Well … damn. What the busy little drones at the Department of Justice couldn’t figure out in four years, Mother Jones put together in a nice fat document for us [open the link to see the various sections of analysis] … and the news ain’t good.
As far as the DoJ goes, it would be one thing to think that these folks were instructed to throw everything in but the kitchen sink so the numbers could be used for budgetary purposes … but I have a sinking feeling they’re just working at capacity — and that’s a big bummer. Remember when the brightest and best made their way into the ranks of high public service? If these are our b&b … we’re all screwed.
I’m appalled … but then, you knew that.
Is it just a matter of being “dumbed down,” generally speaking? I hate to think so … but I’ve had CNN on this afternoon and been treated to HOURS of the Judge-Judy-Wannabe that has finally turned over Anna Nicole’s body to the court-appointed guardian of her daughter — and now we’re speculating, in round-table style, on what all this means. ZZZZZZZZZ.
Maybe we deserve the Dubby.
A nice piece by Robert Perry about Dub’s inability to handle the WOT, his very own Frankenstein creation [he made it, he broke it, he bought it ... and this time Poppy can't bail him out.] Last piece is fun snark … and maybe closer to truth than we dare imagine.
Jude
Audit: Anti-terror case data flawed
Lara Jakes Jordan, AP
Tue Feb 20
WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors counted immigration violations, marriage fraud and drug trafficking among anti-terror cases in the four years after 9/11 even though no evidence linked them to terror activity, a Justice Department audit said Tuesday.
Overall, nearly all of the terrorism-related statistics on investigations, referrals and cases examined by department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine were either diminished or inflated. Only two of 26 sets of department data reported between 2001 and 2005 were accurate, the audit found.
Responding, a Justice spokesman pointed to figures showing that prosecutors in the department’s headquarters for the most part either accurately or underreported their data — underscoring what he called efforts to avoid pumping up federal terror statistics.
The numbers, used to monitor the department’s progress in battling terrorists, are reported to Congress and the public and help, in part, shape the department’s budget.
“For these and other reasons, it is essential that the department report accurate terrorism-related statistics,” the audit concluded.
Fine’s office took care to say the flawed data appear to be the result of “decentralized and haphazard” methods of collection or disagreement over how the numbers are reported, and do not appear to be intentional.
Still, the errors led Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., to question whether the department had exaggerated the number of terror cases.
“If the Department of Justice can’t even get their own books in order, how are we supposed to have any confidence they are doing the job they should be?” said Schumer, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the department.
“Whether this is just an accounting error or an attempt to pad terror prosecution statistics for some other reason, the Department of Justice of all places should be classifying cases for what they are, not what they want us to think them to be.”
Auditors looked at 26 categories of statistics — including numbers of suspects charged and convicted in terror cases, and terror-related threats against cities and other U.S. targets — compiled by the FBI, Justice’s Criminal Division, and the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys.
It found that data from the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys were the most severely flawed. Auditors said the office, which compiles statistics from the 94 federal prosecutors’ districts nationwide, both under- and over-counted the number of terror-related cases during a four-year period.
The office has since agreed to change the way it counts and classifies anti-terrorism cases, said department spokesman Dean Boyd.
Boyd denied suggestions that the department pumped up its numbers. He said Criminal Division prosecutors at Justice headquarters and the FBI have overhauled their respective case reporting systems since 2004 for a more accurate picture of terror-related workloads. Both agencies, he said, were strained to accurately report terrorism data in the flood of cases immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“The notion that the Justice Department intentionally inflated its statistics is false and flatly contradicted by the OIG report itself,” Boyd said.
In all but one area, Criminal Division prosecutors either accurately stated or underreported their data — the ones the department usually uses in public statements about its counterterror efforts, Boyd noted. He said the Justice Department has already completed most of the fixes recommended in the audit.
Much of the problem stemmed from how that office defines anti-terrorism cases.
A November 2001 federal crackdown on security breaches at airports, for example, yielded arrests on immigration and false document charges, but no evidence of terrorist activity. Nonetheless, the attorneys’ office lumped them in with other anti-terror cases since they were investigated by federal Joint Terrorism Task Forces or with other counterterror measures.
Other examples, according to the audit, included:
- Charges against a marriage-broker for being paid to arrange six fraudulent marriages between Tunisians and U.S. citizens.
- Prosecution of a Mexican citizen who falsely identified himself as another person in a passport application.
- Charges against a suspect for dealing firearms without a license. The prosecutor handling the case told auditors it should not have been labeled as anti-terrorism.
“We do not agree that law enforcement efforts such as these should be counted as anti-terrorism,” the audit concluded. Even if those cases were not taken into account, the audit said, the U.S. attorneys’ office had overstated statistics in all other categories it reported.
Lies, damn lies & statistics
Dale McFeatters, Capital Hill Blue
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
The Justice Department’s post-9/11 statistics on terrorism cases have been deeply flawed, sometimes inflated, sometimes underreported — in any case, just highly inaccurate. Only two out of 26 sets of statistics reported between 2001 and 2005 were found to be accurate by the department’s inspector general, Glenn Fine.
The most erroneous were figures on terrorism prosecutions collected by the department’s Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys. In 2004, for example, the department reported 379 terrorism-related convictions, but Fine said the actual number was 240.
Given the penchant of the department’s political leadership for over hyping terrorism-related cases — Jose “Dirty Bomber” Padilla and the hapless Lackawanna, N.Y., “sleeper cell” (”deep asleep,” according to the local police chief) — the natural inclination is to think that the figures were intentionally padded.
Fine, reassuringly, says no. He blamed the errors on a “decentralized and haphazard” system of data collection and disagreements over the definition of an “anti-terrorism” case.
The result was that unrelated offenses like immigration violations, marriage fraud, drug trafficking and firearms violations were included in the terrorism figures. Arrests incidental to massively stepped-up security at airports also came to be counted.
Given the sensitivity of these numbers, it’s surprising that the department was so careless. The Bush administration has made a vocation of portraying itself as tough on terrorism — invoking these same statistics to prove it — and, by extension, the Democrats as weak. If it got this wrong, it makes you wonder what else it got wrong.
Fine’s audit concluded that, “it is essential that the department report accurate terrorism-related statistics.” After over five years of the domestic war on terror, that’s not asking a whole lot.
The Iraq Effect: War Has Increased Terrorism Sevenfold Worldwide
Mother Jones
Bush Is Badly Screwing Up the War on Terror
Robert Parry, Consortium News
February 21, 2007
Al-Qaeda’s resurgence in new Pakistani strongholds is the latest sign that George W. Bush is losing the ‘Global War on Terror’ and has become a dangerous liability to the American people.
Despite the sacrifices in lives, treasure and liberties, the painful reality is that the United States is losing the “war on terror” — in large part because too many people in the Middle East and across the globe view George W. Bush as a bully and a hypocrite.
Bush has become the ugly face of America, mouthing pretty words about freedom and democracy while threatening other nations and bludgeoning those who get in his way. Perhaps even worse, Bush has shown himself to be an incompetent commander, especially for a conflict as complicated and nuanced as this one.
Indeed, it is hard to envision how the United States can win the crucial battles for the hearts and minds of key populations if Bush remains President. Arguably, Bush has become a “clear and present danger” to the interests of the American people — yet he still has almost two years left in his term.
This predicament — the desperate need for new U.S. leadership and the difficult fact of being stuck with Bush — was underscored by the Feb. 19 lead article in the New York Times describing the revival of al-Qaeda as a worldwide terror network operating out of new bases in remote sections of Pakistan.
“American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan,” the Times reported.
“As recently as 2005, American intelligence assessments described senior leaders of al-Qaeda as cut off from their foot soldiers and able only to provide inspiration for future attacks. But more recent intelligence describes the organization’s hierarchy as intact and strengthening,” the Times wrote.
The Times quoted one American government official as saying “the chain of command has been reestablished” and that al-Qaeda’s “leadership command and control is robust.”
In the face of this al-Qaeda comeback, the Bush administration is reportedly debating whether to launch military strikes inside Pakistan. But that would risk destabilizing the dictatorship of Gen. Pervez Musharraf and conceivably provoking the nightmare scenario of Islamic fundamentalists gaining control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
In other words, more than five years into the “war on terror,” Bush has overseen a strategy that has simultaneously alienated world public opinion — with scandals over Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and secret CIA prisons — while fueling Islamic extremism and giving new life to the 9/11 masterminds.
The bipartisan Iraq Study Group described the situation in Iraq as “grave and deteriorating.” But the same description would fit for the broader strategic position of the United States in the Middle East.
The U.S. military is facing a worsening crisis in Iraq; the Taliban is on the rise again in Afghanistan; Hezbollah is gaining strength in Lebanon; Iran is defying international pressure over its nuclear program; and now al-Qaeda — having resettled in Pakistan — is rebuilding its capability to strike targets beyond the Middle East.
Bush’s mistakes
Much of today’s crisis can be traced to Bush’s arrogance and impatience. In 2001, even before the 9/11 attacks, Bush insisted on a “unilateralist” approach toward the world, asserting U.S. global hegemony under a strategy laid out by the neoconservative Project for the New American Century.
At the center of this grandiose scheme was the belief that the oil-rich Middle East could be remade through violent “regime change” in hostile countries like Iraq. Bush later broadened his target list to the “axis of evil,” tossing in Iran and North Korea and making clear that other lesser enemies included the likes of Syria, Cuba and Venezuela.
While this neoconservative plan wrapped itself in the noble language of “democracy,” the concept was always less about respecting the will of indigenous populations than in restructuring their economies along “free market” lines and ensuring compliant leaders.
In all of this, there was little room for compromise or negotiation with the “bad guys.” It was as if the macho rhetoric of AM talk radio and Fox News had swallowed U.S. foreign policy. Real men don’t negotiate with people who get in the way; you jail or kill them.
Bush also grew enamored with his “gut” instincts about war, especially after U.S.-backed forces ousted Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders more quickly than many expected.
Even after he let top al-Qaeda leaders slip away from Tora Bora in late 2001, Bush ignored warnings that he needed to finish the job there before turning America’s attention elsewhere.
Instead, Bush redirected U.S. military assets to Iraq, a country that wasn’t involved in 9/11 and actually had served as an important bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism, both the strains from Shiite-ruled Iran and Sunni-dominated al-Qaeda.
But Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was something of a Bush family obsession since he defied President George H.W. Bush in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91. In March 2003, Bush launched an invasion of Iraq and toppled Hussein’s government in three weeks.
After basking again in public adulation as the victorious “war president,” Bush stubbornly refused to acknowledge the growing seriousness of an Iraqi insurgency that rose up to challenge U.S. forces.
The U.S. occupation of Iraq — combined with abuse scandals at U.S.-run prisons — also fed popular anger across the Middle East. Thousands of young jihadists rallied to the cause of ousting the Americans from Muslim lands.
As the body counts grew — thousands of U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis — Bush dug in his heels deeper. When Iraq slid into chaos and then civil war, Bush again refused to acknowledge the facts in a timely fashion.
Bush also encouraged Israel to wage an ill-conceived war in southern Lebanon in summer 2006, further alienating the Muslim world. That was followed by the grisly execution of Hussein in December and new military tensions with Iran in early 2007.
In short, Bush appears determined to stampede the United States into a Middle Eastern box canyon — after offending most Muslim allies and offering little more than military solutions to essentially political and diplomatic problems.
Al-Qaeda’s favorite president
Over the past six years, the wily and ruthless leaders of al-Qaeda also came to understand that Bush was their perfect foil. The more he was viewed as the “big crusader,” the more they could present themselves as the “defenders of Islam.” The al-Qaeda murderers moved from the fringes of Muslim society closer to the mainstream.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, al-Qaeda’s leaders transformed the conflict into both a rallying cry and a training ground. Bin Laden and Zawahiri believed the longer the Iraq War lasted the better it was for al-Qaeda.
So, in fall 2004, with Bush fighting for his political life against Democrat John Kerry, bin Laden took the risk of breaking nearly a year of silence to release a videotape denouncing Bush on the Friday before the U.S. election.
Bush’s supporters immediately spun bin Laden’s tirade as an “endorsement” of Kerry and pollsters recorded a jump of several percentage points for Bush, from nearly a dead heat to a five- or six-point lead. Four days later, Bush hung on to win a second term by an official margin of less than three percentage points.
The intervention by bin Laden — essentially urging Americans to reject Bush — had the predictable effect of driving voters to the President. After the videotape appeared, senior CIA analysts concluded that ensuring a second term for Bush was precisely what bin Laden intended.
“Bin Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President,” said deputy CIA director John McLaughlin in opening a meeting to review secret “strategic analysis” after the videotape had dominated the day’s news, according to Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine, which draws heavily from CIA insiders.
Suskind wrote that CIA analysts had spent years “parsing each expressed word of the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, Zawahiri. What they’d learned over nearly a decade is that bin Laden speaks only for strategic reasons. … Today’s conclusion: bin Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s reelection.”
Jami Miscik, CIA deputy associate director for intelligence, expressed the consensus view that bin Laden recognized how Bush’s heavy-handed policies were serving al-Qaeda’s strategic goals for recruiting a new generation of jihadists.
“Certainly,” Miscik said, “he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years.”
As their internal assessment sank in, the CIA analysts were troubled by the implications of their own conclusions. “An ocean of hard truths before them — such as what did it say about U.S. policies that bin Laden would want Bush reelected — remained untouched,” Suskind wrote.
Even Bush recognized that his struggling campaign had been helped by bin Laden. “I thought it was going to help,” Bush said in a post-election interview about the videotape. “I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to be the President, something must be right with Bush.”
Bin Laden, a well-educated Saudi and a keen observer of U.S. politics, appears to have recognized the same point in cleverly tipping the election to Bush.
Prolonging the war
Al-Qaeda’s leaders understood that a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq might mean a renewed assault on them as well as the loss of their cause celebre for recruiting new jihadists. With Bush ensconced for a second term, that concern lessened but didn’t entirely disappear.
According to a captured July 9, 2005, letter, attributed to Zawahiri, al-Qaeda leaders still fretted over the possibility that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could touch off the disintegration of their operations, as jihadists who had flocked to Iraq to battle the Americans might simply give up the fight and go home.
“The mujahaddin must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal,” said the “Zawahiri letter,” according to a text released by the office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence.
In another captured letter, dated Dec. 11, 2005, a senior al-Qaeda operative known as “Atiyah” wrote that “prolonging the war [in Iraq] is in our interest.”
Now, it appears al-Qaeda’s “Bush-second-term” strategy is paying big dividends. Bush is stretching U.S. forces even thinner by escalating the American troop commitment in Iraq while also deploying military assets to threaten Shiite Iran, another enemy of the Sunni fundamentalists in al-Qaeda.
Meanwhile, al-Qaeda’s Taliban allies are on the offensive against embattled NATO contingents in Afghanistan, and new al-Qaeda units are undergoing training in Pakistan. In Iraq, al-Qaeda still makes up only a small percentage of the armed insurgency — probably less than five percent — but it benefits from the arrival of new recruits and the opportunity to test out military tactics against the Americans.
Overall, time and momentum appear to be on al-Qaeda’s side. As long as Bush remains America’s leader and al-Qaeda’s poster boy, there seems little chance for a more effective U.S. counterinsurgency strategy.
Unlike the Iraqi insurgents who are proving to be highly adaptive in the field, Bush can’t seem to get beyond his tough-guy rhetoric and his obsession with military force. He remains bin Laden’s favorite President.
According to one recent Newsweek poll, 58 percent of Americans wish the Bush administration were over. But there is a long way between wishing for a desperately needed change and the slow process of the electoral calendar.
The trickier questions are: Can the United States afford 23 more months of Bush in the White House? Does his incompetence in the face of today’s fast-moving crises demand extraordinary action to remove him from office through impeachment?
If impeachment is impossible, given the sizable Republican minorities in both the House and Senate, is there at least some hope for legislative remedies that can begin to correct Bush’s many errors? Could patriotic Republicans confront the President and Vice President about resignations?
Or must the American people wait two more years as today’s “clear and present danger” grows only more acute?
Who Needs Good Intel When You’ve Got Magic 8-Ball?
Andy Borowitz, TruthDig
Feb 16, 2007
Much of the prewar intelligence that led to President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 came from the popular fortune-telling toy known as the Magic 8-Ball, according to documents released today.
As Congress debates the war in Iraq, scrutinizing the prewar roles of such former administration figures as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, the news that a small plastic ball shaped the decision to go to war came as nothing less than a bombshell.
But transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showing conversations among Messrs. Bush, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and the Magic 8-Ball make it clear that the ball had the deciding vote when it came to the administration’s prewar planning.
At one point in the transcript, Mr. Bush asks the Magic 8-Ball flat out, “Does Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction?”
The ball responded equivocally—”Reply hazy, try again”—prompting the president to repeat his question.
When Mr. Bush asked the question again moments later, the Magic 8-Ball was more definitive: “Signs point to yes.”
At the White House today, spokesman Tony Snow defended the Magic 8-Ball’s role in gathering prewar intelligence but said that the ball had left the administration in 2004 to spend more time with its family.
But in response to a reporter’s question about whether the United States planned to go to war with Iran, Mr. Snow raised eyebrows by responding, “Better not tell you now.”
Elsewhere, the Kansas State Board of Education voted to teach evolution in public schools, with the six human members of the board outvoting the four monkeys.
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
(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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February 22nd, 2007
Here’s the latest Cheney flap — out of his cave, now, and wandering to spread his gruff encouragement to the world [in what some are saying is preparation for the newest war.] If he was hoping to keep media scrutiny off him by leaving the US, he’s failed … he can’t be comfortable with all this attention; like sunrise to a vampire, I’d think.
Japan wasn’t happy to see him and Australia has mixed feelings … so the VEEP took the occasion to titillate the troops by schlepping Kool Aid and misinformation about American support at home, and pushing their patriotic hot-button regarding “honor.”
I’m about at saturation point with Uncle Dick — he and his Cave Cabal pointed Delusional Dubby at the Tar Baby [Osama knew we'd jump on] and now that we can’t get free of it, he wants “honorable resolution?” That’s quintessential Bushspeak — there is no peace on the horizon and honor is not something the Bushies are familiar with.
You all know the tale of the scorpion that wanted a ride across the river. It convinced a frog [turtle, fish, whatever ... there are variations] that it wouldn’t sting him if he carried the scorpion on his back; they would cooperate to achieve their mutual desire to cross the water. Half-way across, the scorpion delivers a fatal sting, poisoning its host. Just able to get to the other side, the dying frog asks why — his attacker tells him, “I’m a scorpion … you knew that.”
That’s our Uncle Dick … he is what he is, what he is is evident now and the thing we need to remember about scorpions is that they will sting themselves to death rather than give quarter to the enemy. At the moment, Dick’s enemy is anyone who doesn’t have the fortitude to throw themselves on the funeral pyre of an escalated and never-ending occupation in Iraq [and a wider war.] He and his Neo’s have dumb-bunny Br’er Dubby hysterical that “losing our will” will mean allowing the enemy to win.
And ya know what? He’s right! The radicals must be laughing like loons! Those the naive American public looked down on as wayward, dangerous children psyched us out with a vengeance, no doubt were delighted when Dubby punched that blob of sticky tar while ignoring all the voices urging him not to! We saw it coming — millions and millions of us didn’t give our permission. Now we’re losing our will? These people need to get a grip and face reality — they never had our “will” … and the will of those they did have, they obtained with fraud and fear and lies. They misread the enemy … and they misread us.
“Peace with honor?” The stuff of Doves … Gandhi, King. Uncle Dick ain’t no Gandhi — Scorpion’s default to a nihilistic truth … “Death before Defeat.”
The supposed “clash of civilizations” we’re seeing today is not between religions, despite all the dust-up about who gets into Heaven and how many Angels dance on the head of a pin … it’s between Doves and Scorpions — those who choose life and those who choose death. Given the psychology of both, and the amping of energies that are insisting we learn to fly … the eventual outcome is destined.
We’re in the Aquarian age, the one energy signal that is fully equipped to defeat the uber-personal Scorpionic darkness. Impassioned vindictiveness loses its potency when pitted against cool Aquarian detachment and idealism … it can meet the worst with a shake of its shoulders and a deep breath … and move ahead to pick up the pieces.
And today, the Doves are testing their wings, preparing for first attempts at flight … while Uncle Dick still needs a hitch across the river.
Here’s the reads … and DO open the last link to see GQ’s impeachment resolution for our President in charge of Vice.
Jude
Cheney’s Rocky Road Trip
Cheney came to Asia to help shore up support among America’s allies. He has his work cut out for him.
Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey, Newsweek
Feb 21, 2007
Dick Cheney has seen better days. In Washington, a jury is deciding the fate of his former chief of staff, after hearing extensive testimony about how the vice president and his team worked in the run-up to the Iraq war—surely not the sort of thing the secretive Cheney enjoys. In Britain, America’s staunchest ally in the Iraq war, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced plans to begin bringing British troops home—even as the Bush administration is trying to persuade the American public of the wisdom of sending more U.S. troops in. And as Cheney traveled to Asia, on a trip aimed at shoring up support among allies considered crucial to U.S. interests around the world, his reception was, well, not all that warm. In the days before his arrival, Japan’s defense minister, Fumio Kyuma, branded the Iraq war a “mistake.” Touching down in Tokyo on Tuesday afternoon, Cheney was greeted with the sight of a large truck cruising the blocks surrounding the U.S. Embassy blaring a message through a loudspeaker: “Yankee Go Home!”
If any of this bothered the steadfast vice president, he didn’t let it show. Or, should we say, he didn’t let it show to the press corps accompanying him, which seldom gets close enough to him to tell. Aboard the USS Kitty Hawk on Wednesday, Cheney insisted that Americans still back the administration’s war plans. “The American people will not support a policy of retreat,” Cheney told a crowd of several thousand cheering sailors and Marines. “We want to complete the mission, we want to get it done right and we want to return with honor.” (Interestingly, an embargoed copy of the speech given to reporters beforehand called on Cheney to say “the American people do not support a policy of retreat. Apparently, the veep decided to go beyond their current state of mind and declare a lack of support for a drawdown a metaphysical impossibility. A senior administration official would not say whether Cheney misspoke).
Cheney repeated that sentiment in an interview with ABC News. Asked if Democrats are advocating a policy of defeat, Cheney replied in the affirmative. “I think the American people want to see first and foremost success in Iraq,” Cheney said. “Even those who are not happy with the current situation, given a choice, would prefer a situation in which we succeed in Iraq in terms of being able to deal with the security situation, turn things over to the Iraqis so that the Iraqis can govern themselves.”
The veep made only fleeting reference to President Bush’s plan to send an additional 21,500 troops into Iraq. But that was clearly the policy he was defending. And on that score, what Americans will, won’t or don’t support is a little more complex. While polls show a majority of Americans surveyed do not like the idea of blatant retreat, they don’t like Bush’s troop surge, either. According to the latest USA Today/Gallup poll, 60 percent of those surveyed oppose the surge. Interestingly, the same poll found increasing support for policies that administration officials, including Bush and Cheney, have decried as elements of retreat. Sixty-three percent of those surveyed endorsed a timetable for troop withdrawals beginning next year, while 57 percent advocated a cap on U.S. troops in Iraq.
But it’s not just the American people who are having misgivings about the war. The last time Cheney visited Japan, back in April 2004, he came to a country whose government and people stood firmly behind U.S. strategy in Iraq. This week, he greets a new administration under intense public pressure over the war and its relationship with the Bush administration. Nearly 60 percent of the public in Japan now opposes the war in Iraq. While an administration official described Cheney’s trip as “diplomatic spadework,” the vice president was selective in the targets of his diplomacy. Defense Minister Kyuma, unsurprisingly, was not on the list of people Cheney met with (the veep’s office blamed the oversight on Cheney’s tight schedule). And a senior administration official says the Japanese criticism of the war didn’t come up in sessions with the Japanese leaders Cheney did see, like Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
In a briefing with reporters, Mike Boyle, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, played down any U.S.-Japanese tensions over Iraq or any other subject. “Japan is a remarkably normal country,” he explained, citing the many “opinions.” “[But] we are assured from the Abe administration’s perspective that our relationship is solid.”
Administration officials took a similarly rosy view of news that Blair was calling for a British drawdown in Iraq over the next several months. Behind the scenes, British officials have made it clear that they see a far greater security threat in Afghanistan than in Iraq—and that they take a dim view of Iraq’s prospects for peace and stability. When asked Wednesday whether the British move was a negative signal, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said, “No, it indicates that there’s been some progress in Basra.” That’s what the president likes to call a glass-half-full view of the world. On to Australia.
Cheney slams Iraq plan advocated by Dems
Terence Hunt, AP
Feb 22
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday harshly criticized Democrats’ attempts to thwart President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq, saying their approach would “validate the al-Qaida strategy.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fired back that Cheney was questioning critics’ patriotism.
“I hope the president will repudiate and distance himself from the vice president’s remarks,” Pelosi said. She said she tried to complain about Cheney to President Bush but could not reach him.
“You cannot say as the president of the United States, ‘I welcome disagreement in a time of war,’ and then have the vice president of the United States go out of the country and mischaracterize a position of the speaker of the House and in a manner that says that person in that position of authority is acting against the national security of our country,” the speaker said.
The quarrel began in Tokyo, where Cheney used an interview to criticize Pelosi and Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), D-Pa., over their plan to place restrictions on Bush’s request for an additional $93 billion for the Iraq war to make it difficult or impossible to send 21,500 extra troops to Iraq.
“I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we will do is validate the al-Qaida strategy,” the vice president told ABC News. “The al-Qaida strategy is to break the will of the American people … try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit.”
In the interview, Cheney also said Britain’s plans to withdraw about 1,600 troops from Iraq — while the United States adds more troops — was a positive step. “I look at it and see it is actually an affirmation that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well,” the vice president said.
Pelosi, at a news conference in San Francisco, said Cheney’s criticism of Democrats was “beneath the dignity of the debate we’re engaged in and a disservice to our men and women in uniform, whom we all support.”
“And you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to call the president and tell him I disapprove of what the vice president said,” Pelosi said. “It has no place in our debate.” Bush had previously urged her to call him when a member of his administration stepped over the line by questioning Democrats’ patriotism, she said.
Later, Pelosi said she had tried to reach the president but was only able to get through to White House chief of staff Josh Bolten.
Bolten said he was certain no one was questioning her patriotism or commitment to national security, she told reporters.
“I said to him perhaps when he saw what the vice president said he might have another comment,” Pelosi said. White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said Cheney “was not questioning anyone’s patriotism.” But she said Bush and Cheney believe that Pelosi and Murtha’s “position to immediately pull out our troops would be harmful to our national security and that it is the wrong strategy to pursue.”
As for Cheney’s assertion that the partial British pullout is a sign that things are going well in Iraq, Pelosi said: “If it’s going so well, we’d like to withdraw our troops as well.”
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, said Britain’s withdrawal, coupled with a Denmark’s announcement to pull out its 460 troops by August, “accelerates the breakup of the coalition in Iraq.”
He said the United States should reduce its forces “as a way of pressuring the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future and to reach the political settlements that are essential to end the sectarian violence and defeat the insurgency.”
Administration leaders, however, said Britain’s decision was good news.
“The British have done what is really the plan for the country as a whole, which is to transfer security responsibility to the Iraqis as the situation permits,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at a news conference in Berlin, where she was in meetings on the Mideast peace process.
National security adviser Stephen Hadley, at NATO headquarters in Brussels, said the decision “reflects the progress that has been made on the ground in Basra and in the south,” where British troops were stationed.
“So this is basically a good news story, an indication that progress is being made, and that events on the ground permit this kind of adjustment in forces,” Hadley said. Still, he acknowledged the violence in Baghdad and said, “I’m not saying this is an unalloyed picture of progress.”
AP writer Scott Lindlaw contributed to this report from San Francisco
Peace with “honor”: Cheney channels Nixon, and the history of a disastrous promise
Attytood
February 21, 2007
And I pledge to you tonight that the first priority foreign policy objective of our next Administration will be to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam. We shall not stop there. We need a policy to prevent more Vietnams.
~ Richard Nixon, accepting the Republican presidential nomination, Aug. 7, 1968.
They say that in Nixon’s final days in the White House in 1974, the disgraced soon-to-be-ex-president roamed the hallways, talking to portraits of dead presidents. Frankly, you have to wonder if Dick Cheney is having an animated conversation with Nixon’s portrait these days.
Cheney’s long strange trip through American politics pretty much began in the Nixon White House in the early 1970s, and much of his public life seems like a crusade to avenge his misunderstood ex-boss. At the height of Watergate, he told friends it wasn’t a scandal but “a power struggle,” and as top aide to Nixon’s successor Gerald Ford, he chafed so much at the post-Watergate restrictions on White House power that he honed his bizarre theory of an all-powerful unitary executive.
Those aren’t the lessons that most Americans took away from the Nixon years, and yet they are shaping our nation’s government some 33 years later. Even so, we never expected Cheney to look to Nixon for inspiration on handling the fiasco that is Iraq. Until now. Check out the echoes of 1968 in what Cheney said earlier this week on his Asia junket:
“And I want you to know that the American people will not support a policy of retreat,” he added. “We want to complete the mission, we want to get it done right, and we want to return with honor,” said Cheney, who heads on Thursday for Australia to meet Prime Minister John Howard, another backer of Bush’s Iraq policy.
It’s an old line, but it’s new to Cheney and the Bush White House. And if you know the history of Richard Nixon, you can see why the word “honor” is so important. You see, we all know what “war” looks like, and we all know what “peace” looks like. But “honor,” well that is truly in the eye of the beholder.
For Richard Nixon, “peace with honor” was not synonymous with “peace.”
It meant “war.” A lot of war.
Not long after taking office in 1969, Nixon — without authorization from Congress — initiated a secret air campaign against enemy sanctuaries in Cambodia that dropped 2,750,000 short tons of bombs, more than the alllies used during all of World War II. He later undertook a massive bombing campaign of Hanoi and Haiphong, and his efforts didn’t bring much peace on the homefront, culminating in the slaughter of four bystanders during a 1970 protest at Kent State.
Finally, in January 1973, Nixon declared “peace with honor.”
There are three things you should know about this.
1) When Nixon gave that speech at the GOP convention, it had been 1,467 since the alleged incident in the Gulf of Tonkin that triggered the American escalation of the war. When he finally achieved his “peace with honor,” it was another 1,633 days later, so more than half the fighting came after the “peace with honor” promise.
2) More importantly, from the start of 1969 through the end of the war, some 20,604 American soldiers died in pursuit of “peace with honor,” more than one-third of the total (58,202) for the entire war.
3) In the end, “peace with honor” didn’t look all that different than “peace” — i.e., if Nixon had merely brought the troops home on Jan. 20, 1969. As we all know, Saigon still fell, in May of 1975.
So now we have another White House saying that troops can come home from Iraq (one of those more “Vietnams” that Nixon pledged to prevent, by the way), but only if they do so with “honor.” You can bet that means “honor” is an elusive target that won’t be achieved in the next 23 months, until the next president takes office.
“Peace with honor,” when sought through further bloodshed, is neither peaceful nor honorable. That makes sense, but not when Dick Cheney is too busy engaged in his dialogue with Dick Nixon’s portrait.
“Why Won’t He Just Attack?”
digby, Hullabaloo
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Here’s crazy Dick Cheney articulating his sophisticated foreign policy philosophy again:
“I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we will do is validate the al-Qaida strategy,” the vice president told ABC News. “The al-Qaida strategy is to break the will of the American people … try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit.”
I’ve written a ridiculous amount about this and yet it always shocks me when I hear him put it so plainly. He believes bin Laden’s trash talk and has fashioned this country’s national security policy around it. This was the king of the “grown ups.”
But why should I be surprised? Perhaps it’s time to drag this one up again:
Following one White House meeting at which he’d asked for more time and more troops, Stormin’ Norman reports; Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell called to warn the Desert Storm commander that he was being loudly compared, by a top administration official, to George McClellan. “My God,” the official supposedly complained. “He’s got all the force he needs. Why won’t he just attack?” Schwarzkopf notes that the unnamed official who’d made the comment “was a civilian who knew next to nothing about military affairs, but he’d been watching the Civil War documentary on public television and was now an expert.”
And then, twenty pages later, Schwarzkopf casually drops the information that he got an inspirational gift from Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney right before the air war finally got under way. Cheney was presenting a gift to a military man, and he chose something with an appropriate theme: “(A) complete set of videotapes of Ken Burns’s PBS series, The Civil War.”
But that wasn’t the only gift that Dick Cheney had for Norman Schwarzkopf. Having figured out that the general was being too cautious with his fourth combat command in three decades of soldiering, Cheney got his staff busy and began presenting Schwarzkopf with his own ideas about how to fight the Iraqis: What if we parachute the 82nd Airborne into the far western part of Iraq, hundreds of miles from Kuwait and totally cut off from any kind of support, and seize a couple of missile sites, then line up along the highway and drive for Baghdad? Schwarzkopf charitably describes the plan as being “as bad as it could possibly be… But despite our criticism, the western excursion wouldn’t die: three times in that week alone Powell called with new variations from Cheney’s staff. The most bizarre involved capturing a town in western Iraq and offering it to Saddam in exchange for Kuwait.” (Throw in a Pete Rose rookie card?) None of this Walter Mitty posturing especially surprised Schwarzkopf, who points out that he’d already known Cheney as “one of the fiercest cold warriors in Congress.
This information was available before the 2000 election but we were too busy monitoring Al Gore’s wardrobe palette so it didn’t come up.
Iraq War Protests Greet Cheney’s Australia Trip
Paul Tait, Reuters
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Anti-Iraq war protesters briefly scuffled with police in Sydney on Thursday before the arrival of Vice President Dick Cheney, underlining divisions within one of Washington’s firmest allies over the unpopular war.
A police spokeswoman said seven people were arrested when police barred up to 200 Stop the War Coalition protesters from marching through Australia’s largest city, demanding Prime Minister John Howard pull troops out of Iraq.
A heavy police presence, including officers mounted on horseback, ringed the protesters in an attempt to minimize disruption to peak-hour commuters, some of whom also squabbled with police.
Protesters held placards saying “Dick Go Home & Take John With You” and “Coalition of the Killing”. Police later relented and shepherded protesters as they marched toward the U.S. consulate. Another protest is planned for Friday.
Cheney arrived amid tight security several hours later.
He is to meet Howard on Saturday. Howard has ruled out following Britain’s example and cutting troop numbers in Iraq but his unwavering commitment has him walking through a political minefield toward an election later this year.
“Mr Howard is enduring a perfect storm on the alliance and Iraq at the moment, a series of unexpected events which are combining to make for difficult sailing,” Michael Fullilove, global issues director at the Lowy Institute think tank, told Reuters.
Police earlier began a security clampdown in Sydney ahead of Cheney’s potentially stormy visit, warning commuters of major traffic jams due to city road closures and securing the area around Cheney’s harbourside hotel with concrete barricades.
Stopping over in Guam, he told several hundred soldiers that the self-ruled U.S. territory in the Pacific was important for “the peace and security of our world” because U.S. forces could move quickly from it to protect friends and defend its interests.
BRITISH WITHDRAWAL
Cheney’s visit to Japan this week followed by the trip to Australia are meant to reassure Washington’s allies that Bush’s planned injection of 21,500 more troops into Iraq will help quell violence.
But British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s announcement that he would soon start withdrawing his troops has added to the pressure on Washington’s other allies. Denmark and Lithuania have said they would pull out their much smaller commitments.
“Out of Step,” the Sydney Morning Herald said in a front-page headline about Australia’s Iraq commitment.
Iraq is a major problem for Howard’s conservative government ahead of elections in the second half of 2007, perhaps the toughest of his 11-year tenure.
An opinion poll this week found 67 percent of Australians either want Howard to set a date for withdrawing troops from Iraq or pull them out immediately.
8-POINT LEAD
Centre-left Labor opposition leader Kevin Rudd, who is to meet Cheney on Friday, has an 8-point lead in opinion polls on the back of a promise to withdraw Australia’s 520-strong battle group from southern Iraq if he wins power.
“This war in Iraq represents the single greatest failure of Australian national security policy since Vietnam,” Rudd said on the eve of Cheney’s arrival.
Fullilove said Howard had tied his fortunes to Bush’s Iraq policy and would not change his commitment.
Canberra said on Thursday it was considering plans to double its troop deployment to Afghanistan to about 1,000 to head off an expected spring resurgence of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
Fullilove said increasing troop levels in Afghanistan was not contentious in Australia because the Afghan conflict had bipartisan support.
But he said the continued detention of Australian Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks could be one area where Howard wins a concession from Cheney. Hicks’ five-year detention has angered Australians who want him charged or brought home.
Howard has urged President Bush to push for a speedy trial for Hicks, who faces charges of providing support for terrorism and attempted murder.
Additional reporting by Caren Bohan in Guam.
THE PEOPLE V. RICHARD CHENEY
GQ, March 2007
Resolved, that Richard B. Cheney, vice president of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and that these articles of impeachment be submitted to the American people.
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
(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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February 22nd, 2007