The Bush Legacy

Also at DKos.

The Bush administration's chief propagandist is still spinning webs. In an interview with Michael Abramowitz of the Washington Post, Karl Rove said that there is little talk in the White House these days about young Mr. Bush's legacy, but there's one thing he's certain of. Bush's greatest impact on future presidents will be his doctrine of "preemptive war."

The doctrine, according to Rove, "says if you train a terrorist, harbor a terrorist, feed a terrorist, you will be treated like a terrorist yourself. And then the corollary of that, which is that we will not wait until dangers fully materialize before taking action."

Abramowitz notes that Dick Cheney recently told ABC News "I think history will regard us as having made good, sound, solid decisions."

I think history will regard Cheney and Rove as having heads full of snakes.

Restoring Sanity

Abramowitz also points out that others have a more pragmatic view of the Bush II legacy.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter administration, said the next president will be forced to discard the most "extreme policies" of the Bush administration if he or she hopes to regain American influence in the world, and to abandon Bush's vision of Islamic extremists as on par with the Nazi empire or the Soviet Union at their zeniths.

The next president, he said, "will have to make serious readjustments with rationality."

The rational assessment of the Bush administration will be that it didn't make any sound decisions, and that preemptive war, especially when conducted by a sole superpower against a much weaker opponent, is sublime folly.

Any war is a risky undertaking, and unnecessary risks are not the kinds of things rational political leaders should undertake. On a necessity scale of zero to 10, repelling an invasion by a neighboring country ranks a 10. Invading a country halfway across the world based on pan-fried intelligence and Imperialistic ideologies rates several places to the right of the decimal point.

Intelligence, especially strategic intelligence, is an iffy thing at best. The ability to accurately determine a potential adversary's capabilities through advanced surveillance technology and intentions is limited. Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana (1958) and John le Carre's The Tailor of Panama are two excellent spy novels--written by former spies--that demonstrate the frailties of human intelligence. When you subject intelligence to manipulation by political ideologists with a war-centric agenda, as happened with Iraq--and that threatens to happen again with Iran--you have a recipe for perpetual fiasco.

What's more, as our Iraq excursion illustrates, preemptive wars overseas that involve invasion and occupation based on fuzzy intelligence grind one's land forces into sandbag fill, and it's intuitively obvious to anyone who isn't a Cheney-class compensated psychopath that pursuing a policy that destroys your means of pursuing it is, in layman terms, just plain crazy.

Hatters, Hares and Lemmings

Rebuilding America's Defenses, the Project for the New American Century's neoconservative manifesto published in September of 2000, stated that…

…the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein. (Page 14.)

The 9/11 attacks gave the Bush administration neocons (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Feith, etc.) the "new Pearl Harbor" they needed to carry out their delusional Strangelove strategy.

Rather than rebuilding America's defenses, the neocons have put our military bow and barrel down in a sand dune. And yet, incredibly, the likes of Rove and Cheney insist that they have created a template for the success of future U.S. policies.
By any rational measure, these guys are nuttier that a pecan orchard, but some theoretically sane Americans still listen to them and take them seriously. Maybe the psychiatric field should come up with a new term for people who still cling to the Bush agenda--"compensated lemmings."

The celebrated 20th century logician Bertrand Russell said that "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."

I'm not the wisest guy in the world, but I had doubts about the Bush administration when it came into office. I was vaguely aware that he was backed by a neoconservative cabal who had wild ideas about forging a 21st century American empire through armed force, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when Dick Cheney started talking about restoring the power of the presidency. But what the heck, I figured. The system is too strong, too well established, for a group of wild-eyed ideologues to lead us down the road to aggressive fascism. Silly me.

Six years and change later, the fanatics and the fools who still follow them have turned the United States of America into a militaristic oligarchy with theocratic underpinnings. Our foreign policy is a shambles. Our instruments of power--military, diplomacy, economy and information--are broken. Rule of law is a "quaint and obsolete" notion, and the Constitution itself has become a non-binding resolution.

The lasting legacy of the Bush administration will be that the only thing we have to fear is the people who govern us.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.

Federal Bureau of Intrusion: 'Berto's Burglars

Also at DKos.

It's hardly surprising to discover that the FBI has been abusing its authority under the Patriot Act. What gets my attention is that the person who blew the lid on the scandal was a Justice Department inspector general (IG). For the past six years, the Justice Department's primary function has been to make sure the law does not apply to Mr. Bush.

According to a Washington Post report, the IG audit…

… detailed widespread abuse of the FBI's authority to seize personal details about tens of thousands of people without court oversight through the use of national security letters.

It also found that the FBI had hatched an agreement with telephone companies allowing the agency to ask for information on more than 3,000 phone numbers -- often without a subpoena, without an emergency or even without an investigative case. In 2006, the FBI then issued blanket letters authorizing many of the requests retroactively, according to agency officials and congressional aides briefed on the effort.

On release of the IG audit, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III promptly apologized and promised swift corrective action. At a press conference in Uruguay, Mr. Bush said he was "pleased" that his FBI chief "took responsibility as he should have."

Holy heinous hypocrisy.

Yeah, I'm sure Bush was "pleased" to see yet another of his liegemen take a bullet for him. Meuller should have been canned immediately. What will happen instead, I suspect, is that Bush will keep him around and see how the radioactive dust settles. If the problem gets buried in the hoopla of all the administration's other dirty bombs, Mueller will probably stay in place for the rest of Bush's tenure. If it turns into another Libby-gate, Mueller will take the heat from Congress until he reaches critical mass, and Bush will reluctantly accept his resignation. If things get really, really bad, Mueller might not get his Medal of Freedom.

Something Happened

As with so many of the Bush administration's shenanigans, it takes a Vulcan mind meld to figure out exactly what happened in the Patriot Act abuse affair. To begin with, there can't be much more than a fistful of lawyers who know what the Patriot Act says. It's a compendium of line item changes to other sections of U.S. code. The original version was passed on October 24, 2001, a mere month and a half after the 9/11 attacks. One's mind boggles that such a labyrinth piece of legislation could have been cobbled together in that short a period. A conspiracy aficionado might conclude that the Act was in development well before 9/11.

Senators from both sides of the aisle expressed outrage at the recent IG report. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said, "This goes above and beyond almost everything they've done already. It shows just how this administration has no respect for checks and balances."

Dick Durbin (D-IL) said the report "confirms the American people's worst fears about the Patriot Act."

Arlen Specter told media reps that Congress may "impose statutory requirements and perhaps take away some of the authority which we've already given to the FBI, since they appear not to be able to know how to use it."

The Patriot Act authority the FBI doesn't know how to use is something called a national security letter, which the Times describes as…

…a type of administrative subpoena that allows the FBI to demand records from banks, credit-reporting agencies and other companies without the supervision of a judge.

The IG report found that the FBI had abused the privilege by underreporting to Congress the number of times they used it. But wait a minute--the privilege itself sounds like a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution which guarantees…

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Who knows? The concept of constitutional checks and balances is so scrambled at this point, we may never be able to put the egg back together again. The legislative branch gave the executive branch authority to conduct searches and seizures without warrants from the judicial branch as long as it let the legislative branch know what it was up to. Now, the legislative branch that cut the judicial branch out of the picture is throwing a tantrum because the executive branch cut the legislative branch out of the picture.

Triple Vision

The distinction between the executive branch's Justice Department, the legislative branch's judiciary committees, and the judicial branch is blurred to the point where the only way the Constitution makes sense is if you read it while you're so drunk you're seeing triple.

The Patriot Act is so full of snakes that Congress will never figure out how to fix it. They need to just repeal the damn thing. Then they need to impeach--or threaten to impeach--FBI director Mueller. Then they need to do the same with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (see Larisa Alexandrovna's take on 'Berto's culpability in this fandango). And then they need to go after Dick Cheney, the kingpin who had played the largest role in turning the office of the president into an imperial throne.

As to whether we can breathe easy now that the Justice Department IG is on the job: the IG report released on Friday was required by Congress as part of the dope deal they made when the reauthorized the Patriot Act last year, back when the GOP still had control of Congress.

How did Dick Cheney ever let that happen? He must have been distracted: Iraq, Afghanistan, Plame-gate, NSA-gate, shooter-gate…

Everybody has their favorite parts of the Bush administration's innumerable scandals. Here's my favorite part about Patriot-gate:

The findings by inspector general [Glenn] Fine were so at odds with previous assertions by the Bush administration that Capitol Hill was peppered yesterday with retraction letters from the Justice Department attempting to correct statements in earlier testimony and briefings. Gonzales and other officials had repeatedly portrayed national security letters as a well-regulated tool necessary for the prevention of terrorist attacks.

One such retraction letter, sent to Specter by Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard A. Hertling, sought to correct a 2005 letter that attacked a Washington Post story about national security letters. "We have determined that certain statements in our November 23 letter need clarification," Hertling wrote.

Yeah. They weren't lying. They just weren't clear enough about the truth.

That's understandable, I suppose. It's hard to be clear about the truth when you don't tell it.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.

Iraq: Timelines, Benchmarks, Accountability?

Also at DKos.

The Associated Press reported Thursday morning that House Democrats are pushing for legislation that will require U.S. combat troops to leave Iraq by fall of 2008. That sounds like a timeline to me.

The legislation reportedly also says that the withdrawal deadline will move up to the end of 2007 if Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government doesn't meet benchmarks set for readiness of Iraq's security forces.

Thursday afternoon, Senate majority leader Harry Reid introduced a joint resolution calling for U.S. troops in Iraq to begin redeployment in 120 days and for all American combat forces there to be redeployed by March 31, 2008.

Timelines and benchmarks: it's about time.

Crystal Balls and Tea Leaves

As Will Rogers once famously said, all I really know is what I read in the papers, and I don't believe most of what I read in them. From what I can divine between the lines, it looks like the Democrats have given up on trying to stop Mr. Bush's surge, but are taking measures to ensure the surge doesn't turn into a long-term escalation. The proposed House bill, according to AP, "also calls for the Pentagon to adhere to its existing standards for equipping and training U.S. troops sent overseas and for providing time at home between tours of combat."

From what U.S. commander in Iraq General David Petraeus and his number two man Lieutenant General Ray Odierno are saying publicly, the full surge--five combat brigades plus 7,000 something support personnel and 2,000 or so military police--won't be in place until sometime in June of this year. Odierno says the surge force level can't last beyond August without taking draconian measures that would include extending tours in theater and cutting stateside rotations short.

This clumsy dance will float back and forth across the floor until the inevitable happens. Whether the Democrats manage to push a timeline and benchmark bill through or not, U.S. ground forces will poop themselves dry sometime late this year or early in 2008. We'll end up redeploying to the periphery like Jack Murtha recommended back in November 2005.

As the 2008 election madness heats up, the Republicans will try to gin up spin that either says they achieved "victory" by staying the course or blame "defeat" on the Democrats and the liberal media.

A Tectonic Shift?

Recent media reports suggest that Dick Cheney is losing his influence on young Mr. Bush subsequent to the Scooter Libby convictions. I'm not convinced of that just yet. Cheney and his neo-confederates have been propping Bush's empty hat above the podium throughout his tenure in the White House. 60 years old now, Bush has never been held responsible for any of his actions and never had to pass a test he couldn't cheat on. If you've noticed, he's starting to look his age. It's about time he started acting it.

It may be that Congress will finally get him and his administration under control and hold them accountable for their horseplay. From the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform:

Chairman Henry A. Waxman announced a hearing on whether White House officials followed appropriate procedures for safeguarding the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. At the hearing, the Committee will receive testimony from Ms. Wilson and other experts regarding the disclosure and internal White House security procedures for protecting her identity from disclosure and responding to the leak after it occurred. The hearing is scheduled for Friday, March 16.

Can we dare to hope that the grown ups are taking back control of the kindergarten we call Washington D.C.?

Over the weekend, you might want to check out this interview between David Swanson and retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski. Kwaitowski's last assignment was in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Under Secretary for Policy Near East South Asia (NESA) Policy directorate, and she knows a little something about what went on during the Iraq intelligence bake sale. The money quote regards her assessment of Doug Feith's infamous Office of Special Plans.

There is no doubt in my mind that what they were impeachable offenses.

Have a good weekend. Let's all hope the sun rises come Monday morning. (I have it on best authority that the odds makers in Vegas say it will.)

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.

More Iraq Wackiness

Also at DKos.

General David Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, says there's no "military solution" to that nation's conflict. From AFP:

At his first news conference since taking charge of US-led forces in Iraq, Petraeus said he had felt "shame, horror and sadness" on Tuesday when he heard of a suicide attack that killed more than 100 Shiite pilgrims.
"There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq. Military action is necessary to help improve security... but it is not sufficient. There needs to be a political aspect," he said.

There's no military solution but military action is necessary but it is not sufficient. Hmm.

The necessary but insufficient military action involves a buildup of U.S. forces that Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the number two man in Iraq, says will need to last through February of 2008. However, military officials say that the troops levels will begin to decline in August 2007 unless more units are sent or held over.

Only two of the five "surge" brigades have arrived in Iraq. The last of the brigades won't be ready to conduct operations there until June 2007. So unless somebody figures something out, the "surge" will be in full force for a whopping three months at best. That's probably not enough time for the Iraqi government to get its political act together. And it's probably not enough time for the Iraqi army and police to get their act together either. The latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq said that “the Iraqi Security Forces, particularly the Iraqi police, will be hard pressed in the next 12 to 18 months to execute significantly increased security responsibilities, and particularly to operate independently against Shia militias with success.”

Which means that at best, Iraqi Security Forces might be ready to rock and roll around February 2008, which is about the time Odierno says the surge can ebb.

That leaves at least a four-month gap that needs to be filled, and the gap will likely stretch out much longer than that. All previous projections on Iraqi force readiness have been, to say the least, optimistic.

Something will have to give. Tours in theater will have to be extended, and rotations home will have to be curtailed, which will almost certainly have an adverse effect on training. Looming somewhere in the not too distant future is a material readiness crisis--the gear can't last forever.

We continue to grind our military into sand by throwing it at a problem it can't solve. Democrats in Congress are still groping to craft legislation they can pass that will stop the madness, but they're not having much success.

Meanwhile, the national debate on Iraq remains at the level of "they'll follow us here" platitudes, generalities, appeals to emotion and insults. One neoconservative pundit, himself a former Marine, compared John Murtha to Lee Harvey Oswald. This vituperative didn't come from some A.M. radio or Fox News hack. It came from a distinguished professor at one of our most prestigious graduate level war colleges.

Mr. Bush keeps pursuing something that will have a vague resemblance to "victory," anything short of which he classifies as "defeat." Most of the rest of us have no idea what victory or defeat in Iraq might consist of.

This war has more sides than the Pentagon, and it's already spilled beyond Iraq's borders. We have Shias on Sunnis. We have Shias on other Shias. We have the Shias and the other Shies and the Sunnis on U.S. forces. We have the Kurds involved in there somewhere. Some hardcore Baathists are still around. Iran is supposedly mixed up in the fray. The Saudis probably are too. And Syria maybe. The Turks might get drawn in. Russia and China are somewhere on the periphery. Then we have those pesky terrorists: al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim brotherhood. And don't forget the Taliban!

Pro-war types warn us that if we leave, a regional war will break out in the Middle East, but that war already exists. Conflicts at various levels of intensity are underway in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries, all related in some way to the strife in Iraq--the strife for which there is no military solution and that we continue to pour more troops into.

Some empires went out with a bang; others went out with a whimper. We're setting ourselves up to go out in a straightjacket.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.

The Neocon Bunnies: Still Going

If you thought American neoconservatism was dead, think again. Yes, it was encouraging to see Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton and Scooter Libby marched to the guillotine, but guess what: there's more where they came from.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has chosen Eliot Cohen to serve as her "counselor." It might be more accurate to say that Rice has tapped Cohen to become her neo-consigliore.

Neo-connecting the Dots

Cohen's job as State Department counselor, according to a Johns Hopkins University press release, will be as "a principal officer who serves the Secretary as a special advisor and consultant on major problems of foreign policy and who provides guidance to the appropriate bureaus with respect to such matters. The Counselor conducts special international negotiations and consultations, and also undertakes special assignments from time to time, as directed by the Secretary."

The same press release quotes Cohen as saying "It is an honor to be asked to serve one's country at any time, but particularly during wartime."

Well, well, it's nice of old Eliot to be honored to be consulted on major problems of foreign policy during wartime, especially considering that he's one of the chief culprits who created the problems and the war.

Cohen, along with Rumsfeld, Bolton, Libby and others, were charter members of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the neoconservative think tank founded by Bill Kristol that forged young Mr. Bush's foreign policy--most notably, the part of that foreign policy that involved regime change in Iraq through armed invasion. Like Condi, who was a professor of political science at Stanford, Cohen is an academic.

To take the State Department job, he'll have to be on leave of absence from his regular gig as director of John Hopkins' Strategic Studies Program. That's a good news/bad news thing. The good news is we're getting a neocon out of academia. The bad news is, we're putting another one into the government. The worse news is that when Condi and Cohen leave the government, they'll both go back to academia, where they'll be key players in growing follow-on generations of neocons.

The Neo-Swarm

Douglas Feith, another PNACer, was the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy who his fingers in every Rumsfeld era scandal from the Office of Special Plans (OSP) intelligence cooking on Iraq to the Abu Ghraib scandal. Feith is now a visiting professor in national security studies at Georgetown University.

Feith's successor as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy is Eric S. Edelman. Edelman was a recess appointment in August 2005. Edelman has a long history of ties with Vice President Dick Cheney, another PNAC charter member. Edelman is in charge of the Iranian Directorate (ID), an intelligence cherry picking group that does much the same thing with Iranian intelligence that Feith's OSP did with the intelligence on Iran. Like the OSP, the ID gives direct briefings to Dick Cheney, most notably in the person of Abram Shulsky, who was director of the OSP under Doug Feith and who was also a member of the PNAC.

John Bolton's successor as Ambassador to the UN is expected to be current Ambassador to Iran Zalmay Khalilzad. Khalilzad was also an original member of the PNAC. Bolton is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, as is Fred Kagan. Kagan is also a PNACer and was the primary author of the Iraq "surge" plan. Kagan taught military history for a decade at the West Point Military Academy.

In the wake of the Libby verdict, many have speculated that Dick Cheney will use his recently diagnosed case of economy class leg lump as an excuse to step down and make way for an heir apparent to the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. One name that looms large in the speculation is Little Brother Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida and, oh by the way, also a charter member of the PNAC.

Irish journalist Andrew Cockburn tells a pretty good story about a conversation between Bush 41 and Bush 43 that took place during the 2004 election campaign. Big Brother turned to Big Daddy and asked, "What's a neocon?"

Cockburn won't reveal his source, but he swears the story is true.

Big Daddy's supposed reply was "I'll give it to you in one word: Israel." But he might as well have simply said, "They're everywhere."

At this juncture in the American experiment, the neoconservatives have infiltrated nearly every nook and cranny of the country's political, economic, intellectual and religious life. It virtually owns a significant portion of our information media (A.M. talk radio, the Weekly Standard, National Review, Fox News, etc.), and has infected all of it. And they're reproducing like rabbits. For every Libby who bites the poison turnip, a dozen more young neocons spring out from the shrubbery.

George W. Bush isn't the only cement head who doesn't understand the scope of the neocons' influence and activity. Last October, on CNN's Late Edition, former Secretary of State Al Haig told Wolf Blitzer that the Iraq war "…was driven by the so-called neocons that hijacked my party, the Republican Party."

When Blitzer pressed Haig to name some names, Haig flummoxed and fussed. He eventually threw out names like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. When Blitzer asked him point blank whether Donald Rumsfeld was a neocon, Haig replied, "I wouldn't say he was." When Blitzer asked if Cheney was a neocon, Haig said, "I think so."

I wouldn't say? I think so? Yeah, Al. Cheney and Rumsfeld are as neo-connected as they come, and you don't know that?

It will be a very long time before the GOP manages to purge the neocons from its ranks, which means it will be a cold day in Cuba before I vote for a Republican again.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.

Libby Guilty on Four of Five Counts

We'll see what, if anything, this leads to.

Maybe Cheney will step down because of that darn old blood clot in his leg.

Empires and Anthills

Also at DKos.

I've been saying for some time that America's military superiority has become an increasingly ineffective tool of national power. Now, it appears that a pair of political scientists has accumulated sufficient data to back that assertion. Shankar Vedantam of the Washington Post reports on studies conducted by Jason Lyall at Princeton University and Lieutenant Colonel Isaiah Wilson III at the U.S. Military Academy in an excellent article titled "Don't Send a Lion to Catch a Mouse." (A colleague informs me that Colonel Wilson served with David Petraeus, who is currently the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and who supervised the Army's new field manual on counter insurgency operations.)

According to Vedantam, the studies show that…

Although great powers are vastly more powerful today than in the 19th century, the analysis showed they have become far less likely to win asymmetrical wars. More surprising, the analysis showed that the odds of a powerful nation winning an asymmetrical war decrease as that nation becomes more powerful.

Asymmetrical Warfare

"Asymmetrical warfare" is a term often both misused and abused. Historically, opposing forces in armed conflicts have seldom been identical in terms of size or capability. The Peloponnesian War of the 4th century (B.C.) pitted a maritime power (Athens) against a land power (Sparta). The 20th century Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union had a similar aspect, the U.S. being the maritime power and the Soviets being the land power.

But over time, "asymmetrical warfare" has come to describe armed conflicts between greater and lesser powers, and as the research by Lyall and Wilson points out, the record shows that the greater powers haven't fared well in this type of warfare.

Lyall and Wilson studied 250 asymmetrical wars, starting with Napoleon's Peninsular War with Spain (1808-1814). Success rates for great powers in these types of wars went from 85 percent from 1800 to 1850, but dropped to 21 percent between 1950 and 2003.

Reportedly, General David Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, gives the "surge" strategy a 25 percent chance of succeeding.

In an article titled "Wars and Empires," I wrote that almost without exception, empires that ended badly failed to understand that the military power that established them was not, in itself, sufficient to sustain them. Today, America spends as much as the rest of the world combined on defense, yet our military languishes in seemingly hopeless conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan against adversaries whose technology and logistics are vastly inferior.

It may be that Petraeus can beat his own odds and salvage something from the Iraq situation. I sincerely hope so. But even if he does, we have already revealed our Achilles heel: our primary instrument of power has proven ineffective at defending our shores and borders, achieving our aims overseas, and decisively winning the kinds of wars it fights.

Whether you step on an anthill with a sandal or roll over it with a tank, the result is pretty much the same. You still have a colony of ants.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.

Iraq: The Perpetual Disaster Machine

Also at DKos.

Politicians, pundits and senior military officers alike have characterized the so-called Iraq surge strategy with words like "the last best chance for success." So what if it doesn't work?

According to Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks of the Washington Post, a group of governors asked that question of Mr. Bush and Joint Chiefs chairman Peter Pace in a meeting at the White House last week. Pace's answer: "I'm a Marine, and Marines don't talk about failure. They talk about victory."

Shades of Doctor Strangelove!

There Is No Plan B, Mandrake

Governor Phil Bredesen (D-Tenn.) told DeYoung and Ricks that Pace's Plan B was "to make Plan A work."

Apparently, some within the government are thinking about a worst-case scenario. Last month, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told Congress "I would be irresponsible if I weren't thinking about what the alternatives might be."

The problem is that there is no "good" Plan B. The "best" Plan B would likely be something akin to Congressman Jack Murtha's (D-Penn.) proposal to redeploy to the periphery, but the Bush administration is unlikely to throw up its hands after Plan A fails and say "Murtha was right all along."

So even though nobody has a heck of a lot of faith in Plan A, it will succeed because it has to.

Bush supporters may call this being "resolute." I call it "faith based war fighting."

If At First You Don't Succeed…

I don't have a lot of faith at this point that the Democratically controlled Congress can stop Plan A from proceeding. The Battle of Baghdad has already commenced, and the legislature is unlikely to cut funding for troops already engaged in the field, or to provide reinforcements to an ongoing operation.

Prepare to hear a lot of talk about how "progress" in being made with the new "strategy"--more "corners turned" and "last throes" jabber.

Barring an unexpected breakthrough in the Congressional maneuvering, Plan A is here to stay.

Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is leading an effort to rewrite the 2002 authorization to invade Iraq. The new bill would not repeal the authorization, but would limit the U.S. mission in Iraq to training, counterterrorism efforts, border control and logistics support of Iraqi forces.

I like this idea in theory, but practically speaking, I doubt it could actually work. Iraq is a complex quagmire in which all the parts are interconnected. What good would it do to drive al-Qaeda out of Anbar province only to have the Mahdi Army or some other militia take over Baghdad? I'm also leery about Congress micromanaging the actions of commanders in the field. (Yes, I know that sounds like a Joe Lieberman argument, but it's a valid one.)

Operational considerations aside, though, it's not likely that Levin can craft a bill of this nature that will pass the Senate's 60 vote yardstick.

Iraq has turned into a perpetual disaster machine. Everything we do makes the situation worse, and the worse the situation gets, the more we do that worsens the situation even further.

Terms like "success" and "failure" no longer apply to the Iraq situation. We accomplished the "mission" of regime change more than three years ago, but we'll never transform Iraq into a democratic Shangri-la. Mr. Bush insists on pressing for a "victory" he can't define beyond the level of abstract platitudes, and will not tolerate a situation he considers to be a "defeat."

What is "defeat" in Iraq? The enemy (or enemies) cannot physically drive us out of Iraq. But is staying in Iraq to prove "they" can't drive us out a sane strategy or policy? It appears that Mr. Bush thinks it is. But then, to Mr. Bush, everything is a manhood measuring contest. Too bad he keeps coming up short.

Maybe that's why he's doing everything in his power to ensure we stay engaged militarily in Iraq for a very long time.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.

War Powers: James Baker's Next "Non-binding" Commission

Big bad Baker's back.

According to a press release from University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, former Secretaries of State James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher will head up the National War Powers Commission. The commission will be a "private bipartisan panel" that will "examine how the Constitution allocates the powers of beginning, conducting, and ending war." This panel promises to have as much impact on government policy as Baker's Iraq Study Group had.

None.

A Thousand Days Late and Hundreds of Billions Short

Young Mr. Bush treated the Iraq Study Group's report on Iraq like a disposable hygiene product, even though that report was intended as a stern admonition to correct his administration's failed Iraq policy. The National War Powers Commission doesn't even aspire to have any influence on current policies. From the Miller Center press release:

The Commission intends to produce a report making recommendations to assist Presidents, Congresses, Courts, and other policymakers in addressing war powers issues. When they are issued, the Commission’s recommendations will be entirely prospective in nature and not applicable to the present presidential Administration or present Congress.

Separation of war powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches is the central issue of today's American political environment, and the obvious reason that the War Powers Commission was convened in the first place. So why bother to establish a commission to make "recommendations" that aren't applicable to the present situation?

And why bother to throw (presumably) six-figure plus stipends at yet another group of political have-beens and "other experts" to tell us what the Constitution says about war powers? We can all read the constitution for ourselves and it don't cost nothin'. It's posted online, and you don't need a member name or password to read it.

We the People

Article II, section 2 of the Constitution makes the president commander in chief of the military. It makes no distinction of his authority in that role between wartime and peacetime, nor does it make any distinctions between declared and undeclared wars.

Article I grants all other war making powers--including the authority to declare war and grant letters of marque and reprisal--to the legislature.

Nowhere does the Constitution overtly grant a president "unitary," "plenary," or "extraordinary" powers to act outside what Article III describes as "…this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority."

Constitutionally, when making claims of extraordinary war powers, Mr. Bush doesn't really have a pot to go potty in. But that doesn't keep him and his neocon puppet masters from treating the Constitution like a public restroom.

There is no codified set of "war powers" that give a president extra-constitutional or extra-legal powers in a time of armed conflict. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 does not give the executive expanded authority in time of war. It limits his authority to commit U.S forces to combat without a declaration of war, "specific statutory authorization" from Congress, or a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.

In the course of more than a year and a half of researching the history of U.S. presidential powers, I found one--I repeat one--instance of a law passed by Congress that gives the executive branch a special privilege in wartime is this blurb at the very end of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed fifteen calendar days following a declaration of war by the Congress.

In December of 2005, we discovered that Mr. Bush had authorized warrantless electronic surveillance for several calendar years.

By summer of 2006, a federal district judge (Anna Diggs Taylor) had declared the warrantless wiretapping program to be unconstitutional, stating in her decision that "There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution.'' But Bush's legal mastiff Alberto Gonzales insisted on the executive right to continue the program until the case could be appealed at the federal circuit level. In January, Mr. Bush bowed to the decision of the district court and placed the surveillance program back under control of the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Throughout America's history, presidents have exercised, or attempted to exercise, extraordinary powers in times of armed conflict. Sometimes they've gotten away with it, sometimes they haven't. Congress has not declared war, per se, since World War II, but presidents have committed troops to combat many times since Harry Truman sent U.S. forces to Korea in the 1950s. Arguably, young Mr. Bush has exceeded all other presidents in practicing the concept of executive privilege

Today, Democrats (and some Republicans) in Congress are seeking ways to limit young Mr. Bush's authority to conduct war in Iraq, but have so far been unsuccessful. He has, as we noted earlier, acceded to pressure to place the domestic surveillance program back under supervision of the FISA Court, but we don't know the details of that arrangement because they're secret. He blinked in the Jose Padilla affair, opting to levy charges against Padilla in federal court rather than face a showdown with the Supreme Court over whether or not he could hold a U.S. citizen as an illegal combatant,

We have yet to see if Bush will attack Iran without the legislature's approval. In early February, U.S. forces conducted air strikes in Somalia. I have yet to discover under what auspices those strikes were conducted, and have yet to hear anyone in the mainstream media or Congress even ask that question.

As to the proper division of war powers among the three branches of the federal government, I seriously doubt whether Mr. Baker's new commission will provide any meaningful answers to that question. And even if they do, I doubt anyone will pay any attention.

The time for Baker's new commission was four or five years ago. Now, as Mr. Bush might say, it will be a mere semicolon in the history of American tyranny.

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Related article: "Smoke, Mirrors and War Powers"

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.

The Senior Administration Official Formerly Known As Dick Cheney

Also at DKos.

By now, you've probably heard of Dick Cheney's latest bout of buffoonery. On his way home from his "try and kill me" tour through Asia on Air Force 2, Cheney agreed to be interviewed by reporters, but only if the reporters referred to him as "a senior administration official."

He blew his "cover" when he started making statements like "I would describe my sessions both in Pakistan and Afghanistan as very productive."

But even though any of my three dogs could see through this "anonymity" stratagem, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow plowed ahead with the company policy. On Wednesday, he told reporters " "I have spoken with the vice president's office, and the ground rules that were laid out are going to remain in effect."

Isn't that special?

The New Orwellians

It appears that even the Bush inner-circle is getting a glimmer that anything old "Last Throes" says will be automatically disregarded by the discerning public. And it's a sad state of affairs when the administration spinsters understand that if "Cheney says" his sessions in Pakistan and Afghanistan were very productive, that constitutes de facto evidence that those sessions were a total flop.

And for that blithering jackdaw Tony Snow to cover up the cover up with "ground rules are going to remain in effect" bull pluck illustrates just how insane the nature of discourse in our once might republic has become.

Voltaire, author of the immortal novella Candide, famously wrote, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

Lamentably, too many Americans exist who still believe the Bush administration's absurdities. They remind me of the "outer Party members" that George Orwell described in his seminal novel 1984.

Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph.

In other words, Orwell tells us, it important in a totalitarian society for the citizenry to maintain a mentality appropriate to a state of war.

It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.

Does this sound at all familiar to you? It should.

Another Orwellian concept that should resonate is the Two Minutes Hate.

The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching…

…Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less…

… Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room…

… In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy…

…The Hate rose to its climax. The voice of Goldstein had become an actual sheep's bleat, and for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep. Then the sheep-face melted into the figure of a Eurasian soldier who seemed to be advancing, huge and terrible, his sub-machine gun roaring, and seeming to spring out of the surface of the screen, so that some of the people in the front row actually flinched backwards in their seats. But in the same moment, drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody, the hostile figure melted into the face of Big Brother, black-haired, black-moustachio'd, full of power and mysterious calm, and so vast that it almost filled up the screen. Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying. It was merely a few words of encouragement, the sort of words that are uttered in the din of battle, not distinguishable individually but restoring confidence by the fact of being spoken. Then the face of Big Brother faded away again, and instead the three slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

If you're at all aware of what goes on at A.M. talk radio, Fox News and the rest of the Big Brother Broadcast, you realize that Orwell's Two Minutes Hate has evolved into a 24/7/52 phenomenon.

I don't know how we're going to turn our country around, but I know that we must. We're at a tipping point. Our cherished republic continues to slide toward a state of Orwellian dystopia, and if we let this situation continue much longer, there will be no turning back.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.