Paul Krugman: A Surge, and Then a Stab

Paul Krugman says if you follow the money, it will lead to the truth:

A Surge, and Then a Stab, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: To understand what’s really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed.

Back in January, announcing his plan to send more troops to Iraq, President Bush declared that ... “...Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.”...

Two-thirds of Iraq’s GDP and almost all its government revenue come from the oil sector. Without an agreed system for sharing oil revenues, there is no Iraq, just ... armed gangs fighting for control of resources.

Well, the legislation Mr. Bush promised never materialized, and on Wednesday attempts to arrive at a compromise oil law collapsed.

What’s particularly revealing is the cause of the breakdown..., a Kurdish ... provincial government ... production-sharing deal with the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas ... seems to have been the last straw.

Now here’s the thing: Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Mr. Bush. More than that, Mr. Hunt is a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body... By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds.., he’s essentially betting ... against the survival of Iraq...

The smart money, then, knows ... that the war is lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia. And I suspect that most people in the Bush administration — maybe even Mr. Bush himself — know this, too.

After all, if the administration had any real hope..., officials would be making an all-out effort to get the government ... to start delivering on some of those benchmarks, perhaps using the threat that Congress would cut off funds otherwise. Instead, the Bushies are making excuses, minimizing Iraqi failures, moving goal posts and, in general, giving the Maliki government no incentive to do anything differently.

And for that matter, if the administration had any real intention of turning public opinion around, as opposed to merely shoring up the base enough to keep Republican members of Congress on board, it would have sent Gen. David Petraeus ... to as many news media outlets as possible — not granted an exclusive appearance to Fox News...

All in all, Mr. Bush’s actions have ... been what you’d expect from a man whose plan is to keep up appearances for the next 16 months, never mind the cost in lives and money, then shift the blame for failure onto his successor.

In fact, that’s my interpretation of something that startled many people: Mr. Bush’s decision last month, after spending years denying that the Iraq war had anything in common with Vietnam, to suddenly embrace the parallel.

Here’s how I see it: At this point, Mr. Bush is looking forward to replaying the political aftermath of Vietnam, in which the right wing eventually achieved a rewriting of history that would have made George Orwell proud, convincing millions of Americans that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but were stabbed in the back by the peaceniks back home.

What all this means is that the next president, even as he or she tries to extricate us from Iraq — and prevent the country’s breakup from turning into a regional war — will have to deal with constant sniping from the people who lied us into an unnecessary war, then lost the war they started, but will never, ever, take responsibility for their failures.

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Previous (9/10) column: Paul Krugman: Where’s My Trickle?
Next (9/17) column: Paul Krugman: Sad Alan’s Lament

Comments

[ms]

Spot on. What else can I say?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/opinion/14fri1.html

September 14, 2007

No Exit, No Strategy

This was the week in which Americans hoped they would get straight talk and clear thinking on Iraq. What they got was two exhausting days of Congressional testimony by the American military commander, hours of news conferences and interviews, clouds of cut-to-order statistics and a speech from the Oval Office — and none of it either straight or clear.

The White House insisted that President Bush had consulted intensively with his generals and adapted to changing circumstances. But no amount of smoke could obscure the truth: Mr. Bush has no strategy to end his disastrous war and no strategy for containing the chaos he unleashed.

Last night’s speech could have been given any day in the last four years — and was delivered a half-dozen times already. Despite Mr. Bush’s claim that he was offering a way for all Americans to “come together” on Iraq, he offered the same divisive policies — repackaged this time with the Orwellian slogan “return on success.”

Mr. Bush’s claim that things were going so well in Iraq that he could “accept” his generals’ recommendation for a “drawdown” of forces was a carnival barker’s come-on. The Army cannot sustain the 30,000 extra troops Mr. Bush sent to Iraq beyond mid-2008 without serious damage to its fighting ability. From the start, the president said that the increase would be temporary. That’s why he called it a “surge.”

Before he spoke, Iraq’s brutal reality had debunked the claims of political and military success made by Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the ambassador in Baghdad. First, The Times reported that the only sliver of political progress — a tortuous compromise on sharing oil revenues — was evaporating. Then came news of the assassination of the Anbar tribal leader whose decision to fight alongside the Americans was cited by Mr. Bush as proof that the war’s tide was turning — even though it had nothing to do with the increase in forces.

Mr. Bush’s claims last night about how well the war is going are believable only if you use Pentagon numbers so obviously cooked that they call to mind the way Americans were duped into first supporting this war....

[Thomas More]

Krugman is right, what else can I say.

[ken melvin]

Thanks Paul Krugman.

[gordon]

In a way I hope Prof. Krugman is right. There is another possibility - war with Iran.

[Don Quijote]

In a way I hope Prof. Krugman is right. There is another possibility - war with Iran.

One does not prevent the other. As a matter of fact the breakup of Iraq is likely suck in the Iranians (and the Turks) giving Shrub and the evil one an excuse to invade Iran.

[Greymane]

Of course, Congress could develop a backbone and not pass a military funding bill.

[John]

Krugman as ever puts his finger on the spot. Bush's strategy as is clear to even the most stupid is to kick the can down the road, hope that something turns up over the next 16 months that he can claim as a success, and then pass the problem, probably to Hillary. The right wing machine will of course be sniping at every move she makes to get us out of this mess which is clearly the overwhelming desire of the country. The mystery to me in all this is why have the GOP signed on for this electoral death ride. It's only three months ago they were telling reporters that they were desperate to get Iraq off the table before 08 now they seem happy to keep it there.

[bakho]

Not only will they blame the peaceniks, they will blame the troops who come home instead of staying and dying in Iraq like Rambo would do. They blamed Kerry for getting wounded several times and coming home instead of dying in the jungles like Rambo. They blamed Al Gore for being an army journalist instead of picking up an M16 and long knives like Rambo. They blamed Max Cleland for getting his limbs blown off, instead of being Rambo and doing the impossible.

Of course, Bush and Cheney were blameless in Vietnam because Bush was only a National Guard who was prevented from his chance at being Rambo and Cheney who was too busy to be Rambo. However, if Bush and Cheney only would have been over there, they would have produced a Rambo-like victory.

[evagrius]

That "stabbed in the back" routine is getting a little tiresome.

It's especially tiresome when those who will be accused of stabbing in the back were the ones warning not to go there.

[Chris]

Krugman appears to assume that the next (Democrat) administration will get us out of Iraq. I have grave doubts about this. The fact that the Democrats have not really done anything so far to get us out (other than wring their hands and pretend) makes it unlikely that a Democrat President will do so. If the Democrats really wanted to put a stop to the war they would have done so while Bush was in power so "losing" the war would have been on his watch. When they come to power in 2008 they will find all sorts of reasons why we need to stay in Iraq. Not least the Viceregal Palace/embassy that we have built there. Plus "responsibility" to pacify, etc., etc., etc., etc. All sorts of reasons will be adduced, one after the other. Israel wants the US to make Iraq a US puppet state and that is what we will do.

[calmo]

Is there a better example/model of this administration's policy formation/implementation than this?: Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Mr. Bush. More than that, Mr. Hunt is a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body... By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds.., he’s essentially betting ... against the survival of Iraq
Is the Energy policy of this country as politicized as the media policy that ignores/buries this item so that journalists are left to discover "here's the thing:"?

[Thomas Shafovaloff]

With the Kurd/Hunt Oil contract, and the others that are not now public, will come the call to protect the corporate interests with a military presence for an extended period of time ....not to assist Iraq... but to protect access to Kurd oil. Those are the real interests the President has spoken about. We can always return to fighting the terrorists. After we have had the first shot at access to the oil, of course, we will invite France, Germany an others in for their drink at the trough. "Oil" will be more powerful than the next President and Bush is linking up his buddies to retain post-term power. Why do you think Bush Jr. and Sr. were on the boat with Putin? Hint...Total (France) got a 25% Arctic development contract from Russia and Chevro-Texaco was left out. Might be a good bet for "leaps." At the same time Bush Jr. was discussing his getting back to "investing" post-term and not making a sound about the Russian announcement that it owned the Arctic resources.

[S Brennan]

Krugman gets it,

It's all about 2012. The congressional Dems [and the two leading Democratic Presidential contenders] don't get it, they are actually supporting Republican aims.

Thank you Rahm Emanuel for your Profile in Cowardice. The Democratic leadership is a study in self-serving behavior.

[ilsm]

The war machine, finding a reason for it squandering US resources, and oil have always been the motives.

Mendacity!!

[im1dc]

I take issue with the comments above, not that Our Professor Krugman is correct but that lumping all Dems or all Republicans into two distinct camps is erroneous or useful.

Not all Dems think or vote alike nor do all Republicans.

Therefore the next president, likely a Dem, may or may not reflect a continuation of the corporate behavior of GWBush.

Your vote and participation are vitally important to the direction the USA will take January 9th, 2009.

IMO, Al Gore, Edwards and to a lesser extent Barrack Obama represent a break with the Clintonista wing of the Dems.

And, imo, they would likely quickly redirect USA policy to oppose further Israeli foreign policy goals.

If I am correct then a break from the Clinton wing and redirecting and realigning US ME Foreign Policy would mean less USA involvement in war, continuing free trade and more money spent on social issues at home but no improvement in the ME.

Therefore, the only question one needs to ask and answer when thinking about the ME is whether or not it is possible or probable that a continued American Military presence in the ME (IRAQ) will bring peace and stability to the region sufficient to protect the USA.

According to Gen. Petraeus the answer is that it is not known whether US military presence in IRAQ makes the USA safe or safer, i.e., prevents threats and harm to the homeland.

From that answer it is obvious what the USA ought to do with our troops, imho.

But ours is a Democratic Republic and we each make that judgment independently on the 2nd Tuesday of November every 4 years, the next falling in 2008.

I'd like to think my fellow Americans have learned the lesson of ideologues and demagogues but I have severe doubts about it.

[gordon]

In a recent post, Prof. J.Quiggin asks why the US Congress doesn't just cut off the money. Any answers?

[ilsm]

All congress persons support the jobs program aspect of the war machine.

Without the occupation the war machine as a growing concern declines.

You can be for peace but if it is going to cost your district jobs you support the jobs.

So, to be for peace maybe we demand they just cut checks to the industry and bring the kids home.

Bankrupt morally, but it gets them re-elected.

Maybe not this time.

[gordon]

Well, ilsm, Congress will have the opportunity soon, if it's not already before them.

[ilsm]

Once a flow of money starts, in congress, it is difficult to stop.

The $50B will be spent because the congress and president are now supporting an army of camp followers who without the occupation would be onthe "street".

Cannot have that.

For every dollar spent on a bullet fired or a hot meal served by KBR, 10 or more dollars are expended in "support".

We are, after all, paying the guys who send money to K Street.

The only bill worthwhile is one which would have the congress authorize the expenditure of soldiers' lives.

That is never going to be put forward.

When the base closures were debated, money in districts was the only issue. Not one of the clsoed facilities threatened anything other than the jobs corporate welfare programs.

Same for each authorization/appropriation cycle. It is all about transfers of taxpayers' money to deserving communities.

It is all about selling Fords and toyotas around the military industrial complex.

Pork.

If you are on any military base between now and 30 Sep you will see alll kinds of new stuff, cannot turn abck money to be used for deficit reduction or maybe a tax cut.

[anne]

Notice the date, and the care in presentation:

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F30D17F63B5A0C748CDDA00894DA404482

September 7, 2002

Bush Aides Set Strategy to Sell Policy on Iraq
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

White House officials said today that the administration was following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein.

The rollout of the strategy this week, they said, was planned long before President Bush's vacation in Texas last month. It was not hastily concocted, they insisted, after some prominent Republicans began to raise doubts about moving against Mr. Hussein and administration officials made contradictory statements about the need for weapons inspectors in Iraq.

The White House decided, they said, that even with the appearance of disarray it was still more advantageous to wait until after Labor Day to kick off their plan.

''From a marketing point of view,'' said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff who is coordinating the effort, ''you don't introduce new products in August.''

A centerpiece of the strategy, White House officials said, is to use Mr. Bush's speech on Sept. 11 to help move Americans toward support of action against Iraq, which could come early next year.

''Everybody felt that was a moment that Americans wanted to hear from him,'' said Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political adviser. Sept. 11 will also be a time, Mr. Rove said, ''to seize the moment to make clear what lies ahead.''

Toward that end, in June the White House picked Ellis Island in New York Harbor, not Governors Island, as the place where President Bush is to deliver his Sept. 11 address to the nation. Both spots were considered, White House advisers said, but the television camera angles were more spectacular from Ellis Island, where the Statue of Liberty will be seen aglow behind Mr. Bush.

''We had made a decision that this would be a compelling story either place,'' said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. ''We sent a team out to go and look and they said, 'This is a better shot,' and we said O.K.'' ...

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F30D17F63B5A0C748CDDA00894DA404482

September 7, 2002

In the same way, Mr. Bush's Sept. 11 remarks, about 10 minutes in length, are to serve as the emotional precursor for a tougher speech about Iraq that the president is to deliver to the United Nations General Assembly the following day....

The Sept. 12 speech, a half hour or less in length, was written by a team that included Mr. Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson; Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser; Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld; and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. The Sept. 11 speech was written by Mr. Gerson and Karen P. Hughes, the former counselor who still closely advises Mr. Bush from Texas.

On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, the administration has begun a full-scale lobbying campaign. On the day after Labor Day, the opening of Washington's political new year, Mr. Bush summoned a skeptical Congressional leadership to the White House to enlist their support for action against Iraq. The next day two dozen senators from both parties were invited to the Pentagon to discuss Iraqi policy with Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.

Later in the day, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Tenet gave evidence on Iraqi military capacity to the top four Congressional leaders, some of whom have said the administration has provided no proof that the threat from Mr. Hussein is imminent.

''That was thought of as a necessary step, as was having the leadership down, as was the necessity of providing a higher level of intelligence,'' Mr. Rove said.

Another senior administration official said the White House lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill would include not-so-subtle mentions of the regrets experienced by those lawmakers, like former Senator Sam Nunn, who did not vote for the 1991 ''use of force'' resolution before the Persian Gulf war.

The White House wants a resolution approving the use of force in Iraq to be approved in the next four to five weeks.

''In the end it will be difficult for someone to vote against it,'' the administration official said.

White House officials said they began planning more intensively for the Iraq rollout in July....

[anne]

Remember that Mark Thoma posted a remarkable account of what lobbying of Congress to support a war in Iraq amounte to:

http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070831/NEWS/708310314/-1/NEWS

August 31, 2007

Kanjorski described how, prior to the vote, he and several other representatives were ushered into the Roosevelt Room in the White House and given a 90-minute, highly classified briefing by then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenant.

"They told us all kind of things. That we were under a threat and their information was as complete as possible and they (Iraq) had weapons of mass destruction" he said.

Kanjorski was not terribly impressed with the briefing. Within two hours he received a call from the White House, asking if he had any further questions. Kanjorski said that to enter into a preemptive war, he had to be convinced the threat is imminent. And he wasn't convinced.

So he was asked to return for another briefing the next morning.

In it, he was shown large pictures of a plane "that looked like a mosquito." Kanjorski was told these were called UAVs — unmanned aeronautical vehicles, the highest black-box weapons we have, and they (the Iraqis) have 1,000 of them, and they can deliver weapons of mass destruction. That included a plane that could spray chemical and biological materials....

[anne]

http://www.timesleader.com/news/20070829_29-KANJO_ART.html

August 29, 2007

Kanjorski took the time to tell the people how he was convinced to support the war effort back in 2002. He said he was called to a meeting at the White House along with several other U.S. representatives and senators.

He said he left the meeting unsure of how he would vote, and he told the White House he was leaning toward voting against the war. "I then was invited to return to the White House the next day," Kanjorski said.

He said the group was shown photographs of stored weapons of mass destruction. He said he saw photos of UAVs – Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – which are used to transport chemicals and/or hydrogen bombs. He said he was told that the Iraqis had a thousand of these and they were intending to bring them into the U.S. via both coasts, and more than 250 U.S. cities were to be targeted....

[anne]

There were months of careful planning in summer 2002 to present a persuasive case, an emotionally persuasive case for war in Iraq to the public and Congress and United Nations. There was full participation ranging from Colin Powell at State and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to Defense to the CIA.

All the imagery of September 11 and New York, even to the Statue of Liberty was to be used. There was a rough tough address to the United Nations to follow the emotional appeal of September 11. Congressional representatives were shown evidence of how threatening to America Iraq was, and shown how perilous voting against a resolution supporting war could be.

The United Nations and weapons inspectors alone were a limiting factor to going to war from the summer of 2002 on, and both were increasingly ignored by the Administration and Congress and the public.

[anne]

The emotional persuasiveness of the Aministration extended through the Administration from the President to Colin Powell and on. The Washington Post in early 2003 was all but calling the International Atomic Energy Agency director a traitor for not finding an Iraqi nuclear weapons program that did not exist. Powell could have shown blasnk slides to the United Nations, and the slides were comically meaningless, and still the American media would have cried war; happily cried war.

So Congressional representatives are told of a fleet of the highest technology hydrogen bomb carrying drones to be launched at hundres of American cities and while a New York Times would examine and call the Iraqi drone a farce while weapons inspectors found no drone threat. Powell would criticize the weapons inspectors for neglecting drone-dread, but who cared?

[anne]

Why we are where we are, to this day....

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F30D17F63B5A0C748CDDA00894DA404482

September 7, 2002

Bush Aides Set Strategy to Sell Policy on Iraq
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

White House officials said today that the administration was following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein.

The rollout of the strategy this week, they said, was planned long before President Bush's vacation in Texas last month....

The White House decided, they said, that even with the appearance of disarray it was still more advantageous to wait until after Labor Day to kick off their plan.

''From a marketing point of view,'' said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff who is coordinating the effort, ''you don't introduce new products in August.''

A centerpiece of the strategy, White House officials said, is to use Mr. Bush's speech on Sept. 11 to help move Americans toward support of action against Iraq, which could come early next year.

''Everybody felt that was a moment that Americans wanted to hear from him,'' said Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political adviser. Sept. 11 will also be a time, Mr. Rove said, ''to seize the moment to make clear what lies ahead.''

Toward that end, in June the White House picked Ellis Island in New York Harbor, not Governors Island, as the place where President Bush is to deliver his Sept. 11 address to the nation. Both spots were considered, White House advisers said, but the television camera angles were more spectacular from Ellis Island, where the Statue of Liberty will be seen aglow behind Mr. Bush....

[James Killus]

im1dc says...

Not all Dems think or vote alike nor do all Republicans.

Please tell me who these Republican paragons may be. I have tried to find one who has actually gone against the current Administration on some matter of substance, and the only ones I can find are those who think Bush insufficiently harsh on immigration. On matters pertaining to Iraq, the lockstep is worse than an old Soviet Army parade.

[Tom Womack]

Was there ever a US belief that Yugoslavia should be encouraged to continue to exist as a single state? Slovenia was holding separate elections in April 1990 and a referendum on independence in December 1990, and was independent after a very short war in July 1991; if that's the model Iraqi Kurdistan and the Islamic Republic of Southern Iraq follow, we should all be happy.

Has the UN done the planning needed to arrange that the movement of peoples once Iraq splits up is more like the expulsion of Polish Germans in 1946 than like the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia in 1991? I somehow don't see US marines accompanying convoys of UN trucks filled with unhappy Sunni over the border into Anbar.

[Chris]

Gordon: Congress has not cut off the money because it does not want to end the US presence in Iraq. Quite simple. The Democratic Congress obeys the wishes of Israel re Middle East policy just as much as the GOP Congress did and Israel doesn't want the US to leave Iraq. What it wants is the US to go further and attack Iran in addition. Proof? Easy. When Pelosi introduced a bill that would have compelled Bush to get Congressional approval before attacking Iran, the Israel Lobby gave her a call telling her to withdraw the bill and she did. Pat Buchanan has the details.

[anne]

"Has the UN done the planning needed to arrange that the movement of peoples once Iraq splits up is more like the expulsion of Polish Germans in 1946 than like the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia in 1991?"

Astonishing question. By September 2007 the ethnic splits in Iraq had already been largely and by force accomplished, with more than 4 million Iraqis driven from country and homes. The ethnic splits are continuing though more slowly for the numbers previously displaced are so large.