Isebrand.com

We're paying for the Republicans' wilfull blindness

RICHARD CLARKE, Dir. NSC Counterterrorism 1998-01, recalls:

I remember vividly, in the driveway outside of the West Wing, Scooter Libby grabbing me­ from the vice president's office­ and saying, "I hear you don't believe this report that Mohammed Atta was talking to Iraqi people in Prague." And I said, "I don't believe it because it's not true." And he said, "You're wrong. You know you're wrong. Go back and find out. Look at the rest of the reports and find out that you're wrong." And I understood what he was saying, which was, "This is a report that we want to believe, and stop saying it's not true. It's a real problem for the vice president's office that you, the counterterrorism coordinator, are walking around saying that this isn't a true report. Shut up." That's what I was being told.

Doctrinairism, Arrogance, Myopia, Incompetence, Corruption = The Iraq Fiasco

From "Mindless in Iraq," by Peter W. Galbraith in The New York Review of Books, a set of reviews of Iraq-related current affairs titles.

As we now know, Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon had no plan to secure any part of Baghdad. It allowed looters to destroy Iraq's governmental infrastructure and to steal thousands of tons of high explosives, weapons, and radioactive materials. And it had no coherent plan for Iraq's postwar governance.

In reference to Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, by Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor:

Greg Newbold, who later joined the revolt of the generals, told Gordon and Trainor of his reaction to Rumsfeld's 125,000-troop figure: "My only regret is that at the time I did not say ,Mr. Secretary, if you try to put a number on a mission like this you may cause enormous mistakes.... Give the military what you would like to see them do, and then let them come up with it. I was the junior guy in the room, but I regret not saying it.'"

Regarding Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco, by David L. Phillips:

Men who had put their lives on the line in combat were mostly unwilling to put their careers on the line to speak out against a plan based on numbers pulled out of the air by a cranky sixty-nine-year-old.

Referring to Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace: Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq, by Michael Goldfarb:

Shawkat, [an Iraqi,] founded a newspaper that used Iraq's new press freedoms to protest against this new form of the old order. He was murdered after ignoring a succession of death threats.

Goldfarb contrasts the casualness with which the Americans approached the occupation with the deadly consequences for his friend. His prose reflects his understandable outrage when he writes about how the Coalition Provisional Authority had been turned into an extension of the Bush-Cheney '04 reelection campaign. Other nations' professional foreign-service officers found it shocking that senior CPA figures [in Iraq] attended meetings with their Bush-Cheney lapel pins on.... Didn't they know they were representing all Americans, not just the president's supporters?

Goldfarb describes a young Republican, sent by the Bush administration to instruct the Iraqis on democracy, who explained to a gathering of tribal and community leaders assembled at the Baghdad Hunt Club that "a political party exists to channel power.... Once you have political power, then you can create, you can do what you want with government, right?"

Goldfarb comments:

To people who had survived the Ba'ath, a political party that really knew how to channel power, the lecture must have seemed ridiculous.... By now I was full of slow-burning anger. My friend Ahmad had died for this? So some kid could stand inside a privately guarded compound, explaining that "a political party exists to channel power" on a street guarded by American soldiers in a city where, one year after the overthrow of Saddam, the original meeting site [at a Baghdad Hotel] was so insecure that local police could not defend it? This was bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq? The most powerful nation in history had rendered itself utterly powerless here.

Galbraith's review also covers The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq, by Fouad Ajami.

NYC moneymaker migration

According to Crain's New York Business, citing IRS exemption records...

Estimated percentage of taxpayers from each of NYC's 5 boroughs moving out of the City altogether, 2003-2004:

Manhattan 6%
Queens 4.7%
Bronx 4.4%
Brooklyn 3.5%
Staten Island 3.5%

If you live here, and maybe even if you don't, you know that the City--but Manhattan in particular--is becoming intolerably expensive, particularly in terms of taxes (federal, state, and local), rent, and the costs of purchasing residential real estate.

It's not about a hurricane, but incompetence

There will be much in the blogosphere today about the New Orleans disaster of 2005. I hesitate to call the episode what most commentators name it: simply "Katrina," as if Katrina is exactly synonymous with the levees breaking. Katrina was the name of the hurricane that directly did minimal damage to New Orleans. The story of the New Orleans disaster is not really about a hurricane, it's about incompetence.

Visit this page at Levees.org.

John Biguenet in The New York Times:

After the flooding, New Orleanians were roundly criticized by Congressional leaders for choosing to live in an area below sea level. In fact, only parts of New Orleans are below sea level. My house, for example, is a foot above sea level, and it still received four feet of floodwater. We were hardly as foolish as Americans living in earthquake zones like San Francisco and Anchorage are. After all, we had assurances from the Corps of Engineers that we would be safe in a hurricane of Katrina’s strength. If we were foolish, it was in believing our government.

So there’s a great deal about what happened in New Orleans that is widely misunderstood. On the other hand, what you think you know about FEMA is probably right.... On the way back for a second load [of residents stranded atop a house's roof, my neighbor] passed a boat with men wearing FEMA T-shirts. He shouted for them to follow him to pick up the remaining family members. The men refused, explaining that it was after 5 p.m. and they weren’t authorized for overtime.

New Orleans disaster timeline.

MPs debate the Middle East

BBC Radio 4 brought MPs together in London to debate the crisis in the Middle East. The debate was recorded as live on August 17 from 5:15 - 7:00 pm GMT. An edited hour-long version was then broadcast that night at 9:00 pm, and can be heard here.

The most eloquent speaker, about 38 minutes in, may have been Jeremy Hunt (Con). He argued that what would have been outlined on 7/7/2005 (the date of the London bombings) as the worst possible outcome of UK foreign policy is coming to pass:
*Islamic extremists succeeding in "weaving together" the terrorist attacks of London, New York, Madrid, and Bali with the conflicts in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine-Israel;
*Islamic extremists succeeding in "uniting behind them moderate Islamic opinion," and
*A radical Islamic state getting its hands on nuclear weapons.

Hunt described the current situation in the Middle East as a "foreign policy disaster of the highest magnitude" that is "in good measure of our own making." He stressed that the it was as naive to put full faith in military force as it is to put full faith in diplomacy (the implication being that Bush vis-a-vis Iraq and Bush & Olmert vis-a-vis Lebanon this summer put too much faith in military force).

He sees that a battle for the "hearts and mind" of moderate Muslims is being waged, and he asked relative to that: "who can quantify" the number of friends that Israel has lost by the displacement of over 1,000,000 Lebanese; "who can quantify" the number of recruits to terrorist organizations by the deaths of over 1,000 Lebanese, or for that matter by the deaths of civilians in Iraq, which in 2006 is over 30% higher than it was two years ago (with the number of British casualties having doubled)?

Tim Yeo (Con) pointed out that Tony Blair and the Government were "silent" on the issue of Lebanon when the fighting raged there. He said Blair had been a "nodding donkey" while in the US during the wide-ranging Israel attacks meant to destroy Hezbollah, in stark contrast to Margaret Thatcher who during the Middle East crisis of her day gave George H. W. Bush advice both privately and publicly. Yeo stated bluntly that Tony Blair's "unquestioning support" of the US perspective on international affairs has "increased the dangers of a serious terrorist attack on the British people." History will judge Blair "very harshly indeed," Yeo said, for having made the world a more dangerous than it was in 1997.

Susan Kramer (LibDem) rightly declared that the refusal of the British Government to call for an immediate cease fire was essentially read by the Israelis as "a green light to proceed with a disproportionate response," and has "shattered any trust" between Britain and the the people of Lebanon.

Kramer reminded members that the IRA used the same extreme "no surrender" and similarly radical, reckless language that Hezbollah does (e.g., Hezbollah calls for Israel's destruction), but the clashing parties involved in the Northern Ireland issue persisted in negotiations, and eventually great progress was made. She called for a similar commitment to negotiations on the part of the parties involved in the Middle East, including the US and Israel. (I.e., the US and Israel may not like the prospect of negotiations with Hezbollah, but negotiations of some manner need to be attempted regardless.)

Lord Triesman (Lab) represented the Government's point of view and outlined a sensible goal of a Lebanon "genuinely sovereign and democratic," in which the government alone has "the monopoly right for the use of force," and which is free of "private, marauding militias" who are answerable not to the Lebanese people but to "to Iran and Syria," the former of which has expressly declared its desire to wipe Israel off "the face of the map." He argued the unconvincing case that somehow not calling for a ceasefire aided in fulfilling the Government's worthy goal.

Triesman reminded listeners that "no civilized country" would allow its citizens to be "rocketed every night, to have militias come into its soil" and "abduct its soldiers" and that the "outcry would have been deafening" had any Government allowed such to befall the UK. A colleague of Triesman's complained that calls for cease fires in the early days of the recent conflict were too often calls for Israel to do so unilaterally, with no attendant call on Hezbollah to cease its attacks, too.

Simon Hughes (LibDem) outlined 5 principles to be applied to the larger situation of Israel's security and Middle Eastern peace:
1. the right of Israel to exist in peace and security within internationally recognized boundaries and the right of Palestine to exist in the peace and security within internationally recognized boundaries, something promised them in 1947 and still undelivered;
2. the open status of Jerusalem to people of all faiths;
3. terrorism is not permissible;
4. all those elected in Palestine have to be worked with and recognized; and
5. international law must prevail.

Hughes said that Israel must recognize the 1967 UN resolution and stop settling people outside of the boundaries set forth in that resolution.

Douglas Carswell (Con) believes that the lack of democracy in the Middle East is the "engine" that drives so many of the problems in the region. (Someone ought to tell him that he's holding the Union Jack upside down in this photo.) Carswell used President Bush's "axis of evil" term to describe a four- not three-part axis of Syria, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah pledged to destroy Israel. He conceded "not everything Israel does is right." He predicted "dark days ahead." He also pointed out rightly that the debate over the invasion of Lebanon is nowhere more fierce than in Israel itself.

When asked about John Prescott's description of President Bush's foreign policy as crap, Dr. Phyllis Starkey (Lab) stated that President Bush is not her "favorite politician." Importantly, she pointed out that Israel is not doing itself any favors by arresting freely and democratically elected Palestinian leaders.

Mike Weir (SNP) stressed that as "a friend of the United States" the UK should have stood up during the early days of the Israeli attacks within Lebanon and said to the US, "'You're wrong to allow Israel to do this.'" He declared as "worthless" Prime Minister Tony Blair's description of the US-UK relationship as being--in a phrase used now for decades--"the special relationship" in which the UK is a valued partner.

My endnote: As a regular listener to BBC Radio 4's news programs, I am very disappointed by and concerned about the increasingly anti-American language I hear on-air. It seems that it is becoming fashionable on BBC Radio to dislike all things American, not just the policies of George W. Bush--which polls show most Americans themselves dislike. I know of at least one commentary in the UK print media during the run-up to the US 2004 General Election in which an explicit warning was given: the people of the UK like most things about America--certainly the ideal of America--and the American people, while loathing the American president, particularly his amateurish foreign diplomacy, rhetorical tone-deafness, religiousity, apparent arrogance, and myopic foreign policy; however, if you, the US voters, actually by a majority vote for him (which did not happen in 2000!), UK anger will begin to be more broadly directed against the US as a whole: its culture and its people.

I think that that is happening.

While I would remind UK readers that George W. Bush has an approval rating in the US in the 30s %, which is only slightly higher than Blair's in the UK, it certainly must be said that no President has done more harm to the special relationship than George W. Bush. Even when Eisenhower forced a cease-fire upon the UK-France-Israel alliance to the UK's great detriment during the Suez Crisis in 1956, he did so as a President who had as Supreme Allied Commander during WWII demonstrated his admiration of Britain and respect for her military and political leaders; what is more, the pressure on the UK was exercised with the support of the significant Commonwealth nations of Canada and Australia.

But George Bush has no such diplomatic or political capital to squander vis-a-vis the special relationship; his manipulation of Tony Blair was uncalled for, and he demonstrates a persistent disdain for the UK's foreign policy experience...that was gained in the past at times at a very high cost, and is probably ignored by the US at its peril.

Since it takes two to make a head-on collision, it must be said that Tony Blair is also to blame for the deterioration in the special relationship. He has yet to find a way to out-maneuver President Bush's dangerous policies, and instead seems to be their happy co-executor.

"Evolution Major Vanishes From Approved Federal List"

The New York Times'  Cornelia Dean is reporting that:

Evolutionary biology has vanished from the list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students.

The omission is inadvertent, said Katherine McLane, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, which administers the grants. “There is no explanation for it being left off the list,” Ms. McLane said. “It has always been an eligible major.”

The Exit Strategy (step-by-step)

The Nonist says that, yes, Virginia, there is an Exit Strategy.

Killings of gay men in Iraq

The Observer recently reported:

There is growing evidence that Shia militias [in Iraq] have been killing men suspected of being gay and children who have been sold to criminal gangs to be sexually abused.
.....
Homosexuality is seen as so immoral that it qualifies as an 'honour killing' to murder someone who is gay - and the perpetrator can escape punishment. Section 111 of Iraq's penal code lays out protections for murder when people are acting against Islam.

Bush's & Olmert's idiocy

Blumenthal sums up correctly the horrible damage Israel and the US have suffered thanks to the Bush Administration's idiotic handling of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Excerpts:

Israel's strategic debacle [this summer in Lebanon] was a curiously warped and accelerated version of the U.S. misadventure in Iraq. It used mistaken means in pursuit of misconceived goals, producing misbegotten failure. Rather than seek the disarmament of Hezbollah, Israel sought to eliminate it permanently. If the aim had been to disarm it, in line with United Nations Resolution 1559, Israel might have initiated a diplomatic round, drawing in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, to help with the Lebanese government. But, encouraged by the Bush administration, Israel treated Lebanese sovereignty as a fiction. With U.S. support, Israeli unilateralism was unfurled. The possible consequences of anything less than stunning and complete triumph in a place where Israel had long experienced disaster were dismissed.

After having withdrawn in 2000 from its occupation of Lebanon, achieving few of the aims declared in the 1982 invasion, the Israeli government launched an air campaign that would supposedly extirpate Hezbollah. The wishful thinking behind the air campaign was similar to that of the Bush administration in its invasion of Iraq. Upon the liberators' entry into Baghdad, Vice President Cheney explained beforehand, the population would greet them with flowers. In Lebanon, the idea was that the more destruction wreaked by Israel, the more the population would blame Hezbollah. Of course, as common sense and every previous historical example should have dictated, the opposite occurred. When the air campaign obviously failed, the army was thrown into the breach, sent to relive Israel's 1982 agony. Cautions about repeating the past were ignored, and the past was repeated.
.....
Israel's national security has never been so damaged and endangered. And none of it would have been possible without the Bush administration's incitement and backing at every calamitous turn. The further erosion of U.S. credibility has also been severe.
.....
It can be said with a high degree of certainty, not simply tragic precedent, that the Bush administration engaged in this latest fiasco by ignoring the caveats and worst-case scenarios that must have been produced by the intelligence community.
.....
Bush proclaimed victory, following his Iraq P.R. formula. While his phrases might be a tonic to his political base, the rest of the world, especially now the Israelis, receive it as the empty rhetoric it is. The more Bush declares success when there is failure, the more U.S. credibility is tattered.

Aug. 15, 2002. Another public warning Bush, Cheney, and the media ignored.

There were so many warning given publicly to Reverend W. Bu$h & NeoCons Inc. not to attack Iraq. During the rush up to the invasion date, 100,000's of people protested in the streets of London and New York City and elsewhere mindful of the
overwhelming evidence and argumentation:
*that Saddam Hussein was no threat to the US,
*that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction,
*that preparing to invade Iraq had already become a harmful, dangerous distraction from the war against Al-Qaeda and the hunt for Bin Laden,
*that Reverend Bu$h & NeoCons Inc. had no idea what they were getting into, and
*that invading Iraq would play into the hands of Islamic extremists.

One element of that argumentation was provided on Thursday, August 15, 2002, by Brent Scowcroft, none other than the national security adviser under Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. Of course, Reverend W. Bu$h & NeoCons Inc., as well as the mainstream media like Fox News and CNN, ignored him. Scowcroft's 2002 op-ed was entitled, "Don't Attack Saddam: It Would Undermine Our Antiterror Efforts." From the op-ed:

It is beyond dispute that Saddam Hussein is a menace.
.....
That said, we need to think through this issue very carefully.
.....
Saddam's strategic objective appears to be to dominate the Persian Gulf, to control oil from the region, or both.

[T]here is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks. Indeed Saddam's goals have little in common with the terrorists who threaten us, and there is little incentive for him to make common cause with them.
.....
Given Saddam's aggressive regional ambitions, as well as his ruthlessness and unpredictability, it may at some point be wise to remove him from power. Whether and when that point should come ought to depend on overall U.S. national security priorities. Our pre-eminent security priority--underscored repeatedly by the president--is the war on terrorism. An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken.

The United States could certainly defeat the Iraqi military and destroy Saddam's regime. But it would not be a cakewalk. On the contrary, it undoubtedly would be very expensive--with serious consequences for the U.S. and global economy--and could as well be bloody. In fact, Saddam would be likely to conclude he had nothing left to lose, leading him to unleash whatever weapons of mass destruction he possesses.

.... Finally, if we are to achieve our strategic objectives in Iraq, a military campaign very likely would have to be followed by a large-scale, long-term military occupation.

But the central point is that any campaign against Iraq, whatever the strategy, cost and risks, is certain to divert us for some indefinite period from our war on terrorism. Worse, there is a virtual consensus in the world against an attack on Iraq at this time. So long as that sentiment persists, it would require the U.S. to pursue a virtual go-it-alone strategy against Iraq, making any military operations correspondingly more difficult and expensive. The most serious cost, however, would be to the war on terrorism. Ignoring that clear sentiment would result in a serious degradation in international cooperation with us against terrorism. And make no mistake, we simply cannot win that war without enthusiastic international cooperation, especially on intelligence.

Possibly the most dire consequences would be the effect in the region. The shared view in the region is that Iraq is principally an obsession of the U.S. The obsession of the region, however, is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If we were seen to be turning our backs on that bitter conflict--which the region, rightly or wrongly, perceives to be clearly within our power to resolve--in order to go after Iraq, there would be an explosion of outrage against us. We would be seen as ignoring a key interest of the Muslim world in order to satisfy what is seen to be a narrow American interest.

.... [T]he more progress we make in the war on terrorism, and the more we are seen to be committed to resolving the Israel-Palestinian issue, the greater will be the international support for going after Saddam.

If we are truly serious about the war on terrorism, it must remain our top priority.
.....
In any event, we should be pressing the United Nations Security Council to insist on an effective no-notice inspection regime for Iraq--any time, anywhere, no permission required. On this point, senior administration officials have opined that Saddam Hussein would never agree to such an inspection regime. But if he did, inspections would serve to keep him off balance and under close observation, even if all his weapons of mass destruction capabilities were not uncovered. And if he refused, his rejection could provide the persuasive casus belli which many claim we do not now have. Compelling evidence that Saddam had acquired nuclear-weapons capability could have a similar effect.

In sum, if we will act in full awareness of the intimate interrelationship of the key issues in the region, keeping counterterrorism as our foremost priority, there is much potential for success across the entire range of our security interests--including Iraq. If we reject a comprehensive perspective, however, we put at risk our campaign against terrorism as well as stability and security in a vital region of the world.