Visiting Iraq Has Made McCain Stupid

What will Obama prove by visiting Iraq at this point in time? McCain has been using Obama's lack of taxpayer funded campaign stops to Iraq as a critique on his readiness to be president. The McCain camp is trying to make the case that Obama hasn't been to see the mess we've created in Iraq firsthand so he isn't prepared to deal with the situation. McCain even went as far as to offer an invitation to his likely opponent to join him on a visit to Iraq and referred to Obama's subsequent rejection as "fundamental misunderstanding of the situation in Iraq". Obama was also criticized for not sitting down with General Petraeus in that same McCain harangue.

McCain as we recall has been to Iraq recently. In fact the more he goes the less he seems to know about the situation or its complexities. His last trip ended up looking like a taxpayer funded campaign photo op. It of course was highlighted with McCain repeatedly confusing the nature of Sunni Al Queda and Shia Iran to the dismay of Joe Lieberman. Just today McCain misstated the troop levels in Iraq as being at pre-surge levels when they are clearly not. Further devaluing McCain's Iraq wisdom was his insistence a couple of days ago that Mosul was very calm the very same day that a suicide bombing was carried out, in Mosul. I'm not even going to go into details on last year's staged Baghdad market place theatrics. Maybe McCain should just remain stateside and get briefed on Iraq by his campaign advisers or Lindsey Graham. They could start by learning him the difference between Sunni and Shia factions in Iraq. God knows the current president would have done himself and everyone a favor by figuring that out before invading Iraq. Better yet McCain could go to the internets and read a good Iraq related blog like Informed Comment.

Now the Obama campaign is signaling that a trip to Iraq is in the works. Obama doesn't need to go to Iraq right now or sit down with a politically slanted General to prove his mettle on Iraq. What he does need to do is keep Iraq in the spotlight during the campaign and continue being smart and informed on the subject. It will also be prudent to keep the pressure on McCain and jump on him whenever he makes one of his frequent gaffes or crazy statements on Iraq like the one offered up today.

Appeasing the Saudis

There are those who would say that groveling to the Saudi King to increase oil production is a job below the pay grade of the US President. The Prez was in Saudi Arabia Friday doing just that because he has always touted his good relationship with the Saudis as leverage when it comes to oil prices. The visit with King Abdullah turned out to be a showcase of how the current administration is appeasing the Saudis. He just wanted one small thing to hold up as a reason why he is not as irrelevant as the rest of the world believes him to be. After reading the headlines yesterday I can't tell what actually transpired. The Saudis announced that they had already boosted produciton after Bush left but that move was not in response to the President's request. The Financial Times reported on the visit as a success with this quote:

The move came as Mr Bush faced intense political pressure at home provide relief from soaring petrol prices ahead of the summer driving season, but he received little credit for the Saudi announcement on Friday.

There were other MSM sources taking that angle including the Washington Times (surprise) and Reuters. The other side of the petrodollar was that the Bush was actually rebuffed by the Saudis. The balance of the reporting I read was that he was blown off. The BBC reported this when it came to a new production increase:

Saudi officials said they were already meeting demand, and had
increased production by 300,000 barrels per day earlier this month.

We are in such a bad position when it comes to oil dependency and respect in the Middle East that having to depend on what mood a Saudi king is in has become a big foreign policy deal. Until things change we'll have less and less leverage. With that in mind your government did manage to reach a deal on allowing the Saudis to develop a nuclear program for energy production. I can't shake the feeling that this is a subtle way of allowing the Saudis to accidentally acquire a nuclear capability to counter the moves being attempted by Iran to do the same thing. In the end you'll still pay $4.00 for a gallon of gasoline.

In review Bush went to Saudi Arabia and was rebuffed on his oil production request but the Saudis got assurances from your government on its continued support of Saudi hegemony in the region. They ended up with US support of a nuclear program, more weapons sales and continued protection from Iranian influence on the backs of the US military. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. They may not be the our enemies but they're hardly our staunchest ally in the Middle East.

The Two Best Things About the Latest NIE

The first best thing about the new NIE on Iran is the gnashing of teeth from apoplectic neo-kooks everywhere. I include in this bunch John Bolton, Freedom's Watch gang and of course the folks at the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. This group also includes hardliners in the Israeli government (Ehud Barak for example) who are basically suggesting that the report is wrong.

The second best thing is the news from several sources including Salon and ThinkProgress that the Decider knew about the NIE's conclusions back in August but still continued to insert World War III references in his speeches. Maybe that explains the giggles from the Prez whenever he talks about Armageddon. No seriously, this serves as a check for all of us skeptics out here that know these guys are just using fear of a nuclear Iran for political means. It also weakens any chance of the end of days crowd getting an invasion of Iran as a Christmas gift.

For a great laugh on the “other NIE” read today's Tom Friedman column in the NYT.

"Al Queda" - The new Kleenex

Everything we're shootin' at in Iraq has been deemed to be Al Queda. I thought i had noticed this trend recently in the various news crawls and Wolf Blitzer blatherings. My suspicions were confirmed after reading Glenn Greenwald's column in Salon.

All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as "Al Qaeda."

What's even cuter is that the media are picking up the cue. He goes on to provide some recent examples from stellar publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

It appears the surge of mind speak was started to coincide with the military version. The same thing has been happening with Iran references. I have found from my observations that Iran is being accused of funding shia AND sunni militants in Iraq. My favorite was the claim made by the State Department earlier this month that Iran is funding and arming the Taliban in Afghanistan. So Iran is helping sunni groups whose idealogical bent is to destroy all shia (read Iranian) influence in the region? War truly is peace.