Mercenaries-R-Us

The second biggest foreign force in Iraq is not the British Army, it is the unregulated and unaccountable army of private security contractors.

There are three British private security guards to every British soldier in Iraq, the charity War on Want said yesterday. At least 181 private military and security companies are operating in the country, employing almost 21,000 British private security guards, nearly half of the total number - an estimated 48,000.

...Critics say the main problem is that they are unaccountable. Non-Iraqi employees of private security companies in Iraq were protected from prosecution under Order 17 of the Coalition Provisional Authority, issued shortly before it handed over power in 2004.

In Britain alone, providing private security for the Iraq and Afhgan occupations is a $2 billion a year industry. That's more than the Iraqi Ministry of Defense's entire procurement budget.

One of the biggest growth areas is in the contracting of private interrogators for the U.S. military. The major supplier of contracted interrogators is a company owned by Lockheed - who last year became a major contributor to John McCain for the first time ever. Coincidence?

14,030 US-Bought Weapons Missing In Iraq

Oops.

Nearly one of every 25 weapons the military bought for Iraqi security forces is missing, a government audit said Sunday. Many others cannot be repaired because parts or technical manuals are lacking.

...The Pentagon cannot account for 14,030 weapons - almost 4 percent of the semiautomatic pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other weapons it began supplying to Iraq since the end of 2003, according to a report from the office of the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

The missing weapons will not be tracked easily: The Defense Department registered the serial numbers of only about 10,000 of the 370,251 weapons it provided - less than 3 percent.

...Missing from the Defense Department's inventory books were 13,180 semiautomatic pistols, 751 assault rifles and 99 machine guns, according to an audit requested by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

That's somewhere in the region of $4 million in weaponry missing. I wonder if they'll stop it out of Rumsfield's salary?

Even more importantly, a second audit on logistics capabilities notes that:

there is a ``significant risk'' that the Iraqi interior ministry ``will not be capable of assuming and sustaining logistics support for the Iraqi local and national police forces in the near term.'' That support includes equipment maintenance, transportation of people and gear and health resources for soldiers and police.

...Maj. Gen. Thomas Moore of the Marine Corps said he agreed with the logistics audit recommendations that the U.S. military create a plan to train Iraqi police and examine how well Iraqi agencies' budgets support the supply chain and help for specialists with other training such as doctors, nurses, medics and mechanics.

That a plan for such a thing hasn't even been created at such a late stage, even as the Bush administration admits earlier mistakes in non-planning and says it has learned its lesson, may strike some as astounding.

For those who realize that a lack of capability for logistics and other critical military/security infrastructure (like airpower, communications, C3I and even heavy armor support) is what keeps Iraqi sovereignty a joke and ensures the Iraqi government will always end up doing exactly what regime-change afficiando Zalmay Khalilzad tells them to do - no matter what they might say for public consumption - it comes as no surprise at all.

America's Untapped Anti-Terror Weapon - Technothriller Writers

Author Frederick Forsyth has a piece in todays Sunday Times in which he explains the shadowy world of high-seas freight and how it could easily be used by terrorists.

When I began to look at terrorism around the world for a new project, it was not long before I found that the prospect of in-air sabotage of transatlantic airliners was but one of the nightmares with which the West’s anti-terrorist agencies wrestle on a daily basis. The unrevealed and undiscussed horror is the burgeoning world of marine terrorism.

Megadeath coming at us from the sea is envisaged as a seemingly normal and legitimate merchant ship, maybe a tanker but not necessarily, stolen by Al-Qaeda and staffed with a suicidal crew, bearing inside her hull a simply devastating cargo, quietly cruising into the very heart of a city before detonating.

The whole thing is worth a read - flags of convenience and no-questions banks in offshore islands create a situation where it is impossible to find out who own a large proportion of the world's 44,000 merchant vessels and untold numbers of smaller boats.

But reading the article, I had an idea. Or to be precise, I remembered someone else's idea.

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, in their science-fiction novel Footfall, had the U.S. government put together a panel of SF authors led by the thinly-disguised, late and great, Robert Heinlein to come up with ideas to fight the alien bad-guys.

Why not apply that idea to counter-terror threat assessment? Let's face it, we've all noticed that Al Qaida and others seem to be mirroring ideas from the likes of Tom Clancy and Dale Brown. These authors think out of the box for a living - if they can't come up with a new and believable hook or two for their next novel then it will sink. They are, by temperament and by experience, some of the best imaginable people to begin thinking ahead of the terrorists so that the bad guys can be cut off before they have properly begun a plot. Contrast that with the institutionalised experts of government agencies who, like generals are reputed to do, always seem to be taking steps to fight the last attack.

It couldn't hurt and might well help. It certainly would be a drop in the Homeland Security budget's ocean. I would suggest that a panel include, at a minimum, Forsyth, Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, Larry Bond, Stephen Coonts, R.J. Piniero and Michael DiMercurio. What do you think?

Update I'm told (thanks, James) that at one stage a brainstorming group of Hollywood screnwriters was used to try to come up with possible new terrorist targets and attack methods. But then, the powers that be decided to go for a version of risk assessment that concentrates on protecting us against attacks that have already happened while failing to differentiate between, say, the Empire State Building and a pig fair in Bumf**k, Indiana.

State emergency-management officials use a simple formula — "history plus judgment equals forecast" — to determine the probability of a wide range of hazards, from terrorist attacks to tsunamis, wildfires or an explosion at the Umatilla Chemical Depot in Oregon.

...But all the techniques reflect a conundrum: How do you determine the likelihood that a building, boat or some public icon will be attacked? The answer, say terrorism experts, is you don't. Instead, without specific intelligence, most risk-assessment models assume a constant threat.

...In 1998, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, reported that the Defense Department's risk-based methodology included these levels of probability: frequent, probable, occasional, remote and improbable — "so unlikely it can be assumed occurrence may not be experienced."

But many of the assumptions behind that approach were rewritten after experts investigated the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995...From a risk-management perspective, the likelihood of a terrorist attack on that day at that location was practically zero, said Rod Propst, senior operations analyst with the Virginia-based Anser Institute for Homeland Security, a nonprofit research organization established a few months before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Propst has conducted vulnerability tests on a wide range of military bases and civilian structures. A few years after the Oklahoma City bombing, he removed the idea of "likelihood" from all his statistical models.

"We don't use likelihood in risk-based methodology anymore," he said. "We assume there is a likelihood."

I've some experience in risk assessment techniques as they apply to fire insurance etc. If you don't figure in "likelihood" as part of the judgement process then you haven't DONE a risk assessment. Mind you, it explains - exactly - why some out of the way event in a place no-one has ever heard of gets as much weighting as the Brooklyn Bridge.

Moreover, notice that insurers often either exclude terrorism along with acts of God and the like or cap their liability at a fixed sum - which tells you exactly how good insurers think risk assessment is when it comes to terrorism. You can't do that with lives the way the insurers can with cash-value.

Let's ALL Run With Nuclear Scissors

Graham Allison, an assistant secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton, has an op-ed in today's Washington Post. He's trying to get to the right of the Republicans on nuking North Korea.

Having stiffed Bush -- and the world -- in building a nuclear arsenal, testing a long-range missile and testing a nuclear weapon, might Kim now imagine that he could also sell nuclear weapons?

America's challenge is to prevent this act by convincing Kim that he will be held accountable for every nuclear weapon that originates in North Korea. This requires clarity, credibility about our capacity to identify the source of a bomb that explodes in one of our cities (however it is delivered by whomever) and a believable threat to respond.

Kim must be convinced that American nuclear forensics will be able to identify the molecular fingerprint of nuclear material from his Yongbyon reactor. He must feel in his gut the threat that if a nuclear weapon of North Korean origin explodes on American soil or that of a U.S. ally, the United States will retaliate precisely as if North Korea had attacked the United States with a nuclear-armed missile: with an overwhelming response that guarantees this will never happen again.

Within the last two weeks, you could have read essentially the same plan from David Idnatius, Charles Krauthammer, Victor Davis Hanson and George W. Bush. (Although now that a Clintonista has said it, the moderate right realise how dumb it is!)

It’s a new meme. It’s dumb. It is either meaningless red meat for domestic political purposes ("look how Marlboro Man tough we are") or running with nuclear scissors.

Everything I said about the Ignatius version applies to the Allison version. Every variant of what is being called "expanded deterence" perpetuates an uber-right myth that has spread to become “what everyone knows”: that the “axis of evil” - the very countries being watched closest - are the most likely sources for a terrorist nuke, rather than, say, a Pakistan that has successfully played the neocons for every dime and weapon they could while supporting Islamist terror, or the vast and unsecured nuclear resources of the former Soviet Union.

These are where the real threats of a terrorist nuke come from.

So suppose the LeK set off a nuke in Mumbai which is found to contain Pakistani uranium. The Indian government already maintains that Pakistan’s intelligence agency aids islamic terror groups in any case. Pakistan might claim a “rogue element” or deny all knowledge just as it did with the Khan network. If India claimed it’s right to “expanded deterrence” even so and nuked Pakistan’s four biggest cities do you think the Bush administration or any conceivable Republican successor would stand by and say “Fair enough by us, we did warn everyone”? Of course not. That’s just one possible counterexample to prove that the principle of expanded deterrence as put forward by the hawks would not be universal, but instead be claimed as the sole right of the U.S. Its pretty easy to construct more.

If expanded deterrence is the sole preserve of America…well, that’s the huge can of foreign policy worms opened again. Back to PNAC’s American Hegemony with several vengeances. None of the other big nuclear powers will be at all happy, for starters. Russia will undoubtably get very nervous…

Now, suppose an Islamic terror group gets a hold of fissile material for a bomb, or even a complete weapon, from some Russian Mafia blackmarket dealer in Uzbeckistan. They then set it off in Manhattan and a forensic examination determines that the bomb came from…the former Soviet Union. Probably produced in Minsk, Kiev or somesuch. Is the U.S. going to launch a retaliatory strike “with devastating force” on Russia or the Ukraine? Somehow I don’t think so and again its simple to think up other counterexamples.

So just like “for us or against us” and “no distinction between terrorists and the nations that shelter them”, (think Pakistan again), it cannot be a sensible universal policy for even America.

And if you stop to think for a moment, the actual idea behind this plan is idiotic. It is tantamount to saying that if you manufacture a gun that eventually ends up in the hands of a murderer, no matter how that happens, we will come round to your house and machinegun your whole family. Try getting that “expanded deterrence” past the NRA!

Such a policy would make the U.S. a "rogue state" all on its lonesome, and would ensure the rest of the world would begin to wonder exactly what it should do about the madmen in charge of the sole superpower.

US military courts breach international obligations, UN rights expert warns

From the UN News Service, a piece so important I'm going to reproduce it entirely. The original has links to the cited legislastion and all bold emphasis is mine.

27 October 2006 – The Military Commissions Act (MCA) signed into law by President George Bush earlier this month violates the international obligations of the United States under human rights laws in several areas, including the right to challenge detention and to see exculpatory evidence, a United Nations expert on terrorism said today.

“A number of provisions of the MCA appear to contradict the universal and fundamental principles of fair trial standards and due process enshrined in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions,” the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Martin Scheinin, said in a statement issued in Geneva.

Special Rapporteurs are unpaid and serve in a personal capacity, reporting to the UN Human Rights Council. Mr. Scheinin requested that the US Government invite him for a visit “in the very near future” to discuss his concerns.

“One of the most serious aspects of this legislation is the power of the President to declare anyone, including US citizens, without charge as an ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ – a term unknown in international humanitarian law – resulting in these detainees being subject to the jurisdiction of a military commission composed of commissioned military officers,” he said.

At the same time, the material scope of crimes to be tried by these commissions is much broader than war crimes in the meaning of the Geneva Conventions, he noted.

“Further, in manifest contradiction with article 9, paragraph 4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the MCA denies non US citizens (including legal permanent residents) in US custody the right to challenge the legality of their detention by filing a writ of habeas corpus, with retroactive effect,” he added.

“Another concern is the denial of the right to see exculpatory evidence if it is deemed classified information which severely impedes the right to a fair trial.”

An added concern is that some Governments may view certain aspects of this legislation as an example to be followed in respect of their national counter-terrorism legislation, since the US has taken a lead role on countering terrorism since the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, he stressed.

Mr. Scheinin said that during a visit he would also like to discuss other rights concerns such as the Patriot Act, immigration laws and policies, secret detention centres, rendition flights (to countries where detainees might face torture), breaches of non-refoulement (deportation) and the Government’s denial of extra-territorial human rights obligations.

Last month, five other UN human rights rapporteurs rejected US denials that people were tortured at the Guantánamo detention centre and reiterated calls that it be closed down.

Previous legislation in the U.S. has established that international law to which the U.S. is a signatory has the force of national law in the United States, that breaking those laws is a federal offence and that you cannot unilaterally legislate away obligations already accepted under international law. If the Bush administration want to contravene international law in a way that is legal at home, then they should withdraw from all treaties America is party to that they don't like. That would make America an obvious pariah on the international stage. Otherwise, American law says they are criminals. Don't like that? Tough - it's the way it is.

Bush Caught In Own Language Trap

George Lakoff, author of the excellent Thinking Points [My review is here - C], has an op-ed in todays NY Times in which he explains the bear trap Bush put his own foot in.

The first rule of using negatives is that negating a frame activates the frame. If you tell someone not to think of an elephant, he’ll think of an elephant. When Richard Nixon said, “I am not a crook” during Watergate, the nation thought of him as a crook.

“Listen, we’ve never been stay the course, George,” President Bush told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News a day earlier. Saying that just reminds us of all the times he said “stay the course.”

Lakoff explains why "stay the course" was picked as a powerful metaphor by the Bush administration - and why any amount of spin by conservative apologists will now fall on mainly deaf ears:

“Stay the course” is a particularly powerful metaphor because it can activate so many of our emotions. Because physical actions require movement, we commonly understand action as motion. Because achieving goals so often requires going to a particular place — to the refrigerator to get a cold beer, say — we think of goals as reaching destinations.

Another widespread — and powerful — metaphor is that moral action involves staying on a prescribed path, and straying from the path is immoral. In modern conservative discourse, “character” is seen through the metaphor of moral strength, being unbending in the face of immoral forces. “Backbone,” we call it.

In the context of a metaphorical war against evil, “stay the course” evoked all these emotion-laden metaphors. The phrase enabled the president to act the way he’d been acting — and to demonstrate that it was his strong character that enabled him to stay on the moral path.

To not stay the course evokes the same metaphors, but says you are not steadfast, not morally strong. In addition, it means not getting to your destination — that is, not achieving your original purpose. In other words, you are lacking in character and strength; you are unable to “complete the mission” and “achieve the goal.”

“Stay the course” was for years a trap for those who disagreed with the president’s policies in Iraq. To disagree was weak and immoral. It meant abandoning the fight against evil. But now the president himself is caught in that trap. To keep staying the course, given obvious reality, is to get deeper into disaster in Iraq, while not staying the course is to abandon one’s moral authority as a conservative. Either way, the president loses.

Indeed, Bush's whole schtick has been about "staying the course" on every issue imaginable - and now that he has turned his back on it over Iraq the subtext will be that he will prove to be inconsistent on everything else too. It doesn't matter if it is true, that's the way people will instinctively feel. A truly massive trap to put your own foot in!

But he has a cautionary note for Democrats too:

Their “new direction” slogan offers no values and no positive vision. It is taken from a standard poll question, “Do you like the direction the nation is headed in?”

This is a shame. The Democrats are giving up a golden opportunity to accurately frame their values and deepest principles (even on national security), to forge a public identity that fits those values — and perhaps to win more close races by being positive and having a vision worth voting for.

Right now, though, no language articulating a Democratic vision seems in the offing. If the Democrats don’t find a more assertive strategy, their gains will be short-lived. They, too, will learn the pitfalls of staying the course.

If the think-tankers, wonks and spinners of the Dem heirarchy haven't read Thinking Points yet...then why the hell not? I betcha Karl Rove has.

Arms Trade Treaty: 139 Nations Say Yes, Only U.S. Says No

This pretty much says it all about the Bush administration's attitude to foreign policy and their successful campaign to turn the U.S. into a rogue state.

Today at the United Nations, the majority of the world’s governments took the first step towards a global Arms Trade Treaty to prevent international arms transfers that fuel conflict, poverty and serious human rights violations. The vote comes three years after the launch of a campaign which has seen over a million people in 170 countries calling for a Treaty.

The vote in the UN General Assembly’s First Committee is the first time that governments have voted on the proposal to develop an Arms Trade Treaty, and support was overwhelming: 139 voted yes, with only the United States voting against. Support was particularly strong in Africa , Latin America and Europe .

Work on the Treaty will begin in early 2007 when the new UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, will begin to canvass the views of all member states to establish the foundations of the Treaty.

Going into the vote, the resolution was co-sponsored by 116 governments; a huge number for such a bold initiative.

Because the neocons have never met a war they didn't like...from a safe distance.

What "Everyone Knows" Osama Wants...

Peter Kaplan - pundit, counter-terror expert and a man who once interviewed Osama binLaden - has an op-ed in the NY Times today in which he repeats the conventional wisdom. So conventional that no mainstream pundit or politician of any stripe or hue has tried seriously to challenge it.

A total withdrawal from Iraq would play into the hands of the jihadist terrorists. As Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, made clear shortly after 9/11 in his book “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner,” Al Qaeda’s most important short-term strategic goal is to seize control of a state, or part of a state, somewhere in the Muslim world. “Confronting the enemies of Islam and launching jihad against them require a Muslim authority, established on a Muslim land,” he wrote. “Without achieving this goal our actions will mean nothing.” Such a jihadist state would be the ideal launching pad for future attacks on the West.

And there is no riper spot than the Sunni-majority areas of central and western Iraq.

It is this assertion which lies at the heart of Bush's "stay the course" policy on Iraq and the heart of all allegations that those who would withdraw U.S. troops from the occupation "before we've beaten Al Qaida" are enablers and co-conspirators of the terrorists. As long as the Democrat leadership leave that assertion as unchallenged "fact", they will still be open to that charge if they continue to advocate a phased withdrawal.

But I just don't buy the conventional wisdom on this one. It has the feel, to me, of what "everyone knows" when no-one actually knows anything of the sort.

I just don't believe the "Al-Qaida would get a base in Iraq if the U.S. left" thing. The Shiites and Kurds aren't going to let A-Q have real estate on their turf, and it is far from clear that the Sunnis would be any happier about it. The occupation has created a situation where "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" but I just don't see that lasting if the occupation as a casus Belli was removed. Indeed, evidence from various sources, including tribal fighting against A-Q and the reactions of Sunnis during Col. McMasters project in Tal Afar suggest strongly that A-Q would get its clock cleaned in Sunni areas too.

In any case, the prospect of A-Q fighting fellow Moslems for control has, as 5th generational warfare goes, far more in favor of it that their fighting Americans. Any "paper tiger" spin could be very swiftly neutralized by such.

Some will respond that a base of operations in Iraq is a stated A-Q aim and we should take each of their pronouncements seriously. I am sure it is. I personally aim to prove the moon is made out of green cheese. I've read that A-Q said they have suitcase nukes and that they were going to explode one in the U.S. in September. I must have missed the mushroom cloud on FoxNews. I've heard from a prominent expert that Iran was going to explode a nuclear test last year - and again I must have missed it.

The A-Q leaders come from a culture where haggling is the norm, not poker. You always begin at the most outrageous maximum and if unchallenged you stick with that maximum. I believe what they can do exactly what they say they can as much as I ever believed Saddam's spokesman, Baghdad Bob. Mr Kaplan, obviously, is more trusting of the words of the greatest monsters of the age...

I'm not the only one who doubts what "everyone knows" about what Al Qaida would gain from an end to the occupation of Iraq. Spencer Ackerman sees the crucial difference as being between what Osama wants and what Osama might actually get - and follows pretty much the same chain of argument as I do from there.

The Swordproof Gordian Knot

A lot of ink has been spilled in the last few days, both real and virtual, over what America should do about the occupation of Iraq. Most of it seems to be centering around the idea that we have been patient enough and that Iraqis must stand up and do the heavy lifting for themselves now - or conversely that America broke it so America should fix it. All of it misses an essential point.

How can we expect Iraqis to "stand up" against their own indigent civil feuds and insurgency if we will not give them the respect of being able to "stand up" in other matters except where it suits their occupying nursemaids?

Where's the plan to give Iraq true sovereignty rather than the kind where a foreign head of state can drop in without forewarning or where Iraq's PM can announce a plan for national reconcilliation without one of its key provisions being over-ruled by a foreign ambassador? Where's the plan to give Iraq the kind of military infrastructure it needs not just for internal security but also against external threats?

It seems to me we can either 1) really treat Iraq as a sovereign nation, give it what a sovereign nation should have as our final act of contrition for the FUBAR we've made so far and leave it the hell alone without further meddling or we can 2) admit it is a Satrapy and administer it as such.

However, to date we have tried to give the appearance of the former while actually doing the latter.

Jusr yesterday, a moderate conservative blogger was able to write, without real challenge:

given that we have no interest in establishing a colony in Iraq

I think it is wrong to assume that's a given. Just based upon actions rather than rhetoric. Yet this assumption is the norm among mainstream commenters and among politicians of both sides - despite the lack of real evidence for it. Suggesting otherwise seems to put you out in "tinfoil hat" territory.

As for the rhetoric: the Bush administration, the neocon "pushers" of regime change and the GOP, by continually putting off facing criticism of their Iraq policy through the use of multiple Friedmans - "don’t judge us on what is happening now, wait six/twelve/eighteen months and it will be better" - have created a truly tangled problem.

How do you unravel a Gordian Knot if the sword will not work?

The truth is that no-one, from any side, has any real idea. All the plans for unknotting have the potential, nay certainty, of creating new and just as troublesome knots of their own. All begin with an arrogant implicit assumption that America broke it, so America owns it. Whether America should now "stay the course" or alter strategy in trying to fix it seems to be the main point of debate. The notion that we should give the Iraqis the means to fix it the way they want it fixed and then leave them the hell alone to do so never occurs to the pundits and experts, from Bush on down.

The Iraqis will make mistakes, possibly disasterous ones. That's their perogative and we have no God-given right to take it away from them. The situation may well even end up worse for America's "national interest". Tough. That's the price you pay for incompetent meddling. It will take decades of careful and diligent ethical foreign policy - not just policy that is aimed at domestic vote-winning but is inflicted on foreigners - to untangle even the easiest parts of the knot. That, my friends, is George W. Bush's legacy.

219 And Climbing: the Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq

I mentioned on Monday that there was a campaign for active-duty service members to seek an Appeal of Redress from Congress, asking it to end the occupation of Iraq.

The campaign now has 219 signatories, up from the 65 it kicked off with, and many more are expected.

"As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq," states the appeal posted on the campaign's Web site at www.appealforredress.org.

"Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home," it adds.

The Web site allows service members to sign the appeal that will be presented to members of Congress. Organizers said the number of signatories has climbed from 65 to 219 since the appeal was posted a few days ago and Wednesday when it was publicly launched. There are 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Active duty service members are restricted in expressing personal views publicly. But rules governed by the Military Whistleblower Protection Act give them the right to speak to a member of Congress respectfully while off-duty and out of uniform, making clear they do not speak for the military.

In a conference call with reporters, a sailor, a Marine and a soldier who had served in the Iraq operation said American troops there have increasingly had difficulty seeing the purpose of lengthy and repeated tours of duty since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Their misgivings have intensified this year as the country has edged toward civil war, they said.

"The real grievances are: Why are we in Iraq if the weapons of mass destruction are not found, if the links to al Qaeda are not substantiated," said Marine Sgt. Liam Madden of Rockingham, Vermont, who was in Iraq from September 2004 to February 2005 and is based at Quantico, Virginia.

"The occupation is perpetuating more violence," he said. "It's costing way too many Iraqi civilian and American service member lives while it brings us no benefit."

The campaign's sponsoring committee includes the activist groups Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out.

Navy Seaman Jonathan Hutto of Atlanta, stationed at Norfolk, Virginia and the first service member to join the campaign, said a similar appeal during the Vietnam War drew support from over 250,000 active duty service members in the early 1970s.

Those who are speaking out, from a sense of patriotic duty, are courageous individuals who have shown their willingness to water the tree of liberty not only with their blood but with their honor. Their nation should be proud of them.

A Few More Friedmans, Yet Again.

A "Friedman", for those few that don't know, is a period of six months in Iraq which may turn out to be years - it immortalizes 'pundit' Tom Friedman's infamous flexible deadlines.

Today the senior American soldier in Iraq,General Casey, said in the presence of the real ruler of Iraq, U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, that another two or three Friedmans would be enough to see Iraqis looking after their own security. Casey's opinion is yet another admission that the timetable for "them to stand up as we stand down" has changed course again whether the Bush administration likes it or not.

I thought it would be interesting to look at a few other notable Friedmans from the years of occupation.

There was the time Paul Wolfowitz, then Deputy Defense Secretary and "a leading architect of the Bush administration's reconstruction plan" (sic) told the world:

"A month after the Gulf War, we went in with a coalition force . . . cleared the Iraqi army out of the northern third of the country and left six months later and left it in the hands of the northern Iraqis, who've done a reasonably credible job of managing their own affairs," Wolfowitz said.

But Wolfowitz acknowledged it would be more difficult to stabilize the entire country and turn over power to the Iraqis.

"The country as a whole is bigger and more complicated," he said, "It will undoubtedly take longer."

Somehow I don't think he meant this much longer and still another year and more to go.

There was the one where the Coalition Provisional Authority's head honcho, Paul Bremer, told reporters after the first six months of occupation:

We will see it through. We -- I am optimistic. We have made an enormous amount of progress here in six months, more than I think anybody could have safely predicted, beyond -- in many places, beyond what our plan was. And I think we will continue to implement, as we go forward, on our plan over the next six to nine to 12 months.

Mind you, that was the same press briefing where the following exchange occurred:

Q (Name inaudible) from CNN. Mr. Bremer, with all of your positives and accomplishments notwithstanding, how much longer can we have this daily violence and chaos, with daily loss of life, before the coalition acknowledge that it was very ill-prepared for the aftermath of the war, that it fundamentally misread the reality and the complexity of Iraq?

MR. BREMER: Well, it's going to be a very long time before I admit either of those things, to answer your question.

Then there was Republican Senator Chuck Hagel telling the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce that "The next six months will really tell the story," back in August of 2005.

And let's not forget FoxNews and neocon favorite, retired general Barry McCaffrey, who told a Senate foreign relations committee hearing in July of 2005 that:

"January through September 2006 will be the peak period of the insurgency and the bottom rung of the new Iraq,"..."The positive trend lines following the January 2006 elections -- if they continue -- will likely permit the withdrawal of US combat forces by late summer of 2006,"..."With 250,000 Iraqi security forces successfully operating in support of a government which includes substantial Sunni participation the energy will start rapidly draining out of the insurgency by next summer, in my judgment,"

Which just goes to prove how much drivel these so-called experts expect us to swallow when they make these Friedmans - punting the blame upfield by multiples of six months by which time they hope we will all have forgotten what they said at the time.

Oh, and let us not forget General Casey at the beginning of this month:

"This is a decisive period for everyone and everyone knows it. The next six months will determine the future of Iraq," Casey said in a statement after attending two days of closed-door meetings in Warsaw to address "the challenges facing Iraq and the US-led coalition."

Every six months has been that "decisive time" - and so far the decisions have not been favorable to the occupation.

How many times does anyone have to bang their head off a brick wall before working out that stopping would be a good idea?

Postscript Interestingly, way back at the time of Wolfowitz's Friedman, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was telling ABC:

"We learned a lot in the Balkan situation, where the U.N. suddenly moved in. Here we are 12 years later, still struggling to try and put those pieces back together. We've learned from those experiences, and we're not going to repeat them in the aftermath of this conflict." (Same link as the Wolfowitz quote above - C)

That was the Republican justification for cold-shouldering the UN. It looks pretty damn incompetent now. They found a whole slew of new ways to f**k up.

Breaking: 65 Active-Duty Troops To Appeal Congress To End Iraq Occupation

According to a press release by U.S. Newswire, 65 active-duty troops are to send "Appeals for Redress" under the Military Whistle-Blower Protection Act asking Congress to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

News Advisory:

For the first time since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, active- duty members of the military are asking Members of Congress to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq and bring American soldiers home.

Sixty-five active-duty members have sent Appeals for Redress to Members of Congress. Three of these people (including two who served in Iraq) and their attorney will speak about this on Wednesday, Oct. 25 at 11 a.m. EDT.

Under the Military Whistle-Blower Protection Act (DOD directive 7050.6), active-duty military, National Guard and Reservists can file and send a protected communication to a Member of Congress regarding any subject without reprisal.

What: Three active-duty members of the military and their lawyer, a retired U.S. Marine Corps JAG, make comments and take questions from the media.

When: Wednesday, Oct. 25, 11 a.m. EDT

Hopefully the mainstream media will have far more detail on Wednesday or Thursday.

It will be interesting to see if the campaign takes of and these first 65 appeals turn into hundreds or even thousands.

Bon Voyage, Robin

From The Independent:

It is 37 years since the sailor Robin Knox-Johnston became the first man to perform a single-handed non-stop circumnavigation of the Earth.

But at the age of 67, he is returning to the seas for his first solo race since he beat the renowned French yachtsman Bernard Moitessier to the round-the-world Golden Globe title in 1969.

Sir Robin set off yesterday from Bilbao in Spain at the start of the 30,000-mile Velux 5 Oceans race, the oldest sailor of eight competitors from six countries.

I don't know Robin but I do know his brother Chris, of small boat insurer Haven Knox-Johnston, pretty well. We did some good business together back in the day. If Robin is at all like his brother then he's a gentleman and an eccentric gem of a friend. I hope he succeeds in at least completing the race - even more amazing if he wins.

Best of luck, Robin.

Honk If You're Sorry You Voted For Bush

Yesterday, while writing about the Baker commission and others who want to alter the way things are being done in Iraq, I said that:

The cynical among us realize, though, that the new name of the game now that "cut-and-run" has become the flavor of the month will be to ensure that no-one in the Bush administration has to admit their own personal "arrogance" and "stupidity" in staying the failing course for so long and making sure that the Republican base can at least have some plausible means of telling itself that Dear Leader hasn't flip-flopped.

It didn't take the Bush administration long to set out the rules of the new game - as noted by my colleague Earl and Think Progress, among others, Bush himself has decided to play the most brazen bluff on a busted flush ever by stating that he never advocated "staying the course"

I think Joe Gandelman, the Moderate Voice, gets it exactly right:

Question: How could anyone of any political party follow a leader like this? Abandoning a principle is one thing; denying you ever embraced it is another. The saddest part for American politics: On Monday you'll witness influential talk show hosts insisting the administration never had a policy of "stay the course." And some of their listeners will adjust their thinking accordingly.

There are some who never feel remorse or even embarassment. We call them sociopaths and they are literally capable of anything. So, I wonder how many of those who once voted Republican realized today what a terrible potential they voted for?

Last Head of British Army Joins Current Chief In Dissent

The retired head of the British Army, Field Marshal Sir Peter Inge, has joined the current head, General Sir Richard Dannatt in attacking the conduct of current military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Observer today reports Inge's remarks to a meeting of European experts on Tuesday:

Inge's intervention, coming amid growing speculation about Britain's exit strategy from Iraq, is the first criticism of operations by a former head of the British army. His comments, made at a meeting of European experts on Tuesday and published here for the first time, reflect the growing dismay among senior military officers and civil servants involved in defence and foreign affairs, that in the critical areas of Afghanistan and Iraq Britain lacked clear foreign and defence policies separate from the US.

'I don't believe we have a clear strategy in either Afghanistan or Iraq. I sense we've lost the ability to think strategically. Deep down inside me, I worry that the British army could risk operational failure if we're not careful in Afghanistan. We need to recognise the test that I think they could face there,' he told the debate held by Open Europe, an independent think tank campaigning for EU reform.

Inge added that Whitehall had surrendered its ability to think strategically and that despite the immense pressures on the army, defence received neither the research nor funding it required.

'I sense that Whitehall has lost the knack of putting together inter-departmental thinking about strategy. It talks about how we're going to do in Afghanistan, it doesn't really talk about strategy.'

And the reason the UK government has failed to think creatively about stratgey, as we know, is that the U.K. government incompetently allowed all the thinking to be done by the incompetents in Washington.

How To Make A Power Grab 'Mundane'

James Bovard, writing for Editor and Publisher magazine, makes his point so well and so forcibly that I'm just going to reproduce the whole thing here.

(October 18, 2006) -- How will we know when a dictatorship has arrived? Not from reading the Washington Post. The Post’s story today -- “Bush Signs Terrorism Measure” -- looks like just another routine report on the approval of a piece of legislation, accompanied by the usual “he said/ she said” balancing quotes.

The Military Commissions Act is widely seen as legalizing torture, but the article avoids any such mention of the T-word. Though the act revolutionizes American jurisprudence by permitting the use of tortured confessions in judicial proceedings, the Post discretely notes only that defendants will face “restrictions on their ability to ... exclude evidence gained through witness coercion.”

The lead of the Post article declares that the new law will “set the rules for the trials of key al-Qaeda members.” A typical subway strap hanger reader might shrug at this point and shift to the Sports section to read the latest autopsy on the Washington Redskins. The Post neglects to mention that the bill codifies the president’s power to label anyone on Earth an “enemy combatant” -- based on secret evidence which the government need not disclose.

The Post mentions new “restrictions” on detainees’ ability “to challenge their incarceration.” The article neglects to add “until hell freezes over.” Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) characterized the bill’s suspension of habeas corpus as akin to turning “back the clock 800 years.” But, according to the Post, this reform is simply another provision in just another bill - and, anyhow, so many bills get signed this time of year.

The Post says nothing about how the new law makes the president legislator, prosecutor, judge, and bailiff. As Yale law professor Jack Balkin notes, “The President has created a new regime in which he is a law unto himself on issues of prisoner interrogations. He decides whether he has violated the laws, and he decides whether to prosecute the people he in turn urges to break the law.”

The tone of the Post article is akin to a bored broadcaster’s reading from the Teleprompter: “In other news today, the government announced that the price of gasoline would be reduced by seven cents a gallon and also suspended the Bill of Rights.”

The Military Commissions Act is a stark power grab - but one would never know it from the Post’s account.

At some point, it is conceivable that the U.S. government’s repression could become more overt. And how would the Washington Post likely cover that?

* “As U.S. army tanks rolled through the streets of Washington, the DC police chief reported that the robbery rate fell 27%.”

* “National Guard units fired on demonstrators on Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday, damaging two Starbucks restaurants and seven newspaper vending machines.”

* “The president announced that he has the right to wiretap anyone’s phones. ...” WAIT. This example doesn’t work. The president already did that earlier this year so it is no longer news. Most of the media swallowed dutifully and deferred when the president relabeled the spying as “The Terrorist Surveillance Program.”

Amusingly, on the same page A4, just below the article on the military commissions act, the Post has a “Washington in Brief” snippet entitled “Bush signs Defense Bill with Some Reservations.” The Post’s account notes that, when Bush signed the $532.8 billion military appropriations bill, he included a “long list of caveats.” Bush’s signing statement “singled out about a dozen provisions that would require the White House to provide Congress with information on various subjects. Bush reminded lawmakers of ‘the president’s constitutional authority to withhold information. ...’”

The president proclaims his right to violate laws by denying Congress information on what the U.S. military is doing - and the Post draws no inference on how the powers conveyed by the Military Commissions Act could be used.

Bush has added more than 800 “signing statements” to new laws since he took office. He is the first to use signing statements routinely to nullify key provisions of new laws. The American Bar Association recently declared that Bush’s signing statements are "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers." But the Washington Post portrays the signing statements as simply a gentlemanly difference of opinion between the president and congressmen. It neglects to mention that the president now claims boundless prerogative to what is the law.

And this is how the Washington Post and much of the Establishment media portray almost every government seizure of power. It is never a question of looming tyranny: instead, it is only a question of different perspectives on how best to serve the American public. Waiting for the Washington press corps to sound the alarm on Leviathan is like waiting for Bush to renounce his love of power.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Newshog has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Newshog endorsed or sponsored by the originator.

39 Voices Become A Full Chorus On Iraq

It's a day for piling on the phased-withdrawal bandwagon, it seems. David Broder in the WaPo reminds us that only 39 senators got it correct in a vote earlier this year. The rest put personal power before the interests of those they were elected to work for. The subject of that vote is still alive - what to do about Iraq - and according to long-time Armed Services Committe members Levin and Reed is still Democrat policy:

On Iraq, the two Democrats harked back to the amendment that 39 senators supported during a debate earlier this year -- an amendment that called for a start on U.S. troop withdrawals within six months but set no numbers and specified no target date for ending the U.S. military presence.

Reed, who has made many trips to Iraq and returned just weeks ago from his most recent visit, described the "very, very difficult situation" he found there. "We have to begin to work toward redeployment without setting a timetable," he said. "We have to start laying out some red lines for the Iraqis . . . give them some clear goals we want them to achieve." They need to set plans for disarming militias, conducting elections at the provincial level and spending some of the funds being hoarded in Baghdad on better services for the people, he said.

Implicit in their comments is a belief, based on their firsthand observations, that the current rulers in Baghdad have a different agenda for themselves than the Bush administration's bland assurances suggest. As Levin put it, "Our only leverage for change is to force the politicians in Iraq to realize we're not there as their security blanket. When they recognize that reality, they're more likely to make the necessary compromises on sharing of oil revenues and sharing power. The prospect of losing us as their personal security blanket will focus their minds."

Reed agreed that unless something is done to change course, three separate violent struggles going on in Iraq (Sunnis vs. Shiites; Shiite factions fighting each other; Sunni insurgents fighting Americans) will probably merge into one massive calamity.

It's almost certain that James Baker's commission will echo Dem policy in it's recomendations and for similiar reasons - a growing consensus in the U.S. that Iraqi politicians and power-brokers must be given both carrot and stick. George Will writes today about four questions the commission might ask but given how well connected Will is, I think he knows they already are asking. The first two are:

· What are 140,000 U.S. forces achieving in Iraq that could not be achieved by 40,000?


· If the answer to the first question is "creating Iraqi security forces," a second question is: Is there an Iraqi government? In "State of Denial," Bob Woodward quotes Colin Powell, after leaving the administration, telling the president that strengthening Iraq's military and police forces is crucial but that "if you don't have a government that you can connect these forces to, then, Mr. President, you're not building up forces, you're building up militias." And making matters worse.

Then there's the U.N. and America's allies. Jim Hoagland notes:

The Baker group's political recommendations in late autumn will roughly coincide with the rollout of a U.N.-sponsored International Compact for Iraq that would offer new reconstruction aid and debt relief if Maliki undertakes substantial economic reforms. In the view of international officials, new laws on oil exploration, production and revenue sharing are urgent and central to the reforms and to national reconciliation efforts.

But military leaders and diplomats in Western capitals are not waiting for the Baker and U.N.-sponsored efforts to conclude before they assess the mistakes, poor strategy and changing conditions of warfare that have brought U.S. forces face to face with the bitter prospect of having to withdraw, mission unaccomplished.

And the very last onto the phased-withdrawal bandwagon, according to the New York Times today, will be the Bush administration:

The Bush administration is drafting a timetable for the Iraqi government to address sectarian divisions and assume a larger role in securing the country, senior American officials said.

Details of the blueprint, which is to be presented to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki before the end of the year and would be carried out over the next year and beyond, are still being devised. But the officials said that for the first time Iraq was likely to be asked to agree to a schedule of specific milestones, like disarming sectarian militias, and to a broad set of other political, economic and military benchmarks intended to stabilize the country.

Although the plan would not threaten Mr. Maliki with a withdrawal of American troops, several officials said the Bush administration would consider changes in military strategy and other penalties if Iraq balked at adopting it or failed to meet critical benchmarks within it.

A senior Pentagon official involved in drafting the blueprint said Iraqi officials were being consulted as the plan evolved and would be invited to sign off on the milestones before the end of the year. But he added, “If the Iraqis fail to come back to us on this, we would have to conduct a reassessment” of the American strategy in Iraq.

The cynical among us realize, though, that the new name of the game now that "cut-and-run" has become the flavor of the month will be to ensure that no-one in the Bush administration has to admit their own personal "arrogance" and "stupidity" in staying the failing course for so long and making sure that the Republican base can at least have some plausible means of telling itself that Dear Leader hasn't flip-flopped.

Homeland Security Wants Travel Permits

From the "Practical Nomad" blog:

Should you have to ask for permission from the government before you are allowed to get on a plane or cruise ship? ("Mother, may I?")

The USA Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has proposed that airlines cruise lines, and operators of all other ships and planes -- including charter flights, air taxis, fishing vessels, etc. -- be required to get individual permission (”clearance”) from the DHS for each passenger on all flights or ocean voyages to, from, or via the USA. Unless the answer is “Yes” -- if the answer is “no” or “maybe”, or if the DHS doesn’t answer at all -- the airline wouldn’t be allowed to give you a boarding pass, or let you or your luggage on the plane.

It looks like any such proposal won't get off the ground this time because the airlines and Pentagon are objecting - not because it violates basic human rights and is a signature restriction of a totalitarian state but because it would cost too much and take too much time to implement!

Still, it should worry the sh*t out of you that they are even thinking this way.

When's The Wedding, General?

I suppose this is what they mean when they say you have to play politics to reach the top ranks of the military:

The top US general defended the leadership of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it is inspired by God.

"He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country," said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Both the Bush administration and Al Qaida extremists like to claim God is on their side. One of those claims has to be wrong, and since it is a matter of faith which has no chance of objective proof this side of heaven I wish they would both just shut the f**k up about it.

But worse was still to come:

Rumsfeld is "a man whose patriotism focus, energy, drive, is exceeded by no one else I know ... quite simply, he works harder than anybody else in our building," Pace said at a ceremony at the Southern Command (Southcom) in Miami.

Now maybe its a cultural thing but back in the U.K. you wouldn't say this about your immediate boss in public even if you thought it was true and said so privately. It comes across as simple wholehearted brown-nosing - both inherently insincere and, somehow, unmanly.

Ultimate Scary Story - Vote GOP Or Al-Qaida Will Nuke You!

Via Outside The Beltway, I see the GOP has stooped as low as it is possible to go in its efforts to scare the electorate into voting Republican. A new RNC ad entitled "The Stakes" alleges that BinLaden is just itching to nuke America and will do so the instant that Denny Hastert's visage is no longer scaring him away.

You can watch the vid at OTB but here's the transcript:

“What is yet to come will be even greater”-Osama Bin Laden, Al Jazeera, 12/26/01

“With God’s permission we call on everyone who believes in God…to comply with His will to kill the Americans.”

-Osama Bin Laden (The World Islamic Front, Fatwa, 2/23/98)

[Text Fades: “kill the Americans”]

“They will not come to their senses unless the attacks fall on their heads and…until the battle has moved inside America.” -Osama Bin Laden (Interview, Al-Jazeera, 10/21/01)

[Text Fades: “inside America.”]

“We sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states, and they negotiated. And we purchased some suitcase bombs.” -Ayman Al-Zawahiri (“Al Qaeda: We Bought Nuke Cases,” [New York] Daily News, 3/22/04)

[Text Fades: “suitcase bombs.”]

“Our message is clear—what you saw in New York and Washington and what you are seeing in Afghanistan and Iraq, all these are nothing compared to what you will see next.” -Ayman Al-Zawahiri (“Al Qaeda Threatens More UK, U.S. Attacks,” CNN.com, 8/4/05)

[Text Fades: “nothing compared to what you will see next.”]

“What is yet to come will be even greater”

These Are The Stakes. Vote November 7th.

www.GOP.com

The suitcase nuke rumor has been around since at least 2002, when it was a Drudge story. Here's how even the Free Republic folks thought it was ridiculous.

The big problem with the scare-factor on this rumor is that the triggers on Soviet suitcase nukes have to be "recooked" every 60 days or so. They are useless scrap by now, even if Al Qaida ever had them. Which is doubtful in the extreme. Even uber-right Townhall pundit Dean Barnett thinks the idea is ludicrous.

Here's a link to the original NY Daily News story. It's all thirdhand stuff reliant on the word of a Pakistani journalist, Hamid Mir, who has close ties to BinLaden and has been pushing the suitcase bomb thing, always with different numbers, to different news sources for years.

It also contains a line you won't find in the GOP ad.
U.S. intelligence officials say they are well aware of Bin Laden's lust for nukes and his efforts to buy them on the black market. But they point out there's no concrete evidence that he has succeeded."

Hamid Mir also claimed recently that one of these suitcase nukes would be used in America this September. I must have missed the mushroom cloud footage on FauxNews.

In other words, its a scary story and nothing more. These people have no shame.

Operation Sinking Together

It's officially too late for an oil-spot tactic - where stability grows from cores in major cities - to work in Iraq.

The U.S. military acknowledged Thursday that its two-month drive to crush insurgent and militia violence in the Iraqi capital had fallen short, calling the raging bloodshed disheartening and saying it was rethinking its strategy to rein in gunmen, torturers and bombers.

The admission by military spokesman Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell came as car bombs, mortar fire and shootings around the country killed at least 66 people and wounded 175. The dead included the Anbar province police commander, slain by gunmen who burst into his home in Ramadi.

...Caldwell told reporters the U.S.-Iraqi bid to crush violence in the capital had not delivered the desired results, with attacks in Baghdad rising by 22 percent in the first three weeks of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when compared to the three previous weeks.

"In Baghdad, Operation Together Forward has made a difference in the focus areas but has not met our overall expectations in sustaining a reduction in the level of violence," Caldwell said at a news briefing. He was referring to the security sweep, which began Aug. 7 with the introduction of an additional 12,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops into Baghdad.

"The violence is indeed disheartening," he said.

Caldwell said U.S. troops over the last week were forced to launch a second sweep of southern Baghdad's Dora district after a surge in sectarian attacks. At least eight people, including four policemen, were killed in bombings and shootings in Dora on Thursday, police said.

"We find the insurgent elements, the extremists are in fact punching back hard, they're trying to get back into those areas," Caldwell said.

That is indeed, as Bush finally admitted yesterday, a turning point that invites comparison with Vitenam. James Baker, Bush Senior's consigliere, is already being downbeat about his own commission's ability to come up with policy options - one of which, amazingly, is asking Iran and Syria to bail the U.S. out of the quagmire it has created for itself - which will do anything more than slow what seems now to be inevitable.

Mr Baker, the co-chair of a study group on Iraq, warned it was unrealistic to expect an immediate solution to the problems. "There is no magic bullet for the situation in Iraq. It is very, very difficult," he said in a speech to the World Affairs Council, in Houston, on Tuesday. "Anybody who thinks that somehow we're going to come up with something that is going to totally solve the problem is engaging in wishful thinking."

Bush and his cronies have created a Gordian Knot which cannot be unravelled by any amount of Alexandrian swordwork. They have stayed the course - and continue to demand staying the course - so long that there's no other way to untie the knot either. The Iraqis may have a chance of rescuing themselves if and when their sovereignty is more than just a few empty words scrawled on a napkin - and must chart their own course in doing so, however it turns out. They have that right as human beings and the last people to say different are the failures who put them in their current predicament. For the occupiers, the choices left are leave willingly or leave unwillingly. That those are the only choices, all bad ones, should be laid squarely at the door of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and their neocon cheerleaders. Theirs is the blame.

A General Chorus?

A British Brigadier has echoed criticisms made by the head of the British Army.

Brigadier Ed Butler, commander of 3 Para battlegroup just returned from southern Afghanistan, said the delay in deploying Nato troops after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2002 meant British soldiers faced a much tougher task now.

Asked whether the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath had led to Britain and the US taking their eye off the ball, Brig Butler said the question was "probably best answered by politicians".

But echoing criticisms last week by General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the army, he added that Iraq had affected operations in Afghanistan. "We could have carried on in 2002 in the same way we have gone about business now.

"Have the interim four years made a difference? I think realistically they have," Brig Butler told journalists in London. Since then, he added, Britain had "marked time" and British troops were now "starting to make up for that time".

This comes on the same day that old-style conservative Max Hastings, who was one of the primary media backers for Margaret Thatcher, writes:

The fifth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan has been marked by two significant statements from the British government. Tony Blair said that soldiers resent relentlessly sceptical coverage of the struggle: "They get fed up, as does everyone else, when it is all presented in a negative light."
Meanwhile, Kim Howells, the foreign office minister for Iraq and Afghanistan, denounced the angry emails dispatched from the battlefield by serving soldiers, and leaked to the media.

It would tax even Alastair Campbell to explain how both these statements can be true. If Blair is right that the media is inventing stories about inadequate manpower, shortages of helicopters and vehicles, poor pay and treatment of casualties, why are so many soldiers complaining about these things?

This is a vivid example of the government's approach to defence in general and to Blair's wars in particular, and I write as a supporter of the Afghan commitment. Ministers are shamelessly committed to stifle debate. They seek to quarantine the soldiers at the sharp end from the media, and to deny the British public information it is entitled to have.

... In June, the dean of social sciences at Durham University, Professor Anthony Forster, gave an excellent and provocative lecture about the stresses facing the armed forces, in which he highlighted the danger of a breakdown in the "military covenant" between servicemen and their political and military leadership.

British Army Review, a service journal, planned to publish a transcript. The professor has now been told, however, that his piece has been "pulled". This is allegedly because of concern that it might prejudice courts martial for alleged offences committed in Iraq. In truth, of course, the issues Forster raises are too close to home.

The people most dismayed about the politically enforced silence are the rank and file. During the feeble tenure of the last group of chiefs of staff, the head of the UK Defence Academy, Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszely, was moved to say that service "voices are insufficiently heard in debate on security issues". Lower down the ranks, people express themselves more bluntly. They want to see and hear those supposed to be in charge. It is not good enough, for service bosses to say that ministers will not let them open their mouths.

General Sir Richard Dannatt, the new chief of the general staff, has committed himself to create a new climate, in which the army speaks out much more openly about what it is doing and where it is going. He himself has already gone public on some of the issues, and received a warm response. The first sea lord, Sir Jonathon Band, is likewise an exceptionally able officer, with a 21st-century view.

...It is the chiefs' duty loyally to carry out the policy of the government of the day. No one seriously suggests that serving officers should be permitted - for instance - publicly to question the usefulness of staying in Iraq. But the chiefs of staff have a duty, as well as a right, to say and do things they think necessary for the interests of the institution they serve, even if these are sometimes inconvenient to ministers.

In recent years the chiefs have allowed themselves to be cowed by a government obsessed with information management into accepting restraints which are constitutionally improper. These have contributed to a serious decline in morale. Professor Forster said in his lecture: "If society is to expect soldiers to make personal sacrifices on behalf of the nation, soldiers must not only expect fair treatment and be valued and respected as individuals ... senior commanders have an obligation to deliver this. Without appropriate action, there is a real danger that defence chiefs will have themselves made an important contribution to the breaking of the military covenant between the army and the individual soldier."

The services need a clear vision for the future. Richard Dannatt and Jonathon Band thoroughly understand what needs to be done. The armed forces are still a great national institution. They will not long stay that way, however, unless their leaders are once again allowed to lead them, and to tell the truth even when this discredits the prime minister's sunshine fantasies. [All emphasis mine - C]

One can only hope that American generals read Hasting's words and think for a while. The problem - that of a broken covenant of reciprocal duty between individual soldiers and the military command placed over them - is not a peculiarly British one.

Mysogeny Pop-Quiz

Newshog's best friend and secret, Kat, sends us mails with news we might not have seen and often includes thought-provoking comments of her own. I wish we could convince her to blog for Newshog regularly. Today, her mail was so spot on that I'm going to include it here.

Would you mind humoring me for just a couple of minutes? Please? This is probably going to seem dumb, but it may not be a complete waste of your time, since it could easily lead to a Newshog post. Of course I'm going to explain what I'm on about below, but if you decide to humor me, for the moment I'd really appreciate it if you would restrain your natural curiosity (i.e. refrain from scrolling down to my explanation), and just take this as it comes.

I just want you to (mentally) name a few influential people - say, around 4 to 10 people - in each of the categories I'm going to ask about. I won't even ask you to write down any of the names that come to mind, but I do want you to jot down the number of people you name in each category. In other words, if I were doing this myself, for each question I would just count off whoever comes to mind on my fingers, and then jot down the total. If no one comes to mind for a particular question, don't strain your brain - just skip it. Oh yeah - please, don't name anybody more than once, and don't name anyone not currently living.

Who are (or who do you think are)...?

1. ...the most influential members of the Bush administration?
2. ...the most influential members of the Senate?
3. ...the most influential members of the House?
4. ...the most influential people in the Republican party?
5. ...the most influential people in the Democratic party?
6. ...most likely Rep. candidates for the presidency in '08?
7. ...most likely Dem. candidates for the presidency in '08?
8. ...the most influential right wing bloggers in the US?
9. ...the most influential left wing bloggers in the US?
10. ..the most influential op/ed (print) columnists in the US?
11. ...the most influential tv news people (whether anchors, reporters or pundits) in the US?
12. ...a few of the most influential religious/spiritual figures (I won't call 'em 'leaders') in the US?
13. ...a few other influential people in the US who aren't (or, are no longer) primarily thought of as being associated with either politics or religion?
14. ...a few of the most influential scientists in the US?
15. ...a few of the most influential business people in the US - or most well-known or successful, if influence per se doesn't come to mind?
16. ...a few of the most influential - or most well-known - academics in the US?
17. ...a few of the most influential US people in NGOs (in the broadest sense of that term, including every org. from Greenpeace to the Red Cross, etc.), if any?
18. ...a few of the most influential authors/writers in the US (regardless of genre)?
19. ...a few influential people in other departments of the US government, or in state governments?
20. ...a few people, in any area not covered by any of the above, who are influential on a national level?

Okay, now add up the total number of people you named.

Now, out of that total, how many of the people you named were female?

Condi, Hillary, Nancy, and Oprah probably made the list. Did any others? No? If not, don't worry about it - I can't think of any others either. The only reason Maya Angelou (sp?) came to mind, as a possible dark horse in the writers category, is not because I've actually read any of her stuff, or think she's influential, but because Oprah's been drilling her name into viewers' heads for years. Even if you managed to think of a couple of others, there were probably no more than 6 nationally influential females on your list - out of 300 million people, and from every arena of our society combined. And, no, I'm not surprised by this, and I know you aren't either. We may not overtly think about it very often, but we're all subliminally well-aware that, in our society, this is considered normal - even natural. So what's my point?

Well, as I was pondering whether or not to send you Bob Herbert's Sunday nytimes editorial 'Why Aren't We Shocked', I initially thought (probably due to a caffeine deficiency), 'this isn't exactly political news - although it should be.' But then the coffee began to kick in, and I realized just how political it actually is. At which point I became annoyed with Herbert because, as good a job as he's done of pointing out the cause, he gives short shrift to the effects.

As Herbert says in the editorial, and says well, "...we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against females is more or less to be expected. ...The disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous treatment of women is so pervasive and so mainstream that it has just about lost its ability to shock. ...We're all implicated in this carnage because the relentless violence against women and girls is linked at its core to the wider society's casual willingness to dehumanize women and girls, to see them first and foremost as sexual vessels ” objects” and never, ever as the equals of men."

Although Herbert includes a plethora of appauling examples to drive home his point, he completely fails to mention this hugely important effect: 'a society saturated with mysogyny' is utterly unable to perceive women in general as leaders - in any field of endeavor. Which is why, out of a population of 300m, only half a dozen or so women have managed, individually, to become nationally influential despite our society's persistent and overwhelming mysogyny towards females in general. Although I haven't paid much attention to what's been said about Pelosi, I know that Condi, Hillary, and Oprah have all had to endure many years of relentless personal attacks - attacks which have included everything from their choice of hair style and clothing to accusations of lesbianism and/or sexual frigidity. And the situation is progressively getting worse rather than better. A few decades ago, females at least had a few admirable fictional role models such as Nancy Drew, Supergirl, and Wonder Woman. But today, with only this handful of beleaguered women serving as role models of female leadership (amidst a veritable media deluge of pop-culture 'heroines' such as Paris Hilton), how could society's mysogyny be anything other than self-perpetuating?

Excellent stuff, Kat. Thank you, sincerely. C

Pakistan Frees Top Terror Leader

Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, founder of two organisations listed as terror groups by the U.S.. has been freed from house arrest by a Pakistani court.

Saeed is the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terrorist group alleged by Indian authorities to have carried out the Mumbai bombings. He was placed under house arrest shortly after the Mumbai attacks as a sop to international opinion but is now free again. He supposedly quit the LeK in 2001 but promptly set up a charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which was branded a terrorist organisation by the United States in April on grounds of ties to the LeK. He has been living hassle-free in Pakistan for many years and now will continue to do so.

And you know what the White House will have to say about it?

Absolutely nothing.

Iraq: Flying The Chickenhawk Coup

Since the occupation of Iraq began, the needs of the many (Iraqis and troops alike) have been outweighed by the political needs of the Republican few.

The presentation of the occupation as a rose-covered cakewalk which needed no planning because the occupiers would be welcomed with open arms was followed, once the awful truth began to sink in, by demands that America would stay a course. That course was always designed to show American voters that the Republicans were tough and strong rather than solve problems such as reconstruction, equal rights, sectarian feuds and an insurgency fuelled by the very presence of the occupiers.

That course has failed, and failed so obviously that even the Republicans who wanted to stay it most cannot deny it. So the course must be changed - and yet again the needs of the few will outweigh the needs of the many. Tomas Barnett writes that, following the midterms, we should expect to see many other Republican luminaries following the likes of Hagel and Warner into dissent over what has been policy to date. The reason is simple - the political machinists in their smoke-filled backrooms who run the GOP know that no Republican will get elected in '08 by advocating "staying the course" and so they will demand that the party unite behind a new message, a new course that the next presdiential candidate can run on - and it must be done early enough that there is a minimum disruption to their precious message discipline.

Thus the commission chaired by James Baker, the Secretary of State in the Administration of George Bush Sr. Baker is a staunch Republican and a Bush loyalist - his task is to give continuity by steering "the course" towards a policy for the '08 presidential run without making it look like ditching the Bush line outright. He is said to be considering three possible options - a federalizing of Iraq into three mostly autonomous regions, the imposition of a strongman "junta" or, as suggested by David Ignatius, a solution that involves a wider Middle East resolution and the involvement of local nations such as Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia - perhaps by classifying Iraq as some kind of U.N. Protectorate and moving in a multi-national peacekeeping force to allow the current occupiers to make a phased withdrawal. The last option could partner the first.

But for now, the rhetoric has to be "stay the course" - at least until after the U.S. midterms. That any decision will be held off until then, for purely partisan political reasons, is causing nervousness, uncertainty and further bloodshed.

The international option is favored by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani who says it could end violence in Iraq "within months". Donald Rumsfield, on the other hand, says "Neither Iran nor Syria have been helpful," but then Rummie is one of those in the administration who appears to think America should never talk with those it disagrees with. Talibani has always backed federalism too - especially when it comes to his own Kurdish region.

Federalism - which many see as the prelude to a truly "hot" civil war and the eventual break-up of Iraq - has been opposed by Sunnis, who fear it would leave them in the lurch and by Shiites such as the influential Muqtada al-Sadr. The Kurds and many Shiites, who would gain advantages by such a move, widely are in favor.

In favor of the "strongman" solution are many of the neocon think-tankers who talked Bush and the nation into the current mess in the first place. One of their favorite candidates as dictator or member of a junta is Ahmed Chalabi, the man they always wanted to install as strongman boss of the Satrapy of Iraq. Others include one of the main Sunni political blocs, who surely see it as a surefire way of preventing the Balkanisation of Iraq. Bush himself, while saying that he supports the Malkiki government, has called Maliki's reluctance to reign in the militias "unacceptable" -dpilospeak for "do something now or we get nasty" - and back in June the U.S.'s neocon ambassador to Iraq, a man who has often seemed to be pulling the strings of the Maliki administration, gave them six months to succeed in this, or else. Maliki is now asking for more time and obviously worried that he will be ousted by the occupiers.

I think he is right to worry. Despite a level of incompetence that means neither President nor top intelligence officials can tell the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni, the Bush administration continues to ride roughshod over its own declaration of Iraqi sovereignty. Given a set of options, one of which is throwing Maliki to the wolves and getting that strongman they always wanted, the strongman option - a coup, indeed - will win. Baker, the Bush Family consigliere, with typical Republican attention to framing has described this option as "Stability First". A better title would be "Democracy? Fuggettaboutit!".

A prerequisite for acceptance of any policy that says ditch democracy in Iraq would first have to blame the Iraqis for the failures of the Bush administration, and indeed that is more and more what we are seeing. The Chickenhawk Coup will come as news to all except those who have been planning it all along.

Quoting Machiavelli

There should be a version of Godwin's law that says whenever representative democracies and their relationships are being discussed, the first person to mention Machiavelli in a positive way loses the argument.

James Joyner, often a sane-if-wrong conservative, does so today in a discussion of America's tendencies towards empire or hegemony. Joyner writes that: "It is only during short-lived moments of perceived American weakness, such as the days after the 9/11 attacks, that the international community loves us. The reason was eloquently explained by Nicolo Machiavelli nearly a century before the first British colony was established here". He then quotes Machiavelli's "Prince":

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you. And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other precautions, is ruined; because friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.

and says "And so it remains" as if the facts actually bear out these words of the failed rennaisance politico (or much of the rest of his work).

Because, of course, Japan, the UK, Canada and all the other nations who have been lauded for joining Bush's failed occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan did so only out of fear, right? And come to think of it, the problem with fear is that, at the first sign of weakness, your fearful allies turn on you - as happened with the Soviet satellites as the great bear slumped - or become double-agents as has happened with Pakistan's "joining" the effort to deal with Islamist extremist terrorism.

If you want a far better explanation of why America presents an ever-changing foreign policy face to the world, then Dave Schuler at The Glittering Eye has it right.

The problem here is that the United States unlike countries like, say, England or France does not have a foreign policy or, more accurately, our foreign policy is an emergent phenomenon which depends on the actions and interactions of a number of competing and cooperative political forces within the United States. Consequently, the United States is in turn imperialistic, isolationist, and mercantile depending on which force is in the ascendancy at any given time.

Under a Theodore Roosevelt the country may be imperialistic while just a few years later under, say, Coolidge it will be isolationist.

This apparent changeability is confusing and dismaying to friends and enemies alike. But I also believe that the interaction of the different forces which influence American foreign policy has undeniably given our country a strength and adaptability.

Or, shorter, the U.S. only does domestic policy, which it then inflicts upon the rest of the world. Dave and I will have to differ on whether that is always a strength of the American method.

Be that as it may, Joyner's use of Machiavelli is a symptom of a worrisome tendency towards a particular kind of American political schizophrenia which is far more prevalent on the Right. They say they believe in government "by the people, for the people" and the idea that "all men are created equal" but they tend to assume a superiority of moral integrity and authority in those they wish to have as representatives of the people. In short, they always think of those representatives as Princes - ruling over rather than working for the people. They then become imbued with the "divine right of Kings" where their pronouncements are considered almost ex deus, which explains their incredible loyalty and message discipline.

That schizophrenia is endemic to American politics and I'm not saying that Democrats are exempt - but, for instance, it is far more common to hear conservatives say things like "respect the office if not the person" when speaking about elected representatives. I cannot imagine someone saying that about the British Prime Minister. Why on earth would anyone want to laud a funny-shaped room as being more deserving of respect than the man who occupies it - especially if the man uses his position of elected power to lie about sex or about WMDs?

It's a natural tendency which comes from a schizophrenia in the American constitution, though. Given the lack of any better model for the Founders than the Britain of the time, they decided to have an elected Monarch we would all agree to call President instead of King during his short reign but who has more power - including that to raise his own unelected noble cabinet to positions of power - than most constitutional monarchs do nowadays. From that disguising of a monarchy under the forms of democracy arises this tendency to think the elected, rather than being the electorate's employees, have become the rulers, the Princes, in truth. The Founders, I hope and believe, would prefer us all to strive to remember that A Man's A Man For All That.

You see yonder fellow called 'a lord,'
Who struts, and stares, and all that?
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He is but a dolt for all that.
For all that, and all that,
His ribboned, star, and all that,
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at all that.

Whenever you see someone cite Machiavelli's cynical and authoritarian philosophy as a positive thing, you can be sure that he has forgotten that.

India's Right Cracks Down On Religious Conversions

You can bet if this story were about a Muslim nation, the uber-right's Islamophobes would be all over it - but since it is about the hard-right Hindifascists of India, they don't care.

Thousands of low-caste Hindus converted to Buddhism and Christianity on Saturday in protest against new laws in several Indian states that make such changes of religion difficult.

The ceremonies took place in the central city of Nagpur to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the conversion to Buddhism of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a low-caste Hindu and the founder of India's democratic constitution.

Buddhist monks in orange robes and Christian priests administered religious vows in separate ceremonies to about 10,000 Dalits, the politically correct name for those called "untouchables" in the past.


Several states governed by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have introduced or strengthened laws to stop what it says are forced conversions, mainly by Christian missionaries.

Most of those who converted on Saturday in one of the biggest inter-faith changes in years were poor villagers from the state of Maharashtra where Nagpur is located.

...Under the new laws anyone planning to leave the Hindu fold, the country's majority faith, must obtain certificates from officials and affidavits from courts, stating they were converting out of free will and not by inducements.

Christian groups say these laws are aimed at curbing religious freedom and against the Indian constitution. The anti-conversion laws were condemned by Pope Benedict this year.

"There is complete freedom in the constitution to pick up and follow any faith you chose. Today is the celebration of that freedom," said Joseph D'Souza, president of the All India Christian Council, who presided over the baptism.

"This is not about religion or conversion. It is about a constitutional right, the right to practice one's own religion," said Udit Raj, president of the Indian Justice Party.

If you've ever wondered why India gets on so well with the uber-right of both Israel and the U.S., wonder no longer.

If You Wanted To Rig The Republican Primary For '08

How would you go about it?

Remember, it has to look natural and you have all of the dirty tricks made common by Karl Rove at your fingertips.

Well, maybe first you would ensure that the "dark horse" candidate, George Allen, would be unacceptable to anyone who doesn't have robes made from bedsheets and a pillowcase in their closet.

Then, you could eliminate a whole bunch of minor leadership from the Senate and House GOP with a well-placed sex scandal which would show they enabled pedophilia and covered it up.

The frontrunner from the current administration would need to be thrown under a bus too so that if she ran, the opposition could call Condi's truthfulness into question.

If Bill Frist shot himself in the foot by suggesting the Taliban could be given a place in Afghanistan's government, that would be handy. Handier still if he can be convinced to flip after he flopped so that the world at large can know he isn't authentic and is willing to say anything to appease the GOP base.

Then if you could sic the Feds on Mitt Romney with an investigation into whether he might have lied about safety inspections on the Big Dig...

You'd be almost there.

That would leave the two frontrunners - John "false flag" McCain and teflon-coated Rudy G.

Rudy's too soft on the social issues but he would make an excellent ticket-mate who could "prove" how moderate the Republicans can be while at the same time allow McCain to move further to the right and capture the extremists of the religious and neocon factions.

There. Fait accomplis. But that would take a mastermind or an incredible set of coincidences...

Being honest, I don't really think there is such a masterplan, it is just the collapse of the GOP bearing fruit that the most politically accute are avoiding having land on them. But just the same, I wonder who Karl is really working for nowadays?