http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../24/ixhome.html

Another former Blair aide speaks out over going to war in Iraq
By David Rennie in Warsaw
(Filed: 24/11/2005)

A second member of Tony Blair's foreign policy inner circle has broken ranks to call the Prime Minister's Iraq war alliance with President George W Bush a strategic blunder, with "damaging" consequences for Britain.

Sir Stephen Wall, the Prime Minister's former top adviser on Europe and a former ambassador to the European Union, worked at the heart of Downing Street before and during the US-led invasion of Iraq.


Sir Stephen Wall delivered a scathing attack on Tony Blair
Recently retired from Whitehall, Sir Stephen yesterday delivered a powerful critique of Mr Blair's decision to join Mr Bush in a rush for war, and to cut short the diplomatic process under way at the United Nations, splitting Europe in the process.

Mr Blair and Downing Street did not have to choose that path, and did not foresee the degree to which those actions would shatter relationships inside Europe, with "hugely damaging" consequences that linger to this day, Sir Stephen told The Daily Telegraph.

The Bush administration had no appreciation of the damage being done to their ally, Mr Blair.

Nor did the Bush administration greatly care, as their vision was fixed on regime change in Baghdad. "I doubt whether they appreciated the extent to which this was causing a split in Europe, that this was causing a problem for Britain," Sir Stephen said.

His analysis of the lingering harm dealt to Britain's most important international relationships is strikingly similar to criticisms levelled recently in the memoirs of Sir Christopher Meyer, the British Ambassador to Washington throughout the Iraq invasion.

In a speech on the future of the European Union, given at the British Embassy in Luxembourg in honour of Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Stephen Wall was last night due to declare: "The United States has demonstrated the uses - and abuses - of hard power. I believe we in Europe have demonstrated the value of soft power.

"That optimistic view overlooks one hugely damaging event: the division of Europe over the Iraq war. We have not yet recovered from it."

In a draft distributed on the eve of his speech, Sir Stephen continued: "Whatever the rights and wrongs of Britain's decision to accompany the United States to war in Iraq, I believe it should be the determination of every British Prime Minister in future to put reaching an agreement at European level higher on his or her list of priorities than being at one with the United States. We should not agree to act only if there is European agreement. But acting without such agreement should be the last resort, not the first."

The explicit reference to the United States was removed at the last minute. But, reached by telephone on his way to Luxembourg, Sir Stephen confirmed his strong belief that Mr Blair's ongoing disputes with other EU leaders, including over future trade and economic policy, have their roots in Iraq.

He said: "I don't think we understood at the time the degree to which this was going to polarise Europe. We didn't want the split with Germany, didn't intend the split with France."

The crisis was "not inevitable", he said. "Tony Blair took a certain view, and I think would stand by it, about the urgency of the threat represented by Saddam Hussein. But we could have decided we were going to pursue a longer game with Iraq, pursued the second resolution [asking the United Nations to agree to the use of force to enforce controls on banned weapons]. It may be that we would have come to a point further down the road where we realised that Saddam Hussein was stringing us along. But our policy was not one that let us even take that fork in the road."

"Tony Blair did not want to brook delay, and I am arguing there is a price to pay for that, because most of the things we want to do internationally involve the EU," said Sir Stephen, now a lobbyist with the US consultancy firm Hill and Knowlton.

david.rennie@telegraph.co.uk

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1887806,00.html

The Times November 24, 2005

Bush set to pull out 60,000 troops
By Tim Reid
Growing political and public aversion to the war in Iraq is forcing the President’s hand



PRESIDENT BUSH is planning a major pullout of US troops from Iraq amid rising opposition to the war on Capitol Hill and across America.
After a fortnight in which the political debate has rapidly moved from how to fight the war to how best to get out of Iraq, the White House is looking at reducing troop levels by at least 60,000 next year.



Confirming the worst fears of the war’s conservative supporters, who argue that more troops are needed to defeat the insurgency, senior military officials made clear yesterday that the Bush Administration’s goal is to cut troop levels from 160,000 to below 100,000 by the end of 2006.

Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, far from denying the withdrawal plan first reported in The Washington Post, said that a gradual pullout of troops could begin “fairly soon”, and that the number of coalition troops is “clearly going to come down”.

Dr Rice told Fox News that the US will not need to maintain its present troop levels in Iraq for “very much longer”, because Iraqi security forces are “stepping up”. She added: “I think that’s how the President will want to look at this.”

The talk of withdrawal comes after a profound and swift change in attitude about Iraq in Congress. The issue, festering just below the surface for months, has exploded in Washington and is resonating loudly throughout America. In the past fortnight the war has eclipsed every other subject and is accelerating Mr Bush’s slide in the polls.

For the first time senior Republicans are demanding an exit strategy, and with nearly two thirds of Americans now believing that the invasion was a mistake, the political debate is focused on how to end US involvement.

The mood swing began after the US death toll in Iraq passed 2,000 last month, days before the indictment of Lewis Libby, Vice-President Cheney’s former chief-of-staff, for his role in the CIA-leak scandal.

Democrats exploited Mr Libby’s indictment to broaden the debate about how the White House made the case for war, accusing the Administration of manipulating prewar intelligence. Those claims triggered fierce rebuttals from Mr Bush and Mr Cheney. They alleged that Democrats, many of whom voted for the war, saw the same intelligence as the White House. Mr Cheney called the accusations “revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety”.

But polls suggest the Democrat claims had some success. For the first time, a majority of Americans believe that Mr Bush is dishonest. Only 29 per cent believe that Mr Cheney is honest. The President’s approval rating is 36 per cent.

With debate about how the White House led the country into war raging, the Republican-controlled Senate backed a resolution last week — by 79 to 19 — that a phased redeployment of US forces from Iraq should begin next year.

The sponsors of that proposal were John Warner, the powerful Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Bill Frist, the Republican Senate leader.

They denied that the move was to distance Republicans from an increasingly unpopular war before next year’s mid-term elections. But John McCain, one of the few Republicans advocating a troop increase, said of his party: “They’re nervous. They see the polls.”

Bill Clinton, the former President, then appeared to disavow his support for the war, declaring it to have been a “big mistake”.

The issue moved centre stage on Friday after John Murtha, a Democrat congressman and a decorated Vietnam veteran who voted for the war, called for a total withdrawal of US troops. That call provoked an ugly and at times hysterical debate in the House of Representatives on Friday night. In a moment of vaudevillian theatrics, one Democrat crossed the floor with his fists raised.

Although Mr Murtha’s proposal for an immediate withdrawal was defeated 403 to 3, Republican attacks on the former Marine’s patriotism backfired. Talk about withdrawal, recently at the fringes of debate, now dominates the agenda. In the past 48 hours several Democrats with their eyes on the 2008 presidential race have talked about a phased pullout.

Fred Barnes, a commentator on the conservative Weekly Standard, said: “These events are ominous . . . they suggest that troop removal has superseded victory as the primary American concern.”

Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, said: “Americans are demanding a light at the end of the tunnel. Congress is responding to the question: when will it be over?”

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/5123

O'Reilly Column Says U.S. Needs Timetable to Get Out of Iraq

By E&P Staff

Published: November 22, 2005 1:17 PM ET

NEW YORK Conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly writes in his current column that there needs to be a timetable for the U.S. to leave Iraq.

"Let's win the damn thing," he said in his Creators Syndicate feature. "But there must be a time limit. Mr. Bush and his crew have to understand that American blood and treasure are not unlimited. It is not undermining the war to suggest giving the Iraqis a realistic private timetable to defend themselves. Basic training for a U.S. soldier is six weeks. We've been training the Iraqi army for almost two years now. Even Gomer Pyle would be up to speed."

The Fox News host added that "polls show most Americans have turned against the war, and who can blame them with the media pounding home a depressing picture every day? And there are plenty of depressing images to show. Although most of the country is pacified, Baghdad remains a nightmare. ... But voting is happening, and business is being done. So let's build on that and give the Iraqis a realistic time frame to fight their own fight. ... We need to get out of there."

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/5122

Bipartisan Quartet Urges House Conferees to Endorse Iraq ‘Transition’
Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2005-11-23 16:51. Congress
By Congressional Quarterly

Two House Republicans and two Democrats joined forces this week to urge House conferees on the fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill to accept Senate language prodding the Bush administration to start bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq next year.

The lawmakers said adopting such legislation would be “an important first step” in restoring “unity” to a nation and a Congress divided over the war.
The Senate on Nov. 19 adopted by 79-19 an amendment to the defense bill offered by Armed Services Chairman John W. Warner, R-Va., that would designate 2006 as a “period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty” and require the president to report to Congress every three months on progress of the military mission.

Reps. Tom Osborne, R-Neb., and Mark Udall, D-Colo., this week wrote a letter to the House and Senate managers of the bill asking them to ensure that the Warner amendment is included in the final version of the measure. Since then, Reps. Joe Schwarz , R-Mich., and Ellen O. Tauscher, D-Calif., have added their signatures, a spokesman for Udall said.

deleted, duplicate

Michael Moore said in a speech on Sunday (played today on C-span) that any democrat who does not say this war was a mistake and we need to get out of Iraq will have trouble getting re-elected.......so what are these two senators thinking???

Sen. Nelson Opposes Iraq Troop Withdrawal

Updated 7:24 PM ET November 23, 2005
http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pr...8e2ggm80&src=ap

By RON WORD

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Wednesday he was opposed to the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq because he fears it would allow al-Qaida to take over the oil-rich nation.

"We want this thing to end, but it's got to be done in a way that stabilizes so that we don't have an al-Qaida controlling the world's oil supply," Nelson said in a news conference that also covered oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Navy's future in northeast Florida......

"The way to keep the American people behind the war effort is to be open and truthful and up front and to give clear goals of what you are trying to achieve," Nelson said. "When we went in to Iraq, we were not only given misinformation, we withheld information and what we were given was not true."....

-----------------
Lieberman: U.S. to Finish Iraq Mission

Updated 7:33 PM ET November 23, 2005
http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pr...8e2gknoe&src=ap

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman told Iraq's prime minister Wednesday that U.S. forces will remain in Iraq until their mission is complete, despite growing unease in Congress about the progress of the conflict here.

"We cannot let extremists and terrorists, a small number, here in Iraq deprive the 27 million Iraqis of what they want which is a better freer life, safer life for themselves and their children" Lieberman said after his meeting with Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

The Connecticut Democrat, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the cost of success in Iraq would be high "but the cost for America of failure in Iraq would be catastrophic _ for America, for the Iraqi people and I believe for the world."

Lieberman, who ran unsuccessfully for vice president with Al Gore in 2000, arrived in Iraq on Wednesday to meet with Iraqi officials and spend Thanksgiving with American troops.

Lieberman told a group of reporters that he was convinced progress was being made in building a democratic Iraq despite rising U.S. deaths and the continuing insurgency.

He acknowledged growing concern within Congress over the Bush administration's Iraq policy but said there was little support in the Senate and the House for Rep. John Murtha's call for an immediate pullout of U.S. troops.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13244880.htm

Debate heats up about the U.S. presence in Iraq

By William Douglas and James Kuhnhenn

Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Should we stay or should we go?

The fundamental question about what the United States should do in Iraq is being asked with greater fervor across America and in the nation's capital. The Bush administration is arguing that the nation must stay the course to prevent Iraq from becoming an oil-rich haven for terrorists and to keep the country from spiraling into a bloody civil war that could destabilize the Middle East.

"If they are not stopped, the terrorists will be able to advance their agenda to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to break our will and blackmail our government into isolation," President Bush said earlier this month at Alaska's Elmendorf Air Force Base.

But Bush is fighting waning public confidence in his handling of Iraq and weariness with a war that's claimed more than 2,100 American lives and costs billions of dollars each month.

"I would list all the arguments that you hear against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, the horrible things that people say would happen, and then ask: Aren't they happening already? Would a pullout really make things worse? Maybe it would make things better," wrote William E. Odom, a retired Army lieutenant general and former Reagan-era National Security Agency director, for a Harvard University Web site.

Odom, now a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, has called America's invasion of Iraq "the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history."

What to do in Iraq is a conundrum best summed up by a recent Army War College report.

"The long-term dilemma of the U.S. position in Iraq can perhaps best be summarized as `We can't stay, we can't leave, we can't fail,'" said the report by scholars W. Andrew Terrill and Conrad C. Crane.

Nevertheless, national sentiment is shifting toward getting out - but how? More and more options are being debated in Washington, but no single plan prevails. Here's a look at some of the ideas:

- STAY THE COURSE. This is Bush's approach. He says Iraq is making progress, with a democratic process taking shape and a growing number of Iraqi troops prepared to protect the country.

Last month, 88 Iraqi army and special operations battalions conducted combat operations, according to an October Defense Department report. Of the 88 units, 36 were viewed as being "in the lead" or fully independent, a 50 percent increase since July.

"Iraq is making amazing progress from the days of being under the thumb of a brutal dictator," Bush said at Elmendorf Air Force Base.

However, Bush says Iraq still needs American protection.

But critics say that the Iraqi forces remain largely Shiite Muslim or Kurdish, with few Sunni Muslims and too many infiltrators from religious militias - and from the insurgency. They also argue that the U.S. military presence in Iraq is the problem, not the solution, because it inflames jihadists and nationalists to attack U.S. troops as a foreign occupier.

"You already have a civil war," Odom said. "As for terror, that's the biggest danger there, but it's already happening. Getting out will allow us to focus on al-Qaida. This war has made it easier for al-Qaida - we still haven't gotten Osama bin Laden."

- RAPID WITHDRAWAL. Supporters say it's the best way to stop the killing of U.S. troops, will force Iraqis to take control of their security and future, will prove that the United States doesn't intend to make Iraq its permanent base in the Middle East and thus will lower the passions behind the insurgency and radical jihadists throughout the region.

Rep. John Murtha, a pro-military Democrat from Pennsylvania, caused a stir in Congress recently when he called for the prompt withdrawal of all U.S. troops. Under his plan, troops would begin leaving after Iraq's Dec. 15 election, with total withdrawal within six months. He would deploy a quick-reaction Marine strike force in the region, possibly in Kuwait.

"Our military's done everything that has been asked of them," he said. "The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It's time to bring the troops home."

Murtha's opponents argue that a hasty U.S. departure would be like giving terrorist insurgents the keys to the country. It would undercut Iraq's fledgling government before it gets its footing and almost instantly trigger a civil war between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, while ethnic Kurds fight for their own independent state.

A civil war, they warn, could draw in neighboring Iran as an ally to the Shiites; Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and others as allies to the Sunnis; and Turkey as an enemy to Kurds.

Worst-case scenarios see a pro-Iranian Shiite regime in Iraq and Sunni violence spreading to Saudi Arabia, leading to jihadist Muslims ruling the biggest oil producer in the world and spreading instability throughout the Middle East.

It's far better, critics of withdrawal say, to stick with Bush's goal of implanting democracy in Iraq as the first step toward spreading democracy through the region.

"Pulling the troops out would send a terrible signal to the enemy," Bush said in August. "Immediate withdrawal would say to the ... terrorists of the world, and the bombers who take innocent life around the world ... the United States is weak, and all we've got to do is intimidate and they'll leave."

- ADD U.S. TROOPS. This proposal aims to stamp out the insurgency. A plan by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would begin by clearing specific areas of insurgents, using heavy force if necessary, then holding those areas rather than withdrawing. Heavy security, McCain said, would allow reconstruction to proceed without fear of attack and allow civil society to flourish.

Opponents say McCain's idea has little traction with lawmakers heading into next year's mid-term elections and little enthusiasm from a military already stretched thin and struggling to meet recruitment quotas.

"More troops, we tried that in Vietnam," Odom said. "It didn't work."

- GRADUAL WITHDRAWAL. This course appears most popular among those seeking a way out of Iraq, especially prominent Democratic senators who may seek the presidency in 2008.

Their ranks include Sens. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, Joseph Biden of Delaware, John Kerry of Massachusetts, Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

Slow reduction of U.S. forces over the next year or two would allow time to train the Iraqi military to defend its country and help the elected government get itself and the country's damaged infrastructure up and running, supporters say, while reducing U.S. targets there.

Pentagon officials this week floated the idea of possibly reducing U.S. troops from 150,000 currently to fewer than 100,000 by the end of 2006. Officials caution, however, that any progress toward withdrawal would be contingent on improving conditions in Iraq.

That trial balloon follows a long line of firmer gradual-withdrawal proposals from lawmakers.

Feingold suggests Dec. 31, 2006, as the target date for completing the withdrawal of U.S. troops. In addition, he wants Bush to clarify the mission and outline a plan for accomplishing it.

Kerry wants a phased withdrawal beginning with the reduction of 20,000 troops after the Dec. 15 Iraqi election, provided it's successful.

Kerry also wants the administration to prepare a detailed plan for the transfer of military and police responsibilities to Iraqis "so the majority of our combat forces can be withdrawn - ideally by the end of next year."

He also wants Iraq's neighbors, plus NATO allies and Russia, to "implement a strategy to bring the parties in Iraq to a sustainable political compromise that includes mutual security guarantees among Iraqis."

"To undermine the insurgency, we must instead simultaneously pursue both a political settlement and the withdrawal of American combat forces linked to specific, responsible benchmarks," Kerry said on Oct. 26.

Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Monday for the withdrawal of 50,000 troops by the end of 2006 and all but 20,000-40,000 troops out by January 2008.

Obama called Tuesday for "limited withdrawal" over the next year without specifying numbers.

In the House of Representatives, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, wants to link U.S. troop reduction to the buildup of Iraqi forces. Under his plan, one U.S. military battalion would pull out for every three Iraqi battalions that achieve "fully capable" status and can operate independently.

Reps. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, and Walter Jones, R-N.C., want Bush to announce a withdrawal plan by the end of this year and begin pulling out troops no later than Oct. 1, 2006. They set no deadline for complete withdrawal. Their plan was viewed as somewhat radical when they announced it in June; today it's among the more modest withdrawal proposals.

Researchers at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, propose a two-phase plan that would move 80,000 U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of 2006, with the bulk of the remaining soldiers out by the end of 2007.

The only soldiers who would stay in Iraq, according to the plan, would be a small contingent of Marines to protect the U.S. Embassy, a small group of advisers to the Iraqi government and counterterrorist units to work closely with Iraqi security forces.

If Iraq needed help, it could come from U.S. forces in Kuwait and air strikes from Navy ships in the Persian Gulf.

Bush and other pullout opponents say gradual withdrawal has the same drawbacks as an immediate pullout and would give insurgents a timetable for planning.

"Pulling out prematurely will betray the Iraqis," Bush said in August. "Withdrawing before the mission is complete would send a signal to those who wonder about the United States' commitment to freedom."

Such an approach was also tried in Vietnam, where it was called "Vietnamization." It failed because the South Vietnamese government had limited public support, was riddled with corruption and fielded an army that was no match for communist North Vietnam's. Congress cut off U.S. aid to South Vietnam in 1974, which some U.S. conservatives blame for contributing to South Vietnam's fall in 1975.

The pentagon announced weeks ago that they will keep 90,000 troops in Iraq from mid 2006 to 2008.

What are these people talking about? No one is listening to these congresspeople.

Bush has a plan and he's sticking to it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...xportaltop.html

This is from the article at the beginning of this thread:

"I feel like every morning, I wake up, get a concrete block and have to walk around with it all day," said first-term Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who came to the Senate with an ambitious agenda to overhaul Social Security and the tax code. "We can't even address the issues."

I want to share some personal synchronicity with Sen. DeMint's remark.

When I was in Air Force pilot training I made an astoundingly boneheaded and dangerous mistake when flying solo. Essentially, I was flying the wrong way in the landing pattern. When I discovered my error, I did a high performance climb to get out of the pattern as fast as I could. Shortly thereafter an instructor pilot in the tower radioed, "Aircraft on wrong way initial, identify call sign. I hesitated to respond for a few seconds, but I did.

When I returned to the briefing room after the mission I was awarded a big yellow ZUNT brick to carry around the briefing room for about the next month. I thought I got off easy. I was expecting to be washed out of pilot training.

I was in pilot training during 1969-70 at Moody AFB in Valdosta Georgia. I learned on the John Kerry forum that Goerge Bush went through pilot training at the same base in the same year.

Today, I teach psychology at a small college and I, like Senator DeMint, find it hard to address other issues.

http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=8149
November 25, 2005
Beginning of the End

by Alan Bock
This Thanksgiving, those of us who look forward to the possibility of a future in which war is more often averted than anticipated with relish, enhancing the chances for peace and the freedom that flourishes best in an atmosphere of peace, have a great deal to be thankful for. The Bush administration is unraveling before our eyes, which almost certainly means that despite belligerent rhetoric, just now the Iraq war (or at least direct U.S. involvement in it) should begin to wind down. That could set the stage for a wide-ranging national debate/discussion on the future of American foreign policy.

What's more gratifying, while public acknowledgment of the administration's descent into the Second-Term Blues might have been precipitated by the nomination of Bush's personal lawyer, Harriet Miers, the salient issue in the meltdown is the conduct of the ongoing war in Iraq. It is largely as a result of a widening public perception that the president is utterly detached from reality when it comes to Iraq that he has reached low approval levels that presidents in the past have seldom been able to climb out of.

Almost everybody I have talked to in Washington in the last week says the atmosphere is as charged and as mutually suspicious between the two parties as they can remember, and that includes some who were around town during Watergate. It's not just the polls that show the credibility of the president and other top administration officials at a low ebb. The professional politicians in Washington – people who make their living analyzing and manipulating power – see the Bush administration as severely wounded.

It's not that a comeback is impossible. It might even be that when they get back to their districts during the current Thanksgiving two-week "working vacation" they will find people upset at the turmoil in Washington and urging congresscritters to ease up on that poor President Bush. But they might also find disillusionment with the war to be even deeper than they had suspected. At the least they are likely to find an increasing willingness to talk about the war and its implications in terms that go beyond the usual sound bites.

Thus we have an opportunity – if the upcoming discussion and debate about Iraq policy ever rises to a level above name-calling and personal attacks – to help shape that debate in the direction of eschewing imperial adventures and foreign interventionism. It could be that the American public is more ready to hear that point of view than at any time in recent history.

Waning Appetite

That impression is bolstered by a recent Pew Research Center poll that shows, as MSNBC put it,

"Americans' appetite for world leadership has waned significantly since before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, with more than two-fifths saying the United States should mind its own business."

The Pew poll in question is on "America and Its Place in the World," conducted every four years. The last poll was undertaken in August 2001, so it offers a pretty good benchmark of how Americans felt before the terrorist attacks and how they feel about the aftermath, including the U.S. response. The results might well have been quite different if it had been conducted during the run-up to the war, when few Americans doubted the reliability of administration statements on the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the United States. Coming at this time, however, it amounts to a significant rebuke to the administration and the government in the cold light of dawn when it is apparent the war isn't going so well.

Specifically, four years ago, only 30 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that the United States should "mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own." In the new survey, 42 percent of Americans agreed with that statement. And the survey was conducted from Sept. 5 through Oct. 31, before the vote by the Senate that allowed Republicans to express mild disapproval in the form of requiring more information and a better sense of strategy from the executive branch.

The poll is also interesting in that it polls those it calls "influentials" – journalists, academics, state and local government officials, religious leaders, and acknowledged experts in various fields separately from the general populace. These "influentials" are even more "gloomy," as MSNBC put it, about any good coming from the Iraq war than is the general public. Thus 37 percent of Americans at large think the effort to establish a stable democracy in Iraq will fail, but 84 percent of scientists, 71 percent of foreign affairs specialists, and 63 percent of journalists think it will fail. Some 44 percent of Americans at large think the Iraq war has damaged the struggle against terrorism, but higher percentages of every "influential" category (including military and 82 percent of foreign affairs specialists) think it has.

Going Beyond Recrimination

It seems quite defensible, then, to believe that the stage has been set for a wide-ranging debate/discussion in this country about America's proper place in the world.

The public call by Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha, a 37-year Marine Corps veteran who has been generally pro-military and hawkish, for a prompt beginning to withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq has served as something of a catalyst for what was bound to happen soon anyway: a national debate or discussion on what to do about Iraq and perhaps about U.S. foreign policy in the near future. The president's declining poll numbers and the increasing number of Americans – now a majority if the polls are to be believed – who believe the war was a mistake made it inevitable.

It would hardly be prudent to expect it in this era of sound bites and 24/7 cable news channels (which have the time to host extended and serious discussions of foreign policy, which would be almost as cheap to produce as reruns, were they so inclined) but it would be nice – and helpful to the antiwar side, which in my view is more rational – if this round of discussion could be civil and substantive. There has already been more than enough name-calling and personal attacks.

And while I think it is helpful to our side that the administration has chosen to engage the question of whether there was deception from the government in the months leading up to the invasion, it would be nice if the coming debate is more about the future than the past. The past is important, and it's worth continuing to explore. But disinterring the past won't change the present, and future policy must start from where we are rather than from where we might have been if certain things had been done differently and we hadn't made the mistake of invading Iraq.

Discussions of wars and how to end them are inevitably about life and death. Insofar as the debate over Iraq carries implications for the future foreign policy of the United States, it will affect this country's posture in the world and ability to negotiate the inevitable crises and problems overseas. And attacks in Europe, Indonesia, and elsewhere suggest that the problem of jihadist terrorism will not go away soon and could manifest itself in this country again.

So a great deal is at stake.

Toning Things Down

Shouts of "Bush lied, people died" on one side and accusations of cowardice or lack of patriotism on the other will not help us.

Here are a few suggestions about how both sides could make the debate reasonably productive rather than yet another televised shouting match.

Those who support the war and the administration would do well to acknowledge that despite the number of schools and hospitals built and the possibility (polls vary) that most Iraqis would rather see Americans stay longer rather than leave soon, the occupation has not gone well. A brutal insurgency has not abated and American and Iraqi lives are lost every day. Is this because the U.S. does not have a strategy to defeat the insurgency? Does it suggest that the current strategy needs to be changed? Is it possible that the presence of U.S. troops is more an aggravation and impetus for violence rather than a calming influence?

These are serious questions that deserve consideration more serious than sound bites or talking points. Unless proponents engage them seriously rather than responding with Pentagon-prepared statistics on sewage and the like, the debate is unlikely to be productive.

On the other side, those of us who have opposed the war from the beginning or have come to oppose the war would do well to acknowledge that whether the initial invasion was justified or not, it has created a situation that offers no easy options. Would a prompt pullout of U.S. troops lead to more chaos and killing in Iraq rather than prompting Iraqis to get serious about their country's future and reject violence? Will a withdrawal be seen as a defeat that prompts terrorists to ever more ambitious acts of violence? Will U.S. credibility be damaged to the point that U.S. public and private interests overseas are affected deleteriously?

These are also serious questions that deserve sober consideration. Unless we deal with them seriously rather than simply refusing to acknowledge them, we will be seen, correctly, as frivolous.

Both sides would do well to acknowledge that while they may believe a U.S. pullout would (a) increase chaos or ( have a calming effect, in fact nobody knows for sure. The future is notoriously unpredictable, subject as it is to the actions of people who right now are not able to predict what they will do in two or three months. It is possible to muster evidence and consider probabilities, but we will be dealing with probabilities rather than certainties. I don't know anybody equipped with a reliable crystal ball. All sides could use a little humility.

That said, let the discussion begin (or continue at an accelerated pace). The future of the United States as a free society is quite literally at stake. All Americans have an interest in having as many options as possible on the table.

http://www.antiwar.com/ocregister/machan-s...rpresident.html

Monday, November 21, 2005
Sorry, Mr. President, we won't shut up
The Orange Grove: Even with the left discredited, Bush can't expect to go unchallenged over war

Tibor R. Machan
Adviser to Freedom Communications


President Bush spoke to military personnel at Elmendorf Air Force in Alaska Nov. 14.

associated press


Does President Bush believe that by his announcing that critics of the Iraq war dampen our troops' morale he will prevent such criticism? Does he believe his words will silence critics and raise troop morale?

This is America, and if Americans share a common trait, it's rebellion at those who wield power. Well, they used to, anyway - most of them. Remember, this country was born in revolution.

There is irritating stuff in some criticisms of this war. Too many critics have lost their credibility about chiding government for extending its brute powers. The left likes big government and wants it to perform innumerable "precautionary" measures in every nook and carry of society.

The left, with its irrational enthusiasm for (even exuberance with) every government program aiming to right the wrongs of society, is hypocritical in trying now to rein in government when it comes to this particular exercise overseas.

Just like during the Vietnam War, the left complains that we're all being taxed for something that few support. Yet the same could be said about the New Deal, New Frontier and Great Society social programs. These statists would retort, however, that it's all good with government intervention, redistribution, expropriation, and regulation.

OK, then what's all the fuss about a little preemptory, precautionary war in Iraq?

Still, Bush should have stayed away from his censorial lament, aired previously by his first attorney general, John Ashcroft. It won't fly - this is not the Soviet Union (yet).

I have been laying off the war partly because the United States, being steeped in it, probably should get more solid, expert advice on how to extricate itself. The whole thing was ill-conceived, ill-commenced and should at least be well-concluded. Fretting now about why this is a botched operation isn't too useful.

But now that Bush raised the matter so unwisely, let's see why it is a good thing all around to keep up the critical scrutiny he wishes to discourage if not outright suppress. First, everyone needs to get a very clear idea that the U.S. military's job is defending the country from those who would - or are highly likely about to - attack us. The military (or at least the Marines) are not, as stated one grossly misconceived bumper sticker that I saw back in the early 1990s, "The 911 of the world." It should only be the 911 of Americans and so resist the temptation to go gallivanting about the globe involving itself with nation-building and Operation Iraqi, or whatever country's, freedom.

Second, once committed to the war, every bit of brain power and moral fiber is required not to succumb to complacency about it, lest this country turn into the very thing those troops have been sent to reform, a suppliant dictatorship. This is a bad war, and it is time that those with the know-how put their minds to answering the question of how to undo the damage and leave without provoking further tragedy.

Third, our future could benefit from this ill-begotten war if we remember that it was far from inevitable, that with wiser counsel it could have been avoided and other policies instituted to help those Iraqis - by no means even so many - who really want to live in a genuinely free country (as opposed to those wanting to take hold of power and force all to live by their creed).

No, Mr. President, it is not a wise thing to tell us all to shut up to suit your likely embarrassment over an impossible situation from which you will not likely emerge with a swell presidential legacy. The troops, by the way, will do just fine. They may even be proud knowing that citizens back home haven't gone to sleep on their citizenship job of taking government to task when it's justified.

Newsview: Public taking hard look at Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — A torrent of bad news — rising soldier death tolls, suicide bombers, torture allegations — is riling America right now with the hard realities of Iraq.

A three-day preparatory meeting of the Iraqi reconciliation conference in Cairo.
By Amr Nabil, AP

Yet, after nearly three years and more than 2,000 American lives, there also was some hope this week. At a meeting in Cairo, Iraqis outlined what may prove the best — if uncertain — prospect for success: cutting a deal with former adversaries in hopes the country does not descend into civil war.

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, hinted at such a formula a few months ago when he told an American audience that bringing disaffected groups into the political process "is ultimately how this conflict is going to be resolved."

That would mean a new Iraq in which some lesser figures from Saddam Hussein's old Iraq play a role.

The emerging strategy — strongly pushed by the United States — may work. Sunni Arabs seem genuinely interested in voting in the Dec. 15 elections rather than boycotting the polls as they did in January. Sunni Arab leaders are encouraging a big turnout, often at great personal risk.

If more Sunnis see a future for their community in a democratic Iraq, the level of violence may recede. And, Iraqi army and police forces could assume enough responsibility by late next year so a substantial number of American and other international troops could go home.

But few strategies in Iraq have gone according to plan. There are many pitfalls along the way. And even if this one works, it could take years to stabilize a country awash in both bitter communal rivalries and deadly weapons.

It's not that the situation in Iraq has necessarily gotten worse — it may be just that America's understanding of Iraq has gotten better.

Tensions among Shiites, Sunni and Kurds — held mostly in check during Saddam's rule — are seemingly always on the boil these days. Politics is defined by loyalty to tribe, religion and ethnicity.

U.S. troops unleashed those passions when they invaded in 2003 and now find themselves caught in the middle.

Communal hatreds play out in guerrilla attacks and reprisal killings. As just one example: Iraq's security forces, especially the elite commandoes of the Shiite-run Interior Ministry, have taken a greater role in ferreting out insurgents hiding among the Sunni Arab populations.

American commanders believe Iraqis are better than foreigners in identifying insurgents hidden among the population. But with security services heavy on Shiites and Kurds and insurgent ranks largely Sunni, the battle against insurgents has sharpened the cultural divide.

Since the Shiite-led government took power in April, hundreds of bodies have turned up in Baghdad and remote areas — hands bound and bullets in their head. The victims were both Sunnis and Shiites, slain in reprisal killings by extremists from both communities.

For months, Sunni Arabs have been accusing the Interior Ministry of wholesale arrests and abuse of Sunnis in an attempt to find a handful of rebels.

The discovery by U.S. troops this month of up to 173 detainees — malnourished and some showing signs of torture — hidden in an Interior Ministry building in central Baghdad gave credence to those charges.

U.S. officials took a strong stand after the torture allegation. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Casey met with Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, and demanded a full investigation. The Iraqis agreed.

The sharp U.S. response, after months of Sunni allegations, was aimed at reassuring Sunnis and encouraging them to participate in politics.

To accomplish this, the Americans must drive a wedge between Iraqi insurgents from Saddam's party — who might accept a deal — and the foreign fighters and religious extremists of al-Qaeda's Iraq leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

But the risk of that strategy is alienating the majority Shiites — America's partners since the occupation started in 2003. Many Shiites, who suffered horrifically under the previous regime, oppose far-reaching steps to bring former Saddam allies back into the army and government.

The keys to success are the Dec. 15 election and a planned national reconciliation conference tentatively set for early next year in Iraq.

At the preparatory meeting in Cairo, this week, Sunni Arabs insisted on recognizing the right of resistance to foreign occupation — language that could legitimize the insurgency.

The Sunnis also made clear they want the new government to insist on a timetable for U.S. withdrawal, which President Bush rejects.

The Sunnis ultimately accepted a watered-down version, which recognized that "resistance is a legitimate right for all people" but condemned terrorism and attacks against civilians.

The modified language drew a rebuke from U.S. authorities.

"Our view is that any attack on Iraqi forces or coalition forces, which are in Iraq under a U.N. mandate, is an unconscionable act to be universally and strongly condemned," a U.S. Embassy statement said Tuesday.

Even with the softened language, Shiite officials at the conference also were not pleased with the declaration, since insurgents have been targeting the Shiite-led government's security forces.

The Sunni proposals constitute the broad outlines of a formula:

• Talk to certain factions of the insurgency more interested in power than jihad.

• Come up with some sort of timetable that satisfies the Bush administration and gives hope that the U.S. presence here is limited.

But there is a long way to go.

Robert H. Reid, AP correspondent at large, has reported frequently from Iraq since 2003. This story is part of a series of periodic looks at the overall situation in Iraq.


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Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Walker's World: Iraq policy debate looms in Britain
By Martin Walker
UPI Editor
Published November 24, 2005


WASHINGTON -- This will not be a happy Thanksgiving for President George Bush, but he need just look across the Atlantic to know it could be worse. His only reliable ally, Britain's Tony Blair, now seems to be facing the full-scale parliamentary inquiry into the Iraq war -- its justification, conduct and aftermath -- that Bush has been able to avoid.

Leading opposition figures from the Conservative, Liberal-Democratic, Scottish National and Plaid Cymru (Welsh) parties have banded together to back the cross-party motion titled "Conduct of Government policy in relation to the war against Iraq" to demand that the case for an inquiry be debated in the House of Commons. They seem assured of the 200 signatures required to get such a debate -- and then the loyalty of Blair's dismayed and disillusioned Labor members of Parliament will be sorely tested.


"This apparently modest motion may be the iceberg toward which Blair's Titanic is sailing," said Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond.

Labor Party rebels have already inflicted one unprecedented defeat on Blair in this parliamentary session, and on the issue of Iraq, he commands little confidence. One leading Labor rebel, Alan Simpson, MP for Nottingham, has already signed on to the motion.

It reads: "This House believes there should be a select committee of seven Members, being Members of Her Majesty's Privy Council, to review the way in which the responsibilities of government were discharged in relation to Iraq and all matters relevant thereto in the period leading up to military action in that country in March, 2003 and in its aftermath."

There have been earlier inquiries, critical of Blair but not lethal, into the use of intelligence and other issues, but this would be the first to focus on the way the decision to go to war was reached. The inquiry would be led by senior MPs of all parties who have also been made members of the Privy Council, a medieval hangover that is mainly an honorific post but does allow its members full access to intelligence material.

The inquiry, which Blair is trying hard to fend off, comes at a difficult time, when public trust in government has sunk to a new low. A new survey by the Office of National Statistics has found that 68 percent of the public says official figures are changed to suit the politicians; 59 percent thinks the government uses official statistics dishonestly; 58 percent believes that the official figures are politically manipulated.

It also comes amid a hoist of other embarrassments for the government, including a bizarrely ham-handed attempt to use the Official Secrets Act to squash press reporting of a leaked five-page memo, stamped Top Secret. It records a conversation last year between Bush and Blair in which the British prime minister supposedly dissuaded the American president from bombing Al Jazeera TV in Qatar. The White House has dismissed the suggestion as "outlandish" after the report first appeared in the Daily Mirror, but the decision to invoke the Official Secrets Act has given the tale new prominence.

And as Britain shivers in its first winter blizzard, Blair is also under fire over soaring fuel bills for natural gas. Under hostile questioning in Parliament Tuesday, Blair admitted the country faced "difficulties with gas prices" but insisted the energy industry was doing its best to meet the surging demand. Spot prices for natural gas have risen alarmingly, jumping by a third on Tuesday.

Then there is the flu problem, which had Blair also admitting to Parliament that this year's demand for flu vaccine was unforeseen. And Health Minister Patricia Hewitt then made the mistake of blaming the doctors for over-providing the vaccine to people not deemed at risk.

There is little sign of relief for Blair, even when he travels. Even Britain's traditional partners in the Commonwealth, the 53-nation grouping of former British colonies, will be pressing him hard Friday at their meeting in Malta to get the European Union to relax its stubborn defense of European food subsidies and tariff barriers at the upcoming world trade talks.

Although Blair currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU council, his chances of getting the EU to do his bidding are very slim indeed. Indeed, Blair's partners in the 25-nation EU are furious with him for failing to achieve a budget agreement for the coming 7-year period. The crux of the issue for the EU is whether Britain is prepared to compromise on the annual $5 billion rebate it gets from the sums it pays into the EU's annual budget of $120 billion. Margaret Thatcher won the rebate over 20 years ago, when Britain was one of the poorer members of the EU, but it is now one of the richest. Britain has the second biggest economy after Germany and a higher gross domestic product per capita than the Germans -- and the poorer new member states from Eastern Europe such as Poland are outraged that some of their EU money is being held back to pay the British rebate.

The Europeans want Blair to accept that the rebate be capped at its current level, rather than rising over time and with inflation. That would cost Britain some $25 billion over the next seven years, and for Blair to be seen abandoning Thatcher's rebate would be close to political suicide. Blair tried to make a deal, compromising on the rebate in return for France compromising on the Common Agricultural Policy and its protection for French farmers. France's President Jacques Chirac has issued the bluntest of refusals, and French ministers have jumped on the chance to distract attention from its weeks of riots by turning the spotlight onto Britain's rebate.

"Why should Britain be exempted from paying its share of enlargement?" French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy asked at this week's angry Brussels meeting, where other EU ministers claimed Britain had wasted their time by calling a meeting when it had no proposals to make.

"Nearly all the countries asked, not quite on their knees but almost, that the British presidency come up with a compromise and accept this agreement," Douste-Blazy said.

The response by British Foreign Minister Jack Straw was curious but highly significant. There was no point in Britain offering a deal that the Blair government could not get through a hostile House of Commons and House of Lords. In effect, Blair's lieutenant pleaded for the EU politicians to comprehend the depth of Blair's political weakness in Britain.

And as and when that new inquiry into the Iraq war gets under way, Straw will come up smelling like roses, because he was the senior Cabinet minister who at the last minute tried and failed to get Blair to hold off on the war, and was overruled. That is why the Iraq imbroglio is now known among Labor MPs as "Blair's War," and why the prospect of a new inquiry holds out such perils for the serially embattled Tony Blair.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2400963_pf.html

Bush Faces Dual Challenges on Iraq

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 25, 2005; A01



As he leads a fierce campaign this month to rebut criticism of the Iraq war, President Bush faces twin challenges -- one of them rooted in history, the other in the political realities of the moment.

Bush's historical burden is that there is no recent precedent for a leader using persuasion to reverse a steady downward slide for a military venture of the sort he is facing. Only clear evidence of success in Iraq is likely to alleviate widespread unease about the central project of this presidency, public opinion experts and political strategists say.

That leads to the White House's most daunting political problem. Even if Iraq is someday viewed as a success -- and Bush's decision to try to make that country a democratic beacon in the Middle East seen as visionary -- it is an open question whether this proof can arrive during his presidency. Most military appraisals of Iraq foresee a long road of violence and instability ahead, as well as a substantial U.S. troop presence for the indefinite future.

"People are willing to pay a certain price . . . but for many people, it's too rich for their blood," said John Mueller, a political science professor at Ohio State University and an authority on wars and public opinion. "So even if it turns out well, they're still going to see it as a mistake."

This collision between public desire for a near-term resolution in Iraq and Bush's insistence on a long-term commitment limits his options, analysts say. His most realistic goal may be to manage widespread frustration about the war from growing into a powerful antiwar movement.

"I don't think there's any way he could turn this into a big success," said Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Public Attitudes. "At some point, he may decide that he's going to try to reduce the damage -- and it's clearly creating damage for him now."

Bush plans to use the time before the December elections in Iraq to talk about the U.S. stake and make the case that he has a strategy that is working, beginning on Wednesday with a speech in Annapolis that will focus on what the administration says is clear progress in training the Iraqi security forces. Other speeches will follow as White House officials attempt to use the final weeks of this year and early next year to shape public opinion.

Administration officials believe the congressional debates last week showed that Democrats are divided, and they say that the opposition party's solutions are far closer to those Bush is pursuing than to the call by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) to begin an immediate withdrawal.

What is not clear is whether an emphatic restatement of the administration's strategy will break through to a skeptical public, or whether the president needs to acknowledge in some dramatic way the public's disaffection to create a more receptive environment -- a decision that only he can make. If he is not willing to do that, some analysts believe, public focus will be on the daily flow of bad news in Iraq more than on Bush's view of the ultimate goal.

"We keep reading stories about five Marines dying today and 55 Shiites being blown up in Baghdad," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and Press. "There is considerable frustration over that, and that frustration is the source of political problem for Bush. He's got his name on this war."

Kohut suggested that public opinion could change, but only if there is a decline in U.S. casualties, the beginning of troop withdrawals and a clearer sense that Iraq has become more stable and democratic. "If there's less violence there generally and our people are not getting hurt and there is some feeling that this is a better place than it was, there might be some benefit for Bush -- or at least stop the bleeding," he said.

This bleeding inevitably summons a historical analogy. Comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam are imperfect, but the trend lines in public opinion are similar enough to suggest the size of the challenge now facing Bush and his advisers.

Mueller's analysis of public opinion shows that public patience with the war in Iraq has been far more limited than it was during the Vietnam War. Writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, he notes that about half of all Americans had judged the war a mistake by early this year, when there were about 1,500 combat deaths in Iraq. In Vietnam, there were 20,000 fatalities by the 1968 Tet offensive, a psychological turning point in the war, when a similar percentage of Americans called that conflict a mistake.

"This lower tolerance for casualties is largely due to the fact that the American public places far less value on the stakes in Iraq than it did on those in Korea and Vietnam," he writes.

Most worrisome to the administration, given overall disapproval of the war, is that a slight majority of Americans now say they believe Bush deliberately misled the country in making the case for war in 2002 and 2003, and only 40 percent say the president is honest and trustworthy -- findings that have registered with seismic significance inside the administration. As Karlyn Bowman, who studies public opinion trends at the American Enterprise Institute, put it: "Is the personal bond broken? That's what they must be worried about."

White House counselor Dan Bartlett acknowledged the concern. "I do think that it demonstrates that if you spend enough money and repeat the charge enough, the old political axiom in Washington can come true: that charges left unanswered can stick," he said. "That's why we felt it important to marshal a vigorous defense by calling out our critics and the transparency of their charges."

Bush launched the counterattack on Veterans Day, and Vice President Cheney has weighed in with harsh criticism of Bush's detractors. Administration officials see it as a necessary prelude to making the case for the president's policies.

One White House official, who was willing to talk candidly about internal strategy only without being identified by name, acknowledged that "those numbers are troubling" in recent polls, but expressed confidence that they will recover because the public fundamentally regards Bush as "a person of honesty and integrity."

What happens on the ground in Iraq will play the largest role in determining whether the public eventually sees Bush's decision to go to war as one worth the cost in lives and dollars. But progress toward a constitutional government in Iraq over the past year has done little to reverse the steady decline in public opinion about the war, in large part because of continuing reports of casualties and violence. Administration officials have signaled that troop levels will begin to decline next year, but not precipitously and not according to any precise timeline. Announcing firm withdrawal dates would only give Iraqi insurgents an incentive to wait out the U.S. presence, administration officials believe.

Mueller said he doubts that additional rhetoric from Bush will help his cause at home, noting the intensity of opposition his policies has already generated. "If someone is strongly opposed [to the war], they're not likely to reverse," he said. "Nor are disaffected Democrats, who have taken the lead on it."

Kull said the best the administration may be able to hope for is a draw in the battle for public opinion. If positive changes occur, from a reduction in violence to a stable government to more international involvement, "then he may come out with a possible modest success out of it," he said. "But it's important to remember there are a lot of forces out there that are very determined to make sure this doesn't look like a success. . . . So it's unlikely it will look like a clear success."

But Bartlett said White House officials do not accept the possibility that Iraq will remain a continuing drag on Bush's presidency. "When you're in a tough spot -- and we're in a tough spot because of the nature of the enemy and the debate at home -- the snapshots will reflect [negative] public opinion," he said. "But we don't think they're permanent."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2400759_pf.html

The About-Face of a Hawkish Democrat
Murtha, With Many Military Connections, Moves From Voting for War to Urging Troop Withdrawal

By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 25, 2005; A02



Of all the Democrats calling for an end to the Iraq war, Rep. John P. Murtha is an anomaly. Unlike Sens. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and Russell Feingold (Wis.), he doesn't want to be president. He's no liberal, like his House colleagues Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio) and Maxine Waters (Calif.). He's certainly the only one to call Vice President Cheney a friend.

A man of gruff familiarity -- most colleagues find it more natural to call him "Murtha" than "Jack" -- has been representing his Pennsylvania district for 16 terms, rising to become the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations panel's defense subcommittee. For that perch, he became known for his opposition to defense cuts and his willingness to send troops into battle -- and even to draft them, if necessary. He was the first Vietnam veteran elected to Congress, and has fashioned a reputation as the Democrats' soldier-legislator -- a John McCain type without swagger or upward ambition. He generally prefers the shadows of Capitol Hill to the spotlight -- though that changed dramatically in recent days.

Last week, as Congress was preparing to leave town for a two-week Thanksgiving break, Murtha told a gathering of colleagues and, later, reporters that -- although he had voted in favor of the resolution authorizing the Iraq invasion -- he now wants American troops withdrawn immediately. "The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily," Murtha said. "It is time to bring them home."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) predicted that Murtha's statement would become a "watershed event for our caucus, for our Congress and for our country." The burly 73-year-old lawmaker ignited a news blitz, and Republicans scrambled to respond. House GOP leaders hastily drew up a watered-down version of Murtha's withdrawal resolution, and made Republican lawmakers remain in town for a bitter and emotional Friday night session to vote it down.

It's hard to imagine any other Democrat causing such a stir. Republicans privately acknowledge that Murtha is a worrisome opponent because he can hardly be portrayed as a liberal of the Michael Moore stripe.

What sets Murtha apart from most fellow Democrats is his close connection to different layers of the armed services. The congressman regularly visits with wounded troops, but he also talks to battle commanders. "Jack Murtha is one of a kind," said Rep. Curt Weldon (Pa.), one of the few Republicans who rose in Murtha's defense during the Friday night House debate. "He is an example for all us in this body, and none of us should ever think of questioning his motives, his desires or support for our American troops."

Other Republicans depicted Murtha's call for withdrawal as irresponsible and even dangerous. On Nov. 18, White House spokesman Scott McClellan described Murtha as "endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party" and suggested he was advocating a "surrender to the terrorists."

In the House debate Friday night, several Republicans suggested that Murtha is a coward who was proposing to "cut and run." But then the rhetoric started to cool. On Sunday, while traveling in Asia, President Bush called Murtha "a fine man, a good man who served our country with honor and distinction," who came to his Iraq position "in a careful and thoughtful way."

Democrats suspect that Republicans dialed back their criticisms after taking into account Murtha's hawkish track record. Judging from his history and close relationships at the Pentagon, Murtha probably was echoing a belief that runs deep within the ranks of senior officers. "He's someone who's a strong supporter of the military," said Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a West Point graduate and one of his party's leading Senate spokesmen on the military. "People will recognize that he's got their best interests at heart."

Murtha joined the Marines in 1952, and served in active duty or in the reserves until he retired in 1990. He volunteered for active Vietnam service and received the Bronze Star with Combat "V," two Purple Hearts and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. He was elected to the House in a 1974 special election, after a five-year stint as a Pennsylvania state legislator.

His hawk credentials were burnished early on. "He was one of our strongest supporters when I worked for Reagan," said Lawrence Korb, an assistant secretary of defense from 1981 to 1985, and now a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Murtha shared President Ronald Reagan's anti-communist views, supporting the military buildup against the then-Soviet Union along with covert aid to the Nicaraguan contras. "I supported Reagan all through the Central American thing," Murtha reminded reporters during his Nov. 17 news conference.

He was a strong supporter of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and today regards it as a model for international cooperation, both diplomatically and financially. He noted in an Oct. 2 C-SPAN interview that Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, also kept Congress well informed throughout the conflict. "President Bush One really did it exactly right," Murtha said.

Despite disagreements over defense spending, Murtha also forged a close relationship with President Bill Clinton. At the 1999 signing of a defense authorization bill, Clinton credited Murtha for pay and retirement provisions that Clinton called the biggest increase in military compensation in a generation. USA Today reported Monday that Clinton said in an interview he would reconsider his opposition to a withdrawal timetable in the aftermath of Murtha's proposal. "He's a really good man," Clinton told USA Today. "I'm going to have to think about it because I respect him so much."

Murtha leans conservative on social matters such as abortion and gun control, but his central Pennsylvania district is a union stronghold, and he tends to vote liberal on economic and workers' rights issues. He criticizes Bush's tax cuts as helping the rich at the expense of other needs -- including defense. He had an ethical scrape in 1979, when he was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Abscam bribery scandal and testified against two House colleagues.

After a 1990 primary scare, Murtha spent more time tending to parochial interests. Of the 58 news releases posted on his Web site since August, three are about Iraq, one is about Hurricane Katrina, and the remainder address local concerns, including military contracts Murtha helped to secure and money he lined up for local dams and schools.

For the past few months, Murtha had dropped hints to colleagues that he would soon make a major announcement about the war. Although he supported the initial invasion, he soon came to believe that troop levels weren't adequate and that soldiers weren't properly equipped. He was one of the few Democrats to publicly advocate the reinstatement of the draft. In a CNN interview in May 2004, Murtha said that although "it would be an international disaster I think if we pulled out . . . the alternative is, we're going to struggle along, get more and more young people killed."

Last week, as Murtha prepared for his speech, he spoke to Pelosi, to whom he is close. According to aides who were privy to the conversation, she warned Murtha that "this is going to be a huge deal" and that people would "come after him." His reply: "I can handle it. I'm ready for anything."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/arch...1/25/2003281674

Hillary holds hard line on Iraqi pullout

POLITICAL SAVVY: The former first lady is swimming against the tide of public dissatisfaction over the Iraq occupation in a classic case of political reinvention

AFP , WASHINGTON
Friday, Nov 25, 2005,Page 7

Advertising With Americans embroiled in a heated debate over the US invasion of Iraq, Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton has taken a position considerably to the right of many in her party, including that of her ex-president husband.
An early favorite to win her party's 2008 presidential nod, the former first lady was guarded in remarks on Monday on the way forward in Iraq, just days after Democratic Representative John Murtha, a pro-military former Marine, stunned the political establishment by calling for a complete US withdrawal.

Murtha's remarks left lawmakers from both parties scrambling to stake out positions of their own, including Clinton, who expressed "the greatest respect" for the decorated Vietnam War hero, but said that pulling US troops would be "a big mistake."

The former first lady said a decision on withdrawing from Iraq should be deferred until after national elections there next month.

"I don't think realistically we know how prepared they are until we get a government on Dec. 15," she is quoted as saying in remarks to an audience in New York, the state she represents in the Senate.


A wounded Iraqi woman rests in a hospital bed in Baghdad yesterday. The woman is one of 27 people who were wounded in a car bomb blast in the town of Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad. Thirty people were killed in the explosion.
PHOTO: AFP

"My approach is we tell them we expect you to meet these certain benchmarks and that means getting troops and police officers trained, equipped and ready to defend their people," Clinton said in widely reported remarks.

Those comments are the latest sign that Clinton -- known during the eight years of her husband's presidency as a "bleeding heart liberal" -- has reinvented herself in the Senate as something of a hawk.

In addition to casting a Senate vote in support of the war in Iraq, she occupies a coveted seat on the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, and has forged key alliances with various Republican conservatives in the US legislature.

Her comments advocating standing firm in Iraq come as many leading centrists within her party begin to say that it is time to gradually move toward a troop pullout.

A respected Democratic moderate, Senator Joseph Biden, this week called for some 50,000 US troops to be pulled from Iraq next year, with more troops to follow.

Meanwhile, another Democratic star, Senator Barack Obama, on Tuesday called for a "limited drawdown of US troops," combined with efforts to bolster Iraqi security forces.

For its part, the White House has lashed out at critics who have questioned its decision to go to war, saying that the flawed intelligence used ahead of the invasion was the best available at the time.

But in a sign that President George W. Bush's administration may be relenting in the face of searing criticism and plummeting poll numbers, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said late on Tuesday that conditions for reducing US troops deployed in Iraq could be in place "fairly soon."

Meanwhile, the Washington Post, citing unnamed military sources, reported on Wednesday that the Pentagon is tentatively planning to reduce the number of US forces in Iraq next year from more than 150,000 to fewer than 100,000.

Pundits said Hillary Clinton, now flirting with the right flank of her party and with presidential aspirations, is showing a great deal of political savvy.

"If you look at the polls carefully, they show that Americans are disaffected with the Bush administration policy in Iraq, but have very little confidence in the Democrats on that score either," said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, a car bomb detonated outside a hospital in Mahmoudiya, a town about 30km south of Baghdad, yesterday, killing 30 and wounding 35, a doctor said. Iraqi army Captain Ibrahim Abdeallah said the suicide bomber was targeting US military vehicles parked near the hospital.

In central Iraq, unidentified gunmen in separate attacks killed a former army colonel yesterday and ambushed a local leader of a Sunni Muslim political party, the day after a senior tribal was assassinated, Iraqi officials said.

A bodyguard for the head of the Iraqi Islamic Party branch in Khalis, 8km north of Baghdad, was wounded in a drive-by shooting yesterday. In a similar shooting, former Iraqi army Colonel Hussein Mohammed was killed late on Wednesday in Baqouba, said Ahmed Fouad, a morgue attendant.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/arch...1/25/2003281675

Tempers rise in Washington as Iraq debate heats up


DPA , WASHINGTON
Friday, Nov 25, 2005,Page 7

Advertising Flaring tempers in Washington and personal political attacks are an undeniable sign. Despite the Bush administration's best efforts, debate is heating up about how long US troops should stay in Iraq.
Polls show that most Americans now disagree with President George W. Bush's handling of Iraq, and that they believe the war is not worth its toll in lives and money.

Opposition Democrats have tried to capitalize on the public mood to put the focus on Iraq in recent weeks. That provoked some vicious public sparring in Congress last week -- and rebukes by Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to opponents of US policy.

Bush used a speech on Nov. 11, the day on which the US honors its veterans, to defend the reasons for going to war.

He also criticized some Democrats for accusing the White House of manipulating intelligence to make a case for the invasion, saying it was "irresponsible" and gave comfort to the US' enemies.

That was mild compared to Cheney's subsequent attacks on the opposition party last week.

Suggestions that Bush or others in the administration purposely misled the public on prewar intelligence were "dishonest and reprehensible," he said.

"The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone -- but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history," Cheney said.

The next day, Representative John Murtha, a 31-year member of Congress and highly decorated former soldier, blasted the administration's Iraq policy and proposed a plan to begin with the immediate pullout of US troops.

The White House accused Murtha of endorsing "extreme liberal" positions and said it is "not the time to surrender to the terrorists." Murtha shot back, criticizing Bush and Cheney for not having worn their country's uniform in combat.

While visiting China on Sunday, Bush sought to calm the waters by calling Murtha a "fine man," while emphasizing that he strongly disagrees with his stand on US troops in Iraq.

Though civility was restored this week, the latest sparring indicates that Democrats are increasingly prepared to take on a weakened president -- and Republicans and the White House will fight back.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews...aq/13256317.htm

Iraq a tricky issue for ambitious Democrats

LIZ SIDOTI

Associated Press


WASHINGTON - Sen. John Kerry initially voted in favor of a Republican-sponsored resolution calling on President Bush to explain his strategy for success in Iraq. Minutes later, the Democrat changed his vote.

The scene underscores the risks facing every politician trying to determine an appropriate and politically wise response to war that's become increasingly unpopular with the public.

For those like Kerry eyeing a presidential run in 2008, the stakes are particularly high. Any position they take is a gamble given the uncertain terrain in Iraq and the United States in three years.

"If you stake out too specific of a position this early, you may have to take that back, and you can only zig and zag so many times in American politics," said Darrell West, a political scientist at Brown University in Rhode Island.

So potential presidential candidates have stark decisions to make:

_Do they stick with President Bush's stay-the-course strategy in a war that many Americans believe is going south, and risk being dragged down as well?

_Do they present their own detailed plans to bring U.S. troops home - and open themselves to criticism of "cutting and running?"

_Do they take the same stance they always have, and leave themselves vulnerable to claims that they failed to respond to the changing situation?

Governors and others beyond Washington considering a White House run are under less pressure to declare positions on the war because they don't have to vote on it. Nevertheless, some have been vocal.

"I was wrong," former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., said Nov. 13 in a column in The Washington Post. "It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002." He advocated a "gradual process" of pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq starting early next year.

Another possible candidate, Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, said in a statement Tuesday: "It is now time for the military commanders to design a phased, definitive withdrawal plan."

Other potential candidates outside of Congress have remained largely silent on Iraq.

"Senators that are looking to run are walking a fine line between supporting the troops and supporting their core constituents in the base of their own party," said Scott Reed, a Republican who ran Bob Dole's presidential campaign in 1996.

Senators vote several times a year on spending bills that pay for the war, and sometimes on Iraq resolutions like the two the Senate considered last week.

A Democratic measure, which the Senate rejected, called for a timetable for withdrawing troops. A Republican alternative, which the Senate ultimately passed, urged the Bush administration to explain "its strategy for the successful completion of the mission in Iraq" but omitted a timetable.

Kerry, last year's Democratic presidential candidate who is said to be considering another run, first voted for the GOP resolution. He then left the chamber and was seen just steps off the Senate floor talking briefly to his senior home state colleague, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. Kerry walked back into the chamber and changed his vote.

David Wade, a Kerry spokesman, said Republicans weakened the resolution "late in the game," and "Sen. Kerry mistakenly believed strong language demanding benchmarks and timetables was still intact. Our troops deserve better than half measures, and that's why John Kerry voted against it."

Before the vote, the Senate debated the main difference between the two measures - one called for a timetable and the other didn't. In his floor statement, Kerry said he intended to vote against the GOP resolution partly because it lacked a timetable.

Last month, Kerry called for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops, starting with 20,000 returning home after the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections. He is one of several senators considering a presidential run who have recently recommended changing Bush's Iraq policy.

The latest was Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who said Monday that "measurable progress" must be made on the political, reconstruction and security fronts in the next six months. "What we need is for the president to change course and do it now," Biden said.

Also Monday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said immediately withdrawing from Iraq would be "a big mistake" and suggested that the United States wait for Iraq's elections for an indication about how soon the Iraqis can take over.

Other Democrats' positions have been more clear cut. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., has said the United States should set a target date of Dec. 31, 2006, to complete the military mission in Iraq.

The two Republican senators who have taken arguably the most aggressive positions on Iraq also weighed in recently.

"Trust and confidence in the United States has been seriously eroded," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. "The United States should begin drawing down forces in Iraq next year."

Taking the opposite view, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., advocated a "clear and stay" strategy in which troops rid an area of insurgents and then secure it. Though it would mean more troops and money, it has "the best chance of success," he said.

Craig Smith, a Democrat who ran Sen. Joe Lieberman's presidential campaign last year, said the war is clearly the No. 1 issue.

"But anybody who thinks staking out a position now is going to have much of an impact in 2008, I think, is kidding themselves," Smith said. "Anybody who proceeds to stake out a definite position now does so at their own peril."

---

AP Special Correspondent David Espo contributed to this report.

Time for An Iraq Timetable

By Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The question most Americans want answered about Iraq is this: When will our troops come home?

We already know the likely answer. In 2006, they will begin to leave in large numbers. By the end of the year, we will have redeployed about 50,000. In 2007, a significant number of the remaining 100,000 will follow. A small force will stay behind -- in Iraq or across the border -- to strike at any concentration of terrorists.

That is because we cannot sustain 150,000 Americans in Iraq without extending deployment times, sending soldiers on fourth and fifth tours, or mobilizing the National Guard. Even if we could, our large military presence -- while still the only guarantor against a total breakdown -- is increasingly counterproductive. A liberation has become an occupation.

There is another critical question: As our soldiers redeploy, will our security interests in Iraq remain intact or will we have traded a dictator for chaos?

There is a broad consensus on what must be done to preserve our interests. Recently, 79 Democratic and Republican senators told President Bush we need a detailed, public plan for Iraq, with specific goals and a timetable for achieving each one.

Over the next six months, we must forge a sustainable political compromise between Iraqi factions, strengthen the Iraqi government and bolster reconstruction efforts, and accelerate the training of Iraqi forces.

First, we need to build political consensus, starting with the constitution. Sunnis must accept that they no longer rule Iraq. But unless Shiites and Kurds give them a stake in the new deal, they will continue to resist. We must help produce a constitution that will unite Iraq, not divide it.

Iraq's neighbors and the international community have a huge stake in the country's future. The president should initiate a regional strategy -- as he did in Afghanistan -- to leverage the influence of neighboring countries. And he should establish a Contact Group of the world's major powers -- as we did in the Balkans -- to become the Iraqi government's primary international interlocutor.

Second, we must build Iraq's governing capacity and overhaul the reconstruction program. Iraq's ministries are barely functional. Sewage in the streets, unsafe drinking water and a lack of electricity are all too common. With 40 percent unemployment in Iraq, insurgents do not lack for fresh recruits.

We need a civilian commitment equal to our military effort. Just as military personnel are required to go to Iraq, the president should identify more skilled foreign service officers to help.

This should not be their burden alone. Britain proposed that individual countries adopt ministries. It's a good idea that we should pursue. We must redirect reconstruction contracts away from multinationals and to Iraqis.

Countries that have pledged aid must deliver it. So far, only $3 billion of the $13.5 billion in non-American aid has made it to Iraq. And the president should convene a conference of our Gulf allies. They have reaped huge windfall oil profits -- it's time they gave back.

The third goal is to transfer authority to Iraqi security forces. In September, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. acknowledged that only one Iraqi battalion -- fewer than 1,000 troops -- can fight without U.S. help. An additional 40 can lead counterinsurgency operations with our support.

The president must set a schedule for getting Iraqi forces trained to the point that they can act on their own or take the lead with U.S. help. We should take up other countries on their offers to do more training, especially of officers. We should focus on getting the security ministries up to speed. Even well-trained troops need to be equipped, sustained and directed.

We also need an effective counterinsurgency strategy. The administration finally understands the need not only to clear territory but also to hold and build on it. We have never had enough U.S. troops to do that. Now there is no choice but to gamble on the Iraqis. We can help by changing the mix of our forces to include more embedded trainers, civil affairs units and Special Forces.

Iraqis of all sects want to live in a stable country. Iraq's neighbors don't want a civil war next door. The major powers don't want a terrorist haven in the heart of the Middle East. The American people want us to succeed.

If the administration shows it has a blueprint for protecting our fundamental security interests in Iraq, Americans will support it.

The writer is a senator from Delaware and the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.


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The US Plans a Long, Long Stay in Iraq

by Eric Margolis

While President George Bush hints at eventual troop withdrawals, the Pentagon is busy building four major, permanent air bases in Iraq that will require heavy infantry protection.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11144.htm

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051127/ap_on_...HNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Mass. Democrats Emerge As Iraq War Critics By ANDREW MIGA, Associated Press Writer

Three years ago, Massachusetts Reps. Martin Meehan, Stephen Lynch and Edward Markey bucked their state Democratic colleagues and cast votes to give President Bush a green light to go to war in Iraq.

Since then, the three have renounced their votes and emerged as critics of the way Bush has handled the war.

Unlike the dramatic public change of heart by Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), D-Pa., a decorated Marine veteran who served in Korea and Vietnam, the three congressmen said they began gradually re-evaluating their views soon after the U.S.-led invasion, when no weapons of mass destruction were found.

"The war was based on the false premise that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program," said Markey, who accused the administration of "manipulating facts."

They are not the first to express regret about their pro-war votes. Several members of Congress, including Reps. Walter Jones, R-N.C., and Robert Wexler, D-Fla., have had changes of heart about Iraq.

But for Meehan, Lynch and Markey, the shift has paid political dividends, helping them mend fences with top state Democratic leaders such as Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), and anti-war liberals who are active in the party ranks.

"I'd say that we have been the most vocal state delegation in the entire country in criticizing the president's handling of the war in Iraq," said Meehan, an early advocate of a phased troop withdrawal.

As Bush's popularity slumps, public support for the war crumbles and U.S. casualties mount, Democrats nationwide are stepping up their attacks on the president and pressing for a clearer exit strategy.

"There's been a rift in the Democratic Party about Iraq from the beginning," said Amy Walter, a congressional expert for the Washington-based Cook Political Report. "As the American public changes its views, it makes it easier for these guys (to change)."

Meehan, Lynch and Markey were among 126 House Democrats who voted for the Iraq war measure one year after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Their seven Massachusetts House colleagues opposed the resolution, which passed by a vote of 296-133.

Their votes put them at odds with Kennedy, the state's senior Democrat and one of the party's leading anti-war voices. The votes also rankled many liberal activists.

Such core support is vital for Democrats seeking to run statewide. Meehan, Lynch and Markey, who were seen as potential Senate candidates when John Kerry ran for president in 2004 and the prospect of an open seat arose, are all considered politically ambitious.

"For those contemplating a presidential effort, this helps to get out in front of that issue three years before the first primaries, so they are on record and not waiting until the primaries to change," said Earl Black, a Rice University political scientist. "That goes for others who are not running for president as well."

Back home, the three congressmen drew flak at times for their pro-war votes. Massachusetts is home to an active network of peace groups who have held several protests and vigils denouncing the war. Howard Dean's rise during the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries also stoked anti-war sentiment across the state. One Boston Common anti-war rally in fall 2002 drew an estimated 15,000 people.

Since none of the three faced major re-election challenges, they had a freer hand than most lawmakers to alter their views on the war.




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Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt ...
By FRANK RICH
GEORGE W. BUSH is so desperate for allies that his hapless Asian tour took him to Ulan Bator, a first for an American president, so he could mingle with the yaks and give personal thanks for Mongolia's contribution of some 160 soldiers to "the coalition of the willing." Dick Cheney, whose honest-and-ethical poll number hit 29 percent in Newsweek's latest survey, is so radioactive that he vanished into his bunker for weeks at a time during the storms Katrina and Scootergate.

The whole world can see that both men are on the run. Just how much so became clear in the brace of nasty broadsides each delivered this month about Iraq. Neither man engaged the national debate ignited by John Murtha about how our troops might be best redeployed in a recalibrated battle against Islamic radicalism. Neither offered a plan for "victory." Instead, both impugned their critics' patriotism and retreated into the past to defend the origins of the war. In a seasonally appropriate impersonation of the misanthropic Mr. Potter from "It's a Wonderful Life," the vice president went so far as to label critics of the administration's prewar smoke screen both "dishonest and reprehensible" and "corrupt and shameless." He sounded but one epithet away from a defibrillator.

The Washington line has it that the motivation for the Bush-Cheney rage is the need to push back against opponents who have bloodied the White House in the polls. But, Mr. Murtha notwithstanding, the Democrats are too feeble to merit that strong a response. There is more going on here than politics.

Much more: each day brings slam-dunk evidence that the doomsday threats marshaled by the administration to sell the war weren't, in Cheney-speak, just dishonest and reprehensible but also corrupt and shameless. The more the president and vice president tell us that their mistakes were merely innocent byproducts of the same bad intelligence seen by everyone else in the world, the more we learn that this was not so. The web of half-truths and falsehoods used to sell the war did not happen by accident; it was woven by design and then foisted on the public by a P.R. operation built expressly for that purpose in the White House. The real point of the Bush-Cheney verbal fisticuffs this month, like the earlier campaign to take down Joseph Wilson, is less to smite Democrats than to cover up wrongdoing in the executive branch between 9/11 and shock and awe.

The cover-up is failing, however. No matter how much the president and vice president raise their decibel levels, the truth keeps roaring out. A nearly 7,000-word investigation in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times found that Mr. Bush and his aides had "issued increasingly dire warnings" about Iraq's mobile biological weapons labs long after U.S. intelligence authorities were told by Germany's Federal Intelligence Service that the principal source for these warnings, an Iraqi defector in German custody code-named Curveball, "never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so." The five senior German intelligence officials who spoke to The Times said they were aghast that such long-discredited misinformation from a suspected fabricator turned up in Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations and in the president's 2003 State of the Union address (where it shared billing with the equally bogus 16 words about Saddam's fictitious African uranium).

Right after the L.A. Times scoop, Murray Waas filled in another piece of the prewar propaganda puzzle. He reported in the nonpartisan National Journal that 10 days after 9/11, "President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda."

The information was delivered in the President's Daily Brief, a C.I.A. assessment also given to the vice president and other top administration officials. Nonetheless Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney repeatedly pounded in an implicit (and at times specific) link between Saddam and Al Qaeda until Americans even started to believe that the 9/11 attacks had been carried out by Iraqis. More damning still, Mr. Waas finds that the "few credible reports" of Iraq-Al Qaeda contacts actually involved efforts by Saddam to monitor or infiltrate Islamic terrorist groups, which he regarded as adversaries of his secular regime. Thus Saddam's antipathy to Islamic radicals was the same in 2001 as it had been in 1983, when Donald Rumsfeld, then a Reagan administration emissary, embraced the dictator as a secular fascist ally in the American struggle against the theocratic fascist rulers in Iran.

What these revelations also tell us is that Mr. Bush was wrong when he said in his Veterans Day speech that more than 100 Congressional Democrats who voted for the Iraqi war resolution "had access to the same intelligence" he did. They didn't have access to the President's Daily Brief that Mr. Waas uncovered. They didn't have access to the information that German intelligence officials spoke about to The Los Angeles Times. Nor did they have access to material from a Defense Intelligence Agency report, released by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan this month, which as early as February 2002 demolished the reliability of another major source that the administration had persistently used for its false claims about Iraqi-Al Qaeda collaboration.

The more we learn about the road to Iraq, the more we realize that it's a losing game to ask what lies the White House told along the way. A simpler question might be: What was not a lie? The situation recalls Mary McCarthy's explanation to Dick Cavett about why she thought Lillian Hellman was a dishonest writer: "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.' "

If Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney believe they were truthful in the run-up to the war, it's easy for them to make their case. Instead of falsely claiming that they've been exonerated by two commissions that looked into prewar intelligence - neither of which addressed possible White House misuse and mischaracterization of that intelligence - they should just release the rest of the President's Daily Briefs and other prewar documents that are now trickling out. Instead, incriminatingly enough, they are fighting the release of any such information, including unclassified documents found in post-invasion Iraq requested from the Pentagon by the pro-war, neocon Weekly Standard. As Scott Shane reported in The New York Times last month, Vietnam documents are now off limits, too: the National Security Agency won't make public a 2001 historical report on how American officials distorted intelligence in 1964 about the Gulf of Tonkin incident for fear it might "prompt uncomfortable comparisons" between the games White Houses played then and now to gin up wars.

SOONER or later - probably sooner, given the accelerating pace of recent revelations - this embarrassing information will leak out anyway. But the administration's deliberate efforts to suppress or ignore intelligence that contradicted its Iraq crusade are only part of the prewar story. There were other shadowy stations on the disinformation assembly line. Among them were the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, a two-man Pentagon operation specifically created to cherry-pick intelligence for Mr. Cheney's apocalyptic Iraqi scenarios, and the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), in which Karl Rove, Karen Hughes and the Cheney hands Lewis Libby and Mary Matalin, among others, plotted to mainline this propaganda into the veins of the press and public. These murky aspects of the narrative - like the role played by a private P.R. contractor, the Rendon Group, examined by James Bamford in the current Rolling Stone - have yet to be recounted in full.

No debate about the past, of course, can undo the mess that the administration made in Iraq. But the past remains important because it is a road map to both the present and the future. Leaders who dissembled then are still doing so. Indeed, they do so even in the same speeches in which they vehemently deny having misled us then - witness Mr. Bush's false claims about what prewar intelligence was seen by Congress and Mr. Cheney's effort last Monday to again conflate the terrorists of 9/11 with those "making a stand in Iraq." (Maj. Gen. Douglas Lute, director of operations for Centcom, says the Iraqi insurgency is 90 percent homegrown.) These days Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney routinely exaggerate the readiness of Iraqi troops, much as they once inflated Saddam's W.M.D.'s.

"We're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history," the vice president said of his critics. "We're going to continue throwing their own words back at them." But according to a Harris poll released by The Wall Street Journal last Wednesday, 64 percent of Americans now believe that the Bush administration "generally misleads the American public on current issues to achieve its own ends." That's why it's Mr. Cheney's and the president's own words that are being thrown back now - not to rewrite history but to reveal it for the first time to an angry country that has learned the hard way that it can no longer afford to be without the truth.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopN...c-iraq-bush.xml

Bush may signal Iraq drawdown
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 (UPI) -- President Bush plans what is being billed as a major speech on Iraq for Wednesday amid signs that the administration is changing course.

Aides told the Los Angeles Times that the president is expected to say at the Naval Academy in Annapolis that Iraqi troops are close to being able to operate on their own.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said recently that the United States should be able to start reducing the number of troops in Iraq soon.

The administration is under pressure with increasing public disapproval at the president's handling of Iraq. Members of his own party are worried about next year's Congressional elections and the 2008 presidential race.

At a meeting in Egypt, members of Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions were able to agree on a call for a U.S. withdrawal.

At home, Rep. John Murtha's call for redeployment and his bitter description of the war invigorated administration opponents. Attempts by Vice President Dick Cheney, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan and others to counter the Pennsylvania Democrat, a decorated veteran of Korean and Vietnam, backfired, the newspaper said.

Copyright 2005 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N27208262.htm

Republican senator urges Bush to explain Iraq war
27 Nov 2005 18:00:46 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Jackie Frank

WASHINGTON, Nov 27 (Reuters) - The top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee urged President George W. Bush on Sunday to go before the American public to explain his plan for the war in Iraq.

Virginia Sen. John Warner told NBC's "Meet the Press," said such a public address would be helpful to hold on to public support during the next six months while Iraq sets up its own government and gains the ability to maintain its security.

Bush, who has been out of public sight since he arrived on Nov. 22 at his Crawford, Texas ranch for a Thanksgiving break, has been facing waning support for the war and the lowest job approval ratings of his presidency.

"I think it would be to Bush's advantage. It would bring him closer to the people, dispel some of the concern that, understandably, our people have about the loss of life and limb, the enormous cost of this war to the American public," Warner said.

"We have got to stay firm for the next six months. It is a critical period ... in this Iraqi situation, to restore full sovereignty in that country. And that enables them to have their own armed forces to maintain that sovereignty," he said.

Bush is to speak on immigration in Arizona on Monday and then will return to Washington on Tuesday and give a speech about the war on terror at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis on Wednesday.

Anti-war protesters, including Cindy Sheehan whose son died in Iraq last year and who became an icon for the peace movement after her 26-day vigil near Bush's ranch in the summer, gathered in the tiny central Texas town again, although in much smaller numbers. They vowed to come to Crawford every time Bush visits his ranch.

Warner was one of the authors of a Senate-passed resolution that called for Iraqis to start taking the lead in their own security next year to allow a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops.

CRITICAL SIX MONTHS

While the Senate rejected a Democrats' demand that Bush submit a plan and an estimated timetable to withdraw, Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware said on NBC it would be "virtually impossible" to sustain 150,000 American troops in Iraq for the next two years.

Although Biden said he did not believe the Iraq war was lost, he added: "I think we have a six-month window here to get it right. But I have to admit that I think the chances are not a lot better than 50-50."

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Richard Lugar, said on "Fox News Sunday" that more pressure needs to be put on the Iraqis to take responsibility for their security.

"But the fact is that we are going to try to train them to perform, and the question is how well they do so, whether they mop up on each other or whether they have a unified country," the Indiana Republican said.

Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, said the goal was to enable multinational forces to be drawn down to under 100,000 by 2007.

"Basically, we want to create the right conditions in the urban areas for the Iraqi security forces to assume the responsibility of security in these cities and towns," he said on CNN's "Late Edition."

U.S. defense officials said last week that the Pentagon plans to shrink the U.S. troop presence in Iraq, now at 155,000, to about 138,000 after the Dec. 15 Iraqi elections and is considering dropping the number to 100,000 next summer if conditions allow. However, a variety of scenarios are being reviewed, including no troop cuts, based on political and security conditions in Iraq.

(Additional reporting Leslie Wroughton in Washington and Patricia Wilson in Crawford, Texas)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=710...id=aya8Tp0nmfMg

Iraqi Official Expects U.S. to Pull 30,000 Troops in Next Year
Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- An Iraqi government official said he expects the U.S. will probably withdraw about 30,000 troops early next year, and American forces may number less than 100,000 by 2007.

Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said that while the Iraqi interim government and the U.S.-led coalition have been discussing the circumstances that will allow foreign troops to leave the country they are ``not interested in a timetable'' for withdrawals.

``We want to create the right conditions in the urban areas for the Iraqi security forces to assume the responsibility of security in these cities and towns,'' al-Rubaie said today on CNN's ``Late Edition'' program. ``That's what we are doing.''

Al-Rubaie's remarks come a week after representatives of Iraq's three main factions, meeting in Cairo, demanded a schedule for the withdrawal of coalition troops from Iraq. President George W. Bush yesterday repeated his rejection of a timetable for redeploying U.S. forces.

``We're not discussing the timetable,'' al-Rubaie said. ``We've been discussing condition-based agreements'' between the interim Iraqi government and the U.S.-led coalition, he said.

Bush has said Iraqi forces must be able to take charge of security before the U.S. will leave. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said previously that the U.S. may be able to scale down troops to 138,000 from 159,000 currently after the parliamentary election in Iraq on Dec. 15.

Pressure in U.S.

More than 2,100 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. Insurgents have been targeting U.S. troops as well as Iraqi civilians and government officials, and American military commanders say they expect the violence to intensify before the December vote.

The president is under pressure from lawmakers in the U.S. Congress to set out his strategy for bringing home U.S. military personnel now in Iraq. The debate intensified after Representative John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and a decorated Vietnam War veteran, called on Nov. 17 for the U.S. to begin pulling its troops out of Iraq.

Senator John Warner, a Virginia Republican who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, today urged Bush to give the public a clearer sense of U.S. strategy in Iraq and a status report about the war and efforts to train Iraqi forces.

``It would bring him closer to the people, dispel some of this concern that, understandably, our people have about the loss of life and limb, the enormous cost of this war to the American public,'' Warner said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.''

Warner said he opposed setting a schedule for withdrawals.

Address

Bush will give an address on the war on terror, which he links to the conflict Iraq, on Nov. 30 at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Warner was a co-sponsor of a Senate resolution approved Nov. 15 calling on the president to give lawmakers regular progress reports on Iraq.

``For the moment, it appears that the majority of the Senate is prepared to say that we want to work with the administration,'' Senator Richard G. Lugar, an Indiana Republican who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said on ``Fox News Sunday.''

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the panel, characterized the resolution as ``a vote of no confidence'' in Bush.

Lawmakers want Bush to say what his expectations are for a political settlement in Iraq and when the Iraqi army and ministries will be operational, Biden said on NBC.

Biden, who also opposes setting a firm date for pulling out of Iraq, said the U.S. chances for success in Iraq ``are not a lot better than 50-50'' and succeeding will require the administration follow the course laid out in the Senate resolution for steady progress in getting Iraqis ready to handle their own security.

Response

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said in a statement issued yesterday in response to an opinion article by Biden published in the Washington Post that there was little difference between Biden's position and the Bush administration's stance.

``We are pleased he shares our view that the way to a democratic and peaceful Iraq is through aggressively training Iraqi police and soldiers, rebuilding the country's infrastructure and forging political compromises between Iraqi factions,'' McClellan said.

Senator Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat who voted against the resolution authorizing Bush to take military action in Iraq, said he supported outlining a timetable for U.S. withdrawal. He said such a schedule would und