Advice For Obama About Iraq: Voices From The Past

President Barack Obama has made clear that, while he isn't going to do anything rash, he intends to make a clean break from many Bush administration policies, and in particular those regarding the Iraq war. That sounds like great news to me.

But, I'm a believer in history, and in the lessons of context that it teaches. It's a good idea to listen to voices of experience, from the past, and Obama should heed them. Here are a couple:

"If you're going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein, you have to go to Baghdad. Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's current there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?"
Then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, in 1991.

"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in 'mission creep,' and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq ... Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different -- and perhaps barren -- outcome."
Former President George H.W. Bush and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, in their book "A World Transformed" (1998).

It all seems a bit confusing. But I am hopeful that President Obama is a student of history and can learn from it. Clearly, our rulers of the past eight years have been astonishingly oblivious to its lessons.

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Thanks To Bush, U.S. Has Little Moral Authority To Lecture Russia Now

Morally, it was easier, before Bush. The U.S. never exactly had a spotless record on international (or domestic) aggression, but there were usually ample rationalizations to which one could point. In 2008, there are few rationalizations left, so it sounds ludicrous for American officials to try to scold Russia over the invasion of neighboring Georgia.

Until Il Doofus and the Neocons engineered the invasion of Iraq in 2003, there were usually at least some convoluted reasons trotted out as to why the U.S. did certain unsavory things, and the reasons even held up as folklore. (Yes, I know there are still plenty of morons who think Saddam Hussein was behind the 9-11 attacks, but for now let's confine the debate to participants who can actually think.)

Let's review some history. War with Spain in 1898 was supposed to have been precipitated in part by the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine, though in hindsight it's far-fetched that Spain had anything to do with that. Cuba was very near, and home to many U.S. interests, so with an insurrection there was a great opportunity to kick Spaniard ass and steal some colonies. We made a casino/plantation/whorehouse out of Cuba for 60 years, and killed a million Filipinos while subjugating their country.

Later, our Marines were in Nicaragua so many times, chasing Sandino and his ilk around, that they should have just renamed the place Camp Lejeune South. We violated sovereign territory down that direction as often as United Fruit Co. could think of a reason.

There are those who think of the Vietnam War as a flat-out invasion of Vietnam by the U.S. The rationale was, of course, that it was part of the larger Cold War against communism. That was the argument that die-hards still cling to today -- the reason it was supposed to be OK to prop up a succession of puppet autocracies in the south, doggedly pursue a war that killed some 3 million Vietnamese, poison the countryside for generations and divide our own country for -- yes, generations. We wuz a-fightin' common-ism.

Let's see -- there were CIA-engineered or CIA-aided regime changes in countries like Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973) and others. There were invasions of Panama, Grenada, Cambodia, Laos ...

So far, I'm just hitting "high" points that go back to 1898. It goes back further. There was a war with Mexico that made it possible for me and my forebears to reside in this paradise of the Lone Star State, under American protection. And then, there were those pesky Comanches who once lived just about where I sit, long before Hernando Cortes was a gleam in his daddy's eye. You generally have to drive up to Lawton, Oklahoma to see a live Comanche now, and they look pretty damned depressed, what's left of them.

Not to belabor this -- but the U.S. really didn't have all that damn much moral authority on the world stage B.B. (Before Bush) Arguably, we had our own holocausts, our own wars of conquest, our own slaughters and subjugation of peoples. I won't even start on slavery.

But, at certain points in the 20th century, America seemed to stand tall. We led the alliance that defeated German Nazism, and also Japanese and Italian fascism. The folly of Vietnam aside, we led a very long fight against Stalinist communism in an eerie new kind of war, and won. After a century of post-slavery Jim Crow, we reformed this society's racist heritage to such an extent that our next president may be a man of mixed race. There is much to be proud of here.

A lot has changed since 2003. When Il Doofus and his accomplices manufactured reasons for an invasion of Iraq, they all but destroyed what was left of U.S. moral authority on the world stage. A lot of people recalled that Saddam Hussein was our ally in the '80s, and that we even supplied him with the WMDs he used on the Kurds. Just what made Saddam so alarmingly evil to us, 15 years after? Perhaps it was all that oil he was sitting on, and that we couldn't get to as long as he was there.

That was an invasion of a sovereign nation, albeit a dictatorship, with flimsy rationale that have been discredited and perhaps even exposed as deliberate lies. About a million people and counting have died as a direct result, and the number of refugees can't be accurately estimated.

Now, George W. Bush musters enough chutzpah to say something like, "Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people."

First, one could question whether the latter part of that sentence even describes the contemporary United States. But given the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the continued U.S. occupation, can a sane, reasonably informed person think that most of the world even begins to take him seriously?

One thing is certain: Vladimir Putin and his puppet successor as Russian prez do not. I've been convinced for years that Putin and his wife tell Bush jokes in private. Just imagine what the jesting is like now.

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The Geographically Challenged John McCain: That's A Broad Definition Of A Border, Iraq And Pakistan

Asked by Diane Sawyer whether the "the situation in Afghanistan in precarious and urgent," McCain responded: "I think it's serious. . . . It's a serious situation, but there's a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do and I'm afraid it's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border."

He's also having a hard time remembering that Czechoslovakia is a long-defunct country. Here's the piece from The Huffington Post.

What's all this about how somebody can actually get too old to be president? -- MJ

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Because everyone seems to have forgotten, I want to remind you that Iraq has a refugee crisis

We haven't heard much about the Iraqis who have been displaced by the war lately, but that doesn't mean that they all went home and resumed their normal lives as soon as the media stopped talking about them. Not even close.

The fact still remains that five million Iraqis have been displaced as a result of the invasion and occupation of their country, and the chaos that action has wrought. Five million people. That number represents approximately 20% of the prewar population of the country.

Some of the displaced have left neighborhoods and sought refuge with friends or family in other areas. Many with resources have fled the country and are living a day to day existence in Jordan or Syria. The overwhelming crush of refugees has rendered damage to the social fabric of both those nations. Indeed, the only beneficiary of this clusterfuck - besides some well-connected mercenary outfits, of course - seems to be the Syrian sex industry.

Still others, lacking the resources to get out of the country or the savings on which to survive once out of Iraq, (refugees are not allowed to work in the neighboring countries, instead they subsist on dwindling savings and refugee aid) are displaced into tent cities in the desert. Jordan and Syria were forced last fall to close their borders and deny more Iraqi refugees to cross over, but inside Iraq, internal migration has been curtailed as well. Last fall, governates stopped allowing internal migration, but still not a peep has been reported about it in the M$M, or by the warbloggers. If they have covered it, I missed it.


If anyone wants to know what happens when young men are congregated in refugee camps with no hope for anything except endless days of hopelessness, poverty and humiliation; one only need cast ones eyes slightly to the west and look at the turmoil in Palestine and take note of the fact that there is no shortage of young men willing to blow themselves up in pizza parlors to inflict a measure of suffering against those perceived to be an existential enemy. In other words, George Bush and Dick Cheney and the rest of the war-criminal cabal have turned Iraqis into Palestinians...occupied, ruled, subjugated and humiliated by outsiders in their own land.

How the hell can you have peace when one in five people is displaced, and an even higher percentage has experienced sectarian violence at the hands of their neighbors? How the hell can you have peace when once-thriving multi-ethnic neighborhoods have been ghettoized by concrete barriers, and people can only go in and out of their own neighborhoods by clearing checkpoints?

How do you rebuild a society when the professionals who delivered services and worked the levers that made society function have fled the country? When doctors offices are padlocked and hospitals stand abandoned save one or two doctors who simply refuse to bend, and the education system struggles in the face of teachers and professors who have either left the country or stopped teaching for fear of being brutally murdered for doing their jobs?

A couple of years ago, we heard a lot about the "brain drain" that threatened to ability of Iraq to return to stability and functioning as a society. In January 2006, the Washington Post was all over it.

"Professors have been threatened. Doctors have been killed in their clinics. Killing has become common," Fayed said. "Some people believe this is intentional, to try to empty Iraq of its elite."

Kubasi, the former head of Iraq's military medical corps, believes that. In late April, his secretary handed him a letter written in what he called "bad Arabic" giving them all by May 6 -- 10 days -- to leave the country. He showed the letter to authorities, who suggested he had faked it. By May 8, Kubasi was in Jordan.

His three sons and his daughter are all physicians. They could not risk staying, he said.

"Every day, we sit here, 10 or 12 of us, senior professionals, just discussing the situation," Kubasi said from Amman. "It's mental death to sit here. But even my patients say I should not come back. Really, really, I could not pay for a kidnapper's ransom. And in that case, you would be killed."

It frustrates him to watch the medical training system he helped create fall apart. "The circuit of teaching, training and care is being broken. It may not be recovered," he said.

"Our medical schools and doctors are known all over the Arab world. The teaching care was excellent, based on the British system. We were successful under Saddam Hussein to start our own postgraduate studies, including many medical specialties. Now they are ridding the country of all of this."

Well, Mission accomplished.

If the mission was to turn Iraq into Palestine, displace one-in-five Iraqis from their homes, send the professional and middle classes into diaspora and ethnically cleanse and ghettoize the cities, it has been accomplished in trump.

The humanitarian crisis of the ordinary people who have been forced from their homes and trapped behind blast walls lies at the heart of any potential political and security gains in Iraq. Until the humanitarian disaster is dealt with, the rest is just window dressing.

That it is no longer even being discussed tells me that the progenitors and supporters of this clusterfuck are decidedly unserious.

[Crossposted from Blue Girl, Red State & linked at Informed Comment]

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On the coffee table – ‘Taking the Hill’

This story of Patrick Murphy, the first Iraq War vet to get elected to Congress is informative and sobering. It’s also a pretty good read. But, it’s not a great read.

The book is more informative when Murphy discusses his run for Congress than in his analysis of how and where Bush went wrong in launching the Iraq War in the first place, or how Bush, Cheney, Bremer, Rumfeld et al screwed up after the invasion.

Throw in the fact that Murphy felt compelled to join the Blue Dog Coalition and renew funding for the School of the Americas, with the larger position that, as a freshman in Congress who got elected on one issue, and this is not a five-star book.

I wound up giving it three stars on Amazon. If I were the first rater, I might give it four stars. But, in light of the five-star fluff of several earlier raters, it had to get knocked down to three stars as a counterweight.

Since there’s nothing new on Iraq here, I focus my critique on the Congressman Murphy latter part of the book.

First, the amount of work involved with getting elected is huge. Especially for a first-time office-seeker with not a lot of name recognition, it can be grueling. Murphy spells that out in detail, both for the Democratic primary and the general election. He then details attack-dog Republican tactics against him in the general election, including a possible Hatch Act violation by the chief of staff of his opponent, incumbent Republican Mike Fitzpatrick.

Next, he discusses the hypocrisy of some endorsements, though he’s either too kind or too soft to use the word “hypocrisy.”

That includes the Veterans of Foreign Wars endorsing Fitzpatrick, a non-veteran. That includes unions endorsing Fitzpatrick because “he returns our phone calls.” (It’s all about access, isn’t it?)

Murphy then explains his decision to join the Blue Dogs because they stand for “balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility.”

But, uhh, Pat … “paygo” on budget issues is an official position of your party as a whole in both houses of Congress. No need to join the Blue Dogs for that, unless you think Pelosi and Reid are giving lip service.

As for SOAR, especially in light of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, you’re naïve at best if you really think that under this administration, all its days of training human rights thugs are in the past. You should have voted to kill it.

In short, a good book but not a great one. While it is interesting to read about the shoe leather of a Congressional campaign, one doesn’t have to be an Iraq vet to do that, either.

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There Is No War In Iraq

There is no war in Iraq.

There is an illegal occupation.

There is criminal profiteering.

There is a sectarian bloodbath.

There is a human, economic and Constitutional catastrophe.

But there is no war in Iraq.

To refer to what is happening in Iraq in terms properly applied to war – “the enemy,” “missions,” “battles,” "combat,” “tactics,” “bases,” and “victory” is to engage in deliberate misdirection.

Or to fundamentally misunderstand what America has done to Iraq.

We are oppressing a civilian population that posed no threat to us and did nothing to us to justify this oppression.

Illegally and in defiance of the specific pleas of our allies around the world to refrain, we launched an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation that had made no threat against us, had not even the capacity to threaten us at all.

We are the aggressors.

We are the bad guys.

We are in the wrong.

Any discussion of what to do next in Iraq that does not begin by acknowledging the irrefutable facts above is nothing other than a farce based on lies.

And if you still don't understand that the only terrorists in Iraq are the ones our illegal invasion and occupation created, then you need to put the mouse down and back away from the computer slowly.

Don't come back until you're back on your meds.

For details, here's Fred Kaplan on how Bush is guaranteeing defeat in Iraq, and here's Glenn Greenwald on how the war hawks still haven't learned their lesson.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

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At the End of the Day

Childhood's End Arthur C. Clarke, author of over a hundred books, including 2001: A Space Odyssey has died. He was 90 years old. He and the good Dr. Asimov were my constant companions growing up, occupying a special revered spot as far as I was concerned, because they were both working scientists and wrote textbooks, too. Clarke is credited with coming up with the concept of communications satellites - in fact, geosynchronous orbits are commonly called "Clarke's Orbits" after him.

The Dalai Llama is threatening to step down as the head of Tibet's government-in-exile if violence between Chinese soldiers and Tibetan independence protesters does not abate. Speaking at the site of the exile government in Dharamsala, India, he said: "I say to China and the Tibetans – don't commit violence. Whether we like it or not, we have to live together side by side," adding that "if things become out of control then my only option is to completely resign".

Reconciliation talks in Baghdad got underway, but without the main Sunni bloc who are boycotting the meeting, claiming that "Maliki is stonewalling them by failing to meet demands that include the release of security detainees not charged with specific crimes, disbanding Shiite militias and wider inclusion in decision-making on security issues."

A power-sharing deal in Kenya Kenyan lawmakers on Tuesday unanimously approved a power-sharing deal intended to salvaging a country once seen as one of the most stable and prosperous in Africa, but which disintegrated into ethnic bloodletting when both President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga claimed victory in the countries presidential election, and brought a bloody end to decades of peaceful coexistence between disparate ethnic groups in Kenya. Now they face the challenges of healing the nation and rebuilding a tattered economy that was once one of the most promising in Africa.

The oldest, thickest and most resilient ice around the North Pole is melting This was confirmed Tuesday by data collected from NASA satellites. "Thickness is an indicator of long-term health of sea ice, and that's not looking good at the moment," Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center told reporters in a phone interview.

Pakistan's new parliament was seated on Monday The opposition parliament has vowed to restore the judiciary which has been decimated by Musharraf. An inevitable clash between Musharraf and the new parliament is brewing, and some parliamentarians are openly disdainful of the president. "Musharraf has to go. He has no future in this country, at least," said Khawaja Muhammad Asif, a newly elected legislator. "Maybe he has a future in the U.S."

Paterson preempts the press hounds Tuesday was David Paterson's first full day on the job as governor of New York, and he called a press conference and dropped a bombshell or three. He admitted openly and freely that he and his wife had both engaged in extramarital affairs, but had worked through their marital problems and had been faithful in recent years. One of the women he admitted to having had a relationship with is a state employee and a member of the staff that Paterson "inherited" from the disgraced Spitzer. Which probably prompted the preemptive confession session.

Well knock me over with a feather, the M$M might actually do some follow up! The New York Times is giving a few column inches in tomorrow mornings paper to McCain's foreign policy fuckups in Jordan earlier today, where he repeatedly asserted a connection between (Shi'ite) Iran and (Sunni) al Qaeda. Karen Finney, a spokeswoman for the DNC issued a statement in which McCain's obvious incompetence in foreign policy was underscored and his ties to this failed war and this failed president were reinforced. “After eight years of the Bush administration’s incompetence in Iraq, McCain’s comments don’t give the American people a reason to believe that he can be trusted to offer a clear way forward. Not only is Senator McCain wrong on Iraq once again, but he showed he either doesn’t understand the challenges facing Iraq and the region or is willing to ignore the facts on the ground.”

What creeps me out most about Cheney isn't just that he lies so easily, it's that he believes himself. Talking to soldiers at a sprawling base north of Balad he reasserted the fictitious connection between Iraq and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. "This long-term struggle became urgent on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. That day we clearly saw that dangers can gather far from our own shores and find us right there at home," he told the soldiers. "So the United States made a decision: to hunt down the evil of terrorism and kill it where it grows, to hold the supporters of terror to account and to confront regimes that harbor terrorists and threaten the peace," Cheney said. "Understanding all the dangers of this new era, we have no intention of abandoning our friends or allowing this country of 170,000 square miles to become a staging area for further attacks against Americans."

No Regrets If you had any doubts that Bush is a sociopath with no conscience, he still glibly insists that invading Iraq five years ago was worth what it has cost in lives, treasure and stature.

I think this family would probably disagree with the president and his romantic notions of war.

Hat tip to skippy for the photo.

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Fueling the Insurgency

"Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will." Richard Perle, chair, The Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, July 11, 2002

Let's just cut to the chase - American forces in Iraq aren't fighting jihadists. They are fighting an insurgency that is fueled by economics, not ideology - and the profits that fund it come from pilfered petroleum products that are diverted to the black market after being refined at facilities guarded by American soldiers.

From the New York Times today:

In fact, money, far more than jihadist ideology, is a crucial motivation for a majority of Sunni insurgents, according to American officers in some Sunni provinces and other military officials in Iraq who have reviewed detainee surveys and other intelligence on the insurgency.

Although many American military officials and politicians — and even the Iraqi public — use the term Al Qaeda as a synonym for the insurgency, some American and Iraqi experts say they believe that the number of committed religious ideologues remains small. They say that insurgent groups raise and spend money autonomously for the most part, with little centralized coordination or direction.

Money from swindles in Iraq and from foreign patrons in places like Saudi Arabia allows a disparate, decentralized collection of insurgent cells to hire recruits and pay for large-scale attacks.

It's a Libertarian paradise over there, a black-market bonanza, a free-market free-for-all. And the American officers on the ground get it -

Maj. Kelly Kendrick, operations officer for the First Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division in Salahuddin, estimates that there are no more than 50 hard-core “Al Qaeda” fighters in Salahuddin, a province of 1.3 million people that includes Baiji and the Sunni cities of Samarra and Tikrit.

He said most fighters were seduced not by dreams of a life following Mr. bin Laden, but by a simpler pitch: “Here’s $100; go plant this I.E.D.”

“Ninety percent of the guys out here who do attacks are just people who want to feed their families,” Major Kendrick said.

The First Brigade’s commander, Col. Scott McBride, concurs. “I don’t know that I’ve ever heard one person say, ‘I believe in a caliphate,’ ” he said.

Abu Azzam, a prominent leader of American-backed Sunni militiamen in Nasr Wa Salam, between Baghdad and Falluja, estimated that only 10 percent of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s members adhered to extremist jihadist doctrines.

“Many joined Qaeda for financial and personal reasons,” said Abu Azzam

John McCain is in Iraq right now - he will be back next week, slinging the same line of shit, my friends, that al Qaeda is in Iraq and we can't give up now. So read th whole thing and be ready to counter the coming media blitz.

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Deny, Deny, Deny - after all, it's Grunts, not Generals, who do and who die

It is safe to say that 2005 provided the defining, crystallizing moments when the whole world woke up with a brutal hangover and realized just how badly we had fucked up.

By 2005, the momentum had shifted. More than a few people were figuring out that Iraq was a fiasco, and public support was starting to drain away as the realization set in that not only had Bush screwed the pooch royally with his ill-conceived pissing contest, but we had reelected the stupid fucker and were stuck with him for three more god-damned years.

He was already up a creek without a paddle before Katrina hit and we watched a national treasure drown while he strummed a guitar and shared some birthday cake with John McCain, then did a flyover a few days later, on his way back to Washington. After the PR disaster of Katrina, and the cratering approval ratings, he needed more than a booster shot. He needed more than a transfusion.

What he needed was a spectacular theatrical production.

And so, on November 30, 2005, he took to the stage at the Naval Academy. “The National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” opened to…tepid reviews. Of course, the strategy he unveiled was essentially “We win, because I said so.” (I immediately wondered why he waited almost three years to issue such a powerful edict.)

And he stood there, behind the podium at one of the most hallowed institutions on American soil, and spun like a top - knowing full well that he was completely and utterly full of shit.

Months earlier, in the summer in fact, the RAND corporation had delivered the final report for a study commissioned by the Army in 2003 titled Rebuilding Iraq. Two versions of the RAND report were prepared - a classified one for internal consumption, and an unclassified one for public release, with the intent it might foster public discussion of the situation in Iraq.

The study spared no feelings and pulled no punches. It found plenty of shortcomings to point out - with the White House, the Department of Defense, the State Department. But the General staff at the Pentagon was not happy about being called out, so they took the cowards way out - they got busy and buried the report.

When RAND researchers began their work, nobody expected it to become a bone of contention with the Army. The idea was to review the lessons learned from the war, as RAND had done with previous conflicts.

The research was formally sponsored by Lt. Gen. James Lovelace, who was then the chief operations officer for the Army and now oversees Army forces in the Middle East, and Lt. Gen. David Melcher, who had responsibility for the Army’s development and works now on budget issues.

A team of RAND researchers led by Nora Bensahel interviewed more than 50 civilian and military officials. As it became clear that decisions made by civilian officials had contributed to the Army’s difficulties in Iraq, researchers delved into those policies as well.

The report was submitted at a time when the Bush administration was trying to rebut building criticism of the war in Iraq by stressing the progress Mr. Bush said was being made...

One of the serious issues detailed in the study was the assumption by the Bush administration that reconstruction would be minimal - negligible even. The administration persisted in clinging to the meme even after it was obvious that they had been utterly wrong, because admitting their errors did not fit the narrative. “Building public support for any pre-emptive or preventative war is inherently challenging, since by definition, action is being taken before the threat has fully manifested itself,” it said. “Any serious discussion of the costs and challenges of reconstruction might undermine efforts to build that support.”

But the most damning problem pointed out in the report was the pervasive and overarching lack of coordination. The right hand not only didn't know what the left hand was doing, it appeared to actively avoid coming in contact with comprehensive information. “There was never an attempt to develop a single national plan that integrated humanitarian assistance, reconstruction, governance, infrastructure development and postwar security,” the study said.

The study chided President Bush — and by implication Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who served as national security adviser when the war was planned — as having failed to resolve differences among rival agencies. “Throughout the planning process, tensions between the Defense Department and the State Department were never mediated by the president or his staff,” it said.

The Defense Department led by Donald H. Rumsfeld was given the lead in overseeing the postwar period in Iraq despite its “lack of capacity for civilian reconstruction planning and execution.”

The State Department led by Colin L. Powell produced a voluminous study on the future of Iraq that identified important issues but was of “uneven quality” and “did not constitute an actionable plan.”

Gen. Tommy R. Franks, whose Central Command oversaw the military operation in Iraq, had a “fundamental misunderstanding” of what the military needed to do to secure postwar Iraq, the study said.

One result was that “the U.S. government did not provide strategic policy guidance for postwar Iraq until shortly before major combat operations commenced.” The study said that problem was compounded by General Franks, saying he took a narrow view of the military’s responsibilities after Saddam Hussein was ousted and assumed that American civilian agencies would do much to rebuild the country.

General Tommy Franks is not spared one iota in the findings. It was, after all, his command, and he got virtually everything absolutely wrong. He assumed that the Iraqi police and civilian government employees would stay on the job, and had no contingency plan in the event they did not.

Poor planning.

When Baghdad fell, the heavily mechanized American forces were not suited for restoring order in the absence of the local police and security forces. Anarchy ensued. (And Rumsfeld incredulously asked, in the wake of the looting, how many antique vases a country could have, anyway?)

Then there was the decision by Rumsfeld and Franks to stop the deployment of the First Cavalry Division and other forces to Baghdad after the city fell - they opted to project an image of victory for the cameras at the expense of securing the city.

In the months that followed, tensions mounted between civilian and military occupation personnel. And the law of unintended consequences reared it's ugly head. The lack of planning for the occupation and the possibility of insurgent actions had the inadvertent effect of strengthening the insurgency that was forming the minute the first armored vehicle rolled across the border. And the negative aspects of the occupation stood out in sharp contrast and fueled the insurgents who cropped up in resistance. The American military was unable to seal the borders after the invasion, which allowed weapons and foreign jihadist fighters to stream into the country virtually unchecked. The RAND report warned that sealing the borders was still not a priority in 2005.

Needless to say, the Army's top brass was not happy with being taken to task by the impudent snots at RAND, and started questioning the reports accuracy and methodology. RAND sent a rebuttal, but the Army s an obstinate organization. They were not swayed and refused to allow publication of the unclassified version, and the classified version was not widely distributed throughout the Pentagon. “The RAND study simply did not deliver a product that could have assisted the Army in paving a clear way ahead; it lacked the perspective needed for future planning by the U.S. Army,” said General Lovelace, one of the Generals who commissioned the study, but who refused to be interviewed by the Times for the source article.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton would like to make that determination for himself.

Within hours of reading the article in the paper on Monday, Representative Skelton fired off a leter to Army Secretary Pete Geren:

Dear Secretary Geren:

I am writing to express the sincere disappointment I felt upon reading the article in today’s New York Times entitled, “Army Buries Study Faulting Iraq Planning.” I find it inexcusable that the Army would apparently allow itself to become politicized in such a manner.

The United States Army has a long and honorable tradition of carrying out the nation’s business in a professional, nonpolitical, and extremely competent manner. This makes it all the more important that when the Army finds itself involved in a situation that has not gone according to expectations, it undertake a critical assessment of what went wrong, even if that assessment reflects poorly on the Army, the Department of Defense, the Executive Branch, or Congress. We cannot improve future results without studying past failures any more than we can wish that the war in Iraq had proceeded as outlined in some of the rosier scenarios laid out before the war started.

In September 2002 and March 2003, before the invasion of the Iraq, I wrote to the President to express my serious concerns about the lack of planning for post-war Iraq. The news reports about the unreleased RAND study seems to confirm that my concerns were on the mark. The New York Times article, if accurate, suggests that the RAND study points out a variety of failures, some by military personnel, some by civilians, and some, such as the lack of coordination between agencies, more worryingly, seem to be systemic problems. Such an analysis would not only be useful to the Army going forward, but would seem to be useful to the Department of Defense and the government of the United States at large. To try to not release such a useful report, seemingly to avoid political problems, is not in the fine tradition of the United States Army and should not be acceptable to you.

Again, I write to express my disappointment regarding the Army’s refusal to release the RAND study on Iraq. I would hope that you would take this opportunity to rectify this mistake, to release the full, classified version of the report to the appropriate committees in Congress, and to allow the publication of the unclassified summary of the report.

I hope Skelton is effective, but I am not going to hold my breath. Geren was, after all, a Bush appointee, and we all know that not a one of those craven fucks have a shred of honor, and their loyalty is, inexplicably, to the pretender to the throne, when it is supposed to be to their country.

Yet again, I hang my head in shame.

There's more: "Deny, Deny, Deny - after all, it's Grunts, not Generals, who do and who die" >>

At the end of the day

AP: "Candidates Scramble to Reach Voters"

Sign of the times -- "Bush’s abuse of signing statements has been a constitutional mess for several years now — with more than 151 signing statements challenging 1149 provisions of laws, Bush is without rival in American history — but this week, matters grew particularly ugly." Seems Bush intends to ignore certain portions of a defense authorization bill. Meaning he's above the law. More at The Carpetbagger Report.

U.S. attorney scandal -- The Wisconsin Senate voted unanimously to reimburse Georgia Thompson $228,793 for her wrongful prosecution by one of the DOJ's loyal Bushies. "And remember that efforts by Congress to investigate the Justice Department's handling of the case -- in addition to other possible cases of selective prosecution -- have been firmly rebuffed (with the exception of the disclosure of one telling email)." From Paul Kiel.

Get the Swoop -- Economy is on the front-burner at the WH: "President Bush intervened forcibly to convince an initially reluctant Federal Reserve to reduce interest rates.... On foreign affairs: "One senior official commented privately to us about Secretary of State Rice: 'She is there but not there.'" Concerns over Pakistan and Afghanistan "are now concentrated.... ...Admiral Fallon has just returned from a visit to Pakistan where he held discussions with the new Army Chief of Staff General Ashfaq Kayani." Special ops to deploy to Pakistan "under nominal Pakistani command. US officials have noted... Musharraf’s position continues to weaken. They are unimpressed by any of the civilian alternatives and would be content to accept a new military leader." Swoop

Digby discussed the Reagan myth and it's the same ol' conservative story -- "They get into office, cut taxes on the rich and steal taxpayer money for their [wealthy] contributors."

Oil bonanza -- Mobil-Exxon "beat its own record for the highest profit ever recorded by a U.S. company, with net income rising 3 percent to $40.6 billion last year.... ...Exxon has benefited from a near-doubling of oil prices, from a low of around $50 a barrel in early 2007 to almost $100 by the end of the year - the single biggest jump in oil prices in any one year." Via TP: "Climate Progress notes that the other Big Five oil giants — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Shell — have seen similar trends."

Merrill Lynch in a pinch -- MA Sec of State William Galvin "filed a civil fraud complaint against Merrill a day after the firm took the unusual step of agreeing to reimburse Springfield for losses on the investments.... ...An official in Mr. Galvin’s office said the Springfield case was part of a larger investigation into Merrill’s sales of similar investments to other Massachusetts towns and cities." NYT

Playing favorites -- BTD at TalkLeft: "...blogs should not be about favorite candidates. It should try to persuade and/or pressure Dems, candidates and officeholders, on the issues that matter to them. In 2007, I was very critical of the blogs' performance on withdrawal from Iraq. Why? Because it was candidate centric, not issue centric.... ...There is nothing more important that we can do, as citizens, activists or bloggers than fight to pressure DEMOCRATS to do the right thing on OUR issues.... ...It's more important BY FAR than 'fighting' for your favorite pol because your favorite pol will ALWAYS, I mean ALWAYS, disappoint you."

Those killed in the dual suicide bomb attacks in separate Baghdad markets rises to "as many as 100 people." McClatchy Newspapers questioned, "Were Baghdad bombers willing suicides or victims?"

U.S. troop cuts in Iraq may be put on hold according to Gen. Petraeus. Senior Pentagon officials countered by saying "that President Bush [should] also consider the stress on U.S. ground forces and other global military risks when determining future troop levels." Chairman of the JCoS, Adm. Michael Mullen: "I find all the talk about a freeze or a pause [in troop cuts] in Iraq so interesting." More remarks at WaPo.

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McCain lovefest

Last night during the end of the day wrap-up, I mentioned that Joe Conason asked what is a fair question: "Will the press get over its love for McCain?"

St. John, poised to sprint from Super Tuesday with a cache of delegates that ultimately could crown him as the GOP presidential nominee, has Der Arnold, Rudy, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and a cast of Big Media stars fawning over the B.S. Talking Express. It's enough to jolt a hallucinogenic flashback of the 2000 mainstream press lovefest of a smirking gaffe-ridden Texas grifter governor.

How surreal it was that media pushed Bushie as the bubba with whom so many wanted to have a beer. Today, the preznut provokes a gag response from the national hangover he's given us from one too many WH rodeos -- the Iraq invasion, its continuing violence, his Katrina siesta during our nation's worst natural disaster, and a dizzying, spinning bronco that tossed us into the deficit abyss. Now here's comes "maverick" McCain who would keep the U.S. in Baghdad until our great-great grandchildren grow as old as he. And the crowd roars:

...there's a bizarre disconnect in the warm embrace between McCain and the electorate's mavericks. They hate the Iraq war, while he's willing to fight it for another century. The most pro-war presidential candidate in a decade is winning the 2008 GOP nomination thanks to the antiwar vote.

[Keep reading... more after the jump.]

A full 66% of independents think that the U.S. should completely withdraw from Iraq no later than 12 months from now, according to a Jan. 18-22 L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll. McCain, meanwhile, said last month that the U.S. might stay in Baghdad for another 100 years. He continually expresses bafflement at the idea that that might not be such a good thing. "It's not the point! It's not the point!" he snarled at reporters recently. "How long are we going to be in Korea?"

And yet he dominated the antiwar vote in New Hampshire, with 44% to Romney's 19%, according to CNN exit polls. Ron Paul, the only actual antiwar Republican running, drew just 16% of voters who said they were against the war. The three finished in the same order among antiwar voters in Michigan, even though Romney won the state overall.

The same pattern holds true in the case of voters who despise George W. Bush. In Florida, for example, McCain clobbered Romney 48% to 18% among those who described themselves as "angry" at the president, according to MSNBC exit polls.

So the voters most hostile to the war are backing a potential commander in chief who makes Bush look gun-shy. More than three years before the Bush administration elucidated the radical doctrine of preemptive war, McCain unveiled a plan during his first run at the presidency called "rogue-state rollback," in which "we politically and materially support indigenous forces within and outside of rogue states" -- including Iraq, North Korea and Serbia -- "to overthrow regimes that threaten our interests and values." And if the "odious regimes" crack down on freedom fighters, the U.S. should respond with force. In that campaign, McCain was the neocons' choice against the more internationally "humble" George Bush.

What's wrong with these McCainiacs? Why have they gone gaga over a dedicated war hawk? Maybe these voters aren't against the Iraq War as much as they begrudge Bush for having started something he cannot finish -- miffed that the Incompetent-in-Chief has conducted Operation FUBAR. I also wonder how many of these antiwar independents are disgruntled Repubs who, in their disgust of Bush's mismanagement of Iraq and record-breaking deficits, disavowed their GOP affiliation in anger.

St. John, however, has staked his claim on the need to win in Iraq. In April 2007, he said, "I believe we can succeed," and "that failure in Iraq would be 'catastrophic.'"

Campaigning in Florida up to the 2008 primary, McCain attacked Romney by saying, "If we surrender and wave a white flag, like Senator Clinton wants to do, and withdraw, as Governor Romney wanted to do, then there will be chaos, genocide, and the cost of American blood and treasure would be dramatically higher." His accusation that Romney had "once supported a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq" provoked Mitt to demand an apology. McCain responded invoking the specter of disloyalty to the troops:

...McCain lashed out at his rival, saying: "The apology is owed to the young men and women serving this nation in uniform, that we will not let them down in hard times or good. That is who the apology is owed to."

..."I've been criticizing [Mitt] for months." He added that it makes sense to highlight them in Florida, noting: "I'm in a state that has enormous military involvement. I'm trying to convince them that I'm best qualified to be commander in chief."

McCain's support for the surge of troops in Iraq nearly doomed his campaign early last year, but his decision to stand by it helped revive his White House bid when fortunes in Iraq improved. The leading GOP candidates have all sought to emphasize their support for the Iraq war as polls show that a large majority of Republicans support it.

McCain's emphasis on Iraq also returns the focus of the campaign to foreign policy and the military, issues that the longtime senator and military hero believe play into his strengths....

Notice that plug for the "improvements" in Iraq despite the fact that political reconciliation remains illusory and volatile. Makes you wonder what planet these reporters inhabit. The GOP-faithful establishment media have deemed the Surge™ a success, and in doing so, manipulate the hopes of rubes who cheer U.S. hegemony throughout the globe. Maybe, just maybe, if America pours more blood and treasure into Bush's foreign misadventure, they imagine the U.S. can banish defeat and shout hoo-ray with St. John riding to the rescue. "By golly," we could win!

At best, it's a deluded proposition induced by a potion brewed by media sorcery, fueled by McCain campaign rhetoric, stoked by a compulsion to win and to be right -- void of the moral consequences of the high price for an enduring occupation. At worst, it's another scam preying on the primitive appetites of human nature perpetrated by corporatists who rake in billions from war hyped by the Noise Machine.

Which brings me back to more questions that Conason originally posed about the media's lovefest for Mccain:

Given the unabashed affection that so many in the mainstream media display toward McCain, will he be covered fairly and without favoritism? Will he be subjected to the same sarcasm, gossip and investigative zeal so routinely applied to, for example, his potential Democratic rival Hillary Clinton? Will McCain's panders, flip-flops, gaffes and fumbles receive the kind of attention that embarrasses other politicians? Or will he remain exempt from the unsentimental scrutiny that is supposedly the standard of our political journalism?

Hey, almost everybody seems to know the answers already! But for a few minutes let's pretend we don't.

The problem that now confronts the journalists who have lavished so much love on McCain is whether to let America in on a sad secret about the straight-talking maverick, which is that he has transformed himself into a fairly typical politician. After years of tending the McCain mythos, its builders must either continue to maintain it or tear it down.

Like most appealing political myths, his includes more than a little truth. He's still that salty, wisecracking, accessible, irrepressible pol, surely among the most likable characters in Washington (as long as you don't get on his bad side). For better or worse he still says what's on his mind, unedited (at least sometimes).

But McCain's performance in the California debate proved again that he has abandoned the principled positions admired by so many independents and even Democrats, though not always by Republicans and conservatives. Where was the straight talker when Janet Hook of the Los Angeles Times asked whether he would vote for his own McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill if it came to the Senate floor tomorrow? That guy would not have avoided the question, as McCain did, peevishly retorting that the cursed bill will never come up for a vote. But then that guy left the building many, many months ago.

McCain used the same evasive tactic when Hook asked him about the Bush tax cuts, which he opposed on principle in 2001 and which he currently seems to support retroactively. She pointed out that he originally criticized those cuts as biased toward the superrich, an argument we would expect to hear from a Republican rebel bucking the party establishment and the big boys. But now he meekly claims that he worried about offsetting that fat-cat feast by taking enough away from everybody else in budget cuts. He changed the subject to his political youth as a "foot soldier" in the "Reagan revolution" two decades earlier.

Those little episodes got scant attention in coverage of the debate, while most stories focused on the silly semantic spat between McCain and Mitt Romney over the Iraq escalation. "'Timetables' was the buzzword," McCain kept muttering, perhaps incomprehensibly to most viewers. But as the former maverick keeps shedding the moderate positions that dismay the Republican base, he is hollowing out the persona that launched a thousand adoring profiles. He dropped his opposition to the religious right years ago, and has since walked away from the campaign finance reform crusade that once defined him.

Go read the rest of Joe Conason's article (sub. req.) with a Salon site-pass to get the nitty-gritty on McCain's "soft-money operation" -- the Reform Institute -- and its hidden financing from "insurance giants like AIG," "the executives of Cablevision," and Echostar. Another Reform Institute name pops up, Rick Davis, lobbyist pal and the campaign manager of K Street McCain. Where's the media lens scrutinizing St. John's money ties and his flip-flop on campaign finance purity? If Clinton was the name in this story, I daresay the coverage would be non-stop scandal mongering.

Recently we've heard squawking from Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter about the likelihood of a McCain nomination. Do you honestly think Coulter will vote for Hillary over McCain, that is, if she can vote? Oh, the dramatic hissy fits these blowhards throw at the prospect of a Democratic president. Don't believe these twisted passion plays. Conservatives have devised a contingency plan to "use their time out of power to grow their movement and one of the main ways they do this is by obstructing anything positive the Democrats want to do."

To that end, I wouldn't bet the farm on our mainstream press corp giving even a wildly popular Democratic nominee carte blanche. They will sensationalize every flaw and every stumble, and I'm willing to predict they'll give McCain the edge glorifying his heroic stand, ignoring his unkept baggage. Voters be damned. It's a propaganda war to tilt the election in favor of the über-hawk McCain, the potential CinC of a 100-year war.

Ask what motive do our M$M shills have in fronting McCain as a favorite son and promoting him as The One who can deliver victory in Iraq? War makes a lot of money for TPTB and millionaire media stars will slavishly follow their corporate masters lead. After Super Tuesday and as we near Election Day, I fully expect media big guns to start booming a "defeatist" barrage against the Democratic candidate, whether that's Obama or Clinton, both of whom have promised to withdraw troops from Iraq. I've previously forewarned:

You can count on our fetid press corps to "swift-boat" the nominated Democratic WH contender as they did in 2004. Using a tested strategy, when they're not yapping at shadows, media lapdogs will idly sit, giving air time to dubious claims without challenging the GOP surrogate or politician smearing the Democratic candidate.

The old broadcast journalism saying, "If it bleeds, it leads," suits a perpetual bloody war. Perhaps propelling a war hawk like McCain into the Oval Office is in the corporate media's best interests. But it certainly isn't ours.

While I agree the winds of fortune favor electing a Democratic president this year, don't count out our media's infatuation with McCain. Clearly, "antiwar" independents have fallen for the spin.

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At the end of the day

Campaigning in Cal-ee-for-nee-ah -- "Home to nearly one in eight Americans, California is a giant, diverse political landscape, enormously expensive for candidates yet offering the campaign's largest batch of delegates." Who's doing what from AP.

Joe Conason asked, Will the Press Get Over Its Love for McCain? Hmmm, probably not. But wingnut heads continued to explode over McCain's perceived liberal bent. Oh, those crazy wabbits!

Paul Krugman spoke glowingly of John Edwards: "If 2008 is different, it will be largely thanks to Mr. Edwards. He made a habit of introducing bold policy proposals — and they were met with such enthusiasm among Democrats that his rivals were more or less forced to follow suit." Amen to that! Also, from Krugman, "Obama does Harry and Louise, again."

Republican fraud? -- Say it isn't so! "As part of our ongoing efforts to institute and strengthen financial controls at the National Republican Congressional Committee, we learned earlier this week of irregularities in our financial audit process. Since these irregularities may include fraud, we have notified the appropriate law enforcement authorities. We are aggressively and thoroughly investigating the matter and, while we determine the details, we have terminated our relationship with a former employee who was engaged as an outside vendor." TPM

Quote of the day -- Sen. Saxby Chambliss spokeswoman on whether the senator would endorse John McCain: “We have a lot of balls in the air..." Oh? She had nothing more to report on the, um, endorsement.

James Risen subpoena -- Risen's attorney David N. Kelley said "the subpoena issued last week seeks the source of information for a chapter of James Risen's book "State of War regarding CIA efforts to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program." Spencer Ackerman pointed out, "The Justice Department is going after New York Times reporter Jim Risen for the non-crime of revealing President Bush’s illegal domestic surveillance program. It’s pathetic and unsurprising—a fixture of Bush Justice—that the activity DOJ pursues isn’t the blatant illegality of Bush violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but instead the fact that government sources blew the whistle to a great investigative reporter."

Spinning Gates -- "Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates attempted to spin the negative downturn in Afghanistan, claiming that 'NATO has had a very successful year in 2007' and that the significant increase in suicide bombings in 2007 was the 'manifestations of a group that has lost in regular military terms.' “ Uh huh. "Arguing that increased acts of violence are signs of progress is a common Bush administration tactic." Oh, yeah. Via TP.

The deadliest day since the Surge™ began -- 70+ dead, 170 wounded in Baghdad killed by two women suicide bombers who "were Down's Syndrome victims exploited by al Qaida.... The explosives were detonated by remote control in a co-ordinated attack after the women walked into separate crowded markets, said the chief Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad General Qassim al-Moussawi." WaPo reported that the "two bombings killed 58 people, according to Iraqi police, and wounded more than 170 others."

Starting Monday -- At FDL, "the assault on civil rights laws in the last few years, with the impact of the Roberts Court on years of civil rights precedents front and center..."

From the land of absurdity -- What passes as American journalism continued to spread the lie about Clinton's remarks on the economy and global warming and "a new right-wing meme emerges." Carpetbagger Report

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At the end of the day

Clinton & Obama -- The Democratic debate in CA liveblogged at FDL here, part 2 here, part 3 here, and the final thread here.

The Democratic debate transcript from CNN.

Fact check of the GOP debate from CA: "Romney commits multiple distortions in the last scheduled GOP debate. Others stumble, too."

Barack attack -- "Republican researchers are poring over the Illinois Democrat’s three-year Senate voting record, looking for fresh fodder to be used should Obama become the Democratic Party’s nominee." Via The Hill.

Caning McCain -- "Poor Hugh Hewitt and the rest of right wing talk radio. They are very upset by McCain and are trying to torpedo his candidacy." John Amato

"No Answers, No Deputy" -- "Senate Democrats plan to delay a floor vote on President Bush’s nominee [Mark Filip] for the No. 2 post at the Justice Department until the department responds to several Judiciary Committee oversight letters."

Senate Democrats held up on the economic stimulus package until next week awaiting the return of Clinton and Obama. At the NYT, Herszenhorn wrote that Senate Repubs "blocked a $157 billion economic stimulus package championed by Senate Democrats, who said they would have no choice but to quickly adopt a cheaper, more streamlined plan approved earlier this week by the House." And about that "surrender flag" you mentioned in your article, Mr. Herszenhorn. Maybe you can deliver it to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., for hiring Bill Kristol.

Al Qaeda leader killed -- Yet another No. 3? How many are there? Read Steve Benen.

A new GAO report on veterans with TBI -- traumatic brain injury -- was posted by Pale Rider at Blue Girl's place. Intel Dump offered a TBI-PTSD study of Iraqi vets from the New England Journal of Medicine.

"U.S. casualties rise in Iraq after falling for 4 months."

Iraq -- "Terrorists aren't Mosul's only problem. The city's Sunni and Shiite Muslim Arabs detest each other, and the Arabs distrust the city's Kurdish, Christian and Turkmen minorities. Although 60 percent of Mosul's population of 1.8 million is Sunni, three-quarters of the provincial government is Kurdish, and the Arabs suspect the Kurds of wanting to take over the city."

Po' paranoid conservatives -- They see enemies everywhere! Yikes! Oh! Eeeeeek! Wouldn't it be smarter to put them on meds rather than putting their kind in office?

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At the end of the day

Tonight's GOP debate from CA -- Liveblogged by Josh Marshall here and here.

Debate headline: McCain and Romney spar bitterly in GOP debate

Edwards has left the building -- Good-bye, John, and good luck! Here's to hoping someone is smart enough bring you on board somehow, some way... if that's what you want. Best wishes to Elizabeth, too.

Ed Kilgore offered some thoughts on " Why Edwards Lost" vs. Jonathan Cohn on " Why John Edwards Won."

Speculation over who will benefit from presidential candidate drop-outs.

Polls for 13 Super Tuesday states: The Democratic frontrunners -- Clinton ahead in AL, AZ, CA, MA, MO, NJ, NY, OK, and TN. Obama ahead in IL and by a nose in GA. Clinton and Obama are neck and neck in CO, CT. Click the link for GOP results and caveats. New state polls to come in 24 hours at Pollster Blog. With John Edwards having withdrawn, polls can change dramatically. So beware. There are still a lot of "undecideds." Wheeeee-oooooo! It's a horse race!

He's better than AbuGonzales but -- AG Mukasey dodged and weaved again on whether waterboarding is torture and he "got a harsh reception on Wednesday from senators of both parties, who used his appearance on Capitol Hill to accuse the Bush administration yet again of contempt for the rule of law and American values." NYT

Krugman on today's GDP report and "three reasons" to withhold conclusions on "whether a recession or recession-like period has started."

Rove & Zelikow -- Emptywheel: "By this point, it should surprise no one that Karl Rove does a lot of dirty business using his phone and blackberry. Apparently, that extends to softening the reports of the 9/11 Commission.... ...Rove carried on back-channel discussions with Philip Zelikow, the Commission's Executive Director."

Conservatives and fascism by David Neiwert at Orcinus.

Bipartisanship -- What does it mean in D.C.? Greenwald explained it's "already rampant in Washington" and it happens when "enough Democrats join with all of the Republicans to endorse and enact into law Republican policies, with which most Democratic voters disagree." See Glenn's list of "bipartisan" lawmaking.

Another Repub says no -- Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) will not seek reelection. "There are now 28 House GOPers vacating their seats." (h/t Logan)

Speaking of the GOP exodus -- " 'The open-seat situation is so lopsided as to deny Republicans any chance of taking back the House in 2008,' said David Wasserman, who analyzes House races for The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan publication." Furthermore, "Republicans face a worrisome financial gap in comparison to House Democrats" fundraising. Ending 2007: Democrats -- $35 million cash, $1.3 million debt. Repubs -- $5 million cash, $2 million debt.

Predatory mortgage lenders -- The FBI is investigating 14 "companies, including some of the world’s largest banks..." John Amato provided commentary and video.

Suicidal soldiers -- "Suicides among active-duty soldiers in 2007 reached their highest level since the Army began keeping such records in 1980, according to a draft internal study... Last year, 121 soldiers took their own lives, nearly 20 percent more than in 2006.... At the same time, the number of attempted suicides or self-inflicted injuries in the Army has jumped sixfold since the Iraq war began." Thursday WaPo

Outposts in Iraq -- In an effort to firm up security, "Maj. Gen. Jeffery W. Hammond said he would increase the number of garrisons in [Baghdad] from 75 to 99 by June... ...[M]eanwhile, the remains of 19 people -- 10 heads and nine intact corpses -- were discovered in the town of Muqdadiyah in Diyala province, northeast of the capital, police said. Elsewhere, officials said a suicide car bomber in the northern city of Mosul injured at least 15 people."

Dowd and Brooks -- Echidne unveiled the NYT columnists' codewords about "gender stereotypes" and Clinton Derangement Syndrome.

Fickle Tweety competed with Bloody Bill for the title, Wrongest Wingnut of All. His past praise of Rudy and what a diff a day makes at TP.

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At the end of the day

Clinton, McCain win Florida primary -- CNN: For the Democrats -- Clinton 50%, Obama 33%, Edwards 14%, Kucinich 1%. On the GOP side -- McCain 36%, Mitt 31%, Rudy 15%, Huck 14%, Paul 3%. Exit polls, gender and age breakouts at the link. More Democrats turned out than Repubs. Heh. [See Update II]

Digby rightly criticized MSNBC for behaving "rude, snide and dismissive about more than a million and a half Democratic voters in Florida (more than double the turnout from 2004)... ...If it is inappropriate for Clinton to declare victory it's also damned inappropriate for every gasbag on television to say that all these votes are completely meaningless. They may not add to the delegate count, but they were cast in good faith by American citizens and they should be treated with respect by these jackasses." Amen to that!

Clap harder! -- At Political Animal, Kevin examined "who [clapped] when" during Bush's SOTU and articulated valid points and comparisons between Hillary and Barack.

Disappearing wingnuts on the Hill -- "Two Republican representatives, Kenny Hulshof of Missouri and Ron Lewis of Kentucky, have announced plans to leave Congress, adding their names to a list of more than 24 House Republicans who will not be running for re-election. " Hulshof plans to run for governor of MO. Lewis wants to be with his family. NYT

Russ Feingold (D-WI) explained the privacy issue of FISA in video.

Ezra Klein rocks! -- Challenging a NYT article pronouncement, "Mr. Bush has spent years presiding over an economic climate of growth that would be the envy of most presidents," Ezra delivered a colorful chart on "Average Economic Growth by President" based on GDP. Who won? The Kennedy-Johnson Administration followed by Clinton. Go look at the presidential performers. Via Krugman who also had some choice remarks.

The House overwhelmingly approved -- by a vote of 385 to 35 -- a $146 billion economic stimulus program. Sen. Harry Reid "said the bill would be on the [Senate] floor by late Wednesday and was likely to be approved this week." Potential Senate amendments to the bill -- "to give more money to food banks, to increase food stamps temporarily, to increase subsidies for home heating and other energy costs for low-income families, to adopt alternative energy tax credits and to finance infrastructure projects." More at the link.

Sexual assaults -- Alaska is the worst in the nation: "In nearly 1,000 cases studied over two years, the average age of victims was 16, while the average age of those accused was 29. In four out of five cases, the suspects were relatives, friends or acquaintances.... Overall, 89 percent of the victims were female. One out of three cases were reported more than a month after the abuse occurred, leaving evidence hard to collect." Sexual violence is "worst in rural areas."

Pentagon WMD$? -- "The Office of Naval Research will test fire an electromagnetic railgun (EMRG) at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, Va. on Jan. 31, 2008, between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. EST. The gun will be fired at over 10 megajoules of energy – a power level never before achieved by an EMRG." See Spencer Ackerman.

Shock in Iraq -- "Civilians stumbled upon nine headless bodies in a field about 60 miles north of Baghdad on Tuesday. ...The nine, including three women, had been targeted because they were suspected of being part of a local awakening council, or concerned local citizens group, that was working with U.S. troops to fight al Qaida in Iraq, said a police officer involved in the investigation. ...On Jan. 17, a bombing killed 12 people in Diyala, and unidentified and headless bodies are found sporadically in the province." More disgusting news: "In Baghdad, five roadside bombs" injured 31 that included "five U.S. soldiers and seven members of the Iraqi security forces." McClatchy

Wasting tax dollars -- "A federal report released Tuesday says the Army Corps of Engineers charged the government hundreds of millions of dollars for supervising projects in Iraq that have been identified as having failed or fallen behind schedule specifically because oversight was lax or nonexistent." Adding insult to injury, "its rates were on average more than twice as high as those charged by an Air Force office that has also been active in Iraq reconstruction."

Tomorrow at the Daily Howler -- "Defeat of the Rubes." Bob Somerby: "Lower tax rates produce higher revenues! The rubes have been handed this flat-earth nonsense for years–and your hard-charging “press corps” just sits back and watches. Last night, two rubes repeated this blather to Luntz. Tomorrow, we give you full details." Main link.

Success! -- Blue Girl got her computer thanks to all of you who helped. Special recognition to Kevin Drum for his support!

UPDATE I: Check Yellow Dog for the 411 on Ron Lewis of Kentucky.

UPDATE II: Rudy drops out, endorses McCain. And I erred in stating that more Democrats turned out than Repubs. There are more registered Democrats (41%) than Repubs (37%) in FL... but the total number of voters who cast ballots for Democratic candidates came to 1,683,984 vs. 1,920,164 votes for Repub candidates. How dare I forget Independents. That'll teach me.

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Bush's 2008 SOTU -- Full text and his last! Woo hoo! The number of specific words referenced: 23 for "terror", "terrorist", or "terrorists", 11 for "al Qaida", 2 for "Taliban", 16 for "tax", "taxes", or "taxpayers", 9 for "economy" or "economics", and 6 for the "surge". Peruse a series of fact checks on Bush's final SOTU at TP.

FISA Showdown -- In case you missed it, check Pale Rider and Glenn Greenwald and "What's Next" from Paul Kiel. Statement from Hillary at FDL. Previous remarks from John Edwards.

Oh, you liberal! -- Demonstrating how Repubs and our SCLM have denigrated a great political word that makes me proud, the Reuters headline sums it up: "McCain, Romney lob 'liberal' smear in Florida push." Funny thing... what insult sticks to McCain is nonsensical. He's got a secret plan to get OBL? Oh?

More on the Mitt vs. McCain cage match on the eve of the Florida primary.

On the road to the WH, it's all about the delegates: "The possibility of a long-term slog is real for Democrats, given that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama appear evenly matched... It is less certain on the Republican side, pending the outcome of the party’s primary [in Florida] on Tuesday."

Torture -- TPM headline: "Negroponte Confirms U.S. Use of Waterboarding."

Intelligence failure -- Via Laura Rozen, Milt Bearden of the Washington Independent wrote: "American intelligence has a serious problem. But it is not that the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine services, Jose Rodriquez, allegedly destroyed, in 2005, the videotapes of the enhanced interrogations of terrorist detainees. No, the real problem is that institutional oversight of the intelligence community has failed. It is dysfunctional, perhaps irreparably so. There is no adult supervision of American intelligence or how the White House chooses to use it. " Read the whole thing.

Fix the Bankruptcy Bill! -- Emptywheel reported "good news" that senators plan to fix the "bad bill." But the "bad news is that we're not going to do anything about it until 2009."

Death In Iraq -- Five U.S. soldiers killed in Mosul when a military convoy was "hit by a roadside bomb.... ...It was a particularly bloody day for the U.S. military in a city that has become a gathering point for the Sunni insurgency, and where Iraq's prime minister vowed to have the 'final' battle with the group al-Qaeda in Iraq." Troop deaths for January -- 36 -- up from December's 23 killed.

Pakistani Taliban -- They have "extended their reach across all seven of Pakistan's frontier tribal regions and have infiltrated Peshawar, the provincial capital, heightening U.S. concerns that an insurrection may be broadening in the nuclear-armed nation." Uh oh. McClatchy

Help Blue Girl get a new computer -- Please. And thank you!

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At the end of the day

John Edwards campaigned in Dublin, GA. "Georgia Senate minority leader Robert Brown of Macon introduced Edwards at the farmer's market where an estimated crowd of at least 400 had gathered... 'Senator Edwards is the best candidate. He can win in November,' Brown said before rally. 'He's also very much in tune with what's going in in places like rural Georgia.'"

Also in GA, Obama visited a church in Macon where he spoke about his faith: "Poverty has no place in a world of plenty, and hate has no place in a world of believers."

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) plans to endorse Obama on Monday, according to the NYT. Steve Benen added more insights.

FISA tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. -- In an interview with McClatchy's Matt Stearn, "Clinton said she would break from the campaign trail to return to Washington Monday" in planning "to vote to block a bill to extend the expansion of electronic eavesdropping powers because it provides immunity for phone companies..." Per a FDL update, Obama will be there, too. Yee haw!

Mitt's up! -- Romney rose in FL polls via Chris Bowers: "Zogby now shows a 30%-30% tie, while yesterday McCain lead 31%-28%. Insider Advantage shows Romney ahead 26%-24%, whereas yesterday it was a 23% to 23% tie. Rasmussen shows Romney extending his lead to 33%--27%, whereas three days earlier Romney only led 27%-23%. In fact, the last four polls conducting Florida tracking show the state moving from McCain 25.5%--23.5% Romney, to Romney 29.3%--27.8% McCain." Looks like a Repub slugfest to the finish.

McCain's running mate -- Lemme imitate SNL's church lady: "Could it be... Condi?" Thus sayeth the Prince of Darkness, "...talk to ordinary people about [Condi] and they say, boy, that's terrific. The politicians don’t like it.” Video at TP.

Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday questioned Huckabee about evidence of Saddam's WMDs. The Huckster replied, "I don’t have any evidence.... ...My point was that, no, we didn’t find them. Did they get into Syria? Did they get into some remote area of Jordan? Did they go some other place? We don’t know. They may not have existed. But simply saying — we didn’t find them so therefore they didn’t exist — is a bit of an overreach." Shorter Huckster: "Eeeb, eeeb, eeeb, eeeb!"

Krugman series, Part I: "Why has the Bush economy been so lousy?" See also bmaz's recent post, "Our Collapsing Economy - How We Got Here."

U.S. military death toll reached 3,934. "The AP count is three higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Friday at 10 a.m. EST."

Iraqi troops arrived in Mosul, "site of recent deadly insurgent attacks, in an effort to suppress militant groups." Iraq's Defense Ministry spokesman Askari said, "They are Iraqi army forces and include troops, mechanized troops and air force. The plan will be similar to the ones implemented in Baghdad and Diyala [province]." LATimes

So now Bush shifts the military's focus to Afghanistan and Pakistan. " 'The sense I get is that at least in military terms they are getting a response from Washington which they weren't getting all along,' said Schaffer, a career foreign service officer who was deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia in the administration of former President Bush."

"The Week Ahead" at SCOTUSblog -- "No oral arguments are scheduled and no non-capital orders are expected to be issued from the Court this week." Reply briefs due Friday by 2 p.m. on Dada v. Mukasey.

On personal note -- It's fundraising time and for a good cause. Blue Girl needs a computer. So if you can throw some bucks her way -- the goal is $750 -- she can get back online sooner than later. Purdy please?

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