Ok, For the Last Time: The Surge is NOT Working!

But if you were so unfortunate as to listen and actually believe Brit Hume, all the crazy people are Democrats.

This whole debate has this aura of unreality about it, at least on the Democratic side, because they keep talking about events in Iraq that do not comport with the reality on the ground over there. You hear it again and again. You hear it in the attitude they have, you know, they’re going to force troop withdrawals, impervious to the fact that troop withdrawals have already begun. It’s happening.

No, it is not happening. By removing the additional troops brought in for the surge and taking us back down to pre-surge levels, right where we were a year ago, Bush is doing the Hokey-Pokey - not implementing an actual Troop Withdrawal.

It should be noted that violence does seem to be going down in many parts of Iraq as a result of Sunni Tribal leaders turning against and fighting al Qeada, a trend that began four months before the Surge was even announced, but what should also be noted is that the Political Reconcilliation - which was the entire POINT of the surge - hasn't even begun yet, and isn't likely to begin anytime soon.

So is the violence down because of the Surge or the Sunnis?

Or was it possibly both? Were the Sunni's emboldened by America's new found commitment to their security? Well according to the Iraq NIE for 2007, not so much.

August 24, 2007 : Yesterday, the National Intelligence Estimate reported “measurable but uneven improvements” in the security situation in Iraq. While the White House has rushed to suggest that the modest gains were the result of escalation, the improvement can more plausibly be the product of Iraqi expectations of a U.S. withdrawal.

" “[F]earing a Coalition withdrawal, some tribal elements and Sunni groups probably will continue to seek accommodation with the Coalition to strengthen themselves for a post- Coalition security environment” [...]

“The IC assesses that the emergence of ‘bottom-up’ security initiatives, principally among Sunni Arabs and focused on combating AQI, represent the best prospect for improved security over the next six to 12 months, but we judge these initiatives will only translate into widespread political accommodation and enduring stability if the Iraqi Government accepts and supports them.”"

Now why would Iraqis have been anticipating a withdrawal of U.S. Troops - Four Months Before Bush initiated the Surge? Could it have been the fact that was September of 2006, just when the Democrats were poised to take control of both houses of Congress?

I think it could.

There is of course a secondary reason why violence levels have decreased - simply put - they're running out of Iraqis to kill.

Joe Christoff of the GAO: I think that’s [ethnic cleansing] an important consideration in even assessing the overall security situation in Iraq. You know, we look at the attack data going down, but it’s not taking into consideration that there might be fewer attacks because you have ethnically cleansed neighborhoods, particularly in the Baghdad area. [...]

Then there's the fact that those that haven't been killed outright - have simply fled.

BAGHDAD, Aug. 23 — The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has soared since the American troop increase began in February, according to data from two humanitarian groups, accelerating the partition of the country into sectarian enclaves.

The data track what are known as internally displaced Iraqis: those who have been driven from their neighborhoods and seek refuge elsewhere in the country rather than fleeing across the border. The effect of this vast migration is to drain religiously mixed areas in the center of Iraq, sending Shiite refugees toward the overwhelmingly Shiite areas to the south and Sunnis toward majority Sunni regions to the west and north.

All of this information was available two months ago when the NIE was released. Today we have the update that the withdrawal of British Troops from Basra has reduced the violence by 90%.

Britain's 5,000 troops moved out of a former Saddam Hussein palace at Basra's heart in early September, setting up a garrison at an airport on the city's edge. Since that pullback, there's been a "remarkable and dramatic drop in attacks," Binns said.

"The motivation for attacking us was gone, because we're no longer patrolling the streets," he said.

Last spring, British troops' daily patrols through central Basra led to "steady toe to toe battles with militias fighting some of the most tactically demanding battles of the war," Binns said. Now British forces rarely enter the city center, an area patrolled only by Iraqis.

In mid-December, British forces are scheduled to return control of Basra province back to Iraqi officials — officially ending Britain's combat role in Iraq.

So what all this tell us class?

• That when you stop being a target, people stop shooting at you.
  
• When people stop shooting, less people get killed.
  
• When less people get killed, it tends to generally resemble at status often called "Peace", although "Victory" may also be an acceptable answer.
• And lastly what does "The Surge" have to do with any of this?
  

That's right class - "NOTHING!"

Vyan

Update: One skeptical commenter to the Dkos version of this post stated.

Why for a minute there I was beginning to think that we may actually have a military command that was capable of deep analysis of the situation in Iraq and building a strategy of tactics based on those results........

What a waste of taxpayers money, all the US military command have to do is come here and read diaries like these and...voila they got the answer.....

Sheesh......it's all so clear now.....

To Which I say...

You mean Military Commanders like General Ricardo Sanchez, former head of Operations in Iraq?

In one of his first major public speeches since leaving the Army in late 2006, retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez blamed the administration for a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan” and denounced the current “surge” strategy as a “desperate” move that will not achieve long-term stability.

“After more than fours years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism,” Mr. Sanchez said, at a gathering here of military reporters and editors.

“There was been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding later in his remarks that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”

General Richard Cody, Army Chief of Staff who said we're spending too much time fighting insurgents.

General John Batiste, Former Commander of the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq.

Mr. President you did not listen (to the Commanders on the Ground) and continue to persue a failed strategy that is breaking our great Army and Marine Corps.

Batiste also stated that Donald Rumsfeld...

...served up our great military a huge bowl of chicken feces...

Then there's the other 19 Retired Generals who've spoken out against the war.

In op-ed pieces, interviews and TV ads, more than 20 retired U.S. generals have broken ranks with the culture of salute and keep it in the family. Instead, they are criticizing the commander in chief and other top civilian leaders who led the nation into what the generals believe is a misbegotten and tragic war.

As well as young Military Officers...

One question that silenced many of the officers was a simple one: Should the war have been fought?

“I honestly don’t know how I feel about that,” Major Powell said in a telephone conversation after the discussions at Leavenworth.

“That’s a big, open question,” General Caldwell said after a long pause.

And Active Duty Members of the 82nd Airborne who thoroughly rejected the idea that the Surge had been "successful".

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. […]

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

To all this, particularly the call by at least 8 Generals for Rumsfeld to be fired, Bush said:

“My reaction,” Bush would recall of the so-called General’s Revolt, “was, ‘No military guy is gonna tell a civilian how to react.’”

The fact is that "The Surge" was not a plan that was developed by the military, it's a political strategy that came from the Armchair General's at the American Enterprise Institute.

the DC Examiner reports today that “a bunch of arm chair generals in Washington” from the American Enterprise Institute “almost single handedly convinced the White House to change its strategy” in weekend meetings last December. The AEI escalation plan reportedly “won out over plans from the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command”:

Is that kind of "deep analysis" you were speaking of?

Vyan

Al Qaeda in Iraq Defeated!?

From the Wapo.

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, head of the Joint Special Operations Command’s operations in Iraq, is the chief promoter of a victory declaration and believes that AQI has been all but eliminated, the military intelligence official said.

So can we bring our troops home now?

But Adm. William J. Fallon, the chief of U.S. Central Command, which oversees Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, is urging restraint, the official said. The military intelligence official, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity about Iraq assessments and strategy.

Apparently not.

Just as many determinations coming out of Iraq in the last few years have been contradictory, this particular view is no exception.

From Thinkprogress.

The Congressional Research Service recently warned U.S. commanders have increasingly "seemed to equate AQ-I with the insurgency, even though most of the daily attacks are carried out by Iraqi Sunni insurgents." Gen. James Jones, the author of detailed report on Iraqi security forces, said that 98 percent of more of the fighting is an internal civil conflict among Iraqis.

If 98 percent of the violence is coming from the Sunni Insurgency, and that Insurgency as we've seen in Anbar Province has begun to turn against AQ-I, then most of "our job" really does appear to be done. Excepting of course for the Shiite Death Squads and the increasing unease among the largely Shia' and Iran supported Iraqi government at the increasing rise of Sunni influence and control.

The administration’s "Anbar strategy" holds the perilous possibility "that we just end up arming the Sunnis, who still hate the Shi’a...and that eventually the Sunni tribes end up fighting it out with the central government." Echoing this concern, the largest Shiite political coalition in Iraq urged the U.S. military to "abandon its recruitment of Sunni tribesmen into the Iraqi police."

Yeah, that plan seems to be working to perfection doesn't it?

Admittedly the deja vu factor of this declaration is not just a figment of your imagination - particularly since Gen McChrystal happens to be the exact same person who originally recommended that "Major Combat Operations" in Iraq had been completed in April of 2003.

"I would anticipate that the major combat engagements are over," Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal told reporters at a Pentagon briefing. He said U.S. forces are moving into a phase of "smaller, albeit sharper fights."

Maybe all of this might be better understood if we look at recent statements by the former commander of Iraqi Forces when that original "Mission Accomplished" banner was raised - Lt. Gen Ricardo Sanchez.

"There was been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders," he said, adding later in his remarks that civilian officials have been "derelict in their duties" and guilty of a "lust for power."

Iraq is a living nightmare with no end in sight.

"National leadership continues to believe that victory can be achieved by military power alone," he said. "Continued manipulations and adjustments to our military strategy will not achieve victory. The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off defeat."

Asked after his remarks what strategy he favored, General Sanchez ticked off a series of steps — from promoting reconciliation among Iraq’s warring sectarian factions to building effective Iraqi army and police units — that closely paralleled the list of tasks frequently cited by the Bush administration.

But he said that the administration had failed to craft a detailed strategy for achieving those steps that went beyond the use of military force.

The only reason logically to make such a declaration that Al Qaeda in Iraq has been Defeated would be in preparation for a full scale pull out of our troops. Declare Victory and Leave, but since everything politically argues that it's to the advantage of the Bush Administration to prolong this conflict until the end of his term, declaring "Victory" now is about as likely as Gen. Petreaus winning the Nobel Peace Prize!.

Looking at all sides of the arguement, it is clearly true as Gen Sanchez points out that our military strategy has been doomed without a coresponding diplomatic effort - however it's also apparent that despite that failure, and regardless of The Surge, Sunni Insurgent forces decided long ago and largely on their own to turn to "our side" and begin to battle back against Al Qeada.

If the measly 1000 or so fighters who represent Al Qeada in Iraq are finally on the verge of defeat it will not be seen as a victory for America, it will be the validation of the ascendency of Sunni power in the region - and situation that already has the Shia led government of Iraq quaking in their boots.

The battle with Al Qaeda may indeed be soon over - if it isn't already as Gen McChrystal suggests - but if so the battle between Sunni and Shia's for control of the nation of Iraq is only just beginning.

Vyan

Pelosi has not "Thrown in the Towel"

In today's rec'd diary by buhdydharma the arguement is put forward that Nancy Pelosi has completely given up on her promise to End the Iraq War in a recent interview with Wolf Blitzer.



In the midst of Wolf's talking points Pelosi lays out the sad reality that Republicans have now taken ownership of this war along with President Bush by obstructing Democratic attempts to end it.

As pointed out in the diary Pelosi hasn't given up...

BLITZER: So, are you telling your angry base out there in the Democratic Party that wants to see this war over with, wants to see the U.S. troops home, that you, as speaker, there's nothing you can do, you have to just throw your hands up and say...

PELOSI: No. I didn't say that at all.

BLITZER: ... given the legislative problems in the Senate and the president's stubborn refusal to back down, that there's nothing that you can do?

PELOSI: How could you have ever gotten that impression?

BLITZER: All right, well, tell us...

PELOSI: What I have said, for those who pay attention, is that we will hold this administration accountable time and time again for the conduct of this war in Iraq.

Buhdydharma argues that they she doesn't say that they will impeach to end the war- whereas I've long argued that we aren't ready to impeach yet. (Why not? Because we'd lose!)

Blitzer quotes John Edwards claim that Congress can simply continue to send Redeployment Legislation to the President, Pelosi explains why this isn't possible due to Republican Obstruction.

BLITZER: But you could in the House of Representatives use your power of the purse, the money, to stop funding the war if you really wanted to.

PELOSI: I wish the speaker had all the power you just describe. I certainly could do that. That doesn't bar the minority from bringing up a funding resolution. They have their parliamentary prerogative as well.

It's absolutely true that the House could create a bill that flat-out defunded the war or to refuse to send any bill that does fund the war in the same way that in 1995 Newt Gingrich refused to allow any bills on the House floor that didn't simultaneous include massive tax cuts for the rich and a date-certain balanced budget by 2002.

President Clinton's proposed budget for that year didn't meet that criteria as wasn't voted on, although some Blue Dog Democrats did come up with their own budget ideas and managed to get them through John Kascich budget committee.

The main difference today is that with it pretty much established that Bush will veto any date-certain resolutions on Iraq redeployment (just as Clinton did on a date-certain balanced budget) there are a great many Democrats who just might vote for a Republican measure that strips away any time-tables and benchmarks for redeployment and let it pass.

In short Pelosi refusing to bring up the bill isn't the end of the issue.

Pelosi: So what we have done is to send bills that limit the mission, to limit the time there, to redeploy the troops. And last week, I believe, was a turning point in the congressional debate on Iraq. I think we changed it going in by putting a bill on the president's desk.

Since May until now, we haven't been able to put something on the president's desk.

BLITZER: Because of the Senate. That's what you're saying.

PELOSI: Because of the Senate. The 60 votes.

Let's focus in on this a second. Since the Veto the Republicans have established a standing filibuster of any redeployment or timetable bills in the Senate. Edward suggestion that they keep sending the "same bill" to the President simply isn't possible if those bill can't get to the Senate floor without passing the 60 vote filibuster threshold.

But last week we were really optimistic that the Senate would at least support the readiness of our troops. The Webb resolution, Webb amendment to the defense bill was a resolution that said the guidelines of the Defense Department, the same amount of time in war, you have the same amount of time at home to regroup, to retrain, to recover, to be with your family.

BLITZER: It didn't have enough votes.

PELOSI: When they rejected that -- it had enough votes to pass and in a bipartisan...

BLITZER: But not to beat a filibuster.

PELOSI: But it did not have enough votes to be heard, to be heard so that a majority, a bipartisan majority of the Senate could have sent this to the president's desk. We have been trying to reach out, as the American people want us to do, in a bipartisan way, to build a bipartisan consensus to redeploy the troops out of Iraq safely and soon.

BLITZER: You know your base is really frustrated. Really angry...

PELOSI: I'm frustrated myself.

In order to resolve this many people including Edwards and Kucinich are suggesting a completely unworkable option. But just for a second let's assume that the Democrats could realistically take the position that they won't send any more funding bills to the President until he agrees he'll sign some type of serious redeployment and refocus of our mission in Iraq.

Eventually the existing funding bills will run out and we'll be right back into the same game of Governmental Chicken that the Gingrich Congress was forced to play with President Clinton.

You guys remember who won that fight?

It wasn't the Congress.

There is no evidence - none - that repeating the confrontation that shutdown almost the entire U.S. government twice will end any differently this time than it did last time - and this time were in the midst of a war where cutting off funding for several weeks might literally mean cutting off supply lines and support services for our troops.

You think KBR is gonna work for free? Blackwater? Triple Canopy?

Democrats have already fought tooth and nail to get our troops proper equipment, uparmored Humvees and helmets only to now turn around and say sorry - we can't be bother to make sure any of that stuff actually gets delivered while we have a pissing contest with the President.

Yeah, that'll fly.

There is the possibility we might be able to pin the blame for this on President and Republicans, but again that strategy didn't work so well for Gingrich did it?

Some have already argued with this interpretation of things after I posted it as a comment:

Irrelevant comparison to Gingrich shutdown. (2+ / 0-)

And frankly, I'm sick of people making it. Gingrich shut down the government because he wanted to cut funding to Social Security, a popular program. How is shutting down the government (if that is indeed what it comes to) because you want to cut funding to an unpopular program, i.e., a war that two-thirds of the American people hate, an equivalent?

The popularity of the issue isn't at question, it's a question of willpower between the Congress and the President. Gingrich was certain Clinton would fold. He didn't. Does anyone think Bush is gonna fold?

I don't.

He's already vetoed against Stem Cell research that will help real people while on the theory that phantom snowflake people might be harmed twice. He vetoed the timetable bill and he's about to veto health care for children on the argument that we can't afford it while we're in the middle of spending trillions to kill people in Iraq!?!

You think he's gonna blink if our soldiers have to suffer the brunt of his stubborness and go without funding for a few weeks? Not even.

As to your second point, if there is a standing filibuster (whatever that is) in the Senate against any timetable/redeployment bills, the correct response is not to cave in to the minority when two-thirds of the American people are on your side. The correct response -- if you are sincerely against this war, which I doubt Democrats are -- is to counter with a standing filibuster against any bills without a timetable/redeployment component..

Which means that no bills at all will reach the President's desk (not even the fairly modest Webb dwell time amendment) and we're back into the mexican standoff scenario that Gingrich already attempted and failed at. Let me repeat - Twice!

Now, as to the arguement that Congress is otherwise "doing nothing" as Blizter alleges.

BLITZER: But holding the president accountable, I just want you to explain, what does that mean? Besides just complaining and holding hearings? Specifically, is there anything else you can do?

PELOSI: Well, holding hearings and the oversight that we have on the corruption in contracting in Iraq, the hearings that we're holding and the harm to the readiness of our troops that the president is causing with his obstinance in this war in Iraq.

Blitzer seems ignorant to the fact that Democratic pressure has already taken a dozen scalps from former DOJ and Whitehouse personell including Kyle Sampson, Monica Goodling, Tim Griffin, Susan Ralston, Sara Taylor, Paul McNulty, Brad Schlozman, and the Fredo-of-Darkness himself - Alberto Gonzales.

Harriet Miers and Karl Rove are on the verge of Contempt of Congress charges - which could mean being jailed in the Capital until they answer questions on the DOJ purge.

Those are all accomplishments we should be proud of seem to be much more than just a bunch of "complaints and hearings." to me.

To all of this I've heard the response that the Democrats need to make a symbolic gesture of at least forcing Republicans to actually go through with the filibuster in the Senate over troop reductions. Now Bush has already - finally - agreed to troop reductions, but we need to make the Republicans go through the process of actually filibustering against not giving the troop anything - unless we have a date-certain timetable for bringing them all home, even though we all know damn well that the filibuster has practically no chance what-so-ever of being broken.

That my friends, is called one thing : playing politics with the troops.

How many troops are we willing to risk and possibly lose in order to save the troops?

There's a reason why it was abhorrent when the Republicans pulled this kind of grand-stand stunt over Terry Schiavo and over the Medicare Drug Bill and over the Bankruptcy Bill. That kind of crap is why we kicked their assses out! So us our improvement simply to have our own bunch of hardheaded left-wing pitbulls ready to destroy our country and use our own troops as hostages simply to have our own way on an issue?

No, that's not what we voted for, at least it's not what I voted for.

I know the fact that we've been outflanked, so far, is a bummer. I know that the options we have left aren't neccesarily glamourous, dramatic or sexy, but if we can't take the direct route of redeployment and defunding (and we can't anymore) you have to use a war of attrition at hit them where they're weakest. For example : Dive into the war contracting and rip Blackwater a new one.

Attacking the warprofiteers and contractors is a good strategy IMO, it completely undermines the powerbase that is pushing this war forward in order to line thown pockets with the coins soaked in American and Iraqi blood.

The President has now called for the begining of redeployment, bogus though they may be, the momentum has shifted our our favor - we simply need to do all we can to responsibly accelerate that process.

But we also have to recognize that we will have troops in Iraq at the start, and possibly even the end, of the next Presidency, even if it's a Democrat. The goal at this point needs to be laying the groundwork with a Diplomatic Surge and working with those in the region to make that footprint as small as possible.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy with the sitation - I just think that what so many people are demanding of Pelosi and Reid are very bad ideas which in the end still won't bring the troops home any faster.

I know many disagree, and that's fine. We all have the same goal, the question is how to get there rationally.

Vyan

The Big Dog Bites

Bill Clinton of the MoveOn Ad Kerfuffle.

It was just bait and switch. It was just, oh thank goodness, I can take this little word here and ignore what we’ve done in Iraq and what we’re gonna do — and the outrageous way we gained political power by smearing John Kerry.

That's right, it's just smoke and mirrors getting our eyes misty while the right-wing robs our rights and treasury blind. $190 Billion more for Iraq, and yet another phony evisceration to FISA - while the Repubs play "Hey, LOOK OVER THERE" and like Lucy pulling the ball out from under Charlie Brown the Dems go for and land flat on their back time and time again. This time it was the Houses turn as they voted to condemn a newspaper ad that happens to embarris one political party with the truth, while ignoring a string of lies that same party has purportrated against our military veterans for years.

"Bait and Switch" just about covers it.

Vyan

Who Supports the Troops? (Marsha Blackburn doesn't!)

Yesterday on MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson show, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) repeatedly condemned the recent MoveOn.org ad about Gen. Petraeus. But when host David Shuster asked her for the name of the last soldier from her district killed in Iraq, Blackburn faltered. Schuster informed her of the soldier’s name and added, “When was the last time a New York Times ad ever killed somebody?” Watch it:

Cent Uygar on the Wapo 'Fact Check" of General Betrayus Ad

Cenk Uygar of the Young Turks takes the WaPo "Fact Check" of MoveOn's Betreayus Ad apart piece by piece - then burns the pieces.

Bush Obsessed by Betray US MoveOn Ad

From RawStory

Taking questions from reporters in the White House press room Thursday morning, President Bush seemed more eager to pile on a week-and-a-half's worth of Republican attacks on a MoveOn.org ad than he was to talk about issues with actual geopolitical impact.

In fact he was so upset by the ad that went into an "extended diatribe" over it at the end of his press conference.

The president called the group's full-page New York Times ad "disgusting," and he accused Democrats of caring more about the feelings of liberal activists than the US military.

Feelings.. nothing more than feelings...

Hey Commander Prez-Guy, can our troops have a side of Body Armor and Health Care to go with this old song and dance? Pretty Puhleeze?

Update A Short Clip from the Presser:

"I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus but on the U.S. military.

Yet again, no one can say anything about any specific soldier without attacking the "ENTIRE U.S. MILITARY." It's not like they happen to be individuals or anything. What are they a multi-headed hydra joined at the hip or something? The Uni-mind? All is one - One is All. Y'know - like an Army of One!...

uh oh!

And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad," Bush said. "That leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are (more) afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org ... than they are of irritating the United States military. That was a sorry deal."

He's upset that more Democrats didn't speak out against it? Let's see that ad was criticized by John Kerry, Joe Biden, John Edwards, Elizabeth Edwards and of course, Joe Lieberman - but who didn't speak out against it? Oh yeah - Hillary.

So this is just a pre-emptive jab a Hillary? Ok, fine - that just means Republicans are actually afraid of her. Good.

But it's interesting that when the show was on the other stage and you had people accusing someone like say - John Kerry - of being a "traitor" and giving "aid and comfort to the enemy" the President wasn't nearly so upset. Maybe that's because the President was one of the people making the accusation. (ala WaPo)

Appearing in the Rose Garden yesterday with Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, Bush said Kerry's statements about Iraq "can embolden an enemy." After Kerry criticized Allawi's speech to Congress, Vice President Cheney tore into the Democratic nominee, calling him "destructive" to the effort in Iraq and the struggle against terrorism.

As did Orin Hatch.

Democrats are "consistently saying things that I think undermine our young men and women who are serving over there."

And John Thune speaking about his then Senate rival Tom Daschle.

"His words embolden the enemy." Thune, on NBC's "Meet the Press," declined to disavow a statement by the Republican Party chairman in his state saying Daschle had brought "comfort to America's enemies."

And Dennis Hastert

Asked whether he believed al Qaeda would be more successful under a Kerry presidency, Hastert said: "That's my opinion, yes."

So did anyone on the Republican side of the aisle disavow these remarks? Did anyone at all stand up and say - "this is going too far - it's Disgusting!"? Hm, not so much.

The White House and the Bush campaign said they would neither endorse nor disavow the remarks by Hastert, Armitage and others. "Those statements speak to the great concern many people have about John Kerry's consistent vacillation under political pressure on the most significant issues the nation faces with regard to the war on terror," Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan had no quarrel with the remarks. "They are expressing their opinion," he said.

So all these Republicans were just "expressing their opinion", say like the opinion that Senator Max Clelend has now become a member of Al Qeada simply because he voted against the Patriot Act. It's not like the Patriot has been abused a few thousand times or anything.

No one on the Republican side has spoken out about these actual abuses, not just theoretically ones, real ones. But somehow Democrats are deficient if they don't toss MoveOn from the train over "General Betray Us?"

Yeah, It's not like Repubilicans have ever attacked General Zinni.

MOWBRAY: Discussing the Iraq war with the Washington Post last week, former General Anthony Zinni took the path chosen by so many anti-Semites: he blamed it on the Jews.

Technically, the former head of the Central Command in the Middle East didn’t say "Jews." He instead used a term that has become a new favorite for anti-Semites: "neoconservatives."

Or General Batiste

Bush on Rumsfeld Criticism: ‘No military guy is gonna tell a civilian how to react.'

Or General Eaton.

In making his point that Secretary Rumsfeld should resign, Eaton also maligned nearly all of the military's key leaders of the past four years. Eaton's attack was innacurate, unprofessional and uncalled for. In summing up his case against the Secretary of Defense, the retired general illustrated a mindset that appears focused on issues that have already passed, rather than the problems being faced by commanders in the field today.

And guess what - Moveon didn't even invent the "Betray Us" term - the troops did as Time Online Reported way back in August.

AFTER being hailed as King David, the potential saviour of Iraq, the US commander General David Petraeus is facing a backlash in advance of his report to Congress in September on the progress of America’s troop surge.

Critics, including one recently retired general, are privately calling him "General Betraeus" on the grounds that he is too ambitious to deliver a balanced report on the war.

Lawrence Korb, a defence official under Ronald Reagan who is now at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank, said Petraeus was regarded as "the most political general since General [Douglas] Mac-Arthur".

It's also interesting to note, as John Stewart did last night in discussion with General Wesley Clark, that Petreaus actually wrote the manual on counter-insurgency for the Army, yet his current strategy in Iraq is 180 degrees from what he wrote.

Hm. Could it be that it's not really his idea? (I mean, it's not like he wrote report all by himself or anything is it?)

Possibly not if you listen to what Petreaus own commanding officer, Admiral Fallon head of CentCom, really thinks of him.

Fallon told Petraeus [in March] that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickensh*t" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

Might an "ass-kissing little chickenshit" toss his own long considered theories and opinions out the window in order to secure advancement and in effect BETRAY THE TROOPS in the process?

I think he might, and I think the fact that everything Petraus said contradicts the GAO, the CRS, The NIE and most recently released Pentagon Report on Iraq seems to back this up.

Democrats shouldn't be backing slowly away from Moveon.org - they should be piling on, particularly since everything Moveon.org has said about Petreaus - iS TRUE. (Psst! Just the way Republicans always do when what they're Playing the 'Traitor' Card!)

P.S. They should all take some lessons in courage from John Murtha (who has a few ribbons and medals to his credit, I think)

"I’m saying (Gen Petreaus) came back here at the White House’s request to purely make political statements," Murtha said. "That’s what I’m saying. There’s no question in my mind about it."

Vyan

Biden of Faux: We're Breaking the Military

Following questioning of Defense Secretary Gates on the issue of the Webb proposal to increase the time at home for troops to a year, in which the SecDef stated that he would support a veto of such a measure, Joe Biden responded back that Webb's measure is neccesary because - We Are Breaking the Military.

Gates: I think really, pretty much it's a backdoor effort to accelerate the drawdown so that it's an automatic kind of thing rather than based on the conditions on the ground.

As if the current drawdown plan isn't an automatic kind of thing already at least according to testimony of Gen Patreaus'.

"Yes, the surge forces were scheduled to go home between April and mid-July, that is absolutely right,"

The surge had to end by April. There's been minimal political progress since the surge began, most of the security progress which had been acomplished by Sunni tribesman in Al Anbar began before the surge even started and the fact that much of the civil strife has begun to burn out on it's own now that all the serious work of ethnic cleansing has been completed.

So who's kidding who around here?

Gates: We would have force management problems that would be extremely difficult and, in fact, create, I think would effect combat effectiveness and perhaps pose graater risk to our troops.

Really? How so?

Gates: We would have to be looking at gapping units, where a unit pulling out would not be immediately replaced so you'd have an area of combat operations where no U.S. troops are present and the unit coming in would face greater risks.

But what about that vast 200,000 man Iraqi Army we've been training for the last three years, couldn't they be used to fill those "gaps" while our troop rotate back home? And if they aren't available can't we just find another warlord/thug/ex-insurgent/gangster like the late great Sheik Sattar to hold the line??

I guess not.

We'd have to cobble to together units, we'd have to track the service of each individual soldier.

Pardon me, but aren't they already supposed to be tracking the service of each individual soldier?

In response Biden, whose son is scheduled to be deployed to Iraq in 2008, had this to say.

BIDEN: What are the consequences of continuing to do what we’re doing with essentially the way in which we’re deploying these troops? As the military said we’re breaking, we’re breaking the United States military. Flat breaking it. And what we’re doing is we’re going to end up in a situation where you don’t have people signing up. you’re gonna end up having to go to draft. This long-term consequence, keeping these kind of deployments is absolutely disastrous for the United States of America and for the United States military. It’s not a good thing the other way either. You choose two very bad alternatives. One very bad and one okay. If you don’t figure out how to get these folks some time home, you are gonna break, break this military. That’s what this is about. and we can do what we need to do in Iraq with significantly fewer troops. That is my contention and the contention of a whole lot of other people outside this administration.

As thinkprogres points out, it's not just people outside the Administration who feel that we can get the job done in Iraq with fewer troops - it's also the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Army Chief of Staff and other generals.

• Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace: Pace "is expected to advise President Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq next year by almost half" and "is likely to convey concerns by the Joint Chiefs that keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military." [8/24/07]
• Army Chief of Staff George Casey: "Right now we have in place deployment and mobilization policies that allow us to meet the current demands. If the demands don’t go down over time, it will become increasingly difficult for us to provide the trained and ready forces." [8/20/07]
• Commanding General Odierno: "We know that the surge of forces will come at least through April at the latest, April of ‘08, and then we’ll have to start to reduce...we know that they will start to reduce in April of ‘08 at the latest." [8/26/07]
• Army Secretary Peter Geren:"[T]he service’s top official, recently said he sees ‘no possibility’ of extending the duty tours of US troops beyond 15 months." [8/30/07]
• Former Secretary of State Colin Powell: "[T]hey probably can’t keep this up at this level past the middle of next year, I would guess. This is a tremendous burden on our troops." [7/18/07]

In additional to all this there is also the views of Gen. Patreaus direct commander Gen Admiral William Fallon, head of CentCom.

The polite discussion in the White House Situation Room a week ago masked a sharper clash over the U.S. venture in Iraq, one that has been building since Fallon, chief of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees Middle East operations, sent a rear admiral to Baghdad this summer to gather information. Soon afterward, officials said, Fallon began developing plans to redefine the U.S. mission and radically draw down troops.

One of those plans, according to a Centcom officer, involved slashing U.S. combat forces in Iraq by three-quarters by 2010.

This is also consistent with the testimony of Gen James Jones.

JONES: [W]e can consider taking a look at our footprint, taking a look at how many people we have in Iraq, how many bases we have, how many locations we have, and begin to think about ways in which we can realign the force, retask the force, and even remission it, so that we can gradually adjust our footprint and our military commanders can do it.

SKELTON: Does that mean reduce?

JONES: Sir?

SKELTON: Does that mean reduce our force?

JONES: It means — it means finding efficiencies and it means — yes, it means making a candid assessment of who’s over there, who absolutely needs to be there, critically, and making sure that we are operating at peak efficiency and don’t have excessive capacity simply over there because it’s their time to go.

So contrary to Gates claims, we can and should not only limit the deployments of our troops according to several key members of the President's own command team we should be looking a far more intensive drawdown of forces than the President has proposed - with little or no risk to the integrity of the mission.

Which was what again by the way? WMD's? Loose Nukes? Al Qeada? Insurgents? Elections? Democracy? Peace? Flowers and Candy? Protecting America?

I know I've lost track, and I think Gates has too.

Vyan

Kerry v McCain on the Presi-Treaus Report and "Making Progress"

Today John McCain in the last throes of his striaght (and slightly 'round the corner) talk tour went on This Week to pump a last few puffs of air into the soon to be orally delivered Presi-Treaus Report on our "success" in Iraq so far.

Fortunately John Kerry was also there to provide a bit of Reality-Checking, not to mention sanity.

(Video from Move On documenting the White House version of "progress")

Prefacing this latest version of the "We're Kicking Ass in Iraq" Show prior to the upcoming report was a brief clip from April of 1967 where Gen. Westmoreland spoke to a joint session of Congress to explain just how well we're doing on our last disastrous military boondoogle - Vietnam.

Westmoreland: The strategy we are pursuing is the correct one. And that it is making progress.

Making "progress"? - It's seem we're always making progress, just before we finally realize we've been running in circles, meanwhile the cost of slowly digging this ditch of mystical "progress" is often paid for in buckets of treasure and blood.

While we continued to "make progress" in South East Asia the U.S. lost approx 38,000 troops in from 1968 and 1972. Nice job.

After the clip Stephanapolous also pointed out that much of the public is highly skeptical of Patreaus' upcoming report.

Hmm, ya think?

- 43% Believe Patreaus will fudge the numbers
- 66% Believe Bush will continue his current course regardless of what the report says
- Only 28% believe that things are now “better in iraq”

None of this detered John McCain as he first tried to rehabilitate Patreaus from comparisons to Westmoreland.

McCain – Petreaus new strategy is more like that of Gen. Abrams [who significantly changed things in Vietnam] than Westmoreland.

So those additional 38,000 deaths should be laid at whose feet then? Westmoreland who false claimed we were "making progress" or Abrams who still didn't make any real progress even after this dramatic strategy change? How many more American Deaths will we be counting after this latest "progress" report?

But then again we have to show some sympathy to McCain, you see - he of course only wants what we all want right?

McCain : Of course we are all tired of this war and want our troops out - but we need to get out with honor”

My that phrase sounds familiar doesn't it, might it have previously been uttered by Richard Milhouse Nixon in 1973 when he finally announced the agreement to end the vietnam war?

Good evening. I have asked for this radio and television time tonight for the purpose of announcing that we today have concluded an agreement to end the war and >bring peace with honor in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia.

But it seems to me, McCain doesn't really believe this kind of rhetoric since he later in the program proclaimed that what really don't want is a "defeated" army like the one we had after declared our "peace with honor" in Vietnam.

McCain: I know what it’s like when you have a defeated army. In the 1970 after we had a defeated army we had riots on our aircraft carriers we had rampant drug use we can insubordination, we had a broken army and it took us a decade to recover from that. I don’t want a defeated army.

Stephanopolous: The question is what does it take?

McCain: It does appear that this is moving toward a soft partition. If we leave the Sunni will ally the Iran, the Kurds declare independence. (If we leave) I am convinced that it will be chaos and genocide.

Here's a newsflash you Johnny, it's already is chaos and there already has been genocide and ethnic cleansing. A point which John Kerry made perfectly clear in response.

Kerry: And the fact of the matter is - John McCain just said there isn’t going to be a “soft partition” in Iraq – well the fact of the matter George is that their already is a soft partition in Iraq. At the beginning of this war Baghdad was 65% Sunni, today it is 75% Shia. And the fact is that you’ve had tens of thousand of Iraqis who have been driven out of their communities. And one of the reasons the violence is down is because this level of partition is already taken place.

The real issue isn't about our troops being "defeated" - didn't we declare Mission Accomplished several years ago? Our troops have long ago succeeded in finding out that Saddam had no WMD's, and that he had no ties to Al Qaeda - and managed to depose and execute him anyway. Good Job. Now the question is somewhat different, it's not whether the troops will be defeated - it's whether democracy and diplomacy will be defeated and that's something the troops have nothing to do with.

Stephanpolous: Sen. McCain says we have to give it more time to work.

Kerry: Well that’s the same kind of flawed thinking, I regret to say, that has brought us the first four and a half years of this disastrous war and the thinking that got us mired in Vietnam. You heard McCain say “I don’t want to see a defeated army”. That tells the whole story. It’s not a question of a defeated army, it’s a question of whether the Iraqi government is going to step up and make decisions that are out of the hands of our army. That are outside of any military solution.

So in effect, when Senator McCain and the republicans setup this equation "we can’t have a defeated army, our troops have to come home with honor" - well, of course they have to come home with honor - but they’ve done all that they can do. They've given the Iraqi government time to make those choices, and as we’ve seen the Iraqi government is failing utterly to make any of the critical compromises.

...

These benchmarks were set by the Iraqis, they said this is what you should measure us by and the administration said this is what you should measure us by. Well, we are. And when you look at only three out of 18 benchmarks met, and the three that are met are almost unimportant in terms of the real issue - the oil revenues, the elections the de-bathification, the amnesty – the sole reason for sending more troops was to give them time to make that decision. They’ve been given that time but they haven’t even begun to make the critical decisions.

Ah, yes isn't that nostalgia for the 60-70's intoxicating? Meanwhile in the present day, the question of have we made any "progress" in Iraq is still pressing. The real question is "Should we Stay or should we Rock The Casbah"? What does Mccain say?

McCain: No, the Iraqi government has not met benchmarks, but there has been significant local progress. But this strategy has “only just begun” and I think we’re just getting to a point where we could start withdrawing troops.

Stephapolous: How much time do we give them? Gen Patreaus strategy is based on having a functioning Iraqi government...

McCain: It’s only been after four years of a failed strategy (by Rumself) that we’ve had this strategy in place for short period of time. I share the frustration of the American people, but there is significant political progress – at the local level – on the ground.

By "Local Progress" McCain like so man right-wingers are now hanging all their hopes on Al-Anbar province. The problem of course is that what happened in Anbar has basically nothing to do with the Surge.

Stephanopoulous: Some democrats have come back from Iraq say they see progress. Congressman Brian Baird said “I believe the dynamics on the ground are changing, the changes I’ve seen warrant continued action until next spring”

Kerry: I think it’s really important that people who take quick trips to Iraq (and leasurely stroll through Markets with a ton of Humvee and gunships overhead) don’t get sidetracked by what’s really at stake here. Sunni violence in Anbar province was originally [caused by] al Qeada. And the Sunni sheiks decided they were tired of seeing their daughters raped and their suns beheaded, and violence in their villages. So they’ve took advantage of this moment. And they decided to cooperate with us in order to protect Sunni within their essentially Sunni province. No one can explain, and no one in the administration can particularly say how what has happened in Anbar province translates into anything the rest of Iraq.

Let me just emphasize the point that what we did in Anbar was ally ourselves with the local Insurgents, after they already decided to fight al Qaeda on thier own before the surge even began. Talk about trying to walk in during the third act and take credit.

There are reports today that one of the tribal leaders that met with Bush last week, Sheik Sattar is one of the shadiest characters in the region. Whose tribes is..

notorious for highway banditry, is also building a personal militia, loyal not to the Iraqi government but only to him.” Marc Lynch writes, “It’s kind of humiliating to watch an American President get rolled by a two bit, corrupt petty shaykh

Is this the kind of "progress" we're talking about here? Breaking bread with former killers of Americans and allowing them to setup their own mini-feifdoms?

I guess we have to roll-with-the-gangsters now since the Iraqi government is completely corrupt don't we? Maybe in the long run, ignoring the useless Iraqi Police, Iraqi Army and Iraqi Government and working directly with tribal leaders and former insurgents just might be the correct strategy to creating stabiilty in the region - but it would be nice if we were grown up enough to admit it.

The fact is the some of the fighting is down in certain areas because the ethnic cleansing of those area is now complete. Simple put: there's no one left alive to fight with they're either all dead or have fled.

However, in other areas where the civil war hasn't yet been settled, it's through the roof.

But that isn't a song that McCain cares to sing. He would prefer to simply belittle anyone and everyone who might happen to criticize this near total failure that the Iraq War has been and still is.

McCain: We used to hear that we weren’t making progress militarily, well now that we are we hear that we aren’t making progress politically. Suppose we are making progress (poltically) and in six months I come back on this program will you and the others say – “way to go?”

Stephanoplous: I hope that the evidence justifies it.

Yeah, that's telling isn't it? Doesn't "I hope the evidence justifies it" pretty much mean that Georgie just called McCain a liar to his face?

And he's not the only one since MoveOn.org has put out its "General Betray Us" ad - and McCain is certainly not above playing the Neo-Patriot Card.

Move On: Cooking the books for the White House.

General Petreaus will not admit what everyone else knows: Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war.

McCain: He's served his country with honor and distinction and if we have to sink to that level to besmirch the honor of a fair an fine individual. I lament the level of dialogue. I hope that my democrat friends will not be guided by moveon.org.

Steph: They say many of them have taken to calling this the Bush Report and that it may have undue White House Influence.

Mac: I know this man, he’s not going to allow politicization of the dedication and service that not only he is providing, but the brave young men and women under his command. This may be an indication of the level of discussion in this country, when the leader of the senate says "the war is lost", when a congressman from South Carolina says it would "hurt the democrat plans" if we succeed, Sen. Schumer says "we’re going to pick up seats" as a result of this war. What they fail to understand is that that Presidents don’t lose war snd political parties don’t lose wars – nations lose wars. When nations lose wars the nation suffers the consequences.

If we start disparaging the men and women who are serving in uniform and their honor, then I think we’ve reached a sad place in American politics.

What do you mean "reached"?

McCain laments the "level of the dialogue" of Democrats (for simply pointing out that Patreaus has already shown himself to be a liar fact fudger by the GAO, the Congressional Research Service and other experts) after the Bush campaign alleged that his experience as a P.O.W. in Vietnam had "made him crazy", and that he had an illegitimate black child?

Are you serious?

He laments this after Jean Schmidt called a decorated Marinelike John Murtha "a coward."

He laments this when people like Melanie Morgan - who somehow rates a private visit to the White House - can go around saying that Captain Jon Soltz should be "crushed like a cockroach?"

He thinks things have started getting "nasty" when Democrats point out that Patreaus numbers simply don't add up?

Really now?

I mean, don't we all understand that Democrats are allied with Al-Qeada, didn't Osama Bin Laden just say so? (PDF of Latest Bin Laden Tape)

Not to Kerry.

Kerry: Osama Bin Laden's tape is testimony to one thing, the failure of this Administration to capture and kill him. The failure at Tora Bora and the failure subsequently. He’s influencing the region. He’s still directing attacks against America from Afghanistan and Pakistan – and we have some Republican candidates for President that think he’s insignificant? That should be disqualify them from being President in the first place. This is an insult to everybody in the world that this man is still sending us tapes.

Iraq had nothing to do with Osama Bin Ladin in the beginning. Most of the measurements show that the war on terror is going worse.

Only 5 of the 22 top most wanted al-Qeada operatives have been captured or killed. Terrorism has increased 5-fold since 9-11, we need to redirect those troops and we need to do with certainty and a clarity.

What Republicans fail to understand that the nation suffers when you start wars for bogus reasons. The nation suffers when you fail to effectively manage that war, and it suffers when you fail to implement any form of diplomacy at all that might help resolve the lingering tensions in the region - that you initiated and exercerbated in the first place.

Maybe, just maybe - you shouldn't start shit you have no intention of finishing.

This point is apparently not lost on John Kerry.

But is he going to fall into the "insulting the troops" trap as he calls Patreaus to task? Not so much.

Steph: Do you trust General Patreaus to deliver a credible and honest report.

Kerry: I think General Patreaus will present the facts with respect to the statistics and the tactical successes or situations as he sees them. But none of us should be fooled into this tactical success debate. We’ll never have enough troops to provide the kind of tactical success in one community or another across all of Iraq. So the only way is to have political reconciliation. Until that happens things are going to get more tense. I think they’re courting disaster. You can take a tactical success and misread it as we did in Vietnam.

Amen to that, sir. Amen.

Vyan

Olbermann on the Great Iraq "Wait and Switch"

Last night Keith-O's latest report on Iraq did a masterful job of breaking down exactly how the administration has been pulling a giant bait and switch confidence game since before the war when George Tenet originally told George Bush - there were no WMD's based on credible sources and was ignored.

It was "too late. This isn't about WMD anymore - it's about Regime Change" was the answer.

I think it's well past time we seriously considered some "Regime Change" of our own.

Since before the war the Administration has been playing us all for suckers. It's been a long standing elaborate confidence game. Bush grand strategy in Iraq is clear and simple and would fit on a postage stamp and still leave plenty of room - "Just Wait."

During a press conference today at the G8 summit in Russia, President Bush told President Vladimir Putin that Americans want Russia to develop a free press and free religion “like Iraq.” To laughter and applause, Putin responded: “We certainly would not want to have same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, quite honestly.”

BUSH: I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world, like Iraq, where there’s a free press and free religion. And I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia will do the same thing. I fully understand, however, that there will be a Russian-style democracy.

PUTIN: We certainly would not want to have same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, quite honestly.

BUSH: Just wait.

"Just wait" - that's been the "strategery" all along. Also known as the "Sun will come out tomorrow" view. Bet your bottom dollar.

This is made even more evident by former Colin Powell Chief of Staff Col. Lawrence Wilkerson.

WILKERSON: Well, I think some neo-cons in the administration might have had that as a goal but I think the highest level of leadership in the administration‘s goal was quite clear and it was made clear by the fact that there was so little planning for post-invasion Iraq. The plan was to stay 90 to 120 days and then to substantially reduce the American presence. We would leave some hard stand for aircraft and so forth so that we could use Iraq as a lever in the Middle East in general, but we wouldn‘t have a substantial troop presence there after 90 to 120 days. That was the plan.

OLBERMANN: Year after year since that plan didn‘t happen, didn‘t turn out the way it was planned or not planned as the case may be, Democrats have gotten burned when the administration dangles this possibility of some kind of withdrawal. Why did the Democrats seem incapable of dealing with Mr. Bush on the terms we now know to be his as described in that biography and described again today in “USA Today” by Mr. Bolten that he wants a sustained presence there that outlasts his own term of office?

WILKERSON: Well, let me address that issue first. I think I‘m being proven correct here in my openings some months ago that the administration, particularly Vice President Cheney, had made a strategic decision that they could not fix the situation in Iraq, therefore they were going to do their best to simply pass it on to the next administration without too much damage to, they hope, the Republican party in their hopes to win the White House again in 2008. I think this is justification of the view. I believe they think they can‘t do anything really well in Iraq right now, so they‘re going to pass it on to the next administration.

That's it, in a nutshell. Everytime we fall tragically short of accomplishing any of our goals in the region, the Bushies reset the goal posts. That is exactly what has already happened with the deeply deceptive Patreaus President's report in Iraq. They've already been totally outed by the GAO while trying to cook the books on the surge escalation.

Ilan Goldenberg writes that one explanation for the contrary reports is because the military is not counting deaths from car bombs. The National Security Network notes that Petraeus has made a number of statements about the results of escalation that have been contradicted by Iraqi government data, independent media reports, and other U.S. agencies.

NSN writes, “The numbers have raised such alarm bells that a member of the Iraq Study Group, former ambassadors and leading academics have written to Congress asking them to look into the validity of U.S. government claims.”

This plain a sober analysis of simple facts has of course been attacked by the wingers who've said the General Accounting Office "isn't qualified" to - uh - account for events in Iraq. (Considered the fact that by the same standards the President, Vice President and most of their staff including SecDef Gates aren't qualified to run a war - the point is moot) They've now got their new neo-con attack poodle O'Hanlon repeating their discredit and dismiss strategy that Cheney used so effectively on Joe Wilson, now claiming that the GAO report is "flat-out sloppy" when his own data and reports - borrow from the GAO.

How stupid must he feel now?

Just like when Iraq Foreign Minister Sabri told Tenet that "Saddam destroyed his WMD's in 1991" and was blown off. They didn't listen to him or the Gen. Hussein Kamel who'd said the same thing back in 1996, the Energy Dept who said the aluminum tubes were harmless and the UN Inspector who said our WMD Intel was Garbage, instead they listened to liars like Curveball, Ibn Sheik al-Libi and the Niger Forgeries. Today we're seeing the exact same situation repeated over and over again. The truth is being blown off. The facts are being ignored and the lies promoted as valid. Bush is claiming a great victory in Al Anbar, a wonderful validation of the "surge" when the truth is that the Sunni Militia in Anbar province had decided to fight against al Qaeda before the surge even began.

``In Anbar you're seeing firsthand the dramatic differences that can come when the Iraqis are more secure,'' Bush told U.S. troops, a friendly sea of soldiers and Marines dressed in camouflage uniforms. ``You see Sunnis who once fought side by side with al-Qaida against coalition troops now fighting side by side with coalition troops against al-Qaida.''

In truth, the progress in Anbar was initiated by the Iraqis themselves, a point Gates himself made, saying the Sunni tribes decided to fight and retake control from al-Qaida many months before Bush decided to send an extra 4,000 Marines to Anbar as part of his troop buildup.

There it is in black and white. The Sunni's turned on al Qeada themselves after they had successfully manage to ethnically cleanse the area (either by killing or intimidation) of all oppossing Shia. They had effecively WON their local civil war and simply turned against al Qeada to completely lock down their control of the area.

Sunni and Shia are self-segregating because they're either dead or they've fled the area.

That's how the fighting will eventually be ended, not by the ineffective and corrupt Iraqi Police or Army, not by their joke of a government - but by gradual implementation of their own "final solution."

Peace through Genocide.

Meanwhile, we just stand by and wait... and wait.. and wait, until Bush can quietly sneak out the back door, and when the next President finally start to clean this fracking mess up with some actual diplomacy - Bush will take all the credit.

See, it's a perfect plan. Just wait.

Vyan

Lies, Damn Lies and Working the Surge

The narrative seems to be fairly obvious already - Bush and his supporters seem fully poised to trot out Gen Patreaus on Sept the 11th and bold facedly claim that "The Surge Is Working" just as was claimed Sgt Aguina at Yearlykos.

But then again, it just might be that what BushCo is selling is probably going to be rejected on delivery. Listen as Wolf Blitzer shoots Rep. Boustany (R-LA) down in flames for echoing the false Patreaus claims that "Sectarian Deaths in Iraq are Down".

Rather than let Boustany blather away - Blitzer corrected him using a recent LA Times Report.

Bombings, sectarian slayings and other violence related to the war killed at least 1,773 Iraqi civilians in August, the second month in a row that civilian deaths have risen, according to government figures obtained Friday. In July, the civilian death toll was 1,753, and in June it was 1,227.

In terms of Iraqi dead people, those numbers are high and getting worse despite the increased military troop levels of the United States — the so-called surge — having been in effect over the past couple of months.

Oops.

But then let's pay close attention to the semantic trick being played here - Rep. Boustany didn't say that civilian deaths were down he said that sectarian violence was down - and one wonders, how does he know whether this truck bomb or that truck bomb was sectarian or not? If these were "insurgents" why didn't they attack U.S. or coalition troops?

After denying for so long that Iraq is in the midst of an open Civil War, Bushies now wish to claim that the non-war is now "over" although the bodies continue to pile higher and higher. Is this supposedly all the work of Al Qaeda? All 2000 of them?

Similarly Gen Patreaus seems to be making the same distinction between run-of-the-mill death and sectarian death:

General Petraeus told The Australian during a face-to-face interview at his Baghdad headquarters there had been a 75 per cent reduction in religious and ethnic killings since last year.

But these claims doesn't seem to jibe with like - the facts (via McClatchy).

Violence remains endemic, with truck bombs in two northern Iraqi villages claiming the largest single death toll of the war — more than 300 confirmed dead and counting. North of Baghdad, another truck bomb destroyed a key bridge on the road linking the capital to Mosul, the first successful bridge attack since June.

And while top U.S. officials insist that 50 percent of the capital is now under effective U.S. or government control, compared with 8 percent in February, statistics indicate that the improvement in violence is at best mixed.

U.S. officials say the number of civilian casualties in the Iraqi capital is down 50 percent. But U.S. officials declined to provide specific numbers, and statistics gathered by McClatchy Newspapers don't support the claim.

Or The AP

* Iraq is suffering about double the number of war-related deaths throughout the country compared with last year — an average daily toll of 33 in 2006, and 62 so far this year.

• Nearly 1,000 more people have been killed in violence across Iraq in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2006. So far this year, about 14,800 people have died in war-related attacks and sectarian murders. AP reporting accounted for 13,811 deaths in 2006. The United Nations and other sources placed the 2006 toll far higher.

• Baghdad has gone from representing 76 percent of all civilian and police war-related deaths in Iraq in January to 52 percent in July, bringing it back to the same spot it was roughly a year ago.

Nor are U.S. Troop Casualties down during the Surge.

June-July-August 2003: 113 American troops died

June-July-August 2004: 162 American troops died

June-July-August 2005: 217 American troops died

June-July-August 2006: 169 American troops died

June-July-August 2007: 260 American troops died

This magic smoke-screen of deaths that aren't real deaths is wearing so thin even Katie Dumb as Rocks Couric can see through it.

Well, I was surprised, you know, after I went to eastern Baghdad, I was taken to the Allawi market, which is near Haifa, which was the scene of that very bloody gun battle back in January. And, you know, this market seems to be thriving. And there were a lot of people out and about. A lot of family-owned businesses and vegetable stalls.

And so, you do see signs of life that seem to be normal. Of course, that’s what the U.S. military wants me to see, so you have to keep that in mind as well. But I think there are definitely areas where the situation is improving.

Just as Rep. Tauscher recently pointed out - this is all Death By Powerpoint.

I will tell you that when you get in the Green Zone, there is a physiological phenomenon I think called Green Zone fog," said Tauscher. "It’s death by powerpoint. ... It’s always that their argument is winning."

In all fairness it may be true that in some areas of Baghdad things have improved, just as they've improved in the al-Anbar province where rather than surge, we cut and ran leaving the job of maintaining the peace to the local Sunni Militia.

But then again just as one area gets better, others get a whole lot worse. On August 15th the Deadliest Attack of the Entire War Took Place in a quadruple bombing in Northern Iraq.

BAGHDAD, Aug. 15 — The toll in a horrific quadruple bombing in an area of mud and stone houses in the remote northern desert on Tuesday evening reached at least 250 dead and 350 wounded, several local officials said Wednesday, making it the deadliest coordinated attack since the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Rescuers and recovery teams were still digging through as many as 200 flattened houses, and the death toll could still rise significantly, the officials said.

"It is impossible for us to give an exact figure for the dead and wounded," said Dr. Kifah Kattu, director general of the hospital in Sinjar, a few miles north of where the explosions occurred. As an example, he cited one village in the area of the explosions, called Al Aziz, where he said 40 of the village’s simple homes had been obliterated and no dead or wounded had yet been recovered.

Open Markets over here vs 200 flattened houses over there?

Sure that's "progress" if you happen to be running in circles.

It's clear that the Bushies have long felt the big problem with this War has simply been that not enough "good news" has been getting out, that they've simply had a massive PR problem and that just like a political campaign all they need to do is stay on message to finally break through. So naturally they've decided to simply invent some good news!

Bush's surprise visit to Anbar today underscores this beautifully.

"President Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq on Monday, using the war zone as a backdrop to argue his case that the buildup of U.S. troops is helping stabilizing the nation." On his way to the APEC summit in Australia, Bush made a detour to Iraq, landing at an air base in a remote part of Anbar province. Accompanied by security aides Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates, and Stephen Hadley, Bush’s visit came just hours after British forces completed their pullout from Basra. "Residents of Basra cheered the withdrawal."

We've heard the Bush Admin try to kneecap the leaked GAO report that points out that few of the security and political benchmarks which had been required for Iraq have been met.

Bushies have argued that these benchmarks were designed to "lock in on failure".

I know it's been four whole months since the Iraq Supplemental Bill was passed which made these Benchmarks a part of the LAW - but let's just jump in the way back machine (also known as the Google) and point out just who came up with these benchmarks in the first place? The Bush Administration did.

"The benchmarks - the Iraqis agreed to it, the president agreed it," said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who heads a House subcommittee that controls defense spending. "We're saying to them, 'Well, let's put some teeth into the benchmarks.'"

Although those teeth were severely filed down by Bush's Veto - they remain. And now the Bushies want to claim that their own benchmarks are too negative, simply because - they've failed to meet nearly all of them?

It's like giving someone an open-book test and they come back at the end of the class and say their dog snuck into the room and ate all the answers right off the desk.

Just for the record these were the questions the Administration asked itself to answer via the Iraq Supplemental Bill which...

• Establishes 18 benchmarks on which to measure the Iraqi government’s performance;
• Restricts use of foreign aid to the Iraqi government should they fail to make meaningful progress;
• Requires the President to certify that the Iraqi government deserves these funds even if they fail to perform as promised;
• Requires the Administration to testify before Congress and an independent assessment by the General Accounting Office on the performance of the Iraqi government;
• Requires the President to submit a report on the combat proficiency of Iraqi security forces;
• Requires the President to redeploy our troops if the Iraqi government concludes our presence is no longer desired;
• Restricts use of Defense Department funding until Congress receives information about contractors in Iraq; and
• States official U.S. policy precludes no permanent military bases in Iraq, no torture of detainees, and no designs on Iraqi oil.

The Entire Point of The Surge was to establish a buffer which would allow the Iraqi Government to accomplish the above. That was the Test and both the Iraqi Government and the Bush Administration HAVE FAILED.

Now they want more time - a lot more time - according to a new book on BushCo.

In Robert Draper’s book on the Bush presidency, "Dead Certain," Bush says the goal of his Iraq strategy is to play it out until "October-November." That is when he hopes the Iraq troop increase will finally show enough results to help him achieve the central goal of his remaining time in office: "To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence," and, he said later, "stay longer."

So in order to accomplish his true goal of simply keeping us in Iraq for the foreseeable future - Bush and his cronies plan to outright lie to Congress.

It's not like they haven't done it before.

But this time the odds of their pulling yet another Jedi Mind Trick on Congress seem a little slim if even weak-willed corporate media lapdogs such as Blitzer and Couric can see through the fog of cute semantic tricks like referring only to supposed "sectarian violence" and focusing on pockets of relative calm while a hurricane of death surrounds you.

– Attacks in June "reached their highest daily average since May 2003, showing a surge in violence as President George W. Bush completed a buildup of U.S. troops."

– The "number of unidentified bodies in the capital has risen again to pre-surge levels over the last two months," concluded a report by IraqSlogger.

– Today’s National Intelligence Estimate concludes that "the level of overall violence, including attacks on and casualties among civilians, remains high; Iraq’s sectarian groups remain unreconciled; AQI retains the ability to conduct high-profile attacks; and to date, Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively."

This time we need to point out that implmenting the al-Anbar solution doesn't mean increasing the Surge, it means by-passing the local government, the Iraqi Army and the police and working directly with the people - and the Sunni & Shia Militias - to help fight al Qeada and bring peace. It means DIPLOMACY - not more soldiers.

There is of course the possibility that this just might destabilize the Shia dominated government that we helped install and have continued to prop up despite their complete and total dysfunction. Some prices are worth paying IMO.

Oh, and then there's the little detail that the surge can't be sustained past April no matter what. It's far better for our troops and for the Iraqis that we plan for that reality, than ignore it.

They fooled (some of us) once before, but now I think signs strongly indicate that Roger Daltry was right all those years ago, this time "We Won't Get Fooled Again!"

It's far past time we got our troops out of this meat-grinder and got the Iraqi people to take control of their own country - with or without the blessings of the Iraqi government.

Vyan

Why a U.S. Withdrawal would bring Peace to Iraq

This week Senator John Warner timidly spoke out on the issue of troop reductions in Iraq by the end of year only to be savagely attacked by a White House front group.

(Warner's Comments) Hurt the Cause of Freedom

But a careful reading of the latest NIE indicates that not only is Warner right, pulling back out troops and letting the Iraqis regain control of their own country just might be the best thing for them, and for us.

Those who support the escalation say it's "Too soon to judge" , or that we should "Stretch out the Surge for another year" like say - Bill "When have I ever been right?" Kristol - and we shouldn't get too far ahead of the Patreaus President's Report in September, but we have had several months of Surge now and it seems that various trends our emerging that can give us a fair indication of the future.

Point One: There has been some decreased violence in the al-Anbar province, and most of us on either side of the surge issue hope that such progress can be repeated - but the one thing that is clear is that has occured in Anbar isn't the result of "the Surge"

Until only a few months ago, the Central Street bazaar was enemy territory, watched over by U.S. machine-gunners in sandbagged bunkers on the roof of the governor's building across the road. Ramadi was the most dangerous city in Iraq, and the area around the building the deadliest place in Ramadi.

Now, a pact between local tribal sheiks and U.S. commanders has sent thousands of young Iraqis from Anbar Province into the fight against extremists linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The deal has all but ended the fighting in Ramadi and recast the city as a symbol of hope that the tide of the war may yet be reversed to favor the Americans and their Iraqi allies.

Anbar has been a success, but not because or an increase in U.S. Forces in the area of because the Iraqi Military has finally at long last "stood up", it's been because the U.S. has begun to use -- gasp --- diplomacy with the local leaders and used the Sunni Militia to route out Al Qeaeda.

Point Two: Some of the Anbar Success, beside actually being the result of an American De-escalation in the region, may also be the result of some other rather grim factors.

Large Numbers of Iraqis have Fled their homes.

BAGHDAD, Aug. 23 — The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has soared since the American troop increase began in February, according to data from two humanitarian groups, accelerating the partition of the country into sectarian enclaves.

The data track what are known as internally displaced Iraqis: those who have been driven from their neighborhoods and seek refuge elsewhere in the country rather than fleeing across the border. The effect of this vast migration is to drain religiously mixed areas in the center of Iraq, sending Shiite refugees toward the overwhelmingly Shiite areas to the south and Sunnis toward majority Sunni regions to the west and north.

Though most displaced Iraqis say they would like to return, there is little prospect of their doing so. One Sunni Arab who had been driven out of the Baghdad neighborhood of southern Dora by Shiite snipers said she doubted that her family would ever return, buildup or no buildup.

Sectarian Cleansing.

The polarization of communities is most evident in Baghdad, where the Shia are a clear majority in more than half of all neighborhoods and Sunni areas have become surrounded by predominately Shia districts. Where population displacements have led to significant sectarian separation, conflict levels have diminished to some extent because warring communities find it more difficult to penetrate communal enclaves.

In short, Shia Militia who the Sunnis may want to battle with have moved away and vice versa. They have self-segregated and essentially broken themselves up into neutral corners in a practice that is somewhat similar to the Joe Biden partition plan (which was most successful in Bosnia), but rather than artificially carving up the country like a Turkey, the residents have been gradually finding and creating their own (relatively) safe sectarian havens.

Again, the process may ultimately be inevitable and has not much to do with us - other than the fact that our presense slows it down and our leaving an area just might spur it forward.

"[F]earing a Coalition withdrawal, some tribal elements and Sunni groups probably will continue to seek accommodation with the Coalition to strengthen themselves for a post- Coalition security environment" [...]

"The IC assesses that the emergence of ‘bottom-up’ security initiatives, principally among Sunni Arabs and focused on combating AQI, represent the best prospect for improved security over the next six to 12 months, but we judge these initiatives will only translate into widespread political accommodation and enduring stability if the Iraqi Government accepts and supports them."

Just as John Murtha has stated for well over a year and a half, what Anbar has shown is that the Iraqis won't stand up until they see they have no choice, and ultimately it's not up to their government to decide that they want peace and they don't al-Qeada - it's up to the people.

There is some strong possibility that heavily Shia influenced Maliki government may resist greater and greater areas of Iraq becoming controlled by Sunni Militias, but ultimately they have to be shown that they have no choice.

Eventually the Reality of their Surroundings will come crashing in and the Surge/Delaying Tactic of the Bush Administration will gradually come to an end.

And another segment of that reality is that rank and file Iraqis have had it up to here with Al Qeada in Iraq.

Many Sunnis, for their part, are less inclined to see the soldiers as occupiers now that it is clear that American troop reductions are all but inevitable, and they are more concerned with strengthening their ability to fend off threats from Sunni jihadists and Shiite militias. In a surprising twist, the jihadists — the Americans’ most ardent foes — made the new strategy possible. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a predominantly Iraqi organization with a small but significant foreign component, severely overplayed its hand, spawning resentment by many residents and other insurgent groups.

Imposing a severe version of Islamic law, the group installed its own clerics, established an Islamic court and banned the sale of cigarettes, which even this week were nowhere to be found in the humble shops in western Baquba to the consternation of patrolling Iraqi troops.

The fighters raised funds by kidnapping local Iraqis, found accommodations by evicting some residents from their homes and killed with abandon when anyone got in their way, residents say. A small group of bearded black-clad militants took down the Iraqi flag and raised the banner of their self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq.

"They used religion as a ploy to get in and exploit people’s passions," said one member of the Kit Carson scouts, who gave his name as Haidar. "They were Iraqis and other Arabs from Syria, Afghanistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They started kicking people out of their houses and getting ransom from rich people. They would shoot people in front of their houses to scare the others."

After attempting to draw incorrect comparisons to World War II and Neville Chamberlain, to the occupation of Japan, our continuing troop presense on the North/South Korean border and most recently to the Boat People and Killing Fields of Vietnam and Cambodia (both of which have already occured in Iraq wear upwards of 600,000 people have effectively "disappeared" and another 1.5 Million have fled the country during our occupation) the Bush Administration has now run out bad similes.

Iraq has already had their "Killing Fields" Mr. Bush, now they're literally starting to run out of people to kill - except of course, us.

Instead of claiming we need to stay in Iraq in order to help facilitate a political reconcilation between the waring factions - they now say that reconcilation doesn't matter and that the goal of the surge was simply to bring security to Iraq.

Yeah, right.

All indications are that over the next six months we will have to begin drawing down forces simply becuase - we've run out of forces.

Administration and military officials say Marine Gen. Peter Pace is likely to convey concerns by the Joint Chiefs that keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military. This assessment could collide with one being prepared by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, calling for the U.S. to maintain higher troop levels for 2008 and beyond.

...

According to administration and military officials, the Joint Chiefs believe it is of crucial strategic importance to reduce the size of the U.S. force in Iraq in order to bolster the military's ability to respond to other threats, a view that is shared by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

According to a senior administration official, the Joint Chiefs in recent weeks have pressed concerns that the Iraq war has degraded the U.S. military's ability to respond, if needed, to other threats, such as Iran.

My expectations are that rather than recognizing that the success in Anbar has been because our forces left and put a bullseye on their own backs in Baghdad, rather than implementing a draft to relieve and replenish our troops, rather than paying attention to the joint chiefs who are clearly echoeing Senator Warner (not to mention Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi) that we must draw down our troops in Iraq for the sake of our military readiness - or for that matter to actually listening to General Patreaus and continuing to implement the Anbar Strategy - the White House is going to do what they always do, which is bury their head deeper into their continuing paranoid mass delusion and order a further extension of troops tours from 15 months to 18 months.

Because that will really do wonders for the Suicides and rampant PTSD our troops are already suffering from in record numbers.

It could be wrong of course, but if there's anyone who you can count on to do the stupid thing in a bad situation when all reasonable roads lead elsewhere - it's George W. Bush.

On thing is for certain, Democrats and Republicans alike who no longer support this War or this Escalation need to stop letting themselves be painted as weak, traitors, losers, cutters, runners and cowards. They need to argue from a position of strength, from of position of courage. The reality and the facts are one their side - they need to point out that sometimes the most courageous thing you can do - sometimes what you just have to do - is to simply walk away.

Vyan