McCain: "I am not President Bush"

If McCain wants us to think he's different from George Bush then he should stop stealing W's lines.

Here's John McCain last month:

"What what we'd be doing is nominating justices who strictly interpret the Constitution," McCain said during an appearance on the ABC daytime talk show "The View." "We would not impose litmus test."

and here's George W. Bush in 2000 during the debate against Gore:

Q: Should a voter assume that all judicial appointments you make to the Supreme Court will be pro-life?

BUSH: Voters should assume that I have no litmus test on that issue or any other issue. The voters will know I’ll put competent judges on the bench, people who will strictly interpret the Constitution and will not use the bench to write social policy. I believe in strict constructionists.

Was putting Muqtada al Sadr in control of Basra worth $600 billion?

5 years later:

"The successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable, yet some in Washington still call for retreat." - George W. Bush - explaining why Iraq "was worth it"

"Thirty years from now, when historians look back, where are they going to come out? If at the end of the day the U.S. screwed things up for four years and then in the end left Iraq a better place than they found it under Saddam, it may have still been worth it." - Iraq war advocate Ken Pollack

It is a great American myth, voiced by John Kerry last year, that the nation goes to war only when there is no question about the necessity of going to war. There's always a question. Even if the Iraqi insurgency disappeared tomorrow, George Ibrahim al Washington became president of Iraq and every liter of Saddam Hussein's onetime stockpile of chemical and biological weapons suddenly appeared in the desert, historians would still spend the next century debating whether the war was "worth it." - Robert Kagan (2005), arguing that not going in would have been even worse.

War is an expensive thing, but not the most expensive of things. A man unwilling to pay any price for the well-being of others is a sad creature indeed. - Tim Kane (2006) of the Heritage Foundation arguing "that the active American security umbrella enhances investment."

"If you look back on those five years it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavor ... and it has been well worth the effort" - Dick Cheney, describing the phenomenal success that is Iraq

I'm not entirely sure which successes George Bush is talking about, but the number of times I've heard the the phrase "Iraq was worth it" going unchallenged is absurd. Bush and Cheney talk about fighting an enemy that didn't exist 5 years ago. People like Kagan, Pollack and Kane talk about a hypothetical Iraqi utopia, while the current standard of success is having fewer than 20 dead Iraqis a day.

Was redirecting American forces worth losing Osama bin Laden in the hills of Tora Bora?

Was crippling our military worth ethnically cleansing Baghdad?

Was chasing non-existent threats worth establishing Abu Ghraib?

Was defeating Iran's biggest rival worth putting ourselves in a 100-year quagmire?

Those of us against this war can rattle these questions off the top of our heads. But I've yet to see a pro-war advocate explain just what was worth it?

Just so long as I'm the dictator.

Robert Farley from LGM compares Obama's call for unity with those of W in 2000:

Bush is an outstanding example of a candidate whose centrist direction (at least in 2000; I think Bowers is right about 2004) had no noticeable impact on governing strategy.

Centrist direction?

Contrary to popular opinion, George Bush never ran as a moderate and anybody who bothered to listen to the man during the 2000 election knew that he wasn't a centrist. He was running as a compassionate conservative and if the term "compassionate" confused you, well he told you exactly what he meant by that, too. Here's how Myron Magnet explained it in the WSJ in 1999:

The poor need the larger society's moral support; they need to hear the message of personal responsibility and self-reliance, the optimistic assurance that if they try – as they must – they will make it. They need to know, too, that they can't blame "the system" for their own wrongdoing.

In short, poor people need a pep squad, not a handout. Quit complaining about racism or children being born into poverty. Re-stigmatize illegitimacy, shame unwed mothers, get tough on public school teachers and show the poor how irresponsible they're being by not getting off their lazy asses.

This definition of compassionate conservatism wasn't kept secret. It was repeated again and again during the run-up to the election. Where the government was going to be involved was in "faith based" initiatives - tearing down the wall between church and state.

And if that involved tearing up anti-discrimination laws? Well whatever works:

Some religious groups do, however, follow exclusionary policies, and these point up the inherent -- and constitutional -- difficulties of church-state partnerships. A week ago Friday, Governor Bush toured the Haven of Rest Ministries, a homeless shelter in Akron, Ohio. Two years ago, ministry officials told a Jewish businessman that he couldn't join the board, citing their rule of employing only born-again Christians.

During his visit, Mr. Bush maintained that under his plan Haven of Rest's programs would be eligible for Government funds -- even though groups that accept Federal money must comply with anti-discrimination laws.

The only reason this seemed "centrist" was because the Democrats felt the need to jump on the faith-based bandwagon themselves.

Bush and Gore have enthusiastically endorsed a provision of the 1996 welfare-reform bill called charitable choice, which allows faith-based organizations to administer welfare programs with public funds, as long as there are secular alternatives. And then there is the explosive issue of publicly financed vouchers for parochial and secular private schools, which all of the Republican candidates have embraced. Although Gore opposes vouchers, his Democratic opponent, Bill Bradley, provisionally supports them.

No, George Bush was all about "tax cuts so help me God!", eliminating the right of consumers to sue corporations, and deregulation of industry (back when Enron's Ken Lay was considered the smartest kid on the block).

His solution to environmental problems? Self-policing:

Although state regulators had been considering mandatory restrictions on polluters, state documents indicate that Mr. Bush thought the approach should be voluntary and essentially asked industry leaders to draft such a proposal, which they did in private meetings with state officials two years ago. No environmental groups or other public interest groups were invited, and they only learned about the meetings early this year.

His plan to get health care to the uninsured? Tax credits.

Under the plan he introduced here, Americans who have no health care coverage and are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid could receive a tax credit of up to $1,000 an individual or $2,000 a family to cover 90 percent of the cost of insurance.

Good luck paying for insurance with that. Especially if you're one of those lazy welfare queens.

As for his views on civil liberties, "there ought to be limits to freedom" was provoked by a web site making fun of his campaign. Bush's campaign threatened legal action.

And if we hadn't been so busy chuckling that Bush failed a reporter's pop quiz, we might have worried that the one person he did recognize had just overthrown a democratically elected Prime Minister - and George Bush approved wholeheartedly.

Mr. Bush also offered an assessment of the situation in Pakistan, where Gen. Pervez Musharraf seized power in a coup d'etat last month.

Mr. Bush, failing to name the general, said, "It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country, and I think that's good news for the subcontinent."

So you can fault George Bush for a lot of things, but lying about his goals as president isn't one of them. He told us of his plans to privatize Social Security, to nominate Scalia type justices, to gut social services, to increase military spending and tear up pesky treaties. He was running on unity, not compromise. He intended to get Democrats to agree to his plans, not to find common ground. (And he has been quite successful getting them to sign on to every harebrained idea he had).

Hell, if you believed what the man was telling you at the time, you'd have gotten a pretty good preview of the next 8 years. He even dropped hints about the second Gulf war.

At the Republican debate here on Thursday and at a news conference in nearby Bedford this morning, George W. Bush said that if he was commander in chief, any discovery that Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, was building weapons of mass destruction would touch off a swift and punishing response.

Mr. Bush seemed to say he would "take him out," indicating that he would forcibly remove Mr. Hussein from power or worse. But Mr. Bush said in a telephone interview this afternoon that the phrase, easily misinterpreted because of his Texas drawl, was "take 'em out," meaning the weapons.

As for his idea of bipartisanship, his most famous quote:

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."

...He said that to a bipartisan group of Congressional leaders, one month before taking the oath of office.

If the president tells you to do it, that means it is not illegal

Or at least, that's the thinking of George Bush (channeling the ghost of Richard Nixon).

The government said to those who have alleged to have helped us that it is in our national interests and it’s legal. It’s in our national interests because we want to know who’s calling who from overseas into America. We need to know in order to protect the people.

It was legal.

Of course, they could have simply had their attorneys do a quick check of the law to see that it was illegal.

So on the one hand the civil liberties of our citizens are guaranteed by a lot of checks in the system, scrutinized by the United States Congress.

Right. Those checks are called laws. Like the FISA law. The one you violated. And you didn't bother informing Congress until you were worried they wouldn't rubber stamp your retroactive immunity bill.

As for whether the phone companies will help you monitor terrorist's phone calls -- Well, you could always get a warrant.

Image credit: Bell System Telephone by seychelles88

"Success" in Iraq: de-de-Baathification

The Iraqi Parliament has finally done something that the Bush administration, and many others, considered essential to political progress in Iraq: it passed a law intended to open government jobs to former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. What should have been heralded as an accomplishment, however, may only serve to further reinforce the bumbling nature of President Bush’s ill-conceived adventure in Iraq.

Let's remember that the only reason the Iraqis have to pass an anti-anti-Baathification law in the first place is to undo the anti-Baathification law originally passed by Paul Bremer with the blessing of the Bush administration.

In an act that many saw as the original sin that led to Iraq's current turmoil, Bremer crippled Iraq's institutions of governance and security and created half a million angry and jobless people in the process. He has since said that there were legitimate grievances about the order but that it was necessary to bring oppressed Shiite Muslims and ethnic Kurds into the government.

Bremer's order affected 400,000 members of the armed forces and all civil servants and officials above the Baath Party's lowest rank-and-file level, a number estimated at 32,000 to 85,000.

Bremer now blames the Iraqis for screwing up his brilliant plan.

We then turned over the implementation of this carefully focused policy to Iraq's politicians. I was wrong here. The Iraqi leaders, many of them resentful of the old Sunni regime, broadened the decree's impact far beyond our original design. That led to such unintended results as the firing of several thousand teachers for being Baath Party members. We eventually fixed those excesses, but I should have made implementation the job of a judicial body, not a political one.

Voinovich accuses Obama of being inexperienced - like Bush

This is a funny criticism coming from a man who's rubber stamped every foreign policy initiative of the current president.

Ohio Sen. George Voinovich, a key moderate Republican in the Senate chamber and influential member of the Foreign Relations Committee, scoffed Tuesday when asked if Sen. Barack Obama has the foreign policy chops to be the next president.

It was bad management that got President Bush into trouble, said the Ohio senator, who at one point blocked confirmation of John Bolton, Bush's choice to become ambassador to the United Nations .

"People thought he'd be a much better manager than he was," Voinovich said of the president. "Even though he's dedicated himself to management, I think some of the screw-ups that have occurred have really hurt him. A lot of Republicans are disappointed because they frankly thought he'd be a better manager."

For all his complaints about George Bush's Iraq war strategy, and his fleeting opposition to John Bolton, Senator Voinovich apparently never took the president aside, explained just how he was jeopardizing the nation's defense and used his experience as a distinguished Republican Senator to keep us on the right path. In fact, Bush probably took Voinovich's repeated votes protecting him from oversight as a big thumbs up.

Note to the Senator: You're not a spectator. You helped get us into the mess we're in today. Put up, or shut up.

Nice timing Pinnochio

Arlen Specter (right) has a chance encounter with Karl Rove on his way to the Senate. Image originally uploaded by nanotron.

12/05/07: Arlen Specter is furious at Harry Reid for calling him a puppet of George Bush

Specter, R-Pa., cried foul and declared that Reid had not only violated Senate Rule XIX, which prohibits the questioning of a senator’s integrity, but was just flat wrong.

12/06/07: Arlen Specter acts to protect Karl Rove from a Congressional subpoena

A Senate Judiciary Committee vote on contempt resolutions against Karl Rove and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten were postponed following an objection by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).

h/t ThinkProgress

George Bush: preparing for World War III

Sometimes you have to ask yourself, would you rather have a complete incompetent or a baldfaced liar as your president?

(Of course, there's no rule that says you can't have both)

BUSH: I was made aware of the NIE last week. In August, I think it was John -- Mike McConnell came in and said we have some new information. He didn't tell me what the information was. He did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze.

So Mike McConnell comes strolling into the president's office, tells him we have new information concerning a country that's supposedly planning to nuke Israel (or Poland?) and Bush doesn't even ask for a quick summary. And he doesn't ask about it for 3 months!


video at ThinkProgress

Remember, this is what we're fighting for in Iraq.

President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general "hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy."

Bush spoke nearly three weeks after Musharraf declared emergency rule, sacked members of the Supreme Court and began a roundup of journalists, lawyers and human rights activists. Musharraf's government yesterday released about 3,000 political prisoners, although 2,000 remain in custody, according to the Interior Ministry.

Musharraf, you see, is a decider, and deciders decide in a democracy. Bush elaborated on this point during the interview:

we didn't necessarily agree with his decision, to impose emergency rule

He didn't necessarily disagree, either.

Let's face it, George Bush has supported Musharraf since he led a coup against the elected government of Pakistan 8 years ago. Musharraf has never been elected himself, and he is not a democrat.

He's had opposition leaders arrested, rivals exiled, had the country's constitution rewritten to his ends, censored the media, purged members of the Supreme Court for voting against him, placed them under house arrest, replaced them with his own lackeys and required those justices to sign an oath to military rule and to Musharraf himself. (All in the name of protecting the country against terrorists)

In other words, Musharraf is the president George Bush always dreamed he would be.

Success in Iraq?

This is apparently considered good news these days:

[P]ictures from Iraq show people returning to the streets as often as they show a new suicide bombing.

George Bush has always supported the dictator of Pakistan

A lot of people are astonished that the man who overthrew the Pakistani government in a coup 8 years ago might not actually believe in democracy.

US scolds Musharraf but smothers talk of aid cuts

US President George W Bush today urged Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf to lift a state of emergency, quit as army chief, and hold elections soon - but left unclear whether US aid hung in the balance.

Asked what he would do if Musharraf spurns such advice, Bush replied: "All we can do is continue to work with the president, as well as others in the Pak government, to make it abundantly clear the position of the United States."

Now why would anyone think George Bush was going to suspend aid?

Here were his views in 1999, a year before George Bush was elected, 2 years before 9/11 changed everything and 3 weeks after Pervaiz Musharraf overthrew the elected government.

"Can you name the general who is in charge of Pakistan?" Hiller asked, inquiring about Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf, who seized control of the country October 12.

Bush, in answering the question about the leader of Pakistan, also said: "The new Pakistani general, he's just been elected -- not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country and I think that's good news for the subcontinent."

Musharraf is a military dictator. Let's not act surprised when he acts like one.

Putin isn't buying the Iranian threat

I suppose there's some logical consistency in insisting on building a defense that doesn't work to counter a threat that doesn't exist.

The proposed construction of a missile interceptor site in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic, ostensibly to target incoming Iranian ballistic missiles, has enraged Moscow, which believes the system could undermine Russia's nuclear deterrent.

The issue has contributed to the deepest chill in US-Russian relations since the cold war

Putin isn't buying the Iranian threat, and why would he? Iran has neither nuclear weapons, nor the missiles to deliver them:

A July report by the Congressional Research Service said that, as of mid-2007, "Iran has only flight-tested one medium-range missile, the single-stage Shahab-3, having a range of 1,300-2,000 kilometers," or about 1,200 miles. CRS also noted that many experts disagree with the U.S. assessment of Iran's capabilities.

"The international security policy and ballistic missile proliferation community argue that evidence of an Iranian ICBM program is scant and unconvincing," the CRS reported. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also expressed skepticism, and the Iranians said they dropped development of an ICBM, the CRS reported.

It's the war, stupid!

A lot of virtual ink is being wasted interpreting this image from Professor Pollkatz's site, purporting to show a correlation between the price of gasoline and President Bush's poll numbers. This despite the best efforts of others to debunk the claim.

At first glance it looks pretty impressive with both time series showing a sharp jump after 9/11 followed by a fairly long decline. Chris Bowers goes so far as to conclude that rising gas prices helped helped Democrats win power in 2006 and warns that the longterm trend spells doom for future presidents.

Ending the war will help, and providing millions of people with health care will help, too. However, gas prices will still remain high, making approval ratings in the 40s and 50s about the best anyone can do even under the most favorable conditions until at least 2020.

In two words this is complete nonsense.

If you look at the Bush's popularity figures it's dominated by 3 events - 9/11, the invasion of Iraq and the capture of Saddam. After each event he saw an immediate jump in approval followed by a nearly linear drop back to the norm. I don't think anyone can seriously argue the price of gas dominated his poll ratings during that time.

The fact that neither the sharpest drop in gas prices (in the weeks after 9/11), nor the sharpest increase a few months later had any obvious impact on George Bush's poll numbers is a pretty good clue that the gas theory is full of hot air.

That brings us to about January of 2004. So cover up the left half of pollkatz's chart. Still see a trend?

Want to know what has an even better correlation with George Bush's approval ratings than the price of gas? It's exactly what people keep telling you it is:




Pollkatz's Bush approval index in red. Polling Report's "Do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting?" in blue.

bin Laden "virtually impotent" since 2002

Once again the Bush brigade is mocking the man they're incapable of finding.

The Taliban fled for the hills. Bin Laden, it seemed, would be cornered. Indeed, on Dec. 15, CIA operatives listening on a captured jihadist radio could hear bin Laden himself say "Forgive me" to his followers, pinned down in their mountain caves near Tora Bora.

As it happened, however, the hunt for bin Laden was unraveling on the very same day. As recalled by Gary Berntsen, the CIA officer in charge of the covert team working with the Northern Alliance, code-named Jawbreaker, the military refused his pleas for 800 Army Rangers to cut off bin Laden's escape. Maj. Gen. Dell Dailey, the Special Ops commander sent out by Central Command, told Berntsen he was doing an "excellent job," but that putting in ground troops might offend America's Afghan allies.

They've been making the claim that bin Laden is irrelevant ever since.

"Everybody wants to know where Osama bin Laden is. The next question is, who cares?" says one Defense Department official, reflecting an attitude widespread in Pentagon corridors.

Since that quote was made (in 2002), the impotent man has been involved in terrorist attacks against Tunisia, Bali, Mombasa, Casablanca, Istanbul, Egypt, London and Madrid and members of his organization have been intercepted planning attacks in Denmark, Scotland and Germany.

Maybe president Bush should be more concerned about his own inadequacy.

Democratic majority suicide watch

In an absurdly titled article in the New York Times we learn that the Democrats are preparing to cave, yet again, before the fight even begins.

Democrats Newly Willing to Compromise on Iraq

With a mixed picture emerging about progress in Iraq, Senate Democratic leaders are showing a new openness to compromise as they try to attract Republican support for forcing at least modest troop withdrawals in the coming months.

This is the same group of Senate Democrats who voted 36-11 to rubber stamp George Bush's $120 billion emergency supplemental request last May.

16 of them later voted to legalize the secret NSA domestic spying program. The one that was judged an unconstitutional violation of the 4th amendment last August.

One wonders what more they could do in the name of compromise.

Democrats had been counting on more Republicans to make a clean break from the president after the summer recess, but the White House has managed, at least temporarily, to hold on to much of its support.

After explicitly telling the president that he merely needs to veto legislation to get his way, and showing the minority leader that he can pass his own bill by filibustering theirs; the Democrats thought the Republicans would now cooperate? This is the sort of political acumen that has led to a 20 point drop in their approval rating since January.

Some Democrats have concluded that their decision earlier this summer to thwart votes on alternatives left them open to criticism that they were being intransigent. Democrats had wanted to keep pressure on Republicans over the summer by denying them votes on Iraq. Now, with the recess over, Democratic leaders are more willing to allow alternatives to a hard withdrawal date to reach the floor to keep pressure on President Bush.

Mr. Levin and other Democrats said this week that they were reaching out to Republicans who had expressed reservations about Mr. Bush’s policy to generate momentum for a proposal by Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, to begin to remove at least a limited number of troops from Iraq by the end of the year.

Harry Reid has demonstrated that he simply doesn't know how to lead the Senate. Instead of pushing a Democratic Iraq strategy, he begins negotiations by starting with Republican John Warner's. (Warner's plan is to ask nicely if the president would please send a few troops home for Christmas.)

Democrats won in 2006 because a majority of Americans had tired of an ineffectual rubber stamp Republican Congress and their support for the war plan of the most incompetent president in American history. Democrats were elected to change course, not whine. They cannot wait for Republican conversions. They have the power of the purse and the power to block the president's agenda, but they need to actually use it. If they smack their supporters again they can kiss the Senate goodbye in 2008.

Keep your eye on the ball, Harry. Three strikes and you're out.

Fighting in Basra doesn't count

Apparently, it's not a civil war if the parties involved aren't religiously or ethnically distinct.

Among the most worrisome trends cited by the NIE was escalating warfare between rival Shiite militias in southern Iraq that has consumed the port city of Basra and resulted last month in the assassination of two southern provincial governors. According to a spokesman for the Baghdad headquarters of the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), those attacks are not included in the military's statistics. "Given a lack of capability to accurately track Shiite-on-Shiite and Sunni-on-Sunni violence, except in certain instances," the spokesman said, "we do not track this data to any significant degree."

Attacks by U.S.-allied Sunni tribesmen -- recruited to battle Iraqis allied with al-Qaeda -- are also excluded from the U.S. military's calculation of violence levels.

This definition, of course, requires that we recategorize a fairly famous war of our own.

George Bush won't accept a Labor victory in Australia?

A reporter from Sky News in Australia asks a simple question:

Speers: You've had a very close relationship with John Howard. You famously called him the ‘Man of Steel'. If he doesn't win the election and Kevin Rudd does become Prime Minister, given you have differences over such a big issue as Iraq will the alliance still be the same?

The correct answer is: "Australia is a close ally and we will work closely with the democratically elected government, no matter who the winner is."

Bush: I refuse to accept your hypothesis.

Speers: Well if, if he wins.

Bush: Well that's if. I mean you're asking me to answer a hypothetical. I'm...

Speers: But will the alliance change?

Bush: All I can tell you is is that I remember John Howard has been behind in polls before and he's won it, so I... certainly I'm not going to prejudge the, ah, the decision of the Australian people, and I will end up dealing with whomever and work hard to make sure that the Australian and U.S. relationship is good, but I don't buy into your hypothesis.

Speers: But essentially the relationship won't suffer if Kevin Rudd becomes Prime Minister?

Bush: Look, I'll be glad to deal with the situation. See, that's a loaded question.

Kevin Rudd is the leader of the opposition Australian Labor Party currently favored to defeat John Howard in the next election. Howard is so far behind in the polls that he may lose his own seat in parliament as well as his position as leader of Australia.

Americans may remember John Howard as the man who said that al Qaida is praying for an Obama victory.

Dick Cheney is suspected of arranging the secret plea bargain that freed Guantanamo detainee David Hicks (complete with temporary gag order) to aid in Howard's reelection effort.

Just spot me another $50 billion

This plan can't lose!

Like a compulsive gambler begging for a loan,George Bush is asking for a supplemental to his supplemental:

The revised supplemental would total about $200 billion, indicating that the cost of the war in Iraq now exceeds $3 billion a week. The bill also covers the far smaller costs of the war in Afghanistan. The Pentagon said recently that the cost of the Iraq war has surpassed $330 billion, while the war in Afghanistan has cost $78 billion.

The article quotes an unnamed White House official saying that the additional spending is "relatively noncontroversial".... it just keeps the war running.

Last year at this time, the headline was that the cost of the war in Iraq had reached $2 billion a week.

Here's what we've spent over the years:

$2.5 billion in 2002
$51 billion in 2003
$77.3 billion in 2004
$87.3 billion in 2005
$101.8 billion in 2006

Iraq is not a sovereign country

Nouri al Maliki, prime minister of Iraq, has begun striking back against the rising calls for his resignation, furious that foreigners are making demands of his government.

"Iraq is a sovereign country, and we will not allow anyone to talk about it as if it belongs to this country or that," Mr. Maliki said.

Unfortunately for both the people of Iraq and America, Iraq is not a sovereign country. A sovereign country is at the very least capable of ensuring its own internal security. It's almost universally agreed that the Iraqi government would cease to exist the day U.S. forces left the country.

Sovereignty is not like a gold star to be handed out as a prize to a good student. Paul Bremer's ridiculous stunt, transferring "sovereignty" to Iyad Allawi in a secret ceremony just before he hightailed it out of the country, only reinforced the point that even then Iraq was descending into chaos:

Allawi repeated earlier suggestions that soon he will declare martial law, impose curfews and suspend some civil liberties to battle the insurgents, a disparate mix of Islamic extremists and Iraqi nationalists. He said he would announce the new legal measures today.

U.S. administrator Paul Bremer gave a short speech and answered only two questions from the media before rushing off in a swarm of bodyguards.

Immediately afterward, Bremer was helicoptered to the Baghdad airport, boarded a military airplane and returned to the United States, ending his 13- month reign as the supreme ruler of Iraq.

Like all things done by this administration, bestowing sovereignty onto an unformed and ill-prepared government was nothing more than a P.R. stunt. An attempt to declare victory without actually doing the work needed to accomplish it.

Just the right number of troops in Iraq

It's strange how, these days, everyone realizes that the Iraq war is stretching the military to the breaking point.

After all it wasn't very long ago that senior administration officials were telling us that we had millions of troops to draw upon.

Condoleeza Rice, September 2005:

SECRETARY RICE: There were, I think as of today, more than 70,000 forces in the Louisiana area. So we have an active and reserve and guard force of 2.5 million people; 139,000 people are in Iraq. So this is just not an argument that holds water. What is the question is how we better coordinate and decide when federal resources of this magnitude are going to be brought to bear.

Donald Rumsfeld, January 2006:

"And there isn't any reason in the world why we shouldn't be able to maintain, with an active and reserve total force ... of over 2 million people, why we shouldn't be able to maintain 138,000" troops in Iraq, he said.

We didn't send 150,000 Americans to Iraq because that's all we had. We sent 150,000 Americans to Iraq because that was the perfect number. This was the operative argument right up until the elections last November.

Rumsfeld again, January 2005:

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, there’s of course a debate going on in our country as to whether or not the number of troops is the right number...

The one place there is not a varying opinion on that is among the general officers who are responsible for providing the U.S. military effort in Iraq. ... everyone of them believes that the goal is not to increase the number of troops because then we’d look more and more like an occupying force. We have more and more people that could be attacked. It takes more and more force protection people, more and more logistics support people. And their unanimous recommendation to the president and to me has been that what we want to do is to have right about this – we went from about 140,000 up to 153,000 during this election period, after the election bring down that number and work with the coalition over the period ahead to adjust the force levels downward towards whatever the security situation may or may not require.

From the Heritage Foundation, July 2006:

In Vietnam, the United States employed a flawed strategy referred to as “graduated pressure.” The idea behind this was that increasing levels of military force, applied incrementally, could ultimately push the North Vietnamese to some abstract breaking point, achieving victory for the U.S. and South Viet­nam. The strategy focused on mini­mizing costs rather than winning the war, relied on faulty assumptions about the enemy’s psychology, and, most of all, offered no real solutions about how to defeat the Communists other than essentially throwing more troops at the problem.