Iraq Moving Further from Critical Bilateral Agreement with US
The UN mandate allowing US troops to occupy Iraq expires on December 31, 2008. So the Bush administration desperately wants to sign a bilateral agreement with the Iraqi government before that happens. Without one our presence will be blatantly illegal, without even a figleaf of international legitimacy, creating all kinds of trouble.
The problem for Bush is there’s more and more Iraqi resistance to signing anything, even among Nouri al-Maliki’s main supporters. Bob Fertik looks at the evidence here.
No sooner had Bush’s ex-press secretary (now author) Scott McClellan accused President Bush and his other former collaborators of misleading our country into Iraq than the squeals of protest turned into a mighty roar.
I’m not talking about the vitriol directed at him by former White House colleagues like Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer. I’m talking about McClellan’s other erstwhile war collaborators: the movers and shakers in corporate media.
The people McClellan refers to in his book as “deferential, complicit enablers” of Bush administration war propaganda.
One after another, news stars defended themselves with the tired old myth that no one doubted the Iraq WMD claims at the time. The yarn about hindsight being 20/20 was served up more times than a Rev. Wright clip on Fox News.
Katie Couric, whose coverage on CBS of the Iraq troop surge has been almost fawning, was one of the few stars to be candid about pre-invasion coverage, saying days ago, “I think it’s one of the most embarrassing chapters in American journalism.”
John McCain challenging Barack Obama to go to Iraq is pretty childish. It’s not like a Senator’s meticulously-planned stroll through Baghdad is going to give them an accurate view of what’s going on in Iraq. Here’s McCain’s most well-known trip to the Green Zone, in which little shopping trip needed little more than a bullet-proof vest, “100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships” :
And here’s a photo from McCain’s most recent trip :
If McCain thinks challenging Obama to go to Iraq will teach him something beyond “American troops get annoyed when they get pulled from the field and put on ‘babysit a Sentor’ duty”, then maybe Barack can return the favor and challenge “Maverick” to visit a place where he could learn something. Like a junior college where he can take an Econ 101 class or a temp agency where he can learn what life is like for us who haven’t spent the last three decades in Washington D.C. married to a multi-millionaire or to a bookstore to read about how things are really going in Iraq…
“Call it the triple deficit,” said Mr. Rothkopf. “A fiscal deficit that will soon have us choosing between rationed health care, sufficient education, adequate infrastructure and traditional levels of defense spending, a trade deficit that has us borrowing from our rivals to the point of real vulnerability, and a geopolitical deficit that is a legacy of Iraq, which may result in hesitancy to take strong stands where we must.”
The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging. When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels.
Wow.
Okay, so if I’m in a hole, I should stop digging, but if I’m in three, I should have lots of shovels so I can — stop digging? dig simultaenously? jump from hole to hole? how can I be in three holes at the same time anyway?
Damn you Thomas Friedman and your mindbending extradimensional metaphysical metaphors! You’re making my brain hurt!
(Also: who even knew there were rules of holes? If that’s the first, what are the others? Are there penalties for noncompliance?)
Go behind the headlines of the occupation of Iraq with Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Chris Hedges, journalist Laila Al-Arian, bestselling author Jeremy Scahill, and Seymour Hersh, as they discuss the war, the plight of Iraqi civilians and the role of private mercenaries. The event is a dual book launch for Hedges and Al-Arian’s Collateral Damage and Scahill’s Blackwater (in paperback).
Tickets will be given away on a first-come, first-served basis: send an email to tomtomorrow-at-earthlink-dot-net with the word TICKETS in the subject line. (And if you don’t win, you can still purchase tickets here.)
(Full disclosure: NationBooks, which is part of the Nation Institute, is publishing my next book.)
As Atrios points out, today is the fifth anniversary of Thomas Friedman’s SuckOnThis Day.
The traditional gift for fifth anniversaries is wood, so perhaps we can get him hundreds of thousands of trees, one for each human being he’s helped kill, and then set them all on fire.
To understand Friedman’s berserk depravity, remember that by May 30, 2003, the press was already publishing things like this famous picture. Take a look at that, and then listen to Friedman say this:
FRIEDMAN: What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um, and basically saying, “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?”
You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna let it grow?
Jessica Yellin: Reporters Were “Under Enormous Pressure” From Corporate Executives to Support War
This will come as a shocking revelation for everyone under age two.
CNN’s Jessica Yellin appeared on Anderson Cooper last night to discuss Scott McClellan’s new book. When asked to respond to McClellan’s statement the media was “too deferential” to the Bush administration in the run-up up to the invasion of Iraq. Yellin explained that during this time, she and other members of the media came under “enormous pressure from corporate executives” to present the war positively and “put on positive stories about the president.”
Yellin worked for MSNBC at the time. Yesterday the Washington Post ran a story with a headline stating that MSNBC has been “Leaning Left.”
Here’s the Yellin transcript and video:
COOPER: Jessica, McClellan took press to task for not upholding their reputation. He writes: “The national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq. The ‘liberal media’ — in quotes — didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”
Dan Bartlett, former Bush adviser, called the allegation “total crap.”What is your take? Did the press corps drop the ball?
JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I wouldn’t go that far. I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings. And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives — and I was not at this network at the time — but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president. I think, over time…
COOPER: You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?
YELLIN: Not in that exact — they wouldn’t say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience.
According to MSNBC, the Bush White House is calling Scott McClellan a “traitor” for his new book:
O’DONNEL: Quickly Kevin, a White House staffer said to you on background — they used the word “traitor”?
CORKE: “Traitor.” Absolutely. And I raised my eyebrows, and he said, It is what it is.
In every country on earth, when the governing junta accuses someone of “treason,” they are actually accusing them of “telling the truth.” So I like to keep track of examples of this. For instance, Hussein Kamel (Iraq), Mohammad al-Khilewi (Saudi Arabia), Anthoy Zinni (United States) and Mordechai Vanunu (Israel) all turned out to be traitors in the standard sense. Details are here. Now McClellan has joined their treasonous company.
The Similar Governing Philosophies of George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein
From the Politico story about Scott McClellan’s new book:
Bush was “clearly irritated, … steamed,” when McClellan informed him that chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey had told The Wall Street Journal that a possible war in Iraq could cost from $100 billion to $200 billion: “’It’s unacceptable,’ Bush continued, his voice rising. ‘He shouldn’t be talking about that.’”
Advisory groups [Saddam] established generally assumed Saddam already had a preferred position [on issues] and commonly spent time trying to guess what it was and tailor their advice to it. More conscientious members of the Regime sought to work around sycophantic or timid superiors…
Saddam ignored his economic advisors in the Ministries of Finance and Planning with respect to strategic planning. For example, Saddam entered the Iran-Iraq war heedless of Ministry warnings about the economic consequences. He had no plan or strategy for how the war was to be financed.
Iranian TV: Sistani Forbids Longterm US Basing Agreement
Press TV, the satellite channel funded by the Iranian government, has just run this story:
Iraq’s most revered Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has strongly objected to a ’security accord’ between the US and Iraq.
The Grand Ayatollah has reiterated that he would not allow Iraq to sign such a deal with “the US occupiers” as long as he was alive, a source close to Ayatollah Sistani said.
The source added the Grand Ayatollah had voiced his strong objection to the deal during a meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday.
The remarks were made amid reports that the Iraqi government might sign a long-term framework agreement with the United States, under which Washington would be allowed to set up permanent military bases in the country and US citizens would be granted immunity from legal prosecution in the country…
The mandate of US troops in Iraq will expire in December 2008 and al-Maliki’s government is under US pressure to sign ‘a mutual security agreement’ which would allow the long-term presence of US troops in Iraq.
Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric has been quietly issuing religious edicts declaring that armed resistance against U.S.-led foreign troops is permissible — a potentially significant shift by a key supporter of the Washington-backed government in Baghdad.
The edicts, or fatwas, by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani suggest he seeks to sharpen his long-held opposition to American troops and counter the populist appeal of his main rivals, firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia…
So far, al-Sistani’s fatwas have been limited to a handful of people. They also were issued verbally and in private — rather than a blanket proclamation to the general Shiite population — according to three prominent Shiite officials in regular contact with al-Sistani as well as two followers who received the edicts in Najaf.
I have no idea whether any of this is accurate, but obviously if it is it’s extremely important. The UN mandate which gives the US occupation a figleaf of legitimacy was only be extended to the end of 2008 by Maliki ignoring the stated wishes of the Iraqi parliament. Thus, it’s unlikely to be extended into 2009, particularly without conditions set on the US presence.
This means the US must get a bilateral agreement with Iraq to keep troops there. The Bush administration had hoped to sign such an agreement directly with Maliki—ie, without the involvement of the Iraqi parliament or US Congress. The chances of this happening were already low, and if Sistani truly is making a move now, they’re probably close to zero.
I don’t know what I would do if I were the Bush administration or the next president. Iraq may finally have gotten away from them, in the sense they’d no longer be able to continue the occupation in the current half-assed way. They may have to chose between getting out, or ramping up the ultra-violence.
