Author: Zandar1

From Talking Points Memo comes this story, courtesy of the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

WASHINGTON — Gasoline prices could rise to about $9 per gallon if the United States withdraws troops from Iraq prematurely, Rep. Jon Porter said he was told on a trip to Iraq that ended this week.

The Nevada Republican, who returned Tuesday from his fourth trip to Iraq, met with U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Iraqi Deputy President Tariq al-Hashimi and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh.

“To a person, they said there would be genocide, gas prices in the U.S. would rise to eight or nine dollars a gallon, al-Qaida would continue its expansion, and Iran would take over that portion of the world if we leave,” Porter said Wednesday in a phone interview from Las Vegas.

Umm…excuse me?

Where is this guy getting his info?  As Josh points out, who’s got the oil price analysis credentials in that group?  (Easy answer: the same magic 8 ball with the surge results.)

The article continues, but the writers aren’t buying it:

Porter did not elaborate on the assessment that gasoline prices could spike. His spokesman, Matt Leffingwell, said afterward that the scenario “makes sense if Iran moves into Iraq.”

Porter “can’t speculate directly on what is going to happen with gas prices, but the market prices for oil reflect the stability in that region,” Leffingwell said.

Sure, and then Iran will come in with their giant killer robots and take all of Iraq’s schoolgirls.  This is the kind of garbage that we’ll have to put up with for the rest of Bush’s term.  Every argument that logical, intelligent people make against staying gets turned on its head and used as an argument for why we can never, ever, ever, leave.

A war with Iran would surely “reflect on the stability in the region” with gas prices of 8 or 9 dollars a gallon too, but of course we see arguments all the time from the neocrazies that we have to bomb Iran to keep Israel from getting nuked.  Hell, the neocrazies believe we are at a de facto state of war with Iran already.

Got that?  We can’t leave Iraq because of 8 or 9 dollar a gallon gas and genocide and AQ would gain more power, which of course is completely the opposite of what would happen if we stayed in Iraq long enough to foment a war with Iran.

Makes perfect sense.

Petraeus and Crocker offered a “blunt” assessment of the situation, Porter said.

Although Petraeus did not discuss the much anticipated Iraq status report he plans to release in September, Porter said the general told him the U.S. troop surge was working.

But Porter stopped short of saying he would support Petraeus’ report.

Of course, because that Petraeus White House report hasn’t been written yet.  Nope.  And the surge is working, except for, you know, the Pentagon hedging its bets on publicly saying the surge actually working.

“This was not unlike my trip there in January. I saw a lot of successes, and I noticed substantial improvement in Baghdad,” said Porter, who has traveled to Iraq three times in the past 18 months.

Funny that the article mentions the numbers 3 and 18.  Because 3 of 18 is what the Iraqi government is batting so far even after the surge was supposed to give them the room to meet all of them.

As lawmakers warm up for a renewal of the Iraq war debate in the fall, Porter accused Democrats of failing to offer solutions to the war and avoiding a debate on the ramifications of withdrawal.

That’s because debating the solution (leaving Iraq) is shouted down as unpatriotic at best and treasonous at worst.  There’s no debate because the debate itself kills Americans, according to the GOP.  The very idea of us considering anything other than total war weakens our effort to win, therefore it is not debated.  And really, the Democrats are just as responsible for giving into that idiotic argument…most of the time.  Not this time.

He said that some Democratic organizations, including the Searchlight Leadership Fund operated by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., have funded anti-war groups. The Searchlight Leadership Fund made $5,000 donations to VoteVets.Org in 2006 and again earlier this year, according to federal records.

“They’re entitled to their opinion, but they ought to be honest with Nevadans about where they’re getting their money,” Porter said of the anti-war organizations.

But here’s the funny thing:  the Dems are fighting back against this kind of stupidity.  Yes, look how horrible it is for Senators who are opposed to the war to give money to groups trying to oppose the war!  It’s not like Americans are…opposed to the war.

Some 3rd Bass, from the Cactus Album.  Old school.

A grin shows a trick up a sleeve,
What a tangled web they weave
Deceivers, stupefied through fable
say Let’s Make a Deal at the dinner table
Put you on tour, put your record on wax…

Give em the Gas Face on this gas price bullshit, Dems.

Reid spokesman Jon Summers said Porter is not “fully up to speed” with the Senate’s actions on Iraq.

“Democrats have put forward a number of solutions to change course in Iraq, but Republican obstructionists continue to throw up roadblocks,” Summers said. As for Democrats funding anti-war groups, “did (Porter) happen to mention the Republican organizations that are funding pro-war groups?”

Ka-chow.

A Gas Face, can either be a smile or a smirk
When appears, a monkey wrench to work one’s clockwork
Perkin his brim to the rim of my cup
Don’t tempt me, you’re empty, so fill’er up!

Democrats claim that organizations defending President Bush’s war strategy, such as Vets for Freedom or the newly formed Freedom’s Watch, are fronts linked to the Bush administration whose aim is to attack Democrats and boost GOP fortunes in Congress.

Reps. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., and Jim Moran, D-Va., joined Porter on the taxpayer-funded trip, which began Aug. 23 and included stops in Kuwait and Baghdad.

Never a magician if I ever tricked em
“Oh shit!” Another Gas Face victim!

Now, this is the kind of fighting back against the Noise Machine we need to see more often…and I’m damn glad to see it in the article instead of a “correction” or “reponse” three days later and 12 pages deep into the news section.

In the end, the truth just makes the GOP look stupid.

The hard sell of the Long War rolls on, this week the President made crystal clear the goal of that hard sell: to prepare the public for the coming attack on Iran.

Where both Glenn Greenwald and here on BMT, Larry Johnson have done a phenomenal job covering the President’s unmistakable signal to hit Iran, it’s worth taking a look a few other things the White House has been up to this week proclaiming that the continued war in Iraq and expansion into Iran is a foregone conclusion.
CNN is reporting that the US has released several Iranians after detaining them for being in Iraq.

The group was released and entered into a hotel in the Rusafa district. Then, “based on further instructions,” U.S. soldiers conducted a search on the hotel rooms occupied by the delegation.

 Soldiers confiscated cell phones, a computer and a briefcase filled with Iranian and U.S. money. At that point, the U.S. military said seven Iraqis and the eight Iranian nationals were arrested and “taken to a coalition facility for questioning.”

Video from Associated Press Television on Tuesday showed U.S. soldiers escorting 10 people — their hands bound in front of them and their eyes blindfolded — from the hotel and into military vehicles and driving off.

Indeed, Bush is recruiting some international help to assist him in selling the Long War to not just America, but the world.

In the first broad foreign policy speech of his presidency, Mr Sarkozy struck a notably more pro-US tone than his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, setting out his vision for a world “challenged” by a confrontation between Islam and the west.

He described the standoff over Iran’s nuclear programme as “undoubtedly the most serious crisis before us today”, saying a diplomatic push to rein in Tehran was the only alternative to “the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran.” This broke with Mr Chirac, who had earlier suggested that a nuclear-armed Iran might be inevitable.

Meanwhile, the White House is requesting another $50 billion for the war, signaling of course that there was never any intention of a drawdown of forces in Iraq.

President Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, a White House official said yesterday, a move that appears to reflect increasing administration confidence that it can fend off congressional calls for a rapid drawdown of U.S. forces.

The request — which would come on top of about $460 billion in the fiscal 2008 defense budget and $147 billion in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — is expected to be announced after congressional hearings scheduled for mid-September featuring the two top U.S. officials in Iraq. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker will assess the state of the war and the effect of the new strategy the U.S. military has pursued this year.

Once again, the Petraeus White House report is a foregone conclusion, with the administration planning ahead for more bloodshed and destruction despite the report still being a few weeks away.

But the important info this week remains the same:  Bush is strongly hinting that an attack on Iran is imminent.  Many of the same key phrases and once again key media pundits are pushing the Long War.  Reports have also surfaced this week that the Bush Administration has a plan to hit Iran already in place.

The United States has the capacity for and may be prepared to launch without warning a massive assault on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, as well as government buildings and infrastructure, using long-range bombers and missiles, according to a new analysis.

The paper, “Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East” – written by well-respected British scholar and arms expert Dr. Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and Martin Butcher, a former Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and former adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament – was exclusively provided to RAW STORY late Friday under embargo.

“We wrote the report partly as we were surprised that this sort of quite elementary analysis had not been produced by the many well resourced Institutes in the United States,” wrote Plesch in an email to Raw Story on Tuesday.

Plesch and Butcher examine “what the military option might involve if it were picked up off the table and put into action” and conclude that based on open source analysis and their own assessments, the US has prepared its military for a “massive” attack against Iran, requiring little contingency planning and without a ground invasion.

And should we need more forces in the “Middle East theater” then there are reports that a massive increase in independent contractors are helping to bolster the planned expansion.

Taking private enterprise way beyond what is reasonable, or desirable, or safe, the CheneyBush Administration has turned over a huge raft of national-security functions to those not adequately trained, not accountable to the public or the law, not showing up on the political radar.

In short, CheneyBush have created what amounts to their own private legions — soldiers, intelligence analysts, security guards, construction experts, supply specialists, et al. — in effect, a “mercenary” force bought and paid for by the American taxpayer.

That’s why there will probably be no draft: There is no guarantee of loyalty from those dragooned into service. Besides, many draftees have politically-connected constituencies. But when one’s mercenary “volunteer” forces are totally beholden to the paymaster for their livelihood and under-the-table payoffs, they will dance with them that brung ’em.

These are no small numbers. It’s estimated that in addition to the 160,000 regular troops in the field in Iraq, CheneyBush control anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 private assets (“independent contractors”). Nobody’s even sure under what “rules of engagement” these guys — many in security and reconstruction fields — operate, or whether they are accountable to anyone other than their corporate bosses’ and the financial “bottom line.”

Indeed, it seems that this week a lot of things have “clicked into place” involving the Long War and Iran.  Time is growing short before the Bush Administration makes it move on Tehran.  The question is what America can do to stop it, but we surely cannot say that we weren’t warned.

Not by a long shot.

So where exactly does Alberto Gonzales’s resignation leave the universe? Was it just his time?  Was he just worn out? Most people, including myself, thought he had this beat and was just going to remain lying around the White House like the barely functional but tolerated piece-o-shit “Presidential embarassing relative” Billy Carter/Roger Clinton jagoff he was. But as with Karl Rove’s departure, the real question is “Why?”

And even that breaks down into multiple questions.  What were his motivations for choosing to leave at all?  Why announce now?  What changed between a few weeks ago and today?  (And as Wonkette points out, who the hell in Washington blows a perfectly good Friday Night News Dump by sitting on it until Monday?)  Something was going on with Rove leaving.  Something even more sinister may be going on with Gonzo leaving too.

There are several theories: He left for the private sector, he left because Rove did, he was forced out because Rove’s departure meant he had no purpose, he left one step ahead of the hammer falling…or is it something else?
The obvious answer:  What changed was that Karl Rove resigned.  Alberto Gonzales’s only purpose for drawing breath in the Washington DC zip code was to cover Karl Rove’s ass.  But Rover left, and that means without a Karl Rove to cover, there was zero reason to keep Alberto around.  

This seems to lend a lot of credence to the theory that Rove was originally run out of town just ahead of the investigation that would have nailed him.

Like President Bush’s top political adviser, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned to avoid encroaching Congressional investigations, a fired federal prosecutor said Monday.

During an appearance on CNN, former US Attorney David Iglesias said Gonzales’s resignation is “absolutely linked with Karl Rove leaving two weeks ago,” and speculated the two resigned “for the same reason”: Congressional investigators closing in on their suspected roles in the attorney-firing scandal.

“This is what happens when there is not check and balance” under a Republican-controlled Congress and White House “and all of a sudden you have a new sheriff in town – so to speak – that wants answers to hard questions.”

But I don’t buy this one.  Not at all.  It makes sense on the surface, but if you look at it, it’s a red herring.

I especially don’t buy the “new sheriff in town” bit.  The Dems have been beating up on Alberto for four months.  The perjury accusation had mostly died out with the recess, and even then Bush was adamantly standing stock still on Gonzales.

I do however buy the Rove angle.  In fact, it’s the only thing that make even an ounce of sense.  This theory goes something like, oh, some kind of back room deal was cut between Bush/Cheney/Rove and the Democrats that allowed Rove to walk, that part of the deal was that Alberto was offered up on a platter.  Both sides wanted him gone, so it was a foregone conclusion that it was part on the deal.

But what did the Democrats really have on Rove?  Bush has gone out of his way, even in Gonzo’s departure, to be a petulant son of a bitch.  He clearly resisted this and so did Gonzales, and by all means Gonzo had at least cleared the hurdle of Labor Day and was well on his way to staying past the point of a resignation…remember the Rove excuse that Andy Card said all the people leaving the ship has to disembark by September?  Rove is gone August 31, but Gonzo gets to stick around until after Congress is back and then some, to September 17th.  That doesn’t make sense…which one of the two would you rather have around if you were Bush, the overly clever political operative who is at least competent at his job of being a ruthlessly political bastard, or Zippy the Wonder Lawyer?

Yeah, thought so.

Which means if this theory holds water, then something made Karl Rove leave the White House.  The only gods that Rove worship are purely political.  He was asked to walk away as part of a deal and he did…Bush was practically in tears when Rove announced his resignation, Gonzo on the other hand got got Bush halfheartedly saying “You guys picked on him”.  I truly think Gonzo was part of the price Bush had to pay for Rove to be able to walk free.

Which means whatever the Dems had on Rove must have been really, truly bad, especially given the fact this administration and this President especially have redefined the term “recalcitrant”.  Not only was it bad enough to make Bush puke up Rove before the biggest PR job of his career (the Petraeus White House Report on Iraq) but the Democrats got Gonzo as part of the deal as well.

Now, it’s entirely possible that the GOP game to the President and said “Look, George, we want them gone.  Now.  You’re fisting us with a handful of broken glass here in 2008.”  But considering how the latest hard sell on the Long War is targeting  GOP Congressional apostates on Iraq I doubt that’s it either.  Bush doesn’t care who he steps on to defend his legacy…but the two men primarily responsible for A) crafting his legacy and B) covering his ass to preserve said legacy are now both gone.

Which comes back down to the question that really matters, the linchpin of the “horrible Rove secret” theory:  What the hell is that deep, dark, horrible skeleton the Democrats have on Rove?  Why did they give this horrendous little secret up in exchange for Rove walking away scot-free and Gonzo face down in the wood chipper, like some Sopranos story arc?

And that’s where it breaks down. You see, this deep dark secret theory…that’s not what I really think happened.  Whatever would be bad enough to sink Rove with a Presidential election season right around the corner would have been irresistible for the Dems to give up.  They’re spineless, but they aren’t morons.  The ammo would have been too good to use for getting to the White House in 2008.

While Occam’s Razor suggests that Rove and Gonzo were just sick and tired of taking hits for Bush, the theory that the Democrats exacted their pound of flesh with an ironclad scandal that would have royally screwed the administration over is even less likely.

So what does that leave us? It’s not Rove was about to get prosecuted for anything, and Gonzo along with him…that too is a red herring. It’s predicated on the theory that with the Presidential primaries all but decided before Valentine’s Day, the Democrats would all let Rove walk. The secret that would make Rove walk would be bad enough to sink him, and yet none of the Dems would pull the trigger on it? Bullshit. This too is crap, and I don’t buy it. No, there’s nothing on Rove or Gonzo. We would have seen it by now. Something else made them both leave voluntarily. But what?

For our answer, let’s go down the other path.  It’s not what this administration did (past tense) that is so horrible…but it’s what this administration is about to do.

My theory is this:  Rove and Gonzo got out while the getting was good, because something much, much worse is coming down the pike.

Frankly, if the reason Rove and Gonzo got out is the one I really fear — because they are scared shitless of what Bush…and my guess it’s really what Dick Cheney’s about to do — then I think we should all be paying very, very close attention to the real reason why these two guys are leaving.

Because I think whatever Cheney is planning, not even Rove could stomach it.  And Gonzo either saw what Karl did and decided to leave (in his own incompetent Worst Friday News Dump Ever fashion) or he got tossed out because he really was only serving the purpose of being Rove’s firewall.  I think it’s a combination of both.

Point being with Rove and Gonzo leaving…somebody better figure out what Cheney’s up to and damn fast, because whatever it is it’s going to happen brutally quickly and happen soon.  I think it involves Iran.  I think it involves explosions.  And I think that while Gonzo really could be the other shoe dropping that Rove started, the real thing that could be dropping within the next couple of months are preemptive bombs on Iran.

The really radioactive, half-lifey “tactical theater weapon” kind.  It’s not a time to celebrate, folks.  It’s time to figure out what the hell game Cheney is playing.

The truth in Gonzo’s departure is probably a combination of a number of factors, but the primary reason in my opinion is that he was told what this administration is planning to do in the next few months, and Gonzo wanted out (along with Tony Snow, Karl Rove, etc). And just like the Rove departure, the key to the entire thing is Cheney and his unending appetite for war.

It’s gotten to the point where the important people staying in this administration are easier to keep track of than those who are leaving. And number one on that list is Dick Cheney.

He’s the one holding the cards right now. And we’d better figure out what’s in his hand before the rest of the world finds out the hard way.

The hard sell of the Long War marches on.  The three-pronged attack to try to convince America that perpetual war in the Middle East is our country’s only hope continues largely unabated in “the liberal media.”  Through shame, fear, and demagoguery, we’re being prepared for a generation of war.  Knowing how pivotal the Petraeus White House report on Iraq is, the forces of war are pulling out all the stops in the op-ed pages.

This week’s hard sell Sunday Wankery comes to us courtesy of  Mark Steyn.  This week’s Wank-O-Meme(tm:  “The Lessons of Vietnam”.

George W. Bush gave a speech about Iraq last week, and in the middle of it he did something long overdue: He attempted to appropriate the left’s most treasured all-purpose historical analogy. Indeed, Vietnam is so ubiquitous in the fulminations of politicians, academics and pundits that we could really use anti-trust legislation to protect us from shopworn historical precedents. But, in the absence thereof, the president has determined that we might at least learn the real “lessons of Vietnam.”

Got that?  Everything you know about Vietnam is wrong.  They are “shopworn historical precedents.”

“Then as now, people argued the real problem was America’s presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end,” Bush told the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention Aug. 22. “Many argued that if we pulled out there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people … . A columnist for the New York Times wrote in a similar vein in 1975, just as Cambodia and Vietnam were falling to the communists: ‘It’s difficult to imagine,’ he said, ‘how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone.’ A headline on that story, dateline Phnom Penh, summed up the argument: ‘Indochina Without Americans: For Most a Better Life.’ The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be.”

I don’t know about “the world,” but apparently a big chunk of America still believes in these “misimpressions.” As the New York Times put it, “In urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Mr. Bush is challenging the historical memory that the pullout from Vietnam had few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies.”

Let’s back this up.  That lesson Steyn is talking about is that spending that whole eleven years in Vietnam, where we lost 50,000+ soldiers was not the problem.  The problem was that we withdrew.

Well, it had a “few negative repercussions” for America’s allies in South Vietnam, who were promptly overrun by the North. And it had a “negative repercussion” for former Cambodian Prime Minister Sirik Matak, to whom the U.S. ambassador sportingly offered asylum. “I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion,” Matak told him. “I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty … . I have committed this mistake of believing in you, the Americans.” So Sirik Matak stayed in Phnom Penh and a month later was killed by the Khmer Rouge, along with about 2 million other people. If it’s hard for individual names to linger in the New York Times’ “historical memory,” you’d think the general mound of corpses would resonate.

But perhaps these distant people of exotic hue are not what the panjandrums of the New York Times regard as real “allies.” In the wake of Vietnam, the communists gobbled up real estate all over the map, and ever closer to America’s back yard. In Grenada, Maurice Bishop toppled Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy: It was the first-ever coup in the British West Indies, and in a faintly surreal touch led to Queen Elizabeth presiding over a People’s Revolutionary Government. There were Cuban “advisers” all over Grenada, just as there were Cuban troops all over Africa.

Because what was lost in Vietnam was not just a war but American credibility.

The conclusion:  We were a real country to be reckoned with as long as we stayed in Vietnam and got thousands killed ineffectively and then spread the war into Laos and Cambodia.  When the country had finally had enough and pussed out, that’s when we “lost credibility”.

Naturally, Steyn’s wankery compares this to today’s war in Iraq.  We will lose credibility if we leave Iraq, and then we will be attacked again.  Forget the lessons of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.  Forget the lessons of Eastern Europe in the 90’s, or the first Gulf War.  Those lessons don’t apply here.  Forget the fact that America’s credibility was ravaged when we began the war in Iraq.  Leaving Iraq will apparently cause people to think we’re weak.  That’s the only lesson that needs to be even considered.

But here’s the money graph:

American victory in the Cold War looks inevitable in hindsight. It didn’t seem that way in the Seventies. And, as Iran reminds us, the enduring legacy of the retreat from Vietnam was the emboldening of other enemies. The forces loosed in the Middle East bedevil to this day, in Iran, and in Lebanon, which Syria invaded shortly after the fall of Saigon and after its dictator had sneeringly told Henry Kissinger, “You’ve betrayed Vietnam. Someday you’re going to sell out Taiwan. And we’re going to be around when you get tired of Israel.”

Translation: Even though the Soviet Union crumbled, because we left Vietnam, the Shah fell in Iran and every nasty horrible Islamist terror attack on American interests can be traced directly back to us wimping out in Saigon.

The last heli out of the Embassy caused 9/11.  And by inference, everyone who supported out withdrawal from Vietnam is responsible for 9/11.  That’s the “lesson” we’re supposed to come away with.  We caused this.  It’s our fault.  That’s why we can’t leave Iraq.   If that happens, China will attack Taiwan.  If that happens, Israel will get nuked.  Your refusal to support the war in Iraq will get millions killed.  You’re not a dirty fucking hippie, are you?

But, if you’re not a self-absorbed poseur like Sulzberger, “Vietnam” is not a “tragedy” but a betrayal. The final image of the drama – the U.S. helicopters lifting off from the Embassy roof with desperate locals clinging to the undercarriage – is an image not just of defeat but of the shabby sell-outs necessary to accomplish it.

At least in Indochina, those who got it so horribly wrong – the Kerrys and Fondas and all the rest – could claim they had no idea of what would follow.

To do it all over again in the full knowledge of what followed would turn an aberration into a pattern of behavior. And as the Sirik Mataks of Baghdad face the choice between staying and dying or exile and embittered evenings in the new Iraqi émigré restaurants of London and Los Angeles, who will be America’s allies in the years ahead?

Professor Bernard Lewis’ dictum would be self-evident: “America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.”

Translation: You see, if we don’t stay and kill Muslims, nobody will ever like us. And it will be your fault.  You will have lead America into oblivion.  Vietnam caused 9/11.  What will the next “betrayal” cause?

Hopefully, it will cause us to stop and think about America being a world leader not through the barrel of a gun, but by actual leadership.  The man currently in charge of that has done more damage to America’s credibility than Vietnam ever could have, and the fact that he’s bringing it up (and worse, having Steyn write garbage like this) shows that the people running this perpetual war will now resort to anything — even complete sham fallacies like this — in order to make sure we never leave Iraq, or Syra, or Iran, or Pakistan, or Afghanistan.

At this point the desperation is so evident that I have to start questioning the sanity of the people running this country, and that should worry the hell out of all of us.  We’ve got one last real chance to stop this war before Bush’s cabal makes sure it drags on for decades.

Then again, to Mark Steyn, we’ve been fighting this war since the Fall of Saigon.  We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

There are a disturbing number of dots to try to connect this month when it comes to the future of Iraq.  The picture those dots form could very well be titled “Occupation in Perpetuity” but the fine details of the next 12 months or so are still cloudy.

But a possible explanation for the not exactly “slow” news month of August has been put forth by Professor Juan Cole and it’s a classic golden oldies play: a coming military coup in Iraq in order to create a strong central government alternative to Nouri al-Maliki’s three-ring circus.

A rumor is circulating among well-connected and formerly high-level Iraqi bureaucrats in exile in places like Damascus that a military coup is being prepared for Iraq. I received the following from a reliable, knowledgeable contact. There is no certitude that this plan can or will be implemented. That it is being discussed at high levels seems highly likely.

“There is serious talk of a military commission (majlis `askari) to take over the government. The parties would be banned from holding positions, and all the ministers would be technocrats, so to speak. . . [The writer indicates that attempts have been made to recruit cabinet members from the ranks of expatriate technocrats.]

The six-member board or commission would be composed on non-political former military personnel who are presently not part of the government OR the military establishment, such as it is in Iraq at the moment. It is said that the Americans are supporting this behind the scenes.

The plan includes a two-year period during which political parties would not be permitted to be part of the government, but instead would prepare and strengthen the parties for an election which would not have lists, but real people running for real seats. The two year period would be designed to take control of security and restore infrastructure.

. . .[I]t is another [desperate plan], but one which many many Iraqis will support, since they are sick of their country being pulled apart by the “imports” – Maliki, Allawi, Jaafari et al. The military group is composed of internals, people who have the goal of securing the country even at the risk of no democracy, so they say. “

Now, John Cole isn’t given to Drudge-like superlative insanity.  The key is, as Cole points out, that this is being discussed.  And the more I think about this, the more a coup to replace Maliki with a military council (which of course would need a leader or spokesman) may be in the works.

It’s the consequences of a coup that brings up some very chilling possibilities, as well as explaining many of the arguably strange actions of the Bush administration in recent weeks.

Of course, if the recent announcements of both Karl Rove and Tony Snow are explained by Maliki being on the way out, it implies foreknowledge of the Iraqi PM’s exit by the President and his men.  It also means that since the US is nominally in charge of “Iraqi security” still, that the US would not only have to allow a coup to happen, but would have to actively engineer it.

That’s a pretty huge leap of logic.  But it’s an option that makes a lot of sense from the position of Bush’s supposition that we must remain in Iraq.

It gives the surge political cover.  For “stability in the region”, our troops would have to remain in order to work with the new government.  Remember that the line out of Washington this week is that while there’s “modest” improvement on the ground, Maliki needs to be shown the  door.  Even if the coup rumor has no basis, there’s plenty of talk about who would replace Maliki.  Already, the instability of Maliki’s job security is prompting calls for another Friedman Unit or two in Iraq.  

Replacing Maliki, either through a coup, a collapse that brings in Allawi, or through some other means would basically cement our presence in Iraq through 2009.  In addition, whoever is in charge of Iraq afterwards would have A) every effort to be on their best behavior, B) would nominally have been vetted by the US to begin with and C) would be eager to enact what the US wanted in the first place:  the oil agreements that have stalled and died in Iraq’s parliament.

It also leaves a very convenient scapegoat for the GOP.  “See, all the past failures of Iraq over the last two years, that was all Maliki’s fault.  So you can’t blame us.  We’re trying to help the new guys maintain stability.”

So why the coup?  If replacing Maliki is as simple as letting Ayad Allawi get back in charge, that could be done without the need for the massive chaos a military coup would cause.  The key may be the chaos itself.  The Devil’s advocate position seems to dictate that if the coup could somehow be tied to Iran through the collapse of the “duly elected Maliki government” then we’d have yet another “casus belli” for attacking Iran and expanding the war.

Could the fall of the Maliki government and the resulting coup be the trigger that would put us on course for bombing the IRGC?  I’m not sure, but it would definitely be something an increasingly desperate Bush might be willing to do in order to force us to remain in Iraq and expand the war to Iran.

It would explain why Karl Rove and Tony Snow got cold feet, why the IRGC is being targeted as a “terrorist group”,  why the White House has soured on Maliki and why the hard sell on the Long War is going full blast.  While replacing Maliki in a less violent manner would achieve some of these goals, a coup could be used to not only get everything the Bush administration wants in Iraq, but everything Cheney wants in Iran.

Would the Bush administration go that far?  A coup of that magnitude wouldn’t just “happen” under the noses of 160,000+ US troops and support personnel…not unless it was meant to happen.

It certainly seems Maliki’s days are numbered however.

Glenn Greenwald does an excellent job of detailing the effort to get rid of Maliki and replace him with Ayad Allawi.

Most extraordinary of all is how deceitful this whole process is. As CNN reports: “The lobbying firm boasts the services of two onetime foreign policy hands of President Bush: Ambassador Robert Blackwill, the former Deputy National Security Adviser, and Philip Zelikow, former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

But currently, Zelikow in particular runs around Washington holding himself out — and being held out — as an Expert on the Future of Iraq while concealing that his firm is being paid by Allawi to undermine Maliki. As but one example, Zelikow was a featured Iraq Expert on ABC News with Charles Gibson three nights ago, on Monday.

Reporter Martha Raddatz narrated the story which began (via LEXIS): “today, for the first time, President Bush said Maliki could be replaced.” The story then flashed to Michael O’Hanlon, who said: “I think Mr. Bush made a very significant change in his policy today. He made it clear that his support for al-Maliki is on very thin ice.”

Perhaps this effort is being done to indeed set Maliki up for a coup, and make sure he’s replaced with who the US wants: Ayad Allawi. The truth of the matter may be somewhere between a tacit military effort to overthrow Maliki and a purely political implicit overthrow by forces in the US.

Either way, Nouri al-Maliki is being set up as the fall guy for all of Bush’s problems in Iraq, while serving as a reason to delay our withdrawal and even expand the war.

The hard sell on the Long War continues as the President draws on old ghosts, old saws, and old wounds in order to make the case for staying in Iraq for perpetuity.  Aware of his own damaged credibility as a spokesman for Iraq, Bush is compensating in several ways.  But are the Democrats complicit (knowingly or unknowingly) in working the hard sell this week? Evidence seems to point to yes.
The Long War is getting a PR boost from outside the beltway…sort of.  Former Bush flack Ari Fleischer is at it again:

Freedom’s Watch, a conservative group, plans to launch a $15 million advertising campaign in 20 states today. The group’s spokesman, former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, says the goal is to tell people that the buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq is working.

“We want to get the message to both Democrats and Republicans: Don’t cut and run, fully fund the troops, and victory is the only objective,” Fleischer says.

Note the real problem here:  Heretic Republicans will not be tolerated.  Those who have apostate views on Iraq are going to be targeted by their own people now, using Swiftboat/astroturf methods.  Part of the hard sell on the Long War is to round up those in the President’s party and “convince” them that on Iraq, Bush’s position is the only position.  As Ari Fleischer remarked, “Victory is the only objective”.  All else must be subsumed by the effort for victory, nothing else is acceptable.  That especially includes criticism from inside the GOP.  Bush Uber Alles.

Meanwhile the President is trying to scare up old memories of the last time we were in this bind.

The president will also make the argument that withdrawing from Vietnam emboldened today’s terrorists by compromising U.S. credibility, citing a quote from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden that the American people would rise against the Iraq war the same way they rose against the war in Vietnam, according to the excerpts.

You can’t get too much deeper down the Orwellian rabbit hole than this argument.  Again, the President is saying that the real enemy here is criticism of his Iraq policy.  Dissent cannot be tolerated, because it weakens us and emboldens the enemy.  Only the President’s view on Iraq, that we must fight until “victory” is achieved, is tolerable.

The problem with that of course is the fact that the President is openly questioning the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with him, suggesting that the Enemy is using them to weaken the United States.  The reality is that the President’s disgraceful actions and idiotic foreign policy has done that for us, but of course logic has never slowed down Dubya even for a  second.

The problem is that the Democrats have been allowing Bush to run foreign policy now with virtually no resistance.  Why?  Especially when the largest problem with the Democrats is that they don’t resist the Republicans enough, and that the Democrats are furious because of it. I ask that because there’s a very real problem with the fact that the Democrats are allowing the Petraeus White House Report to be given on September 11th.

There’s something wrong there.  If there’s any solstice date for the politicization of the Long War effort, it’s 9/11.  The date has the most brutal history of being used as a weapon against Bush’s critics and political opposition.  To allow Bush to give the Petraeus White House Report on 9/11 is almost a freebie for the Bush Administration, representing a least-resistance type move that to many Democrats seems like just more of the same refusal to resist Bush on Iraq.  

If it’s somehow a “clever move to highlight the failure of the surge on 9/11” it’s too clever by half,  for the “serious foreign policy” crowd would be able to reject any and all criticism of the General’s White House’s report by saying that the Democrats are playing politics with 9/11…and to an extent they would be right.

There’s no upside for the Democrats to schedule this report on 9/11.  None.  Even criticism that Bush is using 9/11 as a political tool rings hollow on 9/11, even if it is most certainly true.  And yet the evidence is beginning to pile up that the Democrats are not only refusing to resist Bush on Iraq, but that they are actively supporting him and the efforts to expand the Long War into Iran, Syria, Pakistan, and the Middle East.

At this point the Democrats are offering no more than token resistance to Bush, and the reason seems to be that they A) expect progressives to vote for them over the GOP regardless of performance and B) expect the Long War to continue well past Bush’s term.  Both of these assumptions are extraordinarily disturbing to the country and to anybody who does disagree with the President on the war.

So why are the hawkish Democrats, particularly the ones running for President, setting us up for the Long War?  Hillary’s done no more than to prod the Bush administration on the trial balloon involving the draft.  All the Dems should be laying into the Bush position that the draft is back on the table as an admission that the Surge has failed, and yet we’re hearing nothing.  There seem to be no easy answers on this, and in the meantime the clock is ticking on Iran.

Even worse, the Democrats are failing to stand up to the notion that dissent is a criminal act.  The Bush administration is implying at almost every turn now that getting out of Iraq is a treasonous position, that only enemies of America would want us to leave Iraq.  The assumption that supporting us leaving Iraq is somehow an equal act to plotting against America is ludicrous, and yet it is done on a daily basis.  Shame, guilt, fear, and twisted logic…the hard sell rolls on.

It continues with the tacit or implied permission of the Democratic leaders in Congress as well as most of the ones in the 2008 Presidential race.  It continues with the implications that anyone contrary to the Long War is the enemy.  It continues virtually unabated in the press, in the beltway, and in the right blogosphere.

And that’s just this week.

And what a one-sided buttkicking this is for the forces of logic.  Kimberly Strassel in her role of Arbiter Of All That Is Serious decides  the Netroots movement has lost, in particular, Daily Kos.
Her entire argument for “Netroots For Teh Lose” boils down to this:

Henry Cuellar, Harold Ford, and Joe Fucking Lieberman.  Yep, that’s her entire argument:  because these three Democrats exist, the Netroots lost in 2006.  Hahahaha.  Stupid Liberals!

Mr. Cuellar goes so far as to argue that instead of cowing Democratic moderates, the left-wing attacks have united them. More middle-of-the-roaders now believe that if the bloggers were to win a high-profile primary, it would only energize them to go after others. “This has brought us together to say, ‘this is us, and we’ve got to stick together,'” he says.

But perhaps the Netroots biggest failure, suggests Mr. Cuellar, is that it hasn’t bludgeoned his party’s leadership into abandoning the middle. It was moderate Democrats who won their party the majority last year (the New Democrats now boast 60 members; 13 new additions), and Mr. Cuellar claims few people understand that better than Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “I’ve seen her behind the scenes, and I’ve always thought she was liberal, but she’s done a good job of trying to bring us more to the middle.”

For proof, Mr. Cuellar suggests a look at “all the passes” the leadership has given red-state Dems on tough votes like Iraq, missile defense and immigration. This is an obvious recognition by the top ranks of the party that getting moderates re-elected is the only way to stay in power. They know that “if we go the way these Internet groups want us to go, we’ll be the shortest-lived majority in congressional history,” he says.

Now, keep in mind what the word “Moderate” means to Ms. Strassel, with the evidence of Joe Fucking Lieberman and company as examples:  voting to prolong the war, voting to continue to rob Americans of civil liberties, voting in lockstep with the Republican party out of fear.

A good “moderate Democrat” is a cowed Democrat, one who cares more about getting re-elected by carrying the Bush water, supporting the President whenever possible, and having no spine to resist the systematic and systemic rape of America’s Constitution.

A good “moderate Democrat” is a Republican.  And for trying to resist this, the netroots are supposedly “out-of-touch” with Americans…Americans who overwhelmingly want to end the war, want to bring our troops home, and want more protections to civil liberties, not less.

Because in Ms. Strassel’s alternate universe, a good American is a moderate.  And a moderate shuts up and takes it like a victim.  Pssst!  Kimmy!  America doesn’t trust you guys anymore.

More than a few people have pointed out that the recent hard sell on the Long War is moot;  the Bush administration’s war efforts to attack Iran and Pakistan and beyond will simply collapse under the sheer weight of their own incompetence so far.

2008 indeed looks to be a watershed that will be the Waterloo of the GOP.  What the Bushies are up to reeks of flop sweat and desperation.  Rove is gone, mouthpiece Tony Snow is out soon, and a few more are expected to leave as well.

And why are the rats leaving the ship?  Arguably to regroup and attack from a different angle, because the current hard sell is already meeting resistance.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A majority of Americans don’t trust the upcoming report by the Army’s top commander in Iraq on the progress of the war and even if they did, it wouldn’t change their mind, according to a new poll.

 President Bush frequently has asked Congress — and the American people — to withhold judgment on his so-called troop surge in Iraq until Gen. David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, issue their progress report in September.

But according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Thursday, 53 percent of people polled said they suspect that the military assessment of the situation will try to make it sound better than it actually is. Forty-three percent said they do trust the report.

CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said he doesn’t think the mistrust is directed at Petreaus as much as it is what he represents.

Holland said, “I suspect most people are hearing the words ‘general’ and ‘Iraq’ and that’s what they’re basing their opinion on.”

He added, “It does seem to indicate that anyone associated with the Bush administration may be a less than credible messenger for the message that there is progress being made in Iraq.”

You think?  After six years of basically lying as an art form, we have people still openly wondering if Bush has lost all credibility?  Incredible.  Still, this is pretty significant.  “Less than credible” means people are finally calling bullshit on these guys, from the top down.  Bush is even toxic to his own generals at this point.

Twenty-six percent of those polled feel that the Iraqi government is making progress, while 69 percent said that it wasn’t.

“We haven’t done a lot of polling about the Iraqi government,” Holland said, “but the numbers we have seem to indicate that people are pretty skeptical of any government official in Iraq.”

The poll indicates that most of America’s mind is made up about the war — 72 percent said the report will have no effect on their view of the war.

These numbers too are very significant.  There can be no success in Iraq without a functioning government, and the public is completely soured on that prospect.  Likewise, the poll says that the “Petraeus Report” (actually written by the White House) will have virtually no effect on their decisions about how well the surge is going.  They’ve already made up their minds.

At this point, the Bushies have to know that their backs are against the wall.  The September 15th report was basically their last chance, and the news is that the public is already ignoring it.  But this of course means the Bushies will have to take far more drastic measures to ensure the Long War continues.

The question of course is how drastic those measures will be.

It’s only Wednesday, and we’re already seeing more signs this week that despite Karl Rove’s resignation, the hard sell on the Long War continues to ratchet up.

A few days ago I said that the hard sell on the Long War was a three-pronged assault on reason. It was a nasty combination of twisted wingnut appeals to “logic”, “shame”, and “fear”.

This week, the public is being hit hard on all three.
First we have the military noise machine hitting on the “logic”.  This argument basically goes “despite all you hear in the press about Iraq being a disaster, everything is perfectly fine.”

The U.S. military is expressing hope that the recent troop buildup in Iraq is making strides as commanders point to the American death toll in the war zone — the lowest monthly total since November.

 As of Wednesday, 77 U.S. troops were killed in July, a striking drop from earlier this year when spring brought the worst three-month period for U.S. troop deaths since the war began: 104 in April, 126 in May and 101 in June.

“Any time you are talking about coalition forces being safe, we gladly welcome that and hope to see it continue as a trend, that due to our operations the level of violence and level of attacks against coalition forces goes down,” said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, according to Reuters.

See, less US troops are dying, so “logically” we’re winning in Iraq.  Our troops are now “safer” so it’s okay to keep them in “safer” areas of Iraq to continue the Long War.  And who determines what the generals call safe?  Why, the White House.  So much for an objective view of the war from the generals, they’re not just making the kool-aid, they are passing it out to the thirsty public.

Despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report’s data.

On the “shame” front, the right-wing blogosphere is doing its best to attack the Democrats, continuing to say that because of the “logic” of our victory, the Democrats are toast in 2008.

The Democrats, after spending the winter, spring and early summer frantically calling to get out of Iraq as fast as their little feet could carry them, are now, as autumn approaches, demonstrating their Olympic-class backpedaling skills.

By winter (with the complicity of the drive-by media — hat tip to Rush), the Democrats hope to expunge the historic record of their failure of war nerve this spring. This is the moment for Republicans — from the president, to the candidates for president, to the incumbents and challengers for offices all the way down to dog catcher (and especially dog catcher) to remind the public of the springtime Democratic Party defeatism and lost nerve.

They should be inspired to follow the immortal advise of Gen. Patton to his troops regarding what they should do to the Nazi enemy: “We are going to hold them by the nose and kick them in the a– … we are going to go through them like crap through a goose.” (Of course, the Democrats are only the domestic opposition, not the enemy. In American politics we have no American enemies — only philosophical opponents — I mean that):

The leadership of the Democratic Party has, by their public words this spring, disgraced themselves for a generation. Republicans have the right — and the duty — to engrave in the public mind the springtime Democratic perfidy and cowardice in the face of the enemy.

The argument that Democrats aren’t “serious on national security” has been upgraded to “Democratic perfidy and cowardice”.  The stakes have suddenly gotten a lot higher with September 15th now but a month away.  The twisted “logic” has allowed the even more twisted “shame” aspect to be played out…but of course the most effective method of selling the Long War continues to be “fear.”

This aspect too has been upgraded from “The Terrorists will follow us home if we leave” argument to “Millions of Iraqis will die if we leave” to “The Terrorists are already among us!”

NEW YORK – Citizens who quietly band together and adopt radical ways — not just established overseas terrorist groups like al-Qaida — pose a serious threat to American security, a new police analysis has concluded.

The New York Police Department report, to be released Wednesday, describes a process in which young Muslim immigrants, frustrated with their lives in their adopted country, slowly adopt a philosophy that puts them on the path to jihad. The men meet and share ideas in mosques, in bookstores and over the Internet, it says.

Police officials say the report warns that potential terrorists are difficult for law enforcement to detect because they blend in well. It also argues that more intelligence gathering is needed to thwart terror plots at their earliest stages.

Note the fear aspect also contains hints of both the shame and logic angles.  Selling the Long War is taking a combined arms approach.  This old argument, that the terrorists are hiding among us, is certainly nothing new…

I never cease to be amazed – and perhaps it is my own myopia – that my former colleagues on the Left can be blind to this situation. They act as if the threat is not real and is only a blip caused by a post 9/11 overreaction by George Bush, thus ignoring virtually all of Western history since the year 800, not to mention the overwhelming demographic changes of recent decades. (John Edwards – interestingly an opponent of gay marriage – recently called the “War on Terror” a bumper sticker. At least, he’s consistent.) The very people most threatened by the ideology of Islamism and the institution of Sharia law – gays, women, freethinkers – are often the very people least likely to defend themselves against it. What we have on our Left is a culture of denial equal to, if not exceeding, the German Jews of the 1930s and one that has taken the canard about all politics being local to an almost ludicrous extreme.

…but the intensity and the combined arms approach to bundle fear with twisted logic and shame is, and so is the need to use the three to further not just staying in Iraq for eternity, but to justify expanding the war to Iran.

The United States has decided to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a “specially designated global terrorist,” according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group’s business operations and finances.

The Bush administration has chosen to move against the Revolutionary Guard Corps because of what U.S. officials have described as its growing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its support for extremists throughout the Middle East, the sources said. The decision follows congressional pressure on the administration to toughen its stance against Tehran, as well as U.S. frustration with the ineffectiveness of U.N. resolutions against Iran’s nuclear program, officials said.

The run up to September 15th looks to be a brutal PR blitz of staggering proportions designed to ensure that we stay in Iraq for the decades that the Long War will entail.  No resistance will be tolerated.  No effort will be spared to make it happen.  More than ever, we need to get the message out that the public is being played again.  It’s 2002 all over again, and this time if we fall for it, this country and our way of life are over.

The old newspaper editor’s adage is that every story has a who, what, where, when, how, and why.  Different people will tell you that one of the six is more important that the others and will give you different answers.

The optimist will tell you the true heart of the story is “why?”.  Why did the person do that?  Why did they act the way they did?  Why does this matter to me?

But the cynic, for example, will tell you the only thing that matters in 2007 is “how”.  How did this person almost get away with it?  How did they come up with this plan?  How could they have made it better?

Normally when the “who” is Karl Rove, I’d say the story was indeed “how”.  But for the “what” of his resignation, the clear story is actually “why”.

So what are Rove’s motivations?  Let’s look at what we do know:

1)  Rove has known Dubya for thirty plus years.  Pretty much no human being on earth has been more loyal to Dubya than Karl Rove.  And we know this President has above all valued loyalty as the top of his list of criteria.  

2)  Rove knows where the bodies are buried.  Rove’s duties have always been pulling the strings.  He’s a fixer, an information broker and manipulator.  The President’s dirty secrets have always been his trade, and protecting him is paramount to Bush.

3)  Rove isn’t a quitter.  Karl Rove resigning to be with his family would be like Tiger Woods giving up golf to be with his wife and daughter…pretty much inconceivable for a guy at the top of his game.  Rove’s game is the power behind the throne, and no throne is more gilded than that of POTUS.

So, given those facts about Rove, the question becomes “Why?”  Why leave now?  More details are needed to reveal his motivations, but some of them can be gleaned from asking some investigative questions.

1)  What can Rove do outside the White House (that he couldn’t do inside?)  That seems to be question one in my mind.  In the White House, Rove would enjoy unprecedented access, attention, and protection from the unitary executive…but also scrutiny, oversight, and investigation.  It’s one thing that Sen. Leahy is vowing to press on to get Rove to testify now, but something changed in the balance of this part of the equation.  Today’s announcement that he’s granting his first interview since the resignation to Comedian Rush Limbaugh is a major clue.

2)  Why would Rove leave before the biggest event of Bush’s second term, the “September Report?”  If Bush ever needed Rove’s political connections and mini-Machiavellian style, it would be in the hard sell of continuing and expanding the Long War to the American public.  And yet at the time Bush would need Rove the most, he’s leaving.  Specifically, he’s leaving at the end of August.  Somehow, this figures into the equation as well.  Things aren’t going too well in Iraq as of late.

3)  How does Rove get away with leaving the scene of the crime?  For all intents and purposes, Rove is getting away from a hit and run of the entire GOP.  If anything, they should be furious with Rove for losing the 2006 elections to the Dems and putting the President in a situation where the GOP can’t possibly win in 2008…and yet Rove gets hagiography after hagiography from the right-wing…but it’s not fooling everyone.

So the real issue is not “Why did Rove resign” but “What’s his next scheme?”