Tag: Iraq

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

MAD AS HELL: “…But to Do and Die.”

Bush has bought himself another year in Iraq. Mission
accomplished — again! Barring a miracle (doubtful) or impeachment proceedings
(inconceivable), our brave troops are guaranteed to be stuck in Iraq for the
next 16 months. Kick the can on down the road.

The buildup to this Crocker/Petraeus dog-and-pony show
has been coming for months, and arrived on the Hill like a big whoopee
cushion. General David Petraeus, Bush’s new poodle, threw out some stats,
flipped a few charts, and pointed to tables indicating the so-called surge is
working. Surge splurge. This rigged report, contradicted by a host of recent
independent reports, was total poppycock and to quote the immortal words of
Bob Dole, “You know it, I know it, and the American people know it.”

Petraeus, like the other cast members in this show, tried
to stick to script. There were a few shockers, however, when the general was
forced to extemporize.

Petraeus made the claim that the surge of 30,000
additional troops is working to improve the security of Iraq. However, he also
announced that the same number of troops will soon be leaving Iraq. If Iraq
is so safe as the result of the 30,000 troops, why would we suddenly
jeopardize the nation’s safety by pulling them out? It was a simple question
the general tap-danced around and, like the other lies Bush and his lackeys
have told, this boner brazenly defies all logic. It reminds us of their
continuing whopper that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.

When Senator John Warner astutely asked the most
important question in the hearings, “Is the strategy this administration laid
out making us safer?”(a Howard Baker moment), Petraeus squirmed like a greased
pig until blurting out, “I don’t know.” Petraeus then volunteered stutteringly,
that in fact, he just could not say for sure if we are safer or not as a
result of being in Iraq. Imagine that! Almost a trillion dollars, over 3,500
casualties, and five years into a war – a war he is supposedly leading, this
general does not know if being there has made us any safer. Not one to suffer
fools, Warner’s insightful question led the general to admit, however
indirectly, that the entire war policy of this president has been a failure.
It was deja vu, as we suffered another “heck of a job, Brownie” moment.

The other revelation that should get everyone’s focus off
Britney Spears is the news that, as General Petraeus later strongly implied in
a news interview, it would soon be necessary to obtain authorization to take
action against Iran within its own borders, rather than just inside Iraq.
This is a confirmation of several reports made chiefly this year by the New
Yorker’s Seymour Hirsch claiming we currently are, and have been, fighting
a proxy war with Iran within the borders of Iraq. Bush, lacking any clear
record of achievement in Iraq, is now wanting to drop bombs on Iran.

Let’s be clear about what is happening right before our
eyes: our government, of the people, by the people, and for the people is openly
stating, by way of its highest general, that it is of no consequence to this
administration whether the people of the United States or the people of Iraq
obtain their desire to stop this occupation. After years of being told that if
we fight them over there, we won’t have to fight them over here, we learn, by
the military’s reluctant admission, that we are no safer over here for having
invaded Iraq over there. Unfortunately, only a brave few in either the congress
or military have mustered the grit to call this form of governance and military
aggression by its real name—–tyranny.

General David Petraeus, ever the good soldier, has followed
the orders of his commander in chief. He seems to have adopted, literally, the
words of the poem “Charge of the Light Brigade” by Lord Tennyson:

Not tho’ the
soldier knew

Someone had
blunder’d,

Their’s not to make
reply

Their’s not to
reason why,

Their’s but to do
and die.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

MAD AS HELL: Ye Olde GOP Presidential Players

The hallmark of this president will undoubtably be the
Iraq war; however the influence of Karl Rove with his powerful Svengali job as
casting agent and director for the George W. Bush Show will loom large. Over
the last six years, America has been a willing participant in a reality show
created by Republicans called Let’s Pretend. Thematically, this is the
message: “I will pretend to tell you the truth, if you will pretend to believe
it.”

When it comes to acting, Dubya is a rookie, but you’ve
got to hand it to him —- the guy is one hell of a performer. After all, it
can’t be easy playing Goober Pyle, Howdy Doody, and Forrest Gump
simultaneously. Until now, the sunny performances by Ronald Reagan on the show
I’m Not a President but I Play One on TV have ranked tops among
Republicans, but the acting skills of George the Forty-Third have put old
Ronnie to shame.

Cheney, Condi, and Rummy, the co-producers of this
mendacious melange, have a flair for the dramatic as well. Their formula has
been brilliant: Take Lost in Space, cross it with some Green Acres,
and lace it with just the right amounts of Combat and Rawhide
to create a new version of Groundhog Day. What a masterful stroke of genius it
was to make the media part of the cast. When it came to the thespian talents
of the working stiffs at the networks and 24 -hour cable channels, who knew?

Stage doors will soon be shutting for our Witless Wonder
but those amusement loving Republicans have nothing to fear – Fred Thompson is
waiting in the wings. Thompson, a bona fide B- lister in Hollywood rolled out
his candidacy this week by keeping all the razzle-dazzle so cherished by his
party. Not one to disappoint, Ready Freddy kicked off his campaign on The
Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

The role of Candidate is a reprise of one of Thompson’s
earlier portrayals, but in case you missed it, this is the synopsis: Southern
Lawyer turned Washington Senator/actor/lobbyist drawls his way through America
using warmed-over Reagan anecdotes to tout Dixie-fried conservative values.
Folksy speeches that don’t really say anything but are punctuated with the
benefits of war, a devotion to God, and the love of freedom stir the crowds of
the saved and self-righteous. Winking and smiling, Thompson is assuring
nervous neo-cons that he’s their man and will continue on with the Bush
charade of pretending to tell us the truth, so we can continue to pretend to
believe it.

With rank hypocrisy, Republicans love to condemn the
mythical Hollywood life style and claim it to be the epitome of hedonism
represented only by Democrats. Yet Republicans are the ones with a penchant
for electing real actors — candidates whose multiple marriages, secret
lovers, and closeted sexcapades more accurately reflect Hollywood values. In
the days ahead, it will be interesting to see if Mr. Law-‘n-Order can cast his
actor’s spell over Republican voters.

On the other hand: Surely, the time has come for people
to consider electing a President who is genuinely more interested in winning
the Nobel Prize for Peace than the Academy Award for Acting.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

A Bully Puppet

Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is rising a notch in my estimation. He’s begun to snap back at his American critics. Bully for him.

Arrogant American politicians, in calling for his ouster, shed all pretense of any interest in democracy. Clearly, they see themselves as imperial overlords dissatisfied with someone they consider an American stooge. American generals even now are starting to talk about the need for a dictator, though they don’t use that term. Maybe, they are telling journalists, democracy for Iraq wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Nevertheless, al-Maliki is the legitimately chosen head of a legitimately elected government. It’s not up to American senators and presidential candidates to decide who should be prime minister of Iraq. These empty-headed windbags wouldn’t dream of calling for the ouster of the British prime minister. That they so readily do so in the case of Iraq simply shows you how they disdain the democracy they claim to support.

In fairness to al-Maliki, it should be pointed out that the much-publicized hand-over of “sovereignty” to the Iraqi government was and is a sham. Iraq’s army has to answer to the Americans, not to the Iraqi government. Iraq has no intelligence agency. The intelligence agency was set up and is run by the CIA. The U.S. is still the occupier of Iraq, and there is relatively little freedom of the Iraqi government to set its own policies.

Add to that the fact that the Iraqi government, regardless of who leads it, is stuck with a country that we “bombed back into the pre-industrial age,” to use the boastful phrase of General Norman Schwarzkopf during the first Gulf War. Then, with our singularly inept attempt at occupation, we fired its government and its army.

If every member of the Iraqi parliament had a genius IQ, they’d have a hard time digging themselves out of the hole we dug for the country.

The Iraqi fiasco is a black comedy — black because of the tragic loss of life and suffering it has caused, but a comedy nevertheless because of the Three Stooges-type antics of American officials, beginning with President Bush.

The president has misled and continues to mislead the American people in an attempt to rationalize his failed policy. His pathetically juvenile claim that the terrorists would follow Americans home if the U.S. withdrew from Iraq is laughable. Al-Qaeda declared war on us long before we did it the enormous favor of invading Iraq, thus both reinforcing al-Qaeda’s propaganda and providing it with a new recruitment and training ground.

Bush’s ill-fated war has not only increased the stock of the world’s terrorists, it replaced a Sunni-led government with a Shiite-led government that is close to Iran. You couldn’t screw this situation up any worse than if you had let Osama bin Laden plan the invasion. I have never seen such a stupid administration as this one.

And make no mistake — there is no easy solution or way out of this morass. Just as so many knowledgeable people, both here and in the Middle East, warned the president beforehand, Bush has set loose the wild dogs of war — chaos and havoc in a previously stable region — and he doesn’t have any idea at all of how to round them up.

I long ago predicted the end result of this blundering around would be a new dictatorship, because a brutally strong central authority is the only way Iraq’s feuding factions can be controlled. This time, however, it likely will be someone allied to Iran.

Iraq’s misery and difficulties remind me of a quotation from a Turkish officer, who said, “The trouble with being an ally of the United States is that you can never tell when it’s going to decide to stab itself in the back.”

Amen.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Progress Report

Last week, comedian and satirist Bill Maher said, “The surge is working — not the actual surge, but the phrase ‘the surge is working’ is working.”

It would be hard to come up with a more succinct summation of our current Iraq contretemps than Maher’s. The Government Accounting Office’s Iraq report, commissioned by Congress, stated that the Iraqi government has failed to meet 15 of the 18 benchmarks set out by the military and the Bush administration to indicate progress in Iraq.

But, as this administration has done since the very beginning of this ill-fated Iraq debacle, when one set of stated goals isn’t met, it simply moves the goalposts. Six months ago, we were told the goal of the surge was to allow the Iraqi government to make political progress. They were to meet the aforementioned 18 benchmarks.

Oops. No political progress occurred. Just the opposite, in fact, unless you consider meeting three of 18 benchmarks sufficient progress. So now we’re being told that the goal of the surge is to provide increased security for the Iraqi people. Meanwhile, certain administration insiders and some of its supporters in Congress are calling for the ouster of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. He was the man the people of Iraq voted into office via parliament during the much ballyhooed elections awhile back. Purple fingers, remember?

Ah, but here’s the rub: Iraq is majority Shiite and so is Iran. So when the U.S. took out Saddam and instituted democracy in Iraq, we created a potential ally for Iran. Who could have anticipated such a result? In our opinion, Maliki would be well-advised not to take out any long-term magazine subscriptions. And Iran? Well, let’s just say Vice President Dick Cheney wants to attack sooner than later, and President Bush has called Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a “terrorist threat.”

In the midst of all this, General David Petraeus is supposed to provide another progress report later this month. It is widely assumed that since the report will also serve as a de facto summation of his own efforts in Iraq, Petraeus will give himself — and the surge — high marks.

This five-year game of “whack-a-mole” would be funny in its ineptitude if it weren’t so tragic. How many times do the American people have to hear the phrase “six more months” before they realize it’s a shell game? It reminds us of the big sign on the patio wall at Neil’s in Midtown: “Free Beer Tomorrow.” And, of course, the sign says the same thing tomorrow — and the next day and the next. The joke is there ain’t no free beer.

The administration’s tactics seem ever more clearly to be an elaborate stall, the goal of which is merely to keep as many troops as possible in Iraq for as long as possible. “Six more months.” “The surge is working.” “Support the troops.” “We can’t cut and run.” Pick your poison, and these guys have tried it.

And now, shortly before Petraeus’ report is due, the president makes a “surprise” visit to Iraq. And, surprise! The surge is working.

Why are we not surprised?

Categories
News

“Eyes Wide Open” to be Shown in Downtown Memphis

The Mid-South Peace and Justice Center, in cooperation with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), will honor fallen U.S. military personnel and Iraqi civilians with its traveling exhibition: Eyes Wide Open: The Cost of War to Tennessee.

The exhibit will be on display in Federal Plaza, 167 N. Main St. on August 28, 2007 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. A press conference will be held at noon to launch a sustained campaign of public education, outreach and nonviolent direct action.

Eyes Wide Open: The Cost of War to Tennessee focuses on the specific costs of war to the state of Tennessee. The exhibit includes 72 pairs of boots representing fallen servicemen and women from Tennessee, and a visual representation of the Iraqi civilian casualties. This exhibit is part of AFSC’s national Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of War network.

Categories
News

Haley Barbour’s Lobbying Firm Contracts to Undermine Iraq President

CNN is reporting that Barbour, Griffin & Rogers, the powerful lobbying firm founded by Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, has a contract with an opponent of Iraqi prime minister Maliki.

From CNN: A powerhouse Republican lobbying firm with close ties to the White House has begun a public campaign to undermine the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, CNN has confirmed.

A report by the U.S. intelligence community questions Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s ability to govern.

This comes as President Bush is publicly taking great pains to reiterate his support for the embattled Iraqi leader.

Al-Maliki’s government has come under sharp criticism and scrutiny from Washington lawmakers and officials, as reflected in Thursday’s National Intelligence Estimate.

A senior Bush administration official told CNN the White House is aware of the lobbying campaign by Barbour Griffith & Rogers because the firm is “blasting e-mails all over town” criticizing al-Maliki and promoting the firm’s client, former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, as an alternative to al-Maliki.

Asked why allies of the president would take a position that might embarrass the administration, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Friday “far be it from me to judge why people sign contracts for whatever reason. I’m sure they have a desire to help out their client.”

“But they’re former administration officials,” Johndroe said. “Administration policy remains unchanged. There is a sovereign, elected government with Prime Minister Maliki and the Presidency Council.”

Asked earlier why Republican lobbyists would want to undercut the administration’s public statements, Johndroe said, “Maybe it’s a really good contract.”

Read the full story at CNN.com. And for some further perspective on Allawi and his background, go here.

Categories
News

After 10 Hours In Iraq, Sens. Corker And Alexander See “Clear Success”

Returning from a trip to Iraq, Republican Tennessee Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker “gave an upbeat report on progress in Iraq” to reporters this morning.

Alexander said a strategy devised by General Petraeus to work with local leaders and win them over to the U.S. cause has shown “clear success, province by province.”

“They are fed up with random murders of their children” by al-Qaida terrorists, he said.

“There are probably seven provinces where enough progress has been made to involve Iraqis in their own security,” claimed Alexander during the call with reporters.

Unmentioned in press accounts of Alexander and Corker’s trip, however, is the fact that they only spent half a day on the ground in Iraq.

Read more on the senators’ “fact-finding” tour at ThinkProgress.com.

www.thinkprogress.org
Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: (AP Photo/USAF)

The evolution of excuses for blundering into and maintaining the Iraq war is becoming comical. The first excuse was weapons of mass destruction. Do you remember the constant talk about weapons of mass destruction, “the worst weapons in the hands of the worst dictator”? Do you remember how President Bush said the sole reason for the war was to disarm Saddam Hussein? Do you remember how we were warned about a smoking gun that could be a mushroom cloud? Do you remember how Iraq was an “imminent” threat to the world? Do you remember how a 65-year-old dictator, widely acknowledged as not the smartest guy in the world, was compared to Hitler, who had put together a regime and an army that conquered Europe?

Well, oops. Not a single weapon of mass destruction was found in the country. Furthermore, the Iraqis had said there were no weapons of mass destruction. To cover their behinds, U.S. officials started peddling the story that Saddam wanted people to believe he had weapons of mass destruction. That U.S. lie didn’t fly because Saddam and his government repeatedly denied that the weapons existed. Furthermore, Iraq had invited in U.N. inspectors who were verifying the absence of weapons, which was one reason Bush forced the inspectors out by going to war. He had to start his war before the inspectors proved his bogus intelligence amounted to a pack of lies.

Enter the second excuse: Bush wanted to spread democracy in the Middle East, starting with Iraq. That never progressed past elections because, as everyone familiar with the country knew or should have known, a vote would elect a Shia majority with two fractious minorities, Kurds and Sunnis. This is the government that has proven to be totally ineffective. It also greatly increased the influence of Iran. It has sparked the civil war in Iraq.

Bush lately has hinted that his faith in democracy is weakening by implying that a reasonable authority would be acceptable. Trouble is, the U.S. can’t even find a dictator willing to take the job, given the present situation.

Now, when the issue has become getting Americans home from a war that has lasted longer than World War II, the final excuse is to trot out the empire’s favorite ambiguity: stability. If we leave Iraq, instability will result. It’s hard to believe anyone can say that with a straight face. Iraq is unstable already. It’s in the midst of civil war, with a million refugees and displaced people, hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, its economy a total wreck, and virtually all work on repairing the infrastructure at a standstill.

Ironically, the last time Iraq was stable was when Saddam was in power. Iraq is unstable because we made it unstable. We destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure, its economy, and its government. We did. One of the most shameful lies peddled by the Bush administration has been to blame the poor state of Iraq’s infrastructure on Saddam. We destroyed that infrastructure with wars, bombings, and medieval sanctions. The miracle is that with all we were doing, Saddam managed to produce more electricity and more oil than our occupation has been able to produce.

Finally, how is it the U.S. can claim that after four years, there is no trained Iraqi army and police force able to handle security? We send kids into combat with about 16 weeks of training. And why is the U.S. building the largest embassy in the world in a Third World country that is in chaos?

What “Herbert Hoover” Bush has done is destroy the credibility of the U.S., sully our reputation almost beyond repair, demonstrate the weakness of our leadership and the vulnerability of our military, and convince many people in the world that we are an evil nation of idiots led by fools. Let’s at least hope that he destroys the Republican Party, too. It deserves a zero existence.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Seasonal Memory

The dog days of August are upon us. And in Memphis, that means that after an hour in the sun your car feels like the inside of an Easy-Bake Oven; your nice leather seats burn the back of your thighs; the steering wheel scalds your hands. Ouch!

Wouldn’t it be a great time to take a vacation in cooler climes? And wouldn’t it be nice if you could take off the entire month and go to the beach or to your ranch? Sure it would. And that’s just what the Iraqi Parliament, the U.S. Congress, and the president of the United States are about to do: take a month off to relax.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, our soldiers continue to carry out the president’s desperate “surge,” battling 120-degree heat and bullets and bombs. They continue to fight and bleed and die, while those who sent them there are fishing and golfing and boating. They continue to battle for Iraqi “democracy,” while the democratically elected Iraqi government takes a break from doing what it’s been doing for years: nothing. They continue to battle tooth and claw for some undefinable “victory,” while the president plays cowboy and “clears brush” on his ranch.

There should be no vacation in wartime, at least no vacation that lasts a month. As we are regularly informed by the administration, we are in a “global war on terror.”

In August 2001, the president went on his annual 30-day vacation. While at his ranch, he was given a document that read “Osama bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S.” While Bush continued his vacation, bin Laden continued working to create the attacks of 9/11. How soon we forget the lessons of history.

Better Next Time

As the guest speaker of the Memphis Rotary Club on Tuesday, Arkansas governor Mike Beebe focused his speech on the need for bordering governmental jurisdictions to shed their competitiveness and practice the virtues of cooperation.

The governor’s remarks were so softly, even blandly said that a visitor might never have guessed they had any particular relevance to a local situation. That they did, however, would become clear during the Q&A session that followed Beebe’s speech.

A Rotarian asked about Toyota’s recent decision to not to locate its new production plant in nearby Marion, Arkansas, or in Chattanooga, but in Tupelo, Mississippi — just distant enough from Beebe’s bailiwick and the Memphis work force not to benefit either very much.

The questioner wanted to know how much support advocates of a Marion location had received from Memphis and Shelby County officials. Beebe allowed as how there hadn’t been much but declined to blame anybody — neither Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, who was on the dais with him, nor the absent Memphis mayor Willie Herenton, both of whom more or less sat on their hands in deference, as the Arkansas governor gently acknowledged, to “Nashville,” where Governor Phil Bredesen was turning the screws on Chattanooga’s behalf.

The result? A standoff which allowed Tupelo to come in with what Beebe termed an “11th-hour” offer.

There may be a next time, and maybe there’ll be more local governmental support for our neighbor state then — especially since Governor Beebe made it clear that he is ratcheting up Arkansas’ contributions to the maintenance of The Med.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Paranoia Strikes Deep

Indulge me in a little paranoia, if you will.

This week, the Bush administration announced it was creating a new plan for dealing with a catastrophic emergency in the U.S. It gives the president broad authority to take over disaster recovery from state officials and empowers federal authorities to provide “appropriate support” to the vice president to orchestrate post-attack recovery.

Details of the plan have not been released, of course. That would mean the American people would have some idea of just how far-reaching this directive is. And we can’t have that, now can we? Congressman Peter DeFazio of Oregon, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the White House rejected his request to review the secret portions of the plan. Of course. That would allow our elected representatives to have some idea of just how far-reaching this plan is. We can’t have that, now can we?

This administration has a clear track record of flouting the law, whether it’s breaking the Geneva Conventions, outing a CIA agent, manipulating military intelligence, abusing presidential “signing statements,” firing U.S. attorneys without due cause and lying about it, or ignoring subpoenas from Congress.

They’ve done their utmost to create an imperial presidency, claiming powers for our chief executive that were never intended by our Founding Fathers. The question I keep asking myself is, Why? Sure, in the short term, it allows them to get away with almost anything, but looking down the road to, say, a Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama presidency, you would think they would quake at the very idea of such powers in Democratic hands.

Unless they know something we don’t. And, I admit, this is where paranoia strikes deep. The entire Bush presidency is based on the fallout from 9/11. In the aftermath of that tragedy, the administration began accumulating its power, and it hasn’t stopped. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said recently he had a “hunch” we’d be attacked again.

I have a hunch that if such a thing happens, we’d better be prepared to defend our republic — from every direction.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com