I'm sure that this is just another sign that the Surge™ is working

DEVELOPING STORY

Tahsin al-Sheikhly, the official spokesman for the Baghdad security plan was kidnapped from his home by armed militants today. The attack left three of his bodyguards dead.

An Iraqi official spoke with the press on condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to speak to the press.

The officials said Sheikhly, a Sunni who often appeared with U.S. military and embassy officials at news conferences to tout the successes of the crackdown that began in Baghdad and surrounding areas more than a year ago, was abducted from his home in Baghdad's Al-Amin neighbourhood at around 2:30 pm (1130 GMT).

"Armed men stormed his home at a time when there were clashes in his neighbourhood," a security official with the interior ministry said.

"They burnt his home and stole two cars and weapons before fleeing with him."

I told 'em, god-damnit. I told them that they were being foolishly optimistic. I told them that when the guns fall silent, the person who stays alive assumes the other guy is reloading, they sure as hell don't bank on a Constantine-like conversion happening in mid fight. Fucking idiots.

Updates as the story develops...

BG @ 10:49

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Is anyone else sick to death of hearing about how the "Surge™" has been a stellar success?

When the guns fall silent, the safest bet is to assume that the other guy is reloading.

Why does that simple truth seem to so thoroughly elude those who support the so-called Surge™?

Google "surge is working" and look what pops up - 1,910,000 hits in .32 seconds. The Surge™ got underway on February 14, 2007 - and less than two weeks later, the keyboard commandos with the waning erections were already talking up the success of the scheme and their own flagging Johnsons. Patrick Ruffini at Townhall.com was the first in line to slaver, a mere ten days after the first boots hit the ground. It took less than a month for fatassed chickenhawk Robert Kagan to smirk from the pages of the Washington Post that, yeah, people criticized Bush for not having a plan B, but (witty and erudite as he is) he found an unimpeachable response to the critics: Did the critics have a backup plan in case it did? (Kagan has apparently mastered the playground retort of "I know you are, but what am I?") A week later, Gordon Cucullu was penning mash notes to David Petraeus and the AEI architects of the scheme from the pages of the nutty-as-squirrel-poop New York Post.

Except...

None of these paeans to the success of an unsustainable troop buildup took a careful assessment of the situation. For one thing, very few of those who touted the success considered the impact of Muqtada al Sadr ordering his militia, the Jaish al Mahdi, to stand down for six months. Another tactic that has been touted as brilliant since it's inception was that of arming and paying off Sunni militants, many of whom had been insurgents, to form into neighborhood protectorates to oppose the foreign jihadists that have taken up arms in Iraq to train in real-time against American forces.

What an unholy, fucked up mess these idiots have created.

It was a given that desperate measures were going to have to be taken during the brief time the surge window was open. Too bad that they took the drastic steps that they did instead of the ones proposed by Dr. Steven Metz. Instead, they stubbornly pursued a path that many pointed out severe problems with from the outset.

And now, a lot of those warnings that were issued by people like me who have consistently opposed the United States occupation of Iraq are coming true - just read this one paragraph from a post at Abu Aardvark, and follow the links, and see what I mean:

What with this and the Anbar Salvation Council threatening to take up arms against the elected council and refusing to fly the new Iraqi flag and dismissing the entire Parliament as illegitimate and Awakenings leaders declaring that no Iraqi police are allowed in their territory and clashing with them when they do and blaming Shi'ite militias (and not al-Qaeda) for the wave of attacks against them and fighting over territory and threatening to quit if they aren't paid, it really is hard to see why anybody would think that there might be anything troublesome about the relationship between the Awakenings and the Iraqi "state". Nothing to see here but great big gobs of victory folks, please move along.

On Friday, hundreds of members of the newly armed Sunni militias in Baquba donned traditional keffiyeh headdresses and took to the streets demanding that the police chief, who has been accused of operating with a Shiite death squad, be fired. They shut down two neighborhoods in the capital of Diyala province. Shops were ordered closed, and people were ordered to stay inside. The police ordered a curfew be instituted.

And on Sunday, explosions and gunfire wreaked havoc and killed approximately 50 people in attacks that targeted Iraqi Security Forces and American-backed ad hoc militias. The attacks unleashed as Secretary of Defense headed to Iraq for an unannounced get together with Iraqi leaders and members of the US General staff, including David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno.


Just hours before Gates landed in Baghdad, a massive suicide car bomb exploded on the periphery of a local market in Salahuddin province north of Baghdad. That blast alone killed 23 and injured at least 45. The blast frought down part of the market structures, and additional victims might still be trapped in the rubble said a police spokesman.

Another car bomb detonated near Ramadi, killing three. Two more car bombs were reported in Mosul. In all of the attacks, Iraqi soldiers and security personnel were specifically targeted, and in one of the explosions, four Iraqi soldiers were killed.

West of Mosul, at least 21 people were killed as insurgents battled members of one of the US backed Sunni militias. Five "Awakening council" members were killed and 10 insurgents perished in the fighting.

And John McCain has staked his entire presidential bid on convincing us that four more years of staying the course and experiencing more of this "success" is just what the country needs.

Cross-posted from Blue Girl, Red State

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Teflon diplomacy

On Tuesday, Condi made an "unscheduled visit" to Iraq -- a "detour" that tore her away from the Riyadh horse-trading session -- to praise a new Iraqi law, which she described as forward progress toward national reconciliation. We can believe her because why?

First, Condi is speaking. Her "mushroom cloud" tendency toward hyperbole begs scrutiny of her every word. Second, the lack of political progress in Iraq undermines the Surge™ and Bubble Boy can't tolerate bad news. When an Iraqi opportunity arose -- the parliament passed a new law, yippee! -- Condi flew to the rescue to offer a glowing review. Typical lecondel, her trip was an exercise in teflon diplomacy, espousing unrealistic optimism that won't stick, denying dire consequences of the conflicts on the verge of igniting into renewed sectarian strife.

Since my B.S. meter cracked long ago from one too many WH lies, everything this administration says and does falls by default into one of two categories: Con Jobs or ITMFA. Reading Wednesday's Washington Post and the NYTimes accounts confirmed my cynicism. Each reported on Rice's remarks, the new law, and added interesting tidbits unique to their respective articles.

Beginning with the Washington Post (with emphasis):

In a 20-minute news conference in the heavily fortified Green Zone, Rice said the recent passage of a law intended to make it easier for former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to return to civil service jobs would encourage Iraqi unity despite its potential shortcomings.

"This law, the 'accountability and justice law,' is clearly a step forward for national reconciliation," she said. "It is clearly a step forward for healing the wounds of the past."

Clearly, it is not.

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

The law seeks to address the Bush administration's controversial decision in 2003 to force most Baath Party members, who were largely Sunni Muslims, out of government jobs. The decree helped give rise to the Sunni insurgency that continues to this day.

Some Shiite and Sunni lawmakers said the law would allow thousands of former low-level Baath officials to return to their government jobs. But critics, mostly hard-line Sunni lawmakers, say the measure could actually force out some former Baathists still working in the government.

The NYTimes offered more details and reactions to the new law. And they ain't so good (with emphasis).

...the new law has loopholes that some critics have said may ultimately make it more restrictive than the old one. Although Ms. Rice acknowledged that the new measure remained controversial, she praised it as an example of Iraq’s emerging democracy.

“I don’t know of any law that has ever been passed that is everything that everybody wants,” she said. “That’s the nature of democracy. The law will be more than some people wanted. It will be less than some people wanted. That’s the nature of democratic compromise.”

Some leaders said the law would give more jobs to ex-party members, while providing purged Baathists with pensions, which the old process did not do. But some hard-line Shiite politicians who supported the law, and minority Sunni political party members who did not, agreed that the legislation was even more restrictive than the original process, and that it would be used to justify further purges.

One clause prohibits former Baathists from working in several of Iraq’s most important ministries, including Foreign, Interior and Defense, despite American plans to integrate more Sunni Arabs into Iraq’s security forces. Critics of the law said it could have the opposite of its intended effect, and eventually rekindle sectarian bloodshed after the current lull in violence.

Unbelievable. Both Shiites and Sunnis concur that the new law is worse than the old version that sparked the insurgency. But Condi? Her teflon diplomatic reflex shrugged off the negatives in favor of platitudes, smiles, photo ops, and enthusiastic attaboys. Shouldering the tough work needed to achieve sustained détente -- not her mission.

Promoting the success of Bush's Surge™ and manufacturing good news out of Iraq is Condi's Job One, an endeavor the mainstream press readily undertakes. The Iraqi government accomplished something political. Oh, call a press conference, start spreading the news, ignore the dark clouds breaking the horizon, and keep the message upbeat. If bad stuff happens -- and it probably will -- the Administration will move the goal posts and stall for time. Meanwhile, Bush can count on Rice to spread happy talk, words rolling off the lecondeling tongue like water ricocheting off a duck's ass.

Google News headlines about Condi in Iraq

Observe the following lecondeling spin for the sheer audacity of its robotic Bushie loyalist script. From the WaPo article:

"When I hear that the surge was to give the Iraqi people a chance for political reconciliation, I say that's absolutely right," Rice said, referring to last year's U.S. troop buildup. "And while it hasn't always moved as fast as some of us sitting in Washington would like, it has certainly moved."

Like Cheney's bowels after a bagel binge. Now read Bush's remarks from the NYTimes:

“A political system evolves and grows,” he said. “It grows when people have confidence. It grows when the grass roots begins to agitate for change. It grows when there’s alternatives. There’s competition emerging.”

Is "competition" George's quaint term for "purge"?

The NYTimes article also delved into "a national oil revenue sharing law and an agreement on the contested northern city of Kirkuk," added cause for worry. Snip:

On Sunday, a broad swath of sectarian, ethnic and secular parties formed a coalition to push for greater central controls on regional hydrocarbon resources and to set aside a planned popular referendum on the status of Kirkuk, an oil-rich city that Iraq’s powerful Kurdish alliance regards as part of the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan.

The coalition pits nationalist interests against the Kurdish and Shiite parties, including the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, which have pushed for more regional power. Competing Kurdish and Arab claims for Kirkuk, which remains among Iraq’s most troubled areas, remain a particularly delicate problem, which American officials have compared to a ticking time bomb.

I don't know who the "American officials" are but Condi "clearly" avoided the controversy. A happy face applied to her diplomatic excursion, she willfully deceives us (and herself as role of Bush enabler) by negating the downside of the volatile situation in Iraq.

The WaPo report ends with a curious episode -- a raging fire required an Iraqi oil refinery "shutdown." A military spokesman disavowed that the fire ignited due to "coalition overflight" contrary to what "Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani suggested... ...An engineer at the refinery said employees suspected that followers of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were behind" the inferno burning at the facility "near the southern oil-rich city of Basra."

An investigation has commenced but I doubt we will hear much about it. The investment in "the success" of the Surge™ and our Big Media shills won't bother most of us with full details. The incident could simply drown in the hum of progress in Iraq and Condi's refrain, "clearly a step forward."

There's more: "Teflon diplomacy" >>

Iraqi Soldier Turns His Weapon on American Soldiers, Killing Two and Wounding Three

On Saturday, the military announced that on December 26, Capt. Rowdy Inman and Sgt. Benjamin Portell, soldiers assigned to the Third Squadron of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, based at Fort Hood, Texas, died during a joint American-ISF combat operation in Mosul in northern Iraq. When the deaths were announced earlier it was said merely that the two died of small arms fire. That was true - but not the whole story.

A senior Iraqi military officer said that insurgent gunmen hiding in a vehicle and a building opened fire on the patrol, and during the firefight , one of the Iraqi soldiers turned his weapon on the Americans he was ostensibly supposed to be fighting with. It was almost certainly calculated that he killed the Sergeant and the Captain, and wounded three others.

He did not target other ISF personnel, but singled out Americans. The Iraqi soldier who murdered the two Americans attempted to flee, but was apprehended. Another soldier was detained as well, indicating that the gunman is suspected to have had at least one accomplice.

Iraqi Brigadier General Mutaa Habib al-Khazraji, who commands the Iraqi Army 2nd Division said that the gunman was an infiltrator who had ties to the insurgency.

The American military has thus far refused to cite a motive for the shooting, but would confirm that two Iraqi soldiers were in custody and that possible insurgent links were being examined. U.S. Army spokesman Major Gary Dangerfield did say that based on evidence thus far collected, and witness statements from American and Iraqi soldiers “we feel pretty confident that we have the right guy.”

Dangerfield also reported that B.G. al Khazraji had ordered an immediate stand down of theSecond Army Division under his command, and said that he would cooperate fully with the investigation. “We will not let this tragic, isolated incident hinder our partnership with the Iraqi Security Forces and keep us from establishing security in our area of operation,” he said.

The incident is sure to renew the pervasive questions about the loyalty of the Iraqi forces who are bing armed and trained by Americans to take over the security of the country as American forces withdraw.

From the New York Times:

...The Iraqi Army remains dominated by Shiites and Kurds, many of whom are suspicious of the allegiances of Sunni Arab soldiers. Many Sunnis, in turn, fear that the Kurds and Shiites are faithful only to their factions and are habitually hostile to Sunni Arabs.

...The American military did not disclose the circumstances of the shootings until Saturday afternoon, shortly after Reuters reported that Iraqi commanders had said that the American troops had been deliberately shot by an Iraqi soldier.

...The shooting was deliberate,” another Iraqi Army commander in Mosul, Brig. Gen. Noor al-Din Hussein, told Reuters. “It was not an accident.”

...He said the Iraqi soldier had been in the army for a year and was an Arab from the Jubouri tribe, which in Mosul is mostly Sunni. “There is some penetration” by insurgents, he said, “and we want to purify the Iraqi Army.”

News outlets have been quick to point to reductions in violence in Baghdad and western Iraq, but other parts of the country, specifically the north, remain gripped by violence and under the sway of insurgents fighting the American occupation.

Diyala Province, the most troubled region in the country has been rocked by a series of bomb blasts. In the provincial capital of Baquba, a bomb blast wounded three civilians, and north of Muqdadiya, an insurgent-planted bomb exploded and killed six and wounded four. A suicide bomber in Baquba killed four and sounded 23, and A truck driver was killed by gunmen in northeast Diyala. An American soldier died when an IED exploded under his vehicle.

Baghdad experienced the deadliest suicide bombing since September when, on New years Day a suicide bomber attacked a funeral for the victim of a previous suicide bombing, killing 34 and wounding 38.

As the unsustainable shell-game known as the Surge™ winds down, and American forces necessarily withdraw from Iraq, incidents such as this are likely to take place with greater frequency. Barrels of ink and trillions of pixels have been devoted to the infiltration of both the Iraqi Military and the Iraqi police by insurgents and all the things that can go wrong when you make a deal with the devil.

This would be a good time to start paying attention and taking notes, in case you haven't been. Petraeus comes back to Congress to peddle his special line of bullshit in March.

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They said they were planting the seeds of Democracy; instead corruption took root and is thriving

Iraqi and American officials have admitted that in spite of a statistical drop in violence during the Surge™, the state slipped further over the brink into lawlessness over the last year. Corruption and theft have never really been out of favor in Iraq, but occupied Iraq has become nothing short of a kleptocracy. According to an independent analysis, Iraq is the third most corrupt nation in the world - of 180 countries surveyed, only Somalia and Myanmar were more corrupt than Iraq.
The scope of the theft is staggering. It is estimated that as much as 1/3 of what American taxpayers are spending on reconstruction contracts ends up stolen, with a healthy cut going to militias. The top anticorruption official in Iraq estimated that $18 Billion had been filched since 2004.

That official resigned his position and fled the country a few weeks ago, after 31 of his agencies employees were hunted down and executed over the past three years.

[Keep reading...]

All this stealing and pilfering undermines the ability of the nation to provide essential services, yet providing the basics is integral to sustaining the recent perceived advances in security. It also facilitates a distrust of government and throws up roadblocks to reconciliation as groups with an established foothold in the Shiite dominated government resist reforms that would rein in the systemic corruption.

The average Iraqi, for the most part, finds the thieving to be a major source of embarrassment. They feel like the corruption and thievery affects them on an emotional and moral level, and point to what the Q'uran says about theft - Allah is against it. "God does not love the corrupters," is a theme that runs throughout the Q'uran. The Iraqis who were horrified at the looting in the wake of the invasion and toppling of Saddam Hussein are doubly ashamed of the libertarian free-for-all their country has turned into because the tentacles of corruption reach into every nook and cranny of the society.

If you have children in school, you have to buy their textbooks from, a profiteer at three times the price charged by the ministry of education. If you want to wash your car, chances are the carwash is stealing the water from the degraded infrastructure that supplies water to homes and citizens. If you have a loved one with cancer, their pain medications are only available on the black market and are devastatingly overpriced. If you need a job, pay a $500 bribe and become a policeman.

And it has degraded so far that corruption is no longer a means to wealth, it is a way of life. It has created an endless spiral of dishonest dealings, and everyone feels the taint.

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A day chock-full of Iraq news

First, a leading Sunni political group and its parliamentary bloc head are alleged to have connections to car bombs. The government said Adnan al-Dulaimi, leader of the Accordance Front, could be stripped of the immunity from prosecution he holds as a member of parliament if he was found to have links to car bombs. He is denying the charges.

That’s your Surge™ at work. Breathing space for Sunni “concerned citizens groups” to build bombs!

Meanwhile, the Turks are ready to enter the Kurdish area of Iraq. The Turkish parliament’s enabling resolution is for one year.

However, an old friend, Iran, gets mention again here. Supposedly, many of the Kurdistan Workers Party members have slipped across the border into Iran.

And Bush keeps poking Congress to approve Iraq occupation money. Rep. John Murtha has now uttered the magic word “compromise,” which on Congressional Democrats and Iraq issues, is Beltway-speak for “roll over and play dead.”

There's more: "A day chock-full of Iraq news" >>

Iraq good news-bad news department on Sunni “groups”

Our military brass admits it has overcounted Sunni militiamen “concerned local citizens,” to the tune of 77,000 rather than the actual 60,000.

Good news? That’s that many fewer armed Sunni militia forces to possibly inflame Sunni-Shi’a issues, to put it mildly, in the future.

Bad news? That’s 17,000 fewer “concerned local citizens” than the Surge™ previously claimed credit for.

Ehh… the What-a-Gon will probably dismiss it as just another rounding error.

Oh, and don’t “concerned local citizens” sound kind of like “concerned citizens councils” so beloved of folks in places like Trent Lott’s Strom Thurmond-loving political world?

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When all else fails, change the talking points!

From the department of moving goalposts:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 — With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.

Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote.

Now, the focus has shifted to smaller, short-term goals - like authorizing a budget for the nation. (But the Iraqis are already in the process of doing that anyway.)

And of course, the Bush maladministration is all hot and bothered to get the U.N. mandate that authorizes the presence of the American occupiers renewed. (They do this routinely because it's a puppet government that would not exist for more than thirty days if the Americans weren't propping them up.)

And de-de-baathification, so members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party can reenter government service. (That's merely pro forma - former Baathists have been rehired on the q.t. for some time, because they are the ones who actually know how to, you know, do the jobs.)

[Keep reading...I'm not even warmed up yet...]

The administration insists that they have not given up on their larger goals, averring that they will be met *eventually.* But damnit, they have to figure out a way to make lemonade, and do it pronto.

They sold the AEI's Surge™ scheme by packaging it as a necessity, needed to give the political process "breathing space" to achieve reconciliation. Tours were extended, leaving soldiers in combat for 15 months with only 12 months dwell-time. They sacrificed American lives like they meant nothing. And the Iraqi parliament went on vacation the entire month of August.
Tony "Karma's a Bitch" Snow excused the fecklessness of the Iraqi politicians with a blasé "It's 130 degrees in Baghdad in August," conveniently forgetting that his war-criminal boss sent American fighting forces into that hellhole, and they didn't even get the benefit of operating in an air conditioned Green Zone when it was 130 degrees.

But reconciliation didn't happen.

In fact, Maliki and Hashemi snipe at one another like two bleached-blond teenage girls vying for head cheerleader in a one-high-school Texas football town.

Instead of sucking it up and admitting that things didn't work as planned, they are insisting that modest steps such as these - if taken soon - could, maybe, perhaps, if they cross their fingers and say the right magic words in just the right order and cadence, perhaps while hopping on one foot and chanting "I believe" - set the stage for "more progress." You know - like the Surge™ set the stage for the arming of the Sunni thugs who in the past were the insurgents who were killing Americans. (Well, give 'em guns and money and you can rent some temporary loyalty...)

But not to fear! aWol is "applying pressure" on the Iraqi government to produce some sort of political progress. “If we can show progress outside of the security sector alone, that will go a long way to demonstrate that we are in fact on a sustainable path to stability in Iraq,” said one senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity. On Saturday, [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan] Crocker said the military had created opportunities for progress, and added that there were "indications" that Iraqis wanted to move forward on the local and national levels. But he quickly dialed back the expectations and cautioned against expecting quick results on the core issues.

“We are seeing encouraging signs of movement. This is going to be a long, hard slog,” he said, apparently channeling Rumsfeld, "It is going to be one thing at a time, maybe two things at a time, we hope with increasing momentum,” he said. “It is a long-term process.”

Although violence has ticked downward in recent months, the administration has not touted this development, because if they did, scrutiny would surely follow, and that they certainly don't want.

Furthermore, there are clear signs that any influence Americans have over Iraqi politicians is dwindling. In the absence of religious and ethnic reconciliation, the expectation has been dialed back to "accommodation." An American official, again speaking on condition of anonymity, said “We can’t pass their legislation. We can’t make them like each other. We can’t even make them talk to each other."

Crocker at least realizes that “The political stuff does not lend itself to sending out a couple of battalions to help the Iraqi’s pass legislation.” Still, he insisted that there are some positive signs that Iraqis are interested in making their own headway. For example, he pointed to Provincial governors, who are pressing for a law to define their powers. “We are past the point where it is an American agenda,” the ambassador said. “It is what needs to be done in Iraqi terms.” (In plain English - this is how warlords are made.)

Officials in both Baghdad and Washington are both realistic about the fact that military gains are not enough to overcome the deep divides that separate Iraqi factions. But in both capitals there are leaders who still engage in magical thinking. “We need a grand bargain among all the groups,” said a member of the Iraqi government - speaking - you guessed it - anonymously.

The most disturbing part of the whole thing is the repeated references to "long hard slogs" and the allusions to extended, multi-year commitments of American forces, like it's no big deal. But it is a big deal. Maybe not to these worthless, faithless and feckless jackals who have nothing to lose. But to the rest of us, it sure as hell is.

And if you agree, vote Democratic. Give the congress a Democratic president, and just as importantly the votes to end the obstruction of the Republican wingnuts who have no qualms about obstructing progress at the expense of American lives.

George aWol Bush has made the biggest mess the world has ever seen, and intends to keep the fucking up going apace and leave a mess so dire that the next president won't be able to extract us from.

Don't let him get away with it. Congress holds the pursestrings. Not one dime without strings attached. Not one dime.

There's more: "When all else fails, change the talking points!" >>

So much for the success of the Surge™

When the Resident stood in front of the nation on January 10 and announced that he was going to go ahead and implement another American Enterprise Institute pipe dream the reason he gave for escalating forces was to give the nascent Iraqi government the "breathing space" to achieve political reconciliation.

So much for that grand ideal.

The sniping is incessant, the skirmishes bruising. For months, the verbal warfare between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, and his Sunni vice-president, Tariq al-Hashemi, has been escalating.

Now Iraqi politicians and American diplomats and analysts fear that the very public feuding between two of Iraq's most influential leaders will doom even the minimal hopes that exist for progress on a host of key benchmarks — such as holding provincial elections and equitably sharing oil revenues.

"This is not merely about personalities quarreling over something trivial," said Anthony Cordesman, an expert on the Middle East for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. "It's about control of the state. ... It's about basic interests, factional and sectarian, and survival."

In spite of a decline in violence there has been no hint of political reconciliation, and no progress on any of the benchmarks in anyones assessment; Iraqi, United Nations or United States.

In the absence of political progress, it is feared that violence will escalate once more when the "Surge™" ends and the United States begins to reduce the number of troops in Iraq.

[Keep Reading...]

The widening social chasms in Iraq go far beyond the bickering and sniping between Hashemi and Maliki, but the hostility between the two leaders illustrates clearly the failure of the Surge™ to bring Iraq's troubles to an end, in spite of the reduction in violence.

On Tuesday, Maliki accused Hashimi of abusing his position on Iraq's 3-member presidency council and blocking legislation passed by the Shiite-dominated parliament. (To become law, legislation passed by the parliament must be unanimously approved by the council.)

Maliki also ridiculed Hashemi's Iraqi Sunni political party, calling it "unrepresentative" of the country's minority Sunnis, in spite of the fact that the party is the largest Sunni bloc in the parliament.

Hashemi, a former military officer who never joined the Baath party, has taken his shots at Maliki on a few occasions as well, especially regarding security and human rights issues. He has pushed for amnesty for thousands of Sunnis who have been detained and imprisoned. He has visited overcrowded prisons with television cameras in tow to criticize Maliki and his government over the treatment of detainees, most of whom are Sunni Arabs. Maliki dismissed Hashimi's forays into the prison system as nothing more than political grandstanding.

Hashemi has accused the Maliki government of turning a blind eye to the sectarian violence that has claimed the lives of three of his siblings - and the accusation outrages Maliki.

American officials are frustrated that the Iraqi leaders are not acting to resolve the impasse and Phil Reeker, an official at the U.S. embassy last week urged the two men to put their differences aside. "Leaders have to take advantage of this opportunity to continue serious work in focusing on the most important matters at hand to move the country forward. I think it's very important that the Iraqi people are looking to their leaders to provide them with progress, with security, with services, with jobs, and it is legislative activity that is going to lead to that."

Other Iraqi politicians are frustrated with the situation as well. "It's becoming more than political; it's becoming personal, and that's unfortunate. I blame both of them. I hope they can just get over it, because it's affecting the credibility of the government," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of parliament. "At this moment, they should be together now that the security situation is better. Iraq needs teamwork."

A GAO report issued last month found that the Iraqi government had failed to realize most of the 18 benchmarks established by the U.S. as signs of progress and reconciliation. Of vital importance - the GAO found that sectarianism within the government undermines the reconciliation effort. No one sees a quick solution.

Anthony Cordesman put the disputes in historical context, and put it bluntly - "There is not going to be reconciliation because of some magic agreement that will make everybody forget past grievances."

Othman, the Kurdish parliamentarian, agreed. "The lack of trust is the main issue," he said. "Maliki is not ready to have Sunnis as part of the decision-making process. There is a distrust there."

From the outset, the Bush administration has failed to consider the historic and ethnic realities of Iraq. That is why the situation is so thoroughly and utterly FUBAR, and was doomed to be from inception. Continuing the American presence only aggravates the situation. As long as American forces occupy the country, it is not going to get any better.

When faced with no good options, the least-bad option is the only intelligent choice. And right now, the least-bad option is to get the hell out of there and let the Iraqis solve their own problems. The wrong done to that country and it's citizens is of aWol's making, but we can no more solve the problems with military force than one can put out a fire with kerosene.

There's more: "So much for the success of the Surge™" >>

The Surge?

Try the surge in bribing Iraqi sheiks. $100K of smackers would make a lot of people loyal, as long as they knew there was the possibility of getting even more.

But, as the dollar goes south as fast as the Surge’s bump in troops is scheduled to draw down, will the sheiks, like supermodel Gisele, start demanding to be paid in euros?

And can you blame many Shi’ite leaders for being suspicious?

Hell, Moqtada al-Sadr might lead a Shi’ite Awakening for enough money, or he might not. But some Shi’ite leader certainly would.

Hell, Ahmed Chalabi led George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, et al into the Neocon Awakening four and a half years ago after he got enough U.S. perks.

More seriously, the article points out that many of these Awakened Sunni Sheiks may well be double agents, drinking American-bought cognac while U.S. field troops go marching up blind alleys on their unreliable tips.

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Welcome Home

The 10th Mountain Division out of Ft. Drum, NY is heading home – and carrying heavy baggage. 52 of their own died fighting in Iraq, and they left two behind, still missing after being abducted last May, their fates unknown. “That was pretty catastrophic for them,” said Major General Michael Oates, 10th Mountain Division commander.

The 10th Mountain Division had their tours extended from 12 to 15 months 10 months in to what was for many a second or third deployment. They were ten months in, and counting down the days until they shipped out for home when the word came down that all Army personnel in Iraq would be extended to 15 months.

Several returning soldiers dropped down to kiss the ground when they returned home, and what they looked forward to enjoying at home differed. Specialist A.J. Mettao employed the word “surreal” to describe his feelings. “I can’t even explain it. The air is so different. You’re not breathing sand. I’m looking forward to living life and just partying.” Another returning soldier, Chief Warrant Officer Harold Bickel wanted nothing more than to see his wife, but he also wants to “go hunting in the woods” and to celebrate New Years Eve in Las Vegas. Asked what she most looks forward to PFC Maria Basulto had an answer ready: “getting out of the Army.” She is certainly no fan of the extended tours that made the Surge™ shell-game possible. “The hardest part was finding out at 10 months that we had to stay. That was messed up.”

When I was growing up, Viet Nam was the looming specter, and everyone I knew had someone who had either just returned, was in-country or had orders to go. Every family had a way of marking time – some simply circled a date on a calendar. In our house it was a safety-pin chain. 365 safety pins would be affixed to the living room drapes, and every night after dinner, we took one off and put it in a cigar box. At one point, when three family members were deployed simultaneously, there were three chains hanging from the drapes. At first, the chains coiled on the floor. But every day, they got shorter. Then one day it no longer touched the floor, and eventually the youngest kid could no longer reach it. The final pin was always removed by the person we were marking time for when they walked in the door. I can not imagine what I would have felt if that chain I lived and died by had been lengthened from 60 to 150. My cousin Gary died in March of 1967 with 97 days left on his tour. 97 safety pins are still, 40 years later, in my aunt Lorraine’s jewelry box. She asked my Mom to send “Gary’s lifeline” to her at the funeral. I can still see my mother, standing on the step-stool and crying as she removed that string of safety pins and, with a shaking hand, drop them into a manila envelope addressed to my Aunt Lorraine when we returned home after the funeral.

That was when it became real. We had been to the funeral, we had viewed his body. Aunt Lorraine had stoically received the tri-corner flag as his casket was lowered into the Kansas earth. We had hugged and cried and clung to one another. But that intact chain of safety pins…watching my mother do something so simple and ordinary and mundane as remove a safety-pin from a curtain was the cathartic moment that opened the floodgates of grief in my tiny little four-year-old heart. My favorite cousin was gone, and he was never coming back.

Families develop coping strategies to get through it. Non-military people don’t realize it, but families serve, too. Everyone always has a vision of what the long-awaited reunion will be like. Some are apprehensive, some are idyllic, some are wistful and prosaic, while others are simply overwhelming. Many soldiers return to meet for the first time children born while they were deployed. Families assembled in the gymnasium at Ft. Drum yesterday were no exception. One young mom whose husband had yet to meet his daughter said her top priority was giving her husband the time and space to get to know his 9-month-old daughter. Another Army wife, who has done this before, and whose children are a bit older, was not circumspect at all. Rather, she was matter-of-fact...”I just know that I’m not taking out the trash ever again. I have a full trash can right now because I knew he was coming home. I didn’t empty the bathroom trash, the bedroom trash – nothing. It’s all waiting for him.”

Relief, humor, grief, apprehension – emotions run the gamut when G.I.’s return home. But there is always somber reflection, too. One Specialist, returning from his second tour was matter-of-fact. “The first time I went over, I was excited and wanted to do my job and make a difference. But that was before I saw how war really works. The only way to stay sane is to shut down emotionally.” He went on to say that he had lost good friends on both tours and that he finds himself “desensitized” and worries about the effect it will have on his three-year-old marriage, and his wife’s complaints that he is “distant” even when they are in the same room. “I’m out in ’09. I can’t do this anymore. I don’t like the person I’ve become.”

--BG

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I suppose I have to blog about that speech...

...or risk getting a "Bad Blogger! No Biscuit!" citation.

But really...what is to say? It was the Diet Coke of Presidential Speeches. There was no substance and the flavor wasn't quite right, but nonetheless, it was pretty much what was expected; rancid aftertaste and all.

But like Diet Coke is calorie free, the Resident's speech was fact free:

• "Iraq's national leaders are getting some things done," such as "sharing oil revenues with the provinces" [The oil law fell by the wayside, was doused in gasoline and set alight a full day before the bullshit banquet was served up this evening.]

• Bush made the proclamation that Baqubah, capital of Diyala province, (once, (impossibly) simultaneously considered both restive and the al Qaeda - Iraq mothership) is now pacified. "[t]oday, Baqubah is cleared." stated the President. [The pResident makes this claim, yet on 27 August the head of the Foreign Service Office in Diyala said the security situation was far from stable and impeded access to both sustenance and energy needs.]
  

• Further separating himself from reality, he thanked "the 36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq." [He was only off by a dozen or so. Give a dry drunk moron credit for not fucking this up worse...]
  

• He referenced a panel report assembled by Marine Gen. James Jones, and presented to congress last week, but he misrepresented it, saying that "the Iraqi army is becoming more capable..." [The report actually says that the Iraqi Army "cannot yet meaningfully contribute to denying terrorists safe haven." It also described the 25,000 member national police force as being infiltrated to the core by sectarian militias, and at best of specious loyalty. The Jones report recommended that it be disbanded.]

• He pointed to the relatively restive Baghdad of today, as compared to the Baghdad of a year ago, and pointed to lessened violence in the capital as evidence that his Surge™ strategy is showing success. [When the ethnic cleansing is complete, the supply of people fleeing and being murdered naturally dries up.]

At least in Japan miserable failures like the fool currently occupying the oval office have the decency to go sideways. But not this Dionysian fuckwit. He will go to his grave, at far too distant a date, and after enjoying too much health for too many years, convinced that we lost Iraq because I personally didn't clap loud enough.

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Statistical Gymnastics Come Under Close Scrutiny, Outed as Bullshit

Recent assertions by the U.S. military that violence in Iraq has markedly decreased in recent months has come under severe scrutiny from experts both inside and outside the government. Consensus is that that statistics offered by the military are questionable at best, as the pattern emerged that the military simply ignores negative trends. (Before anyone screams "Outliers are tossed all the time!" let me save you the humiliation of a lecture - I actually know what an outlier is. For the record, an outlier is a data point that is more than three standard deviations from the mean. You can't just call any data point you don't like an outlier and omit it to get the result you want and expect your findings to be taken seriously.)

The administration has pinned everything on the reduction of violence metric to prove that finally they have a strategy that is working! That is what Gen. David Petraeus is going to say in front of congress next week when he comes to give his aWol's report on the state of security in Iraq. He is expected to try to convince the congress that there has been a 75% decrease in sectarian attacks. (Problem there: I do not think that word actually means what they want us to believe it means.)

When others look at the full range of data, they find that the military cherry-picks the data for positive indicators and ignores the negative. "Let's just say that there are several different sources within the administration on violence, and those sources do not agree," Comptroller General David Walker told Congress on Tuesday in releasing a new Government Accountability Office report on Iraq.

Meanwhile, military officials would have us believe that the CIA, DIA and GAO are all using flawed methodologies that give an inaccurate picture.

The intelligence community has its own problems with military calculations. Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in Washington. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," the official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal."

"Depending on which numbers you pick," he said, "you get a different outcome." Analysts found "trend lines . . . going in different directions" compared with previous years, when numbers in different categories varied widely but trended in the same direction. "It began to look like spaghetti."

One of the troubling trends is the ommission of violence attributed to Shia militias fighting other Shia militias, which has gripped Basra and last month resulted in the assassination of two southern provincial governors.

According to a spokesman for the Baghdad headquarters of the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), those attacks are not included in the military's statistics. "Given a lack of capability to accurately track Shiite-on-Shiite and Sunni-on-Sunni violence, except in certain instances," the spokesman said, "we do not track this data to any significant degree."

Attacks by U.S.-allied Sunni tribesmen -- recruited to battle Iraqis allied with al-Qaeda -- are also excluded from the U.S. military's calculation of violence levels.

Here it might be beneficial to remember that the Iraq Study Group report that was released in December identified "significant underreporting of violence," noting that "a murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the sources of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the data base." The report concluded that "good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals."

They are bringing their wares to the Capitol next week and the hucksters, pitchmen and carnival barkers are hocking the cherry-picked data in a most full-throated manner.

I just have two words for my countrymen, especially the 535 of 'em that control the pursestrings: Caveat Emptor.

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Operation: Move Those Goal Posts!

Last January the Resident forged ahead with the Surge™, selling it by frequently referencing the Friedman Unit, and pleading for six more months like a junkie whore pleading for a bump.

In May, the Resident prevailed with the supplemental spending bill, and the war was funded through the end of fiscal year 2007 on 30 September. One of the conditions attached to the supplemental, PL 110-28 mandated that the GAO report to Congress on 01 September assessing the progress of the Iraqi government on 18 separate benchmarks.

The GAO released their report on Tuesday. The assessment found that only three of 18 benchmarks had been met.

The picture is bleak. That means there is only one thing to do...Move the goalposts!

Now, since the test has been graded and an F- has been awarded (Three of 18 is 17%) the White House wants the Congress to ignore the failure to meet the benchmarks - which by the way were proposed by the White House and the Iraqi government, not Congress - and concentrate instead on the alliances that are now being made with Sunni Sheiks. The White House also absurdly insists that arming the Sunnis enhances the relationship with the Shia dominated government of Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

You know, since they insist - lets take a moment to look at that arrangement. We are arming the very people who were killing Americans this time last year, the same people that were once the greatest threat to the stability of the country. Additionally, so much ammo is going to Iraqis that our cops stateside are training with paintballs. (Trust me on this - there is no fucking comparison between a 9mm and a paintball gun!) This is truly a sick joke, especially when they flog the lie that this clusterfuck is necessary to 'keep Americans safe.'

The Pentagon immediately commenced with the protesting. One of the nits they picked: The GAO used 'old' data...all the way back through the end of July! And that is just not fair, you see, because August was better! If that data was included, the benchmarks would be nearer! (I'm curious...Were they supposed to do the analysis over the long Labor Day weekend?)

The report determined that violence remained high....prompting Pentagon officials to once more insist that the August numbers would have improved the numbers considerable. (Really? The Yazidis might disagree. 500 Yazidis were killed in coordinated bomb attacks in mid-August. August saw the single most deadly attack of the entire civil war.)

The Pentagon cranked up the Wurlitzer, and House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (MO-07) put on the funny pants and danced like a good little monkey to advance the PentaSpin.

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) said Pentagon officials had told Republican leaders that the GAO had relied on outdated information....He added that lawmakers were far more interested in the assessment coming next week from Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker.

Roy is, of course, referring to the 'report' that the White House is producing for Petraeus and Crocker to deliver. And Roy should speak for himself. He is the Minority whip, and most of the members on the Majority side of the aisle (with the exception of the pod-person that replaced Brian Baird when he popped in for a dog-and-pony show) have had General Petraeus' number since 26 September 2004, when he threw his support behind Bush and the war with a fawning Op-Ed in the Washington Post. (I am still non-plussed that I seem to be the only person having a fit about it. What's up with that? Generals are simply not supposed to weigh in before an election, and I frankly hoped it would at least get a mention when he was in front of Congress before receiving his fourth star.)

Roy can look forward to the Happy-Talk Express all he wants. But something tells me that it is not going to roll down smooth tracks. Congress has about a hundred million angry bees in their collective bonnet, and every last one of us sent our bullshit detectors in for servicing in advance of the PR offensive that is supposed to convince us to sacrifice a few thousand more of our children on the altar of Bush's ego.

There's more: "Operation: Move Those Goal Posts!" >>

A Surge in Ethnic Cleansing

A child and his bicycle cast a shadow over a puddle of blood
after a sectarian attack in Baghdad.
Photo by Ahmed al-Rubaye/AFP-Getty images

You know, there is nothing quite like a successful ethnic cleansing to put the brakes on sectarian violence.

It was not long after the invasion that the slide toward civil war started, but it really got ginned up and the hatred unleashed in earnest after the initial bombing of the al-Askiri Shrine in February 2006. That was the flashpoint, the now-all-bets-are-off event that set the entire country aflame.

In the time since, the ethnic cleansing has claimed countless victims, but the sectarian violence does seem to have abated recently. But don't greet that as good news just yet - the sectarian killings have abated somewhat because they have been effective - victims have either been killed or fled their neighborhoods. When the ethnic cleansing in a neighborhood is complete, there are no more victims to target.

When Gen. David Petraeus goes before Congress next week to report on the progress of the surge, he may cite a decline in insurgent attacks in Baghdad as one marker of success. In fact, part of the reason behind the decline is how far the Shiite militias' cleansing of Baghdad has progressed: they've essentially won. "If you look at pre-February 2006, there were only a couple of areas in the city that were unambiguously Shia," says a U.S. official in Baghdad who is familiar with the issue but is not authorized to speak on the record. "That's definitely not the case anymore." The official says that "the majority, more than half" of Baghdad's neighborhoods are now Shiite-dominated, a judgment echoed in the most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq: "And very few are mixed." In places like Amel, pockets of Sunnis live in fear, surrounded by a sea of Shiites. In most of the remaining Sunni neighborhoods, residents are trapped behind great concrete barricades for their own protection.

The process was hastened under cover of the Surge™ - Rafiq Tschannen, chief of the Iraq mission for the International Organization for Migration, says that the fighting that accompanied the influx of U.S. troops actually “has increased the IDPs to some extent.”

One of the reasons for the Surge™ was to stem the tide of ethnic cleansing of Baghdad - but it has hardly worked out that way. In fact, it has had the opposite effect. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July was up slightly from February, when the escalation started. The Iraqi Red Crescent estimates the number of internally displaced persons has more than doubled since the beginning of the year. Consider that for a moment - in the six-plus months since the troop buildup started - the troop buildup that was supposed to quell the sectarian violence - the number of internal refugees has doubled. In six months. The first half were displaced over four years. From Baghdad alone, nearly 200,000 refugees have been created in six months.

I half expect Resident Evil™ to come back from Oz and attempt to sell that decade-long commitment that Petraeus has been alluding to by pointing out that if we'll just hang in there for a dozen or so years, and sacrifice another ten thousand Soldiers and Marines on the altar of his ego, we'll win because everyone will be dead or gone!

There's more: "A Surge in Ethnic Cleansing" >>

The PR is surging along just fine

Even the most ardent supporters of this clusterfuck will have a hard time defending this.

Or maybe not.

Let's set aside for a moment that I think those juggernauts to the war zone on the taxpayer dime are a ridiculous waste of money, security and time and should be ceased immediately. The bottom line is that idiotic Senators and Representatives are going to keep traipsing in and out of Iraq to take in Dog-and-Pony Shows™ until a congresscritter dies over there.

But the Kabuki doesn't stop with the performance for the critters and the camera - oh no, baby.

The Psy-Ops heathens are also manipulating the perceptions of the lawmakers that the Iraqis and the American forces walk away from the meetings holding. (CENTCOM, of course, disavows all knowledge of the smear and manipulation campaign.)

War supporters get their official bios pulled off the House and Senate websites. War critics....not so much.

Representative James Moran (D-VA) was one whose record and bio were cherry-picked:

The sheets of paper seemed to be everywhere the lawmakers went in the Green Zone, distributed to Iraqi officials, U.S. officials and uniformed military of no particular rank. So when Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) asked a soldier last weekend just what he was holding, the congressman was taken aback to find out.

In the soldier's hand was a thumbnail biography, distributed before each of the congressmen's meetings in Baghdad, which let meeting participants such as that soldier know where each of the lawmakers stands on the war. "Moran on Iraq policy," read one section, going on to cite some the congressman's most incendiary statements, such as, "This has been the worst foreign policy fiasco in American history."

The bio of Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.) -- "TAU (rhymes with 'now')-sher," the bio helpfully relates -- was no less pointed, even if she once supported the war and has taken heat from liberal Bay Area constituents who remain wary of her position. "Our forces are caught in the middle of an escalating sectarian conflict in Iraq, with no end in sight," the bio quotes.

"This is beyond parsing. This is being slimed in the Green Zone," Tauscher said of her bio.

Tauscher is right to be pissed - her record was distorted and manipulated. And that is putting it kindly. On Tauschers info sheet, under "latest Iraq vote" it was noted that she had voted in favor of legislation requiring a withdrawal from Iraq to start within 120 days of the bills enactment. And she did indeed vote that way - last May, during the battle over the supplemental funding bill. But on August 2nd, she voted for her own bill, which mandates that G.I.'s receive as much dwell-time as they spend in the war zone before they can be returned to battle.

They conveniently left out that bit , as it would likely have been a bit too popular with the soldiers she was meeting with.

Somewhere, Goebbels is smiling.

There's more: "The PR is surging along just fine" >>

A small taste of reality for a plane load of potentates

A C-130 leaving Baghdad with a clutch of potentates aboard came under fire shortly after takeoff, and had to take evasive maneuvers and fire flares to get away unscathed.

Sens. Mel Martinez (R-FL), Richard Shelby (R-AL) and James Inhofe (R-OK), and Rep. Bud Cramer (D-AL) were leaving the country after popping in for a quick peek and to take in a (Dog-and-Pony) show.

"It was a scary moment," said Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., who said he had just taken off his body armor when he saw a bright flash outside the window. "Our pilots were terrific. ... They banked in one direction and then banked the other direction, and they set off the flares."

"We were jostled around pretty good," said Cramer, who estimated the plane had ascended to about 6,000 feet. "There were a few minutes there where I wondered: 'Have we been hit? Are we OK?'"

Close call be damned, the predictable potentates aboard were quick to add that they still fully support the troop buildup (ridiculously marketed to a gullible public as "Teh Surge™") and that they believe in the reality that was presented, not the one that lit up the sky outside their plane as they trundled off toward home.

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It's only $50 Billion, and besides, we'll pay for it with tax cuts!

It was announced yesterday that Resident Evil™ plans next month to ask Congress for an additional $50 Billion dollars in funds to sustain the build up of American forces in the ongoing occupation of Iraq.

These funds would be in addition to the $460 Billion in the defense budget for FY 2008, and $147 Billion provided in a supplemental funding bill for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Preferably, this additional request would have been announced after the Petraeus-Crocker Happy Talk Express comes to deliver aWol's fat-pencil rendered report to the congwess. (There's pwogweth! It's twue!!! You can't thtop pounding thand down the wathole now, can you???)

The request is being prepared now in the belief that Congress will be unlikely to balk so soon after hearing the two officials argue that there are promising developments in Iraq but that they need more time to solidify the progress they have made, a congressional aide said.

Most of the funding in the revised supplemental spending bill would go for funding the current troop-buildup strategy that has brought troop levels to 160,000. The funding for the escalation was cleverly/dishonestly left off from the 2008 budget "because they weren't sure how long it would last." The overtures that indicate additional funding will be requested indicates that the powers that be want the killing to continue apace until next spring.

Meanwhile, the Resident continued his Deny Reality 2007 Tour™ with an appearance before the American Legion in Reno, NV on Tuesday, where he gave an optimistic assessment of recent events in the war, now in its fifth year. "There are unmistakable signs that our strategy is achieving the objectives we set out," he insisted. "The momentum is now on our side."

Ummm...Okay...I'm going to be 45 this Christmas. Does this mean I am finally going to get that pony?

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It is long past the time for sobering assessments

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a cofounder of the House Out of Iraq Caucus, went on one of those dog-and-pony juggernauts to Iraq over the August recess. The outspoken anti-war liberal pledged to "listen and learn," and keep her own opinions to herself while there.

That proved a challenge at times. Like when Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told her "There's not going to be political reconciliation by this September; there's not going to be political reconciliation by next September." Or when General Petraeus told her that for a stable Iraq to emerge, it would require another decade of occupation.

But the military presentations left her stunned. Schakowsky said she jotted down Petraeus's words in a small white notebook she had brought along to record her impressions. Her neat, looping handwriting filled page after page, and she flipped through to find the Petraeus section. " 'We will be in Iraq in some way for nine to 10 years,' " Schakowsky read carefully. She had added her own translation: "Keep the train running for a few months, and then stretch it out. Just enough progress to justify more time."

"I felt that was a stretch and really part of a PR strategy -- just like the PR strategy that initially led up to the war in the first place," Schakowsky said. Petraeus, she said, "acknowledged that if the policymakers decide that we need to withdraw, that, you know, that's what he would have to do. But he felt that in order to win, we'd have to be there nine or 10 years."

Schakowsky got an advance screening of the sales pitch that will be hard-peddled in about three weeks time when Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus come to Washington to present the White House-written report on *progress* in Iraq.

Of course, by any metric you choose, the troop buildup is a failure. The express purpose of the exercise in futility and human sacrifice was to give the Iraqi government "breathing space" to achieve political progress. Instead, the government went ahead and stepped up it's disintegration, and calls for Maliki to be replaced are practically commonplace.

The humanitarian crisis is staggering. The number of internally displaced refugees, Iraqis forced from their homes but lacking the resources to flee the war-torn nation, is soaring. Syria and Jordan are overwhelmed. The only beneficiary of the refugee crisis is the Syrian sex trade.

Speaking of the humanitarian crisis created by aWol's vanity war, Petraeus was ready with the spin. "If you don't like the humanitarian crisis, the refugees and the internally displaced people, you can't draw down. If you are concerned about these people, the humanitarian crisis, you should be for our staying here." Schakowsky did not respond to Petraeus; instead she let it pass. "I was not arguing," she said. "I wanted to see what his take was."

Of course he is going to say that. But it's bullshit. The fact is, if the US were out of the way, the neighboring states that are directly affected by the refugees that strain their housing supply, schools and healthcare systems could be involved in helping what is left of Iraq achieve something resembling stability. But seriously - why the hell would Syria get involved when the troublemaker on the block refuses to talk to them, and has even made hostile threatening gestures in their direction?

Why in the name of all that is sacred and holy would we even consider a decade-long occupation of a hostile land when even those who support it admit that the solution is going to be political, not military? It is not at all like Germany, Japan or Korea. We are not occupiers in those nations, we are allies, and we are there at the invitation of the functioning, elected governments of those nations, and the citizens of those nations aren't trying to kill our G.I.'s.

It is time to bring on the diplomats. I don't care if it takes six months to decide on the style of chairs that will surround the peace table. Start fucking talking because this blowing shit up and having our Soldiers and Marines treating the residents of neighborhoods like common criminals is not cutting it, and can not be a successful strategy.

It is long past time to start dealing with reality, because reality certainly has no qualms or reservations about dealing with the young men and women who are thrown into the mix.

There's more: "It is long past the time for sobering assessments" >>

The Rebranding Effort is Under Way

Let me state my position unequivocally to preempt spin. I am not necessarily anti-war across the board, but I am and have always been anti Iraq war. I am as pro-G.I. as you can possibly be, but I am as opposed to Resident Evil and his 'policies' as is possible as well. He is a warmongering toad, and a danger to the Republic.

But the MBA president sure has a good marketing team. The marketing team is so effective that they have convinced staunch withdrawal advocates that another Friedman is called for.

The most vapid bullshit is being repackaged and sold...and Democrats are lining up to buy it. Hillary has been so fished in that she swallowed the hook.

"We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Anbar province, it's working," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Monday.

BZZZTTT!!! Wrong! What is happening in Anbar has nothing - nothing - to do with the so-called Surge™/troop buildup and everything to do with deals being struck with Sunni insurgents that involves massive amounts of firearms and ammo. Consider this for a moment: 170 million mostly 9 mil. rounds for Iraq, and stateside our police forces train with paintballs because there is insufficient ammo. (I have been very vocal about pointing out that the Romney boys and the Bush twits are ducking duty, but Chelsea Clinton isn't in uniform either, and if Mommy is going to be a war-monger on the stump, it's only fair to point that out.)

John Edwards called her on it, too. "Senator Clinton's view that the President's Iraq policy is 'working' is another instance of a Washington politician trying to have it both ways," Edwards campaign manager David Bonior said in a statement. "You cannot be for the President's strategy in Iraq but against the war. The American people deserve straight talk and real answers on Iraq, not double-speak, triangulation, or political positioning."

Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), an Armed Services Committee member seems to get it. "I don't know of anybody who isn't desperately supportive of the military," she said. "People want to say positive things. But it's difficult to say positive things in this environment and not have some snarky apologist for the White House turn it into some clipped phraseology that looks like support for the president's policies." (emphasis mine)

Congress comes back in two weeks, tanned rested and refreshed, having sold out the Fourth Amendment on their way to the beach. But when they come back, they are in for a surprise, because America will be standing watch, silently scrutinizing from the gallery. And it will just get worse for them from there. We, the People, have had it, and we are taking matters into our own hands. On September 4, we begin to stand watch, and on September 21, we observe the first Iraq Moratorium Day.

Participate, people. Be a worthy descendant to the founders who put it all on the line to give us a Republic that these fools have pissed away.

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