The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., 2006. :”Your story about the Iraqi Resistance attack on Forward Base Falcon on 10/11 October is causing spastic colon at the DoD, and certainly here. The Pentagon has rushed out a sort of “rebuttal” to Harring’s charges, excerpts of which I will include here. Off the record, this attack, which destroyed tons of badly-needed small arms ammunition and badly damaged many vehicles and several helicopters, not to mention inflicting significant casualties on the troops, is certainly known to have happened. Pentagon brass, in conjunction with the White House, ordered a complete blackout on any news until they could make an “evaluation” of the mess. Our campaign to take over complete military control over Baghdad and stop the religious and political massacres before the mid terms has completely collapsed and this Falcon business is the final straw. The Pentagon’s Lincoln Group types have put out pages of the silliest nonsense I have ever seen and sent it around to “friendly blogs” (i.e., the Government pays them off.. There are more of these paid finks lurking on the Internet than you realize) and many foreign newspapers. (They don’t want a word about this to appear anywhere in the U.S. media BTW)

These are not “official” U.S. rebuttals but are written so as to appear to be outraged “corrections” from GIs at the scene. In reality, most of the writers are fat-assed punks whose checks should be gift wrapped. The odious Lincoln Group people were recently cleared of charges they looted the cash box of many millions. We know this must be true because the body that cleared them of sticky fingers and gross incompetence was the office of the Inspector General himself!

You can’t get much more reliable than that, can you?

First, here are the Pentagon excuses, in digest form, and then the actual facts:

‘The so-called “rocket attack” on Forward Base Falcon has been blow up out of all proportions. First, Falcon is a very small base, supposed to be closed next month because no one uses it. What happened is that some Iraqi criminals lobbed a few mortar shells into a nearly abandoned base and accidentally ignited some pyrotechnic materials such a Fourth of July type rockets and some old small arms ammunition. It is true that set a small fire but it was soon put out. There were only ten soldiers at the base at the time and none of them were either injured or killed. The only damage was to a small holding area and a nearby empty storage shed.  Falcon was not a “staging area” in any sense and was just a maintenance center for vehicles, only one of which was slightly scorched. Army firefighters put out the blaze in twenty minutes with very little trouble. In spite of rumors, there is no airfield nearby and there is no such hospital as mentioned in one negative report. Since no one was killed or injured, there was no evacuation of anyone. This was just a casual shelling, which happens all the time, and investigations have shown that a stray shell accidentally fell into the small area involved, causing a minor fire, soon extinguished”

First of all, Falcon is a mile square so it is not a “very small base.” It has been in the process of construction for three years. Surrounded by a stone wall and guarded by towers manned with troops, it was built to hold ca 5,000 troops. The mess hall is designed to feed 3,000 men at a sitting. On the base was an artillery park, a tank storage area, a soft-skinned vehicle part and maintenance area  over a hundred barracks or living areas, ( sixty of which were burnt down) a fuel depot, a bunkered small arms, and other ammunition, storage. There were about 3,000 troops at the base at the time of the attack and many fled to shelter areas.

There has been some misconception over the nature of the so-called “casualty list” you published. In military parlance, “casualty” is a soldier either wounded or killed, who is unable to fight. This is not a “death list” at all . There is indeed a major hospital complex west of Baghdad, recently completed to be able to handle the soaring number of badly injured which it was felt could not be airlifted out of the country. There is an airfield adjacent to Falcon that can handle both helicopter and large cargo aircraft.

Every bit of this information comes, not from secret Pentagon reports but from Google. I checked all of this out myself as can anyone else with reasonable skills and a computer. You don’t need “secret informants,” so beloved by the bloggers, for this one, children.

The size of the base, the number of troops it can hold (in this case, the 4^th Infantry Division was at least partially housed there), the hospital complex, the airfield and, most especially, the duration of the attack –caused blazes (at least nine hours in duration) is well covered on that search engine. More can be found on official U.S. government sites so the stories of a tiny old storage area, small and unimportant fires, soon extinguished and, most especially, no casualties of any kind, is typical head-in-the-sand Pentagon crap.

There doesn’t seem to be any doubt that redoubled efforts on the part of the well-armed (mostly armed with weapons from Iran via Russia) resistance in advance of the mid terms is deliberate. The official U.S. death tolls have shot up this month and will certainly not go down. The U.S. military plan to control, by force, all of Baghdad before the election has failed miserably.

Believe me, there are no new troops to throw into the battle and the ones now engaged are worn out, very short of ammunition, working with tanks and armored personnel carriers badly crippled by the constant sand storms which wreak havoc on tank, truck and helicopter engines, designed for temperate climates.

Never mind the wholesale corruption, the faggotry in the White House and on the Hill, Iraq is going to be, and in fact is, the Achilles heel  of the Bush administration and its far-right friends and helpers.

The Falcon disaster is real and more than symptomatic of the whole shabby program of U.S. political and military domination, accompanied by a great bodyguard of lies.

The problem is that while Bush and his crime partners can eventually retire in great comfort with their loot, there are many tens of thousands who are either very dead or badly and permanently crippled.

Who cares, Cheney would say, as long as my Halliburton stock keeps its value?

And please remember me saying that Bush will never withdraw a single soldier from Iraq as long as he is in office. He will not  budge an inch, even if Congress changes hands and he is ordered to do so. (See new AP story in Harring section below. Ed.) This might be an interesting, and domestically violent, two years until the end of his term.

Cold Coffee Warms Up

Foley singled out "hot" boys: report

October 22, 2006
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Florida Republican Rep. Mark Foley made friends with a wide circle of teenaged House of Representatives pages, then singled out "hot" boys to write to, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.

The newspaper said it had identified four more former pages who said they were sexually solicited by Foley, who has resigned since the scandal broke last month.

One former page, who was not identified, said Foley sent him e-mails when he was 16 asking about "my roommates, if I ever saw them naked." Later, the former page said Foley hinted about a job opportunity "because I was a hot boy," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Two years later, the page, now 22, said, he wrote Foley to ask about hotels in Washington. "You could always stay at my place. I'm always here, I'm always lonely, and I'm always up for oral sex," he quoted the disgraced former member of Congress as saying.

Another former page said he felt he had to flirt with Foley, who has said he is homosexual and an alcoholic and that he was abused by a priest as a child.

"I didn't want to piss off a member of an institution that I really revered," the former Republican page said.

"I figured maybe someday I will want to be involved in Congress," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "I didn't want to make an enemy."

Republican leaders have said they did not know about the explicit e-mails sent by Foley before media reports, but a former top aide to Foley has said he told senior aides to House Speaker Dennis Hastert about Foley's behavior three years ago.

The scandal has added to a growing list of threats to Republican domination of the House in next month's elections.

Curious George Faces Life

Bush faces political nightmare if Democrats win

October 22, 2006
by Thomas Ferraro
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If Democrats win control of the U.S. Congress in the November 7 election, it would turn the Capitol upside down and create a political nightmare for the already embattled President George W. Bush.

If his Republicans lose the majority, Bush would hear newly empowered calls to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and would suddenly face promised Democratic-led congressional investigations with subpoena power into the unpopular war.

Bush, whose public approval ratings are below 40 percent, would also face Democratic demands he offer "mainstream" rather than "right-wing" judicial nominees if he wants them confirmed.

Bush’s fellow Republicans applied a rubber stamp to much of his conservative agenda the past six years, including tax cuts that went largely to the rich.

Polls show Democrats running ahead less than three weeks before the congressional election. If they win control of Congress from Bush's fellow Republicans, they would challenge Bush on fronts ranging from his warrantless domestic spying program to his energy and health-care policies.

"In some ways it would be a nightmare for Bush, but in other ways it could be an opportunity," said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Ornstein said Bush, who denounces Democrats as soft on terrorism, could move toward the political center and reach out to Democrats in his final two years in office to overhaul U.S. immigration laws and the Social Security retirement program, two goals he has failed to accomplish.

But Ornstein said that was unlikely. "I've talked to a lot of people who know him well and are really close to him. I have yet to find one who thinks he will change his modus operandi dramatically," he said.

Democrats deny Republican claims they would try to impeach Bush and remove him from office.

Instead, they plan to push their own agenda, "A New Direction for America," which includes raising the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade, ending some tax breaks to oil companies and making college more affordable by reducing federal student loan interest rates.

Democrats also promise to implement recommendations from the 9/11 Commission to bolster security, ease the threat of global warming and, in response to influence-peddling scandals on Capitol Hill, clean up the way Congress does business.

GRIDLOCK?

"Surprisingly little" will become law, predicted Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. "We're headed for gridlock."

If Democrats pick up at least 15 seats to end 12 years of Republican rule in the 435-member House of Representatives, it will likely be by a slim majority, he said.

And, he said, whether Republicans hold the 100-member Senate or lose it to Democrats, neither side will likely have the 60 votes routinely needed to pass controversial bills.

Bush has predicted Republicans would surprise pollsters and keep the House and Senate. In recent weeks he also has reiterated a Republican battle cry, saying, "Democrats will raise taxes."

Democrats would be unlikely to extend Bush's tax cuts beyond the 2010 expiration but plan to push for lower deficits while keeping popular tax breaks for the middle class.

They say their oversight hearings would focus on what critics see as "waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayers' dollars" in Iraq, homeland security and relief after Hurricane Katrina.

Rep. Henry Waxman of California, who would be Government Reform Committee chairman if Democrats took control, said: "It's an important part of Congress's duty under the Constitution to do vigilant oversight. Republicans failed in that regard in the past six years."

House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri said if Democrats won control, "taxes go up, the economy falters and we have a party in charge that doesn't understand what the war is all about."

"What happens if Democrats take control of the House?" House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland asked. "Shouting and glee after being in the wilderness for lo these many years."

How Iraq came home to haunt America

For months doubts over Iraq have risen along with the death toll. Last week a tipping point was reached as political leaders in Washington and London began openly to think the unthinkable: that the war was lost

October 22, 2006
by Peter Beaumont, Edward Helmore and Gaby Hinsliff
The Observer

Colonel Tom Vail is planning a road trip around the United States. It is his last, sad duty before returning to his family from eastern Baghdad. For when the commander of the 4th Brigade of the 101st Airborne arrives back in the States, it will be with videos of the memorial services held in Baghdad for each of his fallen soldiers to give to the families of the dead men.

He knows that some of the families will not want to see him, and he understands. Grief works in different ways, he says. For others, however, it will be an opportunity to talk, to learn something, he hopes, of the inexplicable nature of their children's deaths.

So, when he has a moment, when he is not driving round the battlefield that is eastern Baghdad, Vail examines the map and plans his flights and his car hire. And he wonders at the reception he will receive - a messenger of death, bringing the war back from Iraq to the home front.

For when Vail and his soldiers return, it will be in the knowledge that the United States that they are going home to is not the one that they left. That in their year-long absence a seismic shift has occurred in support for the war in Iraq. And that the deaths that Colonel Vail must carry back with him to grieving families - deaths that once seemed to Americans to be a necessary cost - now seem to the majority a dreadful and pointless waste.

It will also be in the knowledge that the battle that they began with such confidence barely four months ago, to secure and then rebuild some of the most dangerous areas of the Iraqi capital, like the campaigns before, has failed.

With that failure the entire future of Iraq and the US and British-led occupation has been brought to a tipping point of enormous consequence not simply for Iraq and the region, but for the Bush and Blair administrations.

For despite a massive campaign involving the troops of Vail's unit and others, backed by thousands of Iraqi troops, the US military leadership in Baghdad has been forced to admit that attacks during the holy month of Ramadan have increased by 22 per cent, and that the US death toll for October, standing at 74 at the weekend, will be one of the deadliest for US troops since the invasion in 2003.

More worrying still is the assessment that both Sunni and Shia nationalist resistance movements have reached the level of being 'coordinated/consolidated' - able to reply to multinational offensives with their own 'push capability'.

This was admitted explicitly last week by the top US spokesman in Baghdad, General William Caldwell. 'We're finding insurgent elements, the extremists, are pushing back hard. They're trying to get back into those areas where Iraqi and US forces have targeted them,' he said. 'We're constantly going back in to do clearing operations.'

In a few short weeks, the US and British policy over Iraq has dramatically unravelled. In the US that policy has been summed up in the phrase 'stay the course', the message designed months ago by Republican strategist Karl Rove, as a stick with which to beat the Democrats in the critical midterm elections on 7 November. It was a simple formula intended to suggest that it was President Bush, and not those calling for a rethinking of the war, who was the patriot.

Now that message appears to be backfiring as many Republican candidates up for re-election on 7 November have sought to distance themselves from Bush's handling of the war.

It is an unravelling driven by the increasingly dire circumstances on the ground, which have seen a sharp escalation of the blood-letting as the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki weakens in the face of the challenge of the Shia militias.

It has been driven, too, by the criticisms voiced by senior military figures - both American and British - of the conduct of the war, and it has been accelerated by the most potent catalyst of all, the collapse in popular support for the handling of events in Iraq, most notably in the US. Recent polls have suggested that disapproval of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq is now hovering around 63-64 per cent.

The collapsing poll figures mean that suddenly it is not only the Democrats who are challenging the Bush administration's conduct of the war but Republican incumbents themselves, fearful that the White House's longstanding denial of the reality of the situation in Iraq will toss them out of power.

Republican strategists believe that in the House of Representatives 12 seats inevitably are doomed, with the Democrats needing only 15 seats to take the House. Privately, however, the same strategists concede that a loss of 18-25 seats is more likely. In the Senate, too, controlled by the Republicans for all but one of the last 12 years, the Republican hold is under threat.

The result has been a political fall-out that many now expect will pressure Bush - and by extension the UK - into yet another change of tactics over the conduct of the war. The question remaining is what policy could now deliver any more success?

That expectation of change has been driven by ever more visible criticism in the US media over a policy that many now believe is political poison.

It has not been helped by the comments of President Bush himself. He responded to an article by columnist Thomas Friedman which compared the present spike in violence in Iraq to the Tet offensive in the Vietnam War by appearing to accept the comparison.

'I don't believe that we can continue based on an open-ended, unconditional presence,' Senator Olympia Snowe, a centrist Maine Republican, told the Washington Post last week. 'I don't think there's any question about that, there will be a change.'

Snowe is not alone. Senator John Warner, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has also weighed into the fray after returning from a fact-finding mission to Iraq and stating, in sharp contradiction to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit last month, that the country was adrift and all options should be examined.

Most damning of all, however, were the comments of Richard Haass, a former Bush administration foreign policy official, who told reporters yesterday that the situation is reaching a 'tipping point' both in Iraq and in US politics.

'More of essentially the same is going to be a policy that very few people are going to be able to support,' said Haass, now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. He added that the administration's current strategy - of a stable, democratic Iraq, within a politically feasible time frame - 'has virtually no chance of succeeding'.

This sense of a growing crisis has only been deepened by comments from the Iraq Study Group, chaired by the Bush family friend and former Secretary of State James Baker, which have made it abundantly clear that he does not believe that the present Iraq policy is working.

In a second uncomfortable comparison with Vietnam and the Tet offensive, some are now beginning to compare Baker's bilateral group with the 'three wise men' who advocated the change of US military policy in that war.

Baker has let it be known to Bush that he believes that what is required is a timetable for withdrawal. But that comes with its own problems.

'Jim's problem is that he wants a way to make clear to Maliki that we're leaving, but without signalling to the Shia and the Sunni that, if they bide their time, they can battle it out for Iraq,' one long-time national security expert told Friday's New York Times. 'How do you do that? Got me.'

If there is an answer to that question, then Deborah Pryce would like to know - and in a hurry. A popular Ohio congresswoman, a moderate Republican, Pryce's only political error may turn out to have been in getting too close to her party's leadership during the execution of a highly unpopular and expensive foreign war.

In November, she will probably leave office as decisively as she arrived in the Republican midterm sweep in 1994. Pryce would like to talk about local issues like the new control tower at Columbus airport, but the country is in alarm over the war in Iraq, the faltering economy and political sleaze in Washington. For Pryce, the fourth-ranking Republican in Congress who has not faced a serious challenge since she was elected in 1994, her seat, in the 15th district, is a microcosm of the national picture. For, as a touchstone state, what is true for Ohio is true nationally.

In Ohio all the talk is of war and broken government. Incumbent Republicans in all races - House, Senate and governorship - are behind by double digits. In the Senate campaign alone, the Republican national committee has cut campaign spending on its amiable candidate, Mike DeWine , and reallocated campaign money to other states such as Tennessee where victory is still a possibility. While other issues come and go on the front pages, war is the constant, the backdrop.

Once candidates such as Pryce could count on the 'soccer mums' renamed 'security mums' for the post-9/11 world. Once these women accepted the administration's explanation for war. Not any more. 'People are upset about our kids being killed in Iraq in a war that everyone now knows was started on false pretences,' said housewife Vicky Harman. 'Every day there's more information about the cover-ups, the efforts to misguide the public and - worst of all - their absolute lack of remorse.'

With the realities of Iraq as a 'new Vietnam' setting in, voters in the Midwest last week expressed a sense of political powerlessness. Julie Smith wanted to see 'the boys come home from Iraq' but didn't expect them to 'cause I know Bush is gonna do what he likes'.

If there is a hope of wide-ranging change in large quarters of the Republican Party and in Washington's political circles at the week's end it was not being articulated by the two men most closely associated with the war, Bush himself, and his closest lieutenant, the combative Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whom many believe should be sacrificed for the errors of the war so far.

Ahead of a meeting with Vice-President Dick Cheney and the top American commanders in Iraq - George Casey and John Abizaid - Bush and Rumsfeld were still insisting that the goals remain unaltered: creating a country that can govern and defend itself 'that will be an ally in the war against these extremists'. By yesterday Bush was even more emphatic in his weekly radio address, insisting that, while the increase in violence was disappointing, 'our goal in Iraq is clear and unchanging: our goal is victory. What is changing are the tactics we use to achieve that goal.'

If anyone was left in any doubt, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also played down expectations of a major change when she briefed reporters while en route to Moscow. 'I would not read into this somehow that there is a full-scale push for a major re-evaluation (of Iraq strategy),' she said.

Perceptive analysts have noted, however, that while Bush has remained apparently robust, he has dropped his insistence that the end product of his policy is the creation of a 'flourishing democracy' at the heart of the Middle East to focus instead on the much more limited idea of a 'stable' Iraq. Now, the message from the White House and Pentagon is that, while tactics on the ground may be up for grabs, the overall strategy is not. None of which may be enough to save a Republican meltdown.

This considerable problem is being confronted by not only the disillusioned US electorate, but by Bush's allies as well. For it is not only in America that the implications of the unravelling of Bush's Iraq policy are being felt.

For if the situation is difficult for Bush, it is infinitely more complicated for his supposed ally, Tony Blair. Already wrongfooted by the outburst from the Chief of the General Staff , General Sir Richard Dannatt , Downing Street has spent the week struggling to stay on the right side of a constantly changing argument in Washington.

Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett , who has spoken to Condoleezza Rice within the last few days, will indicate today that tactics were bound to change in the run-up to the US polls, but she insists that she does not detect 'that much of a change of pace or mood' in the Washington administration on Iraq. However, she admits there are ongoing discussions about the way forward: 'I think it is just people recognising how things are going and there are bound to be some areas where it would be easier if we were not there.' What was most striking, she said, was that 'in some areas we were part of the problem, in other areas we were not.'

The difficulty for the British government is that American policy on Iraq is now likely to be determined by the outcome of the November elections: if Bush does badly, an early exit becomes more likely, but if he does unexpectedly well there could even be a push to send more troops to Iraq to quell the insurgency.

As the junior partner in the coalition, Britain will inevitably be swept along by whatever new American policy emerges. But that policy remains unclear, leaving British politicians essentially playing for time until they establish what Bush is likely to do.

And Bush is not the only one with elections on his mind. If the midterm contest goes badly for the Republican Party, Labour minds will inevitably turn to the elections due here in May for local councils and the Scottish and Welsh assemblies. In Scotland particularly, Iraq is a hot political potato and Labour's two main opponents north of the border, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, are both highly critical of the war.

All of which, however, is academic for those in the killing fields of Iraq.

Ending the Iraq nightmare - the key points

A Partition

What it means

One of the options being looked at by James Baker and his team - asked by Bush to study the exit alternatives. Lines would be drawn across a map of Iraq dividing it into three autonomous regions - Kurdish in the north, Sunni in the middle and Shia in the south.

Consequences

Dividing Iraq along sectarian lines would exacerbate sectarian violence and lead to ethnic cleansing. It would also unequally split up Iraq's oil resources - and leave the Sunnis with little arable land - which would give opposing sides an economic reason to fight each other. Partition would be far from straightforward in heavily mixed communities, holy cities would be contested and Baghdad would probably explode.

Support

Outside powers such as Iran would find it easy to dominate the new entities. The militias are already creating a partition and more and more people are becoming displaced.

B Regional help

What it means

Sub-contracting problem - asking Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia to step in.

Consequences

Risks drawing the regional players into a wider conflict that could engulf the Arab world. It could mean Bush facing demands from countries he regards as enemies in exchange for help. It's also debatable whether any of those countries would have influence to curb sectarian killings.

Support

It looks good on paper, Baker is very keen, but not popular in Washington. White House press secretary Tony Snow said it unlikely Bush administration would consider ending its ban on talks with Iran and Syria. 'We'd be very happy for them not to foment terror,' Snow said. 'But it certainly doesn't change our diplomatic stance towards either.'

C Immediate withdrawal

What it means

The cut-and-run option where the US-led coalition troops simply pull out overnight.

Consequences

Could worsen the chaos and enfeeble the struggling Iraq government and military. Danger of full-scale civil war and carnage, destabilising the region and leaving a failed state open to use by al-Qaeda. But it would stop UK and US soldiers dying.

Support

Bush will never be persuaded it is the right thing to do. The aim has always been to leave an Iraq that could govern itself. It would mean utter humiliation for his war on terror. The US would forever be blamed for the mess it left behind and could even be forced to intervene again in the future. Bush has been listening to Henry Kissenger who has told him cut and run is not an option and 'victory is the only meaningful exit strategy'.

D Phased withdrawal

What it means

'We notify the Iraqis that we're going to be drawing down a reasonable but careful percentage of our troops over a reasonable interval of months - for example 5 per cent every three months,' said Richard L Armitage, former presidential adviser. US General George W Casey has suggested Iraqi security forces would be ready to take over in 12-18 months. Views of whether it takes weeks or years vary but the pressure is on Bush - and Tony Blair - to produce a timetable.

Consequences

If the weak Iraqi government makes no progress in disarming the militias and death squads then the same results as immediate withdrawal. Insurgents would perceive it as a victory and move into the vacuum.

Support

Democrats winning control of one of the Houses of Congress would increase pressure for an end date to be set. Favoured by Britain and the subject of the row earlier this month engulfing General Sir Richard Dannatt's comments when he called for a swift pull-out of UK troops. Blair has also stressed a desire to leave but only when 'the job is done.'

International press: what they are saying around the world

Los Angeles Times

Tim Rutten, yesterday

The Bush administration's problems in Iraq have nothing to do with public relations and everything to do with the facts. American voters - a substantial majority of whom now recognise the war in Iraq as a mistake - will make their own decisions in November, but the real lesson concerning the American failure in south east Asia that the news media ought to hold in mind over and against all criticism - no matter how adroitly it's spun - can be summed up in one word: quagmire.

New York Sun

Daniel Freedman

Iraq is not like Vietnam, as the anti-war movement likes to say - ie, a failure The reality is America only lost [in south east Asia] because the political leadership lost the resolve to back the troops The crucial part now is to ensure American troops aren't abandoned as in Vietnam.

El Pais

'Impossible Victory', yesterday

All the alternatives Bush has put on the table to solve an increasingly deteriorating situation in Iraq are terrible. This war - and above all its bad management, even more so than at the beginning of the war- has finally turned into the focus of the campaign for the American Congress elections on 7 November. Even the president has now recognised its resemblance to the Vietnam war.

At this stage, the Bush administration is looking for a political escapade. But if the option were clear, they would have already opted for one.

Le Monde

'The strategy in Iraq puts the Congress elections at stake', 18 October

Will James Baker succeed in finding an exit strategy in Iraq's dead end for president George Bush? Three weeks before the Congress elections that some observers see as the 'referendum on Iraq', the former Secretary of State is omnipresent in the media, accrediting the idea that the change of policies in Iraq is perhaps less distant, as opposed to Bush's denials of change.

Mr Baker promotes this idea specially in his book, an autobiography where he shares his emotions as well as revealing his discovery of African-American cousins and his taste for hunting, a pastime he shares with the father of the current president.

Sydney Morning Herald

Leader, yesterday

The debate over Iraq policy in the US, Britain and Australia is being driven by bad news from Baghdad and increasingly hostile public opinion at home. It is good that this is forcing political leaders to review and adjust their strategies. It will be even better if it leads them to stop reviling their critics as traitors or cowards and instead explain the moral, political and military complexities of the Iraq situation. The case against a premature withdrawal should not rest on defence of an invasion that was launched partly on false pretences but, rather, on the new realities created by that invasion and its bungled aftermath. So dire are those realities that pulling out now would not only expose the Iraqis to the danger of even worse bloodshed in an outright civil war, but also present violent jihadists with a victory that would embolden them to further atrocities.

Washington Post

Colbert King, yesterday

There is a new Iraq emerging before our eyes. It is an Iraq that torments Christians, that indulges in unrelenting sectarian bloodbaths, that cheers for Hizbollah, that is no more a friend to Israel than is Iran, all despite the lies sold to the White House and Pentagon by self-serving, power-hungry Iraqi expatriates. The new Iraq is not what George W. Bush talks about. But that's the Iraq he's got. And, worst of all, that's the Iraq we are in.'

The Economist, London

Leader, yesterday

The only honest alternative is indeed probably just to go and let one side win. America did that in Vietnam and Britain did it in Palestine ... Vietnam turned out well enough, regional dominoes did not all fall and America went on to win the cold war anyway ... Maybe something similar will happen in Iraq, not least because the rival versions of theocracy on offer from Iran and al-Qaeda are nonsensical too. But just going would be a fantastic gamble, not only with America's global power and prestige but also with other people's lives. Better, still, to stay.

How to Make a Power Grab 'Mundane'

The Washington Post's story today -- "Bush Signs Terrorism Measure" -- looks like just another routine report on the approval of a piece of legislation, accompanied by the usual "he said/ she said" quotes. A typical reader might shrug at this point and shift to the sports section to read the latest autopsy on the Redskins.

October 18, 2006
by James Bovard
Editor and Publisher

How will we know when a dictatorship has arrived? Not from reading the Washington Post. The Post’s story today -- “Bush Signs Terrorism Measure” -- looks like just another routine report on the approval of a piece of legislation, accompanied by the usual “he said/ she said” balancing quotes.

The Military Commissions Act is widely seen as legalizing torture, but the article avoids any such mention of the T-word. Though the act revolutionizes American jurisprudence by permitting the use of tortured confessions in judicial proceedings, the Post discretely notes only that defendants will face “restrictions on their ability to ... exclude evidence gained through witness coercion.”

The lead of the Post article declares that the new law will “set the rules for the trials of key al-Qaeda members.” A typical subway strap hanger reader might shrug at this point and shift to the Sports section to read the latest autopsy on the Washington Redskins. The Post neglects to mention that the bill codifies the president’s power to label anyone on Earth an “enemy combatant” -- based on secret evidence which the government need not disclose.

The Post mentions new “restrictions” on detainees’ ability “to challenge their incarceration.” The article neglects to add “until hell freezes over.” Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) characterized the bill’s suspension of habeas corpus as akin to turning “back the clock 800 years.” But, according to the Post, this reform is simply another provision in just another bill - and, anyhow, so many bills get signed this time of year.

The Post says nothing about how the new law makes the president legislator, prosecutor, judge, and bailiff. As Yale law professor Jack Balkin notes, “The President has created a new regime in which he is a law unto himself on issues of prisoner interrogations. He decides whether he has violated the laws, and he decides whether to prosecute the people he in turn urges to break the law.”

The tone of the Post article is akin to a bored broadcaster’s reading from the Teleprompter: “In other news today, the government announced that the price of gasoline would be reduced by seven cents a gallon and also suspended the Bill of Rights.”

The Military Commissions Act is a stark power grab - but one would never know it from the Post’s account.

At some point, it is conceivable that the U.S. government’s repression could become more overt. And how would the Washington Post likely cover that?

* “As U.S. army tanks rolled through the streets of Washington, the DC police chief reported that the robbery rate fell 27%.”

* “National Guard units fired on demonstrators on Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday, damaging two Starbucks restaurants and seven newspaper vending machines.”

* “The president announced that he has the right to wiretap anyone’s phones. ...” WAIT. This example doesn’t work. The president already did that earlier this year so it is no longer news. Most of the media swallowed dutifully and deferred when the president relabeled the spying as “The Terrorist Surveillance Program.”

Amusingly, on the same page A4, just below the article on the military commissions act, the Post has a “Washington in Brief” snippet entitled “Bush signs Defense Bill with Some Reservations.” The Post’s account notes that, when Bush signed the $532.8 billion military appropriations bill, he included a “long list of caveats.” Bush’s signing statement “singled out about a dozen provisions that would require the White House to provide Congress with information on various subjects. Bush reminded lawmakers of ‘the president’s constitutional authority to withhold information. ...’”

The president proclaims his right to violate laws by denying Congress information on what the U.S. military is doing - and the Post draws no inference on how the powers conveyed by the Military Commissions Act could be used.

Bush has added more than 800 “signing statements” to new laws since he took office. He is the first to use signing statements routinely to nullify key provisions of new laws. The American Bar Association recently declared that Bush’s signing statements are "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers." But the Washington Post portrays the signing statements as simply a gentlemanly difference of opinion between the president and congressmen. It neglects to mention that the president now claims boundless prerogative to what is the law.

And this is how the Washington Post and much of the Establishment media portray almost every government seizure of power. It is never a question of looming tyranny: instead, it is only a question of different perspectives on how best to serve the American public. Waiting for the Washington press corps to sound the alarm on Leviathan is like waiting for Bush to renounce his love of power.

James Bovard (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is the author of "Attention Deficit Democracy" (Palgrave, 2006) and other books. He has written for the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The American Conservative and many other publications.

Angus Reid Global Monitor : Polls & Research

U.S. Confidence in War on Terror Falls to 31%

October 18, 2006

Fewer Americans believe the global effort to fight terrorism is proceeding adequately, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports. 31 per cent of respondents think the United States and its allies are winning the war on terror, down 13 points since July.

Conversely, 36 per cent of respondents believe the terrorists are winning the war on terror—up 10 points in three months—and 22 per cent believe neither side is ahead.

Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked and crashed four airplanes on Sept. 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people. The war on terrorism was initiated in October 2001 after Afghanistan’s Taliban regime refused to hand over al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—regarded as the network’s top commander in Iraq—was killed in an air strike on Jun. 8.

Yesterday, Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law. The legislation prevents the United States from resorting to torture in order to get information from terrorist suspects, allows these suspects to be held indefinitely without being charged with a crime, and forbids them from challenging their confinement in U.S. courts.

Bush explained his rationale for the law, saying, "When I proposed this legislation, I explained that I would have one test for the bill Congress produced: Will it allow the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to continue? This bill meets that test. It allows for the clarity our intelligence professionals need to continue questioning terrorists and saving lives. This bill provides legal protections that ensure our military and intelligence personnel will not have to fear lawsuits filed by terrorists simply for doing their jobs."

Polling Data

Who is winning the war on terror?

Source: Rasmussen Reports

Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,000 American adults, conducted on Oct. 7 and Oct. 8, 2006. Margin of error is 3 per cent.

Approval of Republicans at record low: poll

October 19, 2006
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With congressional elections less than three weeks away, the Republican party's approval ratings are at an all-time low, with approval of the Republican-led Congress at its lowest point in 14 years, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday.

Forty-seven percent of respondents said they were less in favor of keeping Republicans in control of Congress, compared to 14 percent who were more in favor of maintaining the current congressional makeup, according to the poll.

Only 16 percent of respondents approve of the job Congress is doing, the lowest level since 1992, NBC said.

In October 1994, when Democrats held congressional majorities, Congress had a 24 percent job approval, NBC said. Democrats lost 52 House and 8 Senate seats in the 1994 midterm elections.

NBC said the poll indicates people have been paying attention to the issues they are hearing  about-- from Iraq and Bob Woodward's new book on the Bush administration's handling of the war to the unfolding scandal over former Florida Rep. Mark Foley e-mail messages to teenage congressional aides

The poll numbers and President George W. Bush's own job approval ratings, which have been mired in the 30 percent range, are an ominous sign for a party trying to maintain control of Congress, NBC said.

Bush had a job approval rating of 38 percent, down 1 percentage point from a previous NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released earlier this month after the Foley news first broke, NBC said.

Asked who they planned to vote for in the congressional election, 37 percent of those polled said Republicans and 52 percent said Democrats. The 15 percent difference was the highest disparity ever in the poll and up from a 9-point difference a month ago, NBC said.

The poll of 1,006 registered voters was taken from October 13-16 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.