ANDY MARTIN ON THE DEMOCRATS' DELUSION IN IRAQ

NEWS FROM:
ANDY MARTIN
Executive Editor
ContrarianCommentary.com

“Factually Correct, Not
Politically Correct”

THE IRAQ QUAGMIRE: PART THREE

THE WEEK THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY FELL TO EARTH;

AND THE WEEK THE REPUBLICANS MAY HAVE WON THE 2008 ELECTION

THE DEMOCRATS’ DELUSION IS PUNCTURED BY REALITY

(CHICAGO)(September 29, 2007) The Democrats fell to earth this week. Thud. The great shell game, the great con game they were conducting with their “base” finally ended. Their grand illusion and great delusion exploded in New Hampshire.

This column has been in preparation for several weeks. I watched the Democrats campaign for president with increasingly flatulent promises to withdraw our troops, when it was becoming increasingly obvious that the troops could not be withdrawn with the stroke of a pen. I believed that the Democrats were conducting a con game with their voters, promising something they could not deliver and knew could not be delivered. Ever. How long could it last? It ended before I could write this column.

In New Hampshire.

At a candidates’ debate the three leading candidates all admitted there could be U. S. troops in Iraq at the end of their “first” administration in 2013! In other words, there are no easy solutions to the Iraq quagmire. All of the Democrats bluster and all of the fatuous promises about withdrawing tomorrow or next week at the latest, have exploded.

This is not to say that efforts to end the war should be suspended. Beneath all of the Washington preening and posturing there is a healthy debate going on about what our tactics and strategy should be in the Middle East. Indeed, in our democracy that is what politics and policy should be about: challenging opponents, combating errors, proffering new ideas. I have never hesitated to disagree with and castigate the Bush administration even though I am a Republican. That’s my job. Pity they didn’t listen. I bet now they wish they had. My unpopular reporting both before the war and from Iraq in 2003 looks pretty prescient. My claim to be an "expert" is based on a solid foundation of public commentary and analysis.

Were Democrats were listening this week? I am sure they were. The base must have cracked. They heard Barack Obama say the troops were not coming out yesterday. Ditto for Clinton. Ditto for Edwards. The three “Dittoheads.”

Moveon.org, the new furhur of the Democratic Party, has not been heard from, yet; but they can’t be happy to hear the troops are staying. That admission ends the best rationale for a change in Washington.

The Republicans may have won the 2008 election this week. By accident. My guess is that when the history of the 2008 election is written, we will identify the Democrats’ debate as the turning point, the precise time when reality began to set in with the Democrats, and when reality began to sink in with the electorate. After all, if the troops are staying, whom do you trust to best support them? Not that either party really does right by our men and women in uniform, but would you rather have Dick Durbin or a Republican overseeing the welfare and well-being of our troops abroad? The upshot? More divided government.

The Democrats were always selling an illusion. This week they had to face their own delusions and admit they were bunkum artists.

Don’t get me wrong, I favor bringing our men and women home as quickly as possible, as rapidly as feasible. But I also realize that running for the door, leaving behind a bloodbath would destroy long-term prospects for American policy. Colin Powell was right. We broke it; now we own the mess.

I was an opponent of the war when Obama was an opponent, in 2002. Barry O and I have that in common. And I have openly and publicly challenged Republican leaders to face the same reality on their side that Democrats have now had to confront on theirs. The right-wing base does not like reality any more than left-wingers do. That they have in common. But cheap talk is just that, in both parties.

Politicians, of course, never want to face reality. They prefer complacency to reality. Always. Their own illusions are so much more comforting. That’s why we have elections on a set schedule. To make people confront reality. And make decisions.

And that’s where the Moveon.org types now play a role. Are they going to accept a nominee for president who admits U. S. troops may be in Iraq in 2013? Is that going to be the bipartisan base-line of the presidential debates next year? Or is Moveon.org going to seek to inflate the electoral prospects of one of the other presidential candidates who promise “immediate” withdrawal. I don’t know.

What I do know is that by admitting the troop withdrawal issue is not a simple one, the Democrats have given Republicans an opening. And as Republicans are known to do, they will exploit that opening, probably winning the White House in 2008.

My guess is that when the congress convenes in 2009, and the new president is sworn in, we will see divided government, again. Democrats will control congress, and Republicans will retake the White House. All because of a little campaign candor that began this week in New Hampshire.

On to Tehran? Anyone?
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Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and media critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers regional, national and world events with forty years of experience. He is America's most respected independent foreign policy analyst. Andy has been reporting from the Middle East since 1970; he became involved with the study of revolutionary warfare under Professor Bernard Fall during the mid 1960’s, and later became a founder of the Revolutionary War Research Center, a consortium in Washington and New York. He served as a Baghdad Bureau Chief in 2003.

Columns also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com and ContrarianCommentary.wordpress.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639. Web sites: ContrarianCommentary.com; AndyforUSSenator.com

BARACK OBAMA: MISSING IN ACTION [by Andy Martin]

NEWS FROM:
ANDY MARTIN
Executive Editor
ContrarianCommentary.com

“Factually Correct, Not
Politically Correct”


BARACK OBAMA: MISSING IN ACTION

BARRY O IS MISSING AT A CANDIDATES’ DEBATE; MISSING IN JENA, LOUISIANA; AND MISSING ON THE FLOOR OF THE U. S. SENATE

“ONE, TWO THREE STRIKES YOU’RE OUT ON THE OLD CAMPAIGN TRAIL”

(CHICAGO)(September 21, 2007) Barry Obama is hiding under his bed, again. Now that I am a candidate for U. S. Senator in Illinois I don’t get to write about him as much as I used to. My job as an investigative editor in 2004-2007 was to be a pathfinder, to point out the truth when the “mainstream” media were hiding the truth about Obama from their readers and viewers. And I succeeded. Big time.

Now even the main street media have “discovered” that Obama is not all that he claims to be. Unfortunately for his supporters, they have not yet discovered that Obama is only out for #1 Barry O and for no one else.

This week Obama went missing in action three times. Maybe it’s three strikes and he’s out. Obama knows he is not going to be elected president. Don't sell Barry short. He’s not stupid. He is using the “hopes” and fears of his supporters to build a national, even worldwide platform for a mega-millions killing after the campaign ends. Obama will be a valuable commodity. Business will pay big time. And when the time comes, Obama will be selling. That’s the only way to explain his curious behavior in the past few days.

Obama had his first Norma Desmond moment at a candidates debate in Iowa. Like the fictional Norma Desmond of Sunset Boulevard, Obama said that the debates had become too “small” for him. Obama issued a “statement” saying he was not going to waste his time debating his opponents. Obama was too big for that. Statement #1.

Then there were Jessie Jackson’s comments, promptly denied, that Obama was acting “white” and not supporting African-Americans. I will have more to say about Jena, Louisiana and the racist justice there in another column. But Jena is a legitimate news story, made larger by the outstanding national coverage of the Chicago Tribune, and it has become a focal point of the “soft” racism that still infects the South and the Democratic Party. They don’t lynch people any more; they just hang nooses to remind people who is in charge.

People went to protest in Jena, but Barry O was missing. Another issue that was “too small” for him. Instead, like a distant emperor Obama issued a mealy-mouthed “statement” supporting the marchers. Martin Luther King led the civil rights moment from the front of the parade, not by issuing statements from his office. Statement #2.

Obama does not want to be an African-American leader. Not enough money in that. No, Obama may not have been to the mountaintop; but he has been to the bank vault and the stock broker. He knows where the real money is. He wants to be what he has become: White America’s African-American leader, the Democratic Party’s African-American leader, their antidote to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and the others.

Rightfully or wrongfully, Obama thinks he is too big and too good to waste on mere African-American issues, the same way he was blind to the slum housing being run by his white contributors in the backyard of his state senate district in Chicago. Obama’ blindness is cold and calculating.

Finally, there was the senate vote to defend General Petraeus. Obama betrayed his friends and emboldened his enemies.
I happen to agree with President Bush and most Republicans—and most Americans—that the anti-Petraeus ad was despicable. People should be able to Bush-bash if they want. After all Bush makes the policies, not Petraeus.

But we have had over two hundred years of civilian, non-political military leadership in this country. Politicians make the decisions and take the blame; soldiers obey their superiors or resign. In turn, we don't attack our men and women in uniform for doing what we tell them to do. Elected officials are responsible. And the system works well.

Petraeus is an honorable officer. And whatever you may have thought of invading Iraq (I was against it when Barry O was against it) we have to deal with the reality that we made a mess and we have to clean up the mess and not run away from the mess we have made. Petraeus is an honorable officer and, more importantly, a good officer who has learned from the mistakes of the past and is trying to get us, well, OUT. It is worth remembering that the U. S. Army was ADAMANTLY AGAINST THE IRAQ INVASION. So moveon.org’s ad was even more despicable and dishonorable than our politicians have claimed.

More importantly, Obama was a friend of moveon.org. He has spoken at their functions. Did he stand by his friends and vote against the resolution condemning moveon.org’s anti-Petraeus ad? Nope. Obama betrayed moveon.org and stood silent.

Once again, Barry O was there with a “statement.” Statement #3. Statements, statements, Barry issues more statements than a banker. Always from the rear echelon. Obama explained he did not vote on the moveon.org condemnation to “protest” against the dynamics of democracy, which is, after all, based on voting.

In plain simple English, let me make my statement: Barry Obama is a political coward who has no business running for a leadership role in our nation. If the people of Illinois are stupid enough to reelect him, well they were stupid enough to elect Obama in the first place. But he is only one of 100 votes. But whatever else Obama has proven this week, he has been missing in action on three (count ‘em) battlefields. He betrays friend and foe alike. Barry Obama is not a leader. Never was. Never will be.

Obama is just a very glib, successful huckster and snake-oil salesman who is building himself up for an auction sale to the higher bidder. Take that from the “old pathfinder;” that’s my statement on his “statements.”

CLOSING NOTE: A word of congratulations and appreciation to Chicago Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet. Three years ago, in the early days of the Obama phenomenon, I felt Sweet took a sycophant’s approach to reporting on Obama. But the Sun-Times has developed the most comprehensive and the most honest coverage of Obama. Sweet has grown into a genuine skeptic about the true dimensions of the Barry O scam. Congratulations Lynn. And welcome.
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Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and media critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers regional, national and world events with forty years of experience. He is currently a candidate for U. S. Senator from Illinois. Columns also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639. Web sites: ContrarianCommentary.com; AndyforUSSenator.com.

ANDY MARTIN CALLS FORCTA REFORMS

CONTRARIAN COMMENTARY FOR SEPTEMBER 12, 2007
MEDIA SAY CHICAGO FACES “DOOMSDAY,” BUT MAYBE IT’S TIME FOR PEOPLE TO FACE REALITY
AFTER FORTY-TWO YEARS IN ILLINOIS POLITICS, ANDY MARTIN FACES ANOTHER “CTA CRISIS”
(Chicago, September 12, 2007) “Doomsday” is coming to Chicago this Sunday, September 16th. Oh? You didn’t know? How could you not have known? The papers and broadcast media provide a daily sandwich board of inflammatory coverage about the “failure” of the legislature to bail out the CTA. Ride the CTA trains or buses? You will see red signs stating “insufficient state funding.” (I actually do use the CTA and read this stuff.)
Well, let me provide a little perspective. I first went to the Illinois legislature as a University of Illinois college intern in 1965. Can you guess what the main issue was? Yup. The “CTA's funding crisis.” Forty-two years on, nothing has changed except the lower standard of service provided to the public.
Is public transit a “public good,” as economists would call it? Well, yes and no. Clearly, we can’t each have our own transit system, bicycles excepted. And a complex, urban/suburban/exurban society needs ways for masses of people to go and come. Therefore, the need for mass transportation cannot be denied.
But it does not necessarily follow that the need for mass transit calls ipso facto for massive public subsidies. After all, we are the public. We are only paying the subsidies to ourselves. Or are we? Are we really subsidizing ourselves? Or are the rich taking from the poor, once again?
Let me provide two unpleasant, distinctly contrarian commentaries. As many times a week as I can get away, I use my own form of “mass transit,” and transit my mass along Lake Michigan using my bike. The sight is breathtaking. The lake is unbelievably beautiful. And the modern city that has grown up along the lake during the past half century is equally breathtaking.
In other words, there has been mass construction of luxury housing, people living closer to work and paying the very high Chicano real estate taxes. So Chicago has had an inexorable infusion of new public funds coming directly from the building boom downtown and along the lake.
Is the city any better off for this financial bonanza? Not at all. The thieves on the City council, and the Daley Family kleptocracy, keep spending the money faster than it comes it, perpetually claiming they have “deficits to close” by raising taxes. So giving local politicians more money does not mean more efficient government or more and improved service. The crooks just spend the increased revenue on themselves and their cronies.
Second, mass transit was privately owned at the turn of the last century. But businessmen were incessantly portrayed in the tabloid press as greedy and unscrupulous. They were prevented from raising fares. Politicians campaigned to “save the 5—cent fare” when costs were rising. There was a simple solution. De-privatize public transportation and make it a "public service.” Has public transit improved in the past 75 years? Not really.
A corollary scam was to create an umbrella federal “Federal Transit Administration” in the Johnson Administration, during the heyday of the “Great Society.” Why not tax Montanans and Missourians to pay for subway and bus rides in Chicago and New York? Why not, at the state level, create “mass transit authorities” to shift the bill to suburbanites? It was a great scam as long as it worked, and even though it has stopped working it still continues.
Does anyone vote for a CTA board? Is there any CTA management accountable to the public? Not at all. Only at Doomsday time. CTA management and its labor union giveaways are deeply insulated behind many, many layers of politics and politicians. And the politicians, of course, point the finger at the CTA, without confessing they created this web of intrigue and denial.
So where do we go from here? How about going backwards and opening up the discussion into new avenues of management and operation? Here are two.
First, why not consider privatizing the CTA, and turning the mess back over to private management? Put the entire package, kit and caboodle, out for bids. Deconstruct the RTA and CTA and everything between and have private mangers run the trains and buses. It’s worth a thought and service could not get any worse.
Chicago has a world class transit system between its airport and downtown. At least on paper. Tried riding the O’Hare-Loop CTA recently? It’s an embarrassment.
Second, why not turn management and control of the CTA to the Mayor of Chicago! Now that’s a prime idea. Why shouldn’t the mayor control the transit authority in his own city? Heaven forefend. Why should our transit be controlled by auslanders? My boy Richie Daley, of course, wants no such control. With control comes responsibility, and with responsibility comes accountability. Much easier to be accountable for “Taste of Chicago” food fests. The mayor might actually have to oppose CTA employee pay increases, restructure bloated pensions and find ways to make the system serve the public. Now there’s a real job for Boy Richie.
And so, ultimately. the CTA “doomsday crisis” is yet another crisis of failed leadership and public hypocrisy.
Yes, running trains and busses is not cheap. But we are unwilling as a city and as a society to pay the true costs of running a modern, efficient system so we take refuge in the escapism of “transit authorities” and federal funding, all of which ultimately come out of our own pockets after paying the "Bureaucrat’s tax” to Washington politicos.
By taking responsibility for own transit system we could shave off layers of unaccountability, and put the people of Chicago in direct control of their daily lives.
What I have said holds true equally for suburbs and exurbs. People should not be forced to work together, and to cooperate with intermediaries that are used to deny accountability and responsibility. Suburbs will need enhanced transit; let them be given control over the systems they want, and want to pay for. What is democracy if not the right to control our own lives and to decide which public services we are willing to pay for?
Why should suburbanites make decisions for Chicagoans and why should Chicagoans make decisions for the suburbs?
And, finally, tough love is always easer the further away you get from home. We are reluctant to impose tough love on our local politicians and to demand they assume control of the CTA. No, that’s too draconian. But tough love is fine when we are told by the Democrats it should be practiced in Baghdad. Get tough with those Iraqis, the Dems declare. Why not start with getting tough on ourselves?
Doomsday? CTA crisis? I was there forty-two years ago. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change until we elect bold public officials who are willing to address public problems with creative public, and sometimes private, solutions. My rallying cry? FREE THE CTA!
--------------------------Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and media critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. He is a chronicler of all things Midwestern and the authentic Voice of Middle America. Copyright Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers national and international events with forty years of experience. Columns also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639

ANDY MARTIN REMEMBERS THE PASSING OF A PROHIBITION ERA GANGLAND PRINCESS

CONTRARIAN COMMENTARY FOR SEPTEMBER 7, 2007

CHICAGO GANGLAND PRINCESS DIES AND THE CITY DOES NOT STOP TO REMEMBER

DORSEY CONNORS WAS ONE OF THE LAST OF THE MOBBED UP OFFSPRING OF PROHIBITION ERA CHICAGO

(Chicago, September 7, 2007) Dorsey Connors died this week. She lies in state a couple of blocks from my office. And neither the Chicago Sun-Times, where Connors worked, nor the Chicago Tribune, gave tribute to the passing of a Prohibition Era gangland princess.

Chicago has always been, perhaps always will be, a mob town. Mob history is studied, and voters still support state officials who are at least “connected” and probably closely connected to organized crime. I studied organized crime in the 1960’s and helped fight the Mafia in the 1970’s. I have maintained an interest in the interstices of political power and mob power in the city.

There is even an "Untouchables" tourist bus tour. We are still fascinated by Al Capone and the Prohibition Era. And some of those outrageous events live on in today’s politicians.

Yet none of this colorful history reached the obituary pages when Dorsey Connors passed this week. Her past was forgotten, laundered, sanitized.

Rather, the Sun-Times dryly noted that Connors’ father was a “state senator and ward committeeman…for years.” Unfortunately, “Botchie” Connors was much more. Robert Montgomery, the famous actor of the 1940’s and 50’s, was sued by Botchie Connors when Montgomery called “Botchie” a “political mobster..a hoodlum masquerading as a state senator.” Time Magazine referred to Connors as the “boss of Chicago’s hony-tonk 42nd Ward…”

Connors was part of a hoary tradition in Illinois politics that sent hoodlums and crime syndicate stooges to the Illinois State Senate, House and U. S. House. These men were there to protect mob interests and, occasionally, to fatten their wallets by filing proposed laws as “fetchers.” The only way to prevent a fetcher from becoming law was to bribe the state senator or representative into withdrawing his proposed law.

Streeterville, where Dorsey Connors lived her entire life, is today one of the city’s toniest neighborhoods. But when she was born there around 1910, Streeterville was what we used to call a ”red light district,” replete with prostitution, gambling, and every other conceivable type of vice. The Prohibition Era enjoyed its fullest flowering in the Streeterville neighborhood. Botchie Connors presided over this carnival and cornucopia of corruption. Prohibition was the era and political gangland the milieu in which Dorsey Connors grew up. Botchie was her daddy, and she was daddy’s girl. What did she know? And when did she know it?

Her obituaries noted wistfully that Dorsey wanted to go to New York and star on Broadway, but dad had other ideas. He got her planted in Chicago’s media scene which, conveniently, was headquartered in his own ward. Who can deny that Botchie gave his daughter a send-off into local media stardom? Very likely he did.

Now all of this is not to say that Dorsey was a bad person. On the contrary, on the surface she appears to have led an exemplary life. She was undoubtedly very talented. But there are a lot of talented people out there, and not many of them have ward-boss-fathers who control the real estate sitting under the Tribune Towers or NBC-TV. Perhaps Botchie Connors’ stranglehold over the neighborhood was the reason the Tribune Company chose to locate its new TV station in the 1940’s far, far away from downtown. Different ward boss.

Of course, a city too polite to look into its past, and to connect the past with the present, is living in denial, especially when the current mayor’s office has proven to be a modern day center of thievery and corruption and the federal courts process a seemingly endless conveyer belt of crooked politicians.

And so, dear Dorsey, rest in peace. Botchie’s sins were not your sins. We know that. But your family history is sure a lot more interesting than it was made out to be in the obituaries that noted your passing. You were a link to Chicago’s gangland past, albeit silently and known only to the cognoscenti of Chicago corruption, and your passing deserved more than the laundered, sanitized, expurgated version that appeared in the local newspapers.
--------------------------Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and media critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. He is a chronicler of all things Midwestern and the authentic Voice of Middle America. Copyright Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers national and international events with forty years of experience. Columns also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639

ANDY MARTIN ENTERS THE DEBATE ON WHO DISBANDED THE IRAQI ARMY

NEWS FROM:
ANDY MARTIN
Executive Editor
ContrarianCommentary.com

“Factually correct, not
Politically correct”

PART ONE: DEFENDING PAUL BREMER

THE “WHO DID IT?” OVER “WHO DISBANDED THE IRAQI ARMY?” IS REMINISCENT OF THE BROADWAY PLAY “MR. ROBERTS”

(CHICAGO) The 1950’s Broadway hit “Mr. Roberts” featured a Navy ship that was sidelined in World War II, an ambitious executive officer and an eccentric captain who was proud of his award—-a palm tree--for delivering toilet paper. When the XO throws the palm tree into the harbor, the captain goes berserk and screams “Who did it? Whhhho did it? Whoooo did it?”

This week Washington has faced a more serious variation of the “Who did it?” routine.

Did President Bush disband the Iraqi Army? Or did Paul Bremer disband the army? Or does someone else deserve the blame?

Part One of this “investigation” finds me in an unusual posture: defending Paul Bremer. Sort of. Mr. Bremer was the hapless suzerain sent to Iraq to command that nation and to hustle and husband the Iraqi people into democracy and “free markets” and other right-wing nostrums for the post-Saddam world. Bremer failed miserably.

A few days after Saddam disappeared I rolled into Baghdad with a mandate to find him. My initial quarters were the Palestine (nee Meridian) Hotel. The Palestine of 2003 will be remembered in history along with Claridge’s of London, the Shepherd’s of Cairo, and the Continental Palace of Saigon, as polyglot hotel capitals of wartime intrigue and effervescence.

Later I moved into my own apartment. I lived “on the economy,” that is to say totally separately from the U. S. presence. In fact, there wasn't much presence. Despite lurid tales, and serious instances of looting and violence, most of Baghdad, a vast city, was quiet and peaceful. I walked the streets alone, and celebrated Orthodox Easter in Baghdad.

The UN had stationed convoys of food trucks on the Jordanian border to receive starving refugees. They were not needed. They sat there. No flood of refugees appeared. Food was basic but adequate. And while others headed for military briefings, I headed for Sadr City to see the public markets, and meet with the local warlords who would later become famous. They wanted Saddam as badly as we did. The team that I developed could travel freely anywhere. Safely.

The military brass in Washington eventually decided Iraq was even safe enough for General Jay Garner. Garner was the man who could have saved the Iraq adventure, and stabilized the nation. I was in Najaf the day he arrived in Baghdad and witnessed the scene on TV. Finally, I said to myself. But when the media focused on the very obvious and very tragic instances of breakdowns in public order, Garner was instantly dismissed. Garner had been a solid man for a stolid policy, and when the policy collapsed in the white heat of limited anarchy, Garner was given an unlimited and unceremonious discharge from his duties.

Perhaps the single most disastrous move made during the past four years was not the one to disband the Iraqi Army; very likely the worst decision was to dismiss General Garner, a man who probably could have saved President Bush and his administration and was never given the chance.

Enter Paul Bremer.

This week (September, 2007) Paul Bremer portrayed himself as a team player in disbanding the Iraqi Army. Others have sought to portray him as a rogue administrator. Bremer was no rogue. Rather, he was a stooge. He had not been chosen because of his knowledge of Arabic, or Arab culture or knowledge of the Middle East. He had been chosen to lead a surreptitious experiment in “nation-building,” a hated term in Washington. Bremer was tasked to rebuild Iraq as a “free market” nation, overnight. He was given a second “army” of what I called right-wing weenies, people with no experience, who were chosen solely for conservative political affiliation, to populate a “zone” in Baghdad.

Bremer & Co. were soon “zoned” in Baghdad all right. Zoned out. They cut themselves off from the Iraqi people and lived in an armed compound that I instantly called the Emerald City and became the notorious Green Zone. Instead of living simply and humbly in temporary tents, they took over Saddam's palaces as their own. With disastrous consequences. The weenies are long since gone from Baghdad. The damage they left in their wake lives on.

As 2003 unfolded I became world famous, except in the United States, for exposing Bremer and his toadies, for their arrogance, incompetence, silliness and sheer stupidity. At a time when the “mainstream” media were still toasting Paulie B, I was roasting him. I told Bremer boy to get out on the streets, order them cleaned up, and talk a few words of Arabic. It was not to be. The “innocents abroad” who surrounded Bremer were carefully selected by the Bush administration to propagate conservative economic principles on the souk. Overnight. From the nightmarish confines of the Green Zone. But not to clean the streets of the city.

Ultimately, in assigning blame, the truth must be told: Paul Bremer did not act alone, and he did not make policy. And so, four years later, I can offer a partial defense of the man. Bremer was merely the instrument of a policy that was set in Washington, to destroy all of Iraq’s institutions and to grind Iraqi glass back into sand. Well, Bremer did set one policy: he insisted his laundry be sent to Kuwait, because he did not trust the Baghdadi laundry workers.

The Bush administration has now tried to rewrite history. The president has apparently stated there was a “plan” to retain the Iraqi Army, and he does not remember why it was abandoned. Well. An “anonymous” White House “official” has endorsed this view to the New York Times. Ah, anonymity. Unfortunately, the anonymous-one seeks to rewrite history.

Where General Garner understood the role and function of an army, and soldiers, Bremer did not. Garner had already worked in Iraq, successfully, after the 1991 war. Garner understood that the Iraqi army was a thin veneer of Sunni officers, under which served a force of conscript Shia foot soldiers. While the Iraqi army has been pilloried as Saddam’s, in reality most of the troops were bitterly opposed to his regime and served in the ranks as the preferable alternative to death. Bremer set out to disband a fantasy bogeyman that did not exist in reality.

There is an obvious fallacy in the effort to demonize Bremer. No “plan” has ever appeared to support the claim that one existed to retain and maintain the Iraqi Army. There is a paper trail, but it will not see daylight until 2009 at the earliest. Bremer, however, kept his own file of e-mails and memos.

In response to Mr. Anonymous’ attempt to pin the blame on Bremer for the disbanding disaster, Bremer fired back with his letters to President Bush detailing Bremer’s plan to dismantle the Iraqi military. Bremer also produced a seeming assent from Bush to do so.

Unfortunately for Bremer, his letters expose that while he was an utter failure as a military and political reconstruction leader, he was a formidable presence as a world class courtier, flatterer, apple polisher and ego-massager of President Bush. Bremer’s newly-disclosed letter exposes the way he shamelessly toadied up to the president.

Bremer also inadvertently disclosed that he was obeying a private agenda within the broader conservative plan in the Pentagon and White House. Copies of his flatteries to Bush were also sent to Paul Wolfowitz (he of recent World Bank fame) as well as Douglas Feith, another of the “neo-con” cabal who are credited, fairly or unfairly, with jump-starting the Iraq fiasco.

I also remember November, 2003, when Bremer visited the White House to lift weights and down popcorn with Bush. I was not invited, but they did threaten to deal with the “Internet journalist” who was making their life miserable. Bush did not utter the words “who will rid me of that media priest in Baghdad” but I got the message, and began to lock the door to my apartment in Baghdad. And eventually I came home to Illinois.

Bremer tarried in Baghdad, and he achieved growing immortal ignominy with each passing day. Eventually he went to an Ozymandias-like fate. Today he rails against those who would question his golden year in Baghdad. “I am Bremer,” he says. “Others erred. I did not.” Ozymandias indeed.

But did Bremer disband the Iraqi Army? Is he really to blame? In my opinion, he merely signed the orders. Unlike Adolph Eichmann, who claimed he was merely “following orders” and was not, ultimately Bremer merely followed his orders. And, sadly for him, he followed them too well.

PART TWO: Who should be blamed for disbanding the Iraqi Army? Andy delivers his verdict.

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Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and media critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers regional, national and world events with forty years of experience. He is America's most respected independent foreign policy analyst. Andy has traveled to the Middle East since 1970; he studied revolutionary warfare under Professor Bernard Fall during the mid 1960’s, and later became a founder of the Revolutionary War Research Center. He served as an independent Baghdad Bureau Chief in 2003.

ANDY MARTIN CASTS THE DECIDING VOTE IN BUSH - BREMER CONTROVERSY OVER WHO MADE THE TRAGIC ERROR TO DISBAND THE IRAQI ARMY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

ATTENTION: DAYBOOK/ASSIGNMENT EDITORS

MIDDLE EAST EXPERT ANDY MARTIN WILL JOIN THE BUSH-BREMER DEBATE OVER BLUNDER OF DISMANTLING IRAQ’S ARMY

MARTIN’S COMMENTARY WILL BREAK THE TIE BETWEEN BUSH ADMINISTRATION LOYALISTS AND PAUL BREMER OVER WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR IRAQ ARMY FIASCO

MARTIN SAYS A BIPARTISAN CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION SHOULD BE LAUNCHED TO EXAMINE “THE PLAN” AND THE RECORD OF WHO SAID WHAT ABOUT THE PLAN TO DISBAND IRAQ’S ARMY

(CHICAGO) Middle East expert Andy Martin will step down from the campaign trail to hold a Chicago news conference Wednesday, September 5th to cast the deciding vote in Tuesday’s New York Times debate between former Iraq viceroy Paul Bremer and anonymous sources in the Bush administration who want to avoid accepting blame for the fiasco of disbanding Iraq’s army.

“Four years later, I am far removed from Saddoun Street, and now on State Street and Main Street, but the siren call of Iraq keeps beckoning me back,” Martin says. “The debate in Tuesday's New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/washington/04bremer.html) over who did what to disband the Iraq army has flared up once again.

“Wednesday I will cast the deciding vote in this critical confrontation and controversy. Bremer feels people are pointing the finger at him; Bush says the finger is unfairly being pointed his way. I was in Baghdad, I had my own military and intelligence sources, and history has vindicated all of my research and analysis from that war.

“My answer may not be simple, but I believe my conclusion will be.”

NEWS CONFERENCE DETAILS:

WHO: Middle East expert Andy Martin

WHERE: Southeast corner of Wabash and Huron Streets,
Chicago, (St. James Cathedral)

WHEN: Wednesday, September 5, 2007 1:00 P.M.


MEDIA
CONTACT: (312) 440-4124

WEBSITE: ContrarianCommentary.com; AndyforUSSenator.com

E-MAIL: AndyMart20@aol.com

Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and media critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers regional, national and world events with forty years of experience. He is America's most respected independent foreign policy analyst. Andy has traveled to the Middle East since 1970; he studied revolutionary warfare under Professor Bernard Fall during the mid 1960’s, and later became a founder of the Revolutionary War Research Center. He served as an independent Baghdad Bureau Chief in 2003.