That canary in the coalmine, Richard Clarke, reviews the crises ignored while Iraq consumes all the oxygen in Washington:
As the president contemplates sending even more U.S. forces into the Iraqi sinkhole, he should consider not only the thousands of fatalities, the tens of thousands of casualties and the hundreds of billions of dollars already lost. He must also weigh the opportunity cost of taking his national security barons off all the other critical problems they should be addressing -- problems whose windows of opportunity are slamming shut, unheard over the wail of Baghdad sirens.
Clarke's list of unattended problems is here. Hint: global warming tops the list.
--David Kurtz
For a reminder of what a difference it made that Jerry Ford became president in August 1974, think of this: if Congress had let Nixon nominate his first choice for vice president after Spiro Agnew's resignation in disgrace, ex-Texas governor John Connally would have been the 38th president. That same month, Connally was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice in a separate scandal. (He was later acquitted.) Would faith in our system have survived after we watched a president and vice president quit, only to see a new president indicted as he was sworn in?
That would have been a rather unfortunate turn of events. On the other hand, the sort of faith in the system that Beschloss is talking about is a blind faith. The system per se didn't prevent such a turn of events. Happenstance (and the greater likelihood of Ford being confirmed as vice president) ultimately led to a Ford rather than a Connally presidency. If your faith in the system is predicated on something not happening that very well could have happened, and that could happen again, then that's not faith but wishful thinking. It's the same sort of fair-weather faith that leads to the rather incoherent argument that to try a President for a violation of the law would threaten the system of laws. What Beschloss credits as faith is actually fear.
--David Kurtz
As painful as it was, I watched a bit of ABC's coverage of the arrival of President Ford's remains at the Capitol this evening. Among the guest commentators were David Gergen (that hipster--he's got his own website) and Richard Norton Smith, both the sorts of conservatives that Democrats and the media love to have around for their tempered views. Still, to hear Gergen and and Smith chatting it up with Charlie Gibson and Barbara Walters (who was vacationing in the same locale as Henry Kissinger when word came of Ford's death) about the poisonous atmosphere that existed in Washington around the time Ford took office--how there were protesters with the temerity to stand outside the White House gates and scream that Nixon be impeached, how buses were lined up along Pennsylvania Avenue as barricades, how troops were stationed around Washington to put down any insurrection, how the country was at war with itself--you get the sense that in their minds the unwashed masses were just as much to blame for the tenor of the times as the suited white guys in the inner sanctums of the White House. I had always thought that to the extent Ford had, in the oft-used phrase, restored confidence in the Presidency he had done so by elevating the conduct of those in the White House, raising the office above the shabby habits of his predecessor's men. It had not occurred to me (although it probably should have) until listening to Gergen and Smith that for many people Ford's signature service to the country was calming the waters so that the rabble quieted down and went home. It is in that sense that the pardon of Nixon helped "heal" the country (clearing the way three decades later for Smith to reminisce about the Ford children playing in Statuary Hall on Saturdays in a quaint Washington of a different era). All these years later, you can still discern a liberal from a conservative by whether she perceives the protesters or all the President's men as a greater threat to democracy.
--David Kurtz
Yes, that would seem to merit some investigation ...
The Justice Department is investigating whether the director of a multibillion-dollar oil-trading program at the Interior Department has been paid as a consultant for oil companies hoping for contracts.The director of the program and three subordinates, all based in Denver, have been transferred to different jobs and have been ordered to cease all contacts with the oil industry until the investigation is completed some time next spring, according to officials involved.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation had not been announced publicly, said investigators were worried that senior government officials had been steering huge oil-trading contracts to favored companies.
Any such favoritism would probably reduce the money that the federal government receives on nearly $4 billion worth of oil and gas, because it would reduce competition among companies that compete to sell the fuel on behalf of the government.
The rest from the NYT.
--Josh Marshall
At least two bombings Saturday in Iraq kill upwards of 50 Iraqi civilians, and December becomes the deadliest month of 2006 for U.S. troops, with 108 killed.
--David Kurtz
Looking at the photo the NYT is leading with on its homepage, I am struck by the motley bunch of executioners. Hooded to protect their identities, they look like a gang of toughs from a B movie--or, on further reflection, like the hooded terrorists who in the earlier days of our occupation were murdering hostages like Nick Berg, on camera, for maximum shock value.
--David Kurtz
I'm still sorting through the post-hanging detritus this morning, but this passage from the New York Times, which Greg highlighted over at EC, captures the entire Iraq debacle:
Before the hanging was carried out in Baghdad, Mr. Bush went to sleep here at his ranch and was not roused when the news came.
And so it goes.
--David Kurtz
Reports filtering out that Saddam Hussein was hanged just before 10 p.m. EST. More here.
--David Kurtz
Reuters, December 29th, 2006 18:35 GMT ...
The White House declined to comment on the timing."That is a matter for the Iraqi people, we are observers to that process. They are a sovereign government and they will make their own decisions regarding carrying out justice," spokesman Scott Stanzel said in Crawford, Texas.
AP, December 29th, 2006 10:02 PM Eastern
An adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saddam would be executed before 6 a.m. Saturday, or 10 p.m. Friday EST. Saddam and others were convicted of murder in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from an Iraqi town where assassins tried to kill Saddam in 1982....
The time was agreed upon during a meeting Friday between U.S. and Iraqi officials, said the adviser, who declined to be quoted by name because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
--Josh Marshall
Anyone curious to know what the troops actually think of Bush, the Iraq war, and plans for a "surge"?
A new poll finds that for the first time, more members of the military disapprove of Bush's Iraq performance than approve of it. The number who think victory's likely has plummeted.
Oh, and only a minority think there should be more troops in Iraq.
--Greg Sargent
It's a hornet's nest. But I'm game. So why not jump in.
"Bush administration officials" are telling CNN that Saddam Hussein will be hanged this weekend. Convention dictates that we precede any discussion of this execution with the obligatory nod to Saddam's treachery, bloodthirsty rule and tyranny. But enough of the cowardly chatter. This thing is a sham, of a piece with the whole corrupt, disastrous sham that the war and occupation have been. Bush administration officials are the ones who leak the news about the time of the execution. One key reason we know Saddam's about to be executed is that he's about to be transferred from US to Iraqi custody, which tells you a lot. And, of course, the verdict in his trial gets timed to coincide with the US elections.
This whole endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mache grandeur -- phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters. And this is no different. Hanging Saddam is easy. It's a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us.
Try to dress this up as an Iraqi trial and it doesn't come close to cutting it -- the Iraqis only take possession of him for the final act, sort of like the Church always left execution itself to the 'secular arm'. Try pretending it's a war crimes trial but it's just more of the pretend mumbojumbo that makes this out to be World War IX or whatever number it is they're up to now.
The Iraq War has been many things, but for its prime promoters and cheerleaders and now-dwindling body of defenders, the war and all its ideological and literary trappings have always been an exercise in moral-historical dress-up for a crew of folks whose times aren't grand enough to live up to their own self-regard and whose imaginations are great enough to make up the difference. This is just more play-acting.
These jokers are being dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that the whole thing's a mess and that they're going to be remembered for it -- defined by it -- for decades and centuries. But before we go, we can hang Saddam. Quite a bit of this was about the president's issues with his dad and the hang-ups he had about finishing Saddam off -- so before we go, we can hang the guy as some big cosmic 'So There!'
Marx might say that this was not tragedy but farce. But I think we need to get way beyond options one and two even to get close to this one -- claptrap justice meted out to the former dictator in some puffed-up act of self-justification as the country itself collapses in the hands of the occupying army.
Marty Peretz, with some sort of projection, calls any attempt to rain on this parade "prissy and finicky." Myself, I just find it embarrassing. This is what we're reduced to, what the president has reduced us to. This is the best we can do. Hang Saddam Hussein because there's nothing else this president can get right.
What do you figure this farce will look like 10, 30 or 50 years down the road? A signal of American power or weakness?
--Josh Marshall
The Very, Very Latest: Iraq Warblogger vouches for authenticity of 'Lonely Kerry' photo!
--Josh Marshall
The White House doesn't know failure in its War on Terror. Only "success that hasn't occurred yet."
--Justin Rood
The Federal Election Commission handed out a record multi-million-dollar fine -- to an unusual culprit. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
My, I think Woodward's got some real news here. As a country, for three decades, we've been trying to sort out Gerald Ford's motivations for pardoning Richard Nixon. And in that posthumously published interview of Ford, which Woodward has been excerpting, I think the late president goes pretty far toward answering the question. Said Ford: "I looked upon him as my personal friend. And I always treasured our relationship. And I had no hesitancy about granting the pardon, because I felt that we had this relationship and that I didn't want to see my real friend have the stigma."
Woodward follows by noting that "that acknowledgment represents a significant shift from Ford's previous portrayals of the pardon that absolved Nixon of any Watergate-related crimes."
I would say that's something of an understatement.
I've always thought the notion of some knowing bargain between the two men -- the presidency for the pardon -- was a bit too Hollywood.
With people who know each other well enough stuff like this never has to be said. Perhaps it needn't even be thought. We'd like to think at least that we know who'll really have our back at the critical moment and who won't. And perhaps Nixon's well-known paranoia helped him refine that skill to a tee. As Ford told Woodward last year: "I think that Nixon felt I was about the only person he could really trust on the Hill."
--Josh Marshall
In unexpected dig againt Jeff Greenfield, entire Bush war cabinet adopts Ahmadinejad look.
Cold. Very cold.
--Josh Marshall
End of year TPM game. Which is most likely to cause the inevitable collapse of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign?
1. History of ridiculous flip-flops on gay rights.
2. Fact that all he's ever done in politics is win one gubernatorial election in Massachusetts.
3. Fact that his real first name is Willard.
4. Not a genuine conservative nutjob.
Choose one of these or come up with one of your own.
--Josh Marshall
Matt Yglesias has a good post here about what's really behind the 'surge'. This is also a good example of how paradoxical or even bizarre 'answers' often emerge from political problems. No actual policy or strategic imperative is driving the move to escalate the conflict in Iraq. The real causes are political and psychological.
To put it simply, the presidential is neither psychologically nor politically capable of leaving Iraq. The 2006 election made it clear the current course can't be sustained politically. Even his own party won't back it. That leaves escalation as the only alternative. All that's left is a rationale for doing so. And that's what the president is now working on.
That doesn't mean that in theory there couldn't be a good argument for escalation, only that whatever it is, it has nothing to do with why the president is in favor of escalation. Because if it did he would have called for it at some point over the last three years. And he didn't. All that's changed is that option two of three -- stasis -- was removed from the list of options. End of story.
--Josh Marshall
Ahhh, a walk down memory lane. Back in April, Paul Kiel broke the story of Rep. Jim Ryun's (R-KS) really killer house deal on a home that just happened to be owned by an Abramoff-DeLay front. Here's some fun follow up.
--Josh Marshall
Truthiness report: Right-wing blogs have more fun posting questionable e-mails from the Iraq war.
--Justin Rood
Bill Bennett: Ford cowardly for embargoing anti-Iraq war views until after his death.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader JM on Bush's fall. And no, JM is not "Josh Marshall", no internal sock-puppetry here ...
I'm glad someone pointed out that Bush's downward trend started significantly before Katrina last year. It's my belief that the stunning unpopularity of Bush's Social Security scheme was what really instigated his fall, by showing just how ineffective, tone-deaf and weak he could be. (Of course Iraq was rapidly doing the same thing.)Before the Social Security debacle, Bush had an air of inevitibility about him. All of his major proposals had passed Congress. Yet the privatization push showed him giving an ardent sales job for something no one wanted - a classic Republican idea that was so bad the Republican Congress never got to first base in enacting it. But they wasted enough time on it that Bush and the Congress never accomplished anything this term. It all came to a head during the summer recess of '05, before Katrina. Blood was in the water.
Katrina ensured Bush's destruction. But when it hit, his politcal levy was already compromised.
Obviously, I have something of an attachment to this issue. But I think it's an greatly underestimated factor in what happened over the last two years. Also, the DeLay Rule. This operates on many levels. And the degree to which it put the public on notice of how out-of-touch and how much of an extremist Bush was was a very big deal. But it also showed that Bush could be beaten and beaten badly on a proposal he put all of his resources behind. A lot of Bush's strength by early 2005 was based on the fact that he'd put his mind to pushing through a series of not-very-popular proposals that he really shouldn't have been able to get through. But he did. That created a vicious (or virtuous, depending on your viewpoint) cycle in which he was able to maintain greater and greater degrees of party loyalty on the Hill. Party loyalty allowed him to push stuff through successfully. And his repeated successes enabled greater and greater levels of party loyalty. Both fed on each other.
All political power is unitary. You don't lose it in one sphere and not lose it in another. In addition to what it showed the public, the Social Security debacle showed Bush's fellow Republicans that he was beatable (and thus that he couldn't protect them) and the press that he was a loser. The Social Security battle showed everyone that Bush wasn't as strong or as tough as he looked.
--Josh Marshall
MSNBC helpfully reminds viewers that John Edwards is battling poverty even though he's very, very rich.
--Greg Sargent
Gates lacking the urge to surge? This is interesting. In yesterday's New York Sun, Eli Lake reports that Sec Def Robert Gates is actually quietly opposing President Bush's plan to escalate the conflict by adding 30,000 to 50,000 more troops to crush the Mahdi Army and other Shi'a militias in and around Baghdad.
This would hardly be surprising, if true, since Gates, as recently as November, was a member of the Iraq Study Group and clearly on board with its policy of -- albeit slow -- disengagement.
One question is why we're not seeing more made of this in the big dailies. One clue is certainly the reporter himself. Lake (who, full disclosure, is a good friend of mine, though we haven't spoken in some time) is quite tied in with and has excellent sources among DC neocons. If those folks are trying to push back against Gates' resistance, Eli would know about it and as a reporter he'd be interested in these policy cleavages.
But again, why no more of this in the other dailies? As I alluded to above, we could infer what Eli is telling us even in the absence of his reporting. Gates is either not in favor of the troop build-up or he is guilty of one of the great flip-flops in recent DC history. Where is he on this? Is he going along with a policy that the last year of study of the situation has actually convinced him is bound to fail. Is he silently trying to upend the policy from the inside? Certainly the Post and Times reporters can tell us more on this, right?
--Josh Marshall
I know we're all in year end mode at the moment. So I wanted to let you know about a discussion we've got going over at the TPMCafe's Coffee House blog. I started the conversation back on the 26th by asking whether there was any single galvanizing event that led to the remarkable turnaround in the president's and the Republican party's fortunes over the last two years. So far we've got answers from Ed Kilgore, E.J. Graff, Mark Schmitt, Jo-Ann Mort, and Todd Gitlin. Join us.
--Josh Marshall
Ask not for whom the revolving door turns: Shell Oil hires former Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
Woodward's latest in WaPo ...
Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. "I don't think I would have gone to war," he said a little more than a year after President Bush had launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration.In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford's White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.
"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."
In a conversation that veered between the current realities of a war in the Middle East and the old complexities of the war in Vietnam whose bitter end he presided over as president, Ford took issue with the notion of the United States entering a conflict in service of the idea of spreading democracy.
The interview was embargoed until after Ford's death.
--Josh Marshall
Despite a civil war and mounting body counts on all sides, the National Review folks can still find good news coming out of Iraq. Too bad it's over a year old and of questionable provenance.
--Justin Rood
Yet more examples from our search for Bush administration 'disappeared' government info.
--Josh Marshall
More evidence that glitz DC lobby shop Dutko was tied to those pre-election robo-calls.
--Josh Marshall
It's interesting to see how much contrary opinion Gerald Ford kicks up even more than thirty years after the events that will forever define him in American history -- the denouement of the Watergate scandal and his presidency which was inevitably defined by it. In noting his historically low approval ratings in the post below I had actually meant primarily to point out that this seems like a harsh measure for his presidency -- since he was coming off a low-point in public trust in the presidency and didn't serve long enough to rebound in public estimation. One TPM Reader wrote in demanding that I take the post down because it was inappropriate to discuss these statistics on the day after Ford's passing. I definitely don't agree with that, especially when I was interpreting them in the way I was. Quite a few more, however, wrote in to say that there's nothing unfair about this measure in the least since Ford's presidency itself, in their view, was born in the corrupt bargain he struck with President Nixon over his subsequent pardon.
For my part, I can't help but see Ford in a basically positive light and think he did the country an important service in balancing the ship of state after the trauma and shame of the Nixon years. But I'm curious how much that view is tied to my not having lived (or lived with sufficient awareness -- I was 5 and 6) through the period. Thoughts?
--Josh Marshall
Gallup has put out a blurb noting that Gerald Ford was apparently one of the least popular presidents of the post-WW2 era, coming in with an average of 47.2%. A quick run-down at the Gallup site tells the basic story. He comes in in the low 70s. That ends quickly a month later when he pardons Richard Nixon. That brings him down to 50%. And he goes down hill from there, punctuated by bad news out of Southeast Asia. Given that he was picking up the pieces of the Nixon presidency, it seems like a bit of an unfair measure. But there it is.
--Josh Marshall
The Pentagon's dropping big bucks to build a courthouse at Gitmo -- to try 80 prisoners. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
Uhhhh-boy ... Dennis Prager, take two ...
If you want to predict on which side an American will line up in the Culture War wracking America, virtually all you have to do is get an answer to this question: Does the person believe in the divinity and authority of the Five Books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible, known as the Torah? ("Divinity" does not necessarily mean "literalism.")I do not ask this about "the Bible" as a whole because the one book that is regarded as having divine authority by believing Jews, Catholics, Protestants and Mormons, among others, is not the entire Bible, but the Torah. Religious Jews do not believe in the New Testament and generally confine divine revelation even within the Old Testament to the Torah and to verses where God is cited by the prophets, for example. But "Bible-believing" Christians and Jews do believe in the divinity of the Torah.
And they line up together on virtually every major social/moral issue.
And then the kicker: "This divide explains why the wrath of the Left has fallen on those of us who lament the exclusion of the Bible at a ceremonial swearing-in of an American congressman. The Left wants to see that book dethroned. And that, in a nutshell, is what the present civil war is about."
Sometimes you have a hate-hawker like Prager's become and they step in it and he just can't let go. Just has to keep looking for someone to blame. Keep diggin'...
--Josh Marshall
Carroll (Iowa) Daily Times Herald reporter explains why Obama could win the Iowa caucuses.
--Josh Marshall
Hmmm. From TPM Reader RP ...
Last we heard was just before the elections, now comes this news, out of the blue that Saddam has to be sentenced within the next 30 days. Would it not then put it right before the state of the union address so that the Commander-in-chief and after all the surge in negative discussion from the announcement about a surge in troops. Is the surge even to stem the violence backlash from the sentencing. I am not wiling to overlook any conspiracy theory by this corrupt bunch.
--Josh Marshall
Which presidential wannabes are announcing when and where? Here's our quick guide.
--Josh Marshall
November 2004 to November 2006 represented a remarkable turnabout for President Bush and the Republican party. Was there one key event responsible more than any other for the reversal of fortune: Katrina, Iraq, Social Security, Abramoff? What was the tipping point? We're discussing this now at TPMCafe.
--Josh Marshall
Politically-connected corporations fleeced taxpayers for hundreds of millions of dollars on fraudulent Katrina cleanup contracts. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
An internal Japanese government document shows that Japan has recently looked into the possibility of developing a nuclear warhead, according to a Japanese media report, presumably in response to North Korea's recent nuclear test.
Update: TPM Reader MC correctly points out that the date of the government report is September 20, prior to the North Korean's nuclear test, but following this summer's missile test.
--David Kurtz
The LA Times has its latest installment on the goings-on involving developer-cum-congressman Gary Miller (R-CA).
--David Kurtz
You may have seen the reports that British officials are on high alert for a possible terrorist attack on the Chunnel during the Christmas holiday. A tempting target, I'm sure, and more power to the Brits if they have obtained good intelligence and are taking action to thwart an attack. But this passage from The Guardian jumped out as an ominous sign that at least some among our friends across the pond have lost all perspective on the terrorism threat, in much the same way as we have here:
Last week Sir Ian Blair, the head of the Metropolitan Police, described 'the threat of another terrorist attempt' as 'ever present' adding that 'Christmas is a period when that might happen'.'It is a far graver threat in terms of civilians than either the Cold War or the Second World War,' he said. 'It's a much graver threat than that posed by Irish Republican terrorism.'
Is he serious? A greater threat to civilians lives than world war or nuclear annihilation? What happened to the stiff upper lip?
--David Kurtz
TPM reader EH:
In all of this talk of increasing troop levels to accomplish some kind of success or unstated goal, I'm reminded of a software engineering principle called Brooks' Law: "Adding manpower to a late project makes it later." This meshes nicely with analysis of the escalation being designed to carry the war into the '08 election cycle, but I think the administration is cynical enough to push the surge just for this reason, especially since the reasons and goals of the surge have remained nebulous throughout the past weeks. Nobody knows what the goals are anymore, and nobody's asking.
--David Kurtz
One Goode Republican?
George Stephanopoulos asked Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) about Virgil Goode this morning. And the senator from South Carolina did not disappoint ...
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me turn to a domestic issue, Senator Graham. A Republican congressman from Virginia this week, Virgil Goode of Virginia, raised a lot of controversy with a letter he wrote in response to the idea that the newly elected Democrat from Minnesota, Keith Ellison, the first Muslim in Congress, was going to take the oath, the ceremonial oath, on the Koran.He wrote to his constituents saying -- "If American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran."
Now, Democrats have risen up and said that Republicans ought to denounce Congressman Goode. Do you find anything wrong with what he said, and will you denounce him?
GRAHAM: I don't think that's the appropriate line for a congressman to take when it comes time for another congressman to take the oath. Why would you swear allegiance to a document outside your faith? In our legal system, people can take the oath in a variety of ways.
Religious diversity is a strength, not a weakness in this country.
We need immigration reform, but not for the reasons that Mr. Goode cited. What would happen in this country if a Christian were elected in Lebanon and he had to swear allegiance to the Koran when it came time for them to take office? There would be an outcry in this country.
So I embrace religious diversity. I welcome this new member of Congress. I'm glad he's swearing allegiance to a document that is consistent with his faith.
And what I would like America to do in 2007 is understand that the war on terror is about intolerance, that Syria is a dictatorship that has no interest in seeing a representative democracy in Iraq, that Iran, the president of Iran hosted a conference denying the Holocaust in December 2006, has avowed to destroy the state of Israel. We don't need to be talking to these people. We need to be standing up to their agendas and bringing them in line with the world, a world of tolerance. And Iran and Syria are not tolerant states, and the statements by Virgil Goode do not represent the best of who we are as a nation.
--Josh Marshall
Last week we tried to nail down members of the Republican leadership in Congress on where they stand on the President's soon-to-be-proposed "surge." The response? Mostly silence.
But in an interview published today, one veteran Republican congressman says he is "highly skeptical" that a surge will have any real effect on the ground. Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN), who won re-election after a hard-fought campaign, was surprisingly candid in an interview with the Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette:
In my opinion, it’s been a civil war. But the question of a civil war is: Is there a functioning central government that can win a civil war? … What’s not clear to me is if this government can ever be stable and that the civil war has gone from skirmishing and marginal fighting at the terrorist level and some Shiite militias to the dominant pattern. There’s no number of troops we can put on the ground to basically battle inside of a large-scale civil war without a functioning central government.If we see that it’s developed that way, do we stay to 2008 or do we get out in 2007? At what point do you say we’ve gone across the line where there’s not a hope of stability or at least that it appears to be small?
. . .
I think it’s intriguing that the president is looking at trying to put more troops on the ground like Sen. McCain has suggested all the way along. But my impression – and I haven’t been there since spring – is that we’ve passed that point. Even doubling the number of troops on the ground won’t do it. Instead of just having potentially a few thousand people that you’re trying to stabilize who are picking at random where to hit, or even 20,000, basically at this point the whole country’s engaged. Which means an increase in troop power isn’t going to stabilize it.
. . .
It’s the beginning of the end. The question now is how fast.
. . .
What is it going to look like if we all of a sudden immediately pulled out, pulled out in six months, 12 months or 18 months? Now we’re back to what’s in the interest of the United States and our world security picture, not trying to establish a government in Iraq. … I don’t have any confidence they have a plan. So maybe our troops have to stay there till ’08 till we get a plan of what’s a withdrawal look like. So I don’t know the answer to your question, but I know what variables I’m looking for.
If they can make a compelling case that more troops on the ground would give us a chance, I’m willing to listen. But I’m highly skeptical.
. . .
In my opinion the American people have already closed the book on “are we willing to wait until they have established a free and democratic government that’s safe and secure in Iraq?” The answer is no – unless they can do it awful fast.
Souder may be something of an outlier. He was one of the few GOP members whom I recall coming out publicly for pulling troops back even before the election. But overall he is a reliable conservative from a reliably conservative state. If the President loses the Mark Souders, he's in big trouble on the Hill.
On one level, it's hard to imagine the GOP minority not coming around to support the President's surge. At the same time, these same folks just endured a withering political climate first-hand; saw some of their longtime colleagues defeated; won re-election in some cases by much narrower margins and after spending much more money than in the past; and by and large got an unpleasant earful from voters back home. They face election campaigns in two short years. The President doesn't.
Even if the GOP presents a united front in support of the surge, as I expect it will, you can bet that just below the surface will be much skepticism and caution. With Souder's remarks, the cracks in that facade are already showing.
--David Kurtz
I feel it my bounden duty this Christmas Eve morning to put up a post--any post--just so that you don't start your holiday morning with the post Josh ended with last night. It's quite a shock, especially before your first cup of coffee. So either go and get your coffee before following Josh's link, or perhaps instead you would like to read about the latest New Hampshire presidential polling. I just don't want your day to start like mine did.
--David Kurtz
Celine Dion covering AC/DC's You Shook Me All Night Long. Frightening. Don't make me say anymore.
--Josh Marshall
