Thursday Roundup: Violence Recurs

You'd think that after a few years in Iraq, even Republican legislators would know to be hesitant about making a short-term lull in violence out to be some sort of victory. Sadly, we have a reminder of that lesson today. A Yadizi community in the Kurdish area of Iraq fell victim to a quadruple bombing that left at least 500 people dead, and another 320 wounded.

Yadizi areas are not unacquainted with violence; religious differences have made for numerous violent conflicts with Muslims in the area. Even so, this attack constitutes the worst death toll from a bombing since we've been there, eclipsing by far the Nov. 23 bombing in Sadr City that killed 215 people. The CNN article quotes Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon as saying this was effectively "an act of ethnic cleansing, if you will — almost genocide."

It is difficult to say how this would affect our involvement in Iraq. It doesn't take an astute viewer to see that U.S. policy decisions in the area have been fundamentally independent from the level of violence in the area. Violence is up? We clearly need more troops in the area to put them down. Violence is down? Clearly that shows that our troops are being successful, so we need to keep them in the area. All roads lead to Rome.

That being said, there is some hope that we may see the beginnings of our detachment from the Iraqi civil war soon. USA Today ran an AP story that no one else seems to have chosen to pick up that Gen. Petraeus will be making recommendations on troop reductions in his upcoming report to Congress in September. In what I'm sure is a completely unrelated report, it seems that the White House would really rather Gen. Petraeus make his report in a private congressional briefing, and have the public report that would be presented to Congress come from the State and Defense Departments. It goes without saying that this is a pretty transparent spin control move. In fact, the move is so transparent that either the White House is being ridiculously poor with PR, or they have simply stopped caring about how questionable their spin comes across as, as long as it comes across. Which of those is the case is anyone's guess. Frankly, I think if I were Tony Snow or Dana Perino, I'd feel like giving up and phoning it in by now too.

If you didn't catch it earlier, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was a little irked at the Washington Post's depiction of Congress as not having done enough in their first seven months, and wrote a tersely worded letter noting what they've gotten accomplished. I suppose it's a good thing that a high-ranking Democrat is keeping up with the news buzz and trying to control message some, but boy, wouldn't it be nice if we could get our timing and message on things like this worked out so that we didn't find ourselves having to try and mold public perception post facto? As usual, we're showing ourselves to be the party that's better at governance than we are at spin. Better than the other way around, natch, but every once in a while I want to have my cake and eat it too.

In an interesting bit of unexpected international news, the U.S. has signed on to a $30 billion military aid deal for Israel over the next 10 years. The intent is supposedly for this to balance out the $20 million arms deal with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni nations in the area. Staff writer Kirk Cooper had earlier characterized the arms deal as "trying to stop gang warfare by giving Uzis to the Crips and telling them to take care of the Bloods." It seems like President Bush decided to modify the metaphor a bit. Now we're giving Uzis to the Crips and the Bloods, and standing back and seeing whether or not they take care of each other. Or, to put it another way, we're generous enough to not make the Middle East get embroiled in a military escalation scenario — why bother, when we'll do it for them?

For those of you tracking George Bush taking a page from Speaker Craddick's book by declaring himself unilaterally above any sort of oversight, there's some good news out there for you: apparently the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals also thinks the claim is ridiculous. The WaPo reports on a court "deeply skeptical of a blanket claim that the government's surveillance efforts cannot be challenged in court because the litigation might reveal state secrets."

From the article:

Deputy Solicitor General Gregory G. Garre was forced to mount a public argument that almost nothing about the substance of the government's conduct could be talked about in court because doing so might expose either the methods used in gathering intelligence or gaps in those methods.

...

At one point, Garre argued that courts are not the right forum for complaints about government surveillance, and that "other avenues" are available. "What is that? Impeachment?" Pregerson shot back.

Read the article and enjoy many more such zingers from the fun-loving guys on the Ninth Circuit.

Finally, in state news, The Texas Youth Commission cleanup made some headlines yesterday. The Statesman has the story on over 150 19- to 21-year-olds that "remain in limbo" after state legislators struggled to deal with the fact that they'd rescinded the TYC's authority over its over-18 offenders without any well-planned way to deal with them. And agency officials came up with a too-clever-by-half way to control the most violent of their offenders: they'll be sending them — no, really, I'm not making this up — a harshly worded letter. For those of you keeping track of the Texas Blue letter-seriousness hierarchy, that means it's much more serious than the tersely worded letter Congressman Hoyer sent to the Post. Really serious. No kidding.

From the article:

Despite guffaws and disbelief from employees when a draft of the letter was circulated statewide on Thursday, agency spokesman Jim Hurley insisted Tuesday that it was the right thing to do. "Sending a letter is a good way of communicating," he said.

Why not just have staff members inform the 554 youths directly?

"I think that's being done, too," Hurley said. "We're also sending this to their families."

So they're getting a letter and a stern talking-to. We think. By phone, I presume, as I can't imagine the TYC has the staff to do that in person.

According to an e-mail [agency deputy director Billy] Humphrey sent last week, "all I need is stamps."

Boy, I bet if we'd known that's all it would take, we could have passed on the TYC altogether and saved taxpayers millions.