Thank You Molly!

Stand Up And Be Counted!

Humorist (and Bush critic) Molly Ivins will be sorely missed. Her astute and acerbic observations on the foibles and felonies of George W. Bush in particular, and American political life in general helped pull back the curtain and expose the charlatan,for a broad class of Americans, to understand how deeply flawed our leaders can be.

In her writing, she managed with humor and common sense, to cut to the heart of politics. She knew right from wrong and was unafraid to expose both. Her own words best describe her world view, "Tell them that we had fun!"

Congress' War Powers

The Congress Has The Power To End The War, They Merely Lack The Will To Do So

What happened to the Democrats? Very few dispute the election’s meaning: we want them to end the war. We do not want posturing, politicizing, and predicting. We do not want bipartisanship. If we wanted bipartisanship, we would have voted for moderate republicans, such as Lincoln Chafee. We voted for change. The politicians are worried about getting re-elected; otherwise, the war would be over.

The Republicans worry about insulting the President. George Bush showed remarkable ability to raise money. The Texas oilman has been better connected than any modern politician in modern history. The forces of big Pharma, oil, and finance together with the staggeringly wealthy have been richly rewarded for their investments in this administration. The Bush team managed to dismantle the regulators that had checked the rapaciousness of these groups since the New Deal. Bush spent more money than any candidate ever. His receipts for the 2004 election amounted to $367,228,801. (had he relied on government funding the figure would have been a still staggering $74.6 million in government funding for the general election). Bush demonstrated that he can bring the goods. With no heir-apparent, the Republican who can get Bush on board will have a real advantage; they have no edge in making him angry with protest votes now.

The Democrats worry about not showing “support for out troops”. No one wants to be shown as “soft on terror.” Even with a majority opinion that Bush has recklessly proceeded in Iraq, the Dems fear positioning themselves as losing the war.

Do the trappings of Washington power really have mind control forces? It would seem so. It seems to be one thing to complain about Washington in Minneapolis, and another to complain in DC.

The Congress has the power to end the war in two ways. Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution vest war making powers in the Congress, a part of the often voiced “checks and balances’ genius of the document:

The Congress shall have the power... To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water; To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; To provide and maintain a navy; To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces; To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress...

This power includes not only the intent to begin war, but also the extent of the war. In giving Congress the power to declare war, the Constitution gives it authority to make decisions about a war’s scope and duration. The Founders, including James Madison, who is often called “the father of the Constitution,” fully expected Congress to use these powers to rein in the commander in chief. “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it,” Madison cautioned. “It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.” The Congress may also end the war by not funding the war-the so-called “power of the purse.”

In other words, the Democrats have the power to end the war, they merely lack the will to do so. With the election on the horizon, too many Senators running for office are in key positions and will not do the right thing.

May God have mercy on us all.

What Now In Iraq?

It Was Always About The Oil (And Natural Gas)

The Military

The Iraqis who could have accomplished unification, ordinary educated middle class citizens have abandoned the country. The Iraqis remaining are the poor, too stupefied by psychological response to violence to prevent further victimization, and the young idealists, alienated under the old regime and now ready to die for the last group, the religious zealots who envision a fundamentalist Islamic state free of any non-conformers conditioned by years of war to believe that horrifying levels of violence against anyone fully justified by the desire for a perfect state.

We cannot just leave the region, but we must obviously disengage. At this point we only inflame the radicalism of both Shia and Sunni. We must stop arming the populace under the name of “training Iraqi forces” this has degenerated into merely training combating sides. Also, we have national interests at stake, the very reason Bush attacked in the first place. (No not WMDs which was always a red herring) but vast oil and natural gas reserves that would otherwise have gone to the French or Russians. Iraq contains 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the third largest in the world. According to the Oil and Gas Journal, Iraq contains 110 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven natural gas reserves, along with roughly 150 Tcf in probable reserves. After all during the prewar build up, Vice President Cheney intensley focused on Iraq's energy reserves. Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” "




Iraq is important to world energy markets because it holds more than 112 billion barrels of oil - the world's second largest reserves. Iraq also contains 110 trillion cubic feet of gas."[ US Government's Country Analysis Brief on Iraq, December 1999. ]



"No matter what decision the president makes [on Iraq], the United States will always be better off with a policy that provides more energy independence"(Ari Fleischer, White House spokesman)[ Miami Herald (from Reuters), "White House: No Link Between Iraq Policy, Oil Price", 6 September 2002 ]



The most blunt statement comes from former CIA Director Jim Woolsey, a leading advocate of U.S. military action against Iraq: "France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies work closely with them." Woolsey also said, "If they throw their lot with Saddam, it will be difficult to the point of impossible to persuade the new Iraqi government to work with them."



Second, we need to avoid a regional war. As the Sunnis, Shia, or Kurds appear to gain the other hand, no doubt Iraq, Saudis, and the Turks will feel compelled to intervene. In addition to the horrors of such a war. A regional broadening of the war would destroy the oil-dependent global economy.

Third, if in fact a genocide begins, as many Sunni predict, would America standby as we did in Rwanda and are doing in Darfur. In other words, if had no military in Iraq and witnessed genocide, wouldn’t we want to try to intervene as a matter of humanitarianism.

Fourth, our war created a refugee crisis of unimaginable proportions. The military can be very good at the logistics of moving food, medicine, supplies, and portable housing where it needs to go, in cooperation with neighboring states.

The State Department

The time long passed for turning this war over to the state department. Regional diplomacy remains the best way to end the secular, sectarian, psychotic violence we loosed in Iraq. The only goal now is an end to fighting, a mere cease fire. Get the people to lay down their arms and then work out what kind of government they want. We must ignore President Bush’s uninformed, paternalistic desires to impose a western style democratic republic. Obviously that will not happen. But we need not abandon our desire to help Iraqis shape their own government. We must have a role in insisting on civil rights, the protection of ethnic minorities, and equal status for women, as well as all the other benefits modern government, in it’s varieties of compositions can provide.

These goals lie fully within the State Departments mandate and not in the Pentagon. Our military will always win on the field, but they will always loose if they must fight the entire population.

What We Must Do

Prevent the disunion and partition of Iraq. Look at the disaster that followed the partition of India. The Viceroy Lord Mountbatten viewed the ethnic strife between Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh populations which exploded after the plan to keep India unified but ruled by ethnic provinces. He persuaded the British Parliament to abandon this plan after the rioting became full-blown civil war. The India Independence Act caused the migration of over 15 million Indians as the new countries exchanged populations. Millions died during riots, civil war, and migration.

After division, the region saw continued wars, in 1965, the Indio-Pakistan War, in 1971 again Indio-Pakistan but also the division and birth of Bangladesh. The 1971 war includes the genocide of Bengalis, by 1972 Newsweek reported over 10 million Bengal refugees. The Kargali War of 1992 witnessed conflict between nuclear armed neighbors. Tensions between the new countries continue today, with a nuclear armed Indian and Pakistan still fighting over Kashmir. India continues to be tormented by Kashmiri separatist terrorists, including attack on the India Parliament building by separatist gunmen.

The division of India should inform military planners in Iraq. The massive population displacement, the millions dead from secular fighting, and the continued regional tensions do not bode well for similar response in Iraq.

Millions dead, many more millions displaced, and generations of violent tension. Is that what America hopes to duplicate in the Middle East? While division does seem to be where the inertia at work in Iraq seems headed, the British might be of even more help in planning than they have proved so far. After all, they have India, Afghanistan, and Israel experience before us. They tried and filed and now we have tried and failed. The lessons of Colonialism seem to be revisited on the world wherever our "national interests" demand. Division of Iraq may prove equally explosive, after all, the British planned the India partition.

The military should disperse from the cities of Iraq. We should stop training and arming the Iraqis, as they stand up: they seem to be fighting one another as well as us. It is time to disarm as many of them as we can. Protect the frontier entry points and patrol to prevent infiltration from neighboring states. We should defend the oil infrastructure that both Iraq and the world depend. We should move north to work with the Kurds and help avoid invasion by their historical enemy the Turks. We need to stay in theater in case of genocide, but out of the way to try to reduce the simmering tension felt from our mere presence on Iraqi streets. Let the process of negotiation by the statesmen try to proceed.