The reconstruction money was from oil revenue it was entrusted with between 2004 and 2007, according to a newly released audit that underscores a pattern of poor record-keeping.

Reporting from Baghdad — The Defense Department is unable to properly account for $8.7 billion out of $9.1 billion in Iraqi oil revenue entrusted to it between 2004 and 2007, according to a newly released audit that underscores a pattern of poor record-keeping during the war.

Of that amount, the military failed to provide any records at all for $2.6 billion in purported reconstruction expenditure, says the report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which is responsible for monitoring U.S. spending in Iraq. The rest of the money was not properly deposited in special accounts as required under Treasury Department rules, making it difficult to trace how it was spent.

Today, the war in Afghanistan becomes America's longest war. Longer than the war in Vietnam. Longer than the Korean War.

It took America two years to end World War I, and bring peace to the world. World War II was a little harder; that took us 3½ years to finish off.

The war in Afghanistan is over eight years old. And we're sending in more troops. We're not getting out. We getting deeper in.

Would you like to know why? It's not hard to find the answers. Just read the transcript of Osama Bin Laden's 2004 speech - right here.

Bin Laden's strategy was -- and is -- painfully simple: to repeat his victory in Afghanistan against Russia, by driving us into bankruptcy.

The "war on terror" is a hoax that fronts for American control of oil pipelines, the profits of the military-security complex, the assault on civil liberty by fomenters of a police state, and Israel's territorial expansion.

The US brands Hamas and Hezbollah "terrorist organizations" for no other reason than the US is on Israel's side of the conflict. There is no objective basis for the US Department of State's "finding" that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations. It is merely a propagandistic declaration.

"It may have been the economic crisis that delivered the election to Barack Obama but his consistent opposition to the war in Iraq was also a key plank in his campaign – first to be the Democratic nominee, and then for president.

So it might therefore be surprising that he has retained the services of a Bush appointee, Robert Gates, as defence secretary. What's more, Gates has publicly disagreed with Obama's commitment to a 16-month timetable for withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq."

John McCain said it. Right out loud in the third debate.

That's $200 billion dollars that could be spent, in one year alone, on alternative energy resources and infrastructure, on renewable energy subsidies that will help create green collar jobs for working America."

Dover, New Hampshire

It's great to be back in Dover. We made our first stop in New Hampshire over 19 months ago, and a lot has changed. There are babies walking and talking today who weren't even born back then. But there's one thing that hasn't changed in those 19 months: the American people know this country is on the wrong track, and you know that we need new leadership in Washington.

And here's the thing. I think they truly believe it. After all, my opponent said just last night, "It's easy for me to go to Washington and frankly, be somewhat divorced from the day-to-day challenges people have." So from where he and George Bush sit, maybe they just can't see. Maybe they are just that out of touch. But you know the truth, and so do I.

While Alaska Governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin is getting all the attention, the current vice president, Dick Cheney, was able to pontificate about Russia and Georgia with barely any notice from the media. However, while hardly anyone was watching, Mr. Cheney echoed the hypocrisy of his boss, President George Bush. While traveling in Italy, Mr. Cheney decided to become the moral arbiter of Russia's foreign policies. His incredible remarks are worth studying.

If anyone doubted the vice president's disdain for those who elected him and kept him in power, this speech should have been an eye-opener. How he could make that statement with a straight face is beyond comprehension. Was he not a major force in the U.S. military invasion of Iraq? ...

1--Fed chairman Bernanke has been on a spree lately, delivering three speeches in the last two weeks. Every chance he gets, he talks tough about the strong dollar and "holding the line" against inflation. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson even said that "intervention" in the currency markets was still an option. Is all of this jawboning just saber rattling to keep the dollar from plummeting, or is there a chance that Bernanke actually will raise rates at the Fed's August meeting?

Like the domestic U.S. economy itself, the global financial system is all about getting a free lunch. When Europe and Asia receive excess dollars, these are turned over to their central banks. Until the recent decision to create sovereign wealth funds, these government bodies had little alternative but to recycle these dollar inflows back to the United States by buying U.S. Treasury bonds. This financed the domestic U.S. federal budget deficit, which stems largely from the war in Iraq that most foreign voters oppose. Unless foreign governments are willing to make a structural break to change the world monetary system, they will remain powerless to avoid giving the United States a free ride – including a free ride for its military spending and war in the Near East.

There are many reasons why most Americans should be turned off by Republican presidential candidate John McCain's last-minute choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

But the real reason Palin, the former mayor of little Wasilla, Alaska (pop. 5000 when she was there) and two-year governor of Alaska, is a disastrous pick for the vice presidency on a ticket headed by an ailing 72-year-old presidential candidate who has suffered two bouts of melanoma and who is showing early signs of dementia, is the evidence that she has abused power as governor.

The country owes Rep. Dennis Kucinich a debt of gratitude.

Each article of impeachment is supported by brief but credible bullet-points to suggest prima facie that an high crime has occurred.

Introduced in Congress June 9, 2008.

Resolved, that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has committed the following abuses of power.

Bugliosi Makes the Case

Death Penalty for Bush?

If Vincent Bugliosi were prosecuting George W. Bush for the murder of the more than 4,000 American soldiers who have died in Iraq, he would seek the death penalty.

Bugliosi said he is sending a copy of his book to all fifty state Attorneys General, offering his assistance in prosecuting Bush for homicide.

Another Stimulus Package for the Pentagon

War Abroad, Poverty at Home

The US Senate has voted $165 billion to fund Bush's wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq through next spring.

Before Bush began his wars of aggression, oil was $25 a barrel. Today it is $130 a barrel. Some of this rise may result from run-away speculation in the futures market. However, the main cause is the eroding value of the dollar.

Americans are in a panic over rising gas and heating oil prices, and with reason. For months, the price of a barrel of crude oil has been rising steadily, hitting a record $127 yesterday.

"Oil prices have gone from the mid $20 range in the fall of 2002 to $127 yesterday—a rise of $100/barrel in just over five years," he says. "And the bulk of that increase can be attributed to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to the threats of war against Iran."

The U.S. Economy and the Costs of War

The Big Hurt

First of all, As Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel economist and chief economist at the World Bank, has noted, the real cost of the Iraq War is probably now closer to $3 trillion, in terms of future costs of veterans benefits, replacement of equipment, and payment on the debt that has been piling up because of the government's unwillingness to make the public pay for the war in real time. That whopping bill is in the minds of the international investors who have been deserting the dollar in droves, causing it to approach Third World status as a currency.

One is the misdirection of much of the nation's remaining industrial strength into war production. The late industrial engineer Seymour Melman long ago demonstrated how the military-industrial complex, by producing things not on a competitive but rather a cost-plus basis, destroys economic competitiveness, sucks up research and development talent and resources, and investment capital, and ends up producing nothing of use either for society or for the national trade account.

What Do the Pentagon's Budget Numbers Mean?

The Chaos in America's Vast Security Budget

The new 2009 defense budget has just been released. The more you look into the numbers, the more things become unclear, very unclear. Most of the numbers being released today are inaccurate or incomplete, or both. Other numbers will change as the year progresses, but we do not know if they will go up or down.

The $518.3 billion is incomplete; it does not include $70 billion requested to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that number too is inaccurate. It does not include enough money to fight the wars for more than a few months in 2009. If the violence in Iraq stays at its recently reduced levels--or even declines - that $70 billion should be about doubled to get through the entire year. If things fall apart in Iraq and continue to deteriorate in Afghanistan, as is very likely, that 70 billion should be about tripled. In either case, the amount requested in the budget for the wars is off by $70 to $140 billion.

Suicide rates among US soldiers are heading for a record high, army data released on Thursday shows.

Eighty-nine suicides were confirmed in 2007, and if 32 suspected suicides are also confirmed, the total will rise above the 2006 figure of 102.

"I think it's a marker of the stress on the force," said army psychiatric consultant Colonel Elsbeth Ritchie. "Families are tired".

In his annual State of the Union speech, President Bush asked the US Congress to give his policy of sending more than 20,000 extra troops to Iraq a chance to work.

He also addressed a wide range of other topics including diversifying US energy supplies and reducing petrol usage. Here are some of the key excerpts:

President Bush could have achieved his goal of "regime change" in Iraq quickly and without the violence of war. Saddam Hussein offered, weeks before his country was invaded, to leave Iraq and go into exile. President Bush withheld this offer from public view-and refused it. Nor did the President need to invade Afghanistan to apprehend Osama bin Laden. On five different occasions, George Bush refused a standing offer from the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden-three times before 9/11 and twice thereafter, again without public disclosure.

No, the military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan are not directed against terrorism. They are territorial in nature. Mr. Bush intended from his first days in office to invade the two countries: as early as late January, 2001, his Administration was developing the decisions and beginning the preparations for both military incursions. 9/11 was in the distant future, so the conflicts cannot be exercises in counter-terrorism, as the Bush Administration frequently and dishonestly insists. They are premeditated wars of unprovoked conquest and occupation.

The Results Are In ...

Oh, By the Way, the Iraqis Don't Really Want Us

Did you miss this? It should have been the lead story in every newspaper and radio and TV program in America. In the Washington Post it was on page 14. In virtually all of the rest of the media it was on page zero, channel zero, 0000 AM or 00.0 FM.

The US military in Iraq hired firms to conduct focus groups amongst a cross section of the population. A summary report of the findings was obtained by the Post. Here are some of the highlights of the report as disclosed by the newspaper:

What Would a Withdrawal Mean?

The US Occupation and Popular Opinion in Iraq

No nation that claims to value democracy for the world's people can maintain a military occupation against the will of the occupied population. Yet despite what seems like a fundamental moral truism-the notion that a military occupation of one country by another can only be justified if the occupied population supports it-mainstream commentators in this country rarely broach the subject of Iraqi attitudes toward the US-led occupation. Iraqi public opinion polls, when they even make it into the newspapers, are accorded astoundingly little weight. Instead, most US politicians and analysts repeat vague slogans about how "Iraqis need us" and how "we'll leave when they ask us to."

Over the last four years, and in polls from a wide range of sources, Iraqis have been especially unequivocal on one point: that the US military occupation of their country produces more violence than it prevents. A May 2004 poll sponsored by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority found that roughly 80 percent of Iraqis had "no confidence" in US-led forces to improve security and that most "would feel safer if Coalition forces left immediately."

The Pentagon has been concealing the true number of American casualties in the Iraq War. The real number exceeds 15,000 and CBS News can prove it.

That is not a typo. Active and retired military personnel, mostly young veterans between the ages of 20 to 24, are returning from combat and killing themselves in record numbers. We can assume that "multiple-tours of duty" in a war-zone have precipitated a mental health crisis of which the public is entirely unaware and which the Pentagon is in total denial.

OTTAWA/TORONTO (Reuters) - Two Americans who deserted the U.S. Army to protest against the war in Iraq lost their bid for refugee status in Canada on Thursday, and the Canadian government made it clear they were no longer welcome.

If deported to the United States, they say they face a court martial and up to five years in prison.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination that the mainstream media like to ignore or belittle, stands head and shoulders above the moral midgets and shriveled sophists in that contest, especially today, after he successfully forced the full House to vote to send his bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney to a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee.

Kucinich, whose Cheney impeachment bill, despite having 22 co-sponsors, has been stalled for over six months thanks to the unconscionable machinations of the Democratic Congressional leadership and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, should now get at least a genuine debate in the House Judiciary Committee. With enough pressure from constituents, his bill might even go into hearings.

Heck of a Job, Hughsie

Karen Hughes throws in the towel

And so Karen Hughes is leaving her post as "public diplomat" in much the same way she assumed it, with an air of farce and mystery.

The farcical qualities, in both phases, were up front for all to see. Her entrance two years ago, in a high-profile PR trip to the Middle East, was a jaw-dropping display of ignorance and malapropism that made her the laughing stock of the region. Her announced exit yesterday was marked by tributes to her alleged achievements that were simply surreal.

Iraqi dam 'at risk of collapse'

The largest dam in Iraq is at risk of an imminent collapse that could unleash a 20m (65ft) wave of water on Mosul, a city of 1.7m people, the US has warned.

n May, the US told Iraqi authorities to make Mosul Dam a national priority, as a catastrophic failure would result in a "significant loss of life".

However, a US watchdog said reconstruction of the dam had been plagued by mismanagement and potential fraud.

The international outcry over the recent Blackwater shootings forced the world to closely examine and appreciate the complex reality of the United States government's overdependence on private military contractors operating in Iraq. The foremost expert and most cited authority on the subject is Peter Warren Singer, a senior fellow at the prestigious Brookings Institute, co-founder of "The U.S. Policy towards the Islamic World" Program, and author of the seminal work on private military contractors, "Corporate Warriors." This interview, his most recent, examines the most current repercussions caused by the Blackwater scandal and private military firms within an overall context of The Iraq War, U.S. Foreign policy in the Middle East, and America's public relations with the Muslim world.

As the war grinds through its fifth year, Fort Leavenworth has become a front line in the military's tension and soul-searching over Iraq. Here on the bluffs above the Missouri River rising young officers are on a different kind of journey - an outspoken re-examination of their role in Iraq.

But the consensus was that not even after Vietnam was the Army's internal criticism as harsh or the second-guessing so painful, and that airing the arguments on the record, as sanctioned by Leavenworth's senior commanders, was part of a concerted effort to force change.

...the [UK] Government is permitting the US administration to install additional equipment at Menwith Hill, in Yorkshire, to support its unproven missile defence system.

There has been no public debate in Britain about the desirability or workability of missile defence, let alone about the strategic assumptions that underpin it.

.. The political will to persevere with it has been driven as much by industrial as military priorities. Its original justification was to defend against China: now it is said that it will protect against Iran, depicted in Washington as an implacable, long-term enemy."

What this says to me is that the current American government--and ours, for as long as we follow them - thrives on a state of war. They need it because it allows them to carry on with business as usual whilst at the same time suppressing dissent 'for security reasons'. It allows them to sidestep the democratic process by maintaining a continuous state of emergency.

September 6, 2007

Nuclear Hypocrisy in the Middle East

Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand

By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON
Former CIA Analysts

The internet is loaded these days with reports of the inevitability of a U.S., or a U.S.-Israeli, attack on Iran. Some writers allege that the attack is imminent. Others, including the writers of this article, argue only that the attack will happen sometime before January 2009, when the Bush administration leaves office. Many of these stories have by now been picked up by the mainstream media. In fact, it is probably safe to say that today a majority of the traditionally cautious and so-called respectable foreign policy experts in the U.S. think it is at least possible that Bush will attack Iran before he leaves office.

...

Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis.

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.

How to Sell an Endless War

Buy Hard

The current Bush administration has sometimes been very frank about the need to sell the 'war on terror', and many of the elements used to sell that attack on Iraq--the intelligence dossiers, the unsourced revelations, the denigration of hard evidence, the cosying-up to prominent exiles--are now being used to sell an attack on Iran. With some 22 minutes out of every hour on US TV given over to advertising, the public is accustomed to being sold things on the promise of nirvana if they only succumb. If the Iraq debacle is anything to go by, the process can be extended--remarkably smoothly, in many ways--to selling (and buying) a war.

Andy Card, George W. Bush's chief of staff, said Congress had not been asked in August 2002 to authorise military force in Iraq because "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."

Beyond Euphemism

How to Read a National Intelligence Estimate

Much notice has attended the release of the unclassified version of the latest National Intelligence Estimate [NIE] titled "The Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland." It contains the rectified juices of all sixteen of our intelligence agencies.

The title of the NIE itself will be of interest to future generations of historians. It refers, not to terrorist threats to the United States, but to "the US Homeland." The word "homeland," which resonates sinisterly like das Vaterland in German or rodina in Russian, was virtually unused before 9/11, and despite its relentless repetition by the Bush administration (to include the name of a cabinet agency), it has thus far refused to lodge itself in colloquial American English. One can hardly imagine an American businessman at an airport bar in Tegucigalpa telling a compatriot, "I'm taking the 9:17 flight to the homeland." Indeed, while Vaterland or rodina have non-ideological colloquial roots and were expropriated by Hitler and Stalin, "homeland" is a purely ideological construct of Bush administration. The page-and-a-half "Key Judgments" section uses the word "homeland" nine times.

"All of the Problems Come from the Occupation"

Iraqis will be the Deciders

As Congress debates whether to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, George Bush is trying to buy time. He and Dick Cheney have no intention of ever pulling out of Iraq.

The motive for a permanent presence in Iraq has been obvious from day one. It's the oil. The oft-mentioned benchmark for Iraqi progress, touted by Bush and Congress alike, is the so-called Iraqi oil law. The new law would turn over control of most oil production and royalties to foreign oil companies. The Iraqi people are opposed to the oil law.

Media Silence About the Carnage in Iraq

Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month

A state-of-the-art research study published in October 12, 2006 issue of The Lancet (the most prestigious British medical journal) concluded that--as of a year ago--600,000 Iraqis had died violently due to the war in Iraq. That is, the Iraqi death rate for the first 39 months of the war was just about 15,000 per month.

The U.S. and British governments quickly dismissed these results as "methodologically flawed," even though the researchers used standard procedures for measuring mortality in war and disaster zones. (They visited a random set of homes and asked the residents if anyone in their household had died in the last few years, recording the details, and inspecting death certificates in the vast majority of cases.) The two belligerent governments offered no concrete reasons for rejecting the study's findings, and they ignored the fact that they had sponsored identical studies (conducted by some of the same researchers) in other disaster areas, including Darfur and Kosovo. The reasons for this rejection were, however, clear enough: the results were simply too devastating for the culpable governments to acknowledge. (Secretly the British government later admitted that it was "a tried and tested way to measuring mortality in conflict zones"; but it has never publicly admitted its validity).

MANCHESTER – Retired generals against the Iraq war are bringing their message to New Hampshire, the first primary state and home to vulnerable Republican U.S. Sen. John Sununu.

Former Maine U.S. Rep. Tom Andrews is the chairman of Win Without War. He said the group is focusing on New Hampshire to press the state's congressional delegation to stand up to President Bush on the war.

Fears that the governments of both the US and the UK are conspiring to break international safeguards preventing the return of prisoners held without charge or trial to their home countries--where they face a serious risk of torture and abuse--have gained prominence in the last few days. On Saturday, I wrote on these pages about the case of Abdul Rauf al-Qassim, a Libyan prisoner in Guantánamo who is struggling to prevent his enforced return to the country of his birth, and on Tuesday the Pentagon announced that two Tunisian prisoners in Guantánamo, cleared for release since last year, had been returned to Tunisia on Sunday. Zachary Katznelson, Senior Counsel at Reprieve, a London-based legal charity representing one of the Tunisians, Abdullah bin Omar, immediately denounced his client's enforced repatriation, stating that he was "cleared by the United States--found not to be a threat and not to have information about terrorism. But the US has not apologized and set him free after five years in Guantánamo. Instead, he has been shipped to Tunisia, where abuse and possibly torture await. What has happened to American justice? How are we any safer by sending cleared men back to notorious regimes in the dead of night?"

MEMORANDUM

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

SUBJECT: Countering Terrorism; How Not To Do It

Given the effort that many of us have put into suggestions for reform, how satisfying it would be, were we able to report that appropriate correctives have been introduced to make us safer. But the bottom line is that the PR bromide to the effect that we are "safer" is incorrect. We are not safer. What follows will help explain why.

Wrong-headed actions and ideas had already taken root before that Senate hearing on June 6, 2002. Post 9/11 dragnet-detentions of innocents, official tolerance of torture (including abuse of U.S. citizens like John Walker Lindh), and panic-boosting color codes, had already been spawned from the mother of all slogans-"The Global War on Terror"-rhetorically useful, substantively inane. GWOT was about to spawn much worse.

Is Bush Planning to Nuke Iran? If So, Say Goodbye to Democratic Outcomes

The Reign of the Tyrants is at Hand

The surprise decision by the Bush regime to replace General Peter Pace as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has been explained as a necessary step to avoid contentious confirmation hearings in the US Senate. Gen. Pace''s reappointment would have to be confirmed, and as the general has served as vice chairman and chairman of the Joint Chiefs for the past 6 years, the Republicans feared that hearings would give war critics an opportunity to focus, in Defense Secretary Gates words, "on the past, rather than the future."

This is a plausible explanation. Whether one takes it on face value depends on how much trust one still has in a regime that has consistently lied about everything for six years.

Let us suppose that the Bush-Cheney administration answers the neocons' prayer and does indeed bomb Iran sometime soon. The plan apparently involves more than the destruction of nuclear facilities, replicating Israel's attack on Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981. (That attack, by the way was condemned by the whole world, including a furious President Ronald Reagan). It includes an all-out assault on the Iranian political and religious leadership. Government buildings and officials' residences will be targeted, guaranteeing collateral damage.
Since Iran is a highly complex society, and its government widely unpopular, there may well be some local support for a "shock and awe" campaign. We know that the administration has cultivated ties with the Mujahadeen Khalq (even though they remain on the State Department's terrorist list) and the Pakistan-based Balochi separatist group Jundallah (the Party of God). These among other organizations will get their marching orders amid the "creative chaos" produced by the attack. There can be no large deployment of U.S. troops in Iran, unless they evacuate from Afghanistan and Iraq which is unlikely.

I doubt that administration plans for the construction of a post-attack Iranian polity are any more sophisticated than their plans for post-Taliban Afghanistan or occupied Iraq. Some have suggested that the neocons' goal is actually to plunge the Muslim Middle East into prolonged pandemonium, insuring that all foes of Israel are off-balance and terrorized by the might of Israel's protector for generations to come. "Neocons," writes Paul Craig Roberts, "have convinced themselves that nuking Iran will show the Muslim world that Muslims have no alternative to submitting to the will of the US government."

The war on Iraq won't be remembered for how it was waged so much as for how it was sold. It was a propaganda war, a war of perception management, where loaded phrases, such as "weapons of mass destruction" and "rogue state" were hurled like precision weapons at the target audience: us.

The Bush claque of neocon hawks viewed the Iraq war as a product and, just like a new pair of Nikes, it required a roll-out campaign to soften up the consumers.

Who do you believe about the killing of Afghan civilians? Do you believe official US military statements, brought to us by the people who fabricated the story about Jessica Lynch and lied contemptibly at the highest levels about the killing of Pat Tillman? Or do you believe the Afghans who investigated the bombing?

...

Why Did Bush Invade Iraq?
The Secret War

American soldiers have been fighting and dying in Iraq since 2003, and Americans do not know why.

What is the real agenda?

Dublin, Ireland

Ms. Pelosi, Speaker of the House, said after George signed the new weak as a newborn baby funding authorization bill: "Now, I think the president's policy will begin to unravel." Begin to unravel? How many more of our children will have to be killed and how much more of Iraq will have to be demolished before you all think enough unraveling has occurred? How many more crimes will BushCo be allowed to commit while their poll numbers are crumbling before you all gain the political "courage" to hold them accountable. If Iraq hasn't unraveled in Ms. Pelosi's mind, what will it take? With almost 700,000 Iraqis dead and four million refugees (which the US refuses to admit) how could it get worse? Well, it is getting worse and it can get much worse thanks to your complicity.

Rep. Jim McDermott rescues some history from the Memoryhole and puts Iraq into context: It's always been all about the oil.

Editor's note: After a week that saw Democrats cave to the White House in the worst possible way on Iraq, we thought this speech, offered on the House floor by Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wa., last Wednesday, was worth highlighting. In a brief, five-minute commentary, McDermott does something almost unheard of in Washington: He looks at an issue in its larger historical context instead of pretending it just sprung up overnight like mushrooms after a rainfall.

The Washington, DC, think-tank, The American Enterprise Institute, camouflages its purpose with its name. There is nothing American about AEI, and the organization's enterprise is fomenting war in the Middle East against Israel's enemies. Its real name should be The Likud Center for Middle East War.

Now that the US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have failed, the AEI warmongers are conspiring with Vice President Cheney to foment war with Iran.

Time for a Summer of Action

The Democrats Cave to Bush

In reaction to President Bush's veto the Democrats are reportedly caving in to give him a Iraq War funding without any obligation to end the war. They are making Bush "the decider" once again. It seems that rather than having a lame duck president we have a lame Congress. The only thing that will end the war is constant, organized and focused pressure from Americans who oppose the war....

We want peace advocates to come and join us not only in traditional lobbying but in "extraordinary lobbying." The "Summer of Action" will build on the successful efforts of activists in DC and around the country who have been engaging in "extraordinary lobbying" by occupying offices, protesting in the Halls of Congress and sending a consistent message to end the war. It will build on the Occupation Project, Voices for Creative Non-Violence, and the Declaration of Peace. Already, key anti-war groups are supporting this effort including United For Peace and Justice and Voters For Peace.

Bring people from your local peace group and plan an office occupation or a demonstration inside one of the congressional office buildings as part of the "Summer of Action." Or, come alone and join our ongoing efforts to pressure Congress. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of people killed by terrorism around the world surged by 40 percent to more than 20,000 last year largely because of greater violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, a U.S. report said on Monday.

Global terrorism fatalities rose to 20,498 in 2006 from 14,618 in 2005 with the vast majority in Iraq, according to the U.S. State Department's annual "Country Reports on Terrorism" publication.

Almost Every Aspect of Iraqi Life has Gotten Worse in the Last Four Years

Operation Deepening Nightmare

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Four years ago, in the middle of the US invasion, I drove safely from Arbil in northern Iraq to Baghdad. There were heaps of discarded weapons beside the road, and long lines of former Iraqi soldiers walking home. Signs of battle were few, aside from the hulks of burned-out tanks, but they all seemed to have been hit by US aircraft after their crews had fled.

Tony Blair and George Bush still occasionally imply that the picture of Iraq as a war-torn hell is an exaggeration by the media. They suggest, though not as forcibly as they did a couple of years ago, that parts of the country are relatively peaceful. Nothing could be more untrue.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - What's good for Halliburton shareholders, may not be good for the U.S. economy and the dollar.

On Sunday, Halliburton Co., currently the largest military contractor in Iraq, said it will move its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai. The shift is part of a strategic plan to focus on expanding relations with state-owned oil companies, the company said.

Some market strategists say, while the move would bring substantial benefits to Halliburton shareholders, it may prove hurtful for the U.S. economy and the dollar in the long term.

Bush's Theater of the Absurd: A Missile Defense System That Doesn't Work for Missiles That May Not Exist

It has an appealing symmetry. George Bush is deploying a missile defense system that may or may not work to defend against nuclear weapons that might be fired from Iranian secret weapons sites that may or may not exist. This strategy is of a piece with the rest of George Bush's foreign policy strategies that have produced such successes as, for example, Iraq.

In February it was disclosed that Mr. Bush plans to plant a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic...

*Please forward widely to friends, family, and e-mail lists*

The next step for the growing anti-war movement will be the March on the Pentagon, on Saturday March 17. Timed to coincide with the 4th anniversary of the start of the criminal invasion of Iraq, the massive March on the Pentagon will be followed by local actions on March 19 and 20th. The actual anniversary of the start of the war is March 19 & 20.

The anti-war movement is gaining tremendous momentum. All over the country new people are entering the ranks of the movement for the first time. Many are participating in demonstrations for the first time.

The March on the Pentagon has already attracted more than 1,500 endorsers including prominent individuals and national and grassroots organizations.

Students on college campuses and in high schools will be attending in large numbers.

There will be a large turnout from the Muslim and Arab American community, which is organizing throughout the country.

The biggest single group of new volunteers and activists are soldiers and marines who have returned from Iraq. Their family members and other veterans are also organizing to March on the Pentagon. The opening rally will assemble at the Vietnam Memorial (Constitution Gardens) at noon.

more...

Why I'm marching on the Pentagon

"I'll be marching March 17th, with my wife, with friends, to express our solidarity with all those people, all over the country, who demand that the United States bring our troops back from Iraq."
- Howard Zinn, Author A People's History of the United States

As New Congress Convenes, United for Peace and Justice to Press Congress to Implement Voters' Mandate for Peace

NEW YORK - December 14 - Today United for Peace and Justice announced plans to march for an end to the occupation of Iraq in Washington, D.C.

Leslie Cagan, National Coordinator of UFPJ, said, "On Election Day the voters delivered a dramatic, unmistakable mandate for peace. Now it's time for action. As the new Congress gets underway, on Saturday, January 27, we will converge from all around the country in Washington, D.C., to send a strong, clear message to Congress and the Bush Administration: The People Have Spoken, Now Congress Must Act. End the War in Iraq - Bring the Troops Home Now!"

It takes courage to say that you will not fight -- especially if you are a soldier. The courage demonstrated by war resisters over the last four years has been a critical part of efforts to end the war in Iraq. As more soldiers step forward for peace, the peace movement must step forward to support them.

Here is a list of war resisters whose cases are still pending (please visit their websites for the latest information and details on how you can help):

A titanic power struggle is being waged within the policy elite or power elite, or more simply the U.S. ruling class. The clash is taking place over the war on Iraq, U.S. policy toward Israel--and ultimately over the best way to run the U.S. empire. The war on Iraq is shaping up as such a disaster for the empire that it can no longer be tolerated by our rulers in its present form. The struggle is as plain as the nose on your face; nevertheless it draws little comment. One reason is that we are taught to view matters political through the prism of Democrat versus Republican, whereas this struggle among our rulers cuts across party lines. On the "Left," few so much as allude to this internecine war, much less use it to good effect. This is apparently due to a very rigid, very dogmatic view of how empires function, indeed how they "must" function, and due to a fear of being labeled anti-semitic and thus running afoul of the Israeli Lobby. In many cases this silence reflects an actual sympathy among "liberals" for neocon foreign policy, either out of a latter day do-gooder version of the White Man's Burden, or an attachment to Israel.

This struggle is in no way hidden and definitely not a secret conspiracy. It is out in the open, as it must be, since it is in great part a battle for the hearts and minds of the American public. This fact makes the absence of commentary about it all the more chilling...

Early on in the movement to oppose Bush's wars of aggression, Ramsey Clark and folks associated with the Workers' World Party advocated that the president be impeached. I recall attending antiwar demonstrations where people would go around collecting signatures on impeachment petitions, and thinking to myself:

(1) "No way this is feasible, given Bush's popularity ratings and growing fascist trends," and

(2) "Can't we do better in any case than channel our energies into some legal procedure that will---even if it were to succeed---leave the whole imperialist war machine intact?"

That was before the tide of U.S. public opinion turned, due primarily to the efforts of the people of an invaded country to resist that imperialist war machine. Had the project been the "cakewalk" predicted by prominent neocon Ken Adelman, Bush and his allies in the corporate media might have continued to persuade the masses that the invasion of Iraq was part of a rational, justifiable, heroic and even holy "war on terrorism."

Investigation after investigation convinces all with eyes to see and ears to hear that the war on Iraq is wrong. The tight grip of the corporate media on the American mind would not have allowed the decisive shift of opinion about the war had it not been for the success of the "insurgents" in making life hell for the invaders.

The complex and divided resistance movement, rather than antiwar activists in the American streets, has forced Americans to conclude that Bush did something profoundly immoral in attacking Iraq. The revelation (or what was for some a revelation) that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction and no appreciable al-Qaeda ties has helped millions to figure out that the Iraq War is based on calculated lies.

Congress should levy a 'Victory Over Terror' tax on the superrich which would expire once our troops are safely home.

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more," cries George W. Bush, the downmarket, twangy version of Shakespeare's Henry V. But that king, on stage and off, was a war leader who actually fought in the battles he asked other men to die in. Regardless, the President is moving to commit more of our soldiers and more of our money to try one more time to win the war in Iraq.

The President has not been talking about how Operation New Way Forward is to be paid for. Some of it will be paid for in our young people's lives, of course, but as for the money... Congress is to appropriate it, the Treasury Department is to borrow it from China and Mr. Bush will spend it.

WASHINGTON Jan 12, 2007 (AP)— The Pentagon has abandoned its limit on the time a citizen-soldier can be required to serve on active duty, officials said Thursday, a major change that reflects an Army stretched thin by longer-than-expected combat in Iraq.

The day after President Bush announced his plan for a deeper U.S. military commitment in Iraq, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the change in reserve policy would have been made anyway because active-duty troops already were getting too little time between their combat tours.

By US Labor Against the War

The Democratic Party is soliciting messages of congratulations to House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid. The website includes a space for 'personal' messages.

This provides an opportunity to send a message. The voters mandate could not have been more clear:

Get all of our forces out of Iraq now!

The Surge Pushers

The War and the New York Times

The war in Iraq, one of the most disastrous military enterprises in the history of the Republic, has the New York Times' fingerprints all over it. The role the newspaper played in fomenting the 2003 attack is now one of the best known sagas in journalistic history, as embodied in the reports of Judy Miller, working in collusion with Iraqi exiles and US spooks to concoct Saddam's imaginary arsenal of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

But so fixated have many Times critics been on the WMD/ Miller saga, that they have failed to notice that across the past sixth months the Times has been waging an equally disingenuous campaign to escalate American troop levels in this doomed enterprises.

The prime journalistic promoter of the escalation - it is time to retire the adroitly chosen word "surge" -- now being proposed by the White House is Michael Gordon, the Times' military correspondent, a man of fabled arrogance and self esteem.

Gordon's has been the mouthpiece for the faction -led by Gen. David H. Petraeus -- inside the U.S. military in Iraq that has been promoting the escalation. As Gordon himself triumphantly announced in the New York Times this weekend, Gen. Petraeus has been picked by Bush to lead the open-ended escalation of the war that Petraeus has long campaigned for.

Throughout his time in Iraq Gen. Petraeus himself has been very adroit at fostering good relations with carefully selected reporters, like Gordon. That strategy has been vindicated by the steady stream of stories in the Times--not just by Gordon--reflecting his views.

Once again the barbarians have succeeded in professing human dignity while ignoring human life's sanctity. My thoughts are filled with disgust as the so called civilized world revels in the hanging of Saddam Hussein yesterday.

Don't mistake my total distaste of the execution of Hussein for any alliance or sympathy for the tyrant killer. I just tire of the "morally superior" position of this nation (U.S.) when it comes to the administration's posturing around the capture, trial and execution of the man our government installed in the first place.

We did the same thing with Noriega in Panama and Diem in Vietnam. This names only a couple of many tyrants our nation has been responsible for bringing to power and maintaining in power at the expense of their own citizens.

Let's not forget the now infamous photo of Donald Rumsfeld warmly greeting Saddam back in the 1980's when it was ever so convenient to have a dictator in charge of a country with the second largest oil reserve in the world.

Let's not forget how we encouraged an uprising against Saddam after Gulf War I and then abandoned the rebels to be killed and tortured by his ruthless police.

Let's not forget when sanctions were in place, blocking even humanitarian aid such as medical supplies and water purification, Dick Cheney went around the rules that made it a crime to provide any supplies. By using the European branch of Halliburton (he was CEO at the time) Cheney helped supply Saddam with pipe for the oil fields. No doubt the costs were marked up and Halliburton made a tidy profit.

Meanwhile, let's not forget the hundreds of thousands of children who died as result of sanctions. The deaths could have been easily prevented had medical supplies and water treatment supplies been allowed.

Obviously the American government put more value on oil than the lives of a million Iraqi children. When people in groups like Voices in the Wilderness requested permission to enter Iraq to bring supplies they were denied. When Madeline Albright was informed of the dying children she dismissed it as the cost that had to be paid.

When Kathy Kelly of Voices went to Iraq independently the American government made threats of imprisoning her and handing out large monetary fines. Dick Cheney as Vice President of the United States is exempt from prosecution for his ventures into Iraq with Halliburton-Europe.

Let's also not forget the furor leading up to the war in Iraq about weapons of mass destruction. The American people were bombarded with the danger Saddam presented because of his WMD. As proof of this danger the Bush administration constantly pointed out Saddam gassed the Kurds in Northern Iraq.

What George W. Bush didn't tell the American people was how Saddam came to have any WMD's. Bush and his cronies failed to tell the American people what the American government knew of Saddam gassing the Kurds. They failed to admit the government knew in advance of the gassing and failed to intervene.

Time after time the government of the United States failed to intervene against the ruthless actions of Saddam. Saddam remained in power as long as he did because the American government viewed him as a stable opponent of the Iranian government that we feared was gaining too much influence in the oil rich Middle East.

US President George W Bush intends to reveal a new Iraq strategy within days, the BBC has learnt.

The speech will reveal a plan to send more US troops to Iraq to focus on ways of bringing greater security, rather than training Iraqi forces.

The move comes with figures from Iraqi ministries suggesting that deaths among civilians are at record highs.

The US president arrived back in Washington on Monday after a week-long holiday at his ranch in Texas.

The BBC has been told by a senior administration source that the speech setting out changes in Mr Bush's Iraq policy is likely to come in the middle of next week.

Poynter's Al Tompkins provides a range of resources that will help you make sense of -- and cover -- Saddam Hussein's execution.

What was he convicted of?

Saddam Hussein was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, in the deaths of 148 Shiite Muslims in the town of Dujail, Iraq.

Who else was executed with him?

Barzan Hassan and Awad Bandar were sentenced to die as well, but CNN reported Friday night that they were not hanged with Hussein and would be executed later. Read CNN's full story on the trial here.

What was wrong with the trial?

Human Rights Watch lists many problems, not one of which stopped the execution.

How many people did Saddam's regime kill?

A 2003 report from the White House Web site said:

Under Saddam's regime many hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of his actions -- the vast majority of them Muslims.

According to a 2001 Amnesty International report, "victims of torture in Iraq are subjected to a wide range of forms of torture, including the gouging out of eyes, severe beatings and electric shocks ... some victims have died as a result and many have been left with permanent physical and psychological damage."

Saddam has had approximately 40 of his own relatives murdered.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 — President Bush began 2006 assuring the country that he had a "strategy for victory in Iraq." He ended the year closeted with his war cabinet on his ranch trying to devise a new strategy, because the existing one had collapsed.

The original plan, championed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Baghdad, and backed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, called for turning over responsibility for security to the Iraqis, shrinking the number of American bases and beginning the gradual withdrawal of American troops. But the plan collided with Iraq's ferocious unraveling, which took most of Mr. Bush's war council by surprise.

In interviews in Washington and Baghdad, senior officials said the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department had also failed to take seriously warnings, including some from its own ambassador in Baghdad, that sectarian violence could rip the country apart and turn Mr. Bush's promise to "clear, hold and build" Iraqi neighborhoods and towns into an empty slogan.

This left the president and his advisers constantly lagging a step or two behind events on the ground.

Even in GOP, Few Back the President

Sen. John McCain, leading a blue-ribbon congressional delegation to Baghdad before Christmas, collected evidence that a "surge" of more U.S. troops is needed in Iraq. But not all his colleagues who accompanied him were convinced. What's more, he will find himself among a dwindling minority inside the Senate Republican caucus when Congress reconvenes this week.

President Bush and McCain, the front-runner for the party's 2008 presidential nomination, will have trouble finding support from more than 12 of the 49 Republican senators when pressing for a surge of 30,000 troops. "It's Alice in Wonderland," Sen. Chuck Hagel, second-ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, told me in describing the proposal. "I'm absolutely opposed to sending any more troops to Iraq. It is folly."

What to do about Iraq poses not only a national policy crisis but profound political problems for the Republican Party. Disenchantment with George W. Bush within the GOP runs deep. Republican leaders around the country, anticipating that the 2006 election disaster would prompt an orderly disengagement from Iraq, are shocked that the president now appears ready to add troops.

GOP Lawmakers Divided About 'Surge' in Troops

CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 31 -- Republican lawmakers appear uneasy about -- and in some cases outright dismissive of -- the idea of sending many more troops to Iraq, as President Bush contemplates such a "surge" as part of his new strategy for stabilizing the country.

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), a leading GOP presidential contender for 2008, has been aggressively promoting a plan to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq, and the idea has been gaining traction at the White House as a way to improve security in Baghdad.

But the proposition generates far less enthusiasm among rank-and-file Republicans, many of whom must face the voters again in 2008, presenting a potential obstacle for Bush as he hones the plan, according to lawmakers, aides and congressional analysts.

Today is the first day of the Eid al adha, or Feast of Sacrifice. Celebrated by Muslims worldwide, it's a major holiday like Christmas or Hanukkah, commemorating the willingness of the Prophet Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael to God. In Islam, God stopped Abraham just before he killed Ishmael by giving him a lamb to sacrifice instead of his son. Muslims who can afford to do so sacrifice domestic animals, usually sheep, as a symbol of Abraham's sacrifice. Today, thousands of sacrifices will be made across the Muslim world to celebrate Eid.

Jews and Christians also believe that God spared Abraham from sacrificing his son, Isaac. Muslims believe that they are descended from Ishmael, and Jews believe they are descended from Isaac.

The Eid al ahda also marks the end of the Hajj - the pilgrimage to Mecca made by millions of Muslims each year. Every Muslim who can afford to do so is obligated to make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their life. After several days of rituals in the towns of Mecca and Mina, and a visit to Mount Arafat, the Feast of Sacrifice arrives. Traditionally, the pilgrim killed the animal himself, or at least oversaw the killing. These days, an animal may be killed in the pilgrim's name without the pilgrim being physically present.

Today, all Muslims are thinking about the Feast of Sacrifice. Astonishingly, the first sacrificial lamb was none other than Saddam Hussein, the ousted President of Iraq.

"Desert Crossing" 1999 Assumed
400,000 Troops and Still a Mess

In late April 1999, the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), led by Marine General Anthony Zinni (ret.), conducted a series of war games known as Desert Crossing in order to assess potential outcomes of an invasion of Iraq aimed at unseating Saddam Hussein. The documents posted here today covered the initial pre-war game planning phase from April-May 1999 through the detailed after-action reporting of June and July 1999.

The Desert Crossing war games, which amounted to a feasibility study for part of the main war plan for Iraq -- OPLAN 1003-98 -- tested "worst case" and "most likely" scenarios of a post-war, post-Saddam, Iraq. The After Action Report presented its recommendations for further planning regarding regime change in Iraq and was an interagency production assisted by the departments of defense and state, as well as the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency, among others.

The results of Desert Crossing, however, drew pessimistic conclusions regarding the immediate possible outcomes of such action. Some of these conclusions are interestingly similar to the events which actually occurred after Saddam was overthrown. (Note 1) The report forewarned that regime change may cause regional instability by opening the doors to "rival forces bidding for power" which, in turn, could cause societal "fragmentation along religious and/or ethnic lines" and antagonize "aggressive neighbors." Further, the report illuminated worries that secure borders and a restoration of civil order may not be enough to stabilize Iraq if the replacement government were perceived as weak, subservient to outside powers, or out of touch with other regional governments. An exit strategy, the report said, would also be complicated by differing visions for a post-Saddam Iraq among those involved in the conflict.

Into the Aybyss

http://www.cjr.org/iraq/

In August 2004, CJR asked Farnaz Fassihi of The Wall Street Journal to keep a diary of her time in Iraq. Before we could print her piece, we were scooped, inadvertently, by Fassihi herself. She often sent e-mails to friends, and her September 2004 letter reflected her mood at the time: grim. "Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest," she began, and then later, "The genie of terrorism, chaos, and mayhem has been unleashed . . . as a result of American mistakes." Somebody in the chain put the letter on the Internet, and it went around the world. Among fellow journalists the reaction was swift: some worried that an objective reporter had revealed so much; others felt she made it seem as if no reporting could be accomplished in Iraq; still others thought the e-mail was dead on. Meanwhile, something about the personal nature of the note communicated the reality, more forcefully than yards of standard prose, of what Iraqis call "the situation." Here at CJR we wanted more, and for our forty-fifth anniversary issue we interviewed Fassihi and forty-six other journalists who have covered the war in Iraq. Out of their anecdotes and insights we constructed an oral history — the first of its kind. These people are covering the most significant story of our time and doing it under circumstances that nearly defy belief. They have lived and studied "the situation" closely, some of them for four years or more. This is their story.

Chapter 10: The Continuing Story
http://www.cjr.org/iraq/chapt10.htm

Chris Hondros
Getty Images

I think a lot of journalists want every war to be like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: a place where you can stay in a nice hotel, get up in the morning, drive in your car, see a battle, cover it, see all these dramatic things, and then drive back just in time to send your pictures and have a nice dinner at the American Colony [Hotel], and smoke and drink wine, and tell war stories, and what happened that day, and booze it up into the night, and do everything all over again the next day. That's nice; I've covered stuff there, too, but the world isn't conformed to how journalists should cover — the world is as it is and we as journalists go and do it. Sometimes things are easy and sometimes things are incredibly hard.

Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder (McClatchy)

Most of western Iraq — you just can't function out there as a western reporter. The country has gotten smaller and smaller. I miss Iraq, I do. I live in Baghdad, but I miss the country.

Farnaz Fassihi
The Wall Street Journal

I can't imagine going to Iraq for the first time now and writing it. Truly you do not know the country. You would be writing blindly, with no tangible sense of the place or the people. So I think that as we've sort of gotten tired and cycled out, it's going to be interesting to see how that's going to play out.

Christopher Allbritton
Freelance writer

I hope I contributed to the world's understanding of what's happening in Iraq. I would like to avoid going back to Iraq. I'm not personally interested in the story anymore. Burned out. With too few breaks. Most of the world is waiting for this train wreck to run its course. Anyone can see it's going from bad to worse to truly terrible.

1. Why did the U.S. invade Iraq? (And why did important sectors of the political elite, like Scowcroft, oppose doing so?) What are the U.S.motives for staying?

The official reason was what Bush, Powell, and others called "the single question": will Saddam end his development of Weapons of Mass Destruction? The official Presidential Directive states the primary goal as to: "Free Iraq in order to eliminate Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, their means of delivery and associated programs, to prevent Iraq from breaking out of containment and becoming a more dangerous threat to the region and beyond."

...

2. What, from the elite perspective, would be a major victory in Iraq, what would be modest but still sufficient success, and what would constitute a loss? More, for completeness, how much does democracy in Iraq, democracy in the U.S., the well being of people in Iraq, or the well being of people in the U.S. - or even of our soldiers - enter into the motivations of U.S. policy?

A major victory would be establishing an obedient client state, as elsewhere. A modest success would be preventing a degree of sovereignty that might allow Iraq to pursue the rather natural course I just described. As for democracy, even the most dedicated scholar/advocates of "democracy promotion" recognize that there is a "strong line of continuity" in US efforts to promote democracy going back as far as you like and reaching the present: democracy is supported if and only if it conforms to strategic and economic objectives, so that all presidents are "schizophrenic," a strange puzzle (Thomas Carothers). That is so obvious that it takes really impressive discipline to miss it. It is a remarkable feature of US (in fact Western) intellectual culture that each well-indoctrinated mind can simultaneously lavish praise on our awesome dedication to democracy while at the same moment demonstrating utter contempt and hatred for democracy.

...

Robert Gates' report to the White House on his discussions in Iraq this past week is likely to provide the missing ingredient for the troop ''surge'' into Iraq favored by the ''decider'' team of Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush.

When the understandable misgivings voiced by top U.S. military officials made it obvious that the surge cart had been put before the mission-objective horse, the president was forced to concede, as he did at his press conference on Wednesday, ``There's got to be a specific mission that can be accomplished with the addition of more troops, before I agree on that strategy.''

The president had led off the press conference by heightening expectations for the Gates visit to Iraq, noting that ''Secretary Gates is going to be an important voice in the Iraq strategy review that's under way.'' No doubt Gates was given the job of hammering out a ''specific mission'' with U.S. generals and Iraqi leaders, and he is past master at sensing and delivering on his bosses' wishes.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's aides have given Western reporters an outline of what the ''specific mission'' may look like. It is likely to be cast as implementation of Maliki's ''new vision,'' under which U.S. troops would target primarily Sunni insurgents in outer Baghdad neighborhoods, while Iraqi forces would battle for control of inner Baghdad. A prescription for bloodbath, it has the advantage, from the White House perspective, of preventing the Iraqi capital from total disintegration until Bush and Cheney are out of office.

...this resolution puts down a marker - and that marker applies not only to Iran.

The third - and perhaps most hopeful - is that the United States conducted itself as just another member of the Security Council rather than a country that, alone, could dictate the outcome.

Basra City Council has withdrawn co-operation from UK forces in southern Iraq after the police's serious crimes unit was disbanded by troops.

More than 1,000 troops helped to break-up the unit, which has been blamed for robberies and death squads.

Major Charlie Burbridge said local politics was "complicated" and targeting the unit had been justified.

Mohammed al Abadi, head of the city's council, said the raid was provocative and illegal.

During the operation, troops stormed the unit's headquarters and took charge of 127 prisoners whom they feared might be killed.

They demolished the Jamiat police station, which was the Serious Crimes Unit's base in Basra.

Soldiers from 19 Light Brigade supported by Iraqi forces surrounded the police station before the Royal Engineers used a combat tractor to breach the walls.

Then, warrior vehicles from Staffordshire Regiments entered the compound and troops stormed the buildings.

Even realism has an obligation to be realistic. — George Packer.

The only piece of political journalism ever to make me cry was Ron Suskind's article, Without a Doubt, published in the New York Times Magazine shortly before the 2004 election. It was in that article that the famous passage appeared quoting a senior administration official on the myopia of the "reality-based community" when it came to understanding the government of George W. Bush.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about that article because the "realist" school in foreign policy is thought to be back in charge. The release of the Iraq Study Group's report on December 6th and the re-emergence of James Baker, famous for being pragmatist, a realist, and a fixer, were the triggers for this observation. The Guardian's report was typical: "This is a return to the realist policy of Mr. Bush's father."

Dan Froomkin said the report and reactions to it "marked a restoration of reality in Washington."

Realist, a classic term in foreign policy debates, and reality-based, which is not a classic term but more of an instant classic, are quite different ideas. We shouldn't fuzz them up. The press is capable of doing that—fuzzing things up—because it never came to terms with what Suskind reported in 2004. Of course, neither did the political system. Or the Republican party, or its sensible wing— the elders, the responsible people.

I think they all regret it now. But they're happy with this month's theme, "realists are back." It sounds almost… normal.

Mark Dearden chooses his words with extreme precision. And not just with the deliberateness of a 36-year-old with a BA from Brigham Young, an MA in public health from Tulane and an MD from George Washington University. Dearden is also an active-duty lieutenant commander in the Navy who joined in 1997 and is still considering the possibility of a lifetime military career. "So this was a very difficult decision for me to come to," he says in a quiet, thoughtful voice. "I don't take this decision lightly.

Nor should he. Just a few weeks ago Dearden took the dramatic step of signing a petition to Congress--what's being called by its organizers an Appeal for Redress--opposing the war in Iraq and calling for the withdrawal of US troops. When the Appeal is delivered to Capitol Hill in mid-January, all the names of its almost 1,000 uniformed endorsers will be seen by members of Congress, if they care to look. But with his Nation interview, Dearden is now going public. And while the military cannot take reprisals against those who have supported the Appeal, many of the signers agree that there are an infinite number of ways they can be punished, including internal evaluations, denial of promotions and harsh assignments or postings. "I'm expressing a right of people in the military to contact their elected representatives, and I have done nothing illegal or disrespectful," says Dearden, now an anesthesiology resident at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego. After two tours in Iraq attached to a Marine battalion, including participation in the initial 2003 invasion, Dearden says that signing the Appeal gave him "closure" on what he describes as very tough deployments. "It gave me peace," he says.

Dearden has indeed joined the most significant movement of organized and dissident GIs seen in America since 1969, when 1,366 active-duty service members signed a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for an end to the Vietnam War. The Appeal for Redress, surfacing only in late October, has taken anti-Iraq War sentiment that's been simmering within the ranks and surfaced it as a mainstream plea backed by the enormous moral authority of active-duty personnel. It's an undeniable barometer of rising military dissent and provides a strong argument that the best way to support the troops is to recognize their demand to be withdrawn from Iraq.

George Bush says he wants to increase the size of the US military - currently the second largest in the world - to allow America to take on a "long struggle against radicals and extremists".

Speaking at an end-of-year press conference, Mr Bush said he was "inclined to believe" a permanent increase in the size of US forces was necessary. Previously he indicated he wished to boost the Army and Marine Corps.

On the option of sending more troops to Iraq in the short term, he said: "I haven't made up my mind yet about more troops. We're looking at all options, and one of those options, of course, is increasing more troops, but in order to do so there must be a specific mission that can be accomplished."

His comments came as the new US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, met US commanders in Iraq and discussed the possibility of extra troops.

With polls showing that only a third of Americans now support the war and with Republicans still licking their wounds from the midterm election defeat, Mr Bush is under pressure to announce a new strategy for a war that has cost the lives of almost 3,000 US troops, 126 British soldiers and perhaps more than 655,000 Iraqis. He is due to announce plans early in the new year.

The Democratic Party and its feckless leaders in Congress are about to fall into a trap. The trap is being sprung by President Bush and his too clever brain trust, but the sad fact is that it was actually laid by the Democrats themselves.

Taking over the Congress on a wave of popular revulsion at the twin catastrophes in Iraq and Afghanistan, Democrats could have issued immediate calls for an end to those wars, a return of the troops, and investigations into the criminal causes of those costly fiascos. They could have initiated efforts to halt funding for further war and foreign occupation. Of course, taking such stands and actions would have opened them to charges of being "soft on terror," but the public clearly isn't buying that crap any more. With a little courage and leadership they could have handled it, and come out winners.

Instead, they took what they thought was the easy road, condemning not the criminal policies themselves, but only the administration's handling of the wars. This led some to call not for an end to the wars, but for more troops.

Now, Bush has called their bluff by proposing just that: more troops for Iraq (the so-called "surge" option), and a major expansion of the army over the longer term--the better to allow the president to invade other countries even as the nation is already mired in two losing wars.

And what are the Democrats in Congress going to do?

Tonight on 60 Minutes, Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA's Europe division, revealed that in the fall of 2002, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others were told by CIA Director George Tenet that Iraq's foreign minister -- who agreed to act as a spy for the United States -- had reported that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction program.

BRADLEY: According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high level meeting at the White House.

DRUMHELLER: The President, the Vice President, Dr. Rice…

BRADLEY: And at that meeting…?

DRUMHELLER: They were enthusiastic because they said they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis.

BRADLEY: And what did this high level source tell you?

DRUMHELLER: He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program.

BRADLEY: So, in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authority from a source within Saddam's inner circle that he didn't have an active program for weapons of mass destruction?

DRUMHELLER: Yes.

BRADLEY: There's no doubt in your mind about that?

DRUMHELLER: No doubt in my mind at all.

BRADLEY: It directly contradicts, though, what the President and his staff were telling us.

DRUMHELLER: The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.

Sen. Harry Reid
12.19.2006

Frankly, I don't believe that more troops is the answer for Iraq. It's a civil war and America should not be policing a Sunni-Shia conflict. In addition, we don't have the additional forces to put in there. We obviously want to support what commanders in the field say they need, but apparently even the Joint Chiefs do not support increased combat forces for Baghdad. My position on Iraq is simple:

1. I believe we should start redeploying troops in 4 to 6 months (The Levin-Reed Plan) and complete the withdrawal of combat forces by the first quarter of 2008. (As laid out by the Iraq Study Group)

2. The President must understand that there can only be a political solution in Iraq, and he must end our nation's open-ended military commitment to that country.

3. These priorities need to be coupled with a renewed diplomatic effort and regional strategy.

Iraq chaos 'will not be solved by military force'

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 20 December 2006

A diplomatic effort involving all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council is the only way to stop Iraq falling apart in a religious, Sunni-Shia conflict that could spark a regional conflagration, an influential non-governmental organisation warned yesterday.

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group's (ICG) findings will make even more grim reading for the White House than this month's report from the American Iraq Study Group, as President George Bush struggles to come up with a strategy change.

Iraq, says the ICG's report, faces "complete disintegration into failed-state chaos" and the solution does not lie in the transfer of responsibility to the fragile government of Nouri al-Maliki, as envisaged by the Bush administration and even by the study group led by the former secretary of state James Baker and the former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton.

A wind of change blows from Tehran

Published: 19 December 2006

Preliminary results in Iran's elections point to a defeat, if not a rout, for allies of the country's hard-line conservative president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As counting progressed last night, the chief winners looked likely to be the country's moderate conservatives, with reformists next, and the hardline conservatives lagging some way behind. In a highly symbolic victory, the former president, Akbar Rafsanjani, was assured election to the Assembly of Experts, the powerful religious group responsible for guiding policy and electing the Supreme Leader.

Formally, of course, President Ahmadinejad and his government will be unaffected by these elections, however unwelcome the results. Voting was for the Assembly of Experts and local councils only. The president's main electoral base, moreover, is in the countryside, so later results may limit the extent of the hardliners' defeat. And the main beneficiaries are moderate conservatives, rather than pro-Western reformers.

On November 29, the Washington Post carried an op-ed by Nawaf Obaid, an advisor to the Saudi government. Despite the obligatory "the opinions expressed are his own", and a press release denying government involvement, the piece clearly carries an important message from Saudi King Abdullah to President Bush, Washington, and the American people.

"Stepping Into Iraq" starts by reminding President Bush that in February 2003 the Saudi Foreign Minister had warned him that if the US removed Saddam Hussein by force he would only be solving one problem by creating five more.

Obaid goes on to point out that had the President followed the Foreign Minister's advice, Iraq would not now be facing "full blown civil war and disintegration."

The thrust of the message, however, is a thinly veiled warning to the US not to walk away from Iraq. Obaid quotes the Saudi Ambassador who said last month: "Since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited." And Obaid adds, "If it does, one of the first consequences will be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis."

In this video clip, CNN interviews Cyrus Kar, an Iranian-American filmmaker, who is suing U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for wrongful imprisonment and the violation of his Constitutional rights.

In Iraq to film a historical documentary, Kar was charged with being a terrorist and placed in the notorious prison at Abu Ghraib. He was held for 55 days, most of them in solitary confinement. After 49 days, he was finally given a hearing and eventually freed.

Rumsfeld has filed motions to have the suit dismissed. A hearing in January will determine if Kar's lawsuit can go forward.

Syria and Iran - two of the most vilified nations in the Bush administration's political atlas - could hold the key to saving American plans in their neighbour Iraq.

Washington may need the two regional allies to help stabilise Iraq in order to pull its own troops back from an increasingly unpopular commitment there.

But given its fraught relations with Tehran and Damascus, Washington is only likely to secure active Iranian and Syrian co-operation by paying a high price diplomatically from two countries known for their hard bargaining.

Baghdad locale, slated to be completed in 2007, to be largest of its kind

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The fortress-like compound rising beside the Tigris River here will be the largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq's turbulent future.

The new U.S. Embassy also seems as cloaked in secrecy as the ministate in Rome.

"We can't talk about it. Security reasons," Roberta Rossi, a spokeswoman at the current embassy, said when asked for information about the project.

A British tabloid even told readers the location was being kept secret — news that would surprise Baghdadis who for months have watched the forest of construction cranes at work across the winding Tigris,...

Starve the Iraq War Beast

To prohibit the use of funds to deploy United States Armed Forces to Iraq.
Bring the troops home and stop throwing money into the Iraq quagmire.

The outgoing United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has told the BBC that the situation in Iraq has become "much worse" than a civil war.

Mr Annan, who leaves office after 10 years on 31 December, said life for the average Iraqi was now worse than under the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Expressing his sadness for being unable to prevent the war, he urged regional and international powers to help Iraq.

But Mr Annan urged his successor, South Korean Ban Ki-moon, to "do it his way".

Asked by the BBC's Lyse Doucet whether the situation in Iraq could now be classified as a civil war, Mr Annan pointed to the level of "killing and bitterness" and the way forces in Iraq are now ranged against each other.

"A few years ago, when we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war. This is much worse.

Tens of millions of Americans want President George W. Bush to be impeached for the lies and deceit he used to launch an illegal war and for violating his oath of office to uphold the US Constitution.

Millions of other Americans want Bush turned over to the war crimes tribunal at the Hague. The true fate that awaits Bush is psychiatric incarceration.

The president of the United States is so deep into denial that he is no longer among the sane.

Video

...on CBS's Face the Nation, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said it was "surprising" that "the one thing [Donald Rumsfeld's memo] doesn't raise as a possibility is to increase the number of our troops." Lieberman claimed the failure to send more Americans "may well be a critical part of the problems that we've been having lately.

Lawyers for Saddam Hussein have lodged an appeal against the former Iraqi president's death sentence for crimes against humanity, court officials say.
The appeal was lodged just two days before the expiry of a deadline and a month after the sentence was imposed.

A panel of nine judges will review the verdict, which has been criticised by human rights groups as flawed.

Two days before he resigned as defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld submitted a classified memo to the White House that acknowledged that the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq was not working and called for a major course correction.

Nor did Mr. Rumsfeld seem confident that the administration would readily develop an effective alternative. To limit the political fallout from shifting course he suggested the administration consider a campaign to lower public expectations.

"Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis," he wrote. "This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not 'lose.' "

Poor George W. Bush was duped. Bush is actually the fall guy.

Bush is human and wanted to be respected and admired, and being the son of a president, with massive amounts of money at his disposal, as well as plenty of GOP bigwigs and a fine-oiled political machine at his disposal, he assumed he could just become the president of the United States and then everybody would admire and respect him. Everybody would like to be admired and respected, so this is understandable.

Given those temptations it is understandable that Bush grasped the opportunities before him, and used the capital at his disposal and employed the finely tuned political machine, and attained the presidency of the United States.

But now there are people calling for his impeachment, now people are calling him the worst president ever, they are calling him a liar, and accusing him of all kinds of terrible things. This isn't how Bush had thought it would work out. He doesn't feel admired and respected, he isn't as happy as he thought he would be. He is probably wondering, where did it all go wrong?

The people Bush employed belonged to a not-so-secret society with the not-so-secret goal of maintaining the United States' military dominance and extending the dominance. The not-so-secret organization clearly laid out its goal of preventing any other country from ever rivaling the United States' military might, and that "requires a globally preeminent military capability both today and in the future." The not-so-secret organization made it clear that securing control over the Middle East and its oil reserves was a very high priority. This organization made it clear that the rationale they were basing their planned invasion of Iraq on was the threat, the possibility, the thought, that Saddam may be thinking about creating weapons of mass destruction.

This organization, that many of Bush's political machine belonged to, including, but not limited to, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, drafted documents, such as the one containing their rationale for invading Iraq, that contained very long sentences, such as this one, that caused many who read, or heard, the sentence, to lose track of the original presumption of the sentence and to, therefor, state a possibility in the long, complex sentence (may soon face a threat), and in the next sentence refer to the possibility as an established reality (chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat). It is unclear whether Bush really believed what he was told. Perhaps he is like the majority of the American people had been for many years: while he wasn't sure it wasn't true, he didn't know what was true so he didn't protest.

The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) wants the United States to remain as the world's only superpower. The PNAC wants the United States to increase its military strength. The PNAC wants the United States to control the oil reserves of the Middle East. These have been their goals from their inception in 1997. They are very clear on these goals and not ashamed of these goals.

The only thing the PNAC needed was control of the United States. They found a willing puppet in George W. Bush. Their goal wasn't to establish Bush as an admired and respected person, their goal was to invade Iraq. Bush wasn't told outright by the PNAC that he would be admired and respected, but Bush thought these things would be automatic if he was president. The PNAC believed it was doing the people of the United States a great service by invading Iraq. The PNAC believed that making it clear to all other nations of the Middle East that invasion was a real possibility was in the best interests of the United States.

It didn't really matter to the PNAC if an invasion was based on the pretext that the United States president may think another leader may be thinking about creating weapons. It is now clear to most of the world that US foreign policy is: we can invade whoever we please: our reason, if you need one, is that we thought you were thinking about being bad. The only people this isn't clear to are the current US citizens.

But future historians aren't going to paint a pretty picture, and George W. Bush's legacy isn't going to be one of respect and admiration. Poor George W. Bush was duped. Bush is actually the fall guy.

Relatively youthful F-117 fighter to make room for other, pricier aircraft

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- Less than two decades after the world first got a look at the F-117 stealth fighter, the first aircraft built specifically to elude radar is scheduled for retirement by the Air Force -- and some wonder whether the plane's mothballing is a bit premature.

The reasons for shelving the plane that played a key role in the first Iraqi war are to make room for such aircraft as the F-22 Raptor, which has been under fire for being too expensive. But the Air Force has reasoned that the F-22 can do what the F-117 does, and more. Air Force officials did not return phone calls.

Pentagon analysts point out, though, that the F-117's lifespan will wind up being much shorter than most other Air Force aircraft. It's due to come out of service in 2008.

"It's probably the fastest retirement since the 1960s," said Bill Sweetman, technology and aerospace editor for Jane's Information Group. "I think the Air Force is trying to cast off older planes."

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US involvement in Iraq will pass another sad milestone on Sunday, when it overtakes the length of America's engagement in World War II.

While the two wars are far apart in character -- and in their death tolls -- the Iraq campaign has become a symbol of the pitfalls of the new style of conflict.

World War II ended for Americans after 1,348 days. US soldiers facing a still largely unknown enemy in Iraq do not know when their country will leave, more than three years after the US-led invasion.

American politicians have not failed to note the symbolism.