Category Archives: Iraq War

The Joke Post

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Here’s a joke for you. Doug Feith has published a book called War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism . Must be a laugh riot.

Here’s another joke: John McCain’s health care plan. As near as I can make out, he wants to “lure” people away from employer-based health plans by eliminating tax incentives to employers to offer those plans. Instead, people will get a $5,000 “family tax credit” that will enable them to purchase private insurance, he says, even though the actual average cost of health insurance for a family is way more than double $5,000. And he has little idea what to do about people with a pre-existing condition who cannot purchase health insurance at any price.

Hilzoy takes the plan apart so I don’t have to.

Steve Benen says the plan “probably won’t receive much in the way of scrutiny.” From the press it won’t, no, but that’s why the Dems need to purchase lots of advertising time to scrutinize it. I think if the public were to hear the details, that by itself would be enough to sink McCain’s chances to win in November.

Lorita Doan, who made herself a punch line by pressuring General Services Administration employees to “help” Republican candidates, and who threatened to sanction anyone who cooperated with an investigation of her, has stepped down from her position as chief of GSA. She blames political pressure and bad grammar.

And last but not least, Tom Friedman explains why the Clinton-McCain gas tax plan is a joke.

Scapegoats

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Today the Olympic torch, having been extinguished and re-lit several times in France, is in San Francisco. I haven’t yet heard what’s going on with it today, but protests are expected, and the IOC is considering scrapping the torch relay in the future.

You probably know that the government of China blames His Holiness the Dalai Lama for causing unrest in Tibet. You probably know this is bullshit. However, the people of China hear only the Chinese government’s side of the story, and they tend to support their government.

Here in the U.S. , wingnuts and the crackpots who lead them continue to promote the idea that either Iran, or al Qaeda (the original one), or both conflated together in John McCain’s addled brain, are the chief culprits behind the violence in Iraq. You probably knew this is bullshit, and if you don’t, Dilip Hiro and John Juan Cole explain it for you.

Republican presidential candidate and war hero John McCain continues to be confused about connections (unlikely) between al Qaeda and Sh’ia Iran. Michael Goldfarb thinks we’re all being picky.

This is getting beyond ridiculous. Sometimes people make mistakes, even liberals–like when Arianna Huffington, in the midst of attacking McCain for just such a gaffe, confused Iran with Syria. Does she really not know the difference between the two? Of course not.

Memo to Goldfarb: Arianna Huffington ain’t runnin’ for President. And McCain keeps making the same mistake.

Clinton supporters believe the Clinton campaign is struggling because media are mean to Clinton. The fact that Senator Clinton’s campaign keeps making big, fat, newsworthy mistakes is not, of course, a factor behind the negative press. Yes, there is some piling on, but she’s giving them so much to pile on about. (See also “Why the Clintons Held Onto Mark Penn.” Interesting read.)

And, as I remember, until the Clinton campaign started losing, the same press had built the Senator and her campaign team into the Most Awesome and Absolutely Unbeatable Political Juggernaut of All Time.

Ezra Klein writes that conservatives have a creative scapegoat for recent economic meltdown — liberals caused the subprime mortgage crisis:

The new line we’re hearing is that the financial meltdown was really the product of the Community Reinvestment Act, a piece of legislation from the late-70s that required federally-insured banks to lend throughout the areas from which they take deposits, including poor neighborhoods, which were being systematically excluded from credit. The legislation, by all accounts, worked. Now, however, conservatives are trying to argue that it’s behind the crisis: If the CRA hadn’t been pushing these banks to make all these unsafe loans, then the birds would still sing and Alan Greenspan could still start each morning by being anointed with the oil of the purest, youngest, olives.

As Robert Gordon shows, however, this is crap.

Well, yes.

Anyway, is there anyone out there actually taking responsibility for something?

Irrelevant in Iraq

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As usual, Juan Cole provides a succinct explanation of what’s going on in Iraq. Here’s the most critical bit about the fighting in Basra:

The southern parties have essentially defied al-Maliki and Bush to make a separate peace.

The entire episode underlines how powerful Iran has become in Iraq.

Way to go, Bushies.

Iraq in Meltdown?

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It’s CNN’s headline, folks — “Al-Sadr in trouble, Iraq headed for meltdown.” The Independent has another alarming headline — “Iraq implodes as Shia fights Shia.” And if you need further alarming, read Juan Cole.

Professor Cole says that violence is breaking out in many parts of Iraq, including Baghdad and Najaf, the latter of which is often mentioned in President Bush’s Iraq success myths.

But even though Iraq is either melting down or imploding, or both, the warbloggers are curiously not on top of this so far. In fact, the only thing worrying the gang at the Weekly Standard site is a trip taken to Iraq in 2002 by some Dem senators that was bankrolled by Saddam Hussein’s government. Nothing going on in Iraq now is, apparently, interesting to them.

In other news, this morning about 30 monks disrupted a carefully controlled tour of Lhasa being conducted by the Chinese government for foreign tourists. The resistance is not completely crushed, it seems. You can read about it on the other blog.

Catching Up

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The problem with getting behind in my blogging is that, when I do get back to the blog, so much stuff has happened that I don’t know where to start. And, unfortunately, I have a huge amount of Other work to do today and cannot linger here writing something artful. So I’m just going to sort of free associate for a bit and run through some current items.

Leila Fadel and Nancy A. Youssef write for McClatchy Newspapers, “Is ‘success’ of U.S. surge in Iraq about to unravel?” I knew the surge — as a public relations tool, anyway — was in trouble last night, when I was half listening to Hardball. I heard Tweety ask something along the lines of “Is the surge working?” When Tweety’s catching on to something, you know it’s pretty damn obvious. See also Fester at Newshoggers.

The bobbleheads are beginning to write off the Clinton campaign again, for at least the third time. The Vegetable has her chances of winning the nomination at 5 percent, which makes it a near certainty she’s about shoot up in the polls.

Journalist and brother blogger Will Bunch scored a major coup yesterday with this story. (Senator Clinton is exaggerating? Who knew?) See also “Clinton: Pledged delegates are ‘like superdelegates.’ ”

I have to disagree with E.J. Dionne. He writes,

What’s the matter with conservatism?

Its problems start with the failure of George W. Bush’s presidency …

The problems of conservatism are intrinsic to conservatism. Bush’s failed presidency is just a manifestation of the internal failures of conservatism.

I don’t have any problems with what used to be moderately conservative positions, such as being cautious about raising taxes, spending the people’s money, and getting entangled in foreign problems we would do well to leave alone. A moderately conservative perspective needs to be represented in government as a counterweight to some of the flightier impulses of progressivism. By the same token, conservatism needs progressivism and its flightier impulses to keep it from being utterly stuck in the mud. And democratic government itself can only survive when it respects the values of liberalism.

The problem with conservatism is that, when taken to extremes and logical outcomes, it turns into a nasty, brutish thing that destroys everything it touches. And the problem with the Republican Party is that, in the 1970s, it was infiltrated and taken over by hard-core ideologues who were determined to take the GOP and the rest of the country to those extremes and logical outcomes.

And once the extremists had complete control of all branches of government, with no effective counterweights, they proceeded to destroy everything they touched.

You can argue — hell, I’ve argued — that any ideology, taken to extremes, will implode and self-destruct. Ideology is a bit like medicine; a bigger dose is not necessarily a better dose. One pill every four hours might cure you, but four pills every one hour might kill you.

Well, Other duty calls. Gotta go.

How Romantic

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Erica Goode reports for the New York Times:

BAGHDAD — The shelling started just before 6 a.m., mortar fire shaking buildings and sending early risers in the Green Zone here running for shelter. Sirens went off, and loudspeakers blared, “Duck and cover! Duck and cover!” A thick column of gray smoke rose above the embassies and government buildings in the area.

The early morning onslaught on Sunday was one of the fiercest and most sustained attacks on the Green Zone in the past year, and it ushered in a day of violence that claimed the lives of at least 51 Iraqi civilians and soldiers, including two children.

How ’bout that surge, huh? And what was it the President said the other day about how romantic war is?

Nicolas Kristof writes,

The Iraq war is now going better than expected, for a change. Most critics of the war, myself included, blew it: we didn’t anticipate the improvements in security that are partly the result of last year’s “surge.”

The improvement is real but fragile and limited. Here’s what it amounts to: We’ve cut our casualty rates to the unacceptable levels that plagued us back in 2005, and we still don’t have any exit plan for years to come — all for a bill that is accumulating at the rate of almost $5,000 every second!

Why did we invade Iraq, again? Something about aluminum tubes?

Another Resignation

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Lost in the news about resignations is news about another resignation. Admiral William Fallon, chief of the United States Central Command, resigned Tuesday. It is widely believed he was forced to resign because he opposed military action against Iran.

The resignation may have been triggered by an Esquire interview of Fallon by Thomas P.M. Barnett. Barnett wrote,

If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it’ll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it’ll come down to the same man. He is that rarest of creatures in the Bush universe: the good cop on Iran, and a man of strategic brilliance. His name is William Fallon, although all of his friends call him “Fox,” which was his fighter-pilot call sign decades ago. Forty years into a military career that has seen this admiral rule over America’s two most important combatant commands, Pacific Command and now United States Central Command, it’s impossible to make this guy–as he likes to say–“nervous in the service.”

And the moral is, weenies like Dubya and Dick don’t like real men who stand up to them.

There also may have been a clash between Fallon and Gen. Petraeus. From today’s Los Angeles Times:

The inside story of the battle between Adm. William J. Fallon, former head of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, may be studied by military historians years hence. The animosity between the two top military men was personal (Petraeus reportedly thought Fallon was trying to micromanage him). It was political (Petraeus is President Bush’s favorite general, while Fallon’s views put him increasingly at odds with the administration). And it was strategic (Petraeus’ mission is to win in Iraq, while Fallon feared an extended heavy presence there would sap U.S. strength needed to deal with other global challenges). …

… The timing of Fallon’s resignation is provocative. In less than a month, Petraeus will testify again before Congress. The troop surge he recommended is coming to an end in July, as scheduled, because even with extended 15-month deployments, the Army has no more troops to send. The U.S. will be back to its pre-surge troop strength of 130,000, although many military analysts believe that it can sustain a deployment of only 80,000 to 90,000 without breakingthe back of the Army. Nevertheless, Petraeus is expected to ask for a “strategic pause” in further troop withdrawals in order not to jeopardize the much-improved security climate in Iraq. Petraeus will be grilled on whether the less than impressive Iraqi political progress justifies an extended U.S. troop presence.

David Ignatius (yeah, I know, it’s David Ignatius) wrote,

In a May 15 piece from Baghdad, I quoted an upbeat Petraeus: “How long does reconciliation take? That’s the long pole in the tent.” I asked Fallon if he had an assessment of his own, and he said, specifically rebutting Petraeus: “We’re chipping away at the problem. But we don’t have the time to chip away. Reconciliation isn’t likely in the time we have available, but some form of accommodation is a must.”

By last fall, it was clear to Fallon that the key issue was the pace of U.S. withdrawal. If the surge strategy was “conditions-based,” and the surge was going well, Fallon wondered, why weren’t we pressing the advantage and moving for a faster timetable?

From today’s Boston Globe:

IT IS a worrisome sign that Defense Secretary Robert Gates had to accept the obviously forced resignation of Admiral William Fallon, chief of the United States Central Command. Even if Gates was right to say, as he did Tuesday, that it would be “ridiculous” to take Fallon’s departure as an augury of war with Iran, the fate of the outspoken admiral suggests that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have learned nothing about the value of letting uniformed military chiefs speak their minds, particularly when they disagree with questionable administration doctrines.

Dan Froomkin:

The abrupt resignation yesterday of the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Admiral William J. “Fox” Fallon, has sparked a new round of speculation that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have some sort of plan in the works to attack Iran before their time is up.

Fallon’s resignation — or firing — was apparently precipitated in part by a recent Esquire profile that depicted him as brazenly pushing back against the White House hawks eager to launch another war.

Now it turns out that what Thomas P.M. Barnett, a former Naval War College professor, wrote in that profile was eerily prescient: “How does Fallon get away with so brazenly challenging his commander in chief?

“The answer is that he might not get away with it for much longer. President Bush is not accustomed to a subordinate who speaks his mind as freely as Fallon does, and the president may have had enough.

“Just as Fallon took over Centcom last spring, the White House was putting itself on a war footing with Iran. Almost instantly, Fallon began to calmly push back against what he saw as an ill-advised action. Over the course of 2007, Fallon’s statements in the press grew increasingly dismissive of the possibility of war, creating serious friction with the White House.

“Last December, when the National Intelligence Estimate downgraded the immediate nuclear threat from Iran, it seemed as if Fallon’s caution was justified. But still, well-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don’t want a commander standing in their way.

“And so Fallon, the good cop, may soon be unemployed because he’s doing what a generation of young officers in the U. S. military are now openly complaining that their leaders didn’t do on their behalf in the run-up to the war in Iraq: He’s standing up to the commander in chief, whom he thinks is contemplating a strategically unsound war.”

As Sean-Paul Kelly says,

This comes as a serious blow to any sane policy in the Mid-East.

While We Were Being Disappointed

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In the past few hours, eight U.S. soldiers died in Iraq. This brings the total to just over 3,900, I believe.

Eugene Robinson writes in today’s Washington Post:

Has anyone noticed that Iraq, supposedly transformed into an oasis of peace and tranquility by George W. Bush’s troop surge, is growing less peaceful and tranquil by the day?

The nation’s attention has been riveted by the presidential campaign, with its compelling characters and its edge-of-your-seat story line. Iraq is treated almost as a theoretical issue: What would happen there if Barack Obama became president, as opposed to what would happen if Hillary Clinton became president, as opposed to what would happen if John McCain became president? There has been little debate about what’s happening in Iraq right now.

That seems likely to change.

Wow. And after they celebrated over that damn ugly cake. Be sure to read all of Robinson’s column, which make a good argument that Iraq is still a failure, no matter what the Bushies say.

Warren P. Strobel writes for McClatchy Newspapers:

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network.

The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam’s regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.

The new study of the Iraqi regime’s archives found no documents indicating a “direct operational link” between Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaida before the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report.

This is not exactly news to most of us. But just last week I saw Christopher Hitchens on Bill Maher’s HBO show talking about Saddam’s support of al Qaeda. I doubt Hitchens will ever admit to the truth; he’s too emotionally invested in his Glorious Little War. When the report comes out, expect the Right Blogosphere to come up with some reason why the Pentagon couldn’t possibly know what it’s talking about.

Oh, Joy

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Headline from a right-wing blog: BAGHDAD IS SAVED–Iraqis Celebrate Surge Anniversary!!

I clicked on the link, expecting to see photos of joyous Iraqis littering the streets of Baghdad with flowers and confetti. Instead, this:

This is joy? Some suits and uniforms standing around an ugly-ass cake? I’ve seen giddier office parties.

Gateway Pundit reproduces some news stories that appear to be from Iraqi media — I see one says “Story by 3rd Infantry Division Public Affairs” — although they are in English. So it’s not clear to me exactly where these news stories come from. But of course, we can accept them as gospel because, you know, they’re on our side. The stories describe the wonderful success of the “surge.” And the blogger comments:

It goes without saying… There would be no party, parade or cake today if the Democrats would have had their way.

Thank God.

There you have it, boys and girls — 3,960 U.S. troops died for a cake.

Earlier on the same day as the cake photo op, some Iraqi citizens directly experienced the joy of the surge.

U.S. strike kills three members of Iraqi citizens security group

By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS
Los Angeles Times

BAGHDAD | Three neighborhood security guards were killed and two others injured when U.S. attack helicopters fired at their checkpoint south of Baghdad early Friday, Iraqi police said.

It was the latest in a series of reports about errant strikes that have stoked tensions between the citizens security groups in central and northern Iraq, and their American backers.

Sheik Mohammed Ghuriari, who heads the so-called Awakening Councils that supply fighters to protect neighborhoods in the north of Babil province, said it was the third U.S.-led strike on their checkpoints in fewer than two months. He claimed 19 people had been killed and 14 injured.

“The U.S. forces should learn from their mistakes,” Ghuriari said in a telephone interview. “Such repeated attacks will make the Awakening Councils review their stance in the agreements they signed with the U.S. forces.”

The U.S. military has acknowledged one mistake so far, a Feb. 2 air strike that killed nine people including at least three Awakening members and a child. The soldiers thought they were targeting insurgents readying a roadside bomb in a rural area 25 miles southeast of Baghdad, officers said at the time.

OK, so maybe that doesn’t count because the accidents took place outside of Baghdad. Let’s see what else is going on …

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s prime minister declared “victory in Baghdad” yesterday, claiming U.S. and Iraqi troops have chased al-Qaida in Iraq out of the capital in the year since a security crackdown began, and vowing to pursue insurgents who have fled northward.

Underscoring the rising violence in northern Iraq, a double suicide bombing targeted Shiite worshippers as they left weekly prayer services in the city of Tal Afar, killing at least four people and wounding 17. Police said guards at the Juwad mosque prevented a worse casualty toll by opening fire on the two attackers before they could reach the bulk of worshippers emerging from the building.

In remarks broadcast on state television, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki thanked the U.S. military and its allies for “standing with us in defeating terrorism.”

Wow, Baghdad must be safe, if Nouri al-Maliki says so. After all, as Haifa Zangana writes at The Guardian —

Iraqis suffering from the lack of basic services continue to call the Maliki government; “the government of the sectarian militias” with the highest record of corruption permeating in every aspect of its body. Democracy, transparency and human rights are terms often used as jokes.

Oh, wait …

As for the celebrated US/allied tribal Sunni militia called al-Sahwa (the awakening), the last few weeks has proved that it is increasingly becoming the monster about to devour its creator. Sheik Ali Hathem al Duleimy, the head of al Sahwa, many of whose members are paid by the occupiers, went on Iraqi TV and said that his militia would no longer allow the US or Iraqi government to interfere with its work.

Similar US-paid groups in Diyala province continue to refuse to work with American or Iraqi government forces.

Do read all of Haifa Zangana’s post, as she tells more about the “accidents” befalling Iraqi civilians that we’re not hearing much about here, for some reason. (Can’t imagine why.) See also Steve Lannen, McClatchy Newspapers —

Violence is increasing in Iraq, raising questions about whether the security improvements credited to the increase in U.S. troops may be short-lived.

Car bombs in Baghdad on Monday killed at least 11 people and injured a prominent leader of one of the country’s most influential American-allied tribal militias.

The Ministry of Electricity announced that power to much of the nation, already anemic, is likely to lag in coming days because insurgents had blown up transmission facilities and natural gas pipelines that fuel generators.

CBS News confirmed that two of its journalists are missing in Basra, in Iraq’s south.

Etc., etc. The suits might have their cake, but can they eat it, too?