NIE: Prospects for Iraq’s Stability (pdf)

So, Is Real Debate Over Israel Possible on the Hill?

Army Secretary Wants Deployments Limited to 15 Months

Bush: In the footsteps of Napoleon

There are eerily familiar resonances between Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in 1798 and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Both began with supreme arrogance and ended as fiascoes. Above all, the leaders of both occupations employed the same political vocabulary and rhetorical flimflammery. But at least Napoleon looked to the future and saw the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. Bush's neo-colonialism swam against the tide of history, and its failure is all the more criminal for having been so predictable. - Juan Cole (Aug 24, '07)

New 'surge' report paints grim picture
A new US intelligence study tosses a bone to US President George W Bush's hopes for Iraq, but the overall tone is not promising, particularly the increasingly "precarious" future of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite government. - Jim Lobe (Aug 24, '07)

France knocks heads over its Iran diplomacy
French President Nicolas Sarkozy's anti-Iran stance and his own country's nuclear-arms modernization push are a contradiction that could backfire. Ultimately it could lessen his stature and weaken what progress quiet diplomacy has made with Tehran over its nuclear program. - Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Aug 24, '07)

Musharraf down, but far from out
With former prime minister Nawaz Sharif being allowed to return to Pakistan after seven years in exile, many see a renewed threat to the military rule of President General Pervez Musharraf. It's not that simple, as the general has friends in high places - in the United States. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Aug 24, '07)

The new 'NATO of the East' takes shape
The recent summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization moved the grouping a few steps closer to becoming a "supra-regional alliance". That was underscored by Russia's simultaneous flexing of its dormant air power. Washington still believes that the SCO is some way from becoming a strategic alliance and that there is still time to weaken it before an opposition bloc actually takes shape. - M K Bhadrakumar (Aug 24, '07)

More War on the Horizon
August 24th, 2007 Via: Antiwar:

No pullout from Iraq while I’m president, declares George W. Bush.

On to Iran, declares Vice President Cheney.

Israel is a “peace-seeking state” that needs $30 billion of US taxpayers’ money for war, declares State Department official Nicholas Burns.

The Democratic Congress, if not fully behind the Iraqi war, at least no longer is in the way of it.

Nor are the Democrats in the way of the Bush regime’s build up for initiating war with Iran.

The Bush regime says it is going to designate part of Iran’s military – the Revolutionary Guards – a terrorist organization, whose bases and facilities Bush intends to bomb along with Iran’s nuclear energy sites. Three US aircraft carrier strike forces are deployed off Iran. B-2 Stealth Bombers are being fitted to carry 30,000 pound “bunker-buster” bombs to use against hardened sites. Politicized US generals assert that Iran is providing arms and aid to the Iraqi resistance to the US occupation. The media is feeding the US population the same propaganda about nonexistent Iranian weapons of mass destruction that they fed us about nonexistent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. A former CIA Middle East field officer, Robert Baer, has written in Time magazine that the Bush regime has decided to attack the Revolutionary Guards within the next 6 months. Remember the “cakewalk war”? Well, this time the neocons think that an attack on the Revolutionary Guards will free Iran from Islamic influence and cause Iranians to back the US against their own government.

Lies, unprovoked aggression, and delusional expectations – the same ingredients that produced the Iraq catastrophe – all over again. The entire Bush regime and both political parties are complicit, along with the media and US allies.

One Billion Light Years Across of Nothing
August 24th, 2007 Via: Globe and Mail:

Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That’s got them scratching their heads about what’s just not there.

The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That’s an expanse of nearly 10 billion trillion kilometres of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday.

Astronomers have known for many years that there are patches in the universe where nobody’s home. In fact, one such place is practically a neighbour, a mere 2 million light years away.

But what the Minnesota team discovered, using two different types of astronomical observations, is a void that’s far bigger than scientists ever imagined.

“This is 1,000 times the volume of what we sort of expected to see in terms of a typical void,” said Minnesota astronomy professor Lawrence Rudnick, author of the paper that will be published in Astrophysical Journal. “It’s not clear that we have the right word yet…. This is too much of a surprise.”

<h3 class="post-title">More On the ‘08 Economic Debate </h3> Been on a plane most of the day. My brother is getting married, so I’m gonna be out of pocket for the weekend. In the meantime, check out the full Edwards speech that I excerpted earlier this morning. Also, The Nation has a solid review of the economic debate at the presidential level by Bob Borosage and Katrina Vanden Huevel. Check it out here.

<h3 class="post-title">“Corporate Democrats” </h3> I’m traveling today to my brother’s wedding, so posting is going to be light. One thing that caught my attention, however, was this quote from John Edwards:

“We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other.”

The use of the term “corporate Democrats” is something new from Edwards. It is a term that describes the problem with the Democratic Party these days - and perhaps his use of the term means this fissure in the Democratic Party will take center stage in the primaries during the stretch run.

Where Did the Katrina Money Go?
Two years after the storms, most hurricane rebuilding funds have yet to be spent-much less reached those in need

by Jeffrey Buchanan and Chris Kromm / August 24th, 2007

When pressed on the slow pace of recovery in the Gulf Coast, President Bush insists the federal government has fulfilled its promise to rebuild the region. The proof, he says, is in the big check the federal government signed to underwrite the recovery — allegedly more than $116 billion. But residents of the still-devastated Gulf Coast are left wondering whether the check bounced. (Full article …)

Ah, Democracy, We Hardly Knew Ye…
by Sheila Samples / August 24th, 2007

My friend Bernie says he’s not only tired of making excuses for Democrats, he’s sick and tired of it. “We’ve worked our backsides off since 9-11 getting people in office with the courage to derail Bush and Cheney’s Constitutional death train,” Bernie wailed. “We had our feet on the ground, our eyes on the prize, our noses to the grindstone, our backs to the wall, our shoulders to the wheel –” he paused, mentally clicking off body parts. (Full article …)

Katrina, Impeachment, War and the Black Gulag
by Glen Ford / August 23rd, 2007

We are witnessing the final dissolution of both the Democratic Party and established Black leadership formations as effective agents of domestic social change and world peace. Corporate power has swallowed the Party whole, and is smothering or absorbing the residue of what was once a powerful Black people’s movement. The devastation is all but complete, as is evident when one examines the response to the crises of Katrina, the Iraq War, the necessity to impeach, and the hellish and inexorable growth of a Black American Gulag through mass incarceration. (Full article …)

• The Utah Mine Disaster: A Teachable Moment About Workplace Safety HuffingtonPost.com - Thu Aug 23, 8:15 PM ETBefore the hordes of reporters move on from the Crandall Canyon Mine disaster, taking their note pads, satellite trucks, and the nation's attention with them, we should seize the opportunity to turn this tragedy into a teachable moment -- one that will allow us to look beyond the tragedy in Utah and the dreadful safety record of the mining industry, and focus on the larger issue of worker safety.
• Who Wants War with Iran? The Nation - Thu Aug 23, 6:23 PM ETThe Nation -- With Iraq reaching previously unimaginable levels of violence, with the US military stretched to the breaking point and with America's international reputation in tatters, it's remarkable that any sane person could argue for a preemptive US attack against Iran. But there do seem to be some in government and the media calling for this course of action.
• When it Comes to Protecting Pervs, Congress is More Powerful Than God HuffingtonPost.com - Thu Aug 23, 11:10 PM ETIt must really be nice to live under such a thick veil of protection and secrecy that you can conduct yourself like a complete sleaze bag without repercussions.
• Locked Up in New Orleans The Nation - Thu Aug 23, 2:03 PM ETThe Nation -- "I never got paid," Dewitt Solomon tells me.
• Romney and the Mormon Issue RealClearPolitics.com - Thu Aug 23, 11:30 AM ETOn Monday, Mark Davis had a column on RealClearPolitics that discussed Mitt Romney and how he has handled the issue of his Mormonism.
• The Daily 2008 RealClearPolitics.com - 1 hour, 8 minutes agoThe ghost of Hillary Clinton's past roamed New Hampshire yesterday as Clinton and John Edwards touched on her time in the White House, albeit in different ways.
• 'OUTSOURCING' IS NOT THE ANSWER TO OUR FOREIGN POLICY WOES Georgie Anne Geyer - Thu Aug 23, 7:56 PM ETWASHINGTON -- Just when I think that this wonderful nation is beginning to shed some of the incoherence of the last six years, something new comes up and smacks me right in my ever-hopeful head.
• IT DID HAPPEN HERE Ted Rall - Thu Aug 23, 10:46 AM ETAmerican Citizen Tortured, Convicted of Thought Crime
• Reality: America Isn't Conservative Joe Conason - Thu Aug 23, 3:00 AM ETCreators Syndicate - As Karl Rove exits stage right with his ruined dreams of rightist hegemony, all the political signs and portents tell us that America is turning the other way. No doubt the departing "boy genius" would dispute that assertion as liberal wishful thinking, as would many on the right. But they cannot so easily dismiss The Economist, an avowedly conservative voice that is among the oldest and most respected periodicals in the world.
• The Long Journey to Quick Wealth

• Bush hails freedom, but can he handle a lousy T-shirt? USATODAY.com - Fri Aug 24, 12:22 AM ETPresident Bush's speech at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on Independence Day in 2004, invoked the nation's highest ideals: "On this Fourth of July, we confirm our love of freedom, the freedom for people to speak their minds. ... Free thought, free expression, that's what we believe," Bush told the crowd.
• 1 DOWN, 11,999,999 TO GO Ann Coulter - Wed Aug 22, 7:56 PM ETMickey Kaus has raised the intriguing possibility that, since Bush's amnesty plan went down to humiliating defeat once Americans got wind of what the elites had planned for us, the Bush administration might respond by intentionally targeting highly sympathetic illegal aliens for deportation "in as clumsy, heartless and lawsuit-inspiring a fashion as possible, in order to create the maximum number of negative headlines."
• How to challenge Iran's militancy without using arms The Christian Science Monitor - Thu Aug 23, 4:00 AM ETWashington - There have been persistent rumors in Washington that President Bush does not want to leave office without "doing something" about Iran. Even more alarming, there have been rumors that Mr. Bush has solicited a green light from Russian President Vladimir Putin for Israel to "do something" about Iran.

JOHN W. DEAN Will A Dark Cloud Follow Karl Rove Back To Texas?: Congress Is Still Investigating Serious Criminal Abuses of Executive Powers Why is key presidential advisor Karl Rove leaving the Bush Administration at this particular moment? FindLaw columnist and former counsel to the president John Dean considers possible explanations. Dean suggests Rove's decision may be connected not only to his declining to appear to testify before Congress, citing executive privilege, but also to a possible fear on Rove's part that, unless he keeps a low profile, Congress will discover the extent to which Rove injected partisanship into the Bush Administration, even in areas that should have remained free of it. Dean raises a potential parallel between the Bush and Nixon Administrations in this respect, and considers whether Rove's possible conduct may not only have been overly partisan, but also run afoul of federal criminal statutes, and if so, whether it should lead to prosecution.

9/11 Blame Game: CIA Falls on Its Sword Again- by Kurt Nimmo - 2007-08-23

The U.S. & Iran: A History of Imperialist Domination, Intrigue and Intervention- by Larry Everest - 2007-08-22

Details emerge of vast scope of US domestic spying law- by Joe Kay - 2007-08-22

he Iraqi Convergence - Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

After months of surreality, the Iraq debate has quite abruptly acquired a relationship to reality. Following the Democratic victory last November, panicked Republican senators began rifling the thesaurus to find exactly the right phrase to express exactly the right nuance to establish exactly the right distance from the president's Iraq policy, while Murtha Democrats searched for exactly the right legislative ruse to force a retreat from Iraq without appearing to do so. In the last month, however, as a consensus has emerged about realities in Iraq, a reasoned debate has begun. A number of fair-minded observers, both critics and supporters of the war, agree that the surge has yielded considerable military progress, while at the national political level the Maliki government remains a disaster. The latest report from the battlefield is from Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a strong critic of the Iraq war. He returned saying essentially what we have heard from Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution and various liberal congressmen, the latest being Brian Baird (D-Wash.): Al-Qaeda has been seriously set back as Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar, Diyala and other provinces switched from the insurgency to our side.

The Next War in Iraq - Joe Klein, Time Magazine

At the Iowa Straw Poll a few weeks ago, just about every Republican presidential candidate who mentioned the war in Iraq cited an Op-Ed piece in the "liberal" New York Times written by two military analysts from the "liberal" Brookings Institution. They had just returned from a brief tour of Iraq where they saw many of the same things I saw on a similar trip in June. They saw the success our military has had in turning Sunni tribes against extremists from al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) but then extrapolated wildly, saying this was a war we "just might win." Predictably, this had the impact of crack cocaine on neoconservatives, producing a euphoric and slightly violent high. The conservative Weekly Standard scurrilously announced that it had helped dash the "hope" of war opponents that Iraq was lost. The Op-Ed will be cited continually in the discussion of the war that will accompany the September reports of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Which is too bad, because it is fundamentally misleading about the next stage of the war. To be sure, the success in the Sunni areas is real, but it may have greater long-term significance in the region than it does in Iraq. We've learned an important lesson in Anbar province: the Islamic-extremist message is a loser. Most Muslims do not want to live without music, television and, especially, tobacco. They don't want their daughters forcibly married to jihadis or their sons shrouded in explosive vests. That is certainly good news, but it's not enough. Indeed, the campaign against AQI may be among the last useful missions for the U.S. military in Iraq. We could drive out every last Islamic extremist, and the country would still be in the midst of a civil war that is trending toward chaos. And make no mistake: the U.S. colonialist insistence on dictating the shape of Iraq's future—framing a constitution, training an Iraqi army and the threat of a permanent U.S. military presence—has exacerbated the chaos.

Another Vietnam? - Max Boot, Wall Street Journal

Ever since the mid-1970s, critics of American military involvement have warned that any decision to deploy armed forces abroad--in Lebanon and El Salvador in the 1980s, in Kuwait, Somalia, and Kosovo in the 1990s, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan--would result in "another Vietnam." Conversely, supporters of those interventions have adamantly resisted any Vietnam comparisons. President George W. Bush boldly abandoned that template with his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Wednesday. In a skillful bit of political jujitsu, he cited Vietnam not as evidence that the Iraq War is unwinnable, but to argue that the costs of giving up the fight would be catastrophic--just as they were in Southeast Asia. This has met with predictable and angry denunciations from antiwar advocates who argue that the consequences of defeat in Vietnam weren't so grave. After all, isn't Vietnam today an emerging economic power that is cultivating friendly ties with the U.S.? True, but that's 30 years after the fact. In the short-term, the costs of defeat were indeed heavy. More than a million people perished in the killing fields of Cambodia, while in Vietnam, those who worked with American forces were consigned, as Mr. Bush noted, to prison camps "where tens of thousands perished." Many more fled as "boat people," he continued, "many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea." That assessment actually understates the terrible repercussions from the American defeat, whose ripples spread around the world. In the late 1970s, America's enemies seized power in countries from Mozambique to Iran to Nicaragua. American hostages were seized aboard the SS Mayaguez (off Cambodia) and in Tehran. The Red Army invaded Afghanistan. It is impossible to prove the connection with the Vietnam War, but there is little doubt that the enfeeblement of a superpower encouraged our enemies to undertake acts of aggression that they might otherwise have shied away from. Indeed, as Mr. Bush noted, jihadists still gain hope from what Ayman al Zawahiri accurately describes as "the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents."

Iraq’s Domino Effect – London Daily Telegraph leader

The heat of electioneering in Washington is sending confusing signals about the American commitment to Iraq. On Monday, Senator Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate armed services committee, called on the Iraqi parliament to vote the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, out of office because of his failure to create a political consensus between the different ethnic and religious groups. The day after, George W. Bush confessed to "a certain level of frustration" with the Shia-dominated administration. America appeared to be preparing for withdrawal by blaming the Iraqis for reneging on their side of the bargain, political reform. Yet on Wednesday the President described Mr al-Maliki as "a good man with a difficult job", and reviewed more than 60 years of history, from Imperial Japan through Korea and Vietnam, to persuade his audience that America had to stay the course in Iraq, to meet "the desire for liberty written into the human heart by our Creator". As things stand, the President will not countenance a precipitate withdrawal of American forces, which means that he will bequeath a still heavy Iraqi deployment to his successor in 17 months' time. But the pressure on Mr al-Maliki is set to heighten, and American goals in Iraq are likely to narrow.

Returning to Cambodia – Peter Rodman, National Review

For a long time, when it talked about Iraq, the Bush administration avoided Vietnam references like the plague. This was perhaps a reasonable judgment that, even if useful debating points could be made, any mention of the “V-word” would be a psychological and political disaster. The administration has now dropped the taboo, as we see in the president’s speech Wednesday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. One reason may be that in today’s Iraq debate, the analogies that work in its favor are too strong to pass up. I agree with that. The analogies relate to the situation on the ground and the likely consequences of congressional action. Military historians seem to be converging on a consensus that by the end of 1972, the balance of forces in Vietnam had improved considerably, increasing the prospects for South Vietnam’s survival. That balance of forces was reflected in the Paris Agreement of January 1973, and the (Democratic) Congress then proceeded to pull the props out from under that balance of forces over the next 2 ½ years — abandoning all of Indochina to a bloodbath. This is now a widely accepted narrative of the endgame in Vietnam, and it has haunted the Democrats for a generation. Will tomorrow’s narrative be that the strategic situation in Iraq was starting to improve in 2007 but the Congress tied the president’s hands anyway — tipping events toward an American defeat, dooming Iraq to chaos, emboldening Islamist extremists throughout the Middle East, and demoralizing all our friends in the region who are on the front line against this scourge? How can the president refrain from making this point? Why on earth should he?

Bush's Vietnam Blunder - Jim Hoagland, Washington Post

Desperate presidents resort to desperate rhetoric -- which then calls new attention to their desperation. President Bush joined the club this week by citing the U.S. failure in Vietnam to justify staying on in Iraq. Bush's comparison of the two conflicts rivals Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook" utterance during Watergate and Bill Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," in producing unintended consequences of a most damaging kind for a sitting president. It is not just that Bush's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention on Wednesday drew on a shaky grasp of history, spotlighted once again his own decision to sit out the Vietnam conflict, and played straight into his critics' most emotive arguments against him and the Republican Party. More important, Bush has called attention to the elephant that will be sitting in the room when his administration makes its politically vital report on Iraq to the nation next month. For Americans, the most important comparison will be this one: As Vietnam did, Iraq has become a failure even on its own terms -- whatever those terms are at any given moment.

Fruits of Retreat - John Podhoretz, New York Post

And so the world of conventional wisdom is even now rearing in horror at the mere thought of President Bush daring to compare the war in Iraq to the war in Vietnam - or, rather, describing the consequences of losing the war in Iraq by discussing the consequences of our loss in Vietnam and asking the American people if they want to see that disastrous past repeated as our inglorious future. You could almost feel the outrage rising like steam heat from the left side of the blogosphere: Why, doesn't that evil moron know that Vietnam is our analogy? Doesn't he know no one should be permitted to mention Vietnam in any context other than the one we use - as an example of an immoral, pointless and stupid war, a quagmire from which the nation was saved not by heroes on the battlefield abroad but by political opposition at home?

Maroons Rush In - Mackubin Thomas Owens, National Review

The 1972 Easter Offensive provided the proof that Vietnam could survive, albeit with U.S. air and naval support, at least in the short term. The Easter Offensive was the biggest North Vietnamese offensive push of the war, greater in magnitude than either the 1968 Tet offensive or the final assault of 1975. Despite inevitable failures on the part of some units, all in all, the South Vietnamese fought well. Then, having blunted the Communist thrust, they recaptured territory that had been lost to Hanoi. Finally, so effective was the eleven-day "Christmas bombing" campaign (LINEBACKER II) later that year that the British counterinsurgency expert, Sir Robert Thompson exclaimed, "you had won the war. It was over." Three years later, despite the heroic performance of some ARVN units, South Vietnam collapsed against a much weaker, cobbled-together PAVN offensive. What happened to cause this reversal? First, the Nixon administration, in its rush to extricate the country from Vietnam, forced South Vietnam to accept a ceasefire that permitted North Vietnamese forces to remain in South Vietnam. Then in an act that still shames the United States to this day, Congress cut off military and economic assistance to South Vietnam. Finally, President Nixon resigned over Watergate and his successor, constrained by congressional action, defaulted on promises to respond with force to North Vietnamese violations of the peace terms. Of course the president’s reference to Vietnam did not have to do with operational art or strategy but with the consequences of defeat: the abandonment of allies to the tender mercies of Vietnamese and Cambodian Communists, resulting in the death of millions in Cambodia and thousands in Vietnam, the “boat people,” and re-education camps. This abandonment of our Vietnamese allies was a massive moral failure on the part of the United States. It is one we should not repeat in Iraq.

Why America's Pullout from Vietnam Worked – Michael Hirsh, Newsweek

Above all, we have learned that Vietnam and Southeast Asia were never really central fronts in the cold war (although Korea at the time of the outbreak of war in 1950, when Beijing still kowtowed to Moscow and before the Soviet Union and China split, might have fit that bill). The decision to pull out had very little effect on the ultimate outcome. America triumphed in the cold war because it had the right kind of economy—an open one—compared to Moscow and Beijing, and its ideas about freedom were more attractive to the states within the Soviet bloc than their own failed ideas were. The president would like to make the argument that Iraq is about the same struggle. It’s not, for several important reasons. In contrast to the Soviet and Chinese communists, or for that matter the fascists of the 1930s and '40s, Al Qaeda and its ilk have no universalist program, no persuasive alternative ideology to globalization and some brand of democracy. They are nihilists, and they have failed to capture half the world’s attention as communism and socialism once did. So, yes, while a U.S. pullout would no doubt inspire a great deal of Al Qaeda propaganda about how they succeeded in forcing the Americans to withdraw from Iraq as they forced the Soviets to do in Afghanistan, the majority of the world’s elites won’t buy it.

Iraq, Vietnam and McGovernism - Washington Times editorial

The media and the political left have taken umbrage at President Bush's choice of a Vietnam analogy to illustrate the dangers of withdrawal from Iraq. Then, as now, he said Wednesday at the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City, "people argued the real problem was America's presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end... The price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields.' " This has set off a firestorm. "Historians Question Bush's Reading of Lessons of Vietnam War for Iraq," read yesterday's New York Times' "news analysis." The president's logic "should persuade few," opined the Los Angeles Times. Both newspapers downplayed the Korea and Japan analogies which Mr. Bush also delivered at the convention. This is more than a little convenient. The president spent much more speech time on Korea and Japan than on Vietnam. Both Korea and Japan stand as rebukes to people who once argued for the purported incompatibility democracy and freedom among peoples who lacked a history thereof. Today we hear it about Middle Eastern peoples instead of Asian ones. Mr. Bush's point is that each was proven wrong in time and that he expects the same to be true in Iraq.

Why Democrats Dread Hearing the V-word - Rosemary Righter, London Times

Why did he do it? Why conjure up unquiet ghosts? Why now? Vietnam is not only, as President Bush rather flatly put it, “a complex and painful subject” for Americans. The V-word is lodged in folk memory as an unwinnable war that America should never have fought, that wasted blood and treasure, and that, most woundingly, bitterly split the nation. Vietnam, even today, is a powerful political toxin. Probably the only American politician who can talk about Vietnam without risk is the war hero John McCain. John Kerry tried the “veteran who wants out of Iraq” line in the 2004 presidential elections; the unwanted effect was to remind the nation of his career as an anti-Vietnam protester. As for Mr Bush, it made sense to keep quiet about a war in which he did not exactly rush to serve. The White House response to the use by anti-war Democrats of the “Vietnam quagmire” analogy has been to point out how different — both in character and in strategic significance — these two conflicts are. Until now. Mr Bush’s quick potted history will be denounced as a distortion of history; there are as many opinions about “what went wrong” as there are toilers in the Vietnam history industry. He must know that to make lessons from Vietnam the core of his appeal for greater American patience in Iraq invites the retort that, as in Vietnam, “we should never have gone in”. His judgment is that what matters more to Americans is “Where do we go from here?” And here he is right that the Vietnam endgame is relevant. Public opinion dictated the timing and manner of America’s withdrawal from Vietnam, and could play the same forcing role in Iraq. The consequences for South East Asia were appalling; the scars endure. The uncontroversial core of his message is that the consequences of a political panic over Iraq would be far graver.

Losing is Winning - Cal Thomas, Washington Times

George Orwell, call your office. You can add to your list of opposites ("war is peace," "ignorance is strength" and "freedom is slavery") a new one. It is the emerging plan of congressional Democrats, joined by at least one Democratic presidential candidate: "losing is winning." After years of embracing defeat and openly saying of Iraq "the war is lost" and "this surge is not accomplishing anything" (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, among others), is that a light at the end of the Democrats' dark tunnel? Apparently hoping to head off a potentially positive report next month from the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, some leading Democrats are acknowledging that the surge of American troops is succeeding. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, who recently returned from Iraq with Sen. John Warner, Virginia Republican, says, "The military aspects of President Bush's new strategy in Iraq ... appear to have produced some credible and positive results." Mr. Levin is by no means a neo-con, noting in a conference call with reporters that the purpose of the surge was to help produce a political settlement, which has not yet been achieved. Still, even acknowledging progress on the ground is a far cry from a spokesperson for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said recently that Democratic leaders are "not willing to concede there are positive things to point to" in Iraq. That was less than a month ago, but some are willing to make such a concession now for the same reason they weren't before: politics.

Back to Vietnam - Boston Globe editorial

The Vietnam war is still such a divisive episode in US history that comparisons to Iraq are sure to be clouded by emotion. But President Bush tossed analogies around capriciously this week before the Veterans of Foreign Wars and added a few more from World War II and Korea. Since he broached the subject, it's reasonable to take the comparisons to places he might not want to go. Here's one: It would have been better to surrender South Vietnam to the North Vietnamese communists in the early 1960s than to engage them in a struggle that cost 58,000 American and millions of Vietnamese lives before it ended in 1975 with the same result: victory for Hanoi and the suppression of non-communist opposition in the south. Would Bush agree that, similarly, it would have been preferable to allow Saddam Hussein, notwithstanding his evil regime, to remain in power than to engage in a more than four-year war that has torn Iraq apart and cost the lives of 3,700 Americans and many more Iraqis?

The Problem Isn’t Mr. Maliki? - New York Times editorial

Blaming the prime minister of Iraq, rather than the president of the United States, for the spectacular failure of American policy, is cynical politics, pure and simple. It is neither fair nor helpful in figuring out how to end America’s biggest foreign policy fiasco since Vietnam. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has been catastrophic for Iraq ever since he took over from the equally disastrous Ibrahim al-Jaafari more than a year ago. America helped engineer Mr. Jaafari’s removal, only to get Mr. Maliki. That tells you something important about whether this is more than a matter of personalities. Mr. Jaafari, as it happens, was Iraq’s first democratically chosen leader under the American-sponsored constitution. Continuing in the Jaafari tradition, Mr. Maliki’s government has fashioned Iraqi security forces into an instrument of Shiite domination and revenge, trying to steer American troops away from Shiite militia strongholds and leaving Sunni Arab civilians unprotected from sectarian terrorism. His government’s deep sectarian urges have also been evident in the continuing failure to enact legislation to fairly share oil revenues and the persistence of rules that bar much of the Sunni middle class from professional employment.

For Now, the Maliki Primary - E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post

Maybe Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki should just enter our primaries next year and Americans could vote up or down on whether he should remain in office. The surest sign of how bad our choices in Iraq have become is the eagerness of both of our political parties to blame the entire mess on the man American officials helped install in his job. After all, it was taken as an American victory back in April 2006 when Maliki replaced Ibrahim al-Jafari, who faced many of the same criticisms as prime minister that Maliki does today. Now, Maliki is the problem. Among Democrats, both Sens. Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton have called for replacing him with "a less divisive and more unifying figure," as Clinton put it. On consecutive days, President Bush was against Maliki before he was for him. On Tuesday, he suggested that Iraqi disappointment with Maliki might lead to his ouster. "If the government doesn't respond to the demands of the people," Bush said of the Iraqis, "they will replace the government." On Wednesday, he declared that Maliki was "a good guy, a good man with a difficult job" and added: "I support him." Who knows what the administration's position on Maliki will be by the weekend?

Iraq Vets Respond - David Bellavia, Pete Hegseth, Michael Baumann, Carl Hartmann, David Thul, Knox Nunnally and Joe Worley, Weekly Standard

On Sunday, seven soldiers from the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed in Iraq penned a passionate opinion piece in the New York Times that further illustrates the complexity of what is "really" happening in Iraq. Of the almost 3,000 soldiers from the Army's storied 82nd Airborne Division currently serving in the hottest of Iraqi neighborhoods, seven felt confident enough in their misgivings to sign an opinion piece. They should not be surprised that many of their comrades--including the seven undersigned here--find their work to be misguided. The 2nd Brigade is responsible for two dangerous areas of Baghdad: Adihamiyah and Sadr City. Airborne troopers there have seen the worst al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army can throw at them and the Iraqi people. But the whole story is that the Iraqis and soldiers in their sector have not yet been fully affected by the surge of troops and operations, which have barely been in place two months. Currently, American and Iraqi Forces are clearing sections of southern Baghdad before turning north to the 82nd Airborne's neighborhoods. As such, the portrait these soldiers painted, while surely accurate and honest, is more representative of pre-surge Baghdad: sectarian strife, lawlessness, and indiscriminate slaughter. This is not, however, the picture elsewhere in Iraq, or even most of Baghdad. Additional American combat brigades first surged to the outlying areas around the capital, disrupting the flow of suicide bombers and car bombs and denying haven to al Qaeda.

'To Old Times' - Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal

The American troops in Iraq, our men and women, are inspiring, and we all know it. But whenever you say it, you sound like a greasy pol: "I support our valiant troops, though I oppose the war," or "If you oppose the war, you are ignoring the safety and imperiling the sacrifice of our gallant troops." I suspect that in their sophistication--and they are sophisticated--our troops are grimly amused by this. Soldiers are used to being used. They just do their job. We know of the broad humanitarian aspects of the occupation--the hospitals being built, the schools restored, the services administered, the kids treated by armed forces doctors. But then there are all the stories that don't quite make it to the top of the heap, and that in a way tell you more. The lieutenant in the First Cavalry who was concerned about Iraqi kids in the countryside who didn't have shoes, so he wrote home, started a drive, and got 3,000 pairs sent over. The lieutenant colonel from California who spent his off-hours emailing hospitals back home to get a wheelchair for a girl with cerebral palsy. The Internet is littered with these stories. So is Iraq. I always notice the pictures from the wire services, pictures that have nothing to do with government propaganda. The Marine on patrol laughing with the local street kids; the nurse treating the sick mother. A funny thing. We're so used to thinking of American troops as good guys that we forget: They're good guys! They have American class. And it is not possible that the good people of Iraq are not noticing, and that in some way down the road the sum of these acts will not come to have some special meaning, some special weight of its own. The actor Gary Sinise helps run Operation Iraqi Children, which delivers school supplies with the help of U.S. forces. When he visits Baghdad grade schools, the kids yell, "Lieutenant Dan!"--his role in "Forrest Gump," the story of another good man.

Heat, Dust and Marines - Ralph Peters, New York Post

Marine Cpl. William Thomas kicked off his patrol briefing promptly at 5 a.m. The other members of 2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon, Lima Company, listened as if their lives depended on the corporal's instructions. Because their lives would depend on what their squad leader had to say. The briefing covered everything from specific duties to details of the ground we'd cover. The mission: Extend the security perimeter around the outpost, do a "census check" of Iraqi ID cards in a marketplace and gather intelligence. "First fire team - security. Second team in support, evacuate any prisoners. Third team - assault element." When the corporal concluded, the company first sergeant, Jim Lanham, a rugged Tennessean who carries himself like Burt Lancaster in "From Here To Eternity," offered his own bit of coaching: "I want to see weapons up. At all times. No matter how tired you feel."

Iran's Hangmen Work Overtime to Silence Opposition - Con Coughlin, London Daily Telegraph

Stonings, hangings, floggings, purges. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might claim that United Nations sanctions can't hurt his country, but that is not how it feels for Iran's long-suffering population which now finds itself on the receiving end of one of the most brutal purges witnessed since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The most visible manifestation of the new oppression sweeping Iran has been the wave of public executions and floggings carried out in Teheran and provincial capitals over recent weeks in a blatant attempt by the regime to intimidate political opponents. The official government line is that the punishments are part of its "Plan to Enforce Moral Behaviour" It's the same kind of argument that was used immediately after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took control to purge the country of its prosperous, secular middle class and secure his hold on power. Now Mr Ahmadinejad is adopting similar tactics in a desperate attempt to keep his embattled regime in power. Although Iran has one of the world's highest execution rates, until recently most of the sentences were carried out within the confines of prisons such a Teheran's notorious Evin complex. But this month diplomats at the Japanese and Australian embassies in the capital were alarmed to find the bodies of two convicted criminals hanging from cranes stationed directly outside their office windows.

Fooled by Winds of Reform - Camelia Entekhabifard, New York Times

As a journalist and writer in Iran, I have often compared myself, and many of my colleagues and friends at other Iranian newspapers, to those mushrooms. In 1992, when I started working in Tehran, I was very careful about what I would report. That is, until right after the election of Mohammad Khatami, the reformist president, in 1997. Then I, like so many other journalists, quickly went to work for the country’s leading reformist papers. Moderate clerics began using those newspapers as conduits for challenging religion-based laws, like the restrictive dress code and death by stoning. President Khatami brought reform to the political system and exposed the involvement of Iranian intelligence agents in the murder of a number of intellectuals. Every day, Iranian journalists, with the encouragement of the Iranian people, disclosed news or challenged the system. We trusted that the changes that had come about would remain and that we would be protected by the government we had elected. The last newspaper I worked for in Iran — Zan — was closed by the judiciary in the spring of 1999. I was in the United States at that time, and as soon as I returned to Tehran, I was arrested. The government held me in solitary confinement for three months, and during that time I confessed to crimes I never committed and did whatever a human being could do to save his or her life. I now wonder if all the opportunities we had seen for reform were really illusions created to trick us. Did the Iranian government encourage a fleeting era of reform in order to identify its opponents so as to come after them? Was President Khatami’s election the thunderstorm that ultimately allowed the government to hunt us down?

Power-sharing in Pakistan - Washington Times editorial

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will indeed resign his military commission by the end of the year, said Pakistan's minister of information, Syed Anwar Mahmood, in an interview this week: "President Musharraf will be quitting as the army's chief of staff at the end of the year. He has said so himself." How Gen. Musharraf intended to deal with the issue of holding his dual offices, which Pakistan's constitution bars him from doing, was one major question mark in Pakistan's upcoming elections. The issue won't be settled, of course, until Gen. Musharraf actually completes the transition to civilian life. (After the 2002 election, Gen. Musharraf granted himself an exemption.) It's important, though, that Gen. Musharraf not only made the promise but has a senior member of his government in Washington reiterating it unequivocally.

U.S. is an Overwhelming Force for Good – Kevin Rudd, The Australian

For the 21st century to be a truly pacific century, a truly peaceful one, it must still have an international rules-based order. It was important for the century just gone, and will be just as important for the century just unfolding. And you cannot deliver a rules-based order in the absence of the underlying ballast of US global strategic power. Carefully husbanded, selectively deployed - without that a rules-based order ultimately withers. America today, moreover, should not disengage from the world post-Iraq and I say that as someone who has been for almost five years a continuing and consistent opponent of the war in Iraq. But I say that despite Iraq, the world needs America. I say that despite Iraq, America is an overwhelming force for good in the world. It is time we sang that from the world's rooftops. When you look around the council of nations, you cannot often say that about others. Whether you are looking at those who need nourishment in the rice fields and the disused factories of North Korea or those in need of food aid in West Darfur. Whichever of the world's hell holes I have travelled to in recent years, there I see America's helping hand at work. Whoever wins the next presidential election and however Iraq is resolved, let there be no retreat of America from the world. Let there be no retreat of America from the Asia-Pacific region. Let there be no retreat of America from our region.

A Global Awakening in Congress? - Viola Herms Drath, Washington Times

Congress is in recess and at home trying to assess the mood of the country. In scrutinizing their current standing among their constituency, one can be fairly sure foreign relations will not be on the agenda. Still, questions about the quagmire in Iraq and the explosive Middle East in general haunt our conflicted lawmakers wherever they appear. Traditionally relegated to the congressional back burner, foreign affairs have unexpectedly become local issues. From Missouri to Maine, our lawmakers grapple with whether to take the approach of "traditionalists," who, says former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, "believe in operating within the traditions of 20th-century foreign policy — that one proceeds in foreign policy in conjunction with, or reaching out to our friends, allies and international organizations." Or they might follow the " transformationalists," who argue "that September 11 [2001] showed that the world environment was deteriorating rapidly and we had to be bold. Friends and allies would only hold us back," according to Mr. Scowcroft. Sheltered by oceans for centuries and secure in their superpower status as guarantors of freedom and human rights, Americans paid scant attention to the political developments and power struggles abroad. They did not have to. They proudly supported various administrations in their effort to advance democracy on the international front, focusing on American aid, technical assistance, free enterprise and economic merits of globalization among struggling nations. Occupied with grassroots politics, Congress left foreign relations and diplomacy more or less to the "experts."

Failure at the CIA - Rich Lowry, New York Post / Real Clear Politics

The new report from the CIA's inspector general about the spy agency's pre-9/11 failings could be titled, "What We Did During Our Holiday From History." The stretch between the end of the Cold War and the Sept. 11 attacks was supposed to be a shiny new era of globalized peace and prosperity, to which an intelligence service was considered quaintly irrelevant. The CIA conformed to the zeitgeist by remaining quaintly irrelevant. George Tenet presided over the agency, failing his way to the second-longest tenure of any director of central intelligence, a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a $4 million book advance. He made the Peter Principle work for him not just by advancing to his level of incompetence, but by benefiting from it handsomely. Congressional Democrats pushed for the release of the scathing IG report, completed back in June 2005, to embarrass the Bush administration. But most of the failures identified in the report took place during the Clinton administration, which set the CIA's skewed priorities and selected Tenet in the first place. President Bush should be embarrassed only because he didn't fire Tenet upon taking office or after 9/11, while Bush also has failed to undertake a serious retooling of the sclerotic bureaucracy that is the CIA.

The Path to 9/11 - Michael Scheuer, Washington Times

This week's release of the CIAs inspector general's (IG) report on agency operations before September 11 is important. Because of the report, the CIA now stands as not only the U.S. government's most successful counterterrorism entity, but also its most honest. The report rightfully indicts former CIA director George Tenet for what can be described as a lack of "manliness." The report makes clear that nothing heroic was expected or even needed from Mr. Tenet. If Mr. Tenet simply had had the moral courage to use the statutory powers vested in him by Congress to compel the intelligence community to operate optimally, he would have been respected and remembered as one of the best DCIs. He did not have the courage, and all Americans have suffered as a result. That said, I suspect that over the long run no one will suffer, in quiet moments, more than Mr. Tenet. Noticeably lacking from the CIA IG's report, however, was the other half of the IG's assigned task: recognition and praise for those CIA officers who worked, endured, risked and succeeded against al Qaeda during a time when, like the British Army in the Great War, they were "lions led by asses." I had the honor to lead many of these men and women from several posts for a decade, and I believe the IG is derelict in not listing their achievements against al-Qaeda between 1995 and today.

Six Years Later, We're Still Vulnerable - Amy Zegart, Los Angeles Times

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden finally declassified 19 pages of the agency's voluminous internal 9/11 review on Tuesday. Now we know why the CIA fought Congress to keep that report deep-sixed for the last two years: It points fingers, outlining exactly who screwed up and how. At the top of the hit list: former CIA Director George J. Tenet, former clandestine service chief James L. Pavitt and former Counterterrorism Center Director J. Cofer Black. But there's just one problem: These guys aren't to blame for 9/11. It's comforting and easy to find fault with a few men at the top. But the ugly reality is that 9/11 stemmed from a far more frightening cause: the inability of our entire intelligence system to adapt to the rise of terrorism after the Cold War ended. Organizational breakdown, not individual error, is the key to understanding what went wrong -- and what is still wrong six years later. Intelligence officials and policymakers often complain that hindsight is 20/20. But terrorism wasn't some far-fetched menace that nobody saw coming before 9/11. Every annual CIA threat assessment to Congress between 1994 and 2001 listed Al Qaeda among the most serious dangers to U.S. national security. Terrorism warranted mention in every State of the Union address in that period too. In the decade leading up to 9/11, a dozen different blue-ribbon reports examined U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism capabilities and warned that reforms were urgently needed. They issued a combined total of 340 recommendations. Almost none were implemented before 9/11. Most produced no action whatsoever. No meeting. No memo. No phone call.

Obama: "Nobody Had a Longer Resume Than Cheney, Rumsfeld and That Hasn't Worked Out So Well" [VIDEO]

Post by Adam Howard
Video: Barack Obama laughs off the coverage of his so-called gaffes, addresses the experience question and explains what his strategy will be going forward in the '08 race for the White House. More »

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Will Durst on Bush Adminstration: "Irony Deprived, Depraved, Erectile Dysfunctional..." [VIDEO]
Video: A no holds barred rant from Durst's one man off-Broadway show "The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing." More »


Bill Maher: "This Whole War Has Been Run On Slogans" [VIDEO]
Video: Maher says, "George Bush...when you pull his string he says about five things and they all have to be under ten words." More »

High Crimes and Misdemeanors on the Republican Campaign Trail

John Gorenfeld, AlterNet

No GOP presidential race is complete without criminal activity: The latest on McCain's bathroom blowjob hypocrite, Romney's cop-imitating director of operations, Giuliani's coke hound, possibly Fred Thompson himself, and much more.

The John Warner-GWB Two-Step
by Digby, Hullabaloo
Why did Senator Warner's paltry pledge to bring 5,000 boys home by Christmas get framed as anti-Bush?

Tom Friedman to Arab World: "Suck. On. This."
by Duncan Black, DMIBlog
How Friedman's 2003 argument that America should terrorize a random Arab nation reveals an America gone mad.

GOP Searches for New Willie Horton
by Paul Krugman, New York Times
"From their point of view, it's us versus them -- and everyone who looks different is one of them."

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_do...2c_so_you_r.htm

August 23, 2007

Dear Dubya, So You're Saying Vietnam Just Didn't Go On Long Enough

By Don Williams

Dear Mr. Bush,

Congratulations.

We needed another Vietnam, and you gave us one. Only this time we'll stay longer and finish the job, you suggested in your speech Wednesday.

Good for you. You've finally admitted what some of us have been saying since 2003. Iraq is like Vietnam.

Of course your memory of Vietnam's a lot different from most of ours. You could say it's new and improved. Like most works of creative nonfiction--or is it outright fiction--your story of Vietnam reads a lot better in the rewrite, because rewriting allows you to leave out some of the distasteful or redundant parts. Like, for instance, the untidy little story of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, passed in August 1964 in direct response to a minor naval skirmish. It would've hardly been news-worthy except that it gave U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorization, without a declaration of war by Congress, to use military force in Southeast Asia. Then there's the matter of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/k/khmer_rouge/index.html?inline=nyt-org. It's easy to forget that Cambodia was a beautiful country--some considered it a paradise--until we began bombing hell out of it, which brought about a coup, against its beloved Prince Sihanouk, by Lon Nol, the dictator we supported. Our bombing and strong military support of Lon Nol helped bring about a revolution of the peasants and middle class, and so the country turned to Pol Pot, a genocidal Stalinist who thought he'd bring on a an age of peace and brotherhood by emptying the cities and killing most of the intellectuals. Of course, you simplify that part, by suggesting it was our leaving that unleashed Pol Pot, rather than our meddling.

So, again, congratulations. You've managed to obscure history for a whole new generation. Tell me though, which came first? The idea that we needed another Vietnam? Or the quagmire in Iraq? Either way it fits the bill.

First, like Vietnam, Iraq's a long ways from home.

Second, the war has lined the pockets of all your friends in the military and arms and aerospace industries, plus many in the media, just as Vietnam did for your daddy's cronies in Texas and elsewhere.

Third, Vietnam was based on a series of big lies we were told at the time, like these, endlessly repeated in the "liberal media."

1. Vietnam was in league with Russia and China. Those communists were all in it together.

2. They provoked us to the breaking point by firing on our ships in the Gulf of Tonkin.

3. Unless defeated, the Viet Cong would swallow southeast Asia.

4. The South Vietnamese were democracy-loving allies.

Compare that to the big lies and innuendos of Iraq.

1. Saddam was in league with al-Qaeda. They were all in it together.

2. They attacked us on 9/11, and so we had to fight back by invading Iraq.

3. Saddam had WMDs, and so he threatened the entire Middle East, and even our own Eastern seaboard, what with aerial drones, anthrax, nukes he was building and so forth.

4. Democracy would break out all over after we won.

Of course the wars are similar in other ways as well.

1. We stayed in Vietnam a long long time (though not long enough, you imply).

2. The Vietnam War spread to Cambodia.

3. It threatened to become WWIII.

4. Our leaders said publicly we were winning, long after they acknowledged in private we were losing.

5. It cost billions that might've been spent on any number of things--like new sources of energy.

6. Mostly lower middle class and poor people died in Vietnam, very few sons of senators.

7. The war spawned genocide.

8. In the end we had to leave.

9. Even though we lost, Vietnam is a friendly trading partner.

Amazing! That's just like Iraq.

1. We've stayed a long time. It's been years now since you flew onto that ship at San Diego, dressed like a pilot, and strutted under that banner, "Mission Accomplished."

2. Your war threatens Iran and Pakistan. You could make the case it spread to Lebanon and Israel last year.

3. It could become WWIII, should you unleash Cheney and the Neocons again.

4. You say we're winning the war on terror in public, yet virtually all our intelligence agencies say we're losing.

5. It's cost billions we might've spent on healthcare, keeping social security solvent and developing new sources of energy.

6. Only a few rich people or politicians, like Joe Biden, have children serving there.

7. Your war has spawned genocide, or at least ethnic cleansing. The Shiites you put in charge of Iraq are using this opportunity to kill Sunnis in record numbers, and the Sunnis are responding in kind.

8. In the end we'll have to leave, because, as many in and out of your administration have warned, this is a war we cannot win militarily.

9. Who doubts we'll all be burning Iraqi oil again one fine day?

So Congratulations, Mr. President, you knew we needed another Vietnam, and presto!

You gave us one.

Sincerely,

Don





Authors Website: http://www.mach2.com/williams/

Authors Bio: Don Williams is a prize-winning columnist for the Knoxville News-Sentinel and the founding editor and publisher of New Millennium Writings, an annual anthology of literary writing. His awards include a National Endowment for the Humanities Michigan Journalism Fellowship, a Golden Presscard Award and the Malcolm Law Journalism Prize. He is finishing a novel, RED STATE BLUES, set in his native Tennessee and Iraq. His book of selected journalism, ?Heroes, Sheroes and Zeroes, the Best Writings About People? by Don Williams, is now available for ordering. For more information, email him at donwilliams7@charter.net. Or visit the NMW website at www.mach2.com/williams/.

<h1 class="section-heading">US 'poised to strike Iran'</h1>Geoff Elliott, Washington correspondent | August 25, 2007

BOB Baer, the former Middle East CIA operative whose first book about his life inspired the oil-and-espionage thriller Syriana, is working on a new book on Iran, but says he was told by senior intelligence officials that he had better get it published in the next couple of months because things could be about to change.

Baer, in an interview with The Weekend Australian, says his contacts in the administration suggest a strategic airstrike on Iran is a real possibility in the months ahead.

"What I'm getting is a sense that their sentiment is they are going to hit the Iranians and not just because of Israel, but due to the fact that Iran is the predominant power in the Gulf and it is hostile and its power is creeping into the Gulf at every level," Baer says.

He says his contacts have told him of his book: "You better hurry up because the thesis is going to change. I told them submission is in January but they said, 'You're probably going to be too late'."

Washington's intelligence community is abuzz about possible military action against Iran, which is being weighed at the highest levels of the Bush administration. While the guessing game has become "will they or won't they?", at least some experienced and trusted intelligence sources have told The Weekend Australian that the possibility of a strike in the next 12 months remains remote.

"The success of a strike is limited and the downside could be enormous," said one source, noting the possibility of a regional conflagration involving the entire Gulf because Iran would look to hit back at the US's strategic interests.

For his part, Baer is not an advocate of a demonstration strike on Tehran and he is scathing of the Bush administration's handling of Middle East policy, as he is of previous administrations, marking 1979, under the Carter administration, as the point in which US policy on Iran went awry.

He agrees with many in the intelligence community in Washington that a strike on Iran could be a disaster and counterproductive to US interests, but he says that the rising level of impatience in the Bush administration over Iran's belligerence on its nuclear program and its destabilising role in Iraq could mean that something snaps.

"In the CIA, they are calling what the Iranians are doing to us in Iraq as the slow cook -- where we get cooked there for the next 10 years and then we give up completely and leave."

But Baer says an emboldened Iran in the event of mass US withdrawal from Iraq "scares the shit out of Saudis, the Bahrainis and all the Arab gulf states". "They are saying: 'What are you going to do now that you've created a mess in Iraq and what are you going to do about Iran?'."

Intelligence sources say military contingency planning on Iran under the Bush administration has been under way since 2003 but the latest speculation has been a surgical strike on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

A case for a strike became more prominent last week when The New York Times reported the Bush administration was preparing to declare the Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organisation.

"If imposed, the declaration would signal a more confrontational turn in the administration's approach to Iran and would be the first time that the United States has added the armed forces of any sovereign government to its list of terrorist organisations," the Times reported.

The Revolutionary Guard is said to be the largest branch of Iran's military.

"While the United States has long labelled Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism, a decision to single out the guard would amount to an aggressive new challenge from an American administration that has recently seemed conflicted over whether to take a harder line against Tehran over its nuclear program and what American officials have called its destabilising role in Iraq," the newspaper said.

The Bush administration continues to try to ratchet up the pressure on Iran, pressing the US's allies to apply sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council. The State Department and Treasury officials are pushing for sanctions that include an extensive travel ban on senior Iranian officials and further moves to restrict the ability of Iran's financial institutions to do business abroad.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has consistently denied US allegations that Iran was furnishing weapons to both the Taliban in Afghanistan and insurgents in Iraq. Two months ago, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the volume of weapons reaching the Taliban from Iran made it "difficult to believe" that the shipments were "taking place without the knowledge of the Iranian Government".

Baer says the Iranians are "masters at using surrogates" and disguising their role in conflicts.

"They are not stupid, they are the least stupid people in the Middle East," he says. "If they are providing the EFPs (explosively formed penetrators), they are not leaving serial numbers, return addresses; it's not the way the world works out there."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...55-2703,00.html

[links and formatting at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naima...nk_b_61713.html]

Another Iraq-Vietnam Link: Many Killed By U.S. War
Robert Naiman, Just Foreign Policy, August 24, 2007

I was quite delighted that President Bush brought up the topic of the
relationship between the U.S. war in Iraq and the U.S. war in Vietnam.
I was about to bring up the subject myself.

Just Foreign Policy has been working to put the question of the
overall scale of Iraqi dead since the U.S. invasion in March 2003 back
on the table. To this end, we created an online estimate of Iraqi
dead, by extrapolating from last year's Lancet study - which estimated
more than 600,000 Iraqi dead - using the trend provided by the tally
of deaths reported in Western media that is compiled by Iraq Body
Count. Our count now stands at more than a million.

President Bush dismissed the Lancet study as "not credible." Of
course, this was a meaningless statement. Honest people call something
"not credible" when they have some defensible basis for doing so -
another reference point about which they have a defensible basis for
being more certain. If I say it is raining and you can look outside
and see no rain coming down, you can say my statement is "not
credible." If I say I am ten feet tall you can dismiss my statement as
"not credible" based on your life experience of meeting different
human beings and seeing that all of them were nowhere near ten feet
tall. You could also consult a standard reference to see how tall the
tallest recorded human was.

But if I present a science-based estimate that a million Iraqis have
been killed, you can only dismiss this as "not credible" - if you are
honest - if you have some objective basis for doing so. The Lancet
study is the only scientific study that exists, so it makes sense to
take this as a starting point - not the prejudices of the President of
the United States, who obviously 1) has presented no scientific
evidence 2) has a direct stake in the matter 3) has some credibility
issues of his own.

The fundamental question here is not what the exact death toll is -
that of course will never be known - but what is its order of
magnitude. Is it on the order of many hundreds of thousands, as the
Lancet study suggests, or is it on the order of less than a hundred
thousand, as the President of the United States would have us believe?

In considering the question of scale, in addition to considering the
scientific evidence, it is quite relevant to consider what we know
about other wars. And the comparison to Vietnam is particularly
appropriate.

The official Vietnamese government estimate of Vietnamese war dead -
including combatants and civilians - was about 5 million. One can say
that the Vietnamese government had motivations for overstating the
case - although when this number was released in 1995 the Vietnamese
Government admitted that they had kept their estimate secret during
the war for fear of demoralizing the population. For the purposes of
this rough calculation, let's consider a range from two million to
five million (this is the range given by Wikipedia, for example.)
Let's say that the population of Vietnam during the war was about 40
million (roughly the 1970 figure, so this overstates the population a
little, thus understating the resulting percentages.) Then, very
roughly speaking, between 5% and 12% of the population was lost in the
war.

Now let's consider Iraq. Its population in 2003 was about 25 million.
The Just Foreign Policy estimate would indicate that 4% of the
population have lost their lives. If it's true that less than 100,000
Iraqis have been killed, then less than .4% of the pre-war population
have lost their lives (still a horrific outcome, obviously.)

This calculation proves nothing, of course. It simply suggests that
the order of magnitude of the Just Foreign Policy estimate is in the
same ballpark as generally accepted estimates of the death toll in
Vietnam, and therefore, is not wildly implausible, in the absence of
some argument as to why we should not compare estimates of the death
tolls between the two wars.

Here's another comparison to consider: how many Iraqis have fled their
homes? The standard estimate is four million - two million inside the
country, two million outside. The Just Foreign Policy estimate would
suggest that there has been 1 Iraqi killed for every four that have
fled their homes. If the true death toll were an order of magnitude
lower, than 1 Iraqi was killed for every forty who fled their homes.

Why is this a relevant comparison? Because it is well known that
people are very reluctant to flee their homes. In his book "The Myth
of Rescue," William Rubinstein gives a simple explanation for why Jews
did not flee Hitler's Germany prior to Kristallnacht - they didn't
want to go. They were waiting for a decisive sign that they needed to
leave - which Kristallnacht gave. By the outbreak of war, 90% had left
Germany. (Many subsequently perished - because they did not flee
continental Europe.)

One thing that will cause people to overcome their reluctance to flee
is fear of imminent death. One thing that proves that the threat of
imminent death can no longer be ignored is the death of someone close
to you.

And in fact, if you look at say, Iraqi refugee accounts from Jordan
that have appeared in the U.S. press, you find that death of a family
member often preceded flight.

This comparison, again, proves nothing. It simply suggests that the
Just Foreign Policy estimate is not, in fact, wildly implausible.

If anyone wishes to challenge our estimate, let them do so - on the
basis of data.

In the meantime, we encourage people to cite it.

--
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org

Just Foreign Policy's current estimate of Iraqi deaths due to violence
since the U.S. invasion - now more than a million:
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html

Intelligence briefers call Iraq 'grave'

By: Mike Allen
Aug 23, 2007 01:53 PM EST


U.S. Army troops from Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division get ready for an operation in the Amariyah neighborhood of west Baghdad. Photo by AP

Intelligence officials today released a meticulously worded report concluding that the U.S.-backed government in Iraq looks precarious and security conditions are shaky, but arguing that skyrocketing rates of violence have stabilized.

The document released to the press is posted here.

The report helps buttress the contention of President Bush that his "surge" strategy is showing results, however scattered. But it also provides support for critics such as Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who contends that the dire consequences the White House warns about are already "in motion."

An intelligence official said at a Washington briefing for reporters this afternoon that although the current conditions are "grave," the U.S. expects "continued measured improvement in the security situation in Iraq," depending on both coalition forces and Iraqi security forces.

"Political progress … has stalled," another official at the briefing said bluntly, adding that the most important indicators of stability "will only change slowly."

"The government is going to continue to struggle to move ahead at the national level," the official added, saying that the U.S. has considerably more "hope" for improvements at the local level.

Bush has expressed impatience — and other administration officials have expressed exasperation — with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, although Bush modified his previous comments yesterday and called Maliki a "good man."

The dilemma for the White House was clear in the official's comments to reporters. He said it was "difficult to see … an obvious replacement" if the Iraqi parliament were to hold a no-confidence vote and try to replace Maliki, as Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) has suggested. The official said: "I certainly am not going to comment on whether he SHOULD be prime minister. That is not an intelligence matter."

Most of the NIE is classified, but four pages of "key judgments" were declassified and posted by the Politico today. They were later released to the press.

The document reports "measurable but uneven improvements in Iraq's security situation since our last National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in January 2007."

"The steep escalation of rates of violence has been checked for now, and overall attack levels across Iraq have fallen during seven of the last nine weeks," the document says. "However, the level of overall violence, including attacks on and casualties among civilians, remains high; Iraq's sectarian groups remain unreconciled; [Al Qaeda in Iraq] retains the ability to conduct high-profile attacks; and to date, Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively. There have been modest improvements in economic output, budget execution and government finances, but fundamental structural problems continue to prevent sustained progress in economic growth and living conditions."

Other findings in the four pages of key judgments:

— "Sunni Arab resistance to [al Qaeda in Iraq] has expanded in the last six to nine months but has not yet translated into broad Sunni Arab support for the Iraqi government or widespread willingness to work with the Shia."

— "Iraqi Security Forces involved in combined operations with Coalition forces have performed adequately, and some units have demonstrated increasing professional competence. However, we judge that the ISF have not improved enough to conduct major operations independent of the Coalition on a sustained basis in multiple locations and that the ISF remain reliant on the Coalition for important aspects of logistics and combat support."

— "Recent security improvements in Iraq, including success against [al Qaeda in Iraq], have depended significantly on the close synchronization of conventional counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations. A change of mission that interrupts that synchronization would place security improvements at risk."

— "Over the next year [the Iranian government], concerned about a Sunni reemergence in Iraq and U.S. efforts to limit Iranian influence, will continue to provide funding, weaponry and training to Iraqi Shia militants. Iran has been intensifying aspects of its lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants … since at least the beginning of 2006. Explosively formed penetrator (EFP) attacks have risen dramatically."

— "Syria has cracked down on some Sunni extremist groups attempting to infiltrate fighters into Iraq through Syria because of threats they pose to Syrian stability, but the [intelligence community] now assesses that Damascus is providing support to non-AQI groups inside Iraq in a bid to increase Syrian influence."

The Senate should be told that ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) would help to establish a new global or transnational legal order and undermine America’s constitutional republic. The World Federalists, who played a key role over many years in drafting and promoting the treaty, admitted the obvious in 1997 -- that UNCLOS brings into being “the elements of a limited world government.” ^[1]

Radical Harvard Professor Louis B. Sohn saw the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea as part of a plan for a world government that would include a U.N. “peace” force armed with nuclear weapons. This should not be too surprising because its main architect, Harvard Law Professor and international lawyer Louis B. Sohn,believed in world government. Sohn was not only a key author of UNCLOS but offered a detailed proposal to transform the United Nations into a world government. In his book, World Peace Through World Law, he said that he wanted this world government to maintain hundreds of thousands of troops, military bases and be armed with nuclear weapons. The purpose, he said, would be to disarm “each and very nation and to deter or suppress any attempted international violence.” Of course, this “world authority” would also require a “United Nations Revenue System,” drawing taxes from “each nation” of the world, he said. UNCLOS was seen as a major step down this road. The World Federalists declared that, by “establishing global governance” over the seabeds of the oceans and by stipulating that mining of those areas beyond national jurisdiction “should require payment of royalties” to a United Nations body, UNCLOS has created “a funding resource that would be independent of voluntary contributions by the treaty member nations.” Hence, through UNCLOS, global taxes on the U.S. would come into effect. What also may not be known is that Sohn and identified Soviet spy Alger Hiss, a top State Department official at the time, both participated in the conferences that resulted in the creation of the United Nations in 1945. Sohn’s book, World Peace Through World Law, first published in 1958 and co-authored with Grenville Clark of the World Federalists, is considered a classic by World Federalists and is listed in the “timeline” of the history of world federalism. ^[2] Sohn’s writings are also featured in the book, Uniting the Peoples and the Nations: Readings in World Federalism. In the preface to the book, Robert Woito writes that UNCLOS is an example of “how the broad principles outlined in World Peace Through World Law can be applied to a specific problem.” Sohn, he noted “played a significant role in the Law of the Sea conference.” Harold Hongju Koh, the Dean of Yale Law School who is being talked about as a possible Supreme Court nominee in a Hillary Clinton presidential administration,^[3] has declared that Sohn’s work on UNCLOS was one of several areas in which he helped draft global “constitutions” to manage international affairs. Koh called this the “transnational legal process” and noted that Sohn’s book, World Peace Through World Law, was part of a “stunningly ambitious global project.” Koh said that, “unfortunately,” Sohn’s “sweeping blueprint” did not come to pass. As far as UNCLOS is concerned, Sohn’s fingerprints are all over it. Sohn, who died in 2006, “shaped the Law of the Sea Convention and the Law of the Sea Tribunal…” ^[4] He was, according to a tribute in his honor, “instrumental” in shaping the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. ^[5] In World Peace Through World Law, one of his underlying principles was the need for “equitable management of mankind’s common resources – especially outer space and the oceans…” Sohn proposed a “United Nations Ocean Authority” that would eventually be expressed in UNCLOS as the International Seabed Authority, a vehicle to control vast areas of the oceans beyond the authority of sovereign states. The recipient of awards and medals from the American Society of International Law and the World Federalists of Canada, Sohn declared in World Peace Through World Law that “the race to exploit the oceans and the seabed can lead to new disastrous conflicts unless this ‘common heritage of mankind’ is put under United Nations management and supervision.” This revolutionary, even Marxist, concept, did become part of UNCLOS. And it was one reason why President Ronald Reagan rejected it. James L. Malone, President Reagan’s personal representative to the Law of the Sea Conference, wrote in the Spring 1984 issue of Foreign Policy that the “common heritage of mankind” term had been “distorted” by the authors of the treaty. He wrote: “Rather than recognize the seas as belonging to no country or individual but open to those willing to take the risk and invest the labor necessary to derive benefit from the abundant resources the seas contain, many countries sought instead to build a law of the sea (LOS) regime upon the assumption that every state shares ownership of the oceans in an undivided property interest.” In addition to a U.N. Ocean Authority, Sohn urged creation of:

• A United Nations Outer Space Authority
• A World Development Authority
• World judicial tribunals
• A United Nations Peace Force, with a strength of between 200,000 and 400,000
• A United Nations Peace Force Reserve with a strength of between 300,000 and 600,000
• United Nations military bases
• A United Nations Revenue System

Sohn believed that the U.N. Peace Force would have “the most modern weapons and equipment,” including nuclear weapons. He wanted the U.N. to produce and supply its own weapons through a United Nations Military Supply and Research Agency. ^[6] While Sohn’s role in crafting UNCLOS has not been the subject of examination by the Senate, his colleagues in the academic and legal communities are fully aware of what he proposed and what he did. “Louis contributed significantly to the formulation of a text for the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea,” noted Detlev F. Vagts, Bemis Professor of International Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School. ^[7] Thomas M. Franck, the Ida and Murrary Becker Professor Emeritus at the New York University School of Law, gave Sohn specific credit for Annex 7 of UNCLOS, “which established a model for the mandatory peaceful resolution of disputes.” Franck said that “many” representatives of “landlocked and disavantaged states” during negotiations on UNCLOS “were former students [of Sohn] like me.” ^[8] Daniel Barstow Magraw, president of the Center for International Environmental Law, identified Sohn as “one of four chief negotiators on the U.S. delegation to the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III), which eventually produced the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention.” He quoted Elliott Richardson, the head of the U.S. delegation and “a student in the first class Louis taught at Harvard Law School,” as saying that Sohn was “an indispensable resource” for the U.S. delegation and the conference as a whole. Magraw conceded, however, that Sohn’s book, World Peace Through World Law, envisioned “an unusually strong world government…” ^[9] As the Senate prepares to hold a hearing on UNCLOS in September, it is long past time to consider the influence of Sohn and other like-minded extremists and radicals. Even those who favor the pact should welcome an examination of his writings. After all, he co-authored the book, The Law of the Sea in a Nut Shell, and was considered an expert on the treaty. While Sohn spent many years in academia, his work for the U.S. Government included being a:

• Consultant on Disarmament, U.S. Department of State. 1960.
• Counselor on International Law, U.S. Department of State. 1970-1971.
• U.S. Delegate to the Law of the Sea Convention. 1974-1982.

The timing of the latter is significant. Sohn ended his career as a delegate to the Law of the Sea Convention after President Reagan took office. Reagan believed the delegation had given short shrift to U.S. interests and formally announced on July 9, 1982, that the U.S. could not accept the pact an