Give up the NeoCon Dream

post from The Newshoggers on 21 May 2007 09:50:00 AM. © The Newshoggers

The Pentagon has plans to invade Canada. It has plans to evacuate the staff and Marine guards at the US Embassy to the Vatican if the Pope decides to get unruly. It has plans to land forces in Cuba once Castro kicks the bucket. It has plans for many things that are beyond the laughable and absurd. These plans will never be implemented but somewhere, someone took the time to draw up a basic plan for most contingencies.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. I want my national security apparatus to have an active scenario generation capacity both for threat assessment and to give the smart majors and lt. colonels at the Army War College interesting things to write about in their thesis or dissertations. I get worried when there is not a plan or at least a skeleton of a plan put together for a very plausible scenario as that illustrates blindness and deliberate refusal of acknowledging the plausibility of a particular course of action.

NPR is reporting that the US military has NO PLAN or planning process in place for a full and complete withdrawal of US military forces from Iraq. Instead the largest drawdown of US ground forces from Iraq envisions leaving a 40,000 to 50,000 man garrison in several large bases.

carefully worded public statement this month from Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Testifying before the Senate, he was asked if the Pentagon has made any contingency plans to withdraw from Iraq.

"We have published no orders directing the planning for the overall withdrawal of forces," Pace replied. "We do have ongoing replacements of forces, and we do change the size of the force over time so that that system is available to either plus-up or draw down, but we have published no orders saying come up with a complete plan for total drawdown."....

A series of military installations could be maintained around Iraq, with a total of total of 30,000 to 40,000 U.S. troops, for a long period of time ? maybe a few decades. There are currently about 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

The bases would be located in various strategic locations, ones that served by air landing strips, for instance. The bases would be sealed and U.S. forces wouldn't be on patrols as they are now.

Any political arrangement that is not a US supported authoritarian dictatorship will mean that internal Iraqi political support for long term US bases with a division or more of ground troops and a couple of wings of fighter bombers will be nearly nil. This means US logistics routes will be questionable and under attack whenever a political party needs to demonstrate its toughness and indepdence. This means US bases and flightlines will be mortarted and rocketed on a regular basis. This means more of the same.

More of the same has not worked for us. As Kevin Drum noted earlier this week Iraq has been a fundraising and recruiting boon for Al-Qaeda as the US invasion, occupation and humiliation of a major Arab state reinforces the meta-narrative that Al-Qaeda has been trying to sell for the past fifteen years. The occupation of Iraq inflames the general Arab population and reinforces its sense of powerlessness that is bolstered by US support for other authoritarian regimes in the region. A multi-decade long occupation of Iraq as that is what stationing 40,000 US troops in three or four major airbases will be seen as an occupation and not a territorial integrity assistance mission, does not help the US become safer.

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http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/2007/05/give-up-neocon-dream.html

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Nancy Reagan: Reagan would be
‘worried’

post from Think Progress on 21 May 2007 09:48:00 AM. © Think Progress

about Iraq and the state of the country today. In the “Good Morning America” interview, the former First Lady agrees with a recent Time magazine article by Karen Tumulty that noted, “The principles that propelled the [conservative] movement have either run their course, or run aground, or been abandoned by Reagan’s legatees.” Watch it: [...]

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http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/21/nancy-reagan-reagan-would-be-worried/

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Why The Selling Out Conversation Matters

post from Eschaton on 21 May 2007 09:42:00 AM. © Eschaton

Judging by the reaction of some commenters there seems to be a wide perception that this is just some college-level conversation about who's keeping it real. There's a bit of that, admittedly, but there are larger issues at play. The music industry is going through a radical change right now, due to technology changes and other issues, and it isn't quite clear what the next equilibrium outcome will be. The revenue, marketing, and distribution models are all changing and what they will finally evolve into isn't yet set in stone. There's no inevitable outcome, both due to uncertainty about future technological developments, as well as the fact that policy (copyright law and DMCA, net neutrality and other internet policies, etc...) could play an important role.

The internet provides for the incredible possibility for musicians to market and distribute their own stuff, though there are limits to that so I think it's important to encourage, not discourage, any other alternative methods of marketing and revenue generation.

The Future of Music Coalition has a bunch of info on these issues.

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http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_05_20_archive.html#5147899333463609911

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Money From Iraq Is Funding Al Qaeda Resurgence In
Pakistan

post from Crooks and Liars on 21 May 2007 09:38:24 AM. © Crooks and Liars

Via L.A. Times:A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama bin Laden has produced no significant leads on his whereabouts, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of Al Qaeda operatives and money into Pakistan's tribal territories, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation. In one [...]

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http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/05/21/money-from-iraq-is-funding-al-qaeda-resu
rgence-in-pakistan/

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Kmareka Headlines: May 21, 2007

post from Kmareka.com on 21 May 2007 09:25:00 AM. © Kmareka.com

High Schools Students Compete Worldwide for Math and Science: A contest originating in Montpelier, Vermont, is bringing together students internationally to collaborate for math and science excellence and innovation. The Tragic Consequences of Agent Orange Continue: A study find that men exposed to agent orange are at higher risk for prostate cancer. Getting Rid of Ritalin: [...]

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http://kmareka.com/?p=1196

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Wanker of the Day

post from Eschaton on 21 May 2007 09:20:00 AM. © Eschaton

Fred Hiatt, for publishing that crap.

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http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_05_20_archive.html#6869119957336409350

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The Daily Rant

post from My Left Wing - Front Page on 21 May 2007 09:16:14 AM. © My Left Wing - Front Page

In limbo in the major entries in my vast catalog of frustrations:

1) Still haven't gotten banking information from Wooden Headed Lawyer;

2) Waiting for the final denial of transportation for Younger Son next year, so I can start the process of getting into mediation;

3) Unable to contact either of the involved sisters yesterday, so don't know what's going on with the Dadster.

Jeez, I feel like such a fucking whiner.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=16778

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Are They Kidding

post from Eschaton on 21 May 2007 09:07:00 AM. © Eschaton

No, they aren't kidding. A key feature of wingnuttia is an inability to distinguish between issues which are important to them and issues which are actually popular.

Having said that, a couple of years ago I would've thought immigration would have been a winning issue for them. I was wrong, both because a split within the GOP between the money faction and the nativist faction ensured they'd screw it up and because public hostility to immigration and immigrants was much lower than I thought.

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http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_05_20_archive.html#5374095946978847835

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Information often is not what it seems

post from AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth on 21 May 2007 09:04:00 AM. © AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth

This article makes a simple but frequently overlooked point: in a situation like Iraq, information -- even regarding straightforward metrics and benchmarks -- varies widely depending on who is providing and/or interpreting it.

As Congress and the American public begin to ask for tangible and quantitative measures of whether the troop increase in Iraq is creating improvement or presiding over failure, it would be wise to remember the kind of place where the United States is dispatching ? metaphorically, at least ? its statisticians.

Iraq is the place where there are still wildly conflicting estimates of something as fundamental as how many civilians have died as a result of the war. It is a place where some government officials will swear that there are 348,000 wonderfully trained, motivated and equipped Iraqis in the security forces and other officials will tell you that most of those troops and police either have questionable loyalties, lack equipment or simply do not always report for duty. The precision is very important: 348,000, according to Wednesday?s update from the Pentagon. Or, perhaps, hundreds of thousands less.

With so little access to the ground truth, it is extraordinarily difficult to evaluate the current situation, let alone what the trends are. Many observers, especially within the administration, desperately want their positions to be right and their programs to be successful, which biases their view -- often to the detriment of Americans' understanding of the facts. Further, another significant problems is that people become adept at telling U.S. officials what they want to hear, rather than reality.

How can a single country look so kaleidoscopically different depending on the point of view? Part of the answer is clearly that competing political entities strain with all their might to see a reality that fits their convictions ? and that includes official entities that are determined to show progress . . .

Another difficulty for the United States is the remarkable weakness American officials seem to have for people who say what Americans want to believe about whatever country they happen to be in. The effect has been obvious at least since ?The Quiet American? by Graham Greene, set in 1950s Vietnam, and Iraq has been fertile ground for this particular brand of bad information.

It is increasingly difficult to get good intelligence, reliable information on macro-level metrics, or even updates on the political process. The obfuscation will only increase as the administration comes under more criticism about the war; attempts to show progress will become the most important part of keeping the war going. If you think the administration will ever admit that progress simply isn't happening, you're crazy. And with the situation so messy and confused, it will be hard to sort fact from fiction.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Americablog/~3/118469906/information-often-is-not-
what-it-seems.html

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ThinkFast: May 21, 2007

“Two intelligence assessments from January 2003 predicted that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and subsequent U.S. occupation of Iraq could lead to internal violence and provide a boost to Islamic extremists and terrorists in the region.” They will be released as part of the “Phase II” Senate report on pre-war intelligence.In an op-ed, Govs. Arnold [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/21/thinkfast-may-21-2007/

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