When Seeing Is Disbelieving

By Shankar Vedantam

Monday, April 30, 2007; A03

Four years ago tomorrow, President Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and dramatically strode onto the deck in a flight suit, a crash helmet tucked under one arm. Even without the giant banner that hung from the ship's tower, the president's message about the progress of the war in Iraq was unmistakable: mission accomplished.

Bush is not the first president to have convinced himself that something he wanted to believe was, in fact, true. As Columbia University political scientist Robert Jervis once noted, Ronald Reagan convinced himself that he was not trading arms for hostages in Iran, Bill Clinton convinced himself that the donors he had invited to stay overnight at the White House were really his friends, and Richard M. Nixon sincerely believed that his version of Watergate events was accurate.

Harry S. Truman apparently convinced himself that the use of the atomic bomb against Japan in the fading days of World War II could spare women and children: "I have told Sec. of War to use [the atomic bomb] so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children," Truman noted in his diary.

Nor are U.S. presidents alone when it comes to deluding themselves: Successful politicians may just be more skilled at self-deception than the rest of us. Most people, perhaps all, seem hard-wired to be able to interpret reality to suit their ends.

Self-deception has been uncovered in a wide range of situations, says Robert L. Trivers, an evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University who has studied the phenomenon. Before the Challenger explosion, for example, NASA engineers noticed that one of the O-rings on the space shuttle had been eaten a third of the way through. Since the shuttle had flown and returned to Earth, the engineers concluded that it was not a problem. Surveys show that four in five high school seniors believe they have exceptional leadership ability, and nearly every single professor in the country believes he or she is above average.

During Colonial times, there were even people who managed to convince themselves that slavery was in the best interest of slaves; later on, some maintained that colonialism was in the best interest of poor countries.

War provides especially fertile soil for self-deception. Societies at war do not look kindly at derogatory assessments of their own fighting ability and motives, and they do not encourage talking up an enemy's strengths. This explains why both sides in many conflicts believe they are morally and militarily superior. (Each believes the other is deluding itself.)

Self-deception seems to be a universal trait, which presents an interesting problem for science, especially for scientists who study behavior from an evolutionary perspective. It makes sense for deception to abound in nature -- viruses find ways to sneak into our bodies, predators stealthily stalk prey, and countless species use camouflage to hide themselves from their attackers. But why would nature, after spending millennia evolving highly sophisticated senses to perceive the world, build in a psychological capacity that allows us to ignore what is right in front of our eyes?

Trivers says the primary use of self-deception appears to be that it aids people in deceiving others.

"Self-deception evolves in the service of deceit for two reasons," he said. "It improves your ability to fool others and, second, it reduces the cognitive costs of deception."

The thing to keep in mind, Trivers says, is that even as evolution rewarded deceivers, it also punished deceivers who got caught. (The ability to spot deception evolves along with the ability to deceive.)

Deliberate deception among humans, furthermore, requires effort. It requires you to hold both the truth and the untruth in your mind, and consciously suppress the truth. This is why the stereotype of liars depicts them with sweaty palms, croaking voices and shifty eyes -- lying can be hard work, and liars are often nervous about getting caught.

Self-deception, said Trivers, who has studied the phenomenon in contexts ranging from the Challenger explosion to a plane crash in Florida, offers a way around this psychological hurdle. If you can make yourself believe the untruth, for example, by marshaling evidence that supports your view and ignoring evidence that contradicts your position, it becomes that much easier to persuade others.

Like many other aspects of brain functioning, self-deception does not require people to sit down and decide they are going to lie to themselves. (That would actually defeat the point of self-deception.) No, it usually happens subtly, without the person even being aware of it.

"The costs of deception are being detected and punished," Trivers said. "There is definitely a downside to self-deception, and that is you are putting yourself out of touch with reality, but it cuts down the risk of getting caught."

Lyn Nofziger, a longtime adviser to Ronald Reagan, once said the same thing about his boss -- and about the utility of self-deception in politics: He could "convince himself that the truth is what he wants it to be. Most politicians are unable to do this, but they would give their eyeteeth if they could."

A Hostage Situation: PAUL KRUGMAN - Iraq Funding

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
OP-ED COLUMNIST

A Hostage Situation

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: April 23, 2007

In response to a confrontation over financing for the Iraq surge, President Bush is threatening dire consequences for innocent bystanders.

There are two ways to describe the confrontation between Congress and the Bush administration over funding for the Iraq surge. You can pretend that it’s a normal political dispute. Or you can see it for what it really is: a hostage situation, in which a beleaguered President Bush, barricaded in the White House, is threatening dire consequences for innocent bystanders — the troops — if his demands aren’t met.

If this were a normal political dispute, Democrats in Congress would clearly hold the upper hand: by a huge margin, Americans say they want a timetable for withdrawal, and by a large margin they also say they trust Congress, not Mr. Bush, to do a better job handling the situation in Iraq.

But this isn’t a normal political dispute. Mr. Bush isn’t really trying to win the argument on the merits. He’s just betting that the people outside the barricade care more than he does about the fate of those innocent bystanders.

What’s at stake right now is the latest Iraq “supplemental.” Since the beginning, the administration has refused to put funding for the war in its regular budgets. Instead, it keeps saying, in effect: “Whoops! Whaddya know, we’re running out of money. Give us another $87 billion.”

At one level, this is like the behavior of an irresponsible adolescent who repeatedly runs through his allowance, each time calling his parents to tell them he’s broke and needs extra cash.

...

...Mr. Bush’s refusal to face up to the failure of his Iraq adventure, his apparent determination to spend the rest of his term in denial, has become a clear and present danger to national security.

--MORE--

A Giant Doom Magnet: MAUREEN DOWD

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
The New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST

A Giant Doom Magnet

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: February 17, 2007

Once President Bush stops his chain reaction of negative thought, I can stop my chain reaction of negative thought.

So I was sitting around watching “Oprah” yesterday afternoon when I realized how I could stop W. and Crazy Dick from blowing up any more stuff.

***

"...all he [Bush] needs to do to change his current reality is admit that it’s fake.

--MORE--

Iraq invasion plan 'delusional'

Iraq invasion plan 'delusional'

US commanders originally thought only 5,000 troops would be in Iraq by the end of 2006, documents show.

The Manichean War

February 09, 2007

Atrios:

The people "running" this war were never capable of distinguishing between the vision of the war they were selling to the country for propaganda purposes and the reality of what was happening. Even if torturing people to get "intelligence" was something which actually worked, the premise that such "intelligence" would actually help to solve the situation was based on the fantasy vision of what that problem was. They really believed that there were some evil masterminds with evil lairs - first former Baathists and then various "foreign fighters" - and if only they could find them and kill them then the problems would go away. There was an "enemy" which could somehow be vanquished, and once we did that the ponies would arrive.

This was a cartoon version of the war they tried to sell to the American public, but it was also what was driving their truly barbaric behavior.

That's quite right. I'll link again to Mark Danner's wonderful piece on the many different wars folks in the Bush administration thought they were fighting, which I still think is the smartest analysis of Iraq yet written. It's also worth dipping into an essay my friend Chris Hayes authored on the role World War II nostalgia played in all this. It wasn't an accident that the right kept comparing Bush to Churchill and Bush keeps comparing himself to Truman.

On September 11, 2001, George W. Bush wrote the following impression in his diary: “The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today.” He wasn’t alone in this assessment. In the days after the attacks, editorialists, pundits and citizens reached with impressive unanimity for this single historical precedent. The Sept. 12 New York Times alone contained 13 articles mentioning Pearl Harbor.

Five years after 9/11 we are still living with the legacy of this hastily drawn analogy. Whatever the natural similarities between December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001, the association of the two has led us to convert—first in rhetoric, later in fact—a battle against a small band of clever, murderous fundamentalists into a worldwide war of epic scale.

No leader wants to be a mediocrity, a technocrat, a manager. Even the CEO President wants to engineer a dramatic turnaround and series of takeovers, not leave a record of competent governance and incremental achievements. But Bush entered office at a moment that seemed capable of little more. No wars in the offing, no powerful enemies looming, a surplus in the budget, relatively high contentment and satisfaction among Americans. 9/11 was his chance for greatness, and he took it. But Afghanistan was too easy, too quick, too simple, too obscure. We roared to Kabul and then it was...what? Over? So the reprisal against al-Qaeda became a war against not only terror, but tyranny, and illiberalism. A war against evil. As more and more Americans recognize that deception, and as our own actions in Iraq -- which will leave the country a maelstrom of murder, chaos, and tribal enmity -- begin looking somewhat dark themselves, I wonder how great the psychological damage will be to America. Back to Chris:

It is a grand irony that Spielberg claimed repeatedly that his entire motivation behind making Saving Private Ryan was to deconstruct the simplified version of WWII that Americans had come to accept. “All wars,” he said in a typical interview, are “chambers of horrors.” And that’s certainly true of the film’s opening and of the gruesome descriptions in Ambrose’s books and Brokaw’s recounting. But what emerges from these works is a picture of war as a chamber of physical horrors—torn limbs, exposed viscera, muck, blood. Absent completely are the moral horrors of combat, the horror of taking a life, of feeling the killer within. There’s a good deal of evidence that suggests the most traumatic experience of war isn’t being the target of violence, but rather the agent. A 1994 study of post-traumatic stress in veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam found that “responsibility for killing another human being is the single most pervasive, traumatic experience of war.”

What America is going through isn't, I think, a revulsion at the physical horrors of war. Nor is it a precise analogue to the Vietnam Syndrome, wherein we question our own power. Our power is massive, our ability to salve ancient ethnic conflicts is less so, but that's a different issue. What no longer looks certain, though, is the righteousness of our cause, the morality of our mission. American exceptionalism is what's taking a beating, even among Americans. We're shocked at the moral transgression of this invasion, and the blithe ease with which the country accepted a tragic conflict which will leave, when all is said and done, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, dead. It is the ease with which we have taken those lives, and the realization that we were capable of doing so immorally and irrationally, that will be most unsettling to the American psyche.

February 9, 2007 | Permalink

Bush: 'I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude'

Bush Redefines Insanity
---
Transcript: Bush Interview

That must be some kool-aid, huh?
---
Jan. 14, 2007

---

(CBS) On Jan. 12, 2007, two days after President George W. Bush told the country that he would send 21,000 more troops into Iraq, the president sat down with 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley for a candid conversation. The two met in Camp David's Laurel Cabin, where, in 2001, the president and his cabinet debated plans for the invasion of Afghanistan and thus launched the war on terror.

Excerpt

PELLEY: Well, that the United States did not do a better job in providing security after the invasion.

BUSH: Not at all. I am proud of the efforts we did. We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude, and I believe most Iraqis express that. I mean, the people understand that we’ve endured great sacrifice to help them. That’s the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that’s significant enough in Iraq.

Of Geese,Ganders and Loons

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Dave Lindorff

Over a quarter of a century ago, a group of students, with the backing of the religious government of Iran, invaded and took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran, holding Americans there hostage for months. It was an action so violative of international law (embassies and consulates are considered to be the terrority of the nation that occupies them) that the U.S. has never forgiven Iran, and never restored relations.

How ironic then, to learn that our president, the loony George W. Bush, personally ordered our troops in "sovereign" Iraq to attack and overrun the Iranian consulate in Irbil, arrest and take as hostages six Iranians there, and confiscate consular equipment such as computers, as well as documents.

How predictable that days later, the U.S. embassy in Greece was hit with a rocket-fired grenade--an action which was immediately denounced by the U.S. as an "act of terror," though thankfully no one was hurt.

We don't know who fired the RPG at the U.S. embassy, but if it was the Iranians, or if it was a Greek leftist acting on behalf of the Iranians, they'd be well within their rights, under the internation rules of war, which include the doctrine of reciprocity. It would be, not terrorism, but an act of war.

In authorizing the attack on Iran's consulate in Irbil, President Bush was okaying an act of war--an attack on the sovereign territory of Iran. What did he expect to happen? What's war for the goose is war for the gander.

Now with all the preparations the administration has under way for war with Iran--a second carrier battle group ordered to the region, a Naval carrier commander placed in charge of the "Iraq War," and air force general put in charge of the "Afghan War," and forces inside Iraq already selecting hundreds of targets--it is likely that the attack on the Irbil consulate was a deliberate provocation, intended to push Iran into a retaliatory action that would allow Bush to unleash the bombers. But even if the president has such a hidden agenda, the American people need to know what's going on here.

If the U.S. goes to war against Iran--a mad scheme if there ever was one at a time when the Army and Marines are stretched to the limit and are already losing in Iraq--Iran will fight back in ways that will be hard to defend against. The U.S. embassy in Greece is a clue about what will happen. If we attack Iran, no target in the U.S. will be safe. No American or American facility in the world will be safe.

This is not what the American people want.

These are the actions of a madman.

It's time for Congress to stop dithering. Impeach this loon an put him in an asylum. And bring the troops home where they belong.

11:16 am pst

One Flew Over the White House?

by Stephen Pizzo | Jan 13 2007 - 10:36am |

The time has come to ask the question:

Can it be that our president is not just wrong, not just stubborn, not just acting on sinister but purposeful motives, but mad as a hatter – in the clinical sense? Is the President of the United States of America, mentally ill?

Ever since Bush's speech Wednesday night I've listened carefully as media analysts and members Congress try to make sense out of what Bush proposed. For Congress the effort comes about four years late. But rather than being relieved to hear them finally asking tough questions, I was left scratching my head. It occurred to me everyone was trying to make sense out something that was demonstrably “sense-less.” Not senseless in just the policy, strategic or moral sense, but senseless as in “insane.” (Hell, Bush not only was saying crazy things Wednesday night, but he even looked crazy.)

That thought left me wondering if maybe I was the one that was insane. I mean the implications of that, if true, were terrifying. After all, it's one thing to have guy in the Oval Office who's a crook -- we've been there, done that, and survived. But it's quite another matter to have a certifiable lunatic in that position at a time of war. (Just ask the Germans.)

To find out if there could possibly be a shred of proof for my suspicions I turned off the TV and went online and spent the day searching through the latest psychology papers and texts.

Terms like "crazy" and "insane" are not only loaded, but imprecise. The first thing I needed to do was to narrow it down to a particular, clinically defined, pathology. It turned out that was not an easy matter, because Bush seems to have claims on more than one piece of crazyland real estate. The best I could do was narrow it down to a few leading candidates.

I'll leave you to decide if you think the mental disorders described below define the George W. Bush you've come to know over the past six years. (Words in RED are the characteristics I think apply.)

Disorder: Narcissistic Personality:

A form of pathological narcissistic personality disorder characterized by extreme focus on oneself, and is a maladaptive, rigid, and persistent condition that may cause significant distress and functional impairment. A person suffering from NPD displays:

• a grandiose sense of self-importance
• is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance
• believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by other special people
• requires excessive admiration
• strong sense of entitlement
• takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
• lacks empathy
• is often envious or believes others are envious of him or her
• an arrogant affect.

Disorder: Delusional:

A delusion is commonly defined as a fixed false belief and is used in everyday language to describe a belief that is either false, fanciful or derived from deception. In psychiatry, the definition is necessarily more precise and implies that the belief is pathological (the result of an illness or illness process.) Delusions typically occur in the context of neurological or mental illness. A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture.

Diagnosis criteria include:

• certainty (held with absolute conviction)
• incorrigibility (not changeable by compelling counterargument or proof to the contrary)
• impossibility or falsity of content (implausible, bizarre or patently untrue)

Disorder: Paranoid Personality:

A psychiatric diagnosis that denotes a personality disorder with paranoid features. It is characterized by an exaggerated sensitivity to rejection, resentfulness, distrust, as well as the inclination to distort experienced events. Neutral and friendly actions of others are often misinterpreted as being hostile or contemptuous.

Unfounded suspicions regarding the sexual loyalty of partners and loyalty in general as well as the belief that one’s rights are not being recognized is stubbornly and argumentatively insisted upon. Such individuals can possess an excessive self-assurance and a tendency toward an exaggerated self-reference. The use of the term paranoia in this context implies the presence of ongoing, unbased suspiciousness and distrust of people.... A pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:

• suspects, without sufficient basis, that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving him or her
• is preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or trustworthiness of friends or associates
• is reluctant to confide in others because of unwarranted fear that the information will be used maliciously against him or her
• persistently bears grudges, i.e., is unforgiving of insults, injuries, or slights
• perceives attacks on his or her character or reputation that are not apparent to others and is quick to react angrily or to counterattack

Disorder: Antisocial Personality:

Is a psychiatric diagnosis recognizable by the disordered individual's impulsive behavior, disregard for social norms, and indifference to the rights and feelings of others. Central to understanding individuals diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, is that they appear to experience a limited range of human emotions. This can explain their lack of empathy for the suffering of others, since they cannot experience the emotion associated with either empathy or suffering. Risk-seeking behavior and substance abuse may be attempts to escape feeling empty or emotionally void.

The rage exhibited by psychopaths and the anxiety associated with certain types of antisocial personality disorder may represent the limit of emotion experienced, or there may be physiological responses without analogy to emotion experienced by others.

So mix and match or pick one. But any and all the above make more sense to me, and explain Bush's decision to escalate and expand the war in Iraq better than anything I've read or heard to date. There is a real possibility, I believe, that we have a clinically insane man sitting in the Oval Office. And, that there are people around him that know it and are using it to further the neocon agenda in the Middle East.

If any of this is true we are in for more trouble -- a lot more trouble. Because, all the clinical blather aside, crazy is, as crazy does.
_______

newsforreal.com

About author Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including "Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans," which was nominated for a Pulitzer. His web site is News For Real.

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Our president is so out of touch with reality he may possibly be mentally and emotionally disturbed

The madness of President George

January 11, 2007 08:30 PM

Eric Alterman

The US political debate today has the feel of a Magritte painting or perhaps a Duchamp urinal; in other words, surreal.

Our president is so out of touch with reality he may possibly be mentally and emotionally disturbed. He is undertaking to escalate a failed war that has destroyed a functioning (albeit unfree) society, killed hundreds of thousands, maimed even more, cost trillions, spawned hatred everywhere, strengthened the hands of the West's enemies and destablized an entire region. And he is doing so against the opposition of most of the country, his own generals, the winning side in the last election, the Backer commission - meaning his own daddy - and all of America's allies.

What's more, he's doing so on behalf of a plan that even its proponents do not expect to work. (The authors of the plan, Frederick Kagan and John Keane have said "It is difficult to imagine a responsible plan for getting the violence in and around Baghdad under control that could succeed with fewer than 30,000 combat troops beyond the forces already in Iraq."

And yet Bush proposed barely more than 20,000 and failed to understand, at least so that anyone could understand, what they would be doing that we haven't tried before. Ditto the happy talk; George W Bush: "Most of Iraq's Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace."

It would be absurd if it were a movie - say, "The Madness of President George" - but since it's real, it's a tragedy - a tragedy many hundreds of thousands of times over that so many people will lose their loved one's owing to the vanity, ignorance, extremism and egomania of one small group of delusional individuals. (And by the way, this might be a good time to ask what's up with your Tony Blair. Is there no amount of this man's metaphorical feces he will not swallow and call it chocolate ice cream?)

So what's going to happen here? Well, first we're going to get a lot of standard semiotical analysis n which we are instructed about how Bush looked and felt as he drove his nation futher off its cliff. For instance, Newsweek's Howard Fineman on MSNBC: "I have never seen [George W Bush], in public or private, look less convincing, less sure of himself, less cocky." Or Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: "The plan, outlined by the president in stark, simple tones in a 20-minute speech from the White House library, is vintage George Bush -- in the eyes of admirers, resolute and principled; in the eyes of critics, bull-headed, even delusional, about the prospects for success in Iraq".

The politics, for once, are unpredictable. Despite the position of most of the country and virtually every Democrat and independent, Democrats are divided about the potential political costs of trying to cut off funding for the fiasco. Of the '08ers, so far Edwards and Kerry say yes, Clinton says no, and Obama says he'll think about it. Republicans are also divided between trying to run away and calling those who recognize reality "traitors".

(On Fox News, anchor Gretchen Carlson called Sen Ted Kennedy (D-MA) a "hostile enemy" of the United States because he has demanded that Congress vote on whether to approve funding for escalation in Iraq. In an interview with White House counselor Dan Bartlett, Carlson compared Kennedy to insurgents and terrorists in Iraq, saying that Kennedy represented the same kind of force "right here on the home front."

My fear, expessed best by Harold Meyerson, is that Bush will further double down on disaster by expanding the war into Iran. Bush hinted at this last night. And he gives every indication of having no connection to reality, but many to his own twisted notions of his God-appointed role in Biblical prophecy.

If you're not terrified, you're not paying attention.

Termed "the most honest and incisive media critic writing today” in the National Catholic Reporter, and author of “the smartest and funniest political journal out there” in the San Francisco Chronicle, Eric Alterman is professor of English at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

He is also the “Liberal Media” columnist for the Nation, the Altercation weblogger for MSNBC.com, and a contributor to the Huffington Post.

He is a senior fellow at both the Center for American Progress in Washington DC, for which he writes and edits the Think Again column, and the World Policy Institute at New School University in New York.

He wrote the national bestsellers:
What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News (2003, 2004),
The Book on Bush: How George W (Mis)leads America (with Mark Green, 2004).
His Sound & Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy (1992, 2000), won the 1992 George Orwell Award and his It Ain't No Sin to be Glad You're Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen (1999, 2001) won the 1999 Stephen Crane Literary Award.

Alterman is also the author of Who Speaks for America? Why Democracy Matters in Foreign Policy (1998). His newest book is When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and its Consequences (2004, 2005).

A frequent lecturer and contributor to virtually every significant national publication in the US and many in Europe in recent years, he has also been a columnist for Worth, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and the Sunday Express. A former adjunct professor of journalism at NYU and Columbia, Alterman received a BA in history and government from Cornell, an MA in international relations from Yale and a PhD in US history from Stanford.

He lives with his family in Manhattan, where he is at work on a history of postwar American liberalism and a history of the rock‘n’roll business.

Good Times Are For Hanging the Nigger

Related
Robert Fisk" href="http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2112555.ece" target="_blank">A dictator created then destroyed by America
---
“If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone 'America died from a delusion that she had moral leadership'.” ---Will Rogers
---

Submitted by chicago dyke on Fri, 2006-12-29 23:43

Saddam was a bad, bad man. Like any nigger, he was bad because he beat down on other niggers without permission, and gassed them and raped them, all by his lonesome. Such is the power of his nigger muslim penis. That’s why it had to Be Destroyed. Did you have a good time, churchmouse, watching the slobber come out of his mouth, the blood run from his ass, did you listen to Toby Keith while his neck stretched? I hope you did. In the Good Old Days, you’d have had some fine Kentucky whiskey and fucked a White Woman in the public square, all by your lonesome, as the shit ran down his leg and the crowd broke into song. The flame from the torches would’ve made your flushed face seem more supernatural, more in touch with your God, more alive. But now you get to share your ecstasy with a million of your kind, and line-dance on his grave with your electronic boots, kickin it across the ether, for all them coolies to feel, even as their sorry towel-headed nonEnglish speaking asses can only receive, like a sorry bitch, and not send, in the medium of your creation, which spreads forth across this globe like Santorum from your mother/sister’s ass. You love watching them slurp it up, don’t you? Don’t you? That’s “entertainment. I’m sorry: “infotainment.” Get with the times, Dyke.

Is this an angry post? /Rummy voice/ Yes, yes it is. Is there something wrong with a nation of “freedoms” and “democracy” that celebrates death, makes it a video game, a holiday event for the children to enjoy? Hell yes.

Don’t think some of us don’t know what this is. It isn’t the Rule of Law. It isn’t “justice” for the victims of the Baath regime. Oh, I’m sorry- did you fail to notice them shooting and getting shot at, daily? Civil War, bitches. Not like you care now. Or: River is posting again. I’m not too angry to link. Just turn up the music, kick back and relax, and know that you don’t live in a Civilized Nation. That’s what you want, and like best, right? Else why would you pay these motherfuckers the millions they make, while perfectly fecund white children starve in the hinterlands of your own nation, the better to ring in the new year of imperialism, with the public humilation of the Great Satan of your own making? That’s what “news” is all about, no? Will Rummy cry over the death of his handshaking buddy? Will KBR be sorry they can’t do business with him anymore? Will the Western, taxpayer supported research MIC companies that sold him poison gas look for a new brown man who’ll test their latest product? Can I make this into a Scrabble post? Perhaps there’s an option on “World of Warcraft” that’ll fit.

Saddam’s last foetid, murderous, CIA-empowered breath blew stank into my addled mind. It asks, rolling over my tongue like filth slopping over a hog’s trough: Will you ever turn it off? Here. I have a kitten, and some children. And some tar. Let me see if I can entertain you now. I already have the matches.

Iraq Clusterfuck | Department of Eerie Historical Parallels | Saddam is Dead! Long Live Big Brother!

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A Sobering, Agonizing Reality

by: RenaRF
renarf@comcast.net
Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 12:50:15 PM PST

Sometimes life and the people in kind of slap you back to reality. I had just such an occurrence this past weekend, and truthfully, it has caused me a great deal of distress. This is a real distress - the kind that sometimes makes me stop and feel slightly sick as a human being - over the subject I'm going to discuss.

But I have to share this story. It begins like this: I have a friend who is Iraqi.

I have to be careful about my friend's identity, so some of the contextual (but not necessary) details are going to be vague. It won't be a great story without all the color and background, but it will be a true one.
My friend is Iraqi born and married an Iraqi. I don't know how it happened, but wife is already an American citizen. He is not, though he has told me that he has applied for citizenship and that he doesn't anticipate there will be any issues - it's all a matter of time at this point. They are both professional people - not professional like brain surgeons, but professionals, skilled in what they do.

As with all friendships, getting to know someone entails some mixture of chit chat and polite inquries - you know the kind. You ask if they have children. You ask what they do for a living and whether or not they like it. When you hear them speaking with an accent, you ask where that accent is from. When they tell you they are from Iraq, in light of everything that's going on there, you launch into a new level of questions.

It was those types of questions that let me know him a little better. Some months ago I asked about his family. He has siblings, and all have left Iraq proper for other, safer areas in the middle east. His mother, however, remained in Iraq. At the time, this wasn't a huge issue as she was further to the north in areas that would have been considered, at that time, relatively "safe". All of these details came out very early in my getting to know him. I didn't want to inundate him with sensitive questions about how he felt about the war, and he seemed happy to keep the friendship on the level where it existed.

As life goes, sometimes you just get busy. You have your friends, but you don't necessarily see your friends as much as you would like. It happens - and it happened with my Iraqi friend. Some months went by where we just didn't connect. During those months, the situation in Iraq deteriorated rapidly. The theoretically "safe" northern areas were no longer safe. I thought of my friend and especially of his mother frequently, and wondered how she was doing and whether or not she was safe.

Well, I bumped into him over this past weekend. I went up and shook his hand and let him know I had been thinking about him, and especially about his mother. I told him I wondered often about her safety. He relieved some of these thoughts by letting me know that his mother was not currently in Iraq. She had gone a month or so ago to visit relatives in another country in the region, one that would be considered stable. He was worried, though - it was her intent to return to Iraq, her home, very soon. He wondered aloud if he could get her to come for an extended visit here in the United States... While he was composed, he was also certainly concerned.

Then our friendship took another informational step forward. He let me know that his wife has family, close family, currently in Baghdad. They have been hastily and desperately trying to figure a way to get one family member in particular into the US, sooner rather than later. They had consulted a lawyer who laid out the process at a very high level, but had had to undertake the process on their own due to the prohibitive cost of legal assistance. My friend and his wife are hardworking people, but not the kind with several thousand dollars sitting around idle and unutilized.

This started us on a discussion of the war itself. I'm going to paraphrase the conversation to give you a sense of how it went. I'll call him Joe for the sake of ease, and I'll share that he is Sunni:


ME: Jeez, Joe. I can't believe how badly this has gone. It wasn't a good idea even before we went in there, but now - it's unraveling. I don't think America will see it's good reputation returned in my lifetime. And even though I was against going into Iraq in the first place, I'm an American and to some degree, this has happened in my name.
JOE: You know, a lot of people said many things. They said that Saddam was bad and he was. They went to your Pentagon and they told them 'just go in there and get rid of Saddam'. And your Pentagon, your Rumsfeld, that's what he did. And then Bremmer told your Pentagon to get rid of the Army and the police and the government and that's what he did. And it was not a good thing - not a good idea.

ME: ((sighing)) I know. Ahmed Chalabi, right? [Joe nods] You know, you would think that the American government would have considered the source of all of the information they had. I mean, if they have a guy who's there telling them to 'just get rid of Saddam', that guy has something that he wants. He could be a true nationalist with pure intentions, or he could be politically motivated and trying to seize power. Either way, you'd think they would have stepped back and considered what this guy or anyone else wanted and weigh the information they got against any likely motivations.

JOE: My family in Baghdad - it's bad. They can't go out and go to get food. We call and they are in their house because they can't go out. They have separated Baghdad and put Sunnis in one area and Shi'ia in another. And they have people there to keep them apart. But now with your report, they are going to leave and the Shi'ia are going to come over there. I talked to one family member and he told me 'they are going to kill us when the Americans leave'. They don't want electricity and food and jobs anymore. They just want to be safe. It's the only thing they want. And now the Americans are going to leave.

They just want to be safe. After the conversation, I let myself think about the sheer gravity of that kind of a statement. How emotionally and physically broken do you have to be to be willing to give up everything else for want of safety? I can't really imagine it - I can try, but I can't put myself in his family's shoes. It's very bad, though.

Yesterday, as I was driving to the DC area Kossack Meetup, I heard John Murtha interviewed on CNN's Situation Room. Here are a few excerpts from that interview:


BLITZER: Congressman, thanks very much for coming in. What do you make of this idea of having a short-term surge, as they're calling it, 20- 30,000 U.S. troops deployed to the Baghdad area to try to bring some sort of stability there?
REP. JOHN MURTHA (D), PENNSYLVANIA: Well, Wolf, let's look at the results of what happened. They put 10,000 more troops into the area. They've increased significantly troops in the Baghdad area and it's gotten worse.

The incidents, attacks, I call them, have increased, have doubled. They're up 973 a week now. More Iraqis being killed. More security people being killed. More Americans being killed.

::snip::

BLITZER: The new defense secretary, Robert Gates, said yesterday that failure in Iraq, in his words, "would be a calamity."

Here's the question to you. Has the U.S. already lost in Iraq?

MURTHA: Militarily, we've lost. There's no question about it. We cannot win this militarily.

::snip::

MURTHA: Only the Iraqis can do this. There is in way the United States can solve this problem. We have gotten so far out and we missed our opportunity, if we ever had an opportunity early on, to stabilize Iraq.

Since we didn't do it then, it cannot be done now. I am convinced the best thing for the United States, the best American policy, what's in the best interest of America, and that's to get our troops redeployed out of there.

I have to say that I agree with everything John Murtha said. Yet at the end of the day, to simply pack up and go home means that my friend's in-laws get slaughtered. Literally slaughtered. Whatever tiny semblance of control there is in Baghdad exists at the end of an American rifle. No more Americans, and those people are GONE. How will I look him in the eye, what will I say, when he finally tells me that his wife has utterly lost her family?

Yet at the same time, I feel and have felt strongly that we need to get out of there, not just for the sake of our soldiers, but for the sake of our larger efforts to combat terrorism.

I wish I had answers. I wish I didn't feel so horribly torn in two directions at once. At the end of the day, I blame the Bush administration. Because, as we all know, had we not gone in there in the first place, I wouldn't be wrestling with these questions. And, having decided to go in, had we done so with some semblance of competence, I MAY not be wrestling with these questions.

But that's a hard thing to sell to my Iraqi friend. Because even today, he's sitting in his office worrying about hearing, finally and at last, that his family has fallen victim to the violence. What good will my regrets do him then?

URL

Military Matters: Denying reality on Iraq

By WILLIAM S. LIND

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- Last week, the Iraq Study Group Report burst upon a breathless world, and proved to be an empty piñata. None of its recommendations to the U.S. government has the slightest chance of reversing the course of the war in Iraq.

Only those who just got into town on the last truckload of turnips expected anything more. All Washington "Blue Ribbon Commissions" are part of the kabuki, intended to fool the rubes back home into thinking something real is happening, when it isn't.

If the Iraq Study Group Report is empty of content, the responses to it from the war hawks, or more accurately at this point the war vultures, since what they are feeding on is dead, were clueless. They denounced it as impracticable, which is true; as fanciful, in thinking Iran or Syria has any reason to help us in Iraq, which is also true; and, in the case of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as a recipe for defeat.

McCain almost got it right. The Iraq Study Group Report is not a recipe for defeat, but an acknowledgment of defeat. Therein lies its value, and its function. It offers the Bush administration the bipartisan fig leaf it needs to cover its defeat in Iraq and our inevitable withdrawal.

Like all reports of Blue Ribbon Commissions, the Report of the Iraq Study Group is written so as to cover the backsides of its members. It does not come right out and say, "We've lost, and its time to get out." The Letter from the Co-Chairs begins, "There is no magic formula to solve the problems of Iraq. However, there are actions that can be taken to improve the situation and protect American interests."

After this obligatory tip of the cap to Pollyanna, however, the report lays it out as clearly as Washington ever will. The Assessment of the Current Situation in Iraq concludes on page 32,

"Despite a massive effort, stability in Iraq remains elusive and the situation is deteriorating. The Iraqi government cannot now govern, sustain, and defend itself without the support of the United States. Iraqis have not been convinced that they must take responsibility for their own future ... The ability of the United States to shape outcomes is diminishing. Time is running out."

Short of concluding with a chorus of "Asleep in the Deep," it would be hard for the Study Group to make the reality of the situation more evident.

Again, what is key is not the details of the report or the viability of its recommendations, but the response to it. Had it the slightest understanding of which end is up, the Bush White House, while politely disagreeing with some details of the report, would have accepted it as "the only way forward." The vultures, led by the neo-cons, would have "sadly concurred." The U.S. Joint Chiefs' strings would have been pulled so they saluted and "got on board" the last train out of Baghdad.

A hypothetical news report of a very different. realistic response to the report might have gone somewhat like this:

"Yesterday afternoon, less than twenty-four hours after the release of the Iraq Study Group Report, President George W. Bush, accompanied by Iraq Study Group Co-Chairmen James A. Baker and Lee Hamilton and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Peter Pace, said, 'While I do not agree with every detail of the Study Group's Report, I accept that it represents the only way forward in Iraq that will have bi-partisan support of the Congress and the American people. I therefore accept its recommendations as a package, as Secretary Baker has described them, and pledge this administration to their speedy implementation.

"'I now call on all members of Congress of both parties to join the administration and the members of the bi-partisan study group to set aside all divisions and work together. I look forward to having all American combat troops home from Iraq early in 2008.'

"President Bush was immediately followed by Mr. Baker, Mr. Hamilton and General Pace adding their endorsements to the administration's new course and calling for an end to partisanship and national division over the war in Iraq."

Instead, as we know, the Bush administration and the vultures have rejected the fig leaf the Iraq Study Group Report offers. Determined to achieve "victory in Iraq," they guarantee that America's defeat will be naked before all the world.

One member of the study group, former Democratic Congressman Leon Panetta, was quoted in the Sunday, Dec. 10 Washington Post as saying, "I think the feeling was, how do you rescue this administration from the grip of ideology and force it to face the real world?"

The Bush administration's only desire, unfortunately for the country, is to escape the grip of reality and immerse itself more deeply in the Jacobin ideology of neo-cons. It seems that, absent a miracle, we are doomed to wander in Oz for two more years.

--

(William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation.)

President Bush: State of Denial About Iraq

Sunday , December 10, 2006

By Susan Estric

Hold the melon, please, my daughter always asks, when she orders fruit salad. The problem, as only some waiters and waitresses bother to explain, is that most fruit salads are pre-made, and melon is usually the primary ingredient. Take out the melon and what’s left?

The White House should not treat the Study Group Report “like a fruit salad,” James Baker told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Wishful thinking. Until the president accepts the basic premise of the report, its recommendations are almost beside the point. The basic premise is that we’re failing. The president doesn’t see it that way.

The president is in denial. He has posed for the pictures, accepted the report, thanked the co-chairs. There might even be a few recommendations in there somewhere with which he agrees.

But he refuses to face reality. He rejects the fundamental diagnosis. He still wants to win.

“I thought we would succeed quicker than we did, and I am disappointed by the pace of success,” he said at his joint press conference last week with Tony Blair.

But he still thinks we can win. “I also believe we’re going to succeed. I believe we’ll prevail,” he said.

Prevail? What does it mean to prevail? On what planet?

How are we going to prevail in their civil war?

Denial is the first stage in dealing with death. The president still has to get through anger, bargaining, and depression before he reaches acceptance.

And there is no sign that he is listening to anyone.

He didn’t listen to the voters, who gave him a thumping because of Iraq. So much for democracy.

He isn’t listening to his own new defense secretary, who has testified that his Iraq policy isn’t working and won’t work. So much for his own advisers.

And he certainly isn’t listening to the Iraq Study Group, which most people have characterized as the last, best hope, or at least the best cover, for a change of policy. So much for blue ribbon bipartisanship.

What will it take to get through to this president?

If an election doesn’t do it, and a blue ribbon panel doesn’t do it; if his father’s team and his own savior (remember it was Jim Baker who went to Florida in 2000 to rescue W) can’t do it, who can?

When the president was in denial about the damage caused by Katrina, his staff made a video of the devastation for him to watch. Maybe it’s time for a new video.

The Iraq Study Group described the situation there as “grave and deteriorating.” In his press conference, the president said it was merely “unsettling.”

Asked if his description signaled that he was “still in denial about how bad things are in Iraq,” the president’s answer seemed to confirm that he was: “Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to the families. I also believe we’re going to succeed. I believe we’ll prevail.”

Are the “families” telling George Bush that we can prevail?

With all due respect, how would they know? No one wants to have lost a loved one in vain.

No one has a greater interest in this war having meant something than those who have sacrificed the ones they love most. But is that a reason to keep asking others to sacrifice their lives?

Does the president have any source other than “the families” for his Pollyanna-ish view of the world?

Who else is telling George W. Bush that “we’re going to succeed?” What waiter is he listening to?

Even his own former allies on the Right are tripping over each other blaming him for mishandling the war, as if it were simply a problem of a good idea gone bad.

“Kiss and tell” is ugly to watch, but not even the neo-cons who got us into this mess are still saying we’re going to succeed.

It is one thing for the president, or others, to say that they disagree with specific recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton commission. But the president is stuck at the initial question, which means so are the rest of us.

And as long as he is in a state of denial, the country is bound to be in a state of war that we cannot win. It will be a long two years until the next election, and George W. Bush’s attitude all but ensures that we will spend it debating the war in Iraq. The menu is set. Hold the melon. Not possible, you say. Exactly.


Click here to read Susan's response to your email .

Click here to link to Susan's new book, "Soulless."

Susan Estrich is currently the Robert Kingsley Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Southern California and a member of the Board of Contributors of USA Today. She writes the "Portia" column for American Lawyer Media and is a contributing editor of The Los Angeles Times. She was appointed by the president to serve on the National Holocaust Council and by the mayor of the City of Los Angeles to serve on that city's Ethics Commission.

Estrich's books include the just published "Soulless," "Real Rape," "Getting Away with Murder: How Politics Is Destroying the Criminal Justice System," "Dealing with Dangerous Offenders," "Making the Case for Yourself: A Diet Book for Smart Women" and "Sex & Power," currently a Los Angeles Times bestseller.

She served as campaign manager for Michael Dukakis' presidential bid, becoming the first woman to head a U.S. presidential campaign. Estrich appears regularly on the FOX News Channel.

Has He Started Talking to the Walls? : FRANK RICH - Bush’s Unreality

Reposted

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE WITH ALL HYPERLINKS

The New York Times

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Has He Started Talking to the Walls?
By FRANK RICH
Published: December 3, 2006

The more President Bush loses his hold on reality, the more language is severed from its meaning altogether.


IT turns out we’ve been reading the wrong Bob Woodward book to understand what’s going on with President Bush. The text we should be consulting instead is “The Final Days,” the Woodward-Bernstein account of Richard Nixon talking to the portraits on the White House walls while Watergate demolished his presidency. As Mr. Bush has ricocheted from Vietnam to Latvia to Jordan in recent weeks, we’ve witnessed the troubling behavior of a president who isn’t merely in a state of denial but is completely untethered from reality. It’s not that he can’t handle the truth about Iraq. He doesn’t know what the truth is.

--MORE--

Andrew Sullivan on Iraq: 'It's over, guys. Your beloved Bush administration botched this so badly it's irrecoverable.'

Saturday, December 2, 2006

Denialists Dig In

02 Dec 2006 04:37 pm

Both National Review and the Weekly Standard aim for the Baker-Hamilton Group this week. But when you examine what the Kristol-Kagan team sees as the alternative to a gradual retreat from the South and Anbar into Kurdistan, you can't help wondering how serious they really are. Money quote:

We hope that he will now take the steps necessary to accomplish his stated objectives in Iraq, including a substantial increase in the number of U.S. forces in Baghdad and throughout the contested parts of the country, as well as a long overdue increase in the total size of American ground forces so that higher force levels in Iraq can be sustained.

How much higher would make a difference? At this point, close to 50,000 to 100,000 extra troops to halt the centrifugal force of societal disintegration in Iraq. Does the Weekly Standard seriously believe that is either politically or militarily possible with the urgency necessary? Of course not. Would, say, another 20,000 troops work in a pitched battle with Sadrite forces to retake parts of Baghdad? Unlikely - and with massive casualties probably prompting an uprising in the South. Anbar is all but gone. The South is a battleground for various Shiite militias and sending U.S. troops in to police the conflict is madness. But even if you reduced troops in the South and West, and focused on 20,000 more troops just for Baghdad, it's a stretch. As even Fred Kagan acknowledges:

It is certainly true that only the 20,000 or so troops now programmed to deploy to Iraq in the spring are ready to go. Others could be made ready only in months, and would require accelerated training schedules.

We need at least 50,000 NOW. The only way to do that is sending untrained and ill-prepared or exhausted forces into a combat zone as chaotic and as opaque and as deadly as urban warfare in Baghdad. it would mean re-taking Baghdad three years after we did the first time, with far fewer advantages. And the massive surge in U.S. casualties it would mean would provoke massive opposition at home. If Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush had done this three years ago, it might have had a chance. But they were too arrogant to do what was obviously needed when it mattered, and the window of opportunity is over. To ask for such a radical re-upping of the ante now - after the American public's patience has been exhausted and the Iraqi population has been massacred and thereby embittered on a large scale - is simply a non-starter.

The attempt to belittle the efforts of Baker-Hamilton is therefore pure positioning. In Margaret Thatcher's phrase, there is tragically no alternative to some sort of retrenchment and retreat right now. I agree we need an effort to expand the military by several divisions. That was Al Gore's position in 2000, by the way, the candidate the Weekly Standard hounded as insane and weak. It was Kerry's position in 2004, another candidate the WS smeared as Jane Fonda in drag. Maybe a period of retrenchment and rebuilding of US forces could mean a new offensive in a year or so. But the idea that it can be accomplished swiftly enough now to make a difference in a "country" that has already disintegrated into Hobbesian hell is pure fantasy and Bill Kristol and Bob Kagan must know it.

There is a mood on the right at this moment that is not entirely rational. They are lashing out at the people who can rescue them from the folly of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld policy in Iraq. They are viciously attacking those who have had the temerity to expain why they lost the last election. And they are throwing the vilest of epithets at James Baker. Please. This is not 1991. They are as graceless in defeat now as they were hubristic in premature victory three years ago. Or to put it more precisely, they are exactly what National Review accuses the Baker-Hamilton Commission of being: "driven by their own internal dynamics rather than by any connection to the real world."

It's over, guys. Your beloved Bush administration botched this so badly it's irrecoverable. You enabled them. You never fully took them on when it would have counted - and you trashed those of us who did. You knew this before the 2004 election and still cynically played the anti-Kerry card for all it was worth, telling yourselves you could sway Rummy after the election. Well, you couldn't and you didn't. Your policy was sabotaged by a defense secretary who never believed in it and by a president too weak and out-of-it to rein him in. Get over yourselves and recognize that this dream has died. And we have to fight the nightmare we now face rather than pretend your dream is still even on life-support. That's the patriotic responsibility at this point. And no, I'm not impugning your patriotism. I'm asking you to place it before your shattered dreams.

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Has He Started Talking to the Walls? : FRANK RICH - Bush’s Unreality

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE WITH ALL HYPERLINKS

The New York Times

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Has He Started Talking to the Walls?
By FRANK RICH
Published: December 3, 2006

The more President Bush loses his hold on reality, the more language is severed from its meaning altogether.


IT turns out we’ve been reading the wrong Bob Woodward book to understand what’s going on with President Bush. The text we should be consulting instead is “The Final Days,” the Woodward-Bernstein account of Richard Nixon talking to the portraits on the White House walls while Watergate demolished his presidency. As Mr. Bush has ricocheted from Vietnam to Latvia to Jordan in recent weeks, we’ve witnessed the troubling behavior of a president who isn’t merely in a state of denial but is completely untethered from reality. It’s not that he can’t handle the truth about Iraq. He doesn’t know what the truth is.

--MORE--

Iraq's Reality Bandwagon

To find a way out of Iraq, George W. Bush must first admit he has a problem.

David Corn

November 22, 2006

David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPaine.com. Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and the co-author, along with Michael Isikoff, of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War. Read his blog at http://www.davidcorn.com.


We're screwed.

That's the inescapable conclusion drawn from reading The New Republic's recent special mea culpa issue that combines an apology for its “early support” of the Iraq war with a colloquium on what to do now in Iraq. Sixteen foreign policy thinkers were asked to provide a roadmap out of this debacle. No surprise, the magazine received assorted and contradictory advice. Taken together, it's a mind-bending maze of an obstacle course.

New Yorker writer George Packer calls the war “lost” and counsels helping Iraqis who have worked with Americans to obtain visas so they can flee when US troops inevitably withdraw. Former White House counterterrorism aide Richard Clarke urges initiating a 18-month-long pull-out right away. Author David Rieff bluntly advises, “It is time to put the fucking troops on the fucking planes. Now! Before any more of our children die for their country's hubris.” Neocon stalwart Robert Kagan argues that “clever plans” are not needed in Iraq; more troops are necessary “to provide the stability necessary so that eventual withdrawal will not produce chaos and the implosion of the Iraqi state.” Former US ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith wants to partition Iraq. Reza Aslan, a CBS News analyst, maintains carving up Iraq will be a disaster. Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School advises the U.S. to threaten a precipitous retreat “unless all parties within and outside Iraq come to the table and hammer out an enforceable peace settlement.” Stanford University professor Josef Joffe says the Bush administration should cut a deal with the Sunnis. Swarthmore professor James Kurth argues the U.S. military must crush the Sunni insurgency before leaving Iraq. New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier acknowledges the logic of withdrawal but then suggests doing “anything and everything.” And so on.

I can imagine George W. Bush reading through this issue—I have a good imagination—and declaring, “My head hurts.” Moreover, the magazine's exercise must somewhat parallel what the Iraq Study Group—the bipartisan commission chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton—is going through. That panel has interviewed hundreds and has several working groups composed of dozens of supposed experts. And somehow it's supposed to craft a consensus get-us-out-of-there plan. Good luck. It's not that there are no options in Iraq; there are no good options. And Democrats counseling withdrawal have to recognize the possibility that the removal of U.S. troops—as justified and appropriate as that might be at this stage—could have ugly side-consequences: more intense civil strife and sectarian violence in Iraq. (I explored thismatter here.)

By creating such a vexing dilemma Bush has afforded himself a measure of political protection (yet only a small measure, as the recent election results indicated). No critic of the war can concoct a plan that convincingly promises progress in Iraq. Put in Bushian terms, “Hey, got something better than our plan for victory?” A reader of the assorted New Republic proposals can say of each, “Yeah, maybe. Probably not. Who knows?” It's increasingly possible—especially as the situation in Iraq deteriorates by the week (more bodies, more conflict, more despair)—that the wise men (and one woman) of the Baker Commission will not be able to improve upon The New Republic 's grab-bag.

The Baker Commission is unlikely to promote what might be called the Cry for Help Plan. As I suggested previously, Bush's only chance at preventing Iraq from descending further into hell may depend on his ability to admit he, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest really, really messed up big-time. He ought to acknowledge the errors of his ways and explicitly ask the rest of the world to assist him in finding a path out. It seems clear nothing resembling a resolution in Iraq can be forged without pressure from the outside—and that means pressure from states within the region and from states with ties and interests in the area. It may be impossible to obtain sufficient assistance from other nations—such as Iran and Syria—but trying to do so is necessary. The goal: to bring some degree of stability to Iraq, as the United States disengages.

Yet for Bush to achieve such a breakthrough he will have to break with his past practices of denying the harsh realities of post-invasion Iraq, of claiming progress when the opposite is occurring, and of declaring that he has a strategy for victory and it's called winning. (Or is it a strategy for winning that's called victory?) He can do this by fully acknowledging he has mismanaged a war that might have been unmanageable from the start.

This will be tough for the Texan in the White House. But Tony Blair recently conceded Iraq was a “disaster” (and he has in the past also said that de-Baathification was a mighty blunder). Henry Kissinger has already admitted that full victory in Iraq is a goner. And The New Republic noted it “deeply regrets” its backing for the war: “The past three years have complicated our idealism and reminded us of the limits of American power and our own wisdom.”

Not everyone is jumping on the reality bandwagon. The neoconservatives continue to duck responsibility for the war. Don't blame me, says Richard Perle: I only advocated the war, the fault is with the folks who executed it. Kenneth Adelman, a former Reagan administration official who in 2002 declared a war in Iraq would be a “cakewalk,” points an accusatory finger at his old friends, Rumsfeld and Cheney, for having bungled the war. (He holds Bush accountable, as well.) None of these war advocates are willing to say that the very notion of invading Iraq to create a pro-West, pro-Israel haven of democracy—via the efforts of exile leader Ahmad Chalabi—was flawed at creation.

For many who opposed this elective war at the start, a critical obstacle was the Bush crowd's lack of seriousness regarding what would happen after the initial military campaign. Bush, his aides and their pro-war allies offered no plan. They dismissed or ignored experts who raised the obvious concerns about the post-invasion period. Sectarian violence? Security challenges? Economic dislocation? They prepared for none of that-and eschewed those who wanted to—including General Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, who said it would take several hundred thousand troops to secure the country after an invasion. It was no secret in Washington in the months before the invasion that the White House reached out to virtually none of the town's Middle East experts to discuss what might occur in Iraq after the invasion. I don't recall any neocons at the time raising red flags about the lack of planning. Perle even told me before the war that Iraq could be taken easily and transformed by a small invasion force of 40,000 troops.

Yet the neocons are not the problem now (unless they succeed in whipping up support for attacking Iran). Bush is the main man. He is increasingly isolated. Congressional Republicans are not rushing to endorse his present course in Iraq. Democrats are ratcheting up pressure for troops withdrawal. Some conservatives, like Sen. John McCain, are calling on him to send in more soldiers. And Washington is generally more concerned with what Baker is cooking up than with anything the president has to say to defend his Iraq policy.

Still, at the end of the day—despite whatever Baker devises, despite whatever any foreign policy experts suggest—it is Bush who has the big decision to make. Does he change his fundamental muddled approach? He might be able to use the Baker report as cover for a course correction. Then again, he and Cheney could chuck its recommendations and continue, as Cheney said before the election, “full speed ahead.” To where? They don't seem to know. (Recent news indicates their they-stand-up/we-stand-down training program is a farce.) But it remains their war. The absence of good options is their fault. Bush, Cheney, the neocons and the other war backers placed the United States—and Iraq—in this awful spot. They created a heckuva problem for which there is no good and pain-free solution. They will bear responsibility for the consequences of whatever comes next.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/11/22/iraqs_reality_bandwagon.php