Powell Gets Real

In the recent forum with five former Secretaries of State held in Athens, Colin Powell made it very clear that the United States Military cannot maintain the presence in Iraq and must substantially draw down.

Meanwhile in Iraq, the government there has decided to root out militias who have seized control of portions of the country and the result is horrific battles in Basra and Baghdad, along with bombardments of the Green Zone, the location of the U.S. Embassy. President Bush was putting a positive spin on it saying that the mission is being accomplished by Iraqis. However, yet again, this mission is not being accomplished, Iraqi forces are pulling back, extending a 48-hour deadline to ten days and U.S. Forces have pushed up, including air and ground support. Shiites have hit the streets in the thousands decrying the government assault. The militias fighting now are the same ones that the U.S. could not defeat in the aftermath of the invasion.

The bulk of the fighting is in Basra, in the extreme south of Iraq. Our forces, involved in The Surge are mostly in Baghdad. What is needed is a southern surge, but we are out of personnel and equipment.

So remind me of what we are debating in terms of the Presidential election? Senator McCain, the result of the surge is not sufficient. Senators Obama and Clinton, your positions are not so courageous, we have to get out anyway.

We can no longer support the war, neither physically, nor economically, nor logically, nor morally. I thought that Colin Powell should have resigned rather than giving his speech to the UN when he was Secretary of State. I think if he had then we would not have gone to war. But, I think he knows the military. We need to have a plan, and soon, for letting the Iraqis sort out the mess that this Administration has handed them. In the Pottery Barn, you broke it, you own it, but they do not make you stay in the store. They clean up the mess.

Blame the Media for the Iraq Trap

Four thousand dead U.S. Military Personnel in Iraq, another milestone. The parents and other loved ones of number 3999 couldn’t care less.

The only honest reporting on television anymore, Frontline produced by WGBH in Boston, is doing a report on the deception that led to the war. They are only touching on what I think is the most important issue in the war, the lack of serious questioning by the media in the ramp-up to the war.

At the time, starting just after 9/11/01, I was back at CNN as a Senior International Editor at CNN, on a freelance, day-to-day basis, that wound up being a 2 1/2 year stint. I know of what I write.

Senior management wanted the war, “to win back lost ratings.” That is a quote from a speech that was mandatory for all employees held by the top two executives at the network. As I say, it was mandatory. This is no secret. Ask anyone who worked there at the time.

Sometime after I left CNN, which means after July 2004, I took part in a forum at The Southern Center for International Studies about the war in Iraq. The guests were Eason Jordan, my old colleague and boss, one of those presiding at that mandatory meeting, and Christopher Dickey, Mideast Regional Editor of Newseek. I asked them at the time whether the media had done their job as the fourth estate in the ramp-up to the war. Dickey said, “We were in a situation where you are either with us or with the terrorists” which caused the media to not question the evidence. Jordan said, “If you’re asking whether we asked enough questions, the answer is no.”

I was there, we didn’t question: the aluminum tubes, why Bush attributed the later debunked Niger Yellow cake claim to the Brits in his State of the Union Speech, how mobile labs could be used for both chemical and biological weapons which are two completely different processes, that Iraqi senior officers didn’t know a secure line from an unsecured line when discussing the movement of trucks that the Administration claimed were so important, carpetbaggers like Ahmed Chalabi, the drunk “Curveball,” or the notion of “a smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud.” Hell, we didn’t even question any of those after the fact.

So now we are led to believe that we are faced with a choice, Democratic Presidential Candidates who say they will pull out of Iraq, though their rhetoric is softening of late, and the Republican Senator John McCain, who confuses Iranian influence with Al Qaeda and is corrected by another carpetbagger, Senator Joe Lieberman. But is this really a choice? Will the Dems be able to do what they used to promise and from which they are ever so slowly pushing back? You think that the Foreign Affairs advisor to Senator Obama had to quit just because she said that Hillary Clinton is a monster? In the same interview she revealed that Senator Obama would not be able to follow through with his promise to pull out of Iraq, the centerpiece of his campaign. What else does he have to differentiate himself from Senator Clinton?

The media should be like a sentry dog, in the K9 Corps, looking for traps along the path on which the nation is walking. We did not do our job sniffing out this trap, the trap laid on 9/11/01. We let our nation step into a bear trap and now our choices, since we are alone on the path, are to either stay in the trap and die, or gnaw our foot off to get out, in which case we will bleed to death in the aftermath. There is no election choice that will save us from it. I’ve worked in it for 28 years and have heard it throughout, but this time it is true. Blame the media. Like a house on Palm Beach, the Fourth Estate has been sold and it has indeed, as Thomas Jefferson understood, led to our downfall.

Obama the Professor

In Senator Barack Obama’s speech on race he said, “Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough.” Professed values and ideals? Professed? We have been told that this speech was worked on for an entire weekend and into the wee hours the night before it was given and he left in the word professed? For a candidate who has been accused of being an unknown, why not just say my values and ideals. Perhaps he is too honest and is still actually an unknown.

Foul - Bill Bradley

Senator Bill Bradley has been on the air lately supporting Barack Obama. In his talking points, he consistently says that super delegates need to reflect the voice of the voters. His rationale though is the interesting part. He says that the super delegates risk the wrath of voters in their own districts during their next primary elections, should they vote their conscience if it differs from the popular vote.

That is the exact pressure that was facing senators when they had to vote on the authorization for the war. In an atmosphere where “you are either with us or you are with the terrorists,” that rationale, while morally reprehensible, was reality. So, this supporter of the man who claims that, if he had been in the Senate, he would have voted his conscience is saying that super delegates should consider their vote as a personal political expedient.

Obama Words Differ from Actions

Senator Obama is capable of getting elected. He proved that when he came to the senate. However how did he do once he got into office? In a New York Times article this week, his U.S. Senate record was closely examined and it might be a look into his possible presidency.

On an issue that is central to Senator Obama’s presidential campaign, Iraq, according to the Times article, “He disappointed some Democrats by not taking a more prominent role opposing the war — he voted against a troop withdrawal proposal by Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin in June 2006, arguing that a firm date for withdrawal would hamstring diplomats and military commanders in the field.”

The article went on to say, “He was cautious — even on the Iraq war, which he had opposed as a Senate candidate. He voted against the withdrawal of troops and proposed legislation calling for a drawdown only after he was running for president and polls showed voters favoring it.”

This week Senator Obama’s foreign policy advisor, Samantha Power, had to resign after making very negative comments about Senator Hillary Clinton and regarding Iraq she said the following, “He will of course not rely upon some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or as a US senator. He will rely upon a plan, an operational plan that he pulls together, in consultation with people who are on the ground, to whom he doesn’t have daily access now as a result of not being the president.”

Regarding the issue of Immigration, a priority for republican voters, the Times reported, “While some senators spent hours in closed-door meetings over immigration reform in early 2007, he dropped in only occasionally, prompting complaints that he was something of a dilettante.”

It went on to report, “Yet when the measure reached the floor, Mr. Obama distanced himself from the compromise, advocating changes sought by labor groups. The bill collapsed. To some in the bipartisan coalition, Mr. Obama’s move showed an unwillingness to take a tough stand.”
Not long ago, I read about a move Senator Obama made to require nuclear facilities to report leaks, based on a case in his home Illinois. The gist of that article was that he was unable to get traction under his bill and it died, after he promised his constituents to take action.

Bottom line here is that electability and effectiveness are two different things. And once you get past his campaign rhetoric about the issues, you find that his actions, as in the Iraq war, are very different than his words.