The Surge Didn't Work

Juan Cole writes, "A series of coordinated truck bombings targeted Iraqi government ministries and other facilities on Wednesday morning, killing nearly 100 persons and wounding some 500. Poorly equipped and staffed emergency rooms in the capital were overwhelmed.

These bombings targeted government buildings and symbols of opulence and normality -- the al-Rashid area and Kifah Street. They were intended to inform the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that the guerrilla opposition has not been defeated, and that the prospects of his establishing a stable government that runs roughshod over other groups are low."

President Bush's and Gen. Petraeus's surge didn't work. Iraq is as dangerous as ever. Though al-Qaida will be blamed - they get blamed if soeone stubs their toe in the Middle East - the underlying sectarian conflicts that were uncorked by our invasion that have never been resolved are to blame.

It Doesn't Get Better Than This, Or Worse

$106-billion war bill passed on to Obama

Congress sent President Obama a massive spending bill aimed at ensuring that the military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan won't run out of money in the coming months.

The Senate approved the measure 91 to 5, despite complaints from several senators about the add-ons that pushed the total more than $20 billion above Obama's funding request. The House approved it Tuesday, 226 to 202.

Voting against the bill were Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.; Russ Feingold, D-Wis.; and Bernard Sanders, I-Vt.

I can't find a transcript of Senate majority leader Sen. Harry Reid's statement supporting continued funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but this comes from his official web site:

America's Armed Forces are unequaled in strength, unrivaled in professionalism, and unprecedented in success. As our troops defend our nation in Iraq, and Afghanistan we must ensure that our military stays the strongest fighting force in the world. As Nevada's soldiers and premier military facilities make valuable contributions to America's defense, I remain committed to ensuring that Nevada's military personnel and their families have the necessary resources and support. America's security must come first.

Here's Reid's statement on March 27, 2009, when Democrats tried to pass a supplemental funding bill with timelines:

"The American people spoke on November 7th saying the direction of the war was wrong, and that we as a Democratic Congress should do something about it and we have. The ball is now in the President's court. We need to redeploy those troops, and we need, by the year 2008, the 1st of April to have our troops home."

"If the President is unwilling to recognize that there is a separate branch of government that is equal under our constitution to the executive branch of government, then it's too bad for him. He has to sit down and negotiate with us. He should do that, otherwise he's going to have to veto this, and he's the reason that the troops won't have the supplies that they need."

"President Bush has to understand there's a new Congress. For six years, he's ignored Congress. The Republican-dominated House and Senate gave President Bush everything he wanted, and look at the fix we're in as a country. We have 3,300 dead Americans in Iraq, we have 25,000 wounded, we have a President who didn't take care of the necessities so that these men and women coming back to America after fighting in Iraq would have proper training to get them well. It simply has been a mismatch from the very beginning.

So I say to President Bush: Understand that this Congress has done what the American people asked us to do. You listen to the American people for a change."

The dishonesty, hypocrisy and partisan opportunism is nauseating. This is yet another proof that there's no fundamental difference between the two political parties.

Dennis Prager, Stuck on Stupid

Wednesday, Dennis Prager reacted to Obama's speech before Obama even gave it. In his response, Prager said that Muslims should be grateful that the United States removed Saddam Hussein, who tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of his own Muslim people and a million Muslims in the Iran-Iraq war. So Obama has no business apologizing to Muslims.

1. The rationale given for invading Iraq and removing Hussein was not to liberate Muslims from his persecution. It was his supposed threat to us.

2. Saddam Hussein persecuted certain Iraqis because they opposed his power, not because they were Muslim.

3. The United States supported Hussein's invasion of Iran, so, by Prager's peculiar logic, we contributed to Hussein's victimization of Muslims.

4. Our invasion of Iraq directly contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Muslims and drove millions more from their own country. It left the remainder of them living in a country with a devastated infrastructure that remains rife with sectarian violence.

Yes indeed, we've really helped so many Muslims who we never set out to help in the first place.

My mind vomits.

Bobby Jindal Repudiates the War in Iraq

Bobby Jindal spoke Tuesday night at the $2,500-a-plate National Republican Congressional Committee dinner, which said it raised more than $6 million at the event.

During his speech, he said Obama's proposed budget exceeds the cost of the war in Iraq. Since Jindal thinks Obama's budget is a very, very bad thing, he just unintentionally repudiated the value of what George W. Bush and most other Republicans still believe to be a magnificent achievement.

Pondering the nauseating spectacle of a bunch of people spending $2,500 to hear Jindal's claptrap, it occured to me how much better spent the hundreds of millions of dollars that financed the 2008 election would be if it were apportioned and given to every impoverished adult. Both parties are always mouthing platitudes about helping the underprivileged, but they are only interested in attaining and maintaining the power of elected office.

Christopher Hitchens Hits the Drink

Christopher Hitchens recently subjected himslf to waterboarding. Science Avenger was very impressed: "Leave it to the rare atheist hawk to be one of the few to put his drowning where his politics are and see for himself what the process is really like." It's a stunt that helps Hitch maintain his brand and you fell for it

I think Hitchens has a guilty conscience about his support for the invasion of Iraq. This is an indirect way of expiating some of that guilt.

It's also a form of grandstanding. "I, Christopher Hitchens, former socialist who rebeled against my leftist colleagues by supporting the invasion of Iraq, will now demonstrate my intellectual integrity and physical courage by belaboring the obvious fact that waterboarding is indeed torture."

I find the whole exercise pointless as well as being beside the point. Hitchens, to my recollection, never advocated the use of torture or denied that this specific technique was toturous. Hitchens was an advocate of the invasion of Iraq and remains one its leading apologists. There is no intrinsic relationship between the invasion of Iraq and the use of torture by the Bush administration. Could Hitchens be so naive as to have believed that waterboarding wasn't as bad as it proved to be? I find that hard to believe.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq visited untold death and misery upon millions of Iraqis. Hitchens' stunt does nothing to alleviate it or make us forget the irresponsibility of Hitchens and others who supported and still support it.

Why I'm Voting For Nader

Barack Obama said this in Fargo, ND.

"[W]hen I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies....”

“My 16-month timeline, if you examine everything that I’ve said, was always premised on making sure that our troops were safe,” he said. “I said that based on the information that we had received from our commanders that one to two brigades a month could be pulled out safely, from a logistical perspective. My guiding approach continues to be that we’ve got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable."

He added, “I’m going to continue to gather information to find out whether those conditions still hold."

Note all the conditional weasel words highlighted above. Obama's position is essentially indistinguishable from John McCain's.

On Thursday, September 27, 2007, I wrote about the Democratic debate where Clinton, Edwards and Obama refused to pledge that they would have withdrawn US troops from Iraq by 2013. I quoted Jeffrey Feldman at the Huffington Post:

Rather than having a Presidential election between a problem solving Democrat and a militaristic Republican, the Democratic Party appears to believe that the race will be between an enlightened militaristic Democrat and an authoritarian militaristic Republican.

Treadmill to Oblivion

Why American's Don't Care About Iraq

How to Win Friends and Influence People in Iraq: Kill Civilians, Create More Terrorists

Iraqi Army Deserts a Fight

This Is Sickening!

CNN doesn't allow you to embed videos like YouTube, so I urge you to go via the link and watch this video. It shows Army Captain Jordan Veath wheedling members of what passes for the Iraqi army to engage Sadrite insurgents in urban fighting in Sadr City. When he finally seems to have persuaded the Iraqi commander to move forward, he discovers that the Iraqi soldiers are taking their lunch break!

Nic Robertson, the on-site reporter, wrote this on his blog:

I’ve watched over the past years as the Iraqi army has gone from zero to, in some cases, maybe one step from hero.

I submitted this comment:

How can you write this after having witnessed an American commander wheedling the Iraqis to fight, then they want a lunch break! I watched your story on TV and am placing a link to it on my blog. The Iraqi army displays no heroism in your video. 1,000 of them, including two Iraqi commanders, deserted the fighting in Basra.

When Reviewers Describe Something as Devastating, You Know It Will Have No Effect

Salon calls economist Joseph Stiglitz's new book that concludes that the war in Iraq will cost $3 trillion dollars "devastating." That hoary old cliche was rendered meaningless eons ago. Unless the book is made of some material that will explode under the right conditions, it won't devastate anything. Liberal-left readers looking for a fix of righteous indignation will glom onto it. No one else will care. The deleterious costs of the war have already been demonstrated repeatedly and yet it continues. And you think this book will somehow, suddenly change things? When was the last time in living memory when a book really effected any real change? Wise up. Grow up.

The President's Iraq Speech

A desperate, dishonest attempt to justify the continuation of our unnecessary, unwarranted invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was painful to listen to even the few snippets of President Bush's speech I tolerated while awaiting the commentary and Democratic responses. It was like watching an exceptionally gory horror film. You cover your eyes, but sneak peeks out of morbid curiosity. The President now conflates the entire war in Iraq with Al Qaeda and fears of another 9/11 because playing the terror card is his last refuge. These are huge lies, of course. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks. Al Qaeda in Iraq represent, at most, 5% of the total number of fighters attacking us in Iraq. I was quite pleased with Sen. Jack Reed's official Democratic response and by that of John Edwards, the first time he's ever really impressed me with anything he's said. The responses from Giuliani, McCain and Mike Huckabee were merely partisan echoes of Bush. Sadly, no amount of analysis or rhetoric, however incisive, will change anything at this point. Congressional Democrats won't even attempt to defund Bush's war, so it continues.

I won't perform a line by line analysis of the speech. Fred Kaplan offers an excellent one at Slate. Nevertheless, Bush's speech was so replete with targets of opportunity that I'll comment on a few portions.

Yet Iraq's national leaders are getting some things done. They're sharing oil revenues with the provinces.

A blatant lie. The Iraqi parliament has yet to pass revenue sharing legislation. Sigh.

A free Iraq will deny al Qaeda a safe haven. A free Iraq will counter the destructive ambitions of Iran.

If we were to be driven out of Iraq, extremists of all strains would be emboldened. Al Qaeda could gain new recruits and new sanctuaries. Iran would benefit from the chaos and would be encouraged in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons and dominate the region.

Because you, President Bush, dropped the ball in Afghanistan and Bin Laden escaped while you pursued the invasion in Iraq, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda already enjoy a safe haven in Pakistan under the protection of a resurgent Taliban. Your invasion of Iraq and the subsequent chaos it brought to that country enabled Al Qaeda, who were never a presence in Iraq before, to set up shop there, and our occupation of Iraq validates their anti-American ideology and provides them with their best recruiting tool.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein was the countervailing force to Iran. The Iraqi Shiite majority, with Iranian support, will now probably crush the Sunni minority, leaving Iraq a twin of sorts to Iran. The idea of a free Iraq that opposes Iranian ambitions is as much a delusional fantasy as the rest of your assessments and predictions, Mr. President.

Mitt Romney Insults Our Brave Men and Women Who Are Serving Their Country!!!

One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president.

That was Romney's response to the question as to why none of his five sons was serving in the military. Romney himself assiduously avoided serving in the military during the Vietnam war. My title for this post would be the headline you'd read and the theme for the week heard across talk radio, if only Romney was a Democratic candidate. Because he's a Republican, and might quite possibly end up being their presidential candiate, conservatives will remain silent.

New York Times Editorial: We Must Leave Iraq Without Delay

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.

While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs — after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans’ demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened — the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war.

This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage — with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading.

Ann Coulter's Iraq Strategy

There’s an old joke about Hitler’s last days. Hitler is ranting about losing the war and says, “Next time, no more Mr. Nice Guy!” In their desperation to try to hold on to what little support remains for an indefinite occupation of Iraq, right wing pundits are dusting off the excuses they devised for our failure in Vietnam, and are arguing that we aren’t winning in Iraq because our soldiers aren’t fighting hard enough, because they are restrained by some kind of gentleman’s code that prevents them from taking off the gloves and getting really tough. Ann Coulter said it on Hardball Tuesday and I heard Dennis Miller say it as well.

COULTER: I don‘t know. I mean, I‘m not very savvy about PR. What I do know is that it would be a disaster if we pulled out. And maybe we could fight the war a little harder and not keep responding to Amnesty International...

MATTHEWS: More troops?

COULTER: I don‘t think we even need more troops. I think we need to be less worried about civilian casualties.

MATTHEWS: Who should we bomb in Iraq?

COULTER: The insurgent forces. I mean, we did in Afghanistan last week hit Taliban. And what do we hear in “The New York Times”? Amnesty is crying because some civilians were hit. Well, that happens in a war, and I‘d rather have their civilians die than our civilians die!

This argument is just a form of misdirection. Miller, Coulter and their ilk will never put the blame for the failure in Iraq on the parties responsible: Bush and Cheney. Ted Williams once wrote, “You can’t hit a bad ball good.” The invasion of Iraq wasn’t a good idea poorly implemented. It was a bad idea that was doomed to failure. Andrew Sullivan explains why we will never win in Iraq:

Without any coherent government, without sectarian reconciliation, this kind of thing will continue in the power vacuum. The U.S. military is doing everything it can, but it cannot perform miracles. In a country where there is no effective central government, and where the Iraqi security forces are captive to various sectarian impulses and restrained only by the patina of American force, bombings and mass murders will continue. We could stay there twenty years and, without a political solution from within, they would continue. The problem in Iraq is not that Washington somehow wants to pull out prematurely. It is that there is no credible scenario for improving matters if we continue to plow on.