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 said Pentagon officials had told Republican leaders that the GAO had relied on outdated information.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.

The Iraq Progress Report

There are two big stories today that I've been monitoring. The second, I'll leave for a later post. But the first is the release of the first progress report from the Bush Administration about progress on political benchmarks set by Congress for the Iraqi government. The report is middling, even from the White House's perspective:

Iraq has achieved only limited military and political progress toward a democratic society, the Bush administration said Thursday in a report that became prelude to a House vote on ordering a U.S. troop withdrawal by spring.

''The security situation in Iraq remains complex and extremely challenging'' the report concluded. The economic picture is uneven, it said, and the government has not yet enacted vital political reconciliation legislation [...]

Describing a document produced by his administration at Congress' insistence, he said there was satisfactory progress by the Iraqi government toward meeting eight of 18 so-called benchmarks, unsatisfactory progress on eight more and mixed results on the others.

Not much of daylight there. But you'll be completely shocked to know that the truth is even more ghastly. The National Security Network did a review of the benchmarks that the Bush Administration said showed progress, and, um, they didn't. The NSN report is a thorough point-by-point deconstruction of the entire document. A sample:

Benchmark (viii)


Assessment: The Government of Iraq has made satisfactory progress toward establishing supporting political, media, economic, and services committees in support of the Baghdad Security Plan.

Response: Establishing committees has had little impact on Baghdad’s population which still lacks access to many basic services like water and electricity.

In late May and early June, Baghdad suffered severe power and water shortages of up to 23 hours per day. Baghdad’s water pumping stations require electricity and currently, more than 8 of the 12 supply lines are down. With average highs topping 110˚F in July and August the situation has the potential to get even worse. Meanwhile, Baghdadis are forced to find their own water supply. Neighborhood co-ops are purchasing and running their own fuel-driven generators. Those who can afford to try and dig wells in their backyard, an expensive operation which also seriously affects the water table. [NSN Staff Interviews. Institute for War & Peace Reporting, 6/8/07]

Baghdad is still averaging only 5.6 hours of electricity per day. This number represents only 20% of prewar production levels. The Bush Administration’s Coalition Provisional Authority initially targeted 6,000 megawatts per day by June of 2004 and made the creation of a stable Iraqi electrical and water infrastructure a top priority. Iraq is still 40% below those levels. The average amount of electricity generated nationally in May (The last full month of reporting) was only 3,722 megawatts, a 6% drop-off from prewar levels. This, despite an effort to distribute electricity more equitably on a national level. [Brookings Institution, 7/9/07]

Not enough potable water exists in Iraq. According to the International Red Cross, “both the quantity and quality of drinking water in Iraq remain insufficient despite limited improvement…water is often contaminated, owing to the poor repair of sewage and water-supply networks and the discharge of untreated sewage into rivers, which are the main source of drinking water.” [Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, 4/30/07]

That's really good stuff, and I advise you to read the whole thing. My favorite is where the Administration assessed that the Iraqis had made satisfactory progress on political rights for minority parties, and the one-line rejoinder is "The Sunnis - one of the largest and most important minority groups – are currently boycotting the government."

It's expected that the Bush Administration would fudge the numbers, but the fact that they could only fudge them to show mixed results shows you how desperate the situation is in Iraq. A country where bank robbers could steal $300 million dollars and it's not even that big a story; a country where people can be killed in the Green Zone, which may be one of the most heavily fortified places on Earth; when the only legitimate change in strategy accompanying the escalation, placing troops in fortified outposts closer to the population, is totally backfiring; you have an incomparable, intractable mess on your hands, and no spinning can change that.

Barack Obama came out of the gate with a damning rebuke:

Does this White House think that we don't know how to turn on our televisions? Don't tell us we're making progress in Iraq when the last three months have been some of the deadliest since this war began for our brave troops who have sacrificed so much. And don't tell us it's progress when the Iraqi leadership has done nothing – nothing – to take the political steps necessary to end their civil war. This war has only fueled the terrorist threat whose strength is now at pre-9/11 levels. It should never have been authorized, never have been waged, and it must end now.

That's very strong, and Obama can afford to be, because the American people have figured this out. We're all waiting for a report whose conclusions we already know, to borrow a phrase, and the public doesn't feel there's any need to wait longer than the four-plus years that we already have.

The question of course is, what is the Congress prepared to do about it? I think pretty much nothing. Republicans are clearly going to continue to obstruct because the White House has signaled that nothing different is happening. And while this report is welcome from a political standpoint, to use as a club to bash Republicans, it is meaningless from the standpoint of being enforceable, because the benchmarks are all waivable, as per the capitulation funding bill passed by Congress before Memorial Day. Todat, the President exercised a waiver option he should have never had:

“Economic development funds are critical to helping Iraq make this political progress. Today, I’m exercising the waiver authority granted me by Congress to release a substantial portion of those funds.”

Harry Reid has signaled that the "Pretend to Adopt the Pretend Withdrawal from the Iraq Study Bill" amendment has, in his words, less teeth than a toothless tiger. So Republicans are unlikely to vote for anything enforceable, and the Democratic leadership is unlikely to authorize a vote on anything unenforceable. The House will likely pass their version of Reed-Levin today (which calls for a withdrawal in 120 days), but the Senate will continue to gum up the works. What's the game plan?

Mimi Katz offered the best one I've seen:

So what should the Senate do next? It is time for Harry Reid to take off the gloves. When conservative Southern Dems and their allies filibustered civil rights legislation in the 1960s, they had real filibusters. A Senator got the floor and refused to give it up, talking forever, yielding to colleagues when they needed a bathroom break. Cots were set up, and the debate went on for days and nights. Sometimes Senators talked about why the bill was bad, but sometimes they read the telephone book or otherwise wasted time. No one who wanted a vote could get the floor to call for a vote. In those days a petition to cut off debate (cloture motion) required 66 votes. Eventually LBJ was able to twist arms after the Kennedy Assosination, and the logjam was broken for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The rules were changed to require only 60 votes for cloture. But to get anything done, now once the minority party (or sometimes even just one Senator) signals an intent to filibuster, a cloture vote is held, and that is it.

What Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid needs to do now is to call GOP Minority leader Mitch McConnell's bluff and require the GOP to actually filibuster. Bring up Webb-Hagel again, or do it with Levin-Reed. But make them filibuster. Make it plain to the Senators that there will be no August recess until the Defense bill is done, and if the GOP doesn't want to face losing an upperdown vote, they can filibuster for the whole country to see. The TV stations will love the theater, and the GOP will look as stupid as they did when they staged Bill Frist's talk-a-thon on judges when the Dems wouldn't allow up or down votes.

That's the kind of creative thinking this moment demands if anything is to be done about ending our occupation of Iraq. A general strike in the population is another idea. Let's bring this economy to a standstill.

UPDATE: The House passed a redeployment bill 223-201, getting yes votes from just four Republicans (Ron Paul, who has voted for something like this in the past, didn't vote). That's what we're up against.

Warner Watch

One thing I didn't notice before: John Warner voted for Sen. Webb's readiness bill. At one level, this may be just comity with a fellow Virginian's bill. But at another level, this could be a significant crack in the armor. If nothing major is done this time around, obviously these kinds of bills and ideas will be coming back around in September. Sen. Warner, who I always considered the key Senator in the GOP on these issues, has now stated his willingness to vote for - not just talk about - meaningful policy around Iraq. This certainly puts him in a better class than Sens. Lugar and Voinovich and Domenici, who are all talk. Or maybe they're waiting to vote for that supa-awsom "Pretend To Adopt The Pretend Hard Deadlines of the Iraq Study Group" bill and nothing else.

Warner was extremely quiet about this vote, so any Republican looking for political cover wouldn't have known that they could hide behind his vote. He just went out and did it. Didn't make a big speech or a conference call to reporters. Just voted to support the troops. Which is exactly what this quite narrow bill was. To hear it from Sen. Webb:

A clear majority of the Senate—56 Members – sent a strong message today in favor of ensuring responsible deployment cycles for our men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. I regret that we did not reach the 60-vote margin that would have allowed this amendment to prevail. It was offered in the spirit of bipartisanship. It was offered with the intention of protecting the well-being of our troops.

“A Republican filibuster kept this amendment from passing by an up-or-down vote. Americans are tired of this kind of posturing. The troops and their families don’t want to hear about political, procedural maneuvers. What they really care about are results. They are looking for concrete actions that will protect the well-being of our men and women in uniform.

“The question on this amendment is not whether you support this war or whether you do not. It is not whether you want to wait until July or September to see where one particular set of bench marks or summaries might be taking us. The question is this: more than four years into ground operations in Iraq, we owe stability, and a reasonable cycle of deployment, to the men and women who are carrying our nation’s burden. That is the question. And that was the purpose of this amendment.”

The admakers are going to have a field day damning those who voted against this (Sen. Cornyn, I'm looking at you). John Warner's up this cycle and he maybe doesn't want the popular Webb campaigning against him and maybe that's all this is about. But at some point, Warner will have to go public. He did so today, in a small way.

P.S. My prediction is still that this Pretend to Adopt the ISG Report amendment from Ken Salazar and Pete Domenici will end up passing, even though, if the President were to take the unusual step of actually listening to Congress and following through on the amendment's goals, would be the worst possible situation.

Many would like to reduce the U.S. commitment to something like half of today's troop presence there. But it is much harder to find a mission for the remaining 60,000 to 80,000 soldiers that makes any sense militarily....

The more we shift out of combat missions and into training, the harder we make the trainers' job and the more exposed they become. It is unrealistic to expect that we can pull back to some safe yet productive mission of training but not fighting -- this would be neither safe nor productive.

If the surge is unacceptable, the better option is to cut our losses and withdraw altogether. In fact, the substantive case for either extreme -- surge or outright withdrawal -- is stronger than for any policy between. The surge is a long-shot gamble. But middle-ground options leave us with the worst of both worlds: continuing casualties but even less chance of stability in exchange. Moderation and centrism are normally the right instincts in American politics, and many lawmakers in both parties desperately want to find a workable middle ground on Iraq. But while the politics are right, the military logic is not.

David Broder just threw up in his mouth.

Panic! at the Disco.

The White House is worried about the shifting on Capitol Hill around the Iraq debate. Repeat, they're not worried about the SAFETY AND WELL-BEING OF THE TROOPS IN THE FIELD OR OUR NATIONAL SECURITY, they're worried that Congress might come and take their war away.

What the White House ought to be worried about is the fact that the Iraqi government has not hit one critical target that the Congress set up as benchmarks for progress toward a political solution. Zero. Zilch.

(By the way, though there's a lot to be said about the capitulation in May by the Democrats, and I've said a lot, one thing they were able to extract is a mandate for progress reports. The first one has revealed this total lack of benchmark progress, and it comes precisely at the time when the defense budget is up for debate. To the extent that it may accelerate the end of the war, good show.)

What the White House out to be worried about is the 140,000 Turkish troops amassed at the Iraqi border, a potential crisis that they've done absolutely nothing to stop or even slow down.

What the White House ought to be worried about is the 12 billion dollars a month that this country is spending on wars that are not making any significant progress, and are in fact backsliding into catastrophe. You can bet that the Democratic Congress is worried about that.

What the White House probably does not have to worry about is the behavior of Senate Republicans, who will huff and puff in public but in the end never commit to one amendment that sides with the Defeatocrats.

With the Senate taking up the Defense Department authorization bill during the next two weeks, Senate Republican Conference Chairman Jon Kyl (Ariz.) said Monday that recent GOP statements urging Bush to change his war strategy likely would not translate into many votes for Democratic proposals to redeploy or withdraw troops from Iraq by early next year. Kyl added that most Republican Senators believe September remains the appropriate time to judge the success of the U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq.

"We are quite unified as a Conference on most of the amendments and the big issues," Kyl said. "Some in the Republican Conference might join some of the Democrat amendments, but, by and large, our approach will be consistent with the administration."

Kyl could be wrong, but I don't think he is. If I had to guess, I'd gather that the Salazar-Domenici "pretend to adopt the pretend Iraq Study Group recommendations" will pass, and the President will make a big show out of saying "We always embraced the Iraq Study Group report," and they'll set a vision for withdrawal if they hit a triple bank shot and everything goes just perfectly (because everything ALWAYS goes perfectly in Iraq), and of course it'll be bullshit and a complete rejection of earlier rhetoric and that will generate fearsome Think Progress blog posts, but beyond that nobody will really care, and the punditocracy will call it a great triumph for sensible centrism, the Republican kind, and nobody will bother to point out that the Salazar-Domenici bill is nonbinding and has no force of law, and in the Office of the Vice President, Fourthbranch and his staff will be high-fiving each other and getting out the maps for Tehran.

Harry Reid, prove me wrong.

The War At Home On Iraq Policy Begins

Today Democrats in the Senate got down to work, with the unassailable Jim Webb in the forefront:

“Now in the fifth year of ground operations in Iraq, this deck of cards has come crashing down, and it’s landing heavily on the backs of soldiers and Marines who have been deployed again and again while the rest of the country sits back and debates Iraq as an intellectual or emotional exercise,” Webb said. “We’ve reached the point where we can no longer allow the ever-changing nature of this Administration’s operational policies to drive the way our troops are being deployed. In fact, the reverse is true. The availability of our troops should be the main determinant of how ground operations should be conducted.”

This is a rerun of Jack Murtha's "readiness strategy," which would have worked if House Democrats were committed to it. And it's only one of a series of proposals which will be attached to the defense authorization bill. There will also be a return of the Feingold-Reid legislation to cut off funding after a date certain, Levin-Reed to set a withdrawal date, a de-authorization of the resolution for war submitted by Hillary Clinton, and the Salazar-Domenici "Let's pretend we're doing something" bill, which unsurprisingly has the greatest chance of full passage:

How It Would Work: Sens. Ken Salazar and Domenici put together a bill that would commit the Bush administration to implementing the recommendations of last year's bipartisan Iraq commission led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton. Though the commission had over 70 points of advice, functionally, the strategy set by the commission looks somewhat similar to Levin-Reed. While it wouldn't call for a troop pullout after April 1, 2008, the commission did recommend that the U.S. end its combat mission by then, leaving U.S. troops to train Iraqi security forces, fight al-Qaeda and protect themselves.

Likelihood of Passage: If it gets into the bill, its chances look very good. The Salazar-Domenici plan is the only truly bipartisan potential amendment. It is the plan most likely to attract Republican votes, since it doesn't embrace withdrawal. And as Bush has pivoted lately to embracing the Iraq Study Group after initially scorning it, the White House will find Salazar-Domenici the most palatable measure on offer in the senate.

Political Purpose: An acrimony-free bipartisan abandonment of the war without an abandonment of the U.S. commitment to Iraq. Quite possibly the best option for the GOP to argue that it's winding down the war without repudiating it, because it would allow GOP senators to back away from combat operations in Iraq without committing themselves to withdrawal. While Democrats wouldn't get withdrawal from Salazar-Domenici, they would be able to claim that they successfully won over many Republicans -- perhaps leading to a bipartisan withdrawal bill during the next legislative fight.

I highly recommend Spencer Ackerman's rundown of the legislative options.

In addition, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq is moving swiftly to make this summer hell for wayward Republicans and to move the nation on a course to ending our involvement in this occupation. It's a coalition of some of the strongest organizations in the progressive movement. It's already impacting things in Kentucky.

The public is unwilling to let the Congress off the hook for this for much longer. Republicans clearly sense that the walls are caving in. The goals for anyone who wants to end the war is to get out the messaging on that sham Salazar bill. Because that'll be the safety valve where Republicans will flow. If that's not seen as good enough, the pressure can be racheted up (or maybe as a prelude for the next fight, although my sense is that nobody in the public wants a next fight).

Meanwhile, we have an embassy where people are getting sick from the formaldehyde smell that is a symtpom of the construction problems there. Just thought you'd like to know. Oh, and this guy warns of great chaos if we leave Iraq. Chaos like the stuff that happened this weekend, I guess:

Mr. Zebari was speaking after a violent weekend in which more than 220 people were killed in Iraq, including 150 by a truck bomb in one of the deadliest single attacks since the American invasion in March 2003 [...]

Mr. Zebari’s comments came after some Sunni and Shiite leaders called on Iraqi civilians to take up arms to defend themselves, amid frustration that Iraqi security forces had failed to halt the deadly suicide attacks.

Good thing it's not so CHAOTIC now.

Doolittle: I'm an America-hating peacenik!

The rallying cry for John Doolittle these days appears to be: "What do we want? Some vague and undefined drawdown of US troops from Iraq at some point in the not-as-yet-determined future. When do we want it? Now!"

Rep. John Doolittle, a conservative California congressman, today joined others in his party rapidly deserting the president on the Iraq war.

At a town hall meeting in Rocklin and then in a meeting with the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee he questioned whether the conflict was worth the loss of more American lives. He said U.S. troops should be pulled back from the front lines "as soon as possible" and the fighting turned over to Iraqi forces.

A longtime supporter of the war, Doolittle called the situation in Iraq a "quagmire" on Thursday. "We've got to get off the front lines as soon as possible," Doolittle said at Rocklin City Hall, the Bee reported. "And in my mind that means something like the end of the year. We just can't continue to tolerate these kinds of losses.

"I don't want to keep having our people dying on the front lines. I am increasingly convinced that we never are going to succeed in actually ending people dying (in Iraq). I think it's going to be a constant conflict ... and if that is going to happen ... it needs to be the Iraqis dying and not the Americans."

First of all, the Iraqis are dying, in enormous numbers. Second, it's wholly unsurprising that the Republicans coming out of the woodwork now to condemn the occupation of Iraq happen to be the same ones worried about their re-election prospects. Third, Doolittle doesn't say that he would endorse or vote for any Democratic plan to actually end our involvement in Iraq or draw down American troops, so this talk is about as useful as an old guy in a bar in Roseville jabbering about Iraq.

What Doolittle will probably end up signing onto is this horrible bill calling for the implementation of the results of the Iraq Study Group, which sets up so many conditions and unreachable goals before any withdrawal can be ordered that it has the effect of keeping troops in Iraq forever. Plus, it's a nonbinding "sense of the Congress" resolution. If Doolittle is serious about ending the occupation, there are plenty of bills he can co-sponsor. It's not about talk, but action.

Howie Klein at Down With Tyranny has more.

Domenici Off The Reservation

I think what we're going to see is some resolution in the Senate pass to adopt all the Iraq Study Group recommendations (Democrats should swiftly couple it with their already-passed bill to adopt the 9-11 Commission recommendations). That'll be as far as Republicans go in breaking with the President. Still, that's a somewhat significant shift, and Pete Domenici kicked the ball down that road today:

In a speech earlier today in Albuquerque, Domenici announced his support for legislation currently championed by Senators Ken Salazar (D-CO) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) to make the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group into the official U.S. policy — in other words, Domenici now supports a gradual pulldown of the American presence in Iraq, and a renewed effort at reaching out to other regional players in the Middle East like Iran and Syria.

"I have carefully studied the Iraq situation, and believe we cannot continue asking our troops to sacrifice indefinitely while the Iraqi government is not making measurable progress to move its country forward," Domenici said. "I do not support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq or a reduction in funding for our troops. But I do support a new strategy that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path to coming home."

The bill calls for redeploying a large portion of American forces out of Iraq by the first quarter of 2008, except for those numbers deemed necessary for protecting U.S. infrastructure, training Iraq forces, and conducting special operations. So while a significant number of Americans would no doubt remain, they would not be charged with everyday constabulary duties and other aspects of nation-building.

We don't need a residual force in Iraq, and I don't know how the "special operations" would be any different than what most combat forces are doing right now (certainly the Bush Administration will justify things that way if pressed). This remains significant, because the way Congress ends a war is by chipping away bit by bit. This would stop the surge, no strings attached, instead of Robert Gates' crazy "surge-for-permanent-bases" deal. It would put the majority opinion of the legislative branch on the side of drawing down involvement in the Middle East instead of moving on to the next war like Joe "Iran has declared war on us" Lieberman. A smart Democratic majority would pounce on this and keep pushing, with more and more votes designed to weaken Republican support which is already buckling at the knees. Domenici is up for re-election in 2008, and so obviously him and other Republicans can be reversed, if not in a meaningful way then by degrees. They have to keep the pressure on.

UPDATE: That said, I do agree that Domenici's statement means nothing unless he's prepared to do something about it; that is, put his vote where his mouth is. Dick Lugar kind of failed that test. At least Domenici is signing on to a specific bill.

UPDATE II: Great statement by Harry Reid, essentially telling Domenici and others that talk is cheap and they'll have to back up their words:

"Senator Domenici is correct to assess that the Administration's war strategy is misguided. But we will not see a much-needed change of course in Iraq until Republicans like Senators Domenici, Lugar and Voinovich are willing to stand up to President Bush and his stubborn clinging to a failed policy – and more importantly, back up their words with action. Beginning with the Defense Authorization bill next week, Republicans will have the opportunity to not just say the right things on Iraq, but vote the right way too so that we can bring the responsible end to this war that the American people demand and deserve.

Rudy's Bad Day

This article is painful to read. I wish I could have seen Giuliani's face as he responded to damaging question after damaging question.

Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani, whose tough talk on terrorism is the centerpiece of his campaign, said Wednesday that it was a mistake to join a bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which he later quit.

"I thought it would work, but then after a month or two I realized the idea that I was possibly going to run for president would be inconsistent with that," he said [...]

Giuliani also talked about current New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who announced he left the Republican Party, fueling speculation he could run for president as an independent.

"I like Mike very much," Giuliani said. "I am disappointed that he left the Republican Party. I still respect what he has done as mayor." [...]

Giuliani was in Iowa, delivering a speech about fiscal conservatism, but was forced to address problems with his campaign.

South Carolina State Treasurer Thomas Ravenel was removed as chairman of Giuliani's campaign in that state after he was indicted on cocaine charges.

"Any federal indictment is a very serious case," Giuliani said. "I don't know anything about it. There's no light I can shed on it. He stepped down as having anything to do with the campaign."

At what point did he take a swing at a staffer after that news conference?

We're 18 months out. Rudy will not be able to handle this kind of questioning without flipping. Please, please, PLEASE, Republicans, nominate this guy. I want to see the headline "PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE HANGS JOURNALIST FROM A HOTEL WINDOW."

Hmm... making money, saving America... I'll go with making money.

Please, please, PLEASE Republicans, pick Rudy Giuliani as your candidate.

Today we learned that Mr. "Terrorist War On Us" guy, the boldest and strongest leader on how to take the fight to the Islamomurderfascists, walked out of the Iraq Study Group to go raise some money.

Rudolph Giuliani's membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel's top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said.

Giuliani left the Iraq Study Group last May after just two months, walking away from a chance to make up for his lack of foreign policy credentials on the top issue in the 2008 race, the Iraq war.

He cited "previous time commitments" in a letter explaining his decision to quit, and a look at his schedule suggests why -- the sessions at times conflicted with Giuliani's lucrative speaking tour that garnered him $11.4 million in 14 months.

Incidentally, the first time MSNBC mentioned this today, they attributed it to Fred Thompson. Love that media.

But Josh Marshall is right, this is the kind of thing that ends a campaign. Once MSNBC got their facts straight, Chuck Todd envisioned the ad, seeing Giuliani smiling as he gives a big-money speech while kids die in Iraq. He's trying to run a race on national security and he'd rather make cash than help formulate a solution.

Not to mention that the firefighters will dog him throughout the campaign for betraying the men who wore the uniform on 9/11.

Really, pick him. I'd like to see the Democrat win 49 states.

UPDATE: David Dreier on MSNBC with David Shuster, moments after saying that admitting mistakes is noble, vis a vis Bernie Kerik, who was crying to himself today about missing his partner in crime.

SHUSTER: David, is it OK to have a candidate running for the President of the United States who has not been to Iraq, and why is it that Rudy Giuliani has not been to Iraq?

DREIER: I can't tell you why Rudy Giuliani hasn't been to Iraq. You don't have to be in iraq to understand the magnitude of the challenge in prosecuting the global war on terror. Rudy Giuliani was at the base of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. I think that's being in a line of fire in and of itself.

Is that true? Rudy's never even been to Iraq? And this is how they're combating it? He was on the "front lines" on 9-11 because he happened to be mayor at the time? (and he was only at the base of the WTC because he mistakenly put the emergency command center inside a terrorist target?)

More of this, Team Rudy. This is transparently absurd.

Iraq 4-evah

It was a nice head fake in the Washington Post this morning, suggesting that the Bush Administration is considering a reappraisal of the Iraq Study Group report. Actually the head fake didn't even last the full article. The ISG report is a framework (a cover, really) to keep the United States intimately involved in Iraq until all of us are dead.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.)... said he is looking to the study group's ideas as a way of ensuring a long-term American commitment to Iraq, albeit with a smaller troop presence. "My sense among Republican senators is we know very well that the current course is not a sustainable course over a longer period of time," he said. "If we drift into September, [the president] may not be able to find a bipartisan basis to support a long-term limited interest in Iraq."

"Long-term limited interest" is the key phrase there. That's why the only benchmark you ever hear about is the oil wealth distriubtion deal (which the Iraqi Parliament is wholesale rejecting). The current American policy is never to leave Iraq, and in fact we're laying the groundwork for the infrastructure that will keep us there forever.

This so-called “lily pad” strategy entails keeping a “series of military installations around Iraq,” with tens of thousands of U.S. troops remaining in the country for as long as a few decades:

[W]hat it essentially envisions is a series of military installations around Iraq, maybe five or six of them, a total of maybe 30-40 thousand U.S. troops in Iraq for a long period of time, lasting, maybe a few decades. And the idea is that these bases will be somewhat hermetically sealed, that U.S. military forces won’t be leaving them, they won’t be conducting presence patrols and the patrols they conduct now. Ground convoys won’t be driving into them.

Airplanes will be essentially landing in to deliver supplies and these sort of lily pads will be in various strategic areas in Iraq … And that will enable the U.S. military to maintain a presence in the country, perhaps…for a few decades.

The Pentagon’s goal with the lily pads is to preserve U.S. interests in Iraq for years to come “in the event that Congress or the administration pushes this [withdrawal plan] forward.” As NPR details, those interests are at least three-fold: 1) Training Iraq forces, 2) Preserving economic interests, as “Iraq obviously [sits] on the second largest reserve of oil in the world,” and 3) Providing a U.S. military “presence” to deter Iran and Turkey from “getting involved” after withdrawal.

This is all coming together for me now. It appears that the Administration is just trying to hold off the critics until these "lily pad" bases are complete. Then they might pull out, although they've worked the base into such a lather that politically they probably can't even do that. But they could make a big show of "the Iraqis are now ready to take over!" and they'd shift all the combat personnel to these huge bases and "redefine the mission." Soldiers would still be at risk, but the permanent presence will be cemented. And they can make it so that it wouldn't be viable for anyone to leave. This is classic neocon crap; make it so that "American interests" supersede sanity, and establish another piece in the dominion.

When people say that the military hasn't planned for "defeat" in Iraq, you can bet your last dollar that they have. This is the plan. It's occupation under a different name.