The way to get out of Iraq is to get out of Iraq. – Juan Cole

Afghanistan: Obama is one of many to have long made the point of invading Iraq was ‘not the central front of the war on terrorism’ and thus we need to move out of Iraq and into Afghanistan. But, does anyone remember the Soviet experience? Is occupying Afghanistan any more feasible/advisable than doing such in Iraq?

Juan Cole shares his discomfort with this notion:

If the Afghanistan gambit is sincere, I don't think it is good geostrategy. Afghanistan is far more unwinnable even than Iraq. If playing it up is politics, then it is dangerous politics. Presidents can become captive of their own record and end up having to commit to things because they made strong representations about them to the public.

....Afghan tribes are fractious. They feud. Their territory is vast and rugged, and they know it like the back of their hands. Afghans are Jeffersonians in the sense that they want a light touch from the central government, and heavy handedness drives them into rebellion. Stand up Karzai's army and air force and give him some billions to bribe the tribal chiefs, and let him apply carrot and stick himself.

We need to get out of there. "Al-Qaeda" was always Bin Laden's hype. He wanted to get us on the ground there so that the Mujahideen could bleed us the way they did the Soviets. It is a trap.

Beware.

Torture: Long in the making:

A CIA analyst warned the Bush administration in 2002 that up to a third of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have been imprisoned by mistake, but White House officials ignored the finding and insisted that all were 'enemy combatants' subject to indefinite incarceration, according to a new book critical of the administration's terrorism policies.

The CIA assessment directly challenged the administration's claim that the detainees were all hardened terrorists -- the 'worst of the worst,' as then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at the time. But a top aide to Vice President Cheney shrugged off the report and squashed proposals for a quick review of the detainees' cases, author Jane Mayer writes in 'The Dark Side,' scheduled for release next week.

"There will be no review,” the book quotes Cheney staff director David Addington as saying. “The president has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it. " http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/11/AR2008071102954.html

Mayer Book: Did "enhanced" CIA interrogations save lives? [No]

President Bush has repeatedly defended the need to use 'enhanced interrogations' in order to get life-saving intelligence, and has pointed to Abu Zubayda's case as an example. I went over the claims in this case carefully, and found them highly dubious. Bush claimed three breakthroughs from coercive tactics used on Abu Zubayda.

First, he said, Abu Zubayda told the CIA that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the terrorist behind the 9/11 plot. But, if one reads the 9/11 Commission's detailed report on what information had reached the CIA prior to the 9/11 attacks, it is clear that the CIA already had this information.

Second, President Bush said that Abu Zubayda revealed that an American-born Al Qaeda figure was on his way to attack America. This is widely understood to be a reference to Jose Padilla. But numerous published accounts indicate that Abu Zubayda gave this information to interrogators prior to being physically coerced. So it's not accurate to describe it as an argument for coercion.

Third, the President said Abu Zubayda gave up information leading to the capture of another top Al Qaeda terrorist, Ramsi Bin Al Shibh. But circumstantial evidence, as well as previously published accounts, suggest that Bin Al Shibh was more likely located by the United States as the result of an interview he gave to Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, although President Bush has argued that 'enhanced' interrogation had led to numerous breakthroughs he has never publicly acknowledged the false and fabricated intelligence it has yielded, too. One former top CIA official told me, 'Ninety percent of what we got was crap.'" http://harpers.org/archive/2008/07/hbc-90003234

Prosecuting Bush: Vincent Bugliosi: His book on how to try Bush has been ignored by reviewers and the talk-show circuit… consistent with impeachment being forever ‘off the table.’

Mr. Bugliosi, in a recent telephone interview from his home in Los Angeles, said he had expected some resistance from the mainstream media because of the subject matter - the book lays a legal case for holding President Bush 'criminally responsible' for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq - but not a virtual blackout...

The editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham, said he had not read the manuscript, but he offered a reason why the media might be silent: “I think there's a kind of Bush-bashing fatigue out there." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/business/media/07bugliosi.html?scp=1&sq=Vincent+Bugliosi&st=nyt

Iraq: Doling out the Dollars: We and Maliki: $750 Billion, heading for trillions. And, al-Maliki has cash to spare.

The handouts by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a handful of other top officials are authorized- as long as each goes no higher than about $8,000, and the same people don't get them twice. Aides say they are meant merely to ease the pain a bit, and are motivated by a belief that better conditions will lead to more security.

…The United States has been doling out cash itself, most effectively to former Sunni militants who switched sides to fight al-Qaida. The military has also provided money and assistance to projects like fixing damaged roads in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City after battles there.

Yet most recent big spending announcements have been Iraqi: $100 million to rebuild Sadr City; another $100 million to the Shiite city of Basra after fighting there; $100 million for another southern Shiite town, Amarah; and $83 million to help internal refugees return home.

It's unclear how fast the project money will actually get out. Past U.S. surveys have found Iraqi officials actually spent only tiny portions of the money they had allocated, often because of disorganization in government offices or a lack of technical know-how. http://ph.news.yahoo.com/ap/20080713/tap-iraq-money-as-weapon-d3b07b8.html

Our Embedded Media: The Tillman Example The Associated Press has been especially partisan in recent weeks, reaching a new low in journalism standards.

Buried in the 50-page report on Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch released today by the House Oversight Committee, is a priceless quote from none other than the new head of the AP's Washington Bureau, Ron Fournier.

Straight from page 21 of the report:

Karl Rove exchanged e-mails about Pat Tillman with Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier, under the subject line "H-E-R-O." In response to Mr. Fournier's e-mail, Mr. Rove asked, "How does our country continue to produce men and women like this," to which Mr. Fournier replied, "The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight." http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/203927.php

Inflation: How High? A striking jump, not only emanating from oil prices

Soaring costs for gasoline and food pushed inflation at the wholesale level up by a larger-than-expected amount in June, leaving inflation rising over the past year at the fastest pace in more than a quarter-century.

The Labor Department reported that wholesale prices jumped by 1.8 percent last month, the biggest one-month rise since last November. Over the past 12 months, wholesale prices are up 9.2 percent, the largest year-over-year surge since June 1981, another period when soaring energy costs were giving the country inflation pains.

Outside Washington, there was plenty more bad news. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrials closed below 11,000 for the first time in two years, and shares of troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac tumbled again. Fannie shed 27.3 percent and Freddie lost 26 percent.

In Los Angeles, police had to order people lined up outside an IndyMac Bank branch to remain calm or face arrest as they tried to pull out their money on the second day of the failed institution's federal takeover.

An analyst downgraded Wachovia Corp. and said the outlook for its shareholders is "bleak." Its already-battered stock sank about 7.7 percent further, to $9.08. U.S. Bancorp posted an 18 percent drop in second-quarter profit and tripled its provision for credit losses.

General Motors said Tuesday it plans to lay off salaried workers, cut truck production and suspend its stock dividend, all in an effort to raise $15 billion to help turn around its North American operations.

The dollar hit a new low against the euro. And even good news came with a dark side: Oil prices fell by more than $6 per barrel — the biggest single-day drop in 17 years — as traders fretted that the slowing U.S. economy would dampen demand for crude.

"The country is in a bad spot right now, squeezed by high and accelerating inflation and a very weak economy and struggling to overcome a very severe financial shock," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/5965849/for/cnbc/

A sense of economic gloom gripped Washington on Tuesday as President Bush urged Americans not to lose faith, the Federal Reserve chairman offered a mostly bleak assessment of the difficulties ahead for the economy, and the administration’s latest effort to help the housing sector faced tough questioning in Congress. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/business/economy/16econ.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Oil: Ridiculous Story Lines(3): First we heard that ‘China is drilling off the coast of Cuba.’ A set of GOP’ers rattled off this talking point. Then, ‘Not a drop of oil was spilled from Katrina, so we can drill offshore without worry.’ Both are totally b.s. Add to that, “Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less”- a campaign organized by Newt Gingrich’s 527, “American Solutions.” A grand idea, one that would provide a smidgen of oil in 7-10 years.

As gas prices continue to increase, Congress continues to blame others while ignoring practical steps to stop the pain Americans are feeling at the pump. To lower gasoline prices and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, we need real solutions to our energy challenges.http://www.americansolutions.com/actioncenter/petitions/?Guid=54ec6e43-75a8-445b-aa7b-346a1e096

CAMPAIGN: Obama goes from NY Times op ed to a major address on Iraq, where he emphasizes “lost opportunities” by ignoring Afghanistan. Nothing new, but helpful to give him more stature, as someone versed in foreign policy.

The New Yorker: The article: Ryan Lizza’s article is unremarkable and basically says that Obama is a politician who has moved up faster than the typical politician. Revelatory!

Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them. When he was a community organizer, he channeled his work through Chicago's churches, because they were the main bases of power on the South Side. He was an agnostic when he started, and the work led him to become a practicing Christian. At Harvard, he won the presidency of the Law Review by appealing to the conservatives on the selection panel. In Springfield, rather than challenge the Old Guard Democratic leaders, Obama built a mutually beneficial relationship with them. "You have the power to make a United States senator," he told Emil Jones in 2003. In his downtime, he played poker with lobbyists and Republican lawmakers. In Washington, he has been a cautious senator and, when he arrived, made a point of not defining himself as an opponent of the Iraq war. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?printable=true

McCain’s- “…for all the irony-challenged literalists who were upset by the New Yorker’s Obama-as-a-Muslim magazine cover”: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/viewbydate.asp?ID=1792

Democratic Disunity: Theda Skocpol, academic / thinker / social policy guru:

Michael Kinsley has an incisive opinion piece at TIME/CNN called "Divided They Fall" -- and I urge everyone to read it. Kinsley points out that Republicans are setting aside their gripes about McCain and uniting to do battle, but progressives and Democrats are up to the same old internal sniping: single issue people bashing Obama for moving to the middle or voting a certain way on FISA, when his vote made no difference at all to the outcome; Clintonites using media sexism in the primary as an excuse to threaten to stay home or vote for McCain; fat cats who backed Clinton complaining to the New York Times, along with the blustering egotists like Carville; Jesse Jackson sniping about the common-sense notion that black people might have to be good parents as well as expect help from government.

This leaves one very sad. The social and redistributive stakes in this election are enormous. McCain can easily win if this summer is wasted, if Democrats do not unite and go on the offensive, if funders withold their efforts, if gripers undermine. But that seems to be what we are all doing.

I look back over an adult lifetime of this, of identity-oriented and single-issue groups undermining any chance for a convincing message relevant to all working middle class people. This lack of discipline and inability to sort out the fundamental from the partial is what has made it so hard for Democrats to win -- and has cost the country terribly in terms of the undermining of middle class wellbeing. Why are we doing it again? Why are we playing along with all the diversions and distractions the media wants to pursue, rather than speaking loudly with one voice for Obama and in drumbeat criticism of McCain? The summer weeks are precious, as we should have learned in 2004 -- mistakes now cannot be fixed later. At a moment when a core, long-term econmic advisor to McCain, Phil Gramm, has revealed the true heartlessness and stupidity behind conservative economic doctrines, we progressives are still talking about Jackson and FISA and Clinton's debts and overwrought claims of sexism. We are not hitting McCain/Gramm/Bush again and again in ways that would force some of the media, at least, to give the Gramm revelations -- they WERE revelations, not a "gaff" -- half the attention and staying power of the Wright ravings! http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/11/can_progressives_unite_or_will/

McCain: Obama Wants U.S. to Lose in Iraq; Meanwhile, he’s altered his Afghan policy to mirror Obama’s. He too now calls for pulling brigades out of Iraq and putting them in Afghanistan. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/15/AR2008071503018.html?hpid=topnews

The latest McCain strategy was unveiled on a conference call with reporters this morning, best summarized by McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann: "Sen. Obama seems to think losing a war will help him win an election

The McCain campaign, which has said it doesn't question Obama's patriotism, is now doing something awfully similar: Claiming that Barack Obama and the Democrats are dedicated to losing the war for their own political benefit.

The new accusation was unveiled on a McCain campaign conference call moments ago, with top McCain surrogates making this charge in tandem.

Sen. Lindsey Graham said that a "turning point" was when Harry Reid declared the war "lost" over a year ago, and brought up an old quote from Chuck Schumer predicting that discontent with the war would lead to further Democratic gains. "The Democratic Party built a political strategy around us losing the war in Iraq," Graham said.

McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann joined in: "Senator Obama seems to think losing a war will help him win an election." http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/mccain_campaign_obama_dems_wan.php

Humor: Jay Leno Chooses Bush Sr.

"Today, President Bush lifted the presidential ban on offshore drilling that was imposed by his father, the first President Bush, 18 years ago. But hey, remember Bush's dad also said invading Iraq would be a huge disaster, and cutting taxes would ruin the economy. So what the hell did he know?" http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/bulletin/bulletin_080715.htm#political_humor

-R