Totally agree with your comments about the function of Biden. Everyone knows he’s a tool, so we just need to learn how to work him to our benefit.
I think Dems should make a bigger issue of how long it took to get Saddam after the invasion. Given that there were no WMD, and everyone pretty much now knows there weren’t any when we went in, there was simply no excuse to let the capture of Saddam go on as long as it did and we shouldn’t have gone all the way to Baghdad unless we had a plan and the means to immediately secure him. The fact that there wasn’t [other than to lob a missile in his tent, I mean castle], in my mind was the biggest flaw in the war strategy and also, I think, the most politically effective way of attacking a now unpopular war.
Immediately capture Saddam, and a lot of what happened afterwards is simply unnecessary. And point out it’s not the first time this kind of thing has happened under Bush, and so is likely to continue to happen.

Posted by: bcf | Aug 16 2005 18:59 utc | 3

by 2006 we will be in the middle of the blowback from whatever is done about the Iran situation.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 16 2005 19:34 utc | 5

Part of the problem we Dems are having, whether we were for or against the invasion, is that we keep getting beaten up by the Right about “withdrawal” of the troops from Iraq — treason, cutting and running, not staying the course, etc., etc., etc. Those kind of threats have basically tied the hands of people like Biden and Clinton.
But look at the problem a different way:
1. It’s clear we’re bailing out of Iraq as soon as Cheney can figure out some face-saving way of doing it. We’re going to abandon the Iraqis to whatever hideous fate our invasion will have caused them;
2. We can never “fix” Iraq, we just don’t have the soldiers to do it;
3. Looking at Centcom as a whole and not just focusing on Iraq, we are in the middle of two wars for both of which — Afghanistan and Iraq — we have committed inadequate resources;
4. We should pick one of the wars and staff it properly. It can’t be Iraq — as noted above we simply don’t have the forces to ever staff it properly. Plus, Afghanistan is where al Qaeda, the original enemy, is.
5. Therefore, we don’t withdraw troops from Iraq, we reposition troops within Centcom from Iraq to Afghanistan. Specifically:
6. Within the next 90 to 120 days all the regular Army and USMC light infantry/air assault/SF forces are relocated from Iraq to the Afghan-Pakistan border. That’s probably about 50 – 60,000 troops. Their mission is to capture/kill all al Qaeda and to stabilize Afghanistan. When that’s occurred, they leave. After all, no oil there;
7. The remaining troops in Iraq — regular Army and USMC armor/armored cav/mech infantry units– and the Reserve and NG units are relocated to Kuwait and temporary basing in Jordan. Their mission is to continue to train the Iraqi forces which they would do by rotating into Iraq on a monthly basis. They would also act as a Quick Reaction Force if the Bandini well and truly hit the air supply in Iraq;
8. When the dates arrive for the Reserve and NG units to come home, they would not be replaced. By, say, a year from now, we would have the equivalent of two or brigades of regular Army/USMC types in Kuwait, about what we had before the invasion occurred.
9. What does the Right say then? (Not a rhetorical question — what are peoples’ thoughts re: Dear Leader’s response?)

Posted by: fbg46 | Aug 16 2005 20:59 utc | 7

I see Iran is fighting the War on Terror also

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 16 2005 22:51 utc | 9

Look at this from any national politician’s point of view — there are two options.
One, leave Iraq, let them sell their oil however they please. They will sell it for Euros to the Chinese, Indians, Europeans, and us. Our dollar collapses, and whoever is in the White House is thrown out.
Two, stay in Iraq, prevent oil from being sold except for dollars, through our corporations and puppet governments. Our dollar survives into the future, but our population gets rebellious and whoever is in the White House is thrown out.
i.e. the only real choice is to stay there and keep our heavy hand on the oil market.
As for the rebellious populace, just arrange for a bomb in a subway or container ship or some such, and whoever is in the White House will get the backing of 90% of the populace to go kill some Middle Easterners.
Boys and girls, whichever party is in the White House, they will be looking hard for a domestic terror incident.
Here it comes.

Posted by: Antifa | Aug 17 2005 0:48 utc | 11

In reading the Neo-Cons, it has been helpful to date to understand their agenda and then it’s easy to figure out their gameplan. On Iraq they’ve never had any plan to leave. They don’t give a shit if the country is a hellhole as long as the US has a permanent staging area and decides who can buy the oil.
The political reality is that they have to get through the ’06 elections. They don’t have the will to leave and don’t have the forces to stay. If Bush’s poll numbers were high, a draft would have been feasible. That leaves them with only two reasonable options: hold on for a few more months and then begin a mock draw down (and pray like hell that Iraq doesn’t blow up before the troops can be restore after 11/06). Or escalate the war as Nixon did in 1970 — with the same excuse, cut off the supply routes. That would get the attention off Iraq and onto the borders with Syria and Iran. If they keep limit the bombing to the borders, the rest of the world might continue acting like American sheep. If Iran retaliates, the US will label Iran as the aggressor and Americans will whip out those little flags faster than a fifteen boy with a naked woman could drop his pants.

Posted by: Marie | Aug 17 2005 1:55 utc | 13

State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 – State Department analysts warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Osama bin Laden’s move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven as he sought to expand radical Islam “well beyond the Middle East,” but the government chose not to deter the move, newly declassified documents show.

Officer Says Military Blocked Sharing of Files on Terrorists

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 – A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly.

It wasn’t neocon “benign neglect” that allowed 9/11, the “catastrophic catalysing event – like a new Pearl Harbor” which contiues to develop, like a thunderhead over Iran, into World War III before our dumbstruck eyes.
It was Bill Clinton’s fault.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 17 2005 3:32 utc | 15

I’m fascinated by the Biden phenomenon. He’s doing every possible talk show as many times as possible …with apparently absolutely nothing, nothing to say.
I saw today a replay of his TDS appearance and was amazed that for a guy openly running for President, he came on with absolutely no point to make and not even a funny, self-depracating one-liner. The only other guy I’ve ever seen do that on Stewart was, well, John Kerry.
But at least Kerry had a biographical rationale for his candidacy. Biden seems to think that Kerry’s mistake was being a war hero, so he’s gearing up to run on the same issue-less, point-less, charisma-less platform …but he’s going to be different, since they can’t Swift Boat him.
Biden’s clearly going to be the Lieberman of 08.

Posted by: desmoulins | Aug 17 2005 3:54 utc | 17

@ desmoulins:

(Gosh, two posts in quick succession… who’d’a thunk…) (Of course, I mis-signed one, so does it count?) (One extra error, and you have “The Truth Gets Viscous When You Bite It,” which sounds like an album name for a bad punk band.) No, Biden won’t be the Lieberman of ’08, although he may be a Lieberman of ’08. Not only has Lieberman not gone away, but there are other Dems thinking along the same lines.

Since none of them appear willing to have a sense of humor, and all of them are pro-war, we should infiltrate a focus group and convince them to form a chorus line and sing (to the tune of New York, New York from On the Town) “Iraq, Iraq, it’s a flammable curse / The oil should be shipped in a hearse / Elect one of us to make it all worse / Iraq, Iraq, it’s a flammable curse.”

Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Aug 17 2005 4:52 utc | 19

David Habbakuk:
It is the neocons’ agendas that are most important in this – and they’ve left handedly furthered those of the Iranians.
The evidence is not yet all in, but the following scenario looks increasingly likely:
1. Through Ahmad Chalabi, the neocons fed duff information to credulous Americans, drunk with greed for oil and war, thus inveigling the United States into getting rid of their great enemy, Saddam. At the same time they managed to give the Iranians what they failed to get themselves in eight years of war, without the Iranians’ having to fire a shot.
2. Elections, predictably, produced a pro-Iranian Shia government. Meanwhile, Iranian-backed organizations consolidated their control over the oil-rich south – thereby of course greatly increasing Iranian influence on oil markets. At the same time, the Iranian capacity to make trouble through Shia minorities in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait is being greatly increased. (Note the Saudi Shias are concentrated in oil-rich areas.) And their influence on Lebanon is also being consolidated, through Hezbollah. A Shia crescent is developing right through the heart of the Middle East.
3. War-whooping its happy way along, the Bush Administration resolved to destroy the insurgency – which essentially means further reducing the residual political power of the Iraqi Sunnis. The neocons view chaos and destruction of any and all non-Israeli power centers in the Middle East as a “plus” and it may well suit the Iranians to keep this game going as well. While it is going on, the difficulties involved in taking any military action against Iran are obviously greatly compounded. And the longer it goes on, the weaker the Sunnis become, and the more likely it is that there will be strong popular opposition in the U.S. to further military operations abroad.
4. What would be screamingly funny, if the consequences weren’t so serious, is that the neocons managed to paint all those who talked sense about Iraq as gullible dupes of a wily tyrant; while it seems likely that they themselves were very effectively duping American “leaders” through their surrogates, Chalabi and the INC.
5. If Americans wake up to the true extent of the shambles created, and start thinking, it may be possible to do something about this shambles. (Planning to use nukes against hardened Iranian sites doesn’t count as thinking, but the neocons never accused the Americans of being able to think and the consequences of nuking Iran will be borne not by Israel but by the United States. Implementing such threats would be doing the neocons and bin Laden’s work for them, destroying the nascent Shia power center in the Middle East and bringing about total chaos not only there but throughout the world.)
6. But not only is there intellectual paralysis in the Bush Administration. The Democrats seem, frankly, to be collaborators of the neocons. The neocons must be laughing their heads off at you.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 17 2005 10:16 utc | 21

you wrote:
“On the other hand, given where things stand now, if the Dems don’t do well next year, either Shrub and company will have pulled off a miracle in Iraq, the economy will have entered supply-side heaven, or we’ll know for certain that we’re effectively living in a one-party state.”
Don’t forget about the huge nuclear explosion to be expected in September 2006, somewhere on the planet. That’s about when the rethugs should make their play for the new product they are planning to roll out…the next stage of the perpetual war. how difficult do you really think it’ll be for these people to manipulate the populace. what would herman goering do?

Posted by: chris from boca | Aug 17 2005 22:03 utc | 23