Pentagon Investigates Doctored "Intelligence" on ISIS

Living in an area with a heavy military population, I and others are supportive of our nation's military and not just in terms of the lip service so prevalent among Republicans who talk about supporting the military even as they cut veterans benefits and send our troops to war without property equipment.  All of this said, I remain highly suspicious of senior commanding military personnel who whether it be in the Vietnam era or now in the Middle East fiasco ALWAYS claim to be making better progress than is the reality and who ALWAYS claim that with more time, men and money they can do the impossible regardless of objective reality and/or that local military personnel in countries such as Iraq are capable of defending themselves.  The result is that bad decisions are made and American lives and treasure are wasted.  Now, the Pentagon is investigating doctored intelligence reports that sought to hide the military's failed "success" with fighting ISIS.  Here are highlights from the New York Times:

When Islamic State fighters overran a string of Iraqi cities last year, analysts at United States Central Command wrote classified assessments for military intelligence officials and policy makers that documented the humiliating retreat of the Iraqi Army. But before the assessments were final, former intelligence officials said, the analysts’ superiors made significant changes.

In the revised documents, the Iraqi Army had not retreated at all. The soldiers had simply “redeployed.”

Such changes are at the heart of an expanding internal Pentagon investigation of Centcom, as Central Command is known, where analysts say that supervisors revised conclusions to mask some of the American military’s failures in training Iraqi troops and beating back the Islamic State. The analysts say supervisors were particularly eager to paint a more optimistic picture of America’s role in the conflict than was warranted.

In recent weeks, the Pentagon inspector general seized a large trove of emails and documents from military servers as it examines the claims, and has added more investigators to the inquiry.

The electronic files seized in the Pentagon investigation tell the story of the group’s [ISIS] rise, as seen through the eyes of Centcom, which oversees military operations across the Middle East.

The exact content of those documents is unclear and may not become public because so much of the information is classified. But military officials have told Congress that some of those emails and documents may have been deleted before they had to be turned over to investigators, according to a senior congressional official, who requested anonymity to speak about the ongoing inquiry. Current and former officials have separately made similar claims, on condition of anonymity, to The New York Times.

The committee is not just examining reports about Iraq, Syria and the Islamic State, but also about Afghanistan and other areas under Centcom’s purview. The insurrection inside Centcom is an important chapter in the story of how the United States responded to the growing threat from the Islamic State. This past summer, a group of Centcom analysts took concerns about their superiors to the inspector general, saying they had evidence that senior officials had changed intelligence assessments to overstate the progress of American airstrikes against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

The analysts said problems in Iraq were rooted in deep political and religious divides that could not easily be solved with a military campaign, current and former officials have said. Yet Centcom’s official posture remained generally upbeat. 

It is not clear whether the Centcom assessments significantly changed the Obama administration’s views about ISIS. While Centcom was largely positive about American gains, other agencies have been more pessimistic. The White House has generally been measured in its assessments.

[T]he prospect that senior officials intentionally skewed intelligence conclusions has raised questions about how much Mr. Obama, Congress and the public can believe the military’s assessments.

On Thursday, Foreign Policy reported that a group of Republican lawmakers will be focusing on whether Centcom also skewed intelligence assessments about Afghanistan. 

In addition to determining whether changes were made to intelligence reports — and if so, who ordered them — the investigators, like the staff members of the House intelligence committee, are studying reports from other intelligence agencies produced at the time to determine what was actually occurring in Iraq and Syria when the reports were written.

Sadly, senior military commanders never seem to be held to a level of accountability that is warranted given their ability to throw away the lives of our troops.    If reports were falsified, people need to lose their jobs - and their retirement packages.

Jeb Bush's Middle East Policy No Different from Idiot Brother's

For almost 15 years now, America has been plagued by a never ending disaster in the Middle East that was launched for the most part by the lies and deceit of George W. Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney.   In short, they and their advisers took America to war in Iraq based on deliberate lies and a fantasy world view of how their fool's errand would play out.  Thousands of Americans - and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis - paid with literally their lives and/or ruined lives and America was partially bankrupted.  Enter Jeb "Jebbie" Bush and his ego driven desire to be president.  Terrifyingly, Jebbie's view of the Middle East and his would be policies would likely be a carbon copy of his idiot brother's disastrous policies.  Jebbie and the recycled advisers he has assembled from his brother's failed regime have learned nothing from the last 15 years.  This alone disqualifies the man from ever occupying the White House.  The Washington Post looks at the concern of even Republicans who revel in killing Muslims have over Jebbie's would be policies.  Here are excerpts:

When Jeb Bush stepped up onto the fabled soapbox at the Iowa State Fair on Friday, fairgoers pelted him with questions about the legacy of his brother, a former president. And his father, another former president. And one of his foreign policy advisers, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the architect of his brother’s war in Iraq. And about the war itself.

Under a blazing sun, Bush expressed irritation with what he called “the parlor game” of focusing on Wolfowitz and other past Bush administration advisers who have resurfaced for this Bush campaign.

This was supposed to be the week when Bush would finally lay out his own thoughts on how to combat the Islamic State terror group and put Hillary Rodham Clinton on the defensive — and wrest himself from his family legacy in the process. But over several days, it has become evident that his ideas on the subject are remarkably similar to George W. Bush’s ideas and that he firmly believes that Democrats — not his brother — deserve the blame for the unrest in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

His new struggles with the issue also come as he is fading in polls and being drowned out by the angry outsiders dominating the race.

According to Bush this week, the removal of Saddam Hussein from power “turned out to be a pretty good deal.” The 2007 troop surge was “an extraordinarily effective” strategy. By the time his brother left office, he said, the “mission was accomplished” in Iraq because security had been restored.

Bush also said he won’t rule out waterboarding in the interrogation of terrorism suspects, although he added, “I do think in general that torture is not appropriate.”

He said it might be necessary to deploy more U.S. forces to both Iraq and Syria — and that troops already on the ground should be embedded more closely with local forces.

Democrats are eager to exploit Bush’s remarks this week to remind voters of his family ties. During a town hall in Dubuque, Iowa, on Friday afternoon, Clinton took aim at Bush’s criticism of her, noting that his brother signed an agreement as president to withdraw combat troops from the country by 2011.   I do think that it’s a little bit surprising to hear Jeb Bush talk about this,” she said. “He expects the American people to have a collective case of amnesia.”

Most Americans still believe the Iraq war was a mistake and are opposed to new military engagement — making Jeb Bush’s approach to national security risky.

Carl Owens, a hog farmer, stood off to the side taking in the scene.  “I don’t know if he’s like his brother and dad or not,” said Owens, 59. “I wasn’t too happy with them. Mr. Bush, the last president, look at the mess he got the United States into over there where we shouldn’t have been. Kind of like the Vietnam War. We shouldn’t have been there.”

Mr. Owens, the hog farmer has clearer vision than Jebbie.  And if anyone is playing "parlor games" it is Jebbie and his delusional advisers - except their games involve throwing away more American lives. 

 

Poll: Majority of Americans Support Iran Deal

A new poll reflects that a majority of Americans support the Obama administration's deal with Iran to prevent Iran from securing nuclear weapons despite some mistrust and concern.  Meanwhile, the Republicans - as increasingly is the norm - are pandering to their shrinking party base and playing to anti-Muslim hatred and ignoring the lunacy of going to war with Iran.  One would think that almost always advocating policies not supported by the majority of the population would be a message to the GOP.  Unfortunately, between existing in a bubble and drinking far too much mind altering Kool-Aid, that message is not even received.  Here are highlights from Bloomberg on the new poll findings:

When it comes to the Obama administration's deal with Iran that attempts to keep Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, Americans seem to be taking a pragmatic view. 

Fifty-six percent of U.S. adults surveyed in a new Washington Post/ABC News poll say they support the Iran nuclear deal while 37 percent say they oppose it. Seven percent said that they had no opinion of the deal. In part, those findings may have something to do with the way the poll's question was phrased. 

"The U.S. and other countries have announced a deal to lift economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for Iran agreeing not to produce nuclear weapons," the poll asked. "International inspectors would monitor Iran’s facilities, and if Iran is caught breaking the agreement economic sanctions would be imposed again. Do you support or oppose this agreement?"

Yet, when asked,"How confident are you that this agreement will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons?" a whopping 42 percent surveyed responded, "Not at all." Another 22 percent answered "not so" confident, 29 percent said they were "somewhat"confident,  and just 6 percent said they were "very" confident that the deal will keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

A partisan breakdown of the majority of Americans who say they support the deal finds that 69 percent of Democrats, 56 percent of Independents, and 41 percent of Republicans are, for the moment, on board with the framework. Still, on the campaign trail, every single GOP candidate to have declared has come out against the deal the president's administration has spent years negotiating.

Could part of the GOP's opposition also be from the fact that a black man oversaw brokering the deal? 

The GOP's War Mongering

Having apparently learned absolutely nothing from the fiascoes in Afghanistan and Iraq launched by a similar detachment from reality and insane belief that America can impose its will on other nations, the Republicans are lamenting the agreement negotiated with Iran and condemning it as appeasement and all sorts of other negative descriptions.  Their alternative?  There is none other that ultimately war.  A war that anyone sane ought to know America cannot win based on the examples of the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan.   Is the Iran deal perfect?  Of course not, but again, what is the alternative?   A column in the New York Times looks at the GOP's insane war mongering.  Here are excerpts:

So what do the critics, from Republican presidential hopefuls to the Israeli government, seek in place of the deal with Iran that verifiably blocks Tehran’s path to a nuclear weapon for at least the next 10 to 15 years? Presumably, they want what would have happened if negotiations had collapsed. That would be renewed war talk as an unconstrained Iran installs sophisticated centrifuges, its stockpile of enriched uranium grows, Russia and China abandon the sanctions regime, moderates in Iran like Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are sidelined, and a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic draws closer.

To favor such peril, when a constructive alternative exists that engages one of the most highly educated societies in the Middle East, amounts to foolishness dressed up as machismo.

The Iran nuclear deal is not perfect, nor was it ever intended to address the long list of American-Iranian grievances, which will persist. It must be judged on what it set out to do — stop Iran going nuclear — not on whether Iran has a likeable regime (it does not) or does bad things (it does). President Obama did not set out to change Iran but he has created a framework that, over a decade, might.

If implemented, the agreement constitutes the most remarkable American diplomatic achievement since the Dayton Accords put an end to the Bosnian war two decades ago. It increases the distance between Iran and a bomb as it reduces the distance between Iran and the world. It makes the Middle East less dangerous by forestalling proliferation. In a cacophonous age of short-termism, it offers a lesson of stubborn leadership in pursuit of a long-term goal.

Iran had been increasing its operating centrifuges and the size and enrichment level of its uranium stockpile. Now, the number of centrifuges is to be slashed by two-thirds to 5,060; the stockpile is to be all but eliminated; enrichment levels are capped at 3.7 percent, a long way from bomb grade; the potential route to weapons-grade plutonium at Arak is disabled; international inspection is redoubled and, in Obama’s words, will extend “where necessary,” “when necessary.” In return, Iran gets the phased elimination of most sanctions, the end to its pariah status, and a windfall that will alleviate its economic crisis.

And this is “one of the darkest days in world history”? No, it is a moment for guarded hope.

Iran is finely poised between a tough old guard forged in revolution and its aspirational, Westward-looking youth. A decade is a long time in societies in transition. It is far better to have deep American-Iranian differences — over Hezbollah, over Syria, over regional Shiite irredentism, over Iran’s vile anti-Israel outbursts — addressed through dialogue rather than have Iran do its worst as pariah.

This accord has the merit of condemning the United States and Tehran to a relationship — however hostile — over the next 15 years. The Middle East, several of its states irremediably fractured, needs a new security framework. This will take years. But to imagine it could ever be fashioned without Iran’s involvement is fantasy. Meanwhile, the West and Iran have a common enemy: the medieval slaughterers of Islamic State.

Strict verification is imperative. But Congress should think twice before the feel-good, reckless adoption of a resolution condemning a deal that advances American interests. Obama would veto it, and almost certainly has the votes to resist an override, but this would be a regrettable way for the nation to assume such a ground-shifting agreement. 

Israel, too, should ask the hard questions rather than dismiss a deal that puts Iran much further from a bomb, empowers Iranian reformists, locks in American-Iranian dialogue and will be leveraged by Netanyahu to secure more advanced American weapons systems. The darkest days in history for the Jewish people were of an altogether different order. They should never be trivialized.

The Republicans ranting against the Iran agreement need to study some history and demographic facts.  Unlike Iraq which was a made up nation thanks to the French and British in the aftermath of World War I, Iran is an ancient nation/culture that had a glorious past many centuries before America was even discovered.  It has more than twice the population of Afghanistan and Iraq combined.  Moreover, much of the population is well educated.  These aren't the ignorant "rag heads" that the Christofascists like to see slaughtered. Short of decades of war and a full blown occupation - and we've seen how well that worked in Iraq - with trillions of dollars spent and god knows how many American lives lost, America cannot impose its will on Iran.  We need to realize that there are very real limits to what our military power can do.  This agreement deserves a chance to succeed.  The GOP's embrace of ignorance and military fantasies need to be rejected.

Fox News' Laura Ingraham Slams Jeb Bush on Iraq War Statement

Remember how Jeb "Jebbie" Bush is supposed to be the "smart brother"?  Especially in comparison to his idiot brother George W. Bush, perhaps among the worse U.S. President in the nation's history.  First Jebbie said that his top adviser on Middle East policy and affairs is, yes you guessed it, his idiot brother.  Now, Jebbie has said that knowing all that we now know, he would still take America to war in Iraq.  The stupidity of the statement is both frightening and chilling given the American lives that were squandered (not to mention the huge number of Iraqi lives) the financial ruin brought down on the nation.  Jebbie's idiocy was too much even for the propagandists at Fox News.  As Talking Points Memo, Laura Ingraham of Fox News went off on Jebbie and slammed him.  Here are highlights:

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham dropped the hammer on former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) on Monday after the likely presidential candidate said he would invade Iraq again, knowing what we know now.

"You can't still think that going into Iraq, now, as a sane human being, was the right thing to do," Ingraham said on her radio show.

"If you do, there has to be something wrong with you," she added. 

Bush made the remark in an interview set to air Monday night, after Fox News host Megyn Kelly asked him if he would have ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003, "knowing what we know now." "I would," he said. "And so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody."

This did not fly with Ingraham.

"No Hillary wouldn't!" Ingraham said on Monday. "Hillary wouldn't authorize the war now, if she knew what she knows now."

At one point she began laughing, and doubted that Bush was "his own person" capable of breaking with his brother, President George W. Bush.

The radio host said the exchange did not bode well for Bush if he were to secure the GOP nomination and face off against Clinton and the press.

"You have to have someone who says, look, I'm a Republican but I'm not an idiot! I'm not stupid!" she said. "I learn from the past and I improve myself."

The LAST thing America needs is another Bush in the White House.  The so-called GOP establishment needs to get it collective head out of its ass and make it clear to Jebbie that he is NOT wanted. He needs to go f*ck up something else and leave the country alone. 

Jeb Bush: He Takes Mideast Advice From George W. Bush

Republicans and pundits who are in denial - or who are downing gallons of "Kool-Aid" - try to pretend that Jeb Bush - Jebbie on this blog - is a "moderate.  Jebbie, of course, seeks to fan this myth and disingenuously claims that he is "his own man." .  But on occasion Jebbie slips up and makes statements that let the real truth shine out.  A case in point?  Statements Jebbie made to a group of New York financiers on Tuesday when he admitted that on Middle East policy, he turns to his older brother and former President George W. Bush.  The same George W. Bush who told lies to take America to war in Iraq, who ignored warnings of an attack in the weeks before 9-11, and bankrupted the country and squandered away the budget surplus achieved under Bill Clinton's presidency.  This admission ought to totally disqualify Jebbie for any office - even dog catcher.  Talking Points Memo looks at this frightening admission.  Here are highlights:

Likely presidential candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) told a group of New York financiers on Tuesday that when it comes to Middle East policy, he turns to his older brother and former President George W. Bush, according to the Washington Post.

“If you want to know who I listen to for advice, it’s him,” Jeb Bush said, the Post reported, citing four anonymous attendees of the meeting.

The event was a closed-door affair, reportedly organized by hedge fund manager and Republican Party mega-donor Paul Singer. The paper noted that it was not a fundraiser.

A Bush spokesperson addressed the comment to the Post.  “Governor Bush has said before that his brother is the greatest ally to Israel in presidential history, he admires his stalwart support for our ally, and that is in line with his commitment to standing with Israel in the face of great threats to their security and our own,” the spokesperson said on Thursday.

Last month, George W. Bush reportedly said he would be staying out of the spotlight should his brother run for President.

But a few days later, George W. Bush knocked President Obama's Middle East policy at an event hosted by another mega donor, Sheldon Adelson — particularly the ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran and Obama's handling of the Islamic State group in Iraq. His remarks were leaked by Bloomberg News.

George W. Bush was wrong on virtually every aspect of America's Middle East policy.  If Jebbie is turning to his idiot brother for advise, sane and rational people should be running screaming from Jebbie's unannounced presidential campaign. 

Jeb Bush - A Reprise of His Brother's Failed Policies

Despite his claims that "he's his own man," the prospect of a third Bush presidency suggests that we'd see a return of the disastrous policies of the Chimperator, George W. Bush, both domestic and in foreign policy.  Sadly, Jebbie has surrounded himself with his brothers past advisers who crafted the debacles most Americans would like to forget.  Worse yet, these advisers still refuse to admit that they were nearly 100% wrong about just about everything.  Do we really want a return to policies that caused so much economic havoc, bankrupted the country, and caused so many deaths?  A piece in the Washington Post looks at what Bush III might bring.  Here are excerpts:

If Jeb Bush is elected president, the United States won’t be on speaking terms with Cuba and will partner more closely with Israel. He’ll tighten sanctions on Iran and urge NATO to deploy more troops in Eastern Europe to counter Vladimir Putin. And he’ll order the U.S. military to root out “barbarians” and “evildoers” around the globe.

Far from running from or playing down the views once expressed by his brother George W. Bush, Jeb Bush is embracing them — and emphasizing them.

It is clear when he calls for closer engagement with Arab leaders to combat the growing threat of the Islamic State. Or when he criticizes President Obama for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq. It is most apparent when he refers to “evildoers” — a formulation used widely by his brother — and argues that the United States needs to engage but doesn’t have to be “the world’s policeman,” a view voiced by his brother that was also embraced by their father, George H.W. Bush.

Bush’s views put him squarely in the middle of GOP consensus on foreign affairs — a consensus that formed as his brother reshaped U.S. engagement with the world. But by endorsing some of his brother’s views, he puts himself at odds with most Americans, who remain wary of the two wars launched during the last Bush presidency.

In recent years, nearly 6 in 10 Americans have believed that the Iraq war was not worth fighting, though Republicans have been slightly more supportive, according to polling by The Washington Post and other organizations. In more recent years, public opinion has similarly turned against the war in Afghanistan.

Early in the exploratory phase of his likely campaign, Jeb Bush unveiled a foreign policy advisory team that reflects the disparate views of GOP thinking on the world. The group includes two former secretaries of state, George P. Shultz and James A. Baker III; two former CIA directors, Porter J. Goss and Michael V. Hayden; former attorney general Michael Mukasey; and Paul Wolf­owitz, a former deputy defense secretary and a lead architect of the Iraq war.  

When it comes to Iraq, Bush is mostly supportive of his brother’s legacy there.  “There were mistakes in Iraq for sure,” he said during a speech in Chicago in February. “Using the intelligence capability that everybody embraced about weapons of mass destruction, it turns out to not be accurate.”

Undeterred by public opinion polls that suggest his views are not shared by a majority of voters, Bush believes that global events might prompt Americans to eventually embrace his thinking. During an appearance in San Francisco in January, he accused Obama of exploiting America’s war fatigue to justify withdrawing U.S. military forces abroad.

Claiming that "intelligence was not accurate" is Jebbie's euphemism for dodging the fact that his idiot brother deliberately lied to the American people.

Jeb Bush's Big Problem - His Brother W

With Cruz, Paul and Rubio now officially in the GOP presidential nomination contest, many are waiting for Jeb Bush to formally throw his hat into the fray.  Bush faces two problems.  First, the Christofacscists and their cretinous Tea Party cousins don't like him.  Second, his last name is Bush and far too many voters remember how his idiot brother under the manipulation of Emperor Palpatine Cheney manufactured lies to take America into a failed war in Iraq.  Compounding the later problem is the fact that Jebbie has surrounded himself with the same set of foreign policy advisers who got America into the Iraq debacle and who still refuse to admit that they were wrong on every front.  Even the detached from reality George W. Bush realizes that his name is radioactive with many Americans.  Politico looks at Jebbie's ongoing over arching problem - his brother and the Chimperator's analysis of the situation.  Here are highlights:

Jeb Bush’s candidacy has a problem, says brother George.  “Me.”  “It’s an easy line to say, ‘Haven’t we had enough Bushes?’

“So I said to Jeb, ‘Hang in there; you can do the job. Will you win? I hope so but I don’t know. But if he does he’d be a damn good president I’ll tell you that.”

The elder Bush said the campaign trail will be grueling — as it should be — but his brother has an edge.

“It’s going to be a hard test for everyone, but it should be. You want to see these candidates under pressure, see them fail and succeed so you have a better idea how they’ll handle the pressures of the job. Jeb has actually run something, called a state. That’s a skill that comes in handy where you’re in charge of a very complex multifaceted organization.”

Who in their right mind would want to trust the Chimperator's judgment on his brother when his judgment proved so utterly flawed on so many things?  He and his regime (and the GOP controlled Congress) gave us the Great Recession and the continuing disaster in the Middle East.  

Is Obama Drinking George W. Bush's Kool-Aid?

Other than perhaps America's bungled intelligence that allowed Pearl Harbor to be attacked 73 years ago today and the Vietnam fiasco which began in earnest 50 years ago, perhaps the biggest military/foreign policy mistakes America has made during the last century is the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.  Anyone with any knowledge of the history of the region and not blinded by American hubris should have known from the outset that these invasions would end in disaster.  Yet, after working to get American troops out of the nightmare Bush/Cheney created, Barack Obama seems headed towards throwing away more American lives and squandering billions more of American tax dollars.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at Obama's moves to commit more American resources to this fool's errand.  Here are highlights:

No one has sounded more determined to extricate the United States from Afghanistan than President Obama. It is “time to turn the page,” he said in May when he announced plans to reduce American forces to 9,800 troops by the end of December, with a full withdrawal by the end of 2016. That goal appeared to be on track — until now. Mr. Obama’s recent turnabout and other developments seem to be sucking America back into the Afghan war, a huge mistake.

First, Mr. Obama authorized a more expansive mission for the American military in 2015 than originally planned. His order would put American troops right back into ground combat by allowing them to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militants. He had previously said that the residual force would be engaged only in counterterrorism operations aimed at remnants of Al Qaeda. The new order also permits American jets and drones to support Afghan military missions.

Already, the number of American troops to remain in Afghanistan after December has been increased by 1,000, up to 10,800. NATO allies are supposed to provide 4,000 troops next year, bringing the total of foreign forces to 12,000 to 14,000. Secretary of State John Kerry has said that any additional American troops above 9,800 are temporary and are merely covering for NATO allies that are still trying to decide how many forces to contribute.  But if NATO fails to contribute sufficient troops, then what?

Mr. Obama seems to be having second thoughts about his Afghan strategy after the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the sudden collapse of the Iraqi army. He may be trying to avoid blame if something similar happens in Afghanistan, where Taliban attacks are on the rise.

But he should resist the advice of military commanders, who are again pushing for broader involvement. They were unable to defeat the Taliban when more than 100,000 American troops were in the country; there is no reason to think that a very limited American force will be more effective now.

One lesson learned over the last 13 years is this: No amount of foreign assistance — not tens of thousands of troops, billions of dollars or unlimited amounts of military equipment — will make any real difference if the Afghans cannot or will not pull together a functioning, relatively uncorrupt and competent government, and take primary responsibility for themselves and their country.

Administration officials are still insisting “the combat mission ends” by the end of this year, but that’s simply not credible. Mr. Obama should stick to his original plan. . . .

Living in an area with a huge military presence, one thing you learn quickly is that military commanders will ALWAYS claim that with more troops and more money they can succeed no matter how much such claims are opposed to objective reality.  Anyone who believes these commanders is a fool - or drinking Bush/Cheney Kool-Aid. 

Washington Refuses To Admit It Lost Two Wars

Two years ago today, one of my sons-in-law was badly wounded in Afghanistan.  At the time, the U.S. Army was less than truthful and it was several emotional days before he was flown out to Germany for first phases of major treatment.  To this day we don't know if inquires made on our behalf by Senator mark Warner helped get him out of Afghanistan more quickly.  After that, it was months of treatment and recovery.  Thankfully, he had a largely full recovery.  Many, including some of his friends whom I had the opportunity to meet, were not so lucky.  He has since left the military and just completed the Warrior Hike to "walk off the war"up the Pacific Crest trail from Mexico to Canada.  Sadly, the mindset in Washington that set the stage for the fool's errands in Afghanistan and Iraq is alive and well and puts the lives of other young Americans at Risk.  Andrew Sullivan has a good take down of these morons and hypocrites who continue to admit that both wars have been disasters and that the USA lost them.  Here are excerpts:

Let me put this as baldly as I can. The US fought two long, brutal wars in its response to the atrocity of September 11, 2001. We lost both of them – revealing the biggest military machine in the history of the planet as essentially useless in advancing American objectives through war and occupation. Attempts to quash Islamist extremism through democracy were complete failures. The Taliban still has enormous sway in Afghanistan and the only way to prevent the entire Potemkin democracy from imploding is a permanent US troop presence. In Iraq, we are now confronting the very same Sunni insurgency the invasion created in 2003 – just even more murderous. The Jihadism there has only become more extreme under a democratic veneer. And in all this, the U.S. didn’t just lose the wars; it lost the moral high-ground as well.  The president [Bush] himself unleashed brutal torture across all theaters of war – effectively ending any moral authority the US has in international human rights.

These are difficult truths to handle. They reveal that so many brave men and women died for nothing. And so we have to construct myths or bury facts to ensure that we maintain face. But these myths and amnesia have a consequence: they only serve to encourage Washington to make exactly the same mistakes again. To protect its own self-regard, Washington’s elite is prepared to send young Americans to fight in a war they cannot win and indeed have already lost. You see the blinding myopia elsewhere: Washington’s refusal to release the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on torture merely proves that it cannot face the fact that some of the elite are war criminals tout simple, and that these horrific war crimes have changed America’s role in the world.

What infuriated me about the decision to re-start the Iraq War last August – by a president explicitly elected not to do any such thing – was its arrogance, its smugness, and its contempt for what this country, and especially its armed forces, went through for so many long years of quagmire and failure.

My point is this: how can you behave this way after what so many service-members endured for so long? How can you simply re-start a war you were elected to end and for which you have no feasible means to achieve victory? 

The Truth About Bush's Wars

Lately, some news outlets have been interviewing George W. Bush and asking his opinion on a range of matters.  Personally, I find it incredible that a man that was wrong about almost everything - and who cannot travel overseas for fear of arrest for war crimes - is consulted about anything.  Today, on Veterans Day, it is perhaps most important to remember the disasters that Bush and his evil co-conspirator Dick Cheney brought to America.  I am not anti-military or anti-veteran.  Rather, I believe the worst thing one can do is send our troops on fool's errands and then not properly support them.  Having nearly lost a son-in-law in Afghanistan, this is admittedly very personal to me.  A column in the New York Times authored by a retired general looks at the issue of the need for honesty about America's two failed wars.  Here are highlights:

AS a senior commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, I lost 80 soldiers. Despite their sacrifices, and those of thousands more, all we have to show for it are two failed wars. This fact eats at me every day, and Veterans Day is tougher than most.

As veterans, we tell ourselves it was all worth it. The grim butchery of war hovers out of sight and out of mind, an unwelcome guest at the dignified ceremonies. Instead, we talk of devotion to duty and noble sacrifice. We salute the soldiers at Omaha Beach, the sailors at Leyte Gulf, the airmen in the skies over Berlin and the Marines at the Chosin Reservoir, and we’re not wrong to do so. The military thrives on tales of valor. In our volunteer armed forces, such stirring examples keep bringing young men and women through the recruiters’ door. As we used to say in the First Cavalry Division, they want to “live the legend.” In the military, we love our legends.

Here’s a legend that’s going around these days. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and toppled a dictator. We botched the follow-through, and a vicious insurgency erupted. Four years later, we surged in fresh troops, adopted improved counterinsurgency tactics and won the war. And then dithering American politicians squandered the gains. It’s a compelling story. But it’s just that — a story.

The surge in Iraq did not “win” anything. It bought time. It allowed us to kill some more bad guys and feel better about ourselves.
The remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni insurgents we battled for more than eight years simply re-emerged this year as the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

The surge legend is soothing, especially for military commanders like me. We can convince ourselves that we did our part, and a few more diplomats or civilian leaders should have done theirs. Similar myths no doubt comforted Americans who fought under the command of Robert E. Lee in the Civil War or William C. Westmoreland in Vietnam. But as a three-star general who spent four years trying to win this thing — and failing — I now know better.

We did not understand the enemy, a guerrilla network embedded in a quarrelsome, suspicious civilian population. We didn’t understand our own forces, which are built for rapid, decisive conventional operations, not lingering, ill-defined counterinsurgencies.

What went wrong in Iraq and in Afghanistan isn’t the stuff of legend. It won’t bring people into the recruiting office, or make for good speeches on Veterans Day. Reserve those honors for the brave men and women who bear the burdens of combat.

That said, those who served deserve an accounting from the generals. What happened? How? And, especially, why? It has to be a public assessment, nonpartisan and not left to the military. (We tend to grade ourselves on the curve.) Something along the lines of the 9/11 Commission is in order. We owe that to our veterans and our fellow citizens.

Such an accounting couldn’t be more timely. Today we are hearing some, including those in uniform, argue for a robust ground offensive against the Islamic State in Iraq. Air attacks aren’t enough, we’re told.

As a veteran, and a general who learned hard lessons in two lost campaigns, I’d like to suggest an alternative. Maybe an incomplete and imperfect effort to contain the Islamic State is as good as it gets. Perhaps the best we can or should do is to keep it busy, “degrade” its forces, harry them or kill them, and seek the long game at the lowest possible cost. It’s not a solution that is likely to spawn a legend. But in the real world, it just may well give us something better than another defeat.

What the author argues for would be really supporting our troops rather than the sound bites especially popular with the GOP.  Will such an accounting actually happen?  Probably not.  Too many have too much to lose if the full truth ever comes out.  Meanwhile, our troops risk betrayal yet again by their leaders. 

Another Bush Presidency - Just What America Doesn't Need

Not content with having failed to keep America safe from the 9-11 attacks and having led America into disastrous fool's errands in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush family is gearing up for a presidential run by Jeb Bush.  While the GOP establishment may be thrilled by the prospect, I suspect the spittle flecked, unwashed Christofascist/Tea Party controlled party grass roots will be far lest ecstatic.  Particularly disturbing to me is the sense of entitlement that seems to permeate the Bush clan.  One can only hope that America has the sense to reject Bush early on.  Meanwhile, expect a blood bath in the GOP presidential primaries where Jeb Bush will be assailed by the lunatics in the GOP clown car like Ben Carson, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee.  The New York Times looks at Bush's apparent mmentum towards announcing his canadacy.  Here are excerpts:

When Jeb Bush decides whether to run for president, there will be no family meeting à la Mitt Romney, no gathering at Walker’s Point in Kennebunkport to go over the pros and cons. “I don’t think it’ll be like a big internal straw poll,” said his son, Jeb Bush Jr.

But if there were, the results of the poll are pretty much in. As Mr. Bush nears a decision to become the third member of his storied family to seek the presidency, the extended Bush clan and its attendant network, albeit with one prominent exception, are largely rallying behind the prospect and pulling the old machine out of the closet.

“No question,” Jeb Jr. said in an interview, “people are getting fired up about it — donors and people who have been around the political process for a while, people he’s known in Tallahassee when he was governor. The family, we’re geared up either way.” Most important, he added, his mother, Columba, the prospective candidate’s politics-averse wife, has given her assent.

Barbara Bush, the former first lady and Jeb Bush’s mother, is unconvinced, according to people close to the family, but has been persuaded to stop saying it so publicly.

Just six years ago, at the end of the last tumultuous Bush presidency, this would have been all but unthinkable. But President Obama’s troubles, the internal divisions of the Republican Party, a newfound nostalgia for the first Bush presidency and a modest softening of views about the second have changed the dynamics enough to make plausible another Bush candidacy. And while Jeb Bush wants to run as his own man, invariably this is a family with something to prove.

For the elder Mr. Bush, Jeb was always the son expected to go far in politics, the serious one with drive to spare. After George W. gave up drinking and surpassed his brother, the elder Mr. Bush still harbored ambitions for the second son. Now 90 and in fading health, Mr. Bush has been animated about a possible Jeb campaign, according to friends.

George W. has become an outspoken advocate of a White House bid by Jeb. “The one person who is really, really trying to get Jeb to run is George W.,” said the family insider. “He’s talking it up all the time.”

He knows he would have to find a way to distance himself from some of the unpopular decisions of his father, and especially of his brother, while overcoming broader Bush fatigue.

And he has said publicly he does not want to run if it means getting caught in the “vortex of a mud fight,” acutely aware of the perils of bringing his family into the harsh light of modern politics. Columba was once stopped by customs agents for not declaring the full value of $19,000 in clothing and jewelry she bought in Paris, and their daughter Noelle was arrested on a prescription drug fraud charge a dozen years ago.

Friends and relatives took notice when Jeb Bush told a reporter during a campaign swing for his son that his wife would support a bid should he make one. Jeb Bush Jr. said that was important. “She’s not a big fan of politics and all the ugly things that go along with it, especially as it seems like it’s gotten worse with every passing cycle,” he said. “But she loves Dad and she loves the country, and I think she’ll be supportive.”

Jeb Bush Jr. said his father would make a decision after next week’s midterm elections, informed by experience no other possible candidate has had.

“If there’s one guy out there who knows how to run a presidential campaign, it’s definitely him,” he said. “He’s been around it, really, since 1980. He understands the full-court press.”

America's Continued Fool's Errand in Afghanistan

After 13 years, thousands of squandered American lives and billions of wasted dollars, Afghanistan remains a disaster and horrific backwater rivaled only by some of the failed nations in Africa where colonial rule gave way to gross corruption and often a worsening of local economies.   Yet if one listens to statements by politicians and perhaps worse yet, military leaders, they continue the myth that America has accomplished something in Afghanistan and that democracy and societal modernization are just around the corner.   Not only is such blather wishful thinking, its an outright lie.  A column in the New York Times looks at the reality in Afghanistan and what politicians of both parties and the ever eager for war generals prefer Americans not understand.  Here are excerpts:

John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, apparently is the only official in Washington who dares speak truth to power. In a Sept. 12 speech at Georgetown University, he said that Afghanistan “remains under assault by insurgents and is short of domestic revenue, plagued by corruption, afflicted by criminal elements involved in opium and smuggling, and struggling to execute basic functions of government.” His comments were largely ignored by the American media, and there was no immediate reaction from the Obama administration.

And yet anything less than a heavy dose of honesty and fresh thinking by Afghans and their Western supporters will almost certainly mean the relapse of Afghanistan into civil war and the emergence of groups even more extreme than the Taliban, as has happened in Iraq and Syria.

Moving from the lengthy U.S. military presence to full Afghan sovereignty was premised on the completion of four distinct transitions. But none has been successfully carried out, despite more than $640 billion in U.S. direct spending in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2013.

The most critical transition, the one on which everything else rested, was political. Rather than build state institutions or carry out much-needed electoral reforms, President Hamid Karzai spent his long tenure encouraging a form of crony politics that failed to sap the power of the warlords. He won a second term in 2009, after a vastly fraudulent election. The following year, according to U.N. officials, he asked that the United Nations stop supervising elections in the country, and Washington and NATO went along.

The second promised transition was military. U.S. forces were to hand over security matters to Afghan forces, proving that the new, U.S.-trained Afghan Army would then be able to hold back the Taliban on its own. Yet Interior Minister Mohammad Omar Daudzai told Parliament in Kabul on Sept. 16 that the previous six months had been the deadliest ever for the Afghan police. Today there is fighting in 18 of 34 provinces, Afghan and NATO officials have told me. In many areas, Afghan soldiers are barely able to secure their own bases, much less retake lost territory. Helmand, the critical drugs-producing province in southern Afghanistan, is at risk of being taken over by the Taliban. If it falls, all of southern Afghanistan might too.

The third failed transition has to do with economics.  . . . . here has been little large-scale investment in agriculture or basic industry; instead, the bulk of the economy has focused on servicing foreign troops and on their spending. And now the troops are about to withdraw.

When I first visited Afghanistan in the 1970s, the country was desperately poor, but it was almost self-sufficient in food and had a small yet thriving export trade in fruit, handicrafts, furs and gems. Today, Afghanistan imports much of its food and it produces very few commercial goods. The service economy, which is run by the middle class, has been collapsing, as both educated people and billions of dollars in capital have left the country. 

The fourth contribution expected of the U.S. presence was insulating Afghanistan from foreign interference, which many Afghans fear as much as the Taliban . . . . that, too, has not happened, and the country remains vulnerable to meddling from outside.

2015 is supposed to mark the start of Afghanistan’s “Transformation Decade.” But if the country is to even get to 2015 in one piece, its new leaders must act fast to correct course after the failed transformation of the last decade.