The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.D., November 30, 2006: “The main topic of conversation both here in the White House and inside the Beltway is the looming disaster in Iraq. In spite of what Tony Snow and Bush say, Iraq is deep in a vicious civil war between two bitter religious enemies; the Sunnis and the Shiites.

Anyone who reads the National Geographic is aware of these ancient and bloody feuds but apparently Bush and his Likud friends were not when they created a huge disaster  by removing Hussein and his control over both sides. In the first place, Bush was determined to have his war for as number of reasons.

The first was to give the finger to his father , the second to please his oilmen family friends by grabbing control over the largest known reserves of the world’s oil and lastly, to accommodate his Israeli-controlled Neocon supporters.

That he has utterly failed in all three areas seems to have eluded him and poor Karl Rove is absolutely certain that the American people will realize their terrible mistake in throwing out the Republicans and will vote them back into power again so they can rape, loot, pillage and reestablish a new police state in 2008.

There have  been strong rumors here of a CIA-sponsored military putsch in Iraq with the idea of establishing a military dictatorship that would be friendly to Bush and his people (but certainly not the evil Democrats) but events in Iraq have erupted with such violence that a coup is probably not possible. All we can do to prevent a huge loss of U.S. military life is to withdraw as soon as possible. Once the two bloody factions have butchered each other in a quest for absolute control of Iraq, they will immediately turn on us with a great fury and at this point in time, they are  heavily armed and there will be no stopping them.

The potential for a regional war involving (possibly) Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia is certainly not out of the question.

But Bush will not budge one inch on this. It is his last and desperate attempt to hold on to his created manhood and he is psychologically incapable from retreating.

Unfortunately, Bush has the nuclear football and can launch whatever military action he wants, without any oversight from Congress or the military and given this, and the magnitude of the storm he has created, and coupled with his obvious fury at losing control of Congress, it would be better for all of us if he either voluntarily left the White House before his term is up in 2008  or was removed from the levers of power (and the suitcase with the nuclear launch codes) by those more sensible than himself.”

The Green Zone Follies

Baghdad, 29 Nov 06: “ This area is a zoo right now and a very dangerous zoo what with gangs of hungry tigers and leopards roaming the streets, eating everything in sight. There is, is spite of Bush’s denials, a terrible civil war exploding around us. For the time being, the Muslims are slaughtering each other, blowing up each other’s mosques, setting the other side’s worshippers on fire, machine gunning women and children on the streets and setting off so many car bombs that at night it sounds like the Fourth of July in Kansas City but much, much louder. You can read a newspaper at midnight by the light of the burning buildings and the stench is of burned flesh, rubber and other things. Our bases out in the boonies are in real danger of being overrun by furious fighters and the soldiers slaughtered, so hyped up are the various factions. Bush has said he will never leave, no matter what so morale here is tanking worse than the dollar and the dead and wounded GIs are piling up on the airstrips not under occasional mortar fire awaiting evacuation to safer regions. The current Iraqi government has absolutely no control over the warring factions and has to walk a narrow line to avoid being slaughtered by some splinter group no one has ever heard of. Even senior officers are frightened by the insane violence (religious wars are absolutely the worst) and a number of the brass are fleeing to safer areas via friends in the Pentagon. I have tried for three months to get my sorry ass out of here but I don’t have Point buddies with stars in DC so I will have to stay until an end that is surely coming. Pray for me!”

Bucking White House, NBC Says Iraq in 'Civil War'

Usage increasing in news media

November 28, 2006

The Boston Globe

NBC's "Today Show" host Matt Lauer yesterday told millions of American television viewers, many sitting at their breakfast tables, that the network would buck the White House and from now on describe the Iraq war as a "civil war."

The new policy, which NBC News said would cover all its news shows, could become a benchmark in public opinion about the war, according to media specialists.

Some media analysts compared it to CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite's declaration in 1968 that the United States was losing the Vietnam War -- a pronouncement now considered a turning point in public opinion -- and Ted Koppel's ABC updates on the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 and 1980 that infuriated Jimmy Carter's White House.

"How you frame a problem frames what the public thinks is the right thing to do," said James Steinberg , dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. "If Iraq is a democracy struggling against insurgents and you describe it that way, people might still support you. If it is a civil war, it is indisputably the case that Americans will say, 'What are we doing in the middle of a civil war?' "

Steinberg, who was deputy national security adviser under President Clinton, added: "The more they hear 'civil war,' the harder it is going to be to support a strategy that keeps a lot of American troops there in large numbers."

A few other media outlets with reporters in Baghdad have slowly begun to refer to the conflict as a civil war and still more said yesterday they were debating the issue after the NBC announcement. Lauer, whose announcement was termed "a bombshell" by the industry magazine Editor & Publisher, explained that NBC did not come to the decision lightly.

" For months now the White House has rejected claims that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated into civil war. And for the most part, news organizations, like NBC, have hesitated to characterize it as such," Lauer said. "But after careful consideration, NBC News has decided the change in terminology is warranted -- that the situation in Iraq, with armed militarized factions fighting for their own political agendas, can now be characterized as civil war.

"We didn't just wake up on a Monday morning and say, 'Let's call this a civil war,' " Lauer added.

The White House, for its part, continued to maintain that the expanding cycle of sectarian warfare in Iraq -- on full and painful display over the weekend with the deadliest round of revenge killings between Iraq's Shi'ite majority and Sunni minority -- does not yet amount to a civil war.

"While the situation on the ground is very serious, neither Prime Minister [Nouri] Maliki nor we believe that Iraq is in a civil war," the White House said in a statement. It noted that "the violence is largely centered around Baghdad, and Baghdad security and the increased training of Iraqi security forces is at the top of the agenda when President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki meet later this week in Jordan."

However, the government's position is increasingly being called into question. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, asked by reporters yesterday whether Iraq was a civil war, remarked: "We are almost there." And several leading military analysts have begun using the term in recent weeks.

The Los Angeles Times, dropping the usual qualifiers, flatly referred to the conflict as a civil war yesterday. So, in published stories, have The Christian Science Monitor and McClatchy newspapers.

"We began using it when that was clear that was going on, which was a number of months ago," said John Walcott , Washington bureau chief for the McClatchy chain. "When the Shi'a population is at war with the Sunni population and members of the Interior Ministry kidnap people from the Education Ministry, that sounds like a civil war."

Some other news organizations said that they, too, will permit the use of the term "civil war" where appropriate, though they prefer not to have a blanket policy.

"We talk about it every day," said Sandy Genelius , a CBS News spokeswoman. "But there is no edict here. Each producer and correspondent tries to put on the air what seems accurate and appropriate in the context of each story."

Bill Keller , executive editor of The New York Times, said in a statement yesterday that "after consulting with our reporters in the field and the editors who directly oversee this coverage," the paper has decided that the term "civil war" is now appropriate.

Yet Keller cautioned against using the description too much. "We expect to use the phrase sparingly and carefully, not to the exclusion of other formulations, not for dramatic effect," he said.

Before deciding its policy on the term, the Globe is weighing the judgments of the news organizations that have reporters regularly in Iraq.

Observers said the media's willingness to reject the White House's depiction of events was reminiscent of 1968, when Cronkite filmed a Vietnam documentary and offered his belief that the United States was losing the war.

"To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion," Cronkite said at the time. "The only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could."

President Johnson, after hearing Cronkite's broadcast, reportedly remarked, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

"There is a clear parallel," Edward C. Pease , a journalism professor at the University of Utah, said of yesterday's NBC broadcast during a morning time-slot that is now far more popular than the evening news. "The way the media frames things helps lead the public perception."

Globe correspondent Bryan McGonigle contributed to this report.

Bush says U.S. won't withdraw from Iraq

November 28, 2006

by  Deb Reichmann

AP

RIGA, Latvia - President Bush, under pressure to change direction in Iraq, said Tuesday he will not be persuaded by any calls to withdraw American troops before the country is stabilized.

"There's one thing I'm not going to do, I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete," he said in a speech setting the stage for high-stakes meetings with the Iraqi prime minister later this week. "We can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren."

A bipartisan panel on Iraq is finalizing recommendations on Iraq. The group led by former Secretary of State James Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., plan to present ideas to Bush next month.

The commissioners are expected to debate the feasibility of withdrawal timetables.

Recent U.S. elections added fuel to the argument from Democrats that U.S. soldiers need to come home. In Washington, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that Bush must work with Democrats on stopping the violence in Iraq.

"We want to work in a bipartisan way to settle this," Pelosi said. "If the president persists on the course that he is on, that will be more difficult."

Bush has resisted troop withdrawals even while projecting the need for a different approach.

"We'll continue to be flexible and we'll make the changes necessary to succeed," the president said.

Bush pushed back against skeptics of his goal of spreading freedom across the Middle East. "I understand these doubts but I do not share them," the president said.

In Riga to attend a NATO summit, Bush also enlisted renewed commitments from the NATO allies that have deployed 32,000 troops to Afghanistan. He said NATO commanders must have the resources and flexibility to do the job---an apparent reference to the fact that only a handful of countries- primarily Canada, Britain, the United States and the Netherlands—are doing much of the heavy lifting in the dangerous southern provinces against a resurgent Taliban.

"Defeating them will require the full commitment of our alliance," Bush said.

The countries fighting in the south want others, such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain, that are operating in more secure northern areas, to reduce restrictions on their forces to give NATO commanders more flexibility to use them where they're most needed.

Bush said he hoped the alliance will be able to offer membership to Croatia, Macedonia and Albania in 2008.

Speaking from Russia's doorstep in a former Soviet republic, he also reiterated U.S. support for future NATO membership for Georgia, as well as Ukraine if it makes the necessary democratic reforms.

"The United States believes in NATO membership for all of Europe's democracies that seek it," the president said.

Bush has two days of meetings with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki later in the week.

Earlier Tuesday, Bush blamed the escalating bloodshed in Iraq on an al-Qaida plot to stoke cycles of sectarian revenge, and refused to debate whether the country has fallen into civil war.

 Jordan’s King Abdullah, hosting the Bush-al-Maliki summit, has warned that the new year could dawn with three civil wars in the Mideast – with one in Iraq added to those already ongoing in Lebanon and between the Palestinians and Israelis. The country is reeling from the deadliest week of sectarian fighting since the war began in March, 2003.

Bush, dodging a direct answer of whether a civil war exist, tied the three conflicts together in a different way. He said recent strife in Lebanon and the heated up Israeli-Palestinian dispute are, like Iraq, the result of extremists trying to choke off democratic progress.

"No question it's tough, no question about it," Bush said at a news conference with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. "There's a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of these attacks by al-Qaida, causing people to seek reprisal."

The president dated the current spike to the Feb. 22 bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra, which triggered attacks and reprisal counterattacks between the Shiite majority and Sunni minority, and raised fears of civil war.

Bush said he will ask al-Maliki to explain his plan for quelling the violence.

"The Maliki government is going to have to deal with that violence and we want to help them do so," the president said. "It's in our interest that we succeed."

Directly seeking help from Iran and Syria with Iraq, as part of new, aggressive diplomacy throughout the region, is expected to be among the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton group.

But Bush repeated his administration's reluctance to talk with two nations it regards as pariah states working to destabilize the Middle East.

Iran, the top U.S. rival in the region, has reached out to Iraq and Syria in recent days — an attempt viewed as a bid to assert its role as a powerbroker in Iraq.

The president said Iraq is a sovereign nation, free to meet with its neighbors. "If that's what they think they ought to do, that's fine," he said. "One thing Iraq would like to see is for the Iranians to leave them alone."

The president added that the U.S. will only deal with Iran when they suspend their program of enriching uranium, which could be used in a nuclear weapon arsenal.

"The Iranians and the Syrians should help — not destabilize — this young democracy," he said.

Iran's state-run television, however, quoted Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as saying "we are in dire need of Iran's help in establishing security and stability in Iraq." The comments came after Talabani met Monday with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran.

Far from reaching out to Iran and Syria, Bush also denounced them for trying to destabilize the fragile, Western-backed government in Lebanon.

"That government is being undermined, in my opinion, by extremist forces encouraged out of Syria and Iran," Bush said. "Why? Because a democracy will be a major defeat for those who articulate extremist points of view."

Meanwhile, a U.S. intelligence official said the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon is believed to be training small groups of Iraqis affiliated with anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. As many as 2,000 fighters from Sadr's Mahdi army or his splinter militia may have been trained since the fall of

Saddam Hussein. In addition, Hezbollah fighters have gone to Iraq to train Shiite fighters there.