Dumb and dumber
Match the quote to the source -- Britney Spears, constitutional law professor, or Ann Althouse, fading pop starlet:

He's made his decision, and I think people need to support what he's doing and not undercut him by revealing to our enemies that we can be worn down and demoralized.

and

Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens.

Wait a minute, I got them mixed up; Althouse is the fading law professor... no, that's not right either... Via Roy Edroso ("alicublog").


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UPDATE, 1/12: "d" at Lawyers, Guns and Money got there first. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:45:00 PM -- |    

 
Senator Cardin on Iraq: "Time for a Change"
Yesterday freshman Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) gave his first speech on the Senate floor, and it was about Iraq. Cardin voted against the Iraq war as a representative, and advocated a pullout from Iraq by the end of 2007 in his 2006 Senate campaign.

In yesterday's speech -- titled "Time for a Change" -- Cardin was vocally against escalation (a word he used to describe the plan Bush announced on Wednesday evening). He sees the November 7 election as being in large part a referendum on Iraq, and said the Iraq Study Group recommendations of last month were similar to his own.

While Cardin didn't use the speech to describe specific legislative steps he's prepared to support to oppose escalation or continued American occupation of/presence in Iraq, he does seem to want vigorous action by Congress; it seems to me his remarks that he would not be satisfied with nonbinding resolutions against escalation or for some kind of phased pullout. From excerpts at his Senate web site:

• Iraq is a country today torn by civil war. Victory in Iraq will not be achieved with our military might. It will come only from successfully aiding Iraq in establishing a government that protects the rights and enjoys the confidence of all its people. It must be a government that respects both human rights and democratic rights. The efforts of U.S. soldiers, no matter how heroic, cannot accomplish these objectives for the Iraqis. [...]
  
  
• So when President Bush said several weeks ago that he was reevaluating the situation in Iraq and would announce a new policy shortly after the new year, there was great hope – that the President, Congress and the American people could come together with an effective new policy to help the people in Iraq and advance U.S. interests. . . Unfortunately, that was not the case. President Bush has decided to ignore the advice of the Iraq Study Group, many of his own military officials and the American people in making his decision to send 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq.

The full text of his remarks can be found on pages S412-413 of the January 11, 2007 Congressional Record. His recognition of the nature of the November 7 elections is clearer there. After noting that voters defeated six incumbent Senators to get change, for reasons including ethics reform, "quality health care,"and better educational opportunities, he continued:

But the loudest cry in November was the call for a change in our policies in Iraq. Americans overwhelmingly want to see our troops begin to come home and they don’t want to see thousands of additional troops go to Iraq.

Cardin's recommendations:

We must begin by starting to bring our troops home, not by escalating troop levels. We need to engage and energize the international community, including our traditional allies as well as other countries in the Middle East. Our primary focus must be extensive political and diplomatic negotiations directed toward the twin goals of a cease-fire and a lasting and stable Iraqi Government.

Referring to hearings before the Foreign Relations Committee (on which he serves) and elsewhere, Cardin said:

The hearings taking place in the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees are vital. But our responsibility goes well beyond the hearings. Individually and collectively, we must act with our voices and our votes, speaking out vigorously and taking action against the continued mismanagement of this war.

I'd have preferred "prosecution" to "mismanagement," and I'd have preferred some specifics about the kinds of actions Cardin will support. But Cardin's speech shows that he knows that Iraq is issue number one, that reining Bush in is essential, that pulling out troops is a prerequisite for whatever "success" still means in Iraq -- and that just talking about that won't do.


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CROSSPOSTED to Free State Politics, Watching Those We Chose posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |    

 
Gary
Gary Farber could use some help; he's got no income at this point, and some medical problems. If you have freelance work you might steer his way, he's a good guy who's obviously very smart, with great research and writing skills; if not, consider helping him out with a donation. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:31:00 AM -- |    

 
I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin'
Jack Balkin, "Balkinization" --- Several commentators have suggested that the proposed surge is a last-ditch effort, a sort of Hail Mary pass. But it is a pretty strange sort of Hail Mary pass: Bush is on his own 10 yard line with seconds to play and he is throwing not a long bomb but a short toss to the sideline.

publius, "Legal Fiction" --- All of these plans depend, first, upon another sovereign government actually adopting them and, second, executing them. And the military aspects of the proposals require the cooperation (and competence) of the Iraqi military and, gulp, police force.

Taking a step back, there's a conceptual problem here. It's not really accurate to conceptualize the current situation as helping "the government" fight the anti-government people. In a civil war/sectarian conflict such as this, assisting any part of the government is essentially taking sides. Deploying the police for instance doesn't so much help the government as it helps certain Shiite factions who have overrun the police force.

Jim Henley, "Unqualified Offerings" -- Others will tease out the contradictions, lies, pious hopes and regurgitations of the President’s speech. All I’ll say for now is that one of its purposes appears to be to continue laying the rhetorical groundwork for an attack on Iran.

John Derbyshire, "The Corner" (!)--- The central and most glaring contradiction is the implied threat to walk away... Yoked to the ringing declaration that, of course, we can't walk away. We seem to be saying to the Maliki govt.: "Hey, you guys better step up to your responsibilites, or else we're outa here." This, a few sentences after saying that we can't leave the place without a victory. So-o-o-o:

—-We can't leave Iraq without a victory.
—-Unless Maliki & Co. get their act together, we can't achieve victory.
—-If Maliki & Co. don't get their act together, we'll leave.

It's been a while since I studied classical logic, but it seems to me that this syllogism leaks like a sieve.

Howard Fineman, MSNBC --- George W. Bush spoke with all the confidence of a perp in a police lineup.

Mark Kleiman, "Reality Based Community" --- Will anyone notice that his concession that things were going very badly in Iraq through 2006 makes liars of himself and all his supporters, and monkeys of the wingnut columnists and bloggers who kept insisting that everything was going fine and that reports to the contrary were liberal lies from the MSM? Probably not.

Andrew Sullivan --- This president may have in mind a future escalation far greater and more explosive than anything we're doing in Baghdad. The real reason we're not withdrawing is that we are keeping our options open for a wider war. And the president, as always, is not being honest about his real intentions.

The Cunning Realist --- Purely in terms of our force level and its relation to his own rhetoric, Bush has done the equivalent of sending the Capitol Hill police to take Normandy in 1944. Nothing he said tonight changed that -- on the contrary, it just became more obvious. [...]

Since it's clear we're now in a holding pattern until Bush dumps this mess on the next administration, expect thousands more U.S. troops to be killed over the next few years and tens of thousands more wounded. Almost two years ago, at the exact same time some self-anointed experts and opiners like this one proclaimed "We're Winning", I made this post about a childhood friend of mine serving in Iraq who warned of the low troop morale and the "FUBAR clusterfuck" we were in. He was spot-on as it turned out, and an infinitely better source than those dubious "the media isn't showing the schools we've been painting" missives trumpeted by the usual suspects. He's now out of the Army, but stays in touch with friends still serving in Iraq. Recently he told me that troop morale is at rock-bottom now, lower than ever, and dejection is turning ominously into anger.

After almost four years, the burden of proof is on this war's supporters, the pollyannas, and the enablers. At this point if you're not against the war and the perpetual occupation it entails, then you are for it. And if you're against it, the only responsible course now is protest. Part of that, of course, means making it clear to your elected representatives that you're watching what they say and do, and you'll be voting accordingly.



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NOTES: Cunning Realist via The Editors of The Poor Man. Fineman via Kleiman ("Reality Based Community"). Title via Bob Dylan. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:25:00 AM -- |    

 
Other than that, it's a great plan
From Bush's "surge" speech last night:

The new strategy I outline tonight will change America's course in Iraq and help us succeed in the fight against terror.

So where are many of the troops to fight terror in Iraq coming from? Afghanistan:

President Bush is expected to announce this week the dispatch of thousands of additional troops to Iraq as a stopgap measure. Such an order, Pentagon officials say, would strain the Army and Marine Corps as they man both wars.

A US Army battalion fighting in a critical area of eastern Afghanistan is due to be withdrawn within weeks to deploy to Iraq.

Army Brigadier General Anthony J. Tata and other US commanders say that will happen as the Taliban is expected to unleash a campaign to cut the vital road between Kabul and Kandahar.

The official said the Taliban intend to seize Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city, where the group was organized in the 1990s.

Whose game plan will they accomplish once they're in Iraq? Al Qaeda in Iraq:

The most important thing is that the jihad continues with steadfastness and firm rooting, and that it grows in terms of supporters, strength, clarity of justification, and visible proof each day. Indeed, prolonging the war is in our interest, with God’s permission.

Bush is looking for Iraqis to commit "18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort, along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations; conducting patrols, setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents." But will these forces actually take on al-Sadr's militias in Sadr City and elsewhere -- or will they confine themselves to doing Muqtada al-Sadr's work for him? I'm skeptical:

"Muqtada al-Sadr has about 30 members in parliament," observed Kennedy School of Government research fellow Gregory Aftandilian, a former Middle East analyst at the State Department. "It's still unclear to me whether Maliki is really going to order his troops to crack down on a militia (controlled by) a part of his political base."

Even if you thought escalation might do some good, we'll be adding too few to accomplish anything. Incoming commanding general Petraeus' own counterinsurgency doctrine ("Twenty counterinsurgents per 1000 residents is often considered the minimum troop density required for effective COIN operations") implies around 100,000 American and Iraqi soldiers are required for the Baghdad area alone. More important, in stating "legitimacy is the main objective," that document implies that efforts to prop up a sectarian Maliki government are doomed to fail. Meanwhile, even pro-surge advocates Kagan and Keane thought anything less than 30,000 additional American troops wouldn't work.

Of the troops Bush does plan to send, many will be withdrawn from fighting the Taliban in a war most Americans do support in order to fight a variety of Iraqis on behalf of a variety of others in a war most Americans don't support. It's likely we'll be suckered -- if that's the word for it -- into not just tacitly ratifying ethnic cleansing in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, but in helping out with that. We'll be sending more American troops into a country whose single remaining unifying principle -- other than perhaps the national soccer team -- is not wanting American troops in their country:

About three-quarters of Iraqis believe that American forces are provoking more conflict than they are preventing in Iraq and that they should be withdrawn within a year, according to a poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, a group from the University of Maryland.

The poll of 1,150 people, conducted Sept. 1 to 4, had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points. It found growing support for attacks against American-led forces, with a majority of Iraqis now favoring them.

But other than that, it's a great plan.


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NOTES: "Afghanistan" -- David Wood, Baltimore Sun: 'Commanders seek more forces in Afghanistan: Taliban prepare offensive against US, NATO troops,' link to Boston Globe, via Mark Kleiman and Kevin Drum; "Al Qaeda in Iraq" -- post in this blog linking to West Point "Combating Terrorism Center" translation of an Al Qaeda in Iraq document recovered after Zarqawi was killed; "skeptical" -- Anne Gearan, AP: 'Bush's New Plan for Iraq War a Gamble' ; "counterinsurgency doctrine" -- Counterinsurgency Field Manual, US Army, p.1-13; "anything less than 30,000" -- Matthew Yglesias, 1/10; "helping out" -- Juan Cole, "Groundhog Day in Purple Heart Boulevard"; "soccer team" -- Iraq vice president Tariq al-Hashimi's best evidence of national unity, Washington Post, 1/9, ; "not wanting American troops" -- September, 2006 University of Maryland PIPA findings, via Gary Farber ("Amygdala"). posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |    

 
David Brooks: political prophet
One thing you can be sure of Wednesday evening, if you watch Bush's speech on PBS: David Brooks is always awesomely right. After Bush's second inaugural speech he told Jim Lehrer:

I guess I'd say the president has meticulously ruled out the possibility that he might be a mediocre president. He is either going to be a great president and get a lot done, or he is going to be a complete failure; either Iraq is going to be a success and foreign policy will be a tremendous triumph for him, or else chaos. And on domestic policy, either he succeeds in passing Social Security and tax reform, which means he will have remade the welfare state and he will be FDR II, or else he fails and doesn't get that stuff passed.

Well there you have it: complete failure -- check. Chaos in Iraq -- check. Doesn't get his Social Security shell game passed -- check. Meticulously ruled out the possibility of being even a mediocre president -- check.

David Brooks: political prophet. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:52:00 AM -- |    

 
A bill.
To prohibit the use of funds for an escalation of United States forces in Iraq above the numbers existing as of January 9, 2007, introduced by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) on Tuesday:

Prohibition.--Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no Federal funds may be obligated or expended by the United States government to increase the number of United States forces in Iraq above the number for such forces which existed as of January 9, 2007, without a specific authorization from Congress by law for such an increase.

Some legislators -- including Democratic ones -- were and are so unfamiliar with their constitutional powers and so seemingly oblivious to their contract with voters that they have trouble believing they can and should stand up to Bush. Via Steve Benen ("The Carpetbagger Report"), ThinkProgress's Judd Legum:

Some members have claimed that anything other than symbolic action is unconstitutional. Legal scholars on both the left and the right say that’s false. History supports their case.

A new report from the Center for American Progress details how, over the last 35 years, Congress has passed bills, enacted into law, that capped the size of military deployments, prohibited funding for existing or prospective deployment, and placed limits and conditions on the timing and nature of deployments.

The examples include laws passed in the 70s prohibiting funding of escalation to Cambodia and essentially ending the war in Vietnam, and one as late as 1993 setting an ending date for American involvement in Somalia. Some of the same Republicans who will be decrying any efforts to tie Bush's hands in Iraq tried to do just that (although without success) with Clinton in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Some Democratic Senators and Representatives seem to need a spine and/or a brain transplant. The New York Times' Jeff Zeleny reports ("Democrats Split Over Iraq"):

“I don’t think we should be pulling back any funds,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat who was elected in November. She said she would oppose a proposal to block money for a troop increase. [...]

Representative Adam Smith of Washington, vice chairman of the moderate New Democratic Coalition, said he feared that withholding financing — even for new troops being sent to Iraq — could have a detrimental effect on all forces.

“I don’t want our troops to be caught between the president and Congress in a political fight,” said Mr. Smith, who was to receive a briefing on Tuesday at the White House. “If there are any risks that our efforts to slash the budget would place them at greater risk, that would be unacceptable to me.”

Memo to Rep. Smith: our troops should be so lucky as to be caught between the president and Congress in a political fight -- it sure beats being caught between Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites in a real one. No sane legislator is going to advocate placing those troops at greater risk -- and none ought to imply that a sensibly planned and enforced withdrawal does anything of the kind. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:46:00 AM -- |    

 
Heh. Indeed.
Once again, we must ask ourselves -- what can WE, as 18 to 22-year-old supporters of the war, do to HELP?

Chinese journalists tire of Thomas Friedman (Jeremy Goldkorn, "Danwei", citing translated remarks by Michael Anti) --- "When he interviews people, he opens [up] his big Dell notebook computer and type in the other party's response, nodding occasionally. No other big-name reporter in the world will conduct interviews this way, because it clearly does not leave time to listen to others and think about the answers. But Friedman does not need to record the entire interview accurately. What he needs is an interesting quotation from the government official or CEO in front of him, so that he can suitably cite it in the column that he has already thought out."

Bush Offers to Re-hang Saddam: ‘We’ll Get It Right This Time,’ President Promises ("The Borowitz Report") --- According to the president, Saddam’s second hanging will be conducted under a strict new set of rules handed down by the U.S., including a zero tolerance policy on camera phones.

“If this second hanging shows up on the YouTubes, I am going to blow my stack,” Mr. Bush said.

"This time we are not going to let the Democrats lose the war for America." --- Republican comment troll at "The Carpetbagger Report." The obvious response was made 8 minutes later.

Not just any idiot (Paul Mirengoff, "Powerline") --- Last night, John reported that "some idiot hacked into our server and briefly disrupted the site." He promised to "make every effort to see that [the hacker] is criminally prosecuted."

It turns out that this was an inside job and that I was the idiot hacker.

For a full and complete investigation --- Learning of the spin that the CIA misled the Bush administration about WMD in Iraq, Michael Bérubé imagines the scene back in February 3, 2004:

The Vice-President: A chemical attack on Houston!? Bite your tongue! Certainly there is no call for that kind of irresponsible talk! National security is far too important a matter to permit the bandying-about of speculative-- nay, hysterical-- scenarios of apocalypse.

The President: I have to agree. The question of whether to go to war is the most grave decision I must face as the duly elected representative of the American people, and I insist that we continue to seek other means for adjudicating the many disputes of this troubled region. Above all, we need to consult with our many allies to determine whether they would join with us in finding alternative means of isolating and containing Saddam.

DWCIA [Dastardly Warmongering CIA --ed.] official: Saddam cannot be contained, sir. There are innumerable trailers and pipes strewn throughout his land, any one of which could help him to rain destruction on us within 45 minutes of his say-so. And our allies are-- not to put too fine a point on it-- pusillanimous, sir. There is no strength, no surety to be found in them.

The President: What you say leaves me uneasy in mind. I must give this matter further thought.

Messrs. Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle (in unison): Do not judge this matter rashly, sir. Vice-President Cheney is right-- our dealings with the Arab world after September 11 are very serious business, and we need to proceed with wisdom-- not with the half-baked schemes of rogue elements in our nation’s intelligence apparatus.

Exeunt.

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NOTES: "Help" by Tom Tomorrow. Friedman item via "Stop The Spirit of Zossen," which has interesting writing and computer graphics/Photoshop art work, apparently original. Idiot Powerline hacker via Ogged ("Unfogged"), whose post is the definitive account. Personally, I see no reason to abandon efforts for criminal prosecution. "Exeunt" link added; so long, Bérubé! posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:07:00 AM -- |    

 
Enemy of the state
Hannity's New TV Show Bestows A Weekly "Enemy Of The State" Award (Eric Kleefeld, "TPM Cafe"):

Forget Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person In The World" contest — it's now been completely upstaged by a new Sunday contest on Fox: Sean Hannity's "Enemy of the State" award. Last night, Hannity's new Sunday night program aired for the first time, and from here on he'll award his "Enemy of the State" prize — a term originating with ancient Roman dictators placing bounties on rivals — on whatever red-state abortionist, anti-war activist, or run-of-the-mill Democrat who has attracted Hannity's ire that week.

Hannity's first nominee is... drumroll... Sean Penn -- whose treasonous acts include calling Hannity a "whore," calling for the impeachment of "just about everyone" in the Bush administration, and calling them "bastards." That's it.

It's tempting to make light of this, and so I will: which Bush administration bastard does that lame-ass Penn not want impeached? Huh? Huh? What's up with that? What a sellout!

And indeed some people are doing the old "just a joke, grow a sense of humor" two-step with this. But even as a misbegotten slap at Keith Olberman's "Worst Person in the World" schtick, "Enemy of the State" just isn't funny. Most of us, I think, don't give much of a hoot about "the state" per se. In a pinch, we'd rather take the side of whoever is giving it a good poke in the eye, especially if it or its baby-faced pals come harrumphing along looking for "enemies" who don't "watch what they say," to use Ari Fleischer's infamous phrase. (At least, that's the movie we'd watch.) The constitution, "my rights," voting, junior high civics stuff -- that's something else most of us value about the country. But "the state"? Hell with that.

Yet "enemy of the state" is still a tremendously loaded phrase. That is, it's a time bomb; in less light-hearted times than these it could be a terrifying charge, and folks like Hannity, Coulter, Malkin and worse will be happy to give that a try.

In a recent interview on Salon, journalist and author Chris Hedges made a good observation, I think:

People have a very hard time believing the status quo of their existence, or the world around them, can ever change. There's a kind of psychological inability to accept how fragile open societies are. When I was in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, at the start of the war, I would meet with incredibly well-educated, multilingual Kosovar Albanian friends in the cafes. I would tell them that in the countryside there were armed groups of the Kosovo Liberation Army, who I'd met, and they would insist that the Kosovo Liberation Army didn't exist, that it was just a creation of the Serb police to justify repression.

You saw the same thing in the cafe society in Sarajevo on the eve of the war in Bosnia. Radovan Karadzic or even Milosevic were buffoonish figures to most Yugoslavs, and were therefore, especially among the educated elite, never taken seriously. There was a kind of blindness caused by their intellectual snobbery, their inability to understand what was happening. I think we have the same experience here. Those of us in New York, Boston, San Francisco or some of these urban pockets don't understand how radically changed our country is, don't understand the appeal of these buffoonish figures to tens of millions of Americans.

Via Ogged ("Unfogged"), who adds, "as I keep saying, I think we're one major attack away from very scary days." Sure, Hannity is a buffoon -- but a bunch of people watch him day in, day out, so he's a dangerous buffoon, and "Enemy of the State" is a bad, bad, bad idea.

There are doubtless better ways to oppose it than an earnest blog post like this; ridicule, maybe? Parody? But meanwhile, I say that if anyone's an enemy of what America is or ought to be about, it's Hannity. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:13:00 AM -- |    

 
Ends of eras
Billmon... Kevin Hayden... Michael Berube. (A rather long silence from Stygius as well.)(1/9: ...and Fafblog!)

Hopefully, just when they think they're out, we'll pull them back in. Better yet, they'll all be heard from in other, even better ways, and live happily ever after.


=====
UPDATE, 1/9: I hadn't read this by digby, honest. There's a link to a good Wikipedia(!) entry about Billmon there, and from there to an interview by Philly.com's Daniel Rubin. There are also potentially Billmon archives here, although something isn't working right now. Digby also rightly mentions Jeanne D'Arc, who either quit or went behind a passworded firewall. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:18:00 PM -- |    

 
Fate sure is twisty
Reading a "CorrenteWire" item by Chicago Dyke about the Lieberman-McCain press conference at the American Enterprise Institute (as Jim Henley writes, hilarious and well-observed), I came across this:

It was, and I quote, a “twist of fate” that brought Democrats to power, according to Joe [...]

Recycling my comment about Boehner below, I was going to say I couldn't believe Joe Lieberman actually said this, but then I realized "sure I can." From the Washington Post transcript(!) of Lieberman's and McCain's remarks:

I'm, by this twist of fate that has put the Democrats in the majority now, I have the honor of replacing Senator McCain as chairman of the Airland Subcommittee.

It turns out that "twist of fate" used to be Lieberman's watchword for Lamont's primary victory over him in Connecticut last year. AP, November 3, 2006: "Lieberman sometimes cites a bittersweet Bob Dylan tune, "Simple Twist of Fate," in recalling the loss." That song describes a man's regrets at losing the supposed love of his life:

Maybe she'll pick him out again, how long must he wait
Once more for a simple twist of fate.

Like the man in Dylan's song, Lieberman seemed to be saying there was no apparent reason he was spurned. And now it's just another one of those weird, twisty, fateful things that the Democrats are in the majority. Nothing to do with the Iraq war being a front-burner issue that people have no confidence in Bush about and no longer support. No, that Democratic majority just came right out of the blue skies over left field. Nothing to do with any issues, just inexplicable:

Felt an emptiness inside to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate.

Democrats won the midterm elections. Lieberman survived them. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |    

 
No way to run an empire
In"Diyala is FUBAR," the estimable Phillip Carter ("Intel Dump") -- now back from duty as a police adviser in Iraq -- takes saddened note of the deteriorating state of affairs in the Iraqi province he was stationed in, as reported in an L.A. Times article by Solomon Moore ("A promising Iraqi province is now a tinderbox").

Speaking with Moore, an officer in the unit following Carter's essentially implied Carter's unit had been too hands-off in dealing with out of control militias, drawing a bit of an angry response from Carter, who continues:

In many ways, this article shows why the current rotational model in Iraq is so flawed. A major key to success in counterinsurgency (COIN) is achieving effects over time. The discontinuity caused by the Army's rotation of brigades every 10-14 months undermines our counterinsurgency efforts. This rotation policy virtually guarantees that there will be no effects sustained over time, because each unit comes in with its own way of doing things.

When asked in comments whether that means Carter supports a "for the duration" policy, Carter writes, inter alia,

...a "for the duration" policy would be equally problematic. I don't know that you could sustain such a policy and retain an all-volunteer force. The social contract of today's military revolves around the deployment-cycle model, and I believe that soldiers (and families) would quickly vote with their feet to veto such a policy. [...]

Like a good lawyer, I can spot the issue here and analyze it. But I don't know that there's a good answer.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:10:00 PM -- |    

 
Do unto us as you wish we had done unto you
I was about to say I can't believe Minority Leader Boehner actually said this, but then I realized "sure I can":

"What we really expect out of the Democrats is for them to treat us as they would like to have been treated."

Via David Kurtz ("Talking Points Memo"). posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:49:00 AM -- |