Archive for category: War

I’d like to point out a teeny detail in the report that Henry Waxman cites as his source that OVP isn’t providing ISOO with information about OVP’s classification and declassification activities:

PFIAB and OVP did not report data through the SF 311 to ISOO this year. This report, therefore, does not include any data from these two entities.

It was not just OVP that blew off ISOO in 2003. It was also PFIAB.

PFIAB is the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a group of big-wigs providing outside oversight into our intelligence activities:

The President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) provides advice   to the President concerning the quality and adequacy of intelligence   collection, of analysis and estimates, of counterintelligence, and of other intelligence   activities. The PFIAB, through its Intelligence Oversight  Board, also advises the President on the legality of foreign intelligence activities.

In 2003, the board included such luminaries as:

There’s a remarkable paragraph close to the start of Barton Gellman and Jo Becker’s story on Cheney today:

Cheney is not, by nearly every inside account, the shadow president ofpopular lore. Bush has set his own course, not always in directionsCheney preferred. The president seized the helm when his No. 2 steeredtoward trouble, as Bush did, in time, on military commissions. Theirone-on-one relationship is opaque, a vital unknown in assessingCheney’s impact on events. The two men speak of it seldom, if ever,with others. But officials who see them together often, not all of themadmirers of the vice president, detect a strong sense of mutualconfidence that Cheney is serving Bush’s aims.

Consider the logic of the paragraph. Cheney is not the shadow president, they say. Bush has taken (some) actions independent of Cheney, they say. Cheney is implementing Bush’s goals, they say. But then they say, "Theirone-on-one relationship is opaque, a vital unknown in assessingCheney’s impact on events." None of the other claims made in the paragraph stand in the presence of that fact. So long as no one knows what happens between Bush and Cheney, we can never say whether Cheney is serving Bush’s aims or Bush is serving Cheney’s. 

But the article does provide a great deal of meat to the skeleton understanding of how Cheney operates. I’d like to look at what the story implies, but doesn’t say.

Jane and Steve Soto connect the dots, so you don’t have to. The guy they’ve just appointed to be war czar, Douglas Lute? He was an early advocate (well, for the military world, which puts him just two years behind the blogosphere) for withdrawal:

The interesting thing about the selection of Lute is that he advocated for a withdrawal from Iraq back in 2005so that the Iraqis would step up and take responsibility for their ownsecurity. In fact, Lute is a proponent of the theory that our forcesneed to be withdrawn so that the Iraqis no longer have the excuse of an occupationto do nothing on the political front. In fact, Lute was a supporter ofGeneral George Casey’s and John Abizaid’s belief that we needed totrain the Iraqis and draw down forces, not surge to an increase, a viewthat was tossed aside by Bush after the Baker/Hamilton report came out.

"We want to undercut that notion of occupying force," hesaid, recognising the argument that a less prominent US role could helpstabilise the country.

Unfortunately, Lute said this almost 2 years ago.

This begs the question: why would Bush offer the job tosomeone who has never advocated an increase in our forces and insteadbelieves that Read more →