My second favorite way of spending a day off is working in my wood shop, listening to NPR. I did just that for most of yesterday and, as usual, I learned a little more about all the knowledge I don't have. There are some extremely intelligent people out there paying attention to how the world works. Case in point: Chalmers Johnson was on Talk of the Nation discussing his latest book Nemesis. It's his third of three books on the American Empire and it's definitely going on my ever growing list of must-reads. I had previously read a couple of Johnson's essays on-line, but this was the first time I had heard him speak. I was quite impressed, the word erudite kept coming to mind while I was listening to the interview.

Johnson rightly believes that democracy and empire are incompatible and sees our constitutional form of government in peril because we have allowed the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned of in his farewell address to become ever more powerful and integral to our economy. For those who argue that the US is not an Empire, Johnson points to the 737 US military bases world-wide as proof of a de facto empire. He sees our ever-increasing militarism coupled with an erosion of the separation of powers between the branches of our government as potential signs of a coming imperial presidency or military dictatorship. His arguments are very persuasive. NPR has a good excerpt from his book on their website.

The president now dominates the government in a way no ordinary monarch possibly could. He has at his disposal the clandestine services of the CIA, a private army unaccountable to the Congress, the press, or the public because everything it does is secret. No president since Harry Truman, having discovered what unlimited power the CIA affords him, has ever failed to use it.

Johnson often compares our situation right now to that of the Roman Republic (on which our form of government is based) which ultimately decided to give up democracy in favor of the Roman Empire. Another snippet:

If the American democratic system is no longer working as planned, if the constitutional checks and balances as well as other structures put in place by the founders to prevent tyranny are increasingly less operational, we have not completely lacked for witnesses of every stripe, domestic and foreign. General Tommy Franks, commander of the American assault on Baghdad, for instance, went so far as to predict that another serious terrorist attack on the United States would "begin to unravel the fabric of our Constitution," and under such circumstances, he was open to the idea that "the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government." The historian Kevin Baker feared that we are no longer far from the day when, like the Roman Senate in 27 B.C., our Congress will take its last meaningful vote and turn over power to a military dictator. "In the end, we'll beg for the coup," he wrote.

That's some scary stuff there, and a year or so ago I would have readily agreed that we as a nation were headed down that path, but dubya has so fucked up everything he touches that I now think even the average citizen can see the presidency needs a little reining in. Johnson mentioned something else that might help us move back in the direction of open democracy and a constitutionally balanced government, although in a thoroughly unpleasant way. He spoke of an impending national bankruptcy and world-wide recession. Brr.

Right beside the interview I mentioned below in that same 2-day-old Sunday paper is an article headlined It's time for the endgame by Victor T. Le Vine which points out the lessons to be learned from history regarding current policy in Iraq. It begins with these two paragraphs:

President George W. Bush's new Iraq policy is intended to stabilize Iraq so that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki finally can have the political space in which to govern, and the US military can exit the country at last.

At best, the policy is whistling in the deadly Iraqi dark. At worst, it's another example of a classic war dilemma: trying to extricate ourselves from a catastrophic foreign venture on which we never should have embarked.

The author discusses the difficulty in crafting a viable exit strategy for military ventures gone awry using the examples of ourselves in Vietnam and Beirut and Mogadishu, the Russians in Afghanistan, and the French in Algeria. He concludes with the disastrous invasions of Spain and Russia by Napoleon:

Arrogance, blind ambition, underestimation of his enemies and miscalculation drove Napoleon to invade Spain and Russia. Yet he left the French with only retreat or surrender as exit strategies in both situations.

The French, with long experience in trying to extricate themselves from traps of their own making, had a phrase for it: "Sauve qui peut!" - get out as soon as you can with what, and those, you can save.

I'm sure dubya would fail to see the parallels here, but it's painfully obvious from a historical perspective that the invasion and occupation of foreign lands is, in the long term, rarely a successful endeavor. Regardless of nationality, people are invariably resentful of an occupying army and therefore, short of genocide, the occupying army never really owns the land it's occupying. It eventually comes down to finding a way to end the occupation with something resembling honor. Some negotiated peace in order to claim a semblance of victory, but a core principle of war is the notion that the victors are the ones sitting atop the land when the fighting ceases.

I agree with Le Vine that we've reached that point in Iraq, but our preznit isn't anywhere close to that conclusion yet. He has declared a "global" war against any and all enemies that he defines, told the rest of the world they were either with us or against us, invaded two countries and is now bristling for a third. He thinks he's kicking ass and taking names. This is a history lesson that dubya needs to learn in the worst way. Someone needs to show him that this has been tried a few times before and it never ends well.

Under the headline A Hawk Looks Back, my local Sunday paper (yes, I know it's Tuesday now) printed an interview with PNAC asshole Richard Perle. In the course of answering 5 questions, he managed to place the blame for all the problems in Iraq on the Iraqis themselves, the State Department, the CIA, Paul Bremer, General Tommy Franks, the press and, of course, Congressional Democrats. A remarkable display of prowess in the art of staying on message. And really he did it in 4 questions. He wasted this one being truthful:

Q: Did it ever occur to you, and do you think it ever occurred to the people in the White House, that four years later - a World War II length of time - we'd still be fighting in Iraq, that we'd still be in a tough war, and that we might not win?

A: No, I may be wrong about that, but I don't think it was seriously contemplated.

Yep. They never even considered the possibility things could go wrong. I guess you really have to believe in what you're selling to be successful, and Perle is nothing if not a true believer. In his world, there is still absolutely no doubt that invading Iraq was a good and successful idea, that invading Iran is also a good idea. Any problems in Iraq can only be the fault of those responsible for the implementation of the plan, not of the plan itself and certainly not of the planners.

Most of the PNAC ideologues that were the architects of this war are no longer officially part of the Bush administration. Guys like Perle and Wolfowitz and Feith who really made this war happen, have long since moved back into the private sector where they can function as high-paid cheerleaders for the administration and the war, while ducking any accountability for it. They are gone, but the stench they left behind is going to linger for a long while. And they've still got Darth Cheney out in front every day spreading the gospel of American Empire through never-ending war. Feh.

The headline for this CNN story about Darth Cheney's recent world travels reads Cheney Asks Pakistan to Stop Al Qaida 'Regrouping'. I had to click on it just to confirm that the headline was a mistake. As a rule, Cheney doesn't ask for anything. He makes demands and threatens and twists arms. If team dubya were a mafia movie, Cheney would be the big ugly goon that always stands right behind the capo. Their were no public statements made after his meeting with Pervez Musharraf, so we don't have any details, just a press release. But trust me, there was very little "asking" going on. This particular Dick doesn't go soft.

"Cheney expressed U.S. apprehensions of regrouping of al Qaeda in the tribal areas and called for concerted efforts in countering the threat," according to a faxed statement from the presidential office.
"He expressed serious U.S. concerns on the intelligence being picked up of an impending Taliban and al Qaeda 'spring offensive' against allied forces in Afghanistan," the statement said.

Of all the many (oh so many) failures of the preznit, I think this is probably the most glaringly obvious. The fanatics who planned the attacks of 9/11 and trained and funded and brainwashed the perpetrators are not only still alive and free, but they are regrouping and planning to go on the offensive. And the US is only concerned and apprehensive enough about it to urge Pakistan to take some action. WTF? If more proof was needed that Iraq is eating our lunch, this is certainly it. I have very little doubt, even with dubya as commander-in-chief, that had we not taken our eye off the ball in Afghanistan to go start a conflagration in Iraq most of these people would be dead or captured by now. It's a disgrace that they aren't.

I think it also shows this administration's true regard for one of it's favorites in a seemingly endless supply of tough-sounding slogans, the Global War On Terror. Dubya likes to sling that one around a lot when talking about Iraq, often calling Iraq the central front in the war. I'll grant him that there's some truth to that statement now, but it absolutely was not true before we invaded and kicked off a religious civil war. Just imagine for a moment what might have happened if, back in 2003, we had left that bad man Saddam alone with his imaginary WMDs and instead focused our attention and our forces on the remote, mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Before dubya began steering the GWOT into Iraq, this region was the war on terrorism. And we walked away from it. Regardless of what their motives truly were for invading Iraq, it was never about catching the bad guys. Some of us saw that from the beginning.

Another bit of this story caught my eye:

The New York Times, citing unnamed sources, reported Monday that President Bush has decided to send a tough message to Musharraf, warning him that the Democrat-controlled Congress may cut off money to Pakistan unless it gets more aggressive in hunting down al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in its country.

Now that's just fucking hilarious. The latest weapon in the preznit's arsenal for the War on Terra is...the Democrats?!? It's a crazy world, innit?

Woo-hoo!! I've learned enough HTML and CSS to be dangerous now. I'm making all kinds of changes and so far I haven't murdered the site like last time. At least this time I backed everything up before I started poking the beast with a stick. I've made real progress, too. I got rid of all those annoying little icons or avatars or buttons or whatever they were. Replaced all the angry reds with a more soothing light blue. Adjusted all the font sizes and word spacing, still auditioning actual fonts to try. Now all I have to do is work on putting some pop in the banner. First I have to figure out how to create a .png image. It sure is a lot more fun when things work correctly. At least I think it's working correctly. I haven't checked it with Internet Explorer, but it looks pretty good in Safari.

I just realized that I haven't been pounding on the mythologists much at all lately. My bad. I'm gonna get right on that later today.

I haven't been blogging much at all lately and when I do I can only think about the disaster looming in the Middle East. I really believe that dubya is about to make things oh so much worse by launching air strikes against Iran. I wouldn't have thought it was possible for them to pull off attacking yet another much weaker country by pretending to be afraid of them, but my gut feeling is it's about to happen. They are using the exact same game plan too. Just a couple of years ago our intelligence estimate was that Iran was 10-15 years away from having a bomb, but through constant repetition and escalation of the message, that 10-15 years has been spun all the way down to an imminent threat. The message is always the same, be afraid of the evil brown people who worship a different invisible cloud-daddy. War is Peace. You really can't underestimate the gullibility of the Amurkin public. We're going to see gasoline at 5 or 6 dollars a gallon this summer. Gah.

The reason I haven't been blogging is I've been working on the site itself again. This is one of the built-in Rapid Weaver themes called Simple that I have only slightly modified. I'm still working on an original theme, but I keep fucking it up. I'm having to learn more HTML than I really wanted to. How does this one look?

At long last the British government is beginning to listen to the British people. They've decided to use the relative stability in Basra as an excuse to declare victory in the midst of chaos and withdraw over 20% of their troops. It doesn't say much for the British government's estimate of the potential success of The Surge that they are beginning to bail just as it starts. By using the "peace" in southern Iraq — a peace that's been there all along — as his mission accomplished Tony Blair is essentially saying he doesn't see any better opportunities for glory down the road. And sending his troops home to Britain instead of into Baghdad is just a polite way of saying Blair is no longer among the true believers in the new American empire.

This, I think, is the beginning of the end of any and all foreign support for America's latest adventures in nation building. Before too much longer, dubya will be standing pretty much alone, still staunchly defending the indefensible. Right now he'd be gamely trying to say "Et tu, Tony?" if he knew what it meant.

In my travels on the intertubes this past week I somehow found myself reading this article in the Journal of the Middle East Policy Council written by W. Patrick Lang. He was Defense Information Officer for the Middle East during part of both Bush the elder, smarter and Clinton administrations. The article is 22 pages long, but it reads like it's much shorter. It's an engrossing step-by-step account of just how the intelligence was massaged to sell the Iraq war. As Lang puts it:

The sincerely held beliefs of a small group of people who think they are the "bearers" of a uniquely correct view of the world, sought to dominate the foreign policy of the United States in the Bush 43 administration, and succeeded in doing so through a practice of excluding all who disagreed with them. Those they could not drive from government they bullied and undermined...

I don't think anyone who's been paying attention the last 6 years can reasonably argue with that assessment. Bullying is their preferred method of stifling dissent and the right wing noise machine is always ready to call anyone who dares question their motives a coward and a traitor. Lang covers a lot of ground in showing how this administration came into office with a goal and used 9/11 to realize that goal. I highly recommend reading the whole thing. I'm just looking back through it and I could cut and paste all day, but I'll just leave you with these two paragraphs:

Sometime in the spring of 2000, Stephen Hadley, ..., briefed a group of prominent Republican party policymakers on the national-security and foreign-policy agenda of a future George W. Bush administration. Hadley was one of a group of senior campaign policy advisers to then-Texas Governor Bush known collectively as "the Vulcans." The group, in addition to Hadley, included Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle and had been assembled by George Shultz and Dick Cheney beginning in late 1998, when Bush first launched his presidential bid.

Hadley's briefing shocked a number of the participants, according to Clifford Kiracofe, a professor at the Virginia Military Institute, who spoke to several of them shortly after the meeting. Hadley announced that the "number-one foreign-policy agenda" of a Bush administration would be Iraq and the unfinished business of removing Saddam Hussein from power. Hadley also made it clear that the Israel-Palestine conflict, which had dominated the Middle East agenda of the Clinton administration, would be placed in the deep freeze.

I guess no one is much surprised that dubya came into office with a hard-on for war with Iraq, but what absolutely astonishes me is the fact that this article was published in August of 2004. That would have been right in the middle of the presidential campaigns and yet the evidence that Lang presents was never discussed and the preznit was never questioned about it. I guess questions like that would be insufficiently supportive of the troops. Rackum frackum, liberal media my ass...

On the way home from work today I listened to this story on NPR. It looks like the Italian people have had enough of Emperor Bush's worldwide shenanigans. Italian courts have indicted a bunch of unknown Americans (presumably CIA operatives) for kidnapping an Egyptian cleric in Milan under the "extraordinary rendition" program and a US marine for shooting an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq. And Saturday thousands are expected in Vicenza to protest the expansion of a US military base there. When I was in the Navy I visited (and got drunk in) several ports in Italy and I always found the people to be very friendly and happy to see Americans. That's all changing now. Dubya has so diminished our reputation through the generally clueless and arrogant thuggishness of his foreign policy that even the laid-back Italians have begun a national discussion regarding the necessity for dozens of US military bases in Italy.

I'd bet good money that the boy king is oblivious to it, and he probably wouldn't give two shits if he knew, but the rest of the world is starting to push back against US imperialism. When a former KGB chief and all-around evil bastard like Vladimir Putin calls you on the carpet for excessive use of force, you have to figure things have gotten a little out of hand. I can only imagine how much worse it's going to get over the next two years as dubya continues his calamitous search for a victorious war preznit legacy. We are going to pay for this presidency for decades.

Well, dubya threw a rare press conference today, so you know he's got something to sell. Unfortunately what he's selling is more of the same war-mongering and tough-guy posturing we've all grown tired of. Make no mistake about it, we are at war with Iran right now and it didn't begin in the past few weeks. It really began with the preznit's State of the Union address in January 2002. Do you remember? America was still basking in the good will of the rest of the world as we recovered from 9/11. We had just defeated and scattered al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan with very little effort. The preznit was sporting insanely high approval ratings and the Republicans were firmly in control of all three branches of government. Dubya stepped to the podium for that speech with a boner that a diamond couldn't scratch and did what all small men who are given too much power do, he over-reached. That was when he proclaimed Iran, Iraq and North Korea to be an axis of evil and started his personal jihad.

Think about that for a second. With the benefit of hindsight, doesn't it seem obvious that everything went downhill from that point? The preznit gave the world a glimpse of the neo-conservative vision of American empire and the world responded by politely backing away from us. Then came a year of arm-twisting and bribery and economic blackmail to put together a bullshit "coalition of the willing" in order to give the Iraq invasion some air of legitimacy. The United Nations and all other countries who opposed the invasion were declared irrelevant as millions of people world-wide demonstrated to voice their disapproval of this war of choice. But here in the US, the only opinions that have any weight are by-gawd Amurkin opinions and the right-wing noise machine was dutifully keeping the blood-lust revved to a high pitch. Any and all voices of dissent were labeled as cowardly and treasonous. That particular attack has now morphed into the failure-to-support-the-troops theme. Dubya is so far using it successfully against the Democratic controlled Congress. From today's presser:

Bush cautioned the Democrat-majority Congress that they don't undermine the troops in Iraq -- whether they agree with his strategy or not.
"I am going to make it very clear to the members of Congress starting now that ... they need to fund our troops, and they need to make sure we have the flexibility necessary to get the job done," he said.

And it looks like the Dems are going to take it like the spineless bitches they are. This administration is about to do something horrible to a sovereign nation for no valid reason for the second time, and Congress is fucking around with non-binding resolutions expressing their disagreement with current strategy. The preznit is nothing if not resolute. He plotted a course 5 years ago and he's sticking to it. He's already invaded one of the countries on his list and he's really got nothing to lose by doubling down on Iran. He's even using the same game plan, right down to the unsubstantiated allegations of evil misdeeds and the "Aww shucks, I don't want to go to war, but they may force it on us" line. The US Congress is absolutely the only authority that can rein in this village idiot of a commander-in-chief before he expands this war into a regional conflict with no foreseeable end. But apparently the Dems can't figure a way around dubya's Gotta Support the Troops Gambit, so the leadership on this needs to come from the Republicans.

I have my doubts that it will happen, but if it does...just imagine what would happen. If sometime very soon, a key Republican stands up and looks the American public in the eye and tells them what they already know. That this president is completely out of control and bordering on insane. That this war is lost and must end sooner rather than later. That the people responsible for this war should be held accountable. That Republican will be our next president.

There's a big brouhaha going on today in the left blogosphere about the reported firing by the John Edwards campaign of two liberal bloggers because some right-wing shit-heads didn't like the content of some of their previous posts. One of the bloggers in question, Amanda Marcotte is a long-time favorite of mine. I used to read her back when she had her own little blog called Mouse Words and then I followed her over to the group blog Pandagon a couple of years ago. She's young, liberal, sexual, atheist, feminist, intelligent and outspoken. In short she's everything that drives nails up the collective ass of conservatives. Hell, as the father of two girls on the threshold of puberty, some of the things she writes even make me a little uncomfortable. Especially when it comes to the idea that women should be allowed to have sex for the sheer fun of having sex without being looked down upon just like men do. It's not that I disagree with this concept, in fact I completely agree with Amanda here. It's just that thoughts of my daughters walking that particular walk make me feel all icky. I hope I'm man enough not to just dump the whole thing in my wife's lap and spend several years studiously looking the other way, because given the choice, I would much rather see my daughters grow up to be independent thinkers like Amanda Marcotte than some religious conservatives' dutiful baby-makers.

I didn't even know Amanda Marcotte was working for the Edwards campaign and now, if the story is true, she's already been fired, and presumably for the very same reason she was hired. That is, for being a liberal blogger. The crazy conservative right could have worked themselves into a tizzy over something written in the past by pretty much any liberal blogger. They would have a fucking stroke over what I think of them. Anyway, I went over to the John Edwards campaign website to see what I could find out and maybe post a comment. I had to register and I'm still waiting for confirmation before I can comment, but a lot of people are telling him the same thing I wanted to. Basically that if he caves to the right wing on a trivial issue like this right off the bat, then his campaign is dead on arrival. I thought trial lawyers were supposed to be scrappers. We'll see.

UPDATE: It looks like they are not going to be fired, at least for now. Edwards has released a rather tepid statement of cautious support and the the two bloggers have issued the standard political non-apology apology. Edwards still comes off looking weak because he waited so long to answer the right-wing attack dogs and when he did finally respond, he didn't give them the smack-down they deserved. It doesn't bode well for his candidacy. This is the same right-wing noise machine that in 2004 convinced a lot of voters that a genuine, decorated war hero was in fact a coward while at the same time promoting a guy who dodged the same war as a steely-eyed savior of all things good and decent. This little attack was nothing compared to what they will pull if Edwards begins to look like he has a real shot at the Democratic nomination. He needs to grow some sac if he's in this race for the long haul.

2ND UPDATE: I've been too busy to follow this story, but now both bloggers have resigned. Probably one of those "for the good of the campaign" bullshit resignations. Regardless, John Edwards is no longer even on my radar as a possible candidate I would vote for. Amanda has a good post up featuring some of the hate-mail she's received recently.

I've been nosing around over at TPM Cafe and I ran across this post by former FCC Chairman (Clenis administration) Reed Hundt. His latest offers some real insight into the mind of Vice-President Cheney:

But reinforcing the American military commitment to the Middle East is the maxim of the Administration. It is the Vice President's essential thesis: the American military must be firmly installed in the Middle East until the end of oil, and until anti-American Islamic fervor fades away, no matter how long that may take. He sees American dependence on Middle Eastern oil lasting at least 60 to 80 years, . . . He sees armed opposition to Islamic fundamentalism as lasting at least as long as the Cold War, and of course he thinks of the conflict as the successor to the Soviet threat against capitalism and democracy.

Of course anyone who's read much of the PNAC manifesto already knew that US access to Middle East oil is the most important thing in Darth Cheney's world. Yes, I'm pounding on PNAC again. I can't help myself. I wish I had the power to give every American citizen a homework assignment. It would go like this: 1) Read every word on the PNAC website. 2) Discuss. For the Vice-President, oil is what makes the world go 'round and controlling it is what keeps rich and powerful men rich and powerful. Cheney and his ilk have managed to merge our nation's economy and it's security to the point where the US military is nothing more than a tool of US capitalism, wielded not in our defense, but to preserve US economic advantage.

He thinks that tactics may need to be changed, but the prospect of greater violence spreading from Iraq across the region only underscores the importance of the strategic goal: locking in American access to the region's resources and precluding the formation of significant military power under the control of any Islamic theocratic regime.

Cheney and his PNAC posse begin their analysis of every situation regarding the Middle East from the position that the US absolutely will have access to the oil. I've heard dubya use this same bent logic to justify continuing (and escalating) his incredible Iraqi abortion. He keeps insisting we have to stay the course in order to keep the oil revenue out of the hands of jihadists. That sounds pretty reasonable when accepted at face value because it seems obvious that we wouldn't want to give billions of dollars to batshit crazy suicidal religious fanatics. The problem is the ingrained assumption that we not only must buy the oil, but that we must allow it to be sold at all.

What if we pulled our troops out of Iraq? They are not having much luck making people who have hated each other for centuries get along anyway, so what if we just re-deployed them to the border areas and gave them the new mission of not allowing any oil to leave Iraq until a stable (and sane) government was established? It seems to me it would be a hell of a lot easier for our military to prevent any oil exportation than it is to prevent civilians from blowing each other up. Sure, the reduced supply would drive oil prices up and parts of our economy would be adversely affected, but it would also jump-start a serious effort in this country to do what should have been done decades ago; begin moving away from fossil fuels. Following the leadership of dinosaurs like Dick Cheney, who got rich maintaining the status quo, is why the US has been OPEC's bitch since the 1970s.

I've been reading the declassified summary of the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq released today. It's titled Prospects for Iraq Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead and it's a pretty mixed bag. I really wish I could read the whole thing. The summary is only 9 pages and 5 of those are spent on explaining how it was produced. We're left with just over 3 pages of Key Judgments. It's really not enough to allow proper analysis or to form a knowledgeable opinion, but that's never been an obstacle for me before, so I'll just pop open a can of beer and jump right in. Here's the first paragraph:

Iraqi society’s growing polarization, the persistent weakness of the security forces and the state in general, and all sides’ ready recourse to violence are collectively driving an increase in communal and insurgent violence and political extremism. Unless efforts to reverse these conditions show measurable progress during the term of this Estimate, the coming 12 to 18 months, we assess that the overall security situation will continue to deteriorate at rates comparable to the latter part of 2006. If strengthened Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), more loyal to the government and supported by Coalition forces, are able to reduce levels of violence and establish more effective security for Iraq’s population, Iraqi leaders could have an opportunity to begin the process of political compromise necessary for longer term stability, political progress, and economic recovery.

The bolding of the first two sentences is in the original. What jumped out at me right away is the 12 to 18 month time-frame. That pretty much lets dubya off the hook, doesn't it? He'll use this to reinforce his current meme that The Surge plan needs to be given time to work, meanwhile he can let the clock run out on his presidency and drop this whole mess in the next president's lap. My problem with this is that it also gives him time to come up with some justification for shifting the focus (and the force) of this war onto Iran. The only parts of this paragraph that actually should be in bold are the words if and could in the last sentence. They most accurately reflect the confidence projected by this report in our ability to actually influence future events in Iraq. The report goes on to list bullet after bullet detailing just how badly Iraq is fucked up (and getting worse) before making the following point:

If Coalition forces were withdrawn rapidly during the term of this Estimate, we judge that this almost certainly would lead to a significant increase in the scale and scope of sectarian conflict in Iraq, intensify Sunni resistance to the Iraqi Government, and have adverse consequences for national reconciliation.

That sentence seems tailor-made for the right-wing noise machine of bloggers, pundits and talk radio. You can bet your ass they will use it to berate the anti-war left and beat up on the anti-Surge Dems, even though none of the withdrawal plans that I've seen publicly aired have called for anything that could remotely be called "rapid" withdrawal. The report then lists three developments that could (their emphasis) help to reverse the negative trends:

Broader Sunni acceptance of the current political structure and federalism to begin to reduce one of the major sources of Iraq’s instability.

Yeah, that's not gonna happen. Saddam and the Sunnis ran Iraq with an iron fist for decades and they did it in a mostly secular way. They are not about to turn it over to religious clerics, particularly from a different religious sect.

Significant concessions by Shia and Kurds to create space for Sunni acceptance of federalism.

Also not likely. After being on the receiving end of that Sunni repression for all those years, the Shia and Kurds are just not feeling much brotherly love for them. The death squads are working around the clock.

A bottom-up approach—deputizing, resourcing, and working more directly with neighborhood watch groups and establishing grievance committees—to help mend frayed relationships between tribal and religious groups, which have been mobilized into communal warfare over the past three years.

Wow. That sounds so liberal. It's touchy-feely, it-takes-a-village kind of thinking. Trouble is, it's hard to sell that shit at gunpoint. The parties involved have to want to cooperate with each other to even begin this kind of reconciliation. The report concludes with three possible scenarios for Iraq if (when) things don't all end in sweetness and light like dubya has planned:

Chaos Leading to Partition. With a rapid deterioration in the capacity of Iraq’s central government to function, security services and other aspects of sovereignty would collapse. Resulting widespread fighting could produce de facto partition, dividing Iraq into three mutually antagonistic parts. Collapse of this magnitude would generate fierce violence for at least several years, ranging well beyond the time frame of this Estimate, before settling into a partially stable end-state.

That doesn't sound too good, but I think this is where we've been headed from the moment we toppled Saddam's regime.

Emergence of a Shia Strongman. Instead of a disintegrating central government producing partition, a security implosion could lead Iraq’s potentially most powerful group, the Shia, to assert its latent strength.

Despite all the bullshit rhetoric about spreading freedom and democracy, I think dubya and company secretly would love this option. Provided they could choose a Shia Strongman friendly to US oil company interests.

Anarchic Fragmentation of Power. The emergence of a checkered pattern of local control would present the greatest potential for instability, mixing extreme ethno-sectarian violence with debilitating intra-group clashes.

Ah yes, Anarchy. But isn't that where Iraq already is? Like I said, I would really like to read the full report. For me this summary is notable for things not mentioned at all. Things like oil and Israel and the expected results of the much-discussed Surge.