Moe Lane

(Via Instapundit) It’s kind of nice, that Mead can still believe that such a thing could happen:

President Obama and Vice President Biden must be deeply grateful that President Bush ignored his critics and went ahead with the surge; if they want to reduce the partisan polarization in Washington they could perhaps say something about it as our troops come home.

Completely impossible, of course: far too many progressives have based their moral center around a reflexive and habitual opposition to the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan for the President to dare risk telling them the truth.  For that matter, said opposition will make it equally impossible for the President to “make a peace,” as Mead’s article proposes.  The antiwar Left has never thought of Iraqis as being really people, you understand; and now that Iraq can no longer be used to target Republicans there’s simply no reason for progressives to care about what happens in that country.  The best that Iraqis can hope for at this stage is benign neglect.

Moe Lane

PS: I feel forced to note that Mead seems to think that the Bush administration ‘botched’ the administration.  I also feel forced to reply: ‘botched’ as compared to what?  I hate to break it to modern America, but the Iraq War wasn’t our bloodiest.  It wasn’t even our bloodiest occupation, frankly.  Pride: it really is an insidious sin…

…hasty response, abandonment, Sunni – Shi’ite conflict, Republicans cleaning up Democratic messes, Clintonian, short-sighted, parallels to 1990s, abandonment, Cassandra, flawed counter-terrorism policy, Iran, People’s Republic of China, Russia, Uzbekistan, resurgence of Chinese expansionism, resurgence of Russian expansionism, Kurds, Third Gulf War, Fourth Gulf War, Israel, Middle East Conflict, origins of the current crisis, Hi folks: sorry that we messed up things for you a decade or two down the line – but in my personal defense I voted for the other guy in 2008.

Link.

…and set up the bank shot in 2016 for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, apparently:

The Obama administration has decided to drop the number of U.S. troops in Iraq at the end of the year down to 3,000, marking a major downgrade in force strength, multiple sources familiar with the inner workings and decisions on U.S. troop movements in Iraq told Fox News.

[snip]

This shift is seen by various people as a cost-saving measure and a political measure. The only administration official fighting for at least 10,000 forces to stay in Iraq at the end of the year was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sources said. But she has lost the battle.

No, I don’t actually think that this scenario is actually what’s unfolding: nobody in the administration’s brave enough to try it.  But, speaking cynically, this would work as a long term strategy.  Accept that the election’s lost, set up a disaster for the Republican President to inherit and take the blame for, and put the one brave truth-teller in position to come over in 2016 and save the day.  It’s not optimal, but then it’s going to take a couple of years for the Democrats to fix everything that Obama’s done to their party.  They might as well sabotage things for the GOP in the meantime.
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“Lawrence, we can end this interview right now if you don’t want me to finish my point.”

I know this, because I just watched him crawl on the floor trying to retrieve them after he tried to push around former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This one’s going around. Newsbusters, @adambaldwin, the Daily Caller – take your pick. Particularly enjoyable was the part where she called O’Donnell a liar:
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Turns out that you can hang a bloodthirsty, genocidal dictator and not create a martyr and/or long term problems for yourself.  Go figure.

That’s it: I was just meaning to bring that up eventually, and I figure that four years is a reasonable amount of time to wait before doing so.  Also: read that link.  Pre-Surge Iraq coverage by the regular media never ceases to amaze with its passive-aggressive schadenfreude.

And “shows signs of ethical lapses?”

Say it ain’t so.

This paper considers the second Lancet survey of mortality in Iraq published in October 2006. It presents some evidence suggesting ethical violations to the survey’s respondents including endangerment, privacy breaches and violations in obtaining informed consent. Breaches of minimal disclosure standards examined include non-disclosure of the survey’s questionnaire, data-entry form, data matching anonymised interviewer identifications with households and sample design. The paper also presents some evidence relating to data fabrication and falsification, which falls into nine broad categories. This evidence suggests that this survey cannot be considered a reliable or valid contribution towards knowledge about the extent of mortality in Iraq since 2003.

Via the Corner (and probably Hot Air, soon).  For those who don’t remember, the Lancet 2 study was the one that claimed that 601K people had been killed in Iraq between its liberation in 2003 and 2006. This would have worked out to about 2% of the population dying in three years: to put this in perspective, this is the rough equivalent of the USA losing the population of Los Angeles and Chicago in three years without anybody noticing.  For that matter, the death rate in Iraq has been decreasing since 2000, if this survey is to be believed*.  (more…)

Theoretically, the confirmation hearings for proposed DNI James Clapper could be an opportunity for fireworks… only not in the way that one would think. It turns out that he’s a potential lightning rod for criticism from the Left:

President Obama’s choice to be the next director of national intelligence supported the view that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq sent weapons and documents to Syria in the weeks before the 2003 U.S. invasion.

[snip]

On Iraq, Gen. Clapper said in an interview with The Washington Times in 2004 that “I think probably in the few months running up prior to the onset of combat that … there was probably an intensive effort to disperse into private homes, move documentation and materials out of the country. I think there are any number of things that they would have done.”

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(Via AoSHQ) It has been declared a holiday, and for good reason. They’re getting their country… well, ‘back’ is the wrong word; under the Baathists it was never really ‘theirs’ to begin with. But they do take responsibility for their cities and towns now.

Iraqis Celebrate Day of National Sovereignty Marking US Troop Pullback

Iraqis are staging a national celebration to mark the impending June 30th withdrawal of U.S. troops from most cities, towns and villages. Celebrations in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, include music, dance and poetry.

I think that this is a nicely iconic image:

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

…as found here: he’s the guy that did this pre-surge interview in 2007 for Salon where he breezily declared that:

• “The U.S. is failing miserably at containing the spread of al-Qaida.”
• “The idea of Western-style democracy in Iraq doesn’t appeal to anyone.”
• “I don’t think any number of new troops is going to help unless we’re going to station troops on every single corner of every single street in every single city in Iraq.”

Yeah, I know: oops. (more…)

No, really.

I read with some interest this article which describes a supposed Blue-on-Blue fight looming over the upcoming reduction of troops:

Congressional Democrats’ misgivings about President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce troop levels in Iraq has set the stage for potentially major conflicts between Capitol Hill and the White House in the months ahead.

Obama’s announcement Friday that he will leave between 35,000 and 50,000 troops in Iraq after August 2010 brought lukewarm responses from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Both leaders have publicly questioned the decision to leave that many troops there indefinitely.

Also causing consternation is the president’s decision to finish the drawdown in 18 months. As a candidate, Obama had promised a complete withdrawal within 16 months.

Being a kind and generous soul who understands that we’re all in this together, on behalf of the neoconservative movement I am here to offer the President a little advice on how to keep antiwar legislators in line. We did it for eight years, after all; two of which were years where our party was ostensibly not the one running Congress. Heck, our best work was done between 2006-2008. So you can believe that we know that we’re talking about. (more…)

Stop bitterly laughing like that.  You’ll scare the kids.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) This is in the context of mentioning President Obama’s recent military speech, and in the context of discussing the fairly obvious – to people with functioning neural tissue, at least – points that the President is coasting on Bush’s successful surge strategy; and that our failure to actually have an ambassador to Iraq at the moment is, put simply, dumb. With that out of the way, Brose went on to ask the President to at least note the victories of the previous administration. Brose did not also ask for a magical elixir that would cure cancer, warts, and the galloping staggers, although I’m not sure why. He didn’t stand that much less of chance of getting it (bolding mine):
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After all, we have a Democrat as President: it’s acceptable to pretend to be for freedom and democracy again.

(Via Holger Awakens, via Tennesseefree.com)

Three things:
1). What do we know about this guy? Or when it was made?
2). If we had listened to Obama in 2006, this guy would probably be dead right now.
3). Not In Your Name, antiwar movement.
Not then.
Not now.
Not ever.

Crossposted at RedState.