This evening I ordered "History of the Political Parties II." Click here and you can zoom in on the chart.
This is a growing enterprise, with 16 prints currently available, including Race to the Moon, Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music, and History of Life on Earth.
I think I’ve found the perfect place to find gifts for my family and friends.
(photo of History of Political Parties II chart)
As I started to gather up the articles I planned to link to in my post about the likelihood of an attack on Iran before Bush is out of office, I came across a Washington Post March 21st article, "Iran a Nuclear Threat, Bush Insists - Experts Say President is Wrong and Is Escalating Tensions." From the article: “Experts on Iran and nuclear proliferation said the president's statement was wrong. 'That's as uninformed as Senator John McCain’s statement that Iran is training al-Qaeda. Iran has never said it wanted a nuclear weapon for any reason. It's just not true. It's a little troubling that the president and the leading Republican candidate are both so wrong about Iran,' said Joseph Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation."
I’ve posted numerous times about the likelihood of an attack on Iran. When the National Intelligence Estimate came out last December stating with high confidence that Iran had stopped its nuclear weaponization process in 2003, I thought, “That’s it. Bush can’t possibly attack Iran now.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Even Juan Cole, who blogs at Informed Comment, appears to be getting concerned. On March 12th, he posted: “Secretary of Defense Robert Gates denied Tuesday that the abrupt resignation of Admiral William Fallon as CENTCOM commander indicates an imminent war against Iran. I think Gates's denial is credible. There is no sign of an American war on Iran, which would involve key positioning of warships, materiel and troops…. My guess is that the real reason for moving Fallon out is not Iran but Iraq, and that he is being made to step down for the same reason that Donald Rumsfeld was. He does not agree with the long-term troop escalation or 'surge' in Iraq….”
Today, Cole handed over his blog to William R. Polk,* whose guest op ed, "Iran: Danger and Opportunity." Polk starts with the March 12th US News & World Report article, 6 Signs the U.S. May Be Headed for War in Iran." He elaborates on the six signs, including Cheney’s most recent visit to the Middle East, and asks if it’s “…deja vu all over again? U.S. News and World Report notes, ‘Back in March 2002, Cheney made a high-profile Mideast trip to Saudi Arabia and other nations that officials said at the time was about diplomacy toward Iraq and not war…’ It was, as we now know, one of the concerted moves in the build-up to the already-decided-upon plan to attack Iraq.”
Is Juan Cole a little more concerned about an attack on Iran than he was a week ago? I don’t know, but I describe him as “my Middle East expert” and continue to rely on his blog to keep me informed. Regardless of Cole’s opinion, Polk’s guest op-ed is well worth reading.
* William R. Polk was the member of the Policy Planning Council responsible for North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia from 1961 to 1965 and then professor of history at the University of Chicago where he founded the Middle Eastern Studies Center. He was also president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. His most recent book is Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism & Guerrilla Warfare from the American Revolution to Iraq (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).
(photo of William R. Polk: http://www.williampolk.com/)
This morning, Juan Cole, who blogs at Informed Comment, had the best summary of the five lies of President Bush and his advisors, one for each year of our war in Iraq.
“Year 1: ‘There is no guerrilla war.’
Have you ever wondered about the more than four million Iraqis displaced by the war started by the U.S.? Where are they? Which countries are taking them in? What about those who have had to flee Iraq because their lives have been threatened for helping the US as translators, interpreters and drivers?
I’ve been aware of the mass misery of these displaced Iraqis, but now I’m going to learn more about these people as individuals, starting with those who have been put in harm’s way by allying themselves with the U.S. I’ve put The List: Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies icon on my desktop. I’ve also signed up for e-mail updates.
There’s a good description of The List in Juan Cole’s March 1 post, "On Mercy and Redress."
George Packer, who writes and blogs for the New Yorker, has been paying attention to the Iraqis whose lives are at risk because they helped the US. His March 26, 2007 article, "Betrayed - The Iraqis who trusted America the most," and his November 16, 2007 post, "One Refugee's Story," are both worth reading.
(logo of the The List from its website)
Please take time to read "935 False Statements that Led a Nation to War," posted this morning by Juan Cole at his blog, Informed Comment.
Then ask yourself why Congress and even the public don’t think lies that take this nation to war are impeachable offenses. If you do, go to The Democratic Activist and scroll halfway down the page to the action items.
So far, according to AlterNet, we're one step closer to impeaching Cheney because nine out of 23 Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee favor starting impeachment hearings against Vice President Dick Cheney.
That doesn’t feel close enough to me.
Three recommendations at Juan Cole’s Informed Comment.
Engelhardt’s post is a must-read, and Rubin’s is fascinating for those of us who have been involved in election integrity in this country. I’m also baffled by Pelosi’s position on impeachment.
Juan Cole never misses a beat, posting right through the holidays. Today’s post: "Ten Top Myths about Iraq 2007."
The myths are listed below. Cole dispels each one.
On the “eve of destruction,” I recommend you watch “Video Postcards from Iran”:
Then look at these photos, which I found linked at Juan Cole’s blog, Informed Comment.
Recommended: Have your sound on for both the video postcards and the photos.
Next, I recommend that you read Scott Ritter’s "On the Eve of Destruction," posted at Truthdig on October 22nd.
Read about the “Hadley Rules,” promulgated by National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley: “Hadley is a long-established neoconservative thinker who has for the most part operated ‘in the shadows’ when it comes to the formulation of Iran policy in the Bush administration. In 2001, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Hadley (then the deputy national security adviser) instituted what has been referred to as the “Hadley Rules,” a corollary of which is that no move will be made which alters the ideological positioning of Iran as a mortal enemy of the United States. These ‘rules’ shut down every effort undertaken by Iran to seek a moderation of relations between it and the United States, and prohibited American policymakers from responding favorably to Iranian offers to assist with the fight against al-Qaida; they also blocked the grand offer of May 2003 in which Iran outlined a dramatic diplomatic initiative, including a normalization of relations with Israel. The Hadley Rules are at play today, in an even more nefarious manner, with the National Security Council becoming involved in the muzzling of former Bush administration officials who are speaking out on the issue of Iran….” [emphasis mine]
Ritter goes on to describe Hadley as the …[B]ureaucratic ‘grease’ to ease policy formulated elsewhere down the gullet of a national security infrastructure…” and concludes that …”[P]olicy formulation is more and more concentrated in the person of Vice President Cheney…”
Moving on to the president, Ritter discussed Bush’s relationship with God: “The president himself has stated that “God speaks through me” (he acknowledged this before a group of Amish in Pennsylvania in the summer of 2004)….According to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, President Bush told him and others that ‘God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did.'” I wonder what message God is whispering in Bush's ear about Iran.
You may want to go back and look at the video postcards and photos of Iran because these scenes may not be around much longer.
(Video post cards from Elegant Bay – photos from Lucas Gray)
The October 23rd Tom Toles cartoon says it all, but the following articles fill in the details.
1. On October 23rd Amy Goodman interviews Middle East Analyst & Historian Juan Cole on U.S. War Plans Against Iran.
2. On October 22nd, Washington Post blogger Dan Froomkin posts "Cheney Beats the Drums of War."
“President Bush Bush issued a stark warning on Iran on Wednesday, suggesting that if the country obtained nuclear arms, it could lead to ‘World War III’,” as reported by The New York Times this morning.
This morning when I read Juan Cole’s post, Tutu Excluded - Double Standard at the University of St. Thomas, I was so upset that I called the university, 651.962.4000, and left a message.
According to Cole, Tutu was uninvited from speaking at the Catholic University of St. Thomas [UST] in Minneapolis for his stance against Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians. Tutu “[H]as stood all his life for nonviolent peace-making and an end to racism....
1. Why did Israel bomb Syria? According to Jonathan Cook, in his September 27th article, it could be an opening shot for a war on Iran. “…[T]he political significance of the justifications for the Israeli air strike is that both neatly tie together various strands of an argument needed by the neocons and Israel in making their case for an attack on Iran before Bush leaves office in early 2009. Each scenario suggests a Shia ‘axis of evil’, coordinated by Iran, that is actively plotting Israel's destruction. And each story offers the pretext for an attack on Syria as a prelude to a pre-emptive strike against Tehran -- launched either by Washington or Tel Aviv -- to save Israel.”
2. Why did Saddam Hussein want to take WMD papers with him into exile? In his September 28th post, Bush-Aznar Transcript: The War Crime of the Century, Juan Cole states, “…[T]he documents presumably showed that the Reagan and Bush senior administrations had secretly authorized his chemical and biological weapons programs. With these documents in his possession, it was unlikely that Bush would come after him, since he could ruin the reputation of the Bush family if he did. The destruction of these documents was presumably Bush's goal when he had Rumsfeld order US military personnel not to interfere with the looting and burning of government offices after the fall of Saddam. The looting, which set off the guerrilla war, also functioned as a vast shredding party, destroying incriminating evidence about the complicity of the Bushes and Rumsfeld in Iraq's war crimes.”
Yesterday morning in The New York Times, I read U.S. Focus on Ahmadinejad Puzzles Iranians. When I went online in the evening, I was stunned by the number of articles and posts about the Iranian president’s appearance in the US and speech at Columbia University.
The mainstream media: The Washington Post article, Ahmadinejad Met with Protests, Criticism at Columbia University, where Ahmadinejad defended his human rights record in the face of withering questions and a jeering audience. “Pressed about the Holocaust, he said at one point, ‘I'm not saying that it didn't happen at all.’ Rather, he said, he is asking ‘what does it have to do with the Palestinian people?’”
On August 22nd, Freedom's Watch was launched. Its message: “Victory is America’s Only Choice.”
As reported in the September 12th Washington Post article, 9/11 Linked to Iraq, in Politics if Not in Fact, Freedom’s Watch is airing four spots in 60 congressional districts in 20 states. “The commercials urge Congress to stick with the president's strategy in Iraq. The most poignant of them stars a soldier identified as John Kriesel, who was wounded on Dec. 2, 2006, and is shown walking with two artificial legs….’They attacked us,’ he says as the screen turns to an image of the second hijacked airplane heading toward the smoking World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. ‘And they will again. They won't stop in Iraq.’” You can watch the commercial here.
Ari Fleischer, former Bush White house press secretary and one of the group’s founders, has stated that it doesn’t matter that the Iraqis didn’t attack us on 9/11 because some of the same sorts of people who did are now fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.
According to Juan Cole, who posted Who is the US Fighting in Iraq? on August 27, “Self-identified al-Qaeda are only 1,800 of the 24,000 in captivity, about 7 percent. (Of course, most of these fighters are not really al-Qaeda in the sense of pledging fealty to Usama Bin Laden or being part of his organization; they are using "al-Qaeda" to mean ’bogeyman’ i.e., 'be afraid of me'.)”
As early as September of 2005, we’ve known that only 4 to 10 percent of the insurgents are foreigners, as reported in the Christian Science Monitor, The "Myth" of Iraq's Foreign Fighters.
The right-wing think tank, the Cato Institute, published a report on January 31st of this year, The Myth of an al-Qaeda Takeover of Iraq: “Even the U.S. government concedes that there are fewer than 2,000 al Qaeda fighters in Iraq, and the Iraq Study Group put the figure at only 1,300.
“Indeed, foreign fighters make up a relatively small component of the Sunni insurgency against the U.S. and British occupation forces. It strains credulity to imagine 1,300 fighters (and foreigners at that) dominating a country of 26 million people….
“At best, al Qaeda could hope for a tenuous presence in predominantly Sunni areas of the country while being incessantly stalked and harassed by government forces -- and probably hostile Iraqi Sunnis as well. That doesn't exactly sound like a reliable base of operations for attacks on America.” [bolding mine]
According to the Washington Post article, 9/11 Linked to Iraq, in Politics if Not in Fact, the Freedom's Watch ad featuring John Kriesel is “…part of a new $15 million media blitz launched by an advocacy group allied with the White House, [and] may be the most overt attempt during the current debate in Congress over the war to link the attacks with Iraq."
(photo from Media Matters)
Today’s post from Juan Cole, Can Gen. Petraeus and Ryan Crocker Save the Next Democratic President?: Excerpt: “I'm a severe skeptic on the likelihood of anything that looks like success in Iraq. But I don't think career public servants such as Ryan Crocker and David Petraeus are acting as partisan Republicans in their Iraq efforts. I think they both are sincere, experienced men attempting to retrieve what they can for America from Bush's catastrophe. [bolding mine]. They may as well try, since the Democrats can't over-rule Bush and get the troops out, anyway. If the troops are there, they may as well at least be deployed intelligently, which is what Gen. Petraeus is doing. I wish them well in their Herculean labors. Because if they fail, I have a sinking feeling that we are all going down with them, including the next Democratic president. And their success is a long shot."
Today’s post from Glenn Greenwald, Brit Hume and the Bush administration take propaganda to a new level - Gen. Petraeus gives an exclusive "interview" that was scripted by the U.S. military and designed to bolster every claim of the Bush administration. Excerpt: “Just as George Bush and Dick Cheney have done on politically important occasions, Gen. David Petraeus (along with Ambassador Ryan Crocker) last night selected Fox News' Brit Hume as the ‘journalist’ rewarded with an exclusive ‘interview.’ Whereas Hume, in the past, at least has pretended to play the role of journalist when interviewing high Bush officials -- doing things like asking (extremely respectful) questions about sensitive areas (with no follow up) -- he dispensed entirely with the pretense here. This ‘interview’ took government propaganda to a whole new level, and really has to be seen to be believed (the full video is here).
“The whole production was such transparent propaganda that one doubts that Pravda would have been shameless enough to present it. Even the title of the program was creepy. Fox did not even bother to call it an ‘interview,’ but rather hailed it as a ‘Briefing for America.’”
Over Labor Day weekend, Bush paid a “…[H]ighly symbolic visit to the vast, sparsely populated and Sunni-dominated Anbar province in western Iraq….He held out the tantalizing promise that some U.S. troops may soon be headed home if the military successes in Anbar can be echoed in violence-racked Baghdad,” as reported in The Globe and Mail on September 4 in Bush visits Iraq to buttress claims of progress.
This morning, the photo accompanying The New York Times article about General Petraeus’s appearance in Washington, D.C. for the upcoming Congressional hearing about progress in Iraq was rather amazing. 
The caption: “ANOTHER WAR, 40 YEARS AGO: Gen. William C. Westmoreland briefed Congress in 1967 on what he described as gains in Vietnam. President Bush hopes a general will bolster his case for Iraq.”
The Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975. Will we be in Iraq for another 8 years? MoveOn has cleverly captured President Bush’s comments about “progress” in Iraq over the past several years:
So now we have General Petraeus as President Bush’s political spear-carrier as he appears before Congress on September 11th to talk about progress in Iraq.
I posted about General Petraeus on January 26, as he headed to Iraq shortly after being confirmed by the Senate as the new U.S. Commander in Iraq. I referred to the counterinsurgency manual that Petraeus authored in which he had stated that 120,000 troops would be needed to secure Baghdad, but he reasoned that the roughly 32,000 American troops that would be deployed in the capital under the plan would be enough.
On March 20, I posted Keep your eyes on Petraeus - Part Two linking to my favorite Middle Eastern expert, Juan Cole who posted this comment on March 19 at Informed Comment: “General Petraeus, in the meantime, is signalling that his own patience is not infinite, and that if he can't see a genuine improvement in the security situation by June [bolding mine], he would have an obligation to his own troops to say so. It is so refreshing to hear that kind of language from the Pentagon after all those years of Donald Rumsfeld's despicable disregard for the welfare of the troops he was supposed to be leading….”
Part Three on Petraeus was posted on April 16, in which I linked to Robert Fisk’s April 11 article in the UK Independent, Divide and Rule - American's Plan for Baghdad, in which Fisk describes the latest security plan concocted by General Petraeus to seal off vast areas of Baghdad.
Update: According to todays' New York Times article, Troop Buildup,Yielding Slight Gains, Fails to Meet U.S. Goals, “The hulking blast walls that the Americans have set up around many neighborhoods have only intensified the city’s [Baghdad] sense of balkanization.”
When I listen to General Petraeus on September 11, what do I need to remember? On July 19, Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com posted How much credence should Gen. Petraeus' reports be given - The source being depicted as the Objective Oracle on Iraq has a long history of extreme optimism about the progress we were making in the war. If you don’t read anything else before September 11, read this. Greenwald has exhaustively listed the countless times in the past that General Petraeus has sunnily reported on progress in Iraq.
(photo: The New York Times, Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)
Last night I read Barnett Rubin’s Theses on Policy Toward Iran at Informed Comment Global Affairs and think it’s one of the best articles I’ve read about the likelihood of an attack on Iran and what we can do about it.
This morning Juan Cole provides a summary: “Barnett Rubin gives us a thoughtful call to arms on how to prevent war with Iran at the Global Affairs blog. After analyzing the way the Bushies would probably go to war if they can, Rubin writes:
' The immediate goal for Democratic presidential candidates and the Democrats (and sensible Republicans) in Congress should be to use the power of the legislative branch to prevent the administration from launching a war. I can think of two possible ways to do this: [bolding mine]
* Pass an Act of Congress stating that the 2001 AUMF does not authorize a preemptive strike against Iran (or a strike in response to an alleged provocation – recall Tonkin Gulf). In this case, Congress would claim that war with Iran requires new authorization.
* Cut off funding for any war with Iran not specifically authorized by Congress in accordance with the law after September 30, when spending starts out of next year’s budget. Presumably they won’t be able to start the war by then and rely on the “support the troops” argument. In coordination with this immediate response, responsible leaders in both parties should articulate an alternative policy toward Iran starting with the same principle as the Helsinki Accords of 1975 – no regime change. '
"Read the whole thing"
Then go to Congress.org to find contact information for your Congressional representatives and urge them to take action per Rubin’s suggestions.
(photo of Barnett Rubin – voanews.com)
I’m off for two days to help care for my youngest grandchildren, Rody and Sophia, seven months old today.
In my efforts to stay on top of what is happening in Iraq and what the Bush Administration appears to be planning regarding Iran, these two blogs have become essential daily reading:
1. Juan Cole’s Informed Comment. For instance, today he links to Nermeen Mufti explains why Iraqis are pessimistic on both the security and political front.
2. Informed Comment Global Affairs, a group blog launched by Juan Cole a few months ago. Here’s an excerpt from the September 2nd post by contributor Barnett Rubin, Administration's Iran... which opens with, “The Sunday Times of London reports from Washington a story I have not seen in any U.S. media: that "the Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days.’ The source of this report was Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center.
”Speaking at a meeting sponsored by the journal National Interest, edited by Irving Kristol, father of Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol Debate stated:
"US military planners were not preparing for ‘pinprick strikes’ against Iran’s nuclear facilities. ‘They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,’ he said.
“As in the run-up to the war in Iraq, President Bush is maintaining the fiction that he is ‘committed for now to the diplomatic route,’ but many signs indicate that the decision to attack has been taken as irrevocably as the decision to attack Iraq in the fall of 2002.”
(photo of grandson Rody at about 5 months and me)
In anticipation of the September 11th report to Congress by General David H. Petraeus and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, the White House and the military are getting ready to make what clearly appears to be a big pitch for “staying the course.”
What are the “big guys” doing in order to sway Congress?
The White House is busy preparing Petraeus's report and George Bush is fighting back, accusing the war’s opponents of politicizing the debate over what to do next.
The military:
A. The Pentagon is challenging the GAO report on Iraq, requesting that some of the assessment’s failing grades on key political and security benchmarks that have been imposed on the Iraqi government as a condition of continued US military support be changed before the final report is made public.
B. General Petraeus: To the extent the White House will let him prepare his own report, Petraeus is pulling together an optimistic report on the success of the surge, according to Glenn Greenwald, who blogs for Salon.com: “When Gen. Petraeus comes in September to laud the Great Progress of the Surge, this will be nothing new. Gen. Petraeus has been telling Americans for years -- since at least 2004 -- that we have been making Great Progress in Iraq…. Gen. Petraeus' explanations as to why his prior, highly optimistic reports did not materialize -- i.e., because of subsequent acts of violence such as the February, 2006 Samara bombing which could not be anticipated -- do not withstand scrutiny. Many of Petraeus' most publicized and influential statements of Great Progress concerned the supposedly vast improvements in Iraqi troop readiness. Those claims -- for whatever reasons -- simply turned out to be false, and subsequent acts of violence do not explain why the Iraqi troops whose readiness he was lauding turned out to be so unreliable.
“Whatever else is true, as we decide (a) what the true state of affairs is in Iraq and (b) what we will do about Iraq, we must take into account the past conduct and claims of various individuals who want to exert influence over those perceptions now. And we should not be relying -- certainly not primarily -- on those who either (a) have been swooning for years about how great things are in Iraq and/or (b) who have a significant personal investment in having the invasion, and especially the Surge, be perceived as a success….
“The point here is that nothing warrants holding up Gen. Petraeus as the Ultimate Objective and Infallible Authority on the state of affairs in Iraq, and there is plenty that counsels against doing so."
Kevin Drum, who blogs for The Washington Monthly has posted General Petraeus's PR Blitzkrieg, well worth reading in its entirety. A snippet: "Petraeus is a four-star general, by all accounts a brilliant man, and a professional student of counterinsurgency. He's keenly aware of the value of both the media and public opinion, and he did what any counterinsurgency expert would have counseled in his circumstances: he unleashed a hearts-and-minds campaign aimed at opinion makers and politicians. For months the military transports to Baghdad have been stuffed with analysts and congress members, and every one of them has gotten a full court press of carefully planned and scripted presentations, tightly controlled visits to favored units, and assorted dollops of 'classified' information designed to flatter his guests and substantiate his rosy assessments without the inconvenience of having to defend them in public."
So how do we get informed? Start with Juan Cole’s Arguments over Night of the Living Dead in Iraq. Excerpt: “I personally find the controversy about Iraq in Washington to be bizarre. Are they really arguing about whether the situation is improving? I mean, you have the Night of the Living Dead over there. People lack potable water, cholera has broken out even in the good areas, a third of people are hungry, a doubling of the internally displaced to at least 1.1 million, and a million pilgrims dispersed just this week by militia infighting in a supposedly safe all-Shiite area. The government has all but collapsed, with even the formerly cooperative sections of the Sunni Arab political class withdrawing in a snit (much less more Sunni Arabs being brought in from the cold). The parliament hasn't actually passed any legislation to speak of and often cannot get a quorum. Corruption is endemic. The weapons we give the Iraqi army are often sold off to the insurgency. Some of our development aid goes to them, too. 'The average number of Iraqis killed in 2007 per day exceeds those killed in 2006. Independent counts by news organizations do not agree with Pentagon estimates about drops in civilian deaths over-all.'
"Nation-wide attacks in June reached a daily all-time high of 177.5. True, violence in Baghdad has been wrestled back down to the levels of summer, 2006 (hint: it wasn't paradise), but violence levels are up in the rest of the country. If you compare each month in 2006 with each month in 2007 with regard to US military deaths, the 2007 picture is dreadful. I saw on CNN this smarmy Bush administration official come and and say that US troop deaths had fallen because of the surge, which is why we should support it. Just read the following chart bottom to top and compare 2006 month by month to 2007. US troop deaths haven't fallen. They are way up. Besides, they would be zero if the US were not occupying Iraq militarily, so if we should support a policy that leads to fewer troop deaths, that is the better policy. Here are the US troop death via Icasualties.org:
8-2007 77 : 8-2006 65
7-2007 79 : 7-2006 43
6-2007 101: 6-2006 61
5-2007 126: 5-2006 69
4-2007 104: 4-2006 76
3-2007 81: 3-2006 31
2-2007 81: 2-2006 55
1-2007 83: 1-2006 62"
Then go to TalkingPointsMemo.com's A masterful con job in which Steve Benen posts, “A couple of days ago, the NYT reported that the White House 'is growing more confident that it can beat back efforts by Congressional Democrats to shift course in Iraq.' It's not because conditions in Iraq have improved, and it's not because the president's policy is producing results, but because the administration has 'a sense the dynamic has changed. '
“It's all about some amorphous 'sense' that's entirely independent of reality. Consider what we've learned this week. The GAO prepared a 'strikingly negative' assessment of conditions on the ground, with no political progress (the intended point of the 'surge') and little evidence of reduced violence. Of the 18 Iraqi benchmarks, Bush's policy has come up short on 15. An independent federal commission believes Iraq's 26,000-member national police force is beyond repair and might need to be disbanded altogether. A working draft of a secret document prepared by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad shows that the Maliki government is rotten to the core. Iraqi civilian deaths are getting worse, not better. The latest data shows U.S. troop fatalities worse every month this year compared to the same months last year. A smidgeon of evidence pointing to at least marginal political progress late last week turned out to be smoke and mirrors."
Keep reading everything you can between now and September 11. While the hearing is going on and presumably aired on C-Span, have your Congressional representative’s phone number and your homework handy.
(photo the a surge of detainees in Iraq: PatDollard.com, and as reported in The New York Times on August 25, 2007, Detainees soar with surge)
