As I mentioned above, not all of the almost $200 Billion in Mr Bu$h’s latest demand for money to find his legacy is going to pay for “day-to-day” operations and “basic needs” like bullets, more armor and MRAPs. ABC News reported yesterday about a rather unusual request.

Tucked inside the White House's $196 billion emergency funding request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an item that has some people wondering whether the administration is preparing for military action against Iran.

The item: $88 million to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator, or, in military-speak, the MOP.

The MOP is the the military's largest conventional bomb, a super "bunker-buster" capable of destroying hardened targets deep underground. The one-line explanation for the request said it is in response to "an urgent operational need from theater commanders."

What urgent need? The Pentagon referred questions on this to Central Command.

ABC News called CENTCOM to ask what the "urgent operational need" is. CENTCOM spokesman Maj. Todd White said he would look into it, but, so far, no answer.[emph added]

I think we all remember Mr Bu$h’s famous line about being willing to send more troops if the commanders on the ground asked for them? And of course none of the commanders were asking for them. Until after they retired that is, at which point we learned that they have ALL asked for more troops. I don’t understand what it is about the military corporate mind that allows their troops to be killed in a war of aggression. I don’t understand how they can even look themselves in the mirror in the morning to shave when their cowardice and lack of spine has killed more than a million innocent Iraqis,

But this commentary isn’t about conscienceless generals. It’s about modifying B-2 bombers to carry 30,000 pound MOPs for – some mission or other, somewhere.

Guess where. Guess what’s gong to be the payload.

Okay. Everyone hates guessing games, so let me borrow a graphic from Tristero’s observations on the MOP to give you a hint.

ABC News opines:

There doesn't appear to be any potential targets for a bomb like that in Iraq. It could potentially be used on Taliban or al Qaeda hideouts in the caves along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but there would be no need to use a stealth bomber there.

So where would the military use a stealth bomber armed with a 30,000-pound bomb like this? Defense analysts say the most likely target for this bomb would be Iran's flagship nuclear facility in Natanz, which is both heavily fortified and deeply buried.

They went to John Pike of Global Security for the answer:

"You'd use it on Natanz," said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. "And you'd use it on a stealth bomber because you want it to be a surprise. And you put in an emergency funding request because you want to bomb quickly."

I’ve discussed this with several knowledgeable people, including Jeff Huber, an occasional commenter here, who also has his own little shop of analysis and opinion.

Earlier this year we were all focusing on the perceived requirement for three carrier battle groups to carry out an effective strike on Iran. Jeff seems to feel it could be done with two groups but agrees with me that the Persian Gulf would not be the place to park any of those groups while carrying out your latest pre-emptive war of aggression. He speculated that the primary responsibility for the strike would fall upon Air Force assets instead, and he makes a point.

Any attack would probably require a concentrated killing of communications and anti-air sites first. If there really is a reactor at Natanz busily churning out material for a nuclear weapon you’d want to protect it pretty well with missiles and guns, and the radars needed to direct them. The Air Force just has better tanker assets for this sort of intensive multi-sortie campaign. Remember, the “shock and awe” softening up on Iraq went on for about two weeks before we invaded, and they had no really effective defenses.

The Navy’s contribution could primarily consist of Tomahawk missiles in this phase. Then the Air Force could do their ground strike thing, and somewhere along in there, the B-2s could take out the apparently civilianized Natanz facility with the Massive Ordnance Penetrator.

And our batshit crazy war-mongering PNACers can get their woodies on because once again they will feel invigorated, and victorious, and viciously virile. They will have penetrated another country that wasn’t a real military threat.

Someone buy them some Viagra, for heaven’s sake.

Mr Bu$h had a press conference today. Braver souls than I actually took notes. Me, I was counting my toes, which I consider more important. Something leaped out among all the dross and cotton candy. I’m using the official WH script, which has of course been scrubbed of several mispronunciations, misstatements and outright stupid errors. Oh yes, they’re very interested in historical legacy over there, as long as they’re writing the historical record.

Congress has work to do on health care. Tomorrow Congress will hold a vote attempting to override my veto of the S-CHIP bill. It's unlikely that that override vote will succeed, which Congress knew when they sent me the bill. Now it's time to put politics aside and seek common ground to reauthorize this important program. I've asked Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, National Economic Council Director Al Hubbard, and OMB Director Jim Nussle to lead my administration's discussions with the Congress. I made clear that if putting poor children first requires more than the 20 percent increase in funding I proposed, we'll work with Congress to find the money we need. I'm confident we can work out our differences and reauthorize S-CHIP.

Bang! Memo to Ms Pelosi: I’ve made a screen grab of this page, so when he tries to weasel out later, we've got proof of what he said.

Note how he says that if putting poor children first requires more than the 20 percent increase he proposed he’ll work to find the money? Send him back the frickin bill your American constituents want. Tell him it’s the entire $35 million or he can explain it all next year to desperate Republican politicians.

So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.

We have now moved the goalposts. We’re in fourth-stage Iraq invasion excuse making area, where we were gabbling about weapons of mass destruction program inclinations and desires. We’re now talking about not wanting a sovereign free country to have nuclear weapons, but also not wanting them to have the knowledge to make them. The Iran Strategic Target list must now be updated to include all university science and library buildings, all professional chemical, physics and chemistry companies, all high schools that have any sort of science program, and all public libraries.

And the thought that we could be engaged in a “World War” with a country that has economic and military power less than the Austro-Hungarian Empire should piss off the Russians, since they always thought they were our worst nightmare.

Time to count my toes again.

A few weeks ago the Air Force either made a really stupid and careless series of errors, or cooperated with Mr Cheney’s desire to start a war with Iran. The official story is that somehow, about three or four different trained professionals all overlooked the fact that some nuclear-armed AGM-129 missiles were being shipped to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Six nuclear warheads on cruise missiles were mistakenly carried on a flight from North Dakota to Louisiana last week, prompting a major investigation, military officials have confirmed.

The plane took the cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base for decommissioning Thursday, the Air Force said.

"This is a major gaffe, and it's going to cause some heads to roll down the line," said Don Shepperd, a retired Air Force major general and military analyst for CNN.

Shepperd said the United States had agreed in a Cold War-era treaty not to fly nuclear weapons. "It appears that what happened was this treaty agreement was violated," he said.

The warheads should have been removed from the missiles before they were attached to the B-52 bomber, according to military officials.

Now, if you know anything about how special weapons are handled by the Air Force (I don’t other than what I read) this occurred because the enlisted handlers removed specially marked missiles which are a different size than regular ones, plus they’re apparently quite a bit heavier than regular missiles. They’re marked with a special marking – probably a painted sign that says, “Hey! This is a fucking nuclear weapon!@” or words to that effect.

After the enlisted men drew the wrong weapons, the officer in charge of signing off on the movement had to miss the different sizes and markings. Maybe he was a christianist Evangelist – there’s a lot of them in the Air Force – and since he was probably home schooled he missed the thing about “which of these things is bigger than the others?”

The missiles had to be moved to the pad and loaded onto the wing pylons of the B-52. B-52 wings are pretty flexible. Would a wing with five nuclear missiles dangle lower than a wing with normal warheads?

The crew was unaware that the plane was carrying nuclear weapons, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the extraordinary sensitivity and security surrounding the case.

No, I guess not.

So the plane landed at Barksdale and the official story is that no one noticed the specially marked weapons there, either, for almost a day.

Air Force regulations are pretty specific about how nukes are to be handled and transported. There are no allowances for mistakes.

The official story is that these missiles were flown to Barksdale to be decommissioned. (Decommissioning of these missiles is apparently done at Davis-Monthan AFB at Tucson, AZ.) Maybe somebody needs a new navigator because they ended up at the AFB that stages to the Middle East. Wrong weapons, wrong airbase, wrong time.

Unless you want to turn a mistake into a PSYOPS to intimidate Iran.

By the way, the initial reports were that five weapons were erroneously sent out from Minot AFB. This report came about because Barksdale said five were received. Then somebody at Barksdale anonymously contacted Army Times that actually six missiles had been shipped, and maybe someone should be asking questions if six were actually shipped from Minot and Barksdale says five were received. After that news got out the Air Force agreed that six were actually shipped. If you’re confused, welcome to the club.

Just in case they’re still wrong on the count (you just don’t know when Dick “dick” Cheney is involved, even peripherally) those fine folks at Wired have published this as a public service.

How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

Click here to see it mushroom – uh, to a larger size, I mean.

The cholera wave sweeping through Iraq has killed again.

A woman has died of cholera in Baghdad, Iraq's health ministry says, the capital's first confirmed fatality in the country's recent outbreak.

The disease was first detected in northern Iraq last month.

Eleven others have died of cholera outside Baghdad, and at least 2,000 cases have been confirmed, the vast majority of them in the north.

The 40-year-old woman died on Monday after spending seven days in hospital. Her son is infected with cholera.

Over at the NewsHoggers Cernig properly points out that

The Fourth Horseman, pestilence, has come to Iraq and now Baghdad in the form of a rapidly spreading outbreak of Cholera. … adding to the problems of poor water sanitation, of course, are the lack of modern medical treatment and antibiotics that many Iraqis now suffer. If the Iraqis are really unlucky, the outbreak is of the antibiotic resistant 'O139 Bengal' strain first noticed in 1992. Even if it's the older strain, the last epidemic in South America, which began in Peru in 1991, caused 1.04 million identified cases and almost 10,000 deaths.

How can anyone describe this as success, four years and some into the occupation? Where's the surge to deal with this faceless and inhuman killer of innocents? Where are the billions in earmarked funds from the Bush administration?

Meanwhile, in news that’s really important to the “Very Serious People” in our intolerably dysfunctional Washington, Joe Lieberman (R-Tel Aviv) has managed to move us one step closer to killing a lot of Iranians.

Next step: Mr Bu$h designates the Iranian Army in toto as assisting those mythical “someones” who are allegedly making the EFPs that don’t look like Iran’s military weapons and Whining Joe gets his fondest wish.

Disgracefully, acting either from a drug-induced coma, or a very threatening set of candid photos kept in a safe in the White House, or some other incomprehensible reason, the following spineless Democrats voted once again to start another needless war against the wishes of their constituents:

Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Whitehouse (D-RI)

And look who has ducked out on yet another key vote to preserve the tattered remains of our democracy and freedom:

Not Voting
Obama (D-IL)

Joe Lieberman has received orders from his handlers in the Likud to press harder for war with Iran. Jonathan Schwartz has the facts:

Threatening Lieberman-Kyl Amendment On Iran

Amazingly, no one anywhere in the US media seems to have noticed that yesterday Jon Kyl (Arizona) and Joe Lieberman filed an extremely threatening amendment on Iran to the FY 2008 Defense Authorization bill. I guess all their time was taken up with the earth-shakingly important issue of newspaper ads.

It's a "Sense of the Senate" resolution, which means it has no legal force, but as the Congressional Research Service will tell you, "foreign governments pay close attention to [such resolutions] as evidence of shifts in U.S. foreign policy priorities." If you want you can read it yourself (.doc), but here are the most important paragraphs:

(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;

(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies.

If something like this passes both the House and Senate, I think Bush could legitimately argue that between it, the War Powers Act and the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations to Use Military Force, he has all the authority he needs to attack Iran.

As we have seen with the Move On censure, a “sense of the Senate” [ed: now there’s an oxymoron] achieves the importance of an 11th commandment from Mt Sinai when a Republican produces the legislation, and since this comes from Joe Lieberman – if you get my drift and I think you do.

Things just aren’t progressing fast enough for the US Foreign Policy Control Desk located in the Likud Liaison office at the AEI. Mohammed el Baradei has been inconveniently not going along with the war drumbeat, as is shown in this September, 2007 interview with Der Speigel a magazine which is published in a sane and grown-up country: [emphasis added]

SPIEGEL: Your deputy, Olli Heinonen, who negotiated with the Iranians, is now talking about a breakthrough, a "milestone." Given Iran's history, wouldn't a healthy dose of suspicion be appropriate?

ElBaradei: Obviously we are all pushing for the same strategic goal: That Iran should not get nuclear weapons. We consistently searched for evidence that Iran intends to build nuclear weapons. We found suspicious signs, but no smoking gun. We could now make some progress in setting aside these suspicions by thoroughly inspecting the Iranian facilities and learning details about their history.

SPIEGEL: What do you expect from Tehran?

ElBaradei: We expect information about the scope and nature of its uranium enrichment program and its statements about certain suspicious studies we have. The most decisive element in our assessment will be whether Iran cooperates with us completely and actively.

SPIEGEL: It appears that Iran has fewer centrifuges up and running than experts had assumed until recently. Some say there are substantially fewer than 3,000, which is considered the minimum to produce enough material for a bomb within one year. Have the scientists encountered problems with the technology, or is the surprisingly low number a sign of political accommodation?

ElBaradei: Both possibilities are valid. My gut feeling tells me that Iran has responded positively to my repeated demands that it scale back the program.

This of course, will be considered foolish twaddle, since it is well-known that there is only one man in the world whose gut feelings are accurate.

If it begins to look like Iran has not in fact embarked on a quest for a nuclear bomb, we can expect the level of Lieberman hysteria to escalate sharply.

Events in Iraq are beginning to snowball as observers and participants are more and more reacting to them, rather than controlling them.

Within the last few weeks two provincial governors have been assassinated.

Diwaniya Governor Khaleel Jaleel Hamza, Governor of Qadisiyah Province was killed in a roadside bomb attack on August 10, along with Khalid Hassan, the chief of police for that province.

Muthanna Governor Mohammed Al-Hassani and two of his guards were killed in a roadside bomb explosion that hit his convoy on Monday morning near the town of Rumaitha north of Samara (280 km south of Baghdad).

Both governors belonged to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the renamed SCIRI political party, backed by Iran and the Shiite cleric Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, who heads the Badr Corps militia. Hakim is generally considered a political and military rival of Moqtada al-Sadr, who surprisingly, is also backed by Iran.

These targeted assassinations were in addition to the usual round of daily killings and bombings, including a particularly horrific series of bombings in several northern villages in Kurdistan, which apparently have killed more than 250, and left another 250 wounded in the largest non-American bombing of the occupation.

A Kurdistan government spokesman said yesterday that there might be more survivors in the rubble of these bombings but that further search was being called off.

As it becomes more and more painfully obvious to the Bu$h malAdministration that the Maliki government will be unable (or unwilling) to deliver Iraq’s oil wealth to Western oil interests, there has been a growing background chatter about Prime Minister Maliki being replaced by a more pliant effective Premier.

Word of the assassination [of Muthanna Province Governor Mohammed al-Hassani] came as two prominent members of the Senate Armed Services Committee completed a two-day visit to Iraq and offered a bleak assessment of prospects here.

In a joint statement, Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the committee's chairman, and John Warner, R-Va., the committee's senior Republican, said that while a surge of U.S. troops had tamped down violence in some parts of Baghdad, there was no sign of political reconciliation between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite rivals and "we are not optimistic about the prospects." They said U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker shared their views.

Levin later told reporters during a conference call from Tel Aviv that he believed the Iraqi parliament should replace Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. "The Maliki government is nonfunctional and cannot produce a political settlement because it is too beholden to religious and sectarian leaders," Levin said.

It should be noted that all the political parties in Iraq were established upon the foundations of either sectarian or religious membership, and it would be almost impossible to form a government on any other basis.

As events spin out of control in Iraq the qualified foreign policy community has lost all confidence in the enterprise in Iraq, and indeed in the Middle East.

The world is becoming a more dangerous place for Americans and the United States, with the war in Iraq playing a key role in worsening prospects for US national security, according to a majority of the experts surveyed for Foreign Policy and the Center for American Progress's Terrorism Index.

For the third installment of the Index, Foreign Policy and CAP selected 100 experts from all political persuasions, with 80 percent of the participants hailing from former government service—including more than half in the Executive Branch, 32 percent in the military, and 21 percent in the intelligence community. A selection of results from the Index appear below.

This panel includes experts with actual experience in the matter at hand, rather than agenda-driven think tank academics, and ideologically-driven operatives representing other countries’ interests. Among their observations:

--Fully 91 percent say the world is becoming more dangerous for Americans and the United States, up 10 percentage points since February.

--Eighty-four percent do not believe the United States is winning the war on terror, an increase of 9 percentage points from six months ago.

--More than 80 percent expect a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 within a decade, a result that is more or less unchanged from one year ago.

--Ninety-one percent of the index’s experts said the war in Iraq negatively affects U.S. national security, an increase of 5 percentage points from a year ago. Negative perceptions of the war in Iraq are shared across the political spectrum, with 84 percent of those who describe themselves as conservative taking a dim view of the war’s impact.

--More than half say the surge is having a negative impact on U.S. national security, up 22 percentage points from just six months ago. This sentiment was shared across party lines, with 64 percent of conservative experts saying the surge is having either a negative impact or no impact at all.

--Sixty-eight percent favor redeploying U.S. forces from Iraq during the next 18 months. One in 5, including 25 percent of conservatives, now favor an immediate withdrawal.

--Only 12 percent believe that terrorist attacks would occur in the United States as a direct result of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. Eighty-eight percent of the experts said that either such a scenario was unlikely or that they see no connection between a troop withdrawal from Iraq and terrorist attacks inside the United States.

--Though a majority—83 percent—do not believe Tehran when it says its nuclear program is intended for peaceful, civilian purposes, just 8 percent favor military strikes in response. Eight in 10, on the other hand, say the United States should use either sanctions or diplomatic talks to negotiate an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

A grateful tip of the too-small Kevlar helmet to IraqSlogger, a very useful Iraq news resource, which will slip behind a prohibitively expensive paywall on September 1st. We regret their service will no longer be available to the average reader who is interested in this area which is vitally important to the nation’s survival.

Last year Senator Joe Lieberman (R-Tel Aviv) started beating the war drum against Iran.

While we are naturally focused on Iraq, a larger war is emerging. On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States. … This bloodshed, moreover, is not the inevitable product of ancient hatreds. It is the predictable consequence of a failure to ensure basic security and, equally important, of a conscious strategy by al-Qaeda and Iran, which have systematically aimed to undermine Iraq's fragile political center. … Radical Islamist terrorist groups, both Sunni and Shiite, would reap victories simultaneously symbolic and tangible, as Iraq became a safe haven in which to train and strengthen their foot soldiers and Iran's terrorist agents.

Well, one would naturally wonder why Whining Joe is agitating for a third war when we can’t handle what we have on our plate right now. We get all the news from Iraq, and it’s all bad, if you ignore the MNF-I propaganda abut finding 217 weapons with Iranian markings in Iraq.

Also last year, Glenn Greenwald pointed out that this certainly wasn’t the reason for Senator Lieberman’s call to war:

Initially, it must be emphasized that whatever his reason is, it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the sentiments expressed by Israel's newest cabinet minister, Avigdor Lieberman (whose duties include strategic affairs and Iran) when he visited the U.S. earlier this month and gave an interview to The New York Times:

“Our first task is to convince Western countries to adopt a tough approach to the Iranian problem,” which he called “the biggest threat facing the Jewish people since the Second World War.” [Minister] Lieberman insisted that negotiations with Iran were worthless: “The dialogue with Iran will be a 100-percent failure, just like it was with North Korea.””

And it certainly wasn’t this:

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Friday compared Iran's nuclear ambitions and threats against Israel with the policies of Nazi Germany and criticized world leaders who maintain relations with Iran's president. . . .

Israel has identified Iran as the greatest threat to the Jewish state. Israel's concerns have heightened since the election of Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who frequently calls for the destruction of Israel and has questioned whether the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews took place.

"We hear echoes of those very voices that started to spread across the world in the 1930s," Olmert said in his speech at the Yad Vashem memorial.

Senator Joe Lieberman succeeded in getting us onto a war footing against Iran. Shamefully, the vote was almost unanimous.

Now the Secretary of Vengeance (h/t Bill in Portland) has received new instructions from Bibi Netanyahu: The enemy is Syria.

The United States is at last making significant progress against al Qaeda in Iraq--but the road to victory now requires cutting off al Qaeda's road to Iraq through Damascus.

Thanks to Gen. David Petraeus's new counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, and the strength and skill of the American soldiers fighting there, al Qaeda in Iraq is now being routed from its former strongholds in Anbar and Diyala provinces.
…
Recently declassified American intelligence reveals just how much al Qaeda in Iraq is dependent for its survival on the support it receives from the broader, global al Qaeda network, and how most of that support flows into Iraq through one country--Syria. Al Qaeda in Iraq is sustained by a transnational network of facilitators and human smugglers, who replenish its supply of suicide bombers--approximately 60 to 80 Islamist extremists, recruited every month from across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and sent to meet their al Qaeda handlers in Syria, from where they are taken to Iraq to blow themselves up to kill countless others.

That’s right. The attack against Iran now being in the bag, it’s time to start agitating against Syria. Those evil Syrians are threatening our glorious victory in Iraq! Approximately 60 to 80 foreign fighters a month are all that’s stopping us from finding the ponies WMDs!

Before al Qaeda's foreign fighters can make their way across the Syrian border into Iraq, however, they must first reach Syria--and the overwhelming majority does so, according to U.S. intelligence estimates, by flying into Damascus International Airport, making the airport the central hub of al Qaeda travel in the Middle East, and the most vulnerable chokepoint in al Qaeda's war against Iraq and the U.S. in Iraq.

We can look forward confidently to GEN Petraeus, LTG Ray Odierno, MG Rick Lynch, and BG Kevin Bergner now rotating daily accusations against Syria, warning that something must be done to stop the suicide bombers.

The very first thing in Syria we must bomb is Damascus Airport. Only after we have destroyed that airport (and perhaps the surrounding 20 or 30 square miles, in case they have some camouflaged runways we don’t know about,) can we win in Iraq!

Prediction: after the Likud Party has engineered the destruction of Iran and Syria they will start moaning about those foreign fighters again, and specifically mentioning that more than half of them are Saudis.

There is a story developing in the south of Iraq which will have serious consequences for our occupation of that conquered country.

The British Army has been defeated in Iraq and left with no option but to retreat from the country, claims radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Violent resistance and a rising death toll among UK troops has forced a withdrawal, he said in an interview with The Independent.

"The British have given-up and they know they will be leaving Iraq soon," Mr Sadr said. "They are retreating because of the resistance they have faced. Without that, they would have stayed for much longer, there is no doubt."

The young nationalist cleric heads Iraq's largest Arab grassroots political movement, and its powerful military wing, the Mehdi army. It has clashed frequently with British forces in southern Iraq, most recently in the battle for power over the oil-rich port city of Basra. Scores of British soldiers have been killed and wounded by Sadrist militants.

The signs have been plain for all to see. As Britain has handed over some of the governates and provinces in the area it was assigned to pacify and occupy, attacks against British troops have increased. They British forces are now principally confined to the Basra area.

At the beginning of the year, Britain had just over 7,000 troops in two provinces of southeastern Iraq. Current force strength is down to 5,500, confined to two main bases, Basra airport and the Basra Palace, which is under siege. Another reduction to 5,000 is expected this summer. Any additional cuts would be part of a complete withdrawal. Defence secretary Des Browne said last week that further reductions had not been decided upon and would only take place in agreement with the Americans.

Take this with a grain of salt. Gordon Brown is not Tony Blair. He comes from a different social and political background and it’s fair to say he won’t see the “special relationship” with the US quite the same way. It’s certain he and his ministers view George Bu$h with far less than the adolescent worship Mr Blair espoused. When domestic political pressure becomes too costly, Mr Brown will order a withdrawal.

Moqtada al-Sadr:

"The British have realised this is not a war they should be fighting or one they can win," Mr Sadr said. "The Mehdi army has played an important role in that." He also warned that Britain's involvement in the invasion of Iraq had made the UK a less safe place to live. "The British put their soldiers in a dangerous position by sending them here but they also put the people in their own country in danger," he said. "They have made enemies among all Muslims and they now face attacks at home because of their war. That was their mistake."

Britain’s society is different, and there is less economic opportunity. Muslim immigrants to the US seem to dedicate themselves to getting ahead and building a future, no matter what the xenophobic masturbations of the international Caliphate our never-right might ordain. I don’t want to say we don’t have sleeper cells of martyrs in this country. We haven’t seen any evidence of that, and given the easy access to guns we might well have seen that, rather than winger psychos blowing up abortion clinics and shooting people on school campuses.

The British are leaving Basra. Depend on it. It vastly complicates the continued American occupation of Iraq. There is another, connected Independent article today about that.

Last month Gordon Brown said after meeting George Bush at Camp David that the decision to hand over security in Basra province – the last of the four held by the British – "will be made on the military advice of our commanders on the ground". He added: "Whatever happens, we will make a full statement to Parliament when it returns [in October]."

Two generals told The Independent on Sunday last week that the military advice given to the Prime Minister was, "We've done what we can in the south [of Iraq]". Commanders want to hand over Basra Palace – where 500 British troops are subjected to up to 60 rocket and mortar strikes a day, and resupply convoys have been described as "nightly suicide missions" – by the end of August. The withdrawal of 500 soldiers has already been announced by the Government. The Army is drawing up plans to "reposture" the 5,000 that will be left at Basra airport, and aims to bring the bulk of them home in the next few months.

It looks as if Mr Brown also listens to his commanders, the difference being they tell him what is and not what he wants to hear. But the loss of a heavy brigade of troops positioned to guard our logistic lines is a serious threat. Sixty rocket and mortar attacks daily is actually more like a state of siege.

The Americans are very unhappy, of course, and MNF-I and CENTCOM especially have been saying the British were “defeated.” That may or may not be accurate, since our generals are in denial about progress (or lack of progress) in the north.

American criticism of Britain's desire to pull back in southern Iraq has recently become public, with a US intelligence official telling The Washington Post this month that "the British have basically been defeated in the south". A senior British commander countered, "That's to miss the point. It was never that kind of battle, in which we set out to defeat an enemy." Other officers said the British force was never configured to "clear and hold" Basra in the way the Americans are seeking to do in Baghdad.

Somehow the British got the idea that their job was to train Iraqis to govern their own provinces and learn to defend themselves. No one from the Likud Party explained it all to them.

Immediate American discontent is said to centre on the CIA's reluctance to leave Basra Palace, an important base for watching Iran, which may explain why Britain has held on to the complex until now. But last week it was reported that US intelligence operatives were in the process of pulling out. Further ahead, the US is concerned over the security of its vital supply line from Kuwait, with some American commanders saying that if the British withdraw, American troops will have to be sent south to replace them. As the hub of Iraq's oil industry, Basra is also a tempting prize for the Shia militias battling each other for control.

If the CIA is abandoning a prime listening post, we’re about to see some momentous changes. Having to spread our already over-stretched forces even farther will be a terrific problem. For one thing it could spell death to the 15 month tours as I speculated here.

Here are the facts: George Bu$h will not allow one soldier to be withdrawn while he occupies our Oval Office. Not one. In fact, he is going to insist on a larger presence in Iraq, and the Joint Chiefs will be ordered to make it happen. That means that the current 15 month deployments will become 18 months for the Army, and the just-increased 12 month deployments for the Marines will jump to 15 months. Twelve month down times at home will be shortened to nine months. Several thousand more sailors and airmen will be retrained as infantrymen, military policemen and convoy guards.

Without the British to cover our flanks we’ll need increased convoy guards to maintain our supply lines. Good thing they’re planning to add more retrained sailors and airmen into the sandbox. And the chance to put armed troops on still more of the Iraq/Iran border is just too good to be missed. That will mean greater opportunities to get their war on with Iran.

According to this morning’s NY Times the French are again interested in… doing something in the Middle East.

BAGHDAD, Aug. 19 — Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, arrived in Baghdad on Sunday on the highest-level visit by a French official to Iraq since the 2003 invasion.

The French Foreign Ministry said the surprise trip by Mr. Kouchner, a former United Nations administrator for Kosovo and a founder of Doctors Without Borders, was at the invitation of Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani. A ministry statement said Mr. Kouchner was in Baghdad “to express a French message of solidarity with the Iraqi people and to listen to the representatives of all communities.”

Expressing solidarity is all well and good. More importantly will they be able to exert any influence on the Sunnis to participate in the “newest” Iraq government that they have voluntarily frozen themselves out of? Comments by President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki seemed to have welcomed their participation, but when the Sunni declined to participate last week, the Shiites and Kurds went right ahead without them. Isolating 20% of the citizenry is a surefire way of bringing democracy to the Middle East.

Also in this story: MG Rick Lynch has insisted that the evil Iranians are participating in training Iraqi resisters. He says he happens to know that 50 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have been training Iraqis to fire mortars and rocket launchers.

In Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the American commander in charge of districts south of the capital, said that 50 members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps were operating in his area, training Shiite militias in how to use mortars and rocket launchers.

General Lynch conceded that no Revolutionary Guard members had been captured in his region but said that 217 weapons with Iranian markings had been seized since April. The accusations came days after United States officials said the White House might list the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.

Not 48. Not 53. 50.

And they’re training people who’ve been resisting our occupation for four years? Does the Iraqi resistance not know how to train themselves? We’ve taken a lot of casualties from mortars over the last four years, and now MG Lynch has decided this was pure accident? I’m just a brokedown ole sergeant but I really think this is just one more example of the “Iran delenda est” syndrome that is making Mr Bu$h’s nose quiver.

IraqSlogger casually notes, “No members of the Revolutionary Guard have been captured, the general conceded, but 217 weapons with Iranian markings have been seized since April.”

A cynical man would note that Bill Kristol wasn’t on national television yesterday to advocate for unprovoked nuclear attacks against Iran, and his good friend General Lynch felt obliged to keep up the WAR! pressure.

And, hey! We somehow “lost” 190,000 AKs in Iraq. They were all made in the Balkans. When they start surfacing (and they will) on the streets of Iraq will there be a sudden demand for mushroom clouds over Belgrade? Or was this just General Lynch’s way of barking to get Mr Bu$h’s attention, and a recommendation for a promotion? After all, 217 weapons…. Obviously the evil Iranians are guilty as sin.

The WaPo also covers this invisible Iranian trainer story with a bit of finesse.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, who commands U.S. operations south of Baghdad, said the men were sent by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps -- a military branch that the U.S. government has decided to label a "specially designated global terrorist" -- to train Shiite insurgents in firing mortars and rockets.

As a historical note, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is actually part of the national armed forces. This marks the first time the US Government has ever designated a state actor as a terrorist organization. This would be like North Korea designating the Marine Corps a terrorist organization

The Likudniks must really be leaning on Mr Cheney to get the war on, and save Israel.

Lynch said that no Iranians have been captured in his area of command and that U.S. troops have never found any illegal weapons in two months of patrolling 125 miles of the Iran-Iraq border.

But he said that the number of Iranian-made explosively formed penetrators -- sophisticated roadside bombs built to puncture the armor on Humvees -- has increased dramatically in recent months, while the accuracy of Shiite extremists' bombs and mortars has improved significantly.

"The enemy is more aggressive than it used to be and, candidly, in many cases he is more lethal," Lynch said.

Well, there ya go, then. They're getting more proficient so obviously they're getting outside help. After all, we American exceptionalists know the Iraqis, who are Arabs, are useless by themselves and can't do squat without external help. Damn those evil Persian Iranians!

Lynch also said Sunni insurgents are using Iranian weapons in southern Iraq, though he said he did not know how the weapons were obtained. More than 90 percent of Iran's population is Shiite, making it unlikely that the Tehran leadership would support Sunni fighters. One possibility, Lynch said, is that Shiites are selling the Iranian weapons on the black market in Iraq.

"I don't know how, but I know for a fact that Iranian munitions are making their way into the hands of Sunni insurgents," Lynch said.

He knows they're getting weapons to the Sunnis, their sworn blood enemies for 1,300 years, and he hasn't quite worked out the Iranians wouldn't give Sunnis a life preserver. I suppose the possibility that the Saudis are buying them on the black market and giving them to the Sunnis is politically impossible in Bu$h BizarroWorld.

Stirling Newberry clarifies the War of the Bridges with a different focus:

A guerilla army must first neutralize the major military force's advantages of logistics, mobility and firepower, immobilize the major military force, it then procedes [sic] to bleed the major military force and finally shatter the brittle points in the major military force's ability to hold territory and critical points. First don't get killed, then fix in place, then put vulnerable points in exposed positions, and then deliver attacks with disproportionate effect. The occupation will end when the potential profits from the occupation are higher than the costs. Even if the major military force is "winning" on the ground, the key is to deny them the profits of occupation against the costs.

Fade-fix-bleed-shatter is the cycle of guerilla strategy. The major military has the inverse doctrine: ICA (Isolate, Concentrate, Annihilate).

The in the case of the guerilla force, one of the most important processes then, is to grind down the […] combat readiness of individual soldiers in the military. Since defeating a guerilla force requires vigilance and attention, fatigue is a powerful weapon. As importantly, the guerilla war cycle constantly tests the judgment of the people involved. Judgment is the mental capacity which is most clearly degraded by fatigue: the ability to rapidly make choices based on the weighing of large numbers of initially uncorrelated perceptions and pieces of information. As judgment of the major military force degrades, its collateral damage increases, its ability to separate the guerilla force from civilian population decre[a]ses, its ability to take advantage of temporary concentrations of guerillas decreases.

In short, judgment is the crucial quality which allows the major military to occupy, isolate, concentrate. The major military must then maintain judgment in the same way it maintains any other crucial form of readiness.

A surge is a term for a temporary increase in power, in military cases, manpower. This means that the present surge is created and maintained by holding forces in country longer, and by speeding up deployment of forces already scheduled to be sent. As with the 2004 surge with the Fallujah campaign, it has been a dismal failure at the military objectives. According the available information, the US has not secured any of Baghdad. The military situation is, still, a complete stalemate. This is because the very objective of the "surge" was counter to basic doctrine: land is not the key objective. Since Baghdad cannot be physically isolated from the rest of Iraq, removing guerillas from one part of the city merely means they can move to some other part.

It his however burning out the capacity of the occupation forces, and as importantly, it is being paid for by the commensurate reduction in Afghanistan. We are fighting two wars in the Middle East, and losing both of them. It is important to remember that Afghanistan has approximately the same population as Iraq. The basic security requirements will take the same amount of manpower, and since the government that was overthrown by the initial invasion was a cohesive political force, in the long term, the need for political change is going to drive security arrangements.

Mr Newberry’s points, especially the economic implications, are well-taken, although I would argue that control of land is essential to a successful occupation. Implicit with that phrase is the concept of controlling the movement of people. This control can be overt: a system of concentric controls: roadblocks, registration tables, document exam points, and the like. These are signs of an oppressive occupation, and the change to this system from a form of open passage can be understood to be an admission of a failing occupation. The recently announced plan to require all Baghdadis (and eventually all Iraqis) to be biometrically registered and issued with an ID card is the most egregious indicator yet of both the Bu$h malAdministration’s failure in Iraq and its original malign intent. The most recent excuse for conquest – the imposition of “democracy” (at the point of the gun barrel) falls into the trash heap of all the other excuses because of this requirement. Free people living under a democracy do not need roadblocks, identity checkpoints, and infallible ID cards. These are the tools of the oppressive occupier and the dictator.

Soldiers engaged in the oppression of occupation are doing the work of policemen and are unable to do the work they should properly be engaged in: the eradication of armed resistance. The (US) policemen that should be occupying are engaged in protecting logistic convoys to supply the troops. These forces are unequal to the task, and are being reinforced by sailors and airmen. The soldiers’ footsteps as they march run away from Army careers will be echoed by sailors and airmen who have been drafted into assignments they did not enlist for. Thus the failed imperial ambitions of a failed administration will create outward spreading ripples engulfing the other services.

The “surge” to gain control of Baghdad has failed. Because of poor planning its avowed purpose, controlling the Sunni resistance, has failed as the resistance leaders and an estimated 80% of the fighters melted away to surface in another province and continue their struggle there. The “surge” has degenerated into as many attacks against the Sadr Army as can be made, along with an unremitting propaganda campaign against Iran, in a foolish attempt to goad that country into precipitate action. After all, a White House befuddled and humiliated by the inability of a military to occupy, a mission it isn’t trained, equipped or qualified for, might as well start another war of conquest in order to quiet domestic criticism.

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