The Deepening Afghan Nightmare

This looks to me like a good pivot point to up and end involvement in Afghanistan.

A U.S. jet dropped 500-pound bombs on two tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban before dawn Friday, triggering a huge explosion that Afghan officials said killed more than 70 people, including insurgents and some civilians who had swarmed around the vehicles to siphon off fuel.

Germany, whose troops called in the 2:30 a.m. strike in the northern province of Kunduz, said it feared the hijackers would use the trucks to carry out a suicide attack against its military base nearby.

We are completely in over our heads here. Once again we've allowed amorphous terms like "victory" to define our military involvement instead of achieving realizable goals. So a war initially based on dismantling Al Qaeda becomes a war to build a nation and protect an ethnic class. The country held an election that could lead to outbreaks of violence and unrest, as our man in Kabul is clearly corrupt and ineffectual. Tribal factions with no tradition of a central government have vowed armed conflict if Hamid Karzai is allowed to stand after multiple examples of election fraud. You could have a situation where the government is threatened by a popular uprising, leaving the US troops no clear guidance on how to react. And on top of that, dozens more civilians are bombed from above, leading to more alienation and more desire to drive out the occupiers. The latest in a series of after-the-fact inquiries will do us no good. Meanwhile, more Americans die every day without an articulated rationale.

The divisions in Afghanistan are mirrored by the divisions at home. Top advisers appear to be split on whether to add even more troops. Dick Holbrooke and Hillary Clinton look to be on the side of more troops. Robert Gates has been worried about the foreign footprint in Afghanistan but appears open to escalation. Joe Biden, no dove, is leading the group in the White House opposed to a long-term commitment, which is what escalation would signal. Inside the Pentagon, at least some officials will not acquiesce to Gen. McChrystal's request for more forces without major scrutiny. And in another sign that Obama would only have Republicans behind him if he orders more troops, Senate Democrats are not enthused by the prospect of deepening our commitment.

Speaking on a day when a U.S. bombed tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban killing 70 people, including some civilians, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said the U.S. must focus more on building the Afghan security forces. His cautionary stance was echoed by Sen. Jack Reed, who is also on the committee and spent two days in Afghanistan this week with Levin.

The senators will return to Washington next week, just as Obama receives a new military review of Afghanistan strategy that officials expect will be followed up by a request for at least a modest increase in U.S. troops battling insurgents in the eight-year-old war [...]

"There are a lot of ways to speed up the numbers and capabilities of the Afghan army and police. They are strongly motivated," Levin said from Kuwait. "I think that we should pursue that course ... before we consider a further increase in combat forces beyond what's already been planned to be sent in the months ahead."

Levin said there is a growing consensus on the need to expedite the training and equipping of the Afghan army to improve security in Afghanistan, where 51 U.S. troops died in August, making it the bloodiest month for American forces there since the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.

In a separate call, Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, said the U.S. must use a multi-pronged approach: build up the Afghan Army, send more civilians to Afghanistan to provide economic and political assistance, and reach out to Taliban supporters who are willing to recognize the Kabul government.

This is actually just a fantasy, a hope that more Afghan security forces can reduce our troop numbers. It doesn't talk about the policy itself, which as a true counter-terrorism strategy would focus on intelligence and law enforcement and containing terrorist activity to within the borders. As Chuck Hagel said very expertly this week, foreign policy is not an abstraction. We are committing real lives and real treasure to this effort, and trying to impose our will on a nation which has no interest in mimicking us.

Accordingly, we cannot view U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan through a lens that sees only "winning" or "losing." Iraq and Afghanistan are not America's to win or lose. Win what? We can help them buy time or develop, but we cannot control their fates. There are too many cultural, ethnic and religious dynamics at play in these regions for any one nation to control. For example, the future of Afghanistan is linked directly to Pakistan and what happens in the mountains along their border. Political accommodation and reconciliation in this region will determine the outcome.

If the antiwar movement is truly planning a fall campaign, they should invite Hagel. He is as perceptive and cogent on this issue as anyone. Right now it appears that the DC establishment, while always tilting toward war, is split. The progressive groups who could engage the masses in a very powerful way are reluctant to challenge the President on his policy because, to be honest, they don't feel confident talking about foreign policy and national security. But the greatest organizing opportunity in recent progressive history, what brought Democrats the Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008, was opposition to the war in Iraq. It galvanized a movement and made history. Moreover, it was the right thing to do. It's time for Americans to decide whether to agree to what amounts to endless war or not.

Don't These Conservatives Know They Are Violating The First Amendment?

Here's Sen. Jon Ensign (R-NV) saying that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be President.

GILLAN: do you think she’s qualified to be President?

ENSIGN: well, I do not think that Barack Obama or her are experienced enough to be President of the United States - neither one of them, and Hillary Clinton was much more qualified to be President than Barack Obama was, but that who the nominee is. John McCain is much more qualified than Barack Obama and certainly Joe Biden is much more qualified than Sarah Palin is. I’d rather have the most qualified person at the top of the ticket, not number two.

Ensign joins Chuck Hagel (R-NE), who said "There is no question that this candidate is arguably the thinnest-résumé candidate for Vice-President in the history of America.” And he joins former Republican Secretary of State and McCain supporter Lawrence Eagleburger, who said "I don't think at the moment she is prepared to take over the reins of the presidency." And Colin Powell. And Reagan official Ken Duberstein.

Now I know a lot of these guys, at least the ones who have endorsed Obama, are just jumping on the bandwagon. But they are all using Palin as the pivot point, and in particular pointing out that she's not qualified. Well, the Alaska Governor has news for them. "You're violating the First Amendment!"

HOST: Is the news media doing a good job—are you getting a fair shake, are the Republicans getting a fair shake this year?

PALIN: I don't think they're doing their job when they suggest that calling a candidate out on their record, their plans for this country, and their associations is mean-spirited or negative campaigning. If they convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.

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I wish these Republicans - as well as Republican media figures like David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, and George Will - would have checked their pocket Constitutions before criticizing Palin. Now they're all going to have to go to jail. Sad.

McCain's Iraqi Island

On the question of Iraq, John McCain is now a ridiculous figure, as this CNN interview paraphrased by Josh Marshall makes clear.

First, apparently Maliki didn't really mean what he said. Second, Wolf Blitzer read back to McCain his repeated claim that Obama would rather lose a war if it helped him win a political campaign. This is close to an accusation of treason. So Blitzer asked him whether this wasn't an attack on Obama's patriotism. McCain said 'no' that he was only questioning Obama's judgment. In any rational world the maverick label wouldn't survive a fib of that magnitude.

Perhaps best of all McCain appeared to embrace Maliki's timeline for withdrawal, but said there was no conflict with that also being Obama's timeline for withdrawal, because Maliki's was based on conditions and Obama's wasn't.

Last but not least, Blitzer asked McCain if it didn't make sense to scrutinize McCain's judgment in going to war in the first place if he's placing so much emphasis on scrutinizing Obama's judgment on the surge. McCain's answer, in so many words, that's old news.

Just wow, on so many levels. First of all, as Chuck Hagel noted, continuing to try and figure out who was right or wrong about the surge and what the meaning of "conditions on the ground" is completely obscures the key point at this stage, which is "How are we going to project forward ... What are we going to do for the next four years to protect the interest of America and our allies and restructure a new order in the world?" Bob Kerrey echoed this sentiment today.

And making the determination on how we move forward requires assessing the situation as it is, and making the best judgment of how to proceed. Now the situation currently is simply not as rosy as everyone suggests. Violent events that would be unthinkable in a country at peace still happen every day. The political situation is still a mess, and with the delay in provincial elections, it's only getting worse. Juan Cole notes that it's fairly impossible to pin down the exact cause-and-effect of the surge (though the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad and bribing the Sunnis in Anbar is certainly a major facet, as well as the increase in Iraqi oil revenues which has strengthened the central government), but it's also impossible to suggest this is an unquestionably safe and peaceful nation:

I'd suggest some comparisons. The Sri Lankan civil war between Sinhalese and Tamils has killed an average of 233 persons a month since 1983 and is considered one of the world's major ongoing trouble spots. That is half the average monthly casualties in Iraq recently. In 2007, the conflict in Afghanistan killed an average of 550 persons a month. That is about the rate recently according to official statistics for Iraq. The death rate in 2006-2007 in Somalia was probably about 300 a month, or about half this year's average monthsly rate in Iraq. Does anybody think Afghanistan or Somalia is calm? Thirty years of North Ireland troubles left about 3,000 dead, a toll still racked up in Iraq every five months on average.

All the talk of casualty rates, of course, is to some extent beside the point. The announced purpose of the troop escalation was to create secure conditions in which political compromises could be achieved [...]

There has been very little reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite. The new de-Baathification law which ostensibly aimed at improving the condition of Sunnis who had worked in the former regime was loudly denounced by the very ex-Baathists who would be affected by it. In any case, the measure has languished in oblivion and no effort has been made to implement it. Depending on how it is implemented it could easily lead to large numbers of Sunnis being fired from government ministries, and so might make things worse.

So that's where we are. But again, what this proves is that the political situation cannot be managed by increases in American troops on the ground. Now that the country is a bit more stable and the Maliki government on surer footing, only they can make those necessary decisions, and our presence or absence is not really a factor. And the biggest point is that, if the Iraqis want us out, how can we deny them the freedom to have that choice?



McCain ought to embrace withdrawal as the validation of his strategy. That wouldn't be entirely true, of course, but if he's so keen on a counter-insurgency strategy, the first rule would be to listen to the local leaders about their needs and desires. Maliki is asking for withdrawal for nakedly political reasons, but if McCain rebuffs his wishes, he renders illegitimate the elected Iraqi government and threatens to have the entire population turn on us.

Petraeus's counterinsurgency manual also makes clear the Iraqi Government's desire for a timeline should be seen as an important step forward: "The long-term goal is to leave a government able to stand by itself. In the end, the host nation has to win on its own. ... Eventually all foreign armies are seen as interlopers or occupiers; the sooner the main effort can transition to Host Nation institutions, without unacceptable degradation, the better." Of course, it is quite likely that, buoyed by its recent successes, the Maliki Government is overestimating its own capabilities and the U.S. should take care to withdraw carefully in a way that minimizes the likelihood of the situation deteriorating. But with that caveat in place, counterinsurgency doctrine dictates that this assertion of independence is an important step. It should be welcomed -- not derided as political posturing or suppressed by a White House seeking a permanent presence in Iraq.

In the end, COIN doctrine tells us that Prime Minister Maliki's recent assertions are a crucial turning point as Iraqis being to declare their own independence. This moment should be seized on to begin transitioning to a more limited mission that acts to support the Iraqis instead of taking the lead, and which requires a much smaller U.S. force presence. This is the position that Barack Obama has had all along. John McCain would be wise to accept this new reality and move to Obama's position, instead of continuing to reject the major breakthrough that has occurred.

He won't, of course, because he's stubborn, and his strategy - indeed the neocon strategy from the beginning of this war - was far more about staying permanently than building a democratic society. This suggests that McCain doesn't know a lot about foreign policy and certainly nothing about counter-insurgency. And the policies he does articulate - remaining in Iraq, kicking Russia out of the G8, rogue state rollback - really threaten global stability. It's actually dangerous at this point not to leave Iraq. And that's why the best bet for our continued security and the lives of our soldiers is Barack Obama.

UPDATE: This is fucking weird.



What is he talking about? If Maliki says it, then the timetable is based on conditions on the ground, but if Obama says ithe doesn't? This doesn't make any sense. I guess he's trying to blur the lines here, but he's just confusing everyone.

The Myth Of The Bipartisan Ticket

You can try to pick out particular policies where McCain is an independent maverick or Obama represents unity and reaching across the aisle, but in general, this is a pretty simple election with very stark contrasts between the two candidates on virtually everything. As much as the press wants to tantalize with talk of unity tickets, be it Lieberman on the McCain side or Hagel on the Obama side, there is no way that this could happen in the real world because it would muddle the message of both campaigns.

Lieberman, of course, is a slightly better bet, since he's completely divorced himself from the party on foreign policy and has basically taken a position to the right of the neocons, so he could more easily what few differences remain on domestic policy. Fortunately, the Obama campaign is ready to pin this label on him immediately and take out any benefit from the supposedly "bipartisan" ticket.

I have to admit, I haven't read the whole piece because what dawned on me about two paragraphs into the piece is that Joe Lieberman would be a fabulous secretary of state for John McCain for one reason and one reason only. What Joe Lieberman proposes and what John McCain proposes is another four years of George Bush's foreign policy. We talked about how concerned we are and rightly so about Iran but what we have done is strengthen Iran by invading Iraq in a horrible, misguided war that Joe Lieberman signed off on, that John McCain signed off on, and that George Bush was happy to wage. That’s not kind of foreign policy we need, it’s not what’s going to make us safer.

Ouch. Maybe that's why Lieberman wasn't invited to the barbecue.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

So Joe Biden, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel are headed to Pakistan to observe Monday's elections. Surely the dictator who suspended the Constitution long enough to throw out the entire judiciary will now ensure that the polls are free of fraud and vote tampering. After all, THREE US Senators are going to monitor a country of 164 million!

The first thing that Biden and Kerry and Hagel might want to do is schedule a meeting with Human Rights Watch:

A prominent U.S.-based human rights group Friday released what it said was a recording of Pakistan's attorney general acknowledging that next week's national elections would be "massively" rigged.

Human Rights Watch said a journalist made the recording during a telephone interview with Attorney General Malik Qayyum when Qayyum took a second call without disconnecting the first, allowing his end of the second conversation to be overheard and recorded.

In the recording, Qayyum, Pakistan's top legal officer, can be heard advising the caller to accept a ticket he is being offered by an unidentified political party for a seat, Human Rights Watch said.

"They will massively rig to get their own people to win," Qayyum said, according to a transcript released by Human Rights Watch. "If you get a ticket from these guys, take it."

I mean, it is physical evidence, and all. And certainly there's motive; the opposition party has vowed to impeach Musharraf if they get into power. Do you really think a dictator would let that happen?

Another thing the Senators should do is schedule their outbound flight now. Because it might be tough to get out of Dodge after the election:

Awan's comments came a day after Musharraf warned his opponents not to immediately claim fraud and stage demonstrations after the vote.

Another opposition party, headed by ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, rejected Musharraf's warning, saying it would stage nationwide protests if it believes the election was manipulated.

"We know Musharraf wants to rig the elections," said Sadiq ul-Farooq, a senior member of Sharif's party. "If he did it, we will force him to quit through street protests."

Monday should be fun. If your idea of fun is millions pouring onto the streets in riots and martial law and an unstable nation with a significant Islamist population and nuclear weapons.

Memories of Wankstock

I'm kicking myself for only catching about 10 minutes of the Wankstock conference on C-SPAN. I was disappointed to see Bob Graham there; I always thought he was better than that. And the deep, thought-provoking discussions I saw consisted mainly of jokes about Oklahoma Sooner football. The only issue anybody brought up was Republican former Congressman Jim Leach's call essentially for public financing of elections, which was met with a decent round of applause. I guess Bloomberg's billion dollars doesn't count.

The more representative quotes were pabulum like this:

"People have stopped working together, government is dysfunctional, there's no collaborating and congeniality," Bloomberg said to applause from the crowd.

This is particularly amusing in light of that floated Bloomberg-Hagel ticket. They agree on absolutely nothing. Bloomberg is fairly Democratic domestically and a neocon on foreign policy, while Hagel is a hardline conservative on everything BUT foreign policy, where he rejects neoconservatism forcefully. Those are actual policy differences. The idea that you can "work together" on those doesn't make any sense.

But apparently, the rise of Barack Obama dampened the spirits of the attendees, kind of like a bad trip.

The event was organized by former Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, with former Senator David L. Boren, Democrat of Oklahoma. In the days leading up the event here, just outside Oklahoma City, Mr. Boren suggested that he would encourage Mr. Bloomberg to run if the major party nominees failed to heed the call for bipartisanship.

But several leading participants took pains to say that they had no intention of abandoning their own parties in the election. Some even cast Mr. Obama’s success as evidence that the nation was yearning for the type of leadership they were offering.

“I believe he is demonstrating, in the support he is getting, that the American people share this concern about excessive partisanship,” said Bob Graham, a Democratic former senator from Florida, who said he would support a Democrat for president.

Gary Hart, a Democrat from Colorado who also served in the Senate, said he intended to endorse one of the Democratic presidential candidates in the next 48 hours, though he declined to identify the candidate.

“I am a Democrat, and I will endorse a Democratic president,” he said. “There are no independent candidates. I won’t endorse a Republican.”

Seems to me like these tools are declaring victory (for now). Obama says a few words on bipartisanship, and the Wise Old Men appear satisfied. They're claiming that everyone is following their dictates.

Of course, that's not true. But it's far easier to influence the debate from the outside, to narrow the options for a progressive agenda. They can go ahead and claim some sort of betrayal the first time Obama offers something that doesn't fall in the narrow lines of the status quo. They'll kneecap him as sure as they kneecapped Bill Clinton.

You could hear Sam Nunn, the Jerry Garcia of Wankstock, if you will, just deflated today on an interview with Andrea Mitchell. He kept talking about "the fundamental issues" without really explaining what those issues are (except an allusion to entitlement reform, which means Social Security privatization, of course). Yesterday at Wankstock, he closed it out with an electric guitar version of the Star-Spangled Banner this quote:

"A minister once said to me, if you call yourself a leader, but nobody's following you, you're just takin' a walk."

Wankstock: just takin' a walk.

The Perpetuity of "Things We All Recognize Should Be Dissolved, But Won't"

Blackwater is absolutely staying in Iraq, and the Iraqi government has essentially been blackmailed into it:

An Iraqi official conceded Sunday that Blackwater USA's exit would create a "security vacuum" in Baghdad and said the U.S. and Iraq were instead working on revamping regulations governing private security companies after a deadly shooting of civilians.

Following the Sept. 16 Nisoor Square shooting, the Interior Ministry banned Blackwater from operating in Iraq, but rolled back after the U.S. agreed to a joint investigation. The company resumed guarding a reduced number of U.S. convoys on Friday.

But officials said new rules have to be put in place to govern the behavior of the security companies.

"If we expel this company immediately there will be a security vacuum that will demand pulling some troops off the battlefield," Tahseen Sheikhly, a civilian spokesman for the seven-month-old offensive against militants in Baghdad and surrounding areas. "This will create a security imbalance in securing Baghdad."

And if you let them stay, there will be a security vacuum from rising anger by Iraqi civilians who Blackwater mercenaries are shooting at with impunity. This will end up endangering the very troops you can't "pull off the battlefield," as attacks against them will now be encouraged by the population. I expect a spike in American deaths in the coming weeks.

Senator Obama is drafting legislation to close the legal loophole and at least make contractors and security personnel responsible for misconduct. Which would be nice, but doesn't solve the problem of a hated enemy of the Iraqi people as part of the occupation force in the country.

Another thing not going anywhere for a while... Guantanamo.

A lightning rod for international criticism, the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, not long ago appeared headed for closure. President Bush and his top advisors said they wanted to shutter the controversial lockup.

But the latest attempt to shut it down is facing collapse: The detention facility has been embraced by many Republicans as a potent political symbol in their quest to seize the terrorism issue ahead of next year's elections.

GOP presidential candidates have jockeyed to demonstrate their support for the prison. One candidate has called for doubling its use. Another praised the menu and health plan offered to detainees.

The Senate Republican leader has accused Democrats of wanting to move terrorists "into American communities."

And the president, who last year told German television that he "would like to end Guantanamo," is now threatening to veto any move to "micromanage the detention of enemy combatants."

"It's a Republican litmus test this year," complained Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, one of the few GOP lawmakers calling for the swift closure of Guantanamo.

"The Republican Party has won two elections on the issue of fear and terrorism," Hagel said. "[It's] going to try again."

It's really quite amazing that a symbol of illegal detentions, torture and the loss of American moral leadership is seen as a CAMPAIGN ISSUE to these fools. But so it goes. Chuck Hagel is absolutely right.

I don't expect this to stop even with a Democrat elected in 2008, incidentally. There are a lot of institutional forces in place to protect the status quo. There's a lot of work to be done moving them out.

All The King's Horses And All The King's Men

I think the central tension that official Washington is feeling about Iraq, as expressed in this recounting by Atrios, is that they all feel that, in their positions as masters of the universe, that surely SOMETHING can be done with regard to Iraq that will wipe out all of their bad predictions and wrong-headed mistakes and send Iraq on the road to stability. That option simply doesn't exist, and only precious few people are willing to admit that. For all his faults, Chuck Hagel is one of them.

SEN. HAGEL: Well, as I’ve said from the beginning, and I wasn’t the only one to say this, the outcome in Iraq will be determined by the Iraqis. It’s not going to be determined by the United States. We can help, we can support, and we have a role. Obviously we have an interest. We are where we are. We’ve got a mess on our hands in Iraq. We have done so much to undermine our own interests and influence in the Middle East, we’re going to have to find some new high ground here [...]

Well, let’s, let’s be honest here. We have a mess now. I mean, who are we kidding? We’ve got a mess now. You’ve just put up on the screen before we started this conversation what the current casualty number is. We have no good options in Iraq now. There are no good options. That’s just a fact of life. So we deal with the facts as they are.

Hagel had to say it twice for it to sink in. This is the entire problem. You have a bunch of obstinate fools in Washington, and I'm not talking about members of the executive branch but the "serious pundit" class who enable this war's continuation, who can't wrap their heads around the simple fact that there's nothing to win, and that we cannot manage any sort of stability in Iraq. It's bad if we leave and it's bad if we don't and it's bad if we take half the troops out and leave the other half in. That's just reality. We're claiming to be staying there to give breathing space to an Iraqi government that doesn't functionally exist, and that is about to be drummed out of office entirely. We claim to be stopping Al Qaeda's safe harbor, when if we would only leave the Iraqis themselves would eliminate Al Qaeda from their country within a year, and indeed they're already doing it.

This all gets back to American exceptionalism, and the belief that we're the greatest country in the world and so we must be able to fix any global problem. If Iraq hasn't totally discredited that belief, I don't know what will. But the serious pundits still cling to the hope that if we just get the right people, if we just get the right about of soldiers, if we only keep our balance on the tightrope we can traverse the Grand Canyon...

Bullshit. There's nothing good left to do, other than make room for all of the refugees we created. America is not omnipotent and it can't bumble around trying to fix everything, especially when it doesn't want to do any of the hard work of actually understanding the problem. America has a good deal of power but it's not unlimited and it's not perfectly adaptable. There simply isn't just SOMETHING that can be done. We fucked up Iraq and now we have to leave. Our responsibility to the Iraqis is outweighed by the certainty that whatever we do in service of that responsibility will make things worse. Get a boat, fill it with refugees and GO. And David Broder and David Ignatius and every conservative gasbag can whine and claim that it's a betrayal, when the true betrayal was getting us involved in the first place.

Harry Reid is going to be working very hard to get some enforceable votes on Iraq, and the White House is clearly frightened, as they called Robert Gates back from a trip to Latin America to try and manage things on Capitol Hill. Washington is 2 years behind the American people on this, and too contempuous of American citizens to think they could understand when something is unwinnable. The truth of the matter is that Washington is too wedded to old-fashioned elitist ideas of America as a shining city on a hill to comtemplate that we can't do something. That reality is why the country's in a sour mood, Cokie Roberts, because idiots like you who enable a failed war won't come to terms with your own vanity.

They Never Learn

In 2006, the issue of stem cell research arguably gave the Senate to the Democrats. It was certainly a factor in the Missouri Senate race, especially with the attendant controversy surrounding Michael J. Fox in Rush Limbaugh.

Today the Senate passed a bill fully funding all stem cell research by one vote less than a veto-proof majority. A significant amount of Republicans up for re-election in 2008 voted against the bill. Here are the Senators voting no, with the significant ones in bold:

Allard (R-CO)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Casey (D-PA)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Coleman (R-MN)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hagel (R-NE)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Martinez (R-FL)
McConnell (R-KY)
Nelson (D-NE)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Sununu (R-NH)
Thomas (R-WY)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)

Sununu is done. Coleman is done. Domenici will be in trouble. Hagel shows his true colors, again, as well.

There is an alternative measure, but that won't matter. The House passed the same bill that passed last year, and now the Senate hs done the same.

The American people have spoken on this issue, and they have decided that the promise of medical breakthroughs and cures is worth losing a few nonsentient blastocysts. The Republicans, yoked to their theocratic base, cannot see themselves through to break with them. So fire up the commercials, and we'll see everybody here in two years. Well, not EVERYBODY.

A New Reality

John McCain's floor speech on Iraq today was a return to the "we've turned the corner" lie that characterized the first 3 1/2 years in Iraq. He cobbled together a series of stats and omitted the more ominous ones to portray what he literally called "a new reality," where Gen. Petraeus is boldly moving forward with his counterinsurgency plan, making Baghdad and Iraq safe for democracy. He's decided we've turned around Iraq and that we just need a few more dollars and a few more good men to secure it completely.

This is absolutely absurd. This Green Lantern strategy of "if we will it, we can win" has gone on for too long and has produced next to nothing. We're putting more troops into the conflict, and yet we're winning. The surge has already been surged twice. If we're doing so well, why are we adding troops with each passing day?

Here's the new reality in Iraq: there isn't any clean water.

United Nations agencies working in Iraq warned on Thursday a chronic shortage of safe drinking water risks causing more child deaths and an outbreak of waterborne disease such as cholera during the summer.

There's no water. That's reality. This is a country that is largely desert and there's no water that's safe to drink.

Four years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, millions of Iraqi children still find that safe water is no easier to access, said a statement issued by leading U.N. aid agencies operating in Iraq.

The agencies, whose offices are based in Amman, issued the statement to mark World Water Day.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said shortages of drinking water threatened to push up diarrhoea rates, particularly among children. Diarrhoea is already the second highest cause of child illness and death in Iraq, it said.

"Latest reports suggest we are already seeing an increase in diarrhoea, even before the usual onset of the diarrhoea season in June," said Roger Wright, UNICEF representative in Iraq.

The reality has caused children to die because they get sick from drinking water. This is the new reality. The reality you cannot hope to ever see. The reality you cannot hope to admit because it would mean you have the lives of 3,200 US troops, but millions of children, on your consciences.

Efforts to repair Iraq's damaged water networks have been hampered by electricity shortages, attacks on technicians, infrastructure and engineering works and underinvestment in the water sector, the agencies said.

Iraq was still relying on U.N. support to provide essential water treatment chemicals with UNICEF alone providing 1,650 tonnes of chlorine last year, the statement said.

The suspension of water tankering services to tens of thousands of people in Baghdad, especially to displaced families and communities hosting them, increased the risk of cholera outbreaks, the agencies warned.

4 million Iraqis have either been killed, displaced, sickened, or never born due to living daily with war for over four years. That's the new reality. It's disgusting to suggest that there's any kind of surge to victory going on. It's a surge to the morgue.

When you live on the streets of Iraq like an average citizen, and realize that it's 110 and you won't be having anything safe to drink for the next week, you tell me about reality. You can look at facts and figures and numbers and body counts and twist them up into making a decision that you are succeeding. But you don't get to call that reality. You can call it statistics. You can call it trendlines. You'd be wrong. But to have the temerity to suggest that there's a new dawn, a new reality that nobody can see but Sen. McCain, is as irresponsible as the Administration was for years. It's amazing to see the same zombie lies pop up over and over again.

(UPDATE: Here are some of the lies of Huckleberry Graham in his "me too" speech on the floor: "This is the first congress ever to set a hard date to withdraw from a war" - um, not true, little thing called Kosovo - "It took 13 years to write our constitution" - no, it took a few months to write the Articles of Confederation, they didn't work and so it took a few months to write the Constitution, and by the way who's James Madison in Iraq? - "If you had the courage of your convictions, you would amend to stop funding by a date certain" - which is what the House did, and Huckleberry slandered that, so it's just a talking point)

"There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. There is no military solution in Iraq. Iraq belongs to the 25 million people who live there." -Chuck Hagel, just now.

UPDATE: Here's that new reality for you, John, courtesy Michael Ware in Baghdad:

Honestly, Wolf, you'll barely last twenty minutes out there. I dont know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad.

Video at the link.

Publicity Whore

After getting bipartisans and post-partisans and David Broder all excited, and eliciting commentary and positive buzz for nearly a week, Chuck Hagel backed off announcing for President but still left the door open a bit. In other words, he announced that he's not announcing anything.

In an odd twist, the Nebraska senator called a news conference to say he would decide about his political future later this year, saying a late entry into the 2008 race is still possible.

"I want to keep my focus on helping find a responsible way out of this tragedy," Hagel said of the Iraq war.

The Republican presidential field is crowded with 10 candidates, a number that could grow as Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson weigh possible bids. Hagel's planned announcement touched off speculation that he would join the 2008 White House race or announce plans to seek re-election to a third Senate term.

Instead, he told reporters at a nationally televised news conference: "I am here today to announce that my family and I will make a decision on my political future later this year."

I think that the media is Hagel's natural constituency in the same way that it was for McCain in 2000. He loves the cameras and will do anything to get them to follow him just a bit longer. In actuality, Hagel is quite conservative. He's in the dead center of the Republican Party with a 72% conservative rating, making him more to the right than John McCain, Richard Shelby, Sam Brownback (!) or Rick Santorum (!!). His record is far-right even if his rhetoric is not. I believe that he is somewhat sincere on the war, but when the vote came down on a nonbinding resolution last month he refused to break with the party.

Because he sometimes criticizes Republicans in public, but votes almost uniformly with them in private, the media swoons over him. Maybe the real question here is, why is his record more private than his rhetoric?

UPDATE: Good for the Nebraska Democratic Party chair for calling Hagel out.

"I think it is extremely disappointing that Senator Hagel would bring the entire state of Nebraska to a screeching halt by holding an elaborate ceremony to announce absolutely nothing."

I don't think Hagel is even representing his constituents in Nebraska anymore; he represents himself and his pack of media sycophants.

2008 Matters

I've been trying not to write about 2008 so much, because as much as we'd like George Bush to just go away he is still President for two more years, and while he'll be hard-pressed to get an agenda passed, he can still, you know, start illegal wars and stuff. Somebody has to keep their eyes on the guy in charge. Nevertheless, the early start to the race is fast becoming impossible to ignore, so here's a quick roundup:

• This Fox News "Democrat Party debate" story is interesting. It appears that nobody in the Democratic Party of Nevada really knew about it beforehand; it was an inside job between the party chair and (allegedly) Harry Reid. So. Fox News schedules a debate for Democrats. They handled it pretty horribly last time. They're clearly a propaganda outfit and not a news organization. So. The vast left-wing conspiracy is outraged. John Edwards sez he's not coming. The NV Dems try to stop the bleeding by allowing a token Air America host to participate on the debate panel, but Mark Green, Air America's new President, pretty much shut that down. This is going to get much worse for the NDP before it gets better unless they just pull the plug. It's a shame, too, because we need Nevada as part of a Western strategy in 2008, so anything that hurts the party like this is damaging. I would also say that, while there's no reason to give Fox News any credibility, people don't only have one channel on their television, and they did secure broadcast on major Fox affiliates in the state.

• I did think this was pretty good, and Obama's people had nothing to do with it.



If Barack would only embrace the open-source nature of new politics, he could cruise to victory. Really. He'd be able to raise as much as he wanted online, and he'd have the enthusiastic support of creative people like this.

• Chuck Hagel's close to announcing. He may talk a good game on the war, but he's as reliable a conservative as they come. Still, it'll be fun to see the right bash the hell out of him (and maybe build his popularity besides).

• Newt Gingrich is having a religious conversion. He's positioning himself just right for the nomination, it seems to me. There's a huge vaccuum with the lack of a credible conservative candidate, and some people still consider him an intellectual. He's actually the meanest, most divisive, most corrupt guy the Republicans have, but he taught a class somewhere, so that makes him brilliant. And he's the kind of guy who says things like New Orleans residents suffered from a failure of citizenship for not knowing how to get out of a hurricane. Nobody blames the victim like Newt. The conservatives will lap it up. He wouldn't surprise me at all as the nominee.

• Moving to the Senate in 2008, you know that the Republican chair of the campaign committee, Jon Ensign, isn't particularly enthused about his chances when he lists five Republican-held states as "trouble spots". Those states, by the way, are: Colorado (open seat), Maine (Collins), New Hampshire (Sununu), Oregon (Smith) and Minnesota (Coleman). He forgot New Mexico, given Pete Domenici's recent troubles. And North Carolina, where Elizabeth Dole is vulnerable, given the right candidate. On the Democratic side, pretty much everyone's safe except Tim Johnson (and South Dakota Republicans can't figure out how to run against a sick man given their penchant for slash-and-burn politics) and Mary Landrieu (who looked fairly safe in the most recent poll).

Prepare for a Filibuster-Proof Majority

If the Republicans want to keep talking like they want to end the war but block even the debate about stopping it, they're doomed to the minority for a long, long time. People like John Warner and Chuck Hagel, who filibustered THEIR OWN resolution, are simply terrified of offending their Dear Leader of a President. Think Progress has the list of names of those who talk the talk but refuse to walk the walk.

– Sen. John Warner (R-VA): “Sen. John Warner (R-VA) will introduce a resolution today ‘making clear that he does not support the President on increasing the troop levels in Iraq’ and calling escalation ‘a mistake,’.”

– Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE): “It’s Alice in Wonderland. … I’m absolutely opposed to sending any more troops to Iraq. It is folly.” (Cosponsored Warner resolution.)

– Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR): “This is the president’s Hail Mary pass. … We are extending an ineffective tactic to further the status quo.” (Cosponsored Warner resolution.)

– Sen. John Sununu (R-NH): “Sen. John Sununu told CNN Tuesday he will not support President Bush’s plan to send an additional 21,000 U.S. troops to Iraq, although he hasn’t yet decided whether to back a Democratic resolution opposing the move.”

– Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME): “We should not place more American servicemen and women in harm’s way to instill a peace that the Iraqis are not willing to seek for themselves.” (Cosponsored Warner resolution.)

– Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS): “I do not believe that sending more troops to Iraq is the answer. … Iraq requires a political rather than a military solution.”

– Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA): “We’re all looking for a plan that will work. … The current plan is not working, and 21,500 additional troops — it’s a snowball in July. It’s not going to work.“

There's going to be a debate on Iraq, no question about it. These hypocrites are only delaying the inevitable. But in the process, they've told the whole country that they support the President's plan for Iraq. They can SAY whatever they want, but ultimately that's what this comes down to. They are in favor of this President having a completely free hand in determining military matters, without even so much as questioning from the legislative branch.

This is the exact opposite of what the American people want. They want the Congress to stop this quagmire. Not only that, the troops themselves have no belief in this escalation and think it will fail.

"To be honest, it's going to be like this for a long time to come, no matter what we do," said Hardy, 25, of Atlanta. "I think some people in America don't want to know about all this violence, about all the killings. The people back home are shielded from it; they get it sugar-coated."

While senior military officials and the Bush administration say the president's decision to send more American troops to pacify Baghdad will succeed, many of the soldiers who're already there say it's a lost cause.

"What is victory supposed to look like? Every time we turn around and go in a new area there's somebody new waiting to kill us," said Sgt. 1st Class Herbert Gill, 29, of Pulaski, Tenn., as his Humvee rumbled down a dark Baghdad highway one evening last week. "Sunnis and Shiites have been fighting for thousands of years, and we're not going to change that overnight."

"Once more raids start happening, they'll (insurgents) melt away," said Gill, who serves with the 1st Infantry Division in east Baghdad. "And then two or three months later, when we leave and say it was a success, they'll come back."

We're running a counterinsurgency strategy against a civil war, meaning we have to take up sides in the conflict and consider the other side the insurgents. This is exactly why the Mahdi army is sitting it out and waiting for the US troops to do their dirty work for them.

The U.S. military drive to train and equip Iraq's security forces has unwittingly strengthened anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which has been battling to take over much of the capital city as American forces are trying to secure it.

U.S. Army commanders and enlisted men who are patrolling east Baghdad, which is home to more than half the city's population and the front line of al-Sadr's campaign to drive rival Sunni Muslims from their homes and neighborhoods, said al-Sadr's militias had heavily infiltrated the Iraqi police and army units that they've trained and armed.

"Half of them are JAM. They'll wave at us during the day and shoot at us during the night," said 1st Lt. Dan Quinn, a platoon leader in the Army's 1st Infantry Division, using the initials of the militia's Arabic name, Jaish al Mahdi. "People (in America) think it's bad, but that we control the city. That's not the way it is. They control it, and they let us drive around. It's hostile territory."

(by the way, both of those stories are from the great Tom Lasseter, one of the best journalists working in Iraq today)

But of course, there's no reasoning with Senators who know these arguments, who EMPLOY these arguments, and who then vote in the exact opposite fashion. There's only one thing to do, and that's to make sure that everyone knows about the dishonesty of these men and women, every day until they're up for re-election. They will not survive being yoked to Mr. 32%, and they will certainly not survive while giving up their Constitutional responsibility to act as a co-equal branch of government. Their actions yesterday tell the country that they are not necessary. The voters will tell them the same son enough.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

I wasn't too thrilled about the watering down of a nonbinding proposal expressing dissatisfaction with the President's escalation plan for Iraq. Fortunately, there's always the Republican Party to save the day.

Just now, in an early test vote, EVERY REPUBLICAN except for Susan Collins voted against starting debate on the nonbinding resolutions. This includes Sen. Warner, AUTHOR of the proposal, and Sen. Hagel, arguably the most vocal antiwar critic in the entire Senate (it's all talk, as I've said many times... where's my Hagel troll now?). The Republicans had to protect their Preznit at all costs, so instead of allowing through a resolution which would have actually recommitted to Bush's Iraq policy, they shut it down. Harry Reid is apoplectic about it, and threatening to attach it to every appropriations bill coming down the pike. He gets to yell about how the Republicans don't want to talk about the war, and how the Democrats are trying to stop it.

This is brilliant. Thank you Republicans, for saving the Democrats from themselves, and framing this debate as between Democrats who want to end the war and Republicans who want to stop all debate on it. This will only make the American people angrier, and stiffen the resolve of Democrats to put together a bill with some teeth. This brings us CLOSER to ending the war.

UPDATE: Republicans are literally running away from the debate on Iraq. Well, congratulations, that little filibuster means you'll have to keep running, right into smaller and smaller minorities in 2008.