Tuesday, January 15, 2008
How long will the U.S. be in Iraq…according to Bush, responding to NBC’s David Gregory
Gregory: "John McCain has been saying on the campaign trail that the American people would accept U.S. troops remaining in Iraq for 100 years. Do you agree with that?"
Bush: "I -- I don't know if 100 years is the right number. That's a long time."
Gregory: "Sort of long-term presence?"
Bush: "It could very well be. But it's going to be on the invitation of the Iraqi government. A long-term presence -- and again, I'm not exactly sure how you would define long-term, but it's --"
Gregory: "Ten years?"
Bush: "Yeah, it could easily be that, absolutely." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/22607102#22607102
Iraqis: We could handle things in 4 years…or 10
The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq's borders from external threat until at least 2018. . . .
President Bush has never given a date for a military withdrawal from Iraq but has repeatedly said that American forces would stand down as Iraqi forces stand up. Given [minister Abdul] Qadir's assessment of Iraq's military capabilities on Monday, such a withdrawal appeared to be quite distant, and further away than any American officials have previously stated in public. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/world/middleeast/15military.html?_r=1&ex=1358053200&en=0cd0c8ad0eee50d3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
Bush and Democracy: We know that the Bush Administration doesn’t really care about democracy, but since they keep claiming they do- despite the support of dictators such as Musharraf -and since Bush just gave another speech about democracy, it’s fitting to note Michael Hirsh’s column in Newsweek:
A day after George W. Bush gave his big democracy speech and declared the opening of “a great new era … founded on the equality of all people” — a line he delivered at the astonishingly opulent Emirates Palace hotel, where most of the $2,450-a-night suites are reserved for visiting royals — the president flew to Saudi Arabia on Monday. There he planned to spend a day with King Abdullah at his ranch, where the monarch keeps 150 Arabian stallions for his pleasure, and thousands of goats and sheep “bred to feed the guests at the King’s royal banquets,” as the White House put it in the “press kit” it handed out to reporters on the eve of the president’s eight-day Mideast tour. Bush was also expected to take time out to meet with a group of “Saudi entrepreneurs.”
What could not be found on Bush’s schedule was one Saudi dissident or political activist, much less a democrat. http://www.newsweek.com/id/94447
Bush and Disowning the Iran NIE The White House has not endorsed their work and now virtually disowned it in conversations with Israeli PM Olmert.
Fred Kaplan thinks this undermines U.S. credibility…still further:
This remark has three baleful consequences. First, it can't help but demoralize the intelligence community. NIEs are meant, ultimately, for only one reader, the president; and here's the president telling another world leader that he doesn't believe it because, well, he doesn't agree with it.
Second, it reinforces the widespread view that the president views intelligence strictly as a political tool: When it backs up his policies, it's as good as gold; when it doesn't, it's "just guessing." This result is that all intelligence is degraded and devalued, at home and abroad. Let's say that six months from now Bush publicizes an NIE concluding that Iran has resumed its nuclear-weapons program or that, say, North Korea is reprocessing more plutonium. Given that he pooh-poohed an NIE that rubbed against his own views, why should anyone take him seriously for embracing an NIE that confirms them?
Third, by telling Olmert that it's all right to ignore the NIE, Bush is in effect telling him that Israel should go ahead and behave as if its findings had never been published. Hirsh reports that, when Olmert was asked whether he felt reassured by Bush's words, he replied, "I am very happy." http://www.slate.com/id/2182071/fr/rss/
What's Happening, Afghanistan: The Mini-Surge: Some feuding with Allies as to who’s doing their share…as the Administration dispatches 3200 Marines.
The U.S. plan to send an additional 3,200 Marines to troubled southern Afghanistan this spring reflects the Pentagon's belief that if it can't bully its recalcitrant NATO allies into sending more troops to the Afghan front, perhaps it can shame them into doing so, U.S. officials said.
But the immediate reaction to the proposed deployment from NATO partners fighting alongside U.S. forces was that it was about time the United States stepped up its own effort.
After more than six years of coalition warfare in Afghanistan, NATO is a bundle of frayed nerves and tension over nearly every aspect of the conflict, including troop levels and missions, reconstruction, anti-narcotics efforts, and even counterinsurgency strategy. Stress has grown along with casualties, domestic pressures and a sense that the war is not improving, according to a wide range of senior U.S. and NATO-member officials who agreed to discuss sensitive alliance issues on the condition of anonymity.
While Washington has long called for allies to send more forces, NATO countries involved in some of the fiercest fighting have complained that they are suffering the heaviest losses. The United States supplies about half of the 54,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, they say, but the British, Canadians and Dutch are engaged in regular combat in the volatile south.
"We have one-tenth of the troops and we do more fighting than you do," a Canadian official said of his country's 2,500 troops in Kandahar province. "So do the Dutch." The Canadian death rate, proportional to the overall size of its force, is higher than that of U.S. troops in Afghanistan or Iraq, a Canadian government analysis concluded last year. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/14/AR2008011402722_pf.html
Economy: Not 1929, but…
Richard Berner, chief US economist at Morgan Stanley, said: “The consumer is retreating. It is too soon to say cracking, but the consumer is clearly turning cautious at the very least.”
Mr Berner said the consumer had been hit by a “perfect storm” of falling house prices, slowing jobs growth, high gasoline prices, mortgage resets and tighter lending standards.
However, economists noted that some of the expected December spending had probably taken place in November – a strong month – due in part to the timing of holidays. Bruce Kasman, chief economist at JP Morgan, said the data were “telling things are softening, it’s not telling you things have collapsed”. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/90eb7a60-c37a-11dc-b083-0000779fd2ac.html
Chinese Losing Interest in Propping up the U.S.? James Fallows does not predict upcoming precipitous action, but worries re what Lawrence Summers terms, “the balance of financial terror.”
The Chinese public is beginning to be aware that its government is sitting on a lot of money—money not being spent to help China directly, money not doing so well in Blackstone-style foreign investments, money invested in the ever-falling U.S. dollar. Chinese bloggers and press commentators have begun making a connection between the billions of dollars the country is sending away and the domestic needs the country has not addressed. There is more and more pressure to show that the return on foreign investments is worth China’s sacrifice—and more and more potential backlash against bets that don’t pay off. (While the Chinese government need not stand for popular election, it generally tries to reduce sources of popular discontent when it can.) The public is beginning to behave like the demanding client of an investment adviser: it wants better returns, with fewer risks.
…Whatever the provocation, China would consider its levers and weapons and find one stronger than all the rest—one no other country in the world can wield. Without China’s billion dollars a day, the United States could not keep its economy stable or spare the dollar from collapse.
Would the Chinese use that weapon? The reasonable answer is no, because they would wound themselves grievously, too. Their years of national savings are held in the same dollars that would be ruined; in a panic, they’d get only a small share out before the value fell. Besides, their factories depend on customers with dollars to spend.
But that “reassuring” answer is actually frightening. Lawrence Summers calls today’s arrangement “the balance of financial terror,” and says that it is flawed in the same way that the “mutually assured destruction” of the Cold War era was. That doctrine held that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would dare use its nuclear weapons against the other, since it would be destroyed in return. With allowances for hyperbole, something similar applies to the dollar standoff. China can’t afford to stop feeding dollars to Americans, because China’s own dollar holdings would be devastated if it did. As long as that logic holds, the system works. As soon as it doesn’t, we have a big problem.
What might poke a giant hole in that logic? Not necessarily a titanic struggle over the future of Taiwan. A simple mistake, for one thing. Another speech by Cheng Siwei—perhaps in response to a provocation by Lou Dobbs. A rumor that the oil economies are moving out of dollars for good, setting their prices in euros. Leaked suggestions that the Chinese government is hoping to buy Intel, leading to angry denunciations on the Capitol floor, leading to news that the Chinese will sit out the next Treasury auction. As many world tragedies have been caused by miscalculation as by malice. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801/fallows-chinese-dollars/4
Innovation, Seduction: Chinese Cars headed for U.S.
Amid all the futuristic vehicles, "green cars" and much-hyped "crossovers" being unveiled this week at the Detroit auto show, one of the biggest game changers coming to the American automotive market may be a simple price sticker.
How's this for innovation: $14,000 for a fully loaded, mid-size sport utility vehicle with a leather interior.
The catch: It's made in China.
Four Chinese automakers and an American importer of Chinese cars showed off their wares here Monday, with one promising to bring vehicles -- including the SUV -- to the U.S. as soon as the end of the year. It was a torrent of activity from an industry that made its debut at the Michigan big boys' party only two years ago.
Their plans to sell cars in the world's largest auto market are nothing if not ambitious, considering the mountain of regulatory and marketing challenges, not to mention a recent history of postponed and canceled attempts to come stateside. And then there's the skepticism of U.S. consumers, who have endured recalls of pet food containing Chinese-made ingredients, hazardous toys and other tainted products. http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-chinacar15jan15,0,6664346.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business
Campaign:
Ugliness: Commentary as to Richard Cohen’s article in the WaPost, that Obama is, essentially, bad for Jews since His church and its minister produced Trumpet Newsmagazine which richly praised Louis Farrakhan.
In Richard Cohen’s op-ed for the Post today, he plays a very nasty game of guilt by association. Because Barack Obama belongs to the ostensibly controversial Trinity United Church of Christ, in Chicago, and because the minister there, Reverand Jeremiah Wright, in the pages of an in-house magazine he publishes, “heaped praise on” Louis Farakkhan, calling him a man who “truly epitomized greatness,” Obama must disavow, um, wait, who exactly? Minister Farrakhan? Reverend Wright? It’s not entirely clear from Cohen’s article.
What is clear, though, is that the there’s an effort underway to paint Barack Obama as bad for the Jews. If you’re Jewish, and perhaps even if you’re not, you’ve likely received a piece of hateful spam informing you that Obama is Muslim, or half Muslim, or 3/5 Muslim — just for counting purposes, of course — or some other ill-founded crap. You know that he was also educated at a madrassa, don’t you? Well, don’t you? He’s radical. And a terrorist. http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/richard-cohen-bad-for-the-jews/
Obama’s statement: “I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.”
Clintons’ Goal: Tear Down Obama to their level: Thomas Edsall:
The dramatic escalation of hostilities Sunday in the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination suggests that Senator Hillary Clinton and her strategists are convinced they can win a war of invective and that in such a conflict they will prevail because her liabilities are already well known, while rival Barack Obama's are not yet public and have not been subjected to close examination.
The Democratic contest entered a dangerous new stage as Clinton initiated an all-out assault Sunday, directly accusing Barack Obama of failing to be consistent in his opposition to the Iraq war. Clinton also stood by at a South Carolina rally as one of her prominent campaign surrogates, Black Entertainment Television founder Robert L. Johnson, raised the issue of Obama's past cocaine use and suggested that the Illinois Senator's views on race are as naïve as Sidney Poitier's in the 1967 movie "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner."
…In contrast to Obama, Clinton has been the subject of countless adverse news stories, magazine articles and books. The ABC/Post poll found that her negative or unfavorable ratings, at 40 percent, were substantially higher than Obama's, 30 percent. Clinton aides are convinced that there is little new to be raised about Clinton, while Obama's complex past remains, journalistically, virgin territory. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/01/dem_race_becomes_war_of_invect.html
Michigan/Nevada: Romney- “He’s Alive, he’s alive!” Giuliani defeated Uncommitted, 3% to 2%.
Excluded Kucinich speaks up: Subject: Nuclear Waste
At 5:25 p.m., shortly after the Nevada Supreme Court refused to give Dennis Kucinich a seat at the debate, a small band of his supporters marched to a far corner of a parking lot outside the Cashman Center, where supporters of the three major candidates.
Spectators soon realized that Kucinich was among them. He said:
“The fact of the matter is, NBC is owned by General Electric. General Electric makes power plants. General Electric wants to make sure there is a place to dump the waste.”
He was talking about nuclear waste and the now shuttered Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump site northwest of Las Vegas. Kucinich has joined the state of Nevada in opposing the dump. Thus, he said, GE is trying to keep him off the air.
“Now the media has become an issue in this campaign by trying to determine who should be in this debate,” he said.
The Cleveland congressman said he will fight for changes to Federal Communications Commission law to ensure that future candidates can participate in debates. http://www.lasvegassun.com/blogs/early-line/2008/jan/15/kucinich-decries-ge-media-conspiracy/
-R
