Obsidian Wings

More Petraeus

by hilzoy

(Publius and I think alike -- I just saw his post. Luckily, we made different points, so I don't have to scrap this.)

For some reason, I'm just feeling depressed about the Petraeus and Crocker Reports: too depressed to write much that's interesting about them. They were as predicted: Petraeus called for a drawdown of troops on a schedule that is oddly similar to when he would have to draw them down in any case, at least if the army isn't willing to extend rotations again. Or, as Richard Clarke put it (in this YouTube):

"What it's going to say is, if we keep troops in a given area, a lot of troops in a small area, we can achieve security in that area. Well, duh, of course we can! The United States military, which is costing us a half a trillion dollars, ought to be able to do that."

Crocker did a heroic job of trying to find upbeat things to say about a fundamentally screwed up situation, and he pronounced the Arabic pretty well. I missed most of the questioning, though Fred Kaplan says I didn't miss much. But I did hear a lot of people who seemed to be interested in the question whether we have made progress since the surge began. That seems to me to be entirely beside the point. Because the main points, as I see it, are two:

First, what progress have we made that will be sustained after we leave? If all we've done is tamp down the violence in some places by putting a lot of troops there, then once we leave, all that progress will be reversed. Only if there's some reason to think that the progress we've made will outlast our presence have we achieved anything. Lasting progress depends on political reconciliation, and Ambassador Crocker had precious little to offer.

In thinking about what progress there is, it's important to ask how much of what we see is genuine reconciliation, and how much is various groups trying to get into the best position possible for the eventual civil war. For instance, here are two views of the progress in Anbar: (1) The Sunni tribes have not only gotten sick of AQI, they have also genuinely come around on the question of whether to work with the federal government. If the Shi'a let them in, that will be really significant. (2) The Sunni tribes have gotten sick of AQI, and have decided to use our presence to eliminate as many AQI fighters as possible, so as not to be distracted by them in the civil war that will start in earnest after we leave, and also to get money, training, etc., so that they will be as well equipped to fight that civil war as possible.

Who knows which is true? Probably there are people with both sets of motives, and people who are hedging their bets either way. If the first scenario is true of a majority of the Sunnis we're working with, there's no guarantee that progress will outlast us: that depends on the extent to which the Shi'a are willing to accept them into the army and the police, and in general to work with them. Very little in the Anbar Awakening has demonstrated that the Shi'a are willing to do this. However, if the second scenario is true of a majority of the Sunnis who have been working with us, then this apparent progress is no progress at all; it's just training one side in a civil war (while we simultaneously train the others.)

Which brings us to the second point: Whatever progress has been made, has it been worth it? Here I just think the answer is: no. Just obviously no. Last January, when Bush announced the surge, it was pretty clear that it wouldn't work. Remember articles like this?

"The Bush administration is split over the idea of a surge in troops to Iraq, with White House officials aggressively promoting the concept over the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intense debate."

Or this?

"When President Bush goes before the American people tonight to outline his new strategy for Iraq, he will be doing something he has avoided since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003: ordering his top military brass to take action they initially resisted and advised against. (...)

Pentagon insiders say members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have long opposed the increase in troops and are only grudgingly going along with the plan because they have been promised that the military escalation will be matched by renewed political and economic efforts in Iraq. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the outgoing head of Central Command, said less than two months ago that adding U.S. troops was not the answer for Iraq."

We don't really have enough troops to do this right, people said; moreover, since this surge will plainly be temporary, the various militias will have every incentive to just keep their heads down and wait us out. It was clear, back then, that Bush could not bring himself either to admit failure or to accept the bailout offered him by his father's ex-Secretary of State.

We should have pulled the plug then. We should have been mature enough to be able to admit failure and try to make the best of it. We should, moreover, have recognized that there was one and only one way to get this President to withdraw: to write a timetable into law. But our representatives did not have the courage to do that. They decided to give Bush one more chance to get things right. Now, mirabile dictu, he wants another. I bet that in March, six months from now, the administration will tell us that things are still not sufficiently clear to let us draw down any forces beyond those we have to pull out. Does anyone want to bet against me?

The thing is: since President Bush announced the surge, around 789 American soldiers*, and God alone knows how many thousands of Iraqis, have been killed. (I didn't have the heart to try to total up the wounded: people with traumatic brain injuries who will never be fully themselves again, people who have lost limbs, not to mention the people with PTSD.) That's how many lives our representatives' failure to just confront the President and say 'enough!' has cost. By March, maybe 500 more Americans, and thousands of Iraqis, will be dead.

I want someone to explain to me why the progress we have made is worth this cost, not to mention the money, the opportunity costs, the strain on the army, and so on and so forth. Because I just can't see it.

Unfortunately, I don't really see our representatives growing a spine, stepping up to the plate, and doing their job honorably either. Of course, there are exceptions, but not enough of them. And I find that incredibly depressing.

***

* I added up the figures for Feb. - present, and added 2/3 of January (the surge was announced on Jan. 10.) I didn't count soldiers from the rest of the coalition, since they do not seem to be working on timetables that depend on the surge one way or another, so I didn't think that those lives lost could be chalked up to our punting and going with the surge, as American soldiers' lives can be.

I also recognize that since we would not withdraw instantaneously, many of these soldiers would have died anyways. However, by postponing the day of reckoning for nine months, we have postponed the moment when all our troops are out by nine months, and so it seemed reasonable to imagine that the number who would die while we are withdrawing would be comparable with or without the surge, and that these additional nine months represent the real cost, in lives, that our soldiers are paying for our representatives' cowardice.

***

PS: I thought the MoveOn ad was tasteless and idiotic. It's easy to make all the points they needed to make without trashing General Petraeus, let alone doing it in a way that seems to accuse him of treason. That would have been more honorable, and it would also have been a lot smarter. But I also think that anyone who imagines that the MoveOn ad ought to be today's main story is delusional.

Petraeus

by publius

To avoid having our blogger licenses revoked, I figured I better talk about Petraeus’s testimony today. There are already volumes out there, so I’ll just make some quick points about the Fox News exclusive interview. To me, it’s pretty simple. It’s not that Petraeus is dodging hard questions. It’s that Bush is no longer trying to persuade the nation about the war – in fact, he’s not really even talking to them. He’s just trying to persuade Republicans.

The administration has long since recognized that they’ve lost the public on Iraq -- not to mention virtually all Democrats. I’m sure they also understand that these people are permanently lost and there’s no getting them back.

At the same time though, they recognize that Democrats lack the numbers to stop them (particularly veto-override numbers). Thus, whether the war continues or ends -- escalates or de-escalates -- depends entirely on the will of Republicans. Bush cannot be stopped unless and until congressional Republicans defect en masse.

And as the blogosphere has been preaching for months, the only way to break the lines in the face of inferior numbers is to ratchet up the political pressure. Accept no compromises. Provide no quarter. Let them vote for a forced withdrawal or a never-ending war -- and nothing in between. After all, those are precisely the options we have with this President. He will keep as many troops there as long as possible until he is forced to do otherwise.

[On an aside, that’s why it’s difficult to express just how politically stupid and naïve Brian Baird’s op-ed was (and all op-eds like it). He’s not accomplishing anything other than giving nervous Republicans cover, which is the one thing preventing the war’s end (or at least the process of ending it).]

Anyway, despite a few cracks this spring, the Republican dam didn’t break. So Reid (up until the last couple of weeks anyway) was doing the only thing he could possibly do to end the war -- he was forcing politically-difficult votes on to Republicans. And it was working -- the center of gravity has moved considerably since the election. Enter Petraeus.

With legs still wobbly on the GOP side, the administration (and thus Petraeus, their dependant subordinate) have a single strategy -- reassure the base. They just need to prevent the floor from collapsing while they run out the clock with the Dean Smith Four Corners offense. For that reason, Petraeus is going on outlets like Hugh Hewitt and Fox News.

Again, it’s not that he’s ducking questions -- he’s a smart guy and I’m sure he’d do just fine with those scary, scary reporters. No, it’s that he’s been drafted to keep the floor from collapsing. And on that front, he’s done a pretty good job frankly.

The second point -- and this is more cynical and speculative -- is that I suspect Bush/Petraeus may be purposefully provoking liberal outrage by appearing on Hewitt/Fox News/etc. After all, nothing rallies the base like attacks from liberals. And even if stirring up liberal hornets’ nests undercuts Petraeus’s credibility to the nation, it tends to increase his credibility with the conservative base (which at this point is all that matters to them). In this respect, MoveOn’s tasteless headline was literally a godsend for Bush. Can’t back out on Petraeus now and let the moonbats win!

Noted Without Comment

by hilzoy

From the LATimes:

"Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

In a simple experiment being reported today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.

Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.

The results show "there are two cognitive styles -- a liberal style and a conservative style," said UCLA neurologist Dr. Marco Iacoboni, who was not connected to the latest research.

Participants were college students whose politics ranged from "very liberal" to "very conservative." Scientists instructed them to tap a keyboard when an M appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a W.

M appeared four times more frequently than W, conditioning participants to press a key in knee-jerk fashion whenever they saw a letter.

Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M. (...)

Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at UC Berkeley's Institute of Personality and Social Research who was not connected to the study, said results "provided an elegant demonstration that individual differences on a conservative-liberal dimension are strongly related to brain activity."

Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy."

It's a good thing I'm noting this without comment. Otherwise, I might have had to say something like: liberals are better at dealing with complexity, and at responding to the unexpected; and besides, we're over twice as likely to get things right! Hah!

But I didn't. I'm a model of restraint, I am.

A Study In Contrasts

by hilzoy

From the NYT:

"Private insurance companies participating in Medicare have been allowed to keep tens of millions of dollars that should have gone to consumers, and the Bush administration did not properly audit the companies or try to recover money paid in error, Congressional investigators say in a new report. (...)

Under federal law, Medicare officials are supposed to audit the financial records of at least one-third of the insurance companies each year. But the investigators said the Bush administration had fallen far short of that goal and had never met the “statutory requirement.”

Indeed, they said, the proportion of companies audited by Medicare declined steadily — to 14 percent in 2006 from 24 percent in 2001 — despite a steady growth in Medicare payments to the plans. Those payments now total $75 billion a year, about one-fifth of all Medicare spending.

The Bush administration did not take issue with the findings. (...)

In 2003, Medicare audited 49 of the 220 organizations participating in the program. Auditors found significant errors at 41 companies, but Medicare officials took no action on the findings. As a result of the errors, the auditors said, insurers kept “$59 million that beneficiaries could have received in additional benefits, lower co-payments or lower premiums.” The report did not identify the companies.

Paul Caban, assistant director of the financial management team at the Government Accountability Office, said the Medicare agency’s response was puzzling. “What is the value of conducting these audits if you do not act on the findings?” Mr. Caban asked."

Hmm. The government audited less than half the number of companies it was supposed to, and when its auditors found that those companies owed it money, they did nothing. It sounds as though the government just isn't that concerned about whether or not our tax dollars are used as they were supposed to be used, right?

Think again:

"In separate action, the Bush administration is vigorously pursuing money that it says is owed to insurance companies by Medicare beneficiaries. The Medicare agency has sent letters to more than 135,000 people saying they still owe premiums for prescription drug coverage provided in 2006. In most cases, the premiums were supposed to have been withheld from monthly Social Security checks, but the government withheld the wrong amounts or nothing at all."

So: when companies get more money than they should have, whether through error or through fraud, the government does nothing. But when ordinary citizens are given too much money because the government screws up, they are "vigorously pursued."

Something is wrong with this picture.

Be Even More Afraid

by hilzoy

Just to add to Publius' last post: to judge by the reviews of his book, and by the passages quoted in them, Norman Podhoretz is certifiably crazy. From the Peter Beinart's NYT review:

"What really interests Podhoretz, who now advises Rudolph Giuliani, isn’t the Islamic world; it’s the home front. The news media, he explains, are in favor of “an American defeat in Iraq.” So are the former national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft. Why do these ostensibly patriotic Americans want to see their nation humiliated and its troops killed? Because it will help their careers. Many “Realists ... along with most liberal internationalists,” he writes, “were rooting for an American defeat as the only way to save their worldview from winding up on the ash heap of history.” And thus, Podhoretz lays the foundation for claiming — if America loses in Iraq — that we were stabbed in the back. Which, as Theodore Draper noted 25 years ago in a review of Podhoretz’s book “Why We Were in Vietnam,” is exactly what he did the last time America lost a major war."

To suggest that Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski want America to be defeated in Iraq is calumny. Moreover, it's insane on its face. Besides all the obvious reasons, consider that Scowcroft and Brzezinski are supposed to want America to be defeated in order to help their careers. But Scowcroft is 82 years old, and Brzezinski is 79. While I wish them long life and good health, they'd have to be idiots to bank on having extensive future careers, and neither Scowcroft nor Brzezinski is an idiot.

Moving right along, here's a passage from a review by Ian Buruma in the New York Review of Books:

"It would be absurd to claim that those who doubt the efficacy of the Bush Doctrine fail to recognize the horrors of Saddam Hussein's regime, or the desire among Arabs and Muslims, no less than other people, to live prosperous lives free of tyranny. Equally nonsensical is the notion that only the supporters of Bush's war are serious about fighting Islamist terrorism. Or that anyone who sees merit in attempts by some European Muslims to reconcile their religious orthodoxy with Western democracy is a dupe who defends extremism, or a coward who has been intimidated by acts of terror. Yet these claims are being made in World War IV, as well as other places.

Here is how Podhoretz describes Bush's critics:

...They seem to take it for granted that Arabs and/or Muslims are so different from most of their fellow human beings that they actually like being pushed around and repressed and beaten and killed by thugs, whether dressed in military uniforms or wearing clerical garb. For our part, we wonder whether Muslims really do prefer being poor and hungry and ill housed to enjoying the comforts and conveniences that we in the West take so totally for granted...."

Gosh: I think that? Who knew? Not me. It would be interesting to see exactly who Podhoretz could cite as thinking that Muslims do "like being pushed around and repressed and beaten and killed by thugs." Personally, I'm not aware of anyone. Likewise, I do not minimize the awfulness of Saddam's regime, and so on and so forth. If Podhoretz suggests otherwise, that's probably because he would rather debate caricatures than actual human beings. Either that, or he has no more imagination than a limpet. And that's probably deeply unfair to limpets.

But wait! There's more! Buruma again:

"Podhoretz is convinced that the savage murders and daily atrocities in Iraq are actually "a tribute to the enormous strides that had been made in democratizing and unifying the country under a workable federal system." He wonders why men in the "so-called 'insurgency'" would be shedding so much blood if they didn't think the US mission in Iraq was working."

Wow. Just wow. That defies comment.

I've been saving the worst for last. Buruma yet again:

"He describes the dispute between opponents of Bush's war and its defenders as "no less bloody than the one being fought by our troops in the Middle East," indeed as "nothing less than a kind of civil war." I myself was opposed to the war, and do not always hold tender feelings for my intellectual opponents, but I hardly think of our differences as comparable to the burning of Atlanta or the battle of Fallujah. By the same token, Bush critics in academe are called "guerrillas-with-tenure," which seems a grandiose description of what are on the whole rather harmless professors."

Beinart adds more in the same vein:

"Critics of the Iraq war represent a “domestic insurgency” with a “life-and-death stake” in America’s defeat. And their dispute with the president’s supporters represents “a war of ideas on the home front.”"

Um: no. Leaving aside the fact that I do not favor an American defeat at all (though I do favor admitting one once it occurs), I do not have a life or death stake in any outcome of the Iraq war, any more than Podhoretz does. Nor am I a guerilla of any kind, though I do have tenure. And if he seriously thinks that the disputes between supporters and opponents of the war is "no less bloody than the one being fought by our troops in the Middle East", then he is -- how to put this diplomatically? -- completely and totally insane.

This is serious. According to the Washington Post (which puts these figures at the bottom of Iraq stories like this one), 3,748 American troops have been killed in Iraq, and 27,767 have been injured. 298 Allied troops have been killed, as have 159 civilian contractors. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, God alone knows how many have been injured, and millions have been driven from their homes. Soldiers and civilians in Iraq face death every day. Meanwhile, I am sitting on my bed with my computer in my lap, in my nice safe house in a nice safe neighborhood, listening to Purcell. There is a striking absence of mortars and gunfire, just as, tomorrow, there will be no IEDs on my route to work.

The very idea of saying that any dispute I am currently engaged in is "no less bloody than the one being fought by our troops in the Middle East" is obscene, and anyone who says this sort of thing should never be taken seriously again. Ever.

But of course we have to take him seriously, because he is one of Rudy Giuliani's main foreign policy advisors. Think about it. Giuliani actually chose this lunatic to advise him. As Publius said, be very, very afraid.

PS: I've put some You-Tube clips on Giuliani's 9/11 record below the fold. They're worth watching.

Be Afraid

by publius

Peter Beinart reviews Norman Podhoretz and Michael Ledeen's new books and isn't exactly impressed. Re Ledeen, Beinart writes:

Ledeen’s effort to lay virtually every attack by Muslims against Americans at Tehran’s feet takes him into rather bizarre territory. He says the 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania “were in large part Iranian operations,” which would come as news to the 9/11 Commission, which attributed them solely to Al Qaeda. He says Shiite Iran was largely behind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a man famous for his genocidal hatred of Shiites. He claims that “most” Iraqi insurgents are “under Iranian guidance and/or control,” not just Shiite warlords like Moktada al-Sadr, but Sunni militants as well — the very people who say they are fighting to prevent Iranian domination. In Ledeen’s view, in fact, Sunni-Shiite conflict — the very thing that most observers think is tearing Iraq apart — is largely a mirage, because Iran controls both sides. And Al Qaeda is a mirage too, a mere front for the regime in Tehran. “When you hear ‘Al Qaeda,’ ” Ledeen writes, “it’s probably wise to think ‘Iran.’ ” Not surprisingly, he thinks the mullahs were probably behind 9/11.

It's worth noting that Beinart ranks Ledeen's book as far superior to Crazy Norman Podhoretz's war porn rantings. Podhoretz, remember, is advising Rudy on foreign policy.

Thompson's "Wesley Clark Moment"

by publius

As Steve Benen helpfully documents, the Messiah Fred Thompson hasn’t exactly stormed out of the gate. Skipping debates for Leno, talking gibberish, staff turnover -- all in all, a poor start. In all seriousness, this is a very dangerous time for the Messiah. Over the next few weeks, the risk is quite high that he’ll have a “Wesley Clark moment” and blow the entire election. Indeed, he may have already done so.

The Clark and Thompson campaigns have eerily similar pre-histories. Because the party elites and rank-and-file weren’t very happy with the slate of candidates, Clark and Thompson’s names got floated for months. Party members didn’t know much about them, so they projected their desires on to the idea of them -- and expectations ran high. Rather than seizing this opportunity early on, both candidates played footsie for months and months but hesitated to jump in. And then, finally, they did.

Clark’s campaign famously ended on Day 2 when he said he would have “probably” supported the war resolution. He spent the rest of the campaign backtracking and achieving little more than preventing Edwards from toppling Kerry. It’s a shame because, in many respects, Clark was probably the strongest candidate.

Clark’s gaffe, though, is what should be keeping the Thompson campaign up at night. For several reasons, his failures must be understood as manifestations of his vanity-soaked delay.

First, raising money is not the only reason why campaigns start so early. It’s also important to get your sea legs and work out the bugs well before people start paying attention. People like Kerry and Edwards and Romney and McCain started visiting funnel cake stands in Iowa many months before Clark and Thompson did. It’s not fun, but the experiences gave the candidates a chance to respond to a dizzying range of questions -- and tighten their message accordingly.

Clark wasn’t out there doing that. He didn’t get stumped by an Iowa farmer’s question in March of 2003 and go home to rework his responses. Instead, he jumped out when the spotlight was maximally bright (both because of the date and the drama surrounding his entry) and was completely unprepared for what was coming. And it showed -- he made a fatal gaffe that completely undercut his campaign on the second day.

Thompson seems determined to repeat Clark’s mistakes -- and for similar reasons. Running for President is hard. You get asked a lot of diverse questions. It takes time to hear them all and master good, persuasive, politically-safe responses to them. Thompson, however, clearly hasn’t been thinking about these questions (or let's hope not anyway). Several months on the stump sharpens your message, improves your bullshit powers. Thompson sounds like I would sound if I jumped into a high-stress presidential campaign 4 months before the primary -- like an unprepared idiot.

The point is that Thompson’s stupid responses aren’t a reflection of his intelligence or potential strength, they’re a reflection of his inexperience. They're a reflection of his sitting on his ass all year. There are structural reasons if you will why Thompson is going to say stupid things over the next few weeks. Most people get those out of the way early on before the national media starts hanging on every word. These gaffes are even worse for Thompson because he’s been built up in people’s minds as the Messiah -- dumb words sound even dumber when set against those type of baseline expectations.

Gaffes aside, the second reason why Clark’s delay hurt him is that he didn’t have time to build a field organization in Iowa (or elsewhere for that matter). There are few things on earth I hate more than the Iowa caucuses, but you play the hand you’re dealt. And Iowa requires a ground game. Not predicting the Dean/Gephardt collapse, Clark decided to skip it (an error Hillary Clinton is notably not repeating). Kerry didn’t. And the dynamics of game theory (herd behavior) plus modern communications allowed him to leverage the Iowa victory all the way to Boston.

For similar reasons, it’s hard to see (1) how Thompson can achieve anything in Iowa; and (2) how this failure won’t be fatal. Rudy’s strategy is also risky, but he’s at least building up a firewall in the big February 5 states. Thompson has so much catching up to do on both fronts that I think it’s impossible that he’ll do so.

Thompson had an opening in early summer to seize the initiative and fight off the lazy accusations. Instead, he -- quite lazily -- took his sweet time. And it’s already cost him. Organizationally, he’s far behind. And he’s woefully unprepared for the day-to-day questioning that presidential candidates get. The result? Smoking bans turned the Anbar province our way. Messiah, indeed.

[UPDATE: Hmm, maybe Fred wasn't completely out to lunch on this. Today's Post: "Why the sheiks turned remains a point of debate, but it seems clear that the tribes resented al-Qaeda's efforts to ban smoking and marry local women to build ties to the region."]

Priorities: Special Media Edition

by hilzoy

Via Todd Gitlin, a startling article by Eric Boehlert on Alternet about news coverage of the war in Iraq. Long story short: there hasn't been much:

"Public polling indicates consumers are starved for news from Iraq, yet over the summer the mainstream media, and particularly television outlets such as CBS, steadfastly refused to deliver it. The press has walked away from what most Americans claim is the day's most important ongoing news event. (...) Just recall the events of August 14.

That's when witnesses to the four synchronized suicide truck bombs that detonated in northern Iraq on that day described the collective devastation unleashed to being like an earthquake, or even the site of a nuclear bomb explosion; the destruction of one bomb site measured half a mile wide. A U.S. Army spokesman, after surveying the mass carnage from an attack that targeted Yazidis, an ancient religious community, called the event genocidal. Indeed, more than 500 Iraqis were killed, more than 1,500 were wounded, and 400 buildings were destroyed. (...)

Early news dispatches about the attacks (which pegged the early death toll at a smaller, but still remarkable, 175) were posted around 6 p.m. ET on August 14. Yet that night on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, the hour-long news program that airs at 10 p.m., the carnage from Iraq garnered just a brief report, and that was relegated to the "360 Bulletin," halfway through the program; a report on a playground catching on fire due to spontaneous combustion of decomposing wood chips was given slightly more airtime and, unlike the suicide bombings, prompted a reaction from host Cooper himself: "That's incredible. I never heard of that." Less surprising was the fact that a pro-Bush outlet such as The Drudge Report, as late as 10:30 p.m. that night, was ignoring the massive blast headline, or that Fox News gave the gruesome attack just three mentions all evening.

The next day, as noted by the Columbia Journalism Review, the story was placed on A6 in both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, and Page 4 of USA Today. On that evening's NBC Nightly News, the historic massacre from Iraq was not even tapped as the day's most important story. (Ongoing mortgage woes led the broadcast that night.)"

Here's another example:

"For instance, over the last seven weeks ABC's Nightline, the network's signature, long-form news program, did not air a single substantive report about Iraq. Not one among the 100-plus news segments the program aired during the stretch was about the situation in Iraq. (That, according to a search of Nightline's transcripts via Nexis.) For instance, on the night after the mammoth suicide bomb blasts in Iraq on August 14, Nightline aired reports about a Mexican stem cell doctor, lullaby singer Lori McKenna, and soccer star David Beckham. That week, Nightline did two separate reports about the earthquake in Peru that killed approximately 500 civilians. But nothing that week from Nightline about the suicide blasts in Iraq that also killed approximately 500 civilians.

Instead of Iraq, here are some of the news stories Nightline staffers devoted time and energy to during that seven-week summer span:

* The popularity of organic pet food.
* The favorite songs of Pete Wentz, bassist for the pop/rock band Fall Out Boy.
* The folding of supermarket tabloid, The Weekly World News.
* The rise of urban McMansions.
* The death of the postcard.
* The commercial battle between Barbie and Bratz dolls.
* The nerd stars of the movie Superbad."

The figures Boehlert is working with come from the Project for Excellence in Journalism; check here and here for quarterly figures, and here for weekly reports. During the second quarter of the year, Fox devoted 2.7% of its news time to events in Iraq; MSNBC was even worse, at 1.5%. To put this in context, MSNBC devoted a higher percentage of its news time to each of the following stories: the Don Imus controversy (over 3 times as much coverage as Iraq), the TB traveller, and the Ohio Missing Pregnant Woman. At 6.4%, CNN was comparable to most broadcast networks; PBS brought up the broadcast network average by coming in at 11.4%. (Yay PBS!)

To state the obvious: we are at war in Iraq. Our soldiers and Iraqi civilians are dying there. We, as a people, have to decide whether to stick with our current policies or change course, and if the latter, what new path we should choose. It's hard to do that without a clear idea of what is happening there. It shouldn't be too much to expect that our news organizations devote some time to actually informing us about a war we are asking people to fight and die in; or at least more time than they spend on the TB traveller or the Ohio Missing Pregnant Woman.

War As Attitude Adjustment

by hilzoy

ThinkProgress (via TPM) has posted video of Lindsey Graham speaking at the American Enterprise Institute. Graham promises a big breakthrough in political reconciliation, coming "within the next weeks, not months." I'll believe that when I see it, and I will not regard it as noteworthy unless it includes not just promises to work together, but actual legislation that has passed the Iraqi parliament and been signed into law. Graham's remarks also include this gem:

"My last visit convinced me more than anything else that the biggest benefit of the surge is to take the men and women on the front lines and change their attitude about their mission. They've gone from riding around waiting to be shot, to feeling like they're kicking their ass."

Steve Benen at TPM focusses on the absurdity of saying that we're kicking anyone's ass in Iraq. The government is paralyzed, there are a number of different civil wars going on in different places, people are still dying, being maimed, and going into exile: as I said before, if this is kicking ass, I would hate to think what a serious setback would look like.

But what struck me even more than that was Graham's claim that "the biggest benefit of the surge" has to do not with ending the civil war, promoting political reconciliation in Iraq, improving the lives of ordinary Iraqis, or anything like that, but with the attitudes of our soldiers. I'm not sure I buy Graham's claims about those attitudes, especially the idea that our soldiers used to be just "riding around waiting to be shot". But let's pretend that he's right, for the sake of argument: that the surge has transformed the attitudes of the soldiers and marines in Iraq. If that is the biggest benefit of the surge, then that seems to me like a very good reason for leaving.

Think about it. If we really wanted to improve the attitudes of the men and women on the front lines, we could have found other ways to do it. Maybe we could have given each and every one of them enough money to pay off their homes (or to buy a home, if they don't already have one); college tuition money for all their kids; a marvelous vacation in the resort of their choice for themselves, their families, and ten or twenty of their closest friends; and a lifetime supply of Haagen Dasz.

I imagine this might have improved the attitudes of our men and women in uniform even more than the surge. Plus, it has additional benefits. It would probably have been a lot cheaper. It would have given a boost to an ailing housing market in its hour of need. Unlike the surge, it would not have accelerated the process of breaking the army and wearing out its equipment.

Most important of all: it would have done all these things with no dead bodies.

Since my attitude adjustment proposal seems plainly superior to the surge as a means of improving our soldiers' attitudes, why haven't we adopted it? The obvious answer is: because we are not fighting the war as a way of making our soldiers feel good. And if improvements in their attitudes are (a) not among our war aims, and (b) the biggest benefit of the surge, it would seem to follow that the surge has not, in fact, secured any of the things we are actually fighting for.

If I thought for a moment that Lindsey Graham actually thought that improvements in our soldiers' attitudes were enough to justify the surge, I might try to imagine him explaining to the families of the seven soldiers killed on Thursday that their loved ones died to make their fellow soldiers feel good, or giving an inspirational speech to our soldiers in Iraq about the tremendous importance of what they are fighting for: namely, having better attitudes. Or I might stop being snarky and point out the complete amorality of thinking that it is justifiable to fight a war so that our soldiers can feel good about themselves.

But I don't think Lindsey Graham actually means what he says. He's just grasping at straws. And since he cannot say with a straight face that we are actually achieving any significant and sustainable results, he is left with the claim that our soldiers feel as though they are.

If the best thing Lindsey Graham can find to say about the surge is that it has improved the attitudes of our soldiers, that's just one more indication that it's time to leave.

Uh-Oh

by hilzoy

I very much hope that this is a false alarm:

"A sharp drop in foreign holdings of US Treasury bonds over the last five weeks has raised concerns that China is quietly withdrawing its funds from the United States, leaving the dollar increasingly vulnerable.

Data released by the New York Federal Reserve shows that foreign central banks have cut their stash of US Treasuries by $48bn since late July, with falls of $32bn in the last two weeks alone.

"This comes as a big surprise and it is definitely worrying," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.

"We won't know if China is behind this until the Treasury releases its TIC data in November, but what it does show is that world central banks are in a hurry to get out of the US. They don't seem to be switching into other currencies, so it is possible they are moving into gold instead. Gold is now gaining momentum across all currencies and has broken through resistance at 500 euros," he said. (...)

Any evidence that China was pulling out would risk setting off an unstoppable stampede, which is why such a policy would never be announced. It holds the world's biggest pool of resrves, followed by Japan."

Brad Setser, from about a month ago:

"China’s holdings of US bonds are hard to discern in a real time basis, but if China kept the dollar share of its reserves roughly constant at 70%, its $1.34 trillion in central bank reserves – along with at least another $100b stashed away in the state banks – imply that China now holds about a trillion dollars worth of US bonds."

That's an awful lot of bonds. It'd be a shame if something happened to them.