"More Americans Trust Congress Over Bush on Iraq, Poll Finds" By Jon Cohen Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, February 26, 2007; 11:18 AM
Congressional Democrats still hold a sizable advantage over President Bush in whom the public trusts to handle the Iraq war, although the gap has narrowed somewhat since Bush's State of the Union speech, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
With Bush's approval ratings mired by the unpopular war, Americans trust congressional Democrats over Bush to handle the situation in Iraq by a margin of 54 percent to 34 percent. That is down from a 27-point gap before the president's address last month. Since that time, trust in the Democrats on the issue has slipped six points. That has not been matched by increasing confidence in Bush, but by a five-point rise in the number who trust neither the Democrats in Congress nor the president on the issue. There has also been an eight-point decline in the Democrats' advantage among independents.
Although trimmed, the Democrats maintain a substantial edge on the war in large measure because of Bush's low ratings on handling the situation in Iraq. Two-thirds of Americans disapprove of how the president is handling the Iraq war; 31 percent approve. And intensity continues to run against Bush on the issue: Fifty-five percent "strongly disapprove" of his work there, while only 17 percent "strongly approve" of it.
Bush's ratings on Iraq continue to be highly partisan. While two-thirds of Republicans approve of how Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, more than nine in 10 Democrats disapprove of the job he is doing there. Among independents, 31 percent approve and 68 percent disapprove. Intensity is also a factor here: Eighty-three percent of Democrats strongly disapprove of Bush's performance on the Iraq issue, while far fewer Republicans, 38 percent, strongly approve....read Washington Post here
FIGHTING OUR SHADOW:
"Baghdad Plan Has Elusive Targets" U.S. Patrols Still Unable to Tell Friend From FoeThe Washington Post
Americans [severely] underestimate Iraqi death toll:
"...Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated at more than 54,000 and could be much higher; some unofficial estimates range into the hundreds of thousands. The U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq reports more than 34,000 deaths in 2006 alone.
Among those [Americans] polled for the AP survey, however, the median estimate of Iraqi deaths was 9,890. The median is the point at which half the estimates were higher and half lower." read entire artilce from Yahoo News here
"Prime Minister Tony Blair announced Wednesday that he would begin withdrawing British troops from Iraq immediately. Though Blair stopped short of setting a timetable for the full withdrawal of British forces, his decision to pull 1,600 soldiers out of Iraq, at a time when the United States is sending more than 21,000 more into the war, must be seen as a harbinger of defeat for the U.S. mission there. Denmark, which has 460 soldiers under British command in the Shiite south of Iraq, announced plans to withdraw its troops by August.
The Bush administration has shifted noticeably from defending the war to emphasizing the suspected downsides of withdrawal. President Bush continually asserts that the consequences of leaving Iraq would be "grievous and far-reaching," and result in a "nightmare scenario." The president has focused on two negative consequences: a loss of U.S. credibility, and the prospect that withdrawal would precipitate a reverse domino effect, propping up the authoritarian governments that Bush's Iraq policy was intended to undermine. These claims echo the arguments of Lyndon Johnson, who argued against cutting our losses in Vietnam.
The issue of credibility was so central to America's Vietnam policy that tens of thousands of Americans died in the pursuit not of victory, but of saving face. They died because American leaders believed then -- as the Bush administration apparently believes now -- that defeat would have uncontrollable consequences. But the wiser voices inside the Johnson administration were arguing as early as the mid-1960s that the costs of defeat were manageable.
On Sept. 11, 1967, the intelligence community issued a secret memo, "Implications of an Unfavorable Outcome in Vietnam." The authors considered the dire predictions about the dangers if the United States were to withdraw from Vietnam. The memo concluded that the perils of accepting an unfavorable outcome would be "probably more limited and controllable than most previous argument has indicated." Further, the memo argued, "it should not be beyond the capacity of our leadership and diplomacy to negotiate this passage."
The issue of credibility is once again at the center of the debate over ending a disastrous American military enterprise. The Bush administration argues that U.S. allies would broadly question America's commitments, concluding that when the going gets tough, America bails out.
This argument is partially true, as it was in Vietnam. Al-Qaida will indeed attempt to link our withdrawal to a larger narrative that includes President Reagan's retreat from Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombing and our departure from Somalia after the Black Hawk Down incident. But unless our national leaders allowed our failure in Iraq to call into question other commitments, this damage certainly could be mitigated.
Any administration extricating U.S. troops from Iraq would have to send the message that the U.S. military would now refocus its full attention on al-Qaida. As for other commitments, why would we allow anyone to conclude that our failure in Iraq had any bearing on them? In withdrawing, the U.S. should answer questions of credibility loudly and clearly. Demonstrating that we recognize the error of our ways would indicate a seriousness of purpose and a national magnanimity lacking throughout the Bush years.
The other protest from war supporters is that withdrawal would sound a death knell for the prospect of liberal democratic reform in the Middle East -- a reversed version of the domino theory. But that objection implies that liberal democracy could sweep across the Islamic world if U.S. forces are kept in Iraq. In every location elections have been held in the Muslim world since the Iraq war, something close to the worst possible result has emerged.
Elections predating significant social change have done little to advance either America's interests or the cause of liberalism. The naive assertion peddled by neoconservatives that liberal democratic change was a workable solution to America's terrorism problem has been a blight on U.S. grand strategy. Reform in the Islamic world cannot be precipitated -- or even hastened in a meaningful way -- by pressure from America.
Withdrawing from Iraq will indeed represent a defeat for the United States. It should be taken as a cautionary tale about the perils of nation building and the inadvisability of foreign-policy adventurism. But in the end, we face the same question as we did in Vietnam: Can the United States end the war and emerge with its fundamental global position unchanged? The 1967 memo offered the almost heretical view that "it seems unlikely that in the end an unfavorable outcome in Vietnam would greatly alter the present pattern of [power] relationships."
We should at least consider whether the same is true of Iraq."
Justin Logan is a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute and a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy.
"...Those cheers are just one sign of how much venom has seeped into Sunni-Shi'ite relations in the year since their simmering conflict was brought to a boil by the bombing of Samarra's golden-domed shrine. The bloodlust is no longer limited to extremists on both sides. Hatred has gone mainstream, spreading first to victims of the violence and their families--the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have lost loved ones, jobs, homes, occasionally entire neighborhoods--and then into the wider society. Now it permeates not only the rancorous political discourse of Baghdad's Green Zone but also ordinary conversations in homes and marketplaces, arousing a fury even in those who have no obvious, pressing grievance. Neither Muslawi nor Hussein has suffered personal loss, but they are relatively able to tap into the same loathing that motivates the Shi'ite militias and Sunni jihadis. "The air has become poisoned [by sectarianism], and we have all been breathing it," says Abbas Fadhil, a Baghdad physician. "And so now everybody is talking the same language, whether they are educated or illiterate, secular or religious, violent or not..."from "Behind the Sunni-Shi'ite Divide" Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007 By BOBBY GHOSH / BAGHDAD
"Feith ought to be drawn, quartered, and hung," said a Bush administration official who worked with him frequently. "He's a sonofabitch who agitated for war in Iraq, but once the decision is made to do it, he disengages. It was clear there were problems across the board...and he just had nothing to do with it. I'm furious about it, still."
...characterization of Americans in Iraq "lions led by donkeys".
COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM AT WORK IN OREGON: TOBACO'S CONCERN FOR THE POOR: LAUGHABLE?
Big Tobacco argues against tax rise Revenue - Cigarette taxes unfairly fall on lower-income people, executives testify Saturday, February 10, 2007 BETSY HAMMOND After a parade of witnesses testified mainly in favor of increasing Oregon's cigarette tax, representatives of Big Tobacco and small mom and pop convenience stores got their say Friday.
Speaking to the House Revenue Committee, they said there are two big problems with raising Oregon's tax to $2.02 a pack to pay for children's health insurance:
Cigarette taxes fall heavily on the poor, because low-income Oregonians are a lot more likely to smoke than upper-income ones. Proposing a tax increase of roughly $300 per person on low-income people would never be broached by Oregon lawmakers -- except when those low-income people are smokers, who have little political clout, testified Mark Nelson, lobbyist for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co." The Oregonian
MORE PROBLEMS WITH INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY AT FOX NOISE
A top Pentagon leader weighed in yesterday on the war debate and appeared to undercut the argument advanced by the White House and many GOP lawmakers that a congressional debate challenging the Bush plan would hurt troop morale.
"There's no doubt in my mind that the dialogue here in Washington strengthens our democracy. Period," Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the House Armed Services Committee. He added that potential enemies may take some comfort from the rancor but said they "don't have a clue how democracy works." Washington Post
THE PARTY OF CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION DOESN'T UNDERSTAND IRONY (and therefore doesn't understand the 21st century)
WASHINGTON - Republicans on Wednesday assailed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's request for access to an Air Force transport plane as an extravagance, though former Speaker Dennis Hastert flew in a military jet as well. Washinton Post
"We are witnessing the spectacle of a White House and Republican senators unwilling even to engage in a debate on a war that claims at least one American life every day and at least $2.5 billion dollars a week,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat.
POLL: 87% fools: Only 13 Percent Of Congressional Republicans Believe In Man-Made Global Warming National Journal has released a new “Congressional Insiders Poll,” which surveyed 113 members of Congress — 10 Senate Democrats, 48 House Democrats, 10 Senate Republicans, and 45 House Republicans — about their positions on global warming.
The results were startling. Only 13 percent of congressional Republicans say they believe that human activity is causing global warming, compared to 95 percent of congressional Democrats. Moreover, the number of Republicans who believe in human-induced global warming has actually dropped since April 2006, when the number was 23 percent. Think Progress
Tribute to Molly Ivins: There are some Wise people in Texas
Nov. 19, 2002: "The greatest risk for us in invading Iraq is probably not war itself, so much as: What happens after we win? There is a batty degree of triumphalism loose in this country right now."
Jan. 16, 2003: "I assume we can defeat Hussein without great cost to our side (God forgive me if that is hubris). The problem is what happens after we win. The country is 20 percent Kurd, 20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite. Can you say, 'Horrible three-way civil war?"'
Weeks Before She Died: "We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. Every single day every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. We need people in the streets banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it now!' "
Worth Seeing Again: Good Christians Bearing Witness
LOOK WHAT THE NEO-CONS HAVE GOTTEN US INTO!!!
NIE : NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE
Key Judgments Iraqi society’s growing polarization, the persistent weakness of the security forces and the state in general, and all sides’ ready recourse to violence are collectively driving an increase in communal and insurgent violence and political extremism. Unless efforts to reverse these conditions show measurable progress during the term of this Estimate, the coming 12 to 18 months, we assess that the overall security situation will continue to deteriorate at rates comparable to the latter part of 2006. If strengthened Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), more loyal to the government and supported by Coalition forces, are able to reduce levels of violence and establish more effective security for Iraq’s population, Iraqi leaders could have an opportunity to begin the process of political compromise necessary for longer term stability, political progress, and economic recovery.
• Nevertheless, even if violence is diminished, given the current winner-take-all attitude and sectarian animosities infecting the political scene, Iraqi leaders will be hard pressed to achieve sustained political reconciliation in the time frame of this Estimate.
The challenges confronting Iraqis are daunting, and multiple factors are driving the current trajectory of the country’s security and political evolution.
• Decades of subordination to Sunni political, social, and economic domination have made the Shia deeply insecure about their hold on power. This insecurity leads the Shia to mistrust US efforts to reconcile Iraqi sects and reinforces their unwillingness to engage with the Sunnis on a variety of issues, including adjusting the structure of Iraq’s federal system, reining in Shia militias, and easing de-Bathification.
• Many Sunni Arabs remain unwilling to accept their minority status, believe the central government is illegitimate and incompetent, and are convinced that Shia dominance will increase Iranian influence over Iraq, in ways that erode the state’s Arab character and increase Sunni repression.
• The absence of unifying leaders among the Arab Sunni or Shia with the capacity to speak for or exert control over their confessional groups limits prospects for reconciliation. The Kurds remain willing to participate in Iraqi state building but reluctant to surrender any of the gains in autonomy they have achieved.
• The Kurds are moving systematically to increase their control of Kirkuk to guarantee annexation of all or most of the city and province into the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) after the constitutionally mandated referendum scheduled to occur no later than 31 December 2007. Arab groups in Kirkuk continue to resist violently what they see as Kurdish encroachment.
• Despite real improvements, the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF)—particularly the Iraqi police—will be hard pressed in the next 12-18 months to execute significantly increased security responsibilities, and particularly to operate independently against Shia militias with success. Sectarian divisions erode the dependability of many units, many are hampered by personnel and equipment shortfalls, and a number of Iraqi units have refused to serve outside of the areas where they were recruited.
• Extremists—most notably the Sunni jihadist group al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI) and Shia oppositionist Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM)—continue to act as very effective accelerators for what has become a self-sustaining inter-sectarian struggle between Shia and Sunnis.
• Significant population displacement, both within Iraq and the movement of Iraqis into neighboring countries, indicates the hardening of ethno-sectarian divisions, diminishes Iraq’s professional and entrepreneurial classes, and strains the capacities of the countries to which they have relocated. The UN estimates over a million Iraqis are now in Syria and Jordan.
The Intelligence Community judges that the term “civil war” does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, al-Qa’ida and Sunni insurgent attacks on Coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence. Nonetheless, the term “civil war” accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements.
Coalition capabilities, including force levels, resources, and operations, remain an essential stabilizing element in Iraq. If Coalition forces were withdrawn rapidly during the term of this Estimate, we judge that this almost certainly would lead to a significant increase in the scale and scope of sectarian conflict in Iraq, intensify Sunni resistance to the Iraqi Government, and have adverse consequences for national reconciliation.
• If such a rapid withdrawal were to take place, we judge that the ISF would be unlikely to survive as a non-sectarian national institution; neighboring countries—invited by Iraqi factions or unilaterally—might intervene openly in the conflict; massive civilian casualties and forced population displacement would be probable; AQI would attempt to use parts of the country—particularly al-Anbar province—to plan increased attacks in and outside of Iraq; and spiraling violence and political disarray in Iraq, along with Kurdish moves to control Kirkuk and strengthen autonomy, could prompt Turkey to launch a military incursion.
A number of identifiable developments could help to reverse the negative trends driving Iraq’s current trajectory. They include:
• Broader Sunni acceptance of the current political structure and federalism to begin to reduce one of the major sources of Iraq’s instability.
• Significant concessions by Shia and Kurds to create space for Sunni acceptance of federalism.
• A bottom-up approach—deputizing, resourcing, and working more directly with neighborhood watch groups and establishing grievance committees—to help mend frayed relationships between tribal and religious groups, which have been mobilized into communal warfare over the past three years.
A key enabler for all of these steps would be stronger Iraqi leadership, which could enhance the positive impact of all the above developments.
Iraq’s neighbors influence, and are influenced by, events within Iraq, but the involvement of these outside actors is not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq’s internal sectarian dynamics. Nonetheless, Iranian lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants clearly intensifies the conflict in Iraq. Syria continues to provide safehaven for expatriate Iraqi Bathists and to take less than adequate measures to stop the flow of foreign jihadists into Iraq.
• For key Sunni regimes, intense communal warfare, Shia gains in Iraq, and Iran’s assertive role have heightened fears of regional instability and unrest and contributed to a growing polarization between Iran and Syria on the one hand and other Middle East governments on the other. But traditional regional rivalries, deepening ethnic and sectarian violence in Iraq over the past year, persistent anti-Americanism in the region, anti-Shia prejudice among Arab states, and fears of being perceived by their publics as abandoning their Sunni co-religionists in Iraq have constrained Arab states’ willingness to engage politically and economically with the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad and led them to consider unilateral support to Sunni groups.
• Turkey does not want Iraq to disintegrate and is determined to eliminate the safehaven in northern Iraq of the Kurdistan People’s Congress (KGK, formerly PKK)—a Turkish Kurdish terrorist group.
A number of identifiable internal security and political triggering events, including sustained mass sectarian killings, assassination of major religious and political leaders, and a complete Sunni defection from the government have the potential to convulse severely Iraq’s security environment. Should these events take place, they could spark an abrupt increase in communal and insurgent violence and shift Iraq’s trajectory from gradual decline to rapid deterioration with grave humanitarian, political, and security consequences. Three prospective security paths might then emerge:
• Chaos Leading to Partition. With a rapid deterioration in the capacity of Iraq’s central government to function, security services and other aspects of sovereignty would collapse. Resulting widespread fighting could produce de facto partition, dividing Iraq into three mutually antagonistic parts. Collapse of this magnitude would generate fierce violence for at least several years, ranging well beyond the time frame of this Estimate, before settling into a partially stable end-state.
• Emergence of a Shia Strongman. Instead of a disintegrating central government producing partition, a security implosion could lead Iraq’s potentially most powerful group, the Shia, to assert its latent strength.
• Anarchic Fragmentation of Power. The emergence of a checkered pattern of local control would present the greatest potential for instability, mixing extreme ethno-sectarian violence with debilitating intra-group clashes.
