Yes, we CAN live with this guy

Obama takes McCain to the woodshed:

h/t to TPM ELECTION CENTRAL

Barack Obama, in Montana, responded moments ago to McCain's ridicule of the Illinois Senator for saying that Iran is a minuscule threat compared to the former Soviet Union.

McCain said this revealed Obama's "inexperience and reckless judgment." Here's the key part of Obama's reply...

"Here's the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, and Iran doesn't have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn't we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do, that's what strong presidents do, that's what I'll do when I'm president of the United States of America."

Obama also said: "What are George Bush and John McCain afraid of"?

This sort of thing will thrill Democrats who want to see how a Democratic presidential candidate will fare if he adopts something other than the oft-employed "hawkish" rhetoric that's supposedly necessary for Dems to win an argument with Republicans about national security.

Judging by these early skirmishes between McCain and Obama -- who appears to be trying to do nothing less than redefine what it means to be "strong" and "tough" on foreign policy -- we may soon find out.

McCain seems out of his element, trying to criticize Obama while trying to forget that Ronald Reagan was, in fact, the great appeaser, at least as defined by the warped grasp of history that McCain and Bush have. This is self-evident from any reading of the history, whether it was talking to Gorbachev about eliminating nuclear weapons or giving the Iranians weapons in exchange for hostages and using the proceeds to fund the Contras in Central America. McCain knows all of this, and he treads on dangerous ground every time he criticizes Obama--he might as well be criticizing Reagan.

Obama effectively uses "common sense" to deflect these attacks.

War Between Georgia and Russia?

[link is now fixed--thanks to jerry]

If we had a functioning State Department, I'm not sure what they could do. Perhaps if we had someone in place who made her reputation as an expert on all things Soviet and/or Russian who could navigate the issues and approach the concerned parties as a real mediator...oh, but what am I saying? There's no way we'd ever find someone qualified, right?

Georgia is "very close" to a war with Russia, a Georgian minister said on Tuesday, citing Moscow's decision to send extra troops to the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia.

"We literally have to avert war," Georgian State Minister for Issues of Reintegration Temur Iakobashvili told a news briefing during a trip to Brussels.

Asked how close to such a war the situation was, he replied: "Very close, because we know Russians very well.

"We know what the signals are when you see propaganda waged against Georgia. We see Russian troops entering our territories on the basis of false information," he said.

Russia has said the troop build-up is needed to counter what it says are Georgian plans for an attack on breakaway Abkhazia and has accused Tbilisi of trying to suck the West into a war -- both of which are allegations that ex-Soviet Georgia rejects.

An extra Russian contingent began arriving in Abkhazia last week. Moscow has not said how many would be added but said the total would remain within the 3,000 limit allowed under a United Nations-brokered ceasefire agreement signed in 1994. Diplomats expect the reinforcement to be of the order of 1,200.

Georgia, a vital energy transit route in the Caucasus, has angered Russia by seeking membership of NATO.

Certain areas of what used to be the Soviet Union were absorbed into that entity to give the Russians breathing space. After invasion after invasion, the Russians decided that these areas on their borders were best held and kept out of the hands of any possible enemy. They're funny about their history--they don't like to see it repeated.

Georgia doesn't need to be in NATO. It should either find a way to accomodate Russia or find a way to be a neutral trader with as many countries as possible. And, unfortunately, "accomodating" the Russians these days doesn't lead to a whole lot of freedom, but we lost an opportunity to bring Russia into the family of nations because we didn't do enough to help them during their economic transformation. Had we spent the money to do so, these regional tensions might be a thing of the past.

Would McCain reprise the Cold War?

That is a justified fear when he makes pronouncements like he would like to kick Russia out of the G-8. It didn't get much notice when he made his sweeping foreign policy speech in March - perhaps because of the media mancrush that we have been diligently documenting - but this is definitely worth examination. Not because he could actually do it - the United States is only one of eight member nations, as the name indicates, and the other seven would not go for it - but because such a position would further alienate the few allies we have left.

The Group of Eight, or G-8, as it's popularly known, makes decisions by consensus, so no single nation can kick out another. Most experts say the six other countries — Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Canada — would never agree to toss Russia, given their close economic ties to their neighbor. A senior U.S. official who deals with Russia policy said that even Moscow would have to approve of its own ouster, given how the G-8 works.

"It's not even a theoretical discussion. It's an impossible discussion," said the senior official, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. "It's just a dumb thing."

Aside from that, many wonder whether McCain's suggestion would be wise policy. They fear that if McCain is elected and follows through on an attempt to toss Russia from the group, it could anger and isolate Russia, which has been increasingly assertive on the world stage, autocratic within its borders and is the second-largest producer of the hydrocarbons that feed the world's energy needs.

"In Europe, there's very little support ... for a policy like that," said Stephen Larrabee, an expert on Europe and Russia at the RAND think tank. "It's too late in the game to try and oust Russia."

The proposal also seemed at odds with the theme of McCain's speech, which promised a less unilateral approach to world affairs than the Bush White House has pursued. That could reflect tension between two Republican foreign-policy camps vying for influence in McCain's campaign: the pragmatic realists and the hard-line neo-conservatives — with the neo-cons ascendant for now in Russia policy.

"There are a lot of important issues that we need Russia's support on. ...What's to be gained by tossing Russia out? We feel more self-righteous about ourselves?" said Andrew Kuchins, the director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, a center-right think tank.

Let's call this idiocy what it is...the crankery of a backward-thinking cold-war codger, unable to turn around and embrace the future so he cleaves to the comfort of the known, i.e. the past.

And here is all you need to know about just how stupid this idea really is...Heritage wankers think it's a splendid notion....and when was the last time those chuckleheads were right about any damned thing?

Guiliani Lies About Who Cut the Size of the Military

This is why I don't blog. I have read three stories tonight. And all three of them have made me so mad, I want to throw something.

Republican frontrunner Rudy Guiliani is a serial liar. Do we need to say more?

Giuliani faults the other Clinton
By JONATHAN ROOS [Des Moines] REGISTER STAFF WRITER
November 9, 2007

Ames, Ia. -Republican Rudy Giuliani, campaigning in Iowa the same day that Bill Clinton was in the Hawkeye State, charged Thursday that the former president had weakened the American military and intelligence services through spending cuts during his administration.

"Our military is too small to deal with the Islamic terrorism threats, but it really is too small to deter would-be aggressors to even think of challenging us. And that's due to Bill Clinton," Giuliani told students and others in the audience of about 350 at Iowa State University's Memorial Union.

"Bill Clinton cut our military and our intelligence budget by such a huge amount that we've never made up the difference," said the former New York mayor, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.Giuliani said in response to a question about relations with China that the United States needs a bigger military, including at least 10 more combat brigades and a 300-ship Navy.
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I know, I know. My sides are hurting from the extreme discomfort of hearing those outrageous lies. There are people eating that stuff up. There are people who are, no doubt, in complete agreement with Guiliani.

Well, let's debunk this bullshit.

The following is the record of Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense, prior to the Clinton Administration, and all of these items come from defenselink.mil:

...Early in 1991 the secretary unveiled a plan to reduce military strength by the mid-1990s to 1.6 million, compared to 2.2 million when he entered office. In his budget proposal for FY 1993, his last one, Cheney asked for termination of the B-2 program at 20 aircraft, cancellation of the Midgetman, and limitations on advanced cruise missile purchases to those already authorized. When introducing this budget, Cheney complained that Congress had directed Defense to buy weapons it did not want, including the V-22, M-1 tanks, and F-14 and F-16 aircraft, and required it to maintain some unneeded reserve forces. His plan outlined about $50 billion less in budget authority over the next 5 years than the Bush administration had proposed in 1991. Sen. Sam Nunn of the Senate Armed Services Committee said that the 5-year cuts ought to be $85 billion, and Rep. Les Aspin of the House Armed Services Committee put the figure at $91 billion.

Over Cheney's four years as secretary of defense, encompassing budgets for fiscal years 1990-93, DoD's total obligational authority in current dollars declined from $291.3 billion to $269.9 billion. Except for FY 1991, when the TOA budget increased by 1.7 percent, the Cheney budgets showed negative real growth: -2.9 percent in 1990, -9.8 percent in 1992, and -8.1 percent in 1993. During this same period total military personnel declined by 19.4 percent, from 2.202 million in FY 1989 to 1.776 million in FY 1993. The Army took the largest cut, from 770,000 to 572,000-25.8 percent of its strength. The Air Force declined by 22.3 percent, the Navy by 14 percent, and the Marines by 9.7 percent.

And everyone agreed--the end of the Cold War brought a "peace dividend." Remember those days? You can trace a straight line from the decisions made during the first Bush administration to the size and capability of our military today. Who started the ball rolling, as far as "reducing" the size of our military?

Here's what defenselink.mil has to say about the three SecDefs under Clinton, one of whom (Cohen) was a Republican. Let's start with Les Aspin--who was a disasterous choice:

Development of the Defense budget for FY 1994, beginning on 1 October 1993, remained Aspin's biggest task. The budget process proved more complicated than usual, owing to Clinton's campaign pledge to reduce DoD funding and to a "bottom-up review" of the military structure ordered by Aspin shortly after he took office. The end of the Cold War and the consequent opportunity to cut military costs clearly called for the kind of reevaluation of ends and means that the bottom-up review might contribute. A Pentagon steering group chaired by Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition and Technology) John M. Deutch and including representatives from various OSD offices, the Joint Staff, and the services conducted the review.

Because of the growing threat of regional conflicts, Aspin wanted to have a strong capability to carry out limited military operations, including peacekeeping, and to maintain "a strong peacetime presence of U.S. forces around the world." The bottom-up review report, which Aspin released in September 1993, took into account strategy formulation, force structure, weapon systems modernization, and Defense infrastructure. The report projected a reduced force structure still capable of fighting and winning two simultaneous major regional conflicts. Forces would include 10 active Army divisions; 11 carrier battle groups, 45 to 55 attack submarines, and about 345 ships; 5 active Marine brigades; and 13 active and 7 reserve Air Force fighter wings. The report also called for additional prepositioned equipment and airlift/sealift capacity, improved anti-armor and precision-guided munitions, and enhanced Army National Guard combat brigade readiness.

William Perry:

As always with secretaries of defense, the formulation of the Defense budget and shepherding it through Congress was one of Perry's most important duties. The problem of how to deal with a large projected Defense budget shortfall for the period 1995-2000, an issue that weakened Aspin and contributed to his resignation, per-sisted when Perry took office. Immediately on presenting his 1995 budget request, which he termed "a post-Cold War budget," Perry stated that Defense required a few more years of downsizing and that its infrastructure needed streamlining as well. The proposal, he said, maintained a ready-to-fight force, redirected a modernization program (including a strong research and development program), initiated a program to do business differently (acquisition reform), and reinvested defense dollars in the economy.

Perry asked for $252.2 billion for FY 1995, including funds for numerous weapon systems, such as a new aircraft carrier, three Aegis cruisers, and six C-17 cargo aircraft. The budget projected a further cut of 85,500 in active duty military personnel, leaving a force of 1.52 million. Ultimately Congress provided $253.9 billion TOA, about $2 billion more than in FY 1994, but actually a 1.2 percent cut in real growth.

And Cohen:

When he presented the FY 1998 budget, Cohen noted that he would involve himself with the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which would focus on the challenges to U.S. security and the nation's military needs over the next decade or more. When the QDR became public in May 1997, it did not fundamentally alter the budget, structure, and doctrine of the military. Some defense experts thought it gave insufficient attention to new forms of warfare, such as terrorist attacks, electronic sabotage, and the use of chemical and biological agents. In commenting on the QDR, Cohen stated that the Pentagon would retain the two regional wars scenario adopted after the end of the Cold War. He decided to scale back purchases of jet fighters, including the Air Force's F-22 and the Navy's F/A-18E/F, as well as Navy surface ships. The review included cutting another 61,700 active duty service members--15,000 in the Army, 26,900 in the Air Force, 18,000 in the Navy, and 1,800 in the Marine Corps, as well as 54,000 reserve forces, mainly in the Army National Guard, and some 80,000 civilians department-wide. Cohen also decided to recommend two more rounds of base closings in 1999 and 2001. The Pentagon hoped to save $15 billion annually over the next few years to make possible the purchase of new equipment and weapon systems without a substantial budget increase above the current level of $250 billion.

Those criticisms of Cohen look about right--we should have been more focused on terrorism in the 1990s. But who took over in 2001 and basically ignored the warnings of people like Richard Clarke? Who didn't do anything to respond to the bombing of the USS Cole when we found out who was responsible for that bombing in 2001?

Today, we still have ten active Army divisions. We reduced our Army to ten on a gradual basis--starting with the direction set by the first Bush administration after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We had ten when Clinton left office. We had ten when we went to war in Iraq in 2003. So for Guiliani to say that our military is too small because of something Clinton did all by himself is ludicrous. Bear in mind--after the 1994 mid-term elections, each and every Defense bill had to pass a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. You know--the people who were thrown out of office for incompetence in 2006? The Duke Cunningham crowd? And there's no mistaking what the agreed-upon direction was--the downsizing of our military in the wake of the end of the Cold War.

We saw reductions in the size of our military because of the direction this country took after the Cold War. Secretary of Defense Cheney cut more people from our military, by my count, than Aspin, Perry and Cohen combined. They all cut people because that was the strategic vision as agreed upon by Republicans and Democrats throughout the 1990s. Sometimes it makes my head want to explode--nothing happens without compromise and nothing gets done without both parties finding common ground. But why does Guiliani get away with criticizing what Clinton supposedly did when each and every defense appropriation bill was gone over with a fine-toothed comb by every Republican in the House and Senate, who were all desperate to find some way to embarrass or criticizen Clinton?

Today's military is the size that it is because of a trend in American policymaking that structured our military based on the post-Cold War realities, and not so much on what would happen if someone's crazy kid started wars all over the place and had about as much success as a drunken frat boy trying to get laid in a convent.

Will our media reveal Guiliani to be the serial liar and exaggerator that he is?

I kinda doubt it.

Chilling Relations With Russia

While everyone is focused on the Middle East, we have a much graver problem brewing, if you can get your head around that concept. The cold war may be over, and we may not be calling them Soviets anymore, but the KGB never really went away, it just morphed, and now the top spies and operatives are running the whole show, with no checks in sight. The brief honeymoon is over and the adversarial relationship with Russia is back, and possibly more nefarious, as it is no longer encumbered by communism.

America’s stubborn insistence on pushing forward with the deployment of a missile defense system (that hasn’t really been successful in testing) has prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to announce a suspension of Russia's obligations under the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty

The latest Russian press report, which ran last Sunday the New York Times was disturbing, but underappreciated. It is now official policy that news reports portray the United States as an enemy. The folks who perfected propaganda are cranking up their own Wurlitzer – and theirs is bigger than ours. Their noise machine puts anything we can come up with on either side of the political divide to shame.

Putin leaves office in just over ten months. He is casting the mold for US Russian relations for the next twenty years, and it is looking like we are in for a Big Chill. The dynamic isn’t there for a Cold War Redux, but there is a very real adversarial threat, and I fear we aren’t ready for it because the Mess in Mesopotamia has degraded our military to the point we aren’t able to respond.

Frankly, I am feeling like we have been had. I’m not mad at the Russians for taking advantage of a mendacious administration staffed by Mayberry Machiavellis. I’m mad at the Mayberry Machiavellis for being worthless to us, and useful idiots to our real adversaries.

Remember this – Gates and Rice were spectacularly wrong about the Soviet Union in its final days. They have a perfect track record of wrong where Soviets/Russians are concerned. And Condi is cocking it up again, in real-time.

The furor erupting is over a missile defense system that the US wants to place in Poland and the Czech Republic, ostensibly to protect from a missile attack by Iran. Condi dismisses the Russian concerns out-of-hand, with "The idea that somehow 10 interceptors and a few radars in eastern Europe are going to threaten the Soviet strategic deterrent is purely ludicrous and everybody knows it," Rice told a news conference in Oslo. (Pretty breezy comment from a diplomat, doncha think?)

To the Russians it isn’t a matter of being able to overwhelm the system, it is about a series of broken promises and violations of good-faith agreements. The deal was, NATO was not supposed to expand into former Soviet Republics or place bases in former Warsaw Pact countries. Both things happen. The Russians see NATO bases on their borders as a threat. (Kinda like we would if they put a bomber wing in Ontario.)

Funny, I don’t hear any chickenhawks saying we ought to be bombing the piss out of Moscow for not seeing things our way. Have you? (Not a peep from Kristol or Kagan here, where a real threat exists. Wonder why?)

It's Saturday Morning and I am a Huge Daniel Shore Fan

When I heard Alberto Gonzalez in his press conference on Monday say “Mistakes were made” I got a sick feeling. When his boss said it Tuesday, I damned near went visceral.

I remember the 80’s. I was a SAC wife with three babies, ready to go where the orders…ordered. It was also a time when U.S. service personnel were targeted in bombings in discotheques, airplanes were hijacked regularly and a barracks bombed in Beirut (that happened the last time the U.S. took sides in a civil war and Cap Weinberger ordered Muslim villages shelled in Lebanon). Because my husband had to fly in uniform, we took different planes.

I know things the cheerleaders for Reagan don't know. I was right smack in the middle of that clusterfuck, and felt like a god-damned pawn. Of course, I felt like a pawn because I was a pawn. Let me tell you, from someone who was fucking there - peace broke out in spite of Ronald Reagan, not because of him. If you want to give credit for the hastening of a natural social evolution, don’t thank Reagan. Thank the Strategic Air Command, rock-n-roll, Levi’s jeans and McDonalds for the U.S. victory in the cold war. Just so the record is clear. But don’t just take my word for it – ask around, find someone about 50 who was in the Air Force in their 20’s and ask them. Prepare to hear a truth about that *magical era*that just ain’t told, because it doesn’t appear in the program for the worship services in the church (cult?) of unholy Reagan worship. That’s a bubble of denial that really needs to be popped.

Anyway – when I heard “mistakes were made” I heard Ronald Reagan and the state of the union in 1987 – he stood there and gave cover to every mendacious fuck-up made by every mendacious fuck-up in his entire administration who took part in the treasonous Iran-Contra Affair.

But though we've made much progress, I have one major regret: I took a risk with regard to our action in Iran. It did not work, and for that I assume full responsibility. The goals were worthy. I do not believe it was wrong to try to establish contacts with a country of strategic importance or to try to save lives. And certainly it was not wrong to try to secure freedom for our citizens held in barbaric captivity. But we did not achieve what we wished, and serious mistakes were made in trying to do so. We will get to the bottom of this, and I will take whatever action is called for. But in debating the past, we must not deny ourselves the successes of the future. Let it never be said of this generation of Americans that we became so obsessed with failure that we refused to take risks that could further the cause of peace and freedom in the world. Much is at stake here, and the Nation and the world are watching to see if we go forward together in the national interest or if we let partisanship weaken us. And let there be no mistake about American policy: We will not sit idly by if our interests or our friends in the Middle East are threatened, nor will we yield to terrorist blackmail.

And now, ladies and gentlemen of the Congress, why don't we get to work? I am pleased to report that because of our efforts to rebuild the strength of America, the world is a safer place. Earlier this month I submitted a budget to defend America and maintain our momentum to make up for neglect in the last decade. Well, I ask you to vote out a defense and foreign affairs budget that says yes to protecting our country. While the world is safer, it is not safe.

If you weren’t in my shoes back then, you don’t know what those words sounded like. We knew that we were at increased danger in our assigned duty stations outside the U.S. because of policies of the Reagan administration. We felt like the political football that was kicked, and bounced off the goal-posts, then got pounced on. No matter who is speaking, when I hear “mistakes were made” I don’t hear contrition. I hear “Fuck you, cannon fodder.”

Now, fully twenty years later, the same mantras get chanted and even more American service personnel are being killed in the middle east in all-out open warfare because of foolish and foolhardy policies of a corrupt, mendacious Republican administration.

Learned any lessons yet America? Or are you still riding the short bus?

ITMFA.