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July 18, 2007
Senate Agrees to Stay in Iraq

The filibustering last night was simply a show stage by Senator Reid to appease the crowd.

Behind the stage setting and headlines, the Imperial Senate is united in its will to keep Iraq occupied until a pink pony appears on the Senate floor.

The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed an amendment today to the Defense Authorization bill offered by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which puts every Senator on record acknowledging the consequences of a vote for or against a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. […]

  • The Cornyn amendment, in the form of a Sense of the Senate resolution, in part says, “A failed state in Iraq would become a safe haven for Islamic radicals, including al Qaida and Hezbollah, who are determined to attack the United States and United States’ allies.” Further, the resolution acknowledges, “The Iraq Study Group report found that a chaotic Iraq could provide a still stronger base of operations for terrorists who seek to act regionally or even globally.”
  • The Cornyn amendment concludes by stating that “the Senate should commit itself to a strategy that will not leave a failed state in Iraq; and the Senate should not pass legislation that will undermine our military’s ability to prevent a failed state in Iraq.”

The amendment (pdf) was accepted by a vote on 94-3.

—

On another note: The former White House assistent and current occupation spokesman Gen. Bergner is recycling an old propaganda scheme: U.S. says top Al Qaeda in Iraq figure captured.

Khaled Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud Mashhadani, also known as Abu Shahid, was captured in Mosul on July 4, said Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a military spokesman.

"Mashhadani is believed to be the most senior Iraqi in the Al Qaeda in Iraq network," Bergner said. He said Mashhadani was a close associate of Abu Ayub Masri, the Egyptian-born head of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Bergner said Mashhadani served as an intermediary between Masri and Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman Zawahri.

Remember my oldie on how to Make Your Own Iraq dispatch?

Posted by b on July 18, 2007 at 11:51 UTC | Permalink
Comments

I beleive that the this is a job for the Office of Management and Budget. They should determine just how many more lives and how many billions the USA must spend in order to un-fail the Iraqi state; should that benchmark not be met, the USA should have to withdraw and re-invade.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Jul 18 2007 14:22 utc | 1

I did my full part in the Senate’s all-nighter by leaving CSPAN on, and falling asleep in the other room to the droning, to the draining of vitality from our erstwhile Republic.
This morning I heard one Republican Senator go on about how we are all reasonable folks here in this chamber, and we all wish the best for everyone Over There, and we are all patriots.
And how we must do what is best for Iraq now, not what is convenient for America, or for America’s budget, or for America’s troops or people. WE MUST BEAR UP AND DO THE RIGHT THING.
With never a hint of awareness that we committed a war crime in 2003, that we launched a premptive, willful war of aggression for economic gains, against all international law.
Exactly the kind of war we hung people for in 1948, at Nuremberg. Exactly.
In that tall, patrician Senator I saw only Aarfy Aardvark, pants around his ankles, pipe in hand, explaining to Yossarian that he had to throw the girl out the window. She couldn’t be allowed to go about talking, now could she? He’d done the right thing, he’d done what he had to.
We’ve raped and brutalized an entire nation, for the economic gains it will bring our elites, our best and brightest.
And now we must do the right thing, eh?

Posted by: Antifa | Jul 18 2007 15:34 utc | 2

Yes

Posted by: Noirette | Jul 18 2007 16:51 utc | 3

Pat Lang

The logic of the claims now being made by the administration leads to an outcome in which the September “report” asks for more time and more troops. It will be argued that the tide has turned, a recipe for success has been found and the implication will be clear that whomever wishes to give up and go home will have stabbed the armed forces in the back and exposed the American people to the future ravages of AQinM. Part of the logic of this argument will be the present inclination in the WH and NSC to “lock” the next president into the war in Iraq thus continuing Bush Administration strategy. General Pace revealed to reporters on his recent trip to Iraq that a troop increase is among the options being considered.

Posted by: b | Jul 18 2007 17:02 utc | 4

I think the US has no real control over the outcome in Iraq. pl
Posted by: W. Patrick Lang | 17 July 2007 at 10:05 PM

Posted by: anna missed | Jul 18 2007 17:33 utc | 5

“the Senate should commit itself to a strategy that will not leave a failed state in Iraq; and the Senate should not pass legislation that will undermine our military’s ability to prevent a failed state in Iraq.”
Total Bullshit – what they should really do is should pass legislation that would prevent our military from doing things that have and continue to create a failed state in Iraq. Case in point is arming tribal/insurgent groups that have zero interest in participating in the current government. And have a very strong interest in seeing that government overthrown, or in other words fail – as in FAILED STATE.
Or attacking factions of the Sadr movement, which are members of the current functioning government, or in other words stop attacking factions of the current government thereby pushing it into a FAILED STATE.
Or stopping all legislation aimed at privatization of the oil industry thereby depriving the elected government of its most significant source of revenue and state legitimacy. And stop perpetuating the lie about the oil laws being about the distribution of income, its not, because thats already spelled out in Iraq’s constitution.

Posted by: anna missed | Jul 18 2007 18:03 utc | 6

Link

Posted by: bkieft | Jul 18 2007 18:33 utc | 7

Agreed anna missed, but that is NOT what the Senate wants.
Recommended: Peter Galbraith for the New York Review of Books:

Tribesmen who had been attacking US troops in support of the insurgency are now taking US weapons to fight al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremists. Unfortunately, the Sunni fundamentalists are not the only enemy of these new US-sponsored militias. The Sunni tribes also regard Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government as an enemy, and the US appears now to be in the business of arming both the Sunni and Shi’ite factions in what has long since become a civil war.
…
Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government is in no danger of losing the civil war to al-Qaeda, or a more inclusive Sunni front. Iraq’s Shi’ites are three times as numerous as Iraq’s Sunni Arabs; they dominate Iraq’s military and police and have a powerful ally in neighboring Iran. The Arab states that might support the Sunnis are small, are far away (vast deserts separate the inhabited parts of Jordan and Saudi Arabia from the main Iraqi population centers), and can only provide money, something the insurgency has in great amounts already.
Iraq after a US defeat will look very much like Iraq today – a land divided along ethnic lines into Arab and Kurdish states with a civil war being fought within its Arab part. Defeat is defined by America’s failure to accomplish its objective of a self-sustaining, democratic and unified Iraq. And that failure has already taken place, along with the increase of Iranian power in the region.

I agree with most of Galbraith’s analysis but not his conclusion. He wants to keep U.S. troops in the Kurdish north of Iraq. Any idea how to supply them while at the same time using them, as he recommends, against possible Turkish, Iranian or Arab incursion into that area?
Did he ever look at a map? Maybe he did but then he is also a permanent shill for an independent Kurdistan. How much does Talibani pay him?

Posted by: b | Jul 18 2007 18:44 utc | 8

“The problem with planning against the Americans is that while you can read their manuals to see what they’re going to do, the Americans don’t read their manuals.”
— unknown Russian general

Posted by: Antifa | Jul 18 2007 19:37 utc | 9

One bright spot last night was Cantwell’s speech, mostly about a Biden amendment she supports that renounces permanent bases and a military presence of indefinite length in Iraq as well as any attempt to control the country’s oil. She said (I think – it was very late) that the oil law now being discussed gives control of 17 out of 80 oilfields to Iraqis and opens the rest, plus future discoveries, to foreign control. She also said she hadn’t believed at first that the war was all about oil, but as events unfold, she’s become less sure. Since the administration doesn’t even like to use the word “oil” and calls this the “hydrocarbon law” most of the time, I was glad to find out a little about it from someone in DC.

Posted by: Zotz | Jul 18 2007 21:05 utc | 10

Take Patrick Lang with a grain of salt . . .
Pat Lang has a sterling Company background, and runs a private company to this day selling his insider status and expertise to the “international business community,” and to CNN and to other TV forums.
However; he lies.
Which is to say, he pushes a particular position, against all logic, against all odds, against all comers.
On his blog, and in private emails defending it, he swears that oil had nothing to do with our invasion or occupation of Iraq.
He says, “I just don’t get it” and offers no explanation. He derides people who raise the point as “oilies” and soon enough bans them from his private blog.
On CNN, Newsweek, and elsewhere, he relentlessly pushes the “clash of civilizations” meme as the reason we are fighting in Iraq, and may take on Iran.
On his blog, he went so far as to reply to somebody’s question about whether we would have invaded Iraq if their chief export was peanuts. He said we would have.
Pat is an ideologue in this regard, pushing a particular position on Iraq — probably in order to keep in the good graces of Beltway insiders, since he hopes to do consulting work for the government in future. He loves to tell the story of his failed interview with Doug Feith to his lecture circuit audiences, to show he is not one of the neocons.
Well, we all have to make money.
But, take what he says with a grain of salt. If he will lie about the role of oil in our colonial war in Iraq, one has to wonder what else he is willing to submit to creative reinterpretation.

Posted by: Antifa | Jul 18 2007 22:11 utc | 11

The Clash of Civilizations: those civilizations with lots of cars and not enough oil vs. those with lots of oil and not enough cars.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Jul 18 2007 22:43 utc | 12

Every four years we select an individual to be President. He is empowered with sovereign powers and is not reponsible to anyone. It is conceivable that Congress could refrain the President, by cutting funds for his projects including funds for the armed forces. Can you imagine that happening? cutting funds for Americans that are fighting and risking their lives? Many centuries ago the Roman emperors would run out of money and their payments to the legions would be on arrears and then the legions would rebel and get rid of the emperor. Is that situation conceivable here? Let’s remember that the USA is not a democracy it is a Republic where a sovereign has liberty to act his will for four years. The idea that Congress can restrain him is silly. Ruling classes rarely yield to what seems reasonable, the Russian autocracy never yielded until catastrophe struck, a catastrophe brought about by the incompetence of the Autocrat and of the system in general.

Posted by: jlcg | Jul 18 2007 23:07 utc | 13

Pat Lang is a Lifer. His ideology is the US Army. Still, he is about realistic as they come. He reluctantly even grasps what happens in Iraq will be up to the Iraqis.
The Senate and corporate media still believe the fantasy that the USA can affect the future of Iraq. All US troops can do is kill, maim and destroy. The USA doesn’t have the manpower, wealth or moral justification to control the region. Politicians are playing the pin the blame game. Still undecided is who will be blamed for the debacle. Democrats may have success pinning the blame on Bush and Cheney, if they can bring themselves to repeat it, again and again to get through the fog of corporate propaganda.
It is sad and tragic. If the USA goal was other than killing Muslims for Israel, a more moderate way could be found to pump oil and jail war mongers of any religion who threaten peace.

Posted by: Jim S | Jul 19 2007 6:38 utc | 14

well stated jim s

Posted by: annie | Jul 19 2007 7:59 utc | 15

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