I know we are rightly embroiled in the economic calamity, but it seems that academics have been studying the decrease in violence in Iraq, and...surprise! Adding a paltry 30K soldiers to a country of 30M didn't really make the difference. It was the ethnic cleansing:
Studying satellite imagery of night light in Baghdad neighborhoods dominated by Sunni residents, [UCLA researchers] came up with an alternative conclusion: The Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims had largely stopped killing each other by the time the "surge" of U.S. troops arrived in 2007.
In other words, the remaining Sunnis, defeated, turned out the lights and left. And then the U.S. troops came in.
SEN. HARRY REID: Ray, you can't have it both ways. The president said, "Let's send some more troops over there, and that will give the Iraqis the time to take care of themselves." We sent other troops over there, and there are a lot of reasons the surge certainly hasn't hurt. It's helped. I recognize that.
But also, on your radio program, public radio today, there was a story about the fact that one of the academics said -- it was a long interview -- that said, you know, the ethnic cleansing has taken place all over Iraq. There is not the conflict because there is separation. There's segregation in effect.
What Reid might mean is that the surge didn't answer the question of why we're in Iraq, so it didn't 'work' any more than a light train wreck is 'better' than a freight train wreck. But didn't say that, probably because he's conservative. And when you get down to it, he he probably thinks that the surge was the right thing to do, and doesn't really prioritize ending the war. That doesn't mean he likes George Bush, but it does mean he thinks that the war could be managed a whole lot better. That's true. There could be more competent imperial Christian authoritarians in charge helping the train go off a different cliff. So in that sense, the surge is working.
Remember playing with silly putty as a child? In May, I wrote a diary on Daily Kos stating Bush's surge should be called the silly putty strategy and was doomed to fail.
You squeeze the insurgents in one area but they are not defeated. Instead, they redeploy and attack in another area where U.S. forces are spread thin.
Today in a biting essay in the Washington Post a group of former Army captains call for the immediate withdrawal of our forces from Iraq.
They note: "Though temporary reinforcing operations in places like Fallujah, An Najaf, Tal Afar, and now Baghdad may brief well on PowerPoint presentations, in practice they just push insurgents to another spot on the map and often strengthen the insurgents' cause by harassing locals to a point of swayed allegiances."
Tucked away on Seattle's Portage Bay, a sleek, 85-foot speedboat sat idle for years - save for an annual jaunt to maintain its engine.
The Navy paid $4.5 million to build the boat. But months before the hull ever touched water, the Navy gave the boat to the University of Washington. The school never found a use for it, either.
Why would the Navy waste taxpayer dollars on a boat that nobody wanted?
Blame it on Sen. Patty Murray and Congressmen Norm Dicks and Brian Baird. All three exercised their political muscle to slip language into a 2002 spending bill to force the Navy to buy the boat from Edmonds shipbuilder Guardian Marine International.
Year after year, the Washington lawmakers did favors for the tiny company, inserting four "earmarks" into different bills to force the Navy and Coast Guard to buy boats they didn't ask for - $17.65 million in all. None of the boats was used as Congress intended.
The congressional trio say they were helping Guardian Marine because it had a great product. But each has also received generous campaign donations from the company's three executives, its sole employees: $14,277 to Baird, $15,000 to Murray, and $16,750 to Dicks.
This nexus, between Bush Dogs and corrupt practices, just keeps popping up. I've spoken with a number of savvy local political figures, activists and insiders, and by most accounts, Brian Baird's a terrifically smart and cynical Congressman. Whether it was voting for the Bankruptcy Bill, acting badly on Terry Schiavo, or changing his mind on the surge to pull in right-wing support, he's been able to hew a relatively conservative line on some key issues because of memories of Republican Linda Smith, the crazy evangelical he beat in 1998. Baird's upset a good number of local activists with his bad Iraq stance, and rumor has it that he reduced one longtime supporter to tears. He's also upset environmentalists on his logging work, and the distict is shifting along with the country to a more strident progressive and antiwar stance.
With this earmarked useless boat done in return for political purposes, Baird has lost even more goodwill and opened up a clear spot for a primary challenger in 2008 or 2010.
This piece, http://smallwarsjour... while l-o-n-g, is really worth taking the time. Colonel Kilcullen is a top counter-insurgency theorist, and one of Petraeus' brain trust. This is his assessment, and, given where it was put up, relatively non-propagandistic: for instance, he frankly admits that the Anbar awakening was unanticipated, and that the surge, as originally conceived, didn't work. OTOH, he finds indications that the central government is welcoming the Anbar developments, and I find nothing supporting that in anything that I have access to. The piece also is interesting for explaining what the intent is in arming former insurgents--and watch the caveats! For a candid preview, it will be hard to top this. And it can be used to credibly beat back the moronic idiocy of some of the noise machine's louder cheerleaders.
This is Joel from the Biden Blog. Yesterday, Tony Snow made a comment about Senator Biden that our campaign manager felt warranted a response. After all, we have seen Senator Biden's positions mischaracterized in the past. While we know most will see through Mr. Snow's comments, we feel strongly about confronting any distortions of the Senator's position on Iraq.
With that, here is the response from Campaign Manager Luis Navarro, after the jump.
Chris Bowers pointed out that another blank check for Iraq is probably on its way. Whatever you think about funding strategies for Iraq, this is a good illustration of just how the Bush Dogs hurt us. Here's Jason Altmire, of PA-04, at a press conference upon his recent return from Iraq, on Bush's funding requests.
The president has made the decision to continue the mission at its current level, and I am never going to vote to withhold funding to our brave men and women when they are out in the field of battle serving in harm's way.
By way of background, Jason Altmire is a freshman in a district outside of Pittsburgh, and his district's PVR is R +2.6. He's facing a reelection campaign against either former Congresswoman Melissa Hart or Lynn Swann, neither of whom are particularly good candidates. Republicans have already set up an attack site against him quoting from Fox News and punishing him for voting against the troops.
With his statements on funding, Almire is preemptively caving in to whatever Bush wants. Here's Altmire on Petraeus's report.
So -- and I do want to say one thing about General Petraeus and the meeting that we had with him. I have the utmost confidence, after speaking with him and seeing his commitment to this report, that what you hear in his testimony and what he says is going to be from his heart. I don't think there's going to be any fingerprints from the White House Political Office on General Petraeus's comments.
Just a few weeks ago, the White House claimed they would author the report by Petraeus, casting his credibility into question. Just today, the administration pushed the GAO into changing its pessimistic report on Iraq. Why would Altmire grant the White House this kind of credibilty by building up Patraeus as an unassailable spokesman? Petraeus is going to say the surge is working. We know that now.
Altmire will vote for timelines, and says he wants a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. But he's going to vote for any and all money Bush wants, and he will stand up for surrogates of the surge like Patraeus.
I used Howie Klein's profile of Bush Dog Jason Almire to write this post. It was really useful to have that content handy. If you have a bit of time, pick a Bush Dog Democrat who hasn't been profiled and profile him.
To be a part of the Bush Dog Democrat campaign, sign up here.
First let me say that I live in Brian's district and am active in my county's Democratic Party chapter. Secondly, let me say that I have commented previously on this matter to the effect that we will have a primary opponent for Mr. Baird next August.
local activist Paul Spencer, commenting on Open Left
"It could well cost me the next election," Baird said at the end of the meeting. "That's alright."
The campaign was covered in USA Today, on Fox News, the Politico, and in the New York Observer. Anonymous Democratic strategists are attacking me with the straw man argument that criticism will jeopardize Democratic seats, wingnuts are flipping out, and some local Democrats are very very angry. I've heard of possible primary challenges in several districts where Bush Dog Democrats are in power.
It's really amazing what a little criticism from a few of us can do.
After becoming a sudden star on CNN touting the success of the surge, Bush Dog Democrat Brian Baird got incredible pushback from his constituents at a townhall meeting. First, there was a robocall in the district advertising his town hall. Then there was Jon Soltz from VoteVets, who showed up and made his presence known.
He spoke in a high school auditorium that was packed with at least 500 people who were overwhelmingly vocal in their opposition to Baird's new stance. There were also protesters outside calling for Baird to resign.
He was hammered by Jon Soltz, the young, good looking, charismatic chairman and co-founder of political action committee VoteVets.org. Soltz is also an Iraq war veteran, having served in 2003. Speaking calmly and to raucous applause, he said Baird (who recently returned from a visit to Iraq) was fooled "by a dog and pony show" and is unfortunately providing cover for President Bush.
Afterwards, Soltz told me that his goal is to bring Baird back into the Democratic fold.
Another speaker who brought down the house was Zanne Joi, a Vancouver activist with Code Pink Women for Peace. Joi called Baird "arrogant" for trying to dictate how Iraqis should govern themselves and said the war was only about "American oil profit."
A third speaker, who also spoke to tremendous applause, was Jane Lustig from Vancouver, whose main complain was that Baird was not representing his constituents' point of view.
I also talked to several people as they left the auditorium and asked them if they found Baird-who was there to explain his new position-to be persuasive. To a person, everyone shook their head "no way," including Doris Holmes, active member of the 18th district Democrats, who said, "He lied. He's towing the Bush party line. I can't believe he's a Democrat."
This kind of Bush Dog behavior is not new for Baird, despite his vote against the authorization (which is tempered by a bunch of votes he has taken that are actually pretty right-wing on Iraq since that time). And lest we forget, Baird was a TV star on CNN a few years ago because of his behavior during the Schiavo affair.
This is a Bush Dog through and through. And what this town hall shows is that Bush Dog Democrats are not representing their constituents, despite the nonsense of 'oh those are bloggers who don't like that I'm voting my district'. It turns out that their constituents are also pretty angry.
Here's Washington state's Brian Baird talking about how great the surge is, how he'll no longer vote for timelines, and bashing Democrats, after spending a grand total of two days in Iraq. This is part of a campaign to split Democrats. As part of the right-wing PR campaign, here's Jerry McNerney bashing Democrats on Iraq to the Washington Post.
But in an interview yesterday, McNerney made clear his views have shifted since returning from Iraq. He said Democrats should be willing to negotiate with the generals in Iraq over just how much more time they might need. And, he said, Democrats should move beyond their confrontational approach, away from tough-minded, partisan withdrawal resolutions, to be more conciliatory with Republicans who might also be looking for a way out of the war.
"We should sit down with Republicans, see what would be acceptable to them to end the war and present it to the president, start negotiating from the beginning," he said, adding, "I don't know what the [Democratic] leadership is thinking. Sometimes they've done things that are beyond me."
This is after a 'clarification' on his blog pandering to activists.
We have a lot of work to do on this Bush Dog campaign. Sign up to profile one of them. And meanwhile, we'll need criteria for figuring out how to add new ones. Baird voted correctly on the FISA bill, but I think it's hard to say that he doesn't deserve criticism. Bush won his district in 2004 by a margin of 50-49.
I transcribed Baird's full interview with Tucker in the extended entry.
STATE BLOGS
