Left News and Views

If anyone expects an honest assessment in next month’s report on the so-called surge in Iraq, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you cheap. Despite what you Fox Noise brain-washed Bushies who have been commenting on my blog may believe, there is clear evidence that the administration is still playing fast and loose with the facts.

According to a story in today’s Washington Post, a draft Government Accountability Office report obtained by the Post indicates that Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress.

The document also questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.

The reason this document was leaked to the Post is that some within the Administration are upset over the way facts are being changed to fit President Bush’s addled mindset before the final report is released.

According to the Post, “The person who provided the draft report to The Post said it was being conveyed from a government official who feared that its pessimistic conclusions would be watered down in the final version — as some officials have said happened with security judgments in this month’s National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.”

The Post reported Congress requested the GAO report, along with an assessment of the Iraqi security forces by an independent commission headed by retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, to provide a basis for comparison with the administration’s scorecard. The Jones report is also scheduled for delivery next week.

“Prospects for additional progress in enacting legislative benchmarks have been complicated by the withdrawal of 15 of 37 members of the Iraqi cabinet,” the draft report says. An internal administration assessment this month, the GAO says, concluded that “this boycott ends any claim by the Shi’ite-dominated coalition to be a government of national unity.” [Emphasis mine]

The report also says that training and deploying Iraqi forces is actually losing ground, a claim the administration says is untrue.

Yet, Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik, who in June became the commander of the U.S. troops training and advising Iraqi army and police units, struck a more somber note yesterday in a news conference in Baghdad. “The problems that the military commanders and the minister of defense have here in generating the Iraqi army are very significant, and they shouldn’t be taken lightly,” he said.

Whatever happened to listening to the generals on the ground? Oh, that’s right, if they disagree, they’re fired. I guess Dubik should begin packing his bags.

I don’t know about you, but when Senator Larry E. Craig of Idaho declared during a news conference yesterday that he wasn’t gay, I believed him. After all, he shouted it to the heaven three times, once pulling his wife closer to him as he said it.

I mean, when an undercover officer saw him fidgeting outside a Minneapolis airport restroom on June 11, I am sure Larry was just thinking of the family values that are so near and dear to him and how they are being assaulted by these gay people who think they have the right to get married and live like other normal people – you know, normal people like good old Larry.

Of course it is a little strange that he followed the officer into the restroom and started peeping into the stall in which the officer was sitting through the crack between the door and the jam. However, I am sure Larry was just checking to make sure the officer wasn’t doing anything naughty in there.

We all should know we can look to Larry to make sure naughty people are properly exposed. During President Clinton’s impeachment in 1999, Larry declared that “the American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy, a naughty boy. I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.”

Now I ask you, does that sound like a guy who would go looking for illicit sex in an airport bathroom? We know only nasty, bad, naughty boys do that kind of thing and Larry knows a nasty, bad, naughty boy when he sees one. That’s probably why he was peeping in on the undercover cop. He just wanted the opportunity to put on his family values super hero cape and expose another nasty, bad, naughty boy.

Come on. Larry said he is not gay – three times. He is a Republican senator from a red meat state, so we have to believe him, don’t we? These are the guys who are keeping us safe from terrorism and all. They don’t have time to be getting a blow job in an airport rest room.

He may have crossed the line – if you will pardon my pun – when he took up residence in a stall adjacent to the undercover officer, slid his foot over into the officer’s stall and started playing footsie with him. But Larry said he just has an unusually wide stance when he squats on the john. That is plausible because, after all, he said he is not gay – three times.

We now know it is all that damn newspaper’s fault – the Idaho Statesman. It has been investigating rumors about Larry dating to his college days and his 1982 preemptive denial that he had sex with underage congressional pages – preemptive in that no one had accused him of anything.

Just because the Statesman was told by a man with close ties to Republican officials that he had oral sex with Larry at Washington’s Union Station around 2004 doesn’t mean Larry is gay. They should know now because he said so – three times.

So let’s leave Larry alone. We need him to stay in office to protect our family values, keep us safe from terrorists and be George’s buddy when the president needs one so desperately.

If you think Haliburton has a lock on bilking billions of U.S. tax dollars from the Iraqi war, think again. According to a New York Times article published Tuesday, several federal agencies are currently investigating what officials have characterized as the largest ring of fraud and kickbacks uncovered in the conflict.

According to the Times, investigations span the gamut from low-level officials submitting false claims for amounts less than $2,500 to more serious cases involving conspiracy, bribery, product substitution and bid-rigging or double-billing involving large dollar amounts. The investigations involve contractors, government employees, local nationals and American military personnel.

Just last week, the Times reported, an Army major, his wife and his sister were indicted on charges that they accepted up to $9.6 million in bribes for Defense Department contracts in Iraq and Kuwait.

The investigations even involve a senior American officer who worked closely with Gen. David H. Petraeus in setting up the logistics operation to supply the Iraqi forces when Petraeus was in charge of training and equipping those forces in 2004 and 2005, although there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Patraeus himself.

According to the Times, questions about whether the American military could account for the weaponry and other equipment purchased to outfit the Iraqi security forces were raised as early as May of last year, when Senator John W. Warner, then the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a request to an independent federal oversight agency to investigate the matter.

But federal officials say the inquiry has moved far beyond the initial investigation of hundreds of thousands of improperly tracked assault rifles and semiautomatic pistols that grew out of Senator Warner’s query.

In July of this year, the Government Accountability Office found even larger discrepancies, reporting that the American military “cannot fully account for about 110,000 AK-47 rifles, 90,000 pistols, 80 items of body armor, and 115,000 helmets reported as issued to Iraqi security forces as of Sept. 22, 2005.”

Is there any wonder why there is still a hard core of supporters for this war? Just think of the families who will suffer economically if it comes to an end.

I was about to write my blog this morning on a washingtonpost.com report detailing “How Rove Directed Federal Assets for GOP Gains.” Before I got started, I got the news flash that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is resigning. Obviously, Rove will have to wait.

So ends the reign of the most incompetent attorney general in history – a view that is not mine alone but held by many prominent Republicans and conservatives as well. Gonzales has done serious damage to the U.S. system of justice and, through his condoning torture, seriously damaged America’s reputation throughout the world.

It ought to be interesting – to say the least – what will happen now that President Bush doesn’t have his shield to protect all the abuses of this administration from congressional inquiry. To contemplate the future, it’s worth repeating what I wrote in a blog on August 8.

In a commentary in Time magazine, Massimo Calabresi detailed some of the reasons Bush was bucking all the calls for Gonzales’s resignation.

First, Calabresi writes, “Gonzales is all that stands between the White House and special prosecutors.”

“Without Gonzales at the helm, the Justice Department would be more likely to approve requests for investigations into White House activities on everything from misuse of prewar Iraq intelligence to allegations of political interference in tobacco litigation. And the DOJ could be less likely to block contempt charges against former White House aides who have refused to testify before Congress.”

Secondly, Calabresi asserts “A post-Gonzales DOJ would be in the hands of a nonpartisan, tough prosecutor, not a political hand.”

“Newly appointed Deputy Attorney General Craig Morford is in line to take over until a new Attorney General could be confirmed. Morford, a 20-year veteran … is in the mold of James Comey, the former Deputy Attorney General who stood up to the White House over its domestic-eavesdropping program. … Over the past six months, more than half a dozen top political appointees have left the department amid scandal. The unprecedented coziness that once existed between the Justice Department and the White House now remains solely in the person of Gonzales.”

The third reason, Calabresi says, is “if Gonzales goes, the White House fears that other losses will follow.”

“Republicans are loath to hand Democrats some high-profile casualties to use in the 2008 campaign. Stonewalling, they believe, is their best way to avoid another election focused on corruption issues.”

And finally, “Nobody at the White House wants the legal bills and headaches that come with being a target of investigations.”

“In backing Gonzales, Bush is influenced by advisers whose future depends on the survival of their political bodyguard. Gonzales remains the last line of defense protecting Bush, Rove and other top White House officials from the personal consequences of litigation.”

As I said at the time, Gonzales is the administration’s fire wall, which will, in the end, protect Bush, Cheney, Rove and Gonzales himself from the legal consequences of their misdeeds. Now, only time will tell.

Listen to Vice President Dick Cheney in 1994 before he became chairman of Haliburton and realized how much money could be made from dragging the U.S. into a “quagmire.”

On hearing that Karl Rove was resigning, John Edwards said it best: “Goodbye and good riddance.”

Of course those of us who knew Rove was a scourge in the American political arena could be expected to say goodbye and good riddance. What is surprising to some – although as an optimist I expected it – is that prominent Republicans have had nothing to say about his resignation. They are respecting the rule that if you can’t say something good about someone, don’t say anything at all.

Like Joe McCarthy – in fact I submit exactly like Joe McCarthy – Rove rose to power and ruled political campaigns through the use of scare tactics. McCarthy had his threat of Communism – and tainted his foes as being weak in the “battle” against Communism and not recognizing what a threat it was to the “American way.”

McCarthy was noted for making unsubstantiated claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the federal government. Ultimately, his tactics led to his being discredited and censured by the United States Senate.

Rove used the so-called war on terrorism like a club to knock down critics, leading to an equally long period of time in which politicians withheld their criticism of the abuses of the Bush administration for fear of being labeled weak on defense.

Rove’s tactics were no less spurious than those of McCarthy. The investigations of the last six months are coming dangerously close to exposing Rove for what he is – a rogue politician, which is why I believe he decided to resign now.

And, the silence is as good as the censure McCarthy received.

My reason for optimism? I believe that ultimately we Americans prove Lincoln’s maxim correct: You can fool all of the people sometime, some of the people all the time [read Republican base], but you can’t fool all the people all the time.

So, Karl, I will join the chorus: Goodbye and good riddance.

Chris and I just returned from our Alaskan cruise. While it was awesome in the breadth and beauty of the sights we saw during our seven days on the inside passage, sadly, it was also an education on how this administration’s blind eye on climate change is leading to a quick loss of one of nature’s true wonderlands.

Tour buses bring more than 350,000 people a year to take in the splendor of Mendenhall Glacier just outside of Juneau, an imposing ice wall more than 100 feet high and a mile wide. Our Tlingit Indian guide explained that the natives of this region rely on tourism to make a living. The major attraction, the Mendenhall Glacier, is currently retreating at an alarming rate of 25 to 30 feet per year – a rate one study suggests could accelerate even more quickly.

This study showed the retreat rate averaged 8.4 meters per year from 1962 to 1984 and 20.9 meters per year from 1984 to 1996. During the retreat of the late 20th century, the glacier has exposed a cross-valley ridge of dark-colored metamorphic rock at its terminus. Due to the rock’s high heat absorption, the normal ablation processes (melting, evaporation, and calving) are accelerated.

Recognizing what appears to be inevitable, officials are looking into the possibility of opening one of the old gold mines as a new attraction to offset the eventual loss of the glacier.

The effect of climate change on tourism, however, isn’t their biggest concern. Juneau is barely above sea level. If the arctic ice melt continues at its current rate, Juneau could well be under water in the not too distant future – possibly as early as 2030. Officials are already looking at strategies for relocating this thriving capital of Alaska to higher ground should this become necessary.

Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer reported on a study that showed arctic ice has shrunk to record lows.

“Today is a historic day,” Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center remarked in the Inquirer story. “This is the least sea ice we’ve ever seen in the satellite record and we have another month left to go in the melt season this year.”

The puzzling thing, Serreze said, is that the melting is actually occurring faster than computer climate models have predicted.

Several years ago he would have predicted a complete melt of Arctic sea ice in summer would occur by the year 2070 to 2100, Serreze said. But at the rates now occurring, a complete melt could happen by 2030 [emphasis mine], he said.

Pretty soon the sand President Bush and company have stuck their heads in will wash away in the rising waters brought on by climate change.

Only in the Bush administration.

Our wimpy Democrats in Congress on Saturday caved in to President Bush’s fear tactics and basically signed away one of our most basic rights – protection from wire taps or interception of e-mails unless a judge determines there is probable cause. The legislation, signed into law by Bush on Sunday, permits intercepting Americans’ calls and e-mails without a warrant if the communications involve overseas transmission.

But don’t worry, the law requires oversight to insure procedures are followed to protect the rights of American citizens. Oops, this is Bush and company. Sorry, I guess you do have to worry.

According to a story in the Washington Post, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales have been given the responsibility for creating the broad procedures determining whose telephone calls and e-mails are collected and they have also been assigned the role of assessing compliance with those procedures.

To use a trite analogy, once again Bush has assigned the foxes to guard the hen house. And they don’t have a very good record as protectors – unless, of course, you don’t mind the disappearance of the hens.

In March, the chief watchdog for the Department of Justice, inspector general Glenn A. Fine, told the House Judiciary Committee that the FBI engaged in widespread and serious misuse of its authority to issue national security letters, which resulted in illegally collecting data from Americans and foreigners.

The FBI, since 2001, has been using a type of administrative subpoena known as a national security letter to acquire reams of financial and communication records from thousands of Americans to aid investigations.

In the 130-page report, Fine called the problems he uncovered inexcusable.

In a Post report, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said, “This was a serious breach of trust. The department had converted this tool into a handy shortcut to illegally gather vast amounts of private information while at the same time significantly underreporting its activities to Congress.”

Democrats said that Fine’s findings were an example of how the Justice Department has used broad counterterrorism authorities Congress granted in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to trample on privacy rights.

And then they gave away the keys to the hen house again.

If the American media had done a better job investigating and reporting on the character of the presidential candidates in the 2000 campaigns, George W. Bush may never have received the Republican nomination let alone have the opportunity to steal the election.

Let’s remember, here is a man who drank and partied while his contemporaries were dying in Viet Nam, drove at least two companies into the ground, and demonstrated the kind of incompetence that would mar his administration from the very beginning.

Is it any wonder, then, that he has driven this country to the brink of bankruptcy?

Last week’s bridge collapse in Minneapolis put the spotlight on yet another victim of Bush’s monumental incompetence as the chief executive officer of this country – the crumbling infrastructure.

Citing the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, the volcano-like eruption of a steam pipe in Manhattan and the breach of the levees in New Orleans, the New York Times yesterday wrote in an editorial: “These are some of the most dramatic signs of the nation’s failure to maintain and enhance its aging physical structures at a time when demands on roads, transit systems, sewage treatment plants and other vital facilities are rising. In the event of a catastrophic failure, many lives can be lost. But even the slower deterioration undermines our quality of life and retards economic growth. Traffic jams waste gasoline, pollute the air and exhaust drivers’ patience. Disabled trains and subways strand commuters. Gridlocked airports disrupt travel plans. And power failures plunge millions into darkness.”

As the national Transportation Trust Fund is predicted to start running a deficit in less than a year, the drain on this nation’s resources by Bush’s war in Iraq makes the prospect of finding the money to address our problems with infrastructure dismal at best.

Writing for CommonDreams.org, Robert Freeman, a noted writer on economics, history and education, warned more than two years ago, “This run-up in debt [by the Bush administration] represents the most rapid, predatory looting of public wealth in the history of the world. The interest costs alone will consume the government and, soon, the entire economy.”

And yet, The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$1.43 billion per day since September 29, 2006, with the tab for each and every person in the U.S. hitting $29,575.98.

We are not only facing dangers from infrastructure failures because of Bush policies, but how we will respond to victims of future disasters is also in question because of the decimation of the National Guard.

“The real scandal about Bush and the National Guard is not what he did—or avoided doing—during Vietnam; it is the damage Bush is doing to the National Guard today through his utter mismanagement of the war in Iraq, thereby risking the security of Americans at home,” writers for AlterNet have noted.

Of course, part of the problems facing the National Guard are the result that Bush’s policies in Iraq have nearly broken the Army.

In the Pentagon, there is what is known as the Broken Army clock. It is marking the time toward the moment when an exhausted force can no longer meet all the demands Bush and company have put on it. That clock is counting down to around March of next year … and, as many officials have warned, it may take years to rebuild American’s military in the wake of the Iraqi disaster.

My wife and I are going on an Alaskan cruise in a few days – we want to see the glaciers before they melt. Now that every reputable scientist in the world has acknowledged that climate change is resulting from the actions of human beings, we can no longer ignore the deleterious effects of Bush’s policies of easing restrictions on polluters and ignoring the need to enforce conservation. Thanks to Al Gore and his “Inconvenient Truth,” there may be time to reverse the damages – but it is dwindling to precious little.

Perhaps the greatest failures of Bush – and the most dangerous – are in foreign affairs. Even our own government security services have underscored the fact that we are more at risk from terrorists today than we were prior to Bush’s decision to invade Iraq.

Writing for TPM Café, G. John Ikenberry, the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, sums up Bush’s record in world affairs perfectly: “Bush foreign policy has failed not just because of incompetence or bad luck in Iraq. The entire intellectual edifice of Bush foreign policy – such as it is – is deeply flawed. And let’s be clear. The Bush administration’s grand strategy is not simply a variation on earlier postwar liberal internationalist grand strategies – as some conservatives and liberals suggest. It was a radical departure from America’s postwar liberal hegemonic orientation – and the world has bitten back. [emphasis mine]”

If there has ever been a more despicable character than Vice President Dick Cheney holding a high office in this country, I am not aware of him. By Cheney standards, Joe McCarthy was merely a buffoon.

To say the man is dangerous is an understatement. He has lied, ruined careers and even condoned torture to get his way. It is no wonder, then, that finally the movement to impeach Cheney seems to be gathering steam. If you Google “impeach Cheney,” you will find dozens of web sites devoted to making his impeachment a reality.

Today, I thought it would be interesting to note John Dean’s thoughts on Cheney. As Richard Nixon’s counsel, Dean got caught up in the Watergate scandal – although he tried to warn Nixon early on that there was a “cancer growing on this presidency.” He ultimately played a key role in bringing down the criminals in Nixon’s White House. Although I have likened the Nixon reign of terror to that of Bush, Dean has written a book explaining why the Bush transgressions have been worse than Watergate.

His blog on FindLaw is rather long, but well worth reading for those who still believe that the Constitution applies to the thugs in Bush’s White House as well as the rest of us. On June 29, Dean wrote:

Vice President Dick Cheney has regularly claimed that he is above the law, but until recently he has not offered any explanation of why.

In fact, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a law that Cheney believes does apply to him, whether that law be major or minor. For example, he has claimed that most of the laws passed in the aftermath of Watergate were unconstitutional, and thus implicitly inapplicable. His office oversees signing statements claiming countless new laws will not be honored except insofar as the President’s extremely narrow interpretation allows. He does not believe the War Powers Act should be honored by the President. Nor, in his view, should the President be bothered with laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In fact, it appears Cheney has actively encouraged defiance of such laws by the Bush Administration.

For Cheney, the Geneva Conventions - considered among the nation’s most important treaties — are but quaint relics that can be ignored. Thus, he publicly embraced their violation when, on an Idaho talk radio program, he said he was not troubled in the slightest by our forces using “waterboarding” — the simulated drowning of detainees to force them to talk. There are serious questions as to whether Cheney himself has also conspired to violate the War Crimes Act, which can be a capital crime.

A man who can so easily disregard the War Powers Act, FISA, the Geneva Conventions, and the War Crimes Act is merely flicking fleas when it comes to complying with laws like the Presidential Records Act, which requires him to keep records. Yet as CNN and other news organizations have reported, Cheney ordered the destruction of the visitor logs to his residence. These, of course, are presidential records the law requires him to preserve and protect. (Indeed, neighbors of the Vice President were surprised when, in the past, a truck for a document shredding service would regularly visit the Vice President’s residence at the Naval Observatory.)

Most recently, the Vice President has refused to comply with Executive Order 12958, as amended by his boss, George W. Bush. These orders were issued to implement the law adopted by Congress in 1995 to clarify the classification and protection of national security information.

Most interesting in Cheney’s defiance is his absolutely absurd explanation of why the law is not applicable to him or his staff.

Henry Waxman, who may be the nation’s most diligent and vigilant member of Congress, recently reported that Vice President Cheney claims he is exempt from the presidential orders requiring government-wide procedures to safeguard classified national security information because he is not an “entity within the executive branch.” According to information provided to Chairman Waxman’s Oversight committee, Cheney further claimed he was not an “agency” as set forth in the Executive Orders.

When Cheney was widely ridiculed by humorists, cartoonists, pundits, commentators and several members of Congress for his claim of not being an “entity within the executive branch,” the Vice President’s chief of staff and counsel David Addington responded by asserting that the Vice President is not subject to the order because he is not an “agency” as defined by the order. (Addington thus effectively dropped the claim that the Vice President is not an “entity.”)

However, Addington does not cite any authority or language for his new claim that the Vice President is not an “agency.” In fact, there is none. To the contrary, the order controlling national security classification states exactly the opposite of what Addington claims.

Cheney’s claim his office is neither an entity nor agency defies logic, but it is not surprising since he continues also to claim, with absolutely no evidence to support his claim, that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 and that terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi set up an al Qaeda operation in Iraq.

Needless to say, Cheney’s claim — or Addington’s claim, since Cheney appears to be backing away from his chief of staff and counsel on this issue — raises the question of what the vice president is. Legally, the vice president has only the most limited of powers and authority, unless the president empowers him.

The Vice President’s very limited but vital roles are set forth in the Constitution. He is the next in succession to become President, should there be a vacancy or should the president suffer from mental or physical inability to serve. And he is the president of the Senate, which means he can preside over the Senate but under the Senate Rules, he cannot take part in debate, and under the Constitution, he can only vote to break a tie.

In the event of a vacancy in the office of the president, under Article II and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the Vice President becomes the Acting President. Also under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the Vice President, when acting with a majority of the Cabinet, can also declare the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” If he so declares, then after so informing Congress, the Vice President becomes Acting President until the President notifies Congress that he is fine; if there is a dispute, the Congress resolves it.

The only other Constitutional duty of the Vice President is that set forth in Article I, Section 3, clause 4, which makes the Vice President the “President of the Senate, but [he/she] shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.” Not since the nation’s second Vice President, Thomas Jefferson, decided it was a waste of time to preside over the Senate has any Vice President done so — other than to break ties or for ceremonial events, such as the State of the Union or the tallying of electoral college votes.

Since 1947, the Vice President has been given a number of statutory duties, when President Truman recommended, and the Congress agreed, that the Vice President should be a member of the National Security Council. This, however, is the most significant of his statutory assignments.

Thus, beyond the limited constitutional responsibilities, and the few statutory tasks, the Vice President’s role comes down to whatever the President assigns him. Vice Presidents can have no role greater than the assignments given by the president — or in the case of Dick Cheney, whatever he has been able to convince the President he can appropriately handle for him.

Washington insiders have long understood that Cheney’s power stems from his knowledge of the way the White House and the Office of the President operate. This is knowledge he acquired as President Ford’s Chief of Staff. With Bush’s consent, much of the paper flow of the White House which heads up the chain of command toward the President goes through Cheney’s office. In addition, Cheney’s staff reaches down into the executive bureaucracy to shape the debate before it reaches the White House.

Those with whom I have spoken have serious doubt that Bush and the White House staff really knows what Cheney is doing, why he is doing it, or how he is doing it. From the outset of this administration, Cheney has been instrumental in placing people loyal to him throughout the Executive Branch. This is not to say that Bush is not “the decider,” for he is, but by shaping the debate and controlling the paper flow, Cheney decides what the decider will decide.

It has long been apparent that Cheney’s genius is that he lets George W. Bush get out of bed every morning actually believing he is the President. In fact, his presidency is run by the President of the Senate, for Cheney is its true center of gravity. That fact has become more apparent with every passing year of this presidency, and anyone who thinks otherwise has truly “misunderestimated” our nominal president and his vice president.

Could there be anything left in the Iraqi war that this administration could misjudge? From the May 1, 2003 proclamation of “Mission Accomplished,” to the various reports detailing how President Bush and company failed to plan for managing a post-war Iraq to Vice President Cheney’s endless pronouncements that the insurgency is in its last throes, it is hard to believe they could misjudge anything else.

But, of course, there is.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday that when the administration decided to send some 30,000 more American troops to Iraq in its infamous new “surge” strategy, “we probably all underestimated the depth of the mistrust, and how difficult it would be for these guys to come together on legislation, which, let’s face it, is not some kind of secondary issue.”

This is quite an admission from Gates – particularly in light of the fact that this problem has been at the heart of the argument against the surge policy by numerous congressional representatives from both parties in Washington.

What made it impossible for these administration bunglers to ignore any longer was the decision by Iraq’s main Sunni Arab political bloc to withdraw from the government Wednesday, blaming Shia leaders for not addressing sectarian issues.

According to Newsday, “The pullout leaves Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shia-dominated government even weaker than it was, serving with little more than caretaker status. Barring the possibility of a major political realignment, the government is unlikely to be able to reach significant compromises on benchmarks sought by the Bush administration and aimed at quelling sectarian strife between Sunni and Shia Muslims.”

The problem for Bush now is that even the generals he hand-picked because of their agreement with his strategy – and they are dwindling to a very few – have said that there is no military solution to ending the violence in Iraq. The only answer is political reconciliation among the three major factions that make up Iraq – the Kurds or a Sunnis or a Shiites.

Their now acknowledged misjudgments over the difficulty of achieving reconciliation among Iraq’s sectarian factions, pretty much leaves them up the proverbial river without a paddle while our courageous American troops continue to die there for a cause that was lost the very day Bush declared “mission accomplished.”

In its preparation for the invasion of Sicily during World War II, a secret agreement was reached between US Naval Intelligence officers and Mafia don Charles “Lucky” Luciano that led to the Mafia playing a key role in the landing. It’s now secret that public safety officials have been battling the influence of the Maria in American life ever since/

Now it appears General Petraeus is willing to make a similar deal with the devil – or, the Iraqi Mafia – in order to report progress in the war when he appears before Congress in September.

On the CNN show, AndersonCooper360 last night, Cooper interviewed Michael Ware, who has been there in Baghdad and all across Iraq almost nonstop since the fighting began. Right now, he’s embedded with American forces in Diyala Province.

He asked Ware about reports that General Patraeus will suggest that the surge is making significant progress when he appears before Congress in September.

Ware replied, “…there is progress. And that’s indisputable. Sectarian violence is down in certain pockets. There are areas of great instability in this country. They’re at last finding some stability.

“The point, though, is, at what price? What we’re seeing is – is, to a degree, some sleight of hand. What America needs to come clean about is that it’s achieving these successes by cutting deals primarily with its enemies. [Emphasis mine] We have all heard the administration praise the work of the tribal sheiks in turning against al Qaeda. Well, this is just a euphemism for the Sunni insurgency. That’s who has turned against al Qaeda.

“And why? Because they offered America terms in 2003 to do this. And it’s taken America four years of war to come round to the Sunnis’ terms. And, principally, that means cutting the Iraqi government out of the loop. By achieving these successes, America is building Sunni militias. [Iraqi Mafia] Yes, they’re targeting al Qaeda, but these are also anti- government forces opposed to the very government that America created.”

In January, there was a firefight in Karbala, a Shi’ite holy city of roughly 1 million people that had been one of the safest in Iraq for U.S. troops. Four American troops were kidnapped and later found brutally murdered.

According to an investigative report in this week’s issue of Time magazine, the attack “happened in plain sight of Iraqi police the Americans had been assigned to train. The killers wore U.S.-style uniforms, suggesting a catastrophic lapse of security – or the possibility that the enemy operation had actually been an inside job.”

As Ware pointed out in his interview with Cooper, “…it is a myth to believe that the Iraqi forces have been rid of their sectarian or militia ties. No matter how much any commander wants to tell you, the minute the American forces turn their backs, these guys revert to form, be that Sunni or Shia lines, Kurdish ethnic lines, or be it militia lines.

“So, there is still no sense of unity. And, without America to act as the big baby-sitter, this thing is not going to last.

All we can do now is wait to see if America is ready to once again buy this administration’s deceptions. We have had more than four years of repeated claims that we are turning the corner in Iraq – four years in which more than 3,600 brave American men and women have died. How many more are we willing to sacrifice before Bush, Cheney and company are forced to accept the will of the people that enough is enough.

I should have realized yesterday when I said that there might be hope after ranking Senate Judiciary Committee Republican, Arlen Specter (Pa.), gave the Bush administration 18 hours to resolve the controversy over apparent contradictions in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s congressional testimony.”

I am sure you’ve seen the seen the instant messaging shorthand ROTFLOL. Well, I was nearly rolling on the floor laughing out loud when I heard the administration’s explanation as to why Gonzales wasn’t lying: Since the NSA wiretapping program wasn’t called the Terrorist Surveillance Program at the time of the infamous gathering in the hospital room of then Attorney General John Ashcroft, Gonzales wasn’t lying when he said there was no disagreement over the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

To recap, the dispute centers on a visit by Gonzales to Ashcroft’s hospital room in 2004. James Comey, who was serving as acting attorney general while Ashcroft was ill, told Congress that Gonzales tried to pressure Ashcroft into signing off on a classified program despite objections raised by Justice Department officials.

According to USA Today, Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, wrote to Specter: “I understand that the phrase ‘Terrorist Surveillance Program’ was not used prior to 2006.”

It doesn’t matter that FBI Director Robert Mueller later testified that Ashcroft told him it did involve the surveillance program … or that several other officials who were privy to the information echoed Mueller’s testimony. Gonzales didn’t lie because he used the term for the program that was coined in 2006.

According to USA Today, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate’s deputy Democratic leader, called the letter “gobbledygook” and accused the administration of using “weasel words” to resolve the conflicts between Gonzales’ and Mueller’s accounts. “It just doesn’t track,” Durbin said.

Now it is on to the impeachment route.

According to the Chicago Tribune, several House Democrats who also are former state prosecutors yesterday called for an investigation by the House Judiciary Committee leading to possible impeachment proceedings against Gonzales.

“The president, unfortunately, continues to defend the indefensible,’’ said Rep. Jay Inslee, a Washington state Democrat and former state prosecutor, speaking for a group of 15 House members who have experience as prosecutors or judges.

“There is a national embarrassment right now in the U.S. attorney general’s office,’’ Inslee said. “It needs to be remedied. And if the president will not do his job, we need to do ours.’’

It sure would be great to see them do their job.