Posted by Lambert
In her Liberties column Maureen Dowd writes:
What we are witnessing is how ugly it can get when control freaks start losing control. Beset by problems, the Bush team responds by attacking those who point out the problems. These linear, Manichaean managers are flailing in an ever-more-chaotic environment. They are spending $3.9 billion a month trying to keep the lid on a festering mess in Iraq, even as Afghanistan simmers.
The more Bush officials try to explain how the president made the bogus uranium claim in his State of the Union address, despite the C.I.A. red flags and the State Department warning that it was "highly dubious," the more inexplicable it seems. The list of evils the administration has not unearthed keeps getting longer — Osama, Saddam, W.M.D., the anthrax terrorist — as the deficit gets bigger ($455 billion, going to $475 billion).
After 9/11, this administration had everything going for it. Republicans ruled Congress. The president had enormously high approval ratings. Yet it overreached while trying to justify the reasons for going to war.
Even when conservatives have all the marbles, they still act as if they're under siege. Now that they are under siege, it is no time for them to act as if they're losing their marbles.
There's little here most of you don't know, but all three pieces strike me as excellent summaries; two of them are by Jim Lobe, who is fast becoming an essentialy read, in my book.
Posted by Lambert
Hours before his death, mysteriously slain UK WMD expert David Kelly told of 'dark actors'....
UPDATE: Kelly was a microbiologist, like these others (From Canada's newspaper of record, the Toronto Globe and Mail, thanks to alert reader kelly b). Weird.
Posted by Leah
From the President's weekly radio message:
"The American economy is headed in the right direction, and we can be confident of better days ahead," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address.
It needs to hurry up, don't you think? After all, the recession ended officially, we now know, in November, 2001, eight months after it officially started, in March, 2001. You remember, it was the Clinton recession then.
The 2001 recession was slightly shorter than the average of the nine other U.S. downturns since World War II, and it was also among the mildest in terms of lost economic output
So the months since November 2001 have to be considered this Bush administration's recovery, yes?
When the Dems get beat up badly enough, maybe they'll find a way to make public financing of elections their issue, which is not as easy a move as you might think. There's a Supreme Court ruling to think their way around, and an understandable fear that if they take that issue and run with it, they'll find themselves in a position where they'll look like hypocrites, or be forced to unilaterally disarm.
Even so, what other way is there for citizens to get their democracy back?
Posted by Lambert
Dean has 16 questions for the President. Number 12:
Mr. President, we need to know why your Administration has never told the truth about the costs and long-term commitment of the war, has consistently downplayed what those would be, and now continues to try keep the projected costs hidden from the American people.
Dean's questions are good and pointed, and thank Jeebus someone is asking them.
But the list of 16 is a mixture of detail and big picture stuff. Granted, you've got to master the detail to know when Bush is lying—or at least which lie he's telling at any one time—but only the big picture stuff can take the White House back in 2004. FWIW, I think Dean should focus on the vision and put an attack dog on the details.
And I do like the "We can handle the truth" banner. A positive message.
Who wants to write the "16 questions" parody, to the tune of "16 candles"? (We've already done "16 words, and whaddaya get," thanks to alert reader Weldon Berger). Maybe we can improve on Dean's questions in the course of writing the lyrics...
Posted by Lambert
According to a White House official here:
"The president of the United States is not a fact-checker."
Then again, back on July 5, Our CEO President himself told us:
"I'm the kind of person that likes to know all the facts before I make a decision."
(thanks to alert reader the reverend)
So who's lying? The official? Bush? Or both?
UPDATE: Thanks to the reverend. I guess I'll have to use that "Incurious George" riff another time.
UPDATE: Parseville! Alert readers decode the carefully crafted, lawyer-like statements of Bush and his officials. Surprise! They turn out to be "technically accurate"!
"I said I was the kind of person who likes to know all the facts. ... That doesn't mean I actually look for them. I just like to think I know what they are." (thanks to Traitorous filth)
Posted by Leah
Former UN Arms Inspector, member of UNSCOM, currently part of the team in Iraq looking for those damn WMD, or at least what happened to them, or at least evidence that they were once there, or at least evidence that Saddam had every intention, at some point, to restart his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons program.
If you watched any of the cable news coverage of the leadup to the war, you saw David Kay, and heard him speak often and with absolute confidence; Saddam had 'em, would hide'em, inspections were useless. And he has lost none of his confidence.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 4:41 p.m. EDT
Pentagon Bombshell: U.S. Uncovers WMD Document 'Mother Lode'
The Pentagon's chief weapons inspector, David Kay, has uncovered what is being described as a "mother lode" of documents in Iraq detailing Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program.
"I've already seen enough to convince me," said Kay, former U.N. chief nuclear weapons inspector, in an interview aired Tuesday with "NBC Nightly News" anchorman Tom Brokaw.
"We're finding progress reports. [Iraqi scientists] also got financial rewards from Saddam Hussein by breakthroughs, indicating breakthroughs. They actually took – went to Saddam and said, 'We have made this progress,'" the top WMD prober explained. "There are records, there are audiotapes of those interviews which give us that."
"According to Kay, the Iraqis seem to [have kept] documents on even the most damning evidence," said Brokaw.
In assessing the scope of Kay's find, the NBC newsman proclaimed, "This is a mother lode, an estimated seven and a half miles of documents, many of them collected by U.S. military from [Iraq's] official buildings, but many others handed over by Iraqi civilians."
(edit)
How long will it take before President Bush is able to reveal what could be smoking-gun justification of his decision to make war on Iraq?
"I think we will have a substantial body of evidence before six months," Kay told NBC.
Brokaw ended his report on Kay's find with a clip of Tuesday's comment by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., a move the newsman apparently intended as a reminder to Democrats who continue to carp about the lack of WMD evidence that they're liable to be humiliated when the full story is known.
"It's a disgrace that the case for war seems to have been based on shoddy intelligence, hyped intelligence, and even false intelligence," Kennedy complained.
Meanwhile, back in Baghdad, Kay continues to pour over his treasure trove of WMD documents.
That's how Newsmax is playing the story. Here's the original interview via MSNBC.
The right is banking on David Kay, to bring home the bacon, so to speak. And not just the whacky right. In that NewHours segment, David Brooks, his voice trembling with breathy hope, brought up the name of Kay.
Through-out the runup to the war, David Kay was slightly more impatient then, with references to "smoking guns."
I'm not suggesting Kay isn't knowledgeable, or that he's lacking in integrity. He believes what he believes, and I doubt many of us would claim that given half a chance, Saddam Huessin was not ever ready to renew his various WMD programs. But the approach to inspections, underlying his Janruary WaPo oped, were, I suspect, highly influencial within the administration.
When it comes to the U.N. weapons inspection in Iraq, looking for a smoking gun is a fool's mission. That was true 11 years ago when I led the inspections there. It is no less true today -- even after the seemingly important discovery on Thursday of a dozen empty short-range missile warheads left over from the 1980s.
The only job the inspectors can expect to accomplish is confirming whether Iraq has voluntarily disarmed.
(edit)
When it comes to the U.N. weapons inspection in Iraq, looking for a smoking gun is a fool's mission. That was true 11 years ago when I led the inspections there. It is no less true today -- even after the seemingly important discovery on Thursday of a dozen empty short-range missile warheads left over from the 1980s.
The only job the inspectors can expect to accomplish is confirming whether Iraq has voluntarily disarmed.
And they weren't intended to. The administration knew when it needed to wage this war - sometime before the blistering heat arrived that our troops are serving in now. That put time on Saddam's side in their mind, and in David Kay's.
But was it? And was a containment policy that centered on enhanced inspections incompatible with any possibility of Saddam losing his power over the Iraqi people?
UPDATE: David Ehrenstein, who else, has the definitive answer to the question posed in the header. Click on the excellent comments section to find out the answer.
UPDATE: For more about David Kay, check herehere and here. (courtesy of reader Fact search)
Also, anyone who may have missed the farmer's extraordinary essay posted early this morning, please don't. It's here.
US won't take India's 'No' for an answer
By Sultan Shahin
NEW DELHI - Ever since the United States sought Indian military help to continue its three-month-old occupation of Iraq, speculation about the carrots and sticks attached to the request have been rife. As New Delhi dithered, suspicions grew stronger, despite denials of pressure from both sides, that the incentives were substantial, as were the potential punishments.
Now that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's coalition government has shown the courage to refuse to send troops to Iraq, both the carrots and sticks are beginning to come out into the open.
In total contrast to its very mild public reaction, expressing just disappointment, senior US officials have reportedly made American displeasure very clear in a closed-door meeting with Indian Ambassador Lalit Mansingh in Washington. One of India's largest-circulated newspapers, the Hindustan Times, quoted diplomatic sources on Thursday to confirm that the US administration conveyed that it felt "let down" by India's decision. More worrying for India, they said it could impact Indo-US ties in "critical areas".
(edit)
As analyst Seema Sirohi put it: "Hell hath no fury like the US scorned." State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher expressed his concerns more diplomatically: "I am not predicting any particular problems. However, we hoped the troops would have been able to go, I think in our interests and what we perceive as their interests as well."
The Bush administration is known to have a vindictive streak. It reacts strongly to countries that don't cooperate in its imperialist ventures. Even before India's decision to reject the US request, William Triplett, former Republican counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said: "A 'No' from India will have an impact although no one will say so in public. The adults in the administration are thought to be more than a bit put out by the Indian parliament's resolution on Iraq, especially its timing. Showing that the Indian army are rolling up their sleeves to help out now will pay dividends with the Americans later."
George Perkovich, vice-president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, believes with other analysts that this administration does not forget easily. He commented earlier: "The administration would be angry or at least disappointed, and if India sends troops, it would be bailing out the Republicans from a growing crisis of occupation without international partners."
It's not as if the US press hasn't reported the various stories that illustrate the confusion of "vindictive" with "strong" that runs through-out the Bush foreign policy. In fact, the essence of the Bush doctrine is its willingness to coerce compliance with a Pax Americana.
You just don't see any of our pundits noticing in quite the open way we see here. But maybe that's beginning to change?
David Brooks Puts Himself In The President's Boots
Posted by Leah
On yesterday's NewsHour, during his regular end-of-week commentary from the right, David Brooks expressed consternation and wonderment that the issue of uranium from Niger is still with us.
This story in my view deserved two days. This is a story about one charge among many, and this national intelligence estimate, there were three paragraphs about this uranium story out of ninety pages, and it's not an important story at all.
Brooks pointed out that what we need to be worrying about are where the WMDs are, reconstructing Iraq, and fighting this new guerrilla war that's getting our soldiers killed. That there might be a relationship between the choices made by the Bush administration "then," and the problems we're having "now," Mr. Brooks rejected.
....we are in this frenzy. It is like a libido for the trivial that somehow we think we have Travelgate or Watergate or some other scandal.
Let's leave aside the equation of Travelgate and Watergate; were both trivial? And who was it, again, who treated Travelgate like it was Watergate?
This was the day the White House declassified and released ninety odd pages of last October's NIE, and for Brooks, it explained everything that needed explaining.
Bush gets this in the Oval Office; he reads this on the first page. If Baghdad acquires sufficient fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within several months to a year. Your president of the United States, September 11 just happened, several months to a year. You have to connect the dots. If you're sitting with this document and the whole document is compelling aside from the few areas, including the uranium tubes which are not compelling because of the state department difficult sent. But if you are sitting with this document, you want to connect the dots.
You're in a context, post-September 11 where everybody is blaming you for not bring all the information together, to think about a theory of how the World Trade Centers got blown up. So you want to be aggressive in connecting the dots. They were aggressive and they did take this Niger thing seriously. But to me, that's what I want my president to be doing in those circumstances because nuclear bombs could be months away in Iraq.
Here's what the two Danas, Milbank and Priest, tell us in todays WaPo:
President Bush and his national security adviser did not entirely read the most authoritative prewar assessment of U.S. intelligence on Iraq, including a State Department claim that an allegation Bush would later use in his State of the Union address was "highly dubious," White House officials said yesterday.
The acknowledgment came in a briefing for reporters in which the administration released excerpts from last October's National Intelligence Estimate, a classified, 90-page summary that was the definitive assessment of Iraq's weapons programs by U.S. intelligence agencies. The report declared that "most" of the six intelligence agencies believed there was "compelling evidence that Saddam [Hussein] is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad's nuclear weapons program." But the document also included a pointed dissent by the State Department, which said the evidence did not "add up to a compelling case" that Iraq was making a comprehensive effort to get nuclear weapons.
Bush aides released eight pages of the NIE, including various findings supporting Bush's charges against Iraq: that Iraq was "continuing, and in some areas expanding," chemical, biological and nuclear programs; that it possessed forbidden chemical and biological weapons; and that it was likely to have a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade.
But the excerpts also show that significant doubts were raised about key assertions Bush made in his State of the Union address. According to the NIE, a consensus document based on the work of six agencies, both the Energy Department, which is responsible for watching foreign nuclear programs, and the State Department disagreed with another allegation, voiced by Bush, that aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq were for a nuclear weapons program.
(edit)
A senior administration official who briefed reporters yesterday said neither Bush nor national security adviser Condoleezza Rice read the NIE in its entirety. "They did not read footnotes in a 90-page document," said the official, referring to the "Annex" that contained the State Department's dissent. The official conducting the briefing rejected reporters' entreaties to allow his name to be used, arguing that it was his standard procedure for such sessions to be conducted anonymously.
The official said Bush was "briefed" on the NIE's contents, but "I don't think he sat down over a long weekend and read every word of it." Asked whether Bush was aware the State Department called the Africa-uranium claim "highly dubious," the official, who coordinated Bush's State of the Union address, said: "He did not know that."
"The president was comfortable at the time, based on the information that was provided in his speech," the official said of the decision to use it in the address to Congress. "The president of the United States is not a fact-checker."
Brooks, yesterday, recommended "perspective," in evaluating what's really important about how and why this country went to war against Saddam Huessin, which meant waging war on the entire country of Iraq
The reconstruction of Iraq is what we're going to remember in a year or two -- not one charge out of many in the president's case. And that, I think, in Washington, in particular, and I'm not sure it is true in the country, we've lost perspective. (all italics mine)
And what will we have wrought when we've completed that reconstruction? According to Brooks, exactly what was, and still is, the President's strongest argument about Iraq.
...if he had come to the country and said there is a bad guy and there are mass graves, he kills two million people, I actually doubt it would have been enough. But if he had come and said we have to transform the Middle East to drain the swamp of terrorism, and that is part of our larger war on terrorism, then I think the American people would have supported the president on that.
There you have it, the rebirth of a meme, straight outta the PNAC.
The birthplace of civilizations has become the "swamp of terrorism," and it is our imperial responsibility to transform it, for the ultimate good of all mankind, and if we do not shirk from the task, the world will follow us.
Posted by Lambert
Mike Allen of WaPo (via the Note) lays out the newest White House game plan on hyped Iraq intelligence:
[M]oving the argument away from the specifics of the use of intelligence and to the broader question of the war against terrorism.
Right. Let's enjoy watching Scott "Sucker MC" McClellan sweat and stutter while he explains how getting half our army bogged down in a guerilla war in Iraq has anything to do with fighting the trans-national and decentralized AQ.
Make my popcorn super-sized!
Advice to Mary Matalin: As they say in the Navy: "You can't buff a turd."
Posted by Lambert
Rep. Scott McInnis, a 50-year-old Colorado Republican, cries:
''I fully intended to defend myself."
And what was the imminent threat?
... [McInnis] later said the 71-year-old Stark ''threatened me with physical harm. It was entirely appropriate for the [Chairman Bill Thomas] to call the sergeant at arms and the Capitol Police so order in the committee could be maintained.'' (Margasak, Associated Press)
A 50-year-old gets the cops to defend himself against a 71-year-old man? Weak. Pathetic. But it's the best the Republicans can do:
By their account, [Chairman Bill Thomas] had no choice but to call the authorities, to restore order when Mr. Stark, 71, threatened Representative Scott McInnis, a 50-year-old Republican, and called him "a wimp" and "a fruitcake." (Stolberg, Times)
Stark has, of course, been contrite about calling a Republican a fruitcake[1]. We have yet to hear an apology from the Republicans for anything.
Beyond the heated words, serious issues are at stake:
The Republicans did call the cops. Into the Capitol. Where do they think they are? Texas?
That bill is important, since it could slash pension payouts for millions of Americans. We're going to trust the Republicans with our money?
Not that our "evenly balanced" and play-it-for-sneers SCLM will ever tell you that.
And besides.
Bill Thomasis a fruitcake. He's the one responsible for calling the cops. Make him even nuttier by sending him one!
Send Bill Thomas a fruitcake![2] Let's try a little media manipulation of our own. You can fax Bill Thomas a fruitcake image here:
Washington Fax: 202-225-8798
Bakersfield Fax: 661-637-0867
If you want to send Thomas a real fruitcake, why not send one of those petrified holiday ones you've never thrown out? Good liberals recycle! Or you can send him a new one:
Washington, DC 2208 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Ph.202-225-2915
Bakersfield 4100 Empire Drive
Suite 150
Bakersfield, California 93309
Ph.661-327-3611
(thanks to Leah for recycling suggestion)
[1] "Fruitcake" is slang for a crazy or an eccentric person. Usage example: "Those winger fruitcakes are nuttier than Mussolini."
[2] A real fruitcake, I mean. There are far too many winger ideologues on The Hill already.
UPDATE: Fruitcake Rebellion Roll of Honor
Fruitcake sent. $8.95 is a small price to pay to make my voice heard. (alert reader RCSanders)
Ok, sent a fruitcake. Feel better. Thanks everyone, for making it possible. (alert reader tena)
Just mailed my fruitcake. I really enjoyed "fruiting' the repubs. They deserve all the fruitcakes they can get. Besides, $8.95 is a small price to pay to get my country back!!!!!! (alert reader Colleen)
Fruitcake sent to Thomas' home office in Bakersfield. Hopefully he'll get the point. At least I didn't have to fill out a nine-screen form that first asks if I'm for or against fruitcake. (alert reader whump)
I faxed a letter of complaint, along with a picture of a fruitcake from that Google search you posted. I believe he's still my Rep., unfortunately. (alert reader dark avenger)
Another fruitcake inbound for D.C.! (alert reader Tartarus)
Another fruitcake on it's way to Thomas. Hope he's got a big appetitie!
kriselda jarnsaxa
My family all pitched in to send Billy Boy a big ol' concrete block o' fruity stuff; thanks for the links!
(Thanks to alert reader Beth for "Fruitcake rebellion")
"The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."- Genesis 3:13
Posted by the farmer Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar. – Author unknown
*****
"...Fascism is, also historically, of mushroom growth, without legitimate roots in our liberty-loving traditions." - Anthony Turano quoting a resident of Naples Italy, 1934.
The following excerpts appear in an article titled: "Mussolini Is Tottering", by Anthony M. Turano, published by The American Mercury, September 1934. Volume XXXIII, Number 129. page 25, Editor: Charles Angoff.
Turano, born in Italy, returned to his country of birth to report on the state of affairs during Mussolini's reign. NOTE: All bracketed bold type sectional sub-heads below are my emphasis, and do not appear in the original AM article.
[begin Turano excerpts, Italy circa 1934]
POLITICAL conversation in Fascist Italy divides itself into two main branches: the ostentatious public panegyric, and the whispered private jeremiad. The first, of course, is always concerned with the glory of Il Duce, his dynamic personality, his pontifical infallibility, his success in commanding the respect of other nations toward his country, and his extraordinary feat of making the trains run according to schedule. During a recent personal visit to the land of the Corporative State, I did not escape the loud panegyric; but it was also very interesting to overhear the mono-tone of lamentation and rebellion that prevails in every part of the peninsula.
[i pressci grossi]
One evening, soon after my arrival in my native town in the Southern province of Calabria, I was surrounded by a small group of people who had come to pay their respects to l'Ammcano.
"We have electric lights now," said an old contadino who had previously amused the company by recounting my half-forgotten childhood pranks. "We also have a new railroad, a modern olive press and a flour mill. But il Fascismo is good only for i pesci grossi [the big fish] of the Kingdom. The common people have a worse lot than before. Our knees were badly patched when yon first knew us, and we still wear the same uniforms of poverty.
[Agribiz and Corporate Feudalism]
Mussolini himself has recently admitted that any additional levies would "drive the taxpayers to death." A schoolmate of mine explained that the old regime established Casse Rurali, land banks that were required to loan money to farmers at 3% interest. But the patriotic gentlemen in charge of the institutions, invariably eminent in the high councils of the Fascist Party, manage to collect as much as 12% a year on each loan. Through an epidemic of foreclosures the loan sharks have elevated themselves into feudal barons, while hundreds of families have been evicted from the homes and lands that had been theirs for centuries. These conditions have been consistently ignored by Il Duce, although he is seeking, in his "Battle of Grain," to make Italy self-supporting in the production of wheat.
[Labor vs. Industrial Feudalism]
In Bologna, I spent some time with a distant relative who was a telephone lineman. As an old trade-unionist, he had not managed to digest the industrial feudalism of recent years.
"Labor has lost, under Fascism, everything it had gained in all its previous struggles," he said. "Our wages have been falling steadily since 1929, with no corresponding decrease in the price of bread. If we threaten to strike, we are treated as traitors to the state. With our standard of living lower than ever, we naturally laugh at the propaganda for large families and fearsome armies."
[Culture War and the Fascist Ideal]
Another writer informed me that he had been employed for several years, by an important newspaper, as a special collaborator on artistic and musical subjects. One day his editor, doubtless obeying orders, demanded a written statement of his political attitude.
"I pleaded," said my friend, "that my interests in life were purely literary, and that I preferred to retain my neutrality. It was a mistake. A week later I was discharged."
When I asked him what he had been doing since, he answered that he had managed to eke out an existence by writing for foreign publications in French and English, and that he hoped eventually to establish himself in America.
"The atmosphere itself is so depressing," a Milanese critic said, "that no outstanding writer has arisen here since the advent of the Dark Age of Fascism. Even the novelist is inevitably cramped and self-conscious, for fear that he picture contemporary life in a manner unsuitable to the Fascist idea. The consequence might be imprisonment or exile, as happened to Vinciguerra, De Bosis, Malaparte, and hundreds of the smaller fry. Furthermore, the psychological emphasis has been so completely switched to patriotic stupidities, that there is no longer a reading public in the older sense. There is only the state and its trembling subjects."
[A Blood and Thunder Creed - Learned by Rote]
He later discussed the educational systerm of Italy, and pointed out that all students, even the youngest, are taught to revere imperialism and war, and to learn by rote the various exploits of Il Duce.
[...]
"Every instructor and college professor," I was told, "must subscribe to an oath, a blood and thunder creed of Fascism, before he is allowed to teach. Those who refuse to take the oath are replaced by others more obedient. Some of the non-conformists, including two men of immense erudition, are now teaching in American colleges."
[Agents of the National Security State]
The Fascist answer to all signs of economic and spiritual distress is a formidable army of militiamen, carabinieri [police], guards, spies, metropolitani, and other "agents of public security". An exiled Italian author estimates that the cost of maintaining order in Italy is three times what it is in France. Surely no other nation has a more imposing police force.
Naturally, the average Italian cannot reconcile this depressing state of martial law with the official ballyhoo concerning the great popularity of Fascism. His private conversation contains a rich repertoire of picturesque epithets to fit every corps. Some of the most expressive ones, such as infame, and canaglia (infamous, low brow) are directed at the supernumerary militia of Fascism, whose special assignment is the preservation of the state against subversive uprisings. It is the general opinion that these indolent militi are recruited from among the early partisans of Il Duce, and that he is now "providing for them" at public expense. But perhaps the greatest hatred is expressed against the OVRA [Mussolini's secret police] and the hordes of other officers in plain clothes, who trace the movements of every citizen, in the street cars, trains, cafes and other public places, in the hope of overhearing some unguarded phrase of criticism against the prevailing regime. Their espionage penetrates into the most intimate affairs of civilians, including their telephone conversations. Many citizens informed me that their letters had been opened by postal spies.
[Traitors Be Silent]
The man who does not agree with official opinion must be silent, or suffer as a traitor. The inmates of the political prisons are neither regicides nor Communists, but ordinary citizens whose ideas are current street-corner talk in democratic countries. Nitti, Rosselli, and Lussu were ordinary liberals, but they would still be in prison if they had not escaped."
It is the general belief of most citizens that the Italian national "election" of March 25, 1934, was merely a method of counting the friends and enemies of Fascism, for the purpose of apportioning rewards and punishments.
[The Suicide Chamber & The Council of Corporations]
It is well known that Fascism has small respect for democratic institutions. Several years ago it dispensed with municipal elections, by appointing an autocratic podesta for every city and town. The present House of Deputies, known as "the suicide chamber," has been ordered to eliminate itself in favor of a despotic Council of Corporations.
[Fear, Fictions and Propaganda - A Tribe of Hypocrites in Chains]
I was repeatedly told by natives that Il Duce's popularity is a fiction compounded of propaganda and fear. Others insisted that at least one-half of the crowds that cheer him when he appears in public are policemen in plain clothes, while the other half are largely his political dependents.
Indeed, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Italian blackshirt is nothing more than an ornamental political dickey, a sort of detachable cuff and bosom set that serves a purely forensic purpose; while the majority of citizens continue to wear, closer to their skins, the older white broadcloth of common sense. This universal duplicity that Fascist terrorism has forced upon the population is a frequent subject of apology and justification on the part of intelligent Italians.
"We have been reduced to a tribe of hypocrites in chains," a Neapolitan lawyer was lamenting. "But what can we do? There have been hundreds of martyrs to the cause of freedom in the last twelve years. But you can't expect the whole peninsula to submit to martyrdom. Yet the moral degradation of the individual Italian is a pitiful tragedy. It will be the first concern of Mussolini's successor to restore the dignity of a cowed and fear-palsied nation.
[Fanatic Patriotism and Seeds of Destruction]
It is the prevailing opinion of Italians that Fascism carries within itself the seeds of its own early destruction. One of its main tenets is an insanely fanatic patriotism that causes its leader to fancy himself an avatar of Julius Caesar, and to say that the expansion of his country "is a problem of life and death."
[end Turano excerpts]
Additional Reading: A Kind of Fascism Is Replacing Our Democracy by Sheldon S. Wolin - ("emeritus professor of politics at Princeton University") published July 18, 2003 by Newsday. Article mirrored here.
Republicans defended Thomas, saying he had no choice but to call in police to head off physical attacks they said appeared imminent from Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark, a 71-year-old Democrat from California.
Leah has posted contact information to support Democrats against this thuggery, and placing the whole matter in context.
Unbelievable.
UPDATE: Fruitcake, meet Pretzel Boy (thanks to alert reader "bill thomas"). In the lexicon, fruitcake is a demotic measure of diminished mental capacity, not a taxon in a sexual or gender-related classification scheme.
Here is a usage example: "Those winger ideologues—What bunch of fruitcakes!"
UPDATE: Stark's statement (thanks to alert reader anonymous).
UPDATE: Send Bill Thomas a fruitcake!*
You can fax Bill Thomas a fruitcake here:
Washington Fax: 202-225-8798
Bakersfield Fax: 661-637-0867
And if you want to send him a real one, some bakeries are:
Washington, DC 2208 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Ph.202-225-2915
Bakersfield 4100 Empire Drive
Suite 150
Bakersfield, California 93309
Ph.661-327-3611
* A real fruitcake, I mean. There are far too many winger ideologues on The Hill already.
Posted by Lambert
...So don't wait up for me! (Tom Lehrer)
No, but wait, there's good news tonight: The Bush administration didn't have mini-nukes in the Iraq war!
Though that won't stop this administration from trying to get them. Bennet Ramburg of the Herald Trib writes:
The Bush administration is scrambling to reverse the House Appropriations Committee's recent deletion of new nuclear weapons funding.
With a new preemptive doctrine, the Bush administration called on Congress to overturn the 1993 prohibition on mini-nuclear weapons and give it the right to explore the option. However, its requested authorization to cut in half the 36 months required to ready the Nevada test site to resume nuclear detonations suggests that the Department of Energy's plans to do more than simply weigh the possibility of new nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, the Iraq war has already called into question the mini-nuke rationale. At the time the conflict began, intelligence had "identified" 800 suspected weapons of mass destruction sites. We now know how faulty this estimate was. Had mini-nuclear weapons existed, might the United States have been tempted to use them? Seduced by representations from the labs that the warheads are sufficiently small to minimize collateral damage, the mini-nukes would have burrowed and exploded on bogus sites, lifting tons of radioactive debris into the atmosphere. The radioactive plumes would have left Iraq with large contaminated zones.
Fortunately, the president did not have this nuclear option on his desk.
Jeebus be praised! And it's funny how things turn out, isn't it?
Having real intelligence—not politicized (copy), "technically accurate," exaggerated, bogus intelligence—could be really useful in preventing things like, oh, turning large portions of the Middle East into radioactive death traps in a strike under the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war. Who knew?
Posted by Lambert
Robert Collier of the San Francisco Chronicle writes:
"It was the end of the world," said one officer Thursday. "It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top of us. At least six of us here will lose our careers."
What is it with these guys? They think they're in some kind of citizen army?
[B]itter sentiments -- with no names attached -- were voiced in an anonymous e-mail circulating around the Internet, allegedly from "the soldiers of the Second Brigade, Third ID."
"Our morale is not high or even low," the letter said. "Our morale is nonexistent. We have been told twice that we were going home, and twice we have received a 'stop' movement to stay in Iraq."
(thanks to alert reader cynic http)
Of course, if the neo-cons hadn't promised us all a cake-walk... And if we hadn't gotten guerilla warfare instead ... And if bungled Bush diplomacy hadn't made international troops a fantasy... And if the Bush lies that got us into the war weren't so insultingly transparent to anyone with half a brain, a little cynicism, and CNN (i.e., the entire country), and if Bush hadn't pulled that shark-jumping Mission Accomplished stunt... Maybe morale would be a little bit better?
British police said a body found Friday had been tentatively identified as that of a missing Defense Ministry adviser suspected of being the source for a news report that the government doctored information on Iraq’s weapons programs to bolster the case for war.
The family of the man, David Kelly, 59, a microbiologist who had worked as a U.N. weapons inspector, reported him missing after he went out for a walk Thursday with no coat despite a heavy rainstorm.
If you ever get a mysterious phone call from someone who has to meet you immediately—don't agree to meet them in the woods, OK?
“[Kelly’s wife, Janice] didn’t use the word ‘depressed,’ but she said he was very, very stressed and unhappy about what had happened and this was really not the kind of world he wanted to live in,” [Television journalist Tom] Mangold said.
True for a lot of us, what? Even those of us who aren't wearing tinfoil hats.
UPDATE: Alert reader Eliza Black comments: "I can't comment on Mr. Kelly's situation before knowing more, but I feel a lot of sympathy for him, and a lot of sympathy for his family."
Posted by Lambert
Michael Gordon of the Times details the consequences of the diplomatic bungling by the Bush administration (oxymoron!) in mounting the Iraq war. Bush's flubs are costing American lives (and dollars that, thanks to the tax cuts for the richest, we don't have).
The guerrilla war brewing in Iraq is just one reason the American deployment there is shaping up to be larger and longer than anticipated. Another is the tepid international support for the Bush administration's military campaign to topple Saddam Hussein.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said last week that he hoped to enlist as many as 30,000 troops from 49 nations. That is the much advertised coalition of the willing and able that administration officials are hoping can help stabilize Iraq.
The problem, however, is that many of the recruits the Pentagon has tried to line up so far appear to fall into two categories: the not so willing and the not that able.
[T]he failure to build broad international backing for the effort also meant that there were relatively few allied forces to help shoulder the military and financial burdens of enforcing the peace. There is a long list of nations that may send forces, but many of the promised foreign deployments are small and largely symbolic. ...
The conflict in Iraq may offer an important, if painful, lesson for future military campaigns, particularly those that involve "regime change" and the arduous nation-building that is needed to cope with the power vacuum that follows. The lesson is that broad international support is not only desirable politically, it can also offer a real military advantage.
And we can be certain (thanks Atrios) that the administration has many more such campaigns planned for their "New American Century."
Or can we?
NOTE: C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute—Anton Boulay de la Meurthe (also attributed to Talleyrand)
Posted by Leah
Nancy Pelosi introduced a resolution condemning what happened yesterday. (see Lambert's post) ,which has contact information for one of the offending Repubs.
Today, the Repubs are outraged that the Democrats are "making an issue" of it.
Their argument is essentially that Bill Thomas was neither overeacting nor being autocratic; words were said, menacing words, things were getting out of hand, it was perfectly appropriate to call the police.
The Dems are fighting back.
Whoever among you, dear readers, still think the House Democrats are spineless have not been paying attention to the House floor debates, or their Special Order speeches and colloquies.
The incident last night is symptomatic of the ramrod tactics of the Repubs, like DeLay and Thomas, who wield the real power in the house that Hastart doesn't. On the complicated Medicare bill, for instance, the actual bill and amendments were held in a locked room; Democrats were not provided with copies; they were only allowed to read the bill in the locked room, and only after it being ascertained that they had neither pencil or paper upon which to make notes.
Last night was apparently a similiar type of contempt aimed at the minority members.
The Repubs have now been forced into a vote to table Pelosi's resolution.
Let's help the Democrats make this a really big issue. My suggestion, start faxing, telephoning, emailing Pelosi's office. Best, I would say to focus the efforts, so that Pelosi can make the sheer size of the outcry by us citizens, a public issue.
Here's the contact information for Steny Hoyer, minority whip.
Here's the contact information for Charles Rangel, who is the ranking minority member on the Ways and Means Committee, which is headed by Bill Thomas, and is where the Dems are getting the roughest treatment.
Send some kind of communication to all three. Then call or email ten people to do the same, and ask each of the ten to contact or email another ten, and don't forget to let them know who's already been contacted.
This kind of stuff can really make a difference. What happened last night is so typical of what government has become under total Republican control, that helping to make an issue of it, that has legs, could be the beginning of Congressional Democrats running a national campaign next time around.
Edited to correct horrendous and embarrassing typo, grammatical error, and for purposes of clarification.
Posted by Lambert
John J. Lumpkin of the AP writes:
Mounting a campaign to counter criticism that it used flawed intelligence to justify war with Iraq, the White House made public excerpts of the intelligence community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. That report helped shaped now-challenged comments by President Bush in his State of the Union address that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium in Africa.
But we already know that the National Intelligence Estimates, once the "gold standard," have been so politicized by Cheney (copy) as to be worthless.
So when are we going to stop hearing this "flawed intelligence" thing? The issue is that the administration was going to have its war, no matter what. ("Sentence first, verdict afterwards" is the motto of this down-the-rabbit-hole administration.)
Lumpkin goes on to write:
On Thursday, U.S. officials offered new information which suggested a disconnect between the CIA and the State Department over the handling of what turned out to be a crucial but faulty piece of intelligence - the forged documents - used to make the Bush administration's case for war.
Officials acknowledged that had U.S. intelligence analyzed the documents sooner, they could have discovered the forgeries before the information was used as fodder for Bush administration statements vilifying Iraq.
Pretty vivid language for the slow-moving, mainstream AP, eh?
Posted by Potato Head
Remember how "everybody" thought Iraq had WMDs? Well, turns out everybody thought so--except the experts:
A conference of top-level military analysts was told that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — a message that later fell on deaf ears in the U.S. capital, analysts say.
Former Canadian military officer-turned-analyst Sunil Ram remembers the January, 2001, conference Understanding the Lessons of Nuclear Inspections and Monitoring in Iraq: A Ten-Year Review.
What he heard at the meeting he has repeated for months, he says, getting little attention from the mainstream media: that U.S. President George W. Bush had no grounds to base the invasion of Iraq on the disarmament issue.
"The people doing the presentation were weapons inspectors and former weapons inspectors and senior members of (U.S. government) agencies," Mr. Ram said in an interview.
"These were the guys on the ground (in Iraq) who had this stuff (weapons facilities) taken apart."
The conclusion they reached, he said, was that "Iraq's nuclear weapons program (didn't exist) because (the Iraqi government) had dismantled it."
He said the message of experts at the meeting was heard loud and clear by many U.S. military and political officials.
...
The Washington meeting dealt specifically with nuclear weapons, but Mr. Ram said it also addressed chemical and biological weapons to a smaller extent. Even there, he said, the danger to the world from such weapons was dismissed by the presenters.
If there were such weapons in Iraq at that time, he said, "they were negligible in quantity and militarily meaningless."
...
Scott Taylor, publisher of Esprit de Corps, a magazine on Canadian military affairs, was in Iraq before and after the war and says it was common knowledge — despite insistence of U.S. officials such as Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld — that it was not a certainty that the weapons would be found.
"The unit the Americans had sent (to Iraq) on April 9 (was sent) to find these weapons of mass destruction and secure them (but they) have all come up empty handed," Mr. Taylor said.
"That unit has in fact suspended its operations, and the people (on the team) have a report out to say they do not expect to find any chemical or biological weapons."
...
Mr. Taylor also believes that Canada's refusal makes it a likely candidate to take a significant role in rebuilding Iraq. He described the reaction of Iraqi people to the fact that he is Canadian: "I was there and all the time people were actually saying (to me) 'Jean Chrétien No. 1' when they knew you were from Canada."
The Bushies are practically a caricature of the postmodernist critique of truth: they really thought that political power carried the ability to define reality. And people are now being killed in the service of that ideological delusion.
Posted by Lambert
No, not the Texas Republicans. The (United States) House Republicans. Right on Capitol Hill:
Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., summoned police because he thought the lone Democrat to remain in the room, Rep. Pete Stark of California, was speaking out of line, other Republicans on the panel said. He asked police to remove Democrats from the adjacent room, but later rescinded that request, the Republicans said.
Assistant to the Sergeant of Arms Donald Kellaher, called in to mediate, said that "clearly the police in this circumstance have no role or authority to intervene."
Unbelievable.
I used to think "Rethuglican" was a little over the top. All good clean fun, though, and part of America's tradition of robust political discourse. Now it looks like "Thug" is le mot juste.
UPDATE: This is on C-SPAN? I wonder if some alert reader could paint a vivid word picture of the whole episode for the readership as a whole? The Post article is lacking in telling details.
UPDATE: The Democratic concerns, from Susan Cornwell of Reuters:
The Republican majority rushed the measure through on a voice vote while committee Democrats were conferring over last-minute changes in an adjacent room. ...
Democrats questioned whether the committee action was legitimate and said they were furious that police had been called by Republican staff. "There is no question in my mind this is an absolute abuse of power," said Rep. Robert Matsui, of California.
All too believable. Especially the "abuse of power" part.
UPDATE: From alert reader Scott Alexander:
Contact info for Kevin Brady (R-Texas), the guy who said he was glad the cops were called because the Democrat who was debating heatedly could no longer "control...his bodily functions".
Kevin Brady (Republican)
428 Cannon Office Building
United States House of Representatives
Washington,DC 20515
PHONE:
1-202-225-4901
FAX:
1-202-225-5524
E-MAIL:
rep.brady@mail.house.gov
WEB:
http://www.house.gov/brady/
Posted by Lambert
Still, there's hope (one way or the other). If only we could get that "Peace is War" thing Atrios just spotted under control, we could get the index right back to where ought to be...
Posted by Atrios
The LA Times has a long article on the post-war planning screwups. Don´t forget to read all the way to the end. If you don´t, you´ll miss this:
Still, he and other Pentagon officials said, they are studying the lessons of Iraq closely — to ensure that the next U.S. takeover of a foreign country goes more smoothly.
"We're going to get better over time," promised Lawrence Di Rita, a special assistant to Rumsfeld. "We've always thought of post-hostilities as a phase" distinct from combat, he said. "The future of war is that these things are going to be much more of a continuum
"This is the future for the world we're in at the moment," he said. "We'll get better as we do it more often."
Posted by Atrios Demagoue notices the overexuberance that the Washington Post has for education vouchers in D.C.
It couldn´t have anything to do with the fact that the Post company also has a variety of companies which produce various education materials which would presumably benefit from a from any increases in the degree of the privatization of education.
Posted by Atrios
I just don´t even know how the hell we got here. Via Hesiod I see that the wife of Maj. Gen Blount of the 3rd Infantry sent an email to all of the families of the soldiers telling them that if they continue to dare to criticize Dear Leader and the Pentagon it´s going to be their fault if their loved ones get shot because by speaking up they are encouraging the enemy.
Fortunately, on this side of the Atlantic, it isn´t too early to have a drink.
"When the Iraqis see media coverage of disgruntled Americans publicly campaigning for the return of our soldiers from Iraq, they are encouraged and believe their strategy is working," wrote Anita Blount in an open letter to spouses in The Frontline. The publication is a community newspaper in Georgia for Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield, home to the 3rd Infantry.
Anita Blount is the wife of Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the division, who is in Iraq leading his troops.
She said Iraqis who see complaints by U.S. families could come to believe "that their continued attacks on American soldiers are having the desired effect and are diminishing the resolve of the American people to complete the task in Iraq."
"We need to be aware of the possible outcome of our outcries that could backfire on us directly," said Anita Blount, whose husband Major General Buford Blount commands the US 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq.
Some folks in the White House were apparently hopping mad when ABC News correspondent Jeffrey Kofman did a story on Tuesday's "World News Tonight" about the plummeting morale of U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq.
So angry, in fact, that the next day, a White House operative alerted cyber-gossip Matt Drudge to the fact that Kofman is not only openly gay, he's Canadian.
Yesterday Drudge told us he was unaware of the ABC story until "someone from the White House communications shop tipped me to it" along with a profile of Kofman in the gay-oriented magazine the Advocate. On Wednesday, for 6 hours 38 minutes, the Drudge Report bannered Kofman's widely quoted ABC story -- in which enlisted people questioned the Army's credibility and one irked soldier went on camera to call on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign -- and linked to the Advocate piece with the understated headline "ABC NEWS REPORTER WHO FILED TROOP COMPLAINT STORY IS CANADIAN."
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan "is having a rough first week," Drudge said. "The White House press office is under new management and has become slightly more aggressive about contacting reporters. This story has certainly become talk radio fodder about the cultural wars-slash-liberal bias in the media."
A network insider was less sanguine about the White House tactic: "Playing hardball is one thing. But appealing to homophobia and jingoism is simply ugly."
Posted by Lambert
Rick Karlin of the Albany Times Union writes:
The first sign of trouble came last year when one couple learned their daughter had been strapped into her chair with a leather belt.
Since then, more than a dozen parents have removed their elementary school youngsters amid complaints about disciplinary tactics by one of the teachers at Hawthorne Valley. Punishment included tying the hands of students and taping their mouths shut if they misbehaved.
The teacher who doled it out, Claire McConnell, apologized, saying in a June 24 letter, "I am sorry for my disciplinary misjudgment, very sorry. ... I request your forgiveness." ...
McConnell is the daughter of Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky. She did not return phone messages.
Well, such abuse will never happen when the schools are privatized. Oh, wait, Hawthorne Valley was a private school. (via political wire)
Posted by Lambert
A labour intra-party feud gets rather personal:
Supporters of the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, have launched an extraordinary attack on [Prime Minister] Tony Blair, portraying him as a "psychopath" and "psychotic".
[An article in the Brown-backing New Statesman] declares: "The question of Tony Blair's sanity can no longer be avoided."
It quotes Sidney Crown, a former consultant psychotherapist at the Royal London Hospital, as saying that Mr Blair "does not exist" and compares him with an actor. He adds that Alastair Campbell, Downing Street's director of communications and strategy, is "very much represented in Mr Blair's dark side, which is why they like each other ... the psychopathic personality is very quick to pick things up and shift and move about".
Dr Crown suggests that Mr Blair did not decide to lie about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, but had been "highly selective" over intelligence material, seeing the material that appealed to him. "With all forms of psychotics, if you ask people about the consequences of what they've done they can't tell you, because they've no ability to see the future."
Posted by Lambert
By now we now that the Republicans can't handle money. Paul Krugman shows why it's even worse than we thought. As usual with this President, the starting point is a lie:
Here's another sentence in George Bush's State of the Union address that wasn't true: "We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and other generations."
Mr. Bush's officials profess to see nothing wrong with the explosion of the national debt on their watch, even though they now project an astonishing $455 billion budget deficit this year and $475 billion next year. But even the usual apologists (well, some of them) are starting to acknowledge the administration's irresponsibility. Will they also face up to its dishonesty? It has been obvious all along, if you were willing to see it, that the administration's claims to fiscal responsibility have rested on thoroughly cooked books.
The numbers tell the tale. In its first budget, released in April 2001, the administration projected a budget surplus of $334 billion for this year. More tellingly, in its second budget, released in February 2002 — that is, after the administration knew about the recession and Sept. 11 — it projected a deficit of only $80 billion this year, and an almost balanced budget next year. Just six months ago, it was projecting deficits of about $300 billion this year and next.
There's no mystery about why the administration's budget projections have borne so little resemblance to reality: realistic budget numbers would have undermined the case for tax cuts. ...
You see, a government that has a reputation for sound finance and honest budgets can get away with running temporary deficits; if it lacks such a reputation, it can't. Right now the U.S. government is running deficits bigger, as a share of G.D.P., than those that plunged Argentina into crisis. The reason we don't face a comparable crisis is that markets, extrapolating from our responsible past, trust us to get our house in order.
But Mr. Bush shows no inclination to deal with the budget deficit. On the contrary, his administration continues to fudge the numbers and push for ever more tax cuts. Eventually, markets will notice. And tarnished credibility, along with a much-increased debt, is a problem that Mr. Bush will pass along to other Congresses, other presidents and other generations.
Just as with the WMDS: It's the credibility, stupid.
Does Bush wear an earpiece for his occasional "press conferences"?
Posted by Lambert
Readers have speculated that this would account for the peculiar stilted and halting quality of his speech. All the "I—I—I—I", "Uh—Uh—Uh." Personally, I think there are other reasons for that, but lots of times things have more than one cause.
Posted by Lambert
I'm starting to get tired of hearing that the WMD flap and Bush's 16 weasel words were the result of some kind of intelligence failure.
It's obvious that the failure was by White House political operatives wno politicized what intelligence we had, not the intelligence agencies. (The agencies aren't perfect, but at least they haven't bungled and blundered on the breathtaking scale that the White House has.)
Take two of the carefully crafted talking points on the 16 weasel words.
First, we were just quoting the Brits. Fine, but you can't say you "learned" what you don't really know.
Second, we had other reasons besides the Niger yellowcake forgeries: among them, National Intelligence Estimates, "the gold standard."
Fine, except like so much else in this administration, what was once a gold standard has been looted and trashed.
During the Clinton administration, the CIA's annual reports to Congress on the global proliferation of weapons of mass destruction routinely cast Iraq as a problematic footnote -- a country worth keeping an eye on but not an alarming threat.
But the tone of the reports changed dramatically after George W. Bush became president, with increasingly longer narratives suggesting that Iraq was hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.
In 1997, the first year of the congressionally mandated reports, the CIA devoted only three paragraphs to Iraq, noting that Baghdad possessed dual-use equipment that could be used for biological or chemical programs. There was no mention of a nuclear weapons program.
By last year, the latest reporting period, the section on Iraq ran seven times longer, warning that "all intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons" and that the country could produce a bomb "within a year" if it got its hands on weapons-grade material.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress last week that no significant new evidence about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction had been uncovered during the current administration. Intelligence sources agreed.
So, no new intelligence, but a lot more hype. And whose task was it to make sure the NIEs were hyped? Why, none other than Dick Cheney (copy).
Bush is doubly "responsible" for the 16 weasel words. First, for having his operatives corrupt our intelligence so he could have his war. The weasel words are a direct result of that corruption. The intelligence people kept taking them out; the White House kept putting them in. Second, for every word and every line* of this speech and every other speech he gives..
UPDATE: *"Every line and every word," and the telling photo (see above, French Cuffs and all) are now making it into the mainstream information flow, via WaPo's Al Kamen. Kamen also mentions Bush's "revisionist" or "delusional" history on weapons inspection. So many lies, so many shadings of truth and untruth, who can keep track? (thanks to alert reader Terry)
UPDATE: OK, OK, "Freedom Cuffs." But—free associating from the penchant that Republican Mitch McConnell's daughter has for leather—has anyone noticed that "Freedom Cuff" is an oxymoron? Like "Bush administration"?
Why is Bush being questioned only about his intentionally false claim about nuclear weapons material? What about the other false claims in that same speech: Where are the "25,000 liters of anthrax"? Where are the "38,000 liters of botulinum toxin"? Where are the "500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent"? Where are the "29,984 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents?" All of these were supposedly ready, on 45 minutes' notice, to be used against "freedom-loving people."
LONDON, July 18 — A Ministry of Defense adviser, named by the government as the possible source for a disputed news report on Iraqi arms, has been reported missing by his family, police said Friday.
Police searching for David Kelly said Friday they have found a male body about 5 miles from his home in in Oxfordshire, central England. But detectives have not yet identified the body, a spokeswoman for Thames Valley Police
Kelly's family reported him missing late Thursday after he failed to return to home from an afternoon walk.
''This is clearly a sensitive inquiry,'' David Purnell of Thames Valley Police spokesman told a press conference. ''At the moment ... a body has been found. There is no more further information as to the identity of that person, those inquiries are ongoing.''
Kelly, 59, appeared before a Parliamentary committee earlier this week to face questions over a British Broadcasting Corp. report that government aides doctored intelligence on Iraqi weapons to strengthen the case for war.
Posted by Atrios
Apparently, even reading something which is critical of the way the media reports on the Bush administration can get you a visit from the FBI if some of the brownshirts drop a dime on you.
Posted by the farmer
CNN's Moneyline, currently hosted by some vapid apple polisher who knows nothing much about farm issues, aside from whatever corporate lobbyist talking points have been provided, has been airing what amounts to a corporate agribiz PR news-o-mercial disguised as journalism. Nothing new there, including the usual imbecilic stage-managed shine, costumed as news reporting from the theater department at CNN. But for more perspective on the issue of big agribusiness and its impact on "family farms", local communities and the nation as a whole, the following three writers discuss some of the important broader economic, social and political implications that surround this subject.
With each passing day it becomes more apparent that our nation's family farmers are going to have to rapidly remove the shackles of the recent past, face political and economic reality and collectively organize for the future if they are to survive. {...} Either family farmers must revive and adhere to their proud agrarian populist tradition or find themselves amongst the growing number of corporate agribusiness' "excess human resources." {...} In his book The Myth of the Family Farm: Agribusiness Dominance of US Agriculture, Ingolf Voegler, a geographer at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, points out that corporate agribusiness has managed to create its own self-serving "family farm" myth which it has supported collaterally by four other myths, namely, the work ethic myth, the free enterprise myth, the efficiency myth and the equal-opportunity myth. Belief in such myths has been the basis of the "conventional wisdom" that has not only exacerbated a wholesale exodus of family farmers from farming, but has reduced the role of those remaining in our food delivery system to being chattel, merely raw material providers for a giant profit-driven food manufacturing system.
It is time family farmers put aside such "conventional wisdom" that for so long has enslaved them, speak truth to corporate power and begin to act collectively in their own and in the general public's self interest.
Thus for decades we have witnessed a wholesale exploitation of our agricultural system by corporate agribusiness and its "communities of economic interests" directed not only at driving farmers, workers and consumers apart, but also at the same time attempting to divert the taxpayers' attention away from the root causes of the this nation's chronic farm crisis.
It has done this by preaching about farming practices, "excessive" government regulations, by creating artificial divisions within the farm community, and by replacing a fair price in the marketplace with an ever-escalating unfair burden of debt.
At the same time through corporate/government/land grant college planning during the past 100 years, coupled with the success of self-serving "communities of economic interests," corporate agribusiness has obtained its primary goal -- namely, destroying farmers' economic and political power through forced liquidation caused by enforced low commodity prices.
Corporate America has spent billions lobbying for deregulation of its activities and for privatization of everything from the health system to education to national parks and forests to Social Security -- a situation that would lead to ownership and control by the corporate sector and a tiny handful of the super rich of virtually every aspect of society. {...} With country and culture in the hands of a very few, democracy perishes. The great American Experiment would end not through internal weakness, but via carefully crafted "neoconservative" strategy from without, to be replaced by something resembling, more than anything else, medieval feudalism, only set in a high tech world. According to the plan now in place, "we the people" are to be the new serfs. As Thom Hartmann noted: "We're entering a new and unknown but hauntingly familiar era."
===
SUMMER EXTRA: Read "RURAL ROUTES" by Margot Ford McMillen, on local in-season farm markets.
And for those of you who live in the DC area......
The FRESHFARM market at Dupont Circle, located in the 1500 block of 20th Street, between Massachusetts Avenue and Q Streets, and the adjacent Riggs Bank parking lot in Northwest DC is open from 9am to 1pm every Sunday (summers) or 10am to 1 pm (winters) year-round. The market in St. Michaels, MD, located in Muskrat Park on the St. Michaels's harbor, at Willow and Green Streets, one block from Talbot Street, is open every Saturday from 8:30am to 12:30 pm until October 26.
This producer-only market ensures that the money you spend goes directly to the farmers, helping them to remain economically viable and hang on to their land. American Farmland Trust'sFarming on the Edge report tells the story of our nation's disappearing farmland.
"If Donald Rumsfeld were here, I'd ask him for his resignation," one disgruntled soldier said on ABC's "Good Morning America" show. Asked by a reporter what his message would be for Rumsfeld, another said: "I would ask him why we are still here. I don't have any clue as to why we are still in Iraq."
Abizaid said he personally was "saddened" to hear disparaging comments by professional soldiers and noted that they probably violated the military code of conduct and could draw reprimands. But he said he knew soldiers were simply expressing frustration at being in the middle of a dangerous and difficult situation.
As we know, "[F]aith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen..." (Heb 11:1). And we sure haven't seen any evidence, so it must be faith...
And the -- our people are going to find out the truth, and the truth will say that this intelligence was good intelligence.
But what's with Bush's near-Freudian "And the -- our people", anyhow?
"[T]he" what?
The special ops team in the desert planting the weapons? The intelligence team forging the documents? That's a good explanation for his otherwise bizarre confidence, isn't it?
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, said today that documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under court order as a result of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” The documents, which are dated March 2001, are available on the Internet at: www.JudicialWatch.org.
Posted by Leah
And guess what's just around the corner.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Federal Reserve policymakers' forecasts for U.S. economic growth next year are way above the market consensus and the strongest since 1984, suggesting they are confident recent stimulus will light a fire under the moribund recovery.
But economists caution the central bank has been over-optimistic in its forecasts throughout the entire downturn and pallid recovery, and as yet there are scant signs of the long-anticipated return to solid growth.
The Fed's central tendency forecast for 2004, compiled from estimates by the members of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, put growth at 3.75 to 4.75 percent.
The mid-point of that range of 4.25 percent is well above the median 3.7 percent forecast of 29 private-sector economists polled by Reuters over the past week.
Reader Hobson suggests those who doubt have failed to grasp that Alan Greenspan is prepared to reduce interest rates, if necessary to stimulate the economy, to a minus percentage, wherein depositors will have to pay to keep their money anywhere but under a mattress.
Posted by Lambert
Not nuke-u-lar! Aaugh! (Though to be charitable, check this. (Thanks to alert reader jerry)
UPDATE: Good soundbites, but they don't answer the actual questions (all two of them).
UPDATE: NPR—Bush doesn't take responsibility for the 16 weasel words (constitutionally, his) although he does take responsibility for the war (constitutionally, not his). Lots of "I—I—I—I", "Uh—Uh—Uh."
Lots of obfuscation between "weapons" (imminent threat) and "weapons program" (buried under rosebushes, etc.) Same old, same old.
Lots of references to '80s and '90s intelligence. Same old, same old.
UPDATE: The spin cycle begins anew... EJ Dionne (WaPo): Bush owes Blair big-time. Although Blair settled no questions. President "didn't do himself any good" by not taking responsibility for the 16 weasel words. David Brooks: Brought "mood" back to 9/11. (So??) Bush performance "relatively mediocre." (compared to?) Both agree Bush and Blair are still making the case for war (Brooks: "relitigating.")
THE PRESIDENT: We'll take a couple of questions. Tom.
Q Mr. President, others in your administration have said your words on Iraq and Africa did not belong in your State of the Union address. Will you take personal responsibility for those words? And to both of you, how is it that two major world leaders such as yourselves have had such a hard time persuading other major powers to help stabilize Iraq?
THE PRESIDENT: First, I take responsibility for putting our troops into action. .... And, yeah, I take responsibility for making the decisions I made.
Not, apparently, for his words. But then, how could he?
And Bush never does answer the question. Again, putting the troops into action is not, constitutionally, Bush's responsibility at all. On the other hand, presenting a State of the Union speech to Congress and the American people is exactly that. Same old, same old.
Minnesota Public Radio this week quoted Mary Kewatt, the aunt of a soldier killed in Iraq, saying: "President Bush made a comment a week ago, and he said 'bring it on.' Well, they brought it on, and now my nephew is dead."
Bush lies, soldiers die. All the stonewalling in the world can't change it.
Posted by Leah
On this date last year, the people of Iraq would have been in the streets, celebrating the coup which brought the Baath party to power. As we all know, those celebrations were always highly choreographed.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - For decades Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Baath Party held lavish celebrations every July 17 to mark the anniversary of the 1968 coup that brought them to power.
No speeches and no fanfare rang out in Baghdad on Thursday as Iraqis ignored the 35th anniversary. The broadcast by an Arab TV station of a new tape purportedly of Saddam's voice, marking the anniversary, brought anger and derision on the street.
"This is the best July 17th I've seen so far because there is no Saddam and no Baath," said Fadil Amin, an out-of-work translator. "We're better off without them, even if we don't have any electrical power or water and security is abysmal."
Would that this country had said "No" to Saddam and to the Baathists lo those many years ago when, instead, we tilted toward him, against Iran, which had betrayed us by overthrowing the Shah, our chosen ruler for them, over the one democratically chosen by the Iranian people.
Do I think the mullahs were an improvement on the Shah? No. But if only we'd taken a few moments, then, to look back and consider why it was that in the long run, the Shah thing didn't work out, perhaps we might have avoided the kind of engagement with Saddam that has now resulted in two wars, and endless suffering for the Iraqi people.
Could be the same kind of questioning is in order now? Just a thought.
In an audiotape marking Thursday's 35th anniversary of the Baath Party coup, a voice purported to be that of Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis to continue a "holy war" against U.S. forces. Even so, the banned holiday was a remarkably quiet day for American troops in Iraq. The voice on the audiotape, broadcast on two Arab satellite television networks, said the tape was recorded three days earlier to commemorate the holiday
Unaccustomed as I am to wishing for the death of even the more heinous of persons, and not to be too bloodthirsty about this, but why or why couldn't one of those smart bombs found its way to Saddam? I doubt he has any real following left; whoever those guerrilla's are who are taking on US troops, and let's not assume that they're coordinated, or that they're all like minded or similarly motivated, I'd bet that damn few of them want Saddam back.
But his assumed presence, living and breathing somewhere "in country," is as useful to the Bush administration as it is to any Baathist supporters.
No, I'm not claiming that there is or was some sort of conspiracy to let him live; Saddam alive doesn't argue well for the war, but those tapes of him urging on the resistence will allow the administration and those who continue to defend the war and occupation to claim, once again, that critics of both or either, are siding with Saddam, against our own troops.
As I'm writing this, Tony Blair is speaking to a joint session of Congress, in a speech that it is already clear will seek to justify the war, largely, at least emotionally, on grounds of rescuing the Iraqi people from the clutches of Saddam.
I suspect the speech will do for Bush what Bush couldn't do for Bush these last few week.
Both Saddam's tape, and Blair's speech suggest to me that those of us who fear the consequences, both for the Iraqi people and for this country, of an occupation that its planners didn't really plan for, and those tasked with its implementation weren't prepared to implement, not be enticed by the utter incompetence of Bush's post war performance, into a total skepticism that cannot admit the present moment contains real possibilities for Iraqis, slender as they are, given what the occupiers-in-chief have in mind.
I'm glad Saddam's more or less gone. I'm glad the Baathist party has been disrupted.
Do I want this occupation to succeed? I leave the answer to another post, because only by examining the terms of that crucial question can we understand why a simple "yes" or "no" is inadequate to the reality of this particular historical moment.
[S]ources, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said that Tenet “reluctantly” identified the official as National Security Council member Robert Joseph. Once source said that the revelation led to a series of questions about Joseph’s role.
Sources have told the network that, after Foley objected to the first draft of the passage, Joseph came up with the suggestion of attributing it to the British, asking [CIA analyst Alan] Foley if that would make it technically correct. Since the British were reporting it, Foley had to acknowledge that the passage was factually accurate, even though the CIA did not think the assertion was true, according to the sources.
Though this is what Tenet is quoted as saying, NSC member and (very?) Special Assistant Joseph himself has already denied it. ("He denies it, leave out that part," as the King says in Alice in Wonderland.)
Another functionary (Condi's) heaved over the side....
From the cornered mind of George W. Bush: Got to—think—Some professor somewhere—Yeah, that's the ticket [to repeat Atrios's post earlier today]—Do Special Assistants even have swords?—Condi will know——
QUESTION: Let me come back to your "nonsense" statement here, and let me slice it as thinly as I possibly can, just growing out of what Scott asked. Is it nonsense to say that the White House wanted this information included in the State of the Union and negotiated with the CIA to find a way to put it in to the State of the Union?
Scott McClellan: I'm sorry?
Right.
UPDATE: Who needs BabelFish? You can figure this out for yourself! Le Monde writes that according to the Italian intelligence service:
... [C]'est Silvio Berlusconi lui-même qui aurait relancé le faux dossier à l'occasion d'une conversation téléphonique avec George Bush, trois jours avant le discours de celui-ci sur l'état de l'Union...
It's got everything! A winger-to-winger telcon, outrageous (Italian) media concentration, and the Italian services using the French connection to put it to their own Misleader! (Thanks to Likely Story.)
The recent decision by federal regulators to loosen media ownership rules, already under fire in the Senate, took another blow in Congress yesterday. This setback was dealt by the House Appropriations Committee, which approved a budget amendment that would make it harder for big broadcasting companies to acquire more television stations.
The vote represented a defeat for Michael K. Powell, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, who has led the effort to change the rules. It was also a rebuke to the Republican House leadership and the Bush administration, strong supporters of the commission's efforts.
A White House spokeswoman, Claire Buchan, said last night that the "president's senior advisers would recommend a veto" if a bill including the amendment ultimately reached his desk.
MAKE OUR DAY, MR. PRESIDENT.
This guy still thinks he's invincible? I'd say, "think again," except for the lack of any credible evidence that he's ever had a single identifiable thought of his own.
On the other hand:
The battle over the amendment passed yesterday is expected to be a bruising one, and committee leaders said that the full House might take up the measure as soon as early next week. And with the White House threatening to veto any effort to curb the federal commission's authority, stopping the new rules from going into effect still appears to be an uphill struggle.
"The fight is far from over," said Ken Johnson, a spokesman for Representative Billy Tauzin, Republican of Louisiana and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Mr. Tauzin is among the commission's most vocal supporters in Congress.
"Many of the rules simply don't make sense in a 21st century marketplace," Mr. Johnson said.
There's a lot more work to be done. To keep yourself up to date and for some excellent background material, check out these folks.
When I get more information on what exactly we can do next to advance the cause, I'll post it with easy to use clickable links.
We have many more of Michael Powell's days to unmake.
Posted by Atrios
Sometimes I don´t even know what the hell Drudge´s point is. He´s now hyping the fact that Bob Graham travelled somewhere in a Jaguar*?
Why the guys in the boardroom would heave Bush over the side
Posted by Lambert
[Warning: long quote]
From The Independent:
Little attention has been paid, however, to another consequence of the campaign in Iraq. Call it corporate collateral damage. And the victim is Brand America.
The much bigger worry inside boardrooms, from New York to Atlanta and Chicago, has been this: will the unpopularity abroad of George Bush's America - whether we are talking his attack on Iraq or his inaction on global warming - impact on the fundamental appeal of their brands in global markets? And if so, how badly?
According to a report just completed by the New York consulting firm RoperASW, the value of America's favourite brands abroad is showing unmistakable signs of slippage.
Of the top 10 global US-based firms, only one saw an increase in its brand-power compared with a year earlier. All of the others were either unchanged, which is bad enough, or in negative territory. This is the fifth year that the same survey has been carried out. And 2003 is the first time that American companies have seen their brand-power starting to sink. By contrast, the survey shows gains for the best-known non-US brands.
"It's an early-warning sign," comments Tom Miller, the managing director of RoperASW. "We're seeing a shift in the balance of brand-power." And he notes that while the effect of the brand erosion may yet only have a marginal effect on sales, even that could spell bad news for the companies: "Losing just one percentage point of sales is increasingly a big deal."
The Bush administration considers itself to be business- friendly. Yet, it may have inadvertently soured the atmosphere around the globe for the very icons of American capitalism. These icons, from Coke to Nike to Levi's, may have only two choices. To underplay their American origins as far as possible. Or to wait for the President, or his policies, to change.
Posted by Lambert
Republican state attorneys general have been targeting large corporations regulated in their states for campaign contributions—even when those corporations are subject to lawsuits. And one such AG was William Pryor (WaPo). This administration is such a target-rich environment.
UPDATE: Duh, more coffee! William Pryor. Not that William Pryor isn't pretty funny himself. (Thanks to alert reader Tugent for the correction and the joke.)
Posted by Lambert
At the government printing office, and coming out July 24.
Nearly one entire section of the report, describing the actions of foreign governments in advance of the attacks, has been cut from the final report at the insistence of the intelligence agencies, officials said.
So what about the Saudis?
Some mysteries from after the attacks will apparently remain, like the question of how 15 young men from Saudi Arabia could join in a suicide conspiracy to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon without the knowledge of the Saudi government.
Still, at least the redaction will be visible (except the invisible redaction, of course).
Unlike most other government intelligence reports, how much has been edited out will be publicly known because the final report shows the deleted material, with the actual words blacked out by a marker.
Leaving open the question of who has the original copies, and will be able to read them in their entirety. (And look for plenty of stories that fill in the blanks.)
So, who's going for a Pulitzer by giving the people who paid for it (you and me) a little pre-publication taste? You'd think this report was a Harry Potter book the way it's been embargoed.
UPDATE: Thanks alert reader Technical Blandishmentiser, I took out a slam on the Saudis.
Posted by Lambert
Bill Nichols of USA Today reviews the state of play:
A furor has erupted here over Bush's charge in the State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons in Africa, a charge Bush attributed to the British. But the administration now says evidence shows the claim should not have been in the speech. The British stand by their claim, but Blair says he will not reveal the source of the information to his American friends.
Still, perhaps Blair could be persuaded to reveal this information—perhaps when he collects his gold medal from Congress?—by some Iraqi contracts, or some legality in the treatment of UK prisoners at Gitmo. Or a pat on the head.... I only hope, for poor Bush's sake, that this British intelligence doesn't come from a grad student's paper lifted off the Internet. After all, Blair was just as determined to have his war as Bush.
Yes, Bush and Blair's dinner together should be interesting. Which one owns the other, I wonder?
UPDATE: Although Blair will address a Joint Session of Congress, his hold medal has been quietly postponed
There is speculation that Mr Bush has postponed a ceremony to award Mr Blair a Congressional gold medal until a less sensitive moment: the bill authorising it praises Mr Blair for his efforts to "disarm Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction".
(thanks to alert reader nick sweeney)
Of course, getting that gold medal after all would be an incentive for any poodle...
"He (Tenet) certainly told us who the person was who was insistent on putting this language in which the CIA knew to be incredible, this language about the uranium shipment from Africa," Durbin said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Why should Tenet step down, again? My money's still on Cheney (copy, but Bush himself is coming up fast on the outside).
Posted by Lambert
Once again, via CNN via Daily Kos: Bill Hemmer of CNN interviews Jenna Hamilton, engaged to Specialist Kenneth Egger, who is still in Iraq:
HEMMER: Oh, he's getting out after this tour of duty in Iraq? How do feel about that?
HAMILTON: Yes, yes. He can't stand for it.
HEMMER: Why is that?
HAMILTON: I support him 100 percent.
HEMMER: Why do you say he can't stand it?
HAMILTON: It's hard on the families, it's hard on the soldiers, and it's especially hard to know that you put your faith and trust into a president, and they continue to lie to you, they break promises, and it's hard to fight for somebody like that.
Check this out. "Bush lies, soldiers die" has penetrated to the soldiers, and, it seems reasonable to believe, to Red-states America as well. Probably, this shift in opinion was caused by the Bush administration's extension of tours of duty in Iraq, and a guerilla war instead of a cakewalk, rather than anything happening here at home, but it's still good news. The SCLM hasn't picked up on it yet.* If it's true, Bush is in a lot of trouble. Nothing he says will be taken the way he and his handlers intend.
* UPDATE: Then again, see The Times today (thanks to alert reader KJD)
After months of lies, the president has given millions of people around the world reason to doubt that he has sent Americans into battle for the right reasons," Armey said. "The fact that Americans are expressing these doubts shows that the president is losing his ability to lead. If the president refuses to resign for the sake of the nation, I believe he should be impeached and face Senate trial.
Posted by Atrios
Symbolman and Stranger from Take Back the Media have started a weekly net radio show. I lack the ability to listen at the moment, but don´t let that stop you from checking them out.
In April, as American tanks approached the outskirts of Baghdad, Pentagon officials suggested that only U.S. companies would be allowed to take part in the postwar reconstruction of Iraq's oil fields. In strategic leaks to the press, the Defense Department offered a rationale for an American-only policy: European firms, they declared, should be excluded because they do business with Iran and other countries that sponsor terrorist organizations and harbor weapons of mass destruction.
What defense officials failed to note, however, is that many U.S. companies routinely find ways to bypass economic sanctions and export regulations that bar American citizens and companies from trading with Iran, North Korea, Libya, and Sudan. Taking advantage of legal loopholes, these corporations simply conduct their business through offshore subsidiaries that employ only foreign citizens. With no Americans on the payroll, the subsidiaries are free to ignore U.S. sanctions against the "axis of evil" and other countries identified by the Bush administration as the primary sponsors of terrorism. Other U.S. firms -- including Hewlett-Packard, Kodak, and Procter & Gamble -- ship their products to Dubai, where third parties are known to "re-export" goods to Iran.
"It's a real problem," says Michael Beck, an expert on sanctions at the University of Georgia. "American companies bypass U.S. export controls by using entities based in other countries."
In Iran -- "the most active state sponsor of terrorism," according to the State Department -- General Electric is providing four hydroelectric generators to expand a dam on the Kurun River through a Canadian subsidiary called GE Hydro and is also supplying pipeline compressors and gas turbines for Iran's burgeoning oil sector through an Italian unit called Nuovo Pignone. Not far from the Iraqi border, a subsidiary of Halliburton is helping to build a $228 million fertilizer plant, one of the world's largest. Another Halliburton division based in Sweden is providing the Iranian National Oil Co. with a $226 million semi-submersible drilling rig, while other subsidiaries operate in Libya. A British subsidiary of ConocoPhillips helped Iran survey its Azadegan oil field, and ExxonMobil only recently sold its Sudanese gas subsidiary based in Khartoum.
Posted by Atrios
One of the stupider ideas being transmitted directly from Grover Norquist´s brain into the mouths of the usual right wing idiots is that the Niger nuke thing was just one piece of evidence out of volumes, or something. I wish some of them would actually tell me what those volumes of evidence were. I suspect they can´t. Eric Alterman says it best:
It is almost too ironic to point out, for instance, that when the administration (in the form of Rice, Tenet, Cheney, and Powell) attempts to pooh-pooh the Niger lie by saying it was “technically correct” — they did not have sexual relations with that country — or was just one small piece of a larger case, that virtually every aspect of their case was a lie. The WMD threat was a lie. The al-Qaida connection was a lie. The promise of democracy and human rights was a lie. And as today’s front page Washington Post story (see above) indicates, they got stuck with the stupid Niger tale because everything they had been saying about nukes was a lie, too. “But a review of speeches and reports, plus interviews with present and former administration officials and intelligence analysts, suggests that between Oct. 7, when President Bush made a speech laying out the case for military action against Hussein, and Jan. 28, when he gave his State of the Union address, almost all the other evidence had either been undercut or disproved by U.N. inspectors in Iraq.” (And this to say nothing of the apparently clueless Bush who somehow forgot that it was he who ended the inspections regime, not Saddam.)
Posted by Atrios Via CalPundit we see this David Corn article on just how far the Bush administration may be willing to go to smite their foes:
Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security--and break the law--in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?
....The sources for Novak's assertion about Wilson's wife appear to be "two senior administration officials." If so, a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as "nonofficial cover" and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson's wife is such a person--and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her--her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration. (Assuming she did not tell friends and family about her real job, these Bush officials have also damaged her personal life.) Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, "Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames."
....Bush and his crew abused and misused intelligence to make their case for war. Now there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score. It is a sign that with this gang politics trumps national security.
Mark Kleiman goes into great detail about what all this could mean. Go read.
By replacing Howell Raines with Bill Keller Arthur Sulzberger has caved into pressure from those on the right. Keller's columns show that he hates all the Democratic candidates for President; is glad Al Gore is not running for president; loves the White House bum and supports our criminal aggression in Iraq. The only columnist more conservative than Keller on the Times is William Safire. Keller could be the editor of the NY Post. As usual the right gets its way.
Posted by the farmer
"Viva Nihilism! It must be great working in the Bush White House. Zero accountability. It's All Spin, All the Time. Nothing matters but politics, hence no unfounded claim requires correction or apology." - Russ Baker / All Spin All The Time
Tresy writes:"News organizations are in the credibility business. This works against us when the CW is completely at loggerheads with reality, and no one is willing to break with the pack, but at this point, for CNN to proffer lame excuses that the Administration itself isn't peddling, seems positively suicidal. What can the Moron-American FOX News demographic offer that's worth this kind of self-degradation?"
Alas. Old times there are not forgotten. Given this Bush administration's fondness for flannel underwear, euphemistically speaking, and the art of "terminological inexactitude" and "selective fact" management, I offer briefly, the following distant reminders of bygone swindles.
In a 1984 Rolling Stone magazine article titled "Terms of Endearment; how the news media became all the president's men", by William Greider (RS National Editor at the time), --- Greider offered the following observation concerning the Reagan/Bush administration's "cynical" approach to public policy debate.
The administration's cynical manipulation of the medium [television] was described, perhaps inadvertently, by George Bush's press secretary, Pete Teeley. "You can say anything you want during a debate and 80 million people hear it," Teely said. And if the daily newspapers point out glaring inaccuracies? "So what? Maybe 200 people read it, or 2000, or 20,000."
Greider continues:
The press fell under the spell of the video image. [...] The newspapers, with a few honorable exceptions, forfeited the one game at which they will always be better than television: tough-minded examination of the facts. [...] Why examine the actual record of the Reagan administration, the real inequities and unfair rewards, if everyone is swept away by this fervent "new patriotism"?
Seventy six years ago H.L. Mencken offered the following commentary with respect to the news media's listless critique of the Coolidge administration. Excerpts follow. Welcome back to 1927.
"The decay of the Coolidge superstition leaves most of the principal newspapers of the United States looking very sick. Since the very moment of the martyr Harding's dispatch by the Jesuits they have pumped up his absurd little successor in a lavish and voluptuous manner. Their proprietors, and, in many cases, their managing editors and chief editorial writers, have sailed down the Potomac on the Mayflower, listening to him snore; their news columns have been filled with imbecilities in favor of him, and their editorial pages have glittered with his praises. With what net result? With the net result that even the Babbitts of the land have begun to see that he is a hollow and preposterous fellow, without anything in his head properly describable as ideas, and with notions of dignity and honor indistinguishable from those of a country book agent. He has squirmed and he has backed water; he has played cheap and dirty politics; he has favored charlatans and used the immense influence of his office against honest men. There has been no more trivial and trashy President in American history, nor one surrounded by worse frauds."
[...]
"With precious few exceptions, they [the newspapers] have continued to anoint and flatter him, even when the news they had to print made the truth about him plain to the dullest. He has had, from the first, a superb press - docile, humorless, slimy and knavish. It has, in dealing with him, disgraced itself beyond pardon or remedy. Coming at last - and how gingerly! - to a more realistic attitude towards him, it only reveals the depths of its degradation heretofore."
[...]
"Washington maintains a colossal machine for converting ambitious young journalists into dependable press agents. That machine has wheels in the Capitol and in all the departments of state; its prime mover is in the White House. The problem of resisting its operations is a technical one, and managing editors with any genuine gift for their art and mystery ought to be able to solve it. A few, as I have said, have done so, and to brilliant effect. [Mencken credits the Nation and the New Republic as exceptions to the deterioration of quality journalism.] But the average American managing editor is too incompetent professionally to deal with such difficulties. He prints balderdash because he doesn't know how to get anything better - perhaps, in many cases, because he doesn't know that anything better exists. Drenched with propaganda at home, he is quite content to take more propaganda from Washington. It is not that he is dishonest, but that he is stupid - and, being stupid, a coward. The resourcefulness, enterprise and bellicosity that his job demands are simply not in him. He doesn't wear himself out trying to get the news, as romance has it; he slides supinely into the estate and dignity of a golf-player. American journalism suffers from too many golf-players. They swarm in the Washington Press Gallery. They, and not their bosses, are responsible for the imbecilities that now afflict their trade." - HL Mencken / editorial,The American Mercury, March 1927, Vol. X - No. 39 / page 281.
Sounds familiar doesn't it. Flannel, euphemistically speaking, never goes out of style.
Posted by Atrios
While sending people to Wolf´s poll every day gives us all a bit of fun, I don´t have that many readers. I´m sure I help to add a few hundred votes to the "right" answer (where right is simply defined as the answer that will annoy Wolf the most), but I can´t skew the polls that much. So, when you get results like this you know something´s up.
Do you have confidence in the way President Bush is handling the situation in Iraq?
Yes 6% 672 votes
No 94% 10163 votes
Posted by Atrios
One of the themes of the little propaganda war waged by all the objectively pro dead american soldier types was that there was all this "secret evidence" about all the WMD and all the things Hussein was supposedly hiding during Blix´s inspections process. Now, maybe I´m just forgetting something, but was there one single scrap of this "secret evidence" that has actually materialized? Anything?
Tony Blair appeared yesterday to water down the Government's claim that Iraq tried to import uranium from Africa to build a nuclear bomb.
Mr Blair told the Commons that it was "not beyond the bounds of possibility" that Iraq sought to obtain uranium from Niger recently because it had imported more than 270 tons in the 1980s. And he stood by the claim in the Government's dossier last September even though the White House has distanced itself from it.
It´s not beyond the bounds of possibility that I´ve got a nuclear processing plant in my basement, but it isn´t bloody likely either.
On a related note, Josh Marshall asks how many of the Iraqi defectors were full of it. The answer is obvious - all the ones they were listening to. These guys were taking their lead from a man who hadn´t lived in the country for what, 25 years or more? (Chalabi)
Posted by Lambert
From CNN via Daily Kos: Bill Hemmer of CNN interviews Jenna Hamilton, engaged to Specialist Kenneth Egger, who is still in Iraq:
HEMMER: Oh, he's getting out after this tour of duty in Iraq? How do feel about that?
HAMILTON: Yes, yes. He can't stand for it.
HEMMER: Why is that?
HAMILTON: I support him 100 percent.
HEMMER: Why do you say he can't stand it?
HAMILTON: It's hard on the families, it's hard on the soldiers, and it's especially hard to know that you put your faith and trust into a president, and they continue to lie to you, they break promises, and it's hard to fight for somebody like that.
Posted by Lambert CNN: "Pentagon officials said a U.S. military C-130 transport plane was the target of surface-to-air missile fire when it was flying into Baghdad International Airport."
Anyone military readers on the list know what kind of missile it was, and where it would be likely to come from?
...CNN Headline News invited me on to talk about our campaign on the weapons of mass destruction and the new "Misleader" TV ad.
...Rudi Bakhtiar was the anchorwoman, and as the clock ticked toward nine, she gave a preview of what was ahead. After a short clip from our ad, Ms. Bakhtiar gave a synopsis of the scandal over the President's State of the Union claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger -- a claim now known to be based on fraudulent evidence which even the White House knew was untenable. Ms. Bakhtiar pondered whether there was going to be political fallout from Bush's "slip of the tongue," and then invited viewers to stay tuned.
...In the commercial break before I went live, I asked the producer of the show about the "slip of the tongue" comment. She explained that it had been written for Rudi beforehand -- Rudi was just reading her script.
As I went on air, Ms. Bakhtiar greeted me and asked me about the ad. I laid out the basic case -- the President isn't being forthcoming about this, and we need to know what happened so that we can avoid it next time. Then things started to get really weird: Bakhtiar responded by spending about 30 seconds on air chiding me about how Saddam Hussein was a murderer, how he defied the UN, and how he attacked other countries.
I explained that everyone agrees that Saddam's a bad guy, the question is whether the President misled us about his capacity to do harm. Bakhtiar wasn't satisfied: "Don't you think you're betraying the troops in service by airing ads like that?" she asked. (Unfortunately, we were unable to get a transcript from CNN to verify the exact question. This is a paraphrase to the best of my recollection.) I responded that the opposite was true: one of the petition signers whose comment I had caught was an active-duty military person who was worried that he was putting his life on the line for a lie. I said we needed to find out what really happened so that these folks know that they're risking their lives for something important.
Then the interview ended. I walked out to greet a friend who had come with me. She was shocked -- for most of the interview, rather than showing me, they had shown footage of Saddam Hussein waving guns.
News organizations are in the credibility business. This works against us when the CW is completely at loggerheads with reality, and no one is willing to break with the pack, but at this point, for CNN to proffer lame excuses that the Administration itself isn't peddling, seems positively suicidal. What can the Moron-American FOX News demographic offer that's worth this kind of self-degradation?
Someone who still believes in what America should be
Posted by Lambert
Marc Lacey of the Times via CNN:
"President Bush needs to see corruption while he's here," said a man who identified himself only as Dele, interviewed before the president's visit. "He needs to be asked to pay to get something. Corruption is everywhere here, and I fear he's going to leave without facing our biggest problem."
Dele faced it as he waited in the gas line. Frustrated by the slow pace of things, he reached into his wallet and pulled out a 200 naira bill -- the equivalent of about $1.50 and a day's wage for many Nigerians -- and handed it to a man with a handful of bills who then allowed Dele into a faster-moving gas line.
"Yes, this is part of the problem," Dele acknowledged. "This is what our life has become. Do you pay or do you not pay? You don't feel good when you reach into your wallet. Bush needs to know the feeling."
Bush already knows it, Dele! He's "the man with a handful of bills" you handed your $1.50 day's wage to!
When the Bush administration issued its pre-war claims that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa, the CIA had not yet obtained the documents that served as a key foundation for the allegation and later turned out to be forged, U.S. officials say.
Even as the CIA found little to verify the reports, Bush administration officials [who?] repeatedly tried to put them into public statements. Sometimes CIA succeeded in getting the information removed.
After the CIA received the documents, the government provided them to the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, which quickly determined them to be forgeries.
Which is weird. We already know the documents were very quickly determined to be "crude forgeries." Was the CIA really so credulous as to turn them over to the UN without checking them?
But the documents had already been used for public claims in at least two places: the Dec. 19 State Department fact sheet and Bush's Jan. 28 address, in which he uttered the li[n Sic—Ed.]e: ''The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''
But, as many have now pointed out, how could Bush say "learned" when he knew neither the source nor the nature of the British intelligence?
The (mighty, and very mainstream) AP also summarizes the administration's ever changing stories:
In recent weeks, the Bush administration has offered a number of defenses for using the statement:
The CIA should have had it removed.
It was based on more intelligence information than the Niger letter.
It was technically true because it was attributed to British intelligence.
It wasn't the reason the United States invaded Iraq.
"A number of defenses ..." AP humor is dry, very dry...
When this material reaches the lead paragraph, instead of being buried halfway down the story... Well, Bush is gonna have more 'splainin' to do.
UDDATE: Looks like this leak comes from the FBI, if we believe Spiky, who provides additional detail. "The U.S. Embassy quickly passed the documents along to the CIA station chief in Rome—as well as the State Department’s Office of Intelligence and Research. But the station chief didn’t send them along to CIA headquarters in Langley." (thanks to alert reader shystee)
All-Star Celebrity Cage Match, CIA versus FBI! Pass the popcorn!
UPDATE: The incomparable Howler, we read, has been catching flak from readers who want him to take some other side in the 16 weasel words flap than having journalists get their facts straight. I say they should lay off. The beauty part is, we don't need to do anything other than tell the truth with these guys, and The Howler helps us do that.
UPDATE: Time's Tony Karon examines all the other, uh, inaccuracies in Bush's SOTU here. "the hawks' postwar scenarios have proved hopelessly naïve. Which could mean the revisiting of prewar intelligence has only just begun."
UPDATE: The Bush gang turns vicious when cornered, and has turned on Ambassador Wilson, outing his wife as a CIA employee. But Wilson considers the matter settled "now that the White House has admitted the Bush reference to Iraq and African uranium should not have been in the State of the Union address. "
Perhaps we can't find the WMDs because they aren't there to be found
Posted by Lambert
Bob Drogin of The New Republic interviews weapons Iraqi scientists here (four week free trial subscription). The Iraqi scientists are uniformly fearful of Saddam, but none have taken the American $200,000 cash reward and political asylum or a new identity outside Iraq either.
Sounds to Drogin like Saddam refused to admit he no longer had WMDs for fear of losing his grip on power, and because he believed that fear of his weapons deterred coalition forces in the first Gulf war. So the sanctions, and the inspection regime, were working. Remind me again what the case for war was?
Posted by Leah
Let's see. First, the Germans. Then, the Indians. Now...it's the French saying, thanks for thinking of us, but no thanks.
Although a few nations are sending troops, near daily guerrilla attacks - many of them deadly - and growing doubts about the basis for the war are complicating Washington's search for peacekeepers to replace exhausted American troops in Iraq. (italics mine)
When did the definition of strong leadership become how few people are willing to follow you? Or the ferocity of your petulance?
Interesting to consider our President's response, on his African trip, to the admittedly strong criticism of his Iraq policy by Nelson Mandela, which was to act as if this heroic figure and former President of South Africa doesn't exist. To be fair, Mandela was out of the country. But if the President of the United States had asked for a meeting to discuss their differences, can anyone imagine Mandela not accepting?
What's so enraging about our present predicament in Iraq is how predictable it was. And let's not forget that both Germany and France clearly indicated, once Bush declared the war over, their willingness to mend fences.
Here's Jim Hoagland, one of our non neo-con foreign policy pundits, generally supportive of the Bush doctrine, in an early July discussion of our increasing isolation.
But Bush is no conventional incumbent. He is so deeply involved in remaking Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East that he lacks a foreign policy firewall for 2004. His presidency is irretrievably tied to events in those remote and devastated precincts. Bush must use every asset he possesses every day to achieve, at a minimum, non-failure.
Bush and his increasingly assertive White House foreign policy staff will have to stay on the offensive through the election season. They should begin by moderating the administration's tendency to go it mostly alone.
They should seek greater help from America's traditional friends and partners in managing the messy postwar aftermaths of rapid military victories in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf.
That thought is making headway in public opinion and, I think, at the White House. But this is not a one-way street: It is not only the administration that needs to engage in a fundamental rethinking of the highly fluid international scene created by overwhelming U.S. military power and Bush's unilateralist style in diplomacy.
The complicated hubris of "remaking Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Middle East I'd like to leave for another post.
Not a one-way street? Isn't that the very essence of the Bush doctrine, that it is?
But this is not about knocking Hoagland, tempting though that is. His article is worth reading because his approach, and the challenges he poses to the countries in the other lane of that two way street are ones, in a slightly different form, that are going to be directed at Bush's domestic critics, i.e., Democrats, centrist Republicans, and us liberal lefties.
France, Germany, Russia and other countries that opposed the war in Iraq have yet to communicate in a convincing manner the final outcome they want to see inside Iraq. Nor have many of them indicated what they are prepared to contribute to bringing that outcome about should the United States seek the greater international involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan that is now being urged on Washington.
Is it better for France's quest for "multipolarity" if the United States succeeds or fails in Iraq? Do the hard-liners of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democratic Party want Germany involved in any way in bolstering America's new "imperialism"?
Thinking about our answers is the next step we need to take, beyond making the most of the well-deserved pratfall this administration has experienced, tripping over it's own muddled assertions about its own muddled policies.
"Restoring a balanced budget is an important priority for this administration, but a balanced budget is not a higher priority than winning the global war on terror, protecting the American homeland, or restoring economic growth and job creation." --OMB Director Joshua B. Bolten
When that explosion was heard, a group of Iraqi civilians, who were nearby, gathered at the site of the aftermath [and] were watching what was going on.
And when they apparently realized that this was an attack on a U.S. military force, they erupted in cheers. And that cheering went on for several minutes.
UPDATE: Alert reader santoast chastises me for using "frat boy" as a term of abuse. And... santoast is right. Headline changed to "Pretzel Boy"— as in the old ads where the catchline was, "Prove it, Pretzel Boy." Also, of course, for the subliminal Steely Dan reference.
Posted by Lambert
No, silly, not that George! George "Plank Boy" Tenet!
But even some Republicans are beginning to see problems with Bush's pass-the-buck, "Stop me before I lie again!" cover story. CNN:
"It wasn't just the CIA involved here," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska. "We had the vice president and his office involved, [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, [Secretary of State Colin] Powell's people. This wasn't just a one-man show."
Throw another shrimp on the barbie, as the Aussies would say ... Mmm! Darn good!
...[T]here have been increasing reports of Iraqi men, women and even children being dragged from their homes at night by American patrols, or snatched off the streets and taken, hooded and manacled, to prison camps around the capital.
Children as young as 11 are claimed to be among those locked up for 24 hours a day in rooms with no light, or held in overcrowded tents in temperatures approaching 50C (122F).
...
Amnesty claims that 80 minors have been detained, accused of petty offences including writing anti-American graffiti or, in the case of two teenage boys, climbing on the back of a US troop carrier to hitch a lift through a main street in Baghdad.
One of the most disturbing incidents concerns Sufiyan Abd al-Ghani, 11, who was with his uncle in a car that was stopped near his home in Hay al-Jihad at just after 10pm on May 27. The boy’s father heard a commotion and rushed outside to see him sprawled face down on the road with a rifle muzzle pressed against his neck and US officers shouting that someone in the car had shot at them.
Sufiyan was made to stay on the ground for three hours, while more than 100 soldiers poured into the neighborhood, searching houses and cars. Eventually he was taken away with his hands trussed behind his back and a hood draped over his head. No weapon had been found. The boy said that soldiers dug rifle butts into his neck and back and that the first night he was handcuffed and left alone in a tiny room open to the sky.
The following day he was moved to the airport, where he said for eight days he shared a tent with 22 adults, sleeping on the dirt, with no water to wash or change his clothes.
Sufiyan said that he was pulled from the tent one morning, hooded and manacled again, and driven to Sarhiyeh prison, to be kept in a room with 20 other youths aged 15 or 16 — regarded as minors by the Geneva Convention.
...
Mr Akhjan, whose 58-year-old father was arrested three weeks ago for driving a truck with no doors or headlights, said: "People are so sickened by what is happening they talk of wanting Saddam to come back. How bad can the Americans be that in three months we want that monster back?"
OK, so we're alienating the locals. But how about our friends, the Iraqi exiles?
An Iraqi exile who had been in Baghdad for only three days after living in Denmark for the past 27 years found himself caught up in an American swoop after a shooting in a street market. Not realizing that the man could read English, his interrogator made no attempt to cover up his case file, which described him as “suspected assassin”.
The man, who was held for more than 30 days, is afraid to give his name and says that he is now considering leaving Baghdad for good.
At this rate, the US motto in Iraq will soon be "Not as brutal as the last guy."
Posted by Lambert
A little Zen might help us find our way in Iraq. Maybe. First the news:
George Gedda of the Associated Press has an interview with James Dobbins, '"a former State Department official involved in five of six nation-building exercises over the past 11 years."
[Dobbins says that] the United States should be doing better in Iraq after all this experience.
''We don't seem to have learned much,'' says Dobbins, who served as U.S. special envoy in operations around the world.
Dobbins, who has been working for the Rand think tank since his retirement from government last year, said in a recent interview the most successful operations, especially from the standpoint of postwar casualties, have been Bosnia and Kosovo.
In Bosnia, he says, the ratio of security forces to the population was 18 soldiers for each 1,000 inhabitants. In Kosovo, it was 20 per thousand. In Iraq, it is only seven.
In the two Balkan regions, he notes, there hasn't been a single postwar U.S. combat death. In Iraq, as of Monday, the figure was 32 American soldiers killed in hostile action since Bush declared major combat operations ended on May 1.
''If you go in with heavier force, you sustain fewer casualties and you inflict fewer casualties,'' says Dobbins, who believes the relatively small coalition troop commitment in Iraq has emboldened anti-U.S. militants to resort to violent tactics.
''Nothing happens without good security,'' [Dobbins] observes. ''International investors have to feel free to travel the countryside. Otherwise they won't invest.''
...
Dobbins says American patience in Iraq is essential, claiming that ''no nation-building operation has succeeded in less than seven years'' .
Dobbins believes the United States has to begin taking nation building seriously because these operations probably will be a permanent fixture of U.S. foreign policy.
He says the problem is systemic because neither the State nor Defense departments regards nation building as a part of its central purpose.
Seven years is a long time. And that's with more troops.
I'm torn.
I'm sympathetic to optimistic statements like Leah's—"It's just possible that the Iraqi people may save the Bush administration from the worst consequences of its own arrogance and incompetence" by quickly building their own institutions. In fact, the American ability to combine generosity and realpolitik, as in the Marshall Plan, is one of our national strengths.
OK. When the Iraqis draft a constitution and have elections, we're outta there. It does seem odd that an administration that accused Democrats of treason for wanting international backing for the war would keep spending American lives until the Iraqis tell us to stop, but let that pass.
Is the timetable a cynical ploy for "declaring victory and getting out"? (So raise our window baby, I can ease out soft and slow.) If Iraq were Afghanistan, probably so. But Afghanistan doesn't have any oil revenues. Is the occupation an imperial ploy to maintain the American presence in the Mideast, with a new ally (let's not say "puppet regime" yet) much more beholden to us than Saudi Arabia? More likely.
Regardless, the Iraqi council says 18 months to two years is the timetable for writing a Constitution. So are we there two years? Or seven, as Gedda would have it? Meanwhile, the new Iraqi government is seeking a presence at the UN, so we might end up controlling a second vote there. And we all know how the Bush administration likes those extra votes...
In any case, it's this country I care about. My bottom line is here, not Iraq. Kerry has the right of it: "We shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad while closing them in Brooklyn." Not just because the firefighters are first responders against the resurgent AQ, but because Americans have needs that the administration is ignoring, and seems prepared to go on ignoring indefinitely. First Afghanistan. We're still there. Now Iraq. What next? Syria? Allman's lyrics—If I get by this time I won't be trapped no more—sound pretty good when you think that the "New American Century" doesn't seem to be doing a lot for most Americans.
Lord, I'm foolish to be here in the first place.... But here we are. I'm still torn.
Your thoughts?
NOTE: The Allman Brothers lyrics are a lot like Sonny Boy Williamson's. But they changed them, OK?
UPDATE: HaloScan says the bug in URL href value in HTML <a> tags is fixed. Readers?
UPDATE: Leah wishes to say that nothing Tom Freidman publishes is even remotely similar to her positions on anything.
Posted by Lambert
Michael Sniffen of the AP via the Houston Chronicle writes:
Without fanfare, senators debating defense spending for next year have proposed eliminating all money for the Pentagon's development of a vast computerized terrorism surveillance program that has raised privacy concerns.
But why? If the system had been in place, Tom DéLay would have been able to find those Texas Democrats!
Posted by Atrios And why this lie? I mean, I´ve known for months that most of the stuff in the SOTU and in Powell´s presentation was horseshit. Why is the media suddenly on this story?
Maybe if the objectively pro dead American soldier SCLM would have done their jobs a few months back...
Back in 2000, Commissioner McCarty scoffed at the notion that Al Gore was a victim of Theresa LePore's butterfly ballot. She was so offended by the Florida Supreme Court's rulings during the election controversy that she became chairwoman of a campaign to oust "left-wing" justices. The whole thing, however, turned into a huge embarrassment. Two of the three targeted justices actually had dissented from the opinion that so upset Commissioner McCarty. The fund-raiser fizzled, no justices got voted out, and she ended up facing charges of election impropriety.
As was reported last week, the Florida Elections Commission ruled in May that Commissioner McCarty violated campaign laws, among them taking contributions above the $500 limit and filing an inaccurate disclosure report. The FEC could fine her up to $450,000. What is Ms. McCarty's response?
...
It's hard to see how Commissioner McCarty was duped. Roger Stone, a Republican operative in Washington, asked her to front for the Committee to Take Back Our Judiciary, and she agreed to let the group send out 350,000 fund-raising letters under her name. She knew the purpose was to punish justices who wanted to count as many votes as possible. Even if none of the $220,000 the group raised went directly to Commissioner McCarty, she certainly expected to benefit politically from lending her name so prominently.
Posted by Atrios
Or is it vice versa. Anyway, once people stop making fun of the puppets and goofy signs they can start to actually notice that some critics of "globalization" in its current form have a point. Our free trade rhetoric is often nothing more than that. We muscle developing nations into trade agreements, forcing them to sign onto intellectual property agreements which have nothing to do with trade, and then proceed to refuse to lower the tariffs on items those countries might actually be able to export - textiles and agriculture.
It is particularly galling when we do it to an evil commie country that´s transitioning its way into capitalism.
I´m a free trader, but I´m also a big believer in the fact that the treaties and international institutions which have been set up to perpetuate that are too often used to benefit special interests, corporate and otherwise, in wealthy countries.
Posted by Atrios
When talking about the deficit numbers, Cal Pundit says "...I assume that even these figures are based on the usual overoptimistic growth projections."
Actually, if I remember correctly the Clinton administration numbers were generally on the pessimistic side, though I´d have to do a bit of digging to back up that assertion.
Posted by Atrios
The fun thing about being abroad and reading the foreign press is that very often they get things just fantastically wrong. I appreciate outsider analysis of US politics - sometimes it´s very insightful. But, every now and then it just makes one go < johnstewart> wuuuuuhhhhhh? < /johnstewart > .
Posted by Lambert
Now it's 16 + 19. Here are 19* more weasel words from Bush's constitutionally mandated State of the Union speech:
"Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. "
Well, I know you'll be as shocked as I am to learn that those additional 19 words are dodgy, too. (Not!) Walter Pincus of WaPo writes:
In recent days, as the Bush administration has defended its assertion in the president's State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy African uranium, officials have said it was only one bit of intelligence that indicated former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program.
But a review of speeches and reports, plus interviews with present and former administration officials and intelligence analysts, suggests that between Oct. 7, when President Bush made a speech laying out the case for military action against Hussein, and Jan. 28, when he gave his State of the Union address, almost all the other evidence had either been undercut or disproved by U.N. inspectors in Iraq.
Of his October examples, only the aluminum tubes charge remained in January, but that allegation had a subtle caveat ...
Parseville! (as Josh Marshall has it)
... -- he described the tubes as merely "suitable" for nuclear weapons production.
... Baghdad's first attempts to purchase the aluminum tubes, more than a year earlier, had by Sept. 8 led to a fairly open disagreement in the U.S. intelligence community on whether the tubes were for centrifuges or for artillery rockets in Iraq's military program.
The intelligence estimate, completed in mid-September, reflected the different views, but the final judgment said that "most" analysts leaned toward the view that the tubes had a nuclear purpose. When the British dossier on Iraq's weapons program was published on Sept. 24, it referred to the tubes, but noted that "there is no definitive intelligence that it is destined for a nuclear program."
In his State of the Union address, Bush did not indicate any disagreement over the use of the tubes.
But the Bush administration was determined to have their war—by any means necessary. (For the politicization of the National Intelligence Estimates (NIE), the former "gold standard," see here; copy.)
Bush lies, soldiers die.
* I'm bending over backwards to be generous to the Republicans and counting the hyphenated "high-strength" as one word.
NOTE: Hey, Hel—uh, Bill! Does the Newspaper of Record have anyone, you know, covering this story? Flooding the zone? Hey, about Jeff Gerth?
Posted by Lambert Petition. (Thanks to alert reader Cracker).
Personally, I'd rather see an investigation that examines the Bush administration's complete politicization of intelligence (copy), of which the WMD flap and the 16 weasel words are only a small part.
I can't see any sense in what Bush is doing with intelligence. First, he announces a radical new doctrine of pre-emptive war. Second, he gets Cheney to browbeat the intelligence agencies into giving him whatever answers he wants, instead of doing any real analysis.
You'd think if Bush were going to pre-empt, he'd want to pre-empt at the right place and time. (The national security equivalent of hair trigger trouble, you know?) That's what the national intelligence agencies could help him with, if he he weren't busy browbeating them.
The only answer I can think of is that Bush, like the Lord High Executioner in Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado—see the video, appropriately named Topsy Turvy—has "got a little list." And Bush is going to go to war with everyone on that little list, for whatever reason he can find or make up. We surely saw that with Iraq. And the tactic sounds a lot like the Bush domestic policies, come to think about it.
So if MoveOn can drive the thin end of the wedge home—more power to them.
Posted by Lambert
The one where you search on "weapons of mass destruction" and hit I'm feeling lucky... There's an interview with the creator of that page here.
It started as a joke; now it's at the top of the famed Google page ranking system.
Too bad we don't know today what the Orwellian catchphrases of six months from now are going to be; if we did, we could wage a little pre-emptive informational warfare.... Or maybe we do! "Technically accurate"? Go on, people! Make those pages!
Posted by Lambert
Edith M. Lederer of AP has an update on Tuwaitha, the looted nuclear plant in Iraq—the one Rummy didn't guard, although he did, of course, guard the oil ministry.
"The quantity and type of uranium compounds dispersed are not sensitive from a proliferation point of view," said the report by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei to the U.N. Security Council....
Well, we already knew that there wasn't any weapons grade uranium there, so we already had our concerns on proliferation assuaged. My worry was always that such material could be used for dirty bombs. ElBaradei doesn't seem to address this. Do we have any readers with expertise on this point?
Deeper in the story is the following:
U.N. nuclear inspectors were not allowed to assess the situation at another storage site in Tuwaitha for radioactive sources. That site too was reportedly looted by Iraqis living nearby.
U.N. officials said the U.S. military has provided no information on the status of those potentially deadly sources.
Under the strict guidelines set out by the Pentagon, the IAEA team was only allowed to check on uranium it had stored.
So we really don't have a complete inventory of Iraqi nuclear material at all, do we? Hmm ....
Posted by Leah
A stunning milestone in the annals of human governance has just been established by the Guatemalan Supreme Court when it ruled that Efrain Rios Montt, former dictator and well-known human rights abuser had every right to run for the presidency of Guatamala, despite a law that banned any person who had ever taken power by force from holding public office.
The former strongman's legal argument was that his own coup-leading days had happened prior to the passage of the law and should not therefore come under its perview, and secondly, he argued, that even if the law did apply to him, the law itself was an abuse of General Rios Montt's own human rights.
Human rights groups say Rios Montt was among the bloodiest dictators in Latin American history. The 1960-96 civil war pitted leftist, largely Mayan guerrillas against the army and killed 200,000 Guatemalans. The war ended with a peace treaty in 1996.
Some Guatemalans were upset with the decision.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu described the court ruling as ``a coup d'etat,'' suggesting Rios Montt's Guatemalan Republican Front party - which controls the presidency and enjoys a majority in Congress - had somehow co-opted the court.
But not everybody.
Republican Front officials applauded the decision.
``More than a victory for Gen. Rios Montt, this is a victory for the Guatemalan people,'' said Republican Front congressman Aristides Crespo. ``This shows that only the Guatemalan people can choose their president, not four or ten or twelve lawyers.''
Rigoberta Menchu is so old news. In fact, as I'm sure our friends on the right will insist on emphasizing, to the extent to which they take any notice of this story, some questions about Ms. Menchu's autobiography have been raised. And anyway, she's a Guatemalan indian, and lacking perspective, as does she, most of them are upset.
The current US government commented that it would find it difficult to deal with a Guatemalan government headed by Mr. Rios Montt. I can't imagine why, unless it's because Eliott Abrams is in the Pentagon now, rather than in the State Department.
Rios Montt was hailed in 1982 by Pat Robertson and other American evangelicals, as the last best hope for Guatemala. Rios Montt, unsual for Cental American...uh, leaders, is Protestant.
The 700 Club mobilized on behalf of the General's government, offering aid and even personnel for several of the refugee camps then in Guatemala. The question of why there would be refugee camps inside a country, housing only citizens of that country, did not appear to occur to Mr. Robertson.
Doubtless, his awareness of the pernicious alliance between Priests of the Roman Catholic Church, and the bottom rungs of Central American society, which could only mean an expansion of the Communist menace, allayed any misgivings he might have had.
Posted by Lambert
There's Godwin's Law, which we generally interpret to mean that we can't use the F-word (except when we ought to).
However, there's no law governing the I-word -- "impeachment" -- although the SCLM (let alone the VRWC) hasn't used it much since the days of The Clenis™. Jules Witcover used it in a column this past June, and David Broder used it just the other day, although in understated "cloud no bigger than a man's hand"-style.
Just today the I-word surfaced in the mainstream information flow, in an Op-Ed column in the LA Times. Robert Scheer based his case for impeachment on Bush's "big lie to justify going to war" -- the infamous 16 weasel words.
Legally, I don't think there's much to Scheer's column. If lying is illegal, then there won't be cells enough for all of us. Here, we've had an extensive and informed discussion on just this point:
Is uttering a falsehood in the constitutionally mandated State of the Union speech a felony under statute? (For example, USC Sec. 1001, or 18 USC Sec. 371.) John Dean says Yes, under 18 USC Sec. 371.
Maybe so. (I'm not a lawyer.)
But.
Impeach Bush? Not a good idea, I think.
Payback for the slow-moving, media-fuelled, VRWC-funded coup inflicted on us through the ginned up Clinton scandals, the impeachment, and the Florida coup would sure be good, clean fun... Ditto nailing Bush on his lies, especially the Big Lies...
But emotion shouldn't rule strategy. ("Revenge is a dish best served cold.") And since the Republicans control all three branches of government, impeachment is dead at the starting gate. It's just not on.
The one essential is to get a Democrat -- any Democrat -- into the White House in 2004. To do that, we're going to need all the resources we can get, and -- whether some of you like it or not -- we're going to need moderate voters. (If you want to think of a moderate voter as someone who hasn't done the hard work that you have, and therefore isn't nearly as committed or angry, that's fine. The point is to get their vote!)
Strategically, then, impeachment is both a diversion of precious resources, and a turn-off to voters we need to win.
Red meat for the base, sure. A hot-house for growing the memes more moderate sounding voices can transmit to the mainstream, sure. But no more than that.
Posted by Leah
So much has been happening here, in the mother country, we've been remiss in not keeping up with events in our budding overseas empire.
One hopeful development that should not be underestimated - the establishment of that advisory Council made up of actual Iraqis, fairly representative of the population, with a slight tilt toward exiles, and a rightful majority of Shia. It would be a mistake to view it as a puppet interim institution. Bremer had to engage in a tough negotiation process to get the Council; the Iraqis weren't pushovers, and I suspect they won't be, because they understand that their occupiers need the Council.
A key figure here is the UN Special Envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who is on leave from his regular gig as UN commissioner for human rights. You can get some sense of who he is from this early June USA story:
The new U.N. representative to Iraq arrived for work Monday, saying his main priority is to ensure the quick establishment of an interim authority and pave the way for a democratic government.
In case you're tempted to view that statement as boilerplate international civil servant, Vieira de Mello has already been highly effective in helping Bremer see the wisdom of listening to Iraqis, because Viera de Mello understands the US needs the UN. Note the mention of a meeting of 300 Iraqi's scheduled for July; that's the one that got cancelled in favor of the current arrangements. Talk about needing a roadmap.
Here's an AP account of the Council's first day at work, punctuated as it broke up, by a non-accidental explosion in a parking lot frequented by foreign journalists.
Mouwafak al-Rabii, a Shiite member of the governing council and a human rights activist, condemned the explosion.
"These are being carried out by the Taliban of Iraq," he said at the bomb site. It is "a backward ideology. A very regressive ideology, it depicts Islam in a very unacceptable way."
Speaking about the American-British occupation, al-Rabii said "nobody wants the Americans to stay one day longer than what they have to stay." He added that when Iraq has a government, an elected parliament and the security is under control, then "the American and British troops should leave immediately."
I call that a hopeful response, and one that expresses precisely where most Iraqis are on this occupation issue. And in the same vein, here's Jonathan Steele in the Guardian telling us about the"the vibrant debate among Iraqis after 30 years of repression."
And more than mere debate is going on:
The new council in Iraq is already divided over its attitude to America. A proposal for it to express thanks to President Bush for the invasion and to declare April 9 "Liberation Day" was rejected by most members at their first informal meeting on Saturday. Instead, they made April 9 a holiday to celebrate "the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime".
A majority also decided to invite the chief UN representative rather than Mr Bremer to make the only speech by a foreigner at the council's launch on Sunday.
That latter is especially significant.
It's just possible that the Iraqi people may save the Bush administration from the worst consequences of its own arrogance and incompetence.
UPDATE: Here's a BBC article that describes who exactly each of the twenty-five members of the Council is.
Under an administration initiative first elaborated two years ago and modified several times since, the Park Service must decide by year's end whether to keep intact its Midwest Archaeological Center in Lincoln, Neb., and its Southeast Archaeological Center, in Tallahassee, or offer most of the jobs for bid to outside contractors.
The two centers between them employ fewer than 100 archaeologists, but with the help of volunteers, cooperative agreements with universities and their own outsourcing, they supervise the care, protection and promotion of national heritage resources at 122 national parks and 780 national historical landmarks in 22 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The word that leaped out at me from this story was "volunteers." We've got people volunteering for a government program to save our precious heritage, and the Republicans want to axe the whole thing. This is exactly the kind of citizen involvement that a truly conservative administration would seek to encourage, not gut. This is so disgusting I can't even think of a snappy headline for how disgusting it is.
Posted by Leah
Talk about a target rich environment, has there ever been an administration like this one? (And don't be confused by the ability of the VRWC to paint bullseyes all over the Clinton administration, that's all they were, painted on targets.)
To return briefly to the more prosaic but just as important subject of rightwing court-packing - remember William Pryor?
If you don't, and even if you do, go and read this transcript of a terrific NOW segment from last Friday, on the battle royal over Bush appointments to the Federal Judiciary; it's major focus is Mr. Pryor, 41 year old AG of Alabama, who has been nominated to be a Federal Appelate Judge, a lifetime appointment, thank-you very much.
His nomination hasn't been reported out of committee yet. It was scheduled to be last week, but was then postponed, apparently because Senator Arlen Spector wasn't yet on board this particular Bush humvee. The postponed vote is coming up THIS THURSDAY.
Naturally there's a lot of pressure being put on the Senator from Pennsylvanna. His vote against Pryor will probably bolster his centrist credentials enough to guarantee his re-election, but Spector 's already got that principled moderate repurtation locked in, let's make him earn it.
Working For Change makes it easy for you. Nothing more required than your name on an email, they do the rest.
Or, perhaps even better, especially if you have impressive letterhead, do as MB of Wampumsuggests:
PLEASE FAX A LETTER OF OPPOSITION ON YOUR LETTERHEAD TO 202-318-4040. A copy of your letter will be delivered to the US Senate Judiciary Committee and to all senators should there be a floor vote on this nominee. For more information, go to www.adawatch.org.
There's always the option of calling Spector's Washington office, but unless you're a constituent, it will matter less. If James C of the always estimable Rittenhouse Review were still planning to run against Spector, I'd say let Arlen vote with Bush and pay for it at the ballot box. But alas, we now have no excuse for letting Spector off the hook.
Read the transcript and you'll understand just how important it is that Mr. Pryor not be appointed to the Court Of Appeals.
Say, I've got an idea! Why don't we just find out what Cheney (copy) wants and tell Bush that? Yeah, that's the ticket ...
UPDATE: FWIW. "Look, over there"? Or not? (Thanks to alert reader datanerd)
UPDATE: Then again, William Perry is says "Hold on to your hats!":
"My theory is the reason we don't have a policy on this, and we aren't negotiating, is the president himself," Perry said. "I think he has come to the conclusion that Kim Jong Il is evil and loathsome and it is immoral to negotiate with him."
(Thanks to alert reader Brian CB)
Too bad half our army is tied down in Iraq.
Posted by Lambert
The Times editorializes on the 16 weasel words today:
In trying to defend the indefensible in its depiction of Iraq's nuclear weapons program, the Bush administration is now making a legalistic argument that would be laughable if the matter were not so serious. Because the British government believed in January that Iraq had been trying to import large quantities of uranium from Africa, top administration officials are saying, Mr. Bush was technically correct when he cited the British concerns in the State of the Union address. The explanation conveniently glosses over the fact that long before Mr. Bush delivered the speech on Jan. 28, American intelligence officials had concluded that the British charge was probably unreliable.
The British-made-us-do-it defense might be more compelling if London had a better track record when it came to assessing Iraq's unconventional weapons programs. ....
Yet the charge still found its way into the State of the Union speech. Mr. Tenet has accepted blame for the C.I.A.'s failure to tell the White House to yank it, but the real question is why the White House put it in the address — and kept it there — long after it had been debunked.
Calling Mr. Keller! Calling Mr. Keller! The answer to your question is:
Posted by Lambert
Mohamad Bazzi of Newsday has an interesting interview with one of the Iraqi guerillas here (missed it in the "16 words" frenzy)
Currently, Khaled [the guerilla] said he is responsible for "three or four" Fedayeen cells. He said they have been involved in carrying out attacks on U.S. troops in Fallujah and Baghdad with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.
He said specialized cells have been created to deal with procuring weapons, developing more sophisticated bombs, identifying informers and creating systems of coded communication. These units, Khaled said, are small and do not know one another - a policy meant to reduce the potential for infiltration or arrests that lead the cells to unravel.
That strategy has been used by Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas and Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, and by Algerian nationalists who fought a bloody war to drive France out of Algeria in the 1960s.
Hmmm....
UPDATE: Alert reader Harry Tuttle points to an article by Mohamad Bazzi of Newsday has an interesting interview with one of the Iraqi guerillas here (missed it in the "16 words" frenzy)
Currently, Khaled [the guerilla] said he is responsible for "three or four" Fedayeen cells. He said they have been involved in carrying out attacks on U.S. troops in Fallujah and Baghdad with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.
He said specialized cells have been created to deal with procuring weapons, developing more sophisticated bombs, identifying informers and creating systems of coded communication. These units, Khaled said, are small and do not know one another - a policy meant to reduce the potential for infiltration or arrests that lead the cells to unravel.
That strategy has been used by Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas and Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, and by Algerian nationalists who fought a bloody war to drive France out of Algeria in the 1960s.
Hmmm....
UPDATE: Alert reader Harry Tuttle points to an article by Salam Pax in The Guardian that vividly describes the difference between British and American approach to low intensity warfare.
In June, a floppy disk found near the White House turned out to contain a presentation used by Karl Rove on White House strategy for the midterm elections. Focus on war was a key point in a talk that centered on the White House's desire to, quote, "maintain a positive issue environment."
Posted by Lambert Bush used the active voice about the 16 weasel words here: "Otherwise, I wouldn't have put it in the speech. I'm not interested in talking about intelligence unless it's cleared by the CIA. And as Director Tenet said, it was cleared by the CIA.''
For how and why the CIA's approval process "cleared" bad intelligence, see the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity's "Memorandum" to the President (go read) (copy) .
Here's how you are weighing in on our Web question of the day. We've been asking you this: Do you believe Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction on the eve of the war? Look at this -- 12 percent of you say yes, 88 percent of you say no; more than 10,000 of you have already voted. You can continue to vote, but remember, this is not a scientific poll.
Here's how you're weighing in on our Web question of the day. Remember, we have been asking you this -- whom do you blame for the mistake in the president's State of the Union address in Iraq? Ninety-five percent, ninety-five percent of you say President Bush, 1 percent of you said British intelligence, 3 percent of you blame the CIA. As always, we remind you, this is not a scientific poll. More than 11,000 voters so far.
Here's how you are weighing in on our Web question of the day. Did President Bush make an honest mistake in his State of the Union Address or did he deliberately mislead the American public about Iraq? Look at this, 20 percent of you say honest mistake, 80 percent of you say he deliberately misled the public. More than 15,000 of you have already voted. As always, we remind you this is not a scientific poll.
Posted by Atrios
My good friend Max often makes the point that campaigning on the evils of deficit spending is generally not the way to win elections. I think he´s essentially right on this point. He´s also been rather sanguine about the long run budget picture, noting the CBO numbers don´t look so bad.
However, I think what Max has missed something. Even us (supposed) big government liberals recognize that once you let the Leviathan out of its cage, it´s hard to bring it back in. In the 90s it probably took the fortunate confluence of the bizarre Perot candidacy, a dogmatic Alan Greenspan, an extremely robust economy, anti-government Republicans, and a responsible president to bring the budget into balance - something which, at the time, seemed impossible.
Now, a balanced budget isn´t a good thing in and of itself, but back in 1992 the long run fiscal health of the U.S. was starting to worry some reasonable people. Moderate deficits in perpetuity are fine, but at some point they start to spiral out of control.
We´re probably at $450b and counting for this year, already busting through projections from just a few short months ago. I´m not sure how much of a political winner this is, but increasingly it´s becoming a genuine economic issue.
Posted by Atrios
I have to admit I never expected that conservative republicans would trot out the "Clinton did it too" defense with such regularity. In this case, however, it´s even more bizarre. Bush is proud of the fact that in the year 2003 we were acting on intelligence information from 1998 - 5 years ago?
Q Mr. President, thank you. On Iraq, what steps are being taken to ensure that questionable information, like the Africa uranium material, doesn't come to your desk and wind up in your speeches?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me first say that -- I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence. And the speeches I have given were backed by good intelligence. And I am absolutely convinced today, like I was convinced when I gave the speeches, that Saddam Hussein developed a program of weapons of mass destruction, and that our country made the right decision.
We worked with the United Nations -- as Kofi mentioned, not all nations agreed with the decision, but we worked with the United Nations. And Saddam Hussein did not comply. And it's the same intelligence, by the way, that my predecessor used to make the decision he made in 1998.
Posted by Atrios CalPundit informs us that Fox television is bringing us a new television show about where he lives - the lovely Orange County, CA.
Now, one doesn´t quite have all the information yet (Full Site Coming Soon!), but it´s pretty clear that Fox has done to Orange County what Friends did to New York City - covered it in gallons and gallons of bleach.
It might come as a bit of a surprise to most people that 29.9% of Orange County residents (As of the 2000 census) are foreign born (compared with 11.1% nationally, and 35.9% in New York City). Holy crap that´s a big number. 36% or so of those are from Asia, and most of the rest are from Latin America.
Orange County is only 64.8% white, and that falls down to 51.3% "white-but-not-of-Latino origin." True, OC isn´t a place where too many African-Americans call home, but my guess is that the Asian and Latino populations won´t exactly get much camera time.
The disturbing thing about the media´s portrayal of places like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and yes, even Orange County, isn´t just that they often don´t have enough non-white main characters - it´s that they totally whitewash the background characters as well. The extras are overwhelmingly non-representative of the local populations.
Posted by the farmer U.S. President George W. Bush says he believes the quality of the intelligence reports he receives is "darn good." see: "Darn good", posted by Lambert
Darn right. And a mighty fine darning at that. No one can weave yarns over a tattered gaping hole quite like the basting magicians of the Bush administration. The spinning frames and stitching contraptions of our supranational White House alteration shop never stop whirring as new and wondrous patterns and fanciful embroideries are patched daily into our national quilt. Them Crawford Gang boys is the fastest thimbles this side of the garment district. And fars as the faithful is concerned, no darn sock hole is gonna ruin a darn good buttonhook and seamy international hornswoggle whiles the Crawford Gang is clenching the chalk.
darn: v. - To mend by weaving thread or yarn across a gap or hole. To repair a hole, as in a garment, by weaving thread or yarn across it. darn: n. - a hole repaired by weaving thread or yarn across it: a sock full of darns. (American Heritage Dictionary)
No sir. We can't have our high Brahman of Defense and Minister of Terminological Inexactitude, Don "four corners of the compass" Rumsfeld, running around the global showroom with holes in his socks like some kind of sweatshop hunchback. How would that look? What do you think they'd have to say about something like that on Downing Street? "Blutty Americans, can't mind their sock-holes...tea anyone!?" Or something like that.
So. To show an appreciation for fine tatting and tailorin' and general overall inoperative statement knitting when it presents itself, I suggest that every American patriot go a rootin' through a sock drawer and produce at least one sock in need of a good darn. And a darn good darn at that. Send that darned sock in need of darning off to the White House. Tell em you want your sock patched up and returned in darn good quality condition before winters baneful howl is roaring under the gawd darn door and heating-oil, gas prices, and layoffs conquer K2 heights of corporate fancy. Tell them its a private intelligence initiative called Operation Sock Holder and the spirit of darnation hovers in the shadows and shrubbery of today's Rose Garden the way the ghosts of louisette hover to this day in the shadows of the Bourbon court of Louis the XVI. Tell them Betsy Ross sent you.
And don't forget to request a receipt and a certificate of authenticity that reads: "this darned sock has been personally inspected by number 43". Take no darned bullshit.
Posted by Atrios
Adam Felber, who you should be reading every day, breaks his rule of not commenting on the pundits, as he occasionally does, and gives us a rundown on the brightest lights on the right.
Posted by Atrios
I think for once Joe Klein basically gets it right here. For years the media hasn´t been confronted with angry Democrats, to our shame, and so when they find one they think that they are "leftists" or "extreme liberals."
I´always a bit amused when people accuse sites like Media Whores Online , or Move On, or this one as being "leftist." MWO have always been unabashed Clinton Democrats. Move On began to support a censure resolution to get the country past impeachment, hardly the agenda of radical leftists.
Clinton Democrats are not and have never been "leftists," unless you´ve redefined leftist, as Howie "I am not a whore shut up Shut Up SHUT UP SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP" Kurtz has, as anything to the left of Jonah Goldberg.
Some of us have decided that when the other side is playing Calvinball, it´s time to stop trying to play by the rules. When the other side has successfully managed to bully the media into moving the suppose center of debate into the editorial page of the Washington Times, it´s time to stop playing your compromise position as your opening hand.
Dean´s gotten support simply because he´s speaking out. I´m really not entirely sure what the media expects an opposition to do, though I suspect that if they had their way all Democratic candidates would behave as SNL parodied Joe Lieberman in the VP debate with Dick Cheney (agreeing with everything Cheney said).
Posted by Atrios
One of the more amusing tricks that right wing hacks is the Ostrich Technique. They stick their heads in the sand, see and hear nothing, and then get outraged at what they haven´t seen or heard. For example, it is standard operation procedure to regularly produce sentences like "Why aren´t feminist organizations more concerned about issue X!" This one was quite amusing when issue X was the plight of women in Afghanistan (remember them?) who have probably been the international cause of American feminists for years.
Wyeth catches Instahack pretending no Democrats were concerned when the military fired six translators because they were gay.
Consider his ass fact-checked. I´m sure he´ll correct himself as he always does.
Posted by Lambert
I thought that column from Broder on Sunday mentioning the I-word was an interesting straw in the wind.... And now I'm sure. In today's WaPo Broder writes:
Black Thursday For Bush ...
If Iraq looks increasingly worrisome on TV and in the polls, the economy is even worse. CBS found jobs and the economy dwarfing every other issue, cited by almost four times as many people as cited Iraq or the war on terrorism. On that black Thursday for the administration, first-time unemployment claims pushed the number of Americans on jobless relief to the highest level in 20 years.
And the most troubling pictures on any of the three broadcasts were those of a line of cars, stretching out of sight down a flat two-lane road in Logan, Ohio -- jobless and struggling families waiting for the twice-a-month distribution of free food by the local office of America's Second Harvest. The head of the agency said, "We are seeing a new phenomenon: Last year's food bank donors are now this year's food bank clients." Said CBS reporter Cynthia Bowers, "You could call it a line of the times, because in a growing number of American communities these days, making ends meet means waiting for a handout."
Posted by Lambert
Well, they didn't quite say it like that. Still, Dana Priest and Dana Milbank write here:
... Bush's position was at odds with those of his own aides. ... The president's assertion ... appeared to contradict the events. ... Administration officials have responded with evolving and sometimes contradictory statements ... The administration has offered changing explanations ... Bush's remarks added to contradictions that have been presented by administration officials ... Fleischer's words yesterday contradicted his assertion a week earlier ...
Our ever-changing stories ...
Also good detail on a second uranium snipe hunt to Niger, in addition to Ambassador Wilson's.
A four-star general, who was asked to go to Niger last year to inquire about the security of Niger's uranium, told The Washington Post yesterday that he came away convinced the country's stocks were secure. The findings of Marine Gen. Carlton W. Fulford Jr. were passed up to Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Marines are weighing in... I'll go make some more popcorn! (Thanks to alert reader Sophie P.)
Posted by Lambert
... here, but alert (and late night) Atrios readers already know the answer here.
David Sanger asks:
That has led to questions that Mr. Bush and his aides have still not answered. Why did Mr. Bush's aides keep coming back to the Africa case as "an emblematic example" of Mr. Hussein's surreptitious activities, as one administration official terms it, if so many in the intelligence world were questioning it?
Further, how did it survive so many drafts of the State of the Union speech in January, only to be thrown out, days later, by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who found the evidence so thin that he dared not take it to the United Nations for his own presentation?
Posted by Lambert
Dana Milbank of WaPogives an excellent list of Ari's rhetorical tactics and verbal distortions:
Evasive Maneuver One: Refer the questioner elsewhere
Evasive Maneuver Two: State a generic policy of not responding
Evasive Maneuver Three: The non-sequitur
Evasive Maneuver Four: Reverse the burden of proof.
Evasive Maneuver Five: The platitude
My only question being, If the press knew this so well, why didn't they say so before, or do anything about it? (Sigh... Don't bother to answer that rhetorical question.)
Also this:
Bob Deans of Cox News Service rose to say that he had brought Fleischer a cake. "We've received assurances that it's not yellow cake," Deans said. "But that doesn't prove that it's not yellow cake."
Will the air in the pressroom be any cleaner or fresher now that Comical Ari's successor, Scott McClellan, has taken over? Don't bet on it.
Posted by Lambert
AP quotes Self-Identified Christian Pat Robertson:
"We ask for miracles in regard to the Supreme Court," Robertson said on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "The 700 Club."
A [Robertson] letter targets three justices in particular: "One justice is 83-years-old, another has cancer and another has a heart condition. Would it not be possible for God to put it in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to retire?"
A miracle? Sounds more like a thinly veiled plea for assassination, to me. (James Kopp, Junior, anyone? Or Yigal Amir II?)
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh will soon be calling some signals for ESPN's weekly football preview ``Sunday NFL Countdown.''
Starting in September, Limbaugh, 52, will join the show's line-up as the ``voice of the fan,'' delivering an opinion piece near the top of the two-hour telecast each week, the Walt Disney Co.-owned sports network said on Monday.
Voice of the fan?! Not this fan!
NOTE: It's also sloppy and dishonest to call Limbaugh a "conservative." He isn't.
Posted by Lambert
Kristof mentions the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. Today they released (copy) a Memorandum to the President. It's quite juicy. After eviscerating Condi en passant, the memo proceeds to call for Vice President Cheney's resignation -- and not for anything so trivial as lying weasel words in the State of the Union speech, either. (Alert Atrios readers already know Cheney was up to his protruberant eyeballs in that affair too.)
An excerpt:
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Intelligence Unglued
...
There is just too much evidence that Ambassador Wilson was sent to Niger at the behest of Vice President Cheney's office, and that Wilson's findings were duly reported not only to that office but to others as well.
Equally important, it was Cheney who launched (in a major speech on August 26, 2002) the concerted campaign to persuade Congress and the American people that Saddam Hussein was about to get his hands on nuclear weapons ...
[T]his campaign was based largely on information known to be forged and ... the campaign was used successfully to frighten our elected representatives in Congress into voting for war ...
The fact that the forgery also crept into your state-of-the-union address pales in significance in comparison with how it was used to deceive Congress into voting on October 11 to authorize you to make war on Iraq.
It was a deep insult to the integrity of the intelligence process that, after the Vice President declared on August 26, 2002 that "we know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons," the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) produced during the critical month of September featured a fraudulent conclusion that "most analysts" agreed with Cheney's assertion. This may help explain the anomaly of Cheney's unprecedented "multiple visits" to CIA headquarters at the time, as well as the many reports that CIA and other intelligence analysts were feeling extraordinarily great pressure, accompanied by all manner of intimidation tactics, to concur in that conclusion. As a coda to his nuclear argument, Cheney told NBC's Meet the Press three days before US/UK forces invaded Iraq: "we believe he (Saddam Hussein) has reconstituted nuclear weapons."
It is a curious turn of events. The drafters of the offending sentence on the forgery in president's state-of-the-union speech say they were working from the NIE. In ordinary circumstances an NIE would be the preeminently authoritative source to rely upon; but in this case the NIE itself had already been cooked to the recipe of high policy.
This was no case of petty corruption of the kind that forced Vice President Spiro Agnew's resignation. This was a matter of war and peace. Thousands have died. There is no end in sight.
We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney's immediate resignation.
And much more. Great detail. Great analysis. Interesting policy recommendations. It's always nice to see professionals at work!
I have to agree with Dr. Rice that the focus on that single sentence in the State of the Union address is a bit obsessive. It was only 16 words, attributed in a weaselly way that made it almost accurate, and as any journalist knows well, mistakes do get into print.
So the problem is not those 16 words, by themselves, but the larger pattern of abuse of intelligence. The silver lining is that the spooks are so upset that they're speaking out.
The Defense Intelligence Agency has had town hall meetings in which everyone was told not to talk to journalists (thanks, guys, for naming me in particular). One insider complains: "In the most recent meeting, we also were told that, as much as possible, we should avoid `caveat-ing' our intelligence assessments. . . . Forget nuance, forget fine distinctions; they only confuse these guys. If that isn't a downright scary dumbing-down of our intelligence product, I don't know what is."
Intelligence isn't just being dumbed down, but is also being manipulated — and it's continuing. Experts say the recent firefight on the Syrian-Iraq border involved not Saddam Hussein or a family member, as we were led to believe, but just some Iraqi petroleum smugglers. Moreover, Patrick Lang, a former senior D.I.A. official, says that many in the government believe that incursion was an effort by ideologues to disrupt cooperation between the U.S. and Syria.
Yes, it sure would be great if the Newspaper of Record (not!) would actually start covering this story.
Mr. Keller? Those copies of the 9/11 report still at the printer? Gonna let Graham (yes, he's a scion of the WaPo Grahams) scoop you on that? Or let Unka Karl bury the story?
Posted by Lambert
Richard Norton-Taylor and Sophie Arie of the Guardian write:
In a dispute with serious political repercussions for Tony Blair and George Bush, the CIA and MI6 have made it clear that they do not believe each other's intelligence, notably about a claim that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium from the west African state of Niger for nuclear weapons.
Documents claiming that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger have turned out to be forgeries. But British intelligence sources said yesterday that MI6 had separate information to back the claim. MI6 was provided the information by a third party which insisted neither the source nor the intelligence could be passed on.
(This, by the way, was the British intelligence that Bush "learned" of in the 16 words -- unseen and unsourced; faith-based.)
In a further indication of Whitehall distancing itself from Washington, a British official said yesterday that even if the CIA had been provided with all the information available to British intelligence, "it may not have come to the same conclusion as us".
Britain's intelligence agencies are angry about America's treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, not least because of unfavourable impact on the Arab world and Muslim opinion in Britain. They were also angered by persistent and unfounded attempts by the US to link al-Qaida to Saddam Hussein. Officials are also dismayed by the way in which the dispute over Iraq's banned weapons has put them and the government in the spotlight.
They are even more alarmed about how the CIA is fuelling the unwelcome debate.
Posted by Lambert
Russ Bynum of the AP via The Guardian:
The Army said Monday it has extended the deployment of thousands of 3rd Infantry Division soldiers in Iraq due to increased attacks against coalition forces, dashing hopes that the troops would be home by September.
The 3rd Infantry Division deployed 16,500 troops to Iraq and was a leading force in the assault on Baghdad. The division suffered 36 deaths - more than any other unit in the war - and some of its troops have been in the region since September.
Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount III, the division's commander, said last week he hoped the division's 1st and 2nd Brigade Combat Teams of roughly 9,000 soldiers could return home to Fort Stewart within the next six weeks.
But homecomings for those soldiers, as well as the division's 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, have now been postponed indefinitely.
The units have been ordered to stay ``due to the uncertainty of the situation in Iraq and the recent increase in attacks on the coalition forces,'' Blount said in an e-mail message to Army spouses.
Blount said in the e-mail, obtained by The Associated Press, that he could not say how long the soldiers would remain in Iraq. ``I wish I could tell you how long ... but everything I have told you before has changed,'' he said.
The news upset family members.
``Don't do that to us. Don't pull on our heartstrings that way,'' said Julie Galloway, whose husband, Sgt. Michael Galloway, deployed in November.
It's the second time 3rd Infantry soldiers have seen the Army renege on a tentative return date. After President Bush declared the heavy fighting over May 1, many families were told to prepare for homecomings in June.
Pattern of corruption More than half of the U.S. Army's combat strength is now bogged down in Iraq, which didn't have significant weapons of mass destruction and wasn't supporting Al Qaeda. We have lost all credibility with allies who might have provided meaningful support; Tony Blair is still with us, but has lost the trust of his public. All this puts us in a very weak position for dealing with real threats. Did I mention that North Korea has been extracting fissionable material from its fuel rods?
How did we get into this mess? The case of the bogus uranium purchases wasn't an isolated instance. It was part of a broad pattern of politicized, corrupted intelligence.
So who will be held accountable? Mr. Tenet betrayed his office by tailoring statements to reflect the interests of his political masters, rather than the assessments of his staff — but that's not why he may soon be fired. Yesterday USA Today reported that "some in the Bush administration are arguing privately for a C.I.A. director who will be unquestioningly loyal to the White House as committees demand documents and call witnesses."
In short, those who politicized intelligence in order to lead us into war, at the expense of national security, hope to cover their tracks by corrupting the system even further.
Posted by Lambert
Interesting article by Julie Tannenbaum, a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, on fine distinctions in lying, deception, intention, and belief.
If Bush truly believed in the infamous 16 words he put in the State of the Union speech, was there intent to deceive?
As we know, "[F]aith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen..." (Heb 11:1). And we sure haven't seen any evidence, so it must be faith!
So, can a statement based on "faith-based intelligence" ever be a lie?
Maybe Professor Tannenbaum's students can take this one up...
NOTE: Good material for the incomparable Howler in this brouhaha -- perhaps even a surfeit, since the administration is so very, very duck-pit ready.
"If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies."
Posted by Lambert
Why is The Smoking Sentence -- the false implication in Bush's State of the Union speech that Saddam was seeking uranium in Africa -- important?
Because the clear implication is that Saddam was seeking uranium for nuclear weapons, which would be a clear threat to the security of the United States.
Now even the flimsy justifications we've been given for Saddam's nuclear capabilities are collapsing.
From Charles Hanley of the AP via the San Jose Mercury News:
A top U.N. weapons hunter says it would have been "virtually impossible" for Iraq to revive a nuclear bomb program with equipment recently dug up from a Baghdad backyard, as the Bush administration contends.
Jacques Baute said the long-term monitoring of Iraq's nuclear establishment planned by the U.N. Security Council would have stifled any attempt to build a huge uranium-enrichment plant for making bomb material.
"This is a mistake people are making," Baute said. Such contentions ignore the fact that Iraq would have operated for years under international controls had the U.N. plan not been aborted by war, he said.
Baute also said in an interview with The Associated Press that it appears the unearthed cache of uranium enrichment parts, surrendered by an Iraqi scientist last month, lacked critical components, and its accompanying blueprints were marred by errors.
Bush lies, soldiers die.
NOTE: Thanks to alert reader David E. for reminding me of the appropriate Monty Python. Reminds me on one of Ari's press gaggles. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Ari.
Posted by Lambert VOA:U.S. President George W. Bush says he believes the quality of the intelligence reports he receives is "darn good."
Right. It's too bad, when writing the State of Union speech, that Bush decided not to use those reports, and to use carefully crafted weasel words instead.
Nice to see Bush "defending" Tenet, though. It's cute. With friends like this...
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