73 thoughts on “Kerry v. Bush Part 2: The War In Iraq and Against Islamist Terror”

1. Er, we are already using hit squads. What do you think is going on in Pakistan? What do you think happened in Yemen? What do you think the loyalist paramilitary militias in Iraq are?

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2. A.L., One of my biggest problems with the “Kerry plan” is his persistant attachment to UN involvement– he doesn’t get it at all. Since the end of the Cold War the prime directive of the UN has evolved from brokering peace between member nations to restraining the unipolar power of the US. At Belmont Club, Wretchard “discusses”:http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/10/some-are-more-equal-than-others-joshua.html the inability to to come up with a definition of terrorism in the UN, because, IMHO, the definition of terrorism must also conform to the prime directive.

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3. And, praktike is right. We’ve been getting around the “no assisnations” directive for years.

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4. Yes, I don’t doubt that we do assasinations – but they are not the core of our foreign policy. Can you see how a foreign policy based on them might be different?

   A.L.

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5. A.L., is right. For comparison, look at the public assasinations of Hamas leaders by Israel. Whether you approve or disapprove, it’s a different policy than we have been following.

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6. Well, this is timely.

   In any case, AL, I suggest you do some more reading about what, exactly, is going on before you make a final decision. Because if you don’t know the facts, you can’t make an informed choice.

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7. prkatike – that’s old news; While I’d very much like to see OBL dead or captured, I’m insistent that he be rendered ineffective – which to a large degree he has been. And one key difference I have with the LEO model of counterterror is that the ‘named players’ don’t constitute the whole team. Without OBL, do you think AQ will go away? I don’t – I think it’s a movement. I think it’s a movement that can be rendered relatively ineffective by depriving it of money, state support, and resources – but to defeat the movement is a political, not a military task.

   We won’t get to do that until the movement is shown to be militarily ineffective.

   A.L.

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8. the ‘named players’ don’t constitute the whole team.

   Well, let’s take a look at what the article says.

   It says:
   “Where we’re focusing is on the manhunt,” he said. “That’s still job number one, to break down and capture and kill . . . the inner core of Osama and his very, very closest advisers.” […]\

   Whatever its results, the manhunt remains at the center of Bush’s war. He mentions little else, save the Taliban’s expulsion from power, when describing progress against al Qaeda. According to people who have briefed him, Bush still marks changes by hand on a copy of the HVT list.

   So who’s strategy are you objecting to?

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9. praktike – you’re right, I was careless in writing that.

   I think that capturing or killing the top 2 or 3 is less imprtant than rolling up the middle management, and thereby rendering the top 2 or 3 ineffective.

   Make any more sense?

   A.L.

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10. er, “whose”

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11. Make any more sense?

    Not really.

    Well, the question is: who is more indispensible?

    Mr. Darling and I have agreed that KSM was pretty much the cock o’the walk, and it’s unlikely that we’ll see anyone with his ability again. But Zawahiri is very, very important. He’s the logistics man, the terrorism expert, and he’s also a top-notch ideologist. Bin Laden has a great deal of strategic acumen and the kind of charisma that brings recruits, but he also has a rolodex of supporters in the Gulf.

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12. Btw, aren’t you going to put out your shingle?

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13. I don’t think we need constructive negotiation and consensus right now. That time will come, but history’s stage is not yet set for it.

    See, the way I look at things is that Bush was presented with a beautifully set stage to do just that after 9/11 but blew it entirely in Iraq, because of his administrations obsession with Saddam.

    So now all you seem to be saying is that we don’t need consensus any more.

    But even more that that, you will have to argue that the degradation of international consensus that he has wrought will not present an impediment to fighting global terror in the future, and I just don’t see how anyone can make that case.

    So let’s recount what we’ve learned so far.

    To support Bush, you need to believe that:

    1) America can and should go it alone in the fight against terrorism.

    2) OBL is no longer a threat to America (in comments to Praktike).

    3) Things in Iraq are not as bad as you see on TV, and will not get any worse, and that hope is the pre-eminent force for positive change there.

    4) Bush’s actions in Iraq have not significantly increased hatred of America in the Muslim world, and that this has not helped to fertilize rather than choke off terrorism.

    5) The military will not support a Kerry presidency.

    I find #5 especially troubling, infuriating actually, and cannot fathom why any reasonable person would make such a claim in this era.

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14. First, we are already making people disappear, and worse, so your fear about “un-American” principles in the conduct of this war is a bit laughable.

    I’ve not no prob myself with taking down known terrorists outside the US by covert means, but I do have a problem with an adminsitration which says it can indefinitely imprison an American citizen in the US without a hearing or legal counsel, just ’cause they say so.

    Second, you have completely bought into the right-wing idea, which you and I are both old enough to remember has its origins in John Birch Society-style paranoia, that the UN is only its occasional institutional corruption and the more foolish votes and pronouncements of the General Assembly. This idea is an article of faith among the Bush base (cult).

    How can you forget that there was a brief period of time in which the UN was US? It was called the “New World Order.”

    Why ignore the reality of substantial US control over the UN agenda during the period 1989-2000 and concentrate on the irrelevant facts of who sits on the UN Human Rights Commmission or what impotent resolution is passed by the General Assembly?

    Somalia was the first operational example, before we left that country: The Secretary General’s special representative (Jonathan Howe) was a retired US Navy admiral, the miltary forces and operations were US led. We were calling the shots at every level.

    I saw the New World Order at work when I was in Albania in 1999 during a recall to active duty in support of the Kosovo campaign. We worked hand-in-glove with UN agencies. Guess what? They do some good work.

    Why not apply your “70% solution” logic to the UN?

    Plus, if Kerry gets elected, he won’t oppose the election of “Bill Clinton as Secretary General”:http://interestalert.com/brand/siteia.shtml?Story=st/sn/10210010aaa038a4.upi&Sys=siteia&Fid=LATEBRKN&Type=News&Filter=Late%20Breaking on purely partisan grounds.

    Clinton as UN Secretary General and Kerry as president could be a world leadership team which could dynamically fuse US “soft” and “hard” power and lead to an expansion of democratic ideals far beyond what Bush’s bumbling, insulting approaches could ever do.

    As far as the “morale” of military personnel goes, I can say as someone who is close to military members that there will be many sighs of relief if Kerry is elected. Only apocrypha, but telling examples of graffiti at Baghdad airport porta-potties in June 04: “1st Armored, 13 months in Iraq and counting – Thanks Bush;” “No sacrifice too great – THIS MEANS YOU.”

    Use your common sense. How long do you think that troops are going to endure one year rotations into the lands of roadside bombs, mortars and ambushes, with less than one year downtime? My son’s unit is scheduled to go back to Iraq in July 2005, just one year after returning from 15 months there.

    The Army, Marines and their reserves have been stretched beyond their limit, but Rumsfeld fought the expansion of the Army “_up until January 2004._”:http://quickstart.clari.net/voa/art/gc/888D896F-A142-43D4-826635C7FFF99BB4.html How effin stupid can you get?

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15. Another distinction – our activities in Pakistan and in Yemen (I’ll leave aside Iraq as a bit of a special case) are pursued with the cooperation of the governments there.

    A “hit squad” anti-terrorism approach is, pretty much by definition, not with the cooperation of the governments involved.

    Useful distinction? Heck yes. Cooperation with governments, even if it’s grudging, is going to be more effective in the long run than high-profile assassinations. For one, it helps turn the conflict from an Islam Vs. US one into a Radical Wahhabi Islam Vs. Anybody Who Won’t Let Them Run The World one, which is an important strategic goal.

    On top of that, there’s a lot a government can do in the way of concealing terrorist operations in their territory. A “hit squad” approach that didn’t give governments a good reason not to play on the other side, as it were, would just encourage certain states to do their damnedest to frustrate our efforts. That’s bad – pushing terrorist organizations and the governments of Islamic nations closer together couldn’t possibly have a beneficial result, unless your end objective is to come up with a pretext to invade country after country after country until they run out of territory. So, ironically, that tactic would actually be much more beneficial in the long run to a warmonger than to a government that didn’t want to be forced into waging war to achieve its objectives…

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16. From the New Republic’s endorsement of John Kerry:

    Kerry’s apparent willingness to act within states is particularly important because the U.N.’s obsession with sovereignty renders it impotent in such circumstances. His support for the Kosovo war, waged without U.N. approval, is encouraging in this regard, as is his openness to using U.S. troops–presumably without the Security Council’s blessing–in Darfur, Sudan.

    Here is what John Kerry said about the United Nations and Kosovo:

    Frank Sesno: Senator Kerry, it begs the question, what are the U.S. interests and the strategic interests in this place called the Balkans?

    Kerry: Well, they are less than our interests in perhaps Haiti. They are greater than our interests in Somalia.

    Sesno: But worth dying for? That’s the question, are they worth fighting and dying for?

    Kerry: Well, it depends what you mean by that, Frank. If you mean dying in the course of the United Nations effort, yeah, it’s worth that. If you mean dying American troops unilaterally going in with some false presumption that we can affect the outcome the answer is unequivocally no. So I think it’s a question of where you place the interest.

    Source:
    CNN on Late Edition, April 17th of 1994

    Rather curious that the New Republic would praise Kerry for support of the Kosovo war without UN approval when Kerry was on the record as saying that it was only worth American lives if done in the course of a UN effort.

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17. Well, VT, let’s go through your claims.

    1) America can and should go it alone in the fight against terrorism.

    We aren’t today – which is supposedly the nadir of our ability to gain assistance. We have a choice of accepting aid from other parties – with the conditions attached – or not. One possible outcome is that the other parties may, over time change their conditions to align more with our desires. Another is that we will change our desires to align more with their conditions. In the meantime, there’s work to do, and we should do it.

    2) OBL is no longer a threat to America (in comments to Praktike).

    Not even close. What I said was “I’m insistent that he be rendered ineffective – which to a large degree he has been.” I do believe that OBL is personally, and his organization, AQ, is less of a threat to the US than they were six months ago, and in turn were less of a threat six months ago than they were a year ago.

    3) Things in Iraq are not as bad as you see on TV, and will not get any worse, and that hope is the pre-eminent force for positive change there.

    In fact hope – among the Iraqi people – is the most powerful tool we have working on our behalf. Eroding that hope raises the bar substantially. But what you’re trying (sarcastically) to say is that hope by us is the pre-eminent force, and I’ll disagree. Determination and hard work are the pre-eminent requirements on our side.

    4) Bush’s actions in Iraq have not significantly increased hatred of America in the Muslim world, and that this has not helped to fertilize rather than choke off terrorism.

    Right. They loved us madly up until 2003, and then, shockingly, suddenly turned bitter and angry. Surprise, VT: the hatred was there. I don’t doubt that it’s more visible today. But I’m equally sure that the German people hated American more visibly in 1943 than they did in 1941. We dealt with it then, and we’ll deal with this now.

    5) The military will not support a Kerry presidency.

    No, that’s not what I said. I said:

    bq:Our military is professional, and honorable, and I believe they will serve whoever we elect in November ably. But I also believe that the doubt raised by Kerry’s history and his unfortunate tone in criticizing the war will make it very difficult for the military to maintain morale in the face of sustained engagement; which in turn will be another arhument for cutting short the engagement and ‘returning to normalcy’.

    Let’s argue about what I actually say, OK?

    A.L.

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18. Well, AL, my opinion is that it is only through rose colored glasses that you are viewing Bush as “determined”, and the process of how the war and the occupation as actually waged as 70% successful.

    I’ll allow people much smarter than me to speak in their own voice.

    “Daniel Drezner on the Bush Mongolian cluster-f**ks”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001688.html

    You’ve already heard from fling on this site.

    What Bush didn’t have the determination to do:

    1. Hunt down Zarqawi when they had a chance.
    2. Turned down an opportunity to work with Iran to eliminate Al Queda in late 2001.
    3. Remove troops to the Iraq conflict, that could have continued to round up Al Queda members in Afghanistan.
    4. Put a tax cut in front of funding the war.
    5. Used the “War on Terror” as a political cudgel at every opportunity.

    So no, I don’t believe in Bush’s determination. Between political opportunism, and necessary sacrifice/negotiation, Bush as chosen political opportunism almost every time.

    Also, even if you believe in Bush’s determinism, is it far more important that “Bush can actually shoot straight and hit the target.”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/opinion/21friedman.html?oref=login&oref=login&hp

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19. Can we drop the WWII/traitor MSM bit?

    As you pointed out earlier, Al Qeada and OBL are “[not]likely to succeed; the real power of these forces is extremely limited.” Now if the threat they posed was more immediate and lethal (as in the threat Hitler posed) then we have every right to expect the media to focus more on the “70% solution.”

    You seem to implicitly suggest this much when you state that another large wave of terror attacks would necessitate a “reaction […] likely to be hard to distinguish from genocide” (i.e. the morally tenuous Glenn Reynolds justification). Yet how would the United States conduct such a large scale war with an unwilling media?

    Moving on, I’d like to ask you what exactly was “unfortunate” about Kerry’s response to Vietnam? Do you believe the threat the NVA posed necessitated a “reaction” that was “hard to distinguish from genocide?” How exactly would you describe the US policy of using “free-fire zones” or even Op. Rolling Thunder, then? What level of reaction against an unjust war is justifiable to you, A.L.?

    The problem with those who are the loudest in critizing John Kerry is that they attempt to obscure themselves (the men) from the mission. To denounce and unjust war is not the same as denouncing the soldiers who fought in it. I’m not claiming soldiers were never spat on, nor that VVAW didn’t provide fodder for the radicals or NVA. Yet, if what the men at Winter or the Congressional Hearings said is true, and from what I’ve heard (personally) and read it is, then the greater moral imperative is to put an end to such actions.

    From what I’ve seen and read, John Kerry was always careful to focus his attention on our leaders and lawmakers, he never once blamed our soldiers for the injustices of war. This in itself was a very difficult and unwieldy position to take, but I believe it is a moral one, not to be so easily brushed aside by anyone who puts the word “liberal” in their monicker.

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20. One factual error in something from Mr. LeGrand you posted at the top, A.L., that “training accident” —

    “In WWII for example, 700 soldiers drowned in a training accident in preparation for D-Day (that is about how many combat deaths we’ve experienced so far in Iraq).”

    — was the April 1944 raid at “Slapton Sands”:http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq20-2.htm in which German E-boats attacked an invasion rehearsal. The 749 soldiers and sailors lost were lost by enemy action. Calling it an “accident” is technically correct — the Army hadn’t planned on battle in Lyme Bay that night — but using that word here is a little misleading.

    Worth mentioning in this context because committing people to a theater of operations does mean losses beyond those caused by the enemy — to road and air transport accident, to heat or cold injuries, to local diseases, snakebite, and all the other hazards incidental to an operation that big.

    Something that no President should take on lightly.

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21. Now as to some of A.L.’s talking points, one particularly troubling one is this: “One reason I’ve rejected the ‘law enforcement’ model of fighting terrorism is that, simply, to engage and combat terrorists abroad means that you will be conducting military actions in other countries. Many of those other countries won’t support those actions.”

    I’ve never got a satisfactory answer from the Bush supporters on this one — why does our conduct of the war on terrorism have to be in one single mode — military only? And that mode having to be an all-out invasion or nothing? That seems to be the underlying assumption here.

    If we are dealing with international and supra-national terror organizations, it would seem that _all_ methods of opposition should in be in play. Police intelligence and financial intelligence would be very useful weapons against AQ-type organizations (e.g., KSM wasn’t captured by a Marine Expeditionary Force). We have fine special operations forces and tying them down in a conventional theater of war seems wasteful — certainly the Brits have ample experience in SOF and anti-terror police operations that suggest that there’s plenty more anti-terror options than the narrow approach A.L. seems to address. Why only one paradigm?

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22. More to the point: a war on terrorism should mean every method of offense and defense we can deploy. The Administration isn’t spending nearly enough on the Coast Guard and US Customs — if a nuke ever gets caught being smuggled in, it’ll be one or both of these agencies who’d find it — and the TSA’s security measures so far are incoherent. All of this suggests a narrowness in how we take on a subtle and world-wide enemy.

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23. Bob –

    I agree that we need to proceed on all fronts, and that GWB has been weaker that I’d like on menaingful (as opposed to theatrical) internal security.

    But in priority, I think that it’ll be realistically impossible to have absolute security; you can’t seal your house well enough to keep the ants out.So I think that GWB is correct in putting the emphasis on taking the fight to them.

    A.L.

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24. Damn – premature ‘send’.

    I also would be willing to bet that a substantial amount is going on in the non-military in Iraq and Afghanistan world; control of money laundering, etc. etc.

    From what I see in the news, it sure doesn’t look like Iraq and Afghanistan are the only things we’re doing.

    There’s a legitimate and constructive argument to have about the balance between these things – and I think we’re having it.

    A.L.

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25. Then there’s A.L.’s worries about the Presidency and the military — “…the issue of Sen. Kerry’s relationship with the military. It isn’t good … will make it very difficult for the military to maintain morale … I’m supporting Bush today because I believe that Kerry is fundamentally a legislator; that in his personal experience, victory is a matter of negotiation and working toward consensus.”

    Well, let’s see, Lincoln was fundamentally a negotiator, and victory through negotiating with prickly allies was a talent both FDR and Eisenhower had in plenty, especially when talking them into doing their share of the fighting and bleeding. And Harry Truman didn’t seem to worry about whether the military liked him.

    Morale? If it’s going bad, isn’t that the job of the chain of command? Or more to the point, doesn’t that reflect on them to some extent? The mutiny in the 343rd QM Co wasn’t because they were afraid that Kerry was going to be President, but grievances over mission and equipment.

    And I might mention that Donald Rumsfeld has been making a lot of enemies in the Pentagon, high-handed decision making and tampering with force configuration and deployment. His tampering with the Iraq invasion deployment order (TPFDL) caused considerable confusion and bad karma.

    The military is professional and will manage — will obey — and A.L. is right about that. And they’ll manage no matter who’s president. The question here is which President will mis-use them the least.

    PS. This Administration apparently privatized much of the logistics of the war — soldiers’ meals, fuel supply — to a contractor who is now $160-200M behind in payments to subcontractors and being investigated by the Pentagon, just Google KBR/Kellogg Brown & Root and look up “this example”:http://democrats.reform.house.gov/Documents/20040623112534-43140.pdf or “this”:http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/special/iraq/2383718. This is no way to run a war, and nothing you can pin on John Kerry.

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26. A.L., point reasonable enough, but the question is _where_ do you take the fight? And for what strategic reasons? If this war is truly about going after AQ then that was an argument for an Iraqi invasion to wait till we’d cleaned out eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, or, for that matter, Saudi Arabia. If AQ and its progeny are the objective.

    If Saddam was the problem, it would’ve been cheaper to pay his henchmen to remove him. If WMDs are the threat then bribery, special forces, espionage or (fill in the blank) are easier than sending in a MEF or two into Iraq. And Iran seems to be moving ahead with theirs, not cowed at all. And Pakistan seems to be very free with sharing WMD and ballistic missile expertise, and are we reining them in?

    And if W. had this much trouble with Iraq, how on earth does he expect to govern Iran, if there’s anything to the invade-Iran talk I’m hearing from neocon websites?

    I’ve had enough Command & General Staff training to wonder at the Administration’s strategy. Not just the words but the actions seem to have no coherence. That’s a war-loser if that’s what’s happening. And not just in Iraq. I seriously wonder if Bush is confusing strategy with talking points. Yes, I realize that “this will not stand,” in 1990, was a suitable national strategy objective if it meant freeing Kuwait. But George W. Bush seems to be no George H. W. Bush. Enough!

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27. http://iraqiholocaust.blogspot.com

    Notice how the left always nitpik at trivia ?

    They point at some small detail, usually a
    selective quote that had to be fished out
    of a thousand responses that said the opposite
    ( parade of exception, painting a fake reality
    by searching out the rare and unrepresentative
    so that it fits their leftist worldview)

    I do not trust leftist rags, they defend the
    indefensable and they cheery pick to fit
    an agenda.

    I state directly that the leftist media is
    dishonest, both intelectually and factually.

    The are Walter Durranties

    Walter Durranty got a pulitzer prize for helping
    Stalin cover up his mass murder of 10+ Million
    people,

    And leftist rags never show outrage when a
    democrat goes to cuba and sips drinks served
    by leftist slaves of that island gulag where
    most disidents are sent for lobodomy and secret
    burial after any hint of a image problem is
    ruled out.

    The leftist media never focus on the crimes
    against humanity by the left, and they only
    begrudingly slow down aid and confort to leftist
    terror states of holocaust after the crimes
    become generaly more known.

    The leftist media are objectivly distorting
    what is happening in iraq to help Kerry.

    Its a double standard in morals.

    Clintion raped Wannita, but since he was
    a democrat, rape was just fine.

    The war with Kosovo that was no threat
    real or imagined to us and no UN support
    and it was Ok cause he was a democrat.

    The serbs btw, was fighting the same terrorists,
    applicants to afgan training camps gave as
    credit for acceptance brags of service in
    kosovo killing serbs.

    Clinton bombed the wrong side in kosovo,
    if he really had to bomb someone..

    Where are the mass graves in kosovo ?
    its already been shown that the media
    photograph showing the “death camp”
    was manufactured, a fake, a fraud.

    Then those we helped in kosovo went
    to afganistan bragging about how many
    serbs they beheaded.

    Its true … but you dont see it in the
    leftist fake news media.

    Clinton put Hazel o Leary in charge of the
    DOE, as if you could not find anyone better
    than a self declaired communist that still
    sings the Praises of Kim Jong Il and others
    guilty of leftist Mega-Mass-Murder

    Its as if Clinton went out of his way to
    find the most dysfunctional freaks.

    One of the results was the arming of China
    with advanced nukes and missle tech to
    deliver them, and we are not even getting
    started.

    Things such as these a conservative, if indeed
    you could be one and have done similar, the
    leftist media would run it front page
    for 1000 years.

    But, since it was a democrat.

    CBS didnt fake the memos, but we now know
    that all the people they consulted except
    one told of problems with them, and that
    one person that didnt at the time had to
    qualify how he could support what are not
    only frauds .. but such bad fakes that
    they belong in the show about dumb criminals
    they could only have been worse if done in
    crayon.

    CBS did interviews and all of them who was
    close including the family was ignored.

    The media refuse to interview those that vouch
    for the Bush TANG record if they support bush.

    They dont want anything that does not trash
    the president.

    On fox we had some interviews by those that
    the leftist media refused because they damaged
    and refurted tha fake fraud slander objective
    to get Bush and statements of the actual
    people who served with him available on
    the net

    The true story was available from the people
    involved but the leftist lie was the objective

    The leftist media has no credibilty, its not
    that i cant trust them not to twist and
    distort, i now know for a fact that they
    are actively deliberatly, and with malace
    twisting and distorting everything to
    undermine the war effort and trash the
    president

    The did the same thing during Vietnam

    The media had embedded reporters with our
    troops there, they deliberatly painted a war
    where we never lost a single battle as failures
    they knew full well from their own people
    that our troops was not war criminals.

    They could have, if they had not been america
    hating leftist, told the truth when Kerry began
    to slander our troops and placed our POWs
    in more danger and further undermined
    the country so that their beloved communists
    could gain the final victory.

    But they assisted Kerry and parroted the
    fake news of doom and gloom.

    And today they are doing the same thing
    they did then and kerry is doing almost
    the same thing.

    Its now possible via reports from the people
    of iraq directly to know that the overwelming
    majority are happy we are there happy to be
    rid of saddam and that their greatest fear
    are that the leftist agitprops will succeed
    again what they did to Veitnam.

    fall to the leftist iron boot and suffer a
    immediate holocaust of some two million and
    millions more lucky to survive the Vietnamese
    version of the gulag death camp. after the
    marxocrats in congress cut support because
    they WANTED their beloved butchers to win.

    Kerry called Mihn “George Washington” remeber?

    Even today, Joe McCarthy, vindicated by history
    by the vernona transcripts, and now almost
    eveyone is forced to agree that the USSR that
    murdered 61 Million of their own people was
    an example of evil, measured in bodies far
    more evil than Hitler could ever accomplish

    To have soviet spies in the govt from the
    greatest state of mass murder of all time
    is objectivly a reason for concern.

    And yet, the left, all of the left, had
    and still havem Harsher words for Joe McCarthy
    who cost a few now known soviet spies their
    goverment jobs,

    than for Joe Stalin, who cost
    10s of millions their lives !

    What does this say about their value system ?

    What does this say about the validity of any
    assertion that these american leftist are any
    different from the bolshevic thug exterminators
    of innocent humanity in their beloved leftist
    utopia they spent 70 full years worshiping
    and pushing at us as an aexample of how
    America should be.

    Untill i see the left examine what is provably
    a direct cause and effect connection between
    socialism and holocaust i remain convinced
    they are the same creature

    All the double standards, to see them excuse
    in their own the indefensable whilst they
    pick at a free states inperfections.

    As long as they attempt to offer planks out
    of the leftist agenda that invented the purge
    the gulag and the progrom for those
    imperfections.

    As if we should listen for advice for problems
    with the most fair free and just Country ever
    to exist from those that have wrought the worst
    example of crimes against humanity the planet
    has ever seen.

    No thanks, the Mainstream media that pretend
    to be fair but still cant hide their marxist
    perversion of reality is bad enough.

    But to Offer anything from a known partisan rag?

    Heres a clue … the idea that any war will
    not be a clamity of problems and intense
    training on the value of the ability to adapt
    is absurd.

    The demand that war wont be damn scary and
    full of failures and mistakes that cost lives
    is unreasonable, no its worse that that.

    It says the person picking it apart is
    either an utter fool or a fraud.

    Perhaps we dont even need to go that far.

    Every Country Every Where, that had any
    thing to say about iraq said they had WMD’s

    Our troops wore chem gear going in do to
    that threat.

    Now we know that they was either distroyed
    making the honest person wonder why the
    inspectors was still having access problems
    even with our troops on the border, or
    they are still buried or maybe in syria.

    If somehow we can be certain they dont exist
    the only thing you could say is that the entire
    planet earth, was wrong.

    Being wrong isnt the same as a lie.

    But calling bush a Liar instaed of wrong..
    is a lie

    So who lied ? the left, the left also said
    or implied that WMDs was the only reason
    Bush gave, but that too is a lie…

    Bush also gave as a reason Saddams abuse of
    his people, among others.

    So the left lied again.

    Now the left are willing to undermine our
    troops by showcaseing the unavoidable littany
    of problems that is costing lives of our
    troops by giving the enemy hope that the
    left will succeed again, to do again what
    they did in Vietnam, the left are doing
    today, almost identically what they did
    30 years ago

    To add insult to injury, the fellow most
    famous for slandering our troops and the
    worthy cause of opposing the most evil.
    measured in mountainsize of murdered, the
    most evil idology ever to endanger humans
    is the very person that wants to be in
    charge of them.

    http://www.nop.org/pub/politics/BodyCount.Leftism.vs.war.gif

    To me this is an insult to thought itself.

    The man who had 30 years of good things to say
    about the idology that is stained by the
    summary exectution of more helpless innocents
    than many times the total battle dead of all
    wars, and offers as policy planks from the
    absolute most deadly holcaustic manifesto
    the earth has ever had to suffer wants
    to lead the free world.

    And with the help of the marxist media,
    and the “usefull idiots” as lenin called
    them, those that dont understand the dangers
    of what they have been foisting on America
    He might just make it.

    It sureal.

    Welp, Hitler got over 90% of the vote
    in a germany that was the most advanced
    and literate in all of europe, the last
    vote that gave him absolute power.

    Majorities can be wrong,

    And a people drowning in propaganda can
    often make bad choices.

    The wash post is a leftist propaganda
    outlet and its reporting is selective
    to the point of fishing for the rare
    and unrepsentative.

    Like CBS, the objective truth of reality is
    probably the opposite of the very theme
    and point of the article.

    If Clinton or another democrat was in power,
    the exact same facts on the ground would
    have them singing the songs of optimism
    and success.

    Just like Clinton could rape Wannita and
    its no biggie, whereas even a bad joke
    would get a repub tarred and feathered
    for 500 years and used as the figurehead
    to slander the rest as being the same.

    McCarthy has been proven correct, turning
    50 years of conventional wisdom about the
    man and the very real (61 Million Murdered
    in the USSR alone) Communist threat.

    You would think that would be news.

    If a finding like that benifited the left
    and their littany of now indefensable slander
    about the man you can bet it would be news.

    But we know why it isnt news, dont we.

    After all we have 50 years of the left snearing
    about things, like “red scare” (as if the
    butchery of 100+ Million should not be scary)
    and other such sneers at anyone who dared to
    speak of their egalitarian utopian killing
    fields less than approvingly.

    Raymond

    Reply

28. You’ve stated your priorities as defeating a war on Jihadism. As an African American I don’t disagree w/ you on this. How is the issue? You make it clear certain types of protection(hit squads) create unacceptable moral situations. How can you not see that Bush’s actions at home to throw away 200 years of work on the Constitution of insuring the peoples’ rights is an unacceptable moral position. I would argue that they have used the war to implement procedures and policies detrimental to the rights of American citizens and in favor of an oligarchy.They have hidden behind the cult of secrecy during wartime to insure this outcome.
    The fact that you recognize that the war has been prosecuted abysmally in the post army to army conflict alone should cause you to come to the conclusion Bush this is true.

    Second, to assume the problem has been the 30% what I’d do better scenario is correct doesn’t make the 70% right if the 70% is fundamentally flawed. The 70% includes to few troops, a stated desire to leave quickly, a group of exiles whom were never challenged(the CIA had this assessment correct) and never an explanation to the American people of what we were going into on the ground(think about why there are no-fly zones).

    Remember a liberal is someone who believes in capitalilsm but that society through both the government and non governmental adencies should take the edge off of the buyer beware, market makes all correct outcomes decisions. That you are a liberal who fundamentally got so scared you opted for a “Daddy” to protect you instead of thinking about what is really happening is something to protect yourself from not embrace.

    So please rethink your position on Bush. As a racial minority whose family has participated in the two great wars seeking relieve from racism at home I can never condone giving up any rights at home because the country has become scared of the enemy.

    Reply

29. A.L., one matter you don’t address is wartime leadership at home. One thing the Army impressed on me — via the then-current FM 100-5 (Operations) — was this riff on the principle of the objective: that if an operation will fail if the soldiers and planners don’t have a clear objective, that the American public must understand and commit to clear national strategy if they’re to commit blood and treasure to it. (This with Vietnam still clear in the Army’s mind: Washington never got the American public fully behind it).

    We had that consensus on Sept. 12. We don’t have that now. I have the creepy feeling that the GOP doesn’t _want_ the rest of us supporting the war against terrorism, that it’s their platform and no one else’s. As compared to Lincoln, in 1864, running for re-election on a Union Party ticket that included the War Democrat wing of the other party. Bush doesn’t have that and he squandered the 9/12 consensus in a way that Lincoln and FDR never did. George Bush may get his four more years but at this rate the US public won’t have the mind-set for a war that may go on for decades.

    That’s no way to lead a war. Among the four criteria you name, this is the primary reason I’m voting John Kerry. As a retired military officer, I see nothing but poor leadership and strategy as the war on terror proceeds. As someone who’s gay I see militant Islam as a clear enemy — and I want this war to succeed, not get squandered. And as an American citizen, I keep comparing this wartime President to the ones who preceded him, and W. looks poorly by comparison. John Kerry doesn’t look like a Lincoln, but he’s not George W. Bush either. We need a successful war on terrorism — not another Gallipoli. Gallipoli looks very near.

    Reply

30. Can you see how a foreign policy based on them might be different?

    Yes, A.L. If it was policy instead of workaround for extreme cases, it would be bad ju-ju.

    There are a lot of things we could do in theory, but shouldn’t do in practice.

    Reply

31. Since this is the thread to post facts and figures, relating to determination, and qualifications, I will add this – note: it’s long.

    100 Facts and 1 Opinion
    The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration
    by Judd Legum

    Click here to download, circulate and distribute a PDF version of this article.

    IRAQ

    1. The Bush Administration has spent more than $140 billion on a war of choice in Iraq.

    Source: American Progress

    2. The Bush Administration sent troops into battle without adequate body armor or armored Humvees.

    Sources: Fox News, The Boston Globe

    3. The Bush Administration ignored estimates from Gen. Eric Shinseki that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq.

    Source: PBS

    4. Vice President Cheney said Americans “will, in fact, be greeted as liberators” in Iraq.

    Source: The Washington Post

    5. During the Bush Administration’s war in Iraq, more than 1,000 US troops have lost their lives and more than 7,000 have been injured.

    Source: globalsecurity.org

    6. In May 2003, President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit, stood under a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” and triumphantly announced that major combat operations were over in Iraq. Asked if he had any regrets about the stunt, Bush said he would do it all over again.

    Source: Yahoo News

    7. Vice President Cheney said that Iraq was “the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11.” The bipartisan 9/11 Commission found that Iraq had no involvement in the 9/11 attacks and no collaborative operational relationship with Al Qaeda.

    Source: MSNBC , 9-11 Commission

    8. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said that high-strength aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq were “only really suited for nuclear weapons programs,” warning “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” The government’s top nuclear scientists had told the Administration the tubes were “too narrow, too heavy, too long” to be of use in developing nuclear weapons and could be used for other purposes.

    Source: New York Times

    9. The Bush Administration has spent just $1.1 billion of the $18.4 billion Congress approved for Iraqi reconstruction.

    Source: USA Today

    10. According to the Administration’s handpicked weapon’s inspector, Charles Duelfer, there is “no evidence that Hussein had passed illicit weapons material to al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, or had any intent to do so.” After the release of the report, Bush continued to insist, “There was a risk–a real risk–that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons, or materials, or information to terrorist networks.”

    Sources: New York Times, White House news release

    11. According to Duelfer, the UN inspections regime put an “economic strangle hold” on Hussein that prevented him from developing a WMD program for more than twelve years.

    Source: Los Angeles Times

    TERRORISM

    12. After receiving a memo from the CIA in August 2001 titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack America,” President Bush continued his monthlong vacation.

    Source: CNN.com

    13. The Bush Administration failed to commit enough troops to capture Osama bin Laden when US forces had him cornered in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in November 2001. Instead, they relied on local warlords.

    Source: csmonitor.com

    14. The Bush Administration secured less nuclear material from sites around the world vulnerable to terrorists in the two years after 9/11 than were secured in the two years before 9/11.

    Source: nti.org

    15. The Bush Administration underfunded Nunn-Lugar–the program intended to keep the former Soviet Union’s nuclear legacy out of the hands of terrorists and rogue states–by $45.5 million.

    Source: armscontrol.org

    16. The Bush Administration has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden’s and Saddam Hussein’s money.

    Source: sfgate.com

    17. According to Congressional Research Service data, the Bush Administration has underfunded security at the nation’s ports by more than $1 billion for fiscal year 2005.

    Source: American Progress

    18. The Bush Administration did not devote the resources necessary to prevent a resurgence in the production of poppies, the raw material used to create heroin, in Afghanistan–creating a potent new source of financing for terrorists.

    Source: Pakistan Tribune

    19. Vice President Cheney told voters that unless they elect George Bush in November, “we’ll get hit again” by terrorists.

    Source: Washington Post

    20. Even though an Al Qaeda training manual suggests terrorists come to the United States and buy assault weapons, the Bush Administration did nothing to prevent the expiration of the ban.

    Source: sfgate.com

    21. Despite repeated calls for reinforcements, there are fewer experienced CIA agents assigned to the unit dealing with Osama bin Laden now than there were before 9/11.

    Source: New York Times

    22. Before 9/11, John Ashcroft proposed slashing counterterrorism funding by 23 percent.

    Source: americanprogress.org

    23. Between January 20, 2001, and September 10, 2001, the Bush Administration publicly mentioned Al Qaeda one time.

    Source: commondreams.org

    24. The Bush Administration granted the 9/11 Commission $3 million to investigate the September 11 attacks and $50 million to the commission that investigated the Columbia space shuttle crash.

    Source: commondreams.org

    25. More than three years after 9/11, just 5 percent of all cargo–including cargo transported on passenger planes–is screened.

    Source: commondreams.org

    NATIONAL SECURITY

    26. During the Bush Administration, North Korea quadrupled its suspected nuclear arsenal from two to eight weapons.

    Source: New York Times

    27. The Bush Administration has openly opposed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, undermining nuclear nonproliferation efforts.

    Source: commondreams.org

    28. The Bush Administration has spent $7 billion this year–and plans to spend $10 billion next year–for a missile defense system that has never worked in a test that wasn’t rigged.

    Sources: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04409.pdf, Los Angeles Times

    29. The Bush Administration underfunded the needs of the nation’s first responders by $98 billion, according to a Council on Foreign Relations study.

    Source: nationaldefensemagazine.org

    CRONYISM AND CORRUPTION

    30. The Bush Administration awarded a multibillion-dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton–a company that still pays Vice President Cheney hundreds of thousands of dollars in deferred compensation each year (Cheney also has Halliburton stock options). The company then repeatedly overcharged the military for services, accepted kickbacks from subcontractors and served troops dirty food.

    Sources: The Washington Post, The Tapei Times, BBC News

    31. The Bush Administration told Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan about plans to go to war with Iraq before telling Secretary of State Colin Powell.

    Source: detnews.com

    32. The Bush Administration relentlessly pushed an energy bill containing $23.5 billion in corporate tax breaks, much of which would have benefited major campaign contributors.

    taxpayer.net, Washington Post

    33. The Bush Administration paid Iraqi-exile and neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi $400,000 a month for intelligence, including fabricated claims about Iraqi WMD. It continued to pay him for months after discovering that he was providing inaccurate information.

    Source: MSNBC

    34. The Bush Administration installed as top officials more than 100 former lobbyists, attorneys or spokespeople for the industries they oversee.

    Source: Source: commondreams.org

    35. The Bush Administration let disgraced Enron CEO Ken Lay–a close friend of President Bush–help write its energy policy.

    Source: MSNBC

    36. Top Bush Administration officials accepted $127,600 in jewelry and other presents from the Saudi royal family in 2003, including diamond-and-sapphire jewelry valued at $95,500 for First Lady Laura Bush.

    Source: Seattle Times

    37. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge awarded lucrative contracts to several companies in which he is an investor, including Microsoft, GE, Sprint, Pfizer and Oracle.

    Source: cq.com

    38. President Bush used images of firefighters carrying flag-draped coffins through the rubble of the World Trade Center to score political points in a campaign advertisement.

    Source: The Washington Post

    THE ECONOMY

    39. President Bush’s top economic adviser, Greg Mankiw, said the outsourcing of American jobs abroad was “a plus for the economy in the long run.”

    Source: CBS News

    40. The Bush Administration turned a $236 billion surplus into a $422 billion deficit.

    Sources: Fortune, dfw.com

    41. The Bush Administration implemented regulations that made millions of workers ineligible for overtime pay.

    Source: epinet.org

    42. The Bush Administration has crippled state budgets by underfunding federal mandates by $175 billion.

    Source: cbpp.org

    43. President Bush is the first President since Herbert Hoover to have a net loss of jobs–around 800,000–over a four-year term.

    Source: The Guardian

    44. The Bush Administration gave Accenture a multibillion-dollar border control contract even though the company moved its operations to Bermuda to avoid paying taxes.

    Sources: The New York Times, cantonrep.com

    45. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush said “the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum.” He passed the tax cuts, but the top 20 percent of earners received 68 percent of the benefits.

    Sources: cbpp.org, vote-smart.org

    46. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to pay down the national debt to a historically low level. As of September 30, the national debt stood at $7,379,052,696,330.32, a record high.

    Sources: http://www.georgewbush.com , Bureau of the Public Debt

    47. As major corporate scandals rocked the nation’s economy, the Bush Administration reduced the enforcement of corporate tax law–conducting fewer audits, imposing fewer penalties, pursuing fewer prosecutions and making virtually no effort to prosecute corporate tax crimes.

    Source: iht.com

    48. The Bush Administration increased tax audits for the working poor.

    Source: theolympian.com

    49. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to protect the Social Security surplus. As President, he spent all of it.

    Sources: georgewbush.com, Congressional Budget Office

    50. The Bush Administration proposed slashing funding for the largest federal public housing program, putting 2 million families in danger of losing their housing.

    Source: San Francisco Examiner

    51. The Bush Administration did nothing to prevent the minimum wage from falling to an inflation-adjusted fifty-year low.

    Source: Los Angeles Times

    EDUCATION

    52. The Bush Administration underfunded the No Child Left Behind Act by $9.4 billion.

    Source: nwitimes.com

    53. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to increase the maximum federal scholarship, or Pell Grant, by 50 percent. Instead, each year he has been in office he has frozen or cut the maximum scholarship amount.

    Source: Source: edworkforce.house.gov x

    54. The Bush Administration’s Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, called the National Education Association–a union of teachers–a “terrorist organization.”

    Sources: CNN.com

    HEALTHCARE

    55. The Bush Administration, in violation of the law, refused to allow Medicare actuary Richard Foster to tell members of Congress the actual cost of their Medicare bill. Instead, they repeated a figure they knew was $100 billion too low.

    Source: Washington Post, realcities.com

    56. The nonpartisan GAO concluded the Bush Administration created illegal, covert propaganda–in the form of fake news reports–to promote its industry-backed Medicare bill.

    Source: General Accounting Office

    57. The Bush Administration stunted research that could lead to new treatments for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, spinal injuries, heart disease and muscular dystrophy by placing severe restrictions on the use of federal dollars for embryonic stem-cell research.

    Source: CBS News

    58. The Bush Administration reinstated the “global gag rule,” which requires foreign NGOs to withhold information about legal abortion services or lose US funds for family planning.

    Source: healthsciences.columbia.edu

    59. The Bush Administration authorized twenty companies that have been charged with fraud at the federal or state level to offer Medicare prescription drug cards to seniors.

    Source: American Progress

    60. The Bush Administration created a prescription drug card for Medicare that locks seniors into one card for up to a year but allows the corporations offering the cards to change their prices once a week.

    Source: Washington Post

    61. The Bush Administration blocked efforts to allow Medicare to negotiate cheaper prescription drug prices for seniors.

    Source: American Progress

    62. At the behest of the french fry industry, the Bush Administration USDA changed their definition of fresh vegetables to include frozen french fries.

    Source: commondreams.org

    63. In a case before the Supreme Court, the Bush Administrations sided with HMOs–arguing that patients shouldn’t be allowed to sue HMOs when they are improperly denied treatment. With the Administration’s help, the HMOs won.

    Source: ABC News

    64. The Bush Administration went to court to block lawsuits by patients who were injured by defective prescription drugs and medical devices.

    Source: Washington Post

    65. President Bush signed a Medicare law that allows companies that reduce healthcare benefits for retirees to receive substantial subsidies from the government.

    Source: Bloomberg News

    66. Since President Bush took office, more than 5 million people have lost their health insurance.

    Source: CNN.com

    67. The Bush Administration blocked a proposal to ban the use of arsenic-treated lumber in playground equipment, even though it conceded it posed a danger to children.

    Source: Miami Herald

    68. One day after President Bush bragged about his efforts to help seniors afford healthcare, the Administration announced the largest dollar increase of Medicare premiums in history.

    Source: iht.com

    69. The Bush Administration–at the behest of the tobacco industry–tried to water down a global treaty that aimed to help curb smoking.

    Source: tobaccofreekids.org

    70. The Bush Administration has spent $270 million on abstinence-only education programs even though there is no scientific evidence demonstrating that they are effective in dissuading teenagers from having sex or reducing the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.

    Source: salon.com

    71. The Bush Administration slashed funding for programs that suggested ways, other than abstinence, to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.

    Source: LA Weekly

    ENVIRONMENT

    72. The Bush Administration gutted clean-air standards for aging power plants, resulting in at least 20,000 premature deaths each year.

    Source: cta.policy.net

    73. The Bush Administration eliminated protections on more than 200 million acres of public lands.

    Source: calwild.org

    74. President Bush broke his promise to place limits on carbon dioxide emissions, an essential step in combating global warming.

    Source: Washington Post

    75. Days after 9/11, the Bush Administration told people living near Ground Zero that the air was safe–even though they knew it wasn’t–subjecting hundreds of people to unnecessary, debilitating ailments.

    Sierra Club , EPA

    76. The Bush Administration created a massive tax loophole for SUVs–allowing, for example, the write-off of the entire cost of a new Hummer.

    Source: Washington Post

    77. The Bush Administration put former coal-industry big shots in the government and let them roll back safety regulations, putting miners at greater risk of black lung disease.

    Source: New York Times

    78. The Bush Administration said that even though the weed killer atrazine was seeping into water supplies–creating, among other bizarre creatures, hermaphroditic frogs–there was no reason to regulate it.

    Source: Washington Post

    79. The Bush Administration has proposed cutting the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency by $600 million next year.

    Source: ems.org

    80. President Bush broke his campaign promise to end the maintenance backlog at national parks. He has provided just 7 percent of the funds needed, according to National Park Service estimates.

    Source: bushgreenwatch.org

    RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES

    81. Since 9/11, Attorney General John Ashcroft has detained 5,000 foreign nationals in antiterrorism sweeps; none have been convicted of a terrorist crime.

    Source: hrwatch.org

    82. The Bush Administration ignored pleas from the International Committee of the Red Cross to stop the abuse of prisoners in US custody.

    Source: Wall Street Journal

    83. In violation of international law, the Bush Administration hid prisoners from the Red Cross so the organization couldn’t monitor their treatment.

    Source: hrwatch.org

    84. The Bush Administration, without ever charging him with a crime, arrested US citizen José Padilla at an airport in Chicago, held him on a naval brig in South Carolina for two years, denied him access to a lawyer and prohibited any contact with his friends and family.

    Source: news.findlaw.com

    85. President Bush’s top legal adviser wrote a memo to the President advising him that he can legally authorize torture.

    Source: news.findlaw.com

    86. At the direction of Bush Administration officials, the FBI went door to door questioning people planning on protesting at the 2004 political conventions.

    Source: New York Times

    87. The Bush Administration refuses to support the creation of an independent commission to investigate the abuse of foreign prisoners in American custody. Instead, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld selected the members of a commission to review the conduct of his own department.

    Source: humanrightsfirst.org

    FLIP FLOPS

    88. President Bush opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission before he supported it, delaying an essential inquiry into one of the greatest intelligence failure in American history.

    Source: americanprogressaction.org

    89. President Bush said gay marriage was a state issue before he supported a constitutional amendment banning it.

    Sources: CNN.com, White House

    90. President Bush said he was committed to capturing Osama bin Laden “dead or alive” before he said, “I truly am not that concerned about him.”

    Source: americanprogressaction.org

    91. President Bush said we had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, before he admitted we hadn’t found them.

    Sources: White House, americanprogress.org

    92. President Bush said, “You can’t distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror,” before he admitted Saddam had no role in 9/11.

    Sources: White House, Washington Post

    BIOGRAPHY

    93. George Bush didn’t come close to meeting his commitments to the National Guard. Records show he performed no service in a six-month period in 1972 and a three-month period in 1973.

    Source: boston.com

    94. In June 1990 George Bush violated federal securities law when he failed to inform the SEC that he had sold 200,000 shares of his company, Harken Energy. Two months later the company reported significant losses and by the end of that year the stock had dropped from $3 to $1.

    Source: The Guardian

    95. When asked at an April 2004 press conference to name a mistake he made during his presidency, Bush couldn’t think of one.

    Source: White House

    SECRECY

    96. The Bush Administration refuses to release twenty-seven pages of a Congressional report that reportedly detail the Saudi Arabian government’s connections to the 9/11 hijackers.

    Source: philly.com

    97. Last year the Bush Administration spent $6.5 billion creating 14 million new classified documents and securing old secrets–the highest level of spending in ten years.

    Source: openthegovernment.org

    98. The Bush Administration spent $120 classifying documents for every $1 it spent declassifying documents.

    Source: openthegovernment.org

    99. The Bush Administration has spent millions of dollars and defied numerous court orders to conceal from the public who participated in Vice President Cheney’s 2001 energy task force.

    Source: Washington Post

    100. The Bush Administration–reversing years of bipartisan tradition–refuses to answer requests from Democratic members of Congress about how the White House is spending taxpayer money.

    Source: Washington Post

    OPINION

    If the past informs the future, four more years of the Bush Administration will be a tragic period in the history of the United States and the world.

    “The links for all the facts cited can be found is here”:http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041108&s=facts

    C’mon guys. It’s time to be part of the reality-based community.

    Reply

32. Great post, JC; thanks for the link.

    Reply

33. Bob – yeah, I read ‘On Strategy’ too. I’ve consistently hammered Bush for failing to declare and sell an explicit ‘story’ of what we’re doing – which would also solve your problem.

    And I think that that is the most likely failure mode for this eneterprise; either that Bush’s strategy is so incoherent that it fails completely in execution, or that – because he hasn’t articulated it and sold it to us, that we give up on it and walk away.

    A.L.

    Reply

34. RE: Mister Secretary General Bill Clinton

    I may be wrong, but I thought tradition/policy prevented this position from going to a member of a nation sitting on the security council.

    Reply

35. You suggest that “And I also believe that the surest means to reduce the effectiveness of these nonstate actors to the point that we can treat them as a ‘law-enforcement’ problem is to deprive them of their state sponsors. Kerry doesn’t.”

    What has Bush done to deprive Al Qaeda of its state sponsors? We know Iraq was not such a state sponsor. We know that we left the job in Afghanistan half done to invade Iraq. We know that Saudi Arabia and Iran are both much more closely tied to Al Qaeda. We know that while we’re stuck in Iraq our options with regard to either or both of those actual candidates for state sponsorship (iffy ones but the closest there are to such a thing) are curtailed. So Bush one greatest foriegn policy decision, invading Iraq, has done what exactly to deprive Al Qaeda of state sponsors? Kerry may or may not believe as you do, bush certainly doesn’t.

    Reply

36. Oh! JC, that was a rude abuse of Joe’s bandwidth.

    I can address SECRECY. During both the Carter and Clinton adminstrations compartments were merged, classification levels degraded, and probably $120 dollars was spent declassifying for every $1 spent in classifying documents. The result, contributed to by other cultural decisions made by those admins, was not knowing about 911 in advance, IMHO. At lot of effort is currently being devoted to rectifying the security abberrations of the Clinton adminstration. I was there– they weren’t interested! Reagan was Shane– he cleaned up after Carter. Bush is still cleaning up after Clinton.

    Do you REALLY think we can do without covert ops in this day and age?

    Reply

37. JC –

    If I have time (I’m trying to get the writing done), I’ll hit the high points of your post. Until then I’ll content myself by suggesting that when you’re posting links to “The Nation” as evidence of your membership in “the reality-based community” it’s not clear that you and I mean the same things by reality…

    A.L.

    Reply

38. reteif –

    I’ll suggest that AQ is getting substantially less state sponsorship (or state sponsorship from a much narrower base) than it was pre-invasion.

    Before the invasion, I “wrote this”http://windsofchange.net/archives/003200.php :

    I believe the answer is to end the state support of terrorism and the state campaigns of hatred aimed at the U.S. I think that Iraq simply has drawn the lucky straw. They are weak, not liked, bluntly in violation of international law, and as our friends the French say, about to get hung pour l’ecourager les autres…to encourage the others.

    The goal of warfare is to bend the opponent to your will. Opponents you do not engage directly may also change their actions, and from what I’ve read and seen, there are encouraging signs (note: not conclusive results yet) that this may be taking place.

    A.L.

    Reply

39. JC, great post, but there’s one inaccuracy:

    _62. At the behest of the french fry industry, the Bush Administration USDA changed their definition of fresh vegetables to include frozen french fries._

    That’s frozen _freedom_ fries, pardner.

    Reply

40. in his personal experience, victory is a matter of negotiation and working toward consensus

    Query: Find one successful American war leader in the last century who didn’t enthusiastically endorse this principle and spend the height of their lives fighting against rulers with the bombast of President Bush.

    You’re on the wrong side.

    Furthermore, terrorism isn’t ideologically-driven, it’s politically-driven. That’s a crucial distinction.

    And it’s relatively harmless.

    Terrorism’s recent death total — measured in thousands — is dwarfed by the numbers of dead from war, genocide, and famine. Furthermore, terrorist acts have decreased over the past 20 years, but the carnage has increased. Sure, with mass slaughter and apocalyptic weapons on the terrorist agenda, the scale of the threat is rising, BUT that only calls for more of the patient negotiation and consensus-building that you deride, not some ill-defined and unimpressive macho-posturing, nor a laughably ill-informed and predictably incompetent foreign policy, as seems to be preference of our current insipient incumbant.

    Americans are terrified of their future, not of terrorism. This instinct is right.

    Reply

41. I don’t think we need constructive negotiation and consensus right now. That time will come, but history’s stage is not yet set for it.

    Oy, you’ve got a lot of history to read. And stay off the Marxist stuff will ya?

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42. AL,

    When you have time, please do so. To borrow a metaphor from you, I’m following the 70/30 rule for the Nation post. Considering, along with many many other people smarter than me (such as Dan Drezner, David Hackworth, Tom Friedman, etc) than Bush has fundamentally mismanaged (70%, inverse of your estimation) the War on Terror, the occupation of Iraq, economic policy, and environmental issues…

    Well, I need to use the tools at hand. The Nation had a good collection of information – and the fact that I disagree with a lot of what gets written in the Nation doesn’t mean I shouldn’t use this handy-dandy collection of facts.

    For the immediate future, I’m most concerned about the “vote suppression tactics”:http://vote2004.eriposte.com/ that seem to be popping up everywhere.

    Then talking about what the right combination of democracy building overseas (such as Spirit of America), military posture, and alliance building that has the greatest possibility of success – not just for the US, but for the world.

    And more so, I’m interested in a way to FALSIFY various defense/political theories, so bad ideas, (or bad philosophy, as Joe says) like bad science, stops living on.

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43. Hey post-time – as a casual suggestion, you might want to read more of what I write (actually, in the posts you’re commenting on themselves and elsewhere) before tossing off a casual dismissal not based on what I wrote…

    Go read the first three paragraphs of this post right here, and come back to us, OK?

    A.L.

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44. A.L., the you offer a Hobson’s choice when you assert that “the most likely failure mode … either that Bush’s strategy is so incoherent that it fails completely in execution, or that – because he hasn’t articulated it and sold it to us, that we give up on it and walk away.”

    There’s a third option: relieve this commander in chief of his command and find someone who can lead a unified public, and not strike poses like a latter-day Custer. Someone who won’t FUBAR the mission. Someone who doesn’t seek to prove “that incompetence is courage … that greatness is a loud noise.” (Bernard de Voto)

    Oh, and JC: try to edit your posts? A.L. has broken his yay-for-Bush into four separate threads; you do know how to redact? Education, health care et al doesn’t belong on A.L.’s “war on terror” thread. French freedom fries, bah!

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45. I don’t recall any significant occasions in WW2 where we claimed victory, announced Mission Accomplished, leaked news of troops coming home, underestimated reconstruction costs by a factor of at least 50, and then had to retract.

    Even if it were true that we have accomplished some 70% of something (but just what? 70% of Saddam’s imaginary WMD? 70% of the membership of AQ?? we control 70% of Iraq???), the trends really don’t seem to be developing either as anticipated or even in our favor. The pretense that setbacks are really victories was found in German and Japanese WW2 propaganda (advanced to the rear, successfully shortened the lines), but not ours. We didn’t need it.

    Incidentally, the German invasion of Norway took place while Neville Chamberlain was still PM, and I don’t think the British public held Churchill responsible for the debacle even though he became PM in the interim. Indeed, Chamberlain fell not because of his failed strategy of appeasement, but because his government proved extremely ill-prepared on the battlefield. Churchill replaced him because the public demanded accountability for the disastrous course of the war. Chamberlain was far too great a man to claim that they couldn’t change PM in midstream.

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46. Andrew – Operation Scimitar was an attempted British re-invasion of Normandy, which was a debacle.

    It did result in a great Churchill line, tho…

    A.L.

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47. You know, I agree in some respects with those pointing out our President’s weak points. But I will also be voting for him (holding my nose tightly). Because I strongly believe that Kerry would be worse.

    So, if you want to convince this voter to make a last minute change of mind, you are going to have to stop bashing the President and start showing some reason, including past record (not just hype) that Kerry would be better in the war on Islamist terrorists. I have looked at Kerry’s past record, both speech and action, and I do not believe that he even thinks we are involved in a war.

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48. bq. Sen. Kerry is, I eblieve (sic), a good and honorable man who will do his best.

    This is about the only thing I disagree with you about. Kerry’s past actions prove that he is not “a good and honorable man.”

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49. Andrew, I just caught this:

    “Chamberlain was far too great a man to claim that they couldn’t change PM in midstream.”

    …did you really mean that, or was it just a rationalized dig at Bush? Chamberlain as a great PM? That’s news to me…

    A.L.

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50. A.J., it is true that the invasion of Norway took place on Chamberlain’s watch. Chamberlain was removed in May 1940 after the enemy attacked into the Low Countries and France, which suggested that the British involvement in Norway was the wrong campaign. Sort of a metaphor for our own time, perhaps, especially with a head of government who alights from his aircraft and pronounces the matter concluded. Like Neville Chamberlain.

    A.L., if you want a better metaphor from WWII, the one you want is Crossbow. That’s where the British became so mesmerized by the German ballistic missile threat (V2) that they largely overlooked the threat of a low-tech assault by the V1 cruise missile. (See John Keegan’s “Intelligence in War”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375400532/qid=1098499990/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/102-7814189-2206525?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 . Good read.) Turned out that the V1 was more devastating and might have been worse if Hitler had put more into it and not the V2.

    Sort of like what the Bush Administration is doing now. Spending $XX billions on a missile defense shield is misplaced when (1) the WMD is apt to be delivered by hand and (2) when the threat (N. Korea) could be (could have been?) neutralized by interrupting their contacts with Pakistan. Our ally.

    I realize John Kerry is an unknown. In terms of the Crossbow metaphor, George Bush has a proven track record: clueless dilettante. You still want to vote for him, A.L.?

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51. a couple of points:

    1) You’re right. At this time in history, with this military at his command, any determined American political leader will prevail militarily in Afghanistan, Iraq, and lots of other places, no matter how. . .suboptimal their leadership may be. But the main danger in Iraq is not that we will lose militarily, it is that we will lose the Iraqi people. Or a much larger chunk of the Iraqi people than is necessary. There are three types of young Iraqi men fighting us right now: Sunni supremacists (Baathists), terrorists, and anti-Occupation Nationalists. Or in other words, evildoers and fools. In concert with our Iraqi allies, we must defeat the evildoers, but good Iraqi and American leadership must also try to reduce the number of young Iraqi fools throwing their lives away by fighting against this temporary Occupation. I want leadership that understands these nuances, and is willing make these moral distinctions even among our enemies.

    That we have liberated the Iraqi people is not yet a fact. It will depend on what happens these next few years. I want leadership that understands that. And I want a leader who understands the psychological truth that many Iraqis, irrationally and counter-productively, do not want to give the US credit for liberating their country, and who will therefore try his damndest to put an Iraqi face on this liberation. I want a leader who will try his damndest to engage directly with the Iraqi people, and make them understand our motives and our actions, and try to win them over to our side.

    2) There are all sorts of problems with the UN: a)Any venture with blue helmets is a disaster waiting to happen, because no soldier is willing to fight and die for the UN b) Except for violations of sovereignty, UN types treat all parties to a dispute or issue as equally legitimate and worthy of respect, no matter how evil or in the wrong they are, and get huffy if you demand that they take a stand and stop coddling the bad guys c) the UN is filled with and led by smug, pompous lawyers d) these lawyers tend to be very credulous and putty in the hands of swindlers and thugs, leading to lots of corruption e) the Russians and especially the Chinese are not our friends, and obstruct us at almost every opportunity.

    However, there are lots of problems where we are not willing to do something, but we want something to be done (e.g. we are not willing to send peace-keeping troops to Sudan, but we want troops to be sent). That means working with *some* multilateral organization, UN or not. When the UN lends its legitimacy to some venture, like Gulf War I & the unanimous inspector resolution, it *is* useful. I interpret Kerry’s stance as a common sense one: you use the UN to the maximum extent it proves useful, and to the extent it proves obstructionist or ineffectual, you ditch it and get the job done in some other way.

    To those who say that the UN/multilateral oranizations is a genuinely malign force, actively on the side of evil, actively determined to thwart American power, I say this: Look at the process by which Hamid Karzai was chosen as the post-Taliban leader of a new Afghanistan. Look at the process by which Chalabi, the IGC and now Allawi were chosen as the post-Saddam leaders of a new Iraq. Compare the results. And *then* tell me that the UN is an irredeemably corrupt, useless, good-for-nothing organization.

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52. Here’s what Marshall Mathers thinks about all this:

    “[Bush] has been painted to be this hero, and he’s got our troops over there dying for no reason . . . I think he started a mess . . . He jumped the gun, and he fucked up so bad he doesn’t know what to do right now . . . We got young people over there dyin’, kids in their teens, early twenties that should have futures ahead of them. And for what? It seems like a Vietnam 2. Bin Laden attacked us, and we attacked Saddam. Explain why that is. Give us some answers.”

    Looks like the Bush movement ain’t catching on in this community. Hey, maybe it’s becoming clear that the “war on terror” means sending minority and working class kids into war while the rich folks get a nice tax break.

    The only hope we have is that only white rich guys get their news from CNN and MSNBC.

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53. A.L.; Chamberlain was not a great PM, of course he was a disaster. As a man, that’s another issue. Churchill gave a very warm eulogy for him, and even if the Republican speechwriters confected something as moving for Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton, they would hardly have kept the architect of the failed polioy in the Cabinet, as Churchill did with Chamberlain. Your original post refers to both the invasion of Norway and the German attack on the HMS Scimitar. I can’t imagine you are suggesting that the responsibility for these respective problems went equally up the chain of command.

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54. Only this evening did I Google for Soviet casualties in their Afghan War. They were of about the same order of magnitude as ours are in Iraq. Their force was a little smaller, and while they took fewer casualties in the conventional military phase, they did suffer more—maybe double, not more—than we are in the Occupation/Liberation phase.

    The next time someone wants to comment on how well we’re doing in Iraq, pretend it’s Moscow 1980, and explain to me why my pessimism is wrong, and Marxist-Leninism is on its inexorable march.

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55. >explain to me why my pessimism is wrong. . .

    Because the Soviet Union wanted to keep Afghanistan forever, and we don’t:) IMO, Probably the most accurate historical parallel to Iraq is the turn of the century war in the Phillipines, and also our early 20-century attempted intervention in Mexico. But even that is imperfect, because our motives in Iraq are more noble than our motives were in the Philipines. IMO, the underlying motivation for the Iraq war was Glory, not Conquest.

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56. Andrew, my apologies; it was operation Sickle, and it took place between April and June of 1940. Churchill was appointed PM in May, and it may be possible to suggest that it was the final straw in Chamberlain’s office as P.M.

    A.L.

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57. Well, hell, VT, if Eminem says it’s wrong, it must absolutely be true. You orient the rest of your life around celebrity opinions as well?

    A.L.

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58. Bob

    bq. _“This Administration apparently privatized much of the logistics of the war “_

    This administration had no choice but to do just that. I’m sure you realize that the privatization of military logistics was introduced by previous administrations and expanded upon well before GWB took the helm. You make it sound as though this is something new to this administration alone when in fact it is not. The consequences of such a move are now being realized and on that point I’ll agree. To say it is the fault of this administration alone is pure fallacy.

    bq. _”The mutiny in the 343rd QM Co wasn’t because they were afraid that Kerry was going to be President, but grievances over mission and equipment.”_

    What evidence do you have that says this was a mutiny? I’ve reserved judgment until I hear all the facts and I haven’t heard anything of late concerning this case.

    bq. _”And Pakistan seems to be very free with sharing WMD and ballistic missile expertise, and are we reining them in?”_

    Outing the nuclear for sale program was a major victory concerning nuclear proliferation. I agree that letting the cat out of the bag does not rein in the offenders. It did however, place undue pressure on Pakistan to resolve the issue (act of diplomacy). Pardoning the culprit / culprits for the black market nuclear sale IMO only fosters attitudes of determination to be more clandestine next time around. You and I may not like the resolution put forth by Pakistan so I’ll leave you with one question about this aspect. What would you have had Pakistan do?

    bq. _”And if W. had this much trouble with Iraq, how on earth does he expect to govern Iran, if there’s anything to the invade-Iran talk I’m hearing from neocon websites?”_

    Who said anything about the US or GWB governing Iran? Can you clarify exactly what you mean here or are these words truly your intended thoughts.

    bq. _”I’ve had enough Command & General Staff training to wonder at the Administration’s strategy.”_

    As with all training the military consistently improves, expands, and adjusts to current situations. Since you’ve stated you are a retired military officer I’d like to know how long you’ve been retired and at what rank. Of course you don’t have to answer because it’s just curiosity on my part.

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59. Very well, USMC, since we’re comparing credentials, I retired as a Major, MP, US Army Reserve after 23 years as a commissioned officer. I started in Armor and switched to MPs due to the fact that the nearest tank battalion was some distance from the SF Bay Area. My service was in assorted National Guard and Reserve units; my training included the Command & General Staff course.

    I’m curious what your service was like.

    The logistics problem has been growing since the end of the Cold War, when it became obvious that the clunky mechanized war model against the Soviets was no longer relevant. Trouble is, we still have heavy divisions today but cut back on the combat support. George W. and Rummy didn’t create this situation, which started under Bush 41, but seemed not to know or care that every heavy division and MEF requires considerable logistical support — messing with an operational TPFDL on top of that isn’t a good idea. So we had an invasion with not enough MPs to cover units like that maintenance battalion, let alone properly staff the prisons for the inevitable prisoners, and apparently shortages in maintenance parts even though the staff manuals stress that a desert campaign would be hell on vehicles and vehicle parts.

    Privatizing the logistics was a growing trend — I had noted that Army bases had more and more private contractors providing travel, food and installation facilities services — but that doesn’t mean that the contractors shouldn’t “be accountable”:http://democrats.reform.house.gov/Documents/20040623112534-43140.pdf. Or that the mission will succeed if the contractors fail to perform.

    And this for an invasion that we had a year to plan for. Beyond that — see my posts further up — it’s a little difficult for any military planner to “improve, expand and adjust” if the operational objectives either are unclear or keep shifting.

    “Govern” is something a successful invasion does. Yes, I realize Bush is trying to set up an Iraqi state. Till it’s fully capable of defending itself — and we did remove their gov’t, ruling party, cabinet, army and police forces — who do you think is going to provide the muscle for Allawi to govern? (I’m noting some alarming losses in Civil Affairs officers, and CA is what provides military gov’t and gov’t-local civil liaison).

    And what is our response if Iran presents us with an unacceptable threat? If we go in, we have the same operational issues as with Iraq, unless you can think of an alternative that won’t involve invasion.

    Finally, this: refusal of orders, especially in an organized manner, is a breach of Art. 94 (10 USC § 894), mutiny. The Army might not charge them with that but that incident, as reported, did involve a group refusal to move. They may have had strong grievances — and the failure of the theater command to provide armor, armed convoy escort, and untainted fuel suggests much that is wrong with the contduct of the war — but they are in serious trouble. I mentioned this because of all the drivel above, that John Kerry is spooking the troops’ morale, when in fact the 343d refused orders for other reasons. Disturbing reasons.

    Worth bringing up because A.L. may be shifting his vote to Bush on the theory that someone who talks the loudest about defense is the most reassuring. I’m not reassured.

    BTW, A.L., if this affair with “that British aid worker”:http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/10/23/MNGKA9F73T1.DTL suggests strategy on the enemy’s part: striking at the relief organizations, be it CARE in Iraq, Red Cross in Chechnya, or Medecins sans Frontières in Afghanistan. Maybe the NGOs are a mixed blessing but if the Islamists take them out, who provides civil services? The Iraqi and Afghan gov’ts, such that they are? Our theater command with its gimpy logistics? Or local warlord and terrorist organizations? I wonder if the Administration recognizes this as not just terror but an enemy strategy. I wonder. One thing I learned from Army officers who had been in Somalia was that the UN and NGOs can’t win a war, but sure as hell can lose it for us.

    This affects one of the stated objectives of the Bush Administration: a viable, stable, democratic Iraq. That was both a theater strategy and a criterion for success, on their own say-so. So far, that Iraq is nowhere in sight. So, A.L., what say you?

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60. A.L., you and this thread might be interested in something in today’s NY Times on “the Administration’s innovations in anti-terrorism law”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/international/worldspecial2/24gitmo.html?pagewanted=1&hp&oref=login. Very long article, I won’t post it here, but one sample of the Administration in action.

    Bush set up these _ultra vires_ courts and then hasn’t used them. Which suggests that either his people changed their minds or can’t even manage to frame a case for a drumhead tribunal. Or maybe the lawyers recognize that it was “…a patent illegality. Such an order would be ultra vires and constitute a war crime if issued during an armed conflict. At least for military lawyers, the present Military Order [Nov. 2001], in part, is such an order and places present and future U.S. military personnel in harms way.” –Jordan J. Paust, Antiterrorism Military Commissions: Courting Illegality, 23 Mich. J. Int’l L. 1

    One quote, A.L., illustrates the dangers in (1) the Adminstration’s intramural infighting over the war and (2) the dangers of the Administration’s military dilettantism. “Many of the Pentagon’s uniformed lawyers were angered by the implication that the military would be used to deliver “rough justice” for the terrorists. The Uniform Code of Military Justice, enacted in 1951, had moved steadily into line with the due-process standards of the federal courts, and senior military lawyers were proud and protective of their system. … The military lawyers would from time to time remind the civilians that there was a Constitution that we had to pay attention to …”

    The comment about evolution of courts-martial suggests some legal sophistication by this reporter; it’s the sort of material I researched when I published a law-review article on the WWII Yamashita trial and the current Administration policy on these new tribunals. (3rd year in law school, USMC, as long as you’re questioning my background).

    Take a good look, A.L. Want four more years of this?

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61. Al, I reread your post and find nothing I wish to change in my comment nor any reason why I should. I think I’ve made my disagreement with you clear.

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62. Bob

    My active duty service in the USMC spanned 9 1/2 years. I started out working at the 4th FASC MCAS El Toro (computer operations on the old IBM 360’s) MOS 4034 and finished up enlistment at Quantico working as the focal point DSLO for large mainframe operating systems (mainly Amdhal at the time MOS 4069). During my time I served at Henderson Hall working at the Navy Annex for manpower specifically on TMR (table of manpower requirements). I also spent a lot of time TAD upgrading and installing mainframe operating systems at USMC installations home and abroad. I started out as a slick sleeve in boot camp attained PFC at graduation and was honorably discharged (EOS) at the rank of E6.

    Between MOS training and NCO / Staff NCO schools plus working at the puzzle palace now and then I can certainly understand your complaints about the logistic situation. I saw them first hand and I saw them degrade first hand much like you have and as we both know it is not this administrations fault. As for accountability I agree with you 100% and I think we would both agree accountability has been a major issue from the get go. Again this is not a problem strictly unique to this administration nor is one that was introduced by this administration.

    As for the case concerning the 343rd I understand your take on it only to well. Yes there will be some fall out from it and yes there are some that will answer for their actions. However you seem have some first hand knowledge or reliable source that leaves no doubt in your mind this was in fact a mutiny. The only thing I have to go on is shoddy reports at the moment that are inconsistent to say the least. One report says the fuel was tainted one says it wasn’t. One report says there was no armed support for the convoy one says all convoys get armed support. All reports say no one showed up for the mission. Questions in mind are as follows. 1) Was the unit told not to show or did they conspire not to show? 2) Did the unit air grievances with their superiors or not? I would think as a major even you would understand there’s more than meets the eye here. Is it a command issue? Absolutely on that we both agree.

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63. I can’t add much to the discussion, I think almost any point I would have made has already been addressed. I would like to offer that back in the mid 90’s under Pres Clinton I found myself in Camp Democracy in Haiti and it might suprise a few people here to know that even back then we got our 2 hot meals (breakfast and dinner) from KBR. So I would say meals were outsourced before W.

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64. Scott

    Many thanks for your service and my thanks to KBR for not letting you starve while doing your job.

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65. USMC, it is refreshing to be arguing with you and A.L. because I’m getting the sense that the viewpoint is from experience and training, not polemics picked up from blogs or talk shows.

    My take on the 343d QM incident is not so much on any inside knowledge as in my training, from both the Army and from the law, on the elements of the UCMJ statutes in question. Refusal to roll the convoy suggests Art. 94 though that’s probably not what they’ll be charged with. I can dig into the US Code Annotated and see if there’s more to it but I sense, from experience and training, that this is the dynamic. And I was a property book officer long enough to sense what the maintenance and logistical hassles were as well.

    Circumstantial evidence but it does add up. And if you ask the impossible of people, they may still do it — if they have leadership they can trust. If.

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66. Bob

    Thanks for the vote of confidence. As for the “If” I’ll leave you with a poem by Rudyard Kipling that a wise Capt. put before his troops (me included).

    bq. [IF]

    bq. If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
    If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
    But make allowance for their doubting too,
    If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
    Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

    If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
    If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
    If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
    If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
    Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

    If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
    And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breath a word about your loss;
    If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
    And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

    If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
    If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
    If all men count with you, but none too much,
    If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
    Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

    –Rudyard Kipling

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67. USMC, as long as we’re sharing wartime quotes, this one, from Bernard de Voto’s “Year of Decision: 1846” (pub. 1943) addresses the “Why?” to your “If.” It has always haunted me:

    “He was a good boy. You remembered how he had laughed and chattered. You remembered being harsh to him, in the unforgivable stupidity of parenthood. One day his was playing with a tin sword or, with a wooden gun, shooting imaginary Indians round a corner of the barn. A day or two later his voice was not treble any more and it was not a wooden gun that was on his shoulder when the fifes shrilled and he marched off behind the silk banner which the ladies of the church had made. You saw his face when he waved to you at the curve in the road and you wouldn’t see it again. He had died of fever at Matamoros or of thirst on the way to Monclova, or a Mexican lance had done for him at Buena Vista or he had got halfway up the slope at Chapultepec. No children would spring from his loins as he had sprung from yours. So in Georgia you watched the upland where he had hunted squirrels turn brown with autumn, or in Ohio you saw the cows come in at milking time in still evening with someone else whistling to his dog. For what? …

    “Georgia or Ohio, as day was added to day, you were tugged at by forces subtler, more complex, more powerful, and more lasting than personal grief. A steelyard’s arm had been lengthened and the counterpoise had moved out along it … the lines ran east and west more firmly than before, old constraints were broken through, new bonds formed. …

    “But too slowly. On March 4, 1861, not enough Americans knew what the new President was talking about. ‘Physically speaking we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other …’ … So Abraham Lincoln (who might have been governor of Oregon) had learned in the old West … the achieved West had given the United States something that no people had ever had before, an internal, domestic empire, and he was telling them that Yesterday must not be permitted to Balkanize it.”

    For what? The answer is very germane to this thread. Particularly for A.L., since it’s central to his rationale as to which Commander in Chief to vote for.

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68. Interesting byplay, especially between A.L. and Bob Harmon on the question of the law-enforcement model v. the military. I agree that all modes need to be brought to bear on the problem but question the utility of the law-enforcement model given its reliance on the cooperative effort of national groups (e.g. the Saudis, the Pakistanis) whose sympathies fundamentally lie with the other side. To use a law-enforcement analogy, I have no doubt that they’ll serve up one terrorist out of 10 just to keep us happy, just as drug smugglers will occassionally sacrifice a load to keep the cops off their back.

    The real dilemma we face in this war is that we face a multi-pronged challenge from Arab radicalism in general, not just the Islamist/al-Qaida variant. Al-Qaida and Saddam are or were part and parcel of the same problem and acquired broad-based followings precisely because of their willingness to challenge the U.S. Their challenges answered a broad hunger in the Middle East and Central Asia, festering long before George W. came on the scene, that views us with hostility for many reasons, starting with our support for Israel and export of culture most there regard as inferior. We must face the possibility that ideological appeals (including Bush’s call for democracy) will fall on deaf ears. In other words, we have to find a way to win that doesn’t rely on “winning hearts and minds.”

    Neither candidate is facing this squarely, but I think Bush’s approach is more adaptable. Kerry has no answer if multi-lateralism/law enforcement doesn’t work.

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69. RG

    Your first paragraph sums it up very nicely. It is evident to me the WoT needs to be fought on both fronts (police and military actions). At the risk of opening a can worms again that is precisely what the Patriot Act was intended for. It served as the bridge for information flow between government and civilian sectors.

    With that in mind we have to keep in scope the missions of our military and police forces. No one wants the military serving as a police force or at least I hope not. It is not my intention to replace civilian police with military police. Nor is it my intention to replace military police with civilian police which is just as ludicrous. These roles in my opinion are not interchangeable nor should they be. Given that, I don’t see how we can possibly fight the WoT without sharing any and all information between the sectors.

    The military police are already allotted and paid for with federal tax dollars. My concern here is the trend to expand civilian police with federal tax dollars. It was touted before by previous administrations and I thought it was a bad idea then as well as now. Placing too much support on a federal type funded police force has the potential to lead us down the very troubling path of denying the public sector the control they should have.

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70. RG, USMC,

    Some clarifications. First, police intelligence complements military operations, not replaces it. The British had considerable experience in this dealing with the IRA; indeed, the 1916-1922 Troubles was fought by un-uniformed detectives on the British side (who were specially targeted on Bloody Sunday by Michael Collins and eliminated). The latter-day Troubles required security forces to utilize police, not supersede them.

    Second, and more important, MPs in a theater of operations provide several functions, of which law enforcement is way down the list. Main function is movement control and security, which means both directing vehicle/supply convoys and protecting them. Right next to that, even in the Soviet-era model of conventional warfare, was Rear Area Protection, which meant the MPs were configured to deal with any rear area threats short of a battalion-sized parachute drop, the whole idea being to free the maneuver battalions (tactical reserves) for main combat.

    (All of which is vital. I was taught that a heavy division, in a war theater, would use up 649,000 gallons of POL alone, each day, which is more than Patton’s Third Army consumed. Iraqi Freedom employed several Army and Marine divisions needing main supply lines and port terminals and ammo and fuel and supply depots, all of which has to be secured or it’ll be blown up. Or pilfered. That is the job of theater MP forces.)

    Third MP priority was straggler and refugee control.

    None of this is a civil police function, which in most doctrine was to be handled by host nation gendarmerie. Civilian and military prisoner custody is another function, a major one if you plan to occupy a country and presumably have its soldiers and civilian suspects go into the bag.

    All of this was lacking to some extent in Operation Iraqi Freedom. (And if RG is right about not trusting Pak or Saudi police, though I might say the Paks were helpful enough nabbing KSM, then we’re more dependent than ever on our own resources).

    _That_ is what I mean by military police operations. Not cops in BDUs, but theater security operations that complement main-force operations and that become even more important when enemy main forces vanish off the map. This is US Army doctrine, but they don’t seem to have the bodies needed for this. Now we’re having to move UK forces into Baghdad to cover the Green Zone? Sheesh.

    As for purely police missions, it’s worth noting that police/security forces like the FBI, Customs, and the Coast Guard all have major roles in homeland security in their own right.

    Bush and the neocons seem to assume that military operations preclude all else. In fact, we need to fight the WoT in every mode possible. I speak to an MP/counterintelligence/main force model that acts in all modes, not ignore them. Instead, what has evolved under Bush and Rummy, albeit something that has developed from Bush 41’s day, is a US military that’s like T. Rex, all legs and jaws, but very little else. We need someone who understands how complicated a theater of operations can be. Or at least is less clueless than what we have.

    PS. USMC, as for Federal money for local law enforcement, I again recommend “this Oakland Tribune series”:http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82%257E27730%257E,00.html on the SNAFU on homeland defense funding. This is inexcusable. A.L. would do well to ponder this before he votes for it. If someone lobs another one in on a homeland target it won’t be the US military that will be first responders.

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71. Bob

    Shorter:
    Money provided to Ca from the federal government wasn’t spent or allocated properly within Ca. You blame homeland security for this?

    The Ca local and state governments are at odds over requirements and necessary funding. You blame homeland security for this?

    The federal government wants accountability from the state on homeland security expenses. Homeland security decides what is a justified expense. What are we supposed to do? Leave the wallet on the table and say okay Junior take what you need when Junior seems to think he needs a Ferrari. I think not this is a national contribution of federally collected tax dollars. Every community in US has a say in how much and on what.

    bq. _But California counties, some fearful of placing too great an emphasis on terrorism alone, took an “all-hazards” approach to spending the money. They bought equipment that would help after a terrorist attack, but was just as handy for what they knew well: floods, earthquakes and fires. They talked of saving lives by preventing emergencies from becoming disasters._

    bq. _Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Newport Beach, who chairs the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, says the money should be used for terrorism alone. His committee is pushing legislation to streamline the funding process and separate terrorism funds from those used for more traditional emergency response._

    _”A first responder’s job is far more than dealing with the next terrorist attack,” Cox said. “But a grant program for Homeland Security should not be all-hazards.”_

    But the article also points out

    bq. _Whether its priorities are on target or misguided, California is now better prepared for disasters, manmade and natural, thanks to the open valve of federal cash._

    The rest of the articles are fairly much the same. Another someone done me wrong song instead of looking to the immediate culprits and causes of these situations

    Now to be fair about the situation as we move forward with homeland security it is only practical to assume that federal government can not be the panacea for all state and local communities concerns. Seems to me Ca citizens don’t have a handle on the local and state government nor do the state and local governments have a handle on the priorities of their citizens needs. To blame this administration for those short comings is pure folly.

    I don’t deny the necessity of some targets requiring federal intervention. Nuclear plants, commercial airlines, airports, shipping ports and the like. I don’t deny that federal government shouldn’t provide some guidelines or introduce legislation that guarantees air waves and technology compatibility standards for communications. Other than that the rest is all local or state. To blame this administration for your local and state failures is again a pile of BS.

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72. Raymond:

    I couldn’t agree more with each and every point you made. I respect your opinions and am in complete agreement with your reasoning.

    I sincerely hope Bush wins the election and takes on Iran’s nukes head on. Else, by election 2008, after we’ve seen a nuke-wasted Tel Aviv or Manhattan, the presidential race will have place only for canditates who’ll make Bush look like a UN-kissing ultra-liberal.

    The same left parroting the remove-bush mantra disdains cultural relativism but supports moral equivalence. Sure, Bush has his faults but they pale in comparision to the leftist agenda.

    God bless the free world.

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73. Nicholas D. Kristof takes on Bush’s “commitment”, as well as his relationship to truth (yes) to facts (no).

    http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/opinion/27kristof.html

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