Putting the best possible face on the Bush administration’s disastrous legacy in the Middle East, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Associated Press in a farewell interview “that Iran has chosen to scale back much of its most troubling interference in Iraq, and she credits the strength of U.S. pressure.”

“I don’t think it’s goodwill…They’re in a much more difficult situation in terms of Iraq,” Rice said. “[Iran] did everything they could to stop the strategic forces arrangement – they couldn’t do it.”

As I wrote last week, the idea that the SOFA represents a major defeat for Tehran is the pro-war right’s latest talking point. Leaving aside that the Bush administration’s new story about the relationship between Iraq and Iran has about as much basis in fact as their old story about the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, it says a lot about the administration’s significant readjustment of goals and expectations in Iraq that Rice is now trying to present Iran’s failure to exercise a veto in Iraq’s parliament as a success for the United States.

But, apparently, nobody sent Rice’s memo to Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh, who told the LA Times why he thought that “Iran had taken a more ‘positive stance’ in recent months.”

Dabbagh said a new security agreement between Baghdad and Washington has helped ease Iranian fears about American intentions.

“The Iranians have noticed finally that the American… presence in Iraq is not going to be a threat to them and that helps reduce the temperature,” he said.

This tracks with what CNN’s Michael Ware said in our interview last month, that “during these negotiations between Baghdad and Washington, Tehran — whether we like it or not — was in the room.”

Tehran, in some ways, in some fashion, is a party to this agreement. And you’ll see that some of the sticking points and some of the nuances within the negotiations were issues that were very close to the heart of Tehran….Iran is in a position where it didn’t get everything that it wanted, but then neither did Washington — and indeed neither did Baghdad — but Iran still will feel that it has something of a comfort zone as a result of this.

Early this morning, during a press conference in Kabul with Afghan President Karzai, President Bush attempted to paper over his previous declarations of victory over the now-resurgent Taliban. Bush claimed emphatically, “I never said the Taliban was eliminated.” Watch it:

In fact, Bush used the word “eliminated” to describe the state of the Taliban on several occasions:

September 2002: “The Taliban’s ability to brutalize the Afghan people and to harbor and support terrorists has been virtually eliminated.”

April 2002: “With the Taliban eliminated and al-Qaida badly damaged, we have moved into the second stage of our war on terror.”

At other times, Bush prematurely declared victory using similar language:

September 2004: “And as a result of the United States military, Taliban no longer is in existence. And the people of Afghanistan are now free.”

December 2004: “In Afghanistan, America and our allies, with a historically small force and a brilliant strategy, defeated the Taliban in just a few short weeks.”

October 2005: “Over the years these extremists have used a litany of excuses for violence — the Israeli presence on the West Bank, or the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, or the defeat of the Taliban, or the Crusades of a thousand years ago.”

While coalition forces made significant early progress against the Taliban, President Bush allowed the situation to deteriorate after deciding to invade Iraq in 2003. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, troops and resources have been diverted from Afghanistan. Consequently, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated dramatically in recent years. Currently, the Taliban has a “permanent presence” in 75 percent of the country and exercises control over the country’s “political and military dynamic.”

Likewise, the still-classified Afghanistan NIE reportedly paints a “grim” picture of the country. While Bush deserves credit for trying to bring his current rhetoric more in line with reality, he isn’t allowed to pretend that his past rhetoric wasn’t false.

Yesterday, Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi threw his shoes at President Bush and shouted, “This is a farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.” Bush said that he was unfazed by the incident.

Afterward, Bush continued to dismiss the incident to reporters aboard Air Force One. He said that Zaidi’s actions were “bizarre” and had no larger significance:

Q Well, not to belabor the point too much, on this man, but I have a serious question about it. Obviously he’s expressing a vein of anger that exists in Iraq, and —

BUSH: How do you know? I mean, how do we know what he’s expressing? Who — [...] I’ve heard all kinds of stories. I heard he was representing a Baathist TV station. I don’t know the facts, but let’s find out the facts. All I’m telling you, it was a bizarre moment. [...]

I don’t think you can take one guy throwing shoes and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq. You can try to do that if you want to. I don’t think it would be accurate. … That’s exactly what he wanted you to do. Like I answered on your question, what he wanted you to do was to pay attention to him. And sure enough, you did.

Similarly, in an interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz yesterday, Bush laughed off Zaidi’s actions as “amusing.” “I don’t know what his beef is,” said Bush. “But whatever it is I’m sure somebody will hear it.” Watch it:

Zaidi’s actions were not “bizarre” or “amusing.” In fact, they were “[t]wo of the worst insults in Islam.” Additionally, Zaidi is not a lone protester with his own radical “Baathist” agenda. Since the incident, thousands of Iraqis have taken to the streets to demand the release of Zaidi, who is now being interrogated by Iraqi authorities. These protesters include Shiites in Sadr City, who “are fed up with U.S. policy in the region” and calling Zaidi a “hero.” NPR reported that every single person they interviewed in Baghdad had “nothing but praise” for Zaidi.

Bush is still unable to grasp the “beef” that the Iraqi people have with him: their extreme frustration and unhappiness with the U.S. invasion and its subsequent mismanagement and occupation. Tellingly, one of the last high-profile shoe-throwing incidents occurred in April 2003, when Iraqis took their shoes and hit Saddam Hussein’s falling statue.

Yesterday, after an Iraqi journalist used “[t]wo of the worst insults in Islam” against him, an unfazed President Bush sat down with ABC’s Martha Raddatz for an exit interview in Iraq. When Raddatz asked Bush about his legacy, Bush first boasted about “52 months of uninterrupted job growth.” (There have been 1.9 million jobs lost in 2008 alone.)

Bush then turned to Iraq, and justified the war there by suggesting it had been al Qaeda’s home base. When Raddatz corrected him, Bush dismissively replied, “So what?“:

BUSH: One of the major theaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq. This is where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand. This is where al Qaeda was hoping to take–

RADDATZ: But not until after the U.S. invaded.

BUSH: Yeah, that’s right. So what? The point is that al Qaeda said they’re going to take a stand. Well, first of all in the post-9/11 environment Saddam Hussein posed a threat. And then upon removal, al Qaeda decides to take a stand.

Watch it:

Continuing his refusal to take any responsibility for the consequences of his decisions, Bush suggests that al Qaeda came to Iraq by chance, that it simply “turn[ed] out to have been” the place where they “were going to take their stand.” But al Qaeda’s existence in Iraq is 100 percent attributable to Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq: al Qaeda never existed there before, and in fact, Saddam Hussein viewed Osama bin Laden as a threat and refused to support him.

Throughout the run-up to war, Bush repeatedly cited supposed links between al Qaeda and Iraq to drum up support for the U.S. invasion. When those links proved to be utterly false — and perhaps even willingly fabricated — Bush began insisting that al Qaeda had chosen Iraq as the “central front in the war on terror,” and so the United States was forced to stay there and respond. In the meantime, more than 4,000 Americans have been killed, 30,000 maimed, and nearly 100,000 Iraqis killed.

In an interview earlier this month, Bush cited the intelligence failures in the lead-up to war and said simply, “I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.” Bush’s indifference to the consequences of his decisions mirrors the scorn his Vice President displayed when dismissing American opposition to the Iraq war with a one-word answer: “So?”

Say you have two presidents of two countries, both of whom have established a relationship with a third country and are in competition there for greater influence and strategic depth.

When visiting the third country, the first president arrives unannounced and in secret, is whisked from the airport via helicopter to a heavily fortified compound in the capital, where he holds meetings for a few hours and then a press conference before being whisked back to the airport and departing the country.

The second president, on the other hand, announces his trip weeks in advance, travels from the airport to the capital via motorcade, is welcomed in an elaborate red carpet ceremony, and then leisurely visits various cultural and religious sites.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: The first president gets shoes thrown at him.

Based on these two scenarios, who would you say is winning this competition?

President Bush is in Baghdad today on a surprise farewell visit highlighting the security deal recently reached between the U.S. and Iraq. CNN Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware reports this afternoon that during a press conference with Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, an Iraqi man threw a shoe at Bush — “a grave insult in the Arab world” — but “it just sailed past his head”:

WARE: Well, Wolf, the most extraordinary thing. You may or may not believe this. We’re getting reports from the press pool that flew in with President Bush and apparently just a short, short time ago in a press conference with Prime Minister Maliki, an Iraqi man stood up in the press conference and threw a shoe at President Bush. But the reports we’re getting, it just sailed past his head and while the man was dragged out of the room, President Bush is said to have remarked that, “This was a size 10 shoe he threw at me you may want to know,” even as the man was heard screaming in the hallway.

Watch it:

McClatchy identified the man as Iraqi television journalist Muntader al-Zaidi and reports he threw both of his shoes at Bush just after he finished prepared remarks.

The New York Times notes that the first shoe “narrowly missed” and the second shoe also missed. “This is a farewell kiss, you dog,” Zaidi shouted.

Apparently, Bush was unfazed by the incident. “I didn’t feel the least bit threatened by it,” he said.

Jackson Diehl works very hard to find something good about George W. Bush’s foreign policy legacy, and he comes up with this:

There is, however, one important way in which the president has been faithful to his cause — and one practice he has pioneered that ought to outlast him. Throughout the past several years, Bush has gone out of his way to meet personally with advocates for democratic change around the world — especially those under pressure from their governments. He has invited them to the White House and has looked for them in their own countries. Last year, in Prague, he even attended a conference of dissidents from all over the world.

Diehl’s account of Bush’s freedom agenda is essentially this: “Bush pushed for freedom, autocrats pushed back,” as if Bush gave it the old college try, but in the end was defeated by the mean old world. This is nonsense. The problem is that Bush’s freedom agenda was nested within a broader set of policies — the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq — that was fundamentally inimical to genuine democratic reform, and indeed has proven disastrous for the actual promotion of democracy, especially in the Middle East.

By offering democratic reform as a component to the war on terror, which many in the Muslim world see as a war against Islam, Bush alienated at the outset scores of potential reformist allies. By then promoting the war in Iraq as a showpiece for that agenda (“This could be your country! Who’s in?”) he discredited it even more.

Many praised President Bush’s soaring — at least on the page — freedom rhetoric, but did it help or hinder the cause of freedom for Bush to condemn authoritarian regimes like Syria at the same time that he was rendering suspects there to be tortured?

It’s a rather huge oversight for Diehl to ignore all of this in his account of the failure of Bush’s freedom agenda. Yes, it’s great that Bush took time out of his busy schedule to have coffee with some democratic activists. It’s important to show that the United States supports their work. It’s also important that the United States not pursue policies that make their work harder.

Our guest blogger is Moran Banai, U.S. editor of the Middle East Bulletin.

Yesterday, the Middle East Bulletin published an exclusive interview with Israel’s President Shimon Peres, in which Peres said that “ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and reaching regional peace is a mutual Israeli-American interest.” Peres also argued that “it is essential that the United States keep supporting an Israeli-Palestinian agreement” while also promoting “the Arab Peace Initiative as a means to achieve comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arab states.”

Peres’ comments come six years after the Initiative was first endorsed by the whole Arab League, and a few weeks after Peres himself endorsed the “spirit” of the Initiative. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also published Hebrew-language ads in the three top Israeli dailies featuring the full text of the Initiative, and a group of former Israeli diplomats and generals launched their own campaign promoting the Initiative.

Calling Abbas’ advertisements a “welcome step” Peres added:

Our negotiations are with the other side and when we ignore their voices by writing in our own papers and then reading what we write, we fail to understand their position. We should do the same as Abbas on the other side.

Writing about the renewed interest in the Initiative, Ghaith al-Omari, director of advocacy at the American Task Force on Palestine and a former adviser to President Abbas, argues that for it to be successful, “Arab leaders need to explain the Initiative, not only to the general public, but also to policy makers in Israel.” Moreover, the Initiative must go from being an idea into being a plan. He suggests replacing the “all-or-nothing approach” with “a gradual, reciprocal process,” and defining the security guarantees promised in the plan.

“With so many challenges and obstacles in the path of forging Arab-Israeli peace,” al-Omari concludes, “it would be a mistake to fail to avail ourselves of such a potent tool as the Arab Peace Initiative. Yet, for it to be a truly effective tool, all the parties must bring the skill, energy and determination to make it succeed.”

Our guest blogger is Ken Gude, Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Those who thought it couldn’t get any worse at Guantanamo were once again proved wrong on Monday after the farcical on-again off-again guilty pleas from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other defendants played out in front of the international media and the families of the 9/11 victims. President-elect Obama has consistently stated that he views the military commissions as fundamentally flawed and we need no more evidence than this latest sorry episode. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates should step in and immediately suspend the entire military commissions system to prevent any more fiascos.

The Bush administration had intended the latest pre-trial hearings — involving Mohammed and four others accused of the 9/11 attacks — to serve as an international media bonanza, complete with the presence of the families of 9/11 victims at Guantanamo for the first time. But KSM and the other defendants turned the tables on the Bush administration and instead used the assembled media for their own propaganda coup, offering to plead guilty in the hopes that they would be executed by President Bush after trial in this deeply flawed system.

Little did they know that the system is so flawed that the judge was unaware of whether he could accept the guilty pleas and sentence them to death. Imagine that, five defendants accused of the most heinous crime perpetrated on Americans in decades offer to confess and actually want to be executed, but the judge isn’t sure if he can accept what amounts to a complete victory for the prosecution.

It turns out the hastily crafted Military Commissions Act only allows for a death sentence to be imposed by a unanimous vote of a military jury and does not have any provision that grants authority for the judge to order execution in the instance of a guilty plea. The judge has set a hearing for January 4, 2009, to hear arguments about how to impose a death sentence if the defendants plead guilty and no military jury is impaneled.

Back to KSM. It is clear this offer to confess is not a sincere admission of guilty, but rather a cynical ploy to obtain his desired outcome: martyrdom at the hands of his most hated enemy, President Bush. After all of the shenanigans about whether the judge could accept them, KSM and his other defendants withdrew their offer to plead guilty. So now we are back to where we started after a humiliating series of events that makes the Keystone Cops look like Delta Force.

But the fallout from this embarrassing episode reaches beyond mere propaganda setbacks and could tie the hands of the incoming Obama administration. Perversely, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and George W. Bush now want exactly the same thing: a quick path to a guilty verdict and a death sentence. Even though the commissions as a whole have been a complete disaster, with both sides working towards the same objective it is not inconceivable the January 4 hearing results in a system to call in a military jury for the sentencing phase. Since the defendants actually want to be executed, that process may not take long and this military commission could produce a death sentence for these five defendants a mere two weeks before the Obama takes office.

Such a result may preclude any trial of KSM in U.S. federal court on criminal charges related to 9/11 because the double jeopardy clause prohibits any one person from being put on trial twice for the same offense. If that is true, then the Obama administration could be saddled with this horribly flawed result and stuck in a terrible situation: either carry out the sentence and execute KSM and the others, giving them exactly what they want and inviting international criticism that could imperil the whole project of closing Guantanamo; or deny KSM his favored path to martyrdom, instead imprisoning them for life, but risk a serious domestic political backlash that could also imperil the whole project of closing Guantanamo.

Secretary Gates can prevent all of this from happening. The Military Commissions Act make the secretary of defense the convening authority for the entire process. He has the power to suspend all activity in the military commissions and he should do so with immediate effect. However small the likelihood of this worst possible scenario, Secretary Gates should take action to ensure it does not occur because one thing we have learned about Guantanamo is that it can always get worse.

NRO’s Michael Rubin has written a long response to this post, in which I suggested that it was silly for someone like Rubin, who has a record of past attacks on others, to take issue with a little bit of name-calling.

After a delightful prologue in which he tells me to “grow up,” Rubin offers this rebuttal to my criticism of his presentation of the Islamic concept of taqiya:

Mr. Duss does not understand that religious concepts evolve with time and are seldom interpreted singularly. On May 19, 2008, for example, Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi explained the concept of taqiya as “secret holy warfare, not conservatism, or fear, or evasion of responsibility.” Alas, perhaps the ayatollah does not pass Mr. Duss’s litmus test of what he learned at the University of Washington. Rather than take a sterile view of religion as it is interpreted in the ivory tower, it is important to understand what its practitioners define it as.

Alas, I do understand very well that religious concepts evolve with time. I picked this up during my stay in the ivory tower, where it is in fact the prevailing view. There’s actually a very rich academic literature regarding static versus dynamic representations of Islam and Islamic cultures, some of which Rubin would probably find interesting if he could tear himself away from trying to get the U.S. to attack Iran.

In regard to taqiya, I simply pointed out that Rubin’s dollar store definition of the concept as “religiously-sanctioned lying” was a transparent mechanism for crediting Iranian statements that bolster his thesis in favor of attacking Iran and discrediting those that don’t. Also, as I and others noted, it’s rather silly to devise ornate religio-cultural explanations for why politicians lie, unless of course the goal is to present a certain group of politicians as particularly dangerous liars.

In response to my claim that he suggested “that Middle East scholar Rashid Khalidi was ideologically sympathetic to Saddam Hussein’s attempted genocide against the Kurds,” Rubin writes:

Mr. Duss simply fabricates this and should apologize. What Duss actually refers to is a July 2004 book review. Nowhere do I claim that Mr. Khalidi is ideologically sympathetic to Saddam’s attempted genocide against the Kurds. Mr. Duss made that up. What I did write is this, “In his historical analysis, Khalidi demonstrates little understanding of Iraqi history, failing to mention Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons on the Kurds and the draining of the marshes. Rather, he implies that Arabs think with one mind and hold the Israeli-Palestinian dispute central to their identity.”

No, the passage to which I was actually referring — and to which I also linked, which in my view constitutes a huge hint — was this one:

[Rashid] Khalidi’s influence upon Obama might subordinate basic human rights to the virulent form of Arab nationalism that led to the Anfal.

I don’t think the comically awkward construction of Rubin’s attempted smear makes it any less clear, or any more forgivable.

Rubin’s defense of his work in the Office of Special Plans is actually very interesting. Rubin protests that “I did not report directly to Mr. Feith…the work on the Iraq-Al Qaeda linkage occurred before I was hired.”

Actually, I didn’t specify the Iraq-Al Qaeda linkage, Rubin volunteers that. But it’s good to have him on the record distancing himself both from Doug Feith and from the bogus “Iraq-Al Qaeda linkage.”

Ironically, Rubin also derides journalist Robert Dreyfuss — author of this piece on the OSP — for his past association with the LaRouche organization, but I would suggest that someone who works for Daniel Pipes and writes on a group blog with Michael Ledeen and Andrew McCarthy is really in no position to knock anyone for associating with kooks.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told Congress Daily that President-elect Obama should keep Mike McConnell on as Director of National Intelligence and Michael Hayden as head of the CIA. He said Obama should keep “continuity” in the intelligence sector because we live in “a world that is very dangerous.”

Reyes dismissed concerns over Hayden and McConnell’s records as apologists for torture. He insisted that “there are some options that need to be available” to interrogators — presumably beyond the Army Field Manuel — to get the best information:

Regarding the CIA’s alternative interrogation program, Reyes indicated that his recommendations concerned finding a balance so the agency does not use torture but can get valuable information from suspected terrorists or other detainees.

“There are those that believe that this particular issue has to be dealt with very carefully because there are beliefs that there are some options that need to be available,” Reyes said.

“We don’t want to be known for torturing people. At the same time we don’t want to limit our ability to get information that’s vital and critical to our national security,” he added. “That’s where the new administration is going to have to decide what those parameters are, what those limitations are.”

As the Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman notes, Reyes “framed the debate as between effective torture and ineffective compliance with the law.” In fact, torturing does not provide reliable intelligence, as former interrogator (and author) Matthew Alexander told Jon Stewart Monday night:

STEWART: Did you ever see coercive methods pay off?

ALEXANDER: No. … When I was in Iraq, the few times that I saw people use harsh methods, it was always counterproductive. Because the person hunkered down, they were expecting us to do that, and they just shut up. And then I’d have to send somebody in and build back up rapport, reverse that process, and it’d take us longer to get that information.

McConnell and Hayden share Reyes’ approval of torture. McConnell has explained his refusal to move the CIA to the Army Field Manuel rules by denigrating Army servicemen, saying the Field Manuel was “designed for young and inexperienced” soldiers. He apparently does not consider waterboarding to be torture. Similarly, Hayden has dismissed torture as a mere “legal term,” saying we use the term “in a far too casual way.” Hayden apparently retaliated against the CIA’s inspector general for being an outspoken critic of waterboarding, and he may have destroyed interrogation videotapes to cover up the CIA’s use of torture.

Numerous media outlets are reporting Dr. Steven Chu will be President-elect Obama’s choice to head the Department of Energy. Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, is the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California where he has been addressing the climate crisis by pushing breakthrough research in energy efficiency, solar energy, and biofuels technology.

Colleagues who know Chu best say “he’s not a manager, he’s a leader.” In an interview with the Wonk Room, David Roland-Holst, an economist at the Center for Energy, Resources and Economic Sustainability at UC Berkeley, described Chu as a “very distinguished researcher” and “an extremely effective manager of cutting edge technology initiatives.”

This past summer, Dr. Chu spoke at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, convened by the Center for American Progress, UNLV, and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). In one of the lighter moments during his remarks, Chu claimed that efficiency gains and lowered costs have been shown to be possible when the jobs were assigned to engineers, not lobbyists. Chu also laid out in stark terms the climate crisis that we now face:

Consider this. There’s about a 50 percent chance, the climate experts tell us, that in this century we will go up in temperature by three degrees Centigrade. Now, three degrees Centigrade doesn’t seem a lot to you, that’s 11° F. Chicago changes by 30° F in half a day. But 5° C means that … it’s the difference between where we are today and where we were in the last ice age. What did that mean? Canada, the United States down to Ohio and Pennsylvania, was covered in ice year round.

Five degrees Centigrade.

So think about what 5° C will mean going the other way. A very different world. So if you’d want that for your kids and grandkids, we can continue what we’re doing. Climate change of that scale will cause enormous resource wars, over water, arable land, and massive population displacements. We’re not talking about ten thousand people. We’re not talking about ten million people, we’re talking about hundreds of millions to billions of people being flooded out, permanently.

Joe Romm cautions that the 3°C figure is just a mid-range warming even if we’re able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Watch Chu’s remarks:

In the wake of the passage of the status of forces agreement “Agreement on Complete U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq,” our neoconservative friends are again revealing themselves as deeply confused about Iran’s actual relationship with various actors in the new Iraq.

Charles Krauthammer:

A self-sustaining, democratic and pro-American Iraq is within our reach.

[This] would constitute a major defeat for Tehran, the putative winner of the Iraq war, according to the smart set. Iran’s client, Moqtada al-Sadr, still hiding in Iran, was visibly marginalized in parliament — after being militarily humiliated in Basra and Baghdad by the new Iraqi security forces. Moreover, the major religious Shiite parties were the ones that negotiated, promoted and assured passage of the strategic alliance with the United States, against the most determined Iranian opposition.

Eli Lake:

What the [status of forces agreement] does…is establish the political legitimacy of American troops in Iraq for the next three years and provides a framework beyond that. It is perhaps for this reason that the remnants of Moqtada Al Sadr’s organization have protested the agreement, as have more and more of the hard-line clerics in Iran.

Bill Roggio:

How quickly the narrative on Sadr has changed. Today, the Washington Post describes a weakened Sadr, with a near-toothless political movement, struggling to find its path after suffering a stinging defeat after the passage of the Status of Forces agreement between the United States and Iraq.

While it’s clearly true Sadr’s movement has been weakened, Roggio’s presents this as primarily the result of cunning U.S. military strategy. There’s no acknowledgment of Iran’s role — apart from mentioning “Sadr’s Iranian-backed Mahdi Army” — in brokering the cease-fires between Maliki and Sadr, nor of the extent to which Sadr’s marginalization is the result of Maliki’s co-opting Sadr’s demand for a hard date for U.S. withdrawal.

There’s really very little excuse any more for the “U.S. and Iraqi forces versus Iranian-backed militias” frame. Iran’s close relationship with all the leading Iraqi Shia political trends is well known. An October report from West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) offers a pretty comprehensive analysis of Iran’s strategy in Iraq (pdf): Read more

Today in an interview with NPR, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice continued her Bush Legacy tour, sticking up for the administration’s national security policies. In particular, she downplayed the fact that President Bush hasn’t lived up to his stated desire to close Guantanamo Bay, saying that it’s “not easy” to do.

When reporter Michele Kelemen then asked Rice about another issue that has “tarnished the U.S. image” — the torture of detainees — Rice objected, insisting that it wasn’t a problem because the United States has never tortured:

Q: And Guantanamo wasn’t sort of the only issue that tarnished the U.S. image. There is also the treatment of terror suspects, waterboarding, other methods of torture or –

RICE: Well, you know that I’m going to have to object, because the United States has always kept to its international obligations, which include international obligations on the Convention on Torture. The United States, the President, was determined after September 11th to do everything that was legal and within those obligations, international and domestic laws, to make sure that we prevented a follow-on attack.

Many top Bush administration officials have long been trying to insist that the United States has never engaged in torture. However, even setting aside the infamous Abu Ghraib incidents, Bush’s own CIA director Michael Hayden has confirmed that his agency had subjected at least three detainees to waterboarding. In 2004, the Red Cross documented “cruel, inhumane and degrading” treatment of detainees while inspecting Guantanamo Bay.

In other attempts at hagiography in recent weeks, Rice has claimed that removing Saddam Hussein was a “great strategic achievement” and the United States is still “very well-regarded” around the world.

Transcript and audio below: Read more

Think Progress noted the White House memo going out to administration officials as “a guide for discussing [the] eight-year tenure” of the most unpopular president since presidential approval ratings were first measured:

Titled “Speech Topper on the Bush Record,” the talking points state that Bush “kept the American people safe” after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, lifted the economy after 2001 through tax cuts, curbed AIDS in Africa and maintained “the honor and the dignity of his office.”

The document presents the Bush record as an unalloyed success.

It mentions none of the episodes that detractors say have marred his presidency: the collapse of the housing market and major financial services companies, the flawed intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, the federal response to Hurricane Katrina or the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

I think we can all agree that your presidency has been a failure when the strongest talking point you can muster is “hey, the worst didn’t happen!”

Thankfully, the Simpsons pre-emptively satirized this argument years ago:

Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.

Lisa: That’s specious reasoning, Dad.

Homer: Thank you, dear.

Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.

Homer: Oh, how does it work?

Lisa: It doesn’t work.

Homer: Uh-huh.

Lisa: It’s just a stupid rock.

Homer: Uh-huh.

Lisa: But I don’t see any tigers around, do you?

Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

Even if President Bush’s unfalsifiable claim that he kept us safe were true, let’s remember that his strategy of “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here” resulted in the murder and maiming of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the displacement of over 4 million during Iraq’s 2006-7 civil war.

The evidence is overwhelming that, for the majority of foreign fighters in Iraq, the U.S. occupation itself was the decisive factor in their radicalization and mobilization. Many of these fighters are now returning to their home countries, taking the training they received in Iraq to destabilize the region and attack U.S. interests.

Because of the Iraq war, democracy has once again taken a back seat to stability in the Middle East. To cope with the regional destabilization resulting from Iraq, President Bush effectively abandoned his “democracy agenda” and threw his support behind the very authoritarian governments who were themselves the primary focus of Islamic extremist grievance in the first place.

But never mind all that, because George W. Bush has a rock that keeps away terrorists.

Our guest bloggers are Spencer Boyer, Director of International Law and Diplomacy, and Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

After eight years of George W. Bush, there is a general consensus on the need for the Obama administration to revamp America’s image in the world and repair our damaged alliances. In a new report from the Center for American Progress, we suggest that an important place to begin is Turkey -– a neglected ally that has a key leadership role in its part of the world.

Our strategic relationship with Turkey has been a critical component of American national security policy since the beginning of the Cold War. There are few, if any, security challenges that the United States and Turkey don’t have in common. Not only has Turkey been a member of NATO since 1952, but it is our only ally who enjoys strong relations with all of the major powers in the Middle East. In essence, Turkey is a hub between Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Mediterranean, with its central location making it a valuable connector between each of these regions. In addition to serving as a mediator in delicate international negotiations, including those between Israel and Syria, Turkey serves as a transit point for oil and natural gas flowing from East to West.

The Bush administration’s tragic decision to launch a preventive war in Iraq in 2003 — over vocal Turkish objections — has been one of many issues to eat away at U.S.-Turkish relations in recent years. Recent polling found that only 12 percent of Turks have a positive opinion of the United States –- dangerously low by any standard. Public opinion in a democratic state like Turkey can constrain a country’s leaders and their choices. While U.S.-Turkey relations have seen a slight upturn with the U.S. increasing its cooperation in fighting the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) — the terrorist organization that is Turkey’s most immediate threat — the relationship is still nowhere close to where the U.S. needs it to be.

The Obama administration has a tremendous opportunity next year to revive the U.S.-Turkish strategic partnership and update it to reflect new challenges in the Middle East, Europe, Russia, and the Caucasus. It will take more effort than we’ve exerted in recent years, and require a new recognition of Turkey as an independent actor with interests and policies that may not always comport with those of the U.S. But bringing Turkey closer to the West, including a redoubling of efforts to convince our European Union allies to bring Turkey into the EU sooner rather than later, is worth the effort. It will pay dividends in the years to come.

During an interview last Friday on PBS with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) host Bill Moyers asked Feingold what he wanted from the upcoming Obama administration. “I would like the new president to do exactly what he said he’s going to do,” Feingold said, such as bringing the country together, ending the Iraq war and closing Guantanamo.

Feingold also told Moyers that in his inaugural address, Obama should “renounce the extreme claims of executive power”:

FEINGOLD: Well, of course, the new president, minutes after he’s sworn in, in this wonderful moment — it will be cold out there. It will be short speech. But included in the speech, I would hope, would be some attempt by this new, wonderful president to renounce the extreme claims of executive power. To simply renounce these claims that were made by the Bush administration.

Watch it:

Indeed, since his election as president, Obama has reiterated his promises to close Guantanamo and end the Iraq war. But in a Daily Kos diary published one day after his interview with Moyers, Feingold expounded on why Obama needs to the condemn Bush’s abuses of executive power as soon as he takes office:

[F]ailing to act swiftly to reverse the damage could essentially legitimize that conduct and the extreme legal theories on which it was based. That is why it is critically important for President-elect Obama to unequivocally renounce President Bush’s extreme claims of executive authority. As I mentioned in the interview yesterday, stating this position clearly in the inaugural address would affirm to the nation, and the world, that respect for the rule of law has returned to the Oval Office.

In a speech on the Senate floor last September, Feingold outlined a series of expert recommendations “on what should be done to restore the rule of law” that focus on four key areas: “[T]he separation of powers among the branches, government secrecy, detention and interrogation policy, and protecting the privacy of law-abiding Americans.”

“I am hopeful that with the election of Barack Obama, the assault on our Constitution will end,” Feingold said.

Politico reports that Barack Obama’s personnel selections are causing some consternation amongst progressives: “Liberals are growing increasingly nervous – and some just flat-out angry – that President-elect Barack Obama seems to be stiffing them on Cabinet jobs and policy choices.”

Attempting to diffuse the nervousness, Obama’s top campaign field operative Steve Hildebrand pens a response in the Huffington Post, warning that now is “not a time for the left wing” to be drawing conclusions. (Hildebrand’s argument has stirred reactions from many bloggers.)

This morning, ThinkProgress spoke with Gov. Jon Corzine (D-NJ), who was reportedly under consideration for a cabinet post. We asked Gov. Corzine if he had any concerns that Obama’s choices were not progressive enough:

I think President-elect Obama has done an outstanding job of picking very good people who have the ability to be pragmatists with a progressive agenda. […]

It would be hard to not say that there is an attention to a progressive agenda. But there is a recognition that governing means that you have constraints and resource constraints that have to be attended to as you go forward.

I’m a committed liberal. I’m a committed progressive myself, but I also understand that has to be balanced with what you have the capacity to do at a given point in time. And I think that’s all that’s reflected in the appointments. I think he’s selected extraordinary people.

Corzine pointed to Bill Richardson and John Podesta as evidence of progressives who surround Obama.

Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, a research associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

In the Brookings Institution’s recently released Middle East strategy report, Stephen Biddle, Michael O’Hanlon, and Kenneth Pollack again advocate a policy of beginning U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq in 2010 rather than as soon as practical. But the realities of Iraqi politics — such as the recently concluded Status of Forces Agreement (pdf) — have rendered moot academic proposals that depend on fine-tuning American force levels and postures in Iraq. Unlike the Biddle, O’Hanlon, and Pollack proposal for tens of thousands of American troops performing a variety of missions in Iraq beyond 2011, the SOFA calls for all American forces to withdraw from populated areas by June 30 of next year and all U.S. troops to be out by the end of 2011. Simply put, the SOFA and Iraqi domestic politics have outpaced Biddle, O’Hanlon, and Pollack’s plan.

Other proposed Iraq plans –- such as the Center for a New American Security’s “conditional engagement” strategy, which we have criticized here previously –- fall victim to the same trap. “Conditional engagement” presumed the United States held leverage over the Maliki government because the Iraqis strongly desired continued U.S. military engagement in Iraq. But the SOFA negotiations demonstrated how little leverage the United States has over Iraqi political actors. Rather than forcing Maliki to make political accommodations, Maliki forced the United States to bow to popular pressure for a withdrawal timetable. Like Biddle, O’Hanlon, and Pollack’s proposal, “conditional engagement” has become irrelevant in the face of the SOFA’s limitations on U.S. military action in Iraq, and its firm timetable for withdrawal.

The common flaw in these strategies is that they rest on a distorted vision of American power in Iraq. They suggest that by subtly altering U.S. force levels and posture, the United States can achieve its political objectives in Iraq. However, reporters on the ground note that United States military power is becoming “increasingly irrelevant” in Iraq. This focus on eroding military power leads advocates of these strategies to ignore or misinterpret Iraqi politics, where agreeing to a SOFA with anything less than a timetable for withdrawal would prove politically fatal. Even the agreement on the table now may not be acceptable; Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the top Shi’a cleric in Iraq, has voiced reservations about the SOFA. The agreement itself is slated to go before the Iraqi people in a July 30 referendum. If the SOFA fails to win popular approval, then U.S. forces would have a year from its failure to leave Iraq.

Since the election of Barack Obama, who pledged to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in 16 months, and passage of the SOFA through the Iraqi parliament, Iraqi and American political leaders now appear to be on the same page. The President-elect called Prime Minister Maliki to assure him of the new administration’s support for the SOFA, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has indicated he is on board with Obama’s Iraq policy. These leaders have recognized the need to acknowledge Iraqi political realities and have moved to reset United States policy in Iraq and the Middle East. Clinging to abstract theories of conditional engagement or force level tinkering in the face of the new U.S.-Iraqi political consensus for a new strategic relationship is irresponsible and foolhardy.

Today, President-elect Barack Obama announced that Gen. Eric Shinseki will become his Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary. The nomination of the first Asian-American to the post — Shinseki, a Japanese-American, grew up in Hawaii — carries extra poignancy, coming on the 67th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks. Watch it:

Shinseki is most famous for publicly contradicting Bush administration officials’ overly optimistic predictions about the war in Iraq. In 2003, then serving as the Army’s chief of staff, he told Congress that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to secure Iraq.

The Bush administration’s failure to heed Shinseki’s warnings have led to a decimation of the U.S. military — underequipped forces, an over-reliance on the National Guard and Reserves, a dangerous stop-loss policy, and an increasing number troops coming home with mental and physical problems. As Michigan University history professor Juan Cole told the Washington Post:

If Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and [former undersecretary for defense Douglas J.] Feith had listened to Shinseki, there wouldn’t be as many wounded veterans to take care of. I think this is a way of saying, “Here was a career officer who had valuable insights who was shunted aside by arrogant civilians, and we’re not going to make the same kind of mistakes.”

Shinseki served two combat tours in Vietnam, receiving two Purple Hearts and four Bronze Stars. Shinseki has frequently worked with wounded veterans and visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center, referring to it as a “members-only section” since he too is an amputee. Some veterans organizations, such as IAVA, have already come out with high praise for Obama’s choice, saying that Shinseki is a man the military community holds in “high regard” but also note that he faces enormous challenges.

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