It is August 2005 in Iraq

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8758621/

Some of the dead had been blindfolded and shot, while others were beheaded, according to reports."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4735123.stm

Over 100 Iraq soldiers hospitalized with apparent food poisoning

TIKRIT, Iraq (AP) - Police in Iraq say it appears to be a
massive case of food poisoning.
Over a hundred Iraqi soldiers have been hospitalized after
getting sick at their base in northern Iraq. Hospital officials say
the troops are suffering from fever, vomiting and stomach pain.
The base is in Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein.
A police official says they are investigating the source of the
food poisoning.

The amount of dead and wounded, Iraqi, American, whatever, was always revolting me, but it's starting to turn into a sick, slow-motion nightmare in my head. I refuse to look away regardless because it must be acknowledged rather than ignored.

Army wants 40-something troops

Differing viewpoints about the Casey claim for troop reduction the following year.

A discussion of the 'Lawrence memo' (the criticisms of the UK Iraq occupation by T. E. Lawrence that have been making the rounds recently) and general observations

Plenty of other stuff there too, not all of which you or I might agree with but which should nonetheless be kept in mind.

At this point, al Qaeda is losing the war from the standpoint of its own strategic goals. No Muslim regime has fallen since Sept. 11, save two -- Afghanistan and Iraq -- that fell to the United States. The Iraqi resistance showed extreme promise for a very long time, given American miscalculations. Anti-Americanism had turned effective. However, the shifting calculus among the Sunni elders has threatened to undermine support for al Qaeda's man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and the Sunni nationalist insurgency -- onto which al Qaeda has clamped parasitically -- has been in danger of disruption. This, coupled with serious breaches in al Qaeda's global system, forced the group into a desperate counteroffensive.

The counteroffensive could be only loosely organized, given the difficulties in command, control and communication. Moreover, the resources available were local supporters in places such as London who lacked the key skills needed for strategic operations -- operations on the order of Sept. 11. The counteroffensive may not be over, but thus far the attacks appear to be politically ineffective. There has been no shift in the basic trends. The center of gravity of the situation now is in Iraq, among the Sunnis. As the Sunnis go, so goes the war in Iraq. As the war in Iraq goes, so goes the general war in the Muslim world. The trend favors the United States, but al Qaeda is attempting to reverse that trend.

In short, al Qaeda is very much a warfighting entity. It adheres to the general rules of warfare and therefore can be understood and, to a limited extent, predicted, on the basis of its political program and resources. The outcome of the war is still uncertain, and the level of violence is not a measure of anyone's warfighting capability unless you know their resources. In warfare, the most intense fighting frequently occurs prior to collapse. If the Sunnis in Iraq switch sides -- which is one of the things U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently visited Iraq to try to arrange -- al Qaeda's back will be against the wall. The violence will not end, but its significance will decline.

the insurgency IS essentially a sunni insurgency, as far as i (or nybooks) understand it! making this statement somewhat ridiculous.

Mr Vincent was abducted with his female Iraqi translator at gun point by men in a police car on Tuesday.

His bullet-riddled body was found on the side of a highway south of the city a few hours later.

He had been writing a book about the city, where insurgents have recently stepped up their attacks.

--

In a recent New York Times article, Mr Vincent wrote that Basra's police force had been infiltrated by Shia militants.

He quoted a senior Iraqi police lieutenant saying some officers were behind many of the killings of former Baath party members in Basra.

Mr Vincent also criticised the UK forces, who are responsible for security in Basra, for ignoring abuses of power by Shia extremists.

...

Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.

It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.

The sleeping bag was the idea of a soldier who remembered how his older brother used to force him into one, and how scared and vulnerable it made him feel. Senior officers in charge of the facility near the Syrian border believed that such "claustrophobic techniques" were approved ways to gain information from detainees, part of what military regulations refer to as a "fear up" tactic, according to military court documents.

---

Two Army soldiers with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Fort Carson, Colo., are charged with killing Mowhoush with the sleeping-bag technique, and his death has been the subject of partially open court proceedings at the base in Colorado Springs. Two other soldiers alleged to have participated face potential nonjudicial punishment. Some details of the incident have been released and were previously reported. But an examination of numerous classified documents gathered during the criminal investigation into Mowhoush's death, and interviews with Defense Department officials and current and former intelligence officials, present a fuller picture of what happened and outline the role played in his interrogation by the CIA, its Iraqi paramilitaries and Special Forces soldiers.

Determining the details of the general's demise has been difficult because the circumstances are listed as "classified" on his official autopsy, court records have been censored to hide the CIA's involvement in his questioning, and reporters have been removed from a Fort Carson courtroom when testimony relating to the CIA has surfaced.

Despite Army investigators' concerns that the CIA and Special Forces soldiers also were involved in serious abuse leading up to Mowhoush's death, the investigators reported they did not have the authority to fully look into their actions. The CIA inspector general's office has launched an investigation of at least one CIA operative who identified himself to soldiers only as "Brian." The CIA declined to comment on the matter, as did an Army spokesman, citing the ongoing criminal cases.

It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.

Inefficient interrogation techniques. I've always said the same thing about Barbie's torture of Jean Moulin. It's not only unspeakably sadistic, it makes for bad propaganda and gives you no reliable info. So why do people keep doing it?

It seems apparent that al-Q has committed signifigant resources to the Iraq war, but it does not seem apparent to me that they are strategically weakened by this effort, because it is not apparent that Iraq has been a net drain on their finances. I consider it likely that Saddam squirreled away billions in cash and that al-Q has tapped this source of funds and used it to ramp up their recruitment and training efforts. Their ability to deliver a steady stream of suicide bombers to the battlefield has been nothing short of stunning. Clearly, they have perfected their techniques there.

While I agree that al-Q has not achieved its central objective of replacing even one of the current regimes in the Islamic world, I don't see that as an argument of their failure. Rather, they have succeeded astonishingly well at consolidating their prestige, increasing the reach and effectiveness of their propaganda and in recruiting far larger numbers of soldiers than ever before.

The number of non-Iraq terror incidents al-Q has instigated has risen dramatically each year since September 11, 2001. This, in spite of the western powers devoting an order of magnitude more money and effort to stopping them.

Even if the Iraqi Sunnis bolt away to seek a place in the Iraqi government and cut off money to Zarqawi, al-Q can simply redirect more of their resources to fund-raising and continue to operate at far greater levels of strength than before Iraq.

I am incedulous that Stratfor would dangle the prospect that al-Q is desperate, reeling from the counterpunches thrown by the west and nearing a crisis in Iraq that could doom them. 'Tain't so. We haven't so much as touched their strongholds in the mosques of Central Asia, Pakistan, Indonesia and North Africa. I am sure they would laugh with glee to read this assessment. We constantly underestimate them. We must look very stupid to much of the Islamic world where they organize and operate freely.

One thing that I think Stratfor is DEAD wrong on is Al Q's "scorecard." The most secure victory is usually the result of a longer-term creation of conditions favorable to success. That is, knocking over a government might be better delayed if in the interim they can truly create a pan-islamic, or even regional-islamic fervor for their ideology. And while much of that fervor seems now to be more anti-US than pro-Al Q, they have gained an unimaginable amount of sentimental support from Iraq. They are planting seeds. Al Q's more concrete goals--US bases out of Islamic world, implementation of Islamic republics and sharia throughout the region-- would be the harvest. I think they're willing to be patient, too.

We are complicit in Iraqi corruption (gee, I thought we were inspiring it, see how dumb I am). We have sold out the the good people in Iraq who yearn to breathe free. The problem is that nobody wants to bear the white man's burden any more, we're just too soft, brainwashed and self-loathing. Ivy League professors have even poisoned the military.

In this scene, Vincent takes the smart, scrappy, cynical, "good" Iraqi, named Layla, to meet the American Air Force officer who awards reconstruction contracts:

"I'd wanted to introduce Layla to the Gary Cooper side of America, and I felt I'd succeeded. Instead of the evasive, over-subtle, windy Iraqi, fond of theory and abstraction, here was a to-the-point Yank, rolling up his sleeves with a can-do spirit of fair play and doing good. "I want to have a positive effect on this country's future," the Captain averred.

Layla and I gave our man a quick tutorial about the militant Shiites who have transformed once free-wheeling Basra into something resembling Savonarola's Florence. The Captain seemed taken aback, having, as most Westerners--especially the troops stationed here--little idea of what goes on in the city. "I'll have to take this into consideration..." scratching his head, "I certainly hope none of these contracts are going to the wrong people."

Collecting himself, "But should we really get involved in choosing one political group over another?" the Captain countered. "I mean, I've always believed that we shouldn't project American values onto other cultures--that we should let them be. Who is to say we are right and they are wrong?"

And there it was, the familiar Cultural-Values-Are-Relative argument, surprising though it was to hear it from a military man. But that, too, I realized, was part of American Naiveté: the belief, evidently filtering down from ivy-league academia to Main Street, U.S.A., that our values are no better (and usually worse) than those of foreign nations; that we have no right to judge "the Other;" and that imposing our way of life on the world is the sure path to the bleak morality of Empire (cue the Darth Vader theme)."

I really would like to hear the contract officer's recounting of this. Also it's hard to convince some people that when your administration gives you a whopping silver platter of shit, people in distress don't really want the shit sandwiches that you are optimistically trying to give them. Instead, they'll probably try to steal the silver platter.

But this said, I think Vincent's emphasis on 'naivete' is important beyond political difference. On a blunt military/political level, one wants -- one should HAVE -- good intelligence and awareness of a situation. It would be nice to hear, as Hunter suggests, the other side of this conversation, but it's that first sentence from the officer -- that admission of unawareness -- which bugs. You don't have to be Michael Ledeen, clinging to shreds of belief in discredited figures like Chalabi and the like, to think, "Yeah, it *would* be good to be as aware as possible of the current dynamics here, wouldn't it?"

I had assumed that the title of the piece, "The Naive American," was intended to have an ironic double meaning.

So, does rape count as torture? Abu Ghraib/Gitmo thread, #3

Surely Vincent did understand his personal exposure. Anyone who does what he did was surely very aware of the danger, or he wouldn't have lasted long. And I do not wish to imply that he "got what he deserved."

the absurd, months-long lack of a US ambassador; our continued inability to get a handle on the electricity situation; perhaps an over-estimation of the transformative effect of the election

You'd think. The biggest problem for Lowry still remains those darn Jihadists, of course, which is both true and, in the way he phrases it, almost defeatist:

the resiliency, viciousness, shrewdness, and evil of the collection of terrorists and death squads who are opposing us

Odd post in all, really.

Belgravia, meanwhile, in commenting on the recent attacks on Marines that left over twenty dead, adds this:

By the way, there seems to be quite a bit of talk in the air of late regarding major prospective policy adjustments re: Iraq troop withdrawals. We've been quietly following that story, and as soon as time allows, we'll be sharing our take in some detail in these cyber-pages (it's not all necessarily doom and gloom, btw). That said and somewhat relatedly, perhaps, suffice it to say for now that those beginning to argue: 'we gave them our best shot to get a democracy teed up, those damn natives couldn't get their act together, it's really their fault if a civil war erupts (which, incidentally and so conveniently, might be just the ticket to get the Sunnis in more sober mien!)'--those starting to increasingly propagate this line with straight faces are largely morally repulsive cretins, in my view, and we'll have much more on their specious line of argument soon too.

The comments that follow said post are worth the reading in terms of how things could start shaking down more openly among the right-leaning yakkers...

SFTT has just learned that at least some Marines currently serving in Iraq with II Marine Expeditionary Force (II MEF) have been recently notified that their tours have been extended for 2 to 3 months. These Marines had been due to return to Camp Lejeune in the first week of October, but have now been told to expect to leave the Big Sand Box in December, or perhaps even as late as January.

I'm heartened to see there will be a short term increase towards year end in troop levels and that conditionality for withdrawal (status of train and equip, size/strength of insurgency, new Iraqi government's democratic bearing and viability) appears to be for real rather than merely for face-saving, public consumption. Still, I can't help thinking that, while not giving a direct 'lifeline' to terrorists and insurgents by providing an exact exit timetable--there is still amidst all this talk of potential '06 draw-downs some comfort to be had by the insurgents. That said, this could also be about focusing the minds (particularly of the Sunnis) that American forces may not be around forever, so as to help Sunnis better think about what their future might be like in a post heavy U.S. presence Iraq, not least so that they are dealing at the constitutional negotiating table with a greater sense of urgency. At the end of the day, however, it's all about how the conditionality will be adjudged. The test must be having an Iraqi Army armed with the requisite equipment, with a multi-ethnic officer corps, with enlisted men truly willing to stand and fight a savage foe (forces that are not overly infiltrated by enemy groupings); a sense that political governance structgures are adequately maturing and enshrining real minority rights, and a materially weakened insurgency that can more and more be fought head on by new Iraqi forces operating without U.S. back-up. Is it just me, or is it somewhat hard to see this all coming about in spring '06 in convincing fashion?

"The Humvee finally comes to a stop and the right side is just torn apart and I hear my squad leader screaming, 'I think I lost my arm!' And my best friend Maida was in the front passenger seat where the bomb went off and he was screaming, 'Where's help? Where's help?' And then he went quiet.

"And me, I'm trying to crawl out of the Humvee and I get most of my body out and just this leg is stuck and I thought it must be caught on something in the twisted metal. I look back and I see it's just laying there on the seat, so I'm like, 'Why is it stuck?' So I try to lift my leg up and it won't lift. I just had to pick up my leg and crawl the rest of the way out."

He mimes the action of picking up his leg with his hands, then he continues the story.

"I started patting myself down and that's when I noticed that my face took some shrapnel," he says. "It was all swollen on this side, so when I'm patting myself down, my middle finger went, like, this deep into my cheek where the shrapnel went in."

He points to a spot about halfway down his finger, showing how far it went into the shrapnel wound behind his right eye, which is still pretty much blind, unable to see anything but bright light.

"Then I started checking out my leg. I knew my femur was broken, but at that time I didn't know my calf was missing," he says. "And that's when I hear my best friend Maida and he started heaving."

Rodgers takes a few loud, quick breaths to show what Mark Maida sounded like.

"And he breathes like that for a few seconds and then he just stops. And that's when he died."

Rodgers pauses a moment.

On the ground, there was the removal of Baghdad's mayor -- by a Shiite militia group. This has apparently not been challenged at all. Meanwhile, a noted Shiite leader has called for an autonomous region in the south of Iraq. Random bombings continue, the civilian deaths increase.

Among the right/pro-war blogs, meanwhile, the angst is starting to build even more. InstaPundit's brief reaction to the mayoral coup is to be expected but more importantly the actual can't be dismissed by them, as they are so wont to do, as some sort of problem with liberal bias. That the writer provides a further link to this disquieting but understandable assessment of the current state of things is further evidence that the rah-rah factor on InstaPundit is definitely easing back.

Belgravia is even more on edge, with three separate posts adding up as a blistering indictment of Rumsfeld in particular -- along with a new note of uncertainty about Bush himself, about which more later. Rumsfeld as whipping boy is starting to become a regular meme in outlets on the right, with Kristol in the Weekly Standard having his own recent say.

NRO world, meanwhile, is starting to fray a bit. Hanson earlier this week said what was increasingly clear:

War more often creates political reality, rather than politics determining the course of the war. If the United States winds down its presence, curtails its losses while Iraqis beat the terrorists and ensure a democratic government, then the victory, to paraphrase John F. Kennedy, will still have a thousand fathers. WMD controversies will be a distant memory.

But if the insurrection increases, topples the government, and we withdraw from a new Lebanon, then the Iraqi defeat will be an orphan.

My own view remains absolutely unchanged — that we were right, in both a practical and a moral sense, in removing Saddam, that despite depressing lows and giddy highs, the democratic reconstruction of Iraq will work out, that an emerging constitutional government will make both Americans safer and the Middle East in general more stable, that preexisting jihadists are flocking to Iraq and being defeated rather than being created ex nihilo, that anti-Americanism will gradually subside in the Muslim world as millions see that we are consistent in our support of democratic reform, that the United States military has proved itself the preeminent fighting force in the world today and is on the offensive in Iraq and winning a difficult asymmetrical campaign, and that old allies in Europe and Japan and new ones from India to Russia will slowly come to appreciate American constancy and leadership as never before.

But I am not naïve enough to think that most Americans at this moment would agree with all — or any — of that.

Meanwhile, Podhoretz and McCarthy have spent all of yesterday essentially delineating a core split in opinion, which could probably best be summed up as 'we have to see it through by picking our battles carefully' (Podhoretz) vs. 'we are wallowing badly and have completely lost focus, with potentially horrible consequences' (McCarthy). In brief:

Podhoretz comments on Rumsfeld talking about Syria and Iran

McCarthy vents

Podhoretz responds

McCarthy, in a relative sense, explodes. (Sample bit: "Do you really think the problem here is that I don’t understand the big picture? That I’m somehow too unsophisticated to grasp the ups and downs of a long war? These are the facts. I’m sorry it’s despairing. But I AM despairing.")

Podhoretz continues (sample: "If George Bush isn't hard-line enough for you, Andy, then basically, we're doomed, because he's as hard-line as you're ever going to get.")

McCarthy is hardly convinced ("Is the war about eradicating militant Islam? Is it about establishing democracies even if militant Islam continues to thrive around them? Is it about denying weapons of mass destruction to rogue regimes? When the President admirably eschews withdrawal time-tables and insists we are staying in Iraq until we “complete the mission,” which mission is he talking about? If it’s the stabilization of Iraq rather than wiping out the threats in that region that pose a national security threat to the U.S., is that the mission we went there for in the first place? Would the American people have agreed to go to war to accomplish that?")

Podhoretz tries to assuage McCarthy (or is the correct verb 'patronize'?)

And thus things stand for now, may continue, may not.

"I understand the anguish that some feel about the death that takes place," Bush said.

"I also have heard the voices of those saying: 'Pull out now!' " he said. "And I've thought about their cry and their sincere desire to reduce the loss of life by pulling our troops out. I just strongly disagree."

Which Atrios points out as odd how the FBI guy claims the suspect has no connection to "any terrorist group or activity"...except for the whole bomb-on-plane thing.

but still! we fight them over there so that yadda yadda yadda...

I THINK THE U.S. IS STARTING to run out of time to make things happen here. And, I am getting a very distinct feeling that the President is going "wobbly" on what was his most persuasive (even if unpalatable) issue. To wit: the war on terror is going to be a very long and very bitter fight.

Most of the talk from Washington is now about force reduction because it's politically more acceptable. My opinion is that the Iraqi Army will be nowhere close to being ready to take over the defense of Iraq by 2006. We not only have to be ready to stay longer, but to increase our troop commitment. That may well have to entail some very tough decisions about the overall size of our military.

At the rate things are going here now, I suspect we have less than a year in which to perform. To be of any use, that year must be used to go on a crash program of actually rebuilding the infrastructure rather than talking about it. We need results! We have prattled away for over two years. We have produced enough proposals for fixing Iraq to fill a warehouse! If the Iraqis start to actually see progress, it is possible the insurgency will be defeated. If the Iraqis see nothing but more of the same, I'm afraid they are all too ready to go back into their Saddam-era cocoons and live there for another 25 years. We must remember that the Iraqis have not yet seen many of the purported benefits of democracy. They are still waiting! For them to revert to living as they used to would be easy. All they would have to be prepared to give up are life without electric power, without water, and car bombs on every street corner.

Water and electricity. Something better start to happen soon or it's quite probable that all hell will break loose. And, God help us if the escalators at BIAP start carrying passengers before the average Iraqi has any power or water.

as for the most recent news that really made my eyebrows arch, the baghdad mayor's removal tops it. unbelievable.

Do let me know your family's response, actually. I'm always kinda interested in reactions like that. Also, you could forward them this story from the Times and note how it's not even 'bad news' at all, really. But the stories don't cancel each other out...far from it.

One fact that Army and DoD officials could not conceal was that the officer was killed by a single gunshot wound. Citing a CNN report on June 16, an anonymous commentator writing on the weblog No More Apples determined, "Col. Westhusing's death was ruled as non-combat-related. That category includes accident, illness, foul play, an act of nature, such as being struck by lightning, or suicide. If he died of a gunshot wound, that eliminates everything in that category except murder or suicide. Either is a sorry end for a gallant and courageous officer."

Since then, the rumors have continued that this distinguished Army officer was either murdered or driven to suicide because of as-yet unknown events surrounding his assignment. It is not the rumors that are troubling so much as the Army's stolid silence fertilizes their proliferation.

The nature of Westhusing's assignment in Iraq cannot help but add fuel to such speculation. He had taken a leave of absence from West Point for a six-month tour with the Multi-National Security Transition Command, helping to train the Iraqi army. He had arrived in December 2004 and was less than a month away from returning to West Point at the time of his death.

From the Caspar Star Tribune (Wyoming's News Source!), we have Dick Cheney:

"We cannot predict the length or course of the war on terror, but we know for certain with good allies at our side this great nation will persevere and we will prevail."

Translation: I'm not quite man enough to admit I was full of it with the "last throes" comment, so instead I'll talk about 'dictionary meanings' and avoid discussing Iraq in my public utterances (better to conveniently conflate Iraq under the 'war on terror' rubric which, while accurate, nevertheless, shall we say, conveniently elides the main point).

Hardly Churchillian straight-talk, huh? More by way of Roveian 'stay on message' herdism. But these are mediocre times and we, sadly, appear to be led by mediocre men...Look, if our leaders cannot communicate honestly to their public the real state of play with regard to the most pressing issue of the day--well, they will lose the public's trust and the war effort will be increasingly imperiled because of it.

includes this gem:

"You can support the troops but not the president"

by someone you know.

Of course, not to pat CNN on the back too much. They were cheerleaders for the war as much as anyone. But I'll take critical perspective where I can get it these days.

With US casualties rising and his approval rating falling, Mr Bush used now familiar language to urge Americans to stand united in the war in Iraq - and the wider war on terror.

"The only way to defend to our citizens where we live is to go after the terrorists where they live," he said.

He again stated that US troops would only come home from Iraq when the Iraqi security forces could "stand up" to take the fight to insurgents.

"As Iraqis stand up, Americans will stand down," the president said.

Mr Bush also put what is happening in Iraq into a historical context.

He said that America's own history demonstrated that writing a constitution was a task complicated by political rivalries and regional disagreements.

Oh, I'm so reassured.

NRO world is unsurprisingly where a lot of discontent, if not downright fear, is bubbling up. McCarthy had a fit last night:

There is grave reason to doubt that Islam and democracy (at least the Western version based on liberty and equality) are compatible. But that is an argument for another day. The argument for today is: the American people were never asked whether they would commit their forces to overseas hostilities for the purpose of turning Iraq into a democracy (we committed them (a) to topple a terror-abetting tyrant who was credibly thought both to have and to covet weapons of mass destruction, and (b) to kill or capture jihadists who posed a danger to American national security). I doubt they would have agreed to wage war for the purpose of establishing democracy. Like most Americans, I would like to see Iraq be an authentic democracy – just as I would like to see Iran, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, etc. be authentic democracies. But I would not sacrifice American lives to make it so.

But even if I suspended disbelief for a moment and agreed that the democracy project is a worthy casus belli, I am as certain as I am that I am breathing that the American people would not put their brave young men and women in harm’s way for the purpose of establishing an Islamic government. Anyplace. (emphasis McCarthy's)

Ledeen aims for some words of comfort but admits that there's not much to offer. Goldberg meanwhile basically admits that he accepts decisions by the administration over whatever conservative principles he claims to follow -- and you can tell he's not exactly thrilled by it:

I'm a bit more waffly about it in principle, but in practice that's where I've got to end up. We're already in the nation-building business, we already smashed up the place, we already decided to leave a large cultural footprint. We might as well stick to our guns and get the best one possible for us and for them.

Lowry, meanwhile, is presumably having a dig at some of his fellow-travellers -- that or else he's completely off the deep end:

Regarding the Andy, Jonah, and Michael conversation about the Iraqi constitution, I join them in hoping that it fully respects the rights of women. But I also hope we all understand that there are limits to what our demands can accomplish. It's not our country, and Iraqis ultimately have to make these decisions, even if we can certainly try to influence them. Unfortunately, most Iraqis are not Western liberals. Pretending that we have the power to make them into Western liberals over night, or anytime soon, is an illusion. Would that our demands were invested with such magical powers. Then we could demand an end to the insurgency, a fix to the electricity problem, an end to all ethnic and tribal loyalties, and the rapid secularization of Iraq. And all our problems would be solved!

What exactly does America want?

That question has arisen with particular force over the past week. The U.S. administration has sent mixed messages, beginning with newly arrived Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad’s forthright defense of women’s rights in the face of an implacably hostile sharia legal regime. But there are now press reports of U.S. backsliding across the board in the face of determined opposition from the Shia and Sunni blocs. Based on conversations with administration sources, it seems the fix is in for any deal that can be presented as a success — and the gateway for an exit strategy. And there seems a fixation for engaging so-called Sunni leaders who represent no one but themselves and are in no position to negotiate with Baathist and jihadists terrorists determined to fight to the death.

If today’s talks fall short, the least-worst option is simply to fall back on the current interim constitution, the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) until elections in December. That would preserve vital political momentum toward a more decent and democratic society. And it would allay the concerns expressed by a senior Kurdish politician: “Your American ambassador is giving an Islamic character to the state. You spent all this money and all this blood to bring an Islamic republic here.”

“We are very worried.”

The rest of us should worry, too.

The stakes are higher than Vietnam, and so on realist grounds we owe it to ourselves to see this war and tremendously compex nation-building effort through. And, on moral grounds, we owe it to those who have died to date to fight this right and smart and make a success of it. Yes, those like B.D. arguing that we stay the course will face the reality that, not least because of Administration incompetence, we may still slog it out for two or so more years and end up still failing. With that many more dead. But I think we have turned the corner, perhaps, on the train and equip effort (after many false starts), that a prospectively viable constitution could be in the offing, that the insurgency can be defeated if we don't stand down prematurely. But all this requires a massive continuing American effort, on a variety of different levels (military, diplomatic, humanitarian and more), for a very significant period yet.

It's time for us conservatives to face facts. George W. Bush has pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent. We control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and (more-or-less) the judiciary for one of the few times in my nearly 5 decades, but what have we really accomplished? Is government smaller? Have we hacked away at the nanny state? Are the unborn any more protected? Have we really set the stage for a durable conservative majority?

Etc. etc. -- it's stirred up a lot of comment as you can see through the trackbacks, and not even the NRO crowd, one of whom linked it on the Corner, have bothered to respond to it (the linker, Adler, saying only 'While I am not sure I agree with his analysis, he raises questions that conservatives should address' -- no shit.)

and the new guy on the scene, Khalilzad, pretty much there to get a constitution together, who cares if it turns Iraq into a islamist state or not. Quoting from a WaPo article about it:

"The working draft of the constitution stipulates that no law can contradict Islamic principles. In talks with Shiite religious parties, Kurdish negotiators said they have pressed unsuccessfully to limit the definition of Islamic law to principles agreed upon by all groups. The Kurds said current language in the draft would subject Iraqis to extreme interpretations of Islamic law..."

You say “lots” of Iraqis don't want Islamic supremacy. I'm not sure what that means. Do you think a liberal majority exists in Iraq to vote down a constitution that tilts too far toward Islam? For better or worse, many of the sources of legitimacy and authority in Iraq are religious. That's a fact and it's one that has to be accommodated--although we should certainly try to keep it from going too far. Anyway, I'm curious what you would have done in Iraq. Would you have invaded in the first place? If so, then what would you have done with it? Would you have established a secular authoritarian government and suppressed the religious Shiite parties? Sent Sistani into exile? Or just left chaos and hoped for the best? Or something else?

The lack of obvious plan from the admin is now clearly starting to settle in among the hawks, if they're now debating what alternate possibilities might have been chosen. Lowry seems to be saying 'what else can we do?' without realizing that his question isn't rhetorical.

Meanwhile, how to have fun by trying to sell the Army to people:

As brand manager for the Army's advertising account at Leo Burnett Inc., a Chicago ad agency, DeThorne's job is to sell the Army. And these days, it's a difficult product to sell.

In marketing terms, the Army is a troubled brand. The daily images of violence from Iraq are scaring away potential recruits for the service that has shouldered the largest burden there.

The Army does not expect to meet any of its 2005 recruiting goals for the active, Reserve and National Guard ranks, and Army officials have said that next year the gap is likely to be greater.

This year, DeThorne will spend more than $200 million of the Army's money — the U.S. government's largest advertising contract — to try to reverse that trend and sell the nation on the benefits of military service.

It is a job that gets more difficult each morning, when Americans read over breakfast about the latest roadside bomb or insurgent ambush that killed another handful of U.S. solders.

"This is the most complicated, multilayered thing I have ever worked on," said DeThorne, who slips in and out of marketing jargon when discussing the challenge. "Every day you pick up the paper and there is a story reframing the product you are trying to sell."

So glib, really...

By now it should be clear that President Bush's words on the subject of Iraq have ceased connecting with the American public. His speech yesterday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars is the latest - and one of the most serious to date - manifestations of the problem. The polls tell us that the American public is losing heart. A substantial majority (56%) now say that the war is going either "very badly" or "moderately badly." More than 50% now regard the war as a mistake. One-third want an immediate and total withdrawal. Maybe most fatefully: a plurality now say that they believe that the president deliberately misled the country into war.

Supporters of the war can argue that the public is mistaken, overly influenced by biased news reporting. Yes, yes. But mistaken public opinion is just as powerful as sound public opinion.

Again, supporters of the war can do our bit to try to change minds. But the biggest megaphone in the country belongs to President Bush - and much depends on whether he uses it well or badly.

He is using it very badly indeed.

Let me mention just one single but maybe decisive problem. Again and again during the Bush presidency - and yesterday most recently - the president will agree to give what is advertised in advance as a major speech. An important venue will be chosen. A crowd of thousands will be gathered. The networks will all be invited. And after these elaborate preparations, the president says ... nothing that he has not said a hundred times before.

If a president continues to do that, he is himself teaching the public and the media to ignore him - especially when the words seem (as his speech yesterday to the VFW seemed) utterly to ignore the past three months of real-world events.

A criticism of 'sweep' tactics in Iraq

'The War In Iraq Brought Music To Their Hearts' -- I admit I prefer the story about the rap dudes over there.

Meanwhile, bits of the Iraqi constitution are leaking and many NRO types are leaping to embrace it with alacrity -- I suspect because they'll take anything at this point.

well, that's kinda the point now, innit?

Just to give some feeling for the overall tide of NRO reader opinion: Since my post on the president's VFW address went up early Tuesday morning, I've been flooded with almost 200 emails - all but five of them sharing my concerns.

I know well how beleaguered a White House can feel in tough times. I know that they look to their friends in places like NRO for support, not criticism - and I know that the people who bear the responsibility must contend with a wide range of difficulties often unimagined by those who do not bear the responsibility.

But all that acknowledged: This war and this war president are in real political trouble - and the administration is responding with deadly dangerous passivity. It's not the administration's critics who are delivering this warning. It's the administration's strongest supporters. Don't believe me. Believe the emails.

The problem is that nothing in what he says or in the likely fallout from the constitution addresses the immediate issue of the ongoing insurgency. At this point, it's a little hard to imagine what in the short term will curtail the violence. And as long as the violence is going on, it'll be hard for the U.S. to leave, even if the administration wanted to.

One possibility: All or most foreign troops pull out of the South (leaving it to be policed by Islamist militias who terrorize women and anyone who tries to sell liquor or give the wrong kind of shave), and the U.S. settles for some bases in a de facto Kurdistan. The middle of the country -- including Baghdad -- remains a semi-active battlezone. Of course, even that arrangement can't last long. The Kurds and Shiites are happy enough to co-exist for now, but that can't last forever.

Well, that's the whole thing -- the US situated itself as the be-all end-all, including the constitution or rather getting it to be. So thus things get involved...

That Dexter Filkins guy from the Times was on the PBS Newshour last night and couldn't have made things sound more bleak, ie, on the cusp of a certain popular rejection of the constitution because of the Sunni alienation, leading to possible civil war. That was before W's heroic picking-up of the phone!

Then there's this:

BAQUBA, Iraq (Reuters) - Thousands marched in adoring praise of Iraq's deposed leader Saddam Hussein on Friday, offering a stark display of the loss of power and leadership felt by some of Iraq's Sunni Arabs.

Drawing inspiration from the Baath party strongman, who now languishes in jail awaiting trial, marchers in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, danced and chanted his name and condemned plans by the Shi'ite and Kurdish-led government to push through draft constitution to create a federal Iraq.

They accused the Shi'ite Islamists in government of kowtowing to Iran, Iraq's non-Arab neighbor where many Shi'ites sought refuge during Saddam's rule, and the United States, which backs the government with some 140,000 troops.

``Bush, Bush, listen well; We all love Saddam Hussein!'' crowds chanted. ``We reject the American and Iranian constitution'' and ``No to a constitution that breaks up Iraq,'' their placards read.

For Sunnis, the draft's vision of a federal state is a prelude to dismembering a country whose unity they believe had its most loyal defenders in Saddam and his Baath party.

Located in central Iraq, they have traditionally considered themselves the backbone of the Iraqi state though they are outnumbered by Shi'ites who form 60 percent of the population.

Sunni Arabs were the nucleus of support for Saddam's Baath party, and despite his tyrannical rule many pine for the stability he brought to a country now mired in the chaos of daily bombs, sectarian murder and collapsing public services.

One man said he had been laid off from the Ministry of Health after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam because he had fought in Iraq's 1980-88 war with Iran.

``We don't have any rights any more. They say in the National Assembly that we fought the Koran -- and that's what they told me in the Ministry of Health too,'' he said, referring to Iran's system of clerical rule, admired by many Iraqi Shi'ites.

Although Diyala province is over 60 percent Sunni, local government has been dominated by Shi'ite parties since Sunnis boycotted elections in January.

``Shame on the backwardness of Arab princes and agents who have let foreign dogs run all over them,'' another man shouted. ''If words don't work, we know how to deal with the occupiers and cowardly agents,'' he said, meaning the United States and Iran.

The authorities have been unable to quell a relentless Sunni insurgency over the last two years which many fear could descend into a full-scale sectarian civil war.

SHI'ITE ALLY

Unlike Shi'ites, who display often cult-like loyalty to clerics with huge influence in government, Sunnis have no secular or religious figure to champion their cause.

But they have found a powerful ally in charismatic Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has come out against the federal option as long as the country remains under U.S. occupation.

Tens of thousands of Sadr supporters protested on Friday in cities across Iraq, from Basra in the Shi'ite south to Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed city in the north that Kurds want to wrest from Arab control to include in their autonomous region.

In Diwaniya in the south, 3,000 of them walked in silence bearing images of Iraq sliced up by a bloody knife of federalism.

In Falluja west of Baghdad, Sunni preachers repeated calls for worshippers to get their names onto the electoral register to vote ``No'' in an October referendum on the constitution.

``Federalism is a dagger that the occupiers and their allies want to plunge into the body of the country,'' said mosque preacher Tarek Abdullah, in rhetoric similar to that of Sadr.

In contrast more sites on the right are noticing -- sometimes with desperate haste -- that Michael Yon's blog is a on-the-ground reporting site that in focusing more on a brace of troops there is, generally speaking, less critical and more celebratory. Not mindlessly, I would say -- I find this site far more interesting and readable than Austin Bay's work -- and at points it turns some of the assumptions of the hawkish wing back at them deftly, thus this from the end of the most recent entry:

Iraqi Army and Police officers see many Americans as too soft, especially when it comes to dealing with terrorists. The Iraqis who seethe over the shooting of Kurilla know that the cunning fury of Jihadists is congenite. Three months of air-conditioned reflection will not transform terrorists into citizens.

Over lunch with Chaplain Wilson and our two battalion surgeons, Major Brown and Captain Warr, there was much discussion about the "ethics" of war, and contention about why we afford top-notch medical treatment to terrorists. The treatment terrorists get here is better and more expensive than what many Americans or Europeans can get.

"That's the difference between the terrorists and us," Chaplain Wilson kept saying. "Don't you understand? That's the difference."

Meanwhile, over in the NY Times Brooks posted on the recent Krepinevich essay in Foreign Affairs, "How to Win in Iraq". Read the essay first, of course, but Brooks' profile in talking about it is settilng in among other folks, thus May in NRO world:

For what it’s worth, reading this has raised real doubts for me about whether Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld – whom I’ve always defended in the past – is on the right track.

You'd think.

Stelzer: "We will accept nothing less than total victory over the terrorists and their hateful ideology," President Bush told the Veterans of Foreign Wars last week. But, as they say both on the streets of New York and the ranches of Texas, talk is cheap. We now have a choice--in the vernacular, it is to put up or shut up.

That choice can no longer safely be postponed. We can tailor our national security policies to the economic resources we are willing to commit to those policies, or we can commit sufficient resources to allow us successfully to implement the policies the president has decided are in the national interest.

Hitchens (amid the usual waffle): However, having debated almost all of the spokespeople for the antiwar faction, both the sane and the deranged, I was recently asked a question that I was temporarily unable to answer. "If what you claim is true," the honest citizen at this meeting politely asked me, "how come the White House hasn't told us?"

I do in fact know the answer to this question. So deep and bitter is the split within official Washington, most especially between the Defense Department and the CIA, that any claim made by the former has been undermined by leaks from the latter. (The latter being those who maintained, with a combination of dogmatism and cowardice not seen since Lincoln had to fire General McClellan, that Saddam Hussein was both a "secular" actor and--this is the really rich bit--a rational and calculating one.)

There's no cure for that illusion, but the resulting bureaucratic chaos and unease has cornered the president into his current fallback upon platitude and hollowness. It has also induced him to give hostages to fortune. The claim that if we fight fundamentalism "over there" we won't have to confront it "over here" is not just a standing invitation for disproof by the next suicide-maniac in London or Chicago, but a coded appeal to provincial and isolationist opinion in the United States. Surely the elementary lesson of the grim anniversary that will shortly be upon us is that American civilians are as near to the front line as American soldiers.

Kristol (aka 'W is god, Rumsfeld must go now'): There have been real failures in the execution of the war in Iraq, and a poor job has been done in recent months of explaining the war at home. On the latter front, Wednesday's speech is a good start. Now the president needs to ensure his own administration is executing a policy consistent with his words, and also that these words are followed up with many more. Wartime presidents need to explain and re-explain what's at stake. They need to keep the country informed about the war. They need to keep morale high. And they need to take command so that the military and political strategy aims at victory. The success of the Bush presidency depends on his success as commander in chief. So does the success of American foreign policy.

Worth reading them all. Nobody's jumping ship per se but they're all essentially looking about them to see that their own 'side' is questioning a lot of what's going on and figure they have to respond/send up warning signs. I suspect this is just the start.

I still don't understand what's so hard about being horrified by bin Laden but appalled by Bush. Those seem like very complementary positions to me.

Well, yeah. That's the point! They have to hold on come hell or high water, otherwise THEY'RE fucked.

Our beloved president is apparently muddling through as he can, though.

This has been a tough summer for the Bush Administration. While the President tries to relax on his five week Texas vacation, he's had to contend with deteriorating military and political conditions in Iraq, a Woodstock-like peace protest at the edge of his Crawford compound led by Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan, declining public opinion polls (that are echoed by "even worse" internal polling, says one Bush adviser), high oil prices and a recognition that things are not likely to turn around anytime soon.

Emphasis mine, because if that IS true...my.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. ambassador suggested Tuesday there may be further changes to the draft constitution in order to win Sunni Arab approval, saying he believed a "final, final draft" had not yet been presented...

[...]

"I believe that a final, final draft has not yet been, or the edits have not been, presented yet, so that is something that Iraqis will have to talk to each other and decide for themselves," Khalilzad told reporters.

The law says the version signed off on by parliament Sunday cannot be amended. But Khalilzad said the door could be open for changes declared as "edits" to the approved text. There was no official comment from the Shiite parliamentary leadership on whether it shared that opinion.

However, influential Shiite lawmaker Khaled al-Attiyah, a member of the constitution drafting committee, insisted that "no changes are allowed to be made to the constitution" except for "minor edits for the language..."

Also, interesting set-up for that article, as scenes of political wrangling are intercut with scenes of fighting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/opinion/28rich.html

"Among Washington's Democrats, the only one with a clue seems to be Russell Feingold, the Wisconsin senator who this month proposed setting a 'target date' (as opposed to a deadline) for getting out. Mr. Feingold also made the crucial observation that 'the president has presented us with a false choice': either 'stay the course' or 'cut and run.' ...

But don't expect any of Mr. Feingold's peers to join him or [Chuck] Hagel in fashioning an exit strategy that might work. If there's a moment that could stand for the Democrats' irrelevance it came on July 14, the day Americans woke up to learn of the suicide bomber in Baghdad who killed as many as 27 people, nearly all of them children gathered around American troops. In Washington that day, the presumptive presidential candidate Hillary Clinton held a press conference vowing to protect American children from the fantasy violence of video games.

The Democrats are hoping that if they do nothing, they might inherit the earth as the Bush administration goes down the tubes. Whatever the dubious merits of this Kerryesque course as a political strategy, as a moral strategy it's unpatriotic. The earth may not be worth inheriting if Iraq continues to sabotage America's ability to take on Iran and North Korea, let alone Al Qaeda.

As another politician from the Vietnam era, Gary Hart, observed last week, the Democrats are too cowardly to admit they made a mistake three years ago, when fear of midterm elections drove them to surrender to the administration's rushed and manipulative Iraq-war sales pitch. So now they are compounding the original error as the same hucksters frantically try to repackage the old damaged goods."

I have similar thoughts every time there's a report about people being crushed during marches to or congregations at Mecca too. Perhaps there is some sinister shadowy essence of phobia underlying such thoughts (more that I dislike big unorganised crowds and that volatile aspect they court, rather than anything else, I think/hope - but TV pictures from the Middle East seemed to so often comprise of big gatherings of people in the streets, be they singing and chanting or just staring solemnly at the camera). But it is genuine exasperation at the blatant waste of life, the sense that something has failed, that chaos has been allowed to rear it's ugly head and prevail, but also a suspicion that due care was not taken and logic not applied by people frankly 'blinded by religion' and misplacing priorities (how can the welfare of your neighbour take second place to whatever has motivated the people to march as well as the people who attacked?). This feels like a petulant, ignorant response from me but understand it's a side-effect of the frustration felt. SIX HUNDRED PEOPLE?!

I don't think that many people have been killed at one single time during the occupation. Or am I wrong?