Jaded Sage:

The clock seems to have struck 11:00 PM as the Democratic race enters into a stretch run. With Ohio and Texas looming large in two weeks, we should be able to see much clearer into the crystal ball after those primaries. Hillary has gone negative in ads leading into Tuesday’s primary in Wisconsin.

If Hillary loses in either Ohio or Texas this race is over. If she holds serve and then wins in Pennsylvania then there will be no carriage turning into a pumpkin and this one will drag all the way to the convention in Denver. Lately, even with primaries in Wisconsin and Hawaii this week, there seems to be a pause in the race. It is as if everyone is holding their breath for the big state primaries ahead. Even the goofy add above has this strange “happy” music attached as it attacks Obama. It’s kind of like getting in a fist fight with cartoon music in the background or worse yet, kicking some ass with “Kung Fu Fighting” as your motivational tunage.

Last night, as I’m sure you are fully aware, Obama pulled the trifecta in the Potomac Primaries. John McCain hushed those who claimed the preacher should not be counted out. And then in the minutes following the results Barack Obama came out to a huge crowd in Wisconsin and spoke. He spoke about how McCain was the old guard and pointed at his connection with President Bush. He was eloquent as usual and he spoke as the Democratic nominee (click here for a snippet of the speech). When he was done most cable networks switched over to John McCain. The contrast was stunning. It was as if someone let all the air out of the room. (Click here to see his speech) Notice the people surrounding the two candidates and also the nature of the events. McCain even had old Macaca handy. Does anyone besides me sense the days of the old politics are about to become history? Like a dirge for old despots I give you two videos that remind us all why the 2008 election is significant and detail why Democrats and even some Republicans are so thirsty for change.

Heard about the day
that two skyscrapers came down
Firemen, policemen
And people came from all around
The smoke covered the city
And the body count arise
The president spoke words of comfort
With tears in his eyes
Then he led us as a nation
Into a war all based on lies, oh

…and this one. Thank you Bill Schultz

You may have seen a recent “elect featuring several hip young artists. Not to be outdone, someone who obviously doesn’t care much for the Republican nominee-to-be has entered the fray:

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10:50 PM

In recent articles it seems the Clinton candidacy is holding on by a thread. On the eve of Tuesday’s Potomac Primary there are so-called super delegates that are waffling in their support of Hillary Clinton. Like a modern day Custer (or Bastogne, if you don’t want to be so grim) the New York Senator must have good showings in Ohio and Texas. It appears that a close win there will not do. In Maryland and Virginia, latest polling shows Barack Obama leading significantly. But the stunning data resides in the fact he is leading among women in those states.

Barack Obama has found much success this weekend. After winning Nebraska, Washington, Louisiana, Virgin Islands on Saturday and Maine today the senator from Illinois heads into Tuesday’s Chesapeake Primary with momentum. He is expected to do well in Virginia, Maryland and DC as well. The Clinton campaign is in crisis mode. Her camp manager has stepped down after not wrapping up the nomination on Super Tuesday. It appears the strategy was to have a hold of the Democratic race after last Tuesday’s big primaries. Now the Clinton strategy must be rearranged at a time when the news for them is not good. This weekends primaries and caucuses along with this coming Tuesday’s have all favored Obama. The talk now is the Clinton campaign is eyeing the big state primaries in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania where her 50/50 supporters are more numerous. The 50/50 are those over 50 years old and those who make under $50,000 a year. Along with female voters, these are the core of Hillary’s support. I wonder if waiting for the big states to roll around might be a strategy of “Giuliani light”, referring to the former Mayor’s plan to not compete in the early primary states and prepare for the later primaries in Florida and then Super Tuesday. As other’s won these early primaries, Giuliani was simply forgotten. As Obama rolls through smaller states throughout the nation this weekend and the following days and weeks, will voters not see Hillary as viable? This is the burning question.

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On the Republican side the returns this weekend show the complete dissatisfaction of core conservatives with their candidate. With Romney dropping out of the race so that “we won’t surrender to terror”, Republicans in Kansas and Louisiana chose Huckabee over the candidate that is certain, short of a massive coronary, to win the nomination. Perhaps that is the “miracle” in which Huckabee is referring. In Washington McCain received 26%, Huckabee 24% and Ron Paul (yes, that kooky son-of-a-bitch) received 21% (most of those must have come from the eastern part of the state, next to Idaho). So McCain is competing with an ex-minister who wants to amend the Constitution to outlaw both gay marriage and abortion and also a crazy fringe Representative from Texas. There was a time when Republicans would get behind the anointed candidate. Bush’s disastrous presidency along with McCain’s go-it-alone Congressional history have turned the Vietnam hero into a pariah in his own party.

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Iraq, on the ground, is going well. The momentum the surge has instilled is really breathtaking. But the Iraqi government is as worthless as any government in the region. There is no conciliation going on. In fact as the US is creating peaceful sectors in the Sunni region of Al-Anbar, the Iraqi government won’t fill the economic void because the Shia dominated politicians don’t want to legitimize the Sunni militias that are holding the line.

Read more details from an excellent article written by an ex-marine, Bing West.

In the meantime the Kurds are more and more acting like an autonomous country. Most Kurds don’t even refer to themselves as Iraqi any longer. Their policies have been so independent minded lately that many believe they have overplayed their hand. The Kurds have begun to make their own oil deals and the Shia and the Sunni Iraqis have protested this move, perhaps the only time when the two contentious factions have seen an issue eye to eye.

With just a day to go to Super Bowl Sunday I would like you to take a moment to calm down some and get in the groove like the Schwam. Football is a contact sport with lots of movement. Being a football host and analyst is another animal all together. This is one of my rare moments away from the important issues.

This month marks the 40th anniversary of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. The Tet Offensive was an attempt by communist forces throughout the country to weaken American resolve during the Vietnamese New Year in 1968. On a tactical level the Communist forces were devastated. For a rare moment in the war the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) came out of the shadows where they were ground down by superior American firepower. On a strategic level, however, the Tet Offensive proved to be the turning point that tilted the war in favor of the Communists. The images that were beamed back to American televisions revealed an enemy that did not appear defeated as the then commanding general Westmoreland had bellowed. On the contrary, as the US Embassy was breached it gave the impression the US presence there was under siege. The years that followed saw some of the most deadly fighting of the war. Soon the policy of Vietnamization was the concept that would provide a way out for the US. Handing over the war to the South Vietnamese while the US withdrew proved flawed and fatal for a free, pro-western government in Saigon.

We face a similar decision in Iraq forty years after the Tet Offensive. Bush’s policy has been to “stand down when the Iraqis are able to stand up”.  Joseph Galloway writes in the Miami Herald about death squads in Iraq and how they are attempting to kill the head of the snakes that have stepped up to fight Al-Qaeda forces. There is also tensions within Iraq between the Sunni tribes and the Shia majority. If Moqtada Al-Sadr resumes his campaign against the Sunni in the coming months or years Iraq will again descend into chaos. Currently we are arming and training the Iraqi army which is made up of mostly Shia Muslims. We are also arming and financing the Sunni militia and their new “Awakening Councils” that are currently battling Al-Qaeda in Iraq forces. This has become the equivalent of our Vietnamization policy in Iraq. The difference is we are in effect arming both sides of the divide in the hope that there will be reconciliation. But what will  happen if the two sides slip away from each other. With training, arms and religious fervor a new stage in the history of Iraq would be like the Lebanon civil war on steroids. We are pinning our hopes on the new Iraqi government and the bravery of US soldiers. Like in Vietnam, an early withdrawal means almost certainly that Iraq will fail. But a continued US commitment does not guarantee success there.

We study history for a reason. The true lessons that can be learned from both conflicts is not to enter into war when we don’t understand the dynamics of the nation we have invaded and, when either nationalism and/or religion are in the mix the result of the war will never be assured. Finally, when the government we are supporting is weak only a continued presence by American forces will make victory a possibility. The question for both wars is how long will it take for the host nation to take over the mantle of power?

We know what happened in Vietnam. We did not continue the commitment for viable reasons and the nation along with large portions of Southeast Asia flowed red under communist rule. In Iraq, the enemy and the conditions are different. There is no political division, but there is an ideological and a sectarian division. Are any of these factions truly on our side? Perhaps one could say the Iraqi government is and if they fail we will lose any influence we may have in Mesopotamia. In essence, if the fledgling Iraqi government fails, we fail. These are the lines that are drawn as we contemplate the implication of the 40th anniversary of the Tet Offensive and the lesson’s we learned from the US policy of Vietnamization and the withdrawal from Vietnam.

I know this is beating a dead horse but I have to pass on data that a pair of think tanks gathered in relation to the US going to war in Iraq. These two groups, the Center For Public Integrity and the Fund For Independence in Journalism counted the number of false statements the Bush administration concocted between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. The total: 935. You may have known some prevaricators in your lifetime but I bet no one you know has lied to you 935 times. And just think of all the conservatives who got their panties in a knot over Monicagate (sorry about the pun). These 935 instances of deceptiveness are broken down into those within the administration who have spoken the most falsehoods (I am running out of synonyms for the word lying). Bush led with 259 instances, 232 dealing with weapons of mass destruction alone. Powell actually led the way  over WMDs with 244 utterances. The following quotes come directly from the Center for Public Integrity.

• “1) On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney’s assertions went well beyond his agency’s assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, “Our reaction was, ‘Where is he getting this stuff from?’ ”
• 2) In the closing days of September 2002, with a congressional vote fast approaching on authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, Bush told the nation in his weekly radio address: “The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. . . . This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.” A few days later, similar findings were also included in a much-hurried National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction — an analysis that hadn’t been done in years, as the intelligence community had deemed it unnecessary and the White House hadn’t requested it.
• 
• 3) In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: “Sure.” In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of “compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda.” What’s more, an earlier DIA assessment said that “the nature of the regime’s relationship with  Al Qaeda is unclear.”
• 4) On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish TV, President Bush declared: “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories.” But as journalist Bob Woodward reported in State of Denial, days earlier a team of civilian experts dispatched to examine the two mobile labs found in Iraq had concluded in a field report that the labs were not for biological weapons. The team’s final report, completed the following month, concluded that the labs had probably been used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons.
• 5) On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush asserted: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.” Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase agreement “probably is a hoax.”
• 6) On February 5, 2003, in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Powell said: “What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources.” As it turned out, however, two of the main human sources to which Powell referred had provided false information. One was an Iraqi con artist, code-named “Curveball,” whom American intelligence officials were dubious about and in fact had never even spoken to. The other was an Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who had reportedly been sent to Eqypt by the CIA and tortured and who later recanted the information he had provided. Libi told the CIA in January 2004 that he had “decided he would fabricate any information interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government].”
• Vote well this year, eh?

During these days our military in Iraq is executing Operation Phantom Phoenix. Al-Qaeda has fled Baghdad for the most part and order has been restored by US forces and Sahwa (awakening) brigades, made up of local armed residents. The improved security has enabled US forces to go after the locations where Al-Qaeda has fled. This year I have had the opportunity to talk to a three tour Iraq War vet. He informed me the terrorists used palm groves and animal pens as hideouts to avoid contact. As part of the current operations, the US has employed 18 tones of bombs to destroy suspected jihadists in a swath of date palm groves near Arab Jabour.

This area southeast of Baghdad is predominantly Sunni. The places where Al-Qaeda can flee is narrowing. Some have said this may be the last significant battle that needs to be fought against AQI (Al-Qaeda in Iraq). Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, is also included in the offensive. The most important city there is Baqouba which AQI has termed the “Capital of the Caliphate”. The endgame in terms of the famed organization in Iraq appears to be at hand. This is just one component of the war but it is an important one. If we want to leave Iraq, we need to see the sectarian hostilities in the country die down. AQI has been fueling that tension and their removal is vital to tamp down hostilities.

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I have just completed a book entitled House to House. It tells the true story of an American Army sergeant during the Battle of Fallujah in 2004. Anyone who is determined to go to war on the notion that the enterprise is glorious and exciting should read this book. It reads like a horror story and defines the core nature of war. I have read hundreds of accounts of men in war and this book shocked me like few have.

I am not shy in telling people I have a plethora of problems with the current President. So many in fact that there isn’t enough time left on this Wednesday evening to write them all. But what I am experiencing these days is just plain strange. I am seeing not just poor leadership but a complete void of leadership. By most accounts the situation in Iraq is going much better. Military deaths are down as are Iraqi civilian deaths. Would you know this if you didn’t pay close attention to what is going on in the Middle East? I am certain the average American doesn’t have a clue to what is transpiring in our largest war since Vietnam. I’m not saying we are winning the war in Iraq but the conditions have improved considerably in the past six months and what do you hear? Crickets chirping. Silence. The leader of the free world has lost his voice. After the sacrifice of over 4000 military personnel don’t you think the President has an obligation to tout what is occurring? General David Petraeus put out a New Year’s communiqué to the troops about what is transpiring. It is worth a read. In it he outlines the progress and the challenges ahead in Iraq. As the first Americans prepare to caucus in Iowa tomorrow wouldn’t it be productive if they comprehended the current conditions of the war? I’m sure the one man who has been championing the validity of the surge strategy in Iraq, Senator John McCain, would greatly appreciate a boost from the President; especially after what George Bush did to McCain in South Carolina in 2000. For so long many Americans have desired to move past the Bush presidency and strangely enough, it seems that we are both there and not there. Up until the NIE report which announced Iran had given up its nuclear program in 2003, the Bush Administration seemed to use its quarrel with Ahmedinejad like food that fueled its raison d’etre. But the NIE report has sucked the oxygen from the room. Even when Bhutto was assassinated the President appeared briefly, made a simple comment condemning the action, and retreated back into the White House. Isn’t January the month when the President gives the State of the Union Address? I haven’t heard a lick about that either. The nation is rudderless with a full year to go until inauguration day.  If anyone is reading this in Washington DC, could you please drive by the White House and see if there are any lights on? 

There is much talk about Iraq moving off American’s top issues for the 2008 election. American soldiers are still dying, just not like they were before the surge. Iraqis are still dying, just not like they were before the surge. And that is my good news. Juan Cole explains in his blog Informed Comment the situation away from the surge is not going well at all (click here)

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Supporting Musharraf reminds me of American Foreign Policy during the Cold War. It wasn’t uncommon for the US to support any leader as long as they were anti-communist. The sentiment now is we support leaders as long as they are anti-terrorist. The President of Pakistan took the reigns of power via a military coup. It is always easier to support a pro-US dictator than it is to support an anti-American democratic leader. Look at the US intervention in Guatemala during the Eisenhower administration. One problem we have with General Musharraf is his government was actively supporting the Taliban and thus Al-Qaeda before 9-11 and we know now there are elements in his government that still share pro Al-Qaeda sentiments. Musharraf has changed his tune and has claimed to have “played ball” with the US. The biggest issue we have, however, is Musharraf has many reasons to not track down and kill Osama Bin Laden. Actually he has billions of reasons in the form of US dollars. If Al-Qaeda was neutralized in Pakistan the US would do what they always do. They would turn their attention elsewhere and take their checkbook with them. Musharraf receives billions of dollars in aid, much of it simply disappears into the oblivion of the corrupt Pakistani government infrastructure with little to show for it. The death of Bhutto has shone a nasty little light into the corner of the world where we should be most active. While the nation has been laboring over the Bush war in Iraq, our policy in the eastern recesses of the Middle East has been festering like a bad sore when the wrong medicine is used. It is a shame it took the death of Benazir Bhutto for the nation to reexamine our relationship with Musharraf and Pakistan but it is one that was a long time in coming. Perhaps the surge in Iraq didn’t allow the Iraqi government to get its act together. Rather, it allowed the US public to take a breath and to reassess its lack of attention to the region of the Middle East that brought us September 11.

“I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”

            George W. Bush     September 14, 2001