Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Disgrace

by digby

Thanks to reader Samela for pointing out this incredible series in the Chicago Tribune outlining contractor abuses in Iraq. It’s rather surprising that no other papers or any of the networks have bothered to report the story (at least that I’m aware of) but I can understand it. The sheer volume on inhumane activity that the Bush administration has endorsed or perpetrated is so huge that it’s hard to keep up.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq has ordered sweeping changes for privatized military support operations after confirming violations of human-trafficking laws and other abuses by contractors involving possibly thousands of foreign workers on American bases, according to records obtained by the Tribune.

[…]

The State Department launched an investigation and promised other actions earlier this year in response to a series published Oct. 9-10 by the Tribune, “Pipeline to Peril,” that detailed many of the abuses now cited in the memos.

The stories disclosed the often-illicit networks used to recruit low-skilled laborers from some of the world’s most impoverished and remote locales to work in menial jobs on American bases in Iraq.

Although other firms also have contracts supporting the military in Iraq, the U.S. has outsourced vital support operations to Halliburton subsidiary KBR at an unprecedented scale, at a cost to the U.S. of more than $12 billion as of late last year.

This issue with contractors and human trafficking is not unique to Iraq. We experienced problems with them in Bosnia, too:

…[he] witnessed coworkers and supervisors literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they had purchased.”

…women and girls were handed over to bar owners and told to perform sex acts to pay for their costumes.The women who refused were locked in rooms and withheld food and outside contact for days or weeks. After this time they are told to dance naked on table tops and sit with clients. If the women still refuse to perform sex acts with the customers they are beaten and raped in the rooms by the bar owners and their associates. They are told if they go to the police they will be arrested for prostitution and being an illegal immigrant.”

This problem is compounded by the fact that there are a lot of questions as to whether or not there is any legal remedy. The military appears to be saying they will require contracts to include protections against human trafficking and abuses, but there’s no word on how such contracts can be enforced or whether they fall under under US or Iraqi law.

Last week someone asked the president about this:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. It’s an honor to have you here. I’m a first-year student in South Asia studies. My question is in regards to private military contractors. Uniform Code of Military Justice does not apply to these contractors in Iraq. I asked your Secretary of Defense a couple months ago what law governs their actions.

THE PRESIDENT: I was going to ask him. Go ahead. (Laughter.) Help. (Laughter.)

Q I was hoping your answer might be a little more specific. (Laughter.) Mr. Rumsfeld answered that Iraq has its own domestic laws which he assumed applied to those private military contractors. However, Iraq is clearly not currently capable of enforcing its laws, much less against — over our American military contractors. I would submit to you that in this case, this is one case that privatization is not a solution. And, Mr. President, how do you propose to bring private military contractors under a system of law?

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate that very much. I wasn’t kidding — (laughter.) I was going to — I pick up the phone and say, Mr. Secretary, I’ve got an interesting question. (Laughter.) This is what delegation — I don’t mean to be dodging the question, although it’s kind of convenient in this case, but never — (laughter.) I really will — I’m going to call the Secretary and say you brought up a very valid question, and what are we doing about it? That’s how I work. I’m — thanks. (Laughter.)

Despite all the hilarity, this is actually quite an important question. From Guantanamo to illegal wiretapping to military contractors, the law has been twisted or ignored by this administration. In the case of contractors who participate directly in the conflict, the law ironically suggests that they are “unlawful combatants.” If they are caught breaking laws in Iraq, they fall under no enforceable legal system and are merely sent home. Meanwhile, the unlawful combatants we capture, many of whom have now been found to be factually innocent, are held indefinitely in Guantanamo and in secret prisons around the world.

You will all likely recall that strange moment a couple of months ago when General Peter Perfect publicly contradicted Rumsfeld on the issue of whether or not an American soldier or marine was honor bound to stop abuses if he or she saw them happening. Pace said yes, Rumsfeld said they should just be “reported.” Guess what?

…there have been at least six joint U.S.-Iraqi inspections of detention centers, most of them run by Iraq’s Shiite Muslim-dominated Interior Ministry. Two sources involved with the inspections, one Iraqi official and one U.S. official, said abuse of prisoners was found at all the sites visited through February. U.S. military authorities confirmed that signs of severe abuse were observed at two of the detention centers.

But U.S. troops have not responded by removing all the detainees, as they did in November. Instead, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, only a handful of the most severely abused detainees at a single site were removed for medical treatment. Prisoners at two other sites were removed to alleviate overcrowding. U.S. and Iraqi authorities left the rest where they were.

This practice of leaving the detainees in place has raised concerns that detainees now face additional threats. It has also prompted fresh questions from the inspectors about whether the United States has honored a pledge by Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that U.S. troops would attempt to stop inhumane treatment if they saw it.

[…]

The Iraqi official familiar with the joint inspections said detainees who are not moved to other facilities are left vulnerable. “They tell us, ‘If you leave us here, they will kill us,’ ” said the Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because, he said, he and other Iraqis involved with inspections had received death threats.

The U.S. official involved in the inspections, who would not be identified by name, described in an e-mail the abuse found during some of the visits since the Nov. 13 raid: “Numerous bruises on the arms, legs and feet. A lot of the Iraqis had separated shoulders and problems with their hands and fingers too. You could also see strap marks on some of their backs.”

“I was not in charge of the team who went to the sites. If so, I would have taken them out,” the U.S. official wrote, referring to the detainees. “We set a precedent and we were given guidance” from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “but for some reason it is not being followed.”

Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner, the commander of U.S. detention operations in Iraq, said in an interview, “I would strongly disagree with the statement that Americans are seeing cases of abuse and not doing anything.”

There are other quotes by generals saying that no abuse of any kind has been seen, while other military officers admit that there has been torture including burning with cigarettes, dislocated shoulders from hanging from ropes etc. And the beat(ings) go on.

The US government has lost all moral authority and no longer even theoretically adheres to a consistent set of principles. It indefinitely imprisons citizens and non-citizens alike as non-combatants, some of them innocent, saying the “battlefield” comprises the whole planet, including Smalltown USA. Yet we place our own non-combatants on the real battlefield and protect them by saying there is no legal system that applies them. The taxpayers of this country are paying for human trafficking. The administration created a series of secret prisons for the sole purpose of circumventing American laws. The government advances theories of executive authority that kings and dictators could appreciate. And we are now in the process of enabling the country we liberated from a tyrant to create tyrannical institutions of their own in the name of democratic government.

Every one of those things will make us less safe and yet the perpetrators insist that they are all done to protect us. And they are finally admitting that most of this is done purely for domestic political reasons.

My God.

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Tinkerbloggers

by digby

Mark Kleiman finds that the rightwing bigotsphere has decided the secret prison story was an elaborate ruse to trap CIA leakers. There never were any prisons.

I’m not kidding. Clap louder boys and girls.

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Save The Internet

by digby

I urge everyone to click this link and read Matt Stoller’s post about this threat to your access to Hullabaloo and other blogs if the rapacious greedheads get their way. This is no drill. The internet providers are trying to dismantle Net Neutrality, which is the principle that bars companies from blocking content they don’t like. Up to now the internet has been open, allowing innovations like blogging to emerge on the same playing field as the commercial web sites and compete for readers without needing to pay money for the privilege. With the help of Republicans and certain misguided Democrats, corporate America is about to change all that if we don’t stop them.

This isn’t some arcane technological issue. It affects all of us who surf the internet. It means that the network providers will be able to make deals with certain companies to degrade or cut off your access to its competitors to give you an incentive to use their service. The providers complain that companies like Google or Yahoo are making big bucks and they should get a piece of the action. But the only thing they have to offer these companies is access — and the only way they can assure them that they will get their money’s worth is by assuring them that they can deliver customers. Right now, everybody competes openly for readers and customers. If this bill passes, that will change. Internet providers will be in the business of delivering customers to certain web sites and they will likely use all the technical capability they have to do it.

Watch this very short video for a simple explanation of how this will work. Read Matt’s post on this subject. And contact your representative.

As Matt says:

Can we win this fight? Yes, we can. Congress isn’t that set on giving away the internet. They just don’t understand the issues involved and don’t think anyone’s paying attention.

I have been remiss in not publicizing this issue until now. This may very well affect what I do. If a telco or cable company decides they don’t like this blog, for political or any other reasons, they could theoretically slow it down or block it so that their customers cannot see it. In this environment that is a very scary thing.

Keep in mind that when the Bush administration decided they wanted to shred the constitution and conduct warrantless wiretaps, they went to the telephone companies and the telephone companies said not a word about it.

Consider that the former owners of my own cable company and internet provider, Adelphia, were right wing religious zealots (and crooks) who refused to show certain content on their cable line-up. And consider that there are only a handful of high speed internet services even in a metropolis like Los Angeles.

If you think that this country would be better off politically with another corporate cartel deciding what information you can have access to, then don’t bother calling your congressman. But if the internet has become an important source of news and information that you believe is important to a functioning democracy, get on the horn.

Here is a map showing where members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee stand on this subject. As it turns out my own congressman, a member, has not yet committed. He is going to hear from me today. Perhaps those of you who live here in Southern California (or not) would like to call or fax one of his offices and let him know where you stand.

Rep. Henry Waxman

California:
(323) 651-1040 (phone)
(818) 878-7400 (phone)
(310) 652-3095 (phone)
(323) 655-0502 (fax)

Washington:
202-225-3976
202-225-4099 (fax)

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Bush = Lincoln? Sure, And Ashlee Simpson = Yo-Yo Ma

by tristero

A week or so ago, Iran was the new Cuban Missile crisis. This week, Bush is the new Lincoln. Riiiiight.

For those who think this is a debatable comparison that deserves serious, thoughtful, and nuanced discussion, Bennet Kelley and Mahablog have saved the rest of us a lot of time.

Let’s see – Churchill, Kennedy, Lincoln – who’s next? Napoleon? Nope, he’s French for starters. Gandhi? Ehhh, it would just irritate Pakistan. Me, I’m leaning towards this guy or this one. Or maybe, given the way his poll numbers are going, Bush will go down in history as someone akin to this.

Agitating For A Crackdown

by digby

I wrote yesterday about the re-emergence of the shrieking harpies as the Republicans go down to defeat. I was speaking specifically of the wingnut gasbags, but Robert Parry points out that it is more than rhetoric. They are agitating to criminalize dissent. He cites this column by Tony Blankley:

The upcoming, unprecedented generals’ “revolt” described by Mr. Holbrooke, if it is not against the law, certainly comes dangerously close to violating three articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice:

Article 94 — Mutiny and sedition Text
(a) “Any person subject to this chapter who (1) with intent to usurp or override lawful military authority, refuse, in concert with any other person, to obey orders or otherwise do his duty or creates any violence or disturbance is guilty of mutiny; (2) with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of lawful civil authority, creates, in concert with any other person, revolt, violence, or other disturbance against that authority is guilty of sedition; (3) fails to do his utmost to prevent and suppress a mutiny or sedition being committed in his presence, or fails to take all reasonable means to inform his superior commissioned officer or commanding officer of a mutiny or sedition which he knows or has reason to believe is taking place, is guilty of a failure to suppress or report a mutiny or sedition.”

Article 88 — Contempt toward officials Text…
Article 134 — General article

[…]

Certainly, generals and admirals are traditionally given more leeway to publicly assess war policies than is given to those in lower ranks. But with that broader, though limited, discretion comes the responsibility not to be seen to in any way contradict the absolute rule of civilians over the military in our constitutional republic.

The president has his authority granted to him by the people in the election of 2004. Where exactly do the generals in “revolt” think their authority comes from?

Republicans truly seem to have the idea that when a president wins an election he becomes dictator (or a “decider” as some might call it) Keep in mind Blankley is talking here about officers who resign or retire and then speak out about the policy. He claims that if they did this en masse, by design, they would be guilty of mutiny and sedition and a whole bunch of other things. He’s desperately reaching for a legal way to stop these people from objecting to Bush’s policies, even after they are out o0f the military.

Meanwhile, Bill Bennett says that journalists should be in jail for reporting that the government is tapping the phones of would-be terrorists without a warrant. Parry rightly reminds everyone of what Alberto Gonzales himself said about that:

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Feb. 6, 2006, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, asked Gonzales, “How has this revelation damaged the program” since the administration’s attack on the disclosure “seems to presuppose that these very sophisticated al-Qaeda folks didn’t think we were intercepting their phone calls?”

Gonzales responded, “I think, based on my experience, it is true – you would assume that the enemy is presuming that we are engaged in some kind of surveillance. But if they’re not reminded about it all the time in the newspapers and in stories, they sometimes forget” – a response that drew laughter from the citizens in the hearing room.

I know that the wingnuts don’t want to admit that the illegal wiretapping story is not about national security but rather about a heretofore unknown executive authority to flush the fourth Amendment down the toilet whenever it chooses, but that’s the issue.

The revelation of the secret prisons that is causing the harpies to foam at the mouth this week-end is equally ridiculous:

As for the secret prisons, the fallout appears to be largely political, causing embarrassment for countries that collaborated in what appears to be a clear violation of international law by granting space for “black sites” where torture allegedly was practiced.

The most likely consequence is that the Bush administration will find it harder in the future to set up secret prisons outside the scrutiny of the International Red Cross, the United Nations and human rights organizations.

Certain allies who were bullied or cajoled into accepting our torture facilities were exposed. I would not be surprised to find out that they were relieved not to have to host our sickening little gulag. It’s certainly hard to imagine they were entirely thrilled to have been drawn into our quixotic adventure in spreadin’ freedom through torture by serving as our illegal prison hosts.

Parry concludes:

… what appears most keenly at stake in the escalating political rhetoric is the Bush administration’s determination to stop its political fall by branding its critics – even U.S. generals and CIA officers – as unpatriotic and then silencing them with threats of imprisonment.

Bush is trying to mark the boundaries of permissible political debate. He also wants total control of classified information so he can leak the information that helps him – as he did in summer 2003 to shore up his claims about Iraq’s WMD – while keeping a lid on secrets that might make him look bad.

The firing of CIA officer Mary McCarthy and the threats of criminal charges against various dissenters are just the latest skirmishes in the political war over who will decide what Americans get to see and hear.

The other signal to Bush’s critics, however, is this: If they ever thought he and his administration would accept accountability for their alleged abuses of power without a nasty fight, those critics are very mistaken.

This is why the Democrats need to be very tough and make it clear that they are serious about holding this administration accountable for what they’ve done. If they are not out front, visibly willing to get these generals’ and these whistleblowers’ backs, they are sending a signal that these folks are on their own while the harpies are circling. Democrats need to step up here.

In this very interesting article in the American prospect, Ruy Texeira and John Helpin offer this thesis: “Progressives need to fight for what they believe in — and put the common good at the center of a new progressive vision — as an essential strategy for political growth and majority building.” I don’t know about you, but I believe in the Bill of Rights. (I actually think it may be the single best thing the United States ever did.)

I know it’s unfashionable to talk about rights at this political moment and that we are supposed to pull together and submerge our individual needs for the common good. But I’ve got to say that I think without a robust defense of the Bill of Rights, there is no common good. They are what allow the minority to participate in the common good. They are what allow the people to be heard and the truth to be spoken so that we can even know what the common good is. They are what restrains government from using its awesome power to repress its citizens instead of using it to promote the common good. In my mind, if Democrats don’t stand for the Bill of Rights then they stand for nothing. It’s the foundation upon which everything else we do is built.

So, as we go into this election season and we see the shrieking harpies like Bill Bennett and Tony Blankley agitating for the government to repress dissent, I hope the party keeps in mind that while braying about national defense, Republicans are increasingly “standing” for a police state. If we don’t defend the constitution then who the hell will?

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Partisan Leaks

by digby

Can someone explain to me why it’s assumed that Mary McCarthy leaked information for partisan reasons (because she gave money to the Kerry campaign) while her boss Porter Goss, who was a Republican congressman until a year and a half ago, is not assumed to have fired her for partisan reasons?

Remember, when Goss was head of the house intelligence committee, he had this to say about the alleged leak of covert operative Valerie Plame’s name to Robert Novak:

“Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I’ll have an investigation”

yeah, yeah, I know. IOKIY… whatever.

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The Shake Up

by digby

So, aside from rearranging the deck chairs, Josh Bolton has a new plan:

Deploy Guns and Badges

This is an unabashed play to members of the conservative base who are worried about illegal immigration. Under the banner of homeland security, the White House plans to seek more funding for an extremely visible enforcement crackdown at the Mexican border, including a beefed-up force of agents patrolling on all-terrain vehicles (ATVs). “It’ll be more guys with guns and badges,” said a proponent of the plan. “Think of the visuals. The President can go down and meet with the new recruits. He can go down to the border and meet with a bunch of guys and go ride around on an atv.”

I wonder what costume he’ll put on for that photo-op. Chuck Norris is his favorite actor so I’m thinking Texas Ranger suit.

Hitch up those chaps, Junior.

Make Wall Street Happy

In an effort to curry favor with dispirited Bush backers in the investment world, the Administration will focus on two tax measures already in the legislative pipeline—extensions of the rate cuts for stock dividends and capital gains

What’ll they think of next?

Brag More

White House officials who track coverage of Bush in media markets around the country said he garnered his best publicity in months from a tour to promote enrollment in Medicare’s new prescription-drug plan. So they are planning a more focused and consistent effort to talk about the program’s successes after months of press reports on start-up difficulties. Bolten’s plan also calls for more happy talk about the economy.

Yeah, they’ve got a lot to brag about. And happy talk is a sure way to bring people around.

Court The Press

Bolten is extremely guarded around reporters, but he knows them and, unlike some of his colleagues, is not scared of them…His first move, working with counselor Dan Bartlett, was to offer the press secretary job to Tony Snow of Fox News radio and television, a former newspaper editorial writer and onetime host of Fox News Sunday who served George H.W. Bush as speechwriting director. Snow, a father of three and a sax player, is the bona fide outsider that Republican allies have long prescribed for Bushworld and would bring irreverence to a place that hasn’t seen a lot of fun lately

They finally seem to have realized that Bush’s biggest problem is the perception that the White House isn’t irreverent enough.

So, Bolton’s plan is to change marketing. Hey, maybe they can still sell this shit sandwich as a filet mignon, but I doubt it. There is one aspect of his little plan that is truly disturbing, however:

Reclaim Security Credibility

This is the riskiest, and potentially most consequential, element of the plan, keyed to the vow by Iran to continue its nuclear program despite the opposition of several major world powers. Presidential advisers believe that by putting pressure on Iran, Bush may be able to rehabilitate himself on national security, a core strength that has been compromised by a discouraging outlook in Iraq. “In the face of the Iranian menace, the Democrats will lose,” said a Republican frequently consulted by the White House.

So it’s confirmed that they view confrontatiin with Iran as a politicial winner.

Zbigniew Brzezinski points out the parallels with this marketing plan and the run-up to Iraq in this article in the LA Times today. After discussing the many disasterous consequences of a unilateral, pre-emptive attack on Iran, he also points out how counter-productive this moronic saber-rattling is:

Even if the United States is not planning an imminent military strike on Iran, persistent hints by official spokesmen that “the military option is on the table” impede the kind of negotiations that could make that option unnecessary. Such threats are likely to unite Iranian nationalists and Shiite fundamentalists because most Iranians are proud of their nuclear program.

Military threats also reinforce growing international suspicions that the U.S. might be deliberately encouraging greater Iranian intransigence. Sadly, one has to wonder whether, in fact, such suspicions may not be partly justified. How else to explain the current U.S. “negotiating” stance: refusing to participate in the ongoing negotiations with Iran and insisting on dealing only through proxies. (That stands in sharp contrast with the simultaneous U.S. negotiations with North Korea.)

The U.S. is already allocating funds for the destabilization of the Iranian regime and reportedly sending Special Forces teams into Iran to stir up non-Iranian ethnic minorities in order to fragment the Iranian state (in the name of democratization!). And there are clearly people in the Bush administration who do not wish for any negotiated solution, abetted by outside drum-beaters for military action and egged on by full-page ads hyping the Iranian threat.

There is unintended irony in a situation in which the outrageous language of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (whose powers are much more limited than his title implies) helps to justify threats by administration figures, which in turn help Ahmadinejad to exploit his intransigence further, gaining more fervent domestic support for himself as well as for the Iranian nuclear program.

It is therefore high time for the administration to sober up and think strategically, with a historic perspective and the U.S. national interest primarily in mind. It’s time to cool the rhetoric. The United States should not be guided by emotions or a sense of a religiously inspired mission. Nor should it lose sight of the fact that deterrence has worked in U.S.-Soviet relations, in U.S.-Chinese relations and in Indo-Pakistani relations.

Sober up? Why, here I thought the problem was that they aren’t irreverent enough. Cool the rhetoric? Sorry. It’s an election year. If Bush has to launch nuclear war to prevent being held acountable for what he’s done, that just how it has to be. Remember, they believe that “in the face of the Iranian menace, the Democrats will lose.”

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Gilligan Security

by digby

Mike Stark at Calling All Wingnuts had a chance to talk to Joe Klein and he asked him about why he believed that nuclear war should be on the table.He said:

Joe: Oh… Oh… OK. I said that it should be an option. And I do believe that it should be an option. But let me tell you what I actually believe about this. First of all, it should be an option and I think it doesn’t do us any harm for the Iranians, if they are going to go around saying crazy things, to think that we might act crazily as well.

Mike: So it’s not really an option…

Joe: No, but let me say this. It’s not really an option because I don’t believe that the Bush administration, given the disastrous foreign policy of the last five years, has the credibility or the wherewithall to act unilaterally attack Iraq (sic)…And as a matter of principle, throughout my entire career, my entire career I’ve believed that we can only use force when we do it in concert with out allies as we did in the first Gulf War, as we did in Kosove when it was NATO. So for you to say that I am in favor of nuking Iran, you sound like one of those left wing bloggers who are so routinely innaccurate in everything they write about.

I believe that Klein accurately represents the level of sophistication we see in many American political circles these days, which is this notion that if we act crazy we will scare the hell out of the wogs.

Tom Friedman said much the same thing after 9/11:

No, the axis-of-evil idea isn’t thought through – but that’s what I like about it. It says to these countries and their terrorist pals: “We know what you’re cooking in your bathtubs. We don’t know exactly what we’re going to do about it, but if you think we are going to just sit back and take another dose from you, you’re wrong. Meet Don Rumsfeld – he’s even crazier than you are.”

There is a lot about the Bush team’s foreign policy I don’t like, but their willingness to restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right.

Suppose your local police department suddenly threw out all the rules and started acting “crazy” on the theory that the criminals would get scared and stay home. Would that actually make your town safer or more dangerous?

This is such a deeply immature view that I honestly don’t know these influential middle aged men are even allowed to drive much less be taken seriously on foreign policy. The United States is a superpower. We do not need to “act crazy.” Indeed, acting crazy is the last thing a superpower should ever do. It makes others miscalculate because they think we are unpredictable and dumb.

booga booga

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Insurance Policy

by digby

Do the American people know what they signed on to?

If you want an image of what America’s long-term plans for Iraq look like, it’s right here at Balad. Tucked away in a rural no man’s land 43 miles north of Baghdad, this 15-square-mile mini-city of thousands of trailers and vehicle depots is one of four “superbases” where the Pentagon plans to consolidate U.S. forces, taking them gradually from the front lines of the Iraq war. (Two other bases are slated for the British and Iraqi military.) The shift is part of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s plan to draw down U.S. ground forces in Iraq significantly by the end of 2006. Pentagon planners hope that this partial withdrawal will, in turn, help take the edge off rising opposition to the war at home—long enough to secure Iraq’s nascent democracy.

But the vast base being built up at Balad is also hard evidence that, despite all the political debate in Washington about a quick U.S. pullout, the Pentagon is planning to stay in Iraq for a long time—at least a decade or so, according to military strategists. Sovereignty issues still need to be worked out by mutual, legal agreement. But even as Iraqi politicians settle on a new government after four months of stalemate—on Saturday, they agreed on a new prime minister, Jawad al-Maliki—they also are welcoming the long-term U.S. presence. Sectarian conflict here has worsened in recent months, outstripping the anti-American insurgency in significance, and many Iraqis know there is no alternative to U.S. troops for the foreseeable future. “I think the presence of the American forces can be seen as an insurance policy for the unity of Iraq,” says national-security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie.

There is ample evidence elsewhere of America’s long-term plans. The new $592 million U.S. Embassy being built at the heart of Baghdad’s “international zone” is “massive … the largest embassy to date,” says Maj. Gen. Chuck Williams, head of the State Department’s Overseas Building Operations office. In an interview with NEWSWEEK, Williams called it the “most ambitious project” his office has undertaken in its history. Officials in both the executive branch and Congress say they are unaware of any serious planning, or even talk inside the national-security bureaucracy, about a full withdrawal. The Pentagon has one intel officer assigned to produce and update analyses regarding the consequences of a U.S. pullout. But the job is only a part-time assignment, according to a Pentagon source who asked for anonymity because of the sensitive subject matter. As President George W. Bush himself said in March, the final number of U.S. troops “will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq.”

We’ve known this for a long time, of course, although nobody ever discusses it. But nobody has yet factored in how our “superbases” and “super embassy” are going to fare in the middle of a civil war. What exactly does “the presence of the American forces can be seen as an insurance policy for the unity of Iraq” mean in light of events like this:

As the shooting died down Tuesday afternoon, the tired and frightened residents of Baghdad’s Adhamiyah neighborhood packed their cars and prepared to flee. After two days of street fighting that had kept them locked in their houses, they did not want to see what might come next.

The details of the unusual street battle that began Monday remained shrouded by the fog of war. U.S. and Iraqi soldiers thought they were shooting at insurgents who were trying to ambush them. Local men on neighborhood watch in the predominantly Sunni Arab area thought they were shooting at Shiites who were coming to kidnap and kill them. Residents hiding in their homes, simply praying for survival, could only guess who was fighting whom.

American troops aren’t ever going to be able to “insure” against this. They will end up withdrawing behind the walls of their military and diplomatic compounds. Yet our continued presence in the country will exacerbate the problems without solving anything. So what is going to be accomplished with these huge bases and embassy compounds?

And by the way, is it still politically incorrect to ask how much this is costing the American public? “Freedom” may be the Almighty’s gift to the world but the American taxpayer is paying the insurance premium.

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Gird Your Loins

by digby

The sublime Wolcott tries to prepare us for what’s coming:

Like so many of her fellow insufferables on the right, the Anchoress has to grip and wield her nun’s ruler of rectitude ever more fiercely now that the war in Iraq has gone so disastrously and Bush’s poll numbers are eating through the floorboards. The rhetoric will escalate into the higher rafters of hysteria as they find themselves more and more in the minority, finding it harder and harder to scrape up a lynch mob to go after such dastardly varmints as the Dixie Chicks. Or it will delve deeper into the mire, as the Anchoress leads them into noble battle against the Cult of Mendacity with a crucifix in one hand, a toilet plunger in the other.

It’s going to be bad, no matter what. Do you remember what it was like before Bush was president? The blond shrieking harpies with aneurysms the size of tennis balls pulsing wildly on their throats and temples? It’s all going to come back, only worse. This time they really, truly believed they had embarked on a thousand year Reich.

Art by Rebekah Naomi Cox
Computer Wallpaper can be purchased at Conlan Press

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