The Next Hurrah

Shorter GOP: It's Okay if Maliki's Govt Supports Insurgents, So Long as It's Not OUR Money

by emptywheel

I'd like to return to an interchange between Waxman and Condi from the hearing today. Condi made a verygenerousoffer to let Waxman's committee review documents pertaining to corruption. Waxman pointed out that that offer did not allow the committee to discuss what it discovered in those documents publicly.

He raised the example of whether Iraqis were laundering money for use in militias. And Condi admitted that some of the corruption in Iraq contributed to funding militias. "Particularly in the south."

Someone must have been reading the blogs, because the Republicans (in a pretty smart strategy) saved some time for their designated attack dogs, Shays, Cannon, and Davis at the end so they could clarify what Condi meant with that answer (Darrell Issa must be busy in California trying to dilute that state's electoral votes while Rome burns, because this is usually his role on Oversight). At least Davis and Cannon (and I think Shays, though I was in the other room) got Condi to clarify that US money isn't going to Shiite militias who kill our troops. Iraqi money does.

Frankly, I'd sure like to see the accounting (though Condi correctly pointed out that State Department's relevant budget never goes directly to Iraqis, so it really doesn't fund Shiite militias). But consider where that leaves the Republicans.

We are currently providing a great deal of military support for a government that supports militias--Condi says--that our arch enemy (unless you're Ollie North or Poppy Bush) is also supporting. We're supporting Maliki's government which in turn uses corruption to support pro-Iranian factions.

And that's okay for the Republicans, so long as Maliki isn't launder our own money to support the Shiite militas. Mostly because they have no choice. Stopping such a practice would effectively admit that the war has completely backfired, making our arch enemy (unless you're Ollie North or Poppy Bush) stronger.

Nobody for Attorney General

by Kagro X

Michael Mukasey is certainly qualified to be Attorney General of the United States, if Alberto Gonzales sets any precedent. And while that may be the least convincing recommendation anyone can ever be given for the job, consider that Mukasey yesterday gave perhaps the least convincing answer to one of the most important questions asked of him -- by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)-- in his confirmation hearing:

Why State?

by emptywheel

Josh asks "why State?" of all departments, has such a fondness for contractors in general and Blackwater in particular. I've got two suggestions, one based on reality and one on my tinfoil hat.

First, if you look back at the battle between DOD and State in 2003--in which Bush had officially sided with Colin Powell on the approach to reconstruct Iraq, but in which DOD and OVP managed to at least undermine Powell's best efforts and in key ways to completely defeat it, it becomes clear the degree to which DOD and OVP were using military resources to win bureaucratic battles. This was most notable in the way DOD ferried Ahmed Chalabi around Iraq, always swooping him into place just before an official State event designed to build some kind of consensus on the ground involving all sectors of Iraqi society. Because DOD controlled all the logistics in the country, they could always present State with a fait accompli every time State initiated efforts to build more lasting institutions.

The contracts with Blackwater started ballooning in mid-2004, and had most of their growth while Condi was Secretary of State. It seems clear that, by 2004, it was crystal clear that State could get nothing done--not even uncontested reconstruction activities--without their own army so they could match the logistical flexibility of DOD.

So that's my real reason. But there's another thing I've kept in mind for a while. The fabulous melting embassy in Iraq--owned by State--is alleged to be slotted for hundreds and hundreds of intelligence personnel. Given the degree to which we've outsourced our intelligence functions, is it remotely possible that some of what we're seeing Blackwater do in the name of State is actually servicing the spooks in Iraq, who also use their services? I don't know the answer to this one--it's just speculation. But it has been lurking in my brain for some time.

In Govt We Do Not Trust

by emptywheel

I'm still following up on the question of the way in which the Rather complaint invokes the debate on Hamdi. I wanted to draw extended attention to this article. In it, Tim Grieve susses out precisely what seems to be the reason Rather included the Abu Ghraib details in his complaint.

Did Clement know he was misleading the justices, or was he kept out of the loop so that he could avoid revealing truths that would undermine the administration's "trust us" arguments in the enemy combatant cases? Did Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers persuade CBS to delay broadcasting the photographs from Abu Ghraib to protect the lives of U.S. soldiers -- or to spare the administration embarrassing questions during the Supreme Court arguments in the enemy combatant cases?

[snip]

Clement was a natural choice to appear on behalf of Rumsfeld when the Supreme Court took up the cases of Padilla and his fellow "enemy combatant," Yaser Hamdi, in April. The question is, what did Clement know when he climbed the steps of the Supreme Court building on the morning of April 28? Did he know what his client knew -- that the Department of Defense was investigating grave abuses at Abu Ghraib, that the brigadier general in charge of the prison had already been removed from her post? Did he know what his client's staff knew -- that Joint Chiefs chairman Myers had been working to keep CBS from broadcasting photographs of the abuse?

And we wouldn't be fun if we weren't remembering Monica Goodling, um, "fondly."

The Justice Department won't say. An employee in Clement's office referred a call from Salon last week to Justice Department spokesperson Monica Goodling. Asked what Clement or Ashcroft knew of the Abu Ghraib situation at the time of oral arguments in the Hamdi and Padilla cases, Goodling said: "We wouldn't have any comment." Pressed further, Goodling said the Justice Department would not have any comment at all about the Padilla or Hamdi cases.

I'll remind you, Goodling was the protege of Barbara Comstock, who blackballed Eric Lichtblau for getting too close to the truth.

Go read the whole Grieve article--I had forgotten that Padilla was argued at the same time as Hamdi. In other words--it may not have been Hamdi's torture Clement was covering up, it may have been Padilla's.

One Texas Oilman Pleads Guilty

by emptywheel

It may not be the Texas oilmen we'd like to plead guilty, but it is going to make others think twice before they bribe dictators to do their oil deals.

Texas oilman Oscar Wyatt Jr. pleaded guilty Monday to charges that he paid millions of dollars to Iraqi officials to illegally win contracts connected to the United Nations oil-for-food program.

[snip]

During the trial, prosecutors demonstrated that Wyatt had such a close relationship with Iraq that he was able to meet personally with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in December 1990 to argue for the release of Americans being held as potential shields in the event of a U.S.-Iraq war.

Prosecutors played a tape for the jury of the conversation in which Hussein promised Wyatt that Americans would be released as Wyatt and former Texas Gov. John Connally spoke sympathetically about Iraq's plight.

The government insisted that Wyatt later took advantage of that relationship to secure the first contract under the oil-for-food program and to continue to receive oil deals after other American companies were shut off prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Speaking of Texas oilmen, last I checked there were ongoing allegations that Halliburton had bribed the Nigerian government to make their oil deals when one Dick Cheney was Halliburton's CEO. I wonder if he'll even be charged.

The Cost of Doing Business

by emptywheel

Walter Pincus analyzes one of the contracts that Henry Waxman is looking at to determine how much more Blackwater's mercenaries are costing us than a law-abiding US soldier. Pincus notes that Petraeus makes roughly $493 a day. This doesn't appear to include benefits; figuring benes make up 1/3 of someone's compensation--which in the private sector is often about right, but in the military is probably too small--then Petraeus might cost us, the taxpayer, $750 a day. That's for our top commander in Iraq, $750 a day.

And here's how a Blackwater employee gets charged:

Average day-to-day personnel, $600/day salary paid by Blackwater
Blackwater bills Regency, $850/day for operators
Regency bills ESS an average of $1100/day for all types of employees
ESS charges Halliburton which charges the US based on a per-meal basis (I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Halliburton has some profit worked into this)

A married Iraqi sergeant serving in Iraq makes about $170/day [updated for clarity].

No wonder Bush needs another $200 billion. He's outsourcing the actual fighting of this war to forces that cost six times as much as it would if our military still did the fighting.

Counterproliferationinsurgency

by emptywheel

I've got two small points to make about Sy Hersh's latest, which has been covered generally just about everywhere.

What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.

This, it seems to me, invites a logical approach to combating this idiocy. The Bushies are admitting, at least among themselves, that their "laptop of death" campaign (and other silliness) didn't work. It didn't work, of course, because it was manufactured bullshit. From the line, " the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb," I assume the intelligence community looked at how sketchy the whole laptop of death campaign was, and refused to condone Administration warmonger based on that rationale. So they've simply invented a new rationale. Any bets on whether or not the intelligence community gets to review the evidence behind the allegations about Iran supplying Iraqi insurgents?

In any case, their ability and willingness to pivot like this and change the entire rationale for their war in Iran ought to be reason enough to oppose the idea. That's true, first of all, because it strongly suggests both rationales were just more manufactured evidence. But also because, as the Iraq war showed us, if we go to war without a clearly defined rationale and goal, we're going to get stuck in yet another desert quagmire.

And we're going to forestall the discussions about the real reasons we'd be going to war against Iran.

What's that thing nature abhors, again?

by Kagro X

Via Crooks and Liars, there's video available of Sy Hersh's appearance on CNN's Late Edition today, in which he discusses his latest article for The New Yorker.

The gist of Hersh's comments on CNN? That changing the "mission" with regard to Iran makes an attack more palatable to the American public. Instead of the failed smoking gun/mushroom cloud line...

Hersh: You can also sell counter-terror, it’s much more logical. You can say to the American people, we’re only hitting these people that are trying to kill our boys and the coalition forces and so that seems to be more sensible, The White House think s they can actually pitch this, this would actually work…

By all rights, though, the "administration" shouldn't be able to get away with this one, either. Iranian "meddling" in Iraq was as foreseeable and as obvious and likely an outcome as the post-invasion looting and a sustained anti-occupation insurgency, both of which the war cheerleaders claim to have been unable to predict.

Purely from a force protection perspective, isn't it a spectacular failing to have our troops falling prey to Iranian interference at this stage of the game? And pretending it's a surprise?

Just another day in Republican Bizarro World.

Stuff that doesn't fit in soundbites

by Kagro X

This isn't meant to be a criticism of Hillary Clinton in particular. But it's going to end up that way, because she's the only one of the sitting Democratic Senators running for president who voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment the other day.

But I say that this isn't about her in particular because I think there are a lot of Democrats in Congress who make one of the component errors that I think she made in making her decision, even if they eventually come down in opposition to resolutions and amendments like this one.

What do I mean? Well, I just got a look at Senator Clinton's statement on her vote on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment that passed the Senate the other day, and this part grabbed me:

In February, after troubling reports about the possibility of military action against Iran, I took to the Senate Floor to warn that President Bush needs Congressional Authorization before attacking Iran. Specifically, I said it would be a mistake of historical proportion if the Administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran without further and explicit Congressional authorization. Nor should the President think that the 2001 resolution authorizing force after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, in any way, authorizes force against Iran. If the Administration believes that any use of force against Iran is necessary, the President must come to Congress to seek that authority. Nothing in this resolution changes that.

Afri ... um EuroAfriCom

by emptywheel

Scout prime has been tracking something I've been watching, too. The new AfriCom military command? Well, the entire continent of Africa has told us, "no, thanks."

The Pentagon's plan to create a US military command based in Africa have hit a wall of hostility from governments in the region reluctant to associate themselves with the Bush administration's "war on terror" and fearful of American intervention.

A US delegation led by Ryan Henry, principal deputy under-secretary of defence for policy, returned to Washington last week with little to show for consultations with defence and foreign ministry officials in Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Djibouti and with the African Union (AU). An earlier round of consultations with sub-Saharan countries on providing secure facilities and local back-up for the new command, to be known as Africom and due to be operational by September next year, was similarly inconclusive.

The Libyan and Algerian governments reportedly told Mr Henry that they would play no part in hosting Africom. Despite recently improved relations with the US, both said they would urge their neighbours not to do so, either. Even Morocco, considered Washington's closest north African ally, indicated it did not welcome a permanent military presence on its soil.

"We've got a big image problem down there," a state department official admitted. "Public opinion is really against getting into bed with the US. They just don't trust the US."

The article cites public opinion and the desire to avoid building obvious terrorist targets in their countries. But I suspect two more things are at work, too. We're not going to establish an AfriCom headquarters without negotiating an agreement with the host country that gives our soldiers some immunity from local law enforcement, gives us a big financial bonus for establishing the headquarters, and a whole bunch of other goodies. (Read Chalmers Johnson's Nemesis if you're interested--here's a taste.) Once upon a time, such an arrangement was a good acceptable deal for the host country because, well, the US was the uncontested hegemon of the world.

But now, particularly in Africa (where Hu Jintao has been very busy making friends in recent years), that's no longer true. So I suspect that, when faced with the opportunity to cede a good deal of sovereignty so the US' cowboys can come in and push local folks around, that doesn't look like such a great deal anymore.