See What His Friends Are Saying

by digby

Since for the first time in recent memory Joe Lieberman has gone silent on foreign policy it falls to intrepid blogofascists like myself to seek guidance about his thoughts from other sources. One place to look are the think tanks and policy organizations to which Joe belongs.

Here’s one called The Committee on the Present Danger. “What?” you say, “that group of rightwing fanatics from the 50’s and 70’s who agitated against detente and wrongly claimed that the Russians were on the verge of killing us all in our beds any day?” Well, not exactly. This is the new CPD, revived after 9/11 to find and replace the word “communist” with “terrorist” in all the wingnut demagoguery manuals.

Joe, along with Republicans Jon Kyl, George Schultz and James Woolsey is on the board of directors. (Woolsey likes to pretend he’s a Democrat but if he’s a Democrat I’m Angelina Jolie’s baby.) There are many other important luminaries involved with this group, such as Laurie Myelroie, the highly influential neocon nutball who hallucinated that Saddam Hussein was responsible for everything from the first World Trade Center bombing to male pattern baldness. There’s Ken “Cakewalk” Adelman, Newtie Gingrich and Victor Dave Hanson, who thinks the world is just one big Hollywood movie set. The list is very long. Here — read it and weep.

There are no voices of sanity, of course, nobody who was right about Iraq or who has even the slightest bit of pragmatic realism about the threat of terrorism. They would not want to break their unbroken record — after all, neocons have always been wrong about everything.

But Joe is not just a member, as I mentioned — he’s on the board of directors. He’s a honcho, the lone elected Democrat. So, I think it’s fair to assume that since he has placed his vaunted reputation so prominently on display for this group, he must sign off on their official statements. I was, therefore, very interested to see that the CPD quite recently put out a paper on Iraq. The specific date is unclear but it mentions the death of al Zarqawi which would make it mid-June at the earliest.

Perhaps this will clear up where Joe stands on the issue since he is refusing to talk about it on the campaign trail:

Several events combine to present an opportunity for significant forward movement in Iraq. They are completion of the Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s cabinet, the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the launching of Operation Together Forward to curb terrorist/insurgent activity in Bagdad (49,000 Iraqi soldiers and police and 7,200 Coalition forces) and the possibility of a reconciliation process to abate the Sunni insurgency.

[…]

The unity government is finally in place, nevertheless, much work lies ahead for the new Iraqi government. Sectarian militias must be disarmed, corruption in government must be tackled and eventually eliminated, the country’s oil production must increase; and gradually but steadily Iraqis must take over reconstruction projects.

The threat to stability remains, posed by insurgent diehards loyal to Saddam Hussein as well as the remnant of al-Qaeda in Iraq and allied jihadis. The former seek restoration; the latter seek a much broader goal: regional and ultimately world domination for ther radical islamist ideology, with Baghdad as the center of a new caliphate. The death of Zarqawi and the apparent resulting recovery of a “trove” of intelligence data may result in a sharp reduction of al-Qaeda in Iraq’s operation. Time will tell.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Following is a summary of the Committee’s recommendations for moving forward in Iraq:

* Define the threat to stability to include Saddam Fedayeen insurgents, in addition to al-Qaeda in Iraq and its jihadi allies:

* Heighten and highlight divisions between the two groups;

* Redefine victory as the crippling of both Saddamist insurgent groups and al-Qaeda in Iraq and the training of Iraqi forces to deal with whatever remnants of them remain. In pursuit of that goal, use all possible means to drive wedges between the enemy groups;

* Continue efforts to suppress — and, if possible — eliminate the operations of radical Islamist jihadis;

* Support the new government;

* Seek ways to encourage the Ayatollah Sistani to exert maximum influence to damp down sectarian militias;

* Keep a strong US military presence in Baghdad and other places where insurgent sectarian violence is a serious problem — until the situation improves;

* Encourage iranian Kurds to continue their opposition to the oppressive theocratic regime in Tehran;

* Tighten security of Iraq’s eastern border with Iran to stem the flow of arms and explosives;

* Develop and iraqi Oil Fund in such a way that every citizen of the country can share directly in its greatest asset.

It seems to me that the only substantive recommendations here beyond “stay the course” and “support the government” are their blatant recommendation to “redefine” the enemy as “Saddam Fedayeen” and “redefine” victory as being the defeat of these alleged Saddam loyalists. They want to bring back the boogeyman.

Nowhere is there any mention of civil war. But these guys aren’t stupid, they know there is one. I can only surmise that the CPD sees a way for Bush to gain domestic support by saying that we are still fighting the monster Saddam’s henchmen who are trying to reimpose the tyrannical regime from which we bravely liberated the Iraqi people. It’s quite clever. It has Newtie written all over it.

So, here’s the question: Does Joe Lieberman agree with the conclusions and recommendations of the Committee On the Present Danger’s latest report on Iraq? Does he agree with Newt Gingrich that the US should take sides in Iraq’s civil war?

Oh what a tangled web these neocons weave. Do you think they have the slightest idea anymore who’s on first?