While this is being said during the ad, a still image of a plane flying into the WTC on 9/11 is shown — thus clearly trying again to make the suggestion that the perpetrators of 9/11 and (the need to invade and now stay in) Iraq were/are linked, even though such links were disproved repeatedly by any number of bipartisan government commissions and investigations in recent years, and also by senior members of the Administration. That’s pure FUD and fear-mongering.

“They won’t stop in Iraq.”

This is simply an extension of the tired old chickenhawk talking point about “fighting terrorists over there so we don’t fight them here at home.” Anyone who still believes or perpetuates that logic clearly does not understand the nature of the current conflict, terrorism, unconventional warfare, or simple human nature. Sadly, that flawed logic has become one of the more salient Administration talking points in defense of the Iraq War, if not also a cornerstone for its current ’strategy.’

The bottom line about this commercial: It has been proven repeatedly that none of the 9/11 terrorists had ANY connection with Iraq. It is clear this ad’s desired message is to once again try connecting Iraq and 9/11 in an effort to place fear in the minds of viewers in an effort to curry public opinion for the current policy and ’strategy’ during a time when serious questions are being raised by the political opposition, general public, and members of the President’s own party. I daresay folks in DC are in a panic mode about what to do both from a political and national policy perspective, and are fearful of admitting that based on how things have devolved in Iraq since March 2003, the ideal outcome in Iraq won’t be a “good” one aligned with lofty US goals but rather the one that’s “least bad” for all involved, as Thomas Ricks noted the other day to Tim Russert.

Two final points about the politicization of Iraq and our military not specifically related to the aforementioned commercial:

(1) I am sick of hearing how pundits and politicians take great pains to say they’re “just back from Iraq” as if that confers any additional credence to their statements. Most such visits are tightly-controlled and secured, and as a result these folks aren’t seeing “the real picture” outside their security bubbles and short periods of time “on the ground.”

(2) You can find soldiers and veterans both for and against the war, so for a politician or pundit to make claims that soldiers are supporting their position (or using them in commercials) is a meaningless statistic, because there are just as many who are opposed to it — which is only natural if one considers the opinions of various US servicemembers as representative of the deep divisions of opinion here in American society. Such a technique is used simply as window-dressing to support their various statements.

Just a few thoughts from someone not buying the spin.

PS: Has anyone else noticed that during the past week that there’s been a marked increase in the hostile public rhetoric towards Iran? ++

Richard Forno is a security consultant in the Washington, DC area

Turning point
Anne Davies, Washington, The Age AU
September 8, 2007

THERE could be no more potent way to underscore President George Bush’s message to Congress that America’s safety is at stake in the decision on future strategy in Iraq than General David Petraeus heading to Washington early next week to give evidence.

Next Tuesday — September 11 — marks six years since a plane smashed into the side of the Pentagon — the bricks and mortar symbol of US military might. Just a few minutes earlier two planes had hit the World Trade Centre.

The twin attacks and the plane crash of Flight 93 that thwarted an attack on a third target, were devastating tragedies. But they were also an assault on America’s pride.

So began “the war on terror” and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In a short time, Saddam Hussein was toppled, the search for weapons of mass destruction found they did not exist and Bush declared the Iraq invasion was a “mission accomplished”.

But four years later, America remains mired in the Iraq war, which has escalated into a sectarian civil war and turned Iraq into a haven for al-Qaeda.

As the American death toll mounts — it is now approaching 4000 casualties — the Iraq war has become increasingly unpopular with the US public. A CBS News poll of 1214 respondents conducted last month found that only 26 per cent approved of the way Bush was conducting the war. Nearly 70 per cent disapproved. But the worrying figure for the Republican Party was that while 90 per cent of Democrats disapproved, 34 per cent of Republican voters disapproved as well.

So what better timing, when national emotions are running high and fears of terrorism are just below the surface, to put the case, which will almost certainly be put, to continue with increased troop numbers in Iraq.

Petraeus took command in Iraq soon after Bush decided to increase US forces there by 21,000 to tackle the insurgency. As an expert in the area of counter-terrorism and insurgency, Petraeus was well equipped for the task, and by all accounts his command has improved morale dramatically on the ground in Iraq.

But Bush’s surge required ratification by Congress, which needed to approve additional funds. When a bill came before them in April, both the House and the Senate voted narrowly to fund the Iraq war but imposed a timetable requiring that the US troops would be withdrawn by April next year.

The President vetoed the bill a few days later. The compromise was that Petraeus and US ambassador in Iraq Ryan Crocker would report back to Bush and Congress by September 15 on 18 benchmarks covering military and, importantly, political progress, which after all was the main point of improving security. That date is now near.

But in the interim, there has been political skirmishing, much of it aimed at boosting Democrat fortunes in next year’s presidential elections. Sensing the increasing unease among the American public and some Republicans about the surge strategy, the Democrats have moved several motions in Congress to highlight the war — and their opposition to it.

Following an interim report in early July that said the surge, just six weeks old, had made little difference, the House passed a motion calling for withdrawal to begin in 120 days and to be completed by next April.

In the Senate, Speaker Harry Reid insisted the cots be rolled out in the chamber’s annexe and senators stay for an all-night session — something that had not happened for a decade.

The motion was designed to draw maximum attention to the Democrats’ opposition to the war — and pressure Bush by splitting off Republicans — but it was symbolic only.

There was no way that the Senate could achieve the 60 votes needed to bring the motion to a vote there, and it stalled.

The one thing the Democrats could do, block funding, is clearly too politically contentious. It would bring upon them responsibility for any future course in the war and open them up to blame for every equipment shortage.

When Congress rose for its summer break in late July, it provided Bush with an empty stage, and his month-long sales pitch has been more like a blitzkrieg.

The first salvo came in the form of a New York Times opinion piece on July 30 by two scholars from the Brookings Institution think tank, Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, who had returned from an eight-day trip to Iraq.

“Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: we are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticised the Bush Administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily victory, but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.”

By mid-morning, Washington was awash with copies of the article; the White House sent it to every embassy, commentator and journalist.

Then there were setbacks in Iraq as Sunni cabinet members boycotted the Parliament.

The US Administration stepped up its rhetoric aimed at Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Government. Ambassador Crocker publicly vented his frustration, pondering whether Maliki was in danger of being replaced. Even Bush seemed to wonder aloud about Maliki, only to backtrack two days later and declare he was “a good guy” with “a difficult job”. Was his earlier remark a slip of the tongue or a deliberate attempt by the President to prod the Iraqis into action?

In the past two weeks he has been going all guns blazing to sell the message that the US isn’t about to quit Iraq. In front of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Bush drew parallels between Iraq and previous US wars, including the Vietnam War. He asked whether the US wanted to inflict the same harm that had befallen the Vietnamese and Cambodians after America pulled out.

A week later he told the American Legion’s annual conference: “For all those who ask whether the strategy is worth it, imagine an Iraq where militia groups backed by Iran control large parts of the country. Imagine an Iraq where al-Qaeda has established sanctuaries to safely plot future attacks on targets all over the world, including America.”

Meanwhile, Freedom Watch a new right-wing think tank headed by Bush’s former spokesman Ari Fleischer, began a $US15 million ($A18.2 million) TV campaign to persuade Congress to stick with the war effort.

The Petraeus report, which the White House has admitted is being written in-house, with input from Petraeus and Crocker, is unlikely to stray from the tone of the President’s speeches.

It is almost certain to argue for more time for the surge to work, despite Bush’s brief flirtation with the idea that troop levels might be reduced if conditions continued to improve. Officials quickly hosed down the idea that any cuts would be more than symbolic.

The main thrust of the report — and in particular Crocker’s evidence — will skirt around the problems of the Iraqi Government, from which several Sunni and Kurdish factions have now pulled out, and instead focus on what the Administration calls “local reconciliation”.

Expect to hear much about the improvements in Anbar province and other regions, where Sunni militias are co-operating with provincial governors, for now. As Bush so succinctly put it in an aside to Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile this week, the message will be: “We’re kicking ass.”

Against that upbeat assessment from the White House, Congress will have a raft of reports with far less rosy prognoses for Iraq.

The latest is a report by the Congressional Research Service, completed on August 15 for the House and Senate, which was leaked to the New York Daily News. It concludes that political reconciliation is now hopeless.

“My assessment is that because of the number and breadth of parties boycotting the cabinet, the Iraqi Government is in essential collapse,” Kenneth Katzman, the author of the report, said. “That argues against any real prospects for political reconciliation.”

Also on the pessimistic side of the ledger is a report from the Government Accountability Office, whose job, like that of the Auditor-General, is to test and report on government performance and spending.

The accountability office concluded this week that three of Congress’ 18 benchmarks had been met by the Iraqi Government, four had been partially met, and 11 had not been achieved.

“Overall, key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi Government will spend the $US10 billion in reconstruction funds,” the office’s comptroller-general, David Walker, told congress in evidence this week.
His most controversial finding was that it was “unclear” whether sectarian violence in Iraq had decreased as the Administration and Petraeus have claimed.

This week The Washington Post tried to delve into why claims surrounding civilian death rates and levels of sectarian violence could be so different — even between quarterly reports from the same source, such as the Defence Department. It unearthed an unholy war of statistics that shroud the real picture in Iraq.

The military stopped releasing numbers on civilian deaths in 2005, saying the news media were taking them out of context. When The Washington Post sought information from the Multinational Forces-Iraq, a spokesman said that while the trends were positive, exact data could not be provided.

“MFN-I makes every attempt to ensure it captures the most comprehensive accurate and valid data on civilian and sectarian deaths,” he said.

“However, there is not one central place for data or information … This means there can be variations when different organisations examine this information.”

The August National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, a consensus assessment by the 16 US intelligence agencies, is a case in point. It concluded that the overall level of violence including attacks on and casualties among civilians “remains high” and that “Iraq’s sectarian groups remain unreconciled”, despite the increased troop numbers.

One senior intelligence official told The Washington Post, in an attempt to explain the Defence Department classification system for incidents: “If a bullet went through the back of the head, it’s sectarian. If it went through the front, it’s criminal.”

Somewhere between the upbeat assessment of the President and the Government Accountability Office is the Jones report — named after retired general James Jones of the Marines, who headed a 20-member panel commissioned by Congress to report on the state of preparedness of the Iraqi army.

The report, released on Thursday, found that while the Iraqi security forces were steadily improving, it would be 12 to 18 months before they were capable of operating independently.

Next week will be consumed by each side trying to grab hold of findings that bolster their positions. There is no doubt that Bush has won back some ground in the court of public opinion during the northern summer. He and his advisers will take to the airwaves to argue for “staying the course”.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are already talking to Republican congressmen about withdrawal proposals that might win their support. The Democrats have counted on Republicans returning from a summer in their electorates where they would have heard from voters about their concern about the war.

Whether Bush’s counter-campaign has been successful remains to be seen.

The critical number of votes the Democrats must achieve is 60 in the Senate out of 100. Without those wavering Republican votes, a bill can be stymied by a filibuster — which means the Republicans refuse to allow debate to end.

Talks have more recently centred on bills calling for troop reductions without a firm timetable, which more Republicans might support, rather than the Democrats’ preferred option of a fixed timetable.

More will be revealed in the next fortnight. But in practical terms, unless George Bush can be convinced that the political lifeblood of his party is draining away, he is likely to stand firm.

The Democrats are unlikely to cut off funding or be able to impose a firm timetable, but they will be demonstrating to their anti-war base that they are doing their best.

Meanwhile, the surge will continue until next April, when it will have to come to an end, because the US will run short of troops unless it again extends tours of duty.

The more likely outcome is that Bush will cling on to his strategy for the remainder of his term, with some reductions after April, and that extraction of the US from Iraq will become the problem of the next president of the United States.

A HISTORY OF INDECISION

2003

MARCH 20 Launch of war.

APRIL 12 Fall of Baghdad.

MAY 1 Bush declares major combat ended and US and allies have won, under a banner reading “Mission Accomplished”.

DECEMBER 14 Saddam Hussein captured.

2004

APRIL 28 Abu Ghraib prison revelations.

SEPTEMBER 7 1000 US deaths.

2005

JANUARY 30 Iraqi parliamentary elections.

OCTOBER 25 2000 US deaths.

2006

MARCH 15 US Congress creates the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission after co-chairmen James Baker and Lee Hamilton, and directs the group to study the situation in Iraq and offer policy suggestions.

DECEMBER 6 Iraq Study Group report calls situation in Iraq “grave and deteriorating” and makes 79 policy suggestions, including engaging Syria and Iran in diplomacy. President Bush vows to study the report carefully, but does not promise to abide by its recommendations.

DECEMBER 21 3000 US deaths.

DECEMBER 30 Saddam hanged.

2007

JANUARY 10 Bush rejects the Iraq Study Group recommendation to withdraw troops from Iraq, and announces his decision to send 21,000 more US troops to Iraq as part of a “surge” to pacify Baghdad and other parts of Iraq. He says this will lead to a political agreement among violently feuding Shiite and Sunni factions to share political power in Iraq.

APRIL 26 The US Senate votes 51-46 to fund the Iraq War and compel the Bush Administration to withdraw US troops from Iraq in April 2008. This follows a 218-208 vote in the House of Representatives also forcing a withdrawal of troops by April 2008. The bills were supported by almost all Democrats and opposed by almost all Republicans.

MAY 1 Bush announces he has vetoed Congressional legislation that would compel him to withdraw US troops from Iraq in April 2008.

JUNE Compromise is reached in which the President agrees to report back to Congress by September 15 on the progress of the surge, measured against 18 political and military benchmarks.

SEPTEMBER 4 A report by the Government Accountability Office asserts that 11 of the 18 benchmarks have not been met at all, and that several more have been only partially met.

SEPTEMBER 6 Iraqi Security Forces Independent Assessment Commission, known informally as the Jones report, by retired Marine Commandant James Jones, reports that the Iraqi National Police are inefficient and filled with sectarian partisans and recommends that the US start over. The report offers a somewhat more optimistic view of the Iraqi military.

SEPTEMBER 11 General David Petraeus to testify to the US Congress about the political and military situation in Iraq.

SEPTEMBER 15 The Petraeus Report on the political and military situation to be released by the White House, which will be writing the report itself.

SEPTEMBER 18 Congress to begin debate on the Petraeus Report.

http://csis.org/media/csis/pubs/isf.pdf
http://toarmedservices.house.gov ++

“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

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves