Full text below the fold of Barack Obama's major address on the 5th anniversary of his 2002 speech declaring his opposition to the Iraq War.

(This follows some great proposals on reforming our justice system in a speech on Friday) 

Here's one of many good sections… 

Some seek to rewrite history. They argue that they weren’t really voting for war, they were voting for inspectors, or for diplomacy. But the Congress, the Administration, the media, and the American people all understood what we were debating in the fall of 2002. This was a vote about whether or not to go to war. That’s the truth as we all understood it then, and as we need to understand it now. And we need to ask those who voted for the war: how can you give the President a blank check and then act surprised when he cashes it? 

And read this Daily Kos diary by Geekesque on how the speech is a major offensive on Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and the whole Washington establishment who helped lead us to War.

Please read the whole thing…

Thank you, Ted. Ted Sorensen has been counselor to a President in some of our toughest moments, and he has helped define our national purpose at pivotal turning points. Let me also welcome all of the elected officials from Illinois who are with us. Let me give a special welcome to all of the organizers and speakers who joined me to rally against going to war in Iraq five years ago. And I want to thank DePaul University and DePaul’s students for hosting this event.

We come together at a time of renewal for DePaul. A new academic year has begun. Professors are learning the names of new students, and students are reminded that you actually do have to attend class. That cold is beginning to creep into the Chicago air. The season is changing.

DePaul is now filled with students who have not spent a single day on campus without the reality of a war in Iraq. Four classes have matriculated and four classes have graduated since this war began. And we are reminded that America’s sons and daughters in uniform, and their families, bear the heavy burden. The wife of one soldier from Illinois wrote to me and said that her husband “feels like he’s stationed in Iraq and deploys home.” That’s a tragic statement. And it could be echoed by families across our country who have seen loved ones deployed to tour after tour of duty.

You are students. And the great responsibility of students is to question the world around you, to question things that don’t add up. With Iraq, we must ask the question: how did we go so wrong?

There are those who offer up easy answers. They will assert that Iraq is George Bush’s war, it’s all his fault. Or that Iraq was botched by the arrogance and incompetence of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Or that we would have gotten Iraq right if we went in with more troops, or if we had a different proconsul instead of Paul Bremer, or if only there were a stronger Iraqi Prime Minister.

These are the easy answers. And like most easy answers, they are partially true. But they don’t tell the whole truth, because they overlook a harder and more fundamental truth. The hard truth is that the war in Iraq is not about a catalog of many mistakes – it is about one big mistake. The war in Iraq should never have been fought.

Five years ago today, I was asked to speak at a rally against going to war in Iraq. The vote to authorize the war in Congress was less than ten days away and I was a candidate for the United States Senate. Some friends of mine advised me to keep quiet. Going to war in Iraq, they pointed out, was popular. All the other major candidates were supporting the war at the time. If the war goes well, they said, you’ll have thrown your political career away.

But I didn’t see how Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat. I was convinced that a war would distract us from Afghanistan and the real threat from al Qaeda. I worried that Iraq’s history of sectarian rivalry could leave us bogged down in a bloody conflict. And I believed the war would fan the flames of extremism and lead to new terrorism. So I went to the rally. And I argued against a “rash war” – a “war based not on reason, but on politics” – “an occupation of undetermined length, with undetermined costs, and undetermined consequences.”

I was not alone. Though not a majority, millions of Americans opposed giving the President the authority to wage war in Iraq. Twenty-three Senators, including the leader of the Senate Intelligence Committee, shared my concerns and resisted the march to war. For us, the war defied common sense. After all, the people who hit us on 9/11 were in Afghanistan, not Iraq.

But the conventional thinking in Washington has a way of buying into stories that make political sense even if they don’t make practical sense. We were told that the only way to prevent Iraq from getting nuclear weapons was with military force. Some leading Democrats echoed the Administration’s erroneous line that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. We were counseled by some of the most experienced voices in Washington that the only way for Democrats to look tough was to talk, act and vote like a Republican.

As Ted Sorensen’s old boss President Kennedy once said – “the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war – and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears.” In the fall of 2002, those deaf ears were in Washington. They belonged to a President who didn’t tell the whole truth to the American people; who disdained diplomacy and bullied allies; and who squandered our unity and the support of the world after 9/11.

But it doesn’t end there. Because the American people weren’t just failed by a President – they were failed by much of Washington. By a media that too often reported spin instead of facts. By a foreign policy elite that largely boarded the bandwagon for war. And most of all by the majority of a Congress – a coequal branch of government – that voted to give the President the open-ended authority to wage war that he uses to this day. Let’s be clear: without that vote, there would be no war.

Some seek to rewrite history. They argue that they weren’t really voting for war, they were voting for inspectors, or for diplomacy. But the Congress, the Administration, the media, and the American people all understood what we were debating in the fall of 2002. This was a vote about whether or not to go to war. That’s the truth as we all understood it then, and as we need to understand it now. And we need to ask those who voted for the war: how can you give the President a blank check and then act surprised when he cashes it?

With all that we know about what’s gone wrong in Iraq, even today’s debate is divorced from reality. We’ve got a surge that is somehow declared a success even though it has failed to enable the political reconciliation that was its stated purpose. The fact that violence today is only as horrific as in 2006 is held up as progress. Washington politicians and pundits trip over each other to debate a newspaper advertisement while our troops fight and die in Iraq.

And the conventional thinking today is just as entrenched as it was in 2002. This is the conventional thinking that measures experience only by the years you’ve been in Washington, not by your time spent serving in the wider world. This is the conventional thinking that has turned against the war, but not against the habits that got us into the war in the first place – the outdated assumptions and the refusal to talk openly to the American people.

Well I’m not running for President to conform to Washington’s conventional thinking – I’m running to challenge it. I’m not running to join the kind of Washington groupthink that led us to war in Iraq – I’m running to change our politics and our policy so we can leave the world a better place than our generation has found it.

So there is a choice that has emerged in this campaign, one that the American people need to understand. They should ask themselves: who got the single most important foreign policy decision since the end of the Cold War right, and who got it wrong. This is not just a matter of debating the past. It’s about who has the best judgment to make the critical decisions of the future. Because you might think that Washington would learn from Iraq. But we’ve seen in this campaign just how bent out of shape Washington gets when you challenge its assumptions.

When I said that as President I would lead direct diplomacy with our adversaries, I was called naïve and irresponsible. But how are we going to turn the page on the failed Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to our adversaries if we don’t have a President who will lead that diplomacy?

When I said that we should take out high-level terrorists like Osama bin Laden if we have actionable intelligence about their whereabouts, I was lectured by legions of Iraq War supporters. They said we can’t take out bin Laden if the country he’s hiding in won’t. A few weeks later, the co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission – Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton – agreed with my position. But few in Washington seemed to notice.

Some people made a different argument on this issue. They said we can take out bin Laden, we just can’t say that we will. I reject this. I am a candidate for President of the United States, and I believe that the American people have a right to know where I stand.

And when I said that we can rule out the use of nuclear weapons to take out a terrorist training camp, it was immediately branded a “gaffe” because I did not recite the conventional Washington-speak. But is there any military planner in the world who believes that we need to drop a nuclear bomb on a terrorist training camp?

We need to question the world around us. When we have a debate about experience, we can’t just debate who has the most experience scoring political points. When we have a debate about experience, we can’t just talk about who fought yesterday’s battles – we have to focus on who can face the challenges and seize the opportunities of tomorrow. Because no matter what we think about George Bush, he’s going to be gone in January 2009. He’s not on the ballot. This election is about ending the Iraq War, but even more it’s about moving beyond it. And we’re not going be safe in a world of unconventional threats with the same old conventional thinking that got us into Iraq. We’re not going to unify a divided America to confront these threats with the same old conventional politics of just trying to beat the other side.

In 2009, we will have a window of opportunity to renew our global leadership and bring our nation together. If we don’t seize that moment, we may not get another. This election is a turning point. The American people get to decide: are we going to turn back the clock, or turn the page?

I want to be straight with you. If you want conventional Washington thinking, I’m not your man. If you want rigid ideology, I’m not your man. If you think that fundamental change can wait, I’m definitely not your man. But if you want to bring this country together, if you want experience that’s broader than just learning the ways of Washington, if you think that the global challenges we face are too urgent to wait, and if you think that America must offer the world a new and hopeful face, then I offer a different choice in this race and a different vision for our future.

The first thing we have to do is end this war. And the right person to end it is someone who had the judgment to oppose it from the beginning. There is no military solution in Iraq, and there never was. I will begin to remove our troops from Iraq immediately. I will remove one or two brigades a month, and get all of our combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months. The only troops I will keep in Iraq will perform the limited missions of protecting our diplomats and carrying out targeted strikes on al Qaeda. And I will launch the diplomatic and humanitarian initiatives that are so badly needed. Let there be no doubt: I will end this war.

But it's also time to learn the lessons of Iraq. We're not going to defeat the threats of the 21st century on a conventional battlefield. We cannot win a fight for hearts and minds when we outsource critical missions to unaccountable contractors. We’re not going to win a battle of ideas with bullets alone.

Make no mistake: we must always be prepared to use force to protect America. But the best way to keep America safe is not to threaten terrorists with nuclear weapons – it’s to keep nuclear weapons and nuclear materials away from terrorists. That’s why I’ve worked with Republican Senator Dick Lugar to pass a law accelerating our pursuit of loose nuclear materials. And that’s why I’ll lead a global effort to secure all loose nuclear materials during my first term in office.

But we need to do much more. We need to change our nuclear policy and our posture, which is still focused on deterring the Soviet Union – a country that doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, India and Pakistan and North Korea have joined the club of nuclear-armed nations, and Iran is knocking on the door. More nuclear weapons and more nuclear-armed nations mean more danger to us all.

Here’s what I’ll say as President: America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons.

We will not pursue unilateral disarmament. As long as nuclear weapons exist, we’ll retain a strong nuclear deterrent. But we’ll keep our commitment under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty on the long road towards eliminating nuclear weapons. We’ll work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair-trigger alert, and to dramatically reduce the stockpiles of our nuclear weapons and material. We’ll start by seeking a global ban on the production of fissile material for weapons. And we’ll set a goal to expand the U.S.-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles so that the agreement is global.

As we do this, we’ll be in a better position to lead the world in enforcing the rules of the road if we firmly abide by those rules. It’s time to stop giving countries like Iran and North Korea an excuse. It’s time for America to lead. When I’m President, we’ll strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so that nations that don’t comply will automatically face strong international sanctions.

This will require a new era of American diplomacy. To signal the dawn of that era, we need a President who is willing to talk to all nations, friend and foe. I’m not afraid that America will lose a propaganda battle with a petty tyrant – we need to go before the world and win those battles. If we take the attitude that the President just parachutes in for a photo-op after an agreement has already been reached, then we’re only going to reach agreements with our friends. That’s not the way to protect the American people. That’s not the way to advance our interests.

Just look at our history. Kennedy had a direct line to Khrushchev. Nixon met with Mao. Carter did the hard work of negotiating the Camp David Accords. Reagan was negotiating arms agreements with Gorbachev even as he called on him to “tear down this wall.”

It’s time to make diplomacy a top priority. Instead of shuttering consulates, we need to open them in the tough and hopeless corners of the world. Instead of having more Americans serving in military bands than the diplomatic corps, we need to grow our foreign service. Instead of retreating from the world, I will personally lead a new chapter of American engagement.

It is time to offer the world a message of hope to counter the prophets of hate. My experience has brought me to the hopeless places. As a boy, I lived in Indonesia and played barefoot with children who could not dream the same dreams that I did. As an adult, I’ve returned to be with my family in their small village in Kenya, where the promise of America is still an inspiration. As a community organizer, I worked in South Side neighborhoods that had been left behind by global change. As a Senator, I’ve been to refugee camps in Chad where proud and dignified people can’t hope for anything beyond the next handout.

In the 21st century, progress must mean more than a vote at the ballot box – it must mean freedom from fear and freedom from want. We cannot stand for the freedom of anarchy. Nor can we support the globalization of the empty stomach. We need new approaches to help people to help themselves. The United Nations has embraced the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015. When I’m President, they will be America’s goals. The Bush Administration tried to keep the UN from proclaiming these goals; the Obama Administration will double foreign assistance to $50 billion to lead the world to achieve them.

In the 21st century, we cannot stand up before the world and say that there’s one set of rules for America and another for everyone else. To lead the world, we must lead by example. We must be willing to acknowledge our failings, not just trumpet our victories. And when I’m President, we’ll reject torture – without exception or equivocation; we’ll close Guantanamo; we’ll be the country that credibly tells the dissidents in the prison camps around the world that America is your voice, America is your dream, America is your light of justice.

We cannot – we must not – let the promotion of our values be a casualty of the Iraq War. But we cannot secure America and show our best face to the world unless we change how we do business in Washington.

We all know what Iraq has cost us abroad. But these last few years we’ve seen an unacceptable abuse of power at home. We face real threats. Any President needs the latitude to confront them swiftly and surely. But we’ve paid a heavy price for having a President whose priority is expanding his own power. The Constitution is treated like a nuisance. Matters of war and peace are used as political tools to bludgeon the other side. We get subjected to endless spin to keep our troops at war, but we don’t get to see the flag-draped coffins of our heroes coming home. We get secret task forces, secret budgeting, slanted intelligence, and the shameful smearing of people who speak out against the President’s policies.

All of this has left us where we are today: more divided, more distrusted, more in debt, and mired in an endless war. A war to disarm a dictator has become an open-ended occupation of a foreign country. This is not America. This is not who we are. It’s time for us to stand up and tell George Bush that the government in this country is not based on the whims of one person, the government is of the people, by the people and for the people.

We thought we learned this lesson. After Vietnam, Congress swore it would never again be duped into war, and even wrote a new law — the War Powers Act — to ensure it would not repeat its mistakes. But no law can force a Congress to stand up to the President. No law can make Senators read the intelligence that showed the President was overstating the case for war. No law can give Congress a backbone if it refuses to stand up as the co-equal branch the Constitution made it.

That is why it is not enough to change parties. It is time to change our politics. We don’t need another President who puts politics and loyalty over candor. We don’t need another President who thinks big but doesn’t feel the need to tell the American people what they think. We don’t need another President who shuts the door on the American people when they make policy. The American people are not the problem in this country – they are the answer. And it’s time we had a President who acted like that.

I will always tell the American people the truth. I will always tell you where I stand. It’s what I’m doing in this campaign. It’s what I’ll do as President. I’ll lead a new era of openness. I’ll give an annual “State of the World” address to the American people in which I lay out our national security policy. I’ll draw on the legacy of one our greatest Presidents – Franklin Roosevelt – and give regular “fireside webcasts,” and I’ll have members of my national security team do the same.

I’ll turn the page on a growing empire of classified information, and restore the balance we’ve lost between the necessarily secret and the necessity of openness in a democratic society by creating a new National Declassification Center. We’ll protect sources and methods, but we won’t use sources and methods as pretexts to hide the truth. Our history doesn’t belong to Washington, it belongs to America.

I’ll use the intelligence that I do receive to make good policy – I won’t manipulate it to sell a bad policy. We don’t need any more officials who tell the President what they want to hear. I will make the Director of National Intelligence an official with a fixed term, like the Chairman of the Federal Reserve – not someone who can be fired by the President. We need consistency and integrity at the top of our intelligence agencies. We don’t need politics. My test won’t be loyalty – it will be the truth.

And I’ll turn the page on the imperial presidency that treats national security as a partisan issue – not an American issue. I will call for a standing, bipartisan Consultative Group of congressional leaders on national security. I will meet with this Consultative Group every month, and consult with them before taking major military action. The buck will stop with me. But these discussions have to take place on a bipartisan basis, and support for these decisions will be stronger if they draw on bipartisan counsel. We’re not going to secure this country unless we turn the page on the conventional thinking that says politics is just about beating the other side.

It’s time to unite America, because we are at an urgent and pivotal moment.

There are those who suggest that there are easy answers to the challenges we face. We can look, they say, to Washington experience – the same experience that got us into this war. Or we can turn the page to something new, to unite this country and to seize this moment.

I am not a perfect man and I won’t be a perfect President. But my own American story tells me that this country moves forward when we cast off our doubts and seek new beginnings.

It’s what brought my father across an ocean in search of a dream. It’s what I saw in the eyes of men and women and children in Indonesia who heard the word “ America” and thought of the possibility beyond the horizon. It’s what I saw in the streets of the South Side, when people who had every reason to give in decided to pick themselves up. It’s what I’ve seen in the United States Senate when Republicans and Democrats of good will do come together to take on tough issues. And it’s what I’ve seen in this campaign, when over half a million Americans have come together to seek the change this country needs.

Now I know that some will shake their heads. It’s easy to be cynical. When it comes to our foreign policy, you get it from all sides. Some folks on the right will tell you that you don’t love your country if you don’t support the war in Iraq. Some folks on the left will tell you that America can do no right in the world. Some shrug their shoulders because Washington says, “trust us, we’ll take care of it.” And we know happened the last time they said that.

Yes, it’s easy to be cynical. But right now, somewhere in Iraq, there’s someone about your age. He’s maybe on his second or third tour. It’s hot. He would rather be at home. But he’s in his uniform, got his combat gear on. He’s getting in a Humvee. He’s going out on patrol. He’s lost a buddy in this war, maybe more. He risked his life yesterday, he’s risking his life today, and he’s going to risk it tomorrow.

So why do we reject the cynicism? We reject it because of men and women like him. We reject it because the legacy of their sacrifice must be a better America. We reject it because they embody the spirit of those who fought to free the slaves and free a continent from a madman; who rebuilt Europe and sent Peace Corps volunteers around the globe; because they are fighting for a better America and a better world.

And I reject it because I wouldn’t be on this stage if, throughout our history, America had not made the right choice over the easy choice, the ambitious choice over the cautious choice. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think we were ready to move past the fights of the 1960s and the 1990s. I wouldn’t be here if, time and again, the torch had not been passed to a new generation – to unite this country at home, to show a new face of this country to the world. I’m running for the presidency of the United States of America so that together we can do the hard work to seek a new dawn of peace and prosperity for our children, and for the children of the world.

Draft Bulworth, anyone?

It may surprise some to read this here – but it shouldn't: Congress has no business telling Rush Limbaugh to shut up.

Last week, Senator Leahy and Representative Welch broke with Senator Sanders and brought several flavors of shame to the liberal community under one, all-encompassing umbrella – the vote to rebuke MoveOn. While first and foremost, I find the vote both bizarre and cowardly (for its myopic waste of time on the one hand, and the pointless “Sister Souljah”-style sacrifice of an ally deemed – apparently – disposable on the other), the fact is that it was also an affront to the tradition of free speech in this country. It's true (and important) that the naked attempt by the GOP to frame the anti-war public as crazy and uncivilized (an attempt that was successful only thanks to the assistance of Dems like Leahy and Welch) did not take any action to specifically disallow speech, but such action has a chilling effect nonetheless. As much as I took State Representative Dave Zuckerman to task for sending a chilling message, as an elected lawmaker, by accusing Stewart Ledbetter of “irresponsible journalism” for asking a question he didn't like, the MoveOn rebuke was far worse.

As Leonard Witt of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said:

Congress did not pass a law “abridging the freedom of speech,” but I would argue they, in fact, did abridge our freedom to speak out by sending a message to We the People of the United States of America that we should not insult a general.

They did so on the floor of the Senate, the same place where they vote on laws, which could in the future strengthen or weaken the constitution.

The Congress of the United States should not be in the business of making those sorts of judgements and enshrining them historically and permanently in the Congressional record.

And that includes such judgements against Rush Limbaugh.

One of the most annoying aspects of the MoveOn vote was having to endure the sort of justification that lumped the MoveOn ad in with the GOP electoral smears of John Kerry and Max Cleland – a comparison belied by the fact that neither were mentioned in the language that was approved (and the fact that when a Senate floor amendment to include those two instances was rejected, Dems like Leahy and Welch voted for the MoveOn condemnation anyway). This has caused many, like Front Pager elwood at Blue Hampshire, to push for the following:

…fair is fair.

Draft-dodger Rush Limbaugh is calling American troops who oppose the war “phony soldiers.” Several elected Democrats have spoken out against this. That is not enough. Bring a resolution condemning Limbaugh to the floor immediately.

Denounce the Speaker if she stands in the way.

There cannot be an informal House rule that says progressive groups get condemned but right-wing media is exempt.

Sounds good. Feels good. And some are listening. From Greg Sargent (ht Steve B):

I’ve just learned that Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO) will be introducing a resolution in the House of Representatives on Monday condemning Rush Limbaugh for his “phony soldiers” remark.

This is significant because it has the potential to dramatically up the stakes in this fight. If the Democratic leadership allows it to go for a vote, it will force all the Republicans in the House to either vote for it, against it, or skip the vote — and to pass judgment on the powerful conservative talk show host’s contention that troops who don’t support President Bush’s war policies are “phony soldiers.”

Putting aside for a moment that it'll never happen, the fact is that we shouldn't try, and if Leahy or Welch throw in with such an attempt to placate or otherwise throw a bone to their increasingly agitated, annoyed, and exhausted national base, it will simply add further insult to Constitutional injury.

Two wrongs don't make a right. Let's cut our losses and… er… move on.

In the spirit of the popular NPR quiz show, “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” here is a timely question for reader consideration:

For 10 points, which Democratic candidate said the following at the Dartmouth primary debate last week?

I think that what you are beginning to see is a fairly wide recognition that whatever you think about how the United States got into Iraq, that an American commitment to Iraq–not at the levels that we are now, but an American commitment to Iraq for some significant period of time is going to be critical not just to stabilizing Iraq, but to stabilizing the Middle East.

The answer is below the fold!

John Edwards?  He wouldn’t commit, but that’s worth at least three points.

Barack Obama?  He offered the same message, so that gives you five points.

Hillary Clinton?  Ohhh, so close!  8 points for that!  But before you hear the answer, let’s talk about what this mystery speaker is really saying!

At the Dartmouth primary debate last Wednesday, the underlying assumption to the answers regarding  ongoing American involvement in Iraq is known as the Pottery Barn Rule.  Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward attributes this “rule” to Colin Powell’s advice to the president in 2002, leading up to the war in Iraq.

‘You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,’ he told the president. ‘You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You’ll own it all.’ Privately, Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.

No matter how strongly anyone might feel about America’s responsibility for either “breaking” or “owning” Iraq, it only takes one Blackwater scandal to guess how Sunni’s, Shias, and even members of the Iraqi Police are currently responding to their loss of sovereignty to the American industrial complex.  To them, it probably doesn’t matter whether America will ruled by another war-hungry Neo-Con or a long-winded, moralizing presidential candidate; in either case, the message from the people on the streets in Iraq is that they want their country back and life to return to normalcy.

The real irony of the Pottery Barn Rule is that the store by the same name has no such policy.  Like anywhere else, damaged goods are written off as a loss.  After spending nearly a trillion dollars in Iraq, maybe we should think about stopping our losses, too.  On the other hand, by sticking to the resolute charge of “owning” Iraq because we “broke” it, we can continue to follow our current “Pottery Barn Rule” logic to it’s obvious end, as expressed by comedian Stephen Colbert: 

At Pottery Barn, if you knock over a lamp, you have to glue it back together, even if when you’re done it looks terrible and it doesn’t work. Oh, and you have to stay in the store forever. Oh, and it’s an exploding lamp.

What’s most interesting about the Pottery Barn Rule is that Democratic followers seem to have bought this message, lock, stock, and barrel – war pun intended.  And since they have bought into this message, they better not break it either.  Moderate lefties, bloggers, and even leading presidential candidates now assume the same “rule” of foreign policy offered by Colin Powell and Richard Armitrage is, in fact, their own.  Why this is seems to be the case, no one is certain, however theories among pundits suggest that Democrats just aren’t as good at coming up with their own metaphors, so they stick to the ones they’re given.  That being said, maybe there really is a better way to look at our role in Iraq in a more compelling and accurate way than by comparing a country of 25 million people to a cheap porcelain lighting fixture.

It has been said, even among Republicans, that the Bush Administration’s foreign policy has demonstrated all the subtly and tact of an angry bull in a china shop.  In the case of Iraq, it’s pretty hard to imagine the 2002 conversation between Powell and Bush as if they were innocently  stopping by the nearest Pottery Barn for a particular brand of an attackable, oil-rich nation with a conveniently slapped-on terrorist  label.  If they were, maybe Powell should have just said, “Let’s not go in that store.  It’s too expensive and you might break something.”  Instead, he warned a bull-headed Bush to please be careful and not break anything; because he would then own it.  Given Bush’s strong interest in Iraq’s oil fields, some of us are still wondering, “Was that a warning or an invitation?”

The metaphor of a “Bull In a China Shop” is an apt conceptual platform for accepting our foreign policy responsibilities because we can begin corrective action more appropriately.  After all, it’s not like we broke just one little piece of pottery that is the land and people of ancient Mesopatamia.  The culture is mixed, the artifacts many and rare, and now the mess is absolutely incredible.  Our responsibility isn’t to glue together one lamp, but repair to normalcy the lives and livelihoods of families, business people, and political leaders in a mix of cultures we barely understand. 

Given this, what should we expect to hear from Democratic presidential candidates?  Like the “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me” mystery quote suggests, there is a wide recognition for an “American commitment to Iraq.”  But the question isn’t about commitment; it’s about finding the best way to clean up the mess. 

Since we’ve got a Bull In a China Shop, here’s what we should do:

1.Get the Bull out of the China Shop.  This should be obvious, but apparently it’s not.  As long as our foreign policy continues to wave it’s tail around in Iraq, we’re contributing to the same mess we’re trying to clean up.  By removing privatized security forces, regular military troops, and even diplomats from Iraq and even Baghdad, we can get the Bull out of the China Shop and begin to formulate a workable clean-up strategy with the real stakeholders.  Diplomats and Iraqi political leaders can meet in Paris, Versailles, or New York in order to get the hard work of negotiations done.

2.Put the Bull In the Barn Already.  We don’t need special forces roaming the borders of Iran or Syria while we’re busy cleaning up one store already.  If we send forces anywhere, it probably should be to the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.

3.Get Bearish, not Bullish, on Oil.  It’s terrible to mix metaphors, but in this case it’s apt:  We all know that our foreign policy is nothing more than a strategic grab for Iraq’s oil fields.  If Wall Street starts putting its investment dollars in alternative energy, electric car development, and other non-oil initiatives, then it can start lowering valuations — and dependence — on oil futures trading.  Then we won’t need to get into this Pottery Barn mess again.

But now it’s time to get back to our special edition of “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” 

Once again,  For 10 points, which Democratic candidate said the following at the Dartmouth primary debate last week?

“I think that what you are beginning to see is a fairly wide recognition that whatever you think about how the United States got into Iraq, that an American commitment to Iraq–not at the levels that we are now, but an American commitment to Iraq for some significant period of time is going to be critical not just to stabilizing Iraq, but to stabilizing the Middle East.”

Condoleeza Rice.  Sorry, trick question.  But here’s the follow up, for another 10 points:

Which presidential candidate is most likely to get the Bull In the China Shop out of Iraq?

Wait, wait…  Zero troops in Iraq, right?  Don’t tell me! 

Bill Richardson!!!

From http://www.strategic…

Below are the results of a three-day poll in the state of Iowa. Results are based on telephone interviews with 600 likely Republican cacus goers and 600 likely Democratic cacus goers, aged 18+, and conducted September 21-23, 2007. The margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

If the 2008 Democratic presidential caucus were held today between, Joeseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson, for whom would you vote? (Democrats Only; Names Rotated)
Hillary Clinton 24%
John Edwards 22%
Barack Obama 21%
Bill Richardson 13%
Joseph Biden 4%
Chris Dodd 1%
Dennis Kucinich 1%
Undecided 14%

Do you favor a withdrawal of all United States military from Iraq within the next six months? (Democrats Only)
Yes 84%
No 7%
Undecided 9%

When making your selection for a presidential candidate, what are you looking for most in the candidate, charisma, experience, or ideology? (Democrats Only)
Ideology 30%
Charisma 30%
Experience 27%
Undecided 13%

I’ve posted about my support for Edwards before.  I’ll mention that even though I have real reservations about Obama, I’d be willing to vote for him come the general election.  Clinton, on the other hand, disturbs me greatly and I don’t think I could actually vote for her in the general election.

But this post isn’t about that.  This post is about the Republicans.  While I think it’s plausible that some of the front runners could win a national election, I don’t think any of them are likely to do so unless the Democratic nominee is a small chunk of moldy cheese (and even then, I think Romney would lose). 

There’s only one Republican candidate whom I think would be a dangerous opponent in a national election. 

Policy-wise, I think most of the country opposes Governor Huckabee.  That’s not what scares me.  What scares me is that I when I see him speak, I find myself wanting to like him.  I figure if I want to like him, knowing who and what he is, people who choose not to be informed may be much more easily swayed towards his candidacy.

Don’t get me wrong: no way in hell would I ever vote for the man.  He’s very conservative, and a major part of the religious right.  I don’t think that he’d get elected if his policies were what were being voted on.  In a general election, where many of the voters don’t don’t vote in an informed fashion (think I’m wrong?  Look at 2004) but instead rely on their general feelings about a candidate, a Huckabee nomination would be a serious problem for any Democrat because he’s funny, clever, and doesn’t take himself too seriously.

Here’s the silver lining: he’s got no problem at all speaking about President Bush in very unflattering terms.  This means there’s not much of a shot for him at getting the Republican nomination.  The wingnuts who are deeply committed to their path of cognitive dissonance and self-justification of rank hypocrisy can’t allow themselves to accept that their pet Shrub is an incompetent, arrogant, grandstander who has made everything infinitely worse.

So I don’t think it’s a huge risk of him being the nominee, but I think there’s a risk, and even as a VP candidate, he’ll add to the appearance of humanity of whoever ends up at the top of their ticket.  Fortunately, again, as someone who routinely trashes Bush, I don’t know that that’s a major risk either, but it’s there.

So, anyway… my dream ticket for the Democrats would be Edwards/Obama.  My dream ticket for the Republicans would be Romney/Keyes.  That last bit would be just for the major comedy factor that would ensue.  I think we’d have to write a theme song to go with the campaign, like The Odd Couple meets Jesus Camp. 

This post probably revealed way more about my psyche than I should have allowed.

[cross-posted from Montpelier Matters, here]

An article published within this morning’s edition of the Boston Globe leaves one to wonder if the Douglas administration’s new motto is something along the lines of:

Party On Dude, Just Do It In Vermont!

[emphasis mine]

Saturday, September 29, 2007
Boston Globe
Business News section
Northern hospitality
N.E. states try charm to lure graduates back

By Kristi Ceccarossi, Globe Correspondent  |  September 29, 2007

The state of Vermont, which is losing its young people at an alarming rate, wants them back.

So on Wednesday, a crew of state employees and headhunters boarded a bus in Montpelier headed for The Living Room, a swanky bar in Boston’s North End. There, they hosted a party for 75 young professionals who live and work in Boston, all of them alumni of Green Mountain colleges and universities.

[…]

The $33,000 networking event is the latest strategy by Vermont’s Department of Economic Development to woo college-educated twenty-somethings. Since 1990, the number of 20- to 34-year-olds in Vermont has shrunk 19 percent, according to US Census data. To stanch the outflow, the state has allocated roughly $5 million in the last seven years for events like the North End gathering.

[…]

Hmmm.

Read the entire article, here.

fyi:

• PursueVT

Party on dude!

🙂 [smile]

[Above photo: Vermont Governor Jim Douglas; via Republican Governors Association Website, here]

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Interesting news from Burlington-based True Majority:

We founded TrueMajority and TrueMajorityAction to offer an easy way for all those people out there who want America to be more just and compassionate to speak out. It really caught on, and turned into one of the largest online groups in America. But now, it’s time to take it to the next level.

As of this month, TrueMajorityAction is merging our operations with USAction, one of the pre-eminent field organizing progressive groups in America.

TrueMajorityAction will continue to watch Congress for our members, and create quick “one-click” opportunities to speak up at critical moments. That’s worked great, our members say they love it, and we’ll work at online organizing as hard as ever. But now, as the online arm of USAction, they’ll also be able to offer ways for those online members to connect with neighbors who share their vision for America and carry that work into the “real world.”

True Majority's presence on the national scene hasn't been felt as much over the last year, but they're still a big internet-based organization with a massive list. Merging with US Action, which has always been a field organization (and a hardcore one, too – I cut my teeth as an old, pre-name change, Citizen Action canvasser in Maryland, and later as an organizer in Oregon… in many ways, they are the gold standard) could make them stronger than the sum of the parts.

( – promoted by odum)

In case you missed the actual debate, you may not know how the Dem candidates all (except Gravel)answered Tim Russert’s question, “Will you pledge that by January 2013, the end of your first term, more than five years from now, there will be no U.S. troops in Iraq?”

While the media, and the Republics, candidates, and some netrooters have painted some or all all these responses as “refusing to get all troops out of Iraq”, the reality seems very different to me.

See reality, below.

Excerpts from the transcript of the debate:

OBAMA: If there are still large troop presences in — when I take office, then the first thing I will do is call together the Joint Chiefs of Staff and initiate a phased redeployment. We’ve got to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in, but military personnel indicate we can get one brigade to two brigades out per month.

I would immediately begin that process. We would get combat troops out of Iraq. The only troops that would remain would be those that have to protect U.S. bases and U.S. civilians, as well as to engage in counterterrorism activities in Iraq.

CLINTON: Well, Tim, it is my goal to have all troops out by the end of my first term. But I agree with Barack; it is very difficult to know what we are going to be inheriting.
…
there may be a continuing counterterrorism mission, which, if it still exists, will be aimed at Al Qaida in Iraq. It may require combat, special operations forces or some other form of that. But the vast majority of our combat troops should be out.

EDWARDS: I will immediately draw down 40,000 to 50,000 troops; and over the course of the next several months, continue to bring our combat troops out of Iraq until all of our combat troops are, in fact, out of Iraq.
…
I think somewhere in the neighborhood of a brigade of troops will be necessary to accomplish that (protect the embassy and humanitarian workers), 3,500 to 5,000 troops.
…
I do not think we should continue combat missions in Iraq.

RICHARDSON: my position in bringing all troops out of Iraq is to end the war.
…
I would bring them out through roads, through Kuwait and through Turkey. It would take persuading Turkey. The issue is light equipment. I would leave some of the light equipment behind.

(My Note: I have read many Richardson supporters’ posts that claim he means keeping troops to protect the embassy, but that embassy soil is US soil so those don’t count.)

DODD: I will get that done.

BIDEN: I would make a commitment to have them all out if there is not a political reconciliation, because they’re just fodder.

KUCINICH: I know that we can get out of there three months after I take office or after the new president takes office if one is determined to do that. And I want to make it clear that the plan includes ending the occupation; closing the bases; bringing the troops home…

Here’s my personal distillation:
Obama – most out, keep some counter-insurgency troops

Edwards – no combat troops, leaving leeway for protective troops

Clinton – most out is a “goal”, keep some combat troops

Richardson – trying to create an issue by saying zero but doesn’t really mean it

Biden – get them out if my plan doesn’t work

Kucinich – solidly pro-peace

Dodds – said what he needed to to get Russert off his back

The media coverage has absolutely trashed the Dem candidates on this issue, and it’s been fueled by well-intentioned anti-war progressives who want to try to get candidates to super-duper promise that they will really end the war. I understand the need for that, but the general perception is evolving that Dems are not even against limiting US involvement in this war, really, and that will cut heavily into our electorate in Nov 08.

Washington Post:
Wanted: Democratic Straight Talk on Iraq
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, September 28, 2007
“Yes, you heard it right: At the Dartmouth College debate Wednesday evening, not one of the three leading Democratic candidates could pledge that all U.S. combat troops would be out of Iraq by the end of his or her first term as president.”

The NY Times:
Candidates Hedge Bets on Iraq Withdrawal
September 26, 2007
By JEFF ZELENY and PATRICK HEALY
“The three leading Democratic presidential candidates refused on Wednesday night to promise that they would withdraw all American troops from Iraq by the end of their first term, saying in a televised debate here that they could not predict the future challenges in Iraq.”

All these candidates look weak, maybe you think they are, but I see at least some candidates who are giving pretty good specifics on fundamentally ending this war. Can we get that message out to voters?

Hey, if the Democratic majority in Vermont can't get its message together, maybe we'll slide by with more help like this from the GOP.

So, if its not yet evident, the reason you don't put a wingnut like Rob Roper (until recently, a regular fixture on Paul Beaudry's creepy “True North” radio show) in charge of something like a political party, is that they let their… enthusiasm… run roughshod over common sense. This brouhaha over Burlington's Intervale, and the attempt to paint Gaye Symington, David Zuckerman and Will Raap as anti-environemental hypocrites, was a very bad idea for the GOP, and although it has a lot of Dems concerned, I have little doubt that it's going to backfire on them.

Background, from the Herald/Argus:

When Burlington's Intervale Center was notified by the state this week that it had violated environmental rules and would have to do better if it is to stay open, the center promised to fix the problem.

The issue might have passed with little notice, but for one thing: House Speaker Gaye Symington, a Democrat, works for the center. Rep. David Zuckerman, a Progressive, farms a 16-acre plot there. And other political heavyweights on the left have been involved in greater or lesser ways in the development and operation of the center, established as an environmental and land protection showpiece.

Enter the GOP, stage right.

The environmental problems at the Intervale show that Symington, Zuckerman and other politicians on the left are not up to the task of protecting the environment, said Republican Chairman Rob Roper.

First of all, it's only going to help Symington, whose star hit rock bottom among many in the left last session. The inevitable bounce back has already quietly begun for her, and being thrust into the trenches with progressive darlings Zuckerman and Raap will only jumpstart that bounceback further. That's just action-reaction.

But who was this attack trying to convince? Sure, there'll be the charges of hypocritical-limousine-liberal… from all the people who make that charge every day, anyway. To everyone else? The issue is a serious matter but it's being dealt with in a professional manner. No jumping up and down refusing to address the problem, or claiming that environmental regulations are all communist, or threats to appeal or sue the state.

And this is already being seen as a cheap, mean-spirited shot to try and score points. That's a minus for the GOP. So we have nobody who's paying attention won over, or run off. His suggestion that the party of Rob Roper, Wendy Wilton and Paul Beaudry is better suited for environmental stewardship that the likes of Raap, Symington and Zuckerman is a pretty hysterical punchline – no doubt even to most Republicans.

To the people who only pay marginal attention, it gets this story out beyond Chittenden County:

over two decades the Intervale has taken 354 acres of largely abandoned land, made it productive and ensured it will remain farm land, Symington said.

“It was full of dumped cars and tires. Now there are productive farms and at-risk teens growing food that is served in the school cafeterias,” she said. “I am proud to be part of that work.”

Roper said he really likes the Intervale too. His family goes there to visit and buy vegetables, he said.

Gotta love that.

But what about the people who aren't paying attention?

All they're hearing is “farm – runoff – Intervale – Zuckerman – Gardner's Supply – Symington – waste.” Fuzzy, and a bit inconsistent, but positive. It almost allows Symington to share the spotlight of the poor, beset-upon Vermont farmer.

Thanks for turning on that light, Rob.

I'd bet good money that the only way this becomes a public relations problems for Symington and Zuckerman is if they somehow make it one.

…uh, okay – that part worries me.

And it should worry us all, as Speaker Symington already has this little gem in the press reports (emphasis added):

“Rob Roper's job is partly to embarrass me,” Symington said.

That's right. The 'm' word – me. Symington is already retreating into making it about herself, which is the complete opposite of the right way to handle this, and on so many levels, it'd take a dozen blog posts to fully cover all of them.

Nor do I have much faith in the Progs to handle this. I find myself thinking back to when Anthony Pollina was found to have violated the letter of the campaign finance law he had helped craft. For those of you who don't remember, he didn't go “oops, sorry, my bad” and play the we're-all-only-human route of humility. No, he went ballistic and sued everybody (including in essentially dropping a SLAPP suit on the ED of the Dems at the time by name  – not through his title, just him, as a private citizen), then tried to get the law tossed before being scolded out of court by Judge Sessions. Sure, that was a long time ago, but Zuckerman's quantum leap earlier this week to a charge of “irresponsible journalism” at the word that Stewart Ledbetter was simply doing his job as a reporter shows that its still incredibly easy to press many Progs' buttons.

Who knows, maybe Roper is more clever than I think he is, and figures with a little nudging, Symington and Zuckerman will fly off and make themselves look bad for the media and the public.

If that is his call, let's all hope it's a bad one.