EFTA01193614.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bce: [email protected] Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.... 06/22/2014 Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2014 08:02:53 +0000 Attachments: 5_Foods_Every_Midlifer_Needs_To_Start_Eating_Today_Yagana_Shah_Huff_Post_06_06 2014.docx; Sammy_Davisit_bio.docx; Political_Polarization_in_the_American_Public_PEW_June_12,_2014.docx; Bionic_Eye_AlJazeeraiune_12,_2014.docx; U.S._Healthcare,_Most_Expensive_and_Worst_Performing_OLGA_KHAZAN_The_Atlanti c_June_16,_2014.docx; How to Manage_the_Mess_in_Iraq_Michael_Eisenstadt_USNews_June_ 1 8,_2014.docx; An aciave strategyfor_Iraq_Fareed_Zakaria_TWP_June_ 1 9,_2014.docx; Denise_Squared_Wedding_-_June_21,_2014.docx; Denise_&_Dad_- _Father_&_Daughter_dancejpg Inline-Images: image.png; image(1).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(13).png; image(14).png; image(15).png; image(16).png DEAR FRIEND As JFK once lamented, "Success has a thousandfathers while failure is an orphan," in light of the recent events in Iraq journalist and author Fareed Zakaria wrote an op-ed last week in The Washington Post — Who lost Iraq? The Iraqis did, with an assistfrom George W. Bush. With the fall of Mosal to ISIS insurgents, Kirkuk to Kurdish forces and a number of Sunni groups threatening to march on Baghdad it is becoming increasingly likely that Iraq has reached a turning point of no return as forces hostile to the government have grown stronger, better equipped and more organized. And having now secured arms, ammunition and hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from their takeover of Mosul — Iraq's second-largest city — they will build on these strengths. Inevitably, in Washington, the question has surfaced: Who lost Iraq? EFTA01193614  Territory Mosul falls to Sunni militants The nordtern Iraq city of Mosul fell to Jihad's; Areas by influenced militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and ethnic group Syria (ISIS), an or controlled offshoot of al-Claida. Kurd SYRIA by ISIL and allied Sunni ■ Sunni Tuthmon Arab tribesmen Major ...... Mosul 44 ikt • Arbil • oilfields who are anti-Kurd and Shiite. Cl Sunni Arab/Kurd mix al Oil refinery Sunni Arab NINEVEH Sunni Arab/ ..... litsk Shute Arab nix us Kirkuk Shute Arab Fallujah Sparsely Euphrates River J o populated Baljl Baghdad O Populations Karbala Shills" Arab Samarra IRAN Shiite Arab 60% o Najaf f — Sunni IRAQ a Arab NasIrlyah Ramadi • • MCBAGHDAD l ir - K Sun rdnli 7 Basrao Fallujah Other 3 Sevres W U S Stale Deparrest. nrioNitil01Mietall Sn 02014 Ma Whenever the United States has asked this question — as it did with China in the 1950s or Vietnam in the 1970s — the most important point to remember is: The local rulers did. The Chinese nationalists and the South Vietnamese government were corrupt, inefficient and weak, unable to be inclusive and unwilling to fight with the dedication of their opponents. The same story is true of Iraq, only much more so. The first answer to the question is: Prime Minister Noun al-Maliki lost Iraq. The prime minister and his ruling party have behaved like thugs, excluding the Sunnis from power, using the army, police forces and militias to terrorize their opponents. The insurgency the Maliki government faces today was utterly predictable because, in fact, it happened before. From 2003 onward, Iraq faced a Sunni insurgency that was finally tamped down by Gen. David Petraeus, who said explicitly at the time that the core element of his strategy was political, bringing Sunni tribes and militias into the fold. The surge's success, he often noted, bought time for a real power-sharing deal in Iraq that would bring the Sunnis into the structure of the government. A senior official closely involved with Iraq in the Bush administration said, "Not only did Maliki not by to do broad power-sharing, he reneged on all the deals that had been made, stopped paying the Sunni tribes and militias, and started persecuting key Sunni officials." Among those targeted were the vice president of Iraq and its finance minister. But how did Maliki come to be prime minister of Iraq? He was the product of a series of momentous decisions made by the Bush administration. Having invaded Iraq with a small force — what the expert Tom Ricks called "the worst war plan in American history" — the administration needed to find local allies. It quickly decided to destroy Iraq's Sunni ruling establishment and empower the hard-line Shiite religious parties that had opposed Saddam Hussein. This meant that a structure of Sunni power that had been in the area for centuries collapsed. These moves — to disband the army, dismantle the bureaucracy and purge Sunnis in general — might have been more consequential than the invasion itself. The turmoil in the Middle East is often called a sectarian war. But really it is better described as "the Sunni revolt " Across the region, from Iraq to Syria, one sees armed Sunni gangs that have decided to take on the non- Sunni forces that, in their view, oppress them. The Bush administration often justified its actions by pointing out EFTA01193615 that the Shiites are the majority in Iraq and so they had to rule. But the truth is that the borders of these lands are porous, and while the Shiites are numerous in Iraq — Maliki's party actually won a plurality, not a majority — they are a tiny minority in the Middle East as a whole. It is outside support — from places as varied as Saudi Arabia and Turkey — that sustains the Sunni revolt. If the Bush administration deserves a fair share of blame for "losing Iraq," what about the Obama administration and its decision to withdraw American forces from the country by the end of 2011? The Obama Administration would have preferred to see a small American force in Iraq to try to prevent the country's collapse. But let's remember why this force is not there. Maliki refused to provide the guarantees that every other country in the world that hosts U.S. forces offers. Some commentators have blamed the Obama administration for negotiating badly or halfheartedly and perhaps this is true. But here's what a senior Iraqi politician told me in the days when the U.S. withdrawal was being discussed: "It will not happen. Maliki cannot allow American troops to stay on. Iran has made very clear to Maliki that its No. I demand is that there be no American troops remaining in Iraq. And Maliki owes them." Let's remember that Maliki spent 24 years in exile, most of them in Tehran and Damascus, and his party was funded by Iran for most of its existence. And in fact, Maliki's government has followed policies that have been pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian. With war hawks in Washington demanding that the President do something the White House is debating whether airstrikes or training forces would be more effective, but its real problem is much larger and is a decade in the making. In Iraq, it is defending the indefensible. And for many of the same reasons the same is true in Afghanistan. The policy of Regime Change has always been a fool's errand. Just ask the Russians about their efforts in Afghanistan. Hawks will point to Germany and Japan as successes of Regime Change but they forget to mention that over the past sixty years we have kept hundreds of thousands of troops in both countries as well as provide billions of dollars in economic assistance. Our little unnecessary bloody and inconclusive foray into Iraq has cost American taxpayers several trillion dollars as well as more than 4400 American lives with another 32,000 casualties and taking away valuable resources from our own country that we should have used to deal with the worst economic calamity to hit U.S. since the Great Depression, what makes anyone believe that doubling down is going to make any difference, as long as the underlying ethic divisions continue. Our responsibility ended in 2010 when the Iraqis essentially kicked U.S. forces out of Iraq by refusing to sign a status of forces agreement with Washington. Iraq did not want U.S. forces to stay. It was finished with the American occupation. Iraq was admitting, too, that it had to deal with its internal predicaments on its own, not with the aid of its foreign ally. In fact, the Iraqis were right -- it was time for them to sort out their own problems on their own. As President John Kennedy once said about another war in which the U.S. was involved -- in Vietnam - "in the end, it is their war, not ours." ISIL has ridden a wave of resentment felt by Iraq's Sunni Arabs at the exclusionary sectarian policies pursued by Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. They are currently riding a wave of resentment felt by Iraq's Sunni Arabs at the exclusionary sectarian policies pursued by Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. As a result the Iraqi security forces are seen by many locals as an army of occupation in northern Iraq, in Baghdad it is defending its home turf, and can rely on the support of the thousands of Shiite militiamen that have been mobilized to fight ISIL, as well as much of the population. Already, ISIL's efforts to take the city of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, seem to have stalled. Accordingly, the conflict is likely to take the form of a prolonged and bloody war of attrition. There may be no more easy victories for ISIL, though its ability to wreak havoc in the capital and elsewhere through suicide bombings remains undiminished. This is a civil war and suggest that it EFTA01193616 is anything other is false. And to suggest that ISIL is successor to al-Qaida in Iraq is also wrong other than if your enemy and my enemy are the same we have something in common. In 2006, Iraq had a resurgence, when then Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair, and now Vice President, Joe Biden suggested in a New York Times op-ed essay that semi-autonomous sections should be created along sectarian lines. "The idea, as in Bosnia, is to maintain a unitedIraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno- religious group — Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab — mom to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge ofcommon interests." A year later Biden pursued the theme, telling the senate on April 24, 2007, that then President George W. Bush's centralized plan for Iraqi governance would set Iraq up with problems for years to come. "The most basic premise ofPresident Bush's approach, that the Iraqipeople will rally behind a strong central government headed by Maliki, infact, will look outfor their interests equitably, is fundamentally andfatallyflawed. It will not happen in anybody's lifetime." Back then, a plan for Iraq's federal-style division hammered out among all the parties could have worked. But now, as all three sides gird for war, and the United States plans to move an aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf, may be too late and definitely a stupid move. "The partition has already happened," says Iraqi analyst Hiwa Osman. "Ifputting Iraq back together comes at the price ofthe people's blood, let it go. If keeping the country intact means more mass graves, genocides and wan I say, to hell with Iraq." The wild card now is ISIS, who members do not respect boundaries with the goal of creating a Sunni dominated theocracy. But ISiS's blitzkrieg to Baghdad isn't based on military prowess alone. Many of the Sunni tribes in the areas around Mosul and Tikrit, which ISIS captured a day after taking Mosul, backed the militants out of a deep-seated resentment for the Shi'ite-dominated government of Prime Minister Noun al Maliki. In fact, many Iraqis say that ISIS played a relatively minor role, and that without Sunni support they wouldn't have been able to gain any traction at all. "Thefall ofMosul was not brought by ISIS," says Istrabadi. "Blaming ISIS alone overlooks the fact that the movement had much broader supportfrom Sunnis that have been disenfranchised since 2003," when the United States overthrew Sunni strongman Saddam Hussein, reversing decades of Sunni dominance. ISIS, he says, exploited the dissatisfaction of Sunnis who have long complained that Maliki's government has monopolized power for his sect "What the Shi'ites see as a conspiracy, the Sunnis see as a revolution," says Hoshang Waziri, an Iraqi analyst based in Erbil who has written extensively about the country's sectarian divides. "What is going on in Mosul, and Tikrit and Baiji [all cities that fell to ISIS so far], is a rejection by the Sunnis of the new Iraq under Shi'ite rule." In Iraqi Kurdistan, a region that has enjoyed autonomy for two decades, the tensions fall along territorial lines. Where the Iraqi forces failed to confront ISIS, dropping their weapons and shedding their uniforms as the militants approached, the Kurdish militia, known as the Peshmerga, triumphed in battle. An extremely disciplined and effective fighting force, the Peshmerga was able to protect several towns from ISiS's advance. They also benefited from the Iraqi army's retreat, claiming long disputed territory in the name of shielding it from ISIS's reach. The Peshmerga now hold Kirkuk, an oil city officially controlled by the Iraqi government, but claimed by Kurds as their historic capital. It is unlikely that they will ever give it up. "Some Kurdish politicians see this as the perfect moment to declare independence," says Waziri. And they may be better off, he adds, given what is going in the rest of the country. "This isn't really a Kurd, Sunni and Shi'ite wan this is a war between Sunnis and Shi'ites, one that the Kurds do not want to get involved in. The best solutionfor this crisis at this point would be to build three diffkrent states." EFTA01193617 The idea of dividing Iraq along ethno-sectarian lines dates almost all the way back to its formation at the end of World War I, when the country was carved out of the former Ottoman Empire. In 2006, it had a resurgence, when then Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair, and now Vice President, Joe Biden suggested in a New York Times op-ed essay that semi-autonomous sections should be created along sectarian lines. "The idea, as in Bosnia, is to maintain a unitedIraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group — Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab — mom to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge ofcommon interests." A year later Biden pursued the theme, telling the senate on April 24, 2007, that then President George W. Bush's centralized plan for Iraqi governance would set Iraq up with problems for years to come. "The most basicpremise ofPresident Bush's approach, that the Iraqipeople will rally behind a strong central government headed by Maliki, infact, will look outfor their interests equitably, isfundamentally andfatallyflawed. It will not happen in anybody's lifetime." Back then, a plan for Iraq's federal-style division hammered out among all the parties could have worked. But now, as all three sides gird for war, and the United States plans to move an aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf, it may be too late. "The partition has already happened," says Iraqi analyst Hiwa Osman. "Ifputting Iraq back together comes at the price ofthe people's blood, let it go. If keeping the country intact means more mass graves, genocides and wan I say, to hell with Iraq." There is little that Western powers can do other than let events play out. Al Maliki could remain in power but most likely it won't be as Prime Minister of Iraq. And if there is any chance of this civil war to stop, it is going to require that the Sunni's receive their own autonomous state. But getting back to settling the age-old question within the Beltway, who is the blame? One would have to agree with Fareed Zakaria's op-ed I — Who lost Iraq? The Iraqis did, with an assistfrom George W. Bush. Democrats and Republicans More Ideologically Divided than in the Past D: cf cc 'Li C 7: 5. r. a o;:c r. 5:d a: e.' ix:C: r. cu. 1994 2004 2014 VEDA% VIDA% Wen\ MEDIA% • Democrat Republican Democrat Republican Democrat Republican AlkSillt Consrsiently Cons...sternly conservative Conststenby liberal Source- 2014 bolootil POIVIZODOI n the AmencanCvdc Consistent* conservabve Conustentb Myer* Consstentb conservative *vies ideoloscatconstaenq based On* V**04 ID p01Mal ‘61*5 o vestals isee ayvenia kt The or uearea in thtS Merl represens icleologcsioisoixam of Demcomyhe red preset Rep.ticens The overbp of these si* ckstrOubons *shade] purple. Rep...blears :t J.:. De tl 'An 'a wn 't rY*******: Demati* inClude Derncersobleenirgibbecerelems (see /Wench( El, PEW RESEARCH CENTER There is a perfect storm in politics whereby gerrymandering has tweaked safe seats for both Republicans and Democrats to the point that voters in districts are so alike there is no longer debate. The second part of the storm is partisan media whereby political discourse is more entertainment than news enabling pundits to personalize their attacks against opposition politicians as if they were commenting for the WWF. And the last part of this perfect storm is hatred. Hatred so deep, that more than 2o% of Conservative Republicans publically believe that President Obama's agenda is to destroy America which they voice as "wanting their government/country back." But back from where? And back from who? What has also happened is that economic and cultural inequality has created separate camps. Rich camps, poor camps, ethic neighborhoods and public schools where there are often only a handful of white kids among 500, 1000 more students. When there is little or no contact distrust often festers. And festering can easy turn into hatred. And we are now seeing how this hatred is playing out EFTA01193618 in our partisan politics. We have lost civility in our politics and this is more corrosive than any foreign terrorist movement. Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines — and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive — than at any point in the last two decades. These trends manifest themselves in myriad ways, both in politics and in everyday life. And a new PEW survey of 10,000 adults nationwide finds that these divisions are greatest among those who are the most engaged and active in the political process. The survey labelled, Political Polarization in the American Public: How Increasing Ideological Uniformity and Partisan Antipathy Affect Politics, Compromise and Everyday Life. See attached. Twenty years ago, about 10 percent of Americans were "uniformly" liberal or conservative in their opinions on 10 issues ranging from the role of government to the effects of racial discrimination. Today, 21 percent are, leaving little room for agreement on whether federal aid to the poor should be more or less generous, for example, or whether environmental regulations' benefits outweigh their cost. The only issue on which Democrats and Republicans moved in the same direction was acceptance of gay rights. While members of both political parties have become more ideological in their views, the change is especially stark among Democrats, who are more than four times more likely to be consistent liberals today than they were in 1994. Part of the reason, according to Pew, is "a broad societal shift toward acceptance of homosexuality and more positive views of immigrants," two issues formerly divisive for Democrats. The tie between ideology and political party is stronger than in recent years. Just 4 percent of Republicans are more liberal than the average Democrat, down from 23 percent in 1994, while just 5 percent of Democrats are more conservative than the average Republican, down from 17 percent. Partisans' dislike for the opposition has grown. Thirty-eight percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans have a "very unfavorable" view of the other party, up from 16 percent and 17 percent respectively in 1994. A significant fraction of partisans see the opposition as a genuine enemy: 27 percent of Democrats, and 36 percent of Republicans, say the other party's policies "are so misguided that they threaten the nation's well-being." That number rises to 5o percent among consistently liberal Democrats, and 66 among consistently conservative Republicans. Some, especially conservatives, prefer to live in what the report calls an "ideological echo chamber." Half of Americans with consistently conservative opinions, and 35 percent of those with consistently liberal opinions, say it's important to them to live in a place where most people share their political views. Sixty-three percent of those on the right say that most of their close friends are also conservatives, while 49 percent on the left are friends mostly with liberals. Partisan voices speak louder. Although the most polarized Americans remain the minority, they're likelier than those with mixed views to cast a ballot, donate to campaigns, and contact elected officials. People with the deepest antipathy to the other party are also among the most politically active. Democrats with a "very unfavorable" view of the GOP are 12 points more likely to say they always vote than those with merely a "mostly unfavorable" view. Republicans with a "very unfavorable" view of Democrats are 18 points more likely to say they vote every time than those who just "mostly dislike" them. With Barack Obama in the White House, partisan antipathy is much more pronounced among Republicans, especially consistently conservative Republicans. Overall, more Republicans than Democrats see the opposing party's policies as a threat and the differences are even greater when ideology is taken into account. Fully 66% of consistently conservative Republicans think the EFTA01193619 Democrats' policies threaten the nation's well-being. By comparison, halt (50%) of consistently liberal Democrats say Republican policies jeopardize the nation's well-being. Conservatives also exhibit more partisan behavior in their personal lives; they are the most likely to have friends and prefer communities of like-minded people. However, there is as much ideological uniformity on the left as the right. The share of Democrats holding consistently liberal views has grown steadily over the past 20 years, quadrupling from 5% in 1994 to 23% today. Social issues like homosexuality and immigration that once drove deep divides within the Democratic Party are now areas of relative consensus. And Democrats have become more uniformly critical of business and more supportive of government. Over the past 4o years, Americans have been sorting themselves into communities where people increasingly live, think, and vote like their neighbors. In 1976, for example, just more than a quarter of Americans resided in counties where presidential candidates won the election by a margin of 20 percent or more; but by the year 2004, nearly half of Americans lived in these more politically homogeneous counties. Highly educated liberals become more liberal, while highly educated conservatives grow more conservative. It is now possible to get a clearer picture of the underlying reasons through the examination of education and evolution. The dynamics that fuel the acceleration in the second half of the loth century, coincides with a massive increase in education. Between 1960 and 2008, for instance, the proportion of women with bachelor's degrees nearly quintupled. The dramatic rise in educational attainment has a couple of unexpected side effects. For one, research shows that higher education has a polarizing effect on people: Highly educated liberals become more liberal, while highly educated conservatives grow more conservative. Second, people with college degrees enjoy greater freedoms, including social and geographic mobility. During the 1980s and 1990s, 45 percent of college-educated Americans moved to a new state within five years of graduation, compared with only 19 percent of their counterparts who had only a high-school diploma. Meanwhile, evolutionary forces are pulling these more mobile, like-minded individuals together, because our political orientations play a key role in our choice of a mate. In society as a whole, spouses tend to resemble one another — at least a bit more than they would if coupling occurred at random — on most biometric and social traits. These traits include everything from skin color to earlobe size to income to major personality dimensions like Extraversion. Most of these statistical relationships are quite weak. But one of the strongest of all correlations between spouses by far is between their political orientations (0.65, to be precise). Spouses tend to have similar attitudes on moral issues like school prayer and abortion not because they converge over time, but rather because "birds of a feather flock together." Biologists call this assortative mating. Spouses tend to have similar attitudes on moral issues like school prayer and abortion not because they converge over time, but rather because "birds of a featherflock together." Political scientists Peter Hatemi, Rose McDermott, and Casey Klofstad have fed actual assortment rates from the 198os into a computer simulation of American society. Their simulation took into account the fact that political orientation is a moderately heritable trait. When they ran the program, the population's left-right curve widened substantially in just the first five generations. In the next 10 generations, the curve expanded only a bit more and then reached equilibrium. At this point, the percentage of political extremists in the population had increased from 4.5 to 11.2 percent, while moderates had dropped by 17 percent. In other words, the "birds of a feather"had bred a more polarized nation. This slow dance of ideological assortment and reproduction is already underway on the ground, and it's likely contributing to our unprecedented political polarization. When this fracturing began to EFTA01193620 accelerate in the 1980s, only a quarter of the electorate voted for a president and a legislator in different parties. By 2012 the proportion of voters who split their ballot had plummeted to n percent. And polarization of voting in the House of Representatives has now reached record levels, surpassing even 19th-century highs from the post-Civil War era. The silver lining to these gloomy findings is that our ideological positions are not set in stone. Only about half of the variance in political orientations comes from genetic differences between individuals; the rest comes from the environment. So it's certainly possible to transcend the attitudes that threaten to divide us. The first steps in doing so are to understand our political nature, develop realistic expectations about ideological diversity, and make a renewed commitment to pragmatism over ideology. Fareed Zakaria points out that Washington use to have a system that encouraged compromise and governance. But over the last few decades, what has changed are the rules organizing American politics. They now encourage small interest groups - including ideologically charged ones - to capture major political parties as well as Congress itself. Call it ' political narrowcasting. Here are some examples: 1) Redistricting has created safe seats so that for most House members, their only concern is a challenge from the right for Republicans and the left for Democrats. The incentive is to pander to the base, not the center. 2) Party primaries have been taken over by small groups of activists who push even popular senators to extreme positions. In Utah, for example, 3,500 conservative activists managed to take the well- regarded Senator Robert Bennett off the ballot. GOP senators like Orrin Hatch and John McCain have moved farther to the right, hoping to stave off similar assaults. 3) Changes in Congressional rules have also made it far more difficult to enact large, compromise legislation. In the wake of the Watergate Scandal, "Sunshine rules" were put into place that required open committee meetings and recorded votes. The purpose was to make Congress more open, more responsive - and so it has become to lobbyists, money and special interests. This is because they're the people who watch every committee vote and mobilize opposition to any withdrawal of subsidies or tax breaks. 4) Political polarization has also been fueled by a new media, which is also narrowcast. Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal in which he suggested that he might further the conservative agenda through an occasional compromise. That provoked a tirade from Rush Limbaugh, which then produced a torrent of angry e-mails and phone calls to Issa's office. Issa quickly and publicly apologized to Limbaugh and promised only opposition to Obama. Multiply that example a thousand-fold, and you have the daily dynamic of Congress. What he and others are afraid to say is that RACE is the biggest elephant in the room. It started the moment when it looked as if Barrack Obama had a serious chance of becoming President. They first questioned his credentials, religion and then his citizenship. I even remember hearing one pundit asking if he was black enough. They have called him a community organizing socialist, Islamic sympathizer and an al Qaeda apologist. Even though the financial markets are at an all-time high, banks are solvent, more than 8 million new jobs created and the inflation at less than 196, most Republicans will tell you that the Obama Administration has been a disaster. Republicans campaigned vehemently against Obamacare until recently abandoning their opposition when became clear that the American public wants to keep many of its popular components. And today their attack is that the President released gal Qaeda prisoners in exchange for on American serviceman. Lost in the media this EFTA01193621 week was that ISIL militants seized control of Iraq's second biggest city Mosul and Saddam Hussein's home city of Tikrit and are marching on Baghdad after American spent more than $1 trillion and lost thousands of American lives. And understand that the ISIL are so militant that al Qaeda has disavowed them. It's depressing, but the fact that much of our politics are the result of structural shifts and overt racism means they can be changed. .**... WAR WHISPERERS THIS WEEK'S HEADLINES: Media Welcomes Back Consistently Wrong Iraq 'Experts'... Wolfowitz, Feith, Bremer, Kristol... Even Judith Miller!... Tony Blair Calls For Intervention... FLASHBACK: Wolfowitz's Terrible Prediction On Sectarian Violence... Kristol In '03: 'Pop Sociology' Shiites And Sunnis Can't Get Along... MEANWHILE: UN Warns War Could Engulf Middle East... Republicans are like thefat girl in any given tavern in America - always the victim, always blaming some other guy, never theirfault despite constantly having theirfingerprints on every bit of drama that takes place there and very proud of it. Glenn Quagmire EFTA01193622  In BREMER: 'THE BIG ERROR Retrospect WAS LEAVING TOO SOON" Web Link: littp://youtu.be/uysUn3v1Sg Paul Bremer, the former envoy to Iraq, has been among the more prominent architects of the Iraq War to suddenly reemerge all over the nation's televisions in the wake of that country's current crisis. On Monday night, he received one of his tougher grillings about his actions during the war from CNN's Erin Burnett. Not booking one of the most vocal defenders of the war was apparently not an option, so instead, Burnett asked, 'A lot ofpeople are watching you right now and they're —they're hearing you give your ideas of what to do. And they're saying, 'but aren't you the guy who got us in this mess?"' (Another question might have been, "If you're the one who got us into this mess, why are you on television7Sht now?") Bremer's response was essentially to say that there was nothing wrong with anything MI done. Burnett pressed him admirably on this point. In Monday's Wall Street Journal, Paul Bremer criticized the Obama administration's policy in the Middle East and argued that the United States needs to make "a clear commitment to help restabilize Iraq." Notably, Bremer's op-ed -- "Only America Can Prevent a Disaster in Iraq"-- neglected to mention his own role in helping to destabilize Iraq following the Bush administration's disastrous 2003 invasion. As U.S. presidential envoy to the nation, Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army at the beginning of the occupation, a critical blunder that was followed by years of sectarian violence. The Iraq war, which Bush officials and media advocates sold as easy and inexpensive, grew into the biggest U.S. foreign policy debacle in a generation, resulting in the deaths of over 4,500 U.S. soldiers, 100,000 Iraqis and costing US taxpayers more than $1.7 trillion. It also cast a shadow over the U.S. media, which largely promoted the administration's bogus case for war. Now Bremer and others who were largely discredited when it comes to Iraq are back in the spotlight, and they're being treated as credible experts on the growing chaos in the country. Iraq is once again in the news because the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an extremist group, has taken several major cities and set its sights on Baghdad. Former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who pushed for the Iraq invasion soon after the unrelated 9/11 attacks, appeared Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, one of the most influential media figures to have promoted the war, could be found talking Iraq across the dial on ABC's "This Week." In recent days, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose legacy is inextricably linked to his backing of Bush in Iraq, called for intervention. Former Bush-era officials Doug Feith, in Politico, and Andrew Card, on CNN and Fox News, have taken aim at the Obama administration for its Iraq policy and the withdrawal of U.S. troops in December 2011. Historian and prominent Iraq war- supporter Robert Kagan expressed support for U.S. intervention Monday in a New York Times profile. Even former Times reporter Judith Miller, who has become synonymous with the media's EFTA01193623 failure during the run-up to the war in 2002 and 2003, recently appeared on Fox News to, of all things, criticize media coverage of Iraq. James Fallows, an Atlantic correspondent and author of the book, "Blind Into Baghdad," tweeted Friday that "no one who stumpedfor original Iraq invasion gets to give `advice' about disaster now (orJ should get listened to." The media hasn't listened to Fallows, and several Bush-era figures have been allowed to weigh in with little, or no, acknowledgement of their past actions or statements. For instance, Politico didn't mention Feith's bungling in Iraq when quoting his critique of the current administration's policy there. Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy, said weeks before the invasion in February 2003 that Iraq posed a threat because of the "connection between three things: terrorist organizations, state sponsors, and weapons of mass destruction." In reality, Iraq had no connection to the 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda had little to no presence in the country before the invasion, and there were no WMDs. Around the same time, Wolfowitz told Congress that "it's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's securityforces and his army." Wolfowitz also told Congress that Iraq could finance its own reconstruction" with oil revenues" and do so "relatively soon." On "Meet the Press" Sunday, host David Gregory asked Wolfowitz if he, and other Bush administration veterans, were "culpable of underestimating the level of sectarian violence, warfare in the country that creates the potentialfor this kind of terrorist state to develop today." Gregory told HuffPost he asked the question to try to hold Wolfowitz accountable for what happened over a decade ago. But Wolfowitz largely dodged it and turned instead to al Qaeda, which he said is "not on the road to defeat." Later in the broadcast, Wolfowitz criticized the Obama administration for a "lack of seriousness" in dealing with the Syria crisis. '7 would do something in Syria," he said. "It's a bad situation." During a Monday interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Bremer went as far as to suggest the need for "some troops on the ground." (President Barack Obama has ruled out putting U.S. troops on the ground, though the AP reported Monday that the White House is considering sending in some special forces soldiers.) In response, Bloomberg Politics editor Mark Halperin challenged Bremer on why the United States should, once again, play a role in determining Iraq's government. "What business is it of the United States, at this point, who is in the government of Iraq?" Halperin asked. "Why isn't that up to the people of Iraq, civil society and leaders there, tofigure it out, and not the United States?" Bremer, echoing his Monday column and decade-old calls for U.S. intervention, responded that "there is no one there who can do it, and no other country who can do it." But the real question is, what was he doing on television anyway? Like his neocon comrades — Bill Kristol, Charles ICrauthammer, Robert Kagan, and others — Wolfowitz does not deserve to be presented as an expert with important ideas about the ongoing mess. He and the rest of this gang should have had their pundit licenses revoked after the Iraq war. They got it all wrong: WMDs, the cost of the war, the consequences of the invasion. And these errors were compounded by the deaths of nearly 4,500 US service men and women—and 180,000 or more civilian Iraqi casualties. (Here's a partial list of Kristol's pre-war errors and misrepresentations.) So why care what they have to say now? How about a flashback. It's February 27, 2003, three weeks before the invasion. A s some experts are pointing out that the war could cost a great deal and require the United States to keep hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq following the cessation of hostilities, Wolfowitz is testifying before EFTA01193624 Congress. He's insisting that the US will not have to maintain large number of troops in Iraq after the war—and he's refusing to provide a cost estimate. There's also another critical concern hovering at the time: whether a US invasion will create disorder that will trigger sectarian violence within Iraq. Wolfowitz, long known in Washington as a "defense intellectual," pooh-poohed the matter and indicated it was silly to fret such an outbreak. Let's go to the tape: http://www.c-s an orgivideo/?c4501030/wolfowitz-sa s-ira -record-ethnic-fighting There are other differences that suggest that peacekeeping requirements in Iraq might be much lower than historical experience in the Balkans suggests. There's been none of the record in Iraq of ethnic militias fighting one another that produced so much bloodshed and permanent scars in Bosnia along with the requirement for large policing forces to separate those militias. And the horrors of Iraq are very different from the horrific ethnic cleansing of Kosovars by Serbs that took place in Kosovo and left scars that continue to require peacekeeping forces today in Kosovo. The slaughter in Iraq—and it's been substantial — has unfortunately been the slaughter of people of all ethnic and religious groups by the regime. It is equal opportunity terror. That is, no reason to fear Shiite-Sunni bloodshed after a US invasion. Yet in the aftermath of the invasion, such violent conflict began right away. And the Shiite-Sunni strife — exacerbated by the Bush-backed Maliki regime — has led to the crisis of the moment, with the ultra-extremists of the Sunni-led Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) having taken control of major Iraqi cities and threatening Baghdad. At that same congressional appearance, Wolfowitz echoed the Bush-Cheney administration mantra of the time that the United States would be embraced by Iraqis after invading their nation. Web Link: littp://www.e-span.orgivideo/?c4501032/wolfowitz-iraqis-will-greet-us-liberators These are Arabs, 23 million of the most educated people in the Arab world, who are going to welcome us as liberators. And when the message gets out to the whole Arab world, it's going to be a powerful counter to Osama bin Laden... It will be a great step forward. Now, ii years after that message was supposedly sent to Bin Laden, Wolfowitz says, "Al Qaeda is on the march. Not just in Iraq, in Syria, and Libya." A reminder: there was no Al Qaeda on the march in Iraq and this region before the US invasion of Iraq. In 2003, Wolfowitz dearly did not know what he was talking about regarding sectarian tensions within Iraq — or much else about Iraq and its people and problems. (In the book, Hubris: The Inside Story ofSpin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, Michael Isikoff reported that Wolfowitz at that time embraced an odd and convoluted conspiracy theory that held that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein controlled Al Qaeda and was responsible for all of its terrorism.) Wolfowitz is perfectly unqualified to be giving advice about the present situation — even if he helped cause it. The United States has already sacrificed enough of its soldiers and treasury for Iraq during its eight years of involvement in that nation's so-called struggle for freedom. From the beginning, the war was based on a falsehood, namely the notion that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction. There EFTA01193625 turned out to be none. Yet, in pursuing this bloody and inconclusive war, we spent several trillion dollars, saw over 4400 of our soldiers die in action with another 32,000 casualties, and took away valuable resources from our own country that we should have used to deal with the worst economic calamity to hit U.S. since the Great Depression. But, in any case, our responsibility with that land ended in 2010 when the Iraqis essentially kicked U.S. forces out of Iraq by refusing to sign a status of forces agreement with Washington. Iraq did not want U.S. forces to stay. It was finished with the American occupation. Iraq was admitting, too, that it had to deal with its internal predicaments on its own, not with the aid of its foreign ally. In fact, the Iraqis were right -- it was time for them to sort out their own problems on their own. As President John Kennedy once said about another war in which the U.S. was involved -- in Vietnam - "in the end, it is their war, not ours." Yet, at this late date, some in Congress are now urging that we launch air strikes or bombing attacks on the insurgents to save the regime of Prime Minister Maliki. This would be a grave error. Most importantly, there is no way America will be able to guarantee that its air raids or drone strikes can actually retard the forward movement of thousands of ISIS ground forces. While we may kill a few militant fighters here and there -- such action will not be enough to change the outcome. Meantime we will cause immense collateral damage -- our missiles will wound or murder bystanders, civilians, and other innocent victims, making the US look once again like a cruel interloper. In the end, as noted earlier, this is a conflict that only the Iraqis can resolve through the political