( – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Jane Harman, eight months ago speaking on the floor of the House (all emphasis mine):

“Since I returned from my third trip to Iraq last September, I have been calling on the Administration to develop an exit strategy.  And I believe it is now time to begin the phased, strategic redeployment of U.S. and coalition forces out of Iraq on a schedule designed by military commanders, not designed by the US Congress.

“The U.S. is part of the solution in Iraq, but our large military presence is part of the problem.  Beginning to reduce the “footprint,” while maintaining an over-the-horizon strike force, will improve our chances for success.

“I think we have 3-6 months to advance three objectives:

Notice the 6 month timeframe given?  That explains my use of the Friedman Unit in the post title.  The term is named after the “serious” foreign policy writer at the NYT, Thomas Friedman.  Check the link and you will learn why.

Back to Harman’s objectives:.

“First, helping the new Iraqi government provide electrical power, particularly in Baghdad, and deliver other critical economic and social services to the Iraqi people.

When Jane Harman made this speech (June 2006), Baghdad had 8.0 hours of electricity a day. Six months later (Dec 2006), the city had just 6.7 hours a day, and it has even less now (6.1).  Nationwide, the number of hours of electricity/day has also declined significantly – from 11.9 to 9.2 six months later.  (Source: Brookings Institution, Iraq Index, p. 28)

Other critical economic and social indicators:
Unemployment stands at an astronomical 25-40%, unchanged since June (Iraq Index, p. 29)

Inflation that’s well north of 50%, due to fuel prices jumping 800% between end of 2005 and early 2007, and still at 35% when excluding energy costs. ((Iraq Index, p. 33)

And when you can’t provide security — as the daily bombings in Baghdad attest — you can’t exactly provide social services.

“Second, supporting the Iraqi government in its effort to disarm Shiite militias and integrate them into a trained Iraqi national security force.

After Harman’s six month window, the number of daily attacks by insurgents and militias actually increased from 100 to 185((Iraq Index, p. 20), and this clearly involves Shiite militias in addition to Sunnis, otherwise you wouldn’t have the Iraqi prime minister calling on Shiite militias to disarm.

“Third, continuing the process, begun by our able Ambassador Khalilzad, of obtaining buy-in from Sunni political leaders.

That doesn’t appear to have advanced any from June until now. 

“Achieving these objectives will enable us to leave Iraq in better shape than we found it.

OK, then the inverse of this should also hold true: Failure to achieve these objectives will prevent us from leaving Iraq in better shape than we found it.

“The next three months are critical.  We have a moral obligation to assist Iraq on its path to democracy, but if clearly-defined minimum objectives cannot be achieved within that time frame, the prospects for success in Iraq could all but disappear.  So … a change of course is urgently needed.

That critical three month window closed on September 15, and the six-month window closed on December 15. 

And based on the objectives that Jane Harman herself laid out in June, Iraq is messed up beyond repair.  Not only have none of her three objectives been achieved yet, but there’s been little, if any, progress on reaching any of them.

But all we hear from Harman is more of the same.

If we can’t leave until Iraq is fixed, we’ll be there forever.  It’s time Jane got real on this.

[crossposted at From the Fever Swamp]

(Wonderful stuff by Thompson. – promoted by juls)

Congressman Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), whose first congresssional district represents part of Yolo County, has just cosponsored the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 with Senator (and presidential hopeful) Barack Obama (D-IL) and Philadelpia Congressman and Iraq War vet Patrick Murphy (D-PA) to set a timetable for ending our occupation of Iraq. As a Vietnam Vet and tireless champion of veterans’ issues, Thompson knows firsthand the human cost of staying in a pointless war, and was one of the nearly 2/3 of House Democrats who had the sense to vote against going into Iraq in the first place. The details of the bill are as follows:

The binding legislation ends President Bush’s escalation by capping the number of troops at January 10, 2007 levels, puts forward specific benchmarks for success in Iraq and establishes a timeline to redeploy our troops. Redeployment, according to the bill, would begin no later than May 1, 2007, with the goal of all combat brigades redeployed by March 31, 2008 – a date consistent with the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. Troops would be sent either home to their families in the U.S., to Afghanistan where more troops are needed to fight the war on terror or would remain in the region to train Iraqis, protect against more violence and perform counterterrorist activities. The Iraq War De-Escalation Act will refocus the efforts of American armed forces on Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden and urges the president to send, within 60 days, a Special Envoy to Iraq to begin the important work of diplomacy with key nations in the region.

In addition, if the Iraqi government meets certain political, diplomatic and reconstruction benchmarks outlined by the Administration, the plan allows for the temporary suspension (for no more than 90 days) of troops redeployments, however only with congressional approval.

Senator Russ Feingold has a similar bill out there, similarly titled The Iraq Redeployment Bill of 2007, that would push the withdrawal timetable to 6 rather than 14 months. Feingold has been on fire recently, and had some choice words for his fellow senators in this recent diary at daily kos, this audio interview with Dave Sirota, and last night’s appearance on Countdown. Hopefully between the Thompson-Obama-Murphy bill and Feingold’s bill, they can put something together.

If you’re in his district, you can email here to let Mike Thompson know that he’s got support on the ground for this bill, if you’re so inclined.

—

originally posted at surf putah

( – promoted by SFBrianCL)

Cross Posted at Say No To Pombo and MyDD

MoveOn.org released a report this morning to publicize the costs of the Iraq War to California’s 11th District. A group of voters from CA-11 met at Richard Pombo’s San Ramon office to deliver a copy of the report to Pombo and ask him to comment on it.

Since the Iraq war began, Congressman Richard Pombo (R-Tracy) has joined Republicans in Congress to spend more than $300 billion on President Bush’s failed [Iraq] policy…  The cost of the war to taxpayers in the 11th Congressional District is more than $974 million and counting.

$974 million from CA-11 alone.  Think of the ways that money could have been spent in the district to improve the daily lives of its residents. Education. Healthcare. Transportation. Levee repair. 

But that is only one, easily calculable, cost of the Iraq war. The human cost has weighed even more heavily on the people of Richard Pombo’s district than the loss of valuable financial resources. Think for a moment of the soldiers from the district who died in this war, the many more who have been severely wounded and maimed. Think of the two young men who, right now, are sitting in the brig at Camp Pendleton awaiting trial for war crimes. 

[War’s] glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families … It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. 
—William Tecumseh Sherman

I don’t know much about these two young marines sitting alone at Camp Pendleton. I do know that they are accused of participating in the murder of an innocent civilian in Iraq. I know that they have proclaimed their innocence. I know that they have families and many good friends — Cpl. Marshall Magincalda, 23, in Manteca, and Lance Cpl. Tyler Jackson, 22, in Tracy. I know that their families and friends see a boy who loved poetry and video games, a kid who ran track and taught himself to play the guitar, an all-around good guy who was a co-worker at the local movie theater, a son who fed the homeless in a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. They refuse to believe that their sons, their best friends, could pull a man from his home, bind his hands and feet in duct tape, push him into a hole and shoot him multiple times at close range with an M-16.

I don’t know if these young men are guilty or innocent.  If they are innocent, then their country has betrayed them; and if they are guilty, their country has still betrayed them. Why? Because our leaders made a decision to enter this war of choice, to empower a bellicose and intransigent president, to continue on with no end in sight, knowing full well the terrible costs of war to all those who participate. Every student who ever sat through psych 101 knows about the Milgram experiment, knows that each of us is capable of deep, dark, horrible deeds. In the end it boils down to just one simple fact: war is hell. And yet our government continues to carelessly send our young people off to face its horrors. Before we ask our sons, our brothers, our friends, to sacrifice themselves at the altar of war, we have an abiding moral obligation to them to be certain that their suffering is absolutely and totally unavoidable. When we do anything less, we have betrayed them utterly and completely. 

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war to our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.
—William Tecumseh Sherman