Just What Your War Machine Wanted!

This is so inevitable it's like a really corny punchline. The 'newly captured al Quaida figure' in Iraq has declared they just made up the Iraq chapter. It's all run from abroad. And the people who brought you 9/11 are right there behind the curtain, see?

That the military newsmakers are now not bothering to hire some one else to write up stories to sell their line is not surprising. It made even the most shameless propagandists embarrassed.

A senior operative for al Qaeda in Iraq who was caught this month has told his U.S. military interrogators a prominent al Qaeda-led group is
just a front and its leader fictitious, a military spokesman said on Wednesday.

Brigadier-General Kevin Bergner told a news conference that Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq, which was purportedly set up last year, did not exist.
(snip)
"In his words, the Islamic State of Iraq is a front organization that masks the foreign influence and leadership within al Qaeda in Iraq in an attempt to put an
Iraqi face on the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq," Bergner said.

U.S. military officials in recent weeks have been pressed to explain the link between al Qaeda in Iraq and bin Laden's global network given the military's heightened focus on al Qaeda in Iraq as the biggest threat to the country.
(snip)
Bergner said Mashadani was al Qaeda's "media emir" for Iraq.
He said the operative was "providing significant insights into the nature and circumstances of al Qaeda in Iraq".

The U.S. military has always said al Qaeda in Iraq was run by foreigners.

It really makes me wonder what they do with the ones who, like certain U.S. Attorneys, don't do what they're needed to do to prove the war criminals right. Say, this 'informant' said that they had sprung up as al Quaida in Iraq because the U.S. had bombed their relatives, including those 'insurgent' women and children, and cows and goats, etc.

Do I really think he'd ever be heard from again? (To use McCain's tactic of posing himself the question he'd like the press to use.) Not on your life.

I do give the writer, Yates, for juxtaposing immediately after the military's 'release' exactly what the military wanted to prove. Good going there.

Putting the Rock Down

There's an interesting op-ed piece by David Ignatius in today's Washington Post. The key part of his argument is contained in the first few paragraphs.

A caustic former U.S. ambassador named Chas Freeman compiled a volume he called "The Diplomat's Dictionary." It included several memorable definitions, including "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' till you can find a rock," and "Diplomacy is letting someone else have your way."

The Bush administration, which has generally favored the "find a rock" strategy, seems to be bending toward the subtler "have your way" approach. This conversion is long overdue. But it will require the administration to do what it has sometimes found hardest, which is to prioritize its foreign policy goals and go all-out on the ones it decides are most important.

The clearest example of the administration's new outreach is its turnabout on discussions with Iran and Syria about how to stabilize Iraq. A year ago, the Iranians (responding to what they thought was an American overture) announced that they were ready for such talks -- whereupon the administration pulled back. That was a mistake that made the Iraq mess even worse.

Now, Bush is altering course slightly, with last week's announcement that the United States will join a regional conference in Baghdad. But the administration shouldn't go into these talks holding its nose. If the administration is serious, it should use the initial meeting to set up regular U.S.-Iranian discussions about Iraq. The administration should also start a real dialogue with Syria -- and in the process shelve any half-baked ideas about regime change that may be lurking in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The Syrians pose a deadly threat in Lebanon, which is all the more reason to be talking with them. The obvious person to begin this conversation is James A. Baker III, who knows the Syrians well from his days as secretary of state. [Emphasis added]

Ignatius points back to the Iraq Study Group report which chastised the current administration for not engaging in any meaningful diplomacy with the countries in the region. As Ignatius points out later in the article, the President decided his masterful "surge" plan was a better way to go, and the recommendations made by the study group were pretty much ignored by the White House.

Is the President now going back to the report in order to open a diplomatic front to the war? Ignatius seems to be suggesting that he is. I, on the other hand, am not so sure. The US has had several chances in the past to open a meaningful dialogue with Iran in the past, but has blown each and every one of them.

While screaming loudly about the Iranian nuclear weapon program and demanding sanctions for that program (all the while sending additional carrier fleets into the Middle East in a brazen show of cowboy diplomacy), the US has ignored the signals sent by Iran (the latest of which was last week, as I noted here).

While there is absolutely no way to discern just what this most secretive of White House has in mind, I can't help but feel that any such conference with Iran and Syria is nothing more than a dog-and-pony show designed to distract attention from the worsening conditions in Iraq.

This is one of those occasions when I hope I'm wrong, but I'm not optimistic.

Deep Insecurity

I had hoped that the election results from November would give the current administration pause when it came to its more egregious and arrogant behavior with respect to basic constitutional guarantees. Silly me! If anything, the public rebuke has done nothing more than stiffen the resolve of the Bush White House to flout those guarantees even more openly.

In the past week I posted on the attempt of the federal prosecutors to subvert the Grand Jury process to hide an embarrassing document (see Chillin' and The Good Guys). This week, the government took it upon itself to censor an op-ed piece written by two former government officials: Flynt Leverett, a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council; and Hillary Mann, a former Foreign Service officer who participated in the United States discussions with Iran from 2001 to 2003. What their article looked like after the redaction by the government is located here.

Their response to this violation of the First Amendment is in today's NY Times.

HERE is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article we wrote for The Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.

Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material. These passages go into aspects of American-Iranian relations during the Bush administration’s first term that have been publicly discussed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; a former State Department policy planning director, Richard Haass; and a former special envoy to Afghanistan, James Dobbins.

These aspects have been extensively reported in the news media, and one of us, Mr. Leverett, has written about them in The Times and other publications with the explicit permission of the review board. [Emphasis added]

To prove that the materials to be discussed in their op-ed piece were in fact non-classified, the writers included a side bar to today's article which has an extensive list (with links) of articles published with the same material that was blacked out by the government censors in their article. Why is that material now suddenly too sensitive to be published now?

The answer to that question has several parts. First, the material had to do with Iran and the very quiet US discussions with that country in the past several years. Iran, part of the "Axis of Evil," appears to be next on the White House hit list. The government has just announced the deployment of several ships to the region as a means of showing Iran just how powerful we are. "Don't mess with us," is the clear message behind that not so subtle threat.

And that leads to the second part. The White House has made it clear that it has absolutely no intention of talking to Iran about their nuclear intentions and their growing influence over certain elements of the Shi'ite majority in Iraq. The recently released Iraq Study Group report, however, has recommended just that, and in the past week several members of Congress have actually gone to Damascus to speak with the Syrian President about Iraq and the Middle East. The White House wants none of that, so much so that it feels compelled to hide the evidence that it was at least considering such discussions in the past, evidence that has been openly discussed by such members of the administration as the current Secretary of State.

Fortunately for us, Leverett and Mann are not taking this lying down. Their response is both admirable and necessary, and the conclusion to the article sets out clearly what is at stake:

National security must be above politics. In a democracy, transparency in government has to be honored and protected. To classify information for reasons other than the safety and security of the United States and its interests is a violation of these principles.

Indeed.

Great Leap Forward Isn't Working

It is pretty nice to see the Op-Ed writers beginning to sound like us rabid lambs of the internet. I find that every bit as impressive as the rapidly plummeting favorable ratings of the incompetents at the helm of the ship of state.

Although he's always opposed the war, Eugene Robinson at WaPo is writing that Since we would be providing 20,000 new targets for snipers and roadside bombs, how many do we calculate will die?

It is unconscionable to think about dispatching more young men and women to Iraq without the realistic expectation that their presence will make a difference in a war that is no longer in our control. [emphasis added]

The editorial writer is paying no token apologetic respect to 'mistakes', but calling w the unconscionable waster of lives and treasure that he has been in office. He further notes; I find it hard to believe that even this addle-brained administration is capable of breaking the Army.

It is time for this attitude of disrespect for reprehensible behavior, and criminal mistreatment of the public and public trust, to replace the wish to act as if we still have a rational, respectable administration with the good interests of the country at heart, imho.

From the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Iraq Study Group is given very much the same total dismissal by Director Robert Satlof, who points out;

The wise men (and woman) don't know their history. In boldly suggesting that "all key issues in the Middle East are inextricably linked," the authors of the Iraq Study Group report seem stunningly indifferent to the past 25 years of Middle East politics.
**********************************************
Not one Arab state threatened to fight alongside the Palestinians, and none even came to their aid militarily; indeed, only faraway Iran tried to send weapons. The Arab "street" did not rise in protest. Neither Jordan nor Egypt severed its peace treaty with Israel, and no Arab state faced significant protests. The conflict -- certainly a horrible experience for Israelis and Palestinians -- was contained.

The lesson of the past generation is that most states in the Arab Middle East have grown stronger, not weaker.

No dominoes? whatever will the self-appointed sages do? While I would prefer that the Cretin in Chief follow some of their suggestions, which are far more promising than his 'great leap forward', I do have to agree that a background in Middle Eastern civilization and present political make-up might have made some contributions to planning future behavior in that area.

I am very glad to see that the veneer of pretense has been scoured off more and more of the professional commenters that we hear from on the matters of government. And I join with them in saying, time to take the gloves off. It's the lie that has been the weapon keeping these cretins in high office. We need to do away with the lies they have used, and the polite lie of the commenters that they have some virtue in there deeply hidden away that we should respect. Wrapping themselves in the flag doesn't make them patriotic. It makes them vicious misappliers of the patriotism the public has shown toward their severely misused country

Another Departure From The USS Trepid

This morning's announcement that the President had accepted the resignation of United Nations Ambassador John Bolton (effective when his recess appointment ends)was a bit of a stunner. Most Bolton watchers anticipated some kind of end around by the White House once the Senate made it clear that the renomination of Mr. Bolton was dead in the water, something like an appointment with a different title (Assistant to the Ambassador) that would not require confirmation with no replacement to the actual ambassadorship being nominated, or a recess appointment with Mr. Bolton's pay covered by a private fund put together for just this purpose.

Here's what CNN had up on their web site shortly after the announcement:

Unable to win Senate confirmation, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton will step down when his temporary appointment expires within weeks, the White House said Monday.

...As late as last month, Bush, through his top aides, said he would not relent in his defense of Bolton, despite unwavering opposition from Democrats who view Bolton as too combative for international diplomacy. [Emphasis added]

That sure sounds an awfully lot like the President's vote of confidence for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld before the election, doesn't it? If so, Vice-President Cheney might want to start packing.

Snark aside (if only for the moment), my favorite source for all things Bolton, Scott T. Paul at Bolton Watch at TPM Cafe has some early ruminations on the resignation:

As far back as two weeks ago, I had heard from a source inside the U.S. Mission that Bolton would not accept the "acting" appointment that has been discussed on this site. I didn't post that info because, in all honesty, I didn't find it credible given how hard he pushed for his initial recess appointment and his recent lobbying on conservative talk shows. Then, on Friday evening, I learned that two independent sources in the U.S. Mission said that Bolton was ready to leave, write a book, and hit the speaking circuit to blast the Bush Administration for abandoning ultra-conservative foreign policy principles. One can safely assume that this is what Bolton now plans to do.

OK, that certainly seems plausible, especially with the departure of Donald Rumsfeld and the apparent rise in influence of James Baker and his homeboys. That still doesn't explain the quick acceptance of the resignation by Bush, nor the timing. While I don't have the sources that Scott Paul has, I do have some ungrounded speculations (as do most bloggers, I'm certain).

Is it possible that Bush and his new handlers are trying to seriously consider some way out of the Iraq Mess which would require U.N. assistance, or at least the assistance of its members? Was Mr. Bolton the bone that was tossed for that help? Or was Steven Hadley actually signaling a real New Way Forward, contrary to the doubts I expressed earlier today?

Regardless of the answer, Mr. Bolton's departure has to make many folks at the U.N. happy, or at least happier.

This just might turn out to be an even more interesting week than I expected.

The New Way Forward

Psychoanalysis from a distance is about as accurate as diagnosing brain function after watching a videotape of the patient: not very. That doesn't stop people from doing so, especially when it comes to this president and what he is likely to do when it comes to the Iraq Mess. The latest exercise comes in an article in today's NY Times.

The debate that will engulf Washington and much of the country this week centers on a question that lurks at the intersection of war strategy and the personality of the commander in chief: after three and a half years, is President Bush ready to abandon his declaration that American forces cannot begin to leave Iraq until the Iraqis demonstrate that they are capable of defending themselves? [Emphasis added]

The psychoanalytic language is a handy way for the journalist to organize his story, a hook, if you will, upon which to hang the facts and the analysis in a nice tidy way. As such, it is not particularly disturbing, as long as the reader is aware that it is nothing more than a metaphor.

What is disturbing, however, is that apparently the Iraq Study Group was also concerned with the President's psyche when drafting its report. The article makes it clear that the members of the commission were leaking their considerations and proposals to the administration as much (or more) as they were leaking to the press, and Administration responses were considered in the conclusions reached in the report. I had concluded last Thursday in a post that the Iraq Study Group was couching its conclusions in language that wouldn't upset the President. I didn't realize that so much more was going on.

If this article is correct, then instead of looking for "The New Way Forward" touted by National Security Advisor Steven Hadley in his various appearances yesterday on talking-head shows, the Iraq Study Group was concerned only with what Mr. Bush would do, rather than what he should do. And apparently the commissioners aren't really certain that they succeeded in even that:

Commission members say they concluded that Mr. Bush’s strategy so far has created an expectation that the United States will always be there to hold Iraq together. Breaking that culture of dependency, they concluded, is the key to making the long-discussed “Iraqification” of the country’s security a reality. But they are uncertain whether they can persuade a famously stubborn president to adopt that view.

“Is George Bush ready to hear that?” one commission member asked over the weekend. “I don’t think any of us really know. I don’t know if the president himself knows.” [Emphasis added]

And for that the American taxpayers paid good money?

Saving Face

The Iraq Study Group report is finished and will be officially released next week. Almost from the start information on the proceedings was leaked to the press, so it comes as no surprise that the conclusions of the group have also been made available. If what is being reported is accurate, the President will be urged to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq (although to where is not clear, and no timetable is being proposed) and to engage in diplomacy with countries in the region (including Syria and Iran) to help stop the current carnage. For the most part, the report appears to be steering a safe middle course between the current policy (we're staying) and the desires of the Democrats (we're leaving). From the NY Times:

As described by the people involved in the deliberations, the bulk of the report by the Baker-Hamilton group focused on a recommendation that the United States devise a far more aggressive diplomatic initiative in the Middle East than Mr. Bush has been willing to try so far, including direct engagement with Iran and Syria. Initially, those contacts might be part of a regional conference on Iraq or broader Middle East peace issues, like the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but they would ultimately involve direct, high-level talks with Tehran and Damascus.

Mr. Bush has rejected such contacts until now, and he has also rejected withdrawal, declaring in Riga, Latvia, on Tuesday that while he will show flexibility, “there’s one thing I’m not going to do: I’m not going to pull the troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.”

Commission members have said in recent days that they had to navigate around such declarations, or, as one said, “We had to move the national debate from whether to stay the course to how do we start down the path out.”

...The report also would offer military commanders — and therefore the president — great flexibility to determine the timing and phasing of the pullback of the combat brigades.

Throughout the debates, Mr. Baker, who served as secretary of state under Mr. Bush’s father and was the central figure in developing the strategy to win the 2000 Florida recount for Mr. Bush, was highly reluctant to allow a timetable for withdrawal to be included in the report, participants said.

Mr. Baker cited what Mr. Bush had also called a danger: that any firm deadline would be an invitation to insurgents and sectarian groups to bide their time until the last American troops were withdrawn, then seek to overthrow the government. But Democrats on the commission also suspected that Mr. Baker was reluctant to embarrass the president by embracing a strategy Mr. Bush had repeatedly rejected. [Emphasis added]

In other words, the report has been shaped by a desire not to make the President angry or to look bad. I suppose an argument can be made that riling Mr. Bush up would only serve to make him dig his heels in further. After all, even in the midst of all the leaks on the group's proceedings that pretty much made it clear that a troop pullback and talks with Iran and Syria were going to be proposed, Mr. Bush made it a point wherever he was to insist that the US was not going to leave until the mission was accomplished and that he was not going to talk to either country until they buckled down to US demands on other issues.

However, the group was formed at the request of Congress to come up recommendations for getting the US out of this mess, not to save a stubborn, immature, and apparently stupid man's feelings. A just and effective foreign policy should not be run on the basis of keeping the President happy or looking good.

Apparently it is going to be up to the next Congress to find a way to force the President to do the just and honorable thing.

An Adult Approach

The central tenet of the current administration's foreign policy is gun-barrel diplomacy. We don't talk to our enemies, or to those with whom we disagree, we bomb them, or threaten to. This means that when things go sour, as they inevitably do, we have no real options except to lather, rinse, repeat. Iraq is a prime example of this disasterous foreign policy.

This policy was designed by the neoconservatives who came into power with Vice President Cheney and soon-to-be former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Their view was that as the only superpower the US could pretty much do whatever it pleased. Who would dare challenge us? The answer turned out to be a group of Iraqis who resented being invaded, and by all accounts, they've turned out to be quite successful. Now the US is bogged down in a war that cannot be won militarily.

It was with some relief that I learned of the existence of the Iraq Study Group led by James Baker, who had some success in the more normal types of diplomacy while Secretary of State in the administration of the current president's father. Whether one likes Jim Baker or not, at least he understands the nature of real-world foreign policy. Sometimes one has to talk to those with whom one disagrees. That apparently is the tack Mr. Baker is taking at the present time. From the NY Times:

James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state who is now Republican co-chairman of a bipartisan group examining strategic options in Iraq, has met several times with Syrian officials to discuss how they might cooperate with the United States, the Syrian ambassador here said Friday.

...An outside adviser to the group, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in an interview this week that the panel had also interviewed the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif.

Mr. Baker has made little secret of his belief that the United States should negotiate with nations that it regards as enemies.

Geographically and politically, there can be no solution to the problems in Iraq without the assistance of Syria and Iran, particularly the latter. Thanks to the failed policy of the current administration, Iran is now a major power in the region and has considerable influence with the majority of the Iraqi government. Both Syria and Iran, who at the present are both involved with what is going on in Iraq, could, with the right encouragement, change the nature of that involvement to bring stability to Iraq, which would make extricating our troops much more feasible. The problem is that Mr. Bush appears at this point unwilling to take the steps necessary to enlist their help.

President Bush, though, has not seemed open to dramatic policy shifts. During an appearance in the Oval Office on Monday, Mr. Bush called on Syria to withdraw from Lebanon and stop “harboring terrorists,” and said Iran must suspend uranium enrichment before talks could begin.

Asking these countries to give something up before they will be allowed to help us is a moronic approach, yet at this point, that appears to be the road that the president prefers.

It's going to be a long two years.