This War Isn't Being Lost. It Was Lost.

Appearing on Fox and Friends to exploit Iraq, the Berghdal release, and Barack Obama, New York mayor Rudy Giuliani contended

This situation should be a lesson for him, I mean he put his political objectives ahead of national security in deciding to run away in Iraq. He basically snatched defeat from the jaws of victory...

This is putting your political objectives ahead of national security, ahead of what’s in the best interests in the United States, what’s in the best interests of keeping the people secure, and I just think that this is going to be one of the blackest marks against him.

Giuliani never served in the United States Senate, never was an elected statewide official in New York, and was a substandard mayor, so his blather was merely blather.  John McCain, though, has been a war hero, United States Representative, United States Senator, presidential nominee of a major political party, and is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  He ought to know better (Cenk Uygur on McCain, way below).

But he doesn't.  Or perhaps he does, being clever enough that, Politico reports, he "did not explicitly advocate a U.S. strategy for helping the crisis now, remaining noncommittal on the potential use of airstrikes against militants in the country" when he

continued his blistering attack on President Barack Obama’s handling of Iraq on Friday, again calling for his entire national security team to be replaced and saying his decisions have been very costly.

“The president wanted out and now we are paying a heavy price,” the Arizona Republican said on MSNBC.

McCain said repeatedly that the U.S. “had the conflict won” after the 2007 troop surge, with Iraq maintaining a stable government and al-Qaeda extremists largely defeated.

But the Obama administration’s decision not to leave behind a residual force, he said, has caused the situation to deteriorate. Now, the senator said, “this has turned into one of the most serious threats to American security in recent history.”

McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also reiterated his call for the president to fire his entire national security team, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey.

No, Senator. The Iraq war and surge have turned into one of the most serious threats to American security in recent history.

McCain (and the worthless Giuliani) seem to believe  that American forces have been withdrawn from Iraq by an eager President Obama. But as Fareed Zakaria explains, the Obama Administration (as did the prior crew) attempted to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri-al Maliki but

Maliki refused to provide the guarantees that every other country in the world that hosts U.S. forces offers. Some commentators have blamed the Obama administration for negotiating badly or halfheartedly and perhaps this is true. But here’s what a senior Iraqi politician told me in the days when the U.S. withdrawal was being discussed: “It will not happen. Maliki cannot allow American troops to stay on. Iran has made very clear to Maliki that its No. 1 demand is that there be no American troops remaining in Iraq. And Maliki owes them.”

A little naive about McCain's hero, General David Wonderful, Zakaria is unaware that, as described here, the respite in crushing violence was brought about more by commanding generals George Casey and John Abizaid, who "exploited growing Sunni animosities toward al-Qaeda extremists by paying off Sunni militants to join the so-called 'Awakenin' in Anbar Province."

The Arizona senator saw a decline in violence and declared victory, imagining "the war is over"  (but not like the late Phil Ochs, below).   He misunderstood it as the end game, rather than as part of a process. Saddam Hussein kept in check al-Qaeda in Iraq, which was overthrown and is now roughly reconstituted as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), in part as a reaction to the Al-Maliki regime.  Al-Maliki, in turn, resists help from Washington, is allied with Damascus and Tehran, and the demonization of the Iraqi regime by McCain et al. is now conveniently missing.

The USA invasion of Iraq has been understood, in most quarters, as a mistake. But we never acknowledged that the USA lost the war or that the surge was worthless, enabling the likes of Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham to claim President Obama squandered victory and is losing the war. America the Exceptional.

Charles Pierce remarks

The fundamental problem with the American intervention in Iraq always has been the fundamental incoherence of the case its supporters made for it. It was WMD's. It was rape rooms. It was time for the spring planting of Democracy. It was because Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks of September 11. Mushroom clouds. Aluminum tubes. It was time to free the Kurds. That incoherence is why the case was made in such a mendacious fashion. It was the lies that held all the various brands of bullshit together.



















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Article Of The Week

A former Air Force counterintelligence agent who later volunteered to go to Iraq to work as a senior investigator wrote under the pseudonym "Matthew Alexander" an article entitled "I'm Still Tortured by What I saw in Iraq" for washington post.com in November.

When "Alexander" arrived in the Gulf in 2006, he found Army investigators were "nominally using the methods outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual (but) were pushing in every way possible to bend the rules- and often break them." He said that he "refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead," which emphasized "building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information." Though the methods have been listed in the Field Manual, the team applied them in "unique" ways by getting to know the enemies, negotiating with them, and adapting criminal investigative techniques, ultimately resulting in the capture of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

"Alexander" argues that "torture and abuse" are "inconsistent with American principles" and "cost American lives." He writes "I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo."

Maybe we need to remember that when we hear conservatives blather on about how George W. Bush allegedly kept us safe for eight years (or at least seven years and four months). Or about how President Bush supposedly dedicated himself to the "war on terror." Or how we needed to attack Iraq because of 9/11. Or how President Obama is, as Sean Hannity is claiming, disgraceful because he used the phrase "ongoing war against violence and terrorism" rather than "war on terrorism."

"Alexander" credits General Petraeus with helping "boost the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces, cutting violence in the country dramatically." Nonetheless, the argument advanced by "Alexander" is yet more evidence that the decision by the Bush Administration to invade Iraq damaged the effort to combat terrorism that supporters of the ex-President unashamedly cite as possibly his greatest accomplishment.

Of Biden And McCain

It's a difficult choice- get mad or laugh hysterically.

I found myself reading online this article from Kirsten Powers, a columnist with the conservative Repub tabloid The New York Post. Powers criticizes Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden for various gaffes, the most recent in warning donors of a foreign policy crisis he believes will follow election of Barack Obama as president. Powers claims

Part of the problem is their "Obama love," but we're also seeing the media elite's belief - prejudice - that anyone with an R behind their name is dumb. So, if they say something dumb, they must be dumb. A Democrat, like Biden, can make wildly inaccurate or outrageous comments and they are ignored because the TV and press insiders feel they "know who he really is."

No need here to remind Powers that the media's fondness for Barack Obama is exceeded, "wildly," by its fondness for John McCain. No need, therefore, to ask why no one (as far as I know) has asked John McCain why he apparently is opposed to Social Security or the graduated income tax. (A reasonable interpretation of "After all, before government can redistribute wealth, it has to confiscate wealth from those who earned it," a pretty good description of the progressive income tax.) No need to ask why John McCain has rarely, if ever, been confronted, with his reversals of position (not a comprehensive list) on likelihood of easy success in Iraq, Bush tax cuts, Roe v. Wade, privatization of Social Security, right-wing televangelists, ethanol, gay marriage, reasonable gun control, repeal of the estate tax, torture, surveillance of overseas communications, offshore drilling, trials of Guantanamo detainees, increasing the minimal wage, and comprehensive immigration reform (supportive, then against his own bill, then supportive). Yet, when Democrat John Kerry (merely) appeared to have changed his mind on funding of the Iraq War, the mainstream media joined the Repub propagandists in ridiculing his as a "flip-flopper."

The real problem is that Barack Obama is one in a long line of Democrats suspected of being "weak" simply because there is a (D) after his name. Russia invades Georgia, Obama reacts rationally and cautiously, and is thought of as vacillating; McCain rattles his saber- only to reverse course a few days later- and is considered strong. Barack Obama asserts that with "actionable intelligence" about "high-value terrorist targets," he would act decisively; John McCain boasts of bin Laden that he will "follow him to the gates of hell" but is not asked why he refuses to follow him to northwestern Pakistan. (Nor is he asked how he will "get him.")

More significant than the inattention to Senator Biden has been the inattention to the gaffes of John McCain, who has seduced so many in the media the years by the "Straight Talk Express." Enough has emerged during this campaign to render clear the conclusion that the Democratic vice-presidential nominee knows more about foreign policy than the Republican presidential nominee- or the empty ($150,000) suit that is his running mate.

Saint McCain

Speaking to reporters on August 13, 2008 and condemning Russia for invading Georgia, John McCain contended "but in the twenty-first century, nations don't invade other nations." Considering the small matter of the U.S.A. invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003, this might strike you as an odd statement, especially coming from the candidate deemed by the mainstream media as the experienced hand in foreign policy. But then, John McCain recently (7/14/08, in town hall meeting in New Mexico, for the third time) recreated Czechoslovakia, apparently unaware it was split into two separate countries in 1993; and prior to that, claimed (3/18/08, to reporters in Amman, Jordan) that Al Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni organization, was being trained by Iran, an aggressively Shiite nation.

If this were any other candidate, given also the Repub's apparent confusion about Social Security (7/9/08, at a town hall meeting in Denver) and birth control (7/9/08, to reporters in Portsmouth, Ohio), the media might start asking whether the fellow is qualified to be President of the United States. But this is John McCain.

More Than A Goal

As impressive, but hardly commendable, was Senator McCaskill's obfuscation on yesterday's Meet The Press relative to Barack Obama's position on the Iraq War. She stated (on page 2 of transcript):

He, he has a goal of 16 months, but obviously, the most important thing in getting out...
I mean, obviously, a goal is a goal, and he's been very clear that that's a goal. He's been very clear that he wants to be careful and reasonable about the way--in fact, his phrase is, "I want to be the opposite of what we were when we went in."

Except that it has been more than a "goal." Here is Senator Obama at the January, 2008 Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, Nevada (approximately halfway through):

I have opposed this war consistently. I have put forward a plan that will get our troops out by the end of 2009.

And here is a portion of Senator Obama's website:

Obama would immediately begin to pull out troops engaged in combat operations at a pace of one or two brigades every month, to be completed by the end of next year.

This, of course, is not as much a shift on the war as that of his opponent, who several times over the past few years has declared his fealty to the Bush war policy before recently finding it inconvenient. Still, it's a little discouraging that the presumptive Democratic nominee's zig-zag on major issues is benign only as compared to that of the unprepared, woefully ineffective candidate of the GOP.

Repeating A Myth

Barack Obama gave a speech on June 30, 2008 in Independence, Missouri, homeplace to the greatest President of the 20th century, about patriotism. It contained this interesting observation:

some of those in the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties reacted not merely by criticizing particular government policies, but by attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself - by burning flags; by blaming America for all that was wrong with the world; and perhaps most tragically, by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day.

Did you notice? "Some of those in the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties reacted.... by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day."

It's distressing to hear Obama peddling this conservative urban myth, that the opponents of the Vietnam War shunned, or worse, veterans returning from the war. This self-serving tale of the right should have been put to rest with the publication in 1998 of "The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam" by Jerry Lembcke. In an article written for The Boston Globe on April 30, 2005, the author told of a Michael Smith, who in a typical story, claimed that he returned to the U.S.A. via an airport in Los Angeles where "people were lined up to spit on us." But, Lembcke explained,


Like many stories of the spat-upon veteran genre, Smith's lacks credulity. GIs landed at military airbases, not civilian airports, and protesters could not have gotten onto the bases and anywhere near deplaning troops. There may have been exceptions, of course, but in those cases how would protesters have known in advance that a plane was being diverted to a civilian site? And even then, returnees would have been immediately bused to nearby military installations and processed for reassignment or discharge.

The exaggerations in Smith's story are characteristic of those told by others. ''Most Vietnam veterans were spat on when we came back," he said. That's not true. A 1971 Harris poll conducted for the Veterans Administration found over 90 percent of Vietnam veterans reporting a friendly homecoming. Far from spitting on veterans, the antiwar movement welcomed them into its ranks and thousands of veterans joined the opposition to the war.

I don't know. Maybe Obama, who wasn't born until August, 1961, was too young during, and immediately after, the Vietnam War to have been paying attention, and there were those four years (1967-1971) he was living in Indonesia. But with the FISA bill, withdrawal from Iraq, campaign financing, and gun control, at some point those of us on the left are going to have to stop making excuses for Mr. Obama and instead ask: What does he actually believe?


HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

Bolton Foolishness

If John Bolton was right, as I think he was, when on 6/26/08 on GOP TV's "Hannity and Colmes" he criticized the Bush Administration on North Korea, he was wrong when in the same appearance he rapped International Atomic Energy Administrator Mohamed ElBaredei. Bolton claimed that ElBaradei is "an apologist for Iran," as he did in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer in November, 2007 (video and partial transcript from Think Progress).

The regime occupying Washington, D.C. the past 7+ years long has considered ElBaradei an enemy, as this excerpt from a Washington Post article of 12/12/04 reveals:

The Bush administration has dozens of intercepts of Mohamed ElBaradei's phone calls with Iranian diplomats and is scrutinizing them in search of ammunition to oust him as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to three U.S. government officials.

When it issued its "(The) Status Of Nuclear Weapons Inspections: An Update on March 7, 2003, the IAEA vowed to continue inspections. However, it had found no attempt by Baghdad to import uranium, nor aluminum tubes for centrifuge enrichment and concluded "after three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq." No nuclear weapons program- no weapons of mass destruction. Nevertheless, we invaded Iraq with its Baathist regime a sworn enemy of Teheran, and have for our troubles Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a friend of the Iranians. And John Bolton, with no sense of irony, accuses ElBaradei, whose report could have kept us from invading Iraq and strengthening Iran, of being "an apologist for Iran." This could be a parallel universe- or just another day in the Bush Administration.

Reflections on a Presidential press conference- No. 3

Asked in his press conference of October 17, 2007 about "Al Qaeda in Iraq," President Bush responded in part:



Al Qaeda is still dangerous. They're dangerous in Iraq, they're dangerous elsewhere. Al Qaeda is not going to go away anytime soon. That's why it's important for us to be finding out what their intentions are, and what are their plans, so we can respond to them. This is a -- this war against al Qaeda requires actionable intelligence. That's why this FISA bill is important. And they still want to do us harm, Elaine, and they're still active. Yeah, we've hurt them bad in Iraq. We've hurt them bad elsewhere. If you're the number three person in al Qaeda, you've had some rough goes -- you've either been captured or killed. And we're keeping the pressure on them, all the time.


Note Mr. Bush saying "Al Qaeda is still dangerous. They're dangerous in Iraq, they're dangerous elsewhere," "this war against Al Qaeda requires actionable intelligence," and "we've hurt them bad in Iraq. we've hurt them bad elsewhere." He never stops conflating Al Qaeda with Al Qaeda in Iraq ("they're dangerous elsewhere," "actionable intelligence," "hurt them bad in Iraq (and) elsewhere"). Yet one more pathetic instance of this fellow trying to manipulate the media and the American people.

The Republican Media- No. 5

I don't mean to pick on CNN as a part of the pro-Republican media. It would be easy to select items from FOX News to demonstrate a pro-GOP slant. But given that FOX News is a virtual arm of the Republican Party, demonstrating bias there would not prove bias in the mainstream media generally. And besides, one can go to the Republican National Committee's website and get reports nearly as objective as those on FOX News. Herewith an exchange from Larry King's interview with President Cheney televised last night on CNN:

King: "So, those 3,000-plus lives have not died in vain?"
Cheney: (agreeing) "Yes, sir."
King: "So in restrospect you would still go into Iraq."

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 commission) found no evidence of a "collaborative relationship between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization before the U.S. invasion." Further, Acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, in a Defense Department report released in April, 2007 and here summarized by WashingtonPost.com, reported that "captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides 'all confirmed' that Hussein's regime was not cooperating with al-Qaeda before the invasion of Iraq."

Sure, the Administration has been trying since that disastrous day in 2001 to make the linkage between al-Qaeda and the late Saddam Hussein. According to TIME.com, NBC reported that former NATO commander-in-chief General Wesley Clarke stated that "people in and around the White House had made a concerted push to link 9/11 to Iraq and... he was urged to make that link during his TV appearances." CBS, TIME noted, reported that "Defense Secretary Rumsfeld had urged his aides to begin making the case for striking Saddam as well as bin Laden within hours of the atacks."

Richard A. Clarke, the counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council on September 11, 2001, recounted in his book Against All Enemies Inside America's War on Terror- What Really Happened this regime's push for war by manufacturing a link. Shortly after the attacks, Wolfowitz told Clarke (who had argued that only al Qaeda was "an immediate and serious threat to the United States") "you give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1999 attack on New York without a state sponsor. Just because FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don't exist."

So Larry King conflates our incursion into Iraq with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. And therein repeats a key Republican talking point, the myth that Iraq was involved with the attacks, thereby suggesting a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. And this is repeated throughout "the liberal media."