Month: September 2007

General Heretic

by digby

Let’s see if the right maintains its reverence for the every utterance of Iraq war commanders when they get a load of this:

Every effort should be made to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but failing that, the world could live with a nuclear-armed regime in Tehran, a recently retired commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East said Monday.

John Abizaid, the retired Army general who headed Central Command for nearly four years, said he was confident that if Iran gained nuclear arms, the United States could deter it from using them.

“Iran is not a suicide nation,” he said. “I mean, they may have some people in charge that don’t appear to be rational, but I doubt that the Iranians intend to attack us with a nuclear weapon.”

The Iranians are aware, he said, that the United States has a far superior military capability.

“I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear,” he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States.

“There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran,” Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. “Let’s face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we’ve lived with a nuclear China, and we’re living with (other) nuclear powers as well.”

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Justice Stuff

by digby

I heard Senator Chris Dodd on NPR this week-end talking about his new book about his father, the Nuremberg prosecutor. He was very eloquent on the subject of the rule of law and extremely passionate about restoring habeas corpus. (I do like the guy, I must say.)

Today, he and Senator Pat Leahy have launched Restore Habeas and are asking citizens to become co-sponsors of the Restore Habeas Restoration Act:

This week, we have a critical opportunity to restore habeas corpus.

The Habeas Corpus Restoration Act gives us a chance to reverse one of the Bush Administration’s many assaults on our civil liberties.

We all want to make America safe from terrorism, but becoming a nation that sanctions the unlawful detention of its own residents — detaining and jailing them without the chance to appear before a judge — does not make us safe. Instead, it violates a value that we have held dear for centuries — safeguarding our individual freedom before arbitrary state action.

You can sign up to be a co-sponsor here.

This is so important. I’m not sure this country can hope to regain its footing or protect ourselves properly in this new age unless we erase that horrible blemish of the Military Commissions Act.

Today Bush announced his new pick for Attorney General, a man who is not as bad as Alberto Gonzales or John Yoo, which is good. He’s hardly anyone in which I would put any faith to protect the constitution during this “War On Terror,” however.

Human Rights First:

Trial of Jose Padilla: Judge Mukasey supported granting terror suspects who are U.S. citizens select constitutional protections. While he ruled that the government had the power to detain Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant, he stood up to pressure from the Bush Administration and demanded that Mr. Padilla have access to counsel. He also ruled that Mr. Padilla was entitled to see the government’s evidence against him.

Judge Mukasey ruled that the government has the power to detain enemy combatants, regardless of their citizenship or place of capture. Judge Mukasey decided that the President is authorized by his powers as Commander in Chief[1] and by the Joint Resolution for the Authorization for Use of Military Force.[2] His powers cannot be questioned so long as U.S. troops are in Afghanistan and Pakistan seeking al Qaeda fighters: “At some point in the future, when operations against al Qaeda fighters end, or the operational capacity of al Qaeda is effectively destroyed, there may be occasion to debate the legality of continuing to hold prisoners based on their connection to al Qaeda…”[3]

But, Judge Mukasey also ruled that Padilla must be allowed access to counsel in order for the courts to fairly consider the government’s designation of Padilla as an enemy combatant. “…Padilla’s statutorily granted right to present facts to the court in connection with this petition will be destroyed utterly if he is not allowed to consult with counsel.”[4]

And Judge Mukasey stood up to pressure from the Bush Administration to change his ruling. “When a U.S. District Court ruled several months later that Padilla had a right to counsel, Cheney’s office insisted on sending Olson’s deputy, Paul Clement, on what Justice Department lawyers called ‘a suicide mission’: to tell Judge Michael B. Mukasey that he had erred so grossly that he should retract his decision. Judge Mukasey derided the government’s ‘pinched legalism’ and added acidly that his order was ‘not a suggestion or request.’”[5]

That last seems to me to express more of a (proper) sense of judicial prerogatives than any great devotion to human rights. However, he does deserve credit for at least adhering to the “spirit” of the constitution in demanding that Padilla have access to a lawyer and be allowed to address the charges against him, even if he held that the administration can call any citizen an enemy combatant and treat him under a separate set of rules at his discretion. That we consider this to be a mark of a great and honest conservative jurist just tells you how far down the road to tyranny this country has gone. Still, it’s better than some, so you have to give him his due.

The rest of his recent record isn’t that ambiguous:

Judge Mukasey has defended the use of the material witness statute to detain terrorist suspects without charges.

In Padilla Judge Mukasey signed the material witness warrant authorizing Padilla’s detention.

In Re Material Witness Warrant Judge Mukasey broke with the precedent established in Awadallah, arguing that the material witness statute may be used to detain terrorist suspects for grand jury proceedings and that it does not violate the Fourth Amendment, stating: “[t]he duty to disclose knowledge of crime rests upon all citizens” and “is so vital that one known to be innocent may be detained, in the absence of bail, as a material witness.”[7] He also based his argument on the fact that it is difficult to determine the need for testimonial evidence prior to trial, calling such suppositions “at best an imponderable undertaking.”[8]

Following the attacks of 9/11, Judge Mukasey closed all material witness court hearings and court documents associated with a grand jury investigation to the press and the public.[9]

In a forum held by the NYC bar association, Judge Mukasey defended charges that judges have failed to resist prosecutors’ broad use of the material witness statute, arguing that witnesses are quickly brought before judges to determine the fairness of their detention[10]

Judge Mukasey has expressed concern over using U.S. federal courts to hear cases involving terror suspects.

Judge Mukasey argued that Padilla’s case should not have been heard in a U.S. federal court because terror trials require too much time and too many resources and risk disclosure of U.S. intelligence methods to our enemies.[11]

Judge Mukasey argued that after the government was required to turn over a list of 200 unindicted co-conspirators in Rahman (1995 trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 9 co-defendants, charged with participating in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, plotting to destroy the UN, FBI offices and other NYC landmarks, and proposing the assassination of the Egyptian president), Osama bin Laden had the list within 10 days, thus notifying bin Laden that the U.S was aware of his involvement.[12]

Judge Mukasey has expressed views favoring administrative detention – the imprisonment of detainees without trial.

In his Wall Street Journal op-ed, Judge Mukasey urges lawmakers to consider the creation of an alternative national security law enforcement system, and laments the lack of a law authorizing pre-trial detention in the United States. In the piece, Judge Mukasey speculates that the government’s designation of Mr. Padilla as an enemy combatant might have been due to his being, “more valuable as a potential intelligence source than as a defendant.”[13]

He is far from acceptable to me. But it looks like he’s going to be confirmed, probably in a series of hearings in which certain preening Democrats will fall all over themselves extolling his virtues. (Thank God this administration is almost over.) And he could be worse. After all, they could have nominated Ted Olsen or Laurence Silberman.

Pat Leahy says that he’s going to hold up the confirmation hearings until the administration releases all the documents its been refusing to release. In response, Bush has appointed a terrible wingnut as acting AG, probably to try to force Leahy’s hand. We’ll see how that works out. It would be very satisfying if old Pat picked a big fight on this and insisted.

Meanwhile, both he and Dodd deserve props for pushing the repeal of the MCA. Passing that piece of offal was the lowest congressional moment since the filibusters of the civil rights legislation back in the day and it would be a huge relief to civil libertarians and decent people everywhere if the Democrats could dispatch it into the history’s dust bin quickly. They owe the country that much.

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The Dirty Hippies Were Right

by digby

I just love watching Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman and the rest of these Village gasbags blithely discussing Alan Greenspan’s pronouncement that the Iraq war was all about oil as if it’s always been just so obvious. It’s not even controversial except that it’s Alan Greenspan who said it, which they seem to find tittilating. But now they go on and on about how America runs on oil and that wars are fought over resources (even though it’s a “Marxist” argument *shudder*.)

Well, no shit. It was always obvious and there were a whole bunch of people who told the truth about that from the very beginning and were vilified as traitors, naifs, terrorist sympathizers and worse by these oh-so-jaded commentators who are discussing it now with all the emotion they used when they ordered their lunch today.

I’m sure you’ll all recall how everyone with any sense of decorum ran as fast as they could from the disgusting hippies who had the nerve to say this:

The denizens of the Village are just unbelievable. If we could have had a real debate in the beginning perhaps this “democracy” could have decided for itself if the trillion dollars we would spend on the Iraq invasion and occupation might have been better spent on alternative energy and conservation so we didn’t have to fight any useless wars over oil. We had a right to make that choice for ourselves not be mowed down by a bunch of oilmen and over-excited teenage media whores who wanted to run around in a military costume and pretend they were Ernie Pyle for a week or two.

Instead, Alan Greenspan says from on high that the war in Iraq is about oil and even after five years of shoving shrill neocon sanctimony and intimidation about WMD and terrorism and “Demaaahcracy” down our throats, the whole goddamned town nods its head and says, “of course, everyone knows that.” Arrrgh.

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Chafing from The Wingnuts

by digby

It seems as if I spent half my life listening to smug, arrogant former Democrats drone on and on about how they didn’t leave the party, the party left them. It’s nice to see the shoe on the other foot:

Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he has left the Republican Party because the national GOP has drifted too far from him on critical issues, including the war in Iraq, the economy and the environment.

“It’s not my party anymore,” Chafee, who represented Rhode Island from 1999 until 2007, told The Providence Journal in an article published Saturday

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I can’t say that I’m sorry Chafee didn’t make the switch earlier. His replacement Whitehouse is a far, far better Senator than he ever was. Still, it’s good he finally saw the light. He hasn’t been welcome in the GOP since 1994. I don’t know why he stuck with them for as long as he did.

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Memo To Lefty Bloggers

by digby

If a Democrat wins the presidency and you get the chance to sit in the Roosevelt Room and have a chat with him or her about issues of the day, try not to cry. (And try to refrain from sharing with the folks the fact that you “tinkled” in the white house. It’s icky.)

Truthfully, it’s kind of sweet that all these bloodthirsty milbloggers turned into weeping fangirls in the presence of their commander in chief. They just love him so much. It kind of brings a tear to my eye too.

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Blackwater Banned

by digby

Is the allegedly sovereign government of Iraq allowed to do this?

The Iraqi government said it had revoked the license of Blackwater USA, a private security company that provides protection for American diplomats across Iraq, after shots fired from an American convoy killed eight Iraqis.

Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a spokesman for Iraq’s Ministry of Interior, said the authorities had canceled the company’s license and barred its activity across Iraq. He said the government would prosecute the deaths, though according to the rules that govern private contractors, it was not clear whether the Iraqis had the legal authority to do so.

“This is a big crime that we can’t stay silent before,” said Jawad al-Bolani, Iraq’s interior minister, speaking on satellite television. “Anyone who wants to have good relations with Iraq has to respect Iraqis.”

If so, what does it mean for the US. As I understand it, these contractors are there in huge numbers providing essential military and logistical support. Could the mission do without them?

How much do you want to bet that a “new” company will be formed that will “rehire” these same people. It’s just paperwork.

Update: Brave New Films did this film on Blackwater:

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Ad War

by digby

Rudy’s made a boo-boo:

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani criticized Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton in a full-page ad in Friday’s New York Times, accusing her of assailing Iraq war commander Gen. David Petraeus’ character.

In response, a liberal anti-war group is running a $50,000 ad campaign against Giuliani in Iowa, which begins the presidential nominating process. The television ad from MoveOn.org Political Action, which will start airing next week, accuses Giuliani of a “betrayal of trust” for abandoning the Iraq Study Group.

“Rudy Giuliani has become an uncritical cheerleader for George Bush’s war in Iraq,” said Eli Pariser, the group’s director. “Yet when he had the chance to actually do something about the war, he went AWOL.”

Giuliani joined the Iraq Study Group but only lasted two months, failing to show up for any official meetings. Newsday had reported that Giuliani was a no-show for two of the group’s meetings and instead attended paid public appearances.

Giuliani campaign spokeswoman Katie Levinson said Friday of the upcoming MoveOn ad: “Being attacked by the Democratic character assassination machine MoveOn.org is something Rudy Giuliani will wear as a badge of honor.”

It’s hard to see how even supine media will be able to keep themselves from snorting with laughter if the Republicans continue to wring their little lace hankies and clutch their pearls at the unseemly inappropriateness of Move-On’s terrible ads when they’ve got Hizzoner (and McCain too) out there playing tit-for-tat. It’s no longer about our handsome hero The Man Called Petraeus, or the military is it? It’s just politics now. Rudy misplayed this.

The Republicans will put on a good show.They always do. But it’s a comedy now that they’ve got the snarling beasts, Giuliani and McCain, out there pretending they are a couple of elderly spinsters offended by these ill-mannered hoodlums. Phony sanctimony just doesn’t work for those two grizzled dudes. Rudy especially looks like he’s having way too much fun. It’s like watching William Donohue on television pretending to be defending decency by blathering on about how Hollywood likes anal sex.

And there’s more to come in what’s now known as the “ad war.”

At the same time, MoveOn is readying a new TV ad accusing President Bush of a “betrayal of trust,” the same language the group is using against Giuliani.

The MoveOn TV ad argues that, despite plans to withdraw about 30,000 troops added to the U.S. military presence in Iraq earlier this year, Bush remains mired in the war.

“Now he’s making a big deal about, you guessed it, pulling out 30,000 troops,” the ad states. “So next year, there will still be 130,000 troops stuck in Iraq. George Bush. A betrayal of trust.”

The ad against Bush will run from Monday to Friday in Washington on cable and nationally on CNN. The group is spending $60,000 to run the anti-Bush spot.

That’s whatcha call spine.

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They Censored Her, They Really Censored Her

by digby

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Don’t Have To Live Like A Refugee

by digby

A couple of weeks ago Hilzoy wrote a compelling guest post over on the Daily Dish about the Iraqi refugee problem, which is reaching truly catastrophic proportions. She quoted an ABC report which said:

“Since 2003, when the United States toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime, only about 1,300 Iraqi refugees have been resettled in the United States. Most of those admitted actually applied for resettlement before the 2003 war began. Only in recent months have refugees who fled after the fall of Saddam been able to arrive in the United States.”

Hilzoy added:

Here’s a handy chart. I feel so proud thinking that we have made it all the way to number 15 on this list, and have taken in a little over half as many refugees as Denmark, especially given the differences in the size of our respective populations.

A dialog is developing about this situation and I fear it is going to end very badly. The racist fear-mongering about “the terrists” is going to make the border immigration debate look like a tea party. They simply will not be able to unravel the conscious conflation of terrorism and Iraq without making the neanderthal right wingers’ heads explode. There are going to be many deaths of the people most friendly and helpful to the Americans as a result of Bush’s short-sighted manipulation of the racist American id.

Newsweek has a perfectly awful story this week about a pair of translators who were killed for their ties to Americans:

On the morning of May 21, they took a particularly dangerous route. A friend who had left the country had asked them to withdraw some money from his account at a bank in the notoriously unstable neighborhood of Amariyah. He said they should make the stop only if they happened to be in the neighborhood on other business, but they worried he might be low on cash. U.S. officials say the two had left the bank and were driving out of the area when a gang stopped their car. The men grabbed Hanna and let Meskoni go. A few minutes later, the men called Meskoni on her husband’s mobile phone and brazenly told her to come back. When she did, they grabbed her purse and sent her away again. The purse held the couple’s embassy IDs.

Meskoni spent the next week haggling with the kidnappers by phone. At first they demanded a $250,000 ransom, but she talked them down to $30,000. She finalized her will and asked friends to pray for her and Hanna, but she never told her children what had happened. The day after the kidnapping she e-mailed her son: “Hi, How are you and how is the new flat? We are okay here and remembering the good days that we spent together last year. We pray to God to meet again soon. Everything is fine here. Take care and talk soon.” The Americans reminded her that U.S. policy forbids ransom payments. Friends urged her to avoid the embassy and to deal with the kidnappers through a local cleric instead. “The Americans are behind me,” she said. Her son says the kidnappers finally told her to come alone with the cash to a spot near the 14th of July Bridge, just across the river from the Green Zone, at 10 a.m. sharp. “If you come at 10:30, he will be killed,” the voice warned. Meskoni was not seen again.

About a month later, police found their two bodies and took them to the morgue. They apparently were killed the day after Meskoni disappeared. U.S. officials say no U.S. government employees or contractors had anything to do with the ransom payment. There are unconfirmed accounts that an Iraqi guard was killed and another was wounded trying to protect Meskoni from the kidnappers. Her son is convinced she would have faced the kidnappers with or without armed backup. “At a certain point she decided, ‘To hell with it. I am going down the grave with him’,” the son says. “She was determined.” What mattered most, she told a friend in one of her last phone calls, was that she had gotten all three of her children out of Iraq: “No one can say I didn’t do that.”

In one respect, Hanna and Meskoni had been better off than most of the estimated 100,000 Iraqis who have worked for the American military, contractors and civilian companies: embassy staffers had the chance to apply for U.S. residency. Although Jordan has taken as many as 750,000 Iraqis and Syria some 1.4 million, the United States will have approved only about 1,700 asylum requests by the end of September, according to a Homeland Security estimate. In late February the State Department notified its Mideast embassies of a program to give priority visas to Iraqis who had worked for the Americans and passed screening by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, but few U.S. officials in the region were made aware of the program. The UNHCR approval process alone takes up to nine months; countries like Sweden are able to process Iraqi asylum seekers in two weeks. U.S. officials say they need to make sure no terrorists sneak in disguised as refugees. But Iraqis have to pass security checks before the U.S. government hires them, and then they are subject to regular polygraph tests. Embassy translators seemed stunned to hear last week that the idea of letting them into the United States more quickly was at all controversial. Critics believe the White House doesn’t want to send the wrong signal by freely admitting that Iraqis are no longer safe in their own homes.

That’s part of it. But the fact is that the Freeper crowd will go postal at the idea of letting a bunch of Iraqis in this country, even people like this. They will never trust them and many will assume that they are the infiltrators and sleeper cells that the authorities have been insisting were here all along, no matter what the state department stipulates. Certainly, the wingnuts will never allow more than a very, very small handful to immigrate.

And yet, we owe these people more than we can ever repay. And when we pull out they will likely all be killed. It’s an absolutely horrifying situation.

I don’t know how to clear out all the destruction these awful people have created, but this one seems like one of the most difficult messes to fix. You have the Ann Coulters and the Peggy Noonans of the world on record saying that it would be irresponsible not to speculate about the potential terrorist sympathies of swarthy men and suspicious diner customers. It’s going to be almost impossible to erase the impression among the mass of stupid wingnuts that Iraqi immigrants are terrorists. After all, that’s pretty much what Bush has been saying non-stop for years now.

I would like to see the Democrats lobbying hard to allow these refugees into the country. It’s the right thing to do and it puts them on record as wanting to help these people. If the worst happens, and I dearly hope it doesn’t, there should be no question about who is responsible.

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Bush’s Very Secret Plan To End The War

by digby

Oh fergawdsakes:

[A]ny further changes in war policy before Jan. 20, 2009, seem likely to be up to Bush, who has signaled that he is starting to shift. The White House said the Petraeus drawdown marks the beginning of a “gradual change in mission,” and Bush suggested in his speech that he hopes to bring more troops home next year beyond the troops sent earlier this year for the buildup.

In fact, although senior officials did not use the term “exit strategy,” the outlines of one emerged from the various statements and speeches they made last week. Petraeus plans to begin redefining his mission in December from leading combat operations to partnering with Iraqi security units and eventually to supporting them. At least 21,700 troops, and perhaps more from the buildup, will be pulled out by July. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters he hopes to bring the overall force, now at 168,000, down to 100,000 by the end of next year. And Petraeus told The Washington Post that he foresees “sustainable security” in Iraq by June 2009, a point at which the U.S. presence could be scaled back even more.

Although Petraeus did not define what that would mean for U.S. deployment, other senior officials have said the goal would be to get to a force of perhaps 50,000 once Iraq is secure enough for its own forces to take over. Whatever its precise size, that residual force would then remain for years, much as U.S. troops did in South Korea after the Korean War. Rather than be in the middle of sectarian warfare, the remainder force would engage only in counterterrorism, training, support and border protection. Leading Democrats have envisioned such a long-term smaller presence, as well.

But Bush did not address his extended plan that explicitly and made no commitment to do anything beyond the initial drawdown of forces sent for the buildup. And none of this goes far enough for leading Democrats, who want to pull out more troops, more rapidly. Still, White House aides expressed surprise that Democrats would not latch onto the concessions Bush has made. It is the first time the president has agreed to pull back any forces since last year’s midterm elections overturned Republican control of Congress.

Concessions.

Here’s The Man Called Petraeus just last week:

“Yes, the surge forces were scheduled to go home between April and mid-July, that is absolutely right,”

From Think Progress:

Several current and former Bush administration officials have publicly warned for several months that current troop levels cannot be sustained past next summer:

Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace: Pace “is expected to advise President Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq next year by almost half” and “is likely to convey concerns by the Joint Chiefs that keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military.” [8/24/07]

Army Chief of Staff George Casey: “Right now we have in place deployment and mobilization policies that allow us to meet the current demands. If the demands don’t go down over time, it will become increasingly difficult for us to provide the trained and ready forces.” [8/20/07] Commanding General Odierno: “We know that the surge of forces will come at least through April at the latest, April of ‘08, and then we’ll have to start to reduce…we know that they will start to reduce in April of ‘08 at the latest.” [8/26/07] Army Secretary Peter Geren:“[T]he service’s top official, recently said he sees ‘no possibility’ of extending the duty tours of US troops beyond 15 months.” [8/30/07] Former Secretary of State Colin Powell: “[T]hey probably can’t keep this up at this level past the middle of next year, I would guess. This is a tremendous burden on our troops.” [7/18/07]

Bush has agreed to pull back “surge” troops that were already scheduled to be withdrawn. Yet the Washington Post calls it a concession, as if it makes sense. They don’t even couch it in language that says the “white house” calls it that. They just assert it as if it’s true.

The only concession Bush is making is to his own plan and the reality that the “surge” (which the wingnuts spun like dervishes last winter as being only temporary, so we shouldn’t get all bent out of shape) cannot be sustained. In fact, he is very likely breaking the Army, willfully and knowingly.

Here is an article the Washington Post published on the Sunday before the election last November, and long before the Petraes surge was ordered:

Sunday, November 5, 2006; A01

The Army’s National Guard and Reserve are bracing for possible new and accelerated call-ups, spurred by high demand for U.S. troops in Iraq, that leaders caution could undermine the citizen-soldier force as it struggles to rebuild.

Two Army National Guard combat brigades with about 7,000 troops have been identified recently in classified rotational plans for possible special deployment to Iraq, according to senior Army and Pentagon officials, who asked that the specific units not be named. One brigade could be diverted to Iraq next year from another assignment, and the other could be sent there in 2008, a year ahead of schedule.

Next year, the number of Army Guard soldiers providing security in Iraq will surge to more than 6,000 in about 50 companies, compared with 20 companies two years ago, Guard officials said. “We thought we’d see a downturn in operational tempo, but that hasn’t happened,” said one official.

A more sweeping policy shift is under consideration that would allow the Pentagon to launch a new wave of involuntary mobilizations of the reserves, as a growing proportion of Guard and Reserve soldiers are nearing a 24-month limit on time deployed, they said. Army officials said no decision had been made on the politically sensitive topic but that serious deliberations will unfold in the coming months.

Senior Army leaders have made clear that without a bigger active-duty force, the only way they can maintain the intense pace of rotations in Iraq and Afghanistan is by relying more heavily on the reserves, which make up 52 percent of the Army’s total manpower.

They were nervous about sustaining the pre-surge troop levels. Nobody thought they’d be nervy enough to actually add to them.

After the election, as it became clear that the nation had rejected Bush’s Iraq strategy and wanted a withdrawal, they stalled again and we waited breathlessly for the Iraq Study Group’s proposals — which said:

By the first quarter of 2008, subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground, all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq…

Instead of heeding that advice, as everyone knows, Bush thumbed his nose at everyone and escalated the war. It was a shock, considering what we had long known about the stretched military, what had happened in the election and what the grey eminences of the ISG recommended, but it shouldn’t have been. Whenever Bush is in a corner, he ups the ante. It’s his trademark.

The headline for today’s Washington Post piece is “Accord on Iraq War Slips Further Away” as if there were ever any hope of an “accord” between the administration and the congress on this godforsaken occupation short of Bush agreeing to a serious, definable withdrawal, which he clearly will never do. They say Bush offered “concessions” to lower the troop levels back to where they were when the country decisively repudiated his war and they blame the damned dirty hippies for not taking yes for an answer. They dance around the nonsense in The Man Called Petraeus’ testimony and report that they’ll be bringing troops home to fight the war on Christmas and vanquish the Move-On terrorists. Huzzah.

The real story is completely obvious: the Republicans just had to pull out all the stops to keep their own party from defecting. That’s what the Man Called Petraeus pageant was all about, including the highly coordinated hissy fit about Move-On. They were desperate to keep their own people in line long enough to buy another FU. They literally had to call in a four star General to order their own people to stay the course.

They have no hope of getting any Democrats on board and only the slimmest possibility of persuading a handful of independents who have completely lost faith in the Republicans to give them a chance in 2008. Bush and his war party are hanging on by their fingernails trying to get through each month without a full scale revolt among the faithful. And that may have worked, at least for the time being. I heard last week that at least one poll shows that Bush has shored up his ratings among Republicans. Goody for him.

That’s the story, not this gobbledygook in today’s Wapo article. Apparently the Post got all distracted by the shiny objects on Petraeus chest and couldn’t concentrate on what was really going on.

Update: Surprisingly, not everyone was so easily diverted:

BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: What he did is helped President Bush in his strategy of keeping the Republican firewall in place. Basically, the whole intention here was to make sure Republicans don’t waiver, that they stand with the president on this policy.

And the most amazing story of the summer is that Republicans, not just in the Senate, but rank and file Republican voters, have continued to support this policy. And I think the Petraeus testimony, Crocker, the president’s speech, were all meant at bolstering that base because as long as the Republicans in the Senate stand fast, the Democrats cannot force the president to change.

So I think that was where General Petraeus really had some impact. Not among Democrats, not among independents and not among the public at large.

BLITZER: And, Candy, you’re out in Iowa, watching all these politicians as they deal with this. There’s some suggestion from Republicans I’ve spoken to that have put forward this notion, be careful what you wish for, because continuing the military operations in Iraq, continuing, presumably, to see American casualties, a lot of expenditures, billions and billions of dollars, that could hurt Republican candidates whether presidential candidates or congressional candidates, in November of next year.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, absolutely. I mean, the problem is, the war is already a drag on Republicans. They’re looking, as of this moment, at a very bad 2008. When you look at some of the districts that are currently Republican, the races there, very early on, but look close, there are a lot of Senate seats that appear in jeopardy, including some retirements as well as those Republicans that are just in Democratic-leaning states.

So if these Republicans hang on until July, they almost have run out of time to split themselves from George Bush. And that’s really the problem for some of these rank and file Republicans, because the idea — and many thought that come this next year, they would begin to try to put some distance between themselves and president who, obviously, is quite unpopular.

But with the war, which is the overriding issue of this campaign, if it’s difficult for them to break away in July, it’s going to be difficult for them, at that point, to go forward with the election and have any chance, a minimal chance, of hanging on to their seats.

BLITZER: Even before he uttered a word, Bill Schneider, there was the full page ad in The New York Times last Monday morning, “General Petraeus or General Betray Us? Cooking the Books for the White House.” a serious charge against this four-star general. But did that ad, when all the dust settled this week, come back to haunt the Democrats, hurt them more than help them?

SCHNEIDER: I don’t think in any lasting way. It was really a distraction from the main issue, which is the testimony about the war. It was an unnecessary distraction. Republicans found a talking point there, a good rallying point.

It probably contributed to the affect that I described earlier, which is that Republicans were expected to rally behind the president. This probably gave them a little more fire.

And as you indicated and as Candy said, that could be very damaging to Republicans in the long run because they feel like they’re forced to stick with this president and this policy and the political damage could be catastrophic.

Get it?

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