Category Archives: Iraq War

Germany: About That Intelligence …

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While it’s perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. (Applause.) Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community’s judgments related to Iraq’s weapons programs.

They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. — President George W. Bush, November 11, 2005

We’ve already discussed the reason the bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure regarding WMDs — they weren’t looking for it. That’s why the Senate Dems closed the Senate down a few days ago. They were trying to pressure the Republicans in charge to get off their butts and start looking.

As they say … duh.

Now, let’s go on to the part about the world intelligence community agreeing with Bush’s assessment. Bob Drogin and John Goetz write in today’s Los Angeles Times that Germany tried to warn the U.S. about funky intelligence before the Iraq invasion.

The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein’s suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Five senior officials from Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with The Times that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.

According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball’s information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball’s accounts in his prewar presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.

Mischaracterized. Nice.

Curveball was the chief source of inaccurate prewar U.S. accusations that Baghdad had biological weapons, a commission appointed by Bush reported this year. The commission did not interview Curveball, who still insists his story was true, or the German officials who handled his case.

Sounds like the commission missed some spots.

An investigation by The Times based on interviews since May with about 30 current and former intelligence officials in the U.S., Germany, England, Iraq and the United Nations, as well as other experts, shows that U.S. bungling in the Curveball case was worse than official reports have disclosed.

The White House, for example, ignored evidence gathered by United Nations weapons inspectors shortly before the war that disproved Curveball’s account. Bush and his aides issued increasingly dire warnings about Iraq’s biological weapons before the war even though intelligence from Curveball had not changed in two years.

At the Central Intelligence Agency, officials embraced Curveball’s account even though they could not confirm it or interview him until a year after the invasion. They ignored multiple warnings about his reliability before the war, punished in-house critics who provided proof that he had lied and refused to admit error until May 2004, 14 months after the invasion.

The Germans say Curveball is mentally and emotionally unstable. And they say they told the U.S. that his stories about WMDs in Iraq were, at the very least, dubious.

The senior BND officer who supervised Curveball’s case said he was aghast when he watched Powell misstate Curveball’s claims as a justification for war.

“We were shocked,” the official said. “Mein Gott! We had always told them it was not proven…. It was not hard intelligence.”

This is a long story that I haven’t read all the way through yet, but I ‘spect we’ll be hearing more about this in the next few days.

Related link: “What I Knew Before the Invasion” by Bob Graham

Rightie Challenge II

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This is a follow up to yesterday’s post that challenged righties to answer a couple of basic questions about Iraq. There are some great comments to that post, but none from righties. It’s possible none happened to drop by. I don’t exactly keep a “Righties Welcome” sign out, do I?

Anyway, Josh Marshall expresses some of the same ideas:

… The real problem though — and this becomes clear listening to the president, and increasingly from his supporters — is that the president no longer has any coherent idea of what the war he’s fighting amounts to or what victory would look like.

He says we’ll fight it out to victory or that “as Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” But it’s been a really long time since I’ve heard any coherent plan for what we’re trying to do besides slogans like this.

If we’re honest I think what the president is saying is this: We’re going to stay in Iraq until the place calms down and we can leave with a sense that we’ve accomplished something.

Isn’t that basically the idea?

Isn’t it? If not, why not?

At Kos, Armando argues that some kind of withdrawal really is the only plan on the table, and all the “never surrender” talk is … just talk. Beside getting out … sooner or later … there is no plan.

Eleanor Clift writes in Newsweek

If Bush wants to retrieve his credibility, he should call off the attack dogs and make a televised speech to the American people conceding that the certainty he presented about weapons of mass destruction was not there, and that the administration relied on a single source, aptly named “Curveball,” who was later discredited. Bush can then present his case–what he saw, why he acted, and why he still believes he did the right thing.

Bush won’t give that speech because he can’t tolerate ambiguity. It’s part of his personality. He gave up drinking cold turkey, and it’s all or nothing. He demands simplicity, and he equates dissent with disloyalty. The result is a White House that has become dysfunctional.

Bottom line: The invasion of Iraq was a mistake, and George W. Bush isn’t man enough to admit he made a mistake. And all the smearing and derision and bluster coming out of the Right is just enabling.

At The Left Coaster, larre writes,

A somewhat obscure blog known as Kazablog already is saying this is the tipping point. There will soon be many more. Just watch Technorati or Blog Search or Daou Report or Lefty Blogs or any of the dozen other blog aggregates, left and right.

That’s what has war supporters of both parties gnawing their tails. They know that If you really want to support our troops, military leaders are saying through Mr. Murtha, you’ll help to bring them home now.

By January, the criminal George W. Bush will be trying to join the chorus.

We’ll see. I think the tipping point has been reached as far as the majority of Americans is concerned. The question is, how long will it take before the Bitter Enders — now down to 34 percent — realize this?

Update: See the Mean Jean smackdown by ReddHedd at firedoglake.

Not Like a Virgin

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It’s kind of like virginity. It is hard to get back.” — John Zogby on President Bush regaining public trust

Steven Thomma of Knight Ridder writes that “Bush has lost his aura of invincibility” and Republicans are losing cohesion and direction. “‘There’s been an erosion of power at high levels,’ California Institute of Technology’s Alvarez said. “They’re not able to focus on maintaining the kind of cohesion that has been their hallmark since 2000. They’re not able to put the energy into cracking the whip.'”

House Republicans looked back in form last night as they pulled a political stunt to block serious discussion of Congressman Murtha’s Iraq redeployment proposal. However, seems to me yesterday’s episode in cowardice and misdirection could easily backfire on the Republicans. In spite of the GOP’s shameless mockery of his serious proposal, I don’t believe John Murtha is going away. Much depends on whether Dems get some spine and back him up. Early yesterday that looked iffy, but last night’s House debacle may have pissed off enough of ’em that maybe they’ll finally form a line of battle and start fighting together.

One of Congressman’s Murtha’s points, that Iraqis are not going to “stand up” as long as we’re there to do the standing for ’em, has a nice “tough love” ring to it that could be very appealing to a lot of Americans. It even sounds kinda conservative; it makes me think of old conservative arguments about welfare dependency — that some people won’t get serious about working as long as they can live on the public dole. Considering that at least 60 percent of the public has turned against the war, I think Murtha’s is a much stronger argument than Bush’s mushy “As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down,” which leaves control of when we leave in the hands of Iraqis. Continue reading →

Cowards

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Ohio Congresswoman and former maha next-door-neighbor Jean Schmidt called John Murtha a coward on the floor of Congress today.

I just saw it on television. I don’t have the exact quote, but it was something to the effect of “Cowards cut and run; Marines never do.”

I am reasonably certain the congresswoman is not a Marine, btw.

Congressman Murtha is on television denouncing the house resolution today calling for an immediate pullout from Iraq. He feels it makes a mockery of his proposal from yesterday. By Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press:

House Republicans, sensing an opportunity for political advantage, maneuvered for a quick vote and swift rejection Friday of a Democratic lawmaker’s call for an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq.

“We want to make sure that we support our troops that are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. “We will not retreat.” …

… The GOP leadership decided to act little more than 24 hours after Rep. Jack Murtha, a hawkish Democrat with close ties to the military, said the time had come to pull out the troops. By forcing the issue to a vote, Republicans placed many Democrats in a politically unappealing position – whether to side with Murtha and expose themselves to attacks from the White House and congressional Republicans, or whether to oppose him and risk angering the voters that polls show want an end to the conflict.

Murtha says that the Republican resolution is not what he proposed, and he is upset that, after he spent months thinking and working out the details of his proposal, The GOP would, in effect, put up a straw proposal in its place just so they could knock it down. Continue reading →

Questions for Righties

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Dana Milbank writes in today’s Washington Post:

In his 37 years in the military, John Murtha won two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star with a Combat “V,” and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. As a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania for the past 31 years, he has been a fierce hawk, championing conflicts in Central America and the Persian Gulf.

Yesterday, he was called a coward.

It was as sure as the sun comin’ up in the morning that the righties would smear Murtha for his speech calling for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Righties have utterly lost the ability to just disagree with someone. Opposition must be crushed.

After Murtha stunned the Capitol with a morning news conference calling for a pullout from Iraq because our “troops have done all they can,” the denunciations came quickly.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) accused Murtha of delivering “the highest insult” to the troops. “We must not cower,” Hastert lectured the old soldier.

Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) informed Murtha that his views “only embolden our enemies” and lamented that “Democrats undermine our troops in Iraq from the security of their Washington, D.C., offices.”

At a rival news conference called four hours after Murtha’s appearance, Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.), who like Hastert and Blunt does not have military service on his resume, alerted the 73-year-old Murtha that “the American people are made of sterner stuff.” And Rep. John Carter (R-Tex.) said the likes of Murtha want to take “the cowardly way out and say, ‘We’re going to surrender.’ “

Murtha wasn’t surprised.

Murtha, whose brand of hawkishness has never been qualified by the word “chicken,” was expecting the attacks. “I like guys who’ve never been there to criticize us who’ve been there. I like that,” the burly old Marine said, hands in pocket. Referring to Vice President Cheney, he continued: “I like guys who got five deferments and never been there, and send people to war, and then don’t like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done.”

If you really want to read what’s being said about Murtha on the Right Blogosphere you can find plenty of links of Memeorandum today. But you know what they’re saying. They are calling Murtha every vile name they can think of. For example, in a post titled “Democrats Keep Shifting Towards Surrender,” Captain Ed writes,

Rep. John Murtha pushed the national argument on the Iraq War further towards the International ANSWER/MoveOn agenda this afternoon by demanding an immediate start of an American retreat from Iraq, declaring that American soldiers do not have the capability to defeat terrorists. He based his conclusion not on the facts on the ground, but apparently his experience in Viet Nam, which he tossed around like a West Point degree all afternoon long.

This is, of course, a deeply dishonest representation of what Congressman Murtha actually said. But instead of addressing the congressman’s points, such as —

I have been visiting our wounded troops at Bethesda and Walter Reed hospitals almost every week since the beginning of the War. And what demoralizes them is going to war with not enough troops and equipment to make the transition to peace; the devastation caused by IEDs; being deployed to Iraq when their homes have been ravaged by hurricanes; being on their second or third deployment and leaving their families behind without a network of support.

— which must be what Captain Ed mistranslated into “American soldiers do not have the capability to defeat terrorists,” the Right does what the Right always does and erupts into a festival of mud-throwing.

I’d like the righties to answer two questions honestly. Yeah, I know, when pigs fly. But this is the discussion we should be having if rightes were capable of rational discussion:

The first question is What is our political objective in Iraq? I want a concrete answer, not just “peace, prosperity, and freedom,” because those are a tad open ended. This nation was founded (if you count from the ratificaton of the Articles of Confederation) 224 years ago, and we’re still working on those objectives ourselves. We’ve done better than a lot of other nations with them, granted, but even we don’t have them perfected.

I know a lot of you want to say Screw the objectives; let’s just get out. Maybe so, but right now I’m not trying to determine what our Iraq policy should be. Rather, I’m looking at the national discussion we are not having to determine what the policy should be.

I believe the original Neocon vision was to establish a pro-American government in Iraq headed by their buddy Ahmed Chalabi or a reasonable facsimile thereof. The recent reception Chalabi got in Washington makes me think the Neocons are still holding out hope for this. Cards on the table, rightes–is that still the goal? And if so, we need to talk. We need to talk about why the Neocons are stll married to Chalabi. We need to talk about whether a stable, democratic, and pro-American government, with or without Chalabi, is still possible in Iraq. Or, will we settle for any government the majority of Iraqis consider legitimate, even if that government doesn’t like us much, for the sake of regional stability?

In other words, given our current status (assuming we can agree on that), what can we realistically expect to achieve that would serve the best interests of the United States and Iraq? We should consider both the stability of the Middle East and the discouragement of terrorism. We should also consider rationally how much of our military resources we can afford to commit before we weaken our ability to respond to other problems beside Iraq.

Once we’re settled on the objective, we can go on to the second question — Is our military activity supporting that objective? One of Congressman Murtha’s points is that it isn’t. Yesterday the congressman said,

It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.

General Casey said in a September 2005 Hearing, “the perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency.” General Abizaid said on the same date, “Reducing the size and visibility of the coalition forces in Iraq is a part of our counterinsurgency strategy.” …

…I said over a year ago, and now the military and the Administration agrees, Iraq can not be won “militarily.” I said two years ago, the key to progress in Iraq is to Iraqitize, Internationalize and Energize. I believe the same today. But I have concluded that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is impeding this progress.

Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, Saddamists and foreign jihadists. I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted shows that over 80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, and about 45% of the Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis.

The congressman is hardly the first person to warn that our presence in Iraq is fueling the insurgency. It is obvious to me we are simultaneously feeding and smothering the same fire. Righties lack the moral courage to address this issue; they just jerk their knees and deny it. But if civilians are being burned with white phosporous, even accidently, generations of Iraqis will remember. Assuming that establishing a pro-American government in Iraq is an objective, pissing off the populace seems counterproductive. At the very least we should be looking hard at our rules of engagment to minimize these little accidents. On the other hand, putting too many constraints on our soldiers puts them at greater risk.

The obvious solution is to expect the Iraqis to fight their own bleeping insurgency. But as Steve M. calculated, at our current rate “the Iraqi military will be able to replace the 160,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq in the year 2592.” No, that’s not an exageration. Based on the Pentagon’s own reports, we’re averaging 22 fully training Iraqi soldiers a month. So unless we can find a way to crank out fully trained Iraqi soldiers a damn sight quicker than we’re doing it now, we’re going to have to make up our minds what “victory” we will settle for. Otherwise 20 years from now the children of today’s U.S. soldiers in Iraq will be fighting the children of today’s insurgents.

The terrible truth that the Right refuses to face is that we could win a military objective and lose the political objective. I’m sure we could, if we really tried, obliterate Iraq, but I think even righties — some of ’em, anyway — ought to be able to comprehend that obliteration would be counterproductive to Iraqi freedom and prosperity and all that. We need to make some firm decisions about how aggressively the U.S. can pursue a military objective without utterly screwing up the political objective.

Congressman Murtha’s contention, stated above, is that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is impeding our political goals. Are there any righties out there willing even to discuss this, beyond “You’re wrong” and “Murtha stinks”? Are our military actions furthering or impeding our political goals in Iraq? And if the answer is “impeding,” then what the hell are we fighting for?

If any righties wander by here and want to provide serious answers to these questions based on factual evidence, they are welcome to do so. Knee-jerk comments or gratuitious insults will, as usual, be deleted.

Scared Straight

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Congressman John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania, just put the fear o’ God into some righties. Murtha–a culturally conservative hawk–just held a press conference and called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of us. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region. …

…Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, Saddamists and foreign jihadists. I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted shows that over 80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, and about 45% of the Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis.
I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy. All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free. Free from United States occupation. I believe this will send a signal to the Sunnis to join the political process for the good of a “free” Iraq.

My plan calls:

To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.
To create a quick reaction force in the region.
To create an over- the- horizon presence of Marines.
To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq

This war needs to be personalized. As I said before I have visited with the severely wounded of this war. They are suffering.

Because we in Congress are charged with sending our sons and daughters into battle, it is our responsibility, our OBLIGATION to speak out for them. That’s why I am speaking out.

Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME.

Please read the whole thing. I wanted to paste just enough to show that he actually does have a plan, and it sounds to me like a sensible plan.

Crooks and Liars, as always, has the video.

Now for the fear o’ God part–Rod Dreher posted on NRO’s The Corner:

Don’t know how many of you caught Rep. John Murtha’s very angry, very moving speech just now in which he called on the White House to institute an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. CNN didn’t air the entire thing, but as I listened to it, I could feel the ground shift. Murtha, as you know, is not a Pelosi-style Chardonnay Democrat; he’s a crusty retired career Marine who reminds me of the kinds of beer-slugging Democrats we used to have before the cultural left took over the party. Murtha, a conservative Dem who voted for the war, talked in detail about the sacrifices being borne by our soldiers and their families, and about his visits out to Walter Reed to look after the maimed, and how we’ve had enough, it’s time to come home. He was hell on the president too.

If tough, non-effete guys like Murtha are willing to go this far, and can make the case in ways that Red America can relate to — and listening to him talk was like listening to my dad, who’s about the same age, and his hunting buddies — then the president is in big trouble. I’m sure there’s going to be an anti-Murtha pile-on in the conservative blogosphere, but from where I sit, conservatives would be fools not to take this man seriously.

Holy shit.

I agree with Joe at AMERICAblog that this speech could mark a turning point on the Iraq War debate. I’d like to see Dems get behind this in a big way. There are details to be worked out, of course, but it seems to me this plan is just what most Americans have been wanting to hear.

Kevin Drum writes,

My prediction: we’ve already started to see this, but I think Republicans are about to crumble. Pressure on the White House to use the December elections as an excuse to declare victory and go home is going to mount, fueled by equal parts disgust with Dick Cheney’s lobbying for the right to torture; unease even among Republicans that the president wasn’t honest during the marketing of the war; lack of progress on the ground in Iraq; Congress reasserting its independence of the executive; a genuine belief that the American presence has become counterproductive; and raw electoral fear, what with midterm elections looming in less than a year.

I also think the Rove/Cheney/Bush counterattack is going to backfire. Congressional Republicans are looking for cover right now, and I don’t think they believe that a ferocious partisan attack from the White House is what they need right now. The public is looking for answers, not administration attack dogs on the evening news every day, but this particular White House doesn’t know any other way. It’s going to cost them.

This is right. Bush’s pathetic counterattack is just one more demonstration that he doesn’t know what to do. He’s all talk, no walk. By now people are hungry for direction and eager to see something like actual progress, somewhere. They are sick to death of Bushie attacks and smears and lies and bluster. They want leaders who will shut up and DO something.

Murtha just grabbed the ball. Let’s see if the Dems can run with it.

Email your representative now. And your senators, too.

More Pitiful Than Persuasive

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The Bigus Dickus himself came out swinging yesterday against critics who say the administration misled us into war in Iraq. Michael A. Fletcher and Peter Baker write in today’s Washington Post:

President Bush and Vice President Cheney lashed out again against Democratic senators who have questioned the handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq, with the vice president accusing critics of engaging in “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.”

Speaking before a Washington dinner of the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, a conservative research organization, Cheney said last night that Democrats who say they were misled by the administration are “making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war.” The criticism, Cheney said, threatens to undermine the morale of U.S. troops while “a few opportunists are suggesting they were sent into battle for a lie.”

I’d normally feel obligated to wade through The Dick’s rhetoric and refute it. Fortunately, many others have already done this job, including — praise be! — some reporters.

James Kuhnhenn and Jonathan S. Landay of Knight Ridder write that in defending its old lies, the administration has come up with some new ones. The reporters present each of the administration’s arguments and knock them down. I’m not going to paste it here; just go read it. And bookmark it.

Sidney Blumenthal writes in Salon that Bush “has retreated from the ruins of his grandiose agenda into a defense of his past.” And in the past few days Bush, and now Cheney, have been caught up in a “paroxysm of revenge.”

In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad, Bush was the man of action who never looked back, openly dismissive of history. When asked shortly afterward by Bob Woodward how he would be judged on Iraq, Bush replied, “History. We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.” But his obsessive interest in the subject is not posthumous. The Senate’s decision last week to launch an investigation into the administration’s role in prewar disinformation, after the Democrats forced the issue in a rare secret session, has provoked a furious presidential reaction.

Josh Marshall writes that the administration’s counterattack is right out of Karl Rove’s playbook:

How do you go after a decorated war veteran running against a quasi-draft-dodger? Hit him hard for cowardice and disloyalty to country.

How do you knock out a respected juvenile court judge? Spread rumors that he’s a pedophile.

You can see pretty clearly that Karl Rove is back in the saddle because what we’re seeing now is straight from the Karl Rove play book. You throw them off balance by charging directly into their line of fire.

When the veil is finally being lifted on your history of lies, hit hard against the other side for ‘rewriting history’ or trying to deceive the public.

This strategy has served the Bushies well for many years, but I don’t believe it will work this time.

Oh, the Big Lie strategy will work on the bitter-enders; the hard-core 37 percent 34 percent who still believe, after all that’s happened, that Bush is doing a good job. These people would believe in the Tooth Fairy if Bush made her part of his attack on the Dems. But now a solid majority — 57 percent last I checked — of American adults believe that Bush deceived them into going to war. I don’t think screaming at them and calling them traitors for their lack of blind faith will bring them back to Bush’s side.

Robert Scheer writes in The Nation (web only) that “Bush now sounds increasingly Nixonian as he basically calls the majority of the country traitors for noticing he tricked us.”

Here’s a nice little detail from Scheer:

… the idea that individual senators and members of Congress had the same access to even a fraction of the raw intelligence as the President of the United States is just a lie on its face–it is a simple matter of security clearances, which are not distributed equally.

It was enormously telling, in fact, that the only part of the Senate which did see the un-sanitized National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq–the Republican-led Senate Select Intelligence Committee–shockingly voted in the fall of 2002 against the simple authorization of force demanded by a Republican President. Panicked, the warmongers in the White House and Pentagon pressured CIA Director George Tenet to rush release to the entire Hill a very short “summary” of the careful NIE, which made Hussein seem incalculably more dangerous than the whole report indicated.

And, of course, in recent days we’ve learned much of this “intelligence” had been flagged as untrustworthy by the Defense Intelligence Agency several months earlier –a flag the Senate never saw.

Even Richard Cohen catches on now and then:

In one of the most intellectually incoherent major speeches ever delivered by a minor President, George W. Bush last week blamed “some Democrats and anti-war critics” for changing their minds about the war in Iraq and now saying they were deceived. “It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began,” the President said. Yes, sir, but it is even more deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how history was rewritten in the first place.

It is the failure to acknowledge this that is so troubling about Bush and others in his administration. Yes, the President is right: Foreign intelligence services also thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; Saddam Hussein simply ignored more than a dozen UN resolutions demanding that he reopen his country to arms inspectors.

We can endlessly debate the facts. More important, though, is the mind-set of those in the administration, from the President on down, who had those facts – or, as we shall see, none at all – and mangled them in the cause of the war.

For example, the insistence that Saddam was somehow linked to 9/11 tells you that to Bush and his people, the facts did not matter. It did not matter that Mohamed Atta never met with Iraqis in Prague. It did not matter that Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was finding no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program. None of that mattered to Vice President Cheney, a fibber without peer in the realm, who warned of a “reconstituted” nuclear weapons program, promoted the nonexistent Prague meeting and went after legitimate critics. “We will not hesitate to discredit you,” Cheney told ElBaradei and Hans Blix, the other important UN inspector. ElBaradei recently won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The President’s recent speech conflates all sorts of terrorist incidents – neglecting that they are specific to their regions and have nothing to do with Al Qaeda. Every bombing somehow becomes an attack on Western values.

Like his pathetic attempts to re-create a “bullhorn moment” after the Katrina disaster, Bush’s desperation to take back the narrative on how we got into his war is more pitiful than persuasive.

Update: See “In Lawsuit, Team Bush Swore Saddam Was Behind 9/11” at DU.

Update update: Big MUST READ and big smooch to the Heretik for finding it … read about Iraq War deceptions by Stephen Zunes in Foreign Policy in Focus.

“Division and Accusation”

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Howard Fineman made some interesting remarks last night on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Yeah, I know, it’s Howard Fineman, but he did make some points. Really! Check out this truncated bit of the transcript, with obligatory “Democrats are just as bad” content removed:

OLBERMANN: Is it possible that we‘re overstating how bad those poll numbers are for the president? Is there some silver lining in there that we have overlooked?

FINEMAN: I don‘t think so. I was talking to a Republican today, a top strategist, who said, you know, he hasn‘t seen numbers like this since he‘s been in the game, which is quite some time. … what‘s happened to the president is that his numbers for honesty, honesty have crumbled, and just as important, his backing by the core Republican Party has begun to crumble as well.

So without the reputation for personal honesty and character, and without the hardcore support of his own Republicans, he‘s in deep trouble, probably is glad he‘s getting out of the country for a while.

OLBERMANN: The effort to get himself out of the deep trouble began, obviously, on Veterans Day, on Friday, in Pennsylvania, where Mr. Bush began this campaign to rehab his image by essentially accusing anybody who was critical of the war in Iraq or of how it started, or perhaps of even looking, investigating this question of prewar intelligence, of being deeply irresponsible.

We just heard tonight, in Alaska, he did exactly the same thing, used exactly the same analogies. Is there any indication yet that the strategy is working for him, either within his own party or within the public as a whole?

FINEMAN: No, I don‘t think so. And the numbers are so bad now that they‘re not going to be turned around by that kind of thing.

But he has two additional problems. First of all, he accepted bipartisanship when the war was gearing up. But he didn‘t really seek it out. He didn‘t really make bipartisanship, the notion of politics ending at the water‘s edge, the hallmark of his policy. It was sort of my way or the highway. And, you know, a majority of the Democrats, not all Democrats, but a majority of the Democrats in the Senate went along.

The other part of the problem he‘s got is, what he‘s really implicitly saying is, We went to war for the wrong reason. But the Democrats made the same mistake I made.

So it‘s a negative argument, not a positive argument. Not to mention the fact that he‘s essentially accusing Democrats practically of disloyalty when he says that they are sending, quote, “mixed signals” to the troops. That‘s one stop short of saying that they‘re undercutting the war effort.

OLBERMANN: That other key element to the strategy, the—well, the Democrats also believed this. He even invoked John Kerry‘s name last week, which makes Iraq sound not like Vietnam but like the Spanish-American War, Remember the “Maine,” and damn the torpedoes, and we‘ll find out later if they really attacked us.

Is it smart to be debating your election opponent a year after you have won the election?

FINEMAN: … I think a better strategy for George W. Bush, rather than to pick a fight when he‘s in this bad of a political position, is to look for some common ground.

But George Bush has never operated as a political leader, nor has his strategist, Karl Rove, by the search for common ground. Instead, they‘ve operated by division and accusation. And that is really going to, I think, dig them in deeper here. But that seems to be the policy they‘re pursuing.

OLBERMANN: Confound your enemies and entertain your friends by (INAUDIBLE), try to, trying to breach some sort of peace with the other side. It would be at least a novel approach.

I honestly believe that if Bush could get out of his “Oh, yeah? Well, you stink worse” mode and try to work with Congress, including Democratic members, to create a real exit strategy with authentic bipartisan support, I think Bush’s poll numbers might stop falling. They might even go back up a tad. I think lots of fallen-away Bush supporters would rally to him if he could show he is bringing order out of chaos. I emphasize that for this to work he’s got to produce tangible results that people can see, particularly a substantial reduction in violence.

But instead what we get with Bush are glib phrases (e.g., as they stand up we’ll stand down) and empty promises that after (Saddam is captured; sovereignty is transferred; elections are held) everything will get better.

The benchmarks pass, and it’s not getting better.

Instead Bush’s Iraq policy is just drifting along, directionless, and I think people are realizing that. (This is something I want to write about in more detail in a future post, but for examples I recommend “Why Iraq Has No Army” by James Fallows in the current edition of Atlantic Monthly. Unfortunately if you are not a subscriber you’ll probably have to buy a copy. But Fallows’s latest entry at The Huffington Post is really good, too, and you can read that online.)

Congress is stepping into the leadership void that Bush refuses to fill. For example, Bloomberg reports:

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Senate opened debate today on measures that would put the chamber on record for the first time asking President George W. Bush to set limits for keeping American troops in Iraq.

The Bush administration “needs to explain to Congress and the American people its strategy for the successful completion of the mission,” say resolutions introduced separately by both Republicans and Democrats.

Both parties also would require that Iraq’s rival political factions be told they must make the compromises necessary to achieve a stable government, united against the insurgency, which will allow U.S. troops to leave.

[Update: for today’s developments, click here.]

Bush probably doesn’t like Congress stepping on what he sees as his turf. But if he would step up, I ‘spect Congress would step down.

Instead we get division and accusation, because that’s all we ever get from Bush. And apparently he doesn’t know any other way to “lead.”

For more of Bush’s “my way or the highway” mode, see today’s E.J. Dionne column.

Update: See also today’s Dan Froomkin column.

Inspect This

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George W. Bush did something brilliant in 2002 that he doesn’t talk about now. In fact, he and his supporters try to pretend it never happened.

The “something” was getting UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq. As a result of George W. Bush’s saber rattling, in September 2002 Saddam Hussein had agreed to allow inspections for the first time since 1998. In August 1998 Saddam Hussein suspended cooperation with the weapons inspection teams. The inspectors left the country in December 1998 hours before the United States and United Kingdom began three days of air strikes.

In our current argument about whether “everybody was wrong” about Saddam Hussein’s WMDs, there’s hardly ever a mention of the weapons inspections. Considering that the UN inspectors were the ones with the most up-to-date information at the time of the invasion in March 2003, I think it’s important to look at what the UN believed in the run-up to the war..

And the fact is that the UN didn’t agree with Bush at all. Continue reading →

The Empire Strikes Back

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The White House posted a rebuttal to yesterday’s Washington Post article, “Asterisks Dot White House’s Iraq Argument” by Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus.

It’s late and I’m not up to deconstructing the White House effort at this hour. I see Stirling Newberry, Matthew Yglesias, and World o’ Crap have already done the job, fortunately.

But I’m pleased the Bushies are responding directly and openly, if not factually, to criticism instead of just spreading rumors that Dana Milbank is a cross-dresser. Karl Rove must still be preoccupied.