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Al Gore's Right About Global Warming. Who Says So? The Pentagon

Global Warming real. Consequences catastrophic. So says Al Gore, of course. And so says a source not known for tree hugger sentimentality. The Pentagon. A secret report leaked to The Observer/UK tells the story. And when was the report leaked? 2004. And where were the US media on the story? Pretty much where they've been all along during the disastrous Bush presidency: out to lunch.

Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us

· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change....

Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.'

Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added.

Article date, February 22, 2004!

The Most Dangerous Administration Ever

Back then, it was Bush administration saber rattling over North Korea, only to find out years later that ...

The United States appears to have made a major intelligence blunder over North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, one that may have exacerbated tensions with Pyongyang over the past four years and goaded Kim Jong-Il into pressing ahead with last October's live nuclear test, intelligence and Bush administration officials have said.

The blunder does not concern the plutonium-based bomb technology that North Korea used in its test and has clearly been developing for decades. Rather it concerns the assessment, in a Central Intelligence Agency report to Congress in November 2002, that North Korea was also pursuing a parallel uranium enrichment programme capable of providing the raw material for two or more nuclear weapons a year, starting "mid-decade".

That prompted the US to cut off oil supplies to Pyongyang, to which North Korea responded by throwing out international weapons inspectors and ratcheting up its plutonium bomb programme.

But now many intelligence officials doubt whether the North Koreans have a viable uranium enrichment programme, and administration officials have begun wondering if they could not have handled the North Korean crisis much more smartly if they had been in less of a hurry to get confrontational....

Now it's Bush administration saber ratting over Iran. At a time when we're already paying a steep price for Bush administration saber rattling over Iraq. Yet, evidence aside and public support to end the Iraq occupation be damned, the new Democratic majority in Congress appears paralyzed and the evil clowns at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue have two more years to screw up the world. Scared yet?


© Martin Rowson 2006, Guardian/UK

Questioning The Answers

Tuesday night some of Washington's elite print and television journalists got together at the National Press Club for a friendly bull session with White House press flack Tony Snow.

There (over drinks and cocktail weenies?), they back slapped and complimented each other on the important and serious work they do, and indulged in what's become a favorite Beltway passtime. Trashing bloggers.

Tony Snow confessed to occasionally reading blogs. "It's amazing, you get this wonderful imaginative hateful stuff that comes flying out," he said.

Newsweek's Richard Wolffe chimed in. "There seems to be this sort of -- the witch hunt that's out there. A lot of the blogs are, are, are unduly devoted to media criticism which is itself kind of interesting given all the things you could comment on....

"In my humble view, the press here does a fantastic job of adhering to journalistic standards and covering politics in general," Wolffe proclaimed, arguing that bloggers "want us to play a role that isn't really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information..."

Really? Ask questions? Get information? Oh, you mean like you and others did in the runup to the US invasion of Iraq. How did that work again? You talked to unnamed administration sources. You wrote down what the unnamed administration sources said. And your papers and magazines printed the stuff.

I discovered the extent of the "fantastic job" Richard Wolffe did during this time period by reading Glenn Greenwald's column on the Snow-press corps love fest in Salon.

Greenwald shows up Wolffe as the lickspittle stenographer he is through an outrageously unfair, sneakily underhanded technique often employed by dirty filthy stinking hippie bloggers. He quotes him -- reprints excerpts of articles Wolffe wrote back then. And to devastating effect. Then Greenwald cuts to the heart of the disease that afflicts Beltway journalism

"It is truly astonishing," he writes, "that the people who enabled the administration to spew one falsehood after the next -- and who aided and abetted the worst strategic disaster in our country's history by mindlessly passing those falsehoods along to their readers, completely failing to investigate any of it, but instead obediently validating it all with journalistic approval -- now want to sit around in the most self-satisfied way and pronounce that they are doing an absolutely 'fantastic job' and complain about the vulgar masses who disrupt their tranquility by criticizing them for being insufficiently vigilant.

"And to those American citizens who remain rather angry about the complete failure of the press to scrutinize the war-justifying claims made by their friends in the government -- and who wake up every day and devote themselves to trying to prod the press into performing its intended adversarial watchdog role so that our Government has at least some checks on what it can say and do -- people like Richard Wolffe have nothing to say other than to agree with Tony Snow that they are vulgar and hateful and to lecture them -- in his snidest and most condescending tone -- that they are just ignorant, confused, and unreasonably demanding.

"Truly, the spectacle of watching our country's leading White House journalists sitting there next to Tony Snow -- all of them oozing pomposity and self-satisfaction -- while Snow engineers the entire discussion and treats them like the friendly puppets that they are... is quite difficult to endure, but is nonetheless truly revealing."

And what can we expect from Richard Wolffe and his ilk in the future? Will he continue to puff out his chest and proclaim to the world that he's doing a fantastic job? Will he continue to "ask questions and get information" out like a postman delivering the mail? Very probably.

Even though what he and so many others should be doing as journalists is questioning the answers.

Real Treason

Bush and his enablers in Congress love to talk about supporting our troops. And they're quick to demonize anyone opposing the escalation of the US military bootprint in Iraq as emboldening the enemy. Debate Bush's folly and you're a traitor. Speak out against his insane escalation plan and you're demoralizing our brave soldiers. Well, how's this for demoralizing? How's this for real treason? And guess who bears responsibility for it. Dana Priest and Anne Hull expose the criminal neglect and cynical hypocrisy of the Bush crowd in a Pulitzer-worthy report in Sunday's Washington Post.

Hillary Hits A Triple

"If the administration believes that any, any use of force against Iran is necessary, the president must come to Congress to seek that authority."

Anyone who's read any of my posts on Hillary Rodham Clinton knows I consider her nomination to be a disaster not just for Democrats in 2008 but for the country.

Hillary Clinton is the most polarizing politician in America next to George Bush and Dick Cheney. That isn't going to change. Ever.

On the one hand her candidacy could cost Democrats a sure White House win two years from now. On the other--if she actually is elected president--the country will be in for four to eight years of divisiveness and bloody trench warfare from a reinvigorated right. Of that can there be any doubt?

I offer this as context (if not apology) for my praise of Hillary's Senate speech yesterday drawing a bright line against Bush administration jingoism and saber rattling over Iran.

Strategically, it was brilliant.

Just as, in a weird way, Bush is using Iran to deflect attention from the mess he's made in Iraq and his latest lunatic escalation plan, Hillary is using Iran to take focus away from her Senate vote in 2002 giving Commander Bunnypants a blank check to take the nation to war.

This is the vote Hillary steadfastly, stubbornly, arrogantly refuses to call a mistake. And it's hurting her as she maneuvers to position herself against Obama.

In New Hampshire last week, the question of Hillary's war vote dogged her at every stop, as the New York Times reports. And her refusal to clearly and honestly own up to contributing to the greatest foreign policy mistake in US history, but instead substitute a nuanced, triangulating, slippery, mush-mouthed excuse of "if I knew then what I know now, I would never have voted for it."

Hillary's hope is to make her antiwar bones by standing up to Bush on Iran. And I wouldn't bet money against this canny pol pulling it off, thereby making her 2002 vote a non-issue in the months ahead leading up to the primaries. Especially if the unpopular, distrusted, politically-wounded Bush ups the ante on Iran.

But scoring points off Bush's craziness won't make me feel any better about Hillary's candidacy. Quite the opposite. The country has seen enough of stone cold politicians who can't or won't admit error.

It doesn't need another.

UPDATE Hillary gets caught stealing home. Barely one news cycle after her Senate speech, instead of staying on message with her position on Iran, Hillary returned to the subject of her 2002 Iraq vote. And this time she upped the ante, telling those who want her to admit her "mistake" to take a hike:

“If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from,” Mrs. Clinton told an audience in Dover, N.H., in a veiled reference to two rivals for the nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

In a post on dKos titled "If I knew then what I should have known then," georgia10 scrutinizes Hillary's stubborness and writes this gem on why she's wrong as the party's nominee:

On that, again, Clinton is mistaken. For the 2002 Iraq vote isn't just about that one vote. It's taken on a life of its own, and every day Clinton refuses to admit her mistake is another day she paints a picture to primary voters of just what type of President she would be.

A president who in the past has failed to look forward, and in the present refuses to look back.

Shit For Brains

From ThinkProgress,

Rep. Rohrabacher: Global Warming May Have Been Caused By ‘Dinosaur Flatulence’

This week, Congress held its first hearing on the landmark IPCC report on climate change. That report concluded that global warming is “unequivocal” and human activity is the main driver, “very likely” causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.

During the hearing, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) — one of the 87 percent of congressional Republicans who do not believe in man-made global warming — questioned the authors of the report about a period of dramatic climate change that occured 55 million years ago. “We don’t know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence, you know, or who knows?" ...

Presumably, Rohrabacher was referencing a period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Then, as in now, “sharp rises in temperature were initiated and driven by large spikes in greenhouse gases. … It took over 100K years for the ocean, atmosphere, and temperatures to return to their previous state. The result was a mass extinction event that took millions of years to recover from.” But scientists believe that massive methane releases from the ocean floors — not dinosaur farts — were the cause.

In sharp contrast to Rohrabacher, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) delivered an opening statement recommending mandatory caps on global warming pollution and calling out conservatives for rejecting science. “For twelve years, the leadership in the House of Representatives stifled all discussion and debate of global warming. That long rejection of reality is over, to the relief of Members on both sides of the aisle.”

And here I thought James Inhofe was the stupidest man on the Hill.

Not Exactly An Edward R Murrow Moment, Is It?

This is all you need to know about American television journalism nowadays. ThinkProgress tells the dismal story of the media's obsessive, over-the-top coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death. Even Olbermann, to his shame, devoted over 10 minutues to the sudden demise of the trashy tabloid star last night. And to think the astronaut stalker story had just about run its course. Talk about timing.

The death of Anna Nicole Smith yesterday was a feeding frenzy for the national media, and coverage of the war was drowned out: NBC’s Nightly News devoted 14 seconds to Iraq compared to 3 minutes and 13 seconds to Anna Nicole. CNN referenced Anna Nicole 522% more frequently than it did Iraq. MSNBC was even worse — 708% more references to Anna Nicole than Iraq.

The lop-sided coverage largely ignored many key developments in Iraq, including the sixth downing of a U.S. helicopter in the past three weeks, the allegations that a deputy Iraqi health minister was aiding a Shiite militia in its attacks against U.S.javascript:void(0) troops, and the death of four Marines.

ThinkProgress has collected some of the many, many lowlights of yesterday’s coverage (i.e., Larry King: “The death of Anna Nicole Smith is the number one story around the world tonight”), along with a lone highlight provided by CNN’s Jack Cafferty....

Edwards Rights A Wrong

Okay, it wasn't pretty. But at least Edwards made the right call. Ultimately. From Salon,

Edwards campaign rehires bloggers Marcotte and McEwen

• After a day of infighting, the Edwards campaign reverses a decision to fire two controversial bloggers.

Alex Koppelman and Rebecca Traister

Feb. 8, 2007 | After personal phone calls to the bloggers from the candidate, the Edwards campaign has rehired the bloggers who were fired yesterday, according to sources inside and close to the campaign.

Salon reported yesterday that on Wednesday morning the Edwards camp fired Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen, the two bloggers whose hiring had sparked an uproar by conservatives. That information was confirmed by sources in and close to the campaign. But almost as soon as the decision had been communicated to the bloggers, a struggle arose within the campaign about possibly reversing it, the sources said, as the liberal blogosphere exploded.

The campaign remained silent all day about the status of Marcotte and McEwen, and neither woman posted to the John Edwards blog yesterday. There was also radio silence from the campaign for the hours following Salon's report of their initial dismissal, after a promise from a campaign spokeswoman that there would be more information later.

Sources told Salon that much of Wednesday was spent in a series of conference calls among campaign members trying to hash out a solution to the very difficult problem of what to do with the bloggers, debating the details of their departures or the possibility of their swift reinstatement. These discussions culminated, according to sources inside and close to the campaign, in calls last night from Edwards to the bloggers, in which he asked them to come back to the campaign.

In a statement released today, with individual comments from Edwards and the two bloggers, Edwards said, "I've talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone's faith, and I take them at their word." The statements did not address Salon's earlier report.

Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for Edwards, denied to Salon that the bloggers had been fired. However, asked if the bloggers were ever given the impression they were no longer with the campaign, Palmieri responded, "We had discussions going on for about 36 hours about how to handle this, and Edwards -- he himself had never met either one of them and felt it was important to give them time to decide how they wanted to respond, if at all."

As Palmieri was giving her statement to Salon Thursday, a source close to the campaign, who declined to be named because of the delicacy of the situation, was asserting to another Salon reporter that "they were fired," and that Wednesday was spent in a series of confused and sometimes heated conversations within the campaign, trying to hammer out details of a possible reversal of that decision for one or both of the bloggers. "There was a lot of infighting," said the source.

Kate Michelman, a senior advisor to the Edwards campaign, told Salon in reference to Edwards' statement: "I think John handled this just right. Frankly, campaigns have bumps in the road. The important thing about bumps in the road is the way a campaign handles them, whether they step up to the plate and are fair and move on and regroup. The outcome of the process is the important thing, and I think in the end John has made the right decision here."

While the Edwards campaign kept quiet on Wednesday, the blogosphere was reacting to Salon's story, often with anger at the prospect that the Edwards camp had thrown two of the blogosphere's own under the bus. Chris Bowers, a blogger at MyDD.com, wrote in one post, "While there is no way I will support Edwards with (sic) Amanda and Melissa are fired, I will immediately become a staunch Edwards supporter if they are not fired."

And Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, who was one of the driving forces behind the controversy, has released a new statement. In it, he promises that "what Edwards did today will not be forgotten" and that there will be "a nationwide public relations blitz" against the Edwards campaign for the decision to employ the bloggers.

"John Edwards has apparently decided that there is more to be gained by aligning himself with the cultural left than by standing on principle and firing the Catholic bashers on his payroll," Donohue said in his statement. "Had anyone on his staff used the 'N-word,' he or she would have been fired immediately. But his goal is to loot the pockets of the [George] Soros/Hollywood gang, and they -- like him -- aren't offended by anti-Catholicism. Indeed, they thrive on it."

Waiting For Godot (Edwards Screws Up)

From Salon,

Edwards campaign fires bloggers

The right-wing blogosphere has gotten its scalps -- John Edwards has fired the two controversial bloggers he recently hired to do liberal blogger outreach, Salon has learned.

The bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, formerly of Pandagon, and Melissa McEwan, of Shakespeare's Sister, had come under fire from right-wing bloggers for statements they had previously made on their respective blogs. A statement by the Catholic League's Bill Donohue, which called Marcotte and McEwan "anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots," and an accompanying article on the controversy in the New York Times this morning, put extra pressure on the campaign.

Speculation from sources that the two bloggers might be rehired was bolstered by Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, who said in an e-mail that she would "caution [Salon] against reporting that they have been fired. We will have something to say later...."

The Salon War Room item posted at 1:21 pm Eastern. It's now 4 pm Central and still no word from the Edwards campaign.

What to conclude? That John Edwards is a jellyfish who caves at the first whiff of criticism from notorious right-wing nutjobs? That his campaign is such a godawful mess it can't get its media act together?

However this turns out, Edwards looks bad.

You'd have thunk Edwards would have learned a lesson watching John Kerry fumble away his opportunity in 2004.

In today's world, you don't leave an attack unanswered for even half a news cycle. And, most of all, you don't leave your candidate looking indecisive.

Up Or Down Or Filibuster, The Resolution Doesn't Matter

The Senate has yet to vote on a non-binding resolution condemning Bush's escalation in Iraq.

And maybe it won't.

If the White House gets its way, a filibuster enlisting all 49 Republican senators will kill the measure on the floor.

But whether a weak non-binding resolution emerges or a filibuster prevents a vote, it isn't likely to matter much. Either way, the surge will go on. And the GOP will implode.

The public is already way ahead of the country's elected leadership, both Republican and Democrat. Today 55% of Americans want a pull-out of US forces from Iraq within a year, according to the latest Rasmussen poll.

The dance of the senators is nothing more than a clumsy political two-step. But it is only the first dance. Whether a tepid, compromise resolution emerges or not, the fight over funding and oversight will go on -- and intensify.

If the White House wins and kills the resolution via filibuster (the moral righteousness of having up and down votes apparently only applying to radically conservative federal judges), it loses.

It will have spent tremendous political capital only to delay, not stop, more aggressive action down the road.

And for the GOP, a filibuster is catastrophic. It will exacerbate the split in the party and expose so-called "moderates" as spineless hacks, unwilling to put their beliefs on a subject as important as war above partisan politics.

Not a happy position to be in for 2008.

Overshadowing the debate, prospects for improvement in Iraq remain bleak. Four months from now, six months from now, the situation on the ground is likely to be as bad or worse than it is today.

If so 70% of Americans, not 55%, may be screaming for the US get out. And where will Congress be then?

Just that much closer to the next election.

How Al-Sadr Outsmarted Bush (It Wasn't Hard)

So this is the mess we're surging more American troops into? Heckuva job, Commander Bunnypants. Brilliant. Tom Lasseter of McClatchy Newspapers reports.

Mahdi Army gains strength through unwitting aid of U.S.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military drive to train and equip Iraq's security forces has unwittingly strengthened anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which has been battling to take over much of the capital city as American forces are trying to secure it.

U.S. Army commanders and enlisted men who are patrolling east Baghdad, which is home to more than half the city's population and the front line of al-Sadr's campaign to drive rival Sunni Muslims from their homes and neighborhoods, said al-Sadr's militias had heavily infiltrated the Iraqi police and army units that they've trained and armed.

"Half of them are JAM. They'll wave at us during the day and shoot at us during the night," said 1st Lt. Dan Quinn, a platoon leader in the Army's 1st Infantry Division, using the initials of the militia's Arabic name, Jaish al Mahdi. "People (in America) think it's bad, but that we control the city. That's not the way it is. They control it, and they let us drive around. It's hostile territory."

The Bush administration's plan to secure Baghdad rests on a "surge" of some 17,000 more U.S. troops to the city, many of whom will operate from small bases throughout Baghdad. Those soldiers will work to improve Iraqi security units so that American forces can hand over control of the area and withdraw to the outskirts of the city.

The problem, many soldiers said, is that the approach has been tried before and resulted only in strengthening al-Sadr and his militia.

[...]

"All the Shiites have to do is tell everyone to lay low, wait for the Americans to leave, then when they leave you have a target list and within a day they'll kill every Sunni leader in the country. It'll be called the `Day of Death' or something like that," said 1st Lt. Alain Etienne, 34, of Brooklyn, N.Y. "They say, `Wait, and we will be victorious.' That's what they preach. And it will be their victory."

Quinn agreed.

[...]

Al-Sadr's success in infiltrating Iraqi security forces says much about the continued inability of American commanders in Iraq to counter the classic insurgent tactic of using popular support to trump superior military firepower. Lacking attack helicopters and other sophisticated weapons, al-Sadr's men have expanded their empire with borrowed trucks and free lunches for militiamen.

After U.S. units pounded al-Sadr's men in August 2004, the cleric apparently decided that instead of facing American tanks, he'd use the Americans' plans to build Iraqi security forces to rebuild his own militia.

So while Iraq's other main Shiite militia, the Badr Brigade, concentrated in 2005 on packing Iraqi intelligence bureaus with high-level officers who could coordinate sectarian assassinations, al-Sadr went after the rank and file.

His recruits began flooding into the Iraqi army and police, receiving training, uniforms and equipment either directly from the U.S. military or from the American-backed Iraqi Defense Ministry.

The infiltration by al-Sadr's men, coupled with his strength in Iraq's parliament after U.S.-backed elections, gave him leeway to operate death squads throughout the capital, according to more than a week of interviews with American soldiers patrolling Baghdad. Some U.S.-trained units carried out sectarian killings themselves, while others, manning checkpoints, allowed militiamen to pass.

[...]

"There's been a lot of push to transition to Iraqis so you can show progress, but have you secured the area?" said Capt. Aaron Kaufman, a Washington, Iowa, native who works for a unit that acts as a liaison between U.S. and Iraqi forces in the Shiite enclave of Kadhamiya, across the river from east Baghdad. "I think the political pressure has hurt. ... You're wishing away, you're assuming away enemy activity, and you hurt yourself doing that."

[...]

Al-Sadr's militia has taken advantage of the chaos.

Iraqi soldiers, for example, often were pushed into the field by Iraqi commanders who didn't give them adequate food, clothing or shelter, said Etienne, a 1st Infantry Division platoon leader.

Etienne was on patrol one day when he saw Iraqi soldiers eating fresh vegetables and meat. The afternoon before, the same soldiers had complained that they had only scraps of food left. Who'd brought them their meal? It had come courtesy of Muqtada al-Sadr.

"Who's feeding the Iraqi army? Nobody. So JAM will come around and give them food and water," Etienne said. "We try to capture hearts and minds, well, JAM has done that. They're further along than us."

[...]

Did The Founding Fathers Set The Bar Too Low?

The Founding Fathers in 1789:

"No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States."

Joe Biden today:

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy... I mean, that’s a storybook, man."

Blair Facing His Own Watergate

Last month I posted a story speculating that the cash for honors scandal could bring down Blair's government. That speculation got a bit closer to reality today. How does the line go? -- "It's not the crime, it's the cover-up that gets you."

Blair Ally Arrested in Corruption Probe

• Focus of Police Shifts From Alleged Sale of Government Honors to Suspected Coverup

LONDON, Jan. 30 -- The chief fundraiser for Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor Party was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of hampering a police investigation into whether the party offered seats in the House of Lords and other government honors in exchange for cash.

Michael Levy, a close friend of Blair's and special envoy to the Middle East, was arrested on "suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice." He was released on bail and has not been charged with a crime....

A tennis partner of Blair's who became wealthy in the music industry, Levy has been dubbed "Lord Cashpoint" by British tabloids for his central role in the scandal. He issued a statement Tuesday denying "any allegations of wrongdoing whatsoever."

Many people here see the new charge as more significant than last summer's because it suggests an effort by people close to Blair to hide an offense. "The coverup seems to be the main focus now," said Tim Knox of the Center for Policy Studies in London. "It's a serious crime, and it could be easier to prove" than the initial charges.

Appointed seats in the House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament, could be offered to donors with only a "wink, nod and a handshake," Knox said. But he said it might be much easier for police to discover that e-mails or other documents had been destroyed or hidden in an effort to thwart the investigation.

"Increasingly, this sorry affair has the whiff of Watergate about it," Edward Davey, a member of Parliament from the Liberal Democrats, the third-largest political party here, told the BBC. Suspicion of a coverup is particularly angering people, Davey said.

In all, four people have been arrested in a burgeoning scandal that has made Blair the first sitting prime minister to be questioned by police in a criminal inquiry. The next step is for prosecutors to review the police findings and decide whether to press charges.

Blair announced last fall that he would step down, but he did not say exactly when. Under pressure from his own party and with his approval ratings plunging, Blair said he would not attend his party's next conference, to be held in September.

The cash-for-honors scandal, as it is known here, has increased public disillusionment with Blair, and many people say it could force him to resign earlier than he had planned. Blair has said he did nothing wrong....

So Where Exactly Is The Divide In 'Bitterly Divided' America?

The elite bloviators of America's corporate media keep pounding away at their pet narrative that the country is bitterly divided over Iraq.

Only the numbers don't back them up.

In the latest Newsweek poll, 68% of Americans say they are opposed to Bush's troop escalation in Iraq.

In a recent Gallup poll, 56% said they want US troops out of Iraq sooner rather than later -- 19% are for immediate pullout, 37% want troops out within a year. And nearly 6 in 10 say it was a "mistake" to invade Iraq in the first place, according to Gallup.

What I found most surprising is when asked if Congress should try to block the deployments, a step that would require a partial cut-off of funding, a significant 47% of respondents said yes.

So where's the bitter divide the millionaire pundits keep talking about? Look for it on K Street, not Main Street.

In real America, there's consensus.

When The Strongest Voice Against Escalation Is A Republican's

This is what Sen Chuck Hagel had to say the other day about the nonsense the Decider-in-Chief is calling his "new way forward" in Iraq -- a cynically political, let's-all-clap-louder gambit to avoid facing reality by sending 22,000 more Americans into the meat grinder (enough to delay the outcome, not enough to change it). And my question is, Where are the voices of the two leading Senate Democrats who have either announced or are on the verge of announcing a run for the presidency? What are your views, Sen Clinton? And yours, Sen Obama? When have your words ever had the no-bullshit power of these?

HAGEL: I don't think we've ever had a coherent strategy [in Iraq]. In fact, I would even challenge the administration today to show us the plan that the president talked about the other night. There is no plan. I happen to know that Pentagon planners were on their way to Central Com over the weekend -- they haven't even Team B'ed this plan.... There is no strategy. This is a ping-pong game with American lives.... We'd better be damned sure what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more lives into that grinder...and I want every one of you, every one of us, 100 senators to look in that camera, and you tell your people back home what you think. Don't hide any more, none of us.

Want To Read Something Really Scary?

As bad as the situation is in Iraq, it could have been much worse. Imagine if Cheney and his gang had gotten their way in having the Iraq war resolution cover the entire Middle East. That's what the Bush administration wanted in 2002, says Sen Chuck Hagel in an interview with GQ magazine. ThinkProgress has an excerpt.

... At the time, Hagel says, the Bush administration presented Congress with a resolution that would have authorized the use of force anywhere in the region:

HAGEL: [F]inally, begrudgingly, [the White House] sent over a resolution for Congress to approve. Well, it was astounding. It said they could go anywhere in the region.

GQ: It wasn’t specific to Iraq?

HAGEL: Oh no. It said the whole region! They could go into Greece or anywhere. Is central Asia in the region? I suppose! Sure as hell it was clear they meant the whole Middle East. It was anything. It was literally anything. No boundaries. No restrictions.

GQ: They expected Congress to let them start a war anywhere in the Middle East?

HAGEL: Yes. Yes. Wide open. We had to rewrite it. Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I stripped the language that the White House had set up and put our language in it.

Asked about his vote in support of the final Iraq war resolution, Hagel told GQ, “Do I regret that vote? Yes, I do regret that vote.”

And if you didn't catch Hagels incendiary remarks in favor of the non-binding resolution against Bush's "surge" in the Foreign Relations committee, you'll find it on C&L.

SOTU, So What?

It was Bush's last chance to rally the public to the "new way forward" in Iraq after his last last chance flopped more than a week ago.

He whiffed.

There was no pied piper inspiration in this speech. No standing on the rubble with megaphone moment. No rhythm, no stirring beat for the public to march to--a public that is already running full tilt the other way. Bush repackaged and recycled the same old deceitful, simplistic, dreary rhetoric he's been pushing from the get-go.

Touting a domestic agenda that, when you cut through the smoke, lacks substance or basic honesty, Bush delayed talking about the number-one issue on the minds of Americans until nearly halfway through his speech.

Understandable. Bush's disastrous occupation of Iraq has left the US with no good options militarily.

As for diplomacy (did you get a load of Madam Supertanker's baleful countenance?), the notion that Team Bush is capable of conducting it with anything even approaching common sense is enough to provoke spasms of derisive laughter.

The US is screwed if it stays in Iraq. The US is screwed if it pulls out of Iraq in the middle of a bloody sectarian war.

And we are totally fucked because, like it or not, Bush will be the American president for two more years.

Back From The Dead After New Blogger Murdered Me

I switched this site over to New Blogger on Saturday, January 13, and zap! I couldn't post.

Headlines would print. Text wouldn't.

Tried to contact blogger support. Now that was a trip. Today got an answer from a technical support genius named Nick.

Nick's advice: use a different browser to work around the glitch. (Never had a browser conflict on Old Blogger, but whatever.)

And, hey, Nick's fix works. I can publish again.

Thanks for the help, Nick of New Blogger. New posts start tomorrow.

Bush's Lies

In his Special Comment tonight, Olbermann delivered the most dramatic summary yet of the lies this president has told the American people about Iraq. At the end of the program, my son remarked that the '08 Democratic candidate should make "restoring honor and integrity to the White House" a major theme of the campaign. He's right. In '08 it would even be the truth.

... Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said nation-building was wrong for America. Now he says it is vital.

He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control. Last night he promised to embed them, in Iraqi units.

He told us about WMD. Mobile labs. Secret sources. Aluminum tubes. Yellow-cake.

He has told us the war is necessary because Saddam was a material threat. Because of 9/11. Because of Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda. Terrorism in General. To liberate Iraq. To spread freedom. To spread Democracy. To prevent terrorism by gas price increases. Because this was a guy who tried to kill his Dad.

Because 439 words in to the speech last night, he trotted out 9/11 again.

In advocating and prosecuting this war he passed on a chance to get Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. To get Muqtada Al-Sadr.
To get Bin Laden.

He sent in fewer troops than the Generals told him to.

He ordered the Iraqi army disbanded and the Iraqi government "De-Baathified."

He short-changed Iraqi training. He neglected to plan for widespread looting. He did not anticipate sectarian violence.

He sent in troops without life-saving equipment. Gave jobs to foreign contractors, and not Iraqis. He staffed U.S. positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.

He and his government told us "America had prevailed", "Mission Accomplished", the resistance was in its "last throes".

He has insisted more troops were not necessary. He has now insisted more troops are necessary.

He has insisted it's up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would not be necessary.

He has trumpeted the turning points: The fall of Baghdad; the death of Uday and Qusay; the capture of Saddam; A provisional government; a charter; a constitution; the trial of Saddam; elections; purple fingers; another government; the death of Saddam.

He has assured us: we would be greeted as liberators with flowers; as they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course; we were never about "stay the course." We would never have to go door-to-door in Baghdad. And last night, that to gain Iraqis' trust, we would go door-to-door in Baghdad.

He told us the enemy was Al-Qaeda, foreign fighters, terrorists, Baathists, and now Iran and Syria.

The war would pay for itself. It would cost 1.7 billion dollars. 100 billion. 400 billion. Half a trillion. Last night's speech alone cost another six billion.

And after all of that, now it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Democrats, Republicans, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November, and the majority of the American people.

Oh, and one more to add, tonight: Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Mr. Bush, this is madness.

You have lost the military.

You have lost the Congress to the Democrats.

You have lost most of the Iraqis.

You have lost many of the Republicans.

You have lost our Allies.

You are losing the credibility, not just of your Presidency, but more importantly of the office itself.

And most imperatively, you are guaranteeing that more American troops will be losing their lives, and more families their loved ones. You are guaranteeing it!

This becomes your legacy, sir: How many of those you addressed last night as your "fellow citizens" you just sent to their deaths?

And for what, Mr. Bush?

So the next President has to pull the survivors out of Iraq instead of you?

Good night and good luck.

And Now A Word From President Batshit Crazy

Reading Bush's speech, I had to wonder if the decider had gone off his antipsychotics.

This time though he doesn't have a mob at his back carrying torches. The American people have finally parted company with this buffoon. They aren't coming back.

Some 70 percent of the public rejects Bush's plan to escalate the Iraq occupation. And that was before he opened his mouth last night.

But will Congress follow Sen Kennedy's call to assert itself and halt the so-called surge dead in its tracks? No. The air will be hot with rhetoric, but any resolution passed will be symbolic.

The "surge" is a done deal. More troops already are on their way to the sandbox, while others already there are being "stop lossed" locking them in.

Yet it's clear to the overwhelming majority of military experts (and anyone with a brain) that 21,500 more American soldiers can't and won't alter the outcome.

Bush says he's changing strategy, but what his speech was about was cynical politics--a gesture that let's him punt the Iraq disaster to the next president.

If, as I fear, Fallujah-style tactics are planned for Baghdad (house to house searches, forced relocations, razing entire neighborhoods, acting as hired guns for Shia against Sunni), the pictures from Iraq are about to get even bloodier.

None of which deters Mr Bush. He's even threatened a wider war against Iran and Syria.

Bush's speech fits Franklin's classic definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

You know, batshit crazy.

There's Tony Snow's Version Of 'Mission Accomplished.' Then There's The Truth

At yesterday's WH press briefing, Tony Snow worked overtime to spin Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech. "I think the public ought to just listen to what the president has to say. You know that the mission accomplished banner was put up by members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, and the president, on that very speech, said just the opposite, didn’t he?" No he didn't, Tony. Not even close. And the bit about the sailors being responsible for the banner. It was a lie then, Tony. It's still a lie now.

Let's return, then, to the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier whose planes had released over a third of the three million pounds of ordnance that had just hit Iraq. It had almost reached its homeport, San Diego, the previous day, but was held about 30 miles out in the Pacific because the President, as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd would point out, chose to co-pilot an S-3B Viking sub reconnaissance U.S. Navy jet onto its deck rather than far less dramatically climb stairs.

"That day certainly seemed like the ultimate triumphalist political photo op as well as the launching pad for George Bush's 2004 reelection campaign. British journalist Matthew Engel referred to the President then as 'the stuntman in the bomber jacket.' It was actually a flight suit, but the phrase caught something of the moment. The Tom Cruise film Top Gun -- made, by the way, with copious help from the U.S. Navy -- was on everyone's mind in what Elizabeth Bumiller of the Times called 'one of the most audacious moments of presidential theater in American history.' It seemed to confirm that George Bush was a more skilled actor-president than Ronald Reagan had ever been.

"Unlike his father, the younger Bush was visibly comfortable in the business of creating fabulous fiction. We know that Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer, 'embedded' himself on that carrier days before the President hit the deck. Along with Bob DeServi, a former NBC cameraman and lighting specialist, and Greg Jenkins, a former Fox News television producer, he planned out every detail of the President's landing, as Bumiller put it, 'even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush's right shoulder and the Mission Accomplished banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot. The speech was specifically timed for what image makers call magic hour light, which cast a golden glow on Mr. Bush.'


"So, on that thrilling day, the President landed on what was essentially a movie set. After carefully taking off his helmet in private – no goofy Michael Dukakis moments here -- he made a Top Gun victory speech, avoiding Vietnam as politicians had largely done for two decades. The speech had World War II on the brain right down to the cribs from Churchill. ('We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide…') The President cited 'the character of our military through history -- the daring of Normandy, the fierce courage of Iwo Jima…' Given his frame of reference, he probably meant from The Sands of Iwo Jima to Saving Private Ryan. Then he spoke of 'the decency and idealism that turned enemies into allies [and] is fully present in this generation.'

"He also delivered his now-infamous almost-victory line against the background of that Mission Accomplished banner, claiming that 'major combat operations in Iraq have ended.'

"Give George Bush credit: When it came to not-quite-battle footage, he proved he could don a military uniform, get in a military vehicle, and carry it off with panache. His on-deck Tom Cruise 'swagger' would be a staple of press coverage for weeks. And above all, he clearly loved landing on that deck, wearing that outfit, making that speech. He was having the time of his life.

"But even as his advance men were bringing it off, even as he was glorying in his color-coded tale of battle triumph, something was beginning to devour that moment of presidential glory. A headline that went with the CNN account of his landing that day caught this well: 'Bush calls end to major combat,' it said, but there was also a subhead, little noted at the time: 'U.S. Central Command: Seven [American soldiers] hurt in Fallujah grenade attack.' Those two headlines would struggle for dominance for the next couple of years, a struggle now long over.


"Let's consider the odd fate of the perfect fiction Bush's men put together on the Abraham Lincoln, because it was typical of what has happened to administration image-making and story-telling. Only six months later, Time magazine was already writing, 'The perfect photo-op has flopped,' and claiming that, shades of Vietnam, the President had a 'growing credibility problem.' By then, instead of preparing for a series of Top-Gun reelection ads, the President and his advance men were busy bobbing and weaving when it came to that fateful 'Mission Accomplished' banner. By then, those Iraqi grenades had multiplied into a Sunni insurrection and Fallujah had morphed into a resistant enemy city that, in November 2004, would be largely destroyed by American firepower without ever being fully subdued; and the President was already pinning the idea for creating that banner on the sailors and airmen of the Abraham Lincoln; only to have the White House finally admit that it had produced the banner -- supposedly at the request of those same sailors and airmen; and then, well … not. Long before May 1 rolled around again, 'mission accomplished' would be a scarlet phrase of shame -- useful only to Bush critics and despised Democrats...."

Text from "In the Rubble," an essay by Tom Engelhardt

Hell Just Froze Over

Never thought I'd be quoting Ollie North. Never. Of course, most of Ollie's column is hogwash. What progress in Iraq, Mr North? But the part about Bush's "surge" being totally stupid isn't. Hard to believe. Bush has even lost a nutter like Oliver North. How bad is that?

More Troops = More Targets

... Adding 10,000 or 20,000 more U.S. combat troops -- mostly soldiers and Marines -- isn't going to improve Iraqi willingness to fight their own fight -- an imperative if we are to claim victory in this war. While putting 200,000 American or NATO troops on the Iranian and Syrian borders to stop infiltration might make sense, that's "mission impossible" given the size of U.S. and allied armed forces.

[snip]

A "surge" or "targeted increase in U.S. troop strength" or whatever the politicians want to call dispatching more combat troops to Iraq isn't the answer. Adding more trainers and helping the Iraqis to help themselves, is. Sending more U.S. combat troops is simply sending more targets.

The War That Wasn't For Oil, Was

The motives behind our insane occupation of Iraq were as rotten as you always knew they were. The Independent/UK has the story of the great oil robbery.

Future of Iraq: The spoils of war

• How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise. But it will operate through "production-sharing agreements" (or PSAs) which are highly unusual in the Middle East, where the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's two largest producers, is state controlled.

Opponents say Iraq, where oil accounts for 95 per cent of the economy, is being forced to surrender an unacceptable degree of sovereignty.

Proposing the parliamentary motion for war in 2003, Tony Blair denied the "false claim" that "we want to seize" Iraq's oil revenues. He said the money should be put into a trust fund, run by the UN, for the Iraqis, but the idea came to nothing. The same year Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, said: "It cost a great deal of money to prosecute this war. But the oil of the Iraqi people belongs to the Iraqi people; it is their wealth, it will be used for their benefit. So we did not do it for oil."

Supporters say the provision allowing oil companies to take up to 75 per cent of the profits will last until they have recouped initial drilling costs. After that, they would collect about 20 per cent of all profits, according to industry sources in Iraq. But that is twice the industry average for such deals.

Greg Muttitt, a researcher for Platform, a human rights and environmental group which monitors the oil industry, said Iraq was being asked to pay an enormous price over the next 30 years for its present instability. "They would lose out massively," he said, "because they don't have the capacity at the moment to strike a good deal."

Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Barham Salih, who chairs the country's oil committee, is expected to unveil the legislation as early as today. "It is a redrawing of the whole Iraqi oil industry [to] a modern standard," said Khaled Salih, spokesman for the Kurdish Regional Government, a party to the negotiations. The Iraqi government hopes to have the law on the books by March....

Good News If True

Politicians love to talk about reform. Few ever want to do anything about it. Maybe this time will be the exception. The New York Times reports.

Leadership Tries to Restrain Fiefs in New Congress

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 — Less than 24 hours after taking over as speaker, Representative Nancy Pelosi summoned the new chairmen of five committees with responsibility for various aspects of Iraq policy to her office to review and coordinate plans for hearings and inquiries.

The gathering on Friday would have been unthinkable when Democrats last controlled the House. In the days before the 1994 Republican takeover, all-powerful Democratic chairmen ruled their committees with impunity, doing what they wanted, when they wanted, with little regard to the views of the speaker or others in the upper ranks.

Now the new Democratic leaders of the House and Senate want to avoid a return to that era by forging a working relationship with the men and women who will actually write the bills and lead the Congressional investigations. Top lawmakers acknowledge that finding a way to keep the overarching goals of the party from clashing with the objectives of the independent chairmen will be crucial to keeping Democratic control from spiraling out of control....

Changing Times

Note the ratio of Democrats to Republicans. How times have changed. Even among the Sunday gasbags set.

ABC's "This Week" Reps. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., David Obey, D-Wis. and Henry Waxman, D-Calif.; former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft; former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn.

CBS' "Face the Nation" House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.


NBC's "Meet the Press" Sens. Joe Biden, D-Del., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

CNN's "Late Edition" Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie; Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.; Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Miss.; House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.; Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, presidential candidate.

Loser

Full disclosure: In 2004 I went door to door to get the vote out for John Kerry in Wisconsin.

But no way was he my first choice.

Howard Dean was. When his campaign faltered, I switched to Wes Clark. When Clark's campaign stumbled, I went for John Edwards. In my book Kerry was an uninspiring loser. Unfortunately, he didn't prove me wrong.

During the 2004 presidential race, Kerry's timid, lackluster campaigning--his aloofness, his failure to take on the Swiftboaters, his unwillingness to tear into Bush's cowboy posturing as c-in-c--did what I never thought possible. Made a genuine war hero with a Silver Star look like a wimp next to Commander AWOL.

2004 was all about strength and national security, stupid. Did Kerry not get the memo?

McAuliffe's insider account tells the sad tale of a pol who clearly doesn't deserve the chance to lose another race. RAWSTORY has the link.

... McAuliffe said Kerry's camp was so afraid of offending swing voters that it didn't defend his record or criticize Bush. He said he was muzzled by Kerry's aides from assailing Bush's military record.

He said the campaign also ordered speeches at the Democratic National Convention to be scrubbed of any mention of Bush's name or his record - although McAuliffe privately encouraged firebrand Al Sharpton to go ahead with his attacks on the president in his crowd-pleasing speech.

"I thought the decision of the Kerry campaign to back off any real criticism of Bush was one of the biggest acts of political malpractice in the history of American politics," he said.

Meanwhile, Republicans went on a sharp tirade against Kerry at their convention. But when Bush said in an interview on the first day that he didn't think the U.S. could win the war on terror, Kerry did not respond. The Massachusetts senator was windsurfing off Nantucket, unaware of the president's comments.

McAuliffe said Kerry later told him that was one of the biggest mistakes of his campaign. "I should have gotten off the island," McAuliffe quotes Kerry as saying.

McAuliffe said he was "flabbergasted" to learn after the election that Kerry had $15 million left that he could have spent in the final push. "It was gross incompetence to hoard that money when the race was bound to be so close," McAuliffe said.

McAuliffe said Republicans told him they were shocked that Kerry just took the attacks on his military record, but also overjoyed. He said Bush called former President Clinton while he was recovering from his heart surgery in September 2004 and said, "The Kerry campaign is the most inept group I have ever seen in politics. Don't let them ruin your reputation."

He said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., asked him why Kerry wasn't fighting back more. "My guy (Bush) is no great shakes, but your guy (Kerry) looks like a wimp," McAuliffe quotes McCain as saying.

Kerry's former running mate, John Edwards, also was frustrated with the campaign, according to McAuliffe. McAuliffe said Edwards was angered that the campaign wouldn't let him go after Bush, but Kerry disputed Edwards' claim and said he was frustrated his vice presidential pick wasn't campaigning harder.

New Sheriff In Town

With Bush in the White House and a gang of look-the-other-way lowlifes controlling Congress, corporate scum bags have enjoyed free ride for the last six years. Now the gravy train has derailed. Between Patrick Leahy in the Senate targeting war profiteers and Barney Frank in the House exposing corporate scammers and carpetbaggers in the wake of Katrina, the day of writing blank checks with zero accountability is over. TPM Muckraker has the story.

New Bills Target Profiteering, Public Corruption
... Today, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced a bill, simply called The War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2007, targeting fraud by government contractors supporting the occupation of Iraq and the response to Hurricane Katrina. Such profiteering would be a felony under Leahy's legislation, punishable by up to 20 years in prison and fines of $1 million or twice the gross profits of the profiteering. The bill would also clarify U.S. courts' jurisdiction to handle cases of profiteering which occur overseas.

To make it a muck-fighting twofer, Leahy also joined Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) to introduce a bill aimed at strengthening public corruption investigations. The proposal would extend the statute of limitations for many offenses, allow federal investigators to use wiretaps when chasing state and local officials defrauding the federal government, and would boost the FBI's public integrity budget by $100 million over four years.

Neocolonialism Always Doomed To Fail In Iraq

The following "Ten Laws of Colonial Warfare" is excerpted from an article written in 2004 by Eric S. Margolis, a foreign correspondent based in Toronto, Canada. Most everything Margolis wrote back then about the US presence in Iraq has proved true, while most everything the Bush administration and its supporters have said and done has proved false. Bush is a selfish jerk and horrendously bad president, but he's not stupid. He knows the "new way forward" won't work. But he's unwilling to take the hit for this disaster. Instead he's buying time with the lives of Americans to save his reputation and ego. The US can't lose militarily in Iraq. So Bush will simply use the escalation to run out the clock over the next 24 months until he can hand over the mess--and blame the "loss" of Iraq on the next administration, which he already must know is unlikely to be a Republican one.

1. Most [Iraqis] don't want ... what President Bush calls 'freedom.' They want freedom from US occupation....

2. People will accept misrule, robbery, abuse, and torture by their own fellow citizens -- but not by foreigners.

3. The occupying power will always find locals ready to cooperate and join the colonial police and army for money. Ten percent will serve loyally; 50% will do nothing. The rest will covertly fight the occupiers, provide the resistance with intelligence, or quietly sabotage the occupation.

4. Most of those who cooperate with the occupation will maintain secret links with the resistance. Massive defections will occur the minute the occupiers show the first signs of thinking about withdrawal.

5. Tribal, clan, ethnic and religious loyalties will also prove stronger than political ones imposed by the occupier. You cannot buy loyalty; you can only rent it.

6. An inevitable byproduct of colonial adventures is an unwanted, usually massive influx of people from the conquered country.

7. Colonial occupations almost always cost far more than planned and produce negative earnings for the invader. Occupying Iraq and Afghanistan now costs at least US $6 billion monthly. The costs of garrisoning and running colonies usually exceeds [sic] what can be looted from them.

8. It's always cheaper to buy resources than plunder them. The Soviets thought they would pay for their invasion of Afghanistan by stealing its natural gas. The Washington neo-conservatives who engineered the Iraq war ludicrously claimed its stolen oil would fully cover the costs of invasion and occupation.

9. Guerilla wars waged among civilians inevitably produce hatred for occupiers and corrupt the invaders. Torture, brutality, mass reprisals against civilians, and black marketeering become epidemic, even among the best-discipline[d] troops. The longer occupation troops stay on, the more they become corrupted, brutalized, and addicted to drugs ...

10. Americans make poor colonialists. They lack the historical and cultural knowledge, subtlety, patience and Third World street smarts to be first-rate colonizers, like the French or British. They lack the ruthlessness and brutality of Dutch, Japanese, Spaniards, or Russian colonialists. Or the ability to blend with the local population, as did [the] Portugese.

[text of Margolis article reprinted from March 2005 post]

Nice Job NYT. But Where Were You Four Years Ago? Two Years Ago? One Year Ago?

As the newspaper of record, the paper that published the Pentagon Papers, the NYT is capable of great work. At times it has been fearless in turning over the national government's biggest rocks and bringing truth to the American people. But in its coverage of the Bush administration, particularly since 9/11, the oversight, the scrutiny, the integrity the paper's reputation was built on often has been virtually nonexistent. Lately, things have begun to change. In today's analytical piece headlined "Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in ’06, Bush Team Says," you don't have to dive too deep between the lines to find the outrage and none too subtle hint that much of US policy on Iraq remains muddled, boneheaded and driven by ego. But such reporting coming now from the newspaper that allowed Judy "Great Sources" Miller's crap into print, sat on the exposé of Bush's illegal wiretapping program, soft-peddled the Downing Street memos and who knows what else? smacks of too little, too late.

"President Bush began 2006 assuring the country that he had a “strategy for victory in Iraq.” He ended the year closeted with his war cabinet on his ranch trying to devise a new strategy, because the existing one had collapsed."

[snip]

... But the plan [for turning over responsibility for security to the Iraqis, shrinking the number of American bases and beginning the gradual withdrawal of American troops] collided with Iraq’s ferocious unraveling, which took most of Mr. Bush’s war council by surprise.

In interviews in Washington and Baghdad, senior officials said the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department had also failed to take seriously warnings, including some from its own ambassador in Baghdad, that sectarian violence could rip the country apart and turn Mr. Bush’s promise to “clear, hold and build” Iraqi neighborhoods and towns into an empty slogan.

This left the president and his advisers constantly lagging a step or two behind events on the ground.

[snip]

This year, decisions on a new strategy were clearly slowed by political calculations. Many of Mr. Bush’s advisers say their timetable for completing an Iraq review had been based in part on a judgment that for Mr. Bush to have voiced doubts about his strategy before the midterm elections in November would have been politically catastrophic.

[snip]

... Bush made it clear that he was not interested in any ideas that would simply allow American forces to stabilize the violence. Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine commandant, later told marines about the president’s message.

“What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win,” he quoted the president as warning his commanders, “not how we’re going to leave.”

[snip]

At the State Department, skepticism about General Casey’s strategy ran deep. Philip D. Zelikow, the counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice until he resigned in December, went to Iraq in late 2005, and returned with a recommendation that the first part of 2006 be devoted to a big push — military, economic and political — to boost the soon-to-be-formed Iraqi government. His approach contradicted the commitment to reductions.

[snip]

By May 2006, uneasy officials at the State Department and the National Security Council argued for a review of Iraq strategy. A meeting was convened at Camp David to consider those approaches, according to participants in the session, but Mr. Bush left early for a secret visit to Baghdad, where he reviewed the war plans with General Casey and Mr. Maliki, and met with the American pilot whose plane’s missiles killed Iraq’s Al Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He returned to Washington in a buoyant mood.

The visit meant that the reconsideration of strategy was not as thorough as some officials hoped.

[snip]

... Bush still insists on talking about victory, even if his own advisers differ about how to define it. “It’s a word the American people understand,” he told members of the Iraq Study Group who came to see him at the White House in November, according to two commission members who attended. “And if I start to change it, it will look like I’m beginning to change my policy.”

Understanding The Costs Of A $2 Trillion War

[reprinted post from June 27, 2006]

Linda Blimes, a lecturer on public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, has been arguing for more than a year that the real cost of the continuing US occupation Iraq is going to be measured in the trillions, not billions, of dollars.

In her search for accountability, a virtue approaching extinction in Washington, DC, she has been joined by Joseph E. Stigltiz, a Nobel laureate in economics and professor at Columbia University.

Together, Blimes and Stiglitz considered budgetary costs (outlays from the US treasury) and economic costs (larger effects on the US economy) in calculating the long-term financial impact of the Iraq war on the economy of the United States.

In their estimates, Blimes and Stiglitz relied on government numbers. "Everything we used, except for data on the costs of caring for a brain-injured person, was from government sources," Blimes insisted.

The following estimates, not factored into current Iraq war cost projections, were excerpted from an article that ran in the May-June issue of Harvard magazine].

[Budgetary costs]

___Costs of caring for more than 17,000 wounded soldiers (to date)--25 percent of whom have crippling conditions such as brain injuries and multiple amputations and will need lifelong medical attention.

___Another 25 percent have suffered major injuries, including severe burns, deafness, and total or partial blindness.

___... medical expenses of all veterans, borne by the Veterans Administration: one-third of those back from Iraq, for example, have required some mental-health counseling.

___... In the first Gulf War, 550,000 soldiers fought and 400 were wounded in a conflict that lasted only one month. Even so, 169,000 of those veterans, or about 30 percent, are still claiming veterans' disability for various ailments, cost $2 billion annually.

___The researchers used an "extremely conservative" disability estimate of one-third of veterans to calculate their Iraq projections, though, as Blimes notes, "it could become two-thirds or even all veterans. And all of these costs are there even if we pull out tomorrow. We haven't paid it yet, but we already owe it."

___Weapons replenishment will absorb $100 billion, according to the CBO. "We are going through weapons at six times the peacetime rate and are using them faster than we make them."

___Reenlistment bonuses have risen from $25,000 to as high as $150,000. "Those costs will be carried forward," [Blimes] says. "Anything like that which you put into the military--it will be hard to claw them back [down] again."

___Death gratuities, paid to families of fallen soldiers have also risen, from $12,400 to $100,000. Life insurance settlements have jumped from $250,000 to $400,000.

___Blimes and Stiglitz used two scenarios to tote up interest on the national debt. (The government has not raised taxes to pay for war, but has borrowed instead.) One would have all US troops out of Iraq by 2010 ($98 billion in interest); the other projects a small force there until 2015 ($386 billion in interest).

___In sum, the long-term budgetary outlay for Iraq comes to about $1 trillion, even after subtracting the $12-billion worth of annual air patrols in the former no-fly zone. "Nobody seriously disputes [the figure]," Blimes says...

[Economic costs]

___Mobilizing the National Guard and reserves, for example, means that many soldiers move from a civilian to a (lesser) military wage, and this shrinks the GNP.

___... 44 percent of America's local police forces are missing one or more officers to Iraq. The researchers added in the "value of a statistical life" for those killed, using a figure of $6 million per death.

___Homeland security preparedness also suffers from tying up 600,000 troops in the Iraq effort at one time or another; 40 percent of these are National Guard and reserves--"first-responder types," Blimes says. During Hurricane Katrina, 7,000 Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard members were unavailable to help because they were in Iraq. "If there were a major national disaster of terrorist attack tomorrow," Bliems says, "we would all bear the cost."

___Oil prices have increased from $29 to $60 [now more than $70] per barrel since the war began, and the researchers attributed $5 or $10, under different models, of that increase to the conflict, which has decreased Iraqi oil production and produced general instability in the Middle East.

___... given that the United States imports 4.75 billion to 5 billion barrels annually, these models imply a transfer of resources to oil producers of $25 to $50 billion per year. "Americans are, in a sense, poorer by that amount," the authors write. The oil price increase also has an indirect multiplier effect by reducing consumers' overall purchasing power.

___Other macroeconomic effects involve "counterfactuals"--what would have been the case in the absence of an Iraq war.... "What would happen [let's say] if you had spent $500 billion and bought something else?"

___That money might have gone into investments--in infrastructure like roads, for example, that would have stimulated the American economy more in the short run, and would also have long-term growth benefits.

___In the authors' "moderate" scenario, the combination of expenditure switching from civilian to war outlays ... drains $450 billion from the economy.

"It's hard to imagine any way of spending that money," Blimes says, "that would have a less positive impact on the US economy."

With so much debt hanging out there, so much Iraq spending off budget and so many costs not even admitted to, the bills for George W Bush's war will continue to roll in for decades, with potentially ruinous effect.

America's children will have every right to curse the parent fool enough to have voted to keep this corrupt little man and his posse of incompetent ideologues in power.

No Way Death Of Saddam Worth Lives Of 3,000 Americans

This is George W Bush's war.

It is an obscenity.

It's lasted longer than our involvement in World War II.

It's killed more Americans than the terrorist attacks of 9/11. And resulted in the wounding of 40,000 US servicemen and women.

It's led to the slaughter of upwards of 600,000 Iraqis.

All to serve some weird daddy-hating, revenge fantasy psychodrama of the intellectual and moral midget who inhabits the White House, the incompetent misleader who 62 million American voters (to their everlasting shame) voted to return to office in 2004.

If Bush gets his way and the "sustained surge" or "one last shot" road is taken, the next 12 months are predictable.

By this time next year -- two Friedman Units from now -- we'll be talking about 4,000 dead GIs.

And Iraq will still be a fucking disaster.

U.S. death toll in Iraq reaches 3,000

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The death of a Texas soldier, announced Sunday by the Pentagon, raised the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq to at least 3,000 since the war began, according to an Associated Press count.

The grim milestone was crossed on the final day of 2006 and at the end of the deadliest month for the American military in Iraq in the past 12 months. At least 111 U.S. service members were reported to have died in December.

Spc. Dustin R. Donica, 22, of Spring, Texas, was killed Thursday by small arms fire in Baghdad, the Defense Department said. Donica was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division....

All This Spin Is Making My Head Hurt

WH: bin Laden Capture "A Success That Hasn't Occured Yet"

Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden is still at large -- but that's not a failure of White House policy, says Frances Fragos Townsend. As she explained to CNN's White House correspondent Ed Henry last night:

HENRY: You know, going back to September 2001, the president said, dead or alive, we're going to get him. Still don't have him. I know you are saying there's successes on the war on terror, and there have been. That's a failure.

TOWNSEND: Well, I'm not sure -- it's a success that hasn't occurred yet. I don't know that I view that as a failure.

TPM Muckraker posted this yesterday. In the comments section, Lev Raphael nailed Townsend's flacktacular nonsense delivering what has to be the comment of the day.

So many possibilities:

It's not bankruptcy, just financial growth that hasn't occurred yet.

It's not illness, just health that hasn't flourished yet.

It's not stupidity, just intelligence that hasn't developed yet.

It's not civil war, it's just democracy that hasn't taken hold yet.

Top 10 Myths About Iraq

Juan Cole dissects.

1. Myth number one is that the United States "can still win" in Iraq. Of course, the truth of this statement, frequently still made by William Kristol and other Neoconservatives, depends on what "winning" means. But if it means the establishment of a stable, pro-American, anti-Iranian government with an effective and even-handed army and police force in the near or even medium term, then the assertion is frankly ridiculous. The Iraqi "government" is barely functioning. The parliament was not able to meet in December because it could not attain a quorum. Many key Iraqi politicians live most of the time in London, and much of parliament is frequently abroad. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki does not control large swathes of the country, and could give few orders that had any chance of being obeyed. The US military cannot shore up this government, even with an extra division, because the government is divided against itself. Most of the major parties trying to craft legislation are also linked to militias on the streets who are killing one another. It is over with. Iraq is in for years of heavy political violence of a sort that no foreign military force can hope to stop.

The United States cannot "win" in the sense defined above. It cannot. And the blindly arrogant assumption that it can win is calculated to get more tens of thousands of Iraqis killed and more thousands of American soldiers and Marines badly wounded or killed. Moreover, since Iraq is coming apart at the seams under the impact of our presence there, there is a real danger that we will radically destabilize it and the whole oil-producing Gulf if we try to stay longer.


2. "US military sweeps of neighborhoods can drive the guerrillas out." The US put an extra 15,000 men into Baghdad this past summer, aiming to crush the guerrillas and stop the violence in the capital, and the number of attacks actually increased. This result comes about in part because the guerrillas are not outsiders who come in and then are forced out. The Sunni Arabs of Ghazaliya and Dora districts in the capital are the "insurgents." The US military cannot defeat the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement or "insurgency" with less than 500,000 troops, based on what we have seen in the Balkans and other such conflict situations. The US destroyed Falluja, and even it and other cities of al-Anbar province are not now safe! The US military leaders on the ground have spoken of the desirability of just withdrawing from al-Anbar to Baghdad and giving up on it. In 2003, 14 percent of Sunni Arabs thought it legitimate to attack US personnel and facilities. In August, 2006, over 70 percent did. How long before it is 100%? Winning guerrilla wars requires two victories, a military victory over the guerrillas and a winning of the hearts and minds of the general public, thus denying the guerrillas support. The US has not and is unlikely to be able to repress the guerrillas, and it is losing hearts and minds at an increasing and alarming rate. They hate us, folks. They don't want us there.

3. The United States is best off throwing all its support behind the Iraqi Shiites. This is the position adopted fairly consistently by Marc Reuel Gerecht. Gerecht is an informed and acute observer whose views I respect even when I disagree with them. But Washington policy-makers should read Daniel Goleman's work on social intelligence. Goleman points out that a good manager of a team in a corporation sets up a win/win framework for every member of the team. If you set it up on a win/lose basis, so that some are actively punished and others "triumph," you are asking for trouble. Conflict is natural. How you manage conflict is what matters. If you listen to employees' grievances and try to figure out how they can be resolved in such a way that everyone benefits, then you are a good manager.

Gerecht, it seems to me, sets up a win/lose model in Iraq. The Shiites and Kurds win it all, and the Sunni Arabs get screwed over. Practically speaking, the Bush policy has been Gerechtian, which in my view has caused all the problems. We shouldn't have thought of our goal as installing the Shiites in power. Of course, Bush hoped that those so installed would be "secular," and that is what Wolfowitz and Chalabi had promised him. Gerecht came up with the ex post facto justification that even the religious Shiites are moving toward democracy via Sistani. But democracy cannot be about one sectarian identity prevailing over, and marginalizing others.

The Sunni Arabs have demonstrated conclusively that they can act effectively as spoilers in the new Iraq. If they aren't happy, no one is going to be. The US must negotiate with the guerrilla leaders and find a win/win framework for them to come in from the cold and work alongside the Kurds and the religious Shiites. About this, US Ambassador in Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad has been absolutely right.

4. "Iraq is not in a civil war," as Jurassic conservative Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly insists. There is a well-established social science definition of civil war put forward by Professor J. David Singer and his colleagues: "Sustained military combat, primarily internal, resulting in at least 1,000 battle-deaths per year, pitting central government forces against an insurgent force capable of effective resistance, determined by the latter's ability to inflict upon the government forces at least 5 percent of the fatalities that the insurgents sustain." (Errol A. Henderson and J. David Singer, "Civil War in the Post-Colonial World, 1946-92," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 37, No. 3, May 2000.)" See my article on this in Salon.com. By Singer's definition, Iraq has been in civil war since the Iraqi government was reestablished in summer of 2004. When I have been around political scientists, as at the ISA conference, I have found that scholars in that field tend to accept Singer's definition.

5. "The second Lancet study showing 600,000 excess deaths from political and criminal violence since the US invasion is somehow flawed." Les Roberts replies here to many of the objections that were raised. See also the transcript of the Kucinich-Paul Congressional hearings on the subject. Many critics refer to the numbers of dead reported in the press as counter-arguments to Roberts et al. But "passive reporting" such as news articles never captures more than a fraction of the casualties in any war. I see deaths reported in the Arabic press all the time that never show up in the English language wire services. And, a lot of towns in Iraq don't have local newspapers and many local deaths are not reported in the national newspapers.

6. "Most deaths in Iraq are from bombings." The Lancet study found that the majority of violent deaths are from being shot.

7. "Baghdad and environs are especially violent but the death rate is lower in the rest of the country." The Lancet survey found that levels of violence in the rest of the country are similar to that in Baghdad (remember that the authors included criminal activities such as gang and smuggler turf wars in their statistics). The Shiite south is spared much Sunni-Shiite communal fighting, but criminal gangs, tribal feuds, and militias fight one another over oil and antiquities smuggling, and a lot of people are getting shot down there, too.

8. "Iraq is the central front in the war on terror." From the beginning of history until 2003 there had never been a suicide bombing in Iraq. There was no al-Qaeda in Baath-ruled Iraq. When Baath intelligence heard that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi might have entered Iraq, they grew alarmed at such an "al-Qaeda" presence and put out an APB on him! Zarqawi's so-called "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" was never "central" in Iraq and was never responsible for more than a fraction of the violent attacks. This assertion is supported by the outcome of a US-Jordanian operation that killed Zarqawi this year. His death had no impact whatsoever on the level of violence. There are probably only about 1,000 foreign fighters even in Iraq, and most of them are first-time volunteers, not old-time terrorists. The 50 major guerrilla cells in Sunni Arab Iraq are mostly made up of Iraqis, and are mainly: 1) Baathist or neo-Baathist, 2) Sunni revivalist or Salafi, 3) tribally-based, or 4) based in city quarters. Al-Qaeda is mainly a boogey man, invoked in Iraq on all sides, but possessing little real power or presence there. This is not to deny that radical Sunni Arab volunteers come to Iraq to blow things (and often themselves) up. They just are not more than an auxiliary to the big movements, which are Iraqi.

9. "The Sunni Arab guerrillas in places like Ramadi will follow the US home to the American mainland and commit terrorism if we leave Iraq." This assertion is just a variation on the invalid domino theory. People in Ramadi only have one beef with the United States. Its troops are going through their wives' underwear in the course of house searches every day. They don't want the US troops in their town or their homes, dictating to them that they must live under a government of Shiite clerics and Kurdish warlords (as they think of them). If the US withdrew and let the Iraqis work out a way to live with one another, people in Ramadi will be happy. They are not going to start taking flight lessons and trying to get visas to the US. This argument about following us, if it were true, would have prevented us from ever withdrawing from anyplace once we entered a war there. We'd be forever stuck in the Philippines for fear that Filipino terrorists would follow us back home. Or Korea (we moved 15,000 US troops out of South Korea not so long ago. Was that unwise? Are the thereby liberated Koreans now gunning for us?) Or how about the Dominican Republic? Haiti? Grenada? France? The argument is a crock.

10. "Setting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq is a bad idea." Bush and others in his administration have argued that setting such a timetable would give a significant military advantage to the guerrillas fighting US forces and opposed to the new government. That assertion makes sense only if there were a prospect that the US could militarily crush the Sunni Arabs. There is no such prospect. The guerrilla war is hotter now than at any time since the US invasion. It is more widely supported by more Sunni Arabs than ever before. It is producing more violent attacks than ever before. Since we cannot defeat them short of genocide, we have to negotiate with them. And their first and most urgent demand is that the US set a timetable for withdrawal before they will consider coming into the new political system. That is, we should set a timetable in order to turn the Sunni guerrillas from combatants to a political negotiating partner. Even Sunni politicians cooperating with the US make this demand. They are disappointed with the lack of movement on the issue. How long do they remain willing to cooperate? In addition, 131 Iraqi members of parliament signed a demand that the US set a timetable for withdrawal. (138 would be a simple majority.) It is a a major demand of the Sadr Movement. In fact, the 32 Sadrist MPs withdrew from the ruling United Iraqi Alliance coalition temporarily over this issue.

In my view, Shiite leaders such as Abdul Aziz al-Hakim are repeatedly declining to negotiate in good faith with the Sunni Arabs or to take their views seriously. Al-Hakim knows that if the Sunnis give him any trouble, he can sic the Marines on them. The US presence is making it harder for Iraqi to compromise with Iraqi, which is counterproductive.

Last Place To Be In A Civil War: In The Middle

What exactly is the "surge" in US forces supposed to accomplish? Escalation puts more American targets in the middle of rampant sectarian violence in a vain effort to prop up a fiction, a government that exists only in the Green Zone under the protection of American guns. Once again the fantasies being kicked around in Washington appear disconnected from reality.

Sectarian Ties Weaken Duty’s Call for Iraq Forces

BAGHDAD, Dec. 27 — The car parked outside was almost certainly a tool of the Sunni insurgency. It was pocked with bullet holes and bore fake license plates. The trunk had cases of unused sniper bullets and a notice to a Shiite family telling them to abandon their home.

“Otherwise, your rotten heads will be cut off,” the note read.

The soldiers who came upon the car in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad were part of a joint American and Iraqi patrol, and the Americans were ready to take action. The Iraqi commander, however, taking orders by cellphone from the office of a top Sunni politician, said to back off: the car’s owner was known and protected at a high level.

For Maj. William Voorhies, the American commander of the military training unit at the scene, the moment encapsulated his increasingly frustrating task — trying to build up Iraqi security forces who themselves are being used as proxies in a spreading sectarian war. This time, it was a Sunni politician — Vice Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie — but the more powerful Shiites interfered even more often.

“I have come to the conclusion that this is no longer America’s war in Iraq, but the Iraqi civil war where America is fighting,” Major Voorhies said.

A two-day reporting trip accompanying Major Voorhies’s unit and combat troops seemed to back his statement, as did other commanding officers expressing similar frustration.

“I have personally witnessed about a half-dozen of these incidents of what I would call political pressure, where a minister or someone from a minister’s office contacts one of these Iraqi commanders,” said Lt. Col. Steven Miska, the deputy commander for the Dagger Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, who oversees combat operations in a wide swath of western Baghdad.

“These politicians are connected with either the militias or Sunni insurgents.”

Whatever plan the Bush administration unveils — a large force increase, a withdrawal or something in between — this country’s security is going to be left in the hands of Iraqi forces. Those forces, already struggling with corruption and infiltration, have shown little willingness to stand up to political pressure, especially when the Americans are not there to support them. That suggests, the commanders say, that if the Americans leave soon, violence will redouble. And that makes their mission, Major Voorhies and Colonel Miska say, more important than ever.

They added that while political pressure on the Iraqi Army is great, the influence exerted on the police force, which is much more heavily infiltrated by Shiite militia groups, is even greater.

Shiites, led by militia forces and often aided by the local police, are clearly ascendant, Colonel Miska said.

“It seems very controlled and deliberate and concentrated on expanding the area they control,” he said.

The Sunni forces are being bolstered by support from insurgent strongholds in the West. The Shiite militias are using neighborhoods in the north, specifically Shuala and Sadr City, as bases of operation. There is also increasing evidence that militia members from southern cities like Basra are coming to Baghdad to join the fight.

“I believe everyone, to some extent, is influenced by the militias,” Colonel Miska said. “While some Iraqi security forces may be complicit with the militias, others fear for their families when confronting the militia, and that is the more pervasive threat.”

Looking at a map he had his intelligence officers create, which highlights current battle zones and details the changing religious makeup of neighborhoods, Colonel Miska noted just how many different forces, each answering to different bosses, currently occupied the battlefield.

“Who would design this mess?” he said. “It is like an orchestra where everyone is playing a different song.”

His main focus, he said, is trying to establish some kind of unity of command.

As it stands, the police and military answer to different ministries, and within the police force the bureaucracy is divided even further between the regular police and the national police. On top of that are about 145,000 armed men who work as protection detail for the Facilities Protection Services, with minimal oversight, according to United States military officials.

There are also thousands of Shiite militia members and Sunni insurgents posing as security forces.

Colonel Miska tried to define where American forces fit in the tangle of competing interests, which is only further complicated by the complicity and direct participation of top government officials.

“When they are conducting armed aggression against the population, that is where we try and step in and stop it,” he said, adding that when the groups fight one another, “We sit back and watch because that can only benefit us.”

Some days, the line between militia and insurgent clashes and attacks on the population is a blurry one....