Irish Political News

It lacks that certain je ne sais quoi that George and Tony had.

When Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki launched his crackdown on the al-Sadr militias in Basra, George Bush said that it was "a defining moment". The phrase "clarifying moment" had already been used for another ill-advised crackdown on a Shiite militia -- the Bush/Blair backed Israeli attack on Hezbollah.

Notwithstanding the resulting humiliation for al-Maliki, he apparently can't get enough of these defining moments --

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, meanwhile, said he plans to launch more security crackdowns like the one in Basra against "criminal gangs" in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. Speaking to reporters, he singled out Sadr City and Shula — two Mahdi Army militia strongholds in Baghdad — as likely targets in the future operations.

Al-Maliki did not mention by name the Mahdi Army militia, but said those areas are under the influence of "criminal gangs." "We cannot remain silent about our people and families in Sadr City, Shula and other areas ... while they are held hostage by gangs that control them. We must liberate these cities because we came (to office) to serve them," he said at a news conference.

One factor in this decision is that he knows that even if he gets in trouble in these urban assault operations, the US and UK will back him up with firepower, even at the risk of major casualties.

This is what the presence of US troops is encouraging. There couldn't be a clearer case against the surge.

Who is being described in this New York Times article? --

But interviews with a wide range of American and military officials also suggest that Mr. [...] overestimated his military’s abilities and underestimated the scale of the resistance. [...] also displayed an impulsive leadership style that did not give his forces or that of his most powerful allies, [...], time to prepare.

“He went in with a stick and he poked a hornet’s nest, and the resistance he got was a little bit more than he bargained for,” said one official in the multinational force in Baghdad who requested anonymity. “They went in with 70 percent of a plan. Sometimes that’s enough. This time it wasn’t.”

As the Iraqi military and civilian casualties grew and the Iraqi planning appeared to be little more than an improvisation, the United States mounted an intensive military and political effort to try to turn around the situation, according to accounts by Mr. Crocker and several American military officials in Baghdad and Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In the actual context, which is the botched Iraqi government clampdown on Basra, it's about Iraqi PM Nouri al-Malaki, the preferred fall guy for the failure. But one could take any part of the above and insert George W. Bush's name, and you'd have a description of the original invasion.

Announcement from Multi-National Force Iraq --

TIKRIT, Iraq – Eight Abna al-Iraq, or Sons of Iraq, were killed and three were wounded in an improvised explosive device detonation in southern Ninewah April 1.

The detonation occurred while the SOI members were transporting the IED to a nearby joint combat outpost for destruction.

Prompting the question: why are the US's Iraqi counterparts not given the proper equipment or training to deal with IEDs?

White House announcement (done, like the "resignation" of Alphonso Jackson, en route to Ukraine) --

President George W. Bush today announced that Special Envoy to the European Union, C. Boyden Gray will also serve as Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy. Mr. Gray will engage directly with senior European, Central Asian, Russian and other political and business leaders to support the continued development and diversification of the energy sector.

That position as "Special Envoy" to the EU is in fact an extended recess appointment for Gray i.e. one done without Senate approval. It's not clear what the backstory is here i.e. whether there was nothing for Gray to do in Brussels given that he's not actually the US Ambassador to the EU or if there's some new wheeze involving oil or gas deals at work. But the US Senate needs to find some way to rein in this parallel diplomatic system, especially given how closely it seems to conform to the obsessions of George Bush and Dick Cheney with energy supplies. It's all too clear where that obsession has already led.

The oddest moment at this evening's opening of the Washington Nationals new stadium was not the ceremonial first pitch by George Bush, but an earlier sequence in which military personnel in uniform carried out two huge stars and stripes flags.

The folded up flags being carried looked like body bags.

George Bush, with Australian PM Kevin Rudd today --

And I haven't spoke to the [Iraqi] Prime Minister [al-Maliki] since he's made his decision, but I suspect that he would say, look, the citizens down there just got sick and tired of this kind of behavior ... And so I'm not exactly sure what triggered the Prime Minister's response. I don't know if it was one phone call. I don't know what -- whether or not the local mayor called up and said, help -- we're sick and tired of dealing with these folks. But nevertheless, he made the decision to move. And we'll help him.

But this was his decision. It was his military planning. It was his causing the troops to go from point A to point B. And it's exactly what a lot of folks here in America were wondering whether or not Iraq would even be able to do in the first place.

If ever there was a passage that signified too much protestation, this would be it. For one thing, why did PM al-Maliki look so distinctly unenthused when Dick Cheney popped up in Baghdad last week -- by pure coincidence, of course, right before al-Maliki is said to have decided on his crackdown on the Basra militias?

Before a messianic audience in Dayton, Ohio (added: link to speech)--

Delivered justice to Zarqawi in the form of two 500 lb precision guided bombs.

Tell that to Pope Benedict.

Nothing in the speech yet makes any reference to the chaos in southern Iraq and Baghdad today.

Now he mentions the chaos, but blames Iran. Iran supports SCIRI/Dawa which is part of the government, clamping down on al-Sadr.

A new refrain -- "the soccer, the soccer" (it used to be "the schools, the schools"). Odierno says he saw 180 games in one trip. McCain only saw 50! Is it the job of generals to be counting in-use football fields?

Is his audience deluded enough to think that Iraqi politics is just like US politics? Their President certainly is.

He refers to Iraqi oil production without making any reference to the huge pipeline blast today.

His audience probably doesn't understand the legal dance now going on in the speech: "strategic partnership" = a treaty he intends not to submit to the Senate for consent -- contrary to the constitution.

That "critic" he quoted is long-time war supporter, Tony Cordesman.

Two sentences in the speech on the actual current situation in Iraq -- which has almost nothing to do with al-Qaeda. And he asks others to keep an open mind.

Answer to his question (if not Iraq, where?): Pakistan. But Pakistan doesn't have oil.

What did George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Steve Hadley and "The Lombardis" think was going to happen?

One question lingers: why did the Iraqi government move against al-Sadr happen so soon after Cheney's visit? Did Dick stir up a battle that the government can't win?

Photo: AFP/Alli Al-Saadi

There's an event going on the American Enterprise Institute with the key intellectual backers of the invasion of Iraq and then the surge discussing the future of the US occupation. Not surprisingly, they've all zeroed in on the concept of the "second election" (which doesn't come for another 18 months) being more important than the first in a new democracy -- and thus the need for troops to stay at least that long -- notwithstanding all the cheering about purple fingers that went on after the first one.

Anyway the panel is Fred Kagan, Michael O'Hanlon, and Ken Pollack. Kagan went through a list of benchmarks and declared most of them "done". O'Hanlon declared that the group of war architects like the panel and David Petraeus deserved a group name -- not Vulcans, but Lombardis, after the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers. That's quite an honour to bestow on themselves. Vince Lombardi had won three NFL titles in a shorter time than the war in Iraq.

O'Hanlon seems surprised that things got worse in Mosul during the surge. He never mentioned that troops were reallocated from Mosul to Baghdad for the surge -- and dastardly al-Qaeda moved in the opposite direction. Meanwhile Ken Pollack is complaining that the success of the surge is creating a demand for more troops in the south. "Overstretch through success" or something. He's also claiming that the surge turned Iraq around much more quickly than British military operations in Northern Ireland.

Vince Lombardi had many quotes. O'Hanlon clearly likes the ones about persistence and attention to fundamentals. But Vince also said --

We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time.

Someone is going to have blow the final whistle on the war, even at the risk of the "Lombardis" thinking that they could have won it.

UPDATE: Things are getting wackier. Fred Kagan is demonstrating that if you can use even slightly technical terminology, everyone thinks you're genius. He was talking about the reduction in brigades in terms of a "delta". He said that each reduction in brigade strength from 20 has exponential effects on military capabilities, so that by the time you're thinking about going from 15 to 14 brigades, the loss is 10⁶. 1 million times less effective? Nobody asked.

FINAL UPDATE: Think Progress has the clip of O'Hanlon's Lombardi discussion.

Dick Cheney, with Israeli president Shimon Peres today --

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: I want to thank you, Mr. President, for welcoming me back again to Israel. I remember when we first met many years ago, when you were Defense Minister --

PRESIDENT PERES: Both of us.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Both of us, yes. This was before I was defense minister. This was Rumsfeld's first time as defense minister.

A reminder of the deep roots of the Iraq fiasco. The photo is Cheney with Gerald Ford and Don Rumsfeld when Rumsfeld was Ford's Chief of Staff. Rummy was later moved to the defence position and Cheney took his Chief of Staff job, which is when he first met Peres.

OK, it's not quite up there with his Auschwitz parka, but Dick Cheney couldn't coordinate his jacket and pants to receive his Islamo-sash and al-bling from Custodian of the 400 Oil Wells, King Abdullah?

George Bush has "issued" a statement on the Taiwan election, although since he's probably mountain biking around Camp David, the statement has actually been waiting to go for a few days with an {insert victor name} field once the result was in. And quite a diplomatic dance it is, especially for someone with zero willingness to confront China over Tibet. Of particular note --

Once again, Taiwan has demonstrated the strength and vitality of its democracy ... Taiwan is a beacon of democracy to Asia and the world. I am confident that the election and the democratic process it represents will advance Taiwan as a prosperous, secure, and well-governed society.

As in, not like the other place.

It falls to Taiwan and Beijing to build the essential foundations for peace and stability by pursuing dialogue through all available means and refraining from unilateral steps that would alter the cross-Strait situation.

No reference to "China" at all. Just Beijing. Two places disputing a single title.

The maintenance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the welfare of the people on Taiwan remain of profound importance to the United States.

Not "people of Taiwan" (a usage shared by the State Department). But on balance, a pro-Taiwan statement. Yet, is there really anything that the US could do if things got ugly between China and its "renegade province"? And one hopes Bush doesn't think this compensates for his silence on Tibet.

The good, or at least weird, news is that the one of the two companies involved in the peek into Barack Obama's passport file has as its chairman and CEO a Barack Obama adviser, John Brennan, of The Analysis Corporation. The bad news is that this corporation and its parent (SFA: "national security solutions provider") sees its main business line as counterterrorism, meaning the same securocrats are probably looking through all sorts of other intelligence information on Americans and US residents.

UPDATE: The Analysis Corp, unlike the other company Stanley, has yet to fire the snooper -- the delay at the request of the State Department. And Brennan has disagreed with Obama on retroactive immunity for telecom firms under Bush's modified foreign intelligence surveillance program. Looks like his own company has just become the case study in what happens when private companies start trawling through personal information.

Incidentally, Internet searches for the other company, Stanley, get more precise if you use its NYSE ticker symbol, SXE.

UPDATE: It took 24 hours from when you read it here first for the media to figure out the Brennan angle. But as usual, they try to go with a faux scandal and not look at the underlying issue of privacy and government information-gathering.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page, in a particularly ill-timed rant coming on the evening of news about George Bush's securocrats rummaging through Barack Obama's passport file --

This exercise [blocking "Protect America Act"] shows that the Democratic left that runs the House is a danger to American security.

The White House/Republican spin on why State Department contract employees were snooping into Barack Obama's passport file will be: well, they got caught, right? But they got caught because --

of a computer-monitoring system that is triggered when the passport accounts of a "high-profile person" are accessed, he said. The system, which focuses on politicians and celebrities, was put in place after the State Department was embroiled in a scandal involving the access of the passport records of then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton in 1992.

i.e. if you're not a politician or celebrity, anyone with access to the system, including those pesky "contract employees" could snoop as much they want and no red flag would ever pop up.

Where are the libertarians?

Future generations will find many aspects of our culture bizarre, one surely being why it was that visits by the McCain-Lieberman '08 campaign to Iraq required a stop at a fruit and veg market as an index of progress.

It's very strange. No one told him that "Concerned Local Citizens" were rebranded "Sons of Iraq" to sound less like vigilantes.

Here's an old post on this "weak horse, strong horse" quote. It's amazing that Bush admits that Osama bin Laden has guided his strategy.

White House announcement --

The President intends to appoint Peter Pace, of Virginia, to be a Member of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board.

That would be the board whose oversight element Bush recently gutted with an executive order, removing many of its independent monitoring functions. But just to be sure he hears what he wants to hear, that "Peter Pace" is none other than General Pete Pace, who served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Afghan and Iraqi wars, and was the chairman thereof (and thus Bush's top uniformed adviser) when the wheels were coming off in Iraq in 2005 and 2006.

He was one of the guys Bush said he was listening to when he was claiming that he had enough troops in Iraq. Which was the period right before he decided that he didn't have enough troops in Iraq. Just the guy you went in an intelligence advisory capacity.

She has no known government job, no apparent protocol position, no official designation of any kind. But there again on a Dick Cheney Middle East trip is Liz Cheney (right), doing all the expensive travel at taxpayer expense and apparently attending a lot of meetings. Shouldn't someone e.g. the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, care?

UPDATE: More Liz Cheney here .

Photo: AFP/Paul J. Richards

Dick Cheney Iraq event --

Remarks by Vice President Cheney and Sayyed Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim, Chairman of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

That would be the bizarre pal of the neocons, the Iran-linked SCIRI, and part of the evidence for what would be one of history's great ironies, that the whole neocon operation is in fact being run for the benefit of Tehran.

But that's another story. SCIRI changed their name a year ago, to make themselves sound more Iraqi and less revolutionary. So why wasn't the name change reflected for Dick's arrival?

UPDATE: They corrected it.

George Bush --

The situation in Tibet* remains deplorable. The regime has rejected calls from its own people and the international community to begin a genuine dialogue with the opposition and ethnic minority groups. Arrests and secret trials of peaceful political activists continue, such as the recent arrest of journalists Thet Zin and Sein Win Maung.

No, wait. That's his most recent statement on Burma, the other monk-beating regime. But Burma is not a huge net lender to the USA and is not hosting the Olympics. So that's different.

Photo: AFP/Mark Ralston

Dick Cheney continues his tour of safe audiences -- military bases and loyal Bushies -- with a trip to the Heritage Foundation to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's announcement of the Strategic Defense ("Star Wars") Initiative. Which 25 years and billions of dollars later, still can't do anything like its original vision of intercepting unannounced ballistic missiles headed towards the USA. But the issue is not whether it felt short of that technological goal, but whether the goal is even relevant now, if it ever was. Dick has no doubts --

But in 2000, George W. Bush campaigned on a promise to build missile defenses, and in 2001, he made the wise decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty. It was an act of great courage, and it opened the way for major advances in our ability to stand up a defense against missile attack. (Applause.)

The decision made even more sense in light of the attacks of September 11th. As President Bush said, 9/11 "made all too clear [that] the greatest threats to both our countries come not from each other, or other big powers in the world, but from terrorists who strike without warning, or rogue states who seek weapons of mass destruction."

In fact, 9/11 showed the irrelevance of missile defence. The missile was a hijacked plane. No rogue state, no WMDs, nothing. And the biggest threat to life in Iraq now is not Iranian missiles, but simple bombs made from stuff left lying around during the Bush occupation. The one advantage that Reagan and his hare-brained scheme has is that, by the standards of George Bush, it seems like a harmless folly.

US Admiral William Fallon was forced out of his job as chief of the Pentagon's Central Command because he disagreed with George Bush's policy on Iran and Iraq. The Wall Street Journal ("The Pentagon vs. Petraeus") considers the problem --

A fateful debate is now taking place at the Pentagon that will determine the pace of U.S. military withdrawals for what remains of President Bush's term. Senior Pentagon officials -- including, we hear, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen, Army Chief of Staff George Casey and Admiral Fallon -- have been urging deeper troop cuts in Iraq beyond the five "surge" combat brigades already scheduled for redeployment this summer.

Last month Mr. Gates agreed to a pause in these withdrawals, so that General David Petraeus could assess whether the impressive security gains achieved by the surge can be maintained with fewer troops. But now the Pentagon seems to be pushing for a pause of no more than four to six weeks before the drawdowns resume.

So everyone who ranks above Petraeus wants more withdrawals from Iraq as soon as possible. A tricky one for Bush who has always talked about listening to the generals, not one subordinate general. For the WSJ, the way forward is clear: Bush must overrule everyone who doesn't agree with him. And/or force them out of their jobs. It's a strange way to run a country.

Incidentally, the aforementioned Bob Gates was forced into at least one misleading statement at the news conference announcing that Fallon was out --

Q Did you discuss this with the president before you accepted it?
SEC. GATES: I had -- the president has made clear all along that these matters are to be handled strictly within the Department of Defense. I communicated -- the president's traveling today; I communicated this morning, through the national security adviser, what Admiral Fallon had informed me and what I intended to do.

By "these matters", Gates can only mean the specific business about offering to retire and it being accepted. The idea that Bush had no role in Fallon quitting, not least given what the WSJ says about the rampant disagreements within the Pentagon, is preposterous.

In this morning's radio address explaining his veto of a bill that would ban waterboarding and other "alternative interrogation techniques" that other countries consider to be torture, George Bush said --

The bill Congress sent me would not simply ban one particular interrogation method, as some have implied. Instead, it would eliminate all the alternative procedures we've developed to question the world's most dangerous and violent terrorists. This would end an effective program that Congress authorized just over a year ago.

However, Bush also said that the program has been in place since soon after 9/11, well before the supposed Congressional authorization in 2006. By his own logic, the program was therefore operating without Congressional authorization for 5 years. One might think that the program was therefore illegal. But in Bush's mind, it's that Congress has no power to regulate his conduct of "war" in the first place. It's thus amazing that he even bothered to veto the bill, since even had he signed it, he has claimed the power to ignore it.

George Bush has just said that if the US Congress fails to pass the US-Colombia free trade agreement, the FARC would be emboldened. This on the day when the FARC are being accused of hatching a dirty bomb plot, complete with shaky evidence of an attempted uranium purchase. No mention of Niger yet.

Bush also signalled his support for Colombian president Alvaro Uribe by saying that America stands with democratic leaders in the region -- apparently forgetting that Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa (President of Ecuador) are democratically elected. The GWOT template imposed on yet another complex situation.

Incidentally, lest any readers think we have much sympathy for the FARC, read this.

UPDATE: Bush laughably referred to "provocative maneuvers by the regime in Venezuela" when the cause of the current tension is a Colombian incursion on territory of Ecuador.

We've had multiple central fronts in the War on Terror. We've had various decisive blows against al-Qaeda. Now the US military has come up several centers of al-Qaeda gravity: Baghdad, where the Surge was concentrated, but also northern Iraq, where the bad guys are concentrated --

"Mosul is the center of al-Qaida's terrorist activities today. Mosul is a critical crossroads for al-Qaida in Iraq. Baghdad has always been al-Qaida's operational center of gravity, but Mosul remains their strategic center of gravity as it provides access to the flow of foreign fighters," [US Navy Rear Admiral] Smith said.

Mosul is located at the locus of roads that connect Iraq with Syria to the west, Turkey to the north and Iran to the east. Many fighters smuggled in from Syria make their way through Mosul, where they can easily blend in with city's ethnically and religiously diverse population.

"It is their strategic center of gravity. One-half to two-thirds of attacks in Iraq today are in and around Mosul," Smith said.

Of course one problem with these centers of gravity is that the US attempts to chase them brings the opposite polarity (to botch the physics metaphors) and the centre of gravity moves. Does John McCain really think this futility will not be an issue in the November election?

Incidentally, the news story linked above has a little detail at the end symbolic of the quagmire. A US helicopter fired at teenagers digging at a roadside in the belief they were planting a bomb. They were looking for roots to burn as fuel. In oil rich Iraq.

It's time for America's "aid and comfort to the enemy" patrol to censure Matt Drudge for leaking the news of Prince Harry's deployment in Afghanistan. Note that Drudge seems to be especially implicated because the previous leak, via Australia, never got any traction.

One hopes that US Defence Secretary Bob Gates is aware of the irony even if George Bush is not --

"I think they got our message," Gates told reporters after his talks with Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other leaders, including the president and the minister of defense.

Still, Gates said Turkish officials did not discuss any deadline and he said he did not know if they will end the operation in a week as he's asked.

"I stand by where I've been on this. And that is that they should wrap this thing up as soon as they can," Gates said, noting his meetings with Turkish officials did not change his mind.

President Bush, asked about the situation at a White House news conference Thursday, made a similar point.

"It should not be long-lasting," Bush said. "The Turks need to move, move quickly, achieve their objective and get out."

Because of course in the US political context, a timetable for leaving Iraq is surrender to the terrorists, and "the objective" is so open ended as to facilitate that 100 year presence that John McCain says he wants.

Dick "The Snarl" Cheney, in Texas --

And in the struggle against terror, no country has more battlefield deaths, or lost more civilians, than Iraq itself.

While being rare for Cheney -- a true statement -- it only highlights that the main victims of the war on terror were never consulted on the decision to designate their country as the central front in the war on terror. It's strange to be talking about the great benefits that democracy will bring to Iraq when that most important choice is off-limits.