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you're welcome. i saw a story on tv a couple of days ago saying brazil had now become energy independent. the race would appear to be on to lessen the importance of oil and gas with alternative sources before it can be used as a foreign policy knock-out blow. oil and gas revenues are already embolding dictatorial regimes and ideologies around the world. if the major producers were smart, they would realize they need to keep their oil and gas assets attractive and not drive everyone to alternative sources; unlikely to happen however. their idea of attractive would seem to be buy it or starve.

"Just as the Europeans have become dependent on Russia for its gas, if the pipelines are built to China, the Chinese will become equally vulnerable," he added.

“The end game is who can control online payment,” he said. “They’ve had their hands tied on that.”

how long can we afford to give up control before insisting the playing field be level? Did we force the Chinese government to have an American partner where control would remain before allowing Lenovo to buy IBM's PC division? is it fair to assume this is more of expecting the alligator to eat one last?

here is the direct video link if the other doesn't work (Real Media player required): rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/iraq/iraq120506_gates1.rm

Let history show that Robert Gates came to the same conclusion as President Bush regarding the necessity for invading Iraq. The Senate voted 95-2 to confirm Robert Gates to be the next Secretary of Defense. Fred Kaplan on Slate.com calls Gates "The Grownup." http://www.slate.com/id/2154941 Robert Gates goes on in the confirmation hearings video, a part of which I've transcribed below, to talk about what he sees as some top mistakes in Iraq which is a separate discussion. But cannot the cheap shots against President Bush's judgment regarding the decision to go in now cease?!

[personally transcribed from C-SPAN3 video coverage of the 12/5/06 Senate Armed Services Cmte. Confirmation Hearing on Robert Gates for Sec. of Defense – Morning Session]

Sen. Mark Dayton: (2:50:25 mark in video) “You’ve said, and I agree with you, that hindsight is 20/20, and we’ve all made judgments at the time that with hindsight can be legitimately questioned. Given what we know today about the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, given the predicament that we’re in today, with that benefit of hindsight, would you say that invading Iraq was the right decision or the wrong decision?”

Robert Gates: [long sigh] “Frankly Senator, I think that is a judgment that historians are going to have to make. I certainly supported the decision to go into Iraq in 2003 - and not just because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. It was clear that the food for peace program, the oil for food program was failing; it was totally corrupted, and the money was being diverted. It was clear the sanctions were weakening, and I had no doubt in my mind that once the sanctions were removed by the U.N., and it looked like the French and Russians and others were moving in that direction, that Saddam, if he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, would move quickly to try and obtain them. And you know, I think we have to look at the reality in terms of why we all thought that.

In terms just – and this is a little bit of a diversion but - I think one of the reasons why Iran is determined to have nuclear weapons is they see how complicated it is for us to try and deal with a North Korea that has nuclear weapons, and I think they believe that if Saddam had a nuclear weapon, we might not have attacked him in either 1991 or 2003. And I believe Saddam had the same calculus. So once the sanctions were lifted, there was no doubt in my mind that he would strive to get a nuclear weapon. He clearly hadn’t changed his spots in the slightest, and that is why I supported the decision to go in as well as the fact that I thought he had the weapons of mass destruction - as I like to put it - just like every intelligence service in the world apparently, including the French. So was the decision to go in right? I think it is too soon to tell. I think much depends on the outcome in Iraq.”

Sen. Mark Dayton: “What do you think were the key strategic or tactical mistakes that have lead to our current quagmire in Iraq? How can they be corrected or is it too late to do so?”

Robert Gates: “Well as I say hindsight as you suggest is 20/20, and I suspect members of the administration would make different decisions in light of hindsight, and I’ve made my own mistakes and have learned from them in hindsight. I would say to just give you two or three examples, I don’t think we had a full appreciation of just how broken Iraq was as a country before we ever went in, that after 35 years of Saddam, after eight years of war with Iran, after the First Gulf War, after 12 years of sanctions, that the country was broken economically, socially, and politically in every respect. Even if our soldiers had been greeted uniformly with flowers in their gun barrels, the cost of reconstructing Iraq would have been fairly staggering, and I don’t think there was that realization or the expectation that we would have to reconstruct Iraq.

Two other problems I think were created: the first was the demobilization of the Iraqi army. I know the argument that they had largely dissipated, but I think if we had widely advertised the fact that soldiers who returned to their barracks would continue to be paid, they would have a way to take care of their families, we wouldn’t have had several hundred thousand people who knew how to use weapons, had weapons, and were unemployed out on the streets.

A third example I think was the extreme de-Bathification policy. Frankly looking at it from a distance it seemed to me that we had forgotten the lessons of de-Nazification strategy in Germany in 1945 and 1946 and didn’t really appreciate the fact that every school teacher and power-plant operator for the most part in Iraq had to be a member of the Bath party to get the job, and that they in terms of being a threat to our interests or a threat to a democratic Iraq weren’t necessarily that; that it was the people at the top of the pyramid that were the problem.

And so a few more hundreds of thousands of people were thrown out of work, people who actually knew how to make some things work and who might have had a stake in keeping things together. So this whole thing will be the attention of historians for many years to come, but based on very short term perspective those seem to me to be some of the concerns that I would have had.”

very useful link; hope it will get added to wikipedia so it can be part of the conversation

"it is particularly curious why the Bush administration would choose this moment to remove a last barrier to Russian membership in the World Trade Organization"

please let there be a good explanation

Al Qaeda as i understand it has a strategy of asymetric warfare. Using airplanes as missles into large buildings is one example. Setting a match of violence to inflame sectarian differences into civil war is an even more powerful example. talk about a weapon of mass destruction! it would seem the definition of a civil war would mean that practically everyone on one side considers the other side an enemy. that doesn't seem to be the case yet in iraq. a small percentage of the population is involved still and many of those are acting out of fear and could be brought to the table i would expect if security could be guaranteed. this doesn't mean a full civil war couldn't emerge if things keep going the way they are.

from article: "The English-language version of the encyclopedia speaks of a Japanese shipwreck off Taiwan in 1871, in which 54 crew members were beheaded by Taiwanese aborigines. Japan demanded compensation from China, only to be told that Taiwan was not within China's jurisdiction. The Chinese-language entry on Taiwan, meanwhile, is silent on the jurisdiction question."

learn something new every day

"A parallel, and purely homegrown, effort at creating an online encyclopedia in China, Baidu Baike, skirts controversies like these altogether. Baidu Baike, which is owned by the biggest Internet search engine company in China..."

Can this article be seen in China?

"Why are the Maronites siding with Hezbollah???"

excellent question, haven't come across an answer

is this the "likeliest scenario" as the author says? is it one reason we want to talk to Syria first? what would winning look like?

thanks for posting... didn't realize the two main Shiite groups in Iraq were increasingly coming into conflict creating the possibility of a new more moderate cross-sectarian political realignment... maybe this way Iran's and Al Qaeda's influence can get squeezed out. according to Mr. Krauthammer:

"Such a coalition was almost created after the latest Iraqi elections.

It needs to be attempted again. One can tinker with American tactics or troop levels from today until doomsday. But unless the Iraqis can put together a government of unitary purpose and resolute action, the simple objective of this war -- to leave behind a self-sustaining democratic government -- is not attainable."

IMO, if Lieberman or anyone else is serious about "stabilizing" Iraq it's unlikely that "more troops" would mean just an additional division or two, it would likely mean 100-200K additional men, which would mean persuading the majority of voters who are currently skeptical about oureffrots to support a much higher level of national commitment, for years, without guarantee of success.

And it seems to me that if politicians, Democratic or Republican, aren't serious about laying their political futures on the live to attempt to build that support, then they are just burning through American troops to avoid admitting defeat - which is where we have been for the last 18 months.

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Strongly agree with the caveat that our elected officials owe a duty to the troops to explain the level of support needed to be successful and to justify putting them in harm's way to the American people even at the risk of their own careers. Lieberman had an almost near-political-death experience with the Democratic party regarding his support for the war, so he has definitely laid his political future on the line. Here in the transcript he talks about "we cannot conduct our defense and foreign policy, our national security policy, by public opinion polls":

"MR. RUSSERT: General Thurman, the ranking commander on the ground for the U.S., said “The problem is we want it more than they do.”

SEN. LIEBERMAN: No, from everything I hear, the majority want it. And here’s the problem. We were making great progress last year, three elections, a unity government formed. We were, we were moving forward against the terrorists who exactly went the opposite, and the Iranians, from what we want. And then al-Qaeda in Iraq—Zarqawi claimed credit for this—blew up the holy Shiia mosque in Samarra, and that began this terrible cycle of sectarian violence. We cannot yield to it.

Look, there—in every war, the second World War, there were moments when we could’ve pulled out, when we could’ve set a deadline, but we didn’t because we believed the consequences of doing so would be much greater and worse than what was happening on the ground. I believe that’s where we...

MR. RUSSERT: But a vast--60 percent of the American people say they don’t support this war.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: I—they, they don’t support what’s happening.

MR. RUSSERT: You, you...

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Two things I’d say, Tim. They don’t support what’s happening in the war now. They don’t, I, I believe, want us to just pick up and leave. But most important of all, and I, I appreciate what John McCain said earlier on this; as elected leaders, we cannot conduct our defense and foreign policy, our national security policy, by public opinion polls. We’ve got to do what we sincerely...

MR. RUSSERT: But can you keep a country at war that doesn’t want to be there?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: You can’t, and that’s why we need to form a bipartisan consensus for victory in Iraq, for success in Iraq, which is still attainable. And, and this is the, this is the great problem, the terrorists cannot defeat us on the battlefield in Iraq, but we can lose the war here at home if we don’t begin to be bipartisan about it and, and regain the confidence and some hope for the American people. I do think that the president bringing in a new secretary of defense is a significant move which will now reopen the discussion with the American people, with our allies, with the American military, and I, and I hope it will lead to some progress in Iraq."

"...I'd enjoy sending our legions of gun control advocates into the midst of Sadr City. I'd bet they would either abandon their advocacy immediately and take up arms..."
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there is the whole issue of disarming the militias whether with Sadr in Iraq or with Hezbollah in Lebanon. i'm not sure how to reconcile this with our own tradition of a well armed militia being necessary, the people have the right to bear arms. it may be less a matter of disarming (except for IEDs, mortars, rockets, etc) than of disbanding the unauthorized militias and gaining their loyalty to abide by the laws of the country passed by their duly elected representatives. if the latter is accomplished, having arms can be a check against despotism, especially when they are part of sanctioned militias or national guard. even there, however, "a tradition of don't tread on me" goes back to our earliest founding, and I don't think we expect people in Iraq and Lebanon to give up all their guns if for no other reason than there is a criminal element which always must be contended with.

"We, you and I alike, speculate. We tend to agree the road to to take may include more of of military forces on the ground before we can attain less."
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It looks like former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen is recommending something along the same lines as Lieberman (this from Late Edition on CNN this morning http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0611/12/le.01.html ):

"BLITZER: Do you see Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq, having the guts to take that step in clamping down, especially on his fellow Shiite militias, the ones that are loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, this young, radical Shiite cleric who is clearly pushing members of parliament that he is aligned with toward Nouri al-Maliki?

COHEN: I don't think he has any choice but to try and crack down. The loss of 100 citizens a day or more is not a prescription for success, as far as his political survivability is concerned.

I don't think any government can survive with that level of violence continuing on a day-to-day basis.

So I think, if he has the indication of support coming from the Baker commission, supported by a consensus in Congress, that they're prepared to continue for some time in the future, that has to be tied to his willingness to take the hard steps.

Absent that, I think you'll see Larry Korb and others' view prevail and simply start to disengage."

"...my gut instinct would be to have our unbridled forces move against Sadr and see by commitment which side the new Iraqi government takes. Their deeds, not words will identify them as friend or foe."

most recently the prime minister sided against us by forcing us to take down checkpoints as i understand it around Sadr city in looking for one of our troops, i.e. he was not strong enough or if playing a double game did not want to move that strongly against Sadr. from an Iraqi standpoint, they have to be worried about America's commitment (especially during our election season) while we are asking them to put the lives of their families on the line.

the jihadiis think in terms of generations, not a few years. unless the PM thinks we will be committed to see this thing through to success, he cannot gain the support he needs from his own internal allies to make the ultimate sacrifice. so a short term "test" absent this longer and larger commitment of each to the other imho will not tell us if it is win-able. If we get the PM's commitment and we in turn give ours and then together move against Sadr, that would be something else again in what we might learn. If we then found the PM was misleading us, our commitment would no longer be binding.

I'm assuming the PM has felt the current level of America troops was not going to be enough given the size of the challenge in moving against his radical wing, and he has shown ambivalence as a result. A seize and hold force on our part and a full commitment to move against their radical wing on their part hopefully can put this over the top. But it has to start with the PM's commitment in word and deed based upon in turn our commitment to his commitment which then allows him to make the full commitment which he would be powerless to do otherwise (my speculation).

"Victory must be made the paramount determining factor under which our military is withdrawn."
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we have to find out first which side the Iraqi gov't is finally on, thus the necessity of gaining their commitment to move against Sadr's militia without which we are put into an impossible situation of trying to stop a shiite/sunni civil war. the Iraqi prime minister has to know that if we leave their government will collapse, but if it turns out he is playing a double game all along in really throwing it to the Shiite radicals, he would then not care. we need to know that now. on the other hand, the Iraqi prime minister cannot fully commit to moving against Sadr unless he knows we will stay and fight until we/they win and can communicate that commitment to his allies so they walk out on that limb with us from what i can tell.

No, the plan will be for Democrasts to give the illusion of having "talks"...
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Lieberman would seem more likely to vote with the Republicans on this issue however.

will this be the plan: commit to sending in enough troops to seize and hold in return for a commitment by the Iraqi government to disarm the militias and to bring more Sunnis into the national unity government?

(Or will the Baker-Hamilton plan be different?)