Michael O'Hanlon's Phony Outrage

Have I told you lately...how much I love Think Progress? Let me count the ways...

Yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) published an op-ed in the New York Times outlining his strategy to get out of Iraq. The Washington Post reports that Iraq war supporter Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution was “livid” after reading Obama’s op-ed:

“To say you’re going to get out on a certain schedule — regardless of what the Iraqis do, regardless of what our enemies do, regardless of what is happening on the ground — is the height of absurdity,” said O’Hanlon, who described himself as “livid.” “I’m not going to go to the next level of invective and say he shouldn’t be president. I’ll leave that to someone else.”

In 2004, however, O’Hanlon’s sentiments were strikingly similar to Obama’s. In an op-ed titled “Set a date to pull out,” O’Hanlon wrote that “our own enduring commitment to success in Iraq is beginning to work against us.” “Some will see this as cut-and-run,” he said. “It is not.”

O'Hanlon is more angry at the fact that no one calls him as often as they used to and that he doesn't get to go on television when he feels like it. He's gradually drifting, along with dozens of other neoconservative hacks and Republican Bushniks, into a hellish obscurity. O'Hanlon will soon be fighting for space in the Moonie Times, and he knows it. They all know it--and they knew it the moment McCain blurted out that we could stay in Iraq for a hundred years.

What O'Hanlon doesn't get is that the Iraq War is long since decided, and the US needs to leave. Nothing is going to change unless we can draft a 500,000 man Army out of thin air to stabilize the country entirely, take out Maliki, install a Sunni strongman, and turn the country into what it used to be, a bulwark against Shia Islam. Too late, suckers. Iraq is destined to be a client state of Iran, and we drove them there. Your phony surge accomplished nothing, other than kicking the can down the road, and the greatest military debacle in American history is permanently hung around the necks of the Republican Party.

--WS

Somebody Shut Michael O'HANLON The Hell Up (Part 3,524)

Really, this guy just gets worse and worse by the fucking day.

Michael O'Hanlon comments on the departure of Admiral William Fallon from US Central Command:

"I can't clearly see what the reason would be for why he resigned," said O'Hanlon who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

"Obviously, he said a couple of things that maybe were a little off-key from what the administration was otherwise saying -- the implication that we shouldn't be threatening for against Iran, for example," AFP quoted him as saying.

O'Hanlon claimed that the reason the 63-year-old resigned may have been that he simply 'lost heart' out of sheer exhaustion.

"Although Fallon oversees the Middle East region, the success that General Petraeus has had in Iraq may overshadow his ability to be effective in the job," explained the military expert.

You can't see why? The MAN WAS FIRED, you ignorant jackass. O'Hanlon gets paid to think for a living and he can't recognize when a man gets fired? Jeebus.

So it's not okay to say "General Betray-us" but it's totally kosher to say that a man who's served his country for 42 years, served in three 4-star billets, and performed 1,300 carrier arrested landings in an aircraft is somehow a coward who has lost heart? You know, Fallon saw combat in Vietnam. He was skillful enough NOT to get shot down and captured. Doesn't that make him MORE qualified to be President than McCain? I mean, if we're going to start going after people, why not go there?

What the FUCK? How is this even permitted? How is it that O'Hanlon isn't being laughed out of the building every time he utters something this ridiculous?

When someone loses their heart to carry on in the military, they drop their retirement papers and leave. It ain't hard. Once you roll over the point where you're permitted to retire, you work til it's time. Granted, Fallon was an older guy--but does he look like someone who's bloated, out of shape and tired? I guarantee you--the guy in the picture above probably runs his office on full tilt and probably runs his staff ragged because he, himself runs himself ragged. That's what a goddamned Admiral does, and you don't get to hold three 4-star billets by being a golf-playing layabout who takes a lot of unscheduled four day weekends.

Unbelieveable. Wingnuts and neocons just spew shit and the media laps it up. Of course it's okay to go after Fallon--he stood in the way of their next chance at glory, a war with Iran.

The second Petraeus says something to derail war with Iran, and don't hold your breath that he will suddenly discover his conscience, he will suddenly be "tired and worn out" just like Admiral Fallon.

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

I was mad when I wrote this--title said "O'Fallon" when it should have said O'Hanlon.

My Bad! Thanks to ckelly

Violence in Iraq is on the Rise

[Iraq: War as a SIM Game]

You know, no one is happy about this. I'm not, Blue Girl isn't. We're not happy that the violence in Iraq is increasing, day by day. This isn't why we get up in the morning and blog like maniacs.

I wish I had been wrong from day one. I wish I was wrong about Iraq, and whether we're winning the war. I wish I was the one who was shamed and humiliated for doubting that we could pull it off. That would mean more people would be alive. That would mean, basically, that despite my belief that this was the wrong war for the wrong reasons, I was wrong about our capabilities.

So I don't "enjoy" being able to post things like this:

(CBS/AP) Violence killed at least 42 people Tuesday, including 16 bus passengers caught in a roadside bombing in southern Iraq, after the deadliest day for U.S. troops in precisely six months.

The U.S. military announced that three American soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing north of Baghdad on Monday, bringing to eight the number of troops who died that day. The last time so many U.S. military personnel were killed in Iraq was Sept. 10, when 10 died.

Bloodshed has increased recently, despite what the military said has been a 60 percent drop in attacks across Iraq since June. Last Thursday, two massive bombs killed 68 people in Baghdad's Karradah neighborhood. On March 3, two car bombings killed 24 people in the capital.

According to an Associated Press count, at the height of unrest from November 2006 to August 2007, on average approximately 65 Iraqis died each day as a result of violence. As conditions improved, the daily death toll steadily declined. It reached its lowest point in more than two years on January 2008, when on average 20 Iraqis died each day.

Wait a minute--didn't Michael O'Hanlon tell us this just yesterday?

But they sometimes fail to fold in the reality of how far Iraq has come in the past 12 months under the new surge-based strategy of Gen. David Petraeus. Most Democrats seem to belittle or even deny the progress, despite a 75% reduction in violence and the beginnings of Iraqi political compromise.

I'm not belittling it, or denying it. I just keep finding credible sources that tell me your numbers are way off the mark.

Those numbers have since jumped. In February, approximately 26 Iraqis died each day as a result of violence, and so far in March, that number is up to 39 daily. These figures reflect the months in which people were found, and not necessarily - in the case of mass graves - the months in which they were killed.

Military spokesman Rear Adm. Gregory Smith said Sunday that recent violence should not be taken as evidence of "an increase or a trend of an increase."

"I think we need to continue to look at historically what has happened over the last year to really put in perspective a one-week or two-weeks' worth of activity inside Baghdad," Smith said.

But Smith, in what has become a military mantra of caution, also noted that "on any given day, al Qaeda and other extremist groups are still very much disposed toward handing out violence indiscriminately to achieve whatever means and ends they hope to achieve with those attacks."

While al Qaeda in Iraq is Sunni, Shiite extremists with alleged ties to Iran are also believed to have carried out attacks.

In an interview with CNN Tuesday, Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said he was in favor of substantive discussions with Iran about what the U.S. claims is Tehran's continued funding and training of extremists in Iraq.

Petraeus said he did not meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his visit to Iraq last week because he thought it would have been a "relatively meaningless encounter."

Now, the curious aspect of my Pale Rider personality asks, why would Petraeus be talking about Ahmadinejad as an irrelevant adversary on Tuesday? Why would an American military officer publicly belittle someone like that? Did he have the go-ahead to speak like that from the State Department or the DoD? Did he have someone sign off on his expansion of his commentary beyond his lane? Because Iran is not in his lane. It was in Admiral Fallon's lane, until Tuesday. Think the resignation/firing/elimination of his immediate superior Admiral Fallon and the undiplomatic escalation of the rhetoric from Petraeus was a coincidence?

And why do they keep talking about "al Qaeda in Iraq?" Have they suddenly flooded Iraq with tens of thousands of fighters? Or were they never really much of a factor at all?

The essential questions are: How large is the presence of AQI, in terms of manpower and attacks instigated, and what role does the group play in catalyzing further violence? For the first question, the military has produced an estimate. In a background briefing this July in Baghdad, military officials said that during the first half of this year AQI accounted for 15 percent of attacks in Iraq. That figure was also cited in the military intelligence report during final preparations for a National Intelligence Estimate in July.

This is the number on which many military experts inside the Beltway rely. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution who attended the Baghdad background briefing, explained that he thought the estimate derived from a comprehensive analysis by teams of local intelligence agents who examine the type and location of daily attacks, and their intended targets, and crosscheck that with reports from Iraqi informants and other data, such as intercepted phone calls. "It's a fairly detailed kind of assessment," O'Hanlon said. "Obviously you can't always know who is behind an attack, but there is a fairly systematic way of looking at the attacks where they can begin to make a pretty informed guess."

Yet those who have worked on estimates inside the system take a more circumspect view. Alex Rossmiller, who worked in Iraq as an intelligence officer for the Department of Defense, says that real uncertainties exist in assigning responsibility for attacks. "It was kind of a running joke in our office," he recalls. "We would sarcastically refer to everybody as al-Qaeda."

To describe AQI's presence, intelligence experts cite a spectrum of estimates, ranging from 8 percent to 15 percent. The fact that such "a big window" exists, says Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, indicates that "[those experts] really don't have a very good perception of what is going on."

It's notable that military intelligence reports have opted to cite a figure at the very top of that range. But even the low estimate of 8 percent may be an overstatement, if you consider some of the government's own statistics.

I don't know what they're paying O'Hanlon, and I don't really care. But if he's making more than five bucks an hour to come up with this stuff, he's grossly overpaid and should be replaced by an out of work boy band guru or maybe even someone who can't keep track of donations for the NRCC. I mean, at what point does someone lose all credibility? At what point does the function of "gatekeeper" switch on and we start to see a helluva lot LESS of this guy in print?

Me, personally, I'm sick of seeing neocon apologists getting published day after day after day. I can't keep up. It's an avalanche of bullshit that never ends.

Would Someone Please Stop Listening to Michael O'Hanlon?

Just when you think the delusions of wingnuts and their "supposed" critics like Michael O'Hanlon couldn't get any worse, we see this article in today's USA Today:

Most Democrats — in fact, most Americans — believe that the Iraq war has been a huge mistake for this country. Accordingly, it's no real surprise that Democrats will nominate a presidential candidate who sees Iraq as they see it: anguished by the loss of life, deeply upset by the damage done to America's reputation, and angered by the unilateralism and poor war planning of the Bush administration.

These viewpoints are sincere, legitimate and defensible. But they sometimes fail to fold in the reality of how far Iraq has come in the past 12 months under the new surge-based strategy of Gen. David Petraeus. Most Democrats seem to belittle or even deny the progress, despite a 75% reduction in violence and the beginnings of Iraqi political compromise.

First of all, that's an interesting way to move the goalposts and try to slice out the best piece from a horrific pie. See where you can find a "75% reduction" in these statistics:

In January this year 485 civilians were killed, according to the website. It says the number is based on news reports, and that "actual totals for Iraqi deaths are higher than the numbers recorded on this site."

The average month in 2005, before the "surge" was launched, saw 568 civilian deaths. In January 2006, the month before the "surge" began, 590 civilians died.

Many of the killings have taken place in the most well guarded areas of Baghdad. And they have continued this month.

"Two car bombs exploded in Jadriya, killing so many people, the day the American Secretary of Defence (Robert Gates) was visiting Baghdad last week," a captain from the Karrada district police in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS.

"Another car bomb killed eight people and injured 20 Thursday (last week) in the Muraidy market of Sadr City, east of Baghdad, although the Mehdi army (the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr) provides strict protection to the city," the officer said. "There is no security in this country any more."

Unidentified bodies of Iraqis killed by militias continue to appear in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. The Iraqi government has issued instructions to all security and health offices not to give out the body count to the media. Dozens of bodies are found every day across Baghdad, residents say. Morgue officials confirm this.

And then there's this:

BAGHDAD: The number of Iraqis killed in February rose by 33 per cent over January, reversing a six-month trend of reduced violence, in a setback to the US military plan to curb the bloodshed ravaging the country.

The combined figures from the interior, defence and health ministries showed that the total number of Iraqis killed in February was 721, including 636 civilians, compared with 541 dead in January.

I guess when people are under orders NOT to report violent acts, it's pretty easy to claim success. We're still getting some numbers, however, and those numbers point to a rise in violence, if you count bodies not incidents. If O'Hanlon's cheerleading is to be believed, everything is great, unless you're one of the Iraqi citizens still being killed every day. What was the surge about, anyway? I thought it was to reduce the unacceptable level of violence in Iraq so that the government could have the breathing room it needs to achieve political reconciliation.

People in Basra don't see any benefits so far:

As many as 5,000 people demonstrated near the Basra police command headquarters Saturday [March 8], demanding that the police chief, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Jalil Khalaf, and the commander of joint military-police operation, Lt. Gen. Mohan al-Fireji, resign.

Many carried banners, decrying the killing of women, workers, academics and scientists. Dozens of women were slain in Basra by religious extremists last year because of how they dressed, their mutilated bodies found with notes warning against "violating Islamic teachings."

Saturday's protesters, overwhelmingly men, came from several Shiite political movements, including the biggest Shiite party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its militia wing, known as the Badr Brigade.

Prepare to see more goalposts moved. Basra doesn't "count" because no US troops were sent there. Well, here's a perfect example as to why the surge hasn't worked--all it did was push extremists to another part of Iraq where they could carry out their agenda.

Benchmarks? You wanna ask about benchmarks? Benchmarks? From the Center for American Progress:

Total Benchmarks: 3 of 18 Accomplished
On the one year anniversary of President Bush’s State of the Union address justifying his "New Way Forward" in Iraq, it is clear that the surge has failed to meet its objectives. One year ago, the president pledged that “America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced." Despite the fact that the Iraqi government has only met three of the 18 benchmarks laid out last year, an end to U.S. military and financial commitment is nowhere in sight.

The purpose of the surge was to provide the “breathing space” for political reconciliation to occur. Yet over one year later, political progress has been scant, and what progress has been made is not durable. The Iraqis have not made the difficult political compromises necessary for national reconciliation, and an indefinite U.S. presence in the region will not inspire them to do so. Despite the best efforts of our military men and women in creating a temporary lull in violence, substantial advancement toward a sustainable and independent Iraq has not been made.

In order to motivate Iraq’s political leaders, the United States must set a date certain for withdrawal. Only then will the Iraqis make the difficult political compromises necessary for national reconciliation. While redeploying our forces over the next 10-12 months, the United States must initiate a diplomatic surge to ensure that all of Iraq’s neighbors are involved constructively in Iraq’s future. Only by implementing a Strategic Reset in Iraq will the United States be able to take control of its own national security interests in the country and the greater Middle East.

O'Hanlon then says:

To be sure, it is understandably hard for Democrats and other administration critics to believe that a war fought so badly at first could take a turn for the better. We are not used to such things in the modern era. Arguably, one has to go back to the American Civil War to find a parallel, and even that is a poor analogy because President Lincoln's performance in that war was clearly far better than President Bush's has been in this one, to put it mildly. That said, if Democrats cannot get beyond their viewpoint, they could suffer badly in the fall as a result. Even more important, the nation could suffer as we waste an election campaign refighting the debates of 2002 and 2003 rather than looking to the future.

Lincoln didn't "mismanage" the Civil War; we had never fought a war approaching the scale of the Civil War. There was no precedent for it. There was virtually no Army to stand up and no way to counter the fact that most of the competent, West Point trained military officers were leading the troops of the Confederate States. Here's where Lincoln truly succeeded after a mere 2 and a half years with a 19th Century industrial base, as opposed to the FIVE YEARS that Bush has had with access to manufactured goods never seen before in human history. Once the North provided the right gear--and in sufficient quantities--to its troops, they slaughtered the large and small troop formations of the South and, had the war continued past Appomattox, would have nearly eradicated the male population of the South. By the end of the war, Sherman's Army was outflanking and destroying any formation that dared oppose it. Entire states were being overrun and even overly cautious Northern Generalship was able to trap and pulverize Southern formations.

And have you seen the results from the primaries? Every time Clinton or Obama make noise about ending this unpopular war, they get screams of approval and people beat down the doors to vote for them. McCain? McCain "survived" his way to the nomination and has about as much enthusiastic support as that brain-dead 33% [and dropping!] of the country can muster for him. They can't muster any cash though--the "anti-war" candidates who will cut and run and "suffer badly this Fall" only raised about $85 million to McCain's measly $12 million.

And finally, he tells the biggest whopper of all:

Thankfully, there has been some movement of late in Iraq's politics. Its leaders have passed a pensions law, a de-Baathification law to incorporate former Saddam loyalists into the army, a new budget for 2008, an amnesty law for many detained during the conflict, and a provincial powers act that should help clarify the roles of Iraq's 18 provinces and pave the way for elections this fall. These steps come on top of de facto oil revenue sharing last year, when the central government gave the provinces far more money to spend than ever before.

Yet myriad problems still exist. For example, the de-Baathification law, if badly implemented, could do more harm than good by purging Sunnis from the very security forces that we have worked so hard to include them within. And even the landmark provincial powers act has since been vetoed by Iraq's presidency council, leaving it in limbo.

Where to begin?

Juan Cole gives us these two bits of information:

1. The new law is not the major change that reformers had pushed for. Instead, the law preserves the previous De-Ba'athification system and simply renames Iraq's controversial De-Ba'athification Commission. This is a major change from the draft law that went to parliament in December;

2. Reinstatement rights, pension rights, and the appeals system have been strengthened for many thousands of people, at least on paper. These are welcome improvements - but do not change the fact that the system is still based on guilt by association, not on individual deeds;

3. The new Commission has stronger powers than previously and its reach will now extend across different organizations, including the President's Office, Prime Minister's Office, and the Supreme Judicial Council. Exemptions will be harder to come by. These changes will likely cause political backlash and also severely violates the independence of Iraq's judiciary. These provisions are in addition to the new language that forces all former employees of Ba'ath era security forces to retire, which is already complicating the law's political reception;

4. The new Commission will now have the power to investigate complaints of corruption or criminal activity by former Ba'athists and gather evidence for judicial action. This could be a welcome move towards greater accountability-or a new mechanism to conduct public and high profile witch hunts. Much depends on the Commission's new leadership and the new rules they must establish for the Commission's work. '

Political reconciliation is all but dead in Iraq if the coalitions that gave the Iraqi people al-Maliki cannot hold together:

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Sadr Movement predicts that the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim) will lose half its seats on the provincial councils if provincial elections are held October 1. A law of the provinces was passed by parliament but was turned back by the 3-man Presidency Council. It is suspected that Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi, who belongs to ISCI, led the charge in vetoing the law. ISCI is said to fear losing its political control of a majority of the provinces where Shiites predominate, won in the elections of January, 2005. Not only did the Sadrists denounce the veto, but so did the Da`wa (Islamic Call) Party. Da`wa has the federal prime ministership, and also the governor of Karbala province is a Da`wa member. In the far south in Basra, the Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila) predicted that the provincial elections would upset the balance among the Shiite parties.

I guess if you're Michael O'Hanlon, you have no choice but to keep lying. I think it works best if you just claim that you "missed" Juan Cole's posts because they don't have Internet where you live.

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER
Whoops! I wonder if O'Hanlon reads Swopa:

The Associated Press reports this evening:

The Democratic chairman and Republican former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee have asked government auditors to determine what Iraq is doing with the billions of dollars in oil revenue it generates.

"We believe that it has been overwhelmingly U.S. taxpayer money that has funded Iraq reconstruction over the last five years, despite Iraq earning billions of dollars in oil revenue over that time period that have ended up in non-Iraqi banks," Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John Warner, R-Va., said Friday in a letter to the head of the Government Accountability Office.

"At the same time, our conversations with both Iraqis and Americans during our frequent visits to Iraq, as well as official government and unofficial media reports, have convinced us that the Iraqi government is not doing nearly enough to provide essential services and improve the quality of life of its citizens," they said.

The senators estimated that Iraq will realize "at least $100 billion in oil revenues in 2007 and 2008."

There has been speculation among wags in Iraq (which I'm sure I've quoted here at least once in the past) that having built up no popular base of support during their incompetent/corrupt/etc. reign, the former-exile politicians who have dominated the post-U.S. invasion government there will go promptly back into exile as soon as the Americans stop propping them up.

Yes, it would be a bit expensive to relocate to Ibiza or Malibu without first looting a country.

UPDATE II - PALE RIDER

More from the Holy Shit! File--h/t to Spencer Ackerman:

Sadrists Rebel Against Sadr for Being Too Pro-American!
It’s a real shame IraqSlogger is subscription-only. They’ve got something incredible: an anti-Sadr rally. Practically in Sadr City!

In an act described by witnesses as verging on the "unthinkable," scores of Iraqis staged a protest against the Shi’a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Sunday inside a region known as a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia.

On Monday, in the Kasra wa Atash area, in the Eastern part of the capitol near Sadr City, assembled protesters chanted anti-Sadr slogans, and voiced objections to the recent trends in Sadr’s leadership of the Sadrist Current, the Shi’a religious tendency named after his father and his father-in-law.

The marchers chanted in Arabic: "The traitor is a soldier and we have discharged him" (i.e. from his military service). When a Slogger source asked to confirm who the "soldier" was referred to in the chant, marchers indicated that the "dismissal" was indeed directed to Muqtada al-Sadr, using the nickname "Qaddu," an Arabic nickname for the young cleric that derives from his first name.

But why are they opposing Sadr? Because he’s a demagogic religious thug? Because they’re sick of the violence? Because they want reconciliation with the Sunnis and occupation by the Americans? Nope.

Some marchers reportedly accused the Sadrist leadership of reaching a quiet agreement with U.S. forces in order to pacify the capital, but said they opposed such an agreement, preferring that the Sadrist current offer resistance to the American presence.

One thing that O'Hanlon would never be honest enough to admit is that EVERYTHING, and I do mean, every-last-friggin-thing, collapse in Iraq if Sadr loses control of his followers and the go back to killing Americans. EVERYTHING.

A Master of Understatement

Three weeks ago, Little Mikey O’Hanlon and his traveling companion Little Kenny Pollack published a feel-good, happy-talk piece of puffery on the op-ed pages of the New York Times.

O’Hanlon and Pollack are useful idiots to the war machine and the brass. Period. They can be reliably counted on to ask no probing questions and to see what they are shown and nothing more. Anyone who actually puts any stock in anything those two slavering shills have to say is a danger to themselves and others. They came back and did what they were supposed to do in advance of the so-called September report – they parroted the party line after being taken on a perfunctory eight-day fact-finding fact free trip that was more tightly controlled and scripted than a senior-citizens super-saver package tour of Rome.

On Sunday, a group of NCO’s from the 82^nd Airborne pushed back with an op-ed of their own. Needless to say, those charged with fighting it see it different than the boys from Brookings. That would be the same Brookings Institute that put the lie to the little weasels yesterday with the publication of their Iraq Index (.pdf alert) – (Summary coming – you all know my predilection for white papers by now.)

O’Hanlon was still spinning like the proverbial top this morning on The Diane Rehm Show, where he was inexplicably booked to discuss the situation in Iraq. When he was asked about the soldiers op-ed, he said “They may have even been taking a slight poke at us as we used a similar term in an op-ed three weeks earlier.”

A “slight poke”? Mwahahahahahaha, Mikey! They bloodied your nose, kicked you in the balls and took your lunch money. They left you whimpering on the sidewalk in a fetal position crying for your mommy.

Meanwhile, the rest of us know that NCO's are exactly who we should be listening to right now, not agenda whores from belief tanks. And we also know that we are dealing with a delusional halfwit when he tries to spin his own ass kicking.

We need some new rules

For starters, we need to rename our policy institutes to more accurately reflect the product that comes out of those fever-swamps. They push agendas, reality be damned and critical thinking be suspended.

When agenda-whoring is the major gist, call them what they are – Belief Tanks. And call their "analysts" what they are, too – Agenda Whores.

With September looming, and the true believers having difficulty moving the goalposts to November, the Idiots from Brookings™ are back. Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack take to the op-ed pages of the New York Times today to proclaim that “we are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms.”

O’Hanlon and Pollack bill themselves “as two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq.” They are very quick to point out that they are ‘two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq’ but they fail to mention that they were frothing hawks who poo-pooed those of us who were fucking right before hand. Pollack wrote an entire damned book laying out “the case for invading Iraq,” and took the case for war to the Cheetos-and-Hot Pockets crowd on Oprah in 2002, where he enthusiastically beat the war drum and pushed the false intelligence about Iraq as justification to war.

O’Hanlon is nearly as odious as Pollack. He has shared Pollack’s zeal for war with Iraq. Prior to the invasion, he predicted a “a rapid and decisive” victory. Now, he is intent on flipping war critics to the “surge supporters” column, and his plans revolve around a long-term occupation.

Now that these pathetic fools who have been wrong around everything are back from another “fact finding” trip to Iraq, they are off on a PR junket touting “stay the course.” This weekend on CNN, the hapless O’Hanlon claimed that the war “is going brilliantly at this point.”

CNN correspondent Arwa Damon refuted his claim in an interview with Tom Foreman: .

FOREMAN: Arwa, is there a sense in Baghdad on the ground that that’s exactly what’s happening?

ARWA DAMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Tom, actually not when you speak to the Iraqi people. In fact, most of those that I’ve spoken to will not really say that they feel that the situation is getting better. Remember, they’re not measuring their own security in terms of numbers of U.S. casualties or numbers of bodies that were found unidentified throughout the entire capital. They are measuring their sense of whether or not things are getting better by the level of comfort with which they can leave their homes. For most Iraqis, they are still just as petrified of falling victim of sectarian violence or any other sort of attack that could take place in the capital today as they were before the surge began.

O’Hanlon breathlessly points to some non-existent metrics to bolster his puffery and support for this failed war:

He is excited about the delivery of “basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people,” and he sings Hosannas to the ‘reliability‘ of Iraqi security forces, and he is simply wide-eyed over “how well the coalition’s new Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams are working.”

Too bad none of these things that have him so tickled are actually, you know, happening the way he says. In reality, residents of Baghdad now get only one or two hours of electricity each day, the Iraqi security forces are deserting in large numbers, and reconstruction has stalled.

Only a died-in-the-wool idiot would look to these never-right morons for advice.

So I guess they find a ready audience in aWol.

[H/T Think Progress & Glenn Greenwald]

[Cross-posted from Watching Those We Chose]