Tactical Basketball Vdeo Bogging

With great thanks to Susie Madrak.

The Pentagon announced today that the next increment of replacement and reinforcement of Generalissimo Field Marshal Kagan’s surge escalation has been decided upon.

The Department of Defense announced today additional major units scheduled to deploy in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The announcement involves three brigade or regimental combat teams and one Marine expeditionary force headquarters consisting of approximately 20,000 personnel. These deployments are not associated with the current troop surge. The units are part of a normal rotation of forces to replace formations currently on the ground. The deployment window for these units will begin at the end of this year and continue into 2008.

…
I Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Regimental Combat Team 1, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Regimental Combat Team 5, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

The military doesn’t always announce which units are being rotated out, but I suppose a suspicious observer of the Bu$h malAdministration would automatically assume if 20,000 troops are being fed in, then less than that are being drawn out.

Way back in April DoD announced the next round of National Guard units being sent:

The Department of Defense announced today the alert of additional replacement units for deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. These units, consisting of four National Guard brigade combat teams, will deploy consistent with the Secretary of Defense’s new policy of mobilizing reserve component units for a maximum of one year at any one time.
These Reserve units are not scheduled to begin deployment until December 2007. [emph added] They are receiving alert orders now in order to provide them the maximum time to complete their preparations. It also provides a greater measure of predictability for family members and flexibility for employers to plan for military service of their employees. The final determination of whether these units will deploy will be made based on conditions on the ground in Iraq.

This alert is not associated with the current troop surge. These units would deploy as replacement forces for formations currently operating in Iraq. There are approximately 13,000 personnel in these four brigades.

Specific units receiving alert orders include:

39th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Little Rock, Ark.

45th Infantry Brigade, Oklahoma City, Okla.

76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Indianapolis, Ind.

37th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Columbus, Ohio.

While these above units are not scheduled to leave until December 2007, one can safely presume they’ll be judged fully trained, and will depart NLT late October to mid-November so as to be on the ground in December.

Unmentioned in the DoD announcement, but covered here is the rather surprising news that Marines will now do 12 month tours, more in line with the Army’s 15 month tours.

Sadly, I predicted last month the easy days for the Marines are over.

The “15 months in, 12 months out” policy will join other discarded enlightened Army policies. Marines will start doing 12 month tours, rather than 7 months in country.

The troops will sit still for this treatment. They are patriotic, loyal, and well-motivated. They believe in what they think our nation is doing over there. Whether they are fully aware of things we know here is uncertain, since Fox Noise is the official news carrier in the Middle East and there is very little opportunity for them to gather news from free and independent news sources like many of the UK papers.

Next stop: either 18 month tours for the Army, and 15 months for the Marines, or a shortening of the time home from 12 months to 9 months.

UPDATE: I failed to mention the invaluable assistance of The Newshoggers a fine online resource.

There’s been a lot written about this American soldier. His death was a momentous event in the decades long fight against terrorism and occupation of Iraq, which is included in the fight against terrorism mainly because there was no terrorism there until we invaded and conquered that country.

The Army has had several versions of his death, each crafted and released to the public to serve specific needs, with perhaps the low point reached when the Army crafted a special eulogy for his family to recite at his graveside, knowing the relatives were transmitting a lie for propaganda purposes.

That was a low point, or so we thought, until last week when we learned that doctors examining the body released a report that raised many suspicions that CPL Tillman’s death was not only by friendly fire, but also deliberate. I am far from convinced his death was deliberate, that is to say murder. It’s far more likely that he was killed accidentally, by wild fire, and probably by a SAW LMG. He was sheltering behind a large rock, and there were apparently bullet marks on the rock.

The Army has determined that the ultimate reason the family and the nation were fooled in the cover up of Pat Tillman’s death was improper actions on the part of a now-retired general.

WASHINGTON - The Army censured a retired three-star general Tuesday for a "perfect storm of mistakes, misjudgments and a failure of leadership" after the 2004 friendly-fire death in Afghanistan of Army Ranger Pat Tillman.

Army Secretary Pete Geren asked a military review panel to decide whether Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger, who led Army special forces operations in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, should also have his rank reduced.

In a stinging rebuke, Geren said Kensinger "failed to provide proper leadership to the soldiers under his administrative control" when the Army Ranger and former pro football star was killed in 2004.

Geren said that while Kensinger was "guilty of deception" in misleading investigators, there was no intentional Pentagon cover-up of circumstances surrounding Tillman's death — at first categorized by the military as being from enemy fire.

"He let his soldiers down," Geren said at Pentagon news conference. "General Kensinger was the captain of that ship, and his ship ran aground."

Not having been at the firefight, and not having been the proverbial fly on the way during the discussions (and undoubtedly recriminations) I’m going to have to be satisfied with this response and official action.

The AP notes in the same article:

Geren's actions fail to end a three-year controversy that has damaged the ground service's image. Even as the Army's top civilian was telling reporters he did not know exactly when he'd receive a recommendation from the review board on Kensinger's rank, members of Congress were already judging whether the Army had gone far enough.

Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Mike Honda, both Democrats from Tillman's home state of California, said there still too many unanswered questions.

"We still don't know the full story about the way the Pentagon and this administration managed this tragedy," Boxer said in a statement. "In my view, the Army should reconsider today's announcement and instead move forward with harsher penalties."

In a separate statement, Honda called Geren's actions "necessary and long overdue" but added "they do nothing to lift the appearance of cover-up that continues to envelop the Pat Tillman story."

That’s enough. Let’s let it lie. The family has suffered enough. They and Pat Tillman’s spirit need to rest and as honorable men and women we should leave them alone, and move on.

If the Tillman family asks further questions, or further evidence comes to light, then further inquiry should be made.

I am quite prepared to move on to the next question(s).

However, a curious man might ask why CPL Tillman’s journal was burned.

And that same curious man might wonder if, as the Army claims, the malfeasance and misaction rose no higher than LTG Kensinger, why has the White House refused to provide Congress with its files on this death, claiming executive privilege?

It's especially confusing since, in this latest iteration of the Tillman legend no one higher than LTG Kensinger had any part or action in it.

The refugee crisis in Iraq is growing worse by the day.

Iraq is emerging as one of the fastest-growing refugee crises in the world, with an estimated 1.7 million Iraqis displaced from their homes and up to 100,000 fleeing the country to Jordan, Syria and other nations amid intensifying sectarian violence, U.S. officials and experts testified yesterday.

That’s an estimated 1.7 million refugees inside the country. People who have been torn from destroyed or ethnically cleaned neighborhoods and are relatively rootless, living a day-to-day existence with no hope of improvement. More than that number have managed to escape the country and take up a perilous residence in neighboring lands.

As many as 2 million Iraqis have fled the country in recent years and before the war, including about 700,000 to Jordan and 600,000 to Syria, nations that have taken the bulk of the exodus, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Many of the refugees have been "left with minimal resources and are living on the margins," Sauerbrey said, with children lacking access to school and adequate health care.

Today’s WaPo reports that almost a third of Iraqis are in desperate need of emergency assistance in both health needs and basic survival necessities.

BAGHDAD, July 30 -- Living conditions in Iraq have deteriorated significantly since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, leaving nearly one-third of the population in need of emergency aid, a consortium of relief organizations said in a report released Monday.

The numbers in the report offer a contrast to the picture of steadily improving conditions painted by the Iraqi government and the U.S. military over the past several months. Seventy percent of Iraqi residents lack adequate water supplies, compared with 50 percent in 2003, while more than 4 million people have been displaced during that time. Yet funding for humanitarian assistance in Iraq has declined precipitously, from $453 million in 2005 to $95 million in 2006.

"Iraq's civilians are suffering from a denial of fundamental human rights in the form of chronic poverty, malnutrition, illness, lack of access to basic services, and destruction of homes, vital facilities, and infrastructure, as well as injury and death," researchers from the British-based humanitarian group Oxfam International and a coalition of nongovernmental organizations working in Iraq said in the 40-page report. "Basic indicators of humanitarian need in Iraq show that the slide into poverty and deprivation since the coalition forces entered the country in 2003 has been dramatic, and a deep trauma for the Iraqi people."

Apologists for this appalling situation, including war masturbaters like Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack, will continue to insist the situation is improving and “sustainable security” is just around the corner, in much the same way as President Hoover insisted the economy was strong and recovery was just around that same corner even as office buildings on Wall Street couldn’t keep glass in the panes.

Syria is apparently caring for 1.5 million Iraq refugees.

I’m not going to cut & paste one heart-rending description after another.

Here’s your assignment. Go here and read. Then go here.

Don’t think these problems only exist in the South, where Shia and Sunni are pitted in a three-way battle for supremacy with US occupation forces. The problem also exists in the Kurdish north.

If you’ve finished your reading assignments it’s time to take the test. Go look in a mirror.

We've killed close to one million Iraqis in the last four and one half years. What have we done to these survivors?

Sensing a heavy traffic rush due to refugee crowding, Iraqi Parliamentarians slid off early on their month-long vacation. (They might not feel a sense of responsibility for these matters. Perhaps they are the "Republicans of Iraq.")

BAGHDAD - Iraq’s parliament on Monday shrugged off U.S. criticism and adjourned for a month, as key lawmakers declared there was no point waiting any longer for the prime minister to deliver Washington-demanded benchmark legislation for their vote.

A man cursed with a sardonic bent of mind would admire the ability of the legislators to blame it all on Prime Minister Maliki, and would probably think there is a lesson here for the US Democrats in Congress.

Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani closed the final three-hour session without a quorum present and declared lawmakers would not reconvene until Sept. 4. That date is just 11 days before the top U.S. military and political officials in Iraq must report to Congress on American progress in taming violence and organizing conditions for sectarian reconciliation.

Considering that quite a few of the legislators live outside the country, it’s likely that quite a few days are spent without a quorum. It’s probably fortunate there isn’t a lot of call for them to legislate very much.

The recess, coupled with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s failure to get the key draft laws before legislators, may nourish growing opposition to the war among U.S. lawmakers, who could refuse to fund it.

Critics have questioned how Iraqi legislators could take a summer break while U.S. forces are fighting and dying to create conditions under which important laws could be passed in the service of ending sectarian political divisions and bloodshed.

There is only one “key draft law” – the oil law, and I don’t understand why anyone should be surprised the Iraqis are reluctant to conspire in handing off one of their only two forms of wealth to American oil companies. That same sardonic man would expect the Iraqis would be more than happy to offer the oil companies as much of the other form of wealth – sand – as the companies thought they could pound.

It’s unlikely the US Congress will refuse to fund the Iraq Parliament. They’re planning to sky out of Washington for the month, too.

As the MSNBC story notes the Iraqi Parliament is scheduled to reconvene on September 4th (the day after Labor Day) but no business will be done then because of traffic delays caused by large groups of wandering refugees, late flights, and mortar and rocket attacks.

A week and a half later GEN Petraeus is supposed to deliver his honest, clear-eyed report to Congress that things are slowly improving, and the US Army and Marines, aided by the well-paid freedom-loving Sunni insurgents tribesmen of Anbar province have the evil al Qaeda on the run, and by some time in late Summer, 2008, they will undoubtedly be able to reduce the number of troops stationed in Iraq.

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés discusses the megalomania of the tone deaf in a remarkable article, although I disagree with her sense that chauvinism is an underlying motivator. People who have read my essays for some time might understand I have a slightly different take on the very damaged personality with the “football” keys. Perhaps I misunderstand her definition of “chauvinism.” Cut 10 minutes out of your busy lives and read this slowly and carefully.

Once again a tip of the too-small Kevlar helmet to Ron Beasley for a remarkable find.

Milo Freeman’s back in town, so to speak. His milblog is a stop I make every day, in the hope that he’s written something new. He had a problem a while back when he wrote something that upset a few delicate sensibilities on the never-right side of our shattered political arena.

After he wrote that bit of sensible outrage some moron claiming to be a retired colonel announced he was going to make it his personal crusade to see that Milo was punished. It’s not clear to me what (maybe) Colonel whats-it could do. Send him to Iraq?

Milo next caught my eye with a piece that brought back vivid memories, as well as the 2.7 pucker factor that still comes alive at 4 AM on some nights.

He’s back again today with some special thoughts for the non-thinker children among us:

I've been thinking about this war, and about the events of the last couple of months. I was kind of put off by the flood of fanatics who suddenly began slandering and threatening me at every available opportunity, and now I see talk that they've done it again, to a blogger writing under the pen name of Scott Thomas.

The people who, in each case, have attacked us most ardently were those who would have presented themselves as being our country's most ardent supporters of "the Troops." And yet, nothing I can find in my old comments section really strikes me as having been all that supportive. Unless in that definition, you include death threats and threats of career repercussions (How Stasi).

The “Stasi” comment is well-chosen because our opposite numbers on the never-right side of the fence really have fashioned themselves after the People’s Commissariat for State Security (NKVD). This organization, (formerly the OGPU until a name change in 1941) placed political commissars at every level of the Red Army with the charge of maintaining the purity of political thought. They held weekly classes in Socialist Thought and Understanding the Evils of Fascism. (It’s important to remember that Communism and Fascism were two different modes of governance.) They organized book readings, round table discussions, and occasionally screened films illustrating their propaganda points.

During combat the NKVD commissars stayed behind the lines. They were charged with supporting Socialist thought by shooting anyone who tried to flee the battle.

There is an amazing parallel between those days and now. Once again we have a group of commissars in charge of enforcing party thought among the troops and the citizenry. In today’s incarnation they are self-appointed, yet no less avid for that. And now, instead of shooting those who deviate from party thought, we find they smear those who break with the group think.

Milo again:

And yet, the ones I hear trumpeting their support the loudest never actually know us. They've never seen us outside of a recruiting office, or a John Wayne movie. They're not supporting us as human beings. They're supporting us, it seems, more as warfighters, as resources to be allocated. They support us only insofar as we support their cultural agenda. They support us as cannon fodder. They cease to support us when we tire of not seeing our familes. They cease to support us when we try to differentiate between the moral high grounds of various wars. These people see us as tools, and idols, and whenever we do something that doesn't fit their highly narrow and simplified worldview, they attack us like rabid dogs.

These days, it seems, "supporting the troops" has become a Pavlovian response. You hear it brought up in conversation, and suddenly you have to trump up your own patriotism, lest you risk isolation from your friends.

I referred to those self-appointed keepers of the flame as “children” and it’s easy to understand that when you view the tantrums, and nearly hysterical ooga-boogaing they go through when they discover a new victim.

Last month it was Milo Freeman. This month it’s Scott Thomas Beauchamp. But always the dissenter must be destroyed, less their tidy little imaginary world of neat and tidy America be threatened.

The people I find supporting us the most passionately--and attacking our dissenters the most venomously--all share common traits. They belong to a cross-section of America whose worldview and moral infrastructure is based on one similar to that held in 1950s America. It's a form of capitalist nationalism, and it's hallmarks rest on the assumption of American economic, military, and religious superiority at all cost. It also, simultaneously, assumes that America is under constant attack from entities who want to see its primacy on the world stage brought to an end. These enemies are supposedly both without and within, and so it's easy to accuse anyone who disagrees with your ideals of being one of them. In the world of psychology--an area where I am admittedly no expert--is this not called paranoia?

Richard Hofstetter was a genius.

At the request of frequent reader and commenter WK Maier, this will be an open thread, for all you Cultcha Vulchtas. It’s open to commentary and recommendations on high brow, low brow and no brow stuff.

WK wants to get something off his chest about Lindsey Lindsay Lohan, and that’s fine. He says he recently saw The Last King of Scotland, the film about Didi Amin, starring Forrest Whittaker. How was it?

I liked Whittaker in Ghost Dog as much for the outside quotations from Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure as for the script in the film which was quirky but fun. His reprise (The Enemy Within) of Kirk Douglas’s Jiggs Casey in Seven Days in May disappointed me. Perhaps the story line is starker in back and white.

Any thoughts on all of this?

A secondary threadline since we’re talking about African-Americans and Scotland: Who has seen Formula 51?

UPDATE: The spelling of Lindsay Lohan's first name was corrected. I deeply regret the error. If someone can wake her up, and stand her up, please direct her to this apology.

Josh Marshal discusses the “secret program” that John Ashcroft and Robert Comey refused to sign off on in Ashcroft’s hospital room. Emphasis added throughout.

As you can see, we now have the first hint of what was at the center of the Ashcroft hospital room showdown. According to the New York Times, what the White House calls the 'terrorist surveillance [i.e., warrantless wiretap] program' originally included some sort of largescale data mining.

I don't doubt that this is true as far as it goes. But this must only scratch the surface because, frankly, at least as presented, this just doesn't account for the depth of the controversy [over the contradictions in testimony and perjury of Mr Gonzalez,] or the fact that so many law-and-order DOJ types were willing to resign over what was happening. Something's missing.

Of course, 'data mining' can mean virtually anything. What kind of data and whose you're looking at makes all the difference in the world. Suggestively, the Times article includes this cryptic passage: "Some of the officials said the 2004 dispute involved other issues in addition to the data mining, but would not provide details. They would not say whether the differences were over how the databases were searched or how the resulting information was used."

We’ll hear more about this topic over the next two or three months. The truth will be teased out, bit by bit, just like a sweater unraveling.

To put this into perspective, remember that the White House has been willing to go to the public and make a positive argument for certain surveillance procedures (notably evasion of the FISA Court strictures) which appear to be illegal on their face.

This must be much more serious and apparently something all but the most ravenous Bush authoritarians would never accept. It is supposedly no longer even happening and hasn't been for a few years. So disclosing it could not jeopardize a program. The only reason that suggests itself is that the political and legal consequences of disclosure are too grave to allow.

Late Update: The Post has a follow story on the data mining issue. It covers most of the same ground but hints a little more directly about possible interception of emails and phone calls. The article suggests that examination of "metadata" was the issue here. But, again, it doesn't fit. The intensity of the covering up doesn't match the alleged secret.

A truly cynical observer of Mr Bu$h and Karl Rove might conclude that the monitoring program not only covered landline and cellular telephone calls and electronic (email) contact from “terrorists” outside the country to contacts and sympathetic journalists inside the borders, as originally claimed, but also probably included mail cover and possibly even opening and reading those mails. This would be logical from a counter-espionage standpoint and certainly wouldn’t alarm Federal attorneys, even if it wasn’t covered by a FISA application in every instance. Even the next logical step of creating communication trees and keeping an ear open on people contacted by those domestic contacts. Again, difficult if there is no FISA cover, but still not necessarily something to make Federal attorneys go pale.

After all, FISA allows for doing the monitoring and applying afterwards within a 72 hour period.

And we know the FBI manufactured and presented thousands of phony National Security Letters to phone companies, ISPs, and financial institutions, promising to fax or deliver the FSA authorized subpoenas and never complying with the law. But that was an independent bit of skullduggery committed by agents in a couple of local offices (and in the SOG – national HQ of the FBI.

No, what’s hidden deep in the heart of this entire scandal is something much more terrible, and that singular cynical observer might remind himself that during G H W Bu$h’s Presidential campaigns of 1988 and 1992, his son George W Bu$h was a staff member, concerning himself with opposition research and “pranks.” He might also remind himself that Karl Rove has limited, if any interest in foreign policy or diplomacy, but is an acknowledged expert in the dirty political campaign. And truly enjoys “pranks.”

That singular cynical observer might remind himself that both were ideologically dedicated to the dream of reshaping the country into a corporate state, with only one political party as the intermediary delivering a democracy to the corporate abattoir, and as of January 21st, 2001, these men had the entire facilities of the NSA and other intelligence-gathering agencies at their command.

Some people still don’t understand why so many members of both houses of Congress were so reluctant to speak out during the early years. I’m not implying this is the scenario. But a truly cynical and frightened man might wonder…

UPDATE: In another post, Josh makes a very important point while discussing the history of Art II, Sec 4 of the Constitution [emph in the original]:

[I]n almost 220 years of history under the constitution, the impeachment power has never been used to remove a cabinet secretary from office. Not once. And that's really saying something. But the reason isn't that hard to figure given the structure of our government. The normal course when a cabinet secretary has been implicated in grave wrongdoing or has lost the confidence of the overwhelming number of senators (which I think he clearly has, though partisan loyalty has kept many Republicans from saying it) is for him or her to resign. And if they won't see fit to resign the president fires them since if nothing else the person can't fulfill the responsibilities of office under those debilitating circumstances.

But then there is the big 'unless'.

Unless the president is party to the wrongdoing that placed the cabinet secretary in jeopardy. And that is clearly the case we have here, which explains the historical anomaly that the possibility of Gonzales' impeachment is even a topic of serious conversation.

In Mr Bu$h’s streamlined 21st century America unions are painted as “ooohhhh - scary!” and it’s probably worth understanding that the American Labor movement has been the backbone of democracy and freedom for more than 100 years. Are you an hourly employee? Do you get time-and-a-half for overtime? Double time-and-a-half on holidays? Union organizers bled and died to secure that right for you. Do you get paid vacations? Union members got that for you, too. Sick pay? Ditto.

Unions don’t drive up the cost of goods and services; they fight to ensure that corporations and companies enjoying 35% profits each year don’t pay it all to the CEO. Unions originated the idea of “trickle down” and for them it was valid and not a bullshit slogan for Republicans to stick their hands in your pocket and make sure you can’t afford to buy a second pair of shoes for your child.

AFSCME put together a video explaining just what they do in language that even a broke down old sergeant understands.

One of the most troubling aspects of considering an administration in trouble is its inability to present a coherent policy, either in generalities or in specifics. Besieged on all sides as a result of foolish, careless, and opportunistic ideological policy decisions, today’s White House gang seems to be floundering in its direction.

One good example is the Bu$h malAdministration’s Middle East policy. There appear to be two different, contradictory policy thrusts: The lunatics, headed by Mr Cheney and his Likudnik assistants, who seem determined to reshape the Middle East by violence and conquest in order to destroy all vestiges of civilized Arab (and Persian) nationhood and the “moderates,” headed for the moment by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and our alleged Russian expert and concert pianist Condoleeza Rice, who has Peter-Principled herself into the office of the Secretary of State. Strangely enough the Likudnik lunatics describe themselves as “the Vulcans” – a strange appellation for people who appear to get their woodies discussing unleashing thermonuclear warfare, which most logical Trekkies would agree is more like the way Klingons do business.

I and many other far better writers have discussed the Likudnik wet dreams a number of times so rather than reiterate it all, I wanted to point to yesterday’s essay on enabling the destruction of Iran by mendacious wargaming.

Bernhard takes a look at things today and sees quite another scenario, and this points up the evident floundering.

This is quite speculative, but there are some data points that suggest a big shift has happened.

The Bush administration may have turned away from its Sunni allies in the wider Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and towards some rapprochement with Iran.

Consider:

* The main agitator for an attack on Iran in Cheney's office has been removed.
* Bush himself moves the blame for U.S. problems in Iraq away from alleged Iranian insurgency support and towards al-Qaida.
* Information leaked to newspapers emphasizes the connection of al-Qaida in Iraq and Saudi financing and highlights Pakistan's lack of action against al-Qaida in Pashtun-land.
* High level U.S. officials press the Saudis to retract support for the Sunni side in Iraq.
* Bush's intimate relation with the Iran friendly Maliki in Iraq is pointed out.
* Recent talks between the U.S. and Iran seem to expand. [emph added[

Bernhard backs up his thinking with some good references and expands on his premise. There is a lot to consider here, but I remain unconvinced that Mr Bu$h is even capable of considering turning his back on the Saudi family/monarchy because his family has been comfortably in business with those people for over 30 years and he himself has been stroked, financed and affirmed by them for most of his adult (please – no snarky comments) life.

It’s very frustrating to write about the executive of a country who makes all his decisions based upon what is best for himself rather than for the nation’s interests. Citizens of declared monarchies expect the wearer of the crown to act on behalf of the commonweal because it is no longer the 11th century. Louis XIV is long dead, but the guiding principle of “L’État, c’est moi” lives on in Washington. This can been seen more and more clearly as ever more of the government is bent to the task of protecting Gerge Bu$h and Karl Rove from retribution for their past actions and decisions. But the very fact that the role of Saudi Arabia in enabling the Iraqi civil war is being discussed more openly in the serious press is heartening.

Since Bernhard openly admits to speculation I’ll happily pile on: Mr Bu$h and Karl Rove are so distracted right now by the molasses-in-January Congress that others are attempting to influence events into a saner channel. I’m not certain the departure of David Wurmser will have as much effect as posited, but hope really does spring eternal, even if it isn’t a strategy.

Wurmser and all the other Likudniki know the door to the Oval Office is always open to them, and their war-lust will continue to trouble us for years to come. People like Bill Kristol and his monstrous dreams of dead Arabs (and Persians) will still be flouted on national television every Sunday on the Fox Opinion stations.

Regardless of what happens in this current round of dispute, we will continue to see our nation’s foreign and military policy controlled by what one commenter termed “these backroom guys” for the interminable future. This probably won’t change until something momentous and catastrophic happens, or until Congress removes the possibility of being bribed by anonymous contribution$ and/or the threat of negative lobbying by associated groups inside the country.

Two data points to consider about America’s future in the second half of 2007:

One

After Under Secretary of State Eric Edelman told Senator Clinton that she was a traitor and emboldening the enemy for asking whether the Army has contingency plans for leaving Iraq, the Senator wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Gates asking about the entire affair.

Secretary Gates has replied to Senator Clinton.

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton that a top Pentagon official did not intend to impugn her patriotism by suggesting that questions about U.S. planning in Iraq boosts enemy propaganda.

At the same time, Gates defended his aide and the author of the letter, Undersecretary for Policy Eric Edelman, calling him "a valued member" who provides "wise counsel and years of experience (that) are critically important to the many pressing policy issues facing the military."

In a three-page letter, obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday, Gates sought to calm a politically stoked exchange between the Pentagon and the Democratic presidential front-runner over planning for the withdrawal of U.S forces from Iraq.

No, of course Mr Edelman didn’t mean to impugn Senator Clinton’s patriotism. He said that, but he didn’t really mean it.

Gates' letter, dated Wednesday, insisted that was not the point of Edelman's missive.

"I emphatically assure you that we do not claim, suggest, or otherwise believe that congressional oversight emboldens our enemies, nor do we question anyone's motives in this regard," Gates wrote.

The Defense Secretary both agreed with Clinton that congressional oversight of military planning is needed and at the same time defended Edelman.

"I truly regret that this important discussion went astray and I also regret any misunderstanding of intention," Gates wrote.

"I agree with you that planning concerning the future of U.S. forces in Iraq — including the drawdown of those forces at the right time — is not only appropriate but essential," Gates wrote, adding that Edelman also agrees with that point.

"You may rest assured that such planning is indeed taking place with my active involvement," he wrote in the letter.

So even though Secretary Gates feels that Mr Edelman was wrong, and says Mr Edelman agrees, that’s the end of the issue.

Data Point Two

The Heritage Foundation released a report Wednesday on a recent wargame project examining the economic impact war with Iran, or an attack on Iran, would have on the world economy.

From December 2006 to March 2007, Heritage Foundation scholars conducted a computer simulation and gaming exercise that examined the likely economic and policy consequences of a major oil disruption in the Persian Gulf. The exercise utilized a realistic scenario, state-of-the-art macroeconomic modeling, and a knowledgeable team of subject-matter experts from government, business, academia, and research institutes from around Washington, D.C.

This project was a proof-of-principle investigation that combined computer modeling and gaming to capture how U.S. decisions during a crisis might affect how global energy markets and the U.S. economy adjust to sudden and significant disruptions of oil supplies. In this scenario, the United States responded to a crisis precipitated by an attempted Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

(While wargaming has a long history in the military and is fairly continuous within the military, participation of civilian think tanks is somewhat newer. Herman Kahn, of the RAND Corporation, and later a founder of the Hudson Institute, was really one of the very first civilians to intrude into this arena. During the 1960s his advice and participation in wargaming “the unthinkable” was eagerly sought by several administrations. Mr Kahn felt that nuclear war was “winnable” and that some form of civilized life would go on afterwards. He was the creator of the Mutually Assured Destruction concept.)

The game began with a series of economic results based on a scenario in which Iran began blockading the Strait of Hormuz in January 2007. The assumption was that Iran may succeed in fully blockading the strait for up to one week, but after that, some oil shipping would slowly resume.

The Heritage Foundation economics team, supported by analysts at Global Insight, then modeled the blockade's likely economic effects on world oil prices and the U.S. economy. They found that under worst-case circumstances:

*
The price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude[1] would peak in the third quarter of 2007 at $150 per barrel, an increase of $85 per barrel;
*
Real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) would fall by over $161 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007;
*
Private non-farm employment would decline by over 1 million jobs by the middle of 2008; and
*
Real disposable personal income would be more than $260 billion lower by the fourth quarter of 2007.

The above are best guess estimates of the results of conflict in or near the Straits of Hormuz. Obviously there could be only one country designated as the “problem” in this exercise, and the effects of that country’s response is being considered solely in economic terms.

The purpose of the exercise was to attempt to develop a set of policy initiatives and responses to conflict in the Hormuz area to mitigate the worst-case estimates.

[T]he group broke up into three teams: policy–makers (National Security Council); government agencies that implement the policy (federal agencies); and industry that meets the technical needs of implementing policy (industry). Teams consisted of experts in foreign policy, including regional experts; experts from the Departments of State, Homeland Security, Energy, and Defense; and congressional staff members. The policymakers directed policy; the federal agencies and industry members determined the best way to implement and meet the technical needs of the policy.

You will be surprised to learn that the results of this project indicate that it is possible to develop policies and responses or initiatives to minimize the economic dislocation of a conflict in the area of the Straits of Hormuz.

Just in case you thought the Likudniks weren’t still in charge of our foreign and military policy machinery.

Last month the Armchair Generalist examined the idea of IEDs as weapons in a different light than I’ve ever discussed them. When I’ve written about them it has been solely within the realm of tactical weapons. IEDs are mines – weapons designed to impede or deny passage to an enemy, or to slow his passage through an area, making that enemy vulnerable to further direct attack as we saw when A Company, 2nd.16th Infantry had to travel four miles to a memorial service.

To quote SFC Corey King of the Company A’s 2nd Platoon, who planned the four mile trip, partly mounted and partly on foot, “The pucker factor is pretty high." On the foot portion of the patrol they narrowly escape two IEDs, which are immediately followed with a small arms ambush, including RPGs.

Because of vulnerability to IEDs the troops had been forced to proceed on foot in the classic infantry support of armor and this laid them open to direct fire ambush.

But as the Armchair Generalist pointed out IEDs in Iraq are also strategic weapons in the sense that their impact on public perception far outweighs their impact on US forces. I’m not minimizing the losses US troops have suffered through these weapons – the cost has been high. Perhaps five percent of our casualties stem from these weapons. The influence these weapons have wrought has been most noticed in two areas. Iraqis are well aware of the danger of them and in fact face their own form of IEDs in the daily toll of car bombings.

This daily recitation of bombings in the US and international media is perhaps more horrifying due to the victims: innocent Iraqis trying to go about their daily lives. The explosive effects of car bombings and IEDs guarantees notice in press accounts. It is easily argued that Iraqis are subjected to these bombings for sectarian and religious, or tribal reasons. The purpose of attacking occupation forces is resistance: the slow, steady daily attrition. The discovery of a suspected bomb brings convoys and patrols to an instant halt, delaying or dislocating that unit’s mission, and exposing them to more conventional attack.

The Joint IED Defeat Organization is one of Secretary Rumsfeld’s wilder boondoggles. It’s an office, or maybe rabbit-maze is a better description, of thousands of contractors and think-tanks that has sucked up at least $6.7 Billion to counteract IEDs. Not defeat the bombs themselves, but rather to defeat the impact they have on public perception. A propaganda mill, detailed to produce good news or somehow minimize these IEDs; another welfare teat for private industry. Mr Bu$h is planning to squeeze the teat next year, to the tune of $6.4 Billion.

Judging by all the news reports I’d say it has been wildly unsuccessful. Perhaps you agree.

In Iraq, where the rubber meets the road, the Army and Marines first tried to counter IEDs by uparmoring HumVees. The resistance built bigger bombs. The armored HumVees were augmented by Strykers, which are also vulnereable. Then the services looked for heavier vehicles, obtaining new more resistant vehicles that can withstand the bombs. MRAPs are the current answer.

The Army and Marines have requested $25 Billion to supply upwards of 17,000 MRAPs, vehicles expected to survive the blast of IEDs. There will be different variants, but basically they’re going to be expensive taxis designed to take troops from Point A to Point B in safety.

Leaving aside the human cost, which is incalculable, IEDs will have cost us more than $32 Billion. Two or three years from now we will be discussing uparmoring the MRAPs.

Meanwhile, that’s all money “lost” to future development.

Armchair Generalist, who has a subscription to Defense News quotes from a recent issue:

Functionally, the [Mine Resistant Ambush Protected] is closest to the [Joint Light Tactical Vehicle]. Both are utility vehicles meant to perform the role of a Humvee while adding the kind of protection that can stand up to modern guerrilla weapons. …

[S]ome officials with TACOM Life Cycle Management Command, which manages the Army’s vehicle-acquisition efforts, worry that the MRAP program might drain money and people from the JLTV and FCS.

As the TACOM MRAP office ramps up with more money and personnel, and commanders in Iraq express interest in replacing Humvees in the war zone with MRAP, “some here are concerned that MRAP will detract from the JLTV and other programs,” the TACOM official said.

The Future Combat System (FCS) has been on the planning boards for 10 or 15 years, and its future is in jeopardy because of the rapidly escalating costs of keeping troops alive in Iraq. And, as I pointed out above, as the size of IEDs increase to meet the new targets, troops will still have to pass through Iraq’s dark alleys on foot.

Here is another part of the strategic influence of IEDs: As we spend more and more supporting an ever-growing defense industry, whose product costs spiral upward with each generation, there is less and less available to spend on US citizens. Our national infrastructure is already crumbling, and as we have seen over the last six years the Federal Government doesn’t feel any sense of obligation to support the states with give-backs. How are the schools in your town doing these days? Is your town hiring any new policemen or firemen? No, mine isn’t either.

Maybe we should re-think our national tax policy. If we have to be constantly buying ever more expensive weaponry we’re going to need a much larger pocketbook for the Pentagon. Or perhaps not be planning to fight every other country in the world.

UPDATE: Incorrect link fixed. Thanks to J at Armchair Generalist.

Articles on MRAPs:

Mine Resistant Vehicles

17,700 MRAPs

Marine MRAPs Mired in Minutiae

A Minor MRAP Problem

The Super-MRAP

The Cougar MRAP

Baby Huey Needs Feeding

Army Times is reporting that the Army still [ed: again?] has a problem getting the bodies into the green bag, and HQ, US Army has come up with a dynamic solution.

The Army is immediately ordering 1,106 former recruiters back to that duty. The soldiers are being pulled from their current assignments and sent to recruiting stations across the nation as the army struggles to meet its mission in signing up 80,000 new soldiers this year.

The short-notice assignments are temporary — they begin Friday and will run no later than Oct. 15.

The Army has several thousand assigned recruiters already. They are paid their regular pay, plus special duty pay since they normally live off the economy, including rent in a civilian pad where rents are normally higher than what’s available just off base. I believe they also get some form of body bonus, but I doubt it’s the $2,000 per that these 1,106 GIs are gong to be paid on this TDY assignment.

The recruiting assignments will be performed in temporary duty (TDY) status, and soldiers will return to home stations and regular assignments after completing their recruiting duties.

Noncommissioned officers selected for these assignments will be eligible for Recruiting Command’s $2,000 Referral Bonus Program.

This means the soldiers are authorized a $2,000 bonus for every applicant who successfully processes into the Army and completes initial entry training.

With two months still to run on this fiscal year, the Army is short approximately 15,000 recruits to fill the quota for the year.

These are the troops needed to sustain Generalissimo Field Marshal Kagan’s surge escalation through the summer of 2008, which is the latest move of the goal posts.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, mentioned none of the proposals in Congress for beginning to withdraw U.S. troops as soon as this fall. But he made clear in an interview that in his area of responsibility south of Baghdad, it will take many more months to consolidate recent gains.

“It’s going to take through [this] summer, into the fall, to defeat the extremists in my battle space, and it’s going to take me into next spring and summer to generate this sustained security presence,” he said, referring to an Iraqi capability to hold gains made by U.S. forces.

Lynch said he had projected in March, when he arrived as part of the troop buildup, that it would take him about 15 months to accomplish his mission, which would be summer 2008.

By shoving all the decision points from September 2007 December 2007 into the Summer of 2008 the Army leadership has guaranteed they get at least three more swings at the piñata before it’s November 2008 and anything that happens after that is of course not Mr Bu$h’s fault. *

Under Lynch’s command are two of the five Army brigades that President Bush ordered to the Baghdad area in January as part of a revised counterinsurgency strategy. As part of that surge of forces, Lynch’s command was created in order to put added focus on stopping the flow of weapons and insurgents into the capital from contentious areas to the south.

The three other brigades are in Baghdad and a volatile province northeast of the capital with the purpose of securing the civilian population in hopes that reduced levels of sectarian violence will give Sunni and Shiite leaders an opportunity to create a government of true national unity and to pass legislation designed to promote reconciliation.

Lynch said that Iraqi security forces are not close to being ready to take over for the American troops. So if the extra troops that were brought in this year are to be sent home in coming months, the insurgents — both Sunni and Shiite extremist groups — will regain control, he said. [emph added]

So, even though they sold Generalissimo Field Marshal Kagan’s escalation as a short term fix – surprise! You fucked up! You trusted us!

“To me, it would be wrong to take ground from the enemy at a cost — I’ve lost 80 soldiers under my command — 56 of those since the fourth of April. It would be wrong to have fought and won that terrain, only to turn around and give it back,” he said in an interview with two reporters who traveled with him by helicopter to visit troops south and west of Baghdad.

Because it would be wrong to have soldiers killed in a foolish enterprise drawn up by a political hack and not continue to throw more bodies into the qWagmire.

As I’ve said before, they should have shut down all the training bases in the US, except for one. They should have sent every swinging dick in CONUS – except for the recruiters, and some DIs to train up the recruits.

The best solution, of course, is to collect up every single walking soldier – everyone in uniform – every swinging dick of them (apologies to the ladies reading this) – including all those female soldiers, who obviously are not as above, and move them all the Iraq. NOW. AT ONCE. TODAY. That includes all the training cadres and Drill Sergeants, except a few that we’ll keep at one training base in the US. It includes every single last solitary Brigadier General and Colonel messenger boy in the Pentagon, every last Major assigned to counting paper clips each morning and ensuring they’re all facing in the same direction. Every single Captain whose job is to carry a General’s briefcase. Everybody goes.

Then, six months from now, there will be no more excuses, no more mealy-mouthed weaseling from these warmongering cowards at the White House, AEI, Weekly Standard, and Fox Noise. And then the nation can get on with repairing the damage these creatures have caused.

What‘s that you say? What will we do with all the extra officers if we clean out the Pentagon?

Maintaining 156,000 troops in Iraq from now until Mr Bu$h saddles up ole Marines #1 and rides off into the sunset, and dust of historical obscurity is going to require sending just about every swinging dick in a military uniform. (Apologies to the uniformed women of the US Armed Forces, who truly clank when they walk.) That would include a very large number of Majors, Colonels and even Brigadier Generals currently employed as messengers, walking folders around the corridors of the Pentagon. We could probably field at least one more brigade with those linoleum-trotters and never feel the difference. They could take turns playing brigade commander, and build up their Form 20s.

* - While discussing Mr Bu$h's scheduled departure in January 2009 it's important to remember that the Republican Party has no intention of losing more power in the November 2008 elections. As we have seen not only the Justice Department, but all the other Departments have been marshaled to ensure the election of Republicans gets the full support of the entire Federal Government.

This presupposes of course that there is no tragic and deadly terror-linked event in October 2008 which would cause Mr Bu$h to regretfully suspend the elections in order to maintain order and the continuity of the Government. Naturally, elections would be continued just as soon as the National Emergency is over.

Naturally.

Nonny Mouse explains why people from civilized nations are not visiting the US any longer.

The travel and tourist industry is one of the United States’ biggest money-makers, generating $103 billion in tax revenue every year. Without this tax revenue, every American household would pay nearly $1,000 more in taxes every a year. But while the travel business is flourishing internationally, tourism to America has been on a steep decline, dropping 36 percent between 1992 and 2005, with a loss of $43 billion in 2005 alone. The nation’s international tourism balance of trade declined more than 70 percent over the past 10 years - from $26.3 billion in 1996 to $7.4 billion in 2005.

People are simply choosing to go elsewhere. But as a follow-on to Logan Murphy’s excellent post on the increasing invasion of privacy by the soon-to-be approved Passenger Name Record for passengers entering international airports, allow me to present a personal view into why tourists are deciding not to spend their money visiting the States.

By all means read the entire thing. It’s entertaining and frightening. The bigotry and xenophobia is growing, and it’s a feature, not a bug.

Of course all that lost income will eventually require government subsidies of the airlines, in order to make the CEOs of those companies mega-millionaires.

Atrios points out a devilishly clever method of impressing certain people that the only path out of Iraq in the foreseeable future lies through impeachment.

Here are the two Nancygrams I'm mailing in the morning; I'm including the copy here so those of you who don't have time to compose your own can cut-and-paste.

McScribe hammers to the basics here. Government offices are not staffed with 34 make-work welfare recipients, as the wingers would have you believe. They’re usually understaffed. Overstaffing only occurs at winger welfare fountains, like AEI, which has to supply incomes to loyal megaphones who’ve been laughed out of the public arena. Sending a large number of letters to any office always attracts attention. If Speaker Pelosi received several hundred snail mails – trust me – she’d pay attention. The point is, they get snail mail anyway. Every envelope must be opened because they don’t know how important the letter is.

The first is your basic, somewhat formal letter to a Congressperson, but it touches on the themes I brought up in this post.

The writer is making a good point. The suggestion is for a real letter. One of those things on paper. You write it out, or print it on your computer onto paper, sign it, fold it up and put it in an envelope and put a stamp on it, or, for you time-stealing corporate weasels, slip into the mail room when the mail-serf is out testing his pipe somewhere. Find the postage meter. Don’t worry, it’s probably set for the correct postage (.41) and run it through. Drop it in the outgoing bin and you’re done. (If the boss’s son is starting at the bottom for two weeks just take it back to your workstation and put it into a mailbox on your way out the door.)

Pax Americana even provides a nice basic formula:

The Hon. Nancy Pelosi
450 Golden Gate Avenue, 14th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102

Dear Madam Speaker:

Like millions of Americans, I am dismayed by your repeated assertions that the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney is simply not an option for the Democratic leadership in Congress at this point in time.

While you are correct when you say simply getting the troops out of Iraq is difficult enough, I would suggest that impeachment isn’t going to make that job any harder. The Bush administration has demonstrated that it will tolerate no interference from you or anyone else when it comes to their policy on Iraq, and they fully intend for our troops to remain there for the foreseeable future. Given these circumstances, it seems obvious that the only practical method for bringing the troops home – at least before January of 2009 – is to remove Bush and Cheney or at the very least hamstring their political authority so severely that they will have to comply with Congress’ Constitutional authority to dictate war policy.

Using impeachment to restrict the President’s political options will also have the added benefit of preventing him from doing any more damage. No doubt you hear the whispers about military action against Iran more clearly than those of us outside Washington do; I’m certain that I don’t need to point out how disastrous such action will be. If he should order a strike against Iran during impeachment proceedings, it would be obvious to even his most dedicated supporters that he is once again putting the lives of American servicemen and women at risk not because of a legitimate security concern but rather to prop up his fading political fortunes.

It is true that impeachment may cause the mechanisms of our government to grind to a halt, but seeing as those mechanisms have gone completely haywire I’m not sure that would be an undesirable outcome. Indeed, it may be the only way to bring them back under control.

Thank for your time and attention.

Speaker Pelosi's DC address is 235 Cannon HOB, Washington, DC 20515.

Thanks to the miracle of modern computing and mail merge programs it’s possible to send to both addresses. Sending two letters to different addresses doubles the impact of your protest and if you’re using the postage meter you get to stick it to the greedheads on Mahogany Row twice.

If you're only able to send one letter, and you're torn between offices, bear in mind that snail mail sent to Washington gets opened in an off-site facility, and only the letters get sent on to a Congresscritter. Since we have no way of knowing if that facility is managed by a Bu$hCo apparatchik, your letter might stand a better chance of being seen in San Francisco.

As always, be polite. Do not include bumperstickers, pins, medals, photos, wall posters or notices with letters cut out from a newspaper and glued to a blank page. This is a business letter; we're selling democracy.

Quite a few blogs around the internet have been discussing several episodes reported in The Nation that may or may not be true, but like many such stories of war’s casual brutality, have achieved a life of their own quite independent of the truthfulness of the reports.

The story reported an event in which one GI supposedly posed for a photograph lifting brains with a spoon from an Iraqi corpse and smiling as he prepared to eat them. Agreed, truly nauseating. Unsurprisingly the morally and ethically numb among us, mostly but not exclusively on the right, have signaled approval of such barbarity.

Our good friend Fixer points out through a link that a moral leper named Jules Crittenden addresses the issue in a faux scholarly roundup with a surprising caveat:

Scribbling theology student Chris Hedges, who thought war is the force that gives us meaning, is shocked, or at least betting he’ll make money on the premise that readers will be. He brings us the brain-scooping incident, which is in poor taste, but not exactly criminal.** There is a dog that gets shot, which is maybe unnecessary, depending on whether the soldier considered that dog a threat. Investigate a dog-shooting? There are a lot of people who get rousted from their beds in the middle of the night and searched, and sometimes the GIs think the officers are making them take away the wrong guy. At that point I got bored and bailed.

Presumeably, [sic] if Hedges had found any actual war crimes, he would have led with them ahead of the dog-shooting and hamming-with-brains anecdotes. Another case of someone who has trouble figuring out who the enemy is, which way the frontlines are, and what a war crime is. Repeat offense for Hedges, a veteran war correspondent who took a powder on this one and decided midwar that the best use of his time was to conduct an exhaustive investigation of the dire threat Christian extremists pose to the western civilization.
...

** Technically, as a reader notes below, abusing a corpse in military as well as civilian life is a crime. In this case, I’d apply the legal principle of who cares? The Nation article, at least before I got bored with reading about low-grade offenses, was short on offenses that couldn’t be addressed with a simple “cut that out,” or improved intelligence. I’d add that the reader, a dear old friend, falls into the “genocide preferred” camp, as he would prefer Saddam Hussein (genocide tally 500,000 to 1.5 million, depending how you count) were still in power. That might explain the failure to appreciate that war-stressed soldiers goofing with a corpse, while distasteful, is not a big deal.

Moral Leper Crittenden of course misses the point that the war crime may not be quite so much spooning a dead man’s brains out of his skull, but rather so casually dismissing the action, thereby giving such ghoulish brutality an approval that would have delighted Otto Skorzeny and Joachim Pieper, two of the great war criminals of the 20th century. Of course, the entire report bored Leper Crittenden; he is of sterner stuff, and uses the perhaps true report to attack the real enemies of mankind – those of us on the left who area appalled both by the alleged act and by its casual acceptance by Republicans, who, lacking experience of war, think this sort of behavior is manly, or warrior-like, or virtuous, or something. It is this deadening of moral and ethical sensibilities which will be the hallmark of the Bu$h malAdministration to future generations.

I’ll mention in passing that Moral Leper Crittenden tries to excuse his lack of common decency by noting proudly that an alleged lawyer, Glenn Reynolds, approves of the episode, whether true or not. The racist scum at LGF, who make me truly ashamed of the heritage my mother gave me, of course crow with glee at any barbarity brought upon a Muslim.

In war, stuff happens. Each war has seen brutality visited upon its participants, usually by a victor upon its foes. Mutilation of corpses is not unusual; prior to the wide use of gunpowder in war the collecting of heads was proof that you had conquered your enemy and were worthy of reward by your chieftain, king, sultan, emperor, shogun, what-have-you.

But we of the 21st century are supposed to be more civilized. We are supposed to be guided by laws and customs prohibiting despoliation. Pointing back over your shoulder and saying, “They did it in the last war” is not justification. Cutting ears off dead enemy soldiers is the mark of an animal, and justifying it because you heard a soldier in another battalion had his testicles cut off is not appropriate justification, because the NVA will find their comrades’ bodies and then the atrocities will spiral downward.

We have seen our alleged “leaders” approve, endorse, and require the torture and brutalization of captives. The lessons of Abu Ghraib are not yet finished. According to Sy Hersh and several US Senators who have seen the videos, Americans have not yet had the experience of watching children of both genders raped before their parents. It is indisputable that such events happened; the criminals were stupid enough to document their atrocities, and the tapes are in the possession of US authorities.

When you lower yourself to an enemy’s level of conduct you become him.

J at Armchair Generalist brings us some (more) catastrophe disguised as good news.

DHS is always interesting though. Sec. Michael "The Gut" Chertoff says that he may be able to meet that politically-driven paranoid goal of screening 100 percent of all cargo containers coming into the United States. Horray.

Virtually all cargo containers entering U.S. ports will be scanned by radiation-detecting equipment by the end of the year, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.

The agency also expects to scan "virtually 100 percent" of all containers that enter through border points, Chertoff said on Friday during a visit to the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

However, more advanced equipment is needed to help speed the process and spot a potential nuclear device or dirty bomb, he said. [emph added]

I know sometimes it’s hard to remember what happened yesterday or the day before, but didn’t someone from the DoD recently hand Senator Clinton a bag full of fertilizer because she dared to ask about evacuation plans?

So what’s the difference between asking about planning to leave Mr Bu$h’s Great Experiment in nation-destroying and not bothering to protect the ports from radioactive bombs? And when you decide to promise to have some sort of chewing-gum-and-bailing wire Rube Goldberg device ready “by the end of the year” haven’t you just given the “terraists” a time line? Isn’t that just about the same frickin thing as saying, “We’re gonna unass Iraq before the elections in 2008?”

Yeah. I thought so too.

Bonus points for not only giving the “terraists” a timeline, Secretary Chertoff, but also telling them the Goldberg devices will be for look-see, and won’t really even be effective.

Under Secretary Edelman, please pick up the white phone. You’re needed to write another “Dear Treasonous Bastard” letter.

The latest issue of Time Magazine (July 30th issue date) examines the quickening pace of background talk about leaving Iraq. Everyone is taking about abandoning the Great Enterprise, except the Decider-in-Chief and the sock puppeteer Mr Cheney. (That probably explains why Mr Bu$h had to have a colonoscopy on Saturday, and have five polyps removed. Wool is irritating.)

The cover story argues that there are two schools of thought about Iraq.

The first, represented by many congressional Democrats, argues that it is past the time for America to leave. The best thing that could happen now is for the U.S. to pull out as quickly as possible, force the Iraqis to take control of their destinies and compel the oil-rich gulf states in the neighborhood to get off the sidelines. In this view, leaving Iraq would deny al-Qaeda its best recruiting tool, a large U.S. military presence in the Middle East. Along the way, the U.S. could save the $10 billion a month that it is spending on the war and rescue the U.S. Army and Marine Corps before they both collapse.

A sardonic man would note in passing that Time missed mentioning the 74% of polled Americans who agree with the “many congressional Democrats.” who believe that the latest National Intelligence Estimate is right:

Al-Qaeda has reestablished its central organization, training infrastructure and lines of global communication over the past two years, putting the United States in a "heightened threat environment" despite expanded worldwide counterterrorism efforts, according to a new intelligence estimate.

Intelligence officials attributed the al-Qaeda gains primarily to its establishment of a safe haven in ungoverned areas of northwestern Pakistan. Its affiliation with the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, the report said, has helped it to "energize" extremists elsewhere and has aided Osama bin Laden's recruitment and funding.

Great. They’re back, as strong if not stronger than they were in September 2001. They’re getting tons of ca$h from the Saudis, and lots of eager fighters and suiciders from there, too. The Pakistani madrassas instituted in Pakistan by the Saud family are churning out hundreds, if not thousands, of dedicated Islamic fundamentalists each year, so many in fact, that Iraq and Afghanistan don’t have room for all of them, so they’re starting up trouble in Pakistan.

In fact, we’ve lost ground in the last year, if you can believe an NIE. If you get my drift and I think you do.

An NIE on global terrorism written in April 2006 described a downward trend in al-Qaeda's capabilities since bin Laden and the rest of the group's surviving leadership were driven from their sanctuaries in Afghanistan by U.S. military forces in December 2001. That report, like the one issued yesterday, said that the Iraq war was a primary recruitment vehicle for al-Qaeda. But the earlier report concluded that al-Qaeda's operations had been disrupted and its leadership was "seriously damaged."

This loss of ground, by the way, is the best argument possible for impeachment and voting out the corrupt Republican Party in November 2008.

The Bu$h malAdministration is facing a problem. On the one hand, news is so bad that they must present some good news, somehow, somewhere. Thus we find them trumpeting the success of the Sunni insurgency, our newest BFF, in knocking back the alleged “al Qaeda in Iraq.” These are the people who were killing US troops eight months ago, and killing them in such quantities and methods that the Bu$hies started murmuring darkly about the Shiite Iranians, committed deadly enemies of all Sunni everywhere, of supplying them with weapons, including the dreaded Iranian EFPs which are puzzlingly marked in English.

On the other hand we are now unfortunately in an election season, and it is necessary to ramp up the fear, fear FEAR all the time, because only the Republican Party can keep those jihadis from killing you!

To be fair, there is some sort of vague organization in Western Iraq using the name “al Qaeda in Iraq” and they are being fought off by the western tribes, although it’s possibly not so much an ideological battle as it is a turf war. The tribesmen have become accustomed to some of the Western vices like tobacco and alcohol, and al Qaeda is reportedly quite the pack of prohibitionists, so the tribes are temporarily pushing back against the AQ opportunists.

Time notes that with all the bickering and sloganeering, everyone seems to be missing a key point:

What's needed is not the sloganeering of certain politicians but a clear-eyed, multifaceted policy. That would involve making plain to the Iraqi government our intention to pull back, followed by an orderly withdrawal of about half the 160,000 troops currently in Iraq by the middle of 2008. A force of 50,000 to 100,000 troops would dig in for a longer stay to protect America's most vital interests: denying al- Qaeda a safe haven and preventing an almost inevitable civil war from spilling into neighboring countries. At the same time, the reduction in the U.S.'s military footprint in the region should be accompanied by a sustained surge in American diplomacy.

They are of course missing the primary point: Withdrawing 80,000 troops will do nothing more than reduce the number of targets available to the Iraqi resistance. And hunkering down in reinforced bases will just pin them in place to be mortared and rocketed on a daily basis. It won’t remove the one unifying cause that is driving the resistance and al Qaeda’s paymasters, the Saudis.

Plus, there is all that oil. Messers Bu$h and Cheney are not going to abandon the oil, and without a robust military force to protect the Western oil companies interests under the Iraq Oil Law, those resources will end up being nationalized in an instant. We didn’t just invade and occupy Iraq to steal the oil. The intention was also to deny it to economic competitors.

If the US were to completely withdraw its military forces from Iraq (and of necessity the Middle East) there will be a clear winner, and it won’t be al Qaeda.

That helicopter lifting the Stars-and-Stripes-bedecked “A” on the cover is a Russian Hind-D.

It’s with a sense of great surprise and a bit of regret – no not really – that I announce Ronald McDonald has been fired. He’s sooooo 20th century.

Ambassador Ryan Crocker is asking the State Department to authorize visas for Iraqi translators.

The American ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan C. Crocker, has asked the Bush administration to take the unusual step of granting immigrant visas to all Iraqis employed by the U.S. government in Iraq because of growing concern that they will quit and flee the country if they cannot be assured eventual safe passage to the United States.

Crocker's request comes as the administration is struggling to respond to the flood of Iraqis who have sought refuge in neighboring countries since sectarian fighting escalated early last year. The United States has admitted 133 Iraqi refugees since October, despite predicting that it would process 7,000 by the end of September.

If I didn’t know better I’d suspect Ambassador Crocker of being a defeatist. What possible need is there for visas to evacuate translators if the situation is Iraq is getting better and better? With Generalissimo Field Marshal Fred Kagan’s excellent surge escalation being implemented so ably by GEN Petraeus why would we even be thinking of granting visas to translators unless Ambassador Crocker knows something you and I don’t know.

Perhaps Ambassador Crocker is being compelled by Denmark’s example.

Denmark has secretly airlifted about 200 Iraqi employees and their relatives out of Iraq to prevent them from being killed after the Danes withdraw their ground forces later this summer, the Danish government said Friday.

Interpreters and other employees of foreign forces are prime targets for Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias who accuse them of being collaborators with the Americans.

The last of three secret flights departed Friday before dawn with 80 Iraqis on board, Jakob Winther, a Defense Ministry spokesman, told The Associated Press.

Last month, Denmark's center-right government said it would offer visas to Iraqi employees who wanted to apply for asylum.

Ambassador Crocker makes an emotional appeal:

"Our [Iraqi staff members] work under extremely difficult conditions, and are targets for violence including murder and kidnapping," Crocker wrote Undersecretary of State Henrietta H. Fore. "Unless they know that there is some hope of an [immigrant visa] in the future, many will continue to seek asylum, leaving our Mission lacking in one of our most valuable assets."

Crocker's two-page cable dramatizes how Iraq's instability and a rapidly increasing refugee population are stoking new pressures to help those who are threatened or displaced. As public sentiment grows for a partial or full American withdrawal, U.S. Embassy officials are facing demands from their own employees to secure a reliable exit route, and the administration as a whole is facing pressure from aid groups, lawmakers and diplomats to do more for those upended by the war.

And, anyway, Blackhawk helicopters can carry more passengers than Hueys.

Michael Abramowitz fills in a few of the blanks in today’s WaPo as he reports Mr Bu$h is now a big fan of political compromise in Iraq, (but not in the US.)

Having won a two-month reprieve from Congress to demonstrate progress in Iraq, the White House does not intend to give up on trying to forge a grand political bargain among Iraq's sectarian leaders, even though such a deal has proved elusive since the 2003 invasion, administration officials said.

The officials said they hope to develop the framework through which competing factions can sort out their differences and enact a national oil law, pass legislation aimed at bringing ex-Baathists into the government and demonstrate progress on other measures aimed at achieving national reconciliation.

But the officials privately acknowledge that the Iraqi government probably will not fulfill all of those tasks, which are among the political goals Congress is demanding before a Sept. 15 deadline. Asking the Iraqi parliament to move such legislation by September, one senior administration official said, is a bit like asking the U.S. Congress to handle abortion, gun control and other hot-button issues in a matter of months.

As I’ve noted several times, the oil law is the only benchmark the Bu$h malAdministration is really interested in. In an effort to drag the Maliki government along to get this law passed, Mr Bu$h has taken to expanding his frequent hectoring video conferences with Prime Minister Maliki.

[A]dministration officials have taken in recent days to describing the benchmarks as imperfect indicators, saying a better gauge right now is political reconciliation in local areas. They are also playing up broader Iraqi and U.S. efforts at "top-down" reconciliation, such as strengthening the Presidency Council in Iraq, composed of Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, Kurdish president Jalal Talabani and the two vice presidents, one a Shiite and the other a Sunni.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker told Congress on Thursday that the council is meeting weekly to deal with crises, and officials are hoping this will become a forum to develop consensus on broader political issues. Bush has taken to including the two vice presidents -- Adel Abdul Mahdi and Tariq al-Hashimi -- as well as Talabani in some of his regular video conferences with Maliki.

Bu$hCo is trying to develop a sense of cooperation among the various sects and political groups within the Parliament by making his weekly nagging video conferences more inclusive. I’m sure that having the rest of the Presidency Council see just how effective Mr Bu$h is at extemporaneous speaking will imbue them with a great deal of confidence.

Because there is an implicit commitment by the malAdministration to demonstrate a sense of achievement before September 15th, they are trying to force the Iraqi Parliament to cut short their one month vacation during August,

Prime Minister Mailiki has valiantly made the effort to get the Parliament to comply with Mr Bu$h’s demand:

Baghdad, Jul 21, (VOI) – Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki urged parliament to cancel or shorten the summer recess so as to help the government solving some pending issues, including the filling of vacant ministerial portfolios.

"The political process has to proceed forward and the government has to work with parliament for the progress of the Iraqi people in these tough circumstances," according to a cabinet statement after Maliki met U.S. ambassador in Baghdad Ryan Crocker and U.S. National Security Council senior director for Iraq and the Middle East Megan O'Sullivan. The statement was received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

The Iraqi premier said there were several draft laws not referred yet for debate inside parliament because the quorum was not observed, the statement added.

The Iraqi parliament had decided to extend its work for a month, to end late July, so as to vote on about 50 important draft laws, like the constitution amendment committee and oil.

Some ministerial portfolios within the Iraqi government became vacant after the Sadrists, or Iraqis loyal to Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, withdrew in protest against the government's failure to come up with a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq. [emph added]

If the name Meghan O’Sullivan seems familiar to you that’s because she is one of the hot-shot 30-somethings who are going to remake the world.

Their adulthood has never included a fellow superpower or the need to reach accommodation with an enemy -- a Cold War concept none of the NSC's Gen-X crowd can get their heads around. Instead, their history begins with Sept. 11, 2001. It is the measuring stick they use when discussing their generation's challenge and the sole lens through which they envision the future. "We all built careers in the post-Cold War world," said Meghan O'Sullivan, who at 36 is the deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan. "You have to think about what are the defining features of the age we live in. For me, that's American primacy, globalization, terrorism and WMD, which is why we do what we do. This wasn't applicable during the Cold War."

The Vietnam war was waning just as O'Sullivan was becoming cognizant of the world, a kid in suburban Boston. Today, she is charged with guiding President Bush's strategy on Iraq after already having served as a senior adviser in Baghdad shaping the interim Iraqi government.

As I noted at the time:

Have the 30-something whiz kids… thought about fighting a military equal? Not according to this article. They’re still thinking about shocking and awing the towelheads in the oil countries. That’s land China (and her economic ally Japan) needs in the future to fuel its booming economy.

Primacy, like military power, whether tangible through projection, or intangible through merely existing, stems from economic power, and America has voluntarily offshored much of its power of production, sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit. We don’t make our stuff, we buy it from other countries. And one of the primary factories we buy from is China. China currently holds about 20% of our national debt. This is one of the frightening facts of globalization. Our economy weakens when we become a debtor nation. Someone else holds our purse strings, ad they can close them.

Terrorism is a threat, in a sense. Yet, it’s been a threat since the 70s. Ask the Germans about the Baader-Meinhof gang. Ask the French about the OAS, and the pied-noirs of Algeria, who subverted 15% of the French Army. It was solved politically, and judicially, not by warfare.

And now Meghan O’Sullivan is going to straighten out the Iraqis, and get them to willingly sign away their wealth to the occupier. I’m just a silly old broke down sergeant, but I think Ms O’Sullivan is going to learn that resistance can take forms other than armed attacks.

It’s like herding cats to get an occupied country to give away their children’s inheritance.