More Afghan Security Forces, Fine, But Question The Overall Mission Too

We heard more doubts from Democrats today about any escalation in Afghanistan, but I find myself unimpressed with Carl Levin's rationale.

The leading Senate Democrat on military matters said Thursday that he was against sending more American combat troops to Afghanistan until the United States speeded up the training and equipping of more Afghan security forces.

The comments by the senator, Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, illustrate the growing skepticism President Obama is facing in his own party as the White House decides whether to commit more deeply to a war that has begun losing public support, even as American commanders acknowledge that the situation on the ground has deteriorated [...]

In the telephone interview on Thursday, Mr. Levin said he was not ruling out sending more troops eventually, but rather insisted that the United States try again on a years-old project: finding a way to expand and accelerate the training of the Afghan security forces.

“I just think we should hold off on a commitment to send more combat troops until these additional steps to strengthen the Afghan security forces are put in motion,” he said.

Levin reiterated this in a speech. And maybe Afghanistan needs more security forces. But is it at all in the US national security interest to have 68,000 troops and all kinds of trainers and contractors on the ground in Afghanistan so they can strengthen their own security forces? This assumes that what is required in Afghanistan is an American presence and a general military buildup. That's really not our decision to make. The war started to drive out Al Qaeda. Eight years later, Al Qaeda has been driven out. There is no Al Qaeda presence in that country, and in general Al Qaeda is weakened and destabilized, particularly in Pakistan. So what is the rationale for staying? There is no question that we can accomplish the limited goal of denying Al Qaeda safe havens with a much smaller military footprint. Yet the mission has crept into a counter-insurgency for no justifiable reason.

Yet this is what administration officials have proposed: a counter-insurgency program, creation of a national government, a national army, a democratic process, an economy not based on narcotics. If our goal is foster a strong central government, then we are knowingly pursuing something essentially at odds with Afghan history. A strong Afghan national army would mean doubling the number of trained Afghan military personnel that the US is now struggling to field. According to metrics developed by Gen. David Petraeus, a counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan would require 1.3 million troops for a decade. That is five times the size of US, NATO, and Afghan government forces today. No one thinks this is feasible and we are not attempting to do so. A classic counter-insurgency strategy therefore is not in the cards.

We not only cannot undertake a counter-insurgency of this magnitude as a matter of resources, we have no need to do so. So you can surge with Afghan forces or surge with US military forces but it doesn't change the calculation - only a negotiated settlement with the insurgency and a counter-terrorism strategy to stop the remote potential of safe havens in the region makes any sense.

The Deepening Afghan Nightmare

This looks to me like a good pivot point to up and end involvement in Afghanistan.

A U.S. jet dropped 500-pound bombs on two tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban before dawn Friday, triggering a huge explosion that Afghan officials said killed more than 70 people, including insurgents and some civilians who had swarmed around the vehicles to siphon off fuel.

Germany, whose troops called in the 2:30 a.m. strike in the northern province of Kunduz, said it feared the hijackers would use the trucks to carry out a suicide attack against its military base nearby.

We are completely in over our heads here. Once again we've allowed amorphous terms like "victory" to define our military involvement instead of achieving realizable goals. So a war initially based on dismantling Al Qaeda becomes a war to build a nation and protect an ethnic class. The country held an election that could lead to outbreaks of violence and unrest, as our man in Kabul is clearly corrupt and ineffectual. Tribal factions with no tradition of a central government have vowed armed conflict if Hamid Karzai is allowed to stand after multiple examples of election fraud. You could have a situation where the government is threatened by a popular uprising, leaving the US troops no clear guidance on how to react. And on top of that, dozens more civilians are bombed from above, leading to more alienation and more desire to drive out the occupiers. The latest in a series of after-the-fact inquiries will do us no good. Meanwhile, more Americans die every day without an articulated rationale.

The divisions in Afghanistan are mirrored by the divisions at home. Top advisers appear to be split on whether to add even more troops. Dick Holbrooke and Hillary Clinton look to be on the side of more troops. Robert Gates has been worried about the foreign footprint in Afghanistan but appears open to escalation. Joe Biden, no dove, is leading the group in the White House opposed to a long-term commitment, which is what escalation would signal. Inside the Pentagon, at least some officials will not acquiesce to Gen. McChrystal's request for more forces without major scrutiny. And in another sign that Obama would only have Republicans behind him if he orders more troops, Senate Democrats are not enthused by the prospect of deepening our commitment.

Speaking on a day when a U.S. bombed tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban killing 70 people, including some civilians, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said the U.S. must focus more on building the Afghan security forces. His cautionary stance was echoed by Sen. Jack Reed, who is also on the committee and spent two days in Afghanistan this week with Levin.

The senators will return to Washington next week, just as Obama receives a new military review of Afghanistan strategy that officials expect will be followed up by a request for at least a modest increase in U.S. troops battling insurgents in the eight-year-old war [...]

"There are a lot of ways to speed up the numbers and capabilities of the Afghan army and police. They are strongly motivated," Levin said from Kuwait. "I think that we should pursue that course ... before we consider a further increase in combat forces beyond what's already been planned to be sent in the months ahead."

Levin said there is a growing consensus on the need to expedite the training and equipping of the Afghan army to improve security in Afghanistan, where 51 U.S. troops died in August, making it the bloodiest month for American forces there since the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.

In a separate call, Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, said the U.S. must use a multi-pronged approach: build up the Afghan Army, send more civilians to Afghanistan to provide economic and political assistance, and reach out to Taliban supporters who are willing to recognize the Kabul government.

This is actually just a fantasy, a hope that more Afghan security forces can reduce our troop numbers. It doesn't talk about the policy itself, which as a true counter-terrorism strategy would focus on intelligence and law enforcement and containing terrorist activity to within the borders. As Chuck Hagel said very expertly this week, foreign policy is not an abstraction. We are committing real lives and real treasure to this effort, and trying to impose our will on a nation which has no interest in mimicking us.

Accordingly, we cannot view U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan through a lens that sees only "winning" or "losing." Iraq and Afghanistan are not America's to win or lose. Win what? We can help them buy time or develop, but we cannot control their fates. There are too many cultural, ethnic and religious dynamics at play in these regions for any one nation to control. For example, the future of Afghanistan is linked directly to Pakistan and what happens in the mountains along their border. Political accommodation and reconciliation in this region will determine the outcome.

If the antiwar movement is truly planning a fall campaign, they should invite Hagel. He is as perceptive and cogent on this issue as anyone. Right now it appears that the DC establishment, while always tilting toward war, is split. The progressive groups who could engage the masses in a very powerful way are reluctant to challenge the President on his policy because, to be honest, they don't feel confident talking about foreign policy and national security. But the greatest organizing opportunity in recent progressive history, what brought Democrats the Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008, was opposition to the war in Iraq. It galvanized a movement and made history. Moreover, it was the right thing to do. It's time for Americans to decide whether to agree to what amounts to endless war or not.

F-22 Intrigue

The debate in the Senate over additional funding for the F-22 (even if this funding is cut, we'll have 187 of the fighters available) took a turn last night.

Senator Levin for some reason withdraws his amendment to strike funding for the F-22 fighter that the President wants discontinued and over which he threatens a veto of the bill. And hate crimes legislation finally finds a legislative vehicle to be attached to. Only it's... the bill the President threatens to veto if the F-22 money isn't struck. That ain't gonna go over well, if anyone's looking. I don't know if there's any other effort underway besides Levin's to strike that F-22 funding. We'll see. Meanwhile, Senator Reid has done what needs doing to clear the decks for a vote on the hate crimes amendment. He's filled the amendment tree and filed for cloture [...]

I'd hate to see them stay until one in the morning on Friday to get this done, only to attach it to a doomed bill. But maybe it's not so doomed if this is attached. Maybe that's the thinking. To trade the president the hate crimes salve he promised the LGBT community after the DOMA brief fiasco in exchange for his letting the F-22 authorization escape the veto. Slick!

The White House appears serious enough about removing the additional F-22 funding that I suspect the amendment will return in some form, if not in conference committee. Peter Orszag also objects to $438.9 million in funding for a new engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, which has a perfectly good engine already. And the F-22 funding is being assailed in print media, both in this NYT op-ed:

The plane, the most expensive jet fighter ever built, was designed for cold war aerial combat. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has repeatedly argued that the Pentagon needs to phase out such high-cost, outdated programs so it can buy the kinds of weapons that American troops desperately need to complete their mission in Iraq and defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The F-22 has not been used in either war. Buying more would only make it harder for the Air Force to shift money into aircraft like unmanned intelligence drones and the more adaptable, cheaper-to-fly F-35 fighter, which is set to begin production in 2012 [...]

Providing for America’s real defense needs is expensive enough without making the military budget double as a make-work jobs program. Capping the F-22 program at 187, as the Pentagon wants, would keep production lines intact for years to come, well beyond the immediate need for stimulus-related job creation.

Not to mention this reported piece in WaPo (h/t Hilzoy why the hell are you leaving blogging!!!), detailing all the failures of the F-22 as a vehicle:

"The United States' top fighter jet, the Lockheed Martin F-22, has recently required more than 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in the skies, pushing its hourly cost of flying to more than $44,000, a far higher figure than for the warplane it replaces, confidential Pentagon test results show. (...)

"It is a disgrace that you can fly a plane [an average of] only 1.7 hours before it gets a critical failure" that jeopardizes success of the aircraft's mission, said a Defense Department critic of the plane who is not authorized to speak on the record. Other skeptics inside the Pentagon note that the planes, designed 30 years ago to combat a Cold War adversary, have cost an average of $350 million apiece and say they are not a priority in the age of small wars and terrorist threats.

The plane is literally "vulnerable to rain." And we spend $1.7 billion a piece for them.

So I think the F-22 funding will come out, by hook or by crook. But here's the really interesting part of the defense bill:

The Obama administration has objected to a provision in the 2010 defense funding bill currently before the Senate that would bar the military's use of contractors to interrogate detainees.

The provision, strongly backed by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), describes interrogations as an "inherently governmental function" that "cannot be transferred to contractor personnel." It would give the Defense Department one year from the bill's enactment to ensure that the military had the resources to comply with it.

A White House policy statement yesterday signaled "many areas of agreement" with the bill that emerged from Levin's committee late last month but said the administration has "serious concerns" about some provisions. The statement repeated Obama's threat to veto the $680 billion bill unless $1.75 billion to fund an additional seven F-22 fighter aircraft is removed.

The more that we privatize interrogation, the more likelihood that those less accountable contractors sully America through torture. We can absolutely meet the needs of intelligence gathering without using CACI or other contractors, and it's sad to see the Obama Administration fight this provision.

Basically, there's a whole lot tied up in this bill at the moment. I could see nothing passing and defense funded under last year's agreement. Which would be a net loss and a missed opportunity at reform, not to mention a loss for the hate crimes bill.

The Battle Over The F-22

One area where President Obama deserves some praise is his stand on the F-22, at odds with parochial interests in Congress and even splitting some senior Democrats:

Democratic leaders support an amendment that would strip the $1.75 billion for seven additional jets from the 2010 defense authorization bill, which is being debated on the Senate floor this week.

But several senior Democrats are from states that will see gains from building more F-22s.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who represents the state where Pratt & Whitney builds the F-22 engine, told The Hill he was working with his Democratic colleagues to convince them to support the purchase of more jets despite the president’s opposition. Dodd also faces a tough reelection campaign next year.

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the vice chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference, will be a key vote to watch. The watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, which supports removing the F-22 funds, lists Schumer as poised to vote against stripping the money.

Schumer declined to say how he was voting, telling The Hill he is still studying the issue, and advised: “Watch the vote.”

Sen. Levin withdrew the amendment temporarily today so the Senate could take up the hate crimes bill. Sounds to me like Levin feared he didn't have the votes.

Matt Duss lays out what this is really about.

So just to be clear, this argument over the F-22, at least as it’s occurring in Congress, not really a debate over defending the country — it’s a test of whether the requirements of electoral politics can outweigh the requirements of American national security as defined by the Department of Defense. This isn’t to suggest that Congress has no role in determining American defense requirements — of course it does, but let’s not pretend that seven extra planes is the difference between air dominance and ceding the skies.

Meanwhile, Mike Goldfarb observes that “one thing that’s been consistent throughout this process has been quiet support for F-22, in contrast to the vocal opposition from Obama, Gates, and McCain. Most people thought that F-22 was DOA as soon as Gates released the administration’s defense budget. But it turns out that support for the program in Congress is pretty broad.”

I don’t know if I’d call Lockheed and Boeing spending $6.5 million and $2.4 million, respectively, on lobbying in the first three months of 2009 “quiet support.” But yes, it is rather impressive what kind of support can be gotten for an item that the military doesn’t want by spreading its production out into 48 different states, donating vast sums of money to various political action committees, and sending armies of lobbyists onto the Hill. It’s almost as if politicians were interested in getting re-elected or something.

We're moving into a phase of whether we can take even this minor step in defying the military-industrial complex - remember, the overall military budget will increase this year - or whether we're resigned to defense contractors eating up massive government contracts forever, permanently hamstringing our budget. That's what's at stake in this amendment.

Honest Dick

Nancy Pfothenpfhaupfer wants you to know that salt of the earth Dick Cheney, the guy who chopped down the cherry tree at Mount Vernon (OK, shot it in the face, actually) and admitted it to his father, would never tell a lie:

"You know, obviously you've got different opinions on the whole issue of harsh interrogation techniques. And of course, Cheney wasn't running in the last election, but Sen. McCain, for who I worked, was very clearly opposed to all these harsh interrogation techniques. And he went on record saying, as a former prisoner of war for five years, you don't get high quality information from these types of interrogations. People will basically say anything in order to make it stop. I don't believe, however, that the former Vice President would be making statements that he knew to be inaccurate."

Shuster just breaks up laughing from that one. And mockery is the right reaction. Because we're now seeing Cheney backtracking from his own statement that CIA classified documents will show that torture saved lives.

The key moment came when his interviewer said: “You want some documents declassified having to do with waterboarding.” Cheney replied:

“Yes, but the way I would describe them is they have to do with the detainee program, the interrogation program. It’s not just waterboarding. It’s the interrogation program that we used for high-value detainees. There were two reports done that summarize what we learned from that program, and I think they provide a balanced view.”

Bear with me here, because this is crucial. Cheney is carefully saying that the documents summarize what we learned from the overall interrogation program. Torture, of course, was only a component of that program. So he’s clearly saying that the docs summarize what was learned from a program that included non-torture techniques, too.

Here’s why this is important. It dovetails precisely with what Senator Carl Levin, who has also seen these docs, says about them. Levin claims the docs don’t do anything to “connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of the abusive techniques.”

Of course, Cheney's only hedging in the event that the documents do get released, so he can find some other rhetorical ground. He was perfectly content to lie when he thought that the documents would never get released to the public. The same way he lied yesterday about the Iraq war saving lives, an unprovable negative based on things Saddam Hussein had no capacity to do. It's an obvious falsehood, but he can retreat to some ground where he can claim that nobody else could prove him false. The same with him foisting 9/11 off on Richard Clarke, on the grounds that counter-terrorism was his job so only he must be responsible. Never mind that Cheney takes all kind of credit for keeping America safe AFTER 9/11. And of course this analysis neglects plenty:

When the moderator reminded Cheney that Clarke had repeatedly warned the administration about al Qaeda’s determination to attack the U.S., Cheney snarkily replied, “That’s not my recollection, but I haven’t read his book.”

In fact, it was Cheney who “missed” the warning signs, not Clarke. New York Times reporter Philip Shenon’s book, “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation,” reprinted some of Clarke’s emphatic e-mails warning the Bush administration of the al Qaeda threat throughout 2001:

“Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack” (May 3)

“Terrorist Groups Said Co-operating on US Hostage Plot” (May 23)

“Bin Ladin’s Networks’ Plans Advancing” (May 26)

“Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent” (June 23)

“Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats” (June 25)

“Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks” (June 30)

“Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays” (July 2)

Similarly, Time Magazine reported in 2002 that Clarke had an extensive plan to “roll back” al Qaeda — a plan that languished for months, ignored by senior Bush officials:

Clarke, using a Powerpoint presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. … In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, “Response to al Qaeda: Roll back.” … The proposals Clarke developed in the winter of 2000-01 were not given another hearing by top decision makers until late April, and then spent another four months making their laborious way through the bureaucracy before they were readied for approval by President Bush.

Dick Cheney is a pathological liar, who knows enough to give himself a minor rhetorical out should anyone call him on it. He's also a pathetic child for relying on 9/11 trauma to explain their terror policies.

"Unless you were there, in a position of responsibility after September 11, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas that you faced in trying to protect Americans," Condoleezza Rice said last month as she admonished a Stanford University student who questioned the Bush-era interrogation program. And in his May 21 speech on national security, Dick Cheney called the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a "defining" experience that "caused everyone to take a serious second look" at the threats to America. Critics of the administration have become more intense as memories of the attacks have faded, he argued. "Part of our responsibility, as we saw it," Cheney said, "was not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America." [...]

Yes, we went for days with little sleep, and we all assumed that more attacks were coming. But the decisions that Bush officials made in the following months and years -- on Iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping -- were not appropriate. Careful analysis could have replaced the impulse to break all the rules, even more so because the Sept. 11 attacks, though horrifying, should not have surprised senior officials. Cheney's admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.

Thus, when Bush's inner circle first really came to grips with the threat of terrorism, they did so in a state of shock -- a bad state in which to develop a coherent response. Fearful of new attacks, they authorized the most extreme measures available, without assessing whether they were really a good idea.

Read that whole thing. It's an indictment of the worst Administration in history, who used a crisis to pursue long-sought goals, and rationalizing them through fear and deception.

Bush's Turn

I guess Cheney and Bush switched undisclosed locations for a week, and now the former pResident delivered the talking points about the torture regime.

In his largest domestic speech since leaving the White House in January, Bush told an audience in southwestern Michigan that after the September 11 attacks, "I vowed to take whatever steps that were necessary to protect you."

Although he did not specifically allude to the high-profile debate over President Obama's decision to halt the use harsh interrogation techniques, and without referencing Cheney by name, Bush spoke in broad strokes about how he proceeded after the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in March 2003.

"The first thing you do is ask, what's legal?" he said. "What do the lawyers say is possible? I made the decision, within the law, to get information so I can say to myself, 'I've done what it takes to do my duty to protect the American people.' I can tell you that the information we got saved lives."

Well, those are two different things, aren't they? "What's legal" does not necessarily equal "What do the lawyers say is possible." Especially depending on the sequencing of those events. If "what do the lawyers say is possible" comes first, and it's more "what can we get the lawyers to say is possible," then "what's legal" becomes fairly irrelevant, right? Especially when combined with "I vowed to take whatever steps that were necessary to protect you." That sounds like a vow irrespective of the law.

Then there's this unprovable "the information we got saved lives" statement, and considering that George Bush himself signed the executive order barring public disclosure of specific information gained through torture, and furthermore, he could have released them himself at the time if he wanted to be vindicated. For his part, Carl Levin has called B.S.

Regarding Cheney's claim that classified documents will prove his case -- documents that Levin himself is also privy to -- Levin said: "But those classified documents say nothing about the numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of abusive techniques. I hope that the documents are declassified, so that people can judge for themselves what is fact, and what is fiction."

Pretty unequivocal. But the last thing that Bush and Cheney want would be declassification. Because their tough-guy stance that torture saves lives works out better for them than chalking intelligence up to sugar free cookies.

This got to me:

The former president earned a noisy standing ovation when asked what he wants his legacy to be.

"Well, I hope it is this: The man showed up with a set of principles, and he was unwilling to compromise his soul for the sake of popularity," he said.

By the way, I'm willing to believe that Bush didn't compromise his soul. He probably didn't know about the worst stuff, and anyway you can't compromise a soul that would say this:

In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker's] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them," he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?' "

"What was her answer?" I wonder.

"Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me."

...wonder if George would listen to the advice of his commanders on this one:

MacCallum: (Ticking time bomb scenario)

Gen. Petraeus: ....T here might be an exception and that would require extraordinary but very rapid approval to deal with, but for the vast majority of the cases, our experience downrange if you will, is that the techniques that are in the Army Field Manual that lays out how we treat detainees, how we interrogate them -- those techniques work, that's our experience in this business.

MacCallum: So is sending this signal that we're not going to use these kind of techniques anymore, what kind of impact does this have on people who do us harm in the field that you operate in?

Gen. Petraeus: Well, actually what I would ask is, does that not take away from our enemies a tool which again have beaten us around the head and shoulders in the court of public opinion? When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions, we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward I think it's important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those.

If Petraeus admits that we violated the Geneva Conventions, isn't he calling indirectly for prosecutions of those who ordered such violations?

But Only A Step

You have to consider this a victory for the Gates/Obama effort to radically shift expenditures in the Defense Department.

Bloomberg reported over the weekend that Levin is bullish on the proposal. "It's the right direction," Levin said. "This is how can we be armed more effectively at a more affordable cost."

Levin added that the committee would tackle the plan several weeks from now, starting with testimony from outside experts. In the meantime, he's taking issue with the claims of certain Republicans that Gates and the Obama administration are trying to gut the defense department.

"Secretary Gates is not going to disarm America," Levin said. "President Obama is not going to disarm America. The question is: how can we be effectively armed?"

I agree with Levin's assessment while saying once again that this is only a step, and would not address the profound inequity in the budget between defense and non-defense discretionary spending. We do not need more weapons of mass destruction when that money could be channeled into clean energy or health care.

That said, I do agree with David Axe that the claims about 95,000 jobs being supported by the F-22 is completely bogus, and a symbol of what garbage reformers have to deal with to make progress in this area.

Problem is, that 95,000 number counts indirect employment at firms for whom the F-22 program is just one of many clients. And it also counts Lockheed assembly workers who are in high demand for other aviation projects. In fact, ending Raptor production today might not result in a single unemployed aerospace worker.

Consider Lockheed’s plant in Meridian, Mississippi:

“As far as the facility here in Meridian is concerned, there are only about 20 workers devoted to the manufacturing of the tail assembly on the Raptor,” [plant manager Joe] Mercado added. “That is out of a total work force of almost 200 people. I don’t mean to lessen the importance their jobs mean to the families of those 20 people. It is very possible we could transition those workers to the C-130 product line, which is the major contract we have. But would the loss of the Raptor contract cripple us here in Meridian? No.”

It’s the same across the U.S. aerospace industry. A year ago the industry was worried about huge labor shortages. Shutting down the Raptor line would see thousands of workers snapped up for active production lines churning out F-16s, F-35s, C-130s and modernized C-5s for Lockheed, not to mention the prospect that industry rivals Boeing and Northrop might lure Lockheed workers for their own active production lines for the F-15, F/A-18 and others.

I personally wouldn't have a problem with losing some production jobs, or shifting them to building high speed rail cars. But the misinformation really grates on me.

Seeking Justice, Part I

I mentioned this the other day, but I think I was too hasty about it. The bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee treatment is a bombshell. Here we have the US Senate stating very plainly that members of the Administration, all the way to the very top, committed war crimes by directing interrogators in the field to use torture. They reverse-engineered techniques used to teach American soldiers how to resist torture, and turned them on the detainees captured in Iraq and Afghanistan, in violation of US and international law.

The Committee concluded that the authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques by senior officials was both a direct cause of detainee abuse and conveyed the message that it was okay to mistreat and degrade detainees in U.S. custody.

Chairman Levin said, “SERE training techniques were designed to give our troops a taste of what they might be subjected to if captured by a ruthless, lawless enemy so that they would be better prepared to resist. The techniques were never intended to be used against detainees in U.S. custody.”

Senator McCain said, “The Committee’s report details the inexcusable link between abusive interrogation techniques used by our enemies who ignored the Geneva Conventions and interrogation policy for detainees in U.S. custody. These policies are wrong and must never be repeated.”

Chairman Levin also said: “The abuses at Abu Ghraib, GTMO and elsewhere cannot be chalked up to the actions of a few bad apples. Attempts by senior officials to pass the buck to low ranking soldiers while avoiding any responsibility for abuses are unconscionable. The message from top officials was clear; it was acceptable to use degrading and abusive techniques against detainees. Our investigation is an effort to set the record straight on this chapter in our history that has so damaged both America’s standing and our security. America needs to own up to its mistakes so that we can rebuild some of the good will that we have lost.”

If you've been paying attention for the past several years, none of this is new. There have been many books written on the subject, loads of documentary evidence from those tortured. But never has a body as esteemed as the US Senate pointed the finger right at the White House. We're talking about the President, the Vice President, the chief counsel, the Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, all guilty, going back to a February 2002 order when the President signed an authorization claiming that the Geneva Conventions didn't apply to members of Al Qaeda, which has since been rejected by the Supreme Court. That they based their authorization on warped legal theories is immaterial, in my view. Just because you are told that you're allowed to break the law doesn't men you're absolved from blame when you do so.

There is a legal case with which this report can be put to use. Yesterday the Supreme Court ordered a federal appeals court to make a decision in the case of four British Muslims who were detained at Guantanamo and tortured.

The former prisoners are attempting to hold top Pentagon officials responsible for the abuse, including former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The lawsuit was thrown out last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, which concluded that the Guantanamo prisoners had no rights under the Constitution because they were foreigners held by the military.

In a one-line order Monday, the justices set aside the appeals court's decision and ordered the judges to take a new look at the case.

There are many dedicated lawyers who are not going to stop advocating for holding the Bush Administration responsible. They will be filing motions and seeking arrests in civil and criminal court for the rest of George Bush's life, for the rest of Dick Cheney's life, for the rest of Don Rumsfeld's life. They believe in the rule of law and reject the idea that anyone is above it.

They are seeking justice because they believe in the Constitution.

"Yeah, We Did It, So?"

I don't know if this escaped everyone or not, but Dana Perino yesterday admitted White House involvement in the Pentagon pundit scandal.

But I would say that one of the things that we try to do in the administration is get information out to a variety of people so that everybody else can call them and ask their opinion about something. And I don’t think that that should be against the law. And I think that it’s absolutely appropriate to provide information to people who are seeking it and are going to be providing their opinions on it.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that all of those military analysts ever agreed with the administration. I think you can go back and look and think that a lot of their analysis was pretty tough on the administration. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t talk to people.

Not said here is the multiple conflicts of interest, particularly on a financial level, between these puppets and the military industrial complex. Not said is that access would be granted in exchange for favorable coverage, and military analysts like Wes Clark frozen out if they used independent judgment.

Sens. Levin and Kerry are calling for investigations. Which is fine. But I think Perino gave us most of the information that we need. And the next group that needs to fess up are the heads of the top broadcast and cable news outlets.

UPDATE: Sen. Feingold has asked the GAO if the Pentagon pundit program is legal. I'm happy that Democrats are talking about this, though I'm not sure they're going after the right source - it's the media who has the responsibility here.

When Fully Briefed Does Not Mean Fully Briefed

We're in day two of the latest scandal on officially sanctioned CIA torture, and tensions are rising between the White House and Congress. Democrats on the Intelligence Committee are demanding to see the secret memos, and are going on about the Administration's methods to evade oversight. The White House responded by saying that the relevant people were fully briefed.

PERINO: I believe that the members that have been briefed are satisfied that the policy of the United States and the practices do not constitute torture.

QUESTION: But, Dana, what have they been briefed on? If they haven’t actually seen, like the 2005 legal opinions, they’ve just been briefed in general. You’re selecting what…

PERINO: What I can tell you, and I have been assured they have been fully briefed.

QUESTION: Fully briefed on the actual memos?

PERINO: Yes.

Except John Rockefeller is not fully satisfied, nor has he been fully briefed.

The Administration can’t have it both ways. I’m tired of these games. They can’t say that Congress has been fully briefed while refusing to turn over key documents used to justify the legality of the program.

The reality is, the Administration refused to disclose the program to the full Committee for five years, and they have refused to turn over key legal documents since day one. As I have said from the beginning, Congress has a constitutional responsibility to determine whether the program is the best means for obtaining reliable information, whether it is fully supported by the law, and whether it is in the best interest of the United States.

Of course, the question is, Sen. Rockefeller, what are you going to do about it? The Administration line is that they do not torture and that they follow US law. This is a tautological argument, since they are explicitly redefining the US law that they follow. So what are you going to do to ensure that Congress can at least judge what they are doing and restore the rule of actual law, not law as the President sees fit?

This is spilling into the new Attorney General nomination, and it should.

Meanwhile, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., demanded a copy of a third Justice Department memo justifying military interrogations of terror suspects held outside the United States.

In a letter to Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey, Levin wrote that two years ago he requested — and was denied — the March 14, 2003, legal opinion. Levin asked if Mukasey would agree to release the opinion if the Senate confirms him as attorney general, and cited what he described as a history of the Justice Department stonewalling Congress.

"Such failures and the repeated refusal of DoJ to provide Congress with such documents has prevented the Congress from fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities to conduct oversight," Levin wrote.

There simply shouldn't be any move forward on the Mukasey nomination without the documents themselves, not just a promise to turn them over. The evasion of responsibility should end. Today.

Time For A Democratic Coup

In sports, it's often said that teams can't fire all the players, so they fire the coach. This is the mentality behind the shameful proposal by some Democrats, like Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton, to "fire" Nouri al-Maliki as Prime Minister of Iraq. Only we're not the owners of the country. The Iraqi people own the country, and only they can sort out the problems they now face. A new intelligence estimate declares that Maliki will not be able to bring together factions and achieve a political reconciliation, but it doesn't exactly see any other option, either:

“The report says that there’s been little political progress to date, and it’s very gloomy on the chances for political progress in the future,” said one Congressional official with knowledge of its contents.

The new report also concludes that the American military has had success in recent months in tamping down sectarian violence in the country, according to officials who have read it.

The report, which was intended to help anticipate events over the next 6 to 12 months, is “more dire in its assessments” than the administration has been in its own internal discussions, according to one senior official who has read it. But the report also warns, as Mr. Bush did on Wednesday, that an early withdrawal would lead to more chaos.

“It doesn’t take a policy position,” one official said. “But it leaves you with the sense that what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working, but we can’t let up, or it’ll get worse.”

Damned if we stay and damned if we leave. Nice position you've put the country in, W.

Indeed, American officials are ending any hopes that democracy can exist in Iraq under the current structure. Changing Maliki in favor of a strongman who will crush opposing viewpoints is essentially what the generals are arguing here. And so we're back to the cult of Iyad Allawi, which, um, didn't work the first time, fellas.

he powerful Republican lobbying group of Barbour Griffith & Rogers is plotting an effort to displace Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and supplant him with former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. IraqSlogger reported:

BGR’s work for Allawi includes the August 17 purchase of the Web site domain Allawi-for-Iraq.com.

In recent days, BGR sent hundreds of e-mail messages in Allawi’s name from the e-mail address DrAyadAllawi@Allawi-for-Iraq.com.

Allawi has been described as “Saddam lite.” In 2004, he handcuffed and blindfolded suspected terrorists and shot them in the head with a pistol. Now, with frustrations mounting against current prime minister Maliki, the administration may be using that as an opportunity to usher in its reliable ally Allawi. In a Washington Post op-ed last week, Allawi wrote a piece that seemed to be an effort to curry favor with the White House.

You know, overthrowing governments appears to be the only thing the Bushies can manage. They certainly can't deal with the aftermath.

All of this is kind of a useless argument. To believe that changing the figurehead of the Iraqi government would effect change assumes that you believe there still IS a functioning Iraqi government, and not a collection of city-states run by militias and factions. Militias control the electricity grid, by and large. Sunni militants can hold out in tiny Baghdad neighborhoods for months on end. The Iraqi government is irrelevant in this scenario, and no matter who is its leader, they will not be listened to. We have totally broken this failed state, and whether or not leaving will cause chaos, staying certainly already has. The famed "consequences of failure" are already being met. So Bush and McCain and Lieberman can play "Rambo" and claim that if we just stay a little bit longer (read: indefinitely) everything will be all right, but everything is already all wrong.

Get out. Now.

Rabbit Ears

It's definitely a trying situation for Democrats. Any time they say they support the troops the Bush Administration makes it seem like they support the policy. Anytime they say they don't support the policy the Bush Administration makes it sound like they don't suport the troops.

Which is a tough situation. And yet 70% of the American people, with little help from the media or even Democrats, support the basic policy of ending the occupation of Iraq. So maybe the key here is to stop listening to what the Bush Administration is saying about you and carry out the policy that brings us closest to that goal. Stop playing chess and start playing checkers.

I mean, Rep. McNerney, this is nice and all...

But in an interview yesterday, McNerney made clear his views have shifted since returning from Iraq. He said Democrats should be willing to negotiate with the generals in Iraq over just how much more time they might need. And, he said, Democrats should move beyond their confrontational approach, away from tough-minded, partisan withdrawal resolutions, to be more conciliatory with Republicans who might also be looking for a way out of the war.

"We should sit down with Republicans, see what would be acceptable to them to end the war and present it to the president, start negotiating from the beginning," he said, adding, "I don't know what the [Democratic] leadership is thinking. Sometimes they've done things that are beyond me."

NOTHING is acceptable to them. They want to play out the string and keep Americans dying in Iraq indefinitely. It's nice to want to negotiate to find the pony, but the only thing that will come out of it is getting 3 Republicans to agree to a withdrawal 7 years from now. But only if we invade Syria first.

This focus on Prime Minister Maliki is similarly absurd. You think some other Prime Minister is going to unify the country? Who? Iyad Allawi? Didn't we already try that? Meanwhile, Levin acknowledges progress on the military front after a hasty two-day trip, getting spun about the utility of Iraqi forces. So this is what to expect in September.

Senate Democrats largely will not challenge, but rather will embrace and celebrate, the notion that The Surge Is Working and that we are making "military progress," whatever that might mean this month. To "oppose the war," they instead will follow the strategy Hillary Clinton has adopted this year -- namely, blaming the Iraqis for failing to take advantage of the great opportunities we are creating for them. Levin's demand that Prime Minister Maliki be replaced is designed to accomplish exactly that. Democrats are afraid to challenge the U.S. military's claims that we are Winning, and are even afraid to oppose the Surge, so instead, they will take the safest course -- heaping the blame on the Iraqi government and demanding that they improve [...]

Iraq is so disintegrated, so ethnically cleansed, so broken that, as (Nir) Rosen points out, it does not really exist as an entity any longer:

Iraq has been changed irrevocably, I think. I don't think Iraq even -- you can say it exists anymore. There has been a very effective, systematic ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad, of Shias --from areas that are now mostly Shia. . . . And Baghdad is now firmly in the hands of sectarian Shiite militias, and they're never going to let it go.

Rosen reports that the number of externally displaced Iraqis is now close to 3 million -- most of them Sunnis, representing a sizable portion of the Iraqi Sunni population which, in turn, further ensures Shiite sectarian militia control of most of the country. Always obscured by the exciting debate over whether we are "winning" is what happens if we "win" -- the installation of an Iran-and-Syria-friendly Shiite "government" surrounded by an ethnically divided country armed and ruled by sectarian militias loyal to a whole variety of Middle East actors. In light of all of that, Sen. Levin's claim of "military progress" is just incoherent.

Democrats have put themselves in a horrible spot. There is going to be a drawdown of troops, mainly because of physical realities of manpower, that they won't be responsible for, and it will be seen by the media as "piling on" to suggest it's insufficient, especially after they've determined that "the surge is working." The 100,000 or so contractors will stay, of course, there will be no talk of them. And there may be an internal coup that will be used as a rhetorical weapon by the White House ("We need to give the new Prime Minister time to succeed"). None of this will have any bearing on Iraq's inevitable slide into absolute chaos.

Things that the Democrats could do: highlight reports like this in the same way they're highlighted against you...

In Baghdad, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker was downbeat in his assessment of Maliki's ability to end sectarian warfare between the Shiites and Sunni Arabs. He called progress toward national reconciliation "extremely disappointing" and said Maliki and other members of his government needed to reach compromises to help quell the bloodshed.

"We do expect results, as do the Iraqi people, and our support is not a blank check," Crocker told journalists.

Speak absolutely clearly that the surge is a failure.

“No matter how brilliantly and bravely our troops and their commanders perform — and they have performed brilliantly and bravely — they cannot and should not bear the responsibility of resolving grievances at the heart of Iraq’s civil war,” Mr. Obama said. “No military surge, no matter how brilliantly performed, can succeed without political reconciliation and a surge of diplomacy in Iraq and the region.”

Bird-dog the other side to get them on the record about Bush's war:

But, unlike most lawmakers who return from the war-torn country, Voinovich is refusing to offer an assessment of what he saw on his trip. “He’s not going to get into that right now — what’s working, what’s not working, is the surge working,” his spokesman, Chris Paulitz, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “He’s not really interested in a soundbite response.”

And be extremely firm in calling for a specific end to this war, asking Republicans for their support but also firmly explaining to them the consequences of their opposition; namely, the end of their political careers.

And quit listening to every word the Republicans say on this thing.

The Straight Dope On Iraq

The buzz from Iraq is about Sen. Levin and Warner's report after another Congressional "dog and pony show," where they suggest that there is tangible military progress but no political movement. Levin went so far as to say this:

"The Maliki government is non-functional and cannot produce a political settlement because it is too beholden to religious and sectarian leaders."

Which is pretty much in line with a lot of things we've been hearing from non-propagandist politicians and so-called foreign policy experts.

But when you hear from the soldiers themselves, who aren't on the ground for an 8-day trip arranged by the military but a 15-month deployment, it carries a bit more weight.

VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

I think the most dangerous part of the editorial is the one where the soldiers explain how the notion of an "enemy" is relative in today's Iraq.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

This revelation comes at at time when the military brass continues to try and spin that Iran is the sole bad actor in Iraq, despite little evidence, to the extent that military spokesmen say things like "Just because we're not finding (the Iranians) doesn't mean they're not there."

And it happens every day. And Shiites and Sunnis have more fealty to their militias than to the population, and our continued support for them in their communities simply arms both sides in a civil war.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

This is a great assessment of the country, because it sets the realities of the situation in a way that cannot charitably be seen as an element of "cut-and-run" defeatism. This is a truth that foreign policy experts know but refuse to say publicly. And so the lapdog media looks at words from people like Pollack and O'Hanlon instead of recognizing the truth.

UPDATE: Two provincial governors have been assassinated recently. That's 2 out of 18. The political turmoil is enormous.

If You Don't Build It, They Won't Come

Hillary Clinton, Jim Webb and a collection of other Democrats have just written Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin demanding a hearing on contingency plans for withdrawal from Iraq. This of course will be likely to lead to criticism that just talking about withdrawal emboldens the enemy, criticism that Under Secretary for Defense Eric Edelman made just last week. This letter from Clinton and Webb follows a letter from Clinton and John Kerry to SecDef Robert Gates asking for contingency plans on withdrawal of US forces.

What's amazing is that these letters have to be written at all. It flies in the face of all prior history of the US military.

The entire reason for a Pentagon, for a War Room, for wargaming exercises, for military analysts in the employ of the US government, is for contingency planning. That is their directive and what we mandate as the taxpayers who fund them. The Pentagon has housed in its archives plans to bomb practically every country on Earth, including Iran and Venezuela and on and on. It would be irresponsible if they didn't. USSTRATCOM, the Strategic Command of the United States, exists primarily for nuclear contingencies but also for a wide variety of strategic planning of varied type.

Indeed, the Republican Warner-Lugar bill calls for the presentation of a redeployment plan for Iraq by October of this year. So this is not a recipe for defeat. This is the Defense Department's job, to plan for every possible outcome. The fact that the political class is resistent is simply an irresponsible act. The calculation is that if there are no plans for withdrawal, then it cannot be accomplished. This is not a supposition; members of the "Dear Leader" caucus of the executive branch have come right out and said this. In fact, there appear to be contingencies that have been in the works for months, even before "all the troops were in place":

American military planners have begun plotting a fallback strategy for Iraq that includes a gradual withdrawal of forces and a renewed emphasis on training Iraqi fighters in case the current troop buildup fails or is derailed by Congress.

...a drawdown of forces would be in line with comments to Congress by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates last month that if the "surge" fails, the backup plan would include moving troops "out of harm's way." Such a plan also would be close to recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, of which Gates was a member before his appointment as Defense Department chief.

It's not dishonorable to game out the options of a failed surge; it's the way the military has always done its business. There is this mentality among the warhawks and Bush defenders that if you don't build it (a withdrawal plan, they won't come (to force a withdrawal). That's why it's absolutely smart for Clinton and others to call for hearings on this plan, to ensure that we don't get out of Iraq in the same stupid way that we
got into it.

The letter to Levin follows:

The Honorable Carl Levin
Chairman
Committee on Armed Services
United States Senate
R228
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Chairman Levin:

We write to request that the Senate Committee on Armed Services hold a hearing on Department of Defense contingency planning for the redeployment of United States military forces from Iraq. Such a hearing could solicit the views of outside experts who have experience in the redeployment of large numbers of troops as well as administration witnesses. If necessary, portions of the hearing could be held in closed session.

The importance of holding this hearing was underscored this month when Senators Warner and Lugar introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act calling for the Administration to present its redeployment plan to Congress by October 16, 2007. As they noted, the safety and security of our military forces, as well as our nation’s credibility in the region, require that any military withdrawal or redeployment from Iraq be carefully planned and executed. A poorly planned withdrawal would compound the risks to our forces, coalition partners, and the government of Iraq.

The need for the Committee to know the status of Department of Defense redeployment planning is clear, yet past efforts by individual members to obtain this information were rebuffed. Following reports that the Pentagon was not engaging in detailed planning while the Iraqi Defense Ministry was preparing its own plans in the event that the United States and its forces departed Iraq quickly, the Secretary of Defense was requested in May to provide the appropriate oversight committees in Congress with briefings on the current status of contingency planning for the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman responded to this request on Secretary Gates’ behalf on July 16. A copy of his letter and other correspondence relating to this matter are enclosed for your reference. As you will see, Under Secretary Edelman raised spurious arguments to avoid discussing contingency planning and claimed that premature discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda. His assertion that necessary congressional oversight emboldens our enemies is outrageous.

As you are aware, the roots of the many problems facing our men and women serving in Iraq were planted by the failure of this Administration to develop sound, realistic plans. We cannot afford to repeat the same mistake when our forces redeploy. Congressional oversight will help to ensure that redeployment plans properly address the numerous challenges that our troops will face, including the resources and the diplomatic support required to ensure that any redeployment is safe and orderly.

Thank you for considering this request.

Sincerely yours,

Hillary Rodham Clinton Robert C. Byrd

Evan Bayh Jim Webb

CC: The Honorable John McCain
Ranking Member
Committee on Armed Services

A Breakthrough on Energy

Early in the day it looked like the Democrats' energy package in the Senate was on the rocks. Republicans blocked the centerpiece of the proposal, removing $32 billion dollars in tax breaks and incentives for oil companies and funneling that money into alternative energy research. So the GOP maintained corporate welfare at the expense of working to save the planet. Good times.

However, by the end of the day, a compromise agreement had been reached that is actually fairly solid.

The Senate passed an energy bill late Thursday that includes an increase in automobile fuel economy, new laws against energy price-gouging and a requirement for huge increases in the production of ethanol.

In an eleventh-hour compromise fashioned after two days of closed-door meetings, an agreement was reached to increase average fuel economy by 40 percent to 35 miles per gallon for cars, SUVs and pickup trucks by 2020.

This overcame a watered-down proposal from Michigan's Carl Levin, and is a significant step. As Dianne Feinstein pointed out,

"It closes the SUV loophole," declared Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., referring to current requirements that allow much less stringent fuel efficiency standards for SUVs and pickup trucks than for cars. "This is a victory for the American public."

Industry should have closed that loophole years ago, it would have enabled them to sell more cars, but government has a vested interest in planetary survival as well as the survival of the domestic auto industry, and if the carmakers won't help themselves they must be dragged into the 21st century.

This bill could obviously be better, but getting it through the Senate with what amounts to a veto-proof majority (it got 65 votes without Sen. Johnson and I believe Boxer, so that's 67) is major news. The House may be tougher, especially considering John "I loves me some gas guzzlers" Dingell is Chairman of the relevant committee. Apparently Dingell is trying to punt on the CAFE standards issue, the most important part of the bill. Call your Representatives; we cannot let this happen.

Levin Asks More Soldiers To Die For A Mistake

I have no words for this. Carl Levin reacts to universal anger at Democrats for capitulating on Iraq by... buying the same BS frame about de-funding the troops.

I voted against going to war in Iraq; I have consistently challenged the administration's conduct of the war; and I have long fought to change our policy there. But I cannot vote to stop funding the troops while they are in harm's way, conducting dangerous missions such as those recently begun north of Baghdad. I agree with Lincoln, who decided "that the Administration had done wrong in getting us into the war, but that the Officers and soldiers who went to the field must be supplied and sustained at all events." As long as our nation's policies put them there, our troops should hear an unequivocal message from Congress that we support them.

Idiot, we're not talking about de-funding the troops, we're talking about de-funding the WAR. The troops aren't going to be panhandling for bullets and armor and trying to hitch a ride to Jordan. What is wrong with you?

Here's Russ Feingold, who lately I've thought is the last sensible man in Washington.

In the opinion piece, Levin mischaracterized the effort led by Feingold and Majority Leader Harry Reid as somehow cutting off funding for U.S. troops. In fact, the Feingold-Reid bill would not end funding for the ongoing military mission in Iraq until U.S. troops had been safely redeployed out of harm’s way.

"I’m pleased that Senator Levin and Senator Jack Reed have finally come to the conclusion that a timetable for redeployment with a hard deadline is what we need to safely redeploy our troops from Iraq," Feingold said. "But I’m disappointed that Senator Levin chose to announce his shift by disingenuously suggesting that the Feingold-Reid plan would somehow cut funding for troops in harm’s way. Senator Levin knows full well that the plan I introduced with Majority Leader Harry Reid, and which was supported by a majority of Senate Democrats, would end funding for the war in Iraq only after our brave troops have been safely redeployed out of Iraq. It is time for Senator Levin and Senator Jack Reed to drop their opposition to the Feingold-Reid plan to safely redeploy our troops by March 31, 2008, and then end funding for the mistake in Iraq."

Senator Levin and Senator Jack Reed previously had been critical of timetables culminating in a firm end date as a way to bring our military involvement in Iraq to an end. Despite Levin's current criticism of efforts to use Congress's power of the purse to end the war, Levin voted for a similar effort with regard to Somalia in 1993. In October 1993, Levin joined 75 other Senators in voting for an amendment to require redeployment of U.S. troops from Somalia by setting a deadline after which funding for the military mission there was terminated. The amendment was passed into law and U.S. troops were redeployed from Somalia by the deadline.

Anyone that doesn't understand the fundamental difference between de-funding troops and de-funding war is enabling the further death and destruction of American men and women in an intractable occupation. On this issue, Carl Levin is completely worthless. And the end of his op-ed, where he essentially says "my bill is doing better than your bill," demonstrates exactly the kind of runaway egos that have crippled our ability to govern in the 21st century.

UPDATE: What we have is a fundamental problem. Republicans don't want to talk about Iraq at all; Democrats can't help but talking about it the wrong way. And kids keep dying.

Carl, Use Your Inside Voice

I know I'm supposed to mind my manners like a nice little blogger, but I'm tempted to call Carl Levin some names after this stupidity:

The Senate will not stop paying for the Iraq war or relent from insisting that President Bush keep pressing the Baghdad government for a negotiated end to the violence, a top Democrat said Sunday.

Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the Senate Armed Service Committee chairman, took issue with an effort by Majority Leader Harry Reid to limit war spending after March 2008 as a way to end U.S. involvement.

"We're not going to vote to cut funding, period," Levin said. "But what we should do, and we're going to do, is continue to press this president to put some pressure on the Iraqi leaders to reach a political settlement."

I'm sure Levin really believes that the Democratic Congress won't cut funding, and I'm sure he has his own reasoning for why he would be personally opposed to it. But why, WHY does he have to say it? This is the equivalent of playing a poker game, and before the flop saying "I have Ace-King suited, but everyone knows I'm going to lose, so go ahead and bluff me." How is that in any way good strategy, even if the end result is a stopgap measure of funding for a short time so the President has to come back for more money shortly thereafter?

I know that the war at home is different from the war on the ground. I know that Democrats are trying to be effective and trying to achieve what is politically possible. But another aspect of that is moving the impossible into the terrain of the possible. And you're never going to do that if you give up the battle before it's even joined.

The new talking point, from the Ricks article, is that defeating the insurgency is a 5-10 year project, and the folks in Washington are just being too impatient. Levin seems to have bought that, or at least is scared enough about "you hate the troops" invectives from Republicans that he can't imagine doing anything but funding the occupation.

But the war defenders have been saying "just you wait and see" for going on five years. And what we see is the patterns of the battle naturally shifting, from Baghdad to outside Baghdad, from fighting Shiites to fighting Sunnis to back to fighting Shiites, and nothing is essentially changing at all.

But there is little sign that the Baghdad push is accomplishing its main purpose: to create an island of stability in which Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Kurds can try to figure out how to run the country together. There has been no visible move toward compromise on the main dividing issues, like regional autonomy and more power sharing between Shiites and Sunnis [...]

In the northern and western provinces where they hold sway, and even in parts of Baghdad, Sunni Arab insurgents have sharpened their tactics, using more suicide car and vest bombs and carrying out successive chlorine gas attacks.

Even as officials have sought to dampen the insurgency by trying to deal with Sunni Arab factions, those groups have become increasingly fractured. There are now at least a dozen major Sunni insurgent groups — many fighting other Sunnis as well as the Americans and the Shiite-led government. A deal made with any one or two would be unlikely to be acceptable to the others.

While Shiite militias appear to have quieted in Baghdad so far, elements of them have been fighting pitched battles outside the city, sometimes against one another, sometimes against Sunni Arabs. They are pushing Sunnis out of their homes and attacking their mosques.

And in a new tactic, both Shiite and Sunni militants have been burning down homes and shops in the provinces in recent months.

One American private in the First Battalion, Fifth Cavalry, who was working the overnight shift at a new garrison in western Baghdad, described the Americans’ fight this way: “The insurgents, they see what we’re doing and we see what they’re doing. Then we get ahead, then they figure out what we’ve done and they get ahead.

“It’s like a game of cat and mouse. It’s just a really, really smart mouse.”

And as long as you don't have a buy-in from any of the major population groups, the mouse will always be smarter because he'll have more friends. Heck, even the jails have become recruitment centers for extremists:

Iraqi officials also struggle with a crowded system where prisoners can languish as long as two years before getting a trial. But they say the Americans have allowed militants to flourish in their facilities.

"It looks like a terrorist academy now," said Saad Sultan, the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry's liaison to U.S. and Iraqi prisons. "There's a huge number of these students. They study how they can kill in their camps. And we protect them, feed them, give them medical care.

"The Americans have no solution to this problem," he said. "This has been going on for a year or two, we have been telling them."

(can't wait until I see the first insaneosphere reaction to this that goes something like "See, that's why you gotta torture these people, we're being too nice!" as if that's the problem and not one of simple sequestration.)

This spun into a post about Iraq itself, but I want to put the focus back on Levin. He knows that there's only a political solution left for Iraq. And yet he'll continue to fund a strategy that takes us further and further away from that solution. And he won't even allow for any bargaining position for Democrats so they can at least get a piece of what they want.

I know we were out of power for a long time, but this is basic stuff: you don't tell your opponent that they've won before the battle even STARTS. (Of course, Levin tried to water down the nonbinding resolution, so maybe the truth is that he doesn't want to leave at all)

Spinegold

I mentioned earlier how dramatic it would be to see Sen. Johnson come back to the Senate to cast a vote against the war in Iraq. It would be nice if that vote was an actual opposition vote, instead of this nonsensical empty resolution, one not worthy of even gracing the halls of the Senate with its presence.

Unfortunately, the new Warner-Levin resolution that many Democrats are pushing is flawed and unacceptable. It rejects the surge, but it also misunderstands the situation in Iraq and endorses the President’s underlying approach. It’s basically a back-door authorization of the President’s misguided policies, and passing it would be a big mistake. Under the guise of constructive criticism, the Warner-Levin resolution signs off on the President continuing indefinite military operations in Iraq that will not address the fundamental political challenges in Iraq, and that continue to distract us from developing a comprehensive and global approach to the threats that face our nation.

Here’s a link to the resolution so everyone knows what we’re talking about. I’m going to pass over the first finding, which salutes the President as "Commander in Chief." And I’m not going to focus on finding (16), which salutes the muddled and wishy-washy report of the Iraq Study Group as "valuable." Instead, I’m going to focus on section 22 of the findings, which is nothing short of an endorsement of the status quo in Iraq and that is simply unacceptable. It rejects exactly what is most needed in Iraq – an "immediate reduction in, or withdrawal of, the present level of forces." If you vote for this resolution, you are voting against redeploying troops from Iraq. This resolution doesn’t fix the administration’s failed Iraq policy – it just takes us back to where we were before the escalation. It’s not enough to reject the "surge" if you aren’t willing to support a plan for redeploying our troops.

It’s all downhill from there in (b)2. The resolution goes on to support "continuing[ing] vigorous operations in Anbar province, specifically for the purpose of combating an insurgency." Apparently, some people think that our troops should be involved in putting down the Sunni insurgency in western Iraq. Actually, the President’s policy of maintaining a massive, open-ended military presence in Iraq has been inflaming the insurgency in that country from the start. I support the idea of targeted counter-terrorism missions to take out terrorist elements in Iraq, but we shouldn’t ask our brave troops to remain there to put down an Iraqi insurgency any more than we can expect them to end Shi’ite-Sunni sectarian conflict in Baghdad.

That’s why I introduced legislation this week to use Congress’s power of the purse to end our military involvement in Iraq. I was greeted with a tremendous response from this community. I’m extremely grateful for it because it was evidence of how badly change is both wanted and needed. But how does the Warner/Levin resolution change anything? We owe it to ourselves to demand action that will bring about change in Iraq, not take us back to a failed status quo.

Of course, he's just grandstanding because he wants to run for President. Oh wait, he isn't.

Chris Dodd will also oppose this nonbinding farce of a bill, and good for him.

This legislation, if you read it, authorizes the President (in a nonbinding sort of way) to continue the war. In fact, it endorses the worst kind of compromise: don't escalate but don't leave. In other words, do exactly what's been getting Americans killed and turning Iraq into a hell hole for the last four years.

We've failed Iraq and we're about to compound the mistake by bombing Iran (why do you think all the USAF jets and aircraft carriers are there?), and Sens. Levin and Warner are patting themselves on the back for a resolution that allows this foreign policy nightmare to continue?

I support Sen. Feingold and I am through thinking strategically about this, i.e. the symbolic significance of an opposition vote, or how to get Republicans on board, or whatever. Iraq is over and it needs to be brought to a conclusion. If Republicans want to yoke themselves to Iraq, have at it. There should be a vote a day until this is over. And the votes should mean something.

The Meaningless Nonbinding Self-Satisfactory Bill Lives!

The big story this morning was that Republicans were desperate to stop the Senate's nonbinding resolution on Iraq, and were scrambling to come up with their own resolutions to divide the caucus and ensure nothing too divisive would pass. Sure, there were the usual quotes of Senators acting "concerned" and "worried" and "troubled," but really that's what the story was about. For some reason the Bush Administration really doesn't want a nonbinding resolution to pass. Probably because the press, who is as silly as they are, would treat something with no real power as a "stinging rebuke." I understand that sometimes you have to work within the system, but this is ridiculous.

And it gets even more ridiculous, as Sens. Levin and Warner have agreed to compromise on their competing nonbinding resolutions, virtually ensuring that they will get enough votes to break a filibuster and pass it. I agree with putting up a vote both to see where people stand, forcing Republicans to choose between party and country, and as part of a "kitchen sink" strategy with more and more bills coming down the pike. But on its own merits, this nonbinding thing is crap, and that two nonbinding resolutions put together represents some sort of "breakthrough" is baffling. 0 + 0 = 0.

Now the only competing measure will be one pushed by McCain and Graham, calling for specific benchmarks the Iraqis have already shown they can't handle.

The kind of thinking in the Senate that believes a nonbinding resolution will end the Iraq war must be the same kind of thinking that believes Iraq won't be an issue in the 2008 election. I don't know what country these Senators are living in sometimes.

There are actual ways to stop the war; they've been well-documented. There's something almost poetic in the fact that, on the day after Sen. Feingold runs a classroom seminar on the powers of the legislative branch during wartime, the same legislators make a "breakthrough" on what amounts to a strongly worded letter to the most obstinate man in the history of politics.

There are actual ways to stop the war; they've been well-documented. There's something almost poetic in the fact that, on the day after Sen. Feingold runs a classroom seminar on the powers of the legislative branch during wartime, the same legislators make a "breakthrough" on what amounts to a strongly worded letter to the most obstinate man in the history of politics. Sen. Obama figured it out. Reps. like Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters Jack Murtha have figured it out. Netroots heroes like Patrick Murphy and Jerry McNerney, who signed on as co-sponsors to the bills from the aforementioned Representatives, have figured it out. They're either strong-willed people or those who haven't caught DC disease yet.

Levin and Warner are, well, the opposite.

Nonbinding to victory!