Speculation grows that Bush has approved a covert war against Iran and Syria

From the Washington Note:

Washington intelligence, military and foreign policy circles are abuzz today with speculation that the President, yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran.

The President may have started a new secret, informal war against Syria and Iran without the consent of Congress or any broad discussion with the country.

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Wash Post/ABC poll also bad for Bush

From the Washington Post:

A majority of Americans oppose sending additional troops to Iraq as outlined by President Bush in his nationally televised address Wednesday night, and just one-in-three Americans said the plan for more troops and a stepped up combat efforts by Iraqi forces make victory there more likely, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The findings of the survey, conducted after Bush's primetime speech, represent an initial rebuke to the White House goal of generating additional public support for the mission in Iraq. The poll found that 61 percent of Americans oppose sending more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq, with 52 percent saying they strongly oppose the plan. Just 36 percent said they back the president's new proposal.

Bush fared better among the 42 percent of Americans who actually watched the speech. Among that group, 47 percent support sending more troops, while 51 percent oppose. But the President's supporters were disproportionately represented among the audience....

53 percent of Americans support Democrats' efforts to cut off funds for additional troops, with 44 percent opposed.

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New poll: 70% of Americans oppose escalation

The war is extremely unpopular with the American public. Even 60% of white evangelical Christians are opposed.

The opposition to boosting troop levels in Iraq reflects growing skepticism that the United States made the right decision in going to war in the first place and that a stable, democratic government can be established there. Just 35 percent think it was right for the United States to go to war, a new low in AP polling and a reversal from two years ago, when two-thirds of Americans thought it was the correct move.

Sixty percent, meanwhile, think it is unlikely that a stable, democratic Iraqi government will be established.

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Bush's Secretary of Defense: "I would confess I'm no expert on Iraq"

Oh my God. Bush's new Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, just said this today testifying before the House Armed Services Committee (I just saw the clip on ABC). He's no expert on Iraq? Funny, that's not what the White House claimed just two months ago - and I quote from the White House Web site:

Dr. Gates Understands The Threats We Currently Face And The Nature Of Our Enemies In Iraq And Around The World. He has served as an intelligence advisor to six presidents representing both parties during his 27-year career at the CIA and National Security Council.....

Dr. Gates Understands The Challenges Facing Our Nation In Iraq. While in the private sector, he has continued to serve his country as a member of the Iraq Study Group – a distinguished independent panel of Republicans and Democrats led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton. As a member of the Iraq Study Group, Dr. Gates has traveled to Iraq, where he's met with Iraq's leaders and our military commanders on the ground.

* Dr. Gates Spent Nine Years At The National Security Council, Including Serving As The Deputy National Security Advisor For President George H. W. Bush During Operation Desert Storm.

The man was a member of the Iraq Study Group, yet he's still not an expert on Iraq even today? He's a 27 year veteran of the CIA and the NSC. He was the number 2 guy at the NSC during the first Iraq war. He's received countless briefings about the situation in Iraq, since he is after all the Secretary of Defense, the guy running the war. Yet he's still not an expert on the country or the war.

Then what the hell is Robert Gates doing running the Department of Defense when we're at war in Iraq? Read More......

CNN top national security correspondent mis-portrays Bush escalation policy

Per CNN's correspondent, Jamie McIntyre, moments ago, speaking about the efficacy of Bush's proposal to add another 20,000 troops to Iraq:

"And it won't be hard to tell - if violence drops, the plan is working."

In fact, that statement is patently untrue. As our own AJ, a former Defense Intelligence analyst working on Iraq, explained just yesterday:

"[The surge] happens to coincide with the time of the year when violence traditionally wanes significantly, so unless the increase is a colossal failure (i.e., actually manages to reverse the usual trend of decreased attacks), we won't even know if it worked until summer/fall '07.... by launching this escalation at a time of year during which violence traditionally ebbs anyway, the decrease in violence may create the false impression that the new surge strategy is working (post hoc ergo propter hoc).

Why does a blogger know this fact, but CNN's top national security correspondent doesn't? Read More......

GOP Senator Hagel tells Condi: Bush speech worst blunder since Vietnam

From AP:

U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel offered Thursday what might have been the harshest criticism to date of President Bush's plan to commit more troops to Iraq, calling the president's Wednesday night speech "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder carried out since Vietnam."

Hagel's comment drew applause in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in which members questioned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the plan to commit 21,500 additional U.S. troops to Iraq.

Then he called Condi a liar. Read More......

Senate Republicans' filibuster threat could kill Bush's "surge" plan

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is threatening to filibuster any congressional attempt to stop Bush's plan to escalate the war in Iraq. Only problem? He can't. And here's why.

1. Filibusters kill legislation. They don't create legislation.

2. In order to do his surge/escalation in Iraq, Bush doesn't need to STOP Congress from passing laws, he needs to get them to PASS a law - to the tune of $5.6 billion. That's the price tag of Bush's latest little escalation gambit.

3. That $5.6 billion is new money - money that Congress must appropriate, or Bush can't escalate the war because he won't have the money to do it.

4. That means Mitch McConnell can filibuster legislation until the cows come home, but all McConnell's filibuster is going to do is guarantee that the Congress doesn't pass legislation addressing Bush's escalation plan. Fine. If Congress doesn't pass some kind of escalation plan, then Bush won't have the extra money he needs to launch his escalation.

5. So McConnell's filibuster threat is meaningless, and in fact, counterproductive. McConnell will in essence be doing the Democrats' work for them - stopping any legislation that would provide Bush the money he needs to escalate.

Ergo, the overwhelming majority of Americans who oppose Bush's escalation plan have Bush by the balls. Read More......

Senator Lieberman says Americans concerned about the Iraq war have a "dangerous" opinion and are too "partisan"

The charge of excessive partisanship will come as a surprise to all the Republicans and independents who are seriously concerned about Bush's plan to escalate the war in Iraq. We've been saying for a while that Lieberman isn't a moderate Democrat, he's a conservative Republican. He agrees with John McCain and George Bush that the "solution" to the Iraq debacle is for the "courageous" George Bush to escalate the war and send more than 20,000 more Americans to this growing quagmire.

That doesn't make Lieberman a moderate. It makes him a minority even among conservative Republicans. Read More......

Administration grossly misunderstands nature of current conflict

While most of the speech last night was predictable, it is worth noting once again just how profoundly this administration misreads the current problems in Iraq. Juan Cole gets it exactly right, and is absolutely required reading this morning, writing, in part:

To listen to Bush's speech on Wednesday, you would imagine that al-Qaeda has occupied large swathes of Iraq with the help of Syria and Iran and is brandishing missiles at the US mainland. That the president of the United States can come out after nearly four years of such lies and try to put this fantasy over on the American people is shameful.

The problem is not "al-Qaeda in Iraq", which is not even the global al-Qaeda of 9/11, the USS Cole, etc. but rather a collection of regional Salafists who adopted that name. There are not very many of them, and the bloodshed certainly didn't miss a beat when their leader, Zarqawi, was killed last June. More importantly, though, a "clear and hold" strategy doesn't work against a group that actually holds virtually no territory. The primary goal of the limited number of terrorists in Iraq is to foment intra-Iraqi sectarian violence, and they can do that on the run or by occasionally appearing and then melting away (see: Golden Mosque, bombing of).

The current conflict is an Iraqi one, and this idea that there is a moderate, unified government which just needs a little help to pacify a few extremists is an absolute fantasy. Andrew Sullivan, whose slow, glum move towards the reality-based camp has been fascinating and almost depressing (and, yes, very much overdue), also understands this:

The premise of the speech, and of the strategy, is that there is a national democratic government in Baghdad, defending itself against Jihadist attacks. The task, in the president's mind, is therefore to send more troops to defend such a government. But the reality facing us each day is a starkly different one from the scenario assumed by the president. The government of which Bush speaks, to put it bluntly, does not exist.

But if the president can pretend it exists for another year or so, then he can pass the problem off to a successor. And he can also pass more triangle-folded flags to the families of men and women who will die because of perceptions and strategies divorced from the ground truth. Read More......

Bush invaded Iran last night

Last night, Bush sent US forces to attack the inviolate territory of a foreign diplomatic mission, the Iranian mission in northern Iraq - legally, the land of a foreign nation - and took the Iranians hostage. It's hard to see under international law how this is legal, let alone how this isn't an act of war. And it's beyond ironic that we appear to have condoned the very action that we condemned Iran for - attacking diplomatic missions in violation of international law.

But what's most troubling about this is the transparency of what Bush is up to. He's trying to provoke a war with Iran, either by forcing Iran to strike back, or by discovering secret Iranian diplomatic documents that would prove their complicity in helping the insurgents in Iraq. We just invaded Iran last night, folks. Foreign embassies and diplomatic outposts are legally the foreign soil of the country represented. We invaded Iran. This is an act of war.

Only problem with Bush's plan? How exactly are we going to fight a war with Iran? Our generals told us we didn't even have enough troops to meet the needs of Bush's new escalation plan (the plan called for 32,000 more troops, the generals said we only have 22,000 or so available, that's it.) So where exactly will we get the troops to fight a new war with Iran, at the same time we're fighting a civil war in Iraq, and fighting an increasingly bad civil war in Afghanistan? Our worst nightmare would be Iran calling Bush's bluff and invading Iraq. So, why is it then that this is exactly what Bush is trying to provoke?

It's increasingly looking like Bush is more interested in provoking the coming Rapture than solving the multiple crises in the Middle East.

From AP:

Iraqi officials said Thursday that multinational forces detained as many as six Iranians in an overnight raid on Tehran's diplomatic mission in the northern city of Irbil....

The forces stormed the Iranian mission at about 3 a.m., detaining the five staffers and confiscating computers and documents, two senior local Kurdish officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information....

A resident living near the mission said the foreign force used stun bombs in the raid and brought down an Iranian flag that was on the roof of the two-story yellow house.

This is incredibly serious. Bush may have just given every country in the world justification for attacking US diplomats, attacking US diplomatic posts and embassies, and taking our diplomats hostage. Then again, he already gave the world a green light to torture our soldiers, so why not add American diplomats to the mix.

At some point, we are a country of laws. That is supposed to be what differentiates us from the Irans and the Al Qaedas and the Saddams of the world. This is an incredibly serious breach of international law. It's also an act of war. A war we can't afford. Someone needs to stop this man before he kills again. Read More......

At the very most, Congress should provide Bush only HALF the money he needs for his surge

UPDATE: I just had an idea. In order to thwart Bush from making one of his infamous "signing statements," vitiating whatever restrictive language the Dems (and Republicans) might add to the money Congress provides for Bush's "surge," perhaps Congress should consider providing the money in two tranches. Pass legislation now for the first half of the money he wants. Then in six months, or three months, or whenever, review whether Bush has obeyed the conditions of the first piece of legislation, and if he has, pass a second piece of legislation providing him the second tranche of money he needs. Otherwise, he's going to simply disobey whatever conditions the Congress applies. The man spies on our phones and mail illegally, he tortures innocents illegally, he repeals habeas corpus, do we really think he's going to obey Congress on this one?

Halle-lujah. It's actually quite brilliant. Rather than simply denying Bush the funds he's asking for, the House Dems are talking about attaching benchmarks to the funds - if Bush doesn't meet the benchmarks, he doesn't get the money. Those benchmarks could include lots of things. Including real consultation with congress to a demand that the troops begin being withdrawn in six months. And let Bush veto the Dems' proposal. Then he vetos the money he needs to escalate.

The open question at the moment is Senate Democrats. No word on whether they'll agree to this. If they don't, we'd like to hear a very good reason why. After all, even conservative Republican Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) is now against the Bush escalation proposal. Brownback is running for president. If a conservative Republican thinks he can only win election by opposing Bush's escalation, one would hope the Dems would agree. Now is not the time for timidity.

Senior House Democrats said yesterday that they will attempt to derail funding for President Bush's proposal to send an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq, setting up what could become the most significant confrontation between the White House and Congress over military policy since the Vietnam War....

Those plans could attach so many conditions and benchmarks to the funds that it would be all but impossible to spend the money without running afoul of the Congress. "Twenty-one thousand five hundred troops ought to have 21,500 strings attached to them," said House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.).

Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Pelosi, said Democratic leaders have made no decision to hold back funds, but he added: "We are not going to give the president a blank check. We will subject any proposal to escalate the war to harsh scrutiny, and we will set benchmarks he has to attain to get that money."

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Thursday Morning Open Thread

The morning after the big speech. Just watched Condi on the Today Show. She's as clueless as her boss. Seriously, not a lot of brain power between them. They seem to think that if they say things, those things will come true. Like magic. And, Condi did say Bush isn't taking anything off the table when it comes to Syria and Iran. As John posted last night, Bush threatened war with them last night. So he was really in an escalating mood.

This war won't end while Bush is President. He won't let it.

It's maddening. Read More......

So what is Bush's leverage with the Iraqi government?

Bush is basing his entire future in the history books on Iraq, so how likely is he to put any pressure at all on the Iraqi government? He so desperately wants to show some success in Iraq that it is doubtful that he will somehow suddenly find the ability to get tough now. Sounds like more wishful thinking and hope instead of tough policy and the only legitimate tough talk is coming from the Democrats. Wishful thinking will not win a war that has spiraled out of control long ago.

What makes this new plan any different from every other tweaking over the last 3 1/2 years and once again, why should we believe Bush now? His credibility is at rock bottom and everyone knows it so expect more of the same. Read More......

3000 UK troops out of Iraq by May

With the change of power in the UK coming up, who knows how long the remaining UK troops will stick around. The incoming PM is much less enthusiastic about Bush and Blair's war. Read More......

Bush threatened to go to war with Iran and Syria tonight

The man is categorically insane. From Bill Arkin at the Washington Post.

If there's anything in the President Bush's remarks tonight that we didn't already know or didn't anticipate him saying militarily about Iraq, it is his evident willingness to go to war with Syria and Iran to seek peace.

Speaking about the two countries tonight, the president said that the United States wiill "seek out and destroy" those who are providing material support to our enemies.

It is only a threat. But it is a far cry from the diplomatic proposals floated just last month for making Syria and Iran part of the solution. Can the president really be saying that we are willing to risk war with the two countries, and even attack elements inside them, to achieve peace in Iraq?

....And how will Syria and Iran react? President Bush implicitly accused the two of providing sanctuary and material support for violent elements in Iraq. There is an ominous element here: When the President pledged to "seek out and destroy the networks supporting our enemies in Iraq," to me, that means the threat of strikes on targets in those two countries.

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