Reality, Once Again, Shifts Left

John McCain spoke to a rally in Lima, Ohio yesterday. Ohio, a swing state, seems to be a major part of McCain's strategy -- the monopoly property he plans to build his hotel on. McCain is currently behind in that state -- 46%-44% -- but figure in the margin of error and it's a tie.

So it was that Baghdad Johnny returned to one of his favorite themes -- how Barack Obama's a big fat sissy who'll cut and run from Iraq. And then all the other kids on the global schoolyard will laugh at us.

Chicago Tribune:

"His policy of unconditional withdrawal, regardless of conditions on the ground, could result in renewed violance,'' said McCain, who, at the end of a long speech, distilled his campaign's argument for the White House -- or more precisely, its argument against Sen. Barack Obama's election as president.

[...]

"We're finally winning in Iraq, and he wants to forfeit,'' said McCain, who has vowed that he'd rather lose a campaign than lose a war. "The bottom line, Sen Obama's words, for all their eloquence and passion, don't mean that much,'' McCain said, warning: "We don't need another politician in Washington who puts self interest and expediency ahead of problem solving.''

Not exactly accurate, but that's the way John's been rolling. Obama doesn't advocate ignoring conditions in Iraq. "I do think [withdrawal is] entirely conditions-based," Obama said in July. "It's hard to anticipate where we may be six months from now, or a year from now, or a year and a half from now." But lying about Obama's position is a common practice for the Straight Talker.

Unfortunately for John, a news item came out later in the day that blew a big ol' honkin' hole in his "better than Obama" argument. The Bush administration is going to cut and run from Iraq.

The United States and Iraq are nearing completion of negotiations on a security agreement that would pull American troops out of Iraqi cities by next July and foresees all U.S. combat troops gone from Iraq by 2011, according to two Iraqi officials who are familiar with the negotiations.

"The tactical team is finished and it's a closed deal, but remember that we've been through this before and every time we close a deal it's reopened," said a senior official who's been participating in the talks.

The official said that the deal, once completed, would be perhaps the most restrictive agreement the United States had with a country where it had troops.

That'd be a mere five months longer than Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan. It's hard to express in words how much the Bush administration had hurt McCain's position on the occupation of Iraq. Screwed is nearly the correct word, but only if you pronounce it "ska-roooooooood!" There are at least two syllables worth of screweditude here.

Still, you could argue that this isn't exactly what the Obama camp had proposed -- five months is still a pretty decent time to be off by. But you could only argue that if you ignored Team McCain's idea of a realistic date.

I know you're expecting McCain's hundred/thousand/million year timeline, but that proved really unpopular, so Johnny's not talking about that any more. They've trimmed that back a bit and the new date from the Team that doesn't set dates is 2020 -- twelve freakin' years from now.

Comparatively, Obama was right on the money.

And even 2020 was a flip from a previous position; just mentioning a date for withdrawal would be disastrous. "I don't have a problem with going to the Congress, because I think the issue takes care of itself when we succeed," McCain told George Stephanopoulos in February. "I still say setting a date for withdrawal is chaos, genocide, and we'll be back, because Al Qaeda will then succeed."

Of course, there's some question as to whether Baghdad Johnny even understands who al Qaeda is, so I guess it's no surprise that the McCain non-plan for non-withdrawal would be off by a country mile. Reality never seems to favor McCain's positions.

There's one slim fingerhold that McCain can hold onto to save a little face. It's not a timeline, it's a "time horizon." As far as I can tell, it's the same damned thing. But it's a different phrase, so there's that.

As the Iraq war and reality move away from John McCain, he finds his reasons for even running slipping away. McCain was going to be the brakes on ending the occupation. The cautious, cooler head who would only pull troops out when Iraq was a land of rainbows and unicorns. We would stay in Iraq until Iraq was freakin' perfect. McCain was a head-in-the-clouds dreamer masquerading as a realist.

How McCain is going to co-opt this new position on Iraq is going to be interesting to see. How is he going to adopt Barack Obama's position without it being obvious to everyone on the planet?

That's where Bush has left Team McCain. Adrift and heading 180 degrees off-course from the real world.

They left his "better on Iraq" argument ska-roooooooood...

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; elections; 2008; Barack Obama; war; diplomacy; John McCain has a nearly perfect record of being wrong about Iraq

'It Smacks of Desperation'

Two people from the major parties are running for President this year, Barack Obama and that other guy. You know, that one guy. Farmer MacDonald or Geezer McQuaid or something. You know... [finger-snap, finger-snap]... John McCain! That's it, John McCain.

In the primaries, John McCain got a free ride from the media. In a way, that's still true. But the lack of media scrutiny has become a handicap for McCain in the general election. Only his flubs are being reported. To a certain extent, flubs are really all there are. He's betting everything on Iraq and it's a chump's bet. "The surge worked! The surge worked! The surge worked!" isn't really a plan. The sad fact of the matter is that McCain keeps telling us he's the one who'll win Iraq and that's the extent of his argument. You'll notice that he's a little sketchy on the details. He's not getting media coverage because -- let's face it -- there's nothing to cover. "Hole still a hole" isn't much of a headline.

Part of the disparity in coverage of McCain and Obama is Team McCain's own damned fault. Columnist and attempted vehicular homocide enthusiast Robert Novak wrote spoke with a source in the know and got this:

I asked one of the Republican Party's smartest, most candid heavy hitters last week whether John McCain really has a chance to defeat Barack Obama in this season of Republican discontent. "No, if the campaign is about McCain," he replied. "Yes, if it's about Obama."

Basically, McCain is trying to turn the election into a referendum on whether Barack Obama is ready to be the president. You don't need to be a brilliant political analyst to know how that's going to turn out. Hillary Clinton already tried it. It didn't work. If your entire campaign theme is "Look at Barack Obama!" the press is going to do something crazy like take you up on it.

-Continued after the jump-


The best and shortest explanation of the failure of this strategy that I've read comes from the snarky Wonkette, in a post titled, "McCain Tricks Obama Into Massive Global Win":

Like so many McCain campaign disasters -- choosing Phil “Poor People Suck” Gramm as financial adviser or announcing a press conference on an oil rig during a hurricane -- it probably seemed like a terrific idea at the time: Harass Barack Obama into embarking on an international fact-finding mission thing, which would obviously provide so many embarrassing gaffes and make Americans scared to death of the Boy Muslim President.

Except it didn't work that way. So far, Obama's world tour is gaffe-free. Wonkette lists a lot of things that have happened during the trip, including Obama making "a three-pointer from way downtown on his first try" and pointing out that he "struts around without body armor, a foot taller than everybody else -- in painful contrast to Ol’ Walnuts looking like a Kevlar burrito wearing an old lady’s sun hat." Also unhelpful was Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki endorsing Barack Obama's plan over the "the surge worked!" mantra that McCain is calling a plan.

And this isn't just McCain's A-game, this is McCain's A-game with help from the refs. On CBS, McCain told Katie Couric that the surge was responsible for the “Sunni Awakening in Anbar.” The Anbar Awakening was a move by Sunni Sheiks in the Anbar province against al Qaeda. It happened before the surge was even discussed. "I mean, that’s just a matter of history," McCain told Couric.

Scoop! "McCain gets basic fact about the Iraq war wrong." Except CBS didn't play it that way -- you know, the way a news gathering organization might do it. No, they fixed McCain's flub in the editing room, cutting out the part of his answer that was dead wrong. Like I say, his A-game with help from the refs. Also unreported by the mainstream media is that Team McCain claims the surge protected a Sheik who was, in fact, assassinated.

Given this astoundingly softball treatment, McCain's complaint that the media is biased toward Obama seems more than a little crazy. Sure, a McCain op-ed was rejected by the New York Times, but that's because the paper saw it as an attack on Obama. Obama had written an op-ed about his plan for Iraq and McCain wrote one about how Obama was wrong (the "referendum on Obama" strategy again). The NYT suggested in its rejection letter that McCain might offer his plan, rather than attack Obama's. But, since Baghdad Johnny doesn't actually have a plan, Team McCain decided the best thing to do would be to freak out, accuse the NYT of pro-Obama bias, and claim a right to equal time. That's right, Republican John McCain invoked the Fairness Doctrine. With a straight face.

With the way things are shaking out, you might expect John McCain to do something different. And he is -- kind of. He's not abandoning the tried and untrue "referendeum on Obama" strategy that failed so well for Clinton. He does what Republicans often do when their ideas aren't working; he assumes he's not being a big enough dick about it.

To that end, his course correction takes him on a heading directly toward "complete prick" -- which isn't striking a lot of people as very presidential. To a crowd in New Hampshire, he said, "This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." That didn't earn him a lot of points.

"This is the ninth presidential campaign I've covered," wrote TIME's Joe Klein. "I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad."

That was Tuesday. Given how well that attack worked, McCain tried a similar tack Wednesday, with an aide suggesting -- after Barack Obama had visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Isreal -- that Obama was soft on genocide and would sit by during a second Holocaust. "Today he says ‘never again.’ A year ago stopping genocide wasn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces in Iraq. Doesn’t that strike you as inconsistent?" said McCain campaigner Michael Goldfarb.

"There’s something deeply wrong with these people," wrote Carpetbagger's Steve Benen in response. "I know McCain brought in Rove’s team to run the show, but his campaign operation is getting … ugly."

Of course it's getting ugly. McCain has decided that the only thing he has to run on is "Obama sucks!" Meanwhile, Obama stubbornly refuses to suck. The McCain campaign have painted themselves in a corner and the only way out is to make Obama -- the calm, unflappable, almost serene Democratic choice -- suck. And it's not working. When a neocon's doing something that's not working, the only solution that occurs to them is to do more of it. In McCain's case, that means lie more, attack more, smear more. The real world result of all of this is that McCain flubs more and reinforces the already well-cemented impression of him as a grumpy old man. At the same time, Obama -- like Tiger Woods -- seems to practically live "in the zone."

Foundering and desperate, Team McCain needs to find another strategy for the campaign. But, like George W. Bush before him, he seems to believe that doing things differently is some sort of moral failure and the only right way is to "stay the course."

Even when that course sails straight into a hurricane.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Iraq; war; propaganda; Republican; Democrat; media; CBS; John McCain's plan for America's future -- "The surge worked and Barack Obama sucks!"

The Game Changer II

Monday, I did something I don't normally do. I gave the Bush administration, John McCain, the mainstream media, and various neocons the benefit of the doubt. After seven years of lies, propaganda, and straight-up BS, none of them deserve it. In a post I called "The Game Changer," I pretty much treated a statement by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki the same way the press had -- it was a mistranslation. Not that I bought that -- in fact, I noted that the "mistranslation" denial came after Maliki was pressured by the White House and that denial didn't come from Maliki's office, but through US Central Command (CENTCOM). After that, I pretty much let it slide.

Of course, that's because -- for the sake of my argument -- it didn't matter whether or not Maliki had actually endorsed Barack Obama's plan for Iraq or not. For a long period of time, there was no denial and, during that period, Team McCain basically said that what Iraq wanted didn't matter. "...voters care about [the] military, not about Iraqi leaders," a McCainster was quoted as saying. I did what I always do; I called a spade a spade and pointed out that this was imperialism.

It turns out I didn't need to be so cautious. Maliki said what he said and he meant it. Juan Cole, has the statement, originally published in the German magazine Der Spiegel:

Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we're concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

SPIEGEL: Is this an endorsement for the US presidential election in November? Does Obama, who has no military background, ultimately have a better understanding of Iraq than war hero John McCain?

Maliki: Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems. Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans' business. But it's the business of Iraqis to say what they want.

Seems pretty cut and dried to me. Given the broader context, it's hard to see how a mistranslation could possibly change the meaning. In fact, Cole has info that casts the "mistranslation" line in doubt. In dispelling the "Obama is right" comment, the US used a stooge.

-Continued after the jump-

Ali al-Dabbagh, who is usually described as al-Maliki's spokesman but actually seems to work for the CENTCOM or Pentagon Middle East command, was trotted out to make vague statements about Der Spiegel's having mistranslated or misinterpreted what al-Maliki said. This denial was issued through CENTCOM! When the original demand came from al-Maliki for a timetable for US withdrawal, it was al-Dabbagh who reinterpreted it as a 'time horizon.' Al-Dabbagh was contradicted by National Security Counsellor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, who seems actually closer in this thinking to al-Maliki. My guess is that al-Dabbagh has been recruited by some agency in Washington, DC, to explain away al-Maliki's statements whenever they contradict Bush's.

When it comes to the words of Nouri al-Maliki, what we seem to be getting has been run through a filter at the Ministry of Propaganda -- a sanitized version that the Bush administration finds more digestible.

In fact, what we're witnessing is an attempt to cover up an embarrassment that happened right out there in the open, in front of anyone, on the world stage. Thanks to a media who are either amazingly compliant or astoundingly lazy, it seems to be working.

And this isn't the only evidence that Maliki said exactly what he was reported to have said. "It was a move aimed at ingratiating the Shiite ruling majority in Baghdad with the man they expect to win the November presidential election," writes Eli Lake in The New York Sun.

"The matter was taken up at a meeting of Iraq's National Security Council on Thursday on the recommendation of Mr. Maliki, who had been advised by the Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi to express public support for the Obama withdrawal plan," Lake tells us. "Asked for a comment yesterday, Mr. Chalabi, an old hand at working the American political process to the advantage of Iraq, conveyed a statement via his Washington representative, Francis Brooke: 'This is an honor I will not claim and a rumor I will not deny.'"

Not that Ahmed Chalabi's the most trustworthy person on Earth. After all, it was Chalabi who supplied a lot of the BS that excused the invasion of Iraq. The man is scum of the very lowest order. In fact, if I stepped in a pile of Ahmed Chalabi, I wouldn't scrape him off, I'd throw the shoes away. He's the sort of person who makes me wish I believed in Hell. But the story didn't originate with him, it was -- for all intents and purposes -- confirmed by him. The Sun isn't asking us to trust Ahmed Chalabi.

Not that we'd have to. Der Spiegel stands by its story and a writer for DS explained its editorial policy to The New Republic in an email:

The reason the magazine scores so many high level interviews is that the editors agree to allow the subjects to "authorize" the interviews before they go to press. It wasn't just a slip of the tongue, in other words: Maliki not only endorsed Obama's plans for withdrawing from Iraq, but his office then explicitly approved the endorsement before it was printed. The denials, then, were doubly facetious. Spiegel couldn't say so, though, without revealing its embarrassing authorization policy.

There we go. Maliki said it, reviewed it. and signed off on it. Clearly, he said exactly what he was originally reported to have said. The real story here is that Maliki managed to endorse and not endorse Barack Obama at the same time.

So when I was cautious in dealing with a supposedly mistranslated statement, it turns out I didn't need to be. An, in doing so I've proven one of my beliefs correct -- when it comes to the Bush administration, you can never go wrong by refusing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm also proven correct about the media, who have taken this story at face value and moved on. Whether through complicity, laziness, or (my personal belief) a desire to keep the presidential race close enough to generate lots of news stories, the media have left a big story in the dust, unexamined and unreported.

Maliki backed Obama. That's not bad reporting, that's a fact. Not telling that story is bad reporting.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Iraq; war; elections; 2008; military; diplomacy; Bush; neocon; John McCain; The shocking story the media won't tell you -- Nouri al-Maliki loves him some Barack Obama

The Game Changer

What if we were in the middle of a national election, something happened that changed the game overnight, and the media yawned? I wish that were a hypothetical, but that was the situation this weekend when Iraqi Prime Minister told the German magazine Der Speigel that Obama was right about troop withdrawal.

"Obama is right when he talks about 16 months," Maliki said. "Assuming that positive developments continue, this is about the same time period that corresponds to our wishes."

This was out all over the web Saturday -- I saw it a little before noon. Fun things happened after that...

McClatchy Newspapers:

The White House press office, which usually offers a daily dose of schedules, presidential proclamations and explanations of administration positions, Saturday offered something very different--a Reuters news service story explaining how Iraq's prime minister backed Democrat Barack Obama's troop exit strategy.

Oops.

White House reporters were sent a story explaining "Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told a German magazine he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months. In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Maliki said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible.

[...]

ABC News reported that the story was intended for a more select White House audience, not the general press corps, but an employee hit the wrong button.

But that wasn't the game changer. That was just a incompetent White House doing the only thing it does well -- screwing up royally.

-Continued after the jump-


Later, after a call from the White House, Maliki's office released a statement saying he was mistranslated -- without saying what it was he was actually supposed to have said. And did I say Maliki's office released the statement? I'm sorry, that's wrong, it was released through the US Central Command -- at about 1:30 am US Eastern time. Way too late to do anything about the day's worth of news and comment his statement had generated. Maliki apparently felt no urgency in issuing his weak denial. Most observers believe Maliki's statement was both correct and deliberate (DS stands by the story). After all, Maliki let it hang out there for somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 hours -- then pulled it after everyone in the US was done with their news-consuming. Effectively, he let the reporting go on for an entire day.

The Associated Press's Baghdad Bureau chief Robert H. Reid is one of those observers. Noting that Obama was scheduled to visit Iraq, Reid said the comment was meant to "exploit Obama's position on the war to force the Bush administration into accepting concessions considered unthinkable a few months ago."

The problem for the Bush administration is that they aren't negotiating from a position of strength -- they want, Iraq has. The White House has already caved on a timetable for withdrawal, but they aren't calling it that. They use the ridiculous euphamism "a general time horizon for meeting aspirational goals." After months and months and months of abusing the English language by using the word "timetable" as if it were synonymous with "schedule," the Bush administration now can't call a timetable a timetable. While Bush and McCain argue that withdrawal would depend on the conditions on the ground, they pretend that that's not what everyone else was saying as well.

"...I come to the floor to talk about why we need a timeframe for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq," Russ Feingold said in 2005. "I don’t mean a rigid timetable, nor do I mean a timetable that isn’t connected to clear and achievable benchmarks. What we need is a public, flexible, realistic timetable that will tell people when and how we expect to finish the military mission in Iraq."

This is exactly what the Bush administration has conceded to. Suck it, Bush fans, Russ Feingold came out on top in the end here. Bush is now a cut-and-running surrender-monkey.

But even that's not the game changer. Bush and Feingold and Obama and Maliki are all in agreement against John McCain's position. That's been the new game for about a week. No, the game changer I'm talking about came in Team McCain's first response to Maliki's then-unretracted statement:

Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic:

"His domestic politics require him to be for us getting out," said a senior McCain campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "The military says 'conditions based' and Maliki said 'conditions based' yesterday in the joint statement with Bush. Regardless, voters care about [the] military, not about Iraqi leaders."

In other words, "We don't care about the Iraqi government, we're going to do what we want." Add this to McCain's many flip-flops. When asked about exactly this situation in 2004, McCain said, "Well, if that scenario evolves, then I think it’s obvious that we would have to leave because -- if it was an elected government of Iraq -- and we’ve been asked to leave other places in the world."

Yet, when Team McCain believed that Iraq would ask us to leave, they pulled a 180. Why? Simple. McCain needs the war more than the war needs him. This whole thing is winding down. The McCain campaign's response was way too honest to be helpful -- a McCain White House would see the Iraqi government as subservient to American desires. Iraq would be as free and sovereign as they were allowed to be, otherwise they answer to the American Empire. Iraqis be damned.

Another unnamed GOP strategist put things very honestly and succinctly to Marc Ambinder; "We're fucked." Of course, this was before Maliki was pressured to issue the denial. But that strategist's assessment tells us all we need to know about how much power the Iraqi government holds in this election. It also tells you how much power they hold in negotiations -- nearly all of it. Maliki has demonstrated that he can pull the rug out from under McCain and McCain's campaign doesn't seem to realize that. Clueless in America would go before the voters and tell them that the war goes on, despite the fact that Iraqis have moved to stop it.

Man, is that ever a loser of a message.

But this is the game changer. McCain's campaign has shown an unwillingness to adjust to reality. The war is crumbling beneath him and he has no plan B. In fact, his plan A has been revealed as freakin' awful. He'd keep fighting after the war was over, rather than admit that Obama's plan is better.

The media, as they always do, have skipped over this unfortunate little reality. They'd rather keep this "tight race" narrative going to keep up their ratings. There's no way they're going to give Team Obama this "Dukakis-in-a-tank" moment from Team McCain. They want to pretend McCain has a chance right down to the wire.

And this won't be the only game changer we'll see this week. Obama's overseas trip is going to swing through Europe. He's a rock star in Europe. Where Bush gets protesters dressed like the Grim Reaper and giant papier-mâché puppets whenever he appears in Europe, Obama's appearances will look more like the second coming of The Beatles. American voters will be reminded of a time when everyone on Earth didn't hate us.

But it should've been that Team McCain had dug their candidate's grave with the assertion that the Iraqi government was irrelevant. It should've been that McCain's own flip-flop on the issue was the clincher. It should've been that the media would serve the public and report the news. It should've been that this election ended this weekend with a gaffe of epic proportions and a dismissive and imperial attitude toward Iraqi sovereignty.

The game should've changed this weekend. In Washington and in the White House, it certainly has. The Iraq war is ending and no one can keep it going. Without it, McCain has nothing.

And, as the occupation of Iraq draws to a close, John McCain's last chance at the presidency does as well. Without the war, Baghdad Johnny is nothing.

Just don't expect the media to tell you that.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Iraq; troop withdrawal; elections; 2008; Republican; Democrat; Bush; White House; Nouri al-Maliki gave Barack Obama a shot in the arm, while John McCain shot himself in the foot

More Catholic than JFK?

No offense, but as an atheist, here's my take on the news; an old wizard came to America yesterday. He'll take a short tour of the northeast, do some wizard stuff with other wizards, then he'll go back to his big wizard-city in Rome. Needless to say, I don't see the visit by the pope the same way a lot of people do.

Like John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI is pretty much a mixed bag. I guess when you try to apply the religion of bronze age nomadic shepherds to the 21st century, the results are predictably iffy. While the former Cardinal Ratzinger is somewhat more conservative that his predecessor, Benedict's pretty much a 50/50. Sure, he's as homophobic as any previous pope; anti-abortion, anti-birth control, and anti-embryonic stem cell research to boot. He's also committed to expanding the use of exorcism in the world, a development that has mental health experts more than a little alarmed.

But he's also committed to world peace, fighting poverty, and leading on climate change -- under Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican will become the world's first carbon neutral state. I guess, when you're dealing with old wizards, you get your good and you get your bad. So yay for the good and boo for the bad. Can you start to see the roots of my ambivalence here?

Another person who thinks the pope is a mixed bag is President Bush. With the possible exception of the expanded exorcism thing, what Bush sees as the good and the bad of Benedict is exactly the opposite of what I do. The anti-war, anti-poverty, environmentalist pope is a problem, while the anti-abortion, anti-stem cell, and anti-gay pope is an ally. But Bush, with approval ratings in the tank and his party's '08 candidate getting a big bear hug from an anti-Catholic demagogue, needs the ally pope more than the problematic pope.

So Bush is pushing the idea that he's more Catholic than John F. Kennedy -- literally. A puff piece put out by the Religion News Service shows us just how high the administration is shoveling it. The headline; "NEWS ANALYSIS: Is George Bush leading America's first truly Catholic presidency?"

Seriously.

Shortly after Pope Benedict XVI's election three years ago, President Bush huddled with a small circle of advisers and speechwriters in the Oval Office. As talk briefly turned to religion, the president mentioned reading one of the new pontiff's books about faith and culture in Western Europe.

Save one other soul, Bush was the only non-Catholic in the room, and it did not go unnoticed. Even the president laughed at the thought.

"I used to say that there are more Catholics on President Bush's speechwriting team than any Notre Dame starting lineup in the past half-century," said former Bush scribe William McGurn, a Catholic who was part of the meeting.

"In fact, with all due respect to John F. Kennedy, the nation's first and only Catholic president," we're informed, "Some have begun to call the Bush White House the first truly Catholic presidency."

And, in case that comparison didn't sink in, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum pounds the point in with a sledgehammer. "I don't think there's any question about it," he says. "That's why I called him the first Catholic president; he's certainly much more Catholic than Kennedy."

Even Laura's jumping in on this one. "There really was a warm relationship that developed very quickly with the president, Mrs. Bush, and Pope Benedict," says the First Lady's Chief of Staff Anita McBride. "He’s a very warm and kind person." Why, the pope's practically part of the family.

One Catholic isn't falling for this BS. That'd be some guy named Benedict XVI. While Benedict was picked up at the airport by Bush and will meet with him today, the White House is throwing a big dinner in his honor that the pontiff won't attend. The pope cites a scheduling conflict, but it's widely seen as a statement. The pope and his staff aren't idiots; they know what it looks like. It's hard to believe it's not a statement. The recent news that Bush personally OK'd meetings to find legal loopholes in torture bans couldn't have helped any, either.

So much for the "warm relationship."

Bush's problem is the good half of Benedict's 50/50. If you look at his schedule, you see he'll attend an "Interreligious Gathering at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center" in D.C. with the theme "Peace Our Hope." He'll be presented with symbols of peace by five kids of different religions; Judaism, Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam. "A greeting of interreligious leaders will be followed by a song: 'Peace Prayer,' attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, sung by a schola cantorum," we're told.

Sounds more like Cindy Sheehan's crowd than Dubya's, doesn't it?

Bush's big problem here is that this is one of the few leaders in the world with no reason to either kiss up to him or to fear him. Bush literally has nothing to offer this man and poses no threat to him. The Imperial President finds himself in a completely unfamiliar situation -- that of having almost zero influence. Benedict can pretty much take him or leave him.

And Benedict chose "leave him" a long time ago.

The Capital Times:

[Benedict XVI] has bluntly said that Bush's pre-emptive attack on Iraq and the subsequent occupation of that country does not follow the Catholic doctrine of a "just war."

Before the invasion, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was asked whether the attack might be considered morally justified under the just-war standard. "Certainly not," he replied, explaining that "the damage would be greater than the values one hopes to save."

Rejecting arguments made by the president and many of his supporters that the United States needed to take the lead, this pope argued, "It should never be the responsibility of just one nation to make decisions for the world."

"There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq," Benedict said. "To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a 'just war.' "

Bush can't like the idea that there may not be any such thing as a "just war." Not the least because he claims to be prosecuting one. And whether or not any war can be just anymore is a conversation that this country and the world at large would benefit from. It's also a conversation this "war president" would dearly love to avoid.

So that's the news as I see it; an old wizard came over from Rome and metaphorically slapped a propaganda-addicted warlord right upside his fool head.

Yay for the good.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war ;Iraq; abortion; gay; homophobia; religion; JFK; propaganda; For those of you keeping score, Pope Benedict's Catholic, Bush is just pretending to be

A Do Nothing Congress -- But in a Good Way

The occupation of Iraq goes on. And on and on and on and on. The news barely reports on the violence there anymore. It's daily and constant and has become like wallpaper; we see it constantly, but we don't see it anymore. It's just there. We don't see it because we've become used to it.

Consider just this snippet, from Reuters' Iraq Factbox:

DIWANIYA - Seven policemen were killed when their vehicle was hit by a powerful roadside bomb east of Diwaniya, 180 km (110 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

Now, imagine that had happened in, say, Duluth. It'd be breaking news on every network. But it didn't, so it's not. It's something that happened very far away to people you'll never know. It's just that wallpaper. It doesn't mean anything.

But it's our fault. There were no roadside bombs in Iraq before we went there. This is a direct result of our actions. Pro-war types will argue that people die in war and that, because of this fact, we can't be responsible for every death. But that argument is deeply flawed and dishonest. When you take a course of action in which you know -- without any doubt at all -- that people will die, you can't later say that you aren't responsible for those deaths. Yet that's what we're told. That the violence is a reaction to our actions is supposed to be irrelevant. We are innocent.

We're always being told that things are getting better, but it's never as good as pre-war Iraq. Think about that. Saddam Hussein ran a safer nation than we can provide Iraqis. If the average Iraqi hated Saddam, what the hell must they think of us?

There's a solution to all of this. And the first step is to get the hell out. As The Nation's John Nichols puts it, "[T]he time has come to stop the senseless killing and maiming of young Americans in a distant civil war. The time has come to end what is by any honest measure a colonial occupation and to allow Iraqis to decide their own destiny. The time has come to restore a measure of balance and decency to American foreign policy."

The time has come for a compliant Congress to get up off their asses and do something. Or, more specifically, do something by refusing to do something. That's what 89 members of the House of Representatives have promised to do. Nothing.

But the right kind of nothing.

89 reps have signed a letter to President Bush vowing "that they will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during Fiscal Year 2008 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of our troops out of Iraq before you leave office."

The President can't veto what never gets to his desk. For all the talk about a "veto-proof majority," a simple majority is all it takes to end the war. Without money, Bush's war can't be fought. And all Congress has to do is vote down any appropriation that doesn't include a date for withdrawal.

This isn't much of a gamble, politically. A recent poll asked respondents, "President Bush wants Congress to approve a $200 billion dollar request to continue funding the Iraq war and keep the troops in Iraq. Should Congress: vote against the $200 billion funding request; vote for the $200 billion funding request without conditions; or vote for the $200 billion funding request, but specify that it can be used ONLY to protect US troops and contractors and bring them home, rather than to continue the war?"

"We found that fully 70 percent of those surveyed rejected giving the President further funding for Iraq without conditions," say Rep. Barbara Lee. "And people favored requiring funds be spent on redeployment over providing the administration funds without conditions by a two to one margin."

Only 22% supported unconditional funding. As always, the public is way out in front of this Congress.

It's not surprising, when you look at the signatories to the letter, that House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi's name is missing. Not surprising, but disappointing. I'm getting used to being disappointed in Democratic leadership, just as I've gotten used to hearing reports of violence and death in Iraq. It'd be nice if we got something approximating leadership from the leadership.

Pelosi -- like far too many Democrats and Republicans -- needs to embrace reality. Bush will not end this war unless he's forced to. Nothing on Earth, no matter how catastrophic, will change his mind. George W. Bush is a stubborn ass and a pint-sized intellect -- letting him lead the way is pure idiocy.

Yet, so far, that's exactly what Pelosi is happy to do -- to follow that moron's flag right into more deaths, more tragedy, more expense, and more debt.

This isn't what we voted for in '06.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; poll; Iraq; war; Congress; Democrats; Nancy Pelosi follows Bush straight off the cliff

Failure isn't an Option, It's a Reality

The Iraq war has definitely overstayed its welcome. As it goes on (and on and on...), the war becomes less and less popular. I think it might be that there are so many lies involved and, the longer it goes on, the longer critics are able to talk about those lies. So fragile an argument can't stand up to daily analysis over the course of years. The gaps in the reasoning become chasms and the lies become more and more obvious.

So it shouldn't surprise anyone that a majority of americans want out, think the war -- and Bush's escalation of it -- has failed, and it was a mistake to invade in the first place.

Associated Press:

The public sees the Iraq war as a failure and thinks the U.S. troop buildup there has not worked, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll suggesting the tough sell President Bush faces in asking Congress and voters for more time.

[...]

By 59 percent to 34 percent, more people said they believe history will judge the Iraq war a complete or partial failure than a success. Those calling it a failure included eight in 10 Democrats, three in 10 Republicans and about six in 10 independents, the poll showed -- ominous numbers for a president who hopes to use a nationally televised address later this week to keep GOP lawmakers from joining Democratic calls for a withdrawal.

Respondents saying the war will be remembered as a complete success were outnumbered 4 to 1 by those who said it was a complete failure, with only 7% seeing a brilliant final victory and 28% saying that it would be seeing total failure.

It says a lot about american opinion that so few would argue success. If you use Bush's original reasons to invade Iraq, it has been a success. There are no WMD and we've had regime change. If what Bush had said at the outset was true, then we'd have been done for a few years.

But people see what Bush really had in mind and it didn't have a damned thing to do with Saddam Hussein or WMD. It was about creating a new, USA-friendly democracy in the middle east. That doesn't seem very likely.

For their part, Congress's take on things seems to mirror the public's. Given Petreaus's and Crocker's big PR push for more war, they've reacted with skepticism -- at the very least.

In a piece titled, Congress unconvinced of 'surge' success, the Financial Times reports:

"Are we any closer to a lasting political settlement in Iraq at the national level today than we were when the surge began eight months ago?

"And if we continue to surge for another six months, is there any evidence that the Sunnis, the Shia and the Kurds will stop killing each other and start governing together?" asked Joseph Biden, Democratic chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee.

"In my judgment... the answer to both those questions is no... without a settlement, the surge is at best a stopgap that delays, but will not prevent, chaos.

"Its net effect will be to put more American lives at risk, in my view, with very little prospect for success."

What I keep saying, what Biden is saying, and what everyone who's given it any thought is saying is that without political progress, military progress -- real or cooked up by the Ministry of Propaganda -- is meaningless. If the iraqi government is unable (or unwilling) to control what happens within their borders, nothing we do will change a damned thing.

But, when Bush asks for $50 billion to continue the war, Biden will vote to authorize it. So will a majority of dems.

The most popular explanation is that they're cowed by Bush. This seems unlikely to me, since Bush has no popular mandate for the war. Opposing Bush would come without consequence. Another explanation is that they want to keep the war going until 2008, so they can run against it. I'm not a big fan of that explanation, since it would mean that DC is lousy with very evil people.

My take is that they're afraid of perceived failure. When we pull out of Iraq, bad things will happen. And it doesn't make any difference if we do it now or ten years from now. There was no reason to go to Iraq in the first place and that renders the political situation there completely artificial. The presence of US troops is a factor in the political gameplaying in Iraq. In a nation divided along deeply sectarian lines, our presence helps some and hinders others. We're just the most powerful piece on someone else's chess board. The goals we meet in Iraq are not our own, but those of people who don't give a good goddam about us otherwise.

If we pull out, those political players will be forced to find some other, less artificial, way to achieve their ends -- and that means a period of violence and war. But it makes no difference when we pull out. Everyone knows the concept of a "power vacuum." We've created the opposite, call it a "power balloon." That power balloon doesn't fill a gap, it forces other powers outward, and forces american interests to the center. It creates the artificial political environment I've been talking about. For many political and sectarian groups in Iraq, this helps them by keeping their opponents from center stage. Politics in Iraq is all about the americans, when it should be all about iraqis. And it will continue to be all about the americans until the americans leave.

But leaving will remove that central political force in Iraq and that will create problems. And those problems -- or more specifically, the blame for those problems -- are what dems are afraid of and why they suffer attacks of political paralysis when they have the opportunity to bring us closer to ending this fiasco.

Personally, I don't think they should worry as much about it as they seem to be doing. I think the average american knows that violence will flare up in Iraq after we leave. Polls show they want out anyway.

My advice to dems is to listen to the people and, when 2008 comes around, run against George W. Bush. It doesn't make any difference who the GOP candidate is, all but one (who stands no hope in hell) supports the war, wiretaps, torturing prisoners, rendition, etc. The candidate who wins the primaries would be GWB's third term. Run against that.

Violence in Iraq, whether it happens now or five years from now, is the fault of the man who put troops there in the first place -- not the fault of whoever gets them out. If Congress takes a stand and tells Bush, "Not another dime without a timetable," I doubt there would be any political fallout.

People believe the war is already lost. It's hard to see how just accepting that fact would come with much of a pricetag.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; military; poll; Whatever happens after troops leave Iraq will be Bush's fault, not Democrats'

Iraq is Over

The Iraq war would pay for itself. Paul Wolfowitz told us that, not once, but twice. In February of 2003, he told the House Budget Committee, "[Iraq's] got already, I believe, on the order of $15 billion to $20 billion a year in oil exports, which can finally -- might finally be turned to a good use instead of building Saddam's palaces. It has one of the most valuable undeveloped sources of natural resources in the world. And let me emphasize, if we liberate Iraq those resources will belong to the Iraqi people, that they will be able to develop them and borrow against them."

Then, in March, he told Congress, "The oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years. Now, there are a lot of claims on that money, but... We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon."

Which really makes this story a little perplexing:

Voice of America:

A U.S. newspaper reports that President Bush will ask for up to $50 billion in additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq.

The Washington Post says the administration will request the additional funds after presentation of a long-awaited report on the state of the war in Iraq in mid-September.

The new money would be in addition to the $460 billion asked for in the 2008 budget, and the $147 billion included in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

For a war that was going to pay for itself, this thing is getting awfully pricey. At the risk of sounding like pretty much anyone's mom, does Bush think we're made out of money? As much as Bush and the neocons want to stay in Iraq until the lights go out on the universe, it's clear that we can't afford it. Not only are we running out of money, we're getting tight on personnel. The big surge is running out of steam. And, as it turns out, the big surge had very little bang for the buck.

BBC News:

Iraq has managed to reach only three out of 18 progress benchmarks set by the US, a draft of a key report seen by the Washington Post newspaper says.

The reported findings of the Government Accountability Office - a Congressional watchdog - contrast with a White House study saying eight goals have been met.

According to AP, "The State Department, Pentagon and White House dispute some GAO findings, including the conclusion that Iraq has only partially met tests involving its budget process and legislation dealing with semiautonomous regions in the large, multiethnic country, two officials said."

That should be read as "The White House, White House, and White House dispute some GAO findings..." The idea that State is independent is laughable and the Pentagon hasn't been wasting a lot of time on original thought. Despite a big PR campaign to convince us that Iraq is on the verge of become a model to all nations, Iraq is as big a hellhole as it's ever been. According to an anonymous journalist at McClatchy's Baghdad Bureau, "All the troops in Baghdad couldn't provide security for the residents for one day.. just one day. Not a week... Not a month ... But 12 + 12 hours. And if you have read or heard about such a day believe me it didn't exist."

Allow me to add that most iraqi journalists are anonymous -- it's safer that way. Iraqis practicing journalism tend to get assassinated. That's how "safe" Iraq is now.

Iraq is a failed state brought about by our failed war. That the war would fail to make positive changes should've been entirely predictable. This isn't the first time I've pointed out that operating as if your lies are true is an invitation to disaster.

We have an option. The White House doesn't like it, because it'll make this administration the administration that "lost" the war -- as if it weren't doomed to fail from the gitgo. We are under absolutely no obligation to stay in Iraq.

Go through the 2002 Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, check off the "whereas" points, and see which are no longer true and which were never true. Iraq's obviously not trying to impede weapons inspectors, there are no WMD, Iraq poses no threat to anyone (it can't even threaten armed groups within its own borders), Iraq's violations of UN resolutions is a moot point -- that government no longer exists, Iraq's in no position to attack the US, al Qaeda in Iraq is (despite BS from the administration) a non-player, etc., etc. etc.

We, by Bush's and that Congress's own measure, are done. In an extremely legal and technical sense, we won. It's over. Time to pack it in and go home.

There's a plan.

Center for American Progress:

A phased military redeployment from Iraq over the next 10 to 12 months would begin extracting U.S. troops from Iraq's internal conflicts immediately and would be completed by the end of 2008. During this timeframe, the military will not replace outgoing troops as they rotate home at the end of their tours and will draw down force and equipment levels gradually, at a pace similar to previous rotations conducted by our military over the past four years. According to a U.S. military official in Baghdad involved in planning, a withdrawal could take place safely in this time period.

The Center's full report on withdrawal is here. It's time to hang it up. This is a war still in search of a reason for being. It's an expensive boondoggle. It's cost us thousands of american lives and hundreds of thousands of iraqi lives. We've accomplished everything we set out to accomplish (mostly because none of the "problems" we set out to fix proved to exist).

As things are now, we're accomplishing nothing. We're just going around in circles, putting out small fires in a burned out landscape. It's over and it was over before we ever started. Seriously, there's no good reason to keep pouring blood and money and resources down this rathole. Staying serves no purpose.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Bush; White House; neocon; propaganda; The Iraq war is over, time to go home

Plan B? What About a Plan A?

What do you do with an unpopular war that serves no real purpose? It doesn't seem like it's all that difficult a question -- you stop it.

Some don't see it that way. See, that's too simple and obvious. The question all the big fans of the war are asking is, you pull out -- then what? White House Press Secretary Tony Snow told FOX News recently:

To walk out of Iraq right now would plant a seed that ultimately would lead to destabilization there, hundreds of thousands of deaths, loss of our influence in the region, would create instability throughout the Middle East throughout East Asia, throughout Europe.

The problem with this scary scenario is that it's a damned good description of Iraq now. The newest argument in favor of the war is that people who want withdrawal don't have any plan to deal with the violence afterward.

The most obvious answer is that we don't have any plan to deal with the violence there now. If we pull out, will the sectarian civil war in Iraq turn into a sectarian civil war in Iraq or is that a really stupid and redundant question? "I am convinced based on everything I have read it won't be a hell of a lot worse than it is now," Rep. John Murtha told a reporter for the L.A. Times.

In fact, that quote comes from a Times story titled, 'Pullout proposal lacking a Plan B' -- the subheader reads, 'Those who want troops out of Iraq acknowledge that sectarian violence will likely follow.' The problem is that the premise assumes an entirely unrealistic situation -- that Iraq is manageable now, but difficult. That's not the case. Iraq is a failed state and neither we nor the iraqi government have any control over what happens there. Pro-war people get to talk about 'Plans B' when they come up with their own 'Plan A.'

The mistake has already been made. Asking what we'll do about the violence after we leave is like asking how we plan to unmix paint. Worse, it's a way for the pro-war nuts to slough off their own responsibility for this bloodbath and the initial mistakes that brought us to this point. They started this tire fire and now they fault us for having no way to put it out. All you can do with a tire fire is let it burn itself out.

Which brings us to this letter antiwar dems in the House sent to President Bush yesterday:

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing to inform you that we will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during Fiscal Year 2008 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of all our troops out of Iraq before you leave office.

More than 3,600 of our brave soldiers have died in Iraq. More than 26,000 have been seriously wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or injured in the hostilities and more than 4 million have been displaced from their homes. Furthermore, this conflict has degenerated into a sectarian civil war and U.S. taxpayers have paid more than $500 billion, despite assurances that you and your key advisors gave our nation at the time you ordered the invasion in March, 2003 that this military intervention would cost far less and be paid from Iraqi oil revenues.

We agree with a clear and growing majority of the American people who are opposed to continued, open-ended U.S. military operations in Iraq, and believe it is unwise and unacceptable for you to continue to unilaterally impose these staggering costs and the soaring debt on Americans currently and for generations to come.

The letter is signed by way more people than I'm willing to list here -- 70 in all. Check it out to see where your congress critter stands. I can save some of you some time, though -- the only GOP member who signed was Ron Paul. Other names are predictable -- Conyers, Kucinich, Rangel, Waters among them. I was glad to see my Rep., Tammy Baldwin, listed and the woman I call my 'near Rep.', Gwen Moore from over in Milwaukee. When it comes to stuff like this, the only problem with living in Madison is that I seldom have anyone to yell at. It's a problem I can live with.

As long as we're talking about who does or doesn't have a plan, let's look at a poll taken by Military.com -- a news site for military members. According to them:

Nearly 60 percent of readers who participated in a recent Military.com poll said the United States should withdraw its troops from Iraq now or by the end of 2008. More than 40 percent of the respondents agreed the pullout should begin immediately because "we're wasting lives and resources there."

A similar number of participants, however, felt that U.S. troops should remain in Iraq, with 41 percent of respondents concluding that America should fight "until the insurgency is totally defeated."

I'm sorry, 'until the insurgency is totally defeated?' This brings two questions to mind -- what the hell does that even mean and what's your plan to get that done?

The fact is that the plan for Iraq was exactly what the Bush administration said it was. We go in, boot out Saddam, and everyone's so damned happy they throw us a big parade -- The Princess gives the Wookie a medal, the end, roll credits. That was it. That was what passed for serious military planning. They didn't have a plan when they went in and that's the problem now. They wrecked the place and now they get to criticize us for not being able to fix it? That takes balls.

The answer for Iraq is simple -- we screwed things up so badly there that we can't possibly fix it. We can stay there and be the third side of a three way civil war or we can get the hell out and make it a two way civil war.

Doesn't seem like much of a headscratcher to me.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; democrats; Tammy Baldwin; Gwen Moore; peace; congress; war; Withdrawal from Iraq is the only realistic plan

The Iraq Puppet Show

There was a little battle of the wills Sunday on Meet the Press, with a heated argument between Sens. Jim Webb and Lindsey Graham. While Graham was throwing out the same old tired Republican talking points and Bush apologism for war in Iraq, Webb called him on it. Angrily. It was beautiful. Click on the image above for the video.

Or, we can go to the New York Times politics blog, The Caucus, for a partial transcript.

SENATOR GRAHAM: Have you been to Iraq?

SENATOR WEBB: I have been to Afghanistan as a journalist.

SENATOR GRAHAM: Have you been to Iraq and -- have you been to Iraq and talked to the soldiers?

SENATOR WEBB: You know, you haven't been to Iraq.

SENATOR GRAHAM: I've been to -- I've been there seven times.

SENATOR WEBB: You know, you go see the dog and pony shows.

SENATOR GRAHAM: I've been there as a reservist, I have been there and I'm going back in August.

SENATOR WEBB: That's what congressmen do. Yeah, I have, I have -- I've been a member of the military when the senators come in.

SENATOR GRAHAM: Well, all -- listen, something we can agree on, we both admire the men and women in uniform. I don't doubt your patriotism.

SENATOR WEBB: Don't put political words in their mouth.

The reason Graham switched gears to 'something we can agree on' was because Webb was getting seriously pissed off. Graham was pushing some BS that soldiers were reenlisting because they support Bush and the war. This is kind of like arguing that firefighters are in favor of an arsony because they keep running back into the burning building. The fact is that people reenlist because they don't want to abandon their friends in a hellhole.

Graham was doing what too many of the few remaining war supporters do -- using the troops like a ventriloquist's dummy. I'm surprised that Graham didn't come back with, "The troops don't like your tone, Jim. The troops think you're being very unreasonable right now. The troops think we should either all calm down or go to a commercial."

In fact, a fun little fact turned up recently that pretty much proves that Lindsey Graham and the troops aren't on the same wavelength at all. Of all the GOP presidential hopefuls, Ron Paul -- the only antiwar Republican candidate -- has raised the most money from military personnel.

Wonkette:

The Q2 fundraising numbers reveal [$23,465] were donated to RP's campaign from current and former Army, Navy and Air Force people. John "But I Was Tortured" McCain only picked up $15,825 donations from current or retired military, while draft-dodging Manhattan dandy Rudy Giuliani only collected $2,320 in military donations.

It's a drop in the bucket compared to total fundraising, sure. But the US military doesn't pay quite as well as corporate whoredom. You give what you've got and Republican military members are giving to the only peace candidate. The troops think you're full of crap, Lindsey. Put that in your sock puppet.

In fact, pretty much everyone with even a passing connection to the war is turning against it. A very good piece in the Washington Post, titled 'Midwest Towns Sour on War as Their Tolls Mount,' tells the story.

TIPTON, Iowa -- This farming town in Cedar County buried Army Spec. Aaron Sissel during the Iraq war's ninth month. It buried Army Spec. David W. Behrle during the 51st. Along the way, as a peaceable community's heart sank, its attitude toward President Bush and his Iraq strategy turned more personal and more negative.

Sissel and Behrle were popular young sons of Tipton, a community of 3,100 where anonymity is an impossibility. Sissel bagged groceries at the supermarket and often bowled at Cedar Lanes. Behrle served, just two years ago, as Tipton High's senior class president and commencement speaker.

The town, by all accounts, once gave Bush the benefit of the doubt for a war he said would make America safer and a mission he said was accomplished four years before Behrle died. But funeral by funeral, faith in the president and his project to remake Iraq is ebbing away.

Why don't you tell us what they think, Senator Graham? Put on your swami turban and contact the dead sons and daughters of corn farmers to get their input. Read the minds of those farmers, send your psychic powers over the rolling prairies of Iowa and Nebraska and Wisconsin, and tell us what they think. Tell us what we think.

Of course, he won't. Bush is the only one with enough guts and shamelessness to lie to us about what we think. He's the one who tells us what 'the American people' understand or don't understand -- despite all polling to the contrary. The less crazy know it can't possibly work.

Safer to lie about what the troops think. Most people don't get a chance to talk to them, since they're all over in Iraq, so who's going to contradict you? It's a lie that can be told with impunity.

Or it's supposed to be. People have gotten tired of being frightened. You can only keep people in a panic over terrorism for so long before they become exhausted. Then we remember times in our lives when we had one helluva lot more to fear -- Soviet nuclear death from above, for example. We remember times when courage was valued and fear-mongering was seen as the lowest of political dirty tricks. We remember that real leaders tell us to be brave, not to embrace our cowardice.

The longer this war goes on, the more pointless it becomes and the more obvious that pointlessness becomes. The tricks and lies and puppet theater lose our attention, while the truth becomes more and more undeniable. Those parents and neighbors of dead soldiers know the truth, those military personnel giving to Ron Paul know the truth, you and I know the truth.

Bush is running out the clock so some other president can be blamed for 'losing Iraq' and people like Lindsey Graham have tangled themselves up in their own lies so badly that they can't do the right thing and start telling the truth. If Bush's plan is successful, chumps like Lindsey Graham will be left holding the bag. But there's nothing they can do about it, because they hitched their wagons to the president's setting star too long ago.

Jim Webb gave Lindsey Graham a boatload of grief because Graham deserves a shipload. There's too much blood on his hands to let him get away with anything and the fact that he committed himself to a foolish course a long time ago is no excuse.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Lindsey Graham; Jim Webb; republican; media; propaganda; Meet the Press; If the military supports Bush's war in Iraq, why are they giving money to Ron Paul?

Congress Looks at Cutting War Funding -- And It's Bush's Fault

Is it possible to overdose on hypocrisy? Because I think the president just took a helluva dose.

Associated Press:

President Bush expressed frustration on Tuesday with the congressional debate on Iraq war spending and accused majority-party Democrats of being "more interested in fighting political battles in Washington than providing our troops what they need."

See, here's the thing; congress provided funding for the war. It's the president who's 'fighting political battles in Washington,' rather than 'providing our troops what they need.' The funding's there, all Bush has to do is sign on.

Of course, he has no intention of doing that. And, by vetoing the war bill, he effectively withholds the funding he claims is essential. Way to undermine your case, Mr. President.

This is a tremendous misstep on the part of the Commander in Chief and his team. I suppose strategic blunders from Tean Bush should be no surprise at this point, but saying he can't possibly do the wrong thing every time is just playing the odds -- he has to hit a pitch eventually.

But this isn't that eventual hit. By accusing Democrats of withholding funding for war in Iraq, he frees them up to do just that. Democrats find themselves with two possible outcomes. Either the public sees things Bush's way -- in which case they lose absolutely nothing by going ahead and doing what they're accused of -- or they see reality. In the latter case, the public is already on the Dem's side (and 2006 would suggest that's the case). If you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, you might as well do it.

In fact, Bush's pigheadedness has achieved what it always achieves -- an escalation. Not only are Dems not backing down, they're ratcheting up resistance to Bush policy. AP again:

The president's remarks come one day after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who previously has stopped short of saying he would support measures to cut off funds, announced he would try to eliminate money for the war if Bush rejects Congress' proposal to set a deadline to end combat.

[...]

"If the president vetoes the supplemental appropriations bill and continues to resist changing course in Iraq, I will work to ensure this legislation receives a vote in the Senate in the next work period," Reid said in a statement.

Reid has indicated that he'll sign onto a Feingold bill cutting funding altogether. "I am delighted to be working with the Majority Leader to bring our involvement in the Iraq war to an end," Sen. Russ Feingold said in a statement. "Congress has a responsibility to end a war that is opposed by the American people and is undermining our national security. By ending funding for the President’s failed Iraq policy, our bill requires the President to safely redeploy our troops from Iraq."

Feingold has it right when he says the war 'is opposed by the American people' -- which is why the road Bush is leading Republicans down is a political loser. If Bush vetoes this bill, there will be another and another and another. And each time they're brought to the floor, Republicans will be forced to either vote against them or admit that this war's gone on for far too long. Each vote against one of these antiwar bills will be a vote in favor of a war that's extremely unpopular with voters. Bush is digging a congressional grave for his party.

Frankly, it's about the first thing he's ever done that actually serves the nation well.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; peace; Russ Feingold; Harry Reid; when Bush vetoes funding for war in Iraq, he'll be killing the 2008 election prospects for republican in Congress