Ignorance Is Bliss

As I expected, the traditional media has simply ignored GOP Rep. Jim Walsh, who has changed his view on Iraq and backed withdrawal. Contrast it with Brian Baird, everybody's new favorite Democrat who has become a media staple because he now supports a continued military presence in the country.

Other things the media has conveniently forgotten: claims that the surge would bring stability to Iraq, the fact that the benchmarks were written by the Iraqi government and the Congress, not the White House, the knowledge that the surge was always going to end next spring because there aren't any troops available to continue it, and the continual proof that an Iraqi oil law is always two days away from being a "done deal."

BAGHDAD, Sept. 12 — A carefully constructed compromise on a draft law governing Iraq’s rich oil fields, agreed to in February after months of arduous talks among Iraqi political groups, appears to have collapsed. The apparent breakdown comes just as Congress and the White House are struggling to find evidence that there is progress toward reconciliation and a functioning government here.

Senior Iraqi negotiators met in Baghdad on Wednesday in an attempt to salvage the original compromise, two participants said. But the meeting came against the backdrop of a public series of increasingly strident disagreements over the draft law that had broken out in recent days between Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi oil minister, and officials of the provincial government in the Kurdish north, where some of the nation’s largest fields are located.

The White House relies on people's short-term memories. Those running the traditional media are among the most reliable.

Democrats, We're Not Idiots

There are a few encouraging signs on the Iraq front. Harry Reid has called the end of the surge bait-and-switch unacceptable, Nancy Pelosi judged it as a path to 10 more years of war, the Democratic National Committee is saying time's up, and even Levin and Reed, authors of the toothless Levin-Reed Amendment, are calling bullshit on the President's so-called plan, which is hope and nothing more.

But what will they DO about it? That's the key question. And two of our Presidentials are aware of where this is leading: a lot of talk without action.

Edwards:

"Some, like Senator Obama, have said we should only 'begin' to end this war now. Senator Obama would withdraw only 1-2 combat brigades a month between now and the end of next year, which for the next several months could essentially mimic the president's own plans to withdraw 30,000 troops by next summer...

"Enough is enough. We don't need to 'begin' to end the war now. What we need to do now is actually end the war. This is about right and wrong. Our young men and women are dying every day for a failed policy. Every member of Congress who believes this war must end, from Senators Obama and Clinton to Senator Warner, has a moral responsibility to use every tool available to them, including a filibuster, to force the president to change course. Congress must stand firm and say: No timetable, no funding. No excuses."

Dodd:

"I was disappointed that Senator Obama's thoughts on Iraq today didn't include a firm, enforceable deadline for redeployment, and dismayed that neither he nor Senator Clinton will give an unequivocal answer on whether they would support a measure if it didn't have such an enforceable deadline.

"It is clear to me - especially after yesterday's testimony - that half-measures aren't going to stop this President or end our involvement in this civil war. I thought it was clear to Senators Obama and Clinton as well after they finally came around to supporting the Feingold-Reid measure and voting against a blank-check supplemental spending bill this spring. If 'enough was enough' then, why isn't it after the bloodiest summer of the war?

"Senator Obama has a gift for soaring rhetoric, but, on this critical issue, we need to know the substance of his position with specificity. Without tying a date certain to funding how does he plan to enforce his call for an immediate redeployment?

Hope is not a plan on either side of this debate. Obama's people and Hillary's people send out staffers to write white papers all they want, but until they respond with legitimate action to end the war instead of hopping up and down like Daffy Duck when they get played on the supplemental again, it's useless. We all know that no legislation need be passed to end this war. Jack Cafferty explained it very simply on The Situation Room today. Without a bill for more funding, either the troops come home or the President commits an impeachable offense by stealing money to hold the troops hostage in Iraq. He explained it very simply. The Speaker of the House can hold up any legislation in the House by herself, and 40 Senators can do the same in the Senate. I truly believe that the Democrats think the American people are so ignorant, and that they have so little faith in their own communication skills, that they couldn't make the same claim.

Markos lays out one plan:

Pass a supplemental bill with a withdrawal deadline. Let the GOP filibuster. If it comes to the point where the troops are being harmed from lack of funding, pass one-month supplementals -- keep forcing Republicans in vote after vote to stand with Bush and his hated war.

If the bigger supplemental, the one with teeth, passes, let Bush veto it. Send it back to him, again and again. All the while, keep the one-month supplementals going to ensure our troops have everything they need.

Tell the American people -- we will support the troops by bringing them home safe and sound to their families, and we will fund them appropriately every step of the way. Ignore what Joe Klein and David Broder say. They don't speak for, or to, the American masses.

THIS is what the American people want. They don't want another blank check to Bush for $200 billion more. They want binding legislation to end this thing. The polls are clear. It's morally justified.

Actually all you have to do is not support any plan. But this one is best matched with political reality.

The political blogosphere grew up watching a series of extreme far-right assaults on democracy, from the Clinton impeachment to the stolen election of 2000 to the hijacking of the tragedy of 9/11 into an unnecessary war of choice. We watched as our elected representatives in Washington did literally nothing to stop these predations, and indeed led the Party on a slow road to marginalization and defeat. This is the line in the sand. They have one last chance to restore the trust of the American people. We do not need an elite establishment that is too cozy with incrementalism and will avoid noth the big changes we need and the fortitude to stop the Republicans. If the Democratic leadershipe in DC will not stand up for the will of the American people we will stand up for it by running primary challenges and overtaking these seats. 2008 is going to be a bad year for incumbents, particularly if the gridlock on Iraq continues. Democrats were given a mandate and they shouldn't be afraid of what pundits will think by acting on it.

Presidentials Need To Show Leadership On Iraq

All of our Presidential candidates in the Senate had a chance to question General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker yesterday, and all of them did a decent enough job, though Obama and Clinton used it more as an opportunity to speechify than ask tough questions. Now all of them are on the campaign trail, and they more than anyone else have the opposition megaphone for the Democratic Party. They are running to be the leaders of the free world, so they must lead now, and tell the nation not just what they'll do about Iraq in 18 months should they become President, but what they'll do right now to end the tragic occupation of Iraq.

Chris Dodd has stepped up the most among elected candidates.



He's challenging all other candidates to publicly reject any bill that doesn't enforceable deadlines for withdrawing our combat troops. John Edwards has already announced that there should be no funding without a timeline, which is actually a stronger statement because it speaks to the type of bill that should be put forward, not what the individuals should vote on.

Hillary Clinton today sent a letter to the President (Congress is the only home to inveterate letter-writers these days) asking the President to tell the truth in his speech to the nation tomorrow. She rightly highlights the fact that the surge was planned to end next summer anyway, and so any drop to pre-surge levels is not a troop cut in any way, and she urges a more rapid redeployment. Whether she will do more than send a letter remains to be seen.

Barack Obama is a more interesting case. He's been planning a substantial speech on Iraq all week. He's giving it today in CLINTON, Iowa. And it's apparently very strong.

“Conventional thinking in Washington lined up for war. The pundits judged the political winds to be blowing in the direction of the President. Despite – or perhaps because of how much experience they had in Washington, too many politicians feared looking weak and failed to ask hard questions. Too many took the President at his word instead of reading the intelligence for themselves. Congress gave the President the authority to go to war. Our only opportunity to stop the war was lost.”

“There is something unreal about the debate that’s taking place in Washington… The bar for success is so low that it is almost buried in the sand. The American people have had enough of the shifting spin. We’ve had enough of extended deadlines for benchmarks that go unmet. We’ve had enough of mounting costs in Iraq and missed opportunities around the world. We’ve had enough of a war that should never have been authorized and should never have been waged.”

"I opposed this war from the beginning. I opposed the war in 2002. I opposed it in 2003. I opposed it in 2004. I opposed it in 2005. I opposed it in 2006. I introduced a plan in January to remove all of our combat brigades by next March. And I am here to say that we have to begin to end this war now.”

This is nice rhetoric that I really appreciate in regard to his future judgment. What it says about the current battle in the Senate over Iraq is unclear.

Chris Dodd has the right idea, but the candidates should unite on this issue. The Democratic Party needs to stand up against the just another six months mentality that perpetuates this failed war. I do think that Democratic leaders consider this so-called "troop cut" an insult to their intelligence. I heard Russ Feingold on NPR yesterday say that the mood appeared to be turning among Democrats on Capitol Hill. They have an obligation to pressure the President as much as possible, to get as many concessions as possible in exchange for that funding, and to deny it if there is no meaningful drawdown plan. The Presidentials are the key to that.

Proof That I Watched Several Hours of Iraq Testimony

Let's be clear that the MoveOn ad is getting all of this attention because of one word: Betray. The rest of the ad makes the mainstream argument, made by almost every Democratic politician, that the facts General Petraeus are asserting to prove military progress are random numbers without sourcing. And it's been reported plenty that the White House and Petraeus are coordinating with one another. The apoplexy over MoveOn would not be nearly as great without that word, Betray.

(by the way, the LA Times runs a point-counterpoint between professional conservative operative Hugh Hewitt and former special assistant to President Reagan Doug Bandow? The hell?)

And it's instructive to note that the original construction, General BetrayUs, comes from Rush Limbaugh.

Anyway, it also appears to have been borrowed, indirectly, from Rush Limbaugh. According to a Free Republican diary, Rush took a call in January from a listener who suggested he contrast General Petraeus with Senator Chuck Betrayus -- i.e., Hagel.

Hagel is ALSO a military veteran, who left Vietnam with two Purple Hearts. So this faux shock at a group "questioning the patriotism" of an officer who wears the uniform is just precious. I guess that recently retired general cited in this story is incredibly unpatriotic, too.

It's a WORD. It was an unwise choice of words, but a word all the same. Sticks and stones. The facts are pretty simple. David Petraeus has been cooking the books, spinning whatever has been under his leadership, for some time. He's emphasizing small events and not the big picture. He's doing that intentionally, because the big picture offers no encouraging signs. A reversal of violence in Iraq in 2007 to mid-2006 levels doesn't really do much for anyone, even if it's true; 1,000 attacks a week remains an unstable security environment. You have a US Ambassador claiming that provincial government began in Anbar after security improved, yet they're also claiming that Baghdad's security has improved as well and none such provincial governments are seen. It's incoherent. The commanders on the ground are trying to thread a needle between touting grand progress and warning that the country would collapse when we leave so we must stay for years and years. As I've heard many times before, if it remains true that, the day American troops leave Iraq, the country will collapse, then we might as well leave now, because all you're doing is wasting lives and treasure. And since four years have passed with that exact same dynamic in place, I believe withdrawal is the least worst option.

Juan Cole has a provocative piece today that delves into this a bit, but is a bit more charitable than I am about David Petraeus and the purported leaders of Iraq. In fact, he hopes that they can do the impossible and build up the country so that it doesn't collapse when we inevitably leave.

But in all likelihood, when the Democratic president pulls US troops out in summer of 2009, all hell is going to break loose. The consequences may include even higher petroleum prices than we have seen recently, which at some point could bring back stagflation or very high rates of inflation.

In other words, the Democratic president risks being Fordized when s/he withdraws from Iraq, by the aftermath. A one-term president associated with humiliation abroad and high inflation at home? Maybe I should say, Carterized. The Republican Party could come back strong in 2012 and then dominate politics for decades, if that happened.

It is all so unfair, of course, since Bush started and prosecuted this disaster in Iraq, and Bush is refusing to accept responsibility for the failure, pushing it off onto his successor.

But life is unfair.

So what can the Dems do to avoid being made the fall guy this way?

They could try to legislate stronger US diplomacy aiming at ensuring peace between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran even if there is sectarian violence on a greater scale in Iraq. They could resist the temptation to demonize Iran or to push it onto a war footing with threats or even bombings.

As for Iraq itself, the best hope for the Dems may be that Gen. Petraeus actually succeeds, over the next year, in significantly reducing ethnic tensions. It is a slim reed to hold onto, as they recognize.

But from the moment Bush went into Iraq, Americans were screwed. And that includes the Democratic Party, which is being set up to take the fall.

I'm a severe skeptic on the likelihood of anything that looks like success in Iraq. But I don't think career public servants such as Ryan Crocker and David Petraeus are acting as partisan Republicans in their Iraq efforts. I think they both are sincere, experienced men attempting to retrieve what they can for America from Bush's catastrophe. They may as well try, since the Democrats can't over-rule Bush and get the troops out, anyway. If the troops are there, they may as well at least be deployed intelligently, which is what Gen. Petraeus is doing. I wish them well in their Herculean labors. Because if they fail, I have a sinking feeling that we are all going down with them, including the next Democratic president. And their success is a long shot.

This is a "cork in the bottle" strategy, and I think a few Democrats know it, even the Presidentials, which is why they're being more aggressive about the "great advantage to our enemies" to keeping all of these troops over there. Another year of the status quo makes Cole's scenario much more likely. We've seen a little movement today with Rep. Walsh, and Senator Lugar called out the Iraq strategy this morning.

WASHINGTON - A prominent Republican on Tuesday said he remains deeply skeptical of the U.S. war strategy in Iraq, comparing the long and bloody military campaign to a farmer risking his savings to plant on a flood plain.

"In my judgment, some type of success in Iraq is possible, but as policymakers, we should acknowledge that we are facing extraordinarily narrow margins for achieving our goals," Sen. Richard Lugar, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the top U.S. military commander there.

Hopefully everyone gets that through their heads.

Compare And Contrast

When Bush Dog Democrat Brian Baird changed his vote and decided to come out in favor of the surge and against drawing it down, he was rewarded with a never-before place of prominence on all the cable news shows. He was literally on a merry go-round of media appearances, and became the symbol of the "Democrats in disarray" narrative that the traditional media collectively decided to push.

Republican Representative Jim Walsh today came out against the surge.

Just received an email from our Washington reporter, Erin Kelly, who just got off the phone with Rep. Jim Walsh. She's writing a story for tomorrow's paper that reports the moderate Republican is switching gears and is now calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Not only that but Walsh, who visited Iraq during the weekend, says he will no longer support funding the war.

Let's sit back and see how much scrutiny that gets in the media. Somehow I doubt that they'll give Rep. Walsh an hourlong "Briefing for America" to explain his position. In fact, he'll be lucky if his name appears on the crawl.

Gary Ackerman Slams It

Gary Ackerman, Democrat from New York, just said that he's scratching his head that this testimony is not set into the context of international terrorism, maybe because IT HAS NOTHING TO DO with international terrorism.

Al Qaeda in Iraq is not a threat to us. Ackerman made that very clear in a contentious back-and-forth with General Petraeus. There is an attempt to elide the differences between a home-grown group that has taken on the name "Al Qaeda" within Iraq, and the actual group of Al Qaeda that has been operating independently for some time.

It's really impossible to suggest that Al Qaeda in Iraq is a major terrorist threat to the United States or even to Iraq - they're a mere fraction of the actual violence in the country. Yet the two groups we've heard most about in this testimony are Al Qaeda in Iraq and Iran.

Crock(er)

Ryan Crocker is trying really really hard to find the pony, without much success. He's talking about "provisional de-Baathification" (what the hell does that mean, some Shiite shared an ice cream cone with some former Baathist one time?) and trying to make a parallel between Iraq and the tumultuous gap between our Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.

It's clear what's actually happening. The assessment has been made that the political leaders won't be able to come to agreement, and that it's not even desirable if they do. So we're arming absolutely everyone to try and crate some kind of detente between the various ethnic groups. Only mutually assured destruction doesn't quite work as well as a policy between individuals. It's just going to make an inevitable civil war more deadly.

Crocker's talking about the fake agreement between Iraqi political leaders designed to save their own bacon, and this curious idea of bottom-up reconciliation, which again is arming people AGAINST a federal government, not for it.

2. What is the "bottom-up" reconciliation plan for southern and northern Iraq? Because Iraq's national political process is deadlocked, the Bush administration has tried to shift attention towards pockets of increased stability in the western al-Anbar province. This shift not only overlooks the fact that the central goal of the surge was to achieve progress in Iraq's national political process, it also ignores a deteriorating situation in the southern and northern parts of the country.

During the past six months, Iraq's south has seen escalating conflict between rival Shiite militias. In August alone, two governors of southern provinces were assassinated, militia clashes in the holy city of Karbala killed 50 people, and four top aides to the leading Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali Sistani were murdered. These events are signs that various political groups in Iraq's Shiite ruling coalition are engaged in a deadly struggle for power. Northern Iraq is experiencing conflict between Arabs and Kurds -- much of it centered on the disputed city of Kirkuk. Will the new "bottom-up" reconciliation model address these problems?

Never mind though, because we built a couple sewers! And there's 6% economic growth! 6% of 0=0, by the way.

St. Petraeus Speaks

Starts out by saying that the report is his and his alone (methinks he doth protest too much).

Now talking about progress on the security front, curiously in the same language as the White House! Imagine! Using statistics that are not backed up with any evidence.

"We will be able to reduce our forces to the pre-surge security level by NEXT SUMMER."

So he provides a chart that details "Iraq's security challenges," and it's a map of Iraq with "AQI" (Al Qaeda in Iraq) plastered all over it. This is just completely misleading. And the "lethal aid, training" stamp on Iran is similarly propagandistic.

There's just way too much talk of AQI here. Petraeus actually started out saying that the fight in Iraq is about competing resources between slef-interested groups. Then he drops that almost completely.

Now he's defending his methodologies. He's trying to say "my data is better than your data." Even though how he came up with his data is classified.

You can do a lot with statistics. Where's the "shot in the back of the head vs. shot in the front of the head" chart?

And wow, talk about missing the point. At the top of one of his charts is something I saw late last week, the change in the ACTUAL ethnic makeup of Baghdad. The so-called reduction of sectarian violence is DIRECTLY tied to the ethnic cleansing that has gone on for years and years.

Every time Petraeus says "the number of attacks have declined," add the phrase "that we've counted."

The Scourge Of The American People

The new talking point appears to be that MoveOn's ad wondering if General Petraeus would be cooking the books for the White House was out of line. They're focusing on the "General Betray Us" part. Both Duncan Hunter and Ileana Ros-Lethinen brought it up. John Kerry disavowed it and called it out of line earlier.

Tactically, the actual line was probably not smart, because it can be easily twisted into "Democrats hate the troops." But when you lambaste anyone who thinks the General won't be completely straight on Iraq, you're lambasting the majority of the American people.

Most Americans think this week's report from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus will exaggerate progress in Iraq, and few expect it to result in a major shift in President Bush's policy. But despite skepticism about the Petraeus testimony and majority support for a U.S. troop reduction in Iraq, there has also been a slight increase in the number who see the situation there as improving.

The findings, from a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, underscore the depth of public antipathy toward the Iraq war, the doubts about the administration's policies and the limited confidence in the Iraqi government to meet its commitments to restore civil order.

Fifty-eight percent, a new high, said they want to decrease the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. And most of those who advocated a troop reduction said they want the drawdown to begin either right away or by the end of the year. A majority, 55 percent, supported legislation that would set a deadline of next spring for the withdrawal of American combat forces. That figure is unchanged from July.

Only about a third believed the United States is making significant progress toward restoring civil order in Iraq, most said the buildup has not made much difference, and a majority said they do not expect the troop increase to improve the security situation over the next few months. Just one-third were confident the Iraqi government can meet its political and security goals.

Americans have completely had it with this war. So have the Iraqis. The Congress is unable to do anything about it. I'm blogging about a mirage. But let's end this fiction that this is about hatred toward the military. It's about this knee-jerk deification of anyone who wears a uniform. They're men and women, with their own biases and opinions, and they should be assessed and not taken as gospel.

Now there's a big problem with the mikes. A fitting metaphor for our catastrophe in Iraq.

Tom Motherflippin' Lantos.

His wind-up was pretty long, but he is doing an excellent job. "Anbar Province has only 5% of the Iraqi population." "Removing a brigade is nothing more than a political whisper..." "We need to leave and we need to leave now."

Now Duncan Hunter is decrying the politicization of the Petraeus testimony by comparing any insult of him to insulting the troops ("they are going to watch how we treat him"). Right, that's not politicization. Apparently, David Petraeus is going to bring down the Berlin Wall and bring peace to El Salvador, too.

UPDATE: Lantos' statement:

Who Put Out This Talking Point?

All of a sudden, everybody is talking about some statistic that the military is the only institution that the American people trust. Really? Americans desire a military junta? Since when?

There's a MAJOR push to get everyone in Congress not to criticize St. Petraeus. I have no doubt that the Democrats are buying it. America's deification of the military continues.

In fact, everything Ike Skelton and Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Tom Lantos is saying is prefaced by "Not a knock on you fine men, but..." Lantos and Skelton are actually being pretty strong. But if anyone dares take the gloves off, we're going to hear the punditocracy erupt. "How dare they question St. Petraeus! Why do they hate the troops?"

Useless Iraq Report Pre-Blogging

Ike Skelton is certainly setting the tone so far, talking in glowing terms about Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker (he eventually did a decent job laying out many of the lies of the Bush Administration). But this is a better prelude.

Mr. Bush, we fear, isn’t looking for the truth, only for ways to confound the public, scare Democrats into dropping their demands for a sound exit strategy, and prolong the war until he leaves office. At times, General Petraeus gives the disturbing impression that he, too, is more focused on the political game in Washington than the unfolding disaster in Iraq. That serves neither American nor Iraqi interests.

Mr. Bush, deeply unpopular with the American people, is counting on the general to restore credibility to his discredited Iraq policy. He frequently refers to the escalation of American forces last January as General Petraeus’s strategy — as if it were not his own creation. The situation echoes the way Mr. Bush made Colin Powell — another military man with an overly honed sense of a soldier’s duty — play frontman at the United Nations in 2003 to make the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Bush cannot once again subcontract his responsibility. This is his war.

General Petraeus has his own credibility problems. He overstepped in 2004 when he published an op-ed article in The Washington Post six weeks before the election. The general — then in charge of training and equipping Iraq’s security forces — rhapsodized about “tangible progress” and how the Iraqi forces were “developing steadily,” an assessment that may have swayed some voters but has long since proved to be untrue.

Iraqis are starving to death, have I mentioned that?

And in this environment, we're going to hear a tangential report about none of the real issues that we face in Iraq.

Prepare The Kabuki Stage

This is being billed as a "make or break" day for the Iraq occupation, but it's really not. Gen. Petraeus has already made up his mind; give it another Friedman Unit. I have no confidence that the Democrats will manage to make anything else the 30-second soundbite on the news tonight. The President will give a speech to the nation with a passel of lies in it, claiming that there's major security progress when there isn't. It won't matter that the Iraqi people think the surge has failed (70% think the surge has damaged security in their area), as long as the President and his willing supporters in Congress do. And the Democrats will flail around like they've always done on this issue, giving the President the funding he wants and getting something toothless in return, like the removal of 5 troops 6 years from now or something.

Marty Kaplan nails it today.

President Bush's prime time stay-the-course speech has already been written. Public opinion has already concluded that the Petraeus report will sugarcoat the statistics, that the Crocker report will move the goalposts, and that "victory" in Iraq will be no less absurd an American mission at the end of the week than at the beginning. Magical September will make Republicans no less likely to wag their lapdog tails at the White House, or to rattle their cut-and-run sabers at the Democrats, than will Magical March, the probable next location of the turning-point mirage. Democrats, for their part, will seize on the possible January withdrawal of one brigade of the surge as a bipartisan triumph, and their fear of being branded anti-troop and pro-terrorist by a bunch of chickenhawk demagogues will lead them to hail a non-binding non-deadline nonconditional footnote to the next defense appropriation as though they had drawn some heroic line in the sand.

This doesn't mean there will be any lack of yammering this week. The media will cover it with all the fanfare and ersatz sobriety that they afford to other pseudo-events, like State of the Union addresses. We will be told over and over how Very Serious these reports are, just as we were told how Terribly Important the report of the Iraq Study Group was. Experts and editorialists will announce how very crucial The Next Six Months -- the blogosphere's beloved Friedman Unit -- will be, despite the abundant, Googleable carcasses of previous and equally useless Next Six Months punditry stretching back to Mission Accomplished. There may even be some chatter about the virtues of our system of separation of powers, as though these hearings actually constitute Congressional oversight, as though they were not simply a stage show whose outcome is as foregone as any performance of kabuki.

Bernard Trainor just admitted that this is political theater. The President wants to keep his veto-proof minority, and the Democrats want to use the issue in 2008. That's it.

A couple graphs and a video to edify you before the bullshit is spread.

There Is No Petraeus Report

Unbelievable.

A major political event unfolding Monday will be the report to President Bush by Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker.

A senior military officer said there will be no written presentation to the president on security and stability in Iraq. "There is no report. It is an assessment provided by them by testimony," the officer said.

The only hard copy will be Gen. Petraeus' opening statement to Congress, scheduled for Monday, along with any charts he will use in explaining the results of the troop surge in Baghdad over the past several months.

Because if there actually was a written, binding report, it would require evidence.

Or some truth could slip out, like saying that the political progress "has not worked out as we had hoped."

The Dems got completely and utterly played top to bottom on this one. And now they're looking to make a toothless "compromise" on withdrawal and the "leaders" running for President are silent.

The Anbar Miracle

I thought there were candy canes dropping from the sky in Anbar and an Indiana marketplace had sprung up in Fallouja. How could multiple US Marines die there in those circumstances?

Of course, according to General Petraeus we've been making progress there for three years. He's in a tough spot, by the way, because he has to thread the needle and say we're "kicking ass," but not so much ass that we can ever leave. Hence the "Petraeus Sees Gains As Fragile" story.

That is, he would be in a tough spot if the Democrats weren't so willing to lay down like dogs. I think what you heard from John Warner is exactly what's going to happen; we'll withdraw one brigade by Christmas, keep another 150,000 or so there indefinitely, and the moderate centrists can slap the blood off their hands and onto each others backs as they congratulate each other for doing something meaningful.

Quietly Banging My Head Against The Laptop

The House of Representatives, having seen multiple negative assessments of the success of the escalation, polls showing support for withdrawal in the 60-70% range, etc., etc., is going to pretty much give up on any attempt to get our troops home.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) came out on Wednesday in favor of holding a vote on a bipartisan Iraqi withdrawal bill. Meanwhile, the party’s left wing renewed calls for a pullout and announced a new campaign to block funds for arming and training the Iraq Security Forces.

The bipartisan legislation, authored by Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and John Tanner (D-Tenn.), would order Bush to draft plans to withdraw from Iraq but not require them to be implemented. Rep. Phil English (R-Pa.) and two other Republicans have signed on as cosponsors.

“I would like to see us move forward on that,” Hoyer said. “The president ought to come up with a plan for withdrawal.”

You're the Majority Leader of the House and you don't think the Pentagon has withdrawal plans? Who cares if there's a plan when there's no need for it to be implemented? So you can feel good on the way to your cocktail parties?

Kos, a new convert to the cut the funding plan as the only way to end the war, is righteously angry:

Here's the bottom line -- the voters elected a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate in 2006 to get the f' out of Iraq. Democrats don't need to compromise with Republicans. If there's no money, there's no way to continue the war. And with Democrats in total control of the House, and with the ability to filibuster any funding bill in the Senate, our side can hole up any bill that doesn't do what WE want to do.

Republicans have to compromise with us. We have the electoral mandate, not the unpopular Republicans and certainly not Mr. 25%. And the compromise is 1) we give you the money, and 2) you give us the timetable. We can even compromise on #2, working together to figure out just how long troops ought to remain (from, say, six months to just before Bush leaves office), depending on what military leaders on the ground say would be the safest, most efficient way to get them out.

But telling Bush he doesn't have to do shit for his $200 billion other than come up with a "plan" isn't a "compromise", it's capitulation. And, by giving Republicans a free vote on a paper tiger bill, they even get to go home and campaign on their efforts to "end the war".

And our leaders aren't doing a damn thing about it. Chris Dodd is trying.

The New York Times reported earlier today that Democrats are considering whether to offer a "compromise" amendment on Iraq to the upcoming Defense Department Authorization bill.

This "compromise," the Levin-Reed amendment, would reportedly establish a non-binding "goal" -- as opposed to a firm deadline -- for withdrawing our combat troops from Iraq.

The net result would be another blank check for President Bush.

Senator Dodd said it best earlier today, "I cannot and will not support any measure that does not have a firm and enforceable deadline to complete the redeployment of combat troops from Iraq. Rather than picking up votes, by removing the deadline to get our troops out of Iraq you have lost this Democrat's vote."

This is a depressing day because the Democrats are squandering their mandate, and there is precious little leadership on this side of the aisle apart from Sen. Dodd and former Sen. Edwards. They'll scream about not having the votes when they don't need more than 40 votes in the Senate to block any funding bill. But they don't have the cajones to lead, still afraid of what the President might say about them like a bunch of 9 year-olds. Meanwhile, the President has to withdraw 30,000 troops next year and now he'll get credit for bringing our boys home when it was inevitable anyway. Meanwhile more die every month.

This puts the Presidential election in severe jeopardy. I don't get the sense that our frontrunners are ready or willing to lead. (Edwards and Dodd excepted)

Military Deification of America, Cont'd

Almost three years ago I wrote a post about the deification of the American military that generated a fair amount of controversy when I crossposted it around the blogosphere.

The United States obviously has enemies in the world, and enemies sometimes must be engaged militarily. But I see too many signs that the pendulum in this country is swinging away from Athens and toward Sparta. Our soldiers are not just heroes anymore, but infallible gods who are only on the side of righteousness. Such belief, the endless replaying of "support the troops" over and over again, complicates the relationship between military policy and military action. If the troops are always right, it's a slippery slope to the belief that the policy is always right, and if you're not on the side of the policy, you're against the troops. And in such moral anarchy, you end up in places like Abu Ghraib, or in the mosque with Kevin Sites, watching the downed insurgent being shot at point blank range. And then you get the rebuke from the faithful truth-supporters, that "you don't know what it's like over there" and "you don't know what these kids are going through" and "you hate the very soldiers that guarantee your freedom." These are the very people who would never consider the fact that doctors help guarantee life, the law enforcement officers help guarantee liberty, that teachers and social workers help guarantee the pursuit of happiness. But nobody worships at their collective altars. Soldiers are heroes, not gods, and the difference is crucial.

The difference is crucial because societies that deify the military find it hard not to also deify militarism, and it leads to more war, more death, and more destruction. All societies that laud state power in this way become imperial. There simply is nowhere else to go. It wasn't too long ago that the Founders of America were wary of a standing army, which if you think about it, is the very basis of the Second Amendment. They almost certainly would frown at the thought of a "volunteer" army that preys on the poor who have no other outlet if they want to seek higher education or a decent job. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "Where there is no oppression there will be no pauper hirelings." But today we not only perish the thought of abolishing the Army (and consequently have every citizen ready to serve if needed), we see that as heretical as abolishing religion. There are three organizations in this country that display the same hierarchial, top-down, just-follow-orders-or-be-expelled structure: the military, the church, and the Republican Party.

In 2007 we are seeing the fruits of what we have been sauntering toward for years. Because the soldiers are indisputably good warriors on the side of truth and light, and any small dissent from that universal goodness is tantamount to treason, then anybody dressed up in camos simply must be telling the truth, even when those people are essentially political operatives who are running a PR offensive to absolute perfection.

I've been thinking about the whole David Petraeus issue for the past couple of days, and what I've been thinking about is how badly the liberal blogosphere and the liberal establishment have been outplayed here. While we've spent the last six months snarking about Friedman Units and complaining aimlessly about spineless Democrats, Petraeus has been slowly and methodically carrying out an extremely disciplined military campaign with a very precise goal: gaining support for David Petraeus and the surge.

In retrospect, this is hardly a surprise. Petraeus is a four-star general, by all accounts a brilliant man, and a professional student of counterinsurgency. He's keenly aware of the value of both the media and public opinion, and he did what any counterinsurgency expert would have counseled in his circumstances: he unleashed a hearts-and-minds campaign aimed at opinion makers and politicians. For months the military transports to Baghdad have been stuffed with analysts and congress members, and every one of them has gotten a full court press of carefully planned and scripted presentations, tightly controlled visits to favored units, and assorted dollops of "classified" information designed to flatter his guests and substantiate his rosy assessments without the inconvenience of having to defend them in public.

And it's worked. Even though there's been no discernable political progress, minimal reconstruction progress, and apparently no genuine decrease in violence, he's managed to convince an awful lot of people that the first doesn't matter, the second is far more widespread than it really is, and the third is the opposite of reality.

This includes reports on military progress completely at odds with the truth, and the continued recitation of that progress without any facts or figures to back it up. This includes sliming Democratic members in the Green Zone, and denying them anything but the most tightly controlled access to reality. This includes playing the media to such a degree that they know they're being played and yet report through the same rose-colored glasses anyway. And this is all, in my view, because the words are coming out of the mouth of a General and not some actual PR flack like Dan Senor. We know that GOP lawmakers are untrustworthy; they could get shot at in Iraq and still declare the surge a success - literally. But Petraeus has been prepping for this PR offensive for 5 months, knowing that he could manipulate America's love affair with the troops and essentially make himself unassailable. Watch the Democrats pull punches when he testifies on Capitol Hill. Watch for the news item that "Democrats were weary of attacking Petraeus' views too strongly for fear that they would be seen as anti-military."

David Petraeus is a partisan Republican. He may be brilliant, and so is John Roberts. His reputation depends on filling the shoes of savior that have been created for him by the Republican Party and the Bush Administration. If he can pull it off, or at least make it somehow seem like the war could have been won if only the Democrats didn't pull the plug (books on that narrative have probably already been written) there could be an Oval Office waiting for him. It's not like there's anyone else on the horizon. And his military credentials give him the leeway to say the nuttiest, most partisan things without anyone batting an eyelash. He also can say the exact opposite to antiwar Democrats and come off as credible, too. And we're all to blame for making ridiculous qualifiers like "even General Petraeus says" like he has the wisdom of Solomon. We never acknowledge his self-interest in reporting from Iraq in a biased way.

The military provides a great service but they are not gods. They make mistakes and cover things up and have an agenda that serves the defense contracting industry to an uncomfortable degree. They should never be seen as preferable to policymakers, or even as more trustworthy than them. It lays the groundwork for the kind of thing we're seeing with the Petraeus PR surge, right before our eyes.

UPDATE: Make me puke. Why do I need to hear about some student's field trip with Petraeus? Is this in a national newspaper or a military press release?

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.

Sen. Warner wants Iraq pullout to begin by Xmas

This is a breaking story. John Warner, who isn't likely to run again and is therefore unencumbered by political payback, is apparently calling for the President to start a pullout of American troops in Iraq by Christmas.

"In my humble judgment, that would get everyone's attention the attention that is not being paid at this time," said Warner.

Warner said the president and other leading Bush administration officials have repeatedly said the American commitment to Iraq was not open-ended.

"The time has come to put some meaningful teeth into those comments -- to back them up with some clear, decisive action," Warner added.

It's unclear how large a pullout this would be, or just a symbolic one. It's unclear whether there's any kind of end date for the complete removal of combat troops here, or not. It's unclear whether this move by Warner would change anything on the ground in Iraq or help get our troops out of harm's way and end the occupation of Iraq.

But politically speaking, this is huge. It changes the narrative from "Dems in disarray, forced to acknowledge progress" to "GOP in disarray, some leaders calling for pullout." The NIE was the impetus for this, I believe. Suddenly, everyone will be asking GOP Senators and Congressmen whether or not they agree with Sen. Warner.

I think this is a big step toward the end of the occupation.

UPDATE: ABC has a bit more.

"I say to the President, with great respect," the 80 year-old Senator said at a press conference on Capitol Hill, "consider that you initiate the withdrawal." [...]

"I've tried to work and be respectful of the office of the Presidency," Warner told reporters, but added that after General Petraeus, the leader of coalition forces in Iraq, submits his reporton progress in Iraq come mid-September, senators should be "free to voice our own opinions."

Warner picked a number out of mid-air at his press conference: 5,000 troops out by Christmas. And he's not for a timeline for withdrawal.

Fortunately, the soccer-ball-chasing media is hyping this story, which means extremely little. They're calling it a "major GOP defection on Iraq."