Neo-Connecting the Dots to Iran (Part II)

Part I explored the connection between military public affairs and Dick Cheney's office in the selling of a war with Iran. Part II examines Joe Lieberman's emerging role in the disinformation campaign.

The long promised "proof" that the Iranian government was contributing to attacks on American soldiers in Iraq presented to reporters in Baghdad on February 11, 2007 was greeted with skepticism--if not downright derision--in the United States and elsewhere. The nearly universal rejection of their claims, however, did not deter the administration from continuing to pursue this line of information operations.

The headline of a July 2nd New York Times story by former Judith Miller cohort Michael R. Gordon read: "U.S. Ties Iran to Deadly Iraq Attack." The article was a masterpiece of Rovewellian doublespeak.

It extensively quoted then Brigadier General Kevin J. Bergner, who only weeks earlier had taken over the job as Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Effects in Iraq from Major General William Caldwell IV. (Caldwell has since been promoted to Lieutenant General, and Bergner recently advanced to Major General, so this public affairs gig in Iraq appears to be good for one's career these days.) In fact, the piece didn't directly quote anyone except Bergner.

Gordon wrote that unnamed "American military officials" had "long asserted" that the Quds force, "an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, has trained and equipped Shiite militants in Iraq." "The Americans" had also, according to Gordon, "cited exclusive intelligence" that Iran has supplied Shiite militants with shaped explosive charges capable of penetrating armored vehicles and "American officials" had alleged that "Iran has been in a proxy war against American forces for years."

The crux of the article was the claim, attributed to Bergner, that "Iranian operatives helped plan a January raid in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed." American and Iraqi officials apparently determined at the time that Iranians were involved because the raid "appeared to be meticulously planned," so it naturally stood to reason that Iraqis militants couldn't have pulled it off by themselves. But the ubiquitous officials "stopped short of making a case that the Quds Force may have been directly involved in planning the attack" until the occasion of Bergner's press brief on July 2nd.

(It's worth noting at this point that nothing in Gordon's article indicates that any of the officials he or Bergner referred to were at the briefing, or any other members of the press for that matter. In fact, from the way Gordon wrote the piece, it sounds like nobody was in the room except Gordon and Bergner. We can tell from the transcript of the briefing that other reporters and members of Bergner's staff were in attendance, but they may as well not have been. Bergner and Gordon completely dominated the event.)

The most damning evidence of Iranian complicity in American deaths that Gordon related came in the form of information gleaned from captured Shiite militants. From these prisoners, officials learned that "Iran’s Quds Force provided detailed information on the activities of American soldiers in Karbala" and that Iran "has been using Lebanese Hezbollah as a 'proxy' or 'surrogate' in training and equipping Shiite militants in Iraq." "Hezbollah leadership" instructed two of the prisoners "to go to Iran and help the Quds Force train Shiite Iraqi militants." Intelligence gained from the prisoners also indicated that "groups of up to 60 Iraqi militants were brought to Iran for military instruction at three camps near Tehran and trained in using road-side bombs, mortars, rockets, kidnapping operations and in how to operate as a sniper."

This all sounds compelling until we stop to notice a few things. First is that although Gordon names the captured militants and gives details of their backgrounds, we never heard of them before and nothing about their backgrounds supports the veracity of the information they supposedly coughed up to interrogators. (Moreover, filling a story with interesting but irrelevant details is a standard liar's trick.) Secondly, all this information was relayed to Gordon through Bergner. At the time officials were gaining intelligence from these prisoners, Bergner was back in Washington writing pro-war propaganda for the White House, so the "evidence" Gordon echoed in the New York Times was fourth hand hearsay at the very best. Finally and most importantly, prisoners of this war have been known to tell their interrogators exactly what they want to hear for in exchange for as little as a Twixt bar or a copy of Martha Stewart Living magazine.

As if all this rhetorical manipulation weren't already enough, the article ended with one of the most exquisite pieces of bull feather merchandising I have seen pulled by a Bush camp reporter and general team to date:

“Our intelligence reveals that the senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity,” [Bergner] said. When he was asked if Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be unaware of the activity, General Bergner said, “that would be hard to imagine.”

Gee, it would be hard to imagine that prehistoric humans could have made those funny patterns in the desert; therefore ancient astronauts must have done it. And oh by the way, the official transcript of the briefing reveals that the Bergner "was asked" the question by Michael R. Gordon. I guess Gordon wouldn't agree to be referenced unless he promised himself anonymity--due to the sensitivity of the subject, of course.

You'd think this briefing would have been greeted with the same scorn the February briefing received, but no. On July 11th, Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill that would "require a report on support provided by the government of Iran for attacks against coalition forces, American forces, in Iraq." Lieberman wanted to "bring forth a strong unified statement by the Senate of the United States that we have noted the evidence presented by our military about the involvement of the Iranian forces in the training and equipping of Iraqi terrorists," and it was his hope that, "this amendment will offer an opportunity for us to come together to accept the evidence our military has given us of Iran's involvement in the murder of hundreds of American soldiers."

What "evidence our military has given us" was he referring to? The "forensic evidence" that "senior military officials" had produced at the February press brief and the "new" and "stunning" details Brigadier General Kevin Bergner had provided the week before.

So in July, on the basis of forensic evidence that amounted to the say-so of a single unnamed weapons expert, intelligence gained from prisoners under interrogation, the unconfirmed assertions of anonymous officials and "stunning details" presented by a professional propaganda operative, Joe Lieberman asked the Senate for a "strong unified statement" that would "say to the Iranians that this must stop."

He was desensitizing his audience in preparation for the stunt he was about to pull in September.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword, ePluribus and Military.com. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books, ISBN: 9781601640192) will be available March 1, 2008.

Neo-connecting the Dots to Iran

If we've learned one thing about the Bush administration, it's that if at first they don't succeed with a stunt, they'll pull, pull and pull it again until they get away with it. Thus it is that even as Senators Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) and Joe Lieberman (?-Connecticut) attempted to sneak a declaration of war against Iran into the defense spending bill, the military's propaganda machine in Iraq was spoon feeding the press more "evidence" that Iran is helping Iraqi militants attack U.S. troops.

We've seen this sort of thing before.

Have I Got a Used Bomb for You!

On the Senate floor Tuesday, Jim Webb (D-Virginia) called the Kyl-Lieberman proposal "Dick Cheney's fondest pipe dream." (As journalists like Seymour Hersh, Larisa Alexandrovna and Gareth Porter have been telling us, Cheney has been pressing behind the scenes for war with Iran for some time.)

While Lieberman and Kyl were trying to help Cheney realize his dream in Washington, Major General Kevin Bergner, the chief of public affairs in Iraq, invited members of the press to the latest in a series of Iran bashing dog-and-pony shows in Baghdad's Green Zone. Bergner and his staff let reporters see two roadside bombs disguised as rocks that, according to Andrew E. Kramer of the New York Times, "General Bergner said were likely of Iranian provenance."

Likely of Iranian provenance? Likely? What kind of half-seated accusation was that for a U.S. Army general to level at the Iranians while Congress debates declaring war on them? (Perhaps more importantly: Why do media outlets like the New York Times continue to play echo chamberlain for this kind of irresponsible inflammatory rhetoric?)

The rock bombs were part of a display General Bergner had prepared for the reporters that showcased what "the military says is Iranian support for the insurgency." An "American military explosives expert" was "made available" to reporters. This is like a car dealer making one of his own mechanics "available" to inspect the used Ford he's trying to sell you.

The explosives expert said that the rock bombs "were consistent with other munitions of this type suspected of having been smuggled from Iran." The reporters also got to see two mortar shells that the arms expert said "were positively identified as Iranian-made, based on the markings and the design of the tail fins."

And you're sure to be shocked, shocked to learn that the arms expert only spoke with reporters "on the condition that his name not be revealed."

This press briefing in Baghdad was a continuation of a pattern that began to gel sometime around January 2007--also the time that we learned of the Iraq "surge" strategy.

Sound Familiar?

Claims about Iran's intentions to build nuclear weapons had failed to take sufficient traction and the propaganda vector shifted to accusing Iran of arming and training Iraqi militants. Then U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, who was also a charter member of the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century, promised to offer "proof" of "Iranian meddling" in Iraq.

On February 11, Joshua Partlow of the Washington Post was among the members of the press corps invited to a classified briefing that was "the first time during the Bush administration that officials had sought to make a public intelligence case against Iran." Reporters met with anonymous "Senior U.S. military officials" and an unnamed military explosives expert "who would normally not speak to the news media." They were treated to a "display" of "mortar shells, rocket-propelled grenades and a powerful cylindrical bomb, capable of blasting through an armored Humvee." The unnamed officials "said weapons were smuggled into the country by the Quds Force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that U.S. officials believe is under the control of Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei." The officials also alleged that the "highest levels" of the Iranian government had directed use of weapons that were killing U.S. troops in Iraq.

By the next day, the "proof of Iranian meddling" had been received with a "healthy dose of skepticism." Even General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted there was no evidence he knew of to support the claim that Iran's government was involved in aiding Iraqi militants.

In normal times, such negative results would have caused the administration to drop its disinformation effort and try a new stratagem. But these are not normal times, and this is not a normal administration.

Next: The war of words against Iran gains Joe-mentum.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword, ePluribus and Military.com. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books, ISBN: 9781601640192) will be available March 1, 2008.

SECAF and the Psychedelic Yonder

"Isn't it odd that after a terrorist attack that relied on $2 box-cutters, we are redoubling our pursuit of fantastical weaponry?"

-- Robert Scheer


In January 2007, the Chinese shot down one of their own weather satellites in a test of their anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons system. Based on Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne's reaction to it, you wonder what sky he thinks his pilots fly in.

At a September 19, 2007 meeting of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense policy think tank, Wynn called China's ASAT test an "egregious act." "We were not surprised, we were shocked," he said of the test. It's not entirely clear whom he was referring to as "we." Maybe he meant him and his best friend, because not too many people should have been shocked or surprised about the test.

You don't need a degree in rocket science to get the concept that anyone who can figure out how to put something in orbit can figure out how to shoot it down. Likewise, you don't need a master intelligence analyst to tell you that if a country has developed a major military capability, it will want to test it out sooner or later. The United States and the Soviet Union ran tests of their ASAT programs which both countries initiated in the 1950s. (In 1985, the U.S. tested an ASAT missile that was launched from a high altitude F-15 Eagle fighter.)

So it's difficult to tell why Wynne and his friend were surprised and shocked by the Chinese test, but it's difficult to tell a lot of things about Wynne, at least from the things he says. According to Christian Lowe of Military.com, Wynne concluded at the Strategic and Budgetary Assessments meeting that China has claimed space as a battlefield. That's an interesting statement, considering that Wynne's very own United States Air Force launched an initiative to weaponize space in the 1960s.

That was, of course, before his time, and we couldn't in all fairness expect him to know the history of the service he's the secretary of, could we? But you'd think that someone would have briefed him that in May 2005, only months before he took over as SECAF, the Air Force sought approval from Mr. Bush for a program that would field offensive and defensive weapons in space. And Wynn was on the job in August 2006 when Mr. Bush authorized the National Space Policy that tasked the secretary of defense to, among other things, "Maintain the capabilities to execute the space support, force enhancement, space control, and force application missions," a tasking statement that virtually sanctions everything from spying on Grandma in the bathtub to hurling Mighty Thor's hammer down from Asgard to smite the puny mortals below.

Wynne told the strategy and budget thinkers a few other goofy things. He "reasoned" (Lowe's wording) that future enemies "want to make sure that you will not want to get involved" in a conflict. By normal reasoning, if your "future enemy" doesn't want you to get involved in a conflict, he's not your enemy, present or future. Wynne also said that China's satellite test means "space is not a sanctuary anymore," even though, as we have already discussed, it ceased being a sanctuary from the moment the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957. My favorite Wynn quote from the strategy and budget meeting was, "It is very hard to defend a satellite you're actually trying to talk to." Again, this isn't advanced rocket science, but to defend a satellite you generally have to tell it to do something.

The tone of Wynne's remarks at the strategy and budget ho down makes you hope our Air Force secretary was just having a bad day; that maybe those think tank jokesters slipped something into his complementary beverage. But then you poke around a bit and discover other daffy moments he's had, like back in September 2006 when he asserted that non-lethal weapons should be tested on American citizens in crowd control situations before they're used on the battlefield.

“If we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,” he said. “(Because) if I hit somebody with a non-lethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.” It's funny how he's worried about that, but doesn't seem to care what the media thinks when he blows thousands of people to smithereens with laser-guided bombs.

No, something's not right with that Wynne character. You'd have good reason to suspect that his best friend isn't a real person; but he's not entirely out in the left blue yonder either. He has two credentials that eminently qualify him to be the secretary of a U.S. armed service: a) he's a former senior vice president of a major defense contractor (General Dynamics) and b) he has served as under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. Put another way, he's a proven expert in the care and feeding of America's military industrial complex. In that light, some of his other comments at the strategy and budget shindig start to make sense.

He cited the Chinese ASAT test as a reason to stick with the plan to spend $299 billion on 2,400 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. "How big do you think China is?" he said. "Twenty-one B-2s. Think about that," he added, inferring that 21 stealth bombers aren't enough to bomb China back to the Xia Dynasty in case we decide to preemptively whack them for not having shot down our satellites yet. A couple thousand Joint Strike Fighters would help us bridge the gap. Except, of course, that the JSF doesn't have the range to strike all the good China targets from wherever we could base it out of. However! If we bought enough new air refueling aircraft, say three or four of them per strike fighter, then we'd have something, wouldn't we?

Of the Chinese ASAT test, Wynne asked the strategists and budgeters, "Was it part of a plan; was it not part of a plan?"

It was part of a plan, all right; part of China's plan to sucker us into spending ourselves insolvent by pursuing an arms race with imagined opponents, and thanks to the likes of Wynn, we're playing into that plan rather nicely.

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Related article by Jeff Huber: In an Arms Race with Ourselves

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword, ePluribus and Military.com. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books, ISBN: 9781601640192) will be available March 1, 2008.

Iraq: My Pet Goat Rope

"Accustomed only to nails, they had made one effort to pull out the screw by main force, and now that it had failed they were devising methods of applying more force still, of obtaining more efficient pincers, of using levers and fulcrum so that more men could bring their strength to bear."
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-- C.S Forester, The General

If you're sick of hearing all the liberal hand-wringing over security guards with Blackwater killing a bunch of Iraqi civilians "in cold blood," here's some of the good news from Iraq you haven't been hearing enough of. Walter Pincus of the Washington Post tells us about one Marine general who's determined to show young Iraqi extremists the error of their ways.

The U.S. military has introduced "religious enlightenment" and other education programs for Iraqi detainees, some of whom are as young as 11, Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, the commander of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, said yesterday.

And if you thought a Marine Corps general was the exact wrong kind guy to be in charge of "enlightening" 11 year old Iraqis, you were absolutely, uh… You were absolutely right about that.

Boys' Town

The religious aspect of General Stone's program helps him separate the truly rehabilitated ex-terrorists from the hard-core extremists. "I want to know who they are," he told Pincus. "They're like rotten eggs, you know, hiding in the Easter basket."

"Rotten eggs hiding in the Easter basket" sounds uncomfortably like the "bad apple" U.S. soldiers former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tried to blame for the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib. There's also something entirely awkward about an American jailer using a Christian-centric simile to describe his Muslim Iraqi prisoners, awkward enough to make you wonder is this glorified camp counselor really knows what he's doing.

General Stone describes his rehabilitation program as an effort to "bend them back to our will," a key objective in what he calls the "the battlefield of the mind." As to the core tenet of his methods, Stone says, "We're busting them down, we're making whole moderate compounds that didn't exist before."

As you might suspect, General Stone has interesting ideas about what it means to be a "moderate" in Iraq. He told Pincus the story of "a sort of religious insurgency" that occurred at one detention facility in early September.

"We had a compound of moderates for the first time overtake . . . extremists. It's never happened before," Stone said. "Found them, identified them, threw them up against the fence and shaved their frickin' beards off of them. . . . I mean, that is historic."

Threw a bunch of Muslims against a fence and shaved their frickin' beards off? Yeah, General, that's historic all right. In fact, it's downright Old Testament. What do you call that sort of thing? Shave the other cheek? If we assigned somebody like Major General Stone to teach Iraqi radicals how to behave moderately, is it any wonder that our diplomats can't teach the Iraqi Parliament to compromise on legislation?

Like general officers placed in charge of detention facilities in Iraq generally are, General Stone is a reservist. Don't let the "R" in USMCR fool you, though; Stone is anything but a standard issue feather merchant. His list of credentials, experience and advanced education stretches from the main gate to the sea wall. But none of his eye-popping experiences or accomplishments or graduate level training had anything to do with preparing terrorists for productive lives outside the walls of a prison. The military wouldn't hire a social worker to run a division of Marines, so why did it put a major general in charge of a social program?

Lawyers, Guns and Money

Here's another question: why does the nation that spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined have to hire civilians to do soldiers' jobs?

According to a 20 September Associated Press story, the United States has assembled an "army" in Iraq of over 180,000 contracted civilians, a number that exceeds the 169,000 American service members deployed there. Granted, the lion's share of these "mercenaries" consists of cooks, carpenters, truck drivers, docs, dentists, and other combat support specialists. But these support jobs are the kinds of things that once upon a time were performed by G.I. Janes and Josephs. In World War II and other more conventional looking conflicts, the support forces operated in the rear areas, protected by distance from the action at the front lines.

There are no front lines in Iraq, and hence no rear areas, so all the supporting civilians--as well as State Department officers, the press, politicians and other strap hangers--need dedicated security forces, and that role is being filled by honest to goodness Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner types. By and large the hired guns operate outside the official military chain of command, and the Blackwater characters who snuffed the Hadjis in Baghdad the other day aren’t even held to regulations the Department of Defense imposes on all the other security firms operating in Iraq.

You'd think that four years into this fiasco we'd have figured out how to apply the right tools to the right job, but no. A Marine general runs a head start program while civilians stand point guard for diplomats who might as well be trying to sell the Iraqis Bibles for all the good they're doing.

Yet our commander in chief and his "main man" General David Petraeus insist on squandering yet more force, pincers, levers, fulcrums and men to bear in an effort to unscrew a situation that's developed into a knot that only My Pet Goat could have tied.

And it's looking more every day like there's nothing Congress can do to stop them.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword, ePluribus and Military.com. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books, ISBN: 9781601640192) will be available March 1, 2008.

Mr. Bush's Next World Order

Last week, the Bush administration put on a carnival that mourned the passing of the New American Century, celebrated the sixth anniversary of our national state of emergency and ushered in the institutionalization of the Next World Order. Dubya-Week began last Monday (D-Day) at 1230 pm eastern time (H-Hour) with testimony before Congress by General David Petraeus (our latter-day Lawrence of Arabia) and Ambassador Ryan Crocker (the second coming of Studebaker Hoch).

The week climaxed in an Ides of September address to the nation in which Mr. Bush announced a troop reduction that's actually a renewal of the so-called "surge" and an "enduring relationship" with Iraq that's really a treaty except that it doesn't need to be ratified by the Senate. What Mr. Bush didn't tell us Thursday night was that on Wednesday he'd signed an executive order that extends the state of national emergency we've been living under since September 14, 2001, and that Congress didn't even blink when he told them about it, much less "meet to consider a vote on a joint resolution to determine whether that emergency shall be terminated" like federal law requires them to.

Well, all that is probably okay. By now we're used to Mr. Bush blowing feathers up our skirts about Iraq, and treating the Constitution like a roll of Charmin, and ignoring Congress and Congress letting him get away with it. And in all candor, most Americans will likely get used to the world order Bush has given them, because the first half of this century promises to largely be a repeat of the last half of the previous one.

Brave New World Order

A new world order began when Mr. Gorbachev brought down the Berlin Wall and the United States became the planet's sole superpower. The next world order started about the time a U.S. Army psychological operations unit staged the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad. Subsequent events revealed America's Achilles heel--the military might that brought the U.S. to global dominance is no longer capable of decisively achieving its foreign policy aims.

Nonetheless, the aim of the Iraq invasion did not and has not changed. In his newly released memoir titled The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World , former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan writes, "I'm saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows--the Iraq war is largely about oil." That isn't exactly hot-off-the-presses news. Even the most cursory look at the paper trail of the infamous neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century clearly reveals that the Iraq invasion's purpose was to establish a military base of operations in the center of the Middle East from which America could control the region's oil flow--and ultimately the global energy industry--for virtual perpetuity. That things didn't quite go as planned gave our old Cold War nemeses, Russia and China, the table stake they needed get back in the power politics game. By now, Russia and China have taken on junior partners like Iran and Venezuela to form an ad hoc "axis of energy," one that can present serious competition to the U.S. for the role of world power broker. And make no mistake--the coin of political power in the post-modern world is the kind of power that lights and heats homes and runs industry and moves things from place to place.

Thus it is that Iran's fledgling nuclear industry presents such a threat to American hegemony. The possibility that they might produce a fistful of atom bombs is little more than a mosquito bite in the grand scheme of strategic irritants. Pakistan already has nukes. Its government is as precarious as any in the region, and if there were ever a place where terrorists could go to beg, borrow or steal nukes for themselves, Pakistan would be it.

No, the thing about Iran's nuclear program that keeps Dick Cheney and his big oil pals awake at night is the specter that it could evolve into a world-class nuclear energy industry. That would put its senior partners Russia and China in the catbird's seat for dictating when and how the world transitions from a petroleum-centric energy market to a nuclear/alternative fuel market.

Without control of the energy game, America's bag of national power tricks is pretty much empty. Our military, at least the way we now equip and utilize it, has the effectiveness of a scattergun; if it hits the target we had in mind, it's pretty much by accident.

Cold War II

In 2006, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that America is engaged in World War III. It's more accurate to say, though, that we've embarked upon a second Cold War with Russia and China. The threat from radical Islam is genuine enough, but our so-called Global War on Terror mainly provides a geographic venue for proxy struggles, and the portrayal of jihadi terrorists as the number one threat to America is mostly Islamo-fabulism.

It appears, unfortunately, that our adversaries learned more from the Cold War I than we did. We broke the Soviet Union's bank by seducing it into an arms race it could not win. Now, neither Russia nor China has any interest in repeating that mistake. Sure, either or both of them will, from time to time, make a big show of selling weapons to a client state or of executing a "surge" in its own military budget, but that's primarily to goad us into staying in an arms race with ourselves. (We spend more money on defense than the rest of the world combined, and the rest of the world has no interest in playing "catch up" with us.)

The other big lesson from Cold War I was to let the other guy commit his military to dirty little third world wars and to let the third worlders do your dirty work for you. Again, it’s a lesson the Russians and Chinese learned and we didn't. Thus it is that the longer we stay encumbered in Iraq the more we play into the strategies of both the Islamo-fabulists and the neo-commies, and the further we fall into their trap, the longer it will take us to wiggle free from it. We may never escape at all.

That, my friends, is the "long war" the Pentagon is preparing for: A low-level struggle against countless amorphous foes over equally amorphous objectives for an amorphously defined duration during which America maintains a state of national emergency.

Talk about dystopia. Orwell and Huxley would be impressed.

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Related articles by Jeff Huber:
In an Arms Race with Ourselves
Wars and Empires
The Next World Order Series

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword, ePluribus and Military.com. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books, ISBN: 9781601640192) will be available March 1, 2008.

A Petraeus by Any Other Name

"How the troops are configured, what the deployment looks like will depend upon the recommendations of David Petraeus."

-- George W. Bush, 9 August 2007

Despite what Duncan Hunter and most of the other Republicans on the House Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees would like you believe, General David Petraeus's uniform does not earn him immunity from criticism.

I thought MoveOn.org's full page "Petraeus or Betray Us" ad in Monday's New York Times was a bit more incendiary than it needed to be, but it was pabulum compared to the propaganda shenanigans the Bush administration and its echo chamberlains have pulled over the years to promote their woebegone war in Iraq. And the concern congressional Democrats have regarding Petraeus was aptly summarized by Senator Dianne Feinstein when she said, "I don't think he's an independent evaluator." That statement was more than fair, more than balanced, because Petraeus is not an independent evaluator. He's not even close.

American Caesar or Gunga Din?

Petraeus drew skepticism about his motives the old fashioned way--he earned it. Mr. Bush's "main man" is, in fact, carrying water for the administration and it is ridiculous to pretend otherwise.

To begin with, Petraeus has a personal stake in the success of the so-called "surge" strategy. He did not "invent" it, as some would have you think. Fred Kagan and other think tank neoconservatives can take the blame for that. Petraeus did, however, step up and embrace the surge when virtually all the rest of the four-star community, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was opposed to it. What's more, he adopted the surge even though it did not provide sufficient troops to conduct the tactics outlined in the "book on counterinsurgency" he supposedly wrote. (Generals don't write field manuals. A bunch of light colonels and majors and sergeants revised the old counterinsurgency manual, and Petraeus signed off on the revision. Whether he read it or not we may never know.)

More important to note, though, is that Petraeus's testimony before the House on Monday was in lockstep with standard administration rhetoric.

-- He deliberately overstated the role of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia in the civil and sectarian violence taking place in Iraq, and perpetuated the ubiquitous inference that al Qaeda in Iraq is the same al Qaeda that executed the 9/11 attacks. When challenged on that line of argument by Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-New York), Petraeus shifted into the full evasion mode.

-- He conspicuously highlighted what he considers to be military "victories" while steadfastly avoiding any mention of the fact that none of these tactical "successes" have led to one iota of progress in Iraq's political structure. In war--especially at this particular point in this particular war--tactical victories that do not lead to political gains are merely organized but meaningless violence. Petraeus knows that darn good and well, and for him to pretend otherwise in front of a congressional committee is nothing short of world-class mendacity.

-- Petraeus's most outrageous piece of hocus-pocus on Monday was his talk of troop pullbacks. The front page of Tuesday morning's Virginian-Pilot read "TIME TO BRING SOME HOME, TOP GENERAL IN IRAQ SAYS." Newspapers and TV talking heads throughout the country were saying much the same, and it's a bunch of bunk. The pullbacks Petraeus is talking about aren't, as he claims, something he can agree to because of the success of the surge so far. They're a fait accompli. Back in January 2007, when the surge began, high-level military officials--including Petraeus's number two man in Iraq Lieutenant General Ray Odierno--agreed that it could only be sustained through April 2008. Now, Petraeus is not only talking about sticking with the surge as planned, he's talking about extending it another three months into next summer. But he knows just how to frame his intentions so the folks in Peoria think he's pushing to bring troops home early. Petraeus is nothing if not a master of public relations and media manipulation.

Dress Green Body Armor

The four stars on his epaulets and the rows of ribbons that extend from the top of his breast pocket to his left eyebrow do not grant Petraeus exemption from deconstruction of his agenda and methods. Rovewellians like Duncan Hunter would like to shield Petraeus behind their "support the troops" mantra, but that's yet another false Bush administration stratagem.

David Petraeus is not a "troop." He's a four-star general in operational command of the "best-trained, best-equipped" armed force in the history of humanity that just happens to be getting its hat handed to it by an enemy that doesn't have a navy or an air force or a military industrial complex or anything else that Petraeus's force was trained or equipped to defeat. Petraeus has life and death control over more human beings than did Pericles, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar combined. You can support the troops and still protest the war, but you can't separate Petraeus from the war. Petraeus is the war. He's not a private soldier, he's a public figure; he's a political operative, one who at present is the point man for promoting the program of America's politician in chief.

Petraeus Reports. You Decide.

One of the definitions of "betray" in my Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary is "to deceive; mislead." So was MoveOn.org org unjustified in asking "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" Different people will draw different conclusions, but you know, if you want to convince the world that you're not a salesman hawking Mr. Bush's snake oil, you don't go about it by doing a pro-surge infomercial on Fox News like Petraeus did Monday night.

On Tuesday, at the Senate Committee hearings, John Warner (R-Virginia) asked Petraeus if the war in Iraq was making America safer. Warner had to ask the question twice because Petraeus tried to dodge it the first time. He finally replied, "I don't know, actually…"

I don't buy that answer. I think Petraeus actually does know. I think he knows better than anyone else that the Iraq war is actually making America, and the world, a more dangerous place to live.

Is it too much to hope that our American Caesar just met his Ides of September a few days early?

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword, ePluribus and Military.com. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books, ISBN: 9781601640192) will be available March 1, 2008.

A Petraeus by Any Other Name

Despite what Duncan Hunter and most of the other Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee would have you believe, General David Petraeus's uniform does not earn him immunity from criticism.

I thought MoveOn.org's full page "Petraeus or Betray Us" ad in yesterday's New York Times was a bit more incendiary than needed to make the desired point, but it was pabulum compared to the propaganda shenanigans the Bush administration and its echo chamberlains have pulled over the years to promote their woebegone war in Iraq. And the concern Democratic members of Congress have regarding Petraeus was well summarized by Senator Dianne Feinstein when she said, "I don't think he's an independent evaluator." That statement is more than fair, more than balanced; because the fact of the matter is that Petraeus is not an independent evaluator.

American Caesar or Gunga Din?

Petraeus drew criticism about his motivations the old fashioned way--he earned it. He is, in fact, carrying water for the Bush administration in its pursuit of continued military commitment to Iraq and it is ridiculous to pretend otherwise.

For starters, Petraeus has a personal stake in the success of the so-called "surge" strategy. He did not "invent" it, as some would have you believe. Fred Kagan and other think tank neoconservatives can take the blame for that. But Petraeus did step up and embrace the surge when virtually all of the rest of the four-star community, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were opposed to it, and he adopted it despite the fact that the surge did not provide sufficient troops to conduct the tactics outlined in the "book on counterinsurgency" that he supposedly wrote. (He didn't write the revised Army/Marine Corps Field Manual on counterinsurgency. A bunch of light colonels and majors and sergeants wrote it. Petraeus signed off on it. Whether he read it or not we may never know.)

Of more important note, though, is that the very nature of Petraeus's testimony before the House Committee on Monday was in lockstep with standard administration rhetoric.

-- He deliberately overstated the role of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia in the civil and sectarian violence taking place in Iraq, and perpetuated the ubiquitous inference that al Qaeda in Iraq is the same al Qaeda that executed the 9/11 attacks. When challenged on that line of argument by Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-New York), Petraeus shifted into the full evasion mode.


-- He conspicuously highlighted what he considers to be military "victories" while steadfastly avoiding any mention of the fact that none of these tactical "successes" have led to one iota of progress in Iraq's political structure. In war--especially at this particular point in this particular war--tactical victories that do not lead to political progress are meaningless. Put another way, tactical success that doesn't achieve political goals is organized but meaningless violence. Petraeus knows this darn good and well, and for him to pretend otherwise in front of a congressional committee is nothing short of world-class mendacity.

-- Petraeus's most outrageous piece of hocus-pocus was his talk of troop pullbacks. The front page of Tuesday morning's Virginian-Pilot read "TIME TO BRING SOME HOME, TOP GENERAL IN IRAQ SAYS." Newspapers and TV talking heads throughout the country are saying much the same, and it's bunch of bunk. The pullbacks Petraeus was talking about aren't something he can agree to because of the success of the surge so far. They're a fait accompli. Back in January 2007, when the surge began, high-level military officials, including Petraeus's number two man in Iraq Lieutenant General Ray Odierno, agreed that it could only be sustained through April 2008. Petraeus is not only talking about sticking with the surge as planned, he's talking about extending it another three months (half a Standard Friedman Unit or STFU) into next summer. But he knew just how to frame his intentions so that in they would play in Peoria like he's pushing to bring the troops home early. Petraeus is nothing if not a master of public relations and media manipulation.

Service Dress Body Armor

The four stars on his epaulets and the rows of ribbons that extend from the top of his breast pocket to his left eyebrow do not grant Petraeus exemption from deconstruction of his parochial agenda and insidious methods. Rovewellians like Duncan Hunter would like to shield Petraeus behind their "support the troops" mantra, but that's yet another false Bush administration stratagem.

David Petraeus is not a "troop." He's a four-star general in operational command of the best-trained, best-equipped armed force in the history of humanity that just happens to be losing a war against an enemy that doesn't have a navy or an air force or a military industrial complex or anything else that his force was trained or equipped to defeat. Petraeus has life and death control over more human beings than did Pericles, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar combined. You can support the troops and still protest the war, but you can't separate Petraeus from the war. Petraeus is the war. He's not a private soldier; he's a public figure. And he's not a public servant; he's a politician, one who at present is promoting the agenda of America's politician in chief.

One of the definitions of "betray" in my old Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary is "to deceive; mislead." So was MoveOn.org org unjustified in asking "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" Different people will draw different conclusions, but you know, if you want to convince the world that you're not a politician hawking the Bush administration's agenda, you don't go about it by repeating your pro-surge message to Brit Hume on Fox News like Petraeus did last night.

Petraeus prevaricates. You decide.

Coda

On Tuesday, at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings, John Warner (R-Virginia) asked Petraeus if the war in Iraq was making America safer. Warner had to ask the question twice because Petraeus tried to dodge it the first time. He finally replied, "I don't know, actually."

I don't buy that answer. I think Petraeus actually does know. I think he knows better than anyone else.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword, ePluribus and Military.com. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books, ISBN: 9781601640192) will be available March 1, 2008.

Surge Report: H-Hour of D-Day of Dubya-Week

I woke up this morning feeling like a kid at Christmas. This is, after all, the day that General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker bring their much anticipated Surge Strategy Medicine Show to Capital Hill. Last week brought the kinds of sideshow acts we've come to expect just prior to a big Iraq event and then some: Mr. Bush making a no-notice visit to Iraq for a photo opportunity in front of a group of hand-selected adoring troops, a foiled terrorist attempt, a new taped announcement from Osama bin Laden and--for the first time in the history of armed conflict--Katy Couric making moo-eyes at General David Petraeus.

The Really Big Show

During Dubya-Week minus one, senior administration and military officials said that Petraeus "could accept the pullback of 4,000 troops beginning in January, in part to assuage critics in Congress." That was mighty big of Petraeus to "accept" any kind of pressure or guidance or suggestion from Congress. He has become, after all, a Douglas McArthur class American Caesar. Mr. Bush has made it clear that Petraeus is his "main man," and that the future deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq will "depend upon the recommendations of David Petraeus."

And maybe that's what America wants, a new Caesar to dictate foreign policy. Who cares that nothing in the Constitution gives any four-star general the authority to do that sort of thing?

According to the results of a New York Times/CBS News Poll released Sunday night, "Americans trust military commanders far more than the Bush administration or Congress to bring the war in Iraq to a successful end." Conversely, a Washington Post-ABC News Poll, the results of which were also released last night, reports that Americans expect General David Petraeus to "exaggerate progress in Iraq," which pretty much says they don't trust Petraeus either.

It could well be that both polls are correct. After all, we've become accustomed to the idea that the least of available evils is the best we can hope to get from our government. We know we can't trust Congress to take charge of the war, and we can't trust Bush to tell the truth, so if David Petraeus tells a stretcher or two here and there, what's the big deal? Hell, if he didn't have a touch of the bull feather merchant in him, he wouldn't have made four-start in our modern military, would he?

The Whole Partial Truth

We might, however, want to keep an eye on just how thin he's willing to stretch the fabric. An Associated Press article from last week informed us that "U.S. troop levels--currently at a record 168,000--are expected to hit a high of 172,000 in the coming weeks, the Pentagon said Thursday." So the 4,000 troops going home in January--roughly a battalion's worth--will already have been relieved in theater by an equal number of troops. That's not exactly a "pullback," is it? Maybe what General Petraeus meant was that he wanted to pull our legs about drawing down troop levels, because that's sure what it looks like he's doing.

General Petraeus has also mentioned the possibility of further troop reductions by spring of 2008. On Sunday, officials said that Petraeus has recommended that the issue of reducing the main body of American troops be delayed by another Standard Friedman Unit (STFU, or six months). That would take us to the beginning of April 2008, which was how long the "surge" was projected to be sustainable since it began back in January of 2007. From there, Mr. Bush only needs one more STFU to reach his goal--we know from Robert Draper's new book Dead Certain that Bush is "playing for October-November," meaning he wants to maintain a robust military presence in Iraq until he can wipe his woebegone war off on the sleeve of his successor.

And from all appearances, Petraeus is bound and determined to make sure his boss gets his way. Well, his top boss, anyway. Petraeus's immediate boss may not be quite so willing to play ball with the administration's neocon cabal.

Admiral William Fallon, head of Central Command and Petraeus's direct superior in the military chain of command, is tired of watching America break all of its military eggs in the Iraq skillet. He wants to have more forces available to confront other potential threats in his area of responsibility (which includes, among other hot spots, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia), and has developed plans to redefine the U.S. mission in the Middle East and draw down troops in Iraq.

Fallon and Petraeus don't seem to be the best of buddies these days. "Bad relations?" says one senior civilian official of the relationship between the two men. "That's the understatement of the century."

Petraeus may be a standard Bush liegeman, but one certainly can't say the same for Fallon. According to Garth Porter of Interpress News Service, Fallon is one of a group of very senior military officers determined to "put the crazies back in the box." He shut off a proposed naval buildup in the Persian Gulf proposed earlier this year, and has said that an attack on Iran "will not happen on my watch."

Maybe Fallon can inject some degree of sanity into our Iraq policy and strategy: But he's not Mr. Bush's "main man," and he's not testifying before Congress this week.

Well, it's almost H-Hour. High noon Eastern Daylight Savings Time approaches, and Petraeus and Crocker must be skulking into the corral right about now. Kick-off is in about 30 minutes, just enough time to run to the corner 7-Eleven for chips and soda.

(To be continued…)

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword, ePluribus and Military.com. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books, ISBN: 9781601640192) will be available March 1, 2008.

Iraq: Ryan and David's Laugh-In

It's very interesting: If someone suggests that we repeal Mr. Bush's tax breaks for the wealthy, Mr. Bush and his liegemen don't refer to that as returning taxes to their former levels, they call it a "tax increase." When U.S. commander in Iraq David Petraeus suggests that we return to our pre-surge troop levels, however, they refer to with terms like "troop reduction."

Officers involved in preparation of Petraeus's testimony before Congress next week say he will introduce the possibility of withdrawals beyond January 2008 that will bring the troop count down to 130,000, where it was before the "surge" began in January 2007. In the short term, according to David E. Sanger and David S. Cloud of the New York Times, "senior administration and military officials" say that Petraeus "could accept the pullback of 4,000 troops beginning in January, in part to assuage critics in Congress."

There's something else interesting: Reporters for a newspaper like the New York Times using language that says a four-star general can "accept" the desires of Congress, as if he has a choice in the matter. Then again, maybe these days he does have a choice in whether or not he accepts a mandate from our national legislature.

Here's something else interesting: A Friday morning story from the Associated Press carried the news of seven more U.S. troop fatalities in Iraq, four of whom were Marines killed during fighting in Anbar province, the area touted by Petraeus and others as the crown jewel of the surge's "success" at establishing enhanced security in Iraq.

The even more interesting part of the AP story, though, comes at the very end:

U.S. troop levels -- currently at a record 168,000 -- are expected to hit a high of 172,000 in the coming weeks, the Pentagon said Thursday.

How about them bad apples? No wonder Petraeus is willing to accept a "pullback" of 4,000 troops in January--their replacements will already be in theater. It's less wonder still that he's magnanimous enough to concede to a further "reduction" to the base number of 130,000 by spring of 2008, which from the beginning was as long as senior-most Pentagon officials said the surge could last.

So, what I see happening next week when Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iran Ryan Crocker bring their medicine show to Capital Hill is a promise of a drawdown that isn't a withdrawal in exchange for an extra $50 billion to keep the surge that isn't an escalation going until it was scheduled to end before it even started. And oh, the $50 billion will go on top of the $ 9 trillion national credit card balance because we wouldn't want to burden the wealthy with new taxes that look like the old taxes they used to pay before their pal Dubya started his expensive war in Iraq.

It should all be, as Arte Johnson used to say on the 60s comedy show Rowan and Martin's Laugh In, …

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword, ePluribus and Military.com. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books, ISBN: 9781601640192) will be available March 1, 2008.

Iraq: Success Is Not No Failure

Karl may have left the building, but the Rovewellian tradition lives on in the Bush White House. It's the week before Dave and Ryan's All Star Iraq Review comes to town, and already we've been treated to a secret presidential visit to Anbar province, yet another thwarted terrorist attack, and Katie Couric making goo-goo eyes at General Petraeus. Among the latest Dubya talk to come from Mr. Bush is his "success is not no violence" remark made on Tuesday to the Associated General Contractors of America. Stripped of its Dubya-negative, Bush's sentence reads, "success is violence." Supposedly, that wasn't exactly what he meant. Supposedly, he was trying to say how the "success" he was describing had to do with making Iraq like America, where violence is "down" to a level where "people feel comfortable about living their daily lives." What exactly did he mean?

Even White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, when asked later at a press conference what an acceptable level of violence might consist of, had to say, "That's a very good question. I don't have an answer."

It's not every day Tony Snow says something like that (Heh!).

Down Is Up

Snow wasn't completely at a loss for explanations, though. Earlier in the press conference, he too compared Iraq to America, saying, "Washington for many years was the murder capital of the United States of America. I believe we are still able to do our jobs. Now, really what he's [President Bush] talking about--he's talking about that."

Really, now?

No one in the White House Press Corps pushed Snow to elaborate on the Washington-Baghdad analogy. Nobody asked where the D.C.Green Zone was, or how many mortar rounds had fallen on the Lincoln Memorial in the past few months, or how many car bombs had gone off in cabinet members' motorcades lately. Maybe it didn't occur to all those world-class reporters to ask those sorts of things. Or maybe they're just numb from all the cockamamie analogies and other absurdities on Iraq they've heard from Snow and the rest of the administration echo chamberlains.

Or maybe, when you get down to it, they know good and well that "success is violence" was precisely what Mr. Bush really, really meant.

War Is Peace, Success Is Violence, Staying Is Going

The Bush administration's rhetoric on Iraq has sounded crackers for quite a while now, but lately it's become downright bull-goose looney. During his latest Mission TBA (to be accomplished) photo opportunity in front of hand-picked adoring troops in Anbar province, Mr. Bush caused pundits worldwide to make the sound of one jaw dropping when he said, "General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have said that if the security situation continues to improve the way it has, we may be able to achieve the same objectives with fewer troops."

Two things in that statement are worth noting: 1) The decider managed to defer responsibility for the decision to Petraeus and Crocker and 2) he didn't bother to specifically mention what the "objectives" were. That’s because he doesn't want to be held to specific objectives when it turns out the ones he accomplishes aren't the ones he said he was going to achieve. He's been burned that way before. Remember when the objective of the surge was to secure Baghdad? It's funny how the "center of gravity" became Anbar when the Baghdad thing didn't work out.

Here's another funny thing: Mr. Bush is trying to sell a continuation of the troop increase based on the improved security situation it has supposedly provided. But he's also saying that if we let him keep the extra troops in Iraq a while longer, and they keep doing the same job they've been doing, we won't need the extra troops there any more. But if it's the extra troops that have provided the security, how will we maintain the security without them? Is there a political solution around the corner after all? Not according the recently released Government Accountability Office report, there isn't.

None of it makes any sense, but that doesn't matter, because the administration isn't really trying to present a coherent reason for staying in Iraq. It's trying to persuade us, with a completely emotional argument, that a host of horrible things that will happen if we leave, and as far am I'm concerned, they're not doing a good enough job of scaring us. They need to give us more grisly details.

Here Is There

See, if we leave Iraq, then what will happen is all those Sunnis fighting Shias, and the Shias fighting each other, and al Qaeda egging everybody on, and the criminals and the crazies and everybody else who's lighting Iraq on fire right now… Well, they'll stop fighting each other and join up so they can come and fight us.

First thing they'll do is, they'll all get together and load themselves on board the ships of this big old navy they've got. They'll fight their way through the Persian Gulf and the North Arabian Sea and a bunch of straits and the Pacific Ocean, sinking all of our aircraft carriers and submarines and shooting down our whole Air Force along the way. They'll squeeze through the Panama Canal, and then steam up the Gulf of Mexico into the mouth of the Mighty Mississippi, then they'll bomb what's left of New Orleans with the nukes the Iranians will give them.

They'll keep sailing north, land at Saint Louis, tear down the Arch and set up base camp in the new Busch Stadium. From the Gateway to the West they'll split into two groups, half heading off to California by wagon train and the other half sailing the fleet north to Minneapolis where they'll kidnap Garrison Keillor and cut his head off before they take the Erie Canal to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and conquer the Atlantic Seaboard.

As they establish their occupation of the entire United States and let us vote in a new unity caliphate, they'll simultaneously rage full-scale regional war in the Middle East and take control of the world's entire oil reserves, committing historic levels of genocide in the process.

You got to hand it to those evil-doers: They know how to fight them over here and over there!

And the longer Mr. Bush can fool enough of the people into believing that, the better the chances are he can keep his woebegone war in Iraq going long enough to stick his successor with the blame for losing it.

So as far as Mr. Bush is concerned, violence is indeed success; the longer he can keep the violence going in Iraq, the more successful he'll be in achieving his real objective.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword, ePluribus and Military.com. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books, ISBN: 9781601640192) will be available March 1, 2008.

Condi's College of Foreign Policy Knowledge

Stephen Hadley owes Condoleezza Rice big time. Were it not for his predecessor, Hadley would be the odds on favorite to the title of "Worst National Security Adviser Ever." He has been, after all, so hapless in that position that the White House had to go out and hire an active duty three-star general to do most of his job for him. In any other administration, Hadley would have resigned to spend more time with his family and Lieutenant General Douglas Lute would have been given the title as well as the job.

But Hadley can breath easy on the legacy score; Condi made such a muck of things as the NSA and afterwards that they don't even want her back at Stanford University, where she used to be provost and assistant professor of political science. A letter to the editor of The Stanford Daily written by emeritus professor of mathematics Don Ornstein read, “Condoleezza Rice serves an administration that has trashed the basic values of academia: reason, science, expertise, and honesty. Stanford should not welcome her back.” One online comment at the papers' website said, “Please go away, Rice. We don’t want someone who is responsible for the slaughter of an entire nation teaching at our school.”

No one will ever slap wet towels like that across Stephen Hadley's head. He hasn't done anything; nobody will remember who he is. Condi, on the other hand…

Bad Girl

In a recent New York Times article, Helene Cooper reports that Rice has initiated a full court press to rescue her reputation before the ink dries on the book of her history. Condi has her work cut out for her, and she needs to do it fast.

The mounting body of Bush administration tell-all books calls Rice to account for her inability as Security Adviser to manage the turf battle over Iraq policy between Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell. In Bob Woodward's State of Denial, Rice's administration colleague David Kay, who was charged with finding weapons of mass destruction after the Iraq invasion, describes Rice as "probably the worst National Security Adviser since the office was created." Rice, as you'll recall, was one of the Bush administration's key boo-noise makers during the pre-invasion disinformation campaign, admonishing that "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's deputy Secretary of State, was consistently frustrated with Rice during her tenure as NSA. Over time, Armitage told Cooper, he became aware of the fact that "the president got the national security adviser he wanted." It might be more accurate to say that Rice was the National Security Adviser Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld wanted.

The last thing the administration's chief neocons wanted around the White House was an NSA who could help formulate foreign policy. They could do that just fine without interference from anyone else, thank you very much. What they did need, though, was a private tutor who could bring up to Bush a sixth grade level of competence in history and geography, and who better to do that than a Stanford professor of political science? To make things even better, she made a good workout partner for Lil' Bush, which got the kid out from underfoot while Uncles Dick and Don did all that hard grown up work of squandering the power, influence and good will America had accumulated for over two centuries.

Good Girl

For being a good girl who went along to get along, Condi was rewerded with the Secretary of State cabinet position when it became abundantly clear that Colin Powell didn't want to play ball any more. Cooper tells us that in recent months, as the nation's chief diplomat, Rice has been zeroing in on Arab-Israeli peace as a possible source of redemption. She'll need a Billy Graham-class miracle to pull that one off. Is there any possibility that the Arab world will forget any time soon how she ran interference for Israel during the recent Israel-Hezbollah conflict in southern Lebanon? She stiffed armed talk of a cease-fire when Israel thought it had military business left to take care of, but called for an immediate halt to hostilities once it became clear that the mighty Israeli Defense Force was getting its helmet handed to it. It's little wonder that in January 2007 the Lebanese people hung a huge poster from an overpass in central Beirut depicting Rice with vampire fangs dripping the blood of Lebanese children.

Rice supporters argue that through her management of the Iran situation, she has managed to stay the hand of Dick Cheney, who would like nothing better than to strike Iran militarily. Those supporters fail to note that Rice went along with the demand that Iran cease its uranium enrichment program as a pre-condition to direct diplomatic talks regarding its, uh, uranium enrichment program--the enrichment program that Iran claims is part of its pursuit of a nuclear energy industrial that the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty classifies as an "inalienable right." Condi's efforts at diplomacy with Iran have, in fact, helped to insure that real diplomacy with Iran will never take place, at least not while Bush and Cheney are still in office.

Some give Condi credit for the negotiations that led North Korea to shut down its main nuclear reactor in July, but her main contribution to that process was to stay out of the way and let her assistant for East Asian and Pacific affairs Christopher R. Hill take care of things. And the agreement Hill is working out hardly seems like a gem of foreign policy wisdom. The deal, theoretically, has North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons program in return for being taken off the U.S. list of countries that support terrorism. Not a bad approach on the surface, but get this: Despite the fact that North Korea has reneged on promise after promise regarding its nuclear program, Hill is hinting that the U.S. will remove it from the list of state sponsors of terrorism before it completely gives up its nuclear weapons program. There's a wonderful signal to be sending to all those evil-doing Islamofascist terror sponsors: If you want America to play ball with you, get yourself some nukes, then promise to get rid of them, and then don't. (Heh!)

When you get right down to it, the only thing that's gone right on Condi's watch at State was when Cheney's boy John Bolton got booted as Ambassador to the UN, but Condi didn't have anything to do with that. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had to take care of it for her.

Goodbye Girl

Despite having been "in on" everything from the beginning, and having shown every bit as much capacity for incompetence and/or mendacity as Rumsfeld, Liddy, Rove, Gonzales and, yes, the reviled Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown, there's every indication that Condi will ride out the Bush term until the bitter end, and she certainly enjoys a more positive public image than do her less fortunate former colleagues. No one seriously talks about running her for president any more, but as Cooper tells us, just last month GQ magazine named her the most powerful person in Washington. Forbes has twice ranked her as the most powerful woman in the world and Time has called her one of the world's most influential people four times.

A run at the presidency may be unrealistic, but if the Democrats float a Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama ticket, the GOP might well try to make up the demographic gap by offering Condi its slate's number two spot. There's also been talk of Rice taking over as commissioner of the National Football League. Condi, however, insists she's only interested in going back to Stanford--whether Stanford likes it or not. That might be the most frightening eventuality of all--Condoleezza Rice, teaching a whole new generation of political scientists how to conduct diplomacy and foreign policy.

Please, God. Hasn't she done enough harm already?

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword, ePluribus and Military.com. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books, ISBN: 9781601640192) will be available March 1, 2008.