Daily Archives: December 5, 2008

Rules and Republicans

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OK, here’s the deal with U.S. Attorneys. Usually they are appointed to four-year terms by a new president. When their terms are up, and if they are not re-appointed, they are to remain in their positions only until a new U.S. Attorney is confirmed to replace them. Those are the rules.

Once again, we see that Republicans don’t think the rules apply to them. Loyal Bushie Mary Beth Buchanan, a U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh, says she will not leave her position.

Despite a new administration coming into power, U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan said she plans to stick around.

“It doesn’t serve justice for all the U.S. attorneys to submit their resignations all at one time,” she said yesterday. […]

Asking for the old attorneys to submit resignations is a courtesy, as far as I can tell. If she doesn’t resign that doesn’t mean she can keep her job. If a new Attorney is appointed and confirmed by the Senate for her position, she’s out, whether she resigns or not.

Usually if a president is re-elected to serve a second term, he doesn’t bother about replacing his own appointees, although he could if he wanted to. When a new president is elected, he can choose to replace most or all of the attorneys by appointing new ones. The GOP ginned up a phony scandal when Bill Clinton replaced the old U.S. Attorneys in 1993, even though Reagan had done the same thing with Jimmy Carter’s appointees, and Bush II would do the same thing to Clinton’s appointees when he took office.

Rightie blogger Stephen Brainbridge claims to be a law professor at UCLA:

A lot of people got very worked up when George Bush fired some US Attorneys for political reasons. Now some of those same people are exercised over the refusal of a Bush-appointed US Attorney to resign so that Obama can replace her.

I don’t think you can have it both ways. Either the US Attorney job is a political one or not.

Some people are born stupid, and some people choose to be stupid. If Bainbridge got through law school I will be charitable and assume the latter. He refuses to acknowledge the reasons Bush’s firing of U.S. Attorneys was scandalous.

The tradition of having US Attorneys resign when a new president takes office emerged so that the new president could make political appointments of the key personnel that would be enforcing the new administration’s legal priorities. Firing US Attorneys for failing to advance those priorities differs neither in degree nor kind.

The “priority,” of course, was that the fired attorneys refused to “help” Republicans get elected by bringing bogus charges against Democratic candidates right before an election. Like I said, some people choose to be stupid.

Iraq: Another Corner Turned

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It’s been a while since we’ve turned a corner in Iraq. You might remember that we used to turn corners with some frequency. Iraqis held various elections resulting in a dysfunctional government; adopted a half-assed constitution that needed massive revision; and my favorite — giving Iraq back its sovereignty — are just a few examples. Now Charles Krauthammer says we’ve turned another another corner.

The barbarism in Mumbai and the economic crisis at home have largely overshadowed an otherwise singular event: the ratification of military and strategic cooperation agreements between Iraq and the United States.

Wow, and we only had to spend about $700 billion so far and occupy Iraq for 5-1/2 years to achieve that.

Tina Susman writes for the Los Angeles Times,

Reporting from Baghdad — Explosions tore through two police stations Thursday in the western Iraqi city of Fallouja, leaving at least 16 people dead, and a blast in a northern city killed two U.S. soldiers in the latest reminders of this country’s fragile security situation.

The attacks came on the heels of other large blasts this week that targeted Iraqi and U.S. security forces and left dozens of people dead.

With U.S. combat troops scheduled to begin pulling out of Iraqi cities and towns early next year, the bombings were an ominous sign of what Iraqi security forces may face on their own after the drawdown.

Iraq’s three-member Presidency Council on Thursday formally ratified a Status of Forces Agreement that mandates the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from population centers by June 30 and from the country by the end of 2011. Iraq’s parliament approved the pact Nov. 27. Ratification by Iraq’s president and two vice presidents was necessary for it to take effect Jan. 1, after the United Nations mandate governing the U.S. troop presence expires.

In other words, Krauthammer looks at a pile of shit and sees a pony.

Tom Hayden writes,

The agreement forces the Bush Administration and Pentagon to back down from long-held positions, especially over deadlines. The barracking of American troops in remote areas by June 2009 will be a retreat from offensive operations. More important, the language of the agreement in Arabic stipulates that all American forces, not merely combat units, will be withdrawn by 2011. …

…This is not “out now”, but that was never possible politically or militarily. It’s not literally “ending the war in 2009” as Obama promised. But this pact is officially known as “the withdrawal agreement” to all proud Iraqis. Read carefully, it is an agreed 2009 timetable for ending the war, the occupation, the troop presence and closing the military bases in three years.

However,

Only a few weeks ago Prime Minister al-Maliki was praising Obama’s 16-month timetable. Obviously something or someone got to him. American embassy officials, according to press accounts, were button-holing Iraqi parliamentarians in the hallways in the days before the final voter. There are no registered lobbyists or even lobbying laws in Baghdad.

The Iraqis, finally, were fixin’ to just kick us out, and somehow the Bushies threatened or bribed enough people to make “the withdrawal agreement” look like a mutual agreement between Washington and Baghdad, just to let George W. Bush save face.

Oh, and we’re supposed to thank Bush for that.