New Congressional leaders weigh in on Iraq

This is good news! Okay, not perfectly wonderful news, but still, something definitely worth applauding.
Today, on their second day in office Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged the Prez not to proceed with his plans for a “surge” in the US troop level in Iraq:

    “Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain,” the top two Democrats wrote in a letter to Bush. “Rather than deploy additional forces to Iraq, we believe the way forward is to begin the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror.”
    … “Our troops and the American people have already sacrificed a great deal for the future of Iraq,” the letter from Reid and Pelosi said. “After nearly four years of combat, tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, and over $300 billion dollars, it is time to bring the war to a close.”

That report there, by the WaPo’s Bill Brubaker, also noted that just a few blocks away, Sens John McCain and ‘Holy’ Joe Lieberman were telling folks at that nest of unreconstructed neoconnery the American Enterprise Institute of their continued support for the “surge.”
Bush is now supposed to announce his “new and improved” Iraq policy next Wednesday.
The announcement about the Reid-Pelosi letter comes one day after Sen. Joe Biden, the incoming (Democratic) chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the WaPo’s Glenn Kessler,

    that he believes top officials in the Bush administration have privately concluded they have lost Iraq and are simply trying to postpone disaster so the next president will “be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof,” in a chaotic withdrawal reminiscent of Vietnam.

Kessler said that Biden outlined his plans for the committee’s work,

    including holding four weeks of hearings focused on every aspect of U.S. policy in Iraq. The hearings will call top political, economic and intelligence experts; foreign diplomats; and former and current senior U.S. officials to examine the situation in Iraq and possible plans for dealing with it. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will probably testify next Thursday to defend the president’s new plan, but at least eight other plans will be examined over several sessions of the committee.

(Eight other plans? Is that serious?)
Anyway, more Kessler:

    Biden expressed opposition to the president’s plan for a “surge” of additional U.S. troops and said he has grave doubts about whether the Iraqi government has the will or the capacity to help implement a new approach. He said he hopes to use the hearings to “illuminate the alternatives available to this president” and to provide a platform for influencing Americans, especially Republican lawmakers.
    “There is nothing a United States Senate can do to stop a president from conducting his war,” Biden said. “The only thing that is going to change the president’s mind, if he continues on a course that is counterproductive, is having his party walk away from his position.”
    Biden said that Vice President Cheney and former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld “are really smart guys who made a very, very, very, very bad bet, and it blew up in their faces. Now, what do they do with it? I think they have concluded they can’t fix it, so how do you keep it stitched together without it completely unraveling?”

I disagree strongly with Biden’s statement there’s nothing the U.S. Senate can do “to stop a president from conducting his war.” Of course there is– if the opposition to the Prez has a strong enough base in the Senate. It can start blocking or short of that strongly conditionalizing the White House’s war-related funding requests. Or it might even revisit the war-enabling resolution that was passed with such indecent haste back in October 2002, but that was entirely premised on the fear of what the Bushists claimed at the time was “slam-dunk” evidence about Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs…
And then, look at Biden’s argument. He says he’s hoping to win over Republicans to his (currently) war-skeptical viewpoint. All well and good. I am all for that. Indeed, um, some of them were there before he was. But say he does manage, even before next Wednesday, to put together a strong coalition in the Senate that opposes the surge, which is still quite conceivable– then what does he plan to do with that coalition?? Stand up and say, “Mr. President, I’ve renounced my recourse to our constitutional power of the purse in all matters including funding the waging of war, but I’m standing here with this veto-proof coalition of folks who want to block your very costly and reckless plan for a surge, and– ”
And what?
The WaPo’s veteran African-American columnist Eugene Robinson wrote in today’s paper,

    The new Congress is going to have to stop temporizing and stand up to George W. Bush on the war…
    Given that the Democratic Party’s fortunes keep rising as Bush sinks deeper into the Iraq quagmire, political expediency might tempt the new leadership in Congress to let the president have his way and reap the rewards in 2008. But that would be wrong. Democrats can’t give speeches saying that sending more troops to Iraq without a viable mission is nothing more than a futile sacrifice of young American lives — and then limit their dispute with Bush to whether he gets to send 3,000 more troops or 30,000.
    Very soon, perhaps inconveniently soon, Democrats are going to have to take a stand.

Looks like maybe Reid and Pelosi read that, and paid good heed?
Meanwhile, for more background on what the war has already cost the US public so far, we can head quickly over to David Ignatius’s column today:

    Now that the Democrats have taken control of Congress, President Bush has decided it’s time for fiscal discipline and a balanced budget. That’s shameless, even by local standards. Who does Bush think was in power when the big deficits of the past six years were created?
    A good way for the Democrats to start the new congressional season is to examine just how it happened that the federal government moved from budget surplus to deficit during the Bush presidency…

Using figures provided by the Congressional Budget Office, Ignatius looked first at the tax cuts the Prez has implemented– with the help of his GOP enablers in Congress– since 2001:

    By CBO estimates, [these cuts] reduced government revenue from projected levels by $31 billion in 2002, $84 billion in 2003, $100 billion in 2004, $100 billion in 2005 and $126 billion in 2006. Republicans argue that those tax cuts were “pro-growth” and were justified by economic weakness after Sept. 11, 2001. I disagree with that economic analysis, but even if it were right, it doesn’t justify the spending binge that accompanied the tax cuts.
    The year Bush really busted the budget was 2003, when he embarked on a costly war in Iraq that wasn’t funded by a tax increase. Worse, he added a major new welfare program, the prescription drug benefit, that also wasn’t funded. The inevitable result was a spending bubble.
    CBO numbers show that discretionary spending (which is largely military-related) jumped over projected levels by $120 billion in 2003, $171 billion in 2004, $221 billion in 2005 and $245 billion in 2006. As for the prescription drug benefit, its bite is only now being felt, with the CBO forecasting that it will add $27 billion to projected Medicare spending in 2006 and $40 billion in 2007.

So okay, the Medicare/prescription drug benefit increase has been considerably less of a financial burden than the war. Let’s keep our eyes on the war figures, right?
David again:

    The Democrats have to decide whether on economics, they want to be (forgive the sexist term) the “Daddy Party” of fiscal responsibility. Unless politicians find the courage to trim entitlement spending to what the country can afford, the projections are scary. A 2006 study by the Government Accountability Office noted that if current fiscal policy continues, interest costs on the national debt will rise to 20 percent of gross domestic product by 2045 and overall government spending to nearly 50 percent. That’s a recipe for an economic crackup.
    The Democrats face the essential political decision as they take their seats: Do they want to make people happy by postponing tough decisions or do they want to get serious about restoring fiscal sanity? Are they the party of good times or good governance? The Bush administration has argued for six years that you can have it both ways, but that’s demonstrably not true. So the Democratic moment arrives.

And so, keeping our eyes on the many costs of the war– both economic and non-economic– let’s see what happens to this “surge” proposal within the next five days.
I think all US citizens should just simply redouble our efforts to contact our representatives in Congress and the senate with the simple and strong message “No surge! Start planning the total troop withdrawal now!” Plus of course, “No new war against Iran or anyone else!”

36 thoughts on “New Congressional leaders weigh in on Iraq”

  1. Yes, to all that. Not one more dime or one more drop of blood for Sheriff Dick Cheney and Deputy Dubya Bush. As for blowhard Joe Biden and his supposition about George W. Bush possibly trying to run out the clock on his watch and hand his bloody mess to someone else:
    Gee, Joe. After four disastrous years: Do you think? So why do you seem only too willing to underwrite the pointless human sacrifice? What a flat-lined learning curve. An amoeba would show more sentience and spine.
    The busted deadbeat Deputy Dubya Bush reminds me of that movie scene in The Count of Monte Cristo remake where Edmond Dantes and Jacoppo look on from an open casino doorway while Fernand de Mondego keeps dumping huge loads of cash at the roulette tables. “He’s losing,” Jacoppo tells Dantes. “And they’re not even cheating him.”
    Anyway, a little verse — “Escalating Sacrifice” — about all the “peaking” and “spiking” and “surging” that only adds up to obvious and unconscionable stalling:
    http://themisfortuneteller.blogspot.com/2007/01/escalating-sacrifice.html

  2. Helena,
    I’ve given this a good deal of thought, and I don’t see any way that the President’s Commander-in-Chief powers get reined in unless and until something on the order of 20 Republican Senators and about 60 Republican representatives see the light, and are willing to vote what they know in their hearts and minds.
    The best news I’ve seen yet this year was Robert Novak’s column saying that only 12 Republican Senators actually support the surge/escalation.
    It will take a veto-proof super-majority in both Houses to constrain Bush/Cheney–and even then, they might provoke a constitutional crisis by continuing to stay-the-course regardless, relying on the President’s Commander-in-Chief powers.
    While what has happened so far is certainly not objectionable, it is still a very far remove from where we will need to get to in order to actually change course in the very teeth of this administration.

  3. All valid points, dell, but I lived through just such a time as this before when the Democrats had the Congessional majority but enough Republicans held together to block — for a time — measures to impeach Richard Nixon and cut off funding for the American War on Vietnam that he simply refused to terminate as he had promised in 1968. In time, the right things did happen.
    True, the awakening did not happen fast enough to keep Nixon/Kissinger/Laird from ordering me to Southeast Asia on a fool’s errand just so (t)he(y) could “withdraw” me later hoping to defuse an anti-war sentiment that only kept growing. In the end, the Congress revoked the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, cut off funding for any further bombing or invading of Cambodia, and then a bare handful of Republican Senators went to Richard Nixon and told him privately that even they could no longer support him and that if he persisted in office, the Congress — Democrats and Republicans together — would remove him. It took some persistence and will-power and a real concern for the best interests of America, but the right things happened and a discredited president had to go.
    It can happen again. It has already started to happen — only faster because bad situations for America unravel faster these days. The practical, basic prescription still remains the same, though: (1) Cut off the funding; (2) revoke the “authorization”; and (3) punish the perpetrators. I served in the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent and I swore I would never sit back and watch another generation of young Americans sacrificed like so many of my friends and high-school classmates on the shabby altar of another discredited president’s pathetic ego. I say “NO” to any senseless deployment of the Cheney-Bush Buy Time Brigade.
    All Americans must now join Helena, Cindy Sheehan, Dennis Kucinich, you, me, and millions of others in just saying “NO!” The time for a unified, remorseless resistance has come again. Such times do come around and the movements they inspire define peoples and nations for good or ill. As Winston Churchill said: “What kind of a people do they think we are?” We need to answer that. Do we live in the times that try mens’s souls or the times that buy them? And do we even have souls worth enough to put to the test? We need to answer that, too.

  4. Helena
    There seems to be quite a well of feeling in the US. I am curious to see where the checks and ballances are. All this Thomas Jefferson stuff is about avoiding
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1983994,00.html
    Simon Hoggart is a serious journalist.
    Tasteless joke sent to me by a very anti-Bush American friend: there’s a traffic jam in Baghdad. Someone dashes up to a driver’s window: “Insurgents have captured George Bush and Dick Cheney, and if they don’t get $10m in an hour they going to douse them in gasoline and set them alight!”
    “Of course I’ll help,” says the driver, “how much are other people giving?”
    “Oh, around a gallon, if you can spare it.”

  6. “One might suppose the White House would be chastened, given Bush’s dismal public approval rating. Bush and his aides aren’t. Instead, they’re amused by Democratic pretensions of being in charge of Washington. “It’s just hilarious,” an aide says. “They’ve got to legislate. We govern. We run things.” Presidents, even unpopular ones, usually do.”
    http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/139wmaoa.asp?pg=2
    Who is the “reality based” community now?

  7. Helena – In analyzing our prospects for ending American participation in this war, it’s crucial to understand what Congress can and can’t (or won’t) do and why, as well as what the president can do on his own initiative.
    An American president (or British PM, apparently) who doesn’t have to run again holds most of the cards in a struggle with the legislature. The president is the commander and as long as he is perceived as legitimately so, the military will follow his orders.
    Michael Murray identifies the one way to effect a non-violent change in the power relationship: “a unified, remorseless resistance.”
    Politicians do difficult things only when they are forced to. FDR supposedly responded to a delegation asking him to do something lacking popular support: “I agree, now go out and make me have to do it.”
    The Congressional Democrats (and Republicans) will make Bush stop the war only when we make it so uncomfortable for them that they have no other choice.
    That’s politics in a democratic society, and it runs from letter-writing to massive non-violent direct action. As Michael so forcefully illustrates, it’s up to us now.
    The United for Peace and Justice demo in DC on January 27 (or at your local congressman’s office if you can’t make it to DC) is a good place to start getting “remorseless” in opposition.
    Incidentally, Biden, John Warner, and others have begun talking about a new resolution to replace the October 2002 AUMF that authorized the invasion of Iraq, on the grounds that the situation (Saddam and WMD are no longer a “threat”)has changed completely. That strikes me as a much more plausible Congressional vehicle for challenging Bush’s authority than attempting to cut off funding for the war, which is easily demagoged as failing to support the troops.

  8. I think Biden’s comments are revealing about the mindset of Washington Pols; he is thinking more about who will take blame for this war then the catastrope in Iraq.

  9. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=18797
    ^someone else with a little more knowledge of all things iraq calls mcain and lieberman out.
    Also, I don’t think the democrats should touch the tax cuts. cut spending and pull the plug on the war. better the rich have it than the government. our budget is 2.7 trillion. the idea that our government isn’t big enough is preposterous. it is the fact that it is so big that we have interventions and warrentless wire tapping up the wazoo.

  10. I appreciate all the useful and practical suggestions made above. As well, I understand valid concerns about the very real efforts involved in getting the American government to once again function responsibly as designed. Still, the three currently required measures to accomplish this restoration of equilibrium: namely, (1) de-funding, (2) de-authorization, and (3) perp-punishment, do require us citizens to force and support the necessary actions by our all-too-human representatives in the new Congresss. I don’t know how much more than 70% of the people any political group needs behind them in order to do their jobs, but surely we’ve begun getting close to the critical mass by now.
    At any rate, not one of the three measures enumerated above either singly or in combination poses any unique constitutional difficulty. Regardless of what Senator Joe Biden fails to remember from only as little as thirty years ago, past Congresses have successfully implimented them all — although not nearly early or forcefully enough to save enormous loss of life and national treasure. We can do better this time around.
    The design of the Constitution specifically apportions powers — and mechanisms to defend those powers — to each of the three branches of government and not only expects but demands that each branch defend its own interests and prerogatives with all the means thoughtfully placed at its disposal. The legislative branch gets to (1) declare war or not, (2) impeach outlaw executives and judges, and (3) control the purse strings as its means of defense against encroachments on its legitimate powers by the executive and judicial branches. As Alexander Hamilton argued in the Federalist Papers, the power of the purse belongs to the legislature precisely so that every two years by statutory requirement Congress has to go back and re-examine whether conditions warrant maintaining any standing army at all. And should any president attempt to unilaterally abuse the army for his own political purposes or at the expense of the people, Hamiliton continued, then the Congress can simply not pay the President or his army until they cease fabricating excuses or provoking other countries in order to get wars started that they then will dare the Congress to make them stop. Well, such a time as Hamilton envisioned has arrived, just as a similar occasion arrived over thirty years ago. Time for a “performance” review and some necessarily brutal downsizing of Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism. America doesn’t have a small enough military for its own good.
    In regards to the basic fiscal question, the American budget — before Cheney and Bush got anywhere near it — boasted not just balance but surplus. It ballooned into huge deficits (as it did during the drunken-spending Reagan years) for two obvious and correctable reasons: (1) unnecessary tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans coupled with (2) unnecessary “national security” spending on an already bloated and mismanaged “military industrial complex” (as President Eisenhower called its puny predecessor in 1960): an errant and erring edifice — what I call the Lunatic Leviathan — as expensively useless since 9/11/2001 as it proved practially worthless on 9/11/2001.
    America needs to withdraw its military from Iraq before that colossally inefficient, unimaginatively expensive, and completely unmanageable Rube Goldberg machine hurts itself, the Iraqi people, and America any more than it already has. What remains of the “Bush base” cares only about its tax cuts (the absence of which caused it to abandon Bush-the-First for Ross Perot, therefore electing Bill Clinton twice.) Cancel those unnecessary tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and cancel the unnecessary occupation of Iraq and then the budgetary issues — while still of some concern — can begin to approach manageable proportions again.
    Finally, of course, America has to elect competent people who actually can make a government work (lots of countries have pulled off this trick) instead of ideological fanatics who do everything in their power to see that it doesn’t and then tendentiously claim that it can’t.

  11. Helena
    I wonder what our reaction will be the morning after the strike. It would be interesting to see the immediate and long term caualty projections.
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2535310,00.html
    There is probably nothingleft that can be done to stop it, just as there was in the Lebanon war.

  12. God damnit. Just when I thought things could not get worse, Israel is really threatening to nuke Iran’s nuclear facilities. I hope everyone will be clear and recognize that Israel is the clear aggressor in this particular case, given that we have no real evidence whatsoever that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. I’m really scared for what might happen to Iranian civilians, to Israelis in retaliation, and to the 140,000+ sitting ducks in Iraq.

  13. Perhaps “Holy Joe” should be asked why his own son is not joining the effort if it is so critical. From the Lamont race, I remember a belligerent loudmouth full of grievance at the injustice perpetrated on his old man.

  14. Here is the key passage from today’s NYT article outlining Bush’s “New Way Forward:”
    “Officials said a larger American troop commitment also would be used to illustrate Washington’s increased resolve to deter adventurism by regional adversaries, especially Iran. Mr. Bush’s speech is expected to include talk of a new diplomatic initiative to shore up confidence among Washington’s Islamic allies in the region as well as to warn its adversaries. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to begin that initiative almost immediately after the speech, leaving for the Middle East by next weekend.”
    Folks, this here is what it’s all about. Don’t be distracted by talk of “jobs programs” and the like.

  15. Frank, thanks for the link to the Times article. This will probably be suppressed by the US corporate media.
    What are you planning to do to celebrate the end of the world?
    Cheers, buddy.

  16. Mr Murray- the reason reagan had deficits is because while he cut taxes he didn’t cut spending. I realize not everyone hates the government as much as me, but if this adminstration demostrates anything it’s that what conservatives have been saying about the incompetence of our elected officials is true. They were saying it about welfare, but it’s just as true about warfare. If we just elect peopple we like to handle similar amounts of power the cycle just continues. Powells get pushed out of the way by rumsfelds. excrement floats.
    It’s time radically shrink the government, not maintain a fragile one. FEMA, the corps of engineers, the department of education, everyone who pays their taxes knows the federal government is a joke and a waste.

  17. I know Olmert is not a real sensitive guy, but does he have no sense of irony?
    “‘I think it’s widely shared by the international community that to allow a nuclear capacity to a country which openly and explicitly talks about the use of the nuclear capacity against other countries is a great danger and threat we can’t afford to have,’ Olmert said.”

  18. John C
    A guy called Neville Shute wrote a book 50 years ago called On The Beach.
    In it he describes the behaviour of the last survivors of the human race in Australia after a general nuclear exchange wipes out the Northern Hemisphere. A cloud of radioactive materiel slowly drifts south, and the survivors are left with the question you pose.
    Curiously enough the conflict is postulated as starting in the Middle East.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach
    We must however retain a sense of proportion. There is an EBRD project in being to clean up the parts of Kazakhstan that were used for testing Russian Nuclear Weapons.
    I have no idea if a World Heritage Site like Isfahan could be decontaminated and how long it would take. Destroying it might count as a crime against humanity.

  20. Frank & John,
    The two lines of denial that actually come from the Israeli government are half-hearted and not exactly meant to be convincing:
    “We don’t respond to publications in The Sunday Times”
    “if diplomacy succeeds, the problem can be solved peaceably.”
    They definitely know how to deny something if they want to, such as the oft-heard: “Israel never targets civilians”. I don’t hear them saying “Israel will never initiate a nuclear attack”.

  21. Chaps
    I wonder if this is a warning to people to cool it, from a rational source. The channel it is published in is revealing.
    http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467673463&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
    It ties in with the recently published piece by the former British Ambassador to Iran that suggests that Mr Bush should leave dealing with the Iranians to the people who have been managing the case for a lot longer than they have.

  22. Frank,
    Interesting link, thank you. In 1951-53 Anthony Eden (with the support of his boss, the great hero, Sir WC) agitated against Iran and it’s great bogey-man Mosaddeq, until he had him overthrown. Now Beckett is admitting that that was wrong, while agitating against Iran again (although they all know very well that Ahmadinejad is a nobody, a powerless foolish blabber-mouth, and definitely no Mosaddeq). I wonder what His/Her Majesty’s foreign secretary of 2060 will editorialize in the Jerusalem Post.
    BTW, I know these are odd times, but isn’t it a bit awkward that Her Majesty’s foreign secretary writes editorials for the JP ?

  23. David
    BTW, I know these are odd times, but isn’t it a bit awkward that Her Majesty’s foreign secretary writes editorials for the JP ?
    Not in the least. She is mainlining a message to the people in Israel to cool it. The leaks in Sunday Times piece starts to look like a cry for help from the reality based wing in Tel Aviv. Their intelligence people dont have a common message or threat asessment and the speculation about nuclear armed Iranian infiltrators are causing irrational opinions to be formed.
    As we have seen there are those who are willingly spreading disinformation with the intention of spreading alarm and despondency.
    Actually I miss Doris and hope she will come back. She is a bellwether of all the fears and insecurity that drive a lot of Israeli policy.
    They do have a problem. They have no strategic depth and have limited manpower and suffer from a water shortage. The changing nature of warfare means that their superiority in weapons systems is being eroded. This probably calls into question their long term viability as a military colony in the region, and so far the only rational solution to this problem I have seen proposed is one by Shimon Peres.

  24. All
    The previous comment should not be interpreted to say that Doris spreads disinformation. The two points are completely separate and I think Doris views are honestly held.
    My fault for poor editing.

  28. I’ll admit to a certain amount of skepticism – all right, a lot of skepticism – about the Sunday Times article. The author, Uzi Mahnaimi, seems to make a career of revealing that Israel is about to attack Iran. This time last year, for instance, he claimed that Sharon had ordered air strikes for March 2006. He’s written a number of other similar articles during the past few years, not to mention the infamous ‘ethno-bomb’ story (which alleged that Israel was attempting to develop a bomb that only killed Arabs). Thus far, I’m not aware of a single one of his stories that has panned out, which suggests that he’s an outlet for strategic leaks rather than someone with a real line into Israeli policy-making circles.
    This leaves the question of who is orchestrating the leak and who they’re targeting. I can think of at least six possibilities without even trying: (1) Israel, to blackmail the US into attacking Iran; (2) Israel, to intimidate Khamenei into cooling Ahmedinejad’s jets; (3) Israel and the US, to throw a smokescreen over their actual intentions; (4) Iran, to discredit Israel and manufacture justification for its nuclear program; (5) the UK, to prod Washington into restraining Israel; and (6) Israeli officers opposed to an attack on Iran, to force a disavowal from the Israeli government. No doubt an intelligence analyst could come up with several more.
    Until we know what script is being written here, I’m not sure if we’re in any position to critique the movie. Granted, the Sunday Times article seems more ominous this time around, given that it comes in conjunction with American war drums, an inexperienced and erratic prime minister in Jerusalem, and (as David has pointed out on another thread) Ahmedinejad’s own crude saber-rattling. I’m nevertheless inclined to believe right now that the Sunday Times article is the smoke and Fallon’s appointment is the fire. If Ze’ev Schiff or someone with similar connections starts writing about nuclear strikes against Iran as a possibility, then I’ll be scared.

  29. Jonathan,
    Good sum-up. I find all of your scenarios, or a combination thereof, plausible, other than #2 and #4. Re #2, I don’t think that Israel minds Ahmadinejad’s palaver; he is the classic Aesop’s “A foolish enemy can serve you better than a wise friend”. The Israelis couldn’t pay enough to buy someone who could get them as much sympathy in a year as his loony-talk does in one week. Re #4, I cannot imagine how the Iranians could have such high-level plants or connections in the Israeli intelligence apparatus [If that were true, it would justify a Stalinist purge of the system]. The common denominator of the other 4 is that a strike is very possible or even imminent, such that someone feels the need to hide it (#3), share its burden and responsibilities (#1), or do something desperate to stop it (#5-6).
    As you say, I find myself in position to pass judgment so far, but I starting to squirm in my seat as I see the plot unfold. And as you point out, Olmert’s insecurity as a leader and Ahmadinejad’s stupidity, are a synergistic combination that push the portfolio into the hawks’ lap.
    I agree that a warning from someone like Ze’ev Schiff would be far more ominous, but I wonder what you think of this (I know that the Meretz-Mapam perspective is not exactly mainstream in Israel) :
    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/809800.html
    And while we are talking the remains of the Israeli left, I read a piece by Michael Warschawski who was also extremely anxious about an impending war with Iran. I looked and can’t find the link; I will post it if I do.

  31. Re #4, I cannot imagine how the Iranians could have such high-level plants or connections in the Israeli intelligence apparatus
    They don’t have to have any – all they need is a connection to Uzi Mahnaimi. It’s not as if Mahnaimi ever names his sources, so there’s no way to tell if the “Israeli officers” he gets his information from are actually Iranian intelligence agents. I’m not saying this is the case, because I have no way of knowing, but I am saying it can’t be ruled out.
    Anyway, I find the Meretz perspective more credible than Mahnaimi’s, but what I’m looking for here is someone with an actual line into what the Israeli policy echelons are thinking. Yossi Sarid doesn’t have that access right now. Ze’ev Schiff and others in a similar position do have access. I haven’t yet seen them talking about a nuclear, or even non-nuclear, attack on Iran. Of course this is not decisive, and it doesn’t rule out an attack being in the works, but it suggests that there’s still time to put on the brakes.

  32. I should say “I haven’t yet seen them talking about a nuclear, or even non-nuclear, attack on Iran as something that’s actually in the works.” There has of course been discussion of such an attack as a theoretical matter.

  33. “it doesn’t rule out an attack being in the works, but it suggests that there’s still time to put on the brakes”
    To quote our Churchillian Commander in Chief:
    “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
    Even if the supposed decision makers think they are just bluffing about the threat of force (nuclear or otherwise), I don’t trust them to be smart enough to leave themselves an escape route if the bluff is called. In fact I know that the neocon crowd here in the US is doing everything possible to make sure Bush has no such option. If they can succeed with the “surge” strategy, I think that will about wrap it up. Maybe Nancy Pelosi has realized that lately, which could explain her having second thoughts about the first 100 days agenda. Jonathan, if you can explain to me, in your patient and level-headed way, why I shouldn’t be so worried, I’d be much obliged. I have enough trouble sleeping under normal circumstances.

  34. I’m not saying not to worry. I am worried. It’s just that I’m “let’s get organized and stop this” worried rather than “time to hide under the desk and pray” worried, and that I’m inclined to believe that the pressure point is in Washington. Cold comfort, maybe.

  36. Right now, I’m making some pissed-off phone calls to my congresscritters, although I realize that isn’t likely to do much short-term good. If Ted Kennedy’s bill passes, I’ll volunteer to help defend it against a legal challenge. Other than that, I guess I’ll have to wing it along with everything else. I wish I knew something better.

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