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   Henry Waxmans climate change bill wont make it into law this year. Thats why hes the right guy for the job.
 Conspiracy theories are all fun and games until you become the subject of one.
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December 2, 2006
By: RUMSFELD ON IRAQ....A couple of days before he got fired, it turns out that Donald Rumsfeld wrote a memo outlining a bunch of possible options for the war in Iraq. The full text is here. "In my view it is time for a major adjustment," the memo says, before listing a wide range of possible changes that are mostly notable either for the surprising fact that we're not already doing them or for the less surprising fact that they're pretty much unattainable. What's more interesting, I think, comes at the end: a list of options Rumsfeld considers "less attractive." These include:
In other words, the options Rumsfeld isn't open to are the ones most frequently mentioned by outside analysts: Increasing the number of troops, concentrating on Baghdad, withdrawing, splitting Iraq into three mini-states, and negotiating with Syria and Iran. He doesn't like any of 'em. I'll bet this reflects the thinking of Bush and Cheney pretty accurately. The bottom line then, is: maybe some small changes, maybe a change in rhetoric, but nothing serious. On the bright side, at least Rumsfeld recognizes that things aren't going well. I wonder if Bush even acknowledges that much? —Kevin Drum 6:38 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (214)Comments
It is all your fault, Kevin, you and the liberal media, that there isn't a flowering democracy in iraq, and peace love and harmony everywhere! Posted by: Al's Mommy on December 2, 2006 at 6:52 PM | PERMALINKThe horrible part, to me, is that these are very commonsensical moves--why didn't they do these in April 2003? You have to be kidding me. This is called shutting the barn door after the animals have fled. We need a whole new administration. Knowing they are the worst changes nothing for the better unless we are willing to impeach them quickly. The modern world runs at pace dangerously hectic for such incompetence. Oh, and the dollar is dropping like a rock--Bush and company must be stocking up on Euros. Posted by: Sparko on December 2, 2006 at 6:53 PM | PERMALINKShame on me for saying so, but I agree with RumDumb on bullet point #3. However, my date certain for complete withdrawal would have been the day after we captured Saddam Hussein. Saddam would have made a good cellmate for Manuel Noriega, another tinpot dictator that was supported and propped up by the American right-wing until they went off the reservation. Posted by: The Conservative Deflator on December 2, 2006 at 6:58 PM | PERMALINKThe bottom line then, is: maybe some small changes, maybe a change in rhetoric, but nothing serious. On the bright side, at least Rumsfeld recognizes that things aren't going well. Hah? Where do you get that Rumsfeld "recognizes that things aren't going well"? In fact, I would interpret his support of small changes as showing how well things are going. Since the current course is going so well, there's no need for widescale changes so we can simply stay the course. And Centcom agrees with me things are going well. "Iraqi officers will soon command all four Iraqi Army divisions operating in northern Iraq, a senior U.S. officer said Friday. By February, all four Iraqi divisions in Multi-National Division-North will be under Iraqi Ground-Force Command, Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon told Pentagon reporters during a satellite briefing. " Posted by: Al on December 2, 2006 at 7:19 PM | PERMALINKIf you'd like a peek inside the White House head, so to speak, look at Rumsfeld's bicycle analogy, the phrase, "pull up their socks," and recall Card's explanation of Bush's view of Americans as ten year old children. Posted by: Shazam on December 2, 2006 at 7:27 PM | PERMALINKI like the recommednation that US should tell Syria and Iran to stop it. Sadly for all of us, he does not adequatley describe the tone of voice and the contortions in the facial terrain that George Bush should have when he tells Assad and Ahmedinezad to stop it. America has lost a great soul in Rumsfeld's firing. Posted by: gregor on December 2, 2006 at 7:30 PM | PERMALINKDonald Rumsfeld: "Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough." I wonder how long it is that he has known this unassailable fact? Because in the run-up to the election, as far as I can recall, he was generally upbeat and positive about all our so-called "progress" there. Sheesh.... As for the rest of it, it's a pretty unremarkable list and I can see problems with most of them, not to mention that I cannot see any of them leading to any degree of success. The one thing that I found most interesting is that some of his recommendations basically suggest that we retreat to bunkers in Iraq and stay hunkered down (the accelerated draw-down of U.S. bases, drawing down Coalition forces, providing security only for those provinces and cities that actively cooperate, withdrawing forces from vulnerable position, beginning modest withdrawals, and moving the forces to Quick Reaction Force status (gee, just like Murtha recommended), etc.) The other interesting thing I found was this one: "Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) go minimalist." In short, Rumsfeld is effectively taking the first step toward "cutting and running," aka "declaring victory and getting out." Posted by: PaulB on December 2, 2006 at 7:34 PM | PERMALINKgregor wrote: "Sadly for all of us, he does not adequatley describe the tone of voice and the contortions in the facial terrain that George Bush should have when he tells Assad and Ahmedinezad to stop it." Yup, McCain was similarly lacking in details when he proposed the same solution. I wonder if anyone will call either of them on it? Posted by: PaulB on December 2, 2006 at 7:36 PM | PERMALINKIt would be interesting, perhaps, to compare the statements in the memo with Rumsfeld's public statements in the month before the election. Posted by: James E. Powell on December 2, 2006 at 7:45 PM | PERMALINKIf we withdraw and lose control over Saddam before he's executed, who knows what might happen? Posted by: cld on December 2, 2006 at 7:48 PM | PERMALINKI see that Al is still in denial. To be expected, I guess. Lock-step loyalty to BushCo is alive and well. How, exactly, are things going well in Iraq, Al? Oh, right. A Centcom briefing. From an obedient serving officer saying what he's been told to say. Oh fuck it. What's the point? Posted by: DNS on December 2, 2006 at 7:54 PM | PERMALINKAs they say, "When you are up to your ass in alligators...." Posted by: Keith G on December 2, 2006 at 7:56 PM | PERMALINKRearranging slightly: Move a large fraction of all U.S. Forces into Baghdad to attempt to control it. concentrating on Baghdad, Increase Brigade Combat Teams and U.S. forces in Iraq substantially. Increasing the number of troops, Set a firm withdrawal date to leave. Declare that with Saddam gone and Iraq a sovereign nation, the Iraqi people can govern themselves. Tell Iran and Syria to stay out. withdrawing, Assist in accelerating an aggressive federalism plan, moving towards three separate states Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. splitting Iraq into three mini-states Try a Dayton-like process. Donald Rumsfeld isn't so far off from the ideas KD listed, except negotiating with Syria and Iran, which might or might not fall under "Dayton-like". I myself think that negotiating with Syria and Iran is a fine idea as long as the U.S. doesn't wait for any agreements that we can't enforce. An agreement like "Syria and Iran will stop interfering as soons as all American troops are gone" is something we can't enforce, and so is worthless. Donald Rumsfeld: "Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough." Surely that is not an admission of defeat; "not well enough" is not equivalent to "not well". Thanks to Al for this, which I almost posted yesterday: "Iraqi officers will soon command all four Iraqi Army divisions operating in northern Iraq, a senior U.S. officer said Friday. The test will be in how well they do. The Iraqi army has been reported to do well some of the time, and not so well other times, and sometimes to alternate between brutality and ineffectiveness. Posted by: MatthewRMarler on December 2, 2006 at 8:01 PM | PERMALINKUCLA 13 USC 9 I hate people like the UCLA coach who thank God for sports victories. Posted by: klyde on December 2, 2006 at 8:01 PM | PERMALINKAl is going to get cancer of the rectum from blowing all that smoke out his ass. Posted by: angryspittle on December 2, 2006 at 8:07 PM | PERMALINKklyde - So right. I dunno. Haven't read the article yet but maybe this memo was the final straw. Rummie wasn't on board to a sufficient degree and just had to go. In short: Rummie went wobblie. Sad too. Musta wrecked Dick's day. Posted by: p\ on December 2, 2006 at 8:10 PM | PERMALINKSeperate Iraq into three states? Won't that invite Turkish intervention in the north? Posted by: Ghost of Tom Joad on December 2, 2006 at 8:11 PM | PERMALINKRumsfeld changed his mind two days before being fired?? I mean, what we're the chances?? What a coinkidink! "A good cellmate would have been Manuel Noriega" A very good cellmate would be George Walker Bush. Sort of a Mano on Mano moment. Posted by: thethirdPaul on December 2, 2006 at 8:36 PM | PERMALINKThis memo brings to mind some other well-timed memos, like Ken Lay's memo on how to prevent massive corporate fraud (written just two days before he was arrested). Or like the Pope's memo on reconcilling the animosity between Christendom and the Muslim world (written just two days, mind you, before he called Islam a religion of hate). Or even Ted Haggard's memo on fidelity, sobriety and honesty (written just two days, can you believe just two days before getting caught buying sex and drugs from a male prostitute). What's disappointing is that the memo - and all of the plans floating around - has nothing there about moving more troops to Kurdistan. If we do scale down efforts in Iraq in general, the least we could do is make sure the Kurdish areas are well provided for with support in case the arabs start to cause trouble over Kirkuk or something. And if we are moving troops right now (whether to Kuwait or to "large bases" within Iraq) couldn't they just as well go to Kurdistan? Posted by: cecce on December 2, 2006 at 8:49 PM | PERMALINKmatt r marler ... the ideas you re-worded are listed by rummy as the less attractive options. the snark by kevin still stands ... as the pre-eminent civilian chickenhawk neocon, rummy's assessments and priorities probably accurately reflect those of bush/cheney. Posted by: Nads on December 2, 2006 at 8:54 PM | PERMALINKIf we do scale down efforts in Iraq in general, the least we could do is make sure the Kurdish areas are well provided for with support in case the arabs start to cause trouble over Kirkuk or something. after all, cecce, it's the least we could do after selling saddam the weapons he used to kill all those kurds. Posted by: Nads on December 2, 2006 at 8:57 PM | PERMALINKklyde: I hate people like the UCLA coach who thank God for sports victories. I sympathize -- it's hard to take seriously the belief that God cares about sports outcomes. But religious athletes pray to do their best, so it is natural for them to feel grateful. Besides, do you feel better toward people who feel no gratitude at all for good things that come to them? Posted by: MatthewRMarler on December 2, 2006 at 8:58 PM | PERMALINKIf we withdraw from Iraq soon, we must make sure to do three things: 1) As we rotate forces out of Iraq, we must rotate them into Afghanistan. We should make the point that we are not retreating from the jihadists, but that the greatest threat no longer lies in Iraq, but Afghanistan. We are not withdrawing from the War on Terror as a whole, but shifting our forces to match a shift in our enemy's center of gravity. We must send a message to the Muslim world that our withdraw from Iraq is not a retreat. And we must confront Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, as they are a real and growing enemy. Finally, a confrontation in Afghanistan may continue the one positive effect of the Iraq War: that it prevents many jihadists from attacking the U.S. by putting their homeland in danger and thus drawing them away from the U.S. As Scipio Africanus drew Hannibal away from Rome by attacking Carthage, we must draw Al Qaeda away from the U.S. by attacking them in Afghanistan. 2) We must have a post-Reconstruction strategy for Iraq. After the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union rearmed many of the Communist forces attempting to overthrow South Vietnam, but the U.S. Congress voted to cut off all aid to the South Vietnamese. There was no strategy concerning how to deal with South Vietnam after U.S. troops were gone from that country. That is why it fell, or at least why it fell as quickly as it did. We must send a message to the Iraqi people that we will provide their government with economic, diplomatic, and intelligence assistance if they reciprocate by holding the government together to the point that the Iraqi government can work in cooperation with U.S. intelligence services to prevent Al Qaeda and other radical Islamists from establishing havens in the area. The incentives of diplomatic and economic aid, substantial diplomatic and economic aid, just may give at least some Iraqis reason to support national unity in Iraq. This may not be total, but it may make a vital difference in the stability of the Middle East. 3) We must work with the other powers in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, to ensure that U.S. withdraw in Iraq does not upset the balance of power in the region. If Iran wishes to turn Iraq into a satellite state, than the Sunni nations may have to be assisted in forming an effort to balance out Iran and achieve an equilibrium of power in the region. Posted by: brian on December 2, 2006 at 9:02 PM | PERMALINKEver notice how with time, Al sounds more and more like Baghdad Bob? Posted by: Keith G on December 2, 2006 at 9:02 PM | PERMALINKI just find selective sympathy for whomever the current "good arabs" are supposed to be somewhat tiresome. Posted by: Nads on December 2, 2006 at 9:05 PM | PERMALINKRumsfeld is seeking some distance between himself and Bush. Bush is a pariah. Posted by: Balzac on December 2, 2006 at 9:12 PM | PERMALINKOIC. Except, Kurds are not arabs. So I guess not. Posted by: cecce on December 2, 2006 at 9:14 PM | PERMALINKthat probably makes it easier for you, cecce. Posted by: Nads on December 2, 2006 at 9:20 PM | PERMALINKhttp://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HK21Ak01.html A little off topic (but has something to do with getting a bit more compliance out of the Persians) but pretty cool. From Asia Times: Jihadis and whores Wars are won by destroying the enemy's will to fight. A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women. The French sold their women to the German occupiers in 1940, and the Germans and Japanese sold their women to the Americans after World War II. The women of the former Soviet Union are still selling themselves in huge numbers. Hundreds of thousands of female Ukrainian "tourists" entered Germany after the then-foreign minister Joschka Fischer loosened visa standards
To understand Iranian politics, cherchez les femmes: the fate of Iranian women sheds light on the eccentricity of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. By Spengler's Universal Law of Gender Parity, the men and women of every place and every time deserve each other. A corollary to this universal law states that the battered Iranian whore is the alter ego of the swaggering Iranian jihadi. In the interest of balanced reporting, I cite the history of Jewish prostitution before delving into the Persian example. The Jews have lived long enough to be defeated more often than any other people. After Spain expelled them in 1492, the Jews sold their women so widely that the character of the Jewish prostitute figured prominently in 16th-century literature, notably in one of the earliest novels, La Lozana Andaluza (1528), a story of refugee Spanish-Jewish whores in Rome. After Russian pogroms drove Jews out of the Pale of Settlement in the late 19th century, Jewish women became the raw material of the white-slave traffic, supplying Argentina as well as Western Europe. [1] Jewish prostitutes are almost unknown today, a measure of the revival of the Jewish nation. These distasteful facts bear directly upon Iran's national decline, and the impulses that push the Iranian leadership toward strategic flight forward. Iran's plunging birth rate, I observed in essays past, will burden the country with an elderly population proportionately as large as Western Europe's within a generation, just at the point at which this impoverished country will have ceased to export oil. By 2030, Iranian society will collapse. One does not have to destroy an opponent's military forces to defeat him. Russia collapsed without a single shot fired when Mikhail Gorbachev and his generals understood that they could not compete with Ronald Reagan's United States. The Islamic world also has been defeated, by a globalized economy in which the US dominates the top, and China blocks entry at the bottom. As the most urbane people of Western Asia, the Persians grasped the hopelessness of circumstances quicker than their Arab neighbors. That is why they have ceased to bear children. Iran's population today is concentrated at military age; by mid-century, today's soldiers will be pensioners, and there will be no one to replace them. That is why it is folly to approach Iran as a prospective negotiating partner, and meaningless to offer the clerical government security guarantees, for the threat to its security arises from within. Once a people has determined to extinguish itself, nothing will prevent it from doing so. There is no doubt as to the demographic data, which come from the demographers of the United Nations. But it is one thing to read the statistics, and quite another to consider the millions of intimate decisions that together sum up to national suicide. What is it that persuades women to employ their bodies as an instrument of commerce, rather than as a way of achieving motherhood? It is not just poverty, for poor women bear children everywhere. In the case of Iran, deracination and cultural despair impel millions of individual women to eschew motherhood. Prostitution is a form of psychic suicide; writ large, it is a manifestation of the national death-wish, the hideous recognition that the world no longer requires Ukrainians or Moldovans. Iranians already behave like a defeated people. That is why they are so unstable, and so dangerous. The new Persian Empire masquerading as an Islamic Republic is a wounded beast. The rural misery and urban squalor that drive Iranian women into the brothels of Dubai and Brussels contrasts sharply with neighboring Azerbaijan, whose economy will double in size by 2010 as new oilfields come online, according to the CIA World Factbook. Half of Iranians do not speak Persian, and half of those speak Azeri. Azerbaijan's oil wealth is a giant magnet; it must attract either the largest national minority in Iran, or the military attentions of Iran itself. If a Kurdish state asserts itself out of the ruins of Iraq - a long-delayed justice for that ancient and resilient people - Iran's Kurds will be tempted to throw off the Persian yoke. The proliferation of Iranian prostitutes in Western Europe as well as the Arab world helps explain the country's population trends. The European Commission's most comprehensive surveys of human trafficking found that Iranian women made up 10-15% of the prostitutes working in Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy. [2] "Fatima" from Persia has become as familiar as "Natasha" from Belarus. Iranian whores long have been a scandal in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, which periodically round up and expel them. It is hard to obtain reliable data on prostitution inside Iran itself, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it has increased since Ahmadinejad became president last year. Anti-regime sociologists claim that at least 300,000 women are whoring in Tehran alone. The ADNKronos website reported on April 25: These numbers cannot be verified, to be sure, but the spillover of Iranian prostitutes into Western Europe and the Gulf states suggests that the actual numbers must be very large indeed, so large, in fact, as to help explain the frightful rate of Iran's demographic decline. Along with Albanian, Chechen and Bosnian women, Iranian prostitutes are living evidence of the dissolution of the traditional Muslim society that purports to shield women from degradation. Islamism (or what George W Bush has called "Islamo-fascism") responds to the crisis of faith. As I wrote on November 8, 2005: The collapse of traditional society has brought about a collapse of birth rates across cultures. Cultures that fail to reproduce themselves by definition are failed cultures, for the simple reason that they will cease to exist before many generations have passed. That is why the Islamists - Muslims who seek a new theocracy - display a sense of extreme urgency. They are not conservative Muslims, for they reject Muslim society as it exists as corrupt and decadent. They are revolutionaries who want to create a new kind of totalitarian theocracy that orders every detail of human life. [3] Note that it says "will collapse in 2030". A bit optimistic to assume this will really improve things today. I did read somewhere recently, though, that Iranian oil production was declining rapidly and they were soon out of energy. Posted by: cecce on December 2, 2006 at 9:25 PM | PERMALINKA pointer to Rummy's memo will appear at Wikipedia under "Too Little, Too Late." Posted by: Hedley Lamarr on December 2, 2006 at 9:25 PM | PERMALINKErm, not quite "out of" but getting there: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_50/b4013058.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily Within a decade, says Saad Rahim, an analyst at Washington consultancy PFC Energy, "Iran's net crude exports could fall to zero." As Borat would say: niiiiice! Posted by: cecce on December 2, 2006 at 9:27 PM | PERMALINKSo we got into a war for politics, fucked it up because of politics, can't change course because of politics, will leave because of politics, and will learn exactly the wrong lesson from the whole affair due to politics. Then we'll do it all over again in a few years. Or am I missing something? Posted by: enozinho (wetorture.com) on December 2, 2006 at 9:31 PM | PERMALINKActually, Nads, what ought to make it "easier" (as you say) to support helping the Kurds is that they have been with us from day 1. In keeping with the idea in this memo to "reward good behavior" it's generally good to support your friends, rather than your enemies, and to support those who support you. Posted by: cecce on December 2, 2006 at 9:32 PM | PERMALINKOK, completely off topic, but WOW! U.K. Home Secretary John Reid said yesterday five planes were examined, including two British Airways Plc airliners in which an unspecified radioactive substance was found. One was later cleared, the airline said in a statement posted on its Web site. A third BA plane, which was grounded in Moscow, was to be tested on its return to the U.K., the airline said. The two planes still being investigated, including the one in Moscow, were used on 150 flights, 34 to or from Moscow. BA yesterday was trying to contact 33,000 passengers and 3,000 staff members. Scientists at the U.K.'s Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, west of London, have traced the polonium 210 found in London to a nuclear power plant in Russia, the capital's Evening Standard newspaper reported today. Officials at the establishment didn't return calls. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=alIVN4QzXTws&refer=uk Posted by: cecce on December 2, 2006 at 9:38 PM | PERMALINKMatthewRMarler wrote: "Donald Rumsfeld isn't so far off from the ideas KD listed" Matthew, those were the ideas that Rumsfeld didn't want to do, not the ones he did. Posted by: PaulB on December 2, 2006 at 9:39 PM | PERMALINKSounds like one of Rummy's famous C.Y.A. memos to me - designed to allow future apologists (cough, cough Friedman....) to say Rummy could have won it except for interference from that idiot Bush and evil San Francisco liberals like Deadeye Dick Cheney. Posted by: RepubAnon on December 2, 2006 at 9:52 PM | PERMALINKIn keeping with the idea in this memo to "reward good behavior" it's generally good to support your friends, rather than your enemies, and to support those who support you. of course ... just as we turned a blind eye to saddam's atrocities while he was our friend ... until it became politically expedient for us to switch our support. I'm not sure why I'm trying to educate someone who earlier was so mesmerized by the ramblings of worthless canadian high school dropout steyn. some people are beyond help. Posted by: Nads on December 2, 2006 at 9:55 PM | PERMALINK(snort). Nads is "trying to educate someone" - a moment ago he thought that Kurds are Arabs and Arabs are Kurds. He must have taken some super-duper correspondence course between 9:05 and 9:55. Posted by: lick on December 2, 2006 at 10:03 PM | PERMALINK"lick": You sure that "Asian Times" piece you just dumped here wasn't a Mark Steyn editorial? :) Bob Posted by: rmck1 on December 2, 2006 at 10:37 PM | PERMALINKKevin Drum - what a snide, snarky way to end your post. Posted by: We got to move these refrigerators on December 2, 2006 at 10:41 PM | PERMALINKA brief reminder that - no matter what - Jimmy Carter is STILL our worst president ever. The World According to Carter In fact, Palestinian-Arab terrorism is virtually missing from Mr. Carter's entire historical account, which blames nearly everything on Israel and almost nothing on the Palestinians. Incredibly, he asserts that the initial violence in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict occurred when "Jewish militants" attacked Arabs in 1939. The long history of Palestinian terrorism against Jews which began in 1929, when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem ordered the slaughter of more than 100 rabbis, students, and non-Zionist Sephardim whose families had lived in Hebron and other ancient Jewish cities for millennia was motivated by religious bigotry. The Jews responded to this racist violence by establishing a defense force. There is no mention of the long history of Palestinian terrorism before the occupation, or of the Munich massacre and others inspired byYasser Arafat. There is not even a reference to the Karine A, the boatful of terrorist weapons ordered by Arafat in January 2002. Mr. Carter's book is so filled with simple mistakes of fact and deliberate omissions that were it a brief filed in a court of law, it would be struck and its author sanctioned for misleading the court. Mr. Carter too is guilty of misleading the court of public opinion. A mere listing of all of Mr. Carter's mistakes and omissions would fill a volume the size of his book. Here are just a few of the most egregious: Mr. Carter emphasizes that "Christian and Muslim Arabs had continued to live in this same land since Roman times," but he ignores the fact that Jews have lived in Hebron, Tzfat, Jerusalem, and other cities for even longer. Nor does he discuss the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries since 1948. Mr. Carter repeatedly claims that the Palestinian Arabs have long supported a two-state solution and the Israelis have always opposed it. Yet he makes no mention of the fact that in 1938 the Peel Commission proposed a two-state solution, with Israel receiving a mere sliver of its ancient homeland and the Palestinians receiving the bulk of the land. The Jews accepted and the Palestinians rejected this proposal because Arab leaders cared more about there being no Jewish state on Muslim holy land than about having a Palestinian state of their own. He barely mentions Israel's acceptance, and the Palestinian rejection, of the United Nation's division of the mandate in 1948. He claims that in 1967 Israel launched a preemptive attack against Jordan. The fact is that Jordan attacked Israel first, Israel tried desperately to persuade Jordan to remain out of the war, and Israel counterattacked after the Jordanian army surrounded Jerusalem, firing missiles into the center of the city. Only then did Israel capture the West Bank, which it was willing to return in exchange for peace and recognition from Jordan. Mr. Carter repeatedly mentions Security Council Resolution 242, which called for return of captured territories in exchange for peace, recognition, and secure boundaries, but he ignores that Israel accepted and all the Arab nations and the Palestinians rejected this resolution. The Arabs met in Khartum and issued their three famous "no's": "No peace, no recognition, no negotiation." But you wouldn't know that from reading the history according to Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter faults Israel for its "air strike that destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor" without mentioning that Iraq had threatened to attack Israel with nuclear weapons if Iraq succeeded in building a bomb. Mr. Carter faults Israel for its administration of Christian and Muslim religious sites, when in fact Israel is scrupulous about ensuring those of every religion the right to worship as they please consistent, of course, with security needs. He fails to mention that between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Hashemites destroyed and desecrated Jewish religious sites and prevented Jews from praying at the Western Wall. He also never mentions Egypt's brutal occupation of Gaza between 1949 and 1967. Mr. Carter blames Israel, and exonerates Arafat, for the Palestinian refusal to accept statehood on 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza pursuant to the Clinton-Barak offers at Camp David and Taba in 20002001. He accepts the Palestinian revisionist history, rejects the eyewitness accounts of President Clinton and Dennis Ross, and ignores Saudi Prince Bandar's accusation that Arafat's rejection of the proposal was "a crime" and that Arafat's account "was not truthful" except, apparently, to Mr. Carter. The fact that Mr. Carter chooses to believe Arafat over Mr. Clinton speaks volumes. Mr. Carter's description of the recent Lebanon war is misleading. He begins by asserting that Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers. "Captured" suggests a military apprehension subject to the usual prisoner of war status. The soldiers were kidnapped, and have not been heard from not even a sign of life. The rocket attacks that preceded Israel's invasion are largely ignored, as is the fact that Hezbollah fired its rockets from civilian population centers. Mr. Carter gives virtually no credit to Israel's superb legal system, falsely asserting (without any citation) that "confessions extracted through torture are admissible in Israeli courts," that prisoners are "executed,"and that the "accusers" act "as judges." Even Israel's most severe critics acknowledge the fairness of the Israeli Supreme Court, but not Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter even blames Israel for the "exodus of Christians from the Holy Land," totally ignoring the Islamization of the area by Hamas and the comparable exodus of Christian Arabs from Lebanon as a result of the increasing influence of Hezbollah and the repeated assassination of Christian leaders by Syria. Mr. Carter also blames every American administration but his own for the Mideast stalemate with particular emphasis on "a submissive White House and U.S. Congress in recent years." He employs hyperbole and overstatement when he says that "dialogue on controversial issues is a privilege to be extended only as a reward for subservient behavior and withheld from those who reject U.S. demands." He confuses terrorist states, such as Iran and Syria, to which we do not extend dialogue, with states with whom we strongly disagree, such as France and China, but with whom we have constant dialogue. And it's not just the facts; it's the tone as well. It's obvious that Mr. Carter just doesn't like Israel or Israelis. He lectured Golda Meir on Israeli's "secular" nature, warning her that "Israel was punished whenever its leaders turned away from devout worship of God." He admits that he did not like Menachem Begin. He has little good to say about any Israelis except those few who agree with him. But he apparently got along swimmingly with the very secular Syrian mass-murderer Hafez al-Assad. Mr. Carter and his wife Rosalynn also had a fine time with the equally secular Arafat a man who has the blood of hundreds of Americans and Israelis on his hands: Rosalynn and I met with Yasir Arafat in Gaza City, where he was staying with his wife, Suha, and their little daughter. The baby, dressed in a beautiful pink suit, came readily to sit on my lap, where I practiced the same wiles that had been successful with our children and grandchildren. A lot of photographs were taken, and then the photographers asked that Arafat hold his daughter for a while. When he took her, the child screamed loudly and reached out her hands to me, bringing jovial admonitions to the presidential candidate to stay at home enough to become acquainted with is own child. There is something quite disturbing about these pictures. "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" is so biased that it inevitably raises the question of what would motivate a decent man like Jimmy Carter to write such an indecent book. Whatever Mr. Carter's motives may be, his authorship of this ahistorical, one-sided, and simplistic brief against Israel forever disqualifies him from playing any positive role in fairly resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. That is a tragedy because the Carter Center, which has done much good in the world, could have been a force for peace if Jimmy Carter were as generous in spirit to the Israelis as he is to the Palestinians. Well, at least one of his recommendations was accepted by Shrub - Rumdumb said that if you wanted something, reward it and if you didn't want something, penalize it. Shrub must not have wanted anymore of him, so he penalized him. Posted by: thethirdPaul on December 2, 2006 at 10:59 PM | PERMALINKAl: "Since the current course is going so well, there's no need for widescale changes so we can simply stay the course. And Centcom agrees with me things are going well." And mommy said so! That's why I'm suiting up and going there tomorrow. Buh-bye! Posted by: Kenji on December 2, 2006 at 11:05 PM | PERMALINKis it common for the trolls to devolve into chimps hurling off-topic feces whenever one of their little neocon bitches gets fired? just asking. Posted by: Nads on December 2, 2006 at 11:11 PM | PERMALINKBy DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writer Analysts say the tug-of-war between the two Mideast powers signals a new chapter in an uneasy relationship, one that has swung over the years between wariness and at times outright confrontation. On the surface, both countries have maintained the civil front that has marked ties since a thaw in relations in the early 1990s. "But events on the ground indicate that the two countries are working against each other as their differences are played out outside their borders," said Ibrahim Bayram, a reporter for the Lebanese An-Nahar newspaper, who follows the country's pro-Iranian Hezbollah group. Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in the region, has been putting its economic and diplomatic weight behind groups in direct confrontation with factions backed by Iran in every major conflict zone in the region Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. The kingdom has also expressed concerns over Iran's nuclear program. The U.S. contends Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran denies. But Saudi Arabia has fears even about a peaceful nuclear program because of the possible environmental threat and the potential for conflict between Iran and U.S. troops stationed in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain. A Saudi official said Iran has sent messages expressing its desire to work with the kingdom to resolve the area's conflicts. But the official said Iran's actions speak louder than those messages, making Saudi Arabia cautious in dealing with Tehran. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The tense situation has also made the kingdom more determined to explore ways to find a settlement to Mideast upheavals on its own. Saudi Arabia has stepped up attempts to reconcile Iraq's fractious groups and has invited Iraqi leaders for talks, including anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Harith al-Dhari, head of Iraq's influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars. It has also been talking to Iraq's Sunnis to urge them to renounce violence and become more involved in the political process. Elsewhere, the kingdom is supporting the U.S.-backed Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, who is facing street protests organized by Hezbollah meant to topple the government. The Saudis are also backing beleaguered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is trying to work out a new unity government with the militant Hamas group, which is allied to Iran. The relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia has long been uneasy, especially after the 1979 Iranian revolution. Saudi Arabia sided with Baghdad in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, and Riyadh and Tehran were openly hostile at the height of the conflict. Iran frequently called on Muslims to overthrow the Saudi ruling family, seize its oil wealth and strip it of its role as guardian of Islamic holy places. Riyadh accused Tehran of trying to undermine its security and broke off relations in 1988. But distrust between the two countries eased after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death in 1989, and diplomatic relations were restored shortly after the 1991 Gulf War. Saudi analysts say Iran is now trying to wrest the traditional leadership role Riyadh has played in the region. But Saudi Arabia will "not allow Iran to expand at its expense as a big regional power," said Dawood al-Shirian, a Saudi journalist. "Iran is acting as a Persian state and not as an Islamic state," he said. "The conflict in the region is not a Sunni-Shiite conflict. It's a Persian-Arab conflict." The view from Iran is different, said Mashaallah Shamsolvaezin, an adviser to the Middle East Strategic Studies Center in Tehran, which is closely affiliated with the Iranian Foreign Ministry. He said a change in Iranian foreign policy to focus on improving economic and political ties with Middle Eastern countries instead of Europe has prompted the Saudi fears. He said the political shift is not coming at the expense of traditional powers like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. He blamed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "radical" rhetoric for Tehran's failure to send a reassuring message about its policy shifts. "His statements not only have not helped. They have hurt Iran's strategic policies," he said. Oh great, Nads, toilet humor. Just what we needed. Posted by: thethirdPaul on December 2, 2006 at 11:37 PM | PERMALINKThe Saddam in Rumsfelds Closet Five years before Saddam Husseins now infamous 1988 gassing of the Kurds, a key meeting took place in Baghdad that would play a significant role in forging close ties between Saddam Hussein and Washington. It happened at a time when Saddam was first alleged to have used chemical weapons. The meeting in late December 1983 paved the way for an official restoration of relations between Iraq and the US, which had been severed since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. With the Iran-Iraq war escalating, President Ronald Reagan dispatched his Middle East envoy, a former secretary of defense, to Baghdad with a hand-written letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and a message that Washington was willing at any moment to resume diplomatic relations. That envoy was Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfelds December 19-20, 1983 visit to Baghdad made him the highest-ranking US official to visit Iraq in 6 years. He met Saddam and the two discussed topics of mutual interest, according to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. [Saddam] made it clear that Iraq was not interested in making mischief in the world, Rumsfeld later told The New York Times. It struck us as useful to have a relationship, given that we were interested in solving the Mideast problems. Just 12 days after the meeting, on January 1, 1984, The Washington Post reported that the United States in a shift in policy, has informed friendly Persian Gulf nations that the defeat of Iraq in the 3-year-old war with Iran would be contrary to U.S. interests and has made several moves to prevent that result. In March of 1984, with the Iran-Iraq war growing more brutal by the day, Rumsfeld was back in Baghdad for meetings with then-Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. On the day of his visit, March 24th, UPI reported from the United Nations: Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers in the 43-month Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, a team of U.N. experts has concluded... Meanwhile, in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, U.S. presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld held talks with Foreign Minister Tarek Aziz (sic) on the Gulf war before leaving for an unspecified destination. The day before, the Iranian news agency alleged that Iraq launched another chemical weapons assault on the southern battlefront, injuring 600 Iranian soldiers. Chemical weapons in the form of aerial bombs have been used in the areas inspected in Iran by the specialists, the U.N. report said. The types of chemical agents used were bis-(2-chlorethyl)-sulfide, also known as mustard gas, and ethyl N, N-dimethylphosphoroamidocyanidate, a nerve agent known as Tabun. Prior to the release of the UN report, the US State Department on March 5th had issued a statement saying available evidence indicates that Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons. Commenting on the UN report, US Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick was quoted by The New York Times as saying, We think that the use of chemical weapons is a very serious matter. We've made that clear in general and particular. Compared with the rhetoric emanating from the current administration, based on speculations about what Saddam might have, Kirkpatricks reaction was hardly a call to action. Most glaring is that Donald Rumsfeld was in Iraq as the 1984 UN report was issued and said nothing about the allegations of chemical weapons use, despite State Department evidence. On the contrary, The New York Times reported from Baghdad on March 29, 1984, American diplomats pronounce themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the United States and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name. A month and a half later, in May 1984, Donald Rumsfeld resigned. In November of that year, full diplomatic relations between Iraq and the US were fully restored. Two years later, in an article about Rumsfelds aspirations to run for the 1988 Republican Presidential nomination, the Chicago Tribune Magazine listed among Rumsfelds achievements helping to reopen U.S. relations with Iraq. The Tribune failed to mention that this help came at a time when, according to the US State Department, Iraq was actively using chemical weapons. Throughout the period that Rumsfeld was Reagans Middle East envoy, Iraq was frantically purchasing hardware from American firms, empowered by the White House to sell. The buying frenzy began immediately after Iraq was removed from the list of alleged sponsors of terrorism in 1982. According to a February 13, 1991 Los Angeles Times article: First on Hussein's shopping list was helicopters -- he bought 60 Hughes helicopters and trainers with little notice. However, a second order of 10 twin-engine Bell "Huey" helicopters, like those used to carry combat troops in Vietnam, prompted congressional opposition in August, 1983... Nonetheless, the sale was approved. In 1984, according to The LA Times, the State Departmentin the name of increased American penetration of the extremely competitive civilian aircraft marketpushed through the sale of 45 Bell 214ST helicopters to Iraq. The helicopters, worth some $200 million, were originally designed for military purposes. The New York Times later reported that Saddam transferred many, if not all [of these helicopters] to his military. In 1988, Saddams forces attacked Kurdish civilians with poisonous gas from Iraqi helicopters and planes. U.S. intelligence sources told The LA Times in 1991, they believe that the American-built helicopters were among those dropping the deadly bombs. In response to the gassing, sweeping sanctions were unanimously passed by the US Senate that would have denied Iraq access to most US technology. The measure was killed by the White House. Senior officials later told reporters they did not press for punishment of Iraq at the time because they wanted to shore up Iraq's ability to pursue the war with Iran. Extensive research uncovered no public statements by Donald Rumsfeld publicly expressing even remote concern about Iraqs use or possession of chemical weapons until the week Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, when he appeared on an ABC news special. Eight years later, Donald Rumsfeld signed on to an open letter to President Clinton, calling on him to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam. It urged Clinton to provide the leadership necessary to save ourselves and the world from the scourge of Saddam and the weapons of mass destruction that he refuses to relinquish. In 1984, Donald Rumsfeld was in a position to draw the worlds attention to Saddams chemical threat. He was in Baghdad as the UN concluded that chemical weapons had been used against Iran. He was armed with a fresh communication from the State Department that it had available evidence Iraq was using chemical weapons. But Rumsfeld said nothing. Washington now speaks of Saddams threat and the consequences of a failure to act. Despite the fact that the administration has failed to provide even a shred of concrete proof that Iraq has links to Al Qaeda or has resumed production of chemical or biological agents, Rumsfeld insists that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But there is evidence of the absence of Donald Rumsfelds voice at the very moment when Iraqs alleged threat to international security first emerged. And in this case, the evidence of absence is indeed evidence. Posted by: cecce on December 2, 2006 at 11:40 PM | PERMALINKrcmk1, Bob, no that long editorial was by Spengler - Check out the Asia Times - Spengler writes long essays on political subjects - He wants the US to take out Iran. Posted by: thethirdPaul on December 2, 2006 at 11:41 PM | PERMALINKSmells like desperation around here. Charlie is working his ass off, and it looks like he's been getting some help in fucking up the threads. We've seen heavy impersonation, all kinds of bullshit. Is it time to go to backchannel comms and stay organized? If there's anyone who needs a free e-mail account so they can exchange info with regulars, I think hotmail works pretty good these days for getting one. Shoot, move, communicate. Posted by: Pale Rider on December 2, 2006 at 11:47 PM | PERMALINKSorry for polluting the forum with my nonsense earlier. I just read this article in the Nation, and it completely changed my perspective. Clearly, Rumsfeld and the rest of the PNAC are war criminals. In April of 2003, The Nation called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation as Secretary of Defense. "The indictment has many counts," we wrote, "from misrepresenting the threat posed by Iraq, to the miscalculation of human and financial costs, to the shredding of international relationships." More than three years later, this judgement was met with mainstream consensus and national cheers as last week's election results finally forced President Bush to show Rumsfeld the door. Now, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is working to hold Rumsfeld accountable for being a central instigator of an illegal war. The legal group's President and co-founder Michael Ratner yesterday filed a criminal complaint in Berlin asking the German Federal Prosecutor to open an investigation and, ultimately, a criminal prosecution that will look into the responsibility of high-ranking US officials--starting with Rumsfeld--for authorizing war crimes in the context of the "War on Terror." The complaint was filed on behalf of 12 current and past US-held captives at Abu Ghraib prison and Guantnamo detention center, and argues that the Bush administration authorized policies and interrogation techniques that led to their torture. The Bush Administration has refused to seriously investigate the abuses that have taken place under Rumsfeld's command, so CCR has had to go to Germany to do it. Why Germany? The complaint is being filed under the Code of Crimes against International Law, enacted by Germany in compliance with the Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court in 2002, which Germany ratified. The CCIL provides for "universal jurisdiction" for war crimes, crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity. It enables the German Federal Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute crimes constituting a violation of the CCIL, irrespective of the location of the defendant or plaintiff, the place where the crime was carried out, or the nationality of the persons involved. The German Prosecutor has discretion to decide whether to initiate an investigation. CCR is urging people to write to her so she knows that people around the world support this effort. Please urge the German Prosecutor to open an investigation into this case. CCR has a good letter you can send along with contact info. (Note that all letters are in both German and English with German appearing first.) Needless to say, even a conviction wouldn't put Rummy in the docks. But it would send an important signal to the world that war crimes will not be ignored. It could also crimp Rumsfeld's travel plans! The more of us who write to the German Federal Prosecutor, the more likely she is to open an investigation. Posted by: lick on December 2, 2006 at 11:50 PM | PERMALINK"lick" Quit spamming the thread please. What are you? Some kind of reverse concern troll with a penchant for buggery? Posted by: Pale Rider on December 2, 2006 at 11:52 PM | PERMALINKYeah, great ideas, Pale Rider. Let's go to bachchannel comms. Let's synchronize our watches, too. This is going to be too much fun, almost like camp. Who knew being a poster on a leftie message board could be this exciting? Posted by: nok on December 2, 2006 at 11:54 PM | PERMALINKHave any good Playboy articles? Or the Saskatoon Gazette? Mother Jones? Catholic Times? The Austrian Gross Glockner Gittle? Bring 'em on. Baited breath awaits. Posted by: thethirdPaul on December 2, 2006 at 11:58 PM | PERMALINKDon't bait your breath too much, 3Paul. It's bad enough as it is... Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 12:01 AM | PERMALINKPerhaps Charlie/DonP/Alice/Jeffery/Spooko, et alia could post a week's worth of the Congressional Record from 1957. Or tell us about Hog Futures? Posted by: stupid git on December 3, 2006 at 12:03 AM | PERMALINKIs it time to go to backchannel comms and stay organized? If there's anyone who needs a free e-mail account so they can exchange info with regulars, I think hotmail works pretty good these days for getting one. Shoot, move, communicate. That's AWESOME, Pale Rider. Thanks for posting that. Wow. Shoot, move, communicate. That is really cool. Not as cool as eats, shoots, and leaves, but pretty cool nonetheless. Posted by: cecce on December 3, 2006 at 12:06 AM | PERMALINKMommy I made poopee!!! Ironically, I was using the ... facilities when this was posted, and did, in fact, make a poopee. Too funny! Posted by: Nads on December 3, 2006 at 12:09 AM | PERMALINK"If we withdraw and lose control over Saddam before he's executed, who knows what might happen?" This is a fascinating point which helps explain the stubbornness to leave as well as anything else. Could it really be true that our main reason for going into Iraq was to "get" Saddam? Or is it that there were many reasons for going and this is just the one reason for not leaving "too soon"?
very interesting stuff! It might relate to the Vietnam war in a curious way: our involvement on one side of a 'country of interest' to direct it's attention away from something going on in the other direction may have distracted China away from fighting a nuclear war with the Soviets and our involvement on the West of Iran may distract it's attention from the growing importance of Azerbaijan. But, are American politicians even capable of such machinations? It doesn't seem likely. More likely we're in Iraq to get Saddam, make gobs of money through no-bid contracts and to make the Israelis happy. Don't disregard the obvious simple answer just because the more interesting complicated answer is there. Sometimes truth is simple and obvious. Yea sure MarkH, but let's keep our eye on the ball here. When Iran is well and truly vanquished (even more beaten than today), we'll get lots of Persian whores! How cool is that? Posted by: lick on December 3, 2006 at 12:12 AM | PERMALINK"lots of Persian whores" Oh yeah, I remember when the Shah's people came over - They all became Publicans. Yeah, that was very cool. Posted by: thethirdPaul on December 3, 2006 at 12:17 AM | PERMALINKWell, hopefully they won't come over here. We gotta have some standards. But look on the bright side: Amsterdam is just a quick flight away. Posted by: lick on December 3, 2006 at 12:19 AM | PERMALINKdespite the whores in Full Metal jacket, we still lost vietnam ... I question spengler's premise. Posted by: Nads on December 3, 2006 at 12:20 AM | PERMALINKPR, Doesn't feces say the coolest things? Posted by: thethirdPaul on December 3, 2006 at 12:21 AM | PERMALINKThe guy who just posted under my handle at 12:21 is an imposter. I would never suggest you're a shit, Pale Rider. Posted by: thethirdPaul on December 3, 2006 at 12:25 AM | PERMALINKWell, they sure didn't do me a whole lot of good. I mean all I was able to do was snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But, they'll always be remembered. Posted by: Fightin' Joe Hooker on December 3, 2006 at 12:26 AM | PERMALINK"Islamist radicals (like the penny-a-marriage mullahs of Iran) are the world's most prolific pimps. The same networks that move female flesh across borders also provide illegal passage for jihadis, and the proceeds of human trafficking often support Islamist terrorists." Is that really true? Seems I read somewhere that these were separate networks. Posted by: Sparko on December 3, 2006 at 12:29 AM | PERMALINK"These distasteful facts bear directly upon Iran's national decline, and the impulses that push the Iranian leadership toward strategic flight forward. Iran's plunging birth rate, I observed in essays past, will burden the country with an elderly population proportionately as large as Western Europe's within a generation, just at the point at which this impoverished country will have ceased to export oil." - I call bullshit. Iran is a developing country. Their population has gotta be growing quickly, with sky-high fertility rates. Posted by: Zendry on December 3, 2006 at 12:34 AM | PERMALINKPosting under someone else's name and using their e-mail address is a very lame and infantile practice. The 12:25 post was not by 3Paul - You've done it to Global, PR, PaulB, rcmk1 and now you've done it at least 4 times, 2 on the House of Saud thread to that of thethirdPaul. Get a life DonP, or whom ever or what ever you are - If you can't prevail on your own merits, don't try to steal from others you twisted perverted fuck. Besides if you are going to post as 3Paul, try not to be so erudite as he is such a much simpler folk. Posted by: stupid git on December 3, 2006 at 12:35 AM | PERMALINKActually, the Iranian fertility rate has cratered and is already below replacement level. And the Persian population has had sub-replacement level fertility rates for a long time. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 12:39 AM | PERMALINKPale Rider, too. If you're going to post under his handle, you should affect near-retardation. That's the only way to fool'um, y'see. He's That Stupid. Posted by: stupid git on December 3, 2006 at 12:41 AM | PERMALINKNads, Oh, and I see the slime hit you as well. Gutless little tripe, is it not? Posted by: thethirdPaul on December 3, 2006 at 12:42 AM | PERMALINKthe preceeding little shithead is right ... the 1209 one really is me. Posted by: Nads on December 3, 2006 at 12:48 AM | PERMALINKWe can all speculate until the cows come home, but if we mentally eliminate Americans from the Iraq picture we might conclude that the Sunni/al Qaeda forces are not going to over-run Shia neighborhoods because they don't have the manpower to do it. They've got about enough true fighting people to do what they have been doing, which is to put out the occasional IED and send suicide bombers in cars. Thrown in a dozen snipers and that's about it. The various Shiite militias do have lots of manpower and lots of weapons, but no apparent adult supervision. Syria and Iran have been keeping the Iraq mess going, but of the two Iran is much, much the stronger, even before you consider Iran is going to be a regional nuclear power. In fact, even if Syria has all kinds of Saudi promises of aid and support, Syria seems to be pushing its luck in provoking Lebanon to a new civil war. Israel will not allow all of Lebanon to become greater Syria, period. The New York Times will undoubtedly try like hell to blame the Maronite Christian Lebanese for resisting local Islamo-fascism, but the Maronites I have met are very smart, relatively wealthy, and not into putting on kid gloves before going to war. Posted by: mike cook on December 3, 2006 at 12:52 AM | PERMALINKThe two preceding posts are NOT by me. Same piece of shit that has been stealing our handles all night long. Go fuck yourself! And the 12:09 is definitely not me. Nads. This is really Nads. Posted by: Nads on December 3, 2006 at 12:53 AM | PERMALINK"We can all speculate until the cows come home, but if we mentally eliminate Americans from the Iraq picture we might conclude that the Sunni/al Qaeda forces are not going to over-run Shia neighborhoods because they don't have the manpower to do it." They had enough manpower, though, to run the country for x decades, right? Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 12:55 AM | PERMALINKNow we know why Rumsfeld got canned. Posted by: FreakyBeaky on December 3, 2006 at 12:58 AM | PERMALINKMike Cook - "Syria and Iran have been keeping the Iraq mess going, but of the two Iran is much, much the stronger, even before you consider Iran is going to be a regional nuclear power." That's why we need to fuck Iran up much more severely than we have as of yet. That might be the solution to some of the Iraq problem as well (at least by keeping them occupied at home). One way to do it: get some of their ethnic groups to ceceede. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 1:01 AM | PERMALINKOh, and BTW, above where is says: "I just find selective sympathy for whomever the current "good arabs" are supposed to be somewhat tiresome" under my handle, that wasn't me either. I think it was Don P trying to make me look stupid by creating the appearance that I don't know Kurds from Arabs. Of course I would never write something that dumb. This was an imposter, too. Posted by: Nads on December 3, 2006 at 1:10 AM | PERMALINKAmnesty slams Israel 'war crimes' The rights group's report for 2004 says Israeli forces have killed some 700 Palestinians - including 150 children - mostly in unlawful circumstances. The report lists "reckless shooting, shelling and air strikes in civilian areas... and excessive use of force". It also condemns the killing of Israeli civilians by Palestinian militants and violence by Jewish settlers. "Certain abuses committed by the Israeli army constituted crimes against humanity and war crimes," Amnesty's report says. Posted by: lick on December 3, 2006 at 1:18 AM | PERMALINKDear G-d, the president is such a pussy. Teen Questioned for Online Bush Threats SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Upset by the war in Iraq, Julia Wilson vented her frustrations with President Bush last spring on her Web page on MySpace.com. She posted a picture of the president, scrawled "Kill Bush" across the top and drew a dagger stabbing his outstretched hand. She later replaced her page on the social-networking site after learning in her eighth-grade history class that such threats are a federal offense. It was too late. Federal authorities had found the page and placed Wilson on their checklist. They finally reached her this week in her molecular biology class. The 14-year-old freshman was taken out of class Wednesday and questioned for about 15 minutes by two Secret Service agents. The incident has upset her parents, who said the agents should have included them when they questioned their daughter. On Friday, the teenager said the agents' questioning led her to tears. Posted by: nina on December 3, 2006 at 1:37 AM | PERMALINK"More and More Like A Civil War"
Perhaps it's not altogether surprising that so many of us* never realized how incompetent Rumsfeld was until he took his leave. *For sufficiently clueless values of us, it should go without saying. Posted by: halfbaked caudillo on December 3, 2006 at 3:23 AM | PERMALINKHow about this: Rumsfeld leaves just as he came in, making every effort to make Rumsfeld look good. He produces a laundry list of every conceivable option so he can't be blamed for hewing to one, failed course (which of course he has). Posted by: amend on December 3, 2006 at 3:51 AM | PERMALINKBush the first tried to sabotage Iraq by getting ethnic groups to secede, with the unfortunate result of getting a lot of Kurds and swamp Arabs killed. The U.S. has quite a reputation for encouraging people to be rash and then slipping away to leave them twisting in the wind. Of course, all great nations do that. The Jews of the Warsaw ghetto hoped that the Russian army might possibly reach them if they could hold out against the Nazis, but Stalin only wanted them to think that. His long-term plan was a post-war Poland without Jews and someone else would take the blame. Posted by: mike cook on December 3, 2006 at 6:17 AM | PERMALINKRummy finally realized that he could lose his job, but came up with squat to try and defend it. All of Bush's stupid ideas. So now what is Bush going to do? Perhaps arm the Shiite's with military weapons, which gives the Saudis reason to continue financing the madrassas schools. Bush's new agenda to "bring on the terrorist". Bush can never have enough terrorist to scare American, had go out make more terrorist.
Israel Fakes a Provocation for War(the "kidnapping" of Cpl Shalit). The following passages are from this article published in the Telegraph on 26/06/2006. Last night two Israeli soldiers were killed and another kidnapped in a dawn attack by Palestinian militants who tunnelled under Gaza's heavily protected border. The attackers, believed to number seven or eight, surprised Israeli forces when they appeared at first light through a tunnel on open ground 300 yards inside Israel near a kibbutz. Gaza is built on old semi-consolidated sand dunes. It is extremely unlikely that anyone could tunnel 500, or more, yards in the sandy ground of Gaza (300 yards into Israel plus 200 yards of no-mans land plus more to the tunnel entrance), without the tunnel collapsing at some point, or the Israeli listening equipment, hearing their tunneling activity. They split into three groups before launching simultaneous attacks on three Israeli defensive positions - a look-out tower, plus a tank and an (unoccupied) armoured personnel carrier, both dug in, facing Gaza. If you were only seven or eight, would you split into three groups? If you were only two, or three, would you attack a tank over flat ground, manned by four soldiers waiting inside to kill you? They blew open the tank's rear doors (the Israeli merkava tank has one rear door) with a missile fired from point-blank range before tossing grenades inside. Two of the tank crew died and another was severely wounded but the final crew member, the gunner, was forced out of the wreckage at gunpoint. The rear doors are blown off and a few grenades popped inside. Tanks are not made to fall apart. Blowing off the rear doors would have taken a blast sufficient to seriously hurt those inside. The grenades would have then made mincemeat of them. Later reports, from the New York Times and others, tell us that Shalit suffered only minor injuries to his abdomen and one arm, even though everyone else in the tank was severely wounded or killed. Shalit would have been very close to those killed (there's not much spare room in a tank). And, how exactly did the Jew press find out about his injuries, when no one else seems to have known. Israeli trackers said they found his blood-stained bulletproof vest close to the Gaza perimeter fence. One wonders, if it is standard practice to wear a bulletproof vest inside a hot tank, especially Shalit, who was supposedly the gunner. One would think that the tank would be bulletproof enough not to require such a vest. Can Israeli tanks stop bullets, or not? Anyway, the militants force Shalit to take off his bulletproof vest and leave it close to the Gaza concentration camp fence, in order to help the Israeli's with their investigation. By the way, whose blood is it on his bulletproof vest? Did his minor wounds bleed profusely, or was it the other soldiers blood and guts all over him. Pity their bulletproof vests didn't save them. Meanwhile, two other militants attacked a nearby concrete watchtower.... The troop carrier was also damaged in another attack but it was unoccupied. The attackers then escaped back into Gaza by cutting their way through the perimeter fence. Interestingly, the attackers escaped easily by cutting through the (electrified) perimeter fence and running across the minefield to safety. Yet, cutting through the perimeter fence in order to get in, was so hard to do, that they burrowed through half a mile of sandy ground instead. Something wrong with this story, perhaps? Even, after all the commotion, the soldiers in all of the nearby Gaza concentration camp guard-towers, manage to miss a few Arabs running the 300 yards, over flat ground, to the perimeter fence, miss them as they cut through it, and miss them as they run across the minefield to safety. And why, you may ask, did they not just return through the tunnel they had painstakingly dug? Not only did the Israeli guard-tower watchers sleep during the explosions and pandamonium, but our heroic freedom fighters did not put a foot wrong as they ran through the no-mans land minefield. Allah, was truly with them. If you believe this sad tale, then I have a bridge to sell you. The Hamas political leadership sought to distance itself from the incident last night when a spokesman said it had no knowledge of the fate of Cpl Shilat. Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman, said: "We are calling on the resistance groups, if they do have the missing soldier to protect his life and treat him well." Yes, the Hamas political leadership had no idea of the fate of Cpl Shilat, as the story is a total fabrication. The Jew press then claims that the Popular Resistance Committees, the armed wing of Hamas and the (previously unknown) Army of Islam were jointly responsible for the kidnapping of Shilat. Why three groups you may ask? The reason for three groups, is so that each of them might believe that the other has the "kidnapped" soldier, when, in fact, none of them have him. He is sipping coffee in Tel Aviv. And why did a "previously unknown" group put up its hand? Well, just in case one of the groups had doubts that the other group had the "kidnapped" soldier, they certainly couldn't be sure the "previously unknown" group didn't have him,... because after all, they don't have any idea who is leading, or even anyone in, this unknown group. So the reason for the weird "I did it arrangement," is so that the Jew press can claim that the Arabs claimed responsibility, when all they have done, is to NOT deny they did it. Oh yeah, the "previously unknown" group is a Jew invention. It doesn't exist, except in the Jew newspapers. Of course, shortly, the Army of Islam will need to be created (by the Jews) in order to negotiate the "release" of Shilat. As part of the fabrication, the Jews chose to have a Israeli/French citizen "kidnapped," as the French have not been slavishly following the Jew script, and this could be used to force their hand in the desired way. If you are not already convinced that the whole story is a fabrication, ask yourself; What were the four Israeli soldiers doing in the tiny confines of that dug-in tank? Ask yourself; How long were they going to continue sitting in that tank? All day perhaps, or till they roasted in the desert sun? Or, till another group of four took over on the next shift? And of course, having four soldiers in just one tank, won't provide a defense, so there will have to be hundreds of tanks and hundreds of soldiers all sitting in these tanks,... all waiting,... all waiting,... all waiting,.... for exactly what? Waiting for Palestinian children to throw stones at them, perhaps? Perhaps, waiting attentively for militants to dig a half mile tunnel through sandy ground, pop up, and rush them over flat ground, but not attentively enough to see them approach? Perhaps, they were waiting for the Egyptian army to materialize, Star Trek like, from their bases hundreds of miles away on the other side of the Suez canal? I don't know,... you tell me why? Yes, the story is a total fabrication. A fake provocation to start a war. Yes, the Jews are evil people. Posted by: RememberThis on December 3, 2006 at 8:04 AM | PERMALINKAnd all those retared Repugs that wanted Rummy celebrated as an "intellectual". An intellectual, my ass. Rummy was THE stupidest Defense Secretary EVER. Nobody, NOBODY is ever going to ask Rummy anything in any forth coming administration. Unless someone wants to no the answer too "HOW DID you *uck things so badly in Mideast, Rummy?" Nobody is ever going to need Rummy's stupid two cents worth. The rest of American has already looked at the list of stupid ideas and recognized that its too little, too late. Rumsfield's too little too late suggestions may be to much too soon for our current monomaniacal leadership. Posted by: Paul on December 3, 2006 at 8:55 AM | PERMALINKToday's articles in Washington Post are about Bush's and his supposed legacy. Certainly it seems that this column hit the nail on the head. At a time of national crisis, Pierce and Buchanan, who served in the eight years preceding the Civil War, and Johnson, who followed it, were simply not up to the job. Stubborn, narrow-minded, unwilling to listen to criticism or to consider alternatives to disastrous mistakes, they surrounded themselves with sycophants and shaped their policies to appeal to retrogressive political forces (in that era, pro-slavery and racist ideologues). Even after being repudiated in the midterm elections of 1854, 1858 and 1866, respectively, they ignored major currents of public opinion and clung to flawed policies. Bush's presidency certainly brings theirs to mind. When all else fails, surround yourself with sycophants. Karl Rove tooks his political tricks right out of Joe McCarthy's play book. The hate doctrines that bring out the sycophants. Like George Will's latest column, where Will has to lie about the way Bush is acting and that surely makes George Will one of the many sycophants. Oh, and here is good one that only sycophants believe: Bush has two more years to leave his mark, he argued. What if there is a news flash that U.S. Special Forces have killed Osama bin Laden or that North Korea has renounced its nuclear program? What if a decade from now Iraq is a democracy and a statue of Bush is erected on Firdaus Square where that famously toppled one of Saddam Hussein once stood? It would be very therapeutic for Iraqis if someone would put a statue of Bush in Iraq. There can be doubt that such a statue would be the MOST mutilated statue in all of history. Lets face it, Bush can't even go into Iraq anymore but only meet it's leaders in outside countries like Jordan. In fact Bush is so passionately hated in all Iraq and it's the only thing that binds all Iraqis together, their combine mutual loathing of Bush. I'm surpised Repugs are asking why Iraqis hate Bush so much. Posted by: Cheryl on December 3, 2006 at 9:00 AM | PERMALINKJuan Cole is correct in his analysis of the memo - Rumsfeld was more concerned about how he would be viewed by the public than in any thought about either our troops or the sectarian violence. Setting "mimimalist" goals - telling the public that we are attempting measures on a trial basis - oops, keep adjusting, keep tweaking - and the old "well, we said that we were only trying to go one yard, so now that we've gone two, wow, we are really winning" And, Juan Cole, again points out, the one about bribing the mullahs ala Saddam, is great. If we could only run the country like my old pal Saddam, it would be wonderful, thus sayeth Prince Donald. Posted by: thethirdPaul on December 3, 2006 at 9:01 AM | PERMALINKThat's why we need to fuck Iran up much more severely than we have as of yet. That might be the solution to some of the Iraq problem as well (at least by keeping them occupied at home). One way to do it: get some of their ethnic groups to ceceede. Do you mean, "secede?" Because it looks to me like your junior high teachers haven't gotten that far in history class yet. You have to love the mentality of someone who says we "...need to fuck up Iran" like it's something that would be done in a rap video or something. Jeeeeeee-zus! That's a sane approach to foreign policy. Too bad the idiots in this administration have "nok" in their base and actually subscribe to the people who have that simple-minded mentality. Yeah, go with that. Fuck them up. Flatten their tires. Use a screwdriver on their paint job. Pour superglue in their door locks. Push Iran's girlfriend into the snow cone machine. Roll up your sleeve and flex those little muscles at them. You gotta love a tough guy who wants to fuck up Iran but hasn't got the balls to put on a uniform and go do it. Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 9:27 AM | PERMALINKThat's why we'll just send you, Pale Rider. What with all your martial wit you'll fit right in. But if you do, please don't forget to "shoot, move, communicate" - that's definitely the way to go. Putz Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 9:51 AM | PERMALINKoh, and don't forget to lock & load. isn't that what loser soldier-wannabes like you usually say? Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 9:53 AM | PERMALINKWhy isn't anyone saying what seems obvious to me -- that this memo is the *reason* Rumsfeld got fired? He writes a memo to a White House known for its obsession about loyalty and the party line, in which he mentions federalism and withdrawal. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Bush (paranoid megalomaniac that he is) fired Rummy on the spot as soon as he saw the memo. Posted by: Remus Shepherd on December 3, 2006 at 9:55 AM | PERMALINKPutz Look at poor little "nok." No rejoinder to your analysis? No attempt to actually support your little tough guy thesis to "fuck up Iran?" This is what happens when you give a computer to a kid and fail to properly supervise them. Someone's wingnut kid is out there, pounding away about subjects he may or may not have been exposed to by his old man's ranting and raving at the dinner table and now you're doing your best to make that dinner table drunk proud by spouting your own one liners and your own wingnut smack. Poor kid. That old man? He's just embarrassed and disgusted by you, that's all. You'll have to get over it. Joining the military might help you, but I doubt it. All it will get you is a fresh set of people who will be unimpressed with you. The memo itself is extraordinarily interesting, even to us non-military types, especially given (a) how little regard Sec'y Rumsfeld seems to have for a lot of the strategy either currently being employed or likely to be proposed by the Iraq Study Group; and (b) how Rumsfeld seems a lot more interested in quick strike capability against al Qaeda and Iran elements than having U.S. forces enmeshed in Iraq's sectarian infighting. It will be a lot more interesting to get analysis from people like Mac Owens, Jim Robbins and Fred Kagan who actually know what they're talking about in this regard than from me. My strictly non-military observation, based on many years in government, is: We appear to be in for two years of increasing dysfunction. If high officials in wartime, no less figure they better not give their best, most candid advice on sensitive, publicly-charged issues because opposing policy factions are going to leak each other's memos to the press, the initiative and creativity of the smart people we want in government is stifled. And the leaks will be used to portray the administration as disintegrating into rancorous chaos, which avalanche feeds on itself. Why isn't anyone saying what seems obvious to me -- that this memo is the *reason* Rumsfeld got fired? That's actually a good point--the quickest way to get fired is to tell George W Bush the truth. I wonder if the guy who had to tell Bush to get his snotty little kids out of Argentina got fired as well. Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 10:12 AM | PERMALINKWhoa, Pale. How can I keep up with all your "analysis"? I mean, the arguments are so good. And so well thought through. You got to give me at least a few hours to compose a proper response. In the meantime, though, why don't you tell us more about how cool you are. Here's a good one: some war stories. Imaginary war stories to go with your wannabe soldier lingo. That's always a good way to start. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 10:18 AM | PERMALINKMilitary Options for Disrupting Iran's Nuclear Weapons Program American diplomatic support for robust IAEA inspections is reducing widespread European and Middle Eastern criticism that the United States acts unilaterally or hegemonically in the international arena. Such criticism reached shrill heights during the lead-up to the war against Saddam's Iraq. The United States needs to work to heal those wounds to garner political support from Europe and the greater Middle East region to complement diplomacy with military force in a concerted policy to derail Iran's train ride toward nuclear weapons. Military options could be employed to physically disrupt, delay, and destroy key components of Iran's nuclear weapons program. Such military options would be geared toward causing the Tehran regime pain and inflicting costs for Tehran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. They could be aimed at changing Tehran's strategic calculus, so that Iran views nuclear weapons not as something that enhances the security of the regime, but as a liability that increases prospects for conflict with the United States and threatens the clerical regime's hold on power. Obviously military options would entail less risk if exercised before Iran acquires nuclear weapons. American policymakers would have to be concerned that if military options are employed after Iran acquires nuclear weapons, the Iranians could retaliate for US conventional military strikes by targeting American forces in the region with nuclear weapons or by using clandestine means to attack American civilians, perhaps via the Iranian intelligence services or collaborating transnational actors, especially Hezbollah. While such risks may not ultimately preclude the decision to use force, Iranian possession of nuclear weapons would make the decision a heavy burden. American military superiority over Iran gives Washington a wide spectrum of military options for coercing Tehran. These options range from limited strikes against Iran's political, military, internal security, and WMD-related infrastructure. For example, the United States could target Iran's nuclear power infrastructure-to include the Bushehr nuclear power plant as well as any future nuclear power plants, heavy-water facilities, future plutonium reprocessing plants, and uranium production and enrichment plants-with cruise missiles or combat aircraft strikes. An American air campaign mounted from regional support hubs in the small Gulf Arab states could make short work of Iran's air force and air defense forces to gain air superiority for attacks against Iran's nuclear infrastructure. Such strikes could serve the practical purposes of disrupting Iran's means for developing nuclear weapons as well as constituting a symbolic, political demonstration of American resolve to use whatever means are available to block Iran's nuclear weapons aspirations. The United States would be operating with a less-than-perfect intelligence picture of Iran's nuclear weapons infrastructure, however. The Iranians cannot have escaped learning the importance of diversifying and building redundancies into their nuclear weapons program components in light of Israel's preemptive strike on Iraq's nuclear power facility. They managed to hide Iranian uranium reprocessing developments from the outside world for some time and have undoubtedly tightened security to stem further exposures of their nuclear weapons program. In the aftermath of any American air strikes against their nuclear infrastructure, Iran undoubtedly also would redouble its efforts to conceal and build redundancies into its nuclear weapons infrastructure to make follow-on American attacks more difficult. American aircraft and cruise missiles also could target Iran's key political, security, and military infrastructures to harm the power of the regime in Tehran. Strikes could target government buildings and even the homes of clerics; facilities and compounds used by internal security and policy forces; assets of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Basij forces; major army units and garrisons; and WMD delivery vehicles, such as aircraft and ballistic missiles, as well as their production facilities. Targeting internal security organs would be particularly useful because that might allow the disgruntled populace more freedom to demonstrate against the regime and substantially increase the pressure on clerics to forgo their nuclear weapons aspirations. The threat of a US invasion of Iran should not be taken off the table, because it could be used to bolster the strength of coercive diplomacy to compel the Iranians to desist on nuclear weapons and to accept robust and intrusive international inspections to help ensure their compliance with the NPT. The most imprudent step a statesman can make is to let his adversary know what he is not prepared to do; that profoundly undermines his political leverage to achieve interests without resort to force. President Clinton made this critical mistake in the 1999 Kosovo war, in which he declared that US ground forces would not be used against Serbia. Nevertheless, the US military presence in the greater Middle East that brackets Iran would be insufficient to stage the type of massive ground campaign that would be required to occupy Iran's major cities. Iraq is a comparatively easy occupational task in comparison to Iran; it is smaller and has fewer citizens. Iraq is twice the size of Idaho and populated with about 25 million people, while Iran is nearly four times the size of Iraq with approximately 67 million people.26 The American and British forces in neighboring Iraq are likely to be fully preoccupied with Iraq's internal security for the coming years, and without significant augmentation they would be unavailable for a cross-border invasion of Iran. US forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan are much smaller and more suited for special operations that would augment, rather than spearhead, the massive ground force campaign that would be necessitated by Iran's sheer geographic size. American decisionmakers have to weigh political ends against military means as a basis for formulating strategy. The United States now has a significant portion of its total ground forces committed to Iraq and would be hard-pressed to mount a comparable or larger operation simultaneously against Iran. The United States also needs to keep its forces ready to meet contingencies elsewhere in the world, particularly in Asia where potential clashes could emerge on the Korean Peninsula or over Taiwan. The weighing of these concerns, however, would best be done in the minds of policymakers and not shared aloud in the public domain for the ears of Iran's clerics. The domestic Iranian political fallout from American military operations could cut two ways. On one hand, US operations could undermine the regime politically as many Iranians would see them as more evidence that the nature of the regime works to prolong Iran's isolation from the world community and its economic stagnation and political retardation. On the other hand, the clerics would seize on the strikes as evidence of a hegemonic American campaign to conquer the Middle East and its oil, and use that perception as justification for repressive domestic security measures to hold onto power. In the final analysis, the United States could have to just wait and see which of these competing forces would prove to be stronger as it vigilantly monitored Iran's efforts to reconstitute its infrastructure and made follow-on strikes over a period of years to perpetually "kick the can down the road" and delay Tehran's acquisition of nuclear weapons. As has been the case in the war against Iraq, the United States would have to ride out the international political fallout from any military actions against Iran. At first glance, Russia, China, North Korea, and Pakistan probably would politically protest "American unilateralism" out of concern over economic losses as a result of attacks on Iranian facilities that those countries are supporting. But then again, from a more cynical view, those states might work to economically exploit the situation and seek additional contracts to rebuild all that the Americans had destroyed. Military operations too would come with a tide of regional outcries against the United States. Many would accuse the United States of the all-too-familiar refrain that Washington holds a double-standard in the region by ignoring Israeli nuclear weapons while taking military actions against Muslim states such as Iraq and Iran, which were seeking to arm themselves to balance Israeli and American nuclear power. As hard as it is for American observers to appreciate, many in the region-officers, diplomats, officials, as well as the general public-harbor the view that a nuclear-armed Iran could be useful to counterbalance Israeli as well as American nuclear power Herman has some good suggestions for taking apart the Iranian nukes program: The first step would be to make it clear that the United States will tolerate no action by any state that endangers the international flow of commerce in the Straits of Hormuz. Signaling our determination to back up this statement with force would be a deployment in the Gulf of Oman of minesweepers, a carrier strike groups guided-missile destroyers, an Aegis-class cruiser, and anti-submarine assets, with the rest of the carrier group remaining in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. Navy could also deploy UAVs (unmanned air vehicles) and submarines to keep watch above and below against any Iranian missile threat to our flotilla. Our next step would be to declare a halt to all shipments of Iranian oil while guaranteeing the safety of tankers carrying non-Iranian oil and the platforms of other Gulf states. We would then guarantee this guarantee by launching a comprehensive air campaign aimed at destroying Irans air-defense system, its air-force bases and communications systems, and finally its missile sites along the Gulf coast. At that point the attack could move to include Irans nuclear facilitiesnot only the hard sites but also infrastructure like bridges and tunnels in order to prevent the shifting of critical materials from one to site to another. Above all, the air attack would concentrate on Irans gasoline refineries. It is still insufficiently appreciated that Iran, a huge oil exporter, imports nearly 40 percent of its gasoline from foreign sources, including the Gulf states. With its refineries gone and its storage facilities destroyed, Irans cars, trucks, buses, planes, tanks, and other military hardware would run dry in a matter of weeks or even days. This alone would render impossible any major countermoves by the Iranian army. (For its part, the Iranian navy is aging and decrepit, and its biggest asset, three Russian-made Kilo-class submarines, should and could be destroyed before leaving port.) The scenario would not end here. With the systematic reduction of Irans capacity to respond, an amphibious force of Marines and special-operations forces could seize key Iranian oil assets in the Gulf, the most important of which is a series of 100 offshore wells and platforms built on Irans continental shelf. North and South Pars offshore fields, which represent the future of Irans oil and natural-gas industry, could also be seized, while Kargh Island at the far western edge of the Persian Gulf, whose terminus pumps the oil from Irans most mature and copiously producing fields (Ahwaz, Marun, and Gachsaran, among others), could be rendered virtually useless. By the time the campaign was over, the United States military would be in a position to control the flow of Iranian oil at the flick of a switch Obviously, no plan is foolproof. The tactical risks associated with a comprehensive war strategy of this sort are numerous. But they are outweighed by its key advantages. First, it would accomplish much more than air strikes alone on Irans elusive nuclear sites. Whereas such action might retard the uranium-enrichment program by some years, this one in effect would put Irans theocracy out of business by depriving it of the very weapon that the critics of air strikes most fear. It would do so, moreover, with minimal means. This would be a naval and air war, not a land campaign. Requiring no draw-down of U.S. forces in Iraq, it would involve one or two carrier strike groups, an airborne brigade, and a Marine brigade. Since the entire operation would take place offshore, there would be no need to engage the Iranian army. It and the Revolutionary Guards would be left stranded, out of action and out of gas. In fact, there is little Iran could do in the face of relentless military pressure at its most vulnerable point. Today, not only are key elements of the Iranian military in worse shape than in the 1980s, but even the oil weapon is less formidable than imagined. Currently Iran exports an estimated 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. Yet according to a recent report in Forbes, quoting the oil-industry analyst Michael Lynch, new sources of oil around the world will have boosted total production by 2 million barrels a day in this year alone, and next year by three million barrels a day. In short, other producers (including Iranian platforms in American hands) can take up some if not all of the slack. The real loser would be Iran itself. Pumping crude oil is its only industry, making up 85 percent of its exports and providing 65 percent of the state budget. With its wells held hostage, the countrys economy could enter free fall. Pumpkin Head on Press the Meat....? At least Pumpkin Head pumps Hadley for Bush's confusing messages. It's hard for this administration to find common ground anymore, lie faster now, harder, better. Bush is leave Iraq but he not leaving Iraq, Somebody in this administration sure needs to get the Presidental face on the right page. If only Bush could read, could wake up, could listen, could resign.
Imaginary war stories to go with your wannabe soldier lingo. That's always a good way to start. Nah, I'll leave that to you and your desire to "fuck up Iran." That kinda talk is more up your alley, son. And remember--if you don't do it right, daddy will pull out that soft, supple leather belt you like so much and go to town. That's some nice cut and pasting. Too bad it's all someone else's bullshit and you're not smart enough to think of something on your own. Hence, daddy's disapproval of his chubby little wannabe warrior... Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 10:38 AM | PERMALINKKevin, May I suggest you put up a brief tutorial on your blog for your readers, regarding how to embed a link in their posts? These people that cut and paste, verbatim, lengthy articles from other sources have made this blog's Comments section virtually unreadable. If you would like, I could draft a brief summary of the process. The Comments section has become ridiculous - look at this thread, as an example. TCD Posted by: The Conservative Deflator on December 3, 2006 at 10:45 AM | PERMALINKTCD, It's just some kid trying to look cool and post some information he hasn't even read or understands. Now, registration and banning ips, hey, that might help... Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 10:54 AM | PERMALINKNo need to invade and occupy Iran. Make any attack punitive in nature and destroy: 1. All Air Force assets In furtherance of 10. large amounts of weapons can be smuggled in now. Let's do to the Iranians what they've been doing to us in Iraq. Once airstrikes begin, we can establish a permanent (10-20 year or more, however long it takes) no-fly zone over all ethnic areas. All of this can be done without a single US soldier on the ground. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 10:57 AM | PERMALINKAll of this can be done without a single US soldier on the ground. Well, I guess you don't have to worry about having to go do your part. Too bad those hot little Bush girls didn't take you to Argentina with them... Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 10:59 AM | PERMALINKExcept Pale Rider. He can go. We might need his keen ability to "shoot, move, communicate" And don't forget his ability "to go to backchannel comms and stay organized?" If there's anyone who "needs a free e-mail account so they can exchange info with regulars," Pale rider think hotmail works pretty good these days for getting one. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 11:02 AM | PERMALINKThis will definitely help the war effort. Guaran-fuckin-teed. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 11:03 AM | PERMALINKThere, there, my little fweend. Don't cry no more. Mummy's right here. Don't worry about those bad boys. We'll buy you some new toy guns to play with! And a new coyboy outfit just like that Clint Eastwood wears in your favorite movie. You love him don'tcha? Oh, stop crying... Posted by: PaleRider's Mom on December 3, 2006 at 11:08 AM | PERMALINKOr we can try gmail. Gmail might work for backchannel comms, too. I will do some recon with thethirdPaul and get back to y'all. Plus Gmail just sounds cool, doesn't it? Almost like G-man. Wow. Cool. Shoot, move, communicate. Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 11:11 AM | PERMALINKI have to keep reminding myself that many of the posters here are far to the left of what the center of the Democrat congrerss is likely to be, even after Pelosi skews the controls. Posted by: mike cook on December 3, 2006 at 11:16 AM | PERMALINKPoor little nok. As if anyone doesn't know he's spoofing me. Let's take his little closed-fist pantswetting tirade and tear it apart: No need to invade and occupy Iran. Make any attack punitive in nature and destroy: Good luck. That's a 90 day air campaign, easily. Did it occur to you that the Iranians might fight back or take measures to prevent that from happening? No, of course not. 3. C3/C4 facilities Right, because bombing them back to the stoneage at the onset of winter will kill thousands upon thousands of them in the colder climates and really win their hearts and minds. If you knew anything about Iran, a good number of the people are already on our side and want Western reforms and freedoms. It's the ruling clerics that stand between the Westernization of Iran and what we have right now. But your little policy ends that, doesn't it? Talk about humane--'let the population know they're in a conflict' is just another way of telling them to die in large numbers. 5. All refineries (not oil prodution, just refining. Let them stand in a gas line for a while). Without internal refining capacity or power generating facilities they will be forced to continue pumping and exporting the oil. In fact, their oil exports will go up - it's their only use for the oil once these facilities are taken out. This is kind of ludicrous--blow up all their refineries? That'll go over like a fart in church. Good luck proving to the world that we went after their nuclear program when we cripple their oil refining business but not their oil production business. Why not just come out and say we're after their oil, not the WMD they probably don't have. 6. Any/all production facilities that can contribute to war fighting capability. Tack on another 90 days to that air campaign. Now you're going to be flying sorties for six months and you haven't even gotten to their nuclear facilities. Blowing up thousands of factories and production/assembly facilities--that'll also win those hearts and minds for you. 7. Destroy all bridges over primary and secondary roads. Bring their internal distribution to a standstill. You just added another 90 days to the air campaign--good going. This is now a 9 month operation and you STILL haven't touched one nuclear facility. Guess what? Things aren't looking good for you right now, son. 8. Use Special Operators to disrupt logistical and communications routes, if necessary. They're actually called "Special Forces" and that means you have put US troops in harms way behind enemy lines. So much for your assertion that we can do this without US soldiers on the ground. (a hint--we don't have a massive amount of 'special operators' inside Iran because, for the last 9 months, you've been bombing them back to the stone age.) 9. Any expeditionary force they may deploy can be cut off and destroyed. They won't deploy if they're smart. What? Ever heard of walking? I think they can deploy anyone anywhere if they walk to where they need to go. Or, better yet, what if they're already deployed? 10. Encourage ethnic minorities to break loose from their Persian yoke. The Kurds of Iran should have their own state. The Baluchis likewise. The arabs especially so (most of the Iranian oil is in Arab areas). The Azeris have traditionally been close to the Persians, but with Iran being mostly a spent force, and the Azeri homeland across the border with Azerbaijan a tempting goal, they might want to make a move too. Either way, our goal should be to encourage any and all separatist movements. Too bad--you just bombed them into the stoneage, destroyed the roads and bridges and the refineries they would have been able to use--what the fuck, kid? Bombing people doesn't make them want to be your ally/friend/partner. In furtherance of 10. large amounts of weapons can be smuggled in now. Let's do to the Iranians what they've been doing to us in Iraq. Once airstrikes begin, we can establish a permanent (10-20 year or more, however long it takes) no-fly zone over all ethnic areas. Once more, if you bomb the Iranian people back to the stoneage and wipe out their oil refining business, along with their infrastructure, they are NOT going to want to help you. When do we get to the part where you actually have to locate and destroy their nuclear facilities? Because after a nine month air campaign, you now have to take them out. What a dumbass! Why did you even cut and paste that bullshit? I want to be like nok when I grow up. Spank my bare ass daddy!!! Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 11:24 AM | PERMALINKI'm a jerk and my balls are blue from jerking off. Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 11:25 AM | PERMALINKMommy, I'm getting spanked again!!! Yay!!! Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 11:26 AM | PERMALINKRumsfeld's memo was clearly written for him by defeatist liberal staffers. A man of Rumsfeld's principles and vision would never agree to retreat. The Army has become infested with liberals who are undermining national security. The first job of Rumsfeld's successor is to clean them out. Posted by: Al on December 3, 2006 at 11:31 AM | PERMALINKNok: You have no fucking idea what you are talking about. Iran actually has an Air Force and a modern air defense system that could shoot down many, if not most, American planes. It would not be like shooting fish in a barrel, like invading Iraq was. Iran is also over twice as large, geographically, as Iraq. You write like the U.S. Air Force could waltz in and destroy "every bridge" in Iran without suffering a scratch. You are delusional. Do some research. The U.S. could get its head handed back to it, if it tried that. Anyone with any sense knows that. TCD Posted by: The Conservative Deflator on December 3, 2006 at 11:35 AM | PERMALINK"Right, because bombing ...will really win their hearts and minds." Who said anything about hearts and minds. Can't you do better than warmed-up cliches? "This is kind of ludicrous--blow up all their refineries? That'll go over like a fart in church. Good luck proving to the world that we went after their nuclear program when we cripple their oil refining business but not their oil production business." Prove where? To whom? What for? Is this another one of those lame UN-fixations of yours? "Why not just come out and say we're after their oil, not the WMD they probably don't have." OK "You just added another 90 days to the air campaign--good going. This is now a 9 month operation" Oh, yawn. It's just a wish list. And why not go for 9 months? What are they going to do to us? "that means you have put US troops in harms way behind enemy lines" I said, if necessary. Do try to pay attention. "What? Ever heard of walking? I think they can deploy anyone anywhere if they walk to where they need to go." Walking through cluster bombs. Hmmm. Sounds fun. Wanna volunteer, Pale Rider? "Encourage ethnic minorities to break loose from their Persian yoke." What. Ever. The neat thing about people like the Baluchis and Kurds is that they don't live in very central regions. There would be no need to bomb all that extensively in those areas. But, if huge amounts of weapons and other materiel is available with resistance groups in Iranian Kurdistan, for example, at the outbreak of air strikes, they would be able to take over their areas. And then the Persian central forces would be tied down with whatever pathetic resistance they can put up against us. Alternatively, they could pick up and move against the Kurds, except without bridges to get to Kurdistan, how will they get there with any equipment?
TCD - You have no fucking idea what you are talking about. Iran actually has an Air Force and a modern air defense system that could shoot down many, if not most, American planes. You mean like Saddam had in 1990? Oh, how well we remember the invincible Iraqi AF. Man they really shot down a lot of USAF didn't they? Good thing the Iranians are almost as good. But: TCD knows what he's talking about. Oh sure. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 11:48 AM | PERMALINKPale Rider: Push Iran's girlfriend into the snow cone machine. Now that was funny. Posted by: trex on December 3, 2006 at 11:49 AM | PERMALINKI want to be like nok when I grow up. Spank my bare ass daddy!!! Posted by: Pale Rider Just guessing, but this might have been an imposter. Pale rarely has this level of self-insight. Martial prowess, no doubt, but introspection, not so much. Shoot, move, communicate. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 11:51 AM | PERMALINKPale Rider: Push Iran's girlfriend into the snow cone machine. Now that was funny. Posted by: (Pale Rider posing as) trex Pale, turn to the mirror and say loudly and clearly (take a deep breath first... now let it slowly out): I'm smart enough, I'm funny enough, and doggone it, trex likes me. Or Pale Rider, posting as trex, really likes him. Well, his mommy does, too. I forgot about that. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 11:55 AM | PERMALINKHow old are you, nok? Are you just some snot-faced, punkass kid or are you really that ignorant??? Posted by: The Conservative Deflator on December 3, 2006 at 12:00 PM | PERMALINKhttp://www.defensetech.org/archives/002974.html Pretty good overview of how to take out deeply buried targets: "Or course, bunkers can always be dug deeper. One British Cold War plan involved relocating government centres to coal mines 5,000 feet underground. However, given that the Deep Digger array can collapse the entrance tunnels to a depth of 300 feet, any such deep bunker may become a tomb from which the occupants will never escape. I use a straw to suck butt cheese out of my ass! Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 12:03 PM | PERMALINKTCB, why don't you go play with your toys. Pale Rider can join too, if he can keep the slobbering under control. And if he can tear himself away from his fantasies of "backchannel comms" and such. You never know with this guy. Shoot, move, communicate. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 12:06 PM | PERMALINKMike Cook, Yeah, we're sort of like your average 33rd District voter. Perhaps you should relocate to Aberdeen/Hoquiam - Lots of good racist rednecks there. And considering bombing Iran - By all means - When you can not win one war, why not start another? Then on to Beijing - "Solve all your problems at once" - Perhaps we should start practicing by taking out Chester County. PA. Mike Cook once again, I await your reply with "bated" breath - There is a school marm down the road apiece, who, rightfully, slapped me up the side of the cranium because I wrongfully used the word baited on another thread. Wonder if I could get back into Head Start? Pale Rider, love those barrel rolls you are doing in your brand new F-18. Watch out for those trools coming out of the flotsum and jetsam of the back waters. They look and smell the same. 3rdPaul - "Pale Rider, love those barrel rolls you are doing in your brand new F-18. Watch out for those trools coming out of the flotsum and jetsam of the back waters." Yes, let's not forget Pale Rider's valiant actions against the "trools" - what pathetic fantasies you guys construct. Shoot, move, communicate. And pay attention to those backchannel comms, boys. Pale Rider, you're clearly having a grand day with the cliche's today. Wow. With the pathetic fantasies about other posters here, not so much. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 12:15 PM | PERMALINKPale Rider, btw, is definitely 3rdPaul. They're always posting at about the same time and same threads. What a loser. Posted by: mike cook on December 3, 2006 at 12:18 PM | PERMALINKMost of the posts above are not by me. For example, all of the posts from 12:03 to now are spoofs. Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 12:20 PM | PERMALINKThe post at 12:20 is not by me. Man, will this NEVER end? Shoot, move, communicate.
Adviser: Bush open to Rumsfeld's ideas "Of course they're being considered," Bush adviser Stephen Hadley said. "At some point obviously, we would like to begin bringing troops back home. The president has said that he's talked many times, `As Iraqis stand up, we can stand down.'" I think the important thing is that we're pushing on an open door," Hadley said. He did not perceive Rumsfeld's memo as a late effort to save his job. Rumsfeld resigned Nov. 8, a day after Democrats swept to power in the elections. Bush has nominated former CIA Director Robert Gates to take over at the Pentagon; his confirmation hearing is set for Tuesday in the Senate. The administration is conducting a broad review of Iraq strategy and is awaiting the release Wednesday of recommendations from the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan group of government advisers. "The president had asked agencies to begin a review of our policy in Iraq, and what Secretary Rumsfeld did, I think, very helpfully, was put together a sort of laundry list of ideas that ought to be considered as part of that review," Hadley said. "The president really wanted us to open the aperture, consider all ideas, and it was input by Secretary Rumsfeld, helpful input into that process," he said. None of the above posts are me, including 12:22 PM This site needs registration for posting badly. Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 12:36 PM | PERMALINKJust checking back in. The guy just preceeding me is not me. None of the above posts are me, my last post was 11:22. But we defninitely need registration here. Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 12:39 PM | PERMALINKMike Cook, Oh, if I could only be so fortunate to have the skills of Pale Rider - His research ability is exceptional. No, we are two distinctly different individuals - He rides the High Sierras - I left the sublime of Queen Anne, where the great Rep Jim McDermott represents the gentry quite splendidly, to the environs of the exceptional Rep Earl Blumenhauer in Portland. Once registration takes place, and it surely will, Pale Rider will probably be revealed as Throckmorton P Troolsmasher, Esq. and I as Whiplash McFuddyduddy. Oh, by the way, we were not the ones who were crushed in the 33rd. Losers? Hah! Posted by: thethirdPaul on December 3, 2006 at 12:43 PM | PERMALINKPale Rider (writing as 3rd Paul): "Oh, if I could only be so fortunate to have the skills of Pale Rider - His research ability is exceptional oh-oh-oh-oh i'm soooo goooood." Do you have NO shame, Pale? Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 12:49 PM | PERMALINKFrom the Sunday Telegraph this weekend: In Teheran, Iranian leaders have made clear that they believe they are the big winners from America's involvement in Iraq. "The kind of service that the Americans, with all their hatred, have done us no superpower has ever done anything similar," Mohsen Rezai, secretary-general of the powerful Expediency Council that advises the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamanei, boasted on state television recently. America destroyed all our enemies in the region. It destroyed the Taliban. It destroyed Saddam Hussein The Americans got so stuck in the soil of Iraq and Afghanistan that if they manage to drag themselves back to Washington in one piece, they should thank God. America presents us with an opportunity rather than a threat not because it intended to, but because it miscalculated. They made many mistakes". From an LA Times article this weekend called "Mideast allies near a state of panic": Martin van Crevald back in 2004: In the short run, the greatest beneficiary of the war is Israel. The destruction of Iraq has created a situation where, for the first time since the State was founded in 1948, it has no real conventional enemy left within about 600 miles of its borders. If Sharon had any sense he would use this window of opportunity to come to some kind of arrangement with the Palestinians. Whether he will do so, though, remains to be seen. In the longer run, the greatest beneficiary is likely to be Iran which, without having to lift a finger, has seen its most dangerous enemy ground into the dust. Even before President Bush launched his war against Iraq, the Iranians, feeling surrounded by nuclear-capable American forces on three sides (Afghanistan, the Central Asian Republics, the Persian Gulf), were working as hard as they could to acquire nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles to match. Now that the U.S. has proved it is prepared to fight anybody for no reason at all, they should be forgiven if they redouble their efforts.
Moolak, thank you; Now, you may now go back to your real name of Tony Snow - Thanks for the spin. Spinning wheel keeps on turning. Baghdad keeps on burning - Rolling, Rolling, Rolling on the Potomac - of course, when your Bushtanic is stuck in the mud, kind of hard to do. Posted by: stupid git on December 3, 2006 at 12:53 PM | PERMALINKnina writes: No, you're wrong. Our worst President ever is George W. Bush. You don't judge a President by a book they wrote more than two decades after they've left office. You judge a President by the actions they took while in office. Carter led the effort to sign the Camp David peace accords, and led a worldwide fight for human rights. Bush deceived the American people into initially supporting a war that had nothing to do with the war on terror.
Carter led the effort to sign the Camp David peace accords, and led a worldwide fight for human rights 444 day hostage crises, record high inflation, recod high unemployment, oil crises, national malaise, etc. Jimmy isn't the worst ever but he was the worst last century. Posted by: rdw on December 3, 2006 at 1:01 PM | PERMALINK10. Encourage ethnic minorities to break loose from their Persian yoke. The Kurds of Iran should have their own state. The Baluchis likewise pant pant pant what pathetic fantasies you guys construct. Talk about your pathetic fantasies. This is classic wingnuttery from the war-crazed. Let's just dissect this one tiny piece of bad analysis. First of all, "encourage" is not a plan. Encourage how? What carrot do we dangle in front of minorities who have no reason to trust us? The answer? There is no carrot large or sweet enough. For all their disaffectedness, the Baloch ("Baluchi" is actually one of their languages) are a tiny impoverished minority of just over a million people, and don't have the necessary force or manpower to help overthrow anybody. They would be crushed for any attempt at rebellion. Think about it: if the population of Iraq was 60% Shi'a and 20% Kurds and together they still couldn't overthrow Saddam, what is a mere 2% of the Iranians going to do? Nothing except vainly sacrifice their lives, of course. As for the Azeri, you're totally barking up the wrong tree there. As large a segment of the population as they represent, the bonds of nationalism and Shi'a Islam that they share with their fellow Iranians are much stronger than any feelings of ethnocentricity you may impute to them. The Azeri have been gaining gradual acceptance among the majority after showing their willingness to fight against Saddam to the point where currently the Supreme Leader of Iran is from what ethnic background? He's Azeri, of course. Let me ask: do you work for the Office of Special Plans? Do you and Doug Feith meet every Thursday night for D&D? If not you should, because your analysis is uninformed and piss-poor enough to qualify you for membership in that group. Before you wingnuts decide that we need to attack yet another country maybe you should figure out just how to salvage the chaotic mess in the previous invasions for which you were cheerleaders. In case you haven't been following the news, things aren't going so well in Afghanistan or Iraq. As for the handle-jacking by the jackoffs here, it would be hard to devise a behavior that more clearly sprang from the depths of loserdom. It's the blog equivalent of flinging boogers or the losing football team setting a skunk loose at the victory dance. It just screams "I'm a loser and out of control and I don't care!" I mean, you expect it from Charlie because he's a sociopath who's clearly mentally defective. But from presumptively normal human beings...? Pathetic. Posted by: trex on December 3, 2006 at 1:01 PM | PERMALINKContributors to the Washington Post are debating if George W. Bush is the worst president ever, or if he is just in the bottom five. That should tell you something. He hits with Nixon and Hoover. In those annual surveys of historians that have been going on since the end of WWII Carter is not among the worst presidents. He is much maligned by aging 1970s radical conservatives who dream that Reagan is as great as Lincoln and that the Age of Reagan was a time of prosperity and renewal. I guess if you compare it to the Cheney Regency than it is true Posted by: bellumregio on December 3, 2006 at 1:10 PM | PERMALINKMIKE COOK Even I, as a conservative Republican, see this invasion of Iraq as a complete and utter mess that we should never have gotten into. Mr Bush will have hurt people's perception of the Republican party for a generation. Frankly, it disgusts me how little foresight he and his administation had regarding the consequences of the invasion. I do think alot of posters here spend too much angst on their disgust of THE PAST. Guess what? The invasion happened. Bush lied. We shouldn't be there. All that is true. The invasion is directly responsible for the current violence, although it is not the root cause of the tribal hatreds between Shi'ia and Sunni. Yes, yes, yes. Even alot of Republican Conservatives will agree with all that. But I have not seen Democratic leaders yet come up with any solution to the current problems that are any better than any Republican solution. Posters: Less angst please, More realistic suggestions. Criticism is far easier than coming up with solutions. Posted by: Longstreet on December 3, 2006 at 1:15 PM | PERMALINK"Carter led the effort to sign the Camp David peace accords, and led a worldwide fight for human rights." See how that works? Led efforts and led fights. You mean he DID something? Or ACHIEVED something? Didn't think so. And, oh, how the most-excellent peace process started at Camp David turned out. Peace ensued and we all lived happily ever after. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 1:22 PM | PERMALINKLongstreet - I think the US is obligated by its history to stay in Iraq at this point. Surely, Americans can't be so foolish as to ignore the consequences of an early withdrawl. Iraq cannot govern itself at this point. It cannot protect its citizens. It is not really a country at this point. Immediate withdrawl not only throws the Iraqi people into the trash heap, but it sends a horrible message (as bad as invading another country needlessly, in fact) to the world community. The US has to stay the course and finish what it started, even if it costs us dearly. We created this mess. We have to stay long enough to get a stable government that can defend itself from internal and external aggression. Otherwise, we will be a *worse* laughing-stock than we already are. Posted by: Spock on December 3, 2006 at 1:23 PM | PERMALINKLongstreet, you're wrong. Democrats don't have to propose anything, solution, or "realistic suggestions" about anything. Why would we? When we can just blame everything on Bush. Posted by: trex on December 3, 2006 at 1:24 PM | PERMALINKCharlie: Longstreet, you're wrong. Democrats don't have to propose anything, solution, or "realistic suggestions" about anything. Why would we? When we can just blame everything on Bush. Yeah, I figured that would piss you off a little Charlie. Predictably pathetic. For the record, I do disagree with Longstreet's premise that internal violence in Iraq can somehow now be pacified or that a stable government is a possiblity in the near future. Posted by: trex on December 3, 2006 at 1:32 PM | PERMALINKWay to ignore what I actually wrote, trex. I said Azeris have been traditionally (still) close to the Persians. But who knows what they might be encouraged to do when the oil production drops further (soon Iran will be at net-negative oil exports) and with a few prods from the outside. It's just a constructive suggestion, you see ;) Iran as a nation is a spent force. This is why they are not reproducing and why "Fatime" of Iran has becomes as ubiquitous as "Nastasha" of the Ukraine in the Red Light District of Amsterdam. They're finished. It is very hard to see 30 years into the future and see Iran as a unified country. It's about as cohesive as Yugoslavia was, but with less potential for growth. rdw: 444 day hostage crises, record high inflation, recod high unemployment, oil crises, national malaise, etc. Jimmy isn't the worst ever but he was the worst last century.
if you count american dead and record debt.. there's only one... gwb.... Posted by: mr. irony on December 3, 2006 at 1:39 PM | PERMALINKBut just because it has to happen anyway, doesn't mean we can't help things along. For example, starting by making massive transfers of weapons and explosives into Iranian Kurdistan would be a great idea. Who knows, things could go from there and we would never even NEED to take more radical action. Wouldn't that be neat? Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 1:40 PM | PERMALINKWell, I'm out of here. Going out for a while. If anyone posts under my handle for the next 4-5 hours, you know it's a troll. Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 1:43 PM | PERMALINKtrex posts (if it was her/it/he): "the Baloch are a tiny impoverished minority of just over a million people, and don't have the necessary force or manpower to help overthrow anybody" Bullshit. Noone has too few people to help. They don't have to succeed. There are already IEDs going off in Baluchistan against Persian targets. Can we improve their effectiveness? Encourage more of the same? The way Iran has been doing in Iraq? Of course we can. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 1:47 PM | PERMALINKErrrm, re: bullet point 3. How do you tell someone (Iran & Syria) anything if youre not talking to them? Pantomime? Posted by: Martin K on December 3, 2006 at 1:49 PM | PERMALINKTrying to get back on-topic, the best decomposition of Rumsfelds comments, not surprisingly, is by Professor Juan Cole. As Cole points out, its all about spin. Rumsfeld didnt give a damn about Iraq or the troops, but rather how the American public perceived the Bush Administration. Rumsfeld belongs in a federal penitentiary. Anyhow, Pale Rider, I post under my real name because I am not ashamed of anything I do or afraid of any nutcase out there. But anyhow, Franco's Spain is really worth thinking about because Spain was one of the three "S" nations that evaded the great devastation of World War Two. Sweden and Switzerland were the other two. What is interesting about the three S's is that they all achieved a dicey neutrality from convincing Hitler that they were just strong enough to be too much trouble to conquer outright. Sweden was strong because they quickly copied the best German weapons, particularly a strong air force based on Messerschmidts. Switzerland was strong because of its mountains and legendary plans for national defense. Spain was the most tempting target of all for the Nazis because that would have given them vital air bases, naval bases, and control of Gibralter. But Hitler did not seriously think about invading Spain. Why? Because both factions which fought the Spanish civil war would have united against him and it would take at least 50 divisions to put them down. Spain had no modern arms to speak of, but it did have a heroic national history of chewing up invaders and it had a military leader in the tough-minded Franco. Why put an ephasis on having conversations in the Middle East if you have no real power base and no long-term interests that everyone knows you will kill to protect? Sure, they'll talk to you, but only to make demands. The U.S. does have some nice bases in Iraq, especially in the Kurdish areas. Despite all the trouble, Iraq is pumping more oil at present than ever. The biggest problem is suicide car bombing which is practically impossible to stop in any nation that has a lot of automobiles in the streets. The car bomb is a tactic that the terrorists will adopt internationally, particularly if they continue to have little success against airlines. Unfortunately, I am not hopeful about airlines. The best chance we have to prevent another tragedy is to require all luggage, including carry-ons and shoes, to go into bomb-resistant containers in the hold or to come along later on a special all-cargo flight. Passengers will have to wear issued slippers and be scanned and patted down thoroughly. Even then airliners may endure severe damage from small bombs, but with luck they can fly in crippled condition. Posted by: mike cook on December 3, 2006 at 2:49 PM | PERMALINKmike cook, note that The Conservative Inflator is Pale Rider's sock puppet. They go way back. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 3:02 PM | PERMALINKNot sure if I agree with you on this one, Mike: "Spain had no modern arms to speak of, but it did have a heroic national history of chewing up invaders and it had a military leader in the tough-minded Franco." Weren't they basically a vassal state of France for a long time during the centuries that passed up to this? And had a puppet regime (the French emperor's brother in law) on the throne for ages? And were mostly liberated by accident, when Napoleon got too ambitious? Don't remember all the details, but that's what seems to stick in my memory. Pardon me if I put a potato in my ass and bake it for you! Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 3:20 PM | PERMALINKActually nok, Spain had arms, planes and early model german tanks that they had gotten from the Nazis during the Spanish Civil War. And Spain did send a "volunteer" division to fight against Russia. Early on, Hitler did have plans drawn up for the invasions of Spain and Switerland (Operation Tannenbaum), but scrapped them since they made such little strategic sense. Posted by: Spock on December 3, 2006 at 3:23 PM | PERMALINKIran as a nation is a spent force. This is why they are not reproducing and why "Fatime" of Iran has becomes as ubiquitous as "Nastasha" of the Ukraine in the Red Light District of Amsterdam. They're finished. But man she can sure suck that golfball through that garden hose. Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 3:23 PM | PERMALINKFuck you Pale Rider. You're a fraud and I can kick your ass any day of the week. Motherfucker. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 4:20 PM | PERMALINKPale, turn to the mirror and say loudly and clearly (take a deep breath first... now let it slowly out): There's nothing that a good ass kicking wouldn't fix. Or trex, posting as bellumregio, thinks they can debate me. Forget it. You can't debate me. I've spanked everyone today. And my mommy thinks I'm cool, too. I forgot about that. That's Downtown, dumbass. A Downtown-like process. Consider yourself spanked. Posted by: nok on December 3, 2006 at 5:11 PM | PERMALINKBut man she can sure suck that golfball through that garden hose You are stealing Bill Clintons description of Gennifer Flowers and it's a tennis ball. Posted by: rdw on December 3, 2006 at 5:41 PM | PERMALINKActually, it was a basketball. And, it is sad how hard it has become to get a good blowjob in a limousine these days. What is the world coming to? Posted by: Bill Clinton on December 3, 2006 at 5:49 PM | PERMALINKrdw wrote: Jimmy isn't the worst ever but he was the worst last century. Wrong, but rdw is the worst ever ignorant dumbass right-wing dittohead to ever post a comment on this site. The "leaked" Rumsfeld memo is yet another example of why Donald Rumsfeld has been one of Washington's most successful and long-lasting bureacrats. With his list of suggestions and comments on what is wrong with our Iraq policy and what to do about it, Rumsfeld attempts to show that he, too, is understanding of the problems, is willing to make changes, but at the same time shifting the decisions over to the president with the subtle suggestion that Bush is the key to this mess. It is hardly a coincidence that the memo was supposedly written two days [it was probably sketched out long before] before Mr. Rumsfeld is notified that his services will no longer be needed. Surely Rumsfeld was aware of the impending change and this is yet another example of Rummy's exit strategy--hey, guys, it wasn't all my fault, after all, and besides here are some of the things you should have done. Bye, bye..... Posted by: Philip True on December 3, 2006 at 5:52 PM | PERMALINKrdw: 444 day hostage crises, record high inflation, recod high unemployment, oil crises, national malaise, etc. Jimmy isn't the worst ever but he was the worst last century. Jimmy Carter led the effort to deregulate the economy (natural gas, bank interest rates, petroleum, airlines, trucking); he went along with Volcker's tight money policy, which reined in inflation; he started a long-term plan to develop alternative fuels (we'd be better off now if those had continued at the same rate of a few Billion per year); he reduced the federal budget deficit. I think you could fairly say that he laid the foundation for the subsequent economic growth. Unfortunately, that wasn't what he claimed. He claimed that Americans had to become humble and get used to being poor like the rest of the world; his presentation of conservation seemed penitential rather than growth-oriented. I suspect that, had he thought his achievements would stimulate economic growth, he wouldn't have supported deregulation. His foreign policies were dreadful, though perhaps not so awfule in liight of the Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush policies toward Iraq. Posted by: MatthewRMarler on December 3, 2006 at 6:16 PM | PERMALINKImperial Spain was hardly a vassal state. Napoleon lost the better part of his grand army fighting guerillas in Spain. Didn't know about the volunteer Spaniards fighting in Russia, probably because few of them came back to tell their story. The American volunteers who manned the Abraham Lincoln brigade to fight for the socialist republic of Barcelona pretty much all came back to give interviews, write books, and other arty things, a humanitarian Franco gift to America that helped make Seattle as lefty as it is. Posted by: mike cook on December 3, 2006 at 7:26 PM | PERMALINKI think you could fairly say that he laid the foundation for the subsequent economic growth There are no conditions under which you could suggest such a thing. Aside from appointing Paul Jimmy was an economic disaster and his management of energy was just as abysmal. His pissed away billions on Shale Oil and down other rat holes and left the next President with the worst combination of inflation and unemployment in our entire history. The tremendous wealth generation of the last 2 1/2 decades is due solely to Reaganomics and the restoration of incentives to work, invest and create. If allowing the govt to manage energy programs made any sense at all we'd see it in advancements from Europe, Russia and China. We've got a fairly minimalist energy program now and it's working. Ethanol production is surging and will probably displace 10% of gasoline demand by 2012. The Tar Sands will add 2M in oil production by 2012. They've discovered almost 20B of Oil deposits in the USA in the last year as well as more natural gas. We're getting significant investment in conservation, solar, wind and nuclear is beginning to look attractive. The markets will solve the energy problem not some Jimmy Carter boondoggle. Posted by: rdw on December 3, 2006 at 7:44 PM | PERMALINKRumsfield's memo is pretty weak and shallow. You think a guy in charge for six years would be able to provide a proposed course of action, rather than his menu of choices. And if he is behind the leak, it really diminishes his stature in my mind. Posted by: brian on December 3, 2006 at 8:04 PM | PERMALINKYou think a guy in charge for six years would be able to provide a proposed course of action, rather than his menu of choices He's not in charge. The menu was FOR the guy in charge. Posted by: rdw on December 3, 2006 at 8:08 PM | PERMALINKrdw: You miss my point. Bush obviously is in charge, but Rumfield is Secretary of Defense and it is reasonable to expect him to provide a proposed solution, not a menu of "illustrative" alternatives. It is another example of when you get to read high level classified stuff, you shake your head at the content. Posted by: brian on December 3, 2006 at 8:18 PM | PERMALINKYou miss my point. I didn't miss yor point. You were being snarky and superficial. It's Rumsfelds job to present the C in C the various options in a form he is comfortable. These men have a 6-yr working relationship. The format in fact presents the recommentations in a priority/preference format and it shouldn't be hard to figure out GWB will get Rummys recommendation when he askes for it. The vast majority of leaders want the range of options. They don't want the decision presented to them. Moreover this is one leaked memo. We have no diea if it's the entire memo, the context under which it was written, if GWB asked for it, etc. Posted by: rdw on December 3, 2006 at 8:31 PM | PERMALINKrdw, It is true that this is just one piece of information. I just don't find it very impressive in either analysis of the problem or presentation of a solution. If you think that memo is high quality work, you certainly are entitled to your opinion. I would have expected more from a Secretary of Defense. Posted by: brian on December 3, 2006 at 8:47 PM | PERMALINKI would have expected more from a Secretary of Defense This is beyond trivial. The man has exceptional leadership qualities and communication skills as he's proven over 40-yrs at the highest levels of government and in the business world. Posted by: rdw on December 3, 2006 at 9:09 PM | PERMALINKrdw, Look, we are talking about the quality of one memo, not about Rumfield's 40 year career (which I have always been impressed by). I think the memo is weak. You, apparently, think it is impressive. Neither your opinion nor my opinion is trivial. Posted by: brian on December 3, 2006 at 9:17 PM | PERMALINKFWIW, brian, I agree with you about that memo. It is quite weak in that there is no analysis, no fleshing out any of the "bullet-points" no what-ifs, there's just nothing to go by there. Hopefully, the Baker group will do better, but I doubt it. (What worries me most about Baker is that he's been to Iraq now a Bunch of times in preparation for this, and he has yet to visit Kurdistan, apparently - that smells like another sellout). The best stuff is likely to come from the generals who are actually overseeing this - they are the ones (if any) who likely know all the details. Posted by: cecce on December 3, 2006 at 9:39 PM | PERMALINKWhen a company defrauds its customers, or delivers shoddy goods, the customers sooner or later are going to take their business elsewhere. But if that company has a virtual monopoly, and offers something its customers must have, they may have no choice but to keep taking it. Hey guys, I have a blog up now. It's pretty kewl, if I have to say so myself - LOL!!!! http://blogs.starwars.com/tmplarchvgrl I have been working on it for a while, and I put quite some posts there that's relevant to this topic, so check it out! Kewl or not? Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 10:08 PM | PERMALINKThe post above--not me of course.
http://cp2000.blogspot.com/ Ooh, he's got talent, kids. Real talent. Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 10:11 PM | PERMALINKMy handle's been hijacked by the troll using nok/lick as a handle... He's got a great little blog right here...
Wah wah wah, little troll. Posted by: Pale Rider on December 3, 2006 at 10:25 PM | PERMALINKPale Rider: "The post above--not me of course." Don't worry, we have never thought you were anyone other than Secular Animist's sock puppet anyway. Have anyone ever seen them together? Posted by: Philip True on December 3, 2006 at 11:58 PM | PERMALINKOne Last Thing | A realistic plan: Split the country in twoBy Jonathan Last But there are "realists," and then there are realists. Swarthmore's James Kurth is the latter. Writing in a recent issue of the New Republic, Kurth proposes a novel plan: Abandon the idea of a single democratic Iraq and split the country into two states, a Kurdish north and a Shiite south. Kurth's proposal - call it "Biden with teeth" - is worth considering. Kurth understands that a simple withdrawal from Iraq, or a partitioning that rewards Sunni insurgents, would be interpreted as a sign of American weakness - Somalia, writ large. So he suggests: "Before it leaves Iraq, then, the United States must inflict a dramatic and decisive defeat upon the Sunni insurgents - one that will demonstrate the unbearable cost and utter futility of the Islamist dream... . That defeat must be more than military; it must also be political: The United States should divide Iraq into two parts, leaving the Kurds in control of the north, the Shia in control of the south - and the Sunnis stateless in between." The border would be drawn along the ethnic contours of Iraq, with Kirkuk (and probably Mosul) as part of Kurdistan and Baghdad as part of the much larger southern Shia state. Both territories have enough oil to be economically viable. After the partition, the United States would be free to pursue separate policies with each, using different carrots and sticks as needed. And what would become of the Sunnis? Kurth is clear-eyed in recognizing that theirs would be a grim fate. They "would have to pay for the sins of the cruel regimes that represented them in the past and the cruel insurgents whom they support today." This is a realism based not on a desire for stability and the status quo, but on an understanding of power and the opportunities inherent in instability. There are rational objections to Kurth's plan. Turkey, for starters, would be unhappy with a Kurdish state on its border. Yet Turkey not only declined to participate in the coalition to remove Saddam, but also forbade the Fourth Infantry Division from crossing Turkish territory to establish a northern front in Iraq, a move that spared the lives of many Baathist troops and helped give the insurgency a running start. We owe the Turks no favors. To the contrary, it is worth reminding them that America's friendship is both valuable and conditional. The other looming weakness in the two-state solution is Iran. A Shiite state would be immediately open to Iranian influence and might even become a vassal. Kurth believes that such an alliance would be short-lived: "Arabs are unlikely to accept long-term domination by Persians, whatever their religious commonality." He likens the situation to the way in which communist Yugoslavia became independent of the Soviet Union in the space of a few short years. Yet it is unclear whether, in practice, ethnic schism would trump sectarian unity. America would have a great deal of economic leverage on the new nation, but there would remain a real possibility that the Shia state would become a permanent part of Iran's orbit, helping its bid for regional empire. The biggest casualty of Kurth's plan would be the dream of bringing democracy to the Middle East. The Kurdish state would probably be a functioning democracy; the Shia state would start out as a democracy, but there would be no guarantees going forward. Yet it may turn out that democracy is a tactical, not a strategic, goal. The broad strategic purpose of the Iraq project was to hobble our enemies in the region and prevent them from cooperating with terrorists. Even by the Bush Doctrine's own lights, democracy was just a means to achieve the real ends: liberalism. And while we have largely failed to establish a viable democracy in Iraq, we have completely failed at fostering liberalism. Nearly every indication is that the near- and medium-term consequences of democracy in the Middle East are a decrease in liberalism. Whatever the Baker-Hamilton report may lack, it should spark a clarifying conversation that helps us focus on separating tactical and strategic objectives. Only when that is done can we plot the best way forward in Iraq. James Kurth's two-state proposal is good place to start the discussion. The Iraq Study Group is hard to figure. The members of the commission (other than Baker and Hamilton) are not real impressive, e.g., Sandra Day O'Connor? But if it creates some bipartisanship and does not damage the war effort, it is okay with me. Posted by: brian on December 4, 2006 at 12:05 AM | PERMALINKHere is the full list of members (anyone notice a lack of military influence in assessing a military situation): James Baker, Sandra Day O'Connor, Lawrence Eagleburger, Edwin Meese III, Alan Simpson, Lee Hamilton, Vernon Jordan, Leon Panetta, William Perry, and Chuck Robb Posted by: brian on December 4, 2006 at 12:11 AM | PERMALINKThe above post at 11:59 was not "Pale Rider" and most of the others, just sickeningly incompetent attempts at spoofing or whatever. Registration, please? Dude, have the fucking courtesy to at least switch the name/e-mail address when you're spamming threads, okay? Friggin' trolls are incompetent, that's for sure. Posted by: Give Blood Play Rugby on December 4, 2006 at 12:13 AM | PERMALINKBe aware that the long unfunny handle above is just Pale Rider's sock puppet. He thinks it's funnier that way. Also, with the Rugby reference, he seems less homosexual. Posted by: Kenji on December 4, 2006 at 12:44 AM | PERMALINKKenji, fuck you and fuck your mother. Pale Rider rules! Shoot, move, communicate. Posted by: Give Blood Play Rugby on December 4, 2006 at 12:53 AM | PERMALINK
You, apparently, think it is impressive No, I didn't say it was impressive. But it was a memo. I wasn't a white paper. The triviality is a function of the fact it is only a memo. It written the way memos are supposed to be written; short, concise and clear. In that regard is was dead on. This is useless, worthless nitpicking. You don't like Rummy and you are looking for flaws. This shows the desperation. The fact is the man has been terrific. He's been toying with the press for 6 years and if there's one thing the elitists hate most it's someone so clearly smarter and better prepared than they are. They know for example his press conferences before, during and after the wars have consistently been the best show in D.C. because of his commanding performances. He's embarrassed them repeatedly. Doesn't it also strike you as odd when the Generals complain about Rummy being too hard and abrasive? Somewhow I can't visualize these bureaucratic crybabies leading men in battle. Rummy has been the longest serving Secretary of Defense in our history. He's managed two wars and the most significant military transformation since 1942. We're all the 2nd coming of Albert Einstein with hindsight and still be best you can do is a one page memo? It doesn't even reach the level of trivial. Posted by: rdw on December 4, 2006 at 9:29 AM | PERMALINKDonald Rumsfeld is an American hero. Not one of you punks is fit to even shine his shoes. Shoot, move, communicate. Posted by: Pale Rider on December 4, 2006 at 9:59 AM | PERMALINKThat "memo" is just a snow-job. Rumsfeld knew he was leaving so he cooked up his memo so he could say later "if I'd have stayed I would have done x, y, and z differently and that would have saved the whole operation." Posted by: evan read on December 4, 2006 at 3:41 PM | PERMALINKOrder Generic drugs Buy Generic drugs without prescription You could get the following medicines at cheapest prices: attract women pheromones
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