The Futility Of Counter-Insurgency In A Corrupt State

John Kerry had some good words in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday:

Kerry sets out a few principles for such refinement. “First it will be the Afghans that will ultimately win or lose the struggle against the Taliban.” The United States is in a “race against time” in a region “suspicious of foreign troops.” Recognize “the decentralized nature” of Afghan politics and society. Be flexible. “What works in Mazar-e-Sharif … is very different from what works in Kandahar.” Be “humble about our ability to bring large-scale change.” Put Afghanistan in a regional context. “Permeable borders are straddled by clans, ethnic groups and militants and what happens in one country can have profound implications for what happens in others.”

Finally: “Set realistic goals. The purpose of the mission is what the president said it was” — a struggle against al-Qaeda. Kerry, who has said the United States is involved in a “global counterinsurgency,” references the commando strike earlier this week against a Somali militant with ties to al-Qaeda. The success, he said, should cause policymakers to ask “how much counterinsurgency and nation-building is required to meet a sufficient set of goals?”

This kind of talk among policymakers is far better than those who demand a "war of necessity" with an unlimited commitment to the Afghan people, lest we leave them on the battlefield or some other such military metaphor. Expecting a democracy to flourish in Afghanistan, especially in the wake of a clearly fraudulent election and a leader who is completely ethically compromised by it, is expecting what will never be, frankly. While the US may want Karzai to run the government for explicitly ethnic reasons (it's just easier to have a Pashto heading the coalition than a Tajik) and may try to bring together a unity government by essentially buying off his rivals, that is unlikely to soothe concerns of stolen elections or inspire any defense of the government in fighting the insurgency. The election has basically sealed the fate of counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, and not for the better.

I think Kerry's point about the purpose of the mission being focused on Al Qaeda and not nation-building is extremely important. Even the White House's own benchmarks, according to a document released yesterday, puts that at the top of the list. But from there it moves to a wide-ranging mission creep involving all sorts of tangential activities:

Objective 1: “Disrupt terrorist networks in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan to degrade any ability they have to plan and launch international terrorist attacks.” It directs readers to metrics in a classified annex (not provided to POLITICO).

Objective 2a: “Assist efforts to enhance civilian control and stable constitutional government in Pakistan." It lists six metrics for measuring how progress is being achieved in that objective: from progress towards Pakistan's civilian government becoming stable and free of military involvement, to "demonstrable action by the government against corruption."

Objective 2b: “Develop Pakistan’s counterinsurgency (COIN) capabilities; continue to support Pakistan’s efforts to defeat terrorist and insurgent groups.” That objective is followed by four metrics: 1) Effectiveness of Pakistan civilian, intelligence and military in conducting counter-insurgency operations across the clear-hold-build phases to defeat insurgent groups. 2) Level of militant-initiated violence. 3) Extent of militant-controlled areas in Pakistan. 4) Effectiveness of Pakistani border security efforts.

Objective 2c: "Involve the international community more actively to forge international consensus to stabilize Pakistan."

Objective 3a: “Defeat the extremist insurgency, secure the Afghan populace, and develop increasingly self-reliant Afghan security forces that can lead the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism fight with reduced U.S. assistance.” This is followed by 14 metrics, from “measuring the degree to which security operations are integrated into the overall COIN campaign,” to 14, the ability of the Afghan National Security Foces “to handle their own logistical needs.”

These goals are nice, and so are unicorns. But they ignore the reality of Afghanistan and the region. We need to make whatever deals we can with those who have the guns, shift to a counter-terrorism strategy of ensuring that no extremist can project power beyond their borders, and get out. The very fact that Pakistan factors more into these metrics than Afghanistan - since Al Qaeda actually exists there - points to the futility of a military COIN strategy in the other country in the region.

The President tried to put the brakes on any escalation talk yesterday, but given these wrongheaded metrics I can't see how we're headed for anything but that. The skeptics in Congress need to be encouraged to keep speaking out about this policy, or else another Democratic President will be defined by an increasingly unpopular war.

OK, Let's Talk Benchmarks

Michael O'Hanlon, who apparently is contractually obligated to appear on major op-ed pages once every two weeks, has had a couple more this week, both intoning about a new set of benchmarks that prove Iraq is progressing in progress-y progress and that Democrats have only one role to play, that of the "loyal opposition." As Ezra Klein notes, telling Democrats they shouldn't call for an immediate withdrawal has been very good for his TV and op-ed page appearances, as opposed to when he was writing about setting a date for withdrawal back in 2004. Clearly, taking up for the media elites who were crucially wrong on the war is a good career move.

But I want to go back to this idea of benchmarks. O'Hanlon writes:

....Iraqi leaders need to feel pressure to deliver. That is where a more conditional Democratic approach comes in. The United States stays only if Iraqis accelerate their own political efforts at reconciliation. This is admittedly a complex matter to evaluate accurately, but that is OK — Iraqis will get the message even if it is somewhat inexact and imprecise.

Democrats in Congress — including the two seeking the presidency and the leadership on Capitol Hill — should work for success in Iraq while reminding Iraqis that absent continued progress, the U.S. commitment could end, and soon. It is a message consistent with Democrats' past views on the conflict, yet cognizant of the considerable gains there in the past year.

All right, let's take a look at those "benchmarks," which O'Hanlon says unquestionably show progress. Violence is back up since January. We're pretty much at mid-2005 levels of violence, which were unacceptable then. We're keeping a lid on those levels of violence because of massive payouts to Shiite and Sunni militias so they don't kill us. Ethnic cleansing is not a magnificent myth, as O'Hanlon's buddy Fred Kagan has said, but an uncomfortable reality. The Defense Department's quarterly report counts budget and deBaathification and provincial elections laws as "progress" even though they were all vetoed by the Presidency council. And even that DoD report lists corruption as a serious problem. And billions in oil revenues are missing.

The Democratic chairman and Republican former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee have asked government auditors to determine what Iraq is doing with the billions of dollars in oil revenue it generates.

"We believe that it has been overwhelmingly U.S. taxpayer money that has funded Iraq reconstruction over the last five years, despite Iraq earning billions of dollars in oil revenue over that time period that have ended up in non-Iraqi banks," Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John Warner, R-Va., said Friday in a letter to the head of the Government Accountability Office.

"At the same time, our conversations with both Iraqis and Americans during our frequent visits to Iraq, as well as official government and unofficial media reports, have convinced us that the Iraqi government is not doing nearly enough to provide essential services and improve the quality of life of its citizens," they said.

The senators estimated that Iraq will realize "at least $100 billion in oil revenues in 2007 and 2008."

Needlenose rightly suggests that the former exiles running Iraq are probably dropping a healthy portion of these billions into offshore banks to prepare for when things go to hell in Iraq again.

So, given these benchmarks, what say you, O'Hanlon?

The Iraq 4-Evah Fallout

I didn't watch the President's address but it appears from the reviews in the media that he used the word "success" charitably. As in "Return on Success"! Look, he can declare victory and get out all day long. I won't even notice that there is no victory, as long as the "get out" part happens. But he's trying to snooker the American people into thinking the end of the surge represented some kind of progress rather than... the end of the surge, forced by troop rotations and a desire not to completely destroy the military.

Jack Reed was pretty combative in his response, challenging the President on that point and highlighting the real news in the speech, that the President would keep a permanent force in Iraq well beyond his presidency similar to the US presence in Korea, despite how flawed that parallel is to Iraq. He said that "an endless and unlimited military presence in Iraq is not an option," and also:

"Do we continue to heed the president's call that all Iraq needs is more time, more money and the indefinite presence of 130,000 American troops - the same number as nine months ago?" the senator asked. "Or do we follow what is in our nation's best interest and redefine our mission in Iraq?"

Reed criticized the president for spending $10 billion a month in Iraq while saying that there isn't enough funding for veterans and children's health care.

Democrats were said by Reed to have a quick and responsible strategy to bring troops home, fight terrorism and train the Iraqi army with an emphasis on diplomacy. He said the focus should be on fighting al-Qaeda and other terrorists, not on Iraq.

And John Edwards bought two minutes of airtime to offer a strong rebuke.

Unfortunately, the president is pressing on with the only strategy he has ever had - more time, more troops, and more war.

In January, after years of evidence that military actions cannot force a political solution, the president announced a military surge to force a political solution. In May, he vetoed a plan to end the war, demanded more time to show the surge could work, and Congress gave it to him. Now, after General Petraeus reports the surge has produced no progress toward a political solution, what does the president want? More time for the surge to work, when we know it won't.

Our troops are stuck between a president without a plan to succeed and a Congress without the courage to bring them home.

But Congress must answer to the American people. Tell Congress you know the truth - they have the power to end this war and you expect them to use it. When the president asks for more money and more time, Congress needs to tell him he only gets one choice: a firm timeline for withdrawal.

No timeline, no funding. No excuses.

It is time to end this war.

All of the Presidentials made strong statements of opposition. Idiots like Fred Hiatt are endorsing Bush's stay the course policy, which is a sure sign to know it's a disastrous idea. In fact the White House's own report on progress shows even less than there was in July.

A new White House report on Iraq shows slim progress, moving just one more political and security goal into the satisfactory column: efforts to let former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to rejoin the political process, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.

The latest conclusions, to be released Friday, largely track a comparable poor assessment in July on 18 benchmarks. The earlier White House report said the Iraqi government had made satisfactory gains toward eight benchmarks, unsatisfactory marks on eight and mixed results on two.

It's beyond time to call for an end to this war. The country is a political, security, and even economic mess. As for what the Democrats are doing, it appears they're trying to pass something, anything, that will get them supermajority support. I'm not sure that's even possible, regardless of the gains they claim to be making (although they should continue to claim them). Jim Webb's "readiness strategy" bill got 56 votes last time. Can it crest to 60? The President will veto it. Can it get 290 in the House? Highly unlikely. And the President already said that he'd call up more reserves and National Guard units in that event. I agree with Michael Cohen to an extent:

Here's the rub: No matter what the Congress passes, the President will veto it. So 60 is not the magic number - 67 is; and there is no way the Dems are going to achieve that goal. So my question is why not keep applying the political pressure? Why not make the GOP defend a policy that has about 30-35% support in public opinion polls?

I understand that Democrats love to pass legislation as a sign that they are getting something done. But if it has no chance of getting past the President's veto pen what exactly is the point? Believe me, if I thought this approach would have any success in changing course in Iraq I'd be all over it, but there doesn't seem to be any real evidence that Bush will acquiesce to legislation that changes our Iraq strategy. The only possibility of change is if Republicans grow some political courage and turn against their President. Letting them off the hook is not the way to accomplish that goal.

At the very least, applying maximum political pressure on some of the Senators up for re-election might actually clear some of these jokers out of the Senate - not only increasing the Democratic majority, but teaching these folks about the nature of representative democracy.

But the right course of action, of course, is nothing. The magic number is 41, the number required to filibuster any bill that doesn't have a timeline. No other bill should get to the President. It's as simple as John Edwards makes it. Stop funding endless war.

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.

Joe Isuzu Petraeus

He's lying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATE II: Hilzoy takes apart the GOP talking points.

Because Republicans Are Great At Bottom-Up Democracy

You're starting to see a lot of chatter among war defenders about "mini-benchmarks" and "bottom-up reconciliation." The idea is really based on Sunni tribes turning on extremists in Anbar completely by themselves, which apparently will repeat itself throughout the country. Indeed, the White House is trying to capitalize on this by providing more in aid to Iraqi Sunnis in Anbar, and indeed yesterday's Presidential visit was to Anbar Province.

Here's the thing, though. This "bottom-up" strategy is made-up. There's no political reconciliation going on at all. This is about completely segregating all parts of Iraq and winding up with a heavily armed group of Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds all fiercely protecting their own turf. That's not a country, and it certainly doesn't presage that the central government will ever be able to function. We're moving toward Joe Biden's three-state solution by default. And these would be three violent, theocratic, sectarian states, who undoubtedly would eventually come into conflict with one another using the arms we provided them all.

Thousands of other Sunnis like Kamal have been cleared out of the western half of Baghdad, which they once dominated, in recent months. The surge of U.S. troops—meant in part to halt the sectarian cleansing of the Iraqi capital—has hardly stemmed the problem. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July was slightly higher than in February, when the surge began. According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has more than doubled to 1.1 million since the beginning of the year, nearly 200,000 of those in Baghdad governorate alone. Rafiq Tschannen, chief of the Iraq mission for the International Organization for Migration, says that the fighting that accompanied the influx of U.S. troops actually "has increased the IDPs to some extent."

When Gen. David Petraeus goes before Congress next week to report on the progress of the surge, he may cite a decline in insurgent attacks in Baghdad as one marker of success. In fact, part of the reason behind the decline is how far the Shiite militias' cleansing of Baghdad has progressed: they've essentially won. "If you look at pre-February 2006, there were only a couple of areas in the city that were unambiguously Shia," says a U.S. official in Baghdad who is familiar with the issue but is not authorized to speak on the record. "That's definitely not the case anymore." The official says that "the majority, more than half" of Baghdad's neighborhoods are now Shiite-dominated, a judgment echoed in the most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq: "And very few are mixed." In places like Amel, pockets of Sunnis live in fear, surrounded by a sea of Shiites. In most of the remaining Sunni neighborhoods, residents are trapped behind great concrete barricades for their own protection.

That's only a short-term solution. Do you really think this guy is interested in reconciling with the central government?

Naiem al-Qaisi was imprisoned for four months, beaten, shocked with electric probes and, he said, forced to witness fellow Sunni male prisoners being raped by Shiite soldiers of the Iraqi army.

Now he wants to be a policeman. The American military recruited Qaisi and thousands like him to fight the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, but Qaisi's most feared enemies are soldiers in the Iraqi army's Muthanna Brigade, and his allegiance does not lie with the government he is now being trained to serve.

"We don't trust this government. This government belongs to Iran," said the 29-year-old former security guard for a soft-drink company. "The Iraqi government knows we are innocent guys, but they want to kill us."

We're setting up the conditions for a massive civil war. And the current metrics show the surge to be a failure.

The U.S. military buildup that was supposed to calm Baghdad and other trouble spots has failed to usher in national reconciliation, as the capital's neighborhoods rupture even further along sectarian lines, violence shifts elsewhere and Iraq's government remains mired in political infighting [...]

Despite the plan, which has brought an additional 28,500 U.S. troops to Iraq since February, none of the major legislation that Washington had expected the Iraqi parliament to pass into law has been approved.

The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has increased, not decreased, according to the United Nations' International Organization for Migration and Iraq's Ministry for Displacement and Migration.

Military officials say sectarian killings in Baghdad are down more than 51% and attacks on civilians and security forces across Iraq have decreased. But this has not translated into a substantial drop in civilian deaths as insurgents take their lethal trade to more remote regions. Last month, as many as 400 people were killed in a bombing in a village near the Syrian border, the worst bombing since the war began in March 2003. In July, 150 people were reported killed in a village about 100 miles north of Baghdad [...]

"The military offensive has temporarily suppressed, or in many cases dislocated, armed groups," said Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group. "Once the military surge peters out, which it will if there is no progress on the political front, these groups will pop right back up and start going at each other's, and civilians', throats again."

Bush is talking about drawing down troops because he knows he has to in the spring and he's trying to make it seem like it's being done out of strength rather than the weakness of a broken military. He's delaying the inevitable breakup of Iraq that he's facilitating. Anyone duped into thinking that this escalation provided security or progress to Iraq is out of their minds.

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.

Cue The Fred Sanford-Style Heart Attack

I'm just so shocked that the Bush Administration and military officials would try to change the target date for assessing the situation in Iraq! It's a "surge" to my aortic valve! I'm coming to ya, Elizabeth!

The Bush administration and U.S. military officials predicted Thursday that a key September report would show progress in Iraq, but that it would be November before they could judge the success of the troop buildup.

The comments — coming a day after congressional Democrats failed to force a change in the U.S. war strategy — were a new indication that the White House planned to seek still more time for its troop "surge" to stabilize the situation in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of day-to-day operations in Iraq, said via teleconference from Baghdad that the military would produce the report on time as required by Congress. But, he said, September would be too early to determine whether security improvements would last and whether the buildup had worked.

"In order to do a good assessment, I need at least until November," Odierno said. "If I have 45 more days of looking at those trends, I'll be able to make a bit more accurate assessment — if it's something that we think is going to continue or something that was just a blip."

Here's how this is going to work, by the way. In November they'll say "how about January," and then they'll ask to wait until the spring, and then May, and then September, and then November, and then Bush is out of office and "crew you guys, I'm goin' home."

And it wouldn't be a Bush Administration tactic if it didn't exploit the words of an unnamed soldier for political gain!

Underscoring his view that an extension of the surge is needed, Odierno described a conversation between Command Sgt. Major Neil Ciotola, his top enlisted advisor, and an unnamed Marine lance corporal in Ramadi.

"He looked at my sergeant major and asked, 'We're not going to be given enough time to finish this, are we?' " Odierno said. "I hope that that young Marine warrior is wrong."

Yes, you wouldn't want to break poor Jimmy's heart, would you? Don't you want to hit him a home run and win the big game? He has leukemia!

I like the part, also, where the US Ambassador determines that nothing that happens in Iraq is a measure of progress:

Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, urged the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday not to place the most significance on the benchmarks.

"In many cases, these benchmarks do not serve as reliable measures of everything that is important," Crocker said, adding that there may be better ways to show progress on, for example, national reconciliation.

How dare you try to assess what's happening in Iraq by making... assessments!

This is all a game to these fucking people. Well, I'm with that nearly 1/3 of House Democrats: not one nickel, not one dime, not one penny, not this time. No more money for failure.

The Iraq Progress Report

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

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

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

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

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

Benchmark (viii)


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mimi Katz offered the best one I've seen:

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

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

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

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

The Benchmark Bush Wants

So apparently Bush today echoed Mitch McConnell's statement that if the Iraqi government wanted us to leave, we would happily comply with their request. He has to say this, of course, if we wants to maintain a patina of credibility whenever he says that Iraq is a sovereign nation. But on another level, he's saying this as a direct threat to the Iraqi government to ensure that they pass the euphemistically named "hydrocarbon law" that recommends production sharing agreements (PSAs) to private oil companies for decades, essentially privatizing the lucrative Iraqi oil industry. Bush is playing a long game here, and the Democrats fell right into the trap (or they may be going into it willingly).

If you have read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, the strategy at work by the US is familiar. The end goal is to secure the resources of the developing world for multinational corporations to exploit. They start with cajoling and promises of reconstruction aid. Then it goes to threatening. Then regime change.

The cajoling has been going on for months. This "hydrocarbon law" has been in the works for years. But Iraqi oil unions, along with Sunni and Kurdish lawmakers, have resisted the calls to pass it. As kavips pointed out, Dick Cheney visited Iraq recently for a reason. The message was to inform the Iraqi government that this law, which would enable US oil companies to reap 70% of the profits from the sale of any petroleum products, must pass, and soon.

So what's behind the Cheney visit? Why now?

Last week, the Kurds signed deals with both Norwegian and Turkish companies to develop new oil fields in their province. These were not at 70% PSA rates.

This electrified Cheney and his Iraqi leadership, which said that any contracts signed before the new law was passed, would be invalid and illegal.

Suddenly, in the aftermath of Cheney's visit, Iraq announced publicly that they are making preparations for when the Americans leave.

Iraq's military is drawing up plans to cope with any quick U.S. military pullout, the defense minister said Monday, as a senior American official warned that the Bush administration may reconsider its support if Iraqi leaders don't make major reforms by fall [...]

On Monday, Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi told reporters Iraq's military was drawing up plans in case U.S.-led forces left the country quickly.

"The army plans on the basis of a worst case scenario so as not to allow any security vacuum," al-Obeidi said. "There are meetings with political leaders on how we can deal with a sudden pullout."

That "senior American official" was almost certainly Dick Cheney. He clearly was there to tell the Iraqis "sign that law or we walk," and the Iraqis said "OK, we'll plan for life without you." The same day, Monday, the President called Prime Minister Maliki and stressed the need to pass that oil law.

A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said President Bush expressed confidence in al-Maliki during a telephone call Monday to the Iraqi leader.

He said the two talked about political progress in Iraq, and al-Maliki gave Bush updates on two key U.S. demands — legislation to share Iraq's oil wealth among its regions and ethnic groups and a reform of the constitution.

But two senior Iraqi officials told The Associated Press that Bush warned al-Maliki that Washington expected to see "tangible results quickly" on the oil bill and other legislation as the price for continued support.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't supposed to release the information [...]

Senior Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman confirmed that U.S. pressure was mounting, especially on the oil bill, which was endorsed by the Iraqi Cabinet three months ago but has yet to come to the floor of parliament.

"The Americans are pressuring us to accept the oil law. Their pressure is very strong. They want to show Congress that they have done something so they want the law to be adopted this month. This interference is negative and will have consequences," Othman told AP.

The Bush Administration was running into serious resistance with getting the most important part of their agenda in Iraq passed. So they needed another piece of leverage. All of a sudden, Bush says he'll accept benchmarks, the same benchmarks he derided just a week earlier. The Democratic leadership saw an opening where they could state that Bush compromised (he didn't), so they signed the deal.

So how is the el foldo supplemental structured? It includes these benchmarks that the Iraqis must follow or risk the loss of reconstruction funding, although there's a waiver that Bush can sign to send the funding anyway. People rightly consider these to be toothless benchmarks. But one of the benchmarks, the most important one actually, is about the Iraqi oil law. Bush will MOST CERTAINLY withhold funding for the Iraqis unless they sign this misbegotten law that privatizes their oil industry. And the Dems went right along with it in the interest of "holding Bush accountable." We've given him the very tools to rape the country of Iraq of their natural resources.

"Reconstruction money" can mean a lot of things. Would you at all be surprised if a misplaced Air Force bomb accidentally hit an oil supply line? Would "reconstruction money" be construed as bullets for the Iraqi army? Electricity for the houses of the Iraqi Parliament? Security? At the same time as Democrats gave up the power of the purse to stop the occupation, they handed the power of the purse to Bush over Iraq, and now he can turn it on and off like a spigot if the Parliament doesn't do his bidding. And it would all be completely legal.

This is serious Economic Hit Man stuff. They threatened to leave the country if there was no oil law, the Iraqis didn't blink. So they're trying the economic leverage. And if that doesn't work, Maliki's a goner. They blew up Torrijos in Panama. Same with Roldos in Ecaudor. It was over the same kind of things. I believe the Iraqis may hold firm, until they have to deal with Iyad Allawi back in power, and they understand the consequences of being anything but an American puppet.

The only person talking about any of this, friends, is Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who spent an hour on the House floor talking about this Iraqi oil law, very little of which mentions wealth-sharing, and most of which details how the industry would be privatized and how the oil companies, who have bled Americans dry to the tune of 20 billion dollars this year alone. It is completely infuriating that the Congress gave Bush the ability to use reconstruction money as a club over the head of the Iraqi government, in the name of calling it a "check" on Bush's power.

Feingold-Reid To Get A Vote

It'll be interesting to see how many votes it attracts. The other proposals from the Senate are of the namby-pamby "we must withdraw by fall unless the President says he doesn't want to" variety. Then there's a group that wants to create unenforceable benchmarks that the Iraqi government must follow unless they don't follow them.

(Nebraska Sen. Ben) Nelson has drafted similar legislation that would go even further. If the Iraqis failed to make progress on certain political and security reforms, the U.S. would cut off reconstruction aid. Under the bill, the president could waive the restriction if he provides public justification.

Nelson's bill also would require the U.S. commander in Iraq to testify by Sept. 15 on whether Bush's troop buildup around Baghdad is working.

"The Senate needs to move forward," Nelson said. "The president has signaled he will accept reasonable benchmarks."

The alliance of Nelson and Warner and other moderates on Iraq is reminiscent of the "Gang of 14," a group of senators who in 2005 drafted a compromise to end a Senate fight on judicial nominations.

Gang of 14 II: The Gangening! David Broder may jump through the ceiling of his finely decorated inside-the-Beltway home!

Basically, the politicians are still way behind the American people on this one. And at least some of them are uncomfortable with even doing their job:

The staffer claims that the Senate leadership was going back and forth all weekend on whether to allow this vote. "I think there are probably some people who would prefer not to see a vote on this," the staffer says. "It forces people to take a stand."

Heaven forfend that anyone take a stand against a tragic occupation. It might make David Broder spit out his cocktail! Better to create a broad bipartisan compromise that will effectively do nothing.

I'm glad that there will be a vote on Feingold-Reid, and that everyone will be on the record. The only thing that matters, however, is that George Bush won't sign anything that includes even the smallest concession. In that case, I'd assume that he'll be ending the war himself. Because I don't think the Democrats are stupid enough to allow that.