Running away from conservatism

E.J. DIONNE JR.
THE WASHINGTON POST

May 18, 2007

It isn't always easy to notice, but this year's Republican presidential campaign has become the occasion for the collapse of conservative orthodoxy.

In Tuesday's Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, every leading candidate declared independence from some piece of dogma or another – even as all of them clung for dear life to the word “conservative.” They sounded like religious doubters who compensate for their ebbing faith by shouting ever more fervently: “I believe!”

It wasn't just that Rudy Giuliani seemed to be reading from Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the liberal Democrat from Connecticut who has long argued that helping pregnant women in order to reduce the number of abortions is preferable to an outright ban.

You also had Mike Huckabee defending his decision to raise taxes when he was governor of Arkansas, John McCain reaffirming his support for campaign finance reform (just one of his apostasies), and Mitt Romney speaking out for a strong federal role in education.

It's come to this: The only Republican litmus test seems to be support for torture – excuse me, “enhanced interrogation techniques.” McCain was alone in standing up forcefully and unapologetically against torture by whatever name, a welcome return of the independent-minded dissident willing to risk votes for principle.

One dynamic forcing Republicans to new ground is the failure of the Bush presidency. This is leading liberals to insist that President Bush's tenure proves conservatism doesn't work, and conservatives to insist that Bush was never a real conservative (something they didn't say when his poll ratings were high).

Something similar happened to Jimmy Carter in 1980 when conservatives attacked him as a liberal while liberals disowned him. Carter's defeat by Ronald Reagan was followed by an extended liberal nervous breakdown. Now, it's conservatives who are panicking.

But Republicans also know in their guts that their old axioms don't work anymore because their constituencies are breaking up.

The obituaries this week for the Rev. Jerry Falwell often took the form of elegies for the entire religious right. Younger and suburban evangelicals may be more or less conservative, but they do not share the ideological fervor of the Moral Majoritarians. These new evangelicals care about issues other than abortion and gay marriage. They yearn, along with almost everyone else, for problem-solving competence.

Thus did McCain stress his ability “to reach across the aisle on issues that are important to America” and the need to “work together, as they used to in the past when I first came to Congress.” That particular “past” predated the Great Bush Polarization.

Huckabee was challenged on taxes by former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, who sticks punctiliously to every last detail of the old conservatism. Huckabee not only insisted that he had cut taxes “94 times,” but also had no apologies for raising them to build roads or “to improve education in a state that desperately needed it.” Read his lips: Tax increases are sometimes necessary.

Romney and Giuliani could easily join the race to moderation – otherwise known as the Who Sounds the Most Like Arnold Schwarzenegger Contest. But they are worried about their own straying, past or present, on the abortion issue.

Incidentally, my column about Giuliani earlier this week quoted Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput's critical words in 2004 about John Kerry. But it's worth noting that in the same interview, the archbishop predicted that if Giuliani were the 2008 Republican nominee, “you're going to see the Republicans screaming at the church for making such a big issue of a pro-life matter.” We'll find out.

Giuliani thinks he can overcome all the social issues by out-toughing everybody on terrorism. Imagine: His breakthrough moment Tuesday involved going after not McCain or Romney but the nowhere-in-the-polls libertarian Ron Paul.

Romney, meanwhile, is trying so hard to be a true blue conservative that he's not playing his strongest card as a decent manager at a time when the country gives competence a much higher priority than it did before the Bush era. But even Romney split with conservative purity in defending the No Child Left Behind education bill.

If conservative ideologues were the dominant force in Republican primary politics, Giuliani would not be at the top of the pack, Gilmore the Pure would be doing better, and McCain and Huckabee would not be placing bets on pragmatism and political reconciliation. Yes, every Republican still wants to be called a “conservative.” But they are all feeling pressure to pour new wine into that old vessel, because it's almost empty. And Democrats beware: A less orthodox Republican Party would be a lot more popular.

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me@rescam.org

Torture betrays America

By Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar

May 18, 2007

Fear can be a strong motivator. It led Franklin Roosevelt to intern tens of thousands of innocent U.S. citizens during World War II; it led to Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt, which ruined the lives of hundreds of Americans. And it led the United States to adopt a policy at the highest levels that condoned and even authorized torture of prisoners in our custody.

Fear is the justification offered for this policy by former CIA Director George Tenet as he promotes his new book. Tenet oversaw the secret CIA interrogation program in which torture techniques euphemistically called “waterboarding,” “sensory deprivation,” “sleep deprivation” and “stress positions” – conduct we used to call war crimes – were used. In defending these abuses, Tenet revealed: “Everybody forgets one central context of what we lived through: the palpable fear that we felt on the basis of the fact that there was so much we did not know.”

We have served in combat; we understand the reality of fear and the havoc it can wreak if left unchecked or fostered. Fear breeds panic, and it can lead people and nations to act in ways inconsistent with their character.

The American people are understandably fearful about another attack like the one we sustained on Sept. 11, 2001. But it is the duty of the commander in chief to lead the country away from the grip of fear, not into its grasp. Regrettably, at Tuesday night's presidential debate in South Carolina, several Republican candidates revealed a stunning failure to understand this most basic obligation. Indeed, among the candidates, only John McCain demonstrated that he understands the close connection between our security and our values as a nation.

Tenet insists that the CIA program disrupted terrorist plots and saved lives. It is difficult to refute this claim – not because it is self-evidently true, but because any evidence that might support it remains classified and unknown to all but those who defend the program.

These assertions that “torture works” may reassure a fearful public, but it is a false security. We don't know what's been gained through this fear-driven program. But we do know the consequences.

As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture – only for the toughest cases, only when nothing else works – the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking time bomb. Our soldiers in Iraq confront real “ticking time bomb” situations every day, in the form of improvised explosive devices, and any degree of “flexibility” about torture at the top drops down the chain of command like a stone – the rare exception fast becoming the rule.

To understand the impact this has had on the ground, look at the military's mental health assessment report released earlier this month. The study shows a disturbing level of tolerance for abuse of prisoners in some situations. This underscores what we know as military professionals: Complex situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of combat. The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality.

This has had disastrous consequences. Revelations of abuse feed what the Army's new counterinsurgency manual, which was drafted under the command of Gen. David Petraeus, calls the “recuperative power” of the terrorist enemy.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once wondered aloud whether we were creating more terrorists than we were killing. In counterinsurgency doctrine, that is precisely the right question. Victory in this kind of war comes when the enemy loses legitimacy in the society from which it seeks recruits and thus loses its “recuperative power.”

The torture methods that Tenet defends have nurtured the recuperative power of the enemy. This war will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road to it.

This is not just a lesson for history. Right now, White House lawyers are working up new rules that will govern what CIA interrogators can do to prisoners in secret. Those rules will set the standard not only for the CIA but for what kind of treatment captured American soldiers can expect from their captors, now and in future wars. Before the president once again approves a policy of official cruelty, he should reflect on that.

It is time for us to remember who we are and approach this enemy with energy, judgment and confidence that we will prevail. That is the path to security, and back to ourselves.

Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999.
Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994.

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me@rescam.org

Gonzales' ignore-everything strategy

CARL P. LEUBSDORF
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

May 18, 2007

As embattled Attorney General Al Gonzales began his speech Tuesday to the National Press Club, a nicely dressed, white-haired woman rose and yelled: “Mr. Gonzales, resign! You've dishonored your country. You've destroyed the Constitution.”

The attorney general ignored her as she was hustled out. And, after parrying more than a dozen questions about his mishandling of the firing of those U.S. attorneys, he made clear again he also isn't listening to members of Congress who have urged him to quit.

“At the end of the day, that really is a question for the president of the United States,” he said, secure in knowing President Bush has repeatedly said that he wants his longtime legal adviser to stay.

Outwardly, the attorney general's success in outlasting his critics might indicate that Bush hasn't lost his clout, despite diminished popularity stemming mainly from the Iraq war.

But it may also reflect the fact that the president has little to gain from ousting Gonzales in terms of bolstering his public standing or clout on Capitol Hill.

Only the unlikelihood of a vastly improved situation in Iraq can revive his national standing. And the anticipation of the 2008 elections is a major reason why even congressional Republicans who generally voted with Bush are talking of putting their own political futures ahead of helping a president who often ignores them.

Add to that the aggressive Democratic attacks on the handling of a spate of issues – including those involving the Justice Department – and Bush may figure he's better off keeping a loyal associate in a post that could become a major irritant if held by an independent-minded attorney general.

Besides, senior Senate Democrats say they won't hold confirmation proceedings for top Justice Department posts until the White House stops stonewalling on requests for on-the-record testimony from Karl Rove and former counsel Harriet Mier about the U.S. attorneys' ouster.

In his Press Club appearance, Gonzales stuck to his prior stance that he was not directly involved in much of the discussion about firing the federal prosecutors and couldn't recall many details. About all he conceded was that “I should have been more involved in this,” though he also insisted that “nothing improper happened here.”

But the attorney general didn't just pass the buck on his future up to the president. He also passed the buck for mishandling the situation down to his newly resigned deputy, Paul McNulty, who said he signed off on the decision but was not much involved in the discussions that led to it.

Gonzales said the White House “never added or deleted” names from the list of potential victims, though last week he told the House Judiciary Committee he couldn't say who put the names on there.

A Senate hearing Tuesday produced a new embarrassment for Gonzales: testimony that he and another top White House aide went to the hospital in an unsuccessful effort to pressure his ailing predecessor, John Ashcroft, into approving a domestic surveillance program the department had rejected as unconstitutional.

Yet the White House strategy of simply resisting bipartisan calls for Gonzales to quit is succeeding – at least so far.

Barring impeachment, no one can force a president to remove an incompetent Cabinet member if he doesn't want to. And Bush seems far more interested in keeping his close political associate in charge of the Justice Department than in making a change.

Besides, if news reports are correct that the underlying reason for removing many of the U.S. attorneys was their refusal to press election fraud probes, there's little doubt Rove and even Bush fully shared that concern, despite the minimal evidence such fraud existed in any large degree.

Democrats would certainly consider it a victory to force the ouster of so close a Bush confidant.

Ironically, they might actually benefit more over time if Bush allows his embarrassing tenure to continue and it becomes an issue for GOP candidates in next year's election.

Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News.

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me@rescam.org

Lending money in Latin America

By Marcela Sanchez
THE WASHINGTON POST

May 19, 2007

Come June, the U.S. Treasury Department will launch a lending initiative aimed at small businesses in Latin America. The objective, as outlined by President Bush before his visit to the region this spring, is to encourage U.S. and Latin American banks to provide loans for a clientele they would normally consider as not creditworthy.

According to the Inter-American Development Bank, Latin America ranks among the worst in private sector access to formal credit, averaging 28 percent of gross domestic product in the 1990s compared with 84 percent in developed markets worldwide and 72 percent in Asia. This deficiency is consistently named the top impediment to growth faced by small-and medium-sized enterprises, or SMEs, in surveys.

As in the developed world, SMEs along with micro-enterprises – usually consisting of one or two people involved in such work as sewing or food vending – outpace large companies by far in job creation. According to the World Bank, they generate more than 80 percent of jobs in Argentina, Bolivia and Colombia. That percentage would be much higher if SMEs had as easy a route to credit as micro-enterprises have had in recent years. In Chile, for instance, SMEs generate 11 jobs for every two created by micro-enterprises.

In Latin America, however, lenders believe that SMEs interested in loans below $100,000 are neither worth their time nor the risk. Only 10 percent of the SMEs in the region that have applied for loans from the formal financial sector have received them. And while micro-businesses have been proving that small borrowers do pay back, SMEs continue to struggle to borrow money in a collateral-based lending environment that favors large companies.

“The challenge for regulatory authorities (in Latin America) is to find prudentially sound lending practices beyond traditional, collateral-based lending,” a U.S. Treasury official working on the new initiative said in an interview this week. Some of those alternatives might include loans against their inventory or their accounts receivable.

Tweaking the requirements would be a start, but the rules and regulations that small businesses face overall have been incredibly cumbersome. Nine out of every 10 business owners in Latin America choose to stay in the informal, non-legal sector rather than attempt to comply with labyrinthine, costly and time-consuming requirements.

In recent years some governments have revamped regulations in order to make it significantly faster and easier to open a business. Those reforms are crucial for improving access to credit, according to Jacques Rogozinski, general manager of the IDB's Inter-American Investment Corp., which works exclusively on SMEs. Unless governments help create an “enabling environment” where it becomes easier for companies to formalize their existence, the majority of small businesses – and their practices – will remain outside the purview of government. In such an environment, banks simply will remain “reluctant to lend them money.”

To succeed, the Bush initiative depends on such regulatory reforms. “We are trying to reinforce the benefits of that kind of improved regulations,” said the Treasury official, who asked not to be named because the initiative has not been launched.

The initiative includes two main components: One follows the model created by the Overseas Private Investment Corp., an independent U.S. government agency that offers funds to banks in order to share lending risks; the other would use IDB funds to train banks in assessing clients' creditworthiness when they lack the collateral and credit history normally required from larger borrowers. “If banks are willing to lend to the small business sector, we are committed to helping them with the risks and to do this in a profitable way,” the official said.

The hope is to get about 15 to 20 banks to participate, and once the initiative proves successful, other banks will get on board, said Don Terry, manager of the IDB's Multilateral Investment Fund, which will provide the training grants. “A big opportunity of economic growth in Latin America . . . will be lost,” he noted, “if we can't figure out how to do this.”

Some critics remain skeptical that the lending culture and regulatory environment will change sufficiently in order for SMEs to flourish. They point to state-owned institutions – rather than commercial banks – as the best hope for financing small businesses.

The new Bush initiative recognizes the need for some public funds to help “catalyze a large amount of private money,” the Treasury official noted. But administration officials are betting that even those funds – already scarce in some of the smaller Latin American countries – will become unnecessary once the banks realize that SMEs are worth the investment.

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me@rescam.org

Yeah that's always the trouble: if you have an idea - and potential customers for your idea - and want to found an enterprise, your need credit. If you have the idea but no money, you'll get no credit. But if you do have money, you don't really need the credit...

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Pelosi, Dems threaten a vital U.S. ally

By Robert J. Caldwell
San Diego Union-Tribune

May 20, 2007

Congressional Democrats are taking aim at the decade-old alliance between the United States and Colombia, Washington's staunchest ally in Latin America. For sheer strategic myopia, it would be hard to beat this act of folly.

Even as much of Latin America moves left, Colombia's commendably democratic government continues to share the core U.S. values in the region – fighting terrorism, combating drug trafficking and liberalizing trade. Compare that agenda with the yanqui-bashing alliance pursued by Colombia's neighbor and rival, Venezuela, under leftist demagogue Hugo ChÁvez. While ChÁvez makes common cause with the Castro brothers in Cuba and courts Iran's radically anti-American regime, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe remains a committed democrat and firm friend of the United States.

You might assume, then, that Uribe would get a warm reception and a fair hearing on Capitol Hill when he visited Washington recently to lobby for ratification of the U.S.-Colombia free-trade pact and request continued economic and military assistance. What he got, instead, from the Democrats' congressional leadership was the equivalent of a diplomatic mugging.

The free-trade agreement is imperiled if not dead, blocked by protectionist Democrats in Congress at the behest of the AFL-CIO. Economic and military aid for Colombia is stalled and almost certain to be reduced. Bipartisan support for Plan Colombia, the decade-old strategic framework for the U.S.-Colombia alliance, is on hold and at serious risk.

The pretext for this repudiation of a loyal ally is a hodgepodge of murky accusations that some in Uribe's government have links to rightist paramilitary groups engaged in drug trafficking and death squads. Reading from a script written by Uribe's political opponents in Colombia and left-leaning activists in Washington, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly lectured Uribe about alleged human rights violations and civil rights abuses by his government.

Never mind that Uribe has done more than any Colombian president in decades to disarm and neutralize paramilitary groups, left and right alike. Never mind that Uribe is proving the best ally the United States has ever had in attacking Colombia's cocaine traffickers. And never mind that Uribe's tough law and order policies have dramatically reduced Colombia's endemic violence, stabilized a once-chaotic country and revived its economy.

None of this seems to matter to Pelosi and company, heedlessly playing politics with national security.

Before wrecking the U.S.-Colombia alliance, congressional Democrats should ponder some relevant realities.

Colombia, the oldest democracy in Latin America, retains its credentials as a defender of liberal democratic values. Alvaro Uribe won two successive presidential elections, in 2002 and 2006, by resounding margins against a free and unfettered opposition. Colombia has multiple political parties, a free press, independent courts and judiciary, and a long history of free and fair elections at the local and national level.

Tragically, Colombia is also under siege from two lethal enemies of liberal democracy: A long-running communist insurgency waged by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and an illicit cocaine trade whose murderous cartels grew so powerful in the 1980s and early 1990s that they threatened to turn the country into a narco state.

Uribe, a tough conservative, was elected to save Colombia from these perils. After five years in office, his public approval ratings stand at 80 percent. Maybe he's doing something right.

The proposed free-trade agreement with Colombia would slash tariffs on U.S. manufacturing goods, farm exports and services in exchange for indefinitely extending Colombia's existing duty free access to the U.S. market. Only the blindly protectionist could see that as a bad deal for the United States.

U.S. trade leadership in the Americas now rides on the fate of the free-trade pact with Colombia, and on comparable pending treaties with Peru and Panama. If Democrats in Congress reject ratification, they'll be ceding the trade issue to the likes of Hugo ChÁvez, who preaches a Latin version of anti-U.S. protectionism.

Colombia is the key to fighting the deadly international cocaine trade. At least 80 percent of all cocaine entering the United States comes from Colombia. Without the cooperation and active participation of Colombia's government, the entire U.S.-led fight against this hemisphere-wide scourge would be hopelessly crippled.

Uribe's government has apprehended and extradited to the United States hundreds of narco-traffickers wanted for trial in U.S. courts. Previous Colombian governments were too intimidated by ultra-violent cocaine cartels to extradite anyone. Uribe's government is spraying the coca plantations and eradicating vast areas of coca cultivation. Pelosi should ask the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration about the help it's getting from the Colombian government in fighting the cocaine trade.

On security issues, Uribe has increased the Colombian army's combat forces by 60 percent. He's using U.S.-provided helicopters to give his soldiers vital mobility against the FARC. Uribe's amnesty program has disarmed 30,000 members of the paramilitary right, and 60 of its leaders have been jailed. Better overall security has dropped Colombia's homicide and kidnapping rates by more than 50 percent.

Plan Colombia began a decade ago as a Clinton administration initiative with bipartisan support in Congress. Now that it's working, Pelosi and the Democrats threaten to pull the plug. That would be folly.

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me@rescam.org

Bush, Blair await history's judgment

DAVID S. BRODER
THE WASHINGTON POST

May 20, 2007

The two wounded warriors stood side by side in the sunshine of the White House Rose Garden. Tony Blair and George Bush, partners in a trans-Atlantic alliance that has come a cropper in Iraq, tried to shield each other from the slings and arrows of two nations' reporters.

Bush upbraided British journalists for “trying to do a tap dance” on the “political grave” of the soon-to-depart prime minister. Blair chided European politicians who, seeking what he called “the easiest round of applause, get up and attack America” and its president.

By the end of an agonizing half-hour news conference, what they had left was their shared conviction that their nations stand alone, together, against an evil menace in the world.

Stripped of political protection by their woeful domestic approval scores, Blair (with just about 40 days left in power) and Bush (with about 19 months to go) are driven by the nightmare both have seen close at hand.

The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the July 7, 2005, London subway and bus bombings shook both Bush and Blair from any sense of complacency, and armed both men with a conviction that their pre-eminent mission was to combat the forces behind these assaults. Both men now believe – no, are passionately and permanently convinced – that the terrorist threat from radical Islamists is one that must be resisted at all costs.

As usual, it was Blair who put the proposition best. “The reason why it's important that Britain holds steadfast to the course of fighting alongside America in this battle against terrorism,” he said, is that “the forces that we are fighting in Iraq – al-Qaeda on the one hand, Iranian-backed elements on the other – are the same forces we're fighting everywhere. . . . There is no alternative for us but to fight it (extremism) wherever it exists. And that is true whether it's in our own countries – which have both suffered from terrorism – or in Iraq or Afghanistan.

“It's not about us remaining true to the course that we've set out because of the alliance with America. It is about us remaining steadfast because what we are fighting, the enemy that we are fighting, is an enemy that is aiming its destruction at our way of life and anybody who wants that way of life. And in those circumstances, the harder they fight, the more determined we must be to fight back. If what happens is, the harder they fight, the more our will diminishes, then that's a fight we're going to lose. And this is a fight we can't afford to lose.”

Those are brave words, and a grateful Bush spoke from the heart when he said, “What I know is the world needs courage. And what I know is this good man is a courageous man.”

What both men also know is that Blair has paid an awful price for allying himself with Bush on Iraq and other international issues. His Labour Party has been waiting impatiently for Blair to retire so the prime minister to be, Gordon Brown, can redefine the terms of the alliance. Meantime, as a questioner was rude enough to point out, David Cameron, the leader of the resurgent Conservative opposition, finds it advisable to avoid even meeting Bush.

While the American president cannot be forced out of office against his will, he can be humiliated daily – not only by his political adversaries but by the incompetence of his own appointees. While standing with Blair, Bush was asked about recent disclosures of the wayward actions of two of them, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and he responded lamely to both questions.

The fragile structure of his administration makes Bush's bragging sound delusional. He told reporters that he and Blair have “filled a lot of space together,” because “we have had a unique ability to speak in terms that help design common strategies and tactics to achieve big objectives.”

History will record that both of them saw the threat to the West posed by terrorism and responded courageously. The wisdom of their policy and the conduct of their governments are not likely to be judged as highly.

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me@rescam.org

Giving Iraqis the time they need

DAVID IGNATIUS
THE WASHINGTON POST

May 20, 2007

TAJI, Iraq - America set a long clock ticking when it decided to spend $300 million to rebuild the sprawling military base here as a logistical center for the new Iraqi army. This was to be the soldier's version of nation-building – maintenance depots, orderly barracks and professional schools for Iraqi officers and NCOs.

But the political clock in Washington is running on a different speed. Congress is impatient with the slow work of building a modern army – especially in a country where sectarian violence is destroying any semblance of normal life outside the confines of well-guarded compounds such as this one.

Taji illustrates the mismatch between the Bush administration's ambitious goals for Iraq and the fragile political base on which its policy rests – in Iraq and back home. The vast logistical effort is also a reminder that an American withdrawal from Iraq wouldn't be like turning off a light switch. It would take many months to remove the thousands of tanks, trucks and other vehicles and equipment parked in these dusty palm groves north of Baghdad.

Taji sits today as a magnificent but vulnerable white elephant. Flying over the base with Adm. William Fallon, the commander of Centcom, you get a sense of the scope of the American training and supply effort. The Black Hawk helicopter churns over acre after acre of newly refurbished barracks and motor pools. Vehicles are assembled in orderly lines that seem to stretch for miles. There is an army in embryo here, waiting to be claimed by a functioning country.

We pass a squadron of Iraqi soldiers who have just been issued M-16 rifles to replace their old Saddam-era AK-47s. They hoist the American-made weapons and let out what sounds like a spontaneous cheer. “The M-16s are telling them there's a change,” says Capt. Matthew Sparks. In procuring U.S. weapons for these soldiers, the idea was that America would be around for many years to help train and supply a friendly Iraqi military. You don't give combat rifles, after all, to potential adversaries.

America's military genius has always been in logistics – the ability to organize the supply lines of fuel, ammunition and spare parts that keep an army running after its first bold foray into enemy territory. Those are the skills that U.S. officers have been trying to teach the Iraqis.

In a shed, an Iraqi NCO is leading a class in basic motor maintenance. He lectures to soldiers in overalls about the proper care and feeding of a drive shaft. Then he moves to a test engine and presses the ignition, producing a sputter and then an ear-splitting roar. The depot's Iraq commander, Col. Abdul-Kareem Rafaat, says his soldiers know how to maintain the parts. But U.S. advisers say the Iraqis still need help on the larger tasks of organizing the flows of fuel and supplies so that everything is in place when it's needed.

Out among the palm groves, a group of Iraqi army chefs are completing a field cooking course. They are lined up in their white aprons, presenting their graduation meal of chicken, rice and soup to American visitors. It's quite tasty, actually; if all this army needed was food, it would already have secured the countryside.

The training mission at Taji involved a cultural transformation, which America took on without fully understanding it. Iraqi logistics were a mess under Saddam Hussein because nobody trusted anyone else. When spare parts were received, they were hoarded and sometimes sold on the black market. The Iraqi time horizon was short, and people didn't have confidence that if they played by the rules, they would get their fair share. The Americans meant to change that. We were going to build reliable systems that would reward patience and trust.

But in recent months, the Washington time horizon has grown as short and unpredictable as that of an Iraqi private. The military's plan still envisions a gradual and orderly buildup: The maintenance depot here, for example, won't be finished until July 2008, according to Brig. Gen. Terry Wolff, who commands the training effort at Taji. And after that the U.S. military plans to station trainers and advisers to help the Iraqis master the logistical challenges.

This U.S. training mission in Iraq was the heart of the Baker-Hamilton report's recommendation last December. And it still seems to me the right way forward. American troops cannot stop a civil war in Iraq; but they can teach soldiers how to fix drive shafts, maintain engines and order spare parts. That's a basic mission that Congress should reaffirm, even as it questions the surge of more U.S. troops into Baghdad. Time is the strategic resource now; Congress and the administration need to agree on ways to add some minutes to the clock.

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me@rescam.org

Distract, Tax, and Spend
Democrats are poised to reverse over a decade of Republican tax relief.

By Mitch McConnell

While most of the media were busy covering the latest developments on the Iraq funding bill or the bipartisan immigration proposal, congressional Democrats on Thursday quietly passed a budget creating the framework for the largest tax increases in American history.

Until Thursday, the largest tax increase had been in 1993. That’s when Bill Clinton proposed a monstrous budget that even he would later admit had contained too many tax hikes. The Democrats lost the House of Representatives the following year for the first time in half a century. Clinton, speaking at a Texas fundraiser soon after Election Day, pinned the blame squarely on the hikes: “It might surprise you,” he said, “to know that I think I raised them too much too.”

Despite what happened to Democrats as a result of that tax hike, the budget they submitted their first year back in control of both houses of Congress — and pushed through Thursday on a party-line vote — provides a framework for tax hikes a full three times larger than the one that put them in the minority back then. This budget reverses more than a decade of Republican tax relief. It means a tax hike on every single American — working, retired, rich or poor — and, even as it aims to raise nearly $1 trillion with new taxes, does absolutely nothing to rein in spending or shore up an entitlement system badly in need of reform.

Everyone takes a hit. Forty-five million working families with two children will see their taxes increase by nearly $3,000 annually. They’d see the current child tax credit cut in half — from $1,000 to $500. The standard deduction for married couples is also cut in half, from the current $3,400 to $1,700. The overall effect on married couples with children is obvious: Far from shifting the burden onto the wealthy, the Democratic budget drives up taxes on the average American family by more than 130 percent.

Seniors get hit hard too. Democrats like to crow that only the richest one percent of Americans benefit from the stimulative tax cuts Republicans passed in 2001 and 2003. What they rarely mention is how much seniors benefited from those cuts in the form of increased income as a result of lower taxes on dividends and capital gains. More than half of all seniors today claim income from these two sources, and the Democratic budget would lower the income of every one of them by reversing every one of those cuts.

The great untold story of the post 9/11 period is the recovery of America’s will to fight on, despite new threats, and build an even stronger economy, a stronger America than before we were hit. A Republican Congress gave the American people the tools they needed to help themselves — and then got out of the way. We eliminated the marriage penalty and doubled the child tax credit. We created a tuition tax credit and put the death tax on the road to extinction. We slashed the tax on capital gains and dividends.

Americans took care of the rest, unleashing a flood of economic activity that’s still lifting the tide for tens of millions of working families and retirees. Despite 9/11, despite a recession, despite Katrina, despite a war, the American economy soared. China may be one of the world’s fastest growing economies. But its entire Gross Domestic Product is less than our net economic growth in the five and a half years since 9/11 alone.

The Democrats sounded a thrifty tune in the run-up to the November elections. They know about the tax-and-spend stereotype, so many insisted things would be different this time around. But budget season is always the most telling time of year on Capitol Hill. And as Democrats on Thursday advanced the largest tax hike in history, the story they’re telling is this: The party of tax and spend is back, with a vengeance.

— U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is the Senate Republican Leader

And the Republicans: Distract, Buy on Credit, and Spend.

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Account frozen...

Despite 9/11, despite a recession, despite Katrina, despite a war, the American economy soared.

... straight into debt, a lot of debt, so much debt that we may never recover. ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

Despite 9/11, despite a recession, despite Katrina, despite a war, the American economy soared.

... straight into debt, a lot of debt, so much debt that we may never recover.

Can you support this nattering with any facts?

Despite 9/11, despite a recession, despite Katrina, despite a war, the American economy soared.

... straight into debt, a lot of debt, so much debt that we may never recover.

Can you support this nattering with any facts?

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Account frozen...

Despite 9/11, despite a recession, despite Katrina, despite a war, the American economy soared.

... straight into debt, a lot of debt, so much debt that we may never recover.

Can you support this nattering with any facts?

Yeah, I've seen the pretty display, but what are the sources of the data? How does the number compare with other periods when adjusted for inflation? And how will the number change when the current temporary tax breaks get dropped and intake by the Treasury drops as a consequence?

Despite 9/11, despite a recession, despite Katrina, despite a war, the American economy soared.

... straight into debt, a lot of debt, so much debt that we may never recover.

Can you support this nattering with any facts?

Yeah, I've seen the pretty display, but what are the sources of the data? How does the number compare with other periods when adjusted for inflation? And how will the number change when the current temporary tax breaks get dropped and intake by the Treasury drops as a consequence?

It's all there on that web page...I'm not going to read it out for you.

"Do you have any questions about the National Debt or this Debt Clock?"
Right below the clock there is another line below the one I quoted here.
There are two links there...click...do homework.

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Account frozen...

Can you support this nattering with any facts?

My God man !!! Are you for real ??? ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

A sensible path for the U.S. on Iran

JIM HOAGLAND
THE WASHINGTON POST

May 21, 2007

The United States was never in danger of becoming the “pitiful, helpless giant” that Richard Nixon conjured up in 1970 to justify the invasion of Cambodia – and does not risk that fate today. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and President Bush both need to keep that in mind to avoid stumbling into a widening of the war in Iraq.

The danger is real even if neither leader deliberately seeks such an outcome. Bush's calculated saber rattling against Iranian “triumphalism” in Iraq and the Persian Gulf has been met with new bravado from Ahmadinejad. The Iranian pugnaciously tells his neighbors that “America is weak and cannot protect you.” Worse, he seems to believe it.

Ahmadinejad traveled to Abu Dhabi on May 13 to deliver that message after sending his foreign minister to squeeze an invitation out of the Arab emirate, which has strong security ties to the United States. A few days earlier, Iranian intelligence agents imprisoned Haleh Esfandiari on bogus spying charges.

Esfandiari, an Iranian-born American citizen, is director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Lee Hamilton, the Wilson Center's director, was the co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, which recently urged increased U.S. engagement with Iran. Ahmadinejad goes out of his way to give offense to Washington and then dares a response.

So do Russia's Vladimir Putin and Venezuela's Hugo ChÁvez. Like Ahmadinejad, they seem convinced that they can convert their nations' status as major energy exporters into foreign policy gains at the expense of an administration that is staggering under burdens of scandal and mismanagement at home and abroad.

Other leaders are finding more subtle ways to test the capacity and resolve of a lame-duck president whose party has lost control of Congress and who oversees a politically unpopular and draining war. They would not be human if they did not. And Bush would not be Bush if he were not tempted to take bold, decisive action to show them that he is still in charge and still potent.

But history and contemporary politics both suggest that this is a time for steady nerves and calibrated pressure tactics – not sudden lurches in policy. Using Iraq as a springboard and rationale for an American military strike into Iran would expand the current disaster, just as Nixon's invasion of Cambodia, nominally undertaken to show American strength, came to undermine the U.S. presence in Indochina.

That invasion was meant to bolster an earlier U.S.-backed coup in Phnom Penh. Washington would risk similar results in Iraq by strong-arming the admittedly faltering government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki out of office and replacing al-Maliki with a U.S.-anointed Iraqi savior.

Arab allies are urging such a course on Bush, and would not object to U.S. military action against Iran. There is growing concern in Baghdad that Washington is developing a “Plan B” that involves both hitting Iran and ousting al-Maliki – who ironically was brought to office by U.S. pressure to force out Ibrahim al-Jafari, al-Maliki's predecessor. The concern is augmented by demands from both sides of the aisle in Congress that al-Maliki meet obviously unrealistic benchmarks quickly or face a cutoff of U.S. support.

“Why should we fight somebody else's war against Iran?” asked Mowaffak al-Rubaie, al-Maliki's national security adviser, during a visit to Washington this month. “We say no to Saudi Arabia fighting Iran in Iraq.” He also emphasized that “this Iraqi government is here to stay. It would bring incalculable risks to consider changing this government.”

Not really. This is a government that barely exists and should be changed. But that change should come not from U.S. intervention but from fresh national elections, to be called and overseen by the United Nations this winter. New elections provide the best chance of achieving workable power-and revenue-sharing arrangements in Iraq. It is vital that Iran encourages the majority Shiite population in Iraq to accept such elections and arrangements.

The United States has rattled the saber loudly enough. The dispatching of a second aircraft carrier group toward Iran's waters, the capture and holding of five Iranian operatives in northern Iraq, and a hard-line speech by Vice President Cheney in the Gulf have gotten Ahmadinejad's attention. Targeted banking sanctions are creating significant dislocation and pain for Tehran.

This is the moment for Bush to show America's long-term strength by putting his weight behind the second track of a bifurcated policy: fully engaging with Iran on both Iraq and nuclear weapons, and bringing the Gulf Arabs and European allies into that dialogue. That would be the work of a confident giant.

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me@rescam.org