America's Torture Disgrace. Destroyed US Reputation, Did Not garner Intel.

Finally, the incompetent, disingenuous leadership of the Bush administration is being called to account for its abysmal record on Human Rights.

These Human Rights abuses have not only damaged the US reputation around the world, the methods employed did not yield good intelligence.



In a recent interview with ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed that, in the period after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration embraced a policy of torturing suspected al Qaeda detainees. Cheney did not refer to the Bush administration's practices as "torture." In fact, he insisted that "we don't do torture. We never have." He did admit, however, that he had supported the waterboarding of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. Waterboarding -- a technique in which water is poured over a prisoner's face to simulate drowning -- is considered torture under international law and has been prosecuted as a war crime by the United States. According to Malcolm Nance, a counterterrorism expert and former instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape school, waterboarding "is torture, without doubt."

Torture Doesn't Work: In a recent story in Vanity Fair, journalist David Rose reports that the conclusion of numerous counterterrorist officials he spoke to is "unanimous: not only have coercive methods failed to generate significant and actionable intelligence, they have also caused the squandering of resources on a massive scale through false leads, chimerical plots, and unnecessary safety alerts."

The use of torture has made Americans less safe. Former Air Force interrogator and author of How to Break a Terrorist Matthew Alexander (a pseudonym) recently wrote that "the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked [to Iraq] to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo." Alexander, who used non-violent methods of interrogation to obtain information on the whereabouts of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, argued, "Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda. ... Torture and abuse cost American lives."

Torture Is A Violation Of Our Laws And Values: Arguments about the practical utility of torture distract from the more important point that torture is a violation of U.S. law, and its use represents a significant abdication of the U.S. commitment to human rights. The U.S. federal anti-torture statute, formally known as Title 18, Part I, Chapter 113C of the U.S. Code, "defines the crime of torture and prescribes harsh punishments for anyone who commits an act of torture outside of the United States." Alexander wrote "there's no doubt in my mind" that the tactics allowed by the Bush administration "are illegal." The U.N. Committee Against Torture has been very clear in demanding that the U.S. "should rescind any interrogation technique...that constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, in all places of detention under its de facto effective control, in order to comply with its obligations" under the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Holding Perpetrators Accountable: The Bush administration's embrace of torture marks a significant reversal of decades of U.S. policy. Back in 2006, then-senator Barack Obama said that torture "is not how a serious Administration would approach the problem of terrorism," and declared the use of torture to be "a betrayal of American values." While Vice President-elect Biden didn't rule out future prosecution of Bush administration officials involved in torture, he made clear yesterday that "President-elect Obama and I are not sitting thinking about the past. We're focusing on the future." Whatever legal course is chosen by the new administration to deal with recent abuses, the damage done to America's reputation by the use of torture -- making a mockery of U.S. claims to uphold human rights -- has been incalculable.

President Bush Dodges Shoes, Not Questions

I have to say I was pretty impressed with President Bush's cat-like reflexes when he dodged the shoes hurled at him by a journalist in Iraq (a sign of the utmost disrespect in that country as we know). That said, I was utterly unimpressed by his answers to questions relating to Al Qaeda in Iraq. It is now common knowledge, and a fact accepted by the Pentagon that Al Qaeda did not exist in Iraq until after the US invasion in 2003.



In an interview in Iraq yesterday, President Bush defended the war in Iraq, saying it was "where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand." Raddatz interrupted to point out that al Qaeda was not present in Iraq until after the United States invaded, to which Bush replied dismissively, "Yeah, that's right. So what?"

He continued, "The point is that al Qaeda said they're going to take a stand." In the lead-up to the Iraq war, Bush repeatedly and insistently cited a link between Iraq and al Qaeda. When it turned out those links never existed -- and that the Bush administration may have willingly distorted information to suggest that they did exist -- Bush continued to tie Iraq to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks, even as late as 2007.

Rather than take responsibility for the intelligence failures before the war, earlier this month Bush said cynically, "I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess." He has also repeatedly insisted that Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror," using the claim as justification for the war. Yet, as Raddatz points out, al Qaeda did not exist in Iraq until the U.S. invasion. The Bush administration has finally admitted "privately" that "Afghanistan is now the single most pressing security threat in the war on terror."

Blackwater Guards Called To Account

Blackwater employees, who - unlike US troops - had hitherto enjoyed total unaccountability in their actions, are now being called to account.

US guards indicted over the 2007 fatal shooting of 17 Iraqis used machine guns and grenade launchers against unarmed civilians, prosecutors have said. The guards, from the US security firm Blackwater, were contracted to defend US diplomats. The firm says its guards acted in self-defence.



The five men are charged with 14 counts of manslaughter, as well as weapons violations and attempted manslaughter. A sixth guard has pleaded guilty to killing at least one Iraqi.

The Iraqi government has welcomed the move to hold "criminals accountable".

The killings, which took place in Nisoor Square, Baghdad, have become a central issue in Iraq's relationship with the US and raised questions about the oversight of US contractors operating in war zones.

Witnesses and family members maintain that the shooting on 16 September 2007 was unprovoked.

Bush/ Cheney/ Rumsfeld Torture Approval Hurt US Reputation, Intel gathering

A new bipartisan report from the Senate Armed Services Committee states that approval of torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib came from the very highest levels of government.



Prisoner abuse "was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own" but came from former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and other top officials, who "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees."

Newsweek reports that the administration approved waterboarding on suspected al Qaeda detainees after receiving reports from government psychologists that it was "100 percent effective" in breaking military personnel. In contrast, former interrogator Matthew Alexander recently stated, "When I was in Iraq, the few times that I saw people use harsh methods, it was always counterproductive."

The report concludes that the use of waterboarding "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies and compromised our moral authority."

Shinseki Gets the Call

Yesterday, President-elect Barack Obama named ret. Army Gen. Eric Shinseki as his Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA), promising "the kind of VA that will serve our veterans as well as they have served us." Shinseki will face one of the country's most daunting tasks: managing an institution already plagued by backlogs, scandals, and inadequate resources, and is increasingly taxed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. During the press conference, Shinseki spoke directly to veterans: "If confirmed, I will work each and every day to ensure that we are serving you as well as you have served us. We will pursue a 21st-century VA that serves your needs." The nomination of the first Asian-American to the post -- Shinseki, a Japanese-American, grew up in Hawaii -- carried extra poignancy coming on the 67th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks. Military officials and some veterans organizations immediately praised Obama's announcement. Former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell called Shinseki "an inspired selection." "He is a man that has always put patriotism ahead of politics, and is held in high regard by veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan," read a statement by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.



Shinseki is most famous for publicly contradicting Bush administration officials' overly optimistic predictions about the war in Iraq. In 2003, then serving as the Army's chief of staff, he told Congress that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to secure Iraq. The Bush administration's failure to heed Shinseki's warnings led to a decimation of the U.S. military -- underequipped forces, an over-reliance on the National Guard and Reserves, a dangerous stop-loss policy, and an increasing number troops coming home with mental and physical problems. As University of Michigan professor Juan Cole told the Washington Post, "If Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and [former undersecretary for defense Douglas J.] Feith had listened to Shinseki, there wouldn't be as many wounded veterans to take care of." Shinseki served two combat tours in Vietnam, receiving two Purple Hearts and four Bronze Stars. He has frequently worked with wounded veterans and visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center, referring to it as a "members-only section" since he, too, is an amputee.

Downtrodden by Bush administration. In 2002 and 2003, Bush administration officials tried to sell the public on an Iraq invasion by arguing that the costs to the United States would be almost nonexistent. "Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits," said then-White House adviser Lawrence Lindsey. Bush administration officials not only completely miscalculated the billions the United States would have to spend on combat and reconstruction but also failed to plan for the cost of caring for wounded troops after the war. The Iraq war has seen an unprecedented number of troops who "have been wounded or injured and survived," according to economists Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes. The ratio for Iraq and Afghanistan has been seven injuries for every fatality -- by far the largest in U.S. history -- compared to 2.6 and 2.8 for the Vietnam and Korean wars, respectively. The result of this lack of preparation has been a badly neglected VA, with the appalling conditions at Walter Reed as only the tip of the iceberg. In July 2007, Jim Nicholson resigned as VA Secretary in disgrace, leaving a tenure during which he stood by and even supported the Bush administration's slashing of the agency. President Bush has, in fact, repeatedly objected to large increases in the budget for veterans' medical care. However, Nicholson's departure hasn't cleared up all the problems. Under new secretary James Peake, VA officials have been trying to cover up data on the troubling rise in suicides among veterans.

Challenges. Veterans are suffering the consequences of the Bush administration's neglect. Last year, a Harvard Medical School study found that one in eight veterans younger than 65 is uninsured. Military retirees who are insured are often paying more for medical care than other retirees. Despite the Bush administration's promises to reform the veterans' care system after the Walter Reed scandal, a Government Accountability Office report last year found that delays for disability payments "still average 177 days -- nearly six months -- with no indication that dramatic improvement is in the offing." One of Shinseki's most pressing challenges will be modernizing the VA to deal with the increasing number of mental health troubles faced by soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly 20 percent of returning veterans have post-traumatic stress disorder, but only about half of them seek treatment. Another area where the VA has fallen short is in its treatment of women veterans. As the AP has reported, "Of the women veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who have walked into a VA facility, 15 percent have screened positive for military sexual trauma." Roughly 180,000 women have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and last year, the VA) "treated more than 255,000 female veterans. The number is expected to double within five years."

KBR Gave Troops ice tainted with "Body Fluids and Tainted Remains"

A former technician who worked in Iraq for scandal-ridden contracting company KBR in Iraq has filed a class-action lawsuit saying the company "exposed everyone at Joint Base Balad in Iraq to unsafe water, food and hazardous fumes from the burn pit there." Joshua Eller's suit includes particularly disturbing charges about KBR's indifference to proper sanitization and the disposal of human remain. "



The lawsuit also accuses KBR of shipping ice in mortuary trucks that 'still had traces of body fluids and putrefied remains in them when they were loaded with ice. This ice was served to U.S. forces,'" the Army Times reported. Eller also accused KBR of failing to maintain a medical incinerator, meaning that "medical waste, such as needles, amputated body parts and bloody bandages were burned" in an open-air pit.

Earlier this week, several Indiana National Guard soldiers also filed suit against KBR saying they were "exposed to a carcinogen while protecting an Iraqi water pumping plant shortly after the U.S. invasion in 2003."

Bush Cabinet Plays Down Significance of Iraq Pullout

Over the weekend, Iraq's cabinet "overwhelmingly approved a proposed security agreement that calls for a full withdrawal of American forces from the country by the end of 2011." Yesterday, however, the Bush administration attempted to play down the significance of the agreement. Press Secretary Dana Perino claimed that the deadline for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq included in the security agreement is only "aspirational". Similarly, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen said in a press conference yesterday that he still supports "conditions-based" withdrawal only, and suggested that the agreement might change long before 2011. "Three years is a long time. Conditions could change in that period of time," Mullen said. In reality, there is nothing "aspirational" or "conditions-based" about the withdrawal deadline. Members of the Iraqi government are referring to the pact as a "withdrawal agreement." A spokesperson for the Iraqi government explained that "total withdrawal will be completed by December 31, 2011. This is not governed by circumstances on the ground." In negotiating the agreement, the Iraqi government required that the U.S. "scrap the language that would have allowed the American troops to stay beyond 2011 if Iraq requested."

Obama Will End Torture To Regain US's Moral Stature

Recently, the Wall Street Journal wrote, "President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies," including torture. Last night, Obama put those concerns to rest, in an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes. CBS's Steve Kroft asked if Obama planned "to take early action" on changing interrogation methods and shutting the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. "Yes," Obama replied unambiguously, "I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture, and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world." Recently, CIA senior deputy general counsel John Rizzo, who had been a strong advocate for torture under the Bush administration, said that the CIA detention and interrogation program must be "dealt with immediately." "We do not have the luxury to wait and muddle through," Rizzo added.

War Economy - Owned By China

It makes me sad (and angry) that despite the amazing job the US military is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, the greedy bunglers in the White House make one disastrous decision after another.



A significant reason for the current $9.6 trillion federal debt has been the Iraq war, which the U.S. largely financed through borrowing. The main problem is that "the U.S. had to borrow money from foreign nations at an alarming rate, after it dug itself into debt paying for the Iraq War while cutting taxes."

Thus, the United States had to turn to investment from abroad for financing. This, as well as lax regulation and oversight of Wall Street contributed to the credit troubles. Currently, 45 percent of Treasury securities are owned by foreign nations, with the most owned by China and Japan. Other nations owned less than 20 percent of these securities as recently as 1994.

Bush left out of his assessment the fact that much of the foreign investment went to finance a war and his tax cuts.

Princess of Wales Regiment show their mettle ...

The Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment (PWRR) just emerged from a conflict where they were attacked day and night for nine days with everything the Taliban had in their arsenal.



Around 400 insurgents battered the compound at Roshan Tower with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and kalashnikovs yet the troops, nicknamed The Tigers, still managed to kill a quarter of the enemy and suffered only one casualty.

In scenes likened to the famous Rorke’s Drift attack in 1879 when 139 British soldiers defeated over 4,000 Zulu warriors, a platoon of 30 soldiers from 2 PWRR serving with its A Company made a heroic stand against some the 400 Taliban insurgents last week.

Former SAS trooper, Andy McNab, famous for his harrowing ordeal in the first Iraq war said: “The bravery of these few men knows no bounds. The siege of Roshan Tower should go down in history as perhaps the most savage of the Afghan conflict.” Commenting on the heroic soldiers. Major General Paul Newton CBE, Colonel of the Regiment said: “Naturally, I was pleased but not surprised to read about the courage, determination and professionalism of our PWRR soldiers in combat in Afghanistan."

Say what you like about the Brits - they are showing themselves staunch allies.

Lessons From 9/11

The attacks of September 11, 2001, forever changed the way that Americans think about their national security. It made clear that the need to confront transnational terrorism is a reality of the new age of globalization that is drawing the world closer together. In the wake of those attacks, there was an international outpouring of sympathy for the United States, symbolized by the French newspaper Le Monde's headline, "We Are All Americans." Even in Iran, "vast crowds turned out on the streets and held candlelit vigils, [and] sixty-thousand spectators respected a minute's silence at Tehran's football stadium." But rather than take advantage of the unprecedented international solidarity to bring about better international cooperation against terrorism, President Bush retreated into the familiar "us vs. them" dichotomy that has characterized conservative foreign policy since the mid-20th century. Making his cause clear in a speech to Congress on Sept. 20, Bush declared a "war on terror," promising "a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen." America's new global posture was summarized in one sentence: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."



Seven years later, President Bush has squandered the goodwill of the world. Global opinion of the United States is lower than at almost any time in history. Our country remains deeply involved in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which continue to drive extremist anti-American ideologies. Tragically, even though it has used the rhetoric of freedom and democracy to defend its policies, the Bush administration remains wedded to a national security strategy that prioritizes the use of military force and denies the full range of American economic, political, and cultural power. Recently, senior U.S. intelligence analyst Thomas Fingar presented the findings of a new report, "Global Trends 2025," that "assesses how international events could affect the United States in the next 15 to 17 years." Fingar said that "the U.S. will remain the preeminent power," but he saw U.S. leadership eroding "at an accelerating pace" in "political, economic and arguably, cultural arenas." The Washington Post reported that, according to Fingar, "the one key area of continued U.S. superiority -- military power -- will 'be the least significant' asset in the increasingly competitive world of the future."

Despite the changing world dynamic, military power continues to be the asset which the Bush administration has most often used in the misnamed and misconceived Global War on Terror. After routing al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts from their base in Afghanistan in late 2001 and 2002, Bush turned his attention to Iraq, where the U.S. military continues its occupation to this day at a cost of over $12 billion a month. More than one in five Iraqis has been displaced since the 2003 invasion, both inside and outside the country. The 2007 troop surge, while helping to reduce violence, has also frozen in place "a fragmented and increasingly fractured country," with no sign that Iraq's leaders are prepared to make the tough power-sharing compromises necessary for a stable future Iraq. As a result of the unfinished war in Afghanistan, the Taliban, and al Qaeda eventually regrouped in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas, and have carried out an increasingly destructive insurgency. According to the Foreign Policy/Center for American Progress 2008 Terrorism Index, which surveyed 117 national security experts from across the political spectrum, "eighty percent of the experts say that the United States has focused too much on the war in Iraq and not enough on the war in Afghanistan." Yesterday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen warned Congress that the United States. is "running out of time" to succeed in Afghanistan and that sending in more troops will not necessarily guarantee victory.

Mullen's other comments offer a clue to the way forward. In discussing the Afghanistan front, Mullen noted the "poor and struggling Afghan economy" and "significant political uncertainty in Pakistan" as major barriers to real security and progress in the region. As Center for American Progress Senior fellow Brian Katulis and co-author Nancy Soderbergh argue in their new book, "The Prosperity Agenda," American leadership "has been absent from the scene of many other important global issues -- oil dependency, food shortages, climate change, global poverty, and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons." Americans must expand their conception of national security to encompass more than military solutions for what are in many cases environmental, economic and political problems. With the continuing rise of economic competitors such as China and Russia, the United States must acclimate its security policies to an evolving multi-polar reality in order to work more effectively to deal with problems like Iran's nuclear program. And with the persistence of non-state actors such as Al Qaeda, the United States must look to a more comprehensive approach to national security, one that addresses the conditions which give rise to terrorism, and rethink its reflexive dependence on military power as the first option against potential threats.

Mission Accomplished! (Again?)

Yesterday, President Bush gave "another chest-thumping victory speech" in front of a group of military officers, heralding a "moment of success in the war on terror."



He also announced the withdrawal of roughly 8,000 troops from Iraq of the 146,000 U.S. forces there by next February, a slight reduction that will keep troop levels "several thousand above what they were in January 2007 when he announced the 'surge.'" Brian Katulis, a Center for American Progress Senior Fellow, writes in the Guardian today that political reconciliation, despite Bush's rosy claims,s has completely stalled. "When it comes to true power-sharing -- who has control of the guns, money and other key state resources like -- Iraq has not moved forward substantially," Katulis writes. Though Iraq "is a less violent place," Katulis argues, "it remains a fragmented country." "By overstating the gains to date on Iraq's political transition, Bush continues to overstate the considerable challenges that lie ahead," he adds. Today, the Iraqi parliament reconvenes after a one-month recess to work on an election law; elections were supposed to take place this fall but, the date has been steadily pushed back to, at best, "early next year."

Former SAS Soldier Warns of PTSD Timebomb

Former SAS soldier and author Andy McNab has warned the UK government there is a mental health disaster waiting to happen among military personnel.



The author of the bestselling Bravo Two Zero, he told the London Telegraph: "What we have at the moment is a time-bomb of post traumatic stress disorder that will go off in the next ten to 15 years."Mr McNab told that paper that more soldiers committed suicide after the Falklands War than the number who died in the conflict.He said that in the last 15 years "the situation for ex-service personnel simply hasn't improved" and he condemned the "lack of continued welfare support".The comments come after Welsh MP Elfyn Llwyd uncovered figures under the Freedom of Information Act which show one in ten prisoners in the UK was a member of the armed forces.McNab's latest book, Seven Troop, is an account of his time in the SAS.

Private Security Contractors get $1.2bn. KBR Sued

The United States is spending more money than ever on private security contractors in Iraq as thousands of troops return home amid steady declines in insurgent attacks." Over $1.2 billion will have been spent this year on "contractors, who protect diplomats, civilian facilities and supply convoys."

Its heartwarming news about the declines in attacks, but wouldn't this massive sum of money money be better spent on our own military?



Meantimes, a Washington law firm "filed a lawsuit yesterday against KBR, one of the largest U.S. contractors in Iraq, alleging that the company and its Jordanian subcontractor engaged in the human trafficking of Nepali workers." The firm says 13 Nepali men were recruited for kitchen work in Jordan only to have their passports seized upon arrival and "told they were being sent to a military facility in Iraq."

"Stay The Course" in Iraq (Or Leave?)

In a policy U-Turn, last Thursday, the U.S. Whitehouse endorsed a draft agreement with the Iraqi government that would remove "combat troops from Iraqi cities by next June and from the rest of the country by the end of 2011." Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters that the 2011 date was an "aspirational timeline."



The Iraqis seem quite comfortable with the U.S. pulling out ... Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki explicitly disagreed with their characterization of the time frame as "aspirational." In a speech to tribal leaders yesterday, Maliki said that the U.S. and Iraq have reached an agreement on "a fixed date" for withdrawal. "No pact or an agreement should be set without being based on full sovereignty, national common interests, and no foreign soldier should remain on Iraqi land, and there should be a specific deadline and it should not be open," Maliki said, adding that "an open time limit is not acceptable in any security deal that governs the presence of the international forces." While Maliki claims the U.S. has agreed to his demand, the White House said "no final deal had been reached."

Let's Not Forget Afghanistan

The U.S. military suffered its 101st death in Afghanistan this year when a soldier was killed last week, making it more likely that this year's death toll in Afghanistan will surpass last year's record of 111 soldiers.



The death comes a week after Taliban fighters "mounted their most serious attacks in six years of fighting," including "a coordinated assault by at least 10 suicide bomber against one of the largest American military bases in the country, and another by about 100 insurgents who killed 10 elite French paratroopers."

A New York Times editorial last week urged a change in strategy in Afghanistan, emphasizing that the war there "is not a sideshow. It is the principal military confrontation between America and NATO and the forces responsible for 9/11 and later deadly terrorist attacks on European soil." The Pentagon has declared its intention to send 12,000 to 15,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, where troop levels have been hampered by the war in Iraq. In July, Adm. Mike Mullen said, "I don't have troops I can reach for...to send to Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq."

McCain: "In The 21st Century, Nations Don't Invade Other Nations". John, I couldn't agree more...

Speaking to reporters about the situation in Georgia, Sen. John McCain denounced the aggressive posture of Russia by claiming that:"in the 21st century nations don't invade other nations."



It was the type of foreign policy rhetorical blunder that has regularly plagued the McCain campaign and could have diplomatic ripples as well. Certainly the comment was meant in innocence. But for those predisposed to the notion that the U.S. is an increasingly arrogant international actor, the suggestion by a presidential candidate that, in this day and age, countries don't invade one another -- when the U.S. is occupying two foreign nations -- does little to alleviate that negative perception.

There is another, less controversial undertone to McCain's remark. Since the Georgia-Russia hostilities have commenced, parallels have been drawn to U.S. intervention in Iraq. The two scenarios are highly different in all intents and purposes, both due to regional significance and the longstanding territorial disputes. But some still would dispute the idea, as McCain seemed to imply, that America's involvement in Iraq is any less an invasion than Russia's involvement in Georgia.

Later in his press conference, McCain was asked to address how the Georgian crisis -- which has ceded to a tenuous ceasefire -- was amplified on the campaign trail. The presumptive Republican nominee demurred from attempts to get him to engage with Barack Obama.

"This isn't a time for partisanship and sniping between campaigns," he said. "This is about hundreds of thousand of individuals whose lives are being taken... Maybe later on in the campaign let's have a back and forth about whose comments and statements... but now lets devote all our efforts to resolving a situation that is fraught with tragedy."

A subsequent questioner asked McCain whether this non-partisan window applied to Sen. Joseph Lieberman as well, who, at a townhall on Tuesday, suggested that Barack Obama had not always "put his country first." McCain's answer was classically evasive.

"Let me respond by just saying that I think that whatever we think at the moment that we can all reserve that for a future time. And I think that judgments will be made about how we handled this situation and approached the situation in Iraq and how much experience knowledge and background means in selecting who should be the next commander in chief, all I can say is there will be plenty of time for that and we can move forward. "

Speaking to reporters about the situation in Georgia, Sen. John McCain denounced the aggressive posture of Russia by claiming that:"in the 21st century nations don't invade other nations."

White House *Forged* Iraq/ al Qaeda Evidence?

According to a new book, "The Way of the World," by Pullitzer Prize winner Ron Suskind, the White House ordered the CIA in fall 2003 to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the head of Iraqi intelligence, to Saddam Hussein. The letter, according to Suskind, "was designed to portray a false link between Hussein's regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war."



Suskind, quoting "two former CIA officials who claim to have seen a draft of the letter on White House stationery," writes that "the idea was to take the letter to Habbush and have him transcribe it in his own neat handwriting on a piece of Iraqi government stationery to make it look legitimate. CIA would then take the finished product to Baghdad and have someone release it to the media."

Habbush was reportedly paid $5 million afterwards. When the letter was first released in fall 2003 it was called "probably fake," as it contradicted "highly detailed" intelligence compiled by U.S. law enforcement officials. The White House attacked Pullitzer winner Suskind's new claims as "gutter journalism," while former CIA director George Tenet called the book "seriously flawed." Suskind responded on NBC's Today Show: "I think this is part of George's memory issue. ... I went to all the people around George, close to George, who remember because they were involved in the thing, and they remember what George says to them."

John Kerry Was Right

During the 2004 presidential campaign, Sen. John Kerry said that the U.S. should combat terrorism in the same manner that the RAND study and the new National Defense Strategy now advocate: with less military force and more intelligence, policing and cooperation with allies.


President Bush, however, smeared Kerry's strategy as "naive and dangerous" in 2004 and ran campaign ads that asked, "How can Kerry protect us if he doesn't even understand the threat?"

Yesterday, Kerry delivered a speech that reiterated his position from 2004: "We have to take our military-dominated 'war on terror' and remake it as the global counterinsurgency campaign that it always should have been." Quoting the RAND report, Kerry noted that "military action was the primary cause of a terrorist group meeting its final demise in just seven percent of the time." Kerry followed up his speech with an online discussion at TPM Cafe, where he outlined six key aspects of a successful global counterterrorism campaign and recommended that "everyone should read [CAPAF senior fellow] Brian Katulis' new book [The Prosperity Agenda] for a sense of how we win the war of ideas globally."

Katulis's book, co-authored with former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nancy Soderberg, argues that the Bush administration's so-called "Freedom Agenda" as a means to defeat terrorist groups has not worked, and the next U.S. administration needs to focus on a more comprehensive strategy focusing on the basic security needs of individuals.

President Bush's Failed Bin Laden Hunt

An article in yesterday's New York Times criticized the Bush administration for failing "to develop a comprehensive plan to address the militant problem" along the Afghan-Pakistan border, where Osama bin Laden is reportedly rebuilding the al Qaeda terror network. After expressing enthusiasm for capturing bin Laden shortly after the Sept.11 attacks, the Bush administration has since indicated that "bin Laden doesn’t fit" with its "strategy for combating terrorism" and is "not a top priority use of American resources." Beginning in 2002, the administration "shifted its sights...from counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq" and outsourced the hunt for bin Laden to Pakistan. As a result, "the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan's tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world."



According to "current and former military and intelligence officials" interviewed by the Times, "the war in Iraq diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas" on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan and "drained away most of the CIA officers with field experience in the Islamic world." Intelligence officials have long warned the administration of the dangers of shifting resources prematurely. On Feb.19, 2002, Gen. Tommy Franks reportedly told then-Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), "We are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan" because "military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq." Similarly, an Army War College report published in December 2003 concluded that the Iraq war "diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable Al Qaeda." Where the specialists went, the equipment followed. Officials told the New York Times, for instance, that when they "requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq." As Graham pointed out, the removal of Predator drones from Afghanistan is "a clear case of how the Bush administration's focus on Iraq undermined the war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan."

The Iraq war also bolstered the view "among Pakistanis that American forces in the tribal areas would be a prelude to an eventual American occupation" and made it difficult for the administration "to have insisted that American forces be allowed to cross from Afghanistan into Pakistan." In fact, the Pakistani government "flatly refused" American proposals to allow Special Operations forces to establish operational bases along the border, and in 2003, "under pressure from Pakistan, the Bush administration decided…to end the American military presence on the ground." With the hunt for bin Laden virtually outsourced to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and the administration distracted by the "spiraling violence in Iraq," Bush backed Pakistan’s failed strategy of signing cease-fire agreements "with the Taliban inside Afghanistan." But rather than reducing "cross-border incursions," the agreements allowed al Qaeda to establish an even stronger foot hold in the Pakistan tribal regions. Thus while the Bush administration has propped up "the Muslim world’s most powerful military dictator as an essential ally," Pakistan has shown little commitment to capturing bin Laden. In fact, in January 2008, Musharraf admitted that "the 100,000 troops that we are using...are not going around trying to locate Osama bin Laden and Zawahri, frankly."

The war in Iraq and Bush's over-reliance on Pakistan have allowed al Qaeda to regroup along the Pakistan-Afghan border. Intelligence sources interviewed by the Times suggest that "the makeshift training compounds" in Pakistan's tribal areas "now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago." The build-up of members has reshaped al Qaeda into a threat that is "comparable" to what the United States faced on Sept. 11, 2001. Similarly, according to the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate, "Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives." Rather than reducing the terror threat, the Iraq conflict has become the "cause célèbre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement," the report concluded.

Steep increase in civilan deaths in Afghanistan - the "Forgotten Front"

New U.N. figures show that the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan in the first half of this year rose 62 percent over the same period last year, marking increased instability and deteriorating conditions in Afghanistan, the "Forgotten Front."



The U.N. report shows that insurgents caused 422 civilian deaths while government or NATO forces caused 255, with 21 deaths unclear. A NATO spokesman said that "those numbers were far, far higher than we would recognize" but "provided no alternative figures." Earlier this month, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen told staff at a public meeting that in Afghanistan "violence is up this year by every single measure we look at." Thirty-nine coalition forces were killed in Afghanistan this month, making June the deadliest month of the war and marking the first month that coalition deaths in Afghanistan surpassed those in Iraq. Military commanders "believe they need three brigades, or 10,000 troops, to address the situation in Afghanistan, but with the heavy U.S. commitment in Iraq, those numbers are difficult to muster."

Administration Blocks Army's Effort To Increase Oversight Of Defense Contractors

Last fall, a blue-ribbon panel examining waste and fraud in defense contracts for Iraq recommended adding five active-duty generals to oversee purchasing and monitor contractor performance. Now that the Army is trying to implement the change, the White House's Office of Management and Budget has shot down the effort, giving no reason for rejecting the Army's proposal.

The additional generals would add a mere $1.2 million a year in personnel costs. By contrast, a Defense Contract Audit Agency found $4.9 billion "in overpricing and waste" in Iraq contracts since 2003, a figure that doesn't include an additional $5.1 billion in "expenses charged without documentation." In other words, the White House is blocking a reform that would cost only .012 percent of the $10 billion already lost to contract waste. Last year, President Bush opposed legislation that would limit no-bid contracts and increase congressional oversight of the most lucrative contracts. Despite his opposition, the House passed the bill with 347 votes, and the Senate approved it unanimously.

Dick Cheney At The Center of Plame Leak. Fair Game?

I think its absolutely disgusting that the Bush administration would knowingly put United States security and United States government employees in danger. There is absolutely no excuse for this: from Democrat, Republican or Libertarian. Scott McClellan gave some inside scoop .. too little and too f'ing late if you ask me.



Last week, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan made the media rounds to promote his insider's account of his time in the Bush administration. The book has revived interest in the Valerie Plame leak scandal, what McClellan calls a "defining moment" in his "disillusionment" with the Bush White House. Pointing to passages in the book, House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) requested more documents from the FBI this week after learning that Scooter Libby, who was convicted of crimes for his role in the scandal, "told the FBI that it's possible he was instructed by Cheney to disseminate information to the press about Plame." Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Robert Wexler (D-FL) have called on McClellan to testify before Congress as well. Not surprisingly, the White House is already indicating it might try to block that testimony. Last month, Plame appealed last year's dismissal of her civil lawsuit against Bush officials for outing her identity as a CIA agent-- allowing the White House and Karl Rove to continue to duck questions about the scandal by citing the open legal case.

DID BUSH AUTHORIZE PLAME LEAK?: McClellan's account confirms that President Bush was directly behind at least one aspect of the leak scandal. Some history: In July 2003, former ambassador Joseph Wilson published a New York Times op-ed arguing that, contrary to Bush's State of the Union assertion, Wilson had found no evidence that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger, when he went on a fact-finding mission to the African country in 2002. The next day, White House officials admitted the Niger claim was based on "bogus" intelligence. Still, the White House went into attack mode to discredit Wilson. A week later, Robert Novak published a column outing Wilson's wife, Plame, as a covert CIA agent. At the same time, "Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby" to leak to the media portions of "a then-highly classified CIA report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility" of Wilson. The 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) "detailed the intelligence community's conclusions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq"; Bush instructed Cheney to "get it out" to push back against Wilson. Appearing on NBC's Today Show last week, McClellan revealed that Bush confirmed to him in 2006 that he had personally authorized the declassification of the NIE. McClellan said, "Here we were, learning that the President had authorized the same thing we had criticized" -- namely, "the selective leaking of classified information." "I was kinda taken aback," he added. This information reveals that Bush was personally involved in the push-back against Wilson. As McClellan wondered aloud to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, "Did this set in motion the chain of events that led to the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity?"

ROVE VERSUS McCLELLAN: McClellan said on the Today Show that he "grew increasingly disillusioned" with the Bush administration when it was clear "that what I'd been told by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby -- that they were in no way involved in the leak of Valerie Plame's identity" -- turned out to be false. When asked by Olbermann whether he had ever lied from the podium, McClellan admitted that he had "unknowingly" lied "when it came to the issue of the Valerie Plame leak episode." "I had been given assurances by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby that they were not involved in the leak but it turned out later they were," he said. To rebut these charges, Rove took to the airways himself last week, "maintaining his hair-splitting defense that since he didn't use Plame's name, he didn't reveal her identity." "What I told Scott was that I didn't know her name, didn't reveal her name, didn't know what she did at the CIA, and that I wasn't the source for the leak," Rove said. On NBC's Meet the Press last Sunday, McClellan called Rove's defense "pretty disingenuous." "When I said, 'were you involved in this in any way...he categorically said, 'no,'" McClellan said. McClellan recalled Bush's vow to fire anyone in his administration involved in the leak. "I think the president should have stood by the word and that meant Karl should have left," McClellan said.

RIGHT WING POINTS TO ARMITAGE: Besides parsing his language on what, exactly, he told McClellan, Rove, and his conservative allies are deflecting McClellan's criticisms by pointing their own finger of blame to former State Department official Richard Armitage. As the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin wrote Tuesday, "Armitage was the first to disclose Plame's identity to journalists, but that doesn't change the fact that Rove and Libby did so too, likely for more nefarious reasons than Armitage, and then lied about it." Talking to Fox News's Bill O'Reilly, Rove emphasized that "the identity of Valerie Plame was leaked to Robert Novak by Richard Armitage." Right-wing website Newsbusters picked up Rove's talking points, complaining that during McClellan's interviews, "Richard Armitage, who was the actual leaker, was virtually ignored." Novak argued in a June 2 column that McClellan "virtually ignores" Armitage's role because it "undermines the Democratic theory, now accepted by McClellan, that Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and political adviser Karl Rove aimed to delegitimize Wilson as a war critic." Regardless of the right wing's misdirection campaign, it is a fact that Rove also directly leaked Plame's identity to at least one person: the New York Times's Matt Cooper, who said last August, "I didn't know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove and he said that she worked at the agency and she worked on WMD."

Iraq: "We'll all be home by Christmas" ... Keeping The "Feith"

Douglas Feith, former Undersecretary of Defense and an architect of the Iraq war, appeared on the Brian Lehrer radio show on Tuesday and claimed that the American people "weren't told" the war would be easy "by the administration. Absolutely not."



When Lehrer played a 2003 clip of Vice President Dick Cheney claiming U.S. troops would "be greeted as liberators," Feith dismissed it as "one of the more optimistic comments" but claimed that others, "especially" former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "were a lot more reserved than that."

In fact, the entire administration and its allies declared repeatedly the war would be quick and painless, including Rumsfeld, who said the Iraqi people "will be enormously relieved and liberated" and claimed the war could last "six days, six weeks, I doubt six months." Cheney said the war would take "weeks rather than months," and then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said that the U.S. will not "need to maintain a military presence in Iraq as was the case in Europe" after World War II.

It looks like Feith can add “lying” to the list of his post-White House activities.

The dishonesty and incompetence of these people does an injustice to the amazing work being done by the US Military in Iraq.

Strain On The US Military.

While much attention was focused on the Iraq hearings with Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker yesterday, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) also held an important, less-publicized hearing about the current strain on the military forces. "That marathon has become an enduring relay and our soldiers continue to run -- and at the double time," Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody said, referring in part to the consequences of the administration's decision last year to extend tours of duty in Iraq to 15 months to supply troops for the surge. In response to "intense pressure from service commanders," President Bush will announce this morning that he is cutting Army combat tours in Iraq from 15 months to 12 months. Despite previously stating he is "keenly aware" of the stress on the forces, Petraeus claimed yesterday that "after several years of a generalization of morale as going down, morale actually went up." This assessment, however, glosses over the harsh reality facing our troops.


BACK TO LAST WINTER: The administration's plan does not appear to go far enough, as it "will not apply to any soldiers now serving in Iraq, Afghanistan or other war zones" and therefore only affect troops sent to Iraq as of Aug. 1. This move means that those already deployed must complete 15-month tours. Bobby Muller of Veterans for America said that nearly "half of the Army's active-duty frontline units are currently deployed for 15 months, and that Bush's decision leaves them out." "In short, this is a hollow announcement; it has no immediate effect," he said. "[I]t only resets us to where we were last winter," added Skelton. "This pace will still wear our troops out." The administration's plan will also give troops equal rest time at home as deployed. But the White House had this option on the table in 2007, and has stubbornly opposed it. It went on a full-scale assault against Sen. Jim Webb's (D-VA) "dwell time" bill last year, pressuring Sen. John Warner (R-VA), who introduced a toothless "sense of the Senate" resolution to effectively kill Webb's "will of the Senate" legislation. In fact, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates even recommended that Bush veto Webb's "dwell time" proposal, should it ever pass Congress.

MILITARY UPRISING: Bush's decision to cut tour lengths comes after months and months of warnings from his top military advisers. "The current demand for our forces exceeds the sustainable supply," Army Chief of Staff George Casey said back in September. This week, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen noted he was "very public for many months that we need to get off 15 month deployments as fast as we can." In a recent meeting in the Pentagon, top military leaders "told President Bush they are worried about the Iraq war's mounting strain on troops and their families." While a step forward in the right direction, Bush's announcement today is more likely forced due to necessity, Ilan Goldenberg of the National Security Network observed. "The military is so strained, the president really didn't have a choice," he said. As Colin Powell presciently observed in July 2007, "[T]hey probably can't keep this up at this level past the middle of next year, I would guess. This is a tremendous burden on our troops."

STRAIN BY THE NUMBERS: As a result of the administration's delay in coming off "the longest Army combat tours since World War II," soldiers now are more strained than ever. "Among combat troops sent to Iraq for the third or fourth time, more than one in four show signs of anxiety, depression or acute stress," according to an Army survey of mental health. Twenty-seven percent of noncommissioned officers on their third or fourth tour exhibit post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. The study noted that "soldiers on multiple deployments report low morale, more mental health problems and more stress-related work problems." Today, one in five troops returns from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder. In fact, there were 121 Army suicides in 2007, up more than 20 percent over 2006. An estimated 2,100 troops tried to commit suicide or injure themselves last year -- up from 350 in 2002. Family life is also affected by the war, as 20 percent of married troops in Iraq say they are planning a divorce.