Reason Magazine - Topics > Iraq

Surge Overkill

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:53:00 EDT

John McCain is set to deliver a speech at 11:30 Mountain Daylight Time arguing (according to the prepared remarks) that his support for the surge in Iraq qualifies him to be commander in chief, while opposition to it disqualifies Barack Obama.

We both knew the politically safe choice was to support some form of retreat. All the polls said the "surge" was unpopular. Many pundits, experts and policymakers opposed it and advocated withdrawing our troops and accepting the consequences. I chose to support the new counterinsurgency strategy backed by additional troops − which I had advocated since 2003, after my first trip to Iraq. Many observers said my position would end my hopes of becoming president. I said I would rather lose a campaign than see America lose a war. My choice was not smart politics. It didn't test well in focus groups. It ignored all the polls. It also didn't matter. The country I love had one final chance to succeed in Iraq. The new strategy was it. So I supported it. [...]
Senator Obama made a different choice. He not only opposed the new strategy, but actually tried to prevent us from implementing it. He didn't just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it. When his efforts failed, he continued to predict the failure of our troops. As our soldiers and Marines prepared to move into Baghdad neighborhoods and Anbari villages, Senator Obama predicted that their efforts would make the sectarian violence in Iraq worse, not better.
And as our troops took the fight to the enemy, Senator Obama tried to cut off funding for them. He was one of only 14 senators to vote against the emergency funding in May 2007 that supported our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He would choose to lose in Iraq in hopes of winning in Afghanistan. But had his position been adopted, we would have lost both wars.

I'll let smarter and/or more partisan folk debate the comparative merits, successes and failures of the surge (which I, for the record, opposed, though I'm glad it turned out better than I thought). What interests me here is McCain's classic trait of personalizing all policy debates. If you disagree with him, it must be because you are dishonorable, and placing politics ahead of country. He, on the other hand, continues to be motivated by a love of country more pure than Karen Carpenter's singing voice, at a severe political cost that only a torture-surviving stoic would be willing to bear.

There is plenty of horsepuckey on both counts. First of all, as mom always said, when you assume the motivations of your opponents, you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me." Though I give Obama zero benefit of the doubt, I know plenty of people who have taken his exact line on Iraq over the past few years that he has, and it certainly wasn't out of political calculation or a desire to see American defeat.

Second and more interestingly, at the time of the surge, there was zero political cost to McCain supporting the surge. He was running in a Republican primary, and not particularly well, so his ironclad support for troop escalation was largely seen by many Republican stalwarts (in a season where the only anti-war candidate was being treated like a leper) as one of the best things going for the guy, given his various transgressions on other counts. The only people who thought McCain was taking a practical political hit for supporting the surge in early-primary season were non-Republicans, especially journalists. And even the latter were busy praising his return to Straight Talk. Here's what I wrote at the time:

The John McCain presidency effectively began on January 10, 2007, when George W. Bush announced the deployment of five more combat brigades to Iraq. [...] [T]he plan was nearly identical to what the Republican senior senator from Arizona, nearly alone among his Capitol Hill colleagues, had been advocating for months: boost troop levels by at least 20,000, give coalition forces the authority to impose security in every corner of Baghdad, and increase the size of America's overburdened standing military by around 100,000 during the next five years.
For the purposes of the 2008 campaign, Bush's surge announcement was almost the perfect gift: McCain got to solidify his case with primary voters even while giving himself operational deniability. ("We've made many, many mistakes since 2003, and these will not be easily reversed," he said on January 11, while reiterating his call for even more troops.) [...] [I]t also allowed McCain to recapture some of his lost reputation as a straight-talking independent. "I would much rather lose a campaign than lose a war," he said with a grin on Larry King Live right after Bush's speech. The press, which had been souring on the candidate during his noisy lurch to the right, breathed an audible sigh of relief. "Defiant McCain back as maverick," declared the Chicago Tribune.

And note that his whole "rather lose a campaign than lose a war" shtick is almost word for word how he described his reasons for delaying his official entry into the 2000 campaign, in deference to building support for the Kosovo intervention. How did that hurt McCain politically? Let's go to David Brooks, on Feb. 27, 2000:

We don't know where Arizona Sen. John McCain's campaign will land, but we can pinpoint when it took off. About a year ago, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was cleansing Kosovo of ethnic Albanians. There were reports of massacres and gang rapes and forced marches. The Clinton administration was gearing up to do something about it. The House Republicans were at cross purposes−pretty sure that whatever President Bill Clinton did, they'd be against it. Texas Gov. George W. Bush did the politically prudent thing−and disappeared off the radar screen. Among Republicans, only McCain rushed to declare himself. He criticized the way Clinton was taking us into Kosovo. But he argued vehemently that the world's superpower could not stand by as civilization unraveled in the middle of Europe.

Suddenly, McCain was being quoted all over. He emerged as the most prominent GOP voice on foreign affairs. As the Carnegie Endowment's Robert Kagan noted, Kosovo was the first primary and McCain won it.

Advocating for more boots on the ground has not been an unpopular position in American politics this past decade. Indeed, McCain never took much of a hit for saying about Bill Clinton's Kosovo strategy much what Obama said about the surge: That it was heading us toward failure. Here's McCain on the Senate floor, April 13, 1999:

I think it is safe to assume that no one, including me, anticipated the speed with which Serbia would defeat our objectives in Kosovo, and the scope of that defeat. Yes, the war is only three weeks old, and yes, NATO can and probably will prevail in this conflict with what is, after all, a considerably inferior adversary. But victory will not be hastened by pretending that things have just gone swimmingly.
Worse, unless we all, administration supporter and detractor alike, look critically at both why we went to war in the Balkans, and why we have failed to achieve our ends, I fear the administration and our NATO allies might commit the gravest mistake we could make at this time: changing our ends to make our means more effective rather than employing more effective means to achieve our ends. [...]
For air strikes to have any chance of preventing Milosevic's awful atrocities they needed to be, from the beginning, massive, strategic and sustained. No infrastructure targets should have been off limits. And while we all grieve over civilian casualties as well as our own losses, they are unavoidable. When nations settle their differences by force of arms a million tragedies ensue. That's why we try to avoid it. War is a much more terrible thing than cruise missile attacks on Iraqi radar sites. But losing a war is worse.

How would Kosovo look today if we had sent in ground troops and massively bombed the shit out of Serbia? Hard to say, though surely a lot more people would be dead. The point is that you can win most any military victory you want using maximum U.S. force, but that doesn't in and of itself make sacrificing troops and blowing up countries a good idea, let alone indicative of a politician's superior patriotism.

I don't know about Obama (literally), but I can tell you this: The next time we face what McCain hyperbolically described as "a crisis as profound as any in our history," President McCain will argue − stoically, and with patriotic sadness more than nationalistic anger − that the only thing he hates more than war is anyone daring to suggest that escalating troop levels yet again isn't the answer to the transcendental crisis du jour. Will such sentiments work politically in 2008? I don't know. But it's likely his only hope.

Should We Stay or Should We Go?

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:00:00 EDT

If there is any fixed position in John McCain's policy agenda, it's that we must never, ever, set a timetable for leaving Iraq. He regularly flogs Barack Obama for proposing to withdraw by the summer of 2010. So it was a surprise to hear him say Monday, when asked if our troops might depart in the next two years, "Oh, I think they could be largely withdrawn, as I've said."

I guess that makes it unanimous. This week, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he's amenable to bidding the U.S. goodbye on Obama's schedule. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown indicated his forces will also be heading home soon.

Even President Bush has now come around to establishing a "time horizon" for "the further reduction of U.S. combat forces from Iraq." In other words: "We're going to leave, but it's none of your business when."

Despite creeping toward withdrawal himself, McCain continues to lambaste Obama for setting a timetable. But if the current policy is the stunning success depicted by McCain, it should be eminently practical to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis by the middle of 2010. If it is impossible to do that, more than seven years after the occupation began, how can McCain say the existing strategy is working?

The Arizona senator sounded frustrated this week, insisting that Obama was "completely wrong" in opposing the Bush administration's escalation of the war in January 2007. "The fact is, if we had done what Sen. Obama wanted to do, we would have lost," he declared. "And we would have faced a wider war. And we would have had greater problems in Afghanistan and the entire region."

What McCain omits is that if he himself had been right all the times before 2007 that he said things were going fine, no surge would have been needed. He's like a weatherman who forecasts clear skies every day and, when the rain finally lets up after a week, expects a standing ovation for his accuracy.

If we had done what Obama wanted to do back in 2002, we would not have lost—because we would not have invaded Iraq to start with. We would not have suffered 4,100 dead and 30,000 wounded or burned through hundreds of billions of dollars.

We also would not have diverted ourselves from the correct focus of the war on terrorism. "Greater problems in Afghanistan and the entire region"? Apparently McCain hasn't noticed that we got those in spite of the surge, or more likely because of it.

The troop escalation has not been the complete failure Obama suggested it would be, but it has fallen far short of the triumph claimed by Republicans. The level of violence, though down from the very worst months of the war, remains at levels comparable to 2005—which were considered awful at the time.

Iraqi civilians died at a higher rate in the first four months of this year than in the same period of 2005. The number of attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces is about the same. Here is McCain's definition of success: returning to a pace of bloodshed that was once regarded as intolerable.

Even the progress made in the last 18 months is only partly attributable to the additional American forces. Equally important was the decision of Sunni militias to turn against Al Qaida in Iraq. McCain insists this shift was only made possible by the surge—when, in fact, it happened several months before. Does he not know what really happened? Or does he not care?

Also contributing to the decline in sectarian violence was that by 2007, the sectarian violence had already achieved its main goal: driving Sunnis out of Shiite neighborhoods and vice versa. Of the 5 million Iraqis who fled their homes in the last five years, only 30,000 have returned.

The refugee crisis is just one of the results of a war that McCain has supported all along. The surge didn't provide a remedy to that or the many other afflictions that plague Iraq. For good or ill, though, we have probably achieved about all we can achieve with the means available.

That's obvious to most Americans and most Iraqis. Once in a while, the realization even dawns on John McCain. But he lies down until it passes.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

McCain and Iraq

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:33:00 EDT

A look back at just how "right" McCain has been over the last six years.

Change He Can Believe In

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:00:00 EDT

It's hard to keep up with Barack Obama's positions on the Iraq war. When he entered the presidential race, he offered a plan that would take more than a year to withdraw from Iraq. In September, he said he would withdraw all our combat brigades over 15 months or so. This week, he vowed to pull those forces out within 16 months of taking office.

Wow. He's really been all over the lot, hasn't he? No one can possibly tell if President Obama will get us out in February of 2010, or if he'll put it off till April.

Small wonder that a John McCain spokesman said that on Iraq, Obama "has held almost every conceivable position." Or that a blogger for the conservative American Spectator said Obama "has entered John Kerry territory when it comes to changing positions on Iraq."

See for yourself. Obama was against the war before it began—and then, in a complete reversal, he was against it after it began. When he launched his campaign in early 2007, he favored a phased withdrawal. But now, with the Democratic nomination in hand, what does he favor? A phased withdrawal.

Recently he said once in office, he would consult the military and "refine" his policies, while stressing his intention to get our troops out within—you will never guess—16 months.

OK, maybe he's not so inconsistent. Waiting for Obama to alter his policy on Iraq has been like waiting for the Sphinx to smile.

It would be more believable for Republicans to blast him for being rigidly committed to withdrawal no matter what. There are two reasons they are not crazy about this option.

The first is that it would remind the electorate that Obama has always opposed a war that most Americans think was a mistake—and that he favors a near-term withdrawal, as most of them do and McCain does not.

The second is that his opponents want to paint him as a shameless flip-flopper. They would like to change the subject from whether the war was wise to whether Obama is a vertebrate. This tactic worked against the 2004 Democratic nominee, who famously said of a bill to fund the war, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

The problem they face is that Obama is no John Kerry. The Massachusetts senator voted for the resolution authorizing the war and later changed his mind about Iraq. This year's nominee was against the war from the beginning and in the subsequent six years has proven unwilling to reverse field.

Obama, however, has never called for an immediate exit, as some on the left would prefer. He has been consistent in refusing either to accelerate his schedule or to slow it down. I suspect when he talks in his sleep, he mumbles his mantra that "we have to be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in."

His charge this week that the war in Iraq has diverted us from defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan and going after al-Qaida also sounds a bit familiar. He was criticized during the primaries for saying that if the opportunity arose to hit bin Laden in Pakistan, he would do it. A year ago, he gave a speech called, "The War We Need to Win," which called for "getting off the wrong battlefield in Iraq, and taking the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

He was right then, and he's right now. Our recent progress in Iraq has come at a high price: growing violence and turmoil in Afghanistan, with the American death toll last month rising to the highest level since 2001.

McCain insists success in Iraq breeds success in Afghanistan. But Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gives a different picture: "I don't have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq." The war in Iraq has drained resources needed to go after the people responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, and the consequences are only getting worse.

That's one of the arguments Obama has been making for several years now. For all their charges of flip-flopping, Republicans aren't afraid he will cave on Iraq and Afghanistan. They're afraid he won't.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

The Indicators of Success in Iraq?

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:14:00 EDT

The Associated Press reported today that gas lines in Iraq are as long as two miles, but how could that be the case in a country that is on the cusp of signing oil contracts with potential revenues close to $100 billion? Irony of ironies, the very same "liberation" that freed Iraq's oil market also destabilized the country to the point that it can't even use its own resources:

[S]ectarian strife, rampant corruption, lack of adequate refineries and inefficient government institutions limit the positive impact that increased public revenues could have on average Iraqi citizens like Habib Hadi, who queued up for gas at 4 a.m. Tuesday.
After waiting more than four hours, he said he finally edged close to the gas station and "saw a catastrophe."
"The gas pump was not working because of the lack of electricity," Hadi said.

This bewildering anecdote follows yesterday's news that the no-bid contracts Iraq offered to Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, and Chevron are "under negotiation" until god knows when; not that it matters one way or another to the Iraqis waiting in gas lines. With no infrastructure to refine crude, they might as well be pumping chocolate pudding.

Iraq Occupation: Understaffed from the Beginning

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:42:00 EDT

A nearly 700-page study released Sunday by the Army found that "in the euphoria of early 2003," U.S.-based commanders prematurely believed their goals in Iraq had been reached and did not send enough troops to handle the occupation.
President George W. Bush's statement on May 1, 2003, that major combat operations were over reinforced that view, the study said.
It was written by Donald P. Wright and Col. Timothy R. Reese of the Contemporary Operations Study Team at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., who said that planners who requested more troops were ignored and that commanders in Baghdad were replaced without enough of a transition and lacked enough staff.
Gen. William S. Wallace, commanding general of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, said in a foreword that it's no surprise that a report with these conclusions was written.
"One of the great and least understood qualities of the United States Army is its culture of introspection and self-examination," he wrote.

That's from the AP, via the Cincinnati Enquirer. Read more here. And here.

Whose Iraq Is It, Anyway?

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 07:00:00 EDT

"I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude," President Bush said last year, a bit resentfully. "That's the problem here in America: They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq."

Apparently not. It seems the rarest person in the world is a grateful Iraqi. This week the Baghdad government said it would reject any agreement on U.S. forces that "violates Iraq's sovereignty." That came days after tens of thousands of Shiites took to the streets to protest a proposed agreement that would keep U.S. forces there for years to come.

Followers of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who rejects any such accord, turned out to hear a sheikh who warned, "The cancer has spread and has to be removed." Afterward, reports The Washington Post, they chanted, "Get out, get out, occupier."

Cancer? Occupier? That's not quite how it looks to American supporters of the war.

They see the United States as the savior of the ordinary Iraqis who survived Saddam Hussein only to be victimized by violent extremists. We certainly have made some sacrifices on their behalf, including more than 4,000 troops killed in the war and hundreds of billions of dollars spent on it.

In light of the improvement in security over the last year, you would expect most Iraqis to have a new appreciation for our efforts. Before the surge, Iraqi civilians were dying at the rate of more than 3,000 a month. This year, it's been fewer than 1,000 a month. So it might make sense to keep the Americans around for a while.

But that was not the prevailing sentiment last week among Sadr's followers. The proposed deal has also been denounced by the head of a Shiite party that is part of the ruling government, as well as the country's premier Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

It's not the prevailing sentiment among the Shiites' main rivals, either. A February poll found that 73 percent of Iraqis oppose the presence of foreign troops in Iraq—including 77 percent of Shiites and 95 percent of Sunnis.

Americans spend a lot of time debating the question of whether we should remain in Iraq. What never seems to occur to us is to ask the Iraqis the same question. Sadr is demanding that any agreement be put to a national referendum. We ought to endorse that approach, asking the government to let Iraqis vote on whether we should stay or go.

The U.S. went into Iraq five years ago to liberate the country from a tyrant. We have made war on al-Qaida in Iraq, whose tactics managed to alienate even their Sunni allies. Lately, we've also established comparative tranquility. If there was ever a time when Iraqis could calmly and peacefully weigh in on our presence, it's now.

Every major group has obvious grounds to want us around. We facilitated elections that let the Shiites gain dominance, allowed the Kurds to maintain their autonomy in northern Iraq, and brought Sunni militias over to our side. In short, we've done something for everyone.

Yet all indications are that Iraqis can unite behind only one proposition: Yankee, go home! If that's the case—or even if it's not—how can we justify not letting them express their preference? How can we say that the people we have tried to bless with democracy should be denied a democratic means of resolving the issue?

And why on earth should we mind? If the issue were put to a vote, one of two things could happen. The first is that Iraqis would make it clear they don't want us around anymore and are ready to take over full responsibility for their own affairs. In that case, we can hit the exits with a clear conscience.

The second is that they would have a sudden change of heart, realize they can't manage without us and ask us to stay. That would not convince many Americans who think the potential gains to our security are not worth the cost. But it would surely strengthen the argument for staying.

In November, Americans will get to vote in what amounts to a referendum on the U.S. role in Iraq. Why should we be the only ones?

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Is al-Sistani Simmering?

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 23 May 2008 06:36:00 EDT

More good news from Iraq:

Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric has been quietly issuing religious edicts declaring that armed resistance against U.S.-led foreign troops is permissible—a potentially significant shift by a key supporter of the Washington-backed government in Baghdad.
The edicts, or fatwas, by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani suggest he seeks to sharpen his long-held opposition to American troops and counter the populist appeal of his main rivals, firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia....
A senior aide to the prime minister, [Nouri] al-Maliki, said he was not aware of the fatwas, but added that the "rejection of the occupation is a legal and religious principle" and that top Shiite clerics were free to make their own decisions. The aide also spoke on condition of anonymity.
Fatwas are theological opinions by an individual cleric and views on the same subject can vary. They gain force from consensus among experts in Islamic law and traditions....
Al-Sistani's affirmative response also carried a stern warning that "public interest" should not be harmed and every effort must be made to ensure that no harm comes to Iraqis or their property during "acts of resistance," they said.
"Changing the tyrannical (Saddam Hussein) regime by invasion and occupation was not what we wished for because of the many tragedies they have created," al-Sistani said in reply to a question on his Web site.

More here.

Al-Sistani, whose Q&A section of his website is quite a read, declaimed a different type of "strongly undesirable" occupation here.

McCain's Phony Withdrawal

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:45:00 EDT

John McCain announces timetable for withdrawal from Iraq!

Well, actually, he did no such thing, and probably will never do any such thing, but this morning, in an interesting speech (and crappy companion commercial) dreamcasting ahead to the year 2013, the presumptive Republican nominee cleverly set bait for the national media to undo his most enduring campaign blunder to date: Letting slip the bedrock truism that McCain sees no downside whatsoever to having U.S. troops stationed in Iraq in the year 2109.

The Arizona senator's ongoing political challenge this year is to maintain his strong support and feelings of empathetic good will from independents and Democrats who hate the war (and the mindset behind it) that he so adamantly supports and even embodies. It's a tough nut to crack, trying to convince people who hate George W. Bush that your foreign policy is more "moderate" than the president's when in fact it has been more radical and interventionist for a full decade running, but McCain is banking on the power of suggestion, and above all the remarkable potency of the benefit of the doubt, to obscure his rock-solid neo-conservative credentials and expansionist foreign policy.

Here's how he did it today. By January 2013, after the first McCain term, he says:

America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced. Civil war has been prevented; militias disbanded; the Iraqi Security Force is professional and competent; al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated; and the Government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders. The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.

That's the sole basis of the "McCain announces departure date" interpretation. It doesn't take a cynic to note that this is not remotely a tangible roadmap for drawing down forces, but rather an "I have a dream" laundry list of wonderful things he'd love to see. In fact, his speech today is chock full of such locutions, covering events roughly as likely as President Bush's Mission to Mars. Some other examples of McCain's wishcasting:

* The increase in actionable intelligence that the counterinsurgency produced led to the capture or death of Osama bin Laden, and his chief lieutenants.

* Concerted action by the great democracies of the world has persuaded a reluctant Russia and China to cooperate in pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, and North Korea to discontinue its own.

* After exercising my veto several times in my first year in office, Congress has not sent me an appropriations bill containing earmarks for the last three years.

* U.S. tariffs on agricultural imports have been eliminated and unneeded farm subsidies are being phased out.

* Public education in the United States is much improved thanks to the competition provided by charter and private schools.

It sure would be pretty to think so! And obviously, it's better to have a prospective president mouthing platitudes about free agricultural trade than a political hack demagoguing a lousy farm bill. But as concerns the policy question du jour—and McCain's political necessity of scrubbing the word "neo-con" from his resume, without actually changing any of his neo-conservative policies or foreign policy team—the 2013 drawdown from Iraq should be seen as the strategic and process-free campaign cheap-talk that it is.

And how's it working out? By a quick look at the headlines, Mission Accomplished!

McCain sees Iraq combat over, U.S. troops home before 2013

Troops home from Iraq by 2013: McCain

McCain Sets a Date

The funny thing is, as routinely happens with our straight-talking friend, the press has buried the foreign policy lede by skipping over McCain's interventionist bluster in the very same speech. For instance, did you know that President McCain intends to lead NATO forces into Darfur, and use that as a stepping-stone to various humanitarian interventions?

[T]he United States, acting in concert with a newly formed League of Democracies, applied stiff diplomatic and economic pressure that caused the government of Sudan to agree to a multinational peacekeeping force, with NATO countries providing logistical and air support, to stop the genocide that had made a mockery of the world's repeated declaration that we would "never again" tolerant such inhumanity. Encouraged by the success, the League is now occupied with using the economic power and prestige of its member states to end other gross abuses of human rights such as the despicable crime of human trafficking.

Note here the process difference from the Iraq quote above: Not only is he wishing how something might be true, he's spelling out the procedural road map as well.

As George Will pointed out in yet another recent scathing critique of McCain, the "never surrender" candidate has pledged to stay the course in Iraq until "the establishment of a generally peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic state"—a perfect recipe for the 100-year occupation he's so furiously back-pedaling from—while vowing to use force against Iran if the mullahs develop nukes. The question Will wants answered, and the rest of us should too, is not "is it true you are more moderate than George W. Bush?", but (in Will's words) "how long is your list of nations eligible for 'rogue-state rollback'?"

McCain is lobbying hard, and with some success, to be seen as an "Eisenhower Republican"—a doctrine-straddling "moderate" between idealists (a.k.a. "neo-cons") and Henry Kissinger-style realists (in his March attempt to square his foreign policy circle McCain uncorked the marvelously nonsensical new term "realistic idealist").

The problem is, aside from saying that as a veteran he "hates" war—a preamble that he used to great effect in his March 1999 speech unveiling rogue-state rollback—and staking out some stylistic differences with his predecessor (today's example: "I will not subvert the purpose of legislation I have signed by making statements that indicate I will enforce only the parts of it I like"), the candidate continues to advocate and pine for interventions that would make even Eisenhower blush.

The strain between these two incompatible positions is beginning to show. In a very long Matt Bai profile of McCain's foreign policy in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, the senator kicks off the interview even before Bai asks a question with an irritable five-minute rant about how he is not so a warmonger, that he's really an Eisenhower Republican, and that he's taken close counsel from Henry Kissinger for 30 years. "Anybody is free to write whatever they want and form whatever opinions they want to form," McCain tells Bai. "But facts are facts. And the fact is that I know war, and I know the tragedy of war. And no one hates war more than veterans."

But then, later in the interview, when Bai asks him about possible U.S. interventionism into such strategically unimportant yet undeniably dictatorial countries as Zimbabwe and Burma, McCain laments that a Zimbabwe invasion would be seen as "colonialism," and that "I'm just not sure the American people would support a military engagement in Burma, no matter how justified the cause." As Bai comments:

Most American politicians, of course, would immediately dismiss the idea of sending the military into Zimbabwe or Myanmar as tangential to American interests and therefore impossible to justify. McCain didn't make this argument. He seemed to start from a default position that moral reasons alone could justify the use of American force, and from there he considered the reasons it might not be feasible to do so. In other words, to paraphrase Robert Kennedy, while most politicians looked at injustice in a foreign land and asked, "Why intervene?" McCain seemed to look at that same injustice and ask himself, "Why not?"

Will President McCain draw down combat troops from Iraq by 2013? Only if Iraq becomes the kind of prosperous and stable democracy that few if any humans are predicting will happen in the foreseeable future. In other words, when cows fly. Americans who vote for McCain based on that promise will surely get the president they deserve.

Matt Welch is the editor-in-chief of reason and the author of McCain: The Myth of a Maverick.

Some Squirrelly Guy Who Claims that He Just Don't Believe in Fightin'

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:16:00 EDT

In this week's Village Voice, Chuck Eddy offers a spirited revisionist defense of the much-maligned (by liberals, anyway) country star Toby Keith. As you might recall, Keith topped the charts in 2002 with "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue," a patriotic ditty that promised terrorists and other malfeasants, "we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way." While I can't say that I've ever cared for Keith's music, his feud with the self-important Dixie Chicks was fun to watch. And as reason contributing editor Charles Oliver noticed back in 2003, the famously pugnacious Keith was an Iraq War skeptic from the start.

Here's Eddy on why Keith is more than just a right-wing shock jock:

That handful of songs (a couple of which appeared on a surprisingly funky 2003 album entitled Shock'n Y'All, har har) is pretty much where Toby's editorializing ends, at least on record. His output is no more limited by his war-machine anthem than Merle Haggard's was by the comparably opportunistic "Okie From Muskogee" and "The Fightin' Side of Me" when Nixon was president. And not many country artists since Merle have managed a creative streak like Toby's these past few years-in fact, to my ears, his '00s output (six albums plus change, including half of 2006's Broken Bridges soundtrack and a few spare tracks collected on his new 35 Biggest Hits) just might stand up to anybody else's this decade, in any musical genre.

That's a bold statement. But the comparison to Hag makes sense. Read the rest of Eddy's article here. For the definitive take on the tangled politics of country music, however, look no further than reason's own Jesse Walker.

The War-Spending Debate You Won't Hear This Week

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:44:00 EDT

The Iraq War is being paid for via the most fiscally irresponsible method in modern American history -- a series of "emergency" supplemental bills, outside the normal vetting of the budgeting process, several years after any of the costs could at all be described as being unplanned "emergencies." You knew all this, because you read Veronique de Rugy's groundbreaking May cover story about how congressional Republicans ripped the lid off of all previous restraints on a system that is as easy to abuse as the phrase "support our troops."

This week we are experiencing the ugly results -- Democrats are cramming into the latest $195 billion emergency supplemental bill $11 billion in unemployment benefits, among other non-defense items. That likely pales in comparison to the cost of unvetted weaponry goodies that the Department of Defense is shoving into the package; meanwhile, President Bush has also thrown in extraneous crap, such as $770 million for international food aid.

If the federal government was playing by rules that were in effect as recently as 2000, emergency expenditures would mostly be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget, war funding would have been enveloped into the normal defense-budgeting process by no later than 2005, and -- this bit is underappreciated -- we might actually know the real-world price tag of the war, because budgeteers would have made at least a half-assed attempt at filing war-related expenditures under the same category, instead of willfully blurring the lines.

Instead of any of that, politicians this week, including the major-party presidential candidates, will argue about withdrawal timetables that'll never become law, then eventually agree to spend another couple hundred billion dollars without anything resembling oversight or basic fiduciary responsibility. And if Democrats aren't making even the slightest noises about reforming this system now, it's hard to imagine them suddenly getting religion only after increasing their majorities in Congress and re-taking the White House.

London Calling to the Zombies of Death

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Sat, 03 May 2008 13:59:00 EDT

The most interesting thing about Boris Johnson's victory in the London mayoral race might be what hasn't changed. The office has moved from the hard left to the hard right, but there's one issue where it is staying put:

London voters just voted out Ken Livingstone, the iconoclast left-wing antiwar mayor, and replaced him with the iconoclast right-wing antiwar Boris Johnson....

Johnson is not a neocon. In fact, he comes from the same sort of paleo-conservative roots as Pat Buchanan. He is opposed to British imperial dreams, and is in direct conflict with much of the UK Conservative Party.

In the last few years, he has been a strong opponent of the Iraq War, the rush to war with Iran, and Blair's crackdown on civil liberties.

Something else that hasn't changed: The mayor of Greater London does not, alas, have much influence on his country's foreign policy.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Sat, 03 May 2008 13:30:00 EDT

I don't know how this story slipped by me last week:

Llewellyn Werner admits he is facing obstacles most amusement park developers never have to deal with -- insurgent attacks and looting.

When you are building an amusement park in downtown Baghdad, those risks come with the territory.

Mr Werner, chairman of C3, a Los Angeles-based holding company for private equity firms, is pouring millions of dollars into developing the Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience, a massive American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum. It is being designed by the firm that developed Disneyland....

A $1 million skateboard park, the first phase of the development, will open in July. Parts for 200,000 skateboards and materials to build ramps will be shipped from America to Iraq for assembly at state-owned factories and distributed free to Iraqi children along with helmets and knee pads.

If the attraction does open as planned, I'd be curious to learn how many of its costs are being borne by private investors who actually expect it to be a profitable park, and how many are being subsidized -- via government factories, government security, or any other means -- by leaders eager to establish a Potemkin Disneyland.

Al Qaeda No. 2 Slags U.S., Iran, Sunnis, Starbucks Coffee

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:35:00 EDT

From the AP, via the Cincy Enquirer:

Al-Qaida's No. 2 said in an audiotape released Friday that the United States will lose whether it stays in Iraq or withdraws, and he sneered that President Bush just wants to pass the problem on to his successor....
"The truth is that if Bush keeps all his forces in Iraq until doomsday and until they enter hell, they will only see crisis and defeat by the will of God," said al-Zawahri, the deputy of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden.
"If the American forces leave, they will lose everything. And if they stay, they will bleed to death," he said....
He said Tehran "has clear goals, which are the annexation of southern Iraq and the east of the Arabian Peninsula" as well as strengthening ties to its followers in southern Lebanon.
He said that if Iran achieves its goals, "this will add oil to the fire which is already ablaze. This will explode the situation in an already exploding region."

The tape, which is titled "Five Years of the Invasion of Iraq and Decades of Injustice by Tyrants," couldn't be verified but the AP noted it "the logo of al-Qaida's media wing," for what that's worth. Al-Zawahiri also trashed Iraqi Sunnis who created "Awakening Councils" and joined up with American forces.

More here.

What say you, Hit & Runners? Is A-Z right that U.S. options are all bad? That God is on al Qaeda's side? That Iran is on the march regionally? That the title of this audiotape sounds like a track from Love's Forever Changes? And shouldn't he be asking whether al Qaeda is bleeding to death in Iraq and elsewhere?

Barack's Bitter Truth

myoung@reason.com (Michael Young) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has gotten much heat for suggesting that when people lose faith in Washington, they "end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the right to bear arms [and] gay marriage."

How strange, then, that during his questioning last week of the two most senior American officials in Iraq, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama took a minimalist view of what America could do to help Iraqi citizens regain faith in their government. Instead, the Illinois senator lowered the criterion for American "success" in Iraq, declaring that he could live with "a messy, sloppy status quo" in the country.

Obama's line of questioning was shrewd. With Petraeus he focused on al Qaeda, pushing the general to admit that the complete elimination of the group in Iraq was not necessary. Here's how Obama put it: "Our goal is not to hunt down and eliminate every single trace, but rather to create a manageable situation where they're not posing a threat to Iraq or using it as a base to launch attacks outside of Iraq. Is that accurate?"

"That is exactly right," Petraeus replied.

Obama then turned to Iran and questioned Crocker, the point man in the America-Iranian dialogue in Baghdad. As with Petraeus, Obama sought to lower the benchmark for what the United States should define as Iraqi "success." However, Crocker was less pliable. When Obama argued that it was unlikely that Iranian influence in Iraq could be terminated, Crocker responded: "[W]e have no problem with a good, constructive relationship between Iran and Iraq. The problem is with the Iranian strategy of backing extremist militia groups and sending in weapons and munitions that are used against Iraqis and against our own forces."

Obama didn't offer a convincing rejoinder to Crocker's protest. Instead, his time almost up, he cut to the crux of the exchange: a summary of his position on the war for an electorate that, he knew, would be listening to his every word. Obama's views were best captured in this passage:

And, see, the problem I have is if the definition of success is so high, no traces of Al Qaida and no possibility of reconstitution, a highly-effective Iraqi government, a Democratic multiethnic, multi-sectarian functioning democracy, no Iranian influence, at least not of the kind that we don't like, then that portends the possibility of us staying for 20 or 30 years.

If, on the other hand, our criteria is a messy, sloppy status quo but there's not, you know, huge outbreaks of violence, there's still corruption, but the country is struggling along, but it's not a threat to its neighbors and it's not an Al Qaida base, that seems to me an achievable goal within a measurable timeframe, and that, I think, is what everybody here on this committee has been trying to drive at, and we haven't been able to get as clear of an answer as we would like.

As the Lebanese commentator Hussain Abdul-Hussain bitingly wrote: "Obama's description of a post-America Iraq looked pretty much like post-1991 Iraq under Saddam Hussein: a country 'struggling along' but that was no ‘threat to its neighbors' and was not 'an al Qaeda base.'"

Indeed, but Obama was surely right in assuming that many Americans, perhaps a majority, have no problem with this. Saddam's brutality was never something they worried about. If you moved the goalposts a bit, Obama told them, failure would magically become success. The U.S. could head toward the exit in Iraq with its conscience clear.

The difficulty with Obama's appraisal was not just that it was based on a selective reading of the situation in Iraq, so that his assertion of how the U.S. had to realistically accept continued Iranian influence in the country somehow morphed into tolerance for Iran's systematic undermining of American interests there. The difficulty was not just that Obama over-optimistically assumed that his "messy status quo" could be sustained even if the U.S. removed most of its troops from Iraq (a point Crocker tried to make, before being cut off by Senator Joe Biden); the real difficulty with Obama's case was that it revived an American reading of Iraq that treats Iraqis as secondary characters in their own drama.

For the first two years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration was guilty of the same behavior. Iraq was about America and American power. Iraq's 2005 elections were the first real sign that Washington understood why the Iraqis mattered. Yet it was the 2007 surge that took this realization to new heights. U.S. commanders grasped that the security of Iraqi cities and civilians had to be the centerpiece of a new counter-insurgency strategy requiring U.S. soldiers to insert themselves more than ever into Iraqi society. Iraq's complex social dynamics were studied and, as effectively as possible depending on location, acted upon. For the first time the discussion in the U.S. seriously addressed what a pullout might mean in terms of Iraqi suffering.

That's why Obama's comments were so off-putting. He effectively told the Iraqis, once again, that they weren't worth anything to America. If violence and corruption were controllable, if al Qaeda was still around but was limited to Iraq proper, if Washington could stomach the Iranian manipulation of Iraqis, then it made little difference what the deeper aspirations of Iraqis in general were. Iraq could be a suppurating wound at the heart of the Middle East—a suppurating wound, Obama has tirelessly reminded us, which the U.S. helped create—but that counted for little when faced with the American urge to get out as soon as possible.

In his own defense, Obama might remind us that he's accountable only to his countrymen, not to the Iraqis; that the "good government" he has talked about in his campaign applies to embittered Americans, not to Iraqis embittered by the prospect of a precipitous U.S. departure. He might even be elected on that basis. But this would show that Obama, who has sold himself as a man of vision at home, is selfishly unimaginative abroad. Worse, because it is unlikely he will be able to much alter U.S. policy in Iraq, since Iran will not cede much more to the next administration than it did to this one, Obama's promises are potentially deceitful.

For as long as American leaders don't treat Iraqis as important in their own right, the Iraqis will have no incentive to tie their long-term interests to America's wagon. Should that matter? Both realists and idealists would probably answer in the affirmative. But where does Barack Obama stand? It's hard to imagine that Iraqis see in him change they can believe in.

reason contributing editor Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Lebanon.

But Officer, the Seat Belt Doesn't Fit Over My Explosive Vest

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:41:00 EDT

We must be turning the corner in Iraq, because police in Baghdad have begun enforcing a law that requires drivers to wear seat belts. "Some might say that there are more pressing issues," The New York Times concedes, "like the car bombs that can turn a morning commute into a nightmare of blood and body parts, the daily killings and kidnappings, the political and sectarian infighting." Then again, maybe the seat belt law reflects Iraqis' aspirations to be like the peaceful, affluent countries of the West:

"It is a symbol of civilization," said a taxi driver, Ahmed Wahayid, whose 1993 Hyundai Elantra was stuck in a long line of cars waiting to clear a checkpoint. "Western people in Europe and America have it, so we are like them."

But forcing people to wear seat belts may represent the wrong kind of normality:

Brig. Gen. Zuhair Abada Mraweh, traffic commander for the capital's Rusafah district...said that the seat belt legislation—which applies only to drivers, not passengers—was in effect during the government of Saddam Hussein.

According to the Times, by the way, Mraweh "said that there were no dependable statistics on traffic accidents, but that enforcing the law would reduce them by 70 percent." If seat belts in Iraq prevent crashes, I guess that's why car bombers don't wear them.

"Here's a gun, and here's a beer"

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:20:00 EDT

Over at Radar, reason contributor Marty Beckerman plugs in a genuinely confusing bit from Fox News earlier this week in which the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) goes on a tear about how troops under 21 are "malleable" and hence shouldn't be able to drink legally. The context isn't clear and the video is very Zapruder-quality. But watch it and decide for yourself.

On Monday Fox News Channel aired a debate between Candy Lightner, the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and Alex Koroknay-Palicz of the National Youth Rights Association, which contends that if you're old enough to vote, marry, and join the Army, you're old enough to guzzle Jäger. As you can imagine, Lightner was unimpressed, and rather vocal about it:

Koroknay-Palicz said U.S. soldiers between the ages of 18 and 21 should have the legal right to drink a beer, which seems more than reasonable considering that they might, you know, die at any moment. (You need to unwind after your day at work?) But Lightner was disgusted that our fighting men and women would have the audacity to imbibe. She ranted that 18-year-olds haven't "developed, and that's exactly why the draft age is 18, because these kids are malleable." She added: "They will follow the leader, they don't think for themselves, and they are the last ones I want to say, 'Here's a gun, and here's a beer.' They are not adult—that's why they're in the military. They are not adults."

More here.

Update: Over at reason.tv's Rough Cut blog, Dan Hayes has posted video of a Fox News debate about whether the drinking age should be lowered, a move that several states are considering. Check that out here.

And last April, reason Senior Editor Radley Balko interviewed former Middlebury College President John McCardell, Jr., who heads up Choose Responsibility, a group that advocates repealing the drinking age back to 18. Read that here.

Patience is Not a Policy

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 07:00:00 EDT

When he was the Democratic leader in the Senate, George Mitchell ruefully reflected that his job had given him "the best-developed patience muscle in Washington." The war in Iraq has done similar things for the rest of us. But the strengthening program is by no means done. Gen. David Petraeus was on Capitol Hill this week explaining why we need to keep on exercising forbearance, and keep on, and keep on.

By his reckoning, and that of Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, the administration's policy of escalation has been a success. Violence has come down, political reconciliation is underway, and the Iraqi government is showing more initiative. Heck, Crocker marveled, you even see the newly designed Iraqi flag in all parts of the country, not just some.

We poured in more troops, we accomplished what we set out to do, and now we can start bringing our troops home—which, after all, was the whole point of the surge announced by President Bush 15 months ago. Right? Wrong. It turns out that we have accomplished only enough to allow us to remain in Iraq indefinitely with more forces than we had when the surge began.

Where is Goldilocks when we need her? According to the administration, the circumstances for leaving are always too hot or too cold, but never just right. Petraeus thinks withdrawals should cease in July, at which time there will still be 140,000 American troops in Iraq—compared to about 132,000 when Bush embarked on this course.

The end of the drawdown is commonly referred to as a "pause" but it looks more like a full stop. Petraeus is not willing to commit to reduce troop strength even by September, more than a year and a half after the escalation began. "Withdrawing too many forces too quickly," he insists, "could jeopardize the progress of the past year." All he offers come September—grudgingly—is a promise to "commence a process of assessment" to see if he might be willing to trim the numbers just a bit.

What this illustrates is that no matter what happens in Iraq, the Bush policy is always the same: stay the course. Says Brookings Institution national security analyst Ivo Daalder, "First we couldn't withdraw because things were bad. Then we couldn't withdraw because things were getting better. Now we can't withdraw because things might get worse."

No one in the administration camp is willing to reject an open-ended commitment. Supporters of John McCain complain Democrats have distorted his declaration that he would be willing to stay in Iraq 100 years—since he said that "would be fine with me" only "as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed."

Fair enough. So how long would he be willing to stay as long as Americans are being injured, harmed, wounded and killed? Apparently he is not willing to put any expiration date on our obligation. Sound policy, he told a Veterans of Foreign Wars audience in Kansas City this week, "will require that we keep a sufficient level of American forces in Iraq until security conditions are such that our commanders on the ground recommend otherwise."

Well, suppose security conditions never reach the desired point—which, judging from the recent eruption of violence, is entirely possible. Then what? McCain offers no option except continuing the fight—no matter how long it takes, no matter how bloody it is, no matter the long-term damage to the Army, no matter how slow the political progress, no matter how much it costs.

His Democratic rivals propose to begin a deliberate, phased withdrawal in 2009. To let this war go on for six full years before we finally begin turning it over to the Iraqis suggests, if anything, an excess of patience. Yet McCain portrays such talk as "reckless and irresponsible."

If so, that's only because the surge has yet to produce the dramatic overall progress that its supporters envisioned at the start. Petraeus says we have to stay because the gains are "fragile and reversible." And he acknowledged, "We haven't turned any corners. We haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel."

We may never. In that case, McCain and his allies are prepared to keep stumbling through the dark.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Million Lemmings March

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:20:00 EDT

News that Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had called off his planned "Million-Man March" against the U.S. occupation (while also pondering withdrawal from the eight-month ceasefire that has reduced violence levels in the country) is a timely reminder that few things in this world are as resonant as particularly inspired acts of American political branding.

In the ~~11.5~~ 12.5 years since probably less than a million black men descended upon the capital, we've had the semi-coherent follow-up Million Family March, the related Million Father March and Million Woman March, the 10th anniversary Millions More Movement, plus the anti-gun Million Mom March, the pro-gun Million Gun March, the 10,000-strong Million Worker March, Robert Mugabe's Million Man March in Zimbabwe, the Million Step March across North Carolina, the impeach-Bush Million Phone March, the obesity-fightin' Million Calorie March, a Million Mind March organized by somebody named Rebecca, the Million Musicians March in Austin (of course) to free Tibet (of course), the self-explanatory Million Marijuana March, and the recent Million Fag March against the crazy Westboro Baptist Church. I for one am looking forward to the upcoming Million Paul March, the Million DJ March this August, and the Million Robot March of 2056.

I was first awed by the power of American political sloganeering some time in the early 1990s, when a Czech politician was looking for a catchy new tough-on-crime law, but lacked the powerful national metaphor of baseball (on account of Czechs not having any clue how to play it). His solution? "Three Strikes Are Enough!"

Petraeus at the Senate

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 07:28:00 EDT

From the L.A. Times' account of yesterday's Senate hearings on the Iraq War:

As expected, back-to-back Senate committee hearings spotlighting Army Gen. David H. Petraeus became a confrontation between two immovable forces. But there was no real decision at stake: President Bush is expected Thursday to endorse Petraeus' recommendation for a suspension of withdrawals in July, insisting that security gains over the last 15 months can lead toward a sustainable future, with continued U.S. help....
Democrat after Democrat, including the party's two remaining presidential contenders, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, questioned whether the costs of the strategy proposed by Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who also testified, were too high....
By keeping force levels at 140,000 into the autumn -- a few thousand more than before Bush announced the troop buildup in January 2007 -- U.S. officials can build on recent gains and the Iraqi government can gradually take over responsibility, he argued.

"This approach does not allow establishment of a set withdrawal timetable," he acknowledged. "However, it does provide the flexibility those of us on the ground need to preserve the still fragile security gains our troopers have fought so hard and sacrificed so much to achieve."

Petraeus refused to specify what might take place following a recommended 45-day suspension in troop reductions....

Not surprisingly, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) lauded Petraeus: "This means rejecting, as we did in 2007, the calls for a reckless and irresponsible withdrawal of our forces at the moment we are succeeding." Beyond the Dems, he was countered by several GOP senators, including Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, who noted, "Simply appealing for more time to make progress is insufficient."

More here.

reason's current cover story on "The Trillion Dollar War" here. More on Iraq here.

The Trillion-Dollar War

info@reason.com (Veronique de Rugy) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:00:00 EDT

At the end of December, Congress approved $70 billion in bridge funding—a down payment to cover the gap between the beginning of the fiscal year and the passage of the actual appropriation bill—to keep financing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Legislators at the time were still chewing on the rest of President George W. Bush’s request for a fiscal year 2008 war budget of $196 billion. Should that funding be appropriated—and if recent history is any guide, it certainly will—then the total price tag for America’s present wars will rise to at least $822 billion, approximately 80 percent of which will be spent on Iraq. That surpasses the cost of the Vietnam War ($670 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars). And the Iraq portion dwarfs the $50 billion to $60 billion cost predicted at the outset of the war by Mitch Daniels, then director of the Office of Management and Budget.

These runaway costs do not include a single dollar from the Pentagon’s annual operating budget, which in 2008 reached a whopping $481 billion. If the war were being accounted for based on a rational, transparent budget process instead of an opaque and politicized shell game, Americans would be painfully aware that we are now in the seventh year of what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has called a $1 trillion war.

How much money is $1 trillion? Enough to pay for the entire 1976 federal budget, adjusted for inflation. Enough to write a check for $37,500 to every Iraqi man, woman, and child. Enough to buy 169,492 Black Hawk helicopters, or 455 stealth bombers. Enough, in nominal terms, to pay for the entire federal government from 1789 to 1957. And it’s 10 times more than what specialists predict it would take to eradicate malaria once and for all.

To distract people from the real price tag of a two-front war, the president and Congress have used an unprecedented and fiscally irresponsible budgetary trick: a series of “emergency” supplemental spending bills totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. This scheme has allowed them not only to hide the costs of the conflicts but also to avoid painful budget choices while funneling billions of dollars in unvetted goodies to favored interest groups.

Once a small blip among federal outlays, emergency supplementals have exploded since 2002, when the Republican Congress let a key legislative restriction on their use expire. In May 2007, President Bush signed into law the biggest supplemental bill in history, $120 billion, to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan ($100 billion) and pay for hurricane recovery and agricultural disaster relief at home. This came just five months after Congress approved another $70 billion emergency request for the wars. By contrast, the average annual amount of emergency supplemental spending in the 1990s—a decade that saw interventions in Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo—was just $13.8 billion (see Figure 1).

Supplemental spending does more harm than merely obfuscating the costs of military conflict. It effectively removes the upper limit on the White House’s war budget. It allows the Pentagon to seek and receive much more funding for mundane operations than it could receive via the normal budget process. And its comparative lack of oversight encourages Congress to shovel out pork to Gulf Coast shrimp harvesters, Hawaiian highway builders, Florida orange growers, and other recipients who have nothing to do with fighting terrorism. As Bush prepares to exit office, this out-of-control spending stands to become one of his most lasting and nefarious legacies.

Bush’s Supplemental Shell Game
President Bush has never included a comprehensive war spending request in his annual February budget. Instead, he has submitted emergency war requests to Capitol Hill, usually sometime in the spring, weeks after the defense appropriation subcommittees begin picking through the Pentagon budget.

Last year, for instance, the president submitted a defense budget request of $481 billion for fiscal year 2008. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were covered in an entirely separate $142 billion emergency supplemental request. In October the administration increased that request to $196 billion, leaving Congress to face a dilemma that has become all too familiar since 2001: quickly approve billions of dollars in supplemental war funding without knowing where the money is going or face browbeating accusations of not supporting the troops. In the end, after little discussion, Congress passed its $70 billion down payment.

Although there are no official limits on the amount or type of spending that can be designated as an emergency appropriation, historically there has been an understanding that emergencies are sudden, unforeseen, temporary conditions posing a threat to life, property, or national security. In September 2005, for instance, after Hurricane Katrina smashed the Gulf Coast, the president quickly requested and Congress readily approved a $52 billion emergency bill.

The costs of the war may be necessary and temporary, but they are by no means sudden or unforeseen. The war in Afghanistan started in October 2001, and the war in Iraq commenced in March 2003. Furthermore, the easy-to-predict salaries and benefits of Army National Guard personnel and reservists called to active duty amount to some of the largest expenditures in the supplemental bills.

“The Bush administration’s use of so-called ‘emergency’ supplemental funding to pay for Afghanistan and Iraq is truly unprecedented,” says Travis Sharp, a military policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a nonpartisan research organization specializing in international security and arms control issues. Historically, while emergency supplementals were the most frequent means of financing the initial stages of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War, past administrations and Congresses funded subsequent military operations in regular appropriation bills as soon as even the crudest of cost projections could be made, according to a June 2006 Congressional Research Service study.

In 1951, for instance, 72 percent of the kick-off cost for the Korean War —$33 billion in today’s dollars—went through supplemental appropriations, while $13 billion came from regular appropriations. But by year two, Congress appropriated 98 percent of the war’s funding through the regular defense budget. By 1953 the president no longer requested any funding outside of the regular defense budget.

The decade-long Vietnam War followed a similar pattern. In the first year of the war, Congress provided all of the funding in emergency supplemental bills. The second year, the administration requested a little less than 50 percent of the war funding within regular defense appropriations. By the fourth year, all of the war funding went through the regular defense budget process. This despite the fact that troop levels were in flux, military strategies were changing regularly, and the duration of the conflict could not be foreseen. In the 1990s, the Republican-led Congress showed a kind of discipline it would completely forget during the Bush presidency, directing President Bill Clinton in fiscal year 1996 to fund all ongoing military operations, including the enforcement of no-fly zones over Iraq, from the regular defense budget rather than supplementals. From then on, Clinton sought funding for Bosnia and other conflicts entirely through the regular appropriations process.

In the 1980s, throughout President Ronald Reagan’s military buildup, no Cold War spending was allocated through supplementals (see Figure 2). And once you account for the offsetting contributions from American allies during and after the first Gulf War ($35 billion out of the total $42 billion price tag), it is clear that until recently very little U.S. military spending was treated as an emergency.

What a difference with today’s wars. Five years into the Iraq conflict and seven years into Afghanistan, the administration and Congress have buried all of the explicit funding—totaling more than the spending on either the Korea or Vietnam wars when adjusted for inflation—in emergency supplementals.

What changed? Aside from internal fiscal discipline, the single biggest procedural shift came in 2002, when the Congress let lapse a law that had required budget cuts to “offset” emergency expenditures.

Who benefited? The Pentagon, the political party that ran Washington in the early 2000s, and their friends.

“The Bush administration is clearly capable of projecting costs in Iraq,” says Travis Sharp, “and has simply ignored historical precedent.”

The Size of the Con
This year the Department of Defense once again failed to include the cost of war in its record-breaking $515 billion defense budget for fiscal year 2009. Instead, it included a placeholder for yet another $70 billion emergency war supplemental—which, conveniently for the administration, does not get counted in deficit projections.

Pressed by Democrats during the annual defense budget hearings in February, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates confirmed that the $70 billion was only a small fraction of the total expected war cost for the year. Pressed further, Gates estimated that military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan would cost at least $170 billion in 2009.

He immediately added, “I have no confidence in that figure.”

From the beginning, the administration has argued that supplemental bills have the advantage of being prepared closer to the time when the funds will be used, allowing for a more accurate assessment of needs and quicker access to money. It also notes that making the spending separate prevents it from becoming a permanent feature of the defense budget. In other words, the administration argues, using supplemental bills is the fiscally responsible thing to do.

A more likely explanation has little to do with military strategy or budgetary concerns, and everything to do with the fact that “emergency” spending has very beneficial features for big spenders in Washington.

In 1990, under bipartisan congressional pressure to reduce the size of the deficit, President George H.W. Bush signed the Budget Enforcement Act (BEA), which exempted emergency bills from other rules of the era designed to restrain spending. The BEA allowed the government to exclude emergency spending from the deficit projections required in the annual budget. To prevent lawmakers from abusing that loophole, the law required that Congress offset supplemental spending with rescissions—that is, by permanently withholding already appropriated funds.

For a while, this plan worked well, at least by today’s standards. According to a 2005 Congressional Research Service report, between 1981 and 2002 Congress offset an average of 40 percent of supplemental appropriations with rescissions. And those emergencies weren’t for war; during the recession- and inflation-plagued early 1980s, supplementals were used to fund mandatory outlays for unemployment compensation. In the early 1990s, the purpose shifted to natural disaster relief.

But Congress let the BEA expire in 2002. Since then, supplemental appropriations exceeding budget caps have no longer triggered automatic cuts elsewhere. Today the only legislative limit on emergency spending is a congressional prerogative to raise a point of order to protest the “emergency” designation. This happens rarely if ever.

The floodgates are now open. According to data compiled by the Congressional Research Service, inflation-adjusted supplemental spending has increased nearly fivefold in less than three decades, from $36 billion in fiscal year 1980 to $160 billion in 2007, boosting its share of the overall budget authority from 3 percent to 7 percent. And these numbers don’t even catch all of the federal government’s “emergency” spending measures, because some are attached to regular appropriations, such as the December 2007 omnibus bill containing the $70 billion bridge fund.

But for a true measure of the increase, we ought to look at supplemental spending as a share of total new discretionary spending. And there, the trend lines are striking (see Figure 3). Except for a sharp spike in 1991 to fund the first Gulf War (which was largely offset later), emergency appropriations remained a very small share of new discretionary spending through most of the 1990s, staying below 3 percent. Compare that to 2007, when Congress appropriated over 18.3 percent of all discretionary spending through the supplemental process.

This profligacy is par for the course with President Bush. Since fiscal year 2001, the Bush White House has expanded federal spending by 66 percent, in nominal terms, enacting extremely expensive and pork-swollen bills covering agriculture, highway, energy, and prescription drugs while doubling the same federal education budget that Republicans once sought to eliminate.

Regular military appropriations, too, have more than doubled under Bush. According to the Office of Management and Budget, the $481 billion defense request for fiscal year 2008 is 66 percent higher than the budget Bush inherited from Clinton in 2001. If you add to that amount the $196 billion of requested emergency war funding, the Pentagon’s budget is, in inflation-adjusted dollars, larger today than at any point since the end of World War II.

Even that staggering amount strikes Winslow Wheeler, director of the Strauss Military Reform Project at the nonpartisan Center for Defense Information, as incomplete. Wheeler argues that an inclusive definition of the defense budget should also include the $18 billion requested for nuclear weapon costs by the Department of Energy and another $6 billion for miscellaneous defense costs borne by other agencies, such as the General Service Administration, plus funding for the National Defense Stockpile, the Selective Service, some Coast Guard, and the International FBI. Together, that would make a grand total of $700 billion for 2008.

The real number may be higher still, when factoring in the billions of dollars in other federal programs that are spent as a direct result of maintaining the military. According to Christopher Hellman, a defense analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, you could include $43 billion spent on homeland security activities outside of the Pentagon (mainly through the Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and Justice), $88 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs, a portion of the estimated $40 billion intelligence budget, and some of the $9 billion spent annually on foreign military aid, plus expenditures on international peacekeeping, nonproliferation, antiterrorism, demining, military space programs, employees’ and retirees’ compensation and benefits at the Pentagon, veterans’ benefits, military pensions, and, finally, a conservative $100 billion estimate for the share of the country’s annual interest payment on the national debt that is directly attributable to past military spending. That gives us a grand total of nearly $1 trillion—that’s 12 zeros—in national security spending for 2008 alone.

Even when using only direct outlays by the Defense Department, 2008 funding was more than 100 percent above 2001. It is unlikely that the president would have been able to achieve such an increase if he had to include the costs of war in his budget requests. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, spelled out the utility of shell-game finance in an April 12, 2005, report: “Congress should fund operations in Iraq through emergency supplemental appropriations (because funding it through the regular appropriations process would unnecessarily inflate the defense budget).”

Well, yes, exactly. As a Defense News editorial put it in 2005, the White House is “using the supplemental as a thinly veiled political attempt to keep the public from lapsing into sticker shock, and so, losing support for the war.”

At a requested $892 billion and counting—including a new $70 billion emergency war request for fiscal 2009—the Global War on Terror is now the second priciest conflict in U.S. history in inflation-adjusted terms (see Table 1). Only World War II cost more: $3.2 trillion in adjusted 2007
dollars.

And that’s only for the direct cost of the war. As my colleague Tyler Cowen at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center wrote in The Washington Post last November, “these figures don’t quite get at Iraq’s real cost,” because they focus on what we paid for rather than recognizing what we have lost. Among other things, Cowen lists more than 3,800 U.S. soldiers dead and more than 28,000 wounded (many of them severely), more than 1,000 private contractors killed and many more injured, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths—plus the contributions that all of these people would have made to their families and to humanity at large. A newly released study by the Harvard economist Linda Bilmes puts the combined war costs as high as $3 trillion.

Christmastime for the Pentagon
War supplementals have become the Pentagon’s tool of choice to obtain more funding than it would otherwise receive. Helped by its friends in Congress, the Defense Department keeps finding pretexts to move nonemergency programs, including some wholly unrelated to the war, into emergency supplementals. This frees space under the baseline to stuff in additional spending.

Winslow Wheeler has traced where these “transfer” stunts are readily apparent in the department’s procurement accounts. For example, in the account for “Aircraft Procurement, Army” on page 249 of the regular 2006 Pentagon budget, there is the notation “Transfer to Title IX,” indicating $11.2 million deducted from the president’s regular annual request that was originally intended to purchase “aircraft survivability equipment.” The money is then reinserted on page 477 in Title IX, under the designation of “emergency” spending.

In this one procurement account alone, Wheeler counted 17 such transfers from peacetime budgeting to “emergency” war spending, totaling $654 million, plus another $107 million more in the small print. The best part of the maneuver from the Pentagon’s point of view, Wheeler says, is that the transferred money freed space to buy one F-15E fighter-bomber ($65 million), two Littoral Combat Ships ($440 million), and hundreds of other smaller items. Because similar gimmicks are used in most of the regular budget’s procurement accounts, Pentagon watchers say that the emergency transfers add up to tens of billions of dollars, allowing the Defense Department to boost other parts of its budget by an equal amount.

The practice is so routine and uncontroversial that the military openly admits it. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker testified before the Senate in 2005 that the Army preferred to fund 30,000 additional troops through supplementals because if it included the necessary funds in its annual budget request, it “would have to displace other things that are too important to us as we transform—equipment and other readiness issues. So the department has elected to do it with emergency and supplemental funding since we have the options to do so.”

The president’s latest emergency war request included many nonemergency items, some not even related to war. According to a document released by the Senate Budget Committee, $4 billion of the $196 billion officially allocated for the wars has nothing to do with Iraq or Afghanistan, including $500 million for six electronic warfare planes (neither the insurgents in Iraq nor Al Qaeda has an air force or radar) and $400 million for two developmental aircraft that won’t see service until 2013.

This practice is about to get much worse. After years of war, U.S. military equipment is wearing out five times faster than normal. In the next few years, says the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation’s Travis Sharp, we can expect many more high-priced “emergency” Pentagon wish lists for equipment that may or may not be used in the emergencies being funded. “The problem,” Sharp says, “is that the line between war-related spending and normal Department of Defense ‘base’ budget spending is increasingly becoming blurred.” The price tag for equipment replacement is impossible to predict.

The Pentagon recently made such budgetary bait-and-switches even easier by greatly expanding the definition of “war costs” while putting the finishing touches on its fiscal 2007 war supplemental. Now reconstituting or replacing military equipment for the “longer war on terror” is reason enough to designate a military line item as an “emergency.” So any new toy the Pentagon wants can be stuffed in a supplemental bill. No congressional review need be done, and no compensatory sacrifices need be made in the regular budget. Nor are any real explanations needed. Emergency supplementals are not required to contain the “budget justifications” that are attached to all items in non-emergency defense bills.

Adding final insult to injury, the Department of Defense deliberately obscures what exactly is being spent on war. During past conflicts, the Pentagon usually established a separate account to keep track of operation funds. However, no such account exists for the war in Iraq. It’s impossible to tell in 2008 how much the U.S. is spending on defense and where the money is going.

On Capitol Hill, Everybody Wins!
The Pentagon is not the only shill in the supplemental shell game. Everyone in Washington is addicted to the fiction of the “emergency” loophole. These bills have become a magnet for pork and other projects that would have a much tougher time getting funded on their own merits. Because no member wants to vote against emergency aid money to support the troops, and because most supplemental spending does not count against House and Senate budget limits, Congress has used the legislation to get around the Bush administration’s recent rhetoric about limiting the growth of spending unrelated to defense or homeland security. An increasing number of nonemergency, nondefense programs have found their way into emergency war bills, increasing overall government spending without the usual consequences.

Brian Riedl, a budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, explains: “The common usage of defense supplemental bills has increased non-defense spending as well. Lawmakers now try to shift budget-resolution funds from defense to domestic programs, knowing that these defense funds can be replenished by adding to the next supplemental bill.” For instance, in May 2006, House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) asked that $6 billion from proposed defense increases be shifted to erase almost $4 billion worth of cuts in domestic programs.

The best example of Congress’s propensity to stuff supplemental bills with pork items can be found in the most recent supplemental, signed by the president in June 2007, which contained $24 billion in nonemergency spending. That included $120 million for the shrimp and menhaden fishing industries, $283 million for the Milk Income Loss Contract program, $60 million for salmon fisheries, $100 million for California citrus growers, $50 million for asbestos mitigation at the U.S. Capitol Plant, $1 billion for avian flu, and $1 billion for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The Real Emergency
These earmarks obviously should not fall under the rubric of emergency spending, but then neither should have most of the $120 billion bill. More than two years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast, Congress should be able to fund federal relief through the regular appropriations process. In fact, Congress should be able to fund most hurricane relief through the regular appropriations process, given that the hurricane season is a predictable annual event.
Defense spending may be important, but it does not defy the laws of economics or the rules of good governance. It is ludicrous to believe that every increase in the military budget is a good increase.

Yet despite spending more than ever, and more sloppily than ever, on defense, the White House, the Pentagon, and some big military spenders among Washington’s think tank intelligentsia would like us to believe that the bloated Pentagon budget is frail and in desperate need of more cash. They are more capable of saying this with a straight face because for years now so many costs of war have been hidden in supplemental bills.

The best way to allocate defense resources most effectively is to force a tradeoff between priority items and wasteful boondoggles in the regular defense budgeting process. Yet the exact opposite is happening. Instead of having to justify dumping more billions into controversial old weapons programs such as the Air Force’s F-22 stealth fighter, the Marine Corps’ tilt-wing V-22 Osprey, the Navy’s DDG-1000 stealth destroyer and its Virginia-class attack submarine, the Pentagon can simply move those over into the “emergency” file and put off hard choices.

The Democratic Congress could use the immense cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as leverage for some long-overdue waste cutting at the Pentagon. Alternatively, Congress could decide that $1 trillion for defense is worth every penny and instead make some long-overdue compensatory reductions on the domestic side of the budget.

But if the U.S. is to ever make progress toward budgetary sanity, the federal government must stop pretending that war-related costs are somehow separate from the budget of a department whose mission is to fight and win the nation’s wars. That won’t happen until Washington stops pretending that predictable costs are an “emergency.” The emergency at the Pentagon is the way it is deliberately squandering hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Details, Schmetails

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:58:00 EDT

Some interesting exchanges from a Jewish Journal interview with John McCain:

McCain also defended his support of the controversial Rev. John Hagee, a staunchly pro-Israel evangelical who has been criticized for his anti-Catholic comments. I asked the senator how he would get pro-Israel evangelicals, who have been staunchly opposed to Israel giving up territory or compromising on the status of Jerusalem, to support any peace agreement.

"You can't jump ahead here," he said. "I know they favor a peace process. I know they favor that because of my close relations with them, and pastor John Hagee ... is one of the leaders of the pro-Israel-evangelical movement in America."

I started to correct him -- Hagee and other evangelicals most certainly don't support compromise on territory or Jerusalem, and McCain must know this. That's when I got my first taste of the famous McCain technique: I'll-talk-so-you-can't.

"Look," he cut me off, "I just have to tell you that we should be so grateful for the support of the evangelical movement for the state of Israel, given the influence that they have, beneficial influence that they have over millions of Americans, and then we'll worry about a peace process later on, but I know that they are committed to peace between Palestinians and Israelis as well." [...]
Does he think the war has strengthened Iran in the region?

"I think that our failures for nearly four years obviously did it," the senator said. "But I believe that that is being reversed as the surge succeeds, and I think that the Iranians are very possibly going to step up their assistance to the Jihadists, because they don't want us to succeed in Iraq.... Osama Bin Laden has said that the central front in the battleground is Iraq, and their Palestinian brothers are next. So what are the implications to the State of Israel if they prevail on Iraq? I think they're very obvious." [...]
On the domestic front, I praised the senator in his call for energy independence, but pointed out that every president since Richard Nixon has issued the same call. Why would he succeed?

"Because I believe I can inspire the American people," he said, "and I think that when the price of oil went over $100 a barrel that there was certainly a psychological barrier there."

Whole thing here; link via LA Observed. I'll be on The Charles Goyette Show on Phoenix's KFNX, 1100 on your AM dial, starting in a few minutes here at 10:05 EDT.

This Would Have Made Those Shitty Sgt. Rock Comics a Lot More Interesting...

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:10:00 EDT

...and it would have rendered moot the drama behind the pop ballad "Billy Don't Be a Hero." But the times they are a-changin':

In a historic but little-noticed change in policy, the Army is allowing scores of husband-and-wife soldiers to live and sleep together in the war zone - a move aimed at preserving marriages, boosting morale and perhaps bolstering re-enlistment rates at a time when the military is struggling to fill its ranks five years into the fighting.
"It makes a lot of things easier," said Frazier, 33, a helicopter maintenance supervisor in the 3rd Infantry Division. "It really adds a lot of stress, being separated. Now you can sit face-to-face and try to work out things and comfort each other."
Long-standing Army rules barred soldiers of the opposite sex from sharing sleeping quarters in war zones. Even married troops lived only in all-male or all-female quarters and had no private living space.
But in May 2006, Army commanders in Iraq, with little fanfare, decided that it is in the military's interest to promote wedded bliss. In other words: What God has joined together, let no manual put asunder.
"It's better for the soldiers, which means overall it's better for the Army," said Command Sgt. Maj. Mark Thornton of the 3rd Infantry.

More here.

Government Puzzled by Iraq Situation, Seeks Conspiracy Theories

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:07:00 EDT

From a Washington Post report today on the surging violence in Iraq:

As President Bush told an Ohio audience that Iraq was returning to "normalcy," administration officials in Washington held meetings to assess what appeared to be a rapidly deteriorating security situation in many parts of the country.

Maliki decided to launch the offensive without consulting his U.S. allies, according to administration officials. With little U.S. presence in the south, and British forces in Basra confined to an air base outside the city, one administration official said that "we can't quite decipher" what is going on. It's a question, he said, of "who's got the best conspiracy" theory about why Maliki decided to act now.

4,000 U.S. Dead in Iraq

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:24:00 EDT

The overall U.S. death toll in Iraq rose to 4,000 after four soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing in Baghdad, a grim milestone that is likely to fuel calls for the withdrawal of American forces as the war enters its sixth year.
The American deaths occurred Sunday, the same day rockets and mortars pounded the U.S.-protected Green Zone in Baghdad and a wave of attacks left at least 61 Iraqis dead nationwide.
An Iraqi military spokesman said Monday that troops had found rocket launching pads in different areas in predominantly Shiite eastern Baghdad that had been used by extremists to fire on the Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi government headquarters.
"We hope to deal with this issue professionally to avoid civilian casualties," said spokesman Qassim al-Moussawi.

More here.