Legislating Leadership on Iraq

NY Times Editorial
29 Mar 2007

This week it was the Senate’s turn. Like the House last week and the voters last November, the Senate made clear Tuesday that Americans expect to see the disaster in Iraq brought to an early and responsible end.

President Bush’s reaction was instantaneous, familiar in its contempt for views that do not follow his in lockstep, and depressing in its lack of contact with reality. Mr. Bush threatened to veto the spending bill needed for this year’s military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan rather than accept language calling for most American combat troops to be withdrawn from Iraq sometime next year. Nor was there any hint of his own prescription for ending this war.

Mr. Bush, his advisers and his loyalists on Capitol Hill threw up a cloud of propaganda aimed at making Americans think there is a debate going on between those who want to win the war and those who want to lose. That’s nonsense, and the White House knows it. Mr. Bush’s inadequate response was a cynical attempt to portray the Democrats and moderate Republicans who voted with the majority as indifferent to the political future of Iraq and to the morale of American soldiers stationed there.

In truth, it is Mr. Bush who has been defaulting on his own responsibilities in both areas, and that is why Congress needed to add the language he now objects to so vehemently.

Instead, he has handed a blank check to a government of divisive Iraqi politicians adept at paying lip service to national reconciliation while working hard to undermine it in practice. And he continues to ratchet up an already unsustainable troop escalation that will require sending exhausted units back into combat and compromise the Army’s ability to maintain high-quality forces ready to respond to crises around the world.

Most Senate Republicans still stuck with Mr. Bush and his policies Tuesday. But their arguments are hollow. Senator John McCain of Arizona gibed that the bill should have been labeled the “Date Certain for Surrender Act.” Yet Mr. McCain himself co-sponsored a similar resolution in 1994 calling for withdrawal of American troops from Haiti “as soon as possible.” Other Republicans leading the attack on Democrats, like Senator John Warner of Virginia, also voted in favor of withdrawal from Haiti.

Victory is no longer an option in Iraq, if it ever was. The only rational objective left is to responsibly organize America’s inevitable exit. That is exactly what Mr. Bush is not doing and what the House and Senate bills try to do.

The House version imposes benchmarks for political progress on the Iraqi government and requires the Bush administration to enforce them as a condition for continued financing of most American combat operations. If those conditions are met, it gives the Pentagon 18 months to complete the transition from combat operations to training and antiterrorist missions. The Senate version contains a nonbinding 12-month withdrawal timetable.

Both dates are far enough off to allow for a responsible exit. Even more important is the effort to press Mr. Bush to use remaining American leverage to nudge the Iraqi government away from its worst instincts. Passing new laws on pooling oil revenues, easing restrictions on former Baath Party members and reducing the frightening power that Shiite militias now wield in local and national police forces is fine. But Congress must also make sure the White House insists that legal changes are translated into a qualitatively different reality on the ground. That is the only course that can possibly rescue Iraq from civil war.

That pressure will be forthcoming only if Congress insists on it. Otherwise, Mr. Bush will continue to settle for half-hearted assurances from Baghdad and try to quash any thinking about a responsible exit strategy until he leaves office in 22 months.

We Can't Win If We Don't Know the Enemy

FIGHTING BLIND

By Bruce Hoffman
Washingtonpost, March 25, 2007; Page B05

From the moment that President Bush declared a "war on terrorism" and then led the country to war in Iraq, the United States has utterly failed to fulfill the timeless admonition to "know your enemy." This failure helps explain why we are so far from winning in Iraq or more broadly against al-Qaeda and its allies.

"If you know the enemy and know yourself," China's Sun Tzu famously advised in the 6th century B.C., "you need not fear the results of a hundred battles." But we have plenty to fear, because five and a half years into this struggle we lack a thorough understanding of our enemies: their motivation and mind-set, their decision-making processes and command-and-control relationships, their organizational dynamics and their ideological appeal.

Military tactics are doomed to failure when they are applied without a sophisticated knowledge of the enemy being pursued -- of how that enemy thinks, and therefore how he is likely to respond or adapt to the tactics being used against him. Without knowing our enemies we cannot successfully penetrate their cells; we cannot sow discord and dissension in their ranks to weaken them from within; we cannot think like them to anticipate how they may act in a variety of situations. This means that we cannot conduct an effective counterterrorist strategy by preventing or deterring terrorist attacks, or an effective counterinsurgency strategy by winning the support of the population and then dismantling the insurgent infrastructure.

Until we really know our enemies, America will remain on the defensive, inherently reactive rather than proactive. We will continually be surprised by our enemies' tactics and maneuvers. We will not prevail.

If we knew our enemy, we might not have been surprised by al-Qaeda's resurrection in Pakistan -- literally under the noses of our forces right across the border in Afghanistan. We might also have detected the warning signs of the Taliban resurgence long before the spring offensive now believed to be imminent. And we might have better understood why last year's killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had only an ephemeral effect on al-Qaeda in Iraq's capacity for continued violence and bloodshed.

This is not the first time the United States has faced an enigmatic, unseen enemy motivated by a powerful ideology that used terrorism and insurgency to advance its cause and rally popular support. That was also our situation in the Vietnam War. Though we lost in Vietnam, we did make a serious attempt to understand the enemy. Intelligence agencies used interviews with captured Vietcong soldiers and defectors, plus communist documents that were found or captured, first to figure out who the enemy was and how they operated, then to try to devise political, social and economic programs that would undermine the Vietcong and strengthen the South Vietnamese government that the United States supported. Studying the enemy was big business.

It wasn't enough, because then, as now, our conventional military commanders remained impatiently fixated on strategies of attrition and decapitation. They dismissed tactics that were based more on guile than firepower, hoping for quick results and avoiding tactics that would have taken time to work but in the long run might have been effective.

The United States is making no comparable effort today to study and understand either the terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda or the insurgents in Iraq. Our counterterrorism and counterinsurgency strategies appear weighted toward a "kill or capture" approach targeting individual bad guys. This reflects the conventional military's commitment to "enemy centric" warfare. Killing bad guys is easy compared with the "population centric" approach so important to effectively countering terrorism and insurgency. But our tactics are ineffectual, because they are based on the erroneous assumption that al-Qaeda and its allies or the insurgents in Iraq are organized, centralized armed forces that will respond to traditional definitions of victory and defeat. Our tactics presume that killing or capturing enough bad guys will end global terrorism and the Iraqi insurgency.

So the U.S. military and our intelligence community are focused on hunting down militant leaders, killing terrorists and insurgents, and protecting U.S. forces -- all laudable goals, but inadequate ones. Decapitation strategies have rarely worked against terrorist or insurgent campaigns. Occupations such as ours in Iraq that anger the local populace are similarly ineffective. Our fundamental problem is that al-Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgents appear to have little difficulty attracting new recruits to continue their fights against us.

The Pentagon has made a conceptual breakthrough by recognizing recently that we are engaged in "a long war" likely to continue for a decade or more. This acknowledgement provides a signal opportunity finally to begin to collect and analyze the information needed to truly know our enemy. We have to get serious about this right now, given the changes we see in the behavior and operations of our adversaries, who are much too elusive and complicated to be vanquished by mere decapitation.

Successfully countering terrorism and insurgency cannot be an exclusively military endeavor. It requires parallel political, social, economic and ideological activities. All of these need to be integrated in a systematic approach that is operationally dynamic -- able to quickly identify changes in our enemies' tactics, targeting and recruitment patterns and to respond effectively to them. We need to be able to exploit networks, the constellations of individual relationships that define terrorism and insurgency today, with the ease and facility that our enemies routinely do. We must master "soft" skills such as negotiations, psychology, social and cultural anthropology, foreign area studies, complexity theory and systems management. All are essential to operating effectively in the ambiguous and dynamic environment in which irregular adversaries circulate.

We cannot prevail without breaking the cycle of terrorist and insurgent recruitment and replenishment that have sustained both al-Qaeda's continued campaign and the ongoing conflict in Iraq. So psychological operations that seek to persuade insurgents and terrorists to surrender are particularly important. These proven, cost-effective measures can pay vast intelligence dividends if pursued with shrewdness and persistence. If, as the rule of thumb says, it requires 10 soldiers to successfully neutralize every terrorist or guerrilla, then one defector can reduce by 10 the number of Americans needed on a particular protracted mission. Yes, such efforts require time to succeed, but once launched they can have side benefits. In Vietnam, the suspicion and mistrust that we managed to create within the Vietcong forced our enemies to expend more time and energy watching their backs and monitoring their comrades. If we can do that now, insurgents and terrorists will have less time and energy to plan attacks against us.

The key to success will be to combine the most utilitarian aspects of our formidable military forces with smart, sophisticated political and psychological efforts to know our enemy much better than we do today. We won't succeed unless we can think and plan ahead to address the threats likely to be posed by the terrorist and insurgent generation beyond the current one. And we cannot do that until we have figured out who these enemies are, what makes them tick, and what their strengths and vulnerabilities are. When we know those things, we can build a strategy and tactics based on empirical knowledge and analysis rather than on conjecture or wishful thinking. And we can win.

Bruce Hoffman is a professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and

a senior fellow at the U.S. Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Center. He is the author of "Inside Terrorism" (Columbia University Press).

Terrorized by 'War on Terror'

How a Three-Word Mantra Has Undermined America

By Zbigniew Brzezinski
Washingtonpost, March 25, 2007

The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.

The damage these three words have done -- a classic self-inflicted wound -- is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare -- political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants.

But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that "a nation at war" does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being "at war."

To justify the "war on terror," the administration has lately crafted a false historical narrative that could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By claiming that its war is similar to earlier U.S. struggles against Nazism and then Stalinism (while ignoring the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were first-rate military powers, a status al-Qaeda neither has nor can achieve), the administration could be preparing the case for war with Iran. Such war would then plunge America into a protracted conflict spanning Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and perhaps also Pakistan.

The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its bottle. It acquires a life of its own -- and can become demoralizing. America today is not the self-confident and determined nation that responded to Pearl Harbor; nor is it the America that heard from its leader, at another moment of crisis, the powerful words "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; nor is it the calm America that waged the Cold War with quiet persistence despite the knowledge that a real war could be initiated abruptly within minutes and prompt the death of 100 million Americans within just a few hours. We are now divided, uncertain and potentially very susceptible to panic in the event of another terrorist act in the United States itself.

That is the result of five years of almost continuous national brainwashing on the subject of terror, quite unlike the more muted reactions of several other nations (Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, to mention just a few) that also have suffered painful terrorist acts. In his latest justification for his war in Iraq, President Bush even claims absurdly that he has to continue waging it lest al-Qaeda cross the Atlantic to launch a war of terror here in the United States.

Such fear-mongering, reinforced by security entrepreneurs, the mass media and the entertainment industry, generates its own momentum. The terror entrepreneurs, usually described as experts on terrorism, are necessarily engaged in competition to justify their existence. Hence their task is to convince the public that it faces new threats. That puts a premium on the presentation of credible scenarios of ever-more-horrifying acts of violence, sometimes even with blueprints for their implementation.

That America has become insecure and more paranoid is hardly debatable. A recent study reported that in 2003, Congress identified 160 sites as potentially important national targets for would-be terrorists. With lobbyists weighing in, by the end of that year the list had grown to 1,849; by the end of 2004, to 28,360; by 2005, to 77,769. The national database of possible targets now has some 300,000 items in it, including the Sears Tower in Chicago and an Illinois Apple and Pork Festival.

Just last week, here in Washington, on my way to visit a journalistic office, I had to pass through one of the absurd "security checks" that have proliferated in almost all the privately owned office buildings in this capital -- and in New York City. A uniformed guard required me to fill out a form, show an I.D. and in this case explain in writing the purpose of my visit. Would a visiting terrorist indicate in writing that the purpose is "to blow up the building"? Would the guard be able to arrest such a self-confessing, would-be suicide bomber? To make matters more absurd, large department stores, with their crowds of shoppers, do not have any comparable procedures. Nor do concert halls or movie theaters. Yet such "security" procedures have become routine, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and further contributing to a siege mentality.

Government at every level has stimulated the paranoia. Consider, for example, the electronic billboards over interstate highways urging motorists to "Report Suspicious Activity" (drivers in turbans?). Some mass media have made their own contribution. The cable channels and some print media have found that horror scenarios attract audiences, while terror "experts" as "consultants" provide authenticity for the apocalyptic visions fed to the American public. Hence the proliferation of programs with bearded "terrorists" as the central villains. Their general effect is to reinforce the sense of the unknown but lurking danger that is said to increasingly threaten the lives of all Americans.

The entertainment industry has also jumped into the act. Hence the TV serials and films in which the evil characters have recognizable Arab features, sometimes highlighted by religious gestures, that exploit public anxiety and stimulate Islamophobia. Arab facial stereotypes, particularly in newspaper cartoons, have at times been rendered in a manner sadly reminiscent of the Nazi anti-Semitic campaigns. Lately, even some college student organizations have become involved in such propagation, apparently oblivious to the menacing connection between the stimulation of racial and religious hatreds and the unleashing of the unprecedented crimes of the Holocaust.

The atmosphere generated by the "war on terror" has encouraged legal and political harassment of Arab Americans (generally loyal Americans) for conduct that has not been unique to them. A case in point is the reported harassment of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for its attempts to emulate, not very successfully, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Some House Republicans recently described CAIR members as "terrorist apologists" who should not be allowed to use a Capitol meeting room for a panel discussion.

Social discrimination, for example toward Muslim air travelers, has also been its unintended byproduct. Not surprisingly, animus toward the United States even among Muslims otherwise not particularly concerned with the Middle East has intensified, while America's reputation as a leader in fostering constructive interracial and interreligious relations has suffered egregiously.

The record is even more troubling in the general area of civil rights. The culture of fear has bred intolerance, suspicion of foreigners and the adoption of legal procedures that undermine fundamental notions of justice. Innocent until proven guilty has been diluted if not undone, with some -- even U.S. citizens -- incarcerated for lengthy periods of time without effective and prompt access to due process. There is no known, hard evidence that such excess has prevented significant acts of terrorism, and convictions for would-be terrorists of any kind have been few and far between. Someday Americans will be as ashamed of this record as they now have become of the earlier instances in U.S. history of panic by the many prompting intolerance against the few.

In the meantime, the "war on terror" has gravely damaged the United States internationally. For Muslims, the similarity between the rough treatment of Iraqi civilians by the U.S. military and of the Palestinians by the Israelis has prompted a widespread sense of hostility toward the United States in general. It's not the "war on terror" that angers Muslims watching the news on television, it's the victimization of Arab civilians. And the resentment is not limited to Muslims. A recent BBC poll of 28,000 people in 27 countries that sought respondents' assessments of the role of states in international affairs resulted in Israel, Iran and the United States being rated (in that order) as the states with "the most negative influence on the world." Alas, for some that is the new axis of evil!

The events of 9/11 could have resulted in a truly global solidarity against extremism and terrorism. A global alliance of moderates, including Muslim ones, engaged in a deliberate campaign both to extirpate the specific terrorist networks and to terminate the political conflicts that spawn terrorism would have been more productive than a demagogically proclaimed and largely solitary U.S. "war on terror" against "Islamo-fascism." Only a confidently determined and reasonable America can promote genuine international security which then leaves no political space for terrorism.

Where is the U.S. leader ready to say, "Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia"? Even in the face of future terrorist attacks, the likelihood of which cannot be denied, let us show some sense. Let us be true to our traditions.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, is the author most recently of "Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower" (Basic Books).

The Rewards of Pampering Your Nose

Runny or irritated nose? Treat it well, and you'll enjoy the smells of baked cookies pain free.

By Jeanie Lerche Davis, Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD
WebMD.aol.com Feature

Love it or not, your nose can't be ignored. It is a small but mighty part of our being. And a little pampering -- when a cold or allergies strikes -- can go far.

The upside to having a nose is its faithful ability to detect wondrous aromas. Our nose serves as a sensor, helping us determine if a potential food source is toxic or edible, friend or foe. The nose knows whether it's coffee we're sniffing, spoiled leftovers -- or worse.

"In evolution, odors told us what was good for us, what was bad," says Pamela Dalton, PhD, MPH, a member of The Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. "It was part of our survival system. If something smelled bad, it was toxic. If it didn't smell good or bad, it was worth investigating. If it was the smell of cooked fat, it meant survival."

In fact, scientific evidence suggests -- though far from conclusively -- that a pleasing fragrance actually affects our physiology, helping us relax.

"When animals are exposed to certain scents, there are changes in their brain chemistry and hormone levels. There is also a reduced activity level, a measurable change in their behavior. But are they relaxed? It's hard to ask them," Dalton tells WebMD. "We're also not sure what that means in terms of people."

After all, there's another factor at work: "Our expectations affect our reactions," she says. "That's why bakery smells are enjoyable, probably because they take us back to our childhood."

Taking a Peek Inside
For the best advice on pampering your snout, WebMD contacted those who know noses.

"When you've got a runny nose, the small blood vessels lining the nose become irritated," says Pedro Cazabon, MD, an internist at the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans. "Blowing or rubbing your nose aggravates the nose skin, which is sensitive anyway."

Crazy temperature changes don't help either. In frigid outdoor air, blood vessels clamp down; warm indoor air opens them up, says Michele McDonald, MD, a professor of dermatology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville.

"Any extremity, whether it's the nose or fingers, is affected by temperature changes because blood vessels are the first to react," she tells WebMD. "When blood vessels are clamped down, there's less blood flow to the skin, so skin becomes irritated; it's more susceptible to injury."

The lower humidity indoors and outdoors wreaks its own havoc -- further irritating nasal skin inside and out. "Your nose tends to dry out, especially the skin right underneath or between your nostrils," McDonald adds.

Pampering Your Nose
Saunas and steamy showers might seem like the answer to dry indoor air - and it's true that steamed heat will open up nasal passages. But that's a temporary fix that really doesn't help much. "Once you go into the cold air, they will clamp down, which only causes more nose irritation," Cazabon explains.

Likewise, humidifiers seem like a remedy to relieve dry indoor air. But they don't really help your nose's internal membranes. "It's fine to consider a humidifier if the air is really dry in your home, to make it more comfortable. But to give your skin moisture, you have to put something on it," McDonald adds.

In fact, many doctors don't advise using a portable humidifier at home. "They are prone to developing bacteria and mold, which can be released into the air and cause respiratory problems," Cazabon tells WebMD. "Humidifiers need to be cleaned regularly because of that risk."

A vaporizer, which puts out hot steam, is another option -- although it's best for relieving congestion when you have a cold. However, they are risky because they can burn anyone who overturns or gets too close to them.

Steamy baths, humidifiers, and vaporizers all have their place, says McDonald. "But they won't help your nasal skin. You must apply something to the skin."

The experts' advice:

Use saline nasal spray. "It is the best remedy for restoring moisture to mucus membranes," says Cazabon.
Minimize exposure to cold air. Wearing a scarf that covers your nose, so that it doesn't get exposed to extremes in temperature changes, can help. "Your breath adds humidity to the air inside the scarf," he adds.
Moisturize nasal skin every morning. Use a water-based moisturizer such as Oil of Olay, Neutrogena, or Lubriderm. "Vaseline is too thick for this job, because it closes off the skin and doesn't allow glands to secrete oil. Vaseline is great for lips because lips don't have those issues," says McDonald.
Choose a moisturizer that contains sunscreen.
Carry a small tube of moisturizer with you during the day to reapply. "This will help keep your nose comfortable all day long," McDonald adds.
Petroleum-based moisturizers like Vaseline are not advised for another reason, says Cazabon. "People who apply a lot to the nose, and wear it overnight, can aspirate it into their lungs, which can lead to problems like an abscess," he tells WebMD. "I don't want to be an alarmist, but you don't want a foreign substance in your lungs. Using a little within reason is fine, but many doctors prefer patients use water-based creams."

Pampering Your Senses
To pamper your olfactory sense (which registers odors), try scented oils like bath oils, Dalton suggests. "They have a nurturing effect. When I'm trying to fall asleep in a strange hotel, having an odor that makes me think of home is very relaxing, very comforting."

To wake yourself up, try menthol, cinnamon, eucalyptus, and chili peppers, she says. These produce the sensory irritation of pungency and burning, which is tied to the trigeminal nerve, a nerve in the face that is part of the body's pain response. "Because we experience those chemicals in very low doses, they don't cause pain -- but they do arouse us," she explains.

But do certain smells act as aphrodisiacs? "There's nothing that's universal to everyone," Dalton tells WebMD. "It has to do with whatever in your environment relaxes you. People who are tense are not likely to feel amorous. If the scent of your boyfriend's cologne relaxes you, it's an aphrodisiac for you. If the smell of pumpkin pie relaxes you, then yes, it's an aphrodisiac for you. With scent, if it's a positive thing, then it works for you."

Who's watching the president?

Ronald Brownstein
LA Times OP-ED, 21 Mar 2007

AT TIMES, President Bush's second term has resembled a laboratory test of what happens to a large institution when all mechanisms of accountability are disabled.

The results have not been pretty.

Hurricane Katrina, the chaotic occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, the breakdown at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the FBI's abuse of Patriot Act powers, the troubling dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys — everywhere, the administration has been plagued by an epidemic of incompetence.

Bush has stumbled so badly at managing the basic responsibilities of government that even the National Review, the flagship magazine of the conservative movement and hardly a traditional critic of the president, used its latest cover to plaintively ask: "Can't anyone here play this game?"

How did it come to this for an administration that, as the National Review noted, initially portrayed itself as buttoned-down "adults" returning to Washington after President Clinton's baby boom bacchanal?

The answer begins with Bush's management style. He combines a distaste for details with a tendency to prize loyalty over performance.

Shaped by those attitudes, Bush typically worries more about signaling resolve to his critics by denying failures inside his government than demanding excellence by punishing it. That impulse explains how Bush could present a prestigious medal to George J. Tenet — who had resigned months earlier as CIA chief — after his agency's declarations about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction crumbled like sand, and how Donald H. Rumsfeld survived so long as Defense secretary while Iraq disintegrated.

Bush's instincts were dangerously reinforced by the Republican-controlled Congress, which viewed itself less as an independent branch of government than as a junior partner to the White House in the American equivalent of a parliamentary system.

The Republican majority so completely abdicated its responsibilities to conduct oversight on the executive branch that its governing motto might have been "don't ask, don't tell."

Key House and Senate committees sometimes went months without oversight hearings on Iraq. Neither chamber managed more than a glancing review of the increased police powers the administration acquired for the war on terror. Congress barely noted the collapse in care for many veterans at Walter Reed, and it almost completely avoided issues uncomfortable for Bush, such as global warming and declining access to health insurance.

This deference reflected the widespread tendency among congressional Republicans "to think that your political welfare is tied up with the president, and you don't want to make him look bad," as Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), one of the few GOP leaders who maintained some independence from the White House, told The Times.

But the abandonment of oversight had the opposite effect. By refusing to challenge the administration's performance, the Republican majority allowed problems to fester and dysfunction to deepen. One senior House Republican said this week that nothing hurt the GOP more in 2006 than the collapse of its reputation for competent governance.

Many of the decisions now causing Bush grief could have been made only by a politician who did not believe anyone was looking over his shoulder. It's inconceivable that the administration would have been so cavalier about planning the postwar occupation of Iraq — or so dismissive of the Army warnings that it had not deployed enough troops to ensure order — if it knew that Congress would closely examine its plans.

Likewise, it's difficult to imagine that an administration accustomed to serious scrutiny would have dismissed U.S. attorneys involved in sensitive decisions on whether to prosecute political corruption and fraud cases the way Bush's Justice Department did in December.

Depending on how they apply oversight power, the Democratic congressional majority could restore badly needed accountability to the system.

If Democrats focus on settling scores, they will succeed only in igniting partisan firefights. They veered dangerously close to that mistake Friday with the hearing flogging the Valerie Plame case, which the criminal justice system had already adjudicated. But congressional oversight aimed at legitimate targets will serve the country by increasing pressure on the administration to demonstrate results — beginning in Iraq, but also at home. Already, tough congressional questioning is forcing Bush to change the way he operates.

In the four months since Democrats won control, perhaps more administration officials linked to failure or ethical missteps — Rumsfeld, officials directly responsible for Walter Reed, the Army secretary, the Justice Department chief of staff — have resigned under fire than during the six years when the GOP majority averted its eyes. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, even after Bush's vote of confidence Tuesday, may be the next to fall to the new breeze.

Tuesday's stormy news conference suggests that Bush will push back against tough oversight. But his presidency might have turned out a lot better if he hadn't spent his first six years virtually immune from it.

Shock and Awe Worked, God Help Us

By William M. Arkin
Washingtonpost, 19 Mar 2007

If there is one thing that defines American military technology, one thing that floats seductively suggesting engagement without true commitment, it is airpower.

Airpower was the boost of confidence we needed in 2003 to travel on our own highway of death. Given the current ground quagmire in Iraq, airpower will be even more our downfall in the future.

That is the far greater truth we miss in our splintered and partisan world, where Bush administration "lying" about weapons of mass destruction has become the only politically correct explanation for the mess we have made in Iraq.

Four years ago today, the United States opened a second front in the "war" against terrorism, intent on taking down Saddam Hussein. Twenty-one days later the Army and Marine Corps entered Baghdad, mission accomplished.

Self-deception was as important as deception in the White House decision to attack. The administration convinced itself and the keepers of conventional wisdom that the best way to ensure nuclear safety was through regime change. That the mission would be easy, like Afghanistan. That on the ground the people would welcome us with open arms.

That high technology and a "small footprint" would avoid a quagmire.

On the morning of March 19, 2003, Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. Central Command, and the theater commander for the Middle East, showed up at Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia to visit the Combined Air Operations Center and receive the final briefing from his air commander, Lt. Gen. Michael "Buzz" Moseley.

A-Day, A-hour was designated at 9 p.m. local time on March 21: a massive choreographed attack on leadership, command and control, air defense, and WMD targets throughout Iraq. The attack had been dubbed "shock and awe" in the news media, a label that annoyed Franks and other military leaders for suggesting not only instant victory but also that airpower would do the heavy lifting in bringing down the Iraqi regime.

Later on the morning of March 19, Franks spoke with his intelligence staff about critical imagery freshly available that suggested that Iraq might be preparing to sabotage its oil well in the southern Rumaylah fields. The ground attack would be accelerated by 24 hours to "save" Iraq and avoid another Kuwait conflagration.

Back in Qatar, Franks had his final prewar video teleconference with President Bush and the national security team in Washington. The main ground attack - G-Day - scheduled to begin at 6 a.m. March 21 was now scheduled for 9:30 p.m. on March 20. All across the Kuwaiti front, and from secret bases in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, preparations were made to initiate the final assault on Baghdad.

If March 19 weren't busy enough, the CIA also received reports from Iraqi spies that Saddam Hussein might be spending the evening at a Tigris River farm in eastern Baghdad. A frenzied process of target study and emergency preparations began before dawn. There would be no repeat of Kandahar on opening night 2001 or Tora Bora later, where Osama bin Laden was in sight or cornered, and the shot was missed. Airpower could reliably reach into the heart of Baghdad, literally into the earth, an ever so seductive tool available at a mental push of the button.

A million pieces started to fall into place, and in the south, west and north, U.S., British and Polish special operations forces and CIA paramilitaries infiltrated and attacked targets throughout Iraq. Marines attacked across the Kuwaiti border into the southern oil fields. War was on.

After nightfall on March 20, 540 aircraft strike missions and 177 cruise missiles attacked Iraqi targets. The Baghdad night sky filled with anti-aircraft fire and loud detonations were heard - and remotely "seen" off in the distance -- throughout the city.

"What will follow will not be a repeat of any other conflict," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said from the Pentagon podium. "It will be of a force and a scope and a scale that has been beyond what we have seen before."

We all know the rest of the story: Unconfirmed reports that Saddam Hussein was injured and rushed off in an ambulance; that his son Uday was killed; that the entire Iraqi 51st Mechanized Division was reported to have surrendered west of Basra; that Saddam's palaces and home were hit; that the office of telegenic Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz was destroyed.

The "shock and awe" air campaign officially launched a few minutes before 9 p.m. local time on March 21, really the third night of the accelerated campaign: 1,700 aircraft flying 830 strike sorties plus 505 cruise missiles attacking 1,500 aimpoints at several hundred targets: palaces, homes, guard headquarters, government buildings, military bases.

More targets were attacked in Baghdad in the span of one hour on March 21 than were hit in the entire 43-day air campaign in 1991, and airpower followed up reliably every day with hundreds more strikes. When the sandstorm came, when the Fedayeen arrived, when ground commanders got nervous that Iraq was not the country that the U.S. had wargamed against, when the Red Line was crossed, when the public got equally nervous, airpower continued in the background, bombing, bombing, bombing.

For the three weeks that followed shock and awe - less than three weeks! - we were fed a steady diet of heroics from the 3rd Infantry Division, the 1st Marines, and special forces. But really the only time we heard about airpower was when U.S. briefers uttered some more meaningless statistics that suggested industrial production, or when some mistakes were made on the ground.

An army of embedded reporters tracked every brilliant ground troop, unit and maneuver. But the embeds, as they came to be known, reported from behind U.S. lines from the U.S. perspective. There was great destruction being meted out by Army gunners and tankers, by Marine Corps aviation. There were civilian deaths, but in most cases, there was almost always an explanation, a sympathetic observer, a comrade in arms explaining the difficulty and the bravery and chivalry of the American ground assault.

There were, however, no embeds in the cockpit, none even on most air bases secreted away in places like Saudi Arabia. By default, the dominant narrative became airpower, death and destruction from the Iraqi side, from the Iraqi perspective. Or worse, death and destruction, seeming to come only from the air, bombing, bombing, bombing and the accumulation of those heartless statistics, built an image of airpower stuck in World War II mass destruction and Vietnam carpet bombing.

It just didn't sink in that the ground forces weren't operating alone, that the Iraqi government and military was fighting for its very survival in every nook and cranny of the country because of airpower, as the tanks and armored vehicles slogged through mud, over the rivers and escarpments, through the villages.

When the statue was pulled down in Baghdad, to some, the "shock and awe" experience confirmed a modern sickness of high technology. Airpower advocates again promised too much, and the results -- Saddam and his henchmen survived, civilians died -- proved that air warfare could not deliver.

That isn't the war I saw in 2003. The war I saw was 21 days of air attacks in Baghdad that succeeded in defeating a government that was far more powerful and ready than the Taliban, with ground forces blowing through a defeated and exhausted force, a force that I submit caused far more civilian harm with each inch of territory it took.

Dozens of books have since been written about the brilliance of the Army and Marine Corps, some almost reading like the war took place before the airplane was invented.

Yet it was airpower that had the unique ability, just as it had on such short notice in Afghanistan in October 2001, to reach thousands of miles into the very bedrooms and bunkers of the enemy. Friendly losses associated with hundreds of air missions crisscrossing dozens of countries every day proved so ridiculously low that its use seemed almost cost free.

As targets were selected, missions flown, aimpoints hit, the Taliban and then the Iraqi government were swept from power: The seduction in 2003 was as much that it was made a seeming cakewalk by airpower as it was any other justification or reason.

That is airpower's continuing allure: military engagement with no commitment.

I know all of the arguments, that airpower can't plant a flag on a hill, that airpower can't occupy territory. I know, and have argued in dozens of articles over the years, that we can not figure out why it works, or what it is that precisely happens on the ground with airpower's meticulous repetition. But in Iraq, and even in Afghanistan, where ground forces struggle, airpower seems so effortless and trouble-free.

That is why it is so alluring, and so dangerous.

One Number That Will Ring All Your Phones

State of the Art

By DAVID POGUE
NY Times

If you have only one telephone with one phone number, this column won’t be of any interest to you. Skip to another article, you eccentric you.

But first, count your blessings. Millions of people have more than one phone number these days — home, work, cellular, hotel room, vacation home, yacht — and with great complexity comes great hassle. You have to check multiple answering machines. You miss calls when people try to reach you on your cell when you’re at home (or the other way around). You send around e-mail messages at work that say, “On Thursday from 5 to 8:30, I’ll be on my cell; for the rest of the weekend, call me at home.”


And when you switch your job, cellphone carrier or home city, you have to notify everyone you know that you have new phone numbers.

A new service called GrandCentral, now in its final weeks of public beta testing, solves all of these problems. It’s a rather brilliant melding of cellphone and the Internet.

Its motto, “One number for life,” pretty much says it all. At GrandCentral.com, you choose a new, single, unified phone number (more on this in a moment). You hand it out to everyone you know, instructing them to delete all your old numbers from their Rolodexes.

From now on, whenever somebody dials your new uninumber, all of your phones ring simultaneously, like something out of “The Lawnmower Man.”

No longer will anyone have to track you down by dialing each of your numbers in turn. No longer does it matter if you’re home, at work or on the road. Your new GrandCentral phone number will find you.


As a bonus, all messages now land in a single voice mail box. You can listen to them in any of three ways. First, you can dial in from any phone (a text message arrives on your cellphone to let you know when you have voice mail). If you call in from your cellphone, you don’t even have to enter your password first.

You can also play your messages on the Web, at GrandCentral.com, and download them as audio files to preserve for posterity. You can even ask to be notified by e-mail; a link in the e-mail message takes you online to play the voice mail.

All of this, incredibly, is free if you have only two phone numbers to consolidate. A premium plan, at $15 a month, offers more of everything: up to six phone numbers unified, voice messages preserved forever instead of for 30 days, and so on, along with a Web site free of ads.

There are only two substantial downsides to becoming involved with GrandCentral. First, GrandCentral offers you a choice of about 20 uninumbers, but it doesn’t yet offer phone numbers in every area code, so your next-door neighbor may wind up having to dial an out-of-town number to reach you. In 14 central states, in fact, GrandCentral offers no numbers at all. (You can see what’s available at GrandCentral.com.) GrandCentral plans to offer specific vanity phone numbers for an annual fee.

Second, while you’re publicizing your new number, there will be an awkward period when some people are still dialing your old numbers. You’ll have to check all your old voice mail boxes as well as your new GrandCentral one.

Otherwise, this unification of all your phones and answering machines truly makes life less complicated.

Be warned, however: GrandCentral offers a huge list of additional features that aren’t so simple. If you’re not careful, GrandCentral can turn into a full-blown hobby. For example:

CALLER NAMING Every GrandCentral caller is announced by name when you answer the phone. (“Call from Ethel Murgatroid.”)

How does it know the name? Sometimes Caller ID supplies it. GrandCentral also knows every name in your online address book, which can import your contacts from Yahoo, Gmail or your e-mail program.

Callers not in these categories are asked to state their names the first time they call. On subsequent calls, GrandCentral recognizes them.

LISTEN IN For what may be the first time in cellphone history, you can listen to a message someone is leaving, just as you can on a home answering machine.

Your phone rings and displays the usual Caller ID information. You answer it. But before you can even say “Hello,” GrandCentral’s recording lady tells you the caller’s name, and then offers four ways to handle the call: “Press 1 to accept, 2 to send to voice mail, 3 to listen in on voice mail, or 4 to accept and record the call.” Your callers have no clue that all this is going on; they hear only the usual ringing sound.

If you press 3, the call goes directly to voice mail — but you get to listen in. If you feel that the caller deserves your immediate attention, you can press * to pick up the call.

This subtle feature can save you time, cellular minutes and, in certain cases of conflict-avoidance, emotional distress.

RECORD THE CALL Hitting 4 during a call begins recording it; GrandCentral then treats the recording as a voice mail message. Here again, you can immortalize the historic calls of your life, or just create a replayable record of driving directions. GrandCentral notes that laws in some states require both parties to know that a call is being recorded.

RINGBACK MUSIC This bizarre little feature is evidently popular with young cellphone users in Europe, but is still rare in the United States. It lets you replace the ringing sounds the caller hears while waiting for you to answer (what Lily Tomlin would describe as “one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingys”) with music—in GrandCentral’s case, any MP3 file of your choice.

This does imbue your own personal phone with a certain corporate, Muzakish feel. But hey — who wouldn’t want to seem more European?

CUSTOMIZE GREETINGS Control freaks, rejoice. You can actually record a different voice mail greeting for each person in your address book: “Hi, sugarcheeks” for your sweetheart; “Can’t take your call right now, I’m out looking for a better job” for your mother.

You can also specify, on a per person basis, which of your phones ring, which ringback music plays and whether the call goes directly to voice mail.

Finally, you can tell GrandCentral to answer certain people’s calls with the classic three-tone “The number you have dialed is no longer in service” message. Telestalkers, bill collectors and ex-lovers come to mind. Never has technology been so deliciously evil.

SWITCH LINES Anytime during a call, you can press the * key to make all of your phones ring again, so that you can pick up on a different phone in midconversation, unbeknownst to the person on the other end. For example, if you’re heading out the door, you can switch a landline call to your cellphone — or as you arrive home, a cell call to a landline, in order to save airtime minutes.

PHONE SPAM FILTERS GrandCentral maintains a database of telemarketer numbers that is constantly updated by reports from its own subscribers. Your phones don’t even ring when a telemarketer in that database tries to reach you.

QUICK CHANGES With a quick click at GrandCentral.com, you can direct all calls to voice mail when you don’t want to be disturbed; direct all calls to a new, temporary number (like a hotel); or prevent your home line from ringing during work hours.

WEB BUTTONS You can install a “call me” button on your Web site — a great, free way to field calls from your eBay, MySpace or dating-service Web page without actually posting your phone number.

All of this works smoothly and quickly, and the Web site does a noble job of organizing that dizzying number of functions. And all of these features are free, even those that would be expensive or unavailable from your phone company.

Still, you may be forgiven for feeling that GrandCentral’s central idea — a virtual phone number that’s not associated with a particular telephone — is too much of a radical brain-slamming change. You may also feel that the last thing your life needs is more phone calls reaching you successfully.

But anyone who spends some time contemplating GrandCentral’s possibilities will soon see the bigger picture: this service removes your location as a consideration in phone calling, much the same way that the TiVo makes a TV show’s broadcast time unimportant. In other words, GrandCentral has rewritten the rules in the game of telephone.

Goodbye, Houston. Hello, Dubai

A mosque stands in front of the Sheik Zayed highway towers in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Kamran Jebreili / AP


By HILARY HYLTON/AUSTIN
Time.com march 14, 2007


While you weren't looking, the center of the oil world shifted several thousand miles to the east.

The Houston Petroleum Club, now high atop the city's ExxonMobil building, had always been where oil executives and adventurers gathered to discuss "bidness." But these days, more and more energy executives are meeting at the Emirates Golf Club in Dubai, where Tiger Woods recently played, to discuss their deals. So, it shouldn't have been too surprising when Halliburton Chairman and CEO David Lesar announced that he was moving the headquarters of the enormous oil construction and logistics company to the business capital of the United Arab Emirates. The rest of the industry was migrating that way already.

But some folks were badly surprised. The move prompted cries of outrage and calls for investigations from some in Congress. Was the move by Halliburton, the bete noire of left-wing blogs, an attempt to evade congressional inquiry? A move to dodge taxes? Halliburton and many business experts say no. But oil industry analysts say U.S. consumers and political leaders should be asking questions about the move, because the answers will inform America's energy policy — or lack of one. Halliburton is not running from its past, but toward the future.

Just look at other major players in Texas oil. Many Houston companies and law firms have already boosted their Middle Eastern presence, including Halliburton's business rivals, Baker Hughes and Schlumberger. Baker Hughes is building a regional headquarters and manufacturing center in the UAE and Schlumberger has a training center. Just one day after Lesar's announcement, Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced he will attend a three- day celebration marking the opening of permanent buildings at the Texas A&M University at Qatar, set to graduate its first engineering class in 2007 — evidence that the oil and gas industry will be relying on engineers trained in the Middle East as the number of U.S. petroleum engineers continues to fall.

Many of the city's oil and gas companies have a long symbiotic relationship with the Middle East. Indeed, Emirates Airline announced last month that it would set up daily direct flights between Dubai and Houston by the end of this year. The flights will utilize several of the Emirates' 44 recently purchased Boeing 777s and will come equipped with eight private first-class cabins. But that still places top energy executives 17 hours away from what is becoming the new center of the oil industry. Lesar's move shows Halliburton is aware of business customs in much of the Eastern Hemisphere. "It is very important in this part of the world to do business face-to-face," says Amy Myers Jaffe, a Princeton Arabic Studies graduate and current director of Rice University's Energy Program. She adds, "Halliburton is not deleting jobs. They are not closing the office in Houston. They are not moving to the Caymans to escape prosecution. They are adding new elements."

Apart from knowing their clients, says Jaffe, the company has recognized how the petroleum industry is going to look in the coming decades: "Halliburton is looking to the future. [The industry is] moving away from the Seven Sisters, the major oil companies, and towards national oil companies. Between 1970 and 2000, 40% of the increase in oil in the world came from the majors like Shell. [But] in the next 30 years, 90% of the new oil will come from the Middle East and Africa and will not be produced by Exxon and Shell, but by the nationally owned oil companies."

Halliburton's move is a clear sign that American consumers will be relying more and more on oil and gas produced by nationally owned companies, some in emerging democracies like Indonesia where bureaucracies are often unwieldy, others in strife-torn African nations or corrupt former Soviet republics. The move also puts Halliburton's CEO closer to emerging markets in fast-industrializing China and India.

In the past, oil services companies like Halliburton more typically served as subcontractors to the major oil companies, but as the nationally owned oil companies have gained greater market share, the service companies have contracted directly with them. That has boosted service companies' profits and prompted them to shift their operations to the east, closer to the action. Some 38% of Halliburton's $13 billion in oil services revenue came from its Eastern Hemisphere operations last year.

The move, which was greeted as a "powerful statement" by Merrill Lynch industry analyst Alan Lewis, overshadowed a second part of Lesar's announcement: Halliburton stock will be listed on one of the Middle East's stock exchanges. Most analysts believe it will be the Dubai Financial Market. That, says Jaffe, will enable the company to gain access to the vast amount of capital in the region. It also serves a wider purpose: giving regional investors a stake in the stability of global companies. When nationally owned oil companies have been listed on various exchanges, Jaffe says, it has generally led to greater transparency within those companies and motivation to avoid volatility and disruption in geopolitical affairs.

While the Gulf of Mexico remains a vital area for exploration, the shift eastward means the old Energy Capital must diversify. "A lot of us in Houston have been saying that the energy industry in Houston needs to be a lot more innovative," Jaffe said. Energy industry and political leaders are beginning to develop wind energy offshore in the Gulf, and look to other alternatives. From now on, the "bidness" discussions at the Petroleum Club are more likely to focus on new energy technologies like carbon sequestration than wildcatting.