hu Dec 1, 5:38 PM ET
Opposition Democrats are struggling to find a common voice on the war in Iraq, torn between the public disenchantment with the US military campaign and the need to offer a viable alternative the US administration's "stay the course" approach.
Until recently, centrist Democrats in the Senate cautiously argued against a precipitous pullout and in favor of a policy that would allow -- eventually -- for a gradual US withdrawal.
That policy brought success last month when Democrats rallied the support of most lawmakers in the Republican-led Senate last month, which voted 79-19 in favor of a resolution calling for clearer progress toward Iraqi self-governance in 2006.
The resolution also required that President George W. Bush's administration make quarterly progress reports on Iraq.
The mood shifted dramatically however, when Representative John Murtha (news, bio, voting record) -- a centrist Democrat seen as a hawk on military matters -- two weeks ago unveiled legislation calling for a US pullout.
That call found little immediate congressional support. Nearly all Democrats voted with Republicans against a November 18 resolution to immediately pull US troops from Iraq.
But the top Democrat in the House, Nancy Pelosi this week endorsed Murtha's call.
"The status quo is not working and that we need to have a plan that makes us safer and our military stronger and makes Iraq more stable," Pelosi said.
The change in position could give ammunition to Republicans who long have charged Democrats with being weak on defense issues, and all too willing to "cut and run" before the insurgency in Iraq is subdued.
Many political analysts seem to sanction the middle of the road approach favored by mainstream Democrats.
"I think Bush has been too harsh but I also think Murtha is wrong and not reflective of America's center of gravity," he said.
"If Democrats go down the road of near-term mandatory complete withdrawal they'll do Bush the favor of finding the one way they could make his policies look better than the alternatives," said Brookings Institution analyst Michael O'Hanlon.
What remains to be seen now is how many Democrats follow Pelosi.
Until now leading party members have have been all over the map on charting a way forward in Iraq. Senator Joe Lieberman, a former Democratic presidential contender and perenially strong supporter of the US military, wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week that US troops must stay for the foreseeable future.
"America cannot abandon the war between 27 million Iraqis and 10,000 terrorists," said Lieberman who just returned from this fourth trip there in the 18 months.
He said there had been "visible and practical" progress and that safeguarding those gains likely means that US troops will have to remain in Iraq "for years to come."
At the other end of the spectrum, Senator Russ Feingold -- one of the early opponents of the war and and a possible presidential prospect in 2008 -- has proposed a timetable that would see US troops out of Iraq by December 31, 2006.
Still other lawmakers many of whom voted in favor of authorizing the president to go to war, have staked out a middle ground position.
Senator Hillary Clinton has joined a chorus of Democratic lawmakers calling for US troop reductions beginning next year, but linked a withdrawal on the success of upcoming elections there.
The position is similar to one espoused by two other likely presidential contenders, 2004 candidate John Kerry and Senator Joseph Biden, top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has announced he intends to run for the party's nomination.
Kerry for his part, this week called for a timetable to transfer security duties from US to Iraqi authorities.
"I am not asking for a specific timetable to withdraw, I am asking for specific timetable of transfer of authority, transfer of responsibility of the shift and the setting of a benchmark specifically that allow us to bring our troops home," he told US television on Thursday.
"If we just continue along the road we are going now without a more concrete transfer of responsibility ... I think a lot of people fear it's going to be more of the same."
Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.
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Full Version: Iraq War Debate Eclipses All Other Issues
Common Ground Common Sense > Issues that Affect Our Lives > Foreign Policy and National Defense > Foreign Policy & National Defense Issues Archive
Posted on Wed, Nov. 30, 2005
Bush officials withheld key information on Iraq, former senator says
By Frank Davies
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - In the months before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration resisted pleas from senators to assess the risks of a war, especially the prospect of Iraqi resistance, and failed to share with senators key information about weaknesses in the case for war, former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., charged Wednesday.
Graham, who was the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the run-up to the Iraq war, said that in September 2002, six months before U.S. forces invaded, he asked then-CIA Director George Tenet to analyze the "readiness and willingness" of Iraqis to resist the American presence. He also asked Tenet to look beyond the removal of Saddam Hussein, he said.
"They ignored our requests. To the administration, it was always going to be Paris in 1944: We would be embraced, we'd go home and the Iraqi people would be happy," said Graham, who's teaching at Harvard University.
As a result, "there was no effort to assess a range of possibilities, including an insurgency," he said.
In a major speech Wednesday, President Bush defended the decision to go to war and the need for U.S. forces to stay in Iraq "to assure victory." He also described the fight against the insurgency as "the central front" in the war on terrorism.
Graham said the effort to link Iraqi insurgents to global terrorism ignored the fact that few of the insurgents were foreigners and paralleled the administration's efforts in 2002 to suggest links among Iraq, al-Qaida and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that didn't exist.
His comments also rebutted assertions by the administration that the Senate had access to the same intelligence regarding Iraq that guided Bush's decisions.
The National Journal reported last week that the CIA told Bush during his daily briefing 10 days after the 9-11 attacks that there was no link to Iraq, a finding that was repeated later in a longer CIA report.
Graham said that information was never passed to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
He said the administration also withheld from the Senate warnings from German intelligence that an Iraqi defector, code-named Curveball, was untrustworthy. Curveball was the source for administration allegations that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell made before the U.N. Security Council that Saddam had built mobile germ facilities in Iraq. American forces never found such laboratories in Iraq.
"We're seeing more evidence all the time that they were manipulating the intelligence, selecting what they wanted to hear and getting that on the front page, and trashing everything else," Graham said.
The White House did not respond directly to Graham's assertions. A senior administration official who asked not be further identified said only that "CIA records confirm 30 separate briefings on Iraq-related intelligence were given to members of Congress or their staff between October 2002 and March 2003."
The CIA had no comment Wednesday.
The administration has backed away from suggestions that Iraq and al-Qaida were linked before the war, but with foreign fighters now in Iraq, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are portraying the war against the insurgency as a test of wills with global terrorists.
"They attacked us on 9-11 here in the homeland, killing 3,000 people. Now they are making a stand in Iraq," Cheney said last week.
Graham, who retired from the Senate this year, was among the 23 senators who voted against the resolution on the use of force in Iraq in October 2002. He said at the time that Iraq would become a diversion from the real war on terrorism and would drain resources and personnel from Afghanistan, where U.S. forces had routed the Taliban government, which had supported al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
"From the very beginning the administration defined the war in Iraq as a central piece in the war on terror," Graham said Wednesday. "You can try to sell that argument through repetition, even if the facts are against you."
Bush officials withheld key information on Iraq, former senator says
By Frank Davies
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - In the months before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration resisted pleas from senators to assess the risks of a war, especially the prospect of Iraqi resistance, and failed to share with senators key information about weaknesses in the case for war, former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., charged Wednesday.
Graham, who was the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the run-up to the Iraq war, said that in September 2002, six months before U.S. forces invaded, he asked then-CIA Director George Tenet to analyze the "readiness and willingness" of Iraqis to resist the American presence. He also asked Tenet to look beyond the removal of Saddam Hussein, he said.
"They ignored our requests. To the administration, it was always going to be Paris in 1944: We would be embraced, we'd go home and the Iraqi people would be happy," said Graham, who's teaching at Harvard University.
As a result, "there was no effort to assess a range of possibilities, including an insurgency," he said.
In a major speech Wednesday, President Bush defended the decision to go to war and the need for U.S. forces to stay in Iraq "to assure victory." He also described the fight against the insurgency as "the central front" in the war on terrorism.
Graham said the effort to link Iraqi insurgents to global terrorism ignored the fact that few of the insurgents were foreigners and paralleled the administration's efforts in 2002 to suggest links among Iraq, al-Qaida and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that didn't exist.
His comments also rebutted assertions by the administration that the Senate had access to the same intelligence regarding Iraq that guided Bush's decisions.
The National Journal reported last week that the CIA told Bush during his daily briefing 10 days after the 9-11 attacks that there was no link to Iraq, a finding that was repeated later in a longer CIA report.
Graham said that information was never passed to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
He said the administration also withheld from the Senate warnings from German intelligence that an Iraqi defector, code-named Curveball, was untrustworthy. Curveball was the source for administration allegations that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell made before the U.N. Security Council that Saddam had built mobile germ facilities in Iraq. American forces never found such laboratories in Iraq.
"We're seeing more evidence all the time that they were manipulating the intelligence, selecting what they wanted to hear and getting that on the front page, and trashing everything else," Graham said.
The White House did not respond directly to Graham's assertions. A senior administration official who asked not be further identified said only that "CIA records confirm 30 separate briefings on Iraq-related intelligence were given to members of Congress or their staff between October 2002 and March 2003."
The CIA had no comment Wednesday.
The administration has backed away from suggestions that Iraq and al-Qaida were linked before the war, but with foreign fighters now in Iraq, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are portraying the war against the insurgency as a test of wills with global terrorists.
"They attacked us on 9-11 here in the homeland, killing 3,000 people. Now they are making a stand in Iraq," Cheney said last week.
Graham, who retired from the Senate this year, was among the 23 senators who voted against the resolution on the use of force in Iraq in October 2002. He said at the time that Iraq would become a diversion from the real war on terrorism and would drain resources and personnel from Afghanistan, where U.S. forces had routed the Taliban government, which had supported al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
"From the very beginning the administration defined the war in Iraq as a central piece in the war on terror," Graham said Wednesday. "You can try to sell that argument through repetition, even if the facts are against you."
The owners of the war in Iraq
BY JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - When, in American history, has a vice president had so much influence over a decision to go to war - and how to run the war?
If you answered "right now" you would be correct.
At so critical a time, Vice President Dick Cheney calls the shots, and calls most of them wrong, in cahoots with his old friend Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, said in a recent speech that Cheney early on formed a "cabal" with Rumsfeld that rode rough-shod over the highest level national security policy-making apparatus, and still does.
Cheney and Rumsfeld, and their boss, George W. Bush, by many accounts arrived in office five years ago determined to find some excuse to flex American muscle, invade Iraq, take down dictator Saddam Hussein, implant a pro-Western democracy at peace with Israel in the heart of the Middle East oil patch and demonstrate the virtues of a lighter, leaner U.S. military.
The fires were still burning at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when Bush and Cheney began asking if there was even the remotest connection between the bombers and Saddam Hussein.
The CIA reported there wasn't, but that didn't matter.
Cheney, Rumsfeld and their neo-conservative aides let Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi guide their thinking on what would happen when the United States invaded Iraq. He produced so-called defectors who testified about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and his nuclear program.
Even though those defectors failed lie detector tests, their lies made their way into the intelligence stream, often bypassing the professional intelligence officers who regarded Chalabi and company as charlatans.
Chalabi and his associates told Cheney and others that Saddam would fall swiftly, the invading American troops would be greeted as liberators, the country could be safely handed over to Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress exiles and the Americans could withdraw by the summer of 2003.
Cheney and Rumsfeld were so convinced that they believed the invasion could be done on the cheap. The generals wanted an invasion and follow-on force of nearly 300,000 troops. Rumsfeld thought it could be done, a la Afghanistan, with fewer than 50,000. After all, there would be no need for an occupation force or any nation rebuilding.
So Rumsfeld hammered the head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks, to reduce the force to just over 200,000, cut two divisions out of the follow-on force, and reduce the total U.S. force to 138,000 to deal with occupying and keeping the peace in a fractious country the size of California with a population of 25 million, divided into ethnic and religious groups.
When the whole deal went south on them in the summer of 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld stuck with the idea of fighting this war on the cheap. American armored divisions, the deadliest in the world, were ordered to leave most of their armor at home, because it cost too much to run them. Tank crews dismounted and became infantry patrolling the deadly roads and streets in Humvees, slightly heavier versions of the old Jeep. Ditto artillery crews.
Mothers and fathers provided their soldier and Marine sons and daughters with the $1,000 they needed to buy their own body armor and other combat equipment that the military could not provide.
Inside the leadership councils the main voice arguing against the invasion, against the United States going in without a broad allied coalition, against the failure to plan for an occupation and costly reconstruction was that of Secretary of State Powell, only occasionally supported by his eventual successor, Condoleezza Rice.
Cheney and Rumsfeld rolled over them and never looked back.
The Iraq war belongs to them. They led the charge and beat the military leadership into submission and into line from the get-go. They set the stage for a disaster and stubbornly held that course when it was clear that a larger force was needed to secure the wide-open borders and to take over the unguarded million tons of weapons and ammunition scattered all over the country.
They and their boss, the president, created the conditions that led to the torture and mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Guantanamo Bay, and in the secret Gulag prisons the Central Intelligence Agency manages around the world.
Cheney and Rumsfeld also created the conditions that are grinding down our Army and Marine Corps with repeated one-year tours of duty in a war that seems unending - a war that's now cost the lives of 2,100 American troops and has sent more than 15,000 of them home with horrible wounds, the worst suffered in roadside bombings while riding in Humvees. President Bush believes that God and history will judge his actions.
Cheney and Rumsfeld can only hope they can dodge responsibility for their actions now, and in the hereafter.
---
ABOUT THE WRITER
Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young." Readers may write to him at: Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, 700 12th St. N.W., Suite 1000, Washington, D.C. 20005-3994.
BY JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - When, in American history, has a vice president had so much influence over a decision to go to war - and how to run the war?
If you answered "right now" you would be correct.
At so critical a time, Vice President Dick Cheney calls the shots, and calls most of them wrong, in cahoots with his old friend Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, said in a recent speech that Cheney early on formed a "cabal" with Rumsfeld that rode rough-shod over the highest level national security policy-making apparatus, and still does.
Cheney and Rumsfeld, and their boss, George W. Bush, by many accounts arrived in office five years ago determined to find some excuse to flex American muscle, invade Iraq, take down dictator Saddam Hussein, implant a pro-Western democracy at peace with Israel in the heart of the Middle East oil patch and demonstrate the virtues of a lighter, leaner U.S. military.
The fires were still burning at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when Bush and Cheney began asking if there was even the remotest connection between the bombers and Saddam Hussein.
The CIA reported there wasn't, but that didn't matter.
Cheney, Rumsfeld and their neo-conservative aides let Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi guide their thinking on what would happen when the United States invaded Iraq. He produced so-called defectors who testified about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and his nuclear program.
Even though those defectors failed lie detector tests, their lies made their way into the intelligence stream, often bypassing the professional intelligence officers who regarded Chalabi and company as charlatans.
Chalabi and his associates told Cheney and others that Saddam would fall swiftly, the invading American troops would be greeted as liberators, the country could be safely handed over to Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress exiles and the Americans could withdraw by the summer of 2003.
Cheney and Rumsfeld were so convinced that they believed the invasion could be done on the cheap. The generals wanted an invasion and follow-on force of nearly 300,000 troops. Rumsfeld thought it could be done, a la Afghanistan, with fewer than 50,000. After all, there would be no need for an occupation force or any nation rebuilding.
So Rumsfeld hammered the head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks, to reduce the force to just over 200,000, cut two divisions out of the follow-on force, and reduce the total U.S. force to 138,000 to deal with occupying and keeping the peace in a fractious country the size of California with a population of 25 million, divided into ethnic and religious groups.
When the whole deal went south on them in the summer of 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld stuck with the idea of fighting this war on the cheap. American armored divisions, the deadliest in the world, were ordered to leave most of their armor at home, because it cost too much to run them. Tank crews dismounted and became infantry patrolling the deadly roads and streets in Humvees, slightly heavier versions of the old Jeep. Ditto artillery crews.
Mothers and fathers provided their soldier and Marine sons and daughters with the $1,000 they needed to buy their own body armor and other combat equipment that the military could not provide.
Inside the leadership councils the main voice arguing against the invasion, against the United States going in without a broad allied coalition, against the failure to plan for an occupation and costly reconstruction was that of Secretary of State Powell, only occasionally supported by his eventual successor, Condoleezza Rice.
Cheney and Rumsfeld rolled over them and never looked back.
The Iraq war belongs to them. They led the charge and beat the military leadership into submission and into line from the get-go. They set the stage for a disaster and stubbornly held that course when it was clear that a larger force was needed to secure the wide-open borders and to take over the unguarded million tons of weapons and ammunition scattered all over the country.
They and their boss, the president, created the conditions that led to the torture and mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Guantanamo Bay, and in the secret Gulag prisons the Central Intelligence Agency manages around the world.
Cheney and Rumsfeld also created the conditions that are grinding down our Army and Marine Corps with repeated one-year tours of duty in a war that seems unending - a war that's now cost the lives of 2,100 American troops and has sent more than 15,000 of them home with horrible wounds, the worst suffered in roadside bombings while riding in Humvees. President Bush believes that God and history will judge his actions.
Cheney and Rumsfeld can only hope they can dodge responsibility for their actions now, and in the hereafter.
---
ABOUT THE WRITER
Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young." Readers may write to him at: Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, 700 12th St. N.W., Suite 1000, Washington, D.C. 20005-3994.
December 1, 2005
Editorial
Plan: We Win
We've seen it before: an embattled president so swathed in his inner circle that he completely loses touch with the public and wanders around among small knots of people who agree with him. There was Lyndon Johnson in the 1960's, Richard Nixon in the 1970's, and George H. W. Bush in the 1990's. Now it's his son's turn.
It has been obvious for months that Americans don't believe the war is going just fine, and they needed to hear that President Bush gets that. They wanted to see that he had learned from his mistakes and adjusted his course, and that he had a measurable and realistic plan for making Iraq safe enough to withdraw United States troops. Americans didn't need to be convinced of Mr. Bush's commitment to his idealized version of the war. They needed to be reassured that he recognized the reality of the war.
Instead, Mr. Bush traveled 32 miles from the White House to the Naval Academy and spoke to yet another of the well-behaved, uniformed audiences that have screened him from the rest of America lately. If you do not happen to be a midshipman, you'd have to have been watching cable news at midmorning on a weekday to catch him.
The address was accompanied by a voluminous handout entitled "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," which the White House grandly calls the newly declassified version of the plan that has been driving the war. If there was something secret about that plan, we can't figure out what it was. The document, and Mr. Bush's speech, were almost entirely a rehash of the same tired argument that everything's going just fine. Mr. Bush also offered the usual false choice between sticking to his policy and beating a hasty and cowardly retreat.
On the critical question of the progress of the Iraqi military, the president was particularly optimistic, and misleading. He said, for instance, that Iraqi security forces control major areas, including the northern and southern provinces and cities like Najaf. That's true if you believe a nation can be built out of a change of clothing: these forces are based on party and sectarian militias that have controlled many of these same areas since the fall of Saddam Hussein but now wear Iraqi Army uniforms. In other regions, the most powerful Iraqi security forces are rogue militias that refuse to disarm and have on occasion turned their guns against American troops, like Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Mr. Bush's vision of the next big step is equally troubling: training Iraqi forces well enough to free American forces for more of the bloody and ineffective search-and-destroy sweeps that accomplish little beyond alienating the populace.
What Americans wanted to hear was a genuine counterinsurgency plan, perhaps like one proposed by Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a leading writer on military strategy: find the most secure areas with capable Iraqi forces. Embed American trainers with those forces and make the region safe enough to spend money on reconstruction, thus making friends and draining the insurgency. Then slowly expand those zones and withdraw American forces.
Americans have been clamoring for believable goals in Iraq, but Mr. Bush stuck to his notion of staying until "total victory." His strategy document defines that as an Iraq that "has defeated the terrorists and neutralized the insurgency"; is "peaceful, united, stable, democratic and secure"; and is a partner in the war on terror, an integral part of the international community, and "an engine for regional economic growth and proving the fruits of democratic governance to the region."
That may be the most grandiose set of ambitions for the region since the vision of Nebuchadnezzar's son Belshazzar, who saw the hand writing on the wall. Mr. Bush hates comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. But after watching the president, we couldn't resist reading Richard Nixon's 1969 Vietnamization speech. Substitute the Iraqi constitutional process for the Paris peace talks, and Mr. Bush's ideas about the Iraqi Army are not much different from Nixon's plans - except Nixon admitted the war was going very badly (which was easier for him to do because he didn't start it), and he was very clear about the risks and huge sacrifices ahead.
A president who seems less in touch with reality than Richard Nixon needs to get out more.
Editorial
Plan: We Win
We've seen it before: an embattled president so swathed in his inner circle that he completely loses touch with the public and wanders around among small knots of people who agree with him. There was Lyndon Johnson in the 1960's, Richard Nixon in the 1970's, and George H. W. Bush in the 1990's. Now it's his son's turn.
It has been obvious for months that Americans don't believe the war is going just fine, and they needed to hear that President Bush gets that. They wanted to see that he had learned from his mistakes and adjusted his course, and that he had a measurable and realistic plan for making Iraq safe enough to withdraw United States troops. Americans didn't need to be convinced of Mr. Bush's commitment to his idealized version of the war. They needed to be reassured that he recognized the reality of the war.
Instead, Mr. Bush traveled 32 miles from the White House to the Naval Academy and spoke to yet another of the well-behaved, uniformed audiences that have screened him from the rest of America lately. If you do not happen to be a midshipman, you'd have to have been watching cable news at midmorning on a weekday to catch him.
The address was accompanied by a voluminous handout entitled "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," which the White House grandly calls the newly declassified version of the plan that has been driving the war. If there was something secret about that plan, we can't figure out what it was. The document, and Mr. Bush's speech, were almost entirely a rehash of the same tired argument that everything's going just fine. Mr. Bush also offered the usual false choice between sticking to his policy and beating a hasty and cowardly retreat.
On the critical question of the progress of the Iraqi military, the president was particularly optimistic, and misleading. He said, for instance, that Iraqi security forces control major areas, including the northern and southern provinces and cities like Najaf. That's true if you believe a nation can be built out of a change of clothing: these forces are based on party and sectarian militias that have controlled many of these same areas since the fall of Saddam Hussein but now wear Iraqi Army uniforms. In other regions, the most powerful Iraqi security forces are rogue militias that refuse to disarm and have on occasion turned their guns against American troops, like Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Mr. Bush's vision of the next big step is equally troubling: training Iraqi forces well enough to free American forces for more of the bloody and ineffective search-and-destroy sweeps that accomplish little beyond alienating the populace.
What Americans wanted to hear was a genuine counterinsurgency plan, perhaps like one proposed by Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a leading writer on military strategy: find the most secure areas with capable Iraqi forces. Embed American trainers with those forces and make the region safe enough to spend money on reconstruction, thus making friends and draining the insurgency. Then slowly expand those zones and withdraw American forces.
Americans have been clamoring for believable goals in Iraq, but Mr. Bush stuck to his notion of staying until "total victory." His strategy document defines that as an Iraq that "has defeated the terrorists and neutralized the insurgency"; is "peaceful, united, stable, democratic and secure"; and is a partner in the war on terror, an integral part of the international community, and "an engine for regional economic growth and proving the fruits of democratic governance to the region."
That may be the most grandiose set of ambitions for the region since the vision of Nebuchadnezzar's son Belshazzar, who saw the hand writing on the wall. Mr. Bush hates comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. But after watching the president, we couldn't resist reading Richard Nixon's 1969 Vietnamization speech. Substitute the Iraqi constitutional process for the Paris peace talks, and Mr. Bush's ideas about the Iraqi Army are not much different from Nixon's plans - except Nixon admitted the war was going very badly (which was easier for him to do because he didn't start it), and he was very clear about the risks and huge sacrifices ahead.
A president who seems less in touch with reality than Richard Nixon needs to get out more.
Bush in Iraq, Slouching Toward Genocide
By Robert Parry
December 1, 2005
Despite pretty words about democracy and freedom, George W. Bush’s “victory” plan in Iraq is starting to look increasingly like an invitation to genocide, the systematic destruction of the Sunni minority for resisting its U.S.-induced transformation from the nation’s ruling elite into second-class citizenship.
The Sunnis, an Islamic sect that makes up about 35 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people, are being confronted with a stark choice, either accept subordination to the less-educated Shiite majority or face the devastation of Sunni neighborhoods, the imprisonment of many Sunni males and the deaths of large numbers of the Sunni population.
In referring to this possibility, many in Washington object to the word “genocide” – which is defined in international law as the destruction of “in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” – but already there are troubling signs that Iraq’s incipient civil war could slide into something close to that.
Retaliating against Sunni bombings and other attacks on Shiite targets over the past two years, Iraq’s Shiite-controlled security forces have begun rounding up, torturing and executing Sunni men.
“Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged in recent weeks, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation,” New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins reported from Baghdad.
“Some Sunni males have been found dead in ditches and fields, with bullet holes in their temples, acid burns on their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electric drills,” Filkins wrote. “Many have simply vanished.” [NYT, Nov. 29, 2005]
In November, a secret bunker – where Sunni captives were mistreated and apparently tortured – was discovered in an Interior Ministry building in Baghdad. The Shiite-dominated government has denied responsibility for the abuses and the murders.
But human rights groups and other investigators have blamed many of the Sunni killings on the Badr Brigade, an Iranian-backed Shiite militia associated with a leading element of the Iraqi government, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The Council has close ties to the fundamentalist Shiite government of Iran.
‘Death Squads’
U.S. officials also acknowledge that hard-line Shiite militiamen, who have penetrated the government’s security forces, are operating “death squads” to terrorize Sunnis.
The killings and disappearances are reminiscent of the bloodshed in Central America in the 1980s when right-wing regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador unleashed security forces to round up, torture and kill suspected leftists.
That violence, however, was primarily defined by political ideology, rather than race, religion or ethnicity. An exception was the slaughtering of a Mayan Indian tribe in the Guatemalan highlands as part of a military scorched-earth campaign that later was investigated by a truth commission and denounced as “genocide.” [For details about Ronald Reagan's tolerance of these atrocities, see Robert Parry’s Lost History.]
In Iraq, the religious component of the nation’s incipient civil war is already apparent, although Bush often has presented the Iraqi conflict to the American people as a war largely between foreign Islamic “terrorists” and freedom-loving Iraqis.
Bush finally dropped that distorted analysis in his Nov. 30 speech about his plan for “victory” in Iraq. He divided the “enemy in Iraq” into three groups – the Sunni “rejectionists,” who resent having lost their privileged status; the Sunni “Saddamists,” who retain loyalty to ousted dictator Saddam Hussein; and the foreign “terrorists,” who have entered Iraq to fight the American invaders and generally spread chaos.
U.S. military analysts estimate that more than 90 percent of the forces battling American troops come from the first two Sunni categories, with the foreign jihadists representing only from 5 to 10 percent of the armed opposition. Though Bush didn’t give percentages, he did list the groups in declining order by size, with the “terrorists” the smallest.
Yet what is problematic about Bush’s analysis in terms of the genocide issue is that he identifies the vast majority of the “enemy” as Sunnis. That means both Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government and U.S. forces in Iraq are already targeting a religious minority for defeat, establishing one of the first conditions for the definition of genocide.
‘Complete Victory’
The next element in the equation will be how far the war against the Sunnis goes – or put differently, how stubbornly the Sunnis resist.
For his part, Bush reiterated that he will only be satisfied with “complete victory,” which suggests he is resolved to break the back of the Sunni resistance at whatever cost.
The Bush administration also wants to keep a tight hold on information that might put the U.S. war effort in a negative light. That means the American people can expect to be shielded from many of the worst secrets in Iraq, much as the White House has continued to fight release of video showing abuses at Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.
According to U.S. military experts I’ve interviewed, a great deal of emphasis in the future will be on “perception management,” the concept of shaping how both Iraqis and the American people perceive the events in Iraq.
This media manipulation, combined with secretive “death squads,” adds even more to the recipe necessary for war-time atrocities that might cross over into genocide.
Other warning flags were raised in a New Yorker article by veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, whose sources cited both Bush’s messianic commitment to stay the course in Iraq and to a shift toward a reliance on aerial bombardment of “enemy” targets, as U.S. troop levels begin to decline.
“A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower,” Hersh wrote. “Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units.
“The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the overall level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.”
One of the risks is that the power to target U.S. air attacks would be put in the hands of Iraq’s Shiite-controlled government, which could then rain down American death and destruction from the air on Sunnis and other rivals.
An example of this kind of horror occurred in the early days of the war in March 2003 when the U.S. military relied on a false report from a supposed informant that Saddam Hussein was eating at a Baghdad restaurant. The restaurant was bombed, killing 14 civilians, including seven children, though Hussein was not there.
The Sunnis also got a taste of U.S. destruction from the air during the assault on Fallujah in April 2004. With U.S. warplanes shattering the city with 500-pound bombs, hundreds of Iraqis – many of them civilians – died. There were so many dead that the city's soccer field was turned into a mass grave.
God’s ‘Man’
Hersh’s sources said, too, that Bush’s fundamentalist Christianity has added another complication to the U.S. pursuit of a realistic strategy in Iraq.
“Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments,” Hersh wrote. “In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq.
“After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that ‘God put me here’ to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that ‘he’s the man,’ the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reelection (in 2004) as a referendum on the war; privately he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.” [New Yorker, Dec. 5, 2005]
Caught up in his divine mission, Bush has repeatedly rejected cautionary advice about Iraq, dating back to pre-invasion warnings from the likes of Gen. Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser under President George H.W. Bush. Even now, military advisers say Bush gets angry when they bring him negative news about Iraq.
This mix of Bush’s religious zeal and his refusal to accept reality adds another layer of danger as the United States slouches toward potential genocide in Iraq.
But some in Washington say it’s outrageous even to suggest the possibility of the U.S. government engaging in a crime against humanity as severe as genocide. Despite the historical fact that much of the American continent was settled after genocide against Native Americans, the notion of such a present-day crime is considered unthinkable.
The Bush administration, however, already has crossed other bright lines of international law, including the invasion of a non-threatening foreign nation and complicity in torture, such as subjecting captives to simulated drowning in a process called “water-boarding.”
So, how unthinkable is it really that the Bush administration might venture across another boundary of civilized behavior?
What if Iraq’s Sunnis dig in their heels because they suspect that their historic Shiite rivals plan to deny the Sunni population a significant share of Iraq’s oil reserves, which are located mostly in Shiite and Kurdish territories?
With little choice besides living in poverty in Iraq’s central desert, the Sunnis might decide that their best option is to continue fighting until the Shiites make far bigger concessions, such as giving a strong central government control of the oil riches.
If that’s the choice the Sunnis make – and if Bush sees his commitment to a “complete victory” as part of God’s plan – might the Shiites then exploit U.S. air power to inflict a final crushing blow against their ancient enemies?
Perhaps cooler heads will prevail and excessive bloodshed will be averted. But if too many more lines get crossed, the rest of the world may extend the list of crimes already blamed on the Bush administration – to include genocide.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
By Robert Parry
December 1, 2005
Despite pretty words about democracy and freedom, George W. Bush’s “victory” plan in Iraq is starting to look increasingly like an invitation to genocide, the systematic destruction of the Sunni minority for resisting its U.S.-induced transformation from the nation’s ruling elite into second-class citizenship.
The Sunnis, an Islamic sect that makes up about 35 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people, are being confronted with a stark choice, either accept subordination to the less-educated Shiite majority or face the devastation of Sunni neighborhoods, the imprisonment of many Sunni males and the deaths of large numbers of the Sunni population.
In referring to this possibility, many in Washington object to the word “genocide” – which is defined in international law as the destruction of “in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” – but already there are troubling signs that Iraq’s incipient civil war could slide into something close to that.
Retaliating against Sunni bombings and other attacks on Shiite targets over the past two years, Iraq’s Shiite-controlled security forces have begun rounding up, torturing and executing Sunni men.
“Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged in recent weeks, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation,” New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins reported from Baghdad.
“Some Sunni males have been found dead in ditches and fields, with bullet holes in their temples, acid burns on their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electric drills,” Filkins wrote. “Many have simply vanished.” [NYT, Nov. 29, 2005]
In November, a secret bunker – where Sunni captives were mistreated and apparently tortured – was discovered in an Interior Ministry building in Baghdad. The Shiite-dominated government has denied responsibility for the abuses and the murders.
But human rights groups and other investigators have blamed many of the Sunni killings on the Badr Brigade, an Iranian-backed Shiite militia associated with a leading element of the Iraqi government, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The Council has close ties to the fundamentalist Shiite government of Iran.
‘Death Squads’
U.S. officials also acknowledge that hard-line Shiite militiamen, who have penetrated the government’s security forces, are operating “death squads” to terrorize Sunnis.
The killings and disappearances are reminiscent of the bloodshed in Central America in the 1980s when right-wing regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador unleashed security forces to round up, torture and kill suspected leftists.
That violence, however, was primarily defined by political ideology, rather than race, religion or ethnicity. An exception was the slaughtering of a Mayan Indian tribe in the Guatemalan highlands as part of a military scorched-earth campaign that later was investigated by a truth commission and denounced as “genocide.” [For details about Ronald Reagan's tolerance of these atrocities, see Robert Parry’s Lost History.]
In Iraq, the religious component of the nation’s incipient civil war is already apparent, although Bush often has presented the Iraqi conflict to the American people as a war largely between foreign Islamic “terrorists” and freedom-loving Iraqis.
Bush finally dropped that distorted analysis in his Nov. 30 speech about his plan for “victory” in Iraq. He divided the “enemy in Iraq” into three groups – the Sunni “rejectionists,” who resent having lost their privileged status; the Sunni “Saddamists,” who retain loyalty to ousted dictator Saddam Hussein; and the foreign “terrorists,” who have entered Iraq to fight the American invaders and generally spread chaos.
U.S. military analysts estimate that more than 90 percent of the forces battling American troops come from the first two Sunni categories, with the foreign jihadists representing only from 5 to 10 percent of the armed opposition. Though Bush didn’t give percentages, he did list the groups in declining order by size, with the “terrorists” the smallest.
Yet what is problematic about Bush’s analysis in terms of the genocide issue is that he identifies the vast majority of the “enemy” as Sunnis. That means both Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government and U.S. forces in Iraq are already targeting a religious minority for defeat, establishing one of the first conditions for the definition of genocide.
‘Complete Victory’
The next element in the equation will be how far the war against the Sunnis goes – or put differently, how stubbornly the Sunnis resist.
For his part, Bush reiterated that he will only be satisfied with “complete victory,” which suggests he is resolved to break the back of the Sunni resistance at whatever cost.
The Bush administration also wants to keep a tight hold on information that might put the U.S. war effort in a negative light. That means the American people can expect to be shielded from many of the worst secrets in Iraq, much as the White House has continued to fight release of video showing abuses at Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.
According to U.S. military experts I’ve interviewed, a great deal of emphasis in the future will be on “perception management,” the concept of shaping how both Iraqis and the American people perceive the events in Iraq.
This media manipulation, combined with secretive “death squads,” adds even more to the recipe necessary for war-time atrocities that might cross over into genocide.
Other warning flags were raised in a New Yorker article by veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, whose sources cited both Bush’s messianic commitment to stay the course in Iraq and to a shift toward a reliance on aerial bombardment of “enemy” targets, as U.S. troop levels begin to decline.
“A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower,” Hersh wrote. “Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units.
“The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the overall level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.”
One of the risks is that the power to target U.S. air attacks would be put in the hands of Iraq’s Shiite-controlled government, which could then rain down American death and destruction from the air on Sunnis and other rivals.
An example of this kind of horror occurred in the early days of the war in March 2003 when the U.S. military relied on a false report from a supposed informant that Saddam Hussein was eating at a Baghdad restaurant. The restaurant was bombed, killing 14 civilians, including seven children, though Hussein was not there.
The Sunnis also got a taste of U.S. destruction from the air during the assault on Fallujah in April 2004. With U.S. warplanes shattering the city with 500-pound bombs, hundreds of Iraqis – many of them civilians – died. There were so many dead that the city's soccer field was turned into a mass grave.
God’s ‘Man’
Hersh’s sources said, too, that Bush’s fundamentalist Christianity has added another complication to the U.S. pursuit of a realistic strategy in Iraq.
“Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments,” Hersh wrote. “In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq.
“After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that ‘God put me here’ to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that ‘he’s the man,’ the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reelection (in 2004) as a referendum on the war; privately he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.” [New Yorker, Dec. 5, 2005]
Caught up in his divine mission, Bush has repeatedly rejected cautionary advice about Iraq, dating back to pre-invasion warnings from the likes of Gen. Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser under President George H.W. Bush. Even now, military advisers say Bush gets angry when they bring him negative news about Iraq.
This mix of Bush’s religious zeal and his refusal to accept reality adds another layer of danger as the United States slouches toward potential genocide in Iraq.
But some in Washington say it’s outrageous even to suggest the possibility of the U.S. government engaging in a crime against humanity as severe as genocide. Despite the historical fact that much of the American continent was settled after genocide against Native Americans, the notion of such a present-day crime is considered unthinkable.
The Bush administration, however, already has crossed other bright lines of international law, including the invasion of a non-threatening foreign nation and complicity in torture, such as subjecting captives to simulated drowning in a process called “water-boarding.”
So, how unthinkable is it really that the Bush administration might venture across another boundary of civilized behavior?
What if Iraq’s Sunnis dig in their heels because they suspect that their historic Shiite rivals plan to deny the Sunni population a significant share of Iraq’s oil reserves, which are located mostly in Shiite and Kurdish territories?
With little choice besides living in poverty in Iraq’s central desert, the Sunnis might decide that their best option is to continue fighting until the Shiites make far bigger concessions, such as giving a strong central government control of the oil riches.
If that’s the choice the Sunnis make – and if Bush sees his commitment to a “complete victory” as part of God’s plan – might the Shiites then exploit U.S. air power to inflict a final crushing blow against their ancient enemies?
Perhaps cooler heads will prevail and excessive bloodshed will be averted. But if too many more lines get crossed, the rest of the world may extend the list of crimes already blamed on the Bush administration – to include genocide.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
Excellent thoughtful piece by Ian Lustick. There is also a lurking
issue whether Bush II, and certain members of his administration,
should eventually answer to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for
alleged crimes against Humanity for the tens of thousands of Iraqi
civilians killed by US forces - in spite of the fact that US
participation in the ICC was (effectively) "unsigned" by this
Administration.
Ian Lustick on Iraq
Iraq: Withdraw or stay the course?
Admit mistake, then set an exit date
The end did not justify the ravaging of international norms and legal
principle entailed by our unilateralism.
By Ian S. Lustick
When it comes to Iraq, all questions have easy answers except one: How
do we get out of this mess?
First, answers to the easy questions.
The start of the war. Were there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
poised to strike us in the next decade? No. Were the inspectors doing
their job? Yes. Were Saddam and al-Qaeda in cahoots? No. Why did we
invade? Post-9/11 fears were exploited by a God-struck President and a
neocon cabal on the warpath toward Baghdad long before Osama bin Laden
became a household word.
The results of the war. Did our government have any idea what it would
do with the country once Baghdad fell? No. Are Americans safer for
having invaded? No. Are there more Muslim terrorists in the world ready
and able to kill Americans than there would have been had we not
invaded? Yes. Are Iraqis better off now than they would have been after
four more years of a decrepit Saddam regime? Not if measured in
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties.
The future. Where is Iraq headed? Toward civil war and breakup. What
is our strategy for winning? None. What will our role be if we do not
leave? Patrolling oil-poor and insurgent-rich Sunnistan. Who will gain?
Al-Qaeda (recruits), Kurds (precarious independence), and Iran
(effective domination of Shiastan and its oil fields).
Now the hard question: How do we get out of this slaughterhouse
without turning it into an even bigger catastrophe?
Neither Republicans nor Democrats tell the truth. Republicans postpone
their day of reckoning with stiff upper lips and patriotic happy talk.
Though some have now started declaring that the emperor has no exit
strategy, most Democrats can't live down their failure to stand up when
the intelligence was cooked and the war launched. For leading
Democrats, sniping from the sidelines has been the limit of their
contribution.
Here is the answer to the hard question. The president - and it will
not be George W. Bush - must declare that Americawas wrong to have
invaded Iraqand apologize for that immense misjudgment. Despite all
Saddam's crimes, the end did not justify the ravaging of international
norms and legal principles entailed by our unilateralism. Our soldiers
(he should say) died in an unnecessary war, but at least their deaths
will not doom thousands more of their comrades. Let their sacrifice (he
should continue) also be the salvation of thousands more in the wars of
arrogance that will be prevented by the memory of Iraq.
The president should then note that no Iraqi regime emerging under
U.S.auspices could survive an American departure. Yet a sudden
withdrawal of American troops could produce an even larger calamity,
dooming those with the courage to pursue a democratic alternative to
Baathist dictatorship, and exposing us to an Iraq10 times more
dangerous than Afghanistan.
Therefore, the president should declare, the United States is ready to
put the hundreds of billions of dollars it would otherwise be spending
on war in Iraq into a fund to be managed by international bodies ready
to assemble and deploy a massive military force capable of assuming
responsibility for security operations and a civilian development and
reconstruction authority to assist Iraqis in rebuilding their country.
These bodies could include the United Nations, the European Union,
NATO, the Arab League. Should those bodies call on the United Statesto
contribute forces, Washingtonwould respond affirmatively, including
agreement to place those forces, for stipulated purposes, under the
command of non-Americans.
As part of its renewed commitment to multilateralism in the search for
a peaceful, free, and secure Middle East the president should also
announce Washington's readiness to move decisively, with its ally
Israel, toward a just and permanent solution to the Palestinian problem.
Following his speech at the United Nations, the president would meet
privately with the leaders of a dozen crucial countries, indicating to
them that to change the balance of political expectations in Iraqand
help legitimize the newly forming democracy there, the United
Stateswould soon announce a timetable for the withdrawal of American
forces. This plan would be drawn up in consultation with our allies and
with those bodies working to create a new international framework for
achieving a transition in Iraqtoward a more peaceful future, whether as
one nation, as more than one, or as multiple trusteeships. The United
Stateswould coordinate its withdrawal to facilitate the transfer of
security responsibilities to properly vested international authorities
while offering opportunities to Iraqis seeking political asylum to
emigrate to the United Statesor to other countries.
This answer to the hard question is tough to swallow and difficult to
implement, and certainly will not be implemented by our current
president. True, this administration's irresponsibility knows no
bounds. It may be as ruthless in implementing a politically expedient
evacuation of Iraqas it was in mounting an ideologically driven
invasion. But to live up to our commitments and protect ourselves
against the consequences of anarchy in Iraq, something like the policy
described here is the answer, indeed the only answer, to those who ask
when American troops can come home.
Ian Lustick (ilustick@sas.upenn.edu) is a professor of political
science at the University of Pennsylvania.
issue whether Bush II, and certain members of his administration,
should eventually answer to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for
alleged crimes against Humanity for the tens of thousands of Iraqi
civilians killed by US forces - in spite of the fact that US
participation in the ICC was (effectively) "unsigned" by this
Administration.
Ian Lustick on Iraq
Iraq: Withdraw or stay the course?
Admit mistake, then set an exit date
The end did not justify the ravaging of international norms and legal
principle entailed by our unilateralism.
By Ian S. Lustick
When it comes to Iraq, all questions have easy answers except one: How
do we get out of this mess?
First, answers to the easy questions.
The start of the war. Were there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
poised to strike us in the next decade? No. Were the inspectors doing
their job? Yes. Were Saddam and al-Qaeda in cahoots? No. Why did we
invade? Post-9/11 fears were exploited by a God-struck President and a
neocon cabal on the warpath toward Baghdad long before Osama bin Laden
became a household word.
The results of the war. Did our government have any idea what it would
do with the country once Baghdad fell? No. Are Americans safer for
having invaded? No. Are there more Muslim terrorists in the world ready
and able to kill Americans than there would have been had we not
invaded? Yes. Are Iraqis better off now than they would have been after
four more years of a decrepit Saddam regime? Not if measured in
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties.
The future. Where is Iraq headed? Toward civil war and breakup. What
is our strategy for winning? None. What will our role be if we do not
leave? Patrolling oil-poor and insurgent-rich Sunnistan. Who will gain?
Al-Qaeda (recruits), Kurds (precarious independence), and Iran
(effective domination of Shiastan and its oil fields).
Now the hard question: How do we get out of this slaughterhouse
without turning it into an even bigger catastrophe?
Neither Republicans nor Democrats tell the truth. Republicans postpone
their day of reckoning with stiff upper lips and patriotic happy talk.
Though some have now started declaring that the emperor has no exit
strategy, most Democrats can't live down their failure to stand up when
the intelligence was cooked and the war launched. For leading
Democrats, sniping from the sidelines has been the limit of their
contribution.
Here is the answer to the hard question. The president - and it will
not be George W. Bush - must declare that Americawas wrong to have
invaded Iraqand apologize for that immense misjudgment. Despite all
Saddam's crimes, the end did not justify the ravaging of international
norms and legal principles entailed by our unilateralism. Our soldiers
(he should say) died in an unnecessary war, but at least their deaths
will not doom thousands more of their comrades. Let their sacrifice (he
should continue) also be the salvation of thousands more in the wars of
arrogance that will be prevented by the memory of Iraq.
The president should then note that no Iraqi regime emerging under
U.S.auspices could survive an American departure. Yet a sudden
withdrawal of American troops could produce an even larger calamity,
dooming those with the courage to pursue a democratic alternative to
Baathist dictatorship, and exposing us to an Iraq10 times more
dangerous than Afghanistan.
Therefore, the president should declare, the United States is ready to
put the hundreds of billions of dollars it would otherwise be spending
on war in Iraq into a fund to be managed by international bodies ready
to assemble and deploy a massive military force capable of assuming
responsibility for security operations and a civilian development and
reconstruction authority to assist Iraqis in rebuilding their country.
These bodies could include the United Nations, the European Union,
NATO, the Arab League. Should those bodies call on the United Statesto
contribute forces, Washingtonwould respond affirmatively, including
agreement to place those forces, for stipulated purposes, under the
command of non-Americans.
As part of its renewed commitment to multilateralism in the search for
a peaceful, free, and secure Middle East the president should also
announce Washington's readiness to move decisively, with its ally
Israel, toward a just and permanent solution to the Palestinian problem.
Following his speech at the United Nations, the president would meet
privately with the leaders of a dozen crucial countries, indicating to
them that to change the balance of political expectations in Iraqand
help legitimize the newly forming democracy there, the United
Stateswould soon announce a timetable for the withdrawal of American
forces. This plan would be drawn up in consultation with our allies and
with those bodies working to create a new international framework for
achieving a transition in Iraqtoward a more peaceful future, whether as
one nation, as more than one, or as multiple trusteeships. The United
Stateswould coordinate its withdrawal to facilitate the transfer of
security responsibilities to properly vested international authorities
while offering opportunities to Iraqis seeking political asylum to
emigrate to the United Statesor to other countries.
This answer to the hard question is tough to swallow and difficult to
implement, and certainly will not be implemented by our current
president. True, this administration's irresponsibility knows no
bounds. It may be as ruthless in implementing a politically expedient
evacuation of Iraqas it was in mounting an ideologically driven
invasion. But to live up to our commitments and protect ourselves
against the consequences of anarchy in Iraq, something like the policy
described here is the answer, indeed the only answer, to those who ask
when American troops can come home.
Ian Lustick (ilustick@sas.upenn.edu) is a professor of political
science at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Insurgencies Are Winning
Robert Dreyfuss
December 02, 2005
Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone.He can be reached at his website: www.robertdreyfuss.com.
There are now two resistance movements that are winning. The first, of course, is the one in Iraq, which is gaining in its war against the U.S. occupation. And the second is the resistance movement inside the Democratic party, which is increasingly vocal in its demand for the United States to get out of Iraq.
Next week, the entire House Democratic caucus will meet in closed session with one item on the table: Iraq. Don’t expect the Democrats to come up with a unified position: Donkeys will fly before that happens. But to say that the meeting is crucial is an understatement, and it is likely to mark that start of a year-long battle that will pit the party’s progressives, now joined by Rep. John Murtha, against both nattering nabobs like Hillary Clinton and the ever-warlike Liebermansheviks.
According to a source on Capitol Hill, there isn’t a clear agenda for next week’s meeting, but it is a hopeful sign that Democrats might be finally be getting ready to speak clearly on Iraq. It’s unlikely, they say, that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is now supporting Murtha’s courageous call for a six-month withdrawal timetable, will try to force a unified Democratic stand. But it’s guaranteed to be a lively discussion, one in which the various species of stay-the-course and sorta-stay-the-course Dems will be on the defensive. (Important historical note: By a majority of 126-81, House Democrats voted against the war in 2002, according to Roll Call , which first reported the meeting of the caucus next week.)
The caucus meeting itself was directly triggered by Murtha’s bombshell, which thrilled progressives and anti-war activists. It has given new momentum to the push by Reps. Lynn Woolsey and Neil Abercrombie, who’ve introduced a resolution that calls on the Bush administration to start withdrawing troops no later than next Halloween, and it has reenergized the House’s Out Of Iraq caucus. Abercrombie told me the organizers of the so-called Jones-Abercrombie resolution (the Jones being Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, the Republican version of Murtha) are willing to substitute Murtha’s far stronger, out-in-six-months resolution for theirs. And he said that they will begin organizing for a discharge petition to force a vote on it. Since such a petition requires a majority of the House, there’s no chance it will happen, but it provides the anti-war House Dems with a good organizing tool.
Naturally, the Liebermansheviks are in high dudgeon, warning that if the party decides to align itself with the vast majority of American voters, it will be a mistake. In today’s Washington Post , Marshall Wittman of the Democratic Leadership Council invokes the terrifying name of Rove the Mighty to scare the party away from doing the right thing. "If Karl Rove was writing the timing of this, he wouldn't have written it any differently, with the president of the United States expressing resolve and the Democratic leader offering surrender. For Republicans, this is manna from heaven,” says Wittman. Why, exactly, Democrats ought to take advice from a former Christian Coalition leader who worked for uber-hawk John McCain isn’t exactly clear—never mind the fact that Rove may soon be indicted for lying or leaking state secrets in defense of the war. (The Washington Times and Rev. Moon are smiling, too, running a headline today that reads: “Democratic split on war thrills GOP.” It quotes the spokesman for the Republican National Committee saying Pelosi et al. have adopted a “defeatist position of retreat” in Iraq.)
It isn’t often in politics that doing the right thing coincides with doing the thing that is politically popular. As I wrote last week in Rolling Stone , there are three elements to a new policy for Iraq: First, set a date for withdrawal; second, start negotiating with enemy, that is, with the non-Zarqawi resistance; and third, internationalize the effort. That latter step would involve an international mediator, the United Nations and the Arab League. It has the added, and comforting, benefit of making President Bush look like the weak, flailing, strategy-less executive that he is.
From a moral standpoint, packing up and leaving Iraq is the right thing. The war in Iraq has become a moral blot on America’s soul. U.S. troops in Iraq are dying to defend a Shiite theocracy allied to Iran that operates death squads, tortures prisoners with electric drills and fosters violent sectarianism. Meanwhile, in support of that anti-democratic gang, our forces are killing thousands of oppositionists to no useful result. And the war is being led by Bush administration officials who lied to start the war, who support torture of our enemies in secret prisons and who seem obsessed with what they see as a titanic struggle against an imaginary Evil Caliphate.
From a political standpoint, too, getting out of Iraq in 2006 is a winner. Since last summer, poll after poll has shown that something like two-thirds of Americans now believe that the war in Iraq wasn't worth fighting, and more than half say that the war in Iraq has not made the United States safer. More and more GOPers are having doubts about the war, and the looming election will concentrate their minds wonderfully. That’s what makes it all-important for the Democrats to define themselves by supporting Get the Heck Out. Not because it will cause the Republican caucus to splinter, which it will—why would Republicans want to go into 2006 with the Bush-Cheney war albatross tied to their necks? But because by doing so, they will guarantee that the war in Iraq ends in 2006.
Now, does that mean that the Democratic Party will embrace a Murtha-style stand? Sadly, no. The party has enough Liebermansheviks to guarantee it remains divided. Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, that paragon of Middle East expertise, is doing his best to undermine his party’s majority. “I believe that a precipitous withdrawal of American forces in Iraq could lead to disaster, spawning a civil war, fostering a haven for terrorists and damaging our nation's security and credibility,” he chirped. Despite Hoyer, though, the good guys are winning on this one.
Robert Dreyfuss
December 02, 2005
Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone.He can be reached at his website: www.robertdreyfuss.com.
There are now two resistance movements that are winning. The first, of course, is the one in Iraq, which is gaining in its war against the U.S. occupation. And the second is the resistance movement inside the Democratic party, which is increasingly vocal in its demand for the United States to get out of Iraq.
Next week, the entire House Democratic caucus will meet in closed session with one item on the table: Iraq. Don’t expect the Democrats to come up with a unified position: Donkeys will fly before that happens. But to say that the meeting is crucial is an understatement, and it is likely to mark that start of a year-long battle that will pit the party’s progressives, now joined by Rep. John Murtha, against both nattering nabobs like Hillary Clinton and the ever-warlike Liebermansheviks.
According to a source on Capitol Hill, there isn’t a clear agenda for next week’s meeting, but it is a hopeful sign that Democrats might be finally be getting ready to speak clearly on Iraq. It’s unlikely, they say, that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is now supporting Murtha’s courageous call for a six-month withdrawal timetable, will try to force a unified Democratic stand. But it’s guaranteed to be a lively discussion, one in which the various species of stay-the-course and sorta-stay-the-course Dems will be on the defensive. (Important historical note: By a majority of 126-81, House Democrats voted against the war in 2002, according to Roll Call , which first reported the meeting of the caucus next week.)
The caucus meeting itself was directly triggered by Murtha’s bombshell, which thrilled progressives and anti-war activists. It has given new momentum to the push by Reps. Lynn Woolsey and Neil Abercrombie, who’ve introduced a resolution that calls on the Bush administration to start withdrawing troops no later than next Halloween, and it has reenergized the House’s Out Of Iraq caucus. Abercrombie told me the organizers of the so-called Jones-Abercrombie resolution (the Jones being Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, the Republican version of Murtha) are willing to substitute Murtha’s far stronger, out-in-six-months resolution for theirs. And he said that they will begin organizing for a discharge petition to force a vote on it. Since such a petition requires a majority of the House, there’s no chance it will happen, but it provides the anti-war House Dems with a good organizing tool.
Naturally, the Liebermansheviks are in high dudgeon, warning that if the party decides to align itself with the vast majority of American voters, it will be a mistake. In today’s Washington Post , Marshall Wittman of the Democratic Leadership Council invokes the terrifying name of Rove the Mighty to scare the party away from doing the right thing. "If Karl Rove was writing the timing of this, he wouldn't have written it any differently, with the president of the United States expressing resolve and the Democratic leader offering surrender. For Republicans, this is manna from heaven,” says Wittman. Why, exactly, Democrats ought to take advice from a former Christian Coalition leader who worked for uber-hawk John McCain isn’t exactly clear—never mind the fact that Rove may soon be indicted for lying or leaking state secrets in defense of the war. (The Washington Times and Rev. Moon are smiling, too, running a headline today that reads: “Democratic split on war thrills GOP.” It quotes the spokesman for the Republican National Committee saying Pelosi et al. have adopted a “defeatist position of retreat” in Iraq.)
It isn’t often in politics that doing the right thing coincides with doing the thing that is politically popular. As I wrote last week in Rolling Stone , there are three elements to a new policy for Iraq: First, set a date for withdrawal; second, start negotiating with enemy, that is, with the non-Zarqawi resistance; and third, internationalize the effort. That latter step would involve an international mediator, the United Nations and the Arab League. It has the added, and comforting, benefit of making President Bush look like the weak, flailing, strategy-less executive that he is.
From a moral standpoint, packing up and leaving Iraq is the right thing. The war in Iraq has become a moral blot on America’s soul. U.S. troops in Iraq are dying to defend a Shiite theocracy allied to Iran that operates death squads, tortures prisoners with electric drills and fosters violent sectarianism. Meanwhile, in support of that anti-democratic gang, our forces are killing thousands of oppositionists to no useful result. And the war is being led by Bush administration officials who lied to start the war, who support torture of our enemies in secret prisons and who seem obsessed with what they see as a titanic struggle against an imaginary Evil Caliphate.
From a political standpoint, too, getting out of Iraq in 2006 is a winner. Since last summer, poll after poll has shown that something like two-thirds of Americans now believe that the war in Iraq wasn't worth fighting, and more than half say that the war in Iraq has not made the United States safer. More and more GOPers are having doubts about the war, and the looming election will concentrate their minds wonderfully. That’s what makes it all-important for the Democrats to define themselves by supporting Get the Heck Out. Not because it will cause the Republican caucus to splinter, which it will—why would Republicans want to go into 2006 with the Bush-Cheney war albatross tied to their necks? But because by doing so, they will guarantee that the war in Iraq ends in 2006.
Now, does that mean that the Democratic Party will embrace a Murtha-style stand? Sadly, no. The party has enough Liebermansheviks to guarantee it remains divided. Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, that paragon of Middle East expertise, is doing his best to undermine his party’s majority. “I believe that a precipitous withdrawal of American forces in Iraq could lead to disaster, spawning a civil war, fostering a haven for terrorists and damaging our nation's security and credibility,” he chirped. Despite Hoyer, though, the good guys are winning on this one.
Democratic Lawmakers Splinter on Iraq
By Jonathan Weisman
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's embrace Wednesday of a rapid withdrawal from Iraq highlighted the Democratic Party's fissures on war policy, putting the House's top Democrat at odds with her second in command while upsetting a consensus developing in the Senate.
For months now, Democratic leaders have grown increasingly aggressive in their critiques of President Bush's policies in Iraq but have been largely content to keep their own war strategies vague or under wraps. That ended Wednesday when Pelosi (D-Calif.) aggressively endorsed a proposal by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq as soon as possible, leaving only a much smaller rapid-reaction force in the region.
The move caught some in the party by surprise. It threw a wrench into a carefully calibrated Democratic theme emerging in the Senate that called for 2006 to be a "significant year of progress" in Iraq, with Iraqi security forces making measurable progress toward relieving U.S. troops of combat duties. Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said last month that "it's time to take the training wheels off the Iraqi government."
What's more, House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) issued a statement Wednesday that was in marked contrast to Pelosi's. "I believe that a precipitous withdrawal of American forces in Iraq could lead to disaster, spawning a civil war, fostering a haven for terrorists and damaging our nation's security and credibility," he said.
Marshall Wittmann, a former Republican political strategist now with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, said Pelosi may have resurrected her party's most deadly liability -- voters' lack of trust in the party on national security.
"If Karl Rove was writing the timing of this, he wouldn't have written it any differently, with the president of the United States expressing resolve and the Democratic leader offering surrender," Wittmann said, referring to Bush's top adviser. "For Republicans, this is manna from heaven."
David Sirota, a Democratic strategist in Montana long critical of the party leadership's timidity, fired back: "It is not surprising that a bunch of insulated elitists in the Washington establishment -- most of whom have never served in uniform -- would stab the Democratic Party in the back and attack the courage of people like Vietnam War hero Jack Murtha and Nancy Pelosi for their stand on Iraq."
For Democrats, Iraq presents a political quandary. Americans have clearly turned against the war, with a growing majority disapproving of the president's handling of the conflict and saying the invasion was not worth the costs. What they want done is far less clear.
Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a speech yesterday that military leaders "have not articulated well enough" to the American public what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the case of Iraq, he said, top U.S. officers "made a conscious decision" with the formal transfer of sovereignty in June 2004 to "step back a little bit in the press" and let the new Baghdad government "speak for itself publicly."
"But as a result of stepping back," Pace said, "I think we may have stepped back a little too far inside our own country with regard to explaining to our own people what we were doing."
House Republican leaders, meanwhile, are touting a bipartisan poll in November by RT Strategies that found half of registered voters support a withdrawal of troops only when the nation's goals are met, compared with 15 percent who want an immediate withdrawal and 29 percent who want a specific, public timetable for withdrawal. But a Pew Research Center poll in October found that 52 percent favored a withdrawal timetable, while 43 percent opposed one. An additional 1 percent said that U.S. troops should get out now.
Some Democrats continued yesterday to finesse their position. At a White House appearance after an event honoring civil rights leader Rosa Parks, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said: "If you just continue along the road we're going now without a more concrete transfer of responsibility -- a target schedule by which you begin to turn over provinces, by which you specifically begin to shift the responsibility -- I think a lot of people fear that it's going to be more of the same."
He added: "I'm not asking even for the specific timetable of withdrawal. I'm asking for a specific timetable of transfer of authority."
Pelosi hesitated for nearly two weeks before endorsing Murtha's call for the withdrawal of 160,000 U.S. troops, while she and her aides assessed the political fallout from his action. "What he has said has great wisdom," Pelosi said of her colleague on Wednesday. "While the president is digging a hole, Mr. Murtha is speaking from the light of day about the realities in Iraq, and so yes, I am supporting Mr. Murtha's proposal."
Her pronouncement Wednesday, more than anything, was proof that "the frustrations of the activist wing of the Democratic Party have boiled over," said a prominent Democratic pollster, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering clients.
Aides to Pelosi said yesterday that they are confident she and Murtha speak for a broader group. Since Murtha announced his position, he has received 14,000 e-mails, faxes and phone calls, 80 percent in support, aides said. Over Thanksgiving week, Murtha received a standing ovation in a Dallas Starbucks.
Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.
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By Jonathan Weisman
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's embrace Wednesday of a rapid withdrawal from Iraq highlighted the Democratic Party's fissures on war policy, putting the House's top Democrat at odds with her second in command while upsetting a consensus developing in the Senate.
For months now, Democratic leaders have grown increasingly aggressive in their critiques of President Bush's policies in Iraq but have been largely content to keep their own war strategies vague or under wraps. That ended Wednesday when Pelosi (D-Calif.) aggressively endorsed a proposal by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq as soon as possible, leaving only a much smaller rapid-reaction force in the region.
The move caught some in the party by surprise. It threw a wrench into a carefully calibrated Democratic theme emerging in the Senate that called for 2006 to be a "significant year of progress" in Iraq, with Iraqi security forces making measurable progress toward relieving U.S. troops of combat duties. Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said last month that "it's time to take the training wheels off the Iraqi government."
What's more, House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) issued a statement Wednesday that was in marked contrast to Pelosi's. "I believe that a precipitous withdrawal of American forces in Iraq could lead to disaster, spawning a civil war, fostering a haven for terrorists and damaging our nation's security and credibility," he said.
Marshall Wittmann, a former Republican political strategist now with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, said Pelosi may have resurrected her party's most deadly liability -- voters' lack of trust in the party on national security.
"If Karl Rove was writing the timing of this, he wouldn't have written it any differently, with the president of the United States expressing resolve and the Democratic leader offering surrender," Wittmann said, referring to Bush's top adviser. "For Republicans, this is manna from heaven."
David Sirota, a Democratic strategist in Montana long critical of the party leadership's timidity, fired back: "It is not surprising that a bunch of insulated elitists in the Washington establishment -- most of whom have never served in uniform -- would stab the Democratic Party in the back and attack the courage of people like Vietnam War hero Jack Murtha and Nancy Pelosi for their stand on Iraq."
For Democrats, Iraq presents a political quandary. Americans have clearly turned against the war, with a growing majority disapproving of the president's handling of the conflict and saying the invasion was not worth the costs. What they want done is far less clear.
Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a speech yesterday that military leaders "have not articulated well enough" to the American public what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the case of Iraq, he said, top U.S. officers "made a conscious decision" with the formal transfer of sovereignty in June 2004 to "step back a little bit in the press" and let the new Baghdad government "speak for itself publicly."
"But as a result of stepping back," Pace said, "I think we may have stepped back a little too far inside our own country with regard to explaining to our own people what we were doing."
House Republican leaders, meanwhile, are touting a bipartisan poll in November by RT Strategies that found half of registered voters support a withdrawal of troops only when the nation's goals are met, compared with 15 percent who want an immediate withdrawal and 29 percent who want a specific, public timetable for withdrawal. But a Pew Research Center poll in October found that 52 percent favored a withdrawal timetable, while 43 percent opposed one. An additional 1 percent said that U.S. troops should get out now.
Some Democrats continued yesterday to finesse their position. At a White House appearance after an event honoring civil rights leader Rosa Parks, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said: "If you just continue along the road we're going now without a more concrete transfer of responsibility -- a target schedule by which you begin to turn over provinces, by which you specifically begin to shift the responsibility -- I think a lot of people fear that it's going to be more of the same."
He added: "I'm not asking even for the specific timetable of withdrawal. I'm asking for a specific timetable of transfer of authority."
Pelosi hesitated for nearly two weeks before endorsing Murtha's call for the withdrawal of 160,000 U.S. troops, while she and her aides assessed the political fallout from his action. "What he has said has great wisdom," Pelosi said of her colleague on Wednesday. "While the president is digging a hole, Mr. Murtha is speaking from the light of day about the realities in Iraq, and so yes, I am supporting Mr. Murtha's proposal."
Her pronouncement Wednesday, more than anything, was proof that "the frustrations of the activist wing of the Democratic Party have boiled over," said a prominent Democratic pollster, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering clients.
Aides to Pelosi said yesterday that they are confident she and Murtha speak for a broader group. Since Murtha announced his position, he has received 14,000 e-mails, faxes and phone calls, 80 percent in support, aides said. Over Thanksgiving week, Murtha received a standing ovation in a Dallas Starbucks.
Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.
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U.S. ex-general calls for Iraq pull out
WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- The U.S. general who used to head the National Security Agency says the only way to stabilize the Middle East is to leave Iraq.
Retired three star Lt. Gen. William Odom, writing for NiemanWatchdog.org, wrote that while President George W. Bush wants to bring democracy and stability to the Middle East, the only way to achieve that goal is for the U.S. armed forces to get out of Iraq now.
Odom, one of the most respected U.S. military analysts and a prominent figure at the conservative Hudson Institute in Washington, wrote, "We have seen most of our allies stand aside and engage in Schadenfreude over our painful bog-down in Iraq. Winston Churchill's glib observation, 'the only thing worse that having allies is having none,' was once again vindicated.
"There is no chance that our allies will join us in Iraq," he wrote. "... Iraq is the worst place to fight a battle for regional stability. Whose interests were best served by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the first place? It turns out that Iran and al-Qaida benefited the most, and that continues to be true every day U.S. forces remain there."
© Copyright 2005 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- The U.S. general who used to head the National Security Agency says the only way to stabilize the Middle East is to leave Iraq.
Retired three star Lt. Gen. William Odom, writing for NiemanWatchdog.org, wrote that while President George W. Bush wants to bring democracy and stability to the Middle East, the only way to achieve that goal is for the U.S. armed forces to get out of Iraq now.
Odom, one of the most respected U.S. military analysts and a prominent figure at the conservative Hudson Institute in Washington, wrote, "We have seen most of our allies stand aside and engage in Schadenfreude over our painful bog-down in Iraq. Winston Churchill's glib observation, 'the only thing worse that having allies is having none,' was once again vindicated.
"There is no chance that our allies will join us in Iraq," he wrote. "... Iraq is the worst place to fight a battle for regional stability. Whose interests were best served by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the first place? It turns out that Iran and al-Qaida benefited the most, and that continues to be true every day U.S. forces remain there."
© Copyright 2005 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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Senior army analysts argue against early withdrawal, but still see 'bleak' road ahead.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1202/dailyUpdate.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1202/dailyUpdate.html
Iraqi journalists condemn US military media tactics 2 hours, 57 minutes ago
Journalists in Iraq say they are shocked by revelations that the US military paid Iraqi newspapers and journalists to run positive articles about US activities in Iraq.
"It is a scandal that the US administration would use methods like these which contradict all principles of the profession and seek to defraud public opinion," well-known Iraqi journalist and political analyst Ahmed Sabri said.
"A newspaper should reflect the reality on the ground, not sponsored information aimed at improving the image of the The United States, which in reality has failed in Iraq," Sabri added.
The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that dozens of stories written by "information operations" soldiers were secretly placed with media outlets in Iraq through a defense contractor to mask the military's involvement.
The report relied largely on leaks from members of the military establishment who say they fear that US attempts to influence the Iraqi media may actually be subverting a free press.
As recently as Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pointed to the free press in Iraq as evidence of the progress made in Iraq.
Knight-Ridder newspapers on Thursday reported that the military also was paying Iraqi reporters up to 200 dollars a month to write sympathetic stories.
It said the payments were made to members of the Baghdad Press Club, an organization set up by US army officers more than a year ago.
An Iraqi female journalist, who preferred to remain anonymous, told AFP about working for the Baghdad Press Club, which is headquartered is at the airport, for three months before quitting.
"We were called to go out with them on various educational, reconstruction, health or aid projects and asked to write positive articles about them in exchange for 50 dollars," she recalled.
"After three months, I left. The whole thing was ridiculous and against the ethics of journalists," she said, recalling a US-sponsored trip to Sadr City where people called her a traitor and threw rocks at her.
Another Iraqi journalist in Baghdad who also preferred not to be named was more philosophical about the entire affair.
"It's true that it's fraud, but a professional journalist shouldn't fall into such a trap," he said.
Major General Rick Lynch, the US military spokesman in Iraq, cast the matter as an effort to counter lies spread by Al-Qaeda.
"We do empower our operational commanders with the ability to inform the Iraqi public, but everything we do is based on fact not based on fiction," he said.
Military officials would not comment on whether newspapers and journalists were paid to plant the articles.
Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, head of the US military's press department in Baghdad, cited operational secrecy in withholding information about the program.
Johnson explained that the Iraqi press has traveled a long hard road from total control under ousted president Saddam Hussein to the current period characterized by a lethal insurgency.
"There's outright intimidation and many murders and other ways of manipulating the press, so it was felt operationally that it was necessary to make sure the facts were out," he said.
The White House announced on Wednesday that it was "very concerned" about the report.
Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.
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Journalists in Iraq say they are shocked by revelations that the US military paid Iraqi newspapers and journalists to run positive articles about US activities in Iraq.
"It is a scandal that the US administration would use methods like these which contradict all principles of the profession and seek to defraud public opinion," well-known Iraqi journalist and political analyst Ahmed Sabri said.
"A newspaper should reflect the reality on the ground, not sponsored information aimed at improving the image of the The United States, which in reality has failed in Iraq," Sabri added.
The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that dozens of stories written by "information operations" soldiers were secretly placed with media outlets in Iraq through a defense contractor to mask the military's involvement.
The report relied largely on leaks from members of the military establishment who say they fear that US attempts to influence the Iraqi media may actually be subverting a free press.
As recently as Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pointed to the free press in Iraq as evidence of the progress made in Iraq.
Knight-Ridder newspapers on Thursday reported that the military also was paying Iraqi reporters up to 200 dollars a month to write sympathetic stories.
It said the payments were made to members of the Baghdad Press Club, an organization set up by US army officers more than a year ago.
An Iraqi female journalist, who preferred to remain anonymous, told AFP about working for the Baghdad Press Club, which is headquartered is at the airport, for three months before quitting.
"We were called to go out with them on various educational, reconstruction, health or aid projects and asked to write positive articles about them in exchange for 50 dollars," she recalled.
"After three months, I left. The whole thing was ridiculous and against the ethics of journalists," she said, recalling a US-sponsored trip to Sadr City where people called her a traitor and threw rocks at her.
Another Iraqi journalist in Baghdad who also preferred not to be named was more philosophical about the entire affair.
"It's true that it's fraud, but a professional journalist shouldn't fall into such a trap," he said.
Major General Rick Lynch, the US military spokesman in Iraq, cast the matter as an effort to counter lies spread by Al-Qaeda.
"We do empower our operational commanders with the ability to inform the Iraqi public, but everything we do is based on fact not based on fiction," he said.
Military officials would not comment on whether newspapers and journalists were paid to plant the articles.
Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, head of the US military's press department in Baghdad, cited operational secrecy in withholding information about the program.
Johnson explained that the Iraqi press has traveled a long hard road from total control under ousted president Saddam Hussein to the current period characterized by a lethal insurgency.
"There's outright intimidation and many murders and other ways of manipulating the press, so it was felt operationally that it was necessary to make sure the facts were out," he said.
The White House announced on Wednesday that it was "very concerned" about the report.
Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.
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Odom: Want stability in the Middle East? Get out of Iraq!
COMMENTARY | November 11, 2005 In his last piece for NiemanWatchdog.org, retired Gen. William Odom argued that all the terrible things the Bush administration says would happen if we pulled our troops out of Iraq are happening already. In a new postscript, Odom writes that the converse is true as well: Bush says he wants to bring democracy and stability to the greater Middle East -- but in fact the only way to achieve that goal is to get out of Iraq now.
By William E. Odom
As I have watched the reactions to my earlier piece on NiemanWatchdog.org, "What’s wrong with cutting and running?”, I recognize that one critical point does not come through to many readers. The problem may stem from the words "cut and run" in the title. In the minds of some, that seems to imply leaving the region for good. My argument is fundamentally different.
I believe that stabilizing the region from the Eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan is very much an American interest, one we share with all our allies as well as with several other countries, especially, China, Russia, and India.
The ‘Global Balkans’
Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has called this region the "global Balkans," a name that recalls the role of the European Balkans during two or three decades leading up to the outbreak of World War I. By themselves the Balkan countries were not all that important. Yet several great powers, especially Russia and Austria, were jockeying for strategic advantages there as they anticipated the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and competition for control of the straits leading from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. Britain and France wanted neither Russia nor Austria to dominate; and Germany, although uninterested in the Balkans, was allied to Austria. From a strategic viewpoint, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 was unimportant, but it set in motion actions that soon brought all of the major powers in Europe to war. Four empires collapsed, and the doors were opened to the Communists in Russia and the Nazis in Germany as a result. Brzezinski's point today is that the Middle East and Southwest Asia have precisely that kind of potential for catalyzing wars among the major powers of the world today, although nothing in the region objectively merits such wars.
Thus Brzezinski calls for the United States to lead the states of Europe plus Russia, Japan, and China in a cooperative approach to stabilizing this region so that it cannot spark conflicts among them. As he rightly argues, theask of stabilization is beyond the power of the United States alone. With allies, however, it can manage the challenge.
A Missed Opportunity
After al Qaeda's attacks in the United States, the European members of NATO invoked Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty, meaning that they considered the attack on the United States as an attack on them all. Article Five had never been invoked before. Moreover, over 90 countries worldwide joined one or more of five separate coalitions to support the U.S. war against al Qaeda. Seldom has the United States had so much international support. It was a most propitious time, therefore, for dealing with "the Global Balkans" in precisely the way Brzezinski suggested.
Over the next year and a half, however, in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, many neoconservatives, both inside and outside the administration, disparaged NATO and other US allies as unnecessary for "transforming the Middle East." Because the United States is a superpower, they insisted, it could handle this task alone. Accordingly, we witnessed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s team and some officials in the State Department and the White House (especially in the Vice President's office) gratuitously and repeatedly insult the Europeans, dismissing them as irrelevant. The climax of this sustained campaign to discard our allies came in the UN Security Council struggle for a resolution to legitimize the invasion of Iraq in February-March 2003.
>From that time on, we have seen most of our allies stand aside and engage in <i style="">Schadenfreude over our painful bog-down in Iraq. Winston Churchill's glib observation, "the only thing worse that having allies is having none," was once again vindicated.
Iraq as a Dead End Street
Two areas of inquiry follow naturally from this background:
First, how could we induce our allies to join us in Iraq now? Why should they now put troops in Iraq and suffer the pain with us? Could we seriously expect them to do so?
Second, is remaining in Iraq the best strategy for a coalition of major states to stabilize the region? Would a large NATO coalition of forces plus some from India, Japanese, and China enjoy more success?
On the first point, there is no chance that our allies will join us in Iraq. How could the leaders of Germany, France, and other states in Europe convince their publics to support such a course of action? They could not, and their publics would not be wise to agree if their leaders pleaded for them to do so.
And on the second point, Iraq is the worst place to fight a battle for regional stability. Whose interests were best served by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the first place? It turns out that Iran and al Qaeda benefited the most, and that continues to be true every day U.S. forces remain there. A serious review of our regional interests is required. Until that is accomplished and new and compelling aims for managing the region are clarified, continuing the campaign in Iraq makes no sense.
Withdrawal is the Precondition to Progress
Once we recognize these two realities, it becomes clear that U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is the precondition to winning the support of our allies and a few others for a joint approach to the region. Until that has been completed, they will not join such a coalition. And until that has happened, even we in the United States cannot think clearly about what constitutes our interests there, much let gain agreement about common interests for a coalition.
By contrast, any argument for "staying course," or seeking more stability before we withdraw -- or pointing out tragic consequences that withdrawal will cause -- is bound to be wrong, or at least unpersuasive. Putting it bluntly, those who insist on staying in Iraq longer make the consequences of withdrawal more terrible and make it harder to find an alternative strategy for achieving regional stability.
Once the invasion began in March 2003, all of the ensuing unhappy results became inevitable. The invasion of Iraq may well turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in American history. In any event, the longer we stay, the worse it will be. Until that is understood, we will make no progress with our allies or in devising a promising alternative strategy.
"Staying the course" may make a good sound bite, but it can be disastrous for strategy. Several of Hitler's generals told him that "staying the course" at Stalingrad in 1942 was a strategic mistake, that he should allow the Sixth Army to be withdrawn, saving it to fight defensive actions on reduced frontage against the growing Red Army. He refused, lost the Sixth Army entirely, and left his commanders with fewer forces to defend a wider front. Thus he made the subsequent Soviet offensives westward easier.
To argue, as some do, that we cannot leave Iraq because "we broke it and therefore we own it" is to reason precisely the way Hitler did with his commanders. Of course we broke it! But the Middle East is not a pottery store. It is the site of major military conflict with several different forces that the United States is galvanizing into an alliance against America. To hang on to an untenable position is the height of irresponsibility. Beware of anyone, including the president, who insists that this is "responsible" or "the patriotic" thing to do.
Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. He was Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army's senior intelligence officer. From 1977 to 1981, he was Military Assistant to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Odom: Want stability in the Middle East? Get out of Iraq!
COMMENTARY | November 11, 2005 In his last piece for NiemanWatchdog.org, retired Gen. William Odom argued that all the terrible things the Bush administration says would happen if we pulled our troops out of Iraq are happening already. In a new postscript, Odom writes that the converse is true as well: Bush says he wants to bring democracy and stability to the greater Middle East -- but in fact the only way to achieve that goal is to get out of Iraq now.
By William E. Odom
As I have watched the reactions to my earlier piece on NiemanWatchdog.org, "What’s wrong with cutting and running?”, I recognize that one critical point does not come through to many readers. The problem may stem from the words "cut and run" in the title. In the minds of some, that seems to imply leaving the region for good. My argument is fundamentally different.
I believe that stabilizing the region from the Eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan is very much an American interest, one we share with all our allies as well as with several other countries, especially, China, Russia, and India.
The ‘Global Balkans’
Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has called this region the "global Balkans," a name that recalls the role of the European Balkans during two or three decades leading up to the outbreak of World War I. By themselves the Balkan countries were not all that important. Yet several great powers, especially Russia and Austria, were jockeying for strategic advantages there as they anticipated the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and competition for control of the straits leading from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. Britain and France wanted neither Russia nor Austria to dominate; and Germany, although uninterested in the Balkans, was allied to Austria. From a strategic viewpoint, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 was unimportant, but it set in motion actions that soon brought all of the major powers in Europe to war. Four empires collapsed, and the doors were opened to the Communists in Russia and the Nazis in Germany as a result. Brzezinski's point today is that the Middle East and Southwest Asia have precisely that kind of potential for catalyzing wars among the major powers of the world today, although nothing in the region objectively merits such wars.
Thus Brzezinski calls for the United States to lead the states of Europe plus Russia, Japan, and China in a cooperative approach to stabilizing this region so that it cannot spark conflicts among them. As he rightly argues, theask of stabilization is beyond the power of the United States alone. With allies, however, it can manage the challenge.
A Missed Opportunity
After al Qaeda's attacks in the United States, the European members of NATO invoked Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty, meaning that they considered the attack on the United States as an attack on them all. Article Five had never been invoked before. Moreover, over 90 countries worldwide joined one or more of five separate coalitions to support the U.S. war against al Qaeda. Seldom has the United States had so much international support. It was a most propitious time, therefore, for dealing with "the Global Balkans" in precisely the way Brzezinski suggested.
Over the next year and a half, however, in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, many neoconservatives, both inside and outside the administration, disparaged NATO and other US allies as unnecessary for "transforming the Middle East." Because the United States is a superpower, they insisted, it could handle this task alone. Accordingly, we witnessed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s team and some officials in the State Department and the White House (especially in the Vice President's office) gratuitously and repeatedly insult the Europeans, dismissing them as irrelevant. The climax of this sustained campaign to discard our allies came in the UN Security Council struggle for a resolution to legitimize the invasion of Iraq in February-March 2003.
>From that time on, we have seen most of our allies stand aside and engage in <i style="">Schadenfreude over our painful bog-down in Iraq. Winston Churchill's glib observation, "the only thing worse that having allies is having none," was once again vindicated.
Iraq as a Dead End Street
Two areas of inquiry follow naturally from this background:
First, how could we induce our allies to join us in Iraq now? Why should they now put troops in Iraq and suffer the pain with us? Could we seriously expect them to do so?
Second, is remaining in Iraq the best strategy for a coalition of major states to stabilize the region? Would a large NATO coalition of forces plus some from India, Japanese, and China enjoy more success?
On the first point, there is no chance that our allies will join us in Iraq. How could the leaders of Germany, France, and other states in Europe convince their publics to support such a course of action? They could not, and their publics would not be wise to agree if their leaders pleaded for them to do so.
And on the second point, Iraq is the worst place to fight a battle for regional stability. Whose interests were best served by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the first place? It turns out that Iran and al Qaeda benefited the most, and that continues to be true every day U.S. forces remain there. A serious review of our regional interests is required. Until that is accomplished and new and compelling aims for managing the region are clarified, continuing the campaign in Iraq makes no sense.
Withdrawal is the Precondition to Progress
Once we recognize these two realities, it becomes clear that U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is the precondition to winning the support of our allies and a few others for a joint approach to the region. Until that has been completed, they will not join such a coalition. And until that has happened, even we in the United States cannot think clearly about what constitutes our interests there, much let gain agreement about common interests for a coalition.
By contrast, any argument for "staying course," or seeking more stability before we withdraw -- or pointing out tragic consequences that withdrawal will cause -- is bound to be wrong, or at least unpersuasive. Putting it bluntly, those who insist on staying in Iraq longer make the consequences of withdrawal more terrible and make it harder to find an alternative strategy for achieving regional stability.
Once the invasion began in March 2003, all of the ensuing unhappy results became inevitable. The invasion of Iraq may well turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in American history. In any event, the longer we stay, the worse it will be. Until that is understood, we will make no progress with our allies or in devising a promising alternative strategy.
"Staying the course" may make a good sound bite, but it can be disastrous for strategy. Several of Hitler's generals told him that "staying the course" at Stalingrad in 1942 was a strategic mistake, that he should allow the Sixth Army to be withdrawn, saving it to fight defensive actions on reduced frontage against the growing Red Army. He refused, lost the Sixth Army entirely, and left his commanders with fewer forces to defend a wider front. Thus he made the subsequent Soviet offensives westward easier.
To argue, as some do, that we cannot leave Iraq because "we broke it and therefore we own it" is to reason precisely the way Hitler did with his commanders. Of course we broke it! But the Middle East is not a pottery store. It is the site of major military conflict with several different forces that the United States is galvanizing into an alliance against America. To hang on to an untenable position is the height of irresponsibility. Beware of anyone, including the president, who insists that this is "responsible" or "the patriotic" thing to do.
Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. He was Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army's senior intelligence officer. From 1977 to 1981, he was Military Assistant to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Hil used to be strictly for the war
By JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Clinton left one thing out this week when she tried to explain her views on Iraq - namely that she used to agree almost completely with President Bush, even after the war took a nosedive.
On Tuesday, Clinton wrote in a 1,600-word letter to supporters that her 2002 vote for war in Iraq was based on "evidence presented by the [Bush] administration."
"The 'evidence' of weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda turned out to be false," Clinton wrote.
But just months after the bombs started falling, Clinton (D-N.Y.) called a Daily News reporter to insist she had no second thoughts about her vote for war.
The war was worth it just to remove Saddam Hussein from power, she said.
Clinton emphatically told The News in her 2003 call, "I felt that it was appropriate under the circumstances, which really went back to 1998 under the Clinton administration's conclusion that the regime had to change, that the President [Bush] had authority to pursue that goal."
"Why was the intelligence consistent from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration?" Clinton added. "The intelligence was consistent for over a decade."
On the eve of war, even the senator's aides echoed Team Bush's confidence in a swift victory, including one who boasted, "It's going to be a cakewalk."
At the time of the 2003 phone call, the insurgency had blossomed and the White House had finally backed off claims that Iraq had rebuilt its nuclear bomb program.
Some experts don't fault Clinton for her omission, but admit she is clearly "feeling the heat" over Iraq.
"If the tide shifts, she's on the wrong side of the sea wall," said Baruch College political scientist Doug Muzzio.
Flustered Clinton aides yesterday sidestepped the question of why the senator's letter ignored the intelligence from her husband's administration.
Spokesman Philippe Reines said she "laid out a thoughtful explanation to her constituents of her position on Iraq, reiterating her disagreement with the way the President has used the authority granted to him."
Originally published on December 2, 2005
By JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Clinton left one thing out this week when she tried to explain her views on Iraq - namely that she used to agree almost completely with President Bush, even after the war took a nosedive.
On Tuesday, Clinton wrote in a 1,600-word letter to supporters that her 2002 vote for war in Iraq was based on "evidence presented by the [Bush] administration."
"The 'evidence' of weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda turned out to be false," Clinton wrote.
But just months after the bombs started falling, Clinton (D-N.Y.) called a Daily News reporter to insist she had no second thoughts about her vote for war.
The war was worth it just to remove Saddam Hussein from power, she said.
Clinton emphatically told The News in her 2003 call, "I felt that it was appropriate under the circumstances, which really went back to 1998 under the Clinton administration's conclusion that the regime had to change, that the President [Bush] had authority to pursue that goal."
"Why was the intelligence consistent from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration?" Clinton added. "The intelligence was consistent for over a decade."
On the eve of war, even the senator's aides echoed Team Bush's confidence in a swift victory, including one who boasted, "It's going to be a cakewalk."
At the time of the 2003 phone call, the insurgency had blossomed and the White House had finally backed off claims that Iraq had rebuilt its nuclear bomb program.
Some experts don't fault Clinton for her omission, but admit she is clearly "feeling the heat" over Iraq.
"If the tide shifts, she's on the wrong side of the sea wall," said Baruch College political scientist Doug Muzzio.
Flustered Clinton aides yesterday sidestepped the question of why the senator's letter ignored the intelligence from her husband's administration.
Spokesman Philippe Reines said she "laid out a thoughtful explanation to her constituents of her position on Iraq, reiterating her disagreement with the way the President has used the authority granted to him."
Originally published on December 2, 2005
December 3, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
W.'s Head in the Sand
By MAUREEN DOWD
In the Christmas spirit, the time has come for the reality-based community to reach out to the White House.
The Bush warriors are so deluded, they're even faking their fakery.
This week, the president presented a plan-like plan for "victory" in Iraq, which Scott McClellan rather pompously called the unclassified version of their supersecret master plan. But there would be no way to achieve victory from this plan even if it were a real plan. If this is what they're telling themselves in the Sit Room, we're in bigger trouble than we thought.
Talk about your unknown unknowns, as Rummy would say.
The National Strategy for Victory must have come from the same P.R. genius who gave President Top Gun the "Mission Accomplished" banner about 48 hours before the first counterinsurgency war of the 21st century broke out in Iraq.
It's not a military strategy - classified or unclassified. It's political talking points - and not even good ones. Are we really supposed to believe that anybody, even the most deeply delusional Bush sycophant, believes the phrase "Our strategy is working"?
The president talked about three neatly definable groups of insurrectionists. But as Dexter Filkins reported in yesterday's New York Times, there are dozens, perhaps as many as a hundred, groups fighting the U.S. Army in Iraq, and they have little, if anything, in common.
Mr. Bush's presentation claimed that the U.S. was actually making progress in Iraq. But outside the Bush-Cheney-Rummy bubble, 10 more marines were killed by a roadside bomb outside Falluja, for a total of 2,125 U.S. military deaths so far.
The administration must realize it needs a real exit strategy, because it's advertising for one. The U.S. Agency for International Development is offering more than $1 billion for anyone - anyone at all - who can come up with a plan to pacify and rebuild 10 Iraqi cities seen as vital in the war.
Maybe the White House should apply - Usaid's proffer says the "invitation is open to any type of entity."
When Bush officials weren't telling us fairy tales about the big, bad W.M.D. in Iraq, they were assuring us that the unprovoked war would be a kindness for Iraq, giving it democracy. But they are not just failing to bring democracy to Iraq as they help Iranian-backed mullahs install an Islamic republic with Saddamist torture chambers. They are also degrading democracy in America.
They've tarnished American moral leadership with illegal detentions, torture, secret C.I.A. prisons in countries only recently liberated from the Soviet gulag, and Soviet-style propaganda both at home and in Iraq.
Guess the Bush administration didn't learn anything this fall when federal auditors said it had violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of its education polices. Bush officials got right back into the fake news business, paying to plant propaganda in the Iraqi press. They outsourced this disinformation campaign to something called the Lincoln Group - have they no shame?
You have to admire Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman. He kept a straight face when he called the U.S. "a leader when it comes to promoting and advocating a free and independent media around the world." He added, "We've made our views very clear when it comes to freedom of the press."
Exceedingly clear. The Bushies don't believe in it. They disdain the whole democratic system of checks and balances.
At the Naval Academy, President Bush talked about how well the Iraqi security forces were fighting. He claimed that 40 Iraqi battalions were taking the lead in the fight against insurgents, and that in the battle of Tal Afar this year, "the assault was primarily led by Iraqi security forces - 11 Iraqi battalions backed by 5 coalition battalions providing support."
Anderson Cooper of CNN swiftly produced Time magazine's Baghdad bureau chief, Michael Ware, who was embedded with the U.S. military during the entire Tal Afar battle. "With the greatest respect to the president, that's completely wrong," Mr. Ware said, adding: "I was with Iraqi units right there on the front line as they were battling with Al Qaeda. They were not leading."
He also told Mr. Cooper: "I have had a very senior officer here in Baghdad say to me that there's never going to be a point where these guys will be able to stand up against the insurgency on their own."
Mr. Ware recalled that in a battle two weeks ago, he saw an Iraqi security officer put down his weapon and curl up into a ball when he was under attack. "I have seen that on - on many, many occasions," he said.
Curling up in a ball. Good National Strategy for Victory.
Op-Ed Columnist
W.'s Head in the Sand
By MAUREEN DOWD
In the Christmas spirit, the time has come for the reality-based community to reach out to the White House.
The Bush warriors are so deluded, they're even faking their fakery.
This week, the president presented a plan-like plan for "victory" in Iraq, which Scott McClellan rather pompously called the unclassified version of their supersecret master plan. But there would be no way to achieve victory from this plan even if it were a real plan. If this is what they're telling themselves in the Sit Room, we're in bigger trouble than we thought.
Talk about your unknown unknowns, as Rummy would say.
The National Strategy for Victory must have come from the same P.R. genius who gave President Top Gun the "Mission Accomplished" banner about 48 hours before the first counterinsurgency war of the 21st century broke out in Iraq.
It's not a military strategy - classified or unclassified. It's political talking points - and not even good ones. Are we really supposed to believe that anybody, even the most deeply delusional Bush sycophant, believes the phrase "Our strategy is working"?
The president talked about three neatly definable groups of insurrectionists. But as Dexter Filkins reported in yesterday's New York Times, there are dozens, perhaps as many as a hundred, groups fighting the U.S. Army in Iraq, and they have little, if anything, in common.
Mr. Bush's presentation claimed that the U.S. was actually making progress in Iraq. But outside the Bush-Cheney-Rummy bubble, 10 more marines were killed by a roadside bomb outside Falluja, for a total of 2,125 U.S. military deaths so far.
The administration must realize it needs a real exit strategy, because it's advertising for one. The U.S. Agency for International Development is offering more than $1 billion for anyone - anyone at all - who can come up with a plan to pacify and rebuild 10 Iraqi cities seen as vital in the war.
Maybe the White House should apply - Usaid's proffer says the "invitation is open to any type of entity."
When Bush officials weren't telling us fairy tales about the big, bad W.M.D. in Iraq, they were assuring us that the unprovoked war would be a kindness for Iraq, giving it democracy. But they are not just failing to bring democracy to Iraq as they help Iranian-backed mullahs install an Islamic republic with Saddamist torture chambers. They are also degrading democracy in America.
They've tarnished American moral leadership with illegal detentions, torture, secret C.I.A. prisons in countries only recently liberated from the Soviet gulag, and Soviet-style propaganda both at home and in Iraq.
Guess the Bush administration didn't learn anything this fall when federal auditors said it had violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of its education polices. Bush officials got right back into the fake news business, paying to plant propaganda in the Iraqi press. They outsourced this disinformation campaign to something called the Lincoln Group - have they no shame?
You have to admire Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman. He kept a straight face when he called the U.S. "a leader when it comes to promoting and advocating a free and independent media around the world." He added, "We've made our views very clear when it comes to freedom of the press."
Exceedingly clear. The Bushies don't believe in it. They disdain the whole democratic system of checks and balances.
At the Naval Academy, President Bush talked about how well the Iraqi security forces were fighting. He claimed that 40 Iraqi battalions were taking the lead in the fight against insurgents, and that in the battle of Tal Afar this year, "the assault was primarily led by Iraqi security forces - 11 Iraqi battalions backed by 5 coalition battalions providing support."
Anderson Cooper of CNN swiftly produced Time magazine's Baghdad bureau chief, Michael Ware, who was embedded with the U.S. military during the entire Tal Afar battle. "With the greatest respect to the president, that's completely wrong," Mr. Ware said, adding: "I was with Iraqi units right there on the front line as they were battling with Al Qaeda. They were not leading."
He also told Mr. Cooper: "I have had a very senior officer here in Baghdad say to me that there's never going to be a point where these guys will be able to stand up against the insurgency on their own."
Mr. Ware recalled that in a battle two weeks ago, he saw an Iraqi security officer put down his weapon and curl up into a ball when he was under attack. "I have seen that on - on many, many occasions," he said.
Curling up in a ball. Good National Strategy for Victory.
William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security
The Out in Iraq
We wouldn't be having a debate about the Iraq war -- not about weapons of mass destruction nor the administration's democratization mission nor the role of Iraq as the central front in the war on terror -- if Americans weren't dying every day.
Thus I've been reading the administration's new National Strategy for Victory in Iraq with an eye to understanding whether those lost lives are worth it, whether the U.S. military is indeed pursuing the insurgency in such a way that there's light at the end of the tunnel, and whether Americans should be convinced that the enterprise is worth it.
There's is an intriguing single reference about the United States "exploiting" the differences within disparate enemy groups as "a key element of our strategy." It is a sentence that should serve as further proof that the Bush administration has turned a corner in recognizing the limitations of the United States in Iraq, and insight into a strategy that will facilitate the withdrawal of conventional U.S. military forces.
Yesterday, I wrote about the administration's characterization of the "enemy" in Iraq as "a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists, and terrorists," with an official acknowledgment that each group shares "a common short-term objective" -- "opposition to the elected Iraqi government and to the presence of Coalition forces" -- but otherwise have "separate and incompatible long-term goals."
The Strategy makes clear that defeat or marginalization of the rejectionists and Saddamists is dependent on political and economic realities and the ability of Iraqi forces to shoulder the burden. On the terrorists, a "group [that] cannot be won over and must be defeated -- killed or captured -- through sustained counterterrorism operations," the Strategy says they must be isolated from the people, infiltration must be halted, and support from Iran and Syria stopped.
How are U.S. forces focusing and going after this group and "exploiting" a recognition of their uniqueness? The Strategy gives some hints:
"Getting an accurate picture of this enemy."
"Refining our understanding of the constantly changing nature of, and relationships between, terrorist groups, other enemy elements, and their networks."
Improving the collection of "actionable intelligence" about leadership and hideouts, particularly from Iraqi citizens.
Disrupting "enemy networks," funding and resources.
All of this is to mount, as the Strategy says, "more specialized operations targeted at the most vicious terrorists and leadership networks … to hunt, capture, and kill terrorist leaders and break up their funding and resource networks."
If the National Strategy is now indeed one of conducting more specialized operations while leaving the insurgency writ large to the Iraqis, then of course you don't need 150,000 plus conventional troops on the ground. Counterterrorism operations against terrorist network are and should primarily be conducted combined clandestine, special operations, and law enforcement efforts.
I know the Strategy document speaks of "Clear, Hold, Build" as some classic counter-insurgency doctrine that is being seamlessly pursued, but the unfortunate record on the ground continues to be that when neighborhoods, towns, and cities are taken by U.S. conventional forces, the result looks like a game of "whack-a-mole" with the insurgency just scattering elsewhere. And as fast as those conventional forces, special operations forces and CIA paramilitaries kill those who take up arms, even more recruits take their place.
One of the reasons why I've felt that the U.S. military should leave Iraq is that the small number of U.S. forces available and their composition do not really facilitate carrying out a successful full-fledged counter-insurgency. U.S. military forces are as much engaged in protecting and sustaining themselves, and are engaged in "civil affairs" and reconstruction support as they are "fighting." As the "more specialized operations" become a centerpiece of the U.S. effort, more and more bodies are involved in intelligence collection and analysis. As the Bush administration has admitted to itself that the Iraqi national forces require a lot more training and a lot more preparation, more and more U.S. forces have been given over to training.
So the administration may have belatedly and inadvertently come up with a way to withdraw the majority of U.S. forces on the ground and end the occupation: Focus U.S. efforts on going after terrorists and leave the insurgency to Iraqis, reduce the visibility of conventional forces, pray for Iraq -- the government, the military, the police -- to also turn the corner.
By William M. Arkin | December 2, 2005; 09:59 AM ET | Category: War on Terrorism
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What is ignored in most discussions on the Iraq debate is the fact that this administration, through its ineptness (or worse) has, by their policies, both before the invasion and during this occupation, facilitated the entry and the presence of Al Qaeda and other terrorists in Iraq.
It has been almost universally agreed that there was no connection between Sadaam's Iraq and 9/11 or terrorism pre-invasion. Even our inept CIA concluded that Iraq was not an imminent threat.
That being the case, as John Murtha has forcefully put before the nation, we must leave post haste. The longer we stay, the greater the threat of terrorism.
It is folly to believe that an Iraq army of questionable loyalties will be able to contain the terrorits when supposedly the best trained, best equipped army in the world cannot.
Mr. Bush has made the world an infintely more dangerous place, more vulnerable to terrorism than pre-invasion.
The best strategy to choose from a bevy of terrible choices is John Murtha's plan of redeployment to bases nearby where we can strike at specific imminent threats to us.
Iraq will most likely decend into a bloody, long civil war when we leave, but that will occur whether we leave next month, next year or five years from now.
What a fine mess this President has got us into.
Posted by: G. Kreisberg | Dec 2, 2005 10:21:56 PM
This may not have quite sunk in yet, but the National Strategy has one feature, in particular, ought to worry us all a lot. This is the fact that, of the many different initiatives that are outlined in the Eight Pillars of Wisdom, virtually all are supposed to be done by someone other than the United States: normally the Iraqi government, but sometimes the Iraqi business community, or neighbouring countries, or NATO, or someone else. The United States “assists” and “facilitates” and so on, but the only major tasks that are assigned to it are sending money and conducting military operations. And the latter, too, is presented as an activity in which the Iraqis take the lead and the United States simply assists, even though the reality is presumably different, at least for the present.
So in this project, in which supposedly the United States cannot afford to fail, the actions that are necessary for success are mainly outside American control. In business terms, we have bet the company on the expectation that someone else will do what we need them to do, but without having any tools to make them do it.
And in fact it is completely up to the Iraqi government whether it proceeds with a civil rights agenda, or decides to distribute economic benefits equitably, or even whether it continues to fight the insurgency. It would be perfectly conceivable for the government to reach an accommodation with the insurgents, in which they agreed to leave the central government largely alone in exchange for a free hand in attacking someone else in the region. (There is no shortage of potential targets.) They will probably pursue their own interests as they see them, and these may or may not coincide with ours. They will probably accept some of the tasks that the National Strategy has assigned to them, but will take their own time over completing them. And no doubt they will enthusiastically accept some of their assigned tasks, make their best efforts to succeed in them, and fail anyway. What they very unlikely to do, though, is to accept they are responsible to the United States for their success in following the National Strategy.
It’s not inconceivable that one business would enter into such a “best efforts” relationship with another business in order to pursue a common goal. Normally, though, each partner would reserve the right to go his own way if the other was failing to perform his side of the bargain, or simply if he decided that it was no longer in his interests to cooperate. No doubt that would be an acceptable basis for the relationship between the United States and Iraq as well. But apparently it is not: the relationship is that both parties are free agents, but there is one party for whom failure is not an option.
Posted by: John H - Toronto | Dec 2, 2005 10:02:04 PM
I wish journalists and commentators would start asking and debating the question HAS THE WAR IN IRAQ IMPROVED OUR POSITION IN THE WAR ON TERROR? 1) Richard Clark, the former natioal security advisor on terrorism, was on Charlie Rose last night, and saidf most U.S. and European experts believe the War in Iraq has created a LARGER pool of terrorists AND terrorist recruits than before 9-11. Moreover, these terrorists now have experience in small unit combat operations, a knowledge that they will be bring to bear on the U.S. homeland sooner or later. 2) As was reported a few months ago, there is a retired Coast Guard officer who just published a book which argues War in Iraq has deranged federal spending so terribly that we have NOT been able to move forward with the type of security measures we need for our sea ports -- which the CIA has identified as the most likely entry point for the next major terrorist assault. 3) I think what Murtha is reflecting (from his talks with military on the ground) is something that Gen. Barry McCafferty has stated openly - the National Guard and Reserves are NOW in the process of "melting down" and the U.S. Army and Marines simply can NOT maintain the current level of deployment and operations for more than another 12 to 18 months. Now, what do we do, with Bush's War in Iraq AND his tax cuts having crippled our ground forces, two or more years from now if Iran or North Korea or some other adversary acts up? My judgement is that we are now MUCH LESS secure than before we went into Iraq.
-- Anthony K Wikrent
akw@nbbooks.com
Posted by: Anthony K Wikrent | Dec 2, 2005 9:46:01 PM
If Bush and his administration were smart, he would go to NATO tomorrow and beg for forgiveness. Maybe that well be enough to get a NATO led police force in there to handle security. I hate to break it to you but as long as Iraq is not secure, there is no democracy. You can have thousands of elections, but if bombs are going off everyday and people are not given the safety they need to get around town then the elections are tainted. If Bush does not go to NATO then we should do what Murtha suggested and pull our troops out after the December elections. Now are military is being used by the Iraqis as fodder, and are legitamate targets according to the new Iraqi government. The reason we went into Iraq is simple no because of WMD's, not because Saddam was a bad person, but because of Israel's influence in American foreign policy and the fact that Bushy has a grudge against the man who tried to assassinate his father. The War on Terror is a joke and can never be won. What we can do is increase our security at home and try to build better relations with other so we can get GOOD intelligence and be able to stop major terrorist attacks. Bush now just looks like the moron we all kmnew him to be and Cheney better get off his ass and do something.
Posted by: P.G. | Dec 2, 2005 8:58:19 PM
What most people in America need to understand is that we have lost the Middle East. At this point we are "throwing good money after bad". We can not win in Iraq because the Iraqis, deep down inside, do not want us there. The insurgents need shelter, medical care, food, hiding etc. Where do you think they get it? From the population. Even if we train the Iraqis well enough, I am quite sure that when the time comes, they will choose not to fight their own people.
It is time for us to find a different source of energy and leave the middle east. Only after we leave, the people of that region will concentrate on their own issues and rulers and make the changes we are trying to impose. Also, give it 15-20 years and they will beg us to go back.
I hope Americans start to understand this. It is over. Bring our troops back now. There is no point in keeping them in Iraq, Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait etc. And, for God's sake, when we made up our minds to go to the moon in 10 years, we did it. We need the same kind of plan to find a different energy source. I am certain we can. This is America where nothing is impossible. Let's just do it.
Posted by: Denis | Dec 2, 2005 8:57:57 PM
For those proposing phased withdrawal need only to go back in time to the Vietnam experience. At that time we also withdrew gradually until what's left cannot even hold the embassy. See the helicopter?
A phased withdrawal in Iraq will culminate with the last US official gathering up the flag and board a helicopter in the Green Zone to be airlifted out with the crew kicking and punching locals collaborators to get them off the skids.
In withdrawal from an empire we could learn something from the British. Most recent being from Hong Kong. They lowered their flag ceremoniously to "God Save the Queen" and walked proudly to the Britannia waiting at the pier. They did not HA. Of course it was negotiated and staged with the people who wanted you out. It has always been better to talk, talk than to fight, fight. Bush never understood that and still doesnt.
Posted by: Ping Chen | Dec 2, 2005 8:06:00 PM
My son is one of the soldiers stationed in Iraq and he has been training up the Iraqi Army troops for nearly a year.
The world he describes to me in our nearly daily Instant Messages on the computer are almost always much more positive and insightful than much of the speculation I've read here or in the national newspapers.
For those who would REALLY like to learn about the progress of training of the Iraqi troops, there is a article in the Dec 05 issue of Vanity Fair that talks about his unit and their efforts.
It is a 'warts and all' article and pretty interesting.
Am I trying to change anyone's mind? Nope. Just laying out some facts for those with open minds.
Posted by: Pat Householder | Dec 2, 2005 7:57:30 PM
It is important to note that the nation of Iraq is an artificial conglomeration of people who would, if they where not co-located in the same country, never speak to each other. When left to govern itself there is guaranteed to be conflict. Perhaps war. But what great nation has not been bourn from conflict? None that I can think of . . . It is the natural (though ungainly) way that we humans work out our differences on a macro scale.
What can we do? The best way out of Iraq for America is to teach them to fish. Rather than providing their security for them, we must continue to empower them to protect themselves. This will free up resources to prosecute the war on terrorism more on our own terms instead of feeling around for IED's in Iraq.
Posted by: William Tally | Dec 2, 2005 7:18:10 PM
Inadvertantly? Bush has deliberately given himself an out from Iraq with his 'National Strategy For Victory In Iraq'.
Posted by: ErrinF | Dec 2, 2005 7:08:36 PM
It seems to be an effective plan. The danger is that many will say "OK. Our troops are out. Now cut the aid to zero."
Our leaving does not have to mean defeat and we should not be pressured by those who want a USA defeat.
Posted by: Gary Masters | Dec 2, 2005 6:35:50 PM
one word:
IMPEACHMENT
Posted by: Rick Hanson | Dec 2, 2005 6:11:57 PM
) At the beginning of the Iraqi war, some media reports stated that certain Iraqi commanders were contacted by US/coalition forces in advance of the invasion and were asked/agreed to stand down and/or abandon the Iraqi military. In other words, there was no US ‘win’ because there was no real Iraqi army. Only ‘shock and awe’ for the cameras and the use of the term ‘collateral damage’.
2) The failure to adequately ‘train’ and equip sufficient Iraqi forces over a period of years is truly suspicious and requires further examination. It is said that as they ‘step up’, they are literally shot down. For how long has that been the case? Would it not be worthwhile to incur the cost of transporting those forces to neighboring countries for training and then returning them to Iraq? If this is not feasible, a) forces from neighboring Arab countries should be brought to Iraq to replace US/coalition forces (with the Iraqi’s permission) or
NATO troops should be asked to secure the country (again, only with the Iraqi’s permission.)
3) REF: The Strategy – It is not possible to ‘get a picture’ of a ‘constantly-changing enemy’. If the enemy is indeed ever-changing, a ‘still’ shot can only be of limited value. Hasn’t the US already spent a few years looking for ‘relationships between organizations’ and ‘actionable intel’? How does the US get ‘intel’ from Iraqi citizens when they are increasingly volunteering to join the ‘insurgency’ or at the very least are increasingly in support of it? The ‘disruption’ campaign isn’t working well, either.
The New Strategy sounds a lot like the old, failing one. Can the US government define the word - innovation? Is innovative thinking ‘against the law’ in DC?
4) REF: “… leave the insurgency to Iraqis …”
Leave Iraqi’s with the task of having to deal with the ‘insurgency’ that was created for them by the US? And simply hope that all Iraqi’s will be so pleased to be free of Mr. Hussein’s regime that not one of them will act upon their already obvious resentment toward the US at some later date? Wishful thinking in these ‘terroristic’ times.
The Iraqi’s will hopefully soon develop their own plan for the extrication of US troops from their soil, with or without input from the US.
Posted by: redcat | Dec 2, 2005 6:02:29 PM
Don't you get tired of people like Jennifer L.'s whining about the liberal media? Fox is NOT liberal. The WSJ is NOT liberal. Talk radio is NOT liberal. Even PBS has been coop by the neocons.
As for the planting of stories it was planted in IRAQI, not American newspapers! Who knows whether the Iraqi media is liberal or not? The point is that if you really want to build democracy in Iraq you DON'T manipulate THEIR press by planting propaganda as objective news. That smacks of intellectual and political corruption. It destroys whatever credibility the Bush admin has left in Iraq. Not to mention the bad example it sets thru out the Middle East.
Posted by: Tom | Dec 2, 2005 5:03:31 PM
Hate to burst your patriot-bubble, Jennifer L, but the reason the western media are confined to the Green Zone of Baghdad is that it's too dangerous for them to go anywhere else.
Fortunately they employ Arab journalists to take the big risks, which is how we know that the insurgency is still strong outside Baghdad.
And finally we have the casualty figures, such as today's ten marines killed near Falluja, a city that is supposed to be a model of pacification under "clear, hold and build"...if you believe the optimistic drivel coming out of Pentagon and White House press offices.
Posted by: B. Kaufmann | Dec 2, 2005 4:48:37 PM
Thirty years after Vietnam, three years in Iraq and these guys finally have a strategy for fighting an insurgency war? Give me a break! The political people who run this war are amateur warriors who stayed out of the last big one and now find themselves deep in a hole they can't get out. I'll bet the reason Murtha called for a withdrawal is because he'd heard enough from the professional soldiers to know better. As long as the current war leadership is in place defeat is inevitable. My recommendation to Bush is to get professional help from guys like Colin Powell and Anthony Zinny. Bush may have to eat crow but that's a small price to pay for the country's sake.
Posted by: Tom | Dec 2, 2005 4:48:37 PM
Did anyone else notice that Arkin ends his analysis by noting that the administration's current policy is to "pray" that the Iraqis somehow pull themselves out of this mess?
Excuse me? Pray? That's an interesting military strategy. It's not a terribly strong diplomatic one either. In fact, what it says to me is what the Bush policy has said to me from day one: they don't have the ghost of the foggiest notion how to respond to the peoples of the Middle East.
I have no proof of this, but my guess is that the Iraqis themselves are doing lots of praying these days, and that we probably wouldn't like to read the translations.
Posted by: Lisa Mitchell | Dec 2, 2005 4:30:59 PM
DId anyone else notice that at the end of Arkin's analysis, he says the administration's policy is to "pray" that the Iraqis somehow pull themselves out of their mess?
Excuse me? Pray? The irony is deep, if you care to contemplate it. I have no proof of this, but I think the Iraqis themselves are doing a lot of praying these days, and we probably wouldn't like to read the translations.
Posted by: Lisa Mitchell | Dec 2, 2005 4:23:00 PM
Sr. Bojangles is right - when you don't send enough troops over to hold the ground, you don't need to further deplete their usefulness by having them build schools & doing other so-called "nation-building" projects that would be better farmed out to locals (Iraqis) who need the work to keep them too busy to bury land mines. The troops need to keep their focus on whacking the moles; it's what they're trained for.
Posted by: Zak | Dec 2, 2005 3:13:47 PM
My husband is one of "those people". He was not sent to his deat as some of you suggest. All I have to say is that Saddam is on trial, being judge by the people he opressed for the first time ever in their country. The country's people are voting, and in record numbers, the United States would be lucky to get half the turn out they did. This morning on Good Morning America an Iraqi woman... yes a woman was on National televsion having an intelligent politcal debate with one of her Iraq friends. Please don't be the type of people who turn a blind eye to progress. You call it planting stories... but really I'd be begging borrowing and stealing to share with the country all the good that is being done because our liberal media won't do it! If our media was more fair there would be no need to "plant" stories! All of our news comes our of Baghdad where are the reporters are... you don't think the insurgents know where the media is living? Where would you act out and show your hostilities if you were them..... in front of a camera right? Don't be blind... and don't print this garbage that makes me embarassed to call you a fellow American... you aren't worthy!
Posted by: Jennifer L. | Dec 2, 2005 2:57:58 PM
Why does The Post allow "Che" to post 6 feet of crap in the comments section each day?
Posted by: JB | Dec 2, 2005 2:43:45 PM
I served in the Nam from 69 to 71. History has shown that the real patriots were the ones protesting in our streets to bring us home. Nam was a civil war, it was made part of the "cold war" by our presence. Bush is living in a dream world, while his cronies create their own reality. If the Iraqi's are increasingly taking over the fight for their independence, why are American casualities contining to rise. If the streets of Bagdad are so safe, why is the Military still hiding behind the walled Green Zone.Bush stated that the terrorists have made Iraq the central front of their war, if it is their front, then it is only because we are there. American should support their troops, but not by blindly following an arrogant white house, but by lobbying our reps to bring our young men and women home. It makes no sense to honor our fallen men and women by sending more men and women to their deaths for no good reason.
Posted by: Charlie C | Dec 2, 2005 2:31:11 PM
I think this brings up a great point, that the military is engaged in "civil affairs". We won the war with Iraq in those first few weeks. We won it in a spectacular and complete fashion. Now we're asking our military to oversee the social and political transformation of a country that does not have a history in democracy. This is the same general problem we had in Viet Nam. These goals are NOT MILITARY GOALS and we should not be relying our military to attain them!
Posted by: Sr. Bojangles | Dec 2, 2005 2:20:44 PM
I guess its time to come up with fake inteligence saying all the bad guys are gone. Then "we" can leave with dignity. If new bad guys show up the next day, its not our problem.
Posted by: Fakerman | Dec 2, 2005 1:59:05 PM
The ABBB group will never accept anything he says. I wonder if all the naysayer’s who voted to jump into this situation would take a polygraph to prove they didn't know all the information or they thought they were lied to. This so reminds me of Nam and the politicians trying to run the fighting back then to gain voter approval. All that haranguing did was to stiffen the resolve of Charlie and now the Muslim extremists. When will they ever learn to leave it the Military to decide the best route home rather than to try to garner votes with political redirect? I was in the Army from 8/66 to 7/69 and it really bothered me then and its Deja vue all over again to me. Those who protests too much just makes me question their motives. JMHO.
Posted by: Jim Ferguson | Dec 2, 2005 1:58:13 PM
www.onlinejournal.com
www.takingaim.info/audio
The Out in Iraq
We wouldn't be having a debate about the Iraq war -- not about weapons of mass destruction nor the administration's democratization mission nor the role of Iraq as the central front in the war on terror -- if Americans weren't dying every day.
Thus I've been reading the administration's new National Strategy for Victory in Iraq with an eye to understanding whether those lost lives are worth it, whether the U.S. military is indeed pursuing the insurgency in such a way that there's light at the end of the tunnel, and whether Americans should be convinced that the enterprise is worth it.
There's is an intriguing single reference about the United States "exploiting" the differences within disparate enemy groups as "a key element of our strategy." It is a sentence that should serve as further proof that the Bush administration has turned a corner in recognizing the limitations of the United States in Iraq, and insight into a strategy that will facilitate the withdrawal of conventional U.S. military forces.
Yesterday, I wrote about the administration's characterization of the "enemy" in Iraq as "a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists, and terrorists," with an official acknowledgment that each group shares "a common short-term objective" -- "opposition to the elected Iraqi government and to the presence of Coalition forces" -- but otherwise have "separate and incompatible long-term goals."
The Strategy makes clear that defeat or marginalization of the rejectionists and Saddamists is dependent on political and economic realities and the ability of Iraqi forces to shoulder the burden. On the terrorists, a "group [that] cannot be won over and must be defeated -- killed or captured -- through sustained counterterrorism operations," the Strategy says they must be isolated from the people, infiltration must be halted, and support from Iran and Syria stopped.
How are U.S. forces focusing and going after this group and "exploiting" a recognition of their uniqueness? The Strategy gives some hints:
"Getting an accurate picture of this enemy."
"Refining our understanding of the constantly changing nature of, and relationships between, terrorist groups, other enemy elements, and their networks."
Improving the collection of "actionable intelligence" about leadership and hideouts, particularly from Iraqi citizens.
Disrupting "enemy networks," funding and resources.
All of this is to mount, as the Strategy says, "more specialized operations targeted at the most vicious terrorists and leadership networks … to hunt, capture, and kill terrorist leaders and break up their funding and resource networks."
If the National Strategy is now indeed one of conducting more specialized operations while leaving the insurgency writ large to the Iraqis, then of course you don't need 150,000 plus conventional troops on the ground. Counterterrorism operations against terrorist network are and should primarily be conducted combined clandestine, special operations, and law enforcement efforts.
I know the Strategy document speaks of "Clear, Hold, Build" as some classic counter-insurgency doctrine that is being seamlessly pursued, but the unfortunate record on the ground continues to be that when neighborhoods, towns, and cities are taken by U.S. conventional forces, the result looks like a game of "whack-a-mole" with the insurgency just scattering elsewhere. And as fast as those conventional forces, special operations forces and CIA paramilitaries kill those who take up arms, even more recruits take their place.
One of the reasons why I've felt that the U.S. military should leave Iraq is that the small number of U.S. forces available and their composition do not really facilitate carrying out a successful full-fledged counter-insurgency. U.S. military forces are as much engaged in protecting and sustaining themselves, and are engaged in "civil affairs" and reconstruction support as they are "fighting." As the "more specialized operations" become a centerpiece of the U.S. effort, more and more bodies are involved in intelligence collection and analysis. As the Bush administration has admitted to itself that the Iraqi national forces require a lot more training and a lot more preparation, more and more U.S. forces have been given over to training.
So the administration may have belatedly and inadvertently come up with a way to withdraw the majority of U.S. forces on the ground and end the occupation: Focus U.S. efforts on going after terrorists and leave the insurgency to Iraqis, reduce the visibility of conventional forces, pray for Iraq -- the government, the military, the police -- to also turn the corner.
By William M. Arkin | December 2, 2005; 09:59 AM ET | Category: War on Terrorism
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What is ignored in most discussions on the Iraq debate is the fact that this administration, through its ineptness (or worse) has, by their policies, both before the invasion and during this occupation, facilitated the entry and the presence of Al Qaeda and other terrorists in Iraq.
It has been almost universally agreed that there was no connection between Sadaam's Iraq and 9/11 or terrorism pre-invasion. Even our inept CIA concluded that Iraq was not an imminent threat.
That being the case, as John Murtha has forcefully put before the nation, we must leave post haste. The longer we stay, the greater the threat of terrorism.
It is folly to believe that an Iraq army of questionable loyalties will be able to contain the terrorits when supposedly the best trained, best equipped army in the world cannot.
Mr. Bush has made the world an infintely more dangerous place, more vulnerable to terrorism than pre-invasion.
The best strategy to choose from a bevy of terrible choices is John Murtha's plan of redeployment to bases nearby where we can strike at specific imminent threats to us.
Iraq will most likely decend into a bloody, long civil war when we leave, but that will occur whether we leave next month, next year or five years from now.
What a fine mess this President has got us into.
Posted by: G. Kreisberg | Dec 2, 2005 10:21:56 PM
This may not have quite sunk in yet, but the National Strategy has one feature, in particular, ought to worry us all a lot. This is the fact that, of the many different initiatives that are outlined in the Eight Pillars of Wisdom, virtually all are supposed to be done by someone other than the United States: normally the Iraqi government, but sometimes the Iraqi business community, or neighbouring countries, or NATO, or someone else. The United States “assists” and “facilitates” and so on, but the only major tasks that are assigned to it are sending money and conducting military operations. And the latter, too, is presented as an activity in which the Iraqis take the lead and the United States simply assists, even though the reality is presumably different, at least for the present.
So in this project, in which supposedly the United States cannot afford to fail, the actions that are necessary for success are mainly outside American control. In business terms, we have bet the company on the expectation that someone else will do what we need them to do, but without having any tools to make them do it.
And in fact it is completely up to the Iraqi government whether it proceeds with a civil rights agenda, or decides to distribute economic benefits equitably, or even whether it continues to fight the insurgency. It would be perfectly conceivable for the government to reach an accommodation with the insurgents, in which they agreed to leave the central government largely alone in exchange for a free hand in attacking someone else in the region. (There is no shortage of potential targets.) They will probably pursue their own interests as they see them, and these may or may not coincide with ours. They will probably accept some of the tasks that the National Strategy has assigned to them, but will take their own time over completing them. And no doubt they will enthusiastically accept some of their assigned tasks, make their best efforts to succeed in them, and fail anyway. What they very unlikely to do, though, is to accept they are responsible to the United States for their success in following the National Strategy.
It’s not inconceivable that one business would enter into such a “best efforts” relationship with another business in order to pursue a common goal. Normally, though, each partner would reserve the right to go his own way if the other was failing to perform his side of the bargain, or simply if he decided that it was no longer in his interests to cooperate. No doubt that would be an acceptable basis for the relationship between the United States and Iraq as well. But apparently it is not: the relationship is that both parties are free agents, but there is one party for whom failure is not an option.
Posted by: John H - Toronto | Dec 2, 2005 10:02:04 PM
I wish journalists and commentators would start asking and debating the question HAS THE WAR IN IRAQ IMPROVED OUR POSITION IN THE WAR ON TERROR? 1) Richard Clark, the former natioal security advisor on terrorism, was on Charlie Rose last night, and saidf most U.S. and European experts believe the War in Iraq has created a LARGER pool of terrorists AND terrorist recruits than before 9-11. Moreover, these terrorists now have experience in small unit combat operations, a knowledge that they will be bring to bear on the U.S. homeland sooner or later. 2) As was reported a few months ago, there is a retired Coast Guard officer who just published a book which argues War in Iraq has deranged federal spending so terribly that we have NOT been able to move forward with the type of security measures we need for our sea ports -- which the CIA has identified as the most likely entry point for the next major terrorist assault. 3) I think what Murtha is reflecting (from his talks with military on the ground) is something that Gen. Barry McCafferty has stated openly - the National Guard and Reserves are NOW in the process of "melting down" and the U.S. Army and Marines simply can NOT maintain the current level of deployment and operations for more than another 12 to 18 months. Now, what do we do, with Bush's War in Iraq AND his tax cuts having crippled our ground forces, two or more years from now if Iran or North Korea or some other adversary acts up? My judgement is that we are now MUCH LESS secure than before we went into Iraq.
-- Anthony K Wikrent
akw@nbbooks.com
Posted by: Anthony K Wikrent | Dec 2, 2005 9:46:01 PM
If Bush and his administration were smart, he would go to NATO tomorrow and beg for forgiveness. Maybe that well be enough to get a NATO led police force in there to handle security. I hate to break it to you but as long as Iraq is not secure, there is no democracy. You can have thousands of elections, but if bombs are going off everyday and people are not given the safety they need to get around town then the elections are tainted. If Bush does not go to NATO then we should do what Murtha suggested and pull our troops out after the December elections. Now are military is being used by the Iraqis as fodder, and are legitamate targets according to the new Iraqi government. The reason we went into Iraq is simple no because of WMD's, not because Saddam was a bad person, but because of Israel's influence in American foreign policy and the fact that Bushy has a grudge against the man who tried to assassinate his father. The War on Terror is a joke and can never be won. What we can do is increase our security at home and try to build better relations with other so we can get GOOD intelligence and be able to stop major terrorist attacks. Bush now just looks like the moron we all kmnew him to be and Cheney better get off his ass and do something.
Posted by: P.G. | Dec 2, 2005 8:58:19 PM
What most people in America need to understand is that we have lost the Middle East. At this point we are "throwing good money after bad". We can not win in Iraq because the Iraqis, deep down inside, do not want us there. The insurgents need shelter, medical care, food, hiding etc. Where do you think they get it? From the population. Even if we train the Iraqis well enough, I am quite sure that when the time comes, they will choose not to fight their own people.
It is time for us to find a different source of energy and leave the middle east. Only after we leave, the people of that region will concentrate on their own issues and rulers and make the changes we are trying to impose. Also, give it 15-20 years and they will beg us to go back.
I hope Americans start to understand this. It is over. Bring our troops back now. There is no point in keeping them in Iraq, Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait etc. And, for God's sake, when we made up our minds to go to the moon in 10 years, we did it. We need the same kind of plan to find a different energy source. I am certain we can. This is America where nothing is impossible. Let's just do it.
Posted by: Denis | Dec 2, 2005 8:57:57 PM
For those proposing phased withdrawal need only to go back in time to the Vietnam experience. At that time we also withdrew gradually until what's left cannot even hold the embassy. See the helicopter?
A phased withdrawal in Iraq will culminate with the last US official gathering up the flag and board a helicopter in the Green Zone to be airlifted out with the crew kicking and punching locals collaborators to get them off the skids.
In withdrawal from an empire we could learn something from the British. Most recent being from Hong Kong. They lowered their flag ceremoniously to "God Save the Queen" and walked proudly to the Britannia waiting at the pier. They did not HA. Of course it was negotiated and staged with the people who wanted you out. It has always been better to talk, talk than to fight, fight. Bush never understood that and still doesnt.
Posted by: Ping Chen | Dec 2, 2005 8:06:00 PM
My son is one of the soldiers stationed in Iraq and he has been training up the Iraqi Army troops for nearly a year.
The world he describes to me in our nearly daily Instant Messages on the computer are almost always much more positive and insightful than much of the speculation I've read here or in the national newspapers.
For those who would REALLY like to learn about the progress of training of the Iraqi troops, there is a article in the Dec 05 issue of Vanity Fair that talks about his unit and their efforts.
It is a 'warts and all' article and pretty interesting.
Am I trying to change anyone's mind? Nope. Just laying out some facts for those with open minds.
Posted by: Pat Householder | Dec 2, 2005 7:57:30 PM
It is important to note that the nation of Iraq is an artificial conglomeration of people who would, if they where not co-located in the same country, never speak to each other. When left to govern itself there is guaranteed to be conflict. Perhaps war. But what great nation has not been bourn from conflict? None that I can think of . . . It is the natural (though ungainly) way that we humans work out our differences on a macro scale.
What can we do? The best way out of Iraq for America is to teach them to fish. Rather than providing their security for them, we must continue to empower them to protect themselves. This will free up resources to prosecute the war on terrorism more on our own terms instead of feeling around for IED's in Iraq.
Posted by: William Tally | Dec 2, 2005 7:18:10 PM
Inadvertantly? Bush has deliberately given himself an out from Iraq with his 'National Strategy For Victory In Iraq'.
Posted by: ErrinF | Dec 2, 2005 7:08:36 PM
It seems to be an effective plan. The danger is that many will say "OK. Our troops are out. Now cut the aid to zero."
Our leaving does not have to mean defeat and we should not be pressured by those who want a USA defeat.
Posted by: Gary Masters | Dec 2, 2005 6:35:50 PM
one word:
IMPEACHMENT
Posted by: Rick Hanson | Dec 2, 2005 6:11:57 PM
) At the beginning of the Iraqi war, some media reports stated that certain Iraqi commanders were contacted by US/coalition forces in advance of the invasion and were asked/agreed to stand down and/or abandon the Iraqi military. In other words, there was no US ‘win’ because there was no real Iraqi army. Only ‘shock and awe’ for the cameras and the use of the term ‘collateral damage’.
2) The failure to adequately ‘train’ and equip sufficient Iraqi forces over a period of years is truly suspicious and requires further examination. It is said that as they ‘step up’, they are literally shot down. For how long has that been the case? Would it not be worthwhile to incur the cost of transporting those forces to neighboring countries for training and then returning them to Iraq? If this is not feasible, a) forces from neighboring Arab countries should be brought to Iraq to replace US/coalition forces (with the Iraqi’s permission) or
NATO troops should be asked to secure the country (again, only with the Iraqi’s permission.) 3) REF: The Strategy – It is not possible to ‘get a picture’ of a ‘constantly-changing enemy’. If the enemy is indeed ever-changing, a ‘still’ shot can only be of limited value. Hasn’t the US already spent a few years looking for ‘relationships between organizations’ and ‘actionable intel’? How does the US get ‘intel’ from Iraqi citizens when they are increasingly volunteering to join the ‘insurgency’ or at the very least are increasingly in support of it? The ‘disruption’ campaign isn’t working well, either.
The New Strategy sounds a lot like the old, failing one. Can the US government define the word - innovation? Is innovative thinking ‘against the law’ in DC?
4) REF: “… leave the insurgency to Iraqis …”
Leave Iraqi’s with the task of having to deal with the ‘insurgency’ that was created for them by the US? And simply hope that all Iraqi’s will be so pleased to be free of Mr. Hussein’s regime that not one of them will act upon their already obvious resentment toward the US at some later date? Wishful thinking in these ‘terroristic’ times.
The Iraqi’s will hopefully soon develop their own plan for the extrication of US troops from their soil, with or without input from the US.
Posted by: redcat | Dec 2, 2005 6:02:29 PM
Don't you get tired of people like Jennifer L.'s whining about the liberal media? Fox is NOT liberal. The WSJ is NOT liberal. Talk radio is NOT liberal. Even PBS has been coop by the neocons.
As for the planting of stories it was planted in IRAQI, not American newspapers! Who knows whether the Iraqi media is liberal or not? The point is that if you really want to build democracy in Iraq you DON'T manipulate THEIR press by planting propaganda as objective news. That smacks of intellectual and political corruption. It destroys whatever credibility the Bush admin has left in Iraq. Not to mention the bad example it sets thru out the Middle East.
Posted by: Tom | Dec 2, 2005 5:03:31 PM
Hate to burst your patriot-bubble, Jennifer L, but the reason the western media are confined to the Green Zone of Baghdad is that it's too dangerous for them to go anywhere else.
Fortunately they employ Arab journalists to take the big risks, which is how we know that the insurgency is still strong outside Baghdad.
And finally we have the casualty figures, such as today's ten marines killed near Falluja, a city that is supposed to be a model of pacification under "clear, hold and build"...if you believe the optimistic drivel coming out of Pentagon and White House press offices.
Posted by: B. Kaufmann | Dec 2, 2005 4:48:37 PM
Thirty years after Vietnam, three years in Iraq and these guys finally have a strategy for fighting an insurgency war? Give me a break! The political people who run this war are amateur warriors who stayed out of the last big one and now find themselves deep in a hole they can't get out. I'll bet the reason Murtha called for a withdrawal is because he'd heard enough from the professional soldiers to know better. As long as the current war leadership is in place defeat is inevitable. My recommendation to Bush is to get professional help from guys like Colin Powell and Anthony Zinny. Bush may have to eat crow but that's a small price to pay for the country's sake.
Posted by: Tom | Dec 2, 2005 4:48:37 PM
Did anyone else notice that Arkin ends his analysis by noting that the administration's current policy is to "pray" that the Iraqis somehow pull themselves out of this mess?
Excuse me? Pray? That's an interesting military strategy. It's not a terribly strong diplomatic one either. In fact, what it says to me is what the Bush policy has said to me from day one: they don't have the ghost of the foggiest notion how to respond to the peoples of the Middle East.
I have no proof of this, but my guess is that the Iraqis themselves are doing lots of praying these days, and that we probably wouldn't like to read the translations.
Posted by: Lisa Mitchell | Dec 2, 2005 4:30:59 PM
DId anyone else notice that at the end of Arkin's analysis, he says the administration's policy is to "pray" that the Iraqis somehow pull themselves out of their mess?
Excuse me? Pray? The irony is deep, if you care to contemplate it. I have no proof of this, but I think the Iraqis themselves are doing a lot of praying these days, and we probably wouldn't like to read the translations.
Posted by: Lisa Mitchell | Dec 2, 2005 4:23:00 PM
Sr. Bojangles is right - when you don't send enough troops over to hold the ground, you don't need to further deplete their usefulness by having them build schools & doing other so-called "nation-building" projects that would be better farmed out to locals (Iraqis) who need the work to keep them too busy to bury land mines. The troops need to keep their focus on whacking the moles; it's what they're trained for.
Posted by: Zak | Dec 2, 2005 3:13:47 PM
My husband is one of "those people". He was not sent to his deat as some of you suggest. All I have to say is that Saddam is on trial, being judge by the people he opressed for the first time ever in their country. The country's people are voting, and in record numbers, the United States would be lucky to get half the turn out they did. This morning on Good Morning America an Iraqi woman... yes a woman was on National televsion having an intelligent politcal debate with one of her Iraq friends. Please don't be the type of people who turn a blind eye to progress. You call it planting stories... but really I'd be begging borrowing and stealing to share with the country all the good that is being done because our liberal media won't do it! If our media was more fair there would be no need to "plant" stories! All of our news comes our of Baghdad where are the reporters are... you don't think the insurgents know where the media is living? Where would you act out and show your hostilities if you were them..... in front of a camera right? Don't be blind... and don't print this garbage that makes me embarassed to call you a fellow American... you aren't worthy!
Posted by: Jennifer L. | Dec 2, 2005 2:57:58 PM
Why does The Post allow "Che" to post 6 feet of crap in the comments section each day?
Posted by: JB | Dec 2, 2005 2:43:45 PM
I served in the Nam from 69 to 71. History has shown that the real patriots were the ones protesting in our streets to bring us home. Nam was a civil war, it was made part of the "cold war" by our presence. Bush is living in a dream world, while his cronies create their own reality. If the Iraqi's are increasingly taking over the fight for their independence, why are American casualities contining to rise. If the streets of Bagdad are so safe, why is the Military still hiding behind the walled Green Zone.Bush stated that the terrorists have made Iraq the central front of their war, if it is their front, then it is only because we are there. American should support their troops, but not by blindly following an arrogant white house, but by lobbying our reps to bring our young men and women home. It makes no sense to honor our fallen men and women by sending more men and women to their deaths for no good reason.
Posted by: Charlie C | Dec 2, 2005 2:31:11 PM
I think this brings up a great point, that the military is engaged in "civil affairs". We won the war with Iraq in those first few weeks. We won it in a spectacular and complete fashion. Now we're asking our military to oversee the social and political transformation of a country that does not have a history in democracy. This is the same general problem we had in Viet Nam. These goals are NOT MILITARY GOALS and we should not be relying our military to attain them!
Posted by: Sr. Bojangles | Dec 2, 2005 2:20:44 PM
I guess its time to come up with fake inteligence saying all the bad guys are gone. Then "we" can leave with dignity. If new bad guys show up the next day, its not our problem.
Posted by: Fakerman | Dec 2, 2005 1:59:05 PM
The ABBB group will never accept anything he says. I wonder if all the naysayer’s who voted to jump into this situation would take a polygraph to prove they didn't know all the information or they thought they were lied to. This so reminds me of Nam and the politicians trying to run the fighting back then to gain voter approval. All that haranguing did was to stiffen the resolve of Charlie and now the Muslim extremists. When will they ever learn to leave it the Military to decide the best route home rather than to try to garner votes with political redirect? I was in the Army from 8/66 to 7/69 and it really bothered me then and its Deja vue all over again to me. Those who protests too much just makes me question their motives. JMHO.
Posted by: Jim Ferguson | Dec 2, 2005 1:58:13 PM
www.onlinejournal.com
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It's propaganda time
By Walter Jajko
CRITICS OF THE Iraq war are outraged over the revelation that the U.S. military has been paying millions of dollars to plant pro-American, Pentagon-written propaganda articles in Iraqi newspapers and to buy off Iraqi journalists with monthly stipends.
But in my opinion, it's about time. Information is a critical part of any war, and the U.S. has for too long — to its own detriment — ignored this powerful and essential tool, a tool especially well-suited to the globalized Information Age.
ADVERTISEMENT
Even third-rate countries routinely use information and disinformation as an instrument of foreign policy, often against the United States. The U.S., in turn, cannot win the war of ideas by speaking softly or keeping its mouth shut. But we have been doing just that.
The United States Information Agency, the only open, global information organization run by the U.S. government, was abolished in 1999, supposedly because it served no purpose in the post-Cold War world. It has not been replaced. U.S.-sponsored entities such as Radio and TV Marti (which broadcast to Cuba) and Al Hurra, the U.S. television station broadcasting to the Arabs, have proven ineffective.
We need to be using all the means available in the war of ideas: public diplomacy, psychological operations, influence agents, disinformation and computer information warfare — from open and overt to clandestine and covert, from public explanation of policy to secret subversion of enemies. All of these must be well-orchestrated.
Our current situation is quite a turnaround from the Cold War years. In 1953, the CIA's celebrated Cold War information and disinformation arm — centered in the "Mighty Wurlitzer" propaganda offices of OSS veteran Frank Wisner — was an enormous operation, with thousands of employees adept at planting press and radio stories, engaging with labor unions, applying economic pressure, offering direct monetary payments and waging political and cultural warfare in an all-out effort to prevent European countries from falling to the communists.
According to a 1977 New York Times investigative series, the CIA owned or subsidized, at various times, more than 50 newspapers, news services, radio stations, periodicals and other communications facilities, most of them overseas. In some cases, these were used for propaganda efforts; in other cases, they served as covers for other operations.
Paid CIA agents infiltrated a dozen more foreign news organizations, and at least 22 U.S. news organizations employed American journalists who were also working for the CIA. Nearly a dozen U.S. publishing houses printed some of the more than 1,000 books that had been produced or subsidized by the CIA.
Today, this kind of effort has ended, and it is now unimaginable. Few American officials know how to play this game, and fewer would risk doing so. The left has argued that this shouldn't be done — that it's unethical, it's dishonest, it's a violation of journalistic standards. Our use of information today is insufficient, limited to disjointed efforts: the State Department's passive, reactive and defensive public diplomacy; the Defense Department's tactical, battlefield psychological operations; and the CIA's limited covert influence operations.
Examples abound. The State Department only seldom (and belatedly) has provided Arabic-speaking interviewees to refute stories on Al Jazeera. The CIA never did establish a clandestine radio station to propagandize against the Iranian mullahs.
Each of the few weak, unconnected information efforts has been undertaken episodically, coordinated haphazardly and funded poorly. Each ekes out its existence as transient tools accepted only in extremis, facing resistance from apathetic agencies, clueless congressmen and misinformed media.
A permanent leadership is needed in the form of a new Cabinet department that can knock together heads to force integrated influence activities — a Ministry of Propaganda, if you will.
Some influence operations are cheap, such as distribution of opinion pieces to newspapers; some are expensive, such as setting up a satellite television station; some are technically sophisticated, such as spreading disinformation into government computer networks; many are simple, such as immediate, vigorous, undiplomatic rebuttals by U.S. ambassadors to false accusations. But all require commitment by the national leadership.
In the war against Al Qaeda and its sympathizers, aggressive, relentless and exhaustive attacks are needed, including arguing against the terrorists' theological heresies, rebutting their lies, undermining their popularity, blackening their reputations, falsifying their public and private communications, publicizing intelligence against their fellow-traveler friends and jamming their radio, television and computer networks.
America's failure to use the indispensable instrument of information to protect its own national interests is inexcusable, especially as it wages a protracted war to the death against Islamic terrorists to preserve democratic governance, a free society and Western civilization.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WALTER JAJKO, a retired Air Force brigadier general and former assistant to the secretary of Defense for intelligence oversight, is a professor of defense studies at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. His views are not those of the Department of Defense.
By Walter Jajko
CRITICS OF THE Iraq war are outraged over the revelation that the U.S. military has been paying millions of dollars to plant pro-American, Pentagon-written propaganda articles in Iraqi newspapers and to buy off Iraqi journalists with monthly stipends.
But in my opinion, it's about time. Information is a critical part of any war, and the U.S. has for too long — to its own detriment — ignored this powerful and essential tool, a tool especially well-suited to the globalized Information Age.
ADVERTISEMENT
Even third-rate countries routinely use information and disinformation as an instrument of foreign policy, often against the United States. The U.S., in turn, cannot win the war of ideas by speaking softly or keeping its mouth shut. But we have been doing just that.
The United States Information Agency, the only open, global information organization run by the U.S. government, was abolished in 1999, supposedly because it served no purpose in the post-Cold War world. It has not been replaced. U.S.-sponsored entities such as Radio and TV Marti (which broadcast to Cuba) and Al Hurra, the U.S. television station broadcasting to the Arabs, have proven ineffective.
We need to be using all the means available in the war of ideas: public diplomacy, psychological operations, influence agents, disinformation and computer information warfare — from open and overt to clandestine and covert, from public explanation of policy to secret subversion of enemies. All of these must be well-orchestrated.
Our current situation is quite a turnaround from the Cold War years. In 1953, the CIA's celebrated Cold War information and disinformation arm — centered in the "Mighty Wurlitzer" propaganda offices of OSS veteran Frank Wisner — was an enormous operation, with thousands of employees adept at planting press and radio stories, engaging with labor unions, applying economic pressure, offering direct monetary payments and waging political and cultural warfare in an all-out effort to prevent European countries from falling to the communists.
According to a 1977 New York Times investigative series, the CIA owned or subsidized, at various times, more than 50 newspapers, news services, radio stations, periodicals and other communications facilities, most of them overseas. In some cases, these were used for propaganda efforts; in other cases, they served as covers for other operations.
Paid CIA agents infiltrated a dozen more foreign news organizations, and at least 22 U.S. news organizations employed American journalists who were also working for the CIA. Nearly a dozen U.S. publishing houses printed some of the more than 1,000 books that had been produced or subsidized by the CIA.
Today, this kind of effort has ended, and it is now unimaginable. Few American officials know how to play this game, and fewer would risk doing so. The left has argued that this shouldn't be done — that it's unethical, it's dishonest, it's a violation of journalistic standards. Our use of information today is insufficient, limited to disjointed efforts: the State Department's passive, reactive and defensive public diplomacy; the Defense Department's tactical, battlefield psychological operations; and the CIA's limited covert influence operations.
Examples abound. The State Department only seldom (and belatedly) has provided Arabic-speaking interviewees to refute stories on Al Jazeera. The CIA never did establish a clandestine radio station to propagandize against the Iranian mullahs.
Each of the few weak, unconnected information efforts has been undertaken episodically, coordinated haphazardly and funded poorly. Each ekes out its existence as transient tools accepted only in extremis, facing resistance from apathetic agencies, clueless congressmen and misinformed media.
A permanent leadership is needed in the form of a new Cabinet department that can knock together heads to force integrated influence activities — a Ministry of Propaganda, if you will.
Some influence operations are cheap, such as distribution of opinion pieces to newspapers; some are expensive, such as setting up a satellite television station; some are technically sophisticated, such as spreading disinformation into government computer networks; many are simple, such as immediate, vigorous, undiplomatic rebuttals by U.S. ambassadors to false accusations. But all require commitment by the national leadership.
In the war against Al Qaeda and its sympathizers, aggressive, relentless and exhaustive attacks are needed, including arguing against the terrorists' theological heresies, rebutting their lies, undermining their popularity, blackening their reputations, falsifying their public and private communications, publicizing intelligence against their fellow-traveler friends and jamming their radio, television and computer networks.
America's failure to use the indispensable instrument of information to protect its own national interests is inexcusable, especially as it wages a protracted war to the death against Islamic terrorists to preserve democratic governance, a free society and Western civilization.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WALTER JAJKO, a retired Air Force brigadier general and former assistant to the secretary of Defense for intelligence oversight, is a professor of defense studies at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. His views are not those of the Department of Defense.
A Clear Strategy – for Disaster
by Ray McGovern
The bromide-heavy speech that President George W. Bush gave Wednesday at the Naval Academy presents a clear strategy for continued quagmire and eventual disaster in Iraq. Despite the gathering storm of opposition to the administration's approach to the war in Iraq, the speech was long on tired clichés and bereft of new ideas, calling to mind the words of Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
The problem is that this hobgoblin has consequences. Bush's renewed warning of a future "Islamic empire from Indonesia to Spain" at first seemed to me as outlandish as President Ronald Reagan's warning that the Russians planned to land in Nicaragua in order to invade Texas. Now it seems that Bush's concern may become self-fulfilling prophecy, since the course he is on could hardly be better designed to usher in an eventual Islamic, rather than American, "empire."
Iraqi Security Forces: A Pathetic Pillar
The president indicated that in the days ahead he would be addressing various pillars of his strategy in Iraq. Wednesday's speech was devoted largely to the training of Iraqi army and security forces, and he protested too much in his efforts to accentuate the positive. His tortured attempt to explain why, after so many months of U.S. training, only one Iraqi army battalion can fight independently was no more convincing that earlier attempts by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his star-bedecked generals. Statistics just confuse the issue, we have been told. Progress is being made. Trust us.
All this is reminiscent of the rhetoric at a similar juncture at the beginning – yes, the beginning – of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The Lyndon Johnson tapes show how in February 1964 President Johnson found fault with a draft of a major policy speech by then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara:
LBJ: "I wonder if you shouldn't find two minutes to devote to Vietnam."
McN: "The problem is what to say about it."
LBJ: "I would say that we have a commitment to Vietnamese freedom. … Our purpose is to train [the South Vietnamese] people, and our training's going good."
The training was not going good then, and it's not going good now. The Johnson administration's self-deception helped usher in a decade of war resulting in 2-3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 American servicemen killed. The parallel is eerie. Just a few months ago Rumsfeld was talking about the need for U.S. forces to remain in Iraq for perhaps as long as 12 years.
Let "Freedom" Ring…
As for LBJ's commitment to "freedom" for a foreign client, Bush's speechwriters would not be outdone. In his speech the president used "freedom" or "free" no fewer than 36 times. The nine-paragraph coda, apparently orchestrated by Bush speechwriter and ambassador Karen Hughes, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, was a veritable free-for-all, with 19 "frees" or "freedoms."
… and "Real Progress" in Preparing Iraqi Forces
I found it embarrassing to listen to President Bush stretch for evidence of "real progress" in readying Iraqi army and security forces to "stand up [so that we] can stand down." Did you know that, because of our help, the Iraqis now have their own supply depot north of Baghdad; simulation models for roadblocks; a bomb-disposal school; a training program for squad leaders? Bush even quoted a U.S. soldier saying, "We have turned the corner." For veteran observers of the Vietnam, this brings on a very troubling flashback.
How Many "Insurgents?"
Missing from the president's words was any information on how many "insurgents" there are. No surprise here. Rumsfeld, whose fingerprints are all over the speech (until the coda), is apparently still seeking "situational awareness," the lack of which he has famously bemoaned time and again.
Those of us with experience of Vietnam remember only too well that the Pentagon kept the count of Vietnamese Communist forces at an artificially low level, lest its claims of "real progress" be given the lie. It is hard to know which is worse – artificially low numbers, or none at all. It is, in fact, quite telling that Rumsfeld and the president prefer to leave enemy strength in the Rumsfeldian category of "known unknowns." And it is small solace that this category is a step higher than the "unknown unknowns" in his lexicon.
Still, does it not seem odd that no figures are ever offered on the "insurgents" that are causing such havoc in Iraq, or on whether we are "killing or capturing more terrorists each day than are being recruited against us" – the question Rumsfeld posed to Pentagon brass more than a year ago?
A pity that those running the war in Iraq found ways to sit out Vietnam. For there, too, was a guerrilla war in which it was very difficult to estimate the number of "insurgents," without including thousands and thousands of the populace who were supporting the resistance, with many of them acting as nighttime guerrillas. The lesson is that an army trained and supplied by foreign occupiers can almost always eventually be outmatched and out-waited in a guerrilla war, no matter how many billions are pumped into things like simulation models for roadblocks.
Don't take my word for it. Professor Martin van Creveld of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the only non-American military historian on the U.S. Army's list of required reading for officers, recently criticized President Bush for "launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent his legions in to Germany and lost them."
Staying the Course
The president's words struck an overall defensive tone, especially when he took on critics of his policy of "staying the course." Bush rang a number of changes on the theme of how "flexible and dynamic" our military has become in "adapting and adjusting" to the situation in Iraq. As an example, he noted: "We have changed the way we train Iraqi troops."
There was no sign in the president's speech that this flexibility includes openness to the step that is the sine qua non for the U.S. to climb out of the Iraqi quagmire. As author Robert Dreyfuss has emphasized, that step is to sit down face-to-face with representatives of the Ba'ath Party – not the quisling Sunnis with whom U.S. officials prefer to deal. Why? Because the Ba'athists are the backbone of the resistance/insurgency. And never has it been more politically possible to sit down with then.
The good news is that a peace process has begun, despite Washington's decision to boycott it because of its allergic reaction to dealing openly with the real resistance/insurgents. At a Reconciliation Conference sponsored by the Arab League two weeks ago in Cairo, Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish representatives sat down together and reached a surprising degree of consensus, including agreement on a demand for a timetable for withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq. A second, much larger session will convene in February, and so the die is cast.
In his speech, the president completely ignored the Reconciliation Conference, strongly suggesting that "foolish consistency" rules the roost and rules out the kind of flexibility needed to join and take advantage of the political track. Indeed, he may not even know of the key events in Cairo. There has been meager reporting in the press (surprise, surprise!) and, besides, Bush has admitted that he does not read newspaper articles anyway, preferring to rely on his staff for such information.
But surely, you say, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte would have ensured that the President's Daily Brief (PDB) included a report on the Cairo meeting. That ain't necessarily so. After all, Negroponte's star rose sharply when, as ambassador to Honduras, he distinguished himself for his success in suppressing reports that the forefathers of present-day "neoconservatives" – the brain-trust of the Iran-Contra affair – did not want disseminated to Congress or the press. That intelligence included reporting on the infamous Honduran death squads, known to all but Negroponte, who insisted on having weekly lunches with the generals who were actually running them. Sound familiar? Yes, those are the death squads after which are patterned similar squads now at work in Iraq, where Negroponte was also ambassador.
Negroponte now controls what intelligence goes to the president, and Bush has made it clear that this is the way he wants it. Thus, even if, say, a CIA analyst drafted an analytical report for the PDB on the Cairo conference, and even if it found its way into the Oval Office, there remains many a slip between cup and lip – because the president apparently does not read the PDB either. Rather he has it read to him, and on any given day it is possible for a reader to be cut short, or to give but cursory mention to such an article, given the president's well-known insistence on "staying" a course that does not permit of open negotiation with "insurgents."
Then Will No One Tell the President?
In his Naval Academy speech Bush totally ignored the results of the Cairo conference, which suggests that the U.S. will remain odd man out while the negotiations among key Iraqi leaders and other interested parties continue in February. Were it not for the experience of watching the White House the past four years, it would be very difficult for me to believe that Bush's advisers cannot see the handwriting on the wall, and that they would not see merit in suggesting to the president that he adjust U.S. goals and join the peace process begun in Cairo.
The goals are the rub; they have not changed. Remarkably, the Cheney-Rumsfeld-cum-ideologue-neoconservative cabal still running U.S. policy is still focused primarily on oil, permanent military bases, and making the Middle East even safer for Israel. There are no convincing signs yet – despite the looming disaster apparent to most others – that they or the president are willing to adjust, rather than "stay" the course.
Given the president's penchant for erupting in rage when provided with information not to his liking, it seems improbable that anyone in his small circle of advisers would dare remind him of how many times, and for how many years, presidents Johnson and Nixon insisted on "staying the course" before the helicopters lifted the last of the fleeing Americans from the rooftops of the U.S. compound in Saigon in 1975.
An earlier version of this article appeared on Truthout.com.
by Ray McGovern
The bromide-heavy speech that President George W. Bush gave Wednesday at the Naval Academy presents a clear strategy for continued quagmire and eventual disaster in Iraq. Despite the gathering storm of opposition to the administration's approach to the war in Iraq, the speech was long on tired clichés and bereft of new ideas, calling to mind the words of Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
The problem is that this hobgoblin has consequences. Bush's renewed warning of a future "Islamic empire from Indonesia to Spain" at first seemed to me as outlandish as President Ronald Reagan's warning that the Russians planned to land in Nicaragua in order to invade Texas. Now it seems that Bush's concern may become self-fulfilling prophecy, since the course he is on could hardly be better designed to usher in an eventual Islamic, rather than American, "empire."
Iraqi Security Forces: A Pathetic Pillar
The president indicated that in the days ahead he would be addressing various pillars of his strategy in Iraq. Wednesday's speech was devoted largely to the training of Iraqi army and security forces, and he protested too much in his efforts to accentuate the positive. His tortured attempt to explain why, after so many months of U.S. training, only one Iraqi army battalion can fight independently was no more convincing that earlier attempts by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his star-bedecked generals. Statistics just confuse the issue, we have been told. Progress is being made. Trust us.
All this is reminiscent of the rhetoric at a similar juncture at the beginning – yes, the beginning – of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The Lyndon Johnson tapes show how in February 1964 President Johnson found fault with a draft of a major policy speech by then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara:
LBJ: "I wonder if you shouldn't find two minutes to devote to Vietnam."
McN: "The problem is what to say about it."
LBJ: "I would say that we have a commitment to Vietnamese freedom. … Our purpose is to train [the South Vietnamese] people, and our training's going good."
The training was not going good then, and it's not going good now. The Johnson administration's self-deception helped usher in a decade of war resulting in 2-3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 American servicemen killed. The parallel is eerie. Just a few months ago Rumsfeld was talking about the need for U.S. forces to remain in Iraq for perhaps as long as 12 years.
Let "Freedom" Ring…
As for LBJ's commitment to "freedom" for a foreign client, Bush's speechwriters would not be outdone. In his speech the president used "freedom" or "free" no fewer than 36 times. The nine-paragraph coda, apparently orchestrated by Bush speechwriter and ambassador Karen Hughes, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, was a veritable free-for-all, with 19 "frees" or "freedoms."
… and "Real Progress" in Preparing Iraqi Forces
I found it embarrassing to listen to President Bush stretch for evidence of "real progress" in readying Iraqi army and security forces to "stand up [so that we] can stand down." Did you know that, because of our help, the Iraqis now have their own supply depot north of Baghdad; simulation models for roadblocks; a bomb-disposal school; a training program for squad leaders? Bush even quoted a U.S. soldier saying, "We have turned the corner." For veteran observers of the Vietnam, this brings on a very troubling flashback.
How Many "Insurgents?"
Missing from the president's words was any information on how many "insurgents" there are. No surprise here. Rumsfeld, whose fingerprints are all over the speech (until the coda), is apparently still seeking "situational awareness," the lack of which he has famously bemoaned time and again.
Those of us with experience of Vietnam remember only too well that the Pentagon kept the count of Vietnamese Communist forces at an artificially low level, lest its claims of "real progress" be given the lie. It is hard to know which is worse – artificially low numbers, or none at all. It is, in fact, quite telling that Rumsfeld and the president prefer to leave enemy strength in the Rumsfeldian category of "known unknowns." And it is small solace that this category is a step higher than the "unknown unknowns" in his lexicon.
Still, does it not seem odd that no figures are ever offered on the "insurgents" that are causing such havoc in Iraq, or on whether we are "killing or capturing more terrorists each day than are being recruited against us" – the question Rumsfeld posed to Pentagon brass more than a year ago?
A pity that those running the war in Iraq found ways to sit out Vietnam. For there, too, was a guerrilla war in which it was very difficult to estimate the number of "insurgents," without including thousands and thousands of the populace who were supporting the resistance, with many of them acting as nighttime guerrillas. The lesson is that an army trained and supplied by foreign occupiers can almost always eventually be outmatched and out-waited in a guerrilla war, no matter how many billions are pumped into things like simulation models for roadblocks.
Don't take my word for it. Professor Martin van Creveld of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the only non-American military historian on the U.S. Army's list of required reading for officers, recently criticized President Bush for "launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent his legions in to Germany and lost them."
Staying the Course
The president's words struck an overall defensive tone, especially when he took on critics of his policy of "staying the course." Bush rang a number of changes on the theme of how "flexible and dynamic" our military has become in "adapting and adjusting" to the situation in Iraq. As an example, he noted: "We have changed the way we train Iraqi troops."
There was no sign in the president's speech that this flexibility includes openness to the step that is the sine qua non for the U.S. to climb out of the Iraqi quagmire. As author Robert Dreyfuss has emphasized, that step is to sit down face-to-face with representatives of the Ba'ath Party – not the quisling Sunnis with whom U.S. officials prefer to deal. Why? Because the Ba'athists are the backbone of the resistance/insurgency. And never has it been more politically possible to sit down with then.
The good news is that a peace process has begun, despite Washington's decision to boycott it because of its allergic reaction to dealing openly with the real resistance/insurgents. At a Reconciliation Conference sponsored by the Arab League two weeks ago in Cairo, Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish representatives sat down together and reached a surprising degree of consensus, including agreement on a demand for a timetable for withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq. A second, much larger session will convene in February, and so the die is cast.
In his speech, the president completely ignored the Reconciliation Conference, strongly suggesting that "foolish consistency" rules the roost and rules out the kind of flexibility needed to join and take advantage of the political track. Indeed, he may not even know of the key events in Cairo. There has been meager reporting in the press (surprise, surprise!) and, besides, Bush has admitted that he does not read newspaper articles anyway, preferring to rely on his staff for such information.
But surely, you say, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte would have ensured that the President's Daily Brief (PDB) included a report on the Cairo meeting. That ain't necessarily so. After all, Negroponte's star rose sharply when, as ambassador to Honduras, he distinguished himself for his success in suppressing reports that the forefathers of present-day "neoconservatives" – the brain-trust of the Iran-Contra affair – did not want disseminated to Congress or the press. That intelligence included reporting on the infamous Honduran death squads, known to all but Negroponte, who insisted on having weekly lunches with the generals who were actually running them. Sound familiar? Yes, those are the death squads after which are patterned similar squads now at work in Iraq, where Negroponte was also ambassador.
Negroponte now controls what intelligence goes to the president, and Bush has made it clear that this is the way he wants it. Thus, even if, say, a CIA analyst drafted an analytical report for the PDB on the Cairo conference, and even if it found its way into the Oval Office, there remains many a slip between cup and lip – because the president apparently does not read the PDB either. Rather he has it read to him, and on any given day it is possible for a reader to be cut short, or to give but cursory mention to such an article, given the president's well-known insistence on "staying" a course that does not permit of open negotiation with "insurgents."
Then Will No One Tell the President?
In his Naval Academy speech Bush totally ignored the results of the Cairo conference, which suggests that the U.S. will remain odd man out while the negotiations among key Iraqi leaders and other interested parties continue in February. Were it not for the experience of watching the White House the past four years, it would be very difficult for me to believe that Bush's advisers cannot see the handwriting on the wall, and that they would not see merit in suggesting to the president that he adjust U.S. goals and join the peace process begun in Cairo.
The goals are the rub; they have not changed. Remarkably, the Cheney-Rumsfeld-cum-ideologue-neoconservative cabal still running U.S. policy is still focused primarily on oil, permanent military bases, and making the Middle East even safer for Israel. There are no convincing signs yet – despite the looming disaster apparent to most others – that they or the president are willing to adjust, rather than "stay" the course.
Given the president's penchant for erupting in rage when provided with information not to his liking, it seems improbable that anyone in his small circle of advisers would dare remind him of how many times, and for how many years, presidents Johnson and Nixon insisted on "staying the course" before the helicopters lifted the last of the fleeing Americans from the rooftops of the U.S. compound in Saigon in 1975.
An earlier version of this article appeared on Truthout.com.
December 3, 2005
Smear Pattern
by Paul Sperry
On July 15, 2003, ABC News aired a story about the plummeting morale of U.S. troops in Iraq. It quoted soldiers questioning the war and the judgment and candor of their commanders. One frosted GI even went on camera to call for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign.
It was a devastating report, and the White House went into orbit over it. Rather than address the issues the soldiers raised, angry White House officials devised a plan to attack the messenger – the ABC correspondent who filed the story, Jeffrey Kofman.
He's gay, officials whispered to cyber-gossip Matt Drudge, a reliable Bush toady. Not only that, they sneered, he's not even an American. He's a Canadian.
Drudge, no longer the gadfly he once was during the Clinton years, dutifully posted a banner smear of Kofman on his Web site the day after the powerful ABC story, which had made national headlines. Drudge, who supports the Iraq invasion, later acknowledged the White House tipping him off, remarking that it "has become slightly more aggressive about contacting reporters."
Indeed it had.
Just four days earlier, Vice President Dick Cheney devised a scheme to attack the credibility of another messenger of bad news regarding Iraq – Ambassador Joe Wilson. The previous week, Wilson had blown the whistle on the White House's bogus claim that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy fuel for nuclear weapons from Niger.
Cheney hatched the plan with top aide Scooter Libby aboard Air Force Two during a flight from Norfolk, Va., on July 12, 2003. That same day Libby leaked to Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time magazine the secret identity of Wilson's CIA wife.
Also that day, another administration official who hasn't been identified publicly called Walter Pincus of the Washington Post to point out that Wilson's fact-finding trip to Niger was a "boondoggle" set up by his CIA wife, Valerie Plame. You can't trust what he's saying, he suggested; it's nepotism.
July 2003 was a bad month for the White House. The Iraq insurgency was growing. U.S. troop morale was flagging. No weapons of mass destruction had been found. And people were starting to come forward to question the White House's story in selling the war.
So the White House went into full attack mode. The marching orders issued by Cheney and President Bush were clear: Trash and smear whoever got in the way of their wholesale campaign of deceit. Kofman, Wilson, anyone.
And yet now, with Libby's indictment, the White House expects us all to believe that smearing a key war critic was the furthest thing from their minds. Why, they just wanted to correct the record about who sent Wilson to Niger, because it wasn't Cheney as Wilson said in his New York Times piece.
Never mind that Wilson never said that. And never mind that White House officials launched a whisper campaign, which is a pretty odd way to go about correcting the public record.
The White House also expects us to believe that asking the CIA about the secret employment of Wilson's wife and then leaking it to several reporters and columnists was perfectly innocent and routine White House business. And no one blew Plame's cover – c'mon, it was all just harmless gossip!
"There was no underlying crime. I mean, it really is ridiculous," grumbled Fox News analyst Bill Kristol on a recent Sunday show. "The notion that there was a concerted administration effort to smear its enemies I think has been utterly discredited."
Or so Kristol wishes.
The neocon acolyte of superstatist Leo Strauss helped Libby and his White House co-conspirators sell the "noble lies" that got us into war in Iraq. Now they're in trouble for viciously (and illegally) attacking the CIA wife of a critic who helped expose their lies, and Kristol has dutifully taken up the cudgels for them, knowing that his reputation is yoked to theirs.
Such remarks are designed to suspend disbelief about their treachery. But they are wholly unconvincing against the pattern of smearing war critics that was going on in the Bush White House that month in 2003.
Smear Pattern
by Paul Sperry
On July 15, 2003, ABC News aired a story about the plummeting morale of U.S. troops in Iraq. It quoted soldiers questioning the war and the judgment and candor of their commanders. One frosted GI even went on camera to call for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign.
It was a devastating report, and the White House went into orbit over it. Rather than address the issues the soldiers raised, angry White House officials devised a plan to attack the messenger – the ABC correspondent who filed the story, Jeffrey Kofman.
He's gay, officials whispered to cyber-gossip Matt Drudge, a reliable Bush toady. Not only that, they sneered, he's not even an American. He's a Canadian.
Drudge, no longer the gadfly he once was during the Clinton years, dutifully posted a banner smear of Kofman on his Web site the day after the powerful ABC story, which had made national headlines. Drudge, who supports the Iraq invasion, later acknowledged the White House tipping him off, remarking that it "has become slightly more aggressive about contacting reporters."
Indeed it had.
Just four days earlier, Vice President Dick Cheney devised a scheme to attack the credibility of another messenger of bad news regarding Iraq – Ambassador Joe Wilson. The previous week, Wilson had blown the whistle on the White House's bogus claim that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy fuel for nuclear weapons from Niger.
Cheney hatched the plan with top aide Scooter Libby aboard Air Force Two during a flight from Norfolk, Va., on July 12, 2003. That same day Libby leaked to Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time magazine the secret identity of Wilson's CIA wife.
Also that day, another administration official who hasn't been identified publicly called Walter Pincus of the Washington Post to point out that Wilson's fact-finding trip to Niger was a "boondoggle" set up by his CIA wife, Valerie Plame. You can't trust what he's saying, he suggested; it's nepotism.
July 2003 was a bad month for the White House. The Iraq insurgency was growing. U.S. troop morale was flagging. No weapons of mass destruction had been found. And people were starting to come forward to question the White House's story in selling the war.
So the White House went into full attack mode. The marching orders issued by Cheney and President Bush were clear: Trash and smear whoever got in the way of their wholesale campaign of deceit. Kofman, Wilson, anyone.
And yet now, with Libby's indictment, the White House expects us all to believe that smearing a key war critic was the furthest thing from their minds. Why, they just wanted to correct the record about who sent Wilson to Niger, because it wasn't Cheney as Wilson said in his New York Times piece.
Never mind that Wilson never said that. And never mind that White House officials launched a whisper campaign, which is a pretty odd way to go about correcting the public record.
The White House also expects us to believe that asking the CIA about the secret employment of Wilson's wife and then leaking it to several reporters and columnists was perfectly innocent and routine White House business. And no one blew Plame's cover – c'mon, it was all just harmless gossip!
"There was no underlying crime. I mean, it really is ridiculous," grumbled Fox News analyst Bill Kristol on a recent Sunday show. "The notion that there was a concerted administration effort to smear its enemies I think has been utterly discredited."
Or so Kristol wishes.
The neocon acolyte of superstatist Leo Strauss helped Libby and his White House co-conspirators sell the "noble lies" that got us into war in Iraq. Now they're in trouble for viciously (and illegally) attacking the CIA wife of a critic who helped expose their lies, and Kristol has dutifully taken up the cudgels for them, knowing that his reputation is yoked to theirs.
Such remarks are designed to suspend disbelief about their treachery. But they are wholly unconvincing against the pattern of smearing war critics that was going on in the Bush White House that month in 2003.
Democrats Find Iraq Alternative Is Elusive
By Robin Wright
Around the country, many grass-roots Democrats are clamoring for a quick withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. On Capitol Hill, Democratic politicians have grown newly aggressive in denouncing the Bush administration's war strategy and outlining other options.
But among the Democratic foreign-policy elite, dominated by people who previously served in the top ranks of government, there are stark differences -- and significant vagueness -- about a viable alternative.
In interviews, veteran policymakers offered no end of criticism about how President Bush maneuvered the United States into its present predicament, but only one had a clear vision of what he would do if the Iraq problem were handed over to a Democratic administration tomorrow. Several accept Bush's premise that a rapid withdrawal anytime soon would leave Iraq unstable and risk a strategic disaster in the broader Middle East.
"I'm not prepared to lay out a detailed policy or strategy," said former U.N. ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke, who was widely considered the leading candidate to be secretary of state if Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) had won the presidency last year. "It's not something you can expect in a situation that is moving this fast and has the level of detail you're looking for."
The difficulty that the Democratic foreign-policy elite has in coming together around a crisp alternative to the Bush administration has consequences that echo beyond the warren of think tanks, universities and consulting shops where most of its members now bide their time. On complicated policy questions, candidates and elected officials usually turn to respected and experienced policy experts to fashion their own platforms.
Highlighting the lack of consensus, some Democrats advocate withdrawing apace to change the dynamics in Iraq and the Middle East -- and to avoid getting bogged down or discrediting the United States. Others argue that it is a mistake to even talk about a timed drawdown. In between, still others propose an initial cut, while keeping a sizable force in Iraq or the region to promote stability
By Robin Wright
Around the country, many grass-roots Democrats are clamoring for a quick withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. On Capitol Hill, Democratic politicians have grown newly aggressive in denouncing the Bush administration's war strategy and outlining other options.
But among the Democratic foreign-policy elite, dominated by people who previously served in the top ranks of government, there are stark differences -- and significant vagueness -- about a viable alternative.
In interviews, veteran policymakers offered no end of criticism about how President Bush maneuvered the United States into its present predicament, but only one had a clear vision of what he would do if the Iraq problem were handed over to a Democratic administration tomorrow. Several accept Bush's premise that a rapid withdrawal anytime soon would leave Iraq unstable and risk a strategic disaster in the broader Middle East.
"I'm not prepared to lay out a detailed policy or strategy," said former U.N. ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke, who was widely considered the leading candidate to be secretary of state if Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) had won the presidency last year. "It's not something you can expect in a situation that is moving this fast and has the level of detail you're looking for."
The difficulty that the Democratic foreign-policy elite has in coming together around a crisp alternative to the Bush administration has consequences that echo beyond the warren of think tanks, universities and consulting shops where most of its members now bide their time. On complicated policy questions, candidates and elected officials usually turn to respected and experienced policy experts to fashion their own platforms.
Highlighting the lack of consensus, some Democrats advocate withdrawing apace to change the dynamics in Iraq and the Middle East -- and to avoid getting bogged down or discrediting the United States. Others argue that it is a mistake to even talk about a timed drawdown. In between, still others propose an initial cut, while keeping a sizable force in Iraq or the region to promote stability