US Diary: apparently the Dems have a plan for Iraq - what is it?

1. Iraq - Finally, The Democratic Position -- by Bob Burnett

The March 10-12 Gallup Poll, found that 32 percent of Americans felt that President Bush "has a clear plan for handling Iraq," but only 25 percent thought that the Democrats did. On Wednesday, March 29, Democratic leaders finally unveiled their plan for Iraq, as part of Real Security: The Democratic Plan to Protect America and Restore Our Leadership in the World. Will the public now be able to tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans? Probably, if the Dems get some media time.

The GOP is afraid that this will happen. First, Karl Rove switched the time of President's news conference so that it would eclipse the Dems news briefing where they announced Real Security . Then, the Repugs went on offense. One GOP Senator said there was no difference between what the Dems suggest and Bush's plan, "It's taken [the Democrats] all this time to figure out what we've been doing for a long time." Next, Dick Cheney hit the airwaves and called the Dem plan "a strategic retreat." Hmmm. Real Security can't be identical to what Bush suggests and also "a strategic retreat." What does the Democratic plan actually say?

Real Security addresses five subjects: Iraq, the War on Terror, homeland security, the state of the US military, and energy independence. The authors note that these are interconnected. For example, they imply that the US invaded Iraq because of oil and we need to wean ourselves from foreign oil with a real plan for energy independence.

The Democrats' plan for Iraq addresses withdrawal, Iraqi governance, and Bush culpability. On the key subject of withdrawal, Real Security states, "Ensure 2006 is a year of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with the Iraqis assuming primary responsibility for securing and governing their country and with the responsible redeployment of U.S. forces." It stops short of proposing a definite timetable for withdrawal. This represents a compromise between the position of Dems, like Congressman John Murtha, who want a firm schedule for withdrawal, and others, like DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel, who say President Bush must establish "timetables for success."

A careful parsing of the Dems new Iraq position finds three key elements: 2006 must be the year when significant changes occur in Iraq. In other words, if at the end of the year there are no clear signs of progress, there must be a significant change of American policy, such as a schedule for withdrawal. This is distinct from the Bush doctrine that America stays in Iraq until we "win;" that steadfastly refuses to propose a timetable; that doesn't see 2006 as being all that different from 2005. The White House position is "stay the course;" that we'll be involved in Iraq as long as Dubya is President. At his March 21st press conference, Dubya admitted that the date for the last of our troops to leave "will be decided by future Presidents."

The Dems Iraq plan also states that 2006 must be the year when Iraqis take major responsible for both security and governance. Currently "Iraqi troops have primary responsibility for less than 20 percent of the country overall." One would expect that at the end of 2006 they would have responsibility for more than half. Again, the White House doesn't have any concrete expectations; for good reason, as the Iraqis currently can't get it together enough to form a government.

The third element of the Dems plan is "responsible redeployment of US forces." This follows the Murtha logic that withdrawal doesn't mean that all our Iraqi troops should leave the Middle East, rather that a quick reaction force should be maintained nearby in Kuwait or a similar location.

The key verb in the Democratic plan is ensure . Suppose, for a moment, that in the November elections Democrats regain control of the House or Senate. What would they do to "ensure" that there is a change of direction in Iraq when the 110th Congress convenes in January 2007? Real Security doesn't say. But, it's obvious that the President isn't going to renegotiate his position-"stay until we win"-so the logical conclusion is that a Congress controlled by Democrats would begin to turn off money for the occupation. The Dems position represents a significant difference from the Bush "endless war" scenario.

Regarding Iraqi governance, Real Security says, " Insist that Iraqis make the political compromises necessary to unite their country and defeat the insurgency; promote regional diplomacy; and strongly encourage our allies and other nations to play a constructive role." This assumes that Congress plays a role in the formation of a stable Iraqi government, which it doesn't. And the Dems strategy doesn't address the question of what should be done if Iraqi slides into the abyss of civil war. Nonetheless, the implication is that Dems are drawing a line in the sand. If "2006 is a year of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty," then if Iraqi governance collapses, we're out of there, regardless.

Finally, Real Security addresses the matter of White House responsibility for the Iraqi debacle. "Hold the Bush Administration accountable for its manipulated pre-war intelligence, poor planning and contracting abuses that have placed our troops at greater risk and wasted billions of taxpayer dollars." They tie this to the larger theme of ethics reform that will play a major role in the November elections.

Obviously, there will be no real investigations into issues such as whether or not Dubya and Dick massaged pre-war intelligence to deceive Americans about Iraq, unless Democrats control the House or Senate. Under the current arrangement, there is no accountability. George Bush acts as if he is above the law, and thanks to the Republican Congress, he is.

George Bush has painted himself into a corner. He stubbornly maintains his "stay until we win" position, while Iraq deteriorates. It may take a while for the public to figure this out, but the Democrats have a better plan for Iraq. "Ensure 2006 is a year of significant transition" represents a real choice, not an echo.

(Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net)


2. The New Definition of Military Valour - Saying No To Politicians -- by Max Hastings

Francis Fukuyama's Iraq recantation has received keen attention on both sides of the Atlantic. Like many US conservatives, he now distances himself from what has been done in the neocons' name by the Bush administration. Of course, we welcome every sinner that repenteth, but the people who seem most deserving of respect are those clever Americans who got it right in the first place. Most of my US military acquaintances opposed the invasion. They did not doubt the coalition's ability to defeat Saddam's army swiftly and topple his regime. It was uncertainty about what would follow that rang warning bells. They identified from the outset precisely the difficulties that Messrs Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz contemptuously dismissed.

In October 2002, when it became evident that Bush was determined to invade Iraq, the US Army War College's strategic studies institute undertook a study of a prospective occupation. Some bright soldiers and diplomats got together with two military academics, Dr Conrad Crane and Dr Andrew Terrill. The fruits of their labours were published in February 2003, before the first shot was fired.

Re-reading the study today, it seems stunningly prescient. First, it highlighted previous failures to address the problems of occupation, notably after the 1991 Gulf war. A senior commander on the ground, it said, "could get no useful staff support to assess and plan for post-conflict issues like hospital beds, prisoners and refugees, complaining later that he was handed 'a dripping bag of manure' that no one else wanted".

In 2003, the study predicted, after a brief initial honeymoon "suspicion of US motives will increase ... A force initially viewed as liberators can rapidly be relegated to the status of invaders ... Regionally, the occupation will be viewed with great scepticism, which may only be overcome by the population's rapid progress towards a secure and prosperous way of life ... The establishment of democracy or even some sort of rough pluralism in Iraq ... will be a staggering challenge". It warned that exile groups, the focus of Pentagon hopes, did not possess the domestic support to form a credible Iraqi interim administration.

Crane and Terrill forecast the alienation of Sunnis dispossessed of power, and the difficulties of reconciling a society riven by religious and tribal divides. They anticipated an insurgency, and highlighted the importance of training US soldiers in the specialised skills of low-intensity combat against guerrillas in the midst of a civilian population.

They identified suicide-bombing as the insurgents' likely tactic of choice, noting that Israel had been able to stem this threat only by building its security wall, not an option in Iraq: "All Arabs ... are now learning stunning lessons about the effectiveness of suicide bombers."

They cautioned against disbanding the Iraqi army after winning the war: "To tear apart the army ... could lead to the destruction of one of the only forces for unity within the society ... [It] also raises the possibility that demobilised soldiers could affiliate with ethnic or tribal militias."

Crane and Terrill summarised their conclusions thus: "To be successful, an occupation ... requires much detailed inter-agency planning, many forces, multi-year military commitment, and a national commitment to nation-building. Recent American experiences with post-conflict operations have generally featured poor planning, problems with relevant military-force structure, and difficulties with a handover from military to civilian responsibility."

They forecast the need for strong engineer and civil affairs back-up for combat units, and suggested that US forces would face "possible severe security difficulties ... The administration of an Iraqi occupation will be complicated by deep religious, ethnic and tribal differences, which dominate Iraqi society. US forces may have to manage and adjudicate conflicts among Iraqis that they can barely comprehend".

"An exit strategy will require the establishment of political stability, which will be difficult to achieve given Iraq's fragmented population, weak political institutions and propensity for rule by violence."

There is today much criticism of American and British intelligence about Iraq before the invasion. We know that both the CIA and the Secret Intelligence Service got it wrong about weapons of mass destruction. Yet allied commanders had access to a mass of shrewd analysis, of which the Crane-Terrill study, from a respected US army institution, is only the most striking example. All such material was tossed aside, of course, because it did not fit the administration's agenda.

Intelligence and predictive analysis can never be more useful than the political and service chiefs to whom they are submitted. In Afghanistan today, almost all the smart diplomats, soldiers, journalists and intelligence-gatherers agree that Nato plans to deploy a few thousand troops to support reconstruction amount to gesture strategy of the worst sort. The policy survives only because it represents the highest common factor of Nato nations' willingness to act, a pitiful political figleaf rather than a coherent military operation.

Perhaps the most important lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan is that senior soldiers on both sides of the Atlantic should be braver about saying no. Armed forces are the servants of democratic governments. But their commanders should recognise a constitutional duty to dig in their heels when invited by politicians to undertake operations they perceive as militarily unsound. This the 2003 Iraq invasion emphatically was, because of the US government's refusal meaningfully to address "phase IV" occupation planning.

Cobra II, the new book by Michael Gordon and General Bernard Trainor, which was serialised in this newspaper, makes plain that much of America's military leadership was uncomfortable with the operation, and thought the terms set by defence secretary Rumsfeld quite unrealistic. Yet the doubters stifled their feelings, and the dissenters were sidelined. There was enough ambitious, heedless top brass in the mould of General Tommy Franks to do the business.

Britain's service chiefs would have endorsed every word of the Crane-Terrill pamphlet about the requirements for occupation strategy, and were in no doubt that their American partners had done little or nothing towards fulfilling them. British commanders went ahead with doing their part anyway. They perceived this as their duty, just as they are now presiding over the token British deployment in Afghanistan, though almost no one in uniform thinks its objectives attainable with the forces available.

The Blair government ruthlessly stifles expressions of dissent within the Ministry of Defence. Yet the only way to avoid more foreign fiascos is to have an informed, ongoing public debate about what our armed forces are or are not doing. We have learned the painful consequence of dependence for enlightenment on Alastair Campbell and his "mate" John Scarlett.

Iraq has demonstrated what happens when governments are allowed to defy informed opinion and pursue ideologically driven adventures. There will come a time when the west has vital reasons to stage another armed intervention somewhere in the world. When it does, we need to feel confident that the chiefs of staff on both sides of the Atlantic will speak their minds if they are invited by government to execute a policy that they judge ill-conceived.

We ourselves, as citizens, must know enough to exploit our democratic institutions to prevent another such fiasco as Iraq. Any US soldier or civilian who read the Crane-Terrill report back in 2003 should have recognised that refusal to heed its wise strictures promised disaster, and indeed delivered it.

(Max Hastings is the author of Armageddon: the Battle for Germany 1944-1945.)


3. An Average Joe's Spectacular Lies
By William Rivers Pitt

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
- Edmund Burke

Page four of Sunday's Washington Post carried a story titled "The President as Average Joe," which described how George W. Bush is trying once again to cast himself as a regular fella so as to boost his anemic poll numbers. "As he takes to the road to salvage his presidency," reported the Post, "Bush is letting down his guard and playing up his anti-intellectual, regular-guy image."

Most of us, presumably, know enough "Average Joe" types to fill a room. Most of us, presumably, don't know a single "Average Joe" type who could pull off a trick like the one reported by the New York Times last week. The issue centered, once again, around a memo that was drafted before the invasion of Iraq.

"During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003," read the Times, "[Bush] made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by the New York Times."

"The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable," continued the Times report. "Mr. Bush predicted that it was 'unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups.' Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment. The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein."

Quite a nifty trick for an Average Joe, yes? This was from the same regular fella who ever-so-earnestly told journalist Helen Thomas last week that he didn't want war, because no president wants war. Here we have merely another lie, an accent in a symphony of lies. If Bush did not want war, why decide upon an attack despite the absence of the public motivator for attack, the weapons of mass destruction? Why try to goad Hussein into a fight?

Remember when the administration made that humorous little video of George searching the Oval Office for the weapons of mass destruction way back when? It was truly an "Average Joe" moment that, in light of the revelations afforded by this pre-war memo, brings the yellow bile up the back of the throat.

Seven more American soldiers died in Iraq over the last few days, bringing the total to 2,332. It is difficult to count the number of civilians who have been slaughtered in the it-isn't-a-civil-war-not-really violence of the last several weeks. It takes a special kind of "Average Joe" to get so many people killed in so short a time thanks to lies of such width and breadth. Most "Average Joes," after all, lie about sex or fishing or their bowling score from Saturday night.

Most "Average Joes," likewise, enjoy being considered straight-shooters. They don't hide from hard truths and expect to be able to handle whatever comes their way. Mr. Bush, it seems, would rather be massaged with pleasing fictions from his staff, and is perfectly happy to have his handlers encase him in bubble-wrap to protect him from the aftershocks resulting from astonishingly bad decisions.

Reporter Murray Wass, writing for the National Journal, wrote another essay last week that exposed more of the lies that were used to trick the people of this nation into supporting the unnecessary and criminal invasion of Iraq. "Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser," wrote Waas, "cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address - that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon - might not be true."

"The pre-election damage-control effort in response to (Ambassador Joseph) Wilson's allegations and the broader issue of whether the Bush administration might have misrepresented intelligence information to make the case for war had three major components," continued Waas. "Blame the CIA for the use of the Niger information in the president's State of the Union address; discredit and undermine Wilson; and make sure that the public did not learn that the president had been personally warned that the intelligence assessments he was citing about the aluminum tubes might be wrong."

It is disturbing enough to encompass the hard fact that there has not been, at any point, an element of "incompetence" in the process that has left us in such a deranged state in Iraq. Virtually every item on the Bush administration's wish list has been obtained in the last four years , thanks to the invasion, occupation and conveniently subsequent mess that has followed. Objectively, one must know that a barrage of falsehoods was required to create such a situation. To see these lies exposed one after another, like a long line of sausage links, would seem to be beyond tolerance.

Sadly, our collective ability to absorb and discard such terrifying information appears to be without limit. The revelations offered by the New York Times regarding Bush's pre-invasion decision to go to war no matter what, and his decision to goad Iraq into a war whether or not they posed a threat, passed through the waters of the mainstream media with nary a ripple. The same went for Mr. Waas's report; the information he provided in such scathing detail was met by the mainstream press with a thunderous nothing.

It is almost amusing. The pundits and politicos are justifying each other's vapid and useless existence these days by carrying forth an empty debate as to whether or not Mr. Bush and his people lied us into a war. Yet when hard evidence of these lies is presented in stark black and white, the response is a whistling silence.

The duality is astonishing; if you are callow enough to subject yourself to the dreck that passes for news on television, you might actually see someone acknowledge the existence of the evidence of these lies before turning on a dime to claim that no one lied about anything. Maybe, just maybe, you'll see someone claim the administration is "incompetent."

No one who lies so often or so effectively can be described as incompetent. This kind of thing requires nimble skills combined with an utter absence of conscience.

"Iraq is becoming a country that America should be ashamed to support," reads a chilling New York Times editorial from Sunday, "let alone occupy. The nation as a whole is sliding closer to open civil war. In its capital, thugs kidnap and torture innocent civilians with impunity, then murder them for their religious beliefs. The rights of women are evaporating. The head of the government is the ally of a radical anti-American cleric who leads a powerful private militia that is behind much of the sectarian terror."

Not a bad day's work for an Average Joe.

(William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.)