Not forgetting those in bondage.

It's 2012, an election year. It is a hard fought scrap we are in, between opposing governing philosophies, and the rhetorical pitch is only going to rise as we head into October and November.

But that is no excuse for us to be oblivious to problems that still sit on the desk, unconsidered and unanswered.

Guantanamo. GITMO.

It's slang. It's a meme. It's like a thing parent's lord over little children's heads to get them to go to bed.

But, we know well enough, it is real. And it is ours.

What use to be our little base in another nation, became our beachhead on a front in the Cold War, and now, it's America's Devil's Island. But we don't seem to care or be interested in what it says of us, or what it makes us. 10 years ago most of us decided to hit snooze on addressing this. And we've continued to just ignore it, waiting for it to just be normalized (like so many shifts in the last decade).

Yes, I'm sure (More of an open legal process would help we say "know.") their are bad people that are being detained there. There are also people who seem to be innocent, or who's culpability seems slight. As a just society this should weigh on us. More than that, it should spur us to act to right things for those wrongly held (Some for around a decade!) and to be sure those that have engaged in criminal or war acts see proper justice.

But worse than the fact people are sitting in limbo for years on now, some are not going to make it to having their grievances fully answered.

Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif was cleared for release in 2009, by a task force set up by the Obama administration. But three years on, he was still waiting. That was on top of the seven years he had already been held before this, coming to nearly a third of his life. But he won't know freedom as he was found dead in his cell this month.

The Justice Department had fought release for years for Latif and others. Then it is proving hard to find countries willing to take even those deemed innocent. The result indefinite detention for the guilty and innocent.

Beyond trying to lay blame on a party, a president, or nation...What do we do with this policy? What do we do now? How do we make things right for those held wrongly? How do we right what accepting these detentions all these years has done to us?

YES, it is an election year. We have an economy to bolster. We have nutters who want to get their hands on our military, and on women's uteri. We have big issues to address and fight over.

But there are also people now sitting for up to a decade in cells, waiting for us to give a damn. At some point we have to get around to giving a damn.

Trouble with Matthews - Those Blind Spots

Chris Matthews can be amusing or frustrating to watch on TV. Sometimes it can be a matter of your or his politics. And sometimes it can be how seriously he's taking the job.

I have been seeing him on the TV since the days of Clinton, and what you get from him will vary. Some days it is silly season, with everything a joke or a laugh (When he was covering talk of Al Gore's "exaggerations" during the '00 campaign, he'd just get giddy.). Or, he can get reverential, which we've seen a bit with Obama or GW Bush, and a hell of a lot with talk of Kennedy or Tip O'Neill. Or the Odd Guy, obsessed with minutia, like how you say Dick Cheney's name. Then you get Mr. Serious, who won't take answer as given and will keep pushing. It is a mixed bag.

But he's done good in his time, chased after liars and blowhards.

But he's also been inured of them at certain times, and been them at others. Eh. I hate to go be critical of him, seeing as the Right Wing love to skewer him so...But they skewer everyone not on the payroll.


An issue I do have with Matthews is his obliviousness at time. He loves to act the role of Know It All, he's been there, seen that. But he hasn't really. He is so often clueless about topics.

I remember when he was explaining to us all how Hispanics were natural Republicans, what with their inclination to open bodegas. (Yeah, I know some Hispanics that opened "bodegas", and I know some that are bankers, professors, school teachers, and doctors. It's a sad lack of understanding of Hispanics or the difference between Dems and Reps.) I also remember a time, years back, when he lectured a guest on how Planned Parenthood was mostly about abortion. The man talks piffle.

But that can be true of many of us. What I have a hard time forgiving a journalist is how he chooses to be oblivious to his own past actions and their repercussions. He just reworks it all into a new narrative to his liking.

In talking recently about the Catholic Church, Sandusky, and child abuse (I caught a discussion of this on the June 22nd, The Jimmy Dore Show), he remarked that people had no idea what was really going on all these years because the press didn't use visceral language about sex abuse. If only journalist had used graphic language, people would have acted...really. It is pathetic. "Someone said a priest abused a kid." "Abuse? That is meaningless to me. Go away, you've given me a headache." He doesn't want to admit to himself that HE was silent as he heard the stories of abuse. He was a part of this press all this time, and he did act.


But an even better example of this denial can be seen in him talking about the Iraq War, which apparently to him occurred in the Age of Elves. (Again, I caught this thanks to The Jimmy Dore Show on June 1. Starts at about 32 minutes, 20 seconds.) At a media event he began explaining how we got into the war, how those journalism failed us then, and how the business was wildly different today. Now, you might think this is about how we have blogs and twitter now...No. It is because NOW we have 24-hour cable news. Yeah. The big invention of this decade.

Really! For Matthews the Iraq War was sold to the American people because people relied on TV networks (ABC, NBC, CBS), back in the day (2003). And those journalist didn't do the hard work, ask the hard questions, challenge authority. So, we went to war.

But NOW it's different, cable news is a new beast. 24 hour coverage, going in depth, asking hard questions...Has he seen cable news, ever? Has he seen his own show? (Oh, ye gods, I could go on a tirade about the failure of the 24-hour news scheme.)

But, you may ask, what was Chris Matthews doing in 2003? He wasn't born yesterday, was he?! No. At the time he was, gasp, hosting a cable news show (and hosting another syndicated one, that covered the build up to and start of and end of the Iraq War. He was on a cable news show the whole time. Imagine that.

We must obviously think then that he chased these stories down, right? He fought that noble fight, right?

No. He did the opposite. He attacked people doubting the "evidence." He mocked the antiwar groups. He called the lot kooks and losers. And, he praised GW Bush for his leadership.

At with that, cable news failed, in reality...Uh, no. There actually was one, top rated, show chasing these hard questions down, the Phil Donahue Show on MSNBC (Matthews may be familiar with the network.). It got cancelled for asking those hard questions. Who helped get it cancelled? Chris Matthews, who didn't care for the trouble maker.

That is damn pathetic.

So, now, years on, he ponders. What happen? Why weren't people like him there to act. He ponders why those people listened to GW Bush, an idiot. He ponders why those people were not willing to be critical and ask questions.

He wonders why he failed at his fucking occupation.

But he can't admit to this. So he escapes into a reworked fantasy history.

I almost been sorry.

WMD's and Belief

Weapon's of Mass Destruction. Those were popular for awhile. Early part of the last decades it seemed to be all we would talk about. Not so much now.

But still, after all we've been through some are interested in the topic. No, I'm not talking about people all jacked up on the idea of bombing Iran into oblivion (...Though, there is some overlap.). Nor do I mean the people who still remember all the eager talk of WMD's and the need for wars (Thankfully some remember and try to keep the rest of us from forgetting.). Rather, I mean the lot who still believe and want to make other's believe that Iraq was a success for the US on the WMD chase topic.

Yes, many people, mostly Right Wingers, believe the antiquated dilapidated hype of the Bush PR team. Of course, they are largely FOX News watchers so they believe plenty of naff things. But this is particularly interesting as the continued embrace of this tenuous point makes them more reassured of the idea of the preemptive Iraqi invasion and claims of WMD threats in other places.

Lessons must be learned.

Let us remember just why we went in. We were DAYS from getting nuked by those mad Iraqis. They were mass producing nukes and other horrors, and we had all the proof we needed. So we got shaky intel, we got dubious sources, we got vials of talc to shake in people's faces, and we got all the King's Men in a line to say, "Yes. Freedonia must go to war." (Sigh...I know, obvious joke.)










Then they lined up the allies.

And off we all went, whether we liked it or not.

WAR.

And the results, on the WMD front, were bupkus.

Despite what some want to claim, we found nothing new. What was there is what we already knew of. All the weapons and facilities were in place (Yes, chemical, biological, and nuclear.). They were in place and unused since 1991. That's when we first made them close up shop.

And some want to go, "AH HA!!! Vindication!" ...No. We knew about this stuff. It was no threat. Hell, alot of it was 80's mustard gas, from back when Iraq was our ally. What about the deadly (but sounding, oh so, delicious) yellowcake? Packed up in barrels way back in the day by inspectors. And no sign of the passionately promised Nigerian buys (Looking at you, Powell.).

But people tried and still try to move the goalpost. We can call it WMD's, so they are everything we claimed. So Iraq had them, and the Neocons were right. ...No.

Oh, no. We were told of active work being done. Nuclear warheads, ready to go. Deadly toxins, ready to deploy. But none of that was found. Just the tracks that showed where the goalpost was moved from. From fantastical pristine research labs to the reality of rusting bins in a storage facility.

Whatever the reason we want to say we went into Iraq, and it's impact on our nation, Iraq, and the world, we did not go in and preempt any genuine immediate threat.

That should be a part of the legacy of the Iraq War never forgotten.

But some try to convince us we can forget, and move on to the next war.

Another argument against gays in the military

TPM notes the new argument.  Muslims around the world where we place our forces won't like it.

Which approach to this...

First, this is the same damn argument that was made about having women serving in the armed forces.  Or, to allow women into the roles of Sec of State or Sec of Defense.  We know how much that worries people now.  Or how much that impacts our international ops...Not at all.

Second, fine.  If the Saudi don't want to work with us.  Fine.  If Iraq won't take our help.  Fine.  We'll pull out tomorrow.  If the Afghan want us out.  Bye.  But let's be honest they aren't going to thrown into a tizzy.  The bombings and shootings won't flip them out, gitmo and torture doesn't do it, but if we admit that there are gays among our forces...oh boy.

Because the point is, there are gays in the military, and only a fool can't accept that.  They are there and the world is still turning.  And we operate around the world.

What's more...what about the Brits?  They have open gay troops...what is the negative for them in all the places we work joints...like Iraq and Afghanistan?

None at all.  Think about it.

Born Again Fiscal Conservatives

I am conflicted. I am annoyed at all these conservatives that were happy to spend and spend on wars and give out all sorts of tax cuts to the wealthy for a decade. But now they decry costs and debt in a Democratic administration. Now it is bad. But on the other hand we have chances to call them on it and see them twist, or try to scurry for cover.

See the video on Crooks and Liars, as Joe Conason catches Joe Scarborough, over his support of the trillions spent on war in Iraq, accompanied by numerous tax cuts shrinking American coffers. He looses it.

On torture from the current admin

Olbermann gave criticism of the stance the Obama administration on the torture that happen under Bush and what will be done about it now we are learning how bad it was.



AMERICAblog adds in about the political realities.

... He explains why we should proceed with prosecution, rather than how this president CAN proceed safely. Democrats are notoriously ham-handed. A Democratic president is going to prosecute Republicans for going too far in trying to protect our country? Fat chance. While owning the moral high ground, that kind of charge takes a political dexterity that Democrats simply don't have.

I don't criticize Olbermann for his argument. He's right. I criticize everyone responsible for making the Democratic party so poor at messaging, and thus so necessarily spineless, that politics would trump morality when talking about war crimes.

This needs to be discussed more.

Crooks and Liars looks at Rachel Maddows interview with IAVA over McCain's abysmal support for veterans, for all of his talk.

Includes video.

Piling on the last post

If that last post doesn't worry you, I am sure you will be cool with this.

McCain on making the cities of the US safer.

Crooks and Liars: (w/ audio)

Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) spoke to the National Urban League, a group “devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream.” When an audience member asked him how he planned to reduce urban crime, McCain praised Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s efforts in New York Cirty before invoking the military’s tactics in Iraq as the model for crime-fighting:

MCCAIN: And some of those tactics - you mention the war in Iraq - are like that we use in the military. You go into neighborhoods, you clamp down, you provide a secure environment for the people that live there, and you make sure that the known criminals are kept under control. And you provide them with a stable environment and then they cooperate with law enforcement, etc, etc.

...

Now, beyond the so so results this has given in Iraq, or the fact crime has not been ended in places like Baghdad...doesn't this smack uncomfortably close to a...police state?

Privacy? What's that? And who will be doing this? Will it be national guard, the army, or the police? And seeing as McCain is planning to severely slash spending, taxes, and government involvement, who is going to be paying for this? Or will this go on the same magic credit card the Iraq War is on currently?

Netroots is on

And TPM is covering it.

Here is a coversation they had with Richard Clark on foreign policy.

Iranian or not Iranian

Crooks and Liars:

The Washington Monthly: (h/t Bill W)

IRAN’S WEAPONS….Tina Susman of the LA Times reports that Iranian involvement in Iraq’s civil war may not be everything it’s been cracked up to be:

There was something interesting missing from Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner’s introductory remarks to journalists at his regular news briefing in Baghdad on Wednesday: the word “Iran,” or any form of it. It was especially striking as Bergner, the U.S. military spokesman here, announced the extraordinary list of weapons and munitions that have been uncovered in recent weeks since fighting erupted between Iraqi and U.S. security forces and Shiite militiamen.

….A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. A U.S. military spokesman attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding that emerged after an Iraqi Army general in Karbala erroneously reported the items were of Iranian origin.

When U.S. explosives experts went to investigate, they discovered they were not Iranian after all.

...

And as they note:

...

As Kevin Drum points out, this was a small post on the LA Times Iraq blog. Not the front page of the LA Times, just a small online note. Would any of us have heard about it otherwise? How many times have we heard that Iran is supplying the “enemy” in Iraq? That seems to get through the media loud and clear. Why, it’s almost as if the media is simply relying on the Pentagon and the White House talking points. Hmmm….

Military analyst questions.

Crooks and Liars has an update on the Military Analyst story.

...

I’ve been posting like crazy about the latest media/military propaganda scam that the NY Times broke a few weeks ago. You know, the one about the paid military generals-turned-analysts that the networks used to deceive the American public with so the Iraq war was such an easy sell. Since then we’ve found out that Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and NBC failed to respond to a PBS request for comment which has resulted in virtually a complete media blackout, but which caused the the Defense Department to temporarily stop feeding information to retired military officers pending a review of the issue. Col. Allard admitted to CNN that there definitely was a conflict of interest—while Sen. Feingold questions the legality of it in a letter he wrote. Now it looks like we’ll have some action because it seems that Harry Reid (h/t Glenn Greenwald) has been paying attention to the blogosphere’s call for action:

Harry Reid was at the FDL Book Salon today and an FDL reader asked: ” are you planning to hold hearings on the illegality of the Pentagon’s propaganda training program of retired military officers?”

Reid responded: “The answer is yes. I have personally spoken to Chairman Levin and he is tremendously concerned as I. And we are proceeding accordingly.”

...

McCain logic

I thought this was a nice reading of McCain's thinking.

TPM:

To get a feel for what McCain was saying, about the best account I've seen is Rick Hertzberg's in The New Yorker. He was there at the townhall meeting and wrote up his account shortly thereafter.

Read the whole thing; but here's Rick's conclusion and response to those who even then were already saying McCain was being taken out of context ...

You have to hand it to McCain. It's impossible to imagine any of the other Republicans engaging in this kind of extended conversation with a citizen. There was more real debate in this exchange than in any of the so-called real debates.

But what the context shows, I think, is that yanking that sound bite out of context isn’t really all that unfair. McCain's wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal—that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay.

Bolding by me.

Continuing trouble with Sadr

Informed Comment:

I am always astounded at the combination of unrealistic optimism and foolish gullibility that marks political discourse on the Right in Washington. We were being told by Rich Lowry at the National Review that Sadr was on the ropes and on the verge of disbanding the Mahdi Army because the other political factions had turned on him, and that the others had had their militias join the regular security forces.

So let us get this straight. Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fought off thousands of regular Iraqi army troops in Basra and Baghdad, and perhaps thousands of those troops deserted rather than fight. So the Mahdi Army won big and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki lost. Also the US military trainers of the Iraqi troops lost face.

So the next thing we hear is that al-Maliki is talking big and demanding that the Mahdi Army be dissolved. Usually you get to talk big if you win the military battle, not if you lose.

The Sadrists have no intention of dissolving the Mahdi Army, according to this Arabic source, quoting Sadrist spokesman Salah al-Ubaidi. They point out, pace that great Iraq expert Lowry, that there are 28 militias in Iraq. The Badr Corps of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) still exists as a stand alone organization. In fact it ran as a political party in the elections and holds both provincial and federal seats. It hasn't been complete merged into the state security forces as Lowry alleged. And anyway, painting a sign on a militia saying 'this one is legitimate because its party won the last election' is not going to convince any real Iraqis.

As it happens, the parliamentary representatives of Mosul demanded Monday that the Kurdish Peshmerga be dissolved. (Hint: Hell will freeze over first).
Then the US press went wild for this supposed report that Muqtada al-Sadr said he would dissolve his militia if Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani ordered it. Folks, he always says that when there is a controversy. (He said the same thing in spring, 2004). He says it because he knows it makes him look reasonable to the Shiite public. He says it because he knows that the grand ayatollahs are not going to touch the matter with a ten foot pole. They are not so foolish as to take responsibility for dissolving a militia that they had nothing to do with creating. And that is probably the real meaning of this CNN report that they 'refused' when asked. I doubt the grand ayatollahs in Najaf actively commanded Muqtada to keep his militia. They just declined to get drawn in.

So the idea that, having lost militarily, al-Maliki and his political allies (who are a minority in parliament now) could just a couple of days later jawbone Muqtada into giving up his paramilitary was always absurd.

As for the the threat that the Sadrists would not be allowed to run in the provincial elections in the fall unless the Mahdi Army was dissolved, it is either empty or very dangerous. First of all, not only Sadrists but also other observers have pointed out that excluding parties from running in elections is not the prerogative of the prime minister. It is a matter that would have to be passed by parliament. And since the parliamentarians who would be voting to dissolve all militias ahead of elections are all in parties that maintain militias, it would be political suicide for them to vote that way. Of course, they could just play the hypocrite card and declare, as Lowry did, that their militias are not militias, whereas the Mahdi Army is a militia.

But if the Sadrists are really excluded from civil politics, and they are the majority in the South, then you will have just pushed a majority of Iraqis out of the political process and potentially into civil violence. Isn't that the opposite of the goal here?

...

TPMtv - 100 years

TPM:

John McCain won't stop trying to change the subject. And the RNC just won't stop lying on his behalf about his 100 years in Iraq remark. In today's episode we run through the record. That one townhall event wasn't the only time he said this. At other points he said 1000 years, 10,000 years, even a million years. In other words, he was saying this all the time. Now he wants to run away from it, change the subject, change what he meant and generally bully anybody who wants to bring it up.

...

Late Update: Here's a post at Redstate getting readers to Mau-Mau reporters into leavin McCain alone on the 100 years comment. And remember, 100 years was his short prediction. At other points he was good with 1000 or even 10,000 years.

More

TPM - More on the McCain Bamboozle

Trying to be vague, to not look stupid

And failing.

Crooks and Liars:

...

During today’s hearing with Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) questioned Petraeus on what he called “the major threat” of al Qaeda in Iraq. In the wake of his recent confusion over the nature of al Qaeda, McCain today seemed to refer to al Qaeda as a “sect of Shi’ites”:

MCCAIN: Do you still view al Qaeda in Iraq as a major threat?

PETRAEUS: It is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was say 15 months ago.

MCCAIN: Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shi’ites overall?

PETREAUS: No.

MCCAIN: Or Sunnis or anybody else.

It’s really embarrassing that the guy who has built his whole campaign over staying in Iraq doesn’t understand the players at all. Of course the media will never point this out, but it’s ridiculous that he has made the same gaffe over and over again and can still be considered credible on National Security. As the Democratic Party blog said:

ThinkProgress also has it, and they flag down this quote: “Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.”

You can watch McCain’s whole opening statement here.

More on treatment of women working in Iraq

Crooks and Liars points to this new story (in a long line):

The Nation

:

It was an early January morning in 2008 when 42-year-old Lisa Smith*, a paramedic for a defense contractor in southern Iraq, woke up to find her entire room shaking. The shipping container that served as her living quarters was reverberating from nearby rocket attacks, and she was jolted awake to discover an awful reality. “Right then my whole life was turned upside down,” she says. [..NSFW description of Smith’s rape]

Over the next few weeks Smith would be told to keep quiet about the incident by a KBR supervisor. The camp’s military liaison officer also told her not to speak about what had happened, she says. And she would follow these instructions. “Because then, all of a sudden, if you’ve done exactly what you’ve been instructed not to do–tell somebody–then you’re in danger,” Smith says.

As a brand-new arrival at Camp Harper, she had not yet forged many connections and was working in a red zone under regular rocket fire alongside the very men who had participated in the attack. (At one point, as the sole medical provider, she was even forced to treat one of her alleged assailants for a minor injury.) She waited two and a half weeks, until she returned to a much larger facility, to report the incident. “It’s very easy for bad things to happen down there and not have it be even slightly suspicious.”

Over the next month and a half, she says, she faced a series of hurdles. She would be discouraged from reporting the incident by several KBR employees, she says. She would be confused by the lack of any written medical protocol for sexual assault (as the only medical person on site, she treated herself with doxycycline). She would wander through a tangled maze of interviews with KBR and Army investigators about the incident without any clear explanation of her rights. She would be asked to sign several documents agreeing not to publicly discuss the incident, she says. She describes having her computer–which she saw as her lifeline, her main access to the outside world–confiscated by Army investigators as “evidence” within hours of receiving her first e-mail from a stateside lawyer she had reached out to for help.

And eventually she would find herself temporarily assigned to sleeping quarters between two Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) officials, who, she says, assured her that it was for her own safety, since her alleged assailants were at the same camp for questioning; they roamed freely. When she wanted to move about the camp to get meals etc., she was escorted.
Smith felt very alone. But she was not.

In fact, a growing number of women employees working for US defense contractors in the Middle East are coming forward with complaints of violence directed at them. As the Iraq War drags on, and as stories of US security contractors who seem to operate with impunity continue to emerge (like Blackwater and its deadly attack against Iraqi civilians on September 16, 2007), a rash of new sexual assault and sexual harassment complaints are being lodged against overseas contractors–by their own employees. Read on…

How is this not a major story for the news? Oh, wait, there is a barn fire AND a high speed car chase to cover right now.

Women in the military

Feministing:

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) has an op-ed in the LA Times where she reveals that "women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq."

My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41% of female veterans seen at the clinic say they were victims of sexual assault while in the military, and 29% report being raped during their military service. They spoke of their continued terror, feelings of helplessness and the downward spirals many of their lives have since taken.

Numbers reported by the Department of Defense show a sickening pattern. In 2006, 2,947 sexual assaults were reported -- 73% more than in 2004.

Harman also writes that there's an "unwillingness to prosecute rapists in the ranks." Only 181 out of 2,212 people investigated for sexual assault in 2007 were referred to courts-martial (prosecution); many others were dealt with by "nonpunitive administrative action" or "nonjudicial punishment," the equivalent to a slap on the wrist. Just horrifying.

For a more information and resources on sexual assault in the military see the Veterans for America and their list of rape crisis centers near military bases; the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence also has a long list of resources for military women; and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center has statistics. For those who are looking for more theory-based info, check out just about anything by Cynthia Enloe.

...

Out of Basra

TPM:

Within less than a week the Basra offensive has gone from "a defining moment" in Iraqi's history, in the President's words, to an operation conceived by Maliki that the U.S. didn't plan, had little warning of, and couldn't control.

Not good...but wait, McCain sees the good news.

Crooks and Liars:

...

(h/t Heather) For a man who predicates his whole candidacy on foreign policy and the Iraq war, he certainly doesn’t have a clue what the Iraqi government is doing even after he went to Iraq and spoke with Maliki right before the Basra assault took place. How embarrassing for him.

McCain was asked if the Basra campaign had backfired, he said: “Apparently it was Sadr who asked for the ceasefire, declared a ceasefire. It wasn’t Maliki. Very rarely do I see the winning side declare a ceasefire. So we’ll see.’’

Olbermann fills in St. McCain (or should we call him McGaffe) on his newest Iraq blunder via McClatchy:

Keith: that Sadr had only called for the ceasefire after members of Maliki’s government askedSadr to do so in a during a secret trip to meet with Sadr in Iran.—making McCain wrong about the facts on his signature issue, making Sadr not Maliki the victor in this conflict by McCain’s own reasoning. And making Iran and not McCain and not the US the mediator of choice for Iraq’s two top Shi’a factions. The Maliki government and the Sadrists.

And this is even worse news for Maliki’s government:

Iraqi lawmakers traveled to the Iranian holy city of Qom over the weekend to win the support of the commander of Iran’s Qods brigades in persuading Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr to order his followers to stop military operations, members of the Iraqi parliament said.

The Qom discussions may or may not bring an end to the fighting but they almost certainly have undermined Maliki - who made repeated declarations that there would be no negotiations and that he would treat as outlaws those who did not turn in their weapons for cash. The blow to his own credibility was worsened by the fact that members of his own party had helped organize the Iran initiative…

Read the whole article so you’ll be more informed than McCain.

I am sure the news media will get right on this. Oh, yeah...

Crooks and Liars:

Yep, we’ll have a chance with them in November:

During an interview with Sen. Chuck Hagel, Charlie Rose falsely asserted that Sen. John McCain “early on call[ed] for the firing of Secretary Rumsfeld.” In fact, while McCain expressed “no confidence” in Rumsfeld in 2004, he did not call for him to be fired; he said the decision about whether Rumsfeld should leave was the president’s.

The media.

Iraqi success,,,

really?

TPM:

It was supposed to be, as President Bush called it, "a defining moment in the history of Iraq." And it might just be. But certainly not in the way that Bush meant it. Instead, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's offensive in Basra and Baghdad against Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's forces has confirmed his government's essential weakness.

Consider: with Maliki's campaign stalled, a parliamentary delegation from Maliki's own coalition went off to Iran to broker a deal with Sadr. And the terms of that deal, which involves the release of hundreds of detained Sadr followers and the return of his followers displaced by raids and violence, will surely strengthen Sadr's political position. That's assuming, of course, that the deal holds and the fighting actually stops. All of the papers report that fighting has not stopped in Baghdad and Basra. And while it's unclear whether the deal will actually last, it's crystal clear what the deal means for Maliki. The New York Times sees no upside.

...

A fighter from Sadr's Mahdi Army in Baghdad, speaking to The Washington Post, sees things similarly: "The fighting has proved they have learned a lesson. The government is dead from our point of view."

Maliki has conceded to Sadr and Iran, and his forces couldn't dislodge Sadr's people, even with US support. This is not a promising sign.

Iraq not improving

TPM:
As you've probably heard, our local boss in Iraq, Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki, sternly set forth a 72 hour deadline for members of the Mahdi Army to surrender their weapons or his government forces would take them by force, attack, whatever. Well, things haven't been going well and now he's extended the deadline until April 8th, according to this report from NPR. And to sweeten the deal, he's apparently added on what in this country we call a gun buy back program.

In other encouraging news, Iraqi police in Baghdad are apparently deserting en masse to the Mahdi Army, thus leaving city police checkpoints to be manned by Iraqi Army soldiers, who are conveniently available because the US military is getting pulled in to take over the fight with the Mahdi Army.