Petraeus Report: Absolute Farce

I have mentioned repeatedly that in spite of what the White House and the media have been telling you, the upcoming "Petraeus Report" will actually be written by the White House, not the military general who has given it his name. Now it turns out that this report -- hollow as it is to be -- will not be written at all, not even when delivered to the President himself. I shit you not.

From The Washington Times:

A senior military officer said there will be no written presentation to the president on security and stability in Iraq. "There is no report. It is an assessment provided by them by testimony," the officer said.

The only hard copy will be Gen. Petraeus' opening statement to Congress, scheduled for Monday, along with any charts he will use in explaining the results of the troop surge in Baghdad over the past several months.

I'm just hoping that the presentation will include finger puppets. That may help Bush pay attention.

7 September 2007

Fred Thompson: Bush the Second?

From Tim Grieve at Salon.com:

Not ready for prime time?

In all the time Fred Thompson spent planning to run for president and sort of running for president and announcing that he's running for president, you might think that he'd have thought a bit about how he'd answer a basic question on, say, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

Did he? You be the judge.

From Thompson's "Good Morning America" interview [my link] with Diane Sawyer today:

Sawyer: Osama bin Laden -- we just saw that a videotape is coming out, presumably taunting Americans again on the anniversary of 9/11. If you were sitting in the Oval Office today what would you do to capture bin Laden and to eradicate al-Qaida that the Bush administration has not done?

Thompson: Diane, that's tactics. You don't know what the president knows in terms of intelligence as to how they can pinpoint where Osama bin Laden is right now.

I think the point is clearly he's there, clearly he's somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and clearly he's still giving orders.

And the even broader concern that Americans should have is that al-Qaida is still out there in the world. They're in western Europe, they're in the United States, they're in Iraq.

Iraq is a part of global effort, a global war that al-Qaida and radical fundamental Muslims have been carrying on against us for some time. We didn't pay much attention to it for a while but we are now and we're finding there's a global war going on against us. And we better figure out a way to contain it because it's going to be with us for a long time after Iraq.

So the question is this: what the hell has Fred Thompson been doing with his time in the months and months and months prior to announcing his candidacy? George W. Bush has shown himself to be completely uninterested in the larger world around him. Thompson appears to be in the same mundane mold. He's playing the role of a presidential candidate rather than actually having the chops to step up to the job. John McCain is the only Republican candidate with any actual pedigree, but he's written himself out of the race both politically and functionally by kowtowing to the religious right and backing Bush like a love-sick puppy.

7 September 2007

Edit: It just occurred to me that "W" is in fact "Bush the Second." However, like him or not, the Elder Bush was up to the job of being president, unlike his son. Thus, while not technically correct, when viewed only in terms of competence -- or rather incompetence -- referring to Thompson as following only in the steps of the Junior Bush seems appropriate.

Iraqi Army, Day One

A new biography of President George W. Bush is being released. Written by Robert Draper, a former writer for Texas Monthly, it was oddly welcomed by the White House, perhaps believing that Mr. Draper would write an entirely glowing review. To this end, Mr. Draper was given access not only to staff and documents, but to the President himself. While I have no idea if the work is by and large favorable to the President or not, one section has gotten considerable press of late.

On 2 September 2007, the New York Times ran a piece on the book, noting several passages. One such passage was an account of an interview between Bush and Draper on the fate of the Iraqi army just after the fall of Baghdad.

Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, "The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen."

But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush's former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army's dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, "Yeah, I can't remember, I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?' " But, he added, "Again, Hadley's got notes on all of this stuff," referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.

I'll let Steve Benen of TPM sum up what was pretty much -- at least in part -- my response.

Let's not brush past this too quickly. The disbanding of the Iraqi army was one of the biggest mistakes of an administration burdened by near-constant missteps, one that was largely responsible for the creation of an Iraqi insurgency. On the subject, Bush sounds like a confused child -- he didn't understand the decision, he's not sure how the decision was made, and asked for his reaction to the decision, Bush is left to conclude, "Yeah, I can't remember."

My other reaction was that Bush, while not remembering exactly how the deal went down, is putting the burden of the policy squarely on L. Paul Bremer, the first US envoy to Iraq. Bush is saying that it was Administration policy to keep the army together and that he doesn't know why Bremer didn't follow through with this. The problem is, it isn't true.

Since being fingered by the President for the policy that most believe lit the fire of sectarian violence in Iraq, Bremer has come out swinging. Bremer gave the New York Times documents and letters attesting to the fact that it was Bush's policy to dissolve the Iraqi army from the beginning.

A previously undisclosed exchange of letters shows that President Bush was told in advance by his top Iraq envoy in May 2003 of a plan to “dissolve Saddam’s military and intelligence structures,” a plan that the envoy, L. Paul Bremer, said referred to dismantling the Iraqi Army.

Mr. Bremer provided the letters to The New York Times on Monday after reading that Mr. Bush was quoted in a new book as saying that American policy had been “to keep the army intact” but that it “didn’t happen.”

The dismantling of the Iraqi Army in the aftermath of the American invasion is now widely regarded as a mistake that stoked rebellion among hundreds of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers and made it more difficult to reduce sectarian bloodshed and attacks by insurgents. In releasing the letters, Mr. Bremer said he wanted to refute the suggestion in Mr. Bush’s comment that Mr. Bremer had acted to disband the army without the knowledge and concurrence of the White House.

I'm not actually sure which is worse: the fact that Bush is lying in this case or that he can't remember the events surrounding the implementation of such an important policy. What is telling about the Bush Administration and its complete incompetence is the fact that Bremer can't say that he didn't go along with the policy, only that he didn't change it. They were -- are! -- all rotten from the top down.

6 September 2007

The Lie Before the Lie

TPM's John Marshall has a wonderful essay regarding recent Iraq War "body count" figures that the White House and the military are throwing at us in advance of the so-called "Petraeus Report" being released later this month. Here is a snippet, but it is worth reading in its entirety. We are being lied to, about the deaths of Americans and Iraqis alike, in order to facilitate a position that the President has no intention of changing one way or another.

It's sometimes fun to wonder whether, knowing all we know today, we'd fall for another version of the Iraq/WMD bamboozle if another came down the pike. I'm afraid the answer has to be: absolutely.

Look no further than the present debate about the success of the 'surge'. I think Karen DeYoung's piece in today's Post -- regrettably on A16 -- settles once and for all that the numbers we're hearing are basically a scam.

It's worth beginning by noting what appears to be the universal consensus that the strategic aim of the surge -- political reconciliation -- has been a complete flop. No progress and things have gotten much worse. That leaves a debate about tactical successes, which for better or worse, we're judging by various body counts. As I've struggled to get my head around this discussion I've looked -- mainly in vain -- for numbers going back some period of time with a consistent methodology since an apples to apples comparison over some period of time is the only way to make any sort of reliable judgments about change, improvement or decline.

What comes up again and again though is one basic disconnect -- the military command in Baghdad says civilian casualties have dropped dramatically. Independent press tabulations say the numbers are high and getting higher.

DeYoung's article gives us a couple bits of information that help us start to unravel the mystery. First, the military command in Baghdad is in a spat with the GAO, which the generals accuse of using a flawed methodology. (GAO's analysis basically disagreed with them on all particulars.) DeYoung's piece includes the very telling detail that the GAO is using the same methodology that the CIA and the DIA favor. So it would seem that it's not only a question of the government versus outside observers. The military command in Baghdad sounds like it's completely isolated even within the US government on how to compute the numbers.

6 September 2007

CCD: New Findings

New information on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that affects bees has been released.

Scientists have found a new prime suspect in the deaths of about a quarter of America's honeybees, a mystery that could take a multibillion-dollar toll on the nation's agricultural industry.

Months of genetic testing have fingered a virus that was first reported in Israel just three years ago and may have passed through Australia on its way to the United States. The correlation between Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus and the mysterious bee disease — known as Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD — was reported Thursday on the journal Science's Web site.

For further information, see this link.

6 September 2007

Craig Resignation Revisited

As I posted on 30 August 2007, Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) got himself caught up in a (gay) sex scandal. He later announced his resignation as of the end of this month. Now, it seems that the "good" Senator may be rethinking his decision.

Craig plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disturbing the peace -- a reduced charge from the offense of which the arresting officer believed him to be guilty -- via a form commonly used in such instances. He waived his right to counsel and noted that he understood his rights in this entire process. There has been some debate -- as you might imagine -- regarding whether or not he has any chance of withdrawing the guilty plea. One attorney believes that he stands a good chance. Two others believe that he does not. I personally believe that the latter opinion is the stronger case. Craig is a US Senator, a person supposedly of power, knowledge, and general capability, not a minority immigrant who doesn't speak English (for example) who might have thus been railroaded into a guilty plea.

Regardless of how this turns out, it is good theater. Republicans are squirming to be sure. At a time when the party wants to find a way to get disenchanted social conservatives enthused about the upcoming national elections, this will only turn them off all the more. It also stands to compete for media attention with the mis-named "Petraeus Report" (see post of 15 August 2007) that the White House will soon release. What is more, Senate Republicans fell all over themselves to call for a Senate Ethics investigation of Craig. Even if he is able to withdraw his guilty plea, it will be hard for them to simply call it quits, keeping the whole thing in the public eye even longer. And finally, should Craig ever run again for his Senate seat, Republicans will have to decide whether or not to challenge him in a primary campaign -- always messy within a party -- or risk the unthinkable (in Idaho!) loss of the seat to a Democrat.

Finally, Craig is taking a risk even if is able to withdraw the plea. There is the real chance that the DA in the case would choose to bring greater charges against him instead of the misdemeanor charge to which he has plead guilty. Thus, if he ultimately lost his case, the legal -- as apposed to the political -- consequences could be much more severe.

6 September 2007

September Impeachment Reminder

In August, I called for the impeachment of both President Bush and Vice President Cheney. At that time, I asked you to join me in writing letters to several members of the House of Representatives. I noted that I would continue to send such letters until such time as my call was heeded or these men left office. I have made good on my claim by again sending my letters. This is simply a reminder in the hope that you will do the same. For information on the entire matter, as well as sample letters and recipient contact information, see my original blog post here.

4 September 2007