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

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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 Read more →

Why State?

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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 Read more →

In Govt We Do Not Trust

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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 ofthe loop so that he could avoid revealing truths that would underminethe administration’s "trust us" arguments in the enemy combatant cases?Did Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers persuade CBS to delaybroadcasting the photographs from Abu Ghraib to protect the lives ofU.S. soldiers — or to spare the administration embarrassing questionsduring the Supreme Court arguments in the enemy combatant cases?

[snip]

Clement was a natural choice to appear on behalf of Rumsfeld whenthe Supreme Court took up the cases of Padilla and his fellow "enemycombatant," Yaser Hamdi, in April. The question is,what did Clement know when he climbed the steps of the Supreme Courtbuilding on the morning of April 28? Did he know what his client knew– that the Department of Defense was investigating grave abuses at AbuGhraib, that the brigadier general in charge of the prison had alreadybeen removed from her post? Did he know what his client’s staff knew –that Joint Chiefs chairman Myers had been working to keep CBS frombroadcasting 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 officereferred a call from Salon last week to Justice Department spokespersonMonica Goodling. Asked what Clement or Ashcroft knew of the Abu Ghraibsituation 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 allabout 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

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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 hepaid millions of dollars to Iraqi officials to illegally win contractsconnected to the United Nations oil-for-food program.

[snip]

During the trial, prosecutors demonstrated that Wyatt had such a closerelationship with Iraq that he was able to meet personally with Iraqileader Saddam Hussein in December 1990 to argue for the release ofAmericans being held as potential shields in the event of a U.S.-Iraqwar.

Prosecutors played a tape for the jury of the conversation in whichHussein promised Wyatt that Americans would be released as Wyatt andformer Texas Gov. John Connally spoke sympathetically about Iraq’splight.

The government insisted that Wyatt later took advantage of thatrelationship to secure the first contract under the oil-for-foodprogram and to continue to receive oil deals after other Americancompanies 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 Read more →

The Cost of Doing Business

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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

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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, thePresident and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign toconvince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threathas failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that asa result there is not enough popular support for a major bombingcampaign. The second development is that the White House has come toterms, in private, with the general consensus of the Americanintelligence community that Iran is at least five years away fromobtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition inWashington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as thegeopolitical 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 toterms, in private, with the general consensus of the Read more →

Afri … um EuroAfriCom

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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 Africahave hit a wall of hostility from governments in the region reluctantto associate themselves with the Bush administration’s "war on terror"and fearful of American intervention.

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

The Libyan and Algerian governments reportedly told Mr Henry that theywould play no part in hosting Africom. Despite recently improvedrelations with the US, both said they would urge their neighbours notto do so, either. Even Morocco, considered Washington’s closest northAfrican ally, indicated it did not welcome a permanent militarypresence on its soil.

"We’vegot a big image problem down there," a state department officialadmitted. "Public opinion is really against getting into Read more →

The Price Tag for War

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Does this look like a budget request for a war that is going to end any time soon?

Gates says another $42 billion is needed to cover additional requirements. The extra money includes:

  • $11 billion to field another 7,000 MRAP vehicles in addition to the 8,000 already planned;
  • $9 billion to reconstitute equipment and technology;
  • $6 billion for training and equipment of troops;
  • $1 billion to improve U.S. facilities in the region and consolidate bases in Iraq; and
  • $1 billion to train and equip Iraqi security forces.

It seems to me that "consolidating bases" is the kind of thing you do if you’re planning to stick around. Ditto doubling the number of MRAP vehicles. While they should have been ordered about 4 years ago, ordering them now suggests we’re going to be needing them over the next five years. And note the reference to improving "US facilities in the region." Where? Why? Do those facilities happen to facilitate bombing Iran?

This request ought to be regarded as what it is: a budget request for an imperial outpost. I’m all in favor of reconstituting the equipment and technology that Bush’s war has broken. But defunding the empire is quite different than defunding the troops.

Update: From Congress Daily, part of Read more →

The Real Reason

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I’ve got a different interpretation of the news–via ThinkProgress–that Bush is advising Democrats to keep their options open to sustain the permanent war in Iraq.

Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked inwhere you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, thingscould change dramatically.’ ”

Bolten said Bush wants enoughcontinuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president wouldbe in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there.”

“Especiallyif it’s a Democrat,” the chief of staff told The Examiner in his WestWing office. “He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat notonly will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.”

Rather than some Rovian gimmick to gain advantage in the presidential election, I think this just suggests that Bush believes that when a Democrat becomes President in 2009 (and I do think this suggests he thinks it highly likely), she will review intelligence and get advice and realize that the US must stay in Iraq. Here’s the logic Bush offers.

The Upcoming Resolution for War on Iran

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Reading through the Kyl-Lieberman amendment (hat tip Laura Rozen), you’d think that the Ryan-Crocker dog and pony show was designed to justify war on Iran. And you might be right. The amendment cites four Petraeus statements about Iranian influence in Iraq and four Crocker statements. And intersperses those with cherry-picked citations to create the illusion that Iran is the only outside force causing trouble in Iran. For example, when they cite Ahmadinejad talking about the vacuum US failure will leave in Iraq…

"The political power of the occupiers is collapsing rapidly," MrAhmadinejad said at a press conference in Tehran. "Soon, we will see ahuge power vacuum in the region. Of course, we are prepared to fill thegap,

They neglect to mention that Ahmadinejad nods to Saudi Arabia and Iraq in his statement…

… with the help of neighbours and regional friends like SaudiArabia, and with the help of the Iraqi nation."

(A detail that even Fox managed to include.) And when they cite from the NIE’s list of neighboring countries likely to make trouble in Iraq…