Vetting of desperation?

I was definitely surprised to wake up Thursday, to discover a deal for transfer of force in Fallujah had been proposed and accepted while I slept. At first I thought--great! That's probably the best of a bad lot of options on what to do in Fallujah. We couldn't go house to house, and we couldn't just pack up and leave.

But then some things started to bother me. Lest I be accused of seeking to find the worst in any good situation, I'll repeat: on principle, I think this is a good plan. But there's always a right way and a wrong way to do something, and both from reportage and on my own initial reactions, I'm worried we're (again) taking the quick deal under pressure.

The two main issues I have are these: who is this guy Saleh, what do we know about him and why can we trust him?; and does this action serve our stated goals in Fallujah? The answers to the second --if the goals are rooting out insurgents and finding the perpetrators of the mutilations last month--would be 'possibly' and 'likely not," respectively. The answer to the first comes from NYT, which has done a very good job keeping after this story as it develops. When after a full day no spokesman was able to pass along the general's first name or his resume', I got a little concerned. We have a full name now (see below), but apparently his background remains hazy:

Although some officials in the Pentagon told reporters on Friday that Maj. Gen. Jasim Muhammad Saleh had not been a member of the Republican Guard, intelligence and other Marine officers here reconfirmed their own Friday comments that General Saleh had been a ranking officer in the Republican Guard, one of the special units close to Saddam Hussein, before being named to command the Iraqi Army's 38th Infantry Division.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, said the authority and the new Iraqi Ministry of Defense would have to investigate General Saleh's background, including whether he had been in the Republican Guard.

"would have to?" Isn't that something we might have looked up BEFORE agreeing to put him in charge of the new brigade? Yesterday I read that this plan was brought to the Marines by a group of Saddam's ex-generals. Why did they pick him? Apparently he's not all that senior, and it's like he came out of Junior College or something--nobody's got the scout sheet.

And then there's the size of the troop force. 900 to 1,000 men will take over for 2,000+ Marines. First of all, cutting your force in half doesn't sound like a good thing, and cutting it in half and staffing it with people who have at best 1/10th of the training of the Marines, is even less good. But I wasn't prepared for this update:

As of Saturday, he said, the force numbered around 300 with hopes of moving up to around 1,000 soon.

The plan to deploy the Iraqi force came, he said, just as it appeared "there were no options that would preclude attacks on the city."

Three hundred hastily organized soldiers are going to replace 2,000 highly trained and motivated Marines? Eeesh. A plan out of nowhere, thought up by Saddam's generals, led by Saddam's generals, incorporating Saddam's men, plus maybe even some insurgents from the very battle we've been fighting...I'm not putting my retirement money on their success, let's just say.

McCain comes through again

in response to Sinclair Broadcasting's decision to block Nightline tonight. Typical of McCain, he chooses to mince few words:

There is no valid reason for Sinclair to shirk its responsibility in what I assume is a very misguided attempt to prevent your viewers from completely appreciating the extraordinary sacrifices made on their behalf by Americans serving in Iraq. War is an awful, but sometimes necessary business. Your decision to deny your viewers an opportunity to be reminded of war’s terrible costs, in all their heartbreaking detail, is a gross disservice to the public, and to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. It is, in short, sir, unpatriotic. I hope it meets with the public opprobrium it most certainly deserves.
[hat tip Atrios for the link]

I watched a fair bit of Nightline tonight. I almost felt a duty to watch, to remind myself of the faces and lives behind the daily numbers, not to forget the human flesh behind the wire reports. If you want to read a slightly more detailed list of the people and their circumstance of death, ABC provides that too. I was struck by the complete rainbow coalition we have sent to Iraq. Whites, blacks, Hispanic, Asian, Arab (one man was named Uday; perhaps he was Indian since his last name was Singh), young, older, men, women...a very moving mix of peoples and backgrounds. I thought it was a worthy tribute, and I think most people appreciate the opportunity to reflect on the sacrifice being made by Americans they've never met. The rather sardonic partisan fury attempted by Sinclair was really just in bad taste--even if they felt it was a political ploy, the very public act of blocking the airing itself became a politicization of the deaths, and they became guilty of what they wanted to protest.

Sad. All of it is very sad.

Diebold takes it in the chops

Here's a case where the tinfoil activists appear to have performed a valuable service: the incessant blogular whispers about Diebold and paperless voting have kept the issue on radar, and scientists and poll observers have done a good job pressing their case locally. If you need some background on what the issue is and where it's been news, this is a good primary source page (hat tip Zap).

Part of what gave the Diebolical Plan its conspiracy overtone was the reference to political leanings (Diebold is a big BC04 supporter), and the controversy over the machines in Ohio, THE battleground state of '04. But today's news--finally, the main link!--is a major victory for those who believe paperless voting is a scary, hacktastical nightmare of security and verifiability. Not only is California decertifying over 14,000 machines made by Diebold, and putting severe restrictions on thousands of others, but the state is also recommending inquiry into criminal charges for fraud.

Why is this big? For one thing, 40% of the touchscreens in use in this country are reportedly in California. For another, California is a bellwether state in so many ways, but especially policy-wise. Because California standards are often tough, manufacturers and vendors have a tendency to design to California's specs, thus making them likely to pass muster everywhere else. And on a governmental basis, other state bureaucracies watch what happens in California, as a testing ground for what they will surely have to face eventually. As the article notes, one can be sure other states are reviewing this case closely, especially if they have Diebold machines running in their state. Finally, to return to the "Diebold will steal Ohio for Bush" blog meme, you can imagine that any intentional shenanigans would be a pretty ballsy move for a company under such scrutiny. Which means that public scrutiny and even marginal media reporting, may have prevented voter fraud. That's pretty cool.

Take one for the country

Support takes all forms, and while I don't think it's an altogether smart move on the part of these ladies, I can't argue with either the sentiment or the follow-through, and I'm sure neither do the soldiers. I also think the radical feminist condemnation from Berkley's NOW chapter is sadly humorless--for one thing they react as if the women are whores, when they're clearly giving it up for free!

Spargas said that she, in fact, had heard of TOFTC and was working to find and protest the group at the first opportunity. "These women are really sick, they are prostituting themselves", Spargas ranted, "they are objectifying their bodies to the killers of the Bush cabals war machine. They need to examine how men have made prostitutes of women throughout time".

At least some of the participants don't seem to mind the objectification, as this note from the founder indicates:

To the group in Galveston Texas (Yes, I got word the NEXT day), you CANNOT, and I mean CANNOT go to a bar and get loaded and start chanting 'TAKE ONE FOR THE COUNTRY' like a zillion times. That's bad. I love you Texan gals and love your spirit but that's not what we are trying to accomplish and it's not safe.

Hey, ladies--each according to her ability! Way to support the common!

Happy anniversary

to Torrid and his wife, who celebrate 10 years of marriage together. Of course, we won't be counting the last two months since those Oregon same-sex licenses ruined marriage for everybody. They're meaningless! We burned ours. :)

Torrid is a damn lucky man.

Update on Kerry going after Bush on Vietnam

more from CBS's Washington Wrap, with the text of Kerry's sudden shift towards vitriol:

CBS News’ Steve Chaggaris reports that "when it seemed as if Kerry was going to wrap up his remarks [to a Dayton, OH newspaper group], his demeanor shifted, as he sounded completely fed up with the Bush-Cheney attacks (and it’s only April!). What resulted was Kerry unloading on them in a much harsher way (and defending himself in a much more forceful way) than he has to date."

Kerry said, "They want you to believe that John Kerry - who put the uniform of his country on voluntarily, who felt an obligation to go to Vietnam when so many others didn’t, who stood up and fought for our country - they want you to believe that somehow I’m not strong for the defense of our nation. Well, I’ve defended our nation! And I’m prepared to stand up and defend it as president and forever!"

That's exactly the pugnaciousness he's going to need, as I indicated yesterday. Obviously he can't do this straight through to November, but these little "I won't take this scurrilous defamation" rants do a decent job of blunting the attack and making the accuser's favorability drop at least as fast as the target's.

Also in today's Wrap, discussion of a potentially key subgroup of voters in THE four most crucial states in Election '04: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Florida. The group? Arab-Americans, and they are perhaps unsurprisingly disenchanted with George Bush. The President is running a meager 30% of the Arab vote in these states, and 20% are yet undecided, more likely by polling tradition to eventually vote for Kerry, if at all. What's remarkable is that the current sentiments are a mirror image of the 2000 results, when Bush carried the Arab vote in these states. Michigan has the most Arab-American voters, but Ohio and Florida, with 2% of the electorate recognized as Arab descent, are obviously the key states where every vote will count. Considering that Lebanese-American Ralph Nader draws outsized support but is rather unlikely to end up on the actual ballot, those voters are likely to be Kerry-or-nobody votes as well.

Reverse neutron bombing

Why are we strafing Fallujan districts with heavy guns and bombs?

"If we let them get away, they'll just find another place to bring their breed of terror and chaos," a senior military commander said. "That's what this war is all about: It's about eliminating breeding grounds for terrorists."

And those breeding grounds would be...buildings? Homes? Plazas? Markets? Rolling in and Beruiting a town isn't "eliminating breeding grounds" like some kind of Thug-B-Gone; it's like splashing water on a grease fire--it spatters and disperses.

We spent all that time working on a bomb that killed people but left buildings intact. Who knew we should have been working on one that destroyed buildings but left the people unharmed? Unless we have it already and I just wasn't given code clearance, I don't think we're using those kind of bombs in Fallujah.

What comes out of the President's mouth continues to disturb me deeply:

A series of explosions and gunfire rocked Fallujah, a city near Baghdad, in new fighting on Wednesday, a day after a heavy battle on Tuesday in which U.S. planes and artillery pounded the city in a show of force against insurgents holed up in a slum. Still Bush insisted: "Most of Fallujah is returning to normal."

This is convenient; for the parts that aren't getting bombed, not being bombed is normal. For the areas where insurgents are converging, I'm sure being shot at is also quite normal lately. As to whether you might confuse the imagined street life of Fallujah--which is to say, none--with "normal," that's your own call. Do you really think people are lounging in cafes after dinner, enjoying tea and the cooling down of increasingly hot spring days, chatting amiably and going out on dates? To be fair, Bush may have gotten this impression from the lead Sunni negotiator, as reported by Juan Cole. But I really don't buy his BS, either. If someone is occupying the US and bombing the downtown area of my city, I'm not going about my everyday business just because I live further out.

Bush said those attacking coalition forces "want to kill innocent life to try to get us to quit and we're not going to."

Certainly the coalition forces are brave, true, and heroic. But I have never heard volunteering (and highly paid private) soliders referred to as "innocent life." I wish I was able to re-find the Gen. Kimmitt quote declaring that some semblance of a unilateral US cease-fire was still holding, even as planes roared overhead. Defensive fire doesn't count, see.

"I have laid out a broad strategy that says that Iraq will be as secure as possible - that we will deal with those who want to stop the march to freedom," Bush said. "That's exactly what's happening in Fallujah."

Isn't it really a goal that Iraq will be as secure as possible? Certainly it's a truism that it won't be MORE successful than possible, and frankly as secure as possible sounds like pretty much of a pipe dream too, but I can handle the rhetoric there. But that's not a strategy. In fact, that's not even a plan. I suppose the plan is to "deal with," but I can call saving my house the goal and putting out the fire the broad strategy--and I'm not getting any closer to putting the goddam thing out. And that's the crux of the nation-building plan for Iraq one year in: the goal is the strategy, and the plan is to achieve the goal. Feel better?

Kerry brings it on

Kos has the relevant link and makes some useful points on the nomenclature for ribbons and medals in service manuals, but boy I'm tired of his commenters. I've debated with Torrid several times over whether to include a comments board, and so far inertia is winning. We'll see. If you get perhaps one comment for every 50 views, I'd rather not string zeros across my postings.

Just as Bush made the decision to go on the attack in both Iraq and via Dick Cheney, it seems John Kerry has also made a decision not to stand for it. Strangely, there are in fact some paralells between Bush's strategy in Iraq, and Kerry's in the general campaign so far. They both tried to hang back, landing jabs and trying to keep order, but the boots on the ground got tired of being sniped with no response and so the decision was made to hit back hard. Kaus remembers the "everything is on the table" comment from February, and claims the impact of Kerry's Doomsday weapon is already absorbed. Quite a hasty decision, in my opinion. The whole rope-a-dope thing has some campaign rhythm to it for Kerry--he likes to seem dead in the water before roaring back as the returning hero. The material is being provided by the blogosphere, both Salon and Atrios and of course the yet more er, passionate observers. Will Kerry use it?

The disconnect on Kerry is that he acted like a badass in war, but talks like a wackass in politics. Bush acted like a wackass in war, but talks like a badass in politics. The obvious ploy here is to simply match the badass tone in politics, and the war badass stuff will take care of itself. The bluster here is not so much in the challenge being made, but that the challenge IS being made. Kerry has failed to impress people, mostly, and I mean that in both the positive sense and the formative sense. He has not left much of an impression, which has bad elements that we see now, but lots of opportunity for favorable redemption. And while I really, really don't enjoy the pointless charges of political demagoguery, people will like John Kerry better if he stands up against attack, throws it back in their faces, and demands respect. The equivocation has got to go, and virulent attack (done very carefully in the name of self-defense, however) is going to fix in people's minds that he's a fighter. And THEN the military service will resonate much better, and in this context Bush has no rebuttal at all.

Flagging morale

This has been reasonably well covered, but it's just so absurd and--pardon the pun--emblematic of both the Bush administration and Iraqi Governing Council's cluelessness and lack of selling authority when it comes to all aspects of rebuilding Iraq. A task force has selected a winning indigenous design for the new national flag, without asking the question, "Is the old one really no good?" There's nothing particularly Saddam-like about it, down to the God is Greatest slogan--how fake it was to have it there under Saddam? In any case, the likelihood is that the new Iraq will pay much more attention to religious sentiment, so it would finally mean something. And other than that, it was standard Arab uniform: red black and green.

The thing that creeps me out, as if they were trying to be obtuse, as if they wanted to have it rejected, as if all this stuff actually came from a movie script Dan Bartlett found in a drawer of Reagan's old things, is that the thing looks like none of its neighbors except one. Guess which one. Hint--their flag is baby blue. It'd be like Al Davis changing the Raiders over to Bronco colors. Or rather, a stoolie represented by those who had set Al on the curb and taken over the team.

Is this pernicious? Of course not. We could put Allah himself on the flag (well, not really since it's against Islam), and they'd still relish the chance change it back once they were able to pass their own laws. Which reminds me: as I expected, the administration realized the better strategy was not to move the transfer date forward, it was to make the transfer less meaningful. No one imagines that security will allow any kind of transfer to an Iraqi-led force, but the denial of any ability to make laws really seems to undercut any y'know, authority you might want to have. For another take on Negroponte's all-too-swift confirmation process, try out the International Herald Tribune's pages, a common link from US Politics.com.

The breaking of Fallujah seems to have begun today, and positions are being set for some kind of movement in Najaf as well. Bush was apparently to have decided his course of action over last weekend, and it seems pretty obvious what he chose. This is a huge risk. A HUGE risk. To the health of Iraq, to the success of our mission, to the arrest of terrorism, to the economy of this country, to the lives of our countrymen and theirs, and not least to the outcome of the November election. Bush has gotten a rally-round boost in the polls over the last month or so, but there is always a tipping point. It cannot be said where the fulcrum is on that particular see saw, but this was a decision that has the potential to heavily impact everything I mentioned above, and it was apparently made within the last 48 hours.

How embarassing

I searched a little bit for a good review piece on this fountain of mean-spiritedness from the Virginia Assembly. I don't intend this to sound as if I'm suggesting that those uppity fags are asking for too much too soon, but as the folks at Basic Rights Oregon work towards the holy grail of legal homosexual recognition, I hope they realize how good things really are in our state compared to many others around the country. I'm sure they do, but the example is instructive. It appears inevitable that at the very least, civil unions are going to become the law of the land--and while they don't confer the full benefits of marriage, in Virginia you can't even be gay and visit your deathly ill partner. As some have indicated regarding its vagueness, you may not even be able to be gay and buy a house from a gay person, depending on the breadth of the "invalid contracts" provision. So domestic benefits and spousal visitation looks pretty good.

Some of you may know that Torrid is a long time Virginia resident, and there is much to recommend the Commonwealth. It is rich with history, generally a very economical place to live, and there is much natural beauty. But towards the end of my time there, the structures of government in Virginia started to wear on me deeply. The Governor's Mansion was occupied by two Gingrich Republicans, George Allen and George Gilmore, before Mark Warner managed to squeeze into the residence as the current goobernor. The Assembly also turned sharply to the right in the 90s. Full car tax repeals while half the schools couldn't make their maintenance needs, abstinence-only sex ed, and rejection of new hearings for DNA testing after trials are just some of the swell ideas they thought up.

It extended to the local governments as well--individual rights and property are keen principles, which sounds great in theory but in reality leads to horrible sprawl, nightmare traffic, deep divisions in housing quality, and total noncooperation if not outright hostility between suburban and urban localities. You can see why I love the difference here in Portland, especially the dramatic transformation that happened while I was away, which was engineered in large part by Ernie Bonner, who passed away very recently (tip Isaac L).

And then to throw in the teatotalling intolerance of the cultural elite in Virginia, where you were First Family and Baptist--or not, white--or not, genteel--or not...it was too much. This is just one more example. You're good family folk--or not. As sure as Thomas Jefferson got drunk and randy in Williamsburg during William and Mary homecomings there have always been gays in the Old Dominion. But they are forcibly invisible, and sadly it appears they must continue thus for some time longer. I want Oregon's tourism board to start targeting upscale gays in Virginia, telling them "if you're educated and white collar, we want you to come to Oregon, be gay as a french horn, and start paying into our tax base! We take gay money, and we don't even feel compulsion to wash our hands afterwards!" Oregon is for All Kinds of Lovers, dammit.

Yes, I still love you

...but I just wasn't moved to blog this weekend. Every time I sat down to the computer, I pulled up the Yankees on MLB TV, and they were getting embarassed by the Red Sox. That's certainly not worth talking about. I'd talk about the fact that we're going into Fallujah, or we're not going into Fallujah, but Bush cannot seem to make up his mind yet (and really, the fact that it appears he can't is a rare hopeful sign that the lantern in his lighthouse is actually lit). In the abstract, however, here are three people who'd like to tell George that while he has no good options, the one he seems to be leaning towards is one of the very bad ones:

1) Brahimi
2) Hasan Kazemi-Qomi, Iranian diplomat
3) William Polk, US diplomat and professor

Somewhat relatedly, I've begun reading Way Out There in the Blue, trying to build on evidence that Ted Turner and CNN had as much to do with the downfall of the USSR as Ron Reagan and Maggie Thatcher. The interesting part is the way FitzGerald sets Reagan's behavior and worldview in the historical context of 18th and 19th century Protestant evangelism, and particularly the various paranoid political movements. But what caught my eye was the assertion that Reagan was so masterful at captivating Americans because he referenced both a premillenarian outlook ("the world is coming to an end!") and a postmillenarian outlook ("we will make the world a terminally peaceful place, and that's coming too!") in order to get his often dubious policy goals across. That sure sounds awfully familiar...

Finally for tonight, here's a pretty decent piece on John Kerry's antiwar period by NYT. That was Saturday's piece, followed by Sunday's on whether his wife Teresa will be a help or a hindrance. She started out as the former, switched to the latter, and now NYT isn't so sure she's not back to the former. Damn SUVs! Damn multibillion dollar company! And then in a preview about what Drudge is attempting to drum up on the Kerry credibility front, today's article on a video of Kerry implying he threw medals away, when all he did was throw his ribbons.

Bush was up over the weekend at Rasmussen; they also released Cali numbers, which show a solid 11 point lead. Oregon tomorrow!

Hope you'll forgive me; see you tomorrow.