Terrorism Continued As Iraq Slips Away

This embassy bombing in Yemen is scary, mostly because it was a coordinated and sophisticated attack, suggesting that Al Qaeda or its allies are still strong in the Arabian nation. And of course, that's elementary. Because instead of dismantling Al Qaeda networks where they were in the first place, like in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen (USS Cole, anyone?), we re-routed to Iraq and created a militant insurgency that we then had to defeat. That defeat has come at great human cost (7 Americans died in a helicopter crash just today) and has resulted in a Shi'a strongman allied with Iran.

BAGHDAD -- Once dependent on American support to keep his job, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has consolidated power and is asserting his independence, sharply reducing Washington's influence over the future of Iraq.

Iraq's police and army now operate virtually on their own, and with Washington's mandate from the United Nations to provide security here expiring in less than four months, Maliki is insisting on imposing severe limits on the long-term U.S. military role, including the withdrawal of American forces from all cities by June.

America's eroded leverage has left Iran, with its burgeoning trade and political ties, in a better position to affect Iraqi government policies [...]

"If the next president waits too long, our diminishing leverage will likely disappear altogether, leaving us with two strategic options: resign ourselves to 'ride the tiger' -- that is, accept that we have to simply accept what the Iraqi government does and, at most, mitigate or help buffer the consequences -- or jump off the tiger altogether," said Iraq expert Colin Kahl of the Center for a New American Security.

Well, that was worth it!

...Eric Martin has a great reaction to this. We've not only turned away from trouble spots, but Iraq has become a training ground for terrorists, such that radicals return to their home countries and are better equipped to carry out attacks like this. The "flypaper theory," that if you draw all the terrorists to Iraq you could eliminate them, didn't work.

This Is Really Unbelievable

And it's happening with almost no media attention.

Despite their rhetoric about not wanting to hand President Bush another “blank check” for the Iraq War, Democrats appear poised to give him exactly that — enough cash to keep the war going full steam for as long as six months, no strings attached.

Democratic leaders continue to fear GOP attacks that cutting off or slowing funds would hurt the troops, despite anger among the Democratic base over the party’s failure to use Congress’ power of the purse to end the war.

We've gone from "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" to "Democratic leaders continue to fear GOP attacks." What's that line about how society is always evolving?

The worst thing about this quiet, craven capitulation is that is doesn't even make the effort to provide the public with any context for what is happening in Iraq, ceding the entire landscape to the "we're winning" reverse-Chicken Littles who constantly maintain that the sky is not falling. The truth is that the surge is not meeting its stated goal of bringing factions together for a political reconciliation, and any more stalling there could lead to the Sunnis rejoining the insurgency, according to a top Army Colonel.

Stanton believes Shiite reluctance to bring the so-called Concerned Local Citizens into the formal security forces and to hold provincial elections -- expected to benefit the Sunnis, who boycotted the last round of provincial voting in 2005 -- might guarantee precisely the result that the Shiites fear. "How long before all of these people trying to reconcile get discouraged at the continuous rebuff and come up with their own Plan B?" he asked. Plan B, Stanton assessed, might be either formal secession or to "pick up insurgency again." When I asked what the timetable might be for the Sunni Concerned Local Citizens to go to Plan B, he replied, "God, man, if I knew that, I'd be so much happier with my job than I am right now."

So the situation is still fragile, and made worse by the looming presence of an occupying force with a massive embassy, which at least gives the appearance of controlling the strings of the government. Some metrics for providing basic services are up, and that's great, but the question remains whether or not it's too late. And what's completely uncertain is whether this new strategy is just putting a lid on violence that will blow over once we run out of troops, or... or what? Nobody can articulate what the hell it IS doing.

The problem for these Democratic leaders is that, by saying nothing, their arguments grow stale in a very fluid situation.

Ezra Klein recently reminded me of Fafblog's classic "Fafblog Interviews the Democratic Party" post which, in turn, was a reminder of how lame 2005-vintage Democratic thinking about Iraq was. Over time, though, that thinking improved, which is a good thing. Nevertheless, Iraq is a constantly changing situation and when in early 2007 Bush rejected the verdict of the American people and the Baker-Hamilton Commission, much of the previous wave of proposals became irrelevant to the future debate.

But unlike on other issues, neither Hillary Clinton nor any of her rivals could afford to wait before talking about their plans for Iraq. As a result, the frontrunner has a stated position on Iraq today that's really based on the year-old Baker-Hamilton proposals. Worse, because nobody wants to be seen as "flip-flopping" and because everyone knows you tack left during the primaries and then right during the general election, she's all-but-guaranteed to have a platform in October 2008 that was really designed for the circumstances of December 2006 and doesn't reflect either the evolving situation on the ground or the evolving thinking of policy people, including some of her own advisors.

It's worse for the Democrats in Congress, who've been silent long enough that the "surge is working" myth has become embedded at least in media retellings of the war, making it harder to catch up to where we actually are on the battlefield.

Such A Success, Nobody Wants To Go There

At what point does this cross over into forced labor?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now.

Amen.

A Compelling Reason

The US Embassy in Iraq is an absolute behemoth that sends a terrible message about American dominion over the country. The problem is that the State Department has no personnel who actually want to work in what is still an incredibly dangerous territory. So the top officials came up with a brilliant plan: forced labor!

The State Department will order as many as 50 U.S. diplomats to take posts in Iraq next year because of expected shortfalls in filling openings there, the first such large-scale forced assignment since the Vietnam War.

On Monday, 200 to 300 employees will be notified of their selection as "prime candidates" for 50 open positions in Iraq, said Harry K. Thomas, director general of the Foreign Service. Some are expected to respond by volunteering, he said. However, if an insufficient number volunteers by Nov. 12, a department panel will determine which ones will be ordered to report to the Baghdad embassy next summer.

"If people say they want to go to Iraq, we will take them," Thomas said in an interview. But "we have to move now, because we can't hold up the process." Those on the list were selected by factors including grade, specialty and language skill, as well as "people who have not had a recent hardship tour," he said.

I understand the need to fill various positions, but I wonder what those positions will actually be. Perhaps they could do something about the paralegal running the anti-corruption office?

Rep. John Tierney (D-MA) laid it all out. Not only are there duplicative U.S. offices in Baghdad to oversee anti-corruption efforts -- the Anti-corruption Working Group and the Office of Accountability and Transparency, to name two -- but coordination is so bad that the OAT for months boycotted the meetings of the AWG. Rice said she was "not aware" of that.

Another point she wasn't aware of: OAT has had, according to Rep. Tierney, four acting or permanent directors in the past ten months alone. The most recent one isn't a diplomat or a trained anti-corruption official at all, but rather a "paralegal" who works at the U.S. embassy. "I should get back to you with a sense of how we manage these programs," she replied.

I should note that this information came out in the great House Oversight Committee hearing where Condi Rice was forced to say over and over again, "Corruption is a major problem in Iraq" (in fact, it may be funding the insurgency). The sole reason that there has been these kinds of revelations is the tenacious work of my Congressman, Henry Waxman. He's the Kurt Rambis of the House, a role player who is just supposed to come in and throw some elbows through investigation. And this little guy has the White House completely spooked.

Waxman has become the Bush administration's worst nightmare: a Democrat in the majority with subpoena power and the inclination to overturn rocks. But in Waxman the White House also faces an indefatigable capital veteran -- with a staff renowned for its depth and experience -- who has been waiting for this for 14 years.

These days, the 16-term congressman is always ready with a hearing, a fresh crop of internal administration e-mails or a new explosive report. And he has more than two dozen investigations underway, on such issues as the politicization of the entire federal government, formaldehyde in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers, global warming, and safety concerns about the diabetes drug Avandia.

"We have to let people know they have someone watching them after six years with no oversight at all," said Waxman, 68. "And we've got a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick."

Someone is watching, and I think in the final analysis, there is an opportunity to roll back a lot of the abuses of the first six years.

Danger In Iraq

The preliminary report on the Blackwater shooting incident in Iraq shows that the mercenaries fired first and they were not ambushed like the company suggested.

The report, by the Ministry of Interior, was presented to the Iraqi cabinet and, though unverified, seemed to contradict an account offered by Blackwater USA that the guards were responding to gunfire by militants. The report said Blackwater helicopters had also fired. The Ministry of Defense said 20 Iraqis had been killed, a far higher number than had been reported before.

In a sign of the seriousness of the standoff, the American Embassy here suspended diplomatic missions outside the Green Zone and throughout Iraq on Tuesday.

“There was not shooting against the convoy,” said Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi government’s spokesman. “There was no fire from anyone in the square.”

And the embassy stopping diplomatic missions is a big deal. Americans are clearly under siege in Iraq over this. And in comes the Bush Administration to try and lobby for Blackwater remaining in the country. Nothing could paint a bigger target on all of our troops' backs than that.

Iraq In Fragments

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

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

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

• The enemy of my enemy...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Hey Democrats, Take A Look At What You've Bought!

I know the bloom of buying an entire war has barely come off the rose. I mean, Democrats haven't had a whole war of their own to play with since 1969! But with Iraq, you get so much more than just a war. Just take a look:

You also receive the world's largest embassy, a 592 million-dollar, 104 acre pleasure palace brought in on time and on budget, maybe the only thing in Iraq built with solid construction and free of bomb distress! This 21-building "Thunderdome on the Tigris" should in no way give the impression that Americans are imperial occupiers fixing to stay in Iraq until time immemorial! After all, the Democrats bought Iraq, and they have no such imperial designs!

But that's not all. At no extra charge, other than the $120 billion appropriated, you will get a fine collection of lily pads! And when I say lily pads, I mean permanent installations for 30-40,000 soldiers:

[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.

This is exactly the kind of infrastructure you'll need to keep a perpetual residual force in Iraq, just like your leading Presidential candidate wants to do!

But wait! Because you acted now, we're going to throw in absolutely free a confidential second surge! Some call it escalation; hell, you just bought it, call it whatever you want! But the point is that you'll be presiding over a situation in Iraq with not 100,000, not 150,000, but 200,000 troops in country by Christmas!

The little-noticed efforts to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq are being carried out without the fanfare that accompanied President Bush’s initial troop surge in January.

The second “surge” of troops to Iraq is being executed by deploying more combat brigades to the country, plus extending tours of duty for troops already there.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, the U.S. commander who led NATO troops into Bosnia in late 1995, asked to comment on the findings, said: “It doesn’t surprise me that they’re not talking about it. I think they would be very happy not to have any more attention paid to this.”

Shhh!!!

Now, when you buy the war in Iraq, you don't just get the occupation or the death statistics or the soldiers held hostage to increased deployments. No, you also get the Iraqi government, a plucky bunch of 275 of the most well-rested lawmakers this side of the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, if you want to meet with them, you don't even need to leave the country!

Iraqi president Jalal Talabani at the Mayo clinic for medical treatment. SCIRI/SICI leader Abdul Aziz Hakim in Houston for treatment of lung cancer. The two leading candidates for greater federalism of Iraq in the States for medical treatment.

Some might find it odd that the President of Iraq would leave at a crucial time for the Parliament to satisfy benchmarks to lose weight at a fat farm, but on the other hand, it may be perfect timing for the latest potential gift to you, Democrats: a freshly minted and new Iraqi government!

As Iraq's government compiles a record of failure, the Bush administration is under growing pressure to intervene to rearrange Baghdad's dysfunctional political order, or even install a new leadership.

Publicly, administration officials say they remain committed to Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, even though after a year in office, his elected government has failed to complete any important steps toward political reconciliation — the legislative "benchmarks" sought by U.S. officials.

But privately, some U.S. officials acknowledge that the congressional clamor to find another approach will increase sharply in coming months if no progress is made toward tamping down sectarian violence, bringing more minority Sunnis into the government and fairly dividing up the nation's oil resources.

Yes, those oil resources must be divided fairly... between the heads of the world's biggest oil companies, that is. And if they aren't, this would certainly be a good time to put in a strongman like Iyad Allawi to oversee the country. After all, Democrats, you just bought the war, why not clean house and change the leadership in one fell swoop! I mean, this government certainly isn't responding to threats.

Note this: Bush and Cheney have resorted to threatening the al-Maliki government with a withdrawal of American forces if they don't pass the Oil Law. And the effect on the Iraqis is . . . "OK, go ahead and leave. We'll start planning for that contingency now." This means that Cheney and Bush just shot their wad, and lost.

Leave? No, no, there's no leaving. We Democrats just got this thing!

I don't want to leave out some of the exciting consolation prizes Democrats will receive. They get a stalled domestic agenda, a release of the ability to end the war to the Republicans who wrote the benchmark bill and set the "September timeline" in the first place, a fresh stream of newly declassified information designed to dishonestly keep America in Iraq longer by claiming it will be a terrorist haven if we leave, and... a base to launch a whole new war with Iran!!! Sorry, a "covert action." So covert that you can see it off the coast.

The U.S. Navy staged its latest show of military force off the Iranian coastline on Wednesday, sending two aircraft carriers and landing ships packed with 17,000 U.S. Marines and sailors to carry out unannounced exercises in the Persian Gulf.

The carrier strike groups led by the USS John C. Stennis and USS Nimitz were joined by the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard and its own strike group, which includes landing ships carrying members of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

The Navy said nine U.S. warships passed through the narrow Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday. Merchant ships passing through the busy strait carry two-fifths of the world's oil exports.

So enjoy your new gifts, Democrats. You'll have enough to keep you busy for the next 18 months! Sure, it might cost you a contribution or three...