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Last night President Bush, with what looked like fear on his face, gave a speech to a skeptical public and a defiant Congress–trying to convince them that applying a little band-aid of 20,000+ troops to Iraq is actually going to make a difference. He failed. Instead, he ended up looking like an ignoramus by standing in the presidential library in an attempt to invoke images of FDR’s fireside chats, where one couldn’t help wondering if Dubya had ever read a single book on the shelves behind him.

His proposal is too little, too late…and appears to be the last gasp out of a president who is tired and out of ideas on how to fix the monumental disaster he created. Twenty thousand troops may impose martial law and quell some violence in Baghdad, yes. But Iraq is a big country. The western Anbar province is overrun by Al-Qaida, who aims to make that a base for its vision of a new Islamic Caliphate, and despite Bush’s optimistic rhetoric about that province it has already been declared lost by military analysts. No military band-aid is going to fix that fact, and that is a tremendous problem that goes far beyond the violence in the neighborhoods of Baghdad.

Nor did Bush say what would happen if his new “strategy” doesn’t work, just like none of his previous strategies have worked. What do we do if the violence isn’t quelled? How do we prevent the violence from coming back the minute we re-deploy troops to Anbar or withdraw them altogether? The problem is far more intractable than Bush would have us believe–but maybe he’s just not capable of thinking that far ahead.

He also blundered by continuing his saber-rattling against neighboring countries at a time when they hold all the cards (especially Iran) and we hold precious few of them. A poker face can be a good thing, but not when everyone knows that every card in your hand is a dud. Like it or not we need Iran’s, Syria’s and the others’ cooperation to help stabilize the situation, and they all benefit from a stable Iraq. Rather than appealing to their sensibilities and realizing that nothing is lost simply by talking with them, he instead prefers to hiss and threaten them instead like a cornered pussycat. Pathetic.

Bush did get a couple of things right in his speech. He put Iraqis on notice that our patience has run out and that they need to step up to the plate right now to secure their own country–essentially telling them to grow up and stop acting like a bunch of street thugs. Their insistence on killing each other over an obscure split in Islam about who should have been the first caliph is ridiculous on its face and an affront to civilized society everywhere.

He also got right the best line in his speech: that mistakes were made in Iraq, and that he bears responsibility for them. Yes he does, and he should therefore resign for his extreme incompetence. Sun Tzu once said words to the effect that you should never launch a war unless you are assured of a crushing victory through overwhelming force. Bush ignored that wisdom, and as a result we will never have anything that looks like a victory in Iraq. It will either devolve into civil war, or our soldiers will continue to die. In either case our energy markets will be in constant jeopardy, and Iraq will be used as a springboard for terrorists–both of which we will be powerless to prevent. By refusing to resign and continuing on his ineffectual plodding course, he is simply reinforcing his own legacy as quite possibly the worst president in US history.

Let’s hope that whoever is elected in 2008 has the wisdom and grace necessary to fix this bloody mess.

Just when you think the news can’t get any worse from Iraq, it does.

The Washington Post reports on newly disclosed details of a classified Marine Corps intelligence report, which says the US military is no longer defeat the bloody insurgency in Iraq’s western Anbar province, or counter al-Qaeda’s rising popularity there. An updated assessment in mid-November also said the situation had not improved.

Iranian influence bears a role on the situation:

True or not, the memo says, “from the Sunni perspective, their greatest fears have been realized: Iran controls Baghdad and Anbaris have been marginalized.” Moreover, most Sunnis now believe it would be unwise to count on or help U.S. forces because they are seen as likely to leave the country before imposing stability.

Between al-Qaeda’s violence, Iran’s influence and an expected U.S. drawdown, “the social and political situation has deteriorated to a point” that U.S. and Iraqi troops “are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar,” the assessment found.

Sunnis in the province are desperate, and all levels of government have either collapsed or been completely infiltrated by Al-Qaeda:

Read as a complete assessment, it paints a stark portrait of a failed province and of the country’s Sunnis — once dominant under Saddam Hussein — now desperate, fearful and impoverished. They have been increasingly abandoned by religious and political leaders who have fled to neighboring countries, and other leaders have been assassinated. And unlike Iraq’s Shiite majority, or Kurdish groups in the north, the Sunnis are without oil and other natural resources. The report notes that illicit oil trading is providing millions of dollars to al-Qaeda while “official profits appear to feed Shiite cronyism in Baghdad.”

As a result, “the potential for economic revival appears to be nonexistent” in Anbar, the report says. The Iraqi government, dominated by Iranian-backed Shiites, has not paid salaries for Anbar officials and Iraqi forces stationed there. Anbar’s resources and its ability to impose order are depicted as limited at best.

“Despite the success of the December elections, nearly all government institutions from the village to provincial levels have disintegrated or have been thoroughly corrupted and infiltrated by Al Qaeda in Iraq,” or a smattering of other insurgent groups, the report says.

There are just no words to describe the depths of my scorn for Bush. It is profoundly ironic that it is the president who began the so-called “war on terror” that will be responsible for establishing an Al-Qaeda state in Iraq and making Osama Bin Laden’s dream of a new Muslim Caliphate come true.

Good job, Dubya.

An upcoming Pentagon review of what to do in Iraq is likely to report on three major options, dubbed “go big,” “go long,” or “go home.” It is a review separate but likely to feed into the bipartisan Iraq Study Group review being put together by Congress.

The Pentagon review’s Option 1: Send in more troops. Option 2: reduce troops but stay longer. Option 3: pull out. The overall recommendation will be a short-term increase in troops and a long-term commitment to advise and train Iraqi forces.

There are no good options left in Iraq (even Henry Kissinger, architect of the Vietnam War, says Iraq is not winnable). Any of the three options will be met with harsh consequences. If we increase troops, we put more of them in danger with no guarantee that they will successfully stabilize the country given its current state. There’s also the question of where the troops would come from given the severely strained resources of the military (which is leading to Democrat Charles Rangel to call for re-instatement of the draft.) If we reduce troop numbers but stay longer we are likely to be totally ineffective, and the situation will become even more dangerous for the troops that remain. If we pull out we are ceding Iraq to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda in Iraq and possibly to ambitious neighboring countries. Put together it’s a disaster of unimaginable proportions.

Given the available menu of undesirable options, I agree with the overall recommendation likely to be given by this review. We have to try preventing Iraq from getting into the hands of Iran or terrorist groups, but we also can’t stay there forever. I would favor a temporary increase in forces, said increase to be accompanied by a definite timetable for complete withdrawal and by a clearly defined set of goals. No more of this giving a blank check to the President to send any number of troops for an indefinite duration and with no clear purpose.

Does such a proposal have to be accompanied by a draft? It’s a disturbing thought, especially for our 18-21 year olds. But Rangel is right: our country has sent our nation’s poorest kids into war without really thinking through the consequences, while the rest of American society goes on living blithely without having really been asked to sacrifice anything. If members of Congress had stood to have their own kids sent to Iraq they might have thought twice about endorsing this war, and we would not be where we are today.

Time will tell if such an option is necessary in light of the military’s current needs. The question of the draft may also shed light on the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy of gays in the military–as it seems illogical to expel fully qualified men and women from serving on such an irrational basis especially when the military needs every body available.

Regardless, now that the election has passed it is time to come up with a definitive answer of how to get out of Iraq–and based on a preliminary understanding of the facts I think the panel is right in its recommendation. I suspect its findings will be mirrored by the Iraq Study Group as well.

What happened to the resistance to Bush’s gross push for unlimited violations of the Geneva Conventions posed by a few supposedly brave GOP senators like McCain? Apparently it has dissolved into goo, because Bush got everything he wanted and they got nothing. Did McCain suddenly get cold feet when his resistance endangered his 2008 presidential prospects? Consider the terms of this new “compromise:”

• The bill would permit confessions obtained through cruel and inhumane interrogations by the CIA or military before 2005, but not afterward. Small comfort.
• Defense attorneys may challenge hearsay evidence received in coercive fashion in distant countries only if they can prove it is unreliable–something almost impossible to do when it is in writing and the defense cannot cross-examine the confessor. The rules of evidence traditionally bar hearsay evidence uttered outside of court (with some limited exceptions such as a dying man’s declaration of who killed him) because it is fundamentally unfair to enter evidence against an individual without his having the right to confront his accuser in court.
• It strips from defendants the right of habeas corpus. Habeas corpus allows a detainee to challenge his detention as unconstitutional. Without it, a defendant has no right whatsoever to appeal his detention in any manner and can be essentially allowed to rot in jail forever without ever going to trial regardless of his offense (if there even was an offense) or the manner of his treatment. This breathtaking step of stripping habeas corpus has only happened twice before–by Lincoln during the Civil War (later re-instated by the Supreme Court in Ex Parte Milligan), and during Reconstruction by Grant in South Carolina when taking federal action against the Ku Klux Klan. It is very likely the Supreme Court will rule that an indefinite suspension of habeas corpus without emergency justification is unconstitutional.
• The bill bars detainees from citing the Geneva Conventions or any international/foreign laws or authority on detainee or POW rights. What is the administration afraid of here?
• Bush is given the right to interpret the Conventions as he sees fit for anything that falls below the level of “grave breaches.” While McCain grandstanded his “victory” by saying that Bush would be required to publicly issue such interpretations, we already had White House spokesperson Tony Snow saying that such publication might not be necessary.

The entire exercise is disgusting. It desperately attempts to seal away what the US is doing and still claim it is abiding by its treaty obligations, when it is abiding by neither them nor the Constitution. I hope it’s only a matter of time before the Supreme Court steps in again and bars such gross violations of our values.

As for the “brave” resisting-come-rubberstamping GOP’ers…I really just don’t have words that suitably describe my scorn.

The US military shot down a test ballistic missile over the Pacific Ocean today as part of its emerging anti-missile shield program. The missile was fired from Alaska and the interceptor came from California.

Kudos to the military for this feat, which depended on the ever-accelerating rate of computer technology. In an age where countries like North Korea are developing nuclear missiles that will eventually be capable of reaching US cities, we have no choice but to adapt. Many countries and civilizations have fallen because of the technological superiority of their foes. Hide could not turn bronze spears, bronze shields could not withstand iron swords, European castles crumbled before the cannon, and so on. The game is no different today, except it is much deadlier. We’re still grappling with how to deal with the unseen foe that terrorism represents, but an ability to neutralize threats like North Korea is a solid step forward in maintaining our national security.

Twenty Shiite pilgrims were killed in Baghdad by Sunni militants on a day the US military described as one of “relatively little violence.” The latest killings come despite the imposition of curfews, more soldiers, and tighter security.

This shows either just how disconnected the military and government are from reality, or how numb they have become to the mounting casualties in the Iraqi civil war, or both. It also continues to delineate just how much these various groups in Iraq hate each other. Even the Parliament was not immune, as members of the Sunni minority in that body accused the majority Shiites of denouncing only the deaths of Shiite pilgrims and not Sunni deaths.

Will this cycle of violence ever end?

It must be worse than they’re telling us. Despite trying to put positive spin on the dire news delivered to Congress by Rumsfeld and military generals this week, President Bush and the Pentagon are preparing contingency plans should Iraq descend into a “full blown” civil war. What they would consider a “full blown” civil war remains unclear as compared to the massive killings and inter-group fighting going on now. Plans include attempts to prevent massacres but also involve withdrawal of troops. “If there’s a full-blown civil war, the president isn’t going to allow our forces to be caught in the crossfire,” said one Bush aide.

Um, our troops are already being caught in the crossfire and have been dying in alarming numbers for quite some time now. Why is it that when Democrats demand troop withdrawal that is “cut and run,” but when Republicans propose it it’s called “protecting our troops from the crossfire?”

It seems the British ambassador to Iraq isn’t the only one being candid these days–generals testifying before Congress today are offering a similarly bleak assessment on the likelihood of Iraq devolving into civil war.

“I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I have seen it,” Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed Abizaid’s observation, saying “We do have the possibility of that devolving into civil war.” He said whether this occurs depends on the Iraqis more than on the U.S. military. “Shiite and Sunni are going to have to love their children more than they hate each other,” Pace said, before the tensions can be overcome. “The weight of that must be on the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government.”

God save us all.

The assessment comes amid reports that up to 2/3 of army units are not in a state of operational readiness because of the strain and damage their equipment has suffered in Iraq. I’m sure that makes our military’s men and women feel really confident about their likelihood of survival in a mission that makes no sense.

Thankfully Donald Rumsfeld decided he wasn’t “too busy” after all to testify about this ever-worsening fracas and his disastrous policies before the US Congress.

Credit the Brits for telling it like it is instead of pulling the wool over their leaders’ eyes. A recently leaked memo from William Patey, outgoing British ambassador to Iraq, to Tony Blair and his cabinet showed just how much worse the situation in Iraq is than what British and American leaders have been saying publicly:

“[T]he prospect of a low intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy.

“Even the lowered expectation of President Bush for Iraq — a government that can sustain itself, defend itself and govern itself and is an ally in the war on terror — must remain in doubt.”

When you invade a country without doing your homework about its civilian divisions and without having a plan in place for ensuring peace after you yell “Mission Accomplished,” you should not be surprised when you are stricken by the Law of Unintended Consequences. Instead of a democratic Iraq with arbitrary borders established by colonialists we are more likely to see a country divided along its sectarian lines, with radical religious groups perhaps having a country-within-a-country similar to Hezbollah’s presence in Lebanon. The fragile hold of democracy cannot bind groups together that would prefer to kill each other than live with each other.

We’ve spent $300 billion and counting to break up a country, incite instability, and foment the exportation of terrorism. The only mission accomplished was to make the world a far more dangerous place while lining our soldiers up for slaughter. So much for Bush’s vision of a “new Middle East.”

Evidence is emerging that the Pentagon lied about the magnitude of its response (or lack thereof) on September 11th.

Suspicion about misrepresentations ran so deep among the 9/11 commission members that they considered turning the matter over to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation. In the end they only turned the allegations over to the inspectors general of the Defense and Transportation departments. DoD has since claimed that its mis-statements were due to problems with the Pentagon’s record-keeping.

For more than two years, the Pentagon claimed it had quickly scrambled jets to intercept the highjacked airliners. In the case of Flight 93, the military claimed it was preparing to shoot it down had the passengers not brought down the flight themselves. In fact this is not true.

The truth was that the military never had any highjacked flights in its sights and in one case even chased a phantom image of Flight 11 long after it had crashed into the World Trade Center. The military wasn’t even aware of Flight 93 until after it had crashed in Pennsylvania.

I find the truth of the matter pretty shocking, and only deepens my awe and respect for the heroes on Flight 93. Had it not been for their choice to try to take their destiny back in their own hands on that dreadful day we would have undoubtedly lost an entire branch of our government and a precious landmark given that the flight’s trajectory would have crashed it into the White House or the Capitol. They succeeded where our military and government failed us.