Can't Anyone Here Play This Game?

Conservative policies don't work in a crisis. They work for robbery. Therefore, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the Treasury Department has been flailing from side to side in response to the financial meltdown.

The head of a new Congressional panel set up to monitor the gigantic federal bailout says the government still does not seem to have a coherent strategy for easing the financial crisis, despite the billions it has already spent in that effort.

Elizabeth Warren, the chairwoman of the oversight panel, said in an interview Monday that the government instead seemed to be lurching from one tactic to the next without clarifying how each step fits into an overall plan.

“You can’t just say, ‘Credit isn’t moving through the system,’ ” she said in her first public comments since being named to the panel. “You have to ask why.”

If the answer is that banks do not have money to lend, it would make sense to push capital into their hands, as the Treasury has been doing over the last two months, she continued. But if the answer is that their potential borrowers are getting less creditworthy with each passing day, “pouring money into banks isn’t going to fix that problem,” she said.

The GAO is similarly puzzled by the grand design here, releasing a report yesterday with a number of disturbing conclusions that TPM Muckraker recounted, including:

• Banks don't have to tell Treasury how they're spending the bailout money
• There's no monitoring of conflicts of interest between Treasury and the recipients of bailout money
• Treasury wants to let banks enforce executive pay limits themselves

And on top of all this, Emperor Paulson might ask for the second $350 billion from the Congress before the new Administration comes in, in an effort to steal manage the problem even more.

There's no way Paulson should be allowed another dime, given past performance.

If A Tree Falls In Iraq, And No One Is There To Hear It...

This David Brooks op-ed and this analysis of network news coverage on Iraq and Afghanistan couldn't be more related. Brooks wants us to believe that the surge made everything all better in Iraq when anyone who's actually been paying attention knows that the drop in violence did nothing to bring the country together or reconcile the disparate factions, and we're essentially keeping our finger in the dike until we eventually must leave, without any idea what will happen afterwards. Now, even readers of the New York Times are not likely to know that, because Iraq has been blocked from our memories.

The three major US networks are only dedicating an average of 2 minutes per week to coverage of the war in Iraq according to the New York Times. The report is based on information gathered by a TD consultant who found that CBS evening news spent the least amount of time reporting on the Iraq war, followed by ABC world news and NBC nightly news, respectively.

Among the information not reaching US citizens is that there have been more than 1 million Iraqi deaths since the beginning of the 2003 US invasion, with anywhere from 600 000 to 1.2 million of them being violent. The underreporting of events in Iraq has also left US citizens largely unaware of the millions of Iraqi widows of war and 5 million displaced Iraqi citizens. Some direct blame at the Pentagon for the US public's ignorance of the large number of deaths, but Donald Rumsfeld defends the Department of Defense by insisting that they "don't do body counts on other people."

It isn't just Iraqis that are going unnoticed, however. The US news is even failing to report or show their own soldiers returning home in body bags. Lara Logan, a foreign correspondent for CBS news commented on this issue asking "who in America knows what [the body of a dead American soldier] looks like" and saying that "the American soldiers do feel forgotten."

Of course they feel forgotten - they ARE forgotten. And they've been used as political pawns by people like Brooks for over five years.

This idea that a drop in violence - but not a cessation, mind you, more Americans died just today and there are still upwards of 500 casualties a month, the equivalent of two 9-11s every single month, inside Iraq - takes the war out of the spotlight and allows Bush defenders and warmongers to claim victory is silly, especially because they keep Iraq in the sweet spot between "everything's dandy" and "if we leave there will be nothing but chaos." Those two positions are irreconcilable. There are a number of factors leading to the drop in violence, but an additional American presence is something that Howard Dean was calling for in 2003. And anyway, the larger point is that we're not creating an Iraq that is sustainable without that very large presence, which does not serve our national security in any way. As Matthew Duss puts it:

Leaving aside the fact that [the surge's] "victory" as Gerecht defines it, in addition to obviously representing a monumental climbdown from each and every one of the numerous justifications previously offered for the war, does not actually add up to "an Iraqi state" as much as to "a series of armed militia communities we're going to call Iraq," was this outcome really worth 4,000 American dead, over 28,000 wounded, and, by the end of 2008, some $600 billion in American treasure? Was it worth over half a million Iraqi dead, many times that maimed, and some 3 million displaced? Was it worth creating an open source laboratory for terrorists to develop and sharpen their tactics against the most technologically advanced military in the world, enabling them disseminate those tactics around the world via internet? Was it worth losing a thousand dollars at poker just to win twenty at blackjack?

This is reinforced by a GAO report released yesterday showing no long-term strategy for the war, outside of maintaining fragile security gains. This is a prelude to a long-term occupation but not the withdrawal we all know must come absent a military draft.

While agreeing with the administration that violence has decreased sharply, a report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office concluded that many other goals Bush outlined a year and a half ago in the "New Way Forward" strategy remain unmet.

The report, after a bleak GAO assessment last summer, cited little improvement in the ability of the Iraqi security forces to act independently of the U.S. military, and noted that key legislation passed by the Iraqi parliament had not been implemented while other crucial laws had not been passed. The report also judged that key Iraqi ministries spent less of their allocated budgets last year than in previous years, and said that oil and electricity production had repeatedly not met U.S. targets.

Bush's strategy of January 2007, the GAO said, "defined the original goals and objectives that the Administration believed were achievable by the end of this phase in July 2008." Not meeting many of them changed circumstances on the ground and the pending withdrawal of the last of the additional U.S. forces mean that strategy is now outdated, the report said. The GAO recommends that the State and Defense departments work together to fashion a new approach.

But David Brooks wants to tell you that Bush was right, the surge is working, and will not address the larger concerns. And you'll never see this on the nightly news unless you're very lucky. You may hear something like commanders in Afghanistan lamenting the lack of equipment because of Iraq, but the context of how we have no national security goals in Iraq, but plenty in Afghanistan, and the imbalance is striking and completely perverse, will not get a hearing. Afghanistan CLEARLY needs more help. Attacks are up 40% in some regions, and more US troops died there than in Iraq last month. What Iraq needs more than anything is an exit strategy. The government is not functional, the state is not cohesive, and no amount of military referees policing, arming and funding all sides of a potential civil war is going to reconcile these facts.

Brooks creates a hermetically sealed open-and-shut case, but it's, for lack of a better word, an ignorant one. Which mirrors the public view of the war. Because the information, while not concealed, is not readily available. Less people dying is not a strategy for victory, and permanent occupations are not a cause for celebration.

Such A Success, Nobody Wants To Go There

At what point does this cross over into forced labor?

Uneasy U.S. diplomats yesterday challenged senior State Department officials in unusually blunt terms over a decision to order some of them to serve at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad or risk losing their jobs.

At a town hall meeting in the department's main auditorium attended by hundreds of Foreign Service officers, some of them criticized fundamental aspects of State's personnel policies in Iraq. They took issue with the size of the embassy -- the biggest in U.S. history -- and the inadequate training they received before being sent to serve in a war zone. One woman said she returned from a tour in Basra with post-traumatic stress disorder only to find that the State Department would not authorize medical treatment.

Yesterday's internal dissension came amid rising public doubts about diplomatic progress in Iraq and congressional inquiries into the department's spending on the embassy and its management of private security contractors. Some participants asked how diplomacy could be practiced when the embassy itself, inside the fortified Green Zone, is under frequent fire and officials can travel outside only under heavy guard.

Service in Iraq is "a potential death sentence," said one man who identified himself as a 46-year Foreign Service veteran. "Any other embassy in the world would be closed by now," he said to sustained applause.

What the... don't these diplomats know that we've turned the corner and they're in the last throes?

Let's be clear, these public officials, who know a bit more about the situation on the ground than the layman, are resisting attempts to be deployed to the GREEN ZONE, ostensibly the most secure area in all of Iraq. Now, it could be because they're just afraid of being caught in Blackwater's crossfire, but now that the military will be taking control of convoys, that should be less of a problem. So maybe it's just that these State Department employees know what the GAO has determined:

The U.S. and Iraqi governments have failed to take advantage of a dramatic drop in violence in Iraq, according to a report issued Tuesday by a U.S. watchdog agency, which warned that prospects were waning "for achieving current U.S. security, political and economic goals in Iraq."

Iraqi leaders have not passed legislation to foster reconciliation among Shiite Muslims, Sunnis and Kurds, and sectarian groups still retain control of ministries and divide Iraqi security forces, according to the Government Accountability Office report.

Moreover, the Bush administration's efforts to stabilize and rebuild Iraq are plagued by weak planning, a lack of coordination with the Iraqi government and among U.S. agencies, and an absence of detailed information on "the current and future costs of U.S. involvement in Iraq," it said.

"U.S. efforts lack strategies with clear purpose, scope, roles and performance measures," the report said.

All of this "progress" could go up in a moment, because it's not sustained by any structural changes. It's a play-out-the-clock strategy. And when the clock runs out, these people forced to deploy to Iraq will be among the most vulnerable.

That's why I agree with Juan Cole: it's time to close the US Embassy.

Now is that time for all Americans to stand up for the diplomats who serve this country ably and courageously throughout the world, for decades on end. Foreign service officers risk disease and death, and many of them see their marriages destroyed when spouses decline to follow them to a series of remote places. They are the ones who represent America abroad, who know languages and cultures and do their best to convince the world that we're basically a good people [...]

The guerrillas in Iraq constantly target the Green Zone and US diplomatic personnel there with mortar and rocket fire. State Department personnel sleep in trailers that are completely unprotected from such incoming fire. At several points in the past year, they have been forbidden to go outside without protective gear (as if outside were more dangerous). The Bush administration has consistently lied about the danger they are in and tried to cover up these severe security precautions.

The US embassy in Iraq should be closed. It is not safe for the personnel there. Some sort of rump mission of hardy volunteers could be maintained. But kidnapping our most capable diplomats and putting them in front of a fire squad is morally wrong and is administratively stupid, since many of these intrepid individuals will simply resign. (You cannot easily get good life insurance that covers death from war, and most State spouses cannot have careers because of the two-year rotations to various foreign capitals, and their families are in danger of being reduced to dire poverty if they are killed) [...]

The Democrats have been facing the dilemma that they are blocked from doing much about Iraq. This is something they can do. Cut off funding for the embassy and force most of the diplomats home. This is the way to start ending the war.

Now.

Amen.

Guess What?

You're not going to believe this, but President Bush and all his top advisors want to keep troops in Iraq longer. This is really a stunner because everyone was waiting with such apprehension to see what the President would do. Would he call for troops to stay until the end of time, or just the end of his term? It's been agony, all the wondering.

President Bush's senior advisers on Iraq have recommended he stand by his current war strategy, and he is unlikely to order more than a symbolic cut in troops before the end of the year, administration officials told The Associated Press Tuesday.

The recommendations from the military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker come despite independent government findings Tuesday that Baghdad has not met most of the political, military and economic markers set by Congress.

And guess what, military officials aren't buying the GAO report because they don't like what it says the information is, like, so last month.

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) said Pentagon officials had told Republican leaders that the GAO had relied on outdated information. Because the agency was told simply to assess whether the benchmarks had been met, the GAO was set up to deliver a negative report, Blunt said. He added that lawmakers were far more interested in the assessment coming next week from Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker [...]

The GAO concluded that all forms of violence remain high in Iraq -- causing senior military officials to complain that the report did not consider statistics for August, when, they said, trends in sectarian violence and the performance of the Iraqi security forces improved.

"They use the end of July as the data and evidentiary cutoff and therefore are not taking into account any gains in any of the benchmarks that may have become more clear throughout August," one official said.

Apparently there was just a rush of political and economic and security progress in August, right around the time that 500 Yazidis were killed in a previously stable area of the country, I'd gather.

Did I mention that the military officials gave no facts to support their argument that they're right and the GAO is wrong?

We see exactly what's going on here. The surge was initially defined as to give breathing space for a political reconciliation. That didn't happen, nor did the surge even curb violence, so the Administration is moving the goalposts and declaring that the surge created "bottom-up reconciliation" which is nothing more than militias and former insurgents arming themselves for the civil struggle to come.

The White House insists that Mr. Bush’s fresh embrace of Sunni leaders simply augments his consistent support of Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

But some of Mr. Bush’s critics regard the change as something far more significant, saying they believe it amounts to a grudging acknowledgment by the White House of something these critics themselves have long asserted — that Iraq will never become the kind of cohesive, unified state that could be a democratic beacon for the Middle East.

“They have come around to the inevitable,” said Peter W. Galbraith, a former American diplomat whose 2006 book, “The End of Iraq,” argued that Mr. Bush was trying to rebuild a nation that never really existed, because Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds had never adopted a common Iraqi identity. “He has finally recognized that fact, and is now trying to work with it,” Mr. Galbraith said Tuesday.

I would argue that he's just looking for anything to prolong the war and save face, so he latched on to the Sunni tribes who will still allow themselves to be seen with him. Indeed, he said, when cameras weren't rolling so it's more credible, that his goal is to force the next President to "stay longer" in Iraq. Keith Olbermann lambasted him for this remark, with good reason.

And there it is, sir. We’ve caught you.

Your goal is not to bring some troops home — maybe — if we let you have your way now;

Your goal is not to set the stage for eventual withdrawal;

You are, to use your own disrespectful, tone-deaf word, playing at getting the next Republican nominee to agree to jump into this bottomless pit with you, and take us with him, as we stay in Iraq for another year, and another, and another, and anon.

Be sure to read that whole thing.

So where do we go from here? If the Democrats weren't so consistently weak it would be simple; you shut down funding for this disaster before it's too late. All you have to do is not fund the war, and take the Feingold-Reid option of a date certain after which no money will be spent (it's big news that Kos finally signed on to this, BTW). But whether or not Democrats have the stones to do that is unclear. What's more likely is that something comes out of this...

Rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats, meanwhile, are redoubling efforts to find bipartisan cooperation that could pressure the administration to begin bringing troops home. Six House Republicans and five Democrats released a letter yesterday to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio), asking them "to put an end to the political in-fighting over the war in Iraq and allow the House to unite behind a bipartisan strategy to stabilize the country and bring our troops home."

Breaking with the GOP leadership, the Republicans -- Michael N. Castle (Del.), Charlie Dent (Pa.), Phil English (Pa.), Scott Garrett (N.J.), Jim Gerlach (Pa.) and Tom Petri (Wis.) -- said they saw no reason to wait for testimony by Petraeus and Crocker.

"While we are hopeful that their report will show progress, we should not wait any longer to come together in support of a responsible post-surge strategy to safely bring our troops home to their families," the letter said.

...closer to the Lamar Alexander/Ken Salazar "Remember the Iraq Study Group" resolution, which is easily circumvented by the White House and makes everybody feel good for about 10 seconds before they realize it's completely toothless.

Very depressing.

Joe Isuzu Petraeus

He's lying.

Contrary to claims made by Gen. David Petraeus that sectarian violence has decreased dramatically, the GAO report is unable to report any progress on this front. Moreover, it notes that “average daily attacks against civilians” has remained unchanged:

It is unclear whether sectarian violence in Iraq has decreased–a key security benchmark–since it is difficult to measure perpetrators’ intents, and various other measures of population security from different sources show differing trends. As displayed in figure 4, average daily attacks against civilians have remained unchanged from February to July 2007.

They are not counting car bombs as deaths, that's how they're getting to these numbers. Because they're only focusing on "sectarian violence," I guess.

The GAO Comptroller all but charged Gen. Petraeus and the Bush Administration with lying.

While Walker wasn’t privy to the Pentagon’s information, Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) said he recently met with Gen. Petraeus and was shown “the data in August.” Coleman said the data is “very clear about a reduction in violence. General Petraeus has those charts,” Coleman explained. Walker responded by hinting that an unclassified version of the GAO report contains more explanation of the administration’s claims about reductions in sectarian violence. He said:

"Without getting into detail, let’s just say there are several different sources within the administration on violence. And those sources do not agree. So I don’t know what Gen. Petraeus is giving you. I don’t know which source he’s using. But part of the problem we had in reaching a conclusion about sectarian violence is there are multiple sources showing different levels of violence with different trends."

This is nothing more than political spin from a military commander. It's patently obvious, and not even a master of PR like David Petraeus can hold off the truth.

UPDATE: You have an Iraqi national security adviser who would rather watch cartoons than talk to American legislators. Do you really think there's any semblance of progress?

UPDATE II: Hilzoy takes apart the GOP talking points.

Potemkin Village

Kevin Drum has been all over David Petraeus' PR surge to bamboozle lawmakers, the press and the public, and today he finds the mother of all deceptions. That Dora market, tourist destination number one for all visiting delegations? "It's like an Indiana market!" "Five rugs for five bucks!" That market? Yeah, it's made of papier maché:

"This is General Petraeus's baby," said Staff Sgt. Josh Campbell, 24, of Winfield, Kan., as he set out on a patrol near the market on a hot evening in mid-August.

....[But] visits to key U.S. bases and neighborhoods in and around Baghdad show that recent improvements are sometimes tenuous, temporary, even illusory....Even U.S. soldiers assigned to protect Petraeus's showcase remain skeptical. "Personally, I think it's a false representation," Campbell said, referring to the portrayal of the Dora market as an emblem of the surge's success. "But what can I say? I'm just doing my job and don't ask questions."

....After the delegation left, Maj. Ron Minty , 36, said that the generals had wanted 300 shops open for business by July 1. By the day of the delegation's visit, 303 had opened....Still, the Dora market is a Potemkin village of sorts. The U.S. military hands out $2,500 grants to shop owners to open or improve their businesses. The military has fixed windows and doors and even helped rebuild shops that had burned down, soldiers and others said...."The Americans are giving money, so they're opening up stores," said Falah Hassan Fadhil, 27, who sells cosmetics.

1st Lt. Jose Molina, who is in charge of monitoring and disbursing the grant money, said the U.S. military includes barely operating stores in its tally. "Although they sell dust, they are open for business," said Molina, 35, from Dallas. "They intend to sell goods or they may just have a handful of goods. But they are still counted."

This is no more a sign of progress than a Hollywood movie set would be. You can secure one area and turn it into your perfect indicator but that doesn't make it ACTUALLY indicative of anything. Until you look at overall goals instead of random anecdotes you'll never get the real story. And if you read the independent judgment of the overall goals, you see that they are failing.

UPDATE: Speaking of independent judgments, why is Michael O'Hanlon getting another chance to explain his views on the surge in the New York Times? How about one of the researchers on the GAO report? Somebody without an agenda?

The Truth About Iraq Slowly Seeps Out

The Washington Post has more on that leaked GAO report showing that "progress" in Iraq is a relative term.

Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration [...]

The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. "While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved."

"Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised. While it makes no policy recommendations, the draft suggests that future administration assessments "would be more useful" if they backed up their judgments with more details and "provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies."

My, but this is sure different than the line the Administration and its defenders have been peddling. I wonder what they're excuse is going to be... aah, I see, they didn't know they were taking the benchmarks pass/fail.

Johndroe emphasized that "while we've all seen progress in some areas, especially on the security front, it's not surprising the GAO would make this assessment, given the difficult congressionally mandated measurement they had to follow." [...]

The May legislation imposed a stricter standard on the GAO, requiring an up-or-down judgment on whether each benchmark has been met. On that basis, the GAO draft says that three of the benchmarks have been met while 13 have not. Despite its strict mandate, the GAO draft concludes that two benchmarks -- the formation of governmental regions and the allocation and expenditure of $10 billion for reconstruction -- have been "partially met." Little of the allocated money, it says, has been spent.

In other words, what you'll hear from the spinmeisters all day is that progress is being made, but the benchmarks haven't been fully achieved yet so even if they're 90% done it doesn't matter. This, it will be argued, means that we need more time, another Friedman Unit, because we're just so very close to fulfilling the goal. That, by the way, is nonsense. Only the headline gives the number of benchmarks met; within the body of the report are all the gory details. The "all-or-nothing" defense is crap. In fact, at the time the President thought it was a grat idea. He was measurable standards for students in our nation's schools but not for Iraq. It's the soft bigotry of low expectations all over again.

Get this, the report came out today because the guy knew it would get submarined by partisans:

The person who provided the draft report to The Post said it was being conveyed from a government official who feared that its pessimistic conclusions would be watered down in the final version -- as some officials have said happened with security judgments in this month's National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.

They've apparently already started doing that:

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said that after reviewing a draft of the Government Accountability Office report — which has not yet been made public — policy officials “made some factual corrections” and “offered some suggestions on a few of the actual grades” assigned by the GAO. … “We have provided the GAO with information which we believe will lead them to conclude that a few of the benchmark grades should be upgraded from ‘not met’ to ‘met,’” Morrell said.

Meanwhile, the commanders, the ones that President Bush always listens to, are cashing out of this nightmare.

In a sign that top commanders are divided over what course to pursue in Iraq, the Pentagon said Wednesday that it won't make a single, unified recommendation to President Bush during next month's strategy assessment, but instead will allow top commanders to make individual presentations [...]

Military analysts called the move unusual for an institution that ordinarily does not air its differences in public, especially while its troops are deployed in combat.

"The professional military guys are going to the non-professional military guys and saying 'Resolve this,'" said Jeffrey White, a military analyst for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "That's what it sounds like."

White said it suggests that the military commanders want to be able to distance themselves from Iraq strategy by making it clear that whatever course is followed is the president's decision, not what commanders agreed on.

They're probably sick and tired of being set up as the fall guys, with the President always saying that everything is their decision. They're not idiots, they can see what's coming.

That major reconciliation deal by Iraqi political leaders? Fraud.

At the beginning of this week, Iraqi political leaders announced in a press conference that they had reached a major deal on several of the US-recommended benchmarks for political progress in Iraq. Between the resignation of Fredo and Wide Stance Larry Craig and all the other hoopla that has occurred this week, this event got somewhat ignored. But it would have been a linchpin to the Petraeus-Crocker White House Iraq report scheduled for the middle of next month. Finally, we are starting to see real political progress, a coming together by the Shiite and Sunni and even Kurdish groups to reach solutions on such issues as de-Ba'athification and freeing some Sunni prisoners and more.

Except for one thing... it was a complete shadow play. Total bullshit.

From Baghdad, Charles Crain writes that the first sign that this was not much of a deal was that one of the participants isn't even part of the government, and has no plans to return:

But a day after signing the deal the country's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, announced that the Sunni bloc that walked out of the government August 1 still had no plans to return. "Our previous experience with the government has not been encouraging," he explained, "and we will not go back just because of promises, unless there are real and tangible reforms."

The deal was made between the figureheads at the top of the government and some of the various factions, but not others which are very significant and crucial to any parliamentary success.

And Sunday's deal was more notable for who wasn't involved than who was. The agreement didn't include representatives from the bloc loyal to Shi'ite politician and militia chieftain Moqtada al-Sadr. A senior Western diplomat earlier this month praised Maliki for distancing himself from Sadr, widely viewed as the Shi'ite leader most responsible for sectarian violence, but American officials are well aware that Sadr and his followers cannot simply be marginalized.

The Sadrists are a powerful presence in parliament and in several key government ministries. Their Mahdi Army militia has infiltrated the Iraqi Security Forces. As a practical matter, an agreement to reconcile with former Ba'athists is next to meaningless without Sadr's acquiescence. And the Sadrists weren't absent simply from Sunday's deal. At the moment they are not even part of the government; like their Sunni adversaries they are engaged in a boycott.

So this was a major deal between one piece of the Shiite block, a Sunni politician who isn't even part of the government, and none of the other major factions. As we've seen today, Sadr isn't even totally in control of his own militia, who would certainly be able to veto the move for any Ba'athists trying to reclaim their positions. The Parliament hasn't met in a month, and there's no indication they would actually pass any of these recommendations made by this "panel of leaders" which is emasculated politically. It's a fake document with no staying power.

One of the sharpest commentators on Iraq, Marc Lynch, adds:

Jalal Talabani's emergency summit (last week) produced a political coalition based upon the Maliki 4 - a sectarian four party bloc (the two Kurdish parties, SIIC and Dawa) which prefers to call itself "moderate" (it isn't) or "the majority" (it isn't). A few days ago, the Maliki 4 managed to get Tareq al-Hashimi of the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Tawafuq Bloc to sign on to an agreement which promised movement on some key issues, including Sunni prisoners and an end to deBaathification.

This agreement was likely produced for the sole purpose of giving Ryan Crocker something to bring back to Congress (and is what I expected weeks ago). But it doesn't actually solve anything: Hashemi has made very clear that he has no intention of rejoining Maliki's government, the agreements exist only on paper at this point, and nothing has been done about the deeply sectarian nature of what passes for the Iraqi state.

Hashemi likely agreed to sit up on stage for this kabuki because he's just as constrained by Sunni forces who want something to show for working with Maliki. But when this fails they are just as likely to completely break with the government and no longer even make a show of anything but open warfare.

Ilan Goldenberg has more, and notes that nobody has yet seen this "grand compromise" touted by Maliki and his cadre, probably because it's totally meaningless. Plus:

Back in early July the cabinet (Or should I say half cabinet , since all of the Sunnis as well as the Sadrists were already boycotting) approved an oil law which the Kurds and Sunnis both objected to. You had two to three days of news stories about it, but it became pretty apparent very quickly that there was no chance it would actually pass parliament. Conveniently, this happened one week before the Administration was set to give its midterm July 15 report on Iraq.

Now, we have Maliki taking heat from all sides and interestingly enough we have a "major" breakthrough.

Maliki is both trying to save his own bacon from a lobbyist-administered coup, and trying to help keep the American support that he needs to survive, so he concocted this little deal, which plays right into the hands of the GOP spin machine. The dissembling is not limited to The Green Zone Fog, as described by Rep. Tauscher today. There's going to be happy talk everywhere, a surge of lies which those who want an end to the occupation of Iraq will have to bat down in our own private Whack-A-Mole. We can point to nonpartisan reports, like the GAO's which will be released next week:

Congressional auditors have determined that the Iraqi government has failed to meet the vast majority of political and military goals laid out by lawmakers to assess President Bush's Iraq war strategy, The Associated Press has learned.

The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, will report that at least 13 of the 18 benchmarks to measure the surge of U.S. troops to Iraq are unfulfilled ahead of a Sept. 15 deadline for Bush to give a detailed accounting of the situation eight months after he announced the policy, according to three officials familiar with the matter.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report has not been made public, also said the administration is preparing a case to play down its findings, arguing that Congress ordered the GAO to use unfair, "all or nothing'' standards when compiling the document.

There's just going to be a mass of bullshit coming in September. This so-called "political deal" is part of it. Be aware, and step lively.

Iraq In Fragments

• Residents in Baghdad had full electricity during Saddam's reign (other areas of the country had less). After massive bungling by the Coalition Provisional Authority, who normalized electricity production all over the country even though the biggest demand was easily in Baghdad, and after four-plus years of war, Baghdad now can count on "only an hour or two a day" of electricity. And you think Baghdad's residents feel like they're being liberated? I'm sure they feel like this is deliberate. And the fact that the US government will stop measuring this indicator doesn't inspire confidence.

• The US Embassy in Iraq: proudly built with forced labor. This is confirmed by some whistleblowers during a House Oversight Committee hearing.

• The one bit of good news out of Iraq recently is that the national soccer team reached the finals of the Asia Cup. This united Iraqis, who poured out into the streets to celebrate. Which is when suicide bombers decided to strike, killing 55. This is deplorable and tragic.

• The enemy of my enemy...

U.S. forces in Iraq are striking a variety of "handshake agreements" with Iraqi insurgents and militia groups, sometimes resulting in the release of fighters detained for attacking coalition forces, U.S. military officials said in several recent interviews.

Such informal deals mark a significant tactical shift in the Iraq war and represent a potentially risky effort to enlist former U.S. foes in the battle against hard-line militants. Despite a White House report last week concluding that a formal amnesty initiative would be "counterproductive" for Iraq today, U.S. military officials in Iraq believe that successful counterinsurgency campaigns almost always involve some form of forgiveness as a means to ending the fighting and achieving political reconciliation.

This has always worked SO WELL in the past (see Hussein, Saddam and Qaeda, Al).

• The political situation is going swimmingly - as long as you're talking about an individual who can't swim:

Despite the high stakes here, the Iraqi parliament appears to be deliberating at a pace to rival plodding legislative bodies around the world.

Thursday's session, the 50th of the year, convened half an hour late.

A bell rang in the Convention Center in the fortified Green Zone reminding members to take their seats and raise their hands for roll call (the electronic system is broken). It showed 145 in attendance. That dropped to 137 as some members walked out after the first vote. The speaker on occasion has dismissed parliament for falling below the quorum of 100 legislators, but on Thursday, they proceeded. The opening Muslim prayer and 275-name roll call took half an hour, a quarter of the time, in what turned out to be a roughly two-hour session.

Not that the American ship of state is so lightning fast, and not that quick democracy is in any way automatically good democracy, but do you get the feeling that these members of Parliament weren't even given so much as a small briefing on how to run things? It would certainly fit in with the overall level of atrocious planning.

• There's going to be another September report from the Government Accountability Office, and I'm guessing this one will be far more revelatory than the one administered by General Petraeus. And far more honest.

• Finally, Richard Engel gave a really incredible report this week, which challenged the biases that Americans have about this war being all about our goals, and how our ignorance about the region is a key indicator for why we are failing:

The perception portrayed by the White House and Iraqi government in Baghdad—and commonly reflected in the news media—is that the violence in Iraq is a fundamental struggle between two opposing teams: Freedom Lovers and Freedom Haters [...]

While there are certainly elements of truth to this narrative, the reality in this fractured country is much more complex.

This is a country that doesn't really exist, has been held together by arbitrary British lines on a map and strongman, and where passions go much deeper than the point of our involvement.

As pilgrims marched by our Baghdad bureau on their way to Karbala, I could hear them chant: "Kul yom Ashura! Kul ard Karbala!" or "Every day is Ashura! All land is Karbala!" Simply put, they were saying, everyday and everywhere in Iraq, Shi'ites are reliving Hussein's battles in Karbala. There was no talk of democracy or the Ba'ath Party, Saddam Hussein or the U.S. troop "surge," or other subjects that dominate the Iraq debate in the United States. Instead, it is apparent that many of Iraq's Shi'ites believe they are fighting a different war from the one many in the United States see their troops engaged in here, and for different reasons.

Many Sunni groups in Iraq are also fighting a war that seems to have little in common with the official U.S. and Iraqi characterization of the conflict. Al-Qaeda in Iraq and its allies recently formed an umbrella group they call Dowlit al-Islam, or the Islamic State in Iraq. After the group claimed responsibility for bombing the Iraqi parliament building in Baghdad's Green Zone in April, the group issued an Internet statement explaining its motivation. The group said the suicide bomber who attacked parliament's cafeteria and killed one lawmaker was motivated to kill "the traitors and collaborators" who had sold out to a "Zionist-Persian" conspiracy to control Iraq. From what they wrote, they seem to believe they are fighting Israel, Iran and their agents, not the U.S. mission to bring democracy to Iraq.

These visions of war are just two of the competing power struggles that U.S. troops in Iraq are trying to quell; the reality is there are many wars within the war.

This is well worth reading. One of our biggest mistakes historically is failing to understand the situation on the ground in other countries when we burst in and try to influence them. I wish somebody with political power would author a speech in praise of KNOWLEDGE as the reall "intelligence" capability we need to bolster.