Obama to reaffirm Iraq withdrawal is on schedule

Hard to imagine it's really true. But the Times says it is:

By the end of this month, in accordance with the strategy Mr. Obama put in place after taking office, the American force in Iraq will have shrunk from 144,000 to just 50,000 troops. The remaining “advise and assist” brigades will officially focus on supporting and training Iraqi security forces, protecting American personnel and facilities and mounting counterterrorism operations. Those 50,000 troops are due to leave by the end of 2011.

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Iraq and Afghanistan war spending tops $1 trillion

Today, the House voted to approve another emergency supplemental appropriation to cove the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anyone who is bitching about the deficit needs to know this:

With the new war spending, the total amount of money that Congress has allotted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan surpasses $1 trillion.

The war in Iraq never should have happened. If that war of choice hadn't distracted the U.S., we might have actually done the job in Afghanistan in a timely fashion. But, nine years laters, it's still a mess

This is a testament to the failed leadership of George Bush and Dick Cheney. That $1 trillion is all deficit spending. Just like the Bush tax cuts. But, those faux deficit hawks never gave these Bush/Cheney policies a second thought.

And, the money is one thing. There's no price tag that can sum up the unnecessary human tragedies. Read More......

The voters have voted in Iraq

It's Election Day in Iraq. The polls have now closed.

There was violence across the country early in the day:

A concerted wave of attacks struck Baghdad and other cities across the country on Sunday as Iraqis voted to elect a new parliament and possibly a new prime minister. Explosions reverberated across the capital moments before the polls opened and continued through the morning haze for the first hours of voting.

At least 38 people were killed and dozens more wounded in Baghdad alone by the time polls officially closed there, the Interior Ministry reported.

But, it looks like the Iraqi people still voted:

By late afternoon, it was still too early to measure turnout, though Western election observers noted a significant increase in voting as the day passed. Polls closed at 5 p.m. In parts of Baghdad, the city seemed far from hunkered down, with shops and restaurants opening and families walking on the streets.

These elections are another step in the process of removing the U.S. from Iraq, a war George Bush started by lying to the American people:

In a briefing at the White House last week, senior advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity hammered home two messages: "We can't and we will not tell them how to conduct their affairs," an official said of the Iraqis. "That's up to them." In addition, he said, "we see nothing that would divert us from the track we're on . . . to end the combat mission in August," even in the face of sectarian violence.

We should have left Iraq's affair to Iraq back in 2003. And, let's hope nothing diverts us from getting out. Finally. Read More......

Will anyone hold Karl Rove accountable for his lies this time?

This week, we're seeing the spectacle of GOPers blatantly lying about the reconciliation process. Just lying. It's a standard trick of the GOP, mastered by Karl Rove. He and his boss lied to get us into the Iraq war.

Now, Karl Rove has written a book and he's going to be pimping it pretty hard. In late 2002/early 2003, the traditional media were spoon fed the WMD lies and never challenged or questioned them. David Corn outlines the lies told by the Rove team to get us into the war in Iraq. There were plenty. And, he issues a challenge to the press who will interview Rove on his book tour. Hold him accountable for the lies:

It was a PR campaign girded with misrepresentations and false statements. Rove contends that his old boss did not knowingly bamboozle the public. (Bush, though, did in a January 2003 meeting with Tony Blair raise the idea of staging an incident—in which US reconnaissance planes painted in UN colors would fly over Iraq and try to draw fire—to provoke an excuse for war.) But Bush, Cheney, and other administration aides exercised a thoroughly reckless disregard for the truth, as they pushed an utterly phony and over-the-top case for invading Iraq.

As Rove makes the rounds on his book tour, he ought to be pressed on all this. There is no doubt that the Bush posse mischaracterized what was known and not known about WMDs in Iraq. It was easy—and useful—for them to do so, for they didn't care to get this right. (After all, as Rove writes, the Iraq war would have likely not occurred without the WMD argument: "Congress was very unlikely to have supported the use-of-force resolution without the WMD threat.") Bush and his aides, Rove included, were not looking to lead an informed debate based on the best information available; they were aiming to start a war. Almost by any means necessary. They spun the nation into Iraq—and now Rove is spinning to cover that up.

The traditional media types tend to fawn all over Rove. Watch them do it this time around, too. Read More......

US plans for possible delay in Iraq withdrawal

Oh yeah.

The U.S. military has prepared contingency plans to delay the planned withdrawal of all combat forces in Iraq, citing the prospects for political instability and increased violence as Iraqis hold national elections next month.

Under a deadline set by President Obama, all combat forces are slated to withdraw from Iraq by the end of August, and there remains heavy political pressure in Washington and Baghdad to stick to that schedule. But Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Monday that he had briefed officials in Washington in the past week about possible contingency plans.

Odierno declined to describe the plans in detail and said he was optimistic they would not be necessary. But he said he was prepared to make the changes "if we run into problems" in the coming months.

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UK had Iraq plan with US two years before invasion

Perhaps someone can ask Blair about this when he comes back for additional testimony. Not that he won't deflect and spin again, but it would be interesting to hear more about this joint US-UK plan since he has testified that 9/11 changed everything. The Independent:

Whitehall officials drafted the "contract with the Iraqi people" as a way of signalling to dissenters in Iraq that an overthrow of Saddam would be supported by Britain. It promised aid, oil contracts, debt cancellations and trade deals once the dictator had been removed. Tony Blair's team saw it as a way of creating regime change in Iraq even before the 9/11 attack on New York.

The document, headed "confidential UK/US eyes", was finalised on 11 June 2001 and approved by ministers. It has not been published by the Iraq inquiry but a copy has been obtained by The Independent and can be revealed for the first time today. It states: "We want to work with an Iraq which respects the rights of its people, lives at peace with its neighbours and which observes international law.

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Blair has 'no regrets'

What else is he really going to say, but it's still disgusting to hear. During his testimony he stuck to his same old points, though did update the argument to blame Iran for many problems. As if Iran should somehow not been part of the equation in the first place. Maybe his deep discussions with Bush failed to ever kick around the idea of a power vacuum. Obviously because the world has never, ever experienced such a situation before.

A few protesters called him a "liar and a murderer" at the end and thankfully, Blair was no longer able to have the British police arrest them and charge them with a violation of the anti-terror laws as we witnessed a few years ago.

Tony Blair ended an epic six-hour inquisition by the Chilcot inquiry last night by insisting he had "no regrets" over toppling Saddam Hussein, arguing that the world was more secure and that Iraq has replaced "the certainty of suppression" with "the uncertainty of democratic politics".

The former prime minister blamed "the very near failure of the Iraqi occupation" on Iranian interference, misplaced assumptions and a lack of US troops.

During the long-awaited cross-examination, he gave no substantial ground over why he sent 40,000 UK troops to war to disarm Saddam of weapons he did not possess, arguing that if the west had backed off Saddam would have reassembled them, as he had the intent and ability to do so. "I had to take this decision as prime minister. It was a huge responsibility then and there is not a single day that passes by that I do not think about that responsibility, and so I should," Blair said.

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Blair's foreign secretary warned against Iraq invasion

Blair has some supporters left, but the list is shrinking. It's going to be interesting to hear what he has to say when he eventually speaks at the inquiry. The Guardian:

Straw, foreign secretary at the time, gave what now seems prophetic advice in a letter marked "secret and personal", 10 days before Blair met George Bush at the US president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. That was nearly a year before the invasion.

In his letter, about which he is expected to be questioned when he testifies at the Chilcot inquiry this week, Straw warned Blair, then prime minister: "The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few … there is at present no majority inside the PLP [parliamentary Labour party] for any military action against Iraq."

Straw warned of two legal "elephant traps". He said, "regime change per se is no justification for military action", and "the weight of legal advice here is that a fresh [UN] mandate may well be required".

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As we all thought already, Blair agreed to join Iraq invasion months before invasion

Oh, but he was really pushing for peace. Wink, wink. Nod, nod.

The contents of the notes, which were written by the former Prime Minister and only seen by a small group of senior ministers and advisers, were revealed for the first time at the Iraq inquiry yesterday as it heard from Mr Blair's head of communications, Alastair Campbell. In the correspondence, described as "very frank", Mr Campbell said that President Bush was given the overriding message that British troops would be beside their US counterparts in any invasion, should Saddam Hussein continue to defy the disarmament demands issued by the United Nations.

"I would say the tenor of them was that... we share the analysis, we share the concern, we are going to be with you in making sure that Saddam Hussein is faced up to his obligations and that Iraq is disarmed," Mr Campbell said. "If that cannot be done diplomatically and it is to be done militarily, Britain will be there."

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With Yemen as base for Al Qaeda, Afghanistan deteriorates

I know this is on Obama's plate now, but for eight years, Bush and Cheney ignored the war in Afghanistan to pursue the unnecessary war in Iraq. They failed to take out the leadership of Al Qaeda -- despite repeated promises to do just that. Now, Yemen has become the latest haven for the terror group. According to Reuters, it's an "attractive alternative base." Over the weekend, Joe Lieberman was already making noises about launching a war there:

"Somebody in our government said to me in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war," Lieberman said, during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday". "That's the danger we face."

Lieberman was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the "yesterday's war" in Iraq -- and it's still not over. Thanks to Joe's buddies in the Bush/Cheney administration, we never finished "today's war" in Afghanistan. And, that long-ignored conflict is apparently deteriorating:

As the U.S. and its allies try to overcome logistical hurdles and rush some 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan in 2010, intelligence officials are warning that the Taliban-led insurgency is expanding and that "time is running out" for the U.S.-led coalition to prove that its strategy can succeed.

The Taliban have created a shadow "government-in-waiting," complete with Cabinet ministers, that could assume power if the U.S.-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai fails, a senior International Security Assistance Force intelligence official said in Kabul, speaking only on the condition of anonymity as a matter of ISAF policy.

I know we can't change history, but we can't ignore it. The U.S. should have finished the job against Al Qaeda eight years ago. Instead, Bush, Cheney, Lieberman and the rest got side-tracked by Iraq. Al Qaeda has moved on, but we're now bogged down in two wars, one that should never have been fought and one that should have ended years ago. Read More......

Blair informed Iraq had been disarmed, still invaded

There's been a lot of criticism in the UK about their Iraq war inquiry. Many say that it's too "clubby" and easy going. Compared to the 9/11 joke of an inquiry in the US, I might take "clubby" to see so much come out. Sure many thought as much as we've been discovering, but it's still valuable to get to the bottom of so many myths. Publicly shaming people who can no longer hang on to their lies has a value. True, prosecuting would be better but knocking a few back into their hole is better than letting them tell lies without question. The Independent:

Sir John Scarlett, who was the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee in the run-up to the war, said that two reports received in March 2003, which suggested that Iraq's weaponry had been taken to pieces, were sent directly to the former prime minister. He also said that Mr Blair was made aware of doubts over Saddam's access to the warheads needed to deliver them.

Sir John, who was responsible for the Government's dossier that claimed Saddam had weapons that could be used within 45 minutes, denied that he had come under pressure to "sex up" the document. However, he admitted for the first time that a crucial part of the dossier was not clear about the threat posed by Saddam, meaning that the seriousness of the claim that the Iraqi leader could launch an attack was "lost in translation".

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'45 minute to WMD' claim from a taxi driver

The story only gets worse by the day. Tony Blair and the US Republicans worked everyone into a frenzy over the "45 minutes and we could all die" story and now we see just how ridiculous it really was. How are these people not prosecuted for abusing their power and terrorizing everyone with their lies?

Today, in an interview with the Daily Mail, Holloway said the key piece of information about 45 minutes came from an Iraqi officer who was using a taxi driver as his own sub-source.

"[MI6] were running a senior Iraqi army officer who had a source of his own, a cab driver on the Iraqi-Jordanian border," said Holloway, a former Grenadier Guardsman and television journalist.

"He apparently overheard two Iraqi army officers two years before who had spoken about weapons with the range to hit targets elsewhere in the Middle East."

Holloway made his comments to coincide with the publication of a report he has written claiming that MI6 always had reservations about some of the information in the dossier but that these reservations were brushed aside when Downing Street was preparing it for publication.

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War-time presidents and lost popularity

From ABC:

If there’s a shadow over the proceedings as Barack Obama addresses the nation on his plans for Afghanistan tonight, it may be the ghosts of wartime presidents past.

Consider the chart below. The data track the average annual approval ratings of the last three presidents to find themselves enmeshed in unpopular wars. The picture is not a pretty one: Harry S. Truman lost 25 points in public approval as the Korean war progressed; Lyndon Johnson, 32 points during the Vietnam war; George W. Bush, 43 points during the war in Iraq.

to be fair, George W. Bush was terrible at domestic policy, and often seemed to simply ignore it. You can't do that as president. But clearly, involvement in an unpopular war brings down the "heading in the right direction" index, which eventually hurts the party in power, even when the other party started it and ruined it. Read More......

Blair agreed to help invade Iraq 11 months before

There, there. Who's a good little poodle? Sometimes the legal advise of your top legal adviser can be such a hassle.

Tony Blair made it clear to George Bush at a meeting in Texas 11 months before the Iraq invasion that he would be prepared to join the US in toppling Saddam Hussein, the inquiry into the war was told today.

The prime minister repeatedly told the US president that British policy was to back United Nations attempts to seek Iraq's disarmament, Sir David Manning, his foreign policy adviser, told the inquiry.

However, Blair was "absolutely prepared to say he was willing to contemplate regime change if [UN-backed measures] did not work", Manning said. If it proved impossible to pursue the UN route, then Blair would be "willing to use force", Manning emphasised.

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Blair thinks evidence used against him is "distasteful"

Tony Blair is as narcissistic as ever. It always has to be about his personal spin. To speak the truth against this scheming war monger is somehow unfair. It should be interesting to see how this war study commission deals with Blair once he arrives. Will they be gentle and give him a free ride or do they finally smell blood now that he is finished in politics?

Mr Blair's friends claimed last night that he has found some of the evidence given so far "distasteful", and potentially damaging to his reputation. "It is clear that the headlines so far have not been helpful to him," a former minister said. "But more troubling is the sense that some of the people involved are so keen to stick the knife in. It is quite distasteful."

Another Blair ally said the former leader had made clear his concern that "his reputation could be shredded by the Chilcot process". "He is furious that mandarins are seeking revenge and discovering their principles after the event," one friend added.

Sir Christopher Meyer has attracted much criticism from Blairites following a flamboyant appearance during which he claimed Mr Blair's view on "regime change" in Iraq hardened after a private meeting with Mr Bush in 2002. He also compared Mr Blair unflatteringly to Margaret Thatcher. The former diplomat told the inquiry on Thursday: "She would have insisted on a clear, coherent political/diplomatic strategy and I think she would have demanded the greatest clarity about what the heck happened if and when we removed Saddam."

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UK Iraq war inquiry: Blair decided on war one year before invasion

But remember, Blair was supposed to be the clever guy, educated at Oxford. Do they have pay-cash-will-enter programs like the Ivy League too or is he in fact, just a smart person who is a fool? Either way, it's another reminder as to why he was rejected as the first EU president. It's also even more obvious that Blair was one of the most gutless PMs in British history. Did he really think George Bush was on the right side of history? Really? The Guardian:

Tony Blair's government decided up to a year before the Iraq invasion that it was "a complete waste of time" to resist the US drive to oust Saddam Hussein, opting instead to offer advice on how it should be done, the former British ambassador to Washington said today.

Sir Christopher Meyer, testifying to the Chilcot inquiry into Britain's role in the war, made it clear that once the Bush administration decided to take military action, the Blair government never considered opting out or opposing it.

He said that the timing of the invasion was dictated by the "unforgiving nature" of the military build-up rather than the outcome of diplomacy or UN weapons inspections, which had not been given sufficient time. British officials were left "scrabbling for the smoking gun" – evidence for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction – as preparations continued.

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Bush wanted to invade Iraq even before he was elected

Wouldn't it make sense for the US to also schedule a serious inquiry into the Iraq war? It's even more obvious that the Bush administration had early plans to invade Iraq and simply manufactured problems to trigger the invasion. Then PM Tony Blair initially rejected the idea because it was unlawful, though he eventually folded. The Guardian:

Evidence given at the opening day of the inquiry, chaired by the former top civil servant Sir John Chilcot, painted a picture of a Whitehall slowly realising the significance of George Bush's election in November 2000 on US policy towards Iraq.

Even before Bush's administration came to power an article written by his then national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, warned that "nothing will change" in Iraq until Saddam was gone, Sir Peter Ricketts, a former chairman of the joint intelligence committee (JIC) and now the Foreign Office's top official, told the inquiry.

"We were aware of these drumbeats from Washington and internally we discussed it. Our policy was to stay away from that part of the spectrum," added Sir William Patey, then head of the Middle East department at the Foreign Office.

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British Iraq War inquiry: Blair misled the public

Wait one minute. I think I need to hold on to my seat with this surprise. Next thing you know, we're going to find out that the WMD story was false. Days like this shock me to my core. The Guardian:

They were so shocked by the lack of preparation for the aftermath of the invasion that they believe members of the British and US governments at the time could be prosecuted for war crimes by breaching the duty outlined in the Geneva convention to safeguard civilians in a conflict, the Guardian has been told.

The lengths the Blair government took to conceal the invasion plan and the extent of military commanders' anger at what they call the government's "appalling" failures emerged as Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry's chairman, promised to produce a "full and insightful" account of how Britain was drawn into the conflict.

Fresh evidence has emerged about how Blair misled MPs by claiming in 2002 that the goal was "disarmament, not regime change". Documents show the government wanted to hide its true intentions by informing only "very small numbers" of officials.

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Bribery: Blackwater "authorized secret payments" to Iraqi leaders

This is thoroughly disgusting, but not at all surprising:

Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.

Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater’s ouster from the country, and company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

If true, it's illegal. There are laws about bribing foreign officials. Someone at Blackwater (or Xe Services, as it's known now) should probably be going to jail. Read More......

By visiting our war dead, Obama passes Dover test

Mark Shields writes a moving column about how President Obama passes the Dover Test that George Bush failed:

President Obama, during his winning campaign, promised to make Washington more "transparent" and more "accountable." At 4 a.m. on Oct. 29, as he stood silently by as six soldiers carried the remains of Army Sgt. Dale R. Griffin of Terre Haute, Ind., back to American soil and to those who mourned him, President Obama made both himself, and the national government he leads, more responsible and made the reality of war more transparent.

At Dover, he personally met with and consoled — in their time of profound sorrow — the families of 18 fallen Americans. No form letter or phone call. Just human being to human being.

As John Glenn said: "It's easy to see the flags flying and the people go off to war, and the bands play and the flags fly. And it's not quite so easy when the flag is draped over a coffin coming back through Dover, Delaware." Barack Obama, by choosing the "not quite so easy" path, has earned his nation's thanks.

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