Friday, May 28, 2004

Dissonance Our Exit Strategy The delusional Bush, his quagmire and November by Marc Cooper LAWeekly! MAY 28 - JUNE 3, 2004
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Thursday, May 27, 2004

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From the Al-Asharq Awsat paper, a pro Saudi, London based newspaper. Caption reads "Coming Changes." (Photo: The Washington Post) Courtesy of t r u t h o u t
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Wednesday, May 26, 2004

What Bush Should Have Said His Iraq speech was only a year late: By Fred Kaplan, Posted Tuesday, May 25, 2004, at 1:51 PM PT
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    Subject: What do you think about Iraq?

    Dear MoveOn Member,

    Yesterday, President Bush tried to respond to mounting criticism of his management of the crisis in Iraq. The American people were looking for a sign that Bush understands the situation and is adapting American policy to the realities on the ground. But in this speech, the administration just repackaged failed U.S. policy as a five-step plan. They obviously don't get it. We've got to do better.

    First, of course, we're demanding accountability from the Bush administration. We're demanding a change in leadership at the Pentagon. Without this change, nothing in U.S. policy will change. But the problem remains: even with new leadership, how do we get out of this disastrous situation?

    Most of the people we've talked with share two conflicting instincts: (1) that the U.S. occupation must end before Iraq can move forward but (2) that we have a responsibility to the Iraqi people to protect them from a descent into civil war. The Bush administration has failed to project any plan ending the U.S. occupation, and instead is focusing on an almost meaningless June 30th turn over of "soveriegnty." Recently, two mainstream policy analysts, James Steinberg and Michael O'Hanlon, made an interesting proposal in a Washington Post Op Ed, a call to "set the date" for the end to the U.S. occupation. We've attached the Op Ed below.

    What do you think? We'd like to know where people stand, so that we can craft our campaigns going forward. Let us know what you think at:

    http://www.moveon.org/iraqsurvey.html

    Do you support immediate withdrawal? Do you support setting a date certain to end the military occupation? Or do you support President Bush's call to "stay the course"? Or do you see a better way to proceed?

    Steinberg and O'Hanlon make the case that setting a date to pull out would (1) dampen the popular support for insurgency by demonstrating good American intentions, and (2) allow the establishment of indigenous Iraqi security forces, with international support, to avoid civil war between Shiites and Sunnis, which could grow into a broader Middle East crisis. The importance of a timetable is even more important now that it has become clear to everyone, and especially the Iraqis, that Bush's June 30th turnover of "sovereignty" is a sham.

    The Bush administration's lack of a credible plan is almost shocking. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz recently told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "We don't know what it will be," he said. "We've had changes, as you know, month by month. We've had several different plans."

    Setting a real date for pulling out, and sticking to it, will almost certainly be opposed by the neoconservatives who have gotten us into this mess. Although they say that the occupation is about establishing freedom and democracy, their geopolitical calculus is far more cynical. Their agendas include long-term military bases, significant influence over Iraqi oil policy, and unrestricted foreign investment in Iraq. They still haven't faced the reality of the situation they've created.

    Please help by letting us know what you think. Thanks for everything,

    Sincerely,
    --Wes Boyd
    Tuesday, May 25th, 2004

    P.S Here's the Washington Post Op Ed:

    Set a Date to Pull Out
    The danger is not that we will cut and run
    but that the Iraqis will insist that we get out.
    By James Steinberg and Michael O'Hanlon
    Tuesday, May 18, 2004

    American policy in Iraq faces a crisis. Mainstream U.S. political leaders, including President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry, have continued to insist that we must "stay the course" and that "failure is not an option." But these slogans are not enough to rescue a failing policy. The success of our mission has depended from the outset on the perception by the Iraqi people that our presence is necessary to secure their own future. Today that premise is increasingly in doubt.

    Unless we restore the Iraqi people's confidence in our role, failure is not only an option but a likelihood. Critical to achieving our goal is an announced decision to end the current military deployment by the end of next year, following the Iraqi adoption of a constitution, together with greatly intensified training for the Iraqi security forces. Otherwise, the issue may well be not how long we want to stay but how soon the Iraqis kick us out.

    From the beginning the administration's strategy assumed that the United States would be welcomed as "liberators" by most Iraqis. Yet the failure of the U.S.-led provisional authority to provide basic security for many, and the slow pace of reconstruction, has eroded support for our presence. The Abu Ghraib outrages and the recent escalation of fighting have further undermined our position. A majority of Iraqis now believe their country is worse off than before Saddam Hussein was overthrown, according to a recent poll.

    This dramatic loss of support undermines the legitimacy of our continued military presence. It also makes our task of stabilizing the country nearly impossible.

    The problem is compounded by our own ambivalence about the political transition in Iraq. Although we defined our mission as liberation, we have been deeply reluctant to trust the Iraqi people to set their own course. From the decision to install a handpicked interim governing council, to our initial reluctance to support early elections for the limited authority we plan to grant the transition government after June 30, the message is that we will not permit self-determination in Iraq until Iraqis choose a government that meets our goal: a Western-style democracy broadly supportive of U.S. interests in the region.

    That objective was wildly ambitious even before the military operation began; today it is simply unattainable in the near term. The more we talk about staying "as long as it takes" the more it appears we are trying to impose our vision on Iraq -- further alienating the Iraqi public. The danger is not that we will cut and run but that the Iraqis will insist that we get out, leaving behind a security vacuum that could ignite civil war and wider regional strife.

    How can we avoid such a disaster? First, we must make clear that our military presence in Iraq is designed to permit the Iraqis to freely choose their own future -- even if it is not fully to our liking. We should indicate not just that we will leave if asked but that we will ourselves plan to end the deployment of coalition forces following the election of an Iraqi government and the adoption of a new constitution next year. We should make clear that we (as part of a wider international coalition) would be prepared to stay beyond that time -- but only at the request of the new Iraqi government, and as part of a new, U.N.-sponsored mandate on terms that are acceptable to the new Iraqi government and to us.

    Second, we must be clear about our legitimate security interests in Iraq. We have a right to insist that a new Iraqi government not threaten peace and security -- by developing weapons of mass destruction, harboring terrorists or attacking other nations. And we should certainly seek to use our influence to encourage a tolerant, pluralist society. But because this is a responsibility Iraq owes to all, not just us, we should shift the focus away from the United States as the enforcement arm of the international community to Iraq's neighbors and others that share these interests, including NATO and the United Nations. We should begin by convening a major international summit on Iraq, involving not only Western allies but also Arab leaders and Iraqis, at the time of the NATO summit next month in Istanbul. And we should invite the International Atomic Energy Agency to play a role in ensuring that a new Iraqi government does not pursue weapons programs.

    Third, we should accelerate the training and equipping of new security forces for Iraq. Less than 10 percent of the necessary numbers of soldiers and police have been properly trained to date. Filling this vacuum is critical to the success of this strategy, because indigenous forces are far more likely than foreign forces to succeed in defeating the residual Baathist and foreign fighters in Iraq. If Arab countries and NATO devoted just 10 percent of their police and military training capacity to Iraqi forces, we could complete an intensified training process by next year.

    Some will see this as cut-and-run. It is not. Unlike the case with most previous stabilization missions, our own enduring commitment to success in Iraq is beginning to work against us. It breeds cynicism among Iraqis that we are like the colonialists of old, planning to stay indefinitely to keep our hands on their oil and to use Iraq for our own, broader foreign policy objectives. The lesson of our history is that our best partners are those who freely choose to be. We must give the Iraqis the opportunity to seize that possibility for themselves.

    James Steinberg was deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration and is vice president and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution; Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow there.
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Monday, May 24, 2004

The time is now.

IMPEACHBUSH!
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Subject: Anybody But Bush Update: Bay of Goats
From: msanger@aol.com Add to Address Book
Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 21:30:47 -0700


((((((((((((((((( Anybody But Bush Update: Bay of
Goats )))))))))))))))))

May 23, 2004


------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.anybodybutbush.info/archives/000229.html



------------------------------------------------------------------------

By MAUREEN
DOWD
Published: May 23, 2004

So let me get this straight:

We ransacked the house of the con man whom we
paid millions to feed us
fake intelligence on W.M.D. that would make the
case for ransacking the
country that the con man assured us would be a
cinch to take over
because he wanted to run it.

And now we're shocked, shocked and awed to
discover that a crook is a
crook and we have nobody to turn over Iraq to,
and the Jordanian
embezzler-turned-American puppet-turned-accused
Iranian spy is trying
to foment even more anger against us and the U.N.
officials we've
crawled back to for help, anger that may lead to
civil war.

The party line that Paul Bremer was notified
about the raid on Ahmad
Chalabi's house after the fact is absurd. The
Iraqi police, who can't
seem to do anything without us, were just
proxies. We were going after
the very guy who persuaded us to go after Saddam,
the con man the naïve
neo-cons cast as de Gaulle; the swindler who sold
himself to Dick
Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz as Spartacus.

One diplomat from the region grimly cited an old
Punjabi saying: "It's
very bad when grandma marries a crook, but it is
even worse when she
divorces the crook."

Mr. Chalabi's wealthy family was swept out of
Iraq in a coup in 1958
and he spent much of his life plotting a coup to
take back his
homeland, a far-fetched scheme that took on life
when he hooked up with
Mr. Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Doug Feith, who
had their own dream of
staging a coup of American foreign policy to do
an extreme Middle East
makeover.

The hawks dismissed warnings from their own
people — such as the Bush
Middle East envoy Gen. Anthony Zinni — that the
Iraqi National Congress
was full of "silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in
London." As General
Zinni told The Times in 2000: "They are pie in
the sky. They're going
to lead us to a Bay of Goats, or something like
that."

The C.I.A. and State Department, too, grew
disgusted with Mr. Chalabi,
even though State paid his organization $33
million from 2000 to 2003.

Cheney & Company swooned over Mr. Chalabi because
he was telling them
what they wanted to hear, that it would be simple
to go back and
rewrite the Persian Gulf war ending so that it
was not bellum
interruptus.

The president and his hawks insisted that only a
"relatively small
number" of "thugs," as Mr. Perle told George
Stephanopoulos last month,
were keeping the country from peace. Mr. Perle
said the solution was
"to repose a little bit of confidence in people
who share our values
and our objectives . . . people like Ahmad
Chalabi." The neo-cons still
think he can be Churchill.

On Thursday, an Iraqi judge, Hussain Muathin,
also lamented the actions
of "a small number of thugs." But he was
announcing warrants for the
arrest of thugs around Mr. Perle's own George
Washington, Chalabi
henchmen suspected of kidnapping, torture and
theft. Didn't we sack
Saddam to stop that stuff?

Now we're using Saddam's old generals to restore
order — reversing the
de-Baathification approach that Mr. Chalabi
championed — while Mr.
Chalabi snakes around like a bus-and-truck Tony
Soprano, garnering less
trust than Saddam in polls of Iraqis.

A half-dozen dunderheads who thought they knew
everything assumed they
could control Mr. Chalabi and use him as the
instrument of their
utopian fantasies. But one week after getting cut
off from the
$335,000-a-month Pentagon allowance arranged by
his neo-con buddies, he
glibly accepts the street cred that goes with
bashing America. And he
still won't give us all of Saddam's secret files,
which he confiscated
and is using to discredit his enemies.

Going from Spartacus to Moses, he proclaims to
America, "Let my people
go" — even as he plays footsie with the country
that once denounced the
U.S. as the Great Satan.

On Friday at Louisiana State University,
President Bush told graduates:
"On the job and elsewhere in life, choose your
friends carefully. The
company you keep has a way of rubbing off on you
— and that can be a
good thing, or a bad thing. In my job, I got to
pick just about
everybody I work with. I've been happy with my
choices — although I
wish someone had warned me about all of Dick
Cheney's wild partying."

Mr. Bush thought he was kidding, but too bad he
didn't get that warning
before Dick Cheney took the world on such a wild
ride.

E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com

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