Stygius

All the President's Lies

Keith Olbermann undertakes an archaeological expedition into the the White House's pre-9/11 cluelessness.

Iraq: Essential dilemmas

In agreement with this assessment; quoted in a Laura Rozen post:

The [NIE] notes that ‘victory’ in Iraq would be a blow to the jihadists, and that failure (especially if it led to the establishment of an al-Qaeda sanctuary or if veteran foreign jihadists dispersed out of Iraq to engage in terrorism in other parts of the world) would also be very bad. Thus, the report highlights the essential dilemma Iraq poses for the war on terror: staying fuels the al-Qaeda-inspired movement, creating a net increase in the terrorist threat; while leaving Iraq in chaos would also worsen the threat. The Democrats tend to focus on the first part of the dilemma; the administration focuses on the second part. They are both right (and wrong) -- and the debate would be greatly served by focusing on the dilemma itself.

Bolton toast?

And Steve Clemons declares the Bolton re-nomination dead in committee.

None dare call it NIE?

According to Josh Marshall, the White House is sitting on another document -- this one focused exclusively on Iraq -- that they can't call an NIE since they would then be obliged to share it with congressional leaders.

Punctuation mark reductionism

I was among those appalled that when President Bush, on CNN, outrageously reduced the death and suffering in Iraq to a punctuation mark:

Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there’s a strong will for democracy. (emphasis added)

Now, Ian Welsh fills us in on the dog whistle:

The phrase is: "Never put a period where God has put a comma." Which is to say - it ain't over yet, and God may well make it better. So Iraq's bad, but if we trust in God, he'll make it better.

This is the thing about Bush - he is constantly littering his speeches with code words and phrases meant for the religious right. Other people don't hear them, but they do, and most of the time it allows Bush both to say what those who aren't evangelical or born again want to hear, while still reassuring the religious right wants to hear.

Necessary or contingent?

praktike:

More people are asking the question that Greg Djerejian poses here: "Was Failure Pre-Ordained, or Was It Gross Incompetence?"

I'm working on a longer piece about this, so let me give you a short answer: it depends.

Unfortunately, if the incompetence hadn't been pre-ordained, I would be solidly in Greg's camp:

I can't help feeling a more talented team that understood counterinsurgency doctrine, believed in the import of nation-building, didn't go to war with swagger and arrogance, and relied more heavily on regional experts who understood the depths of the ferocity of ethnic tension among Kurds, Shi'a and Sunni--I can't help wondering whether a more convincing effort could have been waged, one where we might have had a better chance at creating a viable, unitary nation-state in Iraq, one moving in a genuinely democratic direction even, rather than crude majoritarianism and incipient civil war.

Ret. Generals slam Rumsfeld

CBS/AP:

Retired military officers on Monday bluntly accused Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld of bungling the war in Iraq, saying U.S. troops were sent to fight without the best equipment and that critical facts were hidden from the public.

"I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq," retired Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste said in remarks prepared for a hearing by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

A second witness, retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, assessed Rumsfeld as "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically ...."

"Mr. Rumsfeld and his immediate team must be replaced or we will see two more years of extraordinarily bad decision-making," he added in testimony prepared for the hearing, held six weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections in which the war is a central issue.

NIE: Iraq war worsens terror threat

New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

Yoo's vigor

On the 17th, the New York Times published another one of John Yoo's wretchedly obtuse op-eds. When it comes to the "public intellectual" providing cover for a Leader's accretion of power unto himself, President Bush could do a lot better. To wit:

A reinvigorated presidency enrages President Bush’s critics, who seem to believe that the Constitution created a system of judicial or congressional supremacy.

Is this the best Yoo can do? The most childish of strawman arguments? Well, he follows it with the most tired of ad hominems:

Perhaps this is to be expected of the generation of legislators that views the presidency through the lens of Vietnam and Watergate.

Actually, it has far more to do with a generation of Americans who are coming to view the presidency through the prism of the Bush Administration, combined with the American's deep ingrained sense that fundamental freedoms are at stake.

Congress has for years been avoiding its duty to revamp or repeal outmoded parts of bygone laws in the light of contemporary threats. We have needed energy in the executive branch to fill in that gap.

The abdication criticized in the first sentence is undeniably true. Congress has abdicated its role, yet for reasons that contradict the second sentence. George Bush has been using the specious legal theories of John Yoo -- which have wilted when exposed to the daylight of American democracy -- in order to keep Congress inactive and sidelined from doing its Article I, section 8 duties during time of war. Implying that Bush's power grabs is forced by necessity is an appallingly self-serving claim. That these power grabs have failed, and have only served to undermine and erode the legitimacy of the presidency -- ala the Nixon presidency -- has been the predictable result.

Anyway, the letters section to The Times' today has six responses to Yoo's piece, in which one writer exclaims, "I am amazed that an American would write something like that." Indeed. Two others follow:

To the Editor:

Schoolchildren have checks and balances drilled into their heads as the hallmark of our government system. John Yoo mentions it not once.

Instead, he talks of George W. Bush’s reinvigorating the presidency, but doesn’t acknowledge the need for limits.

The incompetence in prosecuting the Iraq war aftermath and Katrina alone are reason for vigorous oversight by other branches to bring accountability and transparency.

“Trust me” no longer satisfies the public.

  Phyllis Sato
Virginia Beach, Sept. 17, 2006
To the Editor:

We can leave it to the legal eagles to rip and tear at John Yoo’s constitutional (and basically sophist) arguments for a strong executive branch, but most people don’t need a lawyer to know an argument for despotism when they hear it.

James Day
Berkeley, Calif., Sept. 17, 2006

[Edited Wednesday AM for grammar]

Buried on A14

Washington Post:

CIA Learned in '02 That Bin Laden Had No Iraq Ties, Report Says

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 15, 2006; A14

The CIA learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden an enemy of the Baghdad regime, according to a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report.