Indeed

Winning and Losing

I think Josh Marshall raises an important point in his post today. The whole argument over whether Harry Reid is right or wrong is a distraction from the larger and more fundamental issue of exactly what we are doing in Iraq. As Marshall says:

This is the key point: right near the beginning of this nightmare it was clear the sole remaining premise for the war was false: that is, the idea that the Iraqis would freely choose a government that would align itself with the US and its goals in the region. As the occupation continued, anti-American sentiment -- both toward the occupation and America's role in the world -- has only grown.

I would submit that virtually everything we've done in Iraq since mid-late 2003 has been an effort to obscure this fact. And our policy has been one of continuing the occupation to create the illusion that this reality was not in fact reality. In short, it was a policy of denial.

I would ask the Michelle Malkins and the Rush Limbaughs to take a step back from misquoting Harry Reid and labeling him a traitor and a rouge and have them explain, in clear terms, who we are fighting in Iraq, and exactly what we hope to achieve. Leave aside the fact that this administration came into office in 2000 clearly opposed to a broad foreign policy involved in "nation building". That is water under the bridge by now. Take it from the situation that we are in right now. Then explain to the American public what it is we are hoping to accomplish in Iraq.

I don't know that it is even feasible to leave Iraq right now. Michael Ware, on CNN last night, said that the consequences of an American withdraw at this moment would be cataclysmic genocide. Strangely enough, Colin Powell was probably right at the outset when he told Bush, "you break it, you own it". We do own it now, and some American military presence in Iraq will long survive me. Too bad Powell sacrificed his reputation for a man who couldn't even understand, or willfully ignored, that simple advice. That said, although leaving right now may not be an option that we can stomach, it is important to understand what terms like winning and losing mean, or in this case, cannot mean in traditional terms.

Tom Tomorrow

and Tom Tomorrow takes us back to the very same time and place...why do we listen to these pundits, who have been so profoundly wrong in everything that they have predicted?

(you may have to click on the image to read all of the print)

Empire: Highjacking Catastrophe

There certainly is a natural fatigue that creeps into our collective consciousness as the scandal, outrage and incompetence of the present administration washes over us each and every day. Sometimes it helps to go back to the beginning and to examine the feelings that we had at the moment that we embarked upon the current path. This video, one of a series that is easily found on youtube, looks at Shock and Awe, the imperial motivations that may or may not have led us into Iraq and Afghanistan, and the possible military consequences of the plan.

You can question the accuracy of the motivations that the filmmaker ascribes to the Bush administration, but I found it to be more interesting as a measure of my own feelings towards the invasion of Iraq at the time we began the bombing. I find, in retrospect, that my belief that this war was tightly analogous to Clinton's Bosnian campaign woefully naive.

Oversight

Today's subpoena of Condi Rice, the continuing Gonzales saga, and the sad spectacle of the Tillman and Lynch testimony yesterday will lead to the inevitable caterwauling by the right that the Dems are out of control as they use their elective congressional majorities to investigate the last six years of the Bush era. Keep in mind, as their complaints about Democratic oversight grow to a roar, how we got into this place:

What these episodes actually do is illustrate how virtually every rotted and broken branch of our political and media culture operate:

First, it has been well-known for several years that the U.S. military outright invented lies regarding literally every aspect of the Jessica Lynch story. And the Tillman family for years has been vocally complaining about the lies they were told by the Pentagon regarding the circumstances surrounding Pat Tillman's death, the pressure on other soldiers to conceal the truth, and the crass and disgusting exploitation of those lies to serve the administration's political interests. None of this is new. So why is Congress holding hearings to investigate these matters only now?

The answer, of course, is because the Republicans who controlled Congress for the last four years absolutely suppressed any attempt whatsoever to exert oversight on the administration. They not only investigated nothing, they aggressively blocked every real investigation into allegations of wrongdoing and corruption on the part of the administration. Our government literally ceased to function the way it is designed to, because Congressional Republicans deliberately abdicated their duty of checks on the executive and actively helped to conceal every improper and deceitful act.

The only reason any of this is being aired now is because the American people removed the President's party from control of Congress and they are no longer able to keep concealed the Bush administration's misconduct.

For the whole depressing wrap-up, read Glenn Greenwald today.

umm.... I don't remember voting for the surge...

When the American people voted out the Republican majority in the House and the Senate in the mid term elections of 2006, a reasonable man might have concluded that the current administration's approach to the Mess-o-potamia had been discredited and a new way forward was desired.

Apparently, this is what we meant:

Electric Miles: Rome 1969

I saw Miles Davis at the Kool Jazz Festival in the mid 80s. I didn't really get it at the time, I don't think. I didn't get much at the time.

Credibility Gap

It really would be interesting to have some perspective on the pervasiveness of the anti-war movement during Vietnam (particularly around 1970). I've read about the movement, but have not seen polls on just how widespread the movement was. I find it hard to believe that their could have been a time during the Cold War when roughly 70% of the people in the country felt thata hot war in Southeast Asia was unwinnable, the underlying justification for the war was completely discredited, and that the President was too inept to do anything about it. Maybe after Watergate, but that's different.

Harry Reid's response to Dick Cheney's snarling rebuke on his statement about the war being "lost" is illustrative of just how far this group has jumped the shark.

This is the same guy who said Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and that we would be greeted as liberators. And it's the same guy who continues to assert that Saddam Hussein had links to al Qaeda long after our own intelligence agency conclusively refuted this notion. To suggest he lacks credibility would be an understatement.

Just wow.

Dishonesty Overload

Glenn Greenwald has a great post contrasting the late David Halberstam's work in Vietnam with our current press corps sorry track record during the march to and execution of the current mess in the Iraq. The juxtaposition of reporters like Halbertsam and Neil Sheehan with a Tim Russert or a Judith Miller is nothing less than depressing. In many ways it is bloggers like Greenwald and Josh Marshall who have filled the void left by the mainstream press which have clearly abdicated their responsibility to work hard to uncover the truth.

Frank Rich probably does the best job pulling together the disparate strings that make up the entire tapestry of this administrations lies each week in the Sunday NYT. Greenwald here brings together Halberstam in contrast with Russert and Newsweek's Richard Wolff, and at the same time I am reading this, Henry Waxman has Jessica Lynch and Kevin Tillman before the House oversight committee, detailing the lies and mythmaking that the military and the administration built up around their real life tragedies in Iraq. This on the day after President Bush declared that after watching Attorney General Gonzales' testimony before Congress (a performance one White House aide likened to the clubbing of a seal) he has MORE confidence in him as attorney general than he did previously. This on a day when Paul Wolfowitz hires Bob Bennett in an attempt to save his job and what little reputation he may have left. There are so many instances of dishonesty that the head spins, but when you wind them together, an overwhelming sense of arrogance pervades the entire sorry affair. You can probably draw a straight line from John Yoo's 'unitary executive' to Bush's obstinant refusal to back down on Gonzales.

He acts this way because he's the President, and the President can do whatever he wants. It is really as simple as that.

Here's the meme

It sure didn't take long for the wingnut right to find their sea legs and talking points on the Virginia Tech tragedy.

Charles Krauthammer leads the way.

Michael Medved refuses to be left behind.

And Ollie North chips in proudly.

God, these guys are sick. Rush simply called the guy a liberal.

Denial

This was Dana Perino's statement regarding the Gonzales testimony yesterday, a spectacle that one White House aide likened to the clubbing of a baby seal:

President Bush was pleased with the Attorney General’s testimony today. After hours of testimony in which he answered all of the Senators’ questions and provided thousands of pages of documents, he again showed that nothing improper occurred. He admitted the matter could have been handled much better, and he apologized for the disruption to the lives of the U.S. Attorneys involved, as well as for the lack of clarity in his initial responses. The Attorney General has the full confidence of the President, and he appreciates the work he is doing at the Department of Justice to help keep our citizens safe from terrorists, our children safe from predators, our government safe from corruption, and our streets free from gang violence.

Like Iraq, Bush sees any readjustment of his position as defeat. That is the truly frightening thing about his small mind. Remember how long Harriet Miers dangled in the wind until Cheney insisted that Bush cut the rope. Cheney is long gone, a sick and tired old man, discredited and disengaged. Who will tell the boy king that it is time to cut Abu Gonzo loose?

most excellent use of the large suit

Bill Maher on Pat Robertson U

Bill Maher, who I do not find at all funny, had this very amusing and frightfully accurate observation last week. It's a long quote, but worth a read:

"And finally, New Rule: Now that liberals have taken back the word, "liberal," they also have to take back the word, "elite." By now, you've heard the constant right-wing attacks on the "elite" media and the liberal "elite," who may or may not be part of the Washington "elite," a subset of the East Coast "elite," which is overly influenced by the Hollywood "elite." So, basically, unless you're a sh*t-kicker from Kansas, you're with the terrorists.

You know, if you played a drinking game where you did a shot every time Rush Limbaugh attacked someone for being elite, you'd almost be as wasted as Rush Limbaugh.


I don't get it. In other fields outside of government, "elite" is a good thing, like an "elite" fighting force; Tiger Woods is an "elite" golfer. If I need brain surgery, I'd like an "elite" doctor. But, in politics, "elite" is bad. The "elite" aren't down to earth and accessible like you and me and President Sh*t-for-brains.

Which is fine, except that whenever there's a Bush Administration scandal, it always traces back to some incompetent political hack appointment, and you think to yourself, where are they getting these screw-ups from? Well, now we know. From Pat Robertson. I'm not kidding.

Take Monica Goodling, who, before she resigned last week, because she's smack in the middle of the U.S. Attorneys scandal, was the third-ranking official in the Justice Department of the United States. She's 33 years old. And though she never even worked as a prosecutor, she was tasked with overseeing the job performance of all 93 U.S. Attorneys.

How do you get to the top that fast? Harvard? Princeton? No, Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah College. You know, Messiah, home of the Fighting Christ-ies? And then went on to attend Pat Robertson's law school. Yes, Pat Robertson, the man who said that the presence of gay people at Disney World would cause earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor, has a law school.

And what kid wouldn't want to attend? It's three years, and you only have to read one book. U.S. News & World Report, which does the definitive ranking of colleges, lists Regent as a Tier Four school, which is the lowest score it gives. It's not a hard school to get into. You have to renounce Satan and draw a pirate on a matchbook.

This is for people who couldn't get into the University of Phoenix.

Now, would you care to guess how many graduates of this televangelist's diploma mill work in the Bush Administration? 150. And you wonder why things are so messed up. We're talking about a top Justice Department official who went to a college funded by a TV host. Would you send your daughter to Maury Povich U.? And if you did, would you expect her to get a job at the White House?

In 200 years, we've gone from "We, the people," to "Up With People." From "the best and the brightest" to "dumb and dumber." And where better to find people dumb enough to believe in George Bush than Pat Robertson's law school?

The problem here in America isn't that the country is being run by "elites." It's that it's being run by a bunch of hayseeds. And, by the way, the lawyer Monica Goodling just hired to keep her a$$ out of jail, went to a real law school."

complications

Just to add on to the post below, Michael Yglesias sarcastically takes apart David Ignatius' piece recognizing the "new" risk of Kurdish ascendancy in Iraq. Obviously, the complications of Turkey and a strong Kurdish state in the North, which could conceivably control not only Kirkuk but also a large portion of the oil reserves in Iraq is an issue that predates Saddam himself. For Ignatius to label this a new crisis is lazy and absurd.

However, the issue itself is illustrative of the simplistic world view of Perle and the neo-conservatives. The Kurdish question has been swept under the rug while the Kurds quite cleverly hold their cards close to their vests, build a strong regional base and deepen their control over Kirkuk. Kurdish flags now wave over that city. They are biding their time and keeping an eye over the carnage to the South, which of course is in their interest. They are quite happy to let the US troops bear the burden of the bloodshed, rooting out the Sunni militias. Sadr, of course, has taken the same approach in Baghdad, moving aside while the US meets his enemies head on.

The Kurds do nuance. George Bush proudly does not. Perle blithely ignores that such complications even exist, keeping his eyes on some lofty Jeffersonian ideal that bears little reality to the facts on the ground.

PBS Special: Richard Perle Justifies His Existence

Richard Perle hosted and absolutely bizarre one hour special on PBS last night, an autobiographical apology for the neo-conservative case for the slow moving disaster in Mesopotamia as part of their "America at the Crossroads" series. In it, he blathered on about how the war in Iraq is a noble undertaking, and how the events in Afghanistan and Iraq represent the best intentions of a nation with only the purest motives. He dismisses any criticism of the Iraq war as the illogic of the "liberal left" who feel that George Bush is worse than Saddam ever was. He rants on about Hollywood liberals who oppose the President and equates them with the Soviet sympathizers who supported Stalin.

After creating this straw man, he goes on to state that our presence in Afghanistan is far different than the Soviets in the 1980s, because we are not an imperial power, and therefore our presence is not resented by the general populace. One straw man after another is created by Perle to wash his hands of the human suffering that he is responsible for.

Even more bizarrely, he interviews "old friends" like Richard Holbrooke and Simon Jenkins of the Times of London, who react to Perle like he's a stark raving lunatic when he presses his case that the war in Iraq is completely justified. Leave aside that he has backpedaled on this case in Vanity Fair in November, Jenkins and Holbrooke call his views patently ahistorical and flat out wrong as Perle smiles strangely back. Later, when he interviews an Iranian dissident who feels that we need to send the marines into Tehran toot sweet, Perle's eyes light up like some demonic fiend as he nods in assent. The entire show made my blood run cold.

Some people may indeed think that Bush is worse than Saddam ever was, however, the majority of the people in this country feel that the adventure in Iraq is wrong, was entered into based upon flawed information, and has been prosecuted so incompetently that we need to change course. Perle's reading of history is so un-nuanced, so elementary, that he fails to even consider that the neo-conservative case has led us into a situation that we can barely understand, and simply cannot control. We've become bystanders in Iraq, and that is not a fair situation to put our troops into. There is nothing that we can do to alter the reality on the ground there. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is resurgent. We're rushing towards failure there again. Perle may say that we are not an imperial power, but to the a villager in Kabul who is caught between the US and the resurgent Taliban, the distinction is certainly academic.

People oppose this administration because they are incompetent. The majority of Americans believe that the White House willfully ignored intelligence that did not fit into their elementary school world view. That world view was Richard Perle's. PBS has been under a great deal of pressure from the White House to show "both sides" of the debate over foreign policy in this administration, and last night's presentation represented the neo-con world view. It was a sad sight for PBS and a sad sight for Richard Perle.

Gingrich/Kerry Debate

I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I watched quite a bit of this two hour debate between John Kerry and Newt last night. It was striking, however, in a number of ways. First and foremost, the quality of the two debaters stands in shocking contrast to the idiot dauphin that inhabits the oval office. Big John never showed the side of himself that he displayed in this debate when he was on the campaign trail in 2004. If he had, he would have won, I'd guess. He was extremely well informed, spoke forcefully and made excellent points. As I remember his campaign, it was a typical Bob Shrum affair, bland beyond belief, reserved in order to spare offense to any constituency, the result of which became milquetoast.

Newt is an enigma. He, like Kerry, is very well informed and knows these issues inside and out. He fashions himself a bit of a polymath, of course, and at times comes across as pedantic. Again, though, as a prospective republican candidate, his intellect stands in stark relief to W's. That said, he's a hypocrite who shouldn't be elected dog catcher.

The one thing that makes Newt different from the pack, I think, is his willingness to reveal the cryptography of the conservative code. He translates the dog whistles and lets everyone know what so many leave unsaid. I've always been a bit confused by the Limbaugh/Hannity/WSJ position on global warming and the bare antipathy to Gore on this issue. Newt comes right out and says it.

Last night, he said that the conservative case against global climate change is completely unscientific (no big surprise for most of us on that), but is based upon fundamental tenets that trump all demonstrable fact. Conservatives find any discussion of global warming challenging because to them, the word "environment" is equated with bigger government and higher taxes. He allows that the association is Pavlovian and really supersedes any rational discussion of the science. I suppose it all goes back to the hippie notion of earth day and the green "E" stickers that defined the 70s environmental movement as well, but until Newt made the explicit connection between the Nordquist Club For Growth dogma and global climate change, I had been confused.

Done and done.

There you go. The Pelosi flap in a nutshell.


Unless you'd like to get into the behavior of this administration with regard to politicizing each and every ginned up "controversy" independent of the seriousness of the topic. We should not be surprised, however. John Dilulio, the first Bush appointee to jump ship, way back in 2001, told us that this was the way it was going to be:

Filling the vacuum created by a lack of interest in domestic policy, says DiIulio, was an obsession with political tactics and positioning. "This gave rise to what you might call Mayberry Machiavellis -- staff, senior and junior, who consistently talked and acted as if the height of political sophistications consisted in reducing every issue to it simplest, black-and-white terms for public consumption, then steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible.

Combine that with a policy bias that seeks the absolute lowest common denominator in terms of foreign policy, and you get a puerile approach to the complexities of the international stage as a whole. To take the approach that "we don't do nuance" is one thing, but to offer this as a response to the recent Iranian seizure of British soldiers is another:

In the first few days after the captives were seized and British diplomats were getting no news from Tehran on their whereabouts, Pentagon officials asked their British counterparts: what do you want us to do? They offered a series of military options, a list which remains top secret given the mounting risk of war between the US and Iran. But one of the options was for US combat aircraft to mount aggressive patrols over Iranian Revolutionary Guard bases in Iran, to underline the seriousness of the situation.

If all you've got is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail....

thankfully, the adults ignored the offer:

The British declined the offer and said the US could calm the situation by staying out of it. London also asked the US to tone down military exercises that were already under way in the Gulf.

Time to get another ribbon magnet...

This story concerns the friendly fire death of Matthew Ziemer, who lasted all of about two hours in Iraq. I had written about the decision to rush the troops into combat without having them complete their full training a month or so back.

The fact some of the brigade's 4,000 soldiers missed that training raises questions about how well the Army is preparing troops for war in the face of accelerated and repeat deployments.

They'll begin to lose the hard core military on this sort of stuff. Frank Rich writes about McCain's charade in the Baghdad market today in the NYT, but he concludes that the stunt may do more to hasten the end of the unecessary war than anything else. Rich says:

It can't be lost on those dwindling die-hards, paricularly those on the 2008 ballot, that if defending the indefensible can reduce even a politician of Mr. McCain's heroic stature to that of Dukakis-in-the-tank, they have nowhere to go but down. They'll cut and run soon enough.

When the final chapter is written, Bush will be alone.

I'm just a bill......

Matt Yglesias catches the WaPo in an unbelievable gaffe.

WaPo: "President Bush used his Easter weekend radio address to suggest that while Americans are "blessed" to have so many brave, volunteer military service members, congressional Democrats are jeopardizing their safety by refusing to sign his $100 billion war funding bill."

Refusing to sign his bill. Somebody needs a civics class. Willful ignorance, or some darker motive at work? Hard to say, but with mainstream journalism that sloppy, it's no wonder that the White House feeds them lies with impunity.

Masters

Made it down to Augusta on Wednesday for the par 3 tournament at the Masters. Just an unbelievable environment, although I can't say that I could have predicted how thoroughly the course would dominate the players this week. My overall impression was simply that the course was long, long, long.

The par 3 tourney is a blast, very low key and friendly. The highlight had to be Arnie, Jack and Gary Player's group, although the Spanish group of Jiminez, Olazabal and Seve was also fun to watch.

Pete and the Boys Making it Look Easy

...hard to decide which one is better, the Ox's falsetto, or Keith being Keith.

Peak Oil and Real Estate

James Kunstler sounds a pretty disturbing note in his rift on the confluence of the end of the real estate bubble and the possibility of a "peak oil" doomsday scenario. I'll add that the fact that we as a nation have a negative savings rate does not leave us much room for error should even a portion of Kunstler's nightmare scenario come to pass.

When I speak to home builders that I know, they are sanguine about the bubble period that they've just come through. They see it as an exact replica of the asset bubble that took place in the stock market in the late 90s. Unfortunately, the banks weren't as unforgiving as brokerage firms were in 2001, and the fallout from this one is more likely to reverberate more widely, I'd guess. In 2001, you got a margin call, or more typically, your 401K lost 80% of its value. Therefore, you either paid up and got out, got blown out of your positions, or lost a bunch of future money that only ever existed "on paper". No such luck right now, if you've used your home as an ATM, got into an 80/20 ARM, and are facing higher monthly payments for a house you could barely afford with rates at 5.625%.

Now it's a default and personal bankruptcy. In 2001, stockbrokers lost their jobs, but now its carpenters and laborers and truck drivers. You tell me which group impacts the overall economy more.