NYTimes.com: Ex-Commander Says Iraq Effort Is 'a Nightmare'

WASHINGTON   | October 13, 2007
Ex-Commander Says Iraq Effort Is 'a Nightmare'
By DAVID S. CLOUD Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez is the most senior war commander of a string of retired officers who have harshly criticized the conduct of the Iraq war.

A Surge, and Then a Stab

September 14, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
A Surge, and Then a Stab
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/pau lkrugman/index.html?inline=nyt-per
To understand what's really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which
already knows that the surge has failed.
Back in January, announcing his plan to send more troops to Iraq, President
Bush declared that "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks
it has announced."
Near the top of his list was the promise that "to give every Iraqi citizen a
stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil
revenues among all Iraqis."
There was a reason he placed such importance on oil: oil is pretty much the
only thing Iraq has going for it. Two-thirds of Iraq's G.D.P. and almost all
its government revenue come from the oil sector. Without an agreed system
for sharing oil revenues, there is no Iraq, just a collection of armed gangs
fighting for control of resources.
Well, the legislation Mr. Bush promised never materialized, and on Wednesday
attempts to arrive at a compromise oil law collapsed.
What's particularly revealing is the cause of the breakdown. Last month the
provincial government in Kurdistan, defying the central government, passed
its own oil law; last week a Kurdish Web site announced that the provincial
government had signed a production-sharing deal with the Hunt Oil Company of
Dallas, and that seems to have been the last straw.
Now here's the thing: Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt
Oil, is a close political ally of Mr. Bush. More than that, Mr. Hunt is a
member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key
oversight body.
Some commentators have expressed surprise at the fact that a businessman
with very close ties to the White House is undermining U.S. policy. But that
isn't all that surprising, given this administration's history. Remember,
Halliburton was still signing business deals with Iran years after Mr. Bush
declared Iran a member of the "axis of evil."
No, what's interesting about this deal is the fact that Mr. Hunt, thanks to
his policy position, is presumably as well-informed about the actual state
of affairs in Iraq as anyone in the business world can be. By putting his
money into a deal with the Kurds, despite Baghdad's disapproval, he's
essentially betting that the Iraqi government - which hasn't met a single
one of the major benchmarks Mr. Bush laid out in January - won't get its act
together. Indeed, he's effectively betting against the survival of Iraq as a
nation in any meaningful sense of the term.
The smart money, then, knows that the surge has failed, that the war is
lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia. And I suspect that most
people in the Bush administration - maybe even Mr. Bush himself - know this,
too.
After all, if the administration had any real hope of retrieving the
situation in Iraq, officials would be making an all-out effort to get the
government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to start delivering on
some of those benchmarks, perhaps using the threat that Congress would cut
off funds otherwise. Instead, the Bushies are making excuses, minimizing
Iraqi failures, moving goal posts and, in general, giving the Maliki
government no incentive to do anything differently.
And for that matter, if the administration had any real intention of turning
public opinion around, as opposed to merely shoring up the base enough to
keep Republican members of Congress on board, it would have sent Gen. David
Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, to as many news media outlets
as possible - not granted an exclusive appearance to Fox News on Monday
night.
All in all, Mr. Bush's actions have not been those of a leader seriously
trying to win a war. They have, however, been what you'd expect from a man
whose plan is to keep up appearances for the next 16 months, never mind the
cost in lives and money, then shift the blame for failure onto his
successor.
In fact, that's my interpretation of something that startled many people:
Mr. Bush's decision last month, after spending years denying that the Iraq
war had anything in common with Vietnam, to suddenly embrace the parallel.
Here's how I see it: At this point, Mr. Bush is looking forward to replaying
the political aftermath of Vietnam, in which the right wing eventually
achieved a rewriting of history that would have made George Orwell proud,
convincing millions of Americans that our soldiers had victory in their
grasp but were stabbed in the back by the peaceniks back home.
What all this means is that the next president, even as he or she tries to
extricate us from Iraq - and prevent the country's breakup from turning into
a regional war - will have to deal with constant sniping from the people who
lied us into an unnecessary war, then lost the war they started, but will
never, ever, take responsibility for their failures.

Shrub Control - Judicial Branch

Story: Historians hopeful after ruling against Bush on records

Historians hopeful after ruling against Bush on records But scholars say judge didn't go far enough to guarantee access 10:40 AM CDT on Wednesday, October 3, 2007 By TODD J. GILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News WASHINGTON -- Encouraged by a court ruling that chipped away at President Bush's executive order that threatened access to White House records, historians and open records advocates said Tuesday that they see fresh hope for Congress to scrap the order entirely. Some of the nation's most eminent historians have urged Congress to overturn the order giving former presidents the right to seal their papers indefinitely, warning that insights into world events could be lost. A federal judge overturned that part of the order Monday. But she sidestepped challenges to other key elements, including assertions that former presidents and vice presidents may claim executive privilege and pass control of official papers to heirs. Legislation to invalidate the Bush order entirely passed the House in March by a veto-proof margin but stalled last week in the Senate. "There's a threat that we'll get a sanitized history. * It's undemocratic," said Robert Dallek, who recently published a book about Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger using declassified documents from the Nixon library. He said Tuesday that he hopes Congress settles the matter. "The country is entitled to know its history." The Bush order delayed the release of thousands of documents from the Reagan administration. White House aides say the order is necessary because in the age of terrorism, presidents need more time to review documents for possible national security revelations. The White House threatened a veto in March and continues to review the matter, a spokeswoman said Tuesday. Meredith Fuchs, general counsel at the National Security Archive, said the legislation "is just as needed now as it was before" because the judge's ruling leaves untouched the "substantive parts of the executive order." "It might speed up the process but it doesn't eliminate the big loophole that allows for abuse," she said. Biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin lamented the Bush order. "If we're going to learn from history, we've got to know what that history is," said Ms. Goodwin, who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book on Franklin Roosevelt and whose best-sellers have covered Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and, most recently, Lincoln. For much of the nation's history, presidents retained private control of their papers, generally donating them to universities or libraries. Congress standardized the rules in 1978, after Mr. Nixon tried to destroy some of his records. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the Bush order -- issued two months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- "effectively eliminates" the discretion the 1978 law gave to the National Archives. Her ruling leaves open the possibility of future lawsuits if papers are actually withheld under the surviving provisions of the Bush order. "It underscores the need for the legislation," said Scott Nelson, the attorney for Public Citizen who filed the case almost six years ago on behalf of his own organization and several historian groups. "Congress isn't limited in a way a court is on issues of 'ripeness.. "Congress can and should act to invalidate those provisions now without having to wait." Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., blocked a Senate vote on the bill, whose co-sponsors include Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a fellow Republican. The National Coalition for History is mounting a campaign to pressure Mr. Bunning to drop his opposition. Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who heads the committee that approved the bill, called on Mr. Bunning on Tuesday to drop his procedural block in light of the court ruling. Bunning aides offered no comment. "They can hide from us to what extent did Cheney have an influence on this administration," Mr. Dallek said. "To what extent was Bush really in charge of the decision-making? What are the inner workings of the Bush White House? Who has influence?" Mr. Dallek noted that researchers have dug out key insights into Lyndon Johnson's handling of Vietnam in recent years. His own John F. Kennedy biography broke ground with details of the president's Addison's disease culled from previously sealed medical files. "We have an astonishing body of information that was not available at first," Mr Dallek said. "We're entitled to know these things. These papers have all been generated by public moneys, and they're owned by the people." Ms. Goodwin said it's understandable for presidents, their aides and relatives to have an impulse to downplay embarrassing details. But she called that short-sighted. Letting analysts work with the complete record will let them assess decisions in light of political cross-currents, competing interests and limited information available at the time. For example, Dwight Eisenhower was ridiculed in his day for ceding too much authority to adviser Sherman Adams. A more flattering picture emerged once historians had the chance to pore through administration records. "It was obvious he was more in charge than we thought," Ms. Goodwin said. "*As a president you just have to hope that as the decades go by, people will come to see the context in which you were making these decisions."

Shrub's Legacy

This one's political, folks.

In musing about the end of W's administration, what would be an apt name for it?

How about one of these?

A. Truth takes a holiday
B. Nixon of the new millennium
C. Huey Long goes preppy
D. Darth Chaney gone wild
E. I did it my way
F. Constitution and democracy?
G. Rover go home
H. Heck, yeah, I'm a "C" student
I. Don't agree? Me good, you bad
J. Mission accomplished. Crash and burn
K. What do they need in New Orleans?
L. It's not as bad as that Monica thing
M. Karl, I need another thought!

I'll entertain other entries from you readers.

You'll need a Google/gmail account to post.

Bring it on!