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On CNN's new show in Dobbs' old time slot, Erica Hill brought on Jeremy Scahill, Michael Ware and Peter Blaber to discuss the President's decision to escalate our presence in Afghanistan. It's nice to see Scahill getting some more air time in the MSM. And I think Scahill was spot on with this statement:

SCAHILL: We need to have a sober discussion in this country on this question, is our continued occupation there, as Michael says, ultimately harming our national security? Are we creating fresh enemies that will blow back to us later? That to me should be one of the crucial questions.

Transcript via CNN.

HILL: For more now on the president's plan and its chances for success, I'm joined by Peter Blaber, former delta force mission unit commander. He's also the author of "Mission, The Men and Me." Here in New York, Jeremy Scahill, the author of "Blackwater, the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army and also an investigative journalist for the "Nation." His story in the current issue is on the "Secret U.S. War." Michael Ware is also with us in the studio, CNN's international correspondent who of course has reported extensively from Iraq and Afghanistan. Good to have all of you here.

Michael, I want to start with you because I know it was something that you mentioned last night. You spent so much time there. You said last night, the key to this, really, is winning over the warlords. The average American sitting back, you hear that, you think, why on earth would the U.S. want to deal with warlords in Afghanistan?

MICHAEL WARE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, sadly, it's an unavoidable trait that the fundamental building blocks of the Afghan society are the warlords or the tribal chiefs, depending on what you want to call them. It's a very feudal society. If you're up in some remote mountain valley, Kabul can exercise absolutely no authority over you or your village. So if you got a land dispute or any kind of problem, you go to the local big chief. That big chief will have another big chief. They're the people that America needs to be reaching out to. At night, in the villages, that's when the Taliban comes in. That's when the Taliban runs. That's when they have control. It's these people that can counter the Taliban at night and when America is not there. But only if we finally put it in their interest to do so.

HILL: So, Jeremy, how do you put it in their interests? How do you make it enticing to them to work with U.S. forces?

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Wolf Blitzer talks to Michael Ware about the increase in violence as the deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq's major cities nears. As Michael points out, it's not that people have not been dying there all year.

Our press in the United States just hasn't been covering it. Maybe John McCain and Lindsey Graham can go over and visit the markets in Baghdad for another rug shopping excursion and tell all of us how wonderful everything is there right now.

I'm sure they'll do their best to blame what's happening now on the Obama administration, rather than the fact the people such as themselves thought it was such a great idea to go in there in the first place and blow up and occupy a country that wasn't a threat to us, despite Dick Cheney and his daughter's best attempts to convince the public otherwise. I'm also sure our American media will give both of them ample time on the air to make those criticisms.

When we quit building and occupying Vatican City sized embassies in Iraq and Afghanistan we can do more than pretend we really have any intention of getting our military out of either country.

BLITZER: A bloody wave of violence is washing over Iraq with scores of people across the country killed in a series of gruesome bombings this past week. And it all comes only days before U.S. forces are scheduled to withdraw from all major Iraqi cities.

Let's go to Baghdad, CNN's Michael Ware, who's standing by. The deadline is Tuesday for U.S. combat forces to leave the cities. Michael, what's likely to happen?

WARE: Well, on the morning of July 1st, not a great deal to be honest, Wolf. This withdrawal has been going on since January. Now you're still going to see some odd Americans out on the streets. You're going to have U.S. advisers embedded with Iraqi units. You'll still see them occasionally. There's going to be some partnered operations. There's some partner patrols, some joint events. But by and large, you're not going to see the presence of U.S. forces that we've become so accustomed to.

Because as you point out, as of Tuesday, all U.S. forces by then have to have had retreated to predesignated bases. They're allowed to operate in the green belt around Baghdad. They're allowed to around in the desert, but they're not allowed in the cities or the townships without the true commanders of the Iraq War as of Tuesday, the Iraqis.

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Campbell Brown thinks it's a "great debate" to use chickenhawk torture apologist Marc Thiessen's article at the National Revue on Obama's Cairo speech as the premise for this segment: President Obama undercut the military in his speech to the Muslim world.

What's next, Campbell? You going to ask your guests when Obama quit beating his wife?

About the only good thing about watching this was getting to see Michael Ware call a chickenhawk out to his face.

WARE: (INAUDIBLE) your article but the problem is you're not talking to a Veterans of Foreign Wars evening dinner. You're talking to the Arab or the Muslim world.

THIESSEN: Yes.

WARE: And to be honest, they don't feel terribly liberated by the U.S. military. Now, you and I might have views of that.

THIESSEN: Well, that's why the president has a responsibility to say something.

WARE: You and I may have our view of that. But when there's American tanks sitting in the Arab streets, when they see the killings in Afghanistan from our bombings, though they're not intended, that's not how they feel. When they see what happened in Abu Ghraib --

THIESSEN: The vast majority of Afghans support Americans --

WARE: You got to understand -- you got to understand, Marc, I mean, it might feel different in the ivory towers in the Capitol Hill and the Pentagon. But on the streets -- on the streets --

THIESSEN: Excuse me, I've been to Iraq and Afghanistan four times in each of those countries so I know what it's like in the Arab streets. I've been there.

WARE: Oh, I'm sorry. You spend how much time in Iraq?

THIESSEN: Oh, listen --

WARE: No, no, no, how much time, Marc? How much time, Marc?

THIESSEN: I've traveled -- oh, I know you lived there.

WARE: Right, I lived there for six years, right? I know the problem that President Obama is trying to address.

THIESSEN: Yes.

WARE: And I can tell you, I've spent more time in the trenches with your troops than I can guarantee you have. And I'm speaking for your soldiers.

THIESSEN: Michael, let me tell you something.

WARE: And I'm telling you, they don't need platitudes. They need a solution.

THIESSEN: I was under fire too. I was in the Pentagon in September 11, 2001 with our troops, so don't tell me about being under fire with the troops.

So in the chickenhawk's view, being at the Pentagon on 9-11 is the equivalent of being under fire with the troops in Iraq. That's rich. Why Brown thought subjecting Ware to this nonsense was a good idea is beyond me. He didn't seem too thrilled about it when it was over, either.

Transcript of the entire segment from LexisNexis below the fold.

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CNN's Michael Ware is easily one of the bravest (and best) journalists in America, so when he tells "Men's Journal" about how radically covering the Iraq War has changed him as a person, we should all take note.

Men's Journal:

“I am not the same f#&@ing person,” he tells me. “I am not the same person. I don’t know how to come home.”

It’s October, six months after our first meeting, and Michael Ware, 39, is at his girlfriend’s apartment in New York, trying to tell me why after six years he absolutely must start spending less time in Iraq. He’s crying on the other end of the telephone.

“Will I get any better?” he continues. “I honestly don’t know. I can’t see the — right now, I know no other way to live.”

Make sure to read the whole thing. It's truly fascinating.

Think Progress:  

The Bush administration is currently trying to push Iraqis into accepting a indefinite long-term security agreement, with demands including nearly 60 permanent bases, immunity for foreign contractors, control over air space, and authorization for war with Iran.

But Iraqis are rejecting the administration’s stubborn attempts to control Iraq’s future. Today, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki remarked, “The American version of the agreement infringes hugely on the sovereignty of Iraq and this is something that we cannot ever accept.”

Today, CNN’s Michael Ware said the U.S. presented a second draft of the agreement, but Iraqis rejected it because the draft is “the same as the first.” According to Ware, many Iraqis now want to “go it alone” and may even “take over this war”:

WARE: What we’re also hearing from the Iraqi government is they may go it alone, using a hangover snippet of law left over from the original American occupation authority of Paul Bremer.

They could create their own legislation in their own Congress or Parliament, and thereby dictate to America what U.S. troops can and cannot do in this country, where they can go, where they must stay, and how many you’re allowed to have. So you may see the Iraqis taking over this war, and you may see a lot of U.S. gains being drawn back.

 Read on...