Category: The Dish

Just check this December 19 blog entry out:

A beautiful Baghdad morning. Bright morning sun, slight chill in the air. Standing by a palace pool, surrounded by palm trees. Talking to my daughter Sarah, back home in Minnesota, where it’s just 10 pm on Monday night. The sound of mortar fire breaks the stillness of the morning air. Insurgent fire or Sadr City fire? Perhaps a gift from the Iranians to al-Sadr. I’m told the impact is close to the embassy grounds. One of the staff said it woke him up. Probably aimed at the area where workers gather to enter the Green Zone. In the far distance there is some smoke on the horizon. Car bomb I’m told by embassy staff.

Yesterday was a full day of meetings accompanied by Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL). Starting with the Iraqi National Security Advisor, Dr. Rubaie, and concluding with Deputy Prime Minister Bahram Salah. In speaking with Iraqis, the assessment we are given of the path we should take is heavily influenced by whether we are talking to Shiites, Sunnis, or Kurds.

Maliki’s National Security Advisor, Dr. Rubaie, maintains that the major challenge facing Iraq is not a sectarian conflict, but rather al-Qaeda and disgruntled Baathists seeking to regain power. Both Senator Nelson and I react with incredulity to that assessment. Rubaie cautions against more troops in Baghdad.

Coleman learned one thing in Baghdad. The Maliki government is lying through its teeth. Somehow president Bush never understood this, and still doesn’t. But then he still believes Vladimir Putin is a man of God.

Does he have a James Frey problem? I like Obama, but you’ve got to worry when a campaign dismisses something as a "non-story." That almost always means it’s a real one.

A military source tells me that the latest Public Affairs Guidance issued to the various branches of the military no longer refers to the surge as a "surge." It is now officially referred to in written and verbal communications as a "plus up." "Surge" is so early January.

Chardon, Ohio, 1 pm.

The Bush administration claimed it could wiretap phones without a warrant because it was essential to national security. Now they think they can live with the FISA court. So are we now to believe that this seizure of executive power to spy on Americans without oversight was always optional? Are we now in grave danger? Or have we just learned – again! – not to trust a word these power-mongers say? More commentary here.

It’s become a racial cause celebre. Clive Davis provides the Brit overview.

Listen to the prime minister of Iraq, Nuri al-Maliki. In the Times of London, he strongly expresses a clear desire: to be given weapons and more training in order to unleash Shiite state violence against Sunni insurgents. His view of the next six months seems pretty obvious to me: the U.S. can help weed out Sunni insurgents in Baghdad, and he is prepared to make a few gestures against the more egregious death squads on his side. But after six months, he wants to be able to get on with the job of killing Sunni insurgents himself in defense of a Shia majority state:

Asked how long Iraq would require US troops, Mr al-Maliki said: "If we succeed in implementing the agreement between us to speed up the equipping and providing weapons to our military forces, I think that within three to six months our need for American troops will dramatically go down. That is on condition that there are real, strong efforts to support our military forces and equipping and arming them." …

Robert Gates, the new US Defence Secretary, said that Mr al-Maliki could lose his job if he failed to stop communal bloodshed and Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, gave a warning that he was living on "borrowed time" and that American patience was running out.

Challenged on the point, Mr al-Maliki remarked acidly: "Certain officials are going through a crisis. Secretary Rice is expressing her own point of view if she thinks that the Government is on borrowed time, whether it is borrowed time for the Iraqi Government or American Administration. I don’t think we are on borrowed time."

How exactly would Maliki "lose his job"? The administration’s political strategy in Iraq is based on control it doesn’t exercize. And its military policy is based on a national government that does not exist. Apart from that, the White House has it all figured out.

(Photo: Brooks Kraft for Time.)

Together at last – as the Christianist-Islamist alliance deepens on the far right.

A reader writes:

I’m strongly anti-war, but I still wish Petraeus true success, sincerely – because I presume that the key existential goal now is to "pacify" a spot of active, pure hell on earth that we are partially responsible for. That pacification may include using deadly force and would be morally justified on just war grounds. The situation now is one in which not to act at all is immoral – but, it may be just as moral and practical to withdraw and let them face each other (Shia, Sunni, others) and make their own existential decision without us as an excuse anymore.

As the one writer said of the unjust war: we were not willing to fight to pacify, to occupy, to take control. We set this up for disaster and watched it. It will be written in history books: When Moqtata al-Sadr emerged early on, why was he not arrested soon (under rules of martial law; but handled humanely) by the new occupying force, detained as a potential terrorist and inciter to violence against other Iraqis? People often compare Japan to Iraq. Would MacArthur have tolerated someone like al-Sadr at large to pursue his course during the occupation?

Why did we not prosecute our victory and power? Why were we so cowardly or unwise or both to let him (and others like him) stand us down? These guys think GHW Bush failed to follow through. But the first Bush saw what follow-through would entail and did not start down that path. These guys did so and then surrendered the position.

In my view, history will show that this president never seriously prosecuted this war, never took his responsibility seriously, never provided sufficient resources, never even gave it his full attention. That became clear to me in 2003. I didn’t get it beforehand because I just assumed that any American president would understand the gravity of the decisions he was taking and would ensure that he took all means to guarantee victory. But this president didn’t. He ran this war like a distracted frat boy, irritated by the distractions it required, and outsourced its execution to two unhinged aides. In other words: he wimped out. Bill Kristol has the gall to call critics of the surge "boneless wonders.’ But there is only one truly boneless wonder these past four years, and he is still sitting in the White House.

(Photo: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty.)

Rochester Hills, Michigan, today.