Making America Great $100s million per DoD Contract

Every day the U.S. Department of Defense announces new defense contracts valued at $7 million or more.

The daily new contract numbers are astounding, a window into American society geared for war and empire. Readership is mostly composed of private contractors, intel communities, service members, politicos and journalists.

For example, the DoD announced on Nov. 28, 2017: "Oshkosh Defense LLC, has been awarded a maximum $71,702,293 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-quantity contract for various motor vehicle parts and accessories, (DoD)."

On Dec. 22, 2017, the DoD announced new contract awards that include Oshkosh Airport Products LLC, ($687,085,219), and Oshkosh Defense LLC, ($40,942,398).

Not the most efficient economic stimuli, but who is going to complain? Every president does the same thing, and President Obama was no improvement is this regard.

Even as President* Trump ran a campaign that stresses non-intervention in foreign affairs, Trump always had intentions to play the military-industrial game, raising the stakes past the point of absurdity.

Harry Blain offers words of sanity this morning at Informed Comment:

Well before the Thanksgiving break, the Senate had already confirmed that the new No.2 at the Pentagon will come from the executive council of Boeing; and the new Army undersecretary from the vice presidency of Lockheed Martin‘s F-35 sustainment program.

The new undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics — a central role in deciding what the Pentagon purchases and from whom — comes from the very top job at Textron Systems, the 16th largest arms company in the world. On November 15, Raytheon didn’t miss out on the action, with its vice president of governmental relations confirmed as Army Secretary.

In all of these cases, notwithstanding a smattering of tough questions, senators haven’t thought twice. By margins of 89-6, 92-7, and simple voice votes, these confirmations have been anything but grillings.

The one exception was John Rood’s November 16 confirmation hearing for undersecretary of defense for policy. Senators Elizabeth Warren and John McCain asked whether a senior vice president of Lockheed Martin International — whose role included 'developing and executing strategies to grow Lockheed Martin’s International business' — could be trusted not to do more or less the same thing in a top Pentagon job.

Yet the prospect of the Senate doing its job was, it seems, short-lived. The Senate Armed Services Committee voted to advance Rood’s nomination two weeks later, despite concerns over potential conflicts of interest.

It doesn’t stop there. As The Intercept’s Lee Fang noted back in March, 'Personnel from major defense companies now occupy the highest ranks of the administration including cabinet members and political appointees charged with implementing the Trump agenda.' This includes the defense secretary himself, who had to resign from the board of General Dynamics to take up the most senior job at the Pentagon, and now White House chief of staff John Kelly, who had to step down from his role as a paid advisor to Dyncorp to become the Homeland Security chief.

These two former generals and close friends of defense contractors are now two of the most senior figures in the Trump administration. They may well be running our foreign policy, with the president himself so inexperienced and his secretary of state only apparently there to destroy his own department and occasionally be subjected to public humiliation by the commander-in-chief.

Trump is a lunatic. Even a lunatic can politically capitalize on rigged Congressional budgets and prey on a frightened American public, while assuring the foolish that America has become great again at the first State of the Union address on Jan. 30.

Racism and Sadism from the USA

Romare Beardon work on American lynchings

Targeting immigrant populations for imprisonment, expulsion and defamation is indecent.

This is precisely why Donald Trump's racist chief political advisor drafted the Muslim ban last week—as a means of appealing to white racists and discouraging minority populations from living free from fear.

Nothing sells like fascism to white racists.

When Republicans cheered for Trump to "lock her up" last year, they meant it. Republicans would like to imprison political opponents and minorities who have been and remain a problem in need of a lasting solution by a brave leader.

That this latest act of cowardice is sadism is a fact lost on most Americans ignoring the nature of the Republican enterprise. Inflicting punishment is a tenet of fascism.

See the text of "Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States," now removed from the White House website that has been turned into a propaganda site for Trump.

By Juan Cole

Picking on immigrants and refugees is the act of a sadistic bully, since they are the one fairly large group of residents of the United States whose constitutional rights are disputed. The executive order Trump signed late on Friday suspending entrance to the United States for citizens of seven countries and cancelling the US refugee program for four months is probably illegal. The 1965 immigration law forbids discriminating against immigrants on the basis of nationality. ...

The political goal of the order was to whip up anti-Muslim hatred. No immigrant from any of the seven countries Trump named has been guilty of terrorism on US soil in this century. ...

The executive orders signed this past week by Trump appear in the main to have been drafted by alt-Neo-Nazi Steve Bannon, the Rasputin of this administration. ...

In another in a series of coups, Trump on Saturday kicked the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff off of the principals committee of the National Security Council. They will attend only when their expertise is required. He then appointed Bannon to that key body, which advises the president on national security issues. Knowledgeable intelligence and military leaders will therefore often not be in a position to contradict Bannon on the NSC, giving him enormous unchecked and unelected power (NSC staffers also don’t have to be confirmed by the Senate). NSC staffers have been known to ask the CIA to do illegal things like go after Americans on American soil, and I think we may expect a lot of that sort of thing in this administration. Bannon is the CEO of the far right extremist purveyor of fake news, Breitbart, today’s equivalent of the Völkischer Beobachter, the newspaper of the national socialist workers party in 1930s Germany.

The way Bannon crafted the executive order on immigrants that the pliant Trump eagerly signed was guaranteed to be a disaster. It would have been easy enough to say that the provisions would come into effect one month hence. Instead, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was instructed to apply its provisions immediately. This step caused some over 100 passengers to be arrested on arrival and put in holding cells at the airport on Saturday, even though they had a valid visa or green card (permanent residency). Thousands of persons with valid visas or green cards (permanent residency, the last step before citizenship) who happened to be abroad on Friday were effectively locked out of the country. These included nearly 200 Google employees caught abroad on Saturday, whom the company was trying to get back into the country.

One of the first to be arrested, at JFK, was Hameed Khalid Darweesh, an Iraqi who had served as an interpreter for the US army in Iraq. Despite Darweesh’s own patience with it all, that he was one of the first to be arrested gave the Trump-Bannon piece of fascism a further black eye. Darweesh’s vital work put his own life in profound danger and he helped avoid casualties among our troops. For him to be humiliated and handcuffed and reduced to tears spoke volumes about the true nature of the executive order.

Here's How We Beat Those Frackers

Following the carnage in Wisconsin, a friend asked, "What the hell?  What's it take to beat those fuckers?"

The question and sentiment are legion across the country.

The answer is simple, organize a bit more, (Juan Cole). That's it, with the corollary that we ought to consider supporting those involved in organizing.

Some details include extirpating the DNC pukes and replacing the lot with the like of Rep. Keith Ellison, (D-Minnesota).

With respect to whites stupid enough to vote for Donald Trump, do not a cede an inch to these bigots and assorted human garbage. As a life-long Wisconsin citizen, I know these people.

Says Bernie this morning, "When my presidential campaign came to an end, I pledged to my supporters that the political revolution would continue. And now, more than ever, that must happen. We are the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. When we stand together and don’t let demagogues divide us up by race, gender or national origin, there is nothing we cannot accomplish. We must go forward, not backward," (NYT).

 Listen to voices such as Michael Moore, and John Pavolovitz.

And, ala spring and summer 2016, if assorted fools admonish we should all unify around Trump for the good of America, the same fools who have not apologized for their rally-around-Hillary-over-Sanders nonsense, ignore these asses and organize some more for progressives.

GOP Disaster Just a Matter of Time

Juan Cole:

Why Republicans are Worried
The corporate media are in the tank for a Republican comeback in 2010, and the GOP may in fact pick up some seats in the Senate and the House, though if employment ticks up by the fall, not as many as some are implying. The corporate media made a big deal about two Democrats who are stepping down but not about 6 Republicans who are. But the long-term trends look good for the Democratic Party.

Dick Cheney Stays on Point

Update: Not Even Chuck Norris Can Save the GOP

Dick Cheney is competing with Rush and Newt as the leader of the new GOP.

We wish him luck.

Maureen Dowd and Juan Cole analyse Cheney's macabre machinations that apparently will not stop ever. From Cole:

This week's news is about the grand old pit bull's struggle to continue to define his own party. Cheney emerged last Friday to warn on a North Dakota radio program that it would be a mistake for the Republican Party to moderate its message. (Does that mean it is now radical?) Then on Sunday Cheney told Bob Schieffer of 'Face the Nation' that it was a mistake to stop using waterboarding and other forms of extreme interrogation, and that they did not constitute torture. He also poked fun at Colin Powell, questioning his credentials as a Republican and expressing a preference for the waspish Limbaugh as the party's leader.

Political Thriller Becomes Comedy

Jane Harman is the divine hypocrite of the new century.

Glenn Greenwald on Jane Harman - Wiretap cheerleader furious: She was wiretapped!:

So if I understand this correctly -- and I'm pretty sure I do -- when the U.S. Government eavesdropped for years on American citizens with no warrants and in violation of the law, that was 'both legal and necessary' as well as 'essential to U.S. national security,' and it was the 'despicable' whistle-blowers (such as Thomas Tamm) who disclosed that crime and the newspapers which reported it who should have been criminally investigated, but not the lawbreaking government officials. But when the U.S. Government legally and with warrants eavesdrops on Jane Harman, that is an outrageous invasion of privacy and a violent assault on her rights as an American citizen, and full-scale investigations must be commenced immediately to get to the bottom of this abuse of power. Behold Jane Harman's overnight transformation from Very Serious Champion of the Lawless Surveillance State to shrill civil liberties extremist.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Thriller Political-War Movie Becomes Reality

Update III: Greenwald: So if I understand this correctly -- and I'm pretty sure I do -- when the U.S. Government eavesdropped for years on American citizens with no warrants and in violation of the law, that was 'both legal and necessary' as well as 'essential to U.S. national security,' and it was the 'despicable' whistle-blowers (such as Thomas Tamm) who disclosed that crime and the newspapers which reported it who should have been criminally investigated, but not the lawbreaking government officials. But when the U.S. Government legally and with warrants eavesdrops on Jane Harman, that is an outrageous invasion of privacy and a violent assault on her rights as an American citizen, and full-scale investigations must be commenced immediately to get to the bottom of this abuse of power. Behold Jane Harman's overnight transformation from Very Serious Champion of the Lawless Surveillance State to shrill civil liberties extremist."

Update II: Prosecutors Considering Dropping Espionage Charges Against Former AIPAC Lobbyists

Update: The new neocon think tank Foreign Policy Initiative's launch was attended by Rep Jane Harman who served on a panel on March 31, 2009 and said, "(W)hat Washington does need is thoughtful people coming together to think about the issues. And many people in this new organization are people I have known for many years and interact with regularly."

If Robert Ludlum were alive today, he could not make this story up.

A small religious, fundamentalist state—whose most prominent power centers view its people as being in most-favored spiritual league with a supreme metaphysical force, is the fifth largest nuclear power in the world, and wants to wage war with its neighbor that is run by a rival religious sect a few hundred miles to the east—regularly spies on the United States, its historical ally, and two of the religious state's major lobbyists subsequently get caught by the FBI after receiving classified U.S. documents from a former Pentagon employee and are indicted for espionage.

Now word comes that the current House Chair of the Homeland Security Committee’s Intelligence Subcommittee and former member of House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has been overheard in a National Security Agency's court-approved surveillance of a conversation in which a U.S. citizen (an accused spy) urges the congresswoman to intervene and halt the Justice Dept (DOJ)'s espionage prosecution of the two lobby spies for the small religious state in exchange for the powerful lobby working to get the congresswomen the chairmanship of the House Intelligence committee.

“This conversation doesn’t exist,” said the congresswoman not knowing that she was being bugged by the NSA.

A journalist covering the story writes:

That's not even the most significant part. Back in October, 2006, Time (Magazine) reported that the DOJ and FBI were investigating whether [the Congresswoman] and [the religious state’s main lobby] 'violated the law in a scheme to get [the Congresswoman] reappointed as the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee' and 'the probe also involves whether, in exchange for the help from [the religious state’s main lobby], [the Congresswoman] agreed to help try to persuade the [Republican] Administration to go lighter on the [the religious state’s main lobby] officials caught up in the ongoing investigation.' So that part has been known since 2006.

[The journalist breaking the NSA story] adds today that [the Congresswoman] was captured on an NSA wiretap conspiring with [the religious state’s] agent to apply pressure on DOJ officials to scale back the [prosecution against the religious state’s main lobby]. But the real crux of journalist's scoop is that [the] then-Attorney General ... intervened to kill the criminal investigation into [the Congresswoman] -- even though DOJ lawyers had concluded that she committed crimes -- because top [administration] officials wanted [the Congresswoman's] credibility to be preserved so that she could publicly defend the ... administration's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program.

The religious state's (as well as that of the US Republican administration's] allies include millions of Americans of another complex religious sect who believe that an unavoidable great battle of Armageddon is upon us and will begin in the region and the specific religious state for whom the spies are working, as well as a small but influential group of nihilistic war mongers who seek to wage the same war as the religious state.

Informed observers and activists working for peace note that should the nuclear-powered religious state strike its rival sect, the "reaction to the bombing of ...will be the blocking of [the] Strait [where massive oil-exporting occurs].

[The rival religious state] dominates the whole length of the Strait. They can seal it hermetically with their missiles and artillery, both land based and naval.

If that happens, the price of oil will skyrocket - far beyond the 200 dollars-per-barrel that pessimists dread now. That will cause a chain reaction: a world-wide depression, the collapse of whole industries and a catastrophic rise in unemployment in America, Europe and Japan.

The peace activist wrote that last July when economic times seemed better. The activist assumes rational economic state actors, and could have added that several rival religious sects' governments could fall (including another nuclear-powered state) and a more deadly serious worldwide depression would result if the US-allied religious state struck its rival sect. Today a depression would seem a near certainty.

For more information see:

- Jeff Stein in CQ.com.
- Gleen Greenwald
- Juan Cole
- Timeline of MegaScandal (Talking Points Memo)
- Lawmaker Is Said to Have Agreed to Aid Lobbyists (Lewis and Mazzetti, NYT)
- Exclusive: Feds Probe a Top Democrat's Relationship with AIPAC (Burger, Oct. 20, 2006,Time)

Rightwingers freaking out

Juan Cole has some fun in Salon describing the great rightwing freak-out.

Obama, Be Bold

On Afghanistan and the economy, Obama needs to dump in toto the rhetoric and substance of the neocons who have brought us to this terrible place.

Repudiation is called for.

Militarism in Afghanistan won't work, nor will pretensions that economic elites, financiers on Wall Street, are well-intentioned actors.

Speak the truth boldly.

See Krugman today in the Times:

Simon Johnson. In an article in the current issue of The Atlantic, Mr. Johnson, who served as the chief economist at the I.M.F. and is now a professor at M.I.T., declares that America’s current difficulties are 'shockingly reminiscent' of crises in places like Russia and Argentina — including the key role played by crony capitalists.
In America as in the third world, he writes, 'elite business interests — financiers, in the case of the U.S. — played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of
reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive.'

And Juan Cole in Salon:

Obama's dark vision of the overthrow of the Afghanistan government by al-Qaida-linked Taliban or the 'killing' of Pakistan by small tribal groups differs little from the equally apocalyptic and implausible warnings issued by John McCain and Dick Cheney about an 'al-Qaida' victory in Iraq. Ominously, the president's views are contradicted by those of his own secretary of defense. Pashtun tribes in northwestern Pakistan and southern Afghanistan have a long history of dissidence, feuding and rebellion, which is now being branded Talibanism and configured as a dire menace to the Western way of life. Obama has added yet another domino theory to the history of Washington's justifications for massive military interventions in Asia. When a policymaker gets the rationale for action wrong, he is at particular risk of falling into mission creep and stubborn commitment to a doomed and unnecessary enterprise.

Juan Cole Hits GOP Hypocrisy

It's not hyperbole to suggest that any political move that today's GOP makes is likely a lie or a rank exercise in hypocrisy. That's what we face today.

From Juan Cole:

You know how the Republicans in the Senate refused to spend $30 billion to bring the US auto industry back from the brink?

It turns out that they were perfectly happy to waste $50 billion in taxpayer money on reconstruction boondoggles in Iraq on explicitly partisan grounds. A veteran Republican lobbyist, says the NYT, explicitly appealed to the then head of the Office of Management and Budget:

To delay getting our funds would be a political disaster for the President . . . His election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without the funding this year, progress will grind to a halt.

Juan Cole Rips Bush Apart One Last Time

Update: See also J. P. Green's Challenging the 'Bush Kept Us Safe' Meme - "It's reflection time at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. When the inhabitants of the white house and their minions are not milking their fading authority to smash and grab as much as they can, they are busy spinning history to describe their positive accomplishments. All they have is the fact that we have not had a major terrorist incident 'on U.S. soil' since 9-11. For this, they figure, Americans should be expansively grateful to the lamest duck."

In case anyone missed it, Juan Cole tears apart Bush's-impersonation-of-a-Soviet commissar address last week on Bush's Middle East policy at the Saban Forum in Washington, D.C.

Not that anyone with the power of insight exceeding Cokie Roberts takes anything Bush says seriously these days, but Bush's "self-glorifying speech" disrespects the million human beings no longer alive because of his lying foreign policy.

Concludes Cole:

Bush was always all hat and no cattle. Bush turned the United States into an aggressor nation. He kicked off an orgy of violence in Iraq that has probably left a million dead. He destroyed entire cities. He left millions of widows and orphans, and millions more displaced. He lied, he destroyed habeas corpus at home and abroad, he tortured. It is too soon to know if American democracy will ever really recover from lawless regime.

Cole and not the Cokies of the world will show the world how quickly that we can recover by speaking truth to power.

But many would like to see not just a reversal of Bush's anti-Democratic and illegal foreign policy towards Iraq, but a presidential repudiation from Barack Obama of this huge war crime that we by virtue of our citizenship are all guilty.

Iraq Horror as Usual

McCain and Bush stress the improvements that our illegal invasion and occupation are bringing to Iraq.

But the facts are leaking out, for those who read Robert Fisk and Juan Cole:

Robert Fisk: Snapshots of life in Baghdad

The Real State of Iraq

Four Americans Killed in Baghdad Explosion

Five years of Iraq lies

Juan Cole has good piece in Salon.

How President Bush and his advisors have spent each year of the war peddling mendacious tales about a mission accomplished

John McCain, Fear and Lying

Update II: Consider that this contrived non-issue (demonstrating either McCain's lack of character or lack of vigor in that he could be the unthinking recepient of lame talking points fed to him) is the most that they can brand Obama with at this point. Sure, it's an opening salvo in the GOP brand manglement of Obama, but it is so clearly lame, that at some point even the broadcast talking heads can see that something is more rotten than usual.

Update: McCain buddy Bush picks up the lying talking point. [just too precious, at right]

BUSH: It's an interesting comment. 'If Al Qaida is securing an Al Qaida base'? Yes, well, that's exactly what they've been trying to do for the past four years. That's — their stated intention was to create enough chaos and disorder to establish a base from which to either launch attacks or spread a caliphate.

From the inception of the Bush presidency which effectively began on September 12, 2001, the war paradigm and fear have been its trademarks.

In policy and politics, Bush and neocons have transformed this country into a permanent culture of fear while claiming to be the sole instrument to provide security.

John McCain has picked up the torch, and is now lying, howler after howler, on the campaign trail with impunity.

The question is: Will the media that credulously reported the weapons-of-mass-destruction and al-Qaeda/Saddam lies [“allowed to stand unchallenged,” it was later reported with regret] continue to let John McCain lie with the newest iteration of the al-Qaeda will strike us from Iraq fable?

“(Al-Qaeda in Iraq) if we left, they wouldn’t be establishing a base. They’d be taking a country, and I’m not going to allow that to happen,” John McCain tells us.

Ludicrous.

As Juan Cole writes:

The allegation that (McCain) makes about there being ‘al-Qaeda in Iraq' that could well take over the country is part lie and part insanity. ... The idea that this small minority of violent Muslim fundamentalists could take over Iraq is completely crazy. They haven't even been able to keep their toehold in Baghdad-- the Sunnis have been largely ethnically cleansed from the capital by Shiite militias.

In GOP political rhetoric, al Qaeda has become inclusively the Islamofascists—the coming caliphate composed of everyone in Iraq and the Middle East who raises a gun or thought against foreign invaders, though Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (and assorted other authoritarian states) remain our steadfast, democratic friends.

And McCain is taking his fear show on the road as he looks to the general election, blasting Barack Obama for answering Tim Russert’s hypothetical question about reinvading Iraq should America withdraw in the future.

Asked Russert: ". . . do you reserve a right as American president to go back into Iraq, once you have withdrawn, with sizable troops in order to quell any kind of insurrection or civil war?"

Obama: . . . Now, I always reserve the right for the president -- as commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad.

That’s just too much for McCain.

“Al Qaeda is there now,” Mr. McCain said today in Houston, with a tone of belittlement in his voice. “So to state that somehow if Al Qaeda were there that he would consider going back militarily is really a remarkable comment, and I don’t think displays an understanding of the size of the threat and what’s at stake in Iraq.” (Bosman, NYT)

But as Juan Cole points out: “Note that Obama was simply responding to Russert's hypothetical, which assumed that the US was already out of Iraq but that in the aftermath, there was ‘insurrection’ or ‘civil war.’ The world that Russert imagined was presumably one in which Iraq had firmed up enough for the US to get out ... "

There are two blatant lies that McCain peddling:

- That Al Qaeda, such as is, can take over Iraq and pose a danger to the United States.

- McCain's failure to acknowledge that Obama’s statement to which McCain has now spent two days misrepresenting was based on Russert’s hypothetical question.

There is nothing “remarkable” about Obama’s comment, except in the disingenuous manner that McCain, Mr. straight talker, is presenting it.

But McCain’s blatant lying is remarkable and ought to be challenged by someone besides Juan Cole.

John McCain’s character, specifically his willingness to lie, is on display, and every journalist ought to be reporting on what is happening.

Instead, the newest media narrative, as I write, is: Can Obama withstand this McCain attack, and is he seasoned enough on military and foreign policy?

Let's hope that the media will heed the lesson of its admitted failure before the Iraq invasion. From The Times and Iraq (New York Times, May 26, 2004):

"We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves."

McCain Dumber than Bush on Iraq

Update II: McCain Keeps up Al Qaeda in Iraq Talk

Update: Obama Scores against McCain

... The allegation that (McCain) makes about there being 'al-Qaeda in Iraq' that could well take over the country is part lie and part insanity. ... They don't call themselves 'al-Qaeda in Iraq.' The major such group is 'The Islamic State of Iraq.' And to say that they have 'bases' in Iraq is pretty grandiose. They have some safe houses and try to take and hold neighborhoods, so far with indifferent success. The idea that this small minority of violent Muslim fundamentalists could take over Iraq is completely crazy. They haven't even been able to keep their toehold in Baghdad-- the Sunnis have been largely ethnically cleansed from the capital by Shiite militias. - Juan Cole

Senator John McCain is in way over his head, no matter how tightly he hugs Bush.

McCain speaking today after the Democratic debate, offered:

"... Senator Obama made the statement that if Al Qaeda came back to Iraq ... after the American troops are withdrawn, then he would send military troops back, if Al Qaeda established a base in Iraq. I have some news. Al Qaeda is in Iraq. It’s called Al Qaeda in Iraq. My friends, if we left, they wouldn’t be establishing a base. They’d be taking a country, and I’m not going to allow that to happen... "

John McCain apparently believes that the Sunni tribes and the Shiite majority (with their various militias) in Iraq will, after the hypothetical withdrawal of American troops, allow the Sunni Al Qaeda to take over "a country," a ridiculous proposition that even the most pedestrian of students of Iraq recognize as an absurdity.

Will the corporate media call McCain on this rubbish?

"John McCain may like to say he wants to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell, but so far all he’s done is follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq," said Obama.

Juan Cole: Romney Says Some Beliefs are More Equal than Others

Juan Cole has an insightful piece pointing out that Mitt Romney is all for instituting a religious test for president, the one you have to pass to win the GOP presidential nominaiton.

John Nichols has a similar piece in The Nation.

Writes Cole:

Mitt Romney's speech in Texas on Thursday was supposed to be an attempt to fend off religious bigotry. Instead, it betrays some prejudices of its own (against secular people), and seems to provoke others to bigotted statements. It has been likened to the speech of John F. Kennedy on his Catholicism. But we knew John F. Kennedy, and Mitt Romney is no John F. Kennedy. Kennedy strongly affirmed the separation of religion and state.

Romney wants to dragoon us into a soft theocracy (not as a Mormon but as a Republican allied to the Pat Robertsons of the world). Kennedy wanted to be accepted as an American by other Americans. Romney wants to be accepted as a conservative Christian by other conservative Christians.

This conundrum is the price the Republican Party is paying for pandering to the religious Right. Can a secular person even win the Republican nomination any more? If you make yourself captive of the Protestant Right, then you will discover that they believe Mormons are heretics. The Republican Party has established its own litmus test, and since it has been a dominant party in recent years, we've all been affected by it. Romney's plight in finding it hard to be accepted by that constituency mirrors the plight of secular and unchurched Americans, on whom the very people Romney is sucking up to want to impose their narrow and sectarian values.

###

Krauthammer: Wrong About Iraq as Usual, Worse than a Broken Clock

Update III: U.S. Moves the goalposts in Iraq, again

Update II: ‘Wave Of Violence’ Against Women In Iraq Undercuts White House’s Claims Of Success

Update: Krauthammer has been lying all along (imagine that): 20,000 vets' brain injuries not listed in Pentagon tally.

Charles Krauthammer in this morning's Post brings more happy news from Iraq: Now, really, really, it's going well; our illegal war is working.

The violence in Iraq has been dramatically reduced. Political allegiances have been radically reversed. The revival of ordinary life in many cities is palpable. Something important is happening.

"(P)alpable." Let's take a glance at this morning's news. Juan Cole's blog shows us:

Friday, November 23, 2007
Dozens Killed in Bombings,
Clashes 3 Million Iranian Pilgrims Expected
41% of Jihadis are Saudis

That doesn't sound so good to establish a client oil state for us.

Maybe that day was just an outlier day, let's look at Thursday:

Thursday, November 22, 2007
Abu Abd and Baghdad Security
US Soldier Killed
dozens of Iraqis Killed or Wounded

Here's a second glance:

Reuters reports civil war violence in Iraq for Wednesday. Excerpts:
BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier and an Iraqi interpreter were killed ... Three U.S. soldiers were wounded. ...

DIWANIYA - Police arrested 30 people, accused of assassinations and other attacks against Iraqi security forces ...

RAMADI - At least six people were killed when a car exploded ... with 15 wounded...

BAGHDAD - Three policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in Mansour district of western Baghdad, police said...

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi army found six decomposed bodies buried...

LONDON - Two British military personnel were killed in Iraq on Tuesday...

Today, is Nov. 23, and only 30 Americans killed so far this month. Wonderful news.

Only a few hundred Iraqis killed this month. Millions dislocated and moved from their homes. Segregated neighborhoods. A country occupied against its will.

Charles Krauthammer, the neocon chickenhawk, is really right this time, he says. How could we have ever doubted him?

You heard the saying: "Even a broken clock is right twice a day"?

The neocons aren't even that good.

###

Cole: Can Gen. Petraeus and Ryan Crocker Save the Next Democratic President?

Cole is simply the best:

Despite what the pundits will say, I fear the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the Hill Monday and Tuesday is not a turning point, does not give Bush breathing room, and is largely irrelevant.

To any extent that what they do in Iraq ends up making a real positive difference, Petraeus and Crocker will likely be doing the Democrats a big favor, not Bush, who won't be in office much longer.

The central question is whether the Democrats can force a significant reduction of troops from Iraq on Bush's watch, so as to avoid Iraq becoming exclusively their headache when they (as is likely) take over the White House in January of 2009. If they could, this drawdown would be the best option. Certainly, that is what a majority of Iraqis thinks, according to the new BBC/ABC poll.

But the answer is: No. The Democrats cannot get the troops out of Iraq because they cannot overturn a Bush veto in the House of Representatives, and because they cannot overcome the need for a consensus of 60 senators in the Senate. Some Democrats, such as Joe Lieberman, oppose a rapid withdrawal. And the likelihood that 11 Republican senators will suddenly become withdrawalniks between now and November, 2008, is negligible.

The testimony of Petraeus and Crocker may marginally reinforce the will of the Republicans to stay the course, but I do not think it is decisive. In all likelihood, the Republican senators would have continued to block their Democratic colleagues from doing anything really dramatic, anyway.

If the Democrats cannot prevail in withdrawing before Bush goes out of office (and they cannot), and if they then rapidly draw down the troops on taking office in 2009, they face the real prospect of a "Gerald Ford meltdown" of the sort that occurred in 1975 when the North Vietnamese and their VC allies took over South Vietnam.

You will note that Ford only served a couple of years as president and lost his election bid to a relative unknown named Jimmy Carter. Although economic stagflation and the stain of Watergate contributed to his defeat, I think the spectacle of the debacle in Indochina harmed Ford a great deal. The United States lost a war, and lost out to its ideological rival in an entire subcontinent of Asia in the midst of the Cold War. That would cause at least some Republicans to stay home in 1976, a sure way for Democrats to win an election.

Could 2010 look for Iraq like 1975 looked in Vietnam? Yes. I just do not see evidence that either the new Iraqi political class or the Iraqi security forces are likely to have the maturity to avoid a conflagration when the US military withdraws.

There are three major wars going on in Iraq: 1) for control of oil-rich Basra, among Shiite militias and tribes; 2) for control of Baghdad and its hinterlands between Sunni Arabs and Shiites; and 3) for control of oil-rich Kirkuk in the north, between Kurds on the one side and Arabs and Turkmen on the other.

Gen. Petraeus believes that the Sunni-Shiite struggle for Baghdad is the central struggle, and that if it cannot be calmed down, nothing can be accomplished. His main energies have been put into reducing violence in Baghdad itself, in which he has succeeded to a limited extent (i.e. getting violence back down to summer, 2006, levels instead of astronomical January 2007 levels).

The successes in Baghdad are ambiguous, not clear-cut. The year 2006 was particularly bloody, so getting to that level is not satisfactory. The reduction in statistics on sectarian violence has not prevented hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs from being ethnically cleansed (mainly displaced) from Baghdad, turning it from a city that was 65 percent Shiite into one that is 75 percent Shiite and rising. The Sunni Arabs of al-Anbar, whether they hate "al-Qaeda" or not, say in interviews that they support the withdrawal of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accord Front from the al-Maliki government, precisely on the grounds that al-Maliki is entangled with the Shiite militias that are displacing the Sunni Arabs from Baghdad.

Further, Gen. Petraeus has frankly admitted that whatever successes he has had in Baghdad militarily (and he has had some there) have not yet translated into solid political gains in Sunni-Shiite reconciliation. He continues to entertain hopes that they will be so translated, but all he can proffer us in this regard is exactly that, hopes.

Petraeus's perspective ignores the over-all rise in civilian deaths in 2007 compared to 2006, and pays no attention to Shiite-Shiite violence in Basra and Karbala. He also codes the Arab attack on Yazidi Kurds as an "al-Qaeda" act of violence. In fact, it was part of an ethnic struggle for control of land and oil in the Iraqi north that is just as destabilizing, potentially, as is the battle for Baghdad. He points to Iraqi security forces policing provinces such as Muthanna and Nasiriya in the Shiite south. It has to be acknowledged, however, that those provincial security forces are dominated by the Badr Corps militia of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which was trained and may still be being partially funded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. And they are in an ongoing struggle with the Mahdi Army militia, also Shiite but more Iraqi nativist.

My own expectation is that unless Iraqi politicians become far more canny and powerful during the next two years, then when the American forces withdraw, the ethnic and sectarian militias will fight the three wars (Basra, Baghdad, Kirkuk) to a conclusion. It will likely be a bloody war similar to that in Afghanistan in the 1990s. With the Americans not around, it is possible that large militia forces will fight set piece battles.

There is also a danger of the neighbors being drawn into a big proxy fight in Iraq (including the Saudis, the Iranians, the Jordanians, the Syrians and the Turks).

Neither outcome is inevitable. If al-Maliki learns how to cultivate the Sunni Arabs as well as Petraeus has been (and if the Sunni Arabs will accept it from al-Maliki, which is not assured), then he might be able to draw them into his orbit just as King Feisal did in the 1920s. Al-Maliki's government is said to have $10 bn. in oil revenue that it refuses to spend; that could buy some loyalty.

Likewise, the US, the Europeans and the Arab League could work hard diplomatically to avoid a proxy war among the neighbors, and it might be avoided. I am heartened that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad of Iran seem intent on continuing to dialogue, and to avoid tensions reaching a fever picth between the two countries. If the US had any sense, it would be warmly encouraging this diplomacy, not trying to get the Arabs and Israelis to gang up on Iran.

But in all likelihood, when the Democratic president pulls US troops out in summer of 2009, all hell is going to break loose. The consequences may include even higher petroleum prices than we have seen recently, which at some point could bring back stagflation or very high rates of inflation.

In other words, the Democratic president risks being Fordized when s/he withdraws from Iraq, by the aftermath. A one-term president associated with humiliation abroad and high inflation at home? Maybe I should say, Carterized. The Republican Party could come back strong in 2012 and then dominate politics for decades, if that happened.

It is all so unfair, of course, since Bush started and prosecuted this disaster in Iraq, and Bush is refusing to accept responsibility for the failure, pushing it off onto his successor.

But life is unfair.

So what can the Dems do to avoid being made the fall guy this way?

They could try to legislate stronger US diplomacy aiming at ensuring peace between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran even if there is sectarian violence on a greater scale in Iraq. They could resist the temptation to demonize Iran or to push it onto a war footing with threats or even bombings.

As for Iraq itself, the best hope for the Dems may be that Gen. Petraeus actually succeeds, over the next year, in significantly reducing ethnic tensions. It is a slim reed to hold onto, as they recognize.

But from the moment Bush went into Iraq, Americans were screwed. And that includes the Democratic Party, which is being set up to take the fall.

I'm a severe skeptic on the likelihood of anything that looks like success in Iraq. But I don't think career public servants such as Ryan Crocker and David Petraeus are acting as partisan Republicans in their Iraq efforts. I think they both are sincere, experienced men attempting to retrieve what they can for America from Bush's catastrophe. They may as well try, since the Democrats can't over-rule Bush and get the troops out, anyway. If the troops are there, they may as well at least be deployed intelligently, which is what Gen. Petraeus is doing. I wish them well in their Herculean labors. Because if they fail, I have a sinking feeling that we are all going down with them, including the next Democratic president. And their success is a long shot.
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Daily Dose of Death

Juan Cole of Informed Comment gives us a daily, sober rundown on the deadly occupation of Iraq. Wonder if our right wing friends, like Wigdergon on Libby, can spin Iraq into something positive.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

20 Rockets, Mortar Shells, Hit Green Zone; Kill 3

Petraeus Meets with Presidency Council On Tuesday, guerrillas launched some 20 katyusha rockets and mortar shells into the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad, killing 3 persons, including a US soldier, and wounding 25 persons.

The Green Zone was originally supposed to be the safe place in Iraq, with the area outside it (everything else) called the "Red Zone."

The US Embassy in Baghdad appears to have forgotten what the phrase "Green Zone" means, since a spokesman there told the LAT, "There's fire into the Green Zone virtually every day, so I can't draw any conclusions about the security situation based on that . . ."

Let me draw the conclusion. If you've got fire into the friggin' Green Zone every day, then we can draw the conclusion that the security situation in Baghdad sucks big time.

When you've got people killed and a large number of people wounded in the one place in Iraq that was supposed to have a "permissive" security environment, then security in general is the pits.

Now you might say that we can't draw many conclusions from the events of a single day. And, being able to lob mortar shells over a wall doesn't speak to that much organization. But then what about these two nuggets in the LAT story?1) "There were about 39 attacks [on the Green Zone] in May, compared with 17 in March, according to a U.N. report."2) "Tuesday's attack came the same day gunmen kidnapped Iraqi Police Col. Mahmoud Muhyi Hussein, who directs security inside the Green Zone . . .In other words, the security situation in the Green Zone is spiralling down at an alarming pace, and the guerrillas have such good inside knowledge that they can kidnap the very person responsible for security in it, as he drives in Jadiriya.

That, my friends, is an inside job. And such an inside job doesn't bode well for future security in the Green Zone. For one thing, presumably they are "debriefing" Col. Hussein as we speak, looking for weak points.People I know and respect are in the Green Zone, so I'm pretty distressed by this situation, and not amused by the embassy spokesman's attempt to blow smoke up our posteriors.

This looks bad.

I.F. Stone was right, all you have to do is read the newspapers carefully and you'd be surprised what you can find out. Al-Zaman gives inflated casualty figures for wounded in Tuesday's Green Zone attack, and attributes it to the Mahdi Army (how could they know it wasn't Sunni Arab guerrillas?)

Al-Zaman says that one of the mortar shells landed not far from the residence of PM al-Maliki! Al-Zaman also reports that President Jalal Talabani and his two vice presidents (Adil Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite, and Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni) met Tuesday with Gen. David Petraeus on ways out of the political impasse.

It is widely felt that PM al-Maliki is just incapable of making progress on Washington's benchmarks, including national reconciliation.

Al-Zaman alleges that the American commanders on the ground are increasingly favoring giving greater power to the 'presidency council' comprising the president and 2 vice presidents.

This move, if truly being pursued, strikes me as a "Mahmoud Abbas" strategy for Iraq, involving essentially sidestepping the prime minister in favor of the presidency council. I doubt it can work.

In Diyala Province, Sunni fundamentalist guerrillas took over the town of Shirween a mixed Sunni-Shiite area. Sunni Arab guerrillas who had controlled 40% of the Diyala capital, Baquba, had melted away before the US advance. But now they have popped up in control of a nearby town.

This move strikes me as a sort of taunting of US commanders. They must know they cannot keep control of Shirween if the US comes after them. They are making the point that their movement is hydra-headed and therefore invulnerable.

Sawt al-Iraq reports in Arabic that MP Husain al-Falluji is calling for the draft petroleum bill to be submitted to a popular referendum, instead of having parliament vote on it.

Many parliamentarians feel that the current draft of the bill gives away too much national sovereignty.

Reuters reports political violence in the country on Tuesday. There is too much of it.
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The MAeLstrom

[A scan of news articles and commentary on the internet.]

Surge not Working — Juan Cole at Informed Comment lists the latest disasters in Iraq and notes that Bill O'Reilly does not think any of this is important, or, actually, thinks reporting what goes on in Iraq is a form of treason. Just remember, as Orwell's 1984 reminds us: "War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."

U.S. ATTORNEYS - Ex-Justice Dept. lawyer can't recall his role in controversial policies — Greg Gordon of McClatchy Newspapers reports that “Another former Justice Department lawyer went before Congress on Wednesday with few answers for his Democratic interrogators and a spotty memory.”

FBI Terror Watch List 'Out of Control' — ABC News, Justin Rood Reports: “terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than half a million names. Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror.”

Secret UN report condemns US for Middle East failures — Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem and Ian Williams report in The Guardian: “The highest ranking UN official in Israel has warned that American pressure has "pummelled into submission" the UN's role as an impartial Middle East negotiator in a damning confidential report.”

Justice Dept. Reshapes Its Civil Rights Mission — Neil Lewis reports in the New York Times that “In recent years, the Bush administration has recast the federal government’s role in civil rights by aggressively pursuing religion-oriented cases while significantly diminishing its involvement in the traditional area of race. Paralleling concerns of many conservative groups, the Justice Department has successfully argued in a number of cases that government agencies, employers or private organizations have improperly suppressed religious expression in situations that the Constitution’s drafters did not mean to restrict.

Alan Dershowitz and Robert Bork Team-up to Halt Patrick Fitzgerald — Qwerty’s Qoncepts notes that a group of leading lawyers and law professors, among them none other than Alan Dershowitz and Robert Bork, have written an amicus brief, questioning the constitutionality of the appointment of the special prosecutor in the case against Scooter Libby.

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