The Big Lie - Iraq - Again - Part II

So many lies, so little time. I was going to write next about the lie that all these horrible consequences would necessarily follow a withdrawal of US troops from combat duty in the Iraq Civil War. I still intend to deal with this topic. However, a new Big Lie has emerged from the Iraq War Supporters.

I am sure you've have heard it. Any mention of placing conditions , or restrictions on the supplemental funding for the war brings forth immediate cries of "micromanagement" from the Iraq War Supporters. Is this really true, or is it just one more Big Lie?

Come below the fold where we'll deconstruct this one and perhaps find some Truth....


Let's start off by defining micromanagement. Dictionary.com gives us this:

mi·cro·man·age : –verb (used with object), -aged, -ag·ing.
to manage or control with excessive attention to minor details.
[Origin: 1985–90]
—Related forms
mi·cro·man·age·ment, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v
1.1)Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

House Republican Leader John Boehner had this to say about a recent plan by John Murtha to place restrictions on the use of funds in the upcoming Iraq supplemental funding bill:

“His aim, he made clear, is not to improve readiness but to ‘stop the
surge.’ So why not straightforwardly strip the money out of the appropriations
bill -- an action Congress is clearly empowered to take -- rather than try to
micromanage the Army in a way that may be unconstitutional? Because, Mr. Murtha said, it will deflect accusations that he is trying to do what he is trying to
do.”

Not to be outdone, Condoleezza Rice said:

proposals being drafted by Senate Democrats to limit the war amounted to "the worst of micromanagement of military affairs."

Even Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Lateline program is getting in on the act. They quote :

ROY BLUNT, REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN: It's hard to imagine a group less capable of making tactical decisions about specific troop deployments than 535 members of Congress.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Lateline, in the same story, also had this:

NANCY PELOSI, DEMOCRAT HOUSE SPEAKER: No more blank cheques for President Bush on Iraq. Our taxpayer dollars must go to protect our troops, to keep our promises to our veterans and to provide for the safety of the American people. In light of the facts, President Bush's escalation proposal will not make America safer.

and this:

TOM LANTOS, DEMOCRAT CONGRESSMAN: We are not fighting terrorism in Iraq. We are attempting to referee a religiously based civil war, which saps our strength and destroys our fabric as a society.

So what is all this talk really about? Does Congress in fact have the power to set policies that control how the military operates? Has it been done before?

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution:

The Congress shall have Power to ...provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States...
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union...To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States

So it would appear that Congress does indeed have the power to govern the military. In fact, Congress has done just that from the inception of the republic. There is 5 USC CHAPTER 99 - DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE NATIONAL SECURITY PERSONNEL System passed in January 2005 (For those of you not paying attention, this was in the Republican controlled Congress). Then there is 10 USC TITLE 10 - ARMED FORCES. This entire title of the code is devoted to the governance of the armed forces of the United States. It covers everything from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps.

So Congress has indeed exercised its powers under the Constitution

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

They have done it under Democratic and Republican controlled Congresses. They have done it before there were Democrats and Republicans. And they should continue to do so now.

So, when you hear your Republican friends talking about Congress micromanaging the Iraq war, just point them to Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. If that doesn't work, direct their attention to 10 USC TITLE 10 - ARMED FORCES. If none of that works, you know you've got the type of Republican who voted for Allan Keyes for the Illinois Senate seat now held by Barak Obama.

The Big Lie - Iraq - Again

I have been writing a series of How to Talk diaries. The goal of these diaries is to enable us to have successful conversations with people who should be agreeing with us, but do not yet.

One of the standard features of this series is a section called Mangle the Memes. This section gives us some tools to deal with the lock step counter arguments framed by the Right Wing Smear Machine, which is famous for generating and propagating The Big Lie.

This diary is going to deal with the current Big Lie - the consequences of a rapid pull out from Iraq. Want to know how to mangle this meme? Then follow me down the rabbit hole...


A Google search on "house republican consequences" yields 1,290,000 hits. I am not about to list them all, but I do want to focus on a couple of key points inside The Big Lie:

• a swift U.S. pullout
• Portrayal of Republican talking points as the only possible outcome

these are the two key points inside The Big Lie. In the initial How To Talk diary I defined Mangle the Memes:

The other side is not going to take all this lying down. They are going
to counter attack you with their favorite memes. You are going to counter attack them by never letting a meme go unchallenged. You have already defined your
terminology. You can mix up your counterattacks by using your predefined
terminology in response to their memes, or you can turn their own memes back on
them. Use either of these tactics, or both. You will confound your opposition
and carry the day

So lets take on the first of the key points above - a swift U.S. pullout.

Here is the first lie within The Big Lie. The other side is portraying calls for a withdrawal from Iraq as a swift U.S. pullout. The lie is no one is calling for a swift pullout. Rep. John Murtha got the pullout ball rolling in 2005 as reported by Fox Noise:

Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and decorated Marine Corps veteran who served in the Vietnam War, last week urged the withdrawal of all U.S. troops within six months.

Is 6 months your idea of swift? Here is how the President talked about Murtha and his proposal:

Congressman Murtha is a fine man, a good man, who served our country with honor and distinction as a Marine in Vietnam and as a United States congressman.
He is a strong supporter of the United States military. And I know the decision
to call for an immediate withdrawal of our troops...

An immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq will only strengthen the terrorists' ... they can turn Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban, a safe haven for terror, a place where they can plot and plan attacks against America

Even Harvard's Nieman Watchdog has fallen into the immediate pullout trap. Consider this:

General William Odom, one of the earliest advocates of an immediate withdrawal

Here is General Odom's earliest statement on this subject as reported by the Nieman Watchdog:

debating an early pullout. Many US officers in Iraq, especially
at company and field grade levels, know that while they are winning every tactical battle, they are losing strategically.

How does debating an early pullout become one of the earliest advocates of an immediate withdrawal?

The very next Odom article published by the Nieman Watchdog, describes Odom's previous article

as get out of Iraq now

The real problem here is that Odom did not say that. Odom went form calling for debating an early pullout to one of the earliest advocates of an immediate withdrawal in a span of just over 15 months. Nowhere in this period does the Nieman Watchdog report Odom actually calling for an immediate withdrawal

So there is lie number one. General Odom calls for debating an early pullout. This is turned into one of the earliest advocates of an immediate withdrawal. John Murtha's call for withdrawal of all U.S. troops within six months is turned into an immediate withdrawal by no less than the President of the United States.

Once we understand what the lie is, refuting it becomes a fairly straightforward exercise. Whenever you hear someone describing an immediate withdrawal, stop them right there. Ask them who is proposing an immediate withdrawal. They will not be able to give you a name. If they try to give you a name, ask them to supply a link or some other documentation. Accept only direct quotes attributed to that name. These can not be supplied because they do not exist.

That should be enough to end the conversation right there. You will have defeated the premise of the argument for all these dire consequences to necessarily follow.

In the next installment of the Big Lie, we will see how to defeat the cause - effect argument for a non-existent immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

Iraq: What We Should Really Do

I have stayed away from diarying about Iraq. Lots of very bright people have been writing about it. I have been focused on the 2006 elections, nationally and here in Florida. I just didn't want to do it.

The elections are over now. WE WON!!! Unfortunately, we didn't win everything we wanted. I dearly wanted Jim Davis to win in FL-Gov. It was not to be. But, we did win a giant referendum on Iraq. Now the President is acting like he is leading a different country than the one that just soundly rejected his vision for Iraq.

So, here I am. I have no excuses for not writing this. Some of you are not going to like what I have to say. Others might. In any event, here is my two cents worth...

First thing, I ought to tell you a little about me. I am old enough to have spent 4 years in the Marine Corps and 13 months in South East Asia. (Viet Nam mostly, but also some other places in that general neck of the woods.) Up until the last few years, I thought this country had actually learned some lessons from Viet Nam. Until ole George W got into his mach0 act.

I long ago came to my own terms with Viet Nam. It was a mistake to have gone there in the first place. We didn't fight the war in a way that would give us a chance to "win". But the men and women who served there did so honorably and felt they were serving the best interests of their country at the time. It was not until several years later that I saw how wrong it was for us to have gotten involved there. But our involvement there did figure into the larger scheme of events and in its own way contributed to the eventual freedom of Eastern Europe. All part of history.

I was not in favor of this war from the beginning. I did not believe that Iraq was an imminent threat to the national security of the United States, and couldn't fathom why Dumbya did. But neither am I a pacifist. There are people out there who want to harm us. I have no problem whatsoever doing it to them before they can do it to us. I would just prefer we focus on the real bad guys out there. There are certainly enough of them. We didn't need to invent any new ones.

On that score, I was in complete agreement with Senator Bob Graham. During the debate for the Authorization of Use of Military Force in Iraq (AUMF), Senator Graham introduced a substitute amendment. The Graham amendment left the Iraq request intact. It added other trouble makers such as Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Syria etc. Graham, who was Chair of the Senate Intelligence committee at the time, urged his colleagues to approve his amendment because there were other bad actors out there who had in fact already killed Americans and wanted to kill some more.

Well, the Graham amendment was defeated. The Bush administration did not want the focus on Iraq to be diluted. Senator Graham's speech the next day on the resolution that ultimately passed should be required reading for every critic of the war.

tonight I am going to vote no on this resolution. The reason is this
resolution is too timid. It is too limiting. It is too weak. This resolution
fails to recognize the new reality of the era of terrorism. And that reality is
that war abroad will, without assertive security actions, increase the prospects
of terrorist attacks here at home. In fact, war on Iraq alone leaves
Americans more vulnerable to the No. 1 threat facing us today, those
international terrorist organizations that have the capability to inflict upon
us a repeat of the tragedy of September 11.

Graham closed his speech with this:

Of all the issues we care about, and those issues over which we have
some capability to determine the outcome, in my judgment, the No. 1
priority should be the war on terrorism and its threat to the people of
the United States in our homeland. Our top targets should be those
groups that have the greatest potential to repeat what happened on
September 11, killing thousands of Americans. Passing this timid resolution, I fear, will only increase the chances of Americans
again being killed. That is not a burden of probability I am prepared
to accept. Therefore, I will vote no.
I close with the words spoken in one of the darkest periods of the
history of the Western World. In 1941, Winston Churchill said:

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and
easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can
measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.
The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that
once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of
policy, but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable
events.

Now to the nub of it. What should we be doing now? There are all these dire predictions of the region falling into chaos if we withdraw precipitously. Sounds a lot like the old "domino theory" to me. We all now that didn't come to pass. , But maybe we just got lucky that time. Maybe this is a different set of circumstances.

Here is my proposal. I don't want to lose a single more American life refereeing the civil war going on in Iraq right now. Neither do I want to risk that the bad actors adjacent to Iraq will use our absence to their advantage. My proposal is that we immediately inform the Iraqis that they are responsible for their own internal security. We will pull our forces back to the Iraqi borders or into Kuwait and / or Turkey. We will provide external security to Iraq for a limited time period.

This should deter Iraq's neighbors from making mischief in the area. At the same time we should be talking to all of Iraq's neighbors to get them to buy into a solution for Iraq's external security that will allow us to remove all our combat forces from Iraqi soil. This should begin immediately.

So there you have it. It has some elements of the Murtha plan. It has some elements of the ISG report. And it has ideas borrowed from elsewhere. If I were in a position to advise the President, that's what I would be telling him we ought to do. I am not, so I am suggesting this alternative to you.