GOTTA READ BETWEEN THE LINES OF THOSE "LEAKED MEMOS"

While Democrats have advocated beginning troop withdrawals as a means of putting pressure on Mr. Maliki, the memo suggests that such tactics may backfire by stirring up opposition against a politically vulnerable leader.

"Pushing Maliki to take these steps without augmenting his capabilities could force him to failure--if the Parliament removes him from office with a majority vote or if action against the Mahdi militia (JAM) causes elements of the Iraqi Security forces to fracture and leads to major Shia disturbances in southern Iraq," the memo says.
--"Bush Advisor's Memo Cites Doubts About Iraqi Leader," Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, November 29, 2006


Television news, by its very nature, is driven by the scoop. Even when the scoop is provided by the print media, TV news rushes to package it into wham-bam soundbites for Americans to snack on just before dinner.

Naturally, that soundbite gets more attention if it highlights controversy of some kind, and so, taking its cue from the NY Times headline, the news media made a big deal about the fact that a notoriously locked-down White House somehow "leaked" a top-secret memo from Bush's National Security Advisor that cast doubt on Maliki's ability to hold the crumbling Iraqi government together.

But that's not the story. Ya gotta read between the lines.

Remember Judith Miller?

She was another crackerjack NY Times journalist who, like Michael Gordon, had won the Pulitzer Prize and wrote about the war. Her seduction by the inner ring of the White House, masterminded by Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney, was a lesson in truly brilliant media manipulation.

The White House knew that the Times was, arguably, the most powerful newspaper in the country and they feared what they perceived as a liberal bias, so as they made their plans to invade Iraq, they knew they'd have trouble getting the rest of the country to get onboard the wartrain, so they set about to seduce one of the country's top foreign affairs journalists.

The seduction works like this: Offer access. Offer exclusivity. Offer secrecy. Stroke their egos while, at the same time, giving them the chance to break big stories before anybody else in the country. Let them do their own imagining of more Pulitzers.

Then, leak whatever lies, distortions, misinformation, or propaganda you want, only do it in a highly secretive, official way.

Offer access. Offer exclusivity. Offer secrecy.

And wait for the headlines.

It worked. The New York Times surprised everybody with its pro-war stance, and made all kinds of history with its leaked documents and inside-access.

It made Judith Miller a star.

Remember Bob Woodward? The most powerful and successful Washington Post reporter on the masthead. And he wanted to write a book about the war.

Offer access. Offer exclusivity. Offer secrecy.

His first two books about the war were chock-full of interviews with the very highest echelons of the Bush White House, from Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld on down. He was given complete cooperation.

His first two books, consequently, were highly flattering of the Bush White House and their handling of the war.


This, I suppose, is a terrible thing to suggest: that Woodward might have been overly attentive to the president's soaring approval ratings, and to what was then considered the likelihood that we'd get out of this Iraq war with some efficiency; that he might have seen a picture of illogic and disarray in the White House (the picture, based at least in part on reporting he did while writing the previous book, that he is painting now), but instead rendered a picture of conviction and even occasional sagacity, because THAT WAS THE CANNY AND COMMERCIAL WAY TO TELL A STORY, AND BECAUSE THESE WERE THE TERMS ON WHICH HE GOT HIS INTIMATE ACCESS. But now, suddenly, like everybody else, including his great cast of highly placed characters, he sees it all going south, and smells the blood…hmmm. (emphasis mine)
--"Survivor: the White House Edition," Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair, December, 2006 issue


In other words, Wolff outright lays it on the line in this month's Vanity Fair that Bob Woodward might have actually KNOWN how bad things were months and months before he said anything, but told the story the way the White House wanted it told because they offered access, exclusivity, and secrecy.

AND IT SOLD BOOKS. MILLIONS OF THEM.

Remember Michael Gordon? He is currently the New York Times's chief war correspondent, and co-author of the groundbreaking, bestselling book: Cobra II: the Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.

His was one of the first books to expose just how badly botched this invasion was, just how egotistical and arrogant were the top Pentagon officials and the ranking general who managed the invasion.

He sold millions of books and continues to write for the Times.

I respect Michael Gordon enormously. He didn't just interview generals for his book; he talked to the troops on the ground and put himself in harm's way many times with the soldiers and Marines.

He was one of the first ranking journalists to speak truth to power.

So, now we've got all this feeding frenzy over the Iraq Study Group and over the Democratic take-over of Congress and the Senate, and this White House feels its back up against the wall to start pulling out of Iraq.

Bush keeps saying he's going to stay the course until the mission is accomplished (his words not mine), but nobody seems to be listening to him.

They do, however, listen to Michael Gordon.

Offer access. Offer exclusivity. Offer secrecy.

If you read carefully the most recent articles by Michael Gordon, every single one of them seems to spell out the same theme: We can't get out of Iraq. To pull out now would be chaos. We need more troops, not less.

Remember Lyndon Johnson? Remember how, when this country was torn apart over the Vietnam war, his response was to escalate and send thousands more troops to Vietnam?

THE WAR DRAGGED ON FOR SIX MORE YEARS AND TENS OF THOUSANDS MORE DIED.

Remember Richard Nixon? Remember how he got himself elected president by promising a "secret plan to end the war"?

And how the war dragged on THREE MORE YEARS, UNTIL JUST BEFORE THE NEXT ELECTIONS?

The big news of the "leaked memos" coming out of the White House, being written up by Michael Gordon/Judith Miller/Bob Woodward, et al, all really say the same thing: We must stay the course. We must accomplish the mission.

And they're all coming out just in time to act as counterparts to the Iraq Study Group recommendations, which will ask for a troop "pullout" of FIFTEEN combat brigades.

This, while the White House is planning to deploy FOUR MORE BATTALIONS to Iraq.

I'm not sure the Vanity Fair columnist was right that a journalist of Bob Woodward's stature could actually be compromised by access, exclusivity and secrecy, to the point that he deliberately misrepresented what was really happening in order to stay on the good side of his gravy train.

I just don't know.

And I do think that Michael Gordon cares a great deal for the troops and this terrible mess.

But when you are talking about access to the highest rings of power in a time of great historic turmoil, and you, and you alone, can break the story…Who can say how long you can remain objective?

Judith Miller flat-out crossed over the line. Who knows how many other ranking journalists with intimate White House access have? But I will give the final dose of REAL reality that comes from Thomas Friedman, the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times. He writes opinion, and he doesn't ask for White House access to do it. He bases his opinion on many years of experience with, travels to, and education about the Middle East.

This is the truth.

And it didn't come from a White House memo.

This is what the American people have GOT to realize, RIGHT NOW, no matter how many memos leak from a White House struggling to maintain its own course while paddling upstream against a tsunami of events on the ground and public outrage:

Here is the simple truth about Iraq today: This country is so broken it can't even have a proper civil war…Iraq is in so many pieces now, divided among warlords, foreign terrorists, gangs, militias, parties, the police, and the army, that nobody seems able to deliver anybody. Iraq has entered a stage beyond civil war--it's gone from breaking apart to breaking down. This is not the Arab Yugoslavia anymore. It's Hobbes's jungle.

Given this, we need to face our real choices in Iraq, which are: TEN MONTHS OR TEN YEARS. Either we just get out of Iraq in a phased withdrawal over ten months, and try to stabilize it some other way, or we accept the fact that the only way it will not be a failed state is if WE START OVER AND REBUILD IT FROM THE GROUND UP, WHICH COULD TAKE TEN YEARS. THIS WOULD REQUIRE REINVADING IRAQ, WITH AT LEAST 150,000 MORE TROOPS, CRUSHING THE SUNNI AND SHIITE MILITIAS, CONTROLLING THE BORDERS, AND BUILDING IRAQ'S INSTITUTIONS AND POLITICAL CULTURE FROM SCRATCH.

Anyone who tells you that we can just train a few more Iraqi troops and police officers and then slip out in two or three years is either lying or a fool…

This has left us with two impossible choices. If we're not ready to do what is necessary to crush the dark forces in Iraq and properly rebuild it, then we need to leave--BECAUSE TO JUST KEEP STUMBLING ALONG AS WE HAVE BEEN MAKES NO SENSE. IT WILL ONLY MEAN THROWING MORE GOOD LIVES AFTER GOOD LIVES INTO A DEEPER AND DEEPER HOLE FILLED WITH MORE AND MORE BROKEN PIECES. (emphasis mine)
--"Ten Months or Ten Years," Thomas Friedman, New York Times, November 29, 2006

DUNCAN HUNTER IS A MORON

Rep. Duncan Hunter (Rep.-Calif.), said that 33 trained Iraqi battalions, now serving in provinces that are relatively peaceful, should be moved into Baghdad or other areas where there is fighting. "Saddle those guys up, move them into the fight," Hunter said on NBC's "Meet the Press." He added, "Nothing trains a combat unit better than actually being in military operations."
--"Lawmakers Criticize Training and Deployment of Iraqi Forces (Report Casts Doubt on Ability to Replace U.S. Troops), Walter Pincus, Washington Post, November 27, 2006


You remember who Duncan Hunter is, don'tcha?

Yeah, he was the right-wing Republican congressman who tried to pass a law last year banning American women troops from combat zones.

This provoked a hue and cry of outrage from none other than the Pentagon, who politely informed Duncan Hunter of two little factoids: first of all, female troops comprise no less than 30% of all our armed forces in Iraq, and that, second, THERE IS NO COMBAT ZONE IN IRAQ; IT'S ALL COMBAT ZONES--so to take all the women soldiers and Marines out of Iraq would, effectively, cripple American fighting forces there.

Then, Duncan Hunter did one more little act as a congressman the week before the elections that was, basically, overlooked by the media: He fired Stuart Bowen.

You remember Stuart Bowen, don'tcha?

Yeah, he was the Republican lawyer whose job it was to expose rampant corruption in the private contracting of Iraqi reconstruction, and who had revealed all sorts of horrors while doing so.

So of course, Duncan Hunter fired him. Then he announced he was going to run for president on the Republican ticket in 2008.

But his firing of Bowen raised a hue and cry of outrage from none other than fellow Republican senators and congressmen--powerful Republicans--who vowed to REHIRE Bowen as soon as possible so that he could continue doing his utterly essential job without fear of being fired by morons.

And so now, the moron is at it again.

And I wouldn't mind so much if those Sunday morning talk shows didn't give him generous sound-bite time without showing him what a moron he is.

This legitimizes yet another idiotic idea from Duncan Hunter.

Because, the main, very simple point that nobody reminds him of is that General Casey DID request SIX BATTALIONS of Iraqi Army forces to help settle the chaos in Baghdad, AND ONLY TWO SHOWED UP. Nobody in the Iraqi government, I might add, attempted to force them to deploy to Baghdad.

And it is the job of the Iraqi Army--not Americans--to move their soldiers around. Only two out of six requested, however, deigned to meet the request. So HOW, PRECISELY, DUNCAN HUNTER, ARE WE SUPPOSED TO "SADDLE UP" THOSE IRAQI TROOPS IF THEY DON'T WANT TO RIDE?

But don't take my word for it.


…the latest study by Anthony H. Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. A Pentagon official in the Reagan administration and a specialist in Middle East intelligence and military matters, Cordesman just returned from Iraq, where he received briefings from military and civilian officials.

One of Cordesman's central issues is that PUBLIC STATEMENTS BY THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT "SEVERELY DISTORTED THE TRUE NATURE OF IRAQI FORCE DEVELOPMENT IN WAYS THAT GROSSLY EXAGGERATE IRAQI READINESS AND CAPABILITY TO ASSUME SECURITY TASKS AND REPLACE U.S. FORCES." He also writes that "U.S. official reporting is so misleading that there is no way to determine just how serious the problem is, and what resources will be required." (emphasis mine)

Cordesman says the Pentagon's Aug. 21 status report, which was sent to Congress, lists 312,400 men "trained and equipped" among the Iraqi army and national and regular police. But it adds that "no one knows how many…are actually still in service." At the same time, he writes, "ALL UNCLASSIFIED REPORTING ON UNIT EFFECTIVENESS HAS BEEN CANCELLED." (emphasis mine)

Criticizing statements about how many Iraqi army units are "in the lead," Cordesman notes that the Iraqi army "lacks armor, heavy firepower, tactical mobility and an Iraqi Air Force capable of providing combat support."

"No administration official has presented any plan to properly equip the Iraqi forces to stand on their own or give them the necessary funding to phase out U.S. combat and air support in 12 to 18 months," Cordesman says. He writes that the IRAQI ARMY COULD NEED U.S. SUPPORT THROUGH 2010. (emphasis mine)

…Cordesman described the situation as "far worse" with the regular police, where "desertion rates are far higher than with the regular Army forces and National Police. He cites the Pentagon report as saying, "there is currently no screening process to ascertain militia allegiance" and "no method exists to track the success rate of these or other police officers."
--"Lawmakers Criticize Training and Deployment of Iraqi Forces (Report Casts Doubt on Ability to Replace U.S. Troops), Walter Pincus, Washington Post, November 27, 2006


I'm sick of this, guys.

I'm sick and tired of flashy politicians with a gift for the soundbite giving credence to Pentagon lies and distortions.

This is how we got into this war and this why we're still stuck in it.

There can be no amount of studies and panels and commissions to examine this terrible situation until everybody involved speaks truth to power. And that has to include the media, whose job it is to INVESTIGATE these statements for their veracity rather than just moving on to the next question.

My Republican husband, a Vietnam combat veteran who supported the war in Iraq for a very long time, said something last night that resonates with me. He said, "What's happening now is exactly what happened with Vietnam. While all these politicians dither around and make media statements, our troops are still dying. They're dying every day while people argue."

I told him that this is because nobody in power really WANTS a solution.

All the want is to COVER THEIR ASS.

So go ahead, Duncan Hunter. Get your little self out there to the Anbar, where, contrary to administration reports, MORE MARINES HAVE DIED IN THE PAST THREE MONTHS THAN ANY AMERICAN TROOPS IN BAGHDAD.

Go on out there, buddy, and saddle up that Iraqi army.

See if you get any further than the Marines have, you moron.

FEEL SAFE, AMERICA! THE PENTAGON & THE DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY ARE PROTECTING US FROM DANGEROUS CELLS OF PEACE ACTIVISTS!

A year ago, an NBC News investigation revealed the existence of a secret Pentagon database that included information on antiwar protests and American peace activists.

Now, newly disclosed documents reveal new details on who was targeted and which other governmental agencies may have helped monitor Americans. At universities across the country, an antiwar group called Veterans for Peace has staged protests by setting up crosses for soldiers killed in Iraq. In New Mexico last year, the local paper described the event as a display of honor.

But a previously secret Pentagon intelligence report labeled that same event a "threat to military installations"…

"No, we are not a threat to military installations," says Michael McPhearson, the leader of Veterans for Peace and a former Army captain whose son recently returned from Iraq. "We're not trying to blow up anything or anything of that nature.

"It angers me that the rights I'm supposed to be protecting I can't exercise without the government looking at me and calling me the enemy," McPhearson says.

Pentagon documents…provide new details on how even Quakers and churches came to be labeled "threats" worthy of attention of the military…The documents also suggest…that agents of the Dept. of Homeland Security played a role in monitoring antiwar activities.
--"Democrats want to See Citizen-Monitoring Databases," Lisa Myers, NBC News, November 22, 2006


You know, we've seen this before, guys.

Remember how Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover salted all the antiwar movements with FBI agents because they were soooo sure that the movement was not run by angry students who faced the draft and eventual deployment to an unwinnable war, and peace activist clergy, but by Communists determined to take over our country?

Documents released years later showed an appalling amount of not just spying on American citizens suspected of antiwar activities, but outright harassment. There is an extensive file on John Lennon, alone, because of his antiwar activities.

This is the very reason that reasonable people want to see judicial oversight on governmental wiretapping of so-called "terrorists." Under this administration's paranoia, ANYBODY can be classified "terrorist."

Even veterans and Quakers.

IT HAS HAPPENED TO ME.

A friend who was traveling overseas accessed "Blue Inkblots" on a computer available at a military base in Germany. He printed up a couple of posts to read later, and the next day, he returned to the base to use the computer.

But "Blue Inkblots" had been BLOCKED by the State Department!

Later, I read that this is routine for any online sentiments that are expressed against the war on computers available at government facilities of all kinds. However, those commentators and bloggers who support administration policies ARE NOT BLOCKED on the same computers!

This is not what freedom and democracy is.

But I'll let someone else speak to the issue. I believe he should have the final word:


Different men often see the same subject in different lights…For my own part I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason toward my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly Kings.

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past…

Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusion of phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?

The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, and the brave.
--"Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" Patrick Henry, (excerpts from) Speech delivered March 23, 1775, at historic St. John's Church, Richmond, Virginia before the Virginia Convention of 1775

THE "AWFUL EMPTY CHAIR" AT THE TABLE

Grief is magnified during the holidays, and with the toll in Iraq steadily mounting, there are now thousands of families across the U.S. who are faced, like Sergeant Baker's relatives, with an awful empty space at their Thanksgiving tables.

…"For everybody, it's the same horrible loss. It's the same tragedy. It doesn't make any difference whether someone was for or against the war…The pain is the same."
--"The Empty Chair at the Table," Bob Herbert, New York Times, November 23, 2006


Rex told his dad that he had "seen more and done more than any 21-year old ought to have to in an entire lifetime!" That was about a month before his death. Rex no longer has the nightmares and sleepless nights, he no longer has to worry about shooting women and children or losing his "nerve". God has removed the fear and wiped the tears away for Rex. A sniper took his life, but God has the capacity to infuse suffering with purpose.
--Personal letter from Edie Page, mother of Pfc. Rex Page, to me, in response to a letter of condolence I sent to her when Rex, who was a member of my son's platoon, was killed in the Anbar province of Iraq on June 28, 2006


I've been told I am obsessed with the war in Iraq. From those who do not understand the nature of that obsession, I have been criticized, even mocked, for my passionate beliefs concerning this war.

It does not help that I held those beliefs long before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. It does not help that every single thing I said--or shouted--before that invasion has now come to pass. It does not even help that the majority of the American public finally came around three years, eight months, and 2, 869 American deaths in Iraq and 351 American dead in Afghanistan, and 21,485 maimings and mutilations of American soldiers and Marines later to realizing that it just might not have been worth it.

It sounds very patriotic to refer to brave women like Edie Page as GOLD STAR MOTHERS. A gold star is, after all, a good thing. It's what kindergarten teachers sometimes put on the papers of their students who have done well.

It's a way to soothe ourselves and make ourselves feel better. We hold them up to heroic standards and give stirring speeches about their patriotic and noble sacrifices for their country.

It doesn't feel very patriotic, however, when the box arrives a couple months after the dead are buried. The one full of their things from the war: their letters from home and their CD's and their pictures of their kids or their wives or girlfriends or moms and dads, and their Bibles and their teddy bears and their favorite mementoes that remind them of home and their combat boots.

Did you know that the Army unit who is tasked with sorting through those things and packing them up for the families has to limit their rotations to three months?

This is because the stress is so terrible for them, so awful, that the human psyche just can't bear it for any longer than that without suffering symptoms of severe post traumatic stress.

You sit there all day long, for three months, sorting through those treasures and lovingly packing them up for grieving families, and see how well you hold up. Though they take their jobs very seriously and are very proud of what they do, when it gets right down to it, most of them who do this would rather get shot at.

And then the box gets home and families often put up makeshift shrines to their beloved soldier or Marine. They put up the posthumous Purple Heart and the other medals, and the snapshots, and the high school sports trophies, and the horse show ribbons, and the tri-cornered flag.

This is all they have left.

Some mothers, like Celeste Zappala, the mother of Sherwood Baker, the soldier who was written about so eloquently in Bob Herbert's piece, become peace activists. They join organizations like Gold Star Families for Peace or Military Families Speak Out. They protest the bloodbath.

That doesn't help either, really.

"Where's the comfort in being right?" Mrs. Zappala asked. "Everything we said was right. Sherwood died looking for weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist. All the nonsense about the al Qaeda connections and Sept. 11th. They were all lies. It was all wrong. But none of that brings Sherwood back to the table."
--"The Empty Chair at the Table," Bob Herbert, New York Times, November 23, 2006

Others, like my son's buddy Rex's mom, search for meaning in their personal religious faith, and cling to that to get them through the harrowing nights and endless days.

We have now lost just about as many soldiers and Marines to the Iraq war as we lost in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/11.

In Iraq, IN ONE MONTH ALONE, they lost--and continue to lose--at least that many--probably many more. Every month. And while they do most of it to themselves, it was this administration who used American troops as if they were, say, a big bodyguard, ordered by the CEO to take a baseball bat to smash a gigantic hornet's nest. They're now being asked to stand still while the hornets swarm around their head and sting their eyes, nose, and mouth because nobody seems to know what else to do. The CEO of course, will never get stung.

Those who insist that what we must continue standing by the hornet's nest, that it's the right and true thing, use twisted statistics to back up their case.

Like the one about how re-enlistments are at an all-time high.

I saw one Republican congressman refer to this as, "The men and women fighting this war know they have a real mission to accomplish. That's why their re-enlistments are higher than ever."

Sounds great, until you talk to the actual soldiers and Marines. You find out then that many of them are forced to remain in the service EVEN WHEN IT IS TIME TO RETIRE.

The most common tactic being used by the military service right now to ensure re-enlistment is to threaten that if they do not re-enlist, that they will be sent back to the war, and then promised that, if they do re-enlist, they will not have to go back for at least two years. The confused--usually young--troops then sign the papers--and are promptly sent back to war.

This is the truth. This is what is happening. It's called the back-door draft.

That doesn't even count those who muster out, then get married, start a family, maybe sign up for college only to be called back in and sent back to war.

It's the dirty little secret behind all the yellow ribbons, waving flags, and anti-draft debates.

"This is why so many are getting out, even though they intended to spend a career in the military. They're being treated dirty. That's not right. Just because we're at war doesn't mean you can't be treated right."
--the wife of a retired Brigadier General, in an e-mail to me


Today, Thanksgiving Day, three more Marines died in the Anbar. That means that on Thanksgiving Day, maybe just as the families were about to sit down to dinner, they got the dreaded knock on the door and their lives were stripped bare to the bone.

Today, Thanksgiving Day, thousands of American troops are serving in a war for the second, third, or fourth family holiday in the past four or five years.

Their children are growing up without them, and there is still an awful empty chair at the table, even though they will--hopefully--return one day to take their seats. I can tell you, from experience, that it is a horrible way to spend a holiday. You don't just miss them, you are terrified for them. And they try so hard to be brave when all they want is just to come home.

But Edie Page's boy will not be among the number who gets to come home. Not now. Not ever. He was a big, sweet, goofy, funny, kind-hearted Marine who was utterly dependable in battle and a friend to all who knew him. He was cherished by his family and beloved by his buddies.

He lived 21 years on this earth.

It's not enough.

People say I'm obsessed by this war.

Until all those Thanksgiving tables are full again, you're damn right I'll be obsessed.

GOD BLESS YOU, MEN AND WOMEN OF OUR ARMED FORCES WHO FIGHT SO VERY FAR FROM HOME ON THIS DAY.

YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN.

SHOUTING DOWN THE WALLS OF THE WHITE HOUSE

Attempting to describe the enemy, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, the DIA director, listed "Iraqi nationalists, ex-Baathists, former military, angry Sunni, jihadists, foreign fighters and al-Qaeda," who create an "overlapping, complex, and multi-polar Sunni insurgent and terrorist environment." He added that "Shia militias and Shia militants, some Kurdish pesh merga, and extensive criminal activity further contribute to violence, instability and insecurity."
--"Violence in Iraq Called Increasingly Complex," Walter Pincus, Washington Post, November 17, 2006.

In the predominantly Shi'ite south of the country, rival militias conduct their own version of gang warfare. In the Sunni Arab areas of western Iraq, there is mushrooming mayhem among foreign jihadists, local insurgents, criminal bands, and tribal fighters…

Because the resistance against foreign occupation has largely been transformed into a sectarian vendetta that hides a struggle for power, there is little chance that an increase in U.S. troop levels or more aggressive tactics could defeat the insurgents or even produce a tolerable level of security.
--"Lost Illusions in Iraq," editorial, Boston Globe, November 19, 2006

What has changed, military experts and intelligence officials say, is that the insurgency of Baathists and foreign jihadists is no longer the greatest enemy the United States faces in Iraq.
--"A Shifting Enemy: U.S. Generals Say Civil War, Not Insurgency, is Greatest Threat," Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, November 18, 2006



Contrary to all the cute White House slogans about how if we "quit" in Iraq and bring the troops home, that the terrorists will follow them to our front yards, the vast overwhelming majority of violence that we are seeing in Iraq right now has nothing to do with terrorists. It has to do with a country--brutally held together by a maniacal dictator for 30 years--coming completely apart.

In order to understand what is happening in Iraq today, you have to imagine a jigsaw puzzle--say it pictures a map of Iraq--that is alive, and each one of the pieces is busy attacking the other pieces. With the possible exception of the Kurdish area, which has been its own little country ever since the Gulf War anyway--the whole puzzle is pretty much on fire.

Areas that the White House has touted as great success stories--Basra, to the south, for instance, in which the Brits handed over control to the Iraqi army some months ago--is a cauldron of mayhem now. In fact, the least-reported story of this war is that the day after the big ceremony just before the British soldiers pulled out of Basra, the post where they had been living and which had been turned over to the Iraqis, was looted and stripped while Iraqi forces stood by impassively.

So the whole fear-mongering election-year tactic of this war-mongering administration, that catchy little slogan that the terrorists would follow us home if we left Iraq and, as that genius-in-his-own-mind Bill O'Reilly rather hysterically pointed out, "would be fighting us on every street in America"--that mushroom-cloud hype was just so much bologney.

Here's the thing about the Anbar. If we pulled out, what would happen is that the new majority, the Shi'ites, who dominate the Iraqi army and outnumber Sunnis by an 80% to 20% margin, would swarm into the Anbar and massacre the Sunnis, who they've long hated even before they were called terrorists. They think the reason the Sunnis have gotten away with the insurgency is that the Americans have not been as bloodthirsty as they should have in getting rid of them.

(Of course, if the Americans HAD annihilated the Sunni insurgency like the Shi'ites want, the bloodshed would have been spilled all over al-Jazeera television 24/7. So we can't win for losing.)

In the used-to-be calm south, rival factions WITHIN the Shi'ites are jockeying for power, invading one another's towns, kidnapping and murdering at will without any interference from all those well-trained Iraqi army and police forces. On one day, one Shi'ite government ministry invaded another government ministry that happened to be mostly Sunni, kidnapped all the men in broad daylight, and drove straight through "police" checkpoints.

When prime minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the Americans out after they had secured a violent neighborhood of Baghdad--because it was a stronghold for Muqtada al-Sadr, whose support Maliki needs--as soon as the Americans left, bombings, kidnappings, torture, and murder of mostly-Sunni neighborhoods returned with a vengeance.

What did the Sunnis do?

Blame the Americans because we actually LISTENED to the prime minister.

In Baghdad, the Sunnis beg the Americans for protection. They say, flat-out, that if they must be arrested, please God let it be the Americans who arrest them. They figure if they are arrested by Baghdad police, they will be tortured to death.

But in Fallujah and Ramadi, the Sunnis can't kill Americans fast enough. I guess they don't talk to each other much on the cellphones they use to set off IEDs.

If we protect Sunnis, it means killing Shi'ites. If we protect Shi'ites, it means killing Sunnis.

Do we pick sides? Right now, we're trying really really hard not to, by rounding up Shi'ite death squads (until the prime minister lets them go) and by going after the Sunnis in the Anbar.

Our troops are walking a tightrope stretched across the Grand Canyon in a high wind without a pole or a lead wire.

So our sloganeering and clueless president says we will "stand up" the Iraqi police and army so we can stand down. Ahhh, sounds so stirring, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, the most recent military strategies put forth seem to say one thing: that we JUST NEED TO TRAIN MORE IRAQIS.

Nobody much asks…What happens to those troops who have been trained? DO they "stand up"? CAN they stand up?

For that answer, we need to ask the soldiers and Marines on the ground who are directly involved in that training. Like this one:


(According to Capt. Stephanie A. Bagley, who commands a military police company in Baghdad):

The local police force in her region, as in much of Iraq, remains undertrained, poorly equipped and unable to stand up to the rigors of this conflict. It offers little resistance to the relentless Sunni Arab-led insurgency and has at least partly come under the sway of wily Shi'ite militias. Casualties are high, morale is low, and many police officers do not show up for work….

"I just want to get everyone home," she said. In the past several weeks, Captain Bagley, 30, barred her troops from foot patrols in the most violent neighborhoods and eliminated all nonessential travel. "I'm just not willing to lose another soldier," she said.
--"A Captain's Journey from Hope to Just Getting Her Unit Home," Kirk Semple, New York Times, November 19, 2006


The article goes on to describe how the Iraqis beg the Americans not to make them go out on patrol, how high the desertion rates are, and so on. This is a company of American military police who are EMBEDDED with the Iraqi police they are training. And it has gotten so dangerous for them--for the Americans, that is--that they don't even go out on foot patrols any more. When they do, the Iraqis beg them not to make them go along.

I am sick and tired unto death of hearing these kinds of "solutions" put forth as if nobody has the slightest idea of what the reality on the ground really is. Ask any military family who's had a loved one deployed to Iraq. Ask them what they think about the well-trained Iraqis. Well, for one thing, they can't tell them where they're going on patrol each day because IT COULD GET THEM BLOWN UP.

This would be a joke if it weren't a nightmare.

And I haven't even touched on the fleeing Iraqi middle class who are leaving the country in droves. Professors, doctors, lawyers and other professionals who have not yet been killed are getting out because they can afford to. The poor pack up what they can carry and hurry by the hundreds of thousands to congregate with their own tribes and sects.

This, my friends, IS A FULL-BLOWN CIVIL WAR. We have not prevented it. We have only been caught in the crossfire.

So if we pull out gradually, then what?

Hardliners all say that a terrible regional war will break out between Sunni nations like Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite nations like Iran.

Haven't we heard this doomsday scenario somewhere before?

Oh yeah. Back during the Vietnam war. That old domino theory. Vietnam falls to communism and all of Indonesia and then Asia follow.

How soon before Hawaii, eh?

So, here we are. Thirty years later.

And the President of the United States is where?

In Vietnam. (His very first visit! How apropos, eh, Vietnam vets?)

Making trade agreements.

So the truth is that if we pull out of Iraq, Iraqis will be so busy killing other Iraqis that they won't really have much time to set up a terrorist stronghold and launch attacks on American soil.

Will other nations rush to finance their factions in the civil war?

They already are.

There is no solution, boys and girls, that is without cost.

And I think the United States and her allies have paid enough.

It's not just me and a few wacky liberal Democrats who feel this way. Here is commentary from two retired army generals, Barry McCaffrey and William Odom, as quoted by Josh Marshall on Talking Points Memo on November 21, 2006:

The quotes were taken from an Army Times interview. (That liberal rag, don'tcha know.)


"The country is not at war. The United States armed forces and the CIA are at war. So we are asking our military to sustain a level of effort that we have not resourced," General McCaffrey told Army Times.

"Our leaders do not act because their reputations are at stake," said General Odom. "The public does not force them to act because it is blinded by the president's conjured set of illusions: that we are reducing terrorism by fighting in Iraq, creating democracy there, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, making Israel more secure, not allowing our fallen soldiers to have died in vain, and others.

But reality no longer can be avoided. It is beyond U.S. power to prevent sectarian violence in Iraq, the growing influence of Iran throughout the region, the probable spread of Sunni-Shi'ite strife to neighboring Arab states, the eventual rise to power of the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr or some other anti-American leader in Baghdad, and the spread of instability beyond Iraq.

These realities get worse every day that our forces remain in Iraq. They can't be wished away by clever diplomacy or by leaving our forces in Iraq for several more years."


This election sent a message, loud and clear, to this administration that the American people have had enough. But the White House still holds the lives of our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan in their blood-stained hands--there is only so much an oppositional Congress can do. They can pass all the laws they want, and Bush can sign statements setting himself free from whatever the law requires. They can appoint commissions to perform investigations, but if he does not have to heed the recommendations. They can even demand accountability with subpoenas, all of which can be tied up in legal wrestling matches until the day he leaves office. Dick Cheney has already stated, flat-out, that he will absolutely not testify before Congress, for any reason.

So what do we do?

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, contrary to what they may believe, do not work for themselves, boys and girls. THEY WORK FOR US.

Remember that old Bible story about the impenetrable walls of the city of Jericho? How impossible it was to scale them and take the city in battle? Joshua, Moses's brother, prayed to God and heard the answer.

Remember how the city fell?

So the people shouted, and the priests blew the trumpets and it came about, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, that the people shouted with a great shout and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up to the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city.

--Joshua 6:20, New American Standard Bible

I say, for all of us--not just those of us with a vested stake in what happens with this terrible war--

SHOUT. LIFT UP A MIGHTY ROAR TO THE HEAVENS OR AT LEAST CNN AND FOX NEWS. BRING DOWN THE WALLS OF THE WHITE HOUSE WITH OUR COLLECTIVE VOICES.

If you've got a trumpet, blow it. When the walls of the White House finally fall down, even the Oval office will be forced to listen.

WHY THROWING MORE TROOPS AT IRAQ ISN'T THE ANSWER

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), set to become the Senate Armed Service Committee's ranking minority member, made it clear that he vehemently opposes a time table for withdrawing troops and instead favors a substantial increase in U.S. ground forces in Iraq.
--"U.S. Commander in Iraq to Face Democrats Eager for Troop Cuts," Ann Tyson, Washington Post, November 15, 2006


McCain proposed "sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq, which means "expanding the Army and Marine Corps by as much as 100,000 people."
--NBC's "Meet the Press," with Tim Russert, November 12, 2006.


General Abizaid did not rule out a larger troop increase, but he said the American military was stretched too thin to make such a step possible over the long term. And he said such an expansion might dissuade the Iraqis from making more of an effort to provide for their own security.

"We can put in 20,000 more Americans tomorrow and achieve a temporary effect," he said. "But when you look at the overall American force pool that's available out there, the ability to sustain that commitment is simply not something that we have right now with the size of the Army and Marine Corps…"

"General Shinseki was right that a greater international force contribution, U.S. force contribution and Iraqi force contribution should have been available immediately aft4er major combat operations," General Abizaid said. "I think you can look back and say that more American troops would have been advisable in the early stages of May, June, July."
--"General Warns of Risks in Iraq if G.I.'s Are Cut," Michael Gordon and Mark Mazzetti, "New York Times," November 16, 2006.

"…to imagine more troops, more people and overwhelming force, can still salvage an Iraqi effort, is also wrong. Throwing more resources at Iraq ignores that the country is beyond the tipping point and outside of our ability to influence how it will go (other than to get out and get out of the way.)
--"The Gates Agenda and the Public Demand," William Arkin on National and Homeland Security blog for the Washington Post, November 16, 2006.


It took a general to finally tell the truth to Senator John McCain about his big idea to send MORE troops to Iraq to end this thing than less.

God bless John McCain. He has served our nation with dignity and courage, and he--unlike the vast overwhelming majority of senators and congresspeople and administration warmongers--has a son in the Marine Corps who is soon to deploy to the Anbar province.

I know he has agonized over this question and I know that he has insisted on more troops from the very beginning of this war. I give him credit for that. And if--as General Abizaid pointed out--if General Shinseki had been listened to in 2003 rather than FIRED for speaking truth, we might not even be having this discussion.

But it's too late now. The truth is, we don't HAVE all those troops Sen. McCain wants, and we won't have them unless there is a national draft.

I've been watching news anchors and commentators and media pundits tossing McCain all kinds of softballs on this issue, and I've been watching him continue to assert that more troops is the answer now in Iraq, and not a single one that I have seen has EVER asked him…WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO GET THEM?

Finally, when he had a chance to try out his theory in front of the cameras by putting the question to the general in charge of making such decisions, he was quickly shot down by the simple, raw, unpleasant and uncomfortable truth that the military has been stretched too thin by two wars bravely fought but badly managed.

There's one more little factoid that nobody is mentioning: If even Gen. Abizaid calls for 20,000 more troops, guess where they will have to come from?

BY EXTENDING THE TOURS OF THOSE ALREADY IN-COUNTRY.

Just so that is perfectly clear to everybody.

I've been mulling this over and feeling fretful and frustrated over this issue because nobody has really been ferreting out the truth or even ASKING people like McCain what he means.

But it took a brand-new column by Fareed Zakaria, the foreign-affairs columnist for Newsweek, to absolutely hit the bull's-eye on this topic. For those of you who don't know, Mr. Zakaria was fully in favor of the war in Iraq and supported the administration for the first couple of years, until things had deteriorated to the progressively alarming levels that we see now. He says:

This is not our chessboard. The Iraqi government has authority over all the political issues in the country…There is a desperate neoconservative plea for more troops to try one more time in Iraq. But a new military strategy, even with adequate forces, cannot work without political moves to reinforce it. The opposite is happening today. American military efforts are actually being undermined by Iraq's government. The stark truth is, we do not have an Iraqi partner willing to make the hard decisions. Wishing otherwise is, well, wishful thinking…

Time is not on America's side. Month by month, U.S. influence in Iraq is waning. Deals that we could have imposed on Iraq's rival factions in 2003 are now impossible…

…America's only real leverage is the threat of withdrawal. Many outsiders fail to grasp how much political power the United States has handed over in Iraq…Washington can warn the ruling coalition that unless certain conditions are met, U.S. troops will begin a substantial drawdown, quit providing basic security on the streets of Iraq and instead take on a narrower role, akin to the Special Forces mission in Afghanistan.

And one last thing: for such a threat to be meaningful, we must be prepared to carry it out.
"Don't Punt on the Troops Issue," Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria, November 20, 2006.


As I have stated many times, I really hate these extremist either-or arguments, like the only people we can trust to figure out what to do in Iraq is Ann Coulter and Michael Moore.

For Republicans to continually spread the mythology that all Democrats want only to cut-and-run, to pull out every last troop tomorrow and tuck our tails between our legs is not only A LIE but it does not help in meaningful discourse over what to do next in this impossible situation.

But it is the responsibility of the news media which disseminates facts--not entertainment--to analyze and dissect all the ideas that are on the table.

If partitioning the country won't work, let's have an honest dialogue about WHY.

And when a popular and experienced senator appears on just about every news outlet insisting that more troops will solve this thing, somebody somewhere needs to ask him the hard questions.

And when well-meaning and patriotic Americans everywhere talk about how terribly important it is for us to stay in Iraq IN FORCE, for as long as ten more years, which is something I've heard repeatedly…

Then they need to ask…Am I ready to send my OWN son or daughter or young husband or young wife or young mother or young father to the war in Iraq?

Do I embrace a NATIONAL DRAFT in order to provide the military with the extra troops such a plan would necessitate?

Am I ready to admit that the current policy of sending the same troops back and back and back again for repeated deployments--three in three or four years--IS NOT GOING TO WORK INDEFINITELY?

Am I ready to FACE THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BACK-DOOR DRAFT--those troops who are forced to remain in the armed forces after they have served their country honorably and bravely, by being refused retirement or being threatened into re-enlisting or stopped from returning home after a whole year in combat or yanked back in, as one Marine I know of--before he's even been out of the service for one month, and sent BACK TO IRAQ?

How about, if their unit is due to deploy to the war just as they are due to get out of the service, they are forced into ANOTHER UNIT which is DEPLOYING SOONER so that they STILL HAVE TO RETURN TO WAR?

This is happening, boys and girls, as I write.

For those of you so certain our staying indefinitely is the only answer, are you ready to admit THIS IS NOT FAIR, and to do something about it?


Are you willing to make the same sacrifice? Bear the same burden?

This president has been only too happy to use this war for political rabble-rousing, but strangely, has asked of no sacrifice from the American people at large for a war that has dragged on now, longer than World War II.

Did you know that only approximately ten percent of Americans currently serve in the armed forces?

That's ten percent fighting the same war, year after year, over and over.

Are you aware that, recently, the U.S. Army extended its enlistment age to 42, and started allowing in high-school drop-outs and those with criminal records because they can't make their enlistment goals?

Sen. McCain means well, and I give him credit for that. He is advocating what he thinks would serve the greatest purpose to protect his own boy and all of our men and women overseas. I am not arguing the fact--on the face of it--that more troops might work temporarily. (Although, we need only observe what happened in Yugoslavia 30 years after the Russian troops came in. As soon as they left, the country turned into a boiling cauldron of sectarian conflict and ethnic cleansing. So more troops can only work for as long as more troops stay.)

After all, WE SENT MORE TROOPS TO BAGHDAD. WE SHUT DOWN A NEIGHBORHOOD. THE PRIME MINISTER ASKED US TO LEAVE. WE DID. AFTERWARD, DOZENS MORE IRAQIS DIED.

Even more significantly, ONE GOVERNMENT MINISTRY INVADED ANOTHER MINISTRY WITH TROOPS AND CARRIED OUT EVERY MALE ON THE PREMISES AND DROVE THEM AWAY IN OFFICIAL VEHICLES, A MASSIVE KIDNAPPING IN BROAD DAYLIGHT BETWEEN GOVERNMENT FACTIONS.

Is that a civil war, mommy?

But what I'm saying, bottom line--and what Gen. Abizaid is saying, is that, it's too late to send hundreds of thousands more troops. We haven't got unlimited troops for an extended deployment and we haven't got the equipment.

There are hundreds of IED attacks on American troops every single day in Iraq, and every time a humvee or other vehicle hits an IED, it is either destroyed or in need of major repairs.

So let's stop thinking about HOW WE WOULD LIKE THINGS TO BE and start looking at THINGS THE WAY THEY REALLY ARE.

And let's stop pretending that all Democrats are Michael Moore and all Republicans are Ann Coulter and let's roll up our sleeves and come up with something workable to get our exhausted and overworked troops out of hell.

What happens to Iraq afterward is up to Iraq.

BUSH'S SECRET PLAN TO IGNORE THE IRAQ STUDY GROUP

The initiative, begun after Bush met at the White House with his foreign policy team, parallels the effort by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group…the White House wants to complete the process before mid-December, about the time the Iraq Study Group's final report is expected…But the administration is basically trying to do in one month what the ISG has done over eight months…

… In a measure of the suddenness and importance of the review, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice this week postponed a long-planned trip to an Asia-Pacific conference in Vietnam to take part in discussions about Iraq…

The White House's decision CHANGES THE DYNAMICS OF WHAT HAPPENS NEXT TO U.S. POLICY DELIBERATIONS. The administration will have IT'S OWN WORKING DOCUMENT as well as recommendations from an independent bipartisan commission to consider as it struggles to prevent further deterioration in Iraq… (emphasis mine)

THE WHITE HOUSE REVIEW COULD GIVE THE ADMINISTRATION ALTERNATIVES SO THAT IT FEELS LESS PRESSURE TO FULLY IMPLEMENT THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE IRAQ STUDY GROUP REPORT, FOREIGN POLICTY EXPERTS SAID. (emphasis mine)

Bush made the decision after his national security team held secret meetings Friday and Saturday to discuss…implications for Iraq after the Republican defeat in midterm elections. Further meetings were held Monday…
--"Bush Initiates Iraq Policy Review Separate from Baker's Group's," Robin Wright, Washington Post, November 15, 2006


"The president indicated Monday that he was interested in hearing interesting ideas…" a White House official said.
--ibid



I really hate being right all the time.

I told this to my husband and he did not argue with me. My Republican husband did not argue with me. Not when it comes to the war.

I said, all along, that the big deal being made about the Iraq Study Group by the chattering class would not amount to a small hill of beans if this president chose not to listen, and he said, himself, and I saw him say it, "I don't have to do what the Iraq Study Group suggests. It's just suggestions."

And then along came the midterm elections--which his brain, Karl Rove, assured him was in the bag for Republicans.

As I stated before, the Iraq Study Group was absolutely NOT Bush's idea, and he would not have gone along with it if Congress had not taken the matter out of his hands. He was going along, patting the ISG on their collective heads and saying, "That's nice, guys," while diddly-bopping along his merry Rummy/Cheney-directed path.

Then the American people took a baseball bat to his head and forced him to realize that they were not going to stand for same-old same-old any more just because their fearless leader said, "Trust me."

I think he was just as stunned by that as he was by the uproar caused by the Harriet Myers nomination, when basically, he told Congress, "Trust me. She'd make a great Supreme Court justice."

He just can't get it through his head that he has to be accountable to the American people for the war he forced them to fight.

So now, here we are. He's backed up against the wall with this ISG coming closer and closer and all the pundits saying it was HIS idea all along to bring in Daddy to help WHEN IT WASN'T!!!!

So what does he do? How does he make it so that he can cover his ass and at the same time, ignore the careful deliberations of this nonpartisan group of experts?

Well, first he calls a secret meeting of his secret guys, and tells them, "I want my own study group. I want the results the same time theirs are ready. And it better say what I want it to say if you know what I mean."

No, I wasn't there and no, I can't prove that's what he said, but considering the kinds of things he's been saying for years and years now, it's a good bet. There isn't enough time, anyway, for this to be any kind of across-the-board study that carefully examines all options, the way the ISG is doing. It was thrown together so fast that Rice had to postpone an important trip to make the meeting. It's got to be a classic CYAC--Cover Your Ass Commission.

This way, when the ISG makes its highly public release of its findings, and it says things he does not want to hear and puts forth ideas for things he does not want to do, he will have his rebuttal argument all ready; his own personal facts and figures, so he can say,

"Thank you for your wonderful work. Really. This is so interesting. I am always interested in interesting ideas."

THE NEW REPUBLICAN MYTHOLOGY

Conservatives searching desperately for a silver lining in the cloud of Tuesday's defeats have tried to argue that Democrats only won because they ran conservative candidates. And they've gotten support from key members of the mainstream news media…

In fact, the Democratic freshman class of the 110th Congress includes a few conservatives, but overall it is made up of candidates who held traditional Democratic positions…All of them support increasing the minimum wage, and all oppose privatizing Social Security. Nearly all support embryonic stem cell research. All except a few are pro-choice. And all of these positions enjoy majority support…

Democrats did not win by moving to the center; they won because at the moment, they ARE the center.
--"The Democratic Center," Paul Waldman, Boston Globe, November 10, 2006


…Most importantly, the American public didn't elect moderate Republicans. In fact, it hammered the moderate Republicans harder than in any election in recent memory. The defeated Republicans in the house were, by and large, from the most centrist third of the Republican caucus. The American public chose to hand power to Democrats, and most specifically a Democratic Party that promised a new direction - out of Iraq.

The campaign by the right…telling people that the incoming Democrats are conservatives, which, in the House, they are not…fails…
--The Center of Attention," Stirling Newberry, blog posting on the TPM Café of Talking Points Memo website, November 14, 2006-11-14


The new Democratic sweep conjures up an ancient image: Furies swooping down to punish bullies.

Angry winged goddesses with dog heads, serpent hair and blood eyes, unmoved by tears, prayer, sacrifice or nasty campaign ads, avenging offenses by insolent transgressors.

This will be known as the year macho politics failed--mainly because it was macho politics by marshmallow men. Voters were sick of phony swaggering, blustering and bellicosity, absent competence and accountability…Men who had refused to go to an untenable war themselves were now refusing to find an end to another untenable war that they had recklessly started.

All the conservative sneering about a fem-lib from San Francisco who was measuring drapes for the speaker's office didn't work. Americans wanted new drapes, and an Armani granny with a whip in charge.
--"Drapes of Wrath," Maureen Dowd, New York Times, November 11, 2006


You know, Republicans are bad losers. And the media lets them get away with it. Now, they're crafting a whole new mythology to explain their humiliating defeat at the hands of the voters this past week.

On a blog posting I read at Talking Points Memo, the point was made that in 1994 when the Republicans made similar gains in the House and Senate, Time Magazine had a graphic on the cover of a Republican elephant crushing a Democratic donkey with the headline about the Republicans sweeping to power in some kind of conservative mandate.

Now, Time puts on its cover something about how "conservative Democrats" have brought the Congress more to the CENTER.

Nobody, it seems, is talking about a Democratic "mandate" or about how Republicans have been crushed or swept or even thumped.

Whereas I do believe that moderation has definitely, FINALLY, made a comback in politics, where pragmatists and common sense centrists have truly "thumped" nasty mean-tempered ideologues, I must admit, the first thing I picked up on during the Sunday news rehashes was the thumpees making their case that the only reason they got thumped was because, as George Will stated on This Week With Stephanopolous, "The Congress is going to be more conservative than ever."

The news media has, in their blind-sheep way, even begun using the terminology. I noticed right off the bat that there seemed to be no such thing as a MODERATE Democrat any more. Why, no. Suddenly, they are all CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRATS.

But closer examination just does not bear that out. Are most of the freshman class flaming liberals? No. This is because it is true that the country is hungry for a common-sense center.

But calling moderate Democrats "conservative" only feeds into the Republican mythology that they didn't really lose.

Or that, Democrats didn't really win.

In FACT, they repeat at nauseum, the election was a true victory for CONSERVATIVES.

Paul Krugman, in his brilliant op-ed to the New York Times, "True Blue Populists" states that the reason Republicans are having so much trouble reconciling their own thumping with what the vast majority of Americans believe, is because they have demonized Democrats for so long as LIBERALS, painting every single progressive or Democrat with the same Ann Coulter/Rush Limbaugh slapstick stereotype, that they simply can't comprehend what a Democrat really is any more.

And somehow, they've convinced the nonexistent "liberal media" of the same thing. As Krugman writes, "In other words, if a Democrat doesn't fit the right-wing caricature of a liberal, he must be a conservative."

The truth is that only 20% of our party actually claim the label, "liberal."

The right-wing driven Republican party simply no longer understands the meaning of the word "moderate." It's just not in their vocabulary. You are either liberal or conservative. Period. This is sad for the Republican party, because although 50-60% of their party claim the label "conservative," the truth is that something like 70% of the American people consider themselves centrists, and it was this group that embraced the Democrats because there was nowhere in the Republican party for them to go. Democrats swept the moderate and independent vote.

I read somewhere else that something like 18 Republican congressmen changed to the Democratic party because they were moderates and they were sick and tired of there not being anyplace for them in their own party.

Not with "the Hammer" at the helm.

Yes, there were two or three high-profile Democrats who do believe in gun rights and are anti-abortion. This does not mean that the whole class feels that way, nor does it mean that because those candidates had been conservative on a few social issues that, in effect, they aren't Democrats at all. Most of them heel solidly in the Blue column on most every other issue.

Since even the media flat-out refuses to use the more honest term of "progressive" to relate to Democrats, I propose we all adopt the more on-target term of "populist" to describe what our party stands for.


(Sen. George Allen), the tobacco-chewing, football-throwing, tax-cutting, Social Security-privatizing senator was only one of many faux populists defeated by real populists Tuesday.

Ever since movement conservatives took over, the Republican Party has pushed for policies that benefit a small minority of wealthy Americans at the expense of the great majority of voters. To hide this reality, conservatives have relied on wagging the dog and wedge issues, but they've also relied on a brilliant marketing campaign that portrays Democrats as elitists and Republicans as representatives of the average American…

This year, however, the American people wised up.
--"True Blue Populists," Paul Krugman, New York Times, November 13, 2006


One of the things that has driven me the most frantic and crazy about this administration is the photo-op governing; thinking that if you just stick the president in front of a bunch of smiling troops, that somehow the American people will be convinced that the war is going well.

Or that, if your president buys himself a ranch right before he takes office, so that he can go pretend to be Ronald Reagan clearing brush and driving a pick-up truck, that the American people will be fooled into believing he's one of them, he's just a good old boy they'd like to have a beer with.

Or that if you land him on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit and stand him up under a banner that reads MISSION ACCOMPLISHED that everybody will believe the war is really over.

I could go on and on and on for pages, but my point is this: by carefully staging every single thing this White House did and timing it to coincide with the evening news, the Republican party effectively dominated the public discourse on every level. Talking points sent out from FOX News to Rush Limbaugh and on down not only guaranteed evening sound bites as well, but also that the Democrats would look like defensive blubbering fools, and it worked. The disastrous candidacy of John Kerry is the crowning emblem of their "achievement."

But as I tried to explain to my family, all politics is not local, it's PERSONAL, especially when aircraft-carrier stunts could get my son--all our sons and daughters in the military--killed.

I think 9-11 just stunned people down to their souls, and they wanted so much to believe that a man standing in the rubble with a megaphone could really inspire and lead them.

And to my way of thinking, the greatest tragedy of the past five years has been just that:

George W. Bush had a precious, priceless opportunity to take one of this nation's greatest tragedies and turn it into inspiration, to lead this nation as FDR led us in a time of Depression and war, or Ronald Reagan led during the downfall of Communism. He could have gone down as one of the greatest presidents of this age.

Instead, he chose to use this terrible tragedy for partisan political purposes, and to ram through a terrible war he and his people had been itching to fight since 1991, and to bully and besmirch anyone who got in their way as "unpatriotic," even heroes like Max Cleland who left half his body in the bloody dirt of Vietnam.

He chose, rather than to lead, to divide our nation into bitter feuding camps of "with us" or "against us." He even went so far as to claim that to vote for Democrats was to "let the terrorists win" and to feed into the insurgency in Iraq.

In effect: to vote Democratic was to become an enemy to this country.

For this and many more travesties, I will never forgive George W.Bush and his minions.

But for years I despaired that the smoke-and-mirrors magic show of Karl Rove and his media machine would so thoroughly hypnotize and mesmerize the American people that our very democracy stood in jeopardy.

Yet through this whole divisive campaign, I clung to something President Bill Clinton said many times, that the American people are so much smarter than they are given credit for by politicians or pundits.

And he was right.

The bottom line is this:

The Republican right-wing media machine can spin up all the mythology they want to explain their own failures, but the American people know better. The Democrats know better. And the new Congress and Senate, which was voted in--not to be more of the same but for CHANGE--will DO better.

HOW DO YOU CLEAN UP A KATRINA'D IRAQ?

Those familiar with the (civilian Iraq Study Group) panel's work predict that the ultimate recommendations will not appear novel and that there are few, if any, good options left facing the country. Many of the ideas reportedly being considered…have either been tried or have limited chances for success.
--"Panel May Have Few Good Options to Offer," Michael Abramowitz and Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, November 13, 2006


In a closely held effort, Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has assembled a team of some of the military's brightest and most innovative officers and told them to take a fresh look at Iraq and Afghanistan.
--"Military Team Undertakes a Broad Review of the Iraq War and the Campaign Against Terror," Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, November 11, 2006


"Senior military officers in Rumsfeld's watch felt their counsel was only welcomed when it was congenial to Rumsfeld's view, and they now want the whole story, good and bad, to be reflected in whatever strategy the administration pursues," said Loren B. Thompson, a national security expert at the Lexington Institute, a public policy think tank.
--"Pentagon to Reevaluate Strategy and Goals in Iraq," Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, November 11, 2006


Essentially, the commission looks set to bring the two parties together by asking each to swallow a bitter pill.
--"Talking About Iraq," by conservative columnist David Brooks, New York Times, November 12, 2006


In order to understand what is taking place in the public discourse about the war in Iraq, it is essential to use your imagination and to picture a big dam during a great flood, with millions of tons of water backing up against the dam.

Cracks appear in the concrete. Those who live near the dam know that it is about to burst, and they quickly pack up a few things and move out--in spite of the administrators for the dam and the local politicians telling them that everything is under control; the dam is stout, not to worry.

Then, with a mighty crash, the dam gives way, and tons and tons and tons of water pour forth and spread out over the countryside.

Now, picture this: painted in bright red, white, and blue and spangled with stars, on the front of the dam, are the words: Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld. When that dam breaks, the words vanish beneath the tons of crashing concrete and floods of water.

Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld believed that they could run this war in an autocratic, iron-fisted way that brooked no debate, no questioning or "disloyalty," no alternative proposals--indeed, to dare suggest such was to be tarred, feathered, and run out of town under the mocking word: UNPATRIOTIC. To back up the point was the patriotism propaganda of cheering troops welcoming their plastic turkey during a surprise Thanksgiving visit and yellow ribbons and flags draped prominently all over that dam in order to hide those ominous cracks and the body bags bumping up against the back of the dam with the toxic flood waters.

If any of the dam's administrators tried to warn Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld that a terrible flood was coming, they were quietly but very quickly fired. Some of them went on to write books about the dam and the ominous flood waters. Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld referred to their books as "cotton candy."

But when the dam burst, and the flood came…then right along with it came all those pent-up objections and questions and alternate proposals that had been dammed up with the flood waters.

The problem is this. Had Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld ALLOWED those proposals to be put forth in the first place; had they WELCOMED suggestions from their staff rather than firing them for disloyalty…well, they might have been able to SAVE THE DAM.

After all, that's what flood-gates are for.

You open the flood-gates gradually and let out the pressure of the accumulating flood waters and that protects the countryside from flood and keeps the dam from bursting. But they wouldn't listen. And now the dam is gone and the countryside is flooded, and NOW they say…Okay, what are your ideas? Seriously.

One of the most despicable displays of many despicable displays to come out of the Bush White House was the day after the election, when Bush posed on the steps of the White House with his entire Cabinet and challenged the Democrats to put forth sincere solutions to solving the problems in Iraq.

This was not a genuine attempt at bipartisanship. For one thing, he'd spent the entire campaign yelling SHOW US THE PLAN in front of hand-picked supportive audiences, which was galling enough since HE HAS NO PLAN OF HIS OWN.

But I'm an old Bush-watcher from years of living in west Texas and watching him botch up Texas before he moved on to Washington, and what THAT was, was a sort of raspberry to the Dems, as if to say, "Fine then. You say I'm doing such a bad job. We're all eager to see how you'd go about saving the damn dam."

But the dam already burst, you see. There is no way to save it now. And he knows that.

I've spent several days seeking out whatever I can find about what the Iraq Study Group is likely to propose, and I was most excited to hear about the Pentagon Study Group.

This is what I figure happened. Rummy was resentful that Congress stepped over his inert body and appointed this bipartisan civilian study group to figure out just how badly he screwed up the war and what--if anything--can be done to fix it.

So, in order to maintain his stamp of control, he told Pace to pick out his OWN STUDY GROUP and then we'll show them, the little fairies. He kept it secret because he does everything in secret, but like all other Rumsfeld-controlled entities, nothing much was being accomplished because all he wanted to hear was what he wanted to hear.

Then the dam burst and he lost his job.

Suddenly, Gen. Pace and the others have been given a get-out-of-jail free card, and overnight, they started using it. I have no doubt they are working their asses off to do the best they can, not only to come up with solutions, but to dovetail with the Iraq Study Group, something I'm sure Rumsfeld would never have allowed, because then he would not have been able to take credit.

General Pace has put together an outstanding panel:

Col. H.R. McMaster, the army officer whose 2005 operation in Tal Afar has been cited as a textbook case in how to wage counterinsurgency in Iraq

Col. Peter R. Mansoor, the director of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan, who previously commanded an Army brigade that fought the Mahdi Army militia in 2004 at Karbala

Col. Thomas C. Greenwood, the director of the Marine Command and Staff College, who oversaw efforts to train Iraqi security forces in Anbar.

And others, all of equal sterling caliber.

This review reflects the recognition that military efforts need to be part of an overall approach that includes all aspects of American power, including diplomatic and economic, according to the article in the New York Times by Michael Gordon, their military correspondent and author of the landmark book, Cobra II.

Even conservative columnist David Brooks--and other ranking conservative commentators, at least the ones with brains, like Bill Kristol and George Will--are agreeing that this election served, as Brooks put it, as "an intellectual release."

In other words, a dam-buster.

Even good and decent Republicans felt completely muzzled by this divisive, Rovian campaign, and only those with secure seats dared question the White House on the war.

The American people changed all that; the dam burst, and now everybody has his or her own idea on what to do to clean up the debris, dead bodies, and nasty flood waters of Iraq.

And everybody seems to be ignoring the ignorant commander-in-chief who keeps yodeling about VICTORY and WINNING when, as Gen. Pace put it, "You have to define 'winning.'"

The bottom line of what everybody seems to be saying is this: OUR TROOPS WON'T BE COMING HOME ANY TIME SOON.

Liberals have to get that through their heads; military families have to get that through their heads; servicemen and women have to get that through their heads.

But, on the other hand: neither party wants to be stuck in Iraq come 2008.

This is where it gets sticky. Events on the ground are going to decide what happens in Iraq, not any study group or military panel.

For example. A full year or more ago, Democratic Senator and presidential hopeful Joe Biden wrote a NY Times op-ed in which he proposed breaking Iraq into partitions like what we did in the Balkans in the 90's. They wouldn't be separate countries, but they would be self-governing and would all share oil revenues under the umbrella of a central government in Baghdad.

Nobody paid any attention to him for months and months, and then more and more people started looking at the sense of it: A Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd partitioning. Like Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia.

Now it has become fashionable to state, flat-out, that such partitioning is a bad idea and just won't work. There's still this snobby sniff to the air by Republicans who refuse to do anything the Clinton administration did even though, in just about everything, it has been proven to have been right, from balancing the budget to finding peace in the Balkans. But that's another subject. The point is that many commentators are saying we can't partition Iraq, bad idea, period.

Tell that to the 350,000 Iraqis who have fled their homes since the bombing of the mosque in Samara in February, Sunnis moving out of Shiite areas, Shiites moving out of Sunni areas--now, to the tune of 50,000 every month. Those who don't move out, get run out or murdered by opposing sects.

Not only that, but Iraq's OWN CONSTITUTION sets up a federalized form of government very similar. So you can talk logically all day long about how that idea is a bad one, but on the ground in Iraq, it's already happening.

In fact, as soon as we get police and army trained in Iraq, they either move into areas of different sects and proceed to murder anyone of the opposite sect who won't move out, or they refuse to leave their home areas to be deployed elsewhere in the country.

Sending more troops is another option. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you can actually COME UP WITH thousands more troops to deploy to Iraq. Let's even say that, in the short term, it is effective and the violence is greatly reduced. At least, the Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence. Deaths to American troops will, of course, spike.

What are you going to do then?

Are you going to stay and turn Iraq into a colonial conquest? Or are you going to eventually leave?

Then what do you think will happen?

Yeah, all hell will break loose.

Sure, there will be a meltdown when we leave, but that will occur if we leave now or if we leave in 2020.

Given the grave predicament the group faces, its focus is now as much on finding a political solution for the United States as on a plan that would bring peace in Iraq…the White House might find in the group's plan either a politically acceptable exit strategy or a cover for a continued effort to prop up the new democratically-elected government in Baghdad, writes Thomas Ricks, author of the masterpiece study, Fiasco, in the Washington Post.

Ahhhhhh. Now we're getting closer to the truth.

Do these various panels hope to actually clean up the toxic flood waters in Iraq, or do they just hope to prettify the political landscape enough that the American people can live with the debacle, as long as the troops do, eventually, come home? Probably in time for the heat of the presidential campaign in 2008?

I don't mean to imply that I don't think these groups are serious braintrusts, the best minds in our whole country, to deal with this terrible situation. Or that they are doing their dead-level best to find answers.

I do believe that, thanks to the common sense of the American people who sent a very loud and powerful message that they were not going to put up with any more partisan politicizing of patriotism or the war, that they wanted everybody to shut up and to put up, then there is now a concerted effort to work this out.

But their proposals will have to be filtered through that whole VICTORY OR ELSE mindset of the commander-in-chief who, as insiders to the White House privately admit, believes we'll be there for DECADES.

And the sad truth, for all of us, is that it's just too damn late to save the dam or the horrific damage its terrible collapse has done to this country and to Iraq.

We can't pull out, and we can't stay. We can't divide up the country and we can't keep it from coming apart. We can train troops but they can't do the job to protect their own country. (Most of them identify more with militias and sects and tribes than with "Iraq.")

So, ultimately, this whole intellectual exercise isn't about actually fixing the dam. There' s no more money to rebuild it, for one thing, and even if you did, the flood waters have already destroyed the countryside. You just can't fix the dam after it has burst. You can't stop a flood that has already happened.

Iraq has been Katrina'd.

The only thing you can really do at this point is find a way to live with it where as few people have to die as possible until we can get the hell out.

That's the bottom line. That's what we all know. God help us as we do our best to figure out how.

CHOOSING OUR BATTLES

Our only two options left today…are "tolerable" and "awful." "Good" is no longer on the menu. It's time to make a final push for the tolerable, and if that fails…insulate ourselves…from the awful.
--"Tolerable or Awful: The Roads Left in Iraq," Thomas Friedman, New York Times, November 6, 2006.


Now, obviously, Thomas Friedman was referring here to the war in Iraq. I have quoted from this piece at length in my previous post.

But I thought that this would be a good time to remember that advice when we are dealing with two more years of George W. Bush in the White House.

Guys, we gotta choose our battles here.

Liberal websites are beginning to make quite a big deal about the fact that Bush's choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, former CIA director Robert Gates, was implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal, and may have even helped provide arms to Iraq during their war with Iran in the 1980's.

At least one Democratic congressman has promised to bring this up and make it an issue in the confirmation hearings.

Here is what I have to say about this: When it comes to dealing with George W. Bush, from now on, Democrats in Congress--and the rest of us--are going to have to put up with one of two choices on any given issue: tolerable, or awful.

He is not going to give the Democrats a good choice on anything.

Before we rear up on our hind legs and fight him on every single little thing, we are going to have to decide the cost beforehand and whether or not it's worth it--also--whether or not he has presented us with a tolerable choice or an awful one.

If we fight a tolerable choice, then his next step will be to present us with an awful one. Then, if we fight THAT, we will be presented as obstructionist gridlockers in the presidential and congressional elections of '08.

We also have to consider, when deciding when and what to fight, the stakes, and who would be hurt with a costly delay.

When it comes to the secretary of defense, every single day we delay means more dead American troops.

So, do we set up a lengthy fight over a TOLERABLE choice when we know the alternative is the AWFUL? Do we waste valuable solution-seeking time dithering over something that took place 20 years ago?

I vote no.

Guys, we can't fight every single thing he does, or we will accomplish nothing in the next two years and he will be the one who will come out looking good. If you doubt this, consider how viciously the Republican congress fought President Clinton after their failed attempt to throw him out of office--they even went so far as to tolerate the shutting down of the government. And it backfired on them.

Now, a converse point could be made about the nomination of John Bolton as U.N. ambassador.

That one was, clearly, an AWFUL choice. So awful in fact that Bush sneaked in the interim appointment while Congress was in recess. Now he needs approval to make it permanent.

Now, more than ever, we need someone far more skilled in the fine art of diplomacy to represent our interests overseas. Everyone agrees--even the military brass--that getting out of Iraq is going to be even more dependent upon diplomatic skill than military prowess. The U.N. ambassador may or may not be involved in those delicate negotiations.

So I say, when it comes to Bolton, an asshole if there ever was one, then yeah, give it your best shot. Force Bush to substitute a merely tolerable candidate.

But don't expect a good one. Not from Bush.

In the next few days I'm going to post a piece about a separate Pentagon study group that is working to examine their strategy in ways even the Iraq Study Group may not be able to--and they are finally free to do it their way, without Rumsfeld poisoning the waters.

All these findings will be presented to the American people and to Congress in the next couple of months. This is not the time to gum up the works over a new secretary of defense because of something he may or may not have done under Ronald Reagan.

That was then. This is now. He's the tolerable choice. Let's get on with it and end this thing.

CHANGING COURSE IN IRAQ OR JUST CHANGING RHETORIC?

On Tuesday, the voters told President Bush that they wanted him to come up with an exit strategy in Iraq. Yesterday, Mr. Bush accepted the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Announcing his decision, the president sounded cranky, and his insistence that Mr. Rumsfeld had done a great job was ridiculous. But everyone would like this to be the beginning of a new era, and it seems best to simply applaud the decision. Whether Mr. Bush understands what a failure Mr. Rumsfeld has been is far less important than whether he is really prepared to rethink the Iraq strategy now.

What was far more worrisome was Mr. Bush's repeated insistence that neither he nor the American people would countenance withdrawal without "victory." If the president still imagines that the American occupation will end in some kind of foreign policy triumph for the United States, neither the election nor Mr. Rumsfeld's abrupt ouster have had any real impact at all. We're still waiting for a sign that Mr. Bush has grasped the steady unraveling of his Iraq strategy as anything beyond a political problem.
--"Rumsfeld's Departure," editorial, New York Times, November 9, 2006.


This needs to be our last election about Iraq.

The Iraq war has turned into a sucking chest wound for our country--infecting its unity at home and its standing abroad. No one can predict what Iraq will look like 10 years from now. I wish it well. But in the near term, it is clear, nothing that we'll feel particularly proud of, nothing that we'll feel justifies the vast expenditure of lives and treasure, is going to come out of Iraq.

Our only two options left today in Iraq are "tolerable" and "awful." "Good" is no longer on the menu…It's time to make a final push for the tolerable, and if that fails, quit Iraq and insulate ourselves and our allies from the awful. This can't go on.
--"Tolerable or Awful: The Roads Left in Iraq," Thomas Friedman, New York Times, November 6, 2006.


On Iraq, the Democratic leadership needs to push the administration to move immediately on whatever recommendations come from the Iraq Study Group led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton. The decision to hold the commission's report until after the election was political idiocy--every day we wait risks the lives of our soldiers and our Iraqi allies.
"An Army of One Less," New York Times op-ed by Paul D. Eaton, a retired Army major general, who was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004.




Let's make one thing perfectly clear: The much-vaunted, bi-partisan Iraq Study Group was not Bush's idea. It was forced on him by Congress. Remember the famous 9-11 commission, that has now become, by and large, the law of the land? Bush not only did not ask for that commission, but he actively resisted it for more than two years, until a vocal and pitiful chorus of 9-11 widows shamed him--and Congress--into it. To this day, he has not implemented all of the commission's suggestions. The Democrats promise to rectify that when they take over Congress in January.

So now there's an Iraq Study Group, a bi-partisan commission set up by Republican Senator John Warner of the Armed Services Committee of Congress, and by a phalanx of senators and congressmen on both sides of the aisle who have been horrified at what our commander-in-chief and his puppetmasters, Cheney/Rumsfeld, hath wrought.

Make no mistake about it. His spin-masters can claim that he was planning to oust Rumsfeld a month ago or more, but I don't believe it. I think the reason he waited to announce his decision until after the election is because he was clearly hoping he would not have to make that announcement. His brain, Karl Rove, had assured him that he had an inside straight in the poker game of politics and that all the polls and pundits were dead wrong and they were going to hold onto power with the death-grip they have come to know and love.

Clearly, when Bush threw together his day-after concessionary press conference, he was shell-shocked and none too happy about having to be there.

So okay. He dumps Rumsfeld. Brings on another one of Daddy's Boys to fix yet another fine mess he's gotten himself into.

From everything I've read so far, Robert Gates appears to be a far more moderate, reasonable voice than Rumsfeld ever thought about being in his worst nightmares. He is well-schooled in the nuance of diplomacy, political pragmatism, and common sense, having served far more reasonable presidents in his long and distinguished career.

So, on the surface--and all the media pundits are getting quite excited--it would appear that a major course correction is in the offing. Gates has actually been a PART of the Iraq Study Group, and only recently returned from a trip to Baghdad where, colleagues say (anonymously of course) that he expressed fundamental disbelief that Rumsfeld let things get as bad as he did.

This all looks good--on the surface. It looks like the Iraq Study Group is going to make these profound proposals for changing course in Iraq, and the new secretary of defense will be far more inclined to pass them than his arrogant, obstructionist predecessor.

There was even a HUGE signal missed by everyone else--including Brian Williams, anchor of NBC news. He featured the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Peter Pace, giving a statement, on-camera, that the word "victory" could actually be redefined.

NBC treated this like an everyday thing. Pace said a thing. Here it is.

What they completely overlooked is that, as long as he was handcuffed to Donald Rumsfeld, Peter Pace couldn't say a damn thing that was not scripted by his boss in one of thousands upon thousands of "snowflake" memos he sent down daily to his minions.

In fact, Peter Pace, a combat veteran Marine, rarely ever said anything at all.

So the fact that he made this statement is already seismic. But even more stunning is WHAT he said: that the word "victory" could be redefined.

Specifically, Pace stated that "victory" could basically entail Iraqi troops bringing the level of violence in Iraq down to what I believe he called a "manageable" level.

First of all, the administration started mumbling around that we would no longer pursue democracy as a goal, but would instead embrace stability.

But when Baghdad exploded even after we infused it with thousands of more troops and it didn't look as if Iraq would EVER stabilize, then, with a losing election in the offing, suddenly, we were no longer going to use the phrase "stay the course." In fact, Bush--with even more unmitigated gall than usual--said that he had ALWAYS sought new tactics and adjusted to conditions as reported by his military people on the ground.

Of course, the real truth is that Rumsfeld always over-ruled everything his military commanders said (beginning in the planning stages for the war, back in '02, and getting worse that very first week of the invasion when he refused to listen to commanders warning about an insurgency) and never let them speak for themselves anyway.

Peter Pace, for example, as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is mandated by the Constitution to have direct access to the president, but has been denied that privilege under Rumsfeld's watch. So, Bush's even making that statement alone is staggering in its raw disconnect between slogan and strategy.

But NOW, suddenly, we're not just no longer saying "stay the course." NOW, suddenly, we are saying that "victory" actually means, Iraqis killing Iraqis at a less horrendous rate than they currently are. Like, maybe just a few hundred dead a month rather than a few thousand. Something like that.

Going back to the Iraq Study Group. The thing is, they can make all the proposals they want and the new defense secretary can echo those proposals.

It does not mean that Bush will follow them. In fact, he may just REDEFINE them. In that case, nothing at all will change except rhetoric.

One more thing. One of the proposals likely to be put forth by the Iraq Study Group has not been much discussed by the media, but it has been leaked, and it will be on the table:

Sending MORE troops to Iraq, not bringing them home.

The theory being that if we send in enough cannon fodder, we'll ride this buckin' bronco. This has been vigorously supported by Senator John McCain, the likely Republican nominee for president in 2008.

Time and time again, I have seen McCain say we need many thousands more troops on the ground in Iraq, that we have always needed more, and time and time again, I have seen whatever media interviewer is present at the time, simply let him make that statement.

I have never, however, seen a single one ask McCain where the hell he intends to get these extra troops.

As it is, the American armed forces are exhausted, stretched out to transparent levels, their equipment beat-up and destroyed, and they are unable to meet their recruitment goals without letting in high school drop-outs, people with criminal records, and people over 40 years old.

So, without a national draft, where are these thousands of warm bodies going to come from?

How many troops, who have already served their country with pride and honor and gone back two and three times to Iraq and Afghanistan, gotten out of the military, and gone on to live their lives, will be yanked back in and sent back to war?

When they talk about "activating the reserves," WHO DO YOU THINK THOSE RESERVISTS ARE?

The same people. Back again. How much longer can this go on?

No one, it seems, is asking these questions.

My only hope is, ironically, the thing that started this godforsaken war in the first place:

Politics.

This administration has already been foist on its own canard. After all, they started this bogus war so they could get elected to office by waving the flag of patriotism and attacking anyone who objected as being, rather than political opponents, downright traitors, even enemies.

They then used the war to get re-elected, scaring a traumatized nation into thinking that you never switch horses mid-stream or unseat a commander-in-chief in times of war.

For this election, they rather frantically attempted to use the war--yet again--to hold onto power, staging yet more nauseating photo-ops to coincide with September 11.

But finally, at long last, the American people seemed to be rousing from the fog of post-traumatic stress that descended upon them in 2001, blinking their eyes, squinting, and saying, What the hell happened?

And--glory of glories--the war Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld started for political gain cost them every bit of political clout they had.

Like that old story about the scorpion riding a frog over a stream, thanking the frog for the ride when they get to shore, and then stinging it to death because, even though the frog saved its life, it was still a scorpion.

So now, we're stuck in this horror, and Republicans, blood-spattered and bruised from their own losing war to hang on to Congress, are realizing that if we don't get out of Iraq by 2008, it's going to cost them the White House as well.

POLITICS GOT US IN AND POLITICS, BY GOD, WILL GET US OUT.

But in the meantime, I would be very, very cautious before I endowed the Iraq Study Group, the new secretary of defense, and the newly-chastened president with the mantle of peace.


At this point, nobody should have any illusions about Mr. Bush's character. To put it bluntly, he's an insecure bully who believes that owning up to a mistake, any mistake, would undermine his manhood--and who therefore lives in a dream world in which all of his policies are succeeding and all of his officials are doing a heckuva job. Just last week he declared himself "pleased with the progress we're making" in Iraq.

In other words, he's the sort of man who should never have been put in a position of authority, let alone been given the kind of unquestioned power, free from normal checks and balances, that he was granted after 9/11. But he was, alas, given that power, as well as a prolonged free ride from much of the news media.

The results have been predictably disastrous.
--"Limiting the Damage," Paul Krugman, New York Times, November 6, 2006


As a Marine mom, I am just as terrified for my son today as I was on November 6, 2006.

I'm cautiously optimistic that the American people will only tolerate so much--especially if anybody starts throwing out that bomb-word, DRAFT.

But on the other hand, I've been seeing a lot of televised interviews with troops in Iraq, where they seem to all say the very same thing, that if we pull out without victory, or accomplishing the mission, or whatever the catch-phrase for the day is, then all their buddies will have died in vain.

These stories are always very touching, and eerily similar.

Yes, this is a belief shared by many troops, but at the same time, there are many, many more who are beginning to think that their buddies are dying for nothing, that their deaths have been a waste. Only, I don't see them on-camera.

Of course, the ones who feel that way don't dare go on-camera, because they get in trouble for questioning their commander-in-chief publicly. But they express themselves very vocally on blogs, in letters and phone calls and e-mails home, and on websites that protect their identity.

Still, it does not get reported on the evening news.

This argument--that we don't want the dead to have died in vain, well, the thing is, this was the same argument used to drag out a war that ultimately cost America more than 58,000 of its brightest and best 30 years ago.

Right now, we're losing troops to the tune of about one hundred every month, not counting Afghanistan.

Untold thousands have left arms, legs, bits of brain, sanity, and soul in the filthy desert streets of Iraq.

When is enough, ENOUGH?

Today is the birthday of the United States Marine Corps. They opened a fine new museum at Quantico, commemorating their courageous and honorable history, starting the year our nation was born, more than 200 years ago.

The president showed up and gave a posthumous Medal of Honor to a boy who would have been 25 years old today, had he not hurled his body on top of a grenade to save his Marine buddies in 2004.

Bush got choked up, as he always does at these flag-waving, troop-honoring, media-friendly events.

But as he walked away from the podium under glorious dress-blue skies, I have to wonder if…even unconsciously…he might have paused to wipe the blood off his hands.