One of Ours

"The level of incompetence is so staggering here, and yet there's this gap between how astonishingly incompetent — and we can go over particulars in the last year if you want to — how astonishingly incompetent they've been and the perception is still of them as solid citizens..."..."The only way you can sort of start to let the public know is to say, no, they don't know what they're doing. They're clowns."..."I was among those people who was deceived. When I was told by administration officials that [Iraq was] working on a nuclear weapons program — Paul Wolfowitz told that to me directly. It did cause me some alarm and cause me some sense that it was not worth the risk to not take Saddam out."

...take a look at Alter's latest Newsweek column. Go ahead and read it. I'll wait.

My problem is that Alter presumably sees the Bush administration up close on a daily basis and is paid to express his opinion about them, but he's not really doing it. His column is typical column stuff: thoughtful, nuanced, critical of the administration but still optimistic that Iraq will be peaceful someday, and with a conclusion that has just the barest hint of partisan preference ("...restoring America's prestige is a means to an end, and the presidential election, a referendum on which man can best change the picture that the whole world sees").

But guess what? It turns out that's not what he really thinks. What he really thinks is that the Bushies are "astonishingly incompetent," they are "clowns," and they are accomplished liars. He is gobsmacked that in so many parts of America "the perception is still of them as solid citizens."

Why should he be so surprised? His advice on the radio was that "The only way you can sort of start to let the public know is to say, no, they don't know what they're doing. They're clowns." But if that's the case, why doesn't he write that in Newsweek? After all, he's the guy with both inside access and a big megaphone, and if he doesn't say it, who will?

In an attempt to end the bloodiest fighting in Iraq and preserve the sanctity of Shiite shrines, the country's most influential cleric called today for the withdrawal of armies from the southern holy cities of Karbala and Najaf.

The Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, demanded in a statement that "armed forces" must "leave the holy cities and open the way for the police and tribal forces." He also asked for people to stage peaceful protests in city centers calling for the withdrawals...

[...]

Senior clerics have called on Mr. Sadr to withdraw from the holy cities, but he has declined to do so. It is unlikely that he will heed Ayatollah Sistani's demands, though he has said he will disarm his militia if the grand ayatollahs ask for that...

[...]

American officers here say the biggest indication that outside fighters are working with the Mahdi Army is the obvious skill of some of the insurgents. One particularly good sniper is believed to be a former member of the Special Republican Guard. Teams of insurgents firing mortars have also been very precise with their attacks, able to lob rounds right into the Mukhaiyam Mosque.

[...]

"Right now, we just need to be able to go into the city," said Lt. Col. Garry R. Bishop, referring to the central shrine area. "They're using it as a sanctuary."

He said the Badr Organization, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an influential Shiite party, had promised it would keep the Mahdi Army from entering the shrines. For whatever reason, it had failed to do so. American officials have been leaning on that party and on other Shiite political and religious leaders to persuade Mr. Sadr to surrender, but such efforts have been unsuccessful...

IXLNXS writes:

Invading Iraq for one shell of outdated sarin gas equates to the local police kicking in your door and shooting your family because [you] supposedly have a huge weapons cache, and they end up finding a pistol.

Lets wait and see what else develops of this before the "Mission Accomplished" banner unveils shall we.

And reader CurrencyLad responds:

Your analogy should run like this:

Three of that family's neighbours had been shot at by the householder concerned. [Some of the ethnic minority] neighbours down the street had been poisoned to death. The police issued operational commands for [a warrent to be served and] the household to be lawfully raded by SWAT unless the madman came out peacefully. Affadavits had been signed by most of the local citizens attesting to the relevant crimes.

The miscreant householder didn't come out with his hands up. A few of the neighbours were being bribed to look the other way, as were [several] police officers [and city officials]. [A siege begins which results in the starvation of some of the children in the madman's house. After waiting for several months, f]earful for their well being, some of the neighbours facilitated the rading of the house by a coalition of security firms. The madman was removed.

Doesn't even really matter whether or not they found weapons in the manhole or the basement. As it happens, they found a few. Kurdish neighbours will not be slaughtered again, others will not be burgled again. Madman's children will not be [starved, murdered and] abused again.

Mission goddam accomplished.

In World War II a passerby, lost in London's Whitehall, stopped a US military officer and asked him which side the Defense Department was on. The officer thought for a moment and then said:

''Well, it's hard to be sure, but our side, I hope.''...

In the last week the coverage of Iraq by the U.S. media has exhibited at least four separate failings:

1. Inferentialism. Several media reports of the Abu Ghraib scandal have been, in effect, prosecuting briefs for the theory that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld either knew about or authorized the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Since the evidence for this is scanty, reporters build inference upon speculation to make the case...


...suggests a wider circle of involvement in aggressive and potentially abusive" techniques...could have been an outgrowth...although no direct links have been found...The coincidence in timing..."

[...]

In opposition to this towering inferno of inferences, there is an actual fact: The statement of one of the abuser guards that the higher-ups would have stopped the abuses if they had known of them.

2. Selective agonizing. Ever since the Abu Ghraib photos emerged, the media have shown them on every possible occasion, along with reports and editorials on America's shame and the world's revulsion.

The photographs are shocking evidence of shocking behavior and we should be ashamed they occurred under American auspices. But they are not the only story in the world. Objectively considered, the UN's "Oil for Food" scandal is a far bigger story, involving the starvation of children. Interestingly, the media have been happy to forget it entirely in all their excitement over Abu Ghraib.

Then again, worse rape and brutality than that displayed in Abu Ghraib are known to occur daily in America's prisons without arousing any media interest at all.

And the photographs of prisoner abuse are not remotely as shocking as the pictures of Nicholas Berg being beheaded by Islamist terrorists. You might imagine that the beheading of an innocent American would be replayed endlessly.

3. Taking dictation from terror. Before we leave Berg, we should note that a vast number of news outlets reported that he was murdered "in retaliation for" the Abu Ghraib abuses. That was the terrorists' own justification...The "retaliation" explanation transferred the blame for Berg's death from the actual murderers onto George W. Bush and the United States....the terrorists abducted Berg about two weeks before the Abu Ghraib scandal surfaced. Was that abduction in retaliation for something else?

4. Willing gullibility. Two newspapers -- the Daily Mirror in Britain and the Boston Globe -- have published fake photographs of British and American soldiers abusing prisoners. In the British case the fakes were quickly detected once they had been published, and in the U.S. case, they had been detected before the Globe published them.

Neither the media's vaunted "skepticism" nor simple fact-checking on the Internet were employed by the papers. The fakes were, in the old Fleet Street joke, "too good to check." ...the journalists wanted to believe they were real. Indeed, it is worse than that -- since the fraud was discovered and the Mirror editor fired, he has become a heroic figure in British circles hostile to Blair and the war.

Admittedly, reporters and editors make mistakes. But when all the mistakes are on the side of opposing the liberation of Iraq, and none of the mistakes favor the United States or Britain or Bush or Blair, it tells you something.

Namely, which side they're on.

The Defense Department announced the creation of a new administrative system today which will periodically review the status of detainees being held at Guantanamo bay to see if they merit further detention in America's war on terrorism. The U.S. has come under fire from international law critics for some time, because it has no 'competent tribunal' established in accordance with Art. V of the 3rd Geneva Convention for the review of prisoner status at this facility. The DoD release doesn't explicitly say this process will fit that bill, but it seems obvious to me that it is intended to do so.

...the work of the sniggering video-morons is black and white: one of the very few moral absolutes of which we have a firm and decided grasp.

...in order to argue this top-down process, [Hersh] decides to propose that it began with Sept. 11...

...the Washington Post "reported that, as many as ten times since early October [2001], Air Force pilots believed they'd had senior Al Qaida and Taliban members in their sights but had been unable to act in time because of legalistic hurdles."

These, and many other bureaucratic and butt-covering obstacles, according to Hersh and others, engendered such frustration at the top of the Pentagon that ruthless methods were discreetly ordered and discreetly applied. Thus, from the abysmal failure to erase Mullah Omar comes the howling success in trailer-porn tactics at Abu Ghraib.

...(There would have been sadistic dolts in the American occupation forces in Iraq, even if there had not been wavering lawyerly fools in the Tampa center that was monitoring Afghanistan.) One needs to stipulate, once again, that the filthy images from Abu Ghraib are not bad because they look bad, but bad because they are bad...

...in the news cycle that preceded the Iraq atrocities, the administration was being arraigned from dawn until dusk for the offense of failing to take timely measures against the Taliban and al-Qaida. I hardly need to recapitulate the indictment here. We had our chance to see it coming, and to see where it was coming from, and the administration comprehensively blew all these chances, from the first warnings of suicide-hijacking to the cosseting of Saudi visa applicants...

But there is no serious way of having this cake and scarfing it...Would the antiwar camp have approved the [questionable] measures necessary to ensure those [beating Al-Qaida]? If they will the end, will they will the means? Would they taunt that lawyer in Tampa, as they taunt the supporters of regime change, with living a quiet life at home while others die in the field? Isn't the refusal to take out the leaders of al-Qaida a bit of a distraction from the struggle against al-Qaida?

...I know the answers to those questions as well as you do...the battle against Islamic jihad will be going on for a very long time, against a foe that is both ruthless and irrational. This means that infinite patience and scruple and intelligence are required, as well as decisiveness and bravery. Given this necessary assumption, all short-cut artists, let alone rec-room sadists, are to be treated, not as bad apples alone, but as traitors and enemies. If Rumsfeld could bring himself to say that, he could perhaps undo some of the shame, and some of the harm as well.

Today, my brother in law and I went to the passports office to get an interim travel document, cause he wants to travel to Syria for some work, so I decided to get a document for me , who knows, probably I might travel oneday.

I was shocked by the new behavior of the officials and the new procedures there, I thought that I were in another country!

There was an organized queues...the boss got out of the building and took the application forms from the elderly people...he said: ‘ anyone has a problem in getting the document or any obstacle just tell me’ !!

[...]

Nearly more than 200 application form were applied in 20 minutes only, which is something impossible in Iraq ! Or was impossible...You might see this as something absurd ‘ getting a passport’ but it was something hard.. Very hard to get..

There is one problem here, which is: this document is ‘interim’ and a ‘document’, so most of the countries don’t accept it, we can travel I think to Syria, Jordan, Yemen and Iran only...

...After hours of debate on Sunday, commanders called in an AC-130 gunship, which began pounding at insurgent positions with 40-millimeter cannon fire around 12:30 a.m. Monday. An American officer at the scene said the insurgents had clustered on a street corner about 160 feet from the golden-domed Shrine of Hussein, dedicated to the martyred grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

As many as 16 insurgents were killed in the airstrike and at least five were wounded, said Maj. Mark Grabski, executive officer of the First Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment of the First Armored Division. Thirteen other insurgents were killed in battles in the area...

[...]

...there have been signs that top Shiites have grown weary of Mr. Sadr. There has been little outrage from residents, even after American troops began using the mosque here as a base.

Mr. Sadr and his armed supporters have used holy sites as shields during a six-week uprising against the occupation forces. Shortly after he ignited the revolt, Mr. Sadr barricaded himself in the nearby city of Najaf and posted members of his militia, the Mahdi Army, around the Shrine of Ali...

[...]

On Sunday afternoon, insurgents with checkered scarves covering their faces and carrying AK-47 assault rifles, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers wandered around the shrine area. A freelance photographer for The New York Times reported seeing many armed men along a road surrounding the Shrine of Hussein. The men had at least a dozen rocket-propelled grenades, and some wore bulletproof vests.

Near one corner, fighters sat in a circle around a small fire brewing tea. Gunfire could be heard nearby. Several men leaned their AK-47's against a wall and prayed, kneeling.

At one point, a group of about 10 men reloaded their weapons and peered around the corner to where they had set up a heavy machine gun 50 yards away on a median in the road. Insurgents fired the gun every minute or so in long bursts.

There were about 70 fighters on that corner of the shrine. They looked relaxed, joking and laughing. They seemed confident that the Americans would not attack them if they stayed in the shrine area...

A defiant Tony Blair faced down his critics last night and delivered an unequivocal message that he has no intention of standing down or "cutting and running in Iraq".

A clearly furious prime minister insisted that yesterday's assassination of Abdul Zahra Othman, the chairman of the Iraqi governing council, only cemented his determination to remain in Iraq to "get the job done".

...the prime minister told a press conference in the Turkish capital: "Of course it's difficult at the moment but the task of leadership is precisely not cut and run but to face difficulties and overcome them."

[...]

Buoyed by the support of ministers from across the party, Mr Blair used his press conference in Ankara to underline his determination to create a democratic Iraq. In remarks, which clearly referred to his own position, he said: "Have we got the will to see it through to a country that is stable and democratic and operates in the best interests of the majority of the Iraqi people? My answer to that is: we have the will. We have the leadership to do it. We will get the job done and we will continue until the job is done. There will be no cutting and running, we will continue until the job is done."

[...]

But British officials made clear that Mr Blair is determined to press on in Iraq by announcing within the next two months further troop deployments to Iraq. These are expected to number 4,000.

...they want to show that Britain and the US are working towards leaving Iraq but this can only be achieved once Iraq is stable - and that needs troops...

...U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is trying to create the caretaker government that will assume authority, but on Monday debate over the details of his plan took a back seat to a more basic question: If Iraq's titular president, Izzedin Salim, can be blown up at the gates of occupation headquarters, what kind of country is being handed over to Iraqis?

"We could not imagine the deterioration leading to such a point. It's getting worse day after day, and no one has been able to put an end to it. Who is going to protect the next government, no matter what kind it is?" said Abdul Jalil Mohsen, a former Iraqi general and member of the Iraqi National Accord, a prominent party represented on the U.S.-appointed Governing Council...

"There's no question: A small band of people can paralyze the country," said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of the council. "They are armed and organized and this is the difficulty. The people who did this have no respect for anything of value. It's a real danger to Iraq, the Iraqis and to an agenda to achieve any kind of democracy."

[...]

Central Iraq, home to a long-running revolt by Sunni Muslims, is plagued by daily roadside bombings, occasional car bombings and frequent assassinations of Iraqis working with the U.S.-led administration. To the south, frequent clashes over the past six weeks have pitted U.S. and allied forces against a persistent insurgency led by Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr. Fighting has all but paralyzed several southern cities.

Hostile bands operate freely in cities that straddle the main routes in and out of Baghdad. Foreigners who travel Iraqi roads run the risk of being kidnapped, and reconstruction projects in many parts of the country have come to a standstill.

[...]

... the area around Fallujah is heavy with roadside bombs and ambushes. Over the weekend, U.S. Marines reported on a goodwill visit to the town of Kharma, on the road from Baghdad to Fallujah. As soon as they left, insurgents peppered the town with rockets...

The roads south from Baghdad have become alleys for ambushes and kidnapping, area residents say. Two Russian electrical workers, nabbed near Latifiyah, were released Monday after two weeks in captivity; one of their comrades was killed during the kidnapping.

Even residents of Latifiyah said they had been terrorized by gangs of insurgents. They insist the attackers are not local people, but fundamentalist Wahhabi Muslims hiding among the date groves. "We don't use the main road to Latifiyah," said Ali Hamza Khazraji, a tribal leader...

...At the moment the Labour party is between three and four points behind the opposition in the polls, and the trumpeted fact that 46% want Blair to stand down before the next election has obscured the more awkward fact that 54%, apparently, don't want him to...

[...]

...today the talk is of forcing out a leader who has presided over (take a deep breath, a list is coming) two landslide victories, record low unemployment, record investment in public spending and all the other stuff that, I seem to remember, used to be regarded as being important by Labour-minded folk...

[...]

...the excessive dislike of Blair among certain small sections of British society long predates Iraq. A friend of mine recalled for me his attendance at a dinner party in late 1997 when he was taken aback by the venomous contempt for Blair displayed by a gathering of journalists, publishers and academics. And I often noticed the same phenomenon...

...The accomplishments of the government cannot be attributed to him, while its failures can. It's a sort of reverse hero-worship...

It isn't really about ideology. Most of the pathological Blair-bashers I have met are not what is meant by "traditional Labour supporters", in the sense that they are invariably members of the professional middle classes. And almost every dread reform that Blair has enacted has been tried somewhere else in social democratic Europe, no matter how much the previous British form has been fetishised by conservative Labourites.

...Blair will want to bugger off a year or so after (he hopes) winning the election of 2005. This allows a successor to be chosen and to have been PM for at least two or three years before standing [for a general election] again...