I'm a liberal democrat, opposed to this war from the very beginning. But I don't support pulling our troops out of Iraq, yet, perhaps not a popular position among my liberal brethren. I'm disgusted at the political football that withdrawal has become.

The left and the right argue back and forth with the president: "bring home the troops", "get the job done", "set timetables for withdrawal", etc., but where is the analysis about the actual consequences of any of these actions? Where are the panels of experts discussing how this decision will affect Iraq, the Middle East, the long-term security of the US?

More below the fold.

So, I just read that the U.S. is going to begin deploying a few of the SWORD mobile robotic combat system in Iraq this month.

I'm curious, do people think there will be a reaction against the US Army now killing people by remote control? (Not that it's really any different that fighting with cruise missiles, but it feels to me like there's a psychological difference when Johnny 5 is driving down a city street sniping badguys around the corner).

I suspect there won't at least not this time. Only 18 are being deployed and I imagine it will barely make the news cycle either here or or in the region.

Eventually, though, we may see swarms of (remote cotrolled) high-tech robots hunting badguys in third-world nations. The thought is just somewhat creepy.

A year ago, we captured Saddam Hussien. This act was suppossed to "break the back of the insurgency". How'd that work out, anyway?

Demolishing Fallujah was also suppossed to break the back of the insurgency. Eleven months from now, how will that have turned out?

You know, the warnings from many opposed to invading Iraq, including a) George H. W. Bush b) several generals and c) several state Dept. analysts was that the invasion would be a grueling slogfest of urban war. Then the invasion turned out to be swift and the country fell in days.

Now we get out urban combat slog after all; it turns out the enemy was too smart to do that up front. Instead, they know better than we do how to use a population to their advantage.

This morning's bombing news was a shiite shrine in the holy city of Karbala, killing 8 and wounding 32.

A while back, I wrote a post called "Journalism of Mass Destruction", following a report on Capitol Hill Blue wherein an anonymous source claimed he'd heard George W. Bush order the CIA to fire analysts who couldn't get him the WMD intelligence he wanted and to hire some who could. The source gave a direct quote to that effect: the kind of thing that could take down a president, if true.

The next day, the source turned out to be bogus, and CHB had to pull the story, plus ten years of stories that had used information from the same source.

Tonight, Salon is running a story about a US Army sergeant, Frank Ford, who reported to his superiors that he observed Iraqi detainees being tortured by other army men. The story claims his commanding officer (who is also named: Captain Victor Artiga) ordered a psych exam for Ford. When the diagnosis came up "completely normal", Artiga purportedly browbeat the psychiatrist into changing it to "delusional from combat stress" whereupon Ford was strapped to a gurney and medevac'd out of Iraq.

An army colonel who examined Ford in Germany afterwards claimed he had examined several other soldiers who had been evac'd for "combat stress" after reporting instances of torture.

If true, this is a truly grotesque, fascist sort of behavior from the military: falsely diagnosing people of phantom psychological disorders for speaking up against inappropriate behavior. Given the number of sources given with name and rank in the story, this one will be easy to check and hard to backtrack from.

So, heads should roll. Not because seeing heads roll is satisfying, but because if we tolerate this kind of behavior we are sliding dangerously into fascism. It's bad enough that nobody was fired for known cases of torture being used on detainees -- many of whom turned out later to be innocent. To lock the whistleblowers into the rubber room is so scary I can barely begin to comprehend it.

Remember, folks, the Defense Secretary who presided over the Abu Ghraib scandal -- the most deadly blow to date to U.S. efforts to promote democracy in the Middle East -- is also the only major cabinet secretary not being replaced for the second term.

Remember also that we don't use torture - even if it were effective and produced good intelligence, which it doesn't - because it is morally wrong. Bad things don't become good because "good" people do them. "Good people" become evil people if they start to do reprehensible things. This is not, and cannot be, the way the U.S. military acts. This is the beginnings of the way the Gestapo acted, and we must not go down that road.

I haven't written a post about politics or the war in a while, I guess it just hasn't been new and interesting to me lately. But I just saw a post by Kevin Drum regarding the CIA screwup of Iraq WMD intelligence and associated commentary, and it's inspired me to comment a bit.

He quotes Michael O'Hanlon, who says that the CIA's error is not so egregious:

Let's face it, it would have taken an overwhelming body of evidence for any reasonable person in 2002 to think that Saddam Hussein did not possess stockpiles of chemical and biological agents ... The United Nations and most European and Middle Eastern intelligence outfits had the same incorrect beliefs as our agencies, for the same understandable reasons.

Kevin correctly points out that this doesn't matter, because after that relevant period, we had inspectors on the ground who investigated our best intel for months and found nothing.

But even before we put inspectors back in Iraq, O'Hanlon's opinion is horseshit. Total and utter horseshit.

Normally I don't swear on my blog, you know, in case I ever want to run for President. In this case no other words suffice.

Exhibit A: Scott Ritter. The man on the ground. He'd been in Iraq for years, overseeing the destruction of WMD stockpiles and factories. Ritter claimed that they were gone. More than claimed, he screamed up and down the aisles of Washington for months before the war. Despite being the single most informed human being on the planet about the subject, he was utterly ignored. Except by "nutcases" like me. Nutcases who ultimately turned out to be correct.

Every single team leader who has been on the ground in Iraq in a weapons-inspection capacity since 1995 has concluded that Iraq had no more WMD stockpiles ore programs. Scott Ritter. Hans Blix. David Kay. Please note that two of those three conclusions were made before the war.

Yet the Right concludes that "there's no way we could have known that Iraq had gotten rid of its' weapons, and everyone agreed that Iraq still had them". Horseshit, horseshit, horseshit. Everyone who agreed that Iraq had those weapons - including the Democrats - held that opinion in the face of contrary evidence, because they wanted to hold that opinion.

Or, because "higher-ups" like the White House continually assured us they had better intelligence that they couldn't show us. Remember Rumsfeld's "We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad." ? (March 30, 2003).

The story is simple. Under international pressure, Saddam Hussein ended his WMD program in the early to mid- 1990's.

Another thing that severely irks me about this whole issue. Everyone is blasting the CIA for its faulty intel. But in the run-up to the war, the CIA was the one agency unsure of the intel, and hedging its best about Iraq. And the Right was absolutely blasting them for not being on board about Iraq, and not whole-heartedly supporting the war. Now that it turns out that our rationalization for attacking Iraq was horseshit, the CIA is being blamed and is taking the fall for the error.

But the strong rhetoric about WMD did not come from the CIA. They certainly made errors, but they never said "We are sure Saddam Hussein has WMD stockpiles and recomend invading to remove him." The strong rhetoric came from the White House. Despite its errors, the CIA never said "We know where [the WMD] are". Rumsfeld did.

Abolutely brilliant cartoon by Toles. Hat tip to Atrios.

It's becoming amazing to me how many of the predictions made by "Kooky Liberals" like me have come true in the last two years. Liberals, in theory, have no more access to the truth than anyone else. But the history of this administration has been one of blind following and willful ignorance of the facts - both by the White House and the public - more than any in recent American History.

I can only attribute it to the emotions of the people of the most powerful nation on earth after two events... an otherwise comparatively successful president violates their trust by sleeping around, and a horrific act of terrorism drove us all to fear, anguish, and blind faith in the white house. Angry and fearful people don't check the facts as well as rational people, sadly.

What do we know? The chief US weapons inspector for Iraq in the 1990's (Ritter) screamed at the top of his lungs that they couldn't have any real WMD capability, all through 2002/2003. Nobody listened but us "libruls", but it turned out he wa right. All us libs were complaining that a very biased source - Ahmed Chalabi and the INC - was the source of too much of the WH's intel. Nobody listened, but it turns out he was feeding us lies and selling info to the Iranians. US generals said 130,000 troops wasn't enough in Iraq. Nobody listened - but they were right, and the administration is falling over itself with stop-loss orders despite predicting we'd be down to 60,000 by now. A bunch of Nobel-laureate and other economists argued that tax cuts wouldn't stimulate job growth sufficient to offset the debt ... and after three years we have the worst deficit in history and despite two strong months of job growth we're a million job behind what the White House promised a year ago. Libs screamed that the WH sold out a CIA operative ... it didn't hit the news for six months. Eventually Ashcroft had to recuse himself, the grand jury is issuing subpoenas, and GWB has lawyered himself up.

Seems that people had better start listening to the liberal pundits: they've been right a lot lately. But, checking your predictions against the facts isn't most conservatives' strong suit.

The fact that we weren't showered with flowers as liberators in Iraq had absolutely no impact on their own perception of rightness.

Only when it touches them personally do they check with reality, as when Andy Sullivan jumped ship after the Hate Amendment (tm) was proposed. When your predictions and policies come up wrong, it's time to admit it. Sure, some liberals don't do this. But, many - particularly the smart ones - do. The GOP seems incapable, and the people of the US follow them anyway, failing to see the incongruities. Why?

Talking about the uprising and reprisals in Fallujah, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt (CPA Director of Operations) was quoted as saying:

"The end state is what we need to be focused on. If it can be achieved through a political track, that's always good. I think we are going to show some combat patience and see if we can deliver this on a political track."

In otherwords, they're not going to invade the city. Because they have come to realize that it would be expensive to invade and that increased resentment by the population may more than negate any gains.

Gee, it would have great to see some "combat patience" allow the political track to function, say, fourteen months ago. But, 20-20 hindsight and all that.

I do not like to be defeatist. However, it's been my belief for about two weeks now that Iraq cannot be fixed. We've f*cked it up too badly, now, and all roads are downhill from here.

We've finally brought the Shia and Sunni populations of Iraq together! The people of Iraq unified under a common cause. Isn't that what we wanted?

So Iraq is a total mess as of this weekend. But I wasn't 100% convinced it will descend into hell until I saw this headline:

Police joined the militants' protest in Basra The US-led coalition in Iraq says an arrest warrant has been issued for radical cleric Moqtada Sadr.

No doubt the man deserves it. But, Sadr has Millions of devoted, loyal followers. Many of whom are armed. Arrest him, and watch hell on earth descend.

I don't like to be a pessimist. But this time, I actually think it is too late for a positive outcome in Iraq. Too much damage has already been done. At least, thank god, I think the inevitable chaos will come under Bush's watch so that people won't be blaming a possible President Kerry for the disaster Bush created.

3:00am and I'm seeing stories that Saddam Hussein may have been captured. Well, if true, thank God for small favors. Hopefully, this will demoralize the insurgents and reduce attacks on US troops, letting them get out of Iraq sooner rather than later. Only time will tell.

UPDATE: So, this morning it's confirmed - Saddam Hussein was definitely captured yesterday. I think my tired brain at 3:00am was only capable of regurgitating the imagined party line: clearly the most important element of this is the confirmed permanent end of the tyrant's reign over the Iraqi people. Hopefully this will reduce the violence level in the country as well, although I think it's unlikely at least in the short term, and to whatever extent the insurgents are simply fighting an invader rather than fighting for the old regime that result may be tempered. Either way, this is an incontrovertibly good thing. I personally would like to see the man tried before the ICC to lend a stronger air of international legitimacy and justice to the whole affair. Any trial by the Iraqis alone, especially if the Coalition is still running the country, risks being perceived by some as a kangaroo court. Milosevic was sent to the Hague, and I think that's the proper destination for this particular scum as well.

I heard Bush's speech this morning and it was pleasantly tempered - no particular gloating. Bremer's, on the other hand, was somewhat more cowboyish. Wonders never cease.

A footnote for the political set: I'm seeing a lot of rhetoric about how this changes the character of politics, liberals will be dismayed etc. Ugh. Seriously, folks, it's a good thing we got the guy. At the same time, getting him doesn't change the fact that the war was unnecessary and ill-advised. About the only things the antiwar dem candidates have to do is say "good job on catching Hussein" and go on as things were.