Iraq

From Juan Cole this morning: A couple days ago Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) interviewed Joseph Christoff, Director, International Affairs and Trade, for the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The Texas Democrat was trying to get Mr. Christoff to admit that the benchmarks Bush laid down for success of the “surge” in Iraq have still not been met. Mr. Christoff kept saying his report was not about benchmarks, but the questioning by Mr. Doggett ended up showing that there has been no progress on benchmarks. This five minute interview is what you might call “wonky” but it’s interesting nevertheless and shows that the so-called surge has not been a great success.

How about some non-US spin on General Petraeus leaving Iraq? Ajazeera is a good place to start. Here’s a video discussed by Juan Cole this morning. Instead of the happy talk of victory that the US media would spin, Juan Cole quotes a more realistic statement by Gen. Petraeus himself:

‘ In a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Sunday, Petraeus said experience in Iraq shows it will take political and economic progress as well as military action to tackle increased violence in Afghanistan. “You don’t kill or capture your way out of an industrial strength insurgency,” he said.’

Click on the YouTube and watch the heavies! There’s quite a bunch there. Also, what sounds to Juan Cole (and me) like realistic reporting. Worth a three minute watch.

Juan Cole provides an interesting news item from Aljazeera this morning: “Almost all of the wealth generated in Iraq comes from two off-shore oil rigs. Guarding these sites is a priority, not just for war-torn Iraq, but for a world in which oil prices have touched record highs.”

Listen to Matt Lauer of MSNBC keep hyping the Iraq flip-flop narrative. Matt either doesn’t get it or doesn’t want to, probably the latter. But now Obama has the Prime Minister of Iraq on his side! Worth a listen.

Jesse Ventura, remember him?, tells it like it is!

How come more Dems aren’t talking like this? Forget the Repugs, but geez, can’t we get a single Dem to get this pissed off once in a while?

Where can you find real news? Well, not on the networks. Lets hear it from Lara Logan and Jon Stewart via www.theREALnews.com:

Thanks to Juan Cole for posting the above so that I could copy it here.

Ted’s successful brain surgery today is great news. How many remember his great speech of nearly six years ago? Perhaps if he had been listened to then we might have avoided the debacle that is Iraq. Thanks to Brian Donohue for reminding us of this on his dailyrevolution.net blog. Here’s the link to Ted’s speech. That the MSM not only ignored the speech at the time, but essentially ridiculed it as some far out leftist tripe has been brought out by Eric Boehlert. Thanks again to Brian Donohue for this link.

Here are some of the key passages in Kennedy’s September 27, 2002, speech, as listed by Eric Boehlert:

* “[T]he Administration has not made a convincing case that we face such an imminent threat to our national security that a unilateral, pre-emptive American strike and an immediate war are necessary.”

* “[T]he Administration has not explicitly acknowledged, let alone explained to the American people, the immense post-war commitment that will be required to create a stable Iraq.”

* “A largely unilateral American war that is widely perceived in the Muslim world as untimely or unjust could worsen not lessen the threat of terrorism.”

* “War with Iraq before a genuine attempt at inspection and disarmament, or without genuine international support — could swell the ranks of Al Qaeda sympathizers and trigger an escalation in terrorist acts.”

* “[I]nformation from the intelligence community over the past six months does not point to Iraq as an imminent threat to the United States or a major proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.”

* “[T]here is no clear and convincing pattern of Iraqi relations with either Al Qaeda or the Taliban.”

And this great foresight was essentially ignored by the MSM and/or referred to as unpatriotic ranting.

OK, back to politics. Charles Pierce has a wild way with words. Here’s his latest (last paragraph) from Eric Alterman’s Altercation:

That story this week about how the war in Iraq has fallen off the general radar is almost incomprehensibly sad, and not merely because it advantages The Saintly Straight-Talkin’ Maverick Dude, which it does. It’s sad because it’s of a piece with the whole effort by the Avignon Presidency to run everything about the response to the 9-11 attacks off the books. Go shopping. You don’t need to know why we’re going to war, and we’re going to lie to you about it anyway. Don’t photograph the coffins. Don’t count the dead. Keep the cost out of the federal budget and off television. If they didn’t need the children of ordinary people to die to get what they want, they might have been able to turn the whole thing into a gated community of the soul. And now, nobody’s paying attention, and nobody’s angry when the people who get paid to pay attention run around yelling about Eliot Spitzer’s banging hookers and the latest blurp from a crotchety old fool like Geraldine Ferraro. Also this week, the Pentagon went out of its way to bury the news that it’s own study has concluded that one of the primary casus belli — the Iraq-al Qaeda connection — was the moonshine that several previous studies said it was. The news dropped with a thud and life went on. The country was told, in a hundred different ways, not to care about this war — or, really, the one in Afghanistan, either — and it has learned the lesson all too well. I don’t know how I’d feel if I were a soldier, or the father of one. But this country is nowhere near as balls-out angry as it ought to be, and none of the contending candidates seem willing or able to become the vehicle of righteous democratic-small-d rage. I don’t want to come together with these people. I want them in irons until they tell me where my country went.

For an excellent discussion of the issues raised by Geraldine Ferraro, see this post by Brian Donohue.

I couldn’t pass up this opening paragraph from Juan Cole this morning:

I review the news below and don’t somehow conclude that the US occupation of Iraq is a success story. I know we are paying a lot for our presence in Iraq. I can’t figure out what the average American is receiving for the money. It isn’t increased security, since Iraq is a training ground for terrorists who will likely hit the US or US interests in future. It isn’t extra petroleum, at least not for us ordinary folks. Maybe the US oil majors will do well out of it. But even they say they can’t do business in Iraq without oil legislations. And petroleum prices held above $98 a barrel on Friday. The Turkish invasion of Iraq was cited as one reason for the price increase. Instead of asking “are things hopeful in Iraq?” or “is there progress in Iraq?”, the American media and public should be asking, “What are we getting out of all this?” That is the question the US Right fears most of all, which is why they ask the ‘progress’ question all the time. They only have two settings, “slow progress” and “progress.” A burned out hulk of a city like Falluja? A sign of “slow progress.”

I enjoy having access to alternative media where I often find nuggets of truth.

Hendrik Hertzberg has the best analysis of the McCain quip, Make it a hundred, in answer to a questioner complaining that Bush wants to stay in Iraq for fifty more years. Hendrik was there and he puts the whole exchange in context. The bottom line:

But what the context shows, I think, is that yanking that sound bite out of context isn’t really all that unfair. McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal—that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we’ll stay.