The Tragedy Of Airstrikes And Civilian Casualties

After a brief struggle over the cash for clunkers provision in the Senate, the chamber passed the supplemental war funding bill and passed it on to the President. The wars in Iraq and particularly Afghanistan have been transfered to this President. On Iraq, the Administration has not wavered from honoring the SOFA agreement, and despite continued violence there, I believe the US position is on the right path, toward a withdrawal that can hopefully force a political reconciliation through a diplomatic surge.

Afghanistan is obviously in a different place right now. The ruling regime controls little of the country, the insurgents and the Taliban can self-fund through the drug trade, and the symbiotic relationship across the Afghan-Pakistan border threatens the ability for foreign occupiers to do much about it. The population doesn't much like the Taliban but also doesn't like being murdered from above either, a practice completely antithetical to the idea of winning hearts and minds in a counter-insurgency. The airstrikes, which have intensified since the election of Barack Obama, are simply too deadly to be pinpointed and effective only against enemies and not friends.

But experiences such as the fateful May 4 airstrike show that halting civilian deaths will not be easy. Fighter pilots and air controllers at the main U.S. air base here, near Kabul, the Afghan capital, say that even the most comprehensive safeguards can fail under the stress and confusion of combat against an enemy that they say often uses civilians as human shields.

The mounting death toll of Afghan civilians from U.S. airstrikes has unleashed a tide of resentment and fury that threatens to undermine the American counterinsurgency effort. From President Obama to the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, American officials have made the reduction of civilian deaths a top priority as they revamp their strategy [...]

To gauge each mission's risk to civilians, a collateral damage estimate, or CDE, is prepared.

Yet civilian deaths continue to mount. U.S. commanders have not specified how they intend to reduce them, except to continue rigorously reviewing and enforcing existing restrictions. But the nature of the war almost guarantees more accidental deaths.

When people make split-second life-or-death decisions, and face what they consider a choice between protecting their compatriots or civilians, the decisions have proved imperfect.

This powerful film shows the aftermath of civilian casualties in Afghanistan. We are undermining our credibility and the legitimacy of the mission.



One more positive note is that a New York Times reporter today escaped from the Taliban and made his way to safety. A rare bit of good news in this region.

Bad Barney

In general, I like Barney Frank. He's important because he's willing to go on television and ridicule Republicans. But he certainly has picked up that Beltway tendency to punch the hippies, hasn't he?

“Off the record, it’s what we call the responsible left,” said one Massachusetts lawmaker. Frank himself was scathing toward both sides, who had often mimicked one another’s arguments that the IMF money constituted a European bank bailout.

“The left and the right live in parallel universes,” Frank told POLITICO. “The right listens to talk radio, the left’s on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. ... I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet.”

I don't totally disagree that obsessing over $5 billion, far less than 1% of the federal budget, in the IMF loan doesn't make a lot of sense. Of course, antiwar activists really wanted to leverage the GOP opposition to get timelines in the Iraq and Afghan war funding - something Frank and all his Democratic colleagues loved when George Bush was in office. There's no reason that the SOFA deadlines had to be implicit, adding them into the funding request would have given Congress the voice they should have on these matters.

Worse, Frank betrays a certain comfort with parroting the party line of the White House and the leadership here, even when it comes to his own community:

Well, it seems a trip to the Oval Office is all openly gay congressman Barney Frank needs to stab his community in the back. After criticizing the DOJ's anti-gay DOMA brief this morning, Frank did a 180 this evening and lauded the brief, which invoked incest and pedophilia. Frank now thinks the brief is just super.

Frank claims that he gave a newspaper reporter his negative opinion of the brief without actually having read it.

Did you catch that? Barney Frank, our senior gay elected representative, and a lawyer himself, claims that he was giving legal opinions on a legal brief that he hadn't even read. At least Joe and I, who are also lawyers, read the brief before commenting on it. How many other issues has Barney opined on about which he's been knowingly willfully ignorant? (Of course, I don't believe Frank for a minute - he read the brief, but the president got him to recant.)

I am simply astounded. Even more astounding is that Barney's release sounds as if it were written by the White House. Their talking points are all through it, including the bizarre notion that somehow Obama would be as bad as George Bush if he opposed DOMA in court. (Repeating the lie that presidents never oppose existing legislation in court.)

I didn't realize until now what a slave to power Frank has turned out to be. He could use his intellect and rapier wit in an independent fashion, but clearly he chooses to do otherwise. Hope that helps his career arc.

...Lawdork disputes John Aravosis' reading of Frank's remarks, in a somewhat compelling fashion.

The House Gives Thumbs-Up To Obama's War

The White House muscled through a bill yesterday in the House of Representatives that provides $106 billion dollars in supplemental funding, much of it for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also a controversial measure adding $5 billion to a line of credit for the IMF, some pandemic flu funding, a bunch of planes that the Air Force never even requested, and a Christmas tree of other proposals. The final margin was 226-202, with 32 Democrats sticking to their positions and voting no (5 Republicans voted yes). Fortunately the photo-suppression amendment was stripped out of the bill, a small but important victory (although I can't seem to gather whether or not it was stuffed into the bill regulating tobacco). There's also a major initiative in the bill called "cash for clunkers," which I want to address in a separate post.

Jane Hamsher did some amazing work getting the White House to sweat over this, and she ought to be commended for it. Rahm Emanuel really backed himself into a corner by putting the IMF funding inside the war spending bill. Democrats in tough districts got forked - support the bill and you voted for bailing out European banks, oppose it and you voted to abandon troops on the battlefield. I suppose the same could be said for Republicans, but Democrats pulling the "he voted against the troops" trick never seems to work. As for stopping the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, clearly we have about 30 votes for that in the House, which is kind of pitiful. Jane was able to do the work she did by leveraging Republican opposition.

Just remember:

They had to hold it open 10 extra minutes and after the Dems hit 218 and there were five GOP votes that scurried in under the wire.

We made the President of the United States himself whip to get the votes.

We tried to make the Dems fight like this when Bush was in office to stop funding the war, but they wouldn't--so we did it ourselves.

I'm very proud to have worked with every single one of you. This was going to be a rout. They had to work for it.

Let's do it again.

I wish the timeline language was in the Iraq part of the funding, since the Administration has repeatedly vowed to honor the status of forces agreement. And an endgame strategy in the incomparably difficult maze in Afghanistan would also be nice. But it's now Obama's war, and should it go awry, he'll receive a deserved amount of blame.

A nice reform for Congress, though one that would never happen, would be to end the practice of adding unrelated riders to must-pass spending bills.

Making Joe Lieberman Cry

Jane Hamsher reports that the Lieberman-Graham detainee photo suppression amendment has been dropped from the war funding supplemental, owing to pressure from liberal Democrats, who refused to vote for a bill that would undermine the Freedom of Information Act and increase executive power. They only got into that position because conservatives in the House refused to vote for a war supplemental that included increased funding for the IMF. But progressives took full advantage of the opportunity and struck the first blow against agglomerated executive power that I can remember in a long, long time.

The underlying bill doesn't much send a thrill up my leg either. But progressive Democrats saw a leverage point, picked it, and attacked until the forces supporting increased executive power had to give up. And that's a good thing. Hopefully they'll keep using this muscle.

...Here's how Huckleberry and Holy Joe will respond to this loss - with the equivalent of a temper tantrum:

"We strongly believe that the first responsibilities of government are the nation's security and the protection of those brave Americans who go into harm's way to defend it.

"The President has said that the release of the photos of detainees in US custody would 'put our troops and civilians serving our nation abroad in greater danger.' We agree with the Commander in Chief.

"We will employ all the legislative means available to us including opposing the supplemental war spending bill and attaching this amendment, which was unanimously adopted by the Senate, to every piece of legislation the Senate considers, to be sure the President has the authority he needs not to release these photos and any others that would jeopardize the safety and security of our troops.

"The release of the photos will serve as propaganda and recruiting tool for terrorists who seek to attack American citizens at home and abroad. We should strive to have as open a government as possible, but the behavior depicted in the photos has been prohibited and is being investigated. The photos do not depict anything that is not already known. Transparency, and in this case needless transparency, should not be paid for with the lives of American citizens, let alone the lives of our men and women in uniform fighting on our behalf in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

"Let it clearly be understood that without this legislation the photos in question are likely to be released. Such a release would be tantamount to a death sentence to some who are serving our nation in the most dangerous and difficult spots like Iraq and Afghanistan. It is this certain knowledge of these consequences of having the photos released that will cause us to vote against the supplemental and continue our push to turn our important amendment into law."

I didn't know you could actually hear crying in press release form.

I wouldn't slam Graham and Lieberman by the way. It certainly seems to me that they're running interference for the President. Direct the inquiries to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Who Wrote This?

In the past, the Congress has moved expeditiously to approve funding for our Armed Forces. I urge the Congress to do so once more. I also urge the Congress to focus on the needs of our troops and our national security, and not to use the supplemental to pursue unnecessary spending. I want the Congress to send me a focused bill, and to do so quickly. When this request returns to me as legislation ready to be signed, it should remain focused on our security.

...

If you guessed former anti-war activist Barack Obama, ding ding ding you get a cookie!

Elsewhere in this letter, Obama addresses why this supplemental request is needed at all, considering his intention to put the wars on budget.

As I noted when first I introduced my budget in February, this is the last planned war supplemental. Since September 2001, the Congress has passed 17 separate emergency funding bills totaling $822.1 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After 7 years of war, the American people deserve an honest accounting of the cost of our involvement in our ongoing military operations.

We must break that recent tradition and include future military costs in the regular budget so that we have an honest, more accurate, and fiscally responsible estimate of Federal spending. And we should not label military costs as emergency funds so as to avoid our responsibility to abide by the spending limitations set forth by the Congress. After years of budget gimmicks and wasteful spending, it is time to end the era of irresponsibility in Washington. In this request, we are honest about the costs we will bear as a Nation, and we will use our resources wisely and responsibly to meet the threats of our time and keep our Nation safe and secure.

Fair enough, and I suppose this couldn't have been readied for the omnibus spending bill because the Afghanistan policy review was not completed in time.

However, there is a belligerent tone in this letter that is completely reminiscent of George Bush's snotty rhetoric about "clean bills" and how the Congress has a responsibility to give him exactly what he asks for. And at least a few progressives aren't buying it:

President Barack Obama plans to request new funding from Congress for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he risks a backlash from antiwar lawmakers.

Mr. Obama is expected to seek congressional approval of $75.5 billion for the wars, perhaps as soon as Thursday. The issue is already raising tensions on Capitol Hill, especially among liberals who are sympathetic to the president's broader agenda but voice concerns about his timeline for withdrawal of troops from Iraq and his plans to beef up forces in Afghanistan.

"I can't imagine any way I'd vote for it," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a California Democrat and leader in the 77-member congressional Progressive Caucus. It would be her first major break with this White House.

Ms. Woolsey fears the president's plan for Iraq would leave behind a big occupation force. She is also concerned about the planned escalation in Afghanistan. "I don't think we should be going there," she said.

Similar sentiments echo across the House. Rep. Jim McGovern (D., Mass.) said he fears Afghanistan could become a quagmire. "I just have this sinking feeling that we're getting deeper and deeper into a war that has no end," he said.

Rep. John Conyers (D., Mich.) dismissed Mr. Obama's plans as "embarrassingly naive," and suggested that the president is being led astray by those around him. "He's the smartest man in American politics today," Rep. Conyers said. "But he occasionally gets bad advice and makes mistakes. This is one of those instances."

Hopefully these urgent questions and concerns get addressed instead of just rubber-stamping this funding. Congress has a role to play. Shouldn't they inquire about the endemic corruption in the Afghan government and police force, and how we can possibly trust the same people to bring economic development to the nation? Can they ask about the impact of Predator drone strikes on recruitment of the Pakistani Taliban and stability of the Pakistani government? Can they request an exit strategy?

Or will there be more my-way-or-the-highway talk?

Stupidest article of the Bush era

There have been a lot of incidents of appallingly bad journalism over the past eight years: those relentlessly focused on trivialities, stories inventing fake scandals out of whole cloth, the ones amplifying Bush lies and cheerleading for war. Yet for some reason, this story by Dan Eggen and Paul Kane in Sunday's Washington Post strikes me as the most unbelievable, factually incorrect and just plain stupidest article of the Bush era.

Headline:

Recent Political Wins Smell of Compromise

Lately, President Employs a Little-Used Tool

I don't know if you're aware of it, but getting full immunity for lawbreaking, expanded unchecked surveillance powers, and no-strings funding for endless war in Iraq is the result of compromise!

The Very Serious Journalists at the Post told me so.

The decider has become the compromiser.

President Bush has racked up a series of significant political victories in recent weeks, on surveillance reform, war funding and an international agreement on global warming, but only after engaging in the kind of conciliation with opponents that his administration has often avoided.

This must be the kind of conciliation where you threaten to veto everything unless you get exactly what you want and then the other side gives it to you. That is, after all, the best kind of conciliation.

Two weeks ago, for example, Bush signed a $162 billion spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that he hailed as a product of bipartisan cooperation. But the final legislation was far more expensive than Bush had said he would accept, and it included expanded G.I. Bill college benefits and other provisions that he had opposed.

The compromise, you see, was Bush accepting MORE money for war than he wanted. He wanted $100 billion and received $162 billion. There are absolutely no strings on this money, not even the fake "benchmarks" that were imposed last year. The domestic priorities attached to the bill are absolutely no different from last year, when the Democrats inserted minimum wage increases to the war funding bill. So this compromising compromiser got everything he wanted for an endless war where dozens of Iraqis and Americans continue to die every day.

A new surveillance bill signed into law Thursday also marked a significant victory for Bush, largely because the White House won legal immunity for telecommunications firms that helped in eavesdropping after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Yet even there, the compromise legislation included reforms that the administration had initially opposed, including language making clear that the measure is the exclusive legal authority for government spying. The changes allowed the bill to easily overcome opposition from Democratic leaders and civil liberties groups.

This is a bill that the President's lackeys in Congress have admitted gives them more than they ever expected to receive, a better deal that they managed to squeeze out of the Republican-led 109th Congress of Denny Hastert and Bill Frist. Take a look at this detailed flowchart to understand that this new law allows for mass untargeted surveillance of every piece of data between foreign and US recipients, without any requirement of probable cause, without even supplying a phone number or email address attached to the surveillance, and with the added bonus of hiding the lawbreaking warrantless wiretapping program approved by the President and immunizing their criminal activity.

This was a "compromise."

Then there's this whopper:

Bush's conciliatory mood extended to the Group of Eight summit last week in Japan, where the United States for the first time joined the other major industrialized countries in agreeing to try to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Although environmental groups said the deal lacked vital specifics, it marked a long journey for a U.S. president who came to office questioning the science of climate change.

Just TODAY, the White House announced they would defy a Supreme Court ruling and refuse to regulate greenhouse gases through the EPA, disavowing the agency's own reports:

To defer compliance with the Supreme Court's demand, the White House has walked a tortured policy path, editing its officials' congressional testimony, refusing to read documents prepared by career employees and approved by top appointees, requesting changes in computer models to lower estimates of the benefits of curbing carbon dioxide, and pushing narrowly drafted legislation on fuel-economy standards that officials said was meant to sap public interest in wider regulatory action.

The decision to solicit further comment overrides the EPA's written recommendation from December. Officials said a few senior White House officials were unwilling to allow the EPA to state officially that global warming harms human welfare. Doing so would legally trigger sweeping regulatory requirements under the 45-year-old Clean Air Act, one of the pillars of U.S. environmental protection, and would cost utilities, automakers and others billions of dollars while also bringing economic benefits, EPA's analyses found.

And the G8 pledge does nothing, it has no targets, provides no numbers, and would not bind any member nation to any policy. Furthermore, does this sound like some conciliatory figure?

President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit.

As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

It is almost impossible to believe that any journalistic enterprise could come up with such dreck on their news pages, attributing these massive rationalizations and misinterpretations as fact. But this is the Beltway mindset, that "bipartisanship" is supremely valued and always just, and if the dirty hippies are mad about it then Washington must have done its job properly. So they literally just make shit up to feed the narrative of Bush as some transactional compromising figure instead of pushing a radical agenda based on supreme executive power. This is the same guy threatening to veto this:

The House approved a homeless veterans housing bill overwhelmingly Wednesday, even though White House advisers warned they'd urge President Bush to veto it.

The bill sponsored by Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, authorizes spending $200 million on housing and services for veterans, requires 20,000 rental vouchers a year for low-income housing for veterans and authorizes $1 million for grants to nonprofit groups to provide housing and services for veterans.

The bill, which passed 412-9, also creates a job in the Department of Housing and Urban Development for someone to coordinate with Veterans Affairs on homelessness and make regular reports to Congress on the issue.

He wants to veto a bill designed to house homeless veterans. Yet the Very Serious Journalists of Washington wants to tell me that there's some great change here. They would love to see that so they can put their relentless cheerleading for this deeply unpopular oaf behind them, so they can believe the system worked, and so everyone can go have cocktails at the bar safe in the knowledge that the betters in the Beltway are doing the glorious and bipartisan work of the people.

The truth is that there has been a hostile takeover at all levels of government that is undermining the very fabric of the nation. But the Very Serious Journalists don't want you to peek behind the curtain. If I didn't know better, I'd think the writers of this fable were Mr. and Mrs. Aesop.

A Piece Of Ordnance In Every Pot

We in the blogosphere have been so worked up about the FISA bill that we virtually ignored the fact that the Senate confirmed what the House began, passing an enormous spending bill to fund the occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan well into the next Administration. There are also provisions for a new GI Bill, unemployment benefit extension for an additional 13 weeks, and a number of domestic spending initiatives (including midwest flooding relief).

Considering that the 110th Congress was elected with a mandate to end the war, it's a little surprising that practically nobody raised their voice in so much as anger to this continued funding. It could be learned helplessness, a resigned view that Congress wasn't going to use their procedural abilities to make any effort to stop the occupation of Iraq. Or it could be that the nation has been bullied into believing that "we're winning" and "the surge is working" while the media has simultaneously taken the details about Iraq off the TV screens and front pages, which makes it that much easier for the bullies.

It's not like people aren't still dying - they are, including 13 Americans this week and scores of Iraqis, at least 70 just yesterday. They're dying at a somewhat reduced rate, but political progress is not existent and the core factors causing the violence remain unchanged. Ethnic cleansing and paying off enemies to create heavily armed militias are the main contributing factors, and those aren't recipes for stability. Yet this is considered to be success. But let me give you an example of what that success looks like, what our tax dollars have bought, and keep in mind the Heller v. DC ruling when you read about it:

Meanwhile, Iraqi officials said a U.S. airstrike killed four members of a family north of Baghdad early Wednesday. Iraqi and U.S. officials provided conflicting accounts of the incident.

Capt. Ahmed al-Azwawi, a police official in Samra, a village about seven miles south of Tikrit, said U.S. troops were conducting an operation in the area when a man fired shots in the air with an AK-47.

Azwawi said the man, who sold propane gas for a living, was afraid thieves were in the vicinity.

U.S. soldiers then retreated and called in an airstrike, Azwawi said, killing the man, his wife, and two of their children.

The kids were 6 and 8, and a separate report claims that two other kids were killed.

There's no secret, other than in the US media, that American forces are trying to secure Iraq through massive airstrikes, many of which result in trigger-happy responses anytime anyone fires a gun (and practically every adult male in Iraq owns an AK-47). The murdered families have relatives, and every incident like this engenders anger and distrust. The status of forces agreement sought by Bush calls explicitly for continued air superiority for the US military.

As usual, when America sees a war slipping away, they bomb the fuck out of the ground. And the bipartisan coalition of the United States government enthusiastically endorses and funds the slaughter. Let's be very clear - your representatives bought another year's worth of stories like the one above, with no gain in national security, a stretching of the US military to the very breaking point should anything else crop up, and no effort to manage or deal with the underlying root causes in the country we unnecessarily invaded.

Iraq 4-Ever

No-strings funding passes. 151 Democratic votes against, almost 2/3 of the caucus. Including, in one of her first votes, Donna Edwards.

I guess that "majority of the majority" thing doesn't apply.

Four Republicans voted against, and I expected Ron Paul, but John Campbell of CA-48? The hell? I think he is opposed to the process, or spending of any kind or something.

Enjoy your war, 6 year-olds.

Bundling

Here it is. The final indignity. Funding for endless war AND etching out the 4th Amendment will be combined into the same bill to force enough compliance from Bush Dogs to get this bill passed. "By any means necessary" for Hoyer and his corporate lobbying buddies.

The House Rules Committee is meeting at this hour on the "FISA Amedments Act." Later today, they'll be meeting on a technical fix that allows them to waive PAYGO rules and waive consideration of a bill within 24 hours of its rules being set.

The plan is to put the two together.

To be precise, the war supplemental will be attached to the FISA bill. This is being fast-tracked well beyond our ability to stop it. The royalists in the House want war without restrictions and free passes for lawbreakers.

UPDATE: The best information I have is the Rules Committee is acting on the FISA bill right now, and they're waiving the requirements that would conceivably allow them to act on both war funding and FISA as soon as tomorrow. However, war funding may happen tonight, with FISA tomorrow. I apologize for trying to get this information out swiftly. It's still possible but not a done deal.

Let's See What You've Bought

So a deal has been reached on no-strings-attached war funding well into the next President's first year, and all the Democrats get out of it is a GI Bill that isn't paid for (they had to drop the tax on millionaires), some appropriations for flooding in the Midwest and Gulf Coast and modified unemployment insurance for an additional 13 weeks. That's not nothing, but given that it's a signing of a death warrant for tens of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, it's perverse to even talk in terms of what you "get" out of the deal.

But it's worth looking at the country we've bought for another year or so, just to kick the tires and see where it's going. Turns out that the "political progress" that is continually touted by war defenders is more like a press release than actual progress that gets implemented:

When the Iraqi parliament passed a law in January aimed at rehiring former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party, U.S. President George W. Bush praised it as a step towards national reconciliation [...]

But five months later, implementation of the law is bogged down by infighting between politicians, and the committee once tasked with hunting out Baathists in government has found itself in the odd position of overseeing the process of rehiring them or offering them state pensions.

The government has still not appointed a seven-member panel to replace the deBaathification Committee, whose enthusiastic purge of Baathists from government posts prompted minority Sunni Arabs to accuse them of conducting a witch-hunt [...]

The committee has received 14,000 applications from former Baathists asking for either reinstatement or for pensions, he said.

But Iraq's presidency council -- which comprises Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, and his two deputies -- and a separate Accountability and Justice Committee in parliament have ordered [the committee's head] and his colleagues to freeze their work.

This is merely an example of a persistent pattern where the ruling government makes a show at reconciliation and then uses their power as a tool of repression. The root causes that presage all the sectarian violence we have seen remain and will certainly be acted upon at some juncture.

In other news, we are reminded that this was not a war for oil but a war for oil services contracts.

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

Gee, I wonder how the US oil companies got the upper hand and those no-bid contracts? It couldn't be the consequence of a decision made at the initial moments of the invasion that the "victor" in Iraq would get the spoils, could it?

As Secretary of State Colin Powell told a congressional panel on Wednesday, "We didn't take on this huge burden with our coalition partners not to be able to have a significant, dominating control over how it unfolds."

And there are similar quotes from that time, freezing out Germany and France from the plunder. Not that any country should profit from the natural resources of Iraq except for Iraq.

So, for the low low price of $162 billion dollars, we have secured a ready-to-explode colony in the Middle East, full of black gold that we will pump out of their sand and mainline directly into the bank accounts of Big Oil.

Awesome.

Bill Of Rights OK'd For Destruction By Fourth Of July

wThere's not a lot more that can be said about this FISA abomination, but you may want to keep up with developments, so here's the latest.

House and Senate leaders of both parties said negotiators were near a deal on extending the authority to track terror suspects overseas while protecting the civil liberties of Americans as spy agencies sift through cell phone calls and other electronic communications that did not exist when the surveillance law first came into being.

Senior Congressional officials said they hoped to seal an agreement early this week and quickly vote in the House and Senate on legislation that expired back in February, though the administration retained the authority to continue spying on terror suspects it already had in its sights. That power begins slipping later this summer.

Well, actually, no. The "power" would revert back to the FISA court, which has only rejected past warrants for surveillance on the technical grounds that the foreign communications go through a domestic switcher, and all that really would need to be done is a patch treating those calls as foreign communications. Off of that molehill is where we are building this mountain of crap.

The main sticking point between the House and Senate has been President Bush’s demand that phone companies that cooperated in the wiretapping program after the Sept. 11 attacks be given blanket immunity from legal action by customers who claim their rights were violated by warrantless surveillance. The Senate went along with the plan but the House balked.

After weeks of talks, lawmakers have worked out a deal that would allow federal courts to settle the question of whether the telecommunications companies should be protected because they were assured their participation was legal.

No, they're not going to allow federal courts to "settle the question." They're asking courts to rule on whether the Attorney General gave telecom companies a "Violate the 4th Amendment" permission slip. By confining the matter to one of paperwork, district courts will not be ruling on the legality of the spying but merely confirming that the executive branch said it was OK to spy. This is a pretext for a completely outraegous circumstance - the executive branch breaking the law, and then legalizing it by showing that they wrote down that they could break the law.

This, along with blank check funding for war into the next President's term, is being given a deadline date by the House leadership, which always works out perfectly.

Lawmakers also have to get more serious this week about finishing up an overdue bill to fund combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The measure has been slowed by fights over an extension of unemployment pay, new veterans education benefits and general Democratic opposition to Bush administration war policy.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she wants the matter settled before Congress breaks for Independence Day at the end of next week, suggesting she is ready to bring the issue to a head.

“We want to pass a bill that will be signed by the president,” she said. “And that will happen before we leave for the Fourth of July. So the timing is sometime between now and then. I feel confident that that will happen.”

There's even talk that the FISA bill and the war funding bill will be COMBINED. Which would certainly wrap up the craven nature of the action into a nice, neat bow, so there's at least something to be said for it. The fact that the deadline is the date marking the birth of the nation gives it a little layer of irony.

CQ has a little more, noting that the compromise, which involves allowing district courts to decide the fate of immunity, was worked out WITHOUT the heads of the Judiciary Committees, or any of the party leadership on either side. This is Steny Hoyer and Jello Jay Rockefeller's ballgame. CQ seems to think that this deal is not yet hardened in stone, but I'm not as sanguine. We need to fight this nonsense, of course, but more than anything this legislation is a slap in the face to those who have prolonged this debate until they are satisfied with the civil liberties and privacy protections. You get the feeling that Hoyer wants to say to the caucus "Can't you let me finish off the Fourth Amendment and go away so we can move on to important items like naming more post offices? I made it LOOK like both sides will get their day in court, what more would you have me do?"

I've previously called for Sen. Obama to step in and put a stop to this nonsense, telling the Hoyer-Rockefeller axis that this undermines his own security goals and debases our ideals as a nation. If he doesn't there really isn't much hope of getting this halted. You can contact him at his Senate website, or at his campaign site.ar

I Can't Wait To End This Era Of Governance

And from the we've got a lot of work to do file:

House Democrats are likely to drop a 13-week extension of unemployment insurance benefits from a major spending package that includes continued funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and that would create a new education benefit for military veterans returning from the battlefields.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday that the unemployment insurance provision would "probably not" be part of the final package of war and domestic spending, which has become the most important legislative battle this spring between congressional Democrats and President Bush [...]

The version of the bill approved by the Senate on May 22 would cost more than $250 billion over 10 years, a price tag that the fiscally conservative caucus of "Blue Dog" House Democrats opposes. The bill would provide $165 billion to fund the two wars into the next presidency, along with billions of dollars more for domestic programs.

The total absurdity about Blue Dogs balking at the price tag of domestic spending in a bill that puts $165 BILLION dollars for war funding OFF THE BOOKS is about to send my fist through this computer screen. I mean good Lord.

If Obama wins, Democrats will own this war. And all of these Blue Dogs will have a choice to make, and they'll either understand the meaning of responsibility or we'll have to hold them to account. There's so much rot in the Democratic Party to clear away, it's going to be a rough road.

GI Bill Passes Senate

By a pretty robust 75-22 count, as well. Of course, it's folded into the broader war funding bill, which extends the blank check all the way to the next President, so it's a bittersweet day. Russ Feingold is absolutely right.

“I am deeply disappointed that Congress is considering another Iraq spending bill that does nothing to end the war in Iraq,” Feingold said. “There’s a lot of tough talk from Democrats and even some Republicans about ending the war but not enough real action to do so. Democrats took control of Congress last year pledging to work to bring an end to the war. But now, five years into this war, with 4,000 Americans killed, over 30,000 wounded, and over $10 billion per month being spent in Iraq, we’re actually moving backwards in our goal to end the war. This is a retreat from responsibility.”

That's true. But we also have a responsibility to our veterans to honor their service, and that's what the Webb GI Bill provides. Here's the roll call, and there are a few dead-enders who don't subscribe to that belief, and their vote will be highlighted for years to come. On the other hand, several endangered Republicans got the message and voted to give vets the education benefits they deserve.

John McCain was fulfilling his duty as a non-voting member of the Senate and campaigned out of town. What's interesting is that he tried to blow this whole thing up by offering a crappy "compromise" and completely lost the bulk of his party. What fine leadership!

UPDATE: Are people really going to fall for this again?

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in the war in Iraq, said that he expects this fall to recommend additional cuts in U.S. troop levels there.

He said that he plans to make an assessment by September, when he would move to take over the U.S. Central Command, if he is confirmed for that position, as is expected.

"My sense is I will be able to make a recommendation at that time for further reductions," Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee today in a hearing to confirm him for the Centcom post. He said he didn't know how large those cuts might be.

Yes, just wait until September again. Why are you people so impatient? Five and 1/2 years is a perfectly respectable time to downshift into a commitment of 100,000-plus troops occupying a foreign country.

Anyone who believes this will be at all meaningful and not just a stunt is out of their minds. This has been a constant refrain since the beginning of the war.

The Beginning of the Iraq Withdrawal

I've been cooped up all day, but I did notice that Republicans basically stopped the war funding bill in the House. The ostensible reason is the added domestic spending, but the real reason is that they don't want to have anything to do with funding Iraq - it'll be poison for their electoral chances. So a bunch of them voted present.

Stoller has a good post on this:

Today, about 100 House Republicans refused to vote for more war funding, voting 'present'. They are trying to hand off the war to the Democrats, but even Democrats were able to increase their 'no' vote number on funding from 141 to 149; the bill failed. In a separate bill, Republicans also voted against timelines, for torture, and accountability for military contractors, including various elements of a Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq. This bill passed with 227 votes; last year, it passed with only 218 votes, for a gain of 9.

Finally the GI bill passed with overwhelming margin of 256 votes in the House, including 32 Republicans. It included a war surtax of one half of one percent on people making over $500k a year to pay for the GI bill, at the behest of Blue Dogs. This might actually be the most remarkable piece of the votes today; conservative Democrats agreeing to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for educational benefits for veterans. Bill Foster and Don Cazayoux both voted well on the new GI Bill and on the Responsible Plan bill with timelines, but were 'yes' votes on war funding. So yes, they are conservative, and I expect Childers to be conservative as well. Still, the MS-01, the IL-14 special election result, and the LA-06 special election result - all red seats picked off by Democrats - are devastating Republican discipline in the House.

Republicans know that they're cooked, and it's every man for himself. Bush has lost his human shield, and Democrats ought to take advantage of this by making him veto every popular program they can think of, making him more and more hated and reflecting badly on McCain and the GOP. While war funding will probably return in the Senate (but doesn't it have to start in the House?), this is a moment of more leverage than I thought possible. The string of special election losses has demoralized House Republicans. There is now a path to ending this war if the leadership chooses to take it.

And those foolish Dems that voted for funding or against education benefits for veterans are going to be hammered over it. Here's Russ Warner already pouncing on David Dreier's vote:

David Dreier voted against a bill to increase educational opportunities for veterans today. The legislation expands the education benefits veterans receive under the GI bill to restore the promise of a full, four-year college education. It passed the House with broad bi-partisan support, 256 to 166.

"I would have voted differently on this bill," said Russ Warner, a successful small businessman and the Democratic candidate for Congress from California's 26th district. "It's important to make the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan part of an American economic recovery, just like the veterans of World War II were. They put their lives on the line for us, and deserve to be able to come home and go to school if they so choose. We need new leaders with new priorities in Washington, and that's why I'm running for Congress."

Warner added "I believe that fully equipping our soldiers, providing them with good medical care and paying them a fair wage should be considered costs of war, but David Dreier seems to believe that we don't owe our veterans anything."

The general election in the House started today, and badly for Republicans.

Obama Jumps On The GI Bill Issue

The Webb GI Bill could come up for a vote this week, and it's putting Republicans in a tough spot. The least we can do for all the veterans we've created during the Bush Administration is give them a full ride to the public university of their choice. It's most definitely part of the cost of war. The Pentagon and some Republicans consider it too expensive. How is a veteran supposed to feel when they her that their service is not worth a big enough dollar amount to educate them?

The dodge that John McCain and others are using is that this will reduce the size of the volunteer army because vets will go scurrying to use the benefits instead of making the military a career. It's an extension of the "welfare queen" argument. Because Republicans are so greedy, they can't imagine not taking advantage of an opportunity immediately. But there's a 15-year time horizon in the bill to use the benefits, enough of a spread to manage that concern. Also, typically the way the world works is that incentives and benefits ENCOURAGE people to join, as the American Legion understands.

“This bill would encourage young men and women to join the military,” [National Commander Marty] Conatser said. “As far as retention goes, the CBO estimates that a simple $8,000 bonus to personnel at their first enlistment point would increase reenlistments by 2 percentage points. Another way to encourage mid-level servicemembers to stay in the military is to transfer GI Bill benefits to family members so the servicemember can remain in the military and still benefit from the program.”

This debate has now jumped into the Presidential race. John McCain, a product of the GI Bill who attended the Naval Academy at taxpayer expense, has tried to weasel out of the bill by endorsing a far more modest version. This puts him on the wrong side of the public (look at all of those op-eds), and in the crosshairs of Barack Obama, who hit McCain hard on this yesterday.

And when our loved ones do come home, it is time for the United States of America to offer this generation of returning heroes the same thanks we offered that earlier, Greatest Generation – by giving every veteran the same opportunity that my grandfather had under the GI Bill.

There is no reason we shouldn’t pass the 21st Century GI Bill that is being debated in Congress right now. It was introduced by my friend Senator Jim Webb, a Marine who served as Navy Secretary under President Ronald Reagan.. His plan has widespread support from Republicans and Democrats. It would provide every returning veteran with a real chance to afford a college education, and it would not harm retention.

I have great respect for John McCain’s service to this country and I know he loves it dearly and honors those who serve. But he is one of the few Senators of either party who oppose this bill because he thinks it’s too generous. I couldn’t disagree more. At a time when the skyrocketing cost of tuition is pricing thousands of Americans out of a college education, we should be doing everything we can to give the men and women who have risked their lives for this country the chance to pursue the American Dream.

Now, this of course is being packaged with continued war funding into the next Presidency, so it's a bitter pill. But in theory, the men and women serving in Iraq and elsewhere deserve these benefits. McCain Republicans are denying them. It's a pretty simple construction.

Getting a Handle on Unaccountable Military Contractors

Funny story - it turns out that lots of the Iraq reconstruction contracts were terminated or left unfinished, and a bunch of them were only claimed to be finished at variance with the facts.

The special IG's review of 47,321 reconstruction projects worth billions of dollars found that at least 855 contracts were terminated by U.S. officials before their completion, primarily because of unforeseen factors such as violence and excessive costs. About 112 of those agreements were ended specifically because of the contractors' actual or anticipated poor performance.

In addition, the audit said many reconstruction projects were being described as complete or otherwise successful when they were not. In one case, the U.S. Agency for International Development contracted with Bechtel Corp. in 2004 to construct a $50 million children's hospital in Basra, only to "essentially terminate" the project in 2006 because of monthslong delays.

But rather than terminate the project, U.S. officials modified the contract to change the scope of the work. As a result, a U.S. database of Iraq reconstruction contracts shows the project as complete "when in fact the hospital was only 35 percent complete when work was stopped," said investigators in describing the practice of "descoping" as frequent.

This is some of the first attempts at accountability in the contracting process, and it comes after the contractors have received all of their money for their crappy workmanship. Iraqi oil money is indeed growing, but who pays for garbage work is really besides the point. Hell, the US military is charged with building barracks stateside AFAIK, and here's what they managed to produce in Fayettevillle, NC:

A Fort Bragg soldier's father uploaded a YouTube video of photos he took of his son's barracks earlier this month. The video shows the deplorable living conditions to which his son and the other soldiers of his unit in the 82nd Airborne Division returned after a 15-month-long deployment to Afghanistan.

The most shocking photo, in my opinion, is the one of the soldier standing in the latrine sink, trying to unstop a drain, while human excrement and urine fills the floor below him. This is the video:

The problem is a process where the provision of services in war zones and for the benefit of American soldiers comes without any accountability whatsoever. We have a supplemental war funding bill coming up in Congress where the Democratic leadership is about to give ANOTHER blank check to the President, actually exceeding the billions of dollars he's asked for the war. To do that without any manner of accountability is a crime. Darcy Burner is absoutely right. The least we could do is end the use of these private military contractors, who waste our tax dollars and help give the American military a bad name around the globe.

Blackwater's contract was just renewed by the State Department. The supplemental appropriation that's about to be brought up before the House includes ongoing funding for Blackwater's activities in Iraq. If we're going to fight this, we need to fight it now.
It is not just that too many of Blackwater's employees in Iraq conduct themselves in ways that are counterproductive and deeply immoral. It is not just that there is no accountability for the company or its employees either in Iraq or here. And it is not just that the Iraqis have clearly and unambiguously called for Blackwater to leave.

Blackwater is a threat to the core underpinnings of our democracy. Who is this private army loyal to? Because they aren't ours. They don't wear our flags on their clothing -- they wear the symbol of Blackwater.

In October 2007, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that the work of these contractors in Iraq was `at cross-purposes to our larger mission in Iraq', and that `right now those missions are in conflict ...'.

If ever there was a core government function that should not be contracted out, it is the right to use deadly force in our names.

There's a bill in the House (that was identified in the Responsible Plan) which would phase out the use of military security contractors. H.R. 4102, the Stop Outsourcing Security Act, currently has 27 sponsors. The Senate equivalent, S. 2398, currently has 2 sponsors. I've listed them below. If your representative or senators aren't on these lists, it's probably time you asked them to be.

At a time when Blackwater is trying to sneak into San Diego and build a base a couple miles from the Mexican border, and at a time when the company is shredding evidence about the September shooting of Iraqi civilians, it is unacceptable to continue funding a war where the chief benefactors are allowed to spend our money and represent out interests without oversight. The list of sponsors is at the link. Check it out.

Democrats Kicking The Can

I know George Bush is a walking impediment to reason, but really this is a critical time for Iraq, and I don't think we can just give up and play out the string until next January.

The war in Iraq has become "a major debacle" and the outcome "is in doubt" despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon's premier military educational institute.

The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush's projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.

The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.

Apparently Collins also called the war a must win, so it's a mixed message, but clearly even the defense establishment is coming around to the fact that the sunny predictions of certain victory hide a dangerous truth - that we're becoming bogged down in an unnecessary and stupid war with no end in sight, and that it's diminishing our capacity as a world leader.

The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in Iraq have diverted "manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers" from "all other efforts in the war on terror" and severely strained the U.S. armed forces.

"Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there (in Iraq) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East," the report continued.

When the strategy for victory includes building a big wall around Sadr City to turn an area with millions of inhabitants into a roach motel; and when the commander-in-chief literally says that his measure of success is success, you know we've got a major problem. And without leadership and a change of direction, it's not going to get better, and the potential for defeat and a crushing blow to our security and standing will actually increase.

Given all this, the fact that the Democrats are preparing to take a pass on the entire issue of funding is deeply distressing. It's like they were pounded into submission and learned only helplessness instead of resolve. The quotes in this article are cringeworthy.

The House Democratic leadership is close to finalizing a decision to combine all outstanding Bush administration requests for war funding — totaling at least $170 billion — into one huge bill, according to lawmakers and aides.

Such a move would clear war funding from the congressional agenda until well into the next administration.

On top of the war funding, Democrats also want to attach billions of dollars in domestic spending initiatives to the measure, which could be the only appropriations bill enacted this year [...]

More immediately, Democratic leaders believe that by offering more than $170 billion in war funding, they can blunt Republican attacks on them for failing to support the troops, a senior Democratic appropriator said. The lawmaker, who declined to be identified, said the strategy also would increase Democrats’ leverage to seek extra discretionary funding.

James P. Moran, D-Va., a senior House appropriator, said that the new plan was the “best idea yet” because it would provide funds for the military through June 2009.

Yes, the "best idea yet." And good luck with blunting Republican attacks, because typically in an election year they back off anyway.

I don't have a big problem with using Iraq funding to get what you need domestically if there was a reason to continue in Iraq. But there isn't. And in truth, the Democrats are giving up on their ability to impact the war at all, even though the simplest thing you can do - not pass a bill - is in their toolkit. There's simply a lack of political will to do anything meaningful. Lynn Woolsey basically explains it.

Lynn Woolsey: I'll tell you one of the things -- and you're just going to hate this -- because I hate it. But, there's this sense that we don't have the votes to do what we need to do, the right things to do, so we're not going to do anything, virtually. And what I say is, okay well if our troops, our wonderful troops over there say, "Well, you know, this is really hard and I don't know we can win this battle, so I think I won't do it." I just think we are looking at this so wrong. And I think the people of this country...89 percent of Americans polled are saying that our economy is directly related to our involvement in Iraq. I mean, they get it. We shouldn't be there in the first place. It's bringing our country down and our economy down. So I would think that the reason they made us the majority party anyway was so that we would do something about it.

I don't know how you can call this anything but complicity.

Why Does Bush Hate The Troops?

Last year Jim Webb and others offered the dwell time amendment to the defense appropriations bill and the emergency supplemental, calling for the Defense Department to allow a soldier as much time at home as he has in the field. The Administration called it craven, Republicans termed it a "slow-bleed" strategy and everybody questioned everybody's patriotism.

Bush just agreed to it today.

President Bush plans to announce today that he will cut Army combat tours in Iraq from 15 months to 12 months, returning rotations to where they were before last year's troop buildup in an effort to alleviate the tremendous stress on the military, administration officials said.

The move is in response to intense pressure from service commanders who have expressed anxiety about the toll of long deployments on their soldiers and, more broadly, about the U.S. military's ability to confront unanticipated threats. Bush will announce the decision during a national speech, in which aides said he will also embrace Army Gen. David H. Petraeus's plan to indefinitely suspend a drawdown of forces.

They can suspend the drawdown, or pause, as per the current parlance, but without the 15-month tours they cannot draw back up if needed. And so the President is basically acknowledging the endgame in Iraq. And don't let him tell you that troop decisions will be made based on conditions on the ground. He just consigned the US to a smaller force in Iraq regardless of the conditions.

Now, John McCain's refusal to rule out pre-emptive war means that he would have to increase tours of duty back to 15 months and/or dramatically increase the size of the Army, and the only way to do that is through a draft. The logical outcome of McCain's foreign policy is the end of the all-volunteer Army. So, let the buyer beware.

With respect to Iraq, this really does spell the end and I think Bush must have been given the message that it's basically over. When you see someone like Kenneth Pollack basically admit that a responsible withdrawal is demanded, you know that there's actually this sea change that very few people are noticing out in the field. The frustration on the faces of Congressmembers during the Petraeus/Crocker hearings showed that they've basically had it. Every step forward is accompanied by two steps back, and in the process we are losing lives and diverting resources from the real national security challenges. You're going to see this manifest itself first in the pullback of money from the war. Here's some more of the Post article.

Democrats moved to press Bush on another front, linking the sagging U.S. economy to escalating war costs. On a day when oil hit $112 a barrel for the first time, lawmakers said that energy-rich Iraq should be footing more of its own bills. "We've put about $45 billion into Iraq's reconstruction . . . and they have not spent their own resources," said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.). "They have got to have some skin in the game."

Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) met yesterday to craft a bipartisan bill to make Iraq take on a greater share of the financial burden. Under their plan, any future U.S. money for reconstruction would take the form of a loan to be repaid, and Baghdad would have to pay for fuel used by U.S. troops and for the training of its own security forces, and make payments to the predominantly Sunni fighters in the Awakening movement taking on al-Qaeda.

"It's time, in fact long past time, the Iraqis start bearing a larger portion of the costs for this war," Collins said. Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) echoed the sentiment. "Doesn't it just make sense that record-high gas prices pay for the reconstruction of Iraq, rather than the American taxpayer?" he asked.

This issue is resonant and I think it will click with voters. So money will come out, the troops will remain for another year because nobody in the Congress has the balls to fully fund withdrawal and nothing else. However, dwell time will return to balance (albeit with a waiting period just long enough to keep up the pace of deployments until Bush leaves office), the money burden will shift more and more to the Iraqis, and there will absolutely be an accountability moment on the war in November, with responsible withdrawal on the table. And the people are on the side of getting out. If Republicans want to bet on the electorate's resolve to stay inside Iraq with no endgame strategy and no plan for even defining success, go ahead. We're see you at the Inaugural ball - before we go inside.

The Sellout on Iraq Funding Nears Completion

The delay of consideration of the FISA bill was a great victory for progressives to show that they can wield some institutional power, but as I said at the time, Harry Reid undoubtedly pulled the bill because he didn't want to mess up his plan of providing money for endless war in exchange for little.

The Senate on Tuesday night passed a spending bill combining funding for 14 Cabinet departments with $70 billion for U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By a bipartisan 76-17 vote, senators approved the massive bill, which bundles 11 annual appropriations bills funding domestic agencies and the foreign aid budget for the budget year that began Oct. 1.

Earlier, by a 70-25 vote in the Senate, President Bush and his GOP allies won a major victory in passing a measure providing $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — without restrictions that Democrats had insisted on for weeks.

This was a renege on a promise not to take up Iraq spending until after the first of the year.

The budget battle actually ended up not being as severe as once thought; Democrats did end up reverting a lot of spending to their priorities (cutting all funding for new nuclear warheads, for example), and they used some "emergency" spending measures to keep in funding for veteran's issues that would have come under the knife. In the end the President did not stick to his budget number. And while I would have liked to have seen the pork removed, all pork is not created equal. "Pork" is sometimes a convenient code word for conservatives who really don't want any social services spending at all.

Democrats succeeded in reversing cuts sought by Bush to heating subsidies, local law enforcement, Amtrak and housing as well as Bush's plan to eliminate the $654 million budget for grants to community action agencies that help the poor.

That all, you see, is considered "pork."

But of course, the Iraq giveaway shocks the conscience. Especially because it used the FISA battle almost as misdirection, so that it could be snuck again with a minimum of effort. The Democrats got their spending bills done, but really got nothing major for this effort, like SCHIP, as they should have. This comes at a time when practically all of the factions in Iraq want us to leave, believing that the military invasion is the root cause of the security breakdown. So the Senate in their infinite wisdom signed the bill to keep us there indefinitely. And look at this little stab in the back from "I'm With McCain":

Twenty-one Democrats and Connecticut independent Joe Lieberman — who stood with Republicans at a post-vote news conference — voted with every Republican but Gordon Smith of Oregon to approve the Iraq funding.

I'd like to see him "stand with Republicans" permanently; can we get that to happen.

Dianne Feinstein, our West Coast Lieberman, took a powder on the vote - she was the only Senator not campaigning in Iowa to miss it. Even McCain managed to get back to cast his vote.

Now THAT'S leadership!

The continued funding of endless war, especially with nothing all that meaningful in return, is very dispiriting. It's hard to argue with a portrait of Democrats as a sort of placeholder, the Washington Generals to the Republican/corporate axis' Harlem Globetrotters, a safety valve so that people still believe they have some access to the system. And while I don't go as far as this writer, I do think this is an important historical note to keep in mind:

For progressives to take over the Democrats would be an unprecedented departure from the party's character. To understand this, one must first recognize that the sole Dem claim to being progressive is rooted almost entirely in the New Deal, itself a response to a unique crisis in American history. FDR recognized that to avert the very real threat of massive social unrest and instability, significant concessions had to be made to the working class by the ruling class. Government could act to defend the weak, and to some extent to rein in the strong, but this was all in the longterm interests of defending the existing social order.

Before FDR, the Dem Party had no progressive record whatsoever; and after FDR, though the New Deal coalition survived until the mid-1960's, it did so with a record of achievement that was restrained compared to the 1930's. After passing Medicare in 1965 the party reverted to its longterm pattern, and since then, there has again been no progressive record to speak of. The party's progressive social reform was thus concentrated mostly in the 1930's, with some residual momentum lasting until the mid 60's. The party's "progressive period" was thus 1) an exception to the longer term pattern; 2) a response to a unique crisis; and 3) has in any case been dead for over 40 years.

I think it's important to remember that progressives are working against the tides of history. However, the naked corruption of this Administration and the trashing of the Republican brand has given an opening, however slight. Sadly, Democrats are doing nothing with that opening, which is why Ron Paul is sucking up so much oxygen among the hopeless, the marginalized, the Nader/Perot "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore" caucus that could be actually a powerful cog in the progressive wheel. When Republicans offer authoritarianism and Democrats offer milquetoast in response, of course people will seek out a Diogenes and imbue him with saintliness.

This will take a generation to break, but the very fact of Paul's existence shows that it's far from impossible. Defeatism is powerful and has the benefit of never having to advocate for something, just against everything. I'm angry right now, but in the words of the labor leader Joe Hill, Don't Mourn, Organize.

Holy crap, we just won this round?!?!

Dodd was just on C-SPAN saying that the Senate is moving on to other issues beyond the FISA bill. He just yielded the floor. He said he was prepared to spend his full 30 hours speaking on the bill but "that will no longer be necessary." I think Reid just pulled the bill.

This is incredible. Obviously we're not done, but we appear to have won a significant battle.

Great work by Senator Dodd showing he means business.

UPDATE: Per mcjoan:

Harry Reid just announced on the floor that he intends to table debate on the FISA overhaul legislation until January.

Reid was taking a lot of heat for this, and in the end perhaps felt that he couldn't hold out any longer. I'm guessing that he'll push for allowing the full Senate to view those legal opinions on warrantless wiretapping as a condition for moving forward on the bill.

This is one of the first good days in a long time, but keep in mind that Reid may have simply reasoned that he wouldn't have had time to finish all the other crap legislation he has coming down the pike, including giving a no-strings $70 billion in war funding to Bush. Keep in mind that there are some good shifting of budget priorities in that omnibus bill, including slashing abstinence-only education funding, raising the Consumer Product Safety Commission budget by 28%, and saving a host of social services from the chopping block. But I guess Reid made the determination that funding Bush's war was more important than giving telecoms a free pass.

UPDATE II: If you haven't read Chris Dodd's first speech on FISA today, you should. It's long but well worth it. Dodd definitely makes me proud to be an American today.

What this process showed is that minority rights can still be upheld in the Senate. Unfortunately, we now know that the minority is the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.