Though there were concerns during much of last year that Iraq was heading toward civil war, Bush says that he often reiterated his confidence in U.S. "victory" for the sake of the troops.
"That's as much to try and bolster the spirits of the people in the field as well -- you can't have the commander-in-chief say to a bunch of kids who are sacrificing that either it's not worth it or you're losing. What does that do for morale?" Bush said.
So Bush wasn't confident of victory? And he didn't say that Iraq wasn't worth it, or that we were losing, because that would hurt the morale of the troops, rather than not saying it because it wasn't true. Kind of like saying "I denied I had an affair because it would have hurt my wife to say otherwise." No, you denied you had an affair because you didn't have an affair. The only person who comes up with the previous excuse is someone who knows he was lying. So Bush is basically saying that he thought we were losing and that it wasn't worth it. But he kept wasting our money, and letting our troops be injured and killed, so that he didn't hurt anyone's feelings. Well, that would be the feelings of the troops who survived.
Brian Beutler does the yeoman’s work of examining some of the more specific instances of "progress" cited by Ambassador Crocker in his testimony last week. It's a great examination of a few specific points, so check it out.
The big lie is often most difficult to disprove, making the idea that general, overall progress is being made is an attractive sell for the administration. When claims regarding any one element are refuted, officials move right on to the next, never fully engaging but playing a game of tag with the facts.
It is vital, therefore, to examine the particulars, and Beutler does so thoroughly. Regarding Crocker's important-sounding assertion that Iraq's economic growth will exceed 6 percent for 2007, Beutler explains that this number, which would sound good for a developed nation, is actually worrisome for a country in Iraq’s dire straits.
[I]t's typical for a country as damaged as Iraq to see its economy fluctuate wildly, resulting in spurts of growth much more substantial than 6 percent. In fact, Iraq's GDP has varied greatly since the 2003 invasion. It climbed 46.5 percent in 2004, after having fallen 41.4 percent in 2003, according to the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index. In other words, though 6 percent would constitute significant growth for a developed nation like the United States, it is nearly meaningless for a country that's experienced as much turmoil as has Iraq.
That’s absolutely correct, and even a much greater improvement in economic growth might be irrelevant to "the great majority of Iraqis, who don’t benefit from government salaries or oil industry profits." With unemployment estimated between 40 and 50 percent, fluctuations in the overall economy are unlikely to affect those who aren't connected to the oil industry or the government payroll.
Even Crocker's insistence that cell phone usage is a positive development is dubious. The heavy reliance on cell phones is due in no small part to the massive damage done to infrastructure – virtually no land lines work.
The reality is, Iraq's economy is in shambles. No business can reasonably be expected to succeed in a place with virtually no electricity, no freedom of movement, no safe structure for exchange, and no security. To pretend otherwise is embarrassing and false.
Even with cutbacks promised by President Bush, the United States may wind up with thousands more troops in Iraq next summer than before the buildup of forces he ordered in January.
So the chimp lied. Again, show of hands for those who are surprised.
A little over a year ago, I started working for a small, upstart group called the National Security Network. I was wary of think tanks for a variety of reasons, but I thought the organization had great potential. NSN had a founder, Rand Beers, who was an actual expert on terrorism and who got the Iraq war right, and policy and communications leadership with talent, aggressiveness, and good political instincts.
Still, I felt like my blog life and establishment life were starkly separate. There wasn't a ton of communication between those worlds, key people didn't know each other, and there was some mistrust.
Today, however, thanks to tons of hard work and the occasional leap of faith, there is unbelievable cooperation and stellar results. Iraq -- and especially the escalation of troops -- has brought together activists, wonks, bloggers, and establishment types to work for a sane foreign policy. It's a privilege to be part of so many valuable parts of this effort, especially when the quality is at the level of NSN's latest, a video of *actual* experts explaining exactly why the Petraeus White House September "report" on Iraq is completely and utterly bogus:
Richard Clarke's comment is especially worth repeating: "What it's going to say is, if we keep troops in a given area, a lot of troops in a small area, we can achieve security in that area. Well, duh, of course we can! The United States military, which is costing us a half a trillion dollars, ought to be able to do that. That's not the issue: the issue is, why the hell are we there in the first place?"
Joe posted last night about the president's ridiculous statement that the U.S. is "kicking ass" in Iraq. Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey of Workers' World wasn't subtle in his commentary:
If "kicking ass" is creating a scenario whereby billions and billions of dollars (and Congress is today being presented with requests for more) of the US citizens' hard-earned wages are poured into a black hole of corruption (the Iraqi govenment, which dares not to venture beyond the refines of the Green Zone in Baghdad), if "kicking ass" is targeting civilian structures with military hardware, then George Bush proves that he indeed reunites the worst qualities of the cowboy clown-statesman the world feared back in 2000.
There was also a CNN article posted about Bush's mind-blowing statement, but the best part were the comments on that page. Who's the horse's ass now?
If "kicking ass" means thousands of innocent people are dying because of his greed, then we must be kicking ass. Posted By Ace, Orange Count California : September 6, 2007 5:38 pm
I'm glad to hear that the President is so down to earth and can tell it like it is. Posted By Jarred, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma : September 6, 2007 5:38 pm
He's the president of the most powerful nation on Earth and he says, "We're kicking ass," like he's talking about a Texas high school football team. Posted By Logan, Huntington, WV : September 6, 2007 5:38 pm
Another crude comment from a fool cowboy who causes other people to die, but who can't even prove he served his time in the military! Posted By Ross, Manlius, NY : September 6, 2007 5:38 pm
Really? How many Troops have died in this senseless war again? Posted By Becky, Euless, TX : September 6, 2007 5:41 pm
Whose ass? The American peoples'? Posted By bvt, Elko, Nevada : September 6, 2007 5:41 pm
"We're kicking ass,", "Fantastic Freedom Institute" and "replenish ol' coffers". Can he get any more adolescent? Posted By Arkay, Detrot, MI : September 6, 2007 5:41 pm
and people wonder why the US is not taken seriously in the world, when our 'leader' is making statements that sound like something out of a bad action movie. He's not the brightest guy. Posted By John, Green Bay Wisconsin : September 6, 2007 5:44 pm
Very classy, Mr. President. We need less tough talking cowboy hyperbole and more reason and logic in your approach to this mess you have created. Posted By Mark, Holmen, Wisconsin : September 6, 2007 5:45 pm
No, Mr. President. We are not "kicking ass" in Iraq. Only a moron would make a comment like this. I rest my point. Posted By Josh Maloney, Oakland, CA : September 6, 2007 5:51 pm
Did we hear that right, George? "Kicking ass?" Our men and women certainly have had successes, but your deceitful and toxic policies are to blame for the thousands of dead and wounded that were sent their because of your lies. And let's not forgot what you have done to Iraq and its citizens–hundreds of thousands dead and wounded, millions displaced, sectarian violence that is reminiscent of the Middle Ages. Childhoods robbed and lives forever altered because you like to "Kick Ass."
Kicking ass, indeed! What a misguided simpleton we have as president. My fingers won't allow me to even spell president (this one anyway) with a capital p. W, you are disgraceful.
Jim Arnold Posted By Jim Arnold, Germantown, TN : September 6, 2007 5:51 pm
There's that cowboy we all love so much.
Kicking who's ass, exactly? The American taxpayer's ass? Posted By Kris, Toronto : September 6, 2007 5:52 pm
Would like to say I am surprised … but I am not. This has to be the most foolish president in the history of the United States. Posted By Hank, Palm Springs, CA : September 6, 2007 5:52 pm
woohoo Go Army, Airforce, Navy & Marines! Posted By Badonkadonk, Houston, Texas : September 6, 2007 6:00 pm
President Bush is out of control and continues to be completely oblivious to the facts, i.e., the NIE report, the GAO report, reporters on the ground in Iraq, etc. At some point, he needs to be held accountable for his continued incompetence and refusal to be truthful with himself and the American people. His behavior is unacceptable. Posted By john p breen, freeport, new york : September 6, 2007 6:09 pm
Well it looks like we won't have to wait for Gen. Petraeus' report since Bush has already announced "we're kicking ass". Posted By Farrell, Houston, Tx : September 6, 2007 6:09 pm
Another completely insensitive, inappropriate and inaccurate comment from our incompetent and insane leader.
Were we kicking ass when some of our people shot up a bunch of Iraqi women, and children? Are we kicking ass when we torture prisoners? Are we kicking ass when the government we set up is half gone?
Someone should kick Bush's ass. If given the opportunity, I would be first in line. Posted By Clint, Menlo Park, CA : September 6, 2007 6:10 pm
The Mortgage Bankers Association, which represents banks and other firms in real estate finance, said delinquencies rose in the second quarter to 5.12 percent of loans on one-to-four-unit residential properties, up from 4.84 percent in the prior quarter.
The delinquency rate does not count another 1.4 percent of loans in the foreclosure process in the April-June period, also up from the first quarter.
Moreover, an additional 0.65 percent of loans entered the foreclosure process, the highest in the history of the survey.
Washington Monthly put its October cover story online today, and it is fantastic. (And not just because I'm quoted.) I'll comment on it and excerpt it briefly, but really, go read the article.
Back? Okay. The author, Andrew Tilghman, is a former reporter for Stars and Stripes, an independent military-focused newspaper, and spent nine months in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. It was clear to me when we spoke that he had an excellent basis of knowledge about the conflict, and he asked all the right questions to get at the specifics of the topic.
And he got fascinating answers from a variety of sources, which he weaved into a solid and damning assessment of the hyping of al Qaeda by military and administration leaders for political and/or careerism aims. To wit:
With disproportionate resources dedicated to tracking AQI, the search has become a self-reinforcing loop. The Army has a Special Operations task force solely dedicated to tracking al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Defense Intelligence Agency tracks AQI through its Iraq office and its counterterrorism office. The result is more information culled, more PowerPoint slides created, and, ultimately, more attention drawn to AQI, which amplifies its significance . . .
[T]he bar for labeling an attack the work of al-Qaeda can be very low. The fact that a detainee possesses al-Qaeda pamphlets or a laptop computer with cached jihadist Web sites, for example, is at times enough for analysts to link a detainee to al-Qaeda. "Sometimes it's as simple as an anonymous tip that al-Qaeda is active in a certain village, so they will go out on an operation and whoever they roll up, we call them al-Qaeda," says Rossmiller. "People can get labeled al-Qaeda anywhere along in the chain of events, and it's really hard to unlabel them." Even when the military backs off explicit statements that AQI is responsible, as with the Tal Afar truck bombings, the perception that an attack is the work of al-Qaeda is rarely corrected.
The author actually talked to regional and intelligence experts -- not to be confused with "political" or "military" commentators -- including names you probably recognize, like Juan Cole, Pat Lang, and Larry Johnson, as well as some you won't but should, like Malcolm Nance, a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker. Nance is also the author of The Terrorists of Iraq, which is easily the best book written on the Iraq insurgency and a must-read for anybody seriously interested in the issue.
The size and impact of al Qaeda in Iraq is hugely overblown by the media, elected figures, and military officials. Further, and perhaps even more importantly, its purported strength is essentially the only security-related reason claimed by the administration for maintaining our occupation. Political manipulation by government and military leaders -- combined with a lack of knowledge of situational specifics on the part of commentators and the public -- results in a profound general misunderstanding of the facts on the ground.
Incidentally, according to General Petraeus the surge is aimed at al Qaeda, a group about which he is severely deluded. It's all such a debacle.
The GOP is going to parrot the talking point that "sectarian deaths are down" for the next few weeks. It's becoming one of their favorite campaign slogans. One problem -- it's a lie. And, you know it's a blatant, glaring lie when even Wolf Blitzer debunks it. Hat tip Think Progress:
Karl Rove wrote a column for the National Review, stating that history will judge George Bush a successful President. The column was entirely laughable, a series of optimistic statements and misconstrued policies.
But typical of Rove, it was also filled with fabulous falsehoods. Here's what he said about the budget.
It was further weakened by terrorist attacks, corporate scandals, natural disasters, and out-of-control spending with discretionary domestic spending increasing 16 percent in the last fiscal year of his predecessor. President Bush took decisive action, cutting taxes and ratcheting down this spending.
In no way did George Bush ratchet down spending. That is an outright lie, one that Rove should be embarrassed to even suggest. According to a report by the Heritage Foundation, no liberal organization:
· Federal spending has grown twice as fast under President Bush as under President Clinton.
Got that? Rove's idea of "ratcheting down this spending" is to spend it twice as fast. It's hard to believe he could write this without laughing.
Over the past seven years, this country has grown accustomed to the blatant lies of the Bush Administration. And it comes as no surprise that the National Review would publish this rubbish. But ultimately, we must remain vigilant. Because history has yet to be written, and if we allow the Karl Rove's of the world to repeat this lie enough, it might eventually be considered true.
It's deplorable mendacity like this that reminds me it was the right decision to resign from the Department of Defense. There's literally nothing I can say or add to improve upon Ilan's commentary, so click through and check it out.
How about a question of the day for you all, in between links and blogwhoring:
What are your top three outrages perpetrated by the Bush Administration? I know, I know, it's almost impossible to keep it to three, but take a crack at it -- Iraq, Katrina, the Plame/CIA leak, torture is A-OK, Abu Ghraib, Habeus Corpus, Libby's pardon, Supreme Court picks, warrentless wiretapping, faith-based programs, ignoring/working to deny climate change, EPA lies about toxicity at Ground Zero, conditions at Walter Reed; endless "signing statements," ludicrous claims of executive privilege, Gonzogate, lack of body armor, training and supplies for the troops; the elections and voter disenfranchisement; Dick Cheney shooting a friend in the face and the attempted coverup...good grief, where to begin?
Okay, the height of hypocrisy is anyone in the Bush administration challenging anything as "highly misleading." Liars don't have the standing to call anyone else a liar. But, that doesn't prevent the Bush team from doing it anyway. Because everyone in the Bush administration knows that the media will dutifully report their lies:
The White House issued a statement that criticized as “highly misleading” a front-page article in The New York Times on Monday that described the legislation as having “broadly expanded the government’s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.”
The White House took issue not with the article’s account of the new law’s provisions, but instead with its characterization of the measure as having “broadly” strengthened the government’s authority.
In a telephone briefing for reporters on Monday, officials said the administration had set out to resolve a “narrow” technical problem that had called into question whether intelligence officials needed to get a court warrant to intercept foreign-to-foreign communications that happened to pass through American telecommunication switches. But in fact the legislation as enacted not only provides that no warrant is needed in such a situation but also goes further, in giving the administration discretion to eavesdrop on foreign communications that might involve Americans.
The officials who participated in the briefing spoke on condition of anonymity, saying only that doing so would allow them to talk more freely.
One more time we see just how boldly the Bush administration is willing to lie. Some anonymous officials, probably including Stephen Hadley, had an a conference call to challenge the NY Times.
Eric Lichtblau, who wrote this article, basically discounts what the anonymous White House official said. When he wrote "But in fact....", Lichtblau was intimating that what he heard wasn't based on facts. In other words, the anonymous Bush sources lied and misled. You won't hear or read those actual words from any reporter -- and the Bushies know that. Instead, most of the White House press corps will dutifully report what they heard, even if they know it's a lie. That's what these reporters always do.
Think Progress has the video of Glenn Greenwald discounting the Bush administration's position:
Today on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, former constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald, who blogs at Salon.com, debunked the White House’s claim that the new FISA law requires “court approval” prior to spying on an “individual located in the United States.” In fact, as Greenwald explained, the law now allows the government to “listen to our conversations, read our e-mails, with no connection to terrorism, with no proof that anyone has ever done anything wrong” — without judicial oversight.
I'd trust Glenn Greenwald over any Bush administration official -- anonymous or not -- any day on any issue, but especially on this.
When something isn't going how the Bush administration wants it to, its officials tend to use one of two ingenious methods of obfuscation: portray the issue mendaciously, or pretend it doesn't exist. Apparently the wheel stopped at "doesn't exist" last week, as the LA Times reports that the administration decided to stop reporting to Congress the status of electricity in Baghdad.
There are a few concrete indicators of quality of life in Iraq, including things like hours of electricity, waste (sewage) disposal, and amount of drinkable water. Electricity is a major one for several reasons. It indicates whether air conditioners are working (and let me say from personal experience that 130 degrees is no joke -- I'd get violent if I had to live in that all summer), affects health and diet (because of refrigeration, or lack thereof), and it also has a tremendous impact on what little economy Iraq has left -- imagine trying to run any kind of business with no power.
In the past several months, hours of power in Baghdad have gone from five to six per day to "an hour or two," according to Ryan Crocker, our ambassador to Iraq. Until Crocker's testimony last week, Congress was apparently uninformed of this regression because the State department stopped estimating how many hours of electricity the people of Baghdad receive. They switched, instead, to an estimate of national electrical production, which can have little correlation to power actually received.
Insurgencies depend on local support. That support dries up when people feel they are being adequately taken care of by the government. Electricity is near the top of that list. Iraqis look at the U.S. and think (and frequently ask), if you could put a man on the moon, why can't you get us electricity? And after a while, incompetence tends to get interpreted as malice. But don't take my word for it that it's an Iraqi priority -- Ambassador Crocker himself recently told CBS news that electricity was "more important to the average Iraqi than all 18 benchmarks rolled up into one."
And what's the official reason for ceasing to report this metric? "The change, a State Department spokesman said, reflects a technical decision by reconstruction officials in Baghdad who are scaling back efforts to estimate electricity consumption as they wind down U.S. involvement in rebuilding Iraq's power grid." Just as the summer starts to heat up and hours of power are plummeting to near-nonexistence, we're . . . winding down U.S. involvement in rebuilding Iraq's power grid.
FURTHER UPDATE: The latest US intelligence shows that Al Qaeda's leadership is in Pakistan, and it's growing stronger. Osama is in Pakistan. What the hell are we still doing in Iraq while Bush refuses to take out Al Qaeda's leadership in Pakistsan? It is a flat-out insult to our troops, lying to them about why they're being asked to risk their lives.
UPDATE: Now he's claiming that anyone who wants us to withdraw from Iraq is doing so because they don't believe Al Qaeda is even IN Iraq. False. Everyone knows that Al Qaeda is NOW in Iraq, since Bush basically invited them in, but we don't believe - the experts in Bush's own administration don't believe - that Al Qaeda is "the PRINCIPAL threat" in Iraq because it is not. This is a civil war. Second, they don't believe that you are capable of winning this war because you're an arrogant, obstinate, blithering idiot who refuses to change the course. More of our troops are going to die needlessly because their commander in chief is an idiot.
Anyone who claims that the so-called al Qaeda in Iraq group is the "principal threat" to anything in that nation -- whether its citizens, the government, the political process, or any specific ethnic or sectarian group -- is either grossly ignorant of the realities of the Iraq war or blatantly lying. I honestly have no idea which it is in this case, though it's worth noting that the chief U.S. military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, was employed as a Special Assistant to the President prior to his current appointment.
Most reliable estimates put the fundamentalist/jihadist/al Qaeda actors in Iraq at around 3-5% of the total insurgency, with virtually no approximations exceeding 10%. I really cannot overstate how misleading it is to focus on al Qaeda when the driving forces of the conflict are average, native, very pissed-off -- but not religious fundamentalist -- Iraqis. The vast majority of the Sunni population is relatively secular (more secular, in fact, than Iraqi Shia), and even tacit support of jihadists is founded in anti-American sentiment. Even the sectarian violence is fueled more by localized conflicts between Sunni and Shia families, tribes, and militias than by al Qaeda
It's not debatable, the man is lying, and our own intelligence agencies have told him so. Yet he keeps doing it. He in on his own personal God-anointed Christian crusade against the "evil Muslims." And he wonders why they hate us.
President Bush accused Democratic lawmakers on Saturday of being unable to live up to their duties, citing Congress' inability to pass legislation to fund the federal government.
"Democrats are failing in their responsibility to make tough decisions and spend the people's money wisely," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "This moment is a test."
The White House has said the failure of a broad immigration overhaul was proof that Democratic-controlled Capitol Hill cannot take on major issues. "We saw this with immigration, and we're seeing it with some other issues where Congress is having an inability to take on major challenges," said spokesman Tony Fratto.
The main reason the immigration measure died, however, was staunch opposition from Bush's own base — conservatives. The president could not turn around members of his own party despite weeks of intense effort.
It's actually been quite rare of late for the media to actually call Bush on his lies. Usually they simply parrot whatever the White House has to say, never challenging what they know to be untrue. In this case, AP refused to simply report a lie. And kudos to AP for that. While the Republicans want the media to report their truth, we want the media to report THE truth. There's a difference.
Froomkin has a typically astute column today titled, Put A Fork in Him. The "him" in question is, of course, George W. Bush. There is one particularly salient section about the Bush team's swagger and confidence -- and how that is usually off-base and just plain wrong. In fact, when team Bush does make a prediction, they're almost always puffery backed up by nothing real. Yet, time after time, the punditry has fallen for it.
Froomkin makes it real by tying Bush's patterns for inaccurate predictions to his spin on Iraq. If George Bush is wrong about everything, why should we believe anything he says will happen in the disastrous war he started? We shouldn't:
Bush and Vice President Cheney's optimistic predictions about the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular have proved to be almost completely and consistently wrong for years now. ("Last throes," anyone?)
Before the 2006 election, White House political guru Karl Rove was supremely self-assured in his public predictions of Republican victory.
White House spokesman Tony Snow recently assured the press corps that Bush had enough votes in the Senate on the immigration bill. "I'll see you at the bill signing," Bush himself told a skeptical journalist on June 11.
Bush and his staff's credibility regarding statements of "fact" is a frequent subject of debate. But their track record on predictions is something else entirely. The evidence is pretty overwhelming that those predictions are unreliable.
I mention this because Bush's core argument against a troop drawdown in Iraq -- something supported by a large majority of Americans -- is basically a prediction. As he put it again yesterday: "If we withdraw before the Iraqi government can defend itself, we would yield the future of Iraq to terrorists like al Qaeda -- and we would give a green light to extremists all throughout a troubled region. The consequences for America and the Middle East would be disastrous."
The consequences for America and the Middle East have already been disastrous because Bush was wrong. Based on Bush's track record, these latest predictions on Iraq aren't going to be accurate either.
Insurgents launched a deadly coordinated attack on an American combat patrol, detonating a roadside bomb, then firing guns and rocket-propelled grenades at the soldiers, the U.S. military said Friday. Five troops were killed.
As the death toll continues to grow, George Bush went to the Naval College yesterday seeking a friendly audience to spin his view of progress in Iraq. In fact, Bush is desperate to keep Republicans, who have enabled the Iraq disaster, on his side. Also, in typical fashion, the Bush administration is pushing back its own September deadline for progress:
White House officials had been hoping that they could hold together their party coalition on the war through that debate. The increasing concern from Republicans has caused them new anxiety.
Mr. Warner said that July 15, when a Congressionally mandated, preliminary report on the progress in Iraq is due, would be pivotal. The White House has been hoping for far more time, even backing away from its earlier statements that September would be a fair deadline to start judging the results of the new war plan.
The fair deadline for judging Bush's war is long past. Congress is going to have to act because Bush is never going to relent or accept his failure.
You may recall Brett Kavanaugh. As an aide to Ken Starr, he was the principal author of the Starr report, which led the GOP Congress to impeach President Clinton for allegedly lying about sex in a civil deposition in a lawsuit that was dismissed for lack of merit. Kavanaugh went on to serve as a lawyer for Bush in the White House. Bush nominated him for a lifetime appointment to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit - the most important and influential court in America after the US Supreme Court - and the Senate confirmed him. In the confirmation hearing, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) asked Kavanaugh if he'd played any role in the legal analysis and debate over enemy combatants. Kavanaugh categorically denied it. Now there are reports that Kavanaugh played a key role. Durbin is writing him to ask him to clear it up.
"By testifying under oath that you were not involved in this issue, it appears that you misled me, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the nation," Durbin wrote Kavanaugh, who was confirmed by the Senate last year on a vote of 57-36 for a seat on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
But Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) ought to initiate impeachment. Steven Griles was sentenced to 10 months in prison yesterday for lying to Congress - it's a crime. Brett Kavanaugh should be his cellmate, not a judge on the 2nd most powerful court in America.
