http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/opinion/29sun1.html
Mr. Gonzales's Never-Ending Story NY Times Lead Editorial: Jul 29, 2007 President Bush often insists he has to be the decider, ignoring Congress and the public when it comes to the tough matters on war, terrorism and torture, even deciding whether an ordinary man in Florida should be allowed to let his wife die with dignity. Apparently that burden does not apply to the functioning of one of the most vital government agencies, the Justice Department. Americans have been waiting months for Mr. Bush to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who long ago proved that he was incompetent and more recently has proved that he can?t tell the truth. Mr. Bush refused to fire him after it was clear Mr. Gonzales lied about his role in the political purge of nine federal prosecutors. And he is still refusing to do so even after testimony by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller, that suggests that Mr. Gonzales either lied to Congress about Mr. Bush's warrantless wiretapping operation or at the very least twisted the truth so badly that it amounts to the same thing. Mr. Gonzales has now told Congress twice that there was no dissent in the government about Mr. Bush?s decision to authorize the National Security Agency to spy on Americans? international calls and e-mails without obtaining the legally required warrant. Mr. Mueller and James Comey, a former deputy attorney general, say that is not true. Not only was there disagreement, but they also say that they almost resigned over the dispute. Both men say that in March 2004, when Mr. Gonzales was still the White House counsel, the Justice Department refused to endorse a continuation of the wiretapping program because it was illegal. (Mr. Comey was running the department temporarily because Attorney General John Ashcroft had emergency surgery.) Unwilling to accept that conclusion, Vice President Dick Cheney sent Mr. Gonzales and another official to Mr. Ashcroft?s hospital room to get him to approve the wiretapping. Mr. Comey and Mr. Mueller intercepted the White House team, and they say they watched as a groggy Mr. Ashcroft refused to sign off on the wiretapping and told the White House officials to leave. Mr. Comey said the White House later modified the eavesdropping program enough for the Justice Department to sign off. Last week, Mr. Gonzales denied that account. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee the dispute was not about the wiretapping operation but was over "other intelligence activities." He declined to say what those were. Lawmakers who have been briefed on the administration's activities said the dispute was about the one eavesdropping program that has been disclosed. So did Mr. Comey. And so did Mr. Mueller, most recently on Thursday in a House hearing. He said he had kept notes. That was plain enough. It confirmed what most people long ago concluded: that Mr. Gonzales is more concerned about doing political-damage control for Mr. Bush - in this case insisting that there was never a Justice Department objection to a clearly illegal program - than in doing his duty. But the White House continued to defend him. As far as we can tell, there are three possible explanations for Mr. Gonzales's talk about a dispute over other "unspecified" intelligence activities. One, he lied to Congress. Two, he used a bureaucratic dodge to mislead lawmakers and the public: the spying program was modified after Mr. Ashcroft refused to endorse it, which made it ?different? from the one Mr. Bush has acknowledged. The third is that there was more wiretapping than has been disclosed, perhaps even purely domestic wiretapping, and Mr. Gonzales is helping Mr. Bush cover it up. Democratic lawmakers are asking for a special prosecutor to look into Mr. Gonzales's words and deeds. Solicitor General Paul Clement has a last chance to show that the Justice Department is still minimally functional by fulfilling that request. If that does not happen, Congress should impeach Mr. Gonzales. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company *** From: All the News That Doesn't Fit <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Guardian - Jul 28, 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2136677,00.html Bush now must lay out the least worst options for Iraq The surge is not working, yet full-scale withdrawal would be protracted and bloody. The search is on for a compromise Martin Kettle In the pre-Iraq years, attitudes to war on both sides of the Atlantic were commonly framed by one of two radically opposed mythic experiences. A supportable war was the sort embodied in Britain's defiance of Hitler in 1940, whose lesson was that the right people would win if they stood firm against evil. An unsupportable war was encapsulated in America's rout in Saigon in 1975, whose lesson was that conflicts were more complicated in practice. When George Bush decided to invade Iraq, he offered Americans a rerun of a 1940-style war, with himself in the role of Winston Churchill and Tony Blair as his transatlantic cheerleader. Today, as Bush's surge strategy - the deployment six months ago of a further five combat brigades - struggles to produce the promised dividends, Iraq has flipped into the alternative frame. It is widely assumed that the conflict is heading inexorably to a 1975-style nemesis. But is this really true? Do these potent precedents illuminate the only possible alternatives? At the very least, such questions must be examined. The US is better at doing this than Britain, since our role is in any case reduced and detailed public discussion of Iraq options rare. One problem is that much of the discussion in 2007 is a continuation of the argument about what ought to have been done in 2003. Defenders of the surge may no longer talk about creating a democratic Iraq that will transform the region; but they still talk about staying the course and doing what it takes to achieve some vaguer benign goal. Opponents go to the other end of the spectrum, however, and say that the best thing is for the US and its allies to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible, frequently without regard to the practicalities or wider consequences. In their different ways, both surgers and withdrawers need to have their assumptions more critically examined in the light of today's realities. The White House's recent claim that the surge is developing satisfactorily is mocked by the very modest security advances and the almost total absence of political advances. As General Wesley Clark said last week, the US would have had to triple the number of troops on the ground to have the effect that the administration seeks as its goal. But it does not follow that outright withdrawal is therefore the only alternative worth considering. Or that it is politically popular: only 36% of Americans want all the troops removed from Iraq, while support for the war has actually increased in the latest US polls. Withdrawal may sound straightforward, but it isn't. Although the popular image of the end of the Vietnam war is of a sudden disorderly helicopter evacuation from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon, the reality is that the process took more than four years. It took the Soviet Union nine months to pull 120,000 troops out of Afghanistan in the early 1980s - and those two countries shared a land border. One recent estimate for extricating the more than 200,000 US troops, contractors and foreign workers now in Iraq is that the whole process would take at least a year. And that is just the human dimension. The US also has an enormous amount of stuff in Iraq, including around 1,900 heavy tanks, 43,000 other military vehicles and more than 700 aircraft, mainly helicopters. Then there are the houses, messes, fitness centres, hospitals, swimming pools, office complexes, power plants, kit and supplies that the Americans brought with them - one current military inventory lists 2.7m candy bars and 1.6m cans of soft drink. It is all scattered across 15 large and 60 smaller bases, 28 supply depots and other sites. At four bases, there are toxic stockpiles of hazardous materials. A full withdrawal of people and kit would take an estimated 20 months. Getting it all out would be no picnic, especially if airfield runways are under mortar attack and roads to the south are mined. Abandoning and disabling it may well be the only practicable course. The prospect of the US having to fight its way out of Iraq is a very real one. And even if the retreating Americans could withdraw in good order, the local death toll would be likely to rise as competing factions battled to fill the vacuum. Withdrawal may be the right long-term policy option for the US - but it will be a very bloody and traumatic business, in whatever way it is accomplished. That is why there is in Washington increasing examination of other strategies. It is some years since the words "third way" were heard in the land, but that is the title of an investigation into partial withdrawal options now being carried out by the US House of Representatives armed services committee. American newspapers and magazines have also carried detailed and thoughtful articles on these subjects - including last week's Time magazine. Partial withdrawal sounds beguiling, centrist and moderate. Yet you only have to look at what these third way strategies might mean on the ground to see that they are not as attractive as they sound. Stephen Biddle, from the Council on Foreign Relations, identified four partial withdrawal options - all of which would reduce US numbers by half - in his evidence to the congressional committee: withdrawal towards training and support of the Iraqis, withdrawal to guarding Iraq's borders, withdrawal into a focused mission on counter-terrorism, and withdrawal into Kurdistan. The Kurdistan option is eloquently expounded by Peter Galbraith in the current New York Review of Books, but Biddle himself is not optimistic about any of the four choices. He thinks they are all self-defeating and unsustainable. "Partial withdrawal would not end American casualties," he says. "But it would make it even less likely that the lives we do lose would be lost for any purpose, or in exchange for any improvement in the future of Iraq." If that is so, then the choice may after all be between the extreme alternatives of sustained military commitment and total withdrawal. But only because one of these is the elusive least worst option, not because it is a good or wise policy. There is an overwhelming case for the Pentagon and the White House to set out the full and true contingency options. It would be reassuring if Gordon Brown were to take such a message to Bush at Camp David this weekend. And even more surprising if Bush was to listen. Bush started this war on the basis of inadequate planning. It looks as if he will end it in the same way too. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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