The Iraq War retrospective Thread

[Thecla]

Now that he hasn't got majorities in both houses, he's stuck doing so.

If there were armed conflict between the US and Iran in the last days of the Dubya administration (I repeat: I don't think it's likely to happen, only that the possibility cannot be dismissed as ridiculous) it would not be as the result of some congressional vote or other, so the lack of a majority is irrelevant. It would arise (willingly or unwillingly) from a cross-border confrontation, something in the straights of Hormuz, a strike by Israel on Iran (widely assumed, presumably correctly, to be made with the tacit support of the administration), or who knows what else. The Bush administration has demonstrated time and again that it will do what it wants first (usually in as much secrecy as possible) and fight legalities second.

I note that in the past four years, he's run into legal and political challenges to his policy on captives, on domestic surveillance, and has had to use the veto power as a political expedient. It is my read that he has learned, the hard way, about the limits of his office.

No doubt it's cramped his style. But what's remarkable to me is how much Bush has been able to get despite a democratically controlled congress (largely because the solid support of the senate republicans has prevented the override of any veto that doesn't contain a significant bipartisan helping of pork). For example, he got full Iraq war funding with no timetables, and legal immunity for the phone companies in the wiretapping case. As far as challenges to Guantanamo etc. go, those have come principally from the supreme court, not congress. In fact, the last supreme court decision finding the military commissions act unconstitutional overturned congressional legislation (even if that legislation was the previous republican congress's rubber stamp of the Bush administration's previous unconstitutional attempt at a system of military commissions).

This sort of reductionist scare mongering isn't worthy of the Thecla I've come to know and love over the years.

Well, that's really sweet of you Occhi :wub:but I'm not sure that even California permits the union of two cross-dressing rouges. What this does show, however, is that I've been altogether derelict in the amount of reductionist scare mongering I've engaged in over the years. I'll definitely step it up in the future.

You will note that Bush had to hide behind the uniform of general Patraeus, rather than sending the CENTCOM commander or the Secretary of Defense to Congress last year to testify about how this Surge was and wasn't working.

It's one of the big advantages of the presidency. Bush can hide behind the uniforms when he wants, and he gets to pick the uniforms he holds up in front of him. And, while in uniform, the military has to be very circumspect about what they say in public regarding their commander in chief. No doubt, using the surge ("this is the surge that never ends, it goes on and on my friends") to run out the clock on his administration was an easy choice for Bush to make; the republicans were glad to stand behind the US military; and perhaps those democrats who feared (with good reason) that a rapid withdrawal could lead to a catastrophe were secretly happy to blame it on the republicans.

I don't doubt for a minute that Dick Cheney would like to do that.

Few seem to. It's one reason to remain worried.

Some of it is bluff. Some of it isn't. This is deliberate. One can improves one's position when one's opponent is left uncertain as to one's actual intentions, though Saddam found out that bluff can have nasty consequences.

Yup---it's hard to separate the bluff from the real here, but as far as Iran goes I don't believe the uncertainty will lead to any improvement of the US position at all. They know that the costs of a US attack on Iran are too great. They will call any bluff, and then we'd better all hope it really is a bluff.

Saber rattling doesn't always mean a war is coming.

It doesn't always mean that peace is coming either.