I’m not sure how many of you read the article I wrote this morning about the Pentagon’s “troop cut freeze” in Iraq. I’m not just mentioning it here because I’m hoping to get my readership up (though if that’s a side effect, I sure won’t complain), rather I write this because of an article on the exact same topic that CNN.com put up around the same time.

While my story is based on the reports already out there publicly, CNN sites all sorts of “sources”. Both articles say much the same thing, but what strikes me is the dramatically different tone.

On 9/11/07, General Petraeus predicted the troop level would be down to 130,000 by this summer. In April of this year, the AP said the pause would leave over 100,000 troops in Iraq by the time President Bush leaves office. The reality is that 146,000 troops are still there, and the Pentagon is urging the President to keep them there until he is out of office. Then, and only then, they suggest that 7,500 troops could be pulled out of Iraq, and most of them would end up in Afghanistan. These are the facts as I presented then this morning. Here is what CNN said:

The top U.S. general in Iraq is recommending nearly 8,000 troop cuts in Iraq because of the improving situation there, a source close to the process has told CNN.

Nowhere is it mentioned that what they’re actually proposing is a several-month-long further delay of already planned troop cuts. And what is the deal with “because of the improving situation there” featuring so prominently in the opening paragraph? What sense does that make? The situation has improved so much that a year later we still can’t reduce troops to the pre-surge level the General in charge predicted a year ago when he said the surge had accomplished all its goals? Can someone explain that to me?

John McCain performed a miracle tonight.

He made Bob Dole’s 1996 Republican presidential acceptance speech look downright eloquent.

Shizam, McCain’s performance - at least for the first 40 minutes of the speech - made Bob Dole sound like the combination of Daniel Webster, John F. Kennedy, and Cicero thrown in for good measure.

McCain seemed to be reciting lame lines - until he got to near the end, when he immersed himself and his groveling audience with the real reason why he is entitled to rule America and the world.

And his riff on Georgia? I hope the media and commentators focus on his falsehood that Russia initiated the conflict. How many American mothers and fathers are willing to sacrifice their sons and daughters to move a boundary line a few miles in the Caucasus? And what do McCain or his top aides expect to receive in return for risking American security for Georgia?

Most of you have seen the video of Amy Goodman’s outrageous arrest at the Republican convention protests.

You may be surprised to learn that charges against her and two of her producers are still pending. Charges against producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar include felony riot charges.

The public information officer of the St. Paul police department can be contacted at: 651-266-5735.

Here is the video of Goodman’s arrest and the subsequent news conference by the police.

MSNBC and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) are reporting that Gov. Palin met this afternoon with the board of directors of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Sen. Joe Lieberman to, in the words of one McCain campaign official cited by MSNBC, put “the American Jewish community at ease over her understanding of US-Middle East relations.” It’s worth noting that Palin, who has obviously been completely off-limits to reporters since she was rolled out as McCain’s running-mate in Dayton Friday, stiffed a reception in her honor sponsored by none other than Phyllis Schlafly a couple hours later. (One wonders what other lobbies have tried to arrange a meeting with Palin in the last 96 hours and with what success.)

“We had a good productive discussion on the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and we were pleased that Gov. Palin expressed her deep, personal, and lifelong commitment to the safety and well-being of Israel,” AIPAC spokesman Josh Block said after the meeting. “Like Sen. McCain, the vice presidential nominee understands and believes in the special friendship between the two democracies and would work to expand and deepen the strategic partnership in a McCain/Palin Administration.”

“She was extremely well received,” McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb said, noting that Palin was interrupted by applause twice,” according to the JTA account. He added that Palin spoke about “the relationship between Israel and American national security, and the threats to Israel from Iran and others.”

Evidence of nervousness in the McCain campaign about Palin’s impact on Jewish voters and donors was made clear when the Likudist Republican Jewish Coalition circulated a video of her Alaska office in which it found a small Israeli flag, in the words of Politico, “poking out from behind a drape.”

“I think it speaks volumes that she keeps an Israeli flag on the wall of her office,” RJC’s executive director, Matt Brooks, told Politico in an e-mail. “It clearly shows what’s in her heart.” Politico’s analysis is well worth reading. As I noted Friday, a Nexis search of the two years previous to her selection as McCain’s running-mate failed to find a single published article in which Palin ever mentioned Israel. I suspect it may make it into her acceptance speech Wednesday night.

It hasn’t been easy to find anything about Sarah Palin’s positions on foreign policy issues, but this clip from a speech to her church gives a clue:

“Pray for our military. He [Palin's son] is going to be deployed in September to Iraq – pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right for this country – that our leaders, our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God, that’s what he have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan and that it is God’s plan.” (about 6 min into the clip)

When someone from Mother Jones wrote me a few weeks ago with a minor question about one of my LewRockwell.com articles on overseas U.S. troops I had no idea what the magazine was up to. You must check out interactive map that Mother Jones has prepared on U.S. military presence worldwide. This is the most exhaustive piece of work on this subject that I have ever seen.

Will McCain or Obama do anything to reduce the number of U.S. troops overseas? I am not holding my breath.

Charley Reese’s columns have been a staple at Antiwar.com since the early days. Back in the 90’s, we carried Charley’s columns from the Orlando Sentinel where he wrote and edited for 30 years.

Since 2001, we have featured his insightful columns regularly. Charley has had some medical problems and has decided to go into full retirement. We wish him well.

This weekend we feature his farewell column. Of course, we will continue to offer his past columns on his archive page. For those who have asked for contact information for Charley, we only have this address: Charley Reese, P.O. Box 2446, Orlando, FL 32802.

Goodbye Charley.

One would think that a coast guard vessel has a fairly straight forward task: patrol the littoral waters surrounding the country.

However, it appears that the US coast guard, like the national guard, has a history of being used in imperial warfare.  For instance, the USCGC Dallas, the largest coast guard ship currently in commission, has just made a pit stop in Georgia.  Not the Peach State, but rather in the Black Sea near the Caucasus.

And while the federal government officially states that the ship is conducting humanitarian aid, based on its previous history (active in the Vietnam war theater as well as Kosovo in 1999), one could surmise that its appearance is more than coincidence.

To give the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt, it should be noted that numerous coast guard vessels are perpetually deployed in forward stations across the globe.  However, this again illustrates the vast geographic expanse that the imperial state attempts to command and control.

Or are there a lot of Cuban refugees attempting to ford the Bosporus?  Is the Dallas practicing hurricane relief techniques from tropical storm experts in Asia minor?  Is someone really arguing that the USCG is actually protecting the shores of Corpus Christi and Mertyl Beach by tacking around in Russia’s bathtub?

See also:
Who Started Cold War II?
And None Dare Call It Treason
Is Not Western Hypocrisy Astonishing?
Does Bush Want War With Russia?

Listen to the great Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, interview John V. Denson, author of A Century of War: Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt, about the sort of World War revisionism that I would hope you’d have a chance to hear.

MP3 here. (10:00)

I was really surprised by the news, first reported by Laura Rozen on her blog on Mother Jones, that Michael Ledeen, who had been under Richard Perle’s wing at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) for some 20 years, has moved to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) and taken his “Freedom” chair with him. I have no inside information on the reasons for the move (I was declared persona non grata at AEI five years ago and told I shouldn’t try to attend any of its events) , and don’t buy his own explanation, although his reference to a “rising” FDD suggests his association there might be more lucrative, particularly as FDD, which earlier this year suffered major Democratic defections, is competing strongly for Sheldon Adelson’s largess. (And I have no doubt at all that Ledeen’s obsession with Iran would definitely appeal to the multi-billionaire casino magnate who reportedly shares that obsession).

One possible explanation is that the AEI’s incoming president (as of Jan. 1), Syracuse University Prof. Arthur Brooks, is hoping that AEI’s public image on foreign policy — dominated as it has been for so long by hard-line neo-cons like Perle — might be softened somewhat. But, while Ledeen clearly belongs on the radical fringe (just read his latest article in the National Review Online (NRO) on how Russia has joined the “terror masters” in Tehran and Damascus and how China is about to invade Taiwan), he’s certainly not nearly as visible as someone like former UN Amb. John Bolton, a bona fide extremist (albeit more nationalist than neo-con). On the other hand, Bolton’s frequent op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and the Telegraph, if not his cachet as a Bush alumnus willing to denounce his former boss as an appeaser to the mainstream press, no doubt raises a lot more money for AEI. By contrast, Ledeen’s relative obscurity probably attracts only a few grateful donors.

Indeed, apart from National Review Online, on which he appears to be publishing less and less, Ledeen has become lincreasingly invisible over the last couple of years, rarely participating even in AEI forums, so his departure may be due to the fact that he’s simply not producing enough. (I understand that his colleague, Joshua Muravchik, has recently been complaining worryingly to friends that AEI management has been pressing him to publish more.) In fact, a quick review of Nexis over the past three years shows that his annual article output for NRO has fallen quite sharply from more than 40 in the Aug 2005-06 period to just 18 in the last Aug 2007-08 period, which is particularly remarkable given all the speculation over the past year about attacking Iran. His television appearances also declined over the past two years, while his latest book, The Iranian Time Bomb (Sept 2007), was all but ignored by the major newspapers (with the exception of the New York Times which predictably panned it).

I would think that FDD, while certainly part of the same Likudist network as AEI’s Middle East cadre, marks a major comedown in prestige and power for Ledeen, and I have a hard time believing that he would go there willingly unless he were offered significantly more money than he is able to earn from his AEI perch. In Time Bomb, Ledeen stressed what a “singular blessing” it has been to work at AEI “where I can find out most anything I need to know by walking down the hall and asking some brilliant and collegial person.” And he singled out for praise the outgoing DeMuth who, he noted, has “always supported my work…” So, was he pushed, or did he jump? Either way, it’s an intriguing development.

Something made me perk up this morning, going through the weekend’s news. After two weeks of reading about South Ossetia’s irregulars, the militiamen blamed for everything from looting to attempted genocide, in the periphery of news stories, this morning I read this in the Washington Post:

In Khetagurovo, housewife Ofelia Dzhanyeva said she had lost her brother during the war in the early 1990s when South Ossetia threw off Georgian control, and after the latest conflict nothing would induce Ossetians to accept Tbilisi’s rule.

“None of the Ossetians is even thinking of reconciliation with Georgia now,” she said. “In 1991 our children turned into refugees. Now they have grown up to defend their homeland.”

She’s talking about the 1991-92 South Ossetia War, when the Ossetians declared independence from Georgian rule, and Georgia retaliated by invading the territory. The children who suffered in that conflict grew up internalizing simmering hatreds. When Georgia once again attacked this year, bombing South Ossetian villages, they finally had a chance to unleash their pent-up rage. The comportment of the official South Ossetian Army, some 2500-3000 men, was eclipsed by the rampaging of nearly 20,000 irregulars.

A cease-fire was agreed upon in the 90s conflict, but officials cannot sign away the damage done to a generation of young people by their policies. The latest conflict, with its thousands of refugees, may be setting the stage for the next generation of children obsessed with revenge. Official independence, especially if only recognized by Russia, isn’t likely to paper over those wounds.

Even though the scale of this conflict is relatively tiny, with “mere” tens of thousands of refugees, the entire world has been in some way affected. Western-Russian relations are at the lowest point since the cold war — and one shudders to think of the possibilities if Georgia had been allowed to join NATO.

Now consider the numbers we’re dealing with in Iraq. A “ripening,” so to speak, of the personal crises of every young Iraqi may be 10-15 years in the future. Barring a far-reaching patching up of grievances between Westerners and Iraqis, as well as between groups throughout that ethnic maze, the world might be in for another South Ossetia — times 1000.

“CIA More Fully Denies Deception About Iraq” - in today’s Washington Post.

The subhead should have read: “This Time We Are Not Lying Like Weasels - We Swear!”

The Post article on the CIA’s reaction to Ron Suskind’s revelations included this tidbit from the CIA’s prepared statement:
“To state what should be obvious, it is not the policy or practice of this Agency to violate American law.”
Obvious perhaps to some of the bootlickers in the DC press corps.