The Tenth Amendment guaranteed the states' rights to self-government.  If the states had not delegated a particular power to the federal government, and if the Constitution had not forbidden the power to the states, then it remained as reserved to the states or the people.  For Thomas Jefferson this was the cornerstone of the entire Constitution.  Its presence in the Bill of Rights serves to remind us of the importance of self government in the minds of Americans of the early republic.

Since the states existed prior to the federal government, they were the source of whatever power the federal government had.  Thomas Jefferson determined the constitutionality of proposed legislation on this basis; if he did not find the power spelled out in Article I, Section 8, then it remained reserved to the states.  It would be unconstitutional for the federal government to exercise the proposed power.  If the Tenth Amendment were still taken seriously, most of the federal government's present activities would not exist.  That's why no one in Washington ever mentions it.

This war was not as claimed [by the left] about piles of WMDs.  The United States went to war to enforce the truce in the first Gulf War, and the authority of the UN and international law.

The end of Gulf one established conditions by which the UN still at war [technically] with Saddam-would let him stay in power.  

Saddam had to disarm and end his programs to develop WMDs.  Violations were a basis to resume the war.  The other UN resolutions were failed attempts to enforce the others that ended Gulf one.

With the help of our "friends on the Security Council [France, Russia & China] Saddam went around sanctions, obstructed inspectors, and did not obey the resolutions.  Then in '98 threw inspectors out.

Even Clinton knew how bad this was but all he did was shoot missles into Iraq, and have Congress pass the Iraqi Liberation Act [was only to help Iraqis to overthrow Saddam].

Saddam had shown he would disregard arms inspectors & arms control agreements he signed.  It was clear to every intelligence agency in the world-that Saddam wanted to break the UN sanctions and to develop WMDs if he could.  Why would Saddam throw out the inspectors if it wasn't his idea to build WMDs [and you better believe he would use them]?

You can see that WMDs was not the rationale for going to war.

The use of force authorization that Bush obtained on October 16, 2002, has only two clauses that mention WMDs.  The possession of WMD by Saddam hardly could be the reason for going to war.  What this did stress were the 16 UN resolutions that Saddam ignored or defied.

There was no rush to war.  In Sept. 2002, Bush told the UN that they must enforce the resolutions Saddam disregarded or become "irrelevant."  That if the Security Council did not meet its obligations the US would do so.  Bush sent troops to the Gulf, which caused Saddam to readmit inspectors.  After gettin the authorization from Congress Bush got Resolution 1441 from the UN, which called on Saddam to disarm [show he had done so] make a report on WMDs "or serious consequences" will follow.  The deadline was in thirty days. 

Even Blix [a leftie] who was against the war, says 1441 was an ultimatum of war that Saddam failed to meet.   Now was there to be another ultimatum without consequence .  If there is never a consequence then the law is empty, and the word of the US and the UN would loose credibility. 

Back in '98 none other than Bill Clinton summarized the reason for enforcing the UN ultimatium.  He said "If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those that who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council, and the clear evidence of a weapons of mass distruction program."

Critics have claimed we could have contained Saddam without war, these are empty claims.  We could not have maintained troops on the border indefinitely.  The only reason the inspectors were let back in is because of the actions and threat of force by the Bush administration.

Again the reason to go to war was the defiance of the UN ultimatum [and previous UN resolutions].  The Powell presentation gave the impression that the reason for war was the WMD stockpiles, this clouded the debate about the war.  This became the basis for the left's attack for "misleading" us into war.

The war was not about WMDs; it was about Saddam's ten year definace of international law, and his determination to get rid of the UN's arms control in order to obtain WMDs.  There was no rush to war.  Both parties authorized the decision to go to war, there was a Security Council vote [which France, Russia and China were not going to honor].  It was not unilateral and not about a "non existant imminent threat" as the Presidents critics have charged.

This report republished with attribution to Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at www.stratfor.com.

After the Election: Democrats and Core Values

By Bart Mongoven

There is little doubt at this point that the Democratic Party is going to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 7. Though which way the Senate will go remains an open question, public and private polling data from both parties projects that the Republicans will lose more than 15 seats in the House. History shores up this prediction: Since World War II, there has been no precedent of a sitting president with approval ratings below 50 percent not losing at least 15 seats in a midterm.

The question -- which has been asked before and becomes particularly relevant now -- is what will Democrats do with this political power? Having led no part of the federal government for the past four years, the party's strategy has been focused primarily on attaining power -- but actually wielding it, and doing so effectively, is another proposition altogether.

As in the aftermath of all midterm elections, both parties will spend the next two years laying the groundwork for the next presidential election. For the Democrats, this will be a particularly complex challenge because of two conflicting requirements: One is a need to show effective leadership in legislation and policymaking, and the other involves the party's own long-term strategy -- embarked upon four years ago -- to define its core values and build grassroots support. Considering that the Democrats did not approach the 2006 election with a clear game plan -- and that their long-term strategy did not hinge on winning control of the House this year -- the decisions the party leadership now must make most likely will reflect its long-term needs and goals.

That said, the party will not be able to escape pressures in the near term -- with the key vectors being foreign policy and domestic issues. On both fronts, the goal of defining Democratic core values will play an important role.

A Problem of Definition

After losing control of Congress in 1994, the Democrats obviously did not want to spend 40 years in the wilderness (as the Republicans had from 1954 to that point). Following the defeats of 2000, which confirmed that simply moving toward the political center was not successful, the party decided to emulate the kind of long-term revitalization program that, they concluded, had been instrumental in the Republican surge during the late 1980s and early 90s. This meant establishing a small set of core values that the entire party could support.

The Republicans had built up their voter base on an intellectual foundation of support for free markets, conservative family values and an aggressive foreign policy. Democratic leaders argued that they needed to find similar values -- and, more to the point, that they needed to be "positive" values of what the party stands for rather than what it opposes. The formation of a "values statement" remains, at this point, a work in progress. But what is emerging is a drive toward a European-conservative approach to community and national solidarity, expressed particularly through an emphasis on economic fairness and equality, improved public health and a strong, idealistic foreign policy that balances realpolitik and liberal social values.

For either party, the strength of a values-based strategy is that it presents a broad set of themes that a variety of special interest groups can support and that voters in general will find unobjectionable.

Given the extremely broad array of special interests that currently make up the Democratic Party, the notion of corralling them around a central values statement seems hardly realistic. Nevertheless, this is the strategy upon which the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and a number of its political support groups, particularly the Center for American Progress, have embarked. They have begun to develop communications strategies that attempt to harmonize the interests of the party's constituent parts -- for instance, seeking common ground between labor and environmentalist groups, African-Americans and immigrants, liberals from the Northeast and gun owners from the Western mountain states.

The party now is trying to bring these diverse constituencies together behind the three core themes of equality, health and security. It is a project that the Democrats can only hope will jell before the 2008 election. A reminder of how challenging this can be was evident in the party's clumsy attacks against Wal-Mart in October: Prominent Democrats singled out the company for criticism over its pay and health care policies. The attacks certainly appealed to a cross-section of the Democratic base -- labor, environmentalists and Northeastern liberals -- but they also alienated middle- and lower-income families who rely on the retailer's ability to keep prices low. It is precisely in this kind of gray zone that DNC Chairman Howard Dean's skills in grassroots outreach and communication will be most sorely needed.

War and Anti-War Policy

As his 2004 presidential campaign demonstrated, Dean is expert at communicating with the grassroots and, particularly, in balancing political moderation with a nuanced anti-war message.

Obviously, voter dissatisfaction over the conduct of the war in Iraq has been the greatest challenge for the Republicans to overcome, and a key factor in the Democrats' campaign performance this year. Sen. John Kerry's recent gaffe notwithstanding, the Democrats have deftly played the politics concerning the war. They have not opposed the war per se, or -- as a party -- called for the troops' withdrawal, or even a time frame for withdrawal. When pressed, candidates have addressed the issue as a question of competence and said that Democrats would have done a better job of prosecuting the war. At the same time, the party has reached out to stridently anti-war constituencies, making it clear that they have a voice within the party. Retaining the energy that the anti-war constituents have brought to the party will be important in the next phase of the political cycle.

The first significant challenge facing the Democrats once they are in power, of course, will be pressure to state an unambiguous position on the war: Is the party for, or against, keeping troops in Iraq? Party leaders thus far have shown no signs of answering this question definitively and appear to believe that they can finesse the issue for two more years at least. Since troops already are in Iraq, the party will not advocate a "cut and run" strategy but speak in favor of achieving whatever strategic victory is possible. The key message they will seek to convey, however, is that under Democratic leadership, the country will not again find itself in such a war.

To convey this message effectively, the Democrats first would be required to show how the GOP's foreign policy principles led to the war, and from there, how Democratic foreign policy principles would have led to a different outcome. This is best accomplished not by proposing legislation, but through a series of hearings and investigations. In this way, the Democrats would be able to criticize Republicans and put them on the defensive -- without necessarily drawing attention to their own party's positive, alternative policy (or lack thereof).

Foreign policy matters apart from the war will be characterized, most simply, as an adjustment of Clinton administration principles to the post-9/11, Iraq and nuclear North Korea era. Clintonian principles -- an inherent inclination toward multilateralism, a liberal social ethos with global appeal and balanced use of "hard" and "soft" forms of power -- will be held up not just as antidotes to eight years of Republican "arrogance," but as a wiser policy, better suited to the challenges now facing the country.

Meanwhile, Democrats will try to tie social issues -- such as energy and climate change, free trade, globalization and development lending -- to the front-burner foreign policy issues: war and terrorism.

Politics or Power

The second broad challenge the Democrats will face is whether to use their power in Congress to achieve lasting goals, or whether to wield it as a bludgeon. Of course, it is too simplistic to phrase this as an either/or decision -- a little of both is coming. However, because the party has shown signs that it is invested in a long-term revitalization strategy, it follows logically that the next two years will be focused primarily on building its power base rather than formulating actual policy.

This relates, in a crucial way, to the goal of defining the party's core values.

In federal-level politics, as in most government policymaking, issues advocates seldom see their ideals achieved. Many activists move to Washington as idealists, working toward a specific moral outcome, and quickly grow frustrated by the inherent tendency of the political machine to reward compromise and celebrate half-measures as full victories.

Party leaders, of course, recognize that the realism of policymaking stifles idealism. The Democrats, attempting to build grassroots support, must determine what level of compromise they can afford without losing the attention and dedication of the grassroots party activists, who tend to be idealists. (This is an issue that has plagued the Republicans and the evangelical right, as well, for years.)

The problem is that the party is still in the midst of defining the core values that will undergird its policy efforts for the next 15 years. Without having established a firm set of values in the minds of the public, the Democrats will be leery of pursuing any policies that would be viewed as setting a precedent -- putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. Any legislation that could be perceived as a compromise of the party's emerging, but still amorphous, values -- even if it results in momentary political gains -- would bring some risk of disillusionment among the grassroots activists and of hurting the party's momentum.

Let's consider what this means in practice.

If the Democratic Party tries in earnest to change the minimum wage, for instance, one option would be to accept a compromise/partial victory in Congress -- meaning that it would have to negotiate a minimum wage with a Republican Senate, and in a form that the president would not veto. The other option would be to pursue the theme-building approach, trying to build the case that the Democrats are the party of "economic fairness." With this option, the Democrats would fight for a minimum wage hike that could not withstand opposition from the Republicans (or the public overall). The legislation would fail, but the political differences between the parties would be clearly delineated.

Similarly, Democrats can try to use their power in Congress to offer new "access to health insurance" laws that moderate Senate Republicans can accept and the president likely would be forced to sign. Or they can propose numerous measures that would nationalize large portions of the health care system, forcing Republicans behind the traditional barricade of opposing what they can be counted on to dismiss as "socialized medicine." Again, legislative progress would be forestalled, but the Democratic Party's core values would be further defined in the public's mind.

Dozens of issues offer similar opportunities for either immediate changes that most Democrats would consider improvements over the status quo, or for long-range political weapons that could help to strengthen the party's brand. As in the foreign policy arena, making choices and finding balance will be difficult.

Clearly, should the Democrats win the House, they will have a powerful foundation from which to work toward the 2008 presidential election. It is far from clear whether they will be able to use their position effectively in that regard. We expect the party will spend the next two years building toward long-term political goals -- coalescing the membership around core values -- rather than trying to achieve short-range policy goals. Senators Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois are the two presidential hopefuls who appear to understand the strategy best -- and who are the most clearly intent on applying it to their own campaigns. It is their actions and statements in the coming months that will provide the best clues as to the party's next move.

This is for those on the liberal left who see Karl Rove "dirty tricks" all over.  Who see voter fraud every time Republicans win an election.  Those who believe that the government [ours] really attacked the Twin Towers and attacked the Pentagon on 9/11.

"The road from legitimate suspicion to rampant paranoia is very much shorter than we think." 

From a Investors Business Daily editorial about the speech Hillary gave on Halloween.

In a bid to appear presidential on the eve of an expected landslide re-election to the Senate, and two years before the 2008 presidential sweepstakes, the former first lady presented her foreign policy vision to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Let's parse what the Democrat from New York asserted in her Halloween speech:

"We did not face the Cold War alone, and we cannot face the global terrorist threat or other profound challenges alone either."

Fact is, in many respects we were alone in aggressively fighting the Cold War. There was harsh opposition among our allies, as well as from leading Democrats in Congress, to Reagan's plans for a nuclear missile defense, the deployment of a new generation of nuclear missiles in Europe and his support for anti-communist insurgencies in Central America and elsewhere. France — or anyone — complaining about our leadership in the global war on terror is no rationale for a new "internationalism."

"Direct negotiations are not a sign of weakness; they're a sign of leadership."

Time and again, refusing to talk to tyrants and aggressors directly has proved to be an invaluable tool when used prudently. The very day of Hillary's speech, North Korea gave in and agreed to resume multilateral nuclear weapons negotiations after a long period of insisting on one-on-one talks with the U.S. — so our toughness prevailed.

Reagan's years-long refusal to meet with Soviet premiers strengthened the U.S. position when he finally met with Mikhail Gorbachev. Would Hillary launch direct negotiations today with, say, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? That would only strengthen his terrorist regime.

"(The Bush administration is guilty of a) simplistic division of the world into good and evil. They refuse to talk to anyone on the evil side, as some have called that idealistic. I call it dangerously unrealistic."

This is simply a denial of the fact that we are engaged in a world war. There is no doubt in the minds of Osama bin Laden, North Korea's Kim Jong Il and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez that the world is divided between America and other democratic nations, and the dictators and Islamofascists who wish us and all free people ill.

Former President Carter believed in talking to an Islamofascist Iranian regime that held more than 50 Americans hostage — a regime he helped place in power by pulling the rug out from under the Shah. It was only when Reagan, as he headed toward the presidency, promised to end talk and take action that our hostages were released — literally the hour he took office in 1981.

"The lost opportunities of the years since September 11th are the stuff of tragedy. . . . Five years later much of the world wonders what America is now."

Whatever else America is now, it is not the victim of any additional terrorist attacks on the homeland. The Bush administration has spent the last five years working with the intelligence and law enforcement organizations of other countries to foil more than a dozen terrorist plots. The Clinton administration, on the other hand, helped allow 9/11 to take place by its Justice Department building a wall preventing the FBI and CIA from sharing information on terrorists.

Speeches about the wonders of diplomacy may get standing ovations from packed houses of foreign policy elites in Manhattan. But Carter and Clinton have proved that when Democrats talk to our enemies, they usually get outsmarted. From the way Hillary's talking now, we can expect her foreign policy to be at least as flawed.

 

This report republished with attribution to Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at www.stratfor.com.

Taliban Psyops: Taking the Fight Abroad

By Kamran Bokhari

An al Qaeda strategist issued a statement over the weekend threatening that unless Canada withdraws its troops from Afghanistan, it will face terrorist attacks similar to 9/11 or the Madrid and London train bombings. Given al Qaeda's penchant for issuing threats, this statement by itself does not indicate a particularly heightened level of risk for Canadians, who have been in al Qaeda's crosshairs since the jihadist war with the West began. But then, al Qaeda is not known for making one-off threats.

In fact, the statement -- attributed to Hossam Abdul Raouf, a member of al Qaeda's information and strategy committee -- marked the second time in recent weeks that jihadists have singled out Canada for special mention over the prominent role it is playing in Afghanistan. In September, Ayman al-Zawahiri referred to the Canadian troops in Kandahar as "second-rate Crusaders." Along with these remarks has come a separate warning from the Taliban, threatening attacks on the soil of European countries that are part of the NATO offensive in Afghanistan.

That is worth saying again, with emphasis: The Taliban -- a nationalist religious movement -- threatened to carry out attacks against civilians on foreign soil, blurring the already fuzzy line between the Afghan group and its transnational militant counterpart, al Qaeda.

The timing of all of these statements centering on Afghanistan seems hardly accidental. In Canada, there is growing sentiment that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government is putting the country at risk by aiding what is perceived as, in truth, Washington's war. Canadian forces were deployed to Afghanistan under a Liberal government, but the Harper administration extended the length of the mission and, critics say, changed the mandate from peacekeeping to insurgent-fighting. With recent news that Canada is preparing to send Leopard tanks and CF-18 fighter jets into the fray, the country's military capabilities will be fully represented in Afghanistan -- and there is no fallback position if it then fails to defeat the Taliban. Voters also are dissatisfied over the absence of milestones by which to chart progress or determine an end point for the mission, and they are worried about the possibility of terrorist strikes on their own soil.

The general tenor of discussion is not unlike that in the United States, where the tally of Iraq war casualties is now a daily drumbeat underlying news coverage of the congressional election campaigns. There are some crucial differences, however: Because Afghanistan was a sanctuary for al Qaeda for years, the military invasion has never excited the kinds of political controversies that surround the Iraq war effort. While the attention of Americans and much of the world remains riveted on Iraq, the campaign in Afghanistan continues to grind away. But the outcome of this campaign -- at least as much as that in Iraq, if not more so -- has direct implications for the "global war on terrorism." As such, it bears careful consideration.

A Shift in the Military Balance

The recent spate of threats -- and particularly those from the Taliban -- is rooted, at least to some degree, in an increasingly confident military footing.

For most of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's time in power, the military situation has been primarily a stalemate. The young government in Kabul was not strong enough to control most of the country's territory, but was shored up by U.S.-led forces. The coalition forces were not able to eliminate the Taliban, which continued to move about with relative freedom in several southern provinces, but neither was the Taliban strong enough to quash either the coalition forces or the government in Kabul. The Karzai administration remained secure, though its power was circumscribed, and the Taliban waged a small- to medium-scale insurgency in the southern and eastern parts of the country.

This balance began to shift early last year. The Taliban, assisted by al Qaeda, began to engage in suicide bombings, surging to the north and east of their southern strongholds (where the guerrilla offensive continued). In fact, Taliban fighters were able to strike as far north as Kabul. This year, the frequency and intensity of these attacks climbed: So far, there have been some 80 suicide attacks, claiming more than 200 lives, compared to fewer than 20 in 2005. And in recent months, Western troops -- not just rival political targets in Afghanistan -- have been targeted with both suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices.

Perhaps the most noteworthy trend in all of this is that Taliban forces appear to be retaking some of the territory they lost following the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. They long have shown an ability to move in and out of the five key provinces where their strongholds are based -- Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul and Paktika -- but there now are signs that Taliban fighters could be, if not holding more ground, at least shoring up their support in outlying areas.



In fact, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in August went so far as to claim the Taliban now have "psychological and de facto military control of nearly half of Afghanistan," mapping out a line of control that runs right through the country's middle. We do not believe the Taliban firmly controls all of southern Afghanistan, but the line of control does conform with the areas of Taliban activity we have observed in recent months.

Sources of Strength

Several factors, both foreign and domestic, paved the way for this surge of Taliban influence. Let's consider these in turn:

• The U.S. military stance: After forcing the Taliban from power, U.S. and coalition forces -- with too few troops to adequately control a large and difficult terrain -- moved to staging periodic anti-Taliban operations in southern and eastern Afghanistan. These periodic disruptions, however, were followed by entrenchment, with the Taliban resettling and digging in between offensives.



• The military transition: Over the summer, U.S. forces began to surrender responsibility for the southern and eastern provinces to other NATO states, whose forces (even by their own admission) were ill-prepared to deal with the fierce insurgency there. Meanwhile, there appears to have been an influx of foreign jihadists, swelling the ranks of Taliban supporters.



• The economic situation: Though the Karzai administration has scored notable achievements -- crafting a new constitution and providing a system of elections at all levels of government -- it has not been able to improve the economy or the daily life of Afghan citizens. In a country that never fully recovered from the massive devastation visited on it by the Soviets, this would be an uphill battle for any government. One of the key points of friction for the Karzai government, however, is that it has cracked down on production of the main cash crop -- poppies -- leaving many Afghans without alternative forms of income. The Taliban, of course, have moved to capitalize on the discontent, reportedly offering money to new recruits and offering social services, such as medical care, for supporters. In some areas, the Taliban apparently have established parallel governments that include district administrators, judges and other officials.

There are other divisions that the Taliban exploit: ethnic ties and clan loyalties, for example, or the rift in cultural traditions. The U.S.-aligned Karzai government is portrayed as chipping away at good, old-fashioned religious and tribal mores. But the economic arena is where the rubber truly meets the road: NATO's top commander in Afghanistan, British Gen. David Richards, warned Oct. 8 that a majority of Afghans likely will turn toward the Taliban if their lives do not tangibly improve during the next six months.

Psychological Warfare

If Richards' assessment is correct, it takes little imagination to envision what could follow. Memories of the Soviet withdrawal and the painful civil war that ensued spring quickly to mind. For coalition states in the West, the failure of Operation Enduring Freedom (or "Operation Enduring Frustration," as one U.S. senator recently dubbed it) would be a crushing political blow. Finally, there is the distinct possibility that Afghanistan, or at least significant portions of it, could again become a sanctuary for transnational Islamist militants (and certainly, the top al Qaeda leaders now believed to be sheltering in northwestern Pakistan wouldn't have far to travel.)

This is not a foregone conclusion, of course, but the stage does appear to be set for intensifying military conflict in Afghanistan as the Taliban move to consolidate their gains. With the annual fighting season drawing to a close, it is interesting that the jihadists have lately been waging a psychological offensive, targeting not only the Canadian and other NATO troops who patrol the roadways of Afghanistan, but also -- with a wave of threats and warnings -- their home countries and communities. This could be construed as an effort to maintain psychological momentum during the winter, until frozen mountain passes thaw in the spring and military offensives can begin again in earnest.

The recent statements of Mullah Dadullah, a top Taliban military commander, are particularly intriguing in this regard. In a Sept. 17 interview with ABC News, he claimed to have 500 suicide bombers under his command, willing to deploy at any time, and said that 12,000 Taliban fighters were fighting under him in four southwestern provinces. "We have no shortage of fighters," he said. "In fact, we have so many of them that it is difficult to accommodate and arm and equip them. Some of them have been waiting for a year or more for their turn to be sent to the battlefield." Dadullah also was quoted as saying the Taliban is gathering strength to launch bigger attacks in Afghan cities -- particularly Kabul -- next spring. And he expressed his opinion that the United States had cleverly handed responsibility for Afghanistan's most dangerous provinces off to British, Canadian and Dutch allies and withdrawn.

Now, in terrorism analysis, we steer toward the view that those who have knowledge of specific operations or targets don't talk, and that those who talk, don't know. It's a rule of thumb that makes fairly specific operational statements like Dadullah's quite interesting to consider. We are in no position to judge whether his numerical estimates are on track -- though if they are, larger military formations, which would create easier targets for NATO airstrikes, likely would be avoided in favor of a higher tempo of small-unit guerrilla engagements. His mention of Kabul, where foreign troops and the enemy government are centered, divulges nothing that would not be otherwise be reasonably assumed. The statement on the whole is designed to be a psychological weapon, used to drive a wedge between NATO allies and stir up dissent among the public in NATO states.

Together, the Taliban and al Qaeda appear to be using the psychological weapon in a focused way, attempting to break the back of political support for the war effort in Canada and other U.S.-allied countries. The jihadists are very much aware of the tone of Canadian politics and want to capitalize on the public's misgivings about the war effort. For the Taliban and al Qaeda, fueling the existing malaise in the war-weary West -- or forcing a general crisis of confidence among the coalition partners -- could be an effective way of weakening them all over the long term.

Whether the Taliban will manage to follow up this psychological offensive and consolidate their military successes when the fighting season resumes next spring is, at this point, an open question. But their staying power, after five years of warfare, is not.

This report republished with attribution to Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at www.stratfor.com.

The Election and Investigatory Powers of Congress

By George Friedman

There is now only a week to go before midterm congressional elections in the United States. The legislative outcome is already fairly clear. President George W. Bush lost the ability to drive legislation through Congress when he had to back away from his Social Security proposals. That situation will continue: The president will not be able to generate legislation without building coalitions. On the other hand, Congress will not be able to override his vetoes. That means that, regardless of whether the Democrats take the House of Representatives (as appears likely) or the Senate (which appears less likely but still possible), the basic architecture of the American legislative process will remain intact. Democrats will not gain much power to legislate; Republicans will not lose much.

If the Democrats take control of the House from the Republicans, the most important change will not be that Nancy Pelosi becomes House Speaker, but that the leadership of House committees will shift -- and even more significant, that there will be upheaval of committee staffs. Republicans will shift to minority staff positions -- and have to let go of a lot of staffers -- while the Democrats will get to hire a lot of new ones. These staffers serve two functions. The first is preparing legislation, the second is managing investigations. Given the likelihood of political gridlock, there will be precious little opportunity for legislation to be signed into law during the next two years -- but there likely will be ample opportunity and motivation for congressional investigations.

Should the Democrats use this power to their advantage, there will be long-term implications for both the next presidential election and foreign policy options in the interim.

One of the most important things that the Republicans achieved, with their control of both the House and Senate, was to establish control over the type and scope of investigations that were permitted. Now, even if control of only the House should change hands, the Democrats will be making those decisions. And, where the GOP's goal was to shut down congressional investigations, the Democrat Party's goal will be to open them up and use them to shape the political landscape ahead of the 2008 presidential election.

It is important to define what we mean by "investigation." On the surface, congressional investigations are opportunities for staffers from the majority party to wield subpoena power in efforts to embarrass their bosses' opponents. The investigations also provide opportunities for members of Congress and senators to make extensive speeches that witnesses have to sit and listen to when they are called to testify -- a very weird process, if you have ever seen it. Congressional investigations are not about coming to the truth of a matter in order for the laws of the republic to be improved for the common good. They are designed to extract political benefit and put opponents in the wrong. (Republicans and Democrats alike use the congressional investigative function to that end, so neither has the right to be indignant.)

For years, however, Democrats have been in no position to unilaterally call hearings and turn their staffs and subpoena powers loose on a topic -- which means they have been precluded from controlling the news cycle. The media focus intensely on major congressional hearings. For television networks, they provide vivid moments of confrontation; and the reams of testimony, leaked or official, give the print media an enormous opportunity to look for embarrassing moments that appear to reveal something newsworthy. In the course of these hearings, there might even be opportunities for witnesses to fall into acts of perjury -- or truth-telling -- that can lead to indictments and trials.

To reverse their position, the Democrats need not capture both the House and Senate next week. In fact, from the party's standpoint, that might not even be desirable. The Senate and House historically have gotten in each other's way in the hearing process. Moreover, there are a lot of Democratic senators considering a run for the presidency, but not many members of Congress with those ambitions. Senators who get caught up in congressional hearings can wind up being embarrassed themselves -- and with the competing goals of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and some of the other candidates, things could wind up a mess. But if the House alone goes to Democrats, Pelosi would be positioned to orchestrate a series of hearings from multiple committees and effectively control the news cycles. Within three months of the new House being sworn in, the political landscape could be dominated by hearings -- each week bringing new images of witnesses being skewered or news of embarrassing files being released. Against this backdrop, a new generation of Democratic congressmen would be making their debuts on the news networks, both while sitting on panels, and on the news channels afterward.

Politically, this would have two implications. First, the ability of the White House to control and direct public attention would decline dramatically. Not only would the White House not be able to shut down unwanted debate, but it would lack the ability even to take part in setting the agenda. Each week's subject would be chosen by the House Democratic leadership. Second, there will be a presidential election in two years that the Democrats want to win. Therefore, they would use congressional hearings to shape public opinion along the lines their party wants. The goal would be not only to embarrass the administration, but also to showcase Democratic strengths.

The Senate can decide to hold its own hearings, of course, and likely would if left in Republican hands. The problem is that, at the end of the day, the most interesting investigations would involve the Bush administration and corporations that can be linked to it. A GOP-controlled Senate could call useful hearings, but they would be overwhelmed by the Democratic fireworks. They just would not matter as much.

So let's consider, from a foreign policy standpoint, what would be likely matters for investigation:

• What did the Bush administration really know about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Did Bush dismiss advice from the CIA on Iraq?


• Did the administration ignore warnings about al Qaeda attacks prior to 9/11?

These, of course, would be the mothers of all investigations. Everything would be dragged out and pored over. The fact that there have been bipartisan examinations by the 9/11 commission would not matter: The new hearings would be framed as an inquiry into whether the 9/11 commission's recommendations were implemented -- and that would open the door to re-examine all the other issues.

Following close on these would be investigations into:

• Whether the Department of Homeland Security is effective.


• Whether the new structure of the intelligence community works.


• Whether Halliburton received contracts unfairly -- a line of inquiry that could touch Vice President Dick Cheney.


• Whether private contractors like Blackwater are doing appropriate jobs in Iraq.


• Whether the Geneva Conventions should apply in cases of terrorist detentions.


• Whether China is violating international trade agreement.

And so on. Every scab would be opened -- as is the right of Congress, the tendency of the nation in unpopular wars, and likely an inevitable consequence of these midterm elections.

We can expect the charges raised at these hearings to be serious, and to come from two groups. The first will be Democratic critics of the administration. These will be unimportant: Such critics, along with people like former White House security adviser Richard Clarke, already have said everything they have to say. But the second group will include another class -- former members of the administration, the military and the CIA who have, since the invasion of Iraq, broken with the administration. They have occasionally raised their voices -- as, for instance, in Bob Woodward's recent book -- but the new congressional hearings would provide a platform for systematic criticism of the administration. And many of these critics seem bruised and bitter enough to avail themselves of it.

This intersects with internal Republican politics. At this point, the Republicans are divided into two camps. There are those who align with the Bush position: that the war in Iraq made sense and that, despite mistakes, it has been prosecuted fairly well on the whole. And there are those, coalesced around Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Warner, who argue that, though the rationale for the war very well might have made sense, its prosecution by Donald Rumsfeld has led to disaster. The lines might be evenly drawn, but for the strong suspicion that Sen. John McCain is in the latter camp.

McCain clearly intends to run for president and, though he publicly shows support for Bush, there is every evidence that McCain has never forgiven him for the treatment he received in the primaries of 2000. McCain is not going to attack the president, nor does he really oppose the war in Iraq, but he has shown signs that he feels that the war has not been well prosecuted. This view, shared publicly by recently retired military commanders who served in Iraq, holds out Rumsfeld as the villain. It is not something that McCain is going to lead the charge on, but in taking down Rumsfeld, McCain would be positioned to say that he supported the war and the president -- but not his secretary of defense, who was responsible for overseeing the prosecution of the war.

From McCain's point of view, little would be more perfect than an investigation into the war by a Democrat-controlled House during which former military and Defense Department officials pounded the daylights out of Rumsfeld. This would put whole-hearted Republican supporters of the president in a tough position and give McCain -- who, as a senator, would not have to participate in the hearings -- space to defend Bush's decision but not his tactics. The hearings also would allow him to challenge Democratic front-runners (Clinton and Obama) on their credentials for waging a war. They could be maneuvered into either going too far and taking a pure anti-war stance, or into trying to craft a defense policy at which McCain could strike. To put it another way, aggressively investigating an issue like the war could wind up blowing up in the Democrats' faces, but that is so distant and subtle a possibility that we won't worry about it happening -- nor will they.

What does seem certain, however, is this: The American interest in foreign policy is about to take an investigatory turn, as in the waning days of the Vietnam War. Various congressional hearings, like those of the Church Committee, so riveted the United States in the 1970s and so tied down the policymaking bureaucracy that crafting foreign policy became almost impossible.

George W. Bush is a lame duck in the worst sense of the term. Not only are there no more elections he can influence, but he is heading into his last two years in office with terrible poll ratings. And he is likely to lose control of the House of Representatives -- a loss that will generate endless hearings and investigations on foreign policy, placing Bush and his staff on the defensive for two years. Making foreign policy in this environment will be impossible.

Following the elections, five or six months will elapse before the House Democrats get organized and have staff in place. After that, the avalanche will fall in on Bush, and 2008 presidential politics will converge with congressional investigations to overwhelm his ability to manage foreign policy. That means the president has less than half a year to get his house in order if he hopes to control the situation, or at least to manage his response.

Meanwhile, the international window of opportunity for U.S. enemies will open wider and wider.

This is part of an article from national review the entire article can be read here

Conservatives have had plenty of cause to complain that “Republicans don’t deserve reelection this year.” But deserve has nothing to do with it. This election does not provide a cost-free opportunity to punish congressional Republicans for their many sins. A Democratic Congress will have real-world consequences for taxpayers, the economy, the judiciary, immigration, Iraq, and the War on Terror. No matter how disappointing the GOP has been, the country doesn’t deserve a Democratic majority.

Are we saying that the case for the Republicans largely consists of the fact that the Democrats are worse? Yes, actually. Every election presents a choice, and voters have to decide which alternative is better than the other. For conservative voters, that is not as hard a call as it has been made out to be.

From opinionjournal.com


Arabs and the Midterms  

Arab governments are looking for change in U.S. policy 
in the Middle East after the midterm elections," 
the Associated Press reports: 
 
One thing they hope for is that a politically weakened 
President Bush would talk with Iran and Syria. They also 
hope he would show greater interest in the Palestinians 
and find a way out of the crisis in Iraq. 
 
 
So if you want a politically weakened president cutting 
deals with terror-sponsoring dictatorships, vote Democratic 
on Nov. 7.