New Developments III

[flipp525]

Just an off-the-cuff tidbit: my cousin has worked for Karl Rove for the past couple of years (my dirty little secret is that I'm the black sheep in a family full of Republicans) and she recently tried getting another job at a bank. They saw that she had worked in the White House for the Fat Pig himself and specifically informed her that she should be lucky the rest of her resume was accomplished enough to get her in for a second interview because the fact that she worked for Rove was definitely not something she should go around advertising. They suggested she put anyone else's name on her resume in the future -- his assistant or someone way below him who she might've reported to directly. I just thought that was kind of awesome.



Edited By flipp525 on 1182293143

[OscarGuy]

More Signs of Government Corruption:

Report: White House aides used GOP e-mail to skirt law
POSTED: 7:37 p.m. EDT, June 18, 2007

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- E-mail records are missing for 51 of the 88 White House aides with Republican Party accounts, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee reported Monday.

The White House says the accounts were set up to keep political work separate from official business, but investigators concluded White House officials used the accounts to conduct official business in a way that circumvented the Watergate-era Presidential Records Act.

The 37 accounts the Republican National Committee did save include nearly 675,000 individual messages -- more than 140,000 of them from Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser.

"Whether intentionally or inadvertently, it appears that the RNC has destroyed a large volume of the e-mails of White House officials who used RNC e-mail accounts," the report states.

The committee found 88 officials who held GOP e-mail accounts; the White House had acknowledged 50.

In a deposition given to committee aides, former Rove deputy Susan Ralston listed a series of White House officials who used party accounts daily. But the RNC "has not retained a single e-mail to or from any of these officials," the report states.

Ralston testified that Ken Mehlman, former director of political affairs, used his account daily, but the RNC has no e-mail records for him.

Additionally, "there are major gaps in the e-mail records of the 37 White House officials for whom the RNC did preserve e-mails," the report states.

The committee, led by California Democrat Henry Waxman, began looking into the GOP e-mail accounts after messages from the accounts turned up in two cases -- the case of imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the 2006 firings of eight U.S. attorneys by the Justice Department.

The committee found that although then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales ordered presidential staff to preserve official e-mails from outside accounts, he failed to enforce that policy.

Ralston told investigators that Gonzales, now attorney general, knew Rove was using his party e-mail account for official business, "but took no action to preserve Mr. Rove's official communications," the report states.

GOP spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said the report "jumped the gun and appears to be representing Democrats' partisan spin as fact."

"Not only have we been clear that we are continuing our efforts to search for e-mails, but there is no basis for an assumption that any e-mail not already found would be of an official nature," Schmitt said in a statement issued Monday afternoon.

White House spokesman Tony Snow declined to comment on the report's specifics, but said separate accounts were set up under the Clinton administration to comply with the federal Hatch Act, which bars the use of federal resources for partisan political activity. Snow said e-mail sent to or from a White House e-mail account was automatically archived.

He said White House officials are willing to cooperate with congressional investigators, but he added, "We have seen a number of times right now where people have been putting together investigations to see what sticks."

"This is an administration that is very careful about obeying the law. We take it seriously. The White House legal counsel's office takes it seriously."

The committee also accused Bush's 2004 re-election campaign of failing to cooperate with the House investigation. Monday's report said the campaign acknowledged that at least 11 White House officials used campaign e-mail accounts, but said the organization refuses to identify all of them or provide "basic statistical information."

"This recalcitrance is an unwarranted obstacle to the committee's inquiry into potential violations of the Presidential Records Act," the report states, warning that it could subpoena campaign officials for the records.

In a statement released Monday evening, campaign lawyer Eric Kuwana said the documents "are from a limited period of time years ago, have no articulated connection to the investigations of the committee, and very well may be the type and nature of political documents that are specifically exempt from the Presidential Records Act." He said campaign officials have been discussing what information they would produce to Congress for more than a month.

[Sonic Youth]

Iraqi Orphanage Nightmare

BAGHDAD, June 18, 2007

(CBS) It was a scene that shocked battle-hardened soldiers, captured in photographs obtained exclusively by CBS News.

On a daytime patrol in central Baghdad just over than a week ago, a U.S. military advisory team and Iraqi soldiers happened to look over a wall and found something horrific.

"They saw multiple bodies laying on the floor of the facility," Staff Sgt. Mitchell Gibson of the 82nd Airborne Division told CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan. "They thought they were all dead, so they threw a basketball (to) try and get some attention, and actually one of the kids lifted up their head, tilted it over and just looked and then went back down. And they said, 'oh, they're alive' and so they went into the building."

Inside the building, a government-run orphanage for special needs children, the soldiers found more emaciated little bodies tied to the cribs. They had been kept this way for more than a month, according to the soldiers called in to rescue the 24 boys.

"I saw children that you could see literally every bone in their body that were so skinny, they had no energy to move whatsoever, no expression on their face," Staff Sgt. Michael Beale said.

"The kids were tied up, naked, covered in their own waste — feces — and there were three people that were cooking themselves food, but nothing for the kids," Lt. Stephen Duperre said.

Logan asked: So there were three people cooking their own food?

"They were in the kitchen, yes ma'am," Duperre said.

With all these kids starving around them?

"Yes ma'am," Duperre said.

It didn't stop there. The soldiers found kitchen shelves packed with food and in the stockroom, rows of brand-new clothing still in their plastic wrapping.

Instead of giving it to the boys, the soldiers believe it was being sold to local markets.

The man in charge, the orphanage caretaker, had a well-kept office — a stark contrast to the terrible conditions just outside that room.

"I got extremely angry with the caretaker when I got there," Capt. Benjamin Morales said. "It took every muscle in my body to restrain myself from not going after that guy."

He has since disappeared and is believed to be on the run. But two security guards are in custody, arrested on the orders of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Two women also working there, who posed for pictures in front of the naked boys as if there was nothing wrong, have also disappeared.

"My first thought when I walked in there was shock, and then I got a little angry that they were treating kids like that, then that's when everybody just started getting upset," Capt. Jim Cook said. "There were people crying. It was definitely a bad emotional scene."

There was nothing more emotional than finding one boy who Army medics did not expect to survive. For Gibson, that was the hardest part:

Seeing a boy who was at the orphanage, where Logan reported from, "with thousands of flies covering his body, unable to move any part of his body, you know we had to actually hold his head up and tilt his head to make sure that he was OK, and the only thing basically that was moving was his eyeballs," Gibson explained. "Flies in the mouth, in the eyes, in the nose, ears, eating all the open wounds from sleeping on the concrete."

All that, and the boy was laying in the boiling sun — temperatures of 120 degrees or so, according to Gibson.

Looking at the boy today, as he sits up in his crib without help, it is hard to believe he is the same boy, one week later — now clean and being cared for along with all the other boys in a different orphanage located only a few minutes away from where they suffered their ordeal.

Another little boy right shown in the photos was carried out of the orphanage by Beale. He was very emaciated.

"I picked him up and then immediately the kid started smiling, and as I got a little bit closer to the ambulance he just started laughing. It was almost like he completely understood what was going on," Beale said.

When CBS News visited the orphanage with the soldiers, it was clear the boys had been starved of human contact as much as anything else, Logan said. Some still had marks on their ankles from where they were tied. Since only one boy can talk, it's impossible to know what terrible memories they might have locked away.

The memory of what he saw when he helped rescue the boys that night haunts Ali Soheil, the local council head, who wept during the interview.

Later at the hospital, Lt. Jason Smith brushed teeth and helped clean up the boys. He and his wife are both special education teachers, and he was proud to tell her what the soldiers had done.

"She said that one day was worth my entire deployment," Smith said. "It makes the whole thing worthwhile."

This is a tough test for the Iraqi government: How a nation cares for its most vulnerable is one of the most important benchmarks for the health of any society.

[Sonic Youth]

But it's imperative that we protect our nation from mothers with sippy-cups!

Bush, Industry Block Anti-Terror Regulations For Chemical Plants
by Thomas B. Edsall
The Huffington Post



For nearly seven years, the chemical, oil and gas industries have successfully fought proposals to require stringent anti-terror security measures at facilities storing poisonous materials such as chlorine and methyl mercaptan.

These industries have been especially opposed to legislation requiring "inherently safer technology," a policy industry officials and the Bush administration view as both setting an excessively high standard and as leaving companies more vulnerable to lawsuits for failing to comply.

The chemical, oil and gas lobbies have successfully fended off regulation even under a Democratic Congress. A provision adamantly resisted by the industry was included in the first Iraq supplemental appropriation, which was vetoed by President Bush. The House added it again to the second Iraq supplemental appropriation, but it was quietly removed during final negotiations between top officials of the House and Senate at the request of Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, whose staff said he was acting at the behest of the White House.

Advocates of regulating chemical manufacturers and users have faced an uphill fight from the start.

This dispute began less than two months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, when publicly released government documents disclosed the existence of more than 100 factories and other facilities where a successful attack would produce toxic clouds with the potential to severely sicken or kill at least a million people.

Then-Democratic Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey, a state with more than its share of such facilities, introduced the Chemical Security Act in November, 2001. With environmental groups warning of the danger of a domestic Bhopal, the 1984 Union Carbide Corp. disaster which killed more than 3,000 in India, the Environment and Public Works Committee approved the Corzine Bill unanimously, 19-0.

Facing the threat of aggressive government oversight, Frederick L. Webber, then-chairman and chief executive of the American Chemistry Council, mobilized industry forces in a lobbying campaign that legislative strategists in Washington recall as one of the most effective in the past decade.

Webber joined forces with the American Petroleum Institute and formed a broad-based coalition that included truckers, railroads, the Fertilizer Institute, the National Propane Gas Association and the Chlorine Chemistry Council.

All these groups had particularly strong leverage in both the Republican Congress and the Bush administration because they had lined up firmly in the GOP corner before the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994.

In 1994, the oil and gas industry contributed a total of $17.5 million to Congressional candidates, with two thirds of it, $11 million, going to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. By 2002, the industry gave a total of $25 million, with 80 percent, $19.9 million, going to Republicans. From 1990 to 2006, the chemical industry contributed $3 to Republicans for every $1 to Democrats, or $46 million to $14.2 million.

Similarly, at least 85 of Bush's major fundraisers - "Pioneers" who collected at least $100,000 and "Rangers" who collected $200,000 or more - were corporate officials in oil, gas, chemical and fertilizer companies.

Although industry forces with the backing of the administration were able to fend off the Corzine bill, pressure to require new security measures at facilities housing dangerous chemicals continued. In 2006, the Republican Congress authorized the Department of Homeland Security to oversee this sector.

That legislation and the regulations growing out of it, issued two months ago, met with the approval of the industry.

On September 30, 2006, American Chemistry Council President and CEO Jack N. Gerard declared that the "ACC would like to thank Congress for their work in accomplishing our shared objective of passing meaningful chemical security legislation this year." When the actual regulations were issued last April, the Council released a statement declaring: "New DHS Regulations Represent a Major Step Forward For Chemical Security."

Democratic legislators, especially those from New Jersey, were highly skeptical, however. Corzine, now N.J. Governor, Senator Frank Lautenberg and Representative Steve Rothman all warned that their state's tough regulations could be preempted by weaker federal rules.

Both Rothman and Lautenberg sought to firmly establish the authority of New Jersey and other states to set more stringent regulations than the federal government by attaching language to the Iraq supplemental. After that maneuver failed, both legislators attached similar language to the House and Senate versions of the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, on the theory that it is the kind of measure Bush cannot afford to veto.

"Allowing the State of New Jersey to protect its chemical plants from al Qaeda attacks is one of the most important provisions in this legislation. It took a great deal of effort to overcome the chemical plant lobby, but so far so good," said Rothman. "The Bush Administration should not be stopping our states from protecting themselves from chemical attacks," said Lautenberg. "I am proud we fought back the chemical industry lobbyists."

The two New Jersey legislators have not, however, won their fight. Both Bush and House Republican whip Roy Blunt warn that Bush could well veto the Homeland Security appropriations bill. A recent Blunt statement carried the headline, "DEMOCRATS FAIL TO SECURE VETO-PROOF MAJORITY ON BLOATED HOMELAND BILL"

Bush, who is adamantly opposed to the Rothman-Lautenberg language, declared in his June 16 radio address: "I will use my veto to stop tax increases and runaway spending," suggesting the fight over chemical plant security will not end soon.

[Sonic Youth]

Oh, you deceiver, Petraeus!

Study: Iraq Second Most Unstable Country

Jun 18, 12:45 PM (ET)

By BARRY SCHWEID

WASHINGTON (AP) - Iraq is now the second most unstable country in the world, a private survey finds, its standing deteriorating from last year's fourth place on a list of the 10 nations most vulnerable to violent internal conflict and worsening conditions.

In the third annual "failed state" index, analysts for Foreign Policy magazine and the not-for-profit Fund for Peace said that Iraq and Afghanistan, which ranked eighth, show that billions of dollars in development and security aid may be futile without a functioning government, trustworthy leaders and realistic plans to keep the peace and develop the economy.

Preventing Iraq from becoming a failed state is a key part of the Bush administration's argument for keeping U.S. troops in the country. The administration says the troops are needed to keep Iraq from becoming a breeding ground for international terrorists.

The ratings are based on 12 social, economic, political and military indicators.

Sudan, which topped the list, and seven other sub-Saharan African countries are among the top 10. Violence in the Darfur region was the main contributing cause to Sudan's top position.

As evidence that troubles in failing states often cross borders, the report cited violence spilling from Darfur into the Central African Republic and Chad.

The five other African nations found most vulnerable were Somalia, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea.

Another African country, Liberia, was credited as the most improved, partly because an election in 2005 brought stability after more than a decade of civil war.

[Wait? Wasn't that supposed to happen in Iraq?]

Liberia's economy is growing at 7 percent a year and it has disbanded its militia. Still, it ranked as 27th most failing state.

The growth of China's economy and a lull in violence in Chechnya helped China and Russia, respectively, to move out of the category of the 60 worst states.

Lebanon experienced the biggest slide, winding up in 28th place. War in the Middle Eastern country reversed much of the progress made since the end of its 15-year-long civil war in 1990.

Israeli air strikes last summer drove 700,000 Lebanese from their homes and caused an estimated $3.8 billion (euro2.85 billion) in damage to the country.

Usually, long-serving strongmen preside over a nation's collapse, the report said. For instance, it said, three of the five worst performing states - Chad, Sudan and Zimbabwe - have leaders who have been in power for more than 15 years.

On the other hand, effective leadership can pull a nation from the brink of failure, the report said. It cited Indonesia's first directly elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, as helping to steer the Southeast Asian country to stability after corruption and the devastation of the 2004 tsunami.

Pauline H. Baker, president of the Fund for Peace, said 12,000 sources were used to compile the ratings.

In an interview, she said foreign aid remained necessary even though spending alone will not prevent failure.

"You just cannot turn your eyes away from mass atrocities, which often accompany failing states," she said.

As examples of long-range impact of failure, Baker cited the effect turmoil in Sudan, an oil-producing state, could have on world oil supplies and mentioned the massive migration from Somalia, predominantly across Africa.

"The world's weakest states aren't just a danger to themselves," the report said. "They can threaten the progress and stability of countries half a world away."

[Sonic Youth]

<span style='font-size:17pt;line-height:100%'>3,526</span>

As of Sunday, June 17, 2007, at least 3,526 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,885 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

The AP count is 13 higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Friday at 10 a.m. EDT.

The British military has reported 150 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 20; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia, three; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Romania, South Korea, one death each.

[99-1100896887]

Johnny Guitar: My kind of humour. LMAO

[criddic3]

I recently saw a documentary about Tony Blair on PBS where similar exchanges were made concerning Kosovo. Blair has always been very agressive about foreign affairs when he felt it was in the national (and inter-national) interests. Frankly, the past is the past. No use in second-guessing policies and decisions years later. Besides, I've no doubt Mr. Blair feels his decision was the right one.

[Johnny Guitar]

I have been outside New York. A better assumption would be that I have never been outside of America. I did once, as a boy, spend a few days at Lake Ontario, which is as close to Canada as I have gotten. Still, I have visited California, Colorado, and the closer state of Massachusetts. I have only been to New Jersey for Atlantic City and once for a Frank Sinatra concert when I was 12.

My tastes have always veered away from those usual for my age. I listened to Frank Sinatra, Big Bands, Bobby Darin. I sang in talent shows and won a few contests. I enjoyed classic films, even silents and foreign efforts. I read books about political history and fiction by Ray Bradbury and Stephen King (okay so maybe that isn't a big stretch). Generally I did well in school and the teachers usually liked me. I have never picked a physical fight, although I was in a few unwittingly as a kid. I would love to travel to Ireland and France. Took French classes in 6th and 7th grade, only to move to a school that didn't offer it the following year. Took drama classes, creative writing and speech classes.

If I'm so uninformed, and ignorant, I don't think my interests would be so diverse.

You are the spitting image of cosmopolitanism.

[Sonic Youth]

Blair knew US had no post-war plan for Iraq


Nicholas Watt, political editor
Sunday June 17, 2007
The Observer


Tony Blair agreed to commit British troops to battle in Iraq in the full knowledge that Washington had failed to make adequate preparations for the postwar reconstruction of the country.

In a devastating account of the chaotic preparations for the war, which comes as Blair enters his final full week in Downing Street, key No 10 aides and friends of Blair have revealed the Prime Minister repeatedly and unsuccessfully raised his concerns with the White House.

He also agreed to commit troops to the conflict even though President George Bush had personally said Britain could help 'some other way'.

The disclosures, in a two-part Channel 4 documentary about Blair's decade in Downing Street, will raise questions about Blair's public assurances at the time of the war in 2003 that he was satisfied with the post-war planning. In one of the most significant interviews in the programme, Peter Mandelson says that the Prime Minister knew the preparations were inadequate but said he was powerless to do more.

'Obviously more attention should have been paid to what happened after, to the planning and what we would do once Saddam had been toppled,' Mandelson tells The Observer's chief political commentator, Andrew Rawnsley, who presents the documentary.

'But I remember him saying at the time: "Look, you know, I can't do everything. That's chiefly America's responsibility, not ours."' Mandelson then criticises his friend: 'Well, I'm afraid that, as we now see, wasn't good enough.'.

Opponents of the war, who have long claimed that the Pentagon planned a short, sharp offensive to overthrow Saddam Hussein with little thought of the consequences, claimed last night that the programme vindicated their criticisms. Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, told The Observer: 'These frank admissions that the Prime Minister was aware of the inadequacies of the preparations for post-conflict Iraq are a devastating indictment.'

Blair's most senior foreign affairs adviser at the time of the war makes clear that Blair was 'exercised' on the exact issue raised by the war's opponents. Sir David Manning, now Britain's ambassador to Washington, says: 'It's hard to know exactly what happened over the post-war planning. I can only say that I remember the PM raising this many months before the war began. He was very exercised about it.'

Manning reveals that Blair was so concerned that he sent him to Washington in March 2002, a full year before the invasion. Manning recalls: 'The difficulties the Prime Minister had in mind were particularly, how difficult was this operation going to be? If they did decide to intervene, what would it be like on the ground? How would you do it? What would the reaction be if you did it, what would happen on the morning after?

'All these issues needed to be thrashed out. It wasn't to say that they weren't thinking about them, but I didn't see the evidence at that stage that these things had been thoroughly rehearsed and thoroughly thought through.'

On his return to London, Manning wrote a highly-critical secret memo to Blair. 'I think there is a real risk that the [Bush] administration underestimates the difficulties,' it said. 'They may agree that failure isn't an option, but this does not mean that they will avoid it.'

Within a year Britain lost any hope of a proper reconstruction in Iraq when post-war planning was handed to the Pentagon at the beginning of 2003.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's envoy to the postwar administration in Baghdad, confirms that Blair was in despair. 'There were moments of throwing his hands in the air: "What can we do?" He was tearing his hair over some of the deficiencies.' The failure to prepare meant that Iraq quickly fell apart. Greenstock adds: 'I just felt it was slipping away from us really, from the beginning. There was no security force controlling the streets. There was no police force to speak of.'

The revelation that Blair was 'exercised' in private will raise questions about his public assurances. The former Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, told the programme he was given a personal assurance by Blair that he was satisfied by the preparations. 'I said to Tony, are you certain?' Kinnock told the programme. 'And when he said: "I'm sure," that was a good enough reassurance.'

Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, confirms that the President offered Blair a way out. Bush told Blair: 'Perhaps there's some other way that Britain can be involved.' Blair replied: 'No, I'm with you.'

[criddic3]

I have to laugh. "Real People"? "Desperate maneuverings"? "Illiterate"?

First of all, you didn't say originally that the government was targeting Canadians, so I did not raise an opinion about that. Of course, it comes as no surprise that I do not recall any government official ever connecting Canada to terrorism or blasting any of them for not flying the American flag after 9/11.

I have been outside New York. A better assumption would be that I have never been outside of America. I did once, as a boy, spend a few days at Lake Ontario, which is as close to Canada as I have gotten. Still, I have visited California, Colorado, and the closer state of Massachusetts. I have only been to New Jersey for Atlantic City and once for a Frank Sinatra concert when I was 12.

My tastes have always veered away from those usual for my age. I listened to Frank Sinatra, Big Bands, Bobby Darin. I sang in talent shows and won a few contests. I enjoyed classic films, even silents and foreign efforts. I read books about political history and fiction by Ray Bradbury and Stephen King (okay so maybe that isn't a big stretch). Generally I did well in school and the teachers usually liked me. I have never picked a physical fight, although I was in a few unwittingly as a kid. I would love to travel to Ireland and France. Took French classes in 6th and 7th grade, only to move to a school that didn't offer it the following year. Took drama classes, creative writing and speech classes.

If I'm so uninformed, and ignorant, I don't think my interests would be so diverse. That alone may not fullfill the life-education you envision would change my view of the world, but certainly I am not at the low level of human thought where you place me. By the way, I have not been to the Hamptons. I don't live in upscale circles, and I certainly have not won the lottery recently.

[99-1100896887]

I think you said "surreal" because you cannot imagine YOUR government and the people who fear it doing such a thing.

Criddic: such a waste of an intelligent mind. You are certainly at the age--well maybe past it--where you should start exploring the world you live in. Do some travelling; see some of how the rest of the world copes, and how it regards the United States, and what REAL people think about. Have slackers like you ever been out of The Hamptons? Tell us where you travelled,-- or at least tell us after you have been there. We assume, by what you have said, that you have not been outside New York in your life.

The intelligent minds that have ridiculed you and called you names obviously read, and because they have inquisitive minds and are thus able to choose which stand they are going to make.

The main difference between us and YOU( that sounds like I would be making you a Martyr for the Cause--certainly don't want that!) is that we are all well-read in many areas. You, my dear, are not. Which makes you illiterate.

I fear for you when your idol and all the crooks he stands up for are roundly trumped out of office. What will you do? What will consume you next? It's coming--a little more than a year away. Prepare.

[99-1100896887]

Criddic: I don't think you fabricate things. You look for someone with whom you can identify in your own small world, whether it is that slug Lieberman or the opportunist Guilani who would curtail all immigration. You need to do some reading. Start with Orwell's 1984.
BUT: Just because you weren't a Canadian in 2001-2003, just because you weren't there, doesn't mean it did not happen. Surreal, you say? The narrow version of the world that you inhabit is, in most of our eyes, the surreal world.
Many of us are older, wiser, and remember history in a way a very young man like you do not. I would venture to say that most of us are horrified at the way the world has changed under your hero.

[Sonic Youth]

Does this real world consider New York as one of the border states?

Wasn't Stephen Glass this desperate in his maneuverings?

[criddic3]

What I Saw in Iraq
Iran remains a problem, but Anbar has joined the fight against terror.

BY JOSEPH LIEBERMAN
Friday, June 15, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

I recently returned from Iraq and four other countries in the Middle East, my first trip to the region since December. In the intervening five months, almost everything about the American war effort in Baghdad has changed, with a new coalition military commander, Gen. David Petraeus; a new U.S. ambassador, Ryan Crocker; the introduction, at last, of new troops; and most important of all, a bold, new counterinsurgency strategy.

The question of course is--is it working? Here in Washington, advocates of retreat insist with absolute certainty that it is not, seizing upon every suicide bombing and American casualty as proof positive that the U.S. has failed in Iraq, and that it is time to get out.

In Baghdad, however, discussions with the talented Americans responsible for leading this fight are more balanced, more hopeful and, above all, more strategic in their focus--fixated not just on the headline or loss of the day, but on the larger stakes in this struggle, beginning with who our enemies are in Iraq. The officials I met in Baghdad said that 90% of suicide bombings in Iraq today are the work of non-Iraqi, al Qaeda terrorists. In fact, al Qaeda's leaders have repeatedly said that Iraq is the central front of their global war against us. That is why it is nonsensical for anyone to claim that the war in Iraq can be separated from the war against al Qaeda--and why a U.S. pullout, under fire, would represent an epic victory for al Qaeda, as significant as their attacks on 9/11.

Some of my colleagues in Washington claim we can fight al Qaeda in Iraq while disengaging from the sectarian violence there. Not so, say our commanders in Baghdad, who point out that the crux of al Qaeda's strategy is to spark Iraqi civil war.

Al Qaeda is launching spectacular terrorist bombings in Iraq, such as the despicable attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra this week, to try to provoke sectarian violence. Its obvious aim is to use Sunni-Shia bloodshed to collapse the Iraqi government and create a failed state in the heart of the Middle East, radicalizing the region and providing a base from which to launch terrorist attacks against the West.

Facts on the ground also compel us to recognize that Iran is doing everything in its power to drive us out of Iraq, including providing substantive support, training and sophisticated explosive devices to insurgents who are murdering American soldiers. Iran has initiated a deadly military confrontation with us, from bases in Iran, which we ignore at our peril, and at the peril of our allies throughout the Middle East.
The precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces would not only throw open large parts of Iraq to domination by the radical regime in Tehran, it would also send an unmistakable message to the entire Middle East--from Lebanon to Gaza to the Persian Gulf where Iranian agents are threatening our allies--that Iran is ascendant there, and America is in retreat. One Arab leader told me during my trip that he is extremely concerned about Tehran's nuclear ambitions, but that he doubted America's staying power in the region and our political will to protect his country from Iranian retaliation over the long term. Abandoning Iraq now would substantiate precisely these gathering fears across the Middle East that the U.S. is becoming an unreliable ally.

That is why--as terrible as the continuing human cost of fighting this war in Iraq is--the human cost of losing it would be even greater.

Gen. Petraeus and other U.S. officials in Iraq emphasize that it is still too soon to draw hard judgments about the success of our new security strategy--but during my visit I saw hopeful signs of progress. Consider Anbar province, Iraq's heart of darkness for most of the past four years. When I last visited Anbar in December, the U.S. military would not allow me to visit the provincial capital, Ramadi, because it was too dangerous. Anbar was one of al Qaeda's major strongholds in Iraq and the region where the majority of American casualties were occurring. A few months earlier, the Marine Corps chief of intelligence in Iraq had written off the entire province as "lost," while the Iraq Study Group described the situation there as "deteriorating."

When I returned to Anbar on this trip, however, the security environment had undergone a dramatic reversal. Attacks on U.S. troops there have dropped from an average of 30 to 35 a day a few months ago to less than one a day now, according to Col. John Charlton, commander of the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, headquartered in Ramadi. Whereas six months ago only half of Ramadi's 23 tribes were cooperating with the coalition, all have now been persuaded to join an anti-al Qaeda alliance. One of Ramadi's leading sheikhs told me: "A rifle pointed at an American soldier is a rifle pointed at an Iraqi."

The recent U.S. experience in Anbar also rebuts the bromide that the new security plan is doomed to fail because there is no "military" solution for Iraq. In fact, no one believes there is a purely "military" solution for Iraq. But the presence of U.S. forces is critical not just to ensuring basic security, but to a much broader spectrum of diplomatic, political and economic missions--which are being carried out today in Iraq under Gen. Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy.

In Anbar, for example, the U.S. military has been essential to the formation and survival of the tribal alliance against al Qaeda, simultaneously holding together an otherwise fractious group of Sunni Arab leaders through deft diplomacy, while establishing a political bridge between them and the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad. "This is a continuous effort," Col. Charlton said. "We meet with the sheikhs every single day and at every single level."

In Baghdad, U.S. forces have cut in half the number of Iraqi deaths from sectarian violence since the surge began in February. They have also been making critical improvements in governance, basic services and commercial activity at the grassroots level.

On Haifa Street, for instance, where there was bloody fighting not so long ago, the 2nd "Black Jack" Brigade of our First Cavalry Division, under the command of a typically impressive American colonel, Bryan Roberts, has not only retaken the neighborhood from insurgents, but is working with the local population to revamp the electrical grid and sewer system, renovate schools and clinics, and create an "economic safe zone" where businesses can reopen. Indeed, of the brigade's five "lines of operations," only one is strictly military. That Iraq reality makes pure fiction of the argument heard in Washington that the surge will fail because it is only "military."

Some argue that the new strategy is failing because, despite gains in Baghdad and Anbar, violence has increased elsewhere in the country, such as Diyala province. This gets things backwards: Our troops have succeeded in improving security conditions in precisely those parts of Iraq where the "surge" has focused. Al Qaeda has shifted its operations to places like Diyala in large measure because we have made progress in pushing them out of Anbar and Baghdad. The question now is, do we consolidate and build on the successes that the new strategy has achieved, keeping al Qaeda on the run, or do we abandon them?

To be sure, there are still daunting challenges ahead. Iraqi political leaders, in particular, need to step forward and urgently work through difficult political questions, whose resolution is necessary for national reconciliation and, as I told them, continuing American support.

These necessary legislative compromises would be difficult to accomplish in any political system, including peaceful, long-established democracies--as the recent performance of our own Congress reminds us. Nonetheless, Iraqi leaders are struggling against enormous odds to make progress, and told me they expect to pass at least some of the key benchmark bills this summer. It is critical that they do so.

Here, too, however, a little perspective is useful. While benchmarks are critically important, American soldiers are not fighting in Iraq today only so that Iraqis can pass a law to share oil revenues. They are fighting because a failed state in the heart of the Middle East, overrun by al Qaeda and Iran, would be a catastrophe for American national security and our safety here at home. They are fighting al Qaeda and agents of Iran in order to create the stability in Iraq that will allow its government to take over, to achieve the national reconciliation that will enable them to pass the oil law and other benchmark legislation.
I returned from Iraq grateful for the progress I saw and painfully aware of the difficult problems that remain ahead. But I also returned with a renewed understanding of how important it is that we not abandon Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran, so long as victory there is still possible.

And I conclude from my visit that victory is still possible in Iraq--thanks to the Iraqi majority that desperately wants a better life, and because of the courage, compassion and competence of the extraordinary soldiers and statesmen who are carrying the fight there, starting with Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. The question now is, will we politicians in Washington rise to match their leadership, sacrifices and understanding of what is on the line for us in Iraq--or will we betray them, and along with them, America's future security?

Mr. Lieberman is an Independent Democratic senator from Connecticut.

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I'm the Stephen Glass of the UAADB? I fabricate things?? Sure, and you're the Easter Bunny. You know, it's one thing not to see the humor, as in sarcasm or other humorous device, but to make these silly accusations just doesn't make any sense. I have never made anything up out of thin air on this or any other thread. Stated opinions, yes. Responded to surreal stories about Canadians being targeted after 9/11 as being terrorist-sympathizers? Yes. Did some people have a problem with Canadians after 9/11? Maybe, but I never met any of them. That is why I said what I said, I live in a state that wouldn't have need of making fun of Canadians for the reasons cam says he was targeted for. Or maybe that's just me, since I can't imagine why anyone would make such a judgment and treat people that way. I can see why some would be offended at the lack of active sympathy he describes, but not to the point of accusation. So that's the story behind the signature that Sonic thought was so marvelously out-there. Now, back to the real world.