President Obama spoke to disabled veterans in Atlanta today, and took the opportunity to highlight the progress of troop withdrawals in Iraq which have continued as promised and are on schedule to end all combat objectives in Iraq, though 50,000 troops will remain to continue training Iraqi forces in the region.

Now, one of those chapters is nearing an end. As a candidate for President, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end. (Applause.) Shortly after taking office, I announced our new strategy for Iraq and for a transition to full Iraqi responsibility. And I made it clear that by August 31st, 2010, America’s combat mission in Iraq would end. And that is exactly what we are doing -- as promised and on schedule.

Already, we have closed or turned over to Iraq hundreds of bases. We’re moving out millions of pieces of equipment in one of the largest logistics operations that we’ve seen in decades. By the end of this month, we’ll have brought more than 90,000 of our troops home from Iraq since I took office -- more than 90,000 have come home.

He did not ignore Afghanistan, or the raging debate over it:

The effort in Afghanistan has been long and been difficult. And that’s why after years in which the situation had deteriorated, I announced a new strategy last December -- a military effort to break the Taliban’s momentum and train Afghan forces so that they can take the lead for their security; and a civilian effort to promote good governance and development that improves the lives of the Afghan people; and deeper cooperation with Pakistan to root out terrorists on both sides of the border.

We will continue to face huge challenges in Afghanistan. But it’s important that the American people know that we are making progress and we are focused on goals that are clear and achievable.

On the military front, nearly all the additional forces that I ordered to Afghanistan are now in place. Along with our Afghan and international partners, we are going on the offensive against the Taliban -- targeting their leaders, challenging them in regions where they had free reign, and training Afghan national security forces. Our thoughts and prayers are with all our troops risking their lives for our safety in Afghanistan.

And on the civilian front, we’re insisting on greater accountability. And the Afghan government has taken concrete steps to foster development and combat corruption, and to put forward a reintegration plan that allows Afghans to lay down their arms.

He once again articulated the ultimate goal in Afghanistan, too:

We will disrupt, we will dismantle, and we will ultimately defeat al Qaeda.

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I'm obviously coming in late on this discussion, but it's pretty interesting to watch the breathless dialogue over words that Gen. Stan McChrystal and his aides used to describe the Very Serious People within the Washington Beltway. I particularly like the coverage in this Firelake post.

McChrystal and aides reserve their greatest rancor for top members of the Administration. They call the “inflection point” deadline of July 2011 to transition to local Afghan forces “arbitrary,” one aide calls National Security Adviser Jim Jones a “clown… stuck in 1985,” and another aide McChrystal himself offers a rejected “Wayne’s World” joke about the Vice President: “Biden? Did you say: Bite me?”

McChrystal had to apologize for the entire profile.

Well, maybe Gen David McKiernan doesn't look so bad, now. I don't have much to add to this controversy other than a few observations. First, I disagree with Spencer Ackerman that the Afghan strategy will somehow collapse if the general is relieved of his command. That's bullshit. No one is indispensable, especially four-star generals. Maybe the Obama administration doesn't want to be cast as another Democratic anti-military crowd (as the Clinton administration was), but let's be clear. McChrystal really stepped on his dick here. Just apologizing won't cut it.

Second, I find it appalling that prominent Democratic politicians like Sen. John Kerry don't immediately support firing the general. We know it was "poor judgment." Rather than being mocked by the Republican conservatives as "anti-military" (which they're going to do in any regard), Kerry doesn't want to make the right call and say, hey, the civilians are in charge of the military. If that's not clear to the general and his aides, they need to go for the good of the US military and any future exercises in national security. Matt Y has already detailed Kerry's past failure to develop a distinct and workable progressive national security strategy in his book "Heads in the Sand."

Third, I'll reserve this shot for anyone who suggests that the political strategy and/or foreign policy needs to crafted to support military operational strategy, rather than the other way around. Mr. Exum already suggests that "there are good reasons both for and against the sack," but I disagree. There's only good reasons for the sack. The military may not like the development of political strategy that is intended to guide the execution of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that's not their call. The second that the military believes it knows better than the political decision-makers, it's time for them to go. They advise, but when the order is given, they salute and move out without sniping at the decision-makers (at least while they're on active duty). I believe there were lots of ground commanders in 2003-2006 who thought the Bush administration had developed poor policy and was not supporting the prompt and efficient execution of military operations, but Rumsfeld and company kept a hard hand on any dissenters. This is the same situation, different leaders, and we cannot let this example stand as the way Dems do business.

On the plus side, if President Obama and SecDef Gates use this unfortunate incident to rethink their strategy and to ensure that the political decisions have been made and are adequate to support a 2011 start of withdrawing forces from Afghanistan, here's the opportunity to do so. It would be foolish not to search this black cloud for a silver lining.

UPDATE: VoteVets calls for McChrystal to resign or be fired

In an interview on "Meet the Press," Sunday, Dec. 6, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates talked to David Gregory about President Obama's plan to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. Clinton insisted the plan is not an "exit strategy" or "drop dead deadline":

HILLARY CLINTON: We're not talking about an exit strategy or a drop dead deadline. What we're talking about is an assessment that in January 2011, we can begin a transition. A transition to hand off -- responsibility to the Afghan forces.

ROBERT GATES: We're not talking about an abrupt withdrawal. We're talking about something that will take place over a period of time. Our commanders think that these additional forces, and one of the reasons for the President's decision to try and accelerate their deployment is-- is the view that this extended surge has the opportunity to make significant gains in terms of reversing the momentum of the Taliban, denying them control of Afghan territory, and degrading their capabilities.

Our military thinks we have a real opportunity to do that. And it's not just in the next 18 months. Because we will have a significant -- we will have 100,000 forces -- troops there. And they are not leaving-- in July of 2011. Some handful or some small number or whatever the conditions permit, we'll begin to withdraw at that time.

Can someone track down all the times that President Bush and others have said that the Iraqi military has made just awesome progress in their training during the last years now and list them please?

Such An Awesome War:

Iraq's new army is "developing steadily," with "strong Iraqi leaders out front," the chief U.S. trainer said.

That was three-plus years ago, and the trainer was David H. Petraeus, now the top American commander in Iraq. Some of those Iraqi officials at the time were busy embezzling more than $1 billion allotted for the new army's weapons, according to investigators.

Nationwide security: In the latest shift, the Pentagon's new quarterly status report quietly drops any prediction of when local units will take over security responsibility for Iraq. Last year's reports had forecast a transition in 2008.

Bush's prediction: In January 2007, President Bush said Iraqi forces would take charge in all 18 Iraqi provinces by November. Four months past that deadline, they control nine provinces and none of the most volatile ones.

Cost: At least $22 billion has been spent to train an Iraqi military with narrow capabilities, critics and outside experts say.

Pentagon's view: Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the current trainer, said his team has made "huge progress in many areas, quality and quantity." Still, "we're not free of difficulties," he said, citing as an example a critical shortage of midlevel Iraqi officers that will take years to close.

Iraqi view: Dubik says Iraqi defense officials don't expect to take over internal security until as late as 2012 and won't be able to defend Iraq's borders until 2018.

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Look at this! Just days after her primary win over Bush Dog Al Wynn and before she will be sworn in, Donna Edwards is already getting face time on major news shows. That's a rising star for you. Chris Matthews brings Edwards on to temper the right wing fear mongering of Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, who apparently has still bought into the great bogeyman of the Cold War era: the Communist. Castro's despotic and tyrannical rule over Cuba was because he was a 1) despot and 2) tyrant...not because he was a communist. But don't tell that to Burton.

Notwithstanding that Cuba has represented absolutely no threat to the U.S. since Khrushchev scuttled his missiles, braying pols and official U.S. policy have continued to buttress Castro's status as a hemispheric bogeyman, oblivious to all measurable reality, much less simple reason. Sure, we've traded liberally all through the Clinton and Bush years with far more vicious authoritarian regimes, from Indonesia and China to Colombia-- which we've armed to the teeth largely to enable fascist paramility Klansmen to murder campesinos so that U.S. corporations can clear-cut their land -- but bring up Cuba, the notion of even relaxing nearly a half-century of teeth-gnashing hostility and economic strangulation, and you might as well be Neville Chamberlain in Munich. The reason, of course, is simple political triangulation: the much-contested Florida electorate and its population of right-wing Cubans. [..]

And curiously, Hardball turned to not-yet-even-elected Donna Edwards, of all the Democrats available, to counterpoint Burton. As yet unschooled on the triangulative realities of real politick, herself actually having been to Cuba, Edwards offered the simple admonishments that engaging a society and finding commonalities, versus demonizing them, versus playing global tough guy, might lead to the rudimentary markets and freedoms we'd like to encourage, especially after Helms-Burton had so plainly not worked-- and, by the way, after playing global tough guy combined with neolib trade dogma has nearly broken the damn country. "We need to re-establish relations with Cuba on issues of travel, even family travel," she told Tweety, " [to] establish dialogue on the ground so that when the transition happens, Cubans have information to make their own decision about their economic future."

Bush's reputation as a lame-duck president isn't helped by a massive staff exodus.

President Bush is losing his chief speech writer, William McGurn, and his director of legislative affairs, Candida Wolff, the White House announced this morning.

Mr. McGurn, a former Wall Street Journal columnist, replaced Michael Gerson in January 2005, and will leave after crafting the president's final State of the Union speech for late January.

Mrs. Wolff joined the president's staff three years ago after three years in Vice President Dick Cheney's legislative affairs shop, and will leave by the end of this month.

It's not unusual for a president's staff to secure post-White House jobs before the transition between administrations, but doesn't Bush still have 13 months left in office?

Someone had to say it; I'm just glad it was Paul Krugman.

[T]here isn’t actually any such thing as Islamofascism — it’s not an ideology; it’s a figment of the neocon imagination. The term came into vogue only because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein, who didn’t. And Iran had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 — in fact, the Iranian regime was quite helpful to the United States when it went after Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan.

Beyond that, the claim that Iran is on the path to global domination is beyond ludicrous. Yes, the Iranian regime is a nasty piece of work in many ways, and it would be a bad thing if that regime acquired nuclear weapons. But let’s have some perspective, please: we’re talking about a country with roughly the G.D.P. of Connecticut, and a government whose military budget is roughly the same as Sweden’s. [...]

Mike Huckabee, whom reporters like to portray as a nice, reasonable guy, says that if Hillary Clinton is elected, “I’m not sure we’ll have the courage and the will and the resolve to fight the greatest threat this country’s ever faced in Islamofascism.” Yep, a bunch of lightly armed terrorists and a fourth-rate military power — which aren’t even allies — pose a greater danger than Hitler’s panzers or the Soviet nuclear arsenal ever did.

All of this would be funny if it weren’t so serious.

The politics of fear might be more effective it were grounded in reality.

NOW:

For many Iraq and Gulf War veterans, the transition from battlefield to home front is difficult. Bouts of fierce anger, depression and anxiety that previous generations of soldiers described as "shell shock" or "combat/battle fatigue" now earn a clinical diagnosis: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. But the relatively new medical label doesn't guarantee soldiers will get the care they need. On Friday, September 28 at 8:30 pm (check local listings), NOW looks at how America's newest crop of returning soldiers is coping with the emotional scars of war, and some new and innovative treatments for them.

NOW Online will reveal facts and figures about vets and PTSD, and offer resources for coping. Also, an interview with veterans advocate Paul Rieckhoff about the denial of veteran benefits, and a deeper look at this week's children's' health care bill debate.

The Newshoggers: BU$HCO'S weapons of mass distraction. But this story is scarier

First Draft: Experts warn that a national security crisis looms for the 2009 administration transition because the Department of Homeland Security is so heavily stacked with political appointees

The Terrorist's Dictionary: The Pentagon multi-billion-dollar project to defeat IEDs ("Joint IED Defeat Organization") says they are "weapons of strategic influence."

The Kingsland Report: Rupert Murdoch of Newscorp fame maybe be about to be chewed up and spit out by the Bancroft family of Wall Street Journal fame. There's a lot of cockiness to this Murdoch takeover attempt of Dow Jones. I'm not so sure it's a foregone conclusion

IraqSlogger: Forced labor building our new Baghdad embassy?

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