The 'war on terror' licenses a new stupidity in geopolitics

The language loved by Bush and Musharraf has translated into a global disaster bringing death and misery to millions

Simon Jenkins
Wednesday January 30, 2008
The Guardian

Nothing and nobody can stop bombs going off. No citizen, no police force, no army, no government and no global military alliance can prevent a determined suicide bomber from blowing himself up. It will happen and innocent people will die as a result, horribly, as they do on the roads, from drugs and alcohol, or from natural disasters - again without responsible authority being able to stop it.

What is recent is the admission of this truism into the mainstream of government under the rubric of "terrorism". This week two outgoing presidents, America's George Bush and Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, defined their terms of office in relation to terror. Bush did so in his final state of the union message on Monday and Musharraf that same day in London during a charm offensive prior to next month's elections.

To Bush, the "war on terror" is the ruling mantra of his politics of fear. Since 9/11 gave a prop to his weakening presidency, his language has scaled new heights of alarmist rhetoric. It has validated every internal repression and every external war. "He who is not with us is against us," he cries. Terrorists everywhere are "opposing the advance of liberty ... evil men who despise freedom, despise America and aim to subject millions to their violent rule".

As the sociologist Ulrich Beck has written, "properly exploited, a novel risk is always an elixir to an ailing leader". By declaring a threat so awful as to be intolerable, a politician can limit the liberties of a free society in the name of risk-aversion. Musharraf utters hardly a sentence that does not contain the word terror. Pivotally close to the base from which 9/11 was apparently launched, his dictatorship has been indulged by London and Washington for a full seven years. This week Gordon Brown hailed him as a "key ally on terrorism", enabling him to take comfort in sacking his judiciary and curbing his media.

Had the war on terror been used only as a metaphor for better policing, like rhetorical "wars" on drugs, poverty and street crime, it might have passed muster. Bush and Musharraf have found the military metaphor too potent to resist and duly carried it into literal effect. The result has been a disaster for their countries, and incidentally for themselves.

The west's Afghan adventure is now devoid of coherent strategy. Soldiers are dying, the opium trade is booming and aid lies undistributed. Command and control of the war against the Taliban is slipping from the most bizarre western occupying force since the fourth Crusade to a tight cabal around the Afghan ruler, Hamid Karzai, who is fighting to retain a remnant of authority in his own capital.

Karzai's exasperation with the west has led him to refuse the services as "coordinator" of the former Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown. The latter may have cut a dash in the subsidy swamp of Sarajevo, but in Afghanistan he would have been a boy on a man's errand. Karzai knows well that his fate lies not with the patronising platitudes of western proconsuls but in the hard graft of provincial warlords, drug gangsters and Taliban go-betweens.

These go-betweens have had their status massively boosted by the war on terror. Bush's demand in 2001 that Musharraf "join the war" sent Pakistani forces into the border territories, breaking old treaties and driving the Pashtun tribes into the eager arms of Taliban leaders. This undoubtedly saved Osama bin Laden's skin from the fury of the northern Tajiks, committed to avenge his murder of their leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud.

Musharraf, at America's bidding and with $10bn of American money, has done what even his craziest predecessors avoided, and recklessly set the Pashtun on the warpath - increasingly in thrall to a revived al-Qaida. The result is a plague of suicide bombings and killings in the heartland of his benighted state. From the law courts of America to the mosques of west London and the mountains of the Hindu Kush, the war on terror has been lethally and predictably counter-productive. It embodies the new stupidity in international affairs.

Nobody disputes that there are killer cells at large in the world, most of them proclaiming various Islamist creeds. It is the job of intelligence agencies and the police to catch as many as they can. After a hesitant start, they appear to be quite good at it. Some bombs will get through but they will not be deterred by draconian laws, any more than by machine gun-toting policemen in Downing Street and Heathrow. Robust societies can handle this admittedly intermittent threat. Only weak ones will capitulate to it.

The menace of these killers lies not in their firepower but in their capacity to distort the judgment and commitment to freedom of politicians too cowardly to bear on their shoulders the burden of risk. In two weeks' time, the fragile democracy of Pakistan will defy the bombers and hold an election prior, it is hoped, to some version of democratic rule. Such communities will defy a probable burst of terror bombs only if their leaders stop setting "terrorists" on a pedestal and using language that exaggerates their capacity, as Bush puts it, "to oppose the advance of freedom".

It is leaders, not bombers, who have the power to balk the advance of freedom. Already those leaders have used the war on terror to introduce the Patriot Act, Guantánamo Bay and a $1.5 trillion war in Iraq. In Pakistan they have used it as an excuse for emergency rule, the imprisonment of senior judges, and the provocation of unprecedented insurgency in the north-west frontier territories. In Britain leaders have used the war as an excuse for 42-day detention without trial, the world's most intrusive surveillance state, and not one but two contested military occupations of foreign soil.

This so-called war on terror has filled the pockets of those profiting from it. It has killed thousands, immiserated millions and infringed the liberty of hundreds of millions. The only rough justice it has delivered is to ruin the careers of those who propagated it. Tony Blair was driven to early resignation. Bush has been humiliated and Musharraf's wretched rule brought close to an overdue end. It may be an ill wind that blows no good, but it is hardly enough.

simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk

America By the Numbers

The Shameful State of the Union

By ROBERT WEISSMAN

Here's one thing everyone should be able to agree upon from George Bush's State of the Union address: "We have unfinished business before us."

Apart from that, it's a little difficult to credit much of what he said.

"So long as we continue to trust the people, our nation will prosper, our liberty will be secure, and the state of our Union will remain strong," he concluded.

But the state of our Union is anything but strong. Consider these snapshots:

1. The United States is spending more than $700 billion a year on the military.

The 2008 appropriations bills include $506.9 billion for the Department of Defense and the nuclear weapons activities of the Department of Energy, plus an additional $189.4 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. [1]

Other military funding is located in the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies.

Congress has approved nearly $700 billion to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the appropriated amount. It doesn't include costs to society -- loss of life, injuries, etc. The amount spent on war-fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq now exceeds the inflation-adjusted amount spent on the Vietnam War. [2]

The United States accounts for roughly half of the world's military expenditures. [3]

Depending on how you count, more than half of all discretionary federal spending is now directed to the military. [4]

2. Wealth is concentrating in the United States at a startling rate.

So startling, in fact, it is very hard to get your head around the statistics. Notes Sam Pizzigati of the invaluable online newsletter Too Much: In 2004, the richest 1 percent in the United States held over $2.5 trillion more in net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent.

The concentration of wealth and income reflects a major shift over the last three decades in how the United States shares its earnings. In 1976, the top 1 percent of the population received 8.83 percent of national income. In 2005, they grabbed 21.93 percent. [5]

3. Compensation for CEOs and Wall Street financiers is out of control

The average CEO from a Fortune 500 company now makes 364 times an average worker's pay, reports the Institute of Policy Studies. This is up from a 40-to-1 ratio in 1980. [6]

But the managers of businesses that make things and deliver non-financial services aren't making the truly big money these days. In the hyper-financialized economy, it's the finance guys who are getting truly rich.

And they're getting rich despite the huge losses being wracked up on Wall Street. Bonuses for those toiling on Wall Street totaled $33.2 billion in 2007, down just 2 percent, according to New York state comptroller's office. Overall compensation and benefits at seven of the Street's biggest firms totaled $122 billion, up 10 percent since 2006 -- even though net overall revenue for these firms fell 6 percent. [7]

But even the traditional investment banks can't match the outrageous compensation captured by private equity and hedge fund managers, a few of whom manage to pull in more than $1 billion in a single year. Thanks to a tax loophole, these characters pay income tax at a rate less than half of what a dentist making $200,000 a year pays.

4. Corporations are capturing more of the nation's wealth.

Corporate profits amounted to 8 percent of GDP over the last decade, Business Week reports, up from 6.5 percent in the early 1990s. [8]

5. The housing bubble and the subprime mortgage meltdown are driving millions of families from their homes.

The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that 2.2 million subprime home loans made in recent years have already failed or will end in foreclosure. Homeowners will lose $164 billion from these foreclosures, the Center projects. [9] Overall losses from deflated housing values may top $2 trillion. One in five subprime mortgages originated during the past two years is likely to end in foreclosure.

6. The racial wealth divide remains a chasm with little prospect of being bridged -- and is likely growing worse.

At the rate the wealth divide closed between 1982 and 2004, it would take 594 more years for African Americans to achieve parity with whites, according to United for a Fair Economy. But the subprime debacle is hitting minority communities disproportionately hard, causing what United for a Fair Economy believes may be the worst deprivation of people of color's wealth in modern U.S. history. [10]

7. Women continue to be paid far less than men.

The ratio of the annual averages of women's and men's median weekly earnings was 80.8 for full-time workers in 2006, according to the Institute for Women's Policy Research. Progress in closing the gender wage gap has slowed considerably since 1990. The gender wage ratio for annual earnings increased by 11.4 percentage points from 1980 to 1990, but added only 5.4 percentage points over the next 15 years. [11]

8. More than one in six children live in poverty.

Is there a worse indictment of the richest society in history? The official U.S. poverty rate was 12.3 percent for 2006. The rate for children was 17.4 percent. The official poverty line is absurdly low. As defined by the Office of Management and Budget the average poverty threshold for a family of four in 2006 was $20,614. For an individual, it was $10,294. [12]

9. More than 45 million people in the United States do not have health insurance.

According to the Census Bureau, 47 million were uninsured in 2006, 15.8 percent of the population. [13]

10. The U.S. trade deficit is more than 5 percent of the gross domestic product.

The 2006 U.S. trade deficit totaled $763.6 billion. [14] The trade deficit will eventually have to be balanced -- sooner than later, it now seems. As the dollar continues to swoon, expect to see inflation and higher interest rates over the medium term. The real standard of living, in economic terms, will decline as a result.

11. U.S. fuel efficiency is worse now than it was two decades ago.

The average fuel economy of today's U.S. car and truck fleet is 25.3 miles per gallon, reports the Union of Concerned Scientists, lower than the 25.9 mpg fleet average in 1987. Regulatory standards have not changed (though a modest increase is mandated by the energy bill passed in 2007), and more SUVs and light truck are on the road. [15]

12. The nation's infrastructure is crumbling.

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that $1.6 trillion is needed over a five-year period to bring the nation's infrastructure to good condition. [16]

13. More than two million people in the United States are locked in prison.

What a colossal waste of human talent. 2,258,983 prisoners were held in Federal or State prisons or in local jails, at the end of 2006, an increase of 2.9 percent from 2005. The prison population has grown 3.4 percent annually since 1995. African-American males are imprisoned at a rate 6.5 times higher than white males, Latino males almost 3 times higher than whites. [17]

Most of these conditions are worse now than at the start of the Bush administration, many dramatically worse. But they have their roots in a bipartisan policy approach over the last three decades, favoring deregulation, handover of government assets to corporations (privatization), corporate globalization, hyper-financialization, lunatic military expenditures, tax cuts for the rich and a slashed social safety net.

If the United States is to see "real change" -- and actually strengthen the state of the Union -- there will have to be a reversal of these policies.

Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor and director of Essential Action.

Notes

[1] Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation,

[2] Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation,

[3] SIPRI Yearbook 2007, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,

[4] War Resisters League,

[5] Too Much,

[6] Executive Excess 2007, Institute for Policy Studies,

[7] Tomoeh Murakami Tse and Renae Merle, The Bonuses Keep Coming, The Washington Post, January 29, 2008,

[8] Michael Mandel, How Real Was the Prosperity, Business Week, January 23 2008,

[9] Center for Responsible Lending, Losing Ground: Foreclosures in the Subprime Market and Their Cost to Homeowners,

[10] Foreclosed: State of the Dream 2008, United for a Fair Economy,

[11] Institute for Women's Policy Research, The Gender Wage Ratio: Women's And Men's Earnings,

[12] http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/poverty06/tables06.html

[13] http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/hlthins/hlthin06/hlth06asc.html

[14] http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/annual.html

[15] Union of Concerned Scientists, Fuel Economy Basics

[16] American Society of Civil Engineers, Report Card for America's Infrastructure, http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/index.cfm

[17] US DOJ, Office of Justice Statistics, Bureau of Justice Statistics
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm

Smirk of the Union

By Rick Perlstein, TomPaine.com
Posted on January 29, 2008, Printed on January 29, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/75340/

A small and beaten man spoke to Congress and the nation last night, convinced in his own mind he's a hero. Snoopy battling the Red Baron. Walter Mitty, imagining himself dying bravely before a firing squad.

For those who missed it, here's the Big Con run-down. Let me start with the facial expressions. Because, more than any of the words, they told the sad story.

The entrance: He raises both eyebrows puckishly, like the frat boy he is. Introduced by Speaker Pelosi, he reacts curiously to the wave of applause: he blushes. He actually thinks this applause is for him--they love me!!--and not a perfunctory gesture of respect for the office. He still thinks he is a great man, and that others think he is a great man. He looks about a thousand years old. He begins: "Seven years have passed since I first stood before you at this rostrum." Or that's what the transcript says he said. If you missed it live, what he actually said was, "...stood before yuh at this rostr'm...."

John Wayne taking on the desperadoes.

Then, the arrogant bastard, he makes a joke: "These issues"--he's named "peace and war, rising competition in the world economy, and the health and welfare of our citizens"--"deserve vigorous debate. And I think history will show we've answered the call." He gives the chamber that famous smirk, to let them know it's OK to laugh, even amid all the pomp: get it? These people keep insisting on debatin' with me. Washington! Bicker, bicker, bicker.

Then, he obliquely announces the speech's theme, also with a smirk: Bush's greatest hits. A golden trip down memory lane. He says, of public servants' job to "carry out the people's business," that "it remains our charge to keep." Dog whistle: this is the Methodist hymn that by which entitled his campaign book. Because remember: George Bush is a Christian Unleashing the "armies of compassion." Or it it this "army of compassion"?

Which brings up one of the creepiest features of the speech: "more than 2,600 of the poorest children in our Nation's Capital have found new hope at a faith-based or other non-public school. Sadly, these schools are disappearing at an alarming rate in many of America's inner cities." I didn't know--and perhaps the Constitution has something to say on this--it was the job of the U.S. government to fret over the disappearance of "faith-based" institutions. Well, our president now proposes we shore them up with "Pell Grants for Kids." Senator Clayborn Pell, a great man, now unfortunately suffers from Parkinson's disease, and probably lacks the wherewithal to slap the president in the face for the insult to his great progressive legacy.

I suppose we should also attend to the words, because this pathetic washout happens to be the most powerful man in the world, so the words he uses are important.

He repeated the Great Republican Lie of 2007, implying that the Democrats in the 110th Congress is obstructionist--"Let us show them that Republicans and Democrats can compete for votes and cooperate for results at the same time," he piously intoned.--when it's really himself and the Republican minority who are willfully obstructing, with an aggressiveness unmatched in modern history. He still trumpets his own disastrous Ownership Society rhetoric (How disastrous? See here) and barely acknowledges the massive economic pain Americans are feeling and our about to feel -- and only then to issue one more obstructionist threat, on the stimulus package: "The temptation will be to load up the bill. That would delay it or derail it." Mafia words: my way, or else.

But back, again, to the facial expressions. The most fulsome smirk came, I think, winding up to his promise, "If any bill raising taxes reaches my desk, I will veto it." He said something interesting, perhaps referring to the remarkable poll results consistently showing a majority of Americans believe Bush's tax cuts were not worth it, or that they would be glad to pay higher taxes if it meant healthcare for all Americans. Such national maturity--indeed any occasion to call Americans to some higher sacrifice--can only but be mocked by the smug bastard running our country. He said this: "Others have said they'd be happier to pay higher taxes. I welcome their enthusiasm. The IRS accepts both checks and money owners."

Cheney joins his smirk.

What else? There was his promise of an executive order canceling earmarks not voted out in the open--because, of course, now that the Democrats run Congress, procedural irregularity and pork-barrel spending has suddenly become a national crisis.

There was some fairy dust about making "health care more affordable and accessible for all Americans. The best way to achieve that goal is by expanding consumer choice, not government control." The Republicans' barks of approval at that one are guttural. He add that medical decisions must be "made in the privacy of your doctor's office, not in the halls of Congress."

About medical decisions made in callous insurance company cubicles, of course--which is to say, most medical decisions--he has nothing to say.

"Six years ago, we came together to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, and today no one can deny its results." No one can deny they suck. Read this.

"To keep America competitive into the future, we must trust in the skill of our scientists and engineers and empower them to pursue the breakthroughs of tomorrow"? Only if those breakthroughs accord with conservative dogma. Read this.

Perhaps later, I'll give you more on the fairy tales he's propounding our nation on its place in the world. I'll leave you with this one peace of jargon: "protective overwatch mission." That's the new Bushism for "We're staying in Iraq for ever." You'll be hearing it much more in the days ahead.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/75340/

Army Blocks Disability Paperwork Aid at Fort Drum

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18492376

Army officials in upstate New York instructed representatives from the Department of Veterans Affairs not to help disabled soldiers at Fort Drum Army base with their military disability paperwork last year. That paperwork can be crucial because it helps determine whether soldiers will get annual disability payments and health care after they're discharged.

Now soldiers at Fort Drum say they feel betrayed by the institutions that are supposed to support them. The soldiers want to know why the Army would want to stop them from getting help with their disability paperwork and why the VA— whose mission is to help veterans — would agree to the Army's request.

'A Worn Pair of Boots'

One disabled soldier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he fears retaliation from the military, says it feels like a slap in the face.

"To be tossed aside like a worn-out pair of boots is pretty disheartening," the soldier says. "I always believed the Army would take care of me if I did the best I could, and I've done that."

At a restaurant near Fort Drum, the soldier described his first briefing with the VA office on base. According to the soldier, the VA official told a classroom full of injured troops, "We cannot help you review the narrative summaries of your medical problems." The official said the VA used to help soldiers with the paperwork, but Army officials saw soldiers from Fort Drum getting higher disability ratings with the VA's help than soldiers from other bases. The Army told the VA to stop helping Fort Drum soldiers describe their army injuries, and the VA did as it was told.

It's unclear why the Army wanted to stop the soldiers from getting help with the disability paperwork. Cynthia Vaughan, spokeswoman for the Army surgeon general, says the VA was not doing anything wrong by helping soldiers at Fort Drum.

"There is no Army policy on outside help in reviewing and/or assisting soldiers in rewriting their narratives during the 10-day period which they have to review them," Vaughan says.

She says the officers who asked the VA to stop helping Fort Drum's soldiers were part of what the Army calls a "Tiger Team"— an ad-hoc group assigned to investigate, in this case, medical disability benefits.

According to Army spokesman George Wright, the Tiger Team thought the VA should not be helping soldiers with their medical documents. The Army delivered that message to VA officials in Buffalo, N.Y., who went along with the request, even though the VA's assistance complied with Army policy.

The Army declined to provide any information about the Tiger Team members' identities or their motivations in asking the VA to stop reviewing the soldiers' paperwork. However, private attorney Mara Hurwitt points out that the Army has a financial incentive to keep soldiers' disability ratings low.

"The more soldiers you have who get disability retirements, the more retirement pay is coming out of your budget," Hurwitt says.

Qualified to Help?

Another question is why the VA would go along with the Army's request.

Tom Pamperin, deputy director of the VA's compensation and pension service, believes VA officers are not qualified to help with soldiers' disability paperwork.

"We do not train our employees in the intricacies of the Defense Department's disability evaluation system, so we would feel that it would be inappropriate for our employees to apply VA standards to a Defense Department process," Pamperin says.

But Hurwitt argues the VA is more equipped than anyone to help soldiers with their paperwork.

"VA counselors understand the disabilities, what the different kinds of conditions are, how they should be properly described in the paperwork," Hurwitt says.

She points out that VA officials have to look at a soldier's medical history anyway to counsel him or her on VA benefits, which are separate from Army benefits.

"Really what it comes down to is you're just helping the soldier get what he's entitled to under law," Hurwitt says.

System 'Unfair'

This is just the latest in a string of controversies about disability payments for injured veterans.

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who co-chaired President Bush's recent commission on veterans' care, says stories like this one show how the whole disability rating system is broken and needs to change.

The system is "fundamentally unfair," according to Shalala, "and that's the point about the need for reform in the system. It has to be reformed for everyone."

The sad, sorry State of the Union

Bush's final State of the Union was just more of the same

By DOUG THOMPSON

The snake-oil salesman tried once again Monday night to sell his illusions to a skeptical audience that stopped listening to him years ago.

George W. Bush's final State of the Union speech marked a sad, pathetic footnote to a failed Presidency: a dismal, clueless exercise in fear-mongering and falsehood; a monument to arrogance and bluster; and a testament to the depths to which this nation's government has sunk.

For the most part, this seventh and last SOTU was pure Bush: a mixture of unreality and unrelenting hyperbole, delivered in the stilted, halting style of a failed orator.

He tried to convince an skeptical Congress to become more of a co-conspirator to his failed polices, urging the House and Senate to make his failed programs permanent as a lasting monument to his corrupt legacy.

Congress must, he said, make his tax cuts permanent -- a move certain to deepen the record deficits that he will leave to the next President.

It must, he demanded, legalize his warrantless wiretapping bill to make government spying on American citizens the alw of the land -- cementing his destruction of the Constitution and destroying what little is left of the freedoms we once thought were bedrocks of the American way of life.

It must continue to send billions off to pay for his failed war in Iraq and support a military presence there that will last well into the next decade if not much, much longer.

But even Congress knows a lame duck when it sees one and, with one eye on the approaching November elections, few -- Democrat or Republican -- are willing to listen to the ravings of George W. Bush.

As Larry Markasak of The Associated Press reports:

A lame duck president called again for immigration reform, an end to lawmakers' pet projects, control of Social Security spending and making tax cuts permanent. Democrats have rejected those Bush initiatives before.

And, in a sign that the dominant political battles will not be in Congress, many in the House chamber kept an eye during the speech on Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton — bitter rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. They sat close to each other, but managed not to shake hands.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who hours earlier had endorsed Obama over Clinton, reached out to shake Sen. Clinton's hand when she came near.

Delivering the televised Democratic response, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius urged Bush to work with a Congress controlled by her party.

"The last five years have cost us dearly — in lives lost, in thousands of wounded warriors whose futures may never be the same, in challenges not met here at home because our resources were committed elsewhere," she said. "America's foreign policy has left us with fewer allies and more enemies."

Bush's time has, indeed, passed and many in Congress and among the American public, wish it was a time that had never happened. His legacy will be a failed, corrupt Presidency that drove this nation to the brink of the abyss and could yet plunge America into it. He has, after all, nearly a year left to complete his dismantling of the Constitution and final elimination of what little integrity is left of the office of President.

In usual Bush style, he twisted facts, played the terrorism fear card and claimed credit for successes that don't exist. He claims of success in Iraq came on a day when five American soldiers died -- the bloodiest death toll for our troops in a long time.

He continues to claim America's economy is sound at a time then millions have lost their homes, a record number of Iraq vets are homeless and this country slides deeper into recession.

Yes, the President of the United States gave Congress and America his view of the State of the Union Monday night. As he has six times before, he presented a view obscured by illusion, illogic and incoherence.

America is in a sorry state...and it sailed into those dangerous waters with George W. Bush at the helm of the ship of state. But this captain will not go down with his ship. He will walk away and leave others to try and save the sinking U.S.S. America.

IRAQ: 'US the Biggest Producer of Terror'

By Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail*

BAQUBA, Jan 25 (IPS) - Broken promises have brought a dramatic increase in anti-U.S. sentiment across the capital city of Iraq's Diyala province.

Many people in Baquba, capital of Diyala 40 km northeast of Baghdad, had supported U.S. forces when they ousted former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. But failed reconstruction projects and muddled policies mean the U.S. has lost that support.

"The Americans based their strategy in Iraq on certain Shias here who have direct enmity with Sunnis and allegiance to Iran," resident Ayub Ibrahim told IPS. "This was the source of the gap between certain Shias which the U.S. backs, and certain Sunnis they back." Shias and Sunnis are different sects within Islam.

The U.S. has also alienated people through its policy of extensive detentions. Many believe that raids that lead to arrests are based on motivated information given to the U.S. military by Shia militiamen who have infiltrated the Iraqi army and police.

"We never witnessed an attempt to arrest Shia people either by the U.S. army or the Iraqi police and army," resident Abdul Sattar al-Badri told IPS. Most people see no reasonable basis for many of the arrests.

In November the International Committee of the Red Cross said that around 60,000 people are currently detained in Iraq.

"The Americans occupied our country and put our men in prisons," Dhafir al-Rubaiee, an officer from Iraq's previous army told IPS. "The majority of these prisoners have been arrested for nothing other than for being Sunni. Every one of these prisoners has a family, and these families now have reason to hate Americans."

Others blame the lack of security and the destroyed infrastructure for the increasing anti-U.S. sentiment.

"The lack of security is a direct result of the occupation," resident Abu Ali told IPS. "The Americans crossed thousands of miles to destroy our home and kill our men. They are the reason for all our disasters."

Another resident, speaking on condition of anonymity added, "We lived in need during the period of the Saddam government, but we were safe. We were compelled to work sometimes 20 hours a day to earn our living, but we were happy to see our children and relatives together." U.S. forces, he said, have ended all that.

Abu Tariq believes the U.S. military intentionally destroyed Iraq's infrastructure. "The Americans destroyed the electricity, water pumping stations, factories, bridges, highways, hospitals, schools, buildings, and opened the borders for strangers and terrorists to get easily into the country," he said.

The large number of Iraqis killed by U.S. forces has also hardly endeared the forces to the people.

"When targeted by a roadside bomb or suicide bomber, U.S. soldiers shoot at people randomly. Innocent civilians have been killed or injured," Yaser Abdul-Rahman, a 45-year-old schoolmaster told IPS. "Thousands of people have been killed like this."

The anti-U.S. sentiment in Baquba is now so high that people no longer hide their distrust of the U.S.

"At the beginning of the occupation, the people of Iraq did not realise the U.S. strategy in the area," Abu Taiseer, a member of the communist party in the city told IPS. "Their strategy is based on destruction and massacre. They do anything to have their agenda fulfilled.

"Now, Iraqis know that behind the U.S. smile is hatred and violence," Taiseer added. "They call others violent and terrorists, but what they are doing in Iraq and in other countries is the origin and essence of terror. America is the biggest producer of terror, and they spend huge funds for creating and training death squads all over the world."

Despite the differing U.S. ways of dealing with Shias and Sunnis, the two sects seem one in their hatred of the U.S.

"Look at our country, it will need 30 years to get back again," Edan Barham told IPS. "This has nothing to do with sects; all of us are Iraqis, and we should think of Iraq in a better way than sectarian lines."

"People of Iraq of all sects now realise that it is the occupation represented by the Americans that has damaged the country," resident Khalil Ibrahim said.

Political analyst Azhar al-Teengane says the only Iraqis who support the occupation are those benefiting directly from it.

"The occupation is good for politicians who have made money, militiamen, contractors and opportunists," Teengane said. "These form not more than 5 percent of Iraqi people."

Self-rule could help lower anti-U.S. sentiment, said resident Jalal al-Taee. "In order to improve the situation, the U.S. army should let the people of this city run it."

(*Ahmed, our correspondent in Iraq's Diyala province, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East) (END/2008)

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40924

Bush order steps up assault on privacy

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/4354

President George W. Bush has ordered stepped-up monitoring of federal computer networks, including government Internet sites, because of stepped up attacks by hackers.

But Bush's secret directive also allows the government to snoop more into private Internet sites as well as data networks that contain information on millions of American citizens.

Bush's executive order, signed earlier this month, is not published for public viewing but sources within the national intelligence community tell Capitol Hill Blue that the order allows snooping into private data networks in Internet sites "in matters involving national security."

According to sources, the system uses the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's "Terrorist Information Network," a vast computer database that collects information, in real time, on millions of Americans' financial transactions, travel habits and purchases.

TIA ties into the private networks of banks, airlines, credit card companies and travel services to monitor the actions of ordinary Americans.

The practice is called "data mining," the use of private information to monitor trends that may fit a pre-determined profile of what the government considers "suspicious" activity.

The system is not monitored by Congress nor it any court order required for it to link into private computers and obtain personal information on Americans.

TIA was originally called the "Total Information Awareness" program but the name was changed to try and obscure the fact that the system was gathering information on ordinary Americas.

This prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to get involved. Jay Stanley, Communications Director for the ACLU, told Congress:

What we have here is a pattern of obfuscatory conduct highly suggestive of a government agency trying desperately to make a frightening program palatable enough for the American people to swallow.

Congress voted to stop funding the project but Bush simply moved TIA into the Pentagon's "black bag" program where federal funds can be spent without Congressional approval or oversight.

"Congress may think they killed TIA but it is alive and well and gathering information daily on Americans," says a former analyst for the National Security Agency. "It listens to your phone calls, monitors your bank accounts, knows when and where your travel and even what you type into your computer. The loss of privacy is no longer question in this country. We lost our privacy when TIA became operational."

The End of Privacy

By Elliot Cohen


Thursday 24 January 2008

Amid the controversy brewing in the Senate over Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reform, the Bush administration appears to have changed its strategy and is devising a bold new plan that would strip away FISA protections in favor of a system of wholesale government monitoring of every American's Internet activities. Now the national director of intelligence is predicting a disastrous cyber-terrorist attack on the U.S. if this scheme isn't instituted.

It is no secret that the Bush administration has already been spying on the e-mail, voice-over-IP, and other Internet exchanges between American citizens since as early as and possibly earlier than Sept. 11, 2001. The National Security Agency has set up shop in the hubs of major telecom corporations, notably AT&T, installing equipment that makes copies of the contents of all Internet traffic, routing it to a government database and then using natural language parsing technology to sift through and analyze the data using undisclosed search criteria. It has done this without judicial oversight and obviously without the consent of the millions of Americans under surveillance. Given any rational interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, its mass spying operation is illegal and unconstitutional.

But now the administration wants to make these illegal activities legal. And why is that? According to National Director of Intelligence Mike McConnell, who is now drafting the proposal, an attack on a single U.S. bank by the 9/11 terrorists would have had a far more serious impact on the U.S. economy than the destruction of the Twin Towers. "My prediction is that we're going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens," said McConnell. So the way to prevent this from happening, he claims, is to give the government the power to spy at will on the content of all e-mails, file transfers and Web searches.

McConnell's prediction of something "horrendous" happening unless we grant government this authority has a tone similar to that of the fear-mongering call to arms against terrorism that President Bush sounded before taking us to war in Iraq. Now, Americans are about to be asked to surrender their Fourth Amendment rights because of a vague and unsupported prediction of the dangers and costs of cyber-terrorism.

The analogy with the campaign to frighten us into war with Iraq gets even stronger when it becomes evident that along with the establishing of American forces in Iraq, the cyber-security McConnell is calling for was, all along, part of the strategic plan, devised by Dick Cheney and several other present and former high-level Bush administration officials, to establish America as the world's supreme superpower. This plan, known as the Project for the New American Century, unequivocally recognized "an imperative" for government to not only secure the Internet against cyber-attacks but also to control and use it offensively against its adversaries. The Project for the New American Century also maintained that "the process of transformation" it envisioned (which included the militarization and control of the Internet) was "likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." All that appears to be lacking to make the analogy complete is the "horrendous" cyber-attack - the chilling analog of the 9/11 attacks - that McConnell now predicts.

Apparently, the Bush administration had hoped to continue its mass surveillance program in secret, but as many as 40 civil suits were filed against AT&T and other telecoms, threatening to blow the government's illegal spying activities wide open. Unable to have these cases dismissed in appellate court by once again playing the national-security card, the administration drafted and tried to push through Congress a version of the FISA Amendments Act of 2007 that gave retroactive immunity to telecom corporations for their assistance in helping the government spy en mass on Americans without a court warrant. The administration's plan was to use Congress' passage of this provision of immunity to nullify any cause of civil action against the telecoms, thereby pre-empting the exposure of the administration's own illegal activities.

Two versions of the FISA bill emerged, one from the Senate Intelligence Committee drafted largely by Cheney himself, which contained the immunity provision, and another from the Senate Judiciary Committee that did not contain the provision. Although Senate Majority leader Harry Reid inauspiciously chose the former to bring to the Senate floor, the bill was surrounded by much controversy. There had been well organized grass-roots pressure to stop it from passing, and the House had already passed a version that did not include the retroactive immunity provision. Thus, in the face of a filibuster threat by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Reid postponed the discussion until the January 2008 session.

Now Reid has tried to put off the FISA Amendments Act once again by asking Republicans to extend, for one more month, the Protect America Act of 2007, an interim FISA reform act that is due to sunset in February. However, Cheney has urged Congress to pass his version of the FISA Amendments Act now. "We can always revisit a law that's on the books. That's part of the job of the elected branches of government," Cheney said. "But there is no sound reason to pass critical legislation ... and slap an expiration date on it."

Cheney's point about the possibility of later revisiting the FISA Amendments Act after it becomes law may foreshadow replacing it in the coming months with a law based on McConnell's plan, which is due to emerge in February. This would mark a gradual descent into divesting Americans entirely of their Fourth Amendment right to privacy - first by blocking their ability to sue the telecoms for violating their privacy and then by giving the government the same legal protection. After all, the FISA Amendments Act still requires the government to get warrants for spying on American citizens even if it does not afford adequate judicial oversight in enforcing this mandate. McConnell's proposal, on the other hand, would make no bones about spying on Americans without warrants, thereby contradicting any meaningful FISA reform.

President Bush has already made clear he would veto any FISA bill that did not give retroactive immunity to the telecoms. However, if McConnell's soon to be unveiled spy-at-will plan is turned into law, a separate law giving retroactive immunity to the telecoms would be unnecessary. All Bush and Cheney would need to do to protect themselves from criminal liability would be to make the new spy-at-will law retroactive in effect from the inception of the illegal NSA surveillance program. This would also be sufficient to deflate the civil suits filed against the telecoms because the past illegal spying activities that these companies conducted on behalf of the government would then become "legal." Indeed, the Bush administration has already done this sort of legal retro-dating and nullifying of civil rights and gotten it through Congress. For example, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 conveniently gave Bush the power to decide whether someone - including himself - is guilty of torture, irrespective of the Geneva Conventions, and it made this authority retroactive to Nov. 26, 1997.

Whatever the final disposition of FISA in the coming weeks or months, the administration is now bracing to take a much more aggressive posture that would seek abridgement of civil liberties in its usual fashion: by fear-mongering and warnings that our homeland will be attacked by terrorists (this time of the menacing hacker variety) unless we the people surrender our Fourth Amendment right to privacy and give government the authority to inspect even our most personal and intimate messages.

It would be a mistake to underestimate the resolve of the Bush administration. But it would be a bigger mistake for Americans not to stand united against this familiar pattern of government scare tactics and manipulation. There are grave dangers to the survival of democracy posed by allowing any present or future government unfettered access to all of our private electronic communications. These dangers must be carefully weighed against the dubious and unproven benefits that granting such an awesome power to government might have on fending off cyber-attacks.

--------

Elliot D. Cohen, PhD, is a media ethicist and critic. His most recent book is "The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-Hungry Government Are Turning America Into a Dictatorship." He is a first-prize winner of the 2007 Project Censored Award.

The Sanctions Trap

by Scott Ritter

The Bush administration had been advertising the "Berlin Sanctions Summit" on Iran as a validation of their long-standing policy of seeking to isolate the Islamic Republic politically and economically in the face of Tehran's ongoing refusal to submit to the will of the United Nations Security Council when it comes to the matter of suspending Iran's uranium enrichment program. The diplomatic push undertaken by the United States was considerable, replete with a fabricated "confrontation" between Iranian and US Navy forces in the Straights of Hormuz on the eve of President Bush's visit to Israel and the Gulf Arab nations. In Israel the President talked the talk of war, sitting down with Israeli policy makers to plot out the mechanism of militarily interdicting and neutralizing Iran's nuclear ambition, and with the Gulf Arabs he outlined the American position of Iran being the world's largest state sponsor of terror, imploring his ostensible Arab allies to stay the course in creating a Sunni counter to the mythical "Shi'a Crescent" which threatens all. Left unsaid in all of this was the visit to Tehran by the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei, where in a series of meetings with the most senior leadership in Iran, including the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran and the IAEA strove to come to closure on all outstanding questions remaining concerning Iran's nuclear program.

The gulf between the sanctions plotters in Berlin and the nuclear negotiators in Tehran is disconcerting. While the details of the language agreed upon for a new Security Council resolution remain secret, the United States and Great Britain are applauding the results of the Berlin summit largely because it keeps alive the process of Security Council "labeling" of Iran as non-compliant, even as the IAEA and Tehran reach an unprecedented level of cooperation. The Russians and Chinese continue to articulate their respective positions concerning sanctions and Iran, with the Russians in particular noting that there will be no "harsh" measures imposed against Iran. The gap between the Russian position, and that of the United States, which has lauded the agreed draft resolution as an affirmation of its hardline position against Iran's nuclear ambitions, is startling.

Once again, the international community, in the form of the Security Council, has crafted a consensus document which will be defined not by its specific language, but rather by the various negotiating positions of those nations participating in the process of crafting the document. Like Security Council resolution 1441, which was passed by the Council in November 2002, on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, the new Security Council resolution on Iran creates a scenario where one can make the case for or against action against Tehran with equal alacrity, dependent solely on the interpretation of the document's "intent." The intent of the Russians is clear: the Security Council resolution is simply a facilitating vehicle to guard against any illicit nuclear activity while the IAEA and Iran bring to closure all unresolved issues. Likewise, the intent of the United States remains clear, using the growing number of Security Council resolutions passed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter as de facto evidence of the threat posed by Iran as well as the growing inability of the international community to effectively deal with these threats.

This, of course, is the crux of the quandary posed by the issue of sanctioning Iran: in a game defined by the principles of global consensus, the United States plays only by the rules of unilateral intervention. Russia and China, and to a lesser extent France, Great Britain and Germany, may view the sanctions as a vehicle for a diplomatic resolution of the issues. The United States views the sanctions as a means to a different end, this one culminating in the elimination of the theocratic regime in Tehran. The world fell into the sanctions trap when trying to deal with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, allowing the United States to distract everyone with the issue of WMD, all the while pushing for Saddam's demise. The United States never had any intention of abiding by either the intent or letter of the law when it came to sanctioning Iraq. The only endgame possible was that which met the objectives of regime change in Baghdad.

Today, on the issue of Iran, the same "sanctions trap" has been set. By continuing to label Iran's nuclear program as representing a threat to international peace and security worthy of Chapter VII attention, the Security Council helps sustain the fiction being promoted by the Bush administration of a dangerous nation which needs to be confronted at all costs. The day will come, in the not so distant future, when the United States will seek to cash in on the string of Chapter VII resolutions against Iran, building its case on the inevitability of Iranian non-compliance; Iran has already rejected the new draft sanctions as illegal, and has stated quite clearly its intent to push forward with its nuclear program in spite of the new sanctions. The Bush administration will be in a position to level a charge of global impotence in the face of a clearly defined threat, and to note that if the international community is unable or unwilling to confront this threat, then United States will have no choice but to take on this task in a unilateral fashion.

With the US military positioning itself operationally and logistically for action sometime this spring, and the level of rhetoric by President Bush and his advisors on Iran being hyped up to near fever pitch, the last thing the international community should be doing is facilitating conflict by helping sustain the logic of Iran as a threat at the very time Iran's status as a nation compliant with international law is being certified. But the tragic genius of the "sanctions trap" is that, once initiated, it is virtually impossible to shut off. By putting the credibility of the Security Council on the line in imposing the sanctions regime against Iran, the members of the Council who view UN action as a means of containing US ambition and aggression have themselves allowed the issue of defending the will of the Council in the face of continued Iranian rejection of the Council's decisions to become the central issue, and not the matter which led them to originally impose sanctions to begin with, that being Iran's nuclear program. The "sanctions trap" is built upon the principles of hubris and procedure, not reason and fact. This is the reason the Bush administration continues to invest so heavily in this process, and why in the end the "sanctions trap," if not prematurely sprung, will in the end lead us to war with Iran . The message is simple: stop the sanctions, stop the war.

What A Great Freakin' War!!

by David Michael Green

http://www.regressiveantidote.net/Articles/What_A_Great_Freakin'_War.html

What a ding-dong I am!

For months – nay, years! – I’ve been ranting about how screwed up the war in Iraq has been, and how disastrous have been its consequences.

What a fool I’ve been! In reality, it’s actually turned out pretty great.

That’s what I learned when I read William Kristol’s recent New York Times piece, “The Democrats’ Fairy Tale”. In a stroke of thoughtfulness, generosity and uncanny prescience, the Times was kind enough recently to hire Kristol to write a regular column for their op-ed page. I guess that’s because Ariel Sharon was unavailable and David Duke was on vacation.

And bless his little heart, Kristol knows a thing or two about a thing or two. Heck, he’s the one who got us into Iraq in the first place! He’s been telling us for a long time what a cool thing it would be to knock over that tin-pot Saddam Hussein crank, and damned if he didn’t convince the president to do it, despite Bush’s decades of foreign policy experience.

But it’s been a rough couple of years for Ol’ Bill, ‘cause the whole damn country went into some sort of narcoleptic, apoplectic, pathogenic tizzy about the war, crying fickle and foul at every turn and seeming like all everyone wanted was to end the darned thing. Imagine that. What a bunch of whiney little self-interested twits, squealing like a continent full of Europeans, and utterly failing to see the great wisdom of Young William’s Grand Adventure In Mesopotamia. It’s really quite nauseating, isn’t it?

In his article, Kristol really rips the Democrats, and don’t they ever deserve it. Now that Iraq appears to be marginally more peaceful than it was last year at this time, Kristol is angry because, as he puts it: “It’s apparently impermissible for leading Democrats to acknowledge – let alone celebrate – progress in Iraq”.

Bill is angry because the Democrats (and the public – but, oddly, he doesn’t mention that part) still want to end the war – even though it’s been a huge success! They should “celebrate” it, instead! Fortunately, he is clever enough to suss out the real reason for this childish intransigence. It’s not, as Hillary put it, because the Iraqis know the Democrats will shut off the supply valve of endless wasted dollars and soon-to-be casualties headed to Baghdad. As Kristol notes, “That is truly a fairy tale. And it is driven by a refusal to admit real success because that success has been achieved under the leadership of ... George W. Bush. The horror!”

I must admit I’ve suffered from some of the same confusion as the Dumb Dems, whom I think we can all agree are simply hopelessly naive pacifists intent on allowing our country to be taken over by Very Bad People (of less than fully white complexion) who mean us harm. You know the type I mean, like George McGovern, who flew all those bombing missions during World War II while Little Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Kristol and the rest fought ... valiantly ... in ... Viet ... oh, never mind. Anyhow, that hopeless and dangerous idealism is why, just one year before the Iraq war, every single Democrat in the Congress opposed the invasion of Afghanistan except for ... well, except for ... every single Democrat in Congress other than one. Okay, never mind on that one too.

Look, let’s get down to brass tacks here. Kristol just gets it. The rest of us don’t. He realizes that in the grand scheme of things – “World War IV” as his pappy likes to call it – what’s important is not the big picture, but the very narrowest.

You may think, for example, that promulgating egregious lies in order to shove your way into am Iraq war that no one else wants is stupid and counterproductive, damaging the credibility and interests of the United States, and probably accounting for the lack of allied support in a more credible war in Afghanistan. But Bill Kristol knows better.

You may think that fighting a war that massively drains military, diplomatic and financial resources away from the real enemies of the country in order to pursue a pet project that has nothing to do with those genuine threats would be idiotic and suicidal. But that’s ‘cause you’re not as smart as William Kristol.

You might believe that it was a ludicrous waste of blood and treasure to kill 4,000 Americans and one million Iraqis, while borrowing and spending a trillion bucks (fast going up to two) in order to invade a country that had neither attacked us nor threatened us. And that doing so was an extremely poor choice of resource allocation, especially when we have tens of millions of children doing without healthcare in this country. But if you were a clever neoconservative like Bill Kristol you’d know better.

You might think that wrecking our military and compromising American security over a non-problem – indeed, a problem that people like Bushes and Cheneys and Rumsfelds and Reagans once very much created and encouraged – would be a stupid choice of priorities. But that’s only because you don’t have the foreign policy insight of someone like Bill Kristol.

And let me guess – I bet you also think that launching a war that brings chaos to a vital and volatile area, and that massively increases the power of an Iran run by radical theocrats was a really, really dumb idea. But if you were Bill Kristol you’d realize that all we need is a third war against an Islamic country, and we can clean up the whole mess all at once!

Or maybe you’re like all those American intelligence agencies, who collectively reported last year that the Iraq war was actually creating anti-American terrorists rather than eradicating them. But if you were as smart as Mr. Bill and his Kristol Ball, you’d know that they’re all just a bunch of long-haired and bearded blame-America-first left-wing Berkeley rejects running covert ops for the CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies. Of course they’re going to diss the war! It’s going well, and those unpatriotic spooks can’t stand that because they hate America!

Maybe you’re angry because you think the same American soldiers whom people like George W. Bush are always hiding behind should actually have adequate armor to fight the war they’ve been thrust into, rather than their families having to hold bake sales to buy it for them. And maybe you also think they should be treated a wee bit better than they have been at Walter Reed (and far beyond) when they come home wounded, or they have to fight harder than in Anbar to get the benefits owed to them out of the military. But what Bill Kristol knows is that you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs! So lighten up on that whole concern-for-the-troops thing already. (Unless you’re the president doing a photo-op, of course.)

Don’t tell me you’re chagrined at the idea that American forces may be in Iraq for another decade, or even for a full “generation”. Probably that’s just because you or someone you know might have to go fight there. People like Kristol never do, of course, so why should he worry?

Are you angry that well-connected cronies and corporations got rich off this war? That eight billion dollars in cash went completely missing in Iraq? That multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts got paid out for jobs never done? That American soldiers worked and bled and died for peanuts alongside mercenaries making four times as much salary? That we will be paying for this war in interest on loans and expensive treatment of the wounded for generations to come? Yeah? Well Bill Kristol thinks you should get your priorities straight!

Have you somehow come to the conclusion that turning one-fifth of Iraq’s 25 million people into either corpses or refugees hasn’t exactly been a great liberating service to that country? You know, sorta like when we told them to rise up but then stood by and watched Saddam mow them down. Or when we turned a blind eye to Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against his own people, and even protected him from condemnation for those crimes at the UN? Bill Kristol thinks that’s because you just don’t know the true value of freedom and democracy. Oh, and you put too much emphasis on that whole not-getting-killed thing.

Are you one of those whiney liberals who believe that this war – whether one supported the idea of it originally or not – has been ridiculously mishandled from the beginning? That there were never enough troops sent in? That allowing rampant looting was stupid? That failing to have plans for the occupation of a country of 25 million people constitutes criminal negligence? That firing the Iraqi army was just as idiotic as sending thousands of armed and angry men home unemployed sounds like it would be? That purging the national government and infrastructure of all Baath Party members was a prescription for chaos? That allowing civil war between Sunni and Shiite was disastrous? Yeah, well, Bill Kristol knows better. He understands that what’s really important is that the massive levels of violence and pandemonium of these last FIVE years (count ‘em) are now possibly slightly lower than the outrageous levels they’ve long been at, and could conceivably stay that way.

Can’t you see the small picture here? Kristol can. I guess that’s why he has a New York Times column and you don’t. I guess that’s why the president listens to his advice and not yours.

Who could blame him for being angry and vituperative toward dangerously silly Democrats who don’t see the peril facing our civilization?

Such quibblers! So what if the war was sold on completely fabricated lies, was supposed to be a cakewalk but has now lasted longer than World War II, has divided the country and made the world hate us, has squandered our (borrowed) resources and broken our military, has brought instability to a volatile and crucial region and allowed a real national antagonist to double its power, has diverted our resources from the still-uncaptured guy who supposedly attacked us on 9/11, has become a factory for producing anti-American terrorists, has wiped out over a million innocent people and turned more than four million into refugees? So what if this war has now supposedly been ‘saved’ by precisely the same strategy that was vehemently rejected by the same people in the beginning?

Let’s keep our priorities straight here, people. All that really matters is that we’ve seen a possible slight improvement in levels of violence in Iraq over the last couple of months (all of which may be due to a host of possible factors, including that there aren’t many people left alive to fight there anymore). Get it?

Some people think that burning down your neighbor’s house and having your own catch fire as a result is a highly stupid and really criminal thing to do. What neocons like Bill Kristol understand, though – and what naive liberals will never get – is that what really matters is whether you can slightly diminish the rate at which the flames consume those dwellings, five years after starting the fire. That’s what’s genuinely important – not the ashes where the houses once stood.

If you understood that simple principle, you wouldn’t be complaining about this war so much. Rather, you’d be “celebrating” how well it’s going.

If you understood this logic, you’d have supported the war from the very beginning, as William Kristol did. (Which of course has nothing to do with his apparent defensiveness about it today, we can all rest assured.)

In fact, if you were as smart as Bill Kristol and the other fine folks who brought you the invasion of Iraq, you’d quit with all your smug complaints, once and for all.

And you’d realize what a great freakin’ war this really is!

More waste and fraud in Iraq

Audit finds millions wasted on shoddy repairs

A defense contractor hired to repair combat equipment routinely failed to do the job right and then charged the government millions of dollars for the extra work needed to get the gear ready for battle in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a newly released audit.

Overall, the contractor's employees at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait worked about 188,000 additional hours to fix Humvees, heavy transporters and fighting vehicles that allegedly were mended but flunked a military inspection, the Government Accountability Office said.

The GAO estimates the Army paid $4.2 million for the additional labor. Under the terms of the $581 million contract, the company is to be paid for all maintenance hours worked. That includes "labor hours associated with maintenance performed after the Army rejects equipment that fails to meet Army maintenance standards," said the GAO, which is the investigative arm of Congress.

The contractor is not named in the GAO audit. The contract number is, however. The Federal Procurement Data System, a website that tracks government contracts, shows ITT Federal Services International of Colorado Springs, as the company performing the work.

In a statement, ITT spokesman Tom Glover said the company does not agree with the GAO's conclusions.

"We have taken numerous corrective actions and have dramatically improved our performance," Glover said. "We believe that we have met the requirements of the contract and have fully supported the mission needs of the U.S. Army."

In one case, a semitrailer used for hauling massive M-1 tanks was fixed and submitted to the Army as ready for return to the field. It failed inspection. After that, the contractor charged the government for 636 hours of repair work before it passed inspection more than three months later.

In another instance, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle failed inspection after a cotter pin in the brake assembly was found to be missing and could have left the heavy vehicle with no way to stop.

As part of the contract, the contractor was also required to thoroughly clean vehicles and other gear before it was returned to the United States. This step ensures the equipment doesn't come back with dirt and other contaminants that could cause public health problems.

The contractor didn't do that job well either.

"We observed an inspection in which a contractor employee was trying to remove water from the interior piece of equipment with his hands and the vehicle tracks were clearly filled with mud," the auditors said.

The Army attributes the shoddy performance to flaws with the contractor's quality control systems and its reliance on the military to point out what was wrong with the gear, according to the GAO. But auditors said the Army did a poor job of monitoring the company's performance. That's partly due to a shortage of qualified contracting personnel.

The audit, which is an interim report on a broader GAO investigation of war support contracts, was released Wednesday by the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press

The Empire That Must Be Obeyed

What Gives the US the Right to Claim a Moral Monopoly Over the World?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

"The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

Five Western military leaders.

I read the statement three times trying to figure out the typo. Then it hit me, the West has now out-Owellled Orwell: The West must nuke other countries in order to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction! In Westernspeak, the West nuking other countries does not qualify as the use of weapons of mass destruction.

The astounding statement comes from a paper prepared for a Nato summit in April by five top military leaders--an American, a German, a Dutchman, a Frenchman, and a Brit. It can be found here.

The paper, prepared by men regarded as distinguished leaders and not as escapees from insane asylums, argues that "the West's values and way of life are under threat, but the West is struggling to summon the will to defend them." The leaders find that the UN is in the way of the West's will, as is the European Union which is obstructing NATO and "NATO's credibility is at stake in Afghanistan."

And that's a serious matter. If NATO loses its credibility in Afghanistan, Western civilization will collapse just like the Soviet Union. The West just doesn't realize how weak it is. To strengthen itself, it needs to drop more and larger bombs.

The German military leader blames the Merkel government for contributing to the West's inability to defend its values by standing in the way of a revival of German militarism. How can Germany be "a reliable partner" for America, he asks, if the German government insists on "special rules" limiting the combat use of its forces in Afghanistan?

Ron Asmus, head of the German Marshall Fund and a former US State Department official, welcomed the paper as "a wake-up call." Asmus means a call to wake-up to the threats from the brutal world, not to the lunacy of Western leaders.

Who, what is threatening the West's values and way of life? Political fanaticism, religious fundamentalism, and the imminent spread of nuclear weapons, answer the five asylum escapees.

By political fanaticism, do they mean the neoconservatives who believe that the future of humanity depends on the US establishing its hegemony over the world? By religious fundamentalism, do they mean "rapture evangelicals" agitating for armageddon or Christian and Israeli Zionists demanding a nuclear attack on Iran? By spread of nuclear weapons, do they mean Israel's undeclared and illegal possession of several hundred nuclear weapons?

No. The paranoid military leaders see all the fanaticism, religious and otherwise, and all the threats to humanity as residing outside Western civilization (Israel is inside). The "increasingly brutal world," of which the leaders warn, is "over there." Only Muslims are fanatics. All us white guys are rational and sane.

There is nothing brutal about the US/Nato bombing of Serbia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, or the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, or the Israeli ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, or the genocide Israel hopes to commit against Palestinians in Gaza.

All of this, as well as America's bombing of Somalia, America's torture dungeons, show trials of "detainees," and overthrow of elected governments and installation of puppet rulers, is the West's necessary response to keep the brutal world at bay.

Brutal things happen in the "brutal world" and are entirely the fault of those in the brutal world. None of this would happen if the inhabitants of the brutal world would just do as they are told. How can the civilized world with its monopoly on morality allow people in the brutal world to behave independently? I mean, really! God forbid, they might attack some innocent country.

The "brutal world" consists of those immoral fanatics who object to being marginalized by the West and who reply to mass bombings from the air and to the death and destruction inflicted on them through myriad ways by strapping on a suicide bomb.

Unable to impose its will on countries it has invaded with conventional arms, the West's military leaders are now prepared to force compliance with the moral world's will by threatening to nuke those who resist. You see, since the West has the monopoly on morality, truth, and justice, those in the outside world are obviously evil, wicked and brutal. Therefore, as President Bush tells us, it is a simple choice between good and evil, and there's no better candidate than evil for being nuked. The sooner we can get rid of the brutal world, the sooner we will have "freedom and democracy" everywhere that's left.

Meanwhile, the United States, the great moral light unto the world, has just prevented the United Nations from censuring Israel, the world's other great moral light, for cutting off food supplies, medical supplies, and electric power to Gaza. You see, Gaza is in the outside world and is a home of the bad guys. Moreover, the wicked Palestinians there tricked the US when the US allowed them to hold a free election. Instead of electing the US candidate, the wicked voters elected a government that would represent them. The US and Israel overturned the Palestinian election in the West Bank, but those in Gaza clung to the government that they had elected. Now they are going to suffer and die until they elect the government that the US and Israel wants. I mean, how can we expect people in the brutal world to know what's best for them?

The fact that the UN tried to stop Israel's just punishment of the Gazans shows how right the five leaders' report is about the UN being a threat to Western values and way of life. The UN is really against us. This puts the UN in the outside world and makes it a candidate for being nuked if not an outright terrorist organization. As our president said, "you are with us or against us."

The US and Israel need a puppet government in Palestine so that a ghettoized remnant of Palestine can be turned into a "two state solution." The two states will be Israel incorporating the stolen West Bank and a Palestinian ghetto without an economy, water, or contiguous borders.

This is necessary in order to protect Israel from the brutal outside world.

Inhabitants of the brutal world are confused about the "self-determination" advocated by Western leaders. It doesn't mean that those outside Western civilization and Israel should decide for themselves. "Self" means American. The term, so familiar to us, means "American-determination." The US determines and others obey.

It is the brutal world that causes all the trouble by not obeying.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Study: False statements preceded war

Hundreds of false statements on WMDs, al-Qaida used to justify Iraq war

The Associated Press
updated 2:30 a.m. ET, Wed., Jan. 23, 2008

WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.

"The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," Stanzel said.

WMD, al-Qaida links debunked
The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

Media 'validation'
The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

"The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.

"Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.


Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22794451/

Neither Supply-Side Theory Nor Keynsian Remedies Can Save Us Now

Farewell to Old Economic Nostrums

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

With his tax rebate policy, President Bush has put economic policy back on a Keynesian basis. Will it work?

During the two decades it was in effect, supply-side economics had restorative effects on the American economy. Its predecessor, Keynesian demand management, stimulated demand more than supply. Consequently, over time the trade-offs between employment and inflation worsened, and for a while it appeared that inflation and unemployment would rise together. The breakdown of the Keynesian policy opened the door for the Reagan administration's supply-side approach.

By following Nobel economist Robert Mundell's advice to "reverse the policy mix," the supply-side policy allowed the US economy to grow without paying for the growth with rising rates of inflation. However, the new macroeconomic policy was not a cure-all, and its success in banishing worsening "Philips curve" trade-offs between inflation and employment masked the appearance of new problems, such as the loss of jobs and GDP growth to offshoring, problems from deregulation, and the growing concentration of income in fewer hands.

The Bush administration is turning to tax rebates, because problems in the financial system and the amount of consumer debt hinder the Federal Reserve's ability to pump money to consumers through the banking system. Like an easy credit, low interest rate policy, the purpose of a tax rebate is to put money in consumers' hands in order to boost consumer demand.

Will consumers spend the rebate, or will they use it to pay down their debts? If they spend the rebate on consumer goods, will it provide much boost to the economy?

Many Americans are overloaded with debt and will have to use the rebate to pay down credit card debt. The gift of $800 per means-tested taxpayer is really just a partial bailout of heavily indebted consumers and credit card companies.

The percentage of the rebate that survives debt reduction will be further drained of effect by Americans' dependency on imports. According to reports, 70% of the goods on Wal-Mart shelves are made in China. During 2006, Americans spent $1,861,380,000,000 on imported goods, that is, 23% of total personal consumption expenditures were spent on imports (including offshored goods). This means that between one-fifth and one-fourth of new consumption expenditures will stimulate foreign economies.

Americans worry about their dependency on imported energy, but the $145,368,000,000 paid to OPEC in 2006 is a small part of the total import bill. Americans imported $602,539,000,000 in industrial supplies and materials; $418,271,000,000 in capital goods; $256,660,000,000 in automotive vehicles, parts and engines; $423,973,000,000 in manufactured consumer goods; and $74,937,000,000 in foods, feeds and beverages.

The Keynesian policy of driving the economy through consumer demand was applied to a different economy than the one we have today. In those days the goods Americans purchased, such as cars and appliances, were mainly made in America. Construction workers were not illegals sending their wages back to Mexico. The US had a robust manufacturing workforce. When consumer demand weakened, companies would reduce their output and lay off workers. Government policymakers would respond to the decline in employment and output with monetary and fiscal policies that boosted consumer demand. As consumer spending picked up, companies would call back the laid off workers in order to increase output to meet the rising demand.

Today Americans are losing jobs for reasons that have nothing to do with recession. They are losing their jobs to offshoring and to foreigners brought in on work visas. Today many American brands are produced offshore in whole or part with foreign labor and imported to the US for sale in the American market. In 2007, prior to the onset of the 2008 recession, 217,000 manufacturing jobs were lost. The US now has fewer manufacturing jobs than it had in 1950 when the population was half the current size.

US job growth in the 21st century has been confined to low-pay domestic services. During 2007, waitresses and bartenders, health care and social assistance, and wholesale and retail trade, transportation and utilities accounted for 91% of new private sector jobs.

When a population drowning in debt is hit with unemployment from recession on top of unemployment from offshoring, will the people spend their rebates in eating places and bars, thus boosting employment among waitresses and bartenders? Will they spend their rebates in shopping malls, thus boosting employment for retail clerks? If they become ill, the lack of medical insurance will direct their rebates to doctors' bills.

Economists and other shills for globalism told Americans not to worry about the loss of manufacturing jobs. Good riddance, they said, to these "old economy" jobs. The "new economy" would bring better and higher paying jobs in technical and professional services that would free Americans from the drudgery of factory work. So far, these jobs haven't shown up, and if they do, most will be susceptible to offshoring, just like the manufacturing jobs.

The Bush administration has in mind a total rebate of $150,000,000,000. As the government's budget is already in deficit, the money will have to be borrowed. As the US saving rate is about zero, the money will have to be borrowed abroad.

Foreigners are already concerned about the US government's indebtedness, and foreigners are bailing out some of our most important banks and Wall Street firms that foolishly invested in subprime derivatives.

Under pressure from budget and trade deficits, the US dollar has been losing value against other traded currencies. Having to borrow another $150 billion abroad will further erode the dollar's value.

Meanwhile, Congress passed a $700 billion "defense" bill so that the Bush administration can continue its wars in the Middle East.

Our leaders in Washington are out to lunch. They have no idea of the real challenges our country faces and America's dependence on foreign creditors.

The rebate will help Americans reduce their credit card debt. However, adding $150 billion to an existing federal budget deficit that will be worsened by recession could further alarm America's foreign creditors, traders in currency markets, and OPEC oil producers. If the rebate loses its punch to consumer debt reduction, imports, and pressure on the dollar, what will the government do next?

As long as offshoring continues, the US cannot close its trade deficit. Offshoring increases imports and reduces the supply of potential exports. With Washington's Middle East wars, with private companies ceasing to provide health coverage and pensions, with political spending promises in an election year, and with recession, the outlook for the federal budget deficit is dismal as well.

The US is moving into a situation in which the government could find it impossible to close the twin deficits without massive tariffs to curtail imports and offshoring and without pursuing peace instead of war. The outlook for the United States will continue to worsen as long as hegemonic superpower and free trade delusions prevail in Washington.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Victory in Iraq

by Vedran Vuk and Walter Block

Without a doubt, the United States of America possesses the most powerful military in the world. No armed force on Earth will likely achieve our level of might today for many a year. Technologies that to us seem to be yesterday’s innovations such as nuclear bombs, stealth fighters, and bunker busters are unrealizable dreams for most nations in any era.

Our soldiers are amongst the best trained in the world and willing to do anything required to defend America. Yet, somehow the United States military faces a daily struggle to maintain control in Iraq. How can we be so omnipotent and so inept at the same time?

The blame is not to be laid upon any soldier fighting, or any general conducting the war. These men follow the orders of the commander-in-chief’s and congress’s wishes to remain in Iraq. The real issue is the unlikeliness of final victory in Iraq.

Consider this. Our overall objective is to build up local Iraqi forces to the point where they can police and defend their own country. We are constantly told how well the Iraqi government prepares its forces. Some months, the Iraqis are on schedule but some months not. The U.S. agenda sets quotas of troop levels which don’t speak to the quality, loyalty, or readiness of these forces.

So, here lies the problem: if our troops who are the most powerful in the world are having trouble with insurgents, how strong must the Iraqi military be when coalition forces leave? The Iraqi army would have to be as gargantuan and as powerful as the U.S. military only to maintain current levels of stability which can hardly be considered firmly secure.

The only solution would be to make the Iraqi army even stronger than our own. Not only is this strategy not humanly possible, it is outright dangerous to long term stability in the Middle East. This armament will only lead to training the next Osama bin Laden.

These logical inconsistencies lead to an inconvenient question, "Is there any real pull out strategy…….ever?" No. Not for tomorrow, or five years from now, not even 20 years hence; there is no real strategy for departing Iraq at all. And indeed, given present policies, why should there be? After all, our country now has some 700 military bases in about 130 countries, some of them (Europe, Japan, Korea) for almost half a century. Why should Iraq be any different? But U.S. taxpayers can’t afford to finance our soldiers’ stay in Iraq forever, and that unhappy country cannot pay the costs of garrisoning an army the size of the United States’ in its wildest dreams.

This conundrum leaves the United States between a rock and a hard place since no one can afford to keep fighting the war. The Canadian dollar is now worth more than our currency. The U.S. dollar has lost out in comparison with the Euro, the yen, and many other currencies. This is just plain embarrassing. Under these unfortunate circumstances, it would appear we have only two options. Either the U.S. leaves Iraq right now, risking the temporary chaos that may well ensue, or withdraw from Iraq in 20 years or so completely bankrupt with our own economy destroyed watching chaos envelope that country anyway. Iraq will never have an army like ours no matter how much we build it up. Nor will anything less suffice.

There is a third option, however; we stay in Iraq forever. This would lead to the deaths of countless Americans and the bankrupting of our entire economy. We assume only patriotic Americans are reading this article, not Islamo-fascists who would support option three.

If you truly think that we should stay in Iraq indefinitely, then please report yourself to the Department of Homeland Security, because you could only support such a policy if you hated America and were in league with the Islamo-fascists.

But wait Mr. Vuk and Dr. Block, aren’t we winning?! Isn’t the troop surge working? Who can say for sure, but we can tell you the difference between propagandist rhetoric and logical rationale. First, how do you determine whether you’re winning in a war like this? There are certainly no battle fronts or capitals to ransack. Well, many of our presidential candidates have a measure.

According to news reports, fewer soldiers than usual have died in the past few months. And this statistic is supposed proof of the troop surge’s efficiency. But wait one second, since when do fewer casualties mean that we’re winning? According to this logic, the Allies lost the battle of D-Day during WWII. Thousands of men died on Omaha Beach. Surely this means America lost. Someone should also send the Russians a memo alerting them to the historical failures of battles both at Stalingrad and Berlin where hundreds of thousands of their soldiers fell, many more than the Germans lost.

It is obvious that the American people are being misled regarding the actual status of the conflict. The amount of dead has nothing to with whether a nation is strategically succeeding in warfare. Absolutely nothing! In fact, victory often comes at the expense of more lives not fewer. In reality, there is no real way to tell whether you are winning or not in such conflicts.

Some claim that "we’re fighting them over there; so that we don’t have to fight them over here." For a fuller analysis of this fallacious line of thinking read here.

What can we do under these dire circumstances? There is only one option: Let’s get out of Middle East affairs entirely. The United States should no longer intervene in Middle Eastern countries and only maintain mutually beneficial trade.

The terrorists don’t hate us for our freedom. The fundamentalists revile the U.S. for four reasons: our alliance with Israel; our imperialist presence in the Middle East in general; our occupation of their Holy Land in particular, Saudi Arabia; and the fact that we have for over a decade been bombing and blockading Iraq.

With regard to this last atrocity, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked if the U.S. sanctions against Iraq, which were responsible for killing some half a million children, were "worth it." She replied in the affirmative. See on this here and here.

If Hillary, John, or Obama are elected from the Democratic side, or Rudy, Mitt, the Huck, John or Fred from the Republican, they will continue all four hated policies and will continue to make the United States of America a prime target.

Leaving any troops will still make the U.S. a target. Both Democrat and "mainstream" Republican non-withdrawal plans would be a disaster for our soldiers. If US troops are actually reduced, those remaining in the region will be weakened with fewer numbers. Both parties have a "helpless and stranded" evacuation plan.

Only one candidate, Ron Paul, offers the option of exiting the Middle East entirely and changing the ultimate target in the eyes of the terrorists.

Another line of thinking says that the terrorists attack us for our freedom and prosperity. If you believe this, then our course in the war thus far is correct. America should remain in Iraq, because staying any longer will ensure the United States is neither free nor prosperous. According to this theory, the terrorist should thereafter cease their aggression, a "brilliant" strategy. One wonders, then, why the terrorists have not targeted other countries that are rich and relatively free, and also feature mini-skirts and rock-and-roll music, such as Norway, or Japan.

The United States of America is in a tough jam. Our only alternative is to get out of the Middle East entirely. Not one half the troops out, not one quarter, all! And not in a decade, nor even a year nor yet six months. Our exit should be measured in hours, not even days.

We are the most powerful military in the world. If the U.S. can’t win a war, it is good evidence that the war was unwinnable in the first place. The conflict will not be won, because it simply cannot be won. Our ultimate choices are between withdrawing our troops now with America as an intact nation or doing so years from now broken and bankrupt.

January 21, 2008

Surge to Nowhere

Don't buy the hawks' hype. The war may be off the front pages, but Iraq is broken beyond repair, and we still own it.

By Andrew J. Bacevich
Sunday, January 20, 2008; B01

As the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom nears, the fabulists are again trying to weave their own version of the war. The latest myth is that the "surge" is working.

In President Bush's pithy formulation, the United States is now "kicking ass" in Iraq. The gallant Gen. David Petraeus, having been given the right tools, has performed miracles, redeeming a situation that once appeared hopeless. Sen. John McCain has gone so far as to declare that "we are winning in Iraq." While few others express themselves quite so categorically, McCain's remark captures the essence of the emerging story line: Events have (yet again) reached a turning point. There, at the far end of the tunnel, light flickers. Despite the hand-wringing of the defeatists and naysayers, victory beckons.

From the hallowed halls of the American Enterprise Institute waft facile assurances that all will come out well. AEI's Reuel Marc Gerecht assures us that the moment to acknowledge "democracy's success in Iraq" has arrived. To his colleague Michael Ledeen, the explanation for the turnaround couldn't be clearer: "We were the stronger horse, and the Iraqis recognized it." In an essay entitled "Mission Accomplished" that is being touted by the AEI crowd, Bartle Bull, the foreign editor of the British magazine Prospect, instructs us that "Iraq's biggest questions have been resolved." Violence there "has ceased being political." As a result, whatever mayhem still lingers is "no longer nearly as important as it was." Meanwhile, Frederick W. Kagan, an AEI resident scholar and the arch-advocate of the surge, announces that the "credibility of the prophets of doom" has reached "a low ebb."

Presumably Kagan and his comrades would have us believe that recent events vindicate the prophets who in 2002-03 were promoting preventive war as a key instrument of U.S. policy. By shifting the conversation to tactics, they seek to divert attention from flagrant failures of basic strategy. Yet what exactly has the surge wrought? In substantive terms, the answer is: not much.

As the violence in Baghdad and Anbar province abates, the political and economic dysfunction enveloping Iraq has become all the more apparent. The recent agreement to rehabilitate some former Baathists notwithstand ing, signs of lasting Sunni-Shiite reconciliation are scant. The United States has acquired a ramshackle, ungovernable and unresponsive dependency that is incapable of securing its own borders or managing its own affairs. More than three years after then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice handed President Bush a note announcing that "Iraq is sovereign," that sovereignty remains a fiction.

A nation-building project launched in the confident expectation that the United States would repeat in Iraq the successes it had achieved in Germany and Japan after 1945 instead compares unfavorably with the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina. Even today, Iraqi electrical generation meets barely half the daily national requirements. Baghdad households now receive power an average of 12 hours each day -- six hours fewer than when Saddam Hussein ruled. Oil production still has not returned to pre-invasion levels. Reports of widespread fraud, waste and sheer ineptitude in the administration of U.S. aid have become so commonplace that they barely last a news cycle. (Recall, for example, the 110,000 AK-47s, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armor and 115,000 helmets intended for Iraqi security forces that, according to the Government Accountability Office, the Pentagon cannot account for.) U.S. officials repeatedly complain, to little avail, about the paralyzing squabbling inside the Iraqi parliament and the rampant corruption within Iraqi ministries. If a primary function of government is to provide services, then the government of Iraq can hardly be said to exist.

Moreover, recent evidence suggests that the United States is tacitly abandoning its efforts to create a truly functional government in Baghdad. By offering arms and bribes to Sunni insurgents -- an initiative that has been far more important to the temporary reduction in the level of violence than the influx of additional American troops -- U.S. forces have affirmed the fundamental irrelevance of the political apparatus bunkered inside the Green Zone.

Rather than fostering political reconciliation, accommodating Sunni tribal leaders ratifies the ethnic cleansing that resulted from the civil war touched off by the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a Shiite shrine. That conflict has shredded the fragile connective tissue linking the various elements of Iraqi society; the deals being cut with insurgent factions serve only to ratify that dismal outcome. First Sgt. Richard Meiers of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division got it exactly right: "We're paying them not to blow us up. It looks good right now, but what happens when the money stops?"

In short, the surge has done nothing to overturn former secretary of state Colin Powell's now-famous "Pottery Barn" rule: Iraq is irretrievably broken, and we own it. To say that any amount of "kicking ass" will make Iraq whole once again is pure fantasy. The U.S. dilemma remains unchanged: continue to pour lives and money into Iraq with no end in sight, or cut our losses and deal with the consequences of failure.

In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon. This was one of the main points of the exercise in the first place. As AEI military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable candor, "part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the Washington narrative," thereby deflecting calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Hawks who had pooh-poohed the risks of invasion now portrayed the risks of withdrawal as too awful to contemplate. But a prerequisite to perpetuating the war -- and leaving it to the next president -- was to get Iraq off the front pages and out of the nightly news. At least in this context, the surge qualifies as a masterstroke. From his new perch as a New York Times columnist, William Kristol has worried that feckless politicians just might "snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory." Not to worry: The "victory" gained in recent months all but guarantees that the United States will remain caught in the jaws of Iraq for the foreseeable future.

Such success comes at a cost. U.S. casualties in Iraq have recently declined. Yet since Petraeus famously testified before Congress last September, Iraqi insurgents have still managed to kill more than 100 Americans. Meanwhile, to fund the war, the Pentagon is burning through somewhere between $2 billion and $3 billion per week. Given that further changes in U.S. policy are unlikely between now and the time that the next administration can take office and get its bearings, the lavish expenditure of American lives and treasure is almost certain to continue indefinitely.

But how exactly do these sacrifices serve the national interest? What has the loss of nearly 4,000 U.S. troops and the commitment of about $1 trillion -- with more to come -- actually gained the United States?

Bush had once counted on the U.S. invasion of Iraq to pay massive dividends. Iraq was central to his administration's game plan for eliminating jihadist terrorism. It would demonstrate how U.S. power and beneficence could transform the Muslim world. Just months after the fall of Baghdad, the president declared, "The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution." Democracy's triumph in Baghdad, he announced, "will send forth the news, from Damascus to Tehran -- that freedom can be the future of every nation." In short, the administration saw Baghdad not as a final destination but as a way station en route to even greater successes.

In reality, the war's effects are precisely the inverse of those that Bush and his lieutenants expected. Baghdad has become a strategic cul-de-sac. Only the truly blinkered will imagine at this late date that Iraq has shown the United States to be the "stronger horse." In fact, the war has revealed the very real limits of U.S. power. And for good measure, it has boosted anti-Americanism to record levels, recruited untold numbers of new jihadists, enhanced the standing of adversaries such as Iran and diverted resources and attention from Afghanistan, a theater of war far more directly relevant to the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Instead of draining the jihadist swamp, the Iraq war is continuously replenishing it.

Look beyond the spin, the wishful thinking, the intellectual bullying and the myth-making. The real legacy of the surge is that it will enable Bush to bequeath the Iraq war to his successor -- no doubt cause for celebration at AEI, although perhaps less so for the families of U.S. troops. Yet the stubborn insistence that the war must continue also ensures that Bush's successor will, upon taking office, discover that the post-9/11 United States is strategically adrift. Washington no longer has a coherent approach to dealing with Islamic radicalism. Certainly, the next president will not find in Iraq a useful template to be applied in Iran or Syria or Pakistan.

According to the war's most fervent proponents, Bush's critics have become so "invested in defeat" that they cannot see the progress being made on the ground. Yet something similar might be said of those who remain so passionately invested in a futile war's perpetuation. They are unable to see that, surge or no surge, the Iraq war remains an egregious strategic blunder that persistence will only compound.

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book, "The Limits of Power," will be published later this year. His son was a Lieutenant in the Army and was killed in Iraq.