Tension Ahead of Monday EU Meeting

Reuters is reporting that Russia continues to play a heavy hand ahead of Monday's EU meeting. President Medvedev has threatened to retaliate with sanctions against any countries taking what Russia sees as "aggressive" actions.

"Russia does not want confrontation with any country. Russia does not plan to isolate itself," Medvedev said in an interview with Russia's three main television stations.

But he added: "Everyone should understand that if someone launches an aggressive sortie, he will receive a response." He said Russian law allowed the Kremlin to impose sanctions on other states, though it preferred not to go down that path.

Russia continues to contend that their invasion of Georgia was necessary to halt a genocide in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

the Kremlin said it acted to prevent what it called genocide against the separatist regions.

If they have evidence of such action, they should bring it before the international community by filing war crimes charges against the responsible people or against the Georgian government itself. Without such action by Georgia, their charges will be interpreted as just more hot air.

Georgia called for the EU to provide monitors to replace the Russian "peacekeepers"

Georgia urged the European Union to impose sanctions against those doing business with the two separatist regions, authorize a civilian mission to monitor buffer zones around them and give Tbilisi about $2 billion to help to help repair damage.

"Europe can do a lot, starting with sending a mission of civilian monitors, which would lead to an international peacekeeping mechanism that would replace the presence of Russian troops," Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze told Reuters in Brussels.

While the UK favors a direct response to Russian aggression in the area, many continental powers, especially France and Germany, favor a more nuanced approach.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Russia's intervention in Georgia was dangerous and unacceptable.

"In the light of Russian actions, the EU should review -- root and branch -- our relationship with Russia," Brown wrote in a comment published in Britain's Observer newspaper.

The German foreign minister said Moscow deserved criticism but Europe needed cooperation with Russia.

"Europe would only be hurting itself if we were to get full of emotion and slam all the doors shut to the rooms that we will want to enter afterwards," Steinmeier said.

Russia supplies more than a quarter of Europe's gas needs. Some observers say this makes tough EU sanctions unlikely.

The AP reports that Russia has strengthened its military commitment to South Ossetia and Abkhazia:

MOSCOW - Russia's president said Sunday his country will give military aid to the two separatist regions at the center of the war with Georgia — signaling Moscow has no intention of backing down in the face of Western pressure.
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Medvedev's decision Tuesday to recognize the Georgian breakaway provinces South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent drew condemnation from the West. Though no other countries have followed Russia's lead, Medvedev reaffirmed the decision on Sunday.

"We have made our decision, and it's irreversible," he said in a speech broadcast on Russian television.

In particular, Medvedev has signaled that he views the confrontation in the Caucasus as a way to challenge US dominance of international affairs.

Dmitry Medvedev also warned that American domination of world affairs is unacceptable, though he insisted that Russia did not want hostile relations with the United States and other Western nations.
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Medvedev said Sunday the world would be more stable if the U.S. was less dominant.

"The world must be multi-polar; domination is unacceptable," he said. "We can't accept the world order where all decisions are made by one nation, even by such serious and authoritative nation as the United States. Such a world would be unstable and prone to conflicts."

--SCC

Impact of the Candidates' Tax Proposals

The Tax Policy Center recently released an updated report estimating the deficit impacts of the Obama and McCain tax plans. Due to a lack of detailed information from either campaign, they made some reasonable assumptions about exactly what was being proposed.

The Tax Policy Center reports that:

Compared to current law, TPC estimates the Obama plan would cut taxes by $2.9 trillion over the 2009-2018 period. McCain would reduce taxes by nearly $4.2 trillion

Moreover,

Neither candidate’s plan would significantly increase economic growth unless offset by spending cuts or tax increases that the campaigns have not specified.

Because neither campaign is proposing a fiscally responsible program, I do not feel that I can endorse either candidate in this election. Our children and grandchildren should not be saddled with debts resulting from our large structural deficit. Each generation should pay its own bills.

I did stumble across an interesting calculator estimating the amount of difference that the Obama tax plan would make for a particular taxpayer:
Alchemy Today Tax Calculator

(While most people will receive a tax cut under Obama's plan, a Gallup poll shows most Americans believing that Obama's plan will result in increased taxes for their household.)

McCain's Surprise VP Choice

McCain's decision to choose Sarah Palin as his VP candidate is bound to affect his argument that Obama is not qualified to lead the country. As reported by Reuters:

Palin, the former mayor of the town of Wasilla, is virtually unknown and untested nationally. That could hurt McCain's argument that Obama, 47, a first-term senator from Illinois, is too inexperienced to handle the White House.
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"Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton, adding that she would work to overturn abortion rights and continue Republican economic policies.

The lack-of-experience angle is getting traction with the press. The AP reports:

She is younger and less experienced than the first-term Illinois senator, and brings an ethical shadow to the ticket. A governor for just 20 months, she was two-term mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of 6,500 where the biggest issue is controlling growth and the biggest civic worry is whether there will be enough snow for the Iditarod dog-mushing race.

"On his 72nd birthday, is this really the one-heartbeat-away he wants to put in the White House?" said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the No. 3 Democrat in the House. "What does this say about his judgment?"
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The pick earned McCain praise Friday from evangelicals and other social conservatives who have been skeptical of him. "Conservatives will be thrilled with this pick," said Greg Mueller, a conservative GOP strategist.

The price for that support could be high. Palin's lack of experience undercuts GOP charges that Obama is not ready to be commander in chief. McCain said in April that he was determined to avoid a pick like Dan Quayle, the little-known Indiana senator whom George H.W. Bush put on his ticket in 1988. The choice proved embarrassing.

Quayle "had not been briefed and prepared for some of the questions," McCain said while discussing his vice presidential search. He was clearly aware that, as a septuagenarian, the decision he made about a running mate would be "of enhanced importance."

Four months and one birthday later, McCain's announcement of Palin made clear the paucity of her experience.

"As the head of Alaska's National Guard and as the mother of a soldier herself," the statement said, "Gov. Palin understands what it takes to lead our nation and she understands the importance of supporting our troops."

It seems pretty clear that this choice was aimed at attracting disaffected supporters of Hillary Clinton:

But she could help him appeal to disaffected supporters of Democrat Hillary Clinton, who lost a bruising primary to Obama. Palin noted the achievements of Clinton and Democrat Geraldine Ferraro, who in 1984 became the first woman vice presidential nominee of a major party.

"Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America," she said, referring to the 18 million votes Clinton received in the primaries. "But it turns out the women of America aren't finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all."

Huckabee also tried to twist the knife that many Hillary supporters seem to feel Obama inserted between their shoulder blades. From MSNBC:

Huckabee also used the Palin pick to reach out to women.

"Governor Palin ... will remind women that if they are not welcome on the Democrat's ticket, they have a place with Republicans," he said.

Palin does have a reputation as a reformer, which may help reinforce McCain's image in that area. Reuters reports:

Alaska's first women governor and the state's youngest chief executive, the 44-year-old Palin gained statewide fame as a whistle-blower calling attention to ethical violations of high-ranking Republican officials, including the chairman of the state Republican Party.

MSNBC reports that there may be some skeletons in Palin's own closet, however, when it comes to ethical issues:

But Palin’s seemingly bright future was clouded in late July when the state Legislature voted to hire an independent investigator to find out whether she tried to have a state official fire her ex-brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper.

The allegation was made by former Department of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, whom Palin fired in mid-July.

“It is a governor’s prerogative, a right, to fill that Cabinet with members whom she or he believes will do best for the people whom we are serving,” Palin told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow in an interview on Aug. 1. “So I look forward to any kind of investigation or questions being asked because I’ve got nothing to hide.”
...
"A legislative panel has launched a $100,000 investigation to determine if Palin dismissed Alaska's public safety commissioner because he would not fire the trooper, Mike Wooten," the AP wrote earlier this month. "Wooten went through a messy divorce from Palin's sister. Palin has denied the commissioner's dismissal had anything to do with her former brother-in-law. And she denied orchestrating the dozens of telephone calls made by her husband and members of her administration to Wooten's bosses. Palin said she welcomes the investigation: 'Hold me accountable.'"

Although she's not linked to them, Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young are facing legal/ethical troubles. In fact, Stevens' trial will start in late September, so the Alaska Republican Party is a mess. And Palin's trooper trouble could play into that.

It will be interesting to see which story line catches on: "Palin, the reformer/maverick", or "Palin, under investigation?"

Russia Plans to Formally Annex South Ossetia

The AP is reporting that South Ossetia has announced that it will be formally annexed by Russia:

TSKHINVALI, Georgia - Russia intends to eventually absorb Georgia's breakaway province of South Ossetia, a South Ossetian official said Friday, three days after Moscow recognized the region as independent and drew criticism from the West.
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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the region's leader, Eduard Kokoity, discussed the future of South Ossetia earlier this week in Moscow, South Ossetian parliamentary speaker Znaur Gassiyev said.

Russia will absorb South Ossetia "in several years" or earlier, a position was "firmly stated by both leaders," Gassiyev said.

My view is that the formal process will be nothing more than a recognition of the de facto annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia by Russia. Short of starting World War III, it is not clear that the West will be able to prevent this annexation.

On the other hand, I can see no good reason for the West to recognize Russia's actions. There are areas where Russia would like Western cooperation, which means that there are ways for the West to express its displeasure short of a full-scale deployment of NATO forces.

The deployment of NATO naval forces to the Black Sea is another way in which the West can present its discontent.

In Georgia, the vice speaker of parliament, Gigi Tsereteli, said the statement cannot be taken seriously.

"The separatist regimes of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and the Russian authorities are cut off from reality," he said in Tbilisi. "The world has already become different and Russia will not long be able to occupy sovereign Georgian territory."

I suppose he has to say that, but I have to respectfully disagree. I think that Russia intends to annex the two provinces, and that they will do so. I don't see that internal nationalist Russian pressures will allow Medvedev and Putin to do otherwise.

Georgia has announced that they will suspend relations with Russia as a result of the Russian announcement:

Georgia said it would cut diplomatic ties with Russia after Moscow recognized its rebel South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions. A Russian Foreign Ministry source told RIA news agency Moscow would respond by closing its embassy in Tbilisi.

Reuters is reporting that the Europeans are unwilling to impose significant sanctions on Russia for its actions:

PARIS/MOSCOW (Reuters) - A defiant Russia said on Friday that international condemnation of its actions in Georgia was "biased," while the appetite in the European Union for imposing sanctions on Moscow appeared to dwindle.
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European diplomats said they had received clear signals from the Kremlin that Russia would retaliate if the European Union imposed punitive measures over Georgia when EU leaders meet for an emergency summit next week.
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A senior diplomat for EU president France said sanctions would not be adopted at the summit. That message contradicted remarks on Thursday by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who said sanctions were among the options on the table.

"The time to pass sanctions has certainly not come," the French diplomat said.

In particular, the Europeans are concerned about their oil and gas supplies from Russia. Of course, everyone denies that this is having any impact on how they see the situation:

European diplomats said they had received clear signals from the Kremlin that Russia would retaliate if the European Union imposed punitive measures over Georgia when EU leaders meet for an emergency summit next week.

Russian oil companies and government officials denied a British newspaper report that they were preparing to restrict oil supplies in response to sanctions.
...
Western policy-makers drafting a response to the Kremlin's actions are mindful that Russia supplies more than a quarter of Europe's gas and that its support is vital to maintain pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.

European diplomats said on Friday they were expecting Russian retaliation if the EU took punitive measures.

"They've been saying loud and clear that they feel they could do whatever they want with impunity," said one diplomat.

Russian threats have gone beyond oil and gas supplies at other issues of mutual concern:

Putin also hinted Russia's cooperation with the West on issues such as trade and nuclear non-proliferation could be at stake in the row over Georgia.

In the meantime, Russian President Medvedev is trying to sell a bizarre conspiracy theory by which the US "provoked" Russian intervention as a way to promote John McCain's candidacy. I don't see this conspiracy theory selling well in the US, even among Bush's staunchest critics. According to the BBC:

Mr Putin told CNN US citizens were "in the area" during the conflict over South Ossetia and were "taking direct orders from their leaders".

He said his defence officials had told him the provocation was to benefit one of the US presidential candidates.

--SCC

Obama Appeals to Pragmatists

Obama made a definite appeal to independents and pragmatists during his acceptance speech. Time will tell how much of it he can deliver, but the approach seems like the right one. The real question is whether the party hacks will allow this sort of approach to proceed, or whether they will want to keep the same old wedge issues active to stir up party activists during the next election.

America, our work will not be easy. The challenges we face require tough choices, and Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past. For part of what has been lost these past eight years can't just be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits. What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose - our sense of higher purpose. And that's what we have to restore.

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country. The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than for those plagued by gang-violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination. Passions fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers. This too is part of America's promise - the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.

The Great Wealth Transfer

Paul Krugman's Rolling Stone article discusses the transfer of wealth to the wealthiest few. It appeared in 2006, but the trends he discusses have accelerated.

An important part of the article is a debunking of the different myths explaining how this happened:

MYTH #1: INEQUALITY IS MAINLY A PROBLEM OF POVERTY.
...
The real divergence in fortunes is between the great majority of Americans and a very small, extremely wealthy minority
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MYTH #2: INEQUALITY IS MAINLY A PROBLEM OF EDUCATION.
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Being highly educated won't make you into a winner in today's U.S. economy. At best, it makes you somewhat less of a loser.
...
MYTH #3: INEQUALITY DOESN'T REALLY MATTER.
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America actually has less social mobility than other advanced countries: These days, Horatio Alger has moved to Canada or Finland. It's easier for a poor child to make it into the upper-middle class in just about every other advanced country -- including famously class-conscious Britain -- than it is in the United States.

A lot of this has been accomplished through Republican tax policy and the associated misinformation.

the administration has engaged in a systematic campaign of disinformation about whose taxes have been cut. Indeed, one of Bush's first actions after taking office was to tell the Treasury Department to stop producing estimates of how tax cuts are distributed by income class -- that is, information on who gained how much. Instead, official reports on taxes under Bush are textbook examples of how to mislead with statistics, presenting a welter of confusing numbers that convey the false impression that the tax cuts favor middle-class families, not the wealthy.

In reality, only a few middle-class families received a significant tax cut under Bush. But every wealthy American -- especially those who live off of stock earnings or their inheritance -- got a big tax cut. To picture who gained the most, imagine the son of a very wealthy man, who expects to inherit $50 million in stock and live off the dividends. Before the Bush tax cuts, our lucky heir-to-be would have paid about $27 million in estate taxes and contributed 39.6 percent of his dividend income in taxes. Once Bush's cuts go into effect, he could inherit the whole estate tax-free and pay a tax rate of only fifteen percent on his stock earnings. Truly, this is a very good time to be one of the have mores.

Framing the Immigration Debate

The Rockridge Institute has an interesting article on how to frame the immigration debate. It makes the point that the Conservatives have succeeded in framing the debate in the most racially-polarizing way possible. The costs associated with immigration (by which we mean hispanic immigration, of course) are considered, but the benefits are not. More importantly we don't think about the complex interrelationship of issues that drive the debate. The Institute's report makes for thought-provoking reading.

Fission vs Coal

Consider this page by the Virtual Nuclear Tourist. It shows the costs associated with fission generation as being about the same as for coal.

This does not take into account the costs associated with the environmental damage from mining the coal, let alone the costs associated with the increased level of mercury in the ecosystem. While the nuclear fission plant produces concentrated waste products, the coal plant spews them throughout the environment.

This Scitizen article argues that renewable sources are enough to avoid using either coal or nuclear fission. My feeling is that this may have been true had we gotten started earlier, but that we don't have the time left to implement these alternatives. I think that we have to proceed with a buildout of fission plants to help us replace oil and coal power generation.

--SCC

A Few Global Warming Links

Conservatives frequently claim that there is no evidence to support the global warming hypothesis. I thought it would be useful to post a few links related to global warming related research.

"A guide to facts and fictions about climate change" by the Royal Society. This document seeks to debunk the most common arguments raised by the skeptics.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on "The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change."

Guardian report: Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study

Beyond any Global Warming-related issues, we need to move away from the oil/coal economy due to the hidden costs of keeping that economy going. We end up paying military, economic, and political costs to keep the oil economy rolling.

In addition, it seems very likely that we are at or near the global peak production levels for petroleum. Given the rapid growth in demand for oil from India and China, we can expect to see oil costs spike upwards over the next few years. We should prepare for this change by moving as quickly as possible to other fuel sources, especially wind, solar, geothermal, and nuclear fission.

--SCC

Georgia and Imperial Overstretch

Russia's intervention in Georgia has effectively called the Western bluff in the Caucasus. As a practical matter, it is hard to imagine a scenario where we would deploy combat troops to defend Georgia. Humanitarian aid, perhaps coupled with overheated rhetoric, seems a more likely response.

The overheated rhetoric from the West is a classic example of imperial overstretch. In a time when large structural deficits limit the activities of the US, it is likely that other countries will see fit to call the West's bluff.

--SCC

Thoughts on the Democratic Convention

What in the world were the Democrats thinking on Monday night? Using that dry-as-dirt "town hall" meeting with the talking heads just before Pelosi? Even Jim Lehrer was making fun of how boring the meeting was. "The audience does not appear to be very attentive," he said, while snickering with his guests.

Pelosi, of course, is not exactly a stem-winder herself. Sure, she hit all the traditional Democratic themes. And it is important for Team Obama to get a woman out front and center to try to smooth over feathers ruffled by the primary race against Hillary. But maybe they could have warmed up the audience with somebody who knows how to give a speech. The audience started to warm up when Jackson, Jr spoke. Maybe they could have started with him. Or some music. Or something. I swear I was hearing crickets chirp while Pelosi spoke.

Hillary's speech Tuesday night hit all the "party unity" points she needed to hit to keep her name around for a few more years. She didn't seem at all bitter about not getting the Veep spot. It's not clear to me how that would have worked out anyway. Hillary is about the only person who can put a muzzle on Bill, and Obama would have just come out of it looking weak.

The Republicans seem to be having a good time. Good for them. Romney was a good choice for front man, since he is able to state their position without coming off as nasty. McCain could certainly do worse than him as a Veep choice, though there is the not-so-hidden anti-Mormon sentiment among his evangelical supporters.

--SCC

The Russian Land Grab Continues

With the Russians stating their intention to continue to occupy the Black Sea port of Goti, it is becoming ever clearer that this has less to do with "peacekeeping," and more to do with resurgent Russian imperialism.

Russia interprets the cease-fire accord as allowing it to keep a substantial military presence in Georgia because of earlier peacekeeping agreements that ended fighting in the separatist areas of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the 1990s.

But even though Poti is completely outside the buffer zone for Abkhazia, Nogovitsyn said Russian troops are not leaving and will patrol the city.

"Poti is not in the security zone, but that doesn't mean that we will sit behind the fence and watch as they drive around in Hummers," Nogovitsyn said, making an acid reference to four U.S. Humvees the Russians seized in Poti this week. The vehicles were used in previous joint U.S.-Georgian military exercises.

The comment about the Hummers is clearly intended to tweak the Bush administration, whose overheated rhetoric has done nothing to ease the situation.

The US should not cower before the Russian bear, but it should treat the Russians with respect. For years, we have failed to take into account Russian sensibilities on a range of issues. Diplomacy and tact could have been used to secure much better results than the Bush administration's policy of arrogance and neglect.

--SCC

Biden: A Conventional Choice

A Vice Presidential choice is one of the earliest substantial windows into a presidential candidate's decision-making process. By choosing Biden, Obama has made a conventional choice.

Conventional wisdom stated that Obama needed someone with lots of foreign policy expertise. Conventional wisdom also suggested that the chairman of the foreign relations committee would be the person with such expertise.

Unfortunately, experience does not always lead to expertise. Don't get me wrong; Biden did some good work in the Balkans. And he was right to label Milosevic as a "war criminal." (Things should be called what they are.)

On the other hand, Biden has a long history of popping off in ways and times that are not appropriate. His face-to-face indictment of Milosevic, while true, was not the most useful way to improve the situation in the Balkans. A frequent criticism of Biden is that his mouth shifts into overdrive while his brain is still in neutral.

But even more important than Biden's infamous mouth is his tendency towards conventional thinking. A big part of his self-assuredness comes from his inability to consider solutions that are not part of the mainstream conversation. More than any other aspect of the Presidency, foreign policy requires an imaginative, original approach. Conventional thinking allows other countries to steal a march on the US, since our reactions will be predictable and relatively unimaginative.

In the runup to the Iraq War, Biden demonstrated this inability to think outside the box by throwing his support behind the administration. The Bush administration set up a false dicotomy (either "cave in to Saddam" or "invade and occupy"). Biden was in a position to lead more substantive criticism of the Bush approach. QuickOverview has a pretty good summary of Biden's position on Iraq:

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Biden was supportive of the Bush administration efforts, calling for additional ground troops in Afghanistan and agreeing with the administration's assertion that Saddam Hussein needed to be eliminated. The Bush administration rejected an effort Biden undertook with Senator Richard Lugar to pass a resolution authorizing military action only after the exhaustion of diplomatic efforts. In October 2002, Biden supported the final resolution of support for war in Iraq. He continues to support the Bush Administration's war effort and appropriations to pay for it, but has argued repeatedly that more soldiers are needed, the war should be internationalized, and the Bush administration should "level with the American people" about the cost and length of the conflict.

In addition to being in conflict with Obama's longstanding opposition to the war, it is hard to see any original thinking in this position.

Obama has repeatedly stated that McCain has demonstrated a lack of judgment, based on his support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. How can he defend his running mate's support for the same conflict? If McCain's support is such a fatal flaw, what are we to make of Obama's willingness to put this fatal flaw within a heartbeat of the presidency?

Moreover, McCain's early and courageous support for the surge demonstrated a willingness to think outside the box. He took on a sitting Defense Secretary, and he worked tirelessly to pull together a behind-the-scenes coalition to force Bush to change his approach towards the war and shift towards the approach supported by General Petraeus. More important than the "surge" has been the change in approach in Iraq, as exemplified by Petraeus' battle to capture the hearts and minds of the Iraqi public.

--SCC

More on the Re-awakened Russian Bear

With each day's news reports, we get more clarity as to why it is taking so long for Russia to withdraw its troops. It looks more and more like ethnic Russians in Abkhazia and South Ossetia are using the cover of Russian occupation forces to make it difficult for their ethnic Georgian neighbors to return.
Zbingiew Brezezinski has summed up Russia's policy in the area:

Russia has deliberately instigated the breakup of Georgian territory. Moscow has promoted secessionist activities in several Georgian provinces: Abkhazia, Ajaria and, of course, South Ossetia. It has sponsored rebellious governments in these territories, armed their forces and even bestowed Russian citizenship on the secessionists.

It appears that Russia may be targeting Ukraine next. The Telegraph reports that

Ukraine is investigating claims that Russia has been distributing passports in the port of Sevastopol, raising fears that the Kremlin could be stoking separatist sentiment in the Crimea as a prelude to possible military intervention.

Earlier this year, the Russians made a point of asserting their claims to Sevastopol. Their claim amounts to an assertion that Sevastopol was not transferred to the Ukraine in 1954.

This is in addition to the economic isolation of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan; economic pressures on the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia; and the cyber attacks on Estonia. Russia may already have achieved an effective partition of Moldova

The bear has definitely woken up. The US needs to find a way to deal effectively with the re-constitution of Russia as a great power. The approach recommended by Cato does not seem the right way to go. We are well past the era when the US could cower behind the bulwark of the Atlantic. The US is also a great power, and there are responsibilities that attach to that. But a balanced, respectful dialog between the two powers would be a huge step forward from the overheated rhetoric and disrespect we've been seeing.

--SCC

Buffett and the Trade Deficit

In a 2003 Fortune article, Warren Buffett spoke out about the USA's large and growing deficit problem.

To resolve the trade deficit, he suggests a solution that he admits is somewhat "gimmicky" and "a tariff by another name." His suggestion is something called "Import Certificates" (ICs), which would be issued to US exporters in amounts equal to the amount that they export. An importer would need to purchase ICs in the amount needed for what they want to import.

The Levy Economics Institute examined the potential effects of this proposal in a white paper. They suggested variations on the Buffett template to reduce the economic impacts, including government-sponsored auctions of the ICs. They also note that such a program is likely to lead to retaliatory trade practices by other countries.

Both articles make for very interesting reading. One way or another, the trade deficit will be corrected. If we don't correct it with policy-based solutions, the market will eventually correct it for us. Unfortunately, the Invisible Hand is not known for gentle, controlled transitions.

--SCC

The Missile Defense Shield

I'm not a fan of the missile defense shield proposed for Poland. I have questions about its effectiveness against real threats, which makes it a waste of money. (I hate spending money on "solutions" that don't solve anything other than transferring money to defense contractors' pockets.) I just don't see it as worth the level of friction it has caused in our relationship with Russia.

There is little doubt that the missile defense shield is aimed at Russia as well as Iran. Once the shield is in place, it becomes easier to expand it than it was to put it in place. That reality helps to explain the Russian reaction.

There are serious concerns about the shield's effectiveness, but a prospective attacker would have to assume that it would work when planning an attack. There is a reasonable argument that the shield doesn't have to actually work in order to be effective. It just has to pose enough of a wild card to force it to be taken into account in mission planning.

It is reasonable to assume that the Russians are unlikely to have felt the need to flex their muscle if we hadn't been pushing the missile shield so hard.

--SCC

Russia's de facto Annexation

Reuters reported on Medvedev's latest comments about the breakaway Georgian provinces.

"If anyone thinks that they can kill our citizens and escape unpunished, we will never allow this," Medvedev told World War Two veterans in the Russian city of Kursk. "If anyone tries this again, we will come out with a crushing response."

"We have all the necessary resources, political, economic and military. If anyone had any illusions about this, they have to abandon them."

Note the "our citizens" part of the statement. I'm reading that as a de facto annexation of the two provinces.

--SCC

Germany and Georgian NATO Membership

It appears that Germany has changed its mind regarding Georgian membership in NATO.

This is an interesting development. Russian allegations of Georgian abuses have not been investigated fully yet. And Russia has been signaling that the two breakaway provinces may be absorbed into the resurgent Russian empire.

The Bush administration has been pushing for Georgian NATO membership, so this shift by Germany may signal closer cooperation between Berlin and Washington.

--SCC

Georgia and NATO/EU Membership

I don't see them becoming a member of either NATO or the EU while there are legitimate questions about their treatment of either breakaway province. (It will be interesting to see how any charges filed by the Russians play out.)

Given the number of third party witnesses to the events described by the Georgians in their charges against the Russians, I think those are a foregone conclusion.)

It was unwise in the extreme for the Georgians to give the Russians a pretext to invade. After the cyber attacks on Estonia, it was pretty clear that the Russians were looking for an arena to send a message to the world (especially to their former possessions). I think the text of that message reads "We're baaack!"

--SCC

The Target on Poland's Back

Russia's reaction to the agreement between the US and Poland is pretty predictable. Basically, they are threatening to roll over the top of Poland in the event of a nuclear showdown with the US.

Poland agreed on Thursday to host elements of a U.S. global anti-missile system after Washington agreed to boost Poland's own military air defenses.

"The USA is engaged in an anti-missile defense for its own government, and not for Poland. And Poland, in deploying (elements of the system) opens itself to a military strike. That is 100 percent," Interfax quoted Nogovitsyn as saying.
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In agreeing to deploy elements of the U.S. missile shield, Poland "becomes an actionable object. Those targets are destroyed in the first order," Nogovitsyn said.

This is not a new position for Poland. They have a long history of being rolled over whenever they got in the way of an expansionist power. Honestly, they probably made about as good a deal as it was possible for them to make.

This is not really about Russian fears that the system actually poses a real threat to their capabilities:

The 10 interceptor missiles to be based at a site in northern Poland compare with Russia's own nuclear arsenal of more than 5,000 ballistic warheads.

This is about national prestige and a newly resurgent Russian imperialism.

I've not been a fan of this missile defense for reasons I'll leave for another time. On the other hand, Russia's move into Georgia needed a real response of some sort. This isn't a bad one given the circumstances.

It would have been unwise to directly involve the US military in Georgia for a range of reasons. It would have been even worse to continue the administration's initial policy of apparent appeasement. I'm glad to see the administration seems to have found a policy with an appropriate level of backbone.

It seems clear that Russia intended to throw a bit of a scare into its erstwhile possessions. In that, they succeeded.

--SCC

Democrats Shift on Drilling

The Gang of Ten proposal seems to have broken the logjam on energy policy. Nancy Pelosi indicated a willingness to put forward a plan included expanded drilling on the OCS.

Democratic proposals to tap the nation's petroleum reserve, curb oil speculation and force oil companies to drill on already leased federal lands were blocked by Republicans trying to force votes on offshore drilling.

Yet any vote on drilling is likely to force the Republicans' hand, since it will likely be packaged with unpopular proposals to tap the petroleum reserve and recoup unpaid royalties from the late 1990s to pay for renewable energy projects.

"This comprehensive Democratic approach will ensure energy independence which is essential to our national security, will create millions of good paying jobs here at home in a new green economy, and will take major steps forward in addressing the global climate crisis," said Pelosi, who criticized Republicans' "drill only" plan.

Republicans view this proposal as a Trojan Horse to bring in things that they view unfavorably.

Hopefully we will begin to seem more motion towards a plan that does more than just drill. Something like my proposed compromise may emerge as both sides start to move.

--SCC

Taking Care of Business

David Broder has an interesting article on the focus from within the Obama campaign. One of the most impressive facets of Obama's organization has been the way that they establish priorities and go after them. I have questions and concerns about his lack of experience on the international stage, and I have serious objections to his lack of a fiscal responsibility platform, but he does bring a level of clear-headed organization to the campaign that is very unusual.

Given that, I have to wonder why he has been so slow to reach out to the Clintons and their supporters in a more substantial way. Given how Bill loves the spotlight, you know that he would be thrilled to be asked to stump or fundraise for Obama, but only if they reach out to him. (If he isn't stroked, you can count on him to sulk and make unhelpful comments.) And it would heal some of the scars from the primary season. Obama's failure to reconcile with the Clintons earlier demonstrates a lack of the whole-souled greatness of spirit that we would hope to see in someone who is marketing himself as a healer.

He is finally reaching out to Florida and Michigan Clinton supporters. And he has finally been dragged to the realization that he should allow Hillary's name to be placed in nomination and allow a roll call vote.

Democratic leaders have recognized and are trying to counter reports of the split from within the party. (Certainly, the RNC has tried to make hay out of the story line. And the Democrats have tried to make hay out of the RNC's efforts.) But however happy a face we try to put on things, there are a lot of embittered Clinton supporters out in Democratia. Obama needs to set a high priority on reaching out to these people if he wants to win.

--SCC

One Person, No Votes

Once again, the Diebold voting machines have proven to be inaccurate. ComputerWorld reports that Premier (aka Diebold) voting machines dropped votes in this year's primary elections.

Suddenly, the Diebold CEO's promise to deliver Ohio (and the 2004 election) for Bush looks even more sinister.

--SCC

The Iraq War, in their Own Words

I strongly recommend viewing the Leading to War documentary. It makes for very interesting viewing, especially given how things have played out.

--SCC

More on the Cyber War in Georgia

Here are a few updates about the battle for Georgian cyberspace

Dancho Danchev has an interesting discussion of some of the different attack scenarios against Georgia. Is it hacktivism, or is it directly sponsored by the state?

The Russian Business Network is reputed to be behind the attacks themselves. The traffic patterns in that link are certainly very suggestive.

The Register has a balanced, readable report on the cyber attacks for the general public.

--SCC

Georgia, Russia, and the World

Time magazine published an interesting article on the situation in Georgia, and how it reflects on the strength of Russia and the weakness of NATO. The author says that Russia may have won a great victory by freezing NATO membership, as the Europeans are unlikely to want to expand in the face of the newly resurgent Russian empire.

In the meantime, Russia is rattling its saber at Poland. One has to question whether this missile defense system is worth the increased tension in the area. It had better be one heck of a system.

Finally, here's a take on the Bush administration's efforts in Georgia and their likely outcome.

--SCC

Georgia and Energy

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the situation in Georgia is another example of the dangers of the oil economy. Russia's military resurgence is fueled by oil and gas. Europe's reticence in talking back to Russia is partially due to their dependence upon Russia for their fuel.

When we look at the total cost of the oil economy, we have to take into account the national security implications of continuing down the same path.

To the extent that we can convert energy use to wind, solar, geothermal, and fission, we will be increasing our ability to withstand pressure from major oil producing states, including Russia. Given the long-term economic and national security benefits of setting up this infrastructure, it makes sense to make energy conversion into a national priority.

--SCC

Weapons of Mass Deception

One of the more interesting stories to emerge lately is the tale of the faked WMD letter produced by the CIA. This letter purported to be from the head of Iraqi intelligence, and constituted an important piece of "evidence" of the involvement of Iraq in 9/11 and the existence of WMD in Iraq. (This was despite credible, explicit statements from Habbush stating that neither assertion was true.)

"The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001," Suskind wrote. "It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al-Qaida, something the vice president's office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link."

...

"After being told that Habbush had said there were no WMD, Bush was frustrated," Suskind wrote in the book, quoting Bush telling an aide, "Why don't they ask him to give us something we can use to help us make our case?"

That darned reality just keeps getting in the way.

Politico also posted an interesting take on the issue:

The author claims that such an operation, part of “false pretenses” for war, would apparently constitute illegal White House use of the CIA to influence a domestic audience, an arguably impeachable offense.
...
Suskind writes that the White House had “ignored the Iraq intelligence chief’s accurate disclosure that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.
...
“It is not the sort of offense, such as assault or burglary, that carries specific penalties, for example, a fine or jail time,” Suskind writes. “It is much broader than that. It pertains to the White House’s knowingly misusing an arm of government, the sort of thing generally taken up in impeachment proceedings.”

If Monica was worth an impeachment, Bush's broad abuses of authority ought to be worth kicking him and Cheney out on their kiesters.

And back to the perils of using facts to formulate policy:

--John Maguire, one of two men who oversaw the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group, was frustrated by what Suskind describes as the “tendency of the White House to ignore advice it didn’t want to hear – advice that contradicted its willed certainty, political judgments, or rigid message strategies.”

That's a pretty common complaint about the White House, where no science or intelligence report goes unedited by the political office.

--Suskind writes in the acknowledgments that his research assistant, Greg Jackson, “was sent to New York on a project for the book” in September 2007 and was “detained by federal agents in Manhattan. He was interrogated and his notes were confiscated, violations of his First and Fourth Amendment rights.” The author provides no further detail.

Bush probably tried to invalidate the First Amendment with a signing statement first...

From MSNBC:

Suskind says he spoke on the record with U.S. intelligence officials who stated that Bush was informed unequivocally in January 2003 that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. Nonetheless, his book relates, Bush decided to invade Iraq three months later — with the forged letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam bolstering the U.S. rationale to go into war.

Why even bother to have an intelligence service? Just ask Cheney what he wants the truth to be today.

Blumenthal reports that the Bush administration deliberately spun intelligence to make it appear that the evidence was strong for WMDs in Iraq:

Precisely because of the qualms the administration encountered, it created a rogue intelligence operation, the Office of Special Plans, located within the Pentagon and under the control of neo-conservatives. The OSP roamed outside the ordinary inter-agency process, stamping its approval on stories from Iraqi exiles that the other agencies dismissed as lacking credibility, and feeding them to the president.

At the same time, constant pressure was applied to the intelligence agencies to force their compliance. In one case, a senior intelligence officer who refused to buckle under was removed.

Bruce Hardcastle was a senior officer for the Middle East for the Defence Intelligence Agency. When Bush insisted that Saddam was actively and urgently engaged in a nuclear weapons programme and had renewed production of chemical weapons, the DIA reported otherwise. According to Patrick Lang, the former head of human intelligence at the CIA, Hardcastle "told [the Bush administration] that the way they were handling evidence was wrong." The response was not simply to remove Hardcastle from his post: "They did away with his job," Lang says. "They wanted only liaison officers ... not a senior intelligence person who argued with them."

When the state department's bureau of intelligence and research (INR) submitted reports which did not support the administration's case - saying, for example, that the aluminum tubes Saddam possessed were for conventional rocketry, not nuclear weapons (a report corroborated by department of energy analysts), or that mobile laboratories were not for WMDs, or that the story about Saddam seeking uranium in Niger was bogus, or that there was no link between Saddam and al-Qaida (a report backed by the CIA) - its analyses were shunted aside. Greg Thielman, chief of the INR at the time, told me: "Everyone in the intelligence community knew that the White House couldn't care less about any information suggesting that there were no WMDs or that the UN inspectors were very effective."

Then we get conservatives coming out to say that the administration never really said that they were sure that there were WMD in Iraq. Oh, really?

These problems were not limited to our side of the Atlantic. The Irregular Times reports that some of the evidence provided by the British intelligence services was actually lifted wholesale from a student's term paper.

The British government called their report an "intelligence dossier" that described "up-to-date" information on Iraqi efforts to evade weapons inspectors. However, it turns out that the majority of the document was plagiarized, taken word-for-word without permission from a collection of old academic articles written well before the current set of weapons inspections even began. In one case, a plagiarized article was based upon information that was twelve years old, dating back to the time of the first Gulf War had even begun back in 1991. The author, Ibrahim al-Marashi, complained, "Had they consulted me, I could have provided them with more updated information."

One of the plagiarized passages from this article, written for a September 2002 issue of the journal Middle East Review of International Affairs, contained paragraphs that were cited as originally written by Scott Ritter, a former chief weapons inspector who has become a strong opponent of a preemptive invasion of Iraq by the United States. Mr. Ritter was unaware that his own writings would be depicted as the product of British intelligence work in a document designed to promote the very war he opposes. "I'll be more sceptical of any British intelligence I read in future," said al-Marashi in a telephone interview. "It was a case of cut and paste. They even left in my mistakes." In another interview, al-Marashi commented, "This is wholesale deception. How can the British public trust the Government if it is up to these sort of tricks? People will treat any other information they publish with a lot of scepticism from now on."

The Cato Institute published an opinion piece describing the US and British officials as using "magical thinking" in their planning for the Iraq invasion, including the hunt for WMDs. Perhaps next time they should go where the facts take them.

--SCC

Saber-Rattling and Iran

The White House secretly stepped up covert operations inside Iran to destabilize its leadership.

Is he trying to start a war as an "October surprise?" It's no secret that he doesn't like either Obama or McCain. Is he trying to stick them with a fait accompli?

(And what is the Democratically-controlled Congress doing giving him this money? Didn't Iraq demonstrate that he can't be trusted? What a bunch of wimps.)

I'm not quite sure what to make of Iran's nuclear ambitions. I halfway think that they looked at the nifty deal that North Korea got and are looking to see how they can cash in.

Seymour Hersh's frightening article demonstrates just how little backbone the Democrats have. Find a backbone, guys. Bush seems to be a nut job who thinks that God wants him to start Armageddon in the Middle East.

some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.
...
The request for funding came in the same period in which the Administration was coming to terms with a National Intelligence Estimate, released in December, that concluded that Iran had halted its work on nuclear weapons in 2003. The Administration downplayed the significance of the N.I.E., and, while saying that it was committed to diplomacy, continued to emphasize that urgent action was essential to counter the Iranian nuclear threat.

Once again, Bush is saying that he knows more than the Intelligence professionals. I wonder how many times Cheney sent the NIE back for re-work? At least this time they stood up to him.

Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.” Gates’s comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was “Let’s just say that I’m here speaking for myself.”

Bush seems to think that we should also ignore the advice being given us by the military professionals. That would pretty much be in character.

In March, Fallon resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran. For example, late last year he told the Financial Times that the “real objective” of U.S. policy was to change the Iranians’ behavior, and that “attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice.”

If you can't get the generals to go along, fire them.

The White House believes that one size fits all, but the legal issues surrounding extrajudicial killings in Waziristan are less of a problem because Al Qaeda and the Taliban cross the border into Afghanistan and back again, often with U.S. and NATO forces in hot pursuit. The situation is not nearly as clear in the Iranian case. All the considerations—judicial, strategic, and political—are different in Iran.”

He added, “There is huge opposition inside the intelligence community to the idea of waging a covert war inside Iran, and using Baluchis and Ahwazis as surrogates. The leaders of our Special Operations community all have remarkable physical courage, but they are less likely to voice their opposition to policy. Iran is not Waziristan.”

Frightening.

--SCC

Cheney as a war profiteer

Aside from the favors that Cheney was able to throw to his buddies in the oil industry, it looks like Cheney was able to enrich himself while giving no-bid contracts to his buddies in Halliburton and KBR. To add insult to injury, the work that they did was so sub-standard that it has killed our servicepeople.

Some of Cheney's defenders have tried to draw a line between KBR and Halliburton, based on the fact that they are different companies. But that is a fairly recent development. According to the relevant Wikipedia article:

On April 15, 2006, Halliburton filed a registration statement with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission to sell up to 20 percent of its KBR stock on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). On November 16, 2006, KBR shares were offered for the public in an Initial Public Offering with shares priced at $17. The shares closed on the first day up more than 22 percent to $20.75 a share.[2] Halliburton announced on April 5, 2007 that it had finally broken ties with KBR, which has been its contracting, engineering and construction unit as a part of the company for 44 years.

--SCC

The 9/11 Connection

Fans of the invasion of Iraq point at "evidence" that Iraq was connected to 9/11. Bush and Cheney have long insisted that there was a connection. Now we know that some of their "evidence" was fabricated.

In fact, the administration has long known that Saddam viewed al Qaeda as a threat. Not only did they know that Saddam was not allied with al Qaeda, they hid and obfuscated the real intelligence that the did have.

--SCC

The Oil Grab

For whatever reason, conservatives are desperate to "prove" that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was not an oil grab. Unfortunately for them, the facts say otherwise.

Dilip Hiro's excellent column discusses several key pieces of evidence demonstrating that the Bush administration's policy in Iraq amounted to an oil grab. The whole article is required reading for anyone interested in the subject. In particular:

• Bush's first Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill tells us that invading Iraq was on the agenda of the very National Security Council meeting, and was the topic of the entire following NSC meeting. Among documents prepared for that meeting was a map of Iraq prepared by the DIA that showed oil fields and proposed which companies should be considered for control of those fields.


• Falah Al Jibury told BBC's Newsnight that he had been engaged in discussions with the Bush administration about the disposition of the Iraqi oil industry within weeks of Bush taking office. He also reported that he participated in secret meetings to interview successors to Saddam Hussein.

After the invasion, suspected WMD sites and cultural treasures were looted and ransacked with no interference by US troops. Oil installations and the Oil Ministry's headquarters, of course, were well guarded.

This is not to say that the US is alone in placing economic interests above moral imperatives. The Observer reported that Russia's reticence in joining Bush's coalition had more to do with fear of losing their lucrative deal with Saddam than with qualms about the invasion.

Greg Muttitt reported on the impact of the new no-bid contracts by outside oil companies within Iraq. It is clear that these contracts are the culmination of the Bush administration's policy to grab Iraq's oil and turn it over to his buddies in the oil industry.

--SCC

Cyber War in Georgia

The Russians have continued the pattern they started in Estonia. Once again, they are using cyber warfare to achieve national security aims.

Perhaps we in the US should get serious about computer security?

--SCC

Looking Deep into Putin's Eyes

AP, reporting from Georgia

In Tskhinvali, South Ossetia's provincial capital, the body of a Georgian soldier lay in the street along with debris. A poster hanging nearby showed Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the slogan "Say yes to peace and stability" as South Ossetian separatist fighters launched rockets at a Georgian plane soaring overhead. Broken glass and other debris littered the ground.

Georgia borders the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia and was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. South Ossetia and Abkhazia have run their own affairs without international recognition since fighting to split from Georgia in the early 1990s.

Both separatist provinces are backed by Russia, which appears open to absorbing them.

Medvedev said Tuesday that Russian peacekeepers will stay in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and Saakashvili said his government will officially designate Russian peacekeepers in those breakaway provinces as occupying forces.

The Russian onslaught angered the West and drew tough words from President Bush, but some Georgians are disappointed that the U.S. did not intervene to protect its tiny ally.

"I'd like to think the words really do matter," U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza said Tuesday in Tbilisi.

Bryza declined to say if the U.S. would provide military support in the event that Russia expands its operations saying only: "I hope we'll never come to the question of what we do if Russia refuses to observe international law."

Medvedev said that people in both breakaway provinces must be allowed to decide whether they want to remain part of Russia.

Bush and Putin press converence

PRESIDENT BUSH: I will answer the question. I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.

For myself, I like McCain's crack about looking into Putin's eyes and seeing the initials "KGB" inscribed there.

--SCC

Georgia and Appeasement

Where's the line between appeasement and jingoism?

I have to think that somewhere in between them there is space for Bush to invite Putin over to the embassy in Beijing for a frank discussion. I know that his schedule was jam-packed with fireworks displays, but maybe he could have taken a few minutes from his busy schedule.

Or he could have just put on a bowler hat, carried an umbrella, looked into Putin's eyes, and assured us that he had achieved peace in our time.

--SCC

Georgia and Iraq

Reuters on the Russian invasion of Georgia:

Putin mocked the support given by the West to Saakashvili, comparing him to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who was hanged in 2006 for executing Shiites.

"They (the Americans) of course had to hang Saddam Hussein for destroying several Shiite villages," Putin said.

"But the current Georgian rulers who in one hour simply wiped 10 Ossetian villages from the face of the earth, the Georgian rulers which used tanks to run over children and the elderly, which threw civilians into cellars and burnt them -- they (Georgian leaders) are players that have to be protected."

This is a good example of how the oil grab in Iraq has cost us credibility in the international community. Besides the damage to our military, Bush damaged our moral authority with the Iraq oil grab. It will be much harder to lead a substantive international coalition when most of the countries involved are still ticked off at us.

I don't think that it is any secret that the Russians are aiming at "regime change" of a foreign government they don't like. Perhaps they feel that they are engaged in a "preemptive war." I just heard the Russian ambassador explaining that Russian operations were aimed at "supporting the peacekeepers." None of this sounds familiar, does it?

Every American single combat brigade is busy because of the Iraq oil grab. (Every combat brigade is either returning from deployment, preparing to be deployed, or deployed.)

Well, we can try to rattle our empty scabbard. If we ask nicely, the French may back us up by treating some Russian tourists rudely. (Never mind, they were planning on doing that anyway.)

Ok, that was mean. At least the French are actively involved. I hope Bush is enjoying the Olympics.

--SCC

Georgia and the Candidates

Politico had an interesting bit of commentary comparing the approaches of McCain and Obama in the early hours of the Georgia invasion. There are definitely distinct style differences between the two.

A McCain adviser suggested that Obama’s statement constituted appeasement, while Obama’s camp suggested that McCain was being needlessly belligerent and dangerously quick to judge a complicated situation.

At least neither of them is W.

--SCC

One Potential Energy Compromise

Paris Hilton and the "Gang of Ten" have hinted at it. There is a fairly obvious compromise to be reached on energy, but it is going to require flexibility on both sides of the aisle.

As I see it, the compromise would take the form of something like:
Allow drilling under the following conditions:

1. Royalty payments in line with what other countries get for similar resources. This includes hiring auditors and checking oil company books for cheating, which is currently costing taxpayers billions of dollars.


2. Strict enforcement of environmental regulations. (The current framework is a joke, as BP demonstrated in Alaska.)


3. Use it or lose it. Strict timelines to explore and develop, or the lease goes back in the pot. If you want to push it, companies who want to play in the new playground need to convert their existing leases to a similar framework.

Promote alternative energy:

1. Restore favorable tax treatment for solar, wind, and geothermal. The period of restoration should be the same as the length of the above-mentioned leases. Funding for this tax treatment should come from the above-mentioned royalties.


2. Government subsidies for research into improved battery, fuel cell, and other energy storage technologies. Researchers who accept this funding must cut the taxpayer in for a share of the licensing fees on any patents arising from this research. Again, funding to come from those royalties.

Incentives for fission plants:
Create a standard-plan plant (or several standard designs) which would have a fast-track approval, since a lot of the pre-approval studies would be the same between plants. (This isn't as hard as it sounds, since such plans already exist.)

As a practical matter, some incentives may need to be included for "clean coal" and natural gas, though I don't think either is actually necessary or particularly desirable. (Coal because it is a dying technology; natural gas because it doesn't need the incentives to take an increasing share of the energy market.)

I don't like all the parts of this "compromise," for reasons that are probably clear to people who have read my other posts. On the other hand, this is the sort of compromise that could get enough support to pass, and could actually make a difference in preparing the country for the coming changes in the energy marketplace.

(No, this is not the same as the Republican proposal. While they claim that they are "all of the above," they have structured their incentives to benefit the oil companies while providing minimal assistance to people who are deploying and installing the technology. The McCain proposal includes incentives for R&D, but none for installation or deployment.)

The allowance for drilling is not because I believe that drilling ANWR or OCS (Outer Continental Shelf) will have much of an impact on our energy future. It won't. What it gives us is a dedicated funding source to move us to sources of energy that will actually improve our future competitiveness.

--SCC

The Politics of Energy

Here are some more postings on the Gang of Ten proposal from different viewpoints:

A Democratic view
A Republican view

Both Republicans and Democrats seem to see the energy issue strictly as an electoral issue rather than as an issue that is important to the health of the country as a whole.

--SCC

The Iraq Obsession

Credible evidence from several sources demonstrates that Iraq was in Bush's crosshairs from day one.

Richard Clarke was the head of the US government's anti-terrorism efforts leading up to 9/11. His book revealed some disturbing facts about the Bush administration's monomania regarding Iraq:

Clarke says that as early as the day after the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for retaliatory strikes on Iraq, even though al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan.

After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.

"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.

"I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection."

"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."

Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'

"So what did we do after 9/11? We invade an oil-rich and occupy an oil-rich Arab country which was doing nothing to threaten us. In other words, we stepped right into bin Laden's propaganda. And the result of that is that al Qaeda and organizations like it, offshoots of it, second-generation al Qaeda have been greatly strengthened."

Sounds like Mr Clarke also thinks it was an oil grab. Of course, what does he know? He's just the guy who ran the black helicopters.

Paul O'Neill, Bush's Treasury Secretary tells some interesting stories about the early days of the Bush administration.

At cabinet meetings, he says the president was "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection," forcing top officials to act "on little more than hunches about what the president might think."

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

The result of Bush's Iraq obsession has been to radicalize a generation of young Muslims, according to Rohan Gunartna. American security has been reduced as a result of Bush's refusal to let facts dictate the direction foreign policy should take.

Since the September 11 attacks, Al Qaeda’s strength shrank from about 4,000 members
to a few hundred members, and nearly 80 percent of Al Qaeda’s operational leadership
and membership in 102 countries has been killed or captured. Al Qaeda adapted, however, instilling its mission and vision in associated groups and transferring its capabilities to them. The U.S. focus on Iraq, Al Qaeda, and eliminating the Al Qaeda leadership limited the ability for U.S. officials to understand and respond better to the changing threat.
...
the U.S. invasion of Iraq increased the worldwide threat of terrorism many times over. Even moderate Muslims are angry about the invasion and postinvasion developments. This animosity toward the United States makes it easier for terrorist and extremist groups to continue to generate recruits and support from the suffering
and grieving Muslims of Iraq. Because of perceived injustices attributed to the West in general, particularly in Pakistan and Iraq, there will be significant support for the new generation of mujahideen in Iraq. Groups that were dying are making a comeback, and several new groups have emerged in Iraq, Indonesia, Pakistan, and even in Europe.
...
Although the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was a fatal mistake, withdrawing from Iraq would be an even greater one. U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and turning responsibility over to the United Nations would only strengthen terrorist capabilities in general and Al Qaeda more specifically.

(And here's the part that I think gets forgotten in the red-meat rhetoric of the right.)

It is therefore crucial to develop a truly multipronged strategy to fight the multidimensional character of violent Islamists. Instead of only tactically targeting identifiable terrorist cells, it is essential to prevent the creation of terrorists strategically. The bloc of nations with staying power in the West must work with the Muslim countries—their governments and nongovernmental organizations—to target the ideology that is producing the terrorist. It is necessary to send the message that Al Qaeda and its associated groups are not Koranic organizations and that they are presenting a corrupt version of Islam by misinterpreting and misrepresenting the Koran and other texts. Only by countering the belief that it is the duty of every good Muslim to wage jihad can the extant and emerging terrorist threat be reduced. As Al Qaeda is constantly adapting to the changing security environment and morphing its structure, the key to defeating Al Qaeda and reducing the terrorist threat is to develop a multi-agency, multijuristic, and multinational strategy to combat this ideology.

Where I disagree with the author of the article (and I'm not so sure we actually disagree) is that I think that we have to plan for a post-occupation Iraq. In order to plan for it, we have to visualize what it should look like and create a plan for getting there.

The whole debate about "benchmarks" has gotten a bit silly. I saw a speech by McCain where he was clearly talking about benchmarks, but was dancing around trying to avoid using the "b" word. The idea behind a benchmark is that you state what your intermediate goal looks like and when and how you hope to achieve it. I can understand his reluctance to get tied into a "withdrawal schedule" or something as inflexible as that, but if you don't have a plan for getting someplace, you'll never get there.

Of course you have to take actual conditions into account. Even Obama is starting to "refine" his policy (gotta love that word!), stating that he will take "conditions on the ground" into account. (I also think that he hasn't even begun to mine the "refinement" possibilities of his refusal to define the difference between "combat" and "non-combat" units.)

--SCC

The Great Oil Give-Away

The recent hysteria over drilling is a thinly veiled attempt to give the public's assets to private corporations.

Some of the oil companies' defenders have claimed that the royalties paid by the oil companies are fair compensation for the damage they do and the fortune they reap from the public lands. But the GAO reports that government giveaways to the oil companies have cost the taxpayers billions of dollars.

If we actually give the oil companies access to additional lands for exploitation, we need to ensure that:

• Fair compensation is paid


• Adequate environmental protections are enforced


• Use it or lose it rules are in place

As the GAO report pointed out, the Dept of the Interior has broad latitude in writing those leases. I don't think it is much of a stretch to say that the oil companies are desperate to have their buddies in the lame duck Bush administration write exceedingly favorable terms into the leases for ANWR and OCS.

We have lost tons of money to outright fraud by the oil companies. The US government has screwed up lease contracts, giving away billions of dollars of royalties. Inadequate auditing has allowed sloppy paperwork to cheat taxpayers out of royalty payments. Lobbyists in the great Washington revolving door have arranged for subsidies and sweetheart deals for their corporate masters.

But last month, the Bush administration confirmed that it expected the government to waive about $7 billion in royalties over the next five years, even though the industry incentive was expressly conceived of for times when energy prices were low. And that number could quadruple to more than $28 billion if a lawsuit filed last week challenging one of the program's remaining restrictions proves successful.

"The big lie about this whole program is that it doesn't cost anything," said Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who tried to block its expansion last July. "Taxpayers are being asked to provide huge subsidies to oil companies to produce oil — it's like subsidizing a fish to swim."

--SCC

The Tax Cut Myth

Supply-side dogma holds that if taxes are cut, there will be enough economic benefit to more than make up for lost revenue. This assertion is not supported by the facts. Consider the words of two economists from Bush's team:

Edward Lazear, chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers told Congress, “I certainly would not claim that tax cuts pay for themselves”

N. Gregory Mankiw, an earlier CEA chair in President Bush’s administration once compared an economist who says that tax cuts pay for themselves to a “snake oil salesman trying to sell a miracle cure”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorites reports that the cost of borrowing money to pay for tax cuts far exceeds any benefit from it.

The CBO reported in 2007 that the budget might have been in surplus if not for the Bush tax cuts:

Orszag concluded that the tax cuts’ indirect impact on economic growth, investment and saving and could affect this year’s budget deficit anywhere from an increase of $3 billion to a reduction of $14 billion, depending on the assumptions used. That is separate from the direct boost to the deficit trhough lost revenue and the added interest on borrowing to cover the gap of $211 billion.

It currently expects this year’s deficit to be between $150 billion and $200 billion, implying that without the tax cuts, the budget would probably be in surplus this year.

--SCC