Month: September 2007

Attacking Iran would be the act of a lunatic. But it is clear that, at a minimum, the Bush administration is currently bent on making Iran think we are going to attack them. There was Bush’s speech last week, and now this from the Times of London:

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.

This is corroborated in a diary at Daily Kos.

I have a friend who is an LSO on a carrier attack group that is planning and staging a strike group deployment into the Gulf of Hormuz. (LSO: Landing Signal Officer- she directs carrier aircraft while landing) She told me we are going to attack Iran. She said that all the Air Operation Planning and Asset Tasking are finished. That means that all the targets have been chosen, prioritized, and tasked to specific aircraft, bases, carriers, missile cruisers and so forth…

…I asked her about the attack, how limited and so forth.

“I don’t think it’s limited at all. We are shipping in and assigning every damn Tomahawk we have in inventory. I think this is going to be massive and sudden, like thousands of targets. I believe that no American will know when it happens until after it happens.</blockquote

Is this all a big bluff? I don’t know. How could I know? No ‘serious’ person in the Establishment is raising alarm bells. Barack Obama is too busy pandering to the pro-Israel constituency to provide any leadership.

Meanwhile, chief war-with-Iran advocate Michael Ledeen is still claiming that the administration is not serious about getting tough on Iran. I think it is just his way of goading them on. The UK Telegraph, which was so instrumental in catapulting the propaganda for the invasion of Iraq, seems to be on board for the attack on Iran. Can anyone verify their claims?

Iran seems to be getting the message. They just replaced the head of their Revolutionary Guard with an experienced war fighter.

This week’s Sunday Wankery candidate was relatively low-hanging fruit:  the weekly WSJ guest op-ed by Josef Jofee.  Now, you expect anything  out of the Paper of Propaganda to be bad, but this one had me hurling expletives before I got done with my breakfast.  It’s the “We Can’t Possibly Ever Leave Iraq” show again, but taken to it’s illogical endpoint.

In contrast to President Bush’s dark comparison between Iraq and the bloody aftermath of the Vietnam War last month, there is another, comforting version of the Vietnam analogy that’s gained currency among policy makers and pundits. It goes something like this:

After that last helicopter took off from the U.S. embassy in Saigon 32 years ago, the nasty strategic consequences then predicted did not in fact materialize. The “dominoes” did not fall, the Russians and Chinese did not take over, and America remained No. 1 in Southeast Asia and in the world.

What makes Sunday Wankery special?  Starting off with logical arguments is one thing, but actually using facts — not “pulled out of my various orifices” quasi-facts, but accepted truths, only means the perversion of these facts through the Wankification(tm) process (It’s like Martinizing your dry cleaning, except it involves turning your clothes into rabid, genetically mutated abominations) is all the more anger-inducing to those of us in the reality based community.

In other words, there’s the wind-up…and the pitch:

But alas, cut-and-run from Iraq will not have the same serendipitous aftermath, because Iraq is not at all like Vietnam.

Unlike Iraq, Vietnam was a peripheral arena of the Cold War. Strategic resources like oil were not at stake, and neither were bases (OK, Moscow obtained access to Da Nang and Cam Ranh Bay for a while). In the global hierarchy of power, Vietnam was a pawn, not a pillar, and the decisive battle lines at the time were drawn in Europe, not in Southeast Asia.

The Middle East, by contrast, was always the “elephant path of history,” as Israel’s fabled defense minister, Moshe Dayan, put it. Legions of conquerors have marched up and down the Levant, and from Alexander’s Macedonia all the way to India. Other prominent visitors were Julius Caesar, Napoleon and the German Wehrmacht.

Iraq was the Most Important War Ever to all these guys, I’m sure.  Here’s a freebie for Josef here:  when trying to argue that America should stay in Iraq in order to slake imperial bloodlust, it’s bad form to list a number of ultimately failed empires that failed to take and keep Mesopotamia in the name of imperial bloodlust.

That kind of thing turns out to be, you know, a shining historical example that we should leave.

This is not just ancient history. Today, the Greater Middle East is a cauldron even Macbeth’s witches would be terrified to touch. The world’s worst political and religious pathologies combine with oil and gas, terrorism and nuclear ambitions.

In short, unlike yesterday’s Vietnam, the Greater Middle East (including Turkey) is the central strategic arena of the 21st century, as Europe was in the 20th. This is where three continents–Europe, Asia, and Africa–are joined. So let’s take a moment to think about what would happen once that last Blackhawk took off from Baghdad International.

There you go again.  The first time was a freebie.  Now you’re clearly saying “Yeah, this wasn’t such a great idea, was it?”  You get one of those, you already used it up, and now you have to spend the rest of the piece trying to out-argue yourself in your own freaking column.

Wankery at its finest.  But it gets better.

Here is a short list. Iran advances to No. 1, completing its nuclear-arms program undeterred and unhindered. America’s cowed Sunni allies–Saudi-Arabia, Jordan, the oil-rich “Gulfies”–are drawn into the Khomeinist orbit.

Wouldn’t they converge in a mighty anti-Tehran alliance instead?  Iran’s Shi’a, you know.

You might ask: Wouldn’t they converge in a mighty anti-Tehran alliance instead? Think again. The local players have never managed to establish a regional balance of power; it was always outsiders–first Britain, then the U.S.–who chastened the malfeasants and blocked anti-Western intruders like Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

Translation:  “Even though this region’s people have survived as a civilization for several thousand years, they are incapable of self-governance, the savages that they are.  Throughout history, the Empire Du Jour has grabbed these little bastard sand castles and chucked them against the wall just to make ’em stick.  That’s why this region exists: to have a country to pimpslap.  Get with the program.”

With the U.S. gone from Iraq, emboldened jihadi forces shift to Afghanistan and turn it again into a bastion of Terror International. Syria reclaims Lebanon, which it has always labeled as a part of “Great Syria.” Hezbollah and Hamas, both funded and equipped by Tehran, resume their war against Israel. Russia, extruded from the Middle East by adroit Kissingerian diplomacy in the 1970s, rebuilds its anti-Western alliances. In Iraq, the war escalates, unleashing even more torrents of refugees and provoking outside intervention, if not partition.

Which is an interesting scenario, except for our inability to prevent all of that from happening if we stay in Iraq.  (Short of the Syria reclaiming Lebanon thing, and actually that’s far enough along the proxy war we helped create to be pretty likely too now.)

But we’ve heard this all before.  Recycled stuff from the run up to the 2006 elections doesn’t constitute wankery, just laziness.  Where’s the beef?

Now, let’s look beyond the region. The Europeans will be the first to revise their romantic notions of multipolarity, or world governance by committee. For worse than an overbearing, in-your-face America is a weakened and demoralized one. Shall Vladimir Putin’s Russia acquire a controlling stake? This ruthlessly revisionist power wants revenge for its post-Gorbachev humiliation, not responsibility.

China with its fabulous riches? The Middle Kingdom is still happily counting its currency surpluses as it pretties up its act for the 2008 Olympics, but watch its next play if the U.S. quits the highest stakes game in Iraq. The message from Beijing might well read: “Move over America, the Western Pacific, as you call it, is our lake.”

Europe? It is wealthy, populous and well-ordered. But strategic players those 27 member-states of the E.U. are not. They cannot pacify the Middle East, stop the Iranian bomb or keep Mr. Putin from wielding gas pipelines as tools of “persuasion.” When the Europeans did wade into the fray, as in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, they let the U.S. Air Force go first.

Yeah, it was about here that the blue streak was being cursed into existence.  Keep in mind the argument is that Iraq is The Most Important War Ever because of the legions of Raghead Sunzabitches waiting to come cross thousands of miles of ocean to blow up your house specifically.  Also keep in mind that Iraq is nothing like Vietnam because unlike Vietnam, it’s The Most Important War Ever.

So how do we justify staying in Iraq?  Abandon the first argument altogether, and whip out the oldest Vietnam canard in the book: The Domino Theory…which you spent the first part of the article saying it was the oldest Vietnam canard in the book.  It’s not the terrorists, it’s Putin and China, meaning really…this is a proxy fight between us and the great Red Menace.  But Iraq is nothing like Vietnam except for all the ways it’s umm…exactly like Vietnam.

Oh, and there’s oil.

Now to the upside. The U.S. may have spent piles of chips foolishly, but it is still the richest player at the global gaming table. In the Bush years, the U.S. may have squandered tons of political capital, but then the rest of the world is not exactly making up for the shortfall.

Nor has the U.S. become a “dispensable nation.” That is the most remarkable truth in these trying times. Its enemies from al Qaeda to Iran–and its rivals from Russia to China–can disrupt and defy, but they cannot build and lead.

For all the damage to Washington’s reputation, nothing of great import can be achieved without, let alone against, the U.S. Can Moscow and Beijing bring peace to Palestine? Or mend a global financial system battered by the subprime crisis? Where are the central banks of Russia and China?

Yes, so despite the HUGE FREAKING MISTAKE we made going into Iraq, and given your argument that it’s not too late for America to display actual leadership and correct the mistake and that the damage isn’t too extensive or systemic…your advice is to keep doing the same stupid thing we’ve been doing that cost us all that political capital and goodwill in the first goddamn place.  Nice!

The Bush presidency will soon be on the way out, but America is not. This truth has recently begun to sink in among the major Democratic contenders. Listen to Hillary Clinton, who would leave “residual forces” to fight terrorism. Or to Barack Obama, who would stay in Iraq with an as-yet-unspecified force. Even the most leftish of them all, John Edwards, would keep troops around to stop genocide in Iraq or to prevent violence from spilling over into the neighborhood. And no wonder, for it might be one of them who will have to deal with the bitter aftermath if the U.S. slinks out of Iraq.

These realists have it right. Withdrawal cannot serve America’s interests on the day after tomorrow. Friends and foes will ask: If this superpower doesn’t care about the world’s central and most dangerous stage–what will it care about?

America’s allies will look for insurance elsewhere. And the others will muse: If the police won’t stay in this most critical of neighborhoods, why not break a few windows, or just take over? The U.S. as “Gulliver Unbound” may have stumbled during its “unipolar” moment. But as giant with feet of clay, it will do worse: and so will the rest of the world.

It’s called “a phased withdrawal” there Skippy.  Maybe you’ve heard of the plan.  The Democrats have been talking about such a phased withdrawal plan for a couple years now, but people like Joey here seem to think that “phased withdrawal” equals “leaving Iraq literally overnight and letting everyone who worked with America die” and therefore the result is that the argument magically morphs into “there are only two options:  ‘Stay and Fight’ or ‘Cut and Run’.”

Nothing could be further from the truth.  But then again, that’s why this piece is Wankery…it defeats itself with its own staggering illogic.

I’m gonna go clean something.  Sheesh.

People that know me know that I frequently joke about Bush’s prospects in retirement. Who is going to pay to hear him give a speech? George W. Bush is like Dan Quayle on steroids. He’s not just ridiculous, he’s actually responsible. He’s going to go down in history as a kind of hybrid of Nixon/McGovern/Carter. He’ll be part radical, part incompetent, part crooked, and totally responsible for ruining the short-term prospects for his party. No one is going to want to hear Bush speak. First of all, he can’t speak. But Bush is counting on a lot of money coming his way on the lecture tour.

…in an interview with a book author in the Oval Office one day last December, he daydreamed about the next phase of his life, when his time will be his own.

First, Mr. Bush said, “I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers.” With assets that have been estimated as high as nearly $21 million, Mr. Bush added, “I don’t know what my dad gets — it’s more than 50-75” thousand dollars a speech, and “Clinton’s making a lot of money.”

Somehow I don’t think the Crawford Kiwanis Club has that kind of cheese. Bush’s real ambition is even more pie-in-the-sky.

For now, though, Mr. Bush told the author, Robert Draper, in a later session, “I’m playing for October-November.” That is when he hopes the Iraq troop increase will finally show enough results to help him achieve the central goal of his remaining time in office: “To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence,” and, he said later, “stay longer.”

But fully aware of his standing in opinion polls, Mr. Bush said his top commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, would perhaps do a better job selling progress to the American people than he could.

“Stay longer.” That’s Bush’s real goal for America. He wants to make it possible for us to stay longer in Iraq. And this is the kind of confidence he provides…

Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, “The policy was to keep the army intact; didn’t happen.”

But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush’s former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army’s dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ ” But, he added, “Again, Hadley’s got notes on all of this stuff,” referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.

To this day, he doesn’t know why the Iraqi army was disbanded? Hard to hold someone accountable for that decision if you don’t know who made it, and why. But Bush is just being dishonest. He’s dishonest to the end.

“One interesting question historians are going to have to answer is: Would Saddam have behaved differently if he hadn’t gotten mixed signals between the first resolution and the failure of the second resolution?” Mr. Bush said. “I can’t answer that question. I was hopeful that diplomacy would work.”

It did not, but soon enough, somebody else will make the decisions on Iraq. And then, Mr. Bush said, he would still be pursuing his “freedom agenda” at his institute, modeled on Stanford’s Hoover Institution, where young democratic leaders from around the world would study.

“Sixty-two is really young,” Mr. Bush said, “and yet I’ll be through with my presidency.”

No one is going to show up at his shitty institute. Who is this guy kidding?

Here’s the one part I enjoyed reading…

Mr. Bush went on to share private thoughts that appeared to reflect a level of sorrow and presidential isolation that he strongly implied he took pains to hide, a state of being that he seemed to view as coming with the presidency and with which he professed to be at peace.

Telling Mr. Draper he likes to keep things “relatively light-hearted” around the White House, he added in May, “I can’t let my own worries — I try not to wear my worries on my sleeve; I don’t want to burden them with that.”

“Self-pity is the worst thing that can happen to a presidency,” Mr. Bush told Mr. Draper, by way of saying he sought to avoid it. “This is a job where you can have a lot of self-pity.”

In the same interview, Mr. Bush seemed to indicate that he had his down moments at home, saying of his wife, Laura, “Back to the self-pity point — she reminds me that I decided to do this.”

Did Laura mean ‘run for President’ or did she mean ‘invade Iraq’? Either way, it was a mistake and a misfortune.

I am running against Mike Pence.  The link is to his speech to the Republican Caucus before the vote for House Minority Leader.  How could he have lost?

We are going to be running for the seat in Indiana’s 6th District.  Why should you care?

Five reasons below

Number Five: Mike Pence is against you on every issue.

Number Four: No Neo-Con seat should be safe.

Number Three: Indiana is not like Iraq in the summer or in the wintertime!

Number Two:  We are running again and we are running to win.

Number One:  If it comes down to one vote to decide legislation, it doesn’t matter what district the person voting is from, it matters only how they will vote.

I understand the anger many have with Democrats at the moment.  I understand the frustration with Blue Dogs, but let’s be honest, most of The Blue Dogs, we knew they were Blue Dogs when they were elected.   Indiana’s own Baron Hill, Brad Ellsworth, and Joe Donnelly are members of the Blue Dogs.  Evan Bayh cannot be compared in Progressivism to his father Birch Bayh.  That Progressivism cost Birch his seat in the 80’s and they have not forgotten it.

Times have changed though in Indiana.  The thinking of the party may not have.  I don’t fault them for that.  They just took the state balance back with The Blue Dogs, and those three Hoosiers helped to make Democrats chairs of Committees, and to have Speaker Pelosi.

The Convention Wisdom in Indiana is still based on only a Conservative Democrat can get elected in Indiana.  My feeling is, that is only because Conservative Democrats are the only one’s properly funded and it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  We are going to test Conventional Wisdom.  

Brad, Baron and Joe, get all the press, but Julia Carson is a strong progressive, and Pete Visclosky can usually be counted on.  If I am elected, the balance shifts in this state in Congress.  That is the real reason it should matter to you.

If we replace Neo Cons with progressives we also marginalize Blue Dogs in the process.
Anyone feel free to argue that in comments, but I think everyone might agree.

I want to ask you to help us.

Go to Barry Welsh our recently launched online headquarters.

While you are there, I want YOUR endorsement.  It doesn’t matter if you can or can’t vote for me, if you think I would be better than Mike Pence, I want YOUR endorsement.

Our campaign has representatives that are going to be in D.C. and in NYC, and they wanted to know what endorsements I wanted to go after.  I said The NetRoots.

They are busy putting together meetings with people who if they endorse, will impress.
I am here asking for YOUR PERSONAL Endorsement, because I think 10,000 computer savvy Americans endorsing our campaign would have a bigger impact, and I know it would mean more to me personally.  

Go to Barry Welsh and please give me your endorsement.

If you are a member of Facebook or MySpace Stop by and check out our sites.

If you know a member of Labor, ask them to watch this

You can see what we are doing on Flickr .
You can hear what I am doing on  Blog Talk Radio

Speaking of Blog Talk Radio.  Clammyc will be a guest on Meet The Bloggers tomorrow at Noon EST.

We had a great live event/blog raiser this afternoon thanks to my team, the people at Paradise Bakery and Café in Castleton Corner in Indianapolis, and to Jane Hamsher and Howie Kline, and all of the people at Firedoglake! Thank you all and you can check it out here.  Yes, we have been endorsed by Blue America.  Our first Big Endorsement. Please make YOUR Endorsement our next Big Endorsement

One final time.  Please go to Barry Welsh and sign our endorsement page.  

Thanks

Future Congressman Barry Welsh IN-06

I’m just making salsa and tomato salad and all that good stuff you need to have a good cookout. Looking to fix up some Brats, and some Baby-back ribs, and some burgers…coupla beers, a few laughs. What’s on your agenda?

Actually (and as many of us know), the entire quote by Andy Card back in September 2002 was “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.” Well, it is September 1, and the time is just about here for another marketing initiative by the callous destructive forces that don’t really care about what the people of this country, or anyone else for that matter says about the absolutely insane idea to bomb or “take action” against Iran.

This “marketing campaign” actually began years ago, back when Iran was labeled part of the “Axis of Evil”, and again in early 2004, when the first rumors of just how evil they were because its leader (who was already lacking support in his own country) stared down The Decider Guy and told him to go scratch – Iran was reconstituting its nuclear program. For energy purposes, we were told. And even if it wasn’t for energy purposes, that isn’t the point.

Back in December 2006, the foundation was laid for another “marketing campaign”. This one started with the same booga booga about nook-you-luhr weapons, just like the previous “marketing campaign” about Iraq started. Then it became Iranian weapons parts found in Iraq, despite the fact that nearly 200,000 US weapons were lost, and the US was funding and providing weapons to “former” insurgents, if they promised not to attack our troops.

And just as the marketing campaign for New Coke failed, so did this one – as it was immediately smacked down by the top military advisor, Peter Pace. The reward for Mr. Pace? Well, a quick “retirement” – to spend more time with his family, no doubt.

But this time, like Freddy Kruger, the “marketing campaign” wouldn’t die. More and more excuses and reasons to “shock and awe” the bad brown people in Iran would be “test marketed” and now, the New and Improved™ bullshit, um, lies, um, irrelevant half truths, um, innuendo, excuses for bombing Iran will be rolled out over the next weeks, including references to the “newly classified as terrorist group Iranian military”.

Most people are on to this charade, but no chances can be taken. Grand Moff Texan had a great diary on the frames to use and the way to address this. The best point he makes is that this is Bush’s and his supporters’ planned attack. NOT the United States’. And as the airwaves are blanketed with how we don’t want to see a mushroom cloud, or that the last thing this world needs is Iran exercising influence in Iraq or that if we leave, Iran will fill the “power vacuum” (shouldn’t this have been considered in 2002?), there needs to be major pushback.

Not this same crap again. These claims were not credible back in 2002 and they are the EXACT same claims again. These people are simply not believable.

What makes this even more disgusting than even 2002 is that after five years of death and destruction not to mention complete unmitigated disaster and failure, it is still looked at as a “marketing campaign”. Lives at stake. Lives ruined. Families ruined. Economy in the shitter. Massive upheaval. And an incredibly unpopular occupation of Iraq, not to mention this not being a remotely popular idea at all among all but a small but foaming at the mouth crew of megalomaniac idiots.

There is absolutely no rationale that would warrant bombing or invading Iran. It is that simple. The burden of proof is on those who say we have to bomb. There is no trust or benefit of the doubt. You don’t market a war. It is a sick thought and a despicable approach to take when it comes to an almost always unnecessary act of aggression.

Here is a way and here is another way and here is yet another way that you can write to Congress to urge them to unequivocally denounce this horrific plan and demand action. Or you can call this number: (202) 224-3121.

Or, here are some ways to contact the media to simply and forcefully pull the curtain back on this deadly nonsense and hopefully stop more senseless killing and a humanitarian crisis of unimaginable proportions.

These war profiteering crooks sold this country and the world a bag of crap once. We can’t let them resell a used, recycled and more deadly bag of crap.

Heh:

“It’s always darkest right before you get clobbered over the head with a pipe wrench. But then it actually does get darker,” said a GOP pollster who insisted on anonymity in order to speak candidly.

That ‘pipe wrench’ would be the combination of Larry Craig’s resignation and John Warner’s announcement that he is retiring. This following is only a slight exaggeration.

“About the only safe Republican Senate seats in ’08 are the ones that aren’t on the ballot,” a GOP operative with extensive experience in Senate races said. “I don’t see even the rosiest scenario where we don’t end up losing more seats.”

I think Thad Cochran and Mike Enzi are safe. I also think whomever wins the GOP nomination in South Carolina is safe (but Lindsey Graham is not safe).

A more interesting thing I’m ruminating about this fine afternoon is our fearless leader George W. Bush, now bereft of his Texas mafia. It must be pretty lonely without McClellan and Miers and Rove and Gonzales. I wonder if he has started talking to that portrait of Abraham Lincoln yet. CQ Politics has a very good run down on the landscape for the debate over Iraq this September.

The synopsis is that the Dems are going to offer the Republicans a deal. If the Republicans agree to pass something that starts a withdrawal of troops by the end of this year, the Dems will drop any deadline for the withdrawal to be complete.

I guess that is a reasonable approach, under the circumstances.

If you caught the intellectual lightweight, Michael O’Hanlon, on CNN this morning you would have been treated to a masterful display of toadying and sucking up that puts the “sick” in sycophant. O’Hanlon continues to insist that his DOD arranged and controlled trip this summer to limited areas of Iraq proved beyond doubt that the surge is working and we are progressing in Iraq.

Of course his confident claims are not attended by any benchmarks or empirical evidence. So as a public service we will take a look at the specifics in Iraq and you can judge for yourself whether or not we are making progress and whether or not we are getting value for our money and the blood of our sons and daughters.

U.S. Casualties:
Compare the current number of U.S. fatalities in Iraq with previous eight month periods for 2006 and 2005. For the first eight months of 2007 there have been 735 American troops killed and 4430 wounded. This is significantly higher than the casualty rate in 2005 or 2006. We have 1000 more dead and wounded this year than last year for the period January-August. The following chart tells the factual story (source, icasualties.org):
Comparison of American Casualties in Iraq

The Iraqi Population:

Higher casualties, by themselves, tell us nothing about progress one way or another. One could make the case that because of the casualties the situation in Iraq has stabilized and Iraqis are rushing to celebrate the “new peace”. Sadly, that is wishful thinking.

The number of Iraqis seeking refuge in the United States is increasing, not diminishing. According to a Reuter’s report this week:

A senior U.S. official said on Tuesday the United States would speed up the immigration of Iraqis who worked with its military in Iraq, after congressional criticism that it has taken in so few since the 2003 invasion.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey said a faster resettlement policy into the United States this year could more than double the rate of migration.

“Two thousand will have made it to the country, we hope if not by the end of September, by the end of October, and a couple of thousand more in November,” she said.

“So by the end of the calendar year, there might be a possibility we will have moved the entire original 7,000 number that was talked about,” Sauerbrey said, referring to figures for the number of Iraqis recommended by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for resettlement in the United States.

Iraqis seeking refuge in other countries continues to mount. The BBC today reports:

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari was informed of the new measure by his Syrian counterpart, Walid Muallim, in a telephone conversation on Thursday.

Syria had been the only country in the region to allow Iraqis to enter and stay up to six months without a visa.

The UN refugee agency says 1.4 million Iraqi refugees are living in Syria.

With the number increasing by an estimated 30,000 every month, Syria’s health and education systems are struggling to cope.

The Syrian government estimates the Iraqi refugee crisis is costing it around $1bn a year.

Well. At least the U.S. presence is healing the rift between Sunnis and Shias. Nope! Today’s New York Times details the growing chasm between these groups in Iraq:

In Parliament three months ago, she shouted down her colleagues for standing by as Sunni extremists in Diyala Province killed hundreds of Shiites. When the speaker, a Sunni, smirked, she screamed: “Why are you laughing, Mr. Speaker? I want to know why you’re laughing.” (He waved her away: “Leave it to the women,” he said.)

Ms. Musawi, though loyal to the more moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, also now defends some actions of the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric, saying that it has filled a necessary void.

“The government couldn’t protect the people,” she said. “They couldn’t save them. The Sadrists did that.”

When asked about accusations that the Mahdi Army forced innocent Sunnis out of the Hurriya neighborhood, which borders Adel, she said Shiites had no time to sift the innocent from the guilty because Sunnis were killing Shiites.

She says the basic problem is that too many Sunnis will never accept Shiite rule. Just as galling, she said, they refuse to accept responsibility for the sins of Mr. Hussein, the Baath party or today’s extremists.

And the list goes on. Sunnis have walked away from the Maliki Government. What passes for a government has been on vacation for a month and no significant agreements regarding the equitable allocation of oil resources or the rights of former Baath party members have been achieved.

As I warned in a blog more than a month ago, the Bush Administration and hacks like O’Hanlon are insisting things are better in Iraq. But, fewer deaths in certain neighborhoods has an alternative and darker explanation. Violence is down because there are fewer people. The absence of respiration is not a sign of life.

Oh, and did I mention the problem of corruption? A congressionally appointed panel headed by the highly respected Marine General, James Jones, reports that:

the rampant sectarianism that has existed since the formation of the police force requires that its current units “be scrapped” and reshaped into a smaller, more elite organization, according to one senior official familiar with the findings. The recommendation is that “we should start over,” the official said.

David Corn has another piece of the corruption puzzle:

according to the working draft of a secret document prepared by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, the Maliki government has failed in one significant area: corruption. Maliki’s government is “not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anticorruption laws,” the report says, and, perhaps worse, the report notes that Maliki’s office has impeded investigations of fraud and crime within the government.

With British forces vacating southern Iraq, the United States must either further divide and weaken its over strapped units and send them to Basra or cede the territory to the Shia militias that are in defacto control.

How many American lives and how many billions of dollars must we expend in Iraq ostensibly to make America safe? We can not afford to be the sole peace keeper in the world. We should not be enabling the Iraqi army and police who continue to swear allegiance to sectarian leaders rather than embracing national interests. This is ultimately a problem the various Iraqi factions must sort out. US troops should not be in the middle of this dispute.

If US roads and bridges were in great shape. If American schools, particularly in inner cities, were the envy of the world. If every American had access to health care, then I could tolerate wasting $3 billion a week. But asking almost 3 Americans per day to die in Iraq? Not worth another drop of our blood.

What are YOU doing on September 11th? May I suggest something?

The vast potential of the American people still lies untapped. The time has come to unleash it. The technique is well-known in most foreign countries, though not here. But it’s actually quite simple. It’s called a General Strike.

When I say “General Strike”, I mean it’s for all of us. You don’t have to be a General to take part.

But what is it against? That’s up to each of us.

It can be against Torture, against the War in Iraq, against the 9/11 Coverup, against False Flag Terror in general, against the shredding of the Bill of Rights, against the destruction of our Electoral System, against the privatization of America’s military, against the corruption of our Mainstream Media, against a regime powered by multi-million dollar “Public Diplomacy” campaigns, against rampant anti-democratic Globalization, against rule by Secrecy and Lies, against unlimited warrantless Surveillance… It can be against any or all of these things, and many more.

But it can’t be against everything!
It also needs to be for something — more than one thing, if possible. We could do it for our Children, we could do it for our Country, we could do it for Humanity, we could do it for Peace, we could do it for Justice, we could do it for 9/11 Truth, we could do for Truth in Media, we could do it for habeas corpus, we could do it for the Bill of Rights… We could do it for any or all of these reasons, and many others.

If you can’t think of a reason, do it for me! Make yourself a sign that says “Google Winter Patriot” and carry it around with you on the 11th of September. Why not?

I’m just kidding, of course. But we need to keep spreading vital truths to people who don’t have enough. We need to get visible. We need to see how many of us there are. And we need to make a statement, even if that statement is only “We’ve had enough!”

It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to be complicated. We don’t need to converge on Washington. Not yet, anyway. At the moment we can make more impact elsewhere. We can actually make the most impact without going anywhere.

This is not about travel. It’s about gridlock. What if we all stop working? What if we all stop going to school? What if none of us spends a nickel? Do you think anyone would notice? Of course they would.

Would it hurt us? Sure. But in the long run it might do us more good than harm.

When I say “this is not about travel”, I’m not saying we should all stay home.

If you can get to Washington, that’s great. You’ll have company.

If you can get to New York City, that might be even better. The sight of 9/11 Truth taking over Ground Zero has inspired a lot of good work. It would be great to be part of it this year.

But if you can’t get to DC or NY, that’s fine too. If you can get to your state capital, head for the government buildings. Otherwise just go downtown.

Wear orange. Be seen.

Carry a sign: “Peace Through Justice“. “Inside Job“. “Stop The War“. “Paper Ballots, Hand Counted“. “Google Winter Patriot“. Or whatever.

We need to get active, and get visible, and watch our numbers grow. And we need to think about doing it again … soon … for as long as necessary.

We’ll never know what can happen until we try. And if we don’t try, we don’t deserve to live in a free country. In my opinion, if we don’t try, we deserve to live in Iraq! Surely the Iraqis don’t deserve it. So let’s see what we can do to stop the war … at the very least.

You can read more at strike911.org and/or truthaction.org.

You can find out what’s happening in your area here.

If you know of other sites that might be useful in organizing ourselves, please post the URLs here. As always, I thank you for your cooperation.

Oh yeah; I almost forgot: I was only partly kidding about the sign. It doesn’t have to say “Google Winter Patriot”. But you do need a sign.

Your sign can protect you from the heat-ray weapon the Pentagon calls “Active Denial“.  Click here before you build it.

One final, personal, note, if I may: This is not something we can or should do out of hate, or anger, or fear. Surely we all feel anger and fear, and many of us feel hate. That’s ok in my view. Considering the circumstances, that’s entirely understandable. But that’s not what this is about. And it won’t help us build anything useful, either.

In my humble opinion, Stephen Stills had it right 35 or 40 years ago. He put it this way:

You know we got to do it, we got to keep on keeping on
‘Cause if we don’t do it, nobody else is gonna.
But you know if we can’t do it with a smile on our face,
You know if we can’t do it with love in our hearts,
Then, children, we ain’t got no right to do it at all.
‘Cause that just means we ain’t learned nothin’ yet,
And we’re supposed to be some kind of different.

The devil is in the details – sometimes even when there don’t appear to be any.

This article originally appeared on Pruning Shears.
This week has been, shall we say, illuminating.  Going into it my goal was to formalize some details for some local activism but it didn’t quite pan out that way.  Big picture: I don’t want our site to be just posts.  Mark started Pruning Shears and I signed on as a contributor because we both believe there have been egregious abuses of executive power since 9/11 and it’s now time to push back.  That means some real action in addition to exhortations.  I’ve previously argued that Vice President Cheney engaged in grave executive abuse by the way he treated prewar intelligence, and since that is included as one of the articles of impeachment the best way for us to push back right now is to get our House representative to sign them.  I would love to start thinking of the electoral map as a little impeachment garden and I don’t think it’s too grandiose to hope to coax a little bloom in Ohio’s 17th.

I’ve called Tim Ryan’s office a few times.  I think representatives have decided they can pretty well ignore phone calls urging legislative action.  Both he and Senators Voinovich and Brown have very polite staffers who answer the phone, thank you and promise to pass along your concerns.  You have to be a cynic to believe these don’t get passed along.  They don’t take your name or your number, don’t offer any information on how the reps feel about it and don’t tell you where they have appearances in the near future so you could shake their hand, look them in the eye and tell them exactly what you think.  In Voinovich’s case that’s because he’s made no public appearances in northeast Ohio during this vacation.  I figured the best way for a citizen to make an impression would be to have a petition and deliver it to Ryan’s local office.  I imagine if you had some sheets full of local voters’ signatures and you show up at his door you might get more than a polite “thank you”, so the plan could go like this:

1. Get a clipboard, pen and petitions.
2. Find a good, high traffic place with lots of potential signees.
3. Collect signatures and deliver.

I knew there would be more to it than that but I figured it would be a good outline to work with.  The big piece is to find a good place and reserve it properly – showing up somewhere out of the blue isn’t terribly persuasive.  In fact, doing that seems about one step above walking around with a “THE END IS NEAR” sandwich board.  I live near a university so I figured: High traffic, probably a decent number of impeach-Cheney enthusiasts.  Let’s contact the folks in charge of programming and set something up.  Once the space is reserved, do a little publicity, drum up some interest, get some petitions signed, deliver to Ryan, rinse and repeat until he signs H Res 333.  What could be simpler?

A lot, as it turns out.  We started by contacting someone who said “oh yeah – this is your contact.  I’ll send it to him and he’ll be in touch in a day or two.”  We didn’t hear anything for close to a week.  (PLEASE understand I’m not beating on the folks in question; I completely understand how things can fall through the cracks or get lost in the shuffle.  I routinely lose the thread on stuff and I certainly don’t expect people to drop everything when I come calling.)  So I send an email saying, hi, I was told you were sent this, does it ring any bells and if so can you give me an update?  The next day I get an email back saying “talk to this one.”  The saga continued along those lines.  I won’t go into to much detail but as of this writing I am still trying to set the details.

I initially thought it would be fairly straightforward; instead it’s already taking a few weeks more than I expected.  It’s important for citizens to be active, but if you want to have any impact at all you need to give a little thought and planning to it.  Unfortunately even coordinating within and among very small groups can get extremely slow and complicated.  I’ve worked in small groups before so I understand how it can happen but even taking that into account it seemed very gummed up.  Fortunately I’m a persistent sort and don’t discourage easily.  On the other hand it’s a little embarrassing to come up with a plan, tell it to people and keep…pushing…it…back.  Embarrassing but illuminating.