Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) was in stable condition yesterday after emergency brain surgery, prompting optimism among family and friends and at least temporarily stanching speculation that the Democrats' narrow control of the next Senate might be in jeopardy.
But Capitol aides predicted tough negotiations between the two parties early next month over the rules for organizing the new Senate, particularly those that would address the possibility that a Democratic seat could be vacated because of illness or death.
Even if Johnson recuperates fully, aides and advisers said, Democrats will be painfully aware that they remain one fatal illness -- or one party switch -- away from a Republican claim on their majority, which has stood at 51 to 49 since the Nov. 7 elections. The two parties may clash in particular over an agreement made in 2001 that enabled Democrats to seize the majority after one Republican senator switched parties. Republicans are likely to try to revive the precedent, according to the congressional aides, and Democrats are likely to fight it. MORE ON SENATOR JOHNSON
Biographical Information
JOHNSON, Timothy Peter (Tim), a Representative and a Senator from South Dakota; born in Canton, S.Dak., December 28, 1946; attended public schools; B.A., University of South Dakota 1969; M.A., 1970; post-graduate studies, Michigan State University 1970-1971; J.D., University of South Dakota 1975; budget advisor, Michigan Senate 1971-1972; began the practice of law in Vermillion, S.D., in 1975; member, South Dakota House of Representatives 1979-1982; member South Dakota Senate 1983-1986; Clay County deputy State’s attorney 1985; elected as a Democrat to the One Hundredth and to the four succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1987-January 2, 1997); not a candidate for reelection to the House of Representatives in 1996; elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996 and reelected in 2002 for the term ending January 2, 2009. (Source.)
More coverage of Tim Johnson on washingtonpost.com
Next Election
Current term expires on November 4, 2008.
Roles in Congress
· 109th Congress: Senator, South Dakota, Democratic. Jan. 3, 2005, to Jan. 3, 2007.· 108th Congress: Senator, South Dakota, Democratic. Jan. 3, 2003, to Jan. 3, 2005.· 107th Congress: Senator, South Dakota, Democratic. Jan. 3, 2001, to Jan. 3, 2003.· 106th Congress: Senator, South Dakota, Democratic. Jan. 3, 1999, to Jan. 3, 2001.· 105th Congress: Senator, South Dakota, Democratic. Jan. 3, 1997, to Jan. 3, 1999.· 104th Congress: Representative, South Dakota, Democratic. Jan. 3, 1995, to Jan. 3, 1997.· 103rd Congress: Representative, South Dakota, Democratic. Jan. 3, 1993, to Jan. 3, 1995.· 102nd Congress: Representative, South Dakota, Democratic. Jan. 3, 1991, to Jan. 3, 1993.
Key Votes
See how Tim Johnson voted on key votes -- the most important bills, nominations and resolutions that have come before Congress, as determined by washingtonpost.com.
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State Information
South Dakota demographic profile (2000 Census)
Financial Disclosure
View Tim Johnson's 2005 official financial disclosure statement, which describes the sources, types and amounts of income earned in 2005. (More disclosure reports.)
Latest Votes
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Date
Vote
Position
GOP opinion
DEM opinion
12/9/06
Vote 279: On the Motion: Motion to Concur in the House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 6111; A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide that the Tax Court may review claims for equitable innocent spouse relief and to suspend the running on the period of limitations while such claims are pending.
Yes
Yes
Yes
12/9/06
Vote 278: On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Concur in the House Amdt. to Senate Amdt. to H.R. 6111; A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide that the Tax Court may review claims for equitable innocent spouse relief and to suspend the running on the period of limitations while such claims are pending.
Yes
Yes
Yes
12/9/06
Vote 277: On the Motion: Motion to Waive CBA Re: Motion to Concur in House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R.6111.; A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide that the Tax Court may review claims for equitable innocent spouse relief and to suspend the running on the period of limitations while such claims are pending.
Yes
Yes
Yes
12/8/06
Vote 276: On the Nomination: Confirmation Kent A. Jordan of Delaware to be U.S. Circuit Judge
Yes
Yes
Yes
12/8/06
Vote 275: On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Kent A. Jordan of Delaware to be U.S. Circuit Judge
Yes
Yes
Yes
12/7/06
Vote 274: On the Nomination: Confirmation Andrew von Eschenbach, of Texas, to be Commissioner of Food and Drugs
Yes
Yes
Yes
12/7/06
Vote 273: On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Andrew von Eschenbach, of Texas, to be Commissioner of Food and Drugs
Yes
Yes
Yes
12/6/06
Vote 272: On the Nomination: Confirmation: Robert M. Gates, of Texas, to be Secretary of Defense
Yes
Yes
Yes
12/5/06
Vote 271: On the Motion: Motion to Waive CBA "Emergency Designation" Re: Conrad Amdt. No. 5205; To provide emergency agricultural disaster assistance.
Yes
No
Yes
11/16/06
Vote 270: H R 5682: H.R. 5682 As Amended; Henry J. Hyde United States and India Nuclear Cooperation Promotion Act of 2006
No
Yes
Yes
11/16/06
Vote 269: S 3709: Boxer Amdt. No. 5187; To make the waiver authority of the President contingent upon a certification that India has agreed to suspend military-to-military cooperation with Iran, including training exercises, until such time as Iran is no longer designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Yes
No
Yes
11/16/06
Vote 268: S 3709: Feingold Amdt. No. 5183; To require as a precondition to United States-India peaceful atomic energy cooperation determinations by the President that United States nuclear cooperation with India does nothing to assist, encourage, or induce India to manufacture or acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.
Yes
No
Yes
11/16/06
Vote 267: S 3709: Ensign Amdt. No. 5181; To ensure that IAEA inspection equipment is not used for espionage purposes.
Yes
No
No
11/16/06
Vote 266: S 3709: Dorgan Amdt. No. 5178 As Modified; To declare that it is the policy of the United States to continue to support implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1172 (1998).
Yes
No
Yes
11/16/06
Vote 265: S 3709: Bingaman Amdt. No. 5174; To limit the waiver authority of the President.
Yes
No
Yes
11/14/06
Vote 264: On the Motion: Motion to Instruct Sgt. At Arms; Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2007
Yes
Yes
Yes
9/29/06
Vote 263: On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Concur in House Amendment to S.403; Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act
Yes
Yes
No
9/29/06
Vote 261: H R 5631: H.R.5631 Conference Report; Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2007
Yes
Yes
Yes
9/28/06
Vote 260: On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on H.R. 6061; Secure Fence Act of 2006
Yes
Yes
No
Full list of votes by Tim Johnson
©
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2006 The Washington Post Company
INCOMING CHAIRMEN READY TO INVESTIGATE DEMOCRATIC-LED PANELS TO PROBE ADMINISTRATION'S ACTIONS IN WAR AND COUNTERTERRORISM
Incoming Democratic committee chairmen say they will hold a series of hearings and investigations early next year to build the case for their call for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and for possible action against defense contractors found to have wasted billions in federal funds.
The emerging plans to grill administration officials on the conduct of the war are part of a pledge for more aggressive congressional oversight on issues such as prewar intelligence, prisoner treatment at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and the government's use of warrantless wiretaps.
Among the most eager incoming chairmen is Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), a lawyer with a professor's demeanor and a prosecutor's doggedness.
Levin said he also plans inquiries into "documentation of waste and fraud and abuse in the contracting areas" of the military. Aggressive oversight "is not just a budget issue," he said, but at some point "becomes a significant moral issue." In the House, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), another leading advocate of a phased withdrawal, has vowed to use his Appropriations subcommittee chairmanship to investigate the Iraq war, holding "two hearings a day for the first three or four months . . . to find out exactly what happened and who's been responsible for these mistakes."
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said he will use his Judiciary Committee perch to conduct "real oversight" of the FBI and the Justice Department and to delve into "the abuse of billions of taxpayers' dollars sent as development aid to Iraq."
"I am not prepared to accept answers like 'I can't talk about it,' " Leahy said in a recent speech at Georgetown University's law school.
Truman's Trials Resonate for Bush: President Battling Terrorism Has Shown Interest In Democrat's Strategies at Dawn of Cold War.
Oh, Come Now Mr. President; you are No Harry Truman and You Ought To Be Paying More Attention To Abraham Lincoln: “The Dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present; We must think anew; We must act anew.”
Business as usual and old models of conflict resolution guarantees disaster!
He led the United States into war and saw his popularity plummet, yet some 60 years later his reputation has never been higher: It's small wonder Harry S. Truman seems to hold a special fascination for President Bush these days.
That interest came into focus recently after Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) went public with an account of a meeting last Friday in which he said the president seemed to be comparing his situation to that of Truman in the late 1940s. According to Durbin's account and another source familiar with the meeting, Bush told the gathering of congressional leaders that Truman's approach to dealing with the Cold War was not initially popular but that he was vindicated by history -- the implication being that Bush would be vindicated about Iraq as well.
White House aides later disputed this reading of Bush's comments, but the episode may offer a glimpse into the psychology of a president who, like Truman in his second term, seems beset by trouble and pressures on all sides and who is ready to look to history for some comfort and guidance.
"Everyone loves a winner, and history reflects Harry Truman was a winner," said Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), whose father was a longtime friend of the late president and who met Truman as a young man. "It is all familiar front-yard psychology -- associate yourself with a winner."
By many accounts, Bush is fascinated by history and biography -- he reads extensively and meets periodically with presidential scholars -- and Truman has certainly seemed to be on his mind in recent months. In his commencement address this year at West Point, Bush discussed Truman at some length, lauding his early role in structuring U.S. forces and institutions for the Cold War.
That speech was followed by repeated references to the Democratic 33rd president during the fall campaign, usually as part of cutting attacks on the party of Truman, which Bush said had become the "party of cut and run" in Iraq. In the 2004 presidential campaign, Bush also mentioned Truman repeatedly, often to praise his role in helping reconstruct Japan after World War II.
By coincidence, say White House aides, one of 10 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom today will be David McCullough, whose 1992 biography of Truman did much to restore the luster of his presidency among the public. In a brief telephone interview this week from his home in Maine, McCullough described himself as "more honored" than he has ever been by the award, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the government, and he noted that the medal was created by Truman in 1945.
"I know that President Bush admires Harry Truman -- we have talked about that," McCullough said, though he was cautious about offering any snap assessments of the Bush presidency. "About 50 years has to go by before you can appraise a presidency -- the dust has to settle."
He did say he sees similarities between Truman and Bush, especially in their capacity to endure "merciless criticism and personal abuse" that he doubts "many of us could take."
Perhaps mindful that Bush-Truman comparisons would draw ridicule from Democrats -- the idea is already the subject of derision in the liberal blogosphere -- White House aides were careful to emphasize that the iconic liberal is only one of a number of inspirations for the president. "People do think about the Truman presidency -- but not only the Truman presidency," said one senior White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. "It is not as though it's a talisman or lighthouse for any of us."
The official and several other senior administration officials speak mainly about Truman's role in key events of the traumatic early days of the Cold War, including the Berlin Airlift, the passage of the Marshall Plan and defense of South Korea.
Bush has described the struggle against Islamic terrorism in generational terms, and the implication from his aides is that he is setting up structures and strategy to win this long war, even if, as with Truman, some of the particular actions are unpopular.
"By the actions he took, the institutions he built, the alliances he forged and the doctrines he set down, President Truman laid the foundations for America's victory in the Cold War," Bush told the graduating cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in May.
Democrats at last week's meeting seemed surprised by Bush's comments about Truman, but White House press secretary Tony Snow said Bush was making a point that as during Truman's presidency, the United States today faces an "ideological enemy with a global ambition . . . that we were going to have to figure out how to face over an extended period of time."
"I think it's important to note that the president was really not trying to compare himself to Harry Truman so much as to talk about the duration and nature of the struggle," Snow said.
Historians are divided about this kind of assessment from the administration. Fred I. Greenstein, a Princeton scholar regarded as a preeminent authority on the presidency, alluded to one major difference between Bush and Truman, often cited by Democrats. "The Marshall Plan was part of a broad-based diplomatic effort, and it was enacted by Truman's bipartisan leadership of a Republican Congress," he said in an e-mail. "Bush's efforts have been heavily unilateral internationally and divisive internally, except those just after 9/11."
James G. Hershberg, a Cold War historian at George Washington University, said he doubts that history will judge Bush as kindly as it has Truman, saying Truman's roles in fostering European recovery and building the NATO alliance were seen as solid accomplishments at the time. "Bush, by contrast, lacks any successes of comparable magnitude to compensate for his mismanagement of the Iraq war and will be hard-pressed to produce any in his last two years," he said.
But Greenstein said he has been struck by parallels between the two presidents, including their feistiness, the fact that neither seemed up to the job in their early months in office, that both had responses to crises that made them seem more presidential and that both saw their approval levels drop after stalemated wars. "As one who remembers the Truman presidency," he said, "I often have a sense of deja vu."
SCAREY ISN’T IT!!! WELL THINK AGAIN…
DON’T LET YOURSELF BE FOOLED INTO THINKING THAT RESUMPTION OF THE DRAFT IS ALL THE TALK OF CRAZY FOLKS. IT IS BEING PLANNED FOR WHEN WE AND WORLD HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE MIDDLE EAST SERIOUSLY IN A FEW YEARS!!!
TALK, TALK; PLAN, PLAN; SOFTEN UP; SOFTEN UP-GET BY THE 2008 ELECTIONS AND WATCH OUT!!!
General Says Army Will Need To Grow Iraq and Afghanistan Are Straining the Force, Chief of Staff Warns
Warning that the active-duty Army "will break" under the strain of today's war-zone rotations, the nation's top Army general yesterday called for expanding the force by 7,000 or more soldiers a year and lifting Pentagon restrictions on involuntary call-ups of Army National Guard and Army Reserve troops.
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, issued his most dire assessment yet of the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the nation's main ground force. At one point, he banged his hand on a House committee-room table, saying the continuation of today's Pentagon policies is "not right."
In particularly blunt testimony, Schoomaker said the Army began the Iraq war "flat-footed" with a $56 billion equipment shortage and 500,000 fewer soldiers than during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Echoing the warnings from the post-Vietnam War era, when Gen. Edward C. Meyer, then the Army chief of staff, decried the "hollow Army," Schoomaker said it is critical to make changes now to shore up the force for what he called a long and dangerous war.
"The Army is incapable of generating and sustaining the required forces to wage the global war on terror . . . without its components -- active, Guard and reserve -- surging together," Schoomaker said in testimony before the congressionally created Commission on the National Guard and Reserves.
The burden on the Army's 507,000 active-duty soldiers -- who now spend more time at war than at home -- is simply too great, he said. "At this pace, without recurrent access to the reserve components, through remobilization, we will break the active component," he said, drawing murmurs around the hearing room.
The Army, which had 482,000 soldiers in 2001, plans to grow temporarily to 512,000. But the Army now seeks to make that increase permanent and to continue increasing its ranks by 7,000 or more a year, Schoomaker said. He said the total increase is under discussion.
"I recommend we continue to grow the Army so that we have choices," Schoomaker said, cautioning that it is ill advised to assume demand for American troops overseas will decrease. "Our history is replete with examples where we have guessed wrong: 1941, 1950, 2001, to name a few," he said. "We don't know what's ahead."
In light of such a sober assessment, Schoomaker voiced skepticism about the idea of an infusion of U.S. ground troops into Iraq, a message sources said he and the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff delivered to President Bush at the Pentagon on Wednesday.
"We should not surge without a purpose, and that purpose should be measurable and get us something," he told reporters after the hearing.
Schoomaker's highly public appeal for more troops and reserve call-ups appeared to be part of an Army campaign to lobby incoming Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who is to be sworn in Monday, to approve the desired policy changes as well as a significant increase in the Army budget.
The Army estimates that every 10,000 additional soldiers will cost about $1.2 billion a year, up from $700 million in 2001 in part because of increased enlistment bonuses and other incentives. The Army will have to "gain additional resources to support that strategy," Schoomaker acknowledged.
Democrats, who will take charge of Congress next month, said yesterday that they plan to hold hearings on the "urgent" and "critical" readiness problems of the Army and Marine Corps. "Readiness levels for every unit must be raised and maintained at the highest possible level," Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz (D-Tex.), incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's readiness panel, and Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) said in an opinion article released yesterday. Two-thirds of Army units in the United States are now considered not ready to deploy.
The Army's manpower dilemma stems in part from current Pentagon policies: Although 55 percent of soldiers belong to the National Guard and the reserve, Defense Department guidelines require that reservists be mobilized involuntarily only once, and for no more than 24 months.
As a result, out of the total of 522,000 Army National Guard and reserve members, only about 90,000 are still available to be mobilized, according to Army data. "We're out of Schlitz," declared an Army chart depicting the shortage as a depleted barrel, saying this leaves "future missions in jeopardy."
Compounding the problem, the Pentagon has restricted repeated involuntary call-ups, leading to deeper and deeper holes in Army Guard and reserve units. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, hundreds of thousands of reserve soldiers have been mobilized for Iraq and Afghanistan. So when a unit is called to deploy, the only soldiers who can go are volunteers and new soldiers. The remainder are often drawn from dozens of units across the United States.
The result is systematically "broken" and "non-cohesive" units, said another Army chart titled "OSD-mandated Volunteer Policy Stresses the Force," referring to the office of the secretary of defense.
For example, Army Reserve units now must take an average of 62 percent of their soldiers for deployments from other units, compared with 6 percent in 2002 and 39 percent in 2003, according to the Army data. In one transportation company, only seven of 170 soldiers were eligible to deploy. The other 163 came from 65 other units in 49 locations, said the commission chairman, retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Arnold L. Punaro, who quoted a Marine Reserve officer as calling the policy "evil."
"Military necessity dictates that we deploy organized, trained, equipped cohesive units -- and you don't do that by pick-up teams," said Schoomaker, a decorated veteran of the Army's Delta Force who served in the ill-fated Desert One rescue mission in Iran in 1980.
"We must start this clock again . . . and field fully ready units. . . . We must change this policy," he said, banging his hand on the table for emphasis. He said later that he had detected "some movement" by Pentagon policymakers who have so far rejected a change on the politically sensitive issue.
In an interview yesterday on C-SPAN, Thomas F. Hall, assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, said that under the current authority Bush can mobilize up to 1 million reservists for no more than two "continuous" years, but the Pentagon policy under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has been more restrictive, limiting the time to two "cumulative" years. "The law does say 'continuous,' so you could have a break and recall them," Hall said.
Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn, chief of the 346,000-strong Army National Guard, said yesterday that his force is "poised for remobilization."
Vaughn said he thinks state Guard leaders will accept fresh call-ups sooner than planned as long as the deployments are limited to 12 months and draw on units that have been home the longest. He said the Guard could tolerate having units deploy for one year out of every five, instead of out of every six.
"One year is absolutely critical," he said, explaining that the 18 months it currently takes for a Guard unit to mobilize, train and deploy means too much time away from jobs and families. Schoomaker indicated that the Army is working on reducing the duration of Guard and reserve deployments to one year.
Since 2001, the Army Guard has deployed 186,000 soldiers and the Army Reserve 164,000 soldiers for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and in homeland-defense missions.
A WAR BUSH WOULDN'T PAY FOR
Believe it or not, winning the war in Iraq was never the Bush administration's highest priority. Saving its tax cuts was more important. That was once spoken of as a moral problem. Now it's a practical barrier to a successful outcome.
Until recently President Bush's refusal to scale back any of his tax cuts was discussed as the question of shared sacrifice: How could we ask so much from a courageous group of Americans fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan but not ask even the wealthiest of their fellow citizens to part with a few extra dollars to support an endeavor supposedly central to our nation's security? On the contrary, even after we committed to war in Iraq, the administration pushed for yet more tax cuts in dividends and capital gains.
Now we know that the decision to put the war on a credit card is not simply a moral question. The administration's failure to acknowledge the real costs of the war -- and to pay them -- has put it in a corner.
The president's options in Iraq are severely constrained because our military is too small for the foreign policy he is pursuing. Sending more troops would place even more excruciating burdens on members of our armed forces and their families. And the brass fears that an extended new commitment could, quite simply, break the Army.
Yet, instead of building up our military for a long engagement and levying the taxes to pay for such an enterprise, the administration kept issuing merry reports of progress in Iraq. Right through Election Day this year, the president continued to condemn anyone who dared suggest that maybe, just maybe, we should raise taxes to pay for this war.
I think it would be a mistake to send more troops to Iraq. But for the sake of argument, let's take seriously the idea that doing so might help, as Sen. John McCain has insisted and as American Enterprise Institute scholar Frederick W. Kagan argued in a report released yesterday. By not matching the military's size to what we are asking it to do, we have hugely raised the costs, including the human costs, of such a policy.
Kagan and William Kristol acknowledged in the Weekly Standard last month that "surging 50,000 more troops" to Iraq "will strain a strained military further."
"But it is also true," they added, "that we can do it -- if we think success in Iraq is a national priority -- by extending tours, moving troops from other theaters into Iraq, and calling up expanded numbers from the Guard and Reserves."
How easy it is to talk about extending other people's tours, calling (or recalling) reservists and National Guard members who have already paid such a high price in this war, and endangering American interests elsewhere in the world in one last effort to make the Iraq gamble work. It's absurd that the most powerful country in the world finds itself forced to treat its armed forces so shabbily.
Kagan and Kristol, at least, have long spoken out in favor of building a bigger Army. But I don't recall that they or their comrades in this cause proposed any taxes to pay for it. Presumably that would have been too much to ask of the Republican coalition and those who bankroll it.
So here we are: Policymakers and politicians will demand more and more from the volunteers who serve our country, but they can't find the gumption to ask shareholders to pay a bit more tax on their dividends or high earners to pay slightly larger levies on their incomes. By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, since 2001 we've offered $2 in tax cuts for every $1 we have spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And conservatives wonder why we have deficits. At least the libertarians, who are against both high taxes and an interventionist foreign policy, have their philosophical story (and their numbers) straight.
It has always been true that the administration and its allies couldn't have it both ways. Their illogic has finally caught up with them. They claimed to be against big government so they could justify big tax cuts. But they were also for a big, activist foreign policy, especially after Sept. 11, 2001, which required a big military, and -- sorry to break it to you, guys -- a big military is a big part of big government. They were not willing to pay for a large enough military, and so now we, and especially our armed forces, are paying for their deficit in logic and courage.
IN BAKER'S BLUNDER, A CHANCE FOR BUSH
As a result of the Iraq Study Group, President Bush has been given one last chance to alter course on Iraq. This did not, however, come about the way James Baker intended. It came about because the long-anticipated report turned out to be, as is widely agreed, a farce. From its wildly hyped, multiple magazine-cover rollout (Annie Leibovitz in Men's Vogue, no less) to its mishmash of 79 (no less) recommendations, the report has fallen so flat that the field is now clear for the president to recommend to a war-weary country something new and bold.
The study group has not just been attacked by left and right, Democrat and Republican. It has invited ridicule. Seventy-nine recommendations. Interdependent, insists Baker. They should be taken as a whole. "I hope we don't treat this like a fruit salad and say, 'I like this but I don't like that.' " On the basis of what grand unifying vision? On the authority of what superior wisdom? A 10-person commission including such Middle East experts as Sandra Day O'Connor, Alan Simpson and Vernon Jordan? And, then one might ponder the fact some committee members as committed to the Impeachment of The President, prompting the motives behind their input.
This kind of bipartisan elder-statesmen commission is perfectly appropriate as a consensus-building exercise for, say, a long-range problem such as Social Security. It is a ludicrous mechanism for devising strategic changes in the middle of a war.
Its major recommendation of gradual retreat is unremarkable -- exactly what you'd expect from a committee whose objective is consensus. It reflects a certain conventional wisdom in Washington that the war is already lost. And if that were true, we should indeed be retreating. And the sooner the better, even more quickly than the ISG recommends.
But having told us that the price of leaving Iraq to chaos is unacceptably high, the commission never attempts to come up with a plan for succeeding. Its only new initiative is to go regional and involve neighboring Syria and Iran.
Syria should stop infiltration, declares the report. And Iran "should stem the flow of equipment, technology, and training to any group resorting to violence in Iraq." Yes, and obesity should be eradicated, bird flu cured and traffic fatalities, particularly the multi-car variety, abolished. Such fatuous King Canute pronouncements give the report its air of detachment from reality.
This holding back of the tides is to be accomplished by negotiations with the likes of Iran. Baker admits that Iranian representatives told the commission that they are unlikely to cooperate. But we must press on, Baker insists, because we will thus expose Iran as "a rejectionist nation" that is "not . . . willing to help try and stabilize Iraq."
Now, there's a diplomatic achievement: undermining our hard-earned agreement with the Europeans to make any future approach to Iran dependent on the suspension of uranium enrichment in order to . . . demonstrate to the world that a country providing sophisticated weapons, roadside bombs and financial support to both sides of the civil war does not support stability there. Is there a sentient adult outside this commission who did not know that?
A major objective of the New Diplomatic Offensive (as if pompous capitalization makes for substance) is to bring Arab-Israeli peace. Baker thinks that if only the Israelis would surrender to Arab demands, all would be well in the Middle East.
Okay. Imagine that there is peace between Israel and the Arabs. No, imagine an even better solution from the Arab point of view -- an earthquake that tomorrow swallows Israel whole and sinks it (like Santorini, 1650 B.C.) into the Mediterranean. Does anyone imagine that the Shiites stop killing Sunnis? That al-Qaeda stops killing Americans? That Iran and Syria work any less assiduously to destabilize post-Saddam Hussein Iraq? It's these obvious absurdities that made the report so dismissible.
Now that these 10 establishment sages have labored mightily to produce a mouse, the president has one last chance to come forward with a new strategy.
He must do two things. First, as I've been agitating for, establish a new governing coalition in Baghdad that excludes Moqtada al-Sadr, a cancer that undermines the ability of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his government to work with us. It is encouraging that Bush has already begun such a maneuver by meeting with rival Shiite and Sunni parliamentary leaders. If we help produce a cross-sectarian government that would be an ally rather than a paralyzed semi-adversary of coalition forces, we should then undertake part two: "Double down" our military effort. This means a surge in American troops with a specific mission: to secure Baghdad and (with the support of the Baghdad government -- a sine qua non) suppress Sadr's Mahdi Army.
It is our last chance for success. Bush can thank the Iraq Study Group and its instant irrelevance for making it possible. Fear not, hope not for our President is prepared to play his equally irrelevant card with yet one more, and his last, failed formula policy decree all wrapped up in a muddle of spinning words!!!
BUT LET US END THIS FOR THE MOMENT WITH:
A RUMSFELD CHRISTMAS SONG
Snowflakes roasting on an open fire, Rummy's in his final throes,Useless memos being fed to the pyre,Hosannas sung by GI Joes.
Everybody knows the voters said you have to go,Iraq has got to be made right,Have a blast making fabulous dough,I'm sure the Boards will love your spite.
We know that Gate's on his way,He's got the exit strategy for which we've prayed. All those in uniform will hardly cry,They long ago saw past the 'oh goodness my.'
And so I'm firing this joyful shot,At Rummy and his lousy crew,We'll still uncover many crimes, many ways,But the world is safer 'cause you're through.
We know that Gate's is on his way,He's going to find the place in Rummy disarray,The troops may be gung-ho but they are fried,Let's hope and pray the Green Zone's days are equally nigh.
And so I offer up this borrowed phrase,The military's black and blue,You point your finger everywhere, every way,The blame however falls on you.
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