Suite: 15

Almost didn't post this year. (Still counts if I haven't slept, yah?)

This was the first time since That Tuesday that I've actually been in New York on 9/11. Went up alone this weekend to help out my mom, in my childhood home.

As I drove back to my present home tonight, on the Belt Parkway, I could see --for the first time with my own eyes-- those twin pillars of light, tracing their starward trajectories opposite those described by the Towers whose memories they evanescently embody each year.

Zero-Seven hushed from the speakers. Late-night traffic was sparse. The Moon serenely choreographed its silvery swarms on the estuary.

I was Sad.

Still am.

This has been a year replete with Losses: Bowie, Rickman, Wilder, Schandling, Marshall, Vigoda, Finkel, Baker, Formerly-Formerly-Known-As, etc., etc.

And other Losses, FAR more personal. Losses of the kind that BAMPF the marrow from your bones, suck the mitochondria out of each and every cell, leave you gasping for joy like a COPD sufferer on Everest's summit. One of them I associate inextricably with New York (I fear seriously for my equilibrium and my breath, when next I set foot in Lincoln Center...or in pretty much any Irish pub...).

So, awash in the howling winds of all those vortices (and yet VERY consciously Mindful of one I've thus far been spared [Kenahorah-Poo-Poo-Poo]), revisiting That Other One seemed a bit much.


So, I almost didn't post.

It was the lights, done me in.

Photons, fired from the very site of such ruin were striking mine own retinae at just under vacuum-C, in real-time. 

Whatthefrak was I supposed to do with that??

As I've said before, I watched those Towers go up. From my sixth to my thirty-fifth years, they lived....and then they died.

And they were anything but alone.

Alas, it made me think of the status of the zeitgeist that lurched its charnel-fanged maw to our throats on That Day.

And that did nothing for the Sadness.

The three --variously-quixotic-- contenders for the Oval Orifice do not inspire.

One, whose tenure as SecState offered up a dreary litany of squandered opportunities (Green Revolution, Al-Maliki's Electile Dysfunction, Ukraine incursions, Arab Spring, "'Reset' Buttons" [Staples irregulars?]...), and a prickly, imperious tone that frosted every interface. It was dismal to a degree that rivals even that of her sodden successor at Foggy Bottom.

And another: notoriously mercurial, viciously thin-skinned, exuberantly-unburdened by any discernible capacity for critical, strategic thought...nor much in the way of raw material for such thought.

And, of course, the Upstart: affable, experienced, idealistic, congruent (at times to the point of unprecedented --and very refreshing-- self-deprecation)....but possessing his party's characteristic Achilles...well...LEG of a breathtakingly naïve conception of geopolitical realities.


So....Yah. Not sanguine.

Neither volatile bellicosity, reptilian manipulation, nor ostrich imitations stand even a Truth's chance on social media of bending the orbit of such Malevolent Clarity by so much as an arc-millisecond.

"Spectacle" attacks like the one having its Quinzeañera today seem to have fallen out of vogue (cf. Yiddish utterance, above), having been succeeded by Lone (/Known) Wolf, and platoon-level soft-target wetwork.

Decisively draining the political, ideological, and economic feeder streams of such "democratized" mayhem would require a multifarious deployment of subtle, nimble, attuned, toothy (with baked-in face-saving compromises), FOCUSED foreign policy, a global Counterinsurgency approach whose likelihood of arising from the daily briefings of any of these Misfit Toys' tenures on Pennsylvania Avenue is....well...


Let's just say that, amid everything else, I was aware of being rather ignominiously discomfited at the fact that I was in New York today.




And that Pisses Me OFF.




Troofer-Dipshit Half-Wit Mental Gymnastics aside, it's plain to any reasonably-informed, rational thinker from the pic below that the Towers' structural support system was exceptionally well-conceived...save for a low-probability but devastatingly exploitable vulnerability.

Alas that the same might be said for the security of the Republic and of its citizenry.




Damned lights.

Forget 9/11? Fuhgeddaboudit, Pal.

[by Mr.Hengist]

Now, me, I’m not big on anniversaries, not even my own birthday. Just not caring, is all. When I was a kid I looked forward to my birthday, sure – presents! – but as I got older, for a variety of reasons, I grew out of it. There’s no day I set aside for celebration or remembrance of anything anymore, and that’s just me. I’m not against this kind of thing but it doesn’t resonate with me.

That’s why the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has come and gone these blogging years without comment from me, although 9/11 marked perhaps the darkest days in my life and set in motion changes in me which were, for me, profound. It’s in the days leading up to the 9/11 anniversary that people reflect on that day and how we move forward. E.J. Dionne Jr. has phoned it in with his September 7th, 2011 column, “Time to leave 9/11 behind”.

As the title promises, the first line delivers:

“After we honor the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we need to leave the day behind.”

It’s a familiar refrain, one I’ve read from Liberal pundits since, well, shortly after September 11, 2001. We shouldn’t use this as an excuse to make war, we’ve gone off-track, we need to understand that we were attacked because we’re hated, and with good reason, we need to make amends so the world will love us again and we’ll all live together in the world with harmony and respect for cultural diversity, and then unicorns will fart rainbows, blah blah blah, blah blah, blah.

Although the Liberal MSM never stopped airing the pictures and video of the planes hitting the towers (look, big explosion!), even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 they wouldn't air the pictures or video of the jumpers. Those were the victims above the inferno in the towers who jumped to their certain death rather than stay and succumb to the smoke and flame. What hell that must have been for those office workers that the better option was to jump from the top floors of a skyscraper. Not a few, either; surviving rescue workers described having to be exceedingly cautious when entering or exiting the towers to avoid being crushed by a random person falling from the sky, and how unnerving it was to hear the bodies thumping on the sidewalk every couple of minutes. Why the media embargo? While not graphic, they were horrifying, and they angried up the blood. Americans were, by and large, ready to unleash our war machine, but already the imploring chorus of restraint was stirring from the anti-war left, who saw us as having gotten our just desserts - Blame America First.

It only took a half a year or so for the focus to shift, as the Lefties knew that this war business wasn't going to treat them well. Modern Liberal Democrats are not the leaders you want in charge in a time of war, and they knew it, so on the whole they thought this 9/11 thing was taking domestic and foreign policy in all kinds of wrong directions. Like hamsters running the wheel for hours on end, they get tired and rest for a spell but soon enough they're back at it. It's their hobby horse and they're not getting off it, because we can't change policy until you people get over the hurt. So, like, it's sad & all, but can't you just leave it in the past? Besides which, you deserved it.

“As a nation we have looked back for too long. We learned lessons from the attacks, but so many of them were wrong. The last decade was a detour that left our nation weaker, more divided and less certain of itself.”

I’ll refrain from rebutting the arguments that Dionne neglects to make himself, but suffice it to say, he’s wrong, wrong, wrong. We learned valuable lessons from 9/11, and perhaps not well enough, and our response has left us stronger, not weaker. Hey, if Dionne won’t make the case against, I’m don’t have to make the case for.

“Reflections on the meaning of the horror and the years that followed are inevitably inflected by our own political or philosophical leanings. It’s a critique that no doubt applies to my thoughts as well. We see what we choose to see and use the event as we want to use it.”

I suppose it would be unfair to point out that Dionne, perhaps tellingly, focuses on how we choose to “use the event as we want to use it”, because in essence, I agree with this paragraph. Let’s just say, for now, that E.J. Dionne and I disagree on all the particulars.

“This does nothing to honor those who died and those who sacrificed to prevent even more suffering. In the future, the anniversary will best be reserved as a simple day of remembrance in which all of us humbly offer our respect for the anguish and the heroism of those individuals and their families.”
“But if we continue to place 9/11 at the center of our national consciousness, we will keep making the same mistakes. Our nation’s future depended on far more than the outcome of a vaguely defined “war on terrorism,” and it still does. Al-Qaeda is a dangerous enemy. But our country and the world were never threatened by the caliphate of its mad fantasies.”

Long have the Liberal-Left fervently implored us not to take 9/11 so hard. Let me start hitting a couple of the specifics here:

First of all, it’s arguable whether we place 9/11 “at the center of our national consciousness”, but if that’s the case then it is so for reasons which are far beyond the ability of anyone to simply wish it away. 9/11 will gradually diminish in importance as time stretches the distance between the now and then, but what Dionne and his ilk have either never grasped or simply wanted to make not so, is that it was an event on the order of magnitude of Pearl Harbor. It is both tiresome and insulting to hear from Dionne et al that we should just get over it. Not happening, not anytime soon.

Then there’s the part where he acknowledges that “Al Qaeda is a dangerous enemy”, but “our country and the world were never threatened by the caliphate of its mad fantasies”. I don’t think it’s necessary to belabor the obvious contradiction here, as these two ideas are mutually exclusive. What Dionne means - but apparently lacks the skill to put clearly - is that Al Qaeda will never succeed in reestablishing a caliphate. It's either clumsiness or intentionally intimating that, in some sense, we are really threatened by Al Qaeda.

In the sense that Al Qaeda will never succeed in their mad fantasies of a worldwide caliphate, Dionne and I agree. I wouldn't be entirely sure of their chances for a regional caliphate, nor would I take off the table the possibility of various other states in the being absorbed into the orbit of this yet-to-be established caliphate. At any rate, I wouldn't want to establish odds, as I think they're pretty long on even the most modest of their goals.

This is an entirely separate question from whether Al Qaeda is an ongoing threat. They are. A diminished, less capable threat, not to be underestimated, but pursued to the ends of the Earth and exterminated wherever they are, no matter how long it takes. Further, Al Qaeda is but one organization of many that are like-minded and equally dastardly. The point I'm driving at is that what Dionne wants is for us to go back to 9/10, and I'm here to tell you this a mad fantasy of Liberal-Leftists. They've probably got a better chance of realizing their fantasy than Al Qaeda does for realizing theirs.

“We asked for great sacrifice over the past decade from the very small portion of our population who wear the country’s uniform, particularly the men and women of the Army and the Marine Corps. We should honor them, too. And, yes, we should pay tribute to those in the intelligence services, the FBI and our police forces who have done such painstaking work to thwart another attack.”

I presume Dionne is preferentially giving shout-outs to the Army and Marine Corps based on casualty figures, but really, all of our armed service members have borne an extraordinary burden. One of the lessons we should have learned from the military engagements of the last decade is that our military is inarguably too small to do this without having to resort to extended tours of combat duty. Whether you support the war(s) or not, the presumption that we have the ability to fight such wars can no longer be taken at face value - or be relied upon as a part of our defense posture. If the possibility of going to war to defend, say, Taiwan or South Korea, is off the table because it would outstrip our capacity to effectively prosecute that third front, then that’s an excellent argument for augmenting the size of our armed forces because weakness invites attack. That lesson was, alas, not learned.

Still, it’s worth noting that Dionne doesn’t go the route of infantilizing our armed forces by talking about them as if they were children forced to go to war, or as bloodthirsty killbot murderers leaving a wake of devastation and suffering. I wish more antiwar folks were as decent as Dionne is here.

Hey, I wish for a lot of things.

“It was often said that terrorism could not be dealt with through “police work,” as if the difficult and unheralded labor involved was not grand or bold enough to satisfy our longing for clarity in what was largely a struggle in the shadows.”

Here Dionne constructs a straw man but doesn’t even bother to knock it down. Let me set it on fire by pointing out that one of the problems with using law enforcement to prosecute a war is that law enforcement is, by varying degrees, reactive rather than proactive. Without probable cause, how to apprehend suspects? How to obtain sufficient evidence to obtain the issuance of arrest warrants, and under what standard of law do we operate – ours, or the laws of a foreign country? To what degree to we constrain and expose our law officers by working with a foreign government in the investigation? By way of example, let me point out that when it was determined that Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan, the Bush Administration demanded he be turned over to us. The Taliban responded that, no, they would be doing no such thing, but they would consider extradition if we could present a case to an international court of law, and besides which, they had no idea where he was, although they would be happy to pass along any message we might wish to send him.

[Go back and read the rest of that last sentence now that you've stopped laughing at how the Taliban were demanding we persuade an international court of law.]

Further, law enforcement is subject to the legal constraints of a civil society rather than an effectively lawless badlands or an actual rootin’ tootin’ battlefield. In that kind of environment it is impractical to the point of being an impossibility to maintain the integrity of a chain of custody for physical evidence, and even the problematical nature of the reading of Miranda rights makes the notion of a legal battlespace, quite frankly, bizarre. Proverbially speaking, it’s bringing a knife to a gunfight, or in this case, an arrest warrant to a gunfight. OK, the FBI carries guns, but up against RPGs, AK-47s, IEDs and, well, you get the picture.

“Forgive me, but I find it hard to forget former president George W. Bush’s 2004 response to Sen. John Kerry’s comment that “the war on terror is less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering and law-enforcement operation.”
“Bush retorted: “I disagree — strongly disagree. . . . After the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States of America, and war is what they got.” What The Washington Post called “an era of endless war” is what we got, too.”
“Bush, of course, understood the importance of “intelligence gathering” and “law enforcement.” His administration presided over a great deal of both, and his supporters spoke, with justice, of his success in staving off further acts of terror. Yet he could not resist the temptation to turn on Kerry’s statement of the obvious. Thus was an event that initially united the nation used, over and over, to aggravate our political disharmony. This is also why we must put it behind us.”

What is obvious to Dionne in Kerry’s statement is left unstated, and it deserves to be fleshed out. I won’t do his work for him, but I will point out that intelligence gathering and law enforcement operations do not preclude warfighting as a means of confronting enemy conspirators and combatants. For a couple hundred years now, the U.S. has used all of these tools in the prosecution of war.

The disconnect between these two ideas – those of Kerry and W – is that W was responding to the unstated premise in Kerry’s statement: that we can use intelligence gathering and law enforcement to mitigate the threat of Al Qaeda without waging war.

The political disharmony Dionne laments is a direct result of the disagreement between these two ideological camps over this question. What’s more, that disagreement was fueled by the political calculus of Democrats who parlayed an issue of national security in order to get more political power, which is simply unconscionable.

I’m sure Liberals will take exception to that statement, but let me preempt their howls by asking this question: how else do you explain the promises of candidate Obama, which were very much in alignment with the spirit of anti-war Liberals, to the actions of POTUS Obama? From the continuance of warrantless wiretaps, to the dramatic expansion of drone airstrikes, and the extension of the Patriot Act, to the Libyan war, and so on, it seems obvious that POTUS Obama has fallen far short of the standards he set for himself. I’m not trying to use these reversals as a cudgel against POTUS Obama, but rather, to point out that, in reality, as POTUS Obama either knew or learned, our country is not well-served by prosecuting a war as if it were a matter solely for intelligence gathering and law enforcement.

While I'm at it, let me also point out how disingenuous the Left has been over these past years. Yeah, yeah, when W was in office, the Constitution was shredded, he thought himself a king, the republic was doomed, and America as we knew it was being destroyed by the evil Republicans, damn those soulless ghouls. The Left marched by the tens of thousands, they did, to stop the wars and take back America! When they did take back America, or at least the government - which, surprisingly, still existed, and still somehow allowed free elections - Democrats won all three branches of government and those very same policies were met with... muted grumbling. Only the far left still seems to be waving their pitchforks, but mainstream Liberals have given their guy a pass.

“In the flood of anniversary commentary, notice how often the term “the lost decade” has been invoked. We know now, as we should have known all along, that American strength always depends first on our strength at home — on a vibrant, innovative and sensibly regulated economy, on levelheaded fiscal policies, on the ability of our citizens to find useful work, on the justice of our social arrangements.”

I’ll defer to Dionne that “the lost decade” is a phrase used with some frequency in Liberal circles, but that phrase has no currency on the Right. At any rate, American strength is not dependent on the false choice Dionne presents. Our economy must be strong in order to have a strong national defense, and our national defense can only be strong if our economy is strong. We can’t have one without the other, but regardless of economic circumstances in our national defense we must wage war on those who wage war against us. It always pays to destroy our enemies, even though it costs us.

“This is not “isolationism.” It is a common sense that was pushed aside by the talk of “glory” and “honor,” […]"

… aaaand let me stop Dionne right here and call out this BS. Glory and honor were never used by the Bush Administration to justify warmaking; this is a shameless manufacturing of a lie to serve Liberal dissent. We did not go to war in Afghanistan or Iraq for glory, period. We did not go to war against Afghanistan or Iraq for honor, either. We did not go to war against Afghanistan or Iraq for treasure either, but I digress. Dionne would like to portray hawks and neocons as warmongers seeking glory and honor, but Dionne forgets that these are the facile accusations of the Liberal-Left, now so ingrained as to be taken as self-evident truths. Recall what I said above, about how accusations against their political opposition are first taken as a possibility, then as probably true, and from there a certainty.

“[…] by utopian schemes to transform the world by abruptly reordering the Middle East — and by our fears.”

Here Dionne is alluding to the neocon ambition of upsetting the apple carts of the undemocratic Middle East dictatorships and facilitating the emergence of representative republics. It’s a shame that POTUS Bush largely gave up on that ambition in his second term, but it’s somewhat encouraging to see the possibility of that dream coming to fruition in some parts of the Middle East today as a part of what’s being called the Arab Spring. You might think that current events would have Dionne thinking twice about calling such a scheme utopian, but, well, apparently not.

“While we worried that we would be destroyed by terrorists, we ignored the larger danger of weakening ourselves by forgetting what made us great.”

And what made us great? Glory? Honor? I’d like to address this statement but as it stands I can’t make heads or tails of it and I’m not about to flesh out his argument that isn’t made so that I can rebut it.

“We have no alternative from now on but to look forward and not back.”

We can do both, unless you can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Of course, Dionne has been arguing that we shouldn’t look back, not that we can’t, so this statement is simply empty rhetoric, and it’s just so very lame, but it does set up his final paragraph:

“This does not dishonor the fallen heroes, and Lincoln explained why at Gettysburg. “We can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow this ground,” he said. “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.” The best we could do, Lincoln declared, was to commit ourselves to “a new birth of freedom.” This is still our calling.”

It’s nice that Dionne concluded his piece with a quote from that venerated Republican Lincoln, whom we all hold dear to our hearts, but the conclusion of his piece ends up right where it began, with Dionne lazily waving his arms, chanting, “Forget, forget, forget.”

So let me sum up my fisking with this:

9/11: Never Forget.

On Walter Pincus and "Selective Recall"

[by Mr.Hengist]

VPOTUS Dick Cheney has a new book out, and Liberal poindexters are using their column space to take their shots. It would be instructive for Liberals to go back over the blogposts and newspaper columns from the W years, as the sheer volume of unsubstantiated allegations and demonizing insinuations is staggering (ah, for the good old days of civil discourse, patriotic dissent, and speaking truth to power...).

As a general rule, in my observations, Liberals go through several stages to arrive at their buy-in to a conspiracy theory or belief that a Republican has committed a high crime. First, the speculation that the crime may have been committed. Having accepted that, it naturally follows that the crime probably was committed, and from there it also follows that it was committed – nay, it must have been committed, and so the buy-in is complete – and, remarkably, this process seems to take virtually no time at all, and requires no additional evidence beyond sheer speculation. From Enron to war-for-oil to the Plame leak, Liberals seem always to be ready and eager to believe the worst of their political opposition based on nothing more than speculation. Dissuading a Liberal of these delusions is a difficult, sometimes impossible chore; Liberal bloggers, columnists, pundits, and occasionally politicians, are often eager to embrace these slanders but loathe to set the record straight when their targets are exonerated. A debunked meme that damages their opposition is merely an inconvenience, like an opportunity lost, which may yet be salvageable given a grace period - one long enough for memories to fade, whereupon the smear is resuscitated.

If nothing else, Cheney's book should prompt the fools to apologize to Bush Administration officials and their fellow citizens for the BS they've propagated. It's too much to hope for, of course, but it's also interesting to scrutinize pieces like these to note which memes they've abandoned, versus those to which they still desperately cling - or hope to revive.

Walter Pincus takes a stab at Cheney ("Cheney’s recall is selective with ‘In My Time’", WaPo, Sep 05, 2011), and I have some observations to make.

"Take the former vice president’s version of the controversial trip that former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson took to Niger at the request of the CIA in February 2002 to check on allegations that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from that country. It eventually grew into a major event involving disclosure of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as a covert CIA operative and the questioning of 16 words in President George W. Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union speech."
“I wrote about it all at the time. I also was caught up in the leak investigation into the disclosure of Plame’s identity and the perjury trial of Cheney’s then-chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, where I testified that he was not the one who told me of her CIA employment.”

Let me start out by giving some credit to Pincus: he does mention that he testified that Libby wasn’t the one who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. What he doesn’t mention here, or throughout the piece, is that Plame’s CIA employment was disclosed to Novak by Richard Armitage, the right-hand man of Colin Powell, something that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald learned at the very beginning of his investigation in December of 2003. Let me also note here that Fitzgerald nonetheless continued his investigation of the identity of the leaker, which he already knew, presumably as a fishing expedition to snag someone within the Bush Administration, presumably on some other charge. That's what Libby was prosecuted on - a charge of perjury, perjury committed during six hours of questioning, when he contradicted his prior testimony, during a deposition that should never have taken place. He wasn't the only one who perjured himself; several journalists did the same thing, but they weren't prosecuted - Libby was, because as an Administration staff member his scalp was the only one worth taking, after so many years of otherwise fruitless investigation. Also of note, and as an aside, Armitage only admitted to his disclosure after he was safe from prosecution and Novak had already made it public.

“In his book, Cheney wrote he began reading newspaper stories in late spring 2003 about an unnamed former U.S. ambassador who went to Africa in 2002 for the CIA to check on whether Iraq was buying, or trying to buy, uranium for its nuclear weapons program. The ambassador had returned, said the story was not true and thus appeared to contradict Bush’s speech when he said, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Wilson’s lie appeared to contradict POTUS Bush’s 2003 SOTU 16 words? Prima facie it didn’t, did it? Joe Wilson could have reported back that he's found evidence directly refuting what British intelligence told us, but that wouldn't change the fact that British intelligence told us that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. That's because Wilson had only gone to Niger, and Niger isn't the only country in the continent of Africa that exports uranium (Hello, South Africa! Also, the Central African "Republic", the "Democratic Republic" of Congo, Gabon, and Zambia!), so nothing Wilson found in Niger would necessarily have bearing on the British intelligence report or the 16 words in POTUS Bush’s 2003 SOTU.

This is something that, even at the time, Liberals didn't quite seem to grasp. It's always been remarkable to me that this has been overlooked by Liberals since the beginning, and it's a matter of reading comprehension and simple logic. Joe Wilson did not refute the SOTU 16 words because he could not. I mean, really, how hard is this?

“One of the stories Cheney read — but did not note in the book — was a May 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed column by Nicholas Kristof, which said, “The vice president’s office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger.” Kristof had learned in a background conversation with Wilson days earlier that the CIA had sent Wilson to Niger to follow up on questions posed by Cheney at a morning briefing. Wilson, who interviewed present and former Niger officials, said he reported back that the uranium story was not true.”

Well, yes, Joe Wilson did say that. His public account of his mission to Niger was varied - no, wait, strike that - Joe Wilson simply lied. A different account Wilson relates in his book: he met with ministers of Niger and asked about whether Iraq had sought to buy uranium from them. He was told that indeed, an Iraqi envoy had come to inquire about increasing trade with Niger, and that was told that international scrutiny was too great after 9/11 and that any such trade deals would have to wait until things had cooled down. What Wilson failed to note was that Niger has only negligible exports aside from uranium (none of which (coal, animal hides, cowpeas, etc.) were forbidden from importing under U.N. sanctions against Iraq), and, oh, by the way, this Iraqi guy turns out to have been the Iraqi public envoy for nuclear matters.

Fact is, Joe Wilson lied about almost every important thing he said in relation to his mission to Niger, and about subsequent related events. He was not, as he strongly and repeatedly insinuated, sent there by VPOTUS Cheney. He did not report back that Iraq had not sought uranium from Niger. He did not review the forged Nigerian document for the CIA and inform them that it was a fake. It was not Dick Cheney who revealed his wife to be a CIA employee.

“On the broader point of the 16 words in Bush’s State of the Union speech, Cheney’s book discusses discusses [sic] the internal White House debate after Wilson’s July 6, 2003, public statements over whether an apology should be made for including the British report that Hussein had been seeking uranium from Africa. Over Cheney’s objection, the apology was eventually made by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
“Cheney writes that a later British inquiry into their statement declared their claim was “well founded.” The British inquiry concluded that it had different sources reporting that “Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999” where there were indications “this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium.”
"Left out of Cheney’s book is a CIA document — relevant to the 16 words — that was sent to his office in June 2003 but made public at Libby’s trial. It summarized previous reports, including one dated March 2002, that disclosed the information on the 1999 delegation came from a former Niger official who said only that he “believed Iraq was interested in discussing yellowcake [uranium].” But a later CIA report, dated Sept. 24, 2002, referred directly to the British information that was subsequently used in Bush’s speech. At that point, the CIA questioned the credibility of the British sources and said it had recommended the British withhold their report."

Yeah, the CIA says a lot of things. They often contradict themselves. They are large; they contain multitudes. In this case it seems churlish to selectively cite this doubt cast on their initial endorsement of the British report, as the subsequent British investigation into the matter has vindicated it. Pincus presents this to cast doubt on the wisdom of including the 16 words in the SOTU, but in hindsight, the British conclusion of the veracity of their own intelligence findings vindicates VPOTUS Cheney’s judgment in the matter.

"In 2004, Charles Duelfer, in his final report of the Iraq Survey Group which studied Hussein’s nuclear program after the U.S. invasion, said, “ISG has uncovered no information to support allegations of Iraqi pursuit of uranium from abroad in the post-Operation Desert Storm era,” meaning after 1991.
Perhaps Cheney has not read Duelfer’s report."

And again, whether the ISG found proof or not is irrelevant in light of the confirming evidence we've had since before the war began. In his piece Pincus is strongly implying that Iraq never sought uranium from Africa as was stated in the 2003 SOTU. Perhaps Pincus never read Wilson's book – or the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Pre-War Intelligence.

The importance of whether Iraq was trying to buy uranium cannot be understated. Iraq, as led by the Hussein dictatorship, was a nation with an extensive history of manufacturing and using WMDs, and an equally extensive history of anti-American and anti-Western hatred. As a nation without any means of using uranium for peaceful uses, there could be only one reason for acquiring uranium: weapons manufacture. In a post-9/11 world where a fanatical terrorist group could get their hands on such a weapon, this provided a critical piece in the justification for war on Iraq.

This is what Joe Wilson undermined with his lies, and with it he undermined the President during a time of war. In his piece, Pincus reissues a credibility Joe Wilson never deserved - and he has the nerve to accuse VPOTUS Cheney of selective recall.

Canard Season: On the Economic Impact of Operation Iraqi Freedom

Via QandO, comes this devastating deconstruction at The American Thinker of the oft-repeated meme that the Iraq War was responsible for the ballooning deficits under which our economy now labors. The general idea has been that Teh Eeevil Booosh had squandered our Nation's wealth on his Massive Boondoggle (for the enrichment of the Oil Companies, the Military-Industrial Complex, or any other of a host of popular bogeymen). And so, the 'reasoning' goes, it is hypocritical in the extreme for Conservatives to now decry the deficits which we now endure under our Democratic Administration and (for now!) Congress.

Bunk. Pure, unadulterated bunk. Have a peek at the chart, below.

Notice anything about the years? Specifically, recall which party was in charge of Congress from 2003 through 2007. Notice anything about the deficit trend lines during those years? How about right after?

The less I say here, the higher the probability that you will read the whole thing. And you should read the whole thing. The author cites the Government's own numbers (i.e., this isn't something cooked up at the Heritage Foundation  or somesuch). It is a bit of much-needed perspective, particularly as we approach the time when we get to decide who writes the next set of budgets.

Maliki Handed his Hat?

From the WaPo comes this bit of bad news for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Back in March, you'll recall, Maliki's State of Law coalition fell just short of former PM Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya bloc in the national elections, and long weeks have dragged into months while the various groups have wrangled to work out who would get to form the new government. Now Maliki's State Of  Law party appears to have lost the support of the Iraqi National Alliance, an (Iran-endorsed...) coalition of religious Shiite parties which had backed Maliki's claim to power.

Without INA backing, Maliki just doesn't have a chance, and he should recognize this. Allawi appears to have pretty much shed his previous stigma of "American Puppet" among Iraqis, and holds great promise in bringing Sunnis more actively and productively to the table. Necessary as they were overall (if at times heavy-handed in the execution), Maliki's aggressive de-Baathification steps have never been forgiven amid a large swathe of the Sunni population. Allawi's broadly secular, trans-sectarian appeal is as much the thing for today's Iraq as Maliki's nails in the Baath Party coffin were for the Iraq of four years ago. Allawi is also a very vocal and credible opponent of Iranian influence in Iraqi affairs (and, despite some recent brave noises along these lines, Maliki just hasn't been able to close that sale with the Iraqi people for whom Tehran is not popular). Kurdish former President Talabani is one of Allawi's closest friends, which appears likely to be reflected in relations between Arab and Kurdish blocs in an increasingly coalitionist government..

Maliki is being obdurate, and Iraq is suffering as a result. This is not to say that he does not have a legitimate case. He just might. That’s not the point. A true statesman would see that this protracted stalemate is the ultimate “broken window” in the neighborhood, and it’s signaling to the agents of chaos that they have their own window of opportunity.

After initially low expectations, Maliki has impressed me on more than one occasion with his tenacity and mettle. It is a shame to see him appearing to regress in what most observers agree is a strenuous and increasingly ignoble-seeming effort to cling to power, at the expense of the stability of his nation.

He should let Allawi have another turn at the tiller, soak up the goodwill from taking that high road, and use it to try again the next time around.

That’s what people do in a republic.

Two In The Hand

I've sat on this report all day, watching updates and waiting for confirmation ("fool me once...").

By now, I'm reasonably satisfied that this is legit. Bill Roggio over at the Long War Journal reports:

Iraq's Prime Minister and the US military confirmed that al Qaeda in Iraq's top two leaders have been killed during a raid in a remote region in the western province of Anbar.

"Abu Ayyub al Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al Muhajir, Abu Omar al Baghdadi and a number of al Qaeda leaders in Iraq were killed during a security operation in al Thar Thar region in Anbar," Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki told reporters at a press conference in Baghdad, according to Voices of Iraq.

US Forces Iraq, the US military command in Baghdad, confirmed the report in a press release.

"A series of Iraqi led joint operations conducted over the last week resulted in the Iraqi Forces with US support executing a nighttime raid on the AQI [al Qaeda in Iraq] leaders’ safehouse," the press release stated. "The joint security team identified both AQI members, and the terrorists were killed after engaging the security team. Additionally, Masri’s assistant along with the son of al-Baghdadi who were also involved in terrorist activities were killed."

During the operation, one US soldier was killed in a helicopter crash, and 16 al Qaeda associates were detained. (emph. added)

My heart goes out to the buddies and family of the helo pilot who lost his life in this highly significant raid. It was surely not lost in vain, as this is otherwise all kinds of good news. First of all, it was predominantly Iraqi security forces, with support from US forces, that executed the raid, which again underscores the success the COIN portion of OIF has enjoyed in training and fielding an increasingly effective and professional Iraqi military (to say nothing of the assets among the indigenous population which it was able to utilize in obtaining the intel that guided the strike, intel which a cowed and cynical pre-Surge population would never have dreamed of providing).

Second, this strike has essentially decapitated AQI, demonstrating that even the highest of the high in that organization is vulnerable. The psychological impact of such a blow cannot be overestimated. You can say "Whack-a-Mole" till you're blue in the face...but it doesn't change the fact that these miscreants' prospective replacements, in addition to being less experienced and possessing less street cred, will slink about with the full expectation that the slightest misstep will leave them...well...blue in the face.

Which brings me to the last point (see bolded text above): Those "16 al Qaeda associates [who] were detained" were sufficiently high in the food chain that they were kicking it in the same safe-house as the two Top (mangy, flea-bitten) Dogs in the AQI hierarchy. The degree of detailed operational and organizational intelligence which can be wrung from these "associates" represents a veritable treasure trove of actionable information which will ripple outward to the lowliest torture chambers and bomb-making shacks. Even in the unlikely event that they are not singing like canaries inside of a Mosul Minute, the mere possibility that they'll make like a Muezzin  will force every Talib, Da'ud, and Hanif to scramble for new procedures to throw off the Pimp Hand of Justice. They'll get panicky. They'll get sloppy. And more and more of their thermal signatures will fade to ambient.

And, lest all this talk of strategic significance obscure it, two Very Bad Dudes have been shuffled off before they had a chance to wreak more bloody mayhem on the poor mother's sons and daughters who would have been shredded in the demonic dervish-dance of their demented demolitions.

High Fives all around for our brave and competent forces and their stalwart Iraqi allies.

Iraqis Go to The Polls

Once again, it appears, the indefatigable people of Iraq have braved the threats of extremists and cowards (and by that I don't just mean the Western media), and ventured out, dressed in their finest, and in large numbers, to cast their votes in this latest, crucial round of elections. Bill Ardolino of the Threat Matrix blog over at the Long War journal, quotes the NYT:

Insurgents here vowed to disrupt the election, and the concerted wave of attacks — as many as 100 thunderous blasts in the capital alone starting just before the polls opened — did frighten voters away, but only initially. The shrugging response of voters could signal a fundamental weakening of the insurgency’s potency.

At least 38 people were killed in Baghdad. But at the end of the day, turnout was reported to be higher than expected, and certainly higher than in the last parliamentary election in 2005, marred by a similar level of violence.

And lo, there must have been no small wailing and gnashing of teeth in the editorial catacombs of the Gray lady over this development. Indeed, in numbers too great to link, the predictions have come fast and furious that the Iraqi people, weary of "deteriorating" security (still orders of magnitude more secure than during the much-vaunted Civil War that never quite was...), and growing sectarian strife (amid mounting evidence that Iraqis retain their hard-won nationalism, and persist in identifying themselves as Iraqi to a greater degree than ever before), would stay away from the polls in droves. This was supposed to be a lukewarm turnout, dripping with cynicism and despair, while various sectarian and ethnic groups kept their powder dry against the day when it all came crashing down and those primordial affiliations would rise again.

Once again, the Iraqis appear to have raised a thicket of purple fingers in the faces of the would-be authors of their national obituary. As one Iraqi observer noted, "We have experienced three wars before, so it was just the play of children that we heard.”

But that's not all. Again, quoting the Times:

Despite a long delay, disputes over candidates’ qualifications, arrests, assassinations and finally an all-out assault by insurgents on Sunday morning, the election took place with only a few reports of irregularities. And by Sunday night, something rare was emerging in a region dominated by authoritarian governments: an election cliffhanger.

Official results are not expected for days, but after the polls closed at 5 p.m., party leaders said two coalitions seem to have fared best: the one led by Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al Maliki, who has campaigned for a second time on improved security in Iraq, and another led by the former interim leader, Ayad Allawi, who has promised to overcome Iraq’s sectarian divides.

 Despite a previous boycott, and the ill-considered (and fortunately reversed) decision to bar hundreds of Sunni candidates due to purported Baathist affiliations, Sunni voters turned out in large numbers. This further cemented the legitimacy of an election which, when the dust settles, could result in a government in which rival parties are forced to form coalitions and partnerships. A government in which Maliki and Allawi are compelled to find common cause and reconcile their constituencies would be a rare and precious thing in a region in which politics has tended to be a blood-soaked, Manichean affair at best. Where bargaining takes the place of ballistics, and bloodshed becomes more metaphorical than literal, one may legitimately speak of real hope.

Throw in the still-unrealized potential of very significant oil and natural gas deposits, discovered under Sunni lands a couple of years ago (and the associated mitigation of one of the chief obstacles to the ratification of an oil revenue sharing law, given the previous near-monopoly on hydrocarbon deposits by Shiites and Kurds), and you've got some serious seeds, on very fertile soil, for something approaching  political normalization and widespread prosperity. Foreign investment in oil development has been quite robust (though, in contrast with some tediously-cherished narratives, not a lot of it has been American. Which is just stupid).

Corruption is still a problem. It's a Big Problem. And everybody knows it...which, given a demonstrably energized and engaged electorate with very little patience, may work to the Iraqi Republic's advantage. The Iraqis are starting to get a lot less shy about voting to "throw the bums out." You know, now that they are starting to Get It that their vote won't earn them a kicked in door and a midnight ride in the back of a van. It's not unreasonable to suppose that a lot of these guys (and gals!) currently on the take might soon have cause, as they reach for their bags of booty,  to look over their shoulders...at a lot of very pissed-off eyes.

Voting for me is a matter of putting on a suit (one of the few times I ever have to plaster myself in one of those silly things), and driving two minutes to the local firehouse to wait in a short line (nothing a quick pass through The Federalist Papers [thank you, Sony Reader!!] doesn't make go by in a blink). I am floored and awed by the sheer moxie of the Iraqi voters, who risk life and limb and even family (!) to dip their digits in the ink of Liberty.

We could learn a thing or two!

UPDATE:  Some typically on-target words from Victor Davis Hanson on this and related subjects.

Pushback in Iraq

Just came across this article over at the Long War Journal, in which Bill Roggio cites credible intel about the perpetrators of recent bombings in Baghdad:

Al Qaeda front group the Islamic State in Iraq has claimed responsibility for last week's deadly truck bombings in Baghdad.

The bombings, which targeted Iraqi's foreign and finance ministries, killed more than 100 Iraqis and wounded hundreds more. The bombings took place less than two months after the Iraqi security forces took control of security in the cities, and US forces withdrew to bases. The Iraqi government was also beginning to remove the concrete barriers that line the city streets.

Al Qaeda in Iraq said its "sons launched a new blessed attack at the heart of wounded Baghdad," designed to "wreck the bastions of infidelity."

The attack was designed to shake the Iraqi people's faith in the government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and show that the Iraqi Security Forces are incapable of providing security...

A couple of thoughts: I had suspected and ---weird as it may sound to use this word in this context-- rather hoped that this might be the case. My fear had been that some new collection of insurgents was rising, and/or vying with the remnants of existing insurgencies to destabilize the hard-won gains in Iraq. The worry would be that a comprehensive power vacuum was perceived, which a variety of actors was emerging to fill. That would be Very Bad, since it would represent a groundswell of chaos the likes of which are devilishly difficult to turn back. This was the case in 2006, and it would be a long bet that the kind of lightning which Coalition Forces and their Iraqi counterparts were able to wield then would be available again.

Instead, it appears that the usual suspects have seen an opportunity to cash in on the anxiety which accompanied the withdrawal of Coalition forces from urban areas and back into their bases, in keeping with the Status Of Forces Agreement (SOFA). Further, if these miscreants did indeed succeed in bribing elements of the Iraqi Security Forces to soften up key checkpoints, then they get the "twofer" of undermining confidence in both the capability and integrity of the ISF. But fundamentally, if Roggio's sources turn out to be correct (and he does have a pretty stellar track record), then we are looking at a rather predictable tactical setback which will require proportional adjustments...but which leave the overarching strategy essentially unchanged.

Yes, Maliki appears to have jumped the gun somewhat on the removal of blast barriers in Baghdad and courting an array of foreign investors. Yes, the degree to which AQI can count on shelter and support from Syria still argues against loosening of the screws on Damascus (are you listening, Hillary?). Yes, some re-vetting and remedial training is pretty clearly in order within the ISF (though, for the most part, they are keeping the peace quite ably in most of the country). And yes, it may be prudent to work in conjunction with the Iraqi Government to revisit some of the pacing issues with respect to the total withdrawal of Coalition forces as per the SOFA (sidebar: would a truly "Imperial" power have sat still on its bases while this was going on?).

But AQI still is still not controlling any appreciable amounts of territory, and remains relegated to the status of savage vandals, whose lashings-out are if anything brought into higher relief due to the overall level of sustained security across the vast majority of the lately war-ravaged Iraq.

AQI's leadership are bloodthirsty nihilistic psychopaths, cloaked in the rhetoric of piety, but they are not fools; they understand as well as we do that the success of counterinsurgency operations keys on the host nation population's sense that their lives and livelihoods are effectively protected by their government and its duly designated (and appropriately controlled) wielders of force. AQI knows that it has precious few windows left for de-legitimizing the elected Iraqi government and its security forces. They know they have a non-zero probability of success if they can make the Iraqi people believe that it was only the presence of the Infidel Occupiers which enabled the Iraqi Government to keep the peace. They will try to shame that government, to paint it as an impotent lap-dog of foreign masters. They will try to make the people yearn for the harsh but sure hand of a strongman (Baathists) or a theocrat (Salafist Jihadis) to make the chaos go away. And they know they don't have long to make their case.

These are delicate, dangerous times for Iraq (beginnings always are). But thus far I have not seen any real game-changers. This is not something I am taking for granted, and neither should you. But beware also the inevitable cries of "Quagmire" in the coming weeks and months. This is push-back, and only triumphalist fools should be surprised at it. But only equally foolish defeatists would not see this as the occasion to dig in and push back even harder. Maliki appears to have slid a bit in the former direction (mainly for political purposes), and he's got a well-earned bloody nose for it. But in the past he's shown himself to be a tough and resilient leader when it's counted. This would be another one of those times.

Totten in Sadr City

Short and linky tonight. Just read this excellent article over at Michael Totten's site about the history and current status of the infamous Shiite slum in Northeastern Baghdad. It is yet another in a swiftly-growing list of stories which highlight the subtle intelligence (in both senses) utilized by the US military in its COIN operations, as well as the breadth and depth of the positive changes taking place in Iraqi society as a result.

The Mahdi Army and its Iranian Quds Force enablers are going to have a hard time of it in their old stomping grounds, by all appearances. For one thing, it is increasingly clear that the valor and professionalism of the US military has rubbed off on their Iraqi proteges. For another, the citizenry of Sadr City and environs are seeing for themselves how their lives have improved under American and Iraqi protection. This is not a thing easily forgotten.

A nice tonic to end the day. If you agree, do consider dropping a little something in Michael's tip jar (scroll to bottom of post); his caliber of journalism is a lamentably rare thing these days, and it's impossible to encompass an environment as complex as Iraq without people telling these stories.

Iraqi Air Force Looks to Add Talons

Via Strategy Page comes this bit of news on the development of the Iraqi military. Specifically, the Iraqi Air Force (IAF) is looking to add a squadron of American F-16s to their fledgling foray into potential battlespaces along the Z-axis:

The Iraqi Air Force has convinced the government to spend $1.5 billion to buy a squadron of 18 F-16 jet fighters. The U.S. is inclined to cooperate, and sell Iraq the 96 F-16s Iraqi Air Force wants to eventually purchase over the next decade.

As the article points out, the US has a fairly large number of F-16s available for export, a number which is apt to increase as the USAF fields new airframes (unless, of course, the Obama Administration continues to target air superiority as an expendable indulgence...). When you factor in the training and support infrastructure which would accompany these sales, it adds up to a pretty penny. In return, the Iraqis would go a long way toward closing one of the main gaps (another being logistics) in their military's ability to function completely independently of Coalition forces.

This story strikes me as a promising sign of the increasing benefits which stand to follow from the economic and political development of the nation of Iraq as a partner in the critical region of the Middle East. The sale of arms to a government which uses them responsibly (the jury for which, I'll grant, is settling in for long deliberations...) solidifies that partnership, and portends other favorable trade arrangements (and no, I'm not just talking about oil). I am seeing little cause to dampen my decreasingly guarded (but never unexamined) optimism about the favorable trajectories (PDF) of the Iraqi State, society, and economy.

As Iraq becomes increasingly able to mind its own security (including patrolling its own airspace), using its own resources (or duly purchasing those of others), it inches ever further toward the full expression of its national sovereignty. While it will take a lot of very profitable trade to even begin to defray the raw costs of OIF for the US, it is gratifying to see what may be remembered as the beginnings of that long journey. A free and prosperous Iraq stands to offer much to the region and to the world, and many of those benefits are difficult to quantify in these early stages. It is certainly too early to tell whether Iraq will escape the trap so many of its oil-rich neighbors have fallen into, and will use its petro-lucre to diversify its economy and develop its human capital, rather than using it only to buy the expertise it fails to nurture at home.

I know: a long way to go from the proposed purchase of a few fighter jets. What can I say...I'm pretty tired (which is often accompanied by a tendency to free-associate), and still pleasantly burnt from a certain recent thread. Still, it perked me up a little.

Required Reading on Afghanistan

Courtesy of FormerSpook, comes this lengthy but indispensable essay by Fred Kagan on the challenges facing General Petraeus and the Obama Administration as we prepare to ramp up our efforts in the Af-Pak theater. As I have written previously, the tasks of adapting the sophisticated counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy which has been so successful in Iraq to the profoundly different terrain and cultural milieu in Afghanistan represents a formidable set of tests for the resiliency and resolve of our military and diplomatic corps. Kagan lines up nine general categories of challenges which we face, and offers suggestions on how to develop plans to overcome them.

Those of us who are diligently watching the fledgling Obama administration's handling of the geopolitical tasks which it has inherited would do well to read this essay very carefully, and to pay very close attention to the signs that its prescriptions are being followed. This is one which Obama absolutely has to get right, and simply throwing troops into the theater without such a carefully thought-out strategy is a recipe for a very costly disaster. Still, Obama has so far been smart enough to keep Bob Gates on as SecDef, and has shown no inclination to mess arround with the command structure of our military (most notably, he has tasked CENCOM head General Petraeus with developing the strategy for winning in Afghanistan. Very good sign, that). This is going to be a very difficult campaign, requiring steadfast and intelligent committment. Let us hope most fervently that Obama is made of the sort of stuff which it will take to see us through it. As Kagan sums up:

This essay does not provide a plan or a strategy for success in Afghanistan. It provides, rather, a set of guidelines for thinking about how to develop one, and for evaluating plans articulated by the administration, its generals, and outsiders. Ultimately, a plan for winning in Afghanistan has to be developed in Afghanistan, just as the plan for winning in Iraq was developed in Iraq. It is a truism that any plan must involve not only the U.S. and allied militaries, but all relevant civilian and international agencies, and must deeply involve the Afghans themselves at every level. Our military and civilian leaders understand that truism. We have failed to date in accomplishing the objective not because we haven’t known that we must, but because it is very hard to do.

But hard is not hopeless in Afghanistan any more than it was in Iraq. The stakes are high, as they always are when America puts its brave young men and women in harm’s way. President Obama has an opportunity in the difficult challenge he faces. So far, he appears determined to try to do the right thing. He deserves the active support and encouragement of every American in that attempt.

Again, Obama has seen fit to keep some very capable people at the reins of this very balky beast. Let us Hope that he gives them everything they need on the dark and dangerous path they must walk.

Hopes

Needless to say, posting has been almost embarrassingly light this month. Part of this, I'm sure, can be attributed to the impending Holidays, and their effects on my schedule (think three-dimensional Tetris). Plans to travel and see family, coupled with attempts to squeeze clients into time-slots, while accommodating various vacations and exams (most of my clients are teens and 20-somethings) have had their impact on blogging.

However, if I'm to be entirely honest, I must confess that the outcome of the election has had an impact on me. At first, there was a kind of depression (not so much clinical/personal --I'm not that far gone-- as blogospheric). I'd devoted so much energy to the candidates' qualifications and positions, debunking and exposing and advocating and warning and generally obsessing, that the end of it all left me rather spent.

Also, I have not wanted to be the one who prematurely blasted or gave a pass to the President-Elect. I have been surprisingly sanguine about his appointments to foreign-policy-relevant Cabinet positions; there are signs there of a degree of maturity and pragmatism which frankly I did not expect to see from Obama. Keeping Bob Gates on as Sec Def was an intelligent and politically risky move, for example. I'm not even displeased with Hillary as Secretary of State; she is, if anything, a canny and pragmatic politician, a master triangulator, and a moderate on the Hawk-Dove continuum. Sec State was arguably the role she was born to play. Other appointments have left me rather more wary...which is a subject for another day.

In short, Obama has so far earned a wait-and-see attitude from me, which is quite astonishing, considering his campaign persona and the blindingly foolish things coming out of his mouth as he contended with John McCain for the Big Chair. I suppose the realities of governing have had the hoped-for effect on his policies, a moderating and focusing effect which is inevitably --for someone who is truly intelligent-- going to be at variance with the need to inspire an electorate to cast its vote. I live in hope that reality continues to mug the POTUS-Elect, and that he continues to exercise the sort of political jujitsu for which one can only hope a street fighter like Rahm Emmanuel will be able to provide cover against the unalloyed horror embodied by the likes of Pelosi and Reed.

Meanwhile, before the subject of McCain drops too far in the rear-view, I direct your attention to an editorial from the WaPo, by Sens. McCain, Lieberman, and Graham, in the wake of their recent trip to Iraq. Their observations embody the sort of careful optimism which the near-miraculous turnaround in Iraq has inspired in so many of those who are able to shed the goggles of partisanship long enough actually to look at what has been transpiring there:

Based on our observations and consultations in Baghdad, we are optimistic that President-elect Obama will be able to fulfill a major step of his plan for withdrawal next year by redeploying U.S. combat forces from Iraq's cities while maintaining a residual force to train and mentor our Iraqi allies. We caution, however, that 2009 will be a pivotal year for Iraq, with provincial and then national elections whose secure and legitimate conduct depends on our continued engagement. By allowing a greater number of forces to remain in Iraq in the short term, we will be able to set the conditions for much deeper troop cuts thereafter.

Really, there is nothing new here; this has always been the plan: stay long enough to stabilize the situation, allow the government to dig in and prove its legitimacy, and train up the Iraqi military and police to the point that they can function as a modern, professional force in the service of the Iraqi people's interests, guided by civilian leadership which will set sound policy. Then pull out in a responsible manner, and let the Iraqi people chart their own course. The difference is that those goals are far less abstract than they once were. Indeed, they are very much in sight.

Just as the destiny of Iraq was very much in question as little as 18 months ago, so the nature of an Obama Administration's strategies and tactics were a terrifying cipher until recently. It is my considered opinion that there are unexpected grounds for hope on both fronts. It is still my belief that McCain would have been a simply superb President (a statement which is likely to draw considerable fire from both Liberals and Conservatives who may read these words). But I am starting to see that Obama may not prove the unmitigated disaster I'd been so certain he would be (ditto!).

I have not forgotten that Obama opposed the change in strategy which has made the current situation in Iraq possible. The fact that he has shown indications of being able to respond intelligently to current conditions is not prima facie evidence that he will have the wherewithal to craft and implement policies which will result in similarly favorable conditions in the future. There will likely be only a short span in the early days of his presidency during which he can ride the coattails of --and vehemently disavow-- the accomplishments of Bush's foreign policy team. After that, he is on his own. Interestingly, this is something which he and Nouri al Maliki share.

Tehran Changing Course in Iraq?

Today's Examiner reports that the number of the deadly roadside ambush bombs known as Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFP) has lately been decreasing sharply in Iraq. These sophisticated and lethal devices, it is widely accepted, have been supplied by Iran (likely through its Quds Force) for years, and have been responsible for many coalition and Iraqi deaths. Their progressive disappearance from the battlespace might signal a strategic shift in the policy of the Mullahcracy toward its neighbor:

Iran is no longer actively supplying Iraqi militias with a particularly lethal kind of roadside bomb, a decision that suggests a strategic shift by the Iranian leadership, U.S. and Iraqi authorities said Thursday. Use of the armor-piercing explosives - known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs - has dwindled sharply in recent months, said Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, head of the Pentagon office created to counter roadside bombs in Iran and Afghanistan.

Metz estimated that U.S. forces find between 12 and 20 of the devices in Iraq each month, down from 60 to 80 earlier this year.

"Someone ... has made the decision to bring them down," Metz told reporters.

Asked if the elite Iranian Republican Guard Corps has made a deliberate choice to limit use of EFPs, Metz nodded: "I think you could draw that inference from the data."

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh agreed Iran has curtailed its activity inside Iraq. He said he thinks Iran has concluded that a new security agreement between the U.S. and Iraq poses no threat to Iran. Iran opposed the agreement as a blessing for foreign forces to remain in Iraq, and encouraged Iraq's democratic government to reject it.

It is doubtful that the regime in Tehran has actually concluded that a peaceful, prosperous, US-Aligned Iraq on its border "poses no threat." Even if the Iranian fear that the US would station large numbers of troops in Iraq has decreased (allayed by the language of the SOFA with respect to American withdrawal plans), the presence of such a State would arguably pose a larger strategic threat to the Repressive Persian regime by embodying an alternative to its theocratic stranglehold on the Iranian people.

More likely, the devastating effects upon the Iranian economy of low petroleum prices on global markets have prompted a recalibration of Iranian tactics in its near-abroad. The costs of international adventurism (in the form of support for Hezbollah and Hamas, for example) must be starting to sting right about now, and the fait accompli represented by the SOFA , along with the diminishing clout of Iran-aligned Shiite militias in Iraq would all argue strongly for a change of approach between the two Middle Eastern states. It may be that the Mullahs have opted to vie for a less nakedly bellicose stance with regard to Iraq, in favor of a longer game of more insidious seduction and division.

Be that as it may, anything which leads to an improved security situation ahead of provincial elections in Iraq next month is a welcome development. More importantly, these terrifying weapons' disappearance from the streets of Iraq will be good news to our valorous troops and their families.

Finding Change in the SOFA

In yesterday's Washington Post, columnist and commentator Charles Krauthammer posted an editorial about the recently-approved Status Of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which creates the legal framework for American forces' continued presence in and ultimate withdrawal from Iraq. Krauthammer is one of my favorite commentators on the nightly panel of "Special Report with Britt Hume." Sure, he looks a bit like Rumpelstiltskin, and is clearly dealing with a whopper of a dysfluency/stutter (and imagine the moxie of an individual with such a condition who chooses to make his living speaking before TV cameras!). But I find his intellect to be formidable, his analyses to be useful and insightful, and his humor to be dry as a Gobi salt flat and intermittently hilarious.

If nothing else, the SOFA will put the lie to many of the hysterical claims that OIF is an "illegal war" (never mind Saddam's continual material breaches of multiple binding UN Security Council resolutions before the invasion, and the UN mandate which had authorized the presence of forces since then...). The SOFA is a legal agreement between sovereign nations, arrived at through the peaceful actions of a democratically elected government (Iraq's), carefully laying out the terms under which the forces of another government (ours) will help to bolster the security and enable the further stabilization of the host nation's government. Indeed, it is the very familiar political machinations by which the SOFA was agreed-upon which Krauthammer rightly points out as well-nigh miraculous, all things considered:

Also largely overlooked at home was the sheer wonder of the procedure that produced Iraq's consent: classic legislative maneuvering with no more than a tussle or two -- tame by international standards (see YouTube: "Best Taiwanese Parliament Fights of All Time!") -- over the most fundamental issues of national identity and direction.

The only significant opposition bloc was the Sadrists, a mere 30 seats out of 275. The ostensibly pro-Iranian religious Shiite parties resisted Tehran's pressure and championed the agreement. As did the Kurds. The Sunnis put up the greatest fight. But their concern was that America would be withdrawing too soon, leaving them subject to overbearing and perhaps even vengeful Shiite dominance.

The Sunnis, who only a few years ago had boycotted provincial elections, bargained with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, trying to exploit his personal stake in agreements he himself had negotiated. They did not achieve their maximum objectives. But they did get formal legislative commitments for future consideration of their grievances, from amnesty to further relaxation of the de-Baathification laws.

That any of this democratic give-and-take should be happening in a peaceful parliament just two years after Iraq's descent into sectarian hell is in itself astonishing. Nor is the setting of a withdrawal date terribly troubling. The deadline is almost entirely symbolic. U.S. troops must be out by Dec. 31, 2011 -- the weekend before the Iowa caucuses, which, because God is merciful, will arrive again only in the very fullness of time. Moreover, that date is not just distant but flexible. By treaty, it can be amended. If conditions on the ground warrant, it will be.

Much could still go wrong in Iraq, to be sure. It is unlikely that Tehran will simply sit on its haunches and allow a prosperous, democratic, and US-aligned Iraq to flourish on its border without attempting to wreak continued mischief. Still, with oil under US$50 a barrel, the Iranian regime may have its hands full without pumping resources toward the destabilization of its neighbor. As Krauthammer points out, we must expect intermittent upticks in deadly attacks inside Iraq, as Provincial elections (scheduled for January 2009) approach.

Still, it is looking more and more like it would take a system perturbation of currently uncommon proportions to derail Iraq's trajectory toward something unprecedented in the Middle East: an Arab state with a multi-sectarian, multi-ethnic, democratically elected legislature (which includes women), a growing middle class, and a diversified economy, and a commitment to lawful, stable interactions with its neighbors, which it can back with credible, professionally-fielded (and civilian-controlled) military force. Krauthammer lays out the potential up-side of this for the region (to say nothing of the Iraqi people themselves):

-- a flawed yet functioning democratic polity with unprecedented free speech, free elections and freely competing parliamentary factions. For this to happen in the most important Arab country besides Egypt can, over time (over generational time, the time scale of the war on terror), alter the evolution of Arab society. It constitutes our best hope for the kind of fundamental political-cultural change in the Arab sphere that alone will bring about the defeat of Islamic extremism. After all, newly sovereign Iraq is today more engaged in the fight against Arab radicalism than any country on earth, save the United States -- with which, mirabile dictu, it has now thrown in its lot.

No one knows the dangers of unchecked extremism, and the retrograde traditionalism which feeds it, like the Iraqi people do; it's been scant months since they were nearly dragged into the fires to which it ultimately leads. The promises of a new Iraqi State are yet but a delicate crust over the chaos from which it was so recently rescued. But I'll bet you dollars to dinars that the Iraqis have had a bellyful of that mayhem, and will be loath to go back for a second helping. If Dubai is a sort of bizarre Disney Land version * of a Middle Eastern future, Iraq may one day be its New York.

* cf. my comment here, #220.

Clearing a Path for The One

Via Hot Air, I encountered this WaPo editorial on the implications of the Status Of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which was recently ratified by the Iraqi Cabinet, prior to being turned over to the Parliament next week. The main thrust of the editorial is the degree to which this agreement, if passed by Parliament (as is generally expected), would give cover to the incoming Obama Administration to adhere in general terms to its pledge to withdraw American troops from Iraq along a relatively fixed timetable, while allowing it a measure of flexibility as to the details.

The main objection to such timetables all along has been the degree to which they would broadcast a time horizon to the very active and unreliably opposed agents of chaos in the fledgling Nation of Iraq. They would only need wait us out before swarming on the unprotected and unready Iraqi military and police, with catastrophic effects.

That situation has now changed. AQI is smashed, but for scattered mayhem and a stubborn but sputtering stand in and around Mosul. Much of the Sunni Insurgency has dissolved or joined --officially or otherwise-- with the Iraqi government and its Coalition allies. Iran has let up on its active support for the Shiite militias, which have been largely de-fanged, owing to the increasingly competent and well-run Iraqi Security Forces, under the surprisingly resolute leadership of a Maliki government which is moving increasingly steadily toward a true Unity composition. The time for timetables can reasonably be said to have arrived, if ever there was to be one.

One irritating misstatement in the WaPo editorial deserves highlighting:

By agreeing to a fixed deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, President Bush contradicted years of promises that he would never agree to anything but a "conditions-based" plan for phasing out the American military role there.

As I said, the timetable incorporated into this agreement can only be seen as a "contradiction" if one posits that all other considerations have remained static. They have not. The editorial staff of the WaPo could not resist this subtle bit of revisionist Bush-bashing, but it changes nothing. President Bush has weathered far worse, and remained undaunted.

Contrary to the shrill ululations of the Left, President Bush has shown himself to be a man of consummate character, for whom the interests of the Nation come before any considerations of popularity or credit.

For Bush’s team to leave Iraq in a condition in which it is safe for Obama to glide in and implement an agreement purchased at the price of so much noble blood irks me mightily; it gives Obama the opportunity to hold himself up as the statesman who completed the mission and withdrew our troops (”see? no bloodbath!”). He can claim credit for Ending The War ™, while he and his media acolytes whitewash the calamity which would have ensued if he had had a crack at policy-making prior to this auspicious time.

Fortunately, however, I can see no evidence that President Bush gives a fig about who gets the credit, so long as the mission is completed, American interests are protected, and the region is left more stable and strategically viable than he found it. The unmistakable impression is of a POTUS who is scrambling to set as many pieces of the game along favorable trajectories as possible before lesser hands take control of the board…not in the interests of a vain clutching at “Legacy,” so much as for the greater good of the Republic.

So, from Fallujah to FATA, our forces are moving at a blistering tempo to remove as many obstacles as can be from before the stumbling feet of The One, like removing the breakables from a room before one’s toddler enters it.

I still hold out a non-zero quantum of hope that Obama’s access to classified information will blunt the edge of his naively dovish foreign policy. For all of his failings, a lack of native intelligence is not one of them. He may learn and grow and not rush foolishly into the most destructive policies to which his campaign promises appeared to doom us. May it be so!

But if it is so, then I also hope that he takes a moment to acknowledge the debt of gratitude he owes to a certain Texan gentleman for sweeping some of the mines from his course.

Actionable Intelligence

Last week, shortly after his slim but historic victory in the US Presidential election, Barack Obama finally got a chance to peek beneath the veil. He has begun to receive classified intelligence briefings about the full range of the threats arrayed against the US and its interests at home and abroad, and about the responses to those threats which he will presently be entrusted to oversee. This is information which would not have been available to him as a senator and a candidate, and it appears to have been a sobering experience for him.

Obama can hardly be blamed for seeming a bit less ebullient as the full weight of the responsibilities he must bear begins to settle on his shoulders. In characteristically irresponsible fashion, the New York Times has reported (again!) on a portion of the covert operations which were authorized by the Bush Administration to pursue and harry al Qaeda across the globe. Depending on your orientation, this story reads like a Bush-Derangement fantasy of Imperial overreach, or as a sobering account of the hitherto (and appropriately!) unseen portions of the Long War in its far-ranging and valiant campaign to keep us safe from the murderous ideologues who would slaughter our children for the sake of piety. Either way, it is part of Obama's world now.

The full scope of the threat landscape in which our President-Elect must immerse himself is daunting in the extreme. However much he has staked his claim on the notion that the US must withdraw from Iraq with all possible speed, I strongly suspect that his access to the Full Story will (hopefully!!) act to stay his hand (no doubt to the considerable annoyance of his supporters):

Iran would cheer a quick American withdrawal, but as soon as the US leaves Iran will use its Shia proxies in Baghdad to create an Iraqi government manipulated like a puppet by strings that stretch to Tehran’s mullahs.

Iraqi Sunni and Kurdish minorities will feel disenfranchised by a quick withdrawal because they expect the Shia majority will then manipulate Baghdad’s government to deny them opportunities and resources. That could ignite a real civil war.

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, al Qaeda’s [fictional] Iraq leader, offered President-elect Obama a truce in exchange for removal of all forces from the region. But American intelligence officials caution any step that could be perceived as a victory for al Qaeda, like pulling troops out of Iraq before the country stabilizes, would only strengthen the terror group’s ability to recruit.

A precipitous US withdrawal is opposed by important allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Saudis fear that Tehran might take advantage of an early withdrawal to seize oil fields in the Shia dominated eastern Arabian Peninsula. Israel, which says it faces an existential threat from a nuclear Iran, wants the US to remain in Iraq in order to keep Tehran in check and hopefully deal with the mullah’s atomic weapons program.

To his credit, Obama has stuck by the theme that a nuclear-armed Iran is "Unacceptable." Indeed, it is. However, the path which he must walk to prevent this is far less than clear. Iran has gamed the international system most adroitly, and has scoffed at all attempts to rein in its nuclear ambitions. There is no reason to believe that this will cease as a result of Obama's much-vaunted willingness to engage in diplomacy with the Mullahcracy. Indeed, on its face, that willingness would seem to play right into the Persians' hands, offering the opportunity to play for time while its centrifuges spin inexorably toward the unacceptable. I expect that the most current intelligence estimates of Iran's capabilities and intentions have now become available to Obama. What will he do with them?

Much has been made of Obama's ill-advisedly public though essentially correct intention to violate Pakistani sovereignty in pursuit of al Qaeda Prime. Indeed, he has made it a cornerstone of his war plan to address the as-yet unfinished business in the shadow of the Hindu Kush. But I have long felt that he has glossed very badly over the complexities of the Af-Pak theater, and so painted himself into a perilously untenable corner:

Recently, Obama’s staff was briefed that the situation in Afghanistan is getting worse – American casualties are up and the Taliban militias are gaining strength and now control large swaths of that country. That’s why the Bush administration told Obama’s people that they must come to office with a battle plan that addresses troops, Pakistan’s safe havens area (where as many as one million Islamic radicals have refuge) and whether to negotiate with the enemy.

Sending more troops to Afghanistan must be part of a winning strategy. But US forces are overstretched globally and that’s why Obama must ask NATO allies to provide more forces. Even though Europeans overwhelmingly endorsed Obama’s presidential bid they have no desire to increase their Afghan role. In fact, the Taliban’s recent campaign of violence has shaken European will to contribute any troops much less more to NATO’s Afghan mission.

Obama’s Afghan war plan must also address the politically sensitive issue of aggressively pursuing Taliban militias and al Qaeda terrorists that are taking refuge in Pakistan’s tribal areas. In 2007, Obama promised that “…if we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets” in Pakistan and that government “won’t act, we will.”

Recently, the US increased cross-border raids and drone missile attacks against enemy forces inside Pakistan. Those assaults have angered Pakistani officials such as Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan’s military chief, who promised to defend his borders at “all costs.” Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said US attacks were “…counterproductive and difficult to explain by a democratically elected government.”

Obama must now confront the reality of a precariously unstable Pakistan's domestically unpopular alliance with the West, the extensive infiltration of its military and intelligence services by Islamist radicals, the fractiously feudal composition of the populations along its border with Afghanistan, and --perhaps most poignantly-- the likely intransigence and apathy of our so-called "traditional allies" in Europe, whose military capabilities are only slightly more limited than their willingness to use them. He must thread multiple needles, with the growing knowledge that many lives will be lost if he should so much as drop a stitch.

Already, Russian puppet-president Medvedev (for the record, pronounced med-VYED-yev) has wasted no time in throwing down the gauntlet before the untried POTUS-to-be. Puppet-master Putin is banking on Obama's previous statements expressing skepticism about the effectiveness and desirability of missile interceptor batteries stationed in Eastern Europe, and, as usual, has masterfully scoped the table before playing his hand:

Medvedev said he holds no animus for Americans and hopes “…the US administration, will make a choice in favor of full-fledged relations with Russia.” But he didn’t backdown [sic] on any front to include expanding Moscow’s military activities in the Middle East, Northern Africa and the Caribbean where Russian bombers and warships recently visited Cuba and Venezuela.

President-elect Obama will need all the political savvy he can muster and allies to deal with a belligerent Kremlin. But he shouldn’t expect help from Europe because Russian energy markets tend to be European-based and Moscow will leverage them to make the European Union squirm.

That last point deserves special mention: the degree to which the Russian economy is based on its ability to leverage its considerable energy supplies to gain geopolitical advantage cannot be overestimated. A sharp drop in the cost of oil and natural gas on the global markets would be devastating to Russia (as indeed it would be for a host of our adversaries). Obama's laudable but ill-conceived reluctance to develop domestic hydrocarbon energy supplies in favor of renewable sources which are just entering a very long pipeline (if you will pardon the pun) indicates a degree of naivete of which I hope he is presently cured. The global economic contraction which has accompanied the recent financial crisis has already precipitated a steep reduction in demand (and thus a concomitant drop in price) for petroleum. If this opportunity were maximized through aggressive pursuit of additional supplies, it could signal a perfect storm for the economies (and accompanying capacity for global mischief) of our various foes.

It is entirely possible that Obama's recent briefings will apprise him of the manifold ways in which these multiple threads wind round each other and form the fabric of the geopolitical veil-dance which George W Bush has doggedly (if often clumsily) executed during these last seven-plus years. It is still my belief that history will vindicate the Presidency of George Bush, but that is out of my hands (maybe the Li'l Cyte will write a thesis on the subject someday...). It is no secret that Obama was not My Guy...but he will presently be my President. As such, I wish him well, and would be more than happy to research the best ways to prepare a hearty dish of crow.

In the meantime, Senator Obama has tasted of the unexpurgated menu whose aroma outsiders like myself can discern only through a probably-unhealthily obsessive daily sniff. I have little doubt that it has seared his taste buds something fierce. I can only Hope that the experience will help him to Change his mind about how he deals with the kitchen staff. It could happen; he is a very smart man. But as with Intelligence, intelligence is only as good as what you do with it.