Pigpile on Stupidty

This is a recurring macro that I implement whenever a seemingly intelligent liberal hawk argues that there was no way to no that their threat assessment and political assessment in the Fall of 2002/Winter of 2003 could have been wrong. This one is being initiated by a post by Scott Winship at TPM-Cafe for the following paragraph:

Of course, there are limits to how far evidence can take us. Evidence is often ambiguous, and so multiple interpretations may be consistent with what we know. Sometimes the facts are wrong. And at times we may lack the necessary evidence when decisions must be made. The Iraq war illustrates these problems particularly well.

While progressives quite effectively assessed the (stunningly weak) evidence around Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain uranium from Niger, for instance, many prominent hawks such as Ken Pollack had important facts about Iraq's WMD capabilities wrong. The invasion of Iraq required advocating a policy without all the ideal information being available.

Information is a very valuable thing and you can buy new information --- that is why I spent $.50 today to see how the Pirates are continuing to embarrass --- and smart, evidence based liberals had the opportunity to assess the quality of information and reassess their evaluations multiple times. So now I'll start my policy-evaluation macro for Iraq:

There was significant uncertainty in the spring and summer of 2002 as to the status of the ABC programs in Iraq, and SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE. And the AUMF in conjunction with an approach to go to the UN for coercive inspections could have been that something. If the support for the AUMF was based on a desire to gain information and reduce uncertainty as to the status of the ABC programs of Saddam Hussein, then the vote is defensible if the voter quickly changed their mind.

The inspections combined with increased US and UK surveillance of Iraqi territory should have produced significant new information. And they did. The information was null information that to the best of the US, UK and UN knowledge the biggest threat in Iraq was minor book-keeping errors and some short range ballistic missiles that either were just within the allowable range limits or under unusual circumstances 10-15% over allowable limits. By mid-January one of three conclusions should have been drawn from the new information.

1) There was nothing there
2) US intelligence sucks
3) Saddam Hussein is a competent evil genius who is able to coordinate the movement of multiple large labs, thousands of artillery shells, millions of pounds of highly fragile precise machinery, thousands of individuals without being noticed despite being under some of the most intensive electronic and visual surveillance in the history of the world.

#1 and #2 are reasonably highly correlated and the available supporting evidence strongly supported some combination of the two. The uncertainty costs had been dramatically reduced so opposition to the war would be a coherent position for an AUMF yes-voter to have if this is the justification.[/end macro]

I can understand people being wrong when there is bad information and insufficient information. I can understand people wanting better information before they lend their support to an extremely expensive proposition. I can not understand anyone who says with a straight face that the information environment by January 2003 was the same information environment of August 2002. We knew that either Saddam Hussein was an evil genius with magical Voldemortian powers to apparate away visible signs of massively capital intensive programs or he had next to jack shit.

Anyone who relies on informational uncertainty to argue that their support to invade Iraq in order to (potentially) disarm it was still retrospectively a good decision is either full of shit or delusional.

Nice Economy, really it is

I am a bit of a bear on the US economy, and I know some of that is personal bias at work as I have had a great time finding work over the past nine months. I am either massive over-educated or under-experienced for most of the jobs that I have applied and interviewed for. But that is another story for another day, or at least later today after this nasty thunderstorm strolls through.

The New York Times is reporting that the second round of data revisions are showing what people already knew --- the economy is slowing down and it is slowing hard:

Growth advanced just 0.6 percent, compared with an initial estimate of 1.3 percent. It was the slowest rate recorded since the fourth quarter of 2002.....

the drag from the collapse in residential real estate was slightly less than the government first reported.

Most economists agree that the first quarter was probably a low point for the last several years, and they expect the economy has regained some strength in the second quarter. Although consumer spending has probably slowed since the first quarter and the correction in the housing market is ongoing

Yep, consumers which means workers still are not making any more money, fixed quantity consumption such as energy and healthcare are still getting more expensive, and the massive home equity ATM system that propped the US economy up for the past couple of years is still broken and will not be pumping out free $100 bills for years to come now. But things are going to get better!!!

US General Says He May Need More Time to Assess Iraq Surge

By Cernig

Staying in Iraq forever, one Friedman Unit at a time:

The U.S. ground forces commander in Iraq says he might need more time to assess the impact of the new security plan, beyond the September assessment President Bush and the Congress are expecting. Lieutenant General Ray Odierno made the statement Thursday during a news conference via satellite with reporters at the Pentagon.

...General Odierno says the troop surge and the new approach to fighting the Iraqi insurgency are making progress, with increases in the number of coalition operations that find weapons caches, bomb factories and insurgent cells. But he also says insurgents attack every day, and he cautions against excessive optimism. The general says he might not be able to make even an initial assessment of the new strategy by September.

"The assessment might be that I need a little more time," he said. "The assessment might be [that] I've seen enough and it's effective, or I've seen enough and it's not going to be effective. Right now, if you ask me, I would tell you I'll probably need a little bit more time to do a true assessment."

Of course, Bush has already made his assessment - a permanent presence - so this is just a smoke screen designed to fool those with short-term memory problems and to give political cover for Republicans on the Hill.

Talking To Terrorists

By Cernig

The AP reports that the US military in Iraq has authorized its commanders to make deals with anyone who will make them for ceasefires.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said he has authorized commanders to reach out to militants, tribes, religious leaders and others in the country that has been gripped by violence from a range of fronts including insurgents, sectarian rivals and common criminals.

``We are talking about cease-fires, and maybe signing some things that say they won't conduct operations against the government of Iraq or against coalition forces.,'' Odierno told Pentagon reporters in a video conference from Baghdad.

``It's just the beginning, so we have a lot of work to do on this,'' he said. ``But we have restructured ourselves to organize to work this issue.''

Four years in, the US military and the Bush administration have finally accepted what many on the Left knew all along - that you have to eventually deal with some of the terrorists if you want the shooting to stop because you cannot kill them all - and it sounds like they're so desparate for some good news they are going overboard on the idea.

Of course, the reason it took so long is that the US military had to overcome political pressure from warmongering asshats like this and this.

Keeping The "White, Christian, Male Power Structure"

By Cernig

Bill O'Reilly and John McCain agree about what's really behind rightwing resistance to any immigration bill at all. Fear.

Bill O'Reilly: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you're a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you've got to cap with a number.

John McCain: In America today we've got a very strong economy and low unemployment, so we need addition farm workers, including by the way agriculture, but there may come a time where we have an economic downturn, and we don't need so many.

[crosstalk]

O'Reilly: But in this bill, you guys have got to cap it. Because estimation is 12 million, there may be 20 [million]. You don't know, I don't know. We've got to cap it.

McCain: We do, we do. I agree with you.

I may be an immigrant but I also fit the WASP profile (other than being non-Christian). However, since the entrenched "white, Christian, male power structure" is made up of asshats like O'Reilly and McCain I figure breaking it down would be a damn good idea - and isn't going to happen anytime soon no matter how many immigrants who don't fit their phenotype come to America. It's rampant, paranoid xenophobia, that's all.

Op-Ed Idiots

By Cernig

I see National Journal has republished Norman Podhoretz' rant from earlier this month in which he hopes and prays George Bush - a president "battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory" - will bomb Iran before he leaves office.

For my opinions on N-Pod's warmongering, see my post from 16th May, "Drums in the Deep".

And while I'm on the subject of op-ed idiots, can someone explain to me why David Ignatius is writing a column attacking Bush for being so slow to accept the Baker Hamiliton Report - which involved a plan for phased withdrawal from Iraq - when it's quite clear that Bush has no intention of ever withdrawing from Iraq? It makes of his entire column a study in wasting newsprint which is new and thorough even for Ignatius. Is Bush's idea of a South Korean style of perpetual presence to be the new elephant in the room for the US professional pundit class?

And the neocon crazies are actually cock-a-hoop about Bush's terrorist-creation plans which will ensure US troops will be wearing targets in Iraq for the next fifty years!

Update Oh look, here comes SecDef Gates to back up Bush's plan for a "long-term military presence in Iraq similar to its arrangement with South Korea."

What A Rude Iraqi Awakening

By Cernig

The cheerleading right this last few weeks have been full of what they say is the very latest good news from Iraq. They call it The Awakening - the tale of Sunni tribes and native Sunni insurgents in Anbar province turning on Al Qaeda and allying themselves with US forces, even joining the local police force.

Over at major cheerleading blog Red State, Pejman Yousefzadeh wrote back in March that:

the progress in Anbar province is very real and very palpable and if the plans undertaken there end up working, they can be transferred to other parts of the country as well, much as General Petraeus's counterinsurgency plan, so successful in Mosul, is being implemented in Baghdad.

Of course, Petreaus' plan was so successful in Mosul that now, the local Sunnis have the time to do some ethnic cleansing of Kurds in the city.

Sunni Arab militants, reinforced by insurgents fleeing the new security plan in Baghdad, are trying to rid Mosul of its Kurdish population through violence and intimidation, Kurdish officials said.

Mosul...was recently estimated to be about a quarter Kurdish, but Sunni Arabs have already driven out at least 70,000 Kurds and virtually erased the Kurdish presence from the city’s western half, said Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of surrounding Nineveh Province and a Kurd.

The militants “view this as a Sunni-dominated town, and they view the Kurds as encroaching on Mosul,” said Col. Stephen Twitty, commander of the Fourth Brigade, First Cavalry Division, which is deployed in Nineveh. Some Kurdish and Christian enclaves remain on the east side, though their numbers are dwindling. Kurdish officials say the flight has accelerated in recent months, contributing to the wider ethnic and religious partitioning that is taking place all over Iraq.

Nineveh is Iraq’s most diverse province, with a dizzying array of ethnic and religious groups woven into an area about the size of Maryland. For centuries, Arabs, Kurds, Christians, Turkmens, Yezidis and Shabaks lived side by side in these verdant hills, going to the same schools, bartering in the same markets, even intermarrying on occasion.

But what took generations to build is starting to unravel in the shadow of the Sunni Arab insurgency, which is tapping into several wells of ethnic resentment.

And Anbar? Well, there's a problem there too. Ascendant local Sunnis who have been praised by the US military and rightwing bloggers alike are turning out to be downright nasty pieces of work.

A Sunni police chief praised by U.S. forces for clearing his city of insurgents has been arrested following an investigation into alleged murder, corruption and crimes against the Iraqi people, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

Col. Hamid Ibrahim al-Jazaa, his brother and 14 bodyguards were taken into custody Tuesday in the city of Hit, 85 miles west of Baghdad, according to a statement by the public affairs office of Multinational Corps-Iraq.

"The apprehensions were the result of an investigation which alleges murder, corruption and crimes against the Iraqi people. The apprehension of this group was authorized and coordinated with local Hit city officials," the statement said. "All the accused are currently being held in coalition force custody."

...Al-Jazaa was lauded by the U.S. military for leading "Operation Police Victory," a crackdown on insurgents in the Sunni Arab city in February...Following the operation, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, visited the city on March 10, strolling through the outdoor market alongside a beaming al-Jazaa and other local officials.

Back in March, Red State approvingly repeated the words of Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of day-to-day war operations in Iraq:

"One of the things I worry about in Baghdad is we won't have the time to do the same kind of thing."

I dunno, maybe they should worry about the exact opposite. How much more wrong can these supporters of Bush's plan get?

What they don't get is that the various factions are trying to use US forces as heavy-firepower backup as they settle scores with each other - and that as soon as they have finished off their weaker enemies and consolidated their hold on the populace by ethnic cleansing, torture and intimidation they will go back to attacking the stongest one - those very US troops who they have so used.

It's exactly the same in Baghdad itself, inside the government heirachy. As The Guardian notes today, senior US officials have been claiming that 135,000 Iraqi policemen have been trained. "As what? Policemen or militia gunmen?" Take the kidnapping of 5 Britons from a Finance Ministry building yesterday. The kidnap was conducted by 40 or more men dressed in the uniforms of Interior Ministry police commandos, driving up to 20 Interior Ministry SUVs, flashing official badges and saying they were acting on behalf of the Integrity Commission. An Interior Ministry spokesman dismissed suggestions that the kidnappers, dressed in police commando camouflage uniforms and driving official vehicles, were a renegade unit from his ministry. The Foreign Minister, a Kurd, blamed the Shiite Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, who managed to both claim and deny responsibility in two statements from different parts of Iraq. Finance Ministry guards who did what they were told by the kidnappers have been taken to the Interior Ministry for questioning. It is still possible that a Sunni group, Al Qaeda, a criminal gang - or even actual rogue Interior Ministry police (gasp) - might be responsible. No-one knows. Everyone is blaming everyone else hoping the US and UK special forces will descend on their rivals with deadly force.

And we are supposed to hope that the Bush administration get the time to do in Baghdad what they've done in Anbar or Mosul? How does fifty years sound? Not good.

Now they're pissed off?

By Libby

I haven't said much about the immigration bill because frankly, I just don't know what the answer is, although I'm pretty sure I know what it isn't. And it surely isn't deporting 12 million illegal immigrants and building a wall. But what I really love is this sudden concern in the far right echo chamber over the rule of law.

The same people who have given pass after pass to Bush himself for destroying our civil rights while breaking every law and constitutional custom in the book, are suddenly outraged that the man won't crack the legal whip against the backs of people who are cleaning toilets and risking their limbs in the vile stench of meat packing plants to deliver their prime ribs in nicely sized portions, suitable for tonight's dinner?

Don takes the outrage up a notch.

He failed to press Mexico to keep its people in Mexico. Despite NAFTA, GATT and other agreements, we are being invaded by illegal aliens.

Excuse me for noticing, but that should have been "because of NAFTA,GATT and other agreements" and I'm guessing Mr. Surber fully supported all those agreements. It's precisely those sellouts to mega-corporate interests that created the exodus of Mexican workers. Those agreements effectively destroyed Mexico's formerly agrarian society and turned it into an urban-industrial poverty pit. It drew in all the workers from the rural reaches of the country and concentrated them on the border to serve US corporations for pennies on the dollar.

They wonder why those workers crossed over? Who in their right mind would slave for pennies on one side, when they can come over here and work for the same mega-corps under better conditions and for 100 times the money? The illegals may be poor and uneducated, but they're not stupid. I'd bet money, under the same circumstances, there's not one of these upstanding materialistic conservatives that wouldn't do the same, rule of law nothwithstanding.

To tell the truth, given the choice, so would I. Who wouldn't?

Iraq Occupation...Forever

By Cernig

Reuters has the report from the White house on the plan to stay in Iraq forever:

President George W. Bush would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea to provide stability but not in a frontline combat role, the White House said on Wednesday.

...White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush would like to see a U.S. role in Iraq ultimately similar to that in South Korea.

"The Korean model is one in which the United States provides a security presence, but you've had the development of a successful democracy in South Korea over a period of years, and, therefore, the United States is there as a force of stability," Snow told reporters.

Josh Marshall has the complete rundown on why a South Korea-style occupation won't work in Iraq.

Let's run through a few differences. First, Korea is an ethnically and culturally homogenous state. Iraq, not a culturally or ethnically homogenous state. And needless to say, that has been a point of some real difficulty. Second, Korea a democracy? Well, yes, for about fifteen years. Without going into all the details, South Korea was a military dictatorship for most of the Cold War.

A deeper acquaintance with the last half century of Korean history would suggest that a) a fifty year occupation, b) lack of democracy and c) a hostile neighbor were deeply intertwined. Remove B or C and you probably don't have A, certainly no A if you lose both B and C.

The more telling dissimilarity is the distinction between frontline troops and troops for stability. At least notionally (and largely this was true) US troops have been in South Korea to ward off an invasion from the North. US troops aren't in Iraq to ward off any invasion. Invasion from who? Saudi Arabia? Syria?

No, US troops are in Iraq for domestic security, in so many words, to protect it from itself, or to ensure the continued existence of an elected, pro-US government. That tells you that the US military presence in Iraq will never be as relatively bloodless as the US military presence in Korea since it has no external threat it's counterbalancing against. In a sense that the US deployment in Korea has never quite been, it is a sustained foreign military occupation.

And we here at The Newshoggers were talking about all this on Saturday, including pointing out what those differences will mean in real terms.

The differences between Iraq and South Korea being, mostly, that the Iraqis are still likely to be using those American super-bases for target practise decades from now, ratcheting up the casualties a few at a time, and that the bases in Iraq will be a provocation destined to create more Islamist terrorists by their very existence than their occupants will ever manage to kill.

As commenter Zeitgeist over at the Carpetbagger Report points out, this has been the Bush plan all along, they just knew it would be political suicide to mention it before now - when they know the Democratic party will cave to any pressure:

The politics of this would be comically bad were it not so serious a matter. Can you imagine if BushCo had been remotely honest with the American public in late 2002 and said “We are planning to invade Iraq not because they have WMD or are an immediate threat to us, but because Saddam Hussein is a bad man - nevermind our past support - the world will be a safer place without him. The downside is that his removal will leave Iraq in sectarian chaos and all told it will cost us thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars to try and stabilize the country. In the end, I anticipate a Korea-like solution where we have several thousand peacekeeping troops there potentially for 20-30 years. I trust the American public will support me in this.”

Maybe, just maybe, the public would have gotten off their asses and into the process for that one.

Maybe they will now. And maybe Dem leaders will rediscover their vertebrate genetics.

U.S. Among Least Peaceful Nations In New Study

By Cernig

Make of it what you will -

WASHINGTON, May 30 (Reuters) - The United States is among the least peaceful nations in the world, ranking 96th between Yemen and Iran, according to a new index released on Wednesday that evaluates 121 nations based on their peacefulness.

According to the Global Peace Index, created by The Economist Intelligence Unit, Norway is the most peaceful nation in the world and Iraq is the least, just after Russia, Israel and Sudan.

"The objective of the Global Peace Index was to go beyond a crude measure of wars by systemically exploring the texture of peace," said Global Peace Index President Clyde McConaghy.

He said the inaugural effort proves "peace can and has and will continue to be measured."

The index was compiled based on 24 indicators measuring peace inside and outside of a country. They included the number of wars a country was involved in the past five years, how many soldiers were killed overseas and how much money was made in arms sales.

Domestic indicators included the level of violent crimes, relations with neighboring countries and level of distrust in other citizens.

The results were then reviewed by a panel of international experts.

..."Democracy didn't actually correlate with peace, but a well-functioning democracy did. Efficient, accountable government seems to be the leading determinant of peace. Beyond that, income helps."

Fifteen of the top 20 most peaceful nations are in Western Europe, and countries with higher income appeared to lead to higher levels of peace, he said.

The United States ranked 96th out of 121 nations, just worse than Yemen and just better than Iran, Honduras and South Africa.

The Economist, by the way, strongly advocates free trade and fiscal conservatism in its editorials. It supported George W. Bush's election campaign in 2000 and as of January 2007 maintains vocal support for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Hardly a bulwark of the "lib'rul" media.

The New Neocon Cold War

By Cernig

The cold war has officially restarted, according to the Russian foreign minister.

Sergei Lavrov said that "strategic stability" was being damaged by America's plans to erect a "Son of Star Wars" shield able to shoot down enemy missiles.

Elements of the system will be based in Poland and the Czech Republic, two former Soviet satellite states.

"I think that those who are professionally aware of this problem understand that there is nothing ludicrous about this issue because the arms race is starting again," he said. "Strategic stability is being damaged."

Mr Lavrov was speaking at a conference in Potsdam, Germany over the future of Kosovo - one of many issues currently causing friction between Russia and the West.

The ballistic missile tested yesterday would be able to "overcome any existing or future missile defence system", Sergei Ivanov, the first deputy prime minister, said.

Launched at the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia, it can be armed with up to 10 warheads and is designed to evade missile defence systems, the Russian defence ministry said.

President Putin and Mr Ivanov, a former defence minister seen as a potential candidate to succeed Mr Putin next year, have repeatedly said Russia would continue to improve its nuclear weapons systems and respond to US plans to deploy a missile defence system in Europe.

No doubt there's a bunch of neocons and Bush supporters out there ready, willing and able to catapult the propoganda that the US ballistic missile defense, being designed to have only a small amount of interceptors on standby, is no threat to Russia's massive arsenal.

But wait - the Russian's can read as well as anyone - and they've no doubt been reading the ideas those self-same neocons and Bush supporters have for the future. Take for example the influential neoconservative Heritage Foundation think-tank. Any bold emphasis is mine.

This is no time for the U.S. to slow the pace of developing and deploying effective defenses against ballistic missiles. Indeed, the Bush Administration and Congress need to accelerate the effort by focusing on developing and deploying the systems that offer the greatest capability.

A detailed proposal for proceeding with the most effective systems was issued by the Independent Working Group on missile defense in June 2006.[3] The report specifically refers to space-based and sea-based defenses as the most effective components of the lay­ered missile defense system design advocated by the Bush Administration. While the sea-based systems have continued to make progress in recent years, the effort to develop and deploy space-based interceptors has languished.

...on May 20, 2003, the White House released a description of a presidential directive signed earlier by President Bush that related to his policy for developing and deploying a layered mis­sile defense system as soon as possible to defend the people and territory of the United States, U.S. troops deployed abroad, and U.S. allies and friends.[8] When fielded, this layered defense will be able to intercept ballistic missiles in the boost (ascent), midcourse, and terminal phases of flight.

The plans, in other words, require Aegis-equipped vessels or platform loaded with interceptors stationed just off America's coast and "Brilliant Pebbles" constellations of space-based interceptors in clear violation of international treaties on weaponizing space. The Heritage Foundation's view is that the US populace should be deceived about this by doublespeak - a propoganda campaign to say that since ballistic missiles already cross into space, space is already weaponized and so hanging a whole bunch of new weaponry in orbit won't make a difference - while extra money is poured into space-based weaponry.

Russia isn't a guilt-free state by a long chalk, and it isn't my purpose today to apologize for its many failings - but as Putin pointed out yesterday as he asserted that the new US missile defense systems will turn Europe back into a confrontational frontline between two great powers, "Let's not talk as if on one side we are dealing with pure, white and fluffy partners and on the other side with a monster that has just left the forest." The Bush administration and its neocon think-tankers know full well how dangerously destabillizing their entire plan is to Russia's deterrent and thus to the old Cold War balance of power, and are busily engaged in misdirection about the facts to conceal them from the public.

Turkish Invasion Tension - Update

By Cernig

The situation on the Turkish border with Kurdish Iraq, which has been grinding towards a Turkish cross-border operation similiar to Israel's operation in Lebanon last summer, is reaching new heights of tension.

Not only has Turkey sent more tanks to the border but Turkish soldiers are telling journalists to leave the area. That's a possibly key signal at a time when Turkish PM Edogan is telling the US "Our patience has run out." Up until now, the Turkish media has been full of " images of military trucks rumbling along the remote border with Iraq's Kurdish zone and tanks being transferred on trains and trucks."

Meanwhile Turkey has formally protested to Washington about an incursion into their airspace bordering Iraq by two USAF F-16 fighters. Although the US says the violation was accidental, "Turkish media said it was intended to send a message to Ankara not to send its troops into Iraq".

God, Having a Dark Sense of Humor

by shamanic

Today is my 31st birthday. As an attention-avoider, I don't make a big deal about these sorts of things, but I have to give it to my always-attention-seeking grandmother in Dallas, Texas, to steal my birthday thunder by selecting this morning to die.

She's been degrading with Alzheimer's for about the last 15 years, and two weeks ago she was diagnosed with a recurrence of colon cancer that she beat sometime in the late 1960s. How's that for stuff sticking around in the body?

Anyway, it's one of those days I guess. If you've got a friend, family member, or other loved one around, take a moment to give 'em a squeeze. I won't get to see my family until the weekend, at which time there will be much squeezing going on. Beat me to it if you have the chance. They're precious. Tell 'em so.

Double Standard Warmongering

By Cernig

Let the Iranians seize British navy personnel in disputed waters and the US extreme Right begins foaming at the mouth because the UK government decided diplomacy would work better than starting an immediate shooting war (which it did).

But let dozens of Iraqis dressed in Interior Ministry police uniforms kidnap a whole bunch of British civilians from an Iraqi Finance Ministry building in broad daylight and without any show of resistance by Ministry guards on the scene - impossible without high Iraqi government involvement - to which the obvious British response is to call in an SAS hostage rescue team which is kept on standby in Iraq just in case...and there will be nary a word from the wingnuts. Especially no calls at all for an instant and overwhelming British military response against the Iraqi government.

Could that be because the latter case points up the Bush administration's monumental failings in Iraq while the former just fed their fantasies of revenge for the long-ago slur of the Tehran Embassy hostages?

Surely they wouldn't be so partisan in their calls for immediate bloodshed, would they?

Confirming What We Already Knew

By Cernig

Valerie Plame was indeed covert at the time of her outing according to a newly declassified CIA document - so yes, it was a crime that she was unmasked, one no-one has yet been charged with. Scooter Libby should go to jail for his involvement but where's the real culprit? Some folks wonder how many wingnuts will retract and begin baying for traitorous blood...and aren't holding their breath.

Bush is an abject and pathetic failure - so it was only a matter of time before someone suggested he must be some kind of liberal. Truth be told, the GOP is so single-issue now that you can be a social liberal in truth and as long as you're a war-hawk willing to bomb Hadji you can be the Republican frontrunner.

The Nazi Gestapo invented the term "enhanced interrogation" and even they thought waterboarding and hypothermia were extreme forms of torture. Nor did their protestations that it was all legal because they were "only interrogating illegal combatants" hold any juice when they fell from power - they all deserved their death sentences.

Progress in Iraq is likely to miss the September expiry of the latest Friedman Unit, so it must be time to move the goalposts again.

And finally, we must realize that conservatives encourage ideological debate while liberals are just internally divided. And anyone who disagrees with the failed warmongering policies of the extreme Right is by definition a liberal.

No Duh (Pt. 3998)

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is reporting shocking news --- addicts are seldom capable of denying themselves access to the object and manifestation of their addiction:

People who sign for the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board's self-exclusion program could be ejected from casinos or have their winnings forfeited. Excluded gamblers also are kept from receiving targeted mail promotions or players club perks.

But so far, only 52 people have signed up for the program, officials said.

An estimated 124,000 people in Pennsylvania, or 1 percent of the state's population, are "pathological gamblers," according to the National Council on Problem Gambling. The group estimates that 3 percent of the state's residents are "problem gamblers."

Shocking!

And this is a great illustration of problems with cost-benefit analysis, as the cost of problem and pathological gambling are externalized and often excluded from the cash generating considerations used in the decision to justify legalizing and licensing large scale gambling in the state. Everyone knows that there is problem gambling but it was not a significant consideration in the decision process as the cost could be passed off to a combination of the future and to other agencies and stakeholders including family members while the benefits of increased revenue for either tax-shifting away from property taxes or increased spending was explicitly included in all calculations.

Iran can count carriers

I have long believed that the United States will not make any overt military strikes against Iran for a wide variety of practical reasons despite the raving rants of the usual neo-conservative and stupid-nationalist influentials who work within and around the Bush Administration. The two biggest practical reasons to argue against a US military strike against Iran are hostages and availability of strike assets.

The Iranians can significantly crimp the US supply lines coming out of Kuwait City and up the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys to the major supply bases in the Baghdad region. Pat Lang at Sic Temper Tyrannis maps the major US logistical system in Iraq. Note that there is a massive, brittle single point of failure system as the entire supply line relies on one major and a couple of minor highways from Kuwait to Baghdad. These lines can be cut off by motivated light infantry shooting at trucks and laying mines/IEDs.

The second, and more practical point is that the US does not have enough strike assets in the region to mount a campaign similar in size and intensity to the one used to start the invasion of Iraq in 2003. That operation is the minimal probable operation as Iran has not been under siege and limited aerial attack for the past fifteen years while Iraq had been under siege for twelve years. And the US is not able to move any significant naval strike assets forward.

The Yorkshire Ranter is performing an invaluable service in tracking down where the US carriers are and what their availability for combat looks like:

Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington are all in deep refit. Enterprise and Harry S. Truman are still at the stage of doing CARQUALs, in the Big E's case for reserve squadrons, Ronald Reagan arrived back in San Diego on the 20th April, and Dwight D. Eisenhower was due in Norfolk on the 23rd of May.

John Stennis and Nimitz are currently on station in the Gulf of Oman, the latter ship having just steamed back from Somali waters. Kitty Hawk is due out of Yokosuka for her summer cruise soon, but is tied to the North Pacific by her commitments there. Stennis sailed on the 16th of January, so is due to turn for home on the 16th of June, Nimitz being on station until September.

However much cruft is retailed to the press, literally no reserve exists in the fleet. (It's also worth remembering that the Charles de Gaulle returns toFrance soon.)

Despite the bluster and the ratcheting up of empty threats, the US will not be going to war against Iran anytime soon (hopefully never).

Losing the dream

I am convinced that Medicare and other old-age programs will be solved so that they are in place for my parents' generation. I have a hard time imaging a large union set of twenty and thirty-somethings who want their parents to move in with them at the same time that they are trying to first pay off college and then raise their own kids AND the parents who have finally gotten their kids out of the house giving up that independence. It is this union set that will not mobilize politically to support old-age programs:

The Baby Boomer voters will make sure that they elect people who make sure they can go to the doctor and hospital and pharmacy and nursing home easily and seemingly cheaply. This is why I worry about pretty much everything else.

The obligations that the current system has incurred are immense. USA Today has gone through the federal government books and sees an accrual accounting deficit of roughly 40% of total spending instead of roughly the 8% cash accounting deficit for this fiscal year. The overwhelming majority of these future debts are medical expenses that my generation will be paying into an inefficient and ineffective system full of perverse incentives.


Political Animal is pointing to an interesting study that looks at income mobility and the prospect of intergenerational advancement within American society put together by a fairly interesting coalition of Washington think tanks. The short answer is that the American Dream of being able to do better than your parents and get ahead by dint of hard work, innovative ideas, and a little bit of luck are at best rare events instead of the standard morality tale of traditional American mythology.

My generation's men, myself included, are behind where our fathers were thirty years ago despite being deeper in debt to fund more and more education. We are being priced out of asset accumulation and the ability to save for the future as the social expectation of being a 'respectable' and thus a hire-able member of society has become more expensive. Adam Smith noted this tendency of escalating relative competition two hundred years ago:

By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but what ever the customs of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably, though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-laborer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into, without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. (h/t Economist View)

The under-45s are politically less viable as a quasi-unified voting block and also significantly under more stress and economic variability. The expenses of daily life have increased significantly faster than the official inflation ex-inflation CPI numbers as education has increased, housing prices have increased, health-care has increased at rates double, triple and quadruple the rates of general inflation and current debt levels, both private and public have dramatically increased. Choices will have to be made eventually to pay off the debts that we as a society and as individuals have incurred, and those choices will be nasty.

The dominant political bloc in American life will seek to protect their interests. And those interests are to likely to be sure that more of the same continues for as long as they can continue to get a good piece of the pie no matter what the costs are to the rest of the population. I fear this outcome as that would dictate a politics that makes Karl Rove look like a piker at divide and conquer. I also fear the economic consequences as it would necessitate a sell-off of my future option space to pay for mistakes made when I was eating paste.

I am also worried about the increasing dissonance between reality and the greater American narrative. My generation has been told that the future is ours to create, but the debts of the past shackle our ability to experiment and achieve. More of our current and future income will be needed to pay off the past's tequila fueled binges furthing the chronic underinvestment for the future as the future can not vote and the stakeholders of the future, my generation, does not vote consistently enough.

The gulf between internalized expectations and realized outcomes increases on both an individual and generational levels, the conflicts will intensify as the American political game shifts from a non-zero sum, increasing pie problem to a far nastier zero-sum game as every one has much stronger incentives to bugger their neighbors to hold onto their relative and hopefully absolute positions.

The View From There

By Cernig

Today's must-read post is an excellent overview of the challenges facing American foreign policy - and the ways in which that same foreign policy has made them worse in recent years - by Ian Welsh over at The Agonist.

Ian's conclusion is not happy reading:

the key point is that the US finds itself weakening, and perversely be more and more isolated yet dependent on other players. The relationship with China is, at best, co-dependent. Britain, a true ally, is likely to cease being a very reliable ally soon. Russia is hostile, and Japan is dependent. Al-Qaeda has been having a number of very good years. Iran was willing to give the US everything it wanted except for its rulers to step down, and a refusal to accept that surrender led Iran to conclude, quite logically, that nothing they could do would appease the US and that they must act as if war is inevitable.

In most of these cases, simply understanding the motivations and world view of the other players could have avoided these problems. England deserved to receive something for its loyalty. Invading Iraq was playing into al-Qaeda's hands. Interfering in Russia's close sphere of influence was the equivalent of bear baiting (imagine China spending money and men and getting a Chinese friendly/US hostile government installed in Canada or Mexico).

Understanding how other nations thought, what their interests were, would not have just helped keep allies like England happier, it could have helped defeat enemies like al-Qaeda, gotten the majority of what the US wanted from Iran; and avoided turning Russia into an angry rival.

It's a long post, but I really do recommend it.

Romney Offers To be President For Free

By Cernig

It's a pretty good move from the Romney camp. In a field of multi-millionaires and in a nation where only the mega-rich have any chance of being elected to national political power, he's decided to set himself out as the one who will do it for the love of service.

Republican Mitt Romney, conceding that his business career helped him make more money than he expected, said Tuesday he would likely decline a salary as president and instead donate the money - and more - to charity.

During a question-and-answer session with Liberty Mutual employees, Romney said that despite his personal wealth - his assets likely will total $190 million to $250 million - he has committed himself to public service, from head of the 2002 Winter Olympics to one-term governor of Massachusetts.

Romney's assets makes him the wealthiest of all the presidential candidates, Democratic or Republican.

``I wouldn't disqualify somebody by virtue of their financial wealth or their financial poverty,'' Romney said after ticking off his public service work. ``I would instead look at their record, what they've done with their life and whether they can make a difference, whether the things they have learned will enable them to be an effective leader.''

Later, speaking with reporters, Romney said he would likely follow the example he set while governor, when he declined his $135,000 annual salary. The president of the United States is paid $400,000 annually.

``I haven't really thought ahead that far,'' Romney said at first. ``There are some questions I haven't forecasted, perhaps because that would seem presumptuous of me.''

Then, he added: ``I presume I would take the salary and then I would donate at least that amount - or more - to charity.''

You can write it off as a cheap political stunt if you want - but I'm betting it will have a positive impact on many. The only way it could be topped is if another candidate suggested means-testing for all administration officials, seantors and congresscritters. Possess existing assets over a certain amount and you get a reduced wage, in steps, until it hits zero at some level. Because it really should be about the wish to serve, about duty and responsibility, not money.

Like that's going to happen...

Unless Hillary really means this, all the way through:

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it's time to replace an ``on your own'' society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.

The Democratic senator said what the Bush administration touts as an ``ownership society'' really is an ``on your own'' society that has widened the gap between rich and poor.

``I prefer a 'we're all in it together' society,'' she said. ``I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none.''

How about it, Mrs. Clinton? Is it Hillary or Shillary? At least offer to follow Romney's lead.

Neo-Blimpism

As an addendum to my Memorial Day post on the insiduous nature of assertions of any "divine mandate", and the dangers of Imperial hubris such always brings, it's worth reading Glenn Greenwald today as he debunks Tony Blair's neo-colonial blimpism. I'm entirely in agreement with Glenn's finding that Blair, Bush and the neo-war crowd are guilty of Blimpism - the crime of thinking they know better than the Poor Bloody Natives, who they will save from their own uncivilized selves.

Glenn writes that he wants to "leave aside for the moment the inflammatory question of whether it is valid to compare our invasion and four-year-and-counting occupation of Iraq and previous policies of British colonialism."

But let's not. Let us instead confront it head on. Glenn quotes extensively from a 1926 rant by British colonial administrator Lord Frederick Lugard. Here's the bit that seemed most resonant to me:

If there is unrest, and a desire for independence, as in India and Egypt, it is because we have taught the value of liberty and freedom, which for centuries these peoples had not known. Their very discontent is measure of their progress.

We hold these countries because it is the genius of our race to colonise, to trade, and to govern. The task in which England is engaged in the tropics--alike in Africa and in the East--has become Part Of her tradition, and she has ever given of her best in the cause of liberty and civilisation.

There will always be those who cry aloud that the task is being badly done, that it does not need doing, that we can get more profit by leaving others to do it, that it brings evil to subject races and breeds profiteers at home. These were not the principles which prompted our forefathers, and secured for us the place we hold in the world to-day in trust for those who shall come after us.

Yet for all its talk of divine mandates and Empires on which the sun would never set, that era of British colonialism is gone the way of Rome and Ozymandias.

Tell me how this substantially differs from the pronouncements of the neocons or other war-hawks from the extreme Right of American politics.

Cooking The National Books

By Cernig

According to USA Today, the United States is broke by any normal standard.

The federal government recorded a $1.3 trillion loss last year — far more than the official $248 billion deficit — when corporate-style accounting standards are used, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

The loss reflects a continued deterioration in the finances of Social Security and government retirement programs for civil servants and military personnel. The loss — equal to $11,434 per household — is more than Americans paid in income taxes in 2006.

"We're on an unsustainable path and doing a great disservice to future generations," says Chris Chocola, a former Republican member of Congress from Indiana and corporate chief executive who is pushing for more accurate federal accounting.

Modern accounting requires that corporations, state governments and local governments count expenses immediately when a transaction occurs, even if the payment will be made later.

The federal government does not follow the rule, so promises for Social Security and Medicare don't show up when the government reports its financial condition.

Bottom line: Taxpayers are now on the hook for a record $59.1 trillion in liabilities, a 2.3% increase from 2006. That amount is equal to $516,348 for every U.S. household. By comparison, U.S. households owe an average of $112,043 for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and all other debt combined.

Cue the the inevitable right/left arguments over how to approach such a massive real deficit - I would argue that a true universal healthcare system would actually cost less than the current system, for example, and that current military expenditure is unrealistic at more than the rest of the world put together. I would likewise argue that medical care and social security for the citizenry are an imperative while brand-new stealth fighters designed to meet a threat that no longer exists aren't. I realize that conservatives will disagree with me.

Leaving aside such discussions, though, it's difficult to argue with John Hawkins assessment:

Do you know want to know why the "White House and the Congressional Budget Office" don't want the real numbers used? Because those numbers would scare the American people to death and they'd demand changes when they realized what we're doing is unsustainable.

...These spending issues are endemic to our political system, so much so that the politicians don't even want people to know how much we're overspending. That's why I'm convinced that the only long-term fix for our spending woes is a Balanced Budget Amendment. Unless these politicians are required to keep the budget under control by the force of law, they will spend this country right into the ground one day -- and when they do, they'll find a way to blame the other guy -- but that won't put any more money in our kid's pockets when they get the bill for the money we've squandered.

Kurds Warn Turkey Against "Panzers" Crossing Border

By Cernig

Michael van der Galen is keeping his eye on the situation on the Kurdish/Turkish border, where there seems to be an inevitable drift towards Turkey taking punitive action inside Kurdish territory.

“Safin Dizai, a senior official from the Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and a close aide to Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani,” said that “Turkish tanks would not be allowed to cross into northern Iraq.”

Dizai pointed to the ongoing domestic debates in Turkey about a possible cross-border operation to crack down on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) camps based in northern Iraq in the face of ongoing attacks inside the country.

“The people of Kurdistan will not remain spectators to the crossing of Turkish tanks and panzers into Kirkuk,” he was quoted as saying by the Doğan News Agency (DHA), which took excerpts from statements made by the Iraqi Kurdish official to Kurdish-broadcasting Web site “Nefel.”

Sadly for the Kurds, the Turkish military believes that a military operation is necessary: there are five PKK camps in Northern Iraq, from which the PKK launches attacks against Turks. Of course there was the terrorist in Ankara recently as well. The PKK has already killed more than 30,000 Turks.

Michael also notes that Condi Rice, in discussions with the Turkish government, refuses to talk about the elephant in the room - a Turkish invasion of Iraqi territory - and instead confines herself to platitudes about being "on Turkey’s side in the war on terrorism".

As Michael says, it's a lose-lose situation for the Bush administration but it is one which they've engineered for themselves by being utterly AWOL for four years on action against a terrorsit group that have killed 30,000 citizens of a NATO ally. I'm not at all as sure as Michael is that the US will be able to look the other way while making soothing statements to the Kurdish leadership if Turkey does invade. The Iraqi president has already said that his government will see any cross-border action as an invasion of Iraq as a whole and will meet it accordingly with a state of war between the two nations. That would put paid to any notion of US success in Iraq if the US wasn't wholeheartedly on Iraq's side. At that point it becomes a question of which is more important to The Decider Guy - would he rather be the guy who blew his big foreign adventure or the guy who lost the NATO alliance. Trying to stand in the middle won't work.

US/ Iran Agree On Aims, Just Not Methods

By Cernig

Details on what was discussed at today's meeting in Baghdad between US and Iranian envoys are sketchy, but it looks like both sides agreed on the aimed-for endpoint but disagreed on how to get there.

Hassan Kazemi Qomi, the Iranian envoy...said that he told the Americans that his government was ready to train and equip the Iraqi army and police to create "a new military and security structure."

Kazemi did not elaborate nor would he say how U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker responded.

...Crocker described the session as businesslike and said Iran proposed setting up a "trilateral security mechanism" that would include the U.S., Iraq and Iran, an idea he said would require study in Washington.

The U.S. envoy also said he told the Iranians their country needed to stop arming, funding and training the militants. The Iranians laid out their policy toward Iraq, Crocker said, describing it as "very similar to our own policy and what the Iraqi government have set out as their own guiding principles."

He added: "This is about actions not just principles, and I laid out to the Iranians direct, specific concerns about their behavior in Iraq and their support for militias that are fighting Iraqi and coalition forces."

...[Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri] Al-Maliki did not attend the meeting, but the prime minister greeted the two ambassadors, who shook hands, and led them into a conference room, where the ambassadors sat across from each other.

Before leaving, al-Maliki told both sides that Iraqis wanted a stable country free of foreign forces and regional interference. The country should not be turned into a base for terrorist groups, he said. He also said that the U.S.-led forces in Iraq were only here to help build up the army and police and the country would not be used as a launching ground for a U.S. attack on a neighbor, a clear reference to Iran.

As I suggested yesterday, really meaningful discussions were hampered by accusation and counter-accusation of cross-border meddling by both Iran and the US, but as much so by claims and counterclaims about Iran's nuclear program, which was the unspoken elephant in the room.

Talking is almost always vastly preferable to bombing. However, I've a nasty feeling that these talks will, eventually, go nowhere - and will then be held up as evidence of iran's lack of amenablility to diplomacy by pro-war Bush administration memebers and their enablers. Even if Iran claimed to have stopped all meddling in Iraq - and it was true - it would be possible to interpret evidence to say otherwise if that was the narrative you started out looking to support.

"The next meeting will occur in Iraq in less than one month," Kazemi told an Associated Press reporter after his news conference at the Iranian Embassy.

Crocker earlier said the Iraqis planned to propose a second session and that the United States would decide upon a follow-on meeting when the invitation was issued.

"We will consider that when we receive it," Crocker told reporters in the U.S.-controlled Green Zone. "The purpose of this meeting was not to arrange other meetings."

I suspect that last sentence means exactly what you think it does.

Dulce Et Decorum Est...

By Cernig

It's Memorial Day in America. It is one of the three days of the year when I feel my foreignness most acutely. The others are Thanksgiving - because I'm still not used to eating Christmas dinner in November - and Independence Day - when I'm just jealous that America has one and England's oldest colony, Scotland, doesn't.

But Memorial Day is the day of the year when I feel saddest about my new home. The one day when I simply cannot convince myself to "buy in" to the prevailling themes of the day and instead feel that those prevailling themes are the cause of much of what makes a great and good country do small-minded and bad things. For despite what some will say about Memorial Day being about remembering the fallen, humbly and with sympathy for their pain and the pain of those left behind by their untimely deaths - in spite of that the overarching motifs of Memorial Day are drum-banging nationalism, a glorification of military might for might's sake and of the manifest Imperial destiny of America to spread itself and its ideals across the globe.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the words of the current leader of the nation today:

From their deaths must come a world where the cruel dreams of tyrants are frustrated and foiled, where our nation is more secure from attack and where the gift of liberty is secured for millions who have never known it. This is our country's calling," Bush said. "It's our country's destiny."

No, it isn't. Any more than it was Britain's destiny or France's, or Nazi Germany's or even great Imperial Rome's. All of them had a myth of their destiny - all were wrong and their "destinies" gone to dust. There is no destiny - there is only the ambition of leaders and the deaths of those who serve or oppose that ambition.

Which isn't to say that great and good nations must not oppose oppression or should stand aside against injustice - far from it. But to believe that this is done out of some "calling", out of divine right rather than bleak and reluctant realization that there are no other options but armed struggle, is to make a dangerous assumption of infallibility which will inevitably lead to hubristic wars of choice and the deaths of thousands for no good reason. The lesson of the last five years, if there is one at all, is surely just that.

Part of the reason these aggresively militaristic motifs of the glory and honor of war and the justifications for war - as opposed to the far sadder and quieter glory and honor of the fallen - persist is that America has been unusually lucky in its wars. Even in its worst wars, the Civil War and WW2, the number of killed in action was less than 1 in 100 of the population. In the latter's case it was more like 1 in 300. In the current "war on terror", it is more like one in five hundred even including those killed on 9/11.

By comparison, my old country of Scotland suffered 1 in 100 of the population killed during WW2 and more like one in 35 during World War One. Yet Scotland's casualty figures pale by comparison with Germany's in WW2 (one in ten) or Russia's (almost one in seven) or Poland's (almost one in five!). In the face of that kind of carnage, it takes a massive effort by a totalitarian state apparatus to keep up any pretense at enthusiasm for a "manifest destiny" (and even then, the old Soviet Union's enthusiasm for such a destiny was more about style than substance). This explains, in its entirety, the far more solemn and contemplative mood at similiar occasions of memorial in European nations.

Yet I wouldn't wish such massacres in every town, every community, on Americans. It has already happened and that should be enough. I would rather that Americans learned from Europe's mistakes and decided that they will not go down that path. And I really do believe that, if they don't learn from history then eventually they will be doomed to repeat it.

Yet Americans more than every other nation seem to me to be inflicted with the attitude of "not invented here", and so I am pessimistic about where their military zeal will lead. There are, unfortunately, few in the U.S. today who will take a moment this Memorial Day, the words of Wilfred Owen's immortal caution towards unseemly patriotic frenzy by those who never fought:

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

And those who do, or who realize that the motifs of the day are misplaced and wrong-headed, won't be at the Memorial day gatherings at monuments to the fallen, for their compatriots in their frenzy of worship for "might is right" and "manifest destiny" will make them feel most unwelcome. That's not how it should be.

Not the people we want running America...

by shamanic

Purges are so Joseph Stalin, but for some reason, the type of large scale ideological purges you see in blogtopia always seem to happen on right wing sites. Am I wrong about this? Does anyone know of left wing sites that have engaged in wholesale bans of commenters favoring Candidate X because of X's irreverent political positions? "Free Republic" indeed.

Iran - US Talks Tomorrow

By Cernig

Is it just me, or is it that the talks between the US and Iran in Baghdad were deliberately scheduled for Memorial Day here in the US so that the spin could be firmly in place by the time any of the major news media actually notices what was said?

Unfortunately, you rarely go wrong from being too cynical about the motives of the current incumbents of the White House.

Expectations from the talks seem to be very low among analysts - as both parties have entrenched positions and are under intense pressure from their own hardliners not to negotiate.

The AP notes:

The United States is pursuing a two-track strategy with Iran that reflects the high stakes in any engagement with a nation President Bush accuses of bankrolling terrorism and secretly building a nuclear bomb.

Monday's talks in Baghdad are one element. Discussion between the U.S. and Iranian ambassadors is only supposed to cover Iraq, where they have competing and overlapping interests.

Then there are the U.S. Navy's exercises in the Persian Gulf last week and tough talk from Bush about new U.N. penalties against Tehran.

``In the American mind, the two tracks sort of complement each other,'' with the muscle-flexing and threats serving to push Iran to the bargaining table, said Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations.

``Iran only sees one track'' and thinks it is a trap, Takeyh said. He does not hold out much hope the diplomats will get beyond talking points on Monday.

``The coercive track is undermining and negating the diplomatic track and preventing any sort of meaningful discussions,'' Takeyh said.

Of course, the Cheneyites would say the undermining process is the other way around. Iranian hardliners are likely to see it the same way, as the FT points out.

the cause of greatest concern for Iranians is the military build-up in the Gulf and the bellicose statements of Vice-President Dick Cheney, who analysts in Washington say believes confrontation is inevitable.

Mohammad Javad Larijani, brother of Iran’s top security official Ali Larijani, recently remarked in Jordan: “If Dick Cheney is supposed to continue intimidating Iran on a daily basis and US officials continue allocating budget, as they claim, to change the Iranian regime and openly show hostility towards Iran, then any clever person will ask why they should talk at all?”

The Washington post writes that the Bush administration will bang the same old drums:

The United States intends to lay out a comprehensive account of Iran's growing military role in Iraq -- including the array of arms provided to both Shiite and Sunni militias -- during critical talks between U.S. and Iranian diplomats scheduled for tomorrow in Baghdad, according to senior U.S. officials.

Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, will also outline steps Iran could take to help stabilize war-ravaged Iraq, both politically and militarily. Any subsequent meeting will depend on the quality of the dialogue and Iran's cooperation in the coming weeks, the sources added.

While the Iranians are likely to have new accusations of meddling too - following reports that Bush has authorized covert ops against Iran, they are now saying that they have uncovered spy networks run by the US and others aimed at destabilizing the Iranian regime.

Wiccan Memorial Day

By Cernig

On this memorial day, a long saga will come to a quiet close as, finally, the graves of Wiccan veterans will get their grave markers. It's been a long time coming, due to the insensitivity of Bush administration officials scared stiff of extremist Christians (like the Decider In Chief).

As the AP reminds us, it wasn't just about honoring the dead of recent wars.

Since Korean War veteran Jerome Birnbaum died in 2005, his grave in a pagan cemetery had been marked with only a pile of stones and U.S. flags.

On Memorial Day, Birnbaum's grave and those of other military veterans will be dedicated with government-issued markers etched with a symbol of their religion - the Wiccan pentacle.

Wiccans sued the government last year, arguing that it was unduly stalling a decision on whether to add the pentacle to the list of acceptable symbols for veterans' graves.

A settlement between the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Wiccans added the five-pointed star to the list of ``emblems of belief.''

``I like to see our success literally etched in stone, because it will be,'' said Birnbaum's wife, Karen DePolito. She said winning the fight is vindication for all Wiccans.

...Circle Sanctuary, located in Barneveld, Wis., about 25 miles west of Madison, will be home to three grave markers - more than any other place in the country, high priestess Selena Fox said.

Arlington National Cemetery will have two markers. A World War II veteran's marker was dedicated Wednesday, and a ceremony for another Wiccan veteran was planned for July 4, Fox said.

The VA said five pentacle markers have been delivered since the April 23 settlement with one more request pending. Fox said she knows of 12 requests that are going to be made to the VA.

...Among those attending the dedications will be Roberta Stewart, whose husband, Sgt. Patrick Stewart, was killed in Afghanistan in 2005 when the Nevada Army National Guard helicopter he was in was shot down. Stewart's ashes were mostly scattered, but some are at the Wiccan cemetery.

``To me it shows that our Veterans Administration is hopefully going to think twice before they discriminate the next time,'' she said of the settlement. ``They don't get to pick and choose our soldiers' faith.''

The widow of a third veteran receiving a marker, A. Douglas Wilkey, also planned to be at Monday's ceremony. Wilkey, who died in 2003, served in both Korea and Vietnam.

Blessed be.

Not Learning History's Lessons

By Cernig

One of the old favorites of the pro-war right in justifying the continued occupation of Iraq is a feeble wave at the occupation of Germany after World war Two. "Look," they say, "it is possible - it takes time but a nation can be rebuilt." And thus the rationalization for staying the course, because Germany wasn't completely rebuilt in four years.

Paddy Ashdown, formerly the international community's envoy for Bosnia and someone who originally supported the invasion of Iraq, explains how Bush administration incompetence blew the comparison with post-war Germany from word one.

The allies ran Germany from 1945 to 1949 and in that period, the rule of law was re-established, human rights respected, robust democratic institutions created and the foundations of Europe's strongest economy laid. Much of this happened despite some spectacular blunders in the early days, many of which were repeated in Iraq.

In 1945 the allies planned to remove 180,000 officials from their posts, but discovered that if they did, they would have no one to run the state. Former membership of the Nazi party ceased to be a barrier; West Germany's second president was a former member.

The situation the coalition found in Iraq was similar. Most of those responsible for running the country were members of the Baath party. The coalition proceeded to purge all the Baathists from their posts. And then found, as in Germany, they were left with no one to run the state and its services.

There was the similarly disastrous decision to disband the Iraqi army. Here, the coalition did not have to look as far back as Germany. In most more recent international interventions, the soldiers of the defeated army had been given a month's salary, then reintegrated into a the army or helped to find a job in civilian life. But in Iraq, the army was peremptorily dissolved, leaving the coalition with too few soldiers to maintain security. For many soldiers, joining the insurgency became a very attractive option.

One of the ironies of the German experience is that it was the US who were the most enlightened and the British and French the most reactionary. The US military had no truck with the ridiculous instructions of General Montgomery to British troops not to speak to any Germans. The Americans were the first to realise that dismantling German industry was a mistake; in the interests of lasting peace, it was far better to help rebuild it. In the coalition in Iraq, the Americans have proved by far the least sensitive to the local population.

Since the end of the Cold War, international intervention has halved the number of wars in the world and reduced the number of casualties by even more. But success depends on basic rules that were ignored in Iraq. Plan even harder for peace than for war; you will probably need more troops to provide security after the war than you needed to win it; make the most of the 'golden hour' after the war ends; creating security should be the first priority; get the economy going fast; you may have to remove those at the top of the old regime, but you will need the rest to run the state; work with the local population and its traditions; you need the help of the neighbours - one of the big mistakes over Iraq was to make enemies of Iran and Syria.

Those who do not study history aren't just doomed to repeat it - they are doomed to make an absolute disaster out of trying to repeat it.

Totalitarian Tony The Thatcherite

By Cernig

Tony Blair used to pretend that he and his Blairites were the new and rational face of the British Left. It got them into power, which was the one thing they always wanted. When Blair took office his first action was to visit Thatcher and many of us experienced what was to become commonplace - that "we've been conned" feeling. Fairly quickly, the Blairites abandoned their pretense and revealed themselves as totalitarian big-government rightwingers in the old Thatcherite mold. The war in Iraq and a poodle-like following of the warmongering Republican across the pond in so many things, the new ID card, the surveillance society, new nuclear weapons, complicity in illegal renditions. Today, even the Conservative Party is to the Left of the hardcore Blairites in their dying spasms.

Here comes the latest political atrocity, right out of the Thatcherite "stop and search" playbook.

NEW anti-terrorism laws are to be pushed through before Tony Blair leaves office giving “wartime” powers to the police to stop and question people. John Reid, the home secretary, who is also quitting next month, intends to extend Northern Ireland’s draconian police powers to interrogate individuals about who they are, where they have been and where they are going.

Under the new laws, police will not need to suspect that a crime has taken place and can use the power to gain information about “matters relevant” to terror investigations. If suspects fail to stop or refuse to answer questions, they could be charged with a criminal offence and fined up to £5,000. Police already have the power to stop and search people but they have no right to ask for their identity and movements.

No general police power to stop and question has ever been introduced in mainland Britain except during wartime. Civil liberties campaigners last night branded the proposed measures “one of the most significant moves on civil liberties since the second world war”.

Ironically, the stop and question power is soon to be repealed in Northern Ireland as part of the peace agreement. Home Office officials admitted, however, that the final wording of the new power to stop and question in the rest of the UK might have to include a requirement for reasonable suspicion.

As we Brits all know, "reasonable suspicion" in Thatcher-speak doesn't have to be reasonable suspicion of anything. There was no requirement under the old "reasonable suspicion" laws, introduced by Thatcher to be used against smelly hippy "travellers" and striking miners, that the police say what they were suspicious of, only that there be "suspicion" of commission of a crime - any crime. That was enough in the UK already for a 24 hour detention. Now Blair wants to extend that so that it's just general suspicion, without even a requirement that a crime have been committed or that the intent exists to commit one. If ever there was a police power ripe for abuse, this is it.

And as usual, the rationale for this is the, by now old and convenient, excuse that "the terrorists hate our freedoms". Blair, in an op-ed for the London Times, writes:

Over the past five or six years, we have decided as a country that except in the most limited of ways, the threat to our public safety does not justify changing radically the legal basis on which we confront this extremism.

Their right to traditional civil liberties comes first. I believe this is a dangerous misjudgment. This extremism, operating the world over, is not like anything we have faced before. It needs to be confronted with every means at our disposal. Tougher laws in themselves help, but just as crucial is the signal they send out: that Britain is an inhospitable place to practise this extremism.

For "their right to civil liberties" read OUR right, because the law has no way to tell in advance whether the subject is guilty or innocent. That's the whole point of "innocent until proven guilty" and Blair is planning an end-run on that basic principle. If Blair gets his way, then he will have managed to roll back the efforts of the greatest generation, for it will be "Papiere, Bitte" at every turn. As Tim Worstall, a non-Thatcherite conservative, points out after reading the BBC's explanation of the proposed new powers:

There you are, amiably wandering down the street, and if a policeman so wishes, he can not only stop and search you, he can insist that you divulge where you have been and where you are going. If you have more than £1,000 in cash on you it can be confiscated, you having to prove where you got it from and what you were going to do with it: for the assumption is that such cash amounts are the proceeds or enablers of crime and so the burden of proof reverses. Finally, if you keep silent John Reid wants this to be taken as proof of your guilt.

A free, happy and liberal land now, isn't it?

Thankfully, my guess is that this legislation won't be passed. There isn't enough time left in Blair's reign to push it through and most civil liberties groups, Labour politicians and the general public seem to be opposed to it. As a hole card for freedom, the House of Lords can be expected to do all it can to block any such draconian measures too.

Then there's the next leader, Gordon Brown, who - it has been "officially leaked" - would like a written British constitution to set out "the respective roles of Parliament, the judiciary and the Government, as well as setting out basic rights, responsibilities and opportunities for all citizens [and] resolve potential conflicts between the Human Rights Act and Britain's ability to introduce its own anti-terrorist, asylum and immigration laws." In December, Brown told listeners at a lecture:

"In each generation, we have found it necessary to renew the settlement between individual, community and state and I cannot see how the long-term credibility of our institutions or our policies can be secured unless our constitutional, social and economic reforms are explicitly founded on these British ideas of liberty."

Brown may have ridden the coat-tails of the Tony Thatcherites into power, but he's a far different kind of political animal. For that, at least, we should probably be thankful.

Cheney and the spirit of 9/11

By Libby

I'm not so sure the best way to honor the newest graduating class of the US Military Academy, who are about to lay their lives on the line for Bush's folly, is to subject them to Cheney's political swill. It appears no occassion is so sacred that the White House won't use it to advance their sorry excuses for the occupation.

Here's just a small sample, because you know, in the post 9/11 world, everything is always about those dang evil-doers.

They have given themselves to an ideology that rejects tolerance, denies freedom of conscience, and demands that women be pushed to the margins of society. The terrorists are defined entirely by their hatreds, and they hate nothing more than the country you have volunteered to defend.

The terrorists know what they want and they will stop at nothing to get it. By force and intimidation, they seek to impose a dictatorship of fear, under which every man, woman, and child lives in total obedience to their ideology. Their ultimate goal is to establish a totalitarian empire, a caliphate, with Baghdad as its capital. They view the world as a battlefield and they yearn to hit us again. And now they have chosen to make Iraq the central front in their war against civilization.

This coming from the guy who routinely called war dissenters traitors, (until nearly 3/4 of Americans joined their ranks), who supports the reversal of Roe v. Wade and who fully embraced the politics of polarization and the promotion of fear-based policies in order to keep his party in power. Plus, if you change the references from terrorists to the Bush administration in that second graf, it would serve as a perfect summary of the administration's tenure.

And this sentence pretty well sums up the biggest problem with the current policy in Iraq.

We know from history that when people live in freedom, answering to their own conscience and charting their own destiny, they will not be drawn to the ideologies of hatred and violence.

That's true enough. Too bad Cheney is not willing to live up to that lofty rhetoric and allow the Iraqis the freedom to exercise their alleged sovereignty rather than being held hostage to US interests. Maybe then at least the Sadrists would stop wanting to kill us.

There's nothing particularly notable in this rote speech except that nearly six years later, Cheney still specifically evokes 9/11 so many times. It got me to wondering how many public statements given by either Bush or Cheney in this time span have not mentioned 9/11 at all? I'm betting there aren't more than three between the two of them. And I'd also wager that if this was a Democratic administration, the "liberal" media would have been screaming about this shameless exploitation of the dead, years ago.

Update By Cernig The Blue State has more analysis of Cheney's speech.

His logic is disturbingly stunning. Al Qaeda is [in Iraq] in mass because of our occupation. So in order to win, we will have to kill every single member of the network in Iraq, hope that the organization has a 0% recruitment rate, and hope that no new foreign al Qaeda fighters enter the country. Those are odds that not even a chronic gambler would bet on.

Indeed.

Pay Attention To PTSD

By Cernig

Does anyone know exactly how many US servicemen and women have now rotated through Bush's quagmire in Iraq? I mean, outside of the Pentagon. Because it's insanely difficult to find a figure - all the official announcements relate to the number of troops in Iraq at a given time, be it 130,000 or 100,000, or to stories about troops going back for their second and third deployment.

But that total is an important figure because it's the only way to estimate the size of the PTSD timebomb that Bush's policy of war forever has created. Back in March I wrote about a report which said that a third of all those returning from Iraq or Afghanistan suffered from some form of mental illness - mostly Post Traumatic Stress Disorder although there was a higher than normal rate of suicides in this population that was more mentally healthy than the norm going in to the quagmire too.

And now there's a news story from NPR (H/t Mike at Crooks and Liars) which says that the military's attitudes to PTSD are still based on neanderthal macho-man misconceptions of the condition.

But all the reports are based on percentages - no-one wants to put an actual figure on the number of PTSD sufferering veterans either still in service or now back in civilian life. That worries the hell out of me because two things are certain. One is that far too few of these sufferers is getting adequate (or even any) treatment. The other is that a significant percentage of those suffering from PTSD will be or are already a (potentially major) danger to others both in theatre and here at home.

Update Taylor Marsh, in comments, points to her excellent post last Sunday on the subject of PTSD. I highly recommend you read it all, especially with Memorial day just around the corner.

we should all get prepared to share, shout and hear the tributes all of our soldiers so justly deserve and have earned one hundred times over. We will watch President Bush march out and trumpet the troops. What no one will do is mention the thousands of soldiers fighting to live normal lives long after they've come home. All the soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan who right now are doing so while fighting PTSD. Memorial Day is reserved for the fallen and the brave. The battle scarred and struggling soldier fighting PTSD every day to stay alive and live normally is never mentioned. The soldier fighting on the front lines with PTSD does so silently in order to try and stay alive. We don't even know the numbers of fighting soldiers struggling on the front lines with PTSD today.

One of her commenters says there are hearings on the Hill on the subject of PTSD. I must have missed the extensive media coverage...

Maybe we'll finally find out how many veterans of Bush's incompetence are suffering from PTSD and how much it might cost to treat them all.

Let Slip The Stenographers Of War

By Cernig

David "Judy Miller in drag" Sanger is at it again, with a finely crafted bit of stenography in the NY Times today which says the Bush administration are drawing up plans to reduce troops in Iraq next year by up to half.

Which, as both Glenn Greenwald and Big Tent Democrat point out, is not the first time we've heard such empty promises for political purposes - and therefore are as believable now as they've ever been.

Prairie Weather catches the real news in the story, sourced as it is from leaks by "senior administration officials". The actual plan is to stay in Iraq forever. Here's the key graph of "Judy" Sanger's whole article:

The officials cautioned that no firm plans have emerged from the discussions. But they said the proposals being developed envision a far smaller but long-term American presence, centering on three or four large bases around Iraq. Mr. Bush has told recent visitors to the White House that he was seeking a model similar to the American presence in South Korea.

Let's be clear about that, shall we - Bush's plan is for more than a dozen huge bases and a constant presence numbering in the tens of thousands over more than three decades. Which is what quite a few people have been saying was Bush's real plan all along.

Sanger writes that Dick Cheney may not go along with the plan, because even a partial withdrawal might embolden Al Qaeda, thus proving that his sources are from the Cheney camp. There's no way on earth Cheney would disagree with a plan to keep the US in Iraq forever - this is pure disininformation, a red herring. Captain Ed, a sure touchstone of the neocon war-hawk temper, shows why:

We cannot leave Iraq altogether and fight Islamist terrorism. They're attempting to base themselves in western Iraq, with Syrian assistance. We can't fight that by deploying to Okinawa and leaving the region to the radicals. This planning takes that reality and adapts our military approach to it. It should come as no surprise at all that the Pentagon and the White House have already begun thinking about the next phase of the war.

The differences between Iraq and South Korea being, mostly, that the Iraqis are still likely to be using those American super-bases for target practise decades from now, ratcheting up the casualties a few at a time, and that the bases in Iraq will be a provocation destined to create more Islamist terrorists by their very existence than their occupants will ever manage to kill.

The Bush Plan B - war forever. It was actually Plan A all along and the Democrats just handed him a blank check for it.

Update Time for more KremlinWatch D.C. as Bill Kristol, one of Cheney's staff of outreach Wormtongues, puts the inevitable next-day spin on the story.

"The president apparently was furious about the New York Times article Saturday. One senior White House official went out of his way to call me Saturday and left me a voicemail saying that. So, since they don’t normally do that on Saturdays, I think maybe it’s even true."

When a liar insists something may be true, check you still have your wallet.

Kristol also told Fox News that it is "irresponsible for people in the State Department, the Defense Department or the White House to be leaking this stuff which they have no idea whether it’s practical."

Nice move, blaming the leak on the "enemy" faction inside the administration. If it really had been that faction, they wouldn't have mentioned Bush plans for a South Korean style of permanent basing. Kristol says the troop reduction part is rubbish, which leaves just the permanent bases. It has Cheney written all over it.