Friedman get's it right on Economy, Dan Drezner get's it wrong, Fed see no evil with Housing Bubble

Friedman, who's gotten pretty trashed over his support of the Iraqi venture, returns to his roots as an economic commentator and hits a home run.

As it turns out, the NYT has Friedman's column where he writes that the Japanese economy is picking up. And it's finally being drawn out of the slump why? Exports to China!

So does this mean that commentators like Dan who advocate the benefits of trade with China and feel that trade concessions made by the Chinese currently are sufficient to achieve "free trade" are right? Well not so fast!!! Let's look at the fine print:

***
Because Japan (much more than the U.S.) has been able to hold onto a sophisticated manufacturing base — like high-end steel, machine tools, cutting-edge electronics and industrial robots — it's been exporting like crazy to China's start-up factories. This year, Japan's trade with China surpassed its trade with the U.S.

"Two-thirds of the reason for [Japan's] recovery is China," says the Japanese management consultant Kenichi Ohmae. China, and new Japanese plants in China, are sucking in so many Japanese exports there aren't enough ships to bring them over fast enough. China is literally dragging Japan out of its slump.

"There is [also] much more attention [in Japan] to restructuring than there was in the past," adds Jeffrey Young, Tokyo economist for Nikko Citigroup. "Companies are improving their efficiencies." And Japan's workers have proved more adaptable, in hard times, than commonly believed. [emphasis added]
***

So it was exactly by rejecting the present "free trade" globalism model of trading in hi-tech manufacturing jobs on the assumption that jobs would be created in return and that a current accounts balance wasn't important that led to the revival of the Japanese economy against all odds.

Remember that "Free trade" advocates here in America have condoned sending away the manufacturing base on the assumption that jobs would be created in return. In addition, they've tended to ignore the glaring Trade Deficit or current accounts balance as being unimportant, since capital flows of debt and security purchases have tended to make up the difference.

The title of the report to Congress? The U.S. Trade Deficit: A Sign of Good Times

Disgusting.

Well every dollar taken away from export industries means less job growth there. Brad Delong has argued that free trade only switches jobs from import affected industries to export industries and therefore increases the synergy/specialization benefits of comparative advantage. This is true only if one of two things occur. One is that there is no current accounts deficit and import and export industries stand on equal footing before the government's eyes in light of currency flows. The other is that the market would correct any policy abberation produced by the Treasury and Federal Reserve banks.

However as it turns out Brad Delong is still mystified by the common fact that the market is often as inefficient as it is efficient, even about terribly obvious things like removing the discount to interest rate premiums for risk, restoring interest rate parity, and devaluing debt notes related to shifts in major currencies like the Greenback.

People in aggregate have irrational systematic biases in their economic decision making. One of these biases is that they're used to treating the US Treasury note as a risk-discounted financial instrument. It will take time for perception to catch up with reality.

When it does, because in the meantime there will have been an "overshoot", the correction will likely be sharp and sudden rather than a gradual adaptation. As Keynes pointed out however, no one knows when that will occur. As he stated, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

But one day it will correct and there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth!

As it turns out the market is not properly assessing the price and costs of transferring large amounts of capital to the public debt of Treasury bills instead of investing it into export industries which would occur if the purchases were made in current accounts balancing buying from companies exporting abroad. These direct purchases into export companies goods and services would at a much higher ratio go into asset building and business expanding capital investment. Instead they come back as US Treasuries - public debt being the most inefficient investment possible in a given system of capital since it is subject entirely to complete political inefficiency rather than any market efficiency at all. When such capital flows don't go into US Treasures for the most part it will go into the secondary market of mature stocks or junk bonds - chasing speculative asset valuations of the highest returns. Overall this is much less efficient in spurring business investment than just buying a product or service from an export oriented firm!!!

This then creates a growth deficit, which needs to be masked by productivity / GDP growth artificial statistical illusions.

Amusing isn't it?

Well it would be except that it's our country!!! Clearly Friedman's accounting for the Japanese turn around (summary; Federal Reserve article) is putting the lie to the model that Free Trade proponents of the current globalization scheme have promoted. Japan is coming back because of good old-fashioned hi-tech manufacturing exports and significant improvements in employee education and flexibility.

The Federal Reserve page also carries an interesting article on "How Vulnerable Are Housing Prices?" but succumbs to a faulty assumption. Bubbles are never market wide, but focus on some commodity or paper asset that experiences marked valuation speculation compared to the rest of the market. Back in the heyday of the Internet boom for instance, small cap firms were routinely undervalued compared to big blockbuster large cap firms - like Enron, Worldcom, etc. The idea that a bubble has to be uniformyly inflated is ridiculous and not worthy of the intelligence of any person. It was tulips in Holland, tech stocks in the late nineties, and selected urban areas like San Francisco now.

Remember that the Fed routinely under-estimated and underplayed the potential of a stock market valuation bubble in the late nineties despite Greenspan's own remarks about "irrational exuberance", and recently Greenspan's speeches have included bizarrities like promoting Adjustable Rate Mortgages that if anyone had actually taken him up on the matter will pay dearly when as most agree interest rates rise even more - 30 year mortgage yields have already increased notably - latter this year.

On the other hand, US education is lagging in K-12 education (MSNBC) and leaving college with more and more debt on average, while at the same time wages are not keeping pace (EPI) with rising tuition costs meaning that the return for investment in a college education and creating a disincentive to invest so much for so little in return!

Which means that over time we will discourage ourselves from having a highly educated hi-tech labor pool, which is the exact opposite path that the Japanese are taking with high-achievement education of their labor force - or Chinese and Indians growth models (Asia Times) for that matter!

So with our blasted policy of "Free Trade" (TANSTAAFL), ignoring advanced manufacturing for nebulous "creative jobs", and failing to modernize our work force's education and skills we are enacting the exact opposite of how Japan learned to successfully trade with China!!!

Argh! Would only that these ivory tower academics be forced to put their necks on the line, or their own wallets, and then we'd see how many balked and how many could walk their talk!

Market mechanisms of risk discounting - Federal Reserve and interest rates

Brad Delong features an essay about the nature of the ability of the Federal Reserve to act as a market-mover on declarations alone.

However the essay is incorrect when it posits that there is no market mechanism that is creating this response.

It's a meta-credit effect, the credit of credit. If the effective 'credit rating' of a lending institution is high enough - a measurement of its liquidity and price to book value which is a rating of the credit worthiness of its financial evaluations and loans - then it would be natural for a market mechanism to grant a very high meta-credit rating a very high discount.

In the limit where the meta-credit rating approaches a very large ratio to the asset / liquidity ratios of lending institutions and market mover purchasers then you have an approach to an almost complete risk discount - e.g. the most powerful and stable central bank in the world.

In that scenario, the market is going to be moved entirely by the expectation of the cash and capital flows of that market dominant institution. Hence the saying, "don't fight the Fed." Were that expectation of absolute correlations to weaken, uncertainty to increase, and therefore effective risk in trusting in the Federal Reserves pronouncements to increase then the market discount would be erased and you would have to see substantial market movement from Fed intervention in order to see a subsequent yield curve capitulation.

It's really about risk discounts in credit worthiness evaluation. If people believe that you will follow through on your word, no matter what, your word becomes a source of credit itself and can exert financial leverage in any given market situation.

Circling back to where we began, Serpent eats its tail - GDP faked

As a reader on my post below commented, for some reason my economic blogging is more well recieved than my foreign policy blogging. I'm not entirely sure why, since I got my start in logistical, strategic, and tactical applied modeling in security and foreign operations analysis, handling agents, and field work. If I made a mistake, the price was paid in blood, sweat, and tears. Economic analysis is something of a derivative interest, though I have predicted successfully years ahead of time the Asian economic meltdown, the Mexican peso collapse, the failure of export dominated and debt ridden economies like Argentina, and the failure of foreign development models, as well as market timed the Internet bust quite successfully. I was wrong about some details, like I felt that there was no way that Amazon could remain solvent - and I have to admit that surprisingly their market share dominance strategy worked - but it worked because I had misread the willingness of lenders to protect their interest by extending additional credit. It was the "too big to fail" model, and that's one thing I'm not good at predicting is political choices.

That's because political choices are often sub-optimal, to paraphrase Gailbraith they're often a choose between the awful and the truly dreadful. I'm all about optimization. That's why my advice in order to focus on consumer goods companies in China a while back turned out to be good now that the G7 is warning that China could overheat or cause worldwide inflation. It's also why my advice to invest in oil futures would have yielded a handy profit. I also successfully predicted the restoration of the oil market after it's slump in the 90's and the new interest in gold.

However over the years, my economic analysis which kind of started out as a hobby have recieved more and more interest from people interested in obtaining neutral financial analysis. It started out really because of the 90's stock craze which pushed a greater interest in those around me, and whose encouragement increasingly egged me on for advice. Possibly this was because even then it was completely apparent to most knowledgeable observers that the standard fund managers, stock brokerage advice and service, and mutual fund companies were become complacent, greedy, and finally manipulatively abusive.

I guess I stopped blogging about the economy because well it all seemed so dreadfully clear to me that for me it wasn't much to say at this point in the cycle. Recent comments however have made me aware that it's not so clear for the average person, so I've decided to return to blogging about that.

It's not as if btw I know for certain the definite outcome of specific financial events. It doesn't work like that. What I focus on is the "inevitables". There are certain factors in every economic analysis that represent inevitable choices to be made. If freedom is money and money is value and value is choice, then financial events can always be described by the constraints of the system. Indeed the more constraints on the system, the more it approaches however many parameters it has a definite end. You don't know exactly how things are going to get there, or who necessarily is going going to be left standing, but when there is a mad scramble for the musical chairs you can pretty easily guess how many are going to be left standing and sitting and from a quick perusal determine the likely winners and losers. Hint: Like Survivor and politics in general, it's usually the people who are the most ruthless while perserving the appearance of morality.

It's quite Machiavellian actually, which explains how I got into the economic end of analysis from private security interests in my less than up-and-up past. Cut-throat competition is pretty much the same on an abstract level, whether or not the long knives are banker's drafts or sharp steel. In both situations, it's usually best to maintain Plausible Deniability while sending out proxies to do the dirty work for you. In reality, the good financial operations guy or the good foreign operations guy is like a chess player. He moves the pieces, he doesn't run around on the board.

So even though I personally consider the outcomes in Fallujah and Najaf to be terribly interesting, let's face it the events there don't effect average ordinary people to a great degree. What does effect them is that we are effectively in a stage of inflation generated money supply shrinkage.

One way to determine this is simply to look at the Money Supply year over year growth versus the present inflation rate. I did this back here in the bottom half of this article.

Interesting this is also the article that notes Nathan Newman's and the Economist's debunking of the GDP figures.

This especially important because it notes the role of trade - or rather offshoring - in distorting GDP figures. To quote:

***
"For example, when American firms outsource call-centre and information-technology-support jobs to India and other Asian countries, the result should be higher imports of services, yet official statistics do not show such an increase. America's recorded imports of software services from India are also much smaller than India's reported exports of such services to America. "
***

This puts the kibosh on unabashed boosting like Dan Drezner's here.

As a matter of fact, this is why this 4.2% GDP number here is truly ominious as reported by MSNBC.

***
The reading on gross domestic product for the January-to-March quarter, reported by the Commerce Department Thursday, marks a slight pickup from the 4.1 percent rate registered in the final quarter of 2003. While the first quarter figure suggests that the recovery is in good shape, it fell short of the strong 5 percent pace that economists were forecasting.

GDP measures the value of goods and services produced within the United States and is considered the most important barometer of the economy’s health.
***

Actually as the Economist article points out, the GDP measures estimates of the values of goods and services. The IP chart measures industrial production measures actual industry reports. So if you rely on the estimates, they're actually overcounting the production of other nations as our own. That's right, the work done by Indian software firms is being recorded as US economic activity and growth because it's been offshored.

But in actually, the actual industrial production number (look here) is clearly trending sidewise or plateaued in normal language. There is of course no reason why we can't break out of this, but the economic indicators from retail sales growth to factory orders - proxies for the service and manufacturing segments of the economy - do not show supporting pickups.

So again, that GDP growth doesn't seem real and is inflated by bogus estimates. What is the actual GDP? Probably slightly higher than 2% - say about 2.2% rather than 4.2%.

How do I get this number? Take a look here at at the total production utilization chart from Econo-magic.

Then scroll down to the bottom and click the option: Percentage change from same period last year and tell it to redraw the graph.

Of course, the total capacity grew as well - a measure of capital investment. More capital investment, more production capacity as well? So we have not only a growth in utilization but a growth in capacity.

Unfortunately if you click on this chart and then go down and do the percentage change from same period of last year you'll see that the percentage change in capacity is slightly more than one percent (1%). So one additional percent growth in capacity should both be a warning sign that this is not a fundamentally business expansion led asset valuation - meaning it's a speculative bubble more or less.

If production capacity (to invoke Say's law) is nearly constant but valuations rise, we must have expanding price-book ratios. What is an asset book ratio? It's the value of the stock divided by the total assets having subtracted the liabilities.

It's showing across the economy in situations like the Real Estate bubble that Brad Delong writes about here.

So once again if we look at the capacity number and the utlization number, then the message is quite clear. The economy is growing at best at about 2.5% rather than 4.2%

If we uncritically accept the popular line that inflation was 2.5% (they're probably discussing core rate subtracting food or energy - hey who buys those anyway? Otherwise it'd be at 5%) then the story is that economic growth is stagnant - zero.

Zero? How can that be? Well if you look at the Fed's own numbers on money supply year over year it's 4.5% for M2 and M3, but if actual inflation is about 5% annualized that means that we're at a -0.5% situation. Net given inflation, we're actually tightening our belts.

Now certainly housing starts are still rising, but given that car sales have fallen 18% I think we can attribute this to a late surge of home buyers trying to lock in the still relatively low rates before they rise too much further. Given all the pressures on the Fed in this financially led financial inflation surge, weakening the dollar and leading to import-driven inflation (Financial Times) will in fact put the nail in the coffin. Inflation will rise - benefits alone are rising at 2.4% for employers - and interest rates will have to rise sooner or later to combat them and stablize the dollar.

The housing market which has always been a lagging indicator, people will sit on their houses hoping for an eventual return of prices, and we'll be stuck with a housing slump which will help turn down the economy into a classic double-dip recession if the downturn lasts long enough to be called a recession. Consumer confidence is rising and jobless claims are still falling, but remember like the housing market these are lagging indicators. They won't fall until the last chips are called in by the House.

So this is pretty characteristic of a "liquidity extraction" phase of an speculative asset valuation bubble and as monetary policy tightens then in the short term money supply will shrink as inflation grows some more before it is checked - once inflation starts going it's hard to rein in - and we'll have the monetary stimulus taken out of the economy which should start slumping hard by late fall to X-mas.

Right now the oldman's advice to everyone's money is to stick in an old fashioned FDIC savings account and wait it out, because even money markets aren't safe anymore.

When interest rates were low and so money market yeilds were low, some managers turned to derivaties which are complex betting instruments that were developed to manage risk but can also greatly increase returns in order to shore up their bottom line. If the market goes belly up with a correction, then a great many of these money market funds could start smelling like ten-day-old rotten fish.

Now I don't know whether or not this particular money market fund uses its derivatives rightly or wrongly, but if you look at the fine print it reads:

may use derivatives to protect against losses from changes in interest rates. For example, the portfolio manager may be concerned about the impact that rising interest rates may have on the fund. The fund will only use derivatives as permitted by Canadian securities regulators.

Yeah, well the problem is that derivatives are so complex that it's easy to accidentally set them up so as to create risk instead of hedge against it - ask Long Term Capital Management which was headed by two Nobel Laureates how easily these things can turn in a bad market.

To quote:
"Long-Term Capital Management [LTCM] was a hedge fund using derivatives so arcane even some of the people at LTCM who created it apparently did not understand it."

A lot of these funds are more exposed than they appear on the surface, and all the more deceptive since money market funds are sold as secure investments to put your money in if there's a storm going on in stock or debt markets. Well they are - as long as you don't put volatile derivatives into the mix unless you extremely careful with them.

More than one company has been breached or wrecked on the shoals of careless or greedy abuse of derivatives already!!!

As Jim Coomes one of the readers here put it so pithily, this is a sucker's rally or as I put it a "late surge in a top-heavy market about to turn over".

So that's another edition of Oldman on the economy, and don't let the banks, brockerages, or government statistics fool ya with slippery numbers. Keep your eye on the bottom line, and you'll always be in plenty of money.

Was 911 a "pocket" of Terrorism? Ridiculous standards edition, Issue 1

Tex over at UnfairWitness blog discusses how the words "pockets of resistance" are being used to describe Fallujah's turmoil while the rest of Fallujah is described as secure.

This "pockets" standard is ridiculous. By that standard 911 was a "pocket of terrorism" because it only affected Manhatten and the rest of the United States could function normally - 96.5% of its population was "unaffected" if you figure 10 million New Yorkers for 280 million Americans. However we all know that the affect was profound.

We can pretty much assume that if one corner of Fallujah is being traumatized, then all of Fallujah is being shocked. We can also pretty much extend that so that if Fallujah suffers, then to a large extent all the Sunni's "feel it".

Just as the hearts of all the Shiites will cry out everytime we blast something in Najaf. Without a native Iraqi response, because of the failure of Rumsfeld to succeed in his Iraqi training program, we may be stuck without any good options. It's also true that we don't have any "dirty tricks" we can pull to get us out of this corner either, because we don't have a functioning wing of Operations directorate in the CIA according to Tenet.

This "pockets" standard is ridiculous. Just as it is ridiculous to assume our actions in Israel won't have a provocative affect elsewhere, or that our failure in Iraq won't have an affect elsewhere.

Think about it, we can't logically on one hand claim that liberating and democratizing Iraq will have a "dominoe" effect helping to modernize the stuffy political regimes of the region without also acknowleging that a failure there will have a massively negative repurcussion. The analogy used is Reagan's withdrawal from Lebanon. However this will be ten times worse. It will be a black-eye like Vietnam was for decades.

Similarly, despite attempts to deny otherwise clearly nakedly one-sided support of Israel is going to be radicalizing in the region.

Dickey describes all of this in the bubbling mood in "Points of No Return".

***
Among students of the region—in government and in think tanks, in the United States and around the world—there’s a rapidly accumulating sense of doom, and I use the word advisedly...

In the meantime, all over the map you can hear the tick-tock of Al-Qaeda-style terrorism counting down to catastrophe. In Britain an attempt to build a chemical bomb was disrupted, then a plot to stage suicide attacks and provoke mass panic in a soccer stadium was stopped. In Jordan, terrorists plotting to set off an enormous toxic explosion were rounded up. Saudi Arabia stopped several bombings earlier in the month, but missed the terrorists who blew up one of the internal security service’s administrative buildings. In Syria, just last night, running gun battles echoed along the streets of embassy row in Damascus. In Thailand, meanwhile, more than 110 people died in what looked like an abortive uprising by Muslim zealots. “The air is too hot,” says Justo Lacunza-Balda, who runs the Vatican’s well-informed Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies. “I have this impression that something very big is being cooked.” [emphasis added]
***

The best part is the story at the end about the servant, his master, and the Appointment at Samarra.

Whatever you think, clearly "pockets" have no business being in the language of government pronouncements here. Government has to put the best face on things. That's not lying, that's it's job. To reassure and calm people for hard tasks. However, calling the fighting in Fallujah "pockets" is not putting the best face on things, it's gone over the edge into denial.

This is pretty clear from Billmon's exposition of how fast Iraq is falling apart and how quickly people are picking up on it. It may seem like a long time, but remember it took well over a decade for Vietnam to completely fall apart, and it's taking Iraq just over a year.

When nearly half the country says that invading Iraq may have been a mistake, you can't rally them to help fix the problem by talking about "pockets". They want the President to level to them, tell them how it really is, and how to fix it.

Another conservative sickened by this Administration's policies ed, Issue 8

Rather than a single apocalyptic shove in Fallujah and Najaf (both in Slate), it seems that we're bringing them to a slow boil according to MSNBC.

Meanwhile, Kevin Drum discusses a conversation with a conservative friend that echoes a lot of conversations that the oldman has had recently.

***
I had lunch today with a longtime friend. He's a Bush supporter and strongly favored invading Iraq.

At least he used to. Today, though, before I could even get a few words out of my mouth, he started shaking his head. There's nothing more we can do in Iraq, he said. Bush's planning was hopelessly bungled. It's a complete mess.
***

The problem with this? Well just like my friends, he won't turn to Kerry to vote. So he might not vote at all or vote for a third party. Given the electoral college setup, the Republican lockdown on the South, and the soft numbers for Kerry this virtually ensures barring a major shift a victory for Bush in November.

The title could be "disgusted with Bush, but dislikes Kerry" on any number of conversations I've had recently.

This positioning is reflected fairly well in the polls as reported by Dan Drezner quite well. Mickey Kaus in Slate has mentioned it as well.

First of all, the election is still many months away. Second of all, we all know Kerry is a finisher. He certainly finished off Dean my preferred Democratic candidate.

However, what we can say is that the general public does not yet view Kerry as a viable alternative to Bush. This is a perception issue and can be changed, however as Buehner notes convincingly on a post that Kerry has a far left flank he has to worry about - Nadar.

Right now Kerry is campaigning about the loss of manufacturing jobs. I'm not saying he should ignore the economy, but I think his campaign is wrong in order to feel it can lay back and let Bush dominate the headlines. If you will remember, it took weeks and weeks of concerted pressure, multiple attacks, focusing press scrutiny on the tiniest verbal errors, and various self-inflicted gaffes in order to weaken Dean sufficiently so that his momentum was stalled and Kerry and Edwards could step in to take over. In a matchup with Bush, Kerry won't have the benefit of several other candidates focusing fire on Bush. He's got to stand up and show that Bush can't just push him around or say anything he wants about him - through proxies of course.

Without a stronger plan on Iraq than simply "talking with foreign countries", he's going to be percieved as a weak leader. Let's face it, while Americans appreciate and like the support of other countries they expect their President to be able to act independently. There are historically good reasons for this expectation. I mean who exactly was backing us up in WWII? Korea? Cuba? Vietnam? Win or lose, we had to basically single-handedly carry that fight almost entirely by ourselves in each case. Yes the Brit's held out against Hitler, and the Soviets bogged down the German army in their Eurasian land-war and Russian winter scenario but it was the United States that toppled Hitler and defeated Japan.

The "go it alone" attitude is a direct extension of several generations living with the simple reality that the United States must be able to carry out and finish off its overseas military commitments by itself with only minimal assistance from allies. This explains why Bush has been so successful in snubbing other nations. The people of the USA don't want a rude President, but they expect one who is able to operate independently of the approbation of other countries.

The man behind the curtain, Wizard of Oz edition Issue 1

Today we are at a startling crossroads of history. While some may debate the legitimacy of the policies in Iraq, there is no question that the effect on the sentiment of the people in those regions is inflammatory. "Security and intelligence officials are convinced that further major acts of terrorism are being planned in several countries - especially, but not exclusively, against American, Israeli and British targets."

Meanwhile as the spies all say that they can do the job, the truth is in fact that they can't do the job. I guess it's our fault for not holding their feet to the fire however.

If Condi has lost her perspective, she should step down. Her job is not to protect the President if it means getting in the way of giving him the information that would allow him to protect the country.

The oldman has made his case before for a more robust intelligence operations capacity, and it is showing now more than ever in its lack. What we do not need is to blast our way into Najaf using the blunt instrument of the military. What we need is what one friend of mine said more lessons from the Mafia. Sadr needs to be deposed by a locally funded army, or to be conveniently found floating face-down in his bath one morning. This is something only a truly functional foriegn operations directorate can deliver however.

The thought that like the critiques of the Sopranos we might be sitting back and saying "we need more murder" to make it work better might seem cold-blooded and evil. Let everyone be reminded however that the cost of doing without such a capacity is not a care-bear kind of world, it is kids like this getting shipped back home so that their families can make their peace before pulling the plug.

If there is a choice between Americans dying and foreigners dying, I pick Americans over foreigners. If there is a choice between many dying and a few dying, I pick the few to die. It's a remarkably nationalistic and utilitarian philosophy. What it requires however is a lot of responsibility and personal insight.

Certainly various delusions and johnny come lately confessions of reservations can't however hysterical the accusations argue away the disaster that were predicted well before hand by arguing for more time to follow policies that are equally likely to end in tears.

Meanwhile on the ground, kids pay with their lives and their limbs for the hesitation and waffling at the top.

If the US military and Admin knew what it was doing, it wouldn't be sending in AC-130's to strafe targets in Najaf. They're just working themselves up to invade Najaf because they're afraid to back down and they don't know what else to do.

The oldman has proposed plans on how to both get the Iraqis to handle Najaf, and how we can used a beefed US troop presence to train enough Iraqis to stabilize the country.

While I am amused at Swopa's comment on Needlenose that my plans not foolproof , I will say three things. The first is that (a) It's better than the plan now, even if as Swopa states it's because there is no plan now! (b) I've always acknowledged the need for political concessions to make this deal work and (c) No it's not guarenteed to work but it's a sight better chance than merely muddling through as we are now.

If we are going to make this work, we basically have to take a very different stance on doing things. The truth is that there is no Wizard behind the curtain. There is no kind, benevolent government filled with competent cadres of officers that have some sort of plan behind the scenes to put things right. The word coming out from the inside is that "We've gone off a cliff (in Iraq)" and "We're fucked,". Behind the curtain of propaganda there are just some guys in suits who have soft hands and haven't done a lick of work in a lot of years, just like your bosses out there in corporate land, and just like them making silly decisions can calling it planned.

Well we have a chance to set this straight, but only if somebody up on high will show some sense and hire someone behind the scenes and for God's sake just listen to them long enough to do this right. If there's an opening on Negroponte's team, well I haven't signed any commitments for next year and I'm still available.

I'd like to say one thing and that is that whatever my criticism of Daniel Drezner, he at least is facing up to facts. For this he is being attacked as being pessimistic by certain commentators. Maybe they feel that to express concerns is to be disloyal. I consider it the height of loyalty. I don't condone Mr. Diamond running, even if I can understand it as a human being. I'm sure he felt impotent and incapable of saving what he came to feel was a doomed venture.

I for one do not believe that Iraq is doomed. However there is a problem. Acknowledging a problem is a step toward fixing it. Denial is a sure road to disaster. In my mind and heart, speaking out about the difficulties in Iraq is the one thing I can do to help make sure that such a crucial venture succeeds. Also I've made sure to lace my criticisms not just with vague proposals (like seeking more troops from allies) but with concrete doable plans for alternative methods of proceeding.

Anybody who thinks these kinds of ideas are liberal or disloyal ought to read these two articles by the Weekly Standard essentially advocating the more Iraqi training and more boots on the ground. These two issues are linked. The only way more of our troops could be effective is with more Iraqis by their sides, and the only way to get more Iraqis trained quickly is with more of our guys. Now we just have to put the weight of the President's full commitment behind them!

I think that anyone now making excuses for Iraq not going well is just being defensive. It's not about blame. It's about fixing the problem. And if people are too afraid to admit a problem might exist because they're afraid of blame, well that's not leadership. That's the way a juvenile acts. Lying about where you were last night doesn't get the car out of the ditch.

There's a phrase that was taught to me young, that many who are still apologists for the Administration's "subtle" genius ought to learn:

Wishing doesn't make it so.

UPDATE:

Remember when the oldman said that the Admin would go back and screw up Najaf and Fallujah? Well, as it turns out the Admin has begun doing just that.

Kerry medal flap - taking back the initiative

Political Animal writer Kevin Drum discusses the failure of Kerry to get traction on foreign policy. He notes that " think that's exactly right. If the war goes poorly, a lot of people are likely to rally around Bush, not toss him out of office. And that means that if John Kerry wants to win, he has to figure out some genuinely bold and popular foreign policy initiative to identify himself with. But what?"

Well this is something that the oldman has been pushing for a while now, that it won't be enough for Kerry to just show up. Democratic sentiments that Kerry just has to show up and it will be Iraq and the economy that will defeat Bush are sadly proving fairy tales liberals tell their kids.

Meanwhile Kerry is on the defensive about his medals (MSNBC) and he's getting tarred by the media (Talking Points Memo). Instead of whining and calling foul, what Kerry needs to do is to seize the initiative and hit back - hard.

How can he do this?

The problem isn't that Bush is stealing Kerry's ideas, it's that Kerry has no ideas. Clinton had more ideas than Kerry, way more. Even Gore had more ideas. People laughed at them, but they were ideas - like the "lockbox" idea for one.

What about one idea for Kerry? How about criticizing Bush for appointing Negroponte - not because of his past misdeeds - but about his lack of expertise. The Bush Admin is appointing someone with no post-war reconstruction or pacification experience. That immediately creates an opportunity for Kerry.

He can say he's serious about Iraq because he'll appoint somebody with experience. It could be anybody with experience - Anthony Zinni or Wesley Clark - that has the kind of know-how and background to get this job done. That'll then put Bush in a bind, he'll either have to stick with Negroponte who clearly has no experience, or he'll have to find a pretext to dump him.

Either way the initiative will be Kerry's, and he won't be on the defensive like this stupid medals flap. Would that GWB have earned a silver star and a bronze star in the first place to throw them away.

March to War ... Chilly Draft in December?

The Administration as Fred Kaplan reports for Slate is on the path of modernizing the nuclear arsenal of the United States of America.

Meanwhile, Phil Carter for Slate asks if our troops have been stretched to the breaking point? You can see Phil Carter's words on the topic also at his blog the Intel Dump.

Meanwhile Wunderdog blog asks if we could scrounge up $87 billion from forgone tax cuts in order to increase incentives for enlistment and re-enlistment to prevent a D-R-A-F-T.

I would argue that this won't happen. To some extent bonuses for renlistment are already being offered. However, it's much more in line for the philosophy of the ruling cabal in order to (a) defer the decision until past the November and then (b) institute a conscription / draft of eligible males in order to escalate their war machine.

Why pay recruits extra when you can just use Selective Service in order to get all the warm bodies that you need?

You think I jest or exaggerate? Dan Froomkin of the WaPo has shown that the Administration has carefully not ruled out a draft in December despite their rhetoric implying that they don't have plans to do so now.

***
It's become a daily question to White House press secretary Scott McClellan: Does the president support a return to the military draft?

And here's what McClellan says: "That is just not something that's under consideration at this time."

Similarly, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told newspaper executives yesterday that a draft "is not useful to do at the present time."

But that doesn't really answer the question that is being asked: Is Bush thinking about reinstating the draft in the future? [emphasis added]
***

Remember when the word was that the Presiden't hadn't made a plan to attack Iraq, but it turns out in retrospect according to Woodward that just weeks after 911 that he'd ordered Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks to produce a war plan for Iraq as well as transferring hundreds of millions of dollars without Congressional oversight in order to fund the policy.

Well the President similarly has no policy to institute the draft at this time, except that he is going to do it after the November election and say he suddenly made up his mind. Except that he is already planning to and the Selective Service is busily preparing for it.

***
So, at this point, GW is stuck between a rock and a hard place on the draft. He actually needs to call for it now, but it would be political suicide. At the same time, to keep extending the tours of duty of the men in Iraq and Afghanistan is making him more and more unpopular with the service people and with their loved ones back home. Many wives have gone public, as well as parents who are now questioning the war itself because of the extensions of duty being demanded by Bush and Rumsfeld. Though our government says it has all the troops it needs; there is no way we can maintain the 700 plus bases in the 123 countries and continue these two wars, and possible other wars that may be started by Muslim and Arabs in other countries who are objecting more strenuously to Bush’s policies in Iraq and his new policies in Palestine.

There is no doubt in my mind and in the mind of many other military men that as soon as the election is over that Bush will call for a draft to replenish the armed forces—that is, if he wins. If he loses, it’s hard to say what he might do. If the college students vote against him, he may just institute a draft to punish them for their disloyalty to him. [emphasis added]
***

In my mind, if Bush loses he will likely leave that difficult choice to Kerry. To be fair, I am not sure that Kerry would not call for a draft. However, White House lies aside it is almost assured that Bush will in fact call for a draft. The writing is in fact on the wall. It's as much as a done deal effectively as invading Iraq was.

I am quite bitter about this, because I believe that the right thing to do is to expand the volunteer army and change the kinds of soldiers we're training for so that the deployments wouldn't be as long for the critical specialties. In the short term, if there is a manpower shortage then the conservation of soldiers applies here and we have to call up more Reserves and National Guard. There are of course more soldiers elsewhere, but we'd have to empty our bases in Europe and the Pacific basin, something the generals are already rumbling about, and this may not be a viable option given the tensions over Korea and Taiwan.

However that's not what is going to happen. An increase in the volunteer armed forces model would create a great deal of cost through the uses of incentives in order to recruit and retain personell. Given the increased costs projected already just to maintain the present force structure, and the unpopularity of the draft the decision is likely to be punted down the road.

Oh and that myth that we are meeting or exceeding the recruitment and renlistment goals? Well they did it by lowering the goals from the year previous. Get it? They reset the goal, and then praise themselves for exceeding it?

Well the absolute number of soldiers recruited is down, year over year, based on my info. Weird how you can take a stumble and convert it into a mighty leap forward by just resetting the goal line right?

And the situation is more dire than reported, which is why the draft is going to come back in style - but only after those pesky November elections are underneath the belt and a crisis is left to brew and everyone will be crying out for more soldiers and the Bush administration will so reluctantly say, ah but if only we had a draft!

And then ever so reluctantly and gravely, both parties in Congress will pass it, because nobody will be to blame because everyone will know we need the draft at that point to win in Iraq!!!

I can see it now. Well I'm too old to be drafted, and my youngest male relative I believe will pass the 26 year old bench mark this coming August so I don't probably have to worry about him getting drafted.

However a lot of good old Americans are going to get screwed by this deal, and their kids are gonna be sent to die, and the poor bastards they won't even know why.

I feel bad for my country, that they're being played for chumps, but maybe that will be what it takes to wake them up from this fevered dream that America seems to be wandering about in shambling and disarranged.

The Top 100 Things I'd do if I were NSA edition, Issue 4

This is an edition of "The Top 100 Things I'd do if I were NSA".

As it turns out the NYT has an article out about Europe's Muslim dillemma.

***
The call to jihad is rising in the streets of Europe, and is being answered, counterterrorism officials say.

In this former industrial town north of London, a small group of young Britons whose parents emigrated from Pakistan after World War II have turned against their families' new home. They say they would like to see Prime Minister Tony Blair dead or deposed and an Islamic flag hanging outside No. 10 Downing Street.

They swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his goal of toppling Western democracies to establish an Islamic superstate under Shariah law, like Afghanistan under the Taliban. They call the Sept. 11 hijackers the "Magnificent 19" and regard the Madrid train bombings as a clever way to drive a wedge into Europe.
***

Now since there will be some temptation to blame this entirely upon the appeasement of the Spanish or the European coddling of the Palestinians let me share another two paragraphs from the piece as well:

***
Even more worrying, said a senior counterterrorism official, is that the level of "chatter" — communications among people suspected of terrorism and their supporters — has markedly increased since Mr. bin Laden's warning to Europe this month. The spike in chatter has given rise to acute worries that planning for another strike in Europe is advanced.

"Iraq dramatically strengthened their recruitment efforts," one counterterrorism official said. He added that some mosques now display photos of American soldiers fighting in Iraq alongside bloody scenes of bombed out Iraqi neighborhoods. Detecting actual recruitments is almost impossible, he said, because it is typically done face to face. [emphasis added]
***

So we both screwed up. Europe found out that no compromise with fanatics was possible, because you cannot do business with suicidal absolutists. America found out that you cannot win by fomenting and imposing false democracies and supporting the bloody and pointless tactics of Sharon. The number of terrorists isn't a finite number, and as Rumsfeld himself had enough perception to question we are indeed creating terrorists faster than we can kill them.

The correct policy would have been a mixture of toughness and softness, conquer and divide. Provide hope, prospects for economic prosperity, and an even-handed policy of justness - Machiavelli's expedient morality principle means doing the right thing when it's also doing the smart thing - combined with a tough security and counterterrorism effort mixed in with targeted assassination. One cannot negotiate with fanatics, but one can "drain the swamp" that produces them and then win by exhausting them in a war of attrition. When they die and are not replaced, when their acts win no greater approbation from the targeted public, and when the greviances they claim are given just redress then gradually their threat will diminish over time.

Instead, sentiments of even moderates are turning away from us (CSM).

However a sophisticated two or three prong programme like this is apparently beyond the minds of the Administration, who comfortably decide that they wish control over creativity. No authentic and genuine foreign leadership can arise that is simutaneously beholden and dependent upon us. The only chance for success is to cultivate friends and allies, and to rely upon the "soft power" of economic cooperation and fostering the cultural values of liberal democracy.

A grevious example of a violation of this is the grevious screw-up in Iraq. As it turns out, the Admin according to Needlenose is reversing course and vascillating regarding Najaf and Fallujah again.

SO WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY?

How to handle Najaf? One way is to exploit the presence of the Tribes. First of all, we dig up that old scarred warrior of the Directorate of Operations former CIA officer Robert Baer. Then we give him a suitcase with a few million dollars and send him in with orders to the CIA handlers for the Ministry of the Interior to take the weapons he's been stockpiling and put a big chunk of them on trucks. Then we instruct Robert Baer to make contact with the Tribal leaders allied with Sistani that have spoken out against Sadr.

These tribesmen then put together a small army, using the funds provided through Robert Baer and the arms provided from the stockpiles of the Ministry of the Interior of the IGC. How do get the support of said Tribes? Well we'll have to cut a deal for definite elections using this plan discussed at Needlenose. Yes, we'll be capitulating to Sistani but we were anyway according to the noises coming from Washington and a good principle in life is that if you are going to have to give something up anyway you might as well cut a deal so that you get something for your concessions instead of coming home with nothing! Sistani will then direct the tribes to cooperate with us.

The tribes will put together this small army and having been armed and funded by us, they will sweep into Najaf. First of all, since they will be Iraqis operating "independently" we'll have Plausible Deniability and Sadr won't be able to claim that they're American agents. Second of all, Sadr won't be able to cry foul politically since we'll make an announcement capitulating to Sistani regarding real elections. Third of all, the Tribal forces will clean out Najaf of all weapons and restore it to a religious neutral zone - part of what they give us - and the second portion of their part of the deal is that they will take Sadr into custody and turn him over to the tender mercies of the Hawaz seminary where they will put him to the task of memorizing the Koran and reciting it until he has mastered all their chants. I figure it'll be the equivalent of a 25 to life sentence of hard labor here in the States.

If people who are reading this have an objection to bribing officials in Iraq and stage managing this sort of political event, let me make it very clear that we are already spending millions bribing Chalabi and the members of the IGC. We just aren't getting anything for our money.

You can pick the pieces out of an excellent Economist article buried in the middle of Col Lounsbury's post here indicating who on the IGC is worth their money - hint they're the ones that gave up on us.

So given the fact that we're already spending millions - as in tens and hundreds of millions bribing people in Iraq - wouldn't it be sensible if we were to actually put together a plan to actually get something in return for that money?

We need somebody who we can do business with, and we need to realize that we have to choose between (a) incompetent and corrupt officials whom we can control but whom cannot deliver and (b) independent autonomous leaders who will only cooperate with us insofar as it serves their interests but who can in fact deliver.

Can we trust them? No. I'm sure they don't trust us either. However if it is in their rational best interests and we pitch it in such a way that they have a reasonable interest in cooperating - if they welched we'd have a good excuse not to implement elections which they want afterall - then they will go along as long as they think they can get ahead and remain independent.

What we get in return is a pacified Iraq, a commitment to a moderate Shiite religious influence, and a way to get back to the bargaining table for a negotiation about the disposition of Iraq's political future.

Right now that's a long sight more than we got at the present. If somebody is out there listening to me in the White House, stovepipe this right away to the NSC because we need to get the gears moving on this right away. In addition, if Robert Baer is drunk we're going to have to have 48 hours to get him dry and up to speed before we send him in-country.

So what are we waiting for? Too bad this plan won't be actually implemented. The White House seems to have a fetish about indecisiveness, reversing themselves, and not having a freaking clue about what to do when the going get's tough. It's easy to make abstract pronouncements, when the rubber hits the road that's what counts.

As a bonus point, read here about the Congressional testimony as reported by Juan Cole and his analysis of the intra-party dynamics of Republican beliefs. As a conservative, I would have to agree. There are concerned Republicans, like Lincoln Chafee willing to stand up to the truth, but the opinion leaders are more like Sanotorum and Brownback. It's an ugly thought. As Max once asked me, did I ever feel like the last of the Mohicans?

Hell yes. More and more I fear that the Republican party of yester-year, the party whom I found intellectually, pragmatically, and morally impossible not to be a part of is slowly disappearing. Instead we have this partisan b.s. that can't get the job done.

As I was saying ... Showdown in Fallujah and Najaf show Admin really is dumb as critics say

MSNBC reports that US soldiers poised to enter Najaf and Fallujah.

***
U.S. troops will likely enter parts of Najaf soon in a move to clamp down on the rebel militia of a radical Shiite cleric but will stay away from sensitive holy sites in the center of the city to avoid rousing the anger of Shiites, a U.S. general said Sunday.

Shiite leaders have warned of a possible explosion of anger among the country's Shiite majority if U.S. troops enter Najaf, and until now U.S. commanders have been saying troops had will not go in.
***

Well that just about does it. As the oldman said, he retracted any admission of error on the theory that any Administration clueless enough to hire Negroponte is stupid enough to fuck up Najaf and Fallujah. Well here we go, just as the oldman said.

Too bad they don't read the Weekly Standard. It's got a sensible political plan for going forward in Iraq.

Some of its suggestions include... repeat several times each day: "If we lose the Shia, we lose Iraq." ... To add extra clarity, labels could be put on the CDs saying, "We lose Sistani, we lose Iraq." ... Ultimately, however, Sistani and the Hawza must handle Sadr. ... The United States simply cannot afford to engage in siege tactics. ... This means, first and foremost, don't attack the holy city of Najaf.

Interestingly enough, the first and foremost prescription on the list of "must-not-do's" is the exact prescription that the President turns to first - attacking Najaf.

Crazy isn't it? You'd almost think that they were attempting to do the most stupid thing possible?

Sunday meditations, Issue 4

This is immoral.

***
For the Bush administration it has been a mantra, one the president intones repeatedly: America's troops will get whatever they need to do the job. But as Iraq's liberation has turned into a daily grind of low-intensity combat—and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld grudgingly raises troop levels—many soldiers who are there say the Pentagon is failing to protect them with the best technology America has to offer. Especially tanks, Bradleys and other heavy vehicles, even in some cases body armor. That has been the tragic lesson of April, a month in which a record 115 U.S. soldiers have died so far and 879 others have been wounded, 560 of them fairly seriously. Those numbers greatly exceed the tallies in the combat-heavy weeks of the invasion last spring...

...A breakdown of the casualty figures suggests that many U.S. deaths and wounds in Iraq simply did not need to occur. According to an unofficial study by a defense consultant that is now circulating through the Army, of a total of 789 Coalition deaths as of April 15 (686 of them Americans), 142 were killed by land mines or improvised explosive devices, while 48 others died in rocket-propelled-grenade attacks. Almost all those soldiers were killed while in unprotected vehicles, which means that perhaps one in four of those killed in combat in Iraq might be alive if they had had stronger armor around them, the study suggested. Thousands more who were unprotected have suffered grievous wounds, such as the loss of limbs.
***

This is delusional.

They're trying to collect donations to help the people of Iraq when our soldiers are dying because of the lack of armored humvees and even body armor.

That is deluded. That the Administration wants to play pc politics with this when our guys are dying but they refuse to ask for the money to make things happen is immoral.

I don't think I can possibly bring myself to support an adventure this immoral and this deluded. That's my Sunday meditation.

Sunday Meditations, Issue 3

We are at a unique cross-roads in history. As Americans we have been woefully slow to mentally adapt to the new world. Instead of engaging with it, and changing the way we do things we have instead retreated within the tried and true rhetoric of false nostalgia. The British are often portrayed as being stuffy and traditionalists. How ironic then that it seems more and more likely that the British will have adapted more quickly than us supposedly more innovative Americans.

How can I assert such a thing? Well Britain has already foiled a major Alqueda plot aimed toward them this year. So far by all considerations, the betting money in the oldman's odds is against the US foiling the plot probably being put together this very moment against us. We have wasted the time given us this past two years to reform our intelligence and criminal agencies.

What we wanted was hard hitting effective intelligence agencies capable of getting the job done. Instead Tenet told us that it would take another five years of recruitment and training to rebuild the covert operations wing of the CIA. In addition, Coleen Rowley had a recent Time Magazine article arguing against the creation of a MI-5 like domestic intelligence agency.

Don't get me wrong, like Freeh's comment indicated I view secret police with suspicion. But Rowley's article was also supposed to mention how we could change the culture of the FBI to improve it. Well she ticked off many reasons why the FBI was good as it was, and MI-5 like agency would not be able to surpass it. Then when she got to the point of suggesting what could be done to improve the FBI, she just kind of petered out and had nothing to say.

It was at that moment that I became a believer in creating a MI-5 like agency. The one thing I can smell a mile away is moronic mendacity, and if this was the best the FBI had to offer, well then the FBI as we knew it simply had to go.

She had convinced me in a way that no proponent of the proposal ever could.

Since given the incompetence of our intelligence agencies, a successful terrorist large-scale attack within the borders of the United States is almost assured before the year is out and we've squandered the past three years as an opportunity to reform such agencies let's take it out of the framework of politics for a second.

What as we as Americans have come to? We used to be the can-do people, and all I hear now is the sound of "We did the best we could,". Well Sean Connery's character "James Mason" has some pithy words about terrorism, from the movie "The Rock." by Jerry Bruickheimer and Don Simpson.

You can listen to it at this site.

What he says is:

"Losers always whine about (doing) their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen."

Well that's what I have to say. I don't want to hear about our intelligence services "doing their best". I want to hear about them getting the job done. Sometimes being philosophical is cast as being effiminate or unmanly.

Well as it turns out some of the philosophers I most admire - Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Sun Tzu, etc. - were war heroes. They were war heroes not just because they excelled at the art of war, but that they were able to take something as messed up as war and find a higher purpose in it that transcended the carnage and lead them to lessons about life.

Life is too precious to waste. We should have learned that on 911. Life is also too precious to waste on whining excuses. We are Americans. We could and should have done better by the memory of our dead, and by our precious regard for our own skin, by taking "care of business" and getting the job done as far as fixing our internal problems.

Now Alqueda is going to come along like a leering stalking buggering sodomizer and we are going to get caught bent over with our pants around our ankles.

Well that's just not acceptable. I don't know how things are going to play out, but I do know that if some of the vascillating ass-kissing bastards in power would just get out of the way there are those of us out there that could fix this problem and get the job done.

There is no excuse for this kind of failure.

And that's my meditation. Most of the time my meditative contemplations are more along the lines of enlightened rationalism and how we can all get along and fix things and find sustainable new innovative technologies in order to expand our civilization and change our way of life to one more smart, sensible, and sensitive to the limits of our resource-limited environment which we should share with all the people of the earth.

Today I'm just fucking pissed off because we got a bunch of know-nothing do-nothing numbskulls in charge that couldn't protect themselves from a spitball much less a terrorist attack.

Okay that's my Sunday meditation.

What the #@$%^*&#!!!? Iraq and Economy, oui vey!!!

Before I explain my reaction, first let me discuss some news from Iraq. MSNBC reports a ratcheting up of violence. The oldman also heard a BBC interview on the radio recently that the attacks on the oil ports there finally has the oil industry in a tizzy and Stirling Newberry has a good post up at the Agonist discussing why such anguish on behalf of the purveyors of black gold.

Next for those who are still saying that the anti-Bush coalition should stay calm about Kerry's current fortunes, they should read two articles. The first is Joshua Marshall's post on why Kerry's strategy is a smart strategy. The next is Ellen at BOP blog wringing her hands about what the oldman would call the painful absence of anything remotely resembling decisive leadership or charisma in Kerry.

As a personal note, the oldman would like to add that he had a depressing phone call with a friend of his who works in New York last night. To put it in perspective, his old buddy and former roomate once upon a time was a rural raised Republican former Illinois farm boy turned scientist. Well the oldman's buddy had before actually registered Democrat in order to vote for a Democratic candidate, but now he called me with sad news.

"I'm sorry but I just can't vote for Kerry." was what my buddy had to say. I told him I couldn't blame him. The oldman while not believing that Bush is better than Kerry, understands that most people need more than a "lesser of two evils" argument to vote a guy into the Presidency. While people may be terribly disappointed in Bush, Kerry's problem is that people don't have much good to say about him besides his former war record in the first place. And this my compadres is a problem. Kerry has no buzz.

Those who suggest that Kerry isn't in trouble ought to take such an anecdote to heart, because it's not the first such sentiment that the oldman has heard along these lines recently.

Depressingly along the lines of Iraq, we have more stories about how our boys in Iraq are getting shafted big time back on the home front (NYT).

"If he doesn't come back soon, we're going to lose it all, and he's going to have to start all over again," said Ms. Johnson, who works full time as an insurance adjustor. "He's proud to serve his country, but the Army doesn't seem to care about him or us."

Not to take anything away from the suffering of military families and with all due respect for the men and women in our armed forces serving overseas, let me take an irreverant moment to note that Mrs. Johnson is in my POV pretty damned attractive as a lady.

Meanwhile in Iraq, we're ticking away the count down to the explosion in Fallujah I've come to resign myself as expecting. This one sentence summarizes the clueness of the Administration "In Washington, officials still describe the fear of uprisings in Iraq as a theory, one they say may be overblown."

When the oldman earlier predicted an explosion in Iraq regarding Najaf and Fallujah, and there seemed to be a last minute reprieve in both cases, the oldman initially made some noises about admitting making a mistake and then retracted such an admission. On the same day if you will recall, the Bush Admin announced the nomination of Negroponte to head the US Embassy to Iraq and the oldman promptly took that as a sign that the Admin was so clueless that they would find a way to go back and totally screw up Fallujah and Najaf. And now, right on cue, they are doing just exactly that.

Right now as the NYT reports the word on the street in Iraq is "Iraqi first; Sunni or Shiite second." This being the case, going back and dealing with Fallujah in a heavy handed way is merely going to cause a rallying point inside Iraq.

Of course they have to go in and do it, but they have to work (a) hand in hand with Iraqi troops (b) work on pincering, cordoning off, and then clearing Fallujah one house at a time (c) use when appropriate non-lethal weapons such as rubber bullets, etc. to minimize collateral civilian damage.

A good example of such methods is the British progress into Basra last year when they took the city despite resistance which turned what could have been a bloodbath into a relatively minor situation that blew-over and whose situation has been one of the more stable cities in Iraq since that time. Calling in artillery or airstrikes and using vehicle weapons is a big no-no. Undoubtedly the Bush Administration will go in shooting first and sorting out the bodies later.

They could learn a great deal from the Astronaut's prayer:

"Dear God, please don't let us screw this one up!"

SO WHAT'S UP WITH THE #@$%^&#!!! REMARK?

Via the Washington Monthly blog of Kevin Drum, we see this chart of a divergence between Industrial Production and GDP. Kevin Drum get's the reference from the premeire economic blogger Nathan Newman who has further analysis from the chart taken from the Economist.

The headline from the Economist is "Grossly Distorted Product: Are official statistics exaggerating America's growth?"

The answer is of course: YES

As the oldman has maintained on this blog and for a long time, official growth numbers are way overstated. This seems to be the final nail in the coffin since as the Economist, hardly a liberal outlet, notes that the Industrial Production numbers are more accurate since they're taken from reports taken from various industries as opposed to estimates made by bureacrats at the offices of the government.

In other words, Greenspan is all hooey and what the oldman and others have been saying all along is correct - the economy was significantly weaker than official numbers indicated the past four years, that jobs numbers were not understated but rather reflected the actual economic state of affairs, and that inflation has been massively understated since it is only by understating inflation and overstating productivity that the bad numbers could have been created. In addition, liberal economists like Brad Delong who essentially buy into the official numbers even if they criticize the Bush Administration still have egg all over their faces.

As it turned out, those who have had to make real decisions regarding the market have had to cobble together our own numbers and estimates and in retrospect these now seem to have been completely vindicated.

One of my more regular readers, Jim Coomes, asked below how I come to the conclusion that this is a late surge in a top-heavy economy about to undergo a turnover. Or as he put it so colorfully, the last "sucker's rally". Well Jim, the answer is that you have to look at a variety of indicators and believe the ones that agree with your own experiences, and you have to widely sample people of different backgrounds and businesses.

Most people choose to congregate narrowly with people from one background or one area. The oldman attempts to associate widely with people from many career interests and backgrounds. One must always believe the reality of one's empirical experiences, if carefully spread out so as to be fully representative.

Putting together the trail of evidence this time, most of the positive economic indicators are associated with real estate development. However as commentators have written, interest rates are under pressures that will move them upwards by at least two and a half and possibly more percent in the upcoming months. Mortgage rates are already rising, up a percent or so for the 30 year mortgage yields already.

Also in my practical experience, costs are rising much higher than the government is reporting - a measy 2.5% for the core inflation rate and a 5% overall including energy and food is understating things.

Given that rising interest rates will cause the real estate development, which everyone practically agrees is at bubble like price speculation levels, to rein itself in considerably then this part of the economic engine will knock off. In addition debt levels at individual levels are quite high, and defaults and bankruptcies are up despite Congress having tightened conditions for declaring bankruptcy last year.

The real economy then is in a final stage liquidity extraction scenario, as can be seen in reports of the money supply. As this Quicken article explains, money supply is a measurement of economic activity or deposits made to put it more crudely.

***
It may be intuitive to suppose that the money supply grows when the government prints currency. But in fact any money held in a bank or Federal Reserve vault that isn't in a customer's name is not included in money supply. So when currency is printed, it doesn't get added to the money supply until it's needed. (This will be important when we talk about the Y2K issue next week).

However, at any given time, there is a finite and an approximately calculable amount of money circulating in the economy. This is the money supply.

Still with me? Good. ... the effect of a shrinking money supply is to choke off the stimulus necessary to keep an economy expanding. The Fed tries to allow for enough money growth to sustain economic prosperity, but not so much as to cultivate inflation. [emphasis added]
***

Well the Federal Reserve Statistical Release indicates that money supply last year at about the same time grew year over year at 6.5% and this year it grew at 4.5%.

Still with me? But as Krugman wrote in the NYT about recently about inflation that "...in the first three months of 2004, prices rose at an annual rate of more than 5 percent. That number included soaring gasoline prices, but even the "core" price index, which excludes food and energy, rose at a 2.9 percent rate."

Got that? So if money supply only grew at 4.5% and inflation grew at 5%, that means that the real economy shrank by 0.5%.

Where is the money going? Well as the Quicken article points out "in fact any money held in a bank or Federal Reserve vault that isn't in a customer's name is not included in money supply."

So the money is going into higher price increases and since the higher price increases include asset valuations ... we have the money supply getting sucked into large real estate and stock market asset valuation bubbles. When those "correct" due to higher interest rates, and we've established that higher interest rates are coming then the "liquidity extraction" phase of the economy will occur as those bubbles are pricked and the released money is "extracted" in the form of rapid asset devaluations - firesales in other words. Not everything will go into firesales, just the most interest rate sensitive assets like junk bonds, speculative real estate development, etc.

Another sign of liquidity extraction? How about good old-fashioned capital flows.

A lot of individual people will probably be rolled up since the number of people who are unable to service their debt will be at an all time high due to the expansion of consumer lending throughout the recession and the racking up of consumer debt.

It isn't helping that tens of thousands of families throughout the United States are being affected by our ongoing deployment. Remember each of those deployed soldiers have families and the number of families being disproportionately punished by the extended deployment is increased because the National Guard and Reserve Families don't expect such long deployments.

The most recent word is that some of those "weekend warriors" may end up serving 22 months in Iraq. Twenty two months! No wonder why their families are going under. Given that most families are two income households and have to take quite a hit in income since their military pay is much lower than their average civilian income ... and you have a recipe for bankrupting tens of thousands of families in the next year or so.

If Bush expands the call-up to include the rest of the National Guard and Reserves, this could be amplified many times over. If he wins the election, still a gloomy possibility to consider, he's likely to call for a draft in December - which the Administration all B.S. aside has not ruled out. What would he have to lose at that point really?

Think about the economic carnage that would result in, a D-R-A-F-T. To be fair, I'm not sure Kerry wouldn't do it either, but it just shows how the average American is pretty much screwed from the get-go here.

We also should consider that two-thirds of Americans according to a recent poll believe that there will be a major terrorist attack before the Election. I wrote in the aftermath of Madrid 11-M that this would likely be looked back upon as period of escalation leading up to a major US terrorist strike.

Well since then, there has been a foiled terrorist attack in Britian where they stopped a plot to blow up a soccer stadium on live TV meaning possibly hundreds of deaths there. Also Jordan stopped a major chemical bomb attack that by their estimates could have easily killed many thousands. Finally Saudi Arabia had a successful attack performed upon them by terrorists.

Remember that Alqueda tends to attack in streaks. The pattern of the attacks also picked up after an announcement to that regard by Al-Zawahiri. We could see an attack on the 4th of July or maybe 7-11-04 this summer, perhaps a big dirty bomb attack in Chicago, something requiring a major urban evacuation exodus.

So as an economic event that would probably be major, and with a top-heavy stock market looking for an excuse to plunge beneath 10,000 ... well let's just say that the oldman's money is in his savings account right now and it's staying there for a bit.

Another conservative sickened by this Administration's policies edition, Issue 7

FIRST THE GOOD NEWS

Thanks to this outraged poster Guy at Atrios' blog, I've stumbled over some great Republicans against Bush websites!

Here is the National Republicans Against Bush Meetup page, where you can scan for similar minded fighting mad Republicans who won't take it laying down in 634 cities across the United States!

Here is one person's Republicans Against Bush page.

Here is a Republicans for Kerry page with a database of registered members. Here is a Republicans for Kerry blog dedicated to shifting conservative or swing voters to vote for Kerry. And here is the Republicans for Kerry Yahoo Group and as of April so far it seems that it had about 1500 messages in it. Even given repeat posters, it's nothing to sniff. It's certainly more than the number of votes that GWB skinned his teeth by in Florida to obtain victory and tip the electoral college in his favor.

THEN THE BAD

Needlenose blog which is moving its site today has a post analyzing some news stories that indicate that GWB supporters seem to have their minds up whatever the evidence says. Also Billmon's analysis indicates that Bush is rebounding in the polls due to weakness on Kerry's part in the public perception department.

So apparently a lot of people have their minds stuck on supporting Bush or at least dissing Kerry, and Bush is winning out in the lesser of two evils ethics contest. Since the President's favorability and approval numbers are falling, we can only assume that his demonization campaign of John Kerry is in fact paying returns despite costing tens of millions. In addition, let's not underestimate that the the economy is in fact picking up even if its a late surge in a top heavy cycle about to get turned over.

Being a "I told you so," kind of person, the oldman would like to point out to Democrats that indeed he had "told you so." Back when GWB's numbers were getting shakey, a lot of Democrats were saying that all John Kerry had to do was just show up and the old one-two punch of the economy and Iraq would K.O. the master of disaster Bush himself.

Well as it turns out, that was rather wishful thinking, if well intentioned. People still want leadership. (MSNBC)If Kerry won't provide it, even us Republicans who've crossed the party lines won't be able to help his sorry arse.

If Kerry is out there reading this blog, get your head our of your arse and start leading. You were better when you were angry. This snotty sniping stuff is not making the cut. If you can't defeat Bush while he's got this Iraq albatross around his neck and half of America believes that the terrorists are winning while two thirds expect a major attack before November, then we are going to get stuck with GWB for another four years.

It's bad when Charles Krauthammer is having to give Kerry (good) advice. Doesn't that guy need blood transfusions? Or does he just suck it out of his victims fresh like my hero Kissinger? Talk about an old vampire!

Sorry, the Republican instincts showing there a second.

If GWB wins, I hope Democrats will finally admit that their party needs a major overhaul from top to bottom because they are in danger of extinction. If a Democratic candidate with a pulse and a high school diploma and no felony record can't beat beat GWB under these conditions, I'd have to ask under what conditions could a Democrat expect victory? Let's not go there.

Casual Friday Philosophy edition, Issue 1

I.
Oldman prediction review

Well, as it turns out USA Today has some spiffy articles out that agree with the oldman. First there's an article about whether or not there's a Housing Bubble, and then right next to is a "your money" article reciting all the reasons why interest rates are going up soon.

In fact, mortgage rates according to USA Today are already going up. With mortgage rates rising and prices already high, there's nowhere for them to go but down. I don't subscribe to a view of a mass bankruptcy scenario at this point, but the industry is going to get bogged down in a slump as people have paid high prices on low fixed interest rate mortgages and can't recover the costs at market prices and so will be loathe to sell unless forced. With the fifth straight rise in 30-year interest rate yields I think it's safe to call it a trend.

With durable good purchases rising, Greenspan will soon have no excuse but to raise the Fed Funds or short term interest rate for overnight bank loans. Estimates vary but they will likely rise to 3.5%-4.5% from about 1% currently. The rest of the rates including savings and mortgage prices will probably rise as well following that. This will push the DJIA below 10,000 if it doesn't beat that watermark all by itself.

Meanwhile the US plans to deploy deathsquads, or in Pentagon speak elite military native counter-insurgency units.

That's not the right way to do things. The right way to do things is to set up a regular army, build barracks with family housing units, embed US units with the Iraqi units, and do joint patrols and check-points. Only by building unit cohesion, allying them through daily cooperation, and using them to bridge the language and cultural barrier in field operations can we successfully help the Iraqis and save ourselves from grief.

The kind of people who are going to sign up for these elite squads don't come from nowhere. They're the same kind of guys who did the bully work for Saddam when he was in power. Ditto for their intelligence side. So it's official. The United States of America is getting back into the deathsquad business. "The U.S.-led coalition is recruiting Iraqis for an elite volunteer unit that would fight fellow Iraqis resisting the occupation of the country." That'll do wonders for morale and local sentiment toward us.

Actually in my scheme of joint patrols, we would eventually send in military videocamera guys to do a "COPS": IRAQ version to show how nice and civilized we can be using joint patrols. I can just hear the music now ... "Bad boys, Bay boys, whatcha gonna do? ... When the Cops come for you!!!"

But I get tired of screaming at the idjits in the White House. They are going to have to find out the hard way. Just like the best way to take Fallujah is to send in large numbers of ground forces, pincer off, cordon, sweep, and search building by building and using scanners, sniffers, and non-lethal tech like tear-gas to flush insurgents or rubber bullets in hostage situations. However they'll probably just roll in there and level the place. And then try to bribe the locales with $77 million in reconstruction money afterwards. Really. That's their plan now, to spend that money in Fallujah to buy off the people after they level the place.

Clueless gits.

II.
A FRIEND IN NEED IS A FRIEND INDEED,

A blogger whose been friendly toward me is Akim of Empty Days blog but recently he's posted some rather depressed writings.

***
Perhaps I am not in my right mind after all. When the whole world says one thing and your mind says something else, that's alienation - classical.

The failure of imagination to extricate oneself from an over-powering nightmare otherwise known as the picture of the world. I certainly did not paint that picture - yet at the same time it is all distinctly mine and there is nothing to suggest that it is shared by anyone else on the entire globe. Interesting. I'd like to know how the mind is supposed to overcome its own creation.
***

Hopefully the writing itself is therapeutic but as it turns out Col Lounsbury is in a foul mood as well.

Well I can't really do anything to fix their problems directly, but I would like to offer a meditation.

Recently a friend of mine, Beth a school teacher in Des Moines, asked me do whether I think money and power really matter in the end? It would have been easy to dismiss the question. I mean clearly wealth and influence can improve one's health and institute social policies that one believes in. On the other hand, I was struck by the images of average Iraqis either looting archeological dig sites or enjoying the splendour of the artifacts in museums.

Indeed as the Romans used to say, all is vanity and as Shelley put it so poetically in 'Ozymandius' the mighty become dust as everyone else and empires that once loomed tall crumble into dust.

Sting also has lyrics in 'Mad about you,' that tell of

"...a city in the desert lies
The vanity of an ancient king
But the city lies in broken pieces
Where the wind howls and the vultures sing
These are the works of man
This is the sum of our ambition"

So is that all there is, fatalism and the passing away of all we know in time?

I think judging our works by far future events isn't the right standard however. Indeed, as GWB so succintly put it, we don't know how history will judge us since we'll all be dead. Yet something else is as profoundly true. It is that the everyman, the ordinary guy whether raiding ancient digs for artifacts or the Iraqi citizens standing before the splendour of the restored artifacts on display is the inheiritor from the past. Montuzuma's descendents and the kith and kindred of his descendants all live everyday with the consequences of his choices, good and bad. The everyday life of people is shaped by the choices of the past, and the common folk are the heir good or bad of the results produced by previous choices.

Today in America, who is the true benefactor of the Founding Fathers? Isn't it the average guy, especially the Rush Limbaugh loving guy who get's to live in a free and prosperous country that at least struggles to be just and preserve individual rights? That is their legacy, that each and every American great or small can enjoy the works of those superlative as well as very human men who achieved something quite profound and left a historical legacy that has endured well over two centuries now.

In the present moment in Iran and North Korea, there is an entire generation who has come to live their everyday life shaped in either restriction or dire famine in the latter's case by the choices made by their father's and their grandfather's. The forces that made the present day political structure were one's made in the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's. In the United States it is still the Baby Boomer and Vietnam War generations created by post-WWII conjugal procreation that enjoy unchallenged political power.

In this struggle is the hidden and not-so hidden hands of many intellectuals in many fields, many politicians, many leaders, businessmen, and ordinary people whose sometimes clashing and sometimes chorusing cacaphony has brought about our present day with all its warts and flaws. The attitudes of the American public toward politics were shaped in the curriculums of high-school history classes in the 1970's and the 1980's. It is not an easy thread to follow, and it is not a simple or entirely beneficial one.

III.
THE TIME THAT WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN

However the story of history is the story of big messy clusterf*cks. In the words of Billy Joel's song "We didn't set the world on fire,"

"...We didn't start the fire
It was always burning,
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire
Well we didn't light it,
But we tried to fight it."

In the words of Gandalf the Grey, we might indeed wish that great burdens had not fallen upon us but then again "... so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

Every generation has its challenges, and the greatest challenges of the 21st Century have only begun to reveal their true forms. The quest is not for a perfect world, or even a perfect understanding of the world. The quest is for a perfect peace with how we have lived within the world. We are the heirs of yesterday, and our deeds the endowment of tomorrow. They will have their own cares, and look back and wonder how we muddled through our messes. Even as we look back and wonder how the past generations muddled through theirs.

This is not an argument for fatalism, rather the reverse. This is not the best of all possible worlds to recall the criticism of Voltaire, it is the world that has been fashioned for us by the past. If we would fashion a better one for tomorrow, then it is up to us and no other. "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." Every decision counts, and I am not the least among the shirkers.

Long have I walked strange paths, and studied odd wisdom, hiding myself away from a world I did not care to frustrate myself upon and did not believe could be convinced to see sense. All things spring from the consciousness, from the fundamental qualities of character and the aptitude of the psyche, that each person cultivates and encourages within themselves and others. Give a wastrel a fortune and he will waste it or worse than waste it - destroy everything about him with it. Give a wiseman a mere mote, and he will build that tiny gift into a legacy to endure for many generations or touch the lives of many.

I think I've been a little bit of both. Let me share a dream I had a few nights ago.

In this dream, I was sitting on the pews of the Calavinist church that I'd attended as a youth. During my fidgiting during the sermon the shoe on my right foot came off. Well I couldn't find it as I turned around and about. Well finally I had to stop looking for it, putting it off until later when I could get down and look beneath the pew. Then the congregation passed the collection plate and I put nothing in it because I thought I didn't have anything to put in, not even a quarter. A bit later after the song, they passed the plate again. This is something they actually did once in a while, passing the kitty twice especially if there was a special cause that they were taking collections for. Well this time as the collection plate came to me, I reviewed my dressing myself that morning and passed on the plate absolutely convinced that I had nothing to offer at all. Then one of my hands snaked down to check my pockets, just in case. As it so turns out there was a big roll of quarters in that pocket and a wad of some cash as well. Then I looked down and realized that somewhere along the way the shoe had gotten back on my right foot.

There's a bit more, but to get psychological about it the theme of the dream seems to be that I didn't feel that I fit in - the missing right shoe in a sort of reverse Cinderella archetypal theme - and because of that I felt that I didn't have anything to share with the community despite my presence. Then in the dream I find out that I have my shoe on after all, indicating as the old saying goes "if the shoe fits..." that I had found my place, and in addition to that I had more to give and share with others than my earlier thoughts had indicated.

So we can all do things differently, and do them better. I guess it's the oldman's turn to chip in with the kitty instead of being a tight-wad cheap-skate miser. ;-) In turn, those who have already given or given up should take hope. The fat lady ain't sung yet.

There are still choices and paths, and while some ends are not as good as others, there are things that can be accomplished within our lifetimes.

So we struggle and we try to come together and we do the best we can, because that's all we have and because there is still a sweetness in life and for all the difficulties there are still triumphs and for all the impermanence of things some choices still matter. So that's what we live for, because if we want to we can still find real joy in life even fully knowing all the shadows that sorround us.

SHOW ME THE MONEY $$$ Edition, part I

I.
IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPID!

As regular readers may have noticed, the oldman hasn't posted anything about the economy for a while even though the last month's number revisions to the jobs numbers actually vindicated previous personal estimates.

The reason why is that I realized something. People who were cluelessly bumping around promoting their ideas and looking past the real problems, were going to continue to do so. The problem is that their ideas simply don't work in the real world.

Instead of asking rather tangential questions, such as whether or not a handful of jobs are created in some sort of trade synergy or not, we should ask ourselves if we simply aren't flat out hands down simply being outcompeted economically. (Friedman - NYT)

A while back the oldman was intent on writing a series of articles explaining everything and how we could get out of the fix. Then he realized this was useless because most people didn't even understand the question. What's the point of an answer when people don't even understand what question it goes with?

Some people such as Nathan Newman (see sidebar about growth/inflation) clearly understand that the economy is not being properly measured and this is creating a real estate bubble. Others such as Brad Delong, have written wringing their hands about the real estate bubble. Well, it's too late to do much about it since even Samuelson has written about a real estate bubble. Since Samuelson has figured it out, then apparently it's so overwhelming that it's completely obvious and no one can stop this train now.

In May of 2003, a report was submitted to Congress examining the potential for a real estate bubble. (PDF) The conclusion is that while there were bubble-like aspects of the housing boom that it hadn't spread sufficient to be called a bubble. Well it has since then!

The problem is that people, even emminent economists like Brad Delong, simply don't understand what is really going on in the economy. That is they look at graphs and numbers, and they know fancy mathematical terms, but it doesn't correspond to anything. It's not like they have a real sense of the economy itself.

What is happening with the economy? Well, we're experiencing a top. As Krugman writes in the NYT, even by the weird system by which we calculate inflation it's rising significantly more than interest rates are set at. Even Greenspan however belatedly is admitting that we may need to raise interest rates soon. (MSNBC)

The actual economy is not that robust. It's not bad, but it's not significantly growing for all the weird GDP / growth figures getting passed around. This is because actual capital investment is tepid at best and business expansion slow. This correspond to the real picture being produced of limited job's growth. That's the facts on the ground.

Up in la-la economist land the economy is robust, we're finally starting to produce jobs like gang-busters even though the numbers are juiced as hell by odd assumptions, and trade is benefiting our country. In the real world, we're getting outcompeted by India and China and the top colleges are more and more playgrounds of the rich who are edging out the middle class in class representation. DISCLOSURE: I attended the University of Michigan once upon a time.

It's not about whether "comparative advantage" applies in some minor correction. It's about the main thrust of simple success, growth, and the failure of our country in order to make progress. In simpler terms it's about competitive advantage. I am constantly surprised by the economists who will make Paretto-Optimum Assumptions or Hicks-Kaldor criteria in Game Theory, when the far more likely result of a multiplayer game with near perfect information and no coordination such as price-fixing is likely to be a Nash Equilibrium. The Nash Equilibrae are called the competitive equilbrium after all.

However in the real world, we're at a top. This is interesting because it seems that China is danger of over-heating its economy and Japan's economy might finally after over fifteen years in the doldrums be picking up. However structurally, fiscally, and in monetary policy there's no place for us to go but down at this point. However it doesn't need to be a quick or obvious reversal. As Keynes noted, the market can stay irrational longer than one can stay solvent.

II.
FALSE DICHOTOMY: MONETARY POLICY VS ENCOURAGING BUBBLES

Brad Delong has an article juxtaposing a false dichotomy about America's interest rate policies. The idea is that we have to put up either speculative bubbles or rigidity in monetary policy. This is simply not true.

There's a big player - the elephant in the living room so to speak - regarding this whole business. As a matter of fact, the Fed does have more than one policy instrument. And certainly the Federal government has more than one policy instrument besides the Fed Funds rate.

Greenspan could have eased the bubble bursting by simply raising margin requirements. He could have also promoted tighter lending standards. Indeed a good monetary policy argument is that lending standards should be tightened or loosened in inverse relationship to credit easing and tightening.

It wasn't that there was just - and still is - a lot of money floating around. It's that it was finding it's way into a lot of speculation or floating enterprises that should have gone under. Macro-economic money supply is determined not just by transactions but by the quality of transactions. Dead money so to speak breeds no capital investment profits.

It's the same problem that happened in Japan only more severely so. Part of the problem of the JCB easing to near zero interest rate levels is that the money only prolonged the existence of zombie companies and kept banks from clearing bad loans off their portfolio.

Macroeconomic stimulus through monetary policy requires lending discipline, or else the stimulus does not achieve its Keynesian aim.

Greenspan himself has recently spoken out about the lack of accountability in the market system. Accounting standards, Corporate governance, institutional firewalls against conflicts of interest, tax system reform - all of these are tools to fight bubbles.

Similarly in a period of credit tightening, loosening credit standards can counteract or mitigate an otherwise harsh economic dampening. Recently the IRS spokesperson said that part of the reason why the 90's binge could happen is that the IRS takes about five years to do a complex corporate audit, and they simply hadn't gotten around to auditing the companies in question before they went belly-up circa 2000. They were still auditing 1995 forms.

Right now we have a system that essentially allows the loosening of credit standards at the same time monetary policy is eased or stimulus applied. This inevitably creates a rampant bubble - asset, debt, real estate, whatever, it's clearly speculative.

By using both policy instrument sets and trading them off against each other, both maximal stimulus and maximal inflation combating can be achieved in a more optimal Keynesian management of the short-term transitions in a national economy.

III.
WHAT ABOUT THE GREENBACK?

Indeed the easing of the Greenback was a necessary and long overdue adjustment in currency exchanges. However it was the precisely the wrong time for such a move to come about. Food and energy is rising even at the warped means of calculation the government uses at about 5% inflation. Part of this is because most people don't understand what dollar hegemony means. It means that the dollar is the "new gold" or a universally accepted currency.

Over and over again I have commentators telling me that the current accounts deficit "doesn't matter" because every US dollar will eventually come back in the purchase of US goods, services, or securities. Putting aside the question of whether or not shifting the monetary inflow from export industries to low-yielding government bonds that fuel reckless spending by warping the yeild curve, it's simply not true. As a matter of fact most people trade the dollar back and forth, without it ever having to come home using it to buy and trade commidities as different as sugar and coffee to crude oil and Persian rugs.

This dollar hegemony has been the hidden third leg of the stool that Greenspan has based his monetary policy upon. The first stool of course was the US Treasury position on the "strong dollar" over consecutive Administrations and the international lending institutions that US policy used in order to promote US interests. The second supporting leg of Greenspan's achievements was his ability to convince the Federal Reserve members in order to follow his lead in lowering interest rates on the basis of low inflation. The third leg was promoting monetary easing that was soaked up by a liquidity hungry world and so prevented inflation that comes from printing too much money. In other words we can buy more than we can sell, primarily because people want the dollars they get from our excess purchases to fund other purchases they need to make in turn using dollars.

Essentially we could print more dollars without inflation because everyone else wanted them. Indeed the world is awash in dollars. Without this global demand, financial inflation and interest rates in the United States would have been significantly higher in the past twenty years.

But the currency adjustment while bringing partially into rein an unsustainable monetary stimulus policy, created a upsurge in a critical commodity. Oil is denominated in dollars and a dollar weakening must correspond to a crude oil price rise, and indeed we have seen such a rise - from about $27-$28 dollars a barrell to over $35 pb. This is the exact rise necessary more or less to cancel out the loss of income from a weakening dollar. The increase in dollar terms of transportation and energy costs however became an economic drag.

If for no other reason, an economic slowdown would have to be expected in the States through the summer months. TANSFAL ... There's no such thing as a free lunch. The attempt to boost the economy through letting the dollar fall without intervention can't win because it means higher oil prices and that will slow the economy. One is merely shifting the costs around inside the economy rather than increasing overall economic competitiveness. The final total fixed cost structure of producing goods and services will remain the same. Yes, the nominal wages of US laborers will go down relative to foreign workers, but the inflation fueled by the rise in import prices especially in oil will eventually cancel that out and then some. Since it takes time for the system to adjust we can expect the initial correction to be mild and then to proceed past the point of matching until it reaches a higher crest before returning to a matching equilibrium long term average.

That means because it takes a while for price increases to work through the system but currency price shifts take place much faster, we can expect an inflation rise to overshoot the value of the currency shift and then crest prolonged above it and then later come back into harmony with it. We can get a quick hit of lower currency cost pricing at the consequence of promoting higher long term inflation before things even out eventually.

Because of this, in the fall interest rates will probably have to rise higher than the structural short term yeild curve expectations would have been. This will in the short term further destabilize the dollar. This will cause further mid-term financially induced inflation. The long term picture is of course controlled by the fiscal outlook, which isn't too rosey. The total result will probably be a period of higher inflation and interest rates than what would have ordinarily been expected until budgetary discipline returns and more capital investment is made in domestic American business operations.

This will depress actual growth and probably send the nation into another liquidation phase- e.g. recession. The only real cure for this will be to tighten lending standards, and this will undoubtedly cause some pain. However this is the cause of the failure of the Federal Reserve and the Government in order to implement sound policy. Tightening lending standards while easing monetary policy, and loosening them while tightening it is probably the best response a managed economy can have.

Right now we're throwing good money after bad. This can be seen by the lowering rates of junk-bond defaults. That may sound like a good thing until you realize that these junk bond companies are staying afloat because that easy credit from the Fed is going to keeping them on life support rather than creating new business operations. These "vampire" or "zombie" companies could be wiped out simply by raising requirements for new or expanded lines of credit.

IV.
WHAT NEXT?

The oldman advised his friends and family over a month ago to take their money out of the stock market (or bond market for that matter), and to delay any real estate purchases not already in the works for about half a year in any bubble-ridden areas.

There was no reason to go around shouting about things simply because it was already a done deal. Next time around, after this debacle we could start afresh with a real look at how best to manage America's economy. However with Greenspan still locked in his triparate program of artificially low interest rates and inflation due to foreign subsidy, we can't really move forward.

So that's where the smart money is, ride out the coming storm.

Land of a thousand battles, cradle of civilization: Iraq

I.
Suffering Suckatashs, What a Predicament!

Needlenose web-blog has a discussion about the awesome essay that Billmon wrote on his blog.

Billmon has three "must-read" paragraphs:
***
The fact that realism has been pushed to the fringes of the political debate says a lot about America's collective mental condition. Sanity isn't very popular these days -- not for those desperate to rescue Israel from its demographic predicament, or for those dreaming of a world that looks "just like us," and certainly not for a president who believes he's God's vice-gerent on earth, or for the 15%-20% of the population that's counting down the days until the Rapture.

We seem to have reached the point where a half-baked strategy for endless war in the Middle East is actually easier to sell politically than a sensible energy policy, an end to American subservience to worst instincts of the Israeli national security state, and a focused campaign to destroy Al Qaeda while drying up the pools of hatred in which jihad festers and grows.

Clausewitz, that ultimate realist, once said that "he who neglects the possible in quest of the impossible is a fool." That just might end up being the epitaph for America's imperial adventure in the Middle East. [emphasis added]
***

Phil Carter at Intel Dump has a discussion about over-reach and the "D"-word. We are fast becoming boiled frogs. (CSM)

The problems may compound in that according to Col Lounsbury's bitter mood we are already seeing an increased destablization of Jordan to accompany Saudi Arabia's descent into murky territory.

Oldman himself has blogged about some of these questions and for a sample post (including a reference to "Fog of War") look here.

II.
WHAT TO DO?

First any problem needs to be broken down. Certainly we already know what to do. Ideas have been posted here, elsewhere, etc. Indeed, the question is almost academically and historically trivial. In the words of McNamara himself:

"As I told you, I am not going to comment on President Bush," McNamara said, patting his briefcase. "I refer you again to the 11 principles. You apply them! …You don't need me to point out the target. You're smart enough!"

Indeed the whole situation is not a historical or sociological or scientific one. What "needs to be done" is quite clear. The entire question is cultural and political. Have we as Americans so far lost touch with reality that we can no longer reconnect sufficiently to avoid or curtail disaster? If we can or can't, it's all up to us to avert disaster.

III.
BUT WHERE DO WE START?

Greenbody recently joked in response to my last post regarding: "How about a bake-sale for the troops? Or maybe gun aficianados can donate one or two pieces from their gun collection to the troops."

Actually I think this is a grand idea, though we need to formalize it a bit. In light of our government's shameful refusal to do the right thing by our troops, I think we can get some good PR for shaming the government by starting a "Buy a soldier body-armor" donation fund.

Now I've never done anything like that before, and don't know how to get it organized. But if we could get a national campaign going, I would certainly put in some time and money. I've personally donated to police officer body-armor funds before, so this is nothing new to me. We could probably get military families involved to help organize and distribute it in a lottery style system.

In addition, I've been thinking about boots. Your typical military boot might look something like this.

However, this is clearly leading to all sorts of injury like this with injuries to arms, legs, and eyes.

I think a great place to start would be to get into production a better boot.

Now special multi-layer Kevlar already exists in boots to diminish chain-saw injuries.

We'd want stitch-down sole construction, and a hidden inside zipper "covered by a Velcro flap". The last model listed even has titanium leg-sliders for crash protection.

Indeed we already know how to create boots with reinforcement for things like race crashes. Now just replace with a steel-titanium mix and standard features like a "steel-toe" to keep things light and strong and away you go! We could also add goretex to make it "breathable". We could also treat it to be fire-resistant.

I think it would be possible to put together a hi-tech combat boot for about $500 that would significantly cut down on lower leg extremity amputations.

One could imagine an updated fore arm bracers combined with shooting gloves (fingerless version). And yes, they have them in goretex as well.

We could probably produce a decent set of fore-arm protection (with titanium reinforcement) and shooting glove that would retail for less than $100 a pair. Remember that body armor (types) have already saved many lives. Body armor as Kaplan discovers can be quite expensive however. (The Atlantic)

Now designing, producing, and marketing new body armor for feet and hands, or creating a non-profit donation fund to just buy body armor for our troops might seem to be a tangential sort of thing to do.

However it has three benefits.
(a) It can be done now.
(b) It will help our troops.
(c) It will buy instant credibility for future discussions.

And this is what is missing most in the cultural and political discussion regarding our rather botched middle-east policy. (i) People don't know who to trust (ii) People are looking for somebody who can get the job done.

It strikes me that creating such products and a donation fund for body armor would shame our government in a very straight forward fashion. It would expose them to the general public for the callous bastards that they really are.

If any one has more ideas about how to accomplish this or contacts in the boot making industry, they can contact me at:

oldman (at) gmail.com

That's right, the oldman is trying out the gmail thingy and has already claimed the "oldman" address. Sucks for all the other old duffs and gaffers out there that I beat them to it.

Until next time,

Another conservative sickened by this Administration's policies, part VI

MSNBC reports that the military forces in the field have some ten billion dollars in unfunded ongoing needs.

***
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, charged that the president is playing political games by postponing further funding requests until after the election, to try to avoid reopening debate on the war's cost and future.

Weldon described the administration's current defense budget request as "outrageous" and "immoral" and said that at least $10 billion is needed for Iraqi operations over the next five months.

"There needs to be a supplemental, whether it's a presidential election year or not," he said. "The support of our troops has to be the number one priority of this country. . . . Somebody's got to get serious about this." [emphasis in italics and bold added]
***

These supplies aren't for big ticket items either. Most of them are for basic items that would save soldier's lives including:

Army Needs
- $132 million for bolt-on vehicle armor
- $879 million for combat helmets, silk-weight underwear, boots and other clothing
- $21.5 million for M249 squad automatic weapon
- $27 million for ammunition magazines, night sights and ammo packs.
- $956 million for repairing desert-damaged equipment
- $102 million to replace equipment lost in combat.

Marine Corps Needs
- $40 million for body armor, lightweight helmets and other equipment
- 1,800 squad automatic weapons
- 5,400 M4 carbine rifles.

You know if Bush and co. are going to ask our soldiers to die for us they might want to give them things like armor, guns, and bullets. Usually you are going to need that sort of thing if you want to do other than shout and shake your fist strongly at an opponent.

What would I do if I were NSA? Part III

This is another edition of What would I do if I were NSA?

To start off here look at Arkhangel's section where has a section discussing how to fix Iraq. Hat Tip to Brad Delong. You can compare to oldman's plan.

For this edition, it goes without saying that the oldman has grave doubts about Negroponte's nomination to be the next Iraqi Ambassador.

Clearly the situation in Iraq has calmed down. The oldman is pleased to say he was wrong about the degree of escalation of violence. However his estimation was based, possibly erroneous, on taking Centom at its word when it declared without equivocation that they would 'kill or capture' Sadr and that it would not stop until it had subdued Fallajuah.

Personally the oldman is quite pleased to find that the revolt in the ranks of the generals over low troop levels and the civilian foreign policy apparatus stopped the leadership from pushing both situations to a castrophic moment.

For the record, the oldman while a sincere believer in the divine is a lapsed church-goer. However as they say, there are no atheists in foxholes. Certainly the situation and the seemingly cluelessness of the leadership visa via Iraq inspired a certain amount of beseeching prayer.

Indeed, the oldman was wrong because he was wrong about the possibility of the White House backing down over Najaf and Fallujah. The defection of Spain and Honduras at the possibility of an Iraq firestorm set off by an invasion of Najaf was only averted by a change in policy from 'kill or capture' to 'containment'.

Clearly this was not some brilliant plan all along by the US government. The reason is that by first stating a 'kill or capture' policy and then having to scale it back when Sistani and the Najaf clerics provided a united front, means that we backed down. Having blinked in the face of the confrontation, we have lost face and Sadr has gained credibility. He faced off with the Americans and he came out alive and free (at least as long as he stays in Najaf)

Clearly Negroponte's appointment is important in the follow way. It shows that the Administration is not serious about rebuilding Iraq. What experience does Negroponte have in reconstructing war-torn countries or rebuilding economies or keeping peace in war-riven lands? None. But he is awful good at following orders. So his purpose must be to enforce Administration edicts and keep the lid on until after November. (link via Atriois)

The Administration has clearly given up on Iraq as a democracy whatever their rhetoric. (The Agonist)

WHAT WOULD I DO?

Besides appointing somebody with ideas about reconstruction or who has peacekeeping experience, how about just not making promises I couldn't keep! It was completely inappropriate to announce such a blatant kill or capture Sadr policy from the get-go. The word put out to the public should have been that we were

... pursuing the apprehension of Sadr in conjunction with Iraqi officials pursuant to the warrent for his arrest.

See how much less confrontational and there less to have to back away from than 'kill or capture'? Furthermore we should have said that we were doing our utmost to respect Iraqi law and custom. That way when Sadr holed up in Najaf we could have cited in the stand-off situation the principle of religious sanctuary which says that religious officials can give sanctuary in some cases to fleeing wrong-doers.

That way we didn't have to get egg all over our faces.

THE PROBLEM WITH DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE

My friend Julienne who works in a National Laboratory in the Great Lakes area had these thoughts to share about the intelligence problem. I thought I would post them here and elaborate on them later.

1. Create a Domestic Intelligence Agency wing of the Central Intelligence Agency.
2. Continue the separation of criminal and intelligence functions.
3. Make the FBI counter-terrorism role enforcement and prosecution (with Justice Department)
4. Expand the role of Intelligence warrents for searches
5. Pass a law restricting legal usage in criminal prosecution of non-terrorism evidence found.
6. Create a cabinet Secretary of Intelligence / elevate DCI to cabinet appointment position
7. Make the Central Intelligence Agency director the undersecretary of Intelligence

The later two suggestions just essentially are the same setup we have for the FBI. Remember that the FBI still is technically under the wing of the Justice Department and the Attourney General is a cabinet level position. Making the DCI a political appointment but making the CIA director a long term appointment like the FBI director is (ten years in the FBI director's case) makes sense as it puts criminal investigation and intelligence on an equal bureacratic footing.

We can still respect civil rights and increase domestic intelligence survellience if we are willing to pass a law that says if you aren't involved in terrorism, material unearthed cannot be used in a court of law unless inevitable discovery applies. For instance, if a spook stumbles over a dead body parked in a car outside that's admissable evidence since somebody it is arguable would have discovered that body inevitably. This would put a damper on the temptation to use intelligence warrents to pursue searches of ordinary criminal violations.

On the other hand, when the spooks wanted to arrest or raid someone they would call the FBI to set up the the bust. As my friend Julienne put it so elegantly, the FBI would be on a need to know basis.

On the other hand, if someone is for instance smuggling cigarettes or laundering money as part of a terrorist enterprise or to support terrorist enterprises, this should be admissable evidence since it's a terrorism-related activity. The standard legal interpretations carried in acts like RICO or the Federal Racketeering act would apply. So if the spooks found out that you had stolen money, you couldn't be charged for grand larceny unless somebody would have discovered the theft anyway or you were stealing the money to help terrorists.

It's clear that in order to protect privacy we should keep something of a firewall between criminal enforcement and prosecution but we also need robust intelligence sanctions in order to protect society collectively.

This would be my advice to the President as NSA.

White House appoints "Death Squad" Negroponte to head Iraq,

MSNBC reports Bush nominates Negroponte to head Iraq mission after Bremer.

***
Negroponte’s nomination for the U.N. post was confirmed by the Senate in September 2001, but that confirmation did not come easily.

It was delayed a half-year mostly because of criticism of his record as the U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. In Honduras, Negroponte played a prominent role in assisting the Contras in Nicaragua in their war with the left-wing Sandinista government, which was aligned with Cuba and the Soviet Union.

For weeks before his Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Negroponte was questioned by staff members on whether he had acquiesced to human rights abuses by a Honduran death squad that was funded and partly trained by the CIA.

Negroponte testified that he did not believe the abuses were part of a deliberate Honduran government policy. “To this day,” he said, “I do not believe that death squads were operating in Honduras.”

“He’s a diplomat’s diplomat,” said Bernard Aronson, the State Department’s top Latin America official in the first Bush administration, when Negroponte was ambassador to Mexico.

“He’s trusted, I think, by the administration. He’s certainly very close to the secretary of state, and he’s unflappable,” Aronson said in a recent interview.
***

Okay, I admit it - the guys in the White House really are as dumb as the liberals think the White House is.

I was going to admit that I was wrong about Fallujah and Najaf on the great news (MSNNC) that a breakthrough agreement (Lounsbury) had been reached and General Meyers verbally indicated that the US policy had changed from 'kill or capture' on Sadr to 'containment' (in Najaf).

However any Admin clueless enough see Negroponte appointed (Needlenose)- and I have to admit that I thought it was a kind of baseless rumor but apparently it was a genuine leak - is going to be dumb enough to go back and screw up Najaf and Fallujah. Hence, I have nothing to apologize for because they really and truly do not "get it" despite the revolt in the ranks of the generals and civilian foreign policy apparatus.

Does the Administration truly believe that the Iraqis will accept a pogrom to reinstate the ruling methods of Saddam at his most goriest? (BOP)

So we really are screwed.

Another conservative sickened by this Administration's policies, part VI

According to the LAT Bush is losing rural support over economic policies .

***
Like much of rural America, this isolated community south of the Columbia River Gorge is a place where people — like their parents before them — vote Republican when they pick their presidents. They went with George W. Bush four years ago. And most are likely to support him again this year.

But cracks have surfaced in President Bush's once-solid rural constituency. From places like Sherman County to Montcalm County, Mich., and Mahoning County, Ohio, some Republicans are so concerned about crop prices and high unemployment that they're considering voting Democratic for the first time.

They're hardworking people like Sherman County farmer Tom Martin. As he plows the stubble of last autumn's wheat harvest on his 12,000-acre spread, the 60-year-old hears mostly grim economic news on his radio.

"I'm right there on the fence," Martin said. "Bush has lost my vote, but I'm just not excited about [John F.] Kerry either. From where I sit, neither party has much regard for the little man. And that includes farmers."

For Bush, winning the rural vote looms more important than ever — especially in such swing states as Oregon, Minnesota, Michigan and Ohio.

In 2000, rural voters overwhelmingly backed him over Democrat Al Gore, giving Bush the boost he needed to win in some states.

Although analysts predict the president this year will again capture the majority of votes in outlying communities, they say he must win by a decisive margin to remain in the White House.

A recent Los Angeles Times poll showed that among rural voters, Bush leads Democrat John F. Kerry, 47% to 41%. But the president's support has slipped — down from 55% in November — for reasons ranging from the troubled economy to growing dissatisfaction over the war in Iraq.

Perhaps Bush's greatest strength with rural voters is an emotional bond based on cultural values. They view him as someone who thinks like they do — a president who speaks their mind on issues like property rights, abortion and gay marriage...

Marked by its rolling wheat fields and steep, narrow canyons, Sherman County can feel a lot farther from Portland than a mere 100 miles.

Locals drive an hour to fill a prescription, shop at a supermarket or order pizza. There are no practicing attorneys, no funeral parlors, one video store and only one part-time doctor. The county's only blinking-yellow traffic light at Biggs Junction was removed this year after officials decided it wasn't needed.

Such isolation sows self-sufficiency — a legacy of the Oregon Trail pioneers who settled here 150 years ago. Farmers don't need a tow truck; they can fix their own broken tractors. And they own guns to scare off intruders. No police needed, thank you.

When choosing politicians, people go by a gut instinct framed by their interest in farm prices and a natural bent toward conservatism.

Along the county's dusty back roads, past fallow wheat fields and rooster-red farmhouses, pro-Bush bumper stickers adorn tractors and silos.

"We're country people, and that's what George W. Bush represents: He's country," said Ray Smith, 57, whose wheat farm spans 3,000 acres. "I'm not going to go crying to the president over dollars and cents. He believes in the same things I do. That's good enough for me."

Farmer Chris Moore says the Bush administration has meant more freedom for folks to run their own affairs without nosy government intervention. The other party, he says, keeps pushing environmental programs that pay more heed to some endangered insect than the economic plight of the American farmer.

"The Democrats don't trust us as stewards of the land. They're in our face with regulations to make the ground we farm one big national park," Moore said.

"They took down big timber first, and farming is next. President Bush may be the only defense we have left."

Prolonged hard times, however, make others uneasy.

"Bush is scaring the heck out of me," said farmer Gary Irzyk, who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 because he thought Bush was too influenced by the religious right. On the economy and foreign affairs, Irzyk says, "He's way in over his head."

When times were good, Sherman County was among the Northwest's richest. Old-timers recall a rural kingdom that flourished beneath the shadow of snow-capped Mt. Hood, a place where private Cessnas seemed as numerous as John Deere tractors.

But a five-year drought and the lowest wheat prices in a generation have caused the community's collective fortunes to plummet. The county now ranks as the fourth-poorest in the nation, with an unemployment rate of 12% — Oregon's highest.

In the last six years, Sherman County has lost nearly a third of its school-age children as families have moved away to look for jobs. Now most wives work part time, and many families collect food stamps.

Last year, Smith offered 100 free acres to anyone willing to bring a good-sized company — and hourly wages of $15 or more — into the county. So far, there have been no takers.

But across the nation's countryside, Democrats have yet to capitalize on Republican vulnerabilities.

In Blaine County, Neb., the nation's second-poorest in per capita income, Republican chairwoman April Wescott said rural Americans didn't believe in pointing fingers at politicians.

"We're used to making do with what we have. We're less spoiled than most Americans," she said. "When hard times come, you just get through them. You don't blame the president or your neighbors. That's just the way it is."

Kerry has been unable to define himself in the eyes of rural voters or articulate a plan of economic recovery, according to a bipartisan poll sponsored last week by George Washington University.

"You see a great deal of discontent in rural America, but people there don't see any options," said James Moore, an independent political analyst in Portland.

"They don't hear Kerry talk about issues that concern them, such as water rights and federal ownership of land."...

Not long ago, Lloyd Walker committed a near-unforgivable conservative faux pas.

The mayor of tiny Greenville, Mich., was miffed that a major refrigerator maker had announced plans to pull up stakes for Mexico, taking with it 2,700 local jobs.

The veteran politician blamed not only the Electrolux factory owners, but U.S. policies that allowed big business to abandon rural towns without the slightest economic penalty.

Speaking at a nationally televised news conference last fall after the Electrolux announcement, Walker lost his cool.

"I said I had never in my life voted for anyone but a Republican for president," he said in a recent interview. "But then I looked right into the bright lights and admitted it: That may change this year."

The town's Republican congressman called from Washington to question Walker's loyalty to the party. Colleagues clamored for Walker to resign from the Montcalm County Republican Committee.

Walker has stood his ground. "I'm wringing my hands over this election," he said. "Bush assures us things are getting better. But I don't see it."

Rural America is feeling the pinch. As the number of farmers and ranches declines and manufacturers leave, unemployment and personal bankruptcies rise.

"Look around these places and you won't see any young people," said Jon M. Bailey, a research director for the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Neb.

"The couples of child-bearing age and kids in school, they're all gone. There's no one to do volunteer work that rural towns depend on, from the fire department to the school board."

Analysts suggest that support for Bush has waned among those who remain — the elderly, who become reliant on Social Security and Medicare.

"Some realize they can't make it under the current economic situation. And they're turning away from the Republicans," said Ed Sarpolus, an independent pollster in Lansing, Mich.

But while dissatisfied with Bush, Republicans won't necessarily vote for his opponent, Sarpolus said: "Some will choose to sit out the election. That's not good for either candidate."...
***

I've always maintained that most Republicans are not fat cat big business guys or rabid anti-abortionist clinic rushers. While conservative social values are important to most Republicans, most of them including and especially the ones in the military are just as or even more so hurt by many of this President's policies. While I don't blame the President for the current economic cycle, his policies have been at best a policy of less than benign neglect. The tax cuts did not create much stimulus and he advanced no other policies for economic restructuring. In addition, agri-business has been unfairly pushing out of business the small farmer with unfair vertical as well as horizontal integration and oligopolic pricing schemes and transferring costs to the public by creating untreated waste streams. The rural areas out here in Iowa are getting drained dry by both the weather and the economic policies of the big donors in the RNC. It's high time that the average Republican speaks out about how his or her interests are not being served by a completely out of touch Washington "conservative" crowd.

That's another edition of "Another conservative sickened by this Administration's policies".

Now darkly through the looking glass, Sunday contemplations

We see but a little ahead, and that but darkly, as if through a looking glass. Brave our soldiers, young men and women, we send into foreign fields with flags waving and parades brashly behaiving and hope to see their faces again but not at Dover. Star spangled banner for tis of thee, sweet land of liberty we speak of from sea to shining sea that for pride and honor's sake young lives go marching hence from the land where our father's died, what bitter price paid in scarlett spilled on foreign sands for liberty?

Now is the hour, and where has the pride of our hearts gone when the aftertaste of victory becomes sour? Where are those to fight for their own nation, that strangers must die for them when they raise no voice or rifle for freedom? Purple mountains majesty, where our generations ought to live and amidst amber waves of grain where they ought to raise families where are the blooms of our youth? Snakes are in Eden, between the Tigris and Euphrates, and their milk is all that too many of our kids will sate their thirst upon in desert lands.

Blowing sand and harsh yellow grit like powdered misery, boots drum in military marches day in and day out but where are the lights in white housed windows late at night? Frustration becomes anger, and anger becomes hate, and screaming and shooting and people laying face down in pools of their own insides. Still we cannot keep the lights on far away for all our vigils at home.

Ringed around mosques, our soldiers crouch ready to rush in where angels take their sandals off to tread. They go sent by leaders blinded and deafened by the words they speak, so soft so soft one would hardly know each one condemns to death a man. The soccer field becomes the graveyard and the laments of grief turn tears from gratitude into the hissing sand storms of vengeance. For the sake of pride and four insults, we grind the wages of vendetta into the bread of despair and the wine of violence.

So quick, so quick, there goes another life fleeting it flies borne heavenward not to touch earth again until Dover. So slow, so slow, everyday ticked off by a scheming clock measured in not seconds but statacco gunshots punctuated by warmth leaving brown eyes. So hopeful, so hopeful chirps those sitting behind desks oceans away with soft hands and never sweating and never chilled as they talk about how things are turning around.

Turning round and round, the lonely falcon of the the wastelands cries and wider and wider it flies until it comes to rest to eat a dead man's sight. Salivating dogs and men lower than dogs stalk the night, amid mortar roars and rocket scores and scores in punchy beats no music man can make a catchier tune to defeat. Red lines trickle in liquid borders, and they so neatly embroider colorful stories at home each bought with a dozen stones and men to go with each fanciful tale.

So we see darkly though a looking glass, but dimly, and all too aware of the cost but not enough of the cost and divided against ourselves but this our uniter and sleeping through the breaking of the bottle that holds the genie but oh they're muslim and they don't believe in genies anymore or will they make one last exception to grant us three curses except that it was supposed to be wishes and oh how I wish that our boys could go home to warm kisses except that now so many to Dover will go and go and find their home six feet below and instead of cute pictures they'll bring home sharpnel scars as souviners from a land that was supposed to give them flowers and open arms but instead they shoot Kalisnakovs and rocket propelled grenades oh that the land would awaken and see that those denying have all been lying and its our boys that will bear witness in a court without repeal that the reaper does not care about spin no matter how far they go round and round the same tired lies thick like fat black flies but the boys will still be busy dying.

Another conservative sickened by this Administration's policies, part V

Here at Brad Delong's site he has both Rubenstein dishing GWB and the pro-war hawk Tish Durkin (who as you can see here is one hot dish herself at the 10:55 AM posting on Friday April 09th 2004 entry of The View From Baghdad blog) cracking the whip on the positive spin assessment of the Bush Admin for the Iraq situation. Remember that she's in Baghdad and GWB isn't.

Here is Col Lounsbury's interesting bit of news. North of Basra according to his CPA sources, commercial shipping doesn't exist. No commerce, no reconstruction. No reconstrucion, no hope. No hope, and we're dead and like a dinosaur we're just too dumb to realize it. If reconstruction has truly stopped and we can't get it going again, then it's game, set, and match and we're just watching a losing strategy play out to its inevitable resolution via cable news channels.

In addition I've added my comment on Brad's website about where oh where have the grown-up Republicans gone, and it lists some more outraged conservatives from Retired General and former Reagan NSA director Odom to Kevin Drum's posted email litany of embittered conservatives speaking about GWB's betrayal of conservative values. However, on the ground the old realcons continue to lose ground to the neocons, politicons, religicons, and aborticons.

But at this point, even some of the more pragmatic neocons like Kagan and Kristol are desperately signaling that Washington policy on Iraq is completely astray.

Oh and Bob Woodward, him of the Watergate "follow the money" reporter fame and the fawning run-up to Afghanistan war book, that Bob Woodward has published a book stating that Bush had his mind made up about Iraq soon after 911 whatever the evidence actually indicated. If Bob Woodward no longer finds Bush's assertions that we might find WMD in Iraq credible, then I would say that the Administration has a serious credibility gap inside the conservative base. Here are some parts of Woodward's writing as presented by Dowd in the NYT, detailing the sickened Powell who nevertheless failed to openly confront his superior gone awry.

***
If you want to know (where the grown-up Republicans are), on all levels, we've been forced out. The problem is that the grown-up Republicans always have been kind of distant, a little disasteful about pandering to the base. Because of that, over the last ten some years other up and comers - the religicons, politicons, and neocons - were able to seize the levers and positions of party power away from us.

Us realcons lost first the religious right, then the anti-tax crowd, then big biz and anti-environment, and then just recently the neocons eclipsed. Each time it happened by a group pushing a radical ideological agenda that pandered to the red-meat frustrations of various parts of the base that was transforming itself away from the old Republican base.

You see the old Republican base was the blue-collar guy who was hard working and loathed unions. He was the white collar guy who came home and read the WSJ. He was the business owner who wanted reasonable regulation and taxes. Once upon a time Eisenhower was a Republican for god's sake.

Nixon's Southern strategy really started changing us, as well as many who became unscrupulous and power seeking - politicons - after the long period of Democratic domination in the Congress. Eventually the captore of the House o'Reps by the politicon by Gringrich (who at heart is a pragmatic but ambitious politicon thru and thru) lead to the driving wedge of radicalized Republican legislative dominance - Delay, etc.

Reagan also turned out to be a polarizing force, moving the party further right. When the disastisfied elements rebelled in the forms of supporting both Buchanan and Perot, and choosing to defeat a relatively moderate incumbent Republican President they consolidated their control and focused on undermining Democratic seats in the Congress.

Rush Limbaugh was symptomatic, as well as the various string of televangelists whom I do not exclude BG here of a "dumbing down" of the Republican base. Where Republicans once prided themselves on sharp pragmatism and a limited government philosophy, gaming the system became more important. As the Republican base lost touch with its core values, and became consumed with party loyalty and winning the old realcons were consistently and gradually marginalized.

Now the voices of reason still do exist, but mostly have been shut out of the inner corridors of power. Even those who willing to speak out like Lugar have been attacked. There remains a significant minority of Republicans including me extremely discontented by this Administration

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_04/003681.php

However we've been shut out Brad, shut out in the cold. They've got a clean lock on most of the base, and all the party levers of power. Even independent prominent guys like McCain, Hagel, etc. or dissenters - (even Susan Collins has sounded shaky recently ) - have minimal pull inside the party machine anymore.

Career guys like Halper or Odom are just plain locked out of the policy process.

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1837816

We got the worst sort of ideologues in the driver's seat, and none of the "good guys" or grownups even allowed near the process. Anybody who does has to pass a loyalty litmus test. Even Rumsfeld has given dissenting signals on occasion, but he's loyal as a dog - he'll do the wrong thing because his boss told him to. Even to an extent Powell has succumbed to loyalty politics.

Anyone else who get's in their way, Republican or not like Whitman or O'Neill, simply get's used up, thrown away, or actively targeted for destruction. O'Neill's treatment was pretty shabby in the end.

To some extent, old realcons deserve some of the blame. Brent Scowcroft fostered and apprenticed Condi for instance. However she succumbed to a form of loyalty politics and gaming the system that the oldman would have never tolerated - and openly spoke out quite presciently against in the run up to the war.

We're locked out in the cold Brett. It's been leaked that even Herbert asked "what was the exit strategy?" before invading Iraq in private family meetings. However, he loves his son and has been publicly defending him. Loyalty politics.

Personally, I'd like to rescue the Republican party of those oldmen for a new generation because there used to be something Grand in the Grand Old Party indeed. But it's all gone to h*ll now Brett, and us grownups are forced to watch the hellion teenagers make a muck out of everything.

Posted by: Oldman on April 15, 2004 04:27 PM

To Read or not to Read, that is the question -

whether it is better to suffer these stings and terrorist arrows or shuffle off this mundane paperwork?

Can it be true?

At times I have spoofed whether or not GW reads. It was purely quite bitter and biting and sometimes vile satire.

"Bushie doesn't know how to read!!!" admits wailing Laura, whom reporters cornered after an aborted flight attempt through the Rose Garden. "I've been trying to teach him for years, but Phonics just doesn't work on him. I'm so ashamed. While we were dating, he faked it. I had no idea he could fake as good as I can! I don't deserve to be called a librarian."

or ...

"Georgie doesn't need to know how to read," blurts out an outrage Barbara Bush when confronted with evidence in form of canceled checks that GW Bush bribed his teachers who had broken down under intense marathon interrogations by the inquisitors of the NEA. "That's what he has servants for!" thundered the frosty matriach of the Bush clan in defense of her eldest son after new charges emerged that President Bush is functionally illiterate.

That kind of stuff.

Only now the Guardian_UK reports that Bush doesn't bother to read his threat reports.

***
"I know he doesn't read," one former Bush national security council staffer told me. Several other former NSC staffers corroborated this. It seems highly unlikely that he read the national intelligence estimate on WMD before the Iraq war that consigned contrary evidence and caveats that undermined the case to footnotes and fine print. Nor is there any evidence that he read the state department's 17-volume report, The Future of Iraq, warning of nearly all the postwar pitfalls, that was shelved by the neocons in the Pentagon and Vice-President Cheney's office.

Nor was Bush aware of similar warnings urgently being sounded by the military's top strategic analysts. One monograph, Reconstructing Iraq, by the US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, predicted in detail "possible severe security difficulties" and conflicts among Iraqis that US forces "can barely comprehend". I have learned that it was suppressed by the Pentagon neocons, and only released to US central command after Senator Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the foreign relations committee, directly intervened. A revolt within the military against Bush is brewing. Many in the military's strategic echelon share the same feelings of being ignored and ill-treated by the administration that senior intelligence officers voice in private. "The Pentagon began with fantasy assumptions on Iraq and worked back," one of them remarked to me. [emphasis added]
***

Here's a striking thought. GW couldn't (?) be illiterate in this day in age. He might however be dyslexic, learning impaired, or functionally illiterate. What a man go through his entire life and limp along pretending to read or pretending to read better than they can?

Is it possible that in the end we were incapable of responding to a terrorist threat because we somehow elected a President who couldn't read at a sufficiently high level to understand the national warning briefs??? That would be about ninth grade reading level.

Look I know it sounds crazy, implausible, but what if we've had it wrong all along? Everyone's been assuming that the President is a stubborn guy, even delusional. But what if, just what if he was stubborn because he couldn't read well and had to rely on others almost completely for information??? This would explain Bush's lousy press conference certainly (critique via William Saletan of Slate)!!!

I would say it would be impossible ... except that it would explain a great deal. This is starting to make me sound like I'm entering tinfoil crowd territory but if its true then an alert person on the lookout ought to be able to spot it with a few adroit questions.

GW did recently talked about a book he'd read with some Press reporters. I'd give a great deal to be able to question him one on one about the contents of that book.

Preaching to the choir, bin Ladin audio tape

Anyone remember how Fareed Zakaria along with a slew of others were sneering at how weak Alqueda had become because of the relative ineffectualness of its Turkey, Saudi Arabia, etc. bombing campaigns? These campaigns killed mostly Muslims and had a huge PR backlash in the Arab community. Give thanks to Bush, Sharon, and the confused Spainards for rejuvanating bin-Ladin's image.

When M-11 and the fall of Aznar's government came while unforeseeable by the terrorists it certainly proved provident. It made all those commentators arguing that Alqueda was "on the ropes," look insipidly stupid.

Now, the conquer and divide bit in the audio tape calling for a "truce" was crude, ham handed, and completely insincere (via Dan Drezner). However it was also good theartre. Now you see bin Ladin playing his hand as threatening the West, and forcing them to publicly deny any such collusion instead of just treating it as laughable as would have happened before 3-11 in Madrid.

This then comes out at the very same time just abouts when the US is having a PR disaster in Fallujah in the Arab press, and Bush is giving Sharon everything he could dream of practically on Palestine. If you don't think Fallujah is having a very bad affect for our moral authority, consider Odom former NSA director under Reagan say how being in Iraq is pretty much were bin Ladin wants us.

NPR:
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1837816

Bin Ladin is playing to the Arab Press, regaining a lot of lost legitimacy and street cred, and you can just bet that with the surge in activity we have multiple Alqueda franchise cells working on different fronts to try to produce another spectacular that bin Ladin and al-Zawahiri can gloat and boast about to take credit.

Let's face facts. Spain set us all back, and the damage is only beginning to be calculated. Iraq is digging us even deeper into the hole. Sharon fair portends to bury us. (NYT)

***
JERUSALEM, April 14 — By throwing his support on Wednesday behind an Israeli plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, President Bush provided diplomatic assurances that represented a victory for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Mr. Sharon wanted three commitments: backing for the Gaza withdrawal, American recognition that Israel would hold on to parts of the West Bank, and an American rejection of the right of millions of Palestinian refugees from the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 and their descendants to return to their lands in what is now Israel. He got them all by promising to trade something Israelis overwhelmingly do not want any more: the Gaza settlements and a handful of settlements in the West Bank. And he got them without having to negotiate with the Palestinians.

Palestinian officials knew that Israel strongly opposed yielding the whole West Bank or accepting the "right of return," and they had explored compromises in the past. But they relied on both demands as formidable negotiating levers. Mr. Bush has now moved to pluck both from their hands.

"Imagine if Palestinians said, `O.K., we give California to Canada,' " said Michael Tarazi, a legal adviser for the Palestine Liberation Organization. "Americans should stop wondering why they have so little credibility in the Middle East."

For the first time in American diplomacy in the Middle East, Mr. Bush announced that major Jewish settlements on the West Bank had achieved the status they aimed for: rooted "facts on the ground," or, as Mr. Bush called them, "already existing major Israeli population centers." The innovative, though risky, element in Mr. Sharon's strategy was to trade his concessions in Gaza and the West Bank not to the Palestinians as part of a negotiated agreement but to the Americans, over outraged Palestinian opposition. [emphasis added]
***

While I've maintained that the military is not overstretched in general, I have to admit that the specific kinds of units being deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan are being severely over-tasked. Listen to Barry McCaffrey and you'll hear he comes to the same conclusion. Then again, Mc Caffrey praises "Death-squad" Negroponte.

Personally as a conservative, I don't think there's anything wrong with having some expertise in setting up and running counter-insurgency squads. Could come in handy as a skill. Being seen to do it in such a gratuitously brutal and loose cannon way as Negroponte carried it out and then to get caught denying it incompetently (NYT via Spleen) and so breaching Plausible Deniability is however a recommendation for a pink slip. Being a psychopath does not overcome the flaw of being an incompetent.

This kind of ham-handedness in combination with the selling out of the "two-state" solution proposed by our own Commander and Chief such a short while ago all for a few percentage points in the polls is building up a systematically catastrophic burden of mistakes adding up to a coming Unforgiving Minute - the moment when it all goes wrong and you can't turn back the clock for any price however dear. Only a moron hires a born loser for a must-win job.

UBL is on a PR roll however, and we can't deny that however much we naturally want to. If there's another spectacular in the works (see the French Connection via Winds of Change blog) and it comes through, we can count on his star rising and our fortunes suffering a great blow.

Moron heaven,

Hey Glenn!

You write the WMD from Iraq are in Europe according to the UN.

Except that the very article in the Wa Po you cite says that:

***
Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned the U.N. Security Council in a letter that U.N. satellite photos have detected "the extensive removal of equipment and, in some instances, removal of entire buildings" from sites that had been subject to U.N. monitoring before the U.S.-led war against Iraq.

ElBaradei said an IAEA investigation "indicates that large quantities of scrap, some of it contaminated, have been transferred out of Iraq, from sites monitored by the IAEA." He said that he has informed the United States about the discovery and is awaiting "clarification."

After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, U.N. inspectors discovered, inventoried and destroyed most of the equipment used in Iraq's nuclear weapons program. But they left large amounts of nuclear equipment and facilities in Iraq intact and "under seal," including debris from the Osirak reactor that was bombed by Israel in 1981. That debris and the buildings are radioactively contaminated. [emphasis added]
***

I hope you're joking Glenn, because I'm getting sick of how many times are pro-war idiots going to point to already defanged and well-known not to mention mothballed and antique nuclear gear as evidence of a weapons-grade reconstituted production program!!!

In fact, since these sites were known and monitored prior to invasion their sudden reappearance as scrap means that the invasion was so poorly managed as to allow widespread looting and reselling of sanction-monitored and sealed equipment.

Yes, that's right there is now clear supporting evidence that the invasion has increased illegal nuclear proliferation (via Needlenose).

Are you joking Glenn or maybe just plain dumb?

The Midnight Hour: Pumpkins, Occupations, and "Darkness Everywhere"

Col Lounsbury covers several editorials about the Iraq situation coming to a head.

Things are steadily but surely degenerating in Iraq while the President stands confident in his stance toward handling the "tough weeks" of the on-going crisis. (MSNNC) Bush stated these things in his news conference and address to the nation. (via Kevin Drum)

You can tell because Dickey at Newsweek who treasures his tough-talking salted world-wise ways expresses what for him is abject panic.

***
Nobody really remembers the long goodbyes. Looking back on Somalia, on Lebanon, and even on Vietnam—the most tragic American military adventures before Iraq—popular imagination recalls U.S. forces rushing for the exits right after bloody encounters with the enemy. But the truth is, we hung on. We wanted to save face. We wanted to create what was called, in Vietnam, a “decent interval” between horrific events on the ground and the admission that these wars and the policies that took us into them were failures. In Iraq, even if nobody’s saying it openly, that search for a face-saving interval has begun already. It remains to be seen how decent it will be.
***

It's grim. After we immolate Fallujah and try to snap up ham handedly Sadr, it could get real real bad. Even here in America, the Admin is losing right-wing conservatives - Novak, Perle, O'Reilly, etc. -as well as many others backpedaling on the President. Even the Weekly Standard is screaming at Bush "Win Now!!!" and to do what it takes rather than assuming everything is going fine. However, the President is disregarding his own allies at this point, and you have to think that Tony Blair is furiously counseling against this course of action. Blair and Straw did against the original invasion schedule, but eventually gave in when he saw Bush couldn't be persuaded, just as Straw is cautioning us now though they clearly intend to stand firm by Bush. (Guardian_UK)

We're on the verge of losing several coalition partners, even "our own whores" in Col's terms on the IGC bucking us, Brahimi and Annan saying we're basically on our own, and even moderate pro-Western Arabs everywhere turning on us.

This is shaping up to be in dizzying speed a foreign policy disaster greater than Vietnam. It's pure hubris. The Romans had an old saying, those whom the gods would destroy first they drive mad.

We see that progression here, with the President pressing on and on despite the friendly advice of many, and pushing toward what will be a tragic end. It will be all the more tragic in retrospect because we have a chance now to turn back, the Administration did agree to a truce and negotiations, but they will not be flexible and the signs that are coming out are that they are going to push this to the bitter end.

Tonight in the address to the nation, I caught the briefest glimpse of humility in Bush as he took questions. However, he still seems entangled with the advisers who are urging him down a disasterous path.

If he doesn't turn from this path then bitter it will be, and not so much an end as a castrophic dawning of a new era of American legitimacy and authority having been destroyed.

But it is not the end of hope. Even if the Administration insists on replaying the debacles of Waco and Ruby Ridge only a thousand times worse, it is not too late to salvage this situation. Only it is as long as we keep the same guys in charge. (CSM)

You see, the oldman is crazy - but crazy like a fox. These guys in charge, they're crazy - crazy like a bull in a china shop given a sharp prick in his privates. There's a difference and it seems awful that we're going to have to experience it first hand.

***
With a US Apache helicopter hovering above, Kadher Fudella took her children and began to run. She did not stop until she reached the highway, along with scores of other refugees, flagging down cars headed to Baghdad.

"My children tried to run away and the helicopters chased them," says Ms. Fudella, breaking into tears. "Families were running through the streets.... Windows were broken, and many, many people were dead."
But, like many other refugees from Fallujah, this family is critical. "We have no hope. Half of our family is in Fallujah, and we don't know anything about them," says Mr. Abid's wife, Hakima. "There's darkness everywhere."

The family fell silent, until their son Mohammed Adnan added his take, that the US has only magnified the problems. "Before it was a small, specific group that fought the USA," he says. "Now it is every family. They all want revenge." [emphasis added]
***

A darkness is clouding the minds of our leaders, leading them in their arrogance to destroy the hope of our future. In this time where darkness is growing, let us pray for our leaders to come to their senses, and avert this terrible crisis. For if we push this through to the bitter end, then surely God will judge us for having failed to show mercy to our fellow man.

This is not what America stands for, and this is not what America is, and yet now we are being led into temptation by the deadly sins of pride, vanity, and wrath. We do not have to destroy others utterly to show we are strong, we do not have to subjugate them utterly to gain their respect, and we need to ask ourselves if this is indeed what God and his son Jesus would have us do. Easter has just passed us, and the redeeming message of sacrifice, suffering, and compassion should not abandon our hearts so soon.

The oldman is down to praying. He'll hope that you'll join him in such orison.

A vet agrees with the oldman,

Over at Drezner's the oldman wrote this:

***
If you haven't been paying attention nobody minds killing bad guys except some squeamish pacifists. The real issue is how many non-bad-guys do we piss off by the collateral damage done in killing bad guys. That ratio's level is non trivial...

I wish that the pro-transformation people would admit that they really don't know if it's possible, and are taking a risk. At that point, the nation could have a dialogue about whether the risk is worth it and what the cost will be, and whether we are committing sufficient resources to succeed at it.

Instead, we get bleating "Would you rather still have Saddam in power." assinine braying out of them.

This is still a democracy. Last I heard, the electorate or their representatives weren't exactly asked if they wanted to be part of a mission to transform the entire Middle-east region. It would be nice, seeing as this is still a democracy nominally, if we did discuss and agree on such an agenda instead of the neocon apologists trying to make everyone feel guilty about not wanting to take the most historic gamble in Western Civilization since the Crusades.

Their failure to address this consent of the governed - here - much less over there increasingly convinces me that they're trying to get away with slipping it in on the sly - manipulating the public to do what they could never openly get them to agree to. This is pretty reprehensible, and they shouldn't be surprised that having failed to get the agreement of the public that the public decides to bail on them when they realize that it's been a bait and switch job.
***

Shockingly, someone and a vet at that actually agreed with the oldman:

***
What Oldman (the real one) said, in spades. I'm a retired U.S. Army officer and I've got no problem with killing bad guys. But I have to ask all of those who've now embraced the absolute rightness in the U.S. going off overseas and liberating the poor, oppressed peoples of the world how they would have reacted if the run-up PR campaign had focused on this objective rather than on the WMD objective. I guess I'm slow, but I see a tiny little difference between fate of the nation and "making the world safe for democracy." Some of that annoying fine print about the oath I've taken to support and defend the Constitution. But you need not be bothered by that. After all, military people are kind of weird.

I missed this one. Damn! And after all the fun I had those years in Vietnam. Do you want them to call me back next year to liberate the North Korean people? And from there, maybe the Iranians? Take care of the Axis of Evil? Shit, maybe we can liberate the Mexicans, too. They suffer under a corrupt political system, too, with some pretty undesirable fallout for the U.S. I'm ready, 24-7. Just say the word. I'll stay overseas forever, fighting the good fight. But, you know, it sure would be nice if some of you came along. I might need help.

posted by: lost in rhetoric on 04.12.04 at 11:46 PM
***

Well someone speaking sense, but of course no matter what I will always respect something about military people. They realize that when it comes time for dying they're first in line, and that always informs their opinions to a degree it doesn't for most civilians. Indeed, the theme I've picked up from most of the pro-war people is that I have never seen so large a group of people so absolutely committed to sending other people to die for their own ideals and noble aspirations.

Since these people also almost uniformly fail to volunteer to fight in the front lines of the seemingly endless string of wars they propose, it seems to me that they have a little credibility gap concerning the supposed "support" America evinces for such wars. Seeing as they are Americans and themselves balking to personally die for the Great Cause they espouse. It's always easy to send someone else to die for your beliefs. It's living for them and paying the cost yourself that's hard.

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Fareed Zakaria writes that we have one last chance to get Iraq right. Too bad he failed to mention this to anyone before when he was encouraging us to rush head long into war.

***
It is conventional wisdom that the United States should stay engaged with Iraq for years. Of course it should, but for this to work Iraqis must welcome the help. In the face of escalating anti-Americanism, U.S. involvement in Iraq will be unsustainable. For one thing, the American people are not likely to want to keep spending blood and treasure in Iraq. It will be the end of Washington's grand plans for a new Iraq, and the United States will face the dilemma that Britain did in 1920: how to get out while still saving face, maintaining stability and preserving its interests.

The United States does not face this dilemma yet. The trends that I outlined are just beginning and are not irreversible—yet. Washington has a final window of opportunity to end the myriad errors that have marked its occupation and adopt a new strategy.

The tragedy is that so much of this was avoidable.
***

Yes it was very avoidable, something that Thomas Friedman is just coming to grips with - he of the liberate Iraq and democratic dominoes transforming the middle-east in a Wilsonian vision hijacked to become the sheep's clothing of the callous and incompetent hegemonic wolf of the neocons. This Thomas Friedman writes in his NYT column:

***
The U.S. operation in Iraq is hanging by a thread. If it has any hope of surviving this Hobbesian moment, we need three conversations to happen fast: George Bush needs to talk to his father, the Arab leaders need to talk to their sons — and daughters — and we need to talk to the Iraqi Governing Council.

President Bush, please call home. You need some of your father's wisdom right now. The old man, Bush 41, may not have had the vision thing, but he did have the prudence thing. He understood that he could not expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait without a real coalition that included Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and other key Arab states, not to mention all the NATO allies and the U.N. America would not have had the legitimacy to operate in that theater for the length of time required without Arab and European cover.

What was true for expelling Saddam from Kuwait was triply true for expelling Saddam from Iraq and is quadruply true for expelling the die-hard Baathists from Falluja and the Shiite radicals from Najaf. The deeper we try to penetrate Iraqi society, especially with tanks and troops, the more legitimacy we need.

When things were going all right in Baghdad with the political process, America could have its way by buying legitimacy with cash or imposing it with muscle. But when you are talking about killing rebellious Iraqi young men and clerics, you can't buy the legitimacy for that and you can't compel it. Iraqi moderates are just too frightened to stand up and defend that on their own. Indeed, they will run away from the U.S. Only a real coalition of the U.N., Arab and Muslim states and Europe — the Bush 41 coalition — might bolster them. It may be too late for that now, but the Bush folks had better try. We have a staggering legitimacy deficit for the task ahead. I am glad El Salvador is with us, but when Iraqis get satellite dishes, they don't tune in TV El Salvador. They tune in TV Al Jazeera.

If it is America alone against the Iraqi street, we lose. If it is the world against the Iraqi street, we have a chance.
***

Yes, wake up and smell the coffee Mr. Friedman. While you were spending your integrity, dignity, and credibility down to the last dime defending the democratic prospects of the Iraqi adventure you systematically overlooked the systematic failures, inability to plan, and endemic narrow-mindedness that have both wounded our own men by unconscienceable shortages of basic necessities like bullets, bullet-proof vests, and armor plating and flat-footed stumbling over the simplest tasks of nation-building. Yet you continue to believe until quite recently that it would "all turn out all right, in the end." You were a useful idiot Friedman, you and the rest of the liberal hawks lent yourself to being used by those who had no care for you or your ideals, and became dupes of cynical individuals whose jadededness would be excusable if it were not also accompanied by damning mendacity at every turn.

Meanwhile Krugman who has been shrill at times, get's his moment of gloating in, twisting the dagger as the Bush Administration scratches its brow and finally realizes that spin cannot deflect bullets or speeding airliners rushing at skyscrapers.

***
In his Saturday radio address, George Bush described Iraqi insurgents as a "small faction." Meanwhile, people actually on the scene described a rebellion with widespread support.

Isn't it amazing? A year after the occupation of Iraq began, Mr. Bush and his inner circle seem more divorced from reality than ever.

Events should have cured the Bush team of its illusions. After all, before the invasion Tim Russert asked Dick Cheney about the possibility that we would be seen as conquerors, not liberators, and would be faced with "a long, costly and bloody battle." Mr. Cheney replied, "Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators." Uh-huh...

And we keep repeating the same mistakes. The story behind last week's uprising by followers of Moktada al-Sadr bears a striking resemblance to the story of the wave of looting a year ago, after Baghdad fell.

In both cases, officials were unprepared for an obvious risk. According to The Washington Post: "One U.S. official said there was not even a fully developed backup plan for military action in case Sadr opted to react violently. The official noted that when the decision [to close Sadr's newspaper] was made, there were very few U.S. troops in Sadr's strongholds south of Baghdad."

If we're lucky, the Sadrist uprising will eventually fade out, just as the postwar looting did; but the occupation's dwindling credibility has taken another huge blow...

The situation in Falluja seems to have been greatly exacerbated by tough-guy posturing and wishful thinking. According to The Jerusalem Post, after the murder and mutilation of American contractors, Mr. Bush told officials that "I want heads to roll." Didn't someone warn him of the likely consequences of attempting to carry out a manhunt in a hostile, densely populated urban area? ...

And let's can the rhetoric about staying the course. In fact, we desperately need a change in course.

The best we can realistically hope for now is to turn power over to relatively moderate Iraqis with a real base of popular support. Yes, that mainly means Islamic clerics. The architects of the war will complain bitterly, and claim that we could have achieved far more. But they've been wrong about everything so far — and if we keep following their advice, Iraq really will turn into another Vietnam.
***

So there they are, the goody two shoes, the badly fooled, and the shrilly ugly. All damned columnists who each in their own way represent the most reprehensible of what is really kicking our ass in Iraq.

Mumble-brained stupidity that would rather bite at each other's backs or rush about screaming solutions instead of doing the one thing that could really fix this problem - thinking.

They aren't alone however. I have come to increasingly loathe Instapundit - not for disagreeing with me but for stupidity.

The real question is what we do now, not what was done before. (As this DefenseTech post notes, the issues are really political, not military).

To the Democrats, well, "we'd all love to see the plan." Where is it?

Well I'm not a Democrat, but I for one have a plan. In addition, I know plenty of other good ideas going out there. Why should we have to have a freaking national conversation about a plan? Can't Republicans, my own party of olde, who control both Houses of Congress and the Presidency just go out there, pick out the best ideas, and just implement them?

Or just like 911 do we have to sit there with crayons and draw a pretty picture for the President?

That we could have prevented the 911 attacks is a ludricous assumption, but it is a sure bet that with what we knew we could have done much more to try to prevent even ordinary hijackings. Just as I am bloody sure that we could be doing things differently and better in Iraq.

It's ridiculous that those who pushed us head over heels into war should bite back now whining that no one has a plan for fixing things. Well those who were so sure enough to bet the lives of others, they had better have a plan before you spend American blood. That they have none is a sign that such people deserve every drop of contempt I have for their useless hides.

What to do with Sadr? The principles to be followed are simple. First we must make him publicly acknowledge our superior power. This is the prerequisite to any negotiation. He must agree to apologize on TV, order his top followers to turn themselves in, order his militia members to lay down their arms and give them to Iraqi police, etc. Second there must be some sort of culturally acceptable consequence - exile to Iran, submission to house arrest by the Shiite Seminary in Najaf that he defied, etc. Thirdly we must make our final offer public, and if refused we really do have to go after him. However, we will have to go after him on foot and without fire support. That means heavy losses. However, no other action in the holy city of Najaf could be politically acceptable. We must make clear that we have bent over backwards to resolve this situation, and if possible let him make provocative statements or actions causing an escalation in the violence as a justification for taking him down.

It's an ugly situation but then again I wasn't the one who started pussy-footing around by arresting his aides and shutting down his newspaper and failed to have a team standing by to swoop down and take him into custody.

We are failing in Iraq, and the only reason why we are failing is a failure of imagination and responsibility. One one side we have naysayers saying "We told you so!" without any ideas of how to proceed. On the other we got idiots like Instapundit who have the gall after have decieved, confabulated, and lied this country into taking on a war not in its best interest that shout back "Well, and do you have any better ideas?". Then twisting in the wind in the middle, we got the people who are saying "Aww shucks, we were completely wrong about how this war would turn out but trust in our judgement now anyway."

And most of all we got ordinary folks who don't know were to turn, who want to see this through and had their trust in their government let down by those who claimed to be protecting them and now don't know who to listen to cause they all sound like back-biting whiners instead of real adults!

Well I'm sick of it! We got a lot of silliness out there and we got a lot to be ashamed of, but the most important thing is that we got a lot left to do. What happened to the "can-do" attitude of America? We can do this. We can make the sacrifices of those who have lost their lives mean something. We can stop running roughshod over the Iraqis and inspire them to work with us to create a new democracy. We can partner with other nations by restoring security to Iraq and convincing them that reconstruction will be fair and have both shared responsibility and shared authority. We can do this without compromising American ideals or security, and cut down on the boys and girls getting killed so far away from home.

We can do this. But first we gotta remember what it means to be American, and it ain't what you seen above. It means putting aside our differences to work together to solve a problem and fix a situation. Because if we can't, then we really are in a sorry lot after all.

Easter Sunday tribute, a fallen soldier

I. SIX DEGREES OF FREEDOM
In the recent Sadr-militia uprising, one of the soldiers that died was Michael Mitchell. He was the step-brother of a Ms. Steele of Visalia who survives him. My only connection to Mr. Mitchell is that Ms. Steele is also the cousin of the wife of one of my friends. I never met Mr. Mitchell, but I felt moved enough to say a few words. His death was reported in the print edition of the NYT and in depth in the Porterville Recorder in California.

I asked through my friend if Ms. Steele would mind if I did a small tribute on my blog to Mitchell. Having gotten the permission, I will say a few words about this man who died far away and whom I myself never met. The entire Porterville article is reproduced below for reference in part III.

II. A FALLEN SOLDIER

When someone dies, it often hits us in such a way to take our breath away and make us question our world. It was that way for me when my father died unexpectedly in a car accident. All at once, questions emerge and these questions make us review our lives and most especially the way we have treated the one who has passed.

I did not know Mr. Mitchell, but I have known many soldiers both in service and past. From the young scrubbed faces of the young ROTC officers that pass through my classrooms, to the old veterans of the older conflicts that sometimes share stories with me I have known many soldiers as they passed through my life. In many little ways their paths cross mine unexpectedly such as a friend of mine serves as a Military Policeman now in the service and just last summer a woman I was stuck at an airport turning out to be a doctor returning from doing a rotation in a military hospital, and I have found vets willing to share their stories in places as varied as late night truck drivers and teaching classrooms of little kids.

Some themes have emerged in my experience, and one of them is that there is something about military service - the discipline, the patriotism, the camradrie of the espirit de corps - something almost undefinable that reveals the best and worst about a person. More often the rigors of military life shapes them for the better. No soldier I've met was perfect, and all too often soldiers have just complaints about their officers, yet nonetheless they stayed and there was a reason why they stayed.

I think perhaps for many of them, reading between the lines of many conversations through the years, it was as much a desire to make a difference as any other single issue. Surprisingly from tank commanders to Marine forward observers to Navy ensigns, one thing that has struck me about many military people is their uncommon if sometimes rough-edged idealism. It is a credit to our nation, that we can attract such people who risk so much in return for for so little.

In many other nations, the military is a source of oppression or a threat to the political order. Almost uniquely here in America, the military has been overwhelmingly a force for social good over time in spite of its admitted many imperfections. This has been apparent more clearly at no other time than the present, when we have an entirely volunteer recruitment for our armed forces.

Many recruits make less than $15,000 a year and that includes allowances and benefits. Junior officers might make about $25,000 a year. There are educational benefits in addition for service, and if they make it that long - most don't - retirement benefits. It is true though that many young military families rely on donated food, clothes, and food-stamps to supplement their income. Recently, the death-benefit has been raised from about $5000 to now about $12,000 for the families of the deceased.

This is not a very great deal to give your life for, and so we justifiably may conclude that whatever reason many soldiers enlist or become officers is not fortune or fame. For some it is honor, and I know of some who consider military service part of their family tradition. For some it is patriotism, and these are most likely to say if asked why that "Freedom is not free,". For some it is a chance at a better life, for the education benefits or ROTC program may be their only hope at a college education and a decent civilian life. Some seek adventure or didn't know what else to do with their lives, and these in my experience benefit best from the order and discipline of military life that can turn them from impulsive young men and women into responsible mature adults in a rite of passage older than recorded history.

When my own father died, it raised all sorts of questions in my mind and all the conclusions that I had reached over the years seemed overthrown in the light of information unearthed by his untimely passing. I questioned how I had treated him, and how I had taken my father for granted all those years. It was too easy to see his flaws, and too easy to discount the sacrifices he had made on my behalf. He was not a perfect man, and he often was unreasonable but he never was a tyrant and I fear that in retrospect sometimes I treated him that way. I know that though I told him I respected him before he died, that he never knew how much I admired him and that he died without knowing me and me knowing him. The knowledge that I had failed him in life, failed to understand his struggles and in doing so made things harder for him, added a special bite to my tears at his funeral.

Mr. Mitchell was someone I did not know. I did not know his family. I pray for them in their time of bereavement, and I hope that whatever their own feelings about his passing that they are comforted. He seems to have been loved and appreciated before his death, and that is good.

Every life deserves recognition, and its passage should cause each and every one of us to pause and to reconsider our own assumptions. For me, this man's death brings home that I wish our troops the best in Iraq and desperately hope that they succeed. It is hard to do otherwise when the cost of such failure is measured in American lives. This man's death and that of many others means that we cannot throw their lives away for nothing. We must find some meaning and some justice for what we have asked them to die for.

For those who supported the war, I hope they too question not why we went to war but whether we are doing the best that we can to win it. What is most urgent is not the past, but the future. Do our leaders know the cost of the blood they cause to be spilled on the sand in strange lands far away from home? Have they come to grips that they need a better strategy to win, because saying that muddling through is okay is not okay when confronted by the human cost of lives ground up in the status quo?

Do our armed forces all have the most modern bullet-proof vests, and their vehicles proper armoring, and their civilian counterparts the money and authority needed to improve the situation in Iraq in order to quell the disastisfaction that feeds the violence there?

Every time a young man like this dies, it makes me question whether we are doing right by them as they have died - and as they have lived. It is a shame that it took my father's death, to see his cares and his burdens, and to make me weep that I did not think to ease them while he lived. It would be more of a shame however if that death had not made me pause and to reflect. We all should ask if we had done right by those that have now gone on beyond our ability to remedy the past.

I did not know this man, but he died because our nation asked the ultimate sacrifice of him and I would hope that as soon his death will be accompanied by others - his bereaved family by other bereaved families - that we ask what are we asking these young people to die for? For what reason, do we ask these young, bright, promised filled lives to be exchanged for? And are we doing everything possible to minimize such sacrifice, and to spend wisely the freedom bought at such dear cost to the greatest result? They gave up their lives, and the least we can do is see that it is not for nothing and that some good comes from this. If they risk their lives, can't the rest of us ask if we have done all that we could have possibly done to ease their burden?

I did not know Michael Mitchell, but he died for his country of his own choice, and today that bravery is enough for me to remember him and salute his passing.

III. THE ARTICLE
The U.S. Department of Defense confirmed Wednesday that Michael W. Mitchell, a 25-year-old Army tank mechanic and 1997 graduate of Monache High School, was killed over the weekend during fierce fighting in Sadr City, Iraq.

Mitchell was one of eight Americans who died trying to stem a Shiite uprising in the Baghdad suburb.

"Mike was murdered, shot in the back of the head," said his father, Bill Mitchell, during a tearful telephone interview Wednesday afternoon. "My understanding is that he was killed instantly."

A sergeant assigned to the 1st Armored Division, Mitchell had been stationed in Baghdad for 10 months.

Mitchell was scheduled to return to his home base in Friedberg, Germany next week, where he was engaged to a German woman.

"Mike called her on Sunday," said Bill Mitchell, who moved from Porterville to Atascadero seven years ago. "She said he sounded great and the last thing he told her was 'I'll see you in a week.'"

Mitchell was born in Orange County but grew up with his father in Porterville after his parents divorced. A good student and star athlete at Monache, for several years during his childhood Mitchell delivered newspapers for The Porterville Recorder.

"It's a very sad time for Porterville to have to lose one of our own and it brings the war awfully close to home," said John Snavely, superintendent of the Porterville Unified School District.

"Mike always seemed to have a smile on his face," said Rich Lambie, a wrestling coach at Monache who worked with Mitchell on the mats for four years. "He was just a great kid."

"Mike was a cool guy," said Ricardo Alvinas, whose older brother wrestled with Mitchell. "I always looked up to him."

Mitchell wrestled in the 135-pound weight division and Lambie said he was "a scrappy, tenacious competitor. Mike always, I mean always gave 100 percent on the mat, never gave up and led by example," Lambie remembered. "He was really admired and well-liked by his teammates."

Reports of Mitchell's death filtered through Monache on Wednesday.

"There was shock and sadness amongst the staff who knew Mike," said Monache Athletic Director Randy Quiram, who was a physical education teacher and track and cross country coach when Mitchell was a student there.

"Mike ran track and cross country for me for four years as well as wrestling here," Quiram said. "He wasn't large in size but he had a ton of heart and a tremendous amount of honesty and integrity. His personality was infectious and although he did very well in athletics, there was a humility about him that kept him grounded."

Proudly following in his father's footsteps - Bill Mitchell was stationed in Germany during the Vietnam War - Mitchell enlisted in the Army immediately after graduation and at the time of his death, was a member of the 2nd Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment's 1st Brigade.

The San Luis Obispo Tribune reported in its Wednesday edition that Bill Mitchell took part in a peace rally in opposition to the U.S.-led occupation in Iraq - joining more than 500 other anti-war protesters in a March 20 demonstration in San Luis Obispo's Mitchell Park.

Mitchell is survived by his father, mother, Cathy Baker of Atascadero; step-father, Chris Baker of Atascadero; step-mother, Kimberly Mitchell of Visalia; sisters Christine Jayroe of Atascadero and Terri Pedrino of Yucaipa; step-brother Kurtis Baker of Atascadero; step-sister Kirsten Steele of Visalia; and grandparents Mary Louise and Mitch Mitchell of Torrance, and Verna Scovil of Yucaipa.

Funeral arrangements are pending while the family waits for his body to be shipped from Dover (Del.) Air Force Base. Meanwhile, arrangements are being made to set up a memorial fund in Mitchell's name.

Som Khamsaysoury, Elizabeth Brady and Sarah Villicana contributed to this report

Remembered: Family recalls precious times

By Cynthia Neff, San Luis Obispo Tribune

Mike Mitchell's family was ready to celebrate - only one week remained before the 25-year-old Army tank mechanic was slated to leave his Baghdad post for a base in Germany.

Their plans were cut short Sunday.

"When I heard the news that G.I.s were killed in Sadr City from the 1st Armored Division, I knew," Cathy Baker, Mitchell's mother, said at her Atascadero home on Wednesday where some of his relatives remembered a thoughtful young man who loved traveling, playing sports and eating Subway sandwiches. As a child, his family called him "Mikey."

"He was my little playmate," remembered Christine Jayroe, one of Mitchell's two older sisters. "I used to drag him and play in the dirt - I was a tomboy, so it worked out well.

"He was always running around with just his diapers on," Jayroe said, laughing. "Then as a teenager he would run around in boxers. We could never get him to put a shirt on."

Mitchell's parents divorced when he was about 18 months old, and his father remarried several years later to Kimberly Mitchell of Visalia.

"He was always so kind-hearted, always thinking of other people, even at a young age," Kimberly Mitchell said, remembering how during his sophomore year of high school, Mike Mitchell volunteered to help several elderly Porterville residents with difficult chores like yard work.

"I couldn't have asked for a better brother, had he been my own flesh and blood," said Mike Mitchell's step-sister Kirsten Steele, Kimberly Mitchell's daughter. "We fought like a real brother and sister and had little squabbles growing up, but he never tattletaled. He would do anything for you."

"Mike was always happy," said his step-father, Chris Baker. "I never saw him down."

The young soldier was engaged to a German woman he met when first stationed in Germany about five years ago. His fiancée, Bianca Liebl, is expected to arrive in Atascadero today.

The couple had been engaged for about four years and was to be married in Germany in August. They planned to move to California after Mike Mitchell's enlistment would have expired.

He reenlisted for the second time about three weeks ago, for another two to three years.

"She's not doing good," added Mitchell's father, Bill Mitchell of Atascadero, who has spoken daily to Liebl since learning of his son's death. "We're going to take care of her."

Bill Mitchell was notified Monday that his son died.

For about the last 10 months in Iraq, Mike Mitchell had been working as a tank mechanic, though "to my knowledge, he never picked up a wrench," said step-father Chris Baker. Instead, he had been working on perimeter duty, at checkpoints or on missions with his unit, such as the one he was on Sunday when attacked and killed.

This story was published in The Porterville Recorder on April 8, 2004

Another conservative sickened by this Administration's policies, part IV

Hat tip to Talking Points Memo who points to Pinkerton's column saying the President wasn't sufficiently focused on Terrorism pre-911.

***
According to White House speechwriter turned memoirist David Frum, that summer Bush "did something I had never seen him do: he brooded." Yet the issue wasn't terror; it seems it was stem cell research. On Aug. 9, Bush gave his first primetime policy speech to the nation - on the topic of embryos. After that, according to Frum, Bush launched a "mini-political campaign" that took him out on the stump.

And we all know what happened the following month.

What we don't know is the precise sequence of events that led to the government's Pearl Harbor-like cluelessness on 9/11. But there's at least a chance now, as documents are revealed and as officials testify under oath, that we'll find out. In the meantime, here's a prediction, based on what we know already: Bush won't dare show more 9/11 images in his campaign ads.
***

As Talking Points Memo points out Pinkerton is a "former George H.W. Bush staffer and a Republican". If you add in as well as the news that of all people Novak may becoming a channel for conservative dissent against White House policy then this bit of news qualifies for a special edition my running series of "Another conservative sickened by this Administration's policies".

LBJ realized that he was losing political support when even middle of the road broadcasters turned against supporting the Vietnam War. A month later, Johnson shocked even his closest associates by announcing, at the end of a speech about the war, that he would not seek re-election in the fall. He reportedly had concluded after the CBS special that if he had "lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."

What I have to say is that if George W. Bush has lost Bill O'Reilly and Bob Novak, then he's lost conservative America much less middle America.

The Rocket's red glare,

The View from Baghdad written by a Republican in country in Iraq has a picture of his friends sitting in lawnchairs watching the rockets impact the Greenzone in Baghdad.

He has these words:
I'm down to my last bag of coffee. In two weeks, I'll have to start drinking instant.

It could be time to pull out.

The Financial Times leads with rocket impacts on the Greenzone in Baghdad on their front page (see it while it's up)

I would like to post this song on behalf of all the Americans and Iraqis struggling to get through this and do the right thing in Iraq:

***
THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER
Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
***

Check out the Future of Iraq portal via the Healing Iraq blog for the list of bloggers Iraqi and foreigner in Iraq.

Needlenose as usual has good commentary and the Agonist blog agonizes over the news from Iraq.

Check out Col Lounsbury's ideas for how to improve Iraq and we can add the novel items to my own growing list of How to Salvage Iraq.

Meanwhile Glenn Reynolds completely loses perspective.

Yes, the casualties in a given day in WWII were horrendous. On the other hand, we were on full war footing, fighting a war in two oceans, three continents, against two of the greatest mobilized military nations of all time, faced with opponents who had technology comparable to or actually superior than our own, and who had already conquered Europe and China.

In Iraq we are facing at most a few thousand active fighters that we vastly outnumber and have greatly superior technology. The fact that we are already losing this many soldiers, and the implications of what would happen if a widespread Iraqi revolt were to occur then become frankly highly disturbing.

Like Holsinger he is the captive of numbers without perspective. If this Iraq situation heats up, and no matter what the Admin spin it's not been cooling down since day one, then we will in fact see those kinds of casualty figures that Glenn says dwarf present losses. This is why morons like this should not be in charge of lemonade stands much less the arsenal of superpowers.

Meanwhile, Tacitus "get's it".

Posted on Thu Apr 8th, 2004 at 11:07:52 AM EST
There are a few things to keep in mind as you watch the Shi'a uprising, now spiralling into oneness with the Sunni uprising, in Iraq. First and foremost, whatever spin you might hear, remember that this is pretty bad news indeed. Very, very bad news. Consider that if you are American, there is no open road to Baghdad from any of Iraq's neighboring countries. For the moment, CPA resupply is a triumph of airlift. Something to chew on. It's not the result of any one tragically wrong decision or miscalculation; rather, it's the end result of a year of accumulating bad calls and wishful thinking: disbanding the army plus not confronting Sadr plus giving the Shi'a a veto plus the premature policy of withdrawal from urban centers plus the undermanning of the occupation force (and the concurrent kneecapping of Shinseki) plus the setting of a ludicrously early "sovereignty" date plus the early tolerance of lawlessness and looting plus illusory reconstruction accomplishments plus etc., etc., etc. In short, the failure of the occupation to be an occupation in any sense that history and Arab peoples would recognize. Bad calls of such consistency are the product of a fundamentally bad system. More on that later.

Another conservative sickened of this Administration's policies, part III

The Washington Post reports that another conservative is unhappy with Administration practices.

***
Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) said events in Iraq suggest that Bush and other administration officials should anticipate a new line of questioning of the assessment, at the time of the invasion, that U.S. forces would be greeted as liberators and face only slight resistance. This assumption "clearly is in doubt" considering recent events, he said.

The questions have come most forcefully from Democrats but are shared by Republicans. "In both parties, members are concerned," said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) "There's not abject panic, but there's deep concern, and there should be."
***

Meanwhile, the NYT reports more Republicans that openly disagree with the Administration.

***
"It's incumbent upon all Americans to rally around the leadership of this country in times of great crisis in the world when we are the leader of the free world and not to incite the other side," said Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, even as he acknowledged that the administration "underestimated just how difficult and complex the job in Iraq would be."

But in an unwelcome development for the White House, even some right-leaning commentators and political leaders appeared uncomfortable with Mr. Bush's Iraq policy. Bill O'Reilly, the Fox News commentator who had been one of the most vocal supporters of the war, warned that the situation in Iraq might cost Mr. Bush re-election if he did not deal with it promptly. Mr. O'Reilly compared the Iraqis to the South Vietnamese in their lack of support for the United States.

"If these people won't help us, we need to get out in an orderly matter," Mr. O'Reilly said on his show Monday evening, repeating the sentiment again on Tuesday.

Newt Gingrich, the Georgia Republican and former House speaker, also said he was concerned that Iraq could hurt the administration unless it made a forceful case to stay there. "The administration has to win the argument that this is an unavoidable fight," Mr. Gingrich said. "This is painful and this is difficult, but we have no choice."

Patrick J. Buchanan, the conservative columnist who ran a spirited challenge to Mr. Bush's father in the 1992 Republican primaries, renewed his criticism of Mr. Bush's war policy. Mr. Buchanan opposed the decision to go to war but toned down his criticism after the war began.

"We have gotten ourselves bogged down in what is clearly a quagmire," Mr. Buchanan said in an interview. In a column published on Wednesday, he wrote, "What Falluja and the Shiite attacks Sunday tell us is that failure is now an option."
***

Meanwhile Tom Holsinger a poster over at Dan Drezner's steadily becomes unhinged.

"But mostly you seem ignorant of history. The invasion or Iraq was a cakewalk as campaigns go. The occupation of Iraq is a cakewalk as occupations go. We're just being nice. We don't have to be nice. Given the culture, we shouldn't be.

And we'll get over that."

When Richard Perle, Newt Gringrich, Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, Pat Buchanan, Richard Lugar, John McCain, Saxby Chambliss, Jim Leach, Henry Kissinger, and Bill O'Reilly (not to mention others) don't think things are going well in Iraq but someone does - then maybe it's time to consider getting a prescription for Thorazine for them.

Especially when the puppet members of our own council are bailing out on us (BBC) and highly educated Westernized Iraqis are turning against the use of US force.

Yet some people are still in la-la land.

Hat tip to Akim for the tip on the Independent (UK) story.

No, they still just don't get it

While things sour faster than milk left outside on a hot summer day, CNN reports that the Administration still just does not "Get It.".

***
Among the leading options for transitioning power to the Iraqis is simply expanding the current Iraqi Governing Council to form an interim government, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday.

"The model that is getting the most attention right now and seems the most practical one in terms of the time available to us would be some form of expanded governing council," Powell told a Senate subcommittee.

But "that is just sort of the lead horse at the moment. No decisions have been made," he said.
***

The IGC is a joke. Even expanding them would leave a precipitiously illegitimate organization on top of a dysfunctional bureacracy carried out by a CPA that is operating according to a failed play book.

We have to scrap these guys at the top, and basically start over.

As long as the Administration doesn't "Get It." the slow grind of the debacle in Iraq will grind on. No, the Iraqis aren't going to toss us out on our ear. We're too powerful for that.

They can make our existence there a living hell however and turn Iraq into a Greater Occupied West Bank. How much reconstruction can we do while this mess is going on? And with no reconstruction there is no hope. And if the Iraqis have no hope, they will eventually all turn on us.

Apparently though Bush is not quite as uninformed as has been implied previously.

The president and his White House aides have not changed their public claims that the uprising in Iraq is the work of a relatively small number of extremists who will inevitably be crushed. But, in private, Bush is apparently expressing a more grim view. According to the Kremlin, he placed a 20-minute call to Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday, and "serious distress was expressed" about the "escalation of violence." Bush aides refused to discuss the details of the conversation.

Maybe GW does need a friend, a real friend and not a synchopant, to level with him and tell him he's got to get this under control.

Someone has to do something, right?

JIM LEHRER: But a hopeless situation still has... somebody's got to do something. So somewhere in there, do you see a combination of toughness and a soft approach working at all?

Hat tip to Billmon.

You can practically taste the despair at The View from Baghdad a site introduced to me by Delong's blog.

Something can be done. It's just whether this Administration has the courage and sense to do it.

Another conservative sickened by this Administration, Perle turns

Once, Max posted a comment on my blog asking me if I ever felt like the last of the Mohicans. His comment on his own blog upon discovering my own was "Republican but sane," of course I have always argued that this Administration and the top Republican leadership has been exploiting rather than representating true conservative values. Indeed, I have spoken or corresponded with several conservatives in the last few days who are seething over what is happening in Iraq.

However in the media or blogosphere it can sure sound otherwise, with most conservative bloggers apparently hewing to an "Administration can do no wrong," kind of rhetoric that includes projecting our failures onto actual but periphial Iranian intervention. If we were on the ball, the Iraqis wouldn't give a dang about Iran's manipulation. Afterall, we liberated them from the tyrant Hussein. Our failure to capitalize upon this incredible first impression is our own fault. As pickup lines go, "Hey baby, how would you like for me to liberate you from an insane murdering tyrant?", and then following through with it is hard to beat.

Yet, we have managed to burn through that goodwill at a historically incredible pace. It took years for Vietnam to get this bad, and they'd already been worked over by the incompetencies of the French.

Yet to the posters at Dan Drezner none of this seems to have sunk in. No degree of personal responsibility and accountability - Conservative tenets of storied lore - has seem to afflicted these souls who seem hellbent on rationalizing into good news even rather bad news.

This is not a widespread revolt, but the indirect support / tolerance for it as a protest against American administrative shortcomings is quite large. (courtesy of Sterling Newberry, BOP blog) I'm not sure in what world most of the other conservative posters on Dan's blog are in, but the idea of invading Iran while no doubt tempting to politcons and neocons is not exactly sounding like a great idea to this realcon. Digesting Iran after we're still having indigestion in Iraq doesn't sound so great.

The delusional "nothing to see here, hurry along" attitude of Dan's posters is strange since publications like the Financial Times and the Economist are considered conservative outlets and yet they are questioning Administration conduct here.

Most of the Iraq blogs I've read indicate that while the educated Iraqi bloggers dislike Sadr, they also grant that he has a fairly large following. In addition, the way the US administration there is playing this wrong way so as to lessen our legitimacy among them.

This is the real reason why Sistani has been playing both sides on this issue, he's using Sadr to burn us and obtain more concessions.

Of course many of the same posters here who advocate expanding regime change policy, also haven't come to grips with the failure to find substantial WMD in Iraq. I wonder if a complete collapse happened in Iraq, would they then finally admit that they were mistaken?

Or would they just keep on going refusing to acknowledge they might have been in error?

As for the deranged poster Holsinger (who has also advocated genocide as a solution to the WoT. Seriously.), the sky does "fall" once in a long while. That's why we're here and not the dinosaurs. Actually, America suffers a military or foreign policy debacle about once a decade ever since Vietnam.

(i) Vietnam
(ii) Iran-collapse
(iii) Retreat from Lebanon
(iv) Retreat from Somalia

So actually, we're about due. The idea of America as invincible is quite false. We are very powerful, but time and time again incompetence or overreaching at the top has undone us. Anyone with a clear eyed view of modern history would acknowledge this.

Incompetence at the top seems poised to do so again, barring a last minute change of heart. It is not Vietnam out there, or at least it doesn't have to be. But Vietnam didn't have to be Vietnam either. It got there one day at a time while leadership was in denial patting themselves on the back about body-bag counts and the "light at the end of the tunnel". There are those still in denial that can't seem to comprehend why the American people would have withdrawn their support from a war that they hadn't managed to win in twice the amount of time it took to fight WWII. They still argue that Vietnam could have been won. And it could have, just not by those who make these claims because they are the same ones who refused to admit or fix the problems that dragged that war out for over a decade.

They say the definition of madness is to attempt the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome from what has come before.

If that is the definition of madness, then the right-wing in this country of whom I used to be a proud member of has gone completely insane.

Only they're not the right wing. They're a portion of the movement that has unfortunately obtained control and leadership of the grassroots base as well as leadership mechanisms. This sucks.

Fighting doomed foreign wars and losing them because of delusions of grandeur was supposed to be a liberal idea. I still argue that the neo-liberals who became the neo-cons and subverted the politicons must be some kind of fifth column infiltrators that the Democrats have sent to bring the Republican party down. All because they don't have any ideas of their own that are good.

Okay, I don't really believe that. It does sound like a pretty crazy conspiracy theory doesn't it? Still some mornings when I wake up and shudder as I witness the "body-snatcher" esque weirdness in the party I've associated myself with my entire life. I voted proudly for Bush Senior and would do so again in a heartbeat. Yet some conservatives have become infected with a madness.

I'm being unfair in blaming this entirely on the neocons, afterall Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, and now Richard Perle (following in the footsteps of Newt Gringrich who said that "US policy in Iraq went off a cliff.") have spoken out about the mismanagement of Iraq and says according to the Financial Times that the Administration lacked a "clear, cohesive policy on Iraq".

***
Sandwiched in between, however, and given far less notice, was another book highly critical of those around President George W. Bush, but from a much more surprising source: Richard Perle, the former Pentagon adviser often regarded as the intellectual godfather of the administration's aggressive foreign policy.

Unlike the other books, An End to Evil - co-written by yet another administration émigré, David Frum, a former speechwriter - is careful to steer clear of Mr Bush himself as well as Mr Perle's patron, Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary.

But Mr Perle's book takes aim at almost everyone else in the senior reaches of the Bush foreign policy team and accuses many of them of significant failures in the run-up to, and the aftermath of, the war in Iraq...

Mr Perle acknowledges that part of the reason he quit the Defence Advisory Board, the Pentagon panel he used to chair, in February was to give full voice to such criticisms.
***

Remember, even in this modern age turning out even a hot-to-the-presses book takes weeks if not months of work. So this must have been in the works for a while. If Richard Perle himself has changed his mind, then I'm not sure who in their right minds can cling to the delusion that "all is well".

Bush Senior himself at the dinner table at family meetings with his son asked if there was an exit strategy to Iraq. Apparently there wasn't. However, in public Bush Senior has been defending his son GW quite understandably from criticism. He has to, this is his son. I understand that, and honor him still.

I don't want GW to go down, especially not if the cost is the destruction of American lives and interests. I myself would gladly serve if it made the difference in turning this Titanic around. However I am mystified by the failure to change course given the ever increasing and ever more alarming danger signs we're getting. Is it hubris? Is it fifth column Democrats? Is it Osama bin Ladin chanting mind control songs from a cave in Afghanistan?

Is it madness?

For I have no other explanation for what I see.

News from the front,

Media reporting here in the US is lousy. Usually it's not the best, being not subject so much to political bias as just outright incompetency and intellectual laziness biases. Others are in the know but just keep quiet so they won't be criticized. However, recently with the outbreak of widespread violence in Iraq it's gotten worse than usual.

An assertion of coverup would be ridiculous given all the outlets, but an accusation of denial seems to be on the mark. Like most Americans our media doesn't seem to want to think of things in Iraq getting that bad.

Some people, like the otherwise very nice and very intelligent Winds of Change blogger Joe Katzman whom I've corresponded with and whom has always been the soul of courtesy to me have been focusing on periphial issues. Maybe Iran is in fact interfering (Oxblog). The point is that they can only do so because we've mismanaged the situation and created a power vacuum. From their perspective with us pressuring them over their weapons grade nuclear power plant, they'd be fools not to take advantage over our pratfall in Iraq.

This is why I've been trying to search out news like that of:

Col Lounsbury who is an ex-pat conservative who works with investors involved in Jordan and Iraq [Hat tip to Akim of Empty days who clued me in to Col first],

and

Ginmar a medic posted in Iraq serving on the frontlines of Iraq. [Hat tip to one of Col's posters] Here's a sample of her writing:

My captain didn’t know I heard him say what he just said. “Honestly, last night, I think every one of us thought that was it, that we weren’t going to make it back. It was that bad.”

and

So we went up to Baghdad for the memorial service, and part of this involved cruising up ‘IED Alley’ before the crews had time to sweep it and clear it of roadside bombs. Let me tell you, those ‘orange alerts ‘feel very different when you can see three-lane wide char marks stretching from the outside edge of the road to the center island---and past. [emphasis added]

Is that powerful, or what?

Besides like me being a fan of the cult hit show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", she clearly is relating personal experience. While some times you need to step back to see the big picture sometimes, clearly the Administration is not synthesizing overall data into a coherent view of the grand scheme of things but doing more of their patented cherry picking of data to fit their preconcieved biases.

This is not Vietnam. But to say that things aren't bad because they aren't Vietnam, yet, is to imply that one should begin planning for a Hurricane evacuation when the sea levels get to your doorstep. At that point, it's too late in order to get away from the disaster.

As weather reports go, what is currently happening in Iraq is troubling. We need to make some drastic changes soon, or there won't be anything to salvage. Even the great liberal hope of John Kerry, whom I must say I dislike more everyday on a purely personal level the more I find out about him (what do you expect? I am a conservative afterall even if a sane one.), is elected in November by then it will probably be too late to salvage to situation in Iraq.

Personally, I have a lot of ideas about how to turn things around in Iraq. I'd post more of them if I wasn't already quite busy working on a work project. However, the question of talent or ideas isn't the major obstacle to progress.

The major stumbling block is the obstinate refusal of this Administration to admit the slightest short-comings and chart a different course. They don't even have to admit they were wrong to satisfy me, just listen to the complaints [Hat tip to one of Delong's posters] and fix things.

Conservatives nowadays aren't the only ones having problems owning up to reality. Thomas Friedman as a liberal hawk gambled his entire reputation (one of his columns noted even his wife objected) on supporting the Iraq venture, and now is spinning his wheels in denial:

***
We are at a perilous juncture in Iraq. Two things are clear, and there's only one question left to be answered. What's clear is that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and there are no Viet Cong in Iraq. The key unanswered question is: Are there any Iraqis in Iraq?

When I say that there are no Viet Cong in Iraq, I mean that the Iraqi "insurgents" opposing the U.S. today cannot plausibly claim to be the authentic expressions of Iraqi nationalism — as the Viet Cong claimed to be in the Vietnam War. The forces killing Americans and Iraqi police are primarily Sunni Muslims who want to restore the rule and privileges of their minority community and Baath Party, or foreign and local Islamists who are trying to undermine any prospect of modernism, pluralism and secularism in Iraq. [emphasis added]
***

At least Friedman is not in such denial as the Bush Administration, but still Friedman while acknowledging the peril believes that this issue can be kept isolated to a relatively small group of dissenters. The fact is that the entire of Iraq is so disgusted with American administration there that they are standing aside or actively helping the uprising as their way of showing a protest against our refusal to address their concerns and needs.

Bush does not have to admit tha he was wrong, except to himself. To fix this situation, he only needs to appoint and empower with authority the people with the experience and determination to get the job done. His failure to do so is crippling his leadership and on the verge of causing the biggest blowback in foreign policy bungles since the loss of Iran to the uprising against the Shah in the 70's. It may in fact be bigger than that even. The President doesn't have to be a specialist on everything. His judgement in empowering and delegating representatives to carry out and execute his policies well however is a crucial test and metric of his leadership.

Americans are not cowards. That is not the proper inference to be read from the dropping US support in the polls for continued deployment there. It is true though that Americans will refuse to pointlessly sacrifice lives if there is no real plan to turn things around. Why should American boys and girls die on foreign sands because some politician can't get his act together? Frankly, I can find nothing with that sentiment to disagree upon.

We should not abandon Iraq if nothing else to let the world know the taste of American resolve, but the President should be told that it is absolutely clear that past management practices will no longer suffice. They have to put someone in charge over there and give them the resources and leeway to do this right, or else it's all going to go down the drains.

Let us pray, and that is not a rhetorical request, for our Commander and Chief to come to his senses and send someone who knows what they are doing over there to take charge and bring this destructive conflict to an end.

What would I do if I were NSA edition, Part II

Condi Rice testifies to the 911 Commission. (MSNBC)

Meanwhile, on other fronts Needlenose discusses the deflation of the Pakistani hinterlands offensive and the cluelessness of the Administration.

Via Needlenose what is the White House's Iraqi "fact of the day"?

"Iraqis reject violence 04/07/04."

Gee, really? Someone might want to tell that to the Iraqis shooting at us and threatening to burn alive foreigners they've captured.

To put it into perspective, lying is a Presidential prerogative or at least if not an executive privilege it's at least a time honored tradition.

Johnson a Democratic President had the term "credibility gap" (CSM) created to describe the implausibility of his Administration analyses. Clinton of course both had as many observed at best a difficult relationship with the truth. What bothers me is that the present administration might *not* be lying. Between delusion and lying there is an intermediate state - it's called confabulation.

According to Miriam-Webster Online dictionary, confabulation has the following definition:

Main Entry: con·fab·u·late
Pronunciation: k&n-'fa-by&-"lAt
Function: intransitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -lat·ed; -lat·ing
Etymology: Latin confabulatus, past participle of confabulari, from com- + fabulari to talk, from fabula story -- more at FABLE
1 : CHAT
2 : to hold a discussion : CONFER
3 : to fill in gaps in memory by fabrication

Essentially, talking out of your arse. It means to speak without any idea of whether it is true or false, and you just make stuff up instead.

Lying would imply a knowledge of the facts sufficient enough to distort them. Delusion would indicate an ideology sufficiently developed to rationalize any factual contradiction.

Confabulation is just making up stuff as you go along without any clue of whether it's correct.

And that is what bothers me ... the disconnection, cluelessness, and the "Duh, and whad da ai du knrow?".

I can forgive malice if repentence accompanies it. Mendacity...

***
What would I do if I were NSA
#01: Get someone else to be GW's friend and instead worry about National Security.
#02: Reorganize National Security Council and implement a plan to fix Iraq.
#03: Reinstitute a policy of Plausible Deniability Hint:only lie when you can get away with it.

In the immortal syntax of the Evil Overlord Suggestions:

"I will only lie publicly when there are no easily accessible sources of facts to openly contradict me. My ordinary five year old child adviser (see rule #12) will be given a computer with internet access, and a list of all my proposed lies for the day each morning. If the child adviser can find two or more outside confirmed sources that contradict my lies within five minutes, I will send the list back to my Ministry of Truth for further revisions before including these lies in my Talking Points list."

Inside track edition, Iraq on the edge

I think Rummy may be claiming we can "got it alone" in Iraq if necessary to "prempt" criticisms that may arise when our allies pull out (MSNBC). This has been a bad week for the Bush Administration.

Dang, this thing is hanging by a thread. If not that, then not by much more (Newsday).

"This is a crucial, critical time. We cannot allow some of these areas to become uncontrollable..,"
--Chuck Hagel, Senator (R)

If as Reuters is reporting their claims of capturing US soldiers is true I'd say that qualifies as uncontrolled:

***
An aide to Sadr told a news conference that some U.S. soldiers had been captured in the fighting. "Some tribes have captured some occupation forces on the streets," Qays al-Khazali told a news conference in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf.
***

Of course the military can crush Sadr. But if they blow up the Imam Ali mosque while they're doing it - like the trick they pulled in Fallujah (BBC) - then it's all over.

My solution? Tell Sadr that if he apologizes on tv, tells his militia to turn in their weapons, and let his top aides and militia leaders be arrested ... then we'll let the seminary in Najaf take him into their custody for discipline. This boosts Sistani and sweetens him for when we "ask" him to negotiate out the new Iraq Constitution or um "give his blessing". We need it. We just can't pussyfoot around anymore.

And if Sadr refuses that positively sweet deal, then we gotta go after him.

That's our best deal I think.

Unmarked links courtesy of the Asia Times.

More updates via the always excellent Needlenose.

P.S. One thing for sure, Sistani wins however this goes down with Sadr claiming to be his military wing on one hand and on the other Sistani using or even encouraging the revolt behind the scenes to use it as leverage against the United States. When the crackdown crushes Sadr, Sistani'll be right there condemning US brutality. The echoes of Palestine and even worse the Saddam crackdown on the '91 insurrection by the Shiites will prove unmistakable. Sistani is using this event to roast the CPA and IGC over the coals of the Constitutional issues they defied him on. This to answer Salam Pax's naive rhetorical question on the NPR audio blurb he had is exactly what Sistani is all about in this event.

Baghdad burning blog reports in...

Stirling Newberry has a summary:

***
Absent a general rallying to his banner, it is likely that Sadr will be crushed by the US offensive, but only after inflicting stinging losses, and forcing the US to expend a great deal of good will. The number of civilian casualties is mounting faster than either coalition or resistence dead. Best estimates indicated that some 60 Iraqi fighters have been killed, 30 coalition, and approximately 80 civilians. Though given the difficulty of confirming resistence dead, their number is probably higher.
***

MaxSpeaks lists some Iraq blogs, of them:

Iraq at a Glance blog has a nice gateway into multiple Iraqi blogs. Note that some of them are openly anti-Sadr.

Baghdad Burning speaks out here:

***
Over the last three days, over 150 Iraqis have been killed by troops all over Iraq and it's maddening. At times I feel like a caged animal- there's so much frustration and anger. The only people still raving about 'liberation' are the Iraqis affiliated with the Governing Council and the Puppets, and even they are getting impatient with the mess...

And as I blog this, all the mosques, Sunni and Shi’a alike, are calling for Jihad...
***

Raed reports in:

***
The uprising in Iraq is still expanding…

But I still feel that Bush and Bremer are totally out of the picture…

All what we can hear from the coalition governments’ spokesmen, and from the international media news are some fake explanations and explanations…

Let me declare some points:

AsSadr is NOT reflecting a minority of Iraqis, this is a stupid big lie.
Whether we liked him or not, he is the political and religious leader for MILLIONS of Iraqis in the southern region…
There are 15 million Iraqis living in the south, and another 5 million in Baghdad, I can say that 5 to 7 millions of them can be considered as AsSadr followers.

AsSadr is NOT a mere twenty-something year old guy, that is playing games.
Whether we liked him or not, he is a phenomenon. When people in the south of Iraq look at Muqtada AsSadr, they see the history of his father, the deep roots of his religious supporter: AlHaeri.

AsSadr is NOT a small follower of the Iranian Government; he has very bad relations with the official government of Iran, unlike Sistani and Hakim.

AsSadr is THE GOVERNMENT in most of the cities of the south: Amara, Kut, Nasryya and Diwanyya and Simawa partially, and Najaf partially (Kufa is a small city in Najaf that is the center of AsSadr).

I mean… from my secular point of view… it is a disaster to have all of these extremist religious right-winged militias… but this is the direct result of the lost policy of the Bush administration, which are exactly what the expected problem of imported “democracy” would be, I used to call this cul-de-sac that we are stuck in: The Algerian Dead End. Algeria went through the exact scenario some years ago… do you want elections and democracy? The powerful extremist religion people are going to win :*)
You don’t want democracy and elections? Don’t start the mess...

...All of these military steps that Bremer is taking now remind Iraqis of the Palestinian crisis, everything related to mass-public punishment will not give good results. Falluja under the siege is the wrong thing to happen, bombing Shia residential areas is the wrong signal to give, and saying lies in public is killing the hope that the CPA would be credible ever.

And the thing happening in Iraq right now, killing hundreds of Iraqis and dozens of coalition soldiers, is NOT just another mob. It is an uprising.
***

And our guys are caught in the middle.

Not that they're using kid gloves or anything (MSNBC):

Americans also called out a weapon rarely used against the Iraqi guerrillas: the AC-130 gunship, a warplane that circles over a target, laying down a devastating barrage of heavy machine gun fire. At least 60 Iraqis killed and more than 120 wounded in overnight fighting in Fallujah, hospital officials said.

The problem is that both our soldiers and the Iraqis are out there dying because of stupid political mistakes.

Mistakes perpetuated by ideological stupidity like the delusions that this is all "terrorist orchestrated", etc.

If Bush didn't want or know how to run Iraq, would he please turn it over to someone who will? Please!!!

Even Tacitus thinks we need new management!

War upon an eastern star, plan for rehabilitation of Iraq

I won't try to keep up with events going on in Iraq, Back to Iraq blog, Juan Cole's Informed Comment blog,

Stirling Newberry, Swopa at Needlenose, Akim, and Col Lounsbury are covering it all much better than I could.

Thirteen guys dead, in Ramahdi alone is what the news is reporting. Meanwhile, Safire at the NYT channels the Administration policy to this crisis for the rest of us not "in the loop" on the Administration's "plans" for handling this situation.

Btw Slate as an article about how to become an Ayatollah.

The BBC reports that the US army vows to wipe out Iraqi Shiite militia. The CSM has two articles on the implications of the situation. Meanwhile the NYT discusses how we may lose Australia next after Spain. The Guardian(UK):Special Report Iraq portfolio is also interesting.

***

What I can say from the depths of my heart is that we are in deep trouble in Iraq. A friend of mine has a cousin who's step-brother was one of the eight that died in the initial Sadr uprising a few days ago. That's the "six degrees of freedom" thing at work. As the number of deaths increase, the ripples from them will increase.

The American people contrary to most opinion are not afraid of casualties. What the American people detest however is getting sold wars and military interventions on bogus bills of goods and lies, and seeing good kids die for politicians mistakes. This is pretty standard MO for politicians everywhere throughout history, so the fact that Americans actually generally want a half decent reason before sending off lots of kids to die is a virtue and not a flaw.

With both candidates, Bush and Kerry, promising to "stick it out" in Iraq and Senators on both ends of the spectrum speculating about letting the June 30 turnover date go then it seems we're going to be stuck in Iraq for a while.

I can't imagine that Sadr will last under the concerted firepower of American forces once they're mobilized, but the constraints of minimizing collateral damage and the support of the populace will mean that unless we get lucky this could be bloody and we could lose a lot more of our own guys. The more of a price we pay, the more surely Sadr will die for his defiance, but the price could end up by American and Iraqi standards being quite high. It could include permanently souring the Shiites on us as well.

A reader Jim Coomes suggested that I draw up a revamped CPA/US Embassy plan for replacing the present. I was originally going to draw up a fairly detailed plan for CPA organization specifically, but instead in the face of this crisis I'm going to opt for a general outline of what I would do in general.

***

1. Fire any person related to any member of the AEI.

2. Fire any Republican operative who did not serve under Bush Senior or Reagan. Anybody who served under Herbert or a Administration previous can stay. Personal petitions to the otherwise will be allowed, but the 'foreign policy' realcons must dominate not politicons and neocons.

3. Bring on Tom Warrick and the rest of the State Department Arabists

4. Bring on Halper, Kenneth Pollack, and every guy with experience mentioned in this article.

5. Raid the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, CATO Institute, Middle East Institute, Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy, and the Saban Center at the Brookings Institute, and some of these authors for talent.

6. Setup a bootcamp for training hundreds (thousands if we can get them) of translators to ship to drawing from among others Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in Military, Arab American Engineers and Architec, Arab American Institute, and other Arab American organizations.

7. Frankly the rot goes so deep, the oldman would have to go through every dossier in the Iraqi Program Management Office and weed out all the political operatives and replace them with reconstruction experts and people familiar with the details who could offer pragmatic solutions that would be an improvement over previous policies (via the Council on Foreign Relations). I would also ask experts who specialized in post-war reconstruction specifically for ideas.

8. However, a political Administration cannot be run by expert committes. The experts are there to inform political Administrations of ideas, options, and consequences while the political administrators have to make leadership choices.

9. In light of that, the only solution is to take Sistani up on his offer and negotiate a scrapping of the IGC and a new Constitutional process.

10. Proposed Iraqi Government
10a. 100 member Senate selected by CPA head to represent tribal interests, selected off the satellite phone number listing that represents Iraqi elites, and native influential leaders like sheikhs.
The Iraqi senate will be roughly representative of ethnic demographics, require a 2/3rds majority to overturn a veto wielded by the CPA head, and be given charge of Iraqi government ministries. The Iraqi Senate will vote to confirm Iraqi ministers, and set up with the UN an internationally recognized election process so that by December 2004 local representatives can be elected to a Parliment or House of Commons. At that time, the government will pass to the House of Commons which will take over control of the Iraqi ministries and organize a national election for the Senate. Any national party that obtains at least 1% of the vote will be entitled to a seat on the Senate. The Senate will elect by 2/3rds majority an Iraqi President who has the power of veto.

10b. The Iraqi Parliment will run the government by forming a coalition of 60% of elected local representatives and appointing by 60% vote one of their number to be Prime Minister. The majority coalition will run the government, unless they fail to get less than 30% of the Parliment on any given vote in which case a new governing coalition must be formed. The Parliment must have all ministerial candidates approved by the Senate, all treaties ratified by the Senate, and all legislation approved of also by the Senate majority vote. The Prime Minister will not have veto powers. The Parliment as directly elected representatives unlike the Senate will write the Constitution, and determine the lengths of office, rotation of elections, etc. barring only modifying the basic bicameral structure, basic Parlimentary rules of organization, and Senate confirmation rules of the President who will have sole vested veto power over Senate legislation.

11. Sadr has to be brought in. However, except in the case of incitement of violencen it should be announced no further newspapers will be closed.

12. The Kurds have to be told that the choice is not between an independent Kurdistan and a Kurdish autonomous zone within a unified Iraq, but a Kurdish autonomous zone within a unified Iraq and a Kurdish colony of Turkey.

13. Oil revenues must be turned over to the Iraqi government for spending. The central government should have its split for centralized functions, and the provinces should be distributed local administration money based upon population.

14. There must be a Western cell phone network built by the CPA for use exclusively by the CPA, US military, etc. However, the Iraqi communications minister should be allowed to revoke CPA contracts on present cell phone networks for domestic Iraqi use and to bid out to local standard systems.

15. American Iraqi reconstruction monies should have set-asides, such at least $200 million for Sir Jeremy Greenstock as a block grant to manage so long as receipts are kept, double book accounting is practiced, and standard bidding practices are followed. Ditto proportionally for the other allied local administrations of Iraq.

16. Order bulk orders of cheap solar power cells and assign them to critical faculties like hospitals, refineries, water plants, etc. These guys at MIT have a few ideas too.

17. As it turns out MIT also has some ideas about water purification.

18. The Iraq Program Management Office analyzes Iraqi electricity. Here's the program in Northern Iraq. So get rid of the Asian labor and buy the actual German, French, etc. parts needed to repair the plants. Oh and btw fire Bechtel. Here is the USAID report. The Program Management office in general needs weeding.

19. set up a program of block grants of $500k to $1 million per hospital with accounting and reporting rules, and let the hospitals fix themselves.

20. Fire Bechtel, again, and just fix the damn water problems directly instead of trying to outsource everything. Just pony up the money to buy all the parts needed, with receipts of course.

21. Put in a four tier system in the new CPA. Top dog = oldman. second tier = all senior staff members and department heads. 3rd tier = team leaders. 4th tier = CPA staff. Assign specific tasks to specific people and put update and reporting requirements including deadlines. Institute task assignment software to track and manage performance. I prefer Lotus Notes.

22. Junk the name CPA, call it the Iraq Reconstruction Organization - or something, anything, etc.

23. Move IRO formerly CPA out of Greenzone to secure Embassy location outside of Baghdad center on the outskirts. Cede former Saddam palaces to Senate / Iraqi government.

24. Exile or execute Chalabi. Seriously. I prefer execution. Public. Exile INC. Seize seized properties, turn over to Iraqi government for sale or use.

25. Inform military that bases will need to be pulled back from cities and all lines of supply must NOT enter city limits or pass through them to stop stupid reoccurring ambushes on main street Iraq.

26. Negotiate phased release of all 10,000+ seized prisoners except those we have hard evidence on. Give them $100 US compensation and send them home.

27. Inform military that on it's new bases it will build adjacent training zones. The new job of the entire US military in Iraq is to train for eight to twelve weeks at a time large cohorts of Iraqi Civil Defense forces.

28. Institute joint patrols.

29. Turn Iraqi television station CPA/IRO controls into a real news outlet that is credible. Do this by firing all media cronies and propagandists and hiring independent journalists to take it over, tell them they can put on air whatever they want on two conditions 1) they cover all CPA/IRO events 2) They source and can back up all stories. Credibility is more important than spin.

30. Note to self, televise Chalabi execution.

31. Instruct military and joint Iraqi police patrols to focus on kidnappings, impromptu "Islamic" law courts, gangs, murders, militias, thieving tribes, etc. Begin televising trials. Especially executions. Law and order is a priority.

32. Note to self, double check rehabilitation of Iraqi legal system - the CPA probably f*cked that up too.

33. Begin using raids on Islamic courts to break up militias.

34. Institute partial curfew - from 11 PM to 4 AM. Begin setting ambushes for those killing intelligentsia in Iraq or clerics. Capture some to puclicly execute, after suitable trial.

35. Get rid of f*cking mercs on CPA / IRO protection detail. Get some real US soldiers.

36. Weed out the Iraqi exiles there for a power grab and the ones who want to make a difference.

37. Plan to build a new refinery in conjunction with Iraqi Oil Ministery. Increased economic activity already putting demand for kerosene, gasoline, etc. above pre-war levels.

38. Rehire Iraqi Army, start vetting program for Iraqi intelligence and Iraqi officers.

39. Bring CIA onboard, they seemed to have been calling the on ground stuff right from civil war to demobilization of army. They need to stop encouraging Iraqi minister who is stockpiling guns though. Note to self: Watch back around CIA.

40. Take deBaathification program and turn it into a Truth and Reconcialiation program, stop disenfranchising "nominal" members and only blacklist or prosecute top leadership and their lieutenants.

41. Rename Airport from Bush International Airport to Baghdad International Airport.

42. Redesign procurement and contract bidding programmes in the PMO, to rely on cheaper and local help with more accounting and less crony bids.

43. Make clear that Iraqi army will report to Iraqi government, starting with full Senate, rather than US military chain of command.

44. Start expecting personal political attacks in USA and/or pressure from legislators on behalf of all the interests I am going to piss off by doing all the above.

45. Take complete responsibility for all outcomes, defend people to the hilt who are carrying out the policies I specify, and prepare to be crucified for doing what it takes to put together Iraq.

It's our boys dying out there,

Blogs from Iraq are reporting things are going worse than the Western press is reporting. There are uncorroborated reports of Iraqi forces turning on US armed forces and widespread social unrest while the Fallujah crackdown is getting serious. Iraqi bloggers are pessimistic about the riots and financial in-country Iraqi guy Collounsbury believes the conflicts will strengthen the renegades. Clearly both those on the right, with Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan from the weekly standard, and those on the left such as JM Marshall and those in the military such as Shinseki all said that we would need more soldiers to keep the situation stable.

Now, it's too late. We can only watch events unfold and hope that it isn't too bad. Juan Cole tallies the damage and Hopes that it doesn't scare off our allies. Stirling Newberry discusses possible similarities to Vietnam and discusses the media imagery of it all.

Meanwhile Needlenose covers the background story excellently, as usual.

The oldman's reponse is this. As a conservative here, one who is still haunted by the shades of Vietnam, I had mixed feeling about invading Iraq from the beginning. Liberating it wasn't itself a bad idea, but the way it was done beginning to end doomed this venture- especially when Bush refused to listen to good advice from Scrowcroft, others, or an old conservative like me who spoke out against the "pollyanna talk" getting put out. Spin doesn't stop bullets.

Most military guys are Republicans ya know. It's our boys, kids from working class, middle class, and minority families out there on the front line. Most of em joined to get a decent job or a college education. Now they're dying cause Bush couldn't admit he made a mistake, or just change things to fix the problem.

Now it's Vietnam all over again, and those kids - some of em with kids themselves - with families that'll never see em again ... they're gonna die because Prez Bush just wouldn't listen. It's heart breaking. I'm gonna stop now, because if I go on at this point I'll start crying. Maybe I have already.

A reader of Unfair Witness blog followed essentially the same post there with this:

***
I think I know how you feel, Oldman. Today, I'm really scared for those people.

As Michael points out, the Bushies had no idea what they were getting into.

Jay Rockefeller admitted something the other day that all the War Party types should admit.

“We had this feeling we could be welcomed as liberators. Americans don’t know history, geography, ethnicity,” Rockefeller said. “The administration had no idea of what they were getting into in Iraq. We are not internationalists. We border on being isolationists. We don’t know anything about the Middle East.”

Posted by: tex
***

Why do I have the sinking feeling that it's going to get a lot worse?

Another conservative get's sick of lack of Administration accountability,

Brad Delong who is a liberal I disagree with a great deal on economic and trade issues, has this post up about Broder's ire at lack of personal accountability in the Administration originally posted in the Washington Post.

***
When President Bush appeared momentarily on Tuesday afternoon in the White House briefing room, he came to announce a surrender. After weeks of resistance, he had capitulated to the growing political pressure for national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to give the bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11 tragedy her sworn public testimony.

Bush's surrender came nine days after his former top counterterrorism aide, Richard Clarke, had fired a missile into the heart of Bush's proudest boast -- and the main plank of his reelection campaign -- by charging the president with indifference to the threat of terrorism before Sept. 11.

For nine days the White House and its allies did everything in their power to discredit Clarke, while trying to shield his old boss, Rice, from the commission's unanimous request that she give sworn public testimony in response to Clarke's stunning indictment.

When the effort to shoot the messenger failed to halt the political erosion, Bush did what he never should have done: He threw Rice to the commission. And, worse, he failed to do what he could have done long before: Offer the American people and the world a clear, coherent and detailed account of his own activities and state of mind in the months leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Instead of acting as the man in charge and saying to the commission, "No, you may not put my national security adviser on the mat, but I will answer to the public for what happened," he did just the opposite. He gave up Rice and then turned on his heel and walked out of the briefing room even as reporters were trying to ask him questions.

At a time when the American people -- and the world -- desperately need reassurance that the government was not asleep at the switch, Bush has clenched his jaw and said nothing that would ease those concerns. Instead, he has arranged that when he answers the commission's questions in a yet-to-be-scheduled private session, he will not face it alone. He and Vice President Cheney will appear together. It will be interesting to learn who furnishes most of the answers...
***

My response on Brad's site was that even a conservative can only take so much. I had my fill back in 2000, other brothers in spirit like Broder just took longer to see the light - to see the profound irresponsibility, mismanagement, and neglicence of this Administration. If the Admin could only do something right, I would vote for Bush in November. But he's made some bad choices and gotten some even worse advice. I'm here to tell you that many conservatives on the ground aren't happy, perhaps even bitter, but they don't have any place to go. And you liberals aren't making it easier with your constant partisan carping. I swear, if Dem's would just stop nagging for a moment and acted statesmanlike we conservatives would get together and quietly ditch our guy - or at least lead an in-party insurrection.

However, with all the fire from the left unfair as well as fair it's the stick together and circle the wagon's instinct that rises to the fore. Republicans from Lugar, McCain, Graham, Hagel, Hastert, Olymmpia Snow, etc. have come out at various points criticizing this Administration. But they can't go too far without making it look like they're selling out the party to rabid Dem's. If we could only get some bipartisanship going I tell ya a lot of moderate Republicans have had it up to here (points to neck)would speak out about the obstinate refusal of this Administration to either admit mistakes or correct their course quietly.

The truth is that various Republican and conservative interests have been gradually becoming disaffected with Bush for some time. There was much schadenfraude on the blogosphere when conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan started becoming disenchanted with Bush stands from education to states rights, and of course when Sullivan blew his top when Bush publicly advocated the anti-gay Federal Marriage Act. Andy is of course, gay.

*Full Disclosure: The oldman was raised to be mildly homophobic, in a strongly homophobic environment. Because of this he is still somewhat uncomfortable around open homosexuals. However he's had a housemate who was (openly) gay, a work associate who was (closeted) gay, and a former boss who was (openly) lesbian and whom he admired if did not always agree with. While the oldman opposes judicial imposition of national gay marriage, as long as gay rights advocists don't try to push for full press social normalization right away the oldman could support local experimentation with civil-unions and possible eventual institution of gay marriage. In any case, he doesn't see the point of writing prejudice and bias against them specifically in the Constitution itself with an Ammendment.*

There are still some like Instapundit who continue to defend the Administration, but increasingly even a prominent neoconservative such as Robert Kagan as well as Halper who served in multiple Republican Administrations are worrying what the heck the Bush Administration is doing. Henry Kissinger one of my personal favorites of all time has also been quoted by the BBC about worrying about the decline in American legitimacy. Max Boot, a prominent up and coming star in the neo-conservative movement wrote an LAT op-ed bemoaning that our "dream team" on foreign policy was in disarray. William Kristol has strongly criticized the Administrations failure to commit proper military resources to Iraq and over their failure to manage the Taiwan crisis properly.

This isn't to neglect the Republicans in the top ranks - Lindsey Graham (said the Administration couldn't buy its way out of a "great lie"), Hagel (said that people should look straight at the Veeps office for culpability in the Plame affair), Lugar (said the President has "got to be President", and be in charge instead of allowing foreign policy disarray), Powell (said WMD evidence in retrospect was shaky at best), ONeill (said Bush was like a blind man in a room of deaf people), Hastert (said the President's people couldn't ever get their numbers straight), Whitman (resigned from office in protest of Administration environmental policy), and the list goes on ...

All of these Republicans have come out against Administration policy, counsuled it to take other alternatives, criticized its practices, or outright resigned from the Administration. These are not lightweights. Any one we could dismiss on the face of it as perhaps a personal falling out. Taken as a whole in addition to voracious criticism such as that of John DiIlulio ("It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis"), Dick Clarke (the WaPo analysis says bulk of book vindicated), many scientists who oppose Bush Administration politicization of science, and Sir Christopher Meyers (Former British Ambassador to USA confirms that Bush was intent on attacking Iraq just nine days after 911) it all amounts to a sweeping and in fact almost damning indictment.

Yes, conservatives are getting sick of this Administration betraying conservative values and ideals. For Broder it was the essence of leadership and the conservative ideal of personal accountability. Why would Rice be hung out to dry when the President, our publicly elected official, is sheltered from full cross examination and public questioning?

If Bush doesn't want to run the country himself, then he should well hire and appoint somebody to do it for him and stand behind them 100%. I repeat I would still vote for Bush in November - if and only if he acknowledged that the past wasn't optimal and changed his ways including replacing key personell and taking a different tack toward crucial issues like standards scientific objectivity, honesty in legislative bargaining instead of pressuring executive departments to give skewed numbers, and replacing flawed appointees like Wolfowitz, Feith, Ashcroft (sorry, but though he's a moral man his lack of legal aptitude has made him a piss poor Attourney General - appoint Guiliani for heaven's sake! The man was actually a prosecutor!), and Cheney. In the absence of such accountability and a clear change of course, I must stand opposed to the record of this Administration which has been nothing less than a traversty of both American and conservative values and principles.

A promising idea ... and trouble in Paradise,

According to CNN Bush has announced a long overdue overhaul of job retraining programs:

***
States will be given more flexibility in designing job-training programs in return for meeting new accountability standards, the officials said.

"Innovation training accounts" also will be introduced that will give workers a stipend they can use to upgrade skills on their own, they said...

The changes will affect two federally funded programs that provide job training for adults and displaced workers, and train about 206,000 people a year.

The administration's goal is to increase that number to 412,000, at a cost of $550 million.

Of that total, $300 million would come from cost savings realized by streamlining and consolidating existing programs in the $4 billion work force investment system, the officials said.

The additional $250 million is part of an initiative Bush previously announced to increase funding to community colleges, where much of the nation's work force training takes place....

About 35 percent of the funding for job-training efforts, which are administered by state and local agencies, is consumed by administrative costs for complying with federal mandates and duplicative programs, the officials said.

Governors have complained about the rules, which are so complex that some potential training providers have decided not to participate, the officials said.

Bush will propose capping those administrative costs at 15 percent and simplifying the mandates so that states can meet the new limits, the officials said.

In return, accountability standards would be put in place to monitor whether people how receive training actually get a job, how long they keep it and how much they earn, the officials said.

Programs could include innovation training accounts, in which federal job training money would be given to people to pay for their own training if they meet eligibility requirements, the officials said.
***

This is something that the oldman likes - less bureaucratic regulatory hoops to jump through and more scrutiny and accountability reporting. We could have really used something like this in the past two years. However, better late than never. Two problems the oldman has with this is what happens if the money isn't realized from "streamlining" the other Federal programs? There ought to be a guarentee that the money will show up for these programs. The other problem the oldman has is that it's not enough to move our country on the economic restructuring path that it has to take.

As for trouble in Paradise, the original Biblical paradise of human origin is the Garden of Eden and was likely located as the epicenter of the origin of recorded human civilazation in Mesopotamia or better known as modern day Iraq.

However as Juan Cole reports, Shiite anti-US violence has rocked several cities in Iraq, and Washington Monthly reports that the CPA is more interested in political 'hype' and 'spin' than governance and policy execution in Iraq.

This as Juan Cole points out is a gross mismanagement of Iraq. Here is a poster from Iraq talking about them, and here is Collounsbury a blogger who is a finance guy in Iraq talking about the piss-poor execution of the American Administration there. Remember, Collounsbury only profits if things go well so if he's reporting that things are getting botched it's because it's frustrating his chance to make more money - in other words I find this more convincing than all the spin coming from the CPA put together. This site was first brought to my attention by the Canadian Empty days blog.

Meanwhile the Daily Telegraph reports that Powell has actually admitted to the truth on WMD evidence shakiness.

While the oldman appreciates the willingness of the Administration to tell the truth eventually he would prefer it early on instead of the shabby and incompetent lies, and he would like the feel that proper policy in the Administration is the first goal of governance and not the last resort after all political spin and attempts to subvert policy to whacko agendas have already failed completely.

It's as if Rove were in the White House going again and again, "What?!?! Yet another hare-brained idea with no substance completely collapsed after it's been tested against the real world? And the spin has failed too, with the public finally beginning to catch on to the lies and even the moronic press finally catching on that we're not the good guys? Well I guess we should trot out those policy guys ... didn't one of them have a good idea how to handle this?"

Doesn't the White House ever learn? It is the credibility gained from taking care of necessities, that buys the freedom to implement discretionary programmes. If we're all honest, we'd agree that there is usually more than one way to get things done successfully. There being pro's and con's to each approach. Ideally, if such a word can be applied to politics, one demonstrates one's competence by "taking care of business" on the necessary items by acting sensibly, successfully, and with maximum public support. In return, the public extends its trust to allowing one to lead them into risky endeavours or promoting programs that will work among a variety of possible policy initiatives. Theoretically, again a word that either too much or too little depending on one's application, the contest of competence should be the measure of governing success and voter approbation.

Now in practice, people win in politics all the time by senseless rhetoric and demagogery. However, even those liars in the past realized that when push came to shove, they needed to put down real policy while selling themselves using lies or else everything would fall apart. Now we have the spectacle of an Administration so disconnected from reality that the reason why they're not lying is that they're too deluded to see reality, or correct their mistakes when confronted by obvious short-comings (MSNBC).

In this story, everyone does not laugh when they finally admit they see that the Emperor has no clothes because they can obviously see that the Emperor has no intention of admitting that he has no clothes on and his loyalists perfectly willing to smear, berate, or persecute anyone who states the perfectly obvious.

Iraq is not going well. I wish that our President would finally bend to reality and decide to send some guys who really knew what they were doing to handle Iraq. Like the jobs' program it's better late than never, and it's not too late though the hour is very late to turn things around there.

The oldman reiterates his offer to personally take charge, and full responsibility, for Iraq and clean it up himself to the White House. Not that there's much chance of that happening, but I get tired of waking up in the morning and getting pale because of the headlines and moreover the implications of them for America's future. America does not need a second Vietnam to haunt her for the next few decades. America needs all her credibility, moral authority, and successful vigor from successes to meet the challenges of the future.

If Bush can bring himself to admit that tax-cuts were not by themselves enough to reform the economy, perhaps he can still be brought to listen to reason and immediately start the true reconstruction of Iraq.

Throw away those advisers consouling you to "stick to your guns," Mr. President! Listen to people who actually care about this country, and are willing to put themselves on the line to see things done right! If you want to see your ideas carried out, you have to show that your Administration can get the job done for the American people! That means throwing away ideological arguments -and advisers- that will consoul you to implement foolish programs that have no chance of success! It also means, realizing that we have to take charge and do something different (YglesiasM) if we want the future to change as well. I thought personal accountability, like in the jobs reformation program, was supposed to be part of conservative ideas. Let's stop blaming the Iraqis and realize that we got ourselves into this situation by our own choice, and against the advice of many. We have to take responsibility now for making it go right (via Nathan Newman).

Listen to those of us in the grass-roots conservative base, and not just the big-donors and foaming-rabid neo-cons! Your legacy and the future of the country depend on you abandoning the flawed policies of the past and embracing those that can get the job done for this country! If you don't, then whoever wins in November (Instapundit) I fear our country may be set upon a course of no return.

"I come to bury Caesar, not praise him..." Mercs or civs?

This memorable phrase comes from the play "Julius Caesar", by William Shakespeare. Apparently, calling the four combatants who died in Fallujah the name of "mercanaries" is in several places causing some ire. Some like Kos have shown no human decency toward the shocking deaths, of the individuals and have been criticized fairly by others like Katzman. When Newman used the same word, he was also criticized - this time by his own posters.

Full disclosure: I've exchanged email with Newman recently and he's apparently banned my handle from posting to his blog. Let it not be said that the oldman fails to be evenhanded whether others are nice to him or not.

Refusing to call the combatants - apparently everyone agrees they were armed and US citizens - mercenaries simply because of an abstract definition that says they can't be mercenaries if they were also US citizens in a warzone the US is participating is absurd. However, if one called anyone taking pay to fight a merc then all our soldiers would be mercs and that wouldn't be right.

A mercenary then should not only take money for pay, but fight out of personal reasons instead of duty. By that measure, Nathan would be within his rights to call these people mercenaries. The better term would probably be simply security guard however, since I wouldn't call the guy who protects my bank a mercenary. To be a mercenary implies waging some sort of offensive operations. Bodyguards however are ubiquitous the world round.

Personally, the oldman would prefer to call them soldiers if for no other reason that they were (somewhat expensively) performing routine operations as an extension of our military policies and operations there as directed and financed by the Pentagon. The fact that Rumsfeld in one of his weird privatization schemes thinks he can save money by paying a company to hire these guys at +$100k yearly a pop in order to do the same job that a recruit would do for less than $15k a year (including housing allowance, etc.) is just another weird neocon idea. The realcon in me wants to call these men soldiers, since that's what the job they were doing was.

However, Nathan is under no obligation to do so. These men were not wearing uniforms of our country, they were not bound by duty or oaths or military standards of conduct. The military can't have it both ways. Either they were not in the military chain of command, and therefore were non-military combatants or they were and cannot be referred to as simple citizens as the military has done since the incident in Fallujah. So Nathan owes them no deference, and no gratitude. Freedom may not be free, but it is paid for in the blood of patriots and not the pay scales of for-hire warriors. They knew what they were doing, and were there by choice, and I would hardly say out of love or ideals as a person working for a NGO might claim or a private mission of mercy could invoke.

Personally I would recommend to Kos and Nathan that they show a little more human empathy. The sacrifice of these people was no less costly to them or their families in human terms than a soldier's deaths - that's why they call it the ultimate sacrifice. However, other than human sympathy we owe them no special deference. Personally, I would direct my ire to whoever thought it was a brilliant idea to drive a four vehicle convoy down the middle of downtown Fallujah. In a poignant human touch, apparently two out of the four killed were in a second car that turned back to help the first car that had gotten into trouble when they themselves perished by driving back into the ambush. I personally think that this as a moment of personal courage deserves a special mention and meritious regard. Risking your life to save someone else, under any circumstances, is a brave and laudable act even if perhaps foolhardy.

Part of what disturbs me however is that the war-adled seem willing to praise soldiers once they are safely dead and buried. Disgustingly, the bodies hadn't even been recovered when military officials were rushing to put words in the dead victim's mouths by saying that the victims would say themselves that the conflict was "worth it". That was a particularly disgusting piece of war propaganda, while the charred dismembered bodies were still swaying in the wind above Fallujah's streets.

Apparently as the Independent_uk reports the military has no trouble bullying wounded and shell-shocked soldiers into going back to the front in order to meet their manpower requirements.

***
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
03 April 2004


Just ten days ago, Jason Gunn didn't think he was in any shape to be sent back to active duty in Iraq.

That's what the 24-year-old tank driver told his family, and what he told the commanders at his US military base in Germany. It is also what he told a team of psychiatrists at Heidelberg Hospital, who not only agreed with his assessment but issued a formal recommendation that he be kept with them for further treatment.

Back in November, Specialist Gunn had suffered devastating injuries up and down the left side of his body when a roadside bomb obliterated the Humvee he was driving on the north side of Baghdad. Over and above his physical wounds, he also had to deal with the trauma of the sergeant in the seat behind his being ripped to shreds in the explosion.

Soon he was displaying classic symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, (PTSD) - anxiety, insomnia interspersed with recurring nightmares, and extreme agitation. Army doctors put him on two different medications to lift his mood and suppress his bad dreams. But the gung-ho, happy-go-lucky, overtly fearless soldier who had existed before last November obstinately refused to resurface.

It used to be accepted practice in the US military not to return a soldier to active duty unless he was fully fit - not just out of consideration for his own needs, but also to protect other members of his unit. In Iraq, however, growing anecdotal evidence suggests that a new policy is emerging - to patch up the wounded as quickly as possible and ship them straight back, threatening them with disciplinary action or even court martial if they show the slightest reluctance.

That, according to the available evidence, is what happened to Jason Gunn. On 23 March, he telephoned his mother in Philadelphia and told her he would refuse to go back to Iraq even if they ordered him to. The very next day, however, he was on a plane to Kuwait, and from there was told to make his own way back to his unit with the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad.

Three days later, his family was shown a signed statement which seemed to contradict everything they knew about him. "It is my wish," the statement said, "to be redeployed with my unit to finish my tour of duty with my unit here in Iraq. I feel that I am able to complete my mission here as well as any other duties assigned to me while on current deployment."

The statement also said he had not been on prescribed medicines since early March - even though his mother believes he had been taking his two sets of pills right up to the time of his departure - and that he did not feel he was in need of "any type of counselling at this time".

It wasn't just his family who found that odd. It was also a flat contradiction of an earlier statement issued by his commanders in Landstuhl on the day of his departure, which acknowledged he was unwilling to return to Iraq and that he had been diagnosed with PTSD by the Heidelberg doctors.

So what happened? His mother, Pat Gunn, herself a military veteran, is in no doubt he was put under severe duress. "My fear," she said in an interview, "is that he was coerced or shamed into signing this statement, just as he was coerced or shamed into returning to Iraq ... .

"When I spoke to him the night before he left, he was adamant he was not going back. They did a lot to his psyche to get him on that plane."

The only contact Pat Gunn has had since his return to the Middle East was a single, very brief phone call from Kuwait to say he had arrived safely. Since then, there has been nothing, despite efforts by her and by the office of the powerful New York congressman Charles Rangel to find out what happened.

When a staffer for Mr Rangel called a military liaison officer this week, she was told that if Jason had not contacted his mother that was his choice and there was nothing they could do to force him.

According to Mrs Gunn, Jason was called a coward from the moment he returned to Landstuhl in early January - even though, just a few months earlier, he had been mentioned in dispatches when he rushed into the smoking ruins of the bombed United Nations headquarters in Baghdad to pull out the dead and wounded.

The statement issued by Jason's superiors in Germany, meanwhile, made clear that they had made a decision simply to ignore the medical advice from Heidelberg. They even said it "may be in his best interest mentally to overcome his fear by facing it".

That line of argument does not wash with most credible experts on PTSD, who say that sending a traumatised soldier back into combat is actually the very worst thing one can do. Steve Robinson, executive director of the Gulf War Veterans Resource Centre in Maryland who has worked extensively with PTSD victims, called the reasoning "patently false".

"The best cure for PTSD is to pull a soldier back to a safe place and deal with the traumatic event that occurred," he said. "I can figure out about 100 better ways of overcoming a psychological injury than re-exposing the victim to his trauma. Remember, they used to put electrodes on people's head and shock 'em. They found out that wasn't such a good idea either."

Despite the growing scientific understanding of PTSD, case histories collected by Mr Robinson and others suggest combat stress victims are being sent back with growing frequency, and in some cases being subjected to humiliation, abuse and intimidation.

Late last year, an army translator called Georg-Andreas Pogany who had a violent reaction to the sight of a mutilated corpse was briefly charged with cowardice, a military crime punishable by death, and paraded across the national media as a disgrace to his country. Both the cowardice charge, and a lesser one of dereliction of duty, have since been dropped, apparently for lack of evidence.

Mr Robinson said he knew of an injured soldier evacuated from Iraq who became so exasperated at the lack of medical care offered by the military that he decided to pay for his own private treatment. That led to a charge of being absent without leave, as a result of which the soldier had a psychological breakdown and tried to kill himself. Rather than show any sympathy, Mr Robinson said his superiors tracked him down and sent him back to Iraq.

Similar cases have been collected by the group Military Families Speak , (MFSO), which represents US soldiers and their families who oppose the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Nancy Lessin, MFSO's co-founder, said she knew of several traumatised soldiers who had attempted suicide, either while recuperating or after they had been sent back.

"Jason Gunn is not an isolated case. The only thing unique about him is that the family is willing to speak out publicly," she said. "We see this as the tip of the iceberg. We are seeing for the first time the military laying out their strategy in writing - to send victims of PTSD back into battle, back to the front. This is how they are dealing with a situation where they are in over their heads without a plan in a war that should never have happened. The attitude is: as long as you can breathe, you can be redeployed."

While the individual stories are necessarily anecdotal, the big picture - of plummeting morale and record numbers of soldiers taking their own lives - is not since it has been documented by the Pentagon.

Last week, a much-delayed official report showed that the suicide rate in the military was higher now than it had been during Vietnam or since, with at least 23 soldiers committing suicide in Iraq last year and another seven killing themselves back home.

A survey by an Army mental health advisory team also found 52 per cent of troops in Iraq reporting low or very low personal morale, and 72 per cent complaining of low or very low unit morale.

A wide range of critics - including John Kerry, the Democratic presidential challenger, and General Eric Shinseki, the recently departed army chief of staff - have charged that too few soldiers are being deployed in Iraq to carry out the ambitious tasks being asked of them.
***

I have great sympathy for our soldiers, but my care is for the live ones too. 'Bring our boys home' is a strong sentiment I feel, and I curse the government mismanagement that would make such a withdrawal a totem of defeat and shame and national cowardice. It didn't have to happen this way. Do we complain about the troop deaths in the Panama occupation? Well that's because we didn't bother to have a lengthy occupation for our last major unilateral illegal invasion to topple a dictator. There's a way to do this kind of thing right, and there's a way to mess it all up. The failure of the Bush Administration (via Emptydays) in the latter along with their obstinate refusal to admit or correct mistakes, and their all too willingness to spend other people's blood in order to whitewash their mistakes is one reason why I've so thoroughly turned against the party that held my loyalty.

The ends justifies the means, America rejects or accepts?

As the oldman has ennumerated, both the Clinton and Bush White Houses weren't fully operational on the war on terror. Clinton considered it a priority, but was hamstrung and distracted by issues created by his personal weaknesses like the tendency of his zipper to fly suddenly open. Bush on the other hand probably wasn't smart enough to understand the true threat of terrorism (MSNBC). Clarke completely aside, the Administration ignored a panel's recommendatiosn on how to deal with terrorism.

However, it is uncertain whether Americans feel like holding him accountable for this or not:

***
Lastly, many of these “lies” have a curious quality: they tend to confirm the popular view of the president's temperament and beliefs. Usually, distortions suggest that the person responsible is putting on an act or is somehow different from what he pretends to be. Yet, at least in foreign policy, the administration's errors and misrepresentations all tend to confirm the president's image as a man uncompromising in his determination to fight the war on terror as he conceives it (at least after September 2001), and willing to ride roughshod over critics and nuanced intelligence alike to get his way.

And that in turn may explain one of the most surprising features of the past two weeks: that despite all the controversy over Mr Bush's honesty, credibility and competence, his position in the opinion polls has remained resilient. In several polls he has regained a narrow lead over Mr Kerry, and 50% of voters say they are more likely to vote for him because of his actions in the war on terror compared with just 28% for his rival.

Admittedly, the margin on the latter question was even greater two months ago, and more people now think the war in Iraq has increased the likelihood of another terrorist attack than think it has reduced it. Still, worries about Mr Bush do not yet seem to be translating into potential votes for Mr Kerry. It is as if voters, faced with the president's lack of straight dealing, are concluding that truth may indeed be the first casualty of the war they want to win. [emphasis added]
***

Presenting the opposite view is Needlenose blog, that using LAT and CBS poll information puts Kerry ahead of Bush. Stirling Newberry discusses some of the contradictory trends including Kerry's slide in a poll but the press finally turning on Bush. Some of the variation we've been seeing in polls might be due to the public not knowing quite what to think with all the accusations flying (Andy Sullivan).

Meanwhile, I fear that the left may be going too far. Katzman is able to skewer Kos for his lapse of human decency, and in so doing obscure the indecency of hanging out guys like that in the first place to dry (Maxspeaks) for what everyone admits are at best is a poorly executed gamble.

I understand the left being angry. I'm upset too. However, again and again I've seen the left let anger get them to act silly or stupid and turn off people in the middle or the right like yours truly who have serious objections to the Administration's conduct (via Atrios). The Economist is by no means a liberal publication it should be repeated.

Meanwhile, Kerry is flat on his back for elective surgery while he let's others do the heavy lifting for him by raising record amounts (for a Democrat) amounts of money and take the hits from the Bush Administration. I was neutral about Kerry to begin with, but the man's sense of entitlement is wearing thin my nerves and about the only recommendation right now he has over Bush is that he apparently wouldn't be as foolhardy and rash.

Nonetheless, the United States may be forced under any Administration to fight three wars in the upcoming four years (Iran for nuclear proliferation, with Korea and Taiwan added because Bush has let a bad situation get far worse). Trust me, Japan isn't joining the missile shield plan for its economic benefits (NYT).

***
As the United States races to erect a ballistic missile defense system by the end of the year, it is quietly enlisting Japan and other allies in Asia to take part in the network, which could reshape the balance of power in the region.

Last week, a few days after the United States Navy announced that it would deploy a destroyer in September in the Sea of Japan as a first step in forming a system capable of intercepting missiles, Japan's Parliament approved spending $1 billion this year to start work on a shield that would be in place by 2007.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon said it would sell Taiwan $1.78 billion in radar equipment to increase the nation's ability to detect ballistic missiles. Australia decided in December to join the United States-sponsored system, and American officials are holding talks with India.

But the network will eventually require the sharing of critical information and coordination among its members, which could split Asian nations into two camps: those inside and those outside the system. Those inside the system say the shield will be a defense against the missile buildup by nations like China and North Korea; those outside say it will destabilize the region and start an arms race.

China, already displeased with Japan's decision, said Thursday that the radar sale to Taiwan sent the "wrong message," and it reiterated its opposition to America's selling "advanced weapons" there. The United States has vowed to protect Taiwan against an attack by China, which has 500 missiles pointed at the island.

North Korea said Thursday that the Navy's deployment of the destroyer was preparation for war and part of its "attempt to dominate the Asia-Pacific region." Indonesia, which does not have ballistic missiles, has said Australia's decision could also ignite an arms race.
***

Meanwhile the left as usual blithely and foolishly lolligags about dithering their chance to seize the agenda from GW. Whatever is being said publicly, this Administration's actions are putting us on a consistent path toward full military escalation with China including the possibility of nuclear exchange. This while we just can't find someone to take Iraq off our hands as NATO says "No," to us.

China not to be outdone is building a fleet of ships to contest the Taiwan strait by 2006, the expected date of Chen's "constitutional reforms" that will probably trigger a Chinese blockade.

America is poised to get sucked into a giant vortex, and it will be the working class, poor, and middle class people that pay the most for all of this. I cannot think of a time that the United States' interests were more at risk than the 1960's under Kennedy when we had the Berlin Blockade, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam all on our plates. This threat level could easily exceed that if allowed to fester much further.

Peak in employment? Leading versus lagging...

On the domestic front, the oldman has heard about the jobs report. He didn't make a prediction this time around because, frankly he didn't know what to think. The last time the oldman made a prediction, he was about a 100,000 job's short!

However, as the NYT reports:
The Labor Department also revised its estimate of jobs added in January and February to 205,000, almost double its previous estimate of 118,000. The revisions pushed average job growth in the first quarter to 171,000 per month, the most vigorous rate since the second quarter of 2000, shortly after the Internet bubble burst.

In other words, the oldman got the past prediction right it's just that it took a month for them to figure out that the oldman was right! Which is a relief, since the oldman thought his mojo was flagging.

The oldman hadn't felt that the picture had changed that much, this time around the number was bigger but as Maxspeaks reports the Household survey actually lost 3000 jobs. While the household survey showed gains, the Administration was happy to trumpet that and play down the Payroll survey. Now that the Payroll survey, which everyone agreed is more reliable, is good the White House is happy to capitalize on that.

However, the picture is more complicated than that. Economic forcasters have admitted that upcoming economic growth will probably be slowed, so that topline GDP growth will decrease going forward into the year with higher gas prices and the like taking their toll. As the oldman indicated, while the payroll survey was more reliable the household survey wasn't just exaggerating jobs created. The household survey was leading the payroll survey. So the jobs that showed up on the payroll survey including revisions now, were some of the jobs "predicted" by the household survey earlier though not as many which is why the household survey is less reliable.

So now that the household survey has taken a dive, we can expect the upcoming payroll surveys to flatten out and then decline. This month in other words was probably the peak month for employment gains, not to mention that about 70,000 of the jobs gained were one time additions from the end of a grocery worker's union strike in sunny California.

***
Brad also has some the destruction of the middle class and outsourcing up. Brad does fail to call Wessel on his logic when he calls teaching elementary kids a high end job. Next thing ya know sanitation engineering will be a white collar proffession according to these free trade ideologues.

The other sort of jobs destined to remain here are high-end jobs. Some require exchanging information in ways that e-mail and teleconferencing don't handle well. Think about teaching first grade or selling a mansion to a multimillionaire or conceiving new forms of software. Others demand such intimate knowledge of the U.S. that it's hard to see foreigners doing them from afar. Think about marketing to American teenagers or lobbying Congress. [emphasis added]

Besides the idiocy of reducing real estate sales to the rich in his example, Wessel clearly refers to teaching grade school as a "high-end job". Last time I recalled, that and most of the occupations he discusses - real estate, teaching, most marketing and avertising jobs were middle class kind of jobs. He has to refer to these kinds of jobs as "high-end" because most of the other kind of jobs he refers to are working class - physical therapist, etc. - that require just an associate's degree. Not to mention he provides no evidence that the high-end jobs are growing, just the one's requiring community college education.

Again, the theory that only "low end" manufacturing jobs will be exported and that other high end jobs will be created is debunked by what it leaves out.
***

The oldman has always maintained the insanity of attacking Bush for job losses incurred mainly by trade treaty inequities created under Clinton or produced by a cyclical economic recession. Yes, there has been jobless recovery even more severe than the one in the nineties but despite the dazed insanity of economists it couldn't be fixed by Keynesian stimulus as Sterling Newberry but only delayed while structural reforms took place.

So tax cuts stimulus or high construction stimulus or Fed low interest rate stimulus - it was all just pushing on a string. Underneath all of that, the real economy was bleeding and the fact that it finally came up for some air is not a sign that there was no undertow but just that the undertow wasn't strong enough to kill the victim this time around. If the pattern holds, the next jobless recovery will be even longer and this job creation period will be shorter.

Assuming nothing changes of course.

It almost seems as if the Democrats perversely want to lose. I'm not sure how else to explain their actions. Criticize Bush on the Iraq war over the Clarke affair, instead of focusing on lack of public readiness for potential terrorist attacks where Bush is actually weak. Criticize Bush for the losses of either trade-driven or recession driven job losses, that assuming that the economy isn't dead yet will eventually show some gains and then see Bush trumpet the gains when they finally arrive. Criticize Medicare spending, when whether or not its fiscally responsible it's at least throwing money at seniors (and drug companies) but not Social Security even though Bush has down nothing to fix that program. It's almost as if John Kerry wants to be behind or something.

It's almost as if Democrats are being mind-controlled by Rove who sits in his office chanting "...get elective surgery John Kerry ... get elective surgery ... stay out of the news for another week while Bush and Cheney roast you everyday ... fail to get your message out there while my ads are massacering you and the Democrats have no spokes person... get elective surgery...".

At this point, I may have to get used to another four years and possibly three more wars under our present Commander and Chief.

Tipping point in Fallujah: Last straw or outlaw city?

There's been a great deal of discussion about Fallujah and the events (CSM) that happened recently.

***
The simple question on everyone's lips is "why?" - why do Fallujah and its environs remain the most dangerous place for US forces in Iraq?

As with everything in Iraq these days, the answer depends on whom you ask. US Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the bloodshed in Fallujah was a symptom of a town "that just doesn't get it," and of a people determined to turn back the clock...

But to Iraqi experts on the deeply clannish tribal networks of much of the Sunni Triangle, the horrifying killings and mutilation of four US security contractors Wednesday were more about a people obsessed with personal honor and revenge than evidence of nostalgia for Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
***

Newsweek's article also rejects the idea that Fallujah is an exception to how things work in Iraq.

***
It's tempting to try to explain away the horror of the corpse-kicking crowd in Fallujah. The town is a special case, says this reasoning. A longtime Baathist stronghold, during Saddam's regime it was a sort of company town for his Mukhabarat, the secret police, in which young men served apprenticeships in torturing, snitching and assassinating. And during the opening days of the war, a misplaced bomb destroyed the family home of a prominent tribal leader, killing him and 16 members of his family. Some claim Sheik Malik had been a secret friend of the Americans, but now his huge tribe, the Yarba, are sworn to revenge...

So it would be tempting to say that Fallujah hardly typifies this war, but it would be wrong. Certainly there are few communities where anti-American sentiment is as widespread as in Fallujah. But the savagery and utter abandonment of any sort of civilized conduct, so amply demonstrated on the streets of the city Wednesday, is actually pretty typical of the way the opposition has chosen to fight its war against American occupation everywhere else, as well. Wednesday's attack itself was hardly the worst thing we've seen; in fact, since the victims had been armed, attacking them was arguably within the rules of war...

So we should really not be too surprised at what happened in the streets of Fallujah; it's perfectly in character. In other places, the opposition doesn't have the numbers and widespread support they do in Fallujah; but they have the same vicious streak...

Coaliltion spokesmen tried to depict that as the work of a small minority, even in Fallujah. "The cowards and ghouls who acted yesterday represent the worst of society," said Coalition spokesman Dan Senor today. Unfortunately, in Fallujah, they represent most of the society...
***

Juan Cole agrees and speculates that the deaths may be retaliation and doubts that promises of pacification will be kept. Here is someone from Iraq commenting on the killings. Iraqi Clerics in Iraq have condemned the mutilation as against Islam, however the clerics did not condemn the initial killing.

Meanwhile it turns out that the Iraqi police and security forces were hiding behind a barred door during the mob rampage. The people in Fallujah meanwhile complain about the provocations of the US military in justifying such attacks.

Meanwhile Brad Delong digs up more evidence that David Kay is an okay guy. Initially the oldman thought that David Kay had sold out his scientific integrity to exaggerate evidence of WMD, but in the end he quit and called openly for the Bush Administration to admit there never had been WMD. This took some degree of integrity so the oldman is pleased to say that he was wrong about Kay, and that Kay in the end did the right thing.

So things don't look so good, and the military pronouncements about 'dead-enders' and 'foreign fighters' begins to look increasingly out of touch. I'd be much more optimistic about the potential outcome of things in Iraq, if the military would just own up to the real challenges rather than making me try to guess whether or not this is a bad remake of "Catch-22".

Looks ominious folks. A bad situation all around. Smells like yea olde lake of gasoline waiting for a match. My offer to take over the administration of Iraq for the White House stands, but they'd better hurry up because it seems with each passing day they're botching it ever more badly (Needlenose).

Love in the time of anarchy, a prelude to Easter

Events in the past few days have impressed a strange feeling on me. I won't go into detail about the horrifics, others have covered that particularly well from all angles. These men were as some have said mercenaries: "Blackwater Security Consulting, a company based in Moyock, N.C., said in a statement Thursday that the four victims were its employees. The company, which hires former military members from the United States and other countries to provide security training and guard services, was hired by the Defense Department to provide security for convoys that delivered food in the Fallujah area."

However, they were also soldiers serving our nation. That they were paid many times the going rate of regular soldiers in one of the bizaare "money saving" privatization schemes of Rumsfeld (how can you save money, even on overhead and benefits, by paying a mercenary $100k-$150k a year for a job that a regular soldier does for less than $25k?) makes no difference in the end. They were there in an official capacity executing the policies of our nation, and they had families.

***

The news is generally more depressing than usual. In Russia, authoritarian rule takes another lurch back from its untimely passing as the Duma passes a law making illegal large gatherings - such as say like protests. Everyone here in the States is subdued since the Fallujah incident, even sparking a brief moment of unity among the top political actors. In Iraq, they watch the images but there hasn't been a large outcry over it. Maybe they're ashamed of it, or maybe they thought we had it coming. I'm not sure.

Meanwhile, the Administration shockingly enough can't find anyone to volunteer to take over Iraq. My offer to do so to the White House still stands, if they can't find anybody else. I may be the last American or conservative willing to take this job, ironically enough. I'm sure they'll find somebody to hold the bag. In the last week, Friedman wrote a column saying how tired he was and how much he wanted someone to surprise him in a pleasant way. For someone to rise above themselves and give hope to a world drenched in bad news.

Meanwhile we approve the sale of long range radars to Taiwan. Coming on the heels of the election there, that can't be making the Chinese happy. Also depressing is the seeming blindness of many liberals and Democrats I've talked to about how much trouble Kerry is in politically. Last night I had dinner with a Democratic friend of mine and her "Old European" boyfriend, and they both acknowledged that right now that it's no better than a 50-50 shot either way.

In my more depressed moments while I see Kerry fritter away his advantages and cede ground to Bush, I wonder if the electoral college advantage with Kerry's lack of aggressive campaigning has already practically for all intents and purposes foreordained a Bush victory in November.

The 911 committee for all the efforts of the widows has gotten almost nowhere, and Clarke lost a golden moment. He could have laid out in an even handed manner the real state of American unreadiness in the War on Terror, and could have spurred our nation to ask what we need to do to truly improve things. Bush would have almost certainly been swept away once people realized that he was an impediment to safety. Instead, by trying to pin everything personally on Bush Clarke opened himself to charges and the appearance of partisanship.

Conservatives in the base still beholden to the religious right or the "neo-cons", instead of the "real-cons" that oldman is part of, then simply rallied to their guy: ole GW. Same old story, new faces.

***

So yeah, I'm pretty depressed and I haven't even seen Fog of War yet. It'll be coming to town tomorrow. I'd like to see it, but at this point it might drive me into a deep depression. The similarities between Iraq and Afghanistan or Vietnam are just becoming too overwhelming. By similarities I mean the general cluelessness, blindness, arrogance, and disconnection of our leaders as they puzzle why they can't make Iraq seem to work. It's said that the definition of madness is to do something over and over again and expect a different outcome than what preceded all the other attempts.

This year Easter falls on April-11th, that's 4-11 for everyone out there. Of course it makes no sense to strike on this date, except in the sort of weird numerological free association of a religious nut kind of way. This is why the oldman is not certain but suspicious of that date. In Britain they seem to have figured out that the 4-11 date is of sufficiently alarming nature, that they've increased their alert status and gone to stand-by for a terrorist attack through Easter Sunday. Here in the States though, not a peep. So much for those supposedly brilliant people protecting us.

This kind of massive incompetency is partly what makes me want to fall in love. All possibility of common sense or political progress seems if not hopeless than bogged down in quibbling and accusations at the moment. The powers that be are locked into their own incestuous feedback where they are blind to anything except the strokes and purrs of their own miniature world there in DC. When things feel that way, it makes me just want to do something that would give me a little hope that there's something pleasant and good and worth caring about in this world that's not poisoned by the stupidity and mendacity going around in spades.

So I think I'd like to fall in love. I have no candidates in particular, though some women in my acquaintance have sent some signals that it might not be a fate worse than death to fall into my arms. I'm not sure if it will be them, or one, or more than one, or anybody I currently know. What I do know is that I'm sick to my soul with the poison of grey futility that seems to ooze outwards from every news channel and every politician and every corporation around me.

***

I met someone cool today. He was an older "non-traditional" student, about two decades older than your typical college student. He was a baker, had been a baker for most of his life. He'd been a marine as well in the Reserves. They'd called him up for Desert Shield. He showed me one of his letters of commendation. It was impressive. He'd been a sniper / forward observer / spotter. That's one of the most elite fields there is. Oh and he was an Eagle Scout too. Is that great or what?

He'd been downsized though and he told me that after three interviews when they told him that he couldn't get a job without a college degree. So back to school he went, to specialize in Industrial Safety. I told him that it suited him well. Then I shook his hand, since it was an honor to meet a real war hero, though that's not what I called him. Too many of the poseurs and not enough of the real kind like him. Though he wasn't the most impressive one I've seen mind you, but rare enough.

I've known plenty of veterans. There doesn't seem to be an old veteran from Vietnam that can't wait to swap stories with me from the old days. This wasn't one of the braggerts. He was an nice guy, very intent, eyes straight forward, he'd look me in the eye. Most people won't look me in the eye, not unless I'm being especially nice to them, and even then the eye contact isn't for that long. People tell me that I tend to look straight through them, and it's unnerving. Life has taught me to assess people pretty well, and I can state candidly their short comings. This sort of critique hardly goes over well often.

This guy though, he looked me in the eye, and I knew he was bright eyed and bushy tailed and he was used to getting assessed down to the weights of his shoe laces. That didn't tell me he was ex-mil, but he was in good shape - nice iron hard well developed forearms.

I drew him out in the conversation because a girl in the physics helproom that I was manning as my office hours had begun talking about statistics that she was doing. I then shared in my usual philosophical musing my ideas about how physics was in the middle between the applied and abstract liberal arts. I could see the guy getting real eager to participate.

After I'd said that pure math was closer to philosophy than physics, and statistics was somewhere in between, he could hardly contain himself and broke in with his own ideas. He talked about how it was odd that the more perfect a philosophy became, the less useful it was. I agreed, because the main idea is that the world is not rational. The more rational you act, the more unworldly your ideas are, because the history of mankind is not the history of rationality. Then he mentioned how it was like you could describe everything with a dot or a line.

When the girl looked confused, I mentioned that he was just talking about geometrical philosophy - the same kind of thing that Plato and Socrates did about 2500 years ago. As an example I brought up Xeno's paradox, about how if you take half the distance in any interval with each step then theoretically you will never arrive at the destination. In real life you do arrive however, because you can't take exactly half the distance exactly in any given step.

The guy was nodding right along with that, and after that it wasn't hard to pull out his history from him, about how his job prospects and his new kid with his wife of only a few years had gotten him thinking he needed a new degree and a new career. I complimented him by telling him he'd broken my stereotype, that you don't think that often of Jarhead Philosophers. His nine plus months in the desert had certainly earned him the right to an education, was what I told him. He countered by saying that anybody who was in the Marines for nine months had earned an education. I let him have that one, since there wasn't much I could find to disagree with that.

Yes, I really did tell an ex-mil Marine Sniper to his face that he was a Jarhead Philosopher. I'm pretty confident, with good reason, and I call them like I see them and I've lived this long by keeping a big chip on my shoulder against all challengers. Including ex-mil guys. Especially them.

If anything however, he seemed quite pleased with the appellation. He talked about how you'd be surprised about how many individuals with such thoughts were in the Marines. He mentioned how if you spent a few months in a foxhole with some guys, they'd talk about all sorts of things. Of course, he mentioned that the Marines also had plenty of guys who were ditch diggers. The kind of guys he said that if you told them to go someplace, they'd do it eagerly and ask questions later.

The guy's name was Corporal Powell and I hope to run into him again sometime.

That was a small taste of hope. I'd like to have some more of it. To know someone who oozed decency the way Mr. Powell did and have a personal life of delightful sincerity. To be honest, I'm more the politician. I know how to survive, and when in a back alley fight to not only stick the knife in someone's back but how to get away with it. That's my life. I fight dirty because I fight to win.

Not with everyone. Decent people like Powell I won't screw. This whole teaching gig is some sort of idealistic crusade I think I dreamt up one day to ease my conscience for all the bad things I'd done. No money, no wealth, a life of pure contemplation. Almost monklike really. But deep down inside I know who I am, and what I've done. In the end, I really I belong with the bastards and when I'm among them there is no one better at burying people than I am. Really. If it makes a difference, they all had it coming.

It's one of the things I've struggled with my entire life. I'm a bad man, in my own way ruthless to the core. But I can't do any good without embracing the side of myself that makes people scared if they look me in the eye for too long. I just do what it takes to get things done. So I'm always caught, between being the ineffectual nice guy slaving away for the good of society, and the hard core guy that can call a Marine sniper a Jughead Philosopher to his face and not even have to worry about having to get away with it.

No, I won't screw a decent guy like Powell. They're just too rare to mess with. It wouldn't be so bad to have some decency in a pretty package or two to come to at night with though. My soul longs for something like that.

***

Love in the time of anarchy. I could use me a little of some of that right about now. Here's to hoping Alqueda doesn't have a sick sense of inter-religious humor and have a little surprise waiting for us on Easter Sunday. It'll be many years before Easter falls on the 11th again, and if that's their gig, this is their big chance. Maybe I should take a chance myself and ask one of those lovely ladies with hilights in their hair out.

Until next time,

Oldman