Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD): a man who should be listened to.

Quite an interview over at Reason:

Reason: What’s your reaction to the president’s veto of the Iraq supplemental?
Rep. Wayne Gilchrest: The veto and the speech were both big disappointments because the president mischaracterized the nature of the legislation. There was no drop-dead date to withdraw troops. There was a recommended goal for beginning to leave in 2007. The president should have looked at that legislation and said “You have your goals, here are mine, let’s see what we can do.” We should be able to reach both of our goals in that short time frame.

Reason: What’s the next step the House should take?
Gilchrest: There’s been a strong message from Congress about the present policy. Next we need to get the funding out there and look at other ways to address the policy. We [in Congress] hold the purse, so for anybody to suggest that we don’t have a constitutional right to influence the executive branch is absurd—really absurd. We’ve been on the sidelines for four years just watching this policy unfold. It is our right and responsibility to have an impact on this policy. Respect for other members of the government doesn’t seem to be apparent to the president.

Reason: When you voted for the war you said that the Americans who would overthrow Saddam were “peacemakers.” Do you stand by that?

Gilchrest: I stand by that rationale. That rationale was based on the Persian Gulf War of 1991. I was here during that war, during the debate, during the development of the authorization to use force, and this authorization for this war was virtually the same. What it meant was that you only go to war with all other options exhausted. After a couple of years, when all that began to unravel, that’s when I knew if I had a chance to vote on authorization again I wouldn’t vote for it. What I failed to consider was whether the executive branch was competent, informed, and had integrity. Under the circumstances, I don’t think it was.

Go read the rest; Gilchrest seems to be a good guy.

Steve Clemons reports Cheney may try to incite war with Iran

This is a strange sort of a thing. Steve Clemons is normally pretty reliable. I hesitate to interpret it.

….
Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney’s national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush’s tack towards Condoleezza Rice’s diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an “end run strategy” around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.

The thinking on Cheney’s team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran’s nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf — which just became significantly larger — as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.

There are many other components of the complex game plan that this Cheney official has been kicking around Washington. The official has offered this commentary to senior staff at AEI and in lunch and dinner gatherings which were to be considered strictly off-the-record, but there can be little doubt that the official actually hopes that hawkish conservatives and neoconservatives share this information and then rally to this point of view. This official is beating the brush and doing what Joshua Muravchik has previously suggested — which is to help establish the policy and political pathway to bombing Iran.

The zinger of this information is the admission by this Cheney aide that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake by aligning himself with the policy course that Condoleezza Rice, Bob Gates, Michael Hayden and McConnell have sculpted.

According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the “right decision” when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President’s hands.

On Tuesday evening, i spoke with a former top national intelligence official in this Bush administration who told me that what I was investigating and planned to report on regarding Cheney and the commentary of his aide was “potentially criminal insubordination” against the President. I don’t believe that the White House would take official action against Cheney for this agenda-mongering around Washington — but I do believe that the White House must either shut Cheney and his team down and give them all garden view offices so that they can spend their days staring out their windows with not much to do or expect some to begin to think that Bush has no control over his Vice President.

It is not that Cheney wants to bomb Iran and Bush doesn’t, it is that Cheney is saying that Bush is making a mistake and thus needs to have the choices before him narrowed.

This is certainly compatible with the story that I posted early today on the “leak” that divulged that Bush has signed a special finding allowing for secret actions against Iran…one might suppose that the Cheney camp gave this story to ABC, and is trying to sabotage diplomatic relations between the US and Iran. However, if this scenario is correct, one would think that a normal president would object to Cheney’s disclosures…but there are no normal people in charge of this country.

New blockbuster film on Iraq: “No End in Sight”

thumbnail of Paul Hughes, interviewed for No End in Sight

No End in Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq is a new film by Charles Ferguson. It won the 2007 Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for a documentary.

I was lucky enough to view it last night, in a showing attended by Ferguson, noted “democracy” scholar Larry Diamond of the conservative Hoover Institute, Pulitzer Prize winning historian and professor David M. Kennedy, active duty and Iraq veteran Lt. Col. Christopher Gibson.

The film is great documentary history. It incorporates battle footage, explosions, handicapped veterans, and, most notably, interviews with several key people who were unwilling participants in the transition from apparent “victory” to what has been called the greatest disaster in the history of American foreign policy.

Ferguson’s great accomplishment was getting these people to talk. As the magnitude of the disaster in Iraq becomes clear, we seem to be entering a period of confessionals and finger-pointing. George Tenet’s controversial book comes to mind. But the interviewees in “No End…” are not lapdogs of the American administration. Rather they are credible and qualified people who viewed with horror, and not with silence, the mistakes of the transition. Jay Garner is a particularly effective witness to the follies that ensued when he was replaced. Other military officers and diplomats also provide evidence of the disasterous decisions to disband the army and remove all Baathists from their jobs. Those who objected to US policies generally lost their positions, and, in one case, his life, for their trouble.

This is a powerful indictment of the Bush administration, and of Bush himself, who, according to Paul Hughes*, couldn’t be bothered to read even single page executive summaries of the impending disaster (There was an audible gasp from the audience at this point in the film). It is almost unthinkable that Bush is still in charge.

See it if you get a chance.

Here’s a review.

—

*Paul Hughes: From January to August 2003, Hughes served as the chief of the Special Initiatives Office for the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance and as the director of the Strategic Policy Office for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq…

Deepak Chopra: Will peace be the Phoenix?

link

There is no viable peace movement presently, thanks to a thirty-year rise of military-industrial interests. America sells more arms around the world than any other country. We are in the forefront of inventing new means of mechanized death, including futuristic robot armies. We betray tenuous alliances, like the one with Russia, by proposing new missile defense systems that directly threaten them.

Yet the prospects for peace have grown steadily, not by frontal maneuvers but through the back door. Arrogance has been peace’s best friend. This month the Israeli prime minister barely held on to his job after a scathing criticism of last year’s war against Lebanon. That was an exercise in pure arrogance, a devastating assault on a defenseless neighbor, with the pretext being the capture of two Israeli soldiers. Instead of defeating Hezbollah, the Israeli invasion greatly strengthened them, so that now even sizable Christian groups in Lebanon are praising Hezbollah.

Arrogance has played a prime part in the Iraq war, too. It was meant to be a free war that a rich country could mount overnight against a defenseless one. But arrogance is famously blind, and with no plans for a post-invasion war, the Bush administration finds itself saddled with a military disaster of historic proportions. It’s not great news that peace must depend on arrogance as a friend, but both of these wars have deflated Israel and the U.S., and there is little doubt that the future will hold much less aggression, particularly of the unilateral kind, from either country.
…
Therefore, two cheers for peace the hard way. Globalization may help bring peace, along with the Internet, cell phones, worldwide emigration, and other factors too complicated to neatly formulate. Keeping in mind last year’s UN report that deaths from major wars are down by 80% over the past twenty years, there is room for cautious optimism.

Unfortunately, the Republicans and the US mass media (and, I might add, the churches) are churning out hate and fear messages as fast as they can, to prevent the world from ever being afflicted by the dreaded peace.

Romney bites on planted ABC story of CIA in Iran, blasts “liberal media.”

Anyone who believes Brian Ross of ABC is an investigative reporter, please stand up. Hi, Mitt Romney.
Romney, as did most of the rightwing blogosphere, shot his mouth off about the ABC story on CIA propaganda efforts in Iran; he was “shocked,” saying it endangered lives.

Here’s Brian Ross’s “scoop”:

“Intelligence officials describe the CIA’s Iranian plan as non-lethal, involving a coordinated campaign of propaganda broadcasts, placement of negative newspaper articles, and the manipulation of Iran’s currency and international banking transactions…”

You first have to understand that the ABC story about CIA attempts to destabilize Iran was planted by Elliot Abrams and his band of reknown, part of the ongoing efforts to “put pressure” on Iran. Just another one of the daily attempts to provoke Iran and to make the US public believe that Iran is the most evil thing on the planet. For weeks, when it looked like we would attack Iran, OTLS! provided a daily accounting of these planted stories (see category “Countdown to attack on Iran” in the left hand column).

ABC’s Brian Ross is one of the Bush administrations favorite media go-to guys. Anything on his show is straight from Dick Cheney’s/Elliot Abrams desk. He is the Michael Gordon of the TeeVee. The stuff he gets is not only planted by Bushco, it’s not even fresh stuff; characteristically, Ross gets months-old stories, with a little fresh lipstick. But Brian isn’t proud, and ABC doesn’t care, because ABC is Disney and it’s television; they don’t do footnotes.

Why would Cheney plant a potential destabilizing story, while Condi Rice is trying to organize herself to do some of that diplomacy stuff? Because we have an adminstration that doesn’t have any idea of what to do and who’s running the show. Condi goes that way, Cheney goes this way…..

This Ross “scoop” is Cheney’s story: War. Right now, we have two giant aircraft carriers (plus two WW II size carriers) in the Gulf. Tensions are very high, and Cheney wants them higher,; he wants to enrage the Iranians. He would love to have a war TO-DAY.

Anyway, Romney decides that the ABC planted CIA/Iran story (which is an open secret; Sy Hersh has been writing about it for what, a year?) is an opportunity to denounce the media; I don’t know whether he knows that it’s a planted story or not.

NEW YORK – Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney criticized ABC News on Wednesday for its report about CIA plans in Iran, saying it could potentially jeopardize national security and endanger lives.
ABC News rejected Romney’s analysis, and said it had given the CIA a chance to make the case that its report put people at risk, but the agency didn’t respond.
The network led its top-rated “World News” on Tuesday with Brian Ross’ report saying that President Bush had directed the CIA to carry out secret operations against Iran both inside and outside that country. The network said the campaign was “non-lethal,” and involved propaganda broadcasts, the planting of newspaper articles and the manipulation of Iran’s currency and banking transactions.
Romney, during a campaign appearance in Tulsa, Okla., said he was shocked that ABC News would broadcast the report.
“The reporting has the potential of jeopardizing our national security,” the former Massachusetts governor said. “Stated quite plainly, it has the potential of affecting human life. We may never know.”
He said he did not support censorship, but that “the media has a responsibility to police itself.”
ABC News’ Web site was flooded with 1,683 comments within a day of the broadcast, with one poster urging ABC to “keep your big mouths shut.”
ABC News President David Westin said the network has changed or withheld stories in the past if the CIA convincingly says it could put lives or operations in jeopardy. The CIA was contacted six days ago about Ross’ story, and chose not to say anything about it, he said.

It is an interesting ploy, and a variation on the “plant story in the NY Times, then reference it as fact” ploy used by Cheney et al in the runup to the Iraq war. This is “plant the story with ABC, then use it to condemn the “liberal media.” Nice.

But the bigger story is that the Bush administration is completely rudderless; or more correctly, it has too many rudders. Bush seems to have freed up his main squeeze Secretary of State to pursue her helpless ideas about Middle East diplomacy, but at the same time, Cheney and Abrams still have unfulfilled fantasies of war, and Bush is allowing them to pursue their anti-diplomacy campaign at the same time that Rice scurries about trying “tough love” on the “Islamofascists.”

This is a president who has no vision, no plan, no idea of what is going on in the real world. He imagines himself to be the CEO and spiritual leader and even the savior, or at least the Winston Churchill, of America. He is a disaster on a global scale.