Centerblue.org

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.

A profoundly sad but accurate editorial from the Providence Journal:

It slowly dawns on Americans that their lives are changing. For more and more of us, “the American Dream,” which we assumed as our birthright — founded on infinite plenty, a bottomless cup of creature comforts, and fair rewards for hard work — is fading.

The material components of the Dream were steady jobs, inexpensive mortgages and other credit, cheap gasoline, secure pensions, and flag-waving confidence in imperial America — an invulnerable power, which could do no wrong. But the deadly albatross of Iraq, gasoline at over $3 a gallon, weak growth in jobs and pay, by companies that won’t share productivity gains with workers, and export their work to Asia, have produced the sharpest drop in consumer confidence since the recession of the early 1980s.

The Dream — powerful, pervasive, energizing, defining — has been the holy writ of the middle class. But today, ask the 20,000 union workers about the American Dream at bankrupt Delphi who face permanent layoffs, while thousands of others confront the prospect of pay cut in half. Or ask the thousands more union and salaried workers with jobs at risk at General Motors and Ford — once the world’s auto-and-truck leaders, now with 40 percent of their home market taken by Toyota and Honda. Or ask the retired guys who’ve been told by the company they served for decades that they’re being stripped of their “assured” pensions and health benefits.

Those young home owners lured by cash-free adjustable-rate mortgages to buy homes beyond their means confront rising interest rates, corrosive debt, and possible foreclosure. With the real-estate market sagging, their home equity shrinks.

Adding insult to injury, the redistribution of our dwindling wealth under Bush widens the gap between the “wealth aristocracy” and the rest of us.

The American consumer economy is operating on two tiers. On top are the relative handful of CEOs and investment people, immune from assault. The Republicans’ gratuitous tax cuts on investment income have significantly lowered the tax burden on the richest Americans — earning more than $10 million — by an average of about $500,000. Mr. Bush continues to press Congress to make permanent cuts for the privileged while the national deficit goes through the roof.

The rest of us are in a squeeze as inflation is driven by energy costs, medical care, and prescription drugs. Home-foreclosure rates are growing; they jumped an average 13 percent a month nationally at the end of 2005, with highs of 30 percent in Massachusetts, 61 percent in Texas, 70 percent in Arkansas, 145 percent in New Mexico, and 210 percent in West Virginia.

As for America’s standing in the world, the fog of the endless Iraq war has cost us friends that it took two world wars to win. Americans who felt pride in our triumphs see the leverage and reputation of this nation squandered.

We are reduced from a beacon of hope to a saber-rattling thug. The Bush foreign policy is nonexistent. The radical right exploits the formless “war on terror” — which can’t be won — to retain power by keeping us afraid.

Our ebbing strength inspires reckless challenges from rogue national leaders. In the power vacuum, Iran and Syria unleash their puppets in Lebanon. Kim Jong Il, of nuclear North Korea, blithely ignores Washington and launches his rockets. Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmedinejad cold-shoulders blustering Washington and continues to enrich uranium. He and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez make threats against our petroleum supplies.

Competition by Asian industrial powers for shrinking oil reserves further threatens the assumed right of this NASCAR nation to cruise free and easy.

Then there is climate change, which Bush and the carbon-based energy giants want us to shrug off.

All this converges in a “perfect storm.”

We high-consumption Americans, who haven’t been asked to sacrifice much of anything since World War II, are unused to belt-tightening and uncertainty. The ultimate question — mostly unaddressed by politicians, pundits, sociologists, and psychologists — is how will we behave when it dawns on us that the glory of the American Dream hath departed? Will we conduct a search for strong, visionary leaders within the democratic process who will refashion the Dream in line with reduced expectations?

When dreams fall apart, humans often respond with rage, hysteria, hopelessness, and fear. How many more will find false comfort in the preachments of dangerous demagogues, who offer certitude by finding scapegoats? How many will seek solace in radical religious frenzy, pronouncing wrathful judgment on America while rooting out “the godless”?

Will the great ideas that have animated America vanish with the retreat of the good life that came to define the American Dream? With what shall we replace them?

Jerry Landay, a retired CBS News correspondent living in Bristol, writes on current issues.

My friend Martin over at Total Information Awareness pointed me to this story on how the military recently expelled a gay Arabic translator under the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy. This is by far not the first time this has happened; the Washington Post previously reported on several other such expulsions of valuable translators and linguists.

Arabic translators are not exactly found under every rock. These are extremely valuable people that could be deployed for urgently needed intelligence and interrogation activities as we conduct the so-called “war on terror.”

Instead of letting these individuals contribute to the nation’s safety by serving as its badly needed eyes and ears in the Arabic world, the military prefers to expel them because of their sexual orientation. That’s right, their sex partners matter more than our national security.

The military’s policy seems ever more outdated especially in light of the successful integration of gay servicemembers in countries like Britain, Spain and Israel.

The military is already having great difficulty holding on to its most talented people. That fact, along with the civil strife and radical Islamic terrorism we are fighting in the Middle East and elsewhere makes the discarding of people like these valuable translators especially reprehensible.

Stop worrying about who people sleep with and start worrying about protecting our country already!