iraq

The conservatives attending this week's Conservative Political Action Conference are generally hawkish when it comes to foreign policy, but they applauded Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) on Friday when he told them the US has no choice but to get out of Iraq.

"Part of the reasons why we lost this last election was the foreign policy issue," Paul insisted. "Generally speaking, the presidential candidate who argues the case for less war-mongering will win the election."

Paul noted that George Bush ran in 2000 on a pledge to end Bill Clinton's nation-building, but then he "joined the idea that the American taxpayers -- you -- have an obligation to take care of everybody and police the world."

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"So yeah," Paul acknowledged. "We want to get rid of a bad guy in Iraq -- we did. But ... another one million Iraqis got killed. Believe me, they weren't all terrorists. ... But nevertheless, it pleased Osama bin Laden."

Really, the war on terror is too expensive? We shouldn't have invaded Iraq because they had no WMDs? Christ, it took you this long to figure it out? Oh and Osama is still running around his mountain cave home laughing at us? And we've managed to give millions of people around the world some pretty legit reasons for hating us?

Way to go, the last eight years have been a complete waste of time.

So here, too, George W. Bush has let us down. Even the banality of evil is too grandiose a concept for 43. He is not a memorable villain so much as a sometimes affable second banana whom Josh Brolin and Will Ferrell can nail without breaking a sweat. He's the reckless Yalie Tom Buchanan, not Gatsby. He is smaller than life.

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Bush's first and last photo-ops in Iraq could serve as bookends to his entire tenure. On Thanksgiving weekend 2003, even as the Iraqi insurgency was spiraling, his secret trip to the war zone was a P.R. slam-dunk. The photo of the beaming commander in chief bearing a supersized decorative turkey for the troops was designed to make every front page and newscast in the country, and it did. Five years later, in what was intended as a farewell victory lap to show off Iraq's improved post-surge security, Bush was reduced to ducking shoes.

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The joke was on us. Iraq burned, New Orleans flooded, and Bush remained oblivious to each and every pratfall on his watch. Americans essentially stopped listening to him after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, but he still doesn't grasp the finality of their defection. Lately he's promised not to steal the spotlight from Barack Obama once he's in retirement -- as if he could do so by any act short of running naked through downtown Dallas. The latest CNN poll finds that only one-third of his fellow citizens want him to play a post-presidency role in public life.

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Bush kept America safe (provided his presidency began Sept. 12, 2001). He gave America record economic growth (provided his presidency ended December 2007). He vanquished all the leading Qaeda terrorists (if you don't count the leaders bin Laden and al-Zawahri). He gave Afghanistan a thriving "market economy" (if you count its skyrocketing opium trade) and a "democratically elected president" (presiding over one of the world's most corrupt governments). He supported elections in Pakistan (after propping up Pervez Musharraf past the point of no return). He "led the world in providing food aid and natural disaster relief" (if you leave out Brownie and Katrina).

In authorizing an invasion in 2002, Congress did not give President Bush a blank check. It explicitly limited the use of force to two purposes: to "defend the national security of the US from the threat posed by Iraq" and "enforce all relevant UN Security Council resolutions."

Five years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the government of Iraq no longer poses a threat. Our continuing intervention has been based on the second clause of Congress' grant of war-making power. Coalition troops have been acting under a series of Security Council resolutions authorizing the continuing occupation of Iraq. But this year, Bush allowed the UN mandate to expire on December 31 without requesting a renewal. At precisely one second after midnight, Congress' authorization of the war expired along with this mandate.

Bush is trying to fill the legal vacuum with the new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) he signed with the Iraqis. But the president's agreement is unconstitutional, since it lacks the approval of Congress

The Bush administration is considering the withdrawal of additional combat forces from Iraq beginning in September, according to administration and military officials, raising the prospect of a far more ambitious plan than expected only months ago.

Just in time for the election!

Torture doesn't work. In fact, in a counterinsurgency it works against you because it turns the locals against you. That is why the Marines took that guy back to his house. Because they knew we were trying to win that neighborhood's trust, and torturing one of their own was not the way to do it, even if he was working with the Muj. Kill him in open battle, sure, they would understand that, but not torture. It backfires on you everytime. Every story about our hapless spook operators torturing some terror suspect makes every Marine and soldier patrolling through the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan less safe.

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

Lets stop chasing oil and use something else.

Mr. KUCINICH. Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 2 of rule IX, I rise to give notice of my intent to raise a question of the privileges of the House.

The form of the resolution is as follows:

Resolved, That President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate...

While the newly released memo focuses on "asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators," it contains a footnote referencing another Administration memo that caught our eye:

... our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.

"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network," Yoo wrote. "In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."

I love how the ends now justify the means.

JOHN YOO'S hitherto secret memo justifying the use of harsh interrogation tactics has finally been declassified and released. As legal scholar Marty Lederman observes, it is hard to see any real justification for having kept the document under lock and key for so long--except, I suppose, that it makes clear there's no wondrous legal proof lurking behind the curtains here, just Mr Yoo's rather extreme (and by now depressingly familiar) view that there is no law higher than presidential whim in time of war. Or, as he puts it, "it is for the President alone to decide what methods to use to best prevail against the enemy."

Local mirror of John Yoo's memo authorizing torture