The Blue State

No one wants to work in Baghdad

It appears that the State Department is having a difficult time trying to get people to work at the new US Embassy in Baghdad.  Next week, if the positions aren't filled, a number of diplomats will be forced to serve there:

Four days before a deadline for Foreign Service officers to volunteer to go to Iraq  or face the prospect of being ordered there, the State Department  notified employees yesterday that "about half" of 48 open assignments there for next year have been filled.

"This reduces but does not eliminate the possibility that directed assignments may be necessary," Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte wrote in an e-mailed update. Filling the remaining jobs is still "theDepartment's priority," he said, adding that he is optimistic that morewill volunteer.

Amid yesterday's report about how the State Department is in disarray.

The hundreds of millions that we put into this embassy illustrates the neoconservative vision of a permanent American presence in Iraq.

Democrats testing Iraq withdrawal bill again

With a record percentage of the public opposing the war, House Democrats are bringing the Iraq withdrawal bill up yet again -- and again, although it will pass, don't expect the measure to get anywhere in the Senate.  Even if it does, expect a quick veto:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced the bill callingfor the immediate withdrawal of troops at a Thursday press conference,saying its language will parallel the Iraq supplemental spending billthat President Bush vetoed in May.

It would require withdrawal to begin immediately on passage, with a goal of completing the withdrawal in a year.

Thebill will also veer into the debate on torturing those suspected ofterrorism by setting into law the rules in the Army Field Manual, whichdoes not allow torture. That would ban intelligence agencies, such asthe CIA, from using controversial practices like waterboarding, atechnique that simulates drowning.

Pelosi gave no indicationthat she expected the measure to fare better than previous Iraqwithdrawal bills, which have either been vetoed by President Bush orhave not even passed the Senate.

And once again, after it gets stalled in the Senate or vetoed by Bush, Democrats will forget about it for another three months and try again.  How about some spine for a change?  They need to bring this bill up each day in both Houses of Congress, forcing Republicans to cast as many votes as possible on it.  Then in 2008, during a number of contested Senate battles, the Democratic challengers can say, "Senator X over here voted 125 times to keep the Iraq war going."

Spreading democracy, or exporting K-Street?

Until now, few among the traditional press have mustered up the courage to ask what we are truly exporting abroad?  Is it genuine democracy?  Or is it someone's sick and twisted version of what democracy means to them?

One thing is for sure: if Robert Blackwill has his way, Baghdad will be the new K-Street:

In the spring of 2004, Robert D. Blackwill, then the influential Iraq director on the National Security Council, pushed hard to make Ayad Allawi , a tough, secular Shiite with close ties to the Central Intelligence Agency , the interim prime minister of Iraq.

Mr. Blackwill’s efforts worked. For the next 10 months, until Mr.Allawi’s party lost in the Iraqi elections, he was the first primeminister of the newly sovereign nation — America’s man in Baghdad.

Now,a little more than three years later, Mr. Blackwill is back in the samebusiness: pushing hard to make Mr. Allawi prime minister of Iraq again.But this time, Mr. Blackwill’s powerful lobbying firm, Barbour Griffith& Rogers, is receiving $300,000 from Mr. Allawi for his work.

It took Washington 218 years before it was completely taken over by lobbyists.  Thanks to Blackwill, if Allawi gets elected, the "democracy" in Baghdad will take less than three.

There is a clear difference between representative democracy and cronyism.

US reliance on contractors quadrupled over last four years

War is profitable, and the State Department is making it happen.

Over the past four years, the amount of money the State Department paysto private security and law enforcement contractors has soared tonearly $4 billion a year from $1 billion, administration officials saidTuesday, but they said that the department had added few new officialsto oversee the contracts.

It was the first time that the administration had outlined theballooning scope of the contracts, and it provided a new indication ofhow the State Department’s efforts to monitor private companies had notkept pace. Auditors and outside exerts say the results have been vastcost overruns, poor contract performance and, in some cases, violencethat has so far gone unpunished.

It's like a two-for-one deal for the neocons.  By not reinstating the draft to provide for the needed security, they keep the American public detached from the war.  By getting contractors to do the job instead, money is to be made, and lawmakers are lobbied by those companies to keep the war going to the President's liking.

State Department allowing contractors to run amok

The State Department is tasked with the job of overseeing and auditing the work of private contractors in Iraq.  But according to an internal report recently submitted to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, her department is not performing sufficient oversight of contractors such as Blackwater and DynCorp:

A State Department review of its own security practices in Iraqassails the department for poor coordination, communication, oversightand accountability involving armed security companies like Blackwater USA ,according to people who have been briefed on the report. In addition toBlackwater, the State Department’s two other security contractors inIraq are DynCorp International and Triple Canopy.

At the sametime, a government audit expected to be released Tuesday says thatrecords documenting the work of DynCorp, the State Department’s largestcontractor, are in such disarray that the department cannot say“specifically what it received” for most of the $1.2 billion it haspaid the company since 2004 to train the police officers in Iraq.

...in presenting its recommendations to Ms. Rice in a 45-minute briefingon Monday, the four-member panel found serious fault with virtuallyevery aspect of the department’s security practices, especially in andaround Baghdad, where Blackwater has responsibility.

So much for oversight.  Remember, Blackwater is a company that may have committed tax evasion.  Yet, Condoleezza Rice's State Department just sits there and allows companies like Blackwater to do whatever they want.

Inspector General: Little political progress in iraq

You can put all the soldiers you want into a defined region, force the insurgents to flee and claim short-term military progress.  In the end though, stabilizing a mess like the one in Iraq ultimately comes down to political progress.  According to the Inspector General, our diplomatic attempts there are producing little positive effect:

Attempts by American-led reconstruction teams to forge politicalreconciliation, foster economic growth and build an effective policeforce and court system in Iraq have failed to show significant progress in nearly every one of thenation’s provincial regions and in the capital, a federal oversightagency reported on Thursday.

The report, by the Office of the Special Inspector General for IraqReconstruction, comes as the United States tries to take advantage of adrop in overall violence to create a functioning government here.

And once again, poor planning was at fault.  We spent $1.9 billion on these reconstruction planning teams, even though they did not set a clear strategy for how to carry out their objectives:

A central finding of the report, Mr. Bowen said in his testimony, wasthat even with 32 of the teams, called provincial reconstruction teams,or P.R.T.’s, now deployed around the country at a cost of $1.9 billionas of August, the program still has not developed concrete methods tomeasure the effects of the teams on progress in the country.

To read all the other reports by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, go here.

Victory in Iraq? If so, let's leave

The news that the US may have dealt a crushing blow to al Qaeda in Iraq only emboldens people like John McCain and George W. Bush, who favor the current troop surge strategy.  But if it's true, we have to ask ourselves, "If we've disabled al Qaeda in Iraq, why are we still there?"

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhapsirreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading somegenerals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which theBush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S.adversary in Iraq.

Are we in Iraq to fight al Qaeda, or are we there to fight locals who have been there for more than one-thousand years?  If the former is true, with al Qaeda gone, maybe it's time we get out and let the Iraqi people decide what to do.

Ret General: At least four more years in Iraq

This week, retired General Ricardo Sanchez addressed the Senate.  And holding true to form, he became yet another Administration official to wait until they retired to tell the truth about the war:

A former top US military commander in Iraq said the current WhiteHouse strategy in Iraq will not achieve victory in thefour-and-a-half-year war, which he described as "a nightmare with noend in sight" in a hard-hitting speech.

In the bluntest assessment of Iraq by a former senior Pentagon officialyet, retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez also lambasted USpolitical leaders as "incompetent," "inept," "derelict in theperformance of their duty" and suggested they would have beencourt-martialed had they been members of the US military.

"There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end insight," Sanchez said on Friday, addressing military correspondents inArlington, Virginia.

Thanks for the heads-up, and thanks for telling us now.  Still though, by all accounts, that could be an understatement.  Others are saying the war could last another ten years.

Iraqis sue Blackwater

The family of an Iraqi that was killed in the Blackwater shootout last month is taking the company to court -- a US court:

A wounded survivor and relatives of three people killed on Sept. 16 when employees of the private security company Blackwater USA  opened fire on Iraqis in Baghdad sued the firm in an American court on Thursday.      

TheCenter for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group, said it filedthe suit, which charges that Blackwater and its affiliates violatedUnited States law in committing “extrajudicial killings and war crimes.”

Meanwhile over in Afghanistan, authorities have shut down two private security firms.  According to the AP, "some suspected of murder and robbery."

Barack Obama right all along

No one can take this away from him.  He was right then, and right today.  In 2002, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd all bowed to political pressure.  Since then, only Edwards and Dodd have corrected themselves.

Is this race about experience or is it about judgment?  Or, better yet, is it about which candidates have the experience of consistently showning good judgment?