Posted by Leah
Digby says everything that needs saying about the California recall farce here, where he explains why this is so wrong, and here, where he sics Marx on all those populist Republicans.
In addition, don't miss this post that explains the circumstances from which sprang forth the particular NIE used by Cheney, during his counterattack this week against all the WMD-obssessed nay-sayers, to justify the administration's response to the threat of Saddam as being the only one that wouldn't have been a dereliction of duty. Good chance you'll be surprised.
Posted by Leah
Yesterday, the WaPo posted two versions of essentially the same story; Jim Baker, distinguished ex-Secretary of Treasury and State, close adviser and fixer to the Bush family, is being sought to help the administration fix whatever it is that's wrong with our occupation of Iraq.
Me? I find the prospect depressing. More evidence that the Bush administration is holding onto the notion of a long, long, occupation with us, essentially, in control of them, and that Baker is just another way not to listen to those who matter, the Iraqis, who are telling us that though we may be relatively welcome in the short run, to help them transition from ruin to functioning, from despotism to democracy, that Iraq is not ours to shape, it's theirs.
BTW, uggabugga has other great stuff up; don't miss this post on Dennis Miller, or this one right underneath it.
President Bush was warned in a more specific way than previously known about intelligence suggesting that al Qaeda terrorists were seeking to attack the United States, a report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks indicated yesterday. Separately, the report cited one CIA memo that concluded there was "incontrovertible evidence" that Saudi individuals provided financial assistance to al Qaeda operatives in the United States.
Priest identifies two "intriguing" and "politically volatile" questions that still surround the 9/11 attack: how personally engaged was Bush and before him, Clinton, in counterterrisim, prior to the attack, and the specific ties between the Saudi's and al Qaeda.
To varying degrees, the answers remain a mystery, despite an unprecedented seven-month effort by a joint House and Senate panel to fully understand how a group of Arab terrorists could have pulled off such a scheme. The CIA refused to permit publication of information potentially implicating Saudi officials on national security grounds, arguing that disclosure could upset relations with a key U.S. ally. Lawmakers complained it was merely to avoid embarrassment.
The White House, meanwhile, resisted efforts to pin down Bush's knowledge of al Qaeda threats and to catalogue the executive's pre-Sept. 11 strategy to fight terrorists. It was justified largely on legal grounds, but Democrats said the secrecy was meant to protect Bush from criticism.
And while the report contains extensive details about counterterrorism policy and operations under President Bill Clinton, it also leaves out substantial material deemed classified. The panel took testimony from former senior advisers to Clinton and Bush but did not interview either president.
How likely is it, that the Bush administration has held back anything that makes the Clinton administration look bad?
Still, the report offers bits of new information about both presidents and the Saudis, and lays out a possible road map for the independent commission charged by Congress to pick up the investigation of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. It also offers pointed criticism of both Bush and Clinton, concluding that neither "put the government or the intelligence community on a war footing before September 11" -- despite ample evidence of al Qaeda's dangerous designs.
How much attention is paid to any of these questions by the Sunday gasbags will tell us a lot about how willing is the mainstream press to continue its questioning of the administration, or how eager it is to get back to business as usual.
Posted by Leah
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that as far as Republicans and the three news Cable outlets are concerned, the congressional 9/11 report is already "history."
The consensus of the video pundits seems to have been that we already knew most of what the report had to say. How else to explain the report's hasty absence in favor of of the endless ramifications pundits found to discuss in the demise of Saddam's twin towers of evil.
This was less true of the print media, where what was expressed was surprise at how much clearer a narrative the report was able to provide, and how the accretition of details made the story more disturbing than previously appreciated.
Michael Isikoff took that view on Nightline, and does again in this lengthy "live" online talk with Newsweek readers.
Some highly selective tidbits:
Chicago, IL: Is Iraq mentioned in the report at all?
Michael Isikoff: Barely. There's one sentence in 900 pages, quoting some earlier testimony from Tenet saying that Mohammed Atta "may" have met with an Iraq intelligence agent in Prague--and that the CIA was working to corroborate this. My sense is that Tenet mentioned this in the first place for political reasons because nobody in the FBI and CIA takes that report seriously anymore--and not a scrap of evidence has surfaced to support the idea that the meeting took place.
(edit)
Houston, TX: National-security people came to Crawford, Texas, to brief the president on or about Aug. 6, 2001. Was that standard procedure, and was it about a threat of attack and what was the president's response? Do you know anything about this? Will we people ever know?
Michael Isikoff: Yes, we have learned a lot more about that briefing thanks to the report. It had previously been acknowledged by Condi Rice that the briefing covered the matter of Al Qaeda using airplanes as weapons. When Condi Rice briefed the press on this last year, she dismissed the significance of the briefing, saying it was "very vague" and mostly "historical" and did not constitute a warning for the president. In fact, we now learn, the briefing was much more detailed--and alarming. Bush was told that members of Al Qaeda had come to and resided in the United States "for years" and that the "group apparently maintained a support structure here." It also included recent intelligence that bin Laden supporters were "planning attacks in the United States with explosives." None of this was disclosed by the White House before. (italics mine)
(edit)
Michael Isikoff: There was a lot of government hand-wringing over trying to kill bin Laden for years. One of the things the report reveals is that Clinton repeatedly ordered attempts to kill him and actually had a nuclear submarine stationed off the Indian Ocean poised to launch another cruise missile strike against bin Laden. But the intelligence on his whereabouts was never good enough, so Clinton never pulled the trigger--expect for the one attack in August 1998 in retaliation for the embassy bombings (and of course we missed.)
(edit)
Michael Isikoff: It is amazing when you read all the terrorist warnings that were being issued by the U.S. intelligence community throughout the late 1990s and right through the summer of 2001--and then stack that up against how little our political leaders were talking about the threat. In fact, I don't remember the terrorism issue even being mentioned during any of the Bush-Gore presidential debates in 2000--and yet it has turned into the dominant issue of our time.
(edit)
Tahlequah, OK: I recollect hearing a report about the Bush administration's refusal to take seriously Bill Richardson's briefing about Al Qaeda's growing threat, following the transition of power. The story smacked of an arrogance on the administration's part, which has since become more apparent. Was there any substance to this report? If so, was this part of the investigation?
Michael Isikoff: I believe you're talking about Richard Clarke's briefing for the Bush NSC aides; not Bill Richardson. In any case, Clarke is quoted quite extensively in the report--especially about how FBI field offices didn't seem engaged on Al Qaeda cases.
(edit)
Washington, DC: Have you read through the report? From what you've seen, do you think the attacks could have been prevented?
Michael Isikoff: I think with a little luck and a little greater vigilance it is very possible the attacks could have been prevented.
Here's an interview with Carrie Lemack, who lost her mother on 9/11. Ms. Lemack doesn't sound happy about the progress made, thus far, in figuring out how and why this happened.
CLELAND: No. No. I tell you what makes me mad. Is when I see the names of those youngsters that are being killed out there every day. I say, "God help us." I've been there. I've seen this movie before.
It was 35 years ago. I was one of those young 21-year-old, 22, 23-year-old guys. Young Lieutenant, hard charger, volunteer. First Air Cavalry Division. Airborne, all this kind of stuff. Hoo-wah, hoo-wah, hoo-wah.
And we got great young soldiers. And I've been at Bethesda and Walter Reade, and I've seen their legs blown off. And I've seen their eyes gone. And that's what bothers me.
Posted by Leah
The ex-Senator was on Bill Moyer's NOW last night.
Not with Moyers, unfortuantely, The interviewer was Frank Sesno, late of CNN, who couldn't quite believe Cleland's ready outrage and kept asking him if he was sure he understood the seriousness of the charges he was making.
SESNO: Coming back to this report for just a minute, I spoke with someone at CIA who said after reviewing this report that there's a lot of stuff in there. But really, nothing new. Did you see anything new in it?
CLELAND: Absolutely.
(edit)
SESNO: So, your commission builds on the joint Congressional…
CLELAND: Yep.
SESNO:…inquiry.
CLELAND: Now, let's talk about that.
SESNO: So, where do you go that they didn't?
CLELAND: Let's talk about that here. This commission was formed about mid-December, the 9/11 Commission. We were supposed to use the joint inquiry report as a launching pad to get into this issue of not only fixing the intelligence community, but moving beyond, and getting into what is the al Qaeda all about? What is this terrorist global network that we're fighting? A new kind of war and all that.
Well, the independent, bi-partisan commission, hello, didn't even get the stuff 'til a few weeks ago.
I'm saying that's deliberate. I am saying that the delay in relating this information to the American public out of a hearing… series of hearings, that several members of Congress knew eight or ten months ago, including Bob Graham and others, that was deliberately slow walked… the 9/11 Commission was deliberately slow walked, because the Administration's policy was, and its priority was, we're gonna take Saddam Hussein out.
SESNO: Senator, do you have any documentation or any proof to back up this very serious charge of yours that this was deliberate besides your own…
CLELAND: Well, first of all…
SESNO: …hunch or gut?
CLELAND: …it's obvious.
SESNO: No, no, no, no…
CLELAND: But… but…
SESNO: …but beyond… but beyond being obvious, let me press…
CLELAND: First of all the war in Iraq…
SESNO: …you on this…
CLELAND: Yeah, okay.
SESNO: …because this is a very serious charge you're making. If you're saying that this was deliberate what I'm asking is has anybody said anything to you, from inside the Administration to support that? Have you seen any document, any memorandum that substantiates your charge?
CLELAND: Well, just look at it. Okay? This executive summary of the intelligence inquiry… the joint intelligence inquiry, the executive summary, was available December 10th. Why did it take nine months to go over what ought to be held out of that?
Now, I'm saying that that was slow walked. I am also saying why did it take eight months to get this 9/11 Commission really cranked up and going, and the first step was to use the Intelligence Committee report as a jumping off point? Why did all of this take so long?
Because the real priority of the White House was not the 9/11 Commission — they fought it. And it was just, and it really was their interest was to delay the revelation of this report.
One of the reasons they didn't want it is they didn't want all this stuff out there.
SESNO: The White House says, and I've spoken to them, that they didn't slow walk it, that there was a lot of very sensitive information involved, both in disseminating the information to begin with, and then determining how much should be released.
Max Cleland remained unconvinced. And outraged.
I couldn't find an audio or video link for the segment, but the transcript is well worth reading.
And not confusing sour grapes with patriotic outrage, I get the definite feeling the White House may yet rue the day it decided to make Max Cleland an ex-Senator.
Regarding that Iraq-al-Qaida Link Not In The 9/11 Report
Posted by Leah
Thursday, I posted a UPI story that gave specific instances in which the absence of such a link between Iraq, Saddam, and al-Qaida was discussed with great specificity.
Yesterday, UPI posted what they call "a corrected and updated version" of that story.
What seems to have happened - the purported parts of the report that dealt with the absence of evidence of a link between Iraq and alQaida had been sourced by Max Cleland, a member of the non-partisan 9/11 Commission, which had given him access to the congressional joint committee report.
Cleland's material gave UPI a scoop and they went with it. The report as relesed the next day, although there was no material indicating such a link, except for the odd sentence there was no explicit discussion either of a link, of the lack thereof.
The story now centers on Senator Cleland's accusation that the White house deliberately dragged it's feet on vetting the report out of fear that its findings would undercut their case for war with Iraq.
"The reason this report was delayed for so long -- deliberately opposed at first, then slow-walked after it was created -- is that the administration wanted to get the war in Iraq in and over ... before (it) came out," he said.
"Had this report come out in January like it should have done, we would have known these things before the war in Iraq, which would not have suited the administration."
(edit)
Although the committee completed its work at the end of last year, publication of the report has been delayed by what one committee staffer called "vigorous discussion" with administration officials over which parts of it could be declassified.
The 800-page report -- 50 pages of which were censored to protect still-classified information -- was published Thursday.
(edit)
Many of the censored pages concern the question of support for al-Qaida from foreign countries. Anonymous officials have told news organizations that much of the still-classified material concerns Saudi Arabia, and the question of whether Saudi officials -- perhaps acting as rogue agents -- assisted the 19 men, 15 of whom were Saudis.
Inquiry staff would not comment to UPI about the issue, but one did say that the section contained references to "more one country."
Prior to the report's publication, a person who had read it told UPI that it showed U.S. intelligence agencies had no evidence linking Iraq to the 9-11 attacks or to al-Qaida. In fact, the issue is not addressed in the declassified sections of the report.
One other person who has seen the classified version of the document told UPI subsequently that the Iraq issue is not addressed in the still-classified section, either. "They didn't ask that question," the person said.
They report; we'd like to decide, except the reporting is so unclear.
If I still don't have this straight, all corrections, or any additional information about the disappearing non-link are gratefully encouraged
Posted by the farmer
Listen fair subjects of the dominion, this is important. According to Ann Coulter, bellwether of forbidden truths, this country was crawling with subversive atheist commie jackals gnawing on the live entrails of our virginal Christian Republic back when Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin were managing the affairs of the nation from a shady veranda under a Banyan tree in Key West Florida.
Because of the Democratic Party's moral infirmity and incompetence, all of America lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation for the next 50 years. It's a shameful history. The Democratic Party did that to this country and they've hidden their collaboration with a regime as evil as the Nazis by making McCarthy the issue. - Ann Coulter, interview Is the Left Guilty of ‘Treason’? 700 Club, Christian Broadcast Network, July 16, 2003 / http://www.cbn.com/CBNNews/News/030714d.asp
"Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason. You could be talking about Scrabble and they would instantly leap to the anti-American position. Everyone says liberals love America, too. No they don't. Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." - Ann Coulter, Treason
Senator Joe McCarthy of the wood violet state tried to warn us of this treacherous union and was slowly nailed to an inverted rood for his efforts. This all happened many years ago, when men were men and chaste women made the nest upon the slopes of whatever slag heap the kindly Mr. Peabody provided. Whats more, according to Ann, we are once again being suffocated by the same treasonous "essence" and torpid lefty sorceries that eventually brought Truman's Scrabble games with GOGs red horse of the apocalypse to a menacing win loose or draw.
"Democrats feel free to say that they’re better on civil rights than Republicans are. That they’re better on women’s issues. But, boy, a Republican says, we’re more patriotic than the Democratic Party and they go ballistic. That’s the one thing you’re not allowed to say. That is the one free speech that is not permitted." - Ann Coulter, MSNBC's 'Scarborough Country', July 7, 2003
Wowwwww. Bold emphasis mine. One can't allow such a bold revelation to go unemboldened.
Of course Ann no doubt fancies herself some sort of latter day Rapunzel, her days spent pining away atop a twisting grapevine staircase leading to the embrasure of a clerestory window, high in a terrible tower, a captive damsel lass, held fast to a bewitched spire of elitist liberal subversions and other high rogue dramas. Yes, times have always been tough for Ann, growing up the scion belle of Mammon touched rampion starved WASPs from Greenwich Connecticut is no picnic, but being muzzled by turnkey Democrats, that is another matter. If what Ann claims is true, that "a Republican" can't say "we’re more patriotic than the Democratic Party" then I'm afraid we are all only a homegrown commie plot and a midnight seizure away from scrabbling away with Ann in her batty prison belfry. Woe is Ann. Woe is US.
Of course I'm not exactly sure when Ann was heaved into her cloud shrouded calaboose, but when one considers that Ann herself has spent at least the last couple of weeks popping up like some kind of grinning albino Monocle snake in front of one television camera after another, freely telling one tale after another that is apparently, according to Ann, not permitted to be told, while simultaneously pitching a book full of goggle-eyed treasons and treacheries she apparently hain't permitted to pitch, one would have to conclude that Ann's vaulting dungeon of liberal tyranny would also include several cable news television studios, radio stations, and a publishing company publicity agent. All carefully concealed from her Bolshevik keepers, one would assume, behind an charmed mirror screwed to a damp revetment wall in her spire of delimitation. Liberal tower hoosegows are apparently full of such contraband amenities these days.
Ann, being Rapunzel-like and all, had always kept a watchful vigil in the event of an approaching Prince, of the Machiavellian sort preferably, - perchance he should come dashing over some field of bluebonnets to liberate her from the bewitched Bastille of liberalism, because thats the way the story goes - but hopefully not by some girly-boy truckle like Richard Lowry or that pudgy bathtub squeak-toy Jonah Goldberg. Sheesh. Perhaps G. Gordon Liddy (insert trumpet blast here) will come galloping to the rescue! A shimmering Teutonic boob, robed in knightly raiment like the Sands,Taylor and Wood company's King Arthur Flour logo-guy, astride a white 1950 Hydra-Glide, bearing a Bible and a basket of enchanted cranberry muffins. You never know, such are the things fairy tales are made of.
In any case, Ann, bellwether Rapunzel and captive of the Tower of Card-Carrying Liberalism, would have to make do with whatever gallant woo came riding a tail wind through her coops casement louvers. Alas! As things would have it, what came wafting through Ann's louvers was the scent of Joe Raymond McCarthy's pickled carcass decomposing among the tangled thorns and thistles of history that coiled themselves around her stockade's impregnable foundation. There was Joe Ray, splayed amongst the barbs and brambles, a fallen warrior Prince who'd long ago charged the walls of the menacing rose strangled Lefty colossus. Hooray! Ann of the Tower would retrieve the fallen hero and make him her chivalrous Templar. Entangled in Ann's golden locks, the dull hero's carcass would be hoisted through the window and into the solitary fold where the resurrected messiah of bygone Congressional witch hunts would be placed upon a trundle bed of straw. Ann would then proceed to scrub her stiff cadaver clean, removing generations of pinko-liberal sullage from under his purple fingernails and plucking the thorns of a thousand godless blasphemies from his ghastly bloodless rump. A little rose water here, a little rose water there and the next thing you know - Ann, the prisoner of the obelisk, had become resurrectionist. Her Prince had come at last, restored before the charmed mirror, a martyr liberated, to the touched reveries of Ann's Tower of Forbidden Babble. (inset trumpet blast here)
WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) ordered U.S. troops into position off the coast of Liberia (news - web sites) Friday to support the arrival of a West African peacekeeping force, as renewed violence in the capital brought despairing pleas for American help.
More than two dozen people were killed and many more were wounded by a mortar barrage near the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia. One shell hit the embassy grounds but injured no one.
In Washington, Bush stopped short of saying the Americans would participate directly in a peacekeeping mission in Liberia, where rebels are trying to oust President Charles Taylor, a former warlord.
Pentagon (news - web sites) officials said the only major troop movement in the works was the dispatching of three Navy ships carrying hundreds of Marines to the waters off the Liberian coast.
It was not clear whether the Marines would go ashore.
I'm not being snarky. It's a genuinely difficult decision. The question is what can we do to make this horror stop?
The reality of increasing chaos, the images of mother's, fathers, children, grandparents, asking, begging for our help, broadcast nightly from Monrovia does seem to demand that we try and do something.
And not to be too political about this, doesn't Liberia suggest that this administration's formulation of what the challenge of terrorism is all about, a war of good against evil, us against them, democracy against tyranny, isn't an example of moral clarity, it's an example of being dangerously simple-minded.
Posted by Leah
Do not miss, do not miss, I say again, James Capozzolas elegant undoing of Tom Shales and his review of Bravo's new series, "Queer Eyes For A Straight Guy, in which Shales is being oh so protective of gay men, and the sterotypes that hurt them.
What James is doing here no one else does as well. Most of us would probably have passed over the review as a piece of unexceptional dullness.
And don't miss James on his amazing mom.
Actually, don't miss James on anything. If you haven't paid a visit to the Review in a while, go and enjoy everything there. (And I haven't even mentioned his humor blog, TRR, to which he graciously provides a link on the Review)
Posted by Leah
Jesse Taylor, the wunderkind responsible for the sophisticated doings at Pandagon , is taking part in the 24 hour Blogathon tomorrow, on behalf of Amnesty International.
Jesse promises, among other wonders, a Peggy Noonan column, and if you doubt that's worth becoming a sponsor for, you haven't read his stunningly hilarious channelling of Miss Peggy channelling Tupac.
He's also got this quite original take posted on those sixteen words, an amusing observation about Salon bothering to interview Ann Coulter, oh, and so much more.
Become a sponsor at whatever rate you can afford. It's a great cause, and Jesse's a terrific young 'un. If times are really tough, which they are for far too many, just let him know you'll be part of the audience sending good wishes and appreciation his way.
Posted by Leah
If you haven't yet read this Michael Tomasky TAP screed, and I mean that in the best possible way, you probably should.
I've hesitated to post it because, frankly, I dread the comments thread it will provoke.
But what the Green Party intends to do in the next election, and what Democrats and others on the left who are determined to defeat Bush as a first priority are going do about the Greens is an issue that needs to be faced, the sooner the better, probably.
Tomasky is responsding to the recent indications by the Greens that they intend to run a candidate in the next election. perhaps Nader, or perhaps Cynthia McKinney.
But short of a megalomaniac whose tenuous purchase on present-day reality threatens to cancel out every good thing he's done in his life, or a discredited anti-Semite, they'll settle for someone less distinguished. The point is to siphon off Democratic votes unless the Democrats prove themselves pure enough to nominate Dennis Kucinich.
Tomasky figures that about half of Nader voters in 2000 can't be won over, so he aims his arguments at those who might be for 2004. His two strongest arguments are these:
First, if it was the intention of Nader voters in New York or Massachusetts (or any state Al Gore was certain to win in 2000) to send a message to the Democrats, that's an understandable and respectable intention. But as the Christian Coalition model shows, such messages are far more effectively sent inside the party than outside it -- the Greens really influence almost nothing in this country, whereas the Christian Coalition, with its power in the GOP, influences almost everything
(edit)
Second, some voted for Nader because they just weren't inspired by Gore personally. Fine. But it should be obvious today that a candidate's personality is one of the last things serious people ought to be thinking about. No one can survey the past 30 months and conclude, whatever the Democrats' shortcomings, that there's no difference between the parties. We would not have John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney, Gale Norton, the USA PATRIOT Act, this Trotskyist war in Iraq, two major class-war tax cuts -- the list goes on and on (and on). And that's only the stuff you hear about. In every agency of government, at every level, there are political appointees who are interpreting federal rules and regulations and deciding how much effort will really be put into pursuing federal discrimination cases, for instance, or illegal toxic dumping. These are the people who are, in fact, the federal government. The kinds of people who fill those slots in a Democratic administration are of a very different stripe than the kinds who fill them during a Republican term, and the appointments of these people have a bigger effect on real life than whether Al Gore sighs too heavily or speaks too slowly.
Tomasky's third argument casts this aspiration on those who voted for Nader; that they were relatively unaffected in their everyday lives by the results of a Bush win.
Among people who were directly affected by which candidate won, Nader was seen as the ornament of frippery that he was. I promise you, you could not have gone to the corner of Lenox Avenue and 145th Street in October of 2000 and found four Nader voters. And at that intersection and the many others in America like it, by my lights, the moral case for Nader crumbles to dust.
Tomasky's proposal is for Democratic candidates to start attacking Nader now. A Sister Souljah moment times fifty, is how he puts it.
I generally agree with where Tomasky comes down on the issues here, agree with him completely about what it takes to to be politically effective in a democracy, and I can't deny the emotional satisfaction to be had in his apprroach. I'm left wondering, though, how such an attack, and what's bound to get said in the way of definiing issues in making it, might sit with that half of Nader voters we're supposed to be trying to court?
Posted by Leah
I don't doubt that the President wants to be the "leader," who solves the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It plays right into his conception that it's mainly through individual strong leadership that anything gets accomplished.
Imagine, too, his pleasure at snatching from Bill Clinton an important piece of his legacy, always the motivation the right attributed to the President's Camp David efforts to find a comprehensive solution to the tragic dilemma of Palestine.
Am I the only one who can imagine President Bush fantasizing about a Nobel Peace Prize, made all the more enjoyable for being a slap at both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton? I even think that in the abstract sense in which these things matter to our current President, he takes some pleasure in the notion of achieving a just settlement for both peoples.
There's also the Rovian concern that the roadmap achieved can be spun as the ultimate justification for the President's Iraqi war and occupation.
The real question is whether Mr. Bush can free himself from the attitudes on this issue of some of his closest advisers, the very ones who have given him his very own doctrine.
In its crudest form, this is an example of the American opposition he, and we, who also want to travel that roadmap, will have to deal with.
Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, never tires of reminding people that he is just a former pest exterminator from Sugar Land, Tex. But beginning this weekend, he will travel to the world's most complex and troubled region, meet with prime ministers, speak to a foreign parliament and, by his presence, remind the Bush administration to pay heed to its right flank as it seeks to make peace.
As he travels next week through Israel, Jordan and Iraq, he will take with him a message of grave doubt that the Middle East is ready for a Palestinian state, as called for in the current peace plan, known as the road map, backed by the administration and Europe.
"I'm sure there are some in the administration who are smarter than me, but I can't imagine in the very near future that a Palestinian state could ever happen," he said in an interview today, as he prepared to leave for a weeklong official tour.
"I can't imagine this president supporting a state of terrorists, a sovereign state of terrorists," he said. "You'd have to change almost an entire generation's culture."
Instead of the roadmap, DeLay wants a "Marshall Plan" for Palestinians, to allow them to develop their society into the kind of peaceful, thriving, market-based, non-security threat that Israeli will be happy to recognize. Where all this is to happen in terms of land mass is ignored. Of course.
He said he had been working hard to persuade the White House to support his plan, and intended to bring it up in separate meetings with Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers. He will also address the Israeli Parliament and meet with King Abdullah of Jordan
We'll have more on the roadmap and Abbas' Washington visit; for now, read the article and find out how much of a player DeLay has become on this issue.
Posted by Leah
Here's Eric Alterman at his very best - not only catching Bill Kristol recycling his father's "Commentary," from the communist-obssessed fifties, but thunbnailing it's precise significance.
Here's Bill:
“But the American people, whatever their doubts about aspects of Bush’s foreign policy, know that Bush is serious about fighting terrorists and terrorist states that mean America harm. About Bush’s Democratic critics, they know no such thing.”
Here's Irving:
“For there is one thing that the American people know about Senator McCarthy; he, like them, is unequivocally anti-Communist. About the spokesman for American liberalism, they feel they know no such thing.”
Here's Eric:
This is truly amazing. It explicitly links the Neocons’ exploitation of the threat of terrorism to that no-good drunken bum, Joe McCarthy, and his use of the charge of “Commie” to ruin lives on a whim through a deliberately stoked mass hysteria. I think there is a great deal of this going on right now, but even I would have been reluctant to go so far. But there it is. The charge worked for McCarthy — at least for a while — and Kristol now seems certain it will work for his team as well. Just one question: Have they no shame? At long last, have they no sense of decency left?
Remember this the next time a David Brooks, or a David Frum, or an Andrew Sullivan, or even a Joe Scarborough attempts to belittle comparisons on the left between now and then.
Posted by Leah
Stunning as that vote in the House was, it only rolled back one of the rule changes foisted on the American public by Michael Powell et al, which includes, by the way, the White House.
So we've preserved the national TV cap, (the number of Americans a single company can reach) to 35 %. That was the least of the new rule changes. Here's MoveOn's Eli Pariser on what's left to be done.
The rules relaxing bans on newspaper/broadcast cross ownership and local TV consolidation (duopolies) are what really hurt media diversity and independence. The White House and the Republican majority in Congress oppose repealing these rules. Nonetheless progressive Democrats made a bold effort. A full roll back was included in the Hinchey-Price-Inslee amendment that we petitioned on Tuesday after the Republicans tried to derail support by calling a surprise vote.
The ploy backfired, because MoveOn, in particular, managed to inspire a huge response; phones "rang off the hook. MediaReform.net, whose fascinating account of how all this happened is worth looking at, reports some offices received a 100 phone calls an hour.
The amendment hadn't been expected to pass, it had been designed to be a vehicle to show the continuing public support for a full rollback of the new rules. The 174 votes the amendment did get, including 34 Republicans, were way beyond insider projections, and gives the probable majority in the Senate for full repeal, tremendous leverage.
What's next is a two pronged effort. The House vote has energized Senators like Byron Dorgan to press for a "Resolution of Disapproval" that would repeal all of the FCC rules, which already has strong support in the Senate, although, due to the August recess, it won't be voted on until September. The Resolution would then move to the House for a vote.
That will give us, the great unwashed grassroots, whom the White House apparently views as not knowing what's good for us, two more opportunities to show them they need to reconsider the contempt that Michael Powell and his two cohorts displayed toward that large majority of Americans who are not true believers in the gospel of deregulation.
The final battle will be waged in the reconciliation negotiations in in the House/Senate conference on the bill. Tom DeLay, Billy Tauzin and an army of industry lobbyists will be circling the conference committee. If the Republicans decide once again to thwart the wishes of the vast majority of Americans, this is an issue that could make them pay a high price at the ballot box. It could even be the basis for a making the 2004 Congressional elections a national campaign.
As a last resort, the President will probably threaten a veto. To which I say, "bring it on," Mr. President.
In the meantime, if you'd like to know how your Representative voted on the amendment, you can find out here. If you're not pleased never hurts to let their office know; not for nothing are they called Representatives.
Posted by Leah
Something it might not have occurred to you to be glad about: That you're not Daniel Pipes.
What must it be like to live with this mind?
Responding to this quote from Lee Harris, identified as "America's reigning philosopher of 9/11;"
"the policy debate in the United States has been primarily focused on a set of problems - radical Islam and the War on Terrorism, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."
Pipes adds:
The same cannot be said of the threats emanating from the Muslim world. Al Qaeda destroys airplanes and buildings that it itself could not possibly build. The Palestinian Authority has failed in every field of endeavor except killing Israelis. Saddam Hussein's Iraq grew dangerous thanks to money showered on it by the West to purchase petroleum Iraqis themselves had neither located nor extracted.
How, despite their general incompetence, has this trio managed to guide the course of events as if they were powers in the traditional sense?
The cause of this anomaly, Harris replies, is that the West plays by a strict set of rules while permitting al Qaeda, the Palestinians and Saddam Hussein to play without rules. We restrain ourselves according to the standards of civilized conduct as refined over the centuries; they engage in maximal ruthlessness.
What to do, what to do.
For the West to reverse this process requires much rougher means than it prefers to use. Harris, author of a big-think book on this general subject coming out from the Free Press in early 2004, contends that Old Europe and most analysts have failed to fathom the imperative for a change. The Bush administration, however, has figured it out and in several ways has begun implementing an unapologetic and momentous break with past restraints:
Pre-empt: Knock out fantasist leaders (the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat) before they can do more damage.
Rehabilitate: Dismantle their polities, then reconstruct these along civilized lines.
Impose a double standard: Act on the premise that the U.S. government alone "is permitted to use force against other agents, who are not permitted to use force."
In brief, until those Harris calls "Islamic fantasists" play by the rules, Washington must be prepared to act like them, without rules.
This appeal for America to act less civilized will offend some; but it does offer a convincing explanation for the inner logic of America's tough new foreign policy.
True enough. But what really offends me is that this is the man whom President Bush has nominated to the Board of the United States Institute of Peace.
There's an online petition you won't want to sign urging his confirmation. Is it even worth the time to try organize some opposition to it? I doubt it. Bigger fish abound to those summertime fish fries.
Better to print up a gazillion copies of this little essay and pass them out to unsuspecting Americans everywhere.
Posted by Leah
It's official. Those high-tech voting machines that were supposed to solve the problems of disenfranchisment revealed in the 2000 election are seriously flawed, and even the NYTimes has noticed.
The software that runs many high-tech voting machines contains serious flaws that would allow voters to cast extra votes and permit poll workers to alter ballots without being detected, computer security researchers said yesterday.
"We found some stunning, stunning flaws," said Aviel D. Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, who led a team that examined the software from Diebold Election Systems, which has about 33,000 voting machines operating in the United States.
The systems, in which voters are given computer-chip-bearing smart cards to operate the machines, could be tricked by anyone with $100 worth of computer equipment, said Adam Stubblefield, a co-author of the paper.
"With what we found, practically anyone in the country — from a teenager on up — could produce these smart cards that could allow someone to vote as many times as they like," Mr. Stubblefield said.
And guess who's responsible for anyone having noticed any of this?
The software was initially obtained by critics of electronic voting, who discovered it on a Diebold Internet site in January. This is the first review of the software by recognized computer security experts.
Not to worry says Diebold; every day in every way we're getting better and better. There's good information about just who Diebold is and what it has acquired of late.
As an industry leader, Diebold has been the focus of much of the controversy over high-tech voting. Some people, in comments widely circulated on the Internet, contend that the company's software has been designed to allow voter fraud. Mr. Rubin called such assertions "ludicrous" and said the software's flaws showed the hallmarks of poor design, not subterfuge.
The list of flaws in the Diebold software is long, according to the paper, which is online at avirubin .com/vote.pdf. Among other things, the researchers said, ballots could be altered by anyone with access to a machine, so that a voter might think he is casting a ballot for one candidate while the vote is recorded for an opponent.
The kind of scrutiny that the researchers applied to the Diebold software would turn up flaws in all but the most rigorously produced software, Mr. Stubblefield said. But the standards must be as high as the stakes, he said.
"This isn't the code for a vending machine," he said. "This is the code that protects our democracy."
No mention of a paper trail for purposes of recounts, but at least the issue made it into the paper of record.
Posted by Leah
Only 386,000 Americans found themselves newly without the kind of jobs which qualified them, at leaset, to apply for unemployment insurance last week.
That number was down 29,000 from the previous week.
New claims were far below Wall Street expectations for 413,000 applications, and the lowest since the week of Feb. 8. It was also the first time since then that initial claims were below the critical 400,000 mark, a level viewed by economists as the sign of a soft jobs market. Claims had been above 400,000 for 22 straight weeks.
Still, a Labor spokesman urged caution in reading too much into one week's figure, saying "it is not uncommon for the series to exhibit volatility during July because of traditional temporary layoffs in industries such as automobiles, textiles and apparel."
The unexpectedly steep drop in claims cheered analysts, and the U.S. dollar maintained initial moderate gains on the data, while Treasuries were off a bit.
"It suggests that we may have hit a peak in the unemployment rate but as (Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Chairman Alan) Greenspan suggested, we have to be careful of the July data because of distortions," said Ian Morris, chief economist at HSBC Securities.
"We need to wait to see what the underlying trend is over the next few weeks, but this is a very hopeful start for those economists looking for a bounce back in the second half," Morris said.
Posted by Leah
All three cable news networks were covering the news conference announcing the results of the congressional 9/11 report, when the Rumsfeld/Bremer news conference began. All three networks immediately cut to the latter, and stayed with it, no cutting back, and at the end, the discussion stayed with Rumsfeld/Bremer, and a crucial issue of whether or not releasing the pictures of the two dead sons of Saddam was a good idea.
NPR, on the other hand, stayed with the 9/11 report.
Which do you think was the more important story to cover?
I think the choice made by the cable guys was less about political bias, than about a corrupt news judgement that extolls "media stars," i.e., the administration, over common folk, i.e., Congress.
Quick impression of the 9/11 report; a lot more there than the ho hum expectations expressed by the SCLM.
Posted by Leah
Shouldn't this quote from a January 30th, William Safire column be posted at least once a day, every day on at least one left-of-center blog?
When Iraqi scientists are permitted to talk to inspectors and journalists without fear of having their tongues later cut out and their families slaughtered by Saddam, the truth will out in vivid detail about the decadelong deception of the U.N. With "Dr. Germs" singing to save her life at future war crimes trials, today's American straddlers will at last be confronted with conclusive evidence they now profess to doubt ... When the postwar books are written, a former Iraqi spymaster with knowledge of the suicide attacker Mohamed Atta's perhaps unwitting connection to Saddam will eagerly come forth to spill all he knows to save his neck or sell his memoirs. Suspected followers of Osama bin Laden like Musaab Zarqawi and Mullah Krekar, if alive, will further link Al Qaeda to Saddam's mukhabarat police.
And don't miss billmon's catch of a classic Safire Then/Now comparison. Or this amazing discussion of who's playing pattycake with the mukhabarat now. The post makes copious use of Kanan Makiya's "Republic Of Fear," which is right and proper.
Makiya came down on the other side of the war argument, but he remains a man of integrity, whose observations are always valuable. Which leads me to the question of whether any reader is aware of any public commentary by him since the news conference he gave at the National Press Club sometime in June, I believe?
My advice always, while at Whiskey Bar, read everything.
Posted by Lambert
Salam Pax, the Iraqi blogger from Baghdad, on Saddam's sons here, after Sanchez's press conference. Photos might convince Salam:
It is so easy, all it takes is to show us the friggin’ corpses. They do have them. Someone did see them and when asked why it wasn’t sown to the public they came up with the moral issues stuff. Habibi it didn’t bother you that all those Iraqis, Americans and British are being killed for dubious reasons, so why suddenly become so squeamish? Give the Images to Jazeera, moral issues have never stopped them from showing gruesome images, let them do your dirty work. All I care about is knowing, seeing, being 100% doubt free and that press conference proved nothing.
Then again, maybe we waited too long.
And people do need proof. The Americans just fucked up. Just like they waited too long after the fall of Baghdad to show the Iraqis they have things under control they have fucked up again by first making the decision to kill the idiots and then not give us clear proof of their death.
Salam on Fisk, the winger bete noir who seems to be doing his job:
At that press conference there was a gentleman who asked an extremely important question which was answered by Sanchez with “that is speculation. Next question.” I later found out that the man in front of me was Fisk and the question he asked which we all want to be answered was: why was the decision made to attack with a force that would have been capable of annihilating a city block? Why did they opt for killing them when they knew their importance as sources of information on all sorts of things and the wish all Iraqis have that they be put thru trial?
Fisk started the ball rolling, sanchez was asked the same question at least 5 times in different ways and with it the question of how to prove this to the Iraqi people. And what do we get? Meaningless militareses. Beyond disappointing.
What sort of wake up call do they need? You get people saying the Americans are slow, the Americans are not fulfilling their promises. Don’t fucking lose it, you are really stretching your luck, act act act. You came and gave people big hopes and you let them fall flat on their faces. I can’t believe that there has not been a single big celebration, I went to the office this morning and one of the photographers was asking “so where do you think they will be dancing in the streets?”. It doesn’t feel like there is a reason to celebrate.
NOTE: Can anyone really believe that the commander on the ground made the decision to kill Saddam's sons instead of capture them? (Instead of, say, letting the White House decide?) And if he did make the decision, why on earth did the rules of engagement allow him to do so?
UPDATE: The "commanders on the ground" meme Regarding alert reader Skygod makes the following point:
To those ... folk who think "troops on the ground made the call".
In this day of SatNav and SatCom, decisions like that are cleared at the highest level, unless Senior Codpiece needs his beauty sleep, then, it is the next highest.
While the ground-pounder might have actually "made the call", it was not done without consulting the White House first.
Micro-management pervades the military, command and control at its finest >:-7
Been there, done that ...
Comments from other military readers?
Alert reader yankee doodle amplifies:
Lambert asked, "Can anyone really believe that the commander on the ground made the decision to kill Saddam's sons instead of capture them?"
I don't. I don't believe the local commander (and by "local commander" I mean the Commanding General, 101st Airborne) had the authority to make such a decision.
I have no doubt that locating Saddam Hussein and his sons is a national-level Priority Intelligence Requirement. Information that answers an national PIR has a very short reporting requirement, say, an hour. While analysts at 101 ABN and CENTCOM G2 might have passed comments on the acuracy of that tip reporting Uday and Qusay, the information went straight to the top. Fast. Very fast.
So killing them rather than capturing seems to have been a matter of policy at the White House. Interesting.
Posted by Lambert
Under cover of the story about Saddam's sons, Rethuglican officials feel safe to come out and admit all kinds of stuff. Here's Wolfie:
American officials underestimated the strength of resistance in Iraq by Saddam Hussein supporters and have done other "stupid things" there, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Wednesday.
The admission of mistakes by Wolfowitz was a departure from the Bush administration's efforts to put events in Iraq in a positive light.
"Some conditions were worse than we anticipated, particularly in the security area," said Wolfowitz, who returned Tuesday from a five-day tour of Iraq.
He named three: First, no Iraqi military units "of significant size" defected to the American side during the war.
"Second, the police turned out to require a massive overhaul," Wolfowitz said at a Pentagon news conference.
"Third, and worst of all," he said, was the underestimation of resistance.
It never ceases to amaze me that the Rethuglicans are able to pose as supporters of the troops.
The reThuglicans want to do everything on the cheap (except privatization), so they don't want to pay the troops what they're worth; the reThuglicans only put in a predictable rotation plan when the troops forced them to by talking to the media; the reThuglicans lied their way into the war they had to have, and for which every single national security justification1 has subsequently been proved false; and by doing "stupid things" they got the troops into a quagmire and had no plan to get them out. (We may have a plan now—my point exactly.) I could go on, but you get the point.
How again do the Republicans "support the troops"?
Ritual disclaimer and troll prophylactic
1Saddam is evil.
Posted by Leah
If you did as Atrios suggested and checked out Glenn's Instasubpundit, you'll need an antidote; foolishness raised to this level becomes poisonous.
Let's deal with the initial sting - the claim that the only issue at stake in whether or not the Administration was forthright with the American people about why we had to go to war with Iraq is the one about a sixteen word sentence in the SOTU.
Joseph Cirincione of the Carniegie Endowment suggests, instead, that it's the threat assessments, stupid.
Senior administration officials say they based their escalating warnings of the imminent danger posed by Iraqi weapons on official intelligence assessments.
(edit)
These reports themselves, however, underwent a dramatic transformation from 2001 to 2002 after reporting essentially the same data for many years. There is little new evidence in the reports to account for this change. So what triggered the new, alarmist tone in 2002?
(edit)
The assessments of the Iraqi nuclear program remained fairly consistent from 1998 through 2001, followed by a dramatic jump in 2002. From 1998 to 2001, Iraq's nuclear program was addressed in one paragraph, if at all.
(edit)
In the first half of 2000, the report noted explicitly "we do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox [December 1998] to reconstitute its WMD programs," though analysts suspected that this might be underway.
(edit)
The January-June 2002 report, however, raised alarm at unprecedented levels rhetorically, though it provided little new evidence of increased capability. This report, which moved the nuclear program from the last program mentioned to the front of the assessment, devoted six long paragraphs to the nuclear weapons, mostly detailed narrative of Iraq's nuclear history and the IAEA inspections and dismantlement process.
So why this marked increase in assessment angst? Cirincione suggests we need a Congressional investigation.
But assessments are based on intelligence, no? Sure enough. It's not sixteen words, it's the intelligence, stupid.
Over the past five years, the intelligence assessments and official warnings on Iraq's weapons capability followed a bell curve. From 1998 to 2001, they expressed a fairly low-level of concern about Iraqi programs. They rose dramatically in 2002, however, peaking in warnings about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program in 2003 at the start of the war, and then declined in the weeks and months after the war to lowered expectations about the size of the arsenals and fairly low-level concern about the use or transfer of these weapons or capabilities.
Cirincione has high credibility in this area. Here he is at an April 18th CEIP forum about what's next in Iraq, convened right at what we thought, at the time, was the end of the war:
Of all the urgent missions remaining for U.S. forces in Iraq, none is more important than finding and securing Iraq's chemical and biological arsenal. We have two urgent reasons for doing this. The first has not been much discussed. It was bad enough when the Iraqi regime had control of chemical and biological weapons; it is worse when they do not have control of them. If the arsenals in Iraq are anywhere near administration estimates, then we are looking at a substantial number of unsecured chemical and biological weapons and possibly nuclear material that are now subject to the same kind of looting that we're seeing in other parts of Iraq. If Iraqis are looting national assets and national treasures, they may turn to the national arsenal. It is very serious that we do not know where these weapons are, that we do not yet have any sense of who - if anyone - still has control of these weapons.
Isn't it interesting how few of the war's industrial strength supporters were making that point at the time?
UPDATE: My canine companion, Apu, who monitors the cable news outlets for me, has just alerted me to a citing on all three news channels of our Vice-President, who has surfaced to lead a counter charge against administration critics, and who, at this very moment, is reading from a "threat assessment."
A protester briefly disrupted Bremer's National Press Club speech.
"Bremer, you're a liar!" the man shouted before being hustled out of the room by a security guard.
"If he tried that in Iraq three months ago, he'd now be dead," Bremer said.
The point being? That in the US you can tell the truth? (Except for the odd smear campaign, of course).
All kidding aside, though—was the protester right? If he said "Bremer, you're a liar!" he would have been right, but is the same true of Bremer? Readers?
Posted by Leah Here's a straightfoward story that takes as it's subject the no Iraq-al-Qaida link in the 9/11 Report:
WASHINGTON, July 23 (UPI) -- The report of the joint congressional inquiry into the suicide hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001, to be published Thursday, reveals U.S. intelligence had no evidence that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks, or that it had supported al-Qaida, United Press International has learned.
"The report shows there is no link between Iraq and al-Qaida," said a government official who has seen the report.
Former Democratic Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, who was a member of the joint congressional committee that produced the report, confirmed the official's statement.
Asked whether he believed the report will reveal that there was no connection between al-Qaida and Iraq, Cleland replied: "I do ... There's no connection, and that's been confirmed by some of (al-Qaida leader Osama) bin Laden's terrorist followers."
The revelation is likely to embarrass the Bush administration, which made links between Saddam's support for bin Laden -- and the attendant possibility that Iraq might supply al-Qaida with weapons of mass destruction -- a major plank of its case for war.
There's more, and Max Cleland gets a smattering of redress.
Posted by Lambert
Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger of the Times write:
In meetings at the White House today, some top aides said they were relieved that the military operation [killing Saddam's sons] happened to occur just as new details were coming out suggesting that the White House and the C.I.A. had both mishandled intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program as they built the case for war.
Posted by Atrios
While the liberal media feels free to publish cartoons making a moral equivalence (the wingnuts love that phrase) between political opponents of Bush and brutal executioners, they consider a couple of Boondocks comics too much for our sensitive eyes.
Posted by Lambert
Move along people, move along. There's no story here.
Others do the tinfoil chapeau thing a lot better than I do, but I still find statements like this curious:
[N]o evidence surfaced in the probe by the House and Senate intelligence committees to show that the government could have prevented the attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Or this:
Said Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill.: ''Anybody who makes an assertion that this could have been prevented is making a political statement because there is no evidence, no information that was shared with the top people in our government that could have led them to believe this was going to happen. It wasn't there.''
How can we know these statements are true?
First, the section on the Saudis has been deleted entirely.
Second, it's my impression—alert readers correct me on this—that there's nothing in the report to show what was passed to the White House, and they, after all, have the ultimate responsibility on this. And we have a pretty good picture now, based on the uranium fiasco, of how the White House (mis)handles intelligence information.
So, there may be no evidence in the report. But in Rummy's famous words: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Eh?
NOTE: Oh, report's revelation that there was no AQ-Iraq link (YABL) sank beneath the waves of the news cycle this morning (back). The most durable urban legend of all, zealously propagated by the administration in the run-up to the war and in the SOTU, still lives.
Posted by Atrios
I haven't yet personally said anything about the deaths of the brothers grim. While I'm happy to acknowledge that the world is a better place without them, and assuming all we've heard about them is true they're still owed quite a lot of karmic retribution.
But, it seems rather obvious that a truly successful operation would have captured them. I have no idea how exactly this situation played out. I have no clue if the soldiers did or didn't do what was necessary in the circumstances. Nonetheless, whether or not one can assign any blame for a failure to take them alive, either at the command level or on the field, I really don't understand anyone would fail to acknowledge that ideally they would have been captured and that this should have been a priority (I have no clue if it was or wasn't.)
I find the gleeful bloodlust that has surrounded their apparent deaths rather disturbing as well. The problem with deriving a sense of triumph from such an end is that it is short-lived. American Justice, a phrase Bush misuses regularly, isn't frontier justice. Far more satisfying for us, the Iraqi people, and the perceptions about our commitment to true Democratic justice, to have captured and tried them.
When police go in to arrest a murder suspect, and the confrontation ends in the suspect's death, that particular mission should be deemed a failure. The planning may have been correct, given known information, and the actions individual police officers may have been appropriate, but nonetheless if the mission is to capture and not to kill the suspect, then if the suspect isn't captured alive the mission is a failure.
And, finally, whether or not it was necessary in the course of battle, we should never be cheering the death of a 14 year old, no matter who his relatives were or how many guns he was carrying. Necessary at the time, perhaps, but not a desirable outcome.
Posted by Atrios
The reality is that there is no inconsistency in voting for the congressional resolution giving Bush authority to go to war with Iraq and subsequently being against that war. That not very subtle distinction is of course lost on hacks like the Mickster, Timmy, and the rest of the kool kids, and therefore poses a bit of a media problem for Gephardt and Kerry (this is not an issue for Lieberman, who just continues to look foolish on this issue and I'm quite sure what Edwards has been doing with this lately).
I was disgusted with Gephardt and Kerry and anyone who signed on to that resolution, particularly if they had reservations about going to war, because I knew the instant it passed that war was inevitable. They'd been planning it for years. But, that doesn't mean that those votes disallow them from expressing less than enthusiastic support for war before it began or less than glowing reviews for how events are unfolding. There is no contradiction there.
On Iraq, Carville said Democrats "should not exaggerate the facts," but merely state and restate them. "They lied to get us in. They don't know how to get us out," he said. "How did they not know the country wasn't divided? How do you commit 150,000 troops with no plan to get out? All we have to do is remind people of that."
But he said there was "this other thing going on," which he called the "patriot-correct police," referring to assertions by Republicans that criticizing the war was un-American.
"If you can't say the simple fact that they lied to get us in and have no idea how to get us out, then there's something wrong with America."
There must be an independent investigation not just of the White House's justifications for war, Carville said, but also the administration's plans for the occupation.
"In '44, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a 700-page plan for the occupation of Japan. That's what happens when you think ahead. What was the plan this time? Who read the important documents? Let's have an investigation," he said. "If we can spend $70 million to investigate the act of consensual sex, we can spend a few million to find out why we are involved in a war in Iraq."
Speaking of inquiries, Carville said people should not forget the Bush administration was stonewalling the federal commission investigating the World Trade Center terrorist attacks.
"If the case is we didn't have this thing [Iraq] thought out, that is a searing, stinging indictment of this administration -- we should not forget that," he said. "If they didn't cooperate fully with this investigation of 9/11, that is not an indictment. That is a sin."
Posted by Atrios
If senior administration officials in the White House really blew the cover of a covert CIA agent to columnist Bob Novak, then they really did a Bad Thing. I've done my best to hedge when discussing this, including words like "if," because this is a much more serious charge than some of the normal fair and balanced commentary that goes on here.
As far as I have seen, the right wing of the blogosphere has been oddly silent on this, exceptions thus far (as far as I have seen) being The Minute Man and Dr. Manhattan. I'm a bit puzzled by it. It's one thing to try and defend the Bush White House on this, but another to ignore the story completely. If it is true, someone really screwed the pooch here.
This thing screams out for a serious investigation. It screams out for more media attention. It screams out for the New York Times to assign someone to the story. Where is that liberal media, anyway.
Posted by Atrios
There is only one reason to privatize government services. It isn't because government is inherently evil or bad, because it's still going to be taxpayer money that's paying for whatever it is. The reason is that by opening up whatever it is to true competition you might be able to obtain cheaper and higher quality services.
But, that assumes that there exists a competitive market for whatever that service is, and assumes that contracts are awarded based on some competitive process.
Want to know how far off the rails things have slid at the Pentagon? Recently, the Army wanted to tally up how much money it had been forced to divert to private contractors as part of Rumsfeld's rush to privatize military tasks. The Rummycrats forbid it. They refused to let the Army balance its own books — because the privatization mafia knew what they would find: Contractors cost more, not less, than soldiers.
When honest budget managers in the services calculate the transition of any uniformed job to a private contractor, their working assumption is that the contract employee will cost the Pentagon $100,000 a year. A sergeant barely makes a quarter of that, and a private hardly a fifth — including benefits.
Posted by Atrios
Just thought I´d replay this bit that Lambert unearthed from the White House web page:
The danger is grave and growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons and is rebuilding facilities to make more. It could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given. The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb -- and, with fissile material, could build one within a year.
Posted by Lambert
Half a news cycle and reThuglican triumphalism starts to wilt (from Rod Nordland of Newsweek):
[A]s details became clearer of the raid that eliminated what the U.S. military calls High Value Targets (HVTs) Nos. 2 and 3, a lot of people in the intelligence community were left wondering: why weren’t they just taken alive?
At a news briefing today, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, squirmed his way past that question repeatedly.
It was, he said, the decision of the commander on the ground based on the circumstances and his judgment—”and it was the right decision.”
But was it? Who beside the sons might have better information about the one HVT that really matters, Saddam? “The whole operation was a cockup,” said a British intelligence officer. “There was no need to go after four lightly armed men with such overwhelming firepower. They would have been much more useful alive.”
But Sanchez insisted it wasn’t overkill. “Absolutely not. Our mission is to find, kill or capture high-value targets. We had an enemy that was barricaded and we had to take measures to neutralize the target.” ...
“Bollocks,” said one former Special Forces soldier. “A SWAT team could have taken them. It didn’t need a company.” ...
Besides, as we already know (back) the neighborhood was already surrounded.
We could have done a Noriega, no problem. Perp walk, Hague Tribunal, UN loves us, Europe throws some cash and more troops our way, and—this is the best part—if we send the war criminals off to be tried at the Hague, the Iraqi people get to see justice in action.
But the Bush gang just had to be thugs. They don't know any other way to be. So they'll probably make the same stupid mistake with Saddam.
NOTE: This doesn't blame the troops (i.e., the grunts—not brass hats like Sanchez). The troops did what they were trained to do.
Posted by Lambert
David Espo of AP via WaPo:
Here:
Rep. Bill Thomas, one of the most powerful committee chairmen in Congress, told a somber House of Representatives on Wednesday that he exercised "poor judgment" last week when he called for the Capitol Police to help remove Democrats from a room where they were meeting.
Thomas' comments amounted to the act of contrition that fellow Republicans had sought in the wake of his role in a partisan meltdown last week in the Ways and Means Committee. But it fell short of the full-throated apology that Democrats clamored for, and Thomas defended another of his controversial actions on Friday, a decision to call House security officials to the committee's main meeting room.
And the real issue is abuse of power, of which Thomas made no mention
"Never before in our time in Congress have we seen such a blatant abuse of power by a committee chairman," Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., wrote all House members on Tuesday. "We were not breaking any rules of the House. We were meeting together, in an empty room commonly used by Republican and Democratic members alike, to develop our response to" the pension bill.
Our fruitcake Republicans... From the White House on down... All we get is denial, blame-shifting, finger-pointing, and non-apology apologies.
It's good that Thomas shed tears at the podium though. I'd like to see more Republicans get in touch with their inner child like that. [Old timers: remember when the SCLM whacked Ed Muskie for similar behavior? And that was in the days when we had a free press!]
NOTE: Troll prophylactic and for those who came in late:
In the lexicon, "Fruitcake" is a demotic measure of diminished mental capacity, not a taxon in a sexual or gender-related classification scheme.
Usage example: "Those winger fruitcakes are nuttier than Mussolini."
The report of the joint congressional inquiry into the suicide hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001, to be published Thursday, reveals U.S. intelligence had no evidence that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks, or that it had supported al-Qaida, United Press International has learned.
"The report shows there is no link between Iraq and al-Qaida," said a government official who has seen the report.
Look! Over there! Photographs of Quday and Usay!
"The administration sold the connection (between Iraq and al-Qaida) to scare the pants off the American people and justify the war," said [Former Democratic Georgia Sen. Max] Cleland. "What you've seen here is the manipulation of intelligence for political ends."
I'm shocked! Shocked!
NOTE: Ritual disclaimer and troll prophylactic: I am not, nor have I ever been, a supporter of AQ.
Posted by Lambert
Force levels may remain the same (AP):
Officials said Tuesday that the plan was to keep the number of Americans in Iraq steady at about 145,000. That could change depending on how many international troops arrive, how well the expanded coalition effort works and how security develops in the country.
Some of the units heading for Iraq were the reserve forces for duty in a Korean emergency. Keane said the units that were coming home from Iraq would be available in such an emergency. "They are at the highest state of readiness already," he said.
Hmmm .... I think Leah has one of her analytical pieces in the works on the NK situation.
Posted by Lambert
Tom Raum of The Mighty But Slow Moving AP writes:
The White House has teamed with GOP congressional leaders in an aggressive damage-control campaign to counter embarrassing questions about prewar intelligence and lapses by President Bush's national security team.
But the effort is being hampered by an ever-changing White House story [heh heh!—Ed.] -- from first blaming the CIA and then the British to new revelations by Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley that contradict earlier statements by his boss, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Not sure I agree with The Big Dog about dropping the issue, though. Some Democrats can keep after Bush on this issue, others can try to tear open new ones.
"It takes a village to stomp a weasel" (or something like that) as someone very close to our last elected President wrote. So have at it, say I.
Posted by Lambert
Richard Oppel of the Herald Trib writes:
The homeowner [of the house where Saddam's sons were killed], Zidan, had a fondness for bragging that he was kin to Saddam, the neighbors say.
One old hand in the neighborhood, Ali Jajawi, a retired Iraqi general who lives nearby, said Wednesday night that revenge could have played a role - if Zidan was indeed the tipster.
Earlier, Zidan "always was trying to be near the important people in the Ba'ath Party and the security people," Jajawi said. But after his brother was arrested, "he was hating Saddam very much, and it is very hard to believe that Uday and Qusay went to that house." For that reason, Jajawi remains skeptical it was the two brothers who died - despite the insistence of U.S. officials.
Oh well. I'm sure dental records will convince him.
A missed opportunity to do a Manuel Noriega on Saddam's sons, since we had the house surrounded the previous night (back).
A perp walk, followed by trial for war crimes in the Hague tribunal, would have been a lot more convincing.
Ritual disclaimer and troll prophylactic Saddam is evil. Saddam's sons are evil.
Posted by Lambert
Again—the hour has produced the man. Hunter Thompson writes again:
When I went into the clinic last April 30, George Bush was about 50 points ahead of his closest Democratic opponent in next year's Presidential Election. When I finally escaped from the horrible place, less than three weeks late, Bush's job-approval ratings had been cut in half -- and even down into single digits, in some states -- and the Republican Party was panicked and on the run. It was a staggering reversal in a very short time, even shorter than it took for his equally crooked father to drop from 93 percent approval, down to as low as 43 percent and even 41 percent in the last doomed days of the first doomed Bush Administration. After that, he was Bill Clinton's punching bag.
Let's hope he's right. Frankly, I always saw Thompson as a master of the telling detail, and his latest screed is a little thin on detail—but it's always nice to see a real professional at work. Wish the administration had more of them. (thanks to alert reader ras_nesta)
But then one thing Incurious George has always been incurious about is putting people to death. "A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute."
And we can't say we weren't warned: "Bush ... mimicked convicted murderer turned Christian Karla Faye Tucker begging, 'Please don't kill me,' something she never actually did."
Ritual disclaimer and troll prophylactic Saddam is evil. Saddam's sons are evil.
REVEALED: The Clintons' plans to make Hillary President
-- and ruthlessly destroy any obstacle in her way
(edit)
In shocking detail, investigative journalist Carl Limbacher here blows the lid off the New York senator's plans for a grand political coup, something she has been carefully and quietly plotting for more than 20 years. With a patience, doggedness, and thirst for the truth that few reporters have displayed, Limbacher got the full story of Hillary's plans by conducting extensive research into Hillary's past and securing exclusive interviews with Clinton insiders. He even questioned Hillary herself! Limbacher uncovers the juicy morsels, backroom deals, and insider wrangling surrounding Hillary's presidential ambitions -- the hidden details that the mainstream press is too intimidated by (or enamored of) the Clintons to tell you about.
There's more. I read it. You need to. So I won't have to bear the burden of this knowledge alone.
Think of it as a safe, convenient way to get your minimum daily requirement of bile.
Posted by Leah
One, anyway. Apparently. According to the Independent.
The BBC says it has a tape recording of David Kelly voicing serious concerns over the role of Downing Street in the disputed Iraq dossier.
The corporation is planning to submit the tape as evidence during the inquiry into the death of the weapons expert. Susan Watts, the science editor of Newsnight, recorded her conversations with Dr Kelly, parts of which were later broadcast anonymously as a "source", using the voice of an actor.
The report, which was broadcast on 2 June, suggested Downing Street had been "desperate" to find information to justify its stance on a war against Iraq. Referring to the claim Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, the source said:
The danger is grave and growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons and is rebuilding facilities to make more. It could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given. The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb -- and, with fissile material, could build one within a year.
Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration. But one thing no one can dispute. Real or unreal, we no longer face those grave and growing dangers.
Reasons To Go To A Screening Of A Film About The Crucifixion of Jesus
Posted by Leah
From the WaPo's gossip-in-chief, here's one, you might not have thought of.
Another invitee, right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham, flew here from San Francisco to see the film but arrived too late and missed it. "I'm so bummed," Ingraham told us. "I want to see any movie that drives the anti-Christian entertainment elite crazy."
The film in question - Mel Gibson's "The Passion," said to be a somewhat eccentric retelling of the Easter story, based on a Catholicism so conservative it rejects Vatican II, and possibly the trend toward exonerating the Jews for Jesus' crucifixion. For a discussion of the curious passion of Mel and his father see the Orcinus post with the Playboy interview Atrios references below.
Among the other invitees to this secret screening of a two-hour "rough cut" of the film at The Motion Picture Association of America, in D.C. were such Republican and rightwing stars as Peggy Noonan, Kate O'Beirne, Michael Novak, Cal Thomas, Linda Chavez, and "White House staffer David Kuo, deputy director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives."
Conspicuous among those not invited - Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who has expressed concerns about what role in Jesus' passion, the film assigns to Jews.
Jack Valenti found nothing objectionable in that regard and pronounced the film, a stirring work of art.
Yesterday when the lights came up, many in the audience -- who were required to sign a confidentiality agreement before being admitted to the screening room -- were in tears. Some were sobbing, we hear.
"Heartbreaking," Michael Novak told Gibson.
"Anti-Christian Hollywood" What do we think that means?
What caught my attention about thie article is that only days before, I'd happened upon an example of the Christian magnanimity of one of the attendees, Linda Chavez.
In a piece commenting on President Bush's recent trip to Africa, "Africa With Dignity," Ms. Chavez is drawn ineluctably by her own precise Christian moral compass into a highly negative comparitive judgement of President Bill Clinton's 1998 trip there, Africa without dignity, presumably.
President Bush went to Africa this week and issued a stinging rebuke against the United States' role in the slave trade, but his comments have not set off the firestorm Bill Clinton's offhand apology for slavery provoked when he made a similar trip in 1998.
Bush isn't known for his eloquence, but the speech he gave Tuesday at Goree Island, Senegal, was one of his finest.
Quotes follow culled from that speech. Turning to Clinton, Chavez becomes less precise, although she claims it's Clinton's fault.
Bill Clinton's words were far more elliptical in 1998: "Going back to the time before we were even a nation, European-Americans received the fruits of the slave trade, and we were wrong in that," Clinton said. If Clinton had stopped there, his comments might not have ignited such a furor...(edit)
But Clinton went further to conflate America's role in slavery with 20th-century American foreign policy.
Chavez offers a quote that seems to me to do nothing of the sort. But perhaps one has to be a Christian.
Significantly, none of the quotes were from the speech Clinton gave at Goree Island, certainly the obvious point of comparison.
But it wasn't only content, it was also context " that most differentiated the two presidents' pronouncements on slavery," in Ms. Chavez's mind, in any case.
Bill Clinton made his trip at the nadir of his presidency, while reporters were plaguing him to answer questions about sex scandals. Indeed, the most memorable image from his visit was a telephoto shot of him chomping on a cigar while he beat an African drum in Dakar the night he received news that a judge had dismissed Paula Jones' sexual harassment suit.
Africa was an escapist adventure for Bill Clinton, and no amount of moralizing about America's past failings could make up for his own moral deficiencies
What I find remarkable here, is the almost prenatural impulse to isolate Clinton from a presidential, or even an American context, even though Bush's trip was clearly a continuation of a Clinton initiative, and just as clearly, Bush was attempting to put his own imprint on making Africa more important in American foreign policy. Even when there's a reason to be united, this religiously political American right insists on dividing us.
What "you're either with us or against us," really means is that even when you're with some of our goals, if you're not one of us, we're against you, no holds barred, no tricks too dirty, no lies too shameless.
just to tell you that i would be really dissapointed if Uday and Qusay were really killed in Mosul. this is just the easy way out for them. they should have been humiliated in public, images of them handcuffed and being pushed around.
:: salam 9:31 AM [+] ::
So enough with the triumphalism, already. Sounds like turning the sons over to the Hague Tribunal as war criminals is a lot more in line with what an Iraqi wants than what Bush did.
That night, coalition commanders planned the operation, gathered the required troops and weapons systems, and cordoned off the neighborhood. Iraqi police established an outer perimeter, Sanchez said.
So we had 'em surrounded, the previous night. The Manuel Noriega option was possible— Bush and his gang decided not to take it.
Killing with high-tech weapons: The world, and the Iraqis, already know we can do this.
Bringing war criminals to justice: The world doesn't know we can do this. And it would be better for us, for the Iraqis, and the world, if it did (back).
But a "last stand" at an Iraqi Alamo makes for better TV... And dead men tell no tales... And, oh yeah, what was it that was being published tomorrow? Some report on 9/11?
Ritual disclaimer and troll prophylactic Saddam is evil. Saddam's sons are evil.
(Maybe this disclaimer worked—there's been a lot of good discussion on this and the previous threads on this subject. And by "good" I don't mean "agrees with me," I mean "advances the discussion through reason." Thanks, readers. Hope this doesn't jinx the thread...)
Democrats objected to the vote, saying Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, rushed the confirmation vote before they could finish an investigation into Pryor's fund-raising activities for a GOP attorneys general group. Hatch overruled the objection and forced the vote.
"We have had a shabby injection of [un]seemly ads relative to religion, we have an unfinished investigation raising serious ethical questions, and as icing on the cake, we're going to strong-arm a vote out of this committee," said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. "This is a perfect send-off for this nominee."
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and one of the moderate Republicans on the committee, voted for Pryor but warned that Senate confirmation was not assured. "This issue is far from over," said Specter, who would not promise to vote for Pryor on the Senate floor.
Spector's contact information:
711 Hart Building
Washington, DC 20510
Tel: 202-224-4254
Fax: 202-228-1229
Email: arlen_specter@specter.senate.gov
Posted by Leah
Look for less of it in the future than the Bush administration had in mind when it appointed Michael Powell FCC Chairman.
Even House Republicans, enough of them anyway, have got the message; most Americans don't feel that their lives are insufficiently influenced by the power of ever larger Coporate entities. No doubt, the NRA and other organizations of the right signing on to reverse the new FCC rules helped.
I shouldn't talk as if this is a done deal, but it's looking good.
The President is still threatening to veto the entire spending bill if there is any monkeying with that which those three Republicans members of the FCC had wrought. And that threat has meant some good amendments have bit the dust in order to provide a veto-proof bill.
Such is the legislative process; such is democracy.
Right now there are no further calls for citizen action. We'll let you know if we're needed again. For the time being, feel good that liberals got themselves organized and made a difference.
If we could do it about something as arcane and as complicated as media policy and the role of the FCC, we can do it on AmeriCorps, Head Start, leaving behind "No Child Left Behind," the environment, Medicare, and universal health care.
And if that list makes you want to reach for an aspirin, a drink, or take a nap, remember, there are fewer of them than there are of us, and, if we take it a step at a time....
Washington DC-- The following is a statement released today by Terry McAuliffe, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee:
"As if Americans needed any more evidence of its political bias, Fox became the only network in Wisconsin to reject a new Democratic National Committee ad that calls for an investigation of President Bush's misleading statements in the State of the Union address. Apparently Fox has changed its slogan from 'We Report, You Decide' to 'We let Bush decide what we air.'
Republicans hope GOP Rep. Bill Thomas demonstrates contrition when he steps before the House to speak about last week's partisan furor over a committee hearing.
Maybe it's all the fruitcakes we've been sending his office ...
The controversy flared when [Republican Ways and Means chair Bill] Thomas had the Capitol police summoned during a committee meeting called to vote on the pension legislation. Democrats, claiming the bill had been changed overnight without their knowledge, moved into an adjoining library, leaving Stark behind to try to slow progress on the legislation.
Where did Thomas think he was? Texas? '30s Berlin?
But Stark soon was hurling insults at Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., calling him a ''wimp'' and a ''fruitcake.'' The Californian later issued a statement acknowledging using ''words that were not becoming.''
But they're true! Thomas is a "fruitcake". Like all the wingers.
The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material in Africa, White House officials said yesterday.
...
The second memo, dated Oct. 6 and sent to Hadley and Rice, was brought to the White House's attention yesterday by the CIA, the officials said. In response to another draft of the speech that had already deleted the uranium reference, the memo included fresh CIA objections to the charge, saying there was "weakness in the evidence" and that the attempted purchase "was not particularly significant," Hadley said.
''We did not know at the time -- no one knew at the time, in our circles -- maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery.
Who knows, maybe she isn't lying. Maybe she's just completely incompetent. But, I consider making statements you aren't reasonably sure are true rather, uh, deceptive. I suppose it depends on the meaning of the word "bowels."
Posted by Lambert
Our own, very mainstream Inky editorializes:
Bush's critics have not questioned whether the U.S. military could kill Iraqis; rather, they have accused the President of distorting evidence that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States and its interests, one requiring a preemptive war. Critics also have called for Bush to seek more help from allies in policing postwar Iraq rather than having U.S. troops shoulder so much of the load. ...
The deaths of Hussein's sons, Odai and Qusai, are unlikely to silence the President's critics on either point unless Iraqi resistance to the American occupation ends with their deaths. And even Bush's supporters cautioned that the sons' demise was unlikely to end Iraqi attacks on U.S. troops or resistance to the occupation. ...
Republican pollster Bill McInturff said the killing of Hussein's sons "breaks the news cycle" that had put the President on the defensive. "We can have a broader discussion about the future and security of Iraq," he said, "and that broader discussion helps the President."
Again:
We should have figured out how to give Saddam's sons the Manuel Noriega treatment, and done it, just like George I did.
Saddam's sons would have been worth a lot more to us alive in captivity than they are dead.
Turning Saddam's sons over to the Hague tribunal for prosecution would have gotten the UN and the Europeans back on board, and gotten us some relief on reconstruction and on troops.
Turning them over to the Hague would have been better for the Iraqi people, too, who probably are not going to be persuaded that Saddam's sons are really dead by any dental records or DNA analysis CENTCOM can produce. Prosecuting them live on TV for weeks on end—that would have been persuasive. Such a strategy worked for the Peruvians when they captured Shining Path leader Guzman and put him in a cage. Why not go with what works?
Bush and his gang seem to think that "hard power"—killing lots of people using very expensive high-tech weaponry—is the essence of what it means to be a great power. The Bush gang likes it, their backers (e.g., Halliburton) like it, and it brings them a bump in news coverage and the polls. So they do it.
One of the best forms of "soft power" America has—I hope I don't have to say "had"— is a reputation for justice. The Constitution, the bill of rights, trial by jury, impartial judges, the rule of law. This reputation is an asset built up over centuries of experience, and for which many Americans gave their lives. (In a chilling sentence in Bush's State of the Union speech, Bush showed he was willing to throw this asset away: He identified "American Justice"with a policy of targeted assassination—frontier justice, like a lynching.)
Great powers that survive over centuries know that "soft power" is both more efficient and more effective than "hard power."
Bringing Saddam's sons to justice would have reinforced true "American justice." The Iraqi people would have seen Saddam's sons in captivity, and seen justice in action (which they have not seen much of). Our soft power would have been reinforced.
The strategy of bringing a dictator to justice instead of killing him worked in the Balkans with Slobadan Milosevic (but since Clinton did that, it must be wrong). Again, why not go with what works?
Killing Saddam's son's instead of bringing them to justice was a missed opportunity to serve the national interest and the Iraqi people.
Let's hope the Bush administration doesn't make the same mistake when another walk-in hands them Saddam.
Ritual disclaimer and troll prophylactic Saddam is evil. Saddam's sons are evil. (I refuse, unlike the Bush apparat, to use the infantile phrase "bad guys.")
UPDATE AP reminds us that there's still an Exective Order on the books prohibiting assassinations of foreign leaders (for the very sensible reason that it's an open invitation for "an eye for an eye.") Bush trashes justice yet again.
UDPATE: Bush: "Yesterday, in the city of Mosul, the careers of two of the regime's chief henchmen came to an end. " What a euphemism. What I said.
Posted by Atrios
Obviously the cause of Krugman's descent into shrill insanity is his overconsumption of alcohol. Here he admits to drinking "a few glasses of wine" with lunch while frolicking with those communist appeasers, the French. It is true that those countries in Old Europe that hate freedom define binge drinking rather differentlythan we do in the freedom loving libertarian U.S. of A., where we define it, correctly, as more than 5 drinks in one occasion. Given the, uh, healthy glow that Professor Krugman displays in the linked photo, and by healthy glow I of course mean an extreme case of gin blossoms, we can safely assume that Paul "fuzzy math" Krugman defines "few" as somewhere between 7 and 30.
I myself am currently located in an undisclosed location (I can only reveal that it was one of our closest allies in our glorious and successful liberation of Iraq.) While here, I would never ever take advantage of the fact that at lunchtime one can get a wonderful 3 course meal, a "few" glasses of wine included, for under 10 bucks at just about every restaurant in town.
Unlike that shrill boozing "professor" of "economics."
Posted by Lambert
Science is seeking a cure for the yips. "Yips are the sudden jerks, clenches, twitches or spasms that can send an easy two-foot putt right off the green."
Bush gets the yips at press conferences, doesn't he? It's a shame.
This correspondence from the Office of the Vice President to the ambassador to the U.S. was redacted by the Office of the Vice President for national and electoral security reasons:
Dear Prince bin ,
...
We are pumped about the double rubout of the Hussein boys. We really needed that win. It could be a game-changer for us. The stock market killed on the killings. And the timing will help cover your royal , too.
When the 9/11 commission report comes out tomorrow, I think you will be well satisfied with our efforts to keep you guys out of it.
We have almost as much experience as you at keeping private matters veiled. It's not good to overburden the American people with too much complicated information.
Here in the House, we've mastered the art of moving beyond what people once thought was important to look for. First, we switched from looking for Osama to looking for Saddam. Then we switched from looking for "weapons" to looking for "weapons programs." Now Wolfie has informed the public that we need to worry less about finding weapons in Iraq than building democracy.
The trick is to keep moving. Just yesterday, we shifted the blame for the uranium debacle in the president's State of the speech from George Tenet at the C.I.A. to Stephen Hadley at the N.S.C.
Posted by Atrios
Let's just be clear about something. The Bush administration has been accused of blowing the cover of a covert CIA operative. Will the SCLM follow this one up at all?
Look, as Barney Frank said in this Buzzflash interview, as the minority the Democrats cannot hold official hearings. They call press conferences and the press doesn´t bother to show up. It´s time for the media to start doing their goddamn job.
Posted by Atrios
I really don't know what's more amusing about the controversy over LA Times cartoonist Ramirez's cartoon - the fact that people are upset about it at all or the fact that all the wingnuts fail to recognize that it is meant to be extraordinarily sympathetic to Bush. It paints Bush as the victim of execution by "politics," likening his detractors to brutal murderers.
And, for some reason, Michael Graham thinks this means I owe him an apology.
Posted by Atrios
Emma over at Notes on the Atrocities looks into the composition of donates to the Democratic candidates. One surprise is that Kerry is taking in a surprising number of small donations.
And Bush? Only 9% of his money comes from donations under $200.
Posted by Atrios
David Neiwert pulls out this interview from Playboy, 1995.
PLAYBOY: What does he [Hutton Gibson] have to do with the Alliance for Catholic Tradition, which one magazine called "an extreme conservative Catholic splinter group"?
GIBSON: He started it. Some people say it's extreme, but it emphasizes what the institution was and where it's going. Everything he was taught to believe was taken from him in the Sixties with this renewal Vatican Council. The whole institution became unrecognizable to him, so he writes about it.
.........
PLAYBOY: Do you believe in Darwin's theory of evolution or that God created man in his image?
GIBSON: The latter.
PLAYBOY: So you can't accept that we descended from monkeys and apes?
GIBSON: No, I think it's bullshit. If it isn't, why are they still around? How come apes aren't people yet? It's a nice theory, but I can't swallow it. There's a big credibility gap. The carbon dating thing that tells you how long something's been around, how accurate is that, really? I've got one of Darwin's books at home and some of that stuff is pretty damn funny. Some of his stuff is true, like that the giraffe has a long neck so it can reach the leaves. But I just don't think you can swallow the whole piece.
PLAYBOY: We take it that you're not particularly broad-minded when it comes to issues such as celibacy, abortion, birth control --
GIBSON: People always focus on stuff like that. Those aren't issues. Those are unquestionable. You don't even argue those points.
PLAYBOY: You don't?
GIBSON: No.
PLAYBOY: What about allowing women to be priests?
GIBSON: No.
PLAYBOY: Why not?
GIBSON: I'll get kicked around for saying it, but men and women are just different. They're not equal. The same way that you and I are not equal.
PLAYBOY: That's true. You have more money.
GIBSON: You might be more intelligent, or you might have a bigger dick. Whatever it is, nobody's equal. And men and women are not equal. I have tremendous respect for women. I love them. I don't know why they want to step down. Women in my family are the center of things. An good things emanate from them. The guys usually mess up.
PLAYBOY: That's quite a generalization.
GIBSON: Women are just different. Their sensibilities are different.
PLAYBOY: Any examples?
GIBSON: I had a female business partner once. Didn't work.
PLAYBOY: Why not?
GIBSON: She was a cunt.
PLAYBOY: And the feminists dare to put you down!
GIBSON: Feminists don't like me, and I don't like them. I don't get their point. I don't know why feminists have it out for me, but that's their problem, not mine.
.................
PLAYBOY: How do you feel about Bill Clinton?
GIBSON: He's a low-level opportunist. Somebody's telling him what to do.
PLAYBOY: Who?
GIBSON: The guy who's in charge isn't going to be the front man, ever. If I were going to be calling the shots I wouldn't make an appearance. Would you? You'd end up losing your head. It happens all the time. All those monarchs. Ifhe's the leader, he's getting shafted. What's keeping him in there? Why would you stay for that kind of abuse? Except that he has to stay for some reason. He was meant to be the president 30 years ago, if you ask me.
PLAYBOY: He was just 18 then.
GIBSON: Somebody knew then that he would be president now.
PLAYBOY: You really believe that?
GIBSON: I really believe that. He was a Rhodes scholar, right? Just like Bob Hawke. Do you know what a Rhodes scholar is? Cecil Rhodes established the Rhodes scholarship for those young men and women who want to strive for a new world order. Have you heard that before? George Bush? CIA? Really, it's Marxism, but it just doesn't want to call itself that. Karl had the right idea, but he was too forward about saying what it was. Get power but don't admit to it. Do it by stealth. There's a whole trend of Rhodes scholars who will be politicians around the world.
PLAYBOY: This certainly sounds like a paranoid sense of world history. You must be quite an assassination buff.
GIBSON: Oh, fuck. A lot of those guys pulled a boner. There's something to do with the Federal Reserve that Lincoln did, Kennedy did and Reagan tried. I can't remember what it was, my dad told me about it. Everyone who did this particular thing that would have fixed the economy got undone. Anyway, I'll end up dead if I keep talking shit.
During one of her routine appearances on Fox television, National Public Radio political correspondent Mara Liasson commented on McDermott and Bonior: "These guys are a disgrace. Look, everybody knows it's 101, politics 101, that you don't go to an adversary country, an enemy country, and badmouth the United States, its policies and the president of the United States. I mean, these guys ought to, I don't know, resign."
...
Much more importantly, if a mainstream political journalist like Mara Liasson was so quick to suggest 10 months ago that McDermott resign for inopportunely seeking to prevent a war, when will she advocate that the president resign for dishonestly promoting a war – or, failing resignation, face impeachment?
"George W. Bush may have learned one important lesson from his father -- that their powerful family connections allow them to skirt the truth and lie with a confidence that most politicians don't enjoy."
[...]
The Bushes have asserted themselves as a kind of American royalty. When the rare question about their truthfulness penetrates the outer defenses, aides step in to spin the facts, or a cowed news media minimizes the offense, or if necessary, some subordinate takes the fall.
"He was Gods own original fool... And he was arrogant as no other man I've ever met, and as sure of his own unshakeable rightness as any man could be-even when his wrong-headedness was there for all to see. That was his great point, the key to his character: he could never be wrong."
"They say that at least he was brave. He was not. He was just stupid, too stupid ever to be afraid. Fear is an emotion, and his emotions were all between his knees and his breast-bone; they never touched his reason, and he had little enough of that." - Harry Flashman, from "Flashman"
Reaction is mixed in the Iraqi city where Saddam Hussein's two eldest sons have been killed by U-S troops.
At least a thousand people gathered outside the house in Mosul where Odai and Qusai died in a raid today. Some were shouting in delight, some were cursing in anger. Others stood silently in mourning.
My reaction isn't mixed.
I think killing Saddam's sons was, well, not the smartest thing this administration has ever done.*
First, it's entirely possible that they were valuable sources of intelligence. Perhaps they knew which rosebushes the rest of the centrigures were under! Second, it would be more effective to display them as captives. Imperial Rome knew this when they paraded captives through the streets in triumph. The Peruvians knew this when they captured Shining Path leader Guzman and displayed him in a cage on national TV. Legends grow around martyrs, not captives.
But the stupidity goes even deeper. Let's look at 11 words in Bush's State of the Union speech that are a real scandal:
One by one the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice.
Parsing this, what Bush means by "American Justice" is finding the "bad guys" and killing them. (Rather like Operation Phoenix in Viet Nam. And we all know how well that adventure went.)
Funny thing! I thought American justice was about The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, trial by jury, and the rule of law.
Suppose that was true, and the administration believed it.
Suppose we had captured Saddam's sons, and then turned them over to the Hague tribunal for trial. What happens? The national interest gets served in all kinds of ways. We get all the propaganda advantages that the Peruvians and Imperial Rome got (which is all the killing was about anyhow). We get the Europeans and the UN back on board, and maybe we get some help with reconstruction and even a graceful way out. Best of all, it's good for the Iraqi people. The Clinton administration followed just this policy in the Balkans when they got Milosevic tried at the Hague for war crimes, and the Balkans are doing reasonably well.
At best, killing Saddam's sons was a missed opportunity. At worst, it's the tip of the iceberg of a policy of targeted assassination that perverts the notion of American justice, and will lead to blowback just as certainly as funding Afghan jihaadists did.
But the killing gives an increasingly rattled administration real estate on the front pages for at least one news cycle. What are lives, the national interest, and justice compared to that?
UPDATE: *At the suggestion of editor Bob, I removed "hog stupid," since it detracted from one of the main points of the post: that American justice is one of the most effective forms of soft power we have.
Posted by Lambert
In a comment, the farmer points to the following from digby:
Have We Been Overlooking The Obvious? Is it possible that there are no WMD in Iraq today because Bill Clinton led a coalition of the willing and disarmed Saddam Hussein 5 years ago [in Operation Desert Fox]?
Great analysis, and great quotes—especially some sanctimonious propaganda on "wag the dog" from that white-sheet-encumbered fifth-rater Trent Lott.
Maybe the Republicans believed their own lies on "wag the dog," and thought that Operation Desert Fox couldn't possibly have worked, since The Clenis™ did it? And that's why they're so confident that "the facts will reveal the truth" on the WMDs?
''Of course it alarms me to see [Bush's] poll figures below the safe margins,'' said Ruth Griffin, co-chair of Bush's 2000 campaign steering committee in New Hampshire. ''If he isn't concerned, and we strong believers in the Bush administration aren't concerned, we must have blinders on.''
''We've got nine Democrats out there beating up on him. That's the problem,'' said Joyce Terhes of Maryland, a member of the 165-person RNC.
''This guerrilla warfare is disturbing,'' said former Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt, an RNC member from Arkansas.
A recent CNN-Time poll found that 47 percent view Bush as a leader they can trust, down from 56 percent in March. A thin majority of voters said they harbor doubts about his leadership.
Bush has refused to shoulder any blame himself, drawing criticism from some GOP officials who fear he may damage his image as a straight-shooting, buck-stops-here leader.
It's interesting to hear a Republican say nine Democrats beating up on Bush is a problem, since the CW seems to be that the Democrats should unify around one candidate as soon as possible.
Anyhow, it looks like the misLeader concept is getting traction. Here again is the MoveOn.Org button for contributions to get that ad on the air.
The controversial passage citing a British intelligence report "should have been taken out of the State of the Union," -Stephen] Hadley said. He said he was taking responsibility on behalf of the White House staff just as Tenet had done for the CIA.
Hadley is the top aide to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
"There were a number of people who could have raised a hand" to have the passage removed from the draft of Bush's Jan. 28 address, Hadley said. "And no one raised a hand."
And apparently one of those unraised hands was Hadley's boss, Condi.
Yawn. As Atrios has already pointed out Bush went over his speech "word by word and line by line". The buck stops where, again?
Posted by Lambert
Joe Klein in Time gives some insight:
The question[:] Did he take responsibility for the false claim in his State of the Union message that Iraqhad recently sought to buy uranium in Africa? ... The President — who seemed a mite tetchy, as he often does when things aren't going well — glowered: "I take the responsibility for making the decision...to put together a coalition to remove Saddam Hussein, because the intelligence...made a clear and compelling case [that Saddam] was a threat to security and peace."
We all heard it.
Right, but that wasn't the question, and one wonders why Bush didn't simply say, "Yep. My fault. Some hard-working guy at the National Security Council got a little overenthusiastic and stuck in that sentence. I didn't take it out. Won't do that again." End of story.
If that were the story, which it isn't. As Klein points out, the real story is Bush's character.
[T]he uranium story ... has ballast because it clarifies an aspect of George W. Bush's essential character — specifically, the problem he has with telling the truth. I am not saying Bush is a liar. Lying is witting: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." This is weirder than that. The President seems to believe that wishing will make it so — and he is so stupendously incurious that he rarely makes an effort to find the truth of the matter. He misleads not only the nation but himself. Every worst-case Saddam scenario just had to be true, as did every best-case post-Saddam scenario. Bush's talent for self-deception extends to domestic and economic policy. (thanks to alert reader pie)
OK, so send Bush a fruitcake—he's nuts, and getting nuttier.
But suppose I accept Klein's take: Bush lies to himself over and over again, and believes his lies when he tells them to me. Does that mean he isn't lying to me? I don't think so.
There I go lying to myself
Said I wasn’t gonna do it
Next thing you know, here I go again
Talked myself right into it
I got no one to blame except myself
I said I wasn’t gonna do it
Next thing you know here I go
Talk myself right into it
Talk myself, talk myself right into it
Talk myself, talk myself, talk myself right into it
Said I wasn’t gonna do it
Here I go again baby
One or two lies is a problem. But Bush doesn't have a problem with lying; he has a pattern of lying. "Here I go again, baby"! On to Syria! On to Iran!
And Bush has "no one to blame except himself." He just can't accept it. And it's too late for him to apologize (Klein suggests "grovel"), since his lies have killed people. Poor George. No wonder he's hiding in Crawford.
UPDATE: This just in! Thanks to Klein's analysis and alert reader Ernest Tomlinson, we now know our President is not George Bush—our President is George Costanza, who famously said:
Posted by the farmer
Formulated worst case scenarios - cooked intelligence - privately funded special interest Right Wing think tanks. Etc.... The following article by Jason Vest, which originally appeared in the Feb. 2001 issue of the American Prospect, sheds light on Rumsfeld and company's adventures down through the years.
"To consolidate that control, Rumsfeld is currently pushing to create an intelligence czar at the Pentagon whose power and influence would rival that of the CIA director's." See: The Pentagon Muzzles the CIA, by Robert Dreyfuss, American Prospect, Dec. 16, 2002
Jason Vest, writing for the American Prospect in 2001 - See: Darth Rumsfeld by Jason Vest, Feb.26.2001.
In 1995 the CIA reported in a national intelligence estimate that a nuclear missile threat from a new foreign power was at least 15 years away. At this point, Rumsfeld acolyte Frank Gaffney, Jr., of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), mounted a campaign against the CIA's estimates; with the aid of right-wing congressional Republicans, he successfully pushed for the establishment of an outside group to provide an alternative assessment to the CIA's--in effect, another Team B.
This time, however, the team--headed by ex-CIA Director Robert Gates--essentially concurred with the national intelligence estimate. So Gaffney prevailed upon the minions of Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich for yet another assessment. Thus the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States was born, with Donald Rumsfeld as chair. Widely characterized as "bipartisan in its conclusions," the final Rumsfeld commission report was, for all intents and purposes, a Team B redux: The CIA, the report concluded, was wrong, and the very real threat of ICBM attack from a "rogue state" was at most five, not 15, years off. Such an event, said the report, could occur with "little or no warning."
The Rumsfeld Report: Jason Vest continued......
The CPD experts, who by this point had come to be known as "Team B," crafted an assessment that, as American University national security expert Anne Hessing Cahn put it, "everywhere saw the worst case," was rife with what we now know was rampant overestimation of Soviet military capability, and led to dire predictions. It's hard to know which is more surprising: that Team B's exaggerated findings were accepted then, or that reporters still accept them today.
[...]
Team B at least looked at data before trying "to discover new and more alarming facts and place the most pessimistic interpretation on them," says Pike. "The Rumsfeld Report basically says, 'We have no interest in examining what's probably going to happen in these other countries.' Rather than basing policy on intelligence estimates of what will probably happen politically and economically and what the bad guys really want, it's basing policy on that which is not physically impossible. This is really an extraordinary epistemological conceit, which is applied to no other realm of national policy, and if manifest in a single human being would be diagnosed as paranoid."
Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) and "Team B": "In 1951 the CPD launched a three-month scare campaign over the NBC network. Every Sunday night thereafter the group used the Mutual Broadcasting System to talk to the nation about the "present danger" and the need to take action. [...] The revitalization of the CPD grew out of an independent group called Team B. Team B was authorized in 1976 by President Gerald Ford and organized by then-CIA chief, George Bush. The purpose of Team B was to develop an independent judgment of Soviet capabilities and intentions. Team B was headed by Richard Pipes and included Paul Nitze, Foy Kohler, William Van Cleave, Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham (ret. ), Thomas Wolf of RAND Corp and Gen. John Vogt, Jr. (ret. ). Also a part of Team B were five officials still active in government: Maj. Gen. George Keegan, Brig. Gen. Jasper Welch, Paul D. Wolfowitz of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and Seymour Weiss of the State Department."
"Funding: The start-up grant for CPD-II came from David Packard of Hewlett-Packard. (6) In 1984, the $300,000 budget came from 1,100 contributors, with a limit of $10,000 per year per source. (1) Grants given by Richard Scaife (Gulf Oil) from the Carthage Fdn, the Sarah Scaife Fdn and the Trust of the Grandchildren of Sarah Mellon Scaife to CPD between 1973 and 1981 total $300,000."
Bush-41 years, Rumsfeld and the CFW Jason Vest, continues......
During the Bush years, Rumsfeld contented himself with being chairman of the Committee for the Free World (CFW), a repository of right-wing defense hawks. In addition to alerting the nation to the continued red menace in Central America, CFW also sold numerous publications extolling the virtuous brilliance of Reagan's Star Wars program, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Rumsfeld also sat on the board of fellow CPD member Leo Cherne's International Rescue Committee, the antileftist human rights organization effusive in its support of right-wing regimes all over the world. And Rumsfeld joined up with William Bennett's Empower America.
Committee for the Free World (CFW): "Principals: Officers in 1989 are: Donald H. Rumsfeld, chairman; Midge Decter, exec dir; Neal Kozodoy, sec; Robert B. Glynn, tres. Background: The Committee for the Free World (CFW) was founded in 1981 by Midge Decter who is the executive director. CFW has tax- exempt status under 501(c)(3) and began with funding of $125,000 from individuals and ultra-conservative foundations. Among the original funders were three of the major right-wing foundations: Scaife, John M. Olin, and Smith Richardson."
Rumsfeld in 1998: Jason Vest on Rumsfelds "ballistic missle panel"........
During his confirmation hearings and in the press, there has been hardly any mention of Rumsfeld's participation in a slew of far-right organizations going back to the 1970s. Nor has there been any real acknowledgment that the watershed ballistic missile panel he headed in 1998 was not the levelheaded "bipartisan" effort it claimed to be but, rather, a distressing flashback to one of the most outrageous intelligence manipulations of the Cold War. That the supposedly "moderate" chairman of this commission had an egregious conflict of interest has also escaped attention.
Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, said today that the question of new evidence versus old was beside the point. "The question of what is new after 1998 is not an interesting question," she said. "There is a body of evidence since 1991. You have to look at that body of evidence and say what does this require the United States to do? Then you are compelled to act.
[...]
Richard Kerr, who headed a four-member team of retired C.I.A. officials that reviewed prewar intelligence about Iraq, said analysts at the C.I.A. and other agencies were forced to rely heavily on evidence that was five years old at least. Intelligence analysts drew heavily "on a base of hard evidence growing out of the lead-up to the first war, the first war itself and then the inspections process," Mr. Kerr said. "We had a rich base of information," he said, and, after the inspectors left, "we drew on that earlier base." "There were pieces of new information, but not a lot of hard information, and so the products that dealt with W.M.D. were based heavily on analysis drawn out of that earlier period," Mr. Kerr said, using the shorthand for weapons of mass destruction.
Additional - related link: "As a rule, both the joint Chiefs of Staff and the Central Intelligence Agency's leadership prefer that Congress stay out of their affairs. Indeed, an ideal Congress for many denizens of this realm would be one that simply holds open the cash spigots while Langley and the Pentagon set their own agendas. That makes it particularly alarming to see that as the Bush administration lays its plans for Iraq, career military and intelligence officers are increasingly -- and desperately -- looking to Congress to help stave off what they fear will be a disaster." Help from the Hill - Military insiders want some to derail Bush's plans for Iraq. by Jason Vest, American Prospect, Aug. 05, 2002.
Posted by Lambert
The Republicans have a really great idea. No, really—
Why should prescription drugs cost up to four times more in the U.S. than overseas?" says [Republican] Congressman Pete Hoekstra. ...
Hoekstra says the U.S. House is considering a bill that would allow pharmacies to import FDA approved prescription drugs at prices that are currently only available to individuals. ...
Gosh. Good idea, but sort of ... small.
Ever think the reason we pay four times more is that those other countries we're importing from have some form of universal health coverage (like Canada's single payer), and as a result the buyer has some clout with Big Pharma? And pays fair prices as a result?
Why put a bandaid on the cancer? Why not just introduce universal health coverage in the United States? The Democrats want to.
Keep this in mind as we head toward 2004. (Weird to think of fear and being downcast making us vulnerable to illness, and then the pills we buy helping Big Pharma, major Republican contributor... One hand truly does wash the other, doesn't it?)
So Charles Dickens walks into a bar, and says "I'll have a martini!" And the bartender says, "Olive or twist?"
Posted by Lambert
You remember the fruitcake episode from last Friday (back)—
The one where Republicans say1 they called the cops on a 71-year-old Democrat—right on Capital Hill—because he called one of them a "fruitcake"? And they felt they were in imminent danger?
Maybe there'll be some fallout. Janet Hook and Richard Simon of the LA Times write:
The flap spilled onto the House floor when Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) offered a measure to reproach [Republican Ways and Means Chair Bill] Thomas and invalidate the committee approval of the pension bill [during which the episode occurred]. Her measure was rejected on a party-line vote.
House Democrats, meeting behind closed doors Monday, considered calling for an investigation. And Pelosi promised "disruptive" tactics to tie up the House all week.
"This will be a week from hell for the Republicans," Pelosi said.
Those boots are made for walkin', Nancy...
NOTE: 1 "Say" because this pathetic story is actually a cover story for the far worse procedural violations that were the real cause of the flare-up. That's what Pelosi's measure would have condemned.
UPDATE: I just added two more alert readers to the Fruitcake Rebellion Roll of Honor (back).
Posted by Lambert
From a Letter to the Editor by Cornelia Strawser in WaPo:
Thanks for John Berry's July 11 Business story, "Number Crunchers vs. Recession," which pointed out that the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has added a new indicator -- monthly real gross domestic product -- and assigned greater weight to GDP estimates in determining when the end of the recession may be reached.
When I looked up the latest NBER analysis and compared it with the one issued two months earlier, I found that the committee had downgraded its emphasis on employment statistics even more than Mr. Berry's story indicated.
In April the committee wrote: "Economy-wide employment and real personal income are the most important monthly indicators . . . employment is probably the single most reliable indicator."
But in July the statement ranked employment behind income. The committee's membership is the same as it was in April, so it appears that it has experienced a remarkable paradigm shift in its analytical processes.
Perhaps these seven economists have convinced themselves that a jobless recovery can be called a recovery, but I doubt that they will be able to convince America's workers and job-seekers.
Well, to call this a recovery is "techically accurate," right Cornelia?
Posted by Lambert
Don Fisher from the Crawford, TX Lone Star Iconoclast (Central Texas edition) writes the following parable. He went to a Future Farmers of American fair where pigs were being judged for a competition:
A young man was helping the judges load the animals onto the scales.
The pig they were weighing belonged to his buddy, and everyone was pretty sure this one was not going to make the weight.
If the animal didn’t weigh enough, it would not be allowed to show.
The judges couldn’t really see this kid.
He was on the opposite side of the scales.
All he had to do was put a toe of his boot on the edge of the scale, and the pig would show.
As the judges were busy moving the weights along the balance bar, I saw him surreptitiously lift his left foot. He held it suspended there for half a second, then put it back on the ground.
The pig didn’t pass.
But that kid did.
The Bush gang wouldn't pass. They'd put a foot on the scales, alright—right out in the open and dare you to call them on it.
Posted by Leah
Let's hope so. Because four people died in this raid.
A firefight erupted when U.S. forces surrounded the home of a cousin of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, killing four people. A senior U.S. official in Iraq (news - web sites) said Saddam's sons Odai and Qusai were believed to be among the dead.
But the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said investigators were "awaiting postive DNA testing" to confirm the identities.
An official with the U.S. civilian administration running Iraq said "something big has just happened" but would provide no futher information.
Members of the 101st Airborne Division had surrounded the house, which belongs to a cousin of Saddam — a key tribal leader in the region — when the fighting broke out in Mosul, 280 miles north of Baghdad.
The stone, columned house was left charred and smoldering, its high facade riddled with gaping holes from bullets and heavy weaponry. Kiowa helicopters roamed the sky.
Some local residents appeared to have been caught in the crossfire. It was not known how many people were injured, but several were taken to a hospital.
In Washington, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld briefed President Bush (news - web sites) about the raid in an Oval Office meeting Tuesday morning, a senior administration official said.
Well, I can't but think that's relatively good news.
Posted by Leah
Munguza, an organizer for the Save AmeriCorps Coalition, in the 'don't miss' comments thread to my original post, urges us to visit their website, www.saveamericorps.org, because the fight isn't over yet.
....we need every supporter to sign the Save AmeriCorps petition and or call members of the House (especially folks in NY, OH, GA and FL).
We've garnered broad, bipartisan support for full AmeriCorps funding: 43 governors, 147 mayors, 228 Congressmen, 186 college & university presidents, 1,180 community organizations and a majority of the US Senate. Over 250 private sector leaders took out full page ads on our behalf in the NYT, Financial Times and Roll Call.
This is far broader support than for repealing the Estate Tax or Bush's abortion Gag Rule.
A tiny number of Right-Wing ideologues are blocking this, and their motivation is that AmeriCorps is successful, popular and 100% to the credit of Bill Clinton & the Democrats.
Your help is deeply appreciated...
I was going to put up a post today about HeadStart, which also needs our help. But there's time for that. Let's concentrate on getting this one past those self-appointed masters of the universe, sometimes called "House leaders."
And, by the way, don't we need to get that broader coalition going against repeal of the estate tax and the reinstitution of a global gag order on informing women what their health options are?
Aside from the violence of the guerrillas, the U.S. occupying forces are also under pressure from many ordinary Iraqis to restore basic services damaged by U.N. sanctions and the war and to let them resume control of their own country.
The 25-member Governing Council, appointed by the U.S. authority in Baghdad nine days ago, has yet to make much of a mark, however, for all its presence at the United Nations.
Made up of representatives of Iraq's various and often fractious religious and ethnic communities, it has yet to choose a leader or determine the structure of power within the Council, let alone appoint ministers to help run the country.
Stung by media reports of squabbling over the leadership, the Council issued a statement on Tuesday saying it had not yet even "discussed this issue at all." On their appointment, several members said picking a leader was their top priority.
It is not clear what their meetings have been devoted to.
In New York, Security Council diplomats said the delegation from Baghdad had been arguing over which of them was to address the chamber.
The letters are pouring in like a water main break -- fast and, yes, furious. From Alabama: "We want to know the truth!" From Arizona: "If there's nothing to hide, what's the harm in a bipartisan inquiry?" From Mississippi: "We must get to the truth -- whatever it is!"
About 400,000 people from every state have contacted members of Congress in the past three weeks as part of a MoveOn.org petition that asks Congress to investigate the controversial claims that led to the war on Iraq, with more than 50,000 people signing on to the liberal activist Web site in the past five days alone.
"It seems more and more people who supported the war are signing on," said Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org's campaigns director. "They're angry. People who in the past couple of weeks before the war decided to support it are swinging back."
Win Without War and MoveOn.org are already calling a 30-second ad they co-sponsored, which aired over the past week in the Washington and New York area cable markets, an unqualified hit. The ad, which labels Bush a "misleader," brought in thousands of people to the MoveOn.org Web site to sign the petition. The coalition said it will place ads in at least 10 other cities over the next two weeks.
Waxman's bill [for a nonpartisan, independent commission on the intelligence questions] doubled its co-sponsors in the week after the ad aired, from 23 to nearly 50, said his chief of staff, Phil Schiliro. "And we expect quite a few more directly as a result of the petition," he added.
Posted by Atrios
It´s really starting to look like the BBC sexy dossier report is going to come down to whether or not the BBC journalist erred in calling Kelly a "senior intelligence official" instead of simply an "intelligence official."
Posted by Leah
In Janruary 2002, President Bush announced a new Freedom Corps initiative, his renaming of the Clinton Administration AmeriCorp program, during his State of the Union address.
In February of this year, the President called for an increase in funding for the program to allow for an increase in the number of volunteers.
Posted by Atrios
This is just the occasional reminder that the reason we need to find WMDs in Iraq, if they exist, isn't simply to help re-elect George Bush. It's also because if they really exist, and we don't know where they are, then we have a wee bit of a problem on our hands. That's why we went to war in the first place, remember_
I'd find the notion that they really believed Iraq was a threat more plausible if all discussions of the weapons weren't simply about ass covering.
Posted by Atrios
I haven´t been following UK politics as much as I used to, but I´m still a bit puzzled about the fact that the Tories don´t even seem to be trying to take advantage of Blair´s problems. Despite their basic support for the Iraq war there still has to be some position they can take which lets them pile on Tony.
9/11 report spin cycle begins, but where will it end?
Posted by Lambert
The (presumably official) leaks are beginning, and it looks like the initial spin is this: "Blame the FBI."
I don't see how that can be, though. AQ was and is a transnational, decentralized, project-driven network of cells.
The FBI, as a domestic intelligence agency, couldn't possibly be on the front lines against such an organization. The fact that an FBI informant had two of the hijackers as tenants is a nice narrative, which is (presumably) why it's being fed to the press, but all that it means is that penetrating the Arab community isn't equal to penetrating AQ.
Spiky has a more sophisticated variant of "Blame the FBI": an associate of one of the hijackers "may have been" a Saudi agent.
So look for a lot of fingerpointing at the FBI, and a lot of controversy about the 28 pages about the Saudis deleted from the report.
Diversionary tactics.
The one place where all the threads tie together—domestic and foreign, FBI and Saudi— is the Bush White House.
If the report doesn't show what Bush was briefed on, it's a whitewash.
I've got my popcorn already. In the immortal words of Marlon Brando, "Pass the butter."
And while we're on the subject of patriotism, let's talk about the affair of Joseph Wilson's wife. Mr. Wilson is the former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the C.I.A. to investigate reports of attempted Iraqi uranium purchases and who recently went public with his findings. Since then administration allies have sought to discredit him — it's unpleasant stuff. But here's the kicker: both the columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine say that administration officials told them that they believed that Mr. Wilson had been chosen through the influence of his wife, whom they identified as a C.I.A. operative.
Think about that: if their characterization of Mr. Wilson's wife is true (he refuses to confirm or deny it), Bush administration officials have exposed the identity of a covert operative. That happens to be a criminal act; it's also definitely unpatriotic.
Well, well, well ... Any lawyers among us who can cite the relevant statute?
UPDATE: Alert reader Bill directs us to David Corn's fine article in The Nation. Corn says the statute is the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.
NOTE: Thanks to Jennifer for "GOPranos." I've been hoarding it for awhile. Corn concludes: "With this gang, politics trumps national security." "Gang" being the operative word.
Posted by Lambert
Spiky and Evan Thomas in Newsweek:
“Within two hours [we] figured out [the Niger yellowcake documents] were forgeries,” one IAEA official told Newsweek. How did they do it? “Google,” said the official. The IAEA ran the name of the Niger foreign minister through the Internet search engine and discovered that he was not in office at the time the document was signed.
Posted by Lambert
Andrea Mitchell (see Leah earlier) reports:
[Ambassador Joseph] Wilson says his family is the subject of a smear campaign. Wilson tells NBC News the White House deliberately leaked his wife’s identity as a covert CIA operative, damaging her future career and compromising past missions after he criticized the administration on “Meet the Press” and in the New York Times.
He told me, “It’s a shot across the bow to those who might step forward, those unnamed analysts who said they were pressured by the White House for example would think twice about having their own families names being dragged through this particular mud.”
Posted by Lambert
Brian Faler writes for WaPo: "The major debates through the 2004 presidential race are regarding who to run and how to run -- and not really whether to run," concluded Ben Manski, one of the Green Party's five national co-chairmen.
"I do not need to explain why I say things. — That's the interesting thing about being the President. — Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
Of course, this is YABL, since the Constitution mandates that the President report to it, as in in the SOTU.
The quote is given new currency by today's commentary Naked Power, Arbitrary Rule in the LA Times, by law Professor Jonathon Turley. He notes that Bush:
has repeatedly acted like an American Caesar, sending some accused terrorists to federal court while others are sent for tribunal justice. In the case of [the two British accused], Bush will allow them a fair trial in Britain as a gift to a friend in political need while he arbitrarily denies such trials to others.
The message is clear and simple: Bush alone will decide the meaning and the means of justice.
Posted by Leah
This poll, brought to us attention by reader, Alex, is right on the main page; they want to know if we think that President Bush is doing a good job. Right now, yes is at 51%.
Go, and then scrowl down, it's at the bottom of the page on the right.
If you have a dog with pretty good manners, canine visits do wonders for people isolated by injury and illness. Be sure to check on what the policy is at the particular facility you may have an interest in visiting.
What Does A Guy Gotta Do To Be An Imminent Threat?
Posted by Leah
No one can accuse Kim Jong Il of not trying.
American and Asian officials with access to the latest intelligence on North Korea (news - web sites) say strong evidence has emerged in recent weeks that the country has built a second, secret plant for producing weapons-grade plutonium, complicating both the diplomatic strategy for ending the program and the military options if that diplomacy fails.
The discovery of the new evidence, which one senior administration official cautioned was "very worrisome, but still not conclusive," came just as North Korea declared to the United States 11 days ago that it had completed reprocessing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, enough to make a half dozen or so nuclear weapons.
(edit)
American officials have long suspected that North Korea would try to build a second plant to protect itself against a pre-emptive strike by the United States. The United States even demanded an inspection of one underground site five years ago, only to find it empty, but this is the first time evidence has emerged that a second plant may be in operation.
"This takes a very hard problem and makes it infinitely more complicated," said one Asian official who has been briefed on the American intelligence. "How can you verify that they have stopped a program like this if you don't know where everything is?"
(edit)
If it turns out that the current evidence is being properly interpreted, and a second plutonium plant also exists, President Bush (news - web sites) may not even have the option that President Bill Clinton (news - web sites) briefly considered in 1994: using a military strike or sabotage to prevent North Korea from producing significant amounts of weapons-grade material. Still, Mr. Bush has vowed that he "will not tolerate" a nuclear North Korea.
(edit)
That issue has also put the White House at odds with George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, who knows that the White House is going to extraordinary lengths to avoid calling the nuclear confrontation with North Korea a crisis. So far, White House officials have been told only informally of the new evidence and have not been fully briefed about its potential implications, administration officials say.
But each week the White House's effort to sound low-key is being undercut by both North Korea's aggressive statements and new evidence that the country is now driving toward production. On Friday, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, who angered the White House by questioning its evidence about Iraq, expressed grave concerns about North Korea.
The situation in North Korea "is currently the most immediate and most serious threat to the nuclear nonproliferation regime," he said from his headquarters in Vienna. It is not clear if he was aware of the newest evidence when he spoke.
What does the President have in mind? "Tear down those nuclear facilities, Mr. Il."
The South Koreans have doubts about that second facility; they're also worried about the impact on their important tourist trade.
And North Korea is ready to deal; non-nuclear for non-aggression. Not enirely unreasonable a position.
This is not about how horrifyingly awful is Kim Jong Il's regime. North Korea is a nightmare, most of all for its own citizens, for the rest of Asia, and for the rest of the world. It will be no less a nightmare with a nuclear capacity.
Here's a not bad BBC Q&A about what the crises is about.
What difference does the US see between North Korea and Iraq?
(edit)
Perhaps more importantly, North Korea is believed to have the bomb, while Iraq did not. The view in the Bush administration is that action has to be taken before a country gets a nuclear capability. With North Korea it is just too late, so Washington has to manage the consequences as best it can.
That, of course, is nonsense. But that's the stand the President took for himself and he's going to stick to it.
I suspect that what they have in mind is to let Korea go nuclear, and then warn them they'll blockade, and or/ attack any Korean ship that has nuclear material on it, and claim we are safe because of our own nuclear deterence. And I suspect they think they can get away with what should be considered a foreign policy and nuclear prolifferation disaster, because they really think they can blame it all on Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and the Agreed Framework.
Posted by Leah
Check out this wonderful riff by Jeanne d'Arc at Body & Soul on the David Sanger et al NYTimes article I posted on here.
Of course, in order to accept the NYT's interpretation, you'd have to believe that the soulution to a lack of information is to attack the country you don't know much about. A simpler answer would be that you need more information. The kind that, say, U.N. weapons inspectors might have supplied.
And don't miss her thoughts on the tragic riddle of Liberia.
Wise Words Do Oft Themselves In Mouths Of Fool Belie*
Posted by Leah
Courtesy of reader Hobson, here are the President's remarks at Saturday's Houston fundraiser, sent with the caution not to read it on a full stomach.
But do read it. It's the boilerplate rhetoric we're going to be dealing with through-out the coming Presidential campaign.
In the last two-and-a-half years, our nation has acted decisively to confront great challenges. I came to this office to solve problems, not to pass them on to future Presidents and future generations. (Applause.) I came to seize opportunities, instead of letting them slip away. We are meeting the tests of our time. (Applause.)
Terrorists declared war on the United States of America, and war is what they got. We have captured or killed many key leaders of al Qaeda, and the rest of them know we're on their trail. In Afghanistan and in Iraq, we gave ultimatums to terror regimes. Those regimes chose defiance, and those regimes are no more. (Applause.)
Fifty million people in those two countries once lived under tyranny; today, they live in freedom. (Applause
And then there are the boilerplate lies:
Two-and-a-half years ago, our military was not receiving the resources it needed, and morale was beginning to suffer. We increased the defense budget to prepare for the threats of a new era. And today, no one in the world can question the skill, and the strength, and the spirit of the United States military. (Applause.)
Two-and-a-half years ago, we inherited an economy in recession. And then the attacks on our country, and scandals in corporate America, and war affected the people's confidence. But we acted. We passed tough new laws to hold corporate criminals to account. And to get the economy going again, we have twice led the United States Congress to pass historic tax relief for the American people. (Applause.)
We know that when Americans have more take-home pay to spend, to save, or to invest, the whole economy grows, and people are more likely to find a job. We understand whose money we spend in Washington, D.C. It is not the government's money. It is the people's money. (Applause.)
Who really thinks that the 5% of Americans who got the 60 or 70% of the tax cut refer to their income as "take-home pay?
The speech offers a pretty good list from which Democrats can work, of the faux accomplishments this President will claim, expressed in that overly generalized, often empty, often unfactual rhetoric that continues to serve him all too well. We need to figure out real fast how to deconstruct it.
Hobson expresses some hope that, given the measured-in-seconds American attention span we're told is the result of so much tv, video, and playstation viewing, at some point, surely, it will click in and people will start booing when the President trots out those threadbare cliches.
One can always hope.
**Don't look it up; it's not Shakespeare. It's a line from a classic Shakespearean sendup by that quartet of wunderkind, Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Dudley Moore in the incomparable "Beyond The Fringe." (I was a wee lass when I heard the record, but it stayed with me)
Posted by Leah
Finally, a journalist gets the message from this White House.
Atrios is right, Mitchell's outburst is multileveled pathetic. Good Lord, what took you so long?
To that observation, l'd like to add the famous exhortation of EM Forester in "Howard's End," "Only Connect." Or, get over yourself and do something.
This ain't just happening to you, honey. How 'bout noticing what's happening to the careers of those officers commanding the kids who spoke to ABC, or what happened to the gay, Canadian reporter who did his job, or what happened to Amb Joe Wilson, and maybe to his wife.
I'm glad Mitchell's outraged. She should be. And good for her for circulating an email telling other reporters what happened.
Take the next step Ms. Mitchell; do what you do best; do some reporting. (And let's remember just how good she was when she took over for Russert several weeks ago on MTP.) There's a story here about the very thin skin in which this White House has wrapped itself, and its preternatural impulse to be vindictive. This President ran as a "uniter, not a divider." How true or untrue has that turned out to be?
And how about us taking the next step?
Send an email to her attention, praise her MTP appearance, her going public on her treatment from the White House, and ask her to do a story about any of the topics mentioned above, with special emphasis on getting to the bottom of the Joseph and Valerie Wilson story.
Send copies to Nightly@NBC.com, HARDBALL@MSNBC.com, and MTP@NBC.com. You can find other contact information here.
Memphis, Tenn.: The Washington Post reported that the White House tipped off Web writer Matt Drudge to discredit an ABC journalist as Canadian and gay. The reporter had quoted soldiers in Iraq who had bad things to say about the administration. What effect, if any, is this attack having on reporters? Is there any intimidation, or is the White House's enemies list-like maneuver only riling up journalists into even more of a combat mode?
Howard Kurtz: I don't think reporters feel particularly intimidated, but rather amazed that a White House official would react to a negative news report by going after the journalist in so personal a fashion. A White House official told me this is not the way they do business and that the leaker would be fired if they could figure out who it was. It's one thing to go after a reporter on the basis of the content of stories; that's fair game. But to try to trash someone because he is a) openly gay, and b) Canadian (gasp) is a pretty low blow.
Two of the fundamental truths of military science, which all soldiers learn during their first days in the training barracks, are that shit always rolls downhill and stink always wafts its way to the top. Operations that are planned by the division staff are executed by a young buck sergeant leading a squad of even younger infantrymen, and when something goes wrong with the plan the general hears about it. Sometimes heads roll. The ideological war hawks of this administration fail to understand either of these principles, which is why the troops are sounding off.
Some people dismiss these complaints as typical of disgruntled privates bellyaching about the chow and the mail. Others, especially on the far-right, are outraged: “How dare they not support the President?” But these aren’t a bunch of privates pitching a bitch about a latrine detail; the guys sounding off are mid-level officers and senior NCOs. Soldiers with experience and training who wear combat patches on their right shoulders, veterans of Gulf War I, Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Macedonia, Afghanistan and Kosovo.
Those soldiers know what they’re talking about. They’ve seen peacekeeping operations done right, in Bosnia, Haiti and Kosovo. And they’ve seen them done wrong in Somalia and Afghanistan. One of the most common complaints we keep hearing from the troops is that they’re not trained, staffed or configured for peacekeeping operations.
The ideologues who planned this operation have always hated the idea of peacekeeping. During the 2000 Presidential campaign Condi Rice articulated the contempt that hard-right conservatives felt toward peacekeeping by saying, “We don’t need to have the 82d Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten.” In fact, one of the Bushies first moves in the Defense Department was to abolish the Army War College’s Peacekeeping Institute. This agency analyzed past peace operations, including NGO participation and military-civilian agency interaction, and passed the results on to the hundreds of American military officers who attended its seminars and courses. Based on this agency’s input, the military services developed their own unique peacekeeping doctrine, incorporating the lessons learned from past operations. But hey, we’re the greatest power on earth, said the neo-conservatives. We don’t need no stinking Peacekeeping Institute.
Professional soldiers are trained to sound off when something is going wrong. Civilians often have the wrong impression that soldiers smartly salute every order saying, “Yes sir, three bags full!” I heard a first sergeant in Bosnia sounding off to our brigade commander one day, complaining after the brigade commander issued a complicated order to deal with an individual problem: “One guy shits his pants, and now the whole goddam brigade’s gotta wear a diaper?” That colonel listened to that first sergeant, because he knew that the NCO would have to implement his order. Army leadership schools at all levels emphasize the importance of dissent in the decision-making process. What the outraged conservatives fail to understand is that these professional soldiers are supporting the chain-of-command. The problem is that the commander-in-chief and his neo-conservative advisors can't smell the stink.
Good commanders encourage dissent and bad commanders surround themselves with yes-men. Any organization that relies on yes-men is bound to fail because nobody will point out folly. Ideologues, yes-men by nature, always fail because they are unable to recognize folly, let alone voice objection. The neo-conservative ideologues who planned this Operation Iraqi Freedom systematically excluded dissent, shouted down critics and accused questioners of treason. In the Army, this kind of organizational behavior is called a circle jerk.
The planning of Operation Iraqi Freedom was a classic circle jerk. Led by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle, the ideologues created a climate that excluded input even from the professional warfighters. When General Shinseki rained on their war dance by suggesting that post-war operations could require up to 150,000 troops for ten years, he was ridiculed by the ideologues. Instead, the ideologues believed and bought the estimates of Ahmed Chalibi and his exile buddies at the Iraqi National Congress who told them a tale they wanted to hear. When General Shinseki retired, he warned policy makers to “beware the twelve division strategy for a ten division Army.” Of course neither Rumsfeld nor any of ideologues heard that warning; no representative from the Office of the Secretary of Defense attended Shinseki’s retirement ceremony, apparently just to spite the unaptriotic General who disagreed.
The neo-conservative circle jerk continues in full frenzy. General Abizaid administered a well-placed bitch slap to the war hawks by stating unequivocally that the US now faces classic guerrilla warfare in Iraq, something about which they have been in denial about for quite some time. But when Wolfowitz arrived in Baghdad for his classified, super-secure Magical Mystery Tour of Iraq, he announced, “I look forward to seeing firsthand evidence of what it means for the Iraqi people to be liberated from decades of brutal repression.” He's looking for a few good ass-kissers. Meanwhile, when Bremer was asked if he had a strategy to stabilize the country, he whined "We've got a strategy. It's just damned hard to implement it." And Doug Feith dismisses criticism of his own post-war planning assumptions as “simplistic.” Simple denial. Rather than admit the failure of the neo-conservative ideology of reverse domino-theory and the spontaneous bloom of a rapturous state of free-market democracy, Wolfowitz and Bremer will ignore the professionals, shut down dissent, and try to make reality conform to ideology.
Still, the neo-conservatives are determined to learn from their mistakes. "We're going to get better over time," promised Lawrence Di Rita, assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and late of the Heritage Foundation. "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." Exactly how the neo-conservatives plan to “get better” is almost as worrisome as the notion that they’ll “do it more often.” Given their consistent pattern of the ideological circle jerk, “getting better” means improved spin control and fixing the leaks before the next circle jerk.
All this peacekeeping might be new stuff for the administration’s ideological war hawks, but it’s old hat for the professionals. General Abizaid criticized the officers and NCOs who sounded off to the press, but he also said discipline is a matter for local commanders. A few officers will get hammered on their efficiency reports, crusty sergeants-major will lay down the law to the NCOs that they better not sound off in public, and the bitching will cease. Remember, these guys are professionals. They know shit rolls downhill.
Posted by Lambert
Janet Hook of the LA Times writes that Republicans "want to establish political dominion for years to come." Read how. Good background and detail here.
''Even though we can do many things, we're not gods,'' Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, told members of the city council over bread and tea at the office of the mayor, Ghanim al Basso.
"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq," said Wolfowitz, who is touring the country to meet U.S. troops and Iraqi officials.
Posted by Lambert
The nice thing about AP is that when AP gets it, the story goes out everywhere. Huge papers, small-town papers, aggregators, the world.
The White House defense of President Bush's now-disavowed claim that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa has evolved over the last two weeks: blame others, stonewall, bury questions in irrelevant information and, above all, hope it will go away.
So far, none has worked.
In question: 16 words in Bush's Jan. 28 State of the Union speech: ''The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''
At issue: the credibility of the president's allegation ...
Posted by Lambert
Republican Senator Hagel opens daylight between himself and administration. (The intelligence flap "is bigger, wider, deeper than just about one person." Who knew?)
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 Slacktivist has a good post up about the increasing use of unnamed sources by journalists. Look, there should be a rather simple rule here - administration officials should not be allowed to "anonymously" put out pro-administration spin. In these situations, the sources only wish to maintain their anonymity in order to preserve their credibility. This lets them get away with more shit-spewing than they otherwise would if they were "on the record."
Journalists let them do this to maintain their access, and so we get a situation in which reporters simply become stenographers (are you listening, Sue?) for top administration officials, and to maintain their quality access to such golden quotes as "top officials say that Bush is bold and determined, and also bold." They may as well just re-type the White House press releases.
And, as I keep repeating, if sources lie to journalists then they are no longer under any obligation to protect them. In fact, they are then obligated to inform their readers that they were lied to and by whom.
Even Robert Novak copped to using Robert Hanssen as a source, although he didn´t go into nearly enough detail about that situation.
Posted by Atrios
The Washington Post actually comes out pretty strongly against the decision by Judge Sentelle and the gang to deny the Clintons reimbursement for their legal costs.
Posted by Atrios
That´s my fundraising goal for the DNC. All I need is about one per day. Give a little, or give a lot. If you can, sign up for the monthly sustainer donation.
Posted by Atrios
The buck has to stop somewhere. Can´t we start acknowledging that serial liar Condi Rice is not only dishonest but utterly incompetent? This is the kind of incompetence which can lead to thousands of deaths. Haven´t we known this since her absurd remarks and prevarications about the events leading up to 9/11? Can´t anyone in this administration be held responsible for anything that happens under their watch?
Posted by Atrios
While at Casa Kleiman, I see that the Bush administration has decided to end the military careers of the officers in charge of the soldiers who mouthed off to the press. I agree with Mark´s earlier post that the law forbidding the troops from criticizing their civilian commanders is a Good Thing even if Republicans and the media never seemed to care back when the Clenis was the commander in chief.
But, there´s one part missing here. The issue isn´t simply that back during those golden years of peace and prosperity, if the military said nasty things about Clinton, the media reported it and the Republicans advertised it gleefully - the issue is what would have happened if the civilian leaders had tried to punish the military. There would have been national outrage about the vindictive draft dodging Slick Willy going up against those fine men.
In this case, we have a mean little vindictive wartime deserter destroying the careers of men, currently getting their asses shot off in the desert fighting this unjustified war, because people under their command violated the law.
Posted by Atrios
Actually, it´s the Mark Kleiman assignment desk but I think this one´s really important. Mark´s been on the Joseph Wilson/Valerie Wilson story trying to tease at the various possibilities. But, at the end of the day there are things which are not known and only A Real Live Journalist Can Figure it out. The question is, did administration officials blow the cover of a CIA operative in an attempt to get back at the former ambassador?
As Mark points out, it´s quite possible that they didn´t. But, someone should be asking the questions.
Posted by Leah
And on Fox News yet. Tony Snows' Fox News Sunday. Here's the transcript.
During the roundtable, William Kristol was red-faced with anger that those sixteen words are being bandied about still. Pretty much lost his cool.
The program is repeated several times, I believe. Try and catch it. Kristol's assertions about Iraq and how honkey dorey it is, except for that little slice of Suniville, quite stunning. And what is with Juan Williams?He started out ready to challenge, and then whimped out. No transcript or I'd provide a link.
Posted by Lambert
The Bush Fiction index is way, way up! But we're still bullish!
This time with the Al Qaeda Iraq link. There's no evidence of it, and there was always little logic to it, write Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon in today's Times:
In making its case for war, the administration dismissed the arguments of experts who noted that despite some contacts between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden's followers over the years, there was no strong evidence of a substantive relationship. As members of the National Security Council staff from 1994 to 1999, we closely examined nearly a decade's worth of intelligence and we became convinced, like many of our colleagues in the intelligence community, that the religious radicals of Al Qaeda and the secularists of Baathist Iraq simply did not trust one another or share sufficiently compelling interests to work together.
But Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promised that the Bush administration had "bulletproof evidence" of a Qaeda-Iraq link, and Secretary of State Colin Powell made a similar case to the United Nations. Such claims now look as questionable as the allegation that Iraq was buying uranium in Niger.
This is not only a question of political accountability — it also bears on our nation's fundamental approach to security. United States policy changed dramatically when the Bush administration, lacking compelling evidence of an Iraq-Qaeda link, decided to base the Qaeda part of its pro-war argument on a hypothetical situation.
But this scenario is extremely unlikely. For years now the world's leading state sponsors of terrorism have had no confidence that they could carry out attacks against the United States undetected. That is why this brand of terrorism has been on the wane.
American policy must recognize this clear division between the old state-sponsored terrorism, which we have shown we can deter, and the new, religiously motivated attacks.
[T]he Bush administration should focus more on Al Qaeda, the only terrorist group that poses an imminent, undeterrable danger. New instability in Afghanistan and the continued spread of jihadist ideology in the Islamic world mean that the prospects for another 9/11 are growing.
It's bad that Bush lied (even though by this time we expect it). What's worse is that he took his eye of the ball with AQ. What's even worse than that is that he is creating the conditions for AQ, and other transnational, decentralized, jihadist organizations like it, to flourish.
Remind me again why the Republicans are so good on national security?
Posted by Leah
As quoted in today's NYTimes in an essential story about how "sketchy" was our knowledge through-out 2002 of what Saddam did or did not have in the way of WMD, or WMD programs:
"Intelligence doesn't necessarily mean something is true," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news briefing after major combat ended in Iraq. "You know, it's your best estimate of the situation. It doesn't mean it's a fact. I mean, that's not what intelligence is."
If Gen. Myers is right, why hasn't he explained it to the President, so he'll stop insisting that those WMD were there and will be found.
Have you noticed how difficult it can be to pindown this straight-talking regular American guy who is our President? His mastery of and comfort with empty language and profound tautological impulses protect him from getting caught saying anything too specific.
Something this article makes clear, the blurring of the distinction between Saddam bfore and after the Gulf War was part of the the way this war was sold through-out last year. Bait and switch indeed; Donald Rumsfeld has never said anything more true:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld offered a nuanced analysis to Congress last week about the role that American intelligence played as the administration built its case against Mr. Hussein.
"The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder," he said. "We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light, through the prism of our experience on Sept. 11."
What they saw, whether they realize it or not, was a way to move up a prime objective this administration had when it came to power - to depose Saddam, as a first step in remaking the Middle East, from which would follow, as night follows day, that most sacred of projects for this new American century, a Pax Americana, the very thing, let us not forget, that President John Kennedy explicitly rejected, by name, in his speech at American University announcing the first step for a nuclear weapons test ban.
Hard to believe that Condi Rice doesn't know what she's trying to distract from with this little bit of vamping.
Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, said today that the question of new evidence versus old was beside the point. "The question of what is new after 1998 is not an interesting question," she said. "There is a body of evidence since 1991. You have to look at that body of evidence and say what does this require the United States to do? Then you are compelled to act.
"To my mind, the most telling and eye-catching point in the judgment of five of the six intelligence agencies was that if left unchecked, Iraq would most likely have a nuclear weapon in this decade. The president of the United States could not afford to trust Saddam's motives or give him the benefit of the doubt," she said.
Well, who on earth was it who was telling anyone in that administration to trust Saddam Hussein's anything?
The article makes excruciatingly clear how difficult it was for either the Clinton or Bush administrations to get hard intelligence about Iraq or Saddam post the withdrawal of the inspectors in 1998.
Whatever Ms. Rice says now, here's Paul Wolfowitz in Janruary of this year, right before the SOTU:
"It is a case grounded in current intelligence," he told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, "current intelligence that comes not only from sophisticated overhead satellites and our ability to intercept communications, but from brave people who told us the truth at the risk of their lives. We have that; it is very convincing."
Who's kidding who, here? And who said this is an administration that speaks with one voice?
The article goes into stunning detail about how Secretary Powell put together his Janruary UN presentation. I'd be interested to know what any of you think about how he fits into this mess. Is Powell really the mature voice of reality, or is he a willing shill for the Bush doctrine, lending it a gravitas that even the SCLM can no longer pretend not to notice has gone awol on the President?
Posted by Leah
At long last, the SCLM is paying attention to a question that the fabled speed at which we we "won" our three week war with Iraq should have raised before now.
Molly Moore does quite a good job of at least starting the discussion.
The rapid disintegration was largely preordained, Iraqis said. The Iraqi military was composed of disparate and competing armies with no central command authority, top generals inexplicably ordered some units not to fight, and security precautions left officers unable to communicate or to coordinate battle plans, according to interviews with more than two dozen former general officers and other field commanders serving in the regular army and special military units.
By the time the war began, most of the Iraqi air force's fighter planes had been disassembled and hidden, many air defense units were under orders not to turn on their radars and artillery batteries were operating at 50 percent capability, military leaders said.
In the end, former president Saddam Hussein was undercut not only by the destruction wrought by the Americans but by an Iraqi regular military that felt little loyalty to a leader who paid his special armies better salaries and intimidated generals into lying about the dilapidated state of his armed forces, the senior officers said.
Though it is impossible to independently verify the accounts provided by the officers interviewed over the past week, the close parallels among experiences described by military leaders from field units, headquarters divisions and special forces assigned to a wide variety of locations buttressed their credibility. Only a handful of the officers requested that their names be withheld.
Every commander interviewed said that despite the anxiety of U.S. officials, no Iraqi military unit had been issued chemical or biological weapons.
And while U.S. military leaders had also feared a bloodbath in the streets of Baghdad, all the commanders said their men were not under orders to fall back into the capital and wage urban warfare. Rather, they said, their men deserted or retreated with the aim of self-preservation. Some commanders said they ordered their soldiers to defend their homes and families, but did not tell them to take offensive action against Americans.
Thank about the implications of just that quote from a much longer article.
Let's concede Saddam's hold on power wasn't dependent on the love of his subjects, though, when you're hoping for a regime change, hatred of the regime by those it rules ain't chopped liver.
Even if we concede that his hold on power was synonymous with his hold on the Baathist institutions of governance, including the use of arbitrary terror, the question a piece of reporting like this underscores is this; was there really no other way than a full scale invasion to loosen Saddam's grasp on power sufficiently to allow the Iraqi people to take the lead in getting rid of him?
Posted by Leah
David Kelley appears to have committed suicide.
A senior officer said a knife and a packet of painkillers had been found close to where his body was discovered in woodland near his home in Oxfordshire on Friday.
The BBC has officially confirmed that Kelley was its government source regarding the "sexing up" of intelligence information re: Iraq, leading up to war.
BBC director of news Richard Sambrook broke the news after speaking to the family of the Iraq weapons expert who was found dead on Friday.
He said the corporation believed it correctly interpreted and reported the information obtained from Dr Kelly during interviews.
Mr Sambrook said the BBC had, until now, owed Dr Kelly a duty of confidentiality and was "profoundly sorry" that his involvement as the source for the reports had ended in tragedy.
What a mess.
Kelley's M.P. blames the BBC for causing the death. Glenda Jackson, a Labour M.P., (and former peerless actress) blames Blair.
At least there will be an independent inquiry, which was immediatley called for by Blair.
I guess 9/11 didn't rise to the same level that this tragedy did.
Steve Gilliard at Daily Kos has much, much more to say about this odd sad story.
Posted by Lambert
Did the Republicans call the cops on a 71-year-old Democrat because he called one of them a "fruitcake"? Not exactly... Good detail on the House fracas here. (Ignore the "partisan passions" and "Democrats said, Republicans said" spin from this headline writer and the SCLM.)
Read down to "I object" for the F-word and the real story.
And "I object" does give the real story. We're looking at (yet one more) gross abuse of process by a Republican—gavelling a reading to a halt before the Democrats have a chance to represent their constituents and object. This is not the way a deliberative body is supposed to operate. Where do the Republicans think we are? '30s Berlin?
Bush administration: Bait and switch with American lives
Posted by Lambert The bait: The war on terror (Say, how's that going? Found OBL yet?)
The switch: The war on Iraq (Say, how's that going?)
The great Seymour Hersh—if only the Times could have reporters like him!—writes in The New Yorker showing the bait and switch in action.
American intelligence and State Department officials have told me that by early 2002 Syria had emerged as one of the C.I.A.’s most effective intelligence allies in the fight against Al Qaeda, providing an outpouring of information that came to an end only with the invasion of Iraq. ...
Flynt Leverett, a former C.I.A. analyst who served until early this year on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, told me that Syria’s help “let us thwart an operation that, if carried out, would have killed a lot of Americans.” ...
Syria’s efforts to help seemed to confound the Bush Administration, which was fixated on Iraq. ...
In Washington, there was anger about what many officials saw as the decision of the Bush Administration to choose confrontation with Syria over day-to-day help against Al Qaeda. In a sense, the issue was not so much Syria itself as a competition between ideology and practicality—and between the drive to go to war in Iraq and the need to fight terrorism—which has created a deep rift in the Bush Administration. The collapse of the liaison relationship has left many C.I.A. operatives especially frustrated. “The guys are unbelievably pissed that we’re blowing this away,” a former high-level intelligence official told me. “... The Syrians were a lot more willing to help us, but they”—Rumsfeld and his colleagues—“want to go in there next.''
So, Bush used the war on terror—the bait—to market the war on Iraq—the switch.
Then, having gotten the Iraq war they always wanted—with a weak bad guy who hadn't attacked America—our fruitcake administration blew it with AQ—really bad guys who did attack America and killed 3000 of us. On to Syria!
Bait... And switch. Republican Tactics 101. With the lives of soldiers and civlians at stake.
Posted by Lambert
AP vis WOOD (Grand Rapids) reports:
Two members of the U.S. coalition in Afghanistan have been injured in a convoy ambush. Coalition forces have been coming under almost daily attacks in Afghanistan, particularly in the volatile south and southeast near the border with Pakistan. The attacks have been blamed on Taliban fighters and forces loyal to a local warlord.
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