Surge Assessment: Life Cycle of a Timeline

Do I hear a "January '09," anybody?

Related: When September Ends: A "vast metaphysical question."

Ted Kennedy, from today's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the nominations of Admiral Mullen and General Cartwright for chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

We had, in January, when this surge was started -- Secretary Gates said, "It's viewed as a temporary surge."

In February Secretary Gates told the Senate Appropriations Committee, "I think General Petraeus believes they'll have a pretty good idea whether this surge is working, probably, by early summer."

And in April, Secretary Gates told us, "More time would be needed. I think it's been General Petraeus's view all along, sometime, at some point, during the summer -- mid- to late summer, perhaps -- he has thought that he would be in a position to evaluate whether the plan was working."

In May the president said even more time would be necessary. He told us General Petraeus said it would be at least the end of the summer before we can assess the impact of this operation; the Congress ought to give Petraeus' plan a chance to work.

A week later, Secretary Gates said the administration would make their evaluation of the situation of the surge in September.

On May 9th, Lieutenant General Ray T. Odierno, the commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, said the surge needs to go through the beginning of next year for sure.

Then, on July 20th, General Odierno again admitted that it would be at least November before the military could provide a real assessment.

A Welcome, if Fleeting, Respite

Some good news from Iraq

But one can always hope it will have some small unifying effect on the country. You never know.

Filipino "contractors" in Iraq: OK, this is bad...

... so maybe I owe at least one German high school student a teary apology, after hearing about what is essentially hijacked slave labor being used to build the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, being effectively (up until this point) swept under the rug by the State Department's I.G.

And hearing about people dying from formaldehyde exposure in FEMA trailers doesn't boost my patriotism very much.

Not sure what else to say, except, once again, dammit, I voted for Gore (and Kerry.) I know we're not perfect (ahem, what country is?) but who knew how fast we could fall in 6 1/2 years?

Pat Tillman Update

It may be worse than we even thought.

U.S. exchange students in Germany moonlight as scapegoats (I mean goodwill ambassadors)

I went through the checklist:

Did I vote for Bush? No, not once.
Pro-war in Iraq? Nope, was out carrying "No Blood for Oil" signs, even when Hillary was still game for it.
The death penalty? No.
Gun control? Yeah, pretty much. (No comment please, Mr. X. ;)
Climate protection? Yep, for it.
I love organic grocery stores,
and to sweeten the deal, I'm not even from Texas.

What more do they want from me?
I'm kinda afraid to ask.

Ah well, I'm too old to be an exchange student, so maybe I shouldn't take it personally, but I am headed on vacation soon to two of Germany's next-door neighbors (who have, from all accounts, not much more love for us Yanks) so I guess I'm feeling a little defensive.

Quote du Jour: Bud Cummins on his old boss

on "Hardball" today with a giddy Chris Matthews (admittedly Cummins, one of the fired U.S. attorneys, has reason to be bitter, but I think he summed up Gonzales' present situation pretty well.)

I think that his credibility is gone. It's partly -- it's clearly partly his fault. I could probably list a dozen things he's done that makes him deserving of losing his credibility. Part of it's politics. The Democrats are now on him like piranha.

But the bottom line is, he has no credibility left. And he's like a boxer that can't keep his hands up anymore but he won't fall down. Somebody needs to throw in the towel.

Gonzo Testimony

Three questions on the TSP memo and Gonzales' blatantly false statements at yesterday's hearing:

1. What were you thinking, Al?
2. Did you really think Chuck Schumer wasn't going to follow up on those documents?
3. Who's pulling the strings here, and what are they smoking? (OK, four questions ;)
   

Time Magazine: Who Dies in Harry Potter? (No Spoiler Alert)

Here's a refreshing perspective on the Potter series... once again, without any spoilers, for those of you who are still waiting for the book to arrive in the flesh (so to speak.)

Who Dies in Harry Potter?

Gee, that's the nicest thing a U.S. general ever said about Saddam...

... and he's not alive to hear it.

from the commandant of the Marine Corps, General Conway's remarks at the National Press Club yesterday.

There is sectarian violence. But if you talk to Iraqis, they would say, hey, my wife's a Sunni; my father-in-law is a Sunni -- or their father-in-law might even be a Shia, you know. I mean, they're just that intermarried.

And Saddam demanded one thing. That was that whatever you are, whatever sect you are, that's second; you're an Iraqi first. And I think we need to be able to capitalize on that.

Speaking of sleep...

... who's live-blogging the Senate slumber party?
Don't look at me... Maybe it's just the humidity of mid-July in D.C., but politics has been making me yawn this past week or so, as my spotty posts seem to indicate.
Wake me up when there's a chance in heck of getting any meaningful legislation passed.

The Wonderful World of Sleep

Interesting program on the latest research into various aspects and functions of sleep:

WNYC Radio Lab: Sleep

Biden Starts the Hard Sell

No, not his candidacy for the Democratic nomination.
He's begun a campaign, on the Senate floor today, to win Republican votes for a timely exit strategy, to be passed, if not before the August break, then by September.
False starts and incoherent flourishes aside, he makes a good speech, and he knows his stuff; gotta give him that.

The question is, do we continue to send our kids into the middle of a meat grinder, based on a policy that is fundamentally flawed?

I don't think there's a dozen Republicans on that side of the aisle who agree with the president's strategy. Nor do I believe, if the president had followed the recommendation of the senator from Delaware and, then, the senator from Arizona, back before there was a civil war, to put enough troops in to solidify the situation on the ground, we might not be here.

The rationale he offered and I offered, if I'm not mistaken, was, Mr. President, you don't have a strategy. The secretary of defense -- these are not a bunch of dead-enders. They're not a bunch of thugs. They are thugs. But you've got a big problem, Mr. President.

If I'm not mistaken, I heard the senator from Arizona make those speeches four years ago. I heard him, along with me, call for more troops, back then, in order to get out sooner.

We predicted there would be a civil war if we didn't gain control. Surprise, surprise, surprise. We have a civil war.

Look, I understand the political dilemmas that we find ourselves in when we have a president of our own party we have a problem with. I've been there. It never kept me from talking up, speaking up.

You recall, my friend from California, as presiding member, to use the trite expression, I beat President Clinton up and about the head, as they say in the neighborhood where I come from, to use force in Bosnia, to end a genocide.

The president didn't agree with me. I was told, calm down; don't put him in that spot. I'm accustomed to taking on presidents of my own party. And I know it's hard. It's hard.

But I tell you what. Name me any one of the people who were quoted here who thinks the policy we're pursuing now makes any sense.

Look. Ever since the Democrats took control of the Congress back in January, we've been working to build pressure on the administration, and quite bluntly, on our Republican colleagues, to change course in Iraq.

Because I've reached the point, Madam President -- I think the president is impervious to information. There's a great expression -- I believe it was Oliver Wendell Holmes -- he was referring to prejudice. And the president is not prejudiced, but it'll make the point.

He said "Prejudice is like pupil of the eye. The more light you shine upon it, the more tightly it closes."

This administration is like the pupil of the eye. The more hard facts you give them to prove that their policy is a failure, the tighter it closes and the less -- the less inclined to change they are.

Recommended Viewing: "The Prisoner"

This documentary by the directors of "Gunner Palace," is, first of all, simply an order of magnitude better than "Gunner Palace" -- more complex and nuanced, more stylistically innovative (still cartoons used to illustrate flashbacks), and just more substantive. The earlier film was criticized for being a bit too neutral to really say anything, and so maybe what Epperlein and Tucker needed was the strong voice of a single subject to carry the film, and Iraqi journalist and former Abu Ghraib prisoner Yunis Abbas is perfectly suited to this task.
This is a fascinating character study as well as a suspense story where the villains -- Saddam, U.S. military bureaucracy, nameless bullies and callous leadership -- are always shadowy and ill-defined. But this film, with its focus on Abbas' candid but uncynical first-person narrative -- and the names of dead prisoners and undocumented abuses he wrote, through it all the earnest journalist, on the inside of his underwear and on pieces of tin foil smuggled outside the prison in visitors' mouths -- is a testament to what really did happen not so long ago in U.S.-occupied, post-Saddam Iraq.

The Prisoner: or How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair