Brian Baird opposed the war and the Surge. Michael O'Hanlon supported the war and the Surge. Michael O'Hanlon is dishonest. Brian Baird is wrong. Here is Baird's argument:

He ignores the fact that political solutions are nonexistent in Iraq. He has no real information nor real answers. He says six more months. What he expects to happen in six months is not clear. In short, Baird has no actual argument. But give Baird his due, he is not lying when he says he was a war and Surge critic. Michael O'Hanlon IS lying when he says he was an Iraq war and Surge critic. One argument merits respect. It is not the one made by the dishonest Michael O'Hanlon.

Michael O'Hanlon defends himself again and elides what to me is the fundamental problem with his recent analysis - his dishonest depiction of himself as an Iraq War and Surge critic. He was a strong supporter of both the war and the Surge. O'Hanlon writes:

How can one gather and assess information about Iraq -- collected on a trip or from any other source? Information from a war zone is difficult to attain and interpretation is open to many views. Unfortunately, much of the blogosphere and other media outlets have emphasized the wrong question, challenging the integrity of anyone who dares to express politically incorrect views about Iraq. Last week, Jonathan Finer criticized [O'Hanlon and Pollack] on this page and he ignored how critical Pollack and I have been of administration policy in the past. . . .

(Emphasis supplied.) That is nonsense. O'Hanlon dishonestly continues to portray himself as a critic of the war and the Surge.

He is lying. That is the fundamental problem with his work in my view. Others have taken apart his analysis. I stand by my position that his willingness to lie about his strong support for the war and the Surge disqualifies his analysis from serious consideration. Others can take apart his analysis. I stand by my view that his fundamental dishonesty make his observations not worthy of consideration.

As long as President Bush is comparing Iraq to Vietnam, I thought I'd take a look at how we got out of Vietnam. Maybe there are some lessons there for getting us out of Iraq:

• June 22, 1971, the United States Senate passed a non-binding resolution urging the withdrawal of all American troops from Vietnam by the end of the year.

• December 31, 1971, there were 156,800 American soldiers in Vietnam. In January, 1972, Nixon announced "... the United States would continue to withdraw from Vietnam in coming months, removing another 70,000 troops over the next three months, but stated that 25,000 to 35,000 American troops would remain until the North Vietnamese released all the American prisoners of war."

• April and May, 1972: "On 4 April, 1972, Nixon authorized massive bombing of the North Vietnamese troops invading South Vietnam. On 15 April, Hanoi and Haiphong Harbour were bombed by the United States....On 8 May 72, President Nixon ordered the mining of all North Vietnamese ports."

• August 23, 1972, the last US ground combat troops left Vietnam

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The "much anticipated" Petraeus Bush Report on the Surge will be presented in a few weeks. Senator Chris Dodd said:

Despite the exemplary performance of our troops, we are coming off the bloodiest summer of this misguided war and it should be clear that there can be no military solution in Iraq.

It is useless to argue the merits of a specific tactic when the strategy itself is failed.

In fact, debating over military tactics when there is no military solution only undermines efforts by those of us who believe that we must change course in Iraq now and begin to immediately redeploy US combat forces so that Iraqi leaders will have the impetus to find a political accord.

(Emphasis supplied.) Senator Dodd is leading on Iraq now. He does not believe, as most of the other candidates seem to, that we must wait until 2009 to change strategy on Iraq. More.

President Bush unveiled a new theory as to why we need to stay in Iraq. Innocent civilians will be killed if we leave, just like they were in Vietnam, where we got out too early.

"The price of America's withdrawal [in Vietnam]was paid by millions of innocent citizens," he told war veterans in Missouri.

..."Many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people," Mr Bush said. "The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be.

"Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens," Mr Bush said, mentioning reprisals against US allies in Vietnam, the displacement of Vietnamese refugees and the massacres in Cambodia under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge.

The full transcript is here. Crooks and Liars has the video of MSNBC's Neil Shuster on the report.

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General Petraeus can not testify before Congress on 9/11. Forget about why 9/11 was chosen, it simply is unacceptable. We will not be able to even discuss Petraeus' testimony with any sense of rationality if he testifies on 9/11. Bush will be accused of politicizing the date. Petraeus' actual testimony will not even be the central focus. Adele Stan is right:

The administration has exploited the pain of that memory one too many times. Even if that's not the intention here of some White House political genius, more than half of the population will never be convinced of that. So let us remember a horrible day when we all came together without linking it to the war that is tearing us apart.

KagroX points to the pitfalls that the September Petraeus Bush Report creates for Dems. Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) corrects a mistake made in the USA Today article Kagro cites about his position on Iraq:

[A]s we approach this pivotal debate, I want to clearly and unequivocally express to you where I stand on the question of executing a responsible redeployment from Iraq:

I am firmly in favor of withdrawing troops on a timeline that includes both a definite start date and a definite end date ("date certain") and uses clearly-defined benchmarks. I am not in favor of an "open-ended" timeline for withdrawal, as some members of Congress have proposed recently.

As many foreign policy experts agree, setting a date certain for withdrawal is fundamental to forcing George W. Bush to bring our troops home from Iraq and ensuring the Iraqis step up and defend their own country. That's why -- even as I consider all proposals as a matter of due diligence -- I am standing strong on setting a definite redeployment end date (as an example, I recently voted for the "Responsible Redeployment from Iraq Act" to safely draw down our troops over the course of nine months).

Well done Representative McNerney.

Monday, Lt. Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan goes on trial at Ft. Meade for his role in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. He is the only officer charged. His claim to fame? According to the charges against him, he approved the use of dogs and nudity to intimidate the prisoners.

If convicted on all counts, Jordan faces 16 1/2 years in prison.

It's not just cooperators testifying against him. Maj. Gen. George R. Fay who investigated the abuses and wrote a report found:

Jordan's tacit approval of violence during a weapons search on Nov. 24, 2003, "set the stage for the abuses that followed for days afterward."

Jordan has a two-fold defense.

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When Iraq Debacle And Surge Supporters Ken Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon dishonestly labelled themselves war and Surge critics, their endorsement, in a NYTimes Op-Ed, of the Surge was falsely treated as big news. Now we have an Iraq War and Surge supporter declaring the Surge a failure in an Op-Ed in the NYTimes. His name is Tom Friedman:

Ditto with Iraqi surges. If it takes a Middle East expert to explain to you why it is working, it’s not working. . . . There’s only one thing at this stage that would truly impress me, and it is this: proof that there is an Iraq, proof that there is a coalition of Iraqi Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds who share our vision of a unified, multiparty, power-sharing, democratizing Iraq and who are willing to forge a social contract that will allow them to maintain such an Iraq — without U.S. troops. . . . [T]he Bush team will say the surge is a “partial” success and needs more time. But that is like your contractor telling you that your home is almost finished — the bricks are up, but there’s no cement. Thanks a lot. My answer: If I saw something with my own eyes that I hadn’t seen before — Iraq’s Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders stepping forward, declaring their willingness to work out their differences by a set deadline and publicly asking us to stay until they do. That’s the only thing worth giving more time to develop. . . . Only Iraqis living in Iraq can prove otherwise. So far, I don’t see it.

Think that will get half of the coverage of the O'Pollahan dishonesties? Me neither.

See also Joe Klein, on this powerful piece by NCOs of the 82nd Airborne. Joe sez "It puts to shame--and shame is the appropriate word--all the Kristol, McCain, Lieberman, Pollack and O'Hanlon etc etc cheerleading of the past two months." Also John Cole.

Hugh Hewitt at Town Hall has a proposal for the White House on how to present the mid-September report of General Petraeus. He argues against having only an announcement and a press gaggle with the traditional White House Press Corps present to ask a few questions.

It is the right of the American people, and especially those families that have sacrificed so much through the loss of a loved one, and the men and women of the military who are called on to bear the burden, to receive both an unmediated report from the general, but also a serious set of tough questions.

I'm flattered to be included on Hugh's list of "new media" representatives he recommends for selection. (I'm also available.)

Hugh's specific proposal is below:

Kevin Drum writes:

Sure, the war skeptics might have been afraid to go against the herd, but I think that was just an outgrowth of something more concrete: a fear of being provably wrong. After all, everyone agreed that Saddam Hussein was a brutal and unpredictable thug and almost everyone agreed that he had an active WMD program. . . . This meant that war skeptics had to go way out on a limb: if they opposed the war, and it subsequently turned out that Saddam had an advanced WMD program, their credibility would have been completely shot. Their only recourse would have been to argue that Saddam never would have used his WMD, an argument that, given Saddam's temperament, would have sounded like special pleading even to most liberals. In the end, then, they chickened out, but it had more to do with fear of being wrong than with fear of being shunned by the foreign policy community.

With all due respect to Kevin, who has been doing some great blogging lately, this is sheer nonsense. I believed Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and a desire to gain nuclear weapons (but it was clear he he was not close to gaining them or even that he had a viable plan for it.) But like others who believed Saddam had WMD, I vehemently opposed the Iraq Debacle. Let's look at why those of us did.

The Bush Administration's purpose for the Surge has always been to distract from the call for withdrawal from Iraq. In today's NYTimes, they admit it:

White House to Offer Iraq Plan of Gradual Cuts

The White House plans to use a report next month assessing progress in Iraq to outline a plan for gradual troop reductions beginning next year that would fall far short of the drawdown demanded by Congressional opponents of the war, according to administration and military officials. One administration official made it clear that the goal of the planned announcement was to counter public pressure for a more rapid reduction and to try to win support for a plan that could keep American involvement in Iraq on “a sustainable footing” at least through the end of the Bush presidency.

Now Bush gets to announce troop reductions. But the reductions will, in the best of circumstances, leave us at troop levels that existed prior to the Surge. Oh by the way, this too will be a NEW strategy:

The officials said the White House would portray its approach as a new strategy for Iraq, a message aimed primarily at the growing numbers of Congressional Republicans who have criticized President Bush’s handling of the war. Many Republicans have urged Mr. Bush to unveil a new strategy, and even to propose a gradual reduction of American troops to the levels before this year’s troop increase — about 130,000 — or even lower to head off Democratic-led efforts to force the withdrawal of all combat forces by early next year.

This has always been nothing but a game for the Bush Administration and Congressional Republicans. The Surge may have been a serious strategy for General Petraeus. For the Bush Administration it has always been an attempt to run out the clock until the end of his term. More.