Month: May 2007

With George Bush delivering only the second veto of his presidency, the question of funding the mission in Iraq became even more acute. Eighty-six days after the start of the 110th Congress, the military still has not received funding for operations in Iraq this year, and the process has to start from Square One while the Pentagon has to start juggling the books:

President Bush vetoed a $124 billion measure yesterday that would have funded overseas military operations but required him to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq as early as July, escalating the most serious confrontation between the White House and Congress over war policy in a generation.
Bush carried through on his veto threat just after the legislation arrived at the White House, calling the timetable a “prescription for chaos and confusion” that would undercut generals. “Setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East and send a signal that America will not keep its commitments,” he said last night. “Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure.”
Democratic congressional leaders cast the veto as willful defiance of the American people. “The president wants a blank check,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said just minutes after Bush’s statement. “The Congress is not going to give it to him.” Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said that “if the president thinks that by vetoing this bill he will stop us from trying to change the direction of this war, he is mistaken.”

At some point, a compromise has to be reached — but it cannot take the form of mandated timetables for withdrawal. The British did that in Basra, and the result has been the formation of militias and internecine fighting in a region homogenous to Shi’ites. Imagine what would happen in the melting pot of Baghdad, let alone the al-Qaeda theater of operations in Baghdad. Announcing withdrawal dates only emboldens those who oppose the democratically-elected government of Iraq and encourages the rest to choose the least-egregious warlord to obey.
One point raised in the Washington Post article that might provide an opening is the question of aid to the Iraqi government. That aid which works for issues other than security could get suspended if the National Assembly doesn’t get busy passing the necessary reforms in oil revenue and de/re-Baathification. That would allow us to continue pressing forward on our security strategies while holding Baghdad accountable for lack of progress on political reform. In the past three years, we have spent more that $5 billion in non-military aid in Iraq. That kind of money should give us some leverage with the politicians.
Pressuring the Iraqi government makes sense. It forces them to focus on the tasks at hand and pushes them towards reconciliation amongst the ethicities, rather than triumphalism and vengeance. An approach which does that without hampering our ability to stabilize Baghdad and kill al-Qaeda terrorists in Anbar and Diyala should be strongly considered.
But we cannot allow Congress to dictate the terms of surrender to the American armed forces engaged with the enemy. We cannot withdraw from Iraq — again — only to be forced to return later to finish what we started in 1991. We cannot allow al-Qaeda and its affiliates to create a base of operations in Iraq the way they did in Afghanistan, unless we want a repeat of 9/11. Bush has to remain strong on those principles while finding ways to pressure the Iraqi government for reform in the manner Democrats want. That should be the basis of any compromise on the issue.

One of the points in dispute about the Iraq war supplemental bill about to get vetoed by the President is whether the delay has affected military operations. Harry Reid said that the current funding will cover operations until mid-July, while the White House insists that it has already begun degrading operations and readiness. A Congressional Research Service analysis supports the Democrats — but only by saying that robbing Peter to pay Paul will still have impact on a broad range of activities (emphases mine):

If the Army temporarily tapped all this transfer authority, it could have a total of $60.1 billion available rather than $52.6 billion. Based on projections of monthly obligations rates, the Army could finance the O&M costs of both its baseline and war program for almost two additional months or through most of July 2007, if it tapped all of this transfer authority (see Table 2). It would be $1.4 billion short of meeting total July obligations. If DOD used only some of its transfer authority, the Army could last through the end of June 2007.
The Army has suggested that these actions would disrupt its programs including facilities repair, depot maintenance, and training. In order to ensure that funding is available for the later months of the year, the Army may very well decide that it must slow down its non-war-related operations before money would run out by, for example, limiting facility maintenance and repairs, delaying equipment overhauls, restricting travel and meetings, and, perhaps, slowing down training. Although it is true that a delay in passage of the FY2007 supplemental could require additional management actions, Congress has given DOD flexibility by providing transfer authority so that funds can be moved to meet more urgent requirements. In this case, because the transfers would presumably be temporary, the disruptions might also be less onerous.

In other words, not passing a serious supplemental and getting the money to the Army by May 1 will cause some disruptions — depending on where the Army wants to have them. This differs from Harry Reid’s assertion that there is no haste in approving the supplemental.
The Senate Republican Policy Committee put out its own analysis today, relying on military officials to state clearly the impact the delay in funding has had:

“At the current moment, because of this lack of funding, MNSTC-I [Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq] is unable to continue at the pace [it had in developing] . . . Iraqi security forces. . . . [This lack of funding] is starting to have some impact today, and will only have more of an impact over time.” — Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, MNF-Iraq
The President requested $1.83 billion for procurement and outfitting of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAP), which the Senate Appropriations Committee fully funded. Senator Biden then took to the floor to provide an additional $1.5 billion to the Procurement chapter of the supplemental bill for the procurement of MRAPs, because, citing military commanders, “MRAP could reduce the casualties in vehicles due to IED [Improvised Explosive Device] attack by as much as 80 percent.” The Amendment was approved by a vote of 98-0.
Now, the failure to provide a war supplemental in a timely manner means that neither funds in the President’s request, nor the plus-up provided by amendment, is currently available for a vehicle pointed out to be “the best available vehicle for force protection.”

The Army has already responded to the notion of reprogramming funding for the war effort, which the SRPC notes:

First and foremost, reprogramming requests are generally inefficient and certainly much less optimal than actually receiving the funds up-front. In a letter signed by the Chief of Staff of each of the Services, the Generals noted that “reprogramming is a short-term, cost-inefficient solution that wastes our limited resources.”
Next, reprogramming is itself not without cost. Since reprogramming is essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul, when the Department takes funds to support one program over another, that action must come at the expense of the program from which the funds are taken. As General Schoomaker notes, “These [reprogramming] actions can disrupt and desynchronize our next-todeploy units as they prepare for war, possibly compromising future readiness and strategic depth.

It should be fairly obvious to anyone who has worked in a large organization — and especially in government and the DoD — that money can’t just be shifted around overnight. It takes a great deal of accounting and oversight to manage the funds, and moving it around requires freezing spening until the money gets transferred to where it is needed. It will cost a fortune to accomplish this, degrading our readiness and halting projects all across the board.
It’s a Mickey Mouse solution to a problem that Congress created, and all the Democrats can do is to tell the Army to blow millions of dollars while it plays politics with the war.
UPDATE: Bush has made his speech, and it wasn’t bad. I wish he had spent more time talking about the pork projects — pick a few to show the ridiculous nature of the way they sold this bill to the one-vote majorities in both chambers. He also kept giving that annoying half-smile of his, a tic that undercuts his credibility. However, other than that, he sounded firm and clear on the reasons for rejecting the timetables, including the way the bill hamstrings commanders in the field.

Today is the fourth anniversary of George Bush’s speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln — the one Democrats and anti-war activists call the “Mission Accomplished” speech. The crew of the carrier flew the banner because their mission had indeed been accomplished — they had successfully supported the invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government, and were returning to the United States. Instead, everyone has attributed the banner’s message to George Bush.
All that proves is that they didn’t listen to what he had to say four years ago. As A Better Where To Find points out, Bush hardly communicated anything remotely like “the war is over”:

We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We’re bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We’re pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We’ve begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. We’re helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people.
The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. Then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq.

Nowhere in this speech did Bush declare that the war was over, nor that we could leave Iraq. In fact, he made it plain that we would stick by the Iraqi people and remain in place until they could establish a democratic government that could secure the nation.
Not everyone on the Left was fooled by the banner. Hillary Clinton, in a speech that preceded Bush’s, also made it clear that the overall mission was far from over:

Tonight President Bush will address our Nation and will tell the world that Operation Iraqi Freedom’s military action is over, at least insofar as major military engagements may be required. We know we will have continuing problems, like those we have seen in the last few days. But it is true we are now moving toward the second phase, which is the rebuilding of Iraq. So this colloquy we are having today is especially timely because of the President’s announcement this evening.

And that much has been true. We have not had major military operations in the same sense as the invasion. We have been engaged in police actions intended on securing portions of cities against attacks, not major military maneuvers such as the opening days of the conflict. Those police actions are still deadly, but they represent the traditional role of stabilization for an allied government.
This meme has all sorts of holes in it, mostly involving a refusal to engage in an intellectually honest manner about what was said and done four years ago today. The same people who complain that the pre-war intel of two administrations and most of the world’s spy agencies wasn’t perfect seem to have no issue using half-truths and less in a weak attempt to score points four years later.

Congress passed its Iraq war supplemental bill last week, but the White House still has not received it. The holdup, according to Congressional Quarterly (via National Review), is that Nancy Pelosi has not yet signed the bill. And the reason for the delay? Apparently, Pelosi has no idea what Congress passed:

The conference report on the bill (HR 1591 – H Rept 110-107) was adopted by the House and cleared by the Senate last week, but Pelosi, D-Calif., wanted time to personally read it and sign it before sending it to Pennsylvania Avenue.
“It’s a major piece of legislation and you have to go through it word for word and line by line,” Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami said Monday. “She believes this is very important legislation, which she will sign and the president will receive Tuesday.”
The White House had wanted to get the bill and send it back, complete with the president’s veto message, before the weekend.

John Boehner wants everyone to know just how ridiculous this is:

Now we’ve heard everything. The Speaker recommended the conference report on the war funding bill last week, voted for it last week, and could have sent it to the President as early as last Thursday when the Senate passed it (the House was in session). But NOW she wants to read it?? Wow.

Once again, the Democrats want to play political games with the troops while twisting themselves into contortions to deny it. They planned all along to time the arrival of the bill with the anniversary of the so-called “Mission Accomplished” speech on the carrier USS Abraham LIncoln:

Democratic leaders in Congress are planning a special ceremony on Tuesday afternoon to send President Bush a bill that sets timetables for troop withdrawal from Iraq.
The timing is no accident. It comes on the fourth anniversary of the day Mr. Bush stood on an aircraft carrier under the banner “Mission Accomplished” and declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.
The Democrats’ ceremony, featuring the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, is part of the elaborate political theater at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue surrounding the Iraq spending bill, which is destined to produce only the second veto of Mr. Bush’s presidency.
But with Mr. Bush planning to spend Tuesday in Florida talking with military commanders, the White House was being coy on Monday about what kind of theatrics of his own — if any — he might stage. Democrats, however, said they expected the veto to come Wednesday.

I guess Nancy Pelosi would rather be thought idiotic than cynically manipulative.