Check this out — the offices of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are denying a Washington Post story today saying that Congressional Democrats have backed down to the White House by offering to remove Iraq withdrawal language from the now-vetoed Iraq bill.
Pelosi just went before the Democratic caucus and informed them that the story’s false, a Pelosi aide tells me. WaPo is standing by the story, and the lead writer of the Post piece, Jonathan Weisman, told me that leadership aides told him that the withdrawal language had to go. But the WaPo story goes further than that, saying explicitly that Dems have already “backed down” and offered the concession of removing the withdrawal language. Those aren’t the same thing.
Why report that Dems have already caved in the negotiations if they haven’t yet?
Jonathan Weisman, the lead writer of the WaPo piece, says that Pelosi staffers told him the timetable language would have to go. And perhaps they did say that. But Greg Sargent points out that the offer hasn’t been made yet. So why is WaPo reporting as if the offer were already made? Serious negotiations haven’t started yet.
Sargent continues,
This all gives rise to a bigger question: Why is much of the media’s coverage of this focussed on the Democratic dilemma the veto creates, while so little of it is focussed on the fact that Republicans, too, are in a bind, are trapped between public opinion and their unyielding President, and are going to have to make concessions towards a compromise?
Normally, when Congress and the President are at odds, they get together and compromise. I doubt there will be a compromise on Iraq funding, however. I say this not because I think the Dems in Congress will stand firm — they’ve already offered to make concessions, in fact — but because I don’t think President Bush will compromise.
As I wrote yesterday, psychopaths don’t compromise on anything they consider important. In my experience, they are averse to compromising even on matters most would consider unimportant. It’s the nature of the beast, see; they can no more compromise than pigs can fly. The pattern I have observed is that they will stubbornly refuse to budge even on trivial matters. If they are forced to concede they will only pretend to do so, often using a fake compromise to deceive the other side into making all the real concessions.
(My former psychopathic boss was brilliant at making “deals” with vendors which, they would realize later, committed them to providing her with free products and services. Their reward was that she would consider taking their phone calls, although a vendor became persona non grata as soon as he dared to submit an invoice.)
A classic example of this behavior is the way Bush “compromised” with John McCain over a bill outlawing the torture of detainees. After months of non-negotiation, in December 2005 Bush made a big show of pretending to endorse McCain’s bill to ban the “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment of detainees in U.S. custody anywhere in the world. McCain’s proposal had veto-proof support, so Bush was backed into a corner. Or so Congress thought. A week later it was learned that Bush had quietly attached a signing statement to the bill that reserved his prerogative to order torture.
This is not to say that Bush is incapable of changing his position. He can change his position, but he does so only when it’s part of a calculated plan to get his way on something else. For example, he opposed the formation of a Department of Homeland Security — a measure being pushed mostly by Democrats — until June 2002, when he suddenly reversed position and supported it. But this was hardly a compromise with Democrats. He took the issue away from Dems by including a poison-pill provision that denied civil service protections to DHS employees. When Democrats balked, the GOP used Democrats’ alleged opposition to DHS to bury the Dems in the 2002 mid-term elections.
In fact, it’s a challenge to find any situation in which Bush negotiated in good faith and compromised in a way that didn’t turn out to be entirely to his benefit. This flip flop list reveals the pattern pretty nicely. (This list was compiled early in 2004. Note that some of his “reversals,” such as a promise to “cooperate fully” in the investigation of who outed Valerie Plame Wilson, turned out to be meaningless.)
With the public resoundingly against him, Republican support wearing thin, and — most importantly — Congress in Democratic hands, President Bush today finds himself in the unusual position of actually having to negotiate.
The question is: Does he have it in him?
A day after vetoing legislation that would have established a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, Bush has invited congressional leaders to the White House for a sit-down.
“I am confident that with goodwill on both sides, we can agree on a bill that gets our troops the money and flexibility they need as soon as possible,” Bush said in a short televised address last night, announcing the veto.
But the president’s language was inflexible: “It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing,” he said. “All the terrorists would have to do is mark their calendars and gather their strength — and begin plotting how to overthrow the government and take control of the country of Iraq. I believe setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East, and send a signal that America will not keep its commitments. Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure — and that would be irresponsible.”
With no apparent sense of irony, Bush described the Democratic plan as “a prescription for chaos and confusion.”
So what happens now? Will Bush refuse to genuinely engage with his critics? (His traditional response to Democrats who disagree with him.) Will he try to find some way to make it look like he’s compromising when he really isn’t? (His traditional response to Republicans who disagree with him.) Or will he start talking in earnest about ways both sides can compromise?
In his first six years in office, the rubber-stamp Republican Congress enabled Bush to play his games his way. Will the loss of the rubber stamp force him to change his ways? If he’s as sick as I think he is, that can’t happen. At some point this year — hopefully before summer vacations — Congress and the White House may be at such an impasse that Congress finally will have to acknowledge we’re in constitutional crisis and that something has to be done about it. Such an impasse is, IMO, the only thing that will push Congress in the direction of impeaching Bush.
Froomkin continues,
The conventional wisdom is that the White House’s big concession will be to entertain discussions about benchmarks for the Iraqi government. But it’s important to keep in mind that the White House has been talking about such benchmarks for many months now. In his prime-time address in January, Bush even announced: “America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.”
The administration has even previously indicated it had some deadlines in mind for those benchmarks. It’s just that none of them have been met. On the same day in January that Bush made his announcement, senior administration officials promised that the Iraqis would deliver three additional Iraqi brigades to Baghdad by the end of February. That didn’t happen. And the following day, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged in Senate testimony that without progress toward some key benchmarks within “one or two months . . . this plan is not going to work.” It’s now been four months, with little or no progress. (For background and links, see my Thursday column, Keep Your Eye on the Benchmarks.)
So the central issue is not whether there are benchmarks, or even timetables. The central issue is whether failure to meet those benchmarks has any genuine consequences — and whether those consequences include the withdrawal of American forces.
A more central issue is whether Bush even cares about the bleeping benchmarks, or whether the benchmarks were just a talking point his speechwriters came up with because he had to say something. But the argument seems to be that, because Bush himself has talked about benchmarks, he shouldn’t balk at a spending bill that includes benchmarks. This idea comes from people who have never had to deal with a psychopath. I’m betting that if the legislation contains any mandatory consequences for not meeting a benchmark, Bush will balk. The only question would be whether he vetoes the bill or just nullifies the conditions with a signing statement.
It’s not about benchmarks, see. It’s not even about Iraq. Psychopaths absolutely cannot stand to be told what to do.
But a new dynamic also is at work, with some Republicans now saying that funding further military operations in Iraq with no strings attached does not make practical or political sense. Rep. Bob Inglis (S.C.), a conservative who opposed the first funding bill, said, “The hallway talk is very different from the podium talk.”
While deadlines for troop withdrawals had to be dropped from the spending bill, such language is likely to appear in a defense policy measure that is expected to reach the House floor in two weeks, just when a second war funding bill could be ready for a House vote. Democrats want the next spending measure to pass before Congress recesses on May 25 for Memorial Day weekend.
Keep in mind that the just-vetoed bill is not the only Iraq War bill that will need to be passed this year. A concession on one bill is not necessarily a concession on the issue. As I wrote yesterday, the goal for Dems is to get a substantial number of Republicans to break ranks with Bush on something, so that the game is changed from “Democrats versus Republicans” to “Congress versus the White House.”
Distressed by the violence in Iraq and worried about tying their political fate to an unpopular president, some Republicans on Capitol Hill are beginning to move away from the White House to stake out a more critical position on the U.S. role in the war.
These lawmakers are advocating proposals that would tie the U.S. commitment in the war to the Iraqi government’s ability to demonstrate that it is working to quell the sectarian conflict. …
… Most Republicans are expected to stick with the White House until September, when the U.S. military commander in Iraq plans to deliver a major assessment of the president’s war strategy. Bush in January ordered the deployment of an additional 21,500 troops to try to stabilize Iraq.
But the call for establishing benchmarks with concrete consequences challenges the position of the president and GOP leaders, much as the Democrats did when they tried to link the same measurements with a troop withdrawal.
And it comes as some Republicans are calling on colleagues to take a more independent position on the war after years of deferring to the White House.
Although nothing is written in stone yet, it’s most likely the next version of the spending bill will not have timetables, but neither will it be completely free of conditions. I’m betting Bush will accept no conditions whatsoever.
Believe me, nothing is over. We’re just getting started.
Monday I published a post about building a veto-proof majority in the House and Senate to vote against the war. A number of commenters argued that since Democrats in Congress are the majority, they should simply refuse to pass any war funding bill, period. This would force Bush to bring the troops home, they said.
“The Army is currently claiming that the supplemental needs to be enacted by the end of April to avoid such problems. In this year’s bridge fund, however, Congress provided $28.4 billion to meet the Army’s operational needs, some $7 billion higher than last year’s bridge fund. The additional funds could reduce the pressure to pass the supplemental quickly. Using DOD data, CRS estimates that the Army could cover its operational costs till about June or July 2007 by using war funds in the bridge, temporarily transferring procurement funds to operations, and tapping monies in its baseline budget that would not be needed until the end of the year,” the report says.
And we know the Bushies have few scruples about tapping into funds that were appropriated for something else, even though it’s illegal for them to do so.
We cannot underestimate how warped Bush is. He’s at least a pathological narcissist if not a full-blown psychopath. I do not believe anyone can force him to do anything he is determined not to do, authority or no authority. His ego is on the line, and if he’s a true psychopath he will have no compunction about sacrificing every U.S. soldier in Iraq rather than admit defeat. For that reason I’m opposed to playing chicken with Bush over the troops. Bush will not blink, no matter the risk.
For that matter, I do not believe for a minute that Bush would honor an act of Congress that stipulated a troop withdrawal, even if his veto were overridden. He’d just nullify the act with a signing statement and go his merry way.
Bush has made it clear many times that he isn’t concerned about what happens in Iraq once his administration is over. He just doesn’t want to be the president who admits defeat. Let the next president take the fall for losing Iraq.
So what can we do? Is it possible to force a troop withdrawal before Bush’s term is up?
There are two ways to describe the confrontation between Congress and the Bush administration over funding for the Iraq surge. You can pretend that it’s a normal political dispute. Or you can see it for what it really is: a hostage situation, in which a beleaguered President Bush, barricaded in the White House, is threatening dire consequences for innocent bystanders — the troops — if his demands aren’t met.
If this were a normal political dispute, Democrats in Congress would clearly hold the upper hand: by a huge margin, Americans say they want a timetable for withdrawal, and by a large margin they also say they trust Congress, not Mr. Bush, to do a better job handling the situation in Iraq.
But this isn’t a normal political dispute. Mr. Bush isn’t really trying to win the argument on the merits. He’s just betting that the people outside the barricade care more than he does about the fate of those innocent bystanders.
This is the way psychopaths operate. If you’ve ever had the unhappy experience of having to deal with a psychopath, you’ll know they can’t be reasoned with. Nor do psychopaths make compromises about anything they consider important. Once they get their minds fixed on X, nothing can persuade them to change to Y, even if Y is clearly in their own best interest. And they will do anything to have things exactly their way. They will go further than you can even imagine. You cannot beat a psychopath at his own game without becoming psychopathic yourself.
Bush must be dealt with like the deranged hostage taker he is. He will kill the hostage rather than surrender. On the other hand, giving him everything he wants won’t make him easier to deal with, either. He’ll just escalate his demands. And then maybe he’ll kill the hostage anyway, for the hell of it.
If Bush is as warped as I think he is, the only way to rein him in is to remove him (and Dick) from office and forcibly march him out of the White House. And this only Congress can do.
The ultimate goal is to isolate Bush by stripping away Republican Party support. Force Republicans to choose between loyalty to Bush and their own political careers. Build up veto-proof majorities. Put Bush on notice that he will obey Congress or be impeached. As I explained in the “Number Crunch” post, this is a reachable goal. Once it’s clear to Republicans in Congress that Bush is a stone around the neck of the Republican Party — and, believe me, that’s getting clearer every day — they’ll turn on him as they turned on Richard Nixon back in the day. Nixon, remember, didn’t resign until senior Republicans in Congress told him he had lost their support and had better go.
I’ve said we can’t beat Bush at his own game. That’s why the game should be changed from “Democrats versus Republicans” to “Congress versus the White House.” That’s the only way we’ve got a shot at forcing an end to the war before the next administration takes office. However, if Dems were to grandstand on defunding the war right now, Republicans would line up to support Bush and the war. They wouldn’t have to take a clear stand for or against Bush; they could unfurl their “support the troops” banners and skip the hard questions.
My understanding is that the current “emergency” appropriation is to cover costs until September, which is the end of the fiscal year. That’s when the White House will discover another “emergency,” probably when Bush returns from his August vacation. A number of Republicans in Congress have made noises about ending their support for the war if the “surge” has not produced significant improvement by August. I think that whatever the Dems do now has got to be done with an eye to dividing Republicans in Congress from Bush then.
I see a lot of support in the blogs for the sentiments expressed in this ad campaign, which was put together by John Edwards’s campaign staff:
We The People
The Edwards campaign is raising money to get this ad onto the airwaves in Washington, D.C., where the guilty will see it. Click here for more information, and to contribute.
I honestly don’t know what Reid and Pelosi will do next, although word is they will propose another funding bill without the timelines but retaining the benchmarks, which have more Republican support. This tactic is not a popular one here in Blog Land. Chris Bowers at MyDD and Jane Hamsher at firedoglake are not happy. They prefer Jack Murtha’s “short leash” proposal, which would force a new vote on appropriations every two months.
I would prefer the “short leash” tactic also. But I’m going to be a contrarian and say that sending a bill with fewer conditions to Bush now is not necessarily a disaster if Reid and Polosi can get a substantial number of Republicans to support some conditions, which is possible. Bush is nearly certain to either veto or nullify that bill, also, which would put him at odds with many in his own party. And there will be another “emergency” appropriation bill to vote on in about four months.
I’m watching Jim Webb on Countdown now. We sent Bush a vote of no confidence, Webb says, and Bush needs to start listening to this. He hopes that the Democratic leadership will keep the provision for standards of training and deployment of troops. A bill with benchmarks for Iraq and limits on how long troops can be deployed might sufficiently piss Bush off that he’d veto that, also.
We are not going on offense for petty political reasons, not partisanship for politics’ sake, but because there are lives at stake here and a failed policy in Iraq to turn into something that makes sense morally and militarily.
But something stands in the way, and I don’t mean President Bush. To no one’s surprise, he vetoed the money for our soldiers and a new course in Iraq. Long ago he doubled down with the Wolfowitzes and the Perles and the Cheneys and the Rumsfelds of the neoconservative movement. Yes, the Congress voted to set a deadline to change course in Iraq, hold squabbling Iraqi politicians accountable, and give our troops the money they need. And yes, the American people are clamoring for this change. The President vetoed it, anyway.
But the President couldn’t remain in his ideological bunker without a whole host of enablers. It is Republican Senators who are blocking a change in course in Iraq and enabling the President; many who claim to be “independent†are in fact acting as a big roadblock to a real change of course.
But just as last year you defeated the Rubber Stamp Republicans, now it’s time to take on these Roadblock Republicans and show them the pressure a committed American public can put on them. And maybe, if we put enough pressure on the right places, they’ll rethink supporting the President over the change of course our troops deserve.
Kerry suggests starting with four senators — Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Norm Coleman (R-MN), Susan Collins (R-ME), John Sununu (R-NH) — to target for defeat next year. He’s got an ActBlue page set up to support whatever Dems run against them next year. Check it out if you are interested.
Other points to consider: I just got word that seven House “Democrats”voted to uphold Bush’s veto on the Iraq bill today. They are:
John Barrow, Georgia
Dan Boren, Oklahoma
Lincoln Davis, Tennessee
Jim Marshall, Georgia
Jim Matheson, Utah
Michael McNulty, New York
Gene Taylor, Mississippi
McNulty‘s toast. The Netroots will see to replacing him next year. The rest of these DINOs may be harder to reach. The seven were among the thirteen congresspersons who voted against the compromise bill last week. These gentlemen need to be made uncomfortable, I say.
It is so exciting to be celebrating the fourth anniversary of Mission Accomplished! And what, boys and girls, have we accomplished? All together now …
[bleep]
My, what foul mouths you have. But let’s look at a scholarly appraisal of our Iraq accomplishments by Bruce Riedel in the May/June 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Riedel is a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He retired last year after 29 years with the Central Intelligence Agency. He served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Near East Affairs on the National Security Council (1997-2002), Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Near East and South Asian Affairs (1995-97), and National Intelligence Officer for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Intelligence Council (1993-95). He knows some shit, in other words.
Al Qaeda is a more dangerous enemy today than it has ever been before. It has suffered some setbacks since September 11, 2001: losing its state within a state in Afghanistan, having several of its top operatives killed, failing in its attempts to overthrow the governments of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. But thanks largely to Washington’s eagerness to go into Iraq rather than concentrate on hunting down al Qaeda’s leaders, the organization now has a solid base of operations in the badlands of Pakistan and an effective franchise in western Iraq. Its reach has spread throughout the Muslim world, where it has developed a large cadre of operatives, and in Europe, where it can claim the support of some disenfranchised Muslim locals and members of the Arab and Asian diasporas. Osama bin Laden has mounted a successful propaganda campaign to make himself and his movement the primary symbols of Islamic resistance worldwide. His ideas now attract more followers than ever.
Bin Laden’s goals remain the same, as does his basic strategy. He seeks to, as he puts it, “provoke and bait” the United States into “bleeding wars” throughout the Islamic world; he wants to bankrupt the country much as he helped bankrupt, he claims, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The demoralized “far enemy” would then go home, allowing al Qaeda to focus on destroying its “near enemies,” Israel and the “corrupt” regimes of Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. occupation of Iraq helped move his plan along, and bin Laden has worked hard to turn it into a trap for Washington. Now he may be scheming to extend his strategy by exploiting or even triggering a war between the United States and Iran.
There was a mission accomplished, all right — Osama bin Laden’s mission.
Riedel continues,
Decisively defeating al Qaeda will be more difficult now than it would have been a few years ago. But it can still be done, if Washington and its partners implement a comprehensive strategy over several years, one focused on both attacking al Qaeda’s leaders and ideas and altering the local conditions that allow them to thrive. Otherwise, it will only be a matter of time before al Qaeda strikes the U.S. homeland again.
Reidel elaborates on how nicely the invasion of Iraq served al Qaeda’s purposes in several ways. First,
The U.S. invasion of Iraq took the pressure off al Qaeda in the Pakistani badlands and opened new doors for the group in the Middle East. It also played directly into the hands of al Qaeda leaders by seemingly confirming their claim that the United States was an imperialist force, which helped them reinforce various local alliances.
Second, our military adventure in Iraq literally bleeds the United States and leaves us increasingly incapable of responding to threats abroad or defending ourselves at home. Third, our presence in Iraq acts as a catalyst for revving up jihad. Fourth, because al Qaeda is still too weak to challenge the governments and security forces of Middle Eastern nations, it needs failed states to survive and thrive. Saddam Hussein, odious as he was, made most of Iraq inhospitable to al Qaeda. Until the invasion, the only part of Iraq in which al Qaeda could operate were the Kurdish areas, which had been protected from Saddam Hussein by U.S. air power since the Gulf War and were not under Saddam Hussein’s control.
Richard Clarke wrote in his book Against All Enemies that something like the Iraq War was bin Laden’s plan all along. At least a decade before 9/11, according to Clarke, Osama was hanging out in the Sudan dreaming up an Iraq scenario–
The ingredients al Qaeda dreamed of for propagating its movement were a Christian government attacking a weaker Muslim region, allowing the new terrorist group to rally jihadists from many countries to come to the aid of the religious brethren. After the success of the jihad, the Muslim region would become a radical Islamic state, a breeding ground for more terrorists, a part of the eventual network of Islamic states that would make up the great new Caliphate, or Muslim empire. [p. 136]
Documents captured after 9/11 showed that bin Laden hoped to provoke the United States into an invasion and occupation that would entail all the complications that have arisen in Iraq. His only error was to think that the place where Americans would get stuck would be Afghanistan.
Iraq has become, for us, a nearly perfect lose/lose situation. If we stay and fight, we serve bin Laden’s interests. If we retreat, we serve bin Laden’s interests. The only Iraq policy we might have adopted that didn’t serve bin Laden’s interests would have been to leave Saddam Hussein where he was.
Those are among the several thousand reasons why talk of “winning” in Iraq is absurd. Even if we destroyed every single militant in Iraq who so much as hurls raspberries at us or the Iraqi government, that would not accomplish the purported “mission” of making America safer from terrorist attack.
As retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom says, “The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place.â€
In today’s New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jeff Zeleny write that Democrats are planning a special ceremony this afternoon when they send the timetable-laden Iraq war funding bill to President Bush, who will veto it.
The timing is no accident. It comes on the fourth anniversary of the day Mr. Bush stood on an aircraft carrier under the banner “Mission Accomplished†and declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.
The Democrats’ ceremony, featuring the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, is part of the elaborate political theater at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue surrounding the Iraq spending bill, which is destined to produce only the second veto of Mr. Bush’s presidency.
But with Mr. Bush planning to spend Tuesday in Florida talking with military commanders, the White House was being coy on Monday about what kind of theatrics of his own — if any — he might stage. Democrats, however, said they expected the veto to come Wednesday.
Bush is making noises about how he thinks he and the Dems will be able to compromise once the veto is out of the way. Of course, a Bush “compromise” is “my way or the highway.” If he gives so much as a millimeter I will be stunned.
A Boston Globe editorial today criticizes the Dems for drawing out the handling of the bill to generate political theater. Whether that was their intention or just a happy accident is debatable. But as the editorial says,
Bush last week blasted Congress for trying to micromanage the war, saying members should listen to the generals on the ground. But if Bush had listened to his own generals in 2003, he would have learned that a far larger force would be needed to pacify Iraq once Saddam Hussein was removed. And now, the new book from former CIA director George Tenet asserts that, if Bush had listened to his intelligence professionals in 2003, he wouldn’t have rushed to war so precipitously.
“You have said we can’t cut and run on more than one occasion. We have to stay until we win. Otherwise, we’ll be fighting the terrorists here at home, on our own streets. So what do you mean exactly by that, Mr. President?” Couric asked.
“Well, I mean that a defeat in Iraq will embolden the enemy and will provide the enemy — more opportunity to train, plan, to attack us. That’s what I mean,” Mr. Bush said. “You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror. I believe it. As I told you, Osama bin Laden believes it. But the American people — have gotta understand that a defeat in Iraq — in other words, if this government there fails, the terrorists will be emboldened, the radicals will topple moderate governments. I truly believe this is the ideological struggle of the 21st century. And the consequences for not achieving success are — are dire.”
Sure Osama bin Laden “believes it.” It was his bleeping idea in the first place.
Number of Democrats in the House — 233
Number of votes needed to override a veto, if all members vote — 290
Number of Republican/Independent votes needed — 57
Number of Democrats in the Senate — 51
Number of votes needed to override a veto, if all members vote — 67
Number of Republican/Independent votes needed — 16
Of course, that’s assuming you get 100 percent of the Dems, which so far hasn’t happened on any of the Iraq votes in the House. In the Senate, Joe Lieberman is counted as a Dem to claim a Democratic majority and rights to committee chairs, but he votes with the Republicans regarding Iraq. He’s neither fish nor fowl, as they say. But we get Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on our side on Iraq, so let’s call it a wash.
The point is that in order to take the war away from President Bush a whole mess o’ Republicans must be persuaded to vote with the Dems — at least 67 House members and 16 senators, possibly more. But the only hope we have that troops will be deployed out of Iraq — indeed, that anything resembling a rational policy is applied to Iraq — before the Bush Administration ends is if there’s a big enough voting block to override a Bush veto. Even then Bush might well ignore the law, but let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.
President Bush is expected to veto the Iraq Accountability Act early this week. It’s not clear to me what Congress might do next. Whatever happens, I expect the Dems to continue to butt heads with Bush over the war. The question is, when will more Republicans join them?
To buy time for his buildup of more than 28,000 troops to show results, Bush asked his commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, to deliver a progress report to the nation in early September.
That helped stave off Republican defections as Congress debated whether to impose a timetable for troop withdrawals. But it also established September as a deadline for clearer military and political progress in Iraq, a tactical concession for a White House that long has refused to accept any benchmarks or timetables for evaluating the war, now 4 years old.
Democratic and Republican members of Congress already are focusing on September as their next major decision point on the war — planning hearings to debate Petraeus’ findings and, in the Democrats’ case, promising new attempts to force Bush to withdraw troops.
By September, the troop buildup will have been underway for more than six months. Unless there is dramatic improvement in Iraq, public support for the war will probably have eroded further. And by September, skittish Republicans will be four months closer to starting their reelection campaigns.
At the moment, at least 17 Republican senators are expected to run for re-election in 2008. There are three more sitting Republican senators whose terms expire in 2009 but who might retire. Among those 20 are the two Republicans who voted with the Dems on the Iraq Accountability Act, Gordon Smith of Oregon and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
And, of course, all members of the House face re-election in 2008.
Doyle McManus continues,
GOP leaders warn that they will need dramatic evidence of progress — something that has been in short supply in Iraq — to maintain support for the war.
“We need to get some better results from Iraq both politically, economically and militarily, and that needs to happen in the foreseeable future,” said House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a Bush administration loyalist.
Several moderate Republicans have warned that they are preparing to switch sides unless the troop “surge” shows results.
“If the president’s new strategy does not demonstrate significant results by August, then Congress should consider all options — including a redefinition of our mission and a gradual but significant withdrawal of our troops next year,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who last week voted against the withdrawal bill.
Even the most optimistic of the generals do not expect significant results by August.
“There is a lot of frustration with the administration on the Republican side,” said one GOP House member who has voted against every Democratic measure on Iraq but asked not to be quoted by name to avoid angering the White House.
This tells us how sick our government has become. Even a congressman is afraid to speak on the record against the Regime. There cannot be a representative, democratic government if the peoples’ representatives are intimidated by the executive branch.
If Bush follows through on his veto threat, senior Democratic lawmakers have said they will pass an emergency funding bill that does not include the withdrawal timelines the president has complained so vociferously about.
Such a measure, however, almost certainly would include readiness standards for the strained military. It would also outline benchmarks the Iraqi government must meet to demonstrate progress in reconciling differences between the country’s sectarian communities.
The administration opposes benchmarks that would impose penalties on Iraq if it does not meet them on time.
“To begin now to tie our own hands and to say, ‘We must do this if they don’t do that,’ doesn’t allow us the flexibility and creativity that we need to move this forward,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
But benchmarks have gained support among Republicans who voice increasing frustration over the Iraqi government’s failure to complete long-promised political reforms: a new law apportioning the country’s oil revenue, a relaxation of rules banning members of the overthrown Baath Party from government jobs, and elections to set up provincial governments.
“We’ve got to get [more] aggressive on pushing the political solution,” Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a supporter of the war, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “We’ve got to push them very hard. And our timelines, I think, are very short…. I don’t know if [September] is the time to set, but I don’t think we have infinite time.”
I expected more Republicans to have broken with Bush by now. But I agree with McManus that the point of the “surge” was to buy time for the administration. Republicans facing reelection in 2008 may not want to run in the general election as supporters of the Iraq War, but neither do they want to alienate their right-wing base. And the base doesn’t want to hear anything about the war that doesn’t include the words winning and victory. So Republicans are boxed in. I fully expect Bush to trot out some other phony Iraq initiative when he comes back from the August vacation, in the hopes it will keep Republicans in Congress in line and buy him a few more months.
But Republicans running for reelection in 2008 do not have infinite time. If they can’t defuse Iraq as an issue before serious campaigning begins next year, it’s going to cost many of them their seats. Surely they know this.
I want to end the war in Iraq as quickly as possible. However, the big immovable object in the way of that goal is the POTUS. We can holler all we want about defunding the war or impeaching the POTUS, but the reality is that the only body with legal authority to kick Bush out of the way is Congress. And nothing meaningful will happen in Congress until at least 16 Republican senators and 57 Republican House members support it. IMO antiwar activists need to stop bellyaching about Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and get to work on Republicans.
The following Republican incumbent senators must win reelection in 2008 if they hope to serve another term.* Not all of them will change their votes, so we’ll need a few Republican senators not on this list. I’m just saying these are the senators with the most reason to be nervous.
Lamar Alexander of Tennessee
Saxby Chambliss of Georgia
Thad Cochran of Mississippi
Norm Coleman of Minnesota
Susan Collins of Maine
John Cornyn of Texas
Larry Craig of Idaho
Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina
Pete Domenici of New Mexico
Michael Enzi of Wyoming
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina
Chuck Hagel of Nebraska**
Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky
Pat Roberts of Kansas
Jeff Sessions of Alabama
Gordon Smith of Oregon**
Ted Stevens of Alaska
John Sununu of New Hampshire
John Warner of Virginia
*The term of Wayne Allard of Colorado is also ending, but he has announced his retirement.
** Already voting with the Dems.
The White House is making noises about rejecting legislation that requires the Iraqi government to meet benchmarks, even if there are no timetables. If Reid and Pelosi think they could patch together a veto-proof majority for such a bill, it might be worthwhile to pass it. Baby steps are better than no steps.
The top US commander in Iraq admitted yesterday that the conflict would “get harder before it gets easier”, providing further ammunition for Democrats determined to face down George Bush in their constitutional clash over the Iraq war.
Hours before the Senate passed legislation ordering troops to start leaving Iraq by October, General David Petraeus said the conflict was “the most complex and challenging I have ever seen”. Gen Petraeus, who was put in charge of the Baghdad troop “surge” to pacify the Iraqi capital, warned of the enormous commitment and sacrifice facing the US in Iraq.
His downbeat assessment, in contrast with Mr Bush’s optimistic statements, stiffened the resolve of Democrats in Congress pushing for an early withdrawal of US troops. Yesterday the Senate followed the House of Representatives in backing legislation that calls for most US troops to be out by spring 2008.
Did Gen Petraeus’s downbeat assessment appear in American news media? I don’t believe I’ve seen it.
Petraeus was in Washington this past week to brief senators and congressmen on the current situation on the ground in Iraq. He was supposed to be shoring up support for the war, but it seems he wasn’t entirely successful. David Sanger reports for the New York Times that even the White House seems more cautious.
The Bush administration will not try to assess whether the troop increase in Iraq is producing signs of political progress or greater security until September, and many of Mr. Bush’s top advisers now anticipate that any gains by then will be limited, according to senior administration officials.
In interviews over the past week, the officials made clear that the White House is gradually scaling back its expectations for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The timelines they are now discussing suggest that the White House may maintain the increased numbers of American troops in Iraq well into next year.
That prospect would entail a dramatically longer commitment of frontline troops, patrolling the most dangerous neighborhoods of Baghdad, than the one envisioned in legislation that passed the House and Senate this week. That vote, largely symbolic because Democrats do not have the votes to override the promised presidential veto, set deadlines that would lead to the withdrawal of combat troops by the end of March 2008.
Gen. Petraeus said of Mr. Malaki, “He’s not the Prime Minister Tony Blair of Iraq.” Make of that what you will.
Meanwhile, retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom says President Bush should sign the funding bill that Congress just passed. Kasie Hunt reports for the Associated Press (emphasis added):
“I hope the president seizes this moment for a basic change in course and signs the bill Congress has sent him,” Odom said, delivering the Democrats’ weekly radio address….
… The general accused Bush of squandering U.S. lives and helping Iran and al-Qaida when he invaded Iraq.
“The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place,” he said. “The president has let (the Iraq war) proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued. He lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies.”
Odom said he doesn’t favor congressional involvement in the execution of foreign and military policy, but argued that Bush had been derelict in his responsibilities. This week Congress passed an Iraq war spending bill that would require Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq on Oct. 1.
Gen. Odom was Director of the National Security Agency during the Reagan Administration, among other things.
What Military Experts Are Saying about the Supplemental and the President’s Plan to Veto It
“This bill gives General Petraeus great leverage for moving the Iraqi government down the more disciplined path laid out by the Iraq Study Group. The real audience for the timeline language is Prime Minister al-Maliki and the elected government of Iraq. The argument that this bill aides the enemy is simply not mature – nobody on the earth underestimates the United States’ capacity for unpredictability. It may further create some sense of urgency in the rest of our government, beginning with the State Department.”
–Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, USA, Ret.
“The bill gives the president a chance to pull back from a disastrous course, re-orient US strategy to achieve regional stability, and win help from many other countries — the only way peace will eventually be achieved.”
–LT GEN Wm. E. Odom, USA, Ret.
“Supporting the Iraq Supplemental Bill not only reflects the thinking of the Iraq Study Group but puts teeth to the phrase “Supporting the Troops”. By establishing timelines it returns the responsibility of self preservation and regional sovereignty to the people of Iraq and their government.”
–Maj. Gen. Mel Montano, USANG, Ret
“This important legislation sets a new direction for Iraq. It acknowledges that America went to war without mobilizing the nation, that our strategy in Iraq has been tragically flawed since the invasion in March 2003, that our Army and Marine Corps are at the breaking point with little to show for it, and that our military alone will never establish representative government in Iraq. The administration got it terribly wrong and I applaud our Congress for stepping up to their constitutional responsibilities.”
–Maj. Gen. John Batiste, USA, Ret.
“We must commence a coordinated phased withdrawal of U.S. combat troops and condition our continuing support of the Iraqi government on its fulfilling the political commitments it has made to facilitate reconciliation of the contending secular factions. Otherwise, we will continue to be entwined in a hopeless quagmire, with continuing American casualties, which will render our ground forces ineffective.”
Former CIA Director George Tenet’s hotly anticipated book about What He Did to Get Us Into War will hit the shelves on Monday, and the New York Times has an advance copy. Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti write,
George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate†about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.
The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,†is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.
“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,†Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion†about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.
Well, OK, so we knew that. But it’s nice to have corroboration.
Tenet admits to making the famous “slam dunk” remark that Bob Woodward wrote about in one of his books. But he says it was taken out of context and, in any event, played no part in the decision to go to war.
Mr. Tenet described with sarcasm watching an episode of “Meet the Press†last September in which Mr. Cheney twice referred to Mr. Tenet’s “slam dunk†remark as the basis for the decision to go to war.
“I remember watching and thinking, ‘As if you needed me to say ‘slam dunk’ to convince you to go to war with Iraq,’ †Mr. Tenet writes.
As violence in Iraq spiraled beginning in late 2003, Mr. Tenet writes, “rather than acknowledge responsibility, the administration’s message was: Don’t blame us. George Tenet and the C.I.A. got us into this mess.â€
Shane and Mazzetti say that Tenet portrays President Bush “in a largely positive light” but is much less kind to Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, and others who, before and after 9/11, largely ignored al Qaeda because they were obsessed with Saddam Hussein. Tenet also settles some scores with Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley.
And Tenet corroborates what many former Clinton Administration officials said about the Bushies ignoring warnings that al Qaeda was really, truly dangerous and needed to be made a high priority.
The book recounts C.I.A. efforts to fight Al Qaeda in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks, and Mr. Tenet’s early warnings about Osama bin Laden. He contends that the urgent appeals of the C.I.A. on terrorism received a lukewarm reception at the Bush White House through most of 2001.
“The bureaucracy moved slowly,†and only after the Sept. 11 attacks was the C.I.A. given the counterterrorism powers it had requested earlier in the year.
George Bush insulates himself from reality! The administration didn’t seriously entertain the notion that Iraq didn’t have WMD’s! Dick Cheney is an asshole!
OK, so the revelations in George Tenet’s new book aren’t going to shock anyone, but they are notable considering the source.
Yeah, pretty much. There was some hope Tenet would reveal something new, but it doesn’t seem that he did.
The Senate vote on the Iraq spending bill is scheduled for 12:45 pm EST. I’ll post the result as soon as there is one.
Update 12:57: The roll call just started.
As expected, the vote was almost straight down party lines… Hagel and Smith did the right thing and voted with 48 Democrats and Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont to bring the troops home. No Democrats voted with the Republicans who, of course, had Joe Lieberman (WHOCARES-CT) on their side, with Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-AZ) missing the vote.
Gee, it’s almost as if the gutless McCain doesn’t want to be on the record about this or something — go figure!
Also, I understand the Dems plan to tie Bush’s veto to the 4th anniversary of Mission Accomplished day. Heh.
It is so exciting to be celebrating the fourth anniversary of Mission Accomplished! And what, boys and girls, have we accomplished? All together now …
There was a mission accomplished, all right — Osama bin Laden’s mission. 
Bush is making noises about how he thinks he and the Dems will be able to compromise once the veto is out of the way. Of course, a Bush “compromise” is “my way or the highway.” If he gives so much as a millimeter I will be stunned. 