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Iraq War Debate Eclipses All Other Issues
GOP Flounders as Bush's Popularity Falls; Democrats Struggle for a Voice

By Jonathan Weisman and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 20, 2005; A01



After largely avoiding the subject since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, lawmakers are suddenly confronting the issue of President Bush's handling of the war. The start hasn't been pretty.

Political stunts by both parties have created an air of acrimony that is infecting the parties' entire agendas. The bitterness reached a new high -- or low -- on Friday when House Republicans forced a late-night vote on a resolution for immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces.

The resolution failed, 403 to 3, but only after members nearly came to blows when a GOP newcomer suggested a veteran Democratic military hawk was a coward.

"Iraq is now a cloud over everything," said Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan political analyst specializing in Congress. "It's the 800-pound gorilla in the room."

"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."

After simmering on Congress's back burner for months, the Iraq war debate has eclipsed every other issue in the capital, slowing progress on some matters while stopping it on others. The GOP-led House and Senate are struggling to pass major tax legislation, an extension of the USA Patriot Act and a broad budget-cutting bill. Bush's top 2005 domestic agenda item -- revamping Social Security -- has sunk from sight, and more recently his bipartisan panel on tax reform barely made a ripple when it issued recommendations.

GOP leaders view items such as the Patriot Act and the budget as too vital to fail in the end, but every endeavor is now made more difficult by the fracturing over Iraq -- and just when the 2006 congressional elections begin to loom. Republicans have lost their anchor of the past five years -- Bush's popularity -- while Democrats are struggling to find their voice on the war. Both sides cannot dally for long, said Peter D. Hart, a Democratic pollster.

"Iraq is now the dominant issue that is affecting voters, and it's affecting Bush's ratings," Hart said. "The public has reached a firm, fixed position on Iraq, and it's not going to change: This is not going to come to a successful conclusion, so how do we figure out how to get out of Iraq?"

Until recently, only Democrats seemed to struggle to find their voice on Iraq, while Republicans were virtually united in backing Bush's policies. But when the 2,000th U.S. military death there coincided with troubling revelations about prewar intelligence and Bush's plunging approval ratings, Republican cohesion began to fray.

Political developments in Iraq, such as the adoption of a new constitution, cannot overcome the impression left by the daily reports of suicide bombers and the milestone of 2,000 deaths among U.S. servicemen, pollsters and political analysts say.

Public opinion has, in turn, emboldened Democrats to sharpen their attacks, and it has freed some Republicans -- especially Northeastern moderates -- to chart a new political course that separates them from the White House but wreaks havoc with the GOP's legislative agenda.

"The central new development is the decomposition of the president's support in Congress," said Ross K. Baker, a Rutgers University congressional expert. "I think there is a very acute realization on the part of Republicans that they no longer can hitch their careers to his popularity. That, combined with the new aggressiveness by the Democrats, means you're seeing basically a Bush agenda that is largely being derailed."

Politicians tried to calm the waters roiled by Friday's House maneuvering. GOP leaders had seized upon an impassioned call Thursday by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, hoping to put Democrats on the spot by rushing a resolution to the floor calling on the administration to bring the troops home now. The ensuing bitter debate brought out calls for calm even before it was over.

"Today's debate in the House of Representatives shows the need for bipartisanship on the war in Iraq, instead of more political posturing," Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.), said in a statement Friday night hailing the bipartisan Senate vote earlier in the week that called on the administration to share more information on the war's progress and to make 2006 a year of significant transition away from U.S. military action.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) said yesterday that the result of the debate was positive, an unambiguous, bipartisan show of resolve for the war effort. Only three Democrats, Reps. Jose E. Serrano (N.Y.), Cynthia McKinney (Ga.) and Robert Wexler (Fla.), voted for the withdrawal resolution. But Pence too noted the acrimony of the discourse. "We cannot do democracy without a heavy dose of civility," he said.

The acrimony, and the all-encompassing nature of the war debate, are having a broad impact. Bush's recent globe-trotting, in Latin America and Asia, has produced more stories on dissent over Iraq than on free trade, economic cooperation and China's move toward democracy.

When Bush's bipartisan panel on tax reform issued its recent recommendations to simplify the tax code, proposals to eliminate deductions for home mortgage interest and state and local taxes might have been expected to create an uproar. Instead, the panel's report barely made a peep.

The president's plan to trim promised Social Security benefits and add private investment accounts disappeared. When Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said any reform plan is dead until 2009, the comments were hardly noted.

Other high-profile legislative priorities have been slowed by a lack of attention from the preoccupied leadership. Congressional aides released details last week from a compromise reached over the extension of the Patriot Act, the controversial anti-terrorism law passed weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But the deal was not acted on quickly, and in ensuing days, provisions of the compromise attracted enough negative attention that a planned vote on the measure was delayed until at least next month.

House Republicans took weeks to garner enough votes to pass a five-year, $50 billion budget-cutting measure full of high-priority policy changes Bush has requested for welfare, Medicaid, agriculture supports and other entitlement programs. The Iraq-induced plunge in Bush's popularity emboldened moderates to oppose the most conservative parts of the bill.

On Friday, after the measure passed by two votes, Republican leaders hoped to highlight the victory at a "get out of town" rally. But they swamped their message by hastily putting the Iraq pullout resolution to a vote. That move also precluded an expected vote on a five-year, $56 billion measure to extend some of Bush's most prized, first-term tax cuts.

Rothenberg says such confusion does not bode well for the political fortunes of the beleaguered GOP. "The public doesn't like mess," he said. "When they realize things are messy, they get frustrated, and they arrive at the general conclusion that you blame the people you figure are in charge."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Hill vs. Spending: Two 800-Pound Gorillas

By Shailagh Murray

After several years of chaos, House and Senate leaders are seeking to restore order to the spending process as part of a broader effort to impose fiscal discipline. But this year's strict budget limits have made negotiations more contentious than usual and exposed stark differences between Republicans and Democrats over the government's priorities.

House GOP leaders were dealt a rare blow Thursday, when moderate Republicans teamed up with Democrats to reject a major labor, health and education appropriations bill that would have reduced spending by $1.4 billion this year. Some lawmakers complained that the $142.5 billion measure did not contain money for many of the special pork-barrel projects they sought for their home districts.

Now the bill must be returned to negotiators for more fine-tuning, as Democrats and moderate Republicans press for more funding for disease research and subsidies to help low-income people pay their heating bills.

The impasse highlights the challenge of Republicans in seeking to satisfy conservative calls for a return to fiscal discipline while coping with mounting demands for relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina and staggering costs associated with the war in Iraq. Republicans say they are up to the task, citing the House vote early Friday that narrowly approved a five-year budget plan to cut $50 billion of entitlement spending.

"What it does is start to turn down the escalating costs . . . for our children and our grandchildren," said Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). "One of the things that we cannot leave to that next generation is a huge deficit that they can't afford."

But the GOP leadership is finding the going tough simply to complete the dozen fiscal 2006 spending bills essential to keep the government operating.

For example, the $445 billion defense spending bill has become entangled in a rash of disputes in recent weeks, including one over Sen. John McCain's drive to crack down on the torture of terrorism suspects being held in U.S. prison facilities. Because it may be the last appropriations bill completed this year, the defense measure may attract many last-minute provisions, including an across-the-board cut in federal agencies' spending that House conservatives are seeking.

Before they left town Friday for a two-week recess, lawmakers approved a resolution to keep the government funds flowing until Dec. 17, including money for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One spending bill that breezed through the House and the Senate on Friday would provide $45.4 billion in military construction funds and veterans benefits. Medical services, including mental health treatment and prosthetic limb research, would receive funding increases, and new housing would be provided for nearly 15,000 military families.

The popularity of military-related programs is one reason the across-the-board cut is likely to meet stiff opposition. "We can't allow it to happen," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who serves on the Appropriations Committee.

A second bill, containing $65.9 billion for the transportation, Treasury and housing departments, was also approved by the House and the Senate on Friday. But that one had been mired in conflict until final passage.

It had been held up in part because of a provision regarding the jurisdiction of lawsuits directed at moving companies for overcharging. Another controversial measure would permit Southwest Airlines to fly to Missouri from Dallas's Love Field, part of a broader bid by the low-fare carrier to repeal a 1979 law, supported by rival American Airlines, that limits flights from Love Field.

The bill also shifts $450 million in funding for two Alaska bridge projects, including one that gained notoriety as the "Bridge to Nowhere" because of its remote location.

Amtrak would receive $1.3 billion under the bill, about $100 million more than last year. It is a blow to President Bush, who had sought deep cuts to the troubled passenger service. The bill would require Amtrak to reduce its operating subsidy, including savings in food and beverage service, first-class service and commuter rail fees.

Lawmakers are so desperate to squeeze extra funds in the giant health and education bill that they are considering shifting money for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides heating bill subsidies for poor people, into an emergency account, to free up funds for other programs.

"This is not the way really to do business," said Sen. Tom Harkin (Iowa), a senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. "These are not normal times, however."

The squeeze on health and education programs even elicited bitter complaints from the bill's Senate author, Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).

"Among many tough choices in this job, this is the toughest one I have made in my tenure in the Senate," said Specter, who opted to eliminate $1 billion in special projects from the bill, rather than further reduce home heating subsidizes and other high priorities.

Many Republicans view the health and education bill as an embodiment of Democratic social policies, and were content with its tight margins. "I'm not ashamed of this bill at all," Rep. Kay Granger (R-Tex.) said.

Democrats saw the $1.5 billion reduction from last year's funding levels as a damaging consequence of the GOP drive to shrink government. "This is a growing country. It has growing problems. It has growing opportunities," said Rep. David R. Obey (Wis.), senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. "If this bill does not grow with it, then we lose ground."

Unlike the health and education bill, which was stripped of special projects, the transportation and housing package included money for many perks. The $8.47 billion allocated for the Federal Transit Administration would pay for rural transportation assistance, capital investment grants, buses and bus-related facilities, and commuter initiatives.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development was funded at $38.2 billion, about $2.1 billion over last year's level. The bill would provide money for several public housing-related programs that Bush proposed axing. A lead abatement initiative that was targeted for elimination wound up getting $48 million. The HOPE VI program for revitalizing distressed units received $100 million, although Bush had wanted to kill it. The bill also rejected a White House bid to rescind $143 million from the program.

Bush had proposed eliminating the Community Development Block Grant Program, but the bill included $4.2 billion for it, and rejected an effort to transfer its functions to the Department of Department.

Congress gave itself a $3,100 pay raise in the transportation and housing bill, and provided a cost-of-living adjustment for federal judges. One Treasury Department provision that negotiators reluctantly omitted from earlier legislation would have loosened agricultural trade barriers with Cuba. The White House had threatened a veto unless the Cuba language was dropped.

"The administration is flat dead-wrong on that provision," complained Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), who wrote the Senate version of the transportation bill.


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What I Knew Before the Invasion

By Bob Graham

In the past week President Bush has twice attacked Democrats for being hypocrites on the Iraq war. "[M]ore than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power," he said.

The president's attacks are outrageous. Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war. Most of them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud.

The president has undermined trust. No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth.

As chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, and the run-up to the Iraq war, I probably had as much access to the intelligence on which the war was predicated as any other member of Congress.

I, too, presumed the president was being truthful -- until a series of events undercut that confidence.

In February 2002, after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, Gen. Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- a war more than a year away. Even at this early date, the White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda.

In the early fall of 2002, a joint House-Senate intelligence inquiry committee, which I co-chaired, was in the final stages of its investigation of what happened before Sept. 11. As the unclassified final report of the inquiry documented, several failures of intelligence contributed to the tragedy. But as of October 2002, 13 months later, the administration was resisting initiating any substantial action to understand, much less fix, those problems.

At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE.

Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein's capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE.

There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.

Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary.

The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as "If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year," underscored the White House's claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq.

From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth.

On Oct. 11, I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.

The writer is a former Democratic senator from Florida. He is currently a fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics.


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Against the Tide on Iraq

By David S. Broder

As demonstrated by the fierce White House counterattack in recent days on critics of the Iraq war, no one has more riding on the outcome of that war than President Bush, the man who sent U.S. forces into Baghdad.

But in political terms, the man next most affected by the outcome of the fighting could be Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

No one outside the administration has been more adamant or outspoken in arguing that there is no substitute for victory in Iraq than has McCain, the Naval Academy graduate and survivor of years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. Others in the field of potential 2008 presidential candidates also support the war, but for none of them does it represent as large a gamble.

McCain's unique credential as a presidential candidate is his hard-earned reputation as someone who rises above partisanship. While burnishing his lifelong Republican credentials by his support of Bush in two campaigns, McCain has established himself as the favorite of independents in poll after poll while enjoying the approval of many Democrats for his advocacy of governmental reforms.

Unscarred in his psyche by the wounds that the 1960s and '70s left on a whole generation of baby-boomer politicians, McCain, who was born in 1936, a full decade before the earliest of the boomers, is a throwback to an earlier generation of leaders who recognized the value of building partnerships across party lines.

He has genuine friendships with Democratic colleagues, and his life is marked by successful efforts at personal reconciliation with people who have been on the opposite side of important policy debates.

Amid signs that the voters are sick of excessive partisanship and looking for a leader who really is, as Bush claimed to be, "a uniter, not a divider," McCain has surged to the top of any list of potential 2008 candidates.

But there is nothing nuanced about his position on the Iraq war. In speeches on and off the Senate floor and in countless television interviews, McCain has argued that it was right to remove Saddam Hussein and that the United States and its allies must remain in Iraq until conditions are created for a stable, secure Iraqi government.

When I interviewed him in his office the other day, he even used the pejorative phrase "cut and run" to describe those now calling for a timetable for withdrawal of American troops. Time and again, he argued that the consequences of leaving Iraq prematurely would be a factional or religious struggle within that country that could lead to a radical Islamic regime destabilizing the Middle East and threatening more terrorist attacks.

The striking thing about McCain's position, which has not wavered from the beginning of the debate about going to war, is that no one has been more critical of the conduct of the war than the senator from Arizona.

As he reminded me, when he made his first trip to Iraq after the capture of Baghdad, he encountered a dozen junior officers of the American and British forces who told him in vivid terms how they were hampered by the shortage of troops. At breakfast with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after he returned, he urged Rumsfeld to bolster the manpower in Iraq, only to be told, "The generals are not asking for more troops" -- as if, McCain added scornfully, "any commander is ever going to make that kind of request."

The misjudgments, McCain said, have continued down to the present. He could not believe, he said, that Rumsfeld pulled Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the man who finally organized the first training program for the Iraqi army to show some positive results, out of Iraq this summer for a prestigious but hardly vital assignment at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

When I saw McCain, he had not yet read James Fallows's cover story in the December Atlantic magazine, titled "Why Iraq Has No Army." In an amply documented and deeply disturbing account, Fallows shows how hollow has been the administration claim to "standing up" Iraqi security forces capable of replacing the U.S. troops. Fallows also argues that doing so at this point would require fundamental shifts in Pentagon priorities -- on everything from troop rotation to the allocation of weapons budgets -- that are not likely to come from Rumsfeld or Bush.

Much of McCain's critique of the management of the war is echoed in Fallows's argument. Nonetheless, McCain insists that victory is still possible -- and that it is vital. Majorities of both independents and Democrats now say the war was a mistake. McCain disagrees. As is his custom, he seems perfectly willing to rest his political future on his belief in his own principles.

davidbroder@washpost.com


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Session Exposes Political Risks Ahead for G.O.P.

Carl Hulse
Published: November 20, 2005
WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 - It was a bitter and fitting final note for a discordant Congress.

The ugly debate in the House on Friday over the Iraq war served as an emotional send-off for a holiday recess, capturing perfectly the political tensions coursing through the House and Senate in light of President Bush's slumping popularity, serious party policy fights, spreading ethics investigations and the approach of crucial midterm elections in less than a year.

As majority leader, Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri is in the eye of the Congressional storm.

Capitol Hill was always certain to be swept up in brutal political gamesmanship as lawmakers headed into 2006 - the midpoint of this second presidential term and, perhaps, a chance for Democrats to cut into Republican majorities or even seize power in one chamber or the other.

The ferocity of the fight in the House over a measure to withdraw American troops from Iraq shows that the war may command the high ground in the coming electoral contest. And the course of events in Iraq - whether a new government takes hold, whether violence continues, whether American troops are still committed in large numbers and being killed by the scores each month - is likely to be of prime political consequence here.

But when lawmakers return next month they face other immediate challenges that also carry substantial political risks. Some are matters related to the war, like the continuing debate on the treatment of detainees in the campaign against global terrorism. Others are the kind of domestic pocketbook issues that Congress must deal with every year - including contentious tax and spending measures - but have been impossible to resolve this year, even with one party in control of both houses.

Representative Mark Foley, Republican of Florida, said he thought the war debate was worthwhile because it sent a reassuring message to troops in Iraq. But he found the tone "absolutely unnecessary, demeaning and potentially destructive."

"We have so many huge problems, and it is frustrating to somebody like myself when we are reduced to partisan fire with bazookas," said Mr. Foley, who added that the House was as polarized as he had seen it during his decade in office.

Indeed, issues like overhauling Social Security, changing the tax code, dealing with illegal immigration or addressing high energy costs were often overshadowed - and sometimes put aside - because of the continuing debate over the war and its costs. As members of Congress returned Saturday to their home districts, it seemed that the fallout from Friday night's showdown would remain a hot topic, at least for now.

Among developments that have knocked Republicans badly off course and provided opportunities for Democrats, who still have problems of their own: The botched response to Hurricane Katrina. The indictment of Representative Tom DeLay. Soaring fuel costs. A failed Supreme Court nomination. Federal charges against a vice-presidential aide in a case related to prewar intelligence. Growing public unease about the war and its death toll. Off-year election victories by Democrats.

The litany has members of Congress taking stock of their own political fortunes and acting accordingly.

"Bad poll numbers on your side unite your opponents and divide you a little bit," said Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, a man in the eye of the Congressional storm as he fills in for Mr. DeLay in trying to hold House Republicans together.

Both of the responses cited by Mr. Blunt were on display this week in an unusually messy Congressional windup. United Democrats forced House Republicans to look solely to their own membership to win approval of spending and budget measures that carried a political price given their reductions in spending on an array of social programs - cuts ready-made for campaign attacks.

As a result, some Republicans chose to part company with their colleagues. Twenty-two defectors joined with Democrats to send a major health and education spending bill to a stunning defeat, the first such loss in a decade for the take-no-prisoners Republican majority.

Fourteen Republicans opposed $50 billion in spending cuts over five years despite major concessions by their leadership to win moderate support. They acted partly out of fear that a vote for the cuts would expose them to Democratic political attacks, a fear well founded. Within hours of the vote, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out news releases to the districts of 50 lawmakers who backed the measure to make sure voters back home heard that their representatives had "blindly rubberstamped" the leadership's plan.

The rising political animosity was evident in the tone of the House debate on the fiscal bills and Iraq. The chamber rang with name-calling, taunts, ridicule and jeers. The exchanges over the war after Representative John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, called for a rapid withdrawal of troops from Iraq were poisonous as bottled-up sentiment on the conflict boiled over. Some lawmakers saw it as a new low.

"We can do better," Representative Tom Osborne, Republican of Nebraska, scolded his colleagues.

The troop withdrawal measure, brought forward by Republicans to put Democrats on the spot, was defeated, 403 to 3, late Friday night.

"It is a reality that no one is finished debating the war," Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia, vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, said Saturday.

But he said Republicans forced the vote out of frustration with Democratic tactics. "We had just had it with Democrats running around saying President Bush lied. It was time for us to call their bluff," he said.

Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, called Friday night "a sad spectacle."

He said the effort to embarrass Mr. Murtha would do more to galvanize than dissipate critics of the war. "If those who say 'stay the course' want to attack the character of people like Jack Murtha or question the patriotism of anyone who is raising questions about the war, then they are going to have a fight on their hands, and that was apparent last night," Mr. Holt said.

"If in the months ahead when somebody goes back to write the history of the war in Iraq," he added, "they will point to the Murtha statement as a key moment in changing course."

Representative Tom Tancredo, a Colorado Republican who was involved in a heated floor exchange with Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., Democrat of Tennessee, attributed much of the vitriol to sleeplessness because of the late nights of the contentious budget fight. "Add to that the emotional nature of the issues we were debating and the fuse was lit," Mr. Tancredo said.

The atmosphere and progress in the Senate, often the graveyard of legislation, were noticeably better than in the House. Republican senators set their sights lower on spending cuts and approved their budget bill weeks ago. They were able to attract significant Democratic support for tax cuts and even had a bipartisan vote pressing the administration to move more aggressively to secure Iraq to allow a troop withdrawal.

But the Senate has serious divisions of its own. Just a few months ago, it was on the brink of a historic rules showdown over judicial filibusters, a subject that could resurface should Democrats choose to block Mr. Bush's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. Democrats also infuriated Republicans by forcing a closed-door session on the use of prewar intelligence, and ill feelings linger over that episode.

Though Democrats see political openings, they have handicaps. The battle over Mr. Murtha's proposal showed that the party remained troubled over its approach to the war in Iraq, aware of vulnerabilities on national security issues and the role of Democrats in approving the use of force in Iraq. Democrats have yet to produce their own policy argument for why they should be awarded control of the House and Senate, preferring to concentrate for now on exploiting the Republican struggles.

And Republicans do not have easy days ahead. When the House and Senate return in December, they will have to reconcile differing budget bills or face the humiliating prospect of falling short of the cuts sought by conservatives.

What may be equally troubling for Republicans is the filing on Friday of a criminal conspiracy charge against a former senior Republican House aide, Michael Scanlon. Mr. Scanlon was once a spokesman for Mr. DeLay and was a partner of Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who is the subject of a federal investigation and had close ties to some House Republicans. The charges hint at potential legal exposure for lawmakers who were wined and dined by the two, adding to Republican ethics cases.

Republicans acknowledge that recent months have been trying. But they think they can hold off Democrats with the advantages of incumbency and by producing legislation that appeals to their conservative base and the business community while propelling what they say is a thriving, underappreciated economy.

Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said he remained confident of the outcome of next year's elections. "We're going to be in the majority," Mr. Reynolds said.

Others say the political future may be out of the hands of either party.

"I think the maneuvers of this week probably aren't going to help either side in the election," said John J. Pitney Jr., professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California. "What's really going to matter is what happens on the ground in Iraq. If there is good news out of the ground in Iraq, then Republicans will benefit. If there is bad news, then they will have even deeper problems."

"Bombs in Baghdad," Mr. Pitney said, "are going to have a lot more impact than speeches in Washington."

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November 20, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
One War Lost, Another to Go
By FRANK RICH
IF anyone needs further proof that we are racing for the exits in Iraq, just follow the bouncing ball that is Rick Santorum. A Republican leader in the Senate and a true-blue (or red) Iraq hawk, he has long slobbered over President Bush, much as Ed McMahon did over Johnny Carson. But when Mr. Bush went to Mr. Santorum's home state of Pennsylvania to give his Veterans Day speech smearing the war's critics as unpatriotic, the senator was M.I.A.

Mr. Santorum preferred to honor a previous engagement more than 100 miles away. There he told reporters for the first time that "maybe some blame" for the war's "less than optimal" progress belonged to the White House. This change of heart had nothing to do with looming revelations of how the new Iraqi "democracy" had instituted Saddam-style torture chambers. Or with the spiraling investigations into the whereabouts of nearly $9 billion in unaccounted-for taxpayers' money from the American occupation authority. Or with the latest spike in casualties. Mr. Santorum was instead contemplating his own incipient political obituary written the day before: a poll showing him 16 points down in his re-election race. No sooner did he stiff Mr. Bush in Pennsylvania than he did so again in Washington, voting with a 79-to-19 majority on a Senate resolution begging for an Iraq exit strategy. He was joined by all but one (Jon Kyl) of the 13 other Republican senators running for re-election next year. They desperately want to be able to tell their constituents that they were against the war after they were for it.

They know the voters have decided the war is over, no matter what symbolic resolutions are passed or defeated in Congress nor how many Republicans try to Swift-boat Representative John Murtha, the marine hero who wants the troops out. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup survey last week found that the percentage (52) of Americans who want to get out of Iraq fast, in 12 months or less, is even larger than the percentage (48) that favored a quick withdrawal from Vietnam when that war's casualty toll neared 54,000 in the apocalyptic year of 1970. The Ohio State political scientist John Mueller, writing in Foreign Affairs, found that "if history is any indication, there is little the Bush administration can do to reverse this decline." He observed that Mr. Bush was trying to channel L. B. J. by making "countless speeches explaining what the effort in Iraq is about, urging patience and asserting that progress is being made. But as was also evident during Woodrow Wilson's campaign to sell the League of Nations to the American public, the efficacy of the bully pulpit is much overrated."

Mr. Bush may disdain timetables for our pullout, but, hello, there already is one, set by the Santorums of his own party: the expiration date for a sizable American presence in Iraq is Election Day 2006. As Mr. Mueller says, the decline in support for the war won't reverse itself. The public knows progress is not being made, no matter how many times it is told that Iraqis will soon stand up so we can stand down.

On the same day the Senate passed the resolution rebuking Mr. Bush on the war, Martha Raddatz of ABC News reported that "only about 700 Iraqi troops" could operate independently of the U.S. military, 27,000 more could take a lead role in combat "only with strong support" from our forces and the rest of the 200,000-odd trainees suffered from a variety of problems, from equipment shortages to an inability "to wake up when told" or follow orders.

But while the war is lost both as a political matter at home and a practical matter in Iraq, the exit strategy being haggled over in Washington will hardly mark the end of our woes. Few Americans will cry over the collapse of the administration's vainglorious mission to make Iraq a model of neocon nation-building. But, as some may dimly recall, there is another war going on as well - against Osama bin Laden and company.

One hideous consequence of the White House's Big Lie - fusing the war of choice in Iraq with the war of necessity that began on 9/11 - is that the public, having rejected one, automatically rejects the other. That's already happening. The percentage of Americans who now regard fighting terrorism as a top national priority is either in the single or low double digits in every poll. Thus the tragic bottom line of the Bush catastrophe: the administration has at once increased the ranks of jihadists by turning Iraq into a new training ground and recruitment magnet while at the same time exhausting America's will and resources to confront that expanded threat.

We have arrived at "the worst of all possible worlds," in the words of Daniel Benjamin, Richard Clarke's former counterterrorism colleague, with whom I talked last week. No one speaks more eloquently to this point than Mr. Benjamin and Steven Simon, his fellow National Security Council alum. They saw the Qaeda threat coming before most others did in the 1990's, and their riveting new book, "The Next Attack," is the best argued and most thoroughly reported account of why, in their opening words, "we are losing" the war against the bin Laden progeny now.

"The Next Attack" is prescient to a scary degree. "If bin Laden is the Robin Hood of jihad," the authors write, then Abu Musab al-Zarqawi "has been its Horatio Alger, and Iraq his field of dreams." The proof arrived spectacularly this month with the Zarqawi-engineered suicide bombings of three hotels in Amman. That attack, Mr. Benjamin wrote in Slate, "could soon be remembered as the day that the spillover of violence from Iraq became a major affliction for the Middle East." But not remembered in America. Thanks to the confusion sown by the Bush administration, the implications for us in this attack, like those in London and Madrid, are quickly forgotten, if they were noticed in the first place. What happened in Amman is just another numbing bit of bad news that we mentally delete along with all the other disasters we now label "Iraq."

Only since his speech about "Islamo-fascism" in early October has Mr. Bush started trying to make distinctions between the "evildoers" of Saddam's regime and the Islamic radicals who did and do directly threaten us. But even if anyone was still listening to this president, it would be too little and too late. The only hope for getting Americans to focus on the war we can't escape is to clear the decks by telling the truth about the war of choice in Iraq: that it is making us less safe, not more, and that we have to learn from its mistakes and calculate the damage it has caused as we reboot and move on.

Mr. Bush is incapable of such candor. In the speech Mr. Santorum skipped on Veterans Day, the president lashed out at his critics for trying "to rewrite the history" of how the war began. Then he rewrote the history of the war, both then and now. He boasted of America's "broad and coordinated homeland defense" even as the members of the bipartisan 9/11 commission were preparing to chastise the administration's inadequate efforts to prevent actual nuclear W.M.D.'s, as opposed to Saddam's fictional ones, from finding their way to terrorists. Mr. Bush preened about how "we're standing with dissidents and exiles against oppressive regimes" even as we were hearing new reports of how we outsource detainees to such regimes to be tortured.

And once again he bragged about the growing readiness of Iraqi troops, citing "nearly 90 Iraqi army battalions fighting the terrorists alongside our forces." But as James Fallows confirms in his exhaustive report on "Why Iraq Has No Army" in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly, America would have to commit to remaining in Iraq for many years to "bring an Iraqi army to maturity." If we're not going to do that, Mr. Fallows concludes, America's only alternative is to "face the stark fact that it has no orderly way out of Iraq, and prepare accordingly."

THAT'S the alternative that has already been chosen, brought on not just by the public's irreversible rejection of the war, but also by the depleted state of our own broken military forces; they are falling short of recruitment goals across the board by as much as two-thirds, the Government Accountability Office reported last week. We must prepare accordingly for what's to come. To do so we need leaders, whatever the political party, who can look beyond our nonorderly withdrawal from Iraq next year to the mess that will remain once we're on our way out. Whether it's countering the havoc inflicted on American interests internationally by Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo or overhauling and redeploying our military, intelligence and homeland security operations to confront the enemy we actually face, there's an enormous job to be done.

The arguments about how we got into Mr. Bush's war and exactly how we'll get out are also important. But the damage from this fiasco will be even greater if those debates obscure the urgency of the other war we are losing, one that will be with us long after we've left the quagmire in Iraq.



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As War Debate Ignites, Democrats Seek a Unified Message
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By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer

November 19 2005, 6:27 PM PST

WASHINGTON -- Last week's emotional congressional debates over Iraq demonstrated both the rise of anti-war sentiment among Democrats -- and the challenge the party faces in converting that impulse into a unified alternative to President Bush.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=8081

More Wheels Spin Off Iraq Policy

by Jim Lobe
In a major new blow to President George W. Bush's determination to "stay the course" in Iraq, an influential Democratic hawk with close ties to the uniformed military has called for Washington to begin withdrawing U.S. troops immediately.

In an emotional press conference Thursday morning, Rep. John Murtha, a former officer in the Marines and the ranking Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee of the House of Representatives, announced he will soon introduce legislation requiring US ground troops to be "redeploy(ed)" out of Iraq and to send a "quick-reaction" force into the region for possible use against "terrorist" camps in their place.

"The war in Iraq is not going as advertised," he said. "It is a flawed policy wrapped in an illusion... It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people, or the Persian Gulf region."

As a longtime Democratic hawk and staunch supporter of the uniformed military, Murtha, who originally supported the Iraq war, will make it much easier for fellow Democrats and some Republicans to challenge the Bush administration's continuing calls to "stay the course" in Iraq.

Even before his statement, Republican lawmakers were voicing growing fears that Iraq threatened their hold on both houses of Congress in next November's mid-term Congressional elections. In a major setback to Bush and an indication of his party's rising anxiety, a majority of Republicans voted Tuesday to require the administration to submit detailed reports about progress toward withdrawing US troops over the next year and replacing them with Iraqi forces.

The New York Times called the resolution "a vote of no confidence on the war in Iraq," while its sponsor, Senate Armed Forces Committee chairman John Warner himself described his amendment as a blunt warning to Iraqis that Washington had "done (its) part" and was fast running out of patience.

Democrats, who until recently had been deeply divided about what to do in Iraq, have increasingly taken the political offensive over growing public sentiment (57 percent, according to one poll last week) that the administration manipulated the intelligence in order to rally the country to war, a charge that Murtha endorsed Thursday.

Led by Bush, the administration has tried to mount a counteroffensive by calling Democratic charges that it deliberately misled the country into war "irresponsible" and deeply damaging to the morale of the some 150,000 troops currently in Iraq.

But its efforts so far have appeared largely ineffective in changing public opinion, in part because last month's indictment in connection with the "outing" of a covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer on perjury charges of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff has added weight to charges that intelligence was indeed manipulated.

Added to this are the widely publicized claims by former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, that Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld led a "cabal" that circumvented normal bureaucratic and intelligence channels in order to take the country to war.

Nor did it help that a prominent moderate Republican and likely 2008 presidential candidate, Sen. Chuck Hagel, criticized the White House's counteroffensive for "dividing the country." In a particularly damaging comment in a major policy address this week, Hagel, a decorated Vietnam veteran who has voiced alarm over developments in Iraq over the past two years, noted that Congress should have spoken out earlier during the Vietnam War.

While the administration has appeared flummoxed and on the defensive over the charges that it manipulated intelligence before the war, Democrats have appeared increasingly unified behind proposals to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq after the Dec. 15 elections there according to a timetable that would see most of them leave by the end of next year.

In the last two weeks, both Sen. John Kerry and his 2004 vice-presidential running-mate, former Sen. John Edwards, have publicly admitted that they now regret their votes in October 2002 to give Bush the authority to go to war, and offered support for legislation that would at least establish benchmarks for withdrawing troops.

In yet another important step in the Democrats' evolution, former President Bill Clinton declared for the first time this week that the decision to go to war in Iraq was "wrong," thus presumably preparing the ground for other Democrats, particularly his Senator-wife, Hillary, who has until now opposed withdrawal, to move in a new direction.

It is in this context that Murtha's remarks will add to the momentum in favor of withdrawal. Indeed, Murtha has historically been so close to the military that many political observers will conclude that he is speaking for senior officers who have grown increasingly convinced that the war has been a major strategic mistake.

(A survey of military leaders released Thursday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found they were roughly evenly split on the wisdom of going to war in the first place and on whether or not the Iraq war was helpful in the larger "war on terrorism.")

Warning that the "future of our military is at risk," Murtha said that he had concluded after numerous trips to Iraq that "our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency" and that "we have become a catalyst for violence."

"I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis," he said. "I believe that before the Iraqi elections, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy."

That redeployment, which partly echoes a more comprehensive plan put forward by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank consisting mainly of former senior Clinton administration officials, in late September, calls for creating a quick-reaction force to be deployed in the region for intervention against "terrorist camps."

It also seeks an over-the-horizon Marine presence that could be deployed quickly, presumably to prevent incursions by foreign forces into Iraq in the event of a widening civil conflict. Murtha also called for intensified diplomatic and political efforts to help stabilize Iraq.

"Our military has done everything that has been asked of them," he said. "The US cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home."

This is part of the Kool-Aid high they've been on since Bush took office...



... and this is the most troubling things about everything else going on. WE DON'T KNOW WHEN WE'RE AHEAD!

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/REF...LTAM&SECTION=US

Nov 18, 5:23 PM EST


Jewish Group Asks Bush to Start War's End

HOUSTON (AP) -- About 2,000 representatives of the Union for Reform Judaism asked the Bush administration Friday to provide a clear exit strategy for the war in Iraq and begin to bring some soldiers home in mid-December.

The 1.5-million member organization of the most liberal of the three major branches of Judaism voted almost unanimously for the resolution at its Houston convention, spokeswoman Emily Grotta said.

"The sentiment was clear and overwhelming," Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, union president, said in a statement. "American Jews, and all Americans, are profoundly critical of this war and they want this administration to tell us how and when it will bring our troops home."

The resolution also asks for a bipartisan independent commission to study the lesson's learned from the war, and condemns "in the strongest possible terms" the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody.



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http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/WorldNF....rticleID=193743

Axis for Peace declares war on hawks
Brussels | By Mohammed Almezel, Assistant Editor | 20/11/2005 | Print this page


An international anti-Bush movement was born here yesterday to stop "the war process" and push for a new global equilibrium that would restore "respect for the law", organisers said.


Gulf News
The two-day conference in progress in Brussels.


The Axis for Peace movement, an alliance of politicians, lobbyists, analysts and intellectuals from across the globe, was declared at the end of a two-day conference held in Brussels.

The conference was organised by the Paris-based Voltaire Network, a non-profit organisation that lobbies for peaceful solutions to international disputes.

The participants signed a declaration that would be presented to the United Nations Security Council.

It urges the permanent members on the council to stop being "a tool in the hands" of the George Bush administration, Thierry Meyssan, president of the Voltaire Network, told Gulf News.

"Respect of the international law depends on the equilibrium of forces and in the past 10 years, following the fall of the Soviet Union, the remaining superpower the US has turned into a predator."

More than 150 prominent politicians, authors, musicians, journalists and peace activists from South America, Europe, Asia, the United States and the Arab world took part in the conference.

For two days, they debated questions such as the war in Iraq and the threat against Syria, neo-colonialism, the role of the United Nations, the nature of terrorism, intervention by democratic states, economic and popular sovereignty.

"The world is involved in a war process. The only possibility to stop that process is to mobilise public opinion all over the world," Meyssan added. "It is a difficult task but the conference is only the first step."

Speaking at the first day, Salim Hoss, former Lebanese prime minister said the United States cannot impose its will on other countries.

"Peace cannot be imposed on the nations; it is only established through democracy and the preservation of human values."

He added: "Peace is closely linked to the state of stability, which cannot be established but through the implementation of justice and democracy."

Hoss said that the threat of terrorism was being used as a reason to launch constant wars, without attempting to define terrorism.

"Terrorism is a hideous epidemic and should be eradicated, yet the war on terrorism is being launched without adopting a common definition of that epidemic.

"It is ironic that Israel's continuous aggressions against Arab territories in Palestine, in explicit violation of UN resolutions, are not considered terrorism; however, the Palestinians who struggle to liberate their land and regain their freedom and dignity are regarded as terrorists."

The Bush administration acts unilaterally, under its pre-emptive war doctrine to "ensure its supremacy over all continents", said Andreas von Bulow, former German state minister and member of the parliamentary intelligence oversight committee.

"All those who are against the war-mongering policies of the US must unite," said Meyssan, pointing out that the Axis for Peace will be an annual event with a permanent secretariat to unite the efforts of all anti-war activists.

The Voltaire Network for the Freedom of Expression (Reseau Voltaire) is an international association founded by Thierry Meyssan in 1994.

Established under French law, it is based in Paris. Réseau Voltaire is active in a number of social and political domains.

It publishes a daily magazine offering political analysis as well as internet sites in four languages (English, Arabic, French, Spanish, and Russian), and develops non-governmental diplomacy promoting the respect of international law.

Réseau Voltaire defends individual liberties and is religiously neutral.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© Al Nisr Publishing LLC - Gulf News Online | contact editor@gulfnews.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines

NEWS ANALYSIS
Democrats' War Opposition Not a United Front
Party lawmakers who have rallied around a general push to pull troops from Iraq still disagree on what remedies to offer, if any.

By Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON — Last week's emotional congressional debates over Iraq demonstrated the rise of antiwar sentiment among Democrats — and the challenge the party faces in converting that impulse into a unified alternative to President Bush.

Twin confrontations over Iraq, in the House and the Senate — highlighted by a ferocious House debate that followed a call by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) to immediately begin removing American troops — showed that the center of gravity among Democrats is rapidly moving toward proposals to accelerate the withdrawal of American troops from the war.

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"The last week has changed everything," said Tom Matzzie, Washington director of MoveOn.org, a liberal group opposing the war. "The whole debate just jumped ahead six months."

But while the week's events demonstrated rising Democratic hostility to the war, they also underscored the party's continuing divisions over what alternative to offer — and whether to present a specific alternative at all.

Though some insiders believe a majority of House Democrats might ultimately endorse Murtha's proposal to begin an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, only 13 so far have co-sponsored the resolution embodying it. When House Republicans forced a vote Friday on a resolution urging immediate withdrawal, only three Democrats voted yes after the bitter floor debate.

According to one Democratic source, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) has dropped plans to seek a vote in early December on adopting a Democratic Conference position in support of Murtha's plan. Murtha has said his proposal could lead to a complete withdrawal of American troops in about six months and the establishment of a "quick-reaction force in the region."

Fearful that the proposal would generate too much opposition among moderate Democrats, Pelosi now plans for the conference only to discuss and debate it, the source said.

The plan Senate Democrats offered last week during that chamber's debate over the war did not seek to change policy nearly as sharply as Murtha does. Their proposal, rejected on a near party-line vote, asked Bush to set estimated timetables for withdrawing American troops as benchmarks of progress in Iraq are reached.

A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that based on the conversations that produced Senate Democrats' proposal, Reid believed hardly any Senate Democrats would sign on to Murtha's approach today.

Yet supporters and opponents of the war agree that the cry of opposition from Murtha — a leading military hawk during his three decades in Congress — is likely to mark a milestone in the war debate.

"Clearly it was a bombshell and it does shift the debate quite dramatically," said Ivo H. Daalder, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution who was a National Security Council aide under President Clinton.

Many Democratic political strategists and foreign policy analysts have long believed the party can benefit more from criticizing Bush's handling of the war than from specifying an alternative.

Although Democrats may be split on Murtha's specific proposal, his call for a clear break from Bush's policy is likely to strengthen those who want the party to offer concrete alternatives, many observers believe.

Many Republicans also see last week as a turning point. Bush allies believe that Murtha's declaration — following Senate Democrats' call for estimated timetables — will identify Democrats with a policy of "cut and run."

"I don't think the country has any doubt there are two positions: One is to stay and fight and the other is to leave," said one Republican strategist familiar with White House thinking.

As public opinion has soured on the war, support for withdrawing troops has grown, according to recent surveys. Nineteen percent of respondents to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released last week supported an immediate withdrawal, and 33% said that all American troops should be pulled out within a year — meaning that a majority wants all troops home by the end of 2006.

Among independents, 56% want all troops home within a year, among Democrats 67%, the poll found.

Yet a range of GOP strategists remain confident that their party will benefit as more Democrats push to end America's involvement in the war. "As long as the Bush administration was in the position of having to debate events in Iraq, it hurt us," said the GOP strategist familiar with White House thinking. "When we are in the position of having to debate the Democratic Party on this, it helps us. That's what happened in the 2004 election."

Clifford D. May, president of the conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said: "Democrats can certainly reinforce their brand identification as the party that cannot be trusted in the midst of a national security crisis. That is a real danger for them."

Largely accepting that logic, almost all centrist Democrats and much of the party's foreign policy establishment believe that a specific timeline or deadline for removing American troops would undermine stability in Iraq and hurt the party politically. During last week's debate, Democratic foreign policy leaders like Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) repeatedly insisted that the party's proposal did not establish a timeline for removing American troops.

Even those Democrats urging more rapid withdrawal are split on a wide range of specific ideas.

Until Murtha unveiled his proposal Thursday, Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), a possible 2008 presidential contender, had adopted the most aggressive position among elected officials: Feingold has urged Bush to withdraw all American troops from Iraq by the end of 2006, although he has softened his demand somewhat by describing that as a "target date."

Several Democratic challengers seeking party nominations in 2006 Senate races have also called for complete withdrawal by the end of next year. They include Patty Wetterling in Minnesota, Matt Brown in Rhode Island and Kweisi Mfume in Maryland.

In the House, war opponents have rallied behind a resolution from Reps. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.) and Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii). That plan — which has about 60 co-sponsors, almost all of them Democrats — would require Bush to formulate a plan by the end of this year for removing American troops from Iraq and to begin that withdrawal no later than Oct. 1, 2006.

Last month, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the party's 2004 presidential nominee who is considering another run in 2008, offered a competing plan.

Kerry proposed a phased withdrawal "linked to specific, responsible benchmarks" of progress with Iraq. As a first step, he said, the U.S. should withdraw 20,000 troops if December's Iraqi election goes well; this approach, he said, could allow the U.S. "to withdraw the bulk of American combat forces by the end of next year."

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, has proposed the inverse approach. Levin says the U.S. should pressure the contending Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish forces in the Iraqi government to resolve their differences by threatening to accelerate the withdrawal of American troops if they don't.

Murtha's plan leapt so far over all of these proposals in pushing to end America's involvement in Iraq that it might be compared to the Bob Beamon long jump in the 1968 Olympics that dwarfed all previous records.

It's not clear how many other Democrats will reach so far in the weeks ahead. But in both parties there seems little doubt that Murtha has pointed the direction his party is heading.

Germans: Bush misused data to justify Iraq war

Informant's handlers say they repeatedly warned of unreliability.

By Bob Drogin and John Goetz
Special to The Morning Call

The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims before the Iraq war.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11089.htm

I'm of the same generation as McCain (I was born in 1935) and I got over it--so can McCain. When this dark period of our history gets distilled down, after Bush
and Chenney, McCain and Kerry will get major credit. Bush and Chenney were in the best position to do the most damage and they did. Kerry and McCain were
in the best position to prevent it and they didn't.

http://select.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/opini...krugman.html?hp

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

November 21, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
Time to Leave
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Not long ago wise heads offered some advice to those of us who had argued since 2003 that the Iraq war was sold on false pretenses: give it up. The 2004 election, they said, showed that we would never convince the American people. They suggested that we stop talking about how we got into Iraq and focus instead on what to do next.

It turns out that the wise heads were wrong. A solid majority of Americans now believe that we were misled into war. And it is only now, when the public has realized the truth about the past, that serious discussions about where we are and where we're going are able to get a hearing.

Representative John Murtha's speech calling for a quick departure from Iraq was full of passion, but it was also serious and specific in a way rarely seen on the other side of the debate. President Bush and his apologists speak in vague generalities about staying the course and finishing the job. But Mr. Murtha spoke of mounting casualties and lagging recruiting, the rising frequency of insurgent attacks, stagnant oil production and lack of clean water.

Mr. Murtha - a much-decorated veteran who cares deeply about America's fighting men and women - argued that our presence in Iraq is making things worse, not better. Meanwhile, the war is destroying the military he loves. And that's why he wants us out as soon as possible.

I'd add that the war is also destroying America's moral authority. When Mr. Bush speaks of human rights, the world thinks of Abu Ghraib. (In his speech, Mr. Murtha pointed out the obvious: torture at Abu Ghraib helped fuel the insurgency.) When administration officials talk of spreading freedom, the world thinks about the reality that much of Iraq is now ruled by theocrats and their militias.

Some administration officials accused Mr. Murtha of undermining the troops and giving comfort to the enemy. But that sort of thing no longer works, now that the administration has lost the public's trust.

Instead, defenders of our current policy have had to make a substantive argument: we can't leave Iraq now, because a civil war will break out after we're gone. One is tempted to say that they should have thought about that possibility back when they were cheerleading us into this war. But the real question is this: When, exactly, would be a good time to leave Iraq?

The fact is that we're not going to stay in Iraq until we achieve victory, whatever that means in this context. At most, we'll stay until the American military can take no more.

Mr. Bush never asked the nation for the sacrifices - higher taxes, a bigger military and, possibly, a revived draft - that might have made a long-term commitment to Iraq possible. Instead, the war has been fought on borrowed money and borrowed time. And time is running out. With some military units on their third tour of duty in Iraq, the superb volunteer army that Mr. Bush inherited is in increasing danger of facing a collapse in quality and morale similar to the collapse of the officer corps in the early 1970's.

So the question isn't whether things will be ugly after American forces leave Iraq. They probably will. The question, instead, is whether it makes sense to keep the war going for another year or two, which is all the time we realistically have.

Pessimists think that Iraq will fall into chaos whenever we leave. If so, we're better off leaving sooner rather than later. As a Marine officer quoted by James Fallows in the current Atlantic Monthly puts it, "We can lose in Iraq and destroy our Army, or we can just lose."

And there's a good case to be made that our departure will actually improve matters. As Mr. Murtha pointed out in his speech, the insurgency derives much of its support from the perception that it's resisting a foreign occupier. Once we're gone, the odds are that Iraqis, who don't have a tradition of religious extremism, will turn on fanatical foreigners like Zarqawi.

The only way to justify staying in Iraq is to make the case that stretching the U.S. army to its breaking point will buy time for something good to happen. I don't think you can make that case convincingly. So Mr. Murtha is right: it's time to leave.



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Iraq puts "cloud over everything" in Congress
By Jonathan Weisman and Charles Babington

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — After largely avoiding the subject since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, lawmakers are confronting the issue of President Bush's handling of the war. The start hasn't been pretty.

Political stunts by both parties have created an air of acrimony that is infecting the parties' entire agendas, and the war debate itself is obscuring every other issue in the capital.

The bitterness reached a new high — or a low — on Friday, when House Republicans forced a late-night vote on a resolution for immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, in an attempt to put Democrats on the spot.

The resolution failed, 403-3, but only after members nearly came to blows when a GOP newcomer suggested Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania — a Democrat, decorated Marine Corps veteran of the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and one of the House's most-respected military hawks — was a coward.

The GOP resolution grew out of a proposal made Thursday by Murtha that sought to force the president to withdraw the nearly 160,000 troops in Iraq "at the earliest practicable date."

"Iraq is now a cloud over everything," said Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan political analyst specializing in Congress. "It's the 800-pound gorilla in the room."

"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 agenda to overhaul Social Security and the tax code. "We can't even address the issues."

After simmering on Congress's back burner for months, the Iraq debate has eclipsed every other issue, slowing progress on some matters while stopping progress on others.

The GOP-led House and Senate are struggling to pass major tax legislation, an extension of the USA Patriot Act and a sweeping budget-cutting bill. Bush's top 2005 domestic agenda — revamping Social Security — has sunk from sight, and more recently his bipartisan panel on tax reform barely made a ripple when it issued recommendations.

GOP leaders view items such as the Patriot Act and the budget as too vital to fail in the end, but every endeavor is now made more difficult by the fracturing over Iraq — and just as the 2006 congressional elections begin to loom. Republicans have lost their anchor of the past five years — Bush's popularity — while Democrats still struggle to find their voice on the war. Neither side can dally for long, said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster.




"Iraq is now the dominant issue that is affecting voters, and it's affecting Bush's ratings," Hart said. "The public has reached a firm, fixed position on Iraq, and it's not going to change: This is not going to come to a successful conclusion, so how do we figure out how to get out of Iraq?"

GOP showing signs of wear

Until recently, only Democrats seemed to struggle to find their voice on Iraq, as Republicans were virtually united in backing Bush's policies. But as climbing U.S. military deaths there coincided with troubling revelations about prewar intelligence and Bush's plunging approval ratings, Republican cohesion began to fray.

Political developments in Iraq, such as the adoption of a new constitution, cannot overcome the impression left by the daily reports of suicide bombers and the recent milestone of the 2,000th U.S. troops lost, pollsters and political analysts say.

Democrats attack, Republicans change course

Public opinion has, in turn, emboldened Democrats to sharpen their attacks, and it has freed some Republicans — especially Northeastern moderates — to chart a new political course that separates them from the White House but wreaks havoc on the GOP's legislative agenda.

"The central new development is the decomposition of the president's support in Congress," said Ross Baker, a Rutgers University congressional expert. "I think there is a very acute realization on the part of Republicans that they no longer can hitch their careers to his popularity. That, combined with the new aggressiveness by the Democrats, means you're seeing basically a Bush agenda that is largely being derailed."

Politicians tried to calm the waters roiled by Friday's House maneuvering. GOP leaders had seized upon the impassioned call Thursday by Murtha for the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq, hoping to put Democrats on the spot by rushing a resolution to the floor calling on the administration to bring the troops home immediately.

"Today's debate in the House of Representatives shows the need for bipartisanship on the war in Iraq , instead of more political posturing," Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said in a statement Friday night hailing the bipartisan Senate vote earlier in the week that called on the administration to share more information on the war's progress and to make 2006 a year of significant transition away from U.S. military action.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said Saturday that the result of the debate was positive, an unambiguous, bipartisan show of resolve for the war effort. Only three Democrats, Jose Serrano of New York, Cynthia McKinney of Georgia and Robert Wexler of Florida voted for the withdrawal resolution. But Pence, too, noted the acrimony of the discourse. "We cannot do democracy without a heavy dose of civility," he said.

Acrimony's broad impact

That acrimony and the all-encompassing nature of the war debate are having a broad impact. Bush's recent globetrotting, in Latin America and Asia, has produced more stories on dissent over Iraq than on free trade, economic cooperation and China's move toward democracy.

When Bush's bipartisan panel on tax reform issued its recent recommendations to simplify the tax code, proposals to eliminate deductions for home-mortgage interest and state and local taxes might have been expected to create an uproar. Instead, the panel's report barely made a ripple.

The president's plan to trim promised Social Security benefits and add private investment accounts disappeared without a trace. After Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said any reform plan is dead until 2009, the comments were hardly noted.

Other high-profile legislative priorities have been slowed by a lack of attention from the leadership. Congressional aides released details last week from a compromise reached over the extension of the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law passed just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But the deal was not acted on quickly, and in ensuing days, provisions of the compromise attracted enough negative attention that a planned vote on the measure was delayed until at least next month.

House Republicans took weeks to garner enough votes to pass a five-year, $50 billion budget-cutting measure full of high-priority policy changes Bush has requested for welfare, Medicaid, agriculture supports and other entitlement programs. The Iraq-induced plunge in Bush's popularity emboldened moderates to oppose the most conservative parts of the bill.

On Friday, after the measure passed by two votes, Republican leaders hoped to highlight the victory at a "get out of town" rally. But they swamped their message by hastily putting the Iraq pullout resolution to a vote. That move also precluded an expected vote on a five-year, $56 billion measure to extend some of Bush's most-prized, first-term tax cuts.

Rothenberg, the political analyst, said such confusion does not bode well for the political fortunes of the beleaguered GOP.

"The public doesn't like mess," he said. "When they realize things are messy, they get frustrated and they arrive at the general conclusion that you blame the people you figure are in charge."

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americ...ticle328244.ece

The Independent & The Independent on Sunday
20 November 2005 23:20 Home > News > World > Americas

White House used 'gossip' to build case for war
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 21 November 2005

The controversy in America over pre-war intelligence has intensified, with revelations that the Bush administration exaggerated the claims of a key source on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, despite repeated warnings before the invasion that his information was at best dubious, if not downright wrong.

The disclosure, in The Los Angeles Times, came after a week of vitriolic debate on Iraq, amid growing demands for a speedy withdrawal of US troops and tirades from Bush spokesmen who all but branded as a traitor anyone who suggested that intelligence was deliberately skewed to make the case for war.

Yesterday Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, joined the fray, saying that talk of manipulation of intelligence "does great disservice to the country".

In Beijing, President George Bush said that a speedy pullout was "a recipe for disaster" - but the proportion of Americans wanting precisely that (52 per cent according to a new poll) is now higher than wanted similar action in 1970, at the height of the Vietnam war.

In an extraordinary detailed account, the Times charted the history of the source, codenamed Curveball, an Iraqi chemical engineer who arrived in Germany in 1999 seeking political asylum, and told the German intelligence service, the BND, how Saddam Hussein had developed mobile laboratories to produce biological weapons.

But by summer 2002, his claims had been thrown into grave doubt. Five senior BND officials told the newspaper they warned the CIA that Curveball never claimed to have been involved in germ weapons production, and never saw anyone else do so. His information was mostly vague, secondhand and impossible to confirm, they told the Americans - "watercooler gossip" according to one source.

Nonetheless the CIA would hear none of the doubts. President Bush referred to Curveball's tale in his January 2003 State of the Union address, and the alleged mobile labs were a central claim in the now notorious presentation to the United Nations by Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, in February 2003, making the case for war.

The senior BND officer who supervised Curveball's case said he was aghast when he watched Mr Powell overstate Curveball's case. "We were shocked," he said. "We had always told them it was not proven ... It was not hard intelligence."

The Iraqi, it now is clear, told his story to bolster his quest for a German residence visa. According to BND officials, he was psychologically unstable.

The debacle became complete when American investigators, sent after the invasion to find evidence of the WMDs, instead discovered Curveball's personnel file in Baghdad. It showed he had been a low-level trainee engineer, not a project chief or site manager, as the CIA had insisted. Moreover he had been dismissed in 1995 - just when he claimed to have begun work on bio-warfare trucks.

Curveball was also apparently jailed for a sex crime and then drove a Baghdad taxi.

The latest disclosures come at an especially delicate moment, as the Senate Intelligence Committee is about to resume a long-stalled inquiry into the administration's use of pre-war intelligence. Committee members said last week that the Curveball case would be a key part of their review. House Democrats are calling for a similar inquiry.

Washington is also still reverberating from the outburst of John Murtha, the veteran Democratic Congressman and defence hawk with close ties to the Pentagon, who last week urged an immediate "redeployment" of the 160,000 US troops in Iraq. Administration attempts to label him a defeatist have abjectly backfired. "I've never seen such an outpouring" of support, the decorated Marine Corps veteran, now 73, declared on NBC's Meet the Press programme yesterday. "It's not me, it's the public that's thirsting for answers."

No longer could President Bush "hide behind empty rhetoric". Mr Murtha said that his vote for war in October 2002 "was obviously a mistake. We were misled, they exaggerated the intelligence". He forecast that whatever the Bush administration said, "We'll be out of there by election day 2006" - a reference to next November's mid-term elections, when many Republicans fear that the Iraq debacle could drag the party down to defeat.

Intelligence red herrings

* Curveball: The Iraqi chemical engineer in his late twenties who defected to Germany in 1995, with tales of mobile germ weapons laboratories that were dubious before the invasion, and later shown to be false. The CIA brushed aside all doubts.

* Ahmed Chalabi: The exiled Iraqi leader won his way into the favour of the Pentagon. Defectors he brought to US attention proved to be false, as was his claim that US invaders would be met with bouquets.

* Iraq's quest to buy uranium from Niger: This claim was based on forged documents originating in Italy, but President Bush repeated it in his 2003 State of the Union speech.

* The aluminium tubes affair: Saddam was said to be seeking parts for a centrifuge for use in making a nuclear weapon. Analysts' doubts were disregarded.

The controversy in America over pre-war intelligence has intensified, with revelations that the Bush administration exaggerated the claims of a key source on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, despite repeated warnings before the invasion that his information was at best dubious, if not downright wrong.

The disclosure, in The Los Angeles Times, came after a week of vitriolic debate on Iraq, amid growing demands for a speedy withdrawal of US troops and tirades from Bush spokesmen who all but branded as a traitor anyone who suggested that intelligence was deliberately skewed to make the case for war.

Yesterday Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, joined the fray, saying that talk of manipulation of intelligence "does great disservice to the country".

In Beijing, President George Bush said that a speedy pullout was "a recipe for disaster" - but the proportion of Americans wanting precisely that (52 per cent according to a new poll) is now higher than wanted similar action in 1970, at the height of the Vietnam war.

In an extraordinary detailed account, the Times charted the history of the source, codenamed Curveball, an Iraqi chemical engineer who arrived in Germany in 1999 seeking political asylum, and told the German intelligence service, the BND, how Saddam Hussein had developed mobile laboratories to produce biological weapons.

But by summer 2002, his claims had been thrown into grave doubt. Five senior BND officials told the newspaper they warned the CIA that Curveball never claimed to have been involved in germ weapons production, and never saw anyone else do so. His information was mostly vague, secondhand and impossible to confirm, they told the Americans - "watercooler gossip" according to one source.

Nonetheless the CIA would hear none of the doubts. President Bush referred to Curveball's tale in his January 2003 State of the Union address, and the alleged mobile labs were a central claim in the now notorious presentation to the United Nations by Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, in February 2003, making the case for war.

The senior BND officer who supervised Curveball's case said he was aghast when he watched Mr Powell overstate Curveball's case. "We were shocked," he said. "We had always told them it was not proven ... It was not hard intelligence."

The Iraqi, it now is clear, told his story to bolster his quest for a German residence visa. According to BND officials, he was psychologically unstable.

The debacle became complete when American investigators, sent after the invasion to find evidence of the WMDs, instead discovered Curveball's personnel file in Baghdad. It showed he had been a low-level trainee engineer, not a project chief or site manager, as the CIA had insisted. Moreover he had been dismissed in 1995 - just when he claimed to have begun work on bio-warfare trucks.
Curveball was also apparently jailed for a sex crime and then drove a Baghdad taxi.

The latest disclosures come at an especially delicate moment, as the Senate Intelligence Committee is about to resume a long-stalled inquiry into the administration's use of pre-war intelligence. Committee members said last week that the Curveball case would be a key part of their review. House Democrats are calling for a similar inquiry.

Washington is also still reverberating from the outburst of John Murtha, the veteran Democratic Congressman and defence hawk with close ties to the Pentagon, who last week urged an immediate "redeployment" of the 160,000 US troops in Iraq. Administration attempts to label him a defeatist have abjectly backfired. "I've never seen such an outpouring" of support, the decorated Marine Corps veteran, now 73, declared on NBC's Meet the Press programme yesterday. "It's not me, it's the public that's thirsting for answers."

No longer could President Bush "hide behind empty rhetoric". Mr Murtha said that his vote for war in October 2002 "was obviously a mistake. We were misled, they exaggerated the intelligence". He forecast that whatever the Bush administration said, "We'll be out of there by election day 2006" - a reference to next November's mid-term elections, when many Republicans fear that the Iraq debacle could drag the party down to defeat.

Intelligence red herrings

* Curveball: The Iraqi chemical engineer in his late twenties who defected to Germany in 1995, with tales of mobile germ weapons laboratories that were dubious before the invasion, and later shown to be false. The CIA brushed aside all doubts.

* Ahmed Chalabi: The exiled Iraqi leader won his way into the favour of the Pentagon. Defectors he brought to US attention proved to be false, as was his claim that US invaders would be met with bouquets.

* Iraq's quest to buy uranium from Niger: This claim was based on forged documents originating in Italy, but President Bush repeated it in his 2003 State of the Union speech.

* The aluminium tubes affair: Saddam was said to be seeking parts for a centrifuge for use in making a nuclear weapon. Analysts' doubts were disregarded.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8093


November 21, 2005
Murtha Is Right
The Democratic Party "leadership" is wrong
by Justin Raimondo
"The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of us. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region."

- Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.)

If anyone other than John Murtha had called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, it wouldn't have been that big a deal. Murtha not only supported the war, he has been one of the biggest supporters of the Pentagon in Congress, praised by none other than Paul Wolfowitz for his "wonderful" support for the astronomical sums sucked up by the War Party in their never-ending quest for our tax dollars. It was Murtha who led the congressional Democrats in supporting Gulf War I, and, in his 2004 book, characterized a withdrawal from Iraq as potentially "disastrous" for our credibility in the Middle East and the world. (So much for efforts by the pro-war wing of the blogosphere to label him a peacenik because of his relatively mild procedural criticism of the Bush policy.) Rep. Murtha, like the rest of the country, has been on a pretty steep learning curve when it comes to Iraq in recent months. Furthermore, Murtha, as Andrea Mitchell pointed out the other day on Chris Matthews' Hardball, enjoys the confidence of top military commanders and Pentagon insiders and would not be speaking out if he didn't have their advance knowledge and implicit support – backing he acknowledged in his appearance on Meet the Press Sunday morning.

That's what this controversy is all about: the reemergence of opposition to the war from within the top echelons of the uniformed military, as well as the intelligence community and the Democratic Party. It was the generals, you'll remember, who opposed this war and pointed out our unpreparedness from the very beginning, starting with but not limited to Gen. Eric Shinseki, who was fired for saying we would need 200,000 troops for the occupation. Now that their predictions have come true, in spades, and our armed forces are being chewed up on the battlefields of Iraq, the uniformed wing of the Peace Party is returning for a second engagement, and they're bringing out the big guns.

The War Party is returning fire, however, and they aren't taking any prisoners. The GOP response was to draft a one-sentence resolution – "It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately" – and force a vote on it. Murtha, who had his own resolution calling for a phased withdrawal over six months, quickly disavowed the GOP maneuver, and it failed with only three votes in favor. The debate caused quite a ruckus on the House floor, however, as Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) rose to speak of a call she supposedly received from a Marine veteran:

"He asked me to send Congress a message – stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message – that cowards cut and run, Marines never do."

This is said of a 73-year-old Marine veteran who served over 30 years, the latter part of his military career in Vietnam, where he received a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. Democrats were outraged, but, tellingly, the Republicans did not relent until the president himself sought to calm the waters and praised Murtha's military service and his "thoughtful" views on Iraq. It was too late, however: the cow was already out of the barn. Earlier, White House spokesman Scott McClellan had said Murtha was "endorsing the policy positions" of antiwar filmmaker Michael Moore and proposing a "surrender to terrorists." And the vice president had ripped into Murtha and other Democrats who questioned the prewar intelligence that lured us into the Iraqi quagmire:

"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."

It isn't just the congressional Democrats who believe we were lied into war: the majority of Americans now realize the nature and scope of the deception. They know full well it is Cheney who is rewriting history – his own, as Murtha pointed out:

"I like guys who got five deferments and have never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what ought to be done."

Ouch!

The chickenhawk brigade is out in force, and they're clucking up a storm, but it seems to be having a boomerang effect – much like our own heavy-handed tactics in Iraq, where the pace and ferocity of attacks on U.S. forces has picked up considerably. The problem for Murtha, however, is as much with his own party as it is with the Republicans, as Reuters reported:

"But nervous Democrats did not rush to embrace Murtha's position either. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, asked if she agreed with Murtha's call for withdrawal, said only, 'As I said, that was Mr. Murtha's statement.' Other House Democrats followed suit."

As did Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and former party standard-bearer John Kerry, who both distanced themselves from Murtha's position. The Los Angeles Times informs us:

"Pelosi has dropped plans to seek a vote in early December on adopting a Democratic Conference position in support of Murtha's plan. … Fearful that the proposal would generate too much opposition among moderate Democrats, Pelosi now plans for the conference only to discuss and debate it, the source said."

"Fearful" – that about sums up the Pelosi Democrats, who stanched all debate until a rising tide of public outrage forced their hand. These, after all, are the same Democrats who voted for the war and supported an administration – the Clinton administration – that was responsible for an equally unjustified, albeit far less bloody, war of aggression in the Balkans. There, too, we invaded a country that had never been any threat to us, without UN authorization, moved by the same sort of arrogance that prompted then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to complain to Gen. Colin Powell:

"What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?"

And it's not as if any of these characters have any moral objections to our decade-long assault on the people of Iraq. Not many lifted so much as an eyebrow when Madame Albright, asked by Leslie Stahl if the death of half a million children – killed by sanctions – was "worth it," answered:


"I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it."

Now that Americans are dying, however, suddenly the price is too high. I guess it all depends on who's paying…

As appallingly immoral as the Clintonites were – and are – however, nothing beats the Bushies when it comes to sliming the antiwar opposition. Even after the president went out of his way to characterize Rep. Murtha's dissent as honorable, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pursued the disloyalty meme. After pointing out that Murtha's views are not shared by the majority of Democrats, Rumsfeld averred:

"We also have to understand that our words have effects. And put yourself in the shoes of a soldier who thinks that we're going to pull out precipitously or immediately, as some people have proposed. Obviously, they have to wonder whether what they're doing makes sense if that's the idea, if that's the debate."

Which means we can never breathe a word about withdrawing from Iraq, because, after all, our troops are so sensitive that such talk amounts to a form of "hate speech" directed at our guys and gals in uniform. It is, in effect, a kind of treason to even raise the subject of getting out, because that will undermine the mission, perhaps fatally. On these grounds, no criticism of any war, at any time, is permissible – which is precisely what our rulers would prefer. The only allowable "debate" is one over means, not ends: anything beyond that is out of bounds.

That, of course, is how we got into this war in the first place – and, if we keep playing by those rules, we'll never get out. The "debate" will pit Bush and Rumsfeld against the me-too tag-team of Pelosi and Kerry, forever bickering over how to "win" and whether the president needs to report on his "progress" – with the fundamental rightness of the mission never in dispute, not even for a moment.

This bipartisan unanimity over the inevitability of an interventionist foreign policy is what got us into Iraq, and its maintenance will keep us in there until doomsday. That's why Murtha's dissent has caused such a refreshing ruckus. The Establishment is shaken to its core because a non-marginal actor in what had been a cooperative bipartisan effort has suddenly defected. A long as he gets away with it he provides an example – and, in Murtha's case, even an inspiration – to others. The aura of inevitability – the idea that, of course we can't have it any other way – vanishes, and their game is up.

The War Party's grip on the policymaking apparatus was made possible by both parties, in pretty much equal measure over the years: that is what antiwar Democrats must recognize before they can take their party back from the Democratic Leadership Council and all the pro-war mandarins. Sure, the Republicans have been in the saddle recently, and it was George W. Bush who took us into this particular war: but what separates the "antiwar" Democrats from their ostensible opponents in the administration is hardly a commitment to a principled anti-interventionist stance. While the Democrats are eager to make political hay out of the disastrous occupation of Iraq, once they're back in power it will be their war – one they have pledged to prosecute more efficiently. A position in favor of rapid withdrawal, however, calls the whole paradigm of America the overweening superpower into question. Do we really have the right to decide the fate of Iraq – or of any other country, for that matter? That is the question Americans, in increasing numbers, are asking, and it is one that neither party has so far chosen to address, let alone answer.

Murtha made a trenchant point when he said that the American people are "way ahead" of their government on this issue – and one can only wonder how long this yawning gap can be maintained. The elites are committed to a foreign policy that assumes American hegemony and the ever-present possibility of a U.S. military strike somewhere in the world, at any given moment. To any half-normal, ordinary American, such a foreign policy is just asking for trouble. So far, the War Party has managed to keep a lid on the debate by controlling both parties and never letting anyone of consequence step out of line.

Murtha, however, has defied them and must either be humbled or appeased. There can be no middle ground. The monopoly enjoyed until now by the War Party – their iron grip on the discussion over foreign policy in this country – has been broken. The floodgates are opened, and the will of the people is about to come rushing through. Now it is up to the grassroots in both parties to give the Murthas – and the Walter B. Joneses – their full support.

This, the elites complain, is nothing less than a "return to isolationism" – "isolationism" being their scare-word of choice. What it means, however, is that Americans just want to mind their own business and turn to solving festering problems on the home front – problems that, in short, they have some real hope of solving. If this is "isolationism," then let the "leaders" of both parties make the most of it – and let us hope that we find our great white "isolationist" hope to lead us out of the interventionist, war-wracked wilderness. Who will step forward to fill the huge leadership gap and give voice to the popular will? We have never been more ready than we are at this moment.

http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=8097

November 21, 2005
We Must Hold the Scoundrels Accountable

by Paul Craig Roberts
The BBC reports that two former British government employees have been charged with violating the Official Secrets Act.

The Official Secrets Act is useful for protecting the British government from accountability. Anyone who reveals wrongdoing by government officials can be charged under the act.

The two men are charged with leaking a harmless memo, "Iraq in the Medium Term," that expresses British Foreign Office doubts about U.S. tactics in Iraq. The real crime is not the leak but her Majesty's government's continuing support for a policy that the British government knows to be illegal and bulging with war crimes. It is Prime Minister Tony Blair and his ministers who should be facing charges.

As the publication by the London Times (May 1, 2005) of the super secret Downing Street Memo (July 23, 2002) made clear, prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the head of British intelligence returned from meetings in Washington to tell the British cabinet that the Bush administration first made the decision to invade Iraq and then manufactured the "intelligence" to justify the decision.

The British government knew in advance that the invasion was wrong. Members of the British cabinet were concerned that British participation in an act of naked aggression would expose British government officials to war crimes charges. Nevertheless, Blair insisted that the UK had to support Bush. Little doubt but Blair was concerned that otherwise his political retirement would not be secured with U.S. corporate directorships.

Consequently, the U.S. and UK governments invaded a country for reasons that were different from the fabricated reasons used to make the case to the public. Thus did the highest officials in the two governments commit a plethora of crimes.

Under the Nuremberg standard, it is a war crime to initiate military aggression.

It is a criminal act both in the U.S. and the UK to commit military forces to action under false pretenses.

Many aspects of the conduct of the war are criminal. Torture, murder of civilians, corruption in contracts. Prosecutors could build a list of charges against President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Prime Minister Blair.

In England it is not Blair who is on trial for participating in what he knew was a wrongful act that has resulted in thousands of deaths. It is not the crimes committed in secret that get punished. The people who are punished are the ones who leak memos that reveal wrongdoing has occurred.

Blair may escape punishment for his treachery to the British and Iraqi people. Bush, however, may not. One of the neocon architects of the illegal invasion, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, has been indicted on a peripheral issue. Another of the neocon architects, Douglas Feith, is being investigated by the inspector general of the Department of Defense at the insistence of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee. Feith is suspected of overseeing the task of creating the false intelligence.

Bush's public support has plummeted. A majority of Americans believe Bush lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, and now they doubt his integrity. Trapped in their lies, Bush and Cheney are lashing out at critics, proving once again the truth of Samuel Johnson's 18th century observation that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a former Marine, has had enough of the senseless killing, maiming, and expense of the Iraq war, which he termed "a flawed policy wrapped in illusion."

Murtha, a strong supporter of the U.S. military, has realized along with Gen. George W. Casey that U.S. occupation, not terrorism, is the driving force behind the Iraq insurgency.

On Nov. 17, Murtha declared: "We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people, or the Persian Gulf region."

A new CNN/USA Today Gallup poll shows that the American public agrees with Murtha. Fifty-two percent of respondents believe all U.S. soldiers should be withdrawn immediately from Iraq or over the next 12 months. Only 38 percent believe the troops should remain in Iraq.

The neocon architects of the war believed that the "cakewalk" invasion of Iraq would flow seamlessly into the overthrow of the Syrian and Iranian governments, making the Middle East safe for whatever policy Israel wished to pursue. Instead, the invasion has poisoned Muslims against America and created chaos and instability that play into the hands of Osama bin Laden.

The Bush administration believed that the euphoria of a "cakewalk" conquest would prevent the nonexistence of weapons of mass destruction from becoming an issue. Success would mask the lies, and the issue of accountability would not arise.

Success, however, was never in the cards. Congress has caught on, and pressure is mounting to bring our troops home. The determination of the Bush administration to discredit all critics resulted in illegal acts and Libby's indictment. The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has announced the formation of a new grand jury to continue the investigation of illegal acts by Bush administration high officials.

As events unfold, we must keep in mind that matters do not end with bringing home the troops and punishing the administration officials who blew the cover of a covert U.S. agent. The worst transgression was the Bush administration's decision to deceive our nation in order to use a war in Iraq to pursue an undeclared agenda in the Middle East. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld committed treason. They still have not told us the real reason they were so determined to invade Iraq that they used falsified intelligence to justify a war of aggression. We must find out their real agenda and hold them fully accountable for their crimes.

If low-level British government employees are to be punished for leaking a memo that had no adverse consequences except for the reputation of Blair and his cabinet, the monsters who started a war that has killed and maimed tens of thousands must be held accountable.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1121/p01s02-usfp.html
USA > Foreign Policy
from the November 21, 2005 edition

Why Iraq war support fell so fast

US public support has dropped faster than during the Vietnam and Korean wars, polls show.

By Linda Feldmann | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – The three most significant US wars since 1945 - Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq - share an important trait: As casualties mounted, American public support declined.
In the two Asian wars, that decline proved irreversible. With Iraq, the additional bad news for President Bush is that support for the war in Iraq has eroded more quickly than it did in those two conflicts.

For Mr. Bush, low support for his handling of the war - now at 35 percent, according to the latest Gallup poll - has depleted any reserves of "political capital" he had from his reelection and threatens his entire agenda. Last week's bombshell political developments, both the bipartisan Senate resolution calling for more progress reports on Iraq and the stunning call for withdrawal by a Democratic hawk, Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, have not helped.

But the seeds of Bush's woes were planted early on. Just seven months into the Iraq war, Gallup found that the percentage of Americans who viewed the sending of troops as a mistake had jumped substantially - from 25 percent in March 2003 to 40 percent in October 2003.

In June 2004, for the first time, more than half the public (54 percent) thought the US had made a mistake, a figure that holds today.

With Vietnam, that 50-percent threshold was not crossed until August 1968, several years in; with Korea, it was March 1952, about a year and a half into US involvement.

Why did Americans go sour on the Iraq war so quickly, and what can Bush do about it?

John Mueller, an expert on war and public opinion at Ohio State University, links today's lower tolerance of casualties to a weaker public commitment to the cause than was felt during the two previous, cold war-era conflicts. The discounting of the main justifications for the Iraq war - alleged weapons of mass destruction and support for international terrorism - has left many Americans skeptical of the entire enterprise.

In fact, "I'm impressed by how high support still is," Professor Mueller says. He notes that some Americans' continuing connection of the Iraq war to the war on terror is fueling that support.

In addition, intense political polarization gives Bush resilient support among Republicans.

But among Democratic voters who supported the US-led invasion initially, most have long abandoned the president. In polls, independent voters now track mostly with Democrats. And, analysts say, once someone loses confidence in the conduct of a war, it is exceedingly difficult to woo them back.

"[Bush's] best option is bringing peace and security to Iraq," says Darrell West, a political scientist at Brown University. "If he can accomplish that, people will think the war's going well and that he made the right decision. But that's proving almost impossible to achieve."

Pollster Daniel Yankelovich, writing in the September/October 2005 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, states that "in my judgment the Bush administration has about a year before the public's impatience will force it to change course."

Not helping the president has been the modern phenomenon of 24/7 cable news coverage, which brings instant magnification to the daily death toll and the longstanding media practice of focusing on negative developments.

And there is the lingering public memory of Vietnam itself, which, in the Iraq war, may have made the public warier sooner of getting stuck in a quagmire.

Scholars like Mueller at Ohio State speak of an emerging "Iraq syndrome" that will have consequences for US foreign policy long after American forces pull out - particularly in Washington's ability to deal forcefully with other countries it views as threatening, such as North Korea and Iran.

"Iraq syndrome" seems to be playing out, too, with the American public. The just-released quadrennial survey of American attitudes toward foreign policy - produced jointly by the Pew Research Center and the Council on Foreign Relations - shows a revival of isolationism. Now, 42 percent of Americans say the US should "mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own" - up from 30 percent in 2002.

According to Pew Research Center director Andrew Kohut, that 42 percent figure is also similar to how the US public felt in the mid-1970s, at the end of the Vietnam War, and in the 1990s, at the end of the cold war.


SOURCE: THE GALLUP ORGANIZATION; RICH CLABAUGH - STAFF

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Bush Keeps Jabbing at War Critics
--------------------

He contends that leaving Iraq too soon would only strengthen terrorists, but he calls disagreements over the war a 'worthy debate.'

By Josh Meyer and Peter Wallsten
Times Staff Writers

November 21 2005

WASHINGTON — President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld took on congressional critics of their war policy Sunday, saying that U.S. troops would remain in Iraq until the Baghdad government was ready to take charge, and that those calling for a hasty withdrawal were jeopardizing the safety of Americans abroad and at home.

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Iraqi Shi'i, Kurdish, Sunni Leaders All Agreed in Cairo There Should Be Timetable of Withdrawal of Foreign Forces, Supported Resistance, Condemned Terrorism

Iraqis Say There Should Be Troop Timetable

By SALAH NASRAWI Associated Press Writer

Nov 21, 2005, 11:30 AM EST

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Leaders of Iraq's sharply divided Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis, seeking common ground for their political future together, agreed Monday there should be a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops, and that resistance was the right of all - but that acts of terror should be condemned.

After hours of negotiations at the Arab League, the participants in a national accord conference reached a final statement aimed at showing the points of agreement between the communities.

The three-day gathering was held to prepare for a wider conference due to be held in February in Iraq, part of a U.S.-backed Arab League attempt to bring the communities closer together and assure Sunni Arab participation in a political process now dominated by Iraq's Shi'i majority and large Kurdish minority.

The participants in Cairo agreed on "calling for the withdrawal of foreign troops according to a timetable, through putting in place an immediate national program to rebuild the armed forces ... control the borders and the security situation" and end terror attacks.

"The Iraqi people are looking forward to the day when the foreign forces will leave Iraq, when its armed and security forces will be rebuilt and when they can enjoy peace and stability and get rid of terrorism," the statement said.

Sunni leaders have been pressing the Shi'i-majority government to agree to a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops. The statement recognized that goal, but did not lay down a specific time - reflecting instead the government's stance that Iraqi security forces must be built up first (which is basically the US position).

On Monday, Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr suggested U.S.-led forces should able to leave Iraq by the end of next year, saying the one-year extension of the mandate for multinational force in Iraq by the U.N. Security Council earlier this month could be the last.

"By mid next year we will be 75 percent done in building our forces and by the end of next year it will be fully ready," he told the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera.

The conference's final statement also stated that "resistance is a legitimate right for all people" - a nod to Sunni Arab leaders who have sought to distinguish Iraqi resistance fighters they say are resisting the U.S. presence in Iraq from terrorism.

But the statement added, "Terrorism is not legitimate resistance and thus we condemn terrorism and the acts of violence, killings and kidnappings that target Iraqi citizens; civil, governmental and humanitarian organizations; national wealth and houses of worships. We ask that they be immediately confronted."

The Cairo meeting was marred by differences between participants at times and at one point saw Shi'i and Kurdish delegates storm out of a closed session when one of the speakers said they had sold out to the Americans.

A major goal of the conference was to resolve who can attend the wider gathering in February. Shi'is have been skeptical of the conference from the start and strongly opposed participation by Sunni Arab officials from the former Saddam regime or from pro-resistance groups.

The statement also stressed the participants commitment to the Iraq's unity. It called for releasing all "innocent detainees" who have not been convicted by courts and asked that allegations of torture be investigated and those responsible be held accountable.

The statement also demanded "an immediate stop to arbitrary raids and arrests without a documented judicial order."

Participants asked the Arab countries to support Iraq by eliminating or reducing its debts and strengthening the Arab diplomatic presence in Baghdad.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2101375_pf.html

Opening the Door to Debate, and Then Shutting It

By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, November 22, 2005; A04



Vice President Cheney protested yesterday that he had been misunderstood when he said last week that critics of the White House over Iraq were "dishonest and reprehensible."

What he meant to say, he explained to his former colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute, was that those who question the White House's use of prewar intelligence were not only "dishonest and reprehensible" but also "corrupt and shameless."

It was about as close as the vice president gets to a retraction.

President Bush, traveling in China on Sunday, appealed for calm in the acidic debate over Iraq, which reached its low point Friday night when Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), in office little more than 100 days, implied that Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a decorated Vietnam veteran, was a coward. Bush said there should be an "honest, open" discussion about Iraq and "people should feel comfortable about expressing their opinions" without their patriotism being questioned. "This is a worthy debate," he asserted.

Cheney tried to follow his boss's edict. "I do not believe it is wrong to criticize the war on terror or any aspect thereof," he said.

But exactly three minutes later, the vice president added this caveat: "What is not legitimate, and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible, is the suggestion by some U.S. senators that the president . . . misled the American people on prewar intelligence." This, he said, "is revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety."

He floated the notion that "one might also argue that untruthful charges against the commander in chief have an insidious effect on the war effort itself" -- before adding: "I'm unwilling to say that."

It was a delicate act: Celebrating debate and criticism while declaring that a key element of that debate -- whether the administration exaggerated prewar intelligence about Iraq -- is off-limits. But Cheney achieved it with matter-of-fact indignation.

As vice president, Cheney has always played the hard-line Cardinal Ratzinger to Bush's sunny John Paul II. Before the war, Cheney asserted that Iraq had "reconstituted nuclear weapons." Since the invasion, he has gone further than others in the administration in asserting Iraq's ties to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He caused a stir when he directed an obscenity at a Democrat on the Senate floor, and he has sparred with senators in both parties in his bid to block a ban on torture.

The single-mindedness has appeared to harm Cheney's image: A poll this month, after the indictment of Cheney's chief of staff in the Valerie Plame affair, found that only one in four Americans had a positive view of the vice president. Cheney has retreated from public questioning and interviews, while Colin L. Powell's former chief of staff accuses him of leading a "cabal" and longtime colleague Brent Scowcroft says he no longer knows his old friend.

If Cheney still has friends in Washington, they are to be found at the AEI, with which his wife, Lynne, is still affiliated. Norm Ornstein and the other AEI fellows in the first two rows led a standing ovation for Cheney when he entered. Introducing Cheney, AEI President Christopher DeMuth was lavish: "We have greatly admired and hereby heartily salute the leadership and fortitude of our esteemed former colleague, who is in the arena to America's great good fortune."

Cheney had little time for such folderol. In his 19-minute speech -- aides made clear there was not even the possibility of him taking questions -- he doled out the bare necessity of thanks, then stuck closely to his written text, stealing only quick glances at his largely silent audience.

Like Bush, Cheney praised Murtha as "a good man, a Marine, a patriot" and said his call for an immediate pullback from Iraq is part of "an entirely legitimate discussion." Similarly, he said, there is nothing wrong "debating whether the United States and our allies should have liberated Iraq in the first place."

The concessions were done. Cheney then branded any accusation that the administration "distorted, hyped or fabricated" intelligence as not only "utterly false" but also illegitimate, dishonest, reprehensible, irresponsible, corrupt, shameless, insidious and, quoting Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), "a lie."

The vice president's string of adjectives did not sway the Democrats from the behavior Cheney had deplored. An hour after the vice president spoke, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) fired off a six-page list of administration claims that seemed to overstate the prewar intelligence. "They continue to ignore the facts and lash out at those who raise legitimate questions," Reid said.

It may not qualify as the "worthy debate" Bush had in mind, but there could be no doubt both sides took seriously his admonition to "feel comfortable" expressing themselves.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/...tem/itemID/9951

American Majority Criticizes Bush’s Handling of Iraq

(Angus Reid Global Scan) – Many adults in the United States remain dissatisfied with George W. Bush’s approach to the coalition effort, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports. 51 per cent of respondents rate the president’s handling of the situation in Iraq as poor.

The coalition effort against Saddam Hussein’s regime was launched in March 2003. At least 2,095 American soldiers have died during the military operation, and more than 15,500 troops have been injured.

On Nov. 17, Democratic Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha—a Vietnam War veteran—introduced a bill seeking the withdrawal of U.S. troops stationed in Iraq "at the earliest practicable date." Yesterday, Murtha defended his call, saying, "The public turned against this war before I said it. The public is emotionally tied into finding a solution to this thing, and that’s what I hope this administration is going to find out.’’

On Nov. 20, U.S. president George W. Bush called Murtha "a fine man, a good man, who served our country with honour and distinction," adding, "I disagree with his position. An immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq will only strengthen the terrorists’ hand in Iraq, and in the broader war on terror. That’s the goal of the enemy."

Yesterday in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney defended the Bush administration’s decision to go to war, adding, "The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight. But any suggestion that pre-war information was distorted, hyped or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false."

Polling Data

How would you rate U.S. president George W. Bush’s handling of the situation in Iraq?

Excellent
16%

Good
17%

Fair
15%

Poor
51%



Source: Rasmussen Reports
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,000 American adults, conducted on Nov. 16 and Nov. 17, 2005. Margin of error is 3 per cent.

http://www.antiwar.com/sperry/?articleid=8105

November 22, 2005
Ever-Evolving Excuses for War

by Paul Sperry
In the now-confirmed absence of any of the key reasons the administration took America to war in Iraq, officials are scrambling to come up with new ones after the fact, and some of them are quite amusing.

On Sunday, a desperate Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld grasped for excuses in a tough interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

Blitzer noted Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction or secret deals with Osama bin Laden to slip them to his terrorists as claimed. That was all hocus-pocus, right Mr. Secretary?

"It's clear the intelligence was wrong," Rumsfeld winced.

But then he maintained that those were not the reasons we went to war in Iraq.

"The reason the United States went to war, the president has announced and said it repeatedly," the secretary started, wearily. "There were 17 resolutions in the UN that were ignored by Saddam Hussein. Our planes were being shot at on a regular basis in the Operation Southern Watch and Operation Northern Watch. Saddam Hussein was giving $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers. Iraq was on the terrorist list. Iraq had used chemical weapons against its own people and its neighbors."

Scramble, scramble. (Note that the shopworn "liberating the Iraqi people" is missing from this latest litany of picayune excuses for attacking Iraq in the middle of a war on al-Qaeda.)

So to hear Rumsfeld, America sacrificed a full division of its soldiers and spilled the blood of countless Iraqi civilians – while diverting precious resources from the hunt for bin Laden – to protect Israel from Saddam's checkbook, which is dwarfed by that of the Islamic Development Bank, which has distributed more than $250 million to the families of Palestinian "martyrs" from two large intifada funds it manages.

Oh, that's right, Saddam's hapless anti-aircraft defenses were taking potshots at our planes patrolling the no-fly zones. Yawn. When hadn't they? Their potshots had always been a sign of frustration and proof that we had Saddam effectively boxed in,­ just as Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell told us before the war, before they joined in the administration's campaign of wholesale deceit to sell it.

"We have made progress on the UN sanctions," Rice told CNN on July 29, 2001. "In terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."

In other words, he was a toothless tyrant, effectively disarmed in the first Gulf war.

But recall how after 9/11 we were told Saddam had somehow regained control of "the northern part of his country," where he was allegedly harboring an al-Qaeda chemical-weapons training camp – another charge that proved to be fantastical.

Then there was Powell, who told reporters at a Feb. 24, 2001, press conference in Egypt that UN sanctions had kept "in check" Saddam's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction.

"Frankly, they have worked," he said. "He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction." In fact, Powell added, Saddam was so effectively defanged that he was unable to even "project conventional power against his neighbors."

Some threat.

Powell should have gone back and read whatever intelligence he was reading at the time he made that statement before going to the UN on the eve of war to try to convince it sanctions were not working – and so much so, he claimed, that the wily Saddam was brewing anthrax on the beds of 18-wheelers and loading the deadly germs onto toy airplanes to attack the continental United States. Powell was right the first time, of course, and he's still living down his Looney Tunes presentation at the United Nations.

In short, the UN sanctions and no-fly zones were working. And my, were they cheap compared with the hundreds of billions in tax dollars we're forking over now to rebuild Iraq (after blowing it all to hell).

But with no new intelligence – other than crude forgeries and rumors from crazed, drunken Iraqi defectors named "Curveball," that is – President Bush decided that "Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country and our people," and must be stopped at once.

He emptied the treasury and, again, spilled the blood of a full division of American soldiers and countless innocent Iraqi civilians only to find out Saddam Hussein was a threat to nobody but his dentist.

In the end, the toothless tinhorn Bush captured didn't have any weapons of mass destruction or secret deals to slip them to bin Laden. In fact, he didn't even have programs under way to make any banned weapons.

Saddam is now in our custody, availing himself of much-needed free dental care. But bin Laden, the real monster, is still at large, sharpening his fangs for another attack – while administration officials go right on spinning their yarn of deceit.

Biden Criticizes Bush Policy on Iraq but Opposes a Pullout Deadline

By Chris Cillizza

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. added his voice to the growing chorus of Democratic critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, but he rejected calls for a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The Delaware senator's luncheon remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York came on the heels of an address by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) last week in which he advocated an immediate drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq.

Biden and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), both of whom are mentioned as potential candidates for the party's 2008 presidential nomination, praised Murtha yesterday even as they disagreed with the specifics of his proposal. Biden said he shared the "frustration" voiced by Murtha and others but was "not there yet" on Murtha's policy prescriptions. Clinton predicted that a hasty withdrawal would "cause more problems for us in America."

Biden, who is perhaps the Democratic Party's most visible spokesman on foreign policy matters, said that President Bush "has to abandon his grandiose goals" for transforming Iraq and the Middle East and define a more realistic mission.

Rather than attempting to transform Iraq into a "model democracy," Biden suggested that Bush spend the next six months accomplishing three goals: creating a "political settlement" that draws support from the rival Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds who make up Iraq; bolstering the ability of the Iraqi government to "deliver basic services"; and accelerating the training of Iraqi troops in order to facilitate a handover of full military authority to them.

Should Bush follow that blueprint, Biden held out hope that "we can start climbing out of the hole he has dug with most of our interest intact."

On the question of troop withdrawal, which is rapidly becoming a litmus test for aspiring national politicians among the Democratic Party's liberal wing, Biden sought a middle ground.

Once an advocate for increased troop levels, Biden said he no longer supports that idea but maintained that "the hard truth is that our large military presence in Iraq is necessary." A quick withdrawal or a must-meet deadline "divorced from progress . . . would doom us," he added.

Biden also said, however, that he expected 50,000 troops to be redeployed from Iraq by the end of 2006 with the remaining 100,000 out of the country by January 2007. A force of 20,000 to 40,000 would remain in the country to continue to train Iraqi forces and "prevent jihadists from establishing a permanent base in Iraq."

Clinton, like Biden, is trying to find a way to balance criticism of the Bush administration's Iraq policy with an unwillingness to call for a full-scale troop withdrawal.

"Until they vote for a government, I don't know that we will have adequate information about how prepared they are," Clinton said yesterday.

Several other Democrats weighing presidential bids, including Sens. Russell Feingold (Wis.) and John F. Kerry (Mass.), have proposed a pullout beginning after next month's parliamentary elections. Former senator John Edwards (N.C.) recently declared that he had made a mistake by supporting the use-of-force resolution against Iraq in 2002.


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Hilary Clinton: Immediate Iraq Exit a Mistake
By JIM FITZGERALD, Associated Press Writer
Mon Nov 21, 4:44 PM ET



Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be "a big mistake."

The New York Democrat said she respects Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., the Vietnam veteran and hawkish ex-Marine who last week called for an immediate troop pullout. But she added: "I think that would cause more problems for us in America."

"It will matter to us if Iraq totally collapses into civil war, if it becomes a failed state the way Afghanistan was, where terrorists are free to basically set up camp and launch attacks against us," she said.

At the same time, Clinton said the Bush administration's pledge to stay in Iraq "until the job is done" amounts to giving the Iraqis "an open-ended invitation not to take care of themselves."

Clinton, who is running for re-election to the Senate and is seen as a likely presidential candidate in 2008, suggested that the United States wait for Iraq's Dec. 15 elections for an indication about how soon the Iraqis can take over.

"Until they vote for a government, I don't know that we will have adequate information about how prepared they are," she said.

She blamed the problems facing the United States in Iraq on "poor decision-making by the administration," but added: "My view is we have to work together to fix these problems."




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Cheney tries to raise the stakes
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Amid growing pressure to begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq and mounting charges by Democrats that senior administration officials misled the nation into war there, Vice President Dick Cheney appears to have taken charge of defending his boss and taking on the critics.

In his second public appearance in less than a week, Cheney told a specially invited audience at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Monday that suggestions "by some US senators" that President George W Bush or any member of his administration "purposely misled the American people" before the war was "dishonest and reprehensible".

"The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight, but any suggestion that pre-war information was distorted, hyped or



fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false," he said. "... This is revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety."

But in what was a clear attempt to refocus the debate in a less partisan way, Cheney, who left AEI without taking any questions from the audience, focused more on the possibly disastrous consequences of a premature US withdrawal that he predicted would bring al-Qaeda to power in Iraq.

"Would the United States and other free nations be better off or worse off with [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi, (Osama) bin Laden and (Ayman al-) Zawahiri in control of Iraq?" he asked. "Would be we safer or less safe with Iraq ruled by men intent on the destruction of our country?"

As indicated by his hasty departure from the podium in what could only be considered the friendliest audience imaginable, Cheney's leadership and visibility in the administration's counteroffensive represent something of a gamble.

Not only have the vice president's public approval ratings fallen further and faster than Bush's in recent months - according to one recent poll, only 19% of respondents said they held a "favourable" opinion of the vice president - but his office has also been identified by some former officials, as well as Democrats, as being the focal point for the manipulation of intelligence before the war.

Cheney's strong opposition, which he has so far failed to discuss publicly, to pending legislation that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of suspected terrorists has also made him a lightning rod for growing numbers of Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

Cheney's appearance Monday was the latest in a series over the past 10 days by top US officials, including Bush himself, Rumsfeld, and national security adviser Stephen Hadley. The purpose was twofold: to rebut growing charges that the administration manipulated the pre-war intelligence on former President Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) programs and ties to al-Qaeda to rally the country to war, and to counter growing pressure in Congress to begin withdrawing substantial numbers of troops of Iraq after next month's elections.

While the two are not directly related, recent public opinion polls show that as a majority of the US public has come to believe that the administration did indeed exaggerate the intelligence, a slightly greater majority has come to favour withdrawing US troops sooner rather than later.

The administration was caught off-guard early last week after a majority of Republican senators joined Democrats in voting for a resolution that requires it to establish benchmarks for transferring security functions to Iraqis during 2006 and report on progress towards meeting those benchmarks.

While that was widely interpreted as a Republican vote of little confidence in Bush's handling of the war, passions reached a high point late last week after a senior Democratic hawk, Rep John "Jack" Murtha, called for Washington to withdraw its roughly 150,000 troops from Iraq over a six-month period beginning after the December 15 elections. Murtha's plan would leave a "quick-reaction" force and an "over-the-horizon" Marine presence to prevent al-Qaeda or its affiliates from taking over Iraq or using its territory.

The administration and Republican lawmakers reacted initially with fury, accusing the highly decorated Marine combat veteran of "cutting and running" and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

After a raucous debate in the House of Representatives over these attacks on November 18, however, party leaders appeared to realize that taking on someone with Murtha's record and stature was a fool's errand, as an unnamed Republican aide told the Wall Street Journal. "If the House of Representatives want to make Jack Murtha the face of the Democratic Party," he said, "then Republicans will really be trounced next year."

That appeared to be the assessment by the White House as well. By Sunday, Bush himself was calling Murtha a "fine man, a good man" and insisted that the pros and cons of withdrawal constituted a legitimate subject of debate.

In his AEI address, Cheney followed the same line. Murtha, he said, was "a good man, a Marine, a patriot, and he's taking a clear stand in an entirely legitimate discussion".

The rest of his speech, however, was boilerplate Republican fire and brimstone, directed particularly against critics who charge that the administration hyped the pre-war intelligence and against the "self-defeating pessimism" of those who favor withdrawal.

"The [terrorists'] only chance for victory is for us to walk away from the fight," he said. "They have contempt for our values, they doubt our strength, and they believe that America will lose our nerve and let down our guard," citing a letter purportedly written by the group's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and allegedly intercepted by US forces last July.

"But this nation has made a decision; we will not retreat in the face of brutality, and we will never live at the mercy of tyrants or terrorists," he declared.

Consistent with previous attacks on the critics, Cheney argued that both Democrats and Republicans agreed at the time that Congress voted to authorize military action against Saddam in October 2002, that Iraq's WMD programs constituted a "threat", particularly after the September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks.

But, unlike recent attacks, he did not assert that lawmakers in Congress had seen the same intelligence that the administration had before the war, a particularly inflammatory charge that has been strongly rejected by Democrats, much of the media, and even some Republicans in recent days.

And while he insisted that the administration had handled the intelligence in good faith, he confined his remarks solely to the pre-war assessment of Saddam's WMD programs, omitting any mention of his own repeated assertions, long rejected by US intelligence agencies, that Sadam worked closely with al-Qaeda, possibly in preparing or sponsoring the 9/11 attacks themselves.

Cheney's decision to harp more on the prospect of an al-Qaeda takeover of Iraq suggests that he and his neo-conservative supporters believe that prospect to be the strongest barrier to a total collapse of their Iraq policy. In a series of articles and media appearances over the last several days, prominent neo-conservatives such as AEI fellow Richard Perle, and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, have made the same argument.

"What would be intolerable would be to lose to the terrorists in Iraq," wrote Kristol and another prominent neo-conservative, Robert Kagan, in The Weekly Standard's lead editorial this week. "Immediate withdrawal from Iraq is a prescription for catastrophe."

At the same time, the fact that the war's defenders have moved so quickly to this argument is testimony to how swiftly the political climate has changed here.

(Inter Press Service)

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/899...49D15893ECE.htm

Iran urges Iraq to set pullout timetable

Tuesday 22 November 2005, 18:56 Makka Time, 15:56 GMT
Khamenei ® called on Talabani to press for a timetable

Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called on visiting Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to press for a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq.

On Tuesday, Khamenei also argued it was the US that was to blame for the ongoing violence in Iraq, amid efforts by Talabani to win Iranian help in combatting the fighting ravaging his country.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran holds the American government responsible for the suffering of the Iraqi people and all the crimes and assassinations now being committed in Iraq," Khamenei was quoted as saying by official media.

"The presence of foreign troops is damaging for the Iraqis, and the Iraqi government could ask for their departure by proposing a timetable," Khamenei said, adding: "The US and Britain will eventually have to leave Iraq with a bitter experience."

Khamenei told Talabani, the first Iraqi head of state to visit Iran in nearly four decades, his country "would be empowered by the development, security, independence and the empowerment of Iraq".

Ties between Iran and Iraq's new authorities have been close, with Baghdad's new government dominated by Iranian-backed Kurdish figures such as Talabani and Shia parties that were backed by Tehran during Saddam Hussein's rule.

Key number

Iraqi political analyst Awni al-Qalamchi said the Iranian statements are designed to tell the US that Iran is a key player in Iraqi politics.

Iran-backed Shia have dominated
Iraqi politics since the invasion

"Iran helped the US occupying Iraq, just like other Arab countries, hoping to benefit politically and financially," he told Aljazeera.net.


"It gained great influence in Iraq when all the political parties it backs ascended to power.



"But when the US realised Iran had become more influential than it should be, it tried to put limits to it.

"Khamenei's statements aim to tell the Americans that Iran is still there and can cause you a headache in Iraq.

"I think Khamenei's statement does not reflect Iran's real position and ambitions in Iraq."

Deal

Despite Talabani's statements denying Iran's involvement in Iraq's internal issues, the visit is seen as an attempt to put more pressure on Tehran, whose relations with the US have come to a standstill because of Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Talabani and Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied in joint statements the US-UK accusation that Iran is interfering in Iraq's internal affairs.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran holds the American government responsible for the suffering of the Iraqi people and all the crimes and assassinations now being committed in Iraq"

Ali Khamenei,
Iran's spiritual leader

Talabani said he is confident Iran will provide Iraq with essential help in combatting "terrorism in Iraq".

"Iraq's President Jalal Talabani does not enjoy the freedom to make his own decisions. We all know that he cannot make any move without US approval," Iraqi political analyst Fadil al-Rubei told Aljazeera.net.

"What is the secret behind promoting Iran's innocence from the US's accusations? I believe that it is a deal.

"The US will help polishing Iran's stained image among Iraqis, in return Iran would send its murderers and killing squads to fight the Iraqi resistance in Falluja and other western Iraqi cities," he said.

Support

Ali al-Awsie, a member of the ruling Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), hailed Khamenei's statement, stressing it reflected the hopes of every Iraqi.

"Khamenei's statements come after the Iraqi national reconciliation conference in Cairo, where all Iraqi factions agreed on asking the US occupation for a withdrawal timetable," he told Aljazeera.net.

But the Iranian-backed SCIRI and other ruling parties in Iraq do not want foreign troops to leave before powerful and effective Iraqi forces are deployed.

"We seek effective guarantees that the situation will be properly maintained after the occupation troops are gone," al-Awsie said.

Aljazeera.net's Ahmed Janabi contributed to this report.

Murtha's Reality Check

By Terry M. Neal

Despite Rep. John Murtha's (D-Pa.) call to bring home the troops in Iraq, the consensus view in Washington is that the Democratic Party has no unified message on the war beyond criticizing the Bush administration's handling of it.

And that lack of message, many pundits and commentators are saying, will ultimately undermine the Democrats' ability to win the debate. Voters want solutions, not just criticism.

Murtha, a man most Americans had never heard of until last week, moved the debate forward by a mile. Because of the credibility he has among the Pentagon brass and GOP hawks, his call received far more attention than recent remarks by a number of Democrats with more prominent names (including Sen. John Kerry and his former running mate, John Edwards) who have renounced their votes on the original Iraq war resolution and called for a return of some or all of the troops on some sort of timetable.

The issue for Democrats isn't lack of message so much as it is lack of unity on what solutions they should be advocating for Iraq.

A senior Democratic staff member in the House told Talking Points on Monday that "generally there is no question that people want to get a change in the policy on Iraq. Clearly, what Bush is doing on stay-the-course is not working. There is some disagreement within the caucus about how to achieve that. Some want immediate pullout, some a longer timetable. Some thinking that [a timetable] is not the way to go at all."

The source, who asked to remain anonymous because it might displease House leaders to be talking about strategy and discord within the party, said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) has called a meeting of House Democratic leaders on Dec. 7 to begin trying to build consensus on what to do with the troops in Iraq. But Pelosi has decided against a plan to have the conference endorse a version of Murtha's plan.

The party has had little guidance from other high-profile leaders, such as Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Last week he told reporters, "Jack Murtha went out and spoke for Jack Murtha." Asked about his thoughts on what the Iraq policy should be, Emanuel took a bold stand: "At the right time, we will have a position."

His comments were echoed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), an early favorite for the party's 2008 presidential nomination. Asked by National Public Radio where she stood, Clinton said, "You know, I really can't talk about this on the fly. It's too important."

In other words, Clinton and others are saying "we'll get back to you after our pollsters focus group it."

Murtha seems to think he's offering the nation a reality check. He said a vote on bringing the troops home is not a matter of if, but when. On NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Murtha predicted that the troops would be home by next November's midterm elections.

"We're going to get out," he said. "There is no question about it. We just have to figure out a bipartisan way to do it."

Murtha may be right. Both support for Bush and the occupation in Iraq continues to drop. A new Wall Street Journal poll has Bush's approval rating down to 34 percent. The problem for Democrats is that they're rated by the public even lower than the Bush administration and are essentially tied with congressional Republicans, with only about a quarter of the public approving of the job both are doing.

The public is more split on Iraq but is inclined to agree with Murtha. According to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll taken last week, 19 percent said the troops should be brought home immediately, and 33 percent said within a year -- that's 52 percent who want the troops brought home sometime in the next year. Only 38 percent said the troops should remain "as long as needed."

Murtha's leadership and public opinion surveys have done little strengthen the resolve of many of the party's leaders, who still can't quite figure out where they stand on the issue of extricating the U.S. from the mess in Iraq.

Sean Spicer, spokesman for the House Republican Conference, argued that Democrats will pay a political price for their inability to offer a viable alternative to the president's vision.

"Murtha stood up and took a principled stand -- albeit a stand we disagree with," Spicer said. "And his own party ran away from him. They basically threw him under the bus and walked away. Not only do [the Democrats] not have an agenda, they walked away from the one guy who does."

Last week, House Republicans pulled a shrewd political move and tried to force Democrats to go on the record in support of Murtha. The strategy was aimed at turning the debate away from how the United States got in the war, which could be damaging to Republicans, to what to do now, which Republicans have at least a chance of winning.

The challenge for Democrats is to avoid being pushed into the corner by GOP efforts to portray the party as weak on terrorism. All the more reason why it will soon be necessary for the party to come up with a unified front on Iraq.

Republicans have their own pitfalls. Apparently recognizing that last week's rhetoric -- comparing Murtha to Michael Moore, as the White House did, and likening him to a coward, as one House member from Ohio did -- is dangerous. Only 35 percent of Americans approve of Bush's handling of the war, and 54 percent believe the war was a mistake, according to the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.

Given that, and the fact that only 38 percent of Americans want an open-ended commitment, it will be difficult for the GOP to sustain the accusation that Democrats want to "cut and run" from Iraq.

This week, the Bush administration sent conflicting messages. President Bush signaled a softer tone, saying people should feel comfortable disagreeing with the war. On the other hand, Cheney called Murtha a "patriot" but suggested that the administration's Iraq critics were guilty of "revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety."

Murtha's comments last week were a thunderclap. And Republicans and Democrats alike realize the real debate has shifted in a fundamental way. As the midterms near, will Murtha be joined by other leaders from both parties to develop an Iraq policy that the American public will support?


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Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005
Colin Powell's Former Chief of Staff Col. Wilkerson on Prewar Intel, Torture and How a White House "Cabal" Hijacked U.S. Foreign Policy

We spend the hour with a former senior member of the Bush administration: Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. He served as chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005. In the interview, Wilkerson discusses what he calls a "White House cabal", led by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld; pre-war intelligence and Powell's February 2003 speech before the United Nations; the "memory lapse" by Gen. Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and much more. [includes rush transcript - partial]
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Vice President Dick Cheney launched a fresh attack Monday on critics of the Iraq war. In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C., Cheney again denied that the Bush administration manipulated prewar intelligence to build support for the invasion.

Vice President Dick Cheney, November 21, 2005:
"The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight. But any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false. Senator John McCain put it best: 'It is a lie to say that the president lied to the American people.' American soldiers and Marines serving in Iraq go out every day into some of the most dangerous and unpredictable conditions. Meanwhile, back in the United States, a few politicians are suggesting these brave Americans were sent into battle for a deliberate falsehood. This is revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety. It has no place anywhere in American politics, much less in the United States Senate."

Cheney's public appearance Monday was his second in less than a week and the latest in a series over the past ten days by senior officials to rebut growing charges that the administration manipulated prewar intelligence and to counter growing pressure in Congress to withdraw troops from Iraq.
Today, we are joined by a former senior member of the Bush administration, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. He served as chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005. Last month, he caused a stir when he made a speech at the New America Foundation.


Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, October 19, 2005:
"What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made."

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us today from a studio in Washington DC for the hour.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005.

AMY GOODMAN: Vice President Dick Cheney launched a fresh attack Monday on critics of the Iraq war. In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., Cheney again denied the Bush administration manipulated prewar intelligence to build support for the invasion.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight, but any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false. Senator John McCain put it best: It is a lie to say that the President lied to the American people. American soldiers and marines serving in Iraq go out every day into some of the most dangerous and unpredictable conditions. Meanwhile, back in the United States, a few politicians are suggesting these brave Americans were sent into battle for a deliberate falsehood. This is revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety. It has no place anywhere in American politics, much less in the United States Senate.

AMY GOODMAN: Cheney's public appearance Monday was his second in less than a week and the latest in a series over the past ten days by senior officials to rebut growing charges that the administration manipulated prewar intelligence to counter growing pressure in Congress to withdraw troops from Iraq. Today, we're joined by a former senior member of the Bush administration, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. He served as chief of staff to then Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005. Last month, he caused a stir when he made a speech at the New America Foundation.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: What I saw was a cabal between the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us today from a studio in Washington, D.C. Welcome to Democracy Now!

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Thank you very much. Glad to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Well, why don't you lay it out? Explain what exactly you see happening right now.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, I listened to the comments that you were playing from the Vice President with great interest. I read some of them this morning in the paper, but my concern as a former member of the Defense Department, a soldier for 31 years, is with the difficulties that this administration has put in the face of our brave men and women in Iraq today, and to a certain extent in Afghanistan and in other places where they're stationed around the world. And the difficulties I refer to come from the two decisions that I had the most insight into that were made in this more or less alternative decision-making process. And those two decisions were the inept and incompetent planning for post-invasion Iraq, and the some two years after that in which we have been involved in essentially a pickup game, an ad hoc approach, and the decision that came also from that alternative decision-making process to depart from the Geneva Conventions and from international law, in general, dealing with treatment of detainees, which has rebounded to America's discredit around the world, hurt our credibility and made the job of our brave men and women in the field even more difficult.

AMY GOODMAN: This issue of torture goes back, even before the pictures that we saw in April of 2004 of the prisoners that were tortured at Abu Ghraib. You were there when the discussions were taking place. What was your position? What exactly did you hear?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, it's not so much discussions as the fact that just prior to those photographs going public, the photographs of Abu Ghraib, the Secretary of State walked through my door into my office and said, -- we had adjoining offices -- and he said, “I want you to get all of the paperwork you can, get everything together, establish an audit trail and a chronology and so forth. I want to know how we got to where we are.” And over the course of the next few months, I got my hands on every piece of paper that I could, open source, classified, sensitive and otherwise, and I built for myself a chronology, an audit trail, and gained profound insights into how we got to where we were.

And what I found was that the statutory process, that is, the process in which the principals and the President meet to make national security decisions, worked. And that process produced a compromise, a compromise reflected in the President's memorandum which said although he recognized we were in a new situation, fighting al-Qaeda terrorists, for example, nonetheless, the spirit of Geneva would be adhered to by our armed forces in the field, consistent with military necessity. Now, my critics have said that phrase gave the President an out. I don't agree. It did not say “consistent with national security demands.” It did not say “consistent with the demands of the war on terror.” It said “consistent with military needs.” Now, military needs are very simple and clear to a man like me who spent 31 years in the military. It means that if one of my buddy's life is threatened or my life is threatened, I can take drastic action. I can even shoot a detainee. And I can expect not to be punished under Geneva, or at least if I am court-martialed, I have a defense.

It doesn't mean that I can take a detainee in a cold, dark cell in Bagram, Afghanistan, for example, in December 2002, shackled to the wall, and pour cold water on him at intervals when the outside temperature is 50 degrees anyway, and eventually kill him, which is what happened. And the first thing I came across in my research was two deaths in Bagram, Afghanistan, in December 2002. And now we know after the army has finally, two years, conducted its investigations, we now know that one of those individuals who was murdered at Bagram was very likely innocent.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain these discs that you found. You found them in December 2002?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: No, this is what I discovered was the first occasion -- this was available to me in open source information, too, because The New York Times had done a really fine job of beginning an investigation of this. And what I found was these two deaths, and the suspicion was aroused in me, because at the time the Army coroner had declared the deaths homicides, and the Army had declared the deaths as a result of natural causes. And so, as I began to investigate, and as others began to investigate and began to talk to me and to feed me information, and as I began to look at the documents that were official and otherwise, I began to construct a case that showed that the Army had obfuscated, it had blocked at every level of command, trying to get to the bottom of these two killings.

And let me just add, when I left the State Department and had to turn over my papers, the deaths were up to over 70. And I have sources inside the government now that tell me the deaths may be up to 90. Now, this is people detained by the United States, either the armed forces, the Central Intelligence Agency or others, and these are people who have died in detention. Now, all of these cases, I hope, are not murder. But many of these cases still need to be investigated, and something needs to be done in the way of accountability.

AMY GOODMAN: And these are deaths in Afghanistan?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: These are in all of our facilities.

AMY GOODMAN: In Iraq.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: In Iraq, at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you know about the secret detention facilities?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I can’t give you any insights into that. I did not know anything about that when I was in government. Those things, presidential findings, if they exist, are usually kept very close hold. Only very few people know about them. I have my suspicions. I suspect that if the Vice President is lobbying the Congress of the United States on behalf of torture, that we must have some kind of clandestine operation going on, but I can’t offer you any insights into that.

Let me just make one other point. You're probably aware that recently the Minister of the Interior in Iraq was discovered to have a prison where principally Shia were being abused, being abused rather drastically, as I understand it. Imagine, if you will, General George Casey, our commander in Iraq and our ambassador in Baghdad, Khalilzad, imagine them having to go to Hakeem, the Minister of the Interior, and speaking to him in strong words about this abuse. Imagine Hakeem looking at them and laughing, because he could cite Abu Ghraib, he could cite Guantanamo, he could cite Bagram, and this position that we have assumed has just hurt our credibility and our image all around the world. Pardon me, my cell phone is ringing.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005. We're going to go back to this point in just a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. He is the former chief of staff of Colin Powell as Secretary of State. He served as his chief of staff from 2002 to 2005 and has called the decision-making that went on in the lead-up to Iraq, those in charge, as a cabal. Colonel Wilkerson, before we go to that, I wanted to go back to what you were saying about those that were detained, over 170 Sunni men being detained, found tortured, and your response to that.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, it just reinforces my position that we cannot afford to be, as a country, as a people, seen as tolerating torture in any way, fashion or form, or unusual and degrading punishment as the International Convention Against Torture delineates it. It just undercuts our image. It undercuts our credibility. More important than that, it undercuts our political values and who we are.

And let me just give you a broader context for why that is so important. This is not a conflict of bombs, bullets and bayonets. This is not a conflict where the military should be the leading instrument. Yes, we had to go to Afghanistan because we had no choice. Al-Qaeda was resident there. The people who actually plotted and the people who planned the 9/11 tragedy were resident there. We had to go after them. The Taliban would not give them up. We had to go after them. The military instrument was appropriate there.

But the military instrument is not appropriate to this wider conflict, because this wider conflict is a conflict of ideas. It is our ideas, which are the political values upon which America is based, indeed, upon western liberalism is based, and the ideas of Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other evil people like those. And if we think that this conflict can be won with bombs, bullets and bayonets, we are sadly mistaken. I was a soldier for 31 years. You do not fight ideas with bombs, bullets and bayonets. You fight them with your ideas, because your ideas are better. And so, when you detract from the better of your ideas, when you give people in the world, especially the millions of moderate Muslims who might be sitting on the fence right now in this conflict, when you give them reason to doubt your credibility, to doubt your ideas, give them reason to criticize you, you're actually defeating yourself. And we just can’t continue to do that sort of thing, because this is a war of ideas, and we're going to win it with our ideas, triumphant over the ideas of people like bin Laden and Zarqawi.

AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Wilkerson, in the run-up to the invasion, the Bush administration issued dire warnings about Iraq's biological weapons program, to portray Saddam Hussein as an imminent threat and to build support for the invasion. President Bush repeatedly said Iraq had had mobile factories, brewing biological poisons. Colin Powell, your chief, the Secretary of State, also made the allegation in his prewar presentation to the United Nations in February of 2003.

COLIN POWELL: One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents. Let me take you inside that intelligence file and share with you what we know from eyewitness accounts. We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails. The trucks and train cars are easily moved and are designed to evade detection by inspectors. In a matter of months, they can produce a quantity of biological poison equal to the entire amount that Iraq claimed to have produced in the years prior to the Gulf War.

Although Iraq's mobile production program began in the mid-1990s, U.N. inspectors at the time only had vague hints of such programs. Confirmation came later, in the year 2000. The source was an eyewitness, an Iraqi chemical engineer, who supervised one of these facilities. He actually was present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. 12 technicians died from exposure to biological agents. He reported that when UNSCOM was in country and inspecting, the biological weapons agent production always began on Thursdays at midnight, because Iraq thought UNSCOM would not inspect on the Muslim holy day, Thursday night through Friday. He added that this was important because the units could not be broken down in the middle of a production run, which had to be completed by Friday evening before the inspectors might arrive again. This defector is currently hiding in another country with a certain knowledge that Saddam Hussein will kill him if he finds him. His eyewitness account of these mobile production facilities has been corroborated by other sources.

AMY GOODMAN: Then Secretary of State, Colin Powell, speaking at the United Nations February 5, 2003. The Iraqi chemical engineer Powell referred to is an informant codenamed “Curveball.” In a major article this past weekend, The Los Angeles Times reported five senior officials from Germany's federal intelligence service say they warned U.S. intelligence that information provided by Curveball could not be trusted or confirmed. The L.A. Times reports the C.I.A. corroborated Curveball's story with three sources. Two had ties to Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. All three turned out to be frauds. The German authorities also told The Los Angeles Times that the informant suffered from emotional and mental problems and was not psychologically stable. Lieutenant Wilkerson, your response, and your involvement in the preparation of this absolutely key speech in the lead-up to the invasion?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, I must tell you that when I heard Secretary Powell uttering those words yet again, my heart sank another inch or two. I have said before, I'll say it again, it was a low point in my professional career. I was in charge of the task force at the Secretary's orders to put together his presentation on 5 February, 2003 at the U.N. Security Council, and I spent six, seven days and nights at the Central Intelligence Agency barely sleeping, as did my team, and then two days in New York with the same routine, putting this production together.

And I have read the stories, and I have heard people in the government who now continue to talk to me, talk about Curveball. I have also heard them talk about Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, whose story also, gained under other than Geneva Convention interrogation techniques, has now been recanted. That was the story that connected al-Qaeda and Baghdad very closely prewar. I have heard that story blown out of the water. Now I have heard the Curveball story blown out of the water.

I have no other defense than to say I sat in the room with the Secretary of State and the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, and listened to George Tenet and listened to John McLaughlin, his deputy, the D.D.C.I., and listened to his best national intelligence officers assure the Secretary of State, assure me, that this was a sound source, that indeed it was multiple-sourced, that everything we were seeing about the biological weapons labs was accurate. We could depend on it. It was a slam dunk. And now I have serious questions about -- after reading the L.A. Times piece, the Washington Post piece, I have serious questions in my mind about how we got to that point, because no one ever said a word to us during that intense preparation period, about Ibn Shaykh al-Libi's possible lack of veracity, because of the way he was interrogated, or more seriously, about Curveball and the doubts that existed in a number of places about his veracity.

AMY GOODMAN: What does it mean to say you spent time at the C.I.A., as Vice President Dick Cheney did, and the allegations over and over again that to go there, to spend that kind of time meant, what many said about Cheney's visit, it wasn't to gather information but to twist the information, to intimidate the analysts?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, I, of course, can’t speak to that. I wasn't there when Vice President Cheney went out. I understand he went out nine or ten times. That does seem to be an inordinate number of times for a vice president to visit the Central Intelligence Agency over that short a period of time, but why I was there was because the President had announced in his State of the Union address that we were going to New York, and we were going to present our position, and Secretary Powell was selected to be the presenter thereof.

And so, when he walked through my door and said, “Here, I need you to go out to the agency, get a task force together and develop this presentation,” I was not going out there to bring any pressure on the agency. Quite the contrary. The agency gathered all of the intelligence community around me, and we attempted to go through the best intelligence that the United States, the British, the Germans, the French, the Jordanians and others had and to develop this presentation. So, I don't think there was any pressure associated with my visit to the agency.

AMY GOODMAN: In September of 2003, the Vice President went on the offensive to justify the invasion of Iraq. In a lengthy interview on NBC's Meet the Press, he portrayed Iraq as the geographic base for the September 11 attacks. In the interview, he reasserted the debunked claim that Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: With respect to 9/11, of course, you have had the story that's been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohammed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack. But we have never been able to develop any more of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know.

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, that claim had been found to be untrue. The F.B.I. investigated, found nothing to substantiate the report of the meeting. In fact, the F.B.I. concluded Atta was most likely in Florida at the time. Even the Czech president, Vaclav Havel, told The New York Times in October 2002, that there was no evidence to confirm reports of the meeting. In an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, David Wise wrote that only moments before Powell addressed the U.N. in February 2003, Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff at the time, was frantically trying to reach you, Colonel Wilkerson, by cell phone to persuade Powell to include the supposed link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 in the speech.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Yes, I know David. He's an excellent writer, and he's a very incisive voice in terms of criticizing the intelligence community, in particular. As far as the call on the floor of the U.N. Security Council goes, I was not taking any calls that morning. I had told all of the people who were supporting me that I was getting ready for the presentation, that I wasn't going to take any calls. I broke my own rule and took one call from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, feeling that it was in my interest to take my boss's call. But I didn't take the call from Vice President's chief of staff, Scooter Libby. I referred it to someone else. So I'm not here to say that Scooter Libby called on the floor of the U.N. Security Council to the point that you're addressing or that David addressed; the person to whom I did refer the call could probably assure you of that, because that's the information I obtained later.

But more important than that is, I think, is the story you referred to did keep coming up. It came up a number of times in rehearsals where Dr. Rice, Mr. Hadley, Scooter Libby, Mr. Armitage, the Secretary and I, and the D.C.I. and D.D.C.I., were all present. And I remember one time vividly, because Mr. Tenet and the Secretary of State had agreed that that story did not have enough firmness, did not have enough foundation to be included in his remarks, everyone agreed on that, but I remember one story in particular or one scene in particular where we were rehearsing it, it was one of the later rehearsals in the D.C.I.'s conference room out at Langley, and Stephen Hadley leaned forward and said, “What happened to the Mohammed Atta story?” And the Secretary looked at him and fixed him with his eyes and said, “We took that out.” And to Mr. Hadley's credit, he sheepishly grinned and leaned back in his chair and said, “Oh, yes, I remember now.” So we had completely discounted that story by the time we made the presentation in New York.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet Cheney continued to assert it.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I can’t explain it. I can’t explain it.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you talk to his aides and say that our own intelligence community, the president of the Czech Republic, are saying this isn’t true; in fact, that Atta was probably here in Florida at the time?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, there is still some conjecture. There are people in the government and out of the government who believe there are people in the Czech government, if not in the Czech community at large, who still cling to that story. So, while I say we discounted it entirely, there may be some people out there who still believe it, and perhaps there are people on the Vice President's staff and indeed the Vice President himself may believe it. That's the nature of intelligence. You have to go, I think, with the majority opinion. And overwhelmingly, the majority opinion of both foreign and U.S. intelligence communities, is that that meeting never occurred.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what you mean by a “cabal”?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, I'm a student of the national security decision-making process. I have taught it at two of the nation's war colleges, four years at the Marine College, two years at the Naval War College. I have watched it up close and personal through my time with General Powell as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, through Bush 1, as we like to say now, 41, George H.W. Bush, through the first year of the Clinton administration and now four years intimately with the State Department in the 43's administration, George W. Bush's administration. And I have studied it extensively all the way back to the 1947 National Security Act. And I know what the statutory decision-making process is supposed to be. I know what it evolved to be in the year 2000-2001, when President Bush took over.

I also know that every president -- every president -- since 1947, Harry Truman forward to the present situation, has deviated from the process at one time or another. That's the President's prerogative. That's the way our government is set up. The President can take advice from other people. He can let other people make decisions. And he can decide to remain aloof from those decisions, witting of the decisions, or he can decide to be unwitting of those decisions, or he can actually be ignorant of those decisions. You can cite many examples: Iran-Contra, Watergate, the last few years of the Vietnam War are examples of failures in this kind of alternative decision-making process. You could cite successes, too. Henry Kissinger accumulated power like no other person in the history of America. He was both National Security Adviser and Secretary of State for Richard Nixon at the same time, concentrating power that still trickles down in history's pages.

But usually what happens is when a president trusts an alternative process that's not transparent, that's not secret, if it results in success, no one ever questions it. But if it results in failure, as did Iran-Contra, as did Watergate, as did the Bay of Pigs for John F. Kennedy, then people start looking. Historians look. Congressmen look. Senators look. Everyone wants to look. The American people want to know the truth when you fail. And my point is, two of these decisions into which I had the most profound insights, the post-invasion planning for Iraq and the detainee abuse issue, have resulted in fairly large failures, and so they need to be looked at. They need to be investigated. And we need to have the insights gained so that we can try to insure that these kind of failures don't occur again in the future.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005. We'll come back with him in just a minute.

Obama Calls for Troop Reduction in Iraq By ANNA JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer

Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday called for a troop reduction in Iraq and criticized the Bush administration for questioning the patriotism of people who speak out against the war.

"I believe that U.S. forces are still a part of the solution in Iraq," according to a prepared text of Obama's speech to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. "The strategic goals should be to allow for a limited drawdown of U.S. troops, coupled with shift to a more effective counter-insurgency strategy that puts the Iraqi security forces in the lead and intensifies our efforts to train Iraqi forces."

Following the Dec. 15 Iraqi elections, Obama said the United States should focus over the course of the next year on how to reduce its troops there.

"Notice that I say 'reduce' and not 'fully withdraw,'" Obama said.

The freshman lawmaker also joined the chorus of politicians defending decorated Vietnam War veteran Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), D-Pa., who was criticized by the Bush administration, other Republicans and the public after calling for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops.

"We watched the shameful attempt to paint John Murtha — a Marine Corp recipient of two purple hearts and a Bronze Star — into a coward of questionable patriotism," Obama said.

Obama said Americans want to find solutions to the "difficult and complicated situation in Iraq."

"The President could take the politics out of Iraq once and for all if he would simply go on television and say to the American people 'Yes, we made mistakes. Yes, there are things I would have done differently. But now that we're here, I am willing to work with both Republicans and Democrats to find the most responsible way out,'" Obama said.




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http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051122/..._withdrawal.php
Getting Out: Responsible Withdrawal
Stephen Zunes
November 22, 2005


Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project . He is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003) and scores of articles on U.S. policy toward Iraq, including the September 30, 2002, cover story in The Nation magazine, “The Case Against War.”

There are a number of scary scenarios that could result from the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. These include that country plunging into full-scale civil war, splitting into three (accompanied by ethnic cleansing), succumbing to fundamentalist Islamic rule, falling under increased influence by Iran and becoming a training and logistical base for international terrorism. All of these should be taken seriously.

The reality, however, is that each of these is at least as likely if U.S. forces remain than if U.S. forces withdraw. The U.S.-led war in Iraq is creating insurgents, including terrorists, faster than we can kill them. The U.S. and British military presence is exacerbating ethnic and sectarian divisions, not lessening them. The overwhelming U.S. presence throughout the government is weakening its standing with the Iraqi people and its ability to govern, rather than strengthening it.

While the principle of self-determination must be respected and while Iraqis are more than capable of governing themselves once stability and basic services are restored, the current circumstances may require active leadership from the outside. The United States, however, simply does not have the credibility to take that on.

Despite this, the vast majority of both parties in Congress, in continuing to fund the war, are putting their trust in the very same people who have proven to be profoundly ignorant about Iraq and totally inept in managing the post-war situation.

As a result, given the choice between “staying the course” and an immediate U.S. withdrawal, the latter is clearly the least bad option.

However, there may be other options for the anti-war movement to consider, such as calling on the U.S. government to: 1) immediately end offensive military operations by U.S. forces; 2) renounce any long-term military presence in Iraq; 3) enter into negotiations with the more moderate elements of the insurgency; 4) replace U.S. and British forces with peacekeeping forces from Arab and other Islamic countries; 5) fund a generous economic redevelopment package under United Nations supervision; and 6) support a mechanism for strict international human rights monitoring and other means to enhance the credibility of the Iraqi government and its ability to govern effectively.

There are dozens of armed groups in Iraq battling U.S. occupation forces and the U.S.-backed government, which include supporters of the former regime of Saddam Hussein, other Baathists, independent nationalists, various Shiite factions, tribal-based groupings and a number of Sunni Arab factions. The Al Qaeda-inspired jihadists and the foreign fighters upon whom the Bush administration focuses represent only a small minority of the insurgency. All but these Islamist extremists would likely be open to a negotiated settlement to the conflict, but only if there was a clear timetable or specific achievable benchmarks for a complete U.S. withdrawal.

Once that was accomplished, with the bulk of the insurgents then allied with the government, the Iraqis could likely deal with the jihadists and other radical elements themselves, since the extremist ideology and terrorist tactics of the radicals have little popular following in the country. If a broader-based Iraqi government was still incapable of containing the insurgency, international peacekeeping forces primarily from Arab and other Islamic countries could fill the breach until a reconstituted Iraqi army could fulfill its mission.

There is the real possibility that such a government of national unity could not be formed and/or the Iraqi government, even with the support of a multinational force, would still not be adequate to handle the insurgency. As a result, concerns that a U.S. withdrawal could lead to the overthrow of the government and victory by radical insurgents should not be discounted.

Some in the anti-war movement have downplayed the seriousness of this scenario, citing the grossly exaggerated horror stories and supposed threats to U.S. national security and world peace that the U.S. government claimed would result from a victory by the Communist-led National Liberation Front in Vietnam if the United States did not continue prosecuting the war.

Unlike Vietnam, however, the Iraqi opposition is not unified. As a result, the toppling of the Baghdad regime will not likely bring peace, but continued violence and disorder. The insurgents also include some decidedly nasty elements that are genuinely fascistic in orientation. In the power struggle that would follow a hypothetical overthrow of the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad, it is quite possible that the new government would become dominated by militant jihadists, Saddam’s wing of the Ba’ath party, or other elements far worse than those currently in power or likely to be in power following next month’s election.

This does not necessarily mean that the national security interests of the United States would be seriously threatened in such a scenario. Indeed, continuing to prosecute the war is probably a much greater threat. However, it does not mean that the United States does not have a moral and strategic responsibility to prevent an insurgent victory.

As a result, the United States may need to keep a residual rapid reaction force—possibly stationed in Kuwait, southeastern Turkey, or easternmost Jordan—that could provide tactical air support in the event there is an assault on Baghdad’s Green Zone should the Iraqi government and its regional allies find themselves imminently threatened by the jihadists or other extremist elements.

The peace movement should be open to such a strategy, since it ends the occupation, it shifts our policy to diplomacy and it creates the common ground necessary to unite politically around the language of Rep. John Murtha, a retired Marine and staunch supporter of the military, who calls for America to get out of Iraq “as soon as practicable.”

The slogan “Out Now!” fits nicely on a bumper sticker and may serve to pressure Congress and the administration to change its policies, but it is too simplistic to adopt as a policy around which to build a broad-based alliance that could actually result in the withdrawal of U.S. forces. At the same time, however, awareness of the complexities of the mess in Iraq and openness to various scenarios to resolve it does not mean being any less insistent in demanding an end to the U.S.-led war.

Rep. Murtha may have brought that urgency to a head last week, but it was the peace movement that has cleared his path. It is now time to unite and end this war.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051122/...ic_interest.php
Getting Out: Our Strategic Interest
Charles V. Peña
November 22, 2005


Charles V. Peña is an adviser to the Straus Military Reform Project, senior fellow with the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, and analyst for MSNBC. He is a co-author of Exiting Iraq: Why the United States Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War against Al Qaeda (Cato Institute, 2004) and author of the forthcoming Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism (Potomac Books, Inc.).

Rep. John Murtha is right when he says, “The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home.” Yet the administration persists. At the American Enterprise Institute, Vice President Dick Cheney responded to Murtha, saying, “A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be a victory for the terrorists, an invitation to further violence against free nations, and a terrible blow to the future security of the United States of America.”

And so the official White House policy remains what it was on Veterans Day when President Bush did his best to evoke Winston Churchill: “We will never back down, we will never give in, we will never accept anything less than complete victory.”

Even if victory could somehow be achieved, it would be Pyrrhic given the costs and consequences. Moreover, it would only be a tactical victory at the expense of losing strategic position in the war on terrorism. What the Bush administration refuses to understand is that the U.S. military occupation in Iraq is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Therefore, the strategic imperative is to exit Iraq rather than stay. And although it is counterintuitive, exiting Iraq may be a prerequisite for victory.

Even if one is willing to believe President Bush’s promise of complete victory, substantially more boots on the ground are needed to have a fighting chance of achieving it. Historically, the force ratio for successful counterinsurgency operations is 20 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants, which is what the British—often acknowledged as the most experienced practitioners of counterinsurgency operations and demonstrably more successful than the U.S. military—deployed for more than a decade in Malaya and more than 25 years in Northern Ireland. With a population of nearly 25 million people, to meet the same standard in Iraq would require a force of 500,000 troops—more than three times the current Iraq deployment of 150,000 soldiers and equal to the size of the entire active-duty U.S. Army which has already been strained by the current Iraq deployment of 150,000 troops—for perhaps a decade or longer.

And the cost of maintaining a prolonged U.S. military presence in Iraq—even for the current force that is unable to put down the insurgency—cannot be ignored. The current cost of military operations is $5.6 billion per month, which exceeds the average cost of $5.1 billion per month (in 2004 dollars) for U.S. military operations in Vietnam between 1964 and 1972. To date, the Iraq war has cost more than $200 billion. So a large-scale, long-term military occupation in Iraq will likely cost hundreds of billions more.

Of course, the difficulties and cost of attempting to secure victory are not reasons in and of themselves for throwing in the towel. But if the difficulties are viewed as insurmountable, and the costs—both in blood and treasure—deemed unbearable, then they certainly become extreme pressures exerted to craft an exit strategy, rather than continue hemorrhaging.

President Bush’s exit strategy is simple: “as Iraqis stand up, Americans will stand down.” But the notion of the Iraqis themselves taking on the insurgents anytime soon amounts to wishful thinking. Although the president claims that “there are nearly 90 Iraqi army battalions fighting the terrorists alongside our forces,” the number of combat-ready Iraqi battalions that can fight insurgents without U.S. or coalition assistance is only one—mysteriously down from three earlier this year. Indeed, according to General George W. Casey, Jr., who oversees U.S. forces in Iraq, “Iraqi armed forces will not have an independent capability for some time.” Translation: The U.S. military will have to shoulder the burden in Iraq for years.

Moreover, the Pottery Barn maxim of “you broke it, you bought it” is invoked even by those who opposed the war —largely liberal internationalists, but also by some libertarians—as a rationale against exiting Iraq, even in the face of mounting difficulties, costs and casualties. Such logic is based on the illusion that Iraq can be fixed by the United States and the result will be accepted by the Iraqis. But the lesson of nation-building in the Balkans— forcing diverse ethnic and religious groups with longstanding animosity toward each other to live together—is that whatever fix is fashioned together by the United States will only hold as long as there is a foreign military presence to enforce the outcome and will likely fracture after those troops leave, which they eventually must do if Iraq is to be considered a sovereign nation.

Ultimately, however, strategic imperative trumps Churchillian rhetoric and the Pottery Barn rule. The United States must exit Iraq because it is in our strategic interests to do so.

First and foremost, polls consistently show that the majority of Iraqi people do not want to be occupied by a foreign military. Most recently, a poll commissioned by the British Ministry of Defense showed that 82 percent of Iraqis are “strongly opposed” to the presence of coalition troops. So however well-intentioned, the U.S. military presence in Iraq breeds resentment that is fuel for the insurgency.

Second, the undeniable fact that the U.S. military is occupying a Muslim country is a powerful tool for Islamic radicals to incite anti-American sentiment—which is the stepping stone to hatred and then to violence and terrorism, not just in Iraq, but all over the world. We should not forget how the unnecessary presence of 5,000 U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War was the basis for Osama bin Laden’s hatred of the United States and one of his consistently stated reasons for engaging in terrorism, including the 9/11 attacks.

Third, despite President Bush’s oft repeated claim that “we are taking the fight to the enemy abroad so we do not have to face them here at home” as justification for staying in Iraq, the harsh reality is that the U.S. military presence in Iraq may be doing more to breed and train terrorists to fight elsewhere rather than killing them there. According to a CIA assessment, Iraq may be a more potent training and breeding ground for Islamic terrorists than Afghanistan was in the 1980s because it is a real-world laboratory for militants to hone their tradecraft in an urban combat environment. The report warned that other countries— such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia—would have to contend with the militants who leave Iraq and turn their attention to other targets. Jordan has already become an apparent victim, but there is no good reason to assume that those targets would be limited to the Middle East and that America would be immune.

The “stay the course” advocates on both the left and right counter that if U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq, the country would descend into chaos and civil war. That is certainly one possible outcome. In fact, it has always been the natural outcome of removing Saddam Hussein from power, as Shiites and Kurds vie to exert control after decades of oppression while Sunnis struggle to retain power and prevent being marginalized. And it is hard to argue that what we are witnessing unfold in Iraq isn’t already a small-scale civil war—with the U.S. military potentially caught in the middle, just as it was in Lebanon in the 1980s.

But internecine conflict between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds in Iraq does not inherently mean a threat to U.S. national security. True enough, the United States must be concerned that Abu Musab Al Zarqawi would take advantage of a civil war to make Iraq a base of operations. But it is clear that the new Iraqi government and the Iraqi people are not welcoming Al Zarqawi with open arms the way the Taliban regime embraced bin Laden in Afghanistan. So Al Zarqawi would not be able to set up shop with impunity.

Perhaps most importantly, a civil war may actually be a tragic and unfortunate necessity. A fundamental fact that is often overlooked is that Al Qaeda's struggle is first and foremost a battle for the soul of Islam. Just as Christianity had its reformation, so too must Islam to reconcile the diversity of the Ummah rather than have a single dominant view prevail. So the real war is within the Islamic world—it is an intra-Muslim ideological struggle for the hearts and minds of Muslims around the world. Therefore, it is a war that must be waged and won by Muslims, and not a war in which the United States can prevail. In fact, the more the United States engages in the fight, the more it legitimizes the rhetoric of bin Laden and the radicals to give their insurgency greater popular support among Muslims.

More importantly, removing the United States from the equation in Iraq might take some of the wind out of the sails of the insurgency. Rather than giving common cause to Al Zarqawi and Sunni Baathists to expel the American military occupation, the insurgents might be reduced to just the likes of Al Zarqawi, whose agenda and attacks would clearly be anti-Iraqi. As a result, Iraqis—even if they are fighting among themselves for political control of the country—might find a way to unite against Al Qaeda in Iraq.

If Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism, then the United States must be willing to let the Iraqis wage the war against the likes of Al Zarqawi and his Al Qaeda followers. And if Al Zarqawi is defeated, we must be willing to accept that the outcome will not likely be the democracy sought by the Bush administration or even a government that is friendly to the United States. But our strategic interests will have been served.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/politics...agewanted=print

November 22, 2005
The Representative
Lawmaker Returns Home, a Hawk Turned War Foe
By DAVID S. CLOUD
JOHNSTOWN, Pa., Nov. 21 - Representative John P. Murtha, the hawkish Democrat who spent his political career as a staunch Pentagon supporter, came home Monday as something entirely different: an antiwar symbol.

His call last week for an American troop withdrawal from Iraq within the next six months took aback many of his own constituents and made the plainspoken former Marine colonel's homecoming on Monday a moment for re-evaluation - of the congressman, as well as of the Bush administration's strategy for Iraq.

"It's really surprising that you would see Mr. Murtha speaking out and saying that it's time to get out, and if he's saying it then it's probably so," said Becky Wicks, a Johnstown resident who said she and her family had supported President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

As recently as last year, Mr. Murtha was warning that "premature withdrawal" of American troops could lead to a civil war in Iraq and leave American foreign policy in "disarray," the exact critique Republicans lodge against him now.

The evolution of his views, he said, has been driven both by the pain of frequent visits to see injured soldiers at Walter Reed Medical Center outside Washington and by his steady disillusionment with the Bush administration's handling of the war. But in some ways he is unsuited temperamentally to the role he has assumed.

"I just came to the conclusion finally that I had to speak out," he told reporters on Monday. "I had to focus this administration on an exit strategy."

"I'm hopeful I don't go too far," he said, adding that he "felt bad" last week after bringing up Vice President Dick Cheney's "five deferments" in the Vietnam era.

Mr. Cheney, in a speech on Monday in Washington in which he defended the administration's handling of the war, called Mr. Murtha "a good man, a marine, a patriot," and said Mr. Murtha was "taking a clear stand in an entirely legitimate discussion."

An insider most comfortable in the backrooms of Congress, Mr. Murtha said his goal was only to force a dialogue with President Bush on the need to draw down American forces - not lead his party's antiwar wing. Many fellow Democrats are uneasy about his call for an immediate withdrawal, fearing it will give Republicans a chance to brand them as weak on national security.

Not everyone in Johnstown is comfortable with Mr. Murtha's new role.

At a speech Monday morning to local executives and elected officials, Mr. Murtha received three standing ovations. The talk focused almost entirely on all the federal aid Mr. Murtha has been able to deliver to his district from his seat on the House Appropriations Committee.

But when he spoke briefly about Iraq, the audience seemed unsure about how to react to their congressman's public break with the Bush administration. When Mr. Murtha invited questions after his remarks, no one in the audience of several hundred came forward.

"We're all kind of perplexed," said Robert A. Gleason Jr., an insurance executive and chairman of the local Republican Committee, who said he had put aside party loyalties and voted for Mr. Murtha in the past.

The first Vietnam veteran elected to Congress, in 1974, Mr. Murtha rose to become the top Democrat on the Appropriations defense subcommittee, a post he has used to look after average soldiers' needs. He keeps a running count of the number of his constituents killed in Iraq: now 13.

Since shortly after the American invasion of Iraq, he has frequently visited wounded troops at Walter Reed, an experience that he said had gradually convinced him that the American troop presence was exacerbating the violence by giving insurgents more targets to attack.

In speeches over the last week, he has repeatedly referred to a constituent, Pfc. Salvatore Ross Jr., a combat engineer from Dunbar, Pa., who was badly wounded while landmines he was clearing near Baghdad went off. The explosion blinded him in both eyes and tore off his leg below the knee, Private Ross said in an interview. He spent more than a month in a coma at Walter Reed and later underwent more than a dozen surgeries.

Mr. Murtha visited him twice in the hospital and later arranged a ceremony in Private Ross's hometown, where he received a Purple Heart. He also arranged for Walter Reed to pick up many of his medical bills for special treatment at a private hospital, Johns Hopkins Medical Center.

Only a year ago, though, Mr. Murtha wrote in the epilogue to the paperback edition of a biography he wrote with a former aide that "an untimely exit could rapidly devolve into a civil war, which would leave America's foreign policy in disarray as countries question not only America's judgment but also its perseverance."

But in several trips to Iraq in the last year, he said that he became convinced that the military was not making progress at defeating the insurgency. Yet, he said, the Bush administration ignored his efforts to open private discussions on devising a bipartisan course change.

A letter on Iraq that Mr. Murtha said he sent to Mr. Bush last year did not get a reply until five months later, and then from a underling at the Pentagon, he complained.

"I deserve more respect than that," he said.

Mr. Murtha said he began discussing his growing unease with the military presence in Iraq with longtime advisers, including two retired generals and a former secretary of the Army, whom he would not identify. They urged him not to call publicly for a withdrawal, he said, but as his doubts about the war grew, "they finally came around."

Even Mr. Gleason, the local Republican chairman, predicted that Mr. Murtha's stance would cause him no significant political problems in next November's elections.

Though most voters lean Democratic in this blue-collar region, they are generally conservative. President Bush only lost the district by 8,000 votes in 2004.

Even so, no Republican has yet announced a run against Mr. Murtha, although that may speak as much to Republican concerns over the political climate and the 2006 election as it does about Mr. Murtha's popularity in his district.

His break with the Bush administration could still entice a candidate into the race. But years of delivering federal money from his Appropriations Committee seat has made him all but invulnerable, Mr. Gleason conceded.

Colonel Denies Disparaging Murtha

By The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 - A colonel in the Marine reserves has taken issue with how his views were represented in a Republican attack last week on Representative Murtha.

Speaking on the House floor on Friday, Representative Jean Schmidt, Republican of Ohio, asserted that the colonel had "asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message: that cowards cut and run, marines never do."

But a spokeswoman for the colonel, Danny R. Bubp, said Ms. Schmidt had misconstrued their conversation.

While Mr. Bubp, a Republican member of the Ohio House of Representatives, opposes a quick withdrawal for forces, "he did not mention Congressman Murtha by name nor did he mean to disparage Congressman Murtha," said Karen Tabor, his spokeswoman. "He feels as though the words that Congresswoman Schmidt chose did not represent their conversation."

Asked to respond on Monday, the congresswoman's office said only, "Mrs. Schmidt's statement was never meant to disparage Congressman Murtha."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota...e-_b_11078.html

Iraq War Critics Are the Real Friends of Freedom, Democracy & America's Troops

I'm confused. We're now being told that the War in Iraq is being waged to promote freedom and democracy. Beyond the fact that such a rationale is an opportunistic departure from the rationale we were originally given (aka. Iraq's supposed possession of WMD), this freedom/democracy rationale is being undermined here at home by the same folks making the argument in the first place.


The latest example of this comes from the Washington Times, the Republican Party's paper of record. This rag today reports that unnamed Bush "Pentagon officials" (read: political appointees) are essentially claiming that critics of the war who have raised questions about the Iraq conflict are supposedly undermining the troops. But how is that possible? Aren't the troops fighting to spread freedom and democracy? And aren't the major tenets of freedom and democracy the right of citizens to challenge their government and raise questions about the decisions made by people in power? How can the troops be undermined by people at home who are exercising the very rights and privileges the troops are supposedly fighting for?

The questions are, of course, rhetorical. The troops aren't being undermined by war critics - they are being helped by war critics who are doing everything they can to end the ridiculous situation whereby American soldiers are being forced to carry out a misguided policy that has needlessly endangered their lives, and left them as sitting ducks in an Iraqi shooting gallery. The story's assertion that troops don't "understand" this is both a lie, and an insult to the intelligence of our soldiers.

It is the right-wing, pigheaded proponents of the status quo who actually seem to have no regard for our troops. Many of these proponents did everything they could to avoid military service when their country called, yet have no problem sending soldiers to die in pursuit of the hairbrained schemes that a bunch of neocon pinheads came up with from the plush and well-guarded confines of their offices in Washington, D.C. And remember, as the Center for American Progress details, this is the same disgusting bunch that has questioned the patriotism of anyone who raises any questions about anything that the Bush administration doesn't like.

So next time you see the latest casualties on TV, and then see chickenhawks like Dick Cheney get up in his fancy tuxedo, conveniently forget his five draft deferments, attack a Vietnam War hero's courage, and claim war critics are hurting our troops, ask yourself this simple question: Is the Bush administration actually arguing that continuing to support this crazily misguided Iraq policy actually helps the troops?

David Sirota

Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel
Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2005-11-22 19:59. Evidence
By Murray Waas, special to National Journal

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, 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, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the "President's Daily Brief," a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders.

One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources.

The September 21, 2001, briefing was prepared at the request of the president, who was eager in the days following the terrorist attacks to learn all that he could about any possible connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Much of the contents of the September 21 PDB were later incorporated, albeit in a slightly different form, into a lengthier CIA analysis examining not only Al Qaeda's contacts with Iraq, but also Iraq's support for international terrorism. Although the CIA found scant evidence of collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the agency reported that it had long since established that Iraq had previously supported the notorious Abu Nidal terrorist organization, and had provided tens of millions of dollars and logistical support to Palestinian groups, including payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

The highly classified CIA assessment was distributed to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, the president's national security adviser and deputy national security adviser, the secretaries and undersecretaries of State and Defense, and various other senior Bush administration policy makers, according to government records.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the White House for the CIA assessment, the PDB of September 21, 2001, and dozens of other PDBs as part of the committee's ongoing investigation into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the run-up to war with Iraq. The Bush administration has refused to turn over these documents.

Indeed, the existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004, according to congressional sources. Both Republicans and Democrats requested then that it be turned over. The administration has refused to provide it, even on a classified basis, and won't say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.

On November 18, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said he planned to attach an amendment to the fiscal 2006 intelligence authorization bill that would require the Bush administration to give the Senate and House intelligence committees copies of PDBs for a three-year period. After Democrats and Republicans were unable to agree on language for the amendment, Kennedy said he would delay final action on the matter until Congress returns in December.

The conclusions drawn in the lengthier CIA assessment-which has also been denied to the committee-were strikingly similar to those provided to President Bush in the September 21 PDB, according to records and sources. In the four years since Bush received the briefing, according to highly placed government officials, little evidence has come to light to contradict the CIA's original conclusion that no collaborative relationship existed between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

"What the President was told on September 21," said one former high-level official, "was consistent with everything he has been told since-that the evidence was just not there."

In arguing their case for war with Iraq, the president and vice president said after the September 11 attacks that Al Qaeda and Iraq had significant ties, and they cited the possibility that Iraq might share chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons with Al Qaeda for a terrorist attack against the United States.

Democrats in Congress, as well as other critics of the Bush administration, charge that Bush and Cheney misrepresented and distorted intelligence information to bolster their case for war with Iraq. The president and vice president have insisted that they unknowingly relied on faulty and erroneous intelligence, provided mostly by the CIA.

The new information on the September 21 PDB and the subsequent CIA analysis bears on the question of what the CIA told the president and how the administration used that information as it made its case for war with Iraq.

The central rationale for going to war against Iraq, of course, was that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons, and that he was pursuing an aggressive program to build nuclear weapons. Despite those claims, no weapons were ever discovered after the war, either by United Nations inspectors or by U.S. military authorities.

Much of the blame for the incorrect information in statements made by the president and other senior administration officials regarding the weapons-of-mass-destruction issue has fallen on the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies.

In April 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a bipartisan report that the CIA's prewar assertion that Saddam's regime was "reconstituting its nuclear weapons program" and "has chemical and biological weapons" were "overstated, or were not supported by the underlying intelligence provided to the Committee."

The Bush administration has cited that report and similar findings by a presidential commission as evidence of massive CIA intelligence failures in assessing Iraq's unconventional-weapons capability.

Bush and Cheney have also recently answered their critics by ascribing partisan motivations to them and saying their criticism has the effect of undermining the war effort. In a speech on November 11, the president made his strongest comments to date on the subject: "Baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will." Since then, he has adopted a different tone, and he said on his way home from Asia on November 21, "This is not an issue of who is a patriot or not."

In his own speech to the American Enterprise Institute yesterday, Cheney also changed tone, saying that "disagreement, argument, and debate are the essence of democracy" and the "sign of a healthy political system." He then added: "Any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped, or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false."

Although the Senate Intelligence Committee and the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, commonly known as the 9/11 commission, pointed to incorrect CIA assessments on the WMD issue, they both also said that, for the most part, the CIA and other agencies did indeed provide policy makers with accurate information regarding the lack of evidence of ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

But a comparison of public statements by the president, the vice president, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld show that in the days just before a congressional vote authorizing war, they professed to have been given information from U.S. intelligence assessments showing evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link.

"You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," President Bush said on September 25, 2002.

The next day, Rumsfeld said, "We have what we consider to be credible evidence that Al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts with Iraq who could help them acquire … weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities."

The most explosive of allegations came from Cheney, who said that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, the pilot of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center, had met in Prague, in the Czech Republic, with a senior Iraqi intelligence agent, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, five months before the attacks. On December 9, 2001, Cheney said on NBC's Meet the Press: "[I]t's pretty well confirmed that [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in [the Czech Republic] last April, several months before the attack."

Cheney continued to make the charge, even after he was briefed, according to government records and officials, that both the CIA and the FBI discounted the possibility of such a meeting.

Credit card and phone records appear to demonstrate that Atta was in Virginia Beach, Va., at the time of the alleged meeting, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials. Al-Ani, the Iraqi intelligence official with whom Atta was said to have met in Prague, was later taken into custody by U.S. authorities. He not only denied the report of the meeting with Atta, but said that he was not in Prague at the time of the supposed meeting, according to published reports.

In June 2004, the 9/11 commission concluded: "There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."

Regarding the alleged meeting in Prague, the commission concluded: "We do not believe that such a meeting occurred."

Still, Cheney did not concede the point. "We have never been able to prove that there was a connection to 9/11," Cheney said after the commission announced it could not find significant links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. But the vice president again pointed out the existence of a Czech intelligence service report that Atta and the Iraqi agent had met in Prague. "That's never been proved. But it's never been disproved," Cheney said.

The following month, July 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in its review of the CIA's prewar intelligence: "Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was little useful intelligence collected that helped analysts determine the Iraqi regime's possible links to al-Qaeda."

One reason that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld made statements that contradicted what they were told in CIA briefings might have been that they were receiving information from another source that purported to have evidence of Al Qaeda-Iraq ties. The information came from a covert intelligence unit set up shortly after the September 11 attacks by then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith.

Feith was a protégé of, and intensely loyal to, Cheney, Rumsfeld, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, and Cheney's then-chief of staff and national security adviser, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. The secretive unit was set up because Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Libby did not believe the CIA would be able to get to the bottom of the matter of Iraq-Al Qaeda ties. The four men shared a long-standing distrust of the CIA from their earlier positions in government, and felt that the agency had failed massively by not predicting the September 11 attacks.

At first, the Feith-directed unit primarily consisted of two men, former journalist Michael Maloof and David Wurmser, a veteran of neoconservative think tanks. They liked to refer to themselves as the "Iraqi intelligence cell" of the Pentagon. And they took pride in the fact that their office was in an out-of-the-way cipher-locked room, with "charts that rung the room from one end to the other" showing the "interconnections of various terrorist groups" with one another and, most important, with Iraq, Maloof recalled in an interview.

They also had the heady experience of briefing Rumsfeld twice, and Feith more frequently, Maloof said. The vice president's office also showed great interest in their work. On at least three occasions, Maloof said, Samantha Ravich, then-national security adviser for terrorism to Cheney, visited their windowless offices for a briefing.

But neither Maloof nor Wurmser had any experience or formal training in intelligence analysis. Maloof later lost his security clearance, for allegedly failing to disclose a relationship with a woman who is a foreigner, and after allegations that he leaked classified information to the press. Maloof said in the interview that he has done nothing wrong and was simply being punished for his controversial theories. Wurmser has since been named as Cheney's Middle East adviser.

In January 2002, Maloof and Wurmser were succeeded at the intelligence unit by two Naval Reserve officers. Intelligence analysis from the covert unit later served as the basis for many of the erroneous public statements made by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others regarding the alleged ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, according to former and current government officials. Intense debates still rage among longtime intelligence and foreign policy professionals as to whether those who cited the information believed it, or used it as propaganda. The unit has since been disbanded.

Earlier this month, on November 14, the Pentagon's inspector general announced an investigation into whether Feith and others associated with the covert intelligence unit engaged in "unauthorized, unlawful, or inappropriate intelligence activities." In a statement, Feith said he is "confident" that investigators will conclude that his "office worked properly and in fact improved the intelligence product by asking good questions."

The Senate Intelligence Committee has also been conducting its own probe of the Pentagon unit. But as was first disclosed by The American Prospect in an article by reporter Laura Rozen, that probe had been hampered by a lack of cooperation from Feith and the Pentagon.

Internal Pentagon records show not only that the small Pentagon unit had the ear of the highest officials in the government, but also that Rumsfeld and others considered the unit as a virtual alternative to intelligence analyses provided by the CIA.

On July 22, 2002, as the run-up to war with Iraq was underway, one of the Naval Reserve officers detailed to the unit sent Feith an e-mail saying that he had just heard that then-Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz wanted "the Iraqi intelligence cell … to prepare an intel briefing on Iraq and links to al-Qaida for the SecDef" and that he was not to tell anyone about it.

After that briefing was delivered, Wolfowitz sent Feith and other officials a note saying: "This was an excellent briefing. The Secretary was very impressed. He asked us to think about possible next steps to see if we can illuminate the differences between us and CIA. The goal was not to produce a consensus product, but rather to scrub one another's arguments."

On September 16, 2002, two days before the CIA produced a major assessment of Iraq's ties to terrorism, the Naval Reserve officers conducted a briefing for Libby and Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser to President Bush.

In a memorandum to Wolfowitz, Feith wrote: "The briefing went very well and generated further interest from Mr. Hadley and Mr. Libby." Both men, the memo went on, requested follow-up material, most notably a "chronology of Atta's travels," a reference to the discredited allegation of an Atta-Iraqi meeting in Prague.

In their presentation, the naval reserve briefers excluded the fact that the FBI and CIA had developed evidence that the alleged meeting had never taken place, and that even the Czechs had disavowed it.

The Pentagon unit also routinely second-guessed the CIA's highly classified assessments. Regarding one report titled "Iraq and al-Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship," one of the Naval Reserve officers wrote: "The report provides evidence from numerous intelligence sources over the course of a decade on interactions between Iraq and al-Qaida. In this regard, the report is excellent. Then in its interpretation of this information, CIA attempts to discredit, dismiss, or downgrade much of this reporting, resulting in inconsistent conclusions in many instances. Therefore, the CIA report should be read for content only-and CIA's interpretation ought to be ignored."

This same antipathy toward the CIA led to the events that are the basis of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity, according to several former and current senior officials.

Ironically, the Plame affair's origins had its roots in Cheney and Libby's interest in reports that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium yellowcake from Niger to build a nuclear weapon. After reading a Pentagon report on the matter in early February 2002, Cheney asked the CIA officer who provided him with a national security briefing each morning if he could find out about it.

Without Cheney's knowledge, his query led to the CIA-sanctioned trip to Niger by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband, to investigate the allegations. Wilson reported back to the CIA that the allegations were most likely not true.

Despite that conclusion, President Bush, in his State of the Union address in 2003, included the Niger allegation in making the case to go to war with Iraq. In July 2003, after the war had begun, Wilson publicly charged that the Bush administration had "twisted" the intelligence information to make the case to go to war.

Libby and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove told reporters that Wilson's had been sent to Niger on the recommendation of his wife, Plame. In the process, the leaks led to the unmasking of Plame, the appointment of Fitzgerald, the jailing of a New York Times reporter for 85 days, and a federal grand jury indictment of Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly attempting to conceal his role in leaking Plame's name to the press.

The Plame affair was not so much a reflection of any personal animus toward Wilson or Plame, says one former senior administration official who knows most of the principals involved, but rather the direct result of long-standing antipathy toward the CIA by Cheney, Libby, and others involved. They viewed Wilson's outspoken criticism of the Bush administration as an indirect attack by the spy agency.

Those grievances were also perhaps illustrated by comments that Vice President Cheney himself wrote on one of Feith's reports detailing purported evidence of links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. In barely legible handwriting, Cheney wrote in the margin of the report:

"This is very good indeed … Encouraging … Not like the crap we are all so used to getting out of CIA."

-- Murray Waas is a Washington-based writer and frequent contributor to National Journal. Several of his previous stories are also available online.

Redeployment Is Not Withdrawal

by Gilbert Achcar and Stephen R. Shalom
There is much of which to approve in the recent speech of Rep. John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, on Iraq. The hawkish Murtha had been critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war for some time, but until recently his solution had been to call for more troops. On Nov. 17, however, he recognized courageously that U.S. troops "can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME."

Murtha pointed out, as the antiwar movement has been saying all along, that the U.S. troops in Iraq, rather than adding to stability, "have become a catalyst for violence." He referred to the acknowledgment made by General George W. Casey, commander of the "multinational force" in Iraq, during a hearing before the Armed Services Committee of the Senate in September 2005, that the presence of "the coalition forces as an occupying force" is "one of the elements that fuels the insurgency."

As Murtha noted, a recent poll indicates that 80 percent of Iraqis want the U.S. out. This poll, a secret British defense ministry survey conducted in August 2005, is consistent with earlier polls and several facts: the fact that most slates in the January 2005 election – including the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), which won the election – had in their platform the demand for a timetable for the withdrawal of occupation forces from Iraq; a U.S. military poll in February that found only 23 percent of urban residents supported the presence of coalition troops, compared to 71 percent opposed; the statement of 126 members of the Iraqi National Assembly, including a majority of the 140 MPs of the majority UIA, demanding "the departure of the occupation force"; and the request made repeatedly by the National Sovereignty Committee of the Iraq National Assembly for a withdrawal timetable for "occupation troops."

There is no guarantee of what would happen in the event of a U.S. withdrawal, but Murtha argued – as the antiwar movement has argued since the beginning of the occupation – that the U.S. presence makes an agreement among contending Iraqi forces, and the peaceful unfolding of the political process, more difficult. For example, the Association of Muslim Scholars, the most prominent Sunni organization with ties to the armed resistance, has repeatedly declared that it would call for a cessation of all armed action if the U.S. and its allies set a timetable for their withdrawal.

Murtha has submitted a resolution to the House calling for the redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq. That Murtha, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran and one of the most prominent boosters of the military in Congress, has had it with the war is a telling sign of how badly things are going for the warmongers, and the more representatives who join the 13 co-sponsors of his resolution, the better. Furthermore, one has to sympathize with Murtha, of course, for the abuse that has been heaped upon him by the Bush administration and right-wing ideologues in Congress and the media.

Nevertheless, the antiwar movement needs to be careful not to confuse Murtha's position with its own.

When Murtha says "redeploy" – instead of withdraw – the troops from Iraq, he makes clear that – despite his rhetoric – he doesn't want to really bring them home, but to station them in the Middle East. As he told Anderson Cooper of CNN:

"We … have united the Iraqis against us. And so I'm convinced, once we redeploy to Kuwait or to the surrounding area, that it will be much safer. They won't be able to unify against the United States. And then, if we have to go back in, we can go back in."

Moreover, Murtha's resolution calls for the U.S. to create "a quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S. Marines" to be "deployed to the region."

We strongly disagree. The antiwar movement cannot endorse U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, whether over or under the horizon. We don't want American troops remaining in the region and poised to go back into Iraq. They don't belong there, period. Some – though not Murtha – suggest keeping U.S. bases within Iraq, close to the oil fields or in Kurdistan, in order to intervene more or less on the pattern of what U.S. forces are doing in Afghanistan. But this is a recipe for disaster, since the Iraqi view that the United States intends a permanent occupation is one of the main causes inciting the insurgency. Moreover, stationing forces in Kurdistan could only deepen the already dangerous ethnic animosities among Iraqis. In any event, if our troops continue to be used in Iraq – whether deployed from bases inside the country or from outside – they will inevitably continue to cause civilian casualties, further provoking violence. Having a U.S. interventionary force stationed in Kuwait or a similar location will continue to inflame the opposition of Iraqis who will know their sovereignty is still subject to external control. As for the impact of keeping U.S. forces anywhere else in the larger region, it should be recalled that their presence was the decisive factor leading to 9/11 and fuels "global terrorism" in the same way that their presence in Iraq "fuels the insurgency."

Murtha, we need to keep in mind, is not opposed to U.S. imperial designs or militarism. He criticizes the Bush administration because its Iraq policies have led to cuts in the (non-Iraq) defense budget, threatening the America's ability to maintain "military dominance."

Murtha's resolution calls for redeploying U.S. troops from Iraq "at the earliest practicable date" – which is reasonable only if it means that the withdrawal should be started immediately and completed shortly after the December elections, with the exact details to be worked out with the elected Iraqi government. In his press conference, however, Murtha estimated it would take six months to carry out the "redeployment," which seems far longer than the "earliest practicable date." (Recall that U.S. troops were withdrawn from Vietnam in 90 days from the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty.) To set such a long time period for the evacuation of Iraq is all the more worrying given that the decision to withdraw the troops is not even being considered yet by the Bush administration or the bipartisan majority of Congress.

Congressional Republicans, in a transparent ploy, offered a one-sentence resolution stating that the deployment of troops in Iraq be terminated immediately. Murtha called this "a ridiculous resolution" that no Democrat would support (Hardball with Chris Matthews, Nov. 18). In point of fact, the resolution was opposed by all of the pro-war Democrats and most of the antiwar Democrats, who (as the Republicans hoped) didn't want to be accused of "cutting and running." But the resolution wasn't ridiculous at all if understood in the sense we have just explained.

The antiwar movement should and no doubt will relentlessly continue its fight for the immediate, total, and unconditional withdrawal of U.S. troops and their allies from Iraq and the whole region. Its central slogan, "Troops Out Now," is more warranted each day and will gain in urgency until withdrawal, not redeployment, is achieved.

An Exit Strategy Bush Can’t Ignore

By: Joe Conason
Date: 11/28/2005

Agitated over their declining credibility, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are answering accusations that they misled the nation into war with characteristic aggressiveness. They’re understandably alarmed by the increasing consensus among Americans that they exaggerated and distorted intelligence to justify invading Iraq.

What alarms everyone else—including many members of the President’s own party—is that that they still can articulate no plausible plan to get our troops out. Rather than distracting themselves with partisan bickering, the President and Vice President ought to seize any opportunity to extricate us honorably from the terrible mess they have made.

Now such a chance has appeared, if only the White House has the wit to recognize it.

The quandary for Americans in Iraq, now that the old rosy scenarios have been discarded, is that both leaving and staying are likely to result in disaster.

If we withdraw, the entire country will be engulfed by civil war, creating a haven for Islamist terror and a threat to regional stability, not to mention a victory for our enemies. If we remain as occupiers, the civil war will continue to expand anyway, attracting support for Islamist terror, draining our resources, and further damaging our army and international prestige. We continue the occupation because of the insurgency, even though the occupation only strengthens the insurgency.

Too often omitted from American discussions of this dismal situation is the widely shared and forcefully expressed desire of the Iraqis themselves—namely that our troops should go home as soon as possible, and that a schedule must be established for their departure.

Last August, the British defense ministry conducted a secret opinion survey in Iraq, whose results have since leaked out. The pollsters found that over three-quarters of the Iraqi public want a timetable for the end of the occupation. Even the Iraqi political parties least hostile to the United States, including those that won the elections last January, want to know precisely when our troops will go.

That broad judgment was ratified again in Cairo last weekend, when Iraqi political leaders met at a “reconciliation conference” under the auspices of the Arab League. Only those who know nothing about public opinion in Iraq were surprised when the Cairo conferees, representing a very broad spectrum of ethnic and religious factions, issued a joint statement that demanded “the withdrawal of foreign forces in accordance with a timetable.” (The communiqué went so far as to acknowledge the legitimacy of “resistance” to foreign occupation, while condemning acts of terror against civilians.)

According to the Egyptian newspaper Al Hayat, sources at the conference suggested that the Iraqi leaders want U.S. and British troops to vacate the country’s major cities by next May. The premise of that hope is “an immediate national program to rebuild the armed forces.”

Opponents of withdrawal argue convincingly that Iraq will not possess the military and police capacity to defend itself from the insurgents within six months. That argument is bolstered by the Bush administration’s history of false predictions and pronouncements about the rapid improvement of the Iraqi armed forces.

How then can our troops get out without plunging Iraq and perhaps the Middle East into bloody chaos?

The best alternative is a negotiated ceasefire leading to an American withdrawal. Working through the Iraqi government, U.S. officials should set forth a clear timetable for the departure of our troops—in exchange for an end to armed attacks by Sunni guerrillas. Spokesmen for the rebels, including leaders of the Association of Muslim Scholars, have often hinted at the possibilities for such a settlement.

Not all of the insurgents would be willing to participate in negotiations with the Iraqi government or the United States, of course. The force that calls itself “Al Qaeda in Iraq,” led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, aims to install an Islamist regime and in any case prefers a prolonged conflict for propaganda purposes. No doubt the Zarqawi group, which is a tiny minority among the insurgents, realizes that any settlement would doom them.

That is another obvious reason for Americans to sit down and talk with the mainstream Sunni and former Baathist rebels. A looming defeat in the “war on terror” could be transformed into a victory over Al Qaeda won by Arabs and Muslims.

At the Cairo conference last Sunday, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said his government would be willing to engage in talks with representatives of the insurgents. Indeed, he sounded eager. The veteran Kurdish leader told reporters, “If those who call themselves the Iraqi resistance want to contact me, I will welcome them.”

Sincere as Mr. Talabani’s invitation may be, however, the insurgents are unlikely to accept it without guarantees that he alone cannot provide. Only the President of the United States can propose the initiation of talks about an orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops and a ceasefire between the insurgency and the Iraqi government—and that is what he should do now.

http://www.observer.com/opinions_conason.asp

Richard Pearle is on C-span WJ today. The host asked him if he and the neocons planned the war in the 1990s with their Project for the New American Century.

Pearle denies that they met and planned the war. He said this is an urban myth.

What else would he say?

http://www.c-span.org

http://www.counterpunch.org/gray11212005.html

Out of Iraq, Now
Rep. Maxine Waters, the Real Leader of the Anti-War Caucus
By KEVIN ALEXANDER GRAY
and MIKE HERSH

Since the beginning of George Bush's unpopular war against the Iraqi people, black female leadership has led the fight in opposing what has now become Bush's moral and political albatross.

Although Representative John Conyers (D-Mich) remains the dean of progressive politics in Congress, a coterie of black female lawmakers have emerged on the leadership forefront of opposition to the war. Many are familiar with Oakland area Congresswoman Barbara Lee's lone challenge to the war at the start-up and Georgia's Cynthia McKinney's constant vocal opposition to a variety of questionable policies, political tactics and the truthfulness of Bush administration officials. Now, Maxine Waters (D-Calif), in her leadership of a multi-racial coalition, hopes to assume a more public role in shaping and leading anti-war efforts in Congress.

The mainstream press has focused on Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), a decorated Vietnam War veteran and hawkish legislator who last week declared that the Iraq had become so bad that the United States needs to immediately withdraw troops. However, it was Waters' "Out of Iraq Coalition" in the House, that jump started House opposition at a press conference at the Longworth Office Building days prior to Murtha's announced change of heart. At her side were 19 other congresspeople, black, white, female, male, gay and Latino demanding that the issue of "how the United States got into war" be fully debated on the floor of the House.

Although the Sunday morning talk shows were quick to book Murtha as a guest, news of last weeks press conference got little notice. The "Out of Iraq Coalition" event, received literally no coverage from mainstream or national media outlets. Nevertheless, Waters, chair and founder of the "Out of Iraq" Congressional Caucus begun in June 2005, announced that the Caucus filed a discharge petition on House Resolution 55, authored by Congressmen Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and Walter Jones (D-NC). If passed by Congress, HJ 55 would require Bush to begin bringing US troops home from Iraq.

A discharge petition is a House rule that permits members to bring to the floor for consideration a measure not reported from committee if 218 members sign the petition. The discharge petition, as drafted, provides 17 hours of debate and permits consideration of any germane amendments including amendments that would move up the date at which US troops would begin to return home.

Waters said, "The American people expect leadership from their elected officials and so far that leadership has been non-existent. We filed the discharge petition on HJ 55 in order to force the House of Representatives, the people's House, to debate the Iraq War. The President and the Republican leadership have refused to fully explain why we are in Iraq and when our troops will be able to return to their families. 'Staying the course' as the President suggests is an insult to our soldiers who have served so bravely in Iraq and to their families who worry every minute about their safety."

Waters listed the ever rising costs of the war: $250 billion, more than 2,070 US troops killed, 15,000 injured, 400 limbs amputated. She pledged to examine and analyze the "distorted" information
which led us into war, and--with our help--lead us out of Iraq. She recounted that in only six months, the Out of Iraq Caucus has grown to include 70 House members of various points of view, but united in the desire to formulate a strategy to lead America out of Iraq: "All of us want out of Iraq."

Waters appears on solid ground in her opposition to the war as most polls show support for the President's policy in Iraq in free fall and his overall support numbers dropping as well. Among blacks, support for the war has been low from the start. A 2005 Pew Research poll found blacks nearly twice as likely as whites to have strong reservations about the war. And black military recruitment numbers have followed suit with black enlistment in the Army falling by 40% since 2000 according to USA Today.

Resolution co-author Abercrombie invited all Republicans, Democrats, and the lone House Independent Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) to join with the Representatives in the room supporting an "open rule," allowing any member to offer any amendment to the resolution. He presented his "bipartisan approach" as "an opportunity for Republicans to join with us." He called the resolution a "kick off" on debate and an opportunity for the American people to demand accountability.

Waters announced that Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass) will manage the effort on House Joint Resolution 55. Frank said, "The House ought to be able to have a debate" on what he called the "single most important issue" facing the Congress and the nation, and explained this discharge petition would permit the debate.

Frank dismissed the Bush claims that debate on Iraq policy was "irresponsible" and rejected the President's excuse for misleading the Congress and the American people because "other people were wrong, too" as a "so's-your-mother defense." Frank added that the discharge petition step would not be necessary "if the Republican [House] Leadership had any respect for democracy."

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tx) called the Iraq conflict an "unconstitutional war" and HJ Resolution 55 the "fix-it resolution." She said the war is "Vietnam reincarnated", and assured there is "no division" between this effort and the troops. She said, "This effort is all about having our people return from Iraq with dignity and success. This will say to the American People, your voices are heard." She told of her visits to the troops in Iraq, as well as hospitals in Germany and the US-- people she called "victims of war."

Barbara Lee described one such victim in a Germany hospital, a servicewoman "burned from head to toe" who was only concerned about her mother. Lee said, "The President misled the Congress with false and misleading reasons for the war. It's crucial we have this debate."

Lee, Co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus said the White House still refuses to respond to questions about the Downing Street Minutes despite signatures from 500,000 Americans and 100 Members of Congress. She was referring to a petition effort led by Conyers with signatures collected through the Washington-based Progressive Democrats of America and the After Downing Street Coalition. She explained that this discharge petition drive is building on her Resolution of Inquiry. That resolution would have required answers and demanded accountability from the administration on pre-war intelligence and other related issues.

Caucus member and former former presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Oh) suggested that the Out of Iraq Caucus' effort be called achieving "an Honorable Discharge from Iraq." Kucinich countered the Bush talking point, that 'Democrats have no grounds to question his Iraq policies because they supported it.' Kucinich argued, "Two-thirds of current House Democrats [and] one-half of current Senate Democrats opposed the resolution empowering Bush to use force." Kucinich declared, "Bush can no longer claim he was misled and continue to mislead." He charged that the American people do not support the war or this president, and he called this, "the beginning of the
end of the war."

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Oh) said, "Our goal is to have a conversation with the American people." She raised three keys to the discussion. First, "Moral Legitimacy: [the USA has] lost that moral edge starting with the revelations of atrocities at Abu Ghraib, after which casualties doubled." She stressed that, "in the military slogan 'Honor, Duty, Country' honor comes first. Second, she claims that the Bush Administration is setting up a "parallel system" of mercenaries--thousands of "contractors" who conduct the "questioning" of prisoners and "undermine our military." Kaptur revealed there could be as many as 100-150,000 "contractors" in Iraq. Third, she warned of apparent and rumored plans to "hold up" the Defense Appropriations bill to link the spending on the war and occupation to spending for all agencies and services-- an effort to "hold the entire nation hostage" to the Bush war policies.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif) --the other co-chairs of the House Progressive Caucus--praised grassroots activists for "putting the starch in the spines" of House Members. She said it's time the Congress started "hearing the voices of the American People" and pass what she called the "Homeward Bound" Resolution. She said this discharge petition effort began in the House with her amendment to the Defense Authorization requesting the White House articulate some exit plan or strategy. Her measure was defeated, but gained bipartisan support and set the stage for Barbara Lee's and Kucinich's Resolutions of Inquiry.

"I believe this war was a mistake from the very beginning," said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass). "There are two things you can do with a mistake--you can correct it or you can compound it. HJ Resolution 55 is an attempt to correct this mistake by requiring the President to develop and implement a meaningful plan to end our military involvement in Iraq."

The discharge petition would also open the House floor to other efforts, including McGovern's HR 4232 which if passed would immediately end funding for the war. "Both of these [approaches] are better than 'staying the course,' as the Bush Administration would have us do which would only compound the mistakes we have made in Iraq," declared McGovern.

Many of those attending the press conference agreed that the world-wide reputation of the United States is suffering because people around the globe don't believe we're going to ever leave Iraq. They stressed the need for ongoing Congressional efforts--with increasing Republican support--to bar permanent bases and other entanglements with Iraq such as "sweet heart deals" for oil.

Kevin Alexander Gray is a civil rights organizer in South Carolina. Mike Hersh is a political commentator. They can be reached at: kagamba@bellsouth.net

http://www.counterpunch.org/frank11212005.html

The Avian Flu of the Antiwar Movement
Democratic Hawks
By JOSHUA FRANK

They won't pull out troops from Iraq and they won't vote for any strategy that calls for immediate removal of United States occupation forces. Of course it took a Republican to put forth an "out-now" resolution, which was supposedly intended to split the Democrats. But the vote in the House late Friday didn't slice a wedge in the Democrat Party -- on the contrary, it united them behind a bloody and illegal occupation in Iraq. Of course this could well have been the Republican strategy all along.

Only three Democrats voted in support of the Republicans' Iraq withdraw proposal: Representatives Wexler, Serrano and McKinney. And their point was well made. They want the troops home now and they don't care who wrote up the legislation or the reasons why they did it. It was the right move to make. If US troops were pulled out tomorrow, Iraq would be a safer place for all of us.

A handful of House Democrats did take the podium to express their seething disgust over the Republicans' political feat. Talk is cheap, however. Votes are what count. If there ever was a subject that should gash the thin-skinned Democratic Party, it'd be the Iraq war. But as the House vote verified, the Democrats don't want US troops home now, let alone in six months as Rep. John Murtha proposed last Thursday.

Murtha, a veteran war hawk who championed the Iraq invasion from its inception, announced at a teary eyed press conference that he wished to withdraw the nearly 160,000 US troops in Iraq "at the earliest predictable date." Recent polls indicate that the majority of Americans agree with Murtha's call to pull out US forces, which wasn't even close to an "out-now" proposition. Regardless, the Democrats took cover as Rep. Murtha began making headlines with his remarks.

"I don't support immediate withdrawal," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid released in a statement following Murtha's call to exit troops.

"Mr. Murtha speaks for himself," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi gasped as reporters asked for her takes on the matter.

The Democratic leadership in Washington was making it crystal clear that they won't be cut and running from Iraq but from Murtha and the movement that prompted his change of heart.

The Democrats, however, are proving to be the Avian Flu of the antiwar movement. They are willing to divvy out just enough fodder in hopes of luring in the antiwar crowd, and then they strike.

First it was the Senate lock out, which ended up being nothing more than a charade masked as opposition. After all, debating pre-war intel is a non-issue -- what we need to be worried about is how to bring our troops home now. But as we well know, the Democrats have neither a plan nor the desire to bring them home anytime soon.

Senator John Kerry and even Donald Rumsfeld are calling for a reduction of US troops after December. But the troops they both want to bring home are the ones they sent over to monitor Iraq elections in the first place. Pulling them out afterward was the plan all along. The Democrats, like the Republicans, still believe there is a mission to be accomplished here. What this mission is, nobody knows.

US presence in Iraq is only enflaming more anti-American sentiment in the Middle East and worldwide. It's only increasing potential threats against the United States. Surely it can't be democracy the Democrats and Republicans want. If that were the case they'd have yanked out troops months ago as Iraqis have overwhelmingly declared that's what they desire. No, this ongoing mission is only about one thing: smug American pride. President Bush and his Democratic enablers can't admit that this war was waged for no reason whatsoever. They can't admit that all the lives lost have been for nothing.

The Democrats in Washington, despite sporadic glimmers of hope, is a feckless lot. So don't take their bait. Like all the shrapnel and bullets flying through the air in Iraq -- the Democratic Party is a killer.

Joshua Frank is the author of the brand new book, Left Out!: How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, which has just been published by Common Courage Press. You can order a copy at a discounted rate at www.brickburner.org. Joshua can be reached at Joshua@brickburner.org.

http://cgi.wn.com/?action=display&article=...xt&index=recent

WorldNews.com, Wed 23 Nov 2005


President Bush: The Real Enemy of Self-Expression and Freedom of Press
WorldNews Guest Writer Beverly Darling.

Since President Bush and others recently claimed to be proponents of self expression and are supposedly welcoming disagreements towards their policy in Iraq, truth has truly become stranger than fiction. Only a few days ago they attacked and used derogatory labels such as ‘coward’ in referring to Rep. Jack Martha (D-PA), the decorated Vietnam war veteran who after visiting and talking with wounded and injured soldiers from Iraq, is now attempting to propose a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives to hold Mr. Bush accountable in ending the Iraqi War and eventually bringing U.S. troops home. Now we learn that in April of 2004, Mr. Bush wanted to launch a military strike against the headquarters of Aljazeera, a major news source for many people in the Middle East. Fortunately, Mr. Blair talked President Bush out of committing another war crime.

From the moment the spurious Bush Administration seized the executive office in 2000, they have overtly and covertly attacked self-expression and the free press. Overtly, as a result of Aljazeera’s critical and exposed coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, namely the numerous images and reports of thousands of innocent civilians being torn apart and brutalized by U.S. weapons of war, Washington viewed Aljazeera as a threat to their ’neat’ and ’tidy’ war. Some Aljazeera journalists have been killed or falsely imprisoned by the U.S. Several Aljazeera offices, such as Kabul and Baghdad, were destroyed by U.S. missiles. Numerous Middle Eastern journalistic groups and organizations have condemned the U.S. for singling out and killing Arab journalists. Right now Spain is attempting to extradite three U.S. soldiers implicated in the murder of a Spanish journalist while covering the war.

Covertly, the Bush Administration has been fined and is still being investigated by the GAO for propagating prepackaged news reports. Unknown to millions of readers and viewers in the U.S, editorialist, actors, and actresses were paid to write articles and air commercials favorable to Mr. Bush’s administrative goals and ideology. The No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan, embedded reporters that were censored by the military, hired performers in the U.S. that staged fake interviews in favor of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Judith Miller (mouthpiece of the New York Times and the Bush cabal), and the staged toppling of the statue of Hussein in Basra, are just a few examples of pre-arranged pseudo-news coverage.

It is no wonder that the world has a different view of the Iraq War and the U.S. from that of most Americans. One way a democracy changes into a dictatorship is through propaganda and manipulating news and information. President Bush has promoted self-destruction instead of self-expression. In the Bush lexicon, freedom of press and communication belongs to those who not only own it and control it, but also who murder and raze its competitors. Unfortunately, a fettered press has replaced a free press. Evidently, the British Civil servant has been charged for leaking the government memo concerning President Bush’s plan to destroy Aljazeera. Why not charge Mr. Bush for his arrogant and lawless actions towards self-expression and the free press?

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112305I.shtml

It is time for the DDemocrats in Congress to to elect new leadership in both the house and senate. Please contact your senators and representatives and demand
leaders that pay attention to rank and file democrats and the majority of US citizens who insist on removing our troops from Iraq.

Iraq war may go for decades: report

From correspondents in London

The Oxford Research Group non-governmental organisation, which assesses constructive approaches to dealing with international terrorism and the "war on terror", says the war in Iraq is only in its early stages.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11125.htm

How Ragtag Insurgents Beat the World's Sole Superpower

By Ted Rall

As inexperienced weekend warriors shot up carloads of civilians from rooftops above invisible checkpoints, it soon became apparent that our forces were undereducated, poorly trained and excessively preoccupied with their own safety. The Americans' cultural insensitivity, often beyond the point of brutality, transformed people grateful to be liberated into insurgents in a matter of months.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11128.htm

Proof That Bush Lied

Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel

By Murray Waas, special to National Journal

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, 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, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11121.htm

Cheney: US never had burden of proof

By Times Of India

"We never had the burden of proof," he said, adding that it had been up to Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to prove to the world that he didn't have such weapons.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11123.htm

A plague on both their houses

By Patrick J. Buchanan

In invading Iraq, we attacked and occupied a country of 25 million that had not attacked us, did not threaten us, did not want war with us – to strip it of weapons we now know it did not have.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11127.htm