Hagel: We Are Losing The War In Iraq

by hilzoy

From the Omaha World-Herald, via DKos:

"GRAND ISLAND, Neb. - More than 200 Nebraska American Legion members, who have seen war and conflict themselves, fell quiet here Saturday as Sen. Chuck Hagel bluntly explained why he believes that the United States is losing the war in Iraq. It took 20 minutes, but it boiled down to this: The Bush team sent in too few troops to fight the war leading to today's chaos and rising deaths of Americans and Iraqis. Terrorists are "pouring in" to Iraq. Basic living standards are worse than a year ago in Iraq. Civil war is perilously close to erupting there. Allies aren't helping much. The American public is losing its trust in President Bush's handling of the conflict. And Hagel's deep fear is that it will all plunge into another Vietnam debacle, prompting Congress to force another abrupt pullout as it did in 1975.

"What we don't want to happen is for this to end up another Vietnam," Hagel told the legionnaires, "because the consequences would be catastrophic." It would be far worse than Vietnam, says Hagel, a twice-wounded veteran of that conflict, which killed 58,000 Americans. Failure in Iraq could lead to many more American deaths, disrupt U.S. oil supplies, damage the Middle East peace effort, spread terrorism and harm America's stature worldwide, Hagel said. That's what keeps him on edge these days. (...)"

From the same article:

"Aboard a plane back to Omaha, Hagel was asked whether he thought Bush was aware that adjustments might be needed in his Iraq policy. "I don't know," Hagel said. The whole Iraqi situation makes him sick to his stomach, he said. "It has tormented me, torn me more than any one thing," he said with a grim look on his face. "To see what these guys in Iraq are having to go through and knowing what I know here: that we didn't prepare for it, we didn't understand what we were getting into. And to put those guys in those positions, it makes me so angry." He lays part of the blame on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who argued before the war that he needed only 150,000 American troops in Iraq. That caused more casualties than were needed, Hagel said. "We still don't have enough troops," he said. "We should have had double or triple the number."

It has led to a bleak situation, Hagel said: Insurgent attacks are more frequent than a year ago. Bombs used by insurgents are growing more deadly, piercing America's best protective clothing and equipment. Oil production is down. Electricity is less available than a year ago. Economic development is lagging. Ninety percent of the humanitarian and economic aid pledged by 60 nations hasn't reached Iraq because of the continuing violence. (...)

Meanwhile, U.S. troops are under severe strain. Troops are stationed in more than 100 countries, and their rapid tempo of deployments with little time off leaves them fatigued and in danger of making mistakes. "We are destroying the finest military in the history of mankind, and the (National) Guard, too," he said. "We're stretching our Army to the breaking point." (...)

The United States has only about six more months to begin to turn things around in Iraq, he said. "I believe that there can be a good outcome in Iraq," he said. "I also believe there could be a very bad outcome for Iraq. I believe we have a very limited time for that good outcome." "

***

We are in a terrible situation in Iraq. We are not defeating the insurgents: according to Knight-Ridder, "a growing number of senior American military officers in Iraq have concluded that there is no long-term military solution to an insurgency that has killed thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,300 U.S. troops during the past two years." Casualties, both US and Iraqi, are going up. The insurgents' bombs are getting more lethal as their skills improve, and by cleverly failing to guard ammunition dumps, we ensured that they have all the explosives they could possibly need to practice with. Just today, at least 38 people were killed in Mosul, and "at least 10 more people were killed in other violence across Iraq, including six police commandos gunned down in western Baghdad and a high-ranking police official assassinated in southern Baghdad, according to an Interior Ministry official. One American soldier was killed in Baghdad on Sunday by a homemade bomb, the military said. And in Kirkuk, insurgents wired an explosive belt onto a dog and detonated the device when the dog wandered into an Iraqi police patrol, wounding one policeman."

The trends are bad:

"So far this year, nearly 1,000 members of Iraq's police and security forces have been killed in attacks, almost as many as the total for the previous year and half, according to Pentagon figures.

US military officials have documented more disturbing trends. The number of attacks involving suicide bombers, for example, rose from 25 percent in February to more than 50 percent in April, according to estimates provided by Pentagon officials who asked not to be named. The first two weeks of May saw 21 suicide attacks in Baghdad alone; there were just 25 in all of 2004."

The New York Times reports that the CIA has concluded that "Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in Al Qaeda's early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat". Fareed Zakaria: "If thousands of jihadists hone their skills in the streets and back alleys of Iraq and then return to their countries, it could mark the beginning of a new wave of sophisticated terror. Just as Al Qaeda was born in the killing fields of Afghanistan, new groups could grow in the back alleys of Iraq. And many of these foreigners are kids with no previous track record of terror." (So that's why we sent our elite training regiment to Iraq: so that a new generation of terrorists could train against it, while our army trains against a National Guard unit.)

We win battles, but:

"Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, expressed similar sentiments, calling the military's efforts "the Pillsbury Doughboy idea" - pressing the insurgency in one area only causes it to rise elsewhere. "Like in Baghdad," Casey said during an interview with two newspaper reporters, including one from Knight Ridder, last week. "We push in Baghdad - they're down to about less than a car bomb a day in Baghdad over the last week - but in north-center (Iraq) ... they've gone up," he said. "The political process will be the decisive element.""

So how is that political process going? Not so well: the current timetable calls for the Iraqi government to have finished drafting a constitution by August 15, "a date that most Iraqis expect to slip, given that it took three months of political bickering to form the new government after landmark elections. The constitution is then to be put to a referendum in mid-October, followed by new elections at the end of the year." But the group that is supposed to draft that constitution has not been formed yet, and the effort to figure out who its Sunni members will be is still running into snags. At this point, with less than three moths to go, it seems clear that the Constitution will not be drafted on time. Pushing the dates back, though, would be a real disappointment to Iraqis, most of whom have already been extremely patient, and might damage the political process. In the meantime, there's massive corruption to be dealt with:

"Iraq is trying to stamp out an epidemic corruption, sacking top officials and reviewing major government contracts that have come under criticism for alleged graft, a leading Iraqi politician said on Tuesday. "The situation has reached disastrous proportions and we are doing something about it," Deputy Parliament Speaker Hussain al-Shahristani said a day before an international conference in Brussels to discuss ways to stabilise and rebuild Iraq."

And training the Iraqi troops? Here's the Economist:

"BAHRO TAHIR is not the brightest soldier in Iraq's new army. Last week, at an American-assisted military academy in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's home town, he began basic training for the fourth time. It was not that he wanted to spend another month studying tedious human-rights law and drilling under a blistering sun; Mr Tahir did not want to do that at all. Rather, according to the academy's Iraqi instructors, Iraqi army commanders tend to send to basic training only those too friendless or dim to wriggle out of it, which included Mr Tahir. “They said they were sending me here for a computer course,” he lamented, to the amusement of the recruits within ear-shot, except for another basic-training veteran, who turned out to be deaf.

The instructors had more pressing concerns than the quality of their recruits. Two months ago, Iraq's Ministry of Defence took over the job of paying its employees, up to then paid by America, and since then they had not seen a cent. Language is also a problem, with half the recruits speaking Arabic and the others Kurdish, and few instructors knowing both. Perhaps the worst problem is the quality of leadership. The Iraqi colonel nominally in charge of the academy tried to employ his relatives, said his American supervisors, including one who was subsequently arrested in murky circumstances. He would not have been the first insurgent to practise on the academy's range: after the fighting in Fallujah, last November, American marines found the academy's badges on enemy corpses. Asked to estimate how many of the academy's students were motivated by a desire to help their country, Major Donald McArdle, the American in charge, reckoned 5%; his colleagues thought this too high.

Senior American officials have made somewhat bolder claims for the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), currently numbering 169,000 soldiers, paramilitaries and police. They are supposed, after all, to be America's exit strategy from a military intervention that has so far claimed nearly 1,700 American lives—and which, according to a poll released this week, six out of ten Americans now oppose. In recent weeks, ISF units have taken charge of small areas of Baghdad and Mosul. By the end of this year, when elections are due to be held under a new constitution, they are supposed to number 230,000, and to be operating in divisions. America would withdraw, or so officials say, some troops early next year.

That is a pipedream. Corrupt, patchily trained and equipped, often abysmally led and devoid of confidence, most army units cannot operate above platoon-size. Between Iraqis and Americans there is deep mistrust: Iraqi units billeted on American bases are fenced off from their hosts as a security measure. For every vaunted ISF success, examples of cowardice and incompetence abound. Even when stiffened by American forces, the ISF often flee when under attack. Iraqi marksmen have a habit of closing their eyes and spraying bullets in “death-blossoms”, in GI slang. Some of the better units, including the 12-battalion, mostly Shia, police commandos, are accused of torture and sectarian violence."

Economically, things are also bad, as you'd expect given the security situation. (Except where noted, the figures that follow are from the Brookings Institute's most recent Iraq Index, dated June 23.) Oil production is still below prewar levels. Financial Times: "Two years of sabotage and violence have gutted Iraq's already fragile infrastructure, driven away investors, and possibly caused irreversible damage to its valuable oilfields. Meanwhile, international traders and refiners have grown frustrated by delays, cancellations and the deteriorating quality of the oil. (...) Petroleum engineers inject water into older oilfields, such as Rumaila, to force oil to the surface. When water injection is interrupted, the prudent engineer reduces the field's pumping rate to avoid causing irreversible damage to the oilfield. At Rumaila this is not being done."

Electricity production as a whole has finally returned to prewar levels, but the average number of hours of electricity per day has fallen by over a quarter since Feb. 2004, when statistics first become available. Inflation is around 17%, though the currency is stable. GDP per capita is around $780, but since private consumption as a share of GDP, at 38.9%, is just over half what it was before the war, while government consumption as a share of GDP is over 50%, the share of GDP that is getting to actual citizens is a lot smaller than one would think. (World Bank (pdf).) And then there's unemployment"

"Numbering in the millions, Iraq's unemployed have found little refuge in an economy derailed by two years of relentless insurgent attacks. Many have not had steady jobs since the United States dissolved the Iraqi army after the 2003 invasion. And U.S. and Iraqi officials acknowledge that every young man without work is a potential recruit for insurgents who pay as little as $50 to people who plant explosives on a highway or shoot a policeman. (...)

A report published last month by the government and the United Nations put the unemployment rate at 27 percent. But many experts here say the actual number is probably closer to 50 percent or more because the survey was not conducted in some of the least stable parts of the country and because many Iraqis work unreliable part-time jobs.""

Our reconstruction efforts are also in trouble. Besides the security problems and sabotage, billions of dollars in Iraqi reconstruction funds are missing, and more goes missing all the time. But companies like Halliburton, which has failed to provide accurate accounting for its work, overcharged the government by millions of dollars, and one of whose employees is being "indicted on charges of devising a scheme to defraud the United States of more than $3.5 million", have had the normal penalties waived twice. And executives from another company that had been banned from future government contracts just formed new companies and kept right on working, despite the fact that the company, Custer Battles, "is under investigation by the Pentagon for allegedly cheating the U.S. government out of tens of millions during the chaotic months following the Iraq invasion. Custer Battles employees have also been accused of firing on unarmed Iraqi civilians, of using fake offshore companies to pad invoices by as much as 400 percent, and of using forgery and fraud to bilk the American government. Two former associates have filed a federal whistle-blower suit, accusing top managers of swindling at least $50 million."

***

So what on earth should we do about this? Tom Friedman thinks we should double the number of troops in Iraq, having cleverly failed to notice that we don't have any, and are in fact in the midst of destroying the army. Our government now seems to be negotiating with the insurgents, despite President Bush's earlier claim that "No nation can negotiate with terrorists. For there is no way to make peace with those whose only goal is death." (h/t Billmon.) Things don't look promising:

"The American team began to irritate the Iraqis with what some saw as a crude attempt to gather intelligence. They asked questions about the “hierarchy and logistics of the groups, how they functioned, how orders were dispatched, how they divide their work and so on”, the Iraqi source said. “It was a boring line of questioning that indicated an attempt to discover more about their enemy than about finding solutions,” one of the sources added. “We told the translator to inform them that if they persisted with this line we would all walk out of the meeting.”

The Iraqis had agreed beforehand to focus on their main demand, “a guaranteed timetable of American withdrawal from Iraq”, the source said. “We told them it did not matter whether we are talking about one year or a five-year plan but that we insisted on having a timetable nonetheless.” The demand did not meet with a favourable response from the American team, perhaps because a timetable is the one thing that President George W Bush has declared he will not agree to."

Nonetheless, I very much hope this works, since I can't see many other good solutions.

I opposed this war. But since we went in, I have felt that we needed to stay in until we had set Iraq on its feet. The one thing that has always given me pause, however, is the thought that we have botched the war so thoroughly that we are not capable of doing that: that our presence is counterproductive, but our absence would be worse. I have never figured out whether I think we are there yet. I suspect we are. For this reason, I honestly do not know what we should do.

I do know, however, that it is time for this administration to stop pretending that we are winning the war, or turning the corner, or that "the insurgency is in its last throes." (Editor and Publisher: "Is Dick Cheney the New 'Baghdad Bob'?") The American people are not stupid. They know that the insurgency is not in its last throes. They need leadership, not lies. I also think it is imperative that this administration set aside its usual modus operandi and actually consult with congressional leaders of both parties. They have had their chance to act as they see fit, and they have used it disastrously. It is time for them to stop. I agree with Zbigniew Brzezinski in yesterday's radio address (mp3, my transcript):

"Patriotism and love of country does not demand endless sacrifice on the part of our troops in a war justified by slogans. To ensure a safe and secure America, we have a responsibility to ask how we got to this point and where we are going from here. For the first time in our history, America is conducting a war without any effort whatsoever at bipartisan consultation on our tactics, on our strategy, and on our goals. The President can't change the circumstances in which we went to war. He can't make up for the mistakes that have been made. But surely he can move forward in a more responsible way.

The President should provide the American people with a plan describing the key elements of a successful strategy in Iraq. He should explain clearly and credibly what must be achieved before our troops can come home. And then he should lay out what he needs in order to achieve that goal. Our soldiers don't need fancy slogans to do their duty. But to accomplish their mission they need honesty and real leadership based on genuine national unity."

Comments

[John Thullen]

My son turns 16 in the Fall. I dread the future.

Punishment must be meted out. Impeachment, jailtime, a death penalty or two.

[ral]

I also think it is imperative that this administration set aside its usual modus operandi and actually consult with congressional leaders of both parties.

Though I regret it, I will lay you 10:1 odds that this does not occur, that Tuesday's speech will rather be more of the same "stay the course," and "it's hard work."

[hilzoy]

ral: I won't take that bet, unfortunately.

I missed this gem while I was writing:

"Rumsfeld defended Cheney's recent statement that the insurgents are in their "last throes," saying there are many ways to measure their strength.

"If you look up 'last throes,' it can mean a violent last throe," Rumsfeld said on ABC's "This Week." Violence may escalate, he said, because insurgents "have so much to lose between now and December." he said."

So I guess it all depends what the meaning of 'throe' is. -- And you all did see the marvelous press briefing in which McClellan was asked about this, right?

[hilzoy]

Slightly O/T: Phil Carter is being deployed to Iraq.

[Andrew Reeves]

The negotiations are in their opening stages. We'll need to wait and see how that works: of course the opening stages are a bunch of demands that neither side expects to be met. The next couple of months are what's important.

[William Kaminsky]

If one is looking (even if perhaps only for the sake of argument) for an assessment of Iraq---what's gone well, what's gone wrong, and what to do now---by someone who is:

(1) on balance, for staying the course in Iraq for the indefinite future,
(2) honest about the problems to date and the possibilities of failure in the future,
(3) actually an expert analyst with field experience,

then I doubt one could do better than to check out this speech by Dr. Anthony Cordesman---longtime Middle East military analyst and sometime foreign policy adviser to Senator McCain. He completed a 2 week tour in Iraq at the behest of the Departments of State and of Defense in early June, and he spoke publicly about his assessment at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Thursday, June 24:

Archived Audio at CSIS here.

Archived Video at CSPAN here.

Further comments and along with a full transcript I personally made of his opening statement can be found on my blog here.

(Summaries of his diagnosis, prognosis, and suggested course of treatment are to come on my blog in the next 1-2 days.)

[moe99]

how prescient that you should post an in depth analysis of Hagel's position and remarks in light of the slander against him perpetrated by our new Tricky Dick, Dick Cheney, as found in dailykos:

Cheney Slanders Hagel: Worse Than You Think
Sun Jun 26th, 2005 at 18:09:32 PDT
(From the diaries -- kos)

The Bush Administration's effort to silence Iraq critics by rewriting the history of 9/11 has reached new levels of desparation.

On national television, Republican Vice President Dick Cheney resorted to slander -- yes, outright slander -- when responding to Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, who recently criticized the Administration's handling of Iraq.

Here's what Cheney said this week on CNN in response to Hagel's Iraq comments:

Since 9/11, we've had people like Chuck Hagel and other politicians and we've had people in the press corps and commentators who've said we can't do Afghanistan.

(For video, go here and click on link to Part I of the Cheney interview. When the video box comes up, click on "More Politics Video" and open Part II of the interview. The quote comes slighly less than halfway through Part II).

*

Cheney then proceeded to go through various things that were accomplished in Afghanistan, and said that the doubters "were all wrong." In the course of his discussion of Afghanistan, the only two people named by Cheney were Hagel and New York Times writer R.W. Apple.

Cheney then turned to Iraq, and went through a similar argument about how the Administration's successes have repeatedly proven the doubters wrong.

Cheney finished his discussion with this quote:

"[Washington has] got a lot of people in it who were armchair quarterbacks or who like to comment on the passing scene. But those who have predicted the demise of our efforts since 9/11 -- as we have fought the war on terror, as we have liberated 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan -- did not know what they were talking about."

In its write-up of the Cheney interview, CNN.com focuses on this last statement when discussing Cheney's response to Hagel. And it is indeed noteworthy that Dick "Five Deferments" Cheney would deride the highly decorated Hagel as an "armchair quarterback" who does not know what he is talking about.

But it is infinitely more noteworthy -- and legally significant -- that Cheney would begin his response to Hagel's comments by falsely accusing him of saying "we can't do Afghanistan."

[Jesurgislac]

I think the US has already lost. I've been meaning to do an update on my outline of 18 months ago, but frankly it depresses me.

I don't see how, at this point, the Bush administration could turn things around in Iraq: but the point is moot, since it seems clear that no one in the Bush administration has the political will to do so.

In short, I believe that the US, having opted for Bush for a second term, is doomed to stay in Iraq till 2008, wrecking the army in the process, accomplishing nothing useful, and indeed making matters worse the longer the occupation lasts.

I would wish otherwise. But even by the end of last year, the occupation was such a devastating mess that I felt only a new administration would stand a fair chance of being able to turn it around - but also the old administration plainly had no wish to make any of the changes necessary that might turn the occupation around.

In response to those who may ask "What?", two examples:

-Funnelling money directly to Iraqis, rather than to American contractors;
-Treating torture as a serious crime, responsibility for which must be punished to the highest levels, whether committed by Americans or by Iraqis.

Neither one is going to happen under Bush.

[John Thullen]

I see Armando at DKos and Trevino at Red State are at it again with the Draft talk.

No. The less than human creatures in this Administration do not kill and maim any more kids.

One hair on my son's head or his friends' heads is harmed by these corrupt liars, murderous dreamers, and draft-dodging cowards and God will wreak vengeance on them through me.

Republicans like pledges of no tax hikes to pay for death and pledges of virginity for all (think of all the dead virgins we're going to have, legs and arms and heads missing but hymens intact and 72 hours of sperm unspent).

Now I have a pledge.

Have a nice week everyone.

[Phil]

hilzoy, I liked Wonkette's take on the whole "last throes" thing:

Cheney went Clintonesque:

CHENEY: No, I would disagree. If you look at what the dictionary says about throes, it can still be a, you know, a violent period, the throes of a revolution.

Have to give the veep this one. We looked up "throes" in the dictionary and, indeed, no time period is specified. That's why the word he should look up in the dictionary is "last."

Heh.

It's a good thing Hagel doesn't have to run in 2006, or we'd already be hearing about the super-conservative Republican that would surprisingly be running against him, backed by the Administration. Now that he's off the reservation, they will make it a mission to destroy him.

[Jeremy Osner]

the word he should look up in the dictionary is "last."

Today Rumsfeld specified that this particular "last throe" could potentially last for 12 years. A sort of long, drawn-out throe; but final!

[CaseyL]

I'd support a draft on one condition and one condition only: Bush's and Cheney's kids, nephews, and neices are the first in line for combat positions in Iraq.

Otherwise, all we'd be doing is giving those bland butchers more of our citizens' lives to throw away on their vanity war.

It's good to see Americans in general are turning against the war. A day late and a dollar short, but if the poll numbers plummet to the 30% support range and stay there, it'll be harder for the GOP to pull off another compromised election. That's important, because nothing short of a complete housecleaning is going to stop this ongoing obscenity.

[Tim]

These guys are all ex-MBA types. Events that will happen 1-2 years from now are in a vague, nebulous future that may require some adroit management someday, but not now. The cheapest thing that they can do in the short term is more PR, so that's what we'll get tomorrow. Even the people criticizing now, like Hagel, aren't actually doing anything substantive yet. Nobody actually wants to derail the gravy train until they have to.

[cleek]

Events that will happen 1-2 years from now are in a vague, nebulous future that may require some adroit management someday, but not now.

but they can see clearly 12 and 40 years ahead, when they put on their Social Security Privateer hats.

[John Kelsey]

The underlying problems are pretty intractible. See, there's a reason the US doesn't have a vast overseas empire, though we prop up various people when it benefits us (or some company that gives a lot to the right politicians): it's not worth it to most of the American people. It's not lack of firepower or resources--we can *conquer* just about anybody who can't retaliate with nukes lobbed at our cities. But holding that territory down requires a willingness to spend lives and resources, and a willingness to be horrifyingly ruthless, that we just don't have.

And this is quite reasonable, because running a vast overseas empire full of hostile natives doesn't pay; the likely benefits aren't in line with the costs. We can buy the oil we need (propping up dictators as needed to keep the oil flowing) far more cheaply.

The common line here is that we're going to go fix the middle east so it doesn't make anymore terrorists, but this is a dream. We aren't going to fix "the root causes of terrorism" for the same reason we didn't manage to fix "the root causes of crime" in our own society. The root cause of crime is that crime pays, at least in the short run. The root cause of terrorism is that terrorism is effective at accomplishing certain goals, at least in the short run.

I can see nothing good coming out of this. And the fact that Bush and so many of the Republicans are fighting so hard to avoid admitting that things are ugly and getting uglier is really terrifying--it implies a willingness to not take what actions could be taken to minimize losses now.

--John

[John Thullen]

No, Casey, the Bush and Cheney kids should not be murdered to pay for the sins of their corrupt patriarchs.

No way any kind of responsibility for drafting anyone is placed in these people's hands.

Bush and Cheney and everyone they have put into place in the government must be removed right down to the line positions in every government agency.

Swiftly. If the government is destroyed in the process, so be it. The government is now a syndicate dedicated to death abroad and privation for the disadvantaged at home, with the middle class now being fed into both maws feet first..

The only moral choice is to remove it, root and branch, as the draft-dodging coward and virgin gambler William Bennett used to say.

[CaseyL]

John, if there's going to be a draft, the only way it won't be the same kind as in Vietnam (with the privileged able to get perpetual deferments, a la Cheney, or posh TANG slots, a la Bush)is if the offspring of the people in charge of the war have to go fight the war. Actually get sent into combat.

I'm sick of the war's architects, lying bastards to a man, getting their gloryrocks off on a pile of other peoples' kids' bones.

[Dantheman]

"virgin gambler William Bennett"

But does he use masturbands as chips at the gaming table?

[Ugh]

actually consult with congressional leaders of both parties.

Except for it's clear that Bush is the R's congressional leaders, and why would he want to talk to the D's congressional leaders, they're agents of the enemy after all.

The U.S. army is an army of liberation, not occupation.

[Barry]

What it comes down to is continued disaster, with the only possible mitigation (not a fix) being if the Democratic Party picks up 5 or more seats in '06. That win, combined with a year and a half of additional insurgency 'death throes', would put some small brake on Bush. Then, possibly, things might be held together long enough to put a Democratic president on the throne for '08.

Given the GOP holding the Senate in '06, it'll be more of the same old same old. I don't think that they *can* change; there's something far too corrupt in them to change.

[John Thullen]

Dantheman: See, what I love is when snark describes the real world down to its most subtle shading.

It happens that Bennett's wife ran or runs an organization which, as far as can tell, funded a tasteful, effective effort to counsel young women, mostly teenagers, to forego sexual activity until more mature choices or marriage could be entered into. A worthy goal, without the invoking of "young mothers in shorts leaning over to get their kids out of car seats" by the hopelessly tumescent romantics* chronicled by Hilzoy.

So, Bennett, by frittering away his family's money on his sweaty little slot habit, denied his wife and her worthwhile organization millions of dollars. Think of all that virtue money directed into the hands of the Atlantic City kingpins and probably into the hands of some very expensive hookers in very expensive suites.

So, yes, he in fact did use "masturbands" as chips at the gaming tables.

* What would Jesus do in this case? Offer to the help the young mother to lift her child from the back seat of the car, or turn away, adjusting his robes to hide his engorgement?

[Jackmormon]

Oh man, I hope Phil Carter gets through the war alright. I don't know the man personally, but my heart leapt through my throat when I read his post. (BTW, hilzoy's link is bad, if you're unregistered there; go to the main site and scroll down.)

[Francis/Brother Rail Gun of Reasoned Discourse]

I don't object to the military trying to use settlement talks to obtain intelligence on their opponents.

I do object to the fact that we are this far into this war and STILL have no idea who we're fighting.

[Nell]

Hagel's performing a limited, but useful, service in being blunt about the disaster. But even the usefulness of that is limited by his failure to deal with the reality that the war itself was wrong, was never 'winnable', and was fought for reasons that are still not sayable. (Hence there's no way to measure 'success'.)

And, as someone else points out above, he is no more offering constructive suggestions than any other politician.

I saw the Cordesman talk on Friday night and recommend the links Martin Kaminsky offers above. Cordesman is scathing about the corruption, waste, and futility of just about all the economic "aid", and that we have to take it out of contractors' hands and place it into Iraqi hands. Got to agree with that.

He said: "We need to state quite clearly that when Iraq is ready we will not have bases and we will not maintain a presence, that we are not seeking our strategic advantage. And we need to explain as part of the changes in the economic aid process that we are turning this money over to the Iraqis, that there will be no effort to give special advantages to American oil companies or contractors." Check.

But here's the catch: Cordesman believes that it will be possible to create effective Iraqi security forces over the next two to three years. (That's the 'ready' he refers to above.) But he never addresses the reality of resistance infiltration into the Iraqi police and army, which is a crucial and extremely difficult problem for any counterinsurgency. It's an impossible problem when there is popular support for resistance.

That said, for any Dem not willing to call for troops out now or very soon, Cordesman's conditions for success are vital to articulate: Renouce bases, make it clear we will leave completely, renouce contractor spending, renounce U.S. oil claims, and support every effort to build up Iraqi self-defense forces and Iraqi self-government.

[Nell]

Oops, sorry, that's Bill Kaminsky, who has performed a service for which I'm very grateful in transcribing the Cordesman talk. Part 1 is up now at his blog; the quotation in my post above is from my own transcription from the C-SPAN audio and comes from the very end of the talk.

The Q&A is as worthwhile as the main statement, so I encourage checking out the C-SPAN links even once Bill has put up Part 2.

[derrida derider]

Renounce bases, pay Iraqis rather than Halliburton and give up the oil? Nell, you must be joking - what do you think the war was *for*?

Nope, I reckon the Republican grownups will renounce "spreading democracy" instead, in name as well as intent, and look for a new Iraqi strongman.

They're learning that imperialism is very expensive.