As time goes by there seems to be a strange effect; time seems to be accelerating. Where once the days and months passed by with stately even progression, now they appear to be rushing forward in mad abandon, denying the metronome of pace. Perhaps this is just a manifestation of age as I look back over my shoulders and see more behind me than before me. Yet, I have the impression of more than that. The frenetic, almost hysterical pace with which the Bu$h malAdministration is dismantling American democracy truly does seem to be accelerating.

So, as we slouch forward into yet another year of misrule and cruel disregard for average Americans and the rights guaranteed them by the Constitution that so many of us fought, bled, and died for, it behooves us to remember the magic and splendor of our national past. One day we will be able to reclaim our heritage as free men, endowed by a Creator with the right to determine our own fates. We must keep this dream alive. This narrative must be spread in the old, traditional method of oral history if we are forbidden the right of assembly and redress of grievances in the future. We must believe that the fantasy of corporate fascism so beloved by Mr Bu$h and his fellow despoilers will falter and die on the rocks and shoals of their own stupid greed.

And we must stand ready then to return to the old ways, to the free thought of the Enlightenment, the belief that man is more than helpless puppets on strings jiggled by false prophets, and that we make ourselves each day as we fashion our own destinies.

For those of my readers who visit me regularly, I express my gratitude for your acceptance of my ideas, and to those who have engaged me in discussion in the comments, I am deeply grateful for your willingness to share your thoughts with me. I have gained much, listening to you over the last year. Your words were the gift of counsel and wisdom and I hope you will continue to treat me with such trust in 2007.

May the blessings of whatever deity you might subscribe to bring you and your loved ones peace, love, health, and harmony in the year to come. May our troops survive this insane quest for empire, and may we one day greet them in joy and fraternity as they march in parades honoring their return home.

Note: the foolishness of American civic discourse now requires any mention of Saddam Hussein to be accompanied by a mandatory condemnation. Yes, yes, yes, he was a “bad man.” Yes, yes, yes, he ”killed his own people.”

In the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s execution, two disparate schools of thought seem to be emerging in the US and throughout the world. More noticeable in the world-wide community is a sense of disapproval, ranging from a mild distaste one finds in the more advanced countries that no longer consider the “eye for an eye” mentality of brute vengeance a satisfactory answer to problems of the 21st century to downright outrage over the killing at the beginning of a Muslim holy day.

In a telling commentary after his death sentence was handed down in November, a CBS News story reported:

CBS/AP) Saddam Hussein's death sentence was celebrated by some as justice deserved or even divine, but denounced by others as a political ploy before critical U.S. midterm congressional elections.

Worldwide, the range of reactions — including a European outcry over capital punishment and doubts about the fairness of the tribunal that ordered Saddam to hang — reflected new geopolitical fault lines drawn after the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and depose its dictator.

…

The European Union welcomed the verdict but said Saddam should not be put to death. At the Vatican, Cardinal Renato Martino, Pope Benedict XVI's top prelate for justice issues, called the sentence a throwback to “eye for an eye” vengeance.

After the execution, the NY Times is reporting in its Sunday edition:

Mr. Hussein’s execution took place early on a day that for Sunni Arabs was the beginning of the Id al-Adha holiday. (Shiites will begin celebrating on Sunday.) Mr. Hillu said the death “adds some more taste.”

If Shiites saw the hanging as a gift, most Sunnis were revolted that, in what appeared to be a violation of Iraqi law, the execution was scheduled on a holiday of forgiveness.

“Actually, I felt angry,” Ms. Abdul Aziz said. “It’s not a proper time. I assure you, those who are feeling that this is a good time and a good judgment, they are not Iraqis.”

In Iraq itself there were public celebrations and quietly expressed sentiments of relief and estrangement from the spectacle of state-sponsored revenge.

As Iraqis across the country awoke to the news that the former dictator had been hanged, the bitter remains of his rule defined their responses.

For Shiites, long oppressed, it was a moment of intense release.

“This chapter of Iraqi history is over,” said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, speaking on national television early Saturday. “Let us forget it and live with each other.”

Sunni Arabs were skeptical. After three years of grinding violence and abuses by the Shiite government security forces, trust has all but fallen away, and few feel genuinely represented by the government. Most, in fact, are afraid of it.

“I’m not part of their world,” said Yusra Abdul Aziz, a teacher in the Sunni Arab enclave of Mansour. “They are not speaking about Iraq. They are speaking about themselves.”

In a sidebar to a USAToday story some Iraqi citizens give their opinions on the execution:

"If it was another government who executed Saddam you would find me celebrating by dancing in the middle of the street, but unfortunately I feel so disappointed today, because this government have done every ugly thing against Iraqis in the last couple years." —Asmaa Sami, 28, High school teacher, Sunni

"United states and this government have shown this morning their real ugly face to the Sunnis, today is our first day of holly Eid, this execution will be the spark of the real resistance operations allover the country, they invaded our country, they ruined our infrastructure, they killed hundred of thousands of our people and now they executed our president, they will pay for this sooner or later."
—Ghassan Abullah, 36, civil engineer, Sunni

"No doubt every criminal like Saddam deserve this fate, but I am unhappy with the timing of this execution, this is wrong message to our brothers Sunnis in their first day of Eid holyday." -Ali Abdel-Rahman, 34, Taxi driver, Shiite

In the US however, the reaction on the right was uniformly triumphalist. Larissa Alexandrovna, Managing Editor of RawStory.com discussed this attitude on her own personal blog online magazine:

It is always interesting to watch a neo-fascist with the brain cells of a flea attempt to reason. I of course applaud all attempts toward logic and reason and so I applaud these little parasites in their quest for developing a fuller, more human brain.

The latest psycho-babble from the far right is presented thusly: Anyone who is opposed to the execution of Saddam Hussein - many the world over, was a Saddam Hussein supporter. Yes, you heard (read) me right:

This is followed by a hyperlinked quote from a fantasist, and in the spirit of DCOW, there is no citation. Feel free to visit Ms Alexandrovna’s fine news and opinion site and click through, although you can just read the quote there.

But you don't want to know facts. You don't even want to know where Osama is (remember him, wanted dead or alive?). What you want is some sort of feeling that you matter and that you are a real American. Unfortunately, real Americans like you, are the reason Saddam came to power to begin with.

Those opposed to the execution are not mourning the death of Saddam. What they are mourning is the loss of our own national conscience. Some are, as I have pointed out, not happy with the farce of a trial in a country to which we are attempting to (so they say) export democracy. Some are not comfortable because of the timing, which just happens to be during a holy time in Muslim religion. Not that you would know this as xenophobes are busy only with flag waving and gay bashing.

To call me, the Vatican, human rights organizations, Christian, Jewish, Islamic leaders, the EU, most Americans, and basically the entire planet "an enemy" takes a lot of nerve for someone who is nothing but a racist with a blog. I mean really, what have you actually done in your pathetic little life that would allow you to believe for a moment that you have any right to call anyone an enemy?

Shrill, just so shrill. Yet, the accuracy of Ms Alexandrovna’s observations are frighteningly accurate. The fascists who have financed and fed a continuous 35 year assault against the American brand of Democracy had exactly this mindset as their ultimate goal: a poorly educated prole, incapable of logical and discriminative thought, trained to react viscerally to the most brutish of stimuli. These stimuli include the field-proven goads of jingoism, racism, and gender and sexual discrimination.

The US is attacked? Well, just get even. Kill someone, preferably someone who is different. Then it’s back-slapping, high-fiving and back to mindless shelf sitting until the next manufactured outrage is brought forth to stir the primitive brain stem.

Gadzooks! The General has been reading my private diary!

He kilt the man who tried to kill his daddy

George W. Bush
The Lord's Chosen

Your Majesty,

There is only one course left for you to take now that Saddam bin Laden is finally dead. You must give a speech in prime time detailing your long battle against this man. Your father should be made to kneel down beside you as you address the nation, so that once and for all, the world will know that you are a better man and a greater leader than him. Saddam's dead, naked body should be draped over the podium as you speak, and once you've finished, you should have your way with it to demonstrate that you've achieved the only thing you ever really wanted to accomplish in Iraq, the total domination of the man your father couldn't control, not with weapons sales or war. Then, you should bring our troops home.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

I feel replenished, fortified, and vindicated, in an entirely heterosexual way.

I was listening to the radio – a Clear Channel station, but one that broadcasts Randi Rhodes – and was treated to a special FOX news radio feed from whatever lunatic asylum they come from.

There were short interview cuts with a few people and they contained the sort of propaganda one expects from Fox News.

Jeff Birnbaum (R-WaPo) considers this a great day in Iraq’s history. Future generations will compare Saddam’s trial and execution to the Nuremburg trials. Well, yes, I suppose so, when you take your ideological lead from people who compare every single opponent in the world to Adolph Hitler and his happy band of warriors, I imagine that is what you think people will compare this show trial to. Of course, in Nuremburg, the allied powers moved heaven and earth to obtain all witnesses requested by the prisoners, and accorded them more than adequate time to consult with attorneys, prepare defenses, and actually presented the public face of a civilized group of nations trying an uncivilized cabal of men for crimes against humanity.

Unlike Nuremburg, defense attorneys for Saddam were threatened, inveighed against, prohibited from access to materials and witnesses they requested. Several of his attorneys were kidnapped, and killed. One might make a good argument that protection of these attorneys would have constituted a prima facie case of demanding fair and open justice.

Mr Birnbuam extended that comparison. Claiming that many people argued the validity of the Nuremburg trials, contending for years afterwards that the whole thing was rigged. Not on the planet I live on, Mr Birnbaum. In the time I have spent in Germany over the years I have never spoken with a German who contended the trials were anything but fair and proper.

Fox News also brought in Ralph Peters, short-sighted columnist for the New York Post who opined that the execution will not make much difference in Iraq, while simultaneously being a “milestone.” One must remember that Mr Peters is a charter member of the PNAC, and is therefore quite practiced at making contradictory claims in the same sentence. He did acknowledge that there have been many “appalling” mistakes in Iraq, thereby reinforcing the current PNAC and Likudnik propaganda narrative that the plan to conquer Iraq and thereby protect Israel was perfect, and George Bu$h screwed it up.

Mr Peters also made the laughable claim that once Saddam dances the Danny Deever dictators all over the world will have trouble sleeping at nights. I suppose he thinks they’ll only sleep during the daytime, or something. Maybe Mr Peters has been doing celebratory jello shots all day – I don’t know, but that is flawed logic if I ever heard it. Does he mean that Mr Bu$h plans to go gunning after every other dictator in the world because there can be but one?

The Fox host used the trademarked “some say” theme that it might be wise to keep Saddam alive in prison. Mr Peters of course didn’t like this idea since Saddam apparently killed 1.5 million people, although he was convicted of killing 142. That would be unacceptable, because a live dictator in prison would be a martyr and a locus point for resistance, whereas a dead dictator wouldn’t be a martyr. Yes. I definitely think he’s been doing jello shots all day long. After all, it’s well known that dead people like Moses, Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammed never inspired people to follow a particular policy or ideology.

There was also a quickie interview with a reporter, Jennifer (last name unknown) who spent much time covering the trial and was present when Saddam was marched in to hear the sentence. She reported Saddam sat down, and when instructed by the judge to stand up to hear his sentence refused. She reported his demeanor as “haughty” and arrogant” and as he left the court room he leaned over the prosecution table, “hissed” something at them, and then “swaggered” out of the room.

I suppose everyone expected him to quiver, and grovel. The first thought I had was “Good for him. He’s going to die whatever he says or does, so why pander to them?” Live by the sword, die by the sword, but die on your feet rather than on your knees. He'll be dead by 10 PM tonight, they say.

Troll prophylactic: Yes, yes, yes, he‘s a “bad man”. Yes, yes, yes, he “killed his own people.” Yes, yes, yes, he deserves to die, but there is no requirement for him to humiliate himself in order to shore up Mr Bu$h’s feelings of masculine inadequacy. I don't like the man, don't care about him, but it is good that he is going out like a man

Considering it was Fox News, I really expected much more triumphalism. Maybe they're planning on O'Reilly doing the "Gloat Factor" tonight.

UPDATE: Paragraph on the Ralph Peters version of Earth reality was edited for better clarity.

Some quick thoughts about the impending execution of Saddam Hussein.

Why the rush to hang him this weekend?

Everything Bu$hCo does, whether policy, initiative, public statement, or action, has only one goal: the immediate domestic political impact of the event. There are no sage, long-term projects in that regard; everything is calculated on the short-term impact on one or two news cycles. Strategic thinking is apparently for weaklings like Democrats, Liberals and Progressives.

It seems to me that there is great political advantage in having Saddam capped about two days before Mr Bu$h’s next State of the Union address in Congress. This would enable him to garner the mandatory sycophantic applause as he repeats again and again that Iraq is obviously a far better place now, and we’re winning, we’re really winning. He can intersperse all these references with the usual vague posturings of impending nuclear catastrophe because Iran insists on determining its own future and also to sell its oil in Euros rather than dollars.

Mr Bu$h will also be able to brag about the Great Surge Forward.* We’re going to see a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division moved out to Kuwait within the next few weeks, in preparation for reinforcement, escalation, sending more troops to train the Iraqis, strengthening the border against the alleged Iranian incursions, or whatever the lie du jour is next month. More troops will follow just as soon as they can be scrounged up.

Imagine the public relations snap of a one-two-three combination punch: Saddam hung, lots of goodilicious, lip-smacking, smirking and jaw-grinding as Mr Bu$h finally, irretrievably, lays down the Saddam club with which he has beaten the world for six years. Followed up with a the mandatory mention of the brave sacrifices of troops being sent back into the maw for a third or even a fourth tour, which always gets applause.

That could lead to the war cries of “Onward to Iran!” phase of the SOTU as he can wave the tieless image of a President Ahmandinejad cooking up nuclear warheads in the back of the mosque in downtown Teheran. It sounds like a natural to me, and will play well among the Likudnik operatives who have hijacked our foreign policy.

So why give up this golden opportunity so soon? Is he really afraid that the Sunnis will spring Saddam from the slammer? There seems to be a lot of that going on in Iraq and I suppose it’s not beyond imagination that there could be plans to do this.

Is he really such a frightened little man that he has to have this guy killed at once? Or is this imperative for immediate execution a result of all the bad press he’s gotten in the last month?

It’s true he’ll see an amazing bounce in his polls – probably two or three per cent, lasting for three or maybe even four days. In the end, that may be reason enough for this undue haste.

* Tip of the too small Kevlar helmet to the Great Helmsman, Mao Dze-dung, who used to hold the international trademark on this phrase.

This is expected to be a slow blogging day due to a periodic, relatively safe medical procedure that requires bed rest afterwards. (“Beulah, peel me a grape.”)

But wandering around Senator Stevens’ internet tubes this morning I discovered a parody site – I think it‘s parody; it certainly is funny, and suspicions confirmed and all that, you know? It’s cruel, and doesn’t contribute to the civil and civic discourse that is suddenly all the rage among wingers who now find themselves in a congressional minority.

WASHINGTON, DC - President Bush appears to be losing support among a key group of voters who had hitherto stood firmly with the president even as his poll numbers among other groups fell dramatically.

A new Gallup poll shows that, for the first time, Bush's approval rating has fallen below 50% among total fucking morons, and now stands at 44%. This represents a dramatic drop compared to a poll taken just last December, when 62% of total fucking morons expressed support for the president and his policies.

The current poll, conducted by phone with 1,409 total fucking morons between May 4 and May 8, reveals that only 44% of those polled believe the president is doing a good job, while 27% believe he is doing a poor job and 29% don't understand the question.

…

Total fucking moron Kurt Meyer of Turlock, California also says his once solid support for Bush has collapsed. "He invaded Iraq and all those soldiers died, and for what? We destroyed all their WMDs, but now their new president is making fun of us and saying he's going to build nuclear bombs and that we can't stop him. Well, nuclear bombs are even worse than WMDs, so what did we accomplish?"

It’s nice to be able to laugh about them, isn’t it?

Be nice today, please, because we start a new year in two days.

Yesterday we learned via Bob Woodward, writing in the WaPo, that when Gerald Ford was interviewed in 2004 he had some harsh words to say about Mr Bu$h’s most excellent adventure to prove his ego-war was more important than Iraqi or American lives. Since this was in the WaPo, there will of course be no citations but I did don my anti-cataract glasses before reading today’s column, so these are accurate quotes:

In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford's White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."

In a conversation that veered between the current realities of a war in the Middle East and the old complexities of the war in Vietnam whose bitter end he presided over as president, Ford took issue with the notion of the United States entering a conflict in service of the idea of spreading democracy.

Gerald Ford with common sense? It’s surprising that a man who played his role of “accidental President” so well appears to actually be able to think his way through an ethical conundrum. What a pity he never spoke out at the time. He was a Republican of course, and one thing you learn early in the party of crime and corruption is party first, party second, wallet third, family fourth, and country last.

This is of course the great ethicist who spoke the now-notorious words about “our great national nightmare” being over as he applied an industrial-sized broom and ballroom sized carpet to the criminal Nixon years. Rumors that he signed the pardon before he even sat down in the Oval Office are probably true.

I have to admit that my own best Gerald Ford memories involve errant golf balls and innocent bystanders. It became such a thematic moment of the late 1970s that Chevy Chase built a career on the theme. Second best Ford memory of course was Mr Ford opening for Saturday Night live. Personal and political qualities aside, he had a good sense of humor.

"Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people," Ford said, referring to Bush's assertion that the United States has a "duty to free people." But the former president said he was skeptical "whether you can detach that from the obligation number one, of what's in our national interest." He added: "And I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security."

I was a bit surprised to read this bit of trivia. The thrust of the article is quite negative, and makes the point that the “embargo” was imposed by President Ford, specifying that the interview could not be published until after his death. Whether that demand was out of party loyalty or fear of being invited to go dove hunting with Mr Cheney is something you’d have to decide for yourself.

In the end, though, it was Vietnam and the legacy of the retreat he presided over that troubled Ford. After Saigon fell in 1975 and the United States evacuated from Vietnam, Ford was often labeled the only American president to lose a war. The label always rankled.

"Well," he said, "I was mad as hell, to be honest with you, but I never publicly admitted it."

President Ford will not be the only Republican executive in that category, soon.

The end of the year, generally shorthand for the period of the Thanksgiving-New Year’s holiday season, is traditionally a time for reflection of the year past, contemplation of the year to come, and along with the requisite moral inventory, the creation of these damned resolutions that are always so hard to keep. It’s also a time devoted to excess, wretched or otherwise, as we celebrate with too much food, alcohol, good times and often too much family.

I hope all of our readers had a happy and joyful period from Thanksgiving to ‘Hannukah or Christmas, whichever you celebrate. And of course best wishes for a safe New Year’s holiday as well.

So, how was our year? Not so good, actually. I don’t want to count grains of sand here, but one of the few bright spots of 2006 was the election upsets. It did cause a number of Republican deadbeats who somehow managed to hang onto their jobs to begin to push the White House to play nice with the Democratic Party. That, of course was reported with breathless excitement by a media that has consistently enabled the man’s drive to destroy American democracy for the last six years. Here’s hoping Democratic leaders like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are smarter than useful fools like David Ignatius, Fred Hiatt, and Debbie Howell of the Washington Post, and especially smarter than the Christmas Nutcrackers at Fox News. Mr Bu$h is far too childish and self-absorbed to ever consider the other side’s view of an issue. True bipartisanship from Mr Bu$h is as likely as a confession of his lies that got us into this mess.

The Likudnik operatives who have hijacked our foreign policy organs watched their Grand Plan for the New American Century to militarily dominate the Middle East fall apart this year and in desperation have demanded what was intended all along: a larger American armed force in Iraq so as to improve the chances of direct armed conflict with Iran. Iran must be reduced to chaos and its infrastructure destroyed as Iraq’s has been in order to ensure peace – well, peace after Syria is also destroyed, that is.

We learned this week that the “surge” the neocons suggested isn’t really a surge after all but more properly a reinforcement of the troops in-country. Some call it an escalation, which is also a valid description. The latest figures being blithely bandied about is a progressive buildup of some four Army brigades (approximately 20,000 bodies, at full TO&E) and two to three Marine regiments, which should work out to be somewhere around 8,000 to 10,000 troops, depending on how successful they are in quickly fleshing out thinned ranks due to previous deployments. To do this, they’ll probably have to dig pretty deep into Reserve units. All of this takes time, of course. Units have to be alerted, tasked, manpower requirements filled with drafts from other units. Missing personal equipment has to be collected up, perhaps from other reserve units, and then all those bodies have to be serviced administratively – records reviews, medical exams, shots, dependent and beneficiary updates, financial allotments – the list goes on and on. Fortunately (or perhaps not) the US military has been doing this for years now and practice always makes it easier more efficient.

It’s anticipated that the bulk of the Army troops will go to Baghdad while the Marines go back to Anbar province in order to take on the Sunni/Ba’athist/dead enders/resistance there.

The official story is that we’re off to a great adventure – dismantling the Mahdi Army and eliminating Muqtada al-Sadr. This will make things more difficult politically for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who derives a great deal of his political power from Mr Sadr’s constituents. It could make things easier for Mr Hakim, the Iranian-backed head of SCIRI, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and also of the Badr Brigades. It says a lot about the political desperation of the Bu$h malAdministration that they are going to involve us in Iraqi sectarian politics, and make life easier for an Iranian proxy in Iraq.

There is of course the specific possibility that these troops will miraculously find themselves in blocking positions on the Iran/Iraq border in anticipation of a ground pushback after the upcoming bombing attacks on the Iranian nuclear plants.

It’s important to remember that everything - everything - Bu$hCo does is viewed only through one lens: domestic politics. Apparently they perceive the threat here at home to be so great that they are casting about for more intensified ground combat (and a higher butcher’s bill) in order to deflect the anticipated Democratic investigations that are coming up next year. Since only some 18% of Americans actually favor this escalation you can be certain the sweat level is high. After all, just how unpatriotic are these Democrats that they would hold public hearings about Mr Bu$h’s little ego-war while our troops are locked in a life and death struggle with Islamofascistic Shiite militias in order to restore security in Baghdad?

Even though America made its New Year’s resolution in November to cut back on Iraq, it seems Mr Bu$h is determined to continue to indulge.

Back in late November we discussed what we thought was the last in a too-long series of Republican legal actions to enable Big Business to steal more money with less effort and publicity.

In what may be one of the Republican Party’s last sloppy wet kisses to Big Business and Wall Street for a while, an “independent” committee formed by Treasury Secretary Henry M Paulson Jr has recommended the US adopt new rules to allow the Republicans’ big campaign donors to steal as much money as they possibly can.

Ah, the sins of overconfidence and post-election triumphalism! How silly to expect them to go quietly into the arena of public respectability.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, in a move announced late on the last business day before Christmas, reversed a decision it had made in July and adopted a rule that would allow many companies to report significantly lower total compensation for top executives.

The change in the way grants of stock options are to be explained to investors is a victory for corporations that had opposed the rule when it was issued in July, and a defeat for institutional investors that had backed the S.E.C.’s original rule.

It looks like The People Who Own America do have a sense of shame, or at least an aversion to having a public spotlight on their excessive greed. When Lee Raymond retired from ExxonMobil his retirement package totted up to well over $400 million:

Exxon is giving Lee Raymond one of the most generous retirement packages in history, nearly $400 million, including pension, stock options and other perks, such as a $1 million consulting deal, two years of home security, personal security, a car and driver, and use of a corporate jet for professional purposes.

Wall Street seems to have done very well in 2006, what with all the home mortgage foreclosures, which comes from predatory sub-prime lending practices, assorted stock flummery, and the failure of the Bu$h economy to float the boats of even the middle class:

Wall Street is awarding itself tens of billions in bonuses this winter. The fantastic amounts of money being handed out to investment bankers, securities traders and the like is symptomatic of the vast social divide that blights every aspect of American life.

Investment bank Goldman Sachs is leading the pack. The firm reported an increase in quarterly earnings of 93 percent and will distribute some $16.5 billion in bonuses to dozens of its bankers and traders. The top “rainmakers,” as they are called, will each take home as much as $20 to $25 million just in bonuses, “while traders who booked big profits will take home a chunk of those profits, up to $50 million apiece,” according to a December 13 article in the New York Times. The report cited the comment of one New York-based investment firm, “Anyone at the bonus line at Goldman Sachs died and went to bonus heaven. It doesn’t get any better than this.”

And that sort of public gloating over public engorgement is just unacceptable. Why allow the proles to learn about the vast gap?

As the NY Times story noted:

“It was a holiday present to corporate America,” Ann Yerger, the executive director of the Council of Institutional Investors, said yesterday. “It will certainly make the numbers look smaller in 2007 than they would otherwise have looked.”

Christopher Cox, the commission chairman, said yesterday that he viewed the decision as “a relative technicality” that improved the rule. When the rule was adopted in July, Mr. Cox said it was aimed at providing information that would allow shareholders to “make better decisions about the appropriate amount to pay the men and women entrusted with running their companies.”

In announcing the new rule on Friday, he said “the new disclosure requirements will be easier for companies to prepare and for investors to understand.”

…

The new rule changes the way grants of stock options will be measured in that summary table.

Under the old rule, if a company awarded an options grant valued at $15 million to an executive this year, the full amount of $15 million would show up in the summary compensation table.

Under the new rule, which takes effect immediately, the amount reflected in the table would be much smaller, with the remaining part of the $15 million included in later years, as the executive qualifies to exercise the options.

This is obviously a good change, aimed at preserving the basic health of the stock market. A cynical man might think that under these new rules there would be a far less visible record if company executives decided to dump their stock holdings before bad news.

Recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, James was hospitalized on the 24th with pneumonia, the old man’s friend, as some doctors call it. He passed away peacefully early this morning.

The “Godfather of Soul,” the “hahdust wuhkin man in show biniss” is gone. No more turns sliding half-way across the stage on his knees, crying out “Please, please, please.” No more Flames to drape capes around his shoulders, and lead him off-stage, sobbing and crying for his lost love.

No more frenetic dance steps, no more grunted accent bites of vocal percussion. The snappy music sample of Clyde Stubblefield’s “Funky Drummer” has been used in scores, if not hundreds of hip-hop records, is taught as a basic riff to student musicians, and will always be one of his trademarks.

The most electrifying stage show I ever saw was James Brown at the Apollo Theater, in 1966, I think it was.

Maybe it’s just part of my misspent and lamented youth, but I miss him already.

I read somewhere that it costs more than a million dollars to train a naval aviator. Thanks to Eason Jordan’s IraqSlogger, we now know that some people owe us a lot of money back.

As we slouch off towards the seventh year of Bu$hCo's occupation of our White House, I wish each of our readers the very best possible Christmas. Whether or not you and your loved ones actually celebrate this holiday, I hope the spirit of this day - hope, peace, love, and happiness - fills your lives throughout the coming year.

Via the prolific Matt Iglesias we learn that Jonah Goldberg, charter member of the Lucky Sperm Club, is spending his post ‘Hannukah explaining why a slip ‘n slide degree from Groucher College doesn’t always prepare a fella for explaining himself accurately – the first time out. Fortunately the Rules of the Universe always allow nitwits and conservatives (reduncancy alert!) a do over:

After technical hassles too complicated and boring to describe, my conversation with Ann Althouse is up at BhTV. It got a little heated in the begining [sic] and I've been trying to figure out why Ann and I had such a problem talking to each other about Frank Meyer, state's rights etc. Ann's a nice and reasonable person, after all.

Discussing a Liberty Fund seminar that Jonah and Ms Althouse attended (ideological reinforcement and free food – always a plus for our Jonah,) he makes the picklish point that when confronted with deep political thinking our younger conservatives “me-tooers” tend to get confused.

A little background: She and I both attended a Liberty Fund conference on Frank Meyer's legacy. Meyer was the author of the doctrine which became known as Fusionism (though Meyer didn't like that label). Meyer was obsessively libertarian in almost all realms, but he alo [sic] took the structure of the constitution very seriously, making him a staunch supporter of State's rights. This put him in the untenable situation of defending States' rights in the face of Jim Crow. He was right on the constitutional principle of state's rights, but he was wrong historically and morally about how that principle needed to be applied in reality. We set aside a whole panel session for this topic, though many of us — but not Ann — had already spent the night arguing about this stuff until 2:00 in the morning. Anyway, earlier last week, Ann ran a post on her site implying that attendees of the conference were a little scary because they "believed" too much. I called her post "odd." She apparently, and I think wrongly, took considerable offense. She later explained that she was really talking about the libertarians and their extreme dedication to ideological conviction. Proof of this, I learned while talking to her, was the lack of realism when talking about the States' rights stuff.

Taking the Constitutional structure very seriously while defending States’ rights would explain why the Army of New Jersey refuses to march behind the Army of South Carolina in parades, I suppose.

One might damned well agree that states righters would be “scary” at a supposed Libertarian conference. They’re pretty terrifying on Free Republic – imagine what they’re like face to face? Let’s leave aside the point of Jonah Goldberg terming any person’s writings as “odd” if we may, because it’s Christmas time and ducks and barrels and all.

The real point of unreality in this drivel to me is in the claim that Libertarians adhere to an “ideological conviction.” My understanding of it, learned at the symbolic knee of Richard Hofstadter, was that Libertarians are political absolutists, admitting no affirming tie to fellow citizens beyond maintenance of toll roads, border crossings, an (possibly) water purification plants, but without fluoride, please. That would be the subset of anarcho-capitalists to which young Jonah appears to aspire, except when he is overwhelmed with awe for Mr Bu$h magnificent codpiece, at which time he segues right through minimalist libertarianism, straight to classic fascism.

There is also some confusing discussion of Jim Crow laws and why they are attractive to some, but not to those icky liberals. After a quick mention of the fact that liberals unfairly adore Fidel Castro, while excoriating conservatives for being on the wrong side of Jim Crow, Jonah considers his 900 word Sunday opus done.

Sabrina Tavernise had a story in yesterday’s NY Times that has an important bearing on the Bu$hCo push to destroy Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. We’ve been hearing stories for months about forms of ethnic cleansing in Baghdad. These are occasionally non-violent: unacceptable and unwanted residents of a district are visited at night by masked men who suggest it’s time to move on. But that seems to be less and less the norm.

BAGHDAD, Dec. 22 — As the United States debates what to do in Iraq, this country’s Shiite majority has been moving toward its own solution: making the capital its own.

Large portions of Baghdad have become Shiite in recent months, as militias press their fight against Sunni militants deeper into the heart of the capital, displacing thousands of Sunni residents. At least 10 neighborhoods that a year ago were mixed Sunni and Shiite are now almost entirely Shiite, according to residents, American and Iraqi military commanders and local officials.

For the first years of the war, Sunni militants were dominant, forcing Shiites out of neighborhoods and systematically killing bakers, barbers and trash collectors, who were often Shiites. But starting in February, after the bombing of a shrine in the city of Samarra, Shiite militias began to strike back, pushing west from their strongholds and redrawing the sectarian map of the capital, home to a quarter of Iraq’s population.

The Sunni move to eliminate traditional neighborhood supports like bakers and barbers, as well as trash collectors, is a very clever way to begin clearing an area; without these basic necessities, urban life is almost impossible.

But then the Shia found the best response to this tactic, and they began their own neighborhood reclamation projects. The Shia move has been very successful in Baghdad as is noted in the Timesarticle:

At an army base in northern Baghdad, an Iraqi general moved his hand across a map of the capital. The city is dividing fast, he said, writing, “Sunni” and “Shiite” in graceful Arabic script across each neighborhood.

“Now we face a new style of splitting the neighborhoods,” said the general, a Shiite. “The politicians are doing this.”

Neighborhoods in the east — most vulnerable to Shiite militias from Sadr City, the largest eastern district and one of its poorest — have lost much of their minority Sunni populations since February. Even the solidly middle-class neighborhoods of Zayuna and Ghadier, very mixed as little as six months ago, are starting to lose Sunnis.

In Baladiyad, a once-mixed area of eastern Baghdad, workers smoothed mortar onto brick. A Shiite mosque was taking shape.

On the same block, a half-finished Sunni mosque stood deserted, its facade hung with peeling posters of last year’s leaders. Less than a mile away, another mosque has never been used.

“They can’t come here now,” a Shiite worker said. “They are Sunni.”

Time.com noted in an October 2006 article that sometimes it’s a bit more old-fashioned:

Some Sunni families around Washash have been getting threat letters from militant Sadr operatives, who typically set a deadline for them to clear out of their homes. There's a DVD version as well, with demands for a family to move out accompanied by images of houses exploding. Often that's enough to scare a family into moving. Sometimes the Mahdi operatives go further, however. U.S. soldiers I joined on patrols in Washash say Shi'ite militiamen will sometimes abduct and murder the main male figure in a Sunni household, leaving his family unable to afford their home or too terrified to stay. It appears these targeted Sunnis make up much of the body count on the streets in Washash.

Patrick Cockburn wrote of the Sunni attempt to isolate Baghdad earlier this year:

Sunni insurgents have cut the roads linking the city to the rest of Iraq. The country is being partitioned as militiamen fight bloody battles for control of towns and villages north and south of the capital.

As American and British political leaders argue over responsibility for the crisis in Iraq, the country has taken another lurch towards disintegration.

Well-armed Sunni tribes now largely surround Baghdad and are fighting Shia militias to complete the encirclement.

The Sunni insurgents seem to be following a plan to control all the approaches to Baghdad. They have long held the highway leading west to the Jordanian border and east into Diyala province. Now they seem to be systematically taking over routes leading north and south.

This tactic appears to have failed, and the recent Shiite push is a logical response both to the Sunni tactic and to the imperatives of a civil war.

Mr Bu$h’s latest spin slogan masquerading as a military strategy - “a new way forward” – includes a partnership with Iranian-backed cleric al-Hakim, supported by the Badr brigades, in order to destroy the military and political power of Iranian-backed cleric al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army. This just might give the Sunnis and their allies a new sense of hope, correctly assessing that any attempt to eliminate al-Sadr as a meaningful military and political force in Iraq will be time-consuming, expensive and deadly.

Since it has become obvious that the wishes of Americans mean absolutely nothing to Mr Bu$h, perhaps we should consider the options and consequences of yet another ego trip by the small little man who cowers inside our White House. As the LA Times reported on December 13th:

WASHINGTON — As President Bush weighs new policy options for Iraq, strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to "double down" in the country with a substantial buildup in American troops, an increase in industrial aid and a major combat offensive against Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shiite leader impeding development of the Iraqi government.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff will present their assessment and recommendations to Bush at the Pentagon today. Military officials, including some advising the chiefs, have argued that an intensified effort may be the only way to get the counterinsurgency strategy right and provide a chance for victory.

The approach overlaps somewhat a course promoted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz). But the Pentagon proposals add several features, including the confrontation with Sadr, a possible renewed offensive in the Sunni stronghold of Al Anbar province, a large Iraqi jobs program and a proposal for a long-term increase in the size of the military.

Such an option would appear to satisfy Bush's demand for a strategy focused on victory rather than disengagement. It would disregard key recommendations and warnings of the Iraq Study Group, however, and provide little comfort for those fearful of a long, open-ended U.S. commitment in the country. Only 12% of Americans support a troop increase, [emph added] whereas 52% prefer a fixed timetable for withdrawal, a Los Angeles Times/ Bloomberg poll has found.

Congressional Democrats must be clear here: this is George Bu$h’s war. He schemed for it; he lied for it – multiple times; he demanded it and almost 3,000 Americans have died so far in the war he needed to make himself feel like a better man than his authentic war hero father. And his partners in crime, the Republican Party, aided and abetted him at every turn. This is their war, and now, having failed at their war, they are demanding a mulligan.

So we now see the familiar Bu$hCo kabuki, the bait-and-switch in which they argue for one great “surge” by once again screwing over the troops, extending tours in Iraq, shortening rest, refit, and retraining tours stateside, in order to go off into Sadr City and try to limit the combat potential of the Mahdi Army. The US Army will fight in Sadr City the only way it knows how: it will shell and bomb entire blocks of the Baghdad suburb until there is nothing but rubble to shroud the corpses not just of Mahdi fighters, but their wives, children, nephews and nieces. This is required because Mr Bu$h has apparently made a political deal with the #2 Shiite cleric in Iraq, as we mentioned here.

Recent trial balloons floated by the usual unnamed Bu$hCo sources indicated we’re exploring the idea of throwing our weight behind the #2 power bloc, the Badr brigades led by the Iranian cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, in the hopes of defeating both al-Sadr and the Sunnis who, along with the Ba’athists and ex-members of the Iraq Army, are the spine of the insurgency/revolution/rebellion/resistance in Iraq.

We can perhaps presume that Mr Bu$h and Mr al-Hakim made a handshake deal when they met at the White House in early December. I’ll get al-Sadr our of your way and you help my guy (Nuri al-Maliki at this moment) and support him in the Parliament.

Iran figures prominently in all of this: Iran backs both Mr al-Sadr and al-Hakim. By breaking one of Iran’s proxies we will elevate another. This comes at the same time as a successful demand on the UN for sanctions against Iran for its nuclear power program and a further naval buildup in the Persian Gulf/Red Sea area – you know – just in case.

So, faced with a catastrophe of his own making, Mr Bu$h does what any degenerate busted luck gambling addict or drunk, dry or wet, would do: he’s going to double his bets so he can get even on the next throw of the dice. After that, he’ll roll sevens for 10 straight throws and he’ll break the house.

This surge will come slowly: it takes time to alert units, get them into the shipment pipeline and get them out there. It’s a lot easier to deal with the troops already there, expecting to rotate in January, February, or March. Just suck it up, troop, and soldier on.

After the probable destruction of Sadr City, it will be on to Anbar, which is currently not considered a friendly AOR for US forces. A confidential US Marine Corps report last month just about ceded the province to the Sunnis/dead enders/Ba’athists/Iraqi Army/Republican Guard/al-Quaeda. It’s complicated to list them because we have so many enemies over in that country.

People have suggested a second alternative for an extra 35,000-50,000 troops in Iraq: Keep them on the Iranian border in defensive echelons for when the bombing of Iranian power plants begins. Well, having watched these guys for six years we know they’re going to bomb Iran, and there’s probably a very good chance Iran will resent it, and do something about it.

In any case, both Kevin Drum and Digby have written very cold-blooded columns. Since Mr Bu$h is determined to have a do-over, the Democrats should nail the words “It’s my war” to his back and never, ever mention the words “Iraq” or “war” without using the qualifier “Mr Bu$h’s.” before them.

In rather cold-blooded analysis they both seem to feel there is no one in Congress or the military with enough courage to stop our little boy-king, so they should just let him widen this war, and start his Iran war that he (and Mr Cheney and the Likudniks) want so desperately. It’s a pretty good bet the effort will fail, like all George Bu$h enterprises, and even though many more Americans will die, the coming deluge will sink the Republican Party and the Likudnik neocons for at least another 25 years.

Digby:

There is no chance this is going to work, so I do not hold out even the smallest hope that this could be worthwhile in literal terms. It is purely to save face for George Bush. The American involvement in this war is over --- they're just delaying the inevitable until he can crawl back to Crawford and dump the whole disater [sic] in the next guy's lap.

As for the long term, it doesn't matter how spectacularly they fail, they will never admit it. We would have won "if only" no matter what actually happens. If only we'd put in more troops earlier, or more troops now, or reinstituted the draft or dropped some daisy cutters or whatever. These people live in a fantasy world in which they are always right but others are continuously conspiring to rob them of whatever they really need to prove it. In the long run, they will insist that the war could have been won if only the wimps hadn't lost their nerve. And they will persuade a fair number of people that this was true --- Americans don't like losers and don't like to think of themselves as losers. The paranoid strain will be happy to re-argue, re-litigate and re-write history down the road to say that America was betrayed from within. It's what they do.

There is some short term political gains to be had, however sick it is to think in these terms. In the long run they will create their own myth but in the short term, they are going to have to deal with the reality that is going to continue to appear on people's televisions every night. And that will rebound to St. John McCain and any other Republicans who jump on this bandwagon as it hurls over the cliff.

Morally, Digby is wrong, of course. This is like handing another book of matches to your rather dim-witted cousin Earle, who’s already burned down three sheds in town. Politics, however is the art of the possible, and not the art of morality.

Firstly, as most people who pay attention now understand, it won’t be a surge. Troops scheduled to rotate back to the US for rest, refit, replenishment, and a chance to see their families won’t. Troops scheduled to return to Iraq after their planned 12 to 18 months at home will be sent earlier. Sorry troops, too bad families, wives, children, mothers, fathers; sometimes sacrifices have to be made in order to maintain the fiction that we’re doing something reputable in Iraq. And what’s more important? Your family’s happiness or Mr Bu$h’s reputation?

Surge politics seems quite complicated and yet is very simple. Fred Kagan and his morally corrupt Likudnik operatives at PNAC and the AEI demand a large troop increase in order to salvage their war-mongering lusts to eliminate Israel’s military and diplomatic threats in the Middle East. The fact that their original plan to invade Iraq and transform it into the first 21st century corporate state failed is immaterial. Ideologues must always be right. An admission of failure is more than a statement of a poor plan; it is an admission of professional incompetence, which can mean loss of face, income and future influence.

We have been treated for about a week to all sorts of stage-managed “news” stories: all the Generals in the military are against the idea of a surge; all the troops in Iraq are in favor of it; Secretary Gates is keeping an open mind and will make a decision on the “facts.” Mr Bu$h hasn’t made up his mind and will wait until after he talks with the Generals and hears Secretary Gates’ report.

We keep hearing that that the JCS and the field Generals (principally Abizaid, Casey and Chiarelli) are opposed to more troops at this time. GEN Abizaid famously testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that he didn’t feel any need for more troops, apparently shooting some holes in Senator John McCain’s flagship, USS Presidential 2008. Both Casey and Chiarelli are on record that they have no use for an increase in the number of troops in Iraq, and strictly speaking that‘s true unless the mission changes.

Those Generals have now been instructed that they do, in fact, support Mr Bu$h’s urgent need to prove Mr Kagan and himself to be military geniuses.

Generals approve troop `surge' Recommendation regarded as key to Bush plans in Iraq

WASHINGTON -- Top U.S. military commanders in Iraq have decided to recommend a "surge" of fresh American combat forces, eliminating one of the last remaining hurdles to proposals being considered by President Bush for a troop increase, a defense official familiar with the plan said Friday.

The approval of a troop increase plan by top Iraq commanders, including Gen. George Casey and Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, comes days before Bush is to unveil a new course for the troubled U.S. involvement in Iraq. Bush still must address concerns among some Pentagon officials and overcome opposition from Congress, where many Democrats favor a blue-ribbon commission's recommendation for a gradual withdrawal. But the recommendation by the commanders in Iraq is significant because Bush has placed prime importance on their advice. The U.S. command in Iraq decided to recommend an increase of troops several days ago, prior to meetings in Baghdad this week with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the defense official said.

Note carefully the second lede: “Recommendation regarded as key to Bush plans in Iraq” – that tells you everything.

It’s not surprising, of course. Abizaid, Casey, Chiarelli all wanted to conduct a clean war, eliminate a danger to humanity, and then decamp from Iraq to US bases. But when they discovered the truth of what Mr Bu$h and his Likudnik advisers planned they went along, because careerism is more important than those wonderful words Duty, Honor, Country which used to mean something at our military academies.

Gates, who returned to Washington on Friday, will join Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley in meetings with Bush on Saturday at Camp David. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush was not expected to make a final decision on the administration's new policy.

Commanders have been skeptical of the value of increasing troops, and the decision represents a reversal for Casey, the highest-ranking officer in Iraq. Casey and Gen. John Abizaid, the top commander in the Middle East who will step down in March, have long resisted adding more troops in Iraq, arguing that it could delay the development of Iraqi security forces and increase anger at the United States in the Arab world.

Camp David is where Mr Bu$h likes to go when he’s planning the deaths of many people. In this case, the “many people” will be the Shiites of Baghdad, specifically the Mahdi Army, the 70,000 strong armed force supporting Muqtada al-Sadr. After that military and political danger to the puppet Iraqi national government is whittled down, they will be able to turn to Anbar province where the Sunnis are more powerful than US occupation forces.

Al-Sadr is a cleric and his followers are apparently fanatically loyal to him for several reasons. His father was a great Imam, the Grand Ayatolla Mohammed Mohammed al-Sadeq al-Sadr, who was killed with several of his sons by Saddam Hussein. This accident of birth and circumstances gives Mr al-Sadr great standing in Iraqi religion and politics, and he’s making the most of it, either for the sake of his country, his Shiite sect, or his own political future.

When Secretary Gates made his visit this week to Iraq, “fact-gathering” with various generals (i.e., getting them on board with what our ruler, Mr Bu$h wants,) he famously had a sit-down breakfast with some enlisted men one morning and was told by a Specialist Jason T Glenn of the 101st MI Bn,

I really think we need more troops here,” said Specialist Jason T. Glenn, one of several soldiers at a breakfast meeting with Mr. Gates who backed the idea. “With more presence here,” he said, security might improve to a point that “we can get the Iraqi Army trained up.”

The NY Times article is revealing if you look carefully,

It was not clear how the soldiers who met with Mr. Gates had been selected, but in a show of hands he requested, about half said they were serving their second tour in Iraq and the rest said they were in their first deployment.

Several soldiers said the Iraqi Army and police were improving but were not competent enough for them to shift to a supporting role. Many Iraqi soldiers and police officers do not show up regularly for work, they said, and some tip off insurgents and sectarian militias about coming military operations.

“Are they ready to take it on themselves?” Mr. Gates asked, referring to the Iraqi security forces. Sgt. Christopher Coulter, an infantryman with the First Infantry Division, replied, “Not now, but they’re getting a lot better”

When Mr. Gates asked, “Do you think we need more American troops?” a majority of the soldiers nodded their heads or murmured, “Yes, sir.”

Well, hell, I know how they were picked, don’t you? Bu$hCo and CENTCOM are famous for dog-and-pony shows. Some high-speed, low drag Major grabs up a couple of troops, tells them “Shave close tomorrow because you’re having breakfast with Secretary Gates. Here’s a list of the things you’re going to tell him. Go back to your hooches, memorize them, and report back to me at 1500 so we can run through them.”

Like LT Cmdr Jeff Huber, I’ve been through this kabuki myself.

Cloud notes that "It was not clear how the soldiers who met with Mr. Gates had been selected." It may not have been clear to Cloud, but it's plain as day to me. I can't count the number of staged events like this I saw in the course of my career--a supposedly informal meeting between hand picked volunteers and a VIP where the hand picked volunteers tell the VIP what he wants to hear while media reps look on. (Footage of the breakfast appeared on MSNBC Friday morning, along with the message that enlisted personnel want more troops in Iraq.)

We need those extra troops in Iraq later next year when Mr Bu$h agrees with Israel to start the attacks on Iran.

UPDATE: It seems there was too much post 'Hanukkah, pre-Christmas cheer and I erred in this post. Jeff Huber, who's an eminent modern historian and a fairly reasonable man actually retired as a Commander and not as a Lieutenant Commander. I regret the error, understanding that it's a bitch to be a lieutenant-anything in this world and herewith apologize even as I switch eggnog bags on my IV, which is what caused all the confusion to begin with.

We note this morning that the Bu$h malAdministration has once again revised its always optimistic figures about the allegedly booming Bu$h economy.

The economy grew more sluggishly this summer than the government first reported, as a deflating housing market held overall growth down to one-third of the pace recorded at the beginning of the year.

The Commerce Department reported today that the nation’s output of goods and services grew at a 2 percent annual rate from July through September. The department’s earlier estimate for the period, issued last month, was 2.2 percent.

It seems that “roaring along” first quarter included a lot of self-help from Wall Street which treated itself to millions and millions of dollars worth of year-end bonuses, as well as a fairly healthy Christmas 2005 season. And, of course, times are always good for millionaires, in the Age of Bu$h. But a crippling housing crunch is coming, as go-go lending produced sub-prime mortgages for people living from one paycheck to the next, yet had been marketed to that it was their inalienable right to live in their own McMansion.

The biggest reason for the slowdown has been contraction in the housing market. In the third quarter, the slowdown in residential construction subtracted 1.2 percentage points from the overall growth rate. That was slightly more than the government first reported, and reflected the sharpest decline in building activity in 15 years.

Slower consumer spending on services and a rise in imports also contributed to the downward revision to third-quarter G.D.P. that was announced today.

In a global economy real national wealth is sort of just like personal wealth – what do you have in your pocket at the end of the month? Since we no longer make a lot of stuff, but rather buy our stuff from other countries, we pay top dollar, leaving less for savings. Plus, we’re borrowing a lot of money for Mr Bu$h’s little ego-pique over there in Iraq because Mr Bu$h wanted to reduce his own taxes and decided all the other millionaires deserved a free ride, too.

Now, I haven‘t been keeping records, but my memory, (old, feeble) thinks we keep hearing about these “restatements” about the economy, new jobs, unemployment, and just about every other economic indicator, every quarter. And it also thinks there’s a lot of things we used to hear about that we don’t her about any more.

Josh Marshall thinks so, too:

Last week, we discovered that the Bush administration was refusing to declassify data on violence in Iraq. [Discussed here.] Soon after that the Pentagon released a report which cut the data in its own ways but didn't provide raw numbers. Unfortunately, the violence is so bad there's no way to hide it. Still, we know that numbers showing the real levels of violence in Iraq aren't available.

It made us wonder: how many times has the administration attempted to suppress government studies, statistics or other forms of once-public information that don't jibe with its policy? We put out the call -- and readers responded.

We've tallied over 20 examples so far from the past six years, and we'll likely break two dozen by the end of the day. Suggestions keep coming in. In areas as diverse as unemployment, health, climate change and the Iraq war, the administration has defunded, classified, or otherwise killed the release of facts that run contrary to its endorsed policies.

It’s going to be a very long list by the time it’s complete. Government by deception is very popular with Bu$hCo.

Talking Points Memo is highlighting a story this morning that actually started several months ago.

According to Network World's Paul McNamara, the communications director for U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), Todd Shriber, hired two 'hackers' to break into the computer of his alma mater, Texas Christian University, and change his college grades.

He went trolling for the law-breaking 'hackers' on a computer security website. But instead of finding anyone to do his dirty work he came across a couple non-criminally minded techies who proceeded to chat him up about his scheme, draw out in explicit detail that what he was asking them to do involved multiple [sic] felonies and then posted their complete email correspondence on the site, attrition.org.

Fortunately, the Republican Party just never changes, eh? We can suppose it’s not too surprising that, somehow, Texas figures at least peripherally in a bit of dirty doings. Is it at all possible that it’s the water down there? Or maybe the lack of water?

After what was apparently a good deal of prodding, Shriber [hacking solicitor] told McNamara [whistleblower]: "I did something that's greatly out of character for me and it's a mistake that I regret." Asked why he attempted this criminal enterprise: ""I would rather not get into that at all. I just got a little too far ahead of myself thinking about things down the road."

Could Mr Shriber, who is currently (as of yesterday) on the staff of a Republican representative, have presumed that it was a mere matter of time until he too could advance to the exalted ranks of Republican pig slopping at the public trough for life? The only thing that seemed to be holding him back was a weak GPA, it seems.

To be fair here (painful, since it concerns Republican malfeasance,) Mr Shriber was quite specific that he wasn’t trying to betray his public trust:

…the job wouldn't be anything like invading a government mainframe for classified documents or stealing money from a bank. Rather it'd be a modification of some personal data.

Just a little, you know, resume puffery. What starts out as tawdry hubris ascends into low comedy:

It pretty much goes down hill from there, with the highlight probably being the request for pictures. The 'hackers' ask for pictures of the campus with squirrels and pigeons to make sure he's 'legit'. He says he doesn't live near campus anymore. Remember, he lives in DC, not Texas. So they tell him any picture of a pigeon or squirrel will do. Don't ask. You've got to read it to believe it.

The Talking Points story displays the photo Mr Shriber sent in to the prospective hackers.

“Here's the picture of a squirrel (looks like near the Capitol) that this imbecile Shriber sent in ...”

OK, we’ve had our little laugh for the morning. This is just so sad. Have these people no sense of honor and decency whatsoever?

I really love JEB!’s tropical paradise:

PORT ST. LUCIE - A 38-year-old woman was arrested Tuesday after she started acting "like a stripper" in a restaurant in St. Lucie West, according to police.

Ruth Ann Duren, of Port St. Lucie, had two alcoholic drinks at Chili's about 6 p.m. Tuesday before her behavior became "loud and unruly," according to a police report. She sat on a male customer's lap and acted as though she was giving him a lap dance, the report said. When asked to leave by a manager, Duren climbed onto her bar stool and then the bar, scaring other customers away.

When police officers arrived, Duren refused to give them her name, but appeared friendly, attempting to put her arms around one of the officers, the report said. She eventually said she had had a "very bad day" and intended to give the customer a "lap dance." She was "tearful and remorseful of her actions," the report said.

Duren was arrested on charges of disorderly intoxication and resisting arrest without violence.

When they asked for her identification I think she took off her halter top.

There was a fascinating story yesterday from Iraq, about a PMC (Private Military Contractor) jailbreak of an Iraqi politician – actually an Iraqi-American politician, if that makes a difference, who was in an Iraqi slammer.

A once-prominent Iraqi American, jailed on corruption charges, was sprung from a Green Zone prison this weekend by U.S. security contractors he had hired, several Iraqi officials said.

Ayham Sameraei, a Chicago-area businessman, returned to Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and assumed the position of electricity minister during the interim government of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi....

This is a very hazy, but dangerous area. We all know about contractors like HalliCheneyBurton, Bechtel, CACI, Titan. You can find a pretty complete list of contractors here. I think there will be some more information and some repercussions about this story in the coming days, although it might be hard to find it in our hapless press, which is so easily diverted by bright, shiny things and head bobbling about politicians' clothing.

By the way, I don’t know a lot about contractors and mercenaries, even though I might know one or two, without knowing I know them. Do you know what friends from 30 years ago are doing now?

But some of the go-to people for good reliable information about contractors, especially the private armies, are Mountain Runner and Dr Hillhouse. I don’t think COL Pat Lang would admit to knowing much about them, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.

There are a lot of armed contractors out there – if you’re contemptuous of them, they’re gunslingers, or “adventurers” (always in quotes) if you’re neutral they are “security contractors.” I think most of the group who post here at M&C and on their own blogs are a bit distrustful of mercs, to put it politely. I know in several cases it isn’t about the obscenely humungous sums they’re paid to basically do the same sort of stuff grunts are doing, but rather – how to put this – the non-fraternal aspect of it. It sounds corny to speak of a “brotherhood of arms” when you’re in the green bag and your job entails some pretty frightening and unpleasant things. But, you’re in it together, and most of us were pretty clear that it wasn‘t for the cash. We were there under demand of law (the draft) or patriotism, or a recognized desire for adventure, or a psychological need to be enveloped in a paternalistic authoritarian structure – the list goes on. But the big bucks was not one of them unless you were managing an NCO club near Saigon or K-Barracks.

One of the problems about PMCs is that when you corporatize government operations you weaken the political structure of the nation. It’s fine for the greed-heads like Mr Cheney, and the other Corporate Pirates of the Caribbean Bank Accounts, but there’s this pesky Rules of Land Warfare, and Geneva Convention, and they take a dim view of mercenaries and privateers…

I think when the crash comes, and it’s time to unass Iraq, sauve qui peut, the US may not be as concerned at evacuating the contractors as it will be in getting troops out. If it’s done by agreement, I’m sure there will be a “collapsing cordon” sort of evacuation by land, mostly, with the non-militarized contractors preceding everyone else. If by some bad luck they have to fight their way out it will get very bad. I knew a man who had been with Jean Schramme in the Congo and I heard some ear-burning stories that were probably part puffery, but part true, since many details were verifiable. There’s always the chance for some great film scripts when the time comes to leave Iraq.

I have a subscription to military.com, a civilian service that sends out newsletters on topics of interest to the uniformed services, retirees, and their dependents. Sometimes you find helpful discussions and announcements about topics, and sometimes the news is depressing (VA benefit cuts, for instance.) Occasionally, the articles are downright uplifting.

There was a corker in the latest newsletter, and I intend to reprint every bit of it under the FAIR USE thingy. It’s well-written, and I just like the content.

Bruce Fleming is a professor of English at the US Naval Academy and the author of Annapolis Autumn: Life, Death, and Literature at the U.S. Naval Academy, and Why Liberals and Conservatives Clash. His latest book [is titled] Disappointment.

Vive la France!

I'm saying this not just because I recently had a wonderful time, yet again, in Paris. I say it as someone deeply committed to good leadership and a rational military, and as a teacher of young people whose lives are precious. Everyone in uniform and everyone who has to do with those in uniform ought to be saying it as well.

Here's why we should all be flying the tricolore, the French flag. To begin on a local note: here at Navy (as we say at the Naval Academy, as if there were not a fleet out there for which most of our graduates are destined), we are oh-so-clearly indebted to France. Our central shrine, the imposing tomb of John Paul Jones under the altar of our Chapel, all dark marble and metal dolphins, is a gift from France, where Jones was buried. His glorious time was fighting against the British, of course, but for the French-his Bonhomme Richard, as he re-baptized it after "Poor Richard" (Benjamin Franklin), was a French ship. (Later Jones fought for Russia, but we don't talk about that.) Even the architecture of our buildings is what's called Beaux-Arts, after the style of the school in Paris that created it. So no France, no John Paul Jones, not to mention no Naval Academy as we know it.

More to the point: no France, no United States. Remember Lafayette? Washington's strategy was to string along the British until the French were willing to intervene. Finally they were. Vive la France!

Yet only a few years ago, enraged right-wingers screamed because the French dared say "no" to the then all-powerful 43rd President, demanding that there be some actual proof that Saddam did in fact possess weapons of mass destruction before they'd sign on to an attack. People posing as patriots (but in fact idiots) poured French wine into the gutters-this was reported gleefully on Fox News, and played for sensational effect on the French news networks-to show their fury that anyone could dare to question El Presidente. For that matter, fury was in the air, anyone who questioned or warned was a traitor or a coward. Far too many people were all too ready to support roaring into battle, being convinced that action- any action - was the way to take their revenge.

Now it's the morning after. Oh, our aching head! And surprise! The French were right. Increasingly the evidence suggests that the CIA gave in to political pressure to front-and-center the claims of questionable sources to justify a war that was already decided on. Rationality was forgotten.

But rationality should never be forgotten. My whole professional life here at the Academy consists in getting my students to question their assertions: they may think X is the only way, the only thing, the only belief. But is this true? If you consider alternatives you may find that one of them is a more effective course of action. In fact, you should never go with course X until you can justify it as better than Y or Z. And that means, you must seek out people who espouse Y and Z, and then take them seriously when they talk.

The current administration has offered at every turn a horrifying lesson in how not to lead. Its MO has been this: suppress dissent (rather than encourage it), surround yourself by sycophantic yes-men (rather than objective views), bring in personal loyalists for key positions (rather than people who actually know what they're doing), vilify those who disagree or propose a better way. And oh yes: accuse even long-term like-minded allies of cowardice and treachery if they don't kiss your ass 24/7. No term of opprobrium is too low for somebody who refuses to bow to your will: that's the way to lead the Free World. (Not.)

In the Concorde metro station I sat reading the inspirational words of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," based on our own "Declaration of Independence," in the wall tiles. Yes, there have been some rough times since then in France: the Revolution turned ugly, then they got Napoleon and various monarchs, before a return to a Republic. (I still have students who think it's funny to tell me that "Sir, when you type in 'French victories' on Google, it says, 'do you mean French defeats?'" Guess they missed the bit about Napoleon.) But when the French make a stink about Guantanamo, they're only demanding that we in fact be true to the principles we, and they, cherish. We particularly need the point of view of France, which has much more experience than we do with the colonial and post-colonial migraine and adventures in the Middle East (Lebanon was a French colony, among other things). The French tortured in Algeria, too: this has continued to haunt them for decades. Did we listen with open ears when they expressed dismay? No. The current administration treated them with contempt. Hardly the smart thing to do-for us, I mean.

Now that we're no longer riding high on the lust to strike out at somebody, anybody as pay-backs for 9/11, it would be justice for the French to tell America to go shove it. But they're not doing that. They're not gloating, not saying "we told you so." They seem to be taking the attitude that late is better than not at all-aside from the fact that you just don't tell the one remaining superpower to shove it. Besides, the French continue to like us, if not our current politicians: they like our popular culture (most movies playing in Paris are American) and our high culture too (the Louvre had invited Toni Morrison and William Forsythe, two Americans, one the Nobel-Prize-winning author and the other a famous choreographer). More to the point here, the French like our democracy. French friends said that the Baker commission would be unthinkable in France. When our democracy works, it works (arguably) better than theirs.

Of course, the French aren't perfect, and we don't have to go with everything they say. They're in an uncomfortable position in the world, having negotiated less smoothly than the English the transition from world power to mid-level European nation. The loss of their own world power status makes them defensive, and being defensive frequently makes them a pain in the butt. Lots of times, as they learned to do under de Gaulle, they contradict the "Anglo-Saxons" (as they amusingly call the Anglo-Americans) just for the heck of it.

The US has paid a terrible price in loss of international esteem for the repeated, apparently willful blunders of the current administration. But perhaps we can repair the mistakes of our bad leadership. We need to stop demanding things and start appreciating allies who are candid-for our own sake.

Vive la France!

I also like the comments, both pro and con. My favorite is probably the commenter who was so incensed he is referring the matter to Bill O’Reilly.

George W Bu$h says we’re winning the war in Iraq. The Baker-Hamilton report says we’re neither winning nor losing the war. Colin Powell says that if we’re not winning then we’re losing. They can’t all be right, can they? Can they all be wrong? How can something be described at the same time by two opposing words? Is it merely a case of semantics? The use of specific words as political spin or some vague mental attitude defined by a single word?

Not winning and not losing – at any moment, a snapshot in time if you like - so it’s possible to be “Not winning” and “not losing.” But as an ongoing process over a period of time, that situation cannot be sustained.

Maybe it all depends on what data you select to support your argument. Mr Bu$h has never defined what “winning” means, although we can perhaps infer what he means by considering his stated intentions at the time he launched his illegal war of aggression. Leaving aside all the many claims that have been thoroughly debunked by tons of newsprint and skazillions of excited electrons, a reasonable man might infer that what Mr Bu$h wanted was a tame ally in a client state in the Middle East operated as sort of market forces political and social experiment. Basically, a successful corporate state run on all the business-friendly idealizations of the American Enterprise Institute: a Corporate run infrastructure, with the major profit centers owned and operated by Transnational corporations, principally American, and unfettered by the inconvenient regulation by government, with little or no state-run operations other than military and police enforcement and possibly medical services like hospitals, unless it was seen they could be assumed as further profitable enterprises. Those state operated items would be supported by a flat tax. More about this later.

It has to be mentioned that Mr Bu$h’s belief that we’re winning is required by the rules of politics as well as his own personality, which is incapable of ever admitting error or failure.

It seems that the US military and Baker-Hamilton define “winning” slightly differently, perhaps because they are looking not at that snapshot moment in time, but rather at something resembling a film strip, in which numbers of attacks, and fatalities of both Iraqis and US forces, are rising slowly but dramatically over a period of over three years. The numbers of attacks, by the way, were deliberately hidden by the Pentagon for the months of September, October, and November, and not released until the appropriate smoke and mirrors report hade been carefully hand-crafted to disguise the bad news. You can read a bit about that here.

Colin Powell, whatever his other flaws and failings, knows from his military service how to define winning and losing. No longer involved in military or diplomatic activities, he might have the most balanced view of the subject by virtue of non-involvement in the judging process. Now, it's true that many would object, citing him as a dishonest judge because of his behavior in supporting Bu$hCo's specious arguments for war in the first place. But because of those actions he has been dismissed by Mr Bu$h (some say comtemptuously kicked to the curb) and seems comfortabl as an outsider.

Today [Sunday, 12/17] on CBS’s Face the Nation, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said he agreed with the Iraq Study Group that the situation in Iraq is “grave and deteriorating.” He disagreed with incoming Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ assessment that the U.S. is neither winning nor losing in Iraq. “We are losing,” Powell said.

Fred Kagan wrote a rally round the flag report for the American Enterprise Institute in which he urgently played military strategist and Mr Bu$h has eagerly seized upon this report to justify his subconscious need to never be held accountable for any of his actions.

People living in the here-and-now world of reality understand that this plan will be temporary at best, since it will entail retaining many troops in Iraq past their scheduled rotation dates, and speeding up replacement deployments of troops, which means they will redeploy before they are fully prepared. It will give us a short-term numerical increase of somewhere between 20,000 and 55,000, figures speculated upon by various observers.

It appears that the dramatic troop increase is needed for a quick campaign to decrease internal dissent in Baghdad and Anbar province. In Baghdad, one can presume that means defanging the Mahdi Army which is loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, which probably means a nasty urban combat situation in Sadr City by the Iraqi Army, National Police, and US troops, which will allegedly be used as stiffeners or backup. The fact that the army and police are believed to be heavily infiltrated by members of Shiite militias, including the Mahdi Army, will complicate the campaign. It is estimated that some 2,000,000 people live in the suburb of Sadr City, among them somewhere around 70,000 fighters loyal to al-Sadr.

There’s a reason that while the 1968 Tet offensive lasted only a few days throughout Viet Nam, it took a month for US Marines to pacify Hue, and that reason is the hard cruel nature of urban combat. It can be a room-by-room, house-by-house battle of attrition. If your enemy is ideologically committed, he will try to bleed you dry with suicidal determination. The way to win such a battle is to either destroy entire blocks by the heavy firepower if artillery and air assets, or to fight them out, room by room, hoping you’ve got more men and bullets than they have. I’ve never done it, thank some deity, but I’ve spoken with veterans of Hue and some of the vicious battles in Western Europe, and it sounded more terrifying than fighting ambushes in the Highlands.

The question that must be asked is what will happen when the dynamic of this surge counter-attack peters out, as it surely must, at some point. Will Baghdad be fully “pacified” and will it remain so when the troops are shifted to Anbar province as they must be, since a recent Marine Corps report has counted that region as effectively lost to the Sunni insurgency and al-Quaeda?

Yes, it will probably be militarily pacified even if the entire quarter of the city is leveled by the fighting. We can reasonably expect heavy casualties among defenders, attackers, and helpless residents caught in the middle. The Iraqi mortuaries and medical services, which are not equal to the burden placed them now, will be overwhelmed, because it’s pretty certain that the everyday violence that is going on now will continue even as Sadr City is pacified.

I know I’ll be interested in how CENTCOM manage the news during this fight, since they are very artful abut denying and disguising facts now.

Since the Marines say that Anbar has been lost, logically it must be calmed down after combat in Baghdad is calmed down. More about Anbar later.

LATE UPDATE: Mr Bu$h has modified his opinion on Iraq in an interview carried this morning in a WaPo interview (no link - find it yourself.) He now maintains we are neither winning nor losing. He apparently plans to increase the size of the US miltary by some as-yet-unknown figure in order to meet the demands of the expected decades-long "war against terror." The full effect of any such increases will of course not be felt for up to two years after their joining the colors, unless he simply authorizes "full access" to the 5000,000-odd US Reserves and National Guard.

We’d like to thank Monkeyfister for recognizing us in the First Annual Golden Monkeyfist awards. This Bravo Zulu is a very unique award, surely. Even though we’re uncertain what a Monkeyfister is or what it does, and in fact we might prefer not to know, to even be considered in a competition with the likes of the excellent Today in Iraq is more flattering than receiving a love note from Pamela Anderson or Sigourney Weaver.

Thank you, Monkeyfister, you are kind and gracious.

There was a story the other day that was opened up at Josh Marshall’s TPM Muckraker indicating that the Pentagon has not released statistics for individual attacks in Iraq for the months of September, October, November and December, 2006.

Now, I know that’s very surprising to our regular readers, because after all we know how forthcoming Bu$hCo has been about news and information. Surely it was just some clerical error? Perhaps the PFC clerk in charge of updating the graph was on leave, or on sick call?

On the cited page, the inclusive graph looks fairly much like a rising tide, and a man with a working brain might make inferences about the missing months.

You can see a larger version of the chart here. It tells a pretty compelling story -- part of a compelling story. It was produced in December, but it's missing data for the months of September, October and November of this year -- a period of increased violence, according to news reports. What gives?

I called Joseph A. Christoff, the GAO official who produced the document. "I have all [the Pentagon's] data" for those months, he told me. But the military stamped it classified, he said. And despite making weeks of phone calls, he can't convince anyone there to declassify the numbers.

"They give conflicting reasons," Christoff told me. "For some reason, they haven't gotten through their bureaucracy."

News accounts from the period indicate that violence has increased since August, and the rate of U.S. casualties has accelerated. October was said to be particularly bloody.

Ah.

Conflicting reasons. Yes. [multiple throat-clearing sounds, dimly-heard tuneless whistling.]

Three days later,

I just got a call from Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a spokesman for the Defense Department. I relayed to him my conversation with the GAO official, who said the Pentagon was refusing to declassify data showing the number of enemy attacks in Iraq for the months of September, October and November.

"That's an interesting accusation from your source," Ballesteros said. As it happens, the Pentagon is releasing a report today at 5 p.m. on "back trends in violence" in Iraq, he informed me.

Does it contain the three-month attack data the Pentagon declined to allow the GAO to include in its report?

Ballesteros paused. "There's information about attacks. Okay?" he replied. "Why don't you wait until 5 o'clock?"

According to another official, the report will be posted to the DoD Web site, at http://www.defenselink.mil.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18, 2006 – Increased violence in Iraq threatens, but so far has failed, to stop progress on the political and economic fronts and in building Iraq’s security forces, according to the Defense Department’s latest quarterly report to Congress, released today.

DoD delivered “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq” to Congress today. The report, the sixth report of its kind, evaluates political stability, economic activity, the security environment, and security force training and performance between mid-August and mid-November.

…

All hopes were for 2006 to be the year Iraq’s new government would get on its feet, Rodman said. However, he pointed to the Samarra Golden Mosque bombing, and the cycle of sectarian violence it sparked, as giving “partial strategic success” to insurgents that they previously couldn’t achieve.

…

This progress is notable, the report recognizes, particularly in light of escalating violence in some of Iraq’s most populated regions. Attacks increased 22 percent during the three-month reporting period. Although 68 percent of those attacks were directed at coalition forces, Iraqis suffered most of the casualties, according to the report.

[Loud, single toned whistle, followed by a muffled “22 per cent. Shiiiit.”]

UPDATE: HTML coding repaired to make article more logical.

Fred Kagan released his great plan for victory the other day. It details just how we can beat the people whose country we’ve been occupying for almost four years now, and who resent us staying where we’re not wanted. They want us out, and a national government associated with one or more religious organizations.

Now, that’s not saying much, because two and one-half years ago the Iraqis viewed us unfavorably.

What Mr Kagan argues is the old warfare concept that there is no conquest without firm control of the enemy’s capital city. And any oxygen breathing biped understands we don’t control Baghdad, although we do have a pretty good handle on the Green Zone itself. We’ve got the Green Zone locked down behind multiple concentric circles of barriers, barbed wire, gunposts, and every other method of fortification we can think of.

Well, sort of.

BAGHDAD, Nov. 21 — A bomb exploded in an armored car among those belonging to the speaker of Parliament, wounding the American security guard who was driving it out of a parking area in the government Green Zone and disrupting a meeting of lawmakers nearby, a parliamentary aide said.

The difficulty with the strategy of conquest by controlling the enemy’s capital is that sometimes it doesn’t work. The British took control of our revolutionary capital, New York, and we moved the capital. We won that war. The British invaded us again in 1812, burned much of our capital, and then had to withdraw because they had an untenable position in Washington . We won that war, too. Napoleon occupied and burned Moscow and had to retreat because he had no safe supply lines. The Grande Armee invaded Russia with more than 600,000 troops. More than 400,000 died of wounds, partisan action, disease and starvation and Napoleon retreated, returning home with less than 30,000 troops, it is said.

When Kagan mentions center of gravity and “decisive factor” he’s actually fumpfeling, mixing metaphors and discrete moments in his fumbling attempts to salvage his own, and his PNAC associates reputations, for starting this g_dawful quagmire under misrepresented ideological reasons A “decisive factor” in warfare is something that is measurably superior to a quality or item the enemy possesses. In Iraq such a factor might be local air superiority, artillery, or even mobility. On the other hand, the “enemy” possesses his own decisive factor: They’re all over the damn place, and we are too few in numbers to match that ubiquity.

Mr Kagan argues that one great last push will solve all the problems. It would be cruel to imagine him hunched down over a Risk mapboard, feverishly moving colored plastic pieces around, mumbling to himself as he searches for the perfect combination of units to win, wouldn’t it?

A troop “surge” or exploitation of our superior mobility, can produce a temporary tactical advantage in a localized area, but the nature of combat in Iraq - urban insurgency – requires massive investment of resources to support that temporary manpower advantage. And you’ll find the smaller version of IEDs, booby traps, everywhere you go. All the insurgency has to do is what the VC did so successfully in Viet Nam: hide the weapons, wait, and exploit immediate opportunities when vulnerabilities are noticed. Or just hide the weapons and do nothing. We’ll find some of the weapons caches because the law of big numbers guarantees that. If there is no immediate resistance some fool will declare a local victory – the insurgency’s back is broken! Just about the time CENTCOM is writing up the award citations for themselves the resisters somewhere else take advantage of the area’s missing troops now working in Baghdad. Then we can move all those “surged” troops to another city and work it out there while Baghdad flares up again.

The term “center of gravity refers to a map point in positional land warfare at which maximum effort should