October 2007 archive

I am a huge NPR listener, especially on my commute and on Saturday, when “This American Life” is on.  Today was part of a pledge drive, since they are “listener-supported” public radio, so this was a repeat.  My internet connection wasn’t working, but I wrote the name “Conrad Crane” down on an envelope, because he warned that it was folly to invade Iraq and not plan for the Reconstruction.  From his study of history, he knew that what would befall our country, the Iraqi people and their neighbors would dwarf what had been experienced under the government of Saddam Hussein.

As soon as my internet connection was up, I discovered Rod Dreher at BeliefNet had written “Conrad Crane Told Us So” after hearing the original NPR podcast.  Concrad Crane knew .. and so did the man I photographed in late 2002.

From Rod’s piece:

I get “This American Life” via podcast, and listened to the latest one this morning. It was a stunner. One of the segments was about the work of Conrad Crane, a historian at the US Army War College, who with colleague W. Andrew Terrill produced this February 2003 monograph. It was a document, based on study of historical experience, intended to guide the American occupation of Iraq, by warning the military what would happen if they did, or failed to do, certain things. Like the TAL correspondent said, it reads like a letter from the future predicting exactly what did happen in Iraq. (See PDF at end of article) Note especially the warning that to disband the Iraqi army would be to annihilate one of the only sources of unity in the country, and could send its soldiers straight into the arms of sectarian militias.

This is not a new story; James Fallows reported on it a couple of years ago in The Atlantic.  The point is, nobody in the administration can say they weren’t warned about what could happen in Iraq. They were. They chose to ignore it because it didn’t suit their ideological vision. Nothing that happened in Iraq after the end of the first phase of the war surprised Conrad Crane. It shouldn’t have surprised President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, or any of them. They chose not to believe it.

It seems that Rumsfeld et al chose to disbelieve it because if historian Crane was right, then he, Rumsfeld, was wrong in his theories about how the US military needed to be transformed. So he — and the commander in chief he served — chose theory over experience. The arrogance simply begs belief.

Damien McElroy of the Daily Telegraph reports that US private security vehicles are parked at PKK headquarters high in the Quandil Mountains this week.

“There is a landing pad complete with spotlights near Mr Karayilan’s headquarters, while four-wheel-drive vehicles belonging to a US private security contractor, are easily seen.”

Get that? US private security company vehicles have been sighted at the base of the top PKK Military Leader: Murat Karayilan.

Crossposted at  dailykos

This will be a short, hit-and-run diary. People need to go to Current.com and view the three short videos Gore uploaded last night, one entitled Healthcare is a right,, one called Americans deserve more protection and the third entitled Get the troops home (H/T Lorikat). All Gorites and those with an open-mind, head over to Current.com and view the clips! Then sign up to the site so you can discuss them.

One of the biggest problems of the Netroots remains its inability to take criticism. Consider this post from Matt Stoller:

Frank Rich wrote a column called ‘The Good Germans’.  He spends a bunch of column inches lamenting how ‘we’ have let the war go on, and are as complicit as the Germans during the Nazi regime.  Here’s the nub:

As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.

And yet, last month, here’s Frank Rich.

Americans are looking for leadership, somewhere, anywhere. At least one of the Democratic presidential contenders might have shown the guts to soundly slap the “General Betray-Us” headline on the ad placed by MoveOn.org in The Times, if only to deflate a counterproductive distraction.

Rich is operating according to the rules of the media elite.  It’s ok to whine about the problem, but try to do anything about it and you’re getting very much uncivil, sir.

Um Matt, it was not the incivility, it was the stupidity. The Netroots’ problem on Move On, indeed, regarding ANY criticism of the Netroots, is the uncheckable impulse to attack the criticizer instead of considering the point. Matt might be interested to learn that Frank Rich was harshly critical of General Petraeus in repeated columns, including in the very column cited by Stoller.

It so happens that I myself was subject to criticism in a Frank Rich column:

This is an Open Thread

News Happening Now

Pentagon, FBI misusing secret info requests: ACLU
  WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Pentagon has misled Congress and the US public by conniving with the FBI to obtain hundreds of financial, telephone and Internet records without court approval, civil-rights campaigners said Sunday.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has successfully challenged key planks of US anti-terrorism legislation, said it had uncovered 455 “National Security Letters” (NSLs) issued at the behest of the Department of Defense.

Before the ACLU’s challenge, the USA Patriot Act had allowed the FBI to issue gag orders to prevent those receiving NSLs — usually Internet service providers, banks and libraries — from disclosing anything about the request.

USA

Al-Qaeda In Iraq Reported Crippled

Many Officials, However, Warn Of Its Resilience

By Thomas E. Ricks and Karen DeYoung

Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, October 15, 2007; Page A01

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved. At the same time, the intelligence community, and some in the military itself, worry about underestimating an enemy that has shown great resilience in the past.

America’s own unlawful combatants?

By Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

October 15, 2007

WASHINGTON — As the Bush administration deals with the fallout from the recent killings of civilians by private security firms in Iraq, some officials are asking whether the contractors could be considered unlawful combatants under international agreements.

The question is an outgrowth of federal reviews of the shootings, in part because the U.S. officials want to determine whether the administration could be accused of treaty violations that could fuel an international outcry.

But the issue also holds practical and political implications for the administration’s war effort and the image of the U.S. abroad.

If U.S. officials conclude that the use of guards is a potential violation, they may have to limit guards’ tasks in war zones, which could leave more work for the already overstretched military.

Unresolved questions are likely to touch off new criticism of Bush’s conduct of the unpopular Iraq war, especially given the broad definition of unlawful combatants the president has used in justifying his detention policies at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.