One, two — buckle my shoe

September 14th, 2007

We had quite a little spectacle in Georgie’s speech last night … we were witnessing [and yes, I couldn't escape it, since the pundit wrap-up's kept playing it again and again] the equivalent of a visit to Dubby’s personal Potemkin Village, kicking the can down the road as he’s done a couple of times a year since he launched Shock ‘n Awe — another in a long line of McMessages from a man who behaves as if we’re all with him, even as he lies to our face.

If that’s not the definition of nutcase, what is? This is HIS war, it’s all going BEAUTIFULLY and he will see that FREEDOM follows his dictates well into the coming century — smile! It’s All Good! As Iraq vet Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, commented, “Bush may yet ‘take credit for the sun rising.’” Yes, he’s the Cock o’ the Walk that will keep God in His heaven and all right with the world, never looking back at the disaster in his wake.

A couple of shoes dropped during these last few days — the first came two days ago:

Notice: Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to Certain Terrorist Attacks

White House News

Consistent with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency I declared on September 14, 2001, in Proclamation 7463, with respect to the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, New York, New York, the Pentagon, and aboard United Airlines flight 93, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.

Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, last extended on September 5, 2006, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2007.

Therefore, I am continuing in effect for an additional year the national emergency I declared on September 14, 2001, with respect to the terrorist threat.

This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Oh, WELL — it’s all RIGHT, then; the Dubby gave himself PERMISSION [again] to do whatever he damned-well wants with the free world! He will, by-God, keep us “safe” in defiance of every statistic that proves we’re worse off, and hold us hostage to the NeoCon principals that got us in this mess. We are, after all, just children that need a strong, determined Daddy like George.

Last night, as a second shoe to smack us on the head, came announcement of a “Permanent Iraq Presence” — Iraq is now the 54th state, right after South Korea. Oh, and it’s a hungry, needy, cash cow of a state, too — it will require SOOOO MUCH FROM US, citizen! Open a vein, won’t you, in the pursuit of “spreading democracy” … and those of your children? And give us an IOU on their children?

Well, gosh — all these years of worry and blogging and activism were all for naught, apparently — we don’t need benchmarks or time lines; what’s time, when you’re ruling the world and so full of yourself that you think you can unitarily plunge the country into a decades-long commitment to fulfill your tweaked and delusional daydreams? Political pundit David Gergen thought that the most surprising and startling of Bush’s stilted proclamations [more from David next post.] We’re not surprised, of course, having followed the building of permanent bases, the action of the Blackwater boyz and the presumptions of capitalizing on the lion’s share of the Iraqi oil … but to announce this — to make PROMISES — without ANY Congressional input or American reaction is unspeakably deluded.

Here’s a nice piece from Comedy Central that shows us how to do that voodoo the Dubby do:
John Hodgman, The Daily Show Reveals Bush’s 8-point “Plan for Success” in Iraq

The public isn’t buying all this — but that won’t stop Bush from working his worst; thanks to Huffington Post for these headlines:

NYT: ” Bush Has No Strategy To End His Disastrous War”…

LA Times: “Word ‘Victory’ [Has] Quietly Disappeared” From Bush’s Vocabulary…

SF Chronicle: “No One Should Be Fooled” By Attempt To Repackage Policy…

NY Post: Bush “Consigning The Future Of Iraq” To The ‘08 Elections

And Thanks to Christine for these Youtubes of John Edwards from his blog –

MSNBC

CNN Larry King

Re: my request for your input last night, Thanks to Earlene who said John looked “very presidential;” to Eileen who says he isn’t, as far as we know, connected to the shadowy Illuminati world-dominance organizations so he’s even more than “dark horse” and has a harder ceiling to break through; to Greg in Australia who mentioned that CBS recently reported that the Dem Congress was hamstrung because it didn’t have enough support from “the people” [yeah, right! Snort! GOSH ... that's an awful message to go out internationally, huh?!]

Oh, and we have a new Merril Lynch’ian slogan for Bush’s Middle Eastern delusion — “Return on Success;” trust Dub to frame in terms of profit. Remarkable words in the obvious face of NO appreciable success, and from a man who has failed the Republican “win, or die” test … this guy’s “pushing up daisies” in that regard, his lifelong track record dismal to the point of laughable. And all this comes as we have just faced the astounding [gulp] task of having to raise the national debt limit to increase our ability to borrow … now it stands at $9.82 trillion; the fifth such increase in Dubbys tenure.

Here’s an excellent collection — you’ll find a most interesting piece from The Street, a marketing site, that cuts George no slack, the Times editorial, others including Krugman. I’d suppose there’s a Jude-equivalent on the Right putting out a collection of kick-ass Righty stuff, starting with a pompous Giuliani article, somewhere in the blogosphere, and capitalizing on our long-standing conceptualization that “war is peace” and “occupation is stability;” George Bush isn’t clever enough by half to make that a national banner by himself — we’re a militaristic society, sucking from the tit of Guns and Butter … he’s just the latest opportunist to have co-opted the underlying arrogance of America’s romance with Manifest Destiny. It’s going to take a real dose of reality to shake this mental/emotional habit!

The most disturbing element of the day? Too little focus on this “staying forever” business … if we think Bush won’t try to do this without us, we’re dead wrong; the Congress needs to step up on this one, and I was pleased to see Nancy Pelosi reject it out of hand in her comments.

We simply MUST grow up!

One, two — buckle my shoe. Shoe, shoe — what to do?

Three, four — SLAM THE FRIKKIN’ DOOR!!!

Jude

[First, a snip from our go-to guy in WaDC, Dan Frookin, with section titles including Jaw Droppers, Incredulous and Backfire]

It Came From Planet Bush
Dan Froomkin, WaPo
Friday, September 14, 2007

In the alternate universe that President Bush occupies, he gave a smashing speech last night.

Over there, the people of Iraq need our help to save them from the al Qaeda terrorists who intend to overthrow their brave and united government on the way to attacking America. It’s a battle of good versus evil. We have 36 countries fighting alongside us. And the fight is going very well indeed. Ordinary life is returning to Baghdad.

A few more things about Bush’s universe: There, the president can make things true simply by solemnly pronouncing them from the Oval Office. He can reach out to his critics just by saying he is doing so. And people believe him.

But over here in the real world, things are different.

Iraq is mostly ruled by armed gangs, not a central government. American troops are dying in the crossfire as the country continues to violently disintegrate along ethnic and sectarian lines. We’re in it pretty much alone. There’s no end in sight. And the real al Qaeda is regrouping in Pakistan.

President Bush is trying and failing to rally support for a war that the majority of Americans have concluded is not worth fighting. He’s not going to change anyone’s mind because he’s too stubborn to change his own. And in any case, his credibility is shot to hell…

[open link for full article]

No Exit, No Strategy
NYT Editorial
September 14, 2007

This was the week in which Americans hoped they would get straight talk and clear thinking on Iraq. What they got was two exhausting days of Congressional testimony by the American military commander, hours of news conferences and interviews, clouds of cut-to-order statistics and a speech from the Oval Office — and none of it either straight or clear.

The White House insisted that President Bush had consulted intensively with his generals and adapted to changing circumstances. But no amount of smoke could obscure the truth: Mr. Bush has no strategy to end his disastrous war and no strategy for containing the chaos he unleashed.

Last night’s speech could have been given any day in the last four years — and was delivered a half-dozen times already. Despite Mr. Bush’s claim that he was offering a way for all Americans to “come together” on Iraq, he offered the same divisive policies — repackaged this time with the Orwellian slogan “return on success.”

Mr. Bush’s claim that things were going so well in Iraq that he could “accept” his generals’ recommendation for a “drawdown” of forces was a carnival barker’s come-on. The Army cannot sustain the 30,000 extra troops Mr. Bush sent to Iraq beyond mid-2008 without serious damage to its fighting ability. From the start, the president said that the increase would be temporary. That’s why he called it a “surge.”

Before he spoke, Iraq’s brutal reality had debunked the claims of political and military success made by Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the ambassador in Baghdad. First, The Times reported that the only sliver of political progress — a tortuous compromise on sharing oil revenues — was evaporating. Then came news of the assassination of the Anbar tribal leader whose decision to fight alongside the Americans was cited by Mr. Bush as proof that the war’s tide was turning — even though it had nothing to do with the increase in forces.

Mr. Bush’s claims last night about how well the war is going are believable only if you use Pentagon numbers so obviously cooked that they call to mind the way Americans were duped into first supporting this war.

There will be a lot said in coming days about Mr. Bush’s “new strategy,” just as there was after each of his previous major addresses on the war. If there was a new strategy, it would be easy to recognize. Mr. Bush would drop the meaningless talk of victory and stop trying to sell Americans the fiction that the war keeps them safe from terrorism. (To his credit, General Petraeus declined to adopt that bit of propaganda.) Instead, Mr. Bush would do what the vast majority of Americans want — plan an orderly withdrawal while doing what he can to mitigate the consequences of the war.

Mr. Bush was right when he said last night that the aftermath of withdrawal would be bloody and frightening, but that is a product of his invasion and his gross mismanagement of the aftermath. Mr. Bush’s endless insistence on staying the course will only make Iraq more bloody and frightening.

If Mr. Bush had a new strategy, he would have talked to the American people last night about what he would do to draw Iraq’s neighbors into a solution. Last January, when he announced the troop increase, Mr. Bush promised to “use America’s full diplomatic resources to rally support for Iraq from nations throughout the Middle East.” The world is still waiting.

A strategy for ending the war would include real efforts to hold Iraq’s government to verifiable measures of political conciliation — and make clear to Iraq’s leaders that they cannot count on America’s indefinite and unquestioning protection.

A real shift in strategy would have included an effort to deal with the massive problem of refugees. Nine months after the surge began, ever more Iraqis are being driven from their homes — and Mr. Bush never even mentioned them last night.

If Mr. Bush were serious about ending the war, rather than threatening Iran and Syria, he would make a serious effort to persuade them that they too have a lot to lose from a disintegrating Iraq. And he would enlist the help of the leaders of Britain, France and Germany for serious negotiations. Then, perhaps, Mr. Bush’s promise from January to stanch the flow of men and weapons into Iraq from Iran and Syria would not have sounded so hollow.

Once again, it is clear that Mr. Bush refuses to recognize the truth of his failure in Iraq and envisions a military commitment that has no end. Congress must use its powers to expose the truth and demand a real change in strategy. Democratic leaders, forever parsing polls, are backing away from proposals to impose a deadline for withdrawal and tinkering with small ideas that mostly sound like ways to enable the president’s strategy of delay.

The presidential candidates, as well, have a duty to take Iraq head-on. Some Democrats have started to talk in some detail about how they would end the war, but the burden is not just on the war critics. Republicans like Rudolph Giuliani and John McCain, who love to proclaim their support for the president and hide behind the troops, need to explain their vision as well. What do they think would constitute victory in Iraq, and how, precisely, do they intend to achieve it?

After all, it seems the burden of ending the war will fall to the next president. Mr. Bush was clear last night — as he was when he addressed the nation in January, September of last year, the December before that and in April 2004 — that his only real plan is to confuse enough Americans and cow enough members of Congress to let him muddle along and saddle his successor with this war that should never have been started.

A Surge, and Then a Stab
Paul Krugman, NYT via WelcomeToPottersville

To understand what’s really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed.

Back in January, announcing his plan to send more troops to Iraq, President Bush declared that “America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.”

Near the top of his list was the promise that “to give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.”

There was a reason he placed such importance on oil: oil is pretty much the only thing Iraq has going for it. Two-thirds of Iraq’s G.D.P. and almost all its government revenue come from the oil sector. Without an agreed system for sharing oil revenues, there is no Iraq, just a collection of armed gangs fighting for control of resources.

Well, the legislation Mr. Bush promised never materialized, and on Wednesday attempts to arrive at a compromise oil law collapsed.

What’s particularly revealing is the cause of the breakdown. Last month the provincial government in Kurdistan, defying the central government, passed its own oil law; last week a Kurdish Web site announced that the provincial government had signed a production-sharing deal with the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas, and that seems to have been the last straw.

Now here’s the thing: Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Mr. Bush. More than that, Mr. Hunt is a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body.

Some commentators have expressed surprise at the fact that a businessman with very close ties to the White House is undermining U.S. policy. But that isn’t all that surprising, given this administration’s history. Remember, Halliburton was still signing business deals with Iran years after Mr. Bush declared Iran a member of the “axis of evil.”

No, what’s interesting about this deal is the fact that Mr. Hunt, thanks to his policy position, is presumably as well-informed about the actual state of affairs in Iraq as anyone in the business world can be. By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds, despite Baghdad’s disapproval, he’s essentially betting that the Iraqi government — which hasn’t met a single one of the major benchmarks Mr. Bush laid out in January — won’t get its act together. Indeed, he’s effectively betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation in any meaningful sense of the term.

The smart money, then, knows that the surge has failed, that the war is lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia. And I suspect that most people in the Bush administration — maybe even Mr. Bush himself — know this, too.

After all, if the administration had any real hope of retrieving the situation in Iraq, officials would be making an all-out effort to get the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to start delivering on some of those benchmarks, perhaps using the threat that Congress would cut off funds otherwise. Instead, the Bushies are making excuses, minimizing Iraqi failures, moving goal posts and, in general, giving the Maliki government no incentive to do anything differently.

And for that matter, if the administration had any real intention of turning public opinion around, as opposed to merely shoring up the base enough to keep Republican members of Congress on board, it would have sent Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, to as many news media outlets as possible — not granted an exclusive appearance to Fox News on Monday night.

All in all, Mr. Bush’s actions have not been those of a leader seriously trying to win a war. They have, however, been what you’d expect from a man whose plan is to keep up appearances for the next 16 months, never mind the cost in lives and money, then shift the blame for failure onto his successor.

In fact, that’s my interpretation of something that startled many people: Mr. Bush’s decision last month, after spending years denying that the Iraq war had anything in common with Vietnam, to suddenly embrace the parallel.

Here’s how I see it: At this point, Mr. Bush is looking forward to replaying the political aftermath of Vietnam, in which the right wing eventually achieved a rewriting of history that would have made George Orwell proud, convincing millions of Americans that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but were stabbed in the back by the peaceniks back home.

What all this means is that the next president, even as he or she tries to extricate us from Iraq — and prevent the country’s breakup from turning into a regional war — will have to deal with constant sniping from the people who lied us into an unnecessary war, then lost the war they started, but will never, ever, take responsibility for their failures.

Surge Reduction Fans Political Flames
John Fout, TheStreet
9/14/2007

President Bush addressed the nation on Iraq last night — his eighth installment on the ongoing war. The American people have heard a stream of edicts on Iraq over the last 4½ years: “mission accomplished,” “the insurgency is in its final throes,” the “surge is working,” and now the “return on success.” After considering all this, the term “quagmire” needn’t be applied only to the progress of the war, but can also be attached to the political and economic impact of this latest iteration.

The president’s position on Iraq has been unpopular for years and his approval ratings stand in the low 30s. But the president has forged on and ignored public disregard for the effort. Will he be able to continue his war in Iraq, or can the Democrats in Congress stop him?

The president did tonight what any good used-car salesman would do: He painted a pretty picture in the hope that nobody notices what is under the hood. When he spoke on Iraq on Jan. 10, the president announced a strategy called the “surge” — an increase in U.S. troops to create an environment for political reconciliation in Iraq.

Technically, the “surge” has failed. The president never discussed his initial reason for the “surge.” He instead focused on the gains made by the military. He proudly touts the success of improved security in the Anbar Province and Baghdad against al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

Intelligence experts and the U.S. military, however, agree that AQI only accounts for about 5% of the violence in Iraq. Yet the president barely mentions sectarian violence or the insurgents in the speech, whereas AQI gets 12 mentions. The public received an incomplete, and thereby incorrect, picture of violence in Iraq.

Political reconciliation has been an utter failure. The Iraqi government and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki have only achieved one of eight of their legislative priorities. The most important legislation remains an accord on oil revenue. Not only has no agreement been signed, but the Kurds have agreed to oil-and-gas sharing contract with Hunt Oil and Impulse Energy. So the Kurds prefer to make agreements to share oil with a Texas company before bothering to deal with their fellow Iraqis. Not encouraging.

Bush had hung his hopes on working with our former Sunni enemies in Anbar, like Sheikh Sattar Abu Risa, who led the Council for the Salvation of the Anbar Province. The sheikh had begun the struggle of fighting the extremism of AQI on his own last summer and had requested help from the U.S. for many months. We finally joined him during the surge.

But the gains made by the combination of Sunni fighters and the U.S. military are in doubt after the sheikh was killed by a huge blast at his home Thursday. A state of emergency was declared in the province following his assassination. So Anbar isn’t so safe after all.

Despite the bad news, Bush only sees the bright side. He announced the endorsement of Gen. Petraeus’ recommendation for troop withdrawals because of the “improving” security situation. As many as 5,700 could come home by Christmas, and another 21,000 may return by next July. This assumes no change for the worse, by the way.

The troop withdrawals are not really withdrawals. The Pentagon has said that the “surge” couldn’t be continued any longer than next spring because of a lack of troops. Troop tours presently last 15 months — up from 12 months before the war started. The surge troops were deployed between January and June of this year and would be returning anyway. Troop levels merely will return to pre-surge levels.

This raises the economic impact. A report from Merrill Lynch assessing the economic impact of a troop withdrawal suggests that the reduction in troops could have an impact on GDP. Based on CBO estimates, the spending on Iraq accounts for 20% of GDP. This leaves the two parties facing interesting challenges as the presidential campaign heats up.

The Democrats in Congress possess significant arguments to oppose the president’s plan: the “surge” failed, Iraq remains violent, and troop withdrawals aren’t withdrawals.

Still, I don’t believe the opposition can succeed. The Democrats have a small majority in the House, where they can pass what they want. But the Senate is another story. They have 49 votes and possibly 50 with Bernie Sanders (D., Vt.) included. They can forget about Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.). The Democrats cannot muster 60 votes to end a filibuster, nor can they come close to 67 to override a veto.

But the Republicans face troubles of their own. The president has handed a lemon to the Republicans in Congress. The Republicans in Congress can in turn say to their constituents that we have made “progress” in Iraq and the troops will come home.

Ultimately, I expect no change of our policy in Iraq until January 2009. That means defense companies will maintain the high profit margins they have enjoyed since 2002 and there won’t be any significant reduction in spending to drawdown on GDP.

The president also alluded to a future after he’s no longer in office. “These Iraqi leaders have asked for an enduring relationship with America,” he said. “And we are ready to begin building that relationship — in a way that protects our interests in the region and requires many fewer American troops.”

That future will be fought out all next year during the congressional and presidential elections where the public will finally weigh in on this long-term view.

Yes, Surge, That’s My Baby: Press Responds to Bush Speech
E&P Staff
September 13, 2007

Bush Speech: Iraq Another Korea
Taylor Marsh, HuffPo
September 13, 2007

Again with the mission creep. I don’t know how many times Mr. Bush has expanded our goals in Iraq, but what he’s offering tonight takes it around the bend and back again.

On an enduring relationship with Iraq that requires many fewer American troops:

These Iraqi leaders have asked for an enduring relationship with America. And we are ready to begin building that relationship — in a way that protects our interests in the region and requires many fewer American troops.

[...]

Mr. Bush can throw in the “fewer American troops” pony, but the the highlighted section above is ominous. What it implies is that Mr. Bush is about to enter into an agreement with the Maliki government that will extend beyond his presidency and commit the U.S. permanently to Iraq. This was obviously the plan all along, especially when you take in the largest embassy on earth, and the football-long bases for troops.

Korea is the model? Only in Bush’s little mind. We haven’t taken serious casualties in Korea since the late 1960s. Does anyone believe casualty rates will plummet with Bush’s new Operation Enduring Nightmare? Just for the record, Bush has been hinting at this for a while (via email from a friend):

“Korea may be Bush’s model for Iraq, officials say”

“With Korea as Model, Bush Team Ponders Long Support Role in Iraq”
“Several visitors to the White House say that in private, he has sounded intrigued by what he calls the “Korea model,” a reference to the large American presence in South Korea for the 54 years since the armistice that ended open hostilities between North and South.”
[The New York Times, 6/3/07]

“Bush envisions U.S. presence in Iraq like S.Korea”
“White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush would like to see a U.S. role in Iraq ultimately similar to that in South Korea.”
[Reuters, 5/30/07]

“White House envisions ‘Korean model’ in Iraq”
“President Bush would like to see the U.S. military provide long-term stability in Iraq as it has in South Korea, where thousands of American troops have been based for more than half a century, the White House said Wednesday.”
[The Seattle Times, 5/31/07]

“S. Korea Eyed as Model for U.S. Troops in Iraq”
“White house spokesman Tony Snow said last week that President Bush looks to South Korea as a sort of model.”
[NPR, 6/10/07]

This new plan for a permanent commitment in Iraq, not just a long-term presence that has been Bush’s launching pad to tonight’s gem, should not go unchallenged by Congress. Of course, we’re likely to hear a chorus of we don’t have the votes blah-blah-blah instead.

Oh, as an aside, the military isn’t fooled by Bush’s Iraqi hearing pageantry. The military are supporting the Democrats in droves. Sign ‘em up and get ‘em to run for office.

Iraq as another Korea?

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse.

Rebutting Bush, Edwards: “No Timeline, No Funding, No Excuses”
After Bush’s lame speech on keeping the war going for a decade, the Democrats came out swinging.
Howie Klein, Down With Tyranny! via Alternet
September 14, 2007

If you didn’t listen to Bush’s lame plan to keep the war going for a decade, here’s the full text. Perhaps someone can name the 36 countries fighting along side us in Iraq. The response from Democrats was… muted and underplayed. We owe John Edwards for buying a couple minutes on MSNBC to give an Outside-the-Beltway response where he said, among other things

No timeline, no funding. No excuses. It is time to end this war.

Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) gave a perfectly fine Inside the Beltway response on behalf of the very loyal semi-opposition. Personally I preferred Howard Dean’s response on behalf of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party:

The President’s speech tonight offers a war without end. It is a PR stunt to buy more time for a stay the course strategy in Iraq that simply hasn’t worked. There’s a reason two-thirds of Americans want a troop decrease in Iraq: our brave troops have done everything that’s been asked of them, but they cannot solve Iraq’s political problems. Now they are hostage to the failure of our civilian leadership to present a thoughtful plan to bring them home.

It is long past time for the President to acknowledge the realities on the ground in Iraq and for Bush Republicans in Congress to stop standing behind the President and start standing up for the American people instead. Republicans urged the American people all along to wait till September before changing course. Well it’s September, and it’s time to do just that.

Like many Democrats, Hillary and Obama sent politically-correct statements out to their supporters. Hill:

What the President told the American people tonight is that one year from now, there will be the same number of troops in Iraq as there were one year ago. That is simply too little too late, and unacceptable to this Congress and the American people who have made clear their strong desire to bring our brave troops home.

The Commander-in-Chief has the authority to issue the order to greatly accelerate the redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq, and to bring so many more of our troops home so much faster. They have done everything we have asked of them and more, but are now stuck in the middle of a civil war. I continue to implore the President to change course, bring our troops home faster, and end this war responsibly as soon as possible.

Obama sounded OK too:

It is long past time to end a war that never should have started. President Bush was wrong when he took us to war, he was wrong when he escalated this war in January, and he is wrong to stay the course now. I opposed this war from the beginning, I introduced legislation in January that would have already started to bring our troops home, and I will continue to lead the fight in the Senate for a fixed timeline with a deadline for the removal of all of our combat troops. The American people are not going to be fooled by the same false promises of success that got us into Iraq. Iraq’s leaders are not making the political progress that was the stated purpose of the surge, but the President wants us to keep giving him a blank check. We must not continue the enormous sacrifice of our troops, our military readiness, our treasury, and our standing in the world just to keep the violence at the same unacceptable levels it was at in 2005 and 2006. That is why I have proposed an immediate and sustained removal of 1 to 2 combat brigades each month to conclude by the end of next year. We have to come together– not as Republicans and Democrats– but as Americans to turn the page in Iraq so that we can recapture our unity of purpose at home and our leadership around the world.

Harry Reid:

For months the American people, a bipartisan majority of Congress and countless military experts have called for a new way forward in Iraq, but the President has offered only a commitment to endless war that will continue to take American lives, deplete our treasury, and divert our focus from fighting an effective war on terrorism against Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda operatives.

After almost five years, tonight was just more of the same. It’s not progress nor is it the strategy for success our troops deserve. And as long as President Bush keeps them in harm’s way without clear purpose or achievable goals, Democrats will keep fighting to responsibly end this war.

Pelosi was good, even if she is, in the words of Chairman Mao, a total and complete paper tiger:

The American people reject the President’s call for an ‘enduring relationship’ with Iraq that is based on leaving our troops in the middle of a deadly civil war for at least 10 years. The President failed to answer how maintaining 130,000 soldiers in Iraq would strengthen our military, make us safer, or how he would pay for its additional $700 billion cost.

In the fifth year of war, after more than 3,700 brave Americans have lost their lives, it is unconscionable to ask additional sacrifices of our military while Iraqi politicians refuse to make the political progress necessary to end sectarian violence. The choice is between a Democratic plan for responsible redeployment and the President’s plan for a 10-year war in Iraq.

So is it time for the Democrats to lead–like most Americans want them to? Even Republicans who live in moderate districts and must fave non-Confederate voters next year were dismayed with the complete lack of genuineness in Bush’s approach tonight. Tomorrow’s Washington Post claims for them it fell flat. Republicans who have been rubber stamps for his policies and agenda know they are in trouble and tonight probably made it worse. A good example is Susan Collins of Maine, a complete Bush Regime tool who fell in with Lieberman and is probably going to be defeated for re-election. She wasn’t happy tonight.

“I just don’t think that waiting another six months to reassess the situation is going to move us forward. The whole premise of the surge, as the president advocated it in January, was to buy time for political reforms, and that didn’t happen. To continue with the same strategy that failed to produce the results that the president and everyone hoped for just doesn’t make sense.”

Does this mean the Democrats will start leading– like most Americans would like to see them do? This craven, cowardly, overly cautious lot? Please!

What Bush Could Not Bring Himself to Say
Trey Ellis, HuffPo
September 13, 2007

The grotesque absurdity of this war, the Groundhog Day feeling that everything said or written about the war today was said or written three years ago, has taken the term “Kafka-esque” to unimagined new levels.

What is clear is that no matter how he tried to finesse it in his speech, the interests of George Bush are not at all the same as the interests of anyone else: not the opposition party, not his own party, not the American or Iraqi people, not the globe. In this intractable quagmire he is the only one who is starting to see some daylight. A little over a year from now he will finally, finally, have pulled himself out of Iraq and back to Crawford.

This is a guy who has never worked hard in his life. If an easy answer wasn’t immediately apparent he just skipped that question and moved on to the next.

That is why in his mind he has already pulled up stakes. A little over a year from now he will be able to say, in the immortal words of Freddie Prinze back on the old show Chico and the Man, “’snot my job, man.”

How on earth can his fellow Republicans be so stupid as to follow him into retirement? Are they just like him? Do they all just want to play golf for the rest of their days?

George Packer in the new New Yorker has written yet another excellent and exhaustive piece on the list of (bad) options for detaching ourselves from the tar baby that is Iraq. Where he keeps getting stuck is his insistence that if we leave, more hell breaks loose in a land where hell is already firmly entrenched. Nevertheless, he solicits advice from every major player so his piece is required reading.

The most amazing quote is from our U.N. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, one of Bush and Wolfowitz’s staunchest neoconservative enablers and our former ambassador to Iraq:

“We’ve made mistakes,” he said. The U.S. has “been like a five-hundred-pound gorilla, sucking the air out of getting any kind of cooperation, rather than giving others a chance.”

What?! How many Iraqis, how many Americans have died because you personally, Ambassador, oversaw an American imperialist pipe dream? And when I say pipe I mean oil pipeline. Tar is an oil derivative so tar baby is a perfect analogy. Cheney’s greed coupled with your neoconservative incompetence is doing what neither the Soviet Union, al Qaeda or the French could do: defeat the world’s last remaining superpower.

We are stuck to Iraq while China and Europe and Russia can prepare for a future without our hegemony. I have often likened us to a bullying mastodon who stumbled into a tar pit (again with the oil derivative analogy). The other mastodons look on while we slowly sink.

The only way out is for the others to lower us a branch to help us out. The problem is that they have no compelling reason to. We were mean and arrogant and they are more powerful with us sidelined, perhaps sidelined forever.

What the President cannot bring himself to understand is that the only way out of this mess is through international cooperation. Barack Obama mentioned it in his major policy speech yesterday but even he didn’t emphasize it as much as it needs to be.

We need to find creative ways to make it in the interest of the world to help us clean up our mess.

For Europe we can promise them a significant share in the oil revenues Cheney so wanted to hoard for himself.

For the Arab world we can give them something more important than what they already have so much of: pride. If we, the sole remaining superpower, humbly ask for a pan-Arab and Muslim solution to this mess then they will have a compelling emotional stake, not just a geopolitical stake, in a stabilized Iraq. The Arab world is understandably touchy about the West’s derision for their culture. Partnering with them fully in Iraq might just help diminish their suspicions about us and our motives.

The final weapon in our arsenal should be money. Developing Muslim countries with significant armies like Egypt and Indonesia could be paid handsomely to come to our aid.

The Iraq war was lost by Bush’s incompetence years ago. Today our leaders must realize that bogging down our entire military until Bush’s term expires threatens to lose us so much more than just Iraq.

The Magnificent 37
Marty Kaplan, HuffPo
September 13, 2007

In case you’re wondering what other nations make up the 37-nation coalition of forces in Iraq cited by President Bush in his Oval Office speech, you may need a scorecard.

Moldova is in (12 troops), but Tonga is out. Bosnia & Herzegovina contributed as many as 37 soldiers in theater, but Slovakia and Hungary have pulled out. El Salvador has stayed, but Nicaragua has gone. Australia, yes; New Zealand, not so much. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, you betcha; Denmark and Norway, gone. Mongolia is in, but Ukraine is out. It appears that Kazahkstan’s 29 troops, and Armenia’s 46, are hanging in there, but Thailand has left the building. For more stats, there’s always the Google.

All those troops’ lives are, of course, as precious to their families, nations and Gods as are the lives of Americans serving in Iraq sacred to their kin and communities and Creators. So, too, though it may be hard for some to imagine, are Iraqi lives.

But when George W. Bush tries to bolster his case for a permanent US military presence in Iraq by citing the splendid international alliance he’s mustered, you have to wonder whether what he really wants us to believe –and what he actually may believe himself — is that the contributions he’s strongarmed from Fiji, Albania et al are just as impressive as the 160,000 troops that his old man wrung from the likes of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and France.

Sometimes it’s just too hard to suppress the suspicion that all of us are just bit players in a delusional son’s deadly Oedipal psychodrama.

Potomac Pinocchio is 7 Cans Short of a 6 Pack
I don’t know what he put in his Kool-Aid, but Bush’s speech last night bore no resemblance to reality.
PoliticsPlus
Friday, September 14, 2007
[Funky graphic here, and collection of news]

“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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