Dub the Decider … mano a mano
The Dubby made a pronouncement today:
“Our objective is to help the Iraqi government deal with the extremists and the killers, and support the vast majority of Iraqis who are reasonable, who want peace.”
Word is, he will send more troops.
That there IS no actual Iraqi government slipped his mind [Doug Thompson weighs in on that, last ... Dubby's delusional mind, not the government.] Actually, George knows that well enough … he’s poised on making some changes in his Iraqi lineup. What a deal, huh? This American president continues to switch out the liberated and democratically elected Iraqi politico’s to suit his needs … and asks us to believe it isn’t a puppet stage. As I said, no actual government there.
So it appears that Dub has decided we’ll be staying the course [or taking the newly reconfigured way forward] and gathering up more troops to send into harms way, leaving Homeland Security, as usual, unprepared for an emergency on these shores — and I guess he didn’t get that memo about how the Army is broke and having to scavenge its own bases for supplies. Dennis Kucinich, who announced his candidacy yesterday, wants to eliminate funding for the war effort — that’s how Vietnam finally came to a halt. I wish I could tell you that Democratic leadership was behind him on that — they’re not; I’ve posted the link to a Chris Floyd piece below … you can read the bad news there. A less stinging indictment but still worrisome editorial by Marie Coco follows it.
What’s interesting about Thompson’s rant, besides his links to insider info and typical candor, is his final comment to a blogger regarding Dick Cheney, which I’ve included. I’m in agreement with this notion, that Cheney’s influence is considerably diminished without his NeoCon allies.
If you project forward a bit with that line of thought, consider the dilemma at hand — an isolated and increasingly paranoid Dubby is now without those who have propped him up in the past, surrounded by newbies and disenchanted with Pappy’s boyz … he’s on his own, as it were, shotgunning his skewed reality out at a hostile world that seeks to foil his plans for democracy and profit. He’s set to go mano a mano with ALL of us, now. Jeez — Ronnie Reagan’s last years are beginning to look gentle and sane.
But none of this is a surprise. Best to face it head on, since we can consider ourselves [and the 70 or so percent of people who agree with us that George is the problem] the reality-based counter-influence to continued Bushy mayhem. We’ve obviously got our work cut out for us — and you should already be writing letters, sending emails to your Congresspersons letting them know what you expect of them.
This is a big old post, important reads of the day — maybe tomorrow will bring us something lighter.
One last thought: You can’t get a decent job in this country without a drug test — I suggest that we never again elect a president without a psychological profile … and regular reevaluation during their term.
Jude
“Senator McCain, I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the corecommander, General Dempsey, we all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no.” – Gen. John Abizaid, 11/15/06
VERSUS
“As President Bush weighs new policy options for Iraq, strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to ‘double down’ in the country with a substantial buildup in American troops.” – Los Angeles Times, 12/13/06
Bush decides direction of Iraq policy
JENNIFER LOVEN, AP
Wed Dec 13
WASHINGTON - President Bush has decided the general direction he wants to take U.S. policy on Iraq and has asked his staff to work out the details as he wraps up a highly public review of the war and its aims. Bush scheduled a session Wednesday with senior defense officials at the Pentagon.
Military commanders who met Tuesday with Bush sought more advisers to train the Iraqis, not more U.S. combat troops in Iraq. They also urged the administration to pour significantly more funding into equipment for Iraqi security forces, according to a defense specialist familiar with the meetings.
Gen. John Abizaid, top U.S. commander in the Middle East, and Gen. George Casey, the top general in Iraq, want more armored vehicles, body armor and other critical equipment for the Iraqis, said the defense specialist, who requested anonymity because the discussions were private.
Abizaid has told the Senate Armed Services Committee that troop levels in Iraq need to stay fairly stable and the use of military adviser teams expanded. About 140,000 U.S. troops and about 5,000 advisers are in Iraq.
The message to Bush, the defense specialist said, is that the U.S. cannot withdraw a substantial number of combat troops by early 2008, as suggested in the Iraq Study Group report, because the Iraqis will not be ready to assume control of their country. Bush is delaying making public his new Iraq policy plan in part to allow officials to work out the funding, he said.
Bush already has visited this week with State Department officials to review options, hosted a few outside Iraq experts, and met with Iraq’s Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi. Last week, the president held talks with the leader of the largest Shiite bloc in Iraq’s parliament, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, and with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the president’s staunchest war ally.
Iraq has proposed that its troops assume primary responsibility for security in Baghdad early next year and that U.S. troops be shifted to the capital’s periphery, The New York Times reported on its Web site Tuesday night.
Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told the Times that the plan was presented during Bush’s meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Amman, Jordan, on Nov. 30.
Bush’s meetings at the Pentagon were expected to cap his high-profile outreach effort, which surrounded last week’s presentation of the Iraq Study Group report, a blistering review from an independent, bipartisan commission.
The Iraq Study Group recommended most combat troops be withdrawn by early 2008 and the U.S. mission changed from combat to training and support of Iraqi units. It also called for an energetic effort to seek a diplomatic solution to Iraq’s violence by engaging its neighbors, including Iran and Syria.
Bush, cool to both of the commission’s central ideas, had been expected to follow his information-gathering with a pre-Christmas announcement of his own altered blueprint for U.S. involvement in Iraq. But the White House, citing the president’s request for more time to refine and game out new policies, said Tuesday that Bush would wait until early next year.
“It’s not ready yet,” White House press secretary Tony Snow said. “There may be some areas on which there are still going to be debates, but most have kind of been ironed out.”
Dissatisfaction with the president’s handling of the war is at an all-time high. Democrats take control of Congress on Jan. 4 because of midterm elections that turned in large part on that issue.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., about to become Senate majority leader, criticized Bush’s decision to delay unveiling the new Iraq plan.
“It has been six weeks since the American people demanded change in Iraq. In that time Iraq has descended further toward all-out civil war and all the president has done is fire Donald Rumsfeld and conduct a listening tour,” Reid said. “Talking to the same people he should have talked to four years ago does not relieve the president of the need to demonstrate leadership and change his policy now.”
The White House first began suggesting the pre-Christmas goal a month after outgoing Pentagon chief Donald H. Rumsfeld resigned and Bush nominated Gates to replace him. Gates plans to go to Iraq shortly after he is sworn in next Monday.
Snow said Bush told his staff Tuesday that he wanted more information about the ramifications for the U.S. military, Iraq’s internal politics, regional relations and other matters.
Bush showed no indication of his leanings.
“Our objective is to help the Iraqi government deal with the extremists and the killers, and support the vast majority of Iraqis who are reasonable, who want peace,” the president said Tuesday, al-Hashemi at his side. He took no questions.
CNN: Bush Is ‘Very Seriously’ Considering Sending More Troops To Iraq
ThinkProgress
CNN’s John King reported this afternoon that President Bush is planning a “substantial policy shift” on Iraq and is “very seriously considering…agreeing with Sen. John McCain and increasing U.S. troop levels in the short-term.”
King said the White House has postponed the announcement of the policy shift to January because Bush “has asked for more advice about” how he could send 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq, and administration officials “need more time to put all that on the table.”
King said the White House sees a political benefit to delaying the announcement. “If you are going to disagree with the Iraq Study Group and not accept its major recommendations, then let some time go by, let the American people forget about that a little bit” and “buy some time for critics” to attack the ISG.
[Open link to view video.]
Full transcript:
- KING: I talked to a number of senior administration officials today, and also some of the outsiders who have been consulted by the administration as part of this review, including one retired general, and they say they think the president wants more time for the reason Ed Henry just noted: because it’s not just one thing, you know, the whole litany — it’s not because of this or because of that. These officials all believe the president is planning to do something big. He is planning to do a substantial policy shift, and one of the sources I spoke to says he believes the president is very seriously considering, in the short term, agreeing with Sen. John McCain and increasing U.S. troop levels in the short-term and also resisting the recommendations from the Iraq Study Group that he put on the table the idea that the United States would begin to withdraw troops. The retired generals have said they believe, like the active duty generals, that any talk of withdrawing troops is a bad idea, and the president, we are told, has asked for more advice about, how could he do it? If he wanted to send in 20,000, 15,000 more troops for a few months to try to improve the situation, primarily in Baghdad, how would could that happen?
So they need more time to put all that on the table. They need more time for the new defense secretary to study it. Another issue is this regional diplomacy. The president will not meet directly with Iran or Syria at a high level, but if they could pull off some sort of regional conference and essentially call the bluff of Iran and Syria, saying, “Can you come to the table with a serious proposal to help?” They think if the Iraqi government can do that, that might help as well. They’re also worried, Wolf, you’ve seen all these reports. Is the Iraqi government in trouble? Is there stirring up within Iraq against the Maliki government? So,the main reasons are policy questions what the president will do, but they’re also watching warily what is happening in Baghdad.
BLITZER: What about domestic politics, because as you know, some Democrats already suspicious that the president is going to delay the speech, not necessarily for strictly policy reasons, but maybe politics might be at play.
KING: What senior administration officials say is it is policy, policy, policy. The president is looking at big changes and he needs to get this right, so he is going to take the time necessary. But they also do believe there is a political benefit. You might get criticism now, as you just heard Dana say, from the Democrats. Why not before Christmas? But they believe there is a political benefit. If you are going to disagree with the Iraq Study Group and not accept its major recommendations, then let some time go by, let the American people forget about that a little bit, buy some time for critics. And you can the Wall Street Journal editorial page, other conservatives attacking, attacking, attacking the findings of the Iraq Study Group. Let that criticism take hold, especially if you are going to say, thank you for your report but I don’t agree with that much of it.
Americans Have No Idea How Bad It Is
Iraq is Beyond Repair
PATRICK COCKBURN, CounterPunch
December 13, 2006
During the Opium Wars between Britain and China in the 19th century, eunuchs at the court of the Chinese emperor had the problem of informing him of the repeated and humiliating defeat of his armies. They dealt with their delicate task by simply telling the emperor that his forces had already won or were about to win victories on all fronts.
For three and a half years White House officials have dealt with bad news from Iraq in similar fashion. Journalists were repeatedly accused by the US administration of not reporting political and military progress on the ground. Information about the failure of the US venture was ignored or suppressed.
Manipulation of facts was often very crude. As an example of the systematic distortion, the Iraq Study Group revealed last week that on one day last July US officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts of violence. In reality, it added, “a careful review of the reports … brought to light 1,100 acts of violence”.
The 10-fold reduction in the number of acts of violence officially noted was achieved by not reporting the murder of an Iraqi, or roadside bomb, rocket or mortar attacks aimed at US troops that failed to inflict casualties. I remember visiting a unit of US combat engineers camped outside Fallujah in January 2004 who told me that they had stopped reporting insurgent attacks on themselves unless they suffered losses as commanders wanted to hear only that the number of attacks was going down. As I was drove away, a sergeant begged us not to attribute what he had said: “If you do I am in real trouble.”
Few Chinese emperors can have been as impervious to bad news from the front as President George W Bush. His officials were as assiduous as those eunuchs in Beijing 170 years ago in shielding him from bad news. But even when officials familiar with the real situation in Iraq did break through the bureaucratic cordon sanitaire around the Oval Office they got short shrift from Mr Bush. In December 2004 the CIA station chief in Baghdad said that the insurgency was expanding and was “largely unchallenged” in Sunni provinces. Mr Bush’s response was: “What is he, some kind of a defeatist?” A week later the station chief was reassigned.
A few days afterwards, Colonel Derek Harvey, the Defence Intelligence Agency’s senior intelligence officer in Iraq, made much the same point to Mr Bush. He said of the insurgency: “It’s robust, it’s well led, it’s diverse.” According to the US political commentator Sidney Blumenthal, the President at this point turned to his aides and asked: “Is this guy a Democrat?”
The query is perhaps key to Mr Bush’s priorities. The overriding political purpose of the US administration in invading Iraq was to retain power at home. It would do so by portraying Mr Bush as “the security president”, manipulating and exaggerating the terrorist threat at home and purporting to combat it abroad. It would win cheap military victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. It would hold “khaki” elections in which Democrats could be portrayed as unpatriotic poltroons.
The strategy worked - until November’s mid-term elections. Mr Bush was victorious by presenting a false picture of Iraq. It is this that has been exposed as a fraud by the Iraq Study Group.
Long-maintained myths tumble. For instance, the standard stump speech by Mr Bush or Tony Blair since the start of the insurgency has been to emphasise the leading role of al-Qa’ida in Iraq and international terrorism. But the group’s report declares “al-Qa’ida is responsible for a small portion of violence”, adding that it is now largely Iraqi-run. Foreign fighters, their presence so often trumpeted by the White House and Downing Street, are estimated to number only 1,300 men in Iraq. As for building up the Iraqi army, the training of which is meant to be the centrepiece of US and British policy, the report says that half the 10 planned divisions are made up of soldiers who will serve only in areas dominated by their own community. And as for the army as a whole, it is uncertain “they will carry out missions on behalf of national goals instead of a sectarian agenda”.
Given this realism it is sad that its authors, chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, share one great misconception with Mr Bush and Mr Blair. This is about the acceptability of any foreign troops in Iraq. Supposedly US combat troops will be withdrawn and redeployed as a stiffening or reinforcement to Iraqi military units. They will form quick-reaction forces able to intervene in moments of crisis.
“This simply won’t work,” one former Iraqi Interior Ministry official told me. “Iraqis who work with Americans are regarded as tainted by their families. Often our soldiers have to deny their contact with Americans to their own wives. Sometimes they balance their American connections by making contact with the insurgents at the same time.”
Mr Bush and Mr Blair have always refused to take on board the simple unpopularity of the occupation among Iraqis, though US and British military commanders have explained that it is the main fuel for the insurgency. The Baker-Hamilton report notes dryly that opinion polls show that 61 per cent of Iraqis favour armed attacks on US forces. Given the Kurds overwhelmingly support the US presence, this means three-quarters of all Arabs want military action against US soldiers.
The other great flaw in the report is to imply that Iraqis can be brought back together again. The reality is that the country has already broken apart. In Baghdad, Sunnis no longer dare to visit the main mortuary to look for murdered relatives because it is under Shia control and they might be killed themselves. The future of Iraq may well be a confederation rather than a federation, with Shia, Sunni and Kurd each enjoying autonomy close to independence.
There are certain points on which the White House and the authors of the report are dangerously at one. This is that the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki can be bullied into trying to crush the militias (this usually means just one anti-American militia, the Mehdi Army), or will bolt from the Shia alliance. In the eyes of many Iraqis this would simply confirm its status as a US pawn. As for talking with Iran and Syria or acting on the Israel-Palestinian crisis it is surely impossible for Mr Bush to retreat so openly from his policies of the past three years, however disastrous their outcome.
An Important Story You Didn’t See
Stephen Pizzo
December 12, 2006
I have no idea why this story was not on the front page of every newspaper and at the top of every newscast yesterday, but it wasn’t. The story ran on only one front page, that I’m aware of. And that was on the paper that broke the story, the Wall Street Journal.
Whether you are among the growing majority of Americans that think Bush is doing an awful job, or a member of the shrinking minority of those that believe he’s doing a the right thing, you have to be bowled by this story. Just when I think I can close the book on the breathtaking incompetence of this administration, hard facts like this cross my bow and I have to reconsider.
Yesterday the WSJ’s defense correspondent, Gregg Jaffe, reported that US Army officials have told the White House they are broke. Worse than broke actually. The Army, despite its $168 billion budget, is out of money and being forced to cannibalize operations, here and in the war zone, just to keep the lights on.
Here are just a few of the grim facts from Jaffe’s exclusive:
According to Maj. Gen Stephen Speakes, the Army was sent to war in Iraq $56 billion short of essential equipment.
Army officials told the White House that it needs at least an additional $24 billion, not in the 2007 budget, just to pay its current bills.
Cash shortfalls have forced the Army to lay off janitorial staff, close base swimming pools, and even stop mowing lawns on Army bases.
But cuts have also hit soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army officials had to cut $3 billion for replacement of weapons in heavy use in Iraq, such as armored Humvees, two-way radios, remote control surveillance aircraft and trucks.
National Guard units now lack 40% of their critical readiness gear because it’s been sent to Iraq, and the Army lacks the funds to replace it.
This budget crunch comes at a time when running the US Army never cost more, Jaffe reported.
To stem the flow of soldiers leaving the Army because of repeated deployments to Iraq the Army was forced to spend $773 million on “retention bonus’ this year compared with just $85 million three years ago.
The Army had to spend an additional $300 million on recruiting this year than in 2003.
The quality of the Army’s oft touted all volunteer force has slid with the Army’s decision to accept more enlistees that scored in the lower third of aptitude tests.
As a result the Army had to issue 8500 “moral waivers” this year compared with just 2260 ten years ago. (Moral waivers are issued for past criminal convictions, drug use and other proven legal/moral violations.)
How much of the Army’s budget problems are due to poor budgeting and how much from private sector gouging? You decide.
Here are few more facts from Jaffe’s report.
The cost of equipping an infantry soldier tripled, from $7000 in 1999 to $24,000 today.
The cost of Humvee’s went from $32,000 in 2001 to a breathtaking $225,000 each today.
The cost of training, feeding and housing Army recruits went from $75,000 per soldier in 2001 to $120,000 today. (The Army uses private contractors, largely Halliburton’s Kellogg, Root & Brown, to provide most non-training services, such as food service and base maintenance. )
So, while we await President Bush to unveil his “new way forward,” plan for Iraq, consider the implications of Jaffe’s report. The Iraq Study Group undoubtedly heard all about the Army’s budget crunch during their closed-door hearings. Which explains why it’s recommendations did not include large additional US troop deployments.
- “The (Army’s) equipment shortages explain why Gen. John Abizaid, the top commander in the middle East, recently told lawmakers that the US couldn’t maintain even a relatively small increase of 20,000 soldiers in Iraq. “The ability to sustain that commitment is simply not something we have right now,” he testified in November.” (Jaffe, WSJ)
If you are looking for someone to blame for the wartime Army budget emergency look no further than Ike’s “military industrial complex.” Even in peacetime that bunch roots through taxpayer’s wallets with reckless abandon. But an actual war sparks a feeding frenzy. Multi-billion dollar weapon systems get approved faster than a Las Vegas hooker can turn a trick, often entirely independent of its relevance to the war at hand.
That fact is reflected in other figure Gregg Jaffe unearthed.
- “Of the $1.9 trillion the US spent on weaponry….the Air Force received 36% and the Navy got 33%. The Army got 16%.”
There you have it. Equipping infantry soldiers at $24,000 a crack ain’t bad work, if you can get it. But slamming taxpayers $32 million a copy for a fleet of F-18 fighter jets, now that’s a spicy meat-a-ball! Or how about this mouthfull — $320.5 billion for a ballistic-missile submarine program — and that’s the base price. You want options? They got options. Add $97 billion for the missiles; $46 billion for submarine propulsion research, development, testing, production, and operations; and $220 billion for attack submarine construction, weapons, and related systems. Now you’re talkin’!
Ships, subs, planes and all the high-end, high-tech gizmos that go with them, are SO much more profitable for defense contractors than the care and feeding of Army grunts that’s it’s no contest. And these high-dollar honey pots are also much more “boast-worthy” for politicians in districts where those contractors maintain plants — and defense contracts make damn sure their facilities are strategically located around the country.
Which explains why the poor grunt on the ground is getting the short end of defense spending. Lockheed can’t build and sell infantrymen. And profit margins on rifles, bullets and bulletproof vests is small change compared to the other stuff that can be sold to Uncle Sam. So, why waste a perfectly good war on nickel and dime infantry stuff when they can go for the real gold?
Just keep Jaffe’s story in mind the next time you hear the President or your member of Congress heaping praise on our “fighting men and women on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.” When they’re done, ask them what Jaffe’s report is all about, and how it translates into “supporting our troops.” Ask them just who they are really supporting — our troops or their favorite defense contributor(s)? Then ask them how many of the nearly 3000 dead US soldiers they figure died ecause they lacked proper gear? Oh, and ask them to let you know right away when one of those $250 billion nuclear subs nails Osama bin Laden or pacifies Fallugia.
Oh my. I’m weary. It’s all so tiresome. I am so, so, so, so, SO tired of being jerked around by the folks we send to Washington. I’m tired of watching the good ones go bad, tired of watching the bad ones get worse, then get reelected anyway. I’m tired of feeling insulted by the lame-ass lies — like Hillary’s “I really haven’t given running for president any serious thougth.” I am tired of the phony patriotism, the cynical, manipulative, moralistic hypocrisy and the revolving-door-financial/political-mutual-back-scratching. And I’m tired of the kind of bullshit bookkeeping that, if you or I tried it, we’d be sharing a prison cell with Jeffery Skilling. Finally I’m tired of being told it’s all going to change for the better now, and then watching it just get worse and worse.
The Iraq Study Group says the “situation is grave, and deteriorating.” True, but not just in Iraq, but right here in the USA. We were a great nation, once. Not just a great military power, but, thanks to a rule-of-law, we were a great financial force. And thanks to deeply held, genuine convictions we actually lived by, we were once a great moral force on the world stage.
Today we are still a great military force. But the other two treasures have been squandered. Corporate officers loot shareholder equity with abandon, shrug off American workers in favor of cheap overseas serf-labor and share their windfall profits and tax-cuts with the beast of corruption that granted them, guaranteeing more to come.
And then there’s America’s once glimmering moral authority — washed away on the water-boards of Gitmo, secret prisons and ruled out of order in military tribunals that only a banana republic could love.
Sorry to be such a downer today. But the drip, drip, drip of the past six years just gets to be too much some days.
Oh, one last thing. You might want to ask your local newspaper editor why he/she didn’t pick up Jaffe’s story. His disclosures are as important as the Iraq Study Group’s report, maybe more so.
Presidential Tyranny Untamed by Election Defeat
Chris Floyd, t r u t h o u t | UK Correspondent
Tuesday 12 December 2006
A Fraudulently Financed War
Marie Cocco
Tuesday, December 12, 2006 by truthdig
George W. Bush has let out a presidentially polite Bronx cheer for most of the recommendations of the much-ballyhooed Iraq Study Group, a panel he finds distasteful for reasons too elaborate in the psychology for a layperson to explore.
He seems bent on continuing to do Iraq his way, and forces us to brush up on the Constitution: The commander in chief decides the fate of those serving in military. The only real power Congress has is that of the purse—cutting off funds for the war effort, or encumbering the money with such tightly knotted strings that it forces a president’s hand. Whether it would force the hand of this president—one who does as he chooses, even to the point of issuing “signing statements” he thinks allow him to ignore parts of legislation he doesn’t like—is doubtful.
So we may well be left, in the long run, with a funding cutoff.
During the fall campaign, Democrats who were voted into the majority in Congress precisely to clean up the Iraq mess rejected a cutoff of funds. They insisted they would not do anything to harm the troops in the field. Nor, for that matter, take any action that might consign them to hearing about their supposedly weak-kneed betrayal of America’s finest for as long as George McGovern has—that is, 34 years and counting.
Yet they must deliver for the voters who put them in office. The difficulty is compounded not just by the president’s obstinacy but by the almost fraudulent way in which the war is financed.
The $450 billion spent so far on the Iraq and Afghanistan military operations has not come out of the regular Pentagon budget. It has been treated instead as an “emergency”—and still is, more than three years into the conflict in Iraq and two years after the government of Hamid Karzai took the reins in Afghanistan.
The spending isn’t subject to the usual reviews by congressional committees meant to find error, waste, duplication and other budgetary funny business. The Republican-run House rarely even held hearings on these “emergency” billions before they zoomed to approval. Since no offsetting spending reductions were made—and taxes weren’t raised—the tab became part of the federal government’s long-term debt. “Congress appropriates funding for the Iraq War much like the administration prosecutes it: recklessly, and without being honest with the American people,” noted David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who is soon to chair the appropriations panel, when the last war spending bill was en route to approval.
Yet, for the moment, Democrats are powerless to stop the madness. Another “emergency” supplemental measure to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is being prepared for consideration only a few weeks after they take control next month. Advanced word is that it could be the largest since the conflicts began. Because the fiscal 2007 appropriations measure for defense already has passed, lawmakers can’t force the Pentagon to cut something else. Still another bill to provide “bridge” funding until the fiscal 2008 budget is adopted also is expected, with the anticipated sum of the two measures to be eye-popping. “I’m hearing between $160 billion and $170 billion,” says Gordon Adams, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and an expert on military budgets. “Nice work if you can get it.”
Congress earlier this year demanded that Bush stop paying for the wars with emergency spending bills. The president, in one of his signing statements, effectively said he would ignore the instruction. The prickliness of Bush’s reaction to the Iraq Study Group recommendations (one of which was that war spending no longer be stuffed into “emergency” measures) suggests he’d rather fight than switch on paying, too.
Voters who demanded change did not expect an arcane argument over whether this billion or that should be treated as a sudden and unforeseen expense. But this is likely to be the unsatisfactory first firefight. Democrats promise hearings to force the administration to justify the spending requests, and may summon the will to make the Pentagon pay for replacing hardware—planes, ships, vehicles—out of its regular budget. The troops would still get their money; rapacious defense contractors might not.
Even this may not be sufficient to persuade the Decider to make decisions reflecting the will of the people to leave Iraq soon. At some point, lawmakers may have to just say no and stanch the gusher that sustains the folly.
Poor Bush had a week that reeked
[Note: this is an odd one ... just grist for the mill]
Thoma M. DeFrank, Daily News
WASHINGTON - For a wounded President locked in a lethal downward spiral ever since his reelection, it was the cruelest week of all.
Not since Bill Clinton forlornly insisted that “the President is still relevant” after being trounced in the 1994 mid-term elections has a President struggled so hard to salvage his political traction.
In 72 hours last week, a bipartisan commission harshly repudiated Bush’s Iraq policy. Incoming Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told senators the U.S. isn’t winning the war. Then a British journalist snarkily asked at a White House press conference if Bush weren’t “in denial” about Iraq.
For good measure, a new poll found only 27% of Americans back his Iraq policy, a new low. And a moderate GOP senator termed the policy “absurd” and possibly criminal.
“He’ll be fine but he can’t be doing very good,” said a well-placed Bush source who talks with the President often. “It’s been a terrible year, and it keeps getting worse.”
Yet Bush is described by another recent visitor as still resolutely defiant, convinced history will ultimately vindicate him.
“I’ll be dead when they get it right,” he said during an Oval Office meeting last week.
Another Bush confidant, however, says the President reluctantly understands an Iraq course correction is mandatory:
“He is determined not to let Iraq go up in smoke and start a slaughter. But he knows something’s got to give here. It just has to. We’re going to start a pullout. The only question is when.”
Despite the Democratic takeover of Capitol Hill and the steady cavalcade of grim news from Iraq, White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and political guru Karl Rove are busily overseeing Bush’s State of the Union address, scheduled for Jan. 23.
Outside Republican sources report that except for isolated pockets of realism, the West Wing bunker hasn’t yet absorbed Bush’s diminished power.
“The White House is totally constipated,” a former aide complained. “There’s not enough adult leadership, and the 30-year-olds still think it’s 2000 and they’re riding high.”
One White House assistant insisted to a friend last week that the election was merely a repudiation of Bush’s execution, not his policies.
“They don’t get it,” a GOP mandarin snapped. “The Iraq report was their brass ring to pivot and salvage the last two years, and they didn’t grab it.”
Even if the chaos in Iraq subsides, prospects for other Bush accomplishments in the twilight of his term are difficult at best.
“Short of doing something on Iraq, there’s not much good he can do anymore,” a key Bush adviser conceded.
A senior Republican official who enjoys excellent relations with the White House was even more downbeat.
“We will get an immigration bill, and the President will make a valiant but doomed attempt at entitlement reform,” he said. “But we are looking at two frustrating years of gridlock and several foreign policy failures.”
George W. Bush: A dangerous, cornered, rabid animal
December 13, 2006
DOUG THOMPSON, Capital Hill Blue
My gut tells me the President of the United States has become a cornered animal - wary of a party that has all but shunned him, distrustful of even his closest advisors, angry at an American public that has rejected him and fearful of his own inability to cope with his growing madness.
White House insiders tell me George W. Bush grows more sullen and moody with each passing day. His paranoia, they say, is increasing to manic levels as he launches into tirades about traitors in his own party, in the press and among his allies.
They describe a man living on the edge and stepping too often over it.
Bush, they say, feels betrayed by former Secretary of State James Baker who he now feels held his administration up for public humiliation in the Iraq Study Group report. Although he told the press after meeting with ISG co-chairs Baker and Lee Hamilton that the White House will take the group’s recommendations “very seriously,” Bush says privately that he has no intention of going along with their plan.
“Fuck ‘em,” Bush reportedly said after his breakfast meeting with Baker and Hamilton last week. “I’m the President. I’m the one who decides what’s best for this country.”
Reports from within the White House show an administration in turmoil, torn from within by dissension over a failed Iraq war policy that everyone but Bush says is a no-win situation.
I wish I had proof of this. I don’t. I have snippets of information passed on by people who should be in a position to know along with rumors and a gut instinct honed by 40 years of watching politicians try to squirm their way out of trouble.
One needs only to closely watch the President in his appearances to see that this is clearly a man in emotional trouble, struggling to hold on. His eyes dart from side to side and his eyelid movements when he speaks indicate a textbook example of dishonesty.
This attitude carries over into other White House staffers. Press briefings with Presidential Press Secretary Tony Snow have become increasingly confrontational with Snow quick to label anyone who dares question administration policy as a “troublemaker.” He accuses reporters of partisanship, an ironic bit of hypocrisy since Snow came to the White House from Fox News, clearly the most partisan game in town.
Bush’s decision to delay his “major policy speech” on Iraq until next year is, Snow claims, just to give the President time to hear all sides of the argument before proceeding. But others say privately the President has already made up his mind and is in no hurry because he doesn’t plan to make any major changes.
And while Bush delays, America hit a grisly milestone this week when the “official” number of Americans dead or wounded in his dirty little war hit 25,000. I say “official” because the Pentagon has played fast and loose with the statistics on just how many Americans have come home without arms or legs or in body bags and the real figure could be even higher.
Whatever the “real figure” is or is not, one inescapable fact remains: Many more Americans will die in Iraq and/or other actions spawned by Bush’s illegal invasion of a country that posed no threat to this nation. And many, many more will come home physically maimed and/or emotionally scarred for life.
Because the Iraq war is not over nor will it end anytime soon. It will continue to be waged by a cornered animal named George W. Bush.
And, as any real hunter knows, nothing is more dangerous than a cornered animal.
Blogger response:
Why does everyone insist on pretending to believe that Bush is the “decider?” All rational analysis clearly shows it is the Dick, Cheney, and his craven cronies calling every important shot, while Junior attends recitals and strides mightily about the corridors of the West Wing - when he is not hunkered down in the Oval Office, demanding fealty from the minor players around him.
Thompson’s reply:
Dick Cheney’s role in the administration effectively ended on Nov. 8, 2006, when Bush fired Rumsfeld. Cheney fought to keep Rummy in the administration. He lost. On that day, the monster he helped create took full and final control. Anyone who thinks Cheney still runs things is living in the past.
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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