Month: January 2007

Watch him deny its existence:

And Greenwald’s response.

An interesting interview. Money quote:

Ayad Allawi: I’m not a military strategist, but looking at it on the surface, I think 20,000 additional troops to complement the 130,000 already there doesn’t seem to be a great boost in the troop numbers. So I don’t think it’s purely a military gesture, and I don’t think it will have a very significant effect on the military equation.

But it’s part of a multi-pronged strategy that basically will ratchet up the pressure on the Iraqi government, propose an alternative to it, and at the same time escalate the costs that Iran may have to bear if it continues to confront or challenge the United States in Iraq.

National Interest: So in your view, the troop increase is in part intended to ratchet up the pressure on Iran, could you elaborate on that?

AA: Well I think it’s clear—the role that Iran has in the Iraqi crisis. It is extremely important and significant, particularly its effect on the Shi‘a Islamist political parties.

And as much as the United States, or the Bush Administration, has objected to possibility of negotiations with Iran, the only alternative course that they have is to confront it, and to challenge it, and to raise the cost of its apparent intervention in the Iraqi crisis.

This of course creates a serious problem for the Iraqi government itself, which is to an extent anchored around the Islamist parties of the United Iraqi Alliance. On the surface it appears to be a contradiction. I mean how can the United States expect that by confronting Iran and Iraq, it is going to get the support of the UIA, which is to some extent dependent on Iranian support—ongoing support—politically and otherwise?

So it’s a way of trying to break this conundrum. Now I don’t think it’s likely to succeed because the only thing that can happen out of this strategy is basically the breakup of the United Iraqi Alliance. You are going to get possibly a new governing majority in parliament, but that would not necessarily reduce the violence or the instability inside the country.

A chill descends. My take here.

A reader writes:

That response from Hewitt is more than a little interesting for what it says about the mindset of George Bush and his dwindling band of supporters.

We get the Iraq Study Group telling us to pursue Plan B. We get most of the military, including half a dozen generals at a Senate hearing last week, telling us to pursue Plan B. We get almost every foreign policy expert in the country – including Charles Krauthammer, for goodness sake – telling us to pursue Plan B. And we had a pretty unambiguous vote for Plan B from the American public in November.

Yet Mr. Hewitt acts as if a statement by Republican senators in favor of Plan B is an act of "appeasement," close to treasonous, because General Petreus testified yesterday in favor of Plan A (meanwhile telling us the situation in Iraq is "dire").

You can reach this kind of "doesn’t compute" meltdown only by the most extreme version of subconcious filitering, ignoring all imputs other than those that yield the result you want. We all do it to some degree, but with Mr. Bush and his supporters the filtering has become almost desperate, of necessity. And when your desired outputs are so out of kilter with the available inputs, meltdowns are to be expected.

Just to play a little mind game, suppose the President had decided we needed 50,000 more troops, or 100,000 more troops, or 50,000 fewer troops. Would Mr. Hewitt have raised a hue and cry? Is there any policy that would have been criticized by Hewitt, once announced by Bush? No chance. Clearly, what Mr. Hewitt and his dwindling band care about has nothing to do with victory in Iraq or supporting our troops any other national interest. They care about something much smaller, much more personal, something that nobody else cares anything about at all.

And so it begins …

"It is critical that we understand that this new form of terrorism carries another more subtle, perhaps equally pernicious, risk. Because it might encourage a fear-driven and inappropriate response. By that I mean it can tempt us to abandon our values. I think it important to understand that this is one of its primary purposes…

London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 were not victims of war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, ‘soldiers’. They were deluded, narcissistic inadequates. They were criminals. They were fantasists. We need to be very clear about this. On the streets of London, there is no such thing as a ‘war on terror’, just as there can be no such thing as a ‘war on drugs’.

The fight against terrorism on the streets of Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of crime, the enforcement of our laws and the winning of justice for those damaged by their infringement," – Britain’s director of public prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald.

The Christianist knives are out:

"I think you have to look at where he stood on the issues and what he said publicly,"  Brownback said. ‚ÄòAt times he’s said different things on these issues. I think that’s all going to come out during a long campaign."

Brownback wouldn’t flatly say if Romney is a reliable conservative. He said, ‚ÄòWe’ll see and that will be for him to discuss. I do think when we get out on the campaign trail and when the campaign really gets fully engaged, there’s going to be a lot of discussion about where do people actually stand on the issues and where have they been and where are they now and how reliable are they to stay that way."

By reliable conservative, of course, they mean reliable Christianist. Romney is reliably pro-Romney, as his record amply demonstrates. Meanwhile, you can view anti-Romney activists at the March for Life in DC recently below; and an endorsement of Brownback.  If I were a social conservative, I’d rather have someone who agrees with me out of conviction than out of  expediency.