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me@rescam.org

Rummy

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

Justice for Saddam
Death is the right sentence

November 9, 2006

An Iraqi court gave Saddam Hussein the verdict and sentence he deserved: guilty of mass murder, death by hanging. This is appropriate justice for one of the modern world's most evil tyrants.

Ironically, the crimes for which Saddam was convicted and sentenced to death are among his lesser atrocities. The torture and execution of 148 men and boys rounded up in the town of Dujail after a failed assassination attempt against Saddam in 1982 hardly begin to describe the horrors he inflicted.

Mass graves containing the remains of at least 300,000 Iraqis murdered by Saddam's regime have been found and excavated. Thousands of Kurdish Iraqi civilians, among them babies in their mothers' arms, were gassed to death in chemical weapons attacks on Saddam's orders in 1988. For decades, Saddam's secret police, the feared Mukhabarat, tortured and murdered anyone suspected of opposing Saddam. Rape rooms and torture chambers were staples of his reign of terror, aptly dubbed the republic of fear.

Saddam's lawyers complain his trial was unfair, a product of “victor's justice.” It was not. International legal experts generally agree that the documented evidence against Saddam was convincing and that he and his co-defendants were given ample opportunity to defend themselves. Moreover, this was an Iraqi court operating under Iraqi law. Certainly it was an infinitely fairer trial than Saddam ever accorded any of his victims.

Saddam's death sentence will be automatically appealed to a panel of judges. If it is upheld, Saddam could go to the gallows in a matter of months. Our own preference would be to wait until Saddam's subsequent trials on even more serious charges are completed before conducting the execution. But either way, Saddam Hussein is headed for the fate he deserves – held accountable by history and his countrymen for horrendous crimes against humanity.

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me@rescam.org

DAVID IGNATIUS
THE WASHINGTON POST

Bush sheds his Rumsfeld problem

November 9, 2006

Senior military officers referred to it as “the 7,000-mile screwdriver.” That was their way of describing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's penchant for micromanaging aspects of the Iraq war that interested him. And it's one reason why the military will be happy today that Rumsfeld is leaving – even happier, maybe, than Democrats, who have claimed an early scalp for their election victory.

To the end, even when Rumsfeld must have known that his time in the job was short, he wouldn't give up that option to meddle with his field commanders. When Marine Gen. James Jones, the retiring NATO commander, went to see Rumsfeld a few weeks ago to talk about becoming commander of Centcom, he asked whether Rumsfeld intended to continue his direct line of communication with the theater commander, Gen. George Casey, sometimes bypassing Centcom. When Rumsfeld wouldn't rule out such contacts, Jones began to doubt the Centcom job would work. And when Rumsfeld said he didn't foresee significant changes in Iraq strategy, Jones withdrew his name from consideration.

Changes in Iraq are coming, and Rumsfeld's departure is, to paraphrase the prayer book, the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual process. The Bush administration in recent weeks has – very much in secret – begun to ask itself the unutterable question: Is the Iraq strategy working? Can we achieve our goals with the tools we have? If not, how do we adjust the tools and goals so that they fit?

Rumsfeld long ago became the symbol for a war he began to doubt at least three years ago when he wrote his famous memo predicting that Iraq would be a “long, hard slog.” That memo illustrated the best of Rumsfeld's intellectual style: He asked whether U.S. tactics were creating new terrorists faster than we were killing the existing ones and mused: “Are the changes we have and are making too modest and incremental? My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?”

That was the upside of Rumsfeld – a willingness to question received wisdom, a penchant for challenging the pet projects of the military, like the Army's plan to build a monster artillery piece, inaptly named the “Crusader,” which would be difficult to move quickly to any modern battlefield. Rumsfeld was convinced that the Army needed to become more mobile, agile and expeditionary. The Army accepted some of his ideas about transformation, but deep down, senior generals were convinced that his policies would break the Army.

Oddly enough, it was the generals who helped keep Rumsfeld in his job. The White House had decided last spring that it was time to make a change at the Pentagon, and officials were steeling themselves to break the news to Rumsfeld when the “generals' revolt” erupted on newspaper op-ed pages, with former officers lining up to denounce their ex-boss. The White House decided it couldn't appear to bow to pressure and retreated.

Rumsfeld's gift was his brilliance and intellectual toughness. He kept his head up, even as the war in Iraq went from bad to awful. In that, he was a harder man even than one of his predecessors, Robert McNamara, who in his final year running the Vietnam War began to crack privately under the pressure. Rumsfeld embodied the prep school injunction: Never let them see you sweat. But the downside with Rumsfeld was so great that few people are likely to remember the upside.

Robert Gates will bring to the job the attentive style of a listener. He rose at the CIA in the early 1980s by making himself indispensable to his boss, William Casey. He was the brightest Soviet analyst in the shop, so Casey soon appointed him deputy director overseeing his fellow analysts. I once waded through Gates' doctoral dissertation in Soviet studies at Georgetown. It was a work of solid, earnest scholarship – good, but not flashy. Rumsfeld might have described it as a long, hard slog. But it illustrates Gates' best qualities: His intellectual seriousness, his professionalism, his lack of “side,” as the British say of good civil servants.

Gates represents the ascension of Bush 41 people and ideas to the Bush 43 administration. Bush Sr. rescued Gates after he was rejected as CIA director in 1987 because of his role in the Iran-contra scandal, bringing him to the National Security Council staff and then appointing him CIA director in 1991. Gates is not a turfy person – he “plays well with others” – a quality that Rumsfeld often lacked.

Gates will bring something else to the table, and it may be a crucial factor in the months ahead. He came back into the Bush administration's spotlight because of his work as a member of the Iraq Study Group, headed by Bush 41 Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton. Gates embodies the group's effort to find a bipartisan policy for Iraq. In that sense, he will go to the Pentagon with an invisible mission statement that can be summed up in two words: “Exit Strategy.” He won't want to leave Iraq quickly or dangerously, but unlike Rumsfeld, he won't fight the problem.

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me@rescam.org

GEORGE F. WILL
THE WASHINGTON POST

Conservatism didn't die in election

November 9, 2006

At least Republicans now know where “the bridge to nowhere” leads: to the political wilderness. But there are three reasons for conservatives to temper their despondency.

First, they were punished not for pursuing but for forgetting conservatism. Second, they admire market rationality, and the political market has worked. Third, on various important fronts, conservatism continued its advance Tuesday.

Of course the election-turning issue was not that $223 million bridge in Alaska, or even the vice of which it is emblematic – incontinent spending by a Republican-controlled Congress trying to purchase permanent power. Crass spending (the farm and highway bills, the nearly eightfold increase in the number of earmarks since 1994) and other pandering (e.g., the Terri Schiavo intervention) has intensified as Republicans' memories of why they originally sought power have faded.

But Republicans sank beneath the weight of Iraq, the lesson of which is patent: Wars of choice should be won swiftly rather than lost protractedly. On election eve the president, perhaps thinking one should not tinker with success, promised that his secretary of defense would remain. That promise perished yesterday as a result of Tuesday's repudiation of Republican stewardship that, though emphatic, was not inordinate, considering the offense that provoked it – war leadership even worse than during the War of 1812.

Tuesday's House result – the end of 12 years of Republican control – was normal; the reason for it was unprecedented. The Democrats' 40 years of control of the House before 1994 was aberrant: In the 140 years since 1866, the first post-Civil War election, party control of the House has now changed 15 times – an average of once every 9.3 years. But never before has a midterm election so severely repudiated a president for a single policy.

The Iraq war, like the Alaska bridge, pungently proclaims how Republicans earned their rebuke. They are guilty of apostasy from conservative principles at home (frugality, limited government) and embrace of anti-conservative principles abroad (nation-building grandiosity pursued incompetently).

About $2.6 billion was spent on the 468 House and Senate races. (Scandalized? Don't be. Americans spend that much on chocolate every two months.) But although Republicans had more money, its effectiveness was blunted because Democrats at last practiced what they incessantly preach to others – diversity. Diversity of thought, no less: Some of their winners even respect the Second Amendment.

Free markets, including political markets, equilibrate, producing supplies to meet demands. The Democratic Party, a slow learner but educable, has dropped the subject of gun control and welcomed candidates opposed to parts or even all of the abortion rights agenda. This vindicates the candidate recruitment by Rep. Rahm Emanuel and Sen. Chuck Schumer, chairmen of the Democratic House and Senate campaign committees, respectively. Karl Rove fancies himself a second iteration of Mark Hanna, architect of the Republican ascendancy secured by William McKinley's 1896 election. In Emanuel, Democrats may have found another Jim Farley, the political mechanic who kept FDR's potentially discordant coalition running smoothly through the 1930s.

Making the Democratic House majority run smoothly will require delicacy. The six elections beginning with 1994 produced Republican majorities averaging just 10 seats. The six elections prior to 1994 produced Democratic majorities averaging 44. Nancy Pelosi's majority will be less than half that. The most left-wing speaker in U.S. history will return to being minority leader in 2009 unless she eschews an agenda that cannot be enacted without requiring the many Democrats elected from Republican-leaning districts to jeopardize their seats.

This year Democrats tacitly accepted much of the country's rightward movement over the last quarter-century. They did not call for restoring the 70 percent marginal tax rates that Reagan repealed. And although Pelosi and 15 of the 21 likely chairmen of committees in the coming Congress voted against the 1996 Welfare Reform that has helped reduced welfare rolls by roughly 60 percent, Democrats this year did not talk about repealing it.

The property rights movement gained ground Tuesday as voters in nine states passed measures to restrict governments from exercising eminent domain in order to enlarge their tax revenues. In Michigan, opponents of racial preferences in public hiring, education and contracting easily passed their referendum, 58 percent to 42 percent, in spite of being outspent more than 3-to-1. In Minnesota – the only state Democrats have carried in each of the last eight presidential elections, but one that is becoming a swing state – Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty was re-elected. And come January, the number of Republicans in the House (at least 200) will still be larger than the largest number during the Reagan years (192 in 1981-83).

The country remains receptive to conservatism. That doctrine – were it to become constraining on, rather than merely avowed by, congressional Republicans – can be their bridge back from the wilderness.

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me@rescam.org

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Red Bull Air Racing

Gas price by zip at Seti

On the Marine Corps' 231st birthday yesterday, President Bush joined Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, (left) and Gen. Michael Hagee, Marine Corps commandant, for the dedication of the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

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me@rescam.org

Who misses Rummy?

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Capitalize on this good fortune, one word can bring you round ... changes.

Who misses Rummy?

Not me. I wonder how things would have been had Bush made Powell Secretary of Defense instead of Secretary of State.

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me@rescam.org

Who misses Rummy?

I do. I loved the Spoonerism "Ronald Dumsfeld".

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Who misses Rummy?

Not me. I wonder how things would have been had Bush made Powell Secretary of Defense instead of Secretary of State.

Good question. Conjecture for us.

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Capitalize on this good fortune, one word can bring you round ... changes.

Who misses Rummy?

Not me. I wonder how things would have been had Bush made Powell Secretary of Defense instead of Secretary of State.

Good question. Conjecture for us.

You meant "hypothesize", surely?

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Held accountable

By Robert J. Caldwell
San Diego Union-Tribune

November 12, 2006

The great virtue of democratic governance is its ability to hold accountable those who err in public office. Voters held Republicans accountable with a vengeance in the midterm elections, for their failures in Congress and for President Bush's bogged-down war in Iraq.

We will now see whether divided government offers any improvement, or makes things worse. A lame-duck president and the new Democratic Congress face a stern test. Can they work together in the national interest at a time of peril for the United States? If they don't, history's judgment will be harsh and the next voters' verdict awaits in 2008.

A clearly chastened President Bush called the election results a “thumpin',” which they obviously were. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will be bitter medicine for a congressional GOP that went astray – on spending, ethics and a forgotten reform agenda – and paid the price. An opposition Congress with the potential to make Bush's life miserable for the last two years of his presidency is his reward for the unresolved mess in Iraq.

Beyond the many House and Senate Republicans who lost their seats Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and House Speaker Dennis Hastert were immediate casualties, too, and rightly so.

Rumsfeld, an occasional visionary but stubbornly flawed, is the architect of the badly botched military campaign in Iraq. That and his brusque persona – critics call it arrogance – have long since made him a lightening rod for criticism of the Iraq misadventure. His departure was inevitable, and overdue.

Hastert, the avuncular and lax overseer of Republican fecklessness and excess in the House, did his party a favor by announcing that he won't seek the minority leader's job. Hastert knows that congressional Republicans need new leadership. That's already guaranteed in the Senate, where Bill Frist is leaving (seemingly for a hopeless presidential quest) and the appropriately tough Mitch McConnell of Kentucky will lead the 49-member Republican minority.

As for bipartisanship, the recent past is full of ill omens even as the president and his tormentors offer conciliatory gestures.

To his credit, President Bush faced defeat forthrightly. At his post-election press conference, Bush acknowledged the magnitude of Republican losses, announced Rumsfeld's departure and admitted that his Iraq policy needs reassessment. He also held out a conciliatory hand to Pelosi and the Democrats and asked for bipartisan cooperation in a search for “common ground.”

Given Pelosi's incessant savaging of Bush and the Republicans as dishonest, corrupt, incompetent and dangerous, the president's words were commendably statesmanlike, all the more so in the immediate wake of a painfully bruising defeat.

Pelosi returned the favor by saying that Democrats also were interested in bipartisan cooperation. Then she joined Bush for what must have been a strained private lunch at the White House.

Skeptics should be forgiven for wondering how long this reverie of bipartisanship can last.

Bush won a measure of bipartisan support during his first term for tax cuts, education reform, prescription drug benefits, counterterrorism measures and (it's worth recalling) the war in Iraq. But since then, the president has proved an increasingly polarizing figure, relying more and more for his governing authority on the Republican base.

For Pelosi and the Democrats, bipartisanship hardly describes their demeanor in recent years. Frustrated by their minority status and driven by their zealously liberal-left base, Democrats turned to unrelenting Bush-bashing as the centerpiece of their strategy. They've just won a resounding midterm victory by relentlessly exploiting Bush's unpopularity and the stalled war in Iraq.

Can these same Democrats now pivot through an about-face and make common cause compromising with a president so many of them have so roundly reviled? Can bipartisanship prevail while both parties posture and position themselves for a wide-open presidential election in 2008?

The odds aren't encouraging.

Still, Pelosi is shrewd enough to judge that Democrats would best serve their own interests, in 2008 and beyond, by showing the country that they can work with Bush. That would reassure voters that Democrats can move toward the center and govern responsibly.

But first, Pelosi in particular would have to restrain a ferociously liberal Democratic caucus. For all the buzz about a new crop of moderate and even conservative Democrats elected Tuesday, the existing Democratic caucuses in the House and Senate are overwhelmingly liberal. The Democrats poised to take committee chairmanships, especially in the House, are mostly liberal partisans itching for retribution against the Bush administration.

Meanwhile, of course, America is at war in Iraq, Afghanistan and against a global terrorist enemy dedicated to killing us. On Iraq, there are no easy options. Bush will need bipartisan support for any new strategy that could avert a disastrous defeat. If Democrats in Congress withhold that support, they'll share responsibility for the consequences.

Pelosi and Reid presumably know that their midterm victory was less an endorsement of agenda-lite Democrats than a repudiation of Republicans. The same restive voters who fired the Republicans are waiting to see if the Democrats can act responsibly in the national interest. If not, accountability awaits just two years hence.

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me@rescam.org

Held accountable

By Robert J. Caldwell
San Diego Union-Tribune

November 12, 2006
Rumsfeld, an occasional visionary but stubbornly flawed, is the architect of the badly botched military campaign in Iraq.

I hear the phrase "badly botched" about the military campaign in Iraq but I am confused. Someone please tell me how a military campaign can be "badly botched" when by every variable you care to measure this military campaign in Iraq has been the safest that has ever been waged in the whole sad history of warfare?

We will now see whether divided government offers any improvement, or makes things worse. A lame-duck president and the new Democratic Congress face a stern test. Can they work together in the national interest at a time of peril for the United States? If they don't, history's judgment will be harsh and the next voters' verdict awaits in 2008

* moderator mode : off *

So WHAT??? Wow!!! What a threat THAT is. There is another election in 2008. Big deal.

Here's the problem as I see it....

We have only two choices as far as voting. You can vote Republican or you can vote Democrat. Oh my goodness...what a GREAT pair of choices. Puh-leze. So what if the Democrats mess up between now and 2008? What alternative will we have? Republicans? Haven't they screwed things up enough as it is? Isn't that why we voted them OUT??

Yeah, what a great choice we get to make. What makes people think things will be any different if the Republicans get back control in '08?

It's such a wonderful system when all you have is a choice between the lesser of two sets of fools.

I honestly don't think that this country will get anything done unless people get angry enough to make a third party a viable alternative to the staus quo.

Too bad there are so many people who can say when asked why they vote for a certain party " Because my Daddy voted that way, my GRAND Daddy voted that way, and by God so will I!!!" without actually looking at who may be better for the job.

* moderator mode : on *

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Air Cold, the blade stops;
from silent stone,
Death is preordained

Calm Chaos Forums : Everyone Welcome

We have only two choices as far as voting. You can vote Republican or you can vote Democrat. Oh my goodness...what a GREAT pair of choices. Puh-leze. So what if the Democrats mess up between now and 2008? What alternative will we have? Republicans? Haven't they screwed things up enough as it is? Isn't that why we voted them OUT??

No, they didn't skrew much up, they maintained the status quo. Well, along with the Democrats, many of whom voted just as the Republicans did. Oh, and they ticked people off because they didn't pander to them.

It's such a wonderful system when all you have is a choice between the lesser of two sets of fools.

Why would you think that any level of gov't would be any different than what you see around here? People will ALWAYS disagree. ALWAYS. As long as the principle behind gov't is: "I agree with something so I'm going to have the gov't make you do it," that's all you'll ever have, the status quo.

I honestly don't think that this country will get anything done unless people get angry enough to make a third party a viable alternative to the staus quo.

Really? Ask Es about the three viable parties in England. Think that makes any difference? They're politicians, KM. People BEG them to meddle.

And meddle they do.

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Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

We have only two choices as far as voting. You can vote Republican or you can vote Democrat. Oh my goodness...what a GREAT pair of choices. Puh-leze. So what if the Democrats mess up between now and 2008? What alternative will we have? Republicans? Haven't they screwed things up enough as it is? Isn't that why we voted them OUT??

No, they didn't skrew much up, they maintained the status quo. Well, along with the Democrats, many of whom voted just as the Republicans did. Oh, and they ticked people off because they didn't pander to them.

It's such a wonderful system when all you have is a choice between the lesser of two sets of fools.

Why would you think that any level of gov't would be any different than what you see around here? People will ALWAYS disagree. ALWAYS. As long as the principle behind gov't is: "I agree with something so I'm going to have the gov't make you do it," that's all you'll ever have, the status quo.

I honestly don't think that this country will get anything done unless people get angry enough to make a third party a viable alternative to the staus quo.

Really? Ask Es about the three viable parties in England. Think that makes any difference? They're politicians, KM. People BEG them to meddle.

And meddle they do.

True enough, Rush. It's just damn frustrating, knowing that nothing will change.

We have only two choices as far as voting. You can vote Republican or you can vote Democrat. Oh my goodness...what a GREAT pair of choices. Puh-leze. So what if the Democrats mess up between now and 2008? What alternative will we have? Republicans? Haven't they screwed things up enough as it is? Isn't that why we voted them OUT??

No, they didn't skrew much up, they maintained the status quo. Well, along with the Democrats, many of whom voted just as the Republicans did. Oh, and they ticked people off because they didn't pander to them.

It's such a wonderful system when all you have is a choice between the lesser of two sets of fools.

Why would you think that any level of gov't would be any different than what you see around here? People will ALWAYS disagree. ALWAYS. As long as the principle behind gov't is: "I agree with something so I'm going to have the gov't make you do it," that's all you'll ever have, the status quo.

I honestly don't think that this country will get anything done unless people get angry enough to make a third party a viable alternative to the staus quo.

Really? Ask Es about the three viable parties in England. Think that makes any difference? They're politicians, KM. People BEG them to meddle.

And meddle they do.

True enough, Rush. It's just damn frustrating, knowing that nothing will change.

KM, things will change, but most change will occur with glacial slowness and, just like glaciers, will advance and retreat. The only guarantee is that nothing will change if you do nothing.