Tag: Iraq

Laura Bush on Iraq: ‘No One Suffers More Than [the] President and I’

Jon Ponder

Double standard: On the Today Show this morning, First Lady Laura Bush was asked what she thought about the damage the war in Iraq was doing to the American people. Her answer, which came without a pause, may have been revelatory:

ANN CURRY: Do you know the American people are suffering… watching [Iraq]?

LAURA BUSH: Oh, I know that very much, and, believe me, no suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this. And certainly the commander-in-chief who has asked our military to go into harm’s way.

AC: What do you think the American people need to know…

LB: Well, I hope they do know the burden of worry that’s on his shoulders every single day for our troops. And I think they do. I think if they don’t, they’re not seeing what the real responsibilities of our president are.

AC: It must be hard for you to watch him in this.

LB: It’s hard. Of course, it’s absolutely hard.

The was an egregious misstatement. The Bushes do not suffer more than the families of the dead and wounded, obviously. It bespeaks an aristocratic ennui — “If only the little people knew how much we royals suffer.”

Last week, when Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid accused the president, Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice and other top Bush aides of knowing the war in Iraq is lost, just as Nixon and Sec. of State Henry Kissinger knew that Vietnam was lost but continued to send men there to die, the media and the GOP reported a much shorter version: “Sen Reid said the war is lost.”

Republicans have been having a field day with this misquote for over a week. The majority leader has demoralized our troops, they say, without providing any evidence that this is so. As late as yesterday, Vice Pres. Cheney called Sen. Reid a “defeatist.”

Compared with the treatment Reid continues to receive, the media and even the Democrats will give the first lady a pass, even though if a similar statement were made by a Democratic first lady, the media and the Republicans would tear her to shreds.

Finally, the interviewer, Ann Curry, did not ask Mrs. Bush about rumors that she and her husband were living apart because he had resumed drinking. I doubt Curry would have passed on the opportunity 10 years ago to ask First Lady Hillary Clinton if tabloid rumors were true.

Fly the Flags at Half Staff for Slain Students – Why Not for Soldiers?

Jon Ponder

I got an interesting note from my friend Judy today:

We made the correct decision to fly our flags at half mast when the students were murdered last week. What is the difference between their promising young lives of the students and the daily deaths of young soldiers in a wasted war? Shouldn’t our flags fly at half mast until there are no soldiers being killed in the Bush/Cheney war?

I can’t think of a better symbol for the antiwar movement than a Old Glory at half-staff.

Reid Got in Bush’s Face on Iraq

Jon Ponder

Harry Reid spoke truth to the boy king, and his royal highness didn’t like it:

[According] to multiple reports Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid compared Iraq to Vietnam at one point in a closed door meeting with Bush. Specifically, Reid suggested that Bush was pursuing a lost cause at the cost of American troops in order to protect his legacy.

Bush’s reaction: He was “visibly angered” says the New York Times; he “bristled” according to the Associated Press. And he “denied this forcefully, after which Mr. Reid touched his arm in a gesture of friendliness,” write the Wall Street Journal.

Could this have been the first time Bush has come face to face with someone willing to confront him so bluntly on the signature issue of his presidency?

Here’s how Reid characterized the contretemps today:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday said the war in Iraq is lost militarily and “can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically” after more than four years of fighting.

“Now I believe, myself, that the secretary of state, the secretary of defense and you have to make your own decision as to what the president knows: that this war is lost, that the surge is not accomplishing anything,” Reid, D-Nev., told reporters.

Repeating remarks he made to President Bush during a meeting of congressional leaders at the White House, Reid said the president is hearing only from people who are backing up his view of the war.

“I know I was the odd guy out yesterday at the White House, but I at least told him what he needs to hear. … I told George Bush what he needs to hear, not what he wants to hear, I did that and my conscience is great,” said Reid, who was one of several lawmakers who met with the president on Wednesday at the White House. Reid added that more people need to tell Bush the same.

Give him hell, Harry.

Iraq Ministers Quit; Demand Timeline for Withdrawal

Trish

Iraqis want U.S. troops to come home too. Shi’ite ministers quit the al-Maliki government in protest over the lack of a timeline for American withdrawal.

The [Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s] Sadrists accused Maliki of “ignoring the will of the people” over the timetable issue and also of failing to improve basic services and security.

The Shi-ites say al-Maliki is ignoring the will of the people. Hmmm, why does that ring a bell?

Tens of thousands of Iraqis answered a call by Sadr to rally in the holy Shi’ite city of Najaf last week to protest against the presence of more than 140,000 U.S.-led forces in Iraq…

“The prime minister has to express the will of the Iraqi people. They went out in a demonstration in their millions asking for a timetable for withdrawal,” the head of the Sadrist bloc in parliament, Nassar al-Rubaie, told a news conference.

Bush Dyslogic: ‘If Dems Cut Off Iraq Funds, Troops Will Stay Longer’ – With No Money?

Jon Ponder

Remember, up is down: I didn’t catch this latest rhetorical folly from the president yesterday because I can no longer abide his histrionical declamations.Thankfully, someone at MSNBC’s Countdown who was paid to listen to the president’s address to the American Legion picked up on this beaut of a logical disconnect, which Keith Olbermann reported last night.

“The bottom line is this: Congress’s failure to fund our troops will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines. Others could see their loved ones headed back to war sooner than anticipated…”
Pres. Bush

Here’s what the president said yesterday:

BUSH: If Congress fails to pass a bill I can sign by mid-May, the problems grow even more acute. The Army will be forced to consider slowing or even freezing funding for its depots, where the equipment our troops depend on is repaired. They will have to consider delaying or curtailing the training of some active duty forces, reducing the availability of those the force — of those forces to deploy overseas. And the Army may also have to delay the formation of new brigade combat teams, preventing us from getting those troops into the pool of forces that are available to deploy.

So what does that mean? These things happen: Some of our forces now deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq may need to be extended, because other units are not ready to take their places. In a letter to Congress, the Army Chief of Staff, Pete Shoemaker, recently warned, “Without approval of the supplemental funds in April, we will be forced to take increasingly draconian measures, which will impact Army readiness and impose hardships on our soldiers and their families.”

The bottom line is this: Congress’s failure to fund our troops will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines. Others could see their loved ones headed back to war sooner than anticipated…

Logically, if there is no money, the war has to end pretty quickly — right? And yet the president says that if funding is cut off, the war will slow down and therefore last longer. But the House Democrats’ plan would have U.S. combat troops pulling out altogether in March 2008.

The president talks about the lack of funds “delaying,” “reducing” and “curtailing” the military. But the funding cuts are targeted specifically at fighting in Iraq. All other military programs covered in the supplemental are fully funded.

Leaving Iraq would free up 120,000 troops as well as the billions we’re flushing down the drain over there every month — resources we can redeploy against real threats to our national security.

CA Dem Leader Urges Putting War on Feb. 5 Ballot

Jon Ponder

California Senate leader Don Perata introduced legislation yesterday that would place a nonbinding advisory measure on the Iraq war on the ballot for the super-duper Tuesday primary in February. Now he’s calling on governors in the other 20 primary states to do the same thing:

“I propose we also use this opportunity to tell the current President where we stand on this fundamental issue of the day,” writes Perata. “It’s time for our citizens to be heard.”

In addition to giving voters a voice in the debate, Perata says the campaign for the referendum might bring clarity to the presidential candidates’ positions on the war.

Cheney Overseeing “Private War” Against Iran

Trish

The United States has been orchestrating raids on Iran by a covert Pakistani group since 2005, according to ABC. The Bush administration makes sure its private war flies below the public radar by keeping funding a secret from Congress.

And Dick Cheney’s recent trip to Afghanistan to meet with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf — when he was finally on the business end of a weapon — was part of it.

Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against Iran was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.

The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.

It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials.

U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or “finding” as well as congressional oversight.

Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states.

Official disavowals focus on whether we bankroll, not control, the group. But laundering money is nothing new for rightwing American paramilitary and intelligence operations. Can you say, “Iran-Contra?”

Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s…

Most recently, Jundullah took credit for an attack in February that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city of Zahedan.

Last month, Iranian state television broadcast what it said were confessions by those responsible for the bus attack…

The Iranian TV broadcast is interspersed with the logo of the CIA, which the broadcast blamed for the plot.

A CIA spokesperson said “the account of alleged CIA action is false” and reiterated that the U.S. provides no funding of the Jundullah group.

The book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, can tell you how little correlation there is between the United States not leaving a money trail and not being behind something.

Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.

McCain Walks ‘Freely’ in Baghdad – With 100 Guards and Helicopters

Jon Ponder

The slo-mo wreckage of Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign continued this weekened when his surprise trip to Baghdad produced a horribly embarrassing spectacle.

It started last week when McCain told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that parts of Baghdad had been secured since the surge began, and were now safe enough for Westerners to walk around in freely. He was immediately contradicted on this by CNN reporter Michael Ware, who covers Baghdad,

Ostensibly to prove his point, McCain took a walk in an open air market just outside the Green Zone. He did move about “freely,” except that he had 100 soldiers with him who were armed to the teeth, as well as Blackhawk helicopters keeping watch overhead.

Offering an assist to the GOP from back home, Drudge reported falsely that at a news conference after McCain’s walkabout he was heckled by Michael Ware.

This morning on CNN, Ware denied the charge:

I did not heckle the senator. Indeed, I didn’t say a word. I didn’t even ask a question. In fact, when I raised my hand to ask a question the press conference abruptly ended. So, what I would suggest is that anyone who has any queries about whether I heckled, watch the videotape of the press conference — Soledad.

War Funding Bill Benchmark Helps Big Oil Companies Gain Control of Iraq’s Reserves

Jon Ponder

The emergency war funding bills passed by the Democrats in the House and the Senate could pave the way to handing over Iraq’s oil reserves to big oil companies. Bush took us to war to gain control of the oil. Will he veto the bill anyway?

The supplemental appropriation package requires the Iraqi government to meet a series of “benchmarks” President Bush established in his speech to the nation on January 10 (in which he made his case for the “surge”). Most of Mr. Bush’s benchmarks are designed to blame the victim, forcing the Iraqis to solve the problems George Bush himself created.

One of the President’s benchmarks, however, stands apart. This is how the President described it: “To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.” A seemingly decent, even noble concession. That’s all Mr. Bush said about that benchmark, but his brevity was gravely misleading, and it had to be intentional.

The Iraqi Parliament has before it today, in fact, a bill called the hydrocarbon law, and it does call for revenue sharing among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. For President Bush, this is a must-have law, and it is the only “benchmark” that truly matters to his Administration.

Yes, revenue sharing is there-essentially in fine print, essentially trivial. The bill is long and complex, it has been years in the making, and its primary purpose is transformational in scope: a radical and wholesale reconstruction-virtual privatization-of the currently nationalized Iraqi oil industry.

If passed, the law will make available to Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell about 4/5’s of the stupendous petroleum reserves in Iraq. That is the wretched goal of the Bush Administration, and in his speech setting the revenue-sharing “benchmark” Mr. Bush consciously avoided any hint of it.

The legislation pending now in Washington requires the President to certify to Congress by next October that the benchmarks have been met-specifically that the Iraqi hydrocarbon law has been passed. That’s the land mine: he will certify the American and British oil companies have access to Iraqi oil. This is not likely what Congress intended, but it is precisely what Mr. Bush has sought for the better part of six years.

It is why we went to war.

Another Rightwing Group Comes out Against Iraq War: The Saudis

Jon Ponder

Pres. Bush once said he’d stick to his guns on Iraq even if he lost the support of everyone but his wife and his dog, Barney. Well, he’d better keep a wary eye on the dog:

“In our beloved Iraq,” [King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia], “we see the bloodshed among brothers in the light of an illegal foreign occupation. Whereas the very ugly sectarianism is threatening a country which used to live in prosperity.”

This is huge because Saudi Arabia has been America’s staunchest ally in the region for decades — and the Saudi royal family is practically kissin’ cousins with the Bush clan.

The State Dept. admitted it was surprised by the king’s statement.