Basra And Beyond

By Cernig

There are a couple of worth-a-reads on the situation in Iraq today. I particularly recommend James Joyner:

The parallels between this action and the Israeli’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon to take on Hezbollah are striking. In both cases, the party that initiated the escalation into high level conflict inflicted substantial damage on their adversary and were able to claim military victory. At the same time, neither came anywhere close to achieving their political objectives. In assessing the 2006 action, I concluded that Israel therefore lost. Absent substantial new information, I’d have to conclude that Maliki was the loser here for the same reason.

While Kevin Drum, in two posts, draws attention to the Iranian connection. Following reports that senior Iraqi government negotiators were asking the Iranians to intercede with Sadr on Maliki's behalf even as Maliki was spouting his "never retreat, never surrender" rhetoric and claiming that the Sadrists were worse than Al Qaeda, Kevin writes:

the head of the Badr Organization sure does seem to have, um, remarkably speedy access to the head of Iran's Qods force, doesn't he? It's something to ponder the next time some Bush administration or U.S. Army spokesperson casually maligns Sadr as "Iranian backed" but maintains a discreet silence when it comes to the far deeper and longer-lived Iranian ties of Maliki's own Dawa/Badr alliance. Just sayin'.

and also gives his opinion on the winners and losers.

it was Maliki who went to Sadr, not the other way around, and that he did it several days ago. What's more, it was Sadr who laid down the conditions for an end to the violence, not Maliki. This is pretty plainly at odds with the theory that Sadr's statement was a show of weakness, a sign that he was taking more damage than he could stand and was desperate for a truce.

In urban warfare like this it's frequently hard to figure out who's "won" and who's "lost." Often both sides lose. In this case, though, it certainly looks as if Maliki has lost more than Sadr. Both sides have taken casualties, but Sadr doesn't appear to have lost any ground; he's forced Maliki to come to him to ask for terms; he's successfully projected a statesmanlike image throughout; and politically he seems to be in stronger shape than before. Maliki, conversely, appears by all accounts to have launched an ill-timed mission with inadequate troops and then been unable to close the deal. The Iraqi army and the redoubtable Gen. Mohan al-Furayji, the much lauded leader of the regular forces in Basra, are both looking pretty banged up in the bargain too.

This could all change tomorrow, but right now that's about where we stand. It's increasingly hard to see how the Basra offensive ends up being a plus for Maliki and his allies. Including us, unfortunately.

But looking beyond Basra today, it's Anthony Cordesman that provides the "must read".

Much of the reporting on this fighting in Basra and Baghdad — which was initiated by the Iraqi government — assumes that Mr. Sadr and his militia are the bad guys who are out to spoil the peace, and that the government forces are the legitimate side trying to bring order. This is a dangerous oversimplification, and one that the United States needs to be far more careful about endorsing.

There is no question that many elements of the Mahdi Army have been guilty of sectarian cleansing, that the Sadr movement is hostile to the United States, that some of its extremists have continued acts of violence in spite of the cease-fire Mr. Sadr declared last summer, and that some of these rogue elements have ties to Iran. No one should romanticize the Sadr movement, understate the risks it presents or ignore the violent radicals in the Mahdi Army.

But it is equally important not to romanticize Mr. Maliki, the Dawa Party or the Islamic Supreme Council. The current fighting, which the government portrays as a crackdown on criminality, is better seen as a power grab, an effort by Mr. Maliki and the most powerful Shiite political parties to establish their authority over Basra and the parts of Baghdad that have eluded their grasp.

Moreover, Mr. Maliki’s gamble has already dragged American forces part-way into the fight, including airstrikes in Basra. Striking at violent, rogue elements in the Mahdi Army is one thing, but engaging the entire Sadr movement is quite another. The official cease-fire that has kept the mainstream Mahdi Army from engaging government and United States forces may well be rescinded if the government’s assault continues.

This looming power struggle was all too clear when I was in Iraq last month. The Supreme Council was the power behind the Shiite governorates in the south and was steadily expanding its influence over the Iraqi police. It was clearly positioning itself to counter Mr. Sadr’s popular support and preparing for the provincial elections scheduled for Oct. 1.

American military and civilian officials were candid in telling me that the governors and other local officials installed by the central government in Basra and elsewhere in southern Iraq had no popular base. If open local and provincial elections were held, they said, Dawa and the Islamic Supreme Council were likely to be routed because they were seen as having failed to bring development and government services.

He calls the situation "a civil war Iraq can't win" - and if the Iraqi people, as opposed to the power-players, won't be winners then you can be pretty certain that the US occupation isn't going to come out ahead either.

So far, it appears that the widespread open Shiite civil war that it looked like Maliki had begun is again on the backburner - for now - but Cordesman's analysis of the situation still provides the underlying warp and weft going forward into regional elections. That underlying power struggle will find its expression somehow, somewhere. My guess is that, having tried and failed to harness the power of the State to impose their own rule, the Dawa and SIIC parties will now turn to militias and ballot-rigging to try to salvage their positions before the regional elections. That in itself might well re-ignite violence on a larger scale but what is certain is that there's no defusing this slow-burn civil war.

Cordesman also notes the other two main currents in Iraq which could also flare into violence:

One is that the Sunni tribes and militias that have been cooperating with the Americans could turn against the central government. The second is that the struggle among Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and other ethnic groups to control territory in the north could lead to fighting in Kirkuk, Mosul or other areas.

and while everyone has had their attention on the South, it's worth noting Walter Pincus in the WaPo who has kept watching the Sunni "Awakening" and writes that the US is increasingly uncertain about the future of the "Sons of Iraq".

At a Pentagon briefing last Wednesday, the commander of the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Diyala province, Col. Jon Lehr, told reporters via videoconference that the Sons of Iraq "are not a permanent security solution," although, he added, "they have been an integral part of our strategy."

...as Lehr put it last week, "not all Sons of Iraq are created equally." In Diyala, the local Sons of Iraq groups have split in two. "One is a tribally based," he said. "They tend to be associated with rural areas . . . [and] are there to protect their villages. " The other half, which he described as "the politically based ones," are in Baqubah, the province's main city of about 300,000, which less than a year ago was considered an al-Qaeda-driven battleground.

Baqubah's Sons of Iraq came from the 1920s Revolutionary Brigade, which earlier had been responsible not only for killing American soldiers but also for kidnapping a U.S. Marine. Others are from Hamas in Iraq, a Sunni insurgent faction that had broken away from the 1920s Brigade. And there are also some from mujaheddin made up of former Saddam Hussein loyalists.

That divide isn't getting much attention in op-ed columns - just as trhe Shiite divide didn't until it exploded in open conflict. And US officers seem divided on the future of the Awakening going forward too.

The question now is what happens to the Sons of Iraq in the long run. "They were a means to an end," Lehr said. "So what we're attempting to do right now is find employment for the men." He said some could be absorbed into Iraqi security forces -- primarily the police and some in the army.

But Gen. David H. Petraeus, interviewed on National Public Radio on March 19, the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion, was more cautious. "There are understandable concerns on the part of a government that is majority Shiite that, what they [would be] doing was hiring former Sunni insurgents, giving them a new lease on life, and that when this is all said and done they may turn against the government or the Shiite population," he said.

Col. Michael Fuller, chief of staff of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, gave a different view during a Pentagon news conference Thursday. "Many of them are not qualified physically to join the Iraqi security forces because they're old, they're infirmed -- whatever the case may be." Nonetheless, he said he expects the Baghdad government to incorporate about 20 percent of them into the Iraqi security forces over time.

For the rest, said Fuller, whose job is to help the Iraq Defense and Interior ministries develop their forces, the government is "looking at programs much like our vo-tech schools, to get them trained . . . [so] they have a viable employment alternative that will keep them off the streets and out of criminal activities, if that's all they feel like they've got to fall back on."

"Conceptually," he added, the government of Iraq has agreed to begin picking up the costs associated with the Sons of Iraq. "We've just got to make sure that we have the conditions set to make sure they do it successfully and it doesn't become something that causes the Sons of Iraq to quit what they're doing," he said.

Petraeus, however, had the final word. In the end, he said, the Sons of Iraq would stay loyal to the course the United States has set "as long as it is in their interests."

Does anyone actually believe that the leaders of the "political" and "tribal" currents of the Awakening will regard having their forces cut to a fifth of their present strength, while the rest become street-sweepers and mechanics, will be in their own interests - especially given the evidence this last week that Maliki and his allies are quite willing to co-opt State military force to attempt to further theirs? Well, maybe some of the US cheerleading set do - but the rest of us should be looking for yet another explosive fracture at some stage in the future.

In The Midst Of His Army, Maliki Guarded By US Soldiers

By Cernig

This will do for a metaphor of all that's gone wrong with Bush's Iraqi project:

The U.S. military raised its profile in Basra still further, providing protection for installations including the palace where al-Maliki is housed, Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said.

This, mind you, in the middle of his most trusted and battle-ready division of troops.

The paragraphs of this McClatchy report that go before this remarkable admission about a puppet ruler and his unreliable army are hardly less troublesome.

After failing to break the resistance of Shiite militias in the five-day siege of oil-rich Basra, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sent a top general to hold talks with his Shiite rival, Muqtada al-Sadr, on Saturday night only to be rebuffed by the anti-American cleric, an Iraqi official close to the negotiations said.

Al-Maliki denounced Shiite militants in Basra as the equivalent of al-Qaida, and al-Sadr told his supporters not to hand over their arms to a puppet state of the United States.

The diplomatic initiative and the harsh rebuff further eroded expectations for a successful outcome to the offensive, which al-Maliki is personally directing from the presidential palace in Basra. It was not the only sign of problems.

Al-Maliki issued orders Friday to enlist volunteers for the battle against the Shiite militias, and his Dawa party sought to enlist fighters.

The Dawa party has never had a major militia of its own, relying instead upon the Badr Brigades of its SCIRI ally, who make up the bulk of recruits to the 14th Army Division Maliki led into Basra. That it has apparently decided it now needs one says as little about Maliki's stability in power as his sending a negotiating emmisary to the Sadrists at the same time as he's publicly claiming there will be no negotiation and no backing down.

The circumstances in which the negotiations with al-Sadr took place suggested the government is no longer able to dictate the terms of an agreement with al-Sadr but now must seek a deal. Gen. Hussein al-Assadi, a Baghdad-based commander, traveled to Najaf to call on the head of al-Sadr's political bureau there, Lewaa Smaisam.

From his office, the two men telephoned al-Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran. But they could not reach agreement, an official close to the negotiations said. He would not give his name due to the sensitivity of the subject.

Shortly after the talks broke down, the Iraqi government extended its curfew in Baghdad indefinitely. Earlier Saturday, al-Sadr directed his followers not to lay down their weapons, a snub of al-Maliki's offer to militias Friday to pay for arms if they would hand them over within 10 days.

So much for the Surge. Baghdad's curfew is extended until further notice. Much of Basra - where US special forces are also now involved directly in the fighting - remains in the hands of Sadr's Mahdi militiamen.

The United States confirmed on Sunday that US special forces units were operating alongside Iraqi government troops in Basra, where the government is battling militants loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

A US military statement described a joint raid by Iraqi and US special forces units which killed 22 suspected militants, including "16 criminal fighters" strafed in an air strike on three houses.

The raid showed US forces are being drawn deeper into the Iraqi-led crackdown, launched on Tuesday by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Basra, Iraq's second-biggest city.

The Iraqi special forces team killed four suspected militants in a house and two on a roof before calling in the air strike, the statement said.

Local Sadrist and Basra police (also likely Sadrist) sources are saying many of the casualties in this and other air strikes are civilians, of course. The US has played this game before, always claiming every dead body as a confirmed insurgent and every arrested one as a suspected insurgent. But the description for not having sufficient boots on the ground to take on a couple of hundred militiamen in a city of over two million, and thus relying on air power and artillery, is always going to be "collateral damage". Iraqi TV stations are describing dead civilians in this and other strikes as "martyrs".

Meanwhile, the British have confined themselves to a checkpoint outside the city and one artillery strike in supprt of Maliki's forces.

"We've had ground forces outside the wire assisting Iraqi forces. There are no British ground forces inside the city of Basra," spokesman Major Tom Holloway said by telephone. "As yet there is no intent to push British armour into the city."

The British military have worked out faster than the US that Maliki's politically-motivated offensive is designed to drag the occupying powers into providing continuing bodyguarding for his government and his own ass.

Killing The UN

By Cernig

I wrote yesterday that McCain's proposed League of Democracies was a way of doing an end run around the UN by creating a new US-led body to provide a facade of international approval to new interventions and "preventative" wars.

Today, Krauthammer confirmed that this part of McCain's foreign policy plan is right out of the neocon playbook.

Well, I like the idea of the league of democracies, and only in part because I and others had proposed it about six years ago. What I like about it, it’s got a hidden agenda. It looks as if it’s all about listening and joining with allies, all the kind of stuff you’d hear a John Kerry say, except that the idea here, which McCain can’t say, but I can, is to essentially kill the U.N.

Think Progress has the video - and also notes that Krauthammer first proposed this League six years ago, so he would know its true purpose.

The UN comes in for a lot of criticism from Americans, but other than the lost 20-something percenters I think they'd mostly agree that it perhaps needs some reform but should still be kept around as the primary international forum. If voting for McCain was clearly labelled as a vote for disbanding the UN, a lot of people would balk. That's why McCain has to pretend that he'd just be adding another body to international diplomacy.

And if McCain dares to invoke Churchill, the greatest defender of a strong UN, anytime in the future I may just puke.

Update Kevin Sullivan, the most right-leaning "liberal" in the blogosphere, wouldn't attend the UN's funeral and James Joyner seems to think a different, democratic, alternative would be better for U.S. interests than the UN is, writing that "Attempting to get that business done through a smaller coalition of more like-minded states only makes sense, and it’s a far sight better than either going it alone or waiting on the UN to achieve consensus."

But here's the rub - what happens when the League of Democracies tries to impose its authority on a non-democracy and the latter says it doesn’t recognise the authority of a body it hasn’t been invited to send representatives to and has no voice at?

We bomb them?

McCain - Centrist Or Wingnut?

By Cernig

Think Progress has the text of John McCain's latest key speech - on foreign policy and to be delivered to the Los Angeles World Council.

He appears to be trying to span the divide between his wingnut base and the rest of America - and doing so badly.

The speech begins with an implicit appeal to genetic heritability of leadership quality.

When I was five years old, a car pulled up in front of our house in New London, Connecticut, and a Navy officer rolled down the window, and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. My father immediately left for the submarine base where he was stationed. I rarely saw him again for four years. My grandfather, who commanded the fast carrier task force under Admiral Halsey, came home from the war exhausted from the burdens he had borne, and died the next day.

And I suppose if you're one of those Religious Right wingnuts who don't believe in evolution (and thus genetics), you might think that such qualities can be inherited as the gift of the Sky Spook or achieved by osmosis. For the rest of us...nope.

But he then goes on to appeal to those Religious Right wingnuts and neoconservative wingnuts both with a bit about Manifest Destiny and Harry Truman.

President Harry Truman once said of America, “God has created us and brought us to our present position of power and strength for some great purpose.” In his time, that purpose was to contain Communism and build the structures of peace and prosperity that could provide safe passage through the Cold War. Now it is our turn.

Of course, now the reason "God has blah, blah" is to fight Islamofascism and Islam in general - the "transcendent challenge of our time". It's all pablum for the scared-of-brown-people base.

Then he gets into his policy prescriptions, and here he really wanders of the reservation. One wonders how those on the far Right who are holding their noses while marching in lockstep are going to (privately) react.

- A new League of Democracies which presumably will mean the U.S. can ignore the UN. But if the new League doesn't like a U.S. proposal then the U.S. "must be willing to be persuaded by them". So much for the go-it-alone neocon dream of superpowerdom.

- A new Kyoto deal that America will back first and try to get China and India onboard for later (but still sign even if they don’t).

- Encourage support for the EU and…wait for it…a transatlantic Common Market (the CM was the predecessor of the EU)!

- Removal of border barriers to trade between South, Latin and North America.

- Unilateral nuclear stockpile reductions.

- Kicking Russia - who is on course to be the world's largest energy exporter - out of the G8 (and generally giving the Cold Shoulder to Russia on all fronts - back to the Cold War) but letting India and Brazil in.

But unlike Russia, oddly, "China and the United States are not destined to be adversaries". Must be all those U.S. notes China is holding. Or maybe the Boeing factory.

- A total ban on enhanced interrogation techniques. (For "suspected" terrorists, is the quibble word.)

- But…no withdrawal from Iraq ever until Iraqis forget their sectarian and factional divides and become a "peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic" state" that poses "no threat to neighbors" and contributes "to the defeat of terrorists". That's the McCain definition of victory. At the same time he wants to throw the Saudis and Egypt under the bus and take on Iran face first (based yet again on faulty translations of the words of an Iranian President who will be gone by 2013 at the latest and spurious claims that Iran has said it wants a nuke).

- So the U.S. under McCain will stay in Iraq while simultaneously pissing of both the main Islamic powerbases in the region. Can anybody say "Proxy Wars"? McCain obviously can't. Not even while the Surge goes into meltdown.

- The same criteria for victory to be applied to Afghanistan, although no mention of how that's to be achieved while about half of promised U.S. aid to that forgotten front goes unspent and what does get spent gets spent on U.S. based contractors who bring most of the money back home again.

The two parts of the speech - the Manifest-Destiny, Cold-War-Redux hard-Right BS and the almost-progressive definitely-centrist policy prescriptions, simply don't go together. It's as if two different speeches were written, one by McCain's neocon advisors and one by his paleocon "realist" team - and then some poor slob had the job of spot-welding the two together.

Oh, and as Fifth Estate points out in TP's comments, Straight Talk McCain is flirting with plagiarism and recycling old speeches as new ones. Right where the spot-weld is.

McCain today:

I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. The lives of a nation’s finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is loss the veteran remembers most keenly. Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.”

a) Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer, July 4 1996–Seawolf Assoc. speech :

“…to the Navy for sending us to war. At the same time, none of us feel that in Vietnam there is a romantic remembrance. War is awful and when nations seek to resolve their differences by fighting, a million tragedies ensue. Look at Bosnia today. The story line should be hatred and ignorance. War is wretched beyond description. Nothing, not the valor with which it is fought, nor the cause with which it serves can glorify war. Neither do we share the exhilaration of combat ”

b) McCain, speech at the RNC in NY, 2004
War is an awful business. The lives of a nation’s finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer. Commerce is disrupted, economies are damaged. Strategic interests shielded by years of statecraft are endangered as the demands of war and diplomacy conflict. However just the cause, we should shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us. But there is no avoiding this war. We tried that, and our reluctance cost us dearly. And while this war has many components, we can’t make victory on the battlefield harder to achieve so that our diplomacy is easier to conduct. That is not just an expression of our strength. It’s a measure of our wisdom.”

All in all, a speech that tried to appeal to two very different constituencies at total odds with one another - the hard Right and the rest of America - and will end up satisfying neither.

Update It's a recycling of a recycling! The HuffPo points to almost the exact same wording again, in a 2001 WSJ op-ed McCain wrote to drum up support for the war-of-choice in Iraq he'd been wanting for a decade. It appears originality isn't "maverick" McCain's strongpoint. Just war and more war. The HuffPo's Stein writes:

What these two, nearly identical, remarks suggest is that McCain's view of combat -- and, perhaps more importantly, its human costs -- has not really changed throughout the course of war. That is, despite five years of military operations in Iraq and more than 4,000 troop deaths, he still sees the "lives lost" and the "merciless realities" as necessary sacrifices to make.

It is a position that undoubtedly remains popular with a great number of primarily conservative voters. But it is also a sign of an unbending, almost stubborn, nature on the war that McCain's critics will certainly hold over his head during the presidential campaign.

You betcha. Because "Shed a tear, and then get on with the business of killing our enemies as quickly as we can, and as ruthlessly as we must" just doesn't cut it when the enemies are ones of choice. It's illegal warmongering, plain and simple, and more than just a solitary tear should be shed to compensate for the blood on the hands of McCain and the other warmongers. A Nuremberg Trial is what is called for.

Update 2 It's a recycling of a recycling of a recycling! Think Progress now notes that the good Rear Admiral appears to have copied his words from an even earlier speech by McCain - back in the 90's, no less. Rinse and repeat.

The Uncommitted Republican

By Cernig

Chuck Hagel is almost the model of a sane and moderate Republican, the kind we Lefties wish more of those across the political divide were like. He's also a decorated Vietnam veteran and a widely-respected moderately-conservative voice on American foreign policy. Which makes it interesting indeed that he won't endorse John McCain, citing fundamental foreign policy disagreements. ABC yesterday:

Sen. Chuck Hagel, R - Neb., said this morning he is not ready to endorse Sen. John McCain, R - Ariz., for president.

"I think endorsements, at least when I endorse someone, or when I work for someone, or commit to someone, I want to be behind that person in every way I can," Hagel said in an exclusive "This Week" interview.

Hagel pointed to their differing views over foreign policy in explaining his hesitation. "I've obviously got some differences with John on the Iraq war. That's no secret. I want to understand a little more about foreign policy, where he'd want to go. Certainly doesn't put me in Obama or Clinton's camp. But John and I have some pretty fundamental disagreements on the future of foreign policy," he said.

Like Hagel counts the Iraq occupation as one of the five biggest blunders in American history while McCain would be happy if it continued for another 100 years. Hagel thinks Bush's policy in Iraq is "ping pong game with American lives" while McCain wants more of the same. And despite the crowing of the pro-Surge crowd, who have ignored all Petraeus' warnings in their rush to cry "mission accomplished" once again, it looks like the window of opportunity is nearly closed and Hagel will be proven right.

Tensions are simmering again in once bloody Anbar province, Washington's prize good news story for security in Iraq.

Along the main road through Anbar's second city of Falluja, a former insurgent stronghold and scene of fierce battles with U.S. forces in 2004, markets and car workshops are re-opening for business.

But many say that growing anger at a lack of jobs, basic services and political progress threatens to shatter peace in the western province, which makes up about a third of Iraq.

"The situation till now is still not certain in Anbar, and the peace is only relative to before. Calm always comes before a storm," Sunni tribal leader Sheikh Yaseen al-Badrani said.

The U.S. military said in January it could transfer security responsibility for Anbar to Iraqi forces as early as this month, but now it is more cautious.

In an interview with Reuters, Major-General John Kelly, commander of U.S. forces in Anbar, would give no time-frame, saying only that the handover would take place soon.

Sunni tribal leaders, credited with cutting violence in Anbar by ordering their men to turn on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, are growing increasingly impatient with politicians.

"We thought that when security was established in Anbar, then the situation would turn to development and reconstruction, but we're surprised to see neglect from the government," said Kamal Nouri, a member of Anbar's tribal council.

Sawhar councilmen are already calling for a national strike of Awakening members - something the central government will either ignore or see as a threat to its authority. The first will see a slow return to insurgency of non-cooperative Sunni militias, the second will see that happen swiftly and explosively. At just the same time, Muqtada al-Sadr's feud with the central coalition of Dawa and SIIC parties has become impossible for Ayatollah Sistani to continually manage and defuse. There's a storm coming in.

I'm going to be called a doom-monger and defeatist by the pro-occupation Right for this, I know. They said the same when their belief that US troops would be greeted as liberators was questioned, when they were told that the insurgency was more complex than just Al Qaeda foreign fighters, when people wrote that the glaring gaps in the Iraqi constitution would lead to sectarian violence, when we said Mookie wasn't dead yet (repeatedly), when we said that the Sunni Awakening was an aliance of convenience...

A Special Relationship

By Cernig

Quote of the day via the UK's Channel Four News:

Mr Cheney, speaking to reporters after arriving in Jerusalem for a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said: "America's commitment to Israel's security is enduring and unshakeable.

"The United States will never pressure Israel to take steps that threaten its security.".

What, not ever, over anything no matter how small or how remote the threat?

The tail wags the dog, and the prospect of Middle East compromise gets shaken off like an unwanted flea.

Update The BBC and Associated Press follow up. Both think Cheney's more interested in bolstering Israel's campaign to have it's proxy superpower attack Iran on its behalf. The AP has some expert thoughts on ramifications for the peace process.

Edward Abbington, a former U.S. consul general in Jerusalem and now an adviser to Abbas, said the mood among the Palestinians in Ramallah was grim. Neither the Israelis or Palestinians are convinced that Cheney is an integral player in the peace process, he said.

"They told me when I was in Ramallah they had no idea why Cheney was even coming to see them," Abbington said. "The Israelis are more interested in what Cheney has to say about Iran and blessing their continued strikes against Gaza than anything he has to say about the peace process."

There are three other diplomatic initiatives aimed at achieving a peace deal that the United States has been tightlipped about. Russia has floated the idea of a Moscow conference as a follow-up to Annapolis. The Egyptians are playing middleman in a pair of negotiations between Israel and Hamas and between Hamas and Abbas' moderate Fatah party. Yemen also is working to mediate talks between Hamas and Fatah.

"I would not expect Cheney to have a lot to say about any of these, simply because while the U.S. attitude ranges between sharp suspicion and quiet acquiescence to these initiatives, they appear to be dying on their own," said Nathan Brown, an expert on Arab politics at George Washington University in Washington.

Gottle Of Geer

By Cernig

Via Jill from Brilliant at Breakfast (and I've stolen her graphic too), I see John McCain still has Joe Lieberman's hand up his ass and wood in his head.

When McCain made a foreign policy gaffe in Jordan on Tuesday, it was Sen. Joe Lieberman who quietly pointed out the mistake, giving McCain an opportunity to correct himself in front of the international press corps. In Israel yesterday, NBC’s Lauren Appelbaum reports, Lieberman once again intervened when McCain made an incorrect reference about the Jewish holiday Purim -- by calling the holiday "their version of Halloween here."

...Purim is not the equivalent of an Israeli Halloween, Appelbaum notes. The holiday -- although a joyous one -- commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in Persia were saved from mass execution. When Sen. Lieberman had a chance to speak at the press conference, he placed the blame of the mistake on himself. "I had a brief exchange with one of the mothers whose children was in there in a costume for Purim," Lieberman, who is Jewish and celebrates the holiday, said. "And it's my fault that I said to Senator McCain that this is the Israeli version of Halloween. It is in the sense because the kids dress up and it's a very happy holiday and actually it is in the sense that the sweets are very important of both holidays."

Jill notes:

It doesn't matter if Lieberman is trying to be a good little Sancho Panza here for McCain's Don Quixote, not when McCain seems to NEED Lieberman to do his thinking for him.

That was Tuesday. By Thursday, McCain was in London pressing flesh with socialists and anti-war conservatives. Oh, and promising to hold India and China to a global warming deal. I presume that means he intends holding the U.S. to one too. Are the rightwingers simply looking the other way in unison or is it that they're ignorant of McCain's plan? Or maybe they just know that McCain will say or do anything to try to look less like Bush (while abroad) and more like he has a functioning braincell (at any time), but they shouldn't take it seriously.

McCain As Ignorant As Dubya

By Cernig

George Bush declared today that he has not a single regret over the invasion and occupation of Iraq despite there being, by any objective tally, plenty of mistakes made and plenty of regret to go around. But John McCain seems to be competing to show that he's just the McSame when it comes to willful ignorance and pig-headed intransigence about the facts surrounding the War on (Some) terror. Josh Marshall nails him down today and speaks for me when he says that McCain is "Unfit for Duty":

Let me follow up on this McCain gaffe in which he got confused and claimed that al Qaeda was getting trained and equipped by Iran before doing mischief in Iraq, before being corrected by his senate colleague Joe Lieberman.

Let's start by stipulating that if Barack Obama had had this slip up it would be everywhere on the news for the next week. Pretty much the same if it had been Hillary Clinton.

But this is really just the tip of the iceberg with McCain. In almost every discussion of foreign policy, not just today but in previous years, what stands out is McCain's inability to see beyond the immediate issues of military tactics to any firm grasp of strategy or America's real vital interests. His free willingness to commit to a decades long occupation of Iraq is an example, his push for ground troops to be introduced during the Kosovo War is another. His refusal, almost inability, to grapple with the political failure of the surge is the most telling one if people will sift through its deeper implications.

The idea that fighting jihadists in Iraq or policing the country's sectarian and ethnic disputes is the calling of this century is one that is belied in virtually everything we see in flux in today's world and which seems certain to affect us through the rest of our lifetimes and our children's.

Josh notes McCain's willingness to continue Dubya's failed policies of spending money like a drunken sailor, fuelling the deficit at a time of recession, and his myopic concentration on short-term military solutions to long-term complex problems. Let's call it the Bigger Hammer Doctrine. He ends with:

[McCain] record actually shows he's one of the most dangerous people we could have in the Oval Office in coming years -- not just because he's a hothead in using the military, but more because he seems genuinely clueless about the real challenges and dangers the country is facing. He's too busy living in the fantasy world where our future as a great power and our very safety are all bound up in Iraq.

I wholeheartedly agree with Josh here - what America and a world in which America is the biggest kid on the block needs most is definitely NOT more short-termist paranoic banging of the military hammer.

What If They Held A Reconciliation Party And Nobody Came?

By Cernig

Fareed Zakaria has a must-read essay today at Newsweek entitled "Stuck In The Iraqi Loop" in which he references one of General Petraeus' favorite scholar-warriors to explain the war supporters' dilemma over Iraq - the paradox that the Surge was supposed to give space for reconciliation and that would enable troop withdrawals, but we're now being told the Surge's gains are too fragile to risk withdrawing troops.

Making sense of this paradox is critical. Because in certain crucial ways things are not improving in Iraq, and unless they start improving soon, the United States faces the awful prospect of an unending peacekeeping operation—with continuing if limited casualties—for years to come.

In a brilliant and much-circulated essay written in August 2007, "Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt," David Kilcullen, a veteran Australian officer who advised Gen. David Petraeus during the early days of the surge, wrote, "Our dilemma in Iraq is, and always has been, finding a way to create a sustainable security architecture that does not require 'Coalition-in-the-loop,' thereby allowing Iraq to stabilize and the Coalition to disengage in favorable circumstances." We have achieved some security in Iraq, though even this should not be overstated. (Violence is still at 2005 levels, which were pretty gruesome.) But we have not built a sustainable security architecture.

How does one create a self-sustaining process that leads to stability? Do we need more troops? Longer rotations? Kilcullen points in a different direction: "Taking the Coalition out of the loop and into 'overwatch' requires balancing competing armed interest groups at the national and local level." In other words, we need to help forge a political bargain by which Iraq's various groups agree to live together and not dominate one another.

But signs that anythink like such a political bargain is in the offing always turn out to be more hype than reality, all the while the "window of opportunity" is closing by even General Pteraeus' admission.

There was another major attempt at forging such a political compact due to begin today - but it's a failure before it has even begun, with key groups either not attending or saying it's all just government window-dressing with no real intent behind it.

A conference to reconcile Iraq's warring political groups began to unravel even before it got under way on Tuesday, with the main Sunni Muslim Arab bloc pulling out and protesting it had not been properly invited.

...The gathering, billed as the biggest of its kind in Iraq, aimed to bring leaders of rival factions together around much-delayed so-called laws meant to promote common cause between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.

The Accordance Front, the main Sunni Arab bloc, had said it would attend but pulled out as dozens of political leaders gathered at a hotel in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

"The Front will not attend the conference, not because it does not believe in reconciliation ... but because the invitations were sent to members of the Front and not formally to the Accordance Front," spokesman Salim al-Jubouri said.

Jubouri said decisions from previous meetings had never been implemented. "How can we now arrange new proposals?," he said.

...The head of the Sadrist political bloc, Nassar al-Rubaie, arrived at the conference but refused to say whether he would take an active role.

"Such conferences are just government propaganda," Rubaie told Reuters.

...The Iraqi National List, a secular bloc headed by former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, had already said they would not attend.

The conference was open to members of Saddam Hussein's now outlawed Baath party. It was unclear whether Sunni Arab tribal leaders responsible for the neighborhood security units would attend.

The Sadrists, the National List, the Accordance Front - these are not bit players and none believe this conference is anything more than PR spin. It remains to be seen whether the central government's ruling Shiites can convince the Ba'athists and any Sawhar attendees that they mean more than platitudes and hypocrisy while continuing to use the security forces as their personal instruments of power rather than for all Iraqis. I don't think either predominantly-Sunni group is that gullible. But without those three notable groups whole-hearted belief in central government good faith and their whole-hearted co-operation, the conference is already a washout anyway.

As Zakaria notes, it isn't the only reconciliation failure.

There has been some positive news reported in the past few weeks. On closer examination, it is more hype than reality. Two of the laws passed, one reversing de-Baathification and the other offering a limited amnesty to former insurgents, have been worded in such a way that much will depend on how they are implemented—by the Shiite government. The reason these assurances were written into law in binding terms was, of course, that Sunnis place so little trust in the good will and fairness of that government. When Baghdad promises to administer oil revenue wisely and fairly, though there is no law telling it precisely what to do, its claims are met with mistrust and unease by the Sunnis and the Kurds.

A Pentagon report to Congress last week admitted that "all four components of the hydrocarbon law are stalled." The law on provincial elections passed but was then vetoed by the presidency council, specifically by Shiite Vice President Adel Abdel Mehdi, whose party now runs most of southern Iraq and does not wish to take its chances in new elections. And it's worth noting that the laws that passed did so only after months of intense wrangling, which produced an 82–82 tie that was broken by the Sunni speaker of Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani. Finally, all these measures I've mentioned add up to only three or four of the 18 benchmarks set out by the Maliki government and the Bush administration to judge their own progress.

The end result of all this is to leave American troops stuck in a loop while a time-bomb of renewed violence ticks away factional patience with Maliki's government. And Bush is engaged in ensuring, via his promised Security Agreement, that should that time-bomb go off there still won't be an Iraqi future that does not require 'Coalition-in-the-loop.

And then there's the Republican heir-apparent, who has said he'd be just fine with another 100 years of US troops in Iraq. Alan Arkin wonders if he's any more able to face mistakes or unpleasant truths than Bush:

McCain? What does he recognize? It will be interesting to see if he comes back with anything new from Iraq or whether, like U.S. forces, he is stuck in a loop. After all, to admit that the political progress isn't keeping pace with the military progress is to admit that "we" have done as much as we can, that his ultimate position is flawed, and that we must withdraw just to give "the Iraqis" a chance.

Update Various worthies, including Matt and Kevin, are noting a massive McCain gaffe that we can only hope someone has on videotape:

He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back."

....A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate's ear. McCain then said: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."

As Kevin points out, even Lieberman's whispered version is simplistic - "What he should have said is that the Iranians are training many of the same extremists that we're allied with too. But that might have provoked a whole different set of questions that McCain would just as soon not answer." Such an elementary mistake, and one that shows that McCain is just as unimaginative and uninformed as the current Decider.

But doesn't Lieberman suit the role of Wormtongue?

Cheney - Running Over The Same Old Ground

By Cernig

Dick Cheney is in Iraq and has announced that he has a gut feeling that the Iraqi invasion and occupation has been a "successful endevour" which was "well worth the effort".

"I was last in Baghdad 10 months ago and I sense that, as a result of the progress that has been made since then, phenomenal changes in terms of the overall situation," Cheney said after meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Cheney said there had been a "remarkable turnaround" in security after 30,000 extra troops were sent to Iraq last year to help reduce sectarian violence that threatened civil war.

Despite the improved security, however, some 4 million Iraqis are still displaced, and the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a report on Monday that millions were still deprived of clean water and medical care.

(In fact, that Red Cross report said that some families spend a third of their average monthly wage of $150 just buying clean water and that healthcare in Iraq was "now in worse shape than ever.")

So there you have it - more faith-based victory metrics from the Bush administration.

And while we're on the subject, does anyone seriously believe that the sitting Republican VP arriving in Iraq at the same time as the Republican heir-presumptive, John McCain is just a coincidence, even if the two have no plans to meet up there? me neither. The Republican party is calculating that most American voters are small-c conservatives in that they will prefer the Devil they know to some amorphous "change" and so intend painting McCain's candidacy as a continuation of the last eight years in policy terms even while saying loudly they're doing no such thing. It's all about the framing.

So to help them along in that endevour I've a campaign song for John McSame, seeing as I'm such a kind and helpful soul.

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skys from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heros for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here

This Week In Arms Trade Land

By Cernig

The old saw has it that one should "follow the money" to find the truth - and in foreign policy that too often means following the arms trade money. Here are a couple of interesting but under-reported stories from NewsNow's "arms trade" aggregator this week.

- The US Navy buys the gasoline it sells to squids and Marines at Navy Base Exchanges from a company owned by Hugo Chavez. Needless to say, the Heritage Warmongering Foundation isn't at all amused. "A designation by the Bush Administration of Venezuela as a terrorist-sponsoring state would allow the Navy to end this awkward situation", they say. So if the US goes to war with Venezuela, will it be all about more expensive gas at the pumps, again?

- NATO says it is near a deal with Russia to use Russian airspace and overland routes to resupply troops in Afghanistan. The obvious reason is to reduce the Afghan mission's reliance of Pakistani routes and thus shake Pakistan's conviction that they have the West by the short-and-curlies in the War on (Some) Terror. But has anyone given a thought to how the Afghans will feel watching replacement armoured vehicles or munitions roll into their nation from across the Russian border? Deja vu, or what?

- An un-named Indian Embassy employee was involved in a wide-ranging conspiracy to steal secret weapon and nuclear technology from American companies. from the U.S. Isn't it a bit of a double standard when some nations get a free pass, and even a deal for more nuclear knowledge, when they pull stuff like this - while others get sanctions and sabre-rattling?

SNAFU

By Cernig

I try not to use profanity on the blog too often, even though I'm a big fan of the f-word. As my countryman Billy Connelly says, it's very direct. No-one ever wrote in a book "'fuck off', he hinted." Profanity definitely has its place, especially in devastating snark, and I guess it's OK if quoted...

So over to John Cole.

The NY Times has nine op-eds to mark the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Because I care about you all, I will simplify these op-eds into one sentence or less, each featuring the f-word. You will then be spared the pain of reading them.

Paul Bremer: “We fucked up, but it wasn’t my fault and I think Bush kinda fixed things last year.”

Richard Perle- “Things went great until those pussies at the State Department fucked up trying to fix what we bombed.”

Anne-Marie Slaugher: “This undertaking was fucked from the beginning.”

Kenneth M. Pollack- “If you think we are fucked right now, wait until you see what happens if we try to leave.”

Danielle Pletka- “The anti-war left was right about everything, but I still fucking hate them and will use this column to trash them.”

Nathaniel Flick- “Our fuck-ups can all be traced back to the fear we would be slimed.”

Major General Paul D. Eaton- “The sycophantic Republican Congress has fucked the military for a long time coming.”

Fred Kagan- “I love my fucking pompoms, and am currently applying for the job of Chief Assistant Fluffer for General Petraeus.”

Anthony Cordesman- “Bush/Cheney- Worst fucking administration EVAH.”

If you think I am exaggerating, read these for yourself.

See what I mean? All the punditry you need on nine whole op-eds. Well done, John.

(Hat tip - Kat again)

PKK Makes $700 Million Yearly From Drugs, Smuggling

By Cernig

The Turkish government has said that the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terror group has a yearly income of 400-500 million euros (up to $750 million) obtained from drug dealing, human trafficking, smuggling and donations.

Speaking on the second day of an international conference on terrorism organized by the Turkish military at the Centre of Excellence -- Defense against Terrorism (COE-DAT) in Ankara on March 10 and 11, Saygun said: “It is obvious that the PKK is a terrorist organization and, with its mafia-like structure, it is also an organized criminal organization. This fact has been proven by several international reports. The terrorists’ organization obtains its income mainly from drug dealing, in addition to arms smuggling, money laundering, racketeering and other illegal means.”
He said the PKK obtains 200-250 million euros from drug dealing, 100-150 million from its various smuggling activities and 15-20 million from donations.

Saygun indicated that the PKK provides arms not only to its members but also to the terrorists of other organizations. He said this shows how the PKK has become an international criminal organization and that it underlines the need to fight the PKK’s crimes internationally. “The mentality that supports the terrorist organization should not forget that this organization controls 80 percent of the drug dealing in Europe and poisons the European public.”

At the conference Saygun said reports from the UN and other esteemed international organizations indicate that the PKK kidnaps children -- including girls -- in Europe to give them training in arms and ideology.

He complained that even though Turkey has been sensitive to make a distinction among groups and not to label everybody terrorists, some Europeans do not show the same understanding. “Some in Europe wrongly identify everybody of Kurdish origin with the PKK,” he said.

Speaking about the harm caused by terrorist organizations in general, Saygun said: “Terrorist organizations claim they represent ethnic groups or great belief groups. So they carry out their activities in the name of the ideologies of Islam, people’s independence, minority rights, Jihad, democratic rights and freedoms, thereby seeking legitimacy for their activities. We should not fall into this trap.”

Not just terrorists responsible for over 60,000 deaths but a massive criminal organistation which has done untold damage to lives throughout the Middle east and Europe. Yet the Bush administration has consistently soft-stepped and fence sat when it comes to the PKK, willing to trade their presence and activities for a quiet Kurdish North in Iraq these last five years.

One offshoot of this group - the PJK - is one that rightwing American extremists like Ken Timmerman cozy up to simply because it is seen as fighting the current Iranian regime. Timmerman isn't just the reporter who wrote a puff piece on the PJK, he's also executive director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, which he founded with neocon Bush administration insider Peter Rodeman.

But both Bush administration and neocons alike should be careful about their allies. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" may well be the way the Right like to run foreign policy but it's just as true that "if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas."

Revisiting Profits of Instability and Extortion

A couple of years ago, I did some quick calculations at what the US invasion and occupation was doing to the oil market via the direct fear premium . Updating those assumptions with a little bit more depth, we get a more useful number. Assuming a $10/bbl risk premium and a short term elasticity of demand of .10, the Iraq War has pumped an extra $30 to $60 billion dollars per year into Russia's coffers, and $40 to $70 billion dollars per year into Saudi coffers. The rest of the price appreciation has been a combination of tight supply/demand, and a weakening dollar, with the potential of Peak Oil sitting atop of any major net production increases.

The results --- a Russia that is flush with money who sees itself as a great power with a recently embarrassing decade or two instead of a weak power with a grandiose past, and the OPEC-11 running massive current account surpluses. Fairly predictable that a major shooting war in the Middle East will have negative impacts on oil pricing.

BJ @ Northman's Fury saw some vultures circling around this pool of money and making demands at the Astute Bloggers ( I had to make sure this was not a parody site first)

I think that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Qatar and the rest of the nations in the region - (including Iran!) - should help underwrite the costs of this heroic and noble effort. They should give the USA $400 billion.

They have the money. Especially now with oil at/near/or over $100/barrel.

AND WITH THE DOLLAR SO WEAK, IT'LL BE EVEN LESS PAINFUL FOR THEM.....

ARABS: ARE YOU DOGS, OR ARE YOU HONORABLE MEN? ARE YOU EVEN CAPABLE OF HONOR? THEN SHOW US. Actions speak louder than words. If you don't send us the money, then you have really told us who you all really are: ungrateful dogs.

About the only ones who strategically benefited from the removal of Hussein and continued instability in Iraq is Iran and Isreal. And neither of them have any reason or ability to pay up. The GCC lost a counterweight to Iran's power, Turkey is routinely launching division sized raids into Kurdistan, and Syria and Jordan are facing mass refugee movements. Even the extra revenue that is being derived from a war that most countries did nothing to get in the way of, but little to support is insufficient to provide the extortion payment that the Astute Bloggers demand.

How's Iraq Doing? Shhhh, It's A Secret

By Cernig

While General Petraeus' next report to Congress will no doubt be subject to the same PR blitz and general folderol as last time - and deal almost entirely with military matters - the intelligence community's National Intelligence Estimate, which will deal far more with such matters as reconstruction and reconciliation, is to be kept under wraps.

A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is scheduled to be completed this month, according to U.S. intelligence officials. But leaders of the intelligence community have not decided whether to make its key judgments public, a step that caused an uproar when key judgments in an NIE about Iran were released in November.

The classified estimate on Iraq is intended as an update of last summer's assessment, which predicted modest security improvements but an increasingly precarious political situation there, the U.S. officials said.

It is meant to be delivered to Congress before testimony in early April by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, according to a letter sent last week by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell to Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.).

...Intelligence officials said that the National Intelligence Board -- made up of the heads of the 16 intelligence agencies plus McConnell -- will decide whether to release the Iraq judgments once the estimate is completed. But they made clear that they lean toward a return to the traditional practice of keeping such documents secret.

In internal guidance he issued in October, McConnell said that his policy was that they "should not be declassified."

Because, y'know, transparency and oversight on actual progress that counts in America's most expensive military adventure since WW2 is what the Bush administration are all about in the run-up to a general election...

(Just like they're all about oversight of the intel community in the first place)

Not.

Bout Face

By Cernig

I missed this one yesterday - international arms dealer Viktor Bout has been arrested in Thailand.

The U.S. is seeking the extradition of a suspected Russian arms dealer dubbed the "Merchant of Death," but for now he will remain in Thailand, where authorities are investigating if he used the country as a base to negotiate a weapons deal with terrorists, officials said Friday.

Viktor Bout, a 41-year-old whose dealings reportedly inspired a 2005 movie about the illicit arms trade, is accused of running weapons to al-Qaida, the Taliban and parties involved in bloody conflicts across Africa. He was arrested at a Bangkok hotel after a four-month sting operation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Thai and U.S. authorities said.

The long list of conflicts Bout has helped fuel and dictators he has armed has to be read to be believed. His customers include Afghanistan's Taliban, Anglola, Liberia, Congo, Columbia, Libya, Sierra Leone, Rawanda and of course al-Qaida. The US believes Bout's fleet of over 50 ex-Soviet military transports could transport tanks, helicopters and weapons "by the ton" to virtually any point in the world. No wonder they call him the 'Merchant of Death' and 'Man of War'.

Bout was arrested in Thailand as he was allegedly arranging a multi-milion dollar drop of sophisticated weaponry to Columbia's FARC.

Authorities in New York unsealed a criminal complaint Thursday charging that Bout conspired to sell millions of dollars in weapons - including 100 surface-to-air missiles and armor-piercing rockets - to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The U.S. considers the leftist rebels, who have been fighting Colombia's government for more than 40 years, a terror group. Bout and associate Andrew Smulian were charged with "conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization."

The DEA was involved because, according to the criminal complaint, the FARC uses weapons to protect its cocaine trafficking business, which helps to finance its operations.

It's a bit odd, and I'm not the only one to have noticed this, because back in 2004 Bout was a sub-contractor for the Pentagon, flying supplies into Iraq. Last September I noted an interview Laura Rosen did with author Douglas Faraj, who wrote the book on Bout.

The U.S. government response to revelations of the use of Viktor Bout to fly for government contractors in Iraq (not just a few flights, but hundreds, and perhaps a thousand) has been mixed. Bear in mind most of these flights occurred after President Bush had signed an executive order making it illegal to do business with Bout, because he represented a security threat to the United States. The State Department, under a congressional inquiry initiated by Senator Russell Feingold, found it had used Bout companies, acknowledged it, and stopped. Paul Wolfowitz, while at DOD, did not respond to queries for nine months, then acknowledged that DOD contractors had subcontracted to Bout companies. Despite the public revelation, the congressional inquiry, the executive order, and a subsequent Treasury Department order freezing the assets of Bout and his closest associates, the flights continued for many months, at least until the end of 2005. The Air Force cut him off immediately, but other branches of the military continued to use him.

If he was so wanted, why did the Bush administration deal with him, in direct contravention of their own order, rather than arresting him? I find myself wondering if the U.S. wants to extradite Bout to ensure he faces justice...or if the Bush administration simply wants more control over what evidence or testimony might come up in any trial. Cynical of me, I know.

Vote McCain for a Third Bush Term!

By Cernig

Dubya hi-jacked the Straight Talk Express today as he endorsed McCain for the White House.

In a press conference after a private lunch, a reporter asked the duo how McCain would “make the case that you’re going to provide the change that the voters seem to want.”

Bush quickly cut in, declaring that McCain is “not going to change”:

BUSH: And the good news about our candidate there will be a new president, a man of character and courage, but he’s not going to change when it comes to taking on the enemy. He understands this is a dangerous world.

Following up on the press conference, Rich Lowry of the National Review said on Fox News that Bush is framing McCain as embracing his old platforms, “someone determined absolutely to take on our enemy and someone with a big heart who cares for those who hurt.” Lowry said McCain was shaping up to be Bush’s “successor”.

So there you have it. The would-be moderate, "maverick" McCain has now been entirely co-opted by the wingnut base of the GOP, who insist that there be no change. Just another ventroloquist's dummy in an expensive suit.

Rove's Math is faulty again

One of the M.O.'s of George W. Bush's political and business careers is the ability and willingness to create an 'after me, the deluge' so don't replace me situations. Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt is created so that although Bush and his associates have created a bad situation, the FUD keeps people from being willing to switch to other management for the fear of the higher associated costs of cleaning up after Bush. This was best captured by the Economist [h/t Unqualified Offerings]

In 2000 he beat an incumbent vice-president after eight years of peace and prosperity: the wry slogan among his inner circle was: “Things have never been better. Vote for change.” Four years later, with the economy stalled and Iraq in flames, he won again. This time, the backstage slogan was: “Things have never been worse. Stay the course.”

And we are getting the same playbook in Iraq. It is a clusterf*ck, the state has been delegitimatized to a ridiculous Nth Degree, the US is funding both the insurgency, and the counterinsurgency efforts (usually the same people), Iran's President was welcomed with flowers and chocalate while President Bush, Sec. State Rice and Sec. Def Gates have to make nighttime unnanounced visits and the success that is being trumpeted is returning to violence levels of 2005 when Iraq had already become a failed state. Oh yeah, two major US allies (Turks and Iraqi Kurds) are setting themselves up for a multi-division slug-fest once the ground dries out in the spring.

And yet, Bush allies are arguing that doing more of what Bush is doing with the same management team is the course with the lowest cost of action. Karl Rove is arguing that pulling out of Iraq would send oil to $200 a barrel. This after seeing the price of oil triple in the past five years, and ignoring either a static or dynamic analysis of the situation.

If we were to give up Iraq with the third largest oil reserves in the world to the control of an Al Qaida regime or to the control of Iran, don’t you think $200 a barrel oil would have a cost to the American economy?

This is wrong on several levels. First, Al-Quaida as the right's talking points like to trumpet this week, is not that strong in Iraq. It never has been until it was a convienent bogeyman. Instead the primary combatants shooting at the US in Iraq have been native-born Iraqis, Sunni Arab nationalists/revanchists/Ba'athists, [at least one, usually two, sometimes all three], Sadr's Mahdi Army which is overwhelmingly urban Shi'ites, and criminal/smuggling operations. The foreign fighters have been at times extremely useful idiots, but always idiots in the eyes of the Sunni Arabs. Al-Queada can't take over the central government; their best objective is hollowing out the central government.

Secondly, the economics don't work out. Iraq is exported in 2007 an average of 1.6 million barrels per day. More recently Iraqi oil exports were roughly 1.9 million barrels per day out of total production of about 2.4 million barrels. Global oil and oil near substitute production in January 2008 was 87.2 million barrels. Iraq produces 2.7% of global crude in January 2008.

If we were to assume for the argument that complete US withdrawal would lead to a complete shutdown of Iraqi oil production and exports and thus lead to a doubling in spot prices, this implies an elasticity of demand of less than .03 in the short run. Elasticity of demand is an economic concept that estimates how much prices would change in response to a percentage change in supply. For instance an elasticity of demand of 1.0 would have prices increase 1% for every 1% of a good that is no longer available. An elasticity of demand of .5 would have prices increase by 2% for every 1% of supply removed from the market etc.

The best short run estimates of the elasticity of demand for crude oil range from .10 to .16. Over the longer run, these elasticities increase, but in the short run using the lowest accepted estimate, removing all Iraqi oil from market would lead to a price increase of 27% +/- a bit, and using the .16, removing all Iraqi oil from market would lead to a price increase of 17% +/- a bit.

And these estimates assume all Iraqi oil comes off the market when we have proven history that there is a good deal of capacity for limited Iraqi production no matter how many people are being shot and pipelines being blown up.

And this is just the simple static counter-argument against Rove. If one wants to get a little more complex and attribute at least a portion of the nominal dollar price increases in oil over the past five or six years to a weakening US dollar, and low US interest rates, we can construct an interesting counterfactual. Right now the entire Iraq expenditure is being placed on the US credit card. Iraq is costing in cash terms about $200 billion per year right now. Removing a significant amount of that cost from our ongoing and recurring expenses will reduce US debt loads, and marginally reduce the downward pressure on the dollar. A strong US dollar means US consumers pay less per gallon/barrel than in a scenario with a weaker US dollar.

This part of the argument that Joseph Stiglitz has been making recently. The Federal Reserve failed in 2003/2004 to counteract the massive fiscal stiumulas of war spending by tightening monetary policy. This led to a bubble, and the subsequent credit crunch.

The war has fed into the weakness of the wider economy, he said, adding, "To cover that up, the Fed and the regulators flooded the economy with liquidity - giving cheap money to anybody this side of a life support system."

He said there was a direct correlation between the extent of the current crisis in financial markets and the cost of the conflict.

So in this counterfactual, the US dollar is a little stronger and oil is a little cheaper. Rove is factually wrong, but he is throwing out a marker of blame against anyone advocating that they want to clean up George W. Bush's failures. Par for the course.

India's Big Arms Deal Bonanza

By Cernig

India has increased its defense budget by 10% and plans to spend $30 billion on arms imports in the next four years. That includes increasing it's deisel sub collection by six more on top of the half dozen it bought in Europe last year, building a nuclear sub, buying an aircraft carrier and a $12 billion purchase of 126 new fighter jets.

Now you know why Gates was in India this week.

Obama On Mercenaries In Iraq

By Cernig

I now have a new reason to be troubled by Obama's policy platform (See, I told you I wasn't simply his cheerleader): it looks very like any troop drawdown he ordered in Iraq would simply be replaced by a surge of mercanaries from Blackwater and others.

A senior foreign policy adviser to leading Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has told The Nation that if elected Obama will not "rule out" using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq. The adviser also said that Obama does not plan to sign on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of these forces in US war zones by January 2009, when a new President will be sworn in. Obama's campaign says that instead he will focus on bringing accountability to these forces while increasing funding for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the agency that employs Blackwater and other private security contractors. (Hillary Clinton's staff did not respond to repeated requests for an interview or a statement on this issue.)

Obama's broader Iraq withdrawal plan provides for some US troops to remain in Iraq--how many his advisers won't say. But it's clear that Obama's "follow-on force" will include a robust security force to protect US personnel in Iraq, US trainers (who would also require security) for Iraqi forces and military units to "strike at Al Qaeda"--all very broad swaths of the occupation.

"If Barack Obama comes into office next January and our diplomatic security service is in the state it's in and the situation on the ground in Iraq is in the state it's in, I think we will be forced to rely on a host of security measures," said the senior adviser. "I can't rule out, I won't rule out, private security contractors." He added, "I will rule out private security contractors that are not accountable to US law."

I'm just not sure that's good enough. Maybe if they were accountable to Iraqi law then such a quibble would have some teeth...but even so I'm inclined to think foreign mercenary armies in a situation such as that in Iraq are just a bad thing, period.

I also note that Clinton's silent on this one so far. I'd like to know, personally.