It might surprise you to know that Howard Dean is not a true antiwar candidate. In fact, it might surprise you to know that your own favorite blogger, maha, wants to stay the course in Iraq and spend more money and blood on it to keep the nonsense going.

 

Sure as hell surprised me.

 

But I spent a chunk of today (wasted) on an argument with some Kucinich supporters who believe their man is the ONLY Democratic candidate who is opposed to maintaining Bush's status quo in Iraq. And if you aren't with Kucinich, you're a pro-war, bloodthirsty Bush dupe. So there.

 

I am now sufficiently pissed off to blog about why Dennis Kucinich should drop out of the presidential race now.

 

Until last Thursday's debate I hadn't focused much on Kucinich. By reputation I know he's supposed to be the most "progressive" candidate in the field. I knew he was against the Iraq war, which is fine by me. But his opening remarks in Thursday's debate bothered me a lot.

SEIB: Turning on Iraq to Congressman Kucinich and Reverend Sharpton, you've both been outspoken critics of the war and have said, in fact, you'd bring the troops home. But the fact is that as of now the troops are there, the United States is committed.

Would you vote--will you vote yes or no on the $87 billion? And if the answer is no, what's the message you would send to the troops who are there today?

KUCINICH: The message is now I will not vote for the $87 billion. I think we should support the troops and I think we best support them by bringing them home.

Our troops are at peril there, because of this administration's policy. And I think that the American people deserve to know where every candidate on this stage stands on this issue, because we were each provided with a document--a security document that more or less advised us to stay the course, don't cut and run, commit up to 150,000 troops for five years at a cost of up to $245 billion.

A matter of fact, General Clark was one of the authors of that document that was released in July.

So I think the American people deserve to know that a candidate--and I'm the candidate who led the effort in the House of Representatives challenging the Bush administration's march toward war, I say bring the troops home unequivocally. Bring them home and stop this commitment for $87 billion, which is only going to get us in deeper.

After a while, we're going to be sacrificing our education, our health care, our housing and the future of this nation.

First, I've been googling since Thursday to find out what this "security document" is Kucinich is talking about, and I can't find it anywhere. Kucinich supporters have grasped at this alleged report as proof that Wesley Clark wants to spend $245 billion dollars for more warfare in Iraq, which is certainly at odds with the General's public statements.

 

General Clark wasn't given a chance to rebut Kucinich's claim. In the absense of context, it isn't unreasonable to assume that this "security document," if it exists at all, was an estimate of what the war will cost if it continues as it has. We're already up to $166 billion ($79 billion original appropriation plus the infamous $87 billion recently requested). One of these days it'll add up to real money.

 

It bothered me also that Kucinich glibly brushed off the $87 billion -- no more money to Iraq, just bring the troops home. Kucinich apparently plans to beam them back to North America next week with his Start Trek transporter.

 

It's morally cheap to be against the $87 billion. Of course, no one wants to spend the $87 billion. This is money that would never have had to be spent if we hadn't gone ahead with the dadblamed invasion. As several candidates said last Thursday, we must demand accountability for that money -- Congress must know exactly what the Bushies intend to do with every dollar. Perhaps a lesser appropriation will do. But to say no money at all is irresponsible.

 

As I've ranted before, our troops are in Iraq without adequate food, water, and shelter. Soldiers have died because there aren't enough kevlar vests to go around. Just today we learned of a new attempt by the Bushies to save money by risking soldiers' lives:

Even as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made headlines this week by announcing that up to 20,000 fresh troops may be called to Iraq, President Bush and members of the congressional leadership were quietly abandoning a plan to protect troop-transport airliners from missile attack by terrorists or Saddam loyalists.

The measure, first advanced by the Pentagon, would have begun an ambitious program to equip the commercial airliners that are used for troop transport with advanced technology to protect them from the shoulder-fired missiles. Confused by disarray in the administration's plans to protect airliners from missile attack, the House of Representatives slashed the original $25 million request to $3 million. Congressional officials say the Bush administration did nothing to win approval of the full measure -- despite recent missile attacks on U.S. military craft flying near the Baghdad airport. [Paul J. Caffera, "Bush Abandons Troop Protection Plan," Salon, September 27, 2003]

But according to Dennis Kucinich, our troops should just put up with these little hardships until we can bring them home, which in spite of the Congressman's best hopes will not be next week.

 

When I press them on the matter of how the troops will be brought home, the Kucinichistas tell me brightly that the Congressman has an original plan to turn Iraq over to the UN. Wow, I'm amazed nobody else ever though of that (sarcasm alert).

 

Still, the UN is not likely to march peacekeepers into Baghdad anytime this year. Perhaps not even next year. But we don't have to spend any more money to support the troops. They can just make do without kevlar vests and bottled water and other little frills.

 

(Am I still pissed off? You betcha.)

 

Face it, Kucinich was just plain demagoging this issue. The other candidates gave reasonable, thoughtful answers to the $87 billion question. For the record, I thought the best answer came from Carol Mosley Braun:

MOSELEY BRAUN: I stand with the mothers of the young men and women who are in the desert in Iraq and who right now are in the shooting gallery without even sufficient supplies to sustain themselves.

And so, it is absolutely, I think, critical that we not cut and run, that we provide our troops with what they need and that we just not blow up that country and leave it blown up; we have a responsibility.

Following in on that responsibility means we will have to vote some money. The estimates vary as to what that is.

Almost a year ago, I called on this president not to go into Iraq and I called on the Congress not to give him the authority to go into Iraq, and at the same time asked the question, "Mr. President, how much is this going to cost?" He didn't answer the question then, he's not answering the question now.

But I believe that it's going to be important for us to come up with the money to make certain that our young men and women and our reputation as leaders in the world is not permanently destroyed by the folly of preemptive war.

You say she doesn't want to cut and run? In Kucinich World, that makes Mosley Braun a war monger. For shame.

 

(Keep in mind also that, as all us armchair military experts know from reading Civil War novels, retreats are very dangerous to troops unless they are done correctly. A haphazard retreat exposes troops to more dangers than if they are just holding a line.)

 

Another Kucinich moment of brilliance, from the debates -- "I'm disappointed that my fellow colleagues here haven't continued to make the connection between the rising deficit and the war in Iraq. Because unless we commit ourselves to get out of Iraq--get the U.N. in and get the U.S. out--we're going to see rising deficits."

 

Is he serious? Does he think no one but he is making the connection between the Iraq War and the deficit? Again, that's just plain demagoguery.  

 

Kucinich also joined in ganging up on Howard Dean by saying he was surprised that Dean, a medical doctor, would promote a health insurance plan that doesn't cover every American. Neither do the plans offered by Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards or other candidates, but Kucinich only singled out Dean.

 

It must not be forgotten that in his first three terms as a Congressman, Kucinich had a consistently anti-abortion rights voting record, earning him endorsements from the National Right to Life Committee.  "He absolutely believes in the sanctity of life and that life begins at conception," Kucinich's spokeswoman explained last year.

Now he says he sees the error of his ways and is pro-choice. Yeah, I've heard that one before. 'Scuse me if I don't entirely trust you, Congressman.

Face it, folks. Dennis is a flake and needs to go away before he damages the cause further.

Oh, and how did the Kucinichistas come to the conclusion that Howard Dean is not a true antiwar candidate? From this article in Salon, published February 19, 2003.

It's Thursday, Feb. 6, the day after Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations of evidence of Iraq's noncompliance with Resolution 1441. Edwards calls it "a powerful case." Kerry says it's "compelling." Lieberman, of course, is already in his fatigues.

Dean isn't sold. It doesn't indicate that Iraq is an imminent threat, he says.

From Washington come the barbs -- The New Republic calls it proof he's "not serious." ABC News' "The Note" wonders if he's backed himself into a corner. Dean has opposed the pending war because he didn't think President Bush had made his case. If he doesn't support military action now, the thinking goes, then he's just contradicting himself. Or, at the very least, he's been put in an untenable and -- for the moment, at least inside war-ready Washington, unpopular -- position.

He gets a deluge of phone calls from reporters asking him to clarify his position. Which is -- "as I've said about eight times today," he says, annoyed -- that Saddam must be disarmed, but with a multilateral force under the auspices of the United Nations. If the U.N. in the end chooses not to enforce its own resolutions, then the U.S. should give Saddam 30 to 60 days to disarm, and if he doesn't, unilateral action is a regrettable, but unavoidable, choice.

"Dean is stirring up antiwar people," a senior advisor to one of his Democratic opponents says. "They are against all war, not just against war without U.N. support. When we do go to war, and Dean says he's with our troops and president in time of national crisis, the antiwar activists he's cultivated will turn on him quickly."

Dean says that's fine, and denies that there's any inconsistency. "I think people are madly trying to find one," he says. "It's part of the game." [Jake Tapper, "On the Campaign Trail With the Un-Bush," Salon, February 19, 2003]

I repeat, Kucinich supporters whip out this very article to "prove" Dean is flip-flopping on the war. A tad short on critical thinking skills, it seems. 

 

Carlson had been defending telemarketers on the show, and an e-mail writer during the show suggested he give out his home phone, saying he wanted to direct-market to Carlson some of his "junk in the garage."

According to the report, co-host Paul Begala encouraged Carlson to reveal the number, which he did – only it was the Fox News number, not his home number.

"Get out your pen," Carlson said before reciting the main line at the Fox newsroom. [World Net Daily, September 25, 2003]

Now, this is a cute little prank. I would have expected Faux News to retaliate by directing callers to CNN News, which they did in some news releases. But someone at Faux posted Tucker Carlson's private unlisted number on Faux's web site.

Carlson said hundreds of angry phone calls were made to his home, including threatening calls. Carlson's wife and four young children were at home at the time the calls were made. [TheBostonChannel.com]

Imagine the semihuman, mouth-breathing, chromosome-challenged cretins who actually watch Faux News, then imagine these creatures talking to sweet little children. Disgusting. 

 

Mathematically, then, Bush's "free fall" has to end at some point, with his ratings at least leveling off. And it seems likely that his "bottom" is a lot closer to the current 49% than to zero, for the simple reason that his own party remains united behind him. [James Taranto, "Best of the Web Today," WSJ Opinion Journal, September 25, 2003]

Well, they do have a point -- he can't fall to a minus percentage, unless you count me several times. So the question is, how low can he go?

 

If the WSJ is right, and registered Republicans remain solidly behind Bush, then he could go as low as 35 percent. I understand that's the percentage of voters in 2000 who identified themselves as Republicans (39 percent Democrats; 27 percent independent).

 

But then, of course, there are self-described "independents" who are dittoheads (and therefore Bush supporters). And there are Republicans who are real Republicans and don't like the growing Bushie budget deficit (I've met some of 'em at Howard Dean meet-ups). So I don't think you can go by that.

 

Bush won't fall to zero, because there is a segment of our population who will stand by him no matter what. The man could ride a tricycle down Pennsylvania Avenue, naked but for a clown wig, and there are some who would call it the beginnings of a bold new transportation policy.

 

I call this phenomenon "Peggy Noonan Syndrome."

 

There are no polls that will tell us how many have an incurable case of PNS, but my guts tell me it's somewhere around 30 percent of the voting population, give or take a lot.  So, I predict that Bush has falling room below the current 49 percent, but no matter what he does it won't go below the 30s.

 

But that's low enough.

 

United Nations. Well, that's the official name--but it's high time to reconsider. The unity here consists largely of shared high-end real estate in New York and a strange presumed equivalency among all rulers of sovereign states, an assumption that does no service to the cause of peace and freedom. What we need is hardly a society of "united" (or maybe "convened") nations, but of "free nations"--perhaps with a children's table out back for the world's tyrants.

U.N. Resolutions. In light of the U.N.'s utter failure to resolve any of the most pressing issues of the world's surviving tyrannies and their terrorist spawn, maybe we should in such cases start talking about U.N. "irresolutions." [Claudia Rosett, "New World Order," Wall Street Journal, September 24, 2003]

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, President Bush made a strong argument on behalf of Washington's efforts to rebuild Iraq and create a stable, democratic Middle East. The president rightly didn't give any ground to foreign and domestic critics of the policies he has pursued with extraordinary determination since the September 11 attacks. Instead, he took advantage of the opportunity to address the U.N. to re-emphasize the reality that we make progress in the war on terrorism by encouraging democracy in dangerous, volatile regions like the Middle East. ["Bush's Powerful Case," The Washington Times, September 24, 2003]

Solid proof that Tony Blankley lives in an alternate universe.

According to Oliver Burkeman of the Guardian, some neocons are losing their passion for the Bush II Regime. Burkeman reported from the neocon thinktank American Enterprise Institute.

In interviews with the Guardian they expressed deep scepticism about President Bush's new overtures to the UN, accusing the White House of a lack of commitment - and, most surprising of all, rounding on their former hero Donald Rumsfeld. The distance between the president and the movement widely credited with persuading him to go to war in the first place has never seemed greater.

"All of us surely understand that, but for the president, we wouldn't be arguing about postwar Iraq - we would still be arguing about what to do with Saddam," said Thomas Donnelly, an AEI scholar and senior fellow at the Project for the New American Century, the influential rightwing group whose founding signatories include Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Mr Rumsfeld, and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.

"But having got rid of the guy, we're now understanding that regime change is a much larger undertaking than we thought it was. But this is a unique American responsibility, and passing the buck to the rest of the world, a good portion of which didn't agree with us in the first place, is not a great idea." [Oliver Burkeman, "Vision of the Neocons Stays Fixed on Making Hard Choices," The Guardian, September 23, 2003]

These people crack me up. They were the true believers in the Cakewalk Theory. After a fun little war, liberated Iraqis would embrace democracy and American values would bloom throughout the Middle East. Now they say, um, well, it's all been more difficult than we thought it would be.

What can one say but, duh.

Going to the United Nations to ask for help puts some cracks in Bush's base. The neocons hate the UN. (Last April Fred Barnes at the Weekly Standard warned that the UN would try to take control of reconstruction away from the U.S., and this must not happen.) But even the Bushies have come to realize that Iraq's costs in lives and treasure are going to hurt him politically. If Bush can get troops and money from other countries, it would give him some political cover going into next year's campaign. So he's going to the UN.

On the other hand, the member nations seem determined not to cave to Bush's demands without some concessions. And the concession they most want is control. But if Bush cedes any part of control to the UN, the neocons will take this as a sign of weakness. It would also confound their plans to control the Middle East through Iraq, which in their minds was the whole point of the war.

The Bushies built this box; let them figure out how to break out of it.

"There is a hell of a case of donor fatigue," a senior administration official said today. "A realistic appraisal [of what a new resolution would bring] is 'not much.' "

Bush's rhetorical maneuvering room was limited in other ways. Faced with the worst approval ratings of his presidency, Bush designed his speech to appeal to a domestic audience. But the president's conservative base, long skeptical of the United Nations, would not approve of an explicit acknowledgment of a broad U.N. role in Iraq. Bush limited his comments on potential U.N. aid to programs that bring broad bipartisan support, such as UNICEF and the World Food Program. [Glenn Kessler, "A Vague Pitch Leaves Mostly Puzzlement," The Washington Post, September 24, 2003]

Yesterday's speech revealed Mr. Flight Suit having a failure of nerve.  On September 7 he had to tell the nation he needed $87 billion from Congress to spend on Iraq. In this speech he promised to ask for help from the UN to lessen the burden on U.S. taxpayers. But yesterday he was unable to make the speech he needed to make to get that help, because that would have required (1) offering to share control with the UN and (2) admitting that things are not going as well in Iraq as he's been pretending.

Josh Marshall writes that the Administration is stuck in a loop:

First, some major setback occurs in Baghdad. Next, the White House reacts with a newfound desire to broaden its coalition by bringing in the United Nations and our allies.

When the crunch comes, however, the White House can’t bring itself to make the hard decisions necessary to change the dynamic in Iraq or the United Nations. So everything falls back to the status quo ante until the next bomb blows up in Baghdad. [Josh Marshall, "Administration Stuck in an Infinite Loop," The Hill, September 24, 2003]

Bottom line: For the first time in his pampered, privileged, silver-spoon life, George W. Bush is not going to get bailed out by his daddy's rich friends or his business cronies. He has to make the tough choice between risking the support of the Hard Right and the neocons in order to do the right thing by Iraq and the U.S., or clinging to his political support and letting Iraq and the U.S. suffer the consequences.

If Bush's bio is our guide, he lacks the fortitude and character to do the former, so we are stuck with the latter as long as Bush is President of the United States.

Can we afford to stay stuck for another 15+ months, assuming the next election gets him out of office?

At the very least, Congress must take Bush in hand and make some decisions for him. The House must demand that Bush reveal where every U.S.dollar is going in Iraq -- no more secrets, or no more money. The Senate must exert its constitutional power to direct the President in foreign policy.

Most Republicans will whine and squeal about "partisan politics," but I think it's possible there are enough honest statesmen among the GOP in Congress to join with Democrats in this effort. If the President's approval numbers continue to slide, maybe -- just maybe -- Congress will finally get past its own failure of nerve and do its job.