Month: December 2006

Wind-breaking news, that is.

In what must count as one of the slowest epiphanies of the post-Soviet era, Glenn Reynolds seems to have concluded that maybe, just maybe, the Iraq war has not been the f*cking awesomest thing ever. So what’s a shameless, logorrheic warmonger to do? Host a “blog symposium on Iraq, Iran, and Syria,” of course! Sez Glenn:

I want some new ideas – beyond “cut and run” or “stay the course” – on things we’re not doing that we should be doing.

And where’s the first place he looks for new ideas? Duh! Charles Krauthammer’s latest essay at National Review.

For more reasons than you would ever need to ignore Glenn Reynolds for the rest of eternity, click here.

According to a CNN story linked to by this site today, nine U.S. troops were killed in Iraq over the weekend.  Let’s stop and think for a minute what this means. It means that nine families were told today by the U.S. government that their father, husband, son, or brother died in Iraq. It means that nine families have nothing to celebrate this Christmas. It means that nine families are experiencing untold grief and anguish. What makes all of this even worse, of course, is that these dead U.S. soldiers died for a lie. Do the families of these soldiers realize this? I can’t imagine the disgust I would feel if one of my family members died for this administration’s Iraq policy. When oh when will Congress stop funding this senseless war?

To see the effect of this war on the freedom of the press, note that the 2006 Press Freedom Index from Reporters Without Borders ranks the United States 53rd out of 168 countries. Finland, Iceland, Ireland, and the Netherlands tied for first place. The United States was tied with Botswana, Croatia, and Tonga.

Amid all the hysteria emanating from the British tabloid press (or do I repeat myself?) over l’affaire Litvinenko, the facts are not fitting the original narrative of a KGB hit against a heroic “human rights” crusader. UPI reports the latest in this developing story:

“Russia’s nuclear agency said the country is no longer producing radioactive polonium-210, the substance that killed a former KGB spy in Britain. An unidentified spokesman for the Federal Agency for Nuclear Power in Moscow said Monday that the only facility capable of producing the isotope was closed two years ago, the Novosti news agency reported.

“The spokesman said just 8 grams of polonium-210 have been created from reserve stocks of uranium.

“‘We have supplied it (polonium-210) to U.S. companies, and there were deliveries to British firms. The 8 grams we have produced cannot have disappeared in Russia, but we do not keep track of the material after selling it,’ the source said.”

This should be relatively easy to verify, given that Russia adheres to the Nonproliferation Treaty and its nuclear facilities are routinely inspected by the IAEA. If the Russians are telling the truth, then the polonium couldn’t have been procured in their country: if they are caught in a lie, then the cloud of suspicion hanging over the Kremlin will start emitting lightning bolts.

As Antiwar.com columnist Gordon Prather points out, polonium-210 is proscribed by the NPT. There are, however, nuclear-armed states that refuse to sign the Nonproliferation Treaty — and, in one case, won’t even acknowledge its longstanding membership in the nuclear club. Investigators hunting down the assassin’s polonium source might want to start here, and then go here.

Robert M. Gates, the man slated to fill the “stuff happens” combat boots of Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, offered his first cautious pass at the lessons of the Iraq War this week. In a questionnaire he filled out for the Senate Armed Services Committee in preparation for his upcoming confirmation hearings, he responded to a query about what he would have done differently with the following, according to the Associated Press:

“‘War planning should be done with the understanding that post-major combat phase of operations can be crucial,’ Gates said in a 65-page written response submitted to the committee Tuesday. ‘If confirmed, I intend to improve the department’s capabilities in this area…With the advantage of hindsight, I might have done some things differently.'”

With the advantage of “hindsight”… hmmm.

So, let’s see if we can get this straight: With hindsight, his lesson would be that, in the next Iraq-style invasion and occupation, we should focus more on that “post-major combat phase” – a nice phrase that resonates with our President’s famed “mission accomplished” moment on May 1, 2003 aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, when he announced that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

Of course, by then, a lot of “stuff” had already happened and Baghdad, as well as much of the rest of Iraq had been thoroughly looted. But assumedly the new Secretary of Defense has learned his lesson: More troops for the occupation, more well-trained US MPs for the streets, a few people who actually speak the language of whatever invaded countries we might end up in, and maybe a good strongman in our pocket, not to speak of an undisbanded army of well-trained locals to keep him and us company.

It’s so early in the “withdrawal” game and yet Gates’ sad answer sums up the sad state of what passes for debate right now in the mainstream, including among the members of James Baker’s Iraq Study Group.

Of course, there’s only one lesson of the Iraq War to start with, the sort of lesson that parents tell kids every day: Don’t do it!

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a Secretary of Defense who, having absorbed the lessons of this war, would begin planning to do no planning for future invasions of Iraq-like countries, not to speak of the post-major combat phases of such invasions. But we might as well wish for the confirmation of Tinkerbell.

Cross-posted from The Nation blog. Visit TomDispatch for more Tom Engelhardt.