Hitting the Wall

December 20th, 2006

OK, I’ll admit frustration — I came back from my break, albeit apprehensive considering the tell-tale signs of the administrations post-election grunt and spin, prepared to detail a slow, solid push back into the realms of reality, and ran into the same wall that the rest of the world has flattened itself against in the last days — the Dubby.

I would like to stop talking about the little weasel — I’d like him to take his proper place in the political dialogue … but it ain’t gonna happen soon. For whatever reason the Universe conspired to give us George and his Cabal as a catalyst to growth, it gave us a guy who sticks like gum to the bottom of your shoe … as hard to control as an undiagnosed rash … and as virulent as an e-coli epidemic.

Today he has announced that we are NOT winning in Iraq … but we aren’t LOSING either. I’d guess that’s his version of — I’m not wrong, dammit! A kind of quasi-nod to facts because 98% of the free world demands it of him … and we should not be surprised that that does NOT change his course — because he’s barking mad and drunk with power and egoism. [Link to someone as frustrated as I am with this rhetoric, here.]

Ya know, if I were to crawl into Dubbys brain [heaven help!] and look at the crap-shoot he’s decided upon, I’d feel pretty comfortable — Pappy showed him how to keep the cover on, and he’s done a dandy job of burying even those facts that aren’t secrets, as the ACLU discovered recently — he’s usurped so much power that he feels patently untouchable, even issuing signing statements in matters of foreign policy, as India should nervously note — he’s salted the judiciary with folks that think like he does, so he’s confident in their support — and when was the last time you saw a United States president wearing an orange jump suit and marched away to prison? The corruption at the top is a very soft cushion for this war criminal — want to take odds that Dub pardons Libby before Uncle Dick has to testify?

Harry Reid made an unfortunate statement on Sunday television when he seemed to go along with the Dub’s “double down.” He’s posting at Huffy today, sending a rather different message — and that’s good — he’s not going to win Lefty friends with that earlier position. The ONLY defense we have against the rogue regime of George Bush is the Democrats that have the floor in the coming year — they are still part of the broken system but at least they will NOTICE public outcry and figure it into their position. United for Peace and Justice has info on contacting Reid, snipped below — read his blog post first, before you respond. Remind the man he’s the MAJORITY leader, now — and that you support his firm support for withdrawal [which is why he finds himself in leadership today.] You’ll find those two bits at the bottom, along with the e-mail I sent this morning — feel free to borrow, if you’d like.

Frustrated, yes — I’d like to talk about other things, like to look at some of the new ideas out there, like to reflect on the season … but we are, again, in a state of emergency. Bush declared today that we need to “expand the overall size of the “stressed” U.S. armed forces to meet the challenges of a long-term global struggle against terrorists.” Now what the hell does THAT mean? Is it getting drafty in here??

Marty Kaplan writes a piece below about one of my favorite 60’s movies, Seven Days in May — I’ve mentioned it before. Turn the plot on it’s head, and we’re there … with the president gone rogue instead of the military. The military analysts are looking on in disapproval, noting the decline of General’s Abizaid and Casey as the voice of reason … and we know the Joint Chief’s want no part of this. George has scouted out the few remaining voices who will tell him what he wants to hear — and dug down deeper into his psychosis as he herds us all toward the cliff.

Frustrated. Emergency. PISSED.

An important collection today.

Jude

While we celebrate the birth of Jesus, mass murder is being planned
Dennis Rahkonen
Dec 19 2006

Incredibly, the Bush administration is using a holiday season devoted to the Prince of Peace to prepare a bloodbath in Iraq.

Rather than comply with the American and Iraqi people’s clear, polled desire for a swift end to the U.S. occupation, just the opposite will likely transpire.

According to widely reported accounts, the initial stage of a new American troop “surge” in Iraq will probably entail Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s ouster, followed by a fierce attack on militant Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi militia, some 60,000 fighters strong.

That militia, located mainly in Baghdad’s teeming Sadr City slum, would be engaged not only with infantry, but by artillery fire and air attacks as well.

Ensuing civilian casualties would consequently be horrendously high.

Arab populaces have endured awful mass murder in the past, most infamously the Jenin massacre on the Palestinian West Bank, the U.S. assault on Fallujah in November 2004, and last summer’s merciless Israeli pummeling of Southern Lebanon.

Full-scale urban warfare raging in Sadr City, however, would surely set a grisly record. The Muslim world, and all of humankind, would have bloody basis for comparing the carnage there to that of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.

Such unnecessary barbarism — undertaken solely to further American energy-interest avarice — would be unequivocally criminal.

And yet it’s apparently about to happen, plus something even worse.

Confronted with escalating Shiite vs. Suuni sectarian violence, which has made the Iraq occupation totally unpalatable to the American domestic populace, an obscene proposal is gaining currency.

Reportedly favored by Vice President Cheney is the sinister idea that, because the Shiites are more numerous and much stronger within Iraq than the Suunis, the U.S. should no longer try to broker rapprochement between the two.

Instead, after more extreme Shiites have been eliminated, Washington would throw its support to relative moderates within the faith, freely allowing them to wipe out the Suunis, responsible for the Iraqi insurgency’s most frequent killings of U.S. troops.

But what about victorious Shiites possibly aligning themselves with their brethren in Iran?

Even given that scenario, the operative belief among proponents of this cruelly calculated outcome is that the resulting situation would, nevertheless, be more conducive to American corporatists’ profiteering ambitions than the present situation in Iraq allows.

There’s also an accompanying, depraved expectation that vengeful Suunis in surrounding countries would ultimately unite to defeat Shiite Iran, the main obstacle to U.S. hegemony in the region.

The horrific details and insanity of this profoundly unsettling plan have been presented online, by several sources, reflecting an original New York Times article. Perhaps the best synopsis is available at the World Socialist Web Site, in its December 18 news and analysis section.

Despite almost everyone else on the planet wanting a prompt, total halt to America’s occupation, Bush and his imperial-minded enablers are hell bent on staying in Iraq, for the selfish reason that there’s so much money to be made by controlling „their‰ oil lying under Iraqi sand.

Never mind how many weeping mothers’ precious children get blown to bits.

That their diabolical scheme couldn’t possibly succeed is obvious.

It’s only in animated cartoons that painting an exit door on a cul-de-sac’s rock wall will allow a trapped character to escape impending doom.

We’re not dealing with the Roadrunner, but George W. Bush, and he’s completely delusional.

His fate can’t be avoided. He’s about to suffer a crushing defeat.

That’s what happens when facts are ignored and a wayward President attempts to revive neo-colonial policy more than fifty years after the age of imperialism was ended by rebellious Third World people unwilling to remain forever oppressed.

Nothing can pull America’s chestnuts out of burning Iraq’s fire. History simply won’t allow it.

That’s why cutting our losses and withdrawing fully while we still can is the only option.

We, the people, must make our peace sentiments absolutely and powerfully clear. That means street demonstrations on a massive scale. They need to be tied to Dennis Kucinich’s call for a Congressional de-funding of the war.

Fortunately, such protests are already being organized, for Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, on January 27. Google United for Peace and Justice for information.

In the meantime, flood your elected officials with calls for withdrawal. Write letters to the editor. Stand on overpass walkways with pertinent placards. Get your places of worship to take a truly moral position regarding this unjust war. Do anything you can think of that’s productive and nonviolent.

Just don’t do nothing at all. ++

Bush Can’t Kick the Habit
Robert Scheer, TruthDig
Dec 19, 2006

Here we go again: A new secretary of defense and yet another call for ending the war in Iraq by escalating it. What are they smoking in the Bush White House?

Even as government statistics now show marijuana is America’s No. 1 cash crop, it is important to remember that militarism is the most dangerous drug threatening our sanity. Yet even formerly sober folks—first Colin Powell and now new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates—get a contact high from cozying up to the walking hallucinogen that is our president.

Succumbing to the Bush fantasy that freedom is fertilized by firepower, a vision that has mucked up Iraq beyond recognition, Gates told CBS that “as the president has made clear, we simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility, and endanger Americans for generations to come.”

This from a man who recently made sense, during his confirmation hearings, when he told members of Congress that we are not winning this war, despite having committed, proportionally, as many troops as we did in Vietnam. But now, as a rising chorus of obsessed hawks calls for a “surge” in U.S. troop deployment in Iraq—a call echoed even by some prominent Democrats—Gates endorses the staying-the-course strategy for compounding the Iraq failure rejected by the voters. A member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) who had apparently supported its unanimous findings that the military strategy was bankrupt is suddenly blinded by Bush’s Iraq victory myopia.

In a sign of just how out there Bush is on Iraq, The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff are in “unanimous disagreement” with “White House officials aggressively promoting the concept … . [T]he Joint Chiefs think the White House, after a month of talks, still does not have a defined mission [in Iraq].”

All this despite the fact that the ISG report correctly underscored that the real failures in the Mideast have clearly been political, not military. The accurate subtext of the report is that the continued U.S. military presence in Iraq is the key source of chaos in the region—inflaming religious fanaticism from Beirut to Baghdad and leaving the United States dependent on the tyrants in Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia to now bail us out.

So with Bush rejecting the sage advice of a commission headed by his father’s secretary of state to cut our losses is there any hope the Democrats who now control Congress will stop playing the role of enabler to these war junkies? After all, it was the Democratic congressional leadership that provided Bush with bipartisan cover for his irrational “anti-terrorism” invasion of a country that had nothing to do with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Some, like John Kerry, now recognize that folly, and even Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, in her appearance on NBC’s “Today” show Monday, finally expressed her regrets for supporting the war and opposed a “surge” in U.S. troops for Iraq.

But other Democrats continue to play the dangerous game of supporting Bush’s escalation. Particularly alarming were the remarks on Sunday of incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid endorsing a buildup as long as it aims at getting the troops home by 2008: “If the commanders on the ground said this is just for a short period of time, we’ll go along with that.”

Reid’s strategy is as obvious as it is opportunistic: This is a Republican war, goes the thinking, and the Dems will give the Republicans all the rope they need to hang themselves in ‘08. This seems a deeply cynical position, when you consider that the Pentagon just announced that attacks on American and Iraqi targets are at their highest levels, with a 22 percent leap from just this summer. The difference between taking a position and positioning oneself is what determines leadership; if the Dems fail to provide real leadership on ending this war, they will deservedly lose the next election.

The convenient lie behind all of this is that U.S. military occupation is the indispensable agent of Mideast enlightenment. No, we have become the enablers of Iraqi madness, be it in the form of torture or the ascendancy of religious tyranny in Iraq, where daily life has been reduced to an unmitigated horror.

Yet, like a junkie who needs one more hit to get his life in order, Bush is hooked on the drug of military might. If the Democrats continue to feed his dangerous habit they will only help Bush visit greater mayhem upon Iraq while undermining the core values of our own country. ++

Bush Madness Becomes Apparent
Bill Gallagher, Niagara Falls Reporter
Dec 19 2006

DETROIT — George W. Bush is bloody nuts. There’s no other way to describe this dangerous madman. A chorus of experts and the Iraq Study Group have concluded that the present course is not working. Diplomatic initiatives are required to prevent Iraq from exploding into a regional maelstrom and humanitarian catastrophe. The Army chief of staff says his branch of the military “will break” without a fresh infusion of thousands of new active duty troops.

The White House has ordered Pentagon planners to come up with an option for a major troop surge. Bush and his puppeteer Dick Cheney’s fingerprints are all over this madness. Last Friday, they attended the farewell ceremonies for ousted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Bush offered effusive praise for the man he sacked the day after the midterm elections, not for incompetence, but for political expediency. “This man knows how to lead and he did,” Bush gushed, “and the country is better off for it.”

Bush suggested the myth that Rummy should be considered a liberator, a master nation-builder: “On his watch, the United States military helped the Iraqi people establish a constitutional democracy in the heart of the Middle East.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice skipped Rummy’s send-off. But neocon nuts and former Rumsfeld aides Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith were on hand, along with Gen. Peter Pace, the apple-polishing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. America would be more secure if everyone who attended the Rumsfeld ceremony were permanently banned from making any military and national security decisions.

The Busheviks’ dependence on the military to protect us from terrorists is a failure as we continue to fail to commit the resources to intelligence and border security measures that could make a difference in preventing another 9/11 nightmare. While we squander billions of dollars in Iraq, a system to track whether foreign visitors leave the country when their visas expire is stalled because the Busheviks say it’s too expensive. The exit-monitoring system known as U.S. Visit was to be in operation at the 50 biggest land border crossings by next December.

Congress actually authorized the creation of the system in 1996.

But The New York Times reports it could take five to 10 years to get the system operational.

“Domestic security officials, who have allocated $1.7 billion since the 2003 fiscal year to track arrivals and departures, argue that creating the program with the existing technology would be prohibitively expensive,” according to the Times story.

In an interview with the Times, Stewart A. Baker, the assistant secretary for Homeland Security, said the exit system would cost “tens of billions of dollars,” and the report notes, “the department had concluded that such a program was not feasible, at least for the time being.”

Jonathan Alter of “Newsweek” magazine reminds us that that a section of the Iraq Study Group Report explains our diplomatic efforts have a serious handicap because, as the study notes, “our embassy of 1,000 has 33 Arabic speakers, just six of whom are the level of fluency. In a conflict that demands effective and efficient communications with Iraqis, we are often at a disadvantage.”

That language gap is deliberate and negligent, and the State Department is not alone. The FBI’s record with Arabic-speaking agents should cause us all sleepless nights. Bassem Youssef, the FBI’s highest-ranking Arab-American agent, infiltrated the terrorist cell of the “blind sheik” Omar Abdel-Rahman, the mastermind of the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center.

Youssef has been cut out of any significant role in the war on terror. He claims his exclusion is the result of discrimination and he’s sued the FBI. The lawsuit has revealed a stunning lack of knowledge among top FBI counter-terrorism officials about the basic tenets of Islam.

FBI Director Robert Mueller was in Detroit last week, and the local bureau flak promised he would deign to give the media 20 minutes of his precious time. We were ordered to be assembled at 10:30 a.m. Half an hour later, Mueller appeared and made a brief statement about how well the Detroit FBI is doing with a local joint terrorism task force and then turned to questions.

I raised the issue of the scant number of agents with advanced Arabic language skills and the abysmal ignorance of Islam the FBI brass showed in sworn depositions, including the difference between Sunnis and Shiites.

“I’m not sure your facts are all accurate,” Mueller said dismissively. He went on to claim he was “always interested in recruiting more individuals with those language skills in the bureau,” and added, “So to put it in context, it’s not as dire as you purport to believe it is.”

Did Mueller mean his underlings had not given sworn depositions on the Sunni-Shiite distinction, I asked.

“I have not read their depositions,” he now said. “I did not understand that was an issue in their depositions. It may have been.”

Using videotaped excerpts, NBC reported on their testimony on Dec. 4. Several other news organizations picked up on the explosive story. So the FBI director who claims he has not looked at the depositions presumes that my reliability, having read them, is suspect. You decide.

Dale Watson, the FBI’s top counter-terrorism official before and after 9/11, now retired, was asked by Bassem Youssef’s lawyer, “Do you know who Osama bin Laden’s spiritual leader was?”

Watson: “Can’t recall.”

Lawyer: “And do you know the difference in the religion between Shiite and Sunni Muslims?”

Watson: “Not technically, no.”

The same question was posed to John Lewis, who until recently was the FBI’s assistant director of counter-terrorism.

Lewis: “You know generally. Not very well.”

Lawyer: “Was there any relationship between the first World Trade Center bombing and the 9/11 attacks?”

Lewis: “I’m aware of no immediate relationship other than all emanates out of the Middle East, al-Qaeda linkage, I believe. Not something I’ve studied recently that I’m conversant with.”

Don’t bother studying anything important. Be like Bush — run with your gut, lump everything in the Middle East together and brand it as terror. The FBI director is tolerating this inexcusable ignorance and he should be held accountable for it.

Lawmakers responsible for overseeing U.S. intelligence are not much better. “Congressional Quarterly’s” National Security Editor Jeff Stein asked the man incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tapped to chair the Intelligence Committee what branch of Islam al-Qaeda is linked to.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, answered, “They are probably both.” Then he said, “Predominantly probably Shiite.” Nice try. He had a 50-50 chance and was flat wrong.

Stein was amazed and told CNN, “If you’re the baseball commissioner and you don’t know the difference between the Yankees and the Red Sox, you don’t know baseball. You’re not going to have the respect of the people you work with.”

But Reyes is safe. He only has to watch over George W. Bush, another early retiree. Recall, when Bush was part owner of the Texas Rangers, he aspired to become baseball commissioner. The other owners rejected him as someone with a famous name but weak on ability and experience. Baseball’s break is the world’s tragedy. ++

It Can’t Be Won Militarily; So, Send More Troops?
W. Patrick Lang and Ray McGovern, t r u t h o u t
Wednesday 20 December 2006

As Robert Gates takes the helm at the Pentagon this week, he can be in no doubt that Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush remain determined to stay the course in Iraq (without using those words) for the next two years. What Gates probably does not realize is that the US military is about to commit hara-kiri.

The media are abuzz with trial balloons leaking word that President George W. Bush is about to approve a “surge” in US troop strength in Iraq by tens of thousands. At the same time, surge advocate Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC), just back from a brief visit to the Green Zone with fellow surgers John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), has warned that “the amount of troops will make no difference” if Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki avoids taking “bold” moves. The three pretend to be unaware that the most important move for which they pressed - breaking with radical Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr - would amount to political suicide for Maliki.

Incoming Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who owes his position to the popular revolt in November against the war, has said he can “go along” with a surge, but only for two to three months and only as part of a broader strategy to bring combat forces home by early 2008. Meanwhile, says Reid, Democrats will “give the military anything they want.”

Is it conceivable that Reid doesn’t know that this is about the next two years - not months? Former Army vice chief of staff General Jack Keane, one of the anointed retired generals who have Bush’s ear, is urging him to send 30,000 to 40,000 more troops and has already dismissed the possibility of a time-frame shorter than one and a half years. Egged on by “full-speed-ahead” Cheney, Bush is determined that the war not be lost while he is president. But events are fast overtaking White House preferences and moving toward denouement well before two more years are up.

Perhaps it was not quite the way he meant it, but Bush has gotten one thing right; there will indeed be no “graceful exit.” And that goes in spades, if he sends still more troops to the quagmire.

Oxymoron

Let’s send more troops to Iraq so we can pull our troops out of Iraq. A generation from now, our grandchildren will have difficulty writing history papers on this oxymoronic debate on how to surge/withdraw our troops into/from the quagmire in Iraq. Historians will have just as much trouble, especially those given to Tolstoy’s theory that history is ruled by an inexorable determinism in which the free choice of major historical figures plays a minimal role. Tolstoy died before events put into perspective the legacy of Tsar Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat [Decider] of All the Russias, and his Vice President/Èminence grise, Rasputin.

Judging from President Bush’s behavior in recent weeks, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that he may be no more stable than Nicholas II. And if retired colonel Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s top aide at the State Department, is right in saying that Bush still has the “vice president whispering in his ear every moment,” we have an unhappy but apt historical analogy.

But, you protest, the generals most intimately involved in Iraq - John Abizaid and George Casey - and Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker have made no secret of their strong reservations about sending large numbers of additional troops. And, if the Washington Post is to be believed, so have the Joint Chiefs. That may be correct; it is also irrelevant. As was the case in the Vietnam War, our top generals have long since morphed into careerists and politicians. Sadly, they have become accustomed to looking up for the next reward - and not down at the troops who bear the brunt of their acquiescence in political/military decisions that make no sense.

But what about Senators Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy - and Colin Powell, and even Donald Rumsfeld, all of whom have spoken out in recent days against a sizable surge in troop strength in Iraq? Not a problem. The Cheney/Bush team is the sole “decider.”

This does not mean that Defense Secretary Robert Gates should renege on his promise to visit the troops in Iraq and hear the generals out. It does mean that by the time he gets there, the generals probably will already be “with the program,” as they say. Just as they “never asked for more troops” at earlier stages of the war, they are likely to be instant devotees of a surge, once they smell the breezes coming from the White House. As for Gates, whatever input he has will almost certainly be dwarfed by Cheney’s. And taking issue with “deciders” has never been Gates’s strong suit.

Stalingrad on the Tigris

Whether Robert Gates realizes it or not (but the generals should), once an “all or nothing” offensive like the “surge” contemplated has begun, there is no turning back. It will be “victory” over the insurgents and the Shia militias or palpable defeat, recognizable by all in Iraq and across the world.

Any conceivable surge would not turn the tide - would not even slow it. We should have learned that last summer, when the dispatch of seven thousand US troops to reinforce Baghdad brought a fierce “counter-surge” - and the highest number of casualties since the Pentagon began issuing quarterly reports in 2005. Those who believe still more troops will bring “victory” are living in a dangerous dream-world and need to wake up.

A major buildup would commit the US Army and Marine Corps to decisive combat in which there would be no more strategic reserves to be sent to the front. As Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway pointed out on Monday, “If you commit your reserve for something other than a decisive win, or to stave off defeat, then you have essentially shot your bolt.”

It would be a matter of win, or die in the attempt. In that situation, everyone in uniform on the ground would commit every ounce of their being to achieving “victory,” and few measures would be shrunk from.

Analogies come to mind: Stalingrad, the Bulge, Dien Bien Phu, the Battle of Algiers. It would be total war, with the likelihood of all the excesses and mass casualties that come with total war. To take up such a strategy and force our armed forces into it would be nothing short of immoral, in view of predictable troop losses and the huge number of Iraqis who would meet violent injury and death. And for what? If adopted, the surge strategy will turn out to be something we will spend a generation living down.

Senator Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) spoke for many of us last Thursday on the Senate floor:

I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore.

Yesterday, when George Stephanopoulos asked Smith what he meant by “criminal,” he replied:

I said it. You can use any adjective you want, George. But I have long believed in a military context - when you do the same thing over and over again, without a clear strategy for victory, at the expense of your young people in arms, that is dereliction. That is deeply immoral.

++

Seven Days in (May) December
Marty Kaplan, HuffPo
12.20.2006

So maybe it’s the Generals who’ll save us from the POTUS. Who would have thunk it?

The idea that military brass would step up to the challenge of rescuing us from a crackpot Commander-in-Chief undermining our national security was first played out in the JFK-era thriller “Seven Days in May,” by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey. The heart-thumping novel — written for the screen, appropriately enough, by “Twilight Zone”-creator and paranoia master Rod Serling, and direected by John Frankenheimer — told the story of the Joint Chiefs of Staff plotting a coup to stop the President from signing what to them was a fatally naive nuclear disarmament pact with the Soviets.

When “Seven Days in May” came out, it wasn’t hard to side with the idealistic President, whose plan turns out to have prefigured Ronald Reagan’s trust-but-verify strategy. What’s so stunning today, as Pentagon vs. Bush plays out, is the way that our rooting interests have switched sides.

Our current President — the one who just told us in his press conference to go shopping more — is hell-bent on a policy that only his boss, the Vice President, supports. The Congress, the country, the bipartisan commission: everyone else thinks the course he’s on is nuts. Yet for W, it’s full speed ahead.

He’s still talking about victory in Iraq. He’s even leaning toward a “surge” of troops in Baghdad that no one but the loopiest neocon ideologues is for, and that deserves its scare quotes; it would actually be yet another extension of duty tours for our courageous but vulnerable and war-weary soldiers. And not only has he rejected the bipartisan Iraq Study Group’s proposal to talk with Iran and Syria; he’s even ordered a Navy battle group into the Persian Gulf. Hey, Mahmoud, look how big my stick is!

What’s striking is that each of these blunders by our civilian leadership has sharply opposed by our military commanders, past and present. While media sycophants fawned over the Daddy Party’s unspooked-by-Vietnamishness, it was our Four Star Generals who gave John Murtha the goods he needed to decry the tragic haplessness of American policy in Iraq. It was Generals Shinseki and Zinni and Batiste who have told the nation the truth, despite Rummy’s fangs. Today, not one of the Joint Chiefs wants more troops in Iraq. Nor do Generals Abizaid and Casey, our top brass in Baghdad, want to sacrifice more soldiers for a failed policy. Nor would it surprise me if the Navy quietly believes that W’s gunboat diplomacy toward Iran is batshit insane.

Now the Los Angeles Times is reporting that General Abizaid is going to retire in March, and that General Casey will likely be replaced. Clearly the President’s war policy is to listen to his commanders on the ground, unless they disagree with him, in which case he gets rid of them.

Is it too fanciful to hope that a handful of Generals who are citizens of the Republic, not citizens of Bush’s state of denial, are secretly planning an intervention? Not an actual coup; that’s too Hollywood (unless you count the de facto coup that the right wing effected during the era bracked by Katherine Harris’s rise and Katherine Harris’s fall). Wouldn’t it be sweet if the Texas Air National Guard’s delinquent, the smirker in Top Gun codpiece beneath the “Mission Accomplished” sign, plus the six-deferment VPOTUS who had other priorities than war, were given a good, or-else, ultimatum-laced tongue-lashing by the adults on the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

The movie poster for “Seven Days in May” had this chilling come-on: “THE ASTOUNDING STORY OF AN ASTOUNDING MILITARY PLOT TO TAKE OVER THE UNITED STATES! THE TIME IS 1970 OR 1980 OR, POSSIBLY, TOMORROW.” In 2006 or 2007 or, possibly, tomorrow, it’s hard to imagine something more heartening than an astounding military plot to take over Iraq policy from the bizarro-world bubble boys currently running it. ++

The Clock is Ticking, Mr. President
Senator Harry Reid, HuffPo
12/20/06

Frankly, I don’t believe that more troops is the answer for Iraq. It’s a civil war and America should not be policing a Sunni-Shia conflict. In addition, we don’t have the additional forces to put in there. We obviously want to support what commanders in the field say they need, but apparently even the Joint Chiefs do not support increased combat forces for Baghdad. My position on Iraq is simple:

1. I believe we should start redeploying troops in 4 to 6 months (The Levin-Reed Plan) and complete the withdrawal of combat forces by the first quarter of 2008. (As laid out by the Iraq Study Group)

2. The President must understand that there can only be a political solution in Iraq, and he must end our nation’s open-ended military commitment to that country.

3. These priorities need to be coupled with a renewed diplomatic effort and regional strategy.

I do not support an escalation of the conflict. I support finding a way to bring our troops home and would look at any plan that gave a roadmap to this goal.

It’s been two weeks since the Iraq Study Group released its plan to change the course and bring our troops home. Since then, the President has been on a fact finding tour of his own administration — apparently ignoring the facts presented by those in the military who know best.

The President needs to put forth a plan as soon as possible, one that reflects the reality on the ground in Iraq and that withdraws our troops from the middle of this deadly civil war. ++

from United for Peace and Justice

[...]

Obviously, they haven’t been listening to the will of the people, whose opposition to the war gave them control of the Congress. Only 12% support sending more troops to Iraq — the overwhelming majority want the troops to come home now.

So we need to speak louder than ever:

1) Call or email the office of Senator Harry Reid and tell him you expect the Democrats to follow the clear wishes of the electorate and bring the troops home from Iraq.

Call Reid at 202-224-2158 or 202-224-7003 or email his chief of staff at Susan_McCue@reid.senate.gov

2) Plan to mark the 3,000th U.S. death with a vigil or other event in your community. Under the slogan, “Not One More Death, Not One More Dollar,” the American Friends Service Committee, a member group of UFPJ, is coordinating events all around the country. Learn more at www.afsc.org/3000

3) Now more than ever, be sure to join us in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, January 27, for a massive peace march calling on Congress to use its power to bring the troops home now! Leaflets, web banners, ride and housing boards, and much more for this urgently needed protest are available at www.unitedforpeace.org

With hopes for peace and justice in this holiday season,
UFPJ National Staff ++

Dear Ms. McCue –

I would appreciate your passing my opinion on to your employer.

The only worthwhile thing George Bush has managed to do in six years is make the average citizen aware of politics — when the house is on fire, you eventually smell the smoke. Now that so many of us have very clearly made our wishes known about the misadventure in Iraq, and our desire to end this as quickly as possible, I would appreciate Speaker Reid’s sensitivity to those that supported a progressive outlook … and a more thoughtful response to Bush’s last-ditch effort to achieve a “victory.”

It is tragic that the US of A has to walk away from Iraq a failure, having caused so much instability in the Middle-East and prompted so many needless deaths. But propping up the Iraqi government is an illusion — there IS NO Iraqi government; there are tribes and factions … and no “Constitional Democracy” can be foisted on those who are willing to kill one another for their religious differences.

When an incoming George Bush promised us he would do no nation building, it was because he obviously DIDN’T KNOW HOW … whatever slight chance for victory we had in Iraq fell on the sword of Bush’s ineptitude years ago. It is too late now to do what should have been done … but it’s not too late to save American lives.

In November, this country voted for a return to sanity — we’d like to see some now. It’s time to turn our dwindling resources to the actual challenge at hand — international security against terrorism. The American people have been patient long enough.

Respectfully,
Judith Gayle ++

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

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves