Who's Making the Call?

washingtonpost.com
Who's Making the Call?
By Dan Froomkin

Whose advice does President Bush take most seriously on Iraq?

If the goal is figuring out which way the president is headed, the press corps could do the public a big favor by reporting on who is whispering in his ear.

Most likely, the chief whisperer is Vice President Cheney -- in which case the back-and-forth over whether Bush will change course is sort of pointless. Bush has made some pretty dramatic about-faces in the past. The same cannot be said of the vice president.

In either case, Bush's evident leaning toward a troop "surge" in Iraq suggests that the very central issue of troop strength is no longer simply up to the American military commanders -- if it ever was.

Peter Baker writes in The Washington Post that "as Bush rethinks his strategy in Iraq and approaches one of the most fateful moments of his presidency, he confronts difficult questions: At what point does determination to a cause become self-defeating folly? Can he change direction in a meaningful way without sacrificing principle?"

Some observers think he will be pragmatic. Former senator Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), a member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, tells Baker: "He's going to do outreach. . . . He is a total realist. He knows that the solid, march-in-step Republicans, at least in the House, are gone. . . . Now his legacy depends on the national interest, not partisanship."

But, as Baker puts it so understatedly: "Others don't buy it. . . .

"Critics predicted that any new strategy he announces after the holidays will be little more than a dressed-up version of 'stay the course.' And a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 66 percent of Americans do not think Bush is willing to change his policies in Iraq.

"'I just don't believe that this president, with this vice president whispering in his ear every moment, is oriented to change,' said retired Col. Larry Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in Bush's first term. 'And even if he were, I don't believe his administration is capable of implementing change.'"

Joseph Galloway writes in a blistering column for the McClatchy-Tribune Information Service: "The word on the street, or in the Pentagon rings, is that he'll choose to beef up American forces on the ground in Iraq by 20,000 to 30,000 troops by various sleight-of-hand maneuvers -- extending the combat tours of soldiers and Marines who are nearing an end to their second or third year in hell and accelerating the shipment of others into that hell -- and send them into the bloody streets of Baghdad. . . .

"This hardly amounts to a 'new way forward,' unless that definition includes a new path deeper into the quicksand of a tribal and religious civil war in which whatever Bush eventually decides is already inadequate and immaterial. . . .

"The White House hopes that its much-trumpeted reshuffling of a failed strategy and flawed tactics will buy time for its luck to change miraculously. That this time will be paid for with the lives and futures of our soldiers and Marines -- and their families -- apparently means little to these wise men who've never heard a shot fired in anger.

"This president has made it painfully obvious that he has no intention of listening to anyone who doesn't believe that he's going to win in Iraq."

And, Galloway concludes: "Did you notice that at every stop on the president's information-gathering tour last week, there was a very familiar face looming over his shoulder? There was Vice President Dick Cheney, looking as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

"Should the president suddenly have an original thought or seem to be going wobbly, Cheney will be right there to squelch it or to set him straight.

"It can be argued that Bush understood little about war and peace and diplomacy and honesty in government. Cheney understood all of it, and he bears much of the responsibility for what's gone on in Washington and in Iraq for the last six years. Keep a sharp eye on him. Desperate men do desperate things."
Down the Memory Hole

American Prospect blogger Greg Sargent makes an important point: "It appears we've all agreed to forget that in the past President Bush has repeatedly -- many, many times -- insisted that he would let the troop levels be determined by the commanders on the ground."

Here, for instance, is Bush describing his decision-making process on April 6: "I know you're thinking about, well, when's he going to get our troops out of there? There's a debate going on in Washington, D.C., which it should, and it's an important debate about our troop levels. Here's my answer to you: I'm not going to make decisions based upon polls and focus groups. I'm going to make my decisions based upon the recommendations of our generals on the ground. They're the ones who decide how to achieve the victory I just described. They're the ones who give me the information.

"I remember coming up in the Vietnam War and it seemed like that there was a -- during the Vietnam War, there was a lot of politicization of the military decisions. That's not going to be the case under my administration. They say, well, does George Casey tell you the truth? You bet he tells me the truth. When I talk to him, which I do quite frequently, I've got all the confidence in the world in this fine General. He's a smart guy, he's on the ground, he's making incredible sacrifices for our country, and he -- if he says he needs more troops, he'll get them, and if he says he can live with fewer troops because the Iraqis are prepared to take the fight, that's the way it's going to be."

Writes Sargent: "Right now Bush is reportedly leaning towards sending more troops to Iraq -- a 'surge,' as we keep hearing. But the military commanders -- including the very same General Casey . . . -- appear to be leaning against recommending that more troops be sent.

"I know this is an embarrassingly simple point, but still: Now that Bush appears to be favoring a solution at odds with that of the recommendations of his commanders, why doesn't it matter that back when they were telling him what he wanted to hear, Bush said unequivocally again and again and again that the commanders would determine troop levels? Why have we agreed to forget this? Why isn't it in every news story about this stuff? Or better, why isn't it in virtually any stories about it?"
The Maliki Conundrum and Cheney's Trial Balloon

Michael Abramowitz and Robin Wright write in The Washington Post: "Even as the White House contemplates a faster turnover of responsibilities to the Iraqi government, severe doubts remain within and outside the Bush administration over whether Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki can execute the steps necessary to stabilize the country, according to sources familiar with the ongoing policy review."

So if Maliki can't be counted on to achieve political reconciliation, what's the alternative?

Helene Cooper writes in the New York Times: "Someone in Vice President Dick Cheney's office has gotten everybody on this city's holiday party circuit talking, simply by floating an unlikely Iraq proposal."

The proposal "basically says that Washington should stop trying to get Sunnis and Shiites to get along and instead just back the Shiites, since there are more of them anyway and they're likely to win in a fight to the death. . . .

"At first glance, the idea of siding with the Shiites doesn't seem that crazy. America has, after all, had more spectacular trouble of late from Sunni extremists like Al Qaeda and the Taliban than from Shiites, whose best-remembered attacks on Americans were two decades ago, by hostage-takers in Iran and truck bombers in Lebanon.

"But Middle East experts can provide a long list of reasons why a survival-of-the-fittest theory might not necessarily be the best way to conduct American foreign policy in Iraq. First, they say, it's always dangerous to take sides in a civil war. Second, siding with the Shiites in a Shiite-Sunni war is particularly dangerous since most of the Arab world is Sunni and America's major Arab allies are Sunni. Besides Iraq, Shiites form a large majority only in Iran, and, well, enough said there. . . .

"Can you just hear President Bush's speech to the nation? 'My Fellow Americans, the United States has decided that there are more Shiites than Sunnis in Iraq, so we are therefore going to side with the people most likely to win a fight to the death. We'll figure out how to deal with the rest of the Arab world, where there are more Sunnis than Shiites, later.'"
'A Strategy That Says We Have a Plan'

I've written before about how Bush often confuses tactics, strategy and goals. But now along comes a Bushism that takes the cake. It's from the Bushes' year-end interview with People magazine.

Asked for his view on Iraq, Bush replied: "I think it's been a very difficult year in Iraq -- for our troops, for the families of the troops, for the Iraqi people. And it's been difficult for the American people, because success in Iraq has been slower coming than any of us would like. And so the task at hand now is to come up with a new way forward. I think most Americans fully understand the importance of success; they're wondering whether we have a plan to succeed. It's my job to listen to a lot of opinions and come up with a strategy that says we have a plan." [My italics.]

Kind of makes you nostalgic for "I'm the Decider," doesn't it?
The Twins and the War

Incidentally, People finally popped the question the White House press corps has been too timid to ask.

"This year, we invited readers on our Web site to ask you questions. Here's one: Nina Frazier of New Braunfels, Texas, asks: If you believe in the war, why didn't you encourage your own daughters to fight for your country? Or did you?

"THE PRESIDENT: I believe Americans can contribute to the security and well-being of our country in a variety of ways. That's why we have a volunteer army. What we say to young people is that if you want to serve your country you can do so in the military, or you can do so by teaching children in inner-city Washington, D.C., like one of our daughters did. Or you can help form education programs in New York City, like our (other) daughter. There are all kinds of ways to serve."

Later, a follow-up, of sorts:

"Are your daughters coming home for Christmas?

"Mrs. Bush: They are. Jenna is working with an international organization in Central and South America about education policy. And Barbara is working for a museum in the education department."
The Freedom Agenda and Iraq

Fareed Zakaria writes in Newsweek: "It's relatively easy these days to point out all the ways in which George W. Bush has been ill-informed, misguided and wrong about Iraq. And in case you run out of examples, the president provides fresh ones continually. But on one central issue, Bush has been right. He has argued from the start that a modern, liberal democratic Iraq would be an example, an inspiration and a spur for progress in the Middle East. The trouble is, the Iraq of today is having precisely the opposite effect. If Bush wants to save his freedom agenda, he needs to decouple it from Iraq. . . .

"Iraq after Saddam presented a unique opportunity to steer history on a new course. But instead the Bush administration drove it into a ditch. As a result, the effort to create an Iraqi model for the Middle East has failed. No matter what happens over the next year or two, the country has developed into more of a warning about the dangers of democracy than a symbol of its promise. When people around the world--and, most important, in the region--look at Iraq, they see chaos, religious extremism and violence."
People Who Mattered

As part of Time's year-end issue, James Carney writes about the "axis of denial":

"It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were regarded as a national-security dream team, three men perfectly suited to perilous times: the President, instinctive and decisive; the Vice President, a sage and tested Washington veteran; and the Defense Secretary, whose brio and charm were rare and reassuring. Or so it was thought.

"But in 2006, the dream team died, and its members instead became objects of scorn and emblems of failure. Their signature venture -- the Iraq war -- spiraled relentlessly downward into civil war. As it did, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld sealed their fate by diving deeper into denial about the realities on the battlefield."
Where Was Dad?

Curt Smith, a former speechwriter for Bush's father, writes in the New York Daily News: "Prewar, I had phoned ex-White House colleagues still in Washington. Once balanced, they seemed messianic: As Brent Scowcroft said of Vice President Cheney, I no longer knew them. Old friends assured me that we would be viewed as liberators, oil would pay the freight and regional democracy would thrive. They are lucky you can't be more than 100% wrong.

"Don Rumsfeld himself said, 'I don't do quagmires.' True. W has done a catastrophe. . . .

"Speakers at the 1988 Democratic National Convention mocked, 'Where was George?' My query concerns 2003-06: 'Where was Dad?' . . .

"George H.W. Bush was astute and nuanced. By contrast, W's gamble has eviscerated his presidency. Bush the Elder often twitted the word 'prudent.' At one time, prudence might have saved Bush the Lesser. It is unlikely to save him now.

"Some risks are so bad they become immune even to Texas-sized providence. How heedless, needless and, above all, sad."
Now It's Personal

Christopher Caldwell writes in the New York Times Magazine: "Why have few such people risen to the defense of George Bush?

"Here is a guess. The recent election feels like something more intimate than a personnel change. It feels like the beginnings of an escape from a twisted relationship. . . .

"Why are opinions so personal when it comes to President Bush? Because he has frequently sought, like the child of the 1960s that he is, to blur the line between the personal and the political. Posing as an amiable guy rather than a partisan politician has great advantages in democratic power politics. Even if not all of them vote for you, most Americans want to believe that their president is a jolly good fellow. But when a politician makes likability a substitute for authority, his opponents make hatred a substitute for opposition."
Rumsfeld's Goodbye

Ann Scott Tyson writes in The Washington Post that Bush and Cheney were effusive in their praise of Donald H. Rumsfeld, at a ceremony marking the defense secretary's departure.

"Cheney hailed Rumsfeld as his best boss, best friend, an 'ideal' public servant and 'the finest secretary of defense this nation has ever had.'

"For his part, Bush portrayed Rumsfeld as a comrade in arms. 'Don Rumsfeld has been at my side from the moment I took office. We've been through war together,' Bush said.

"'We walked amid the rubble of the broken Pentagon the day after September the 11th, 2001. He was with me when we planned the liberation of Afghanistan. We were in the Oval Office together the day I gave the order to remove Saddam Hussein from power,' he said.

"'In these and countless other moments, I have seen Don Rumsfeld's character and his integrity. He has always ensured I had the best possible advice. . . . He spoke straight. It was easy to understand him.'"

Here are transcripts of Bush's speech and Cheney's speech.
Powell Speaks Out

Karen DeYoung writes in The Washington Post: "Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell said yesterday that the United States is losing what he described as a 'civil war' in Iraq and that he is not persuaded that an increase in U.S. troops there would reverse the situation. Instead, he called for a new strategy that would relinquish responsibility for Iraqi security to the government in Baghdad sooner rather than later, with a U.S. drawdown to begin by the middle of next year.

"Powell's comments broke his long public silence on the issue and placed him at odds with the administration. President Bush is considering options for a new military strategy -- among them a 'surge' of 15,000 to 30,000 troops added to the current 140,000 in Iraq, to secure Baghdad and to accelerate the training of Iraqi forces, as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and others have proposed; or a redirection of the U.S. military away from the insurgency to focus mainly on hunting al-Qaeda terrorists, as the nation's top military leaders proposed last week in a meeting with the president.

"But Bush has rejected the dire conclusions of the Iraq Study Group and its recommendations to set parameters for a phased withdrawal to begin next year, and he has insisted that the violence in Iraq is not a civil war."

Here is video of Powell's appearance on CBS's Face the Nation.
Mary Cheney Watch

James Gerstenzang writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Although he recently expressed confidence that Mary Cheney will make a loving parent, President Bush continues to believe it is best that a child is raised by a man and woman married to each other, the president's spokesman said Friday."

Frank Rich writes in his New York Times opinion column (subscription required) that "the only Christmas season miracle to lift the beleaguered Bush administration this year has been the announcement that Mary Cheney, the vice president's gay daughter, is pregnant. Her growing family is the living rejoinder to those in her father's party who would relegate gay American couples and their children to second-class legal or human status."
Rove's Deputy Avoids Scrutiny

Aaron Sadler writes for the Morning News of Northwest Arkansas: "A former Republican political operative and top aide to President Bush was named late Friday as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

"The appointment of Tim Griffin drew criticism from Arkansas senators Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln, both Democrats. Pryor accused the Bush administration of circumventing the traditional nomination process on behalf of a political ally.

"The open-ended appointment differs from a normal presidential selection, where Griffin would face Senate hearings and a confirmation vote.

"Pryor believes the Senate should be able to quiz Griffin about his qualifications, especially given his background as Bush's deputy director of political affairs under Karl Rove, spokesman Michael Teague said.

"Before that, Griffin worked in opposition research for the Republican National Committee. . . .

"A report by the BBC in 2004 connected Griffin to a possible effort to disenfranchise black voters in Florida. The report said an e-mailed list of 1,886 names was to be used to challenge residents' voting status."
White House Censorship?

The liberal Think Progress blog relates Middle East analyst Flynt Leverett's contention "that the White House has been blocking the publication of an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times. The column is critical of the administration's refusal to engage Iran. . . .

"Leverett says the incident shows 'just how low people like Elliot Abrams at the NSC [National Security Council] will stoop to try and limit the dissemination of arguments critical of the administration's policy.'"

There's more from The Washington Note blog.
More Protection Needed

Ken Herman writes for Cox News Service that experts foresee unprecedented security need for Bush after he leaves the White House, due largely to the war.

"Former Secret Service agent John Vance, who is a former son-in-law of former President Gerald Ford, said Bush's post-presidency will include a variety of challenges.

"'One thing is, he is a relatively young man, and young men are more active and always on the road,' said Vance, now a security consultant in Virginia. 'That takes a lot of manpower and a lot of team effort.'

"And, Vance noted, Bush will be a target.

"'He is the only president that invaded a country without provocation and without it being started by the other side. I think he has gained a lot of enmity.... There are a lot of people who resent this president, both externally and internally, some of whom have lost sons and daughters and had people injured in the war in Iraq,' he said."
Suddenly, Church Is Cancelled

Caroline Daniel of the Financial Times had early-Sunday-morning pool duty, and filed this report: "Ordered into Press Van Two, by 7:23am the pool assumed the proper sobriety of an anticipated church visit, only to be told five minutes later that: 'church is cancelled.' No reason was offered. Perhaps POTUS was keen to avoid a repeat of last week's sermon from Rev. Luis Leon that insisted: 'Repentance is changing your way, changing your mind, changing your direction. It requires the courage to acknowledge that you want to change, to change your direction.' Or perhaps he wanted more time to commune with God from the back of a mountain bike, not a pew."
Holiday Gift Watch

Roy Rivenburg writes in his Los Angeles Times humor column about holiday gift ideas for political junkies. Among them: A 'Karl Rove is Voldemort' tote bag; a shotgun-toting Dick Cheney action figure; a George W. Bush fire-starter; and Drink'n with Dubya, "a talking bottle opener that plays one of Bush's syntax-impaired sentences every time you crack open a brewski."
'His Walk Is a Lie'

Sarah Kaufman of The Washington Post writes about the unsparingly brutal antiwar work 'Banquet of Vultures,' being performed by the Paul Taylor Dance Company at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater.

And guess who's a central character?

"Taylor said he was inspired to create a dance focusing on President Bush after watching him move.

"'The first time I saw Bush walking, on television, I did not trust the man,' he said. 'His walk is a lie.

"'Walks are like fingerprints,' he continued. 'They tell a lot about us. And this one was not sincere.' . . .

"Taylor puts his self-described presidential figure right in the middle of the battlefield, watching stonily as agonies fell the troops." And he doesn't just sit there, either: "After he violates a female recruit, [he] kills her and tosses her aside."
Political Cartoon Humor

David Horsey on Bush's options; Ann Telnaes on the first lady; Walt Handelsman on the space station; and Mike Luckovich on the war slogan memorial.
Late Night Humor

Via U.S. News, Jay Leno on the Tonight Show: "CNN said today that President Bush is seriously considering sending more troops to Iraq. So apparently, his goal is to achieve a negative popularity rating."

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White House, Joint Chiefs At Odds on Adding Troops

washingtonpost.com
White House, Joint Chiefs At Odds on Adding Troops
By Robin Wright and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers

The Bush administration is split over the idea of a surge in troops to Iraq, with White House officials aggressively promoting the concept over the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intense debate.

Sending 15,000 to 30,000 more troops for a mission of possibly six to eight months is one of the central proposals on the table of the White House policy review to reverse the steady deterioration in Iraq. The option is being discussed as an element in a range of bigger packages, the officials said.

But the Joint Chiefs think the White House, after a month of talks, still does not have a defined mission and is latching on to the surge idea in part because of limited alternatives, despite warnings about the potential disadvantages for the military, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House review is not public.

The chiefs have taken a firm stand, the sources say, because they believe the strategy review will be the most important decision on Iraq to be made since the March 2003 invasion.

At regular interagency meetings and in briefing President Bush last week, the Pentagon has warned that any short-term mission may only set up the United States for bigger problems when it ends. The service chiefs have warned that a short-term mission could give an enormous edge to virtually all the armed factions in Iraq -- including al-Qaeda's foreign fighters, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias -- without giving an enduring boost to the U.S military mission or to the Iraqi army, the officials said.

The Pentagon has cautioned that a modest surge could lead to more attacks by al-Qaeda, provide more targets for Sunni insurgents and fuel the jihadist appeal for more foreign fighters to flock to Iraq to attack U.S. troops, the officials said.

The informal but well-armed Shiite militias, the Joint Chiefs have also warned, may simply melt back into society during a U.S. surge and wait until the troops are withdrawn -- then reemerge and retake the streets of Baghdad and other cities.

Even the announcement of a time frame and mission -- such as for six months to try to secure volatile Baghdad -- could play to armed factions by allowing them to game out the new U.S. strategy, the chiefs have warned the White House.

The idea of a much larger military deployment for a longer mission is virtually off the table, at least so far, mainly for logistics reasons, say officials familiar with the debate. Any deployment of 40,000 to 50,000 would force the Pentagon to redeploy troops who were scheduled to go home.

A senior administration official said it is "too simplistic" to say the surge question has broken down into a fight between the White House and the Pentagon, but the official acknowledged that the military has questioned the option. "Of course, military leadership is going to be focused on the mission -- what you're trying to accomplish, the ramifications it would have on broader issues in terms of manpower and strength and all that," the official said.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said military officers have not directly opposed a surge option. "I've never heard them be depicted that way to the president," the official said. "Because they ask questions about what the mission would be doesn't mean they don't support it. Those are the kinds of questions the president wants his military planners to be asking."

The concerns raised by the military are sometimes offset by concerns on the other side. For instance, those who warn that a short-term surge would harm longer-term deployments are met with the argument that the situation is urgent now, the official said. "Advocates would say: 'Can you afford to wait? Can you afford to plan in the long term? What's the tipping point in that country? Do you have time to wait?' "

Which way Bush is leaning remains unclear. "The president's keeping his cards pretty close to his vest," the official said, "and I think people may be trying to interpret questions he's asking and information he's asking for as signs that he's made up his mind."

Robert M. Gates, who was sworn in yesterday as defense secretary, is headed for Iraq this week and is expected to play a decisive role in resolving the debate, officials said. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's views are still open, according to State Department officials. The principals met again yesterday to continue discussions.

The White House yesterday noted the growing number of reports about what is being discussed behind closed doors. "It's also worth issuing a note of caution, because quite often people will try to litigate preferred options through the press," White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters.

Discussions are expected to continue through the holidays. Rice is expected to travel to the president's ranch near Crawford, Tex., after Christmas for consultations on Iraq. The administration's foreign policy principals are also expected to hold at least two meetings during the holiday. The White House has said the president will outline his new strategy to the nation early next year.

As the White House debate continues, another independent report on Iraq strategy is being issued today by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based crisis monitoring group that includes several former U.S. officials. It calls for more far-reaching policy revisions and reversals than did even the Iraq Study Group report, the bipartisan report issued two weeks ago.

The new report calls the study group's recommendations "not nearly radical enough" and says that "its prescriptions are no match for its diagnosis." It continues: "What is needed today is a clean break both in the way the U.S. and other international actors deal with the Iraqi government, and in the way the U.S. deals with the region."

The Iraqi government and military should not be treated as "privileged allies" because they are not partners in efforts to stem the violence but rather parties to the conflict, it says. Trying to strengthen the fragile government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will not contribute to Iraq's stability, it adds. Iraq's escalating crisis cannot be resolved militarily, the report says, and can be solved only with a major political effort.

The International Crisis Group proposes three broad steps: First, it calls for creation of an international support group, including the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Iraq's six neighbors, to press Iraq's constituents to accept political compromise.

Second, it urges a conference of all Iraqi players, including militias and insurgent groups, with support from the international community, to forge a political compact on controversial issues such as federalism, distribution of oil revenue, an amnesty, the status of Baath Party members and a timetable for U.S. withdrawal. Finally, it suggests a new regional strategy that would include engagement with Syria and Iran and jump-starting the moribund Arab-Israeli peace process.

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Attacks in Iraq at Record High, Pentagon Says

The New York Times
Attacks in Iraq at Record High, Pentagon Says
By DAVID S. CLOUD and MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 — A Pentagon assessment of security conditions in Iraq concluded Monday that attacks against American and Iraqi targets had surged this summer and autumn to their highest level, and called violence by Shiite militants the most significant threat in Baghdad.

The report, which covers the period from early August to early November, found an average of almost 960 attacks against Americans and Iraqis every week, the highest level recorded since the Pentagon began issuing the quarterly reports in 2005, with the biggest surge in attacks against American-led forces. That was an increase of 22 percent from the level for early May to early August, the report said.

While most attacks were directed at American forces, most deaths and injuries were suffered by the Iraqi military and civilians.

The report is the most comprehensive public assessment of the American-led operation to secure Baghdad, which began in early August. About 17,000 American combat troops are currently involved in the beefed-up security operation.

According to the Pentagon assessment, the operation initially had some success in reducing killings as militants concentrated on eluding capture and hiding their weapons. But sectarian death squads soon adapted, resuming their killings in regions of the capital that were not initially targets of the overstretched American and Iraqi troops.

Shiite militias, the Pentagon report said, also received help from allies among the Iraqi police. “Shia death squads leveraged support from some elements of the Iraqi Police Service and the National Police who facilitated freedom of movement and provided advance warning of upcoming operations,” the report said.

“This is a major reason for the increased levels of murders and executions.”

The findings were issued on the day Robert M. Gates was sworn in as defense secretary, replacing Donald H. Rumsfeld.

At an afternoon ceremony at the Pentagon attended by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Gates said he planned to travel to Iraq shortly to consult with military commanders as part of a broad administration review of Iraq strategy.

“All of us want to find a way to bring America’s sons and daughters home again,” Mr. Gates said. “But as the president has made clear, we simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility and endanger Americans for decades to come.”

Over all, the report portrayed a precarious security situation and criticized Shiite militias for the worsening violence more explicitly than previous versions had.

It said the Mahdi Army, a powerful Shiite militia that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal Al-Maliki has not confronted despite American pressure to do so, had had the greatest negative impact on security. It is likely that Shiite militants are now responsible for more civilian deaths and injuries than terrorist groups are, the report said.

But the report also held out hope that decisive leadership by the Iraqi government might halt the slide toward civil war.

While noting that efforts by Mr. Maliki to encourage political reconciliation among ethnic groups had shown little progress, it said that Iraqi institutions were holding and that members of the current government “have not openly abandoned the political process.”

The Pentagon assessment, titled “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,” is mandated by Congress and issued quarterly.

The new report, completed last month, noted two parallel trends.

On the one hand, the Iraqi security forces are larger than ever, with 322,600 Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other troops, an increase of 45,000 since August. Iraqi forces also have increasingly taken the lead responsibility in many areas.

The growth in Iraqi capabilities, however, has been matched by increasing violence. That raises the question of whether the American strategy to rely on the Iraqi forces to tamp down violence is failing, at least in the short term.

The Bush administration has decided to step up substantially the effort to train and equip the Iraqi forces. A major question being pondered by Mr. Bush is whether that is sufficient, or whether more American troops are needed in Baghdad to control the violence and stabilize the city.

According to the Pentagon, the weekly average of 959 attacks was a jump of 175 from the previous three months. As a consequence, civilian deaths and injuries reached a record 93 a day.

Deaths and injuries suffered by Iraq’s security forces also climbed to a new high, 33 a day, while American and other allied deaths and injuries hovered at 25 a day, just short of the record in 2004, when the United States was involved in battles in Falluja and elsewhere.

The increase in violence coincided with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, when there had previously been a temporary spike in attacks, but also reflected the deeper sectarian passions that have flared since an attack in February 2006 on a Shiite shrine in Samarra.

According to Pentagon data used in formulating the report, there were 1,028 sectarian “executions” in October. That was a slight dip from July, when there were 1,169 executions, but a major increase since January, when there were 180. During this period, “ethno-sectarian incidents” have steadily risen, the report noted.

Security difficulties varied in different parts of the country. While sectarian strife was the biggest problem in Baghdad, in Anbar Province it was attacks by Sunni militants. North of Baghdad, in Diyala and Bilad, terrorists linked to Al Qaeda have been battling the Mahdi Army, it says.

While Shiite militias are active, the group known as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is still a major threat, despite the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, its leader. “The emergence of Abu Ayub al-Masri as leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq demonstrated its flexibility and depth, as well as its reliance on non-Iraqis,” the report noted.

Indications of progress were few. The report credited the Iraqi government with taking “incremental” steps at assuming more responsibility and said its security forces “have assumed more leadership in counterinsurgency and law enforcement operations.” But it remained “urgent” for the Iraqi government “to demonstrate a resolve to contain and terminate sectarian attacks.”

In a briefing for reporters, Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, a senior aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Baghdad operation had been constrained because the Iraqi government had not allowed American and Iraqi troops to “go in and neutralize Sadr City,” the base for the Mahdi Army.

Crude oil output was 2.3 million barrels a day, 7.5 percent higher than in August but still below the government’s goal of 2.5 million barrels.

Proponents of sending more troops to Iraq cited the report to argue that only Americans could ensure security in the short term and that more were needed. Critics said it showed that the initial effort by the American military to reinforce Baghdad had failed to stop the killing.

Gen. James T. Conway, who took over this fall as commandant of the Marine Corps, told reporters in Missouri on Saturday that among other options, President Bush was considering sending five or more combat brigades to Iraq, or about 20,000 troops.

General Conway said he believed that the Joint Chiefs would support such an increase as long as “there is a solid military reason for doing so.” He said sending more troops just to be “thickening the mix” in Baghdad would be a mistake.

Representative Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri, the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was opposed to more troops. “Everything I’ve heard and everything I know to be true lead me to believe that this increase at best won’t change a thing,” he said, “and at worst could exacerbate the situation even further.”

Carl Hulse contributed reporting.

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U.S. withdraws demand for return of secret memo

Reuters
U.S. withdraws demand for return of secret memo

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government withdrew on Monday a demand for the American Civil Liberties Union to hand over a "secret" Washington memo on its policy on photos of enemy prisoners of war and detainees, the rights group said.

The New York-based civil liberties group said the government had asked a federal court judge to withdraw the subpoena demanding "any and all copies" of the memorandum, saying that the document had now been declassified.

"The Bush administration's attempt to suppress information using the grand jury process was truly chilling and is unprecedented in law and in our history as an organization," ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement.

In its motion to quash the subpoena to the ACLU, the Justice Department said the memo had been wanted for a criminal investigation into the improper dissemination of classified and sensitive documents from a government agency.

"The document is now declassified and there exist alternate sources for the evidence necessary to the grand jury investigation. Accordingly, the government withdraws the subpoena at issue in this matter," the Justice Department said in its filing.

The memo, titled "The Permissibility of Photographing Enemy Prisoners of War and Detainees" and dated December 20, 2005, advised that news media and the U.S. Army Public Affairs Office can take photos as long as it was done in a way that cannot be interpreted as holding the prisoners and detainees up to public curiosity.

It also said U.S. soldiers are banned from photographing prisoners and detainees except when required as part of official duties. The ACLU did not say how it obtained the memo.

"The issue was not the content of the document but the government's unprecedented effort to suppress it," said ACLU Legal Director Steven Shapiro. "Now that the document has been declassified, it should be plain for all to see that it should never have been classified to begin with, and that the grand jury subpoena was overreaching and inappropriate."

Romero said the documents "raise the question of whether the guidelines were in place prior to the Abu Ghraib scandal and if not, why it took more than a year after the scandal to issue a policy."

In early 2004, photographs showing American troops abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were published around the world. Several U.S. troops have since been convicted in relation to the abuse.

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Robert Gates, new U.S. defense secretary, sounds like he is preaching "Stay The Course"!!!

Reuters
Gates warns against failure in Iraq
By Kristin Roberts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Robert Gates, sworn in as U.S. defense secretary on Monday, said he understood the desire to bring troops home but that failure in Iraq would be a "calamity" that haunts and threatens America for decades.

"All of us want to find a way to bring America's sons and daughters home again. But, as the president has made clear, we simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East," Gates said at the Pentagon.

"Failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility and endanger Americans for decades to come," he said.

The 63-year-old former CIA director acknowledged during his Senate confirmation hearings in December that the United States was not winning in Iraq, but said it was not losing either.

Gates was officially sworn in at 7:03 a.m. EST by White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten in the chief of staff's office. Later, he was ceremonially sworn in at the Pentagon by Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the Bush administration's strongest defenders of the Iraq war.

Gates called Iraq his top priority and said he would travel there soon to meet with commanders as he tries to develop a new war plan.

But Gates also warned about growing problems in Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO forces face a resurgent Taliban five years after the invasion.

"The progress made by the Afghan people over the past five years is at risk. The United States and its NATO allies have made a commitment to the Afghan people and we intend to keep it," he said. "Afghanistan cannot be allowed to become a sanctuary for extremists again."

Gates said the U.S. approach to Iraq and Afghanistan would determine whether those countries and others pursue paths of gradual progress or the "forces of extremism and chaos will become ascendant."

President George W. Bush announced Gates would replace Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon a day after voters swept Republicans out of control in the next Congress, largely over anger about Iraq. Rumsfeld had become a focus for criticism of America's management of that war.

"We are a nation at war," Bush said at the swearing-in ceremony. "And I rely on our secretary of defense to provide me with the best possible advice and to help direct our nation's armed force as they engage the enemies of freedom around the world. Bob Gates is the right man to take on these challenges."

Gates easily won the Senate's confirmation earlier this month and has since participated in National Security Council meetings and received briefings at the Pentagon.

Gates, who served as CIA director from 1991 until 1993 under Bush's father, told the president to expect candor.

"You have asked for my candor and my honest counsel at this critical moment in our nation's history and you will get both," Gates told Bush in his six-minute speech at the Pentagon.

Bush has been seeking advice about a new plan for Iraq from military officials, the State Department and others in and out of government.

Recommendations have included both withdrawing and increasing troop levels, now at 134,000. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow would not discuss speculation that the president was considering a plan to add 20,000 or more troops.

"I'm not going to talk about theories of surges (of troops) or non-surges," Snow said, adding the alternatives being weighed include non-military components as well.

Many Democrats have called for a phased withdrawal from Iraq, although Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said he would support a short-term increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq if it was part of a broader pull-out plan.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander and Jeremy Pelofsky)

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This Just Not In

Huffington Post
Harry Shearer
This Just Not In

Let's just assume for the sake of argument that, despite David Kay's words to contrary, "we" weren't "all wrong" regarding the pre-war intel on Iraq. Let's imagine that there were well-respected and serious intelligence people in the countries most closely allied with ours who attempted to alert people to the fact that the pre-war intel didn't show what Bush, Blair and Howard said it did. We'd know about that by now, wouldn't we? So maybe the names Brian Jones and Andrew Willkie are household words for you. They have been for me, primarily because I didn't depend on the US media for information in the runup to the war. (One reason, perhaps, why the NYT and WaPo have apologized for their credulity in that period; NPR, just as credulous, has not)

So now comes a new name, with impressive credentials, to renew the charge that the intel did not say what our leaders said it did. Now, in this newly enlightened time, when the semi-serious press has apologized, read the polls and changed its tune, this story should be front-page news, yes?

No. Meet Carne Ross, who revealed this past Friday that Britain's leaders never bought the Saddam-WMD and Saddam-al Qaeda stories. He was a part of Britain's UN delegation during the period in question, and what did he know?

Mr Ross told Lord Butler he read UK and US human and signals intelligence on Iraq every working day during the four years he spent in New York up to 2002, and spoke at length to UN weapons inspectors.

And what did that reading and speaking tell him?

"At no time did [the government] assess that Iraq's WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK," he told the Butler committee. "On the contrary, it was the commonly-held view among the officials dealing with Iraq that any threat had been effectively contained ... At the same time, we would frequently argue, when the US raised the subject, that 'regime change' was inadvisable, primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos."

FYI, the Butler committee was one of several inquiries convened by Britain's labor government to "prove" that prewar intel wasn't fixed to fit the pre-ordained policy.

So, Sen. Gordon Smith's change on Iraq, and the to-ing and fro-ing of the White House re the ISG are incessant stories, but this is...journalistic chopped liver?

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Former US Detainee Describes Prisoner Abuse

The New York Times
Former U.S. Detainee in Iraq Recalls Torment
By MICHAEL MOSS

One night in mid-April, the steel door clanked shut on detainee No. 200343 at Camp Cropper, the United States military’s maximum-security detention site in Baghdad.

American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.

The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.

Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and released by the American military in Iraq, and his account of his ordeal has provided one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon’s detention operations since the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is unusual.

The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the F.B.I. about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.

But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.

At Camp Cropper, he took notes on his imprisonment and smuggled them out in a Bible.

“Sick, very. Vomited,” he wrote July 3. The next day: “Told no more phone calls til leave.”

Nathan Ertel, the American held with Mr. Vance, brought away military records that shed further light on the detention camp and its secretive tribunals. Those records include a legal memorandum explicitly denying detainees the right to a lawyer at detention hearings to determine whether they should be released or held indefinitely, perhaps for prosecution.

The story told through those records and interviews illuminates the haphazard system of detention and prosecution that has evolved in Iraq, where detainees are often held for long periods without charges or legal representation, and where the authorities struggle to sort through the endless stream of detainees to identify those who pose real threats.

“Even Saddam Hussein had more legal counsel than I ever had,” said Mr. Vance, who said he planned to sue the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, on grounds that his constitutional rights had been violated. “While we were detained, we wrote a letter to the camp commandant stating that the same democratic ideals we are trying to instill in the fledgling democratic country of Iraq, from simple due process to the Magna Carta, we are absolutely, positively refusing to follow ourselves.”

A spokeswoman for the Pentagon’s detention operations in Iraq, First Lt. Lea Ann Fracasso, said in written answers to questions that the men had been “treated fair and humanely,” and that there was no record of either man complaining about their treatment.

Held as ‘a Threat’

She said officials did not reach Mr. Vance’s contact at the F.B.I. until he had been in custody for three weeks. Even so, she said, officials determined that he “posed a threat” and decided to continue holding him. He was released two months later, Lieutenant Fracasso said, based on a “subsequent re-examination of his case,” and his stated plans to leave Iraq.

Mr. Ertel, 30, a contract manager who knew Mr. Vance from an earlier job in Iraq, was released more quickly.

Mr. Vance went to Iraq in 2004, first to work for a Washington-based company. He later joined a small Baghdad-based security company where, he said, “things started looking weird to me.” He said that the company, which was protecting American reconstruction organizations, had hired guards from a sheik in Basra and that many of them turned out to be members of militias whom the clients did not want around.

Mr. Vance said the company had a growing cache of weapons it was selling to suspicious customers, including a steady flow of officials from the Iraqi Interior Ministry. The ministry had ties to violent militias and death squads. He said he had also witnessed another employee giving American soldiers liquor in exchange for bullets and weapon repairs.

On a visit to Chicago in October 2005, Mr. Vance met twice with an F.B.I. agent who set up a reporting system. Weekly, Mr. Vance phoned the agent from Iraq and sent him e-mail messages. “It was like, ‘Hey, I heard this and I saw this.’ I wanted to help,” Mr. Vance said. A government official familiar with the arrangement confirmed Mr. Vance’s account.

In April, Mr. Ertel and Mr. Vance said, they felt increasingly uncomfortable at the company. Mr. Ertel resigned and company officials seized the identification cards that both men needed to move around Iraq or leave the country.

On April 15, feeling threatened, Mr. Vance phoned the United States Embassy in Baghdad. A military rescue team rushed to the security company. Again, Mr. Vance described its operations, according to military records.

“Internee Vance indicated a large weapons cache was in the compound in the house next door,” Capt. Plymouth D. Nelson, a military detention official, wrote in a memorandum dated April 22, after the men were detained. “A search of the house and grounds revealed two large weapons caches.”

On the evening of April 15, they met with American officials at the embassy and stayed overnight. But just before dawn, they were awakened, handcuffed with zip ties and made to wear goggles with lenses covered by duct tape. Put into a Humvee, Mr. Vance said he asked for a vest and helmet, and was refused.

They were driven through dangerous Baghdad roads and eventually to Camp Cropper. They were placed in cells at Compound 5, the high-security unit where Saddam Hussein has been held.

Only days later did they receive an explanation: They had become suspects for having associated with the people Mr. Vance tried to expose.

“You have been detained for the following reasons: You work for a business entity that possessed one or more large weapons caches on its premises and may be involved in the possible distribution of these weapons to insurgent/terrorist groups,” Mr. Ertel’s detention notice said.

Mr. Vance said he began seeking help even before his cell door closed for the first time. “They took off my blindfold and earmuffs and told me to stand in a corner, where they cut off the zip ties, and told me to continue looking straight forward and as I’m doing this, I’m asking for an attorney,” he said. “ ‘I want an attorney now,’ I said, and they said, ‘Someone will be here to see you.’ ”

Instead, they were given six-digit ID numbers. The guards shortened Mr. Vance’s into something of a nickname: “343.” And the routine began.

Bread and powdered drink for breakfast and sometimes a piece of fruit. Rice and chicken for lunch and dinner. Their cells had no sinks. The showers were irregular. They got 60 minutes in the recreation yard at night, without other detainees.

Five times in the first week, guards shackled the prisoners’ hands and feet, covered their eyes, placed towels over their heads and put them in wheelchairs to be pushed to a room with a carpeted ceiling and walls. There they were questioned by an array of officials who, they said they were told, represented the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

“It’s like boom, boom, boom,” Mr. Ertel said. “They are drilling you. ‘We know you did this, you are part of this gun smuggling thing.’ And I’m saying you have it absolutely way off.”

The two men slept in their 9-by-9-foot cells on concrete slabs, with worn three-inch foam mats. With the fluorescent lights on and the temperature in the 50s, Mr. Vance said, “I paced myself to sleep, walking until I couldn’t anymore. I broke the straps on two pair of flip-flops.”

Asked about the lights, the detainee operations spokeswoman said that the camp’s policy was to turn off cell lights at night “to allow detainees to sleep.”

A Psychological Game

One day, Mr. Vance met with a camp psychologist. “He realized I was having difficulties,” Mr. Vance said. “He said to turn it into a game. He said: ‘I want you to pretend you are a soldier who has been kidnapped, and that you still have a duty to do. Memorize everything you can about everything that happens to you. Make it like you are a spy on the inside.’ I think he called it rational emotive behavioral therapy, and I started doing that.”

Camp Rule 31 barred detainees from writing on the white cell walls, which were bare except for a black crescent moon painted on one wall to indicate the direction of Mecca for prayers. But Mr. Vance began keeping track of the days by making hash marks on the wall, and he also began writing brief notes that he hid in the Bible given to him by guards.

“Turned in request for dentist + phone + embassy letter + request for clothes,” he wrote one day.

“Boards,” he wrote April 24, the day he and Mr. Ertel went before Camp Cropper’s Detainee Status Board.

Their legal rights, laid out in a letter from Lt. Col. Bradley J. Huestis of the Army, the president of the status board, allowed them to attend the hearing and testify. However, under Rule 3, the letter said, “You do not have the right to legal counsel, but you may have a personal representative assist you at the hearing if the personal representative is reasonably available.”

Mr. Vance and Mr. Ertel were permitted at their hearings only because they were Americans, Lieutenant Fracasso said. The cases of all other detainees are reviewed without the detainees present, she said. In both types of cases, defense lawyers are not allowed to attend because the hearings are not criminal proceedings, she said.

Lieutenant Fracasso said that currently there were three Americans in military custody in Iraq. The military does not identify detainees.

Mr. Vance and Mr. Ertel had separate hearings. They said their requests to be each other’s personal representative had been denied.

At the hearings, a woman and two men wearing Army uniforms but no name tags or rank designations sat a table with two stacks of documents. One was about an inch thick, and the men were allowed to see some papers from that stack. The other pile was much thicker, but they were told that this pile was evidence only the board could see.

The men pleaded with the board. “I’m telling them there has been a major mix-up,” Mr. Ertel said. “Please, I’m out of my mind. I haven’t slept. I’m not eating. I’m terrified.”

Mr. Vance said he implored the board to delve into his laptop computer and cellphone for his communications with the F.B.I. agent in Chicago.

Each of the hearings lasted about two hours, and the men said they never saw the board again.

“At the end, my first question was, ‘Does my family know I’m alive?’ and the lead man said, ‘I don’t know,’ ” Mr. Vance recounted. “And then I asked when will we have an answer, and they said on average it takes three to four weeks.”

Help From the Outside

About a week later, two weeks into his detention, Mr. Vance was allowed to make his first call, to Chicago. He called his fiancée, Diane Schwarz, who told him she had thought he might have died.

“It was very overwhelming,” Ms. Schwarz recalls of the 12-minute conversation. “He wasn’t quite sure what was going on, and was kind of turning to me for answers and I was turning to him for the same.”

She had already been calling members of Congress, alarmed by his disappearance. So was Mr. Ertel’s mother, and some officials began pressing for answers. “I would appreciate your looking into this matter,” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois wrote to a State Department official in early May.

On May 7, the Camp Cropper detention board met again, without either man present, and determined that Mr. Ertel was “an innocent civilian,” according to the spokeswoman for detention operations. It took authorities 18 more days to release him.

Mr. Vance’s situation was more complicated. On June 17, Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a spokesman for the American military’s detention unit, Task Force 134, wrote to tell Ms. Schwarz that Mr. Vance was still being held. “The detainee board reviewed his case and recommended he remain interned,” he wrote. “Multi-National Force-Iraq approved the board’s recommendation to continue internment. Therefore, Mr. Vance continues to be a security detainee. We are not processing him for release. His case remains under investigation and there is no set timetable for completion.” Over the following weeks, Mr. Vance said he made numerous written requests — for a lawyer, for blankets, for paper to write letters home. Mr. Vance said that he wrote 10 letters to Ms. Schwarz, but that only one made it to Chicago. Dated July 17, it was delivered late last month by the Red Cross.

“Diana, start talking, sending e-mail and letters and faxes to the alderman, mayor, governor, congressman, senators, Red Cross, Amnesty International, A.C.L.U., Vatican, and other Christian-based organizations. Everyone!” he wrote. “I am missing you so much, and am so depressed it’s a daily struggle here. My life is in your hands. Please don’t get discouraged. Don’t take ‘No’ for answers. Keep working. I have to tell myself these things every day, but I can’t do anything from a cell.”

The military has never explained why it continued to consider Mr. Vance a security threat, except to say that officials decided to release him after further review of his case.

“Treating an American citizen in this fashion would have been unimaginable before 9/11,” said Mike Kanovitz, a Chicago lawyer representing Mr. Vance.

On July 20, Mr. Vance wrote in his notes: “Told ‘Leaving Today.’ Took shower and shaved, saw doctor, got civ clothes back and passport.”

On his way out, Mr. Vance said: “They asked me if I was intending to write a book, would I talk to the press, would I be thinking of getting an attorney. I took it as, ‘Shut up, don’t talk about this place,’ and I kept saying, ‘No sir, I want to go home.’ ”

Mr. Ertel has returned to Baghdad, again working as a contracts manager. Mr. Vance is back in Chicago, still feeling the effects of having been a prisoner of the war in Iraq.

“It’s really hard,” he says. “I don’t really talk about this stuff with my family. I feel ashamed, depressed, still have nightmares, and I’d even say I suffer from some paranoia.”

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A Surge of Insanity

Huffington Post
Arianna Huffington
A Surge of Insanity

Harry Reid started off well on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, answering a question about Iraq by saying, "We have to change course in Iraq, that was determined on November 7th and the people feel even more strongly today than they did on November 7th. By the first quarter of 2008, American troops should be out of there."

But then the segment, to borrow from a recent but already dead report, became grave and deteriorating. Stephanopoulos asked what Reid would do if the president -- as he's expected to -- calls for even more troops to be sent to Iraq.

"If it's part of a program to get us out of there as indicated by this time next year, then sure I'll go along with it," he said.

To which Stephanopoulos rightly asked: "How will you know that it's going to be temporary?"

Of course, Reid doesn't know that. Nor did Reid even broach the question whether the so-called "surge" is the right thing to do if it were to last a single day.

The senator was right about one thing, though, and that's the message that the American people sent on November 7th -- that they want to end this war and end it quickly.

And yes, I have no doubt that when Bush presents his "surge" plan, or "New Way Forward," or whatever meaningless term he's going to call it, he'll present it in the most sugar-coated way possible.

Part of what has enabled this disastrous war from the beginning has been the willful delusion about who George Bush is and how he operates. Harry Reid will go along with my plan if I tell him it's "temporary"? Fine, Harry, "the plan is temporary." But only someone with a surge of insanity would go along with this.

Which is why the public voted the way it did in November and why only 12% of Americans support this "surge." George Bush has no intention of pulling the troops out. The only thing this surge will accomplish is a surge of more death and destruction.

Harry Reid began his segment today by talking about the health of South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson. We all of course wish Senator Johnson a speedy recovery, but one of the reasons why his health has been the subject of so much attention is because of the possibility of the Senate going back into Republican hands. If Senator Reid's idea of leadership is to trust President Bush on yet another last ditch effort --however temporary-- to "fix" Iraq, it apparently doesn't matter which party controls the Senate.

As the old saying goes, there is nothing so permanent as a temporary solution. Except President Bush's incompetence, willful denial of reality and refusal to listen to the will of the American people. We don't need a surge of those any more than we need a surge of troops in Iraq.

Here's hoping Senator Reid comes to his senses.

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U.S. to triple number of military trainers in Iraq

Reuters
U.S. to triple number of military trainers in Iraq
By Ross Colvin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military plans to speed up the training of Iraq's army by tripling its number of embedded trainers to about 9,000, while keeping a close eye on units' sectarian loyalties, a U.S. general said on Sunday.

Brigadier General Dana Pittard, whose Iraqi Assistance Group oversees training of Iraq's security forces, also said each of the nine police brigades would be taken off the streets over the next nine months for one month-long training.

A number of police units have been accused of colluding with, or being infiltrated by Shi'ite militia death squads targeting minority Sunnis. An explosion of sectarian violence since February has pushed the country toward all-out civil war.

"Over the next couple of months we will augment the transition teams to double or triple their size," Pittard said, noting that the teams training the Iraqi army were now 3,000-strong.

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group has recommended to President George W. Bush that he accelerate the training of Iraqi forces to allow the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops by early 2008.

Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki agreed to this at a summit in Jordan last month. Maliki said then that Iraqi forces would be able to assume security control by next June. Pittard said he thought that was an achievable goal.

The general said the new trainers would be drawn from combat troops already in Iraq. He was unaware of reports that they might come from reinforcements heading to the region.

While analysts have questioned the effectiveness and sectarian loyalties of Iraq's 300,000-strong security forces, saying they could splinter if communal fighting worsens, Pittard said he had not seen much evidence of this.

"They rebel against the allegation that this is anything else but a national army that they are trying to build," he told journalists in Baghdad.

SHI'ITE OR SUNNI?

Nevertheless, the American training teams were asking soldiers whether they were Shi'ites or Sunni Arabs because it was crucial to know the religious affiliation of the units.

"But we are seeing comparatively a lot less sectarian leanings than in other security forces," he said, referring to the Iraqi national police. "It is a concern to us and to the Iraqi government."

He also highlighted three factors which he said were inhibiting the performance of the army. The absence of a Uniform Code of Justice meant that Iraqi commanders had no way of disciplining soldiers who went absent without leave.

The absence, too, of a national banking system meant that many soldiers whose units were far away from their families disappeared for days when they traveled home to give them their pay. Some simply deserted because the travel costs ate up much of their small salaries.

"If we had a banking system, that would help retention. At present there is a 12 to 14 percent attrition rate," he said.

Regional recruitment also meant that many soldiers were reluctant to serve in areas of the country that took them away from their families.

U.S. commanders have complained that Operation Together Forward, a major security crackdown aimed at reclaiming the streets of Baghdad from death squads, suffered because the Iraqi military committed too few troops.

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Iraqalypto

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A Method To His Madness

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Gov't's case for Iraq war torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over weapons of mass destruction

The Independent
Diplomat's suppressed document lays bare the lies behind Iraq war
By Colin Brown and Andy McSmith

The Government's case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

A devastating attack on Mr Blair's justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain's key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act.

In the testimony revealed today Mr Ross, 40, who helped negotiate several UN security resolutions on Iraq, makes it clear that Mr Blair must have known Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. He said that during his posting to the UN, "at no time did HMG [Her Majesty's Government] assess that Iraq's WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests."

Mr Ross revealed it was a commonly held view among British officials dealing with Iraq that any threat by Saddam Hussein had been "effectively contained".

He also reveals that British officials warned US diplomats that bringing down the Iraqi dictator would lead to the chaos the world has since witnessed. "I remember on several occasions the UK team stating this view in terms during our discussions with the US (who agreed)," he said.

"At the same time, we would frequently argue when the US raised the subject, that 'regime change' was inadvisable, primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos."

He claims "inertia" in the Foreign Office and the "inattention of key ministers" combined to stop the UK carrying out any co-ordinated and sustained attempt to address sanction-busting by Iraq, an approach which could have provided an alternative to war.

Mr Ross delivered the evidence to the Butler inquiry which investigated intelligence blunders in the run-up to the conflict.

The Foreign Office had attempted to prevent the evidence being made public, but it has now been published by the Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs after MPs sought assurances from the Foreign Office that it would not breach the Official Secrets Act.

It shows Mr Ross told the inquiry, chaired by Lord Butler, "there was no intelligence evidence of significant holdings of CW [chemical warfare], BW [biological warfare] or nuclear material" held by the Iraqi dictator before the invasion. "There was, moreover, no intelligence or assessment during my time in the job that Iraq had any intention to launch an attack against its neighbours or the UK or the US," he added.

Mr Ross's evidence directly challenges the assertions by the Prime Minster that the war was legally justified because Saddam possessed WMDs which could be "activated" within 45 minutes and posed a threat to British interests. These claims were also made in two dossiers, subsequently discredited, in spite of the advice by Mr Ross.

His hitherto secret evidence threatens to reopen the row over the legality of the conflict, under which Mr Blair has sought to draw a line as the internecine bloodshed in Iraq has worsened.

Mr Ross says he questioned colleagues at the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence working on Iraq and none said that any new evidence had emerged to change their assessment.

"What had changed was the Government's determination to present available evidence in a different light," he added.

Mr Ross said in late 2002 that he "discussed this at some length with David Kelly", the weapons expert who a year later committed suicide when he was named as the source of a BBC report saying Downing Street had "sexed up" the WMD claims in a dossier. The Butler inquiry cleared Mr Blair and Downing Street of "sexing up" the dossier, but the publication of the Carne Ross evidence will cast fresh doubts on its findings.

Mr Ross, 40, was a highly rated diplomat but he resigned because of his misgivings about the legality of the war. He still fears the threat of action under the Official Secrets Act.

"Mr Ross hasn't had any approach to tell him that he is still not liable to be prosecuted," said one ally. But he has told friends that he is "glad it is out in the open" and he told MPs it had been "on my conscience for years".

One member of the Foreign Affairs committee said: "There was blood on the carpet over this. I think it's pretty clear the Foreign Office used the Official Secrets Act to suppress this evidence, by hanging it like a Sword of Damacles over Mr Ross, but we have called their bluff."

Yesterday, Jack Straw, the Leader of the Commons who was Foreign Secretary during the war - Mr Ross's boss - announced the Commons will have a debate on the possible change of strategy heralded by the Iraqi Study Group report in the new year.

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Three Possible Outcomes for the Rest of Bush's Presidency

Huffington Post
Cenk Uygur
Three Possible Outcomes for the Rest of Bush's Presidency

Now that we've screwed the pooch on Iraq, there are only three possible outcomes for George Bush's presidency.

1. He stays the course and just drives Iraq into the ground. This could involve putting more troops in, keeping the same number of troops or even some form of withdrawal. But anyway you slice it, Iraq will be a monumental failure.
It is what George W. Bush will be known for. He could leave it at that.

Or he could choose one of two other options. One could make things much better and the other is guaranteed to make things much worse.

2. He could attack Iran and turn the world upside down. This would guarantee his place among - not just the worst US presidents of all time - but the worst world leaders of all time. Attacking Iran would rank among the biggest military blunders in history.

We do not have the forces to fight against Iran. It would not be an easy fight, quite to the contrary, it would be exceedingly difficult. Iran is four times the size of Iraq and has far greater military and political capabilities. They could mobilize Shiites to attack our already weakened interests in Iraq and Lebanon, let alone Israel. They could nearly bring the production and distribution of oil to a halt out of the Persian Gulf. And expose our soldiers in Iraq to much greater harm.

The leaders of Iran already know this. They also know that being attacked by the US is the best thing that could happen to their political fortunes inside Iran. It would turn a young, disaffected population into one with nationalistic and religious fervor united behind the mullahs.

Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is the Dennis Rodman of global politics. He is trying to goad Bush into taking a swing at him. He knows that it is not possible for Bush to finish the job, and that if America jabs at Iran, it will secure Ahmedinejad and the Ayatollahs' reign in Iran for another generation. It's a dangerous but smart game. And it is being played against an opponent who doesn't have any idea of what's happening to him. It's easy to provoke this dumb, blind beast.

Say a couple of inflammatory things against Israel - but don't actually take any aggressive steps. So, when the US attacks, they are the guilty party. You are the protector of Iran. America is loathed across the world for starting another aggressive war. And the whole Muslim world is united behind your leadership.

If Bush falls for this trick, he will live in infamy as one of the least capable and least intelligent men to ever lead a global power. The old European and Ottoman empires would often breed entirely within royal families. This would from time to time produce a mentally handicapped heir to the throne. None of them have ever made a mistake as large as the one Bush would make if he attacked Iran without a legitimate military provocation.

We are told we must be wary because Ahmedinejad denies the Holocaust. I have never heard a worst reason to contemplate attacking another country in my life. Who cares?! What is the official Chinese position on the Cambodian genocide? And should we invade them based on this? The government of Turkey still denies the Armenian Genocide. Should we invade them too while we're at it?

Have people in this country lost their minds? You don't go to war with people and risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of people because they hurt your feelings. Please tell me our leaders aren't this painfully stupid.

Of course, then there is option number three. The only thing that can salvage Bush's presidency at this point. It's got to be a doozy to pull him out of the ignominious hole he has dug for himself. And it is.

3. Broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians. If Bush could pull off this Herculean task, then every sentence about his legacy would start off with, "But no matter what, he was the one that brought peace to the Middle East..."

Now, that seems so improbable as to be near impossible. But it's his only chance. If he could pull it off, it would be an undeniably historic task. It would make Nixon going to China look like my Aunt Maude going down to the grocery store. No matter how bad you screw things up in the rest of your presidency, if you get a true peace deal between the Israelis and the rest of the Middle East, you would be forever heralded for that legendary achievement.

Finally, what does he have to lose? Why not give it a shot? Maybe it takes an unhinged guy like Bush to make both sides listen. The Palestinians and the Israelis would be sure that when Bush says he might do something, he really might do it -- no matter how crazy it sounds. He's built good ballistic capital. The guy could go ballistic at any moment. So, it's best to make a deal and not piss him off.

I'm trying to make lemonade out of lemons here. This is not some sort of Trojan Horse advice that the conservatives are fond of (e.g. the Democrats better not fight us on this, otherwise they will seem weak on defense and no one will ever vote for them again). This is a genuine outreach to try to help the president.

Why? Because he's still my president. This is our country and our world. And I still care.

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Unfinished Business

The New York Times
Unfinished Business

Some recent images from George W. Bush’s war on terror:

¶Jose Padilla, the supposed dirty bomber, submitting while guards blindfolded him and covered his ears for a walk from his cell to a dentist’s chair.

¶Government lawyers arguing that a prisoner could not testify that he was tortured by American agents, because their brutality was a secret.

¶A judge dismissing another prisoner’s challenge to his detention, after a new law stripped basic rights from those Mr. Bush has designated “illegal enemy combatants.”

¶The White House scorning lawmakers’ attempts to rein in Mr. Bush’s illegal domestic spying.

This is the legacy of a Republican Congress that enabled the president’s imperial visions of his authority. It leaves the new Democratic majority with much urgent, unfinished business to restore due process, civil liberties and the balance of powers.

Military Tribunals

In the heat of the midterm campaign, Congress was stampeded into establishing military courts for suspected terrorists. The measure improved on Mr. Bush’s own kangaroo courts, which were struck down by the Supreme Court. But the bill over all was a national disgrace.

Among the many things that Congress needs to fix are the bill’s broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant,” which could subject legal United States residents to summary imprisonment; its repudiation of the Geneva Conventions to allow the president to decide what prisoner abuse he will permit; its denial of the basic right of appeal to any noncitizen designated as an “illegal enemy combatant”; and its stripping of the powers of federal courts. The law is also far too lax on the use of coerced evidence and secret evidence. The definition of torture should be changed to reflect civilized norms.

We were greatly encouraged last week when Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who will head the Judiciary Committee, said fixing this bill would be a priority for his panel.

The C.I.A. Prisons

At the insistence of Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the Military Commissions Act gave legal cover to the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret illegal prisons, which house foreign citizens who are often abducted off the streets of their hometowns and brutalized. Congress should at minimum bring these prisons under the rule of law, and make sure that C.I.A. interrogators are given clear instructions comporting with American values. Ideally, Congress would investigate and decide whether this operation has any national security value, and if it doesn’t, immediately close the prisons down.

Domestic Spying

Mr. Bush personally authorized the National Security Agency to ignore federal law and eavesdrop on telephone calls and e-mail between the United States and other countries without a warrant. Republican lawmakers have introduced bills that would legalize the program after the fact. The only remotely sensible measure is from Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who has proposed forcing the eavesdropping back under the 1978 surveillance law and giving the administration a bit more flexibility to do electronic surveillance.

But we agree with Senator John Rockefeller IV, the incoming chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who says more needs to be known about the program before enacting new laws. The administration has stymied Congressional efforts to look into the spying operation, refusing even to turn over the presidential order creating it.

The Intelligence on Iraq

Nearly two and a half years ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee reported on the nation’s spy agencies’ prewar failure to figure out that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and promised to deliver a report on whether Mr. Bush and his team pressured the agencies to cherry-pick or hype evidence — or lied outright to Americans.

Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the Republican head of the intelligence panel, dragged out the second phase of the report, with the aim of killing it. We hope Mr. Rockefeller finishes the job.

That will require heavy lifting on the most important section, comparing the statements of administration officials to what they knew about the intelligence. Mr. Roberts insisted that it cover every public statement by any administration official or member of Congress dating back to 1991. What President Bill Clinton or Senator Hillary Clinton said about Iraq is irrelevant. What matters is what was said by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney — who ordered the invasion of Iraq — and by their aides. We hope Mr. Rockefeller’s committee will sift through the hundreds of statements collected so far and focus on the ones that matter.

Unhappily, this is not an exhaustive list and there will be big fights over many of these issues. But it is not too late to take action. The midterm elections prove that despite all the posturing and fearmongering, the American public has not been blinded or deafened to what this country stands for and the need for truth.

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New Counterinsurgency Manual Hits Net. Why is the DoD Making it Available to Insurgents,Terrorists?

iraqslugger.com
New Counterinsurgency Manual Hits Net
Why is the DoD Making it Available to Insurgents,Terrorists?
By EASON JORDAN

Your IraqSlogger editors are stunned that the Pentagon has released to the entire world and posted on the Web the U.S. military’s new 282-page counterinsurgency war-fighting manual.

This is the first post-9/11 “war on terror” U.S. military counterinsurgency manual – the long-awaited doctrine meant in part to help turn the tide for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The counterinsurgency field manual's cover reads in part, "Distribution Restriction: Approved for Public Release; Distribution is unlimited."

Why?

Now you and everyone, including Al Qaeda terrorists and insurgents, can read the entire 282-page manual.

It's posted on multiple military Web sites.

While the manual doesn’t contain classified secrets, it contains an astounding amount of seemingly sensitive military doctrine, with subject headings including:

-- INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE OPERATIONS

-- HUMAN INTELLIGENCE AND OPERATIONAL REPORTING

-- COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERRECONNAISSANCE

-- INTELLIGENCE COLLABORATION

-- INTELLIGENCE CELLS AND WORKING GROUPS

-- PROTECTING SOURCES

-- EXECUTING COUNTERINSURGENCY OPERATIONS

-- TARGETING

Should such sensitive and detailed information be dished up to the U.S.’s enemies, especially via Pentagon Web sites?

In the manual's foreword, Lt. Generals David Petreaus and James Amos write in part, "With our Soldiers and Marines fighting insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is essential that we give them a manual that provides principles and guidelines for counterinsurgency operations."

How would a U.S. soldier or Marine now in Iraq or Afghanistan feel knowing the hot-off-the-presses counterinsurgency manual is available to the “bad guys” at the same time it is available to the “good guys”?

Granted, the Pentagon posts a lot on the Web, but it seems fair to ask whether this entire 282-page document (surely, there are additional classified components) should be made available to all.

Will the manual be of value to Al Qaeda terrorists, Iraqi insurgents, and the Taliban?

Would the U.S. think it had scored an intelligence coup if it got its hands on the insurgents' 282-page field manual?

How would the American people feel if asked in a poll whether the U.S. military's counterinsurgency manual should be shared with the insurgents?

Your IraqSlogger team will keep an eye out on terrorist and insurgent Web sites to see whether they provide links to Pentagon Web sites providing the counterinsurgency manual -- or whether they go so far as to translate the manual into Arabic and other languages.

Stay tuned.

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Flynt Leverett Blasts White House National Security Council Censorship of Former White House Officials Critical of Bush Policies

Huffinton Post
Steve Clemons
Flynt Leverett Blasts White House National Security Council Censorship of Former White House Officials Critical of Bush Policies

John Bolton when he served as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security was famous for pounding intelligence officials hard until they coughed up intel reports and "frames" that fit the political objectives he had in mind.

The practice of politicizing intelligence in the Bush White House seems to be continuing with "friends lists" and "enemies lists" determining who should be rewarded or punished in the "secrets-clearing process" in cases where former goverment officials publish materials on U.S. foreign policy debates.

In an unprecedented case, the White House National Security Council staff has insinuated itself into a "secrets-clearing" process normally overseen by the CIA Publications Review Board which screens the written work of former government officials to make sure that state secrets don't find their way into the op-ed pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, or in other of the nation's leading papers, journals, and books.

Flynt Leverett, a former government official who worked at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of State, and on the National Security Council staff of the George W. Bush administration, is now a senior fellow and Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Initiative at the New America Foundation.

He has written numerous books, manuscripts, working papers, and many dozens upon dozens of some of the most important public policy op-ed commentary on American engagement in the Middle East and has always dutifully submitted his materials to the CIA's review process. Never -- not even once -- has been a word or item changed in anything submitted.

The White House has now forced the CIA to heavily censor a 1000 word op-ed draft planned for the New York Times that is based on a much larger product he produced under the sponsorship of the Century Foundation titled "Dealing with Tehran: Assessing US Diplomatic Options Toward Iran." (A pdf of the article can be downloaded here.)

Leverett believes that the White House is now politicizing the "secrets review" process and is rewarding those who support Bush's policies and punishing those don't.

Flynt Leverett's official statement -- sent to this blogger tonight -- follows:

Since leaving government service in 2003, I have been publicly critical of the Bush administration's mishandling of America's Iran policy -- in two op-eds published in the New York Times, another published in the Los Angeles Times, an article published earlier this year in The American Prospect, and a monograph just published by The Century Foundation, as well as in numerous public statements, television appearances, and press interviews.

All of my publications on Iran -- and, indeed, on any other policy matter on which I have written since leaving government -- were cleared beforehand by the CIA's Publication Review Board to confirm that I would not be disclosing classified information.

Until last week, the Publication Review Board had never sought to remove or change a single word in any of my drafts, including in all of my publications about the Bush administration's handling of Iran policy. However, last week, the White House inserted itself into the prepublication review process for an op-ed on the administration's bungling of the Iran portfolio that I had prepared for the New York Times, blocking publication of the piece on the grounds that it would reveal classified information.

This claim is false and, I have come to believe, fabricated by White House officials to silence an established critic of the administration's foreign policy incompetence at a moment when the White House is working hard to fend off political pressure to take a different approach to Iran and the Middle East more generally.

The op-ed is based on the longer paper I just published with The Century Foundation -- which was cleared by the CIA without modifying a single word of the draft. Officials with the CIA's Publication Review Board have told me that, in their judgment, the draft op-ed does not contain classified material, but that they must bow to the preferences of the White House.

The White House is demanding, before it will consider clearing the op-ed for publication, that I excise entire paragraphs dealing with matters that I have written about (and received clearance from the CIA to do so) in several other pieces, that have been publicly acknowledged by Secretary Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and that have been extensively covered in the media.

These matters include Iran's dialogue and cooperation with the United States concerning Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and Iran's offer to negotiate a comprehensive "grand bargain" with the United States in the spring of 2003.

There is no basis for claiming that these issues are classified and not already in the public domain.

For the White House to make this claim, with regard to my op-ed and at this particular moment, is nothing more than a crass effort to politicize a prepublication review process -- a process that is supposed to be about the protection of classified information, and nothing else -- to limit the dissemination of views critical of administration policy.

Within the last two week, the CIA found the wherewithal to approve an op-ed -- published in the New York Times on December 8, 2006 -- by Kenneth Pollack, another former CIA employee. This op-ed includes the statement that "Iran provided us with extensive assistance on intelligence, logistics, diplomacy, and Afghan internal politics."

Similar statements by me have been deleted from my draft op-ed by the White House. But Kenneth Pollack is someone who presented unfounded assessments of the Iraqi WMD threat -- the same assessments expounded by the Bush White House -- to make a high-profile public case for going to war in Iraq.

Mr. Pollack also supports the administration's reluctance to engage with Iran, in contrast to my consistent and sharp criticism of that position. It would seem that, if one is expounding views congenial to the White House, it does not intervene in prepublication censorship, but, if one is a critic, White House officials will use fraudulent charges of revealing classified information to keep critical views from being heard.

My understanding is that the White House staffers who have injected themselves into this process are working for Elliott Abrams and Megan O'Sullivan, both politically appointed deputies to President Bush's National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley.

Their conduct in this matter is despicable and un-American in the profoundest sense of that term. I am also deeply disappointed that former colleagues at the Central Intelligence Agency have proven so supine in the face of tawdry political pressure. Intelligence officers are supposed to act better than that.

Flynt Leverett will also be speaking at the New America Foundation on Monday, 18 December, 12:15 pm EST on the subject of "Dealing with Tehran." I will be moderating the meeting and also offering comments.

This event will air live on C-Span at the same time.

I am positive that Leverett will comment extensively on this unprecedented and disturbing policy of punitively censoring former government officials of the Bush administration engaged in constructive policy debate.

-- Steve Clemons is Senior Fellow and Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

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Newt Wants to Catch You Napping

Huffington Post
Paul Abrams
Newt Wants to Catch You Napping

In the party that claims for itself traditionalí values, Newt Gingrich's personal history--diddling an employee while married and while impeaching Bill Clinton for the same, 3 citations for violating House ethics, 3 (or is it 4?) marriages that seemingly disqualifies him from becoming its Presidential nominee threatens to induce complacency to his utterances by Democrats.
Big mistake.

Newt is running, and running hard. While the rightwing personal destruction machine (see, Johnson and Boyce, 'How Long Will the Right Let Us Love Obama') grinds down Democrats, Newt's improbability is providing him an unscrutinized forum to spout what he calls 'big ideas', rewrite history, appeal to the intellectual side of those who would reject him for his personal transgressions, and provide the rightwing its next dose of vision.

Newt is the most clever, astute politician on the radical right. He also learns from his mistakes. His biggest mistake was assuming the country was as rightwing as the '94 elections may have suggested, and thus would support him when he shut down government to cause Social Security and Medicare to wither on the vine for lack of sustenance. Newt responded by combining Orwellian labeling---his bills were to 'Strengthen Medicare' and to 'Save Social Security'---with outright deception about the actual content of those bills whose results would have been to weaken and destroy, respectively.

Paradoxically, by providing legitimacy to government-run social programs across the political spectrum, the Orwellian language that enabled the radical right to retain power in the face of strong public opposition to their true policies undermined their ultimate goal of disestablishing collective responsibility from the body politic. It was then only a matter of time before the movement collapsed in corruption and 'big-government' conservatism. The ultimate irony is that that use of government power for the powerful disables the liberty they claim to cherish far more than the liberals' social safety net excoriated in Newt's rants.

When cornered with, say, a specific fact at odds with his claims, Newt employs two techniques: 1) overwhelming verbosity; and 2) reaching for generalities to deny that fact. For example, when challenged on the impact of his real decreases in medicare funding, Gingrich painted a starry-eyed vision of future medical care---his 'diagnostic chair' that will provide patients an instant, accurate, inexpensive diagnosis. The direct message about funding reductions: 'don't worry, medical care will not be that expensive anyhow'. The [not so] indirect message: 'the current medicare system is preventing the introduction of the diagnostic chair into medical practice.

To anyone who can recall the last time he was poked with needles, or scanned in a claustrophobia-inducing machine to establish perhaps an uncertain diagnosis, and then recalls the bill for these tests, Gingrichís 'diagnostic chair' is very appealing. One small problem, ignored by Gingrich: the diagnostic chair does not exist, it is not currently in production nor is it even on the drafting table.

Newt's most recent endeavor is to demonstrate God's central role in the establishment of our Republic. [N.B: This is Newt's ticket to attempted salvation for his personal perfidy with the religious right]. That the Constitution makes no Biblical reference, nor any mention of God* or a Creator, is of trifling concern to Gingrich who, instead, refers to our 'founding documents' to include the Declaration of Independence so as to insert the heavenly hand.

It is an interesting ploy, but, like Gingrich's Orwellian language to deceive the voting public about social programs, it proves the opposite. The Declaration, of course, is not connected seamlessly to the Constitution. Even if the Articles of Confederation, and 11 years, had not intervened, the Declaration was a statement to the world about the inherent right of people to govern themselves, not a contract under which certain people (our ancestors) would agree to be governed, which is what the Constitution (and Articles) is.

But, it is more telling to take Gingrich's conflation of the "founding documents" at face value. It is a central principle of Constitutional construction that, if the Founders demonstrated in one place that they ìknewî how to define or outline something, its absence in another place is proof that their silence on that subject was intentional, and thus cannot be imputed.

The Founders clearly showed in the Declaration that they considered 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' to be inalienable rights that were direct gifts of the Creator, not mediated through some royalty claiming 'Divine Right' to rule. In constitutional construction terms, it would be said that the Founders 'knew how to appeal to a Creator in a document, and knew how to define what that Creator provided and how it was provided'. Thus, the absence in the Constitution of biblical reference for gifts, proscriptions or obligations, or to any God or Creator, demonstrates it was consciously omitted, not a mere oversight, and not because it was so obvious that it need not have been mentioned.

Indeed, the 1st Amendent's non-establishment and religion freedom clause ("Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof") buttresses the case above that these wise and temperate men specifically segregated civil society---where belief in absolute truths lashed to the power of government was so fraught with danger from peoples' individual lives where their right and privilege to believe and practice anything they wanted, unaided by government power, threatened no one, while providing them the dignity and respect for which their inalienable rights were created.

Our forebears arrived on this continent to escape government prosecution for their religious beliefs. It is testimony to their true greatness, and magnanimity of spirit, that their reaction was to chose to secure tolerance by separating religion from government, rather than ërevengeí for their own persecution by establishing a religion and subjecting others to it by force of law.

As we are learning in Iraq, revenge societies do not work. It would be well if Newt learned that lesson, rather than trying to rewrite American history. In the meantime, watch him carefully. He is as slippery as a salamander.

(*Yes, the Constitution does contain a reference, the date(!), "In the Year of Our Lord", i.e., using God as timekeeper. To inject the entire King James' Bible on that basis is, to put it mildly, a bit oblique. More importantly, it actually proves--again--that the Founders knew exactly what they were doing by omitting any reference to God, or a Creator, in the body of the Constitution describing citizens' rights and obligations with reference to government, while they had previously referenced our Creator in the Declaration of Independence as the source of certain rights, including to rebellion).

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Hillary Clinton's Biggest Issue? A Certain Someone in Her Background.

The President In the Room
Hillary Clinton's Biggest Issue? A Certain Someone in Her Background.
By Lynne Duke
Washington Post Staff Writer

NEW YORK He stood far behind, hiding in plain sight, though his glowing white hair and ruddy complexion rendered him as inconspicuous as a face on Mount Rushmore.

The spotlight was not Bill Clinton's. It belonged, instead, to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as she celebrated her reelection victory.

So Bill stood poker-faced. He clasped his hands. He held his head high. He clapped when appropriate. He smiled ever so faintly. And he did not move. When Hillary offered thanks to him and turned around to acknowledge him, he did not step forward, did not step to her side. He stayed put, several feet away, as if taking pains to soak up not one ray of the spotlight he so dearly loves but that, now more than ever, must be hers and hers alone.

It was political Kabuki -- Bill Clinton, held in check -- on a night that some observers saw as the start of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Bill is poised to mightily help or deeply hurt his wife's White House prospects. Either way, his impact will be profound as he undertakes the unprecedented role of ex-president turned male campaign spouse to the first woman ever to have a serious shot at the presidency.

washingtonpost.com
Yes, Bill can deliver political superstardom. He's a razor-sharp political strategist. He knows the institution of the presidency. His fundraising chops are unrivaled. All that is well and good -- perhaps too good, according to a September CNN poll, which showed his favorable rating higher than hers, 60 percent to 50 percent.

But there's the other Bill, the one who could be a massive and messy distraction. That Bill is the ex-president known for his outsize appetites and indiscipline, the Bill who still revels in the limelight, who runs with global jet-setters. He is prone to pop up in the press for even the smallest of curiosities, like being spotted at dinner with another woman -- bad news for an ex-president already infamous for marital infidelity.

If she runs, will voters focus too much on him? Will they remember too much of the national trauma known as "that woman" (Monica Lewinsky) -- and the presidential prevaricating, hair-splitting (what is"is," anyway?) and impeachment that followed? Can voters look at Bill without thinking of sex? If they don't think of sex, they'll likely think the word: "president," which may also not be such a good thing for the spouse who wants that title.

From now until Election Day 2008, the national fascination with the Clintons and their marriage will be central to the race. The media-industrial complex will again feed like hungry hounds on the Clintons, their past and future; on the Clintons and their mysteries; on power and politics as the Clinton lifeblood propelling her run against all odds.

She will face haters. She'll face sexists. There'll be folks who think she's power-mad, including some still queasy about what she knew and when she knew it when it came to Bill's marital indiscretions.

Look at the polls; opinions on her are strong and run the gamut. Gallup last month asked 1,003 respondents to state what comes to mind about Hillary. Thirteen percent said they disliked her. Ten percent said she's qualified to be president. Nine percent said she's riding Bill's shirttails. Eight percent called her strong. Six percent called her intelligent, and another six percent called her dishonest and said they didn't trust her.

With numbers like that, plenty of Democrats are asking: Can she win? So the last thing she needs is people asking, as they have in the media and at cocktail parties: Can Bill control himself during her presidential campaign?

Such a familiar circumstance, such a Clintonesque conundrum, which her supporters can only hope won't lead to a Clintonesque spectacle: Bill, the management challenge.

It's such a delicate subject that many people who know the Clintons well refuse to talk about it. If they do, they summon their most diplomatic selves when addressing it.

"I guess the best way to say this is that they're going to be watched very closely," says Leon Panetta, Clinton's former White House chief of staff. "I think the press and everybody around him is going to be watching to make sure that the same mistakes aren't made."

Discipline: That's the key. It was Clinton's struggle while in the White House, says Panetta -- to stay focused, to not respond to diversions or to provocations. That struggle is an essential aspect of Clinton's personality.

"Clearly, in someone who is probably the brightest and most capable that I've ever met in politics, that's the weak side," Panetta says.

And it's not just sex we're talking about. It's the need for attention, adulation; to play a grand role, make a sweeping impact.

There's something unbridled about Bill's neediness, this love of the crowd -- like the story about his trip to the World Cup in Berlin this year. En route to the stadium on a bus carrying several aides and donors, Bill told the bus driver to head instead to the Brandenburg Gate, the New Yorker reported. There, hundreds of thousands of soccer fans had gathered to watch a match on giant television screens. Uninvited, the former president mounted the stage where a rock band had been performing, and just stood there waving and thanking the crowd, which responded with roaring cheers.

Could Bill's hunger for the spotlight pose problems? You bet, says James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. Hillary will have to be careful not to be upstaged by him or lost in the glare of his global political stardom.

Thurber, called the issue of Bill "a central question to her candidacy."

For starters, he said: "You have to be very careful in terms of Bill Clinton taking the headlines. So one way you do it is use him behind the scenes, to bring in money to your campaign through closed events. And in my opinion, you rarely have them appear on the stage together, and if you do, you don't have him speak."

Her campaign strategists also have to be "very careful" about managing Bill because "he sucks up the air around everybody when he's there," says Thurber. "And he needs to be loved. She is more self-assured, doesn't need as much adulation as he does. And that's trouble."

There are "so many barriers for her, alone, and then add Bill in there and then add his infidelity to it," says Thurber. "Well, she doesn't want to be looking over her shoulder and having questions asked by the media about it."

But there will be questions aplenty. How could there not be? The Clinton marriage fell into political soap opera with the troubles of Bill's White House years, with nothing but question marks hovering overhead, for a time. Was he contrite? Had she forgiven him? Would she stay? The woman whose earlier assertiveness as first lady rankled some now was tagged with a new set of labels: Hillary the martyr. Hillary the steadfast, for sticking with her man. Hillary as Machiavelli, accepting marital humiliation as the price of power.

Complained someone who worked on her White House staff, who requested anonymity to speak freely: "If your husband has an affair and you forgive him, you get to turn the corner and move on. She never does." Not in the public mind, at least.
Her 'Most Difficult Decisions'

She raised the subject in her 2003 memoir, "Living History," writing, "The most difficult decisions I have made in my life were to stay married to Bill and to run for the Senate." Rarely has she discussed that period since. As she has prepared to possibly run for president, questions about the marriage have bubbled to the fore again.

Earlier this year, both the U.S. and Canadian press ran stories about Bill's periodic meetings with a Canadian auto-parts magnate turned politician, Belinda Stronach. Both have characterized themselves as just friends since they met in 2001 at a fundraiser. But tongues wagged nonetheless, because of the baggage.

Folks around the Clintons believe -- or want to believe -- that Bill's indiscretions are a thing of the past, that he has faced his demons.

Since the Lewinsky scandal, Bill has received counseling for a sex addiction. He and Hillary have grown as a couple. She has burst out of her role as wife and first lady to become a politician in her own right. He has had a brush with death, in the form of his emergency heart bypass surgery in 2004. He has found his global calling as an active former president and is fully committed to helping his wife along her chosen path.

Despite all that, the subject of the marriage is too hot to handle.

"It's uranium-242," said longtime Clinton adviser and friend James Carville, earlier this year. "You pick that stuff up and it'll blow up in your face . . . I'll talk about anything. But I ain't gettin' near anybody's marriage, especially the Clintons.' "

But he did concur that Bill Clinton could require special management by her campaign strategists, because of his political stature.

"I think it is something that people are cognizant of," he said. "You could make a pretty persuasive argument that there's more good to come out of this than bad."

Asked how Hillary's presumed rivals might deal with the Bill factor, an aide to one of them said, "Everybody knows everything there is to know about the Clintons." The aide spoke anonymously to avoid any damaging blowback for the comments. "No one needs to point out to them 'guess what? Bill Clinton was impeached [after] having an affair' . . . It's obvious to everyone that her husband is a huge benefit and he comes with some baggage."

Spokesmen for both Clintons steadfastly refused to discuss the theory that Bill might pose obstacles should Hill, as the New York tabloids call her, run for president.

"He campaigned for her in 2000. He campaigned for her in 2006," says Howard Wolfson, a Hillary Clinton adviser. "In both instances, we found, as did many other candidates across the country, that his presence on the campaign trail was a huge boost."

In her first campaign, when he was a sitting president, her handlers found it necessary to carefully calibrate Bill's role -- just as they are likely to do should she run in '08.

Both Clintons declined to be interviewed for this article. Ditto for several members of her innermost circle, known as Hillaryland.

If she runs, her husband "will do anything and everything to support her," says Jay Carson, Bill Clinton's spokesman.

So get ready to see that Bill Clinton thing at work on the campaign trail, if she runs -- that charm, that way with the crowd, that charisma. With him, it's seems innate.

Hillary, by contrast, is the dogged preparer known for the expertise and analysis she brings to her policy work. Hers is a more sober public persona, more remote.
Different Styles

The nation saw the contrast quite starkly during the nationally televised funeral last February of Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr. Bill spoke in the subtle cadences of the pulpit and seemed to reach right into the heart of the mourners, give expression to their feelings.

Hillary spoke more stiffly, with little hint of emotion, of a connection to the crowd.

Their appearance set off a wave of speculation about her style vs. his and how it would or would not serve her in a campaign.

"Of course I've seen the difference," says Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who prodded Hillary to run for the Senate back when she was still first lady. "But I never would think that anybody would say one would not shine as brightly. It's always been a team. I think that the personal problems have cemented that even more so than in other couples."

"I don't think there's any woman in public life that has such self-esteem and assurance as Hillary Clinton," Rangel said.

Theirs has not been a competitive marriage, but a complementary one, Panetta says. "I think that she knows he's got a lot of charisma and people pay a lot of attention to him, and I think she has always viewed that as an important asset not only because of the attention he gets and the guidance he provides, but also because it makes both of them larger than life."

They once called themselves the "blue-light special," offering "two for one" -- two leaders for the price of one, quickly dubbed "Billary." That was back during Bill's 1992 presidential campaign, when Hillary was the first professional woman, a lawyer, heading for the role of first lady.

The co-presidency idea got jettisoned pretty quickly. Campaign polls showed voters didn't necessarily want Clinton's wife acting as an unelected leader. The notion of the co-presidency gave rise to some of the early condemnations of Hillary as power hungry. And when, as first lady, she lead the failed charge for health care reform and wound up politically bruised, she retreated from major policy crusades, putting the two-for-one deal to bed.

And yet, today, the nation faces a combination that's far closer to the mythic co-presidency than their stature of yore.

"Most people say it's two for one," Rangel said of Hillary's prospective campaign. "Anyone would know that one of the most outstanding public officials in the free world is Bill Clinton. . . . To have the benefit of a former president and a person that has international respect as your partner, I don't see how it gets any better than that."

Some folks who know her take umbrage with the two-for-one idea. They say it denigrates her singular leadership abilities and suggests she's not up to the job on her own.

And it could confuse the public in a campaign in which the lines between the two Clintons would have to be clear. Her candidacy, not his; her presidency, not his; not a blue-light special; and certainly not an attempt at dynasty.

"The biggest challenge facing Hillary is: Can she convince the American people that they are not trying to build a dynasty, but rather they are trying to help improve the lives of people?" says Donna Brazile, the Democratic strategist who chaired Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign.

In the past several months, Bill has appeared to be her chief campaigner, publicly saying Hillary would be a great president, even better than him, because she would enter the White House with more experience.

It is in the nature of the Clintons and their evolved relationship, says Panetta, that Bill will subordinate himself and summon all his discipline, for Hillary's sake.

"This is the love and loyalty that they share in their relationship," Panetta said. "It's very genuine. And that's why I think he'll want it. He will not want to in any way jeopardize her chance to win the presidency."

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U.S. first ladies to be honored on coins

USA TODAY
U.S. first ladies to be honored on coins
By Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON — Not to be outdone by their husbands, the first ladies are getting their chance to shine on the nation's coins. Starting next year, Martha Washington, Abigail Adams and all the rest will begin appearing on a new series of gold coins.

It will be the first time in history that the U.S. Mint has produced a series featuring women.

While a new presidential series will be $1 circulating coins, the wives will be on half-ounce gold coins with each likely to sell for more than $300.

Both coins were authorized by Congress in 2005 with lawmakers modeling the $1 coin series after the Mint's extremely popular 50-state quarters.

The hope is that changing the images on the presidential coins every three months will spur greater interest and help the maligned dollar coin finally achieve acceptance with Americans. The Susan B. Anthony dollar, introduced in 1979, and the Sacagewea, introduced in 2000, have both been flops.

The half-ounce gold coins for the spouses have been designed to appeal primarily to collectors, although the Mint will be offering bronze medal duplicates that will sell for a more affordable $3 to $4.

The first four coins are scheduled to go on sale around Mother's Day next May, but the public will get a first look at the designs at an unveiling ceremony on Tuesday at the National First Ladies Library in Canton, Ohio.

As with the presidential coins, there were be four new coins honoring the spouses introduced each year, and the Mint is hoping to teach a little history with the spouse series.

"I think Americans are going to take a look at these coins, which are very original, and be drawn to finding out more about the first ladies," Mint Director Edmund Moy said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The first coin in the series features a stern-looking Martha Washington, wearing a bonnet, on one side with a depiction of her mending a soldier's jacket on the other side and the phrase, "First Lady of the Continental Army."

The drawing of Dolley Madison, wife of James Madison, the fourth president, shows her in front of the famous George Washington portrait that she saved before the British burned the White House in the War of 1812.

Thomas Jefferson's wife died before he became president so the gold coin for his administration will feature a symbolic representation of Lady Liberty that appeared on a half-cent coin during the time Jefferson was president.

Jefferson was one of five presidents who were not married during their time in the White House.

The legislation directs that all presidents be honored on the $1 coin and all spouses be honored on the gold coins. But they must have been dead for two years before they can be depicted on a coin.

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