Today in a speech at the National Press Club, Vice President Dick Cheney claimed that no one predicted the violent insurgency that has now taken root in Iraq:

MODERATOR: Do you think that you underestimated the insurgency’s strength?

CHENEY: I think so. I guess if I look back on it now, I don’t think anybody anticipated the level of violence that we have encountered.

But Cheney’s statement isn’t true. Many analysts did anticipate extensive violence.

– “The longer a U.S. occupation of Iraq continues, the more danger exists that elements of the Iraqi population will become impatient and take violent measures to hasten the departure of U.S. forces. … The impact of suicide bombing attacks in Israel goes beyond their numbers, and this fact will also capture the imagination of would-be Iraqi terrorists.” [Army War College, Feb. 2003]

– “But if we’re going to invade, we need to prepare for a worst-case scenario involving street-to-street fighting, with farmers like Mr. Khal taking potshots at our troops. Is America really prepared for hundreds of casualties, even thousands, in an invasion and subsequent occupation that could last many years?” [Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, Sept. 2002]

– “We must be prepared to occupy the country and stay there for a very long time at very great expense in treasure but also in risk to lives. There can be no question that the military cost of this option will be enormous.” [Morton Halperin, Council on Foreign Relations, July 2002]

It’s not that no one predicted intensity of Iraq’s post-war violence. It’s just that no one in the Bush administration wanted to listen.

The U.S. Senate is one vote away from passing a constitutional amendment that would criminalize desecration of the U.S. flag.

If successful, it will mark the first time in 214 years that the Bill of Rights has been restricted by a constitutional amendment, and will place the United States among a select group of nations that have banned flag desecration, including Cuba, China, Iran, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Three reasons to oppose the flag amendment:

– Flag burning is a non-problem: As Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT) has said, “I don’t want to amend the Constitution to solve a non-problem. People are not burning the flag.” One study found just 45 reported incidents in the over 200 years between 1777 and 1989, when the Flag Protection Act was first passed.

– Flag burning is protected speech: The Supreme Court has twice ruled that destruction of the flag for political purposes, although highly offensive to most Americans, is undeniably a political statement and a political expression.

– Amendment is vaguely worded: The amendment is “phrased in such broad and vague language” that it could could include censorship of images of the flag in works of art, advertising, or commerce. Last week, the Senate spent time debating whether “wearing a very skimpy bathing suit” decorated with the flag’s stars and stripes would constitute desecration.

Now, aided by a handful of Democrats, the amendment has gathered 66 votes in favor, just one shy of passage. “Whether advocates can find the 67th vote to send the flag amendment to the states for ratification remains unclear.”

ThinkProgress has compiled a list of veterans, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who have offered their opposition to the flag burning amendment. See it HERE.

he’d run it just like Saddam Hussein did.

In May 2005, Vice President Cheney declared that the insurgency in Iraq was in its “last throes” and predicted “[t]he level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline.” Since that time, violence in Iraq has continued unabated.

Today at the National Press Club, Cheney was asked if he still believed that May 2005 was when the insurgency entered its “last throes.” He said he still did. Watch it:

Cheney tries to spin his previous comments as a prediction of political progress. Cheney now says he meant that May 2005 would be the beginning of a “series of events when the Iraqis increasingly took over responsibility for their own affairs.” Actually, Cheney predicted that violence in the country, from May 2005 on, “will clearly decline.”

Full transcript: Read more

Today, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced Robert Zoellick’s resignation as Deputy Secretary of State. Last Friday Zoellick said he was resigning because “he had accomplished his objective of helping Rice set up her management team and get her tenure as Secretary of State off to a fast start.” He has accepted a position at Goldman Sachs.

While loyal to the Bush administration, Zoellick was one of its few moderates. But like other moderates in the White House, he was increasingly left without significant influence, which associates hint may have been the real reason for his departure:

In addition, friends said, Mr. Zoellick had at times felt marginalized at the State Department, where his subordinates, including R. Nicholas Burns, an under secretary of state, manage most of the major issues.

Zoellick has told administration officials he will leave, probably to a Wall Street firm, if he isn’t named to replace Treasury Secretary John Snow, two persons familiar with the matter said.

From his first days at the State Department, Mr. Zoellick has chafed at his subordinate position, frequently remarking that he was finding the adjustment difficult after running his own office during four years as United States trade representative, which is a cabinet position.

Instead of promoting capable moderates such as Zoellick, the Bush administration continues to hire partisans who are unlikely to fulfill Bush’s promise to “change the tone” in Washington.

practiced at U.S. prisons in Guantanamo and Afghanistan, compiled by medical ethicist Stephen Miles: “Beating; punching with fists; use of truncheons; kicking; slamming against walls; stretching or suspension (to tear ligaments or muscles to cause asphyxia); external electric shocks; forcing prisoners to abase and to urinate on themselves; forced masturbation; forced renunciation of religion; false confessions or accusations; applying urine and feces to prisoners; making verbal threats to a prisoner and his family; denigration of a prisoner’s religion; force-feeding.” And it goes on.

The Supreme Court said today it will review a California case over whether the federal late-term abortion ban “imposed an undue burden on a woman’s right to seek an abortion and whether it is unconstitutionally vague.” The Court had already agreed to rule on a challenge to the law that originated in Nebraska. More from SCOTUSBlog.

Since it was announced that Karl Rove escaped indictment, right-wing commentators have aggressively advocated a presidential pardon for Scooter Libby. Here is the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol yesterday on Fox:

[Fitzgerald] indicted one person, not for any underlying crime, but for allegedly mis-remembering a couple of conversations with reporters when talking about them to the grand jury — these were conversations that went nowhere. No one thinks Scooter Libby actually leaked Valerie Plame’s name, even if that were a crime, which is isn’t.

Bush should pardon Scooter Libby and get the whole thing over with…I am blaming Ashcroft for recusing himself. And the CIA was out to get people in the White House at that point. And Bush should pardon Scooter Libby.

Conservative pundit and attorney Joseph diGenova is trying to portray a pardon of Libby as standard operating procedure:

“I think ultimately, of course, there are going to be pardons,” said Joseph diGenova, a former prosecutor and an old Washington hand who shares that view with many pundits. “These are the kinds of cases in which historically presidents have given pardons.”

Scooter Libby is accused of blatantly lying, under oath, to a federal grand jury. Apparently, Kristol and diGenova do not believe that this kind of offense that is worthy of prosecution.

The Carpetbagger Report has more.