Uncle Sam runs out of troops

So Bush is to announce a reduction, next year, in US troops in Iraq.

But the only reason he is doing it is because the USA, bless them, have run out of troops, or will do next year if they don't radically reduce their deployments.

It's nothing to do with the Iraqi political system and its army and police force being able to take the strain. We were told that was the reason for the troops being there in the first place - to enable an orderly transition.

What a mess!

Replace Warner with Warner - an enticing prospect for US Democrats

Mark Warner is a lamentably under-utilised resource in the American Democrat party.

Until recently, he was Governor of Virginia (he stood down due to term limits). He is a politician who connects extremely well with rural Americans and, most crucially, comes from the South, in a party which desperately needs southerners at its helm for demographic reasons, if nothing else.

I had a tenner on him with Stan James to become US President. Sadly, Stan James nabbed my tenner when Mark Warner announced that he would not seek the Democratic nomination. It was a crowded field. Once you have tasted a family-friendly Governor's mansion, jetting around the States, on a possible fool's errand, is not an enticing prospect.

It is a shame he stood down. I still think Obama or Clinton or going to have a fairly tough task trying to beat, say, Guiliani. They could do, especially if Guiliani throws a bit of a wobbly in some way, as he is wont to do. But I wouldn't bank on it. Mark Warner could have ticked all the "photogenic (at the right angle)/walks in a straight line/talks/nice family" boxes as well as ticking that all-important "Southerner who wears cowboy boots" box.

Mark Warner has been mentioned as a possible Vice-Presidential candidate, which would make sense. Any ticket with a Senator from Illinois or New York at the top will have to have a southerner at the bottom.

He is now considering a Senatorial bid. It would make sense. John Warner, a man who's been a senator for so long he ought really to be carved into a sort of second rank Mount Rushmore, is standing down from his Virginian senate seat. Replace Warner with Warner. No relation. Different party. It would make the Democrats' chances in the Senate a lot more rosy. They won the other Virginian senate seat at the last election, against the odds. To take the second one would be a terrific victory and allow them to, perhaps, breathe a little easier in the Upper House.

The chilling clarity (and silence) of John Bolton, US Neocon

If you missed it, it's worth listening to the interview with John Bolton, former (unconfirmed) US Ambassador to the UN, on Radio Four's PM tonight (it's about 15 minutes in).

George Bush is forever banging on about spreading democracy across the world. Indeed, one of his retirement plans is to set up a "Freedom Centre", to encourage international democracy.

It is remarkable that George Bush's enthusiasm for world democracy stops at the Pakistani border. It's as if there is a sort of force field around Pakistan that flips Bush's logic on its head, unexplained, cheerfully accepting a dictatorship.

Mr Bolton, with chilling clarity, explained why this is. Basically, Musharraf has nukes and is cracking down on Al-Qaeda. Hold onto nurse for fear of something worse.

So, democracy is fine. But where there are nukes held and terrorists to crack down on, a dictator is best.

Bolton put it as protecting "command and control". The US, therefore, prefers "command and control" under a dictator than under a democracy. In Pakistan.

It all goes back to that interview before George Bush's election when he was asked the name of the new leader of Pakistan. "General" he answered. "General who?" pressed the interviewer. "General" replied Bush with one of his frat boy smirks.

It was amusing at the time, but, upon reflection now, it reveals, perhaps, a deeper truth. I suspect that Bush didn't actually care which General was in charge. He was just happy with it being a General who was a "good man".

The PM interview had one remarkable aspect. John Bolton said that terrorist-searching efforts in Pakistan "take priority over democracy". Interviewer Eddie Mair allowed Bolton to expand on his answer by pausing.

I actually joined the interview a this point, listening on Long Wave. There was a long silence (ten seconds long in the end). I wondered whether I was about to treated to an Emergency Test Match Special ("The Batsman's Holding, the Bowler's Throat") or a Hurricane-strength Shipping Forecast. But no. It was a sort of Mexican Stand-off. As Eddie Mair says on his blog, he (Mair) "blinked first" and asked: "Why?"

John Bolton was not born yesterday.

It reminds me of the advice I have always been given for speaking with auditors:

Answer the question, then stop talking.

Bush: 'We're kicking ass' in Iraq

Oh well, that's alright then.

At least, I suppose, you can't accuse him of verbosity.

George Bush's priorities after office: Money and teaching people to repeat his mistakes

The New York Times reviews Robert Draper's book "Dead Certain", about George W Bush.

It gives some fascinating glimpses into the priorities of the great man.

Take his plans after leaving office. He wants to make lots of money and establish a "Freedom Institute" to tell young people how to mess up countries - like he did in Iraq:

Mr. Draper quotes him saying that he plans to build a 'Freedom Institute,' a sort of think tank where young leaders from abroad can learn about democracy. Mr. Bush, who has a net worth estimated at $8 million to $21 million, also said he would like to make some money -- 'replenish the ol’ coffers,' as he put it.""He said he could make 'ridiculous' money out on the lecture circuit: 'I don’t know what my dad gets. But it’s more than fifty, seventy-five' thousand dollars a speech."

He can make "ridiculous money", can he? Has anyone told George W that his dad actually had a brain?

Thanks to Political Wire.

Barack Obama is ahead in poll of readers of this blog

There has been what I regard as a surprisingly large response to the US Presidential survey button on the right. 31 people have voted. Thank you!

Barack Obama has stormed ahead with 77%. Next is, interestingly, Ron Paul with 23%.

I have repeated the botton below just in case anyone is still to vote.

US Anti-gay lawmaker busted for allegedly trying to buy oral sex from man

Thanks to Paul Canning for this.

Member of the Florida House of Representatives, Bob Allen is known for his anti-gay stances and recently introduced a bill proposing harsh penalties for public sex.

However, he "got busted recently for allegedly trying to buy some oral sex for 20 bucks in a park washroom from an undercover cop."

His excuse?:

He says because he was afraid of the numerous Black men at the park. "I certainly wasn't there to have sex with anybody and certainly wasn't there to exchange money for it," the 48-year-old Allen told officers.

Unsurprisingly, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has made quite a lot of hay with this one - click below:

Bush is as unpopular as Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal

This really takes the biscuit. According to the latest poll from respected pollster, Harris, George Bush now has as low an approval rating as Nixon did in its polls taken at the height of the Watergate scandal. Bush is at 26%, which is the same as Nixon during the Watergate crisis.

Breathtaking. When he has even Republican Senator John Warner, that chip off Mount Rushmore, coming out against his Iraq policy, then it has to be said that George W. Bush is in what George H.W.Bush, his father, used to call "deep doo-doo".

Has McCain had his chips?

How we all laughed.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the implosion of the John McCain campaign team. McCain was forced to tell ABC that only "contracting a fatal disease" would cause his departure from the Presidential race.

Then there's this quote from McCain's former campaign strategist talking to New York magazine:

We had a spending problem, a message problem, a spending problem... that’s nobody’s fault but mine. We began the campaign believing our own b.s., and I’m very guilty of that.

Believed their own b.s? That won't do.

George Bush continues to aim at the wrong duck

George Bush said today that pulling troops out too soon "would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al-Qaeda". He just doesn't get it does he?

Even the US National Intelligence Council, the best brains available to Bush, says that the Sunni-Shiite warfare is the cause of most of the violence in Iraq - see below.

It is amazing that, with an awesome array of intelligence resources available to him, President Bush continues to aim at the wrong duck.

A McClatchy article on June 28th noted:

Bush's use of al Qaida in his speech had strong echoes of the strategy the administration had used to whip up public support for the Iraq invasion by accusing the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein of cooperating with bin Laden and implying that he'd played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks. Administration officials have since acknowledged that Saddam had no ties to bin Laden or 9-11.

A similar pattern has developed in Iraq, where the U.S. military has cited al Qaida 33 times in a barrage of news releases in the last seven days, and some news organizations have echoed the drumbeat. Last month, al Qaida was mentioned only nine times in U.S. military news releases.

U.S. intelligence agencies and military commanders say the Sunni-Shiite conflict is the greatest source of violence and insecurity in Iraq.

"Extremists -- most notably the Sunni jihadist group al Qaida in Iraq and Shia oppositionist Jaysh al-Mahdi -- continue to act as very effective accelerators for what has become a self-sustaining struggle between Shia and Sunnis," the National Intelligence Council wrote in the unclassified key judgments of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq published in January. Jaysh al Mahdi is Arabic for the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr.

The council comprises the top U.S. intelligence analysts, and a National Intelligence Estimate is the most comprehensive assessment it produces for the president and a small number of his senior aides. It reflects the consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.

Obama ahead of Clinton on funds

The latest fund-raising figures in the US Presidential campaign, have been eagerly awaited. They can be crucial in indicating who is in the lead and who is faltering.

Barack Obama has raised $32.5 million between April and June. This is well ahead of Clinton's $27 million. This is a very significant achievement for Obama. The Clintons are no slouches when it comes to raising funds.

Interestingly, the Obama money is coming significantly from internet donations and the "grass roots", whereas, according to The Times, the Clinton money is coming largely from "mining the list of established donors who backed her husband."

Supreme Court pay-back time for Bushs Senior and Junior

It is one of the vagaries of the US constitution that patient amassing of US Supreme Court appointees over many years can make a fundamental difference to the country's law-making.

Even though Gerald Ford is dead, his appointee to the Supreme Court, John Stevens, still sits on the bench. Ronald Reagan is long gone but Messrs Scalia and Kennedy, who he appointed, carry on in the Supreme Court. So do two of G.H.W.Bush's (Senior) appointees.

Whether or not the judges are appointed by a Republican President is no guarantee of a conservatism as judges, as Day O'Connor and Souter have shown.

However, with the replacement of Day O'Connor with Alito, in the last week, the shift of power to a clear conservative agenda has become evident in the decisions of the court on subjects such as:

School integration
Abortion
Campaigns
Discrimination
Students' free speech

Erwin Chemerinsky, a liberal Duke University law professor, comments:

This was the year the conservatives finally got their court. Roberts and Alito have been everything conservatives could have hoped for and everything liberals could have feared.

The man who is pulling George Bush's strings

The Washington Post has published a major four-part investigation and assessment of Dick Cheney. Entitled "The Angler" it collates a fascinating picture of the US Vice-President.

The opening of the first part of this Barton Gellman and Jo Becker series, is stunning. It reveals that Cheney basically got Bush to sign the order for foreign terrorist suspects to be tried by military tribunal without the Secretary of State (Colin Powell) or the National Security Adviser (Condeleeza Rice) knowing anything about it. That is significant, given that several years later the first case at such a tribunal collapsed. Perhaps if more advisers had discussed the order before its approval, all those years of agony would have been avoided.

The series clearly illustrates that Cheney's role is unlike that of any previous Vice-President. Rather than agreeing to keep to a limited range of portfolios...

Cheney preferred, and Bush approved, a mandate that gave him access to "every table and every meeting," making his voice heard in "whatever area the vice president feels he wants to be active in," Joshua B Bolten (White House Chief of Staff) said.

Cheney has used that mandate with singular force of will. Other recent vice presidents have enjoyed a standing invitation to join the president at "policy time." But Cheney's interventions have also come in the president's absence, at Cabinet and sub-Cabinet levels where his predecessors were seldom seen. He found pressure points and changed the course of events by "reaching down," a phrase that recurs often in interviews with current and former aides.

It is particularly illuminating to read Cheney's role in the changing of the definition of torture by the Bush administration. This change appears to have its origins in the so-called "Torture memo", which was a documented opinion from the US Justice Department which narrowed the definition of "torture" to mean only suffering "equivalent in intensity" to the pain of "organ failure ..... or even death."

Reading this series one has to ask, again, "Who is actually the President of the United States?" It is clear that Cheney has accumulated power to an extent where it appears that Bush follows his instructions like a lamb following its mother ewe. I know none of this is new, but the Washington Post is remarkable in accumulating a vast array of evidence for this view.

Bush's surge strategy - are its days numbered?

Richard Lugar has been US Senator for Indiana for 31 years and is a former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This week he created a major stir by being the first leading Republican to break ranks on Iraq. He warned that he might not support Bush's funding request for Iraq in September. His words were strong:

In my judgment, the costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved. Persisting indefinitely with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests over the long term.

Powell to back Obama?

The Telegraph reports:

Washington is buzzing with talk that Barack Obama, the candidate for the White House, and Colin Powell, the former general and secretary of state, may join forces.

Last week, Mr Powell revealed that he has been advising the senator from Illinois on foreign policy - provoking a flurry of speculation about the plans and ambitions of both men.

There have been loads of stories about possibilities for Powell since he left the Army. 'Cheney standing down and Powell becoming Vice-President' was one of them. I suspect, like the rest of the rumours, this one may come to nothing. Powell plays a fairly straight bat. I think he is unlikely to abandon the Republicans. But you never know. He was certainly the main anti-neo-Conservative in the first Bush term administration.

Graphic comparison of US Presidents' popularity

2nd hat tip in ten minutes to Tom Watson (if I do another one it will be a hat-tip-trick).

I have occasionally tried to find comparisons of the popularity ratings of current and past US presidents. Unfortunately, the information is often in several different places, making comparison difficult. Hats off, therefore, to the Wall Street Journal, who display an excellent graphic on the subject. It is remarkably clear and has a bar on the left to click for detail on each President.

The two Presidents which stand out the most are Eisenhower, who seems to have been the most consistently popular of the post-war Presidents, and Clinton, who is the only one who was more popular when he left office than when he entered it.

Surprise Guardian sympathetic profile of Conrad Black

Yesterday's Guardian had a remarkably sympathetic profile of Conrad Black. It centred on the publication of his biography of Richard Nixon. That tome seems, from the summary, to be relatively balanced and prescient. While thoroughly acknowledging Nixon's stupidity, we are told, Black seeks to restore some balance to his reputation. Black entones:

"The US simply can't pretend that this guy was some aberration, some kind of mutant, who ran on furry feet into the White House and hid his real nature, until the brave people of the Washington Post pulled back the shower-curtain one night, saw the cloven hooves, and threw him out."

Interesting stuff.

Another blow for Bush - Wolfowitz to quit

Paul Wolfowitz is to quite as head of the World Bank. This is a major blow for George Bush and his neo-Con friends.

US Republican race: Forget Tommy, now it's Fred

Tommy Thompson is at the bottom of the US Republican Presidential contenders' league.

But no matter, Fred, Thompson that is, may be entering the race and he is currently third in the popularity stakes with 13 points.

He is a former Senator. But the biggest thing in his favour is that he is an actor.

The thing not in his favour is that he is quite a good actor.

The Republican way forward - nuclear war with Iran

Yes, really intelligent isn't it? The suggestion comes from an excellent article by Terry Jones in today's Guardian. I have always been a great Python fan since their first TV series, and Jones has developed a rapier sharp style of political commentary. The article is well worth a read.