Neocons turn on Bush for incompetence over Iraq war

I've said before that the rats have started to desert Mr Bush's sinking ship.

Now a group of neo-cons have got together for an article in this months Vanity Fair in which they attack Bush for his "incompetence" in carrying out the Iraq war and, in some cases, having the temerity to question the wisdom of the 2003 invasion that they once strenuously promoted. Rats have no morals and even less memory it would appear.

Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman, who were both Pentagon advisers before the war, Michael Rubin, a former senior official in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, and David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, were among the neoconservatives who recanted to Vanity Fair magazine in an article that could influence Tuesday's battle for the control of Congress. The Iraq war has been the dominant issue in the election.

First to launch himself into the water was Richard Perle, who one can only describe as a true believer. Perle once famously said of the Iraq invasion, "If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war ... our children will sing great songs about us years from now."

Just before his fat ass hit the water he had considerably changed his tune:

Mr Perle, a member of the influential Defence Policy Board that advised the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, in the run-up to the war, is as outspoken in denouncing the conduct of the war as he was once bullish on the invasion. He blamed "dysfunction" in the Bush administration for the present quagmire.

"The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly," Mr Perle told Vanity Fair, according to early excerpts of the article. "At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible."

Asked if he would still have pushed for war knowing what he knows now, Mr Perle, a leading hawk in the Reagan administration, said: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?', I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists'."

Kenneth Adelman who sat on the Defence Policy Board and who had said Iraq would be a, "cakewalk" has performed a similar U-Turn as he escapes:

He now says he hugely overestimated the abilities of the Bush team. "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent," Mr Adelman said.

"They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

He too takes back his public urging for military action, in light of the administration's performance. "I guess that's what I would have said: that Bush's arguments are absolutely right, but you know what, you just have to put them in the drawer marked 'can't do'. And that's very different from 'let's go'."

Mr Adelman, a senior Reagan adviser at cold war summits with Mikhail Gorbachev, expressed particular disappointment in Mr Rumsfeld, who he described as a particular friend. "I'm crushed by his performance," he said. "Did he change, or were we wrong in the past? Or is it that he was never really challenged before? I don't know. He certainly fooled me."

Aldeman went even further than most and announced the death of neo-conservatism:

Mr Adelman said the guiding principle behind neoconservatism, "the idea of using our power for moral good in the world", had been killed off for a generation at least. After Iraq, he told Vanity Fair, "it's not going to sell".

Rubin and Frum were equally damning:

Michael Rubin, who worked on the staff of the Pentagon's office of special plans and the coalition provisional authority in Baghdad, accused Mr Bush of betraying Iraqi reformers.

The president's actions, Mr Rubin said, had been "not much different from what his father did on February 15 1991, when he called the Iraqi people to rise up and then had second thoughts and didn't do anything once they did".

Mr Frum, who as a White House speechwriter helped coin the phrase "axis of evil" in 2002, said failure in Iraq might be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them". The blame, Mr Frum said, lies with "failure at the centre", beginning with the president.

Of course the theme that runs through all their complaints is not that the war was a bad idea per se, but that Bush's handling of it was incompetent. In this way they attempt to distance themselves from the mess of Iraq whilst refusing to accept their responsibility in the creation of that disaster.

For people like Perle to pretend that if he knew then what he knows now that he would not have supported the invasion simply beggars belief.

Perle and his ilk were this wars architects and it's loudest supporters. Let us never forget the mindset that exemplified the neo-cons and the supporters of Project for a New American Century:

Once we assert the unilateral right to act as the world’s policeman, our allies will quickly recede into the background. We will be forces to spend American wealth and American blood protecting the peace while other nations redirect their wealth to such things as health care for the citizenry.

The lure of empire is ancient and powerful, and over the millennia it has driven men to commit terrible crimes on its behalf. But with the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the Soviet Union, a global empire was essentially laid at the feet of the United States. To the chagrin of some, we did not seize it at the time, in large part because the American people have never been comfortable with themselves as a "New Rome".

And there were plenty of people decrying Perle and his ilk at the time, people who could see very well what PNAC were all about:

"This is a blueprint for United States world domination - a new world order of their making, "Tam Dalyell, British parliamentarian and critic of the war policy from the Labor Party said. "These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. This is garbage from think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks," Dalyell said, "men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war.

William Rivers Pitt wrote on February 25, 2003, "Above all else, PNAC desires and demands one thing: The establishment of a global American empire to bend the will of all nations. They chafe at the idea that the United States, the last remaining superpower, does not do more by way of economic and military force to bring the rest of the world under the umbrella of a new socio-economic Pax Americana."

These rats can hit the water at the speed of light, but they wrote down far too much on paper before they jumped in for any of us to ever seriously believe that there was a time when they might have said no to the invasion.

What lies burning in the streets of Baghdad are the chickenhawk's hopes of empire.

That they can have the gall to pretend that this policy is not 100% their own merely adds a lack of grace to the lack of courage that we always knew was their hallmark. These men were perfectly willing to have other people's children die for their causes.

Now they are not even willing to own the cause that they risked other people's lives for.

Some things are simply beneath contempt. And this U-Turn is certainly one of them.

Click title for source.

tag: Perle, Frum, neo-cons, Bush, Iraq war, war on terror, "Stay the course"

Ted Haggard Bashing Gays - from JESUS CAMP the Movie

These are the stunning levels of hypocrisy that show why the Republicans deserve to be thrown out of the House and the Senate. (If what he is alleged to have done is true.)



tag: Ted Haggard, gay bashing, hypocrisy, , Republican, mid-term, elections, November

Desperation '06: Hannity Resurrects John O'Neill

It's says a lot about how little the Republicans actually have to run on that Sean Hannity has brought on a Swift Boats Veteran - John O'Neill for God's sake! - to talk about John Kerry. Now this is getting surreal. We all know that Kerry didn't say what Hannity is still pretending he thought he said, so Hannity now joins Bush as a man who appears to be too stupid to understand a joke even when it's been explained to him.

The truth, of course, is that Hannity knows full well what Kerry meant to say, but he's got bugger all else to attack the Democrats with. Which is a very good indication of just how much shit the Republicans are in...



tag: Bush, Impeach, take action,

Do-It-Yourself Impeachment

Casual left this in the comments section and it's so good I've decided to post it here.

Do-It-Yourself Impeachment, no joke.
The Citizens' movement.

The day the nation demands impeachment is almost upon us. On Jan 3rd, sacks and sacks of mail will be sent to congress demanding impeachment via the House of Representative's own rules. This legal document is as binding as if a State or if the House itself passed the impeachment resolution (H.R. 635).

There's a little known and rarely used clause of the "Jefferson Manual" in the rules for the House of Representatives which sets forth the various ways in which a president can be impeached. Only the House Judiciary Committee puts together the Articles of Impeachment, but before that happens, someone has to initiate the process.

That's where we come in. In addition to the State-by-State method, one of the ways to get impeachment going is for individual citizens like you and me to submit a memorial. ImpeachforPeace.org, part of the movement to impeach the president, has created a new memorial based on one which was successful in impeaching a federal official in the past. You can find it on their website as a PDF.

STOP WAITING FOR YOUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO ACT FOR YOU.

You can initiate the impeachment process yourself by downloading the memorial, filling in the relevant information in the blanks (your name, state, etc.), and sending it in. Be a part of history.

Click here to go to Impeach Now.

tag: Bush, Impeach, take action,

Scarborough: I think Dems will take House and Senate

tag: mid-term, elections, November, Republican, Scarborough, corruption,

Iraq Closer to Chaos, Government Demands Looser Security

A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict.

A one-page slide shown at the Oct. 18 briefing provides a rare glimpse into how the military command that oversees the war is trying to track its trajectory, particularly in terms of sectarian fighting.

The slide includes a color-coded bar chart that is used to illustrate an “Index of Civil Conflict.”

It shows a sharp escalation in sectarian violence since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, and tracks a further worsening this month despite a concerted American push to tamp down the violence in Baghdad. In fashioning the index, the military is weighing factors like the ineffectual Iraqi police and the dwindling influence of moderate religious and political figures, rather than more traditional military measures such as the enemy’s fighting strength and the control of territory.

The conclusions the Central Command has drawn from these trends are not encouraging, according to a copy of the slide that was obtained by The New York Times.

The slide shows Iraq as moving sharply away from “peace,” an ideal on the far left side of the chart, to a point much closer to the right side of the spectrum, a red zone marked “chaos.” As depicted in the command’s chart, the needle has been moving steadily toward the far right of the chart.

Click title for source.

tag: Iraq war, chaos, , Bush, "Stay the course"

Newman supports Lamont

tag: Paul Newman, Ned Lamont, , mid-term, elections, November, Lieberman,

Peters: Blame the Iraqis for the Iraq mess.

Even whilst admitting that the Iraq war is a disaster, Ralph Peters and his ilk still manage to find a way to blame the Iraqis themselves for this neo-con misadventure:

Yet, for all our errors, we did give the Iraqis a unique chance to build a rule-of-law democracy. They preferred to indulge in old hatreds, confessional violence, ethnic bigotry and a culture of corruption. It appears that the cynics were right: Arab societies can't support democracy as we know it. And people get the government they deserve.

For us, Iraq's impending failure is an embarrassment. For the Iraqis — and other Arabs — it's a disaster the dimensions of which they do not yet comprehend. They're gleeful at the prospect of America's humiliation. But it's their tragedy, not ours.

Iraq was the Arab world's last chance to board the train to modernity, to give the region a future, not just a bitter past. The violence staining Baghdad's streets with gore isn't only a symptom of the Iraqi government's incompetence, but of the comprehensive inability of the Arab world to progress in any sphere of organized human endeavor. We are witnessing the collapse of a civilization. All those who rooted for Iraq to fail are going to be chastened by what follows.

And you'll notice in that last sentence an attempt to put the blame for what comes next on to the shoulders of "all those who rooted for Iraq to fail". In other words, the mess and carnage on the streets of Iraq can be blamed on all those who did not support the glorious invasion.

I think this is what most disgusts me about lazy right wing thinking. It is their total inability to ever take responsibility for their own actions. You see this manifested in a thousand different ways. In the way Bush supporters blame Clinton for 9-11, the way they blame the citizens of New Orleans for having the temerity to be caught in a hurricane, and now we have Peters blaming the Iraqis and anti-war protesters for the disaster of a policy that Peters and his ilk promoted, and campaigned for, and denigrated all who offered any words of caution against.

These people are despicable. There is no other word. A party that talks about personal responsibility and yet evades it when they find themselves responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands - possibly hundreds of thousands - of people in a war that has proven to be an abject failure.

They should be hanging their heads in shame, resigning their posts, and sliding off into obscurity, never to be heard from again.

But no. They will attempt to shift the blame on to others as they quickly shift their attention on to new country's to be attacked; namely, North Korea and Iran.

If one casts one's mind back to 2002/3 when Bush and Blair were attempting to drum up support for this military misadventure, public scepticism was actually rather high. Blair found himself producing dodgy dossiers in an attempt to bring the general public round to his way of thinking as two million people marched on the streets of London protesting against the planned invasion.

Bush and Blair would never have got away with the invasion were it not for a group of dedicated right wing mouthpieces like Peters, who tirelessly repeated the pro-war line and attacked the patriotism of anyone who questioned the war as a tacit supporter of terrorism in general and Saddam in particular.

There is no way one can overestimate the importance of journalists like Peters in helping to sell the Iraq war to the public.

For him now to attempt to place the blame for the failure of that policy on to others is an abdication of personal responsibility on a shocking scale. But, worse, for him to attempt to place the blame on to the shoulders of the people who tried to prevent the war - the anti-war protesters - and the people who were most victimised by that war - the people of Iraq - is simply disgusting.

He ends his rather hateful article by attempting to write the war off as quite a good thing for the US:

Islamist terrorists have chosen Iraq as their battleground and, even after our departure, it will continue to consume them. We'll still be the greatest power on earth, indispensable to other regional states — such as the Persian Gulf states and Saudi Arabia — that are terrified of Iran's growing might. If the Arab world and Iran embark on an orgy of bloodshed, the harsh truth is that we may be the beneficiaries.

There is simply no way that a rational person can argue with a mind that is so racked with delusion. The mystery is that publishers continue to pay people like this for their opinions and will continue to pay them long after their opinions have been proven to be dangerous and delusional and wrong.

In this way, Peters exemplifies the mind of the Bush supporter. Never admit you are wrong. Always find a way to blame others for anything bad that happens.

It is imperative that in the mid term elections power is taken away from these irrational lunatics.

Click title for Peters' diatribe.

tag: Iraq war, , United, States, Bush, mid-term, elections, November, Republican, "Staying the course", "Stay the course", neo-con, Ralph Peters,

Israel: PM's reshuffle gained stability, not popular support

I said during his atrocious handling of the war in Lebanon that I would be surprised if Ehud Olmert survived as Israeli Prime Minister and I have been staggered since at the disgraceful steps he has taken to shore up his leadership, the most shocking being the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman, a self confessed fascist, as Israel's Deputy Prime Minster.

However, a recent Israeli opinion poll has shown that support for Olmert is at staggeringly low levels.

A poll conducted by Haaretz and Dialog under the guidance of Professor Camille Fuchs earlier this week found that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's approval rating is only 20 percent, while 70 percent of respondents said that they were dissatisfied with his leadership.

Olmert can take some comfort from the fact that he does not need to face the public at the polls any time soon, mostly because of the fact that he has bolstered his support by including fascists in his government and Labour's astonishing acquiescence in that decision, but one day he will face his day of reckoning at the ballot box.

The silence and hypocrisy of the EU and US, who condemned the Palestinians for electing Hamas and yet remain silent as Israel appoint a fascist as Deputy Prime Minister is entirely predictable.

Hebrew University professor Ze'ev Sternhell, a leading Israeli academic specialist on fascism and totalitarianism, was quoted by the Scotsman newspaper as terming Lieberman "perhaps the most dangerous politician in the history of the state of Israel."

The state of Israel, thanks to Olmert, now have as their Deputy Prime Minister a man who said in only 2002:

"I would not hesitate to send the Israeli army into all of Area A [the area of the West Bank ostensibly under Palestinian Authority control] for 48 hours. Destroy the foundation of all the authority's military infrastructure, all of the police buildings, the arsenals, all the posts of the security forces... not leave one stone on another. Destroy everything." He also suggested to the Israeli cabinet that the air force systematically bomb all the commercial centers, gas stations and banks in the occupied territories (The Independent, March 7, 2002).

Only one in five Israelis approve of the job Olmert is doing as Prime Minister. The rest of the world has almost no opinion as our leaders have remained largely silent whilst a fascist is promoted to Deputy Prime Minister of a country in the most volatile region in the world.

Under Olmert's leadership Israel has lurched into very dangerous territory. I am pleased to see that most Israeli's disapprove of his leadership, I only wish the leaders of the free world showed similar common sense.

Click title for full article.

tag: Israel, Road Map, Lebanon, Olmert, Deputy Prime Minister, Lieberman,

Iraq a 'work of art in progress' says US general after 49 die

As attempts at spin go, it was considerable.

Major General William Caldwell, the chief military spokesman, said - on a day that 49 people were killed in Iraq - that Iraq was like a work of art.

"Every great work of art goes through messy phases while it is in transition. A lump of clay can become a sculpture. Blobs of paint become paintings which inspire," Maj Gen Caldwell told journalists in Baghdad's fortified green zone.

"The final test of our efforts will not be the isolated incidents that you report daily, but the country that the Iraqis build." Perceptions of how the war is going have become a central factor in next Tuesday's congressional elections, which could determine President George Bush's freedom of manoeuvre in his last two years in office.

Maj Gen Caldwell was speaking after a series of public disagreements between Washington and the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, over proposed benchmarks for his government's performance, and over a recent US raid on a Shia district of Baghdad.

A quiet word in the General's ear: The current situation in Iraq can only be viewed as art if you believe the Toxteth riots were street theatre. Or if you believe bank robbery is merely a form of self expression.

Murder and looting on a grand scale can never be considered "a work of art".

As attempts to spin this debacle go, that's the worst I've ever heard.

Click title for full article.

tag: Iraq, terrorists, terrorism, "Staying the course", "Stay the course", disintegration, collapse, work of art,

British believe Bush is more dangerous than Kim Jong-il

America is seen by it's allies as one the greatest threats to world peace according to a new poll.

The poll reveals that British voters see George Bush as a greater threat than Kim Jong Il or Ahmadinejad of Iran.

The survey has been carried out by the Guardian in Britain and leading newspapers in Israel (Haaretz), Canada (La Presse and Toronto Star) and Mexico (Reforma), using professional local opinion polling in each country.

It exposes high levels of distrust. In Britain, 69% of those questioned say they believe US policy has made the world less safe since 2001, with only 7% thinking action in Iraq and Afghanistan has increased global security.

The finding is mirrored in America's immediate northern and southern neighbours, Canada and Mexico, with 62% of Canadians and 57% of Mexicans saying the world has become more dangerous because of US policy.

Even in Israel, which has long looked to America to guarantee national security, support for the US has slipped.

Only one in four Israeli voters say that Mr Bush has made the world safer, outweighed by the number who think he has added to the risk of international conflict, 36% to 25%. A further 30% say that at best he has made no difference.

Voters in three of the four countries surveyed also overwhelmingly reject the decision to invade Iraq, with only Israeli voters in favour, 59% to 34% against. Opinion against the war has hardened strongly since a similar survey before the US presidential election in 2004.

In Britain 71% of voters now say the invasion was unjustified, a view shared by 89% of Mexicans and 73% of Canadians. Canada is a Nato member whose troops are in action in Afghanistan. Neither do voters think America has helped advance democracy in developing countries, one of the justifications for deposing Saddam Hussein. Only 11% of Britons and 28% of Israelis think that has happened.

Indeed, the only person the poll identifies as a greater threat to world peace than George Bush is Osama bin Laden, and even then, it's not by a great margin. 87% identify bin Laden as a serious danger and 75% are saying the same about Bush.

This is hardly surprising when one considers the fact that Bush has tossed aside international law and is in charge of the largest army the world has ever known. Although, to cast your mind back six short years, it is unthinkable that Clinton would ever have been viewed in this manner.

Indeed, it is a direct consequence of the neo-con philosophy that America's military muscle should be used more often that has led traditional allies to view the US with such suspicion. This, coupled with the fact that the invasion of Iraq is viewed as so unnecessary across the globe, only adds to the feeling that the person most likely to start wars is actually the President of the USA.

Especially when one remembers the dreadful scenes in Lebanon and the way that Washington almost egged the Israelis on to their worst excesses.

The world is less safe with the neo-cons in charge of it. That is now official. I am only relieved that so many on the planet see things the way I do.

I was beginning to think I was losing my mind.

Click title for source.

tag: Bush, war on terror, Bin Laden, Kim Jong Il, threats to peace,

Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens eviscerate Bush

This is astonishing. Sullivan and Hitchens are now openly attacking Bush. Sullivan goes as far as to call Bush "unhinged" and says, "In my opinion this proves this man has lost his mind." Hitchens calls him "fantastical."

The rats are deserting this sinking ship!



tag: mid-term, elections, November, Bush, Sullivan, Hitchens, Bush has lost his mind,

U.S. Soldier Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques

Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Az., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne, died in Iraq on the 15th September 2003 from what the army said was a "non-hostile weapons discharge."

It now transpires that Peterson killed herself shortly after she objected to interrogation techniques being used in the prison at the American air base in Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq where she worked as an Arabic-speaking interrogator.

Journalist Kevin Elston uncovered the story after making several attempts to get the tale out of a reluctant military. Indeed, it was only after he filed a Freedom of Information Act request that the true story regarding Miss Peterson came to light.

"Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed...."

She was then assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards, and sent to suicide prevention training. "But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle," the documents disclose.

The Army talked to some of Peterson's colleagues. Asked to summarize their comments, Elston told E&P: "The reactions to the suicide were that she was having a difficult time separating her personal feelings from her professional duties. That was the consistent point in the testimonies, that she objected to the interrogation techniques, without describing what those techniques were."

Elston said that the documents also refer to a suicide note found on her body, revealing that she found it ironic that suicide prevention training had taught her how to commit suicide. He has now filed another FOIA request for a copy of the actual note.

So what exactly were the interrogation techniques that she was asked to participate in? And what does the army mean that "all records of those techniques have now been destroyed?"

People's minds have not been washed. There were other people there who no doubt remember the techniques and her precise objections to them.

What were they?

Now there may be no link at all between what she was asked to do and the taking of her own life, but it still seems essential that her specific objections should be made public. Or have her objections been "destroyed" as well?

The one thing that links Abu Ghraib and every US security centre appears to be the harshness of the interrogation techniques that are being employed. In this case, they were presumably so harsh that Miss Peterson refused to have anything to do with them.

With both Bush and Cheney loudly shouting that the US "Don't do torture" - even as Cheney appears to support waterboarding - it is vital in a democracy that we find out what specifically this young woman was objecting to, if only to find out if Bush and Cheney's loud protestation are with or without merit.

Click title for full article.

tag: Iraq, United, States, Abu Ghraib, waterboarding, Alyssa Peterson, suicide, interrogation techniques, Tal-Afar,

Daily Show - Midwest Midterm Midtacular

Part 1:



Part 2:



tag: mid-term, elections, November, Jon, Stewart, Today, Show

Olbermann: There is no line Bush will not cross

tag: Olbermann, Bush, mid-term, elections, November, John, Kerry, State of denial,

With Iraq Driving Election, Voters Want New Approach

70% of Americans say that President Bush does not have a plan for ending the Iraq war. This remarkable figure shows that the US public are far brighter than the media give them credit for, and also undermines Bush's policy as portraying the Democrats as the party of "cut and run".

Getting out of Iraq is apparently what the US electorate are electing the Democrats to do.

The poll underlined the extent to which the war has framed the midterm elections. Americans cited Iraq as the most important issue affecting their vote, and majorities of Republicans and Democrats said they wanted a change in approach. Twenty percent said they thought the United States was winning in Iraq, down from a high this year of 36 percent in January.

There really is a delicious irony in all of this where Bush, confident that national security is his issue, finds himself skewered on that very aspect of his policy.

All the signs are that Bush is heading for meltdown in the polls.

Fifty percent of independent voters, a closely watched segment of the electorate in such polarized times, said they intended to vote for the Democratic candidate, versus 23 who said they would vote for a Republican.

Among registered voters, 33 percent said they planned to support Republicans, and 52 percent said they would vote for Democrats.

Beyond favouring the Democratic approach to Iraq, the electorate also appear to want an increase in the minimum wage and a reduction in the costs of health and prescription drugs. All topics that the Bushites imagine to be their strong points.

What's also interesting is that Bush appears to have lost many Republicans with his stance regarding Iraq:

Pat Atley, 73, a Republican from Florida, said she expected Republicans to press for more troops in Iraq if they stayed in power, although she said she hoped they would not.

“I’ve always felt we were never going to do any good over there,” Ms. Atley said, adding, “I don’t think we should increase our troops because increased troops aren’t going to do anything except put more of our men and women in jeopardy.”

In these circumstances it's very hard to think of anything that Karl Rove could do that would solidify Bush's base, as - even on core issues - it appears that the base do not agree with the direction Bush has taken the country in.

Mr. Bush’s overall approval rating was 34 percent, unchanged from a poll three weeks ago, an anemic rating that explains why many Democrats are featuring him in their final advertisements, as well as why some Republican incumbents do not want him at their side.

That approval rating is 9 points below where former President Bill Clinton’s was in October 1994 — the election in which Republicans surprised Democrats by taking control of the House — and 28 points below where Mr. Bush’s approval rating was on the eve of the 2002 midterms.

In this latest poll, 56 percent of respondents said Mr. Bush’s campaigning on behalf of candidates had generally hurt them, as compared with 26 percent who said a campaign visit by Mr. Bush helped.

I find this all hugely encouraging. Over here in Europe, your average American is almost always portrayed as largely apolitical and disinterested in matters that do not directly affect them. Indeed, this appears to me to be a central assumption in Rove's strategy for approaching elections.

It was certainly apparent in the recent Republican attack on John Kerry's bungled comments and the need to portray what he was attempting to say in a deliberately false light. The assumption at the root of that attack was that most Americans wouldn't take the time to find out whether or not what Bush was claiming Kerry said was right or wrong.

Leaving aside the blatant double standard of the King of Mispeak picking up on someone else's verbal gaffe's, we are left marvelling at the cynicism that lay just beneath the surface of the charge. Bush was relying on the hope that most Americans would be too lazy - dare I say too stupid? - to see through his blatant dishonesty and opportunism.

This latest poll implies that Bush is very wrong in this assumption and that most Americans can see very well what is being done in their name.

And, more importantly, that they are about to punish Bush big time for what he has done.

Happy, happy days.

Vermont poised to elect America's first socialist senator

Every so often a story comes along that simply makes you smile:

Amid the furious debate over Iraq and the speculation that George Bush may be a lame duck after next Tuesday's mid-term elections, an extraordinary political milestone is approaching: a cantankerous 65-year-old called Bernie looks set to become the first socialist senator in US history.

Bernie Sanders is so far ahead in the contest for Vermont's vacant seat for the US Senate that it seems only sudden illness or accident could derail his rendezvous with destiny, after eight terms as the state's only congressman. His success flies in the face of all the conventional wisdom about American politics.

He is an unapologetic socialist and proud of it. Even his admirers admit that he lacks social skills, and he tends to speak in tirades. Yet that has not stopped him winning eight consecutive elections to the US House of Representatives.

"Twenty years ago when people here thought about socialism they were thinking about the Soviet Union, about Albania," Mr Sanders told the Guardian in a telephone interview from the campaign trail. "Now they think about Scandinavia. In Vermont people understand I'm talking about democratic socialism."

Democratic socialism, however, has hardly proved to be a vote-winning formula in a country where even the word "liberal" is generally treated as an insult. Until now the best showing in a Senate race by a socialist of any stripe was in 1930 by Emil Seidel, who won 6% of the vote.

John McLaughry, the head of a free-market Vermont thinktank, the Ethan Allen Institute, said Mr Sanders is a throwback to that era. "Bernie Sanders is an unreconstructed 1930s socialist and proud of it. He's a skilful demagogue who casts every issue in that framework, a master practitioner of class warfare."

When Mr Sanders, a penniless but eloquent import from New York, got himself elected mayor of Burlington in 1981, at the height of the cold war, it rang some alarm bells. "I had to persuade the air force base across the lake that Bernie's rise didn't mean there was a communist takeover of Burlington," recalled Garrison Nelson, a politics professor at the University of Vermont who has known him since the 1970s.

"He used to sleep on the couch of a friend of mine, walking about town with no work," Prof Nelson said. "Bernie really is a subject for political anthropology. He has no political party. He has never been called charming. He has no money, and none of the resources we normally associate with success. However, he learned how to speak to a significant part of the disaffected population of Vermont."

Mr Sanders turned out to be a success as mayor, rejuvenating the city government and rehabilitating Burlington's depressed waterfront on Lake Champlain while ensuring that it was not gentrified beyond the reach of ordinary local people. "He stood this town on its ear," said Peter Freyne, a local journalist.

"I tried to make the government work for working people, and not just for corporations, and on that basis I was elected to Congress," Mr Sanders said. He has served 16 years in the House of Representatives, a lonely voice since the Republican takeover in 1994. He has however struck some interesting cross-party deals, siding with libertarian Republicans to oppose a clause in the Patriot Act which allowed the FBI to find out what books Americans borrowed from libraries.

He says his consistent electoral success reflects the widespread discontent with rising inequality, deepening poverty and dwindling access to affordable healthcare in the US. "People realise there is a lot to be learned from the democratic socialist models in northern Europe," Mr Sanders said. "The untold story here is the degree to which the middle class is shrinking and the gap between rich and poor is widening. It is a disgrace that the US has the highest rate of childhood poverty of any industrialised country on earth. Iraq is important, but it's not the only issue."

In a state of just over 600,000 people he also has a significant advantage over his Republican opponent, Rich Tarrant, a businessman who has spent about $7m on his campaign. "Sanders is popular because even if you disagree with him you know where he stands," said Eric Davis, a political scientist at Vermont's Middlebury College. "He pays attention to his political base. He's independent and iconoclastic and Vermonters like that."

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tag: United, States, mid-term, elections, November, Vermont, Socialist, Bernie Sanders

US claims Syria and Iran planning Lebanon coup

The US has accused Syria and Iran of trying to bring down the Lebanese government and has warned the two countries to keep their "hands off".

The US has not revealed the "evidence" on which it's claim it's made.

What's slightly surreal here is watching the US, the same country who refused to call for a ceasefire whilst Israel pummelled Lebanon into the ground, cast themselves in the role of Lebanon's "friend" whilst castigating Iran and Syria, the two countries that it hoped Israel's pummelling of Lebanon would draw into a wider regional conflict.

"Support for a sovereign, democratic, and prosperous Lebanon is a key element of US policy in the Middle East," said Mr Snow.

How can Tony Snow even say those words with a straight face? We saw the damage that the US allowed Israel to inflict on that country over the summer, how can Snow now hope that we will have conveniently forgotten this and see the US as having only Lebanon's best interests at heart?

The White House made its claims ­ for which Mr Snow said he was unable to provide supporting evidence as it was classified ­ a day after the Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned Mr Siniora's ruling coalition that it had until the middle of this month to agree on forming a unity government. Hizbollah said if no such agreement were reached there would be protests demanding new elections.

Poor Lebanon, she always seems to be the host nation for other people's wars.

Last night the Syrian embassy in Washington also denied Mr Snow's claims, describing them as ludicrous and unfounded. In a statement it said: " What is happening in Lebanon is a purely domestic political issue. Syria fully respects the sovereignty of Lebanon and does not interfere in its internal politics. Therefore, we call on the US to follow suit and stop instigating the Lebanese people against each other and against other countries."

This all comes on the back of John Bolton's recent claims at the UN that Syria and Iran are helping to rearm Hizbullah and is a further sign of Washington's continual interference in the country.

In the middle of all this diplomatic back stabbing Tony Blair chose yesterday to send his senior envoy, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, to meet the Syrian president in Damascus. The timing was strange to say the least.

The reaction from Israel and the US was drearily predictable.

Shimon Peres, Israel's deputy prime minister, said in London: "I wouldn't like to make any remarks about British movements [but] I'm sceptical, not because of Britain but because of the Syrians."

This is a further part of the remarkable dance that goes on in the Middle East where the Israelis must always be portrayed as looking for peace, whilst actual peace - since it involves handing back land seized in 1967 - must always prove tragically just out of reach.

Mr Peres said yesterday that Israel, which is still technically at war with Syria, would like to negotiate with Mr Assad but not while he supported Hamas and Hizbullah and while he demanded the return of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel during the 1967 war, as a pre-condition for talks.

You'll have noticed the way this game is played. Israel, who "would like to negotiate", cannot do so whilst Syria make "pre-conditions", like the return of the Golan heights. The return of the Golan Heights is a requirement put upon Israel by international law mandated in resolution 242.

Syria asking Israel to comply with international law is considered an unhelpful pre-condition.

However, Israel is allowed to ask that Syria stop supporting Hamas and Hizbullah as a pre-condition to any talks and this is seen as being perfectly reasonable - despite the fact that the Israeli pre-condition is far vaguer and Syria's compliance with it almost impossible to establish.

It is, in effect, a Joker card that Israel can play whenever talks that she does not want to take part in seem possible.

Mr Peres, asked if he supported the idea of Britain having closer relations with Syria, said: "Frankly, we support the engagement by the quartet [the US, the UN, Russia and the EU]. I believe it will be very hard to have any negotiations without American participation." He added that Syria wanted the US to negotiate but that "the Americans don't feel that the Syrians are clear and honest".

Of course it's hard to have negotiations "without American participation" as the Americans are the only country on Earth who buy into Israel's duplicitous reading of the situation as it pertains to land captured in 1967. The UN, Russia and the EU are all in favour of Israel obeying international law and handing back the captured land. Only the US accept as legitimate this Israeli dance where they would "really like" to hand it back whilst simultaneously finding a myriad of reasons as to why negotiations cannot take place. And all the while Israel continues building on the land in clear violation of UN resolutions.

I'm not sure where this present US accusation against Syria and Iran is going to lead us, but I do know that when Israel and the US - the two country's who connived to cause billions of dollars of damage to Lebanon this summer in the hope of setting off a wider regional conflict - portray themselves as having only Lebanon's best interests at heart, it really is time to pass the sick bag.

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tag: United, States, Bush, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Resolution 1559, Hizbullah, Hamas,

Speaker bans Cameron from questioning Blair on succession

I was listening to Prime Minister's Questions in the car today and this made me laugh out loud.

Cameron has been having a whale of a time at each and every Prime Minister's Questions by asking Blair the same question.

Blair once supported Brown as future PM, does he still want Brown to succeed him?

This is a question that Blair was loathe to answer, which was the very reason that Cameron kept asking it. Oh, the fun they were having on the Conservative front bench... until today.

The Speaker, Michael Martin, ruled that this question was inappropriate as Blair is there to answer questions of the business of government. Mr Martin said that the matter of who led the Labour party was a matter for the Labour party alone.

Cameron promptly took a hissy fit.

Mr Cameron - instead of acquiescing to the request from the Speaker, who is the ultimate arbiter of debates in the Commons - started querying the decision.

He turned to the Speaker, who is officially neutral (although elected as a Labour MP) and demanded: "Are you honestly saying we cannot ask the prime minister of the country who ..." before he was again cut off by the Speaker, and loud Labour jeers.

He (Martin) said: "You have no right to ask on the floor of the house at prime minister's question time who the prime minister is supporting for an office within the Labour party."

Mr Cameron refused to back down, but rephrased his question, demanding of Mr Blair: "Perhaps I could just ask who you'd like to see as the next prime minister of this country?"

Mr Martin then said: "I'll allow that. That's in order." Mr Blair stayed above the spat between the Tory leader and the Speaker, before praising Mr Brown's record as chancellor - and comparing it to Mr Cameron's early career as a special advisor to then Tory chancellor Norman Lamont, who sacked by John Major after "Black Wednesday" in 1992.

So today we had our first sight of Cameron being asked to improvise on his feet. Hissy fit ensued.

Marks: 2/10. Needs to work harder at spontaneity.

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tag: Cameron, Blair, House of Commons, succession, debate, Martin, Speaker of the House,

Kerry Pushes Back

When I first heard it, I did think Kerry should not have made the gag that he made.

He has now said that it was a joke that came out the wrong way and reminded us that he is actually a veteran and asks if we believe that he - with his history - would say anything to denigrade those serving.

He reminds us that the people making the attack are the same people who dodged the draft themselves. I also think it odd that the man who famously said, "Bring it on!" sees himself as the best person to defend US troops from other people's words.

Here's Kerry's statement:



UPDATE:

Kerry's office said the senator had misread his prepared remarks. They said he had intended to say, "Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush."

UPDATE II:

It's a sad day for the Republicans when even Bill O'Reilly doesn't buy their spin:

FNC's O'Reilly: "I don't believe John Kerry meant to demean any American military member. I just don't. I think that fair-minded people know that that would be political suicide for the senator. He wouldn't do it" ("O'Reilly Factor," 10/31).

tag: Kerry, Bush, veterans,

Israel launches major Gaza raid

Israel have launched yet another raid on the Gaza Strip which has resulted in 6 dead Palestinians, one dead Israeli soldier and thirty five wounded Palestinians some of them militants.

Witnesses said Israeli tanks backed by helicopter gunships entered Beit Hanoun overnight, amid heavy exchanges of fire.

Sixty tanks were involved in the attack, AFP news agency said.

It reported that Israeli soldiers took positions on rooftops during exchanges of fire with militants.

Israeli bulldozers razed three houses in Beit Hanoun, and another dozen homes were hit by tank shells, the agency reported.

This kind of incursion has been taking place ever since the kidnap of Gilad Shalit in late June of this year.

I've made this point before but the reason the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon was because the price Hizbullah was extracting from them was too severe to maintain. So they ended the action.

The raids in Gaza continue for the very reason that the Palestinians are too feebly armed to do the IDF any real harm, so the action continues. If I were Hizbullah, nothing would make me less likely to give up my arms than watching what Israel does to opponents who lack the firepower to hit back.

Both the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Prime Minister, Ismail Haniya, have described the Israeli military action as a massacre.

The director of the Beit Hanoun hospital told the Associated Press that all the hospital's blood supplies had been used up.

What's extraordinary is that this action is being taken at the very point when Israel is negotiating for the release of Gilad Shalit and the other two Israeli soldiers kidnapped over the summer.

Is this another case of Olmert attempting to play the strong man and to Hell with the consequences?

Hamas said Wednesday that the Israel Defense Forces operation in northern Gaza would have a "negative influence" on negotiations being brokered by Egypt to try to arrange an exchange of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel for the release of captured IDF Corporal Shalit.

A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Tuesday for talks with Egyptian officials on the deal that would see the release of Shalit, captured in June by Gaza-based Palestinian militants.

"The release of the Israeli soldier will only come after the enemy fulfils the conditions set by the captors," said Ismail Rudwan, a Hamas spokesman, referring to demands to free more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Meanwhile, Israeli Arab lawmaker Ahmed Tibi (Ra'am-Ta'al) said Wednesday that there were still substantial differences between Israel and Hamas on the terms of the deal for Shalit's release.

Speaking to Israel Radio from Cairo, where he met Wednesday morning with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Tibi said that there was a good chance of reaching an agreement soon, but some more time was needed.

Egypt has stepped up pressure on Hamas to complete the swap of Shalit for Palestinians in Israeli jails and to recognize Israel - moves Cairo believes could help resolve the deepening political crisis in the West Bank and Gaza, officials said Tuesday.

For Israel to be carrying out such an offensive whilst delicate negotiations are taking place is strange to say the least. Perhaps Olmert is obsessed with never being seen to look weak.

Or maybe the appointment to the Israeli Cabinet of the fascist Lieberman as Deputy Prime Minister is beginning to give us some indication of things to come:

Israel Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman recommended at the cabinet meeting that the IDF model its operational plans for Gaza on the Russian army's tactics in Chechnya.

Operating along the lines of the Russians in Chechnya? God help us...

If Lieberman is going to be listened to, we can forget any negotiated peace settlement for a long time.

tag: Israel, Israeli, raids, raid, Gaza, strip, Olmert, Lieberman, Gilad Shalit, kidnap, negotiations, Egypt,

Maher: Impeach Bush!

Personally, I disagree with Maher's reasoning. Bush should be impeached for misleading the American people and the American Congress over the threat that Saddam constituted.

I think Bush deliberately misled the nation.

tag: Maher, Scarborough, Bush, impeach, Habeus Corpus,

Nasrallah: 'Serious' negotiations underway on fate of IDF soldiers

Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah has said that he is negotiating with Israel over the release of two soldiers.

This is the negotiation Israel said she would never make, and Israel's refusal to negotiate was her justification for the war in Lebanon. Opponents of that war, like myself, always said the day would come when Israel would negotiate and that, on that day, we would have the right to question why so much death and destruction was inflicted upon the Lebanese when a negotiated settlement was always going to be the solution to the crisis.

Today the Israelis refuse to confirm that they are even talking to Hizbullah, I would hope out of a deep sense of shame and embarrassment at the loss of life they needlessly inflicted on Lebanon, but I know I'm being fanciful to imagine that Olmert experiences any such regrets.

Indeed, the fact that Nasrallah is continuing to boast about Israel's inability to disarm Hizbullah only further points to the abject failure that the war was in terms of military success and, more importantly, on Israel's reputation as a superpower in the region.

Nasrallah also said during the interview that United Nations Forces in Lebanon would not be able to disarm the guerilla group.

"The assembly of UNIFIL forces does not hint to anything that should inspire fear. This is not an ensemble with a goal of disarming us, nor would they be able to do so," he said, in his first appearance since speaking at "victory" rally in south Beirut last month.

Nasrallah said the countries that had sent forces to Lebanon had established contact with the Hezbollah before deciding to deploy their troops. "We told them that we have no problem with them coming to help the [Lebanese] army," he said.

The Hezbollah leader also said that Israel had been defeated in the recent war, and would have to "think a thousand times" before starting another war in Lebanon. He said the guerilla group had well prepared itself over the last six years for a war of siege with Israel. "We had more than 33,000 missiles," he said, adding, "and what we had is still in our possession.

He went on to say that the US would leave the region in defeat:

"Afghanistan is a failure ... In Iraq, there is clear failure on the security, military and political levels ... Who shoulders responsibility? It's the American administration and the occupation forces in control of the situation," Nasrallah said in a taped interview on Hezbollah's television station Al-Manar.

He said America's plans in the Middle East face "failure, frustration and a state of collapse," and predicted the U.S. would be forced to leave the region in the future - just like it left Vietnam after the war there three decades ago.

The U.S. has "no future" in the region, Nasrallah said. "They will leave the Mideast, Arab and Islamic worlds just as they left Vietnam, and I advise those who are counting on them to draw conclusion from the Vietnam
experience."

This would happen "within years, not months," he added.

Personally, I am pleased that the young Israeli soldiers may soon be returned to their families. I hope the same will soon happen to young Gilad Shalit.

The tragedy is that Olmert, spurred on by Bush and the neo-cons, waged a hopeless war that caused billions of dollars worth of damage to Beirut and southern Lebanon. It was a war in which Israel sought to punish a civilian population for the crimes of Hizbullah, a form of collective punishment that constituted a war crime.

The Israeli attacks on Lebanon actually illustrated the failed policy of Bush and his cohorts more clearly than even the Iraq war has done. It is their overwhelming belief in military power, their lack of empathy for any civilians whose lives are lost in the process, their unbending belief that their cause is right and that this supersedes any amount of casualties that wars fought on their ideological battleground causes.

We are dealing here with ideologues. Dangerous, dangerous people.

The most shocking thing about Israel's intervention into Lebanon has been the lack of shame that it's practitioners have displayed since the war ended. They now enter into negotiations that were always open to them, and they do so without expressing any hint of regret that so many needlessly died because they chose to fight rather than to negotiate.

Indeed, as I reported yesterday, John Bolton continues to look for ways to escalate and restart the conflict.

There are madmen at the heart of this American administration. People who believe that violence is the answer to every problem.

And even when their violence yields them no results, they simply prepare - as Bolton is proving by his every utterance - to launch yet another violent assault.

When will the American public see these men as they actually are and eject them from office? When will conservatives realise that their party has been overtaken by these ideologues and eject them from their party in the same way the British Labour Party had to eject Militant in the 1980's?

Until they do, there will only be more of this madness, because these people are truly without shame.

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tag: Lebanon, Gilad Shalit, Israel, Hizbullah, Nasrallah, negotiations, talks, prisoner swap, John Bolton, Bush, neo-Cons, Olmert,

Baghdad is under siege

By Patrick Cockburn

Sunni insurgents have cut the roads linking the city to the rest of Iraq. The country is being partitioned as militiamen fight bloody battles for control of towns and villages north and south of the capital.

As American and British political leaders argue over responsibility for the crisis in Iraq, the country has taken another lurch towards disintegration.

Well-armed Sunni tribes now largely surround Baghdad and are fighting Shia militias to complete the encirclement.

The Sunni insurgents seem to be following a plan to control all the approaches to Baghdad. They have long held the highway leading west to the Jordanian border and east into Diyala province. Now they seem to be systematically taking over routes leading north and south.

Dusty truck-stop and market towns such as Mahmoudiyah, Balad and Baquba all lie on important roads out of Baghdad. In each case Sunni fighters are driving out the Shia and tightening their grip on the capital. Shias may be in a strong position within Baghdad but they risk their lives when they take to the roads. Some 30 Shias were dragged off a bus yesterday after being stopped at a fake checkpoint south of Balad.

In some isolated neighbourhoods in Baghdad, food shortages are becoming severe. Shops are open for only a few hours a day. "People have been living off water melon and bread for the past few weeks," said one Iraqi from the capital. The city itself has broken up into a dozen or more hostile districts, the majority of which are controlled by the main Shia militia, the Mehdi Army.

The scale of killing is already as bad as Bosnia at the height of the Balkans conflict. An apocalyptic scenario could well emerge - with slaughter on a massive scale. As America prepares its exit strategy, the fear in Iraq is of a genocidal conflict between the Sunni minority and the Shias in which an entire society implodes. Individual atrocities often obscure the bigger picture where:

* upwards of 1,000 Iraqis are dying violently every week;

* Shia fighters have taken over much of Baghdad; the Sunni encircle the capital;

* the Iraqi Red Crescent says 1.5 million people have fled their homes within the country;

* the Shia and Sunni militias control Iraq, not the enfeebled army or police.

No target is too innocent. Yesterday a bomb tore through a party of wedding guests in Ur, on the outskirts of Sadr City, killing 15 people, including four children. Iraqi wedding parties are very identifiable, with coloured streamers attached to the cars and cheering relatives hanging out the windows.

Amid all this, Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President, has sought to turn the fiasco of Iraq into a vote-winner with his claim that the Iraqi insurgents have upped their attacks on US forces in a bid to influence the mid-term elections. There is little evidence to support this. In fact, the number of American dead has risen steadily this year from 353 in January to 847 in September and will be close to one thousand in October.

And there is growing confusion over the role of the US military. In Sadr City, the sprawling slum in the east of the capital that is home to 2.5 million people, American soldiers have been setting up barriers of cement blocks and sandbags after a US soldier was abducted, supposedly by the Mehdi Army. The US also closed several of the bridges across the Tigris river making it almost impossible to move between east and west Baghdad. Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, added to the sense of chaos yesterday when he ordered the US army to end its Sadr City siege.

Mr Maliki has recently criticised the US for the failure of its security policy in Iraq and resisted American pressure to eliminate the militias. Although President Bush and Tony Blair publicly handed back sovereignty to Iraq in June 2004, Mr Maliki said: "I am now Prime Minister and overall commander of the armed forces yet I cannot move a single company without Coalition [US and British] approval."

In reality the militias are growing stronger by the day because the Shia and Sunni communities feel threatened and do not trust the army and police to defend them. US forces have been moving against the Mehdi Army, which follows the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, but he is an essential prop to Mr Maliki's government. Almost all the main players in Iraqi politics maintain their own militias. The impotence of US forces to prevent civil war is underlined by the fact that the intense fighting between Sunni and Shia around Balad, north of Baghdad, has raged for a month, although the town is beside one of Iraq's largest American bases. The US forces have done little and when they do act they are seen by the Shia as pursuing a feud against the Mehdi Army.

One eyewitness in Balad said two US gunships had attacked Shia positions on Sunday killing 11 people and seriously wounding six more, several of whom lost legs and arms. He added that later two Iraqi regular army platoons turned up in Balad with little military equipment. When they were asked by locals why their arms were so poor "the reply was that they were under strict orders by the US commander from the [nearby] Taji camp not to intervene and they were stripped of their rocket-propelled grenade launchers".

Another ominous development is that Iraqi tribes that often used to have both Sunni and Shia members are now splitting along sectarian lines.

In Baghdad it has become lethally dangerous for a Sunni to wander into a Shia neighbourhood and vice versa. In one middle-class district called al-Khudat, in west Baghdad, once favoured by lawyers and judges, the remaining Shia families recently found a cross in red paint on their doors. Sometimes there is also a note saying "leave without furniture and without renting your house". Few disobey.

The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq by Patrick Cockburn is published this month by Verso

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tag: Iraq, United, States, Bush, war on terror, "Staying the course", "Stay the course", seige,

Labour slither off enquiry's hook.

So Blair survived calls for an enquiry into the political decisions that led to the Iraq war by twenty five votes.

It was a debate, the first parliamentary debate on Iraq for two years, that Blair chose not to even attend. In his place was a rather testy Margaret Beckett, who conducted herself throughout like a school mistress facing an unruly mob who didn't understand school policy on such matters. It was, in short, pitiful.

Her main, and quite extraordinary defence, was that any enquiry would be unwise whilst our troops were still engaged in Iraq. The Tories made short shrift of this argument very quickly:

But Mr Hague ridiculed the argument that having a debate would harm the morale of British troops.

"I don't believe that it is possible to argue in a House of Commons which 80 years ago instituted an inquiry into the Dardanelles while the first world war was still raging that to raise even a suggestion that an inquiry in the future is to undermine the British army."

Indeed, Beckett's main defence was built only by ignoring that the most vocal criticism's of the Iraq war had come from the army itself in the shape of Sir Richard Dannatt who has called for the troops to be called home "soon".

Redwood, the Martian, made a very good point when he said that if we were fighting in Iraq to export democracy, then surely it is only democratic that we are able to discuss this war in parliament.

The Tories then offered to make the whole argument go away of Beckett would agree to an enquiry once the troops have returned home, an offer that Beckett slithered around without accepting.

The most extraordinary intervention for Labour came from Blunkett who argued that people did not complain when the coalition went into Kosovo without a UN mandate and that we never complained then that the Kosovo campaign was "illegal". He appeared at this point to be admitting that the Iraq war was illegal.

The arguments of the opposition were by far the most persuasive:

Charles Kennedy, the former Liberal Democrat leader, making his first Commons speech since his forced resignation in January, said that there was a "suspicion" that the Government never had any plan other than to join the Americans in invading Iraq.

But he was also scathing about the "convoluted consensus" now being sought by the Conservatives, and reminded MPs of how vehemently they supported the war at the time. "The Conservatives have not exactly played their part in asking questions, which is why inquiries remain outstanding," he said.

He added: "The goalposts kept moving through this whole tragic episode. It was a moral case at one point; at another point it was a strategic defence of our interests because Iraq had a 45-minute threat of potential obliteration and all the rest of it. Yet in the final debate what did he [Blair] say? - 'even at this late stage, Saddam and his sons can save their regime if they comply with United Nations resolutions'. So much for the moral argument. The truth will out one day. We will never know how many people lost their lives, but on the political tombstone of this Prime Minister will be the word, Iraq."

Malcolm Rifkind, the former Tory foreign secretary, described the conflict as worse than Vietnam, because there America had intervened in an existing war.

Gavin Strang, a former Labour minister, said Iraq had not been a war against terrorism but one that "fuelled and fed" terrorism. "We have to probe the extent to which British troops' presence is part of the problem."

It was, all in all, a tawdry affair; with Beckett and the Labour side pretending that they were facing calls for a debate from an opportunistic opposition. The truth is that Blair is a Prime Minister who misled the house on several occasions and were an enquiry to go ahead it would probably signal the end of his leadership.

The simple truth is that if we believe in the democracy that Beckett, Blair and others think they are exporting, then that democracy surely begins at home. One of the first signs of a healthy democracy is the ability to question the executive.

Labour denied parliament that opportunity yesterday and they did so behind an argument that was notable false; their supposed concern for the troops that they sent into a needless battle.

Yesterday marked a new low for this Labour administration, who are running as fast as they can and using any argument available to avoid ever being held to account for their past actions.

But the day of reckoning will come. Blair may well have left office before his crimes are fully exposed, but the simple truth is that Britain will not be able to "move on" - as Blair so often asks it to - until this particular boil has been lanced.

Simon Jenkins, as always, hits the nail on the head:

Charles I would have been proud of today's Commons. Even yesterday's debate required the initiative of the separatist Scots and Welsh nationalists to get on to the order paper.

There cannot be a more serious moment for democratic scrutiny than when a government is involved in a controversial and dangerous foreign war. It is the more urgent when troops seem trapped and facing defeat on two fronts. There is nothing to stop MPs debating what they like. There is nothing to stop a grand committee being appointed to inquire into the war. It can demand "persons and papers" and subpoena anyone it likes. Even if select committees are too scared of the whips to act, parliament is sovereign. It need not ask Downing Street's permission to scrutinise. Parliament even has a second chamber, albeit one too terrified for its future to do more than rap the government's knuckles.

Britain's debate on the Iraq war is taking place in the media. It should be in parliament.

Labour scraped away from allowing their actions to be scrutinised by Parliament yesterday. Read that last sentence again.

It's hardly an honourable victory, is it?

Related Articles:

When will they learn?

tag: Labour, Conservative, Tory, enquiry, Iraq war,