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All DeLay's Children

by ARI BERMAN

[from the June 19, 2006 issue]

If the toothless lobbying "reform" bill approved by the House and Senate is any indication, we haven't seen the last of the likes of Jack Abramoff or Tom DeLay. DeLay exits Congress June 9, but his influence lives on. His former deputy, Dennis Hastert, remains Speaker of the House. His key liaison to lobbyists on K Street, Roy Blunt, is majority whip. Even John Boehner, a rival from the Gingrich years, retained three DeLay staffers when he became majority leader. More important, the Hammer left many nails behind among the lower tier of House GOP leadership members, committee chairmen, party spokesmen and fundraisers he propelled to power. These are the people who will shape the GOP's agenda for years to come. Here are five disciples who are carrying on DeLay's legacy.

§ Eric Cantor (age 43). A fast-rising third-term Congressman, Cantor distinguished himself as DeLay's "chief defender," according to Roll Call. He was appointed chief deputy majority whip--the fourth most powerful position in the House--at the ripe age of 39. Cantor became the youngest member of the House leadership after a DeLay staffer recommended he be named Blunt's deputy over a host of older and more qualified candidates. Thus, when DeLay's ethical problems piled up in 2004 and '05, the Virginian held countless press conferences and strategy sessions with conservative activists to protect his leader.

As the only Jewish Republican in the House, Cantor provides a crucial link between pro-Israel donors and Christian conservatives. Through his seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which oversees tax law and Social Security, Cantor raised more money for his colleagues than any other House Republican in the last election cycle. Like DeLay, Cantor is also tied to Abramoff, having accepted $13,000 from the disgraced lobbyist's Indian clients, written letters on behalf of tribes and held eight events at Abramoff's restaurant, Signatures. Cantor even had a sandwich named after him at Abramoff's deli, Stacks: the Eric Cantor, a "tuna-based stacker," changed by Cantor to roast beef on challah.

§ Jack Kingston (age 51). As vice chairman of the Republican Conference Committee and the number-six House Republican, Georgia's Kingston sculpts the GOP's message, producing talking points for fellow members and soundbites for conservative media. National Journal rated him the most conservative Congressman in 2004. But unlike DeLay, Kingston is an affable, smooth Southerner who jokes with Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher. Kingston's relentless defense of DeLay at times merited its own comedy show. When the TV series Law & Order referred to DeLay negatively in one episode, Kingston accused the show of associating his boss with a "racist, anti-Semitic judge killer." After Representative Chris Bell filed an ethics complaint against DeLay resulting in an unprecedented three rebukes, Kingston called it a "nonstory." When DeLay received two indictments in Texas on money-laundering charges, Kingston circulated a glossy brochure titled "The 'Hammer' Has a Big Heart," boasting of DeLay's "affections for his bichons frisés, Baily and Taylor, and his miniature dachshund, Scooter," reported the Washington Post. Describing how DeLay maintained his resilience, Kingston said, "he knows Jesus personally."

§ Patrick McHenry (age 30). The youngest member of the 109th Congress, McHenry is the "it" boy of the GOP establishment. DeLay recently named McHenry one of his potential successors, an endorsement the freshman accepted enthusiastically. "I'm blown away," McHenry told the Washington Times. "I'm so excited that Tom DeLay would say that about me"--a fitting compliment to a pupil who's earned a reputation as the party's "attack-dog-in-training." DeLay was the first Washington pol to contact McHenry after he won the Republican primary in North Carolina's rural 10th Congressional district, promptly sending his campaign $10,000. Upon election, DeLay shepherded McHenry through Washington, with cushy seats on the Budget and Financial Services committees, a communications position within the GOP's fundraising arm and a role in Blunt's whip operation. McHenry returned the favors by attacking House minority leader Nancy Pelosi for alleged travel violations and by voting, along with just nineteen other Republicans, to rewrite House ethics rules permanently to insulate DeLay. McHenry's clearly a quick learner: He's hired Grover Norquist's press secretary and dated a former assistant of Karl Rove.

§ Richard Pombo (age 45). With his cowboy hats and ostrich-skin boots, Pombo fancies himself a "Capitol Cowboy." To government watchdogs, he's "Dirty Dick," a militant antienvironmentalist and Abramoff crony. The California rancher has raised hundreds of thousands from big business for fellow Republicans and enjoyed close ties with recently indicted DeLay staffer Tony Rudy. Pombo and fellow DeLay protégé John Doolittle (himself a top Republican under investigation for assisting Abramoff) helped kill a government investigation into a Houston-based DeLay donor responsible for a $1.6 billion savings-and-loan scandal in Texas. At the same time Pombo's staff was cultivating ties to Abramoff, DeLay helped Pombo leapfrog ahead of six more-senior Republicans to become chairman of the House Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over Indian gaming. At age 42, Pombo was the youngest chairman in the House. "This is the guy DeLay wanted," former House Ethics Committee chair Joel Hefley remarked. Pombo has used the position to try to destroy the Endangered Species Act, reward big-donor polluters, ignore calls for an investigation into Abramoff's tribal clients, give his chief of staff two salaries and pay his wife and brother $357,000 over the past four years for "consulting" work. More recently, Pombo has come under fire for renting an RV for a family vacation and sticking taxpayers with the bill.

§ Tom Reynolds (age 55). As head of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), Reynolds breakfasts with Karl Rove and lunches with Dick Cheney. When Reynolds inherited the upstate New York seat of DeLay ally Bill Paxon (now a top K Street lobbyist), DeLay said he "made sure [Reynolds] had every opportunity presented to him to exploit his abilities." Reynolds became the only freshman to become a deputy on DeLay's whip team and only the second newcomer ever named to the House Rules Committee, which controls House debate. In 2001 DeLay personally persuaded New York Republicans to draw Reynolds a more Republican district. With DeLay's backing, Reynolds became a player on the Ways and Means Committee, cultivating a plum fundraising base, and chair of the NRCC, helping to expand the GOP majority in 2004. He emulated DeLay's fundraising prowess--coming up with $1 million for House Republicans in the last election--and replicated his lavish lifestyle. In the past three years, Reynolds has taken more lobbyist-funded trips than return visits to his district. Small wonder that Reynolds calls DeLay "a darn good mentor of mine." He's frequently mentioned as a possible future Speaker of the House.

Of course, recent polls indicate that the House DeLay built might yet collapse. If Republicans lose their majority in November, or a significant number of seats, a major shake-up could derail the careers of quite a few DeLay disciples. The guilt is only likely to accumulate. Two of DeLay's top aides have already been indicted in the Abramoff investigation. Reports suggest that DeLay's key spiritual adviser and lobbyist, Ed Buckham, along with another former protégé, Ohio Representative Bob Ney, are in the cross-hairs of the law. And ABC News claims that Dennis Hastert is "in the mix." DeLay himself faces trial in Texas and remains a target in the Abramoff probe. As his disciples are learning, it's no longer a good day to be a comrade of DeLay.

Copyright © 2006 The Nation

22 July 2006 16:10

America's domestic policy vs America's foreign policy

This week, George Bush used his presidential veto to block a bill on stem cell research, saying he couldn't support the 'taking of innocent human life'. In Iraq, six civilians are killed by a US air strike, while casualties in Lebanon and Israel mount. George Bush (and Tony Blair) oppose UN calls for an immediate ceasefire

By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad

Published: 22 July 2006

Parents dare not let their children wander the dangerous streets of Baghdad alone, but until a few days ago they could give them a treat by taking them to al-Jillawi's toyshop, the biggest and best in the city, its windows invitingly filled with Playstations, Barbie dolls and bicycles.

They go there no longer. Today the shop on 14 Ramadan Street in the once-affluent al-Mansur district is closed, with a black mourning flag draped across its front. The three sons and the teenage grandson of the owner, Mehdi al-Jillawi, were shutting down for the evening recently, bringing in bicycles and tricycles on display on the pavement in front of the shop. As they did so, two BMWs stopped close to them, and several gunmen got out armed with assault rifles. They opened fire at point-blank range, killing the young men.

Sectarian slaughter is not the only way to die in Iraq.

Yesterday US troops killed five people, including two women and a child, in the city of Baquba during a raid, claiming they had been shot at. At best it was a tragic error, at worst it spoke to the cavalier attitude of the US towards Iraqi civilian lives. Local police said that a man had fired from a rooftop at the Americans because he thought a hostile militia force was approaching.

While the eyes of the world are elsewhere, Baghdad is still dying and the daily toll is hitting record levels. While the plumes of fire and smoke over Lebanon have dominated headlines for 11 days, with Britain and the US opposing a UN call for an immediate ceasefire, another Bush-Blair foreign policy disaster is unfolding in Iraq.

Invoking the sanctity of human life, George Bush wielded the presidential veto for the first time in his presidency to halt US embryonic stem cell research in its tracks. He even paraded one-year-old Jack Jones, born from one of the frozen embryos that can now never be used for federally funded research, and talked of preventing the "taking of innocent human life". How hollow that sounds to Iraqis.

More people are dying here - probably more than 150 a day - in the escalating sectarian civil war between Shia and Sunni Muslims and the continuing war with US troops than in the bombardment of Lebanon.

In a desperate effort to stem the butchery, the government yesterday imposed an all-day curfew on Baghdad, but tens of thousands of its people have already run for their lives. In some parts of the city, dead bodies are left to rot in the baking summer heat because nobody dares to remove them. I drove through empty streets in the heart of the city yesterday, taking a zigzag course to avoid police checkpoints that we thought might be doubling as death squads. Few shops were open. Those still doing business are frantically trying to sell their stock. A sign above one shop read: "Italian furniture: 75 per cent reductions.''

Iraqis are terrified in a way that I have never seen before, since I first visited Baghdad in 1978. Sectarian massacres happen almost daily. The UN says 6,000 civilians were slaughtered in May and June, but this month has been far worse. In many districts it has become difficult to buy bread because Sunni assassins have killed all the bakers who are traditionally Shia.

Baghdad is now breaking up into a dozen different hostile cities, Sunni or Shia, heavily armed and living in terror of the other side. On 9 July, Shia gunmen from the black-clad Mehdi Army entered the largely Sunni al-Jihad district in west Baghdad and killed 40 Sunni after dragging them from their cars or stopping them at false checkpoints. Within hours the Sunni militias struck back with car bombs killing more than 60 Shia.

Nouri al-Maliki, the new Iraqi Prime Minister is to leave Iraq tomorrow on his way to Washington. He was appointed after five months of wrangling and intense pressure from the American and British embassies. The Iraqi government is a prisoner of the Green Zone, the heavily fortified enclave defended by US troops in the centre of Baghdad. Entering it is like visiting another country. Soldiers at the gates spend longer looking at documents than do officials at most European frontiers. "Some ministers have never visited their ministries outside the Green Zone," said one ex-minister. "They have their officials bring them documents to sign."

It seems unlikely that Baghdad will ever come together again. Sunni are frightened of being caught in a Shia district, and vice versa. Many now carry two sets of identity documents, one Sunni and one Shia. Checkpoints manned by the Mehdi Army know this and sometimes ask people claiming to be Shia questions about Shia theology. One Shia who passed this test was still killed because he was driving a car with number plates from Anbar, a Sunni province.

Where are the Americans in all this? Iraqis who used to say that they were against the US occupation but at least the Americans prevented civil war now think that a civil war has started regardless of their presence.

The Iraqi army and police are themselves divided along sectarian lines. Recognising this, the Shia-controlled Interior Ministry ludicrously suggested that people challenge the ferocious police commanders and demand their identity cards in order to distinguish real police from death squads. It is hard to think of a surer way of getting oneself killed.

I never expected the occupation of Iraq by the US and Britain to end happily. But I did not foresee the present catastrophe. Baghdad has survived the Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 Gulf War, UN sanctions, more bombing and, finally, a savage guerrilla war. Now the city is finally splitting apart, and - most surprising of all - this disaster scarcely gets a mention on the news as the world watches the destruction of Beirut so many miles away.

Conflict: day 10

* Fighting has killed at least 344 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians. Nineteen Israeli soldiers and 15 civilians dead.

* Israeli troops and tanks mass on Lebanon's border after planes drop leaflets warning civilians to evacuate, prompting speculation Israel is preparing for a full-scale ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

* One Israeli pilot dies as two Apache helicopters collide in northern Israel. Hizbollah says two militants have been killed.

* Nineteen people are injured in Haifa as three Hizbollah rockets crash into the town. Numerous other Israeli towns hit.

* Israel allows aid supplies into Lebanon. Agencies warn movement of aid hampered by destroyed roads and bridges.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

Report raps Pentagon for equipment sales

By ANDREW MIGA, Associated Press Writer

Fri Jul 21, 11:10 PM ET

Undercover government investigators purchased sensitive surplus military equipment such as launcher mounts for shoulder-fired missiles and guided missile radar test sets from a Defense Department contractor.

Much of the equipment could be useful to terrorists, according to a draft report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

In June, two GAO investigators spent $1.1 million on such equipment at two excess property warehouses. Their purchases included several types of body armor inserts used by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, an all-band antenna used to track aircraft, and a digital signal converter used in naval surveillance.

"The body armor could be used by terrorists or other criminal activity," noted the report, obtained Friday by The Associated Press. "Many of the other military items have weapons applications that would also be useful to terrorists."

Thousands of items that should have been destroyed were sold to the public, the report said. Much of the equipment was sold for pennies on the dollar.

The list included circuit cards used in computerized Navy systems, a cesium technology timing unit with global positioning capabilities, and 12 digital microcircuits used in F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft.

At least 2,669 sensitive military items were sold to 79 buyers in 216 sales transactions from November 2005 to June 2006.

"DOD has not enforced security controls for preventing sensitive excess military equipment from release to the public," the report concluded. "GAO was able to purchase these items because controls broke down at virtually every step in the excess property turn-in and disposal process."

In the report, the GAO said it had briefed Pentagon officials on its findings but that the Pentagon had no response because it had not had time to perform a detailed review.

Rep. Christopher Shays (news, bio, voting record), R-Conn., chairman of the House Government Reform Committee's national security panel, will hold a hearing on the matter Tuesday. Earlier GAO reports also had found lax security controls over sensitive excess military equipment.

"During previous hearings we learned DOD was a bargain basement for would-be terrorists due to lax security screening of excess military equipment," Shays said in a statement Friday. "Based on GAO's most recent undercover investigation it looks like the store is still open."

Shays added: "We've seen partial changes that have resulted in over $34 million savings, but they still have a long way to go to make this system functional."

The GAO findings were first reported by CBS News and ABC News.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press.

Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc.

Senator Rick Santorum: Poster Boy for Obnoxious and Desperate Conservatism

Posted 21 July 2006

By Walter C. Uhler

If Pennsylvanians are lucky, after November's elections the Keystone State will be rid of its junior U.S. Senator, Rick Santorum. It will not be a moment too soon. Such a blessing would radiate across the United States and, thus, the world.

Today, Mr. Santorum is the not-so-proud possessor of poor polling percentages, which indicate that even the good citizens of central and rural Pennsylvania (AKA the mostly "Alabamans" who live between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh) have tired of his empty, "bogus nostalgia and right-wing extremist ideology" about "the traditional family" (see my article, "Rick Santorum Flunks 'The History of the American Family,'" http://www.walter-c-uhler.com/Reviews/Santorum.html ).

Thus, political desperation best explains Santorum's recent attempt to reframe the debate by announcing to Pennsylvanians and all Americans - during his speech to the National Press Club on July 20, 2006 - that "today the biggest issue facing our children's future is a war." However, with that speech - which was replete with reckless rhetoric designed to incite the mob and turn out the faithful on election day -- Santorum revalidated the timeless truth spoken by Samuel Johnson: "Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrel."

The speech also proved that Santorum knows even less about foreign affairs and national security than he does about the traditional family - thus validating Jose Ortega y Gasset's timeless truth about the "learned ignoramus." ("He is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with all the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line." Santorum, after all, is "learned" in duping social conservatives and the citizens of Pennsylvania.)

For example, no serious person talks about "Islamic fascism" without defining the term and specifying to whom -- and why -- that term applies. Yet, Santorum belches out: "Islamic fascism is just as menacing as the threat from Nazism and Soviet Communism," conveniently overlooking the fact that, while Nazis and Communists readily called themselves such, self-admitted "Islamic-fascists" are hard to find.

Moreover, as Middle East expert Juan Cole concludes, "the idea that the Muslim world is full of fascist regimes is just not true." Additionally, Cole doesn't see a "coherent enemy" and suspects that "Washington misses the Cold War." ["Juan's world," Metro Times Detroit, Feb. 22, 2006]

Yet, the primary target of Santorum's speech - beyond his own reelection - was Iran. If one were to believe Santorum's rants about Iran, he or she would conclude that it's an Islamic fascist regime that America cannot negotiate with because, in 1979 and for reasons unknown, it "declared itself our enemy." Thus, the only recourse is regime change. Ah, yes, yet another regime change.

Unfortunately, Santorum's speech contained nothing that would demonstrate that Iran's regime constitutes "Islamic fascism." It contained nothing to suggest that the Bush administration, with Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech, might have convinced Iran's leaders that restraint and concessions to America wouldn't work. And it contained nothing to suggest that Iran's domestic reforms under President Khatami might have been shelved in response to American threats of regime change.

Even worse, Santorum was patently dishonest when he failed to explain why many in Iran, in 1979, came to view America as its enemy. In fact, it was an American-backed coup in 1953, followed by twenty-five years of repression by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi that sparked the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the rise of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and much of the suspicion and hostility toward the United States that remains today.

It's called "blowback." Moreover, Iran's rise in the Middle East today is, in large measure, yet more "blowback" -- resulting from the lies and exaggerations about Iraq (in preparation for America's invasion) which despicable neoconservatives and conservatives, like Santorum, foisted upon an unwitting, if not witless, American public nearly four years ago.

Yet, four years ago, serious people were warning that an invasion of Iraq - the illegality and immorality of it aside - might empower Iraq's Shiites, thus benefiting Iran, might lead to an insurgency and perhaps a civil war, which, in turn, might embroil the entire Middle East.

Now, out of fear that the public might seize upon those prescient warnings and turn out of office the reckless instigators of this Middle East conflagration, obnoxious and desperate conservatives like Rick Santorum speak yet more reckless nonsense in order to save their political skins. Yes, even if it means duping Americans yet again for the sake of another regime change, pouring more fuel on the raging fire and provoking yet more blowback.

Had enough?

Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA).
waltuhler@aol.com

Lieutenant Watada’s about-face came as a shock to his parents, his fellow soldiers and his superiors. In retrospect, though, there may have been one ominous note in the praise heaped on him in his various military fitness reports: he was cited as having an “insatiable appetite for knowledge.”

Lieutenant Watada said that when he reported to Fort Lewis in June 2005, in preparation for deployment to Iraq, he was beginning to have doubts. “I was still prepared to go, still willing to go to Iraq,” he said. “I thought it was my responsibility to learn about the present situation. At that time, I never conceived our government would deceive the Army or deceive the people.”

He was not asking for leave as a conscientious objector, Lieutenant Watada said, a status assigned to those who oppose all military service because of moral objections to war. It was only the Iraq war that he said he opposed.

Military historians say it is rare in the era of the all-voluntary Army for officers to do what Lieutenant Watada has done.

“Certainly it’s far from unusual in the annals of war for this to happen,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in military affairs at the Brookings Institution. “But it is pretty obscure since the draft ended.”

Mr. O’Hanlon said that if other officers followed suit, it would be nearly impossible to run the military. “The idea that any individual officer can decide which war to fight doesn’t really pass the common-sense test,” he said.

Lieutenant Watada conceded that the military could not function if individual members decided which war was just. But, he wrote to Colonel Townsend, he owed his allegiance to a “higher power” — the Constitution — based on the values the Army had taught him: “loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage.”

“Please allow me to leave the Army with honor and dignity,” he concluded.

Lieutenant Watada said he began his self-tutorial about the Iraq war with James Bamford’s book “A Pretext for War,” which argues that the war in Iraq was driven by a small group of neoconservative civilians in the Pentagon and their allies in policy institutes. The book suggests that intelligence was twisted to justify the toppling of Saddam Hussein, with the goal of fundamentally changing the Middle East to the benefit of Israel.

Next was “Chain of Command,” by Seymour M. Hersh, about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. After that, Lieutenant Watada moved on to other publications on war-related themes, including selections on the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the so-called Downing Street memo, in which the British chief of intelligence told Prime Minister Tony Blair in July 2002 that the Americans saw war in Iraq as “inevitable” and that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Lieutenant Watada said he also talked to soldiers returning to Fort Lewis from Iraq, including a staff sergeant who told him that he and his men had probably committed war crimes.

“When I learned the awful truth that we had been deceived — I was shocked and disgusted,” he wrote in the letter to his brigade commander.

There were efforts to work things out, Lieutenant Watada said. The Army offered him a staff job in Iraq that would have kept him out of combat; but combat was not the point, he said.

Lieutenant Watada said he had volunteered to serve in Afghanistan, which he regarded as an unambiguous war linked to the Sept. 11 attacks. The request was denied.

In public statements, Army officials warned Lieutenant Watada that he was facing “adverse action” in the days leading up to his decision to refuse to go to Iraq. Charges were filed only after he showed insubordination, they said; his insubordination included giving interviews.

“This was a call of his commander, after he decided that Lieutenant Watada’s action required these charges,” said Joe Hitt, a Fort Lewis spokesman.

When Lieutenant Watada’s mother, Carolyn Ho, learned of his decision, she was caught off guard, she said. Her son, an Eagle Scout who grew up in Hawaii, had always admired the Army.

“I tried to talk him out of it,” Ms. Ho said. “I just saw his career going down the drain. It took me awhile to get through this.”

Now, she said, “I honor and respect his decision.”

Two officers who served with Lieutenant Watada in South Korea also voiced support for him in telephone interviews arranged by Lieutenant Watada, though they made it clear they did not share his views on Iraq.

“He was a good officer, always very professional,” said one of the officers, Capt. Scott Hulin. “I personally disagree with his opinion and his stance against the war. But I personally support his stand as a man, to be able to do what his heart is telling him.”

A former roommate of Lieutenant Watada, First Lt. Bernard West, offered similar remarks.

Lieutenant Watada had two assignments in South Korea. One was as the executive officer of the headquarters battery, the other as a platoon leader of a unit of multiple-launch rockets. His evaluations were glowing.

“Exemplary,” said his executive officer fitness report, which Lieutenant Watada provided to a reporter. “Tremendous potential for positions of increased responsibility. He has the potential to command with distinction. Promote ahead of his peers.”

His evaluation as a platoon leader also called him “exemplary” and said he had “unlimited potential.”

Under the military system, the charges against Lieutenant Watada will be reviewed in an Article 32 hearing, the rough equivalent of a grand jury hearing. If there is a court-martial hearing, it will probably come in the fall; the maximum penalty would be a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of pay and seven years in prison, according to a news release from Fort Lewis.

A spokesman for the Army, Paul Boyce, said that as far as he knew, Lieutenant Watada would be the first Army officer to be court-martialed for refusing to go to Iraq.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

In Iraq, Military Forgot Lessons of Vietnam
Early Missteps by U.S. Left Troops Unprepared for Guerrilla Warfare

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 23, 2006; A01

The real war in Iraq -- the one to determine the future of the country -- began on Aug. 7, 2003, when a car bomb exploded outside the Jordanian Embassy, killing 11 and wounding more than 50.

That bombing came almost exactly four months after the U.S. military thought it had prevailed in Iraq, and it launched the insurgency, the bloody and protracted struggle with guerrilla fighters that has tied the United States down to this day.

There is some evidence that Saddam Hussein's government knew it couldn't win a conventional war, and some captured documents indicate that it may have intended some sort of rear-guard campaign of subversion against occupation. The stockpiling of weapons, distribution of arms caches, the revolutionary roots of the Baathist Party, and the movement of money and people to Syria either before or during the war all indicate some planning for an insurgency.

But there is also strong evidence, based on a review of thousands of military documents and hundreds of interviews with military personnel, that the U.S. approach to pacifying Iraq in the months after the collapse of Hussein helped spur the insurgency and made it bigger and stronger than it might have been.

The very setup of the U.S. presence in Iraq undercut the mission. The chain of command was hazy, with no one individual in charge of the overall American effort in Iraq, a structure that led to frequent clashes between military and civilian officials.

On May 16, 2003, L. Paul Bremer III, the chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-run occupation agency, had issued his first order, "De-Baathification of Iraq Society." The CIA station chief in Baghdad had argued vehemently against the radical move, contending: "By nightfall, you'll have driven 30,000 to 50,000 Baathists underground. And in six months, you'll really regret this."

He was proved correct, as Bremer's order, along with a second that dissolved the Iraqi military and national police, created a new class of disenfranchised, threatened leaders.

Exacerbating the effect of this decision were the U.S. Army's interactions with the civilian population. Based on its experience in Bosnia and Kosovo, the Army thought it could prevail through "presence" -- that is, soldiers demonstrating to Iraqis that they are in the area, mainly by patrolling.

"We've got that habit that carries over from the Balkans," one Army general said. Back then, patrols were conducted so frequently that some officers called the mission there "DAB"-ing, for "driving around Bosnia."

The U.S. military jargon for this was "boots on the ground," or, more officially, the presence mission. There was no formal doctrinal basis for this in the Army manuals and training that prepare the military for its operations, but the notion crept into the vocabularies of senior officers.

For example, a briefing by the 1st Armored Division's engineering brigade stated that one of its major missions would be "presence patrols." And then-Maj. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then the commander of that division, ordered one of his brigade commanders to "flood your zone, get out there, and figure it out." Sitting in a dusty command tent outside a palace in the Green Zone in May 2003, he added: "Your business is to ensure that the presence of the American soldier is felt, and it's not just Americans zipping by."

The flaw in this approach, Lt. Col. Christopher Holshek, a civil affairs officer, later noted, was that after Iraqi public opinion began to turn against the Americans and see them as occupiers, "then the presence of troops . . . becomes counterproductive."

The U.S. mission in Iraq is made up overwhelmingly of regular combat units, rather than smaller, lower-profile Special Forces units. And in 2003, most conventional commanders did what they knew how to do: send out large numbers of troops and vehicles on conventional combat missions.

Few U.S. soldiers seemed to understand the centrality of Iraqi pride and the humiliation Iraqi men felt in being overseen by this Western army. Foot patrols in Baghdad were greeted during this time with solemn waves from old men and cheers from children, but with baleful stares from many young Iraqi men.

Complicating the U.S. effort was the difficulty top officials had in recognizing what was going on in Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at first was dismissive of the looting that followed the U.S. arrival and then for months refused to recognize that an insurgency was breaking out there. A reporter pressed him one day that summer: Aren't you facing a guerrilla war?

"I guess the reason I don't use the phrase 'guerrilla war' is because there isn't one," Rumsfeld responded.

A few weeks later, Army Gen. John P. Abizaid succeeded Gen. Tommy R. Franks as the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East. He used his first news conference as commander to clear up the strategic confusion about what was happening in Iraq. Opponents of the U.S. presence were conducting "a classical guerrilla-style campaign," he said. "It's a war, however you describe it."

That fall, U.S. tactics became more aggressive. This was natural, even reasonable, coming in response to the increased attacks on U.S. forces and a series of suicide bombings. But it also appears to have undercut the U.S. government's long-term strategy.

"When you're facing a counterinsurgency war, if you get the strategy right, you can get the tactics wrong, and eventually you'll get the tactics right," said retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, a veteran of Special Forces in the Vietnam War. "If you get the strategy wrong and the tactics right at the start, you can refine the tactics forever, but you still lose the war. That's basically what we did in Vietnam."

For the first 20 months or more of the American occupation in Iraq, it was what the U.S. military would do there as well.

"What you are seeing here is an unconventional war fought conventionally," a Special Forces lieutenant colonel remarked gloomily one day in Baghdad as the violence intensified. The tactics that the regular troops used, he added, sometimes subverted American goals.

Draconian Interrogation Ideas

On the morning of Aug. 14, 2003, Capt. William Ponce, an officer in the "Human Intelligence Effects Coordination Cell" at the top U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, sent a memo to subordinate commands asking what interrogation techniques they would like to use.

"The gloves are coming off regarding these detainees," he told them. His e-mail, and the responses it provoked from members of the Army intelligence community across Iraq, are illustrative of the mind-set of the U.S. military during this period.

"Casualties are mounting and we need to start gathering info to help protect our fellow soldiers from any further attacks," Ponce wrote. He told them, "Provide interrogation techniques 'wish list' by 17 AUG 03."

Some of the responses to his solicitation were enthusiastic. With clinical precision, a soldier attached to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment recommended by e-mail 14 hours later that interrogators use "open-handed facial slaps from a distance of no more than about two feet and back-handed blows to the midsection from a distance of about 18 inches." He also reported that "fear of dogs and snakes appear to work nicely."

The 4th Infantry Division's intelligence operation responded three days later with suggestions that captives be hit with closed fists and also subjected to "low-voltage electrocution."

But not everyone was as sanguine as those two units. "We need to take a deep breath and remember who we are," cautioned a major with the 501st Military Intelligence Battalion, which supported the operations of the 1st Armored Division in Iraq. "It comes down to standards of right and wrong -- something we cannot just put aside when we find it inconvenient, any more than we can declare that we will 'take no prisoners' and therefore shoot those who surrender to us simply because we find prisoners inconvenient."

Feeding the interrogation system was a major push by U.S. commanders to round up Iraqis. The key to actionable intelligence was seen by many as conducting huge sweeps to detain and question Iraqis. Sometimes units acted on tips, but sometimes they just detained all able-bodied males of combat age in areas known to be anti-American.

These steps were seen inside the Army as a major success story, and they were portrayed as such to journalists. The problem was that the U.S. military, having assumed it would be operating in a relatively benign environment, wasn't set up for a massive effort that called on it to apprehend, detain and interrogate Iraqis, to analyze the information gleaned, and then to act on it.

"As commanders at all levels sought operational intelligence, it became apparent that the intelligence structure was undermanned, under-equipped and inappropriately organized for counter-insurgency operations," Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones wrote in an official Army report a year later.

Senior U.S. intelligence officers in Iraq later estimated that about 85 percent of the tens of thousands rounded up were of no intelligence value. But as they were delivered to the Abu Ghraib prison, they overwhelmed the system and often waited for weeks to be interrogated, during which time they could be recruited by hard-core insurgents, who weren't isolated from the general prison population.

In improvising a response to the insurgency, the U.S. forces worked hard and had some successes. Yet they frequently were led poorly by commanders unprepared for their mission by an institution that took away from the Vietnam War only the lesson that it shouldn't get involved in messy counterinsurgencies. The advice of those who had studied the American experience there was ignored.

That summer, retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, an expert in small wars, was sent to Baghdad by the Pentagon to advise on how to better put down the emerging insurgency. He met with Bremer in early July. "Mr. Ambassador, here are some programs that worked in Vietnam," Anderson said.

It was the wrong word to put in front of Bremer. "Vietnam?" Bremer exploded, according to Anderson. "Vietnam! I don't want to talk about Vietnam. This is not Vietnam. This is Iraq!"

This was one of the early indications that U.S. officials would obstinately refuse to learn from the past as they sought to run Iraq.

One of the essential texts on counterinsurgency was written in 1964 by David Galula, a lieutenant colonel in the French army who was born in Tunisia, witnessed guerrilla warfare on three continents and died in 1967.

When the United States went into Iraq, his book, "Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice," was almost unknown within the military, which is one reason it is possible to open Galula's text almost at random and find principles of counterinsurgency that the American effort failed to heed.

Galula warned specifically against the kind of large-scale conventional operations the United States repeatedly launched with brigades and battalions, even if they held out the allure of short-term gains in intelligence. He insisted that firepower must be viewed very differently than in regular war.

"A soldier fired upon in conventional war who does not fire back with every available weapon would be guilty of a dereliction of his duty," he wrote, adding that "the reverse would be the case in counterinsurgency warfare, where the rule is to apply the minimum of fire."

The U.S. military took a different approach in Iraq. It wasn't indiscriminate in its use of firepower, but it tended to look upon it as good, especially during the big counteroffensive in the fall of 2003, and in the two battles in Fallujah the following year.

One reason for that different approach was the muddled strategy of U.S. commanders in Iraq. As civil affairs officers found to their dismay, Army leaders tended to see the Iraqi people as the playing field on which a contest was played against insurgents. In Galula's view, the people are the prize.

"The population . . . becomes the objective for the counterinsurgent as it was for his enemy," he wrote.

From that observation flows an entirely different way of dealing with civilians in the midst of a guerrilla war. "Since antagonizing the population will not help, it is imperative that hardships for it and rash actions on the part of the forces be kept to a minimum," Galula wrote.

Cumulatively, the American ignorance of long-held precepts of counterinsurgency warfare impeded the U.S. military during 2003 and part of 2004. Combined with a personnel policy that pulled out all the seasoned forces early in 2004 and replaced them with green troops, it isn't surprising that the U.S. effort often resembled that of Sisyphus, the king in Greek legend who was condemned to perpetually roll a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down as he neared the top.

Again and again, in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006, U.S. forces launched major new operations to assert and reassert control in Fallujah, in Ramadi, in Samarra, in Mosul.

"Scholars are virtually unanimous in their judgment that conventional forces often lose unconventional wars because they lack a conceptual understanding of the war they are fighting," Lt. Col. Matthew Moten, chief of military history at West Point, would comment in 2004.

When Maj. Gregory Peterson studied a few months later at Fort Leavenworth's School of Advanced Military Studies, an elite course that trains military planners and strategists, he found the U.S. experience in Iraq in 2003-2004 remarkably similar to the French war in Algeria in the 1950s. Both involved Western powers exercising sovereignty in Arab states, both powers were opposed by insurgencies contesting that sovereignty, and both wars were controversial back home.

Most significant for Peterson's analysis, he found both the French and U.S. militaries woefully unprepared for the task at hand. "Currently, the U.S. military does not have a viable counterinsurgency doctrine, understood by all soldiers, or taught at service schools," he concluded.

Casey Implements a New Tactic

In mid-2004, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. took over from Sanchez as the top U.S. commander in Iraq. One of Casey's advisers, Kalev Sepp, pointedly noted in a study that fall that the U.S. effort in Iraq was violating many of the major principles of counterinsurgency, such as putting an emphasis on killing insurgents instead of engaging the population.

A year later, frustrated by the inability of the Army to change its approach to training for Iraq, Casey established his own academy in Taji, Iraq, to teach counterinsurgency to U.S. officers as they arrived in the country. He made attending its course there a prerequisite to commanding a unit in Iraq.

"We are finally getting around to doing the right things," Army Reserve Lt. Col. Joe Rice observed one day in Iraq early in 2006. "But is it too little, too late?"

One of the few commanders who were successful in Iraq in that first year of the occupation, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, made studying counterinsurgency a requirement at the Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, where mid-career officers are trained.

By the academic year that ended last month, 31 of 78 student monographs at the School of Advanced Military Studies next door were devoted to counterinsurgency or stability operations, compared with only a couple two years earlier.

And Galula's handy little book, "Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice," was a bestseller at the Leavenworth bookstore.

Tomorrow: One unit's aggressive approach

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

With Insurance Policy Comes Membership
Unbeknown to Some, Those Signing Up With Firm Are Joining Conservative Group

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 23, 2006; A05

In 2001, Jennifer B. Chace heard an insurance broker's pitch for a new insurance company marketing tax-free medical savings accounts. She jumped at the offer, but first, the broker told her, she would have to sign an application -- already filled out -- that would entitle her to a low group rate.

With that signature, Chace, a Florida dentist in the market for health insurance, unwittingly joined one of Washington's most prominent conservative organizations, Citizens for a Sound Economy, she would later testify.

"Before I showed you this form today, did you even realize that you signed a form that was an application for membership in Citizens for a Sound Economy?" her lawyer would ask during a 2004 deposition.

"I don't know what Citizens for a Sound Economy is," she replied.

Chace's experience has brought to light an obscure arrangement between a prominent Republican businessman, J. Patrick Rooney, and a free-market interest group that has netted the grass-roots organization hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of new members. Citizens for a Sound Economy -- now called FreedomWorks and headed by former House majority leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) -- has netted more than $638,000 and about 16,000 members through the sale of insurance policies.

Officials from FreedomWorks say the insurance sales are just another way for grass-roots groups to garner members and are no different from the activities of such giants as AARP, the senior citizens lobby.

"This is one of several avenues through which nonprofits do their job," said Kent Lassman, vice president for strategy at FreedomWorks.

Critics see the effort as a way for political groups to inflate their membership rosters -- and their bottom lines -- by taking dues from people with no interest in the groups' politics.

"We have clearly concluded these folks had no idea what Citizens for a Sound Economy was," said Louis M. Silber, a lawyer involved in a Florida class-action suit against Rooney's firm. "They had no idea where their money was going."

Officials from Rooney's Medical Savings Insurance Co. did not respond to numerous telephone calls and e-mails.

Documents produced through the suit against Rooney's company show how FreedomWorks, a political group that made its name fighting for a flat income tax and questioning global warming, has joined the insurance business. Under the deal, proposed by Rooney in 2000, brokers for Medical Savings Insurance Co. sell high-deductible insurance policies and tax-free savings plans at a group discount to buyers who join the conservative political organization.

"We are pleased with your offer to benefit CSE and we are ready to go forward subject to alterations of the contract," Ann House Quinn, then vice president for development of Citizens for a Sound Economy, wrote to Rooney on Sept. 13, 2000.

That was the first of a series of letters that revealed that insurance policy holders' names would be rented out as CSE members, that the group's bylaws would be changed to accommodate Rooney and that CSE would control dues rates.

Lassman said emphatically that no one has been signed up for the organization unwittingly and no one who joined through an insurance policy has quit upon learning of the group's political activities. An "MSA [Medical Savings Accounts] Association" membership form that CSE produced in 2000 to accompany application forms is emblazoned with the phrases "Flat Tax," "Across-the-Board Tax Cuts," "Limited Government" and "School Choice" among other political slogans.

"I have every confidence that new members to FreedomWorks know what we're about and what that relationship means to them," Lassman said. "There is no confusion about their relationship to us."

He did not deny that the $638,040 that has flowed to the group over 5 1/2 years in monthly checks for "association fees" collected by Medical Savings Insurance Co. is a boost. But, he said, it is a small one for a group with a $7 million budget. A database search of the group's 800,000 members indicated roughly 2 percent -- or about 16,000 -- joined by signing up for insurance, he said.

"If people want an account like this and are not aware of FreedomWorks, and they come to us this way, that's great," said FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Brandon.

But Jeffrey M. Liggio, a lead lawyer in the lawsuit, pointed to the insurance policies themselves, which never mention FreedomWorks or Citizens for a Sound Economy and label the group policyholder simply by a number: 1214.

"The certificates of insurance issued to class members, despite the clear language contained therein, did not disclose the identity of the Group Policyholder of the group policy, despite the fact that each putative insured must 'join' and pay money to such group as a condition of obtaining the insurance," the suit's motion for class certification states. The motion was granted in December.

Larry Butcher, a plaintiff in the case, said in a deposition that he signed on to a policy simply because his insurance broker son thought it was a good deal.

FreedomWorks and its predecessor, CSE, were careful about the deal's financial aspects. In a Sept. 13, 2000, letter, CSE's Quinn said documents should overtly refer to dues, suggesting they be set at $12 a year, to be raised at CSE's discretion upon notifying Medical Savings Insurance Co. She also noted: "I would assume that these people will become CSE members for all purposes and therefore will go on the CSE mailing list. Since the CSE mailing list is rented, as a matter of course, those names would be rented as CSE members . . . without specific identification as MSIC insureds."

A Sept. 20, 2000, correspondence from Medical Savings President Randal E. Suttles to Rooney said the deal could not go through because the CSE charter states "the corporation shall not have members" and therefore does not comply with the law governing group insurance.

Fifteen days later, Quinn told Suttles the group had solved the problem, amending its charter to allow for voting members.

The money that Medical Savings collected on behalf of CSE and FreedomWorks trickled in at first, canceled checks show. The first, in December 2000, was for $28. In April 2001, it was $738. But according to financial documents, the program gathered steam quickly. By March 19, 2003, the monthly "association fees" totaled $10,060. By 2004, they were topping $15,000, peaking that August at $15,309. They have since ebbed, to $10,687 last month.

Last month, Lassman said, about four times as many FreedomWorks members dropped out of the organization as joined by purchasing a policy.

But the total raised so far, $638,040, is not insignificant, Lassman said.

"In the nonprofit world, every dollar is precious," he said, "but to put it in context, hundreds of thousands of dollars over five years does not strike me as out of the realm of normal."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

ACLU Sues for Anti-Gay Group That Pickets at Troops' Burials

By Garance Burke
Associated Press
Sunday, July 23, 2006; A02

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A Kansas church group that protests at military funerals nationwide filed suit in federal court, saying a Missouri law banning such picketing infringes on religious freedom and free speech.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit Friday in the U.S. District Court in Jefferson City, Mo., on behalf of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church, which has outraged mourning communities by picketing service members' funerals with signs condemning homosexuality.

The church and the Rev. Fred Phelps say God is allowing troops, coal miners and others to be killed because the United States tolerates gay men and lesbians.

Missouri lawmakers were spurred to action after members of the church protested in St. Joseph, Mo., last August at the funeral of Army Spec. Edward L. Myers.

The law bans picketing and protests "in front of or about" any location where a funeral is held, from an hour before it begins until an hour after it ends. Offenders can face fines and jail time.

A number of other state laws and a federal law, signed in May by President Bush, bar such protests within a certain distance of a cemetery or funeral.

In the lawsuit, the ACLU says the Missouri law tries to limit protesters' free speech based on the content of their message. It is asking the court to declare the ban unconstitutional and to issue an injunction to keep it from being enforced, which would allow the group to resume picketing.

"I told the nation, as each state went after these laws, that if the day came that they got in our way, that we would sue them," said Phelps's daughter Shirley L. Phelps-Roper, a spokeswoman for the church in Topeka, Kan. "At this hour, the wrath of God is pouring out on this country."

Scott Holste, a spokesman for Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon, said, "We're not going to acquiesce to anything that they're asking for in this lawsuit."

The suit names Nixon, Gov. Matt Blunt (R) and others as defendants.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Iraqi Detainee Abuse Widespread: Report

By Kristin Roberts
Reuters
Sunday, July 23, 2006; 12:46 AM

WASHINGTON - Iraqi detainees were routinely subjected to beatings, sleep deprivation, stress positions and other forms of abuse by U.S. interrogators, according to a Human Rights Watch report released on Sunday that offers first-hand accounts from three former soldiers.

The U.S.-based watchdog group said its report discredits government arguments casting mistreatment of detainees as the aberrant and unauthorized work of a few personnel.

It included accounts by former soldiers who said detainees were regularly subjected to beatings, sleep deprivation and stress positions -- practices that started to come to light two years ago when pictures of physical abuse and sexual humiliation at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison surfaced.

"These accounts rebut U.S. government claims that torture and abuse in Iraq was unauthorized and exceptional -- on the contrary, it was condoned and commonly used," said John Sifton, author of the report and the group's senior researcher on terrorism and counter-terrorism.

A Defense Department spokesman, however, said 12 reviews have been conducted and none found the Pentagon promulgated a policy that condoned, directed or encouraged abuse.

"The standard of treatment is and always has been humane treatment of detainees in DoD's custody," said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a Pentagon spokesman.

Human Rights Watch said it could only document instances of abuse from soldiers stationed in Iraq up to April 2004.

The United States has faced international criticism for the indefinite detention of detainees at a naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and for physical abuse and sexual humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

The Bush administration, however, says it treats prisoners humanely. The Pentagon acknowledged earlier this month that all detainees held by the U.S. military are covered by an article of the Geneva Conventions that bars inhumane treatment.

But Human Rights Watch said the U.S. government's insistence that abusive practices were not authorized or routine and the military's failure to put any blame on leadership have hindered probes into detainee treatment.

The group's report offered accounts of abuse at three facilities in Iraq.

Former Army interrogator Tony Lagouranis said, in one account, that abusive techniques were commonplace at a Mosul facility, where he was based from February to April 2004.

Lagouranis, then a specialist in rank, said he was given interrogation rules on a card that Human Rights Watch said "authorized" the use of dogs, exposure to hot and cold temperatures, sleep deprivation and forced exercise, among other means of coercion.

© 2006 Reuters

Today we call them neoconservatives, but when the first George Bush was president, those who believed that America could remake the world to its liking with a series of splendid little wars — people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld — were known within the administration as "the crazies." Grown-ups in both parties rejected their vision as a dangerous fantasy.

But in 2000 the Supreme Court delivered the White House to a man who, although he may be 60, doesn't act like a grown-up. The second President Bush obviously confuses swagger with strength, and prefers tough talkers like the crazies to people who actually think things through. He got the chance to implement the crazies' vision after 9/11, which created a climate in which few people in Congress or the news media dared to ask hard questions. And the result is the bloody mess we're now in.

This isn't a case of 20-20 hindsight. It was clear from the beginning that the United States didn't have remotely enough troops to carry out the crazies' agenda — and Mr. Bush never asked for a bigger army.

As I wrote back in January 2003, this meant that the "Bush doctrine" of preventive war was, in practice, a plan to "talk trash and carry a small stick." It was obvious even then that the administration was preparing to invade Iraq not because it posed a real threat, but because it looked like a soft target.

The message to North Korea, which really did have an active nuclear program, was clear: "The Bush administration," I wrote, putting myself in Kim Jong Il's shoes, "says you're evil. It won't offer you aid, even if you cancel your nuclear program, because that would be rewarding evil. It won't even promise not to attack you, because it believes it has a mission to destroy evil regimes, whether or not they actually pose any threat to the U.S. But for all its belligerence, the Bush administration seems willing to confront only regimes that are militarily weak." So "the best self-preservation strategy ... is to be dangerous."

With a few modifications, the same logic applies to Iran. And it's easier than ever for Iran to be dangerous, now that U.S. forces are bogged down in Iraq.

Would the current crisis on the Israel-Lebanon border have happened even if the Bush administration had actually concentrated on fighting terrorism, rather than using 9/11 as an excuse to pursue the crazies' agenda? Nobody knows. But it's clear that the United States would have more options, more ability to influence the situation, if Mr. Bush hadn't squandered both the nation's credibility and its military might on his war of choice.

So what happens next?

Few if any of the crazies have the moral courage to admit that they were wrong. Vice President Cheney continues to insist that his two most famous pronouncements about Iraq — his declaration before the invasion that we would be "greeted as liberators" and his assertion a year ago that the insurgency was in its "last throes" — were "basically accurate."

But if the premise of the Bush doctrine was right, why are things going so badly?

The crazies respond by retreating even further into their fantasies of omnipotence. Th