Month: September 2007

Chin Music

by digby

I have a new post up over at CAF today about the long game of Constitutional Hardball the Republicans have been playing.

Check it out.

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Of Course, They Were Attacked.

by tristero

Here’s how the Times reported it:

Two of the soldiers who wrote of their pessimism about the war in an Op-Ed article that appeared in The New York Times on Aug. 19 were killed in Baghdad on Monday. They were not killed in combat, nor on a daring mission. They died when the five-ton cargo truck in which they were riding overturned.

No doubt, the “five-ton cargo truck” did indeed overturn. The unanswered question is why did the five ton-cargo truck overturn?

And there really is only one reasonable answer which is that it was attacked. Just like all those helicopter crashes due to nothing other than “mechanical failure” were, in fact, caused by attacks.

Let me be clear. I’m NOT saying that the administration ordered them killed or even deliberately ordered them into harm’s way. Nor do I for a minute believe such nonsense (cue the usual folks to accuse me of extreme gullibility for not realizing that Osama and Bush are secret lovers who hatched 9/11 together in bed one enchanted Arabian night).

All I’m saying, and believe, is what’s patently obvious: Their truck overturned, and they were killed, because they were attacked. Apparently, I’m not alone, although strictly speaking all she wants are the details.

But hey! Y’never know! Accidents do happen in war zones, after all. Indeed they do. But this was the result of an attack. And if I’m wrong – but I’m not – I will gladly and publicly apologize.

Okay, you military geeks, go to it. Explain in detail how these five-ton cargo trucks are nothing like driving a Nissan Sentra. Enlighten us on their extremely unusual and fragile transmission, on how if they’re not kept in perfect condition accidents are inevitable, on how they’re a bit top-heavy and quite unstable on the road, and that it’s actually more than reasonable to assume mere driver error caused an accident.

Hey! Y’never know!

Flag Clothes Banned

by tristero

By way of self-styled conservative/libertarian blogger Clayton Cramer comes word of this dreadful, dreadful behavior, which he rightly decries as “one of these insane triumphs of ACLUism over common sense.” Seems that Hobbton High in Sampson County, N.C. – a foul, stinking nest of liberal, ACLU types – has banned students from wearing clothes with an American Flag. This is an outrage, an outrage! The school 1rule bans all countries’ flags and stems from “a controversy over students wearing shirts bearing flags of other countries.” Clayton movingly writes:

Does it bother anyone besides me that the laws of the United States have been twisted to put a symbol of the United States at the same level of protection as symbols of other nations?

Hear, hear, Mr. Cramer! I couldn’t agree more!

And that is why, back in 1968, I distinctly recall that so many, many folks that hold Clayton’s political persuasions loudly protested the arrest of one Abbott Hoffman for expressing his own patriotism in exactly the same way as those fine upstanding kids of Hobbton High. I’m sure those conservative defenders of the right to wear the American Flag even paid his legal and hospital bills.

Oh, and Clayton? A personal message. As MY child gets older, I trust conservatives and conservatism less and less. Seems conservatives are hellbent on making America as unsafe, as dreary, and as authoritarian a place as they possibly can. As for your weakening libertarianism…well, I’m sure you’ll outgrow all of it, eventually.

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[Updated slightly after original post.]

“Everything I can”

by tristero

Harry Reid:

“Ted [sic] Olson will not be confirmed,” Reid, D-Nev., said in a written statement. “I intend to do everything I can to prevent him from being confirmed as the next attorney general.”

Let’s hope so. As per my earlier post, should Theodore Olson [“Ted” makes him sound like a harmless furry, little bear, which he is not] be nominated, whether he is confirmed can be thought a rough indicator of how serious and organized the Dems are about 2008.

BTW, can the Senate somehow block or resceind a recess appointment?

Gordon’s Stats Redux

by tristero

A couple of days ago, I asked the hive mind for help understanding the charts in this Michael Gordon article about the “surge”. A marvelous discussion ensued which was very informative. In addition, Mike the Mad Biologist posted an illustrated analysis of what conclusions can be gleaned from these charts. If I understand him, and the consensus of the comments here, correctly, there is not much of any conclusion to be had as there are so few data points. But from what one can tell, according to the data Gordon presents as the basis for his interpretation, there is no significant trend for the better or the worse. Therefore, Gordon’s analysis, quoted below, is, to be generous, overly optimistic, or to be bluntly accurate about it, misleading and untrue:

The most comprehensive and up-to-date military statistics show that American forces have made some headway toward a crucial goal of protecting the Iraqi population. Data on car bombs, suicide attacks, civilian casualties and other measures of the bloodshed in Iraq indicate that violence has been on the decline, though the levels generally remain higher than in 2004 and 2005.

By the way, it is very likely that the Times editors are aware of the problems with Gordon’s optimistic conclusions on the “surge.” In addition to numerous highly criticial editorials, the Times published a long article from reporters other than Gordon that contradicted his assessment.

If it seems rather odd that the Times so distrusts the ability of one of its most prominent foreign correspondents to report the truth in an objective fashion that it sends other journalists to check up on him, that’s because it is odd, at least when it comes to recent history. Had they only checked up on Miller.

Thanks, Mike, and everyone else, for taking the time to walk me, and the rest of us through these charts. We all need to get more statistically literate, and demand that more accurate and relevant data get printed. And also so that reporters with an axe to grind feel less likely bamboozle us and report spin on the data as a legitimate conclusion.

Theodore Olson And The Quantification of Poultry

by tristero

Around the blogosphere, it is not uncommon to find sentiments like this:

The central question is whether the Democrats can force a significant reduction of troops from Iraq on Bush’s watch, so as to avoid Iraq becoming exclusively their headache when they (as is likely) take over the White House in January of 2009.

Let me put it this way. While countrywide disgust with Bush, Bushism, and the low-brow pandering of Republican shtick is, perhaps, at an all-time high, one should never misunderestimate the Democrats’ remarkable skill at pulling the rabbit of defeat out of the most victorious of hats (or something like that).

Now comes word that the genuinely odious Theodore (“Ted” humanizes him) Olson could very well be Bush’s AG nominee, beating out Michael Chertoff, who Bush must think clearly is overqualified for such a trivial post. If Olson is indeed the nominee, how he fares should be considered a decent harbinger for 2008. If they confirm him, hang on to that hat: It means that the top Dems have learned nothing and ’08 is seriously up for grabs. But if the Dems can manage not merely to defeat Olson, but expose the extremism that he – and by extension, the Republican Party – embodies, well, that’s a different story. Suffice it to say that one can safely purchase a calculator and start ‘a-counting, because the future could very well resemble a certain Hitchcock masterpiece, but in a good way.

9/11

by digby

Gary Kamiya in Salon has written an indispensible article today about 9/11,retribution, terrorism and how we got here. This is the conclusion:

Like a vibration that causes a bridge to collapse, the 9/11 attacks exposed grave weaknesses in our nation’s defenses, our national institutions and ultimately our national character. Many more Americans have now died in a needless war in Iraq than were killed in the terror attacks, and tens of thousands more grievously wounded. Billions of dollars have been wasted. America’s moral authority, more precious than gold, has been tarnished by torture and lies and the erosion of our liberties. The world despises us to an unprecedented degree. An entire country has been wrecked. The Middle East is ready to explode. And the threat of terrorism, which the war was intended to remove, is much greater than it was.

All of this flowed from our response to 9/11. And so, six years later, we need to do more than mourn the dead. We need to acknowledge the blindness and bigotry that drove our response. Until we do, not only will the stalemate over Iraq persist, but our entire Middle Eastern policy will continue down the road to ruin.

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The Plan

by digby

As the blogosphere has been saying for years now:

Bush policy to bequeath Iraq to successor

The president plans to end his term with a strong U.S. military in the country and leave the issue of exiting to his successor.

By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 11, 2007

WASHINGTON — — The talk in Washington on Monday was all about troop reductions, yet it also brought into sharp focus President Bush’s plans to end his term with a strong U.S. military presence in Iraq, and to leave tough decisions about ending the unpopular war to his successor.

The plans outlined by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, would retain a large force in the country — perhaps more than 100,000 troops — when the time comes for Bush to move out of the White House in January 2009.

The plans also would allow Bush to live up to his pledge to the defining mission of his presidency, and perhaps to improve his chances for a decent legacy. He can say he left office pursuing a strategy that was having at least some success in suppressing violence, a claim that some historians may view sympathetically.

“Bush has found his exit strategy,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former government Mideast specialist now at the Brookings Institution. As Petraeus met with lawmakers and unveiled chart upon chart showing declining troop levels, the U.S. commander seemed to have opened a new discussion about how the United States would wind up its commitment to Iraq. Yet viewed more closely, his presentation, and that of U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, were better suited to the defense of an earlier strategy: “stay the course.”

[…]

Crocker said nothing about reducing the U.S. commitment. Indeed, four years after Bush stood under a banner declaring “Mission Accomplished,” Crocker said U.S. economic aid to Iraq, which had been in decline, would be broadened with a new infrastructure “trust fund” and an “Iraqi-American Enterprise Fund” to buy stock in new and reshaped Iraqi companies.

One State Department official recalled that before the 2003 invasion, Crocker “warned that it would probably take 10 years to stabilize Iraq. And that’s about what it’s going to take — 10 years.”

Bush’s approach also gives some support to Republican allies on Capitol Hill who have been anxious about entering the 2008 election season carrying responsibility for the war.

Now the Republicans will be able to claim that the war is winding down and the troops coming home, even if fewer than 20% are scheduled to return in the next year.

Bush was even able to oblige Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia, senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who asked for a brigade to come home before Christmas.

But while Petraeus and Crocker made the administration’s general goals clear, it left uncertain their thinking on a variety of key issues.

[…]

Those issues most likely will be left for the next president, whose new job is looking tougher all the time.

The question for me is why the Democratic leadership seems to think it’s a good idea to punt and just allow Bush to do this. They will not benefit politically if they are not seen to have been doing everything they could to get Bush to end the occupation. In my view, the only way this works for them politically is to push as hard as possible. I just don’t see how they can make the argument for change effectively otherwise. And perhaps more to the point of this article, I don’t see how they can cleanly argue for historical purposes that they weren’t complicit in keeping this war going far beyond the point where everyone knew it was a failure and the American people demanded withdrawal.

I keep getting the sense that the Dems are making this harder than it needs to be. The war and Bush are unpopular. It’s not making the country more secure. It’s costing the next generation’s future. This isn’t really a tough call — they’re fighting phantoms of the past.

And then, of course, there are all the dead bodies, American and Iraqi alike. It’s sadly true that we may not be able to prevent Iraqi deaths when we withdraw. We don’t know the future — I fervently hope that the Iraq civil war will be short lived. But we do know that we can prevent a bunch of American deaths, deaths which would not happen if not for George W. Bush’s need to save face.

There can be no greater waste of life than that. It isn’t about national security or self-defense or even national “prestige” whatever that is. This war is being continued so that one man might have an opportunity to avoid embarrassment — after he’s dead. I can think of some things that might be more useless and immoral, but not many.

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“An Intellectual Of Sorts”

by digby

PHILLIPS: What’s interesting is that Petraeus not only was one of the most popular commanders when it came to the 101st Army Airborne, but also he’s an intellectual of sorts, David, a Ph.D. from Princeton.

GERGEN: Yes.

PHILLIPS: And this is a general who came in and devised a team of intellectuals to surround him and support him and to add to that military background, an intense intellectual — I guess you should say — round table as he dealt with operations there.

GERGEN: That’s right. This is a man who is now in his third tour, who had a celebrated first tour in Iraq in the north. And then came back for a second tour to try to work with the Iraqi army, trying to train them up. That was regarded as less successful. And now he’s back for his third tour.

And he is — there is a considerable degree to which General Bush — President Bush went looking for him. He wanted General Petraeus over there. He wanted someone who thought as he did. So, you have to say that there is an alliance of, at least, outlook between the president and General Petraeus at the beginning.

At the same time, General Petraeus has won high marks within the military on all services as one of the most respected, independent- minded men and who really is the — become a father figure on counterinsurgency. How do you do — how do you run smart counterinsurgency? He’s written a book on that for U.S. Army training.

I must tell you, I have a personal relationship with him, so I’m sure I’m biased in this regard. But I think what he’s — I think what all of us are looking forward to, what does he really have to say? Then we can assess it. But it sort of seems unfair to load it up against him personally before he’s even had a chance to open his mouth in this long-awaited testimony.

This fabulous intellectual has opened his mouth many times over the past few years, and in doing so has proved himself each time to be a hack for the Bush administration. Check out this Glenn Greenwald video:

You can sign the petition, here.

I grew up in a military family and I’m not hostile to the services. But this phony reverence for The Man Called Petreaus is enough to make me sick. He may be a smart guy but he’s as political as they come. In fact he’s been pimping the white house marketing scheme almost non-stop for months, culminating in spending virtually the entire month of August glad-handing easily impressed congressmen like Brian Baird.

All this hand-wringing sanctimony about Petraeus today as if he’s some sort of godlike figure who is beyond criticism is ridiculous. He’s selling his war and that’s his right. But when he spins and obfuscates and lies like a politician, he should expect to be treated like one.

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Top Dog

by digby

As Jack Cafferty said earlier today, “are they going to give us another one who can’t talk?”

On Friday, Thompson told reporters in Iowa that bin Laden is “more symbolism than anything else” and said his presence in the “mountains of Pakistan or Afghanistan is not as important as there are probably al-Qaida operatives inside the United States of America.”

The remarks drew criticism from some Democratic rivals and later in the day, Thompson adopted a tougher line, saying bin Laden “ought to be caught and killed.”

On Monday, Thompson said he wasn’t suggesting that bin Laden’s death would happen immediately after his capture.

“No, no, no, we’ve got due process to go through” depending on the circumstances, he said. “I’m not suggesting those things happen simultaneously.”

Later, a Thompson spokesman explained that Thompson meant “the same rules ought to apply to him as to everyone at Guantanamo Bay, and there ought to be due process thru a special military court or commission.”

“For anyone to suggest that we shouldn’t squeeze out every last bit of intelligence information has absolutely no understanding how to fight a long term global war on terrorism,” spokesman Todd Harris said. “It would be very dangerous for the long-term security of our country to not try to milk bin Laden for every ounce of information he has.”

Thompson also told reporters removing bin Laden would not end threats to the United States.

Bin Laden “needs to be located and killed. But we also need to understand that there will be people who can replace him. You know, that top dog in Iraq that we killed a while back, you know, that was a great big deal, too. But how much changed after that?” Thompson said.

You can understand why the neanderthal base would like this guy. He looks the part and sounds like an idiot. The perfect GOP candidate.

(I hesitate to even think about what this guy means by “milk bin Laden for every ounce of information he has.” Yikes.)

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