It’s a little known fact that one of the big reasons Iraq turned around is we simply offered a better price than al Qaeda. Within a month the word got out that we were paying top dollar and the insurgents were turning against the terrorists and the US body count started to drop.

Will the same strategy work elsewhere?

From the Times Online:

Afghans are known for changing sides back and forth during their long years of war — there is an old saying that “you can rent an Afghan but never buy one” — and battles have often been decided by defections rather than combat.

Paying Taliban foot-soldiers to switch sides could spare US lives and save money, say its advocates. A recent report by the Senate foreign relations committee estimated the Taliban fighting strength at 15,000, of whom only 5% are committed idealogues while 70% fight for money — the so-called $10-a-day Taliban. Doubling this to win them over would cost just $300,000 a day, compared with the $165m a day the United States is spending fighting the war.

And here’s a bit about a what we did in Iraq…

The tactic was used to good effect in Iraq where the US government put 100,000 Sunni gunmen on its payroll for about $300 a month each.

Some disagree that this strategy will work without more troops, but a refocusing of priorities along with paying people to not kill us will do the trick. Afghans are like anybody else…they want to be able to provide for their families and if somebody is offering a better deal, they’ll go with the best price in town. This isn’t a holy war even though the Taliban would like to convince everybody it is.

More as it develops…

” I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan. I think that these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq who told me that. I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed. And so — and I believe that information according to the FBI and others could have been gained through other methods.”
- John McCain on Face The Nation today

Yes folks, torture became a recruitment tool. And it’s apparently yet another reason we got bogged down in Iraq. Again, from McCain…

“Senator Lindsey Graham and I were in Camp Bucca, where there’s the 20,000-prisoner camp. We met with a former high- ranking member of al Qaeda. I said, how did you succeed so well in Iraq after the initial invasions? He said two things. One, the chaos that existed after the initial invasion, there was no order of any kind. Two, he said Abu Ghraib pictures allowed me and helped me to recruit thousands of young men to our cause. Now that’s al Qaeda.”

Does this surprise anybody?

The question now…will we learn?

Doug points this one out, and if true, well, no wonder France took a pass on backing us in Iraq.

French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice recounts the tale in his book release in March, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny).

From Secular Humanism:

President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”

Again, if true, I think it speaks for itself.

And given Bush’s insistence on saying he was chosen by God, etc., we have every reason to believe that something like this is not only plausible, but also highly likely.

Ugh.

Anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has said that the withdrawal pledge has left him “filled with hope,” but he added, “If the occupation forces breach the claimed withdrawal even with the government’s cover, then the people have the right to express their opinion by peaceful means and the right of self-defense in a way that does not harm the Iraqi people or security forces.”

On the flight over, the U.S. Vice President told reporters, “I think the Iraqis have become invested in their nationhood. I think they’ve become invested in the idea that they want to run their own lives, that they want to be in charge. The reason I came is [President Barack Obama] wants to focus within the White House on the implementation of our administration’s plan to…. draw down troop levels in Iraq.” …Continue reading here…

While some have worried that the Democratic controlled Congress might strip our war efforts of funding, that wasn’t the case in the House where members passed $97 billion in war funding by a vote of 368-60 — $12 billion more than President Obama requested.

The senate is in the process of passing a similar bill, making it almost a sure thing that Obama will get all the money he needs to fight our wars the way he wants. I wonder if a President McCain would have gotten the money as easily?

For those who’ve worried that under the command of President Obama, our military in Iraq won’t be able to adjust to realities on the ground, there’s this story out of Mosul. Conditions in the region are not good and our forces are likely postpone the scheduled withdrawal if Iraqi authorities ask us to stay.

Army Colonel Gary Volesky, commander of U.S. forces in the Mosul area, said U.S. and Iraqi officials are now assessing security in the northern Iraqi city to determine whether his troops should leave by June 30, when U.S. combat forces are due to pull back from towns and cities across Iraq.

The deadline is part of a U.S.-Iraqi pact reached last year that also calls for all U.S. troops to depart Iraq by 2012.

Neither we nor the Iraqis want to leave a terrorist haven/destabilized region in Iraq. If Mosul is too violent for the Iraqis to govern effectively, there’s good reason to keep our forces involved. Such flexibility is necessary if we want to withdrawal from Iraq responsibly. At this point, it’s pretty clear Obama supports the responsible withdrawal side rather than the withdrawal-at-all-costs side many feared he’d follow once elected president.

Since taking office, Obama has tended towards pragmatism in military endeavors, even trending somewhat to the hawkish side, particularly in Afghanistan. For those listening closely during the election, this isn’t a huge surprise, but it is welcome.

Here’s the transcript…

MATTHEWS: The polling that took place before we attacked, conducted by “Time” and CNN, showed that 72 percent of the American people, nearly three quarters, believed it was likely that Saddam Hussein was involved in the attack on us 9/11. How do you think they got that idea, that somehow going to war with Iraq was getting even for 9/11?

GAFFNEY: Well, as I said, he kept saying that he was going to try to get even against us for Desert Storm, so it wouldn‘t be unreasonable for people to conclude maybe that that‘s what he was doing. There‘s also circumstantial evidence, not proven by any means, but nonetheless some pretty compelling circumstantial evidence of Saddam Hussein‘s Iraq being involved with the people who perpetrated both the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and even the Oklahoma City bombing.

They have video over at C&L.

Amazing.

One of my favorite comedians is on his way overseas to entertain our brave men and women and he’s posting a lot of pictures and commentary detailing the whole thing.

Here’s the first entry…

Last December (2008) I went to Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the Seargent Major Tour for the USO. I did shows in Army bases all over the Middle East. I had never done anything like it before and it left me with a lasting impression. I took lots of pictures and wrote several emails back to my family throughout the trip, mostly to let them know that I was okay, but they were very detailed. I have intended since then to post these stories and pictures on my site but I am a lazy idiot.

Today I feel four percent less lazy and stupid than usual, so I am going to try to start posting these stories. What I intend to do is post an entry each day as if I was there doing those things now. The reason for this is that it means I have to do less work to edit the emails that I sent my mom and sisters. I don’t have to change all the present tense stuff to past tense.

So this will start tomorrow. But let me just add the caveat that… I might not do it. I have a lot of energy right now and I’m all excited about this but tomorrow I might just lay in a pool of my own vomit instead.

And so it begins…

By the way, if you haven’t see his now famous “Everything’s Amazing. Nobody’s Happy.” bit on Conan’s show, well, you’re in for a treat…

“You’re sitting in a chair…in the SKY!”

Love it.

Break a leg Louis.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), President Obama’s campaign opponent, went to the White House Thursday for a briefing on the president’s plan for a timetable for a troop drawdown in Iraq. Before heading down Pennsylvania Avenue, he said he was already largely on board.

McCain said he would not be advising the White House as to what he thought was the best plan, but rather hearing them out.

“They’re going to present us their recommendations. It’s their plan,” he said. “From what I know about it, I agree with it.”

For McCain, the plan has virtue because it is backed by the generals and the ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker. “I like it best because it’s what Ambassador Crocker and General [Raymond] Odierno and General [David] Petraeus also felt was a suitable strategy,” said McCain.

Nancy Pelosi disagrees — which bring us to comments made here by Jitter and others… does it seem that Nancy Pelosi (and Harry Reid, et al.) tries to politically ‘cock-block’ what the Obama administration is trying to do?

Sure Nancy, there may be a larger-than-you-would-like residual force left in Iraq (Obama says approximately 50,000 troops, Pelosi wants closer to 15,000), but most Americans want to see troops leaving Iraq. With a smaller force there, redeployment rates will decrease. Stop-loss will decrease or completely end. Troops having to serve three, four and five tours in Iraq will be a thing of the past.

I don’t want to see ANY troops in Iraq, but 50,000 is far less than the current level (142,000). The whole point is that troops will begin to leave en masse, and to me — that is nothing but a good thing.

Now, Afghanistan…

[cross-posted at ThePajamaPundit.com]

Obama’s plan would pull out all combat troops 19 months after his inauguration, although he had promised repeatedly during the 2008 campaign that he would withdraw them 16 months after taking office. That schedule, based on removing roughly one brigade a month, was predicated on commanders determining that it would not endanger U.S. troops left behind or Iraq’s fragile security.

Really, I don’ t think Obama can be criticized by anti-war folk because he’s added three months onto his initial pledge. In fact, given that he now has access to information he lacked during the campaign, I’m surprised his withdrawal plan is so close to what he promised. I don’t know if this means the majority of commanders are in agreement that we can safely leave or if this means Obama is determined to follow through with removal of our troops, no matter the consequences.

I have always tried to view the Iraq situation in the present tense, looking at the situation as it is now and not as it was when we invaded or how I ardently wish it might be in the future. For a long time, I opposed withdrawal because I found the idea too reckless, more likely to cause greater turmoil than to bring any semblance of lasting peace. But with the success of the surge and other anti-insurgent policies (both American and Iraqi), we may have reached a point where the drawdown of our forces will not threaten Iraq’s or the greater region’s stability.

Once the redeployment of combat troops begins, we will get a better sense whether or not their absence is causing more problems than it’s solving. I hope to God we can get our men and women out of there without setting off another crisis. President Obama makes a good case that he knows what he is doing. I just hope he keeps a steady hand on the situation.

“The original intelligence was wrong, no question about it. But there were parts of it that were right. It wasn’t 100 percent wrong. It was correct in saying he had the technology. It was correct in saying he still had the people who knew how to build weapons of mass destruction. I think it was also correct in the assessment that once sanctions came off, he would go back to doing what he had been doing before.”
- Dick Cheney on Face The Nation today.

So let’s just get this clear once and for all…

By Cheney’s standard, the US could invade every single one of our enemies because they “know” how to build weapons of mass destruction and they “could” build them if given enough time. And that’s just crazy.

The refreshing part in all of this? Cheney actually admitted that the “original” intelligence was wrong. You know, the stuff that he and his neo-cons cherry picked and presented as the very best, top shelf info?

Goodbye Dick.

The end of this year has seemed filled with bad news. So here’s something that went right in 2008: American troop deaths in Iraq were down 66% from 2007. That’s a drop from 906 to 309.

The direct cause for the decrease in fatalities is obvious. Attacks in Iraq have dropped from an average of 180 a day to just 10 a day.

But why have attacks dropped?

The surge has helped, but there are other factors at play:

“It’s no single effort. It’s a combination of efforts,” said Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, commanding general of Multi-National Division-Baghdad. “The people of Iraq are tired of violence, and they are assisting the security forces; the government is improving its ability to govern and to apply the rule of law.”

We can only hope things continue to improve in 2009.

Still, that doesn’t mean Bush’s presidency will be a failure…

Personally, I don’t think Iraqi democratization will ultimately turn out the way Bush and company said it would. Because my guess is that Iraq and Iran will form a political coalition and Iraq will seek to legitimize Iran’s nuclear program so down the road they can build their own nuclear program.

Because, like it or not, nuclear energy is clean and it’s the only way these Middle Eastern countries will survive after the oil runs out eventually. That will be the argument. That it’s actually a stabilizing force in the region. And Russia and China will obviously side with Iraq and Iran because they need access to oil so they can build up their infrastructures to compete with America.

Sound plausible?

Looks like it’s a little bit longer than the 16 months Obama talked about during the primaries, but as long as the plan is to get out during his first term I bet he’ll allow the generals more time to execute a plan they think is realistic.

From NY Times:

The plan was proposed by the top American commanders responsible for Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus and Gen. Ray Odierno, and it represents their first recommendation on troop withdrawals under an Obama presidency. While Mr. Obama has said he will seek advice from his commanders, their resistance to a faster drawdown could present the new president with a tough political choice between overruling his generals or backing away from his goal.

The plan, completed last week, envisions withdrawing two more brigades, or some 7,000 to 8,000 troops, from Iraq in the first six months of 2009, the military officials said. But that would leave 12 combat brigades in Iraq by June 2009, and while declining to be more specific, the officials made clear that the withdrawal of all combat forces under the generals’ recommendations would not come until some time after May 2010, Mr. Obama’s target.

This is good news as it signals an end to the Iraq slog.

Now it’s time to let Iraqis figure it all out. Because whatever happens, we’re only delaying the inevitable.

More as it develops…

Here’s more about the reporter and what he said…

“This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog,” the journalist shouted (in Arabic), Steven Lee Myers of The New York Times reported in a pool report to the White House press corps.

Myers reported that the man threw the second shoe and added: “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.”

Journalists at the scene said the hurler was Muntadar al-Zaidi, a reporter for Al-Baghdadia TV, an independent satellite channel based in Cairo.

A producer for the channel was murdered in Baghdad last year.

My question: why did Bush pop back up after the first shoe was thrown? Aren’t Presidents taught to hit the ground if somebody attacks them?

By the way, isn’t smacking people with your shoe a particularly demeaning insult in the Middle East? Because if I remember correctly, the Iraqis who were riding the statue of Saddam’s through Baghdad were hitting it with their shoes.

Moving on…

A new report from the Senate Armed Services Committee places significant blame for abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay on former Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

The report’s executive summary, made public by the committee’s Democratic chairman Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and its top Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said Rumsfeld contributed to the abuse by authorizing aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay on December 2, 2002.

He rescinded the authorization six weeks later. But the report said word of his approval continued to spread within U.S. military circles and encouraged the use of harsh techniques as far away as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report concluded that Rumsfeld’s actions were “a direct cause of detainee abuse” at Guantanamo and “influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques … in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

The report concluded that the abuses were not merely a case of a few soldiers acting on their own but the result of decisions made at the highest levels within the Department of Defense. The report also faults President Bush for signing a memorandum in February of 2002 that stated the Geneva Convention did not apply to the U.S. war with al Qaeda.

While I know there are still plenty of people who view torture as an acceptable means of extracting information from terrorists, I have long argued that we damage the deepest principles of America and compromise our moral authority when we resort to abuse — even when we do so in the name of our own defense. The “but our enemies are worse” argument holds no water for me. Yes, they are much, much worse. That doesn’t matter. We can’t let our enemies set the standards for morality.

Careful observers have long known that the instances of detainee abuse were not just the result of a few “overzealous” soldiers but the result of an administration that overreached in its quest for victory. I’m glad the Senate Armed Services Committee was willing to place the blame where it belongs: at the top.

Why?

Because it’s still a mess…

BAGHDAD – For the past two weeks I’ve been embedded with the United States Army in Baghdad, and I find myself unable to figure out what to make of this place. Baghdad, despite the remarkable success of the surge, is as mind-bogglingly run-down and dysfunctional as ever, even compared with other Arabic countries. Iraq is a dark place. At times it feels like a doomed country that has only been temporarily spared the reckoning that is coming. Other times it is possible to look past the grimness and see progress beyond the mere slackening off of violence and war. Is Iraq truly on the mend, or has a total breakdown been merely postponed? Opinions here among Americans and Iraqis are mixed, but nearly everyone seems to agree about one thing at least: terrorists and insurgents will respond with a surge of their own in the wake of the upcoming withdrawal of American forces.

My guess is that since Obama kept Gates on, the withdraw will be slower…but it’s inevitable and we all know it. Iraq has to stand on its own, and there’s little we can do to stop internal tensions that have been going on for as long as anybody can remember. We would literally have to be there for decades and watch a generation die out, and that’s not politically or economically feasible at this point.

By the way, the photo above is of a mini bus that was full of 15 police cadets that was hit by a car bomb near a police academy in Baghdad on Monday. 36 people died in bombings around the country yesterday.

I think this will be as close as he gets to actually saying, “Okay, you know what…I screwed it up.”

First, he admits he wasn’t prepared for war…

Looking back on his eight years in the White House, President George W. Bush pinpointed incorrect intelligence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction as “biggest regret of all the presidency.”

“I think I was unprepared for war,” Bush told ABC News’ Charlie Gibson in an interview airing today on “World News.”

“In other words, I didn’t campaign and say, ‘Please vote for me, I’ll be able to handle an attack,’” he said. “In other words, I didn’t anticipate war. Presidents — one of the things about the modern presidency is that the unexpected will happen.”

Now, let’s face it, that’s a pretty ridiculous statement considering there was plenty of intelligence to show that al Qaeda was trying to hit us. So the idea that this was “unexpected” is simply not accurate. But one thing’s for sure…he was definitely unprepared.

More about the war…

“A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein,” Bush said. “It wasn’t just people in my administration. A lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington, D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence.

“I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess,” Bush added.

When pressed by Gibson, Bush declined to “speculate” on whether he would still have gone to war if he knew Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction.

“That is a do-over that I can’t do,” Bush said.

Now, maybe my memory isn’t correct, but I seem to remember that Bush and Republicans have been saying that if they had to do it all over again, they would. This appears to contradict that.

So why can’t they admit that we don’t belong there and we shouldn’t continue to waste American blood and treasure on what is now widely regarded as one of the biggest foreign policy mistakes in modern American history?

January can get here soon enough…

Amid the turkey and stuffing, I neglected to update everybody on this good news…

In a vote heralded by supporters as a momentous step toward restoring Iraqi sovereignty, lawmakers here passed a crucial bill Thursday, setting out a three-year timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraqi soil.

The bill passed after months of backroom negotiations with the Americans, political arm-twisting by Shiite Muslim Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, and warnings from a small but vocal bloc of hard-line Shiite opponents that the law could be manipulated to keep American soldiers in Iraq indefinitely.

However…

And the whole process could still be derailed in July when, in a concession to Sunni Arab parties, a national referendum is to be held to ratify the accord.

Does anybody believe that the Iraqi people will vote against this? They want the US out as much as the folks in Parliament. In fact, even more so. They’d be foolish not to ratify this thing because it’s the most likely path to fully regaining their sovereignty.

In any event, it looks like we’ll be gone by 2011 and that’s something we can all give thanks for.

Well, they didn’t wait until the last minute to pass this thing, and thank god for that. The last thing Bush needed was not getting this agreement in place and having to deal with troops being in Iraq illegally.

From MSNBC:

BAGHDAD – Iraq’s Cabinet on Sunday approved a security pact with the United States that will allow American forces to stay in Iraq for three years after their U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.

The decision followed months of difficult negotiations and, pending parliamentary approval, will remove a major point of contention between the two allies. Parliament’s deputy speaker, Khalid al-Attiyah, said he expected the 275-member legislature to begin debating the document this week and vote on it by Nov. 24.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said all but one of the 28 Cabinet ministers present in Sunday’s meeting, in addition to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, voted for the pact by a show of hands.

What was the hold up? Well, it was some pretty basic stuff, and I’m glad we gave Iraqis these concessions given that this is their country…

It provides for the departure of U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2011 and gives Iraq the right to try U.S. soldiers and defense contractors in the case of serious crimes committed off-duty and off-base. It also prohibits the U.S. from using Iraqi territory to attack Iraq’s neighbors, like Syria and Iran.

So no more attacks on Syria?

We shall see…