Armchair Generalist

Gen. Clark's Controversy?

I am as befuddled as many others when I say, what's the controversy over Gen. (ret) Wes Clark's words on Face the Nation last Sunday? I just don't see it, because it sounds right.

Bob Schieffer: Well you, you went so far as to say that you thought John McCain was, quote, and these are your words, "untested and untried," And I must say I, I had to read that twice, because you're talking about somebody who was a prisoner of war. He was a squadron commander of the largest squadron in the Navy. He's been on the Senate Armed Services Committee for lo these many years. How can you say that John McCain is un- untested and untried? General?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Because in the matters of national security policy making, it's a matter of understanding risk. It's a matter of gauging your opponents, and it's a matter of being held accountable. John McCain's never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn't held executive responsibility. That large squadron in Air- in the Navy that he commanded, it wasn't a wartime squadron. He hasn't been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn't seen what it's like when diplomats come in and say, 'I don't know whether we're going to be able to get this point through or not. Do you want to take the risk? What about your reputation? How do we handle it-'

Bob Schieffer: Well-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: ' -it publicly.' He hasn't made those calls, Bob.

Oh - you meant the part further down, the one liner that made all the evening news shows without any context, about how McCain's POW experience - while harrowing - didn't qualify him to be a national security expert. Here's a news flash - it doesn't. McCain's POW experience didn't make him an economic leader either, or an immigration expert, and so on. Just as Rudy Giuliani seemed to use 9/11 as an example of how he demonstrated leadership in every imaginable field, it seems as if the McCain crowd wants to use his POW experience as the reason why he's the right candidate for President. The media seem unable to comprend this.

Just as my prior Army experience didn't make me qualified to be a defense analyst, McCain's military experience - on its own - didn't qualify him to be commander-in-chief. It's what you do with your experience and more importantly, the record of your judgment calls since that experience. McCain's record isn't so good (continue the war in Iraq, bomb Iran, no new GI Bill, etc etc), and his temperament isn't one I'd like to see in the next President. Let's not overlook the fact that McCain has missed the majority of this year's Senate votes, to include many defense-related debates. And to talk about bad judgment... let's talk about McCain's use of a SwiftBoater on his "Truth Squad." Another example of Orwellian newspeak, I guess.

Judicial Activism

Dionne in the WaPo: " Yesterday's narrow majority spent the first 54 pages of its decision, written by Scalia, trying to show that even though the Framers inserted 13 important words in front of the assertion of a right to bear arms, those words were essentially meaningless. Does that reflect an honest attempt to determine the "original" intention of the Constitution's authors?

"In fact, it was the court's four more liberal justices who favored judicial modesty, deference to democratic decisions, empowerment of local officials and care in examining the Constitution's actual text and the history behind it. Indeed, the same conservative majority ran roughshod over the work of an elected branch of government in its ruling yesterday on campaign finance law.
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In his intemperate dissent in the court's recent Guantanamo decision, Scalia said the defense of constitutional rights embodied in that ruling meant it "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed." That consideration apparently does not apply to a law whose precise purpose was to reduce the number of murders in the District of Columbia."

Obama's The Smart Pick

Once again, Sen. Barack Obama demonstrates why he's got the better grasp on national security issues in this ABC interview.

TAPPER: How do you know that [the Bush administration is] wrong? It's not possible that they're right?

OBAMA: Well, keep in mind I haven't opposed, for example, the national security surveillance program, the NSA program. What I've said that we can do it within the constraints of our civil liberties and our Constitution.

TAPPER: They disagree, though.

OBAMA: Well, but the fact that they disagree does not mean that they're right on this. What it means is, is that they have been willing to skirt basic protections that are in our Constitution, that our founders put in place.

And it is my firm belief that we can track terrorists, we can crack down on threats against the United States, but we can do so within the constraints of our Constitution. And there has been no evidence on their part that we can't.

And, you know, let's take the example of Guantanamo. What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks -- for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated.

And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world, and given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, "Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims."

So that, I think, is an example of something that was unnecessary. We could have done the exact same thing, but done it in a way that was consistent with our laws.

How refreshing to hear something articulate, intelligent, legal, rather than "We're never gonna close Gitmo! Torture saves American lives! The Supreme Court is wrong in its decisions!"

White House Press Briefs

From the Onion. U.S. Finally Gets Around To Closing Last WWII Internment Camp

If McCain gets into office, expect a similar briefing from his press secretary re: Gitmo.

Way, Way Overdue

The Senate Intelligence Committee has finally released two reports that examine the US government's actions with respect to Iraq's alleged WMD program. I suppose the Repubs could only stall their release so long, once they lost the majority. Talking Points Memo has summarized the key points (reports can also be accessed there):

Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.

Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.

Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.

The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.

The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

My emphasis added to note a common theme of mine - it wasn't the intel community that was screwed up as much as it was the policy makers cherry-picking and exaggerating what they were being told by said community.

Wow, it's a good thing that Doug Feith got his points on the record in his book (which I just received from the library) prior to these reports coming out. Now we can see what a flaming lieing idiot he really is. Not that I'm biased against him or anything.

UPDATE: Once again, I must shamefacedly admit that my liberal brethern have "cherry-picked" a bit themselves. The report on former statements made by Bush administration officials (once I read it) notes that, in as far as statements concerning Iraq's alleged development of NBC weapons and delivery systems, they "were generally substantiated by available intelligence." In short, the intel community thought there were CB weapons present and a nuclear weapons program in development, but were unwilling to state with certainty that there were NBC weapons being produced and stored or that they represented a threat to US forces or interests. The policy makers filled in those gaps with their wisdom.

However, I have to add that there is nothing more pathetic than the protests from the Republicans on the committee (notably, Senators Bond, Chambliss, Hatch, and Burr) to the effect that this was a "poorly handled congressional investigation" when their side sat on this report for THREE YEARS. Keep trying to dance around the facts, guys, you screwed the pooch. You bet that US forces would find the "WMD program" that the Bush administration played up, and you lost big. Enjoy those bitter fruits of your labor in November.

Wanted: A President With Dignity

 

Honest to God. Is there any question why people look to Barack Obama? From the Dependable Renegade.

Casual Fridays will be slightly delayed.

Random Humor

H/T to the Undeniable Liberal.

Who Is the "National Security" Party?

So why is it that the Republicans hate the military? I can't think of any other reason why 26 Senate Republicans would be the lone hold-outs from authorizing of the FY 2009 defense budget. It's not as if this was larger than many of the past five years' bills, but it did include domestic spending and veteran benefits that the White House had not supported.

The Senate yesterday approved $165 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan well into the next presidency, but in a break with President Bush and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, it also approved billions of dollars in domestic spending that includes a generous expansion of veterans' education benefits.

The war funding measure, which passed 70 to 26, will be twinned with the domestic spending package and sent to the House for final approval after Congress's Memorial Day recess. Senators stripped the package of all language that mandated troop withdrawals and sought to govern the conduct of the Iraq war, which had been in a previous version approved by the House.

But the separate domestic spending package served notice to the White House that in an election year, lawmakers from both parties will demand coupling Iraq war funds with priorities at home. In total, the bill would cost more than $250 billion over 10 years, including $51 billion for the veterans' education benefits alone.

The names of those Senate Republicans (22 in number) who voted against the amendment adding the revised GI Bill can be found here.  You'll notice some of the big shot names: the Senate minority leader, Mitch "chem demil pork" McConnell (KY), Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett (UT), Richard Lugar (IN), Lindsey "I'm really a moderate" Graham (SC), Lamar Alexander (TN), John Cornyn (TX) - all politicians with military bases, but they must think their reelection efforts won't be harmed by their vote against veteran benefits. As for John McCain, we do know that he was against this bill, but he didn't show up for the vote.

Although parts of the amendment have always enjoyed bipartisan support, the measure has taken on the weight of the presidential campaign in recent weeks. McCain (Ariz.) had opposed the domestic spending and advocated a slimmed-down version of the G.I. Bill, adopting the administration's argument that the original version -- by Sens. James Webb (D-Va.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) -- would deplete the military.

In so doing, McCain went against virtually every veterans organization, from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion to the more partisan VoteVets.org, which has aired blistering advertisements against him.

McCain did not interrupt his campaign schedule to vote yesterday, a decision that drew criticism. His Democratic rivals, Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), did vote.

Yes, the man who is the presumptive Republican candidate for president, running unopposed at this point, a man who is not yet facing a presumptive Democratic candidate, couldn't break away from political campaigning to vote on a bill that would fund the Department of Defense and that would enhance veterans' benefits. And this is the party who would have us think that they are the "national security" champions.

McCain - Not a Serious National Security Candidate

It's great how Sen. John Syndey McCain just does all the work to make us understand how poorly he grasps the tenets of national security. In a recent blast against Sen. Barack Obama, McCain accused Obama of failing to adequately appreciate Iran's threat to the United States.

Republican John McCain accused Democrat Barack Obama of inexperience and reckless judgment for saying Iran does not pose the same serious threat to the United States as the Soviet Union did in its day.

The likely Republican presidential nominee made the criticism Monday in Chicago, Obama's home turf.

"Such a statement betrays the depth of Senator Obama's inexperience and reckless judgment. These are very serious deficiencies for an American president to possess," McCain said at the restaurant industry's annual meeting.

He was referring to comments Obama made Sunday in Pendleton, Oregon: "Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, 'We're going to wipe you off the planet.'

Let's not even get into the abstract appreciation of how large the former Soviet Union's military forces were and the billions of dollars and man-years spent on keeping troops in Europe to protect against the anticipated Warsaw Pact invasion. All you have to do is count the number of ballistic missiles pointed at the United States from the two countries. Former Soviet Union - around 1400 intercontinental ballistic missiles, and that's not including the strategic bombers or ballistic missile submarines. Iran - zero intercontinental ballistic missiles, no strategic bombers or missile boats. And let's not forget the former Soviet Union's massive stocks of chemical and biological munitions.

Of course, Sen. McCain does know better. He merely wants to lash out and score some political points with the conservative base who wants to see him to bash Obama. As Kevin Drum suggests, conservatives need to pretend that Iran is the catastrophic threat of the current and future day because it suits their political agenda. Certainly Iran's leaders, while inflammatory in their rhetoric, are not suicidal or apocalyptic. And certainly Russia today continues to poise much more of a threat to US interests than Iran.

It's all about this silly idea that presidents can't negotiate with adversarial countries. You know, like when President Nixon took the initiative to take an unspeakably foolish trip to Communist China. Or when President Reagan assisted Saddam Hussein against Iraq Iran in the 1980s (let alone when Reagan negotiated with Gorbachev on dismantling nuclear and chemical weapons programs). And then there's the "arms for hostages" deal with Iran. Or when this current president decided to deal with North Korea and Libya on their WMD programs. Yep, those were big mistakes, right, Senator? And the Bush administration's refusal to openly deal with Hamas, Syria, and Iran have just worked soooo well (and we all know about the quiet, undisclosed State negotiations with those same nations). Because we just can't act like civilized nations and engage in diplomacy - unless you're a Republican, I guess.

Insane Conservative Logic

Imagine my surprise when I found this LA Times op-ed by Jonah Goldberg, where he actually compares two things of interest to me - long-term nuclear waste storage and long-term enemy combatant confinement. He thinks that liberals treat the two subjects similarly, in that they expect results but consciously block legitimate attempts to get there. Let's find out how this works.

See, Yucca Mountain is where the government wants to keep incredibly dangerous substances -- nuclear waste -- until we figure out a better way to handle it.

And Guantanamo Bay is where the federal government keeps incredibly dangerous people -- jihadi enemy combatants -- until we figure out a better way to handle them.
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Much like Yucca Mountain, lots of things are said about Gitmo that aren't true. Yucca is derided as unsafe, when its biggest shortcoming is that its designers can't promise that in 10,000 years a passerby who digs it up won't be exposed to much more than a few chest X-rays' worth of radiation.

Gitmo, likewise, is routinely lumped in with the more legitimate outrage over mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib and the more complicated controversies about renditions and CIA black sites. In reality, argues Andrew McCarthy in the current National Review, Gitmo "is probably the most scrutinized prison in modern history."
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Nonetheless, Gitmo will soon be closed. President Bush wants it closed, as do all of his likely successors. And that's probably for the best, given the stink it puts on America in the world, deservedly so or not. But here's the thing: If you want to fight a war on terrorism, or any war, you need to put captured combatants someplace -- someplace other than a conventional U.S. prison, where they're treated like any other criminal.

No, you ass, that's not quite an appropriate comparison. You see, Yucca Mountain was actually designed to federal regulations, approved in an open and public fashion, and not implemented due to the political cowardice of state governors and congressional delegations. Whereas the detainment of unaccused prisoners in Gitmo was done in spite of federal and international law, done secretly without public input, and implemented over the protests of lawyers and human rights activists. President Bush made an executive order to open Yucca Mountain, but he doesn't really care enough to force the issue. For Gitmo, he made an executive decision to ignore public laws to take any measure possible to incarcerate potential insurgents without charging them or offering a trial to many for years. I don't think he really wants it closed at all.

I love the way Jonah makes up assumptions to support his theory. Nuclear power is a must-do to defeat the impact of climate change. There's no other option for dealing with captured enemy combatants other than years of incarceration in Gitmo without a trial. It's the fault of Congress, not the president, in failing to resolve these issues (well, okay, maybe he's right there). Other than those details, yeah, sure, Yucca Mountain and Gitmo, exactly the same thing. Idiot.

Feith on The Daily Show

Why, Jon, why? Why give that horse's ass a chance to sell more of his fiction to the public? Do you really need to spar with these conservatives? Are you feeling  strong when you tell them that they're wrong? Because I don't think they really care, other than to get that spotlight.

On Monday night, Doug Feith said more stupid things about WMDs and how the president was really just trying to prevent "the next attack" after 9/11 by invading Iraq.

Useful Idiots

Hey, it's amazing! I found someone who thinks that Doug Feith's new book is actually worth reading! that is, for a purpose other than a warning to future voters on how not to trust "national security" Republican neocons. Michael Barone of US News and World Report (and Faux News commentator) thinks that poor Dougie has been beaten up too much.

One such narrative is "Bush lied, people died." The claim is that "neocons," including Feith, politicized intelligence to show that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction. Not so, as the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Silberman-Robb Commission have already concluded. Every intelligence agency believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and the post-invasion Duelfer report concluded that he maintained the capability to produce them on short notice. There was abundant evidence of contacts between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Given Saddam's hostility to the United States and his stonewalling of the United Nations, American leaders had every reason to believe he posed a grave threat. Removing him removed that threat.

Unfortunately—and here Feith is critical of his ultimate boss, George W. Bush—the administration allowed its critics to frame the issue around the fact that stockpiles of weapons weren't found. Here we see at work the liberal fallacy, apparent in debates on gun control, that weapons are the problem, rather than the people with the capability and will to use them to kill others. The fact that millions of law-abiding Americans have guns is not a problem; the problem is that criminals can get them and have the will to kill others. Similarly, the fact that France has WMDs is not a problem; the fact that Saddam Hussein had the capability to produce WMDs and the will to use them against us was.

Yes, the "liberal fallacy" that guns kill people is an excellent analogy to nations that develop weapons of mass destruction. If only that damnable President Richard Nixon hadn't decided to unilaterally stop the US offensive biological warfare program, and if only that cursed President George H.W. Bush had not worked so hard to stop the US offensive chemical weapons program!! Because it's not the good nations who own WMDs that you have to worry about... It amazes me that there are people like Barone who still want to defend the Iraq WMD issue.

And as for Dougie's hang-up about the Bush administration "allowing" its critics to frame the issue around WMDs, well, let's jump into the magic time machine. Five years ago, what did Mr. Feith say?

Although stability operations are ongoing across post-Saddam Iraq, "much work remains to be done before the coalition's military victory can be confirmed as a strategic victory," Feith acknowledged.

Feith said U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq continue to experience "attacks from scattered, small elements that remain loyal to the former regime."

Yet, former regime leaders on the "most-wanted list" are being rounded up "more or less daily," he pointed out, while the hunt for weapons of mass destruction continues.
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Regarding the search for WMDs in Iraq, U.S. and coalition forces have only checked about 20 percent of 600 suspected sites, Feith noted.

"We're learning about new sites every day," Feith said. He asserted his confidence "that we will eventually be able to piece together a fairly complete account of Iraq's WMD programs, but the process will take months, and perhaps, years."

Yes, it wasn't the critics framing the issue as much as the Bush administration who kept throwing it up in the news. It only took about eighteen months for the Iraq Survey Group to determine that there were no WMDs to police up, and its leader said "we were all wrong." But hey, I'm sure that Doug Feith is very pleased that there are useful idiots such as Michael Barone willing to make excuses for him.

Why Do Republicans Hate America?

Interesting article in the Washington Times (yes, if you can stomach it). It seems that al Qaeda's recruiting campaign is actually enhanced when its adversaries talk about it as being "jihadists." Muslims are less likely to assist when they hear about "Islamic terrorists," as it implies that they are all viewed as terrorists. This past Atlantic Monthly article notes:

With the advice of Islamic scholars and think-tank officials, Guirard has assembled an alternative lexicon he thinks U.S. officials should use in both English and Arabic. These include hirabah (“unholy war”) instead of jihad; irhabists (“terrorists”) instead of jihadists; mufsidoon (“evildoers”) instead of mujahideen; and so on. The long-term effect, he says, would be like labeling certain kinds of battle genocide or war crime rather than plain combat—not decisive, but useful. Conceivably President Bush’s frequent use of evildoers to describe terrorists and insurgents represented a deliberate step in this direction, intended to steer the Arabic translation of his comments toward the derogatory terms. (I could not confirm whether there was any such plan behind Bush’s choice of words, or whether it had made much difference in translations. While granting Guirard’s point, for convenience I’ll stick with the familiar terms here.)

So understanding this point, what do the House Republicans do? Insist that no federal funding be spent on changing the currently failed terminology used to discuss al Qaeda.

The leak of Bush administration guidelines urging U.S. officials to avoid using terms such as "jihadi" or "Islamic terrorists" to refer to al Qaeda and similar groups has exposed a fault line in Republican thinking about the U.S. war on terrorism.

On Friday, every Republican member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence voted for an amendment to an intelligence bill that would have banned the use of federal cash to produce documents like the terminology guidelines from the U.S. National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) that recently were leaked and posted online.

The NCTC guidelines say such shorthand "reinforces the 'U.S. vs. Islam' framework that [al Qaeda] promotes."

The amendment, authored by Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the panel's ranking Republican, was defeated on a party-line vote.

That is to say, only because the Democrats all voted against Hoekstra's idiotic amendment, the counter-terrorist experts can actually develop guidelines that MAKE SENSE due to the cultural norms of the Muslim community. So why do Republican politicians hate America? And hate their mothers, too?

Please Just Let It Go

I'm going to beg the great bloggers Glenn Greenwald, Duncan Black, and tristero at Hullabalo to just stop this stupid, dogged pursuit of "Pentagon-gate" - the charge that OSD is somehow to blame for the fact that media firms used retired general officers and admirals to comment on military issues to include the war in Iraq. Now Glenn's free to have his opinion and castegate the media, but he goes too far in this accusation:

So this was a group devoted to building domestic support in the U.S. for the invasion of Iraq through so-called "educational and advocacy efforts." And NBC News then hired both Barry McCaffrey and Wayne Downing as supposedly "independent analysts" to opine to NBC's viewers about the war, and did so without ever once disclosing this affiliation to their viewers, without ever disclosing that they were dedicated to propagandizing on behalf of the Bush administration's desire to invade Iraq.

Beyond their ideological affiliations that negated their "independence," both McCaffrey and Downing had substantial ties to the defense industry which gave them strong financial incentives to advocate for the war. Worse, these ties were detailed all the way back in April of 2003 by The Nation, in an article entitled "TV's Conflicted Experts:
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It's true, as Williams points out as though it is exculpatory, that -- like Bill Kristol and plenty of other hard-core war supporters -- McCaffrey wanted more U.S. troops in Iraq. He even signed a 2005 letter from PNAC -- along with the likes of Kristol, the mighty Kagan Brothers, Max Boot, Frank Gaffney, Michael O'Hanlon and Peter Beinart -- demanding that more troops be deployed to Iraq (the Kagans, O'Hanlon and Beinart -- despite their relative youth -- were all unavailable for duty).

It really ought to go without saying by now that advocating more troops for the War hardly made one a "war critic" nor did it demonstrate independence from the Bush administration's propaganda campaign for the War. To the contrary, the fact that both McCaffrey and Downing had financial ties to the defense industry which would stand to profit from policies entailing more defense spending further calls into question their independence, rather than resolves those questions.

Now I will let others argue as to whether OSD's alleged selective use of retired general officers was illegal as an act of propaganda. I'm not a lawyer, but I think the argument is weak and won't get any traction. This certainly isn't an "Armstrong Williams" case. But the accusation that retired general officers would knowingly and willingly parrot administration lines in support of the war in the hopes that industry would benefit and reward them financially is not only odious and despicable but just flat out idiotic.

First, of all officers to pick on, trying to make out Generals McCaffrey and Downing as profiteers is just absolutely off-base. Both gentlemen were highly decorated military officers, both served in Vietnam and all the way through Gulf War I. These are men who have been wounded in close combat, who have seen their friends and subordinates killed and wounded in battle. They know what war looks like and are certainly not the cheerleaders for more. They are professionals who have dedicated their lives to service to the country. General Downing cannot defend himself - he died last year. I'll let General McCaffrey defend himself, but the thing is, he really shouldn't have to, based on his record of critical and unbiased reviews of this administration's actions and his personal trips to the Middle East to see for himself what was going on.

Here's the thing, Glen, Duncan, Tristero, and all the rest of you babbling on about this effort. The Military-Industrial Complex doesn't need a war to be profitable. Yes, certainly defense contracts have grown, and given the amount of hardware damaged and destroyed and the number of services required to support a war, the military-industrial complex has profited. But even if there were no war, certainly there would be contracts for modernization, for services to be performed at maintenance shops and on military posts. Congress falls all over themselves throwing extra money toward the Pentagon for projects that were never asked for. Over the past decades plus, the U.S. government has spent more on defense every year than the next twenty countries combined - not including the defense supplementals. A war isn't necessary for industry to make money.

These professional officers know that their experience and connections are valuable, and if someone wants to give them a check to develop a better product that will aid the military, why not? Of course they're going to join boards of directors and of course they're going to work on studies that explore pros and cons of military strategy. That's what they've been doing for the government for over thirty years. Glenn also points out that McCaffrey signed that PNAC letter in 2005 saying that more troops were needed in Iraq. Now I won't defend his choice to associate with that group, but hell, I was also calling for more troops in Iraq in 2005. There were absolutely too few troops, and as a result, Americans were dieing and there was no political or military progress being made. It wasn't a call to continue the war as much as it was to get positive results so that we could get the hell out. One could be a war critic and still see that we weren't adequately executing the war so that it could be terminated.

There's not much more that I can say without getting repetitious and just cycled ranting. I was and remain strongly offended that the non-military liberal bloggers feel the need to recycle this pathetic flower-child charge of war-profiteering against these respected and honorable men. They have military pensions, they have work, they have connections, with or without the administration. I have no doubt that there may be some military officers who take advantage of this situation for their own glorification, but not for profit. There are no doubt some unscrupulous companies who take advantage of the war to make profits, but they don't need retired military officers to make money (just careless DOD contracting officers).

If there is a clear position on some law being broken by the administration, make your case. I don't think it's there. If you think the media is broken, I won't disagree with you, but that's their problem. But there is absolutely no call to be attacking, of all people, Generals McCaffrey and Downing, and I doubt that there is any rationale to be calling them war profiteers. These good men have done a lot for their country and will continue to do so. 

Bob Barr for President!

I eagerly await the media coverage on this fine candidate for President! Vote for the true conservative, my brother Republicans! Here's Big Bob's position on National Defense:

• For far too long and at the cost of American blood and treasure, our great military has been too willingly and quickly used for purposes other than national defense. Our fighting men and women deserve better and the integrity of our nation must be restored.
• Our National Defense policy must renew a commitment to non-intervention. We are not the world's police force and our long, yet recently tarnished, tradition of respecting the sovereignty of other nations is necessary, not from only a moral standpoint, but to regain the respect of the world as a principled and peaceful nation.
• The proper use of force is clear. If attacked, the aggressor will experience firsthand the skillful wrath of the American fighting man. However, invading or initiating force against another nation based upon perceived threats and speculative intelligence is simply un-American. We are better than the policy of pre-emptive warfare.

Won't you tell a friend?