Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) announced his intention to reintroduce legislation reinstating the military draft in the US.  Rangel last introduced such a bill in 2003.  It was defeated when the Pentagon insisted the all-volunteer force was both capable of and sufficient to the tasks at hand - namely, fighting multiple wars on multiple fronts with woefully inadequate numbers.  The president's refusal to put his money where his mouth was - namely, refusing to ask sacrifices of Americans for fear of upsetting the applecart he carefully balanced on deception, hubris and willful blindness also contributed.  And finally, extrapolating from my own circle of acquaintances, the draft, as an idea, is not popular, since the American people, as a whole, were able to take away slightly more of a Vietnam lesson than the president's slack-jawed revelation "we'll win as long as we don't leave."

Rangel posits hawks would support the war less forcefully if they were forced to give up the lives of their own privileged children in furtherance of Bush's neocon folly rather than relying upon other people kids to do the fighting and dying for their blustering, contemptuous rhetoric.  Rangel notes, of course, that many of the volunteers is our current all-volunteer force are there because they have few, if any, other viable choices in pursuing a living wage which provides basic healthcare without sacrificing little luxuries like food and shelter. 

I have two boys.  Though they are yet young, the draft is a prickly, personal issue for me.  Should they eventually choose national service, I would support their efforts to the best of my ability.  I do not, however, want them sacrificed on the altar of myopic arrogance by stiff-necked, bull-headed priests of other people's accountability. 

I'm sure Rangel's betting on a similar reaction from the politically powerful who still support staying the course, in whatever pretty phrase they care to wrap it today.  While I appreciate Rangel's frustration, and understand - even share a belief in - his underlying point, I fear that the practical application of his theory will not lead to the desired outcome, as the politically connected will always have a way to shield their own children from the sacrifice they ask of other's.  Our current leadership, including both the president and vice-president, provide ample proof of that.

Somewhere between 50-150 Iraqis were kidnapped from the Higher Education Ministry building earlier today (WaPo here and here, and Reuters here).  Reports indicate the gunmen may have been dressed as police, and may have separated Sunni from Shia before focusing on taking Sunni men and possibly heading for Sadr City.

As noted in the second linked article, the assault on the education offices came "just hours after a U.S. assault on the northwest Baghdad Shiite district of Shula," which happens to be a stronghold of Shi-ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, sponsor of the Mahdi Army militia and the man who just two weeks ago convinced Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to get rid of US checkpoints around Sadr City (WaPo) - or so many believe.

Higher Education Minister Abed Theyab has "ordered the closure of all universities in the capital until the government could ensure a safe and secure environment for lecturers and students" (Irin News).  The academic community has been repeatedly targeted by the militias.  Driving out and/or silencing (but preferably the former) secular educators is one of the vital steps in establishing and consolidating an oppressive theocracy.

(CNN)  SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, the worst thing to happen to the Pentagon in 25 years, is resigning, and the president, apparently shocked into momentary reality by last night's giant, nationwide repudiation of everything BushWorld holds dear, is accepting that resignation.

CNN says rumors point to Robert Gates, former CIA director, as Rummy's successor.  Well, more than rumors.  The president just nominated him.

I'm positively giddy.

Armchair Generalist found an LA Times article outlining a viable, though distasteful to the president, strategy for extracting ourselves from Iraq while reducing the ongoing chaos.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the outline involves diplomatic normalization with Iran, at least insofar as our mutual interests lie (and we do have some common interests), which alone will make the plan difficult even to pitch, let alone implement.

As the Generalist notes:

There are alternatives which will work. What we need are political leaders who have the gumption to propose them. This current cast of Republican yes-men aren't the ones to do it. That's why we need a Democratic Senate as well as a Democratic House. Help make it happen next week.

Amen.

A spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), chairman of the House Armed Service Committee, told the NY Times that recent legislation squashing the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction on October1, 2007, was not politically motivated.

Right.

Stuart W. Bowen , Jr., a Republican lawyer, has been heading up that office since its inception in 2004.  His mission - to examine reconstruction money spent in Iraq and report his findings back to Congress.  The creation of the office, and installation of Bowen , is one of the few oversight measures Congress has taken with regard to the Iraq conflict, and Mr. Bowen, unlike most Republican appointees, actually does his job:

[Bowen's] investigations...have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces.

Which is probably why he is being fired.  I imagine he was expected to publicize puppies, unicorns and rainbows, not uncover graft, corruption and incompetence.  And this is payback.

Payback that actually shocks some lawmakers, who were unaware that Hunter's office had inserted the language into the military authorization bill prior to passing it to the White House for signature.  Senators Susan Collins (R-ME; Chair, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs) and John Warner (R-VA; Chair, Senate Armed Services Committee) both seemed surprised by the language and have announced their joint intention to mitigate the order.

But back to Hunter, who thinks he's got a shot at the presidency in '08, on killing the only functional oversight in Iraq (emphasis mine):

The idea, [said his spokesman], was simply to return to a non-wartime footing in which inspectors general in the State Department, the Pentagon and elsewhere would investigate American programs overseas.

Huh.  When did the war end?  Did we win?

John Kerry needed to apologize for the accidental bungling of a joke about Bush that inadvertently cast aspersions on rank and file troops, and he did.  Good.

The Bush administration, having nothing better to do, pounced on his remarks, in order to deflect attention from their complete ineptitude at governance to Kerry's inability to tell a scripted joke, as anyone with half a brain knew they would.  Par for the course.

But on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), self-confessed believer that Donald Rumsfeld is the "best thing to happen to the Pentagon in 25 years" took Kerry's error in speech an intentional step further and blamed the generals on the ground in Iraq  for the administration's total incompetence in directing our continuously devolving war:

House Majority Leader John Boehner: Wolf, I understand that, but let's not blame what's happening in Iraq on Rumsfeld.
Wolf Blitzer: But he's in charge of the military.
House Majority Leader John Boehner: But the fact is the generals on the ground are in charge and he works closely with them and the president.
Source: US Newswire

Boehner doesn't have the excuse of either bungling a joke or misspeaking.  If Kerry's accidental comment merited an apology, which it did, then Boehner's willfully blind defense of the incompetence that is Rumsfeld, particularly in light of retired generals' multiple avowals that the mulish Defense Secretary listens neither to grounded advice nor to any reason contrary to his own emphatic opinion, is inexcusable.  He owes the generals an apology for his deceitful exculpation of executive inadequacy achieved through shifting the blame from its rightful owners to the guys stuck with carrying out bad orders, he owes the American people an apology for insisting the misguided Rumsfeld is somehow beneficial to the country, and he owes an apology to his constituents for allowing partisan hackery to interfere with his duty to protect their interests.

Unfortunately, whereas Democrats are lately often characterized as weak for being thoughtful people who, even if belatedly, attempt to do the right thing with respect to this disastrous war, Republicans see dishonesty and intransigence as laudable virtues, rendering an apology from Boehner, on even the most superficial of levels, likely a physical impossibility.

In a country where blind partisanship is held in higher regard than ethical assessment, no wonder we have stunted adolescents for leaders.

John Kerry (D-MA) made a serious misstep yesterday when speaking at Pasadena City College.  After a series of one-liners regarding the Bush administration, he told the assembled students to study hard and make the most of their education, because if they don't they'll "end up stuck in Iraq."

Oy vey.

Kerry later said he fumbled the joke, garbling it in such a way that changed the meaning.  A spokeswoman said the prepared joke (as written in the speech) was meant to be:

Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.

That's a different joke than the one Kerry ended up blurting out.

Right wing news sources are in an uproar over Kerry's comments, and the President, playing to a friendly crowd, sputtered out that Kerry needs to take it back because the troops are "plenty smart."  For his part, Kerry refuses to apologize, maintaining that the joke was meant to be about Bush, that the criticism of Bush is valid, and that it is Bush who needs to apologize to the troops for sending them into a war he had no clue how to fight.

I agree with Sen. Kerry on all but one point - that he does not need to apologize.  My friends on the left will probably be outraged by this, but I have my reasons, and it's not about fighting versus caving, but about choosing a battle we can win over one that offers, at best, a Pyrrhic victory which casts us not as the people who value the lives of our troops, but as the people who secretly disdain them - even though we know that is not true.  Truth matters not one whit to this adminstration, however, and the battle now is not over truth, but over marketing.

I know the Army has lowered its recruiting standards over the last year, and I've read statistics on what and infusion of Class IV recruits does to overall aptitude, and it's true that the least educated have few options and that military service is one of the few living wage avenues open to them, but none of that changes the fact that insulting the intelligence of every single service man and woman is a bad idea and is causing a political imbroglio that never needed to exist.

Kerry regrets not fighting the Swift Boaters who attacked him during his presidential run with more vigor, and I think he harbors a deep and genuine disdain for Bush.  I can appreciate his desire to stand up and fight back, I can.  I wish he had done it some time ago.  But this issue is not the issue; this stand is not the stand.  He does himself no favors here because the hard right cannot even hear his follow up over the din of their own manufactured outrage - contrived just in time for the midterm elections.

Believe me, I wish Kerry had gotten the joke right.  The Bush administration's collective failure to study and prepare for their war of choice is a more concrete insult to the troops than Kerry's "botched" joke.  Whereas Kerry insulted military intelligence and hurt some feelings, Bush et al insulted the entire nation's intelligence, continues to do it on a daily basis, got thousands of people maimed and killed, and intends to keep on keepin' on because the lives of the individual troops don't mean squat in their insulated, segregated, privileged, mean little existences.

But now Bush gets to rally around "plenty smart" troops as if mouthing a defense of their collective intelligence makes up for sending them to die for the lie du jour in his own private war. 

Unfortunately, I think Kerry should apologize for misspeaking.  I know it won't do his future presidential hopes much good to apologize, but, frankly, I don't know that not apologizing does his hopes any good, either.  Maybe he should just let go of those hopes at this point.  Regardless, we need to get the focus off of how a windsurfer thinks troops are stupid and back on to how a privileged class of neo-con elites think the entire world is nothing but a stupid game of Risk, with people as plastic playing pieces: sometimes frustrating, sometimes entertaining, but ultimately comfortably disposable.

---------------

Update: According to Reuters, Kerry did apologize on this morning's Imus in the Morning show.  I don't care for Imus, so I neither watch nor listen to him and therefore missed the apology, to wit:

I said it was a botched joke. Of course, I'm sorry about a botched joke.

Better than Rush Limbaugh's non-apology for aping the uncontrollable movements associated with medication for advanced Parkinson's disease, but probably still not quite enough to make the kerfluffle go away.  Maybe if he'd managed it yesterday.  Today, I imagine many will demand something a little more strongly worded.

The People's Channel for the Dissemination of Newspeak, otherwise known as the Department of Defense PR campaign.  Per the Houston Chronicle:

In a memo obtained by the Associated Press, Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said new teams of people will "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and "correct the record."

Lucky us, we get to have our very own state-run news (again - Armstrong Williams, etc), just like our best friends China, North Korea and certain other countries where those in power spoon-feed their people with the "news" they want them to hear.

According to Rumsfeld, the media reporting bad news out of Iraq is "the thing that keeps [him] up at night."  It's not the fact that he is responsible for the failure, or that people are dying, or even that North Korea has tested one bomb and is likely to test another.  No, Rumsfeld is up at night because the media insist on broadcasting the realities of war rather than focusing on whatever rainbows and puppies the administration can cobble together in the green zone.

I imagine this propaganda campaign will help Rumsfeld sleep, which is unfortunate.  A man responsible for so many deaths should be up at night trying to figure out how to staunch the flow of blood, not the flow of information.

Reuters reports that Democratic Chair Howard Dean believes an immediate pull out from Iraq is unlikely, even if the Democrats win control of Congress.  Given that we will still have President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld in charge of foreign policy and the military, I'd say that's a fair assessment.  Beyond that, it is currently the only viable option.

Much as I would like to bring our troops home, the gross mismanagement of this war makes that impossible for the foreseeable future.  Gradual redeployment to the periphery, in whatever countries will tolerate our presence, is both more likely and more prudent at this juncture in the hostilities.  We cannot completely extricate ourselves - we have both a moral and strategic obligation to remain involved in the country, albeit at a distance.  Moral because it was our preemptive war that destroyed Iraq's political and physical infrastructure, leading to the civil war we see today, and physical because that war paved the way for terrorist organizations to take deep root in the country.  We must do our part to mitigate the damage we have done in the region, both to its inhabitants and to our national interest, and that will require that we stay on in some capacity to monitor and contain the violence.

Dean suggests Congress, depending on the recommendations of James Baker's Iraq Study Group, may pressure the Executive for redeployment, which is, unfortunately, probably our best, most effective course of action given the mess we have made of the situation.

Duncan Hunter (R-CA), who is making noises about running for president in 2008, insists that the US must remain in Iraq until the government is fully functional and able to keep people safe:

"Now, we did that in Germany, we did that in Japan, we did that in the Philippines," after World War Two, Hunter told Fox.

I hate to break it to Mr. Hunter, but that's part of the problem.  Yes, we stayed in Germany, Japan and the Philippines until their governments were restored.  And then we stayed a little longer.  In fact, we're still there.  And for all our politicians may consider the Middle East behind the times, they are also well aware of the fact that we never left those countries.  They don't actually want to be in the same position as Germany, Japan, and the Philippines, with a permanent US presence inside their borders and on their sacred lands.  This national tendency of ours to remain well beyond our welcome contributed to the initial resistance in Iraq and continues to feed the flames of insurgency.  Hunter's suggestion is, in fact, a rallying cry for the opposition: they must fight the US with everything they have or the US will never leave - just look at Germany, Japan and the Philippines for examples.

We cannot leave completely, yet our simple presence (even if we holed up in bunkers and never came out) compounds the violence because militia leaders and others can point to our history, and to comments like Hunter's, and draw very plausible conclusions.  It's like doing basic math, 2+2=4, and they will use that math against us for as long as we play into the assumptions.

[Hunter] accused Democrats of fearing a Vietnam-like quagmire, which he said was unrealistic.

History, like logic, is obviously not Hunter's strong suit.

While I never favored this preemptive war, once we were there I - along with every other ethical citizen of our country - hoped we would achieve "victory" comparatively quickly, with minimal loss of life on either side, and then stand down, leaving Iraq with a viable future as an independent state, whether modelled on our Republic or some other relatively free ideal.  Lack of adequate planning and exit strategy, lack of understanding of regional politics and impact of historical US actions made that impossible.  People like Hunter, with their Pollyanna view of US history and its perception abroad, particularly in the Middle East, make that more impossible with each passing day.

I still hold out hope that thoughtful heads will find an adequate solution to the problems we created for ourselves in Iraq, but Hunter and his ilk, with their insistence on modelling the Iraqi occupation after Pacific Reconstruction, are not those thoughtful heads.  Blinders are part of the problem.  We need leaders who know a tunnel when they see it and will try to find a way out, not those who think the surrounding darkness is a political trick played by nefarious liberals looking to steal a little pork.

"Donald Rumsfeld is the best thing that's happened to the Pentagon in 25 years," said House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) on ABC Sunday's This Week.

Boehner must have started hearing voices.  One cannot blame him overmuch for cracking, I suppose, having (after the departure of the indicted Tom DeLay) presided over one of the most corrupt Houses on record, embroiled as is he is in the Foley scandal, with a boss who cannot remember having a single conversation about a 52-year old man chasing high school boys in the halls of Congress, and facing the possible loss of his once locked-down seat as a result.  During his 16-year Congressional tenure, Boehner has had to abandon principles of smaller government and fiscal responsibility, ideals which it seems he held fairly dear until approximately 2000.  For any person with even a tinge of conscience, repudiating one's life work in pursuit of power can cause some side-effects, but this praise in defense of gross incompetence means Boehner's break with reality is complete.

To give credit where it is due, Donald Rumsfeld may be the only Republican currently in power who actually believes every word he says, and sticks by it no matter the fallout.  That does not change the fact, however, that his belief - that a faster, lighter, more technologically-focused military which abandoned "old-war" principles would be more efficient, more effective, and more globally unstoppable than a heavily equipped traditional fighting force - is accurate.  His belief has, in point of fact, been proven wrong. 

You cannot fight two wars without the appropriate manpower, which we do not have and Rumsfeld does not want.  You cannot destroy the political, commercial, security, and physical infrastructure of a country and expect them to recover immediately and without assistance, as Rumsfeld did in Iraq.  You cannot ignore the values and culture of the people you have "liberated" while establishing your own little fiefdom in their capital and not expect some backlash, as Rumsfeld allowed Bremer to do.  You cannot expect even a nation of backward barbarians to hail as heroes their conquerors and occupiers, particularly when those conquerors and occupiers torture those who are left - and the Iraqis, as a population, were never backward barbarians. 

Rumsfeld had no grasp of the internal politics of Iraq, the deep divisions between Sunni and Shiite, as evinced by his assumption that being rid of their dictator the people would bond and band together and rise up a federalist society.  He has no concept, obviously, of the history and impact of religion on the middle east, if he can assume that a conquered and occupied Muslim country will lay roses at our feet just because it worked that way in Europe.

If it contradicts the ideas he has cemented in his head, he refuses to accept counsel from those who actually do this for a living.  And since those who actually do this for a living apparently tend to disagree, on some level, with every stagnant pool this man imagines is "forward thinking," that means he refuses all advice - even when the heavens open up and proclaim him wrong.  He alienates his generals, micromanages his staff, silences even respectful dissent, and mulishly, intractably insists on following his singularly conceived non-plan.

He abandoned proven military strategy in favor of his own misguided flights of fancy, he ignored an exit strategy based solely on his assertion that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he was right, he sent our troops unprepared to fight a war he neither understood nor planned for, he continues with his losing strategy because he can neither admit failure nor make strategic adjustments.  Rumsfeld, for all he likes to think of himself as ahead of his time, is naught but a thousand pound sloth with delusions of agility, unable to function in a world not of his own creation, his nimbleness restricted to the dreams in his head.

In the interview, Boehner also said, "I think Donald Rumsfeld's the only man in American who knows where the bodies are buried at the Pentagon, has enough experience to transform that institution."

The Rumsfeld revolution hasn't worked, however, and unlike the New Coke experiment, we cannot just slap the old label back on the can and call it fixed.

It may well be that Rumsfled is the only man in America who knows where the bodies are buried at the Pentagon.  Someone should show him where the bodies are buried in Iraq, in Arlington, in Barrancus, in plots next to their parents or spouses.  Donald Rumsfeld needs to see the real bodies, not just the political ones.

We cannot eat cake if we have no money for bread.

Well they've definitely got a new strategy on Iraq, if not in it...

Have lackeys make statements to appease most of the world (those who were against the invasion to begin with, those who are frustrated with the lack of progress, those who have concluded the invasion was a mistake but don't know how to get out, those who own cats, etc), while the White House continues to officially insist that no significant changes to overall strategy are either necessary or forthcoming - this for the 36% of people who may still believe that Iraq actually had WMD at the time of our invasion.

Given all the chatter about "October Surprises," that this public undershift comes in October is not surprising.  The Sybilization of the administration is meant to satisfy two diametrically opposed points of view while attempting to do as it has always done and remain unfettered by bothersome plans, particularly of the viable or concrete persuasions.  Empty rhetoric is apparently ever so much more effective at winning wars than accurate intelligence, honest and educated assessments or troops on the ground.

Anyone tuned into the news this morning has probably heard by now that President Bush finally allowed a comparison between Iraq and Vietnam, agreeing in an ABC interview with columnist Thomas Friedman that the violence level in Iraq is "the jihadist equivalent of the Tet offensive."  Said the President:

"He could be right. There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election."

The internets, particularly left-leaning blogs, have been buzzing with the news.  Morning programs led off with the soundbite.  It's everywhere, as well it should be.  An acknowledgement of the existence of reality from the Fantasy King is international headline news.

But wait.  He didn't really mean what we think he means.

Apparently, GWB got in trouble with his handlers when he returned to the White House from last night's interview, because the line this morning is that

the president had not been making the analogy that Iraq had reached a similar turning point. Instead, he was saying that insurgents were possibly increasing violence to try to influence coming U.S. elections. (Reuters)