Official Military Publication Calls For End Of Don't Ask Don't Tell

An article in the Joint Forces Quarterly, an official military publication published for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argues powerfully and using available evidence for an end to discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military.

WASHINGTON - An article in the Pentagon’s top scholarly journal calls in unambiguous terms for lifting the ban on gays serving openly in the armed forces, arguing that the military is essentially forcing thousands of gay men and women to lead dishonest lives in an organization that emphasizes integrity as a fundamental tenet.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of Pentagon leaders, but their appearance in a publication billed as the Joint Chiefs’ “flagship’’ security studies journal signals that the top brass now welcomes a debate in the military over repealing the 1993 law that requires gays to hide their sexual orientation, according to several longtime observers of the charged debate over gays in the military.

While decisions on which articles to publish are made by the journal’s editorial board, located at the defense university, a senior military official said yesterday that the office of Admiral Mike Mullen, the Joint Chiefs chairman who is the nation’s top military officer, reviewed the article before it was published.

“After a careful examination, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that unit cohesion will be negatively affected if homosexuals serve openly,’’ writes Colonel Om Prakash, who is now working in the office of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. “Based on this research, it is not time for the administration to reexamine the issue; rather it is time for the administration to examine how to implement the repeal of the ban.’’

Via Adam Bink at Open Left, here's the entire article. The author takes a very deliberate approach, marshaling all of the arguments before and against repeal and coming to an unequivocal conclusion. He says that allowing gay members to serve while hiding their true identity compromises their personal integrity to an unacceptable degree. He says this ends up hurting unit cohesion more than it helps, as commanders know everything about their troops except one hidden fact. He cites the tragedy of 12,500 willing servicemembers no longer serving, likely a low number "since it cannot capture the number of individuals who do not reenlist or who choose to separate because of the intense personal betrayal they felt continuing to serve under the auspices of DADT."

Importantly, Col. Prakash applies empirical data from other NATO and allied countries who have allowed gay members of their militaries and sees absolutely no basis to the claim of a loss of unit cohesion:

Prior to lifting their bans, in Canada 62 percent of servicemen stated that they would refuse to share showers with a gay soldier, and in the United Kingdom, two-thirds of males stated that they would not willingly serve in the military if gays were allowed. In both cases, after lifting their bans, the result was “no-effect.” In a survey of over 100 experts from Australia, Canada, Israel, and the United Kingdom, it was found that all agreed the decision to lift the ban on homosexuals had no impact on military performance, readiness, cohesion, or ability to recruit or retain, nor did it increase the HIV rate among troops.

This finding seems to be backed by the 2006 Zogby poll, which found that 45 percent of current Servicemembers already suspect they are serving with a homosexual in their unit, and of those, 23 percent are certain they are serving with a homosexual. These numbers indicate there is already a growing tacit acceptance among the ranks.

This was written by a member of the military, for members of the military, and his study leads to the inescapable conclusion that Don't Ask Don't Tell is a costly failure that must be repealed. Furthermore most Americans favor repeal. There is absolutely no excuse for delay on this subject from either Congress or the Obama Administration.

Sucked Into Another Quagmire

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen just put Barack Obama in an unwinnable position today by endorsing an effort to escalate the war in Afghanistan even further.

The top U.S. military officer said Tuesday that thousands more U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan to regain the initiative against a worsening Taliban insurgency, and that a new program is underway to offer "incentives" to persuade Taliban fighters to switch sides.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that between 2,000 and 4,000 military trainers from the U.S. and its NATO partners will be required in order to accelerate and expand the growth of Afghan army to 250,000 troops and increase the size of the Afghan police force in coming years.

Mullen also strongly suggested that more U.S. combat troops will be required to provide security in the short term, while the Afghan forces are being developed.

"A properly resourced counterinsurgency probably needs more forces," Mullen said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, calling the effort both "manpower and time-intensive."

These Afghan forces Mullen speaks about here? They're mostly functionally illiterate, they frequently abandon the army when they find out they'll be deployed to dangerous areas, and they are 100% dependent on American troops:

If we left Afghanistan tomorrow, lock stock and barrel, two things would happen to the security forces. The first would be the ANA and ANP would completely evaporate as functioning institutions in much of the country, probably in a matter of days if not hours. They are still very much artificial constructs that we've imposed, and wholly dependent on our technology for their survival so long as they continue to use the tactics we've taught them. The second would be that the revitalized Northern Alliance and other forces that the ANA replaced would resume doing exactly the kinds of nifty hit-and-run things, to protect their enclaves, that Malevich is talking about. Because that IS how they fight, when left alone.

To get the current Afghan army to do those things, you're talking basically starting over at this point... or taking a good chunk of the country and letting them run it with a bare minimum of Western troop support, operating almost covertly within their ranks. It would have to be a low-risk area of the country, because if you did that right now in the South the insurgents would eat them for lunch, but in another part of the country it might be possible.

Here's what we've trained the ANA to do, instead. They can in some circumstances involving the locals be useful interfaces for our forces. They can hold and defend fixed locations and the immediate environs. They can force-multiply small Western dets, which would be a lot more useful if there weren't more westerners in the south than ANA right now. They can do effective IED sweeps daily, and other such activities where the cumulative risk to Western troops would simply be too high. Umm, that's about it.

They've been trained for eight years as glorified interpreters and chum for explosives. And so increasing those forces will do nothing but provide more chum. If I didn't know better, I'd say that the US training and equipping effort for Afghan security forces was designed to fail to ensure a long-term American commitment that would act as a money funnel for the military-industrial complex. Heck, even if the Afghans were well-trained, maintaining an Army of that size would cost three times their gross domestic product, which is impossible.

I appreciate the strategy to buy out Taliban fighters - hey, it worked in Iraq - but there's still no articulation of an overall mission strategy or goal here, probably because if the public knew what that was, namely, building a democratic state in an part of the world which has never known one, they would react violently in opposition. They've already lost most of the country in the absence of any strategy.

We know how this game will be played. Gen. McChrystal will offer a menu of options and Obama will pick the one in the middle, so he can say he rejected the hawks and the doves. But that middle course will escalate the war. Mullen basically forced Obama's hand here, and the freak-out if the President rejected the advice of the top military commander would be unyielding.

There's a hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on this tomorrow. The Democrats are walking into a huge trap if they rubber-stamp an escalation for an unpopular war.

Did Biden Threaten Iran?

A lot of buzz about Joe Biden's strange construction of an answer about Israel's potential airstrike to take out suspected Iranian nuclear facilities:

BIDEN: Look, Israel can determine for itself — it's a sovereign nation — what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But just to be clear here, if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat, they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way?

BIDEN: Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination that they're existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.

It's just not the same as how the Administration has answered this question in the past. Robert Farley thinks this is an effort by the Administration to distance the United States from Israeli actions, while Kevin Drum thinks it was a warning to Iran. I tend to follow the latter. There's no way Israeli and American actions could truly be divorced in this case, not only because of US foreign military aid to Israel, not only because of historical precedent, but because Israel would have to fly over Iraqi airspace and get American go-aheads to carry this off. I agree that an assertion of Israeli soveriegnty is UN Charter biolerplate, and certainly Biden insisted that engagement with Iran would continue, but one statement can send two messages. Here's Drum's take:

Rhetorically, though, this amps things up. Biden is basically saying that Israel really might launch an attack, and the best way to avoid that is for Tehran to start dealing seriously with the United States. "If the Iranians respond to the offer of engagement, we will engage," he said carrotishly — and if they don't, well, there's not much we can do to stop our crazy cousin. You know how he is. You're better off dealing with us.

Hard to say if this will work. But that seems to be what's going on. This isn't distancing, it's pressure to quit screwing around and instead sit down and talk.

The good news is that Admiral Mullen, at the same time on CBS, announced that military action on Iran would be destabilizing. But an awkward statement like this could have the same destabilizing impact in the Muslim world.

LAST UPDATE (Monday morning): a variety of comments from assorted well-placed worthies have come my way over the last day, some online and others privately. Most suggest that Biden's comments were not meant to change U.S. policy, and that if anything he meant to distance the U.S. from any Israeli strike (though a few speculate that it was actually meant to strengthen the U.S. bargaining position ahead of the Moscow talks). If that's the case, then it is only that much more important to repeat that his comments are being nigh-universally presented in the Middle Eastern media (Israeli and Arab, at least) as a "green light." If that wasn't the intended signal, then the administration needs to recognize that its signaling has gone awry and clear it up before it's too late...

The White House has prided itself on engagement through Arab media, so if they truly didn't mean for this to be the message, they need to explain themselves publicly to that constituency.

Villagers Let Their Freak Flag Fly

This is a reversal:

President Barack Obama, who pledged during his campaign to shift U.S. troops and resources from Iraq to Afghanistan, has done little since taking office to suggest he will significantly widen the grinding war against a resurgent Taliban.

On the contrary, Obama appears likely to streamline the U.S. focus with an eye to the worsening economy and the cautionary example of the Iraq war that sapped political support for President George W. Bush.

"There's not simply a military solution to that problem," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said last week, adding that Obama believes "that only through long-term and sustainable development can we ever hope to turn around what's going on there."

Less than two weeks into the new administration, Obama has not said much in public about what his top military adviser says is the largest challenge facing the armed forces. The president did say Afghanistan and Pakistan are the central front in the struggle against terrorism, a clue to the likely shift toward a targeted counterterrorism strategy.

After Obama's first visit to the Pentagon as president, a senior defense official said the commander in chief surveyed top uniformed officers about the strain of fighting two wars and warned that the economic crisis will limit U.S. responses. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because Obama's meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff was private.

I think the reporter is playing mind-reader a little bit. What's happening right now is a strategy review. Wisely, President Obama is actually looking at the situation and taking input from everyone, even detractors. Publicly, those who will be closest to making the decision are offering a very balanced view, full of warnings and caveats. Bob Gates' Senate testimony this week was quite honest.

Gates, a cautious advocate of bolstering U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that he worries that “Afghans [will] come to see us as the problem, not the solution, and then we are lost.” He warned that increased levels of U.S. troop deaths in 2009 were “likely.”

In December, Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, stated that he needs an increase of nearly 30,000 troops “for the next few years” — in other words, a sustained troop increase, not a brief surge in U.S. forces as occurred in Iraq in 2007. In the last few days Obama administration officials have begun telling reporters off the record not to presume that the president has made a decision on the size or duration of any prospective troop increase.

Gates said Tuesday that he backs McKiernan’s request — but signaled that the troop spigot would not remain open. “I would be very skeptical about additional force levels beyond what Gen. McKiernan asked for,” Gates told the Senate panel. A former senior CIA official during the Russian invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, Gates recalled that “the Soviets couldn’t win that war with 120,000 troops and a ruthless approach” to Afghan civilians, since they adopted “the wrong strategy.” [...] “Above all,” he said, “there must be an Afghan face on this war.” More important to Gates than increasing U.S. troop levels, he said, was increasing the numbers of Afghan security forces, and he said the government of Hamid Karzai supports a U.S.-backed effort to increase the Afghan National Army to 130,000 troops from its current 80,000, though he said he was unsure “even that number will be large enough.” At several points in the hearing, Gates worried that the U.S. was losing support from the Afghan people, saying that the U.S. has “lost the strategic communications war” to the Afghan insurgency about U.S.-caused civilian casualties. Proposing a policy of “first apologiz[ing]” when U.S. troops kill civilians in error, Gates said, “We have to get the balance right with the Afghan people or we will lose this war.”

Gates was adamant that there's no military solution in Afghanistan, and that the goals should be minimal, narrowed to denying Al Qaeda a safe haven. “If we set as the goal [creating] a Central Asian Valhalla, we will lose,” he said. Similarly, this week Adm. Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said to the Washington Post "I don't have enough troops in the United States military to make the difference that needs to be made" in Afghanistan.

Some of this may come from the large protests against the President's first forward action in the region, an airstrike in the Waziristan area that killed civilians. This may have shown that aerial strikes will only inflame the population and possibly turn Pakistan toward religious parties. While the theory behind additional troops is that less airstrikes would be necessary, it would increase the foreign occupier footprint at a time when the population is less supportive of them. The fact that NATO help appears unlikely is being factored into their thinking as well, as is the relative weakness and corruption of the Karzai government. While top officials press Karzai for more, there is a lot of thought to throwing Karzai over, or at least not offering him any support, in the next Presidential election, which has now been postponed until August due to the rising violence. So it looks like no big decisions have been made.

Throughout this there have been great, strident voices contextualizing the situation in Afghanistan and warning against a deeper commitment. Barnett Rubin, Juan Cole, Steve Clemons and Scott Ritter are just a few. What's been notable in the past couple days is, while the Administration undergoes this strategy review, the chattering class is going nuts. Newsweek decided that eleven days and a noncommital stance was enough to call this "Obama's Vietnam," as if he ordered the invasion in 2001 and neglected the war for seven years. They've somehow justified this by distancing from dirty hippies who analogize every war to Vietnam, and then... analogizing the war to Vietnam:

"Vietnam analogies can be tiresome," they write. "To critics, especially those on the left, all American interventions after Vietnam have been potential "quagmires." But sometimes clichés come true, and, especially lately, it seems that the war in Afghanistan is shaping up in all-too-familiar ways."

And you should have seen Bob Woodward on ABC this morning, yipping away with "What is the strategy?" and "Why aren't we leaving yet," sounding like a latter-day Country Joe McDonald. And there have been other big-picture pieces in the print media.

I agree that troops shouldn't be committed in the absence of goals or strategy, and it's good that the establishment is starting to question the slow roll in Afghanistan. Forgive me, however, for questioning their motives. Although Obama is engaging in a deliberative process, it is characterized as a rush to war. They are making up for their own past while they analogize to the distant past. Obama stumbling into his own Vietnam "fits" for them. It's the perfect narrative and they're going to sell it.

I think it's very unsettling. The public is very split on Afghanistan and could be persuaded on either side. While I'm personally against escalation, I'm willing to deal with the outcomes of my decision. I don't think the Village is. They're interested in putting their imprint on the story no matter what happens. So if Afghanistan falls into chaos with an escalation, then Obama is stuck in a quagmire. If it falls into chaos without an escalation, then Obama make a strategic mistake and the blood is on his hands. Even if it succeeds, the voices will be raised about when we can leave. And throughout it all, there will be talk about how the commitment overseas will constrain Obama at home and ruin all of his plans to restore and transform the economy. They are not arguing in good faith, and while I'm glad to have a real public debate about Afghanistan, I think it's worth thinking about why the Village has put on their tie-dye and gone wild in the streets.

Testing The Young President

A day after the Iraqi Cabinet approved a withdrawal agreement that would remove US forces entirely from the country by the end of 2011, the White House is trying to snooker the press by saying that they agreed only to "aspirational dates." There is nothing aspirational about this agreement. It is a firm deadline for withdrawal that wouldn't even allow for residual forces in the country.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is out there today claiming that no we can't leave on this kind of schedule. This is just the beginning of the pushbacks that we can expect to see from the military as we move into a new Administration.

The U.S. military would require two to three years to remove its roughly 150,000 troops and equipment from Iraq safely, and the timing of that withdrawal should be based on security conditions on the ground, the nation's top military officer said today.

"To remove the entire force would be, you know, two to three years," Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a Pentagon news conference.

While Mullen said that he and the top commanders for Iraq and the region, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Ray Odierno, were "comfortable" with the status of forces agreement signed with Iraq today, he described some logistical hurdles to a U.S. troop withdrawal along a fixed timeline.

"We have 150,000 troops in Iraq right now. We have lots of bases. We have an awful lot of equipment that's there. And so we would have to look at all of that tied to, obviously, the conditions that are there, literally the security conditions," he said.

"Clearly, we'd want to be able to do it safely."

This isn't some option thrown out at a briefing. This is a signed agreement between the US and Iraq that has very strict demands on withdrawal. Mullen is treating it like some war game scenario that he doesn't like. And he wants a word with Obama.

Mullen emphasized that he still believes any U.S. troop reductions should be based on the levels of violence in Iraq - a position that runs counter to the official Iraqi stance.

Anticipating possible policy shifts on Iraq under the Obama administration, Mullen indicated the Joint Staff was planning for a range of options. "We're always taking into consideration plans based on what we understand possibilities might be," he said.

"President-elect Obama has also said is that he would seek the counsel of myself and the Joint Chiefs before he made any decisions. And so I look forward to that discussion, look forward to the engagement," he said.

This lays the groundwork to undermine the agreement, and to push the President-elect in that effort. And by the way, the most likely outcome of this is to erode support in the Iraqi Parliament, which only trusts the US as an honest broker because of the presence of Obama. If the agreement is vacated there will be a very early showdown between militia and the occupying forces, which could prove deadly for US troops and embarrassing to the incoming President.

They have a word for this, I believe - sabotage. And this isn't the only area of military/national security issues where we might see something similar. While Obama and the military may be able to salvage a productive working relationship, we have examples like the Air Force general who is already pushing Obama on the missile defense boondoggle:

The Air Force general who runs the Pentagon's missile defense projects said that American interests would be "severely hurt" if President-elect Obama decided to halt plans developed by the Bush administration to install missile interceptors in Eastern Europe.

Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering III, director of the Missile Defense Agency, told a group of reporters Wednesday that he is awaiting word from Obama's transition team on their interest in receiving briefings [...]

"What we have discovered is that a lot of the folks that have not been in this administration seem to be dated, in terms of the program," he said. "They are kind of calibrated back in the 2000 time frame and we have come a hell of a long way since 2000. Our primary objective is going to be just, frankly, educating them on what we have accomplished, what we have been able to do and why we have confidence in what we are doing."

Note the framing in terms of how American interests will be "severely hurt" if the incoming President, who's totally ignorant about us big boys and our big toys, by the way, cancels this program. Indeed, the contractors and the military-industrial complex are already gearing up to push back hard if one dime of military spending is cut.

The uniformed services are trying to lock in the next administration by creating a political cost for holding the line on defense spending. Conservative groups are hoping to ramp up defense spending as a tool to limit options for a Democratic Congress and president to pass new, and potentially costly, social programs, including health care reform.

They also like the idea of creating an unrealistically high baseline of expectations for defense spending that will allow them to claim President Obama has cut defense spending.

Let us be clear: There is no indication that the president-elect intends to cut defense spending, and indeed, during his campaign he promised to increase the size of the ground forces, which makes an increase in spending almost inevitable. As with any transition, there will be some adjustments to specific programs, but cutting individual weapon systems is not and has never been synonymous with cutting spending overall.

There are so many things wrong with this emerging process that it is hard to address the issue concisely. Promoting overspending on defense in order to forestall popular social spending is undemocratic - it creates a false tension between national security and other public policy goals.

The informal alliance between the services and conservative think tanks threatens to further politicize the military. The abuse of national security arguments to win political arguments is both morally suspect and threatens the security of the nation by delinking strategic assessment from public policy.

And now there's this Mullen incident, which is very reminiscent of how the JCS rolled Clinton in 1993 on the subject of gays in the military.

In yesterday's 60 Minutes interview, which had a lot of positive signs in it (including Obama's desire to keep moving forward on a new energy economy despite falling oil prices, to dismiss neo-Hooverist griping about deficit spending and instead use government to stimulate the economy, to overhaul the auto industry, and more), Obama was clear that he would have his national security team execute a drawdown policy in Iraq as soon as he entered office. Mullen is already laying down the marker that he disagrees. This tension will also spill over to the intelligence community. One of the brightest moments in the interview was this exchange:

Kroft: There are a number of different things that you could do early pertaining to executive orders. One of them is to shutdown Guantanamo Bay. Another is to change interrogation methods that are used by U.S. troops. Are those things that you plan to take early action on?

Mr. Obama: Yes. I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture. And I'm gonna make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world.

That is excellent news, and yet there's still the matter of implementation, and without new leadership at the top, expect similar Admiral Mullen-like scenarios as Obama attempts to climb out of the muck of the Bush Administration.

"I am confident President-elect Obama understands the need for new leadership of the intelligence community and will appoint competent, capable people who will work aggressively to ensure the safety and security of Americans without undermining our laws and Constitution," Feingold said in the statement.

"For eight years, the current Administration has shown contempt for the rule of law, including in intelligence-related matters, while repeatedly refusing to work cooperatively with Congress. At the same time, the Administration has failed to develop comprehensive strategies to protect our nation against our most immediate threat, al Qaeda and its affiliates. New leadership is needed to move our intelligence policies in the right direction," Feingold's statement concludes.

It's quite something when you see a headline like Democratic Pressure on Obama to Restore the Rule of Law. But this is not totally about Obama's instincts by themselves, but the need to fight against and, in some cases, clear out those who may have more loyalty to the status quo than following the orders of their new chief executive. This has historically been an issue for Democratic Presidents in the modern age, and in this incoming Administration it will be no different. If Obama thinks he can just use his own personality - or force of character - to stop the challenges from inside his own government, I wouldn't call him naive, but let's say he'd be shouldering a heavy burden. One that he plans to make heavier by seeding the government with even more Republicans at every level.

This is something that Obama needs to think about, IMO. A "Team of Rivals" government is a nice theory on paper, but Lincoln's era was quite different - the real "rivals" split off and formed their own government and seceded from the Union, and Lincoln's political foes were kind of thrown together by circumstance. Obama is doing this by choice, and he had better be prepared to be undermined at the highest levels. In many respects, it's already happening.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

US troops have been sending commando teams over the border to raid Taliban remnants in Pakistan, and the Pakistanis have had enough of that.

Pakistani troops opened fire on US soldiers trying to enter the country's lawless tribal area today, according to reports, marking a dangerous further deterioration in relations between the two anti-terror allies.

Details of the incident, in South Waziristan, are unclear. According to local security officials and tribesmen, however, two US helicopters breached Pakistani airspace in the early hours but were forced to retreat when they came under fire.

The US forces were likely to have been on a hit-and-withdraw mission against suspected militants in the area, similar to the first documented US ground raid into the tribal territory earlier this month, when choppers flew in commandos. That enraged the Pakistani army and public.

One security official in South Waziristan said: "American helicopters came, and there was a space [border] violation. Pakistani scouts [paramilitary troops]) fired artillery as a warning and they left. The helicopters did not land."

Now the Pakistanis are codifying this as a rule, ordering their soldiers to open fire on any US presence that violates their national sovereignty, whether by air or ground.

See, if we bothered to have a relationship with the Pakistanis instead of merely a relationship with Musharraf, we might have better cooperation in this regard. But countries don't like it when you send commandos into their country regardless, especially when they feel their army is already working on the problem.

U.S. military commanders accuse Islamabad of doing too little to prevent the Taliban and other militant groups from recruiting, training and resupplying in Pakistan's wild tribal belt.

Pakistan acknowledges the presence of al-Qaida fugitives and its difficulties in preventing militants from seeping through the mountainous border into Afghanistan.

However, it insists it is doing what it can and paying a heavy price, pointing to its deployment of more then 100,000 troops in its increasingly restive northwest and a wave of suicide bombings across the country.

This is a delicate situation that has metastasized because of bungling by the Bush Administration. Admiral Mike Mullen has been dispatched to Pakistan to try and resolve the dispute. This seems to me like a hasty policy on the part of Bush to grab bin Laden for his legacy which he implemented without contacting Pakistan. That clearly has not produced the desired result.

In general, I think we have to leave this to the locals, as history has proven that it's a far more effective counter-terrorism strategy.

Run! The 12th Imam Has Spoken!

Oh noes! Iran test-fired some missiles, which clearly means that the Lexington, Cincinnati and greater Columbus areas had better put up that invisible shield they've been prepping (don't think I don't know about the Ohio-Kentucky invisible shield compact) because the bombs will be raining down any minute. Sen. Lieberman was right! We truly are next!

There's only one piece of contradictory information here, and that's this chart:

UNITED STATES IRAN
Population 303,824,646 65,875,223
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) $13.8 trillion $0.75 trillion
Defense spending fiscal year 2009 $711 billion $7.2 billion
Total troops 2,580,875 895,000
Main battle tanks 8,023 1,613
Reconnaissance vehicles 348 35
Armored infantry fighting vehicles 6,719 610
Armored personnel carriers 21,242 640
Artillery units 8,041 8,196
Helicopters 5,425 311
Submarines 71 6
Principal surface combatants 106 5
Patrol and coastal combatants 157 320
Mine warfare ships 9 5
Amphibious ships 490 21
Fighter aircraft 3,538 286
Long-range bomber aircraft 170 None
Transport aircraft 883 136
Electronic warfare/intelligence aircraft 159 3
Reconnaissance aircraft 134 6
Maritime patrol aircraft 197 8
Anti-submarine warfare aircraft 58 None
Airborne early warning aircraft 53 None
Nuclear warheads ~5,400 None

Iran is not a military threat to the United States. Iran's testing of weapons is a little something called self-defense, with a dollop of domestic politics thrown in besides, as inflammatory rhetoric from this country (also known as friendly joshing around) ends up inflaming tensions - what a concept! It's like that's what it's designed to do!

A nuclear program from Iran would be a concern if they were actually building one. But it's unlikely they are. Unless and until we have a legitimate negotiating strategy instead of asking Iran to give up its civilian energy program before going to the bargaining table - which is the entire point of the negotiation - they will continue to reject proposals and increase the danger. There are offers out there which Iran would seriously consider - but under threat of bombing instead of negotiations in good faith, they have little incentive to do so.

Those who understand our military know that we must not attack Iran. The consequences would be catastrophic for the region, which would break into further chaos and instability, and for the US military, which is so overstretched that it cannot even send troops to Afghanistan without some kind of drawdown in Iraq. In this sense, the escalation of forces has made us less safe and unable to cope with unexpected threats.

The death rate for American troops in Afghanistan last month was four times that of Iraq. The last two months have been the deadliest of the war for U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan since 2001.

And today, Afghanistan sustained the deadliest single terrorist attack since 9/11 when suspected Taliban militants blew up the Indian embassy in Kabul.

This is directly attributable to negligent policies set forth by the Bush administration--an administration dangerously obsessed with Iraq at the expense of the Real Global War on Terror. When many were urging the U.S. to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan in early 2007, the Bush administration--with the support of Senator John McCain--launched the "surge" of troops into Baghdad.

Iran isn't a threat to world domination but they could cause us great harm - if we engage in yet another stupid preventive war which is unnecessary and destabilizing.

Waterboarding For Thee But Not For Me

Mike McConnell is a professional liar. He's twice lied to Congress, openly, during the debate over FISA, mischaracterizing examples of surveillance to buttress Administration arguments. Now he's actually come to the conclusion that waterboarding would be torture for him but as long as you don't have a deviated septum and would actually be drowned, it shouldn't be much of a problem.

McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, was quoted in the New Yorker edition released on Sunday as defining torture as "something that would cause excruciating pain."

Asked if waterboarding -- the practice of covering a person's face with a cloth and then dripping water on it to bring on a feeling of drowning -- fit that definition, McConnell said that for him personally, it would.

"If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can't imagine how painful!" McConnell said in the article. "Whether it's torture by anybody else's definition, for me it would be torture."

But he rejected a suggestion that he personally condemned the practice [...]

"You can do waterboarding lots of ways ... I assume you can get to the point that a person is actually drowning," McConnell said in the New Yorker article, which paraphrased him as agreeing that this would certainly be torture.

McConnell said he could not be more specific because "if it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it."

One of the positive outcomes of the Mukasey/waterboarding affair is that you get these Bush Administration hacks, who are frightened of the prosecution they know they deserve, dancing on the head of a pin in ways that make Bill Clinton look like Abe Lincoln. They either try to split the atom like this and wind up looking foolish, or they speak the truth, which is at odds with Administration policy. An example is Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, calling for the closure of Guantanamo yesterday. Plenty of Bush Administration officials have said the same thing. For the future, it's good to have so many Republicans on the record on closing Gitmo and condemning waterboarding, or looking like idiots trying not to do so. When it's actually done by a Democratic President, they aren't really going to be able to protest.

Take A Hint From Vlad Putin, Democrats

On foreign policy issues, you just divide and conquer:

President Bush said yesterday that a missile defense system is urgently needed in Europe to guard against a possible attack on U.S. allies by Iran, while Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested that the United States could delay activating such a system until there is "definitive proof" of such a threat.

The seemingly contrasting messages came as the Bush administration grappled with continuing Russian protests over Washington's plan to deploy elements of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. The Kremlin considers the program a potential threat to its own nuclear deterrent and has sought to play down any threat from Iran.

From the moment that the White House announced this European missile defense system, Putin went to work. He would not be persuaded in a series of meetings. He gave the option of placing the missiles in a country he controls, Azerbaijan. He showed up in Tehran talking with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. And generally he threatened a return to the Cold War if Bush moved forward. Now he's got the Defense Secretary wobbling and the White House in disarray.

Obviously Putin is impervious to the type of demagoguing Bush routinely does to the Democrats, claiming that they are invting terror or would rather see attacks on America or so forth. But those simply don't have the force that they did in, say, 2002. Russia has plenty to fear from a hostile United States. None of the leverage points worked. And they shouldn't work with the Democrats, either. In fact, they have some allies inside the inner circle.

The new chairman (of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Adm. Mike Mullen, expressed deep concerns that the long counterinsurgency missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have so consumed the military that the Army and Marine Corps may be unprepared for a high-intensity war against a major adversary.

He rejected the counsel of those who might urge immediate attacks inside Iran to destroy nuclear installations or to stop the flow of explosives that end up as powerful roadside bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan, killing American troops.

With America at war in two Muslim countries, he said, attacking a third Islamic nation in the region “has extraordinary challenges and risks associated with it.” The military option, he said, should be a last resort.

Now, Mullen's going to be asking for large military spending to offset the cost of equipment replacement and restoring the armed forces after two long wars. There's an opportunity there to make some agreements.

My point is that you stand firm. Putin's obviously a shady character, and emulating his kind of anti-democratic style is not advisable. But he absolutely played the Bushies on this missile defense thing. For want of a backbone, the Democrats could do the same thing.