Trigger Happy, Are We?

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Last year Blair talked Bush out of bombing al-Jazeera.

The five-page transcript of a conversation between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveals that Blair talked Bush out of launching a military strike on the station, unnamed sources told the daily which is against the war in Iraq.

The transcript of the pair’s talks during Blair’s April 16, 2004 visit to Washington allegedly shows Bush wanted to attack the satellite channel’s headquarters.

Blair allegedly feared such a strike, in the business district of Doha, the capital of Qatar, a key western ally in the Persian Gulf, would spark revenge attacks.

The Mirror quoted an unnamed British government official as saying Bush’s threat was “humorous, not serious”.

However, another source told the Mirror Bush was serious.

A source told the Mirror: “The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush.

“He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem.

“There’s no doubt what Bush wanted to do — and no doubt Blair didn’t want him to do it.”

Another source said: “Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men.”

What can one say but … Jeebus.

Shakespeare’s Sister: “Looks like Instapundit DOES owe Eason Jordan a serious apology.”

Don’t hold your breath.

Padilla Indicted

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Mark Sherman of the Associated Press reports that somebody finally brought charges against Jose Padilla. But they aren’t same the charges John Ashcroft talked about three years ago.

Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held for three years as an enemy combatant suspected of plotting a “dirty bomb” attack in this country, has been indicted on charges that he conspired to “murder, kidnap and maim” people overseas.

A federal grand jury in Miami returned the indictment against Padilla and four others. While the charges allege Padilla was part of a U.S.-based terrorism conspiracy, they do not include the government’s earlier allegations that he planned to carry out attacks in America.

You mean Crisco John was wrong? Wow.

The indictment avoids a Supreme Court showdown over how long the government could hold a U.S. citizen without charges. Padilla’s lawyers had asked justices to review his case last month, and the Bush administration was facing a deadline next Monday for filing its legal arguments. The high court had been asked to decide when and for how long the government can jail Americans in military prisons.

If it took ’em three years to patch a case together, one suspects they didn’t have much on Padilla when they arrested him.

“Staying the Course”

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Juan Cole writes about the national reconciliation conference in Cairo and the Iraqi agreement for withdrawal:

Al-Hayat gives the orginal Arabic wording of some articles of the agreement. One provision says, “We demand the withdrawal of foreign forces in accordance with a timetable, and the establishment of a national and immediate program for rebuilding the armed forces through drills, preparation and being armed, on a sound basis that will allow it to guard Iraq’s borders and to get control of the security situation . . .”

Sources at the conference told al-Hayat that they envisaged the withdrawal of foreign military forces from the cities within 6 months (i.e. mid-May?). They said that the withdrawal would be completed over a period of two years (i.e. November 2007). This timetable, al-Hayat says, appears actually to have been put forward by the Americans themselves. If that is true, we finally know exactly what George W. Bush means by “staying the course.” It is a course that takes us to withdrawal.

The Shiite United Iraqi Alliance list had originally called for an American troop withdrawal as part of its party platform, but that plank was opposed by Ibrahim Jaafari, and was dropped even before the January 30 elections, presumably because of American pressure.

Oh, what a difference a year makes. I’ll bet this very minute they are brainstorming in the White House over how to frame withdrawal so that it doesn’t sound like withdrawal. As soon as they’ve got that figured out, the Bushies will announce “withdrawal,” although they’ll call it something else. And I’m betting the announcement will come early next year, or even at the end of this year; between Christmas and New Year’s might be just the time. Nobody’s paying attention then.

One more time: If the Dems don’t show some leadership and get out in front with a withdrawal plan now, the Republicans will outmaneuver them again.

Over at BOP News, Stirling Newberry points to another sign that talk of withdrawal will soon become fact.

Sharon, whatever one may thing of his ideology, is an excellent strategist and tactician. He never lets anything get in the way of geographic, or chronological, realities. His breaking off to form the “Responsibility” Party is an attempt to destroy the socialist Labor, but also because he understands that America’s time in Iraq is running out. …

… With US involvement in Iraq, the resources have flowed to striking at the US directly. …

… Sharon has been pragmatic, the day that the US occupation of Iraq ends, all of those roadside bombs will be destined for Israel, and the apparatus based in Iraq will spill out over the roads, and reach into the heart of his state. He must have a final solution, and a palestinian buffer state. And his time to make that deal is dwindling. His own Likud Party was the major obstacle, his hope is to be able to form a minority government, and go to Likud for economic policy, and to Labor for foreign policy – balancing both against the other to prevent a no confidence vote.

So let us face reality, Bush is going to withdraw from Iraq – Sharon knows it – Bush’s problem is how to blame it, and therefore run the “stabbed in the back” play, on the Democrats.

If Dems don’t act now, that’s exactly what will happen.

The means for Dems to seize the issue and claim it as their own is right in front of them. Be sure to read “What Murtha Meant” by Fred Kaplain at Slate. Murtha’s plan is actually not a withdrawal, as is usually described.

True, his final line reads, “It is time to bring them home,” but his plan suggests he wants to bring, at most, only some of them home. The others are to be “redeployed” in the quick-reaction forces hovering just offshore.

Host Tim Russert never asked—nor did Murtha explain—what these forces will be doing offshore, or under what circumstances they might re-enter the conflict. But we can fill in the blanks by looking at a study, published last month by the Center for American Progress, titled Strategic Redeployment: A Progressive Plan for Iraq and the Struggle Against Violent Extremists, written by Lawrence Korb (an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration) and Brian Katulis.

Korb and Katulis begin with the same premises that Murtha does: that the U.S. military presence in Iraq is inflaming the insurgency, uniting nationalists with Islamo-fundamentalists, and bolstering America’s terrorist enemies worldwide; that the Iraqi government is using U.S. troops as a crutch; that maintaining 140,000 troops for another year will destroy the U.S. Army; and that, therefore, on several grounds, it is best for all that we get out.

They call for a phased, two-year plan, drawing the troops down to 80,000 by the end of next year and dispensing with most of the rest by the end of 2007. However, they don’t call for a total withdrawal. By their plan, all 46,000 members of the Guard and Reserve will go home next year, but most of the active-duty soldiers and Marines will be “redeployed” to Kuwait or Afghanistan. Even after that, many American troops will remain to train, advise, help secure the borders, and provide logistical and air support to the Iraqi regime.

Murtha seems to have at least partly based his plan on the Korb and Katulis study, and partly on discussions with former and current Army brass.

In other words, we’ve got a plan that offers to both remove U.S. troops as an occupation force without abandoning the region to terrorists. Dems could use this plan to push for an honorable withdrawal and still be tough on terrorism.

Instead, so far we’ve got Hillary Clinton’s non-position.

Dems? … Dems? … Hello? …

Adventures in RightieWorld II

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In what was either an innocent glitch or a prank pulled by a techie somewhere in the employee labyrinth of CNN, yesterday an X flashed onscreen over the face of Dick Cheney while he was speaking at the American Enterprise Institute.

Whereupon the entire Right Blogosphere erupted in hysteria.

You can find links at Memeorandum. Top executives at CNN deliberately slammed the Vice President! With an X that lasted 2 frames or 1/15th of a second! And a subliminal message that reads, Transition begins after 5 frames of black.

“Transition begins.” Hmm, clearly a reference to either an act of terrorism or an armed takeover of Congress by Jack Murtha. “After 5 frames of black” obviously is secret code to let the cells of leftie Bush haters know when to strike.

Righties: I’m kidding.

One rightie blogger proclaimed that CNN has just driven another nail into the MSM coffin. And he’s not kidding. “[T]his ought to convince a lot of holdouts that traditional, ostensibly objective media sources are increasingly unreliable and agenda-driven,” he says.

No wonder you can’t have a rational converstion with these people. They’re nuts.

See also World o’ Crap.

Leading From Behind

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Sen. Hillary Clinton finally addressed John Murtha’s Iraq redeployment proposal yesterday. Boldly, the Senator declared she was opposed to withdrawal but also opposed to remaining. Further, she is opposed to making any firm decisions for the time being.

The Associated Press reports,

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that an immediate U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq would be “a big mistake.”

While professing “the greatest respect” for Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., the ex-Marine who has called for a pullout, the New York Democrat said, “I think that would cause more problems for us in America.”

On the other hand, she said, the administration’s pledge to stay in Iraq “until the job is done” amounts to giving the Iraqis “an open-ended invitation not to take care of themselves.”

The right approach, Clinton suggested, would be for the United States to await Iraq’s Dec. 15 elections for a clue about how soon the Iraqis can take over.

I wonder if she employs people to come up with positionless positions that don’t say shit but don’t scare away the swing voters, or if it just comes naturally.

Update update: See Avedon, “And the Truth Will Set You Free.”

If Democrats would spend more time reading The Left Coaster and Political Animal and less time listening to the tediously bland fraidy-cats they use as political consultants, they would know more, have plenty of verbal karate at their fingertips, and be prepared for all the lies that come out of the RNC. …

…We’ve been offering Democrats, for free, better advice than they’ve been paying for over the last several years, and their response has been to let the GOP convince them that anyone who disagrees with rabid right-wing talking points is some kind of loony. They can dismiss us as mere bloggers even while the Republicans make terrific use of their own “mere” bloggers. They use their resources while convincing Democrats to shun their own. And Democrats fall for it.

Iraqis Unite!

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There’s hope for a united Iraq after all. Hassan Fattah writes in Tuesday’s New York Times:

For the first time, Iraq’s political factions on Monday collectively called for a timetable for withdrawal of foreign forces, in a moment of consensus that comes as the Bush administration battles pressure at home to commit itself to a pullout schedule.

The announcement, made at the conclusion of a reconciliation conference here backed by the Arab League, was a public reaching out by Shiites, who now dominate Iraq’s government, to Sunni Arabs on the eve of parliamentary elections that have been put on shaky ground by weeks of sectarian violence.

About 100 Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders, many of whom will run in the election on Dec. 15, signed a closing memorandum on Monday that “demands a withdrawal of foreign troops on a specified timetable, dependent on an immediate national program for rebuilding the security forces,” the statement said.

I guess they really can work together and agree on something.

The television pundits still talk about staying in Iraq another two or three years, but I think we’ll be out in a matter of months (see “Speaking With One Voice,” below). The only question is, will it be an orderly and honorable withdrawal or something more ignominious? The Bushies and their rightie supporters will be the last people on the planet to realize that a withdrawal will happen, but once they catch on they’ll find some way to argue that withdrawal was the plan all along.

Earth to Tweety: Ya Think?

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Get this:

Four years after 9/11 and the “crazy zeitgeist” that permeated the United States, most Americans have still not learned to know their enemies instead of just hating them, U.S. political journalist Chris Matthews says.

In a speech to political science students at the University of Toronto yesterday, the host of the CNBC current affairs show Hardball had plenty of harsh words for U.S. President George W. Bush, as well as the political climate that has characterized his country for the past few years.

“The period between 9/11 and Iraq was not a good time for America. There wasn’t a robust discussion of what we were doing,” Matthews said.

As I remember, the period between 9/11 and Iraq marked the time I swore off watching Hardball because of the crap Tweety was presenting in lieu of a robust discussion.

Speaking With One Voice

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I just got a call from someone representing The Friends of John Kerry. The FoJK are pushing a petition to bring 20,000 troops home from Iraq by Christmas. I declined to sign the petition, even though of course I want troops home by Christmas. I told the Friend that I want the Dems to stop competing with each other and get together behind a single, basic plan. They don’t have to agree on the fine details, but with the Bush Administration and the Republican Party in dissaray, it’s time for the Dems to speak with one voice.

Jeffrey Laurenti writes for The Century Foundation:

The near hysterical reaction of the Bush administration to Representative John Murtha’s call for a swift American pullout from Iraq, lumping the hawkish Pennsylvania Democrat with “Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party,” underscores the war planners’ acute awareness that Murtha has breached a crucial dike. They must brace themselves for a storm surge of opposition to their Iraq project in coming months that could leave them politically stranded.

Murtha’s move renders obsolete the cautious half-steps that centrist Democrats have advanced to differentiate themselves from Bush on Iraq, but which the administration has consistently been able to co-opt. The standing ovation that Murtha’s House colleagues gave him in the closed-door Democratic caucus suggests the depth of their disenchantment, though most are not themselves ready yet to embrace his proposal publicly. But by early next year total “redeployment” (the Reagan euphemism for withdrawal) by the end of 2006 will almost surely emerge as the liberal alternative to the conservatives’ war.

I think the Dems need to claim collective ownership of a serious withdrawal plan ASAP. By this I mean a general working plan, whether John Murtha’s “beyond the horizon” redeployment or something else, upon which more specific nuts-and-bolts withdrawal procedures can be built. Such a plan should be a well-publicized feature of Brand Democrat going into 2006. And Democrats need to claim ownership of this plan now, before Republicans beat them to it.

Bush has a history of turning on a dime and assimilating former opposing positions as his own. For example, he fought the creation of the Department of Homeland Security tooth and nail, until one day in (I think ) June 2002 he declared he was for it. From that moment forward he spoke of it as if it had been his policy all along. And by adding a “poison pill” anti-Union provision, he took the issue away from the Democrats, who were for the DHS all those months that Bush was against it. As Molly Ivins wrote in April 2004,

There are always moments of cognitive dissonance in listening to President Bush, when you realize that what he is saying simply does not accord with any known version of reality. By way of good news, he proudly bragged that “we” created the Department of Homeland Security — that would be the department whose creation he opposed all those months. Also, he is looking forward to the report of the 9-11 Commission — that would be the same commission he so vigorously opposed for all those months. …

… One trouble with Bush’s “stay the course” rhetoric — he never changes his mind, he never backs down, what a macho guy he is, etc. — is that he does change his mind, often, (why do you think Condi Rice testified?), but you can’t tell if he realizes it.

Some time soon — maybe after the December elections — Bush could announce that the “mission” is sufficiently accomplished to begin withdrawal from Iraq. And then Karl Rove and the noise machine will turn the centrist Democrats’ “cautious half-steps” into talking points arguing the Dems are against withdrawal. That sounds may farfetched, I know, but I think it is entirely in line with Bush’s past behavior.

Whether Bush likes it or not, whether he realizes it now or not, U.S. troops cannot stay in Iraq in perpetuity. One way or another we’re going to leave before Bush’s second term has expired.

Paul Krugman writes in today’s New York Times,

The fact is that we’re not going to stay in Iraq until we achieve victory, whatever that means in this context. At most, we’ll stay until the American military can take no more.

Mr. Bush never asked the nation for the sacrifices – higher taxes, a bigger military and, possibly, a revived draft – that might have made a long-term commitment to Iraq possible. Instead, the war has been fought on borrowed money and borrowed time. And time is running out. With some military units on their third tour of duty in Iraq, the superb volunteer army that Mr. Bush inherited is in increasing danger of facing a collapse in quality and morale similar to the collapse of the officer corps in the early 1970’s.

So the question isn’t whether things will be ugly after American forces leave Iraq. They probably will. The question, instead, is whether it makes sense to keep the war going for another year or two, which is all the time we realistically have.

The Democrats’ window of opportunity is open now. I don’t know how long it will stay open. It’s time for them to get their act together and speak with one voice.

What’s Up With This?

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CNN reports that today Dick Cheney praised Congressman John Murtha and called him a patriot.

Vice President Dick Cheney continued the Bush administration’s efforts Monday to pull back on attacks against a decorated war veteran who called for the near-term withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq….

… He used the top of his speech — televised live by CNN and other news networks — to praise U.S. Rep. John Murtha, “my friend and former colleague.” The 17-term Pennsylvania Democrat made news last week when he called for U.S. forces to leave Iraq over a six-month period.

“I disagree with Jack and believe his proposal would not serve the best interest of this nation. But he’s a good man, a Marine, a patriot, and he’s taking a clear stand in an entirely legitimate discussion,” Cheney said.

President Bush similarly praised Murtha on Sunday while on his trip to Asia. …

… Bush’s and Cheney’s comments were a far cry from initial comments by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who last week accused Murtha of “endorsing the policies of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party.”

What do you want to bet the Bushies saw some poll numbers showing that Murtha is more popular than they are?