How Much Oil Will Iraq Produce?

If the purpose of invading Iraq was about oil, the results have been disappointing. Although Iraq has had a few good quarters in the last two or three years, they have not been able to put together a year of production equal to pre-invasion levels. And it's been three decades since Iraq reached it maximum output. Wars, corruption and incompetence share blame for Iraq's poor performance.

Of course the oil is still sitting in the ground. Everyone agrees there is still a sizable reserve. Here's the latest concerning Iraqi oil:

Head of Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization, Falah Alamri, said that the country plans to start crude oil shipping operations in March and prepares to export larger volumes of crude in the future, Reuter reported.

Another site carries the same Reuters story. They have a picture that may or not be contemporary and yet it seems to fit what I know of Iraq's petroleum industry for the last thirty years.

It's hard not to be skeptical. Stuart Staniford has a post in The Oil Drum that's also skeptical but he explores the possibility of Iraqi oil production rising from a little more than 2 million barrels/day in 2009 to 12 million barrels/day by 2017. Here's an excerpt from Staniford's post:

At this stage, it seems too soon to say the Iraqis definitely will succeed. But the scenario that they might seems worth serious consideration.

(snip)

There doesn't seem to be too much dispute that Iraq has enough reserves to support far higher production than has actually occurred in the past.

(snip)

Iraq held two rounds of auctions for oilfield management contracts in 2009 that the large international oil companies have responded to. The first round, in June, were for fields that were already in production and set up contracts in which companies get paid a fee per barrel for all production over the existing level. The second round, last month, were for fields not yet on stream. The Iraqis seem to have driven hard bargains - the oil companies are being paid a flat fee per barrel that is generally under $2/barrel in the safer parts of the country, and thus will not benefit from high oil prices - all price risk/reward remains with the Iraqis. Nonetheless they were able to attract some bids from large competent oil companies with a track record - the likes of Shell, Exxon, Statoil, and Lukoil, and have been signing preliminary contracts with them. According to the oil ministry, the total contracts awarded amount to 12mbd of production, and this could be achieved within six years.

Staniford always has good graphs. Below is just one of the them:



It's simply not possible these days to post such a story without checking to see if the Chinese are paying attention. They are:

Iraq's oil exports amounted to 1.97 million barrels a day in December 2009, an increase of 950,000 barrels over November, the preceding month, according to latest statistics from the Iraqi Ministry of Oil. And a significant change in the volume of exports fully reflects the rapidly-rising momentum from an aspect of current oil production in the country.

In line with requirements for its government to sign a contract with foreign energy firms, Iraq would increase its crude oil to 12 million barrels a day from the current 2.5 million barrels in the next six years; at the same time, its gas production would increase to 144 million cubic meters from the present 48 million cubic meters. Representatives of some OPEC member nations, however, regard that Iraq’s practice for a large-scale increase of oil production is inconsistent with the OPEC’s current strategy for "limited production and oil price protection", and this could cause volatility on the future global oil market.

Admittedly, the article doesn't say all that much, but it's in the opinion section of the People' Daily Online. That means it's news China wants to be noticed. Despite the optimism of Iraq's oil sector, China and Stuart Staniford agree: there may be increased production from Iraq but we're also likely to see increased volatility in the world's oil markets.

In the long run, a plug-in or hybrid car not only sounds like a bargain but may also offer peace of mind.

Cheney and Other Republican Liars and Hypocrites

Since 2002, no government official lied about the war in Iraq more than Dick Cheney. In a different era, the vice president would have been impeached and sent packing. Cheney's outing of a CIA officer whose husband's factual report on Niger yellowcake disagreed with Cheney's self-serving fantasies should have been enough to send the vice president to jail. Dick Cheney's authoritarian and anti-social character has been on display repeatedly but in no case was it more obvious than when he shot a friend of his in the face with a shotgun and it was the friend who was obliged to apologize. Strange man, Dick Cheney.

I am proud to be yet another blog linking to Larry Wilkerson's article in The Washington Note:

...when Cheney claims that if President Obama stops "the Cheney method of interrogation and torture", the nation will be in danger, he is perverting the facts once again. But in a very ironic way.

My investigations have revealed to me--vividly and clearly--that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering "the Cheney methods of interrogation", simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009.

(snip)

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

(snip)

There in fact were no such contacts.

It's a national disgrace that right-wing Republicans continue to coddle such liars as Dick Cheney. But Cheney wasn't the only liar. We have to include such 'stalwart' Republicans as Donald Rumseld, Scooter Libby, Alberto Gonzalez, Douglas Feith, and yes, George W. Bush. There were plenty of others. The fact remains that the Bush Administration felt comfortable lying to Congress for eight years. But they didn't stop there. They lied to the American people.

Now Nancy Pelosi is accused of lying about what she was told by an administration that had little credibility. Our country needs a reliable non-political CIA but Bush and Cheney were doing everything they could to politicize parts of the government that had always been nonpolitical and bipartisan. As an example, the Bush Administration promoted people like Dusty Foggo to the number three spot at the CIA:

Foggo is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria after pleading guilty to a single count of fraud as part of a plea bargain. He is the highest ranking CIA officer ever to be convicted of a federal felony.

The fraud was part of a bribery ring that included Foggo's old friend, contractor Brent Wilkes, and former [Republican] Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, both of whom have been sentenced to years in prison.

Court papers filed this week offer the most detailed glimpse yet of Foggo's misconduct, which included getting his mistress hired to a $100,000 a year job at the CIA and steering millions of dollars in CIA contracts to Wilkes.

Even in the CIA there were people under Bush who were feeding at the public trough.

Again, most people in the intelligence community are competent professionals. But Bush and Cheney were not shy about bending the rules and finding people who would do the same. Here's another example of life under Bush by way of Talking Points Memo:

Adm. Mike McConnell came in as the Director of National Intelligence with a rep for being professional and non-partisan, a calling card the Bush Administration has put to its own uses.

(snip)

In his first months as DNI, McConnell did plenty to undermine that rep. He told Congress that three German terrorism suspects had been arrested due to intercepts made possible by the then-new Protect America Act when in fact they were obtained under the old FISA law. Soon after, McConnell offered a especially misleading account to Congress of a supposed FISA Court ruling that had delayed the U.S. from spying on the kidnappers of U.S. troops in Iraq. And throughout congressional debate on a surveillance law he claimed that the debate itself endangered American lives.

Then earlier this year, he suggested that a questioner at a public event at Johns Hopkins was "disappointed" that the U.S. hadn't suffered additional terrorist attacks. And now McConnell has really let lose, framing the Senate debate on the surveillance bill as being between those who think "we shouldn't have an Intelligence Community" and those who do. That has prompted a letter from Sen. Russ Feingold demanding an apology for those false characterizations of the debate.

There were other people besides McConnell who served at Bush's pleasure and thought nothing of lying to Congress. We know Cheney and others were liars. We know they lied to people like Pelosi. Until proven otherwise, I think we already know who the liars are. In the current political climate, Dick Cheney will never be prosecuted and sent to jail for his crimes. At the very least, he should go home and the news media should stop paying attention to a man who lied his way into a war our nation did not need.

The Chalabi Cousins and Pie in the Sky Oil News

Remember Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraq National Congress and darling of the neoconservatives? He did much to feed false information about Iraq to the Bush Administration and somehow, curiously, was never brought to account. He has done well.

After failing to lead some sort of democratic revolution that Bush and his friends were counting on, Chalabi somehow got involved in various aspects of Iraqi government including some aspects of oil. He's now involved in debaathification but still has connections to Iraq's oil business and has a cousin who was the oil minister. We wouldn't want to judge people by their relatives but Fadhil Chalabi sounds too much like his more famous cousin who was very adept at telling people what they wanted to hear:

Chalabi, a former senior Iraqi oil ministry official, believes the country has huge undiscovered reserves on the grounds but no major development projects have been undertaken for more than two decades.

The proven reserves were officially put at 112 billion barrels in 2007 but Chalabi believes the final figure could exceed 300 billion barrels. “Iraq could have this figure, there is no exaggeration in this,” he said.

Iraq has large proven oil reserves that are substantial but there's been a tendency for countries in the Middle East to exaggerate their reserve potential. Even Saudi Arabia wants us to believe that it might have large undiscovered reserves in its 'Empty Quarter.' There are people, including Fadhil Chalabi, who argue that Iraq may have more oil than Saudi Arabia though they don't seem to make clear whether those reserves might be more than Saudi Arabia's fictitious figures or its real figures. This begs the question of course of motivation. If an Iraqi is genuinely concerned about the future of his country, should he speak up now about possible reserves or should he wait until after the Americans leave?

There's been a tendency since the sharp oil price hikes in 2005 for reports on new oil finds to focus on the high end of possible reserves. It doesn't seem to matter whether the oil finds are in the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil or Siberia. To date, the high numbers have not been justified. We have a problem and we're still moving in slow motion to deal with it.

Some Thoughts on the American Crisis

First, let me say that the American Crisis has two parts. The first part is a leadership crisis that can be traced largely to the Republican Party and its habit of talking tough while obstructing any reasonable proposal to deal with a long list of problems; no one excels at this form of failed leadership more than George W. Bush. But the Republicans are not the only part of the leadership crisis. Democrats have not led as well as they might have over the last eight years though many Democrats can deal very effectively with various problems if given the chance; part of the problem with Democrats is that the party is slowed down by elements who pay more attention to polls than to leading. Many Democrats have also been somewhat paralyzed by the Republican Noise Machine that is heavily financed by right-wing elements. The other leadership problem in the United States is a media that lives for the next quarterly report and no longer acts as a balance against the political nonsense that will always come out of Washington or any other national capital.

Leadership is one side of the American crisis and it overwhelmingly affects the other part of the crisis we are facing. First of all, the American Crisis (yes, it's time for caps) is also, in many respects, the World Crisis. We are facing a rather daunting list of growing problems that are largely going unaddressed. And that itself is a major component of the crisis. Global warming, pollution, overpopulation, food resource issues, water shortages and a very serious and growing energy problem are just a few of the issues that are far from getting the attention necessary in Washington. And these problems are certainly not getting the attention from American businesses that they should despite the somewhat irrational belief that free enterprise can, all by itself, deal with these issues. If the media is more concerned with its quarterly reports, most American corporations are no better. I see signs of some business people beginning to think more seriously about a range of issues but we have to judge these things by action and not by words. Words have been used too often by politicians and business people to put off actually doing something.

The dog and pony show put on by President Bush to postpone once again any serious decisions regarding Iraq was embarrassing. It was words designed to change the subject, avoid realistic decision making and wave the flag as a way of avoiding responsible action. Americans are becoming less susceptible to this kind of nonsense and yet Bush's numbers went up a notch or two. Of course, a week after the nonsense, we see a headline like this that completely gives the lie to Bush's phony optimism:

US officials were barred on Wednesday from travelling by land outside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone amid fears of attacks after the alleged killing of civilians by private security firm Blackwater.

The suspension came as Washington grappled with ways to curb the damage from Sunday's clash in which Blackwater guards escorting US embassy officials opened fire in a Baghdad neighbourhood, killing 10 people and wounding 13.

Blackwater denies any wrongdoing but a top Iraqi judge has said the US firm, one of the largest private security operators in Iraq, could face trial.

The president and his Republican friends in Congress are still unable to answer two straightforward questions: what are we doing in Iraq and what realistic, doable goal are we trying to accomplish? A majority of the country still awaits an answer.

In spirit, at least much of the time, I favor some of the things that Moveon.org has been doing over the last seven years. But playing the Republican game of overly cute snark doesn't get our country focused on any particular element of the many problems we are facing, the fiasco in Iraq simply being just one of those problems. The ad on Petraeus ignored the fundamental problem of Iraq: the problem is Bush. This is Bush's war. If Moveon.org wanted to expand on that, the problem then is Bush and Cheney and their mutually reinforcing political philosophy that is at odds with what this nation stands for. Bush and Cheney have not only given us a war our nation did not need, but they have ignored a host of other problems largely by insisting the problems don't exist. A little further expansion on relevant criticism would include the obstructionist Republicans in the House and Senate who have chosen to ignore a majority of Americans demanding a change in course and some serious reform in Washington. General Petraeus is far down the list of issues that might be raised; he wasn't even a major figure until the last year. President Bush has the option of ignoring experienced generals and finding new generals who suit his purposes. Read that last sentence again because it's all one needs to know that the problem is Bush. Bush, of course, would like nothing more than to pin his problems on a general. I understand quite clearly the frustration felt by many progressives as the leadership of our nation continues to drift but it is important to stay focused.

The American Crisis is very much about an inability to come to grips with the issues of our times. If Moveon.org got carried away with its rhetoric, the Republican far right offers ten times the nonsense every day of the week. The actress, Sally Fields, is now the latest to suffer the slings and arrows of the Republican Smear Machine. Think Progress has the story:

Since actress Sally Field won an Emmy and spoke out against the Iraq war in her acceptance speech, the right wing has been on the attack. In addition to Fox censoring her speech, conservatives continue to criticize Field for speaking out.

Taking the slander to a very personal level, right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin attacked Field’s parenting skills with a column in the National Review entitled “Sally Field Does Not Speak For Me.”

Here's a case where right wingers are becoming caricatures of themselves. I started reading the post and burst out laughing. Republican right wingers are attacking "The Flying Nun!" They're smearing Gidget! They're trying to body tackle a slim five-foot woman! Suffice to say, much of our nation has gone stark raving mad.

Meanwhile the price of oil is $83 a barrel. Healthcare is a mess. Real wages are falling as fictitious numbers are posted on inflation. The president is deliberately kicking the can down the road on Iraq. Global warming is real and much of our nation refuses to acknowledge the reality of the problem. American innovation, while still leading the world, is actually slipping (see this month's Discover). Wheat prices are sky high. Corn prices too are going up as we gear up for an ethanol industry that is far from solving a host of problems. Mortgages, despite a significant rate drop, are going to continue to be a problem. Our infrastructure is crumbling. Various nations are increasingly making noise that suggests we're on the verge of a new arms race. And throughout the world, including inside our own country, American leadership is AWOL.

Until Republicans repair their party, I expect nothing from them. In the meantime, it's vital that the rest of the nation recognize that we have a crisis and a host of problems. We are in need of major changes and reform just like the changes and reforms that have moved our nation forward every twenty to fifty years since our founding. What I'm writing here are just quick notes and I hope to elaborate more on these thoughts over the next few months. My time is limited but there are two themes I offer to those with more time, particularly those who are bloggers. First, protect your credibility. Don't let Republicans drag you into exasperation and hyperbole. Second, focus on the essential problems that are mounting. There is profound pathology in our country right now and much of that pathology can be found in people avoiding the real problems facing us so that they can enjoy their illusions or make a few extra bucks. The Republican Party talks tough and then hides its head in the sand. One advantage to Republicans of the war in Iraq is that it's a convenient issue to talk about appeasement while appeasement on a host of much more serious problems defines much of the Republican Party's behavior these days. So stay focused on the bigger problems. They are coming. And they will bite. But there is much we can do, if we are willing.

This Is a Long Battle, Folks

One of themes I've been pushing on Donkey Path is that we're in a generational battle to reform Washington and to undo the increasingly reactionary politics in America that have been taking place over the last thirty years. We need reform and we need a government ready to take on the problems of the 21st century. Most Republicans in Washington and a small number of Democrats have been hiding from those problems. Even a majority of Democrats are only now catching up on a number of issues; and yet, across the spectrum, the Democrats are generally far more informed these days that their opposites across the aisle—that's important to remember.

I have no illusions about the Democratic election last November. It was great victory but a victory mitigated by the damage of the last thirty years and by the fact that the Democratic majority is rather slim in the House and almost nonexistent in the Senate and exists there because of two independents, one of them Joe Lieberman. The good news is that a number of strong moderates and progressives were elected last November but over the last thirty years, even the Democrats saw their party tilting more rightward than usual. Not all Democrats are ready to take on the 21st century. But there's a good chance that Democrats may be able to increase their majority in 2008 with good people and there's a good chance that those Republicans who embrace their radical right wing agenda may find their numbers diminishing as Americans recognize the damage many of them are doing to our nation and our future.

I'm not happy about some of the compromises Democrats have made recently and I worry that there isn't as much progress as I hoped there would be by now, but there is progress and I expect more to come. So, on the one hand, I understand some of the grousing I'm reading on different blogs but a lot of it simply isn't realistic. As I said, this is a long battle, and a handful of votes in Congress doesn't mean much. I'm committed to building on the progress that's been made and I know too much about what coming down the road to waste much time on cynicism and despairing rhetoric.

Here's a very fine post from Mahablog with a useful take on all this, including the different votes that were taken as the Democratic leadership looked for a majority:

The Feingold and McGovern amendments both provided that a troop redeployment out of Iraq begin within a set number of days after the passage of the bill. These were tougher than the timetable bill, in other words. In the Senate, 29 out of 51 Democratic senators voted yes. In the House, 169 out of 233 Democrats voted yes. A glorious total of two Republicans in the entire Congress voted yes.

Yet some twit commenting on Think Progress wrote We can’t even get Democrats to vote for timetables. Unfortunately, I think this notion is common among a large lump of people who passionately hate the war but aren’t paying close attention to what’s actually happening in Washington to end it.

Further, the concept of overriding a veto seems to elude some people. Bush has just said he wants a South Korea style presence - superbases and fifty years. What makes anyone think he’ll listen to 25 Republicans? If 25 Senate Republicans voted with the Dems, that would be more than enough to override Bush’s veto in the Senate. By law, Bush would have to comply if Congress overrode a veto. If he didn’t — well, that’s never happened before. It could get interesting.

I agree there’s plenty of reason to criticize the Dems, but it worries me when large numbers of “progressives” develop knee-jerk antipathy toward the Dems. This is not helpful.

There’s a middle way between mindless boosterism and mindlessly assuming the worst. This middle way has two steps: First, be informed. Second, think. [See the original.]

Readers may have noticed a number of blogs that talk about being members of the 'reality-based community.' There's a reason for it and even a number of progressives could do a better job of being reality-based. The stakes are high as we approach the second decade of the 21st century with little progress in Washington. But there is movement. And I believe reform is coming. And there are many, many people with their eyes open.



***Personal Note*** I'm determined to keep Donkey Path going and I will post as often as I can. I'm sure regular readers have noticed fewer posts lately. That's life. I have bills to pay, a body that doesn't always cooperate, and not many working years left. It's too bad blogs provide income for only a few. But I deeply appreciate the readers who keep dropping by from Swisher, Iowa to Orange County to the area around Rome, Georgia, to several readers in Ohio and to a frequent reader from Ludington, Michigan (or thereabouts) and to many other readers elsewhere I recognize. At least ten percent of my readers come from other countries and that's been an eye opener for me. Blogs truly are an international affair and it's important for bloggers, readers and commenters to keep that in mind. The world is watching all of us and wondering how things will turn out. I hope for the best.

The Delusional and Contrary Mr. Bush

It's hard to escape the notion that if liberals say the night is dark, a right-wing contrarian like President Bush will get it in his head to say the opposite just to spite liberals. Right wing conservative pundits have made a living out of being contrarians but the effect of such nonsense on the affairs of our country can only be described as a fiasco when put into action and made part of official American policy. In the end, we are witnessing a national tragedy of historic dimensions.

The month of May was not a good one for Bush's war in Iraq. The death toll of our soldiers in May comes to 124 and the total coalition deaths, which for some reason does not include Iraqis fighting on our side, is 129 deaths. Not since the bizarre punitive battles that took on the entire city of Fallujah have so many Americans died. The attack on Fallujah remains a symbol of Bush's bizarre war; destroying an entire Iraqi city because of the crimes of a few against a handful of contractors who ignored travel warnings against going into Fallujah not only doesn't make sense, the destruction of a city of 300,000 was an operation that can hardly be considered American. The military opposed the initial plan from the White House to attack Fallujah back in April 2004; it was considered counterproductive. But Bush and his inner circle pushed on.

And now three years later, there is no sign that Bush has learned a thing. But he still considers himself the Decider-in-Chief. Think Progress draws our attention to an article by Georgie Anne Geyer in the Dallas News:

..by all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness.

Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny."

Destiny. Methinks the president has a touch of what some call the Napoleonic complex. Years before being handed the keys to the White House by his father, Bush once asked Queen Elizabeth who the back sheep was in her family, obviously making it clear that he was the black sheep in his own family. There is no sign that frat boy ever grew up. The bunker mentality of the president is not healthy and Congress need to come to grips with President Bush's increasingly delusional view of the world. A president with that kind of bunker mentality cannot properly do his job and cannot properly serve the American people.

We have a problem of course in the vice president. There is no other way to describe Cheney except to say that he takes pleasure in being sneaky and dishonest. I say that because 'last throes' Cheney has repeatedly lied to the American people, and among his friends he tells stories that are supposed to be about how clever he is but that, to my mind, show a very different person than Cheney would like us to see. Cheney has no understanding that there is no United States as we know it unless there is law and that law is the US Constitution and the laws that follow thereby from Congress. So we have a dysfunctional right wing president and a dysfunctional right wing vice president and a sluggish Congress that is finally becoming aroused but that is still doing too little to hold Bush and Cheney to account.

Majority of Americans Want Out of Iraq

On Iraq, most Americans do not agree with Commander Guy. Here's the latest poll from CNN:

A majority of the U.S. public disapproves of President Bush's decision to veto a war spending bill that called for U.S. troops to leave Iraq in 2008, according to a CNN poll released Tuesday.

The poll found that 54 percent of Americans opposed Bush's May 1 veto, while 44 percent backed the president's decision to kill the $124 billion bill.

Now that the veto has been cast, 57 percent of Americans said they want Congress to send another spending bill with a timetable for withdrawal back to the White House, the poll found -- but 61 percent would support a new bill that dropped the timetables in favor of benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet to maintain American support.

What I want to know is why 44% still support a president whose Iraq policy is simply to kick the can down the road for the next president to deal with? Other than that, President Bush has no Iraq policy worthy of the name. We have turned ourselves into an unpopular occupation army in the middle of a civil war without an identifiable goal beyond not being shot at when we patrol a very unhappy and dysfunctional country that we never much thought about before Bush launched an invasion we did not need.

A war should have a realistic and meaningful goal. Bush never explained why (at least not accurately or honestly) we're there beyond his fiction created long after the start of the war that we're there so that the magical they do not come here. Bush can't even define who this magical they happens to be. Leaving war to an incompetent like Bush is also not acceptable. The 44% who think Bush was right to veto the Iraq bill need to get more realistic about what's happening. With the world's most powerful military, wars should not take four or five years to fight. And we should not be in the business of acquiring colonies or behave like we own Iraq which is how much of the world sees our presence in Iraq.

We need to wind the war down and think long and hard about what our military is for and why it should ever be used when there is no imminent threat. I believe in a strong defense but it makes no sense to go to war without an understandable policy or an acceptable and worthwhile goal. Relying on Bush's 'gut instinct' was a poor way to go. Congress needs to get Bush to wind down the war and wind down his strange and very costly ambitions.

Four Years Later, Bush's Fiasco Continues

It's been four years since George W. Bush strutted on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. It's been five years since Bush started making noise about Iraq.

Let's review:

1. No WMDs. But plenty of bogus charges and plenty of evidence that Bush and Cheney lied.

2. No significant connection between al Qaida and Saddam Hussein. But repeated charges by the White House and plenty of evidence that Bush and Cheney were trying to deceive the American people.

3. If what exists in Iraq is democracy, that might explain why democracy is under attack at home. Maybe the imperious Wolfowitz believed in the democracy project but no one believes that Cheney and Rumsfeld ever gave much thought to democracy as a rationale for war. It should be noted the Paul Bremer was appointed virtual viceroy of Iraq and early efforts of democracy were tabled. That is not democracy; it is colonialism.

4. No significant progress in the war on terror. But more terrorists are being created and Osama bin Laden is chuckling and still free in Pakistan.

What then, at this late date, is Bush's rationale for the war in Iraq? There doesn't appear to be a legitimate reason.

What might be some other reasons for Bush's war?

1. Second largest oil reserve in the world. Of course, Bush still is refusing to come to grips with our serious energy problem and the issue of Global Warming. The cost of the war would have made huge strides in making the United States energy independent.

2. Asserting America's superpower status. The incompetence of the Bush Administration has damaged our credibility and even the credibility of our military because of decisions by political types like Karl Rove. Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and George W. Bush never served in the military (the champagne unit of the 1970s national guard in Texas will never qualify as military service by Bush).

3. Making profits for defense industries and close allies of the Bush Administration. This is the only area where the Bush Administration has been 'successful.' Keep in mind that the troops have often not received adequate equipment and supplies and some of the reconstruction projects are now languishing in disrepair. But many right wing Bush Republicans are pleased by the profits they have made.

The record, actions and behavior of the Bush Administration supports the above three as possible reasons for the war. Oil, colonialist pretensions and greed are not honorable reasons for a war. If a crooked mayor burns down the city hall so he can build a bigger one and his friends can make money, the fire fighters are still just doing their job by trying to put out the fire. Our military has been doing its job; soldiers do not get the choose the wars they fight. The overwhelming majority of our troops have been acting honorably in a difficult situation. The same cannot be said of the president and his top advisers. The fact that Bush has deliberately and arrogantly ignored the bipartisan Iraq Study Group speaks volumes. It's time to bring Bush's fiasco to a close.

Bush Never Much Thought About His War

The most powerful man in the world never much thought about why he was going to war in Iraq. That's pretty much one of the key points that George Tenet has made about George W. Bush. It's not news though. We already knew that President Bush doesn't think much about anything. He's the kind of guy who shoots from the lips and shrugs when things don't go his way.

Here's an AP article from over the weekend about the chaos in Iraq and the death of 9 Americans:

A car bomb exploded Saturday in the Shiite holy city of Karbala as the streets were packed with people heading for evening prayers, killing at least 58 and wounding scores near some of the country's most sacred shrines. Separately, the U.S. military announced the deaths of nine American troops, including three killed Saturday in a single roadside bombing outside Baghdad.

With smoke clogging the skies above Karbala, angry crowds hurled stones at police and later stormed the provincial governor's house, accusing authorities of failing to protect them from the bombings usually blamed on Sunni insurgents. It was the second car bomb to strike the city's central area in two weeks.

Several more Americans have died since then raising the total of Americans dead in April to 104; the combined coalition casualties for April are the highest since the Iraqi elections of January of 2005. It should be noted that the British are having increasing problems in what was once the relatively peaceful areas of southern Iraq which is predominately Shiite. As Bush stubbornly continues to ignore the advice of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, right wing Republicans in Congress and around the country should think long and hard about supporting an incompetent president who thinks he has all the answers.

Dan Froomkin of White House Watch has some thoughts on Tenet's somewhat tardy revelations:

As President Bush drove the country to what has turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq, did he ever have any doubts about whether it was the right call? Did he ever even consider there might be another way?

The new book by former CIA director George Tenet adds more evidence to the conclusion that once the president's mind was made up, there was no looking back. Inside the White House, the only debate about the war would appear to have been about how to sell it.

The administration's response to this latest charge has been angry -- yet vague. Bush's defenders are still unable to offer up one concrete piece of evidence suggesting that the costs that could (and would) be suffered by American troops and the Iraqi people weighed heavily enough upon the president that he ever seriously questioned his initial decision.

There's plenty of evidence to suggest that Bush was interested in invading Iraq long before 9/11; certainly Rumsfeld and Cheney were interested in the project before Bush became president. But we have an incompetent in the White House surrounded by ideologues who have a poor understanding of the world. Bush is the kind of man who does not harbor doubts, who has all the answers and who doesn't believe he makes mistakes; combine that recipe for disaster with sheer incompetence and there's going to be trouble no matter where such a man is put. Putting Bush in charge of the most powerful government in the world will go down as America's greatest strategic blunder.

Technically, you can only impeach a president for treason and high crimes and misdemeanors but not for gross incompetence; perhaps the words 'gross incompetence' should be inserted in the US Constitution. But it's increasingly clear Bush has actually committed any number of crimes that are impeachable; he is protected, however, by a stubborn right wing base, a compliant media (though less so than three years ago) and an increasingly deluded group of politicians who are unable as yet to acknowledge his crimes and failures. But dissastisfaction with Bush is growing even among Republicans. And there is still the matter of ignoring the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that included Republicans and was led by a Republican. Bush has no explanation for his inadequate performance.

White House Correspondents Wimp Out at Dinner

Rich Little was a flop but that wasn't the problem. The association for the White House correspondents picked about as safe a comedian as they could while they concentrate on those seven and eight figure salaries so many of them are shooting for. Here's something to think about. Does anyone think Jonathan Swift would have been easy on our boy king? Does anyone think Mark Twain would give George W. Bush a free pass for trying to resurrect the Gilded Age? Will Rogers would have twirled his lariat and had you thinking the Decider-in-Chief was dizzy with all that rope tightening around him.

These kind of dinners are not supposed to be safe. Not with an incompetent president. Not with a president who thought it was funny to look behind his chair for WMDs. Not with a president who increasingly rambles even when he's speaking to a carefully selected audience. The White House correspondents should be a little restless six years into Bush's presidency with so little for the Mayberry gang to show for it. The president's behavior is a disgrace. The correspondents know it and they continue to act as if it's a kind of parlour game. How's his style? How his haircut? Is he aging? Did he do a good job of putting on a photo op? Was his strutting effective? Does he look like Mister Rogers in that flight suit or like John Wayne? Ah, being a White House correspondent is apparently a difficult life.

Here's a story from Editor & Publisher, people who still care about journalism and the functioning of our democracy:

Rich Little, with shockingly dyed hair, said at the outset that he is “not political” but rather a “nightclub performer who does a lot of dumb, stupid jokes,” then proved that.

He started with a couple of Canada (his native country) jokes and a weak Sen. John McCain, which bombed...

(snip)

Little followed by doing six presidents, including a man he “loved,” Ronald Reagan. He put in false teeth to play Jimmy Carter saying that when he was a peanut farmer “I had the biggest nuts in the county.”

As the presidents got more recent, the impressions got weaker: George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and then possibly the worst impression of all, the current president. But he closed with the one he is most famous for, Richard Nixon, saying, “Let’s bring him out of the mothballs one more time.”

(snip)

Speaking to E&P afterward, probably aware that his routine went over rather poorly, he said, "this is not the easiest audience in the world." But he said Bush told him when it was over, "absolutely perfect."

Some in the crowd walked out in the middle of the routine-- far more than left during Colbert's performance last year.

Embarrassing. Harry Reid says something to the effect that we're losing in Iraq and the media types, particularly on the right, go nuts. I've said for over three years we're gaining nothing out of this war. We'll end up spending $2 trillion for what? A strut on an aircraft carrier? What are we gaining from Bush's incompetence, lies, cronyism, ideological rigidity, and repeated blunders, all quite visible in his fiasco in Iraq? What are we gaining? Does anybody buy the garbage that if we don't kill Iraqis, they'll come here? Sorry, but the 9-11 attackers came by way of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and most of them were from Saudi Arabia. The logic of attacking Iraq does not hold.

Should it take five years to finish the first war? Should it take ten years to finish the second? Should these idiots be allowed to start a third? It's not about losing. It's about a president and vice president who don't know what they're doing. Other than engaging in fantasies about bringing democracy to the Middle East at the point of our guns and fighting terrorism in about as half-assed a way as one could possibly ask for, Cheney and Bush have no policy in Iraq worthy of the name. It's stall, it's dodge, it's tantrums and overblown rhetoric, it's pompous statements about running out of patience or insurgents in their last throes, it's bluster that only the Republican base deludes itself into buying.

Are Bush and Cheney impeachable? Of course they are. Should it happen? Yes. Will it happen? No, not in the current political environment with a media that still does a poor job of revealing the damage the current administration is doing to our country. But enough Americans are aware of what's happening that Bush and Cheney can be held accountable. It's time for a special prosecutor. Forget the incompetence. There's plenty of dishonesty and deception in the current White House for a special prosecutor to deal with. There are plenty of laws being broken. A special prosecutor needs to be appointed by Congress.

If we are to keep our country strong, it's time to bring most of our troops home while keeping troops in strategic position to keep the neighbors out of Iraq. It's time for Bush and Cheney to negotiate a settlement in Iraq and Iran; and if they won't, it may be time for Congress to appoint people who will. There's nothing in the US Constitution that says the American people have to put up with arrogance, gross negligience and obstinate incompetence. Bush, not the Democrats, not Congress, not the American people, is the one who chose to ignore the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. The people of the Iraq Study Group, both Republicans and Democrats, have a record of competence. Our president does not. The surge is a profoundly flawed political stunt that puts our troops at risk. It is not a change of strategy: it's just more of the same.

Let me ask it again. Are we losing? Sorry, but that's the wrong question. The question is this: do we have an administration that knows what it's doing? The answer is no. Bush has no trouble talking like a tough guy but he didn't know what he was talking about when he launched the invasion and never had an honest strategic purpose for invading Iraq in the first place, and even if he had managed to come up with an honest strategic purpose, it's highly unlikely he could have executed it with cronies, ideologues and party hacks. We're still a strong and powerful nation. But the current president is a failure. The rest is just hot air and a lot of self-justifications by the right and a lot of nonsense by a media that still can't fully acknowledge the crisis in Washington and particularly the White House.

Kicking the Can Down the Road and Other News

There's not much to say about Bush's dishonest press conference today with the strange Dick Cheney half lurking in the shrubbery looking on (I'm writing this straight but I suppose there's a pun in there somewhere). The media is slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y, coming around to holding Bush more accountable but it's hard work keeping up with the president's less than straightfoward presentation with all its multiple levels of lies, half-truths and hypocrisy; and then there's all that help from his media flacks who can't even keep their multiple stories straight. It's not too difficult to understand what's happening, though. Suffice to say, Bush is a failure—it's all we really need to know from now on. After the November election, Bush had a chance to redeem himself, at least partly, by getting his act together at long last, but he's determined to do more damage than admit his many failures.

When it comes to Iraq no one should doubt that Bush is simply kicking the can down the road for the next president to handle. It's shameful behavior and suggests Bush and his inner circle have learned nothing from Vietnam. Here's an article from Raw Story on an earlier version of kicking the can down the road that didn't quite work:

On Vietnam, Dallek writes that Kissinger and Nixon privately concluded that the war was unwinnable. "In Saigon the tendency is to fight the war to victory," Dallek quotes Nixon in a 1969 phone call to Kissinger. "But you and I know it won't happen -- it is impossible." Yet Kissinger and Nixon sought to label Democrats criticizing the progress of the war as being from "the party of surrender," writes Dallek.

Authoritarians and their followers in the Republican Party still peddle their myths about Vietnam along with their rot that the war was winnable, and yet they conveniently forget the first can kicker was actually Lyndon Johnson who passed Vietnam on to Nixon who had a 'plan' to win the war and who, nevertheless, managed to prolong the war a long and deadly six years. Maha of Mahablog reminds us that press conferences in Johnson's day were much rougher than anything George W. Bush has yet to experience:

I sometimes wish videos of President Lyndon Johnson’s press conferences were available on the web (if they are, let me know). As I remember it, at some point after the Vietnam War began the Washington press corps began to hound LBJ mercilessly. The press became openly antagonistic to Johnson, and I won’t say he didn’t deserve it. When reporters began to treat Richard Nixon the same way they’d treated LBJ, Nixon sent out Spiro Agnew to stir up faux outrage against the nattering nabobs of negativism and whine about liberal media bias; thus a myth was born. The fact is, as I remember it the press was a shade gentler to Nixon than it had been to LBJ. And by the time Reagan came along they’d become sufficiently defensive about “”liberal media bias” that reporters generally treated Reagan with kid gloves compared to the way they’d treated presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. And in comparison to the press corps in Johnson’s day, today’s White House reporters are a neutered and toothless lot, indeed.

War is not a political football. Our soldiers should not be used to prolong a failed foreign policy. There are times when war may be necessary. Afghanistan appears to have been the case in 2001. Bush's war in Iraq, however, was not necessary and was pushed for reasons not in the interests of most Americans for what now can only be described as a shameful political agenda. That's the bottom line. We have some obligation to stabilize Iraq and it's in our interests to withdraw as carefully as we can even if we have to leave troops nearby. But it's time to leave.

It doesn't help when someone like Senator McCain becomes too incompetent to understand Iraq or so flawed in his reasoning and desperation to become the next president that he begins to utter nonsense that doesn't help the debate on Iraq. Steve Clemons of The Washington Note reminds us there are still people in Iraq who know what's going on and they're not very patient with McCain's nonsense; Clemons' post covers a talk by Anne Garrels:

... She is, of course, National Public Radio's veteran roving foreign correspondent most often in Baghdad as of late -- though she seems to have covered nearly all of the world's rough and tough spots over the last couple of decades.

(snip)

...Anne Garrels opened her talk last Thursday night blasting Baghdad visitor and erstwhile presidential candidate Senator John McCain.

Now old news, but then fresh off the wire, John McCain had said that things had improved so much in Baghdad that Iraq Multinational Force Commander General David Petraeus was driving around the city in an unarmord Humvee. Garrels -- who when you read her book strains for balance in her research and reporting -- really lambasted McCain for his duplicitous comments. She said it "was way too early to judge the results from a change in tactics in Baghdad."

She said that McCain's commentary seemed ludicrous to nearly anyone with real world Baghdad experience. Anne Garrels does NOT live in the green zone. She lives in the red zone, beyond the barriers of protection that most Americans have -- and every day is one where one has to be very careful and win the day and survival by his or her wits.

When Garrels covered the invasion of Iraq while staying at the Palestine Hotel, she was there with just 15 other American journalists -- including correspondents for The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. ...

(snip)

She told the audience that in Iraq the "resentment and disbelief in the incompetence of America was profound."

She offered much of what any avid Iraq-watcher knows. The White House predicted a cost of this war at $50 billion and didn't really envision an occupation. The costs are now well beyond ten times that amount. The Department of Defense had no serious post-invasion strategy.

But one of the numbers she threw out which shocked me is that today it can cost between $3,500 and $5,000 for a one way taxi ride from the Baghdad Airport to downtown Baghdad. She has arranged some alternative, permanent service that brings the costs down some for NPR.

And McCain says average people like you and me can easily walk around downtown Baghdad...if we can afford it and can find a hundred soldiers to act as our tour guides.

A friend of mine has been complaining lately that I've been getting repetitious and no doubt he's right. Of course, he's one of those people who pays attention. I'm sure other readers may think the same thing. But when I turn on the evening news at night, it's still apparent that many journalists are still not up to speed on the leadership crisis that our country is experiencing. In times of crisis, some things bear repeating.

Very few journalists have been as observant, though, as Paul Krugman of The New York Times; here's a column from the other day as it appears in Truthout:

...voters realize that society has changed. They may not pore over income distribution tables, but they do know that today's rich are building themselves mansions bigger than those of the robber barons. They may not read labor statistics, but they know that wages aren't going anywhere: according to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of workers believe that it's harder to earn a decent living today than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

You know that perceptions of rising inequality have become a political issue when even President Bush admits, as he did in January, that "some of our citizens worry about the fact that our dynamic economy is leaving working people behind."

But today's Republicans can't respond in any meaningful way to rising inequality, because their activists won't let them. You could see the dilemma just this past Friday and Saturday, when almost all the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls traveled to Palm Beach to make obeisance to the Club for Growth, a supply-side pressure group dedicated to tax cuts and privatization.

The Republican Party's adherence to an outdated ideology leaves it with big problems. It can't offer domestic policies that respond to the public's real needs. So how can it win elections?

The answer, for a while, was a combination of distraction and disenfranchisement.

That's the sad truth of George W. Bush and the current Republican Party: at the national level, they can't win on the issues—they can only win by playing games. That's why the US Attorney scandal, only the latest of a series of scandals, is such a big deal: firing honest Republicans who believe in law enforcement and putting in party hacks and cronies that will do the bidding of Republican kingmakers is a big no-no if one still believes in the US Constitution and democracy.

It's going to be a big fight for the next few years, but it's time for the American people to take their country back.

Baghdad McCain and Tagalong Lindsey Graham

Remember Baghdad Bob and his attempts to spin reality as American troops were overrunning Baghdad? Now we have Baghdad McCain with Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) tagging along. My wife's jaw dropped open this morning as CNN showed Sen. John McCain talking about how easy it was to walk around Baghdad; he apparently was at a press conference in the well-protected Green Zone when he told us this. I told her to wait a few hours; things are not like they were three years ago when the Bush Administration and its Republican friends could still spin just about any story they wanted. Sure enough, even the major networks caught John McCain on this one. Thinkprogress was quickly on the story:

Sen. John McCain strolled briefly through an open-air market in Baghdad today in an effort to prove that Americans are “not getting the full picture” of what’s going on in Iraq.

But, NBC’s Nightly News reports that McCain’s neighborhood stroll was accompanied by “100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead.” Still photographs provided by the military to NBC News seemed to show McCain wearing a bulletproof vest during his visit.

Three helicopters. Two gunships. A hundred soldiers. And it sure looked like a bulletproof vest to me (click on Thinkprogress to see the picture). Yep, you and me can just walk in downtown Baghdad anytime we want, in broad daylight, for a half hour or so, in one of the safer neighborhoods, if we had McCain's protection force. *sigh*

I miss the old, reasonably honest John McCain. The new John McCain has become an embarrassment. Much of what passes for the Republican leadership these days is an embarrassment.

There Is No Plan B Except Continued Denial

I see the word 'conservative' tossed around in the newspapers and on TV and I wonder who the journalists are talking about. There really aren't that many conservatives left in the Republican Party these days. If there were, I would be writing these posts a great deal less often. If a conservative like Chuck Hagel were the rule rather than the exception, I would voice my objections from time to time and otherwise go about my business. What journalists so often refer to as 'conservatives' are right wingers straight out of Hollywood central casting of the 1950s and 60s when such characters specialized in race baiting, fear and warmongering.

Our country is currently run by right wingers who initially tried to sell themselves as moderates in the 2000 election. Journalists from CNN and Newsweek and The New York Times have been slow to notice that things have been different since then; unlike others, at least they have noticed. Sort of.

Think Progress has a quote by Senator Inhofe that was caught by The Carpetbagger; the senator seems to explicitly embrace his right wing credentials:

“Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) got the crowd [at CPAC] cheering early in the day. ‘I have been called — my kids are all aware of this — dumb, crazy man, science abuser, Holocaust denier, villain of the month, hate-filled, warmonger, Neanderthal, Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun,’ he announced. ‘And I can just tell you that I wear some of those titles proudly.’”

Then there's Ann Coulter who's paid something like $25,000 a pop to play naughty, if that's the Republican term these days for smears and hate speech. Not only were prominent Republicans very slow to condemn Coulter's unwarranted attack on John Edwards (though that's evidence once more of who the Republicans fear could bring an end to their 28 year run of party time in the new Gilded Age), the audience at the event obliged Ms. Coulter with a hearty laugh. These are strange, unprincipled people dominating our politics these days though Americans seem at last to be turning somewhat to the Democrats as a protest against Republican corruption and incompetence (and yet, without the conviction that things really do need to change).

So that brings us to Bush's war in Iraq and his latest adjustment of tactics in pursuit of 'staying the course.' Dan Froomkin of White House Watch noted this today:

Ever since President Bush announced on Jan. 10 that he was defying the public will and increasing the U.S. military commitment in Iraq, he has been emphatic that his latest plan -- unlike all those previous ones -- would work. The key to his confidence: Iraqis, this time, are being told to get with the program -- or else.

The two obvious follow-up questions: But what do we do if it doesn't work? And "or else" what?

(snip)

I raised several of these possibilities in my Jan. 11 column, the day after Bush announced the "surge." And in that same column, I encouraged reporters to figure out what Plan B actually is.

Keeping in mind that the big hotshots of the Bush Administration never had a Plan B after the fall of Baghdad when their unrealistic schemes failed to materialize, Froomkin raises several possible Plan B's the administration may be considering from this point on in 2007, including the most obvious: kicking the can down the road for the next president to deal with. This would make it twice in forty years that a president has used such a maneuver (the last one was a Democrat though like Bush, he was a Texan tied to big oil). It doesn't speak well about the state of our politics or the seriousness of Republicans. And once again, one can have no doubt that the right wingers, who are incapable of accepting responsibility for their failures, will of course be weaving the mythology that somehow others were to blame for the failures in Iraq. In fact, the right wingers can barely get themselves, if at all, to admit that we invaded Iraq and had no proper case for war.

There is an enormous amount of damage to be repaired. Even if more stability is brought to Iraq in the next 20 months, Americans need to think long and hard about what kind of country we intend to be. We will continue to be powerful but some of our greatness will not be what it once was if Republicans continue to lead. Republicans like George W. Bush and Karl Rove and Tom DeLay and Grover Norquist and Newt Gingrich and Bill Frist and Jim Inhofe would like nothing more than change the first three words of the US Constitution from "We, the people..." to "We, the privileged of the right sort...."

Woodward Asked Bush about WMDs in Late 2003

We're hearing more that Bush really believes what he's saying when it comes to Iraq and the Middle East. That doesn't make Bush any less of a fool. Given how little he knows about the world, particularly when he became president, it's arrogant for him to rely so heavily on his own 'gut instincts.' And then there's the problem that Bush is not just conservative but essentially reactionary; the reality is that right wingers have not understood the world very well in the last hundred years and they have great difficulty being honest with themselves and others.

Here's an excerpt from Bob Woodward's State of Denial:

On December 11,2003, I had interviewed President Bush and got a taste of his style and habit of denial. It was eight months after the invasion and WMD had not been found.

"On weapons of mass destruction," I asked.

"Sure," the president said.

One of my bosses at The Washington Post had suggested I ask, "Was the president misled—"

"No," Bush said.

I continued the question, "—by the intelligence, or did he mislead the country?"

"No."

"No, okay," I repeated his reply.

"The answer is absolutely not."

"What happened?" I asked.

"What do you mean what happened?" Bush asked, sounding as if he had not been the one who gave all those speeches about WMD.

"In terms of weapons of mass destruction," I explained. "And the 'slam dunk' case."

The president said that weapons inspector David Kay's initial report supported the idea that Saddam had weapons programs. "I think that it's way too early to fully understand the complete history. This is intelligence," he pointed out.

I understand," I said. "Not fact."

"It was intelligence, hard-enough intelligence for the United Nations to pass several resolutions. Hard-enough intelligence for President Bill Clinton to make a military decision on this" by ordering the bombing of Iraq's suspected WMD sites in 1998.

"But we have not found any weapons of mass destruction," I said.

"We have found weapons programs that could be reconstituted."

"Could be, I agree."

"A weapon could come very quickly. And so therefore, given that, even if that's the very minimum you had, how could you not act on Saddam Hussein, given his nature," Bush said.

I mentioned that I'd spoken with Americans as I traveled around the country who thought that after 9/11 he had been the voice of realism by saying it had been a catastrophic attack, that the terrorists were killers, and that America was in for a long battle. His unwillingness to acknowledge that no WMD had been found was making him less the voice of realism.

"I disagree with that, that construct," Bush replied.

"Fair."

"Saddam Hussein had weapons, he used weapons."

"No question."

"And he hid weapons. He hid systems. He had plans," Bush went on. "And so therefore—the voice of realism just lays out where we are. That's a realistic look."

"And include in there, We haven't found them yet," I said.

He chuckled. "From my perspective, I don't want people to say, 'Aha, we told you so.' I want people to know that there is a process that's ongoing in a very dangerous part of the world. And so, frankly, I haven't heard one person say that to me, but you run in different circles than I do. Much more elite."

I said the people I was talking about were business people.

"The realism is to be able to understand the nature of Saddam Hussein, his history, his potential to harm America."

"Clearly, we haven't found bubbling vats," I said.

"Well," the president chuckled.

"But the status report, for the last six or seven months, is we havaen't found weapons. That's all," I pushed one more time.

"True, true, true."

It had taken five minutes and 18 seconds for Bush simply to acknowledge the fact that we hadn't found weapons of mass destruction. [pages 488-489]

The voice of realism? ....No comment.

I'm not going to rehash everything I've said for the last four years. Nor am I'm going to quibble over some of Woodward's assumptions that give Bush more wriggle room than he deserves. Suffice to say that the dialogue is damning and shows a president in denial and squirming every which way to avoid confronting his failure. In the end, the intelligence the Bush Administration used was mush and probably had little to do in any case with the administration's many conflicted motivations. And Bush's ideological theory for the war, as near as we can understand it, was based on the contradictory gibberish of military domination, imposing democracy by military force while gaining some economic advantages for the United States. It was a pathetic excuse for a war in Iraq. It was an enormous strategic failure in concept and execution.

I know Republicans, and particularly right-wing Republicans, well enough to know they probably see the above dialogue somewhat differently than I do and most of them probably still give Bush the benefit of the doubt but I also know a few hard-nosed Republican realists who would shake their heads knowing perfectly well that Bush should never have become president. We went to war based on self-deceptions supported by conscious lies with a plan based on abysmal ignorance and hubris. Americans need to think long and hard about who the next president is going to be. If we elect another public relations illusion, our country will continue to stumble.

More on Cheney's Poor Judgment and al Qaida

The other day, I pointed out that the Bush Administration had al Qaida on the ropes and failed to finish the job in late 2001 and 2002; Cheney's posturing comments against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi avoid the obvious: that Cheney's incompetent policies have done much to enable al Qaida to come back. Truthout has a long article by Robert Parry of Consortium News that explains in much detail why the vice president is so wrong:

Vice President Dick Cheney says he stands by his accusation that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's plan for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq would "validate the al-Qaeda strategy." And he apparently thinks he got the better of this latest war of words.

However, if Pelosi ever goes beyond complaining that Cheney is impugning her "patriotism" – while Cheney counters that he is only questioning her "judgment" – she might point out that it is the Bush administration that has "validated" al-Qaeda's 9/11 strategy over the past five years.

Captured al-Qaeda documents reveal that Osama bin Laden's principal goal in the 9/11attacks was to lure the United States into a clumsy counterattack in the Middle East that would alienate Muslims, help al-Qaeda recruit more jihadists and bog down the American military in a no-win war.

Though bin Laden was mistaken in believing that Afghanistan would become the central front, he was right in pretty much every other part of his plan. At the time of 9/11, al-Qaeda was a fringe player in the Muslim world, with its leaders driven into exile and holed up in the mountains of Afghanistan.

I don't agree with everything that Parry says but he adds a number of useful details. There should be no doubt at this late stage of the war that Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld are responsible for the fiasco in Iraq, the failure to deal fully with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan by rushing off to Iraq, and subsequently the resurgence of al Qaida.

Frank Rich on Al Qaida

Iraq didn't have a nuclear program worthy of the name but we attacked anyway. We attacked and Iran decided it might be time to at least pretend to have a nuclear program. We haven't attacked them yet but Cheney is thinking about it while Bush.... handles public relations?

The organization that attacked us on 9/11 was al Qaida, led by Osama bin Laden, all of whom were largely in Afghanistan at the time. Osama bin Laden escaped. Into Pakistan. Which has nuclear weapons. Which has a military that may not be totally loyal to President Musharraf. Afghanistan, which seemed to be a winnable war back in late 2001, has been dangerously neglected. The Taliban is threatening to make headway again. Al Qaida, in the meantime, seems to be growing strong again by basing itself across the Afghan border in the Northwest Territories of Pakistan, where the Pakistani military refuses to go. And Bush and Cheney are digging a hole in Iraq debating whether to support the Sunnis or the Shiites or some secular coalition that exists only in their imagination. We have a problem.

Frank Rich of The New York Times has an article on the serious potential threat of a regrouped al Qaida (via Truthout):

The White House doesn't want to hear it.... That's why terrorism experts are trying to get its attention by going public, and not just through The Times. Michael Scheuer, the former head of the C.I.A. bin Laden unit, told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann last week that the Taliban and Al Qaeda, having regrouped in Afghanistan and Pakistan, "are going to detonate a nuclear device inside the United States" ... Al Qaeda is "on the march" rather than on the run, the Georgetown University and West Point terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman told Congress. Tony Blair is pulling troops out of Iraq not because Basra is calm enough to be entrusted to Iraqi forces - it's "not ready for transition," according to the Pentagon's last report - but to shift some British resources to the losing battle against the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

This is why the entire debate about the Iraq "surge" is as much a sideshow as Britney's scalp. More troops in Baghdad are irrelevant to what's going down in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The surge supporters who accuse the Iraq war's critics of emboldening the enemy are trying to deflect attention from their own complicity in losing a bigger battle: the one against the enemy that actually did attack us on 9/11. Who lost Iraq? is but a distraction from the more damning question, Who is losing the war on terrorism?

The record so far suggests that this White House has done so twice. The first defeat, of course, began in early December 2001, when we lost Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora. The public would not learn about that failure until April 2002 (when it was uncovered by The Washington Post), but it's revealing that the administration started its bait-and-switch trick to relocate the enemy in Iraq just as bin Laden slipped away. ...

(snip)

... It is precisely by pouring still more of our finite military and intelligence resources down the drain in Iraq that we are tragically ignoring the lessons of 9/11. Instead of showing resolve, as Mr. Bush supposes, his botch of the Iraq war has revealed American weakness. Our catastrophic occupation spawned terrorists in a country where they didn't used to be, and to pretend that Iraq is now their central front only adds to the disaster. As Mr. Scheuer, the former C.I.A. official, reiterated last week: "Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you want to address the threat to America, that's where it is." It's typical of Mr. Bush's self-righteousness, however, that he would rather punt on that threat than own up to a mistake.

That mistake - dropping the ball on Al Qaeda - was compounded last fall when Mr. Bush committed his second major blunder in the war on terror. The occasion was the September revelation that our supposed ally, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, president of Pakistan, had negotiated a "truce" with the Taliban in North Waziristan, a tribal region in his country at the Afghanistan border. This truce was actually a retreat by Pakistan, which even released Qaeda prisoners in its custody. Yet the Bush White House denied any of this was happening. ...

I'm not sure what to make of Scheuer's statements, but there is this to consider: Bush and Cheney have bluffed and lied and bluffed again so often in the last five years that they can't even keep track of the consequences and permutations anymore. In foreign policy, you don't bluff unless you know exactly what you're doing; that does not describe George W. Bush or Dick Cheney this late in the day. Some potentially dangerous bluffs have been called. I won't say which ones though some of the more obvious ones are apparent to most people. The incompetence and ideological recklessness of Bush and Cheney is clearly endangering the United States.

We have a choice: we either regroup and begin serious talks with our enemies and friends in the Middle East or we drift into wider wars necessitating a draft and the neglect of any real future for years to come. Bush and Cheney, as things now stand, are on a slippery slope that may lead to a greater disaster of their own making in two or three trouble spots in the Middle East. And they have neglected al Qaida, to our nation's peril. Bush and Cheney have shown us how not to fight the 'war on terror.'

Bush and Cheney's Foreign Policy: Oops!

According to Sy Hersh's article in the New Yorker (here's a copy in Truthout), it is hard not to draw the conclusion that the Bush Administration is:

1) No longer working hard to create a democracy in Iraq.

2) Somewhat reluctant as things now stand to turn Iraq over to the Shiites, the majority in Iraq. This is largely because of the administration's paranoia about Iran, a Shiite country. It should be noted that the Bush Administration has made no serious effort to engage in real talks with the Iranians, though both sides have been guilty of unhelpful posturing.

3) Funding Sunni organizations in Iraq (and elsewhere for that matter) despite the fact that most American casualties in Iraq were caused by Sunnis, many of them leftovers from the Saddam Hussein regime.

4) Allowing the Saudis to fund Sunni organizations that fund other organizations with ties to al Qaida, the organization that is responsible for the 9/11 attack. Let us remember that the Saudis, although our allies, were never open about how so much funding went to al Qaida in the first place.

5) Hiding money and covert activities from Congress.

6) Insisting they have no intention of going to war with Iran but creating conditions that may make war with Iran more likely.

Oh, one other thing: Bush and Cheney have absolutely no idea what they're doing. Except that it seems to have dawned on them that they're creating a bigger mess in the Middle East and there is the potential of a regional conflict with Shiites and Sunnis, courtesy of the mess that Bush and Cheney have created. Bottom line: the damage they are doing to America's national security is worse than we thought. And in many ways they are working hard to kick the can down the road for the next president rather doing what they need to do to start cleaning up the mess in ways that are meaningful.

We need to get Bush and Cheney out of foreign policy business now rather than two years from now. Congress knows what it has to do and Republicans better start jumping aboard.

Stepping Deeper into the Quagmire

In Iraq, the Sunnis are already mad at the United States. Now Bush is working on getting the Shiites mad at us; here's the AP story by Robert H. Reid in the Houston Chronicle:

Thousands of Shiites on Saturday protested the U.S. detention of the son of Iraq's most powerful Shiite politician, and the country's Kurdish president deplored the "uncivilized" behavior of the American soldiers responsible.

The real message of the demonstrations: Don't push the Shiites too far either over concessions to the Sunnis or ties to Iran.

Having 80% of the Iraqis mad at us is not a good idea. Oh, wait a minute, the Kurds have something to say too, according to the same AP story:

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd and longtime ally of al-Hakim's father, deplored the Americans' "uncivilized and inappropriate" behavior and demanded punishment for those responsible.

It's becoming hard to find anyone in Iraq who isn't mad at us. Part of the problem is that we don't know the culture, the religious issues, the ethnic groups, the tribes, the factions and the shifting political loyalties. And we're not just in a civil war but a civil war with multiple factions. Juan Cole of Informed Comment has some thoughts on the arrest of the eldest son of Aziz al-Hakim; here's the beginning but read his whole post to get a feel of the conflicting stories circulating:

The US has released Ammar al-Hakim and US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad apologized profusely for his arrest. The US military is giving three reasons for his arrest: He entered Iraq at a closed border station, his passport was expired, and his party was armed to the teeth. In fact, however, his passport was valid until September 17, 2007, and nobody travels overland in Iraq without being armed. It is most likely that the US doesn't want Shiite leaders slipping over to Iran in this way, because it is trying to reduce Iranian influence with US allies in Iraq. That is, al-Hakim's offense was probably his trip itself, though that cannot be admitted by Washington.

One of the stories mentioned by Cole is that the military may have thought that they were going to capture Muqtada Sadr. Maybe it's just as well they didn't. They probably would have a half million Shiites rioting by now. We're not just in a quagmire but in a dangerous situation with multiple plausible explanations for any event and multiple possible triggers for real trouble. It is not politics to say that our presence itself is becoming the biggest problem in Iraq; we're not trusted and we're in the middle of a deadly family quarrel in a land we don't know well. No one can expect rigid ideologues like Bush and Cheney to sort through such a mess.

Now, for the sake of balance, let me point out that not everything out of Iraq is bleak. A couple of days ago we discovered a bomb making factory in Fallujah (different spelling in the story below for Fallujah; it's not easy to keep up with the multiple English spellings of Arabic words); here's the story from Peter Spiegel of tghe Los Angeles Times:

U.S. troops in Iraq uncovered a "car bomb factory" near Fallouja this week that contained multiple canisters of chlorine, a potentially lethal gas that has been used in three insurgent attacks over the last month, a top U.S. official in Baghdad told reporters Thursday.

Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the Army commander responsible for day-to-day military operations in Iraq, said the Tuesday night raid outside the city west of Baghdad netted a wide array of munitions and three vehicles that were apparently being readied as car bombs at the compound, in addition to the chlorine cylinders.

This is the kind of operation that should have been taking place more regularly three years ago when it would have been far more useful. These operations are only possible with intelligence in cooperation with the Iraqi government (and not by way of Abu Ghraib which only produces blowback). It's very late in the day for this kind of stuff but it may take a series of successful operations like it to make it easier to start drawing down with the purpose of disengaging from a conflict that isn't doing a thing for us and is already damaging us in multiple ways. The single most important reason we need to start disengaging is the risk that incompetent and arrogant people like Bush and Cheney will drag us into a deeper and far more dangerous conflict. Make no mistake: we're in deeper than we were a year ago.

British Military Overstretched

Thanks to mishandling by Bush, Cheney and the fired Rumsfeld, we are at risk of losing two wars, one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. Dick Cheney seems to be itching for a third war, this one with Iran, without bothering to engage in serious diplomacy. The Bush Administration and its neoconservative allies never understood the job, the Iraqi people or the military requirements. Clearly, we never sent enough troops to stabilize Iraq and we put Afghanistan on the back burner far longer than we should have instead of finishing the job. I have said this any number of times.

Cheney is being fraudelent when he says the war is going so well that the British can send troops home. If Bush is to have any chance of getting his foreign policy under control, he needs to urge Cheney to resign or, at the very least, cut back the vice president's portfolio so that he'll no longer create problems with his strange right wing ideology. The British are now in a position where they essentially are overstretched. Here's the story from Kim Murphy of the Los Angeles Times:

Britain's decision to pull 1,600 troops out of Iraq by spring, touted by U.S. and British leaders as a turning point in Iraqi sovereignty, was widely seen Wednesday as a telling admission that the British military could no longer sustain simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The British military is approaching "operational failure," former defense staff chief Charles Guthrie warned this week.

"Because the British army is in essence fighting a far more intensive counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan, there's been a realization that there has to be some sort of transfer of resources from Iraq to Afghanistan," said Clive Jones, a senior lecturer in Middle East politics at the University of Leeds, who has closely followed Britain's Iraq deployment.

"It's either that, or you risk in some ways losing both," he said. "It's the classic case of 'Let's declare victory and get out.' "

What is happening to the British is exactly what a number of American generals have warned could happen to us. In Iraq, we don't have enough people, we don't have enough equipment, training is seriously beginning to slip and we have people in the Bush Administration who still don't know what they're doing. The reality is that the United States never fully mobilized for the war Dick Cheney and George W. Bush had in mind; the job of civilians, apparently, was to go about their business and, by the way, go shopping.

Even if we manage to stabilize Iraq and Bush calls that a victory, we have lost far more than anything we have gained. There have been some calls lately to make sure the job in Afghanistan is finished. Al Qaida is making a comeback along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. It's time to get out of the middle of a civil war in Iraq, leave forces nearby and concentrate on finishing the neglected job in Afghanistan.


Note: The LA Times article has a mildly misleading graph from the Brookings Institute. It gives the impression there were fewer coalition forces in Iraq in 2003 than there actually were, though by the end of 2003, coalition forces had dropped considerably in numbers. It should be noted that the British alone had at least 40,000 troops in Iraq at the beginning of the war.

Allies Steadily Giving Up on Bush

The McCain Doctrine, the 'surge,' the 'augmentation,' the escalation, whatever one wants to call it, cannot mean very much if our allies continue to pull out troops. It's been a long time, for example, since Tony Blair had over 40,000 British troops in Iraq. While Blair has been drawing down, the Spanish have left, the Poles have left, the Italians have left and on it goes.

Steve Soto of The Left Coaster caught this on the news today:

The BBC and NBC are reporting at this hour that Tony Blair will be withdrawing 1500 troops from Basra within weeks, and that he wants 3000 of their 7700 troops out of Iraq by the end of 2007, if security warrants it. According to the BBC, Blair told Bush of this revised timeline just this morning.

By the end of the year, the British could have less than 5,000 troops in Iraq compared to the more than 40,000 they once had. That's a drop of 35,000 troops, considerably more than the troops that Bush is including for his 'surge.'

The British aren't the only ones among our alllies in recent weeks who are increasingly unhappy with Bush. The Japanese have been among our strongest allies but even their patience is wearing thin. Dick Cheney, of all people, has been sent to patch up the problems. Here's the story from John Brinsley of Bloomberg:

Cheney, 66, arrived in Tokyo late today, less than three weeks after Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso called U.S. policy in Iraq ``naive.'' Last month, Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma said President George W. Bush made a ``mistake'' in starting the war.

The belittling of the U.S. shows that support for the war in its closest ally in Asia is waning after Bush ordered an additional 21,500 U.S. troops to Iraq. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who succeeded Junichiro Koizumi in September, said his cabinet was united in its support for the ``surge.''

``When the defense minister and foreign minister of one of your allies criticize your policies, you cannot reasonably interpret it as being happy with what's going on,'' said Gerald Curtis, a political science professor at Columbia University in New York specializing in U.S.-Japan relations.

The mixed message from the Japanese seems to imply that they would like to see a change in policy by their staunchest ally. It may also be a signal that the Japanese want nothing to do with a war in Iran; they are, after all, heavily dependent on oil from the Middle East. Steve Soto also suspects that Tony Blair is sending a similar message to Bush. The British and Japanese are clearly among our strongest allies. If Bush's incompetence is giving them second thoughts, that doesn't leave many people supporting Bush's failed policies. It is well past time for Republicans in Congress to join Democrats in asserting Congress as a co-equal branch and start holding the president accountable while insisting on changes that makes sense.