Mitt's Deflated Foreign Policy

Hey look, it's giant metaphor for Mitt Romney's foreign policy positions ahead of tonight's presidential debate:

An airship promoting Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in Florida drew attention for other reasons Sunday when it was forced to make an emergency landing just north of Miami.

According to WSVN-TV, the blimp, bearing the banner, “America Needs Romney,” was caught in high winds on its way back to a local airport, forcing it to the ground near a residential area in Davie, Florida.

“It was getting lower and lower,” one resident said. “It was totally going down, it was just losing altitude. The wind was just taking it and taking it.”

Team Romney took a double-whammy this weekend, as the Obama administration announced a major diplomatic breakthrough with Iran and the Republican version of the Benghazi attack collapsed under the weight of reality. Their foreign policy blimp went crashing down. Team Romney is furiously trying to spin good news into bad, but I seriously doubt anyone other than the base will bite. As is so often the case, good news for America is bad news for the GOP -- which means this weekend was a disaster for them.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Today's Award for 'Biggest GOP Jerk' Goes to Rep. John Fleming

Let's try a little fun with math; when is 33% more than 33%? At first glance, that may seem to be a dumb question -- they're obviously the same. But it's a trick question; the answer is that when the 100% totals are different, the smaller percentages, although an equal share, are not equal numbers. 33% of one dollar is obviously less than 33% of ten dollars. A one third portion of one thing is not necessarily equal to a one third portion of another.

Unfortunately, some people are having a hard time wrapping their heads around this concept. Case in point; Barack Obama is entering into a treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles by a third. This is, of course, the worst thing ever. The party that practices Reagan worship is accusing the president of giving away the store, not understanding nuclear diplomacy, and -- in one case -- of deliberately putting the nation at risk.

But here's the thing; Reagan did the same thing. Only bigger. In 1982, Ronald Reagan proposed cutting nuclear arms by one third. Since then, nuclear arms have been cut -- most notably by the START I and START II treaties. So Barack Obama's reduction -- at least compared to Reagan's proposal -- is modest. Reagan wanted to cut 100% by 33%. Now Obama wants to cut a smaller 100% -- minus Start I and Start II -- by 33%.

Which reduction is greater?





Pencils down. The answer is clearly that Ronald Reagan hated America -- and he hated it even more than Barack HUSSEIN Obama. Given the over-the-top reactions to Obama's proposal, we can only assume that this is what his critics believe. Of course, that also assumes that the criticism is honest. I don't think I'm going out on a limb if I say it's probably not.

But back to the accusation of deliberately putting the nation at risk. Was that some teabagger moron with a misspelled sign? Some talk radio blowhard like Rush Limbaugh? Some batcrap crazy TV shrieker like Glenn Beck?

No. It was Rep. John Fleming, Republican of Louisiana. In an op-ed that begins by quoting Ronald Reagan (who, remember, logic dictates must've hated America more), Fleming makes a lot of untrue and not-so intelligent statements, titling the piece "Reagan had it right on national security" and summing the whole thing up thusly:

As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I work daily to ensure our men and women have the resources they need to protect this country, and I continue to be dismayed by the national security policies coming out of this White House. Simply put, President Obama is disadvantaging the United States one step at a time and undermining this country’s national defense on purpose. Whether he is catering to the anti-war leftists or truly doing what he thinks is best for our security, the president is leading this nation down a very dangerous path.

That emphasis is his. He wants to make it absolutely clear that he believes the President of the United States of American is putting our nation at risk on purpose.

Steve Benen comments:

Ignorance is commonplace. Belligerence is routine. Stupidity has become habitual throughout much of the [GOP] caucus. But let's not overlook the fact that Fleming spoke directly to President Obama's motives. Fleming argued that the president isn't just mistaken, but rather, is deliberately trying to make the United States less safe and more vulnerable.

In other words, Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana effectively accused the President of the United States -- the Commander in Chief during two wars -- of treason. For Fleming, Obama is choosing to betray the nation, in his words, "on purpose."

"I write a lot about the excesses of Republican rhetoric, in part because I find GOP remarks illustrative of a party gone mad, and in part because of the impact the rhetoric has on the larger political culture/discourse. Most of the time, the temptation is to mock the absurdities," Benen continues. "But once in a while, we find a case like this one, in which a sitting member of the House of Representatives -- not a Fox News personality, not a host of right-wing radio show -- suggests, in print, that the president is a traitor."

Fleming has gone far beyond hyperbole.

There are a few things you should look out for that indicate a totally illogical argument. One of those things is mind-reading. Some will notice that I got into Republican heads toward the beginning of this post, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt -- they're either lying or stupid and I base that on what they've said. There is no other explanation. But when an argument hinges on knowing what someone is thinking -- despite what they've said -- you've got a pretty good clue that you're listening to BS. I can do the same thing and excuse Fleming's op-ed; he was obviously distracted with perverse sexual fantasies that have been stirred up by all the news coverage of the Catholic Church's child molestation scandal -- like any good Republican. He really should take a cold shower before he sits down in front of his word processor and pounds out an anti-Obama screed.

One thing we can know about Rep. John Fleming, Republican of Louisiana, is that -- either because of ignorance, intent, or a combination of the two -- he's a horse's ass. Whenever I come across a story like this, I'm tempted to say that his district is getting the representation they deserve; if this is the sort of idiot they elect, then this is the sort of idiot they deserve. But Fleming wasn't elected unanimously and his idiocy, dishonesty, and reactionary reflex don't only affect his district. He's our problem too and, frankly, no one deserves this moron.

-Wisco


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Remember Iraqi Refugees

Today, the President and the President-Elect will meet at the White House to discuss the bloodless change of government that is the genius of democracy. Viva la Revolución Pacífica! The economy is said to be the primary focus, but you imagine the discussion will be pretty broad in its range. Barack Obama has been getting daily intelligence briefings, so we can assume he's up to speed on world events and the status of different "situations" around the globe. He's probably not going to be too interested in advice, although you assume he'll take it graciously. Normally, free advice is worth only what you paid for it, but from a failed presidency, it's worth even less than that. Obama just wants to know if you have to dial 9 to get an outside line. This is about running the physical machinery of the White House and a smooth transition from failure to promise.

There are many problems that President Obama will have to address and many of those are problems that President Bush let fester. In fact, many of these crises were caused by Bush, who's now busy pretending they don't exist. A big reason for the failures of the Bush administration is their addiction to BS; they seem to have a belief that there is no problem that isn't a PR problem. It doesn't matter whether something's going well, what's important is the perception that it's going well. If everyone thinks there isn't a problem, then there isn't a problem. Crisis management, for this crew, consists almost solely of press conferences. There is no problem that can't be talked to death.

And that's the problem with Iraq. While Bush singlemindedly pursues what he calls "victory," he ignores the problems he's caused with his boneheaded invasion of that country. Many will tell you that things are better there than they have been, but few will tell you its better now than it's ever been. Iraq is still a nation defined by instability, violence, and want. The current President wants you to think otherwise, because that's how he solves problems. The President-Elect will have to do better. Contrary to what George W. Bush seems to believe, you can't deny reality forever.

"Many Iraqis tell me that America broke this country and it is still shattered. When they look at their lives they see the lack of electricity, the corruption, the lack of clean water and much more," writes McClatchy Baghdad Bureau Chief Leila Fadel. "Security has improved but everything here is tenuous and violence, which has dropped but not disappeared, may come back."



Still, we're supposed to believe constantly repeated claim that "the surge worked." Of course, it hasn't, but that doesn't matter. Repeat it often enough and everyone either just assumes it's true or gets tired of banging their head against the wall. But let's assume for a moment that it did -- is this good enough? Of course it's not. This is a state of existence that we wouldn't stand for in the US. I can guarantee that if, say, Indianapolis didn't have reliable electricity or clean water, with sporadic outbreaks of street fighting and frequent bombings, while the local government operated on bribery and corruption, we wouldn't just want it fixed, we'd want people to go to prison for it. Better -- even if you really believe it -- is still unacceptable.

People can't live like this, so they leave. Ethnic cleansing has been so successful in Iraq that entire neighborhoods are dark and empty, ghost towns abandoned by those who've managed to survive. Those people become refugees.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees:

Iraqi refugees throughout the region have become increasingly desperate. Despite a decline in violence in the second half of 2007, only a small number have gone home, often because their resources are exhausted. Of those who returned to Iraq, many found their property occupied and suffered secondary displacement.

UNHCR estimates more than 4.7 million Iraqis have left their homes, many in dire need of humanitarian care. Of these, more than 2.7 million Iraqis are displaced internally, while more than 2 million have fled to neighbouring states, particularly Syria and Jordan. Many were displaced prior to 2003, but the largest number has fled since. In 2006, Iraqis became the leading nationality seeking asylum in Europe.

Worse, as these refugees return to this "better" Iraq, they're chased off again or killed. Not even a month ago, McClatchy reported that returning families were being attacked, many killed. "Some have been threatened," the report read. "Others have found explosives tied to their front doors. Some have had their homes blown up."

This refugee crisis spreads beyond Iraq's borders, further destabilizing the entire region. "Many uprooted Iraqis fleeing to surrounding countries do not initially seek UNHCR help, but rely instead on a social net of friends and relatives which UNHCR worries is rapidly wearing thin, bringing rising social problems among the exiles and occasional friction with host communities," say the UN. As this problem grows -- almost completely ignored by the nation that caused it -- it causes other problems in other nations. Where the neocons argued that removing Saddam Hussein from power would spread democracy throughout the region, it's helped to spread instability instead.

It's looking like we're out of Iraq by 2011, if not sooner. Bush may not like that, but he's nearly irrelevant. Iraq doesn't want to deal with him anymore and seems to be engaged in delaying tactics until they get a chance to sit down with an Obama administration.

When that happens, Iraq's refugees shouldn't be overlooked. Contrary to what Bush seems to think, widespread ignorance of the problem isn't a solution to it.

-Wisco

McCain, Musharraf, and The Ways of The World

John McCain is Mr. Foreign Policy, Mr. Experience, the one candidate who's been in government longer than marble. He's seen leaders come and leaders go, he's seen entire nations fall to history, he's seen wars won and wars lost. And all this experience seems to have gone completely over his head. In all those years in government, John McCain doesn't seem to have learned a damned thing.

The lessons of Vietnam are clearly lost on the Vietnam vet. A war based on lies cannot be won, because the objectives aren't based on truth. Beat the living hell out of it all you want, but your aren't going to get that square peg into that round hole. The hammer of the military has its limitations.

But, like free market moonies who believe that the "genius of the market" can do anything -- including predicting terrorist attacks -- McCain is a military moonie who seems to believe that force is the only way to do anything.

As a result, McCain's choices of international allies reflects Bush's -- and a history of failure that goes back throughout the 20th century. Diplomacy is for wussypants appeasers. Stalin's quote -- "The Pope? How many divisions has he got?" -- could easily be applied to anyone who shares McCain's thinking. Real allies have guns, because only guns have influence. The world is an awful and dangerous place and only the strong are worth knowing. The Dalai Lama is for photo ops and dictators are for actual work. Nowhere is more apparent than in McCain's support for disgraced Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf.



Prior to 9/11, Musharraf was a nobody -- just another strongman who'd taken over a developing nation in a coup. How much of an nobody is demonstrated in Reuters' Factbox; "Musharraf's evolving relationship with Washington":

November 3, 1999 - In a test of foreign policy acumen, a television news reporter in Boston asks then-Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush to name the leaders of four global "hot spots," including Pakistan. Bush cannot name Musharraf, who had taken power in a coup a month earlier, referring to him as "the general."

No word on whether Bush giggled when he was told Musharraf's first name was Pervez, but I think it's probably a given. Bush didn't know who Musharraf was because he probably thought he'd have no use for him. That changed.

September 11, 2001 - After Al Qaeda attacks the United States, Musharraf reverses Pakistan's support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, which had sheltered Osama bin Laden's network, and throws its weight behind Bush's war on terrorism. Pakistan's Islamist opposition calls him a U.S. stooge.

June 2003 - Washington promises billions of dollars in aid for Pakistan -- it hands over more than $10 billion between 2001 and 2008 -- while White House officials say Bush presses Musharraf to move toward democracy and stop extremists from launching attacks on Afghanistan from Pakistan. Many al Qaeda leaders had fled across the border to Pakistan when U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan.

March 25, 2004 - Bush waives sanctions on Pakistan imposed after Musharraf seized power in a coup, saying this will facilitate a transition to democracy and help the fight against international terrorism.

Musharraf, the classic military usurper, suddenly fit the mold of other unsavory US allies -- Augusto Pinochet and Saddam Hussein come to mind. He had men, he had guns, and he had the sort of power that only an autocrat has. "[D]ictatorships have the characteristic of being efficient," Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said. "They don't have to worry about the press. They don't have to worry about parliaments. They don't have to worry about a court system. They just do things, efficiently, immediately -- poorly, but quickly."

But the problem with dictatorships is that they're always illegitimate. The dictator holds on to power through any means necessary or he doesn't hold on to power at all. The brutality and corruption of dictatorships are born of desperation -- they're always in danger of being legitimately deposed. Musharraf was lucky; many are removed from existence altogether when they lose power, not just removed from office.

Dictatorships are generally seen as the most stable governments, because their oppressive nature makes immediate change unlikely. And, as Rumsfeld pointed out, they don't waste a lot of time screwing around with debate. A dictatorship would seem to make an ideal ally for a nation concerned more with effectiveness than with human rights, democracy, and the rule of international law.

But the dictatorship is a government in one man. As a result, it must be short-lived. An alliance with a dictatorship is by no definition a long range strategy. It's a momentary convenience. John McCain was a big fan of that convenience.

After the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, McCain couldn't find enough nice things to say about Pervez Musharraf. Where many were calling on Musharraf to step down, McCain was running to his defense. McCain called him a "personally scrupulously honest" man who deserved "the benefit of the doubt" on uniting Pakistan and that I continue to believe Musharraf has done a pretty good job, done a lot of the things that we wanted him to do.

He even cast Musharraf as the savior of Pakistan:

Speaking to about 50 people packed into a cafe in Iowa, McCain said U.S. politicians should keep in mind that Musharraf has been a largely reliable ally who agreed to hold elections.

"Prior to Musharraf, Pakistan was a failed state," McCain said. "They had corrupt governments and they would rotate back and forth and there was corruption, and Musharraf basically restored order. So you're going to hear a lot of criticism about Musharraf that he hasn't done everything we wanted him to do, but he did agree to step down as head of the military and he did get the elections."

And, now that Musharraf has stepped down rather than be impeached, McCain can't get far enough away from his former good buddy. And that's what McCain hasn't learned, that dictatorships are only stable for the blink of an eye, historically speaking. That promoting democracy will serve us for centuries, while supporting a dictator serves us for one man's lifetime -- or an even shorter term. That the guys with the guns have no lasting power.

Foreign policy has been poorly focused for more than a century. McCain would continue that myopic focus. As I said, he hasn't learned a damned thing.

-Wisco

The Audacity of Being Realistic

It's not a photo we've seen lately. An American politician in Europe addressing a sea of people -- without any giant papier-mâché heads of Bush and Cheney in prison stripes, no one dressed like the Grim Reaper, no one demanding said politician face war crimes charges. If you ever needed proof that it's not America who's hated around the globe, but the American President, here ya go. I give you Barack Obama in Berlin yesterday.

Obama returned to the theme of the speech he gave after winning the Democratic primary. "People of Berlin -- people of the world -- this is our moment. This is our time," Obama told a crowd of some 200,000 who didn't hate him for being an American.

Left behind at home, John McCain can't win for losing. After suggesting that Obama needed to spend some time abroad, McCain complained that Obama was spending time abroad. In one of what has been a long string of poorly conceived photo-ops, Baghdad Johnny spoke to reporters at the Columbus, Ohio Sausage Haus in a neighborhood called German Village (No really, I swear), to gripe about Obama in Berlin.

"I'd love to give a speech in Germany," McCain said to the assembled dozens, "a political speech or a speech that maybe the German people would be interested in, but I'd much prefer to do it as president of the United States rather than as a candidate ... for the office of presidency."

The unspoken suggestion was that it was unseemly for a candidate to stump in a foreign country. We're all supposed to forget that McCain just got back from Colombia not to long ago and previously addressed a crowd in Canada.

-Continued after the jump-


Of course, McCain's message has been hopelessly inconsistent. The only thing consistent about McCain has been the message that whatever Obama does is wrong. The McCain campaign, as I pointed out yesterday, wants this election to be a referendum on Obama and that forces their candidate to be reactive and reactionary. It also forces John McCain to be blatantly hypocritical.

When he was running in the GOP primary and the strategy of every Republican candidate was to out-Reagan each other, McCain thought optimism was just the best damned thing any presidential candidate could possess. Now that Barack Obama has taken hope as his lighthouse, optimism is naive and foolish. For the new John McCain, created entirely in reaction to Obama, hope and optimism are for chumps.

For myself, I've never had much use for optimism, to tell the truth. It strikes me as too similar to delusion. It's one thing to hope for the best, it's another to expect it. Hope, on the other hand, is reasonable -- I've always defined hope as the knowledge that the best possible outcome is always a possible outcome. Hope is always realistic, where optimism often is not.

But my definition is my definition. My own little self-help compass to keep myself from veering off into dreamer-land. I'd imagine that most would think hope and optimism are basically synonymous. When McCain runs against hope, he runs against Reagan's optimism. Optimism is wonderful in a Republican, until they run up against an optimistic Democrat -- then optimism becomes a comforting lie.

What struck me most about Obama's speech wasn't its hopefulness, but its amazing... I don't want to say "courage," but that's the only word. He stood in the heart of Berlin and invoked the Holocaust in relation to Darfur. He called for the world to rid itself of nuclear weapons. He acknowledged that climate change was a global problem that needed global solutions. That, likewise, terrorism isn't a solely American problem with a unilateral American solution. He called on the entire world to become people-focused, not state- and corporation-focused.

John McCain just doesn't have that -- he seems incapable of it. It's not that he just disagrees with it, but he doesn't seem to be able to think of the United States as one nation in an entire world. All of McCain's solutions are typical Republican non-solutions -- more money, more troops, more American imperialism. McCain's solutions to the world's problems are all about being the stereotypical American jerk.

The world can't take another swaggering moron who thinks that being an American is the same as being chosen by freakin' God. And neither can the United States. We live in a much wider world than the one we pretend to and the time has come to wake up and realize, once again, that we aren't a separate world unto ourselves.

We may not need optimism, but we damned sure need realism. It's not people like Barack Obama or myself or, perhaps, you who are the fantasists. It's the low dreamers on the right, who believe that people are basically evil and will only do the right thing with a gun to their head, who think that everyone's a potential criminal who must be watched by a government using police state powers, who believe that "non-American" is synonymous with "enemy." The murderous, the brutish, the stupid and low and frightened followers of the neocon mindset are the dreamers. And their dream is a freakin' nightmare. For them, if you're not afraid of everyone on Earth, it means you're naive -- anyone who's a realist spends their life scared stupid, working toward an authoritarian state that will render us rightless in order to protect us.

Of course, that's not realism, that's not even pessimism -- that's paranoia. As I said, hope is realistic.

-Wisco

You can view Obama's Berlin Speech here:



Technorati tags: politics; international; Berlin; Germany; Bush; elections; 2008; Republican; Democrat; John McCain or Barack Obama, that's your choice -- be a neocon or be a realist

'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

Next Year, Pal -- Maybe

We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It's their government's choice. If they were to say leave, we would leave.
-George W. Bush, May 24, 2007

Yeah, it turns out that was a lie. Big shocker there, huh? Negotiations for a long term security deal between the US and Iraq broke down yesterday, with the Bush administration punting. There will be no security agreement, not this year, and Bush's responsibility for Iraq has been sloughed off on the next president.

Washington Post:

U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency, according to senior U.S. officials, effectively leaving talks over an extended U.S. military presence there to the next administration.

In place of the formal status-of-forces agreement negotiators had hoped to complete by July 31, the two governments are now working on a "bridge" document, more limited in both time and scope, that would allow basic U.S. military operations to continue beyond the expiration of a U.N. mandate at the end of the year.

The failure of months of negotiations over the more detailed accord -- blamed on both the Iraqi refusal to accept U.S. terms and the complexity of the task -- deals a blow to the Bush administration's plans to leave in place a formal military architecture in Iraq that could last for years.

See that? It's all Iraq's fault. Never mind that the US terms were insane -- blanket legal immunity for US forces and contractors (including the almost universally despised Blackwater), unchecked access to anything within the borders of Iraq, the power to police and arrest -- independent of Iraqi law -- and an open-ended commitment (i.e., John McCain's "100 years").

For their part, Iraq didn't want any of this. Mostly because it was all insane -- it was the US governing Iraq while the Iraqi government pretended to. In fact, the Iraqi government wanted the Bush administration to commit to a timetable for withdrawal. Bush had thrown up so many firewalls against that idea at home that there was no way he could accept it from Iraqis without significant domestic political damage; not only for himself, but for the party that repeated his every word as if it were divinely inspired. By the lunatic reasoning the Republicans and neocons had constructed, the Iraqis were asking them to "cut and run."

-Continued after the jump-


Given the choice between keeping his word or accepting a timetable, Bush fled the table screaming. If anyone out there still needs proof that Bush's word isn't worth jack, there ya go. Iraq has asked us to leave and, rather than respect the wishes of this so-called "sovereign nation," Bush shut down negotiations and refuses to return to the table -- ever.

Of course, I called this last week, with a post I called "Not This Year, Buddy." Bush isn't going to leave Iraq. We could lose every man but one and Bush would insist he had to stay. "Losing" Iraq is what some other president will do. Bush hopes that the historical blame will fall on some other executive's shoulders, rather than where it belongs -- with the current executive. If the disaster of Iraq and our inevitable departure from that nation is seen as Bush's fault, the neocon ideology of gunboat diplomacy, global policing, and American supremacy (and I mean that in the same way that "white supremacy" is meant) is dead for good, having been proven wrong on pretty much every single point, dash, and ampersand. The reign of the neoconservatives will resemble that of the McCarthyites -- short, stupid, and thoroughly discredited.

So the negotiations have been put off until the next chump -- I mean, president -- takes office. If it's McCain, he'll be able to blame everything on what will most likely be an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress. If it's Obama, he'll be the president who "lost" Iraq. Either way, it's going to be the Democrats' fault.

A new problem for this strategy of blame-shifting is popping up -- the Pentagon will publish a report recommending a "16-month timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq." The withdrawal would leave a token force of 50,000, "with platoon-size U.S. detachments backing the Iraqis from small outposts, with air support." Forward operating bases would be mostly abandoned. The military is about to recommend "cutting and running."

Reality, it appears once again, has a liberal bias. Iraq wants us to leave Iraq, the American people want us to leave Iraq, and now even the military wants us to leave Iraq. The excuses for staying are becoming a pretty rare species. Luckily for Bush, he's closed that door on withdrawal, by putting off renewed negotiations until next year. If that means going back on his word, so what?

It's much more important that someone else take the blame for the debacle in Iraq. If a whole bunch of people have to die in order to keep this thing rolling for a few months more, so what? There's a lunatic ideology to defend, a vision of an American world in a New American Century. We won the cold war, we get the world -- that's the way the reasoning works.

Nothing is more important than that vision -- not Bush's word, not Iraqi sovereignty, not the lives of Iraqis and their occupiers, not even the opinion of the military. The only thing that's important is that the neocons are proven right. If that turns out to be impossible to do, then they must not be proven wrong.

So, when Iraq asked him to leave, he didn't. Bush turned his back on everything he'd previously said about Iraqi sovereignty. He walked away from the negotiating table and unilaterally decided the war would go on as scheduled -- until he's safely out of office.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Military; Pentagon; neocon; propaganda; peace; Barack Obama; John McCain; Bush lied to Iraq

Not This Year, Buddy

It's the neocon's nightmare scenario. You invade a country, institute "regime change," and declare it a free and sovereign nation -- then it starts actually believing it's a free and sovereign nation. Next thing you know, they start thinking they can tell you what to do and make you obey their laws. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile; tell them they're a free and sovereign nation and they'll start thinking they really are.

Of course, they're as free as they're allowed to be. But it puts you in kind of a tight spot. Do you play along and wind up doing something you'd rather not do or do you drop the pretense and expose the lie for all the world to see?

I've said before that neocons want world domination. That's probably not exactly true -- at least, it's an oversimplification. What neocons believe is that we already have world domination, but that we can't let anyone know that. After the fall of the Soviet Union, they figure the last superpower standing won -- not just the cold war, but everything. World dom isn't our goal, but our right. And we get to march around the globe exercising that right.

But the rest of the world isn't really on the same page. Neocons like former Ambassador to the UN John Bolton literally believed that it was the place of the United Nations to do what the US told them to. Donald Rumsfeld dismissed "old Europe" after those countries didn't back the invasion of Iraq. The new Europe -- the former Soviet states -- understood the new world order. Everything was changed after the USSR fell, it became an American world, but not enough people accepted that truth. In the neocon mind, the United States has the right to do anything -- naysayers are merely deluded, hanging on to the old international system in the same way that Dickens' Miss Haversham wore her wedding dress every day. They were all living in the past.

Who'd have thought that many of those backwards, antiquated attitudes existed in Iraq? The government of Iraq actually believes they can dictate terms to the US and tell us when to leave.

BBC News:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has raised the prospect of setting a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

It comes as the US attempts to push through a new security deal before the end of 2008, when the UN mandate allowing a US presence in Iraq expires.

The Pentagon has played down the suggestion of a withdrawal timetable.

But correspondents say Iraqi MPs would be more likely to back Mr Maliki if the deal includes such a timetable.

Iraq apparently never got the memo; George W. Bush doesn't do timetables. He said so just last month. Maliki seems to believe that his bosses live in Iraq. He's wrong. His boss lives on Pennsylvania Avenue.

In fact, Maliki's belief that he can dictate terms to his invaders and overlords was so unthinkable that State Department spokesperson Sean McCormick said the press must've gotten Maliki's statement screwed up somehow. "I’ve seen the same press reports that you have," he told reporters, "but I haven’t yet had an opportunity to get greater clarify as to exactly to what Mr. Maliki was referring or if, in fact, that’s an accurate reporting of what he said."

There are a lot of reasons why Bush is eager to keep this occupation going. Primary among these is that history must not remember Bush as the president who "lost" Iraq. The whole thing's going to go to hell sooner or later, but it's better that some other president -- a Democrat would be a bonus -- preside over that. Then, the neocons can come back and say, "See? We told you so. This proves that we were right all along."

But if the end begins now, then it'd be hard for Bush and the neocons to pretend it's all someone else's fault. Further, John McCain would find himself up the river without a war, seriously undercutting his case for his presidency. There can be no withdrawal, the war cannot end, because Bush and McCain rely on it so damned much to justify their existences. No matter how free and sovereign a nation Iraq is, it's not free or sovereign enough to screw up Bush's legacy or McCain's already slim chances.

Those two are among history's great men and their political ambitions are more important than the lives of Iraqi shopkeepers or mere Lance Corporals from Omaha. Where saner men avoid war, Bush and McCain seem intent on avoiding peace.

So Iraq can make noise, it can flex its international muscle, but it will never, ever, be allowed to start the clock ticking on their own occupation. At least, not if the neocons have their way. Iraq is as free and as sovereign a nation as they're allowed to be.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; neocon; propaganda; diplomacy; Bush and John McCain won't allow timetable for withdrawal from Iraq -- they need war more than they need peace

If There's Nothing to be Afraid of, Would Anyone Vote for McCain?

I may be in the minority on the left in believing that we're not going to attack Iran. Yes, we've been doing a lot of saber-rattling. Yes, our leadership is insane enough to do it. Yes, we're stepping up covert actions against Iran -- to the point of funding the al Qaeda- tied Iranian People's Resistance Movement, hypocritically making the Bush administration a state-sponsor of terrorism.

But how long have we been frightened with the scarecrow of war with Iran -- one year, two, three? We fire on Iranian boats, we move carrier groups into the Persian Gulf, we hear that Israel's going to get the ball rolling with an attack of their own. But nothing ever happens. I'm starting to think all this "war with Iran" stuff is a diplomatic game of good cop-bad cop. Unfortunately for the cops, it only makes them look indecisive; "We're cooking something up, just you wait. It's gonna be really bad..."

That it also freaks people in the US out is probably not coincidental. Bush has turned the Republican party into the party of fear. As long as you're so damned afraid you can't keep your pants dry, you'll agree to pretty much anything. And you'll look the other way when it comes to crimes like torture. The GOP has also been using the fear card to give them a leg up in elections. They're the tough guys. Never mind that these "tough guys" always seem to get their asses kicked. The "tough guys" didn't stop 9/11, Iraq continues to be uncontrollable, and Afghanistan is going south in a big hurry. They talk tough, so that must mean they are, recent history be damned.

But what will happen to them when Iraq isn't an issue and we have no reason to freak out over Iran? Will they claim Raul Castro has a death ray, that Robert Mugabe's third-rate military power constitutes a "threat to America," that some nasty little far-flung dictatorship like Turmenistan has designs on world domination?

If they don't have a boogeyman to scare voters with, what will Republicans run on? The problem with Republican ideology is that their positions on most issues are pretty unpopular. Everything boils down to sink or swim. Their idea of health care reform is removing restrictions on the industry to make it even more dominated by faceless corporations. Social Security reform is privatization, which is basically abolishment. Their economic policies are apparent in our current situation, which even Republicans aren't happy with.

Take John McCain. Lose "war, war, war" and his signature issue is global free trade. Turns out that most people aren't fans.

CNN:

As John McCain prepares to promote the advantages of free trade during a high-profile trip to Colombia and Mexico, a poll released Tuesday suggests the issue may pose a political hurdle for the Arizona senator as the general election campaign heats up.

According to the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 51 percent of the Americans questioned view foreign trade as a threat to the economy — the first time in a CNN poll that a majority of respondents report holding negative views on free trade.

Not a huge majority by any means, but in an election, 51% is the magic number. Anything below that really doesn't give a candidate much to worry about. A lot of people brought up Hillary Clinton's "high negatives" in the Democratic primary, but I don't think I ever did. Mostly because she never got over 50% disapproval and that made those negatives irrelevant. 51% is the sweat number.

John McCain may wind up running without Iraq or Iran. For Iraq's part, the Iraqi Parliament is about an inch away from kicking us out. McCain might have reason to thank them for that -- his position on the occupation is killing him with voters. On the other hand, I don't see Bush leaving. Iraq would find it's a "sovereign state" whose sovereignty extends only so far as it's allowed to by the occupying force. Bush has said he'd leave if he were asked to by the government, but saying one thing one week and something entirely different the next has never stopped him before. There is no truth in this President.

But what about Iran? Well, there's good news for sane people and bad news for crazy neocon warmongers. There are signs that war with Iran may be completely unnecessary -- as opposed to just unnecessary -- and that they may stop being scary enough for McCain and the Republicans to use as a scarecrow.

McClatchy Newspapers:

Iran's senior diplomat said Tuesday that Tehran was seriously considering a new offer from six world powers to resolve the dispute over its nuclear program, and he praised the package as "constructive."

The unusually positive remarks by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to a small group of reporters raised hope that a negotiated solution can be found to defuse the crisis.

The U.N. Security Council has demanded that Iran suspend the enrichment of uranium that can be used for nuclear weapons, and the Bush administration has refused direct talks with Iran until it meets that condition.

Of course, this is nowhere near a done deal, but it does bring up the question; if John McCain can't freak out over Iran or Iraq, just what is his reason for existing?

And it doesn't help any that Iran has come to this point with the world because the world did something Bush and McCain argued was reckless and naive -- talking to Iran. Bush, before the Israeli Knesset, compared this to the appeasement of the Nazis, as if people were arguing that we give Iran the Sudetenland. John McCain agreed and upped the ante, comparing Barack Obama to Neville Chamberlain. McCain also made a ridiculous argument about Reagan and the Iranian hostage crisis that ignored the plain historical fact of the Iran-Contra arms for hostages scandal. "He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran," Baghdad Johnny said, "he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home." Maybe Reagan didn't sit down with those religious extremists, but someone who worked for him did. Reagan basically paid a ransom. Which, of course, makes Ronald Reagan a Nazi appeaser.

The Nazi appeasers who've brought us to this stage are Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and -- wait for it -- the United States. Iran has finally agreed to consider a two year-old joint offer that includes many appeasey elements -- McClatchy says it gives "Iran political, economic and security rewards if it 'verifiably suspends its enrichment-related and reprocessing activities.'" McCain would call this a "carrot and stick" approach. Bush would say it's "rewarding bad behavior." People who aren't freakin' crazy would call this "productive."

So, not only are McCain's ideas for international diplomacy very close to being proven wrong, but his entire argument as to why he has to be president is in jeopardy. If there's nothing to be afraid of, what's McCain going to pretend he can protect us from?

There doesn't seem to be any place for John McCain in a relatively peaceful world. And that's a good reason to reject him right there.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; middle east; Bush; neocon; war; diplomacy; elections; 2008; Republican; Take away Iran and Iraq and what's John McCain got?

An Agreement No One Agrees With

There are times when what you're told and what you know for a fact are two different things. When this happens, you can only come to one of two conclusions -- either what you're told is a mistake or a lie. Either way, it's false. Sometimes, the distinction is unclear -- you can't say for certain whether you're being lied to or whether someone's mistaken. At other times, this distinction is clear as an unmuddied stream. It's not a mistake, it's clearly a lie.

That was the situation I found myself in this weekend, when I read about a meeting between GOP presidential candidate John McCain and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

Associated Press:

Appearing together in solidarity, Republican John McCain and Iraq's president said Saturday that the war-ravaged country is making significant but fragile progress.

The GOP presidential nominee-in-waiting expressed confidence about prospects for the two countries completing a complex agreement that would keep U.S. troops in Iraq after a U.N. mandate expires at year-end. And, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said an American military presence still was needed.

"I, of, course am encouraged," McCain told the press after the meeting. "We both agree that the progress has been significant but the progress is also fragile. And there's a lot of work that needs to be done."

The problem, of course, is that things aren't going well at all. What this is really about is a long-term security agreement between the US and Iraq. Unpopular in both countries, McCain and Talabani represent the minority opinions in their respective nations. By appearing together, both can tell the home audience, "See? They all agree with me," and pretend a self-appointed spokesperson for the minority is really the spokesperson for all. But the truth is that even fewer Iraqis want a long term US military presence in Iraq than do Americans.

It's an occupation that few want, but those who want it want it really, really bad. Talabani revealed his minority opinion status by saying; "In my personal opinion, we are in need to have some, at least some, military bases as a symbol for preventing" other states (presumably Iran) from "interfering" in Iraqi politics.

And therein lies the split. Just the day before, negotiations between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Bush administration broke down over the issue of military bases in Iraq. The administration wants free reign in Iraq -- pretty much forever -- that includes the ability to conduct military operations, to arrest and jail citizens and unchecked use of Iraqi airspace and territorial waters. Details on the disagreement aren't available, but it's not hard to imagine what the hang-up might be -- the Bush administration, as it always is, is being bullheaded, stupid, and unreasonable, demanding everything they want and accepting nothing less. "Negotiation" isn't something neocons actually do.

"We have reached an impasse, because when we opened these negotiations we did not realise that the US demands would so deeply affect Iraqi sovereignty and this is something we can never accept," Maliki told reporters.

Kind of sounds like PM Maliki and President Talabani aren't on the same page, doesn't it? It also sounds like Sen. McCain and President Bush are.

In a totally unrelated and coincidental event, which was in no way meant to threaten or punish Maliki, a US special forces counter-terrorism unit raided the town of Janaja. In that raid, which just happened to occur the day after Maliki rejected Bush's kind offer to let Iraq become an unofficial US territory, special forces -- damn the luck -- killed a relative of Maliki. This all happened in Maliki's home province. Small world, huh?

Bush wants the agreement before he leaves office very, very badly. He feels that such an agreement would force the next president to continue his policies. But Bush argues that this isn't a treaty -- so he can forgo congressional approval of it -- which kind of makes that argument BS. An agreement between Bush and anyone is an agreement among men, not nations. A binding agreement between nations is a treaty by definition. Any leader would be a fool to rely on the sort of agreement Bush proposes, which would only have the force of political opinion behind it. And, since almost everyone believes the Republican party will be significantly weakened in the elections this November, that political force won't amount to much. Maliki may not be that fool who takes that agreement, but it sure looks like Talabani would be.

The lie that McCain and Talabani told was told to each other's nations. McCain's position was as a pretense of continued American support for Talabani's position. And Talabani's was the same, only aimed for American audiences. They both represent almost no one, but claim to speak for almost everyone. That's not a mistake, that's a lie.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; diplomacy; military; Nouri al-Maliki; neocon; Bush, John McCain, and Jalal Talabani pretend everyone wants the US in Iraq forever

McNasty

I've never been a huge fan of liberal talk radio host Ed Schultz. Not because of any of his views -- they seem to be pretty mainstream, for the most part. My problem is with his constant self-promotion. He's attacked bloggers as ineffective in the past, while pushing liberal talk radio as the be-all and end-all of lefty opinion. Never mind that few people on the left or right listen to talk radio of any stripe. To Schultz, the only medium worth a damn is talk radio -- specifically, his show. Newspaper columnists and magazine writers apparently aren't crap.

That said, we all have reason to congratulate Schultz, who called John McCain a "warmonger" at an Obama event.

Ed Schultz, host of a nationally syndicated radio program, was warming up the crowd Friday at a $100-a-person fundraiser for the North Dakota Democratic party in Grand Forks when he tagged the probable Republican presidential nominee as a "warmonger," Schultz acknowledged in a telephone interview Saturday.

He said he has used the term many times on the air to refer to McCain because of his support for the war in Iraq.

"He voted for this war. He's a perpetrator of the war. He's an advocate of the war," Schultz said. "In my personal definition, that's a warmonger."

Team McCain took offense with this."I would hope that in keeping with his commitment that Senator Obama would condemn such language, since it was part of his campaign," McCain said. To his discredit, Obama did just that.

I say "discredit" because there are few words in the English language that describe John McCain so well as "warmonger." With the vast majority of Americans opposed to this war, McCain will not end it. This is nothing new, I couldn't find any instance where Mcain had voted against war -- any war. In our current conflict, when the choice between President Bush and the troops comes up, McCain chooses Bush. He voted against a bill to "specify minimum periods between deployment of units and members of the Armed Forces deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom." He also voted against troop reduction. In a bipartisan effort by Sens. Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel to pass a new G.I. Bill, expanding benefits for vets, John McCain has been described as "AWOL."

While it doesn't explain his lack of support for the troops and veterans, McCain's consistent votes for military action can be explained by his temperament. John's widely considered a hothead. As far back as 1999, McCain was described as having a "volcanic" temper. It was so disturbing to those in his home state that the Arizona Republic found it necessary to issue a warning to the nation from its editorial page:

If McCain is truly a serious contender for the presidency, it is time the rest of the nation learned about the John McCain we know in Arizona. There is also reason to seriously question whether he has the temperament, and the political approach and skills, we want in the next president of the United States.

It's tempting to resort to pop psychology and believe that McCain's the stereotypical Vietnam vet with emotional problems. It's easy to say that he went nuts as a POW. But his history shows that's not the case. In High School, his nickname was "McNasty" and the editors of the school yearbook labeled him a "punk."

"His magnetic personality has won for him many life-long friends," it reads "but, as magnets must also repel, some have found him hard to get along with."

John McCain isn't some crazy vet out of bad movies, John McCain is and always has been a dick. Do we really need some High School bully who's never met a war he didn't like as President of the United States?

Yeah, I don't think so.

The next president is going to spend a large part of their first term repairing the US's reputation in the world. Either that or continue to be the global bully that George W. Bush has been. Angry phone calls in the middle of the night aren't going to be all that helpful.

For his part, Ed Schultz is sticking to his guns. "I'm sorry, John, the label sticks," Schultz told CNN's American Morning today. "John McCain is a warmonger." And a prick. The next presidency is going to have to engage in a lot of diplomacy -- leaving military action as a last resort.

John McCain is clearly the wrong man for that job.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Bush Iran; elections; 2008; republican; diplomacy; Barack Obama; Ed Schultz is wrong about John McCain -- he's not just a warmonger, he's worse