Thursday, November 30, 2006

Baker's Partial Wimp-Out




It's a partial wimp-out.

The New York Times is reporting that the Iraq Study Group--the bipartisan panel headed up by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton--will recommend next week that George W. Bush implement a gradual pullback of 15 brigades of US troops in Iraq. But the group will not call for Bush to set an actual timetable for this withdrawal. The group will also not state whether this redeployment should entail removing troops from Iraq or shuffling them to bases within Iraq or in nearby countries.

The point apparently is to encourage Bush to apply pressure on Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki without forcing him to accept what he has already denounced: a specific schedule for disengagement. But the Baker gang, though soft-peddling the withdrawal option, is slicing the meat rather thin. No matter how gently they put it, Baker and his colleagues--who will also call for a revived regional diplomatic effort--will be asking for Bush to break with his no-retreat rhetoric and to acknowledge a strategic shift is necessary to deal with the mess he has created in Iraq. Which brings me back to an old point: can Bush do this? In recent days, he has been sticking to his latest catch phrase: "complete the mission" (a variant on the discarded "stay the course"). And he refuses to consider the withdrawal of troops as a way to finish the job.

Regardless of what Baker cooks up, the big decision belongs to Bush: will he make any significant changes in his Iraq policy? So far he shows no signs of doing so. Will Baker report's and its half-a-shout for withdrawal compel Bush to reconsider? My hunch is that even though he does not say it publicly, Bush's internal mantra remains the same: stay the course, stay the course, stay the course.

Posted by David Corn at November 30, 2006 10:37 AM

16 comments:

Saladin said...

MR. Corn, more smoke and mirrors? This is really getting boring. How about digging into the meat of this so-called "Iraq Study Group?" What are they REALLY up to? It isn't anything to do with troop pullouts because the Vatican City of Bagdad and all those permanent bases are not going up because they have nothing better to do!
Kathleen, in case you missed it I left a link specifically for you at the end of the last thread.

Saladin said...

A Recovering Conservative
Republican American


...I am not an American who looks at the world from the confines of my state or my city or my part of America as if the Red State and Blue State phenomenon means anything to me. I look at America and the world as an American and I take the time to listen to others.

We are not One Nation under God. We are led by some of the most greedy, despicable humans on the face of this planet. Their agenda for many years has been to plunder the world and call it success when much of it was in contrived wars, devious schemes, illegal conduct and intent to steal and pat themselves on the back as mission accomplished.

We have evolved into a nation where grand theft from non-Americans is rewarded with accolades and pats on the back as smart business practices.

For America to change US citizens have to come to terms with what has been done in our name and much of that was some of the sleaziest things any nation has ever done to another nation in the history of the world.

That is why we have to all reassess what it means to be an American. First you have to be a human being wide awake to realities, being American is second to that.

I frankly think we need a new international law barring bribes, corruption, lining the pockets of insiders, drug money, money laundering, etc and make it uniform and applicable to all, even presidents of nations, Federal Reserve that launders the money for them, the banks that participate, etc. It should have uniform sentencing and no pardons, no safe havens. You do the crime you do the time and anyone that does not want to abide gets nothing from the rest of the world community.

That would be a step in the right direction and the courts would be buried with meaningful work for years.

I am well on my way to a full recovery.
===========
This article is full of ugly truths. Here is some real meat to sink your teeth into!

kathleen said...

Carter has been on Fresh Air, Diane Rehm , Cnn (go watch Wolf Blitzer try his best to undermine Carter and Carter politely hammers him), MSNBC's David Schuster tried his best to trip Carter up but was completely unsuccessful. Both Blitzer and Schuster tried to blame Arafat for the failing of Clinton's efforts to deal with the I/P conflict. Carter blows through that myth by letting the world know that Barak never signed onto Clinton's proposals. This was a myth the Israeli lobby was able to successfully permeate the MSM which repeated over and over again that it was Arafat who blew the negotiations! I heard Blitzer, Daniel Schorr (many, many times), Scott Simon, and others repeat this myth many times in the 90's!

I think the best interview of President Carter so far was done by Larry King...( what a pleasant surprise).

Carter has not been on Talk of the Nation...yet! Contact Talk of the Nation!

Carter will be on C-Span at 12 noon this Sunday for three hours, trying to help us face the fact.

"It's the Israeli/Palestinian conflict stupid!"


Please contact your local bookstores asking them to order Carter's new book. This is the time to contact your reps and let them know that you want them to deal with the I/P conflict in a more balanced and honest way! Stand behind Carter, he is telling the truth!

Odd that Hadley's (Plameleak participant) statement about Iraq was leaked. I believe the Israeli/Palestinian conflict was going to be discussed? HMMM


SALDIN I HOPE YOU LINK THAT LETTER AGAIN. SO HONEST!

Saladin said...
Kathleen, glad you're here. Check out this letter, it is SO good!

kathleen said...

As you said Saladin "more smoke and mirrors". Wonder if Corn will say anything about what Carter is focused on..."the core issue".

Carter trying his best to remind the world....

It's the Israeli/Palestinian conflict stupid!

It's not Bush's internal mantra..he said it yesterday outloud. He plans to stay (if only he would go to Baghdad) until the job is done! (control the oil)

kathleen said...

Later!

Saladin said...

The Highjacking of a Nation
Part 2: The Auctioning of Former Statesmen & Dime a Dozen Generals By Sibel Edmonds


...We are proud of the large turnout at the ballot box for the midterm elections a few weeks ago; a sign of participatory citizenship. Perhaps we’ll be repeating this phenomenon, if not increasing it, for the presidential elections in two years; another means to demonstrate our ‘democratic government process in action’ for badly needed change. But who really runs our country? Who really shapes our public policies and determines the flow of our hard-earned tax money entrusted to our government? If you had the patience to go through this article, which sheds light on only a fragment of what really takes place behind our backs, within the halls of our government, in all three branches, you would start questioning your significance as a voter and taxpayer, and you would begin wondering whether you are governed by who you think you are.

The foreign influence, the lobbyists, the current highly positioned civil servants who are determined future ‘wanna be’ lobbyists, and the fat cats of the Military Industrial Complex, operate successfully under the radar, with unlimited reach and power, with no scrutiny, while selling your interests, benefiting from your tax money, and serving the highest bidders regardless of what or who they may be. This deep state seems to operate at all levels of our government; from the President’s office to Congress, from the military quarters to the civil servants’ offices. Let’s let Marcus Cicero’s timeless warning from over two thousand years ago put the finishing touch on this article:

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder[er] is less to fear.”- - Marcus Tullius Cicero
=========
This is a lengthy essay, but WOW!

kathleen said...

Read Ledeen's latest at National Review!

Anyone in America Ever Heard of the Power of a Little Fear?
Steve to W.
By Michael Ledeen

Forget about the New York Times lead (“...a memorandum prepared for cabinet-level officials...”). It’s addressed to the president, not to a collective. Stephen Hadley says “you have asked General Casey...” and “send your personal representative to Baghdad...”

I rather think it was written to be leaked. I can’t believe that the president’s national-security adviser would write something so long, so rambling, and so mediocre to George W. Bush. I mean, I’d die of embarrassment before I let any such thing go into the Oval Office with my name on it.

At National Review


If Ledeen could feel embarassed or anything at all he would have "died of embarassment" along time ago!

How can we forget that the false Niger Documents did not have Ledeen's signature on it just his bloody fingerprints!

Although I do agree with Ledeen it does seem rather obvious that the most recent leak of Hadley's (Plameleak) note to Bush was on purpose. But not for the reason Ledeen claims!

kathleen said...

Funny how Baker the guy who brought us Bush may get credit for this plan that Zbigniew Brezenski came out with several years ago!

When Baker was on Diane Rehm's several months ago he kept saying "well the world was with us in the run-up to the invasion". He repeated this even too many times for Diane Rehm she finally politely jumped on his ass, because she was receiving so many e-mails and phone calls calling Baker's bullshit out on the table.

Why does anyone trust Baker anyway...he brought us this group of psychopaths!

Saladin said...

Kathleen, I would like to know how kissinger, that war criminal and murderer of innocents gets asked to advise the pope!! Fucking psychotic, upside down world we live in!

uncledad said...

I don't get all this talk about a timetable. Bush is never going to pull the troops and the next president will not get elected unless he or she vows to end our involvement in this horrible misadventure. So you see that’s the timetable, the troops will leave Iraq when bu$hco leaves the white house and not a day sooner. Well that’s my opinion anyway. And it can’t happen soon enough.

O'Reilly said...

Your photo has it wrong. Bush wears his little black dress called 9/11 everytime he needs to justify his war of agrerssion in Iraq.

I'm glad we've gotten passed the 'they attacked us' justification.

The national and international dialogue about the untenible situation in Iraq, not the Iraq Study Group, will be the determining factor in Bush's strategy.

I'm afraid his willful petulence does not allow him to consider alternatives other than "I'm right."

Our only hope is that conservative Republicans and moderate arab states can penetrate the fog of war hanging around Bush's tormented mind.

Bush likes to have a villian. Neither the sunni nor shia supporters outside Iraq will allow Bush to choose one over the other, in order to build a ruling majority, empower the governemnt with security forces and quell the civil war.

It's beginning to look we'll give up Anbar and hope we can keep Bagdhad.

Now, watch this golf swing.

capt said...

I'm afraid his willful petulence does not allow him to consider alternatives other than "I'm right."

*****

And THAT is the problem in a nutshell.

I bet monkey-boy is still at a complete loss if asked to admit a single mistake -lost for a reason to have done anything any differently.


capt

Saladin said...

US Dollar can fall a lot further. Isn't it time for the US Federal Reserve to be nationalized ?
Posted Nov 30, 2006 10:42 AM PST

WRH comment:

Our nation was started with a treasury that had the sole legal right to coin money, and that money was based on metal;s of known and agreed-upon values, not subject to tampering. There was no income tax. The nation grew prosperous.
Then, right at the start of the 20th century, the Federal Reserve, a private bank, was created and control over the money supply handed to it. The dollar was delinked from a metals-based unit of value and became a unit of promissory debt. An income tax quickly followed, and ever since then, our nation has descended into uncontrollable debt.

Shouldn't we go back to what worked?
=========
UH, YES. JFK thought so and look what happened to him.

Saladin said...

Iraq war was good for Israel: Olmert

Yahoo News

By Dan Williams
Wed Nov 22, 3:16 PM ET

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Iraq war was a boon for Israel's security, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Wednesday, voicing fresh endorsement for a Bush administration sapped by the unpopularity at home of its Middle East policies.

The mid-term election losses of U.S. President George W. Bush's Republican Party were widely considered a repudiation of his decision to topple Iraq's Saddam Hussein as part of a vision of democratizing the region and bolstering allies like Israel.

Olmert avoided explicit comment on the Republicans' fortunes during Washington talks with Bush earlier this month. But in a speech to visiting American Jews, Olmert made clear he had few regrets about the changes wrought by the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"I know all of his (Bush's) policies are controversial in America. There are some who support his policies in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, and some who do not," he said.

"I stand with the president because I know that Iraq without Saddam Hussein is so much better for the security and safety of Israel, and all of the neighbors of Israel without any significance to us," added Olmert, who was speaking in English.

"Thank God for the power and the determination and leadership manifested by President Bush."
=========
Who cares how bad it is for America and all their murdered and maimed troops? It's GREAT for us!!
What a jerk, I think all the neocons, both Israeli and American, suffer from the same sick disease.

Saladin said...

'Israel knew Iraq had no nuclear weapons'

IOL.com.co.za

By Laurie Copans

Jerusalem - A government critic said on Tuesday that Israel was aware before the war against Iraq that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction, but Israel did not inform the United States.

Israel put itself on war footing before the US invasion last year, passing out gas mask kits to its citizens and then ordering them to open the kits, a step that eventually will cost millions, since components would have to be replaced.

But lawmaker Yossi Sarid, a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, said on Tuesday that Israeli intelligence knew beforehand that Iraq had no weapons stockpiles and misled US President George Bush.

In contrast, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud Party said Israel had shared its doubts with the Americans.

During the first Gulf war in 1991, Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel, all with conventional warheads. Last year Israel appointed a stern general, Amos Gilead, as its liaison with the population. Gilead filled the airwaves with dire warnings of possible chemical or biological attacks from Iraq.

Sarid, who represents the dovish opposition Meretz Party, said it was just a costly show - Israeli intelligence knew the threat was "very, very, very limited."

"It was known in Israel that the story that weapons of mass destruction could be activated in 45 minutes was an old wives' tale," said Sarid, regarding a claim leading up to the war.

"Israel didn't want to spoil President Bush's scenario, and it should have," Sarid said.

Israeli critics say the government of Sharon maintained the state of alert for its own political reasons, to help galvanise public opinion in favour of harsh steps against the Palestinians.

The United States and Britain have launched inquiries into intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, used by leaders of both nations as part of their justification for the invasion. So far such weapons have not been found.

Likud lawmaker Ehud Yatom said Israel told the Americans that it was not sure that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

"Israel said apparently there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but we haven't seen anything with our own eyes," Yatom said. "But the great United States didn't have to rely on Israel." Yatom had a career in Israeli security before entering the parliament last year.

Another view came from Scott Ritter, who led United Nations weapons inspections in Iraq for seven years before resigning in 1998. He told an Israeli newspaper this week that Israel knew for years that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

"The Israeli intelligence reached this conclusion many years ago," Ritter told the Ynet Internet site, affiliated with the Yediot Ahronot newspaper. "Despite this, the security establishment instructed citizens to open their gas masks, a move that cost Israel billions."

Ritter, an ex-Marine officer, has been a vocal critic of Bush's Iraq policies.

When Ritter met with Israeli intelligence officials in 1998, they told him that Iraq had been reduced to the number six threat down from number one four years before, he said.

"In the end, if the Israeli intelligence knew that Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction, so the CIA knew it and thus British intelligence too," Ritter told Ynet. - Sapa-AP
===========
Let's see. They both had the same motive, means and opportunity. They both used the same tactics and got the results they required. Any questions? You really have to wonder who is leading who.

capt said...

new thread