The Political Junkies
archived: 22 - 28 Oct, 2006 Back Next
UPDATED: OCTOBER 26, 2006
UTTER MADNESS
Last week the Bush administration signaled that it was considering a time table to start withdrawals from Iraq. The apparent change seemed forced by a deteriorating environment for Republicans facing defeat in mid-term elections and increasing American casualties in Iraq:
The 96 deaths [this month] is the highest monthly total since October 2005, when the same number of American forces were killed. Before that the deadliest months were January 2005, at 107; November 2004 at 137 and April 2004, at 135.
Officials even claimed that Bush had never adopted a strategy of “stay the course.” BuzzFash (a TPJ favorite) immediately posted the videos disproving that assertion.
Bush, with Prime Minister Blair in tow, talked of a 12 to 18 month time table (“benchmarks”) for the Iraqi government to assume increasing levels of their own security.
In a series of developments that can only be described as bizarre:
[Iraqi Prime Minister] Al-Maliki . . . angrily rejected the timeline suggested by US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad for the performance of the Iraqi government with regard to reducing civil violence and addressing the militia problem. He said that no outside power could set a timeline for the sovereign Iraqi government.
Next, while Bush is signaling that Iraqis must stand up, he publicly rejects a time table:
President Bush said Wednesday that mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq are a "serious concern," but again refused to set a timetable for pulling out American troops.
"A fixed timetable for withdrawal, in my judgment, means defeat," he said.
In a somber, pre-election review of a long and brutal war, Mr. Bush conceded that the United States is taking heavy casualties and said, "I know many Americans are not satisfied with the situation in Iraq."
Prime Minister Blair publicly follows Bush’s lead.
While the Iraqis are rejecting a time table that does not exist, commanders in Iraq are calling for more troops to meet the escalating violence:
U.S. officials previously said they were satisfied with troop levels and had expected to make significant reductions by year’s end. But a surge in sectarian killings, which welled up this past summer, forced them to reconsider.
At a rare joint news conference with the American ambassador, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, said additional U.S. troops could come from inside or outside Iraq to “improve basic services for the population of Baghdad.”
“Now, do we need more troops to do that? Maybe. And, as I’ve said all along, if we do, I will ask for the troops I need, both coalition and Iraqis,” Casey said. There are currently 144,000 U.S. forces in Iraq.
The harsh reality remains unchanging; America cannot militarily establish democracy or peace in Iraq:
Late Wednesday the military said it had killed 10 suspected militia fighters and wounded two in the battle. It did not identify the wanted militia leader or say whether he was still at large. Earlier, police and hospital officials said four people were killed and at least 18 wounded.
The military also said it had raided a mosque in Sadr City looking for a missing U.S. soldier and his kidnappers. The soldier was not found but three suspects were detained.
Residents living near Sadr City said gunfire and air strikes began about 11 p.m. Tuesday and continued for hours. The neighborhood was sealed to outsiders before dawn.
Groups of young men in black fatigues favored by the Mahdi Army were seen driving toward the area to join the fight. Explosions and automatic weapons fire were heard above the noise of U.S. helicopters circling overhead firing flares.
Crowds of Shiite men, some carrying pistols and others hoisting giant posters of al-Sadr, swarmed onto the district's streets Wednesday morning, chanting, "America has insulted us."
Throughout the day and into the night, U.S. F-16 jet fighters growled across the Baghdad sky, and at one point the report of tank cannon fire echoed across the city five times in quick succession.
Streets were empty and shops closed, although the district still had electricity from the national power grid.
Well after nightfall, residents said all roads into the slum remained blocked by U.S. and Iraqi forces. U.S. soldiers were searching all cars.
A frustrated motorist waiting at one checkpoint jumped out of his car and called for al-Maliki to resign.
"Where is al-Maliki? It would be more honorable for him to resign. Why is he letting the Americans do this to us," the driver could be heard to scream.
To add even more madness to the policies of this Administration, The Washington Times is reporting that the Bush administration is preparing to overthrow the very government in Iraq it helped create:
Iraqi army officers are reportedly planning to stage a military coup with U.S. help to oust the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Cairo-based Iraqi and Arab sources said Monday several officers visited Washington recently for talks with U.S. officials on plans for replacing Maliki's administration by a "national salvation" government with the mission to re-establish security and stability in Iraq.
One Iraqi source told United Press International that the Iraqi army officers' visit to the United States was aimed at coordinating the military coup in case the efforts of Maliki's government to restore order reached a dead end.
He said among the prominent officers were the deputy chief of staff, a Muslim Shiite, the intelligence chief, a Sunni, and the commander of the air force, a Kurd. It is believed the three would constitute the nucleus of the next government after the army takes over power.
The proposed plan, according to the source, stipulates that the new Iraqi army, with the assistance of U.S. forces, will take control of power, suspend the constitution, dissolve parliament and form a new government
Question for Americans, “Had enough!”
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UPDATED: OCTOBER 24, 2006
CHANGING FORTUNES
Americans have fixed themselves upon Bush’s failed military excursion into Iraq.
Bush and Republicans have attempted to counter the dire news from Iraq by portraying the American economy as strong. It is a message that the mainstream media appears to be accepting. Note the reference in this article discussing the war in Iraq:
It's two weeks away, and the 2006 midterm elections look like a referendum on Iraq, a war in which President Bush and his party have lost not just the political center but significant chunks of their base.
An improving economy notwithstanding, opposition to the war remains the prime issue driving congressional voter preference. And the war's critics include not just eight in 10 Democrats but 64 percent of independents, 40 percent of conservatives, 35 percent of evangelical white Protestants and a quarter of Republicans.
Is the American economy “improving?” Consider this judgment:
One of the world's most exclusive business clubs warned the United States Tuesday that its open-ended national security and war expenditures, along with tax cuts that led to large budget deficits, could affect the country's status as a powerful economic force.
The Geneva-based World Economic Forum issued its 2006-07 Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) rankings and listed the United States in sixth place, down from the top spot, behind Switzerland, Finland and Sweden and just ahead of Japan.
The top 10 countries are all rich industrialised nations. They are Switzerland, Finland Sweden, Denmark, Singapore, the United States, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain.
The report says that with potentially even higher spending commitments in defence and homeland security, which comes with the U.S. war on terror and ongoing plans to lower taxes further, the U.S. faces difficult fiscal balancing.
"With a low savings rate, record-high current account deficits and a worsening of the U.S.'s net debtor position, there is a non-negligible risk to both the country's overall competitiveness and, given the relative size of the U.S. economy, the future of the global economy," said Augusto Lopez-Claros, chief economist of the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Network.
The report says that the United States faces major institutional challenges because the quality of the country's public institutions fares worse than those of other rich nations in terms of transparency and efficiency, especially after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina last year. . . .
The comprehensive annual survey is conducted by the WEF along with research institutes and business organisations in the countries covered by the report. This year's report was complimented with a poll of more than 11,000 business leaders in a record 125 economies worldwide. . . .
The admonition from such a pro-market establishment group could serve as a red flag on the direction of the U.S. economy. If international confidence in the U.S. economy continues to ebb, the U.S. dollar is likely to fall further and foreign investment will shrink.
Bush’s foreign policy is in shambles and the Republicans drove the American economy from first in the world to sixth in the view of this business group.
The simple message is that Republican policies have failed the United States miserably. Had enough?
SOCIAL SECURITY
The occupation in Iraq has failed and the American economy is losing its position in the world. Bush counters that he will pursue privatization of Social Security in Congress:
President George W. Bush said Republicans can hold their congressional majority by focusing on national security and the economy, and that he'll return to overhauling Social Security as a domestic priority for his last two years in office. . . .
The top items on the agenda, Bush said, are immigration and Social Security. The Republican-led Congress stymied Bush on both after he was re-elected in 2004 and made them his top priorities.
Do Americans really want to trust Bush and the Republicans to reform Social Security?
GUTTING THE CONSTITUTION
This op ed piece appeared in the Asheville Citizen Times, a regional newspaper in western North Carolina. It was written by Thomas M. Sullivan, a professional engineer who consults for industries ranging from chemicals to biotech, and a citizen who understands the Republican destruction of the American Constitution.
If they had voted away the right to bear arms, we’d have had a revolution. When they gutted habeas corpus, we hardly noticed.
“The Priv-ilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” - U.S. Constitution, Article I
America confronts a serious threat from terrorism, but faces neither rebellion nor invasion.
No matter. With little debate 65 U.S. Senators voted Sept. 28 to deny habeas corpus review for alien detainees in U.S. custody. Every Republican but two approved the “Military Commissions Act of 2006,” a broadly-written bill concerned primarily with tribunals for terror suspects detained since Sept. 11. Twelve Senate Democrats joined the Republican majority.
Thirty-two Democrats and 218 Republicans (all but seven) approved the final bill in the House. And so Congress repudiated a fundamental principle of liberty that predates the Magna Carta.
Ironically, the 14 Guantanamo suspects facing charges receive limited due process under this bill. Hundreds of others face legal limbo, barred from contesting their indefinite imprisonment.
Habeas corpus (“you have the body”) is not a right many Americans use daily. Still, the “Great Writ,” the prisoner’s right to challenge the king’s reasons for jailing him, has been a cornerstone freedom for centuries. Until now.
“What the bill seeks to do is set back basic rights by some 900 years,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA). He then voted for the bill he called “patently unconstitutional on its face.”
His colleagues also knew that the Supreme Court will likely overturn the habeas provision. But a party rocked by scandals and an unpopular war in Iraq needed a divisive vote with which to paint Democrats soft on terrorism.
All who voted “yea’’ proved they were soft on the Constitution.
To recap, 65 Senators and 250 congressmen approved a bill that undermines the Constitution they swore a solemn oath to uphold. President Bush will sign it.
Consider that when asked, “Who do you trust?” But there are more skeletons in this closet.
The War Crimes Act that enforces the Geneva Conventions makes cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners a federal crime. When the Supreme Court ruled this summer that Geneva’s Common Article 3 applies to all detainees, CIA interrogators scrambled to buy legal-defense insurance. Bush administration lawyers had led them to believe that Geneva did not apply to “enemy combatants,” and that waterboarding and other abuses were legal.
Thus the hurry to pass the Military Commissions Act before Republicans lose control of Congress this November.
The act parses the meaning of cruelty and grants legal immunity retroactive to 1997 for both interrogators and senior officials involved in all but “grave” prisoner abuses.
The president decides what is “grave.” The act bars courts from reviewing his decisions.
A recent estimate says that America holds 14,000 prisoners in camps from Bagram (Afghanistan) to Guantanamo. Retired Army Major General John Batiste testified recently that of 13,000-plus once held in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, “probably 99 percent … were guilty of absolutely nothing,” but “the way we abused them turned them against the effort in Iraq forever.”
Stay this course? No.
Raise questions about prisoner treatment and hardliners suggest you “don’t get it,” and invariably change the subject to al-Qaida’s barbarity.
“The terrorists” deserve no rights.
Assuming that’s true, then presumably the innocent do. Justice, honor and decency demand that. What percentage of those 14,000 prisoners are guilty of nothing? Which are “the terrorists” deserving military justice?
The administration won’t say and thinks patriots wouldn’t ask. Americans who do are soft on terrorism.
The detainee treatment question is not about the blackness of terrorists’ hearts.
It is about our own hearts. About our standards of behavior, not theirs. Neitzsche cautioned, “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.”
Fighting terrorism requires tough measures. Tough, but smart. And effective.
Promoting democracy requires living by our principles, not retreating from them.
America aspires to set a standard for the world, a moral high bar so high that sometimes she fails in reaching it. In our post-Sept. 11 zeal we allowed our enemies to re-set that bar for us — ankle-high. Stay one step above those who cut off prisoners heads on videotape and we can still claim moral superiority. Not that the world will pay attention any longer.
Osama bin Laden wants to destroy America? He needn’t bother. We just might do it for him.
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OCTOBER 22, 2006
STAYING THE COURSE
The split in the Republican Party is growing. As late as Friday, Bush was touting the policy of “stay the course.”
"We will stay in Iraq, we will fight in Iraq and we will win in Iraq," Bush told Republican contributors in Washington. "Our goal hasn't changed, but the tactics are constantly adjusting to an enemy which is brutal and violent."
Members of his own Party, facing an American public that is now repudiating Bush’s policy, are tracking a different policy objective:
The growing doubts among GOP lawmakers about the administration's Iraq strategy, coupled with the prospect of Democratic wins in next month's midterm elections, will soon force the Bush administration to abandon its open-ended commitment to the war, according to lawmakers in both parties, foreign policy experts and others involved in policymaking.
Senior figures in both parties are coming to the conclusion that the Bush administration will be unable to achieve its goal of a stable, democratic Iraq within a politically feasible time frame. Agitation is growing in Congress for alternatives to the administration's strategy of keeping Iraq in one piece and getting its security forces up and running while 140,000 U.S. troops try to keep a lid on rapidly spreading sectarian violence.
"I don't believe that we can continue based on an open-ended, unconditional presence," said Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine). (By Robert F. Bukaty -- Associated Press) . . .
Many senior Republicans with close ties to the administration also believe that essential to a successful strategy in Iraq are an aggressive new diplomatic initiative to secure a Middle East peace settlement and a new effort to engage Iraq's neighbors, such as Syria and Iran, in helping stabilize the country -- perhaps through an international conference.
One point on which adherents of these sharply different approaches appear to agree is that "staying the course" is fast becoming a dead letter. "I don't believe that we can continue based on an open-ended, unconditional presence," said Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, a centrist Maine Republican. "I don't think there's any question about that, that there will be a change" in the U.S. strategy in Iraq after next month's elections.
Richard N. Haass, a former Bush administration foreign policy official, told reporters yesterday that the situation is reaching a "tipping point" both in Iraq and in U.S. politics. "More of essentially the same is going to be a policy that very few people are going to be able to support," said Haass, now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. He added that the administration's current Iraq strategy "has virtually no chance of succeeding" and predicted that "change will come."
Bush counters that he has never been limited to just “stay the course,” and he is willing to change tactics.
His remarks appeared to signal that he was open to at least a limited change in his approach, and that he was not wedded to a "stay-the-course" doctrine, as critics say. At the same time, Bush pledged to secure victory and said he would not change his administration's strategy or overall goals, even if it shifted tactics.
The Republicans are obviously trying to ameliorate anger being directed toward the Republican Party immediately prior to the election. It is disingenuous.
Bush’s failed policy in Iraq will end only when the Republicans are defeated at the polls.
Last Update: 10/29/2006