Tuesday, June 26, 2007

The Lugar Threat




Is the dam about to break? That is, are congressional Republicans soon going to jump ship on George W. Bush and his war in Iraq?

Last night, Senator Dick Lugar, the senior Republican on the foreign relations committee, gave what Zbigniew Brzezinski has called a "historic" speech. Lugar declared flat-out that Bush is wrong on Iraq. He said:

In my judgment, our course in Iraq has lost contact with our vital national security interests in the Middle East and beyond. Our continuing absorption with military activities in Iraq is limiting our diplomatic assertiveness there and elsewhere in the world. The prospects that the current "surge" strategy will succeed in the way originally envisioned by the President are very limited within the short period framed by our own domestic political debate. And the strident, polarized nature of that debate increases the risk that our involvement in Iraq will end in a poorly planned withdrawal that undercuts our vital interests in the Middle East. Unless we recalibrate our strategy in Iraq to fit our domestic political conditions and the broader needs of U.S. national security, we risk foreign policy failures that could greatly diminish our influence in the region and the world....

Commentators frequently suggest that the United States has no good options in Iraq. That may be true from a certain perspective. But I believe that we do have viable options that could strengthen our position in the Middle East, and reduce the prospect of terrorism, regional war, and other calamities. But seizing these opportunities will require the President to downsize the U.S. military's role in Iraq and place much more emphasis on diplomatic and economic options. It will also require members of Congress to be receptive to overtures by the President to construct a new policy outside the binary choice of surge versus withdrawal. We don't owe the President our unquestioning agreement, but we do owe him and the American people our constructive engagement.


Takeaways: the surge is not working and it's time to start withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. (You can read the entire speech here.) Will the White House and its prowar media comrades brand Lugar a "defeatocrat" or "surrender monkey" for speaking such words?

Lugar is not a commanding national figure. (Who remembers his hapless presidential campaign of 1996?) But he is a leading Republican voice on foreign policy and can provide cover to other Republicans anxious about Iraq and its potential impact on the congressional elections next year. If one or two more major Republicans join Lugar--paging Senator John Warner!--Bush could find himself buried in a truly bipartisan avalanche of congressional opposition.

General David Petraeus in recent days has started to downplay the report he is scheduled to present in September on progress (or the lack thereof) in post-surge Iraq. But Petraeus' shuffle may be insufficient to head off growing Republican unease with the war. Lugar is leading a charge that threatens Bush, Dick Cheney and their war.

Posted by David Corn at June 26, 2007 11:28 AM

14 comments:

capt said...

Mr. David Corn,

Good post. I think the real question is: Will the GOPhers jump ship BEFORE the Iraqis sign the oil revenue agreement?

It seems that is the only thing holding back the floodgates.

Thanks

Kirk

capt said...

German Scientists to Sequence Neanderthal Genome

After the sequencing of the human genome, scientists are planning to reconstruct the entire genome of the Neanderthal. The work will help answer questions about whether humans and Neanderthals are related -- and if they interbred.

In the novel "Jurassic Park," scientists cloned dinosaurs after sequencing dinosaur DNA. Now the specter of cloned mammoths, cave bears and even Neanderthals roaming the landscape has been raised after researchers revealed they are able to sequence the genomes of these extinct species.

A team of scientists led by Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany say they have found ways to sequence the whole Neanderthal genome, despite the difficulties of obtaining usable samples. They also believe they can reconstruct the genomes of the mammoth and cave bear.

"We are confident that it will be technically feasible to achieve a reliable Neanderthal genome sequence," said Pääbo and his team, who published their findings in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.



More HERE

*****end of clip*****

It’d be funny if the pure white or Aryan pedigree proves to be something other than pure or white. I am certain we are all mixed. It is the nature of nature. As the years and generations pass all humans will be more mixed not less - it is the beauty of our diversity that we should all celebrate.



capt

Gerald said...

Lugar is right in his words about the Iraq war.

Personally, only the repukes can bring down Hitler Bush. The Dems are too passive.

The U.S. Supreme Court is obsolete. We have state supreme courts that can best know each of the state's needs. The U.S. Supreme Court was probably needed in 1776 but it is no longer needed in 2007.

Gerald said...

Praying Each Day

June 26 reminds me of Hitler Bush.

There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures than Hitler Bush.

Gerald said...

Afghan's Poppy Crop

In my book I shared with you in Black Budgets the words of Catherine Austin Fitts who said that drug money and drug trafficking shores up Nazi America's economy. We are in Afghanistan for the poppy crops and not to spread democracy.

Nazi America is an evil empire.

Gerald said...

Quotable

The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people. - Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Nazi Americans are an inert people.

Gerald said...

Zombie, Zombie, Zombie: One of the definitions of a zombie is a person whose behavior or responses are “wooden, listless, or seemingly rote; automaton” (dictionary.com). As Carly and I were wiping our eyes and blowing our noses yesterday, enormous gas guzzling behemoths were whizzing by us on I-5 rushing from point A to point B. Some had “Support the Troops” magnets and some had “W” stickers. I wonder if any of them reflect (for even a second) on what support for W and his pre-meditated, pre-emptive act of aggression has cost some people and if anyone they whizzed by yesterday (in smaller, more modest cars) were weeping because of their robotic allegiance to a dangerous imbecile. Even more disastrously, the immense majority of our brothers and sisters who disapprove of BushCo and its foreign policy (”if you’re not with us, you’re against us”), are apathetic consumer-ing automatons that allow the carnage to continue. And the violence caused such silence.

Our lives have been fundamentally altered forever. We never know when the grief will strike or from what direction it will come. The only thing we can be assured of is that it will always be there.

On I-5 yesterday it came from Zombie.

Gerald said...

Iran: The Next War

Gerald said...

A strong argument can be made that Americans are likely to be supportive of a democratic, long-standing ally like Israel and to sympathize with the need for America to protect all of its allies – including Israel – from genuine existential threats. But if Americans are being induced to support wars not in American interests but rather Israel’s, and if American lives and treasure are being squandered in wars justified by false pretenses, by a hidden agenda, they will realize that at some point – likely at the point when such a war has gone particularly awry and they begin to search for the real reasons we entered it in the first place.

When the realization begins to dawn that at least one substantial factor as to why America waged Middle Eastern war(s) is because influential individuals with an overarching devotion to Israel pushed for war against Israel’s enemies, then an anti-Israeli backlash is highly likely to occur. And the backlash is likely to be far more severe and hostile than anything that would ever happen naturally, meaning in the absence of such manipulation.

MAKE NO MISTAKE!!! THERE WILL BE AN ANTI-ISRAEL BACKLASH!!!!!

Gerald said...

Bed Partners in Arms

The triad of evil, Nazi America, Nazi England, and Nazi Israel, has a foreign policy that wraps iself up in death and destruction among nations.

Gerald said...

Media reports have been careful to leave out important facts leading up to the coup such as that Hamas was the legitimate, democratically elected ruling party in the Palestinian territories following the January 2006 Palestine Legislative Council elections; that it was the US-Israeli dismissal of those election results that fueled the civil infighting between Hamas and Fatah; that obvious US backing of Fatah against Hamas helped create popular mistrust of Fatah increasing Hamas’ popularity in Gaza and leading directly to Hamas’ takeover of the Fatah military apparatus in the Gaza Strip. In other words, there were real and understandable reasons for the coup. But in the end, Hamas’ seizure of the power that it should have had in the first place ends up serving the interests not only of Mahmoud Abbas and the warlord Muhammad Dahlan. It also provides the perfect opportunity for US-Israeli policy in the region to move forward with even fewer objections, if that is possible to imagine, than have heretofore been made. Who will stand up for a “terrorist organization that seeks the destruction of Israel”? The line has been beaten into our heads with every mention of the word “Hamas” for years. We should not expect a change in the behavior of the American public or of other western audiences until, when Israel is mentioned, we immediately say to ourselves, “a terrorist state that seeks the destruction of Palestine.” Seeks and is succeeding in it.

Gerald said...

Bordering on Lunacy

capt said...

"War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood. It degrades and stupefies with the sense that you are not responsible, that 'tis not yours to think and reason why, but to do and die,' like the hundred thousand others doomed like yourself. War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder." : Alexander Berkman

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"It seems that 'we have never gone to war for conquest, for exploitation, nor for territory'; we have the word of a president [McKinley] for that. Observe, now, how Providence overrules the intentions of the truly good for their advantage. We went to war with Mexico for peace, humanity and honor, yet emerged from the contest with an extension of territory beyond the dreams of political avarice. We went to war with Spain for relief of an oppressed people [the Cubans], and at the close found ourselves in possession of vast and rich insular dependencies [primarily the Philippines] and with a pretty tight grasp upon the country for relief of whose oppressed people we took up arms. We could hardly have profited more had 'territorial aggrandizement' been the spirit of our purpose and heart of our hope. The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations." : Ambrose Bierce, Warlike America

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"In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes." Thomas Paine

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Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day": Theodore Roosevelt, April 19, 1906

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"The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing": Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791


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Thanks ICH Newsletter!

capt said...

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