Getting Not So Tough

The last honest man continues his courageous leadership on Iraq.

Scary Smart

The evil people who rule us:

Condoleezza Rice's office gave final approval to the infamous Environmental Protection Agency press releases days after 9/11 claiming the air around Ground Zero was "safe to breathe," internal documents show.

Now Secretary of State, Rice was then head of the National Security Council - "the final decision maker" on EPA statements about lower Manhattan air quality, the documents say.

Scientists and lawmakers have since deemed the air rife with toxins.

Early tests known to the EPA at the time had already found high asbestos levels, the notes say. But those results were omitted from the press releases because of "competing priorities" such as national security and "opening Wall Street," according to a report by the EPA's inspector general.

The chief of staff for then-EPA head Christie Todd Whitman, Eileen McGinnis, told the inspector general of heated discussions, including "screaming telephone calls," about what to put in the press releases.

Failures

heh. indeed.

Our failure as progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the nation is not just rhetorical, though. Our fear of getting "preachy" may also lead us to discount the role that values and culture play in some of our most urgent social problems.

Now would be a good time to start, you know, leading instead of scolding.


Senator Obama:

Washington D.C. Office
713 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-2854

Dial

Senator Obama:

Washington D.C. Office
713 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-2854

Ask when his office is going to issue a statement in support of or against torture.

there is some shit i will not eat

Digby:

The vote is going to happen and it's going to pass. But I can't help but wonder if the momentum wouldn't have gone the other way if some of the Democrats who constantly exhort the rank and file to be more friendly to religion and values and morals had stood up and said no. Imagine if Barack Obama had staked out a leading position against this legislation making the explicit argument that it is immoral and unamerican to torture. That would have gone farther to demonstrate our respect for religious values than his frequent process talk and scolding could ever do.

Or imagine if Holy Joe Lieberman showed even one tenth the righteous indignation toward this torture legislation that he showed toward president Clinton's personal affairs. Imagine if the great centrist hawk, the man of morals and religious sincerity whom the Republicans have anointed as a principled example of a Democrat who understands the stakes in the war on terror, went to the floor of the senate and said:

In choosing this path, I fear that the president has undercut the efforts of millions of Americans who are naturally trying to instill in our children the value of honesty and decency toward others --- and the absolute taboo against torture. As most any mother and father knows, kids have a singular ability to detect double standards. So, we can safely assume that it will be that much more difficult to convince our sons and daughters of the importance of treating even enemies with humanity and dignity. Many parents I have spoken with in Connecticut confirm this unfortunate consequence.

The president's legislation allowing torture and repealing habeas corpus may also undercut the trust that the American people have in his word. Under the Constitution, as presidential scholar Newsted has noted, the president's ultimate source of authority, particularly his moral authority, is the power to persuade, to mobilize public opinion, to build consensus behind a common agenda. As Teddy Roosevelt once explained, "My power vanishes into thin air the instant that my fellow citizens, who are straight and honest, cease to believe that I represent them and fight for what is straight and honest. That is all the strength that I have," Roosevelt said. Sadly, with his deception about the contents of this legislation, from the meaning of torture to its intentions, President Bush may have weakened the great power and strength that he possesses, of which President Roosevelt spoke.

But I believe that the harm the president's actions have caused extend beyond the political arena. I am afraid that the actions the president is attempting to codify with this legislation may be reinforcing one of the worst messages being delivered by our popular culture, which is that values are fungible. And I am concerned that his misconduct may help to blur some of the most important bright lines of right and wrong in our society.

As the debate on this matter proceeds, we would be advised, I would respectfully suggest, to heed the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln's second annual address to Congress in 1862.

With the nation at war with itself, President Lincoln warned, and I quote, "If there ever could be a time for mere catch arguments, that time is surely not now. In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity."

I believe that we are at such a time again today.

There's so much at stake, we, too, must resist the impulse toward catch arguments and reflex reactions. Let us proceed in accordance with our nation's traditional moral compass -- yes -- but in a manner that is fair and at a pace that is deliberate and responsible.

Let us as a nation honestly confront the damage that the president's decisions in the war on terror and Iraq over the last five years have caused, but not at the expense of our common interest as Americans. And let us be guided by the conscience of the Constitution, which calls on us to place the common good above any partisan or personal interest, as we now in our time work together to resolve this serious challenge to our democracy.

He's already got it drafted.

But we aren't going to see the moral scolds standing up on this, I'm afraid. At least I'll be very shocked if they do. They believe, as do so many Republicans and members of the press that morals are attached to somebody elses crotch. They apparently don't see that institutional torture isn't just something that a few bad apples learn from popular culture.

...

Makes a tear come to the eye, doesn't it, the way men like McCain and Lieberman keep evoking Lincoln and the Bible as they work to institutionalize torture and continue a bloody, useless war that kills thousands and thousands of people? It's all very inspirational.

Keep your eyes on Holy Joe as the debate unfolds. If he bothers to show up at all, I will be shocked if his vaunted religious values lead him to vote against the bill. And that says everything you need to know about his sincerity. When it comes to lying about consensual sex he's all over it, leading the charge. Torture and endless imprisonment with no trial, not so much.

I'm with Atrios. If these religion scolds vote for this bill I will never stand for being lectured by them again about how liberals need to be more respectful of the faith and values crowd. The time is now for them show what they are made of. Let's see it.

Even head up his ass Hiatt knows this is shit.

Morning Thread

Enjoy.

Smackdown

Paul Waldman of Media Matters for America beats down fact free John Stossel.

Torture

Will the faith and values senator put a stop to torture?

All signs point to no.

If so, that's the last time I want any fucking lectures from the faith and values senator.

Some values, Jesus Torture Warrrior.

Young Broder

Rick Perlstein wrote in to remind us that Broder is the same as he ever was. From the Washington Post, October 7, 1969.

If there are any smart literary agents around these days, one of them will copyright the title [ed. note - titles can't be copyrighted] "The Breaking of the President" for the next big series of nonfiction best-sellers. It is becoming more obvious with every passing day that the men and the movement that broke Lyndon B. Johnson's authority in 1968 are out to break Richard M. Nixon in 1969.

The likelihood is great that they will succeed again, for breaking a President is, like most feats, easier to accomplish the second time around. Once learned, the techniques can readily be applied as often as desired - even when the circumstances seem less than propitious. No matter that this President is pulling troops out of Vietnam, while the last one was sending them in; no matter that in 1969 the casualties and violence are declining, while in 1968 they were on the rise. Men have learned to break a President, and, like any discovery that imparts power to its possessors, the mere availability of this knowledge guarantees that it will be used.

The essentials of the technique are now so well understood that they can be applied with little waste motion. First, the breakers arrogate to themselves a position of moral superiority. For that reason, a war that is unpopular, expensive, and very probably unwise is labeled as immoral, indecent, and intolerable. Critics of the President who are indelicate enough to betray partisan motives are denounced (That for you, Fred Harris.) Members of the President's own party who, for reasons perhaps unrelated to their own flagging political careers, catapult themselves into the front ranks of the of the opposition are greeted as heroes. (Hooray for Charley Goodell.)

The students who would fight in the war are readily mobilized against it. Their teachers, as is their custom, hasten to adopt the students' views. (News item: The Harvard department of biochemistry and molecular biology last week called for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam.)

Next, a New England election (the New Hampshire primary is best but the Massachusetts Sixth Congressional District election will do as well) surprisingly shows that peace is popular at the polls. The President's party sees defeat staring it in the face unless it repudiates him, and the Harris poll promptly comes along to confirm his waning grip on public trust. The Chief Executive, clearly panicky, resorts to false bravado and says he will never be moved by these protests and demonstrations, thus confirming the belief that he is too stubborn to repent and must be broken.

And then, dear friends, Sen. Fulbright and the Foreign Relations Committee move in to finish off the job.

All this is no fiction: it worked before and it is working again. Vietnam is proving to be what Henry Kissinger once said he suspected it might be -- one of those tragic, cursed messes that destroys any President who touches it.

That being the case, any President interested in saving his own skin would be well-advised to resign his responsibility for Vietnam and publicly transfer the assignment of ending the war to Congress or the Vietnam Moratorium Committee or anyone else who would like to volunteer for the job.

But he cannot. And that is the point the protesters seem to overlook. Assume that they and the President are both right when they assert the time has come to end this war. Assume that the protesters know better than the President how to do so -- despite the conspicuous absence of specific alternatives to the President's policies in their current manifestos.

There is still a vital distinction, granting all this, to be made between the constitutionally protected expression of dissent, aimed at changing national policy, and mass movements aimed at breaking the President by destroying his capacity to lead the nation or to represent it at the bargaining table.

The point is quite simple. Given the impatience in this country to be out of that miserable war, there is no great trick in using the Vietnam issue to break another President, you have broken the one man who can negotiate the peace.

Hanoi will not sit down for secret talks with the Foreign Relations Committee. Nor can the Vietnam Moratorium's sponsors order home a single GI or talk turkey to Gen. Thieu about reshaping his government. Only the President can do that.

There is also the matter of time. It is one thing to break a President at the end of his term, as was done last year. It is quite another thing to break him at the beginning, as is being attempted now.

The orators who remind us that Mr. Nixon has been in office for nine months should remind themselves that he will remain there for 39 more months -- unless, of course, they are willing to put their convictions to the test by moving to impeach him.

Is that not, really, the proper course? Rather than destroying his capacity to lead while leaving him in office, rather than leaving the nation with a broken President at its head for three years, would not their cause and the country be better served by resort to the constitutional method for removing a President?

And what a wonderful chapter it would make for Volume 2 of "The Breaking of the President" series.

Shorter 1969 David Broder:

We undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.

I had to type this in, so please point out any typos you see.

Tipster Perlstein wrote this book:

Fresh Thread

Enjoy.

Fresh Thread

A lot of great letters to Cafferty. I hope Obama was watching. I'm sure C&L will have it up in a while...

They Make Ads

New Patrick Murphy ad. Just saw it on CNN.

They Write Letters

My friend Will Bunch writes to David Broder. Excerpt:

And yet, I am also a blogger – professionally, and I guess by temperament. And when I see what is coming out of your hometown in 2006 -- ugly politics driven by fear, the chucking of the constitution and our deep-seated judicial principles such as the writ of habeas corpus – it can indeed make me very angry, so angry that there are times when, yes, I must sound “vituperative” on occasion.

I am writing to you to explain why that is.

Mad? Often. "Vituperative"?...sometimes, but "foul mouthed" never. I know some people have said and even sent some nasty things to you – I don’t endorse that. I would not and will not insult you; in fact, there was a time in my life when I very much wanted to be you, when I was a young man who wanted your seat one day as one of "the boys on the bus," covering the Making of the Next President. And you were very much a man for those times, the 1970s, when the rise of TV advertising meant that spin would complete the war to replace substance. America needed people like you then – with the right kind of cynicism to cut through all the crap on both sides of the aisle.

But what we used to call "a healthy dose of cynicism" eventually became toxic, for you and for so many of your "gang of 500" inside the Beltway. Somehow, exposing the lies of the system during the Watergate era, when you won a deserved Pulitzer, grew into benign acceptance that politics is pretty much a sport – a sport where, well, everybody lies.

And while you and your new lunch pals at the Palm knew you still had to expose the occasional lie, or at least get worked up about it, to maintain your journalistic credibility, you only went for the low-lying fruit, the “objective lie,“ the DNA test on a blue dress from the gap, not the elusive but ultimately false premises that would kill tens of thousands on a bloody war far from most Americans’ sight. Monica Lewinsky allowed you and your friends to prove that journalism was still about exposing...well, exposing something or other.

You, and your colleague Bob Woodward, and so many others, grew to admire the callous art of spincraft you'd been trained to expose -- so much so that when Hurricane Katrina devastated an American city and betrayed a stunning indifference to the fate of the nation's poorest, you could only write that Katrina "opens new opportunities for [Bush]to regain his standing with the public."

Bye Tad

Concern troll loses his job.

The Language of Religion

It's something I don't understand. It's gibberish to me. When people start invoking religion in discussing issues they may as well be talking Martian. I'm not being insulting here, I'm just saying it's utterly meaningless to me personally.

More than that, I'm really not comfortable linking to people who do weave religion into their politics. That's not because I have something against them, it's because ultimately this blog is basically my voice, even if links and the liberally quoted text of others are used to express that voice. In addition, I don't feel comfortable taking sides in a theological debate. If one person says we should send out the flaming sword of the baby Jesus to torture people, and someone else says torturing people makes the baby Jesus cry, who am I to endorse one of those views? I don't know if Baby Jesus - Torture Warrior or Baby Jesus - Little Lamb (Not Rabid) of God is the right model. It's just not my arena. It's not my debate.

But this talk and language does resonate with other people. And, today, over at Faithful Democrats they're talking torture. Pastor Dan is too. So if that's your thing, if that's the language you speak and understand, go join in.

Iraq'd

I want to add on to something John Kerry says:

Aimless talk of stay the course is making things worse.

I think a not addressed enough point is that there are really two choices: 1) George Bush continues to fuck things up 2) Something happens to force a change in policy.

There is no option 3), which is [Insert name here] gets to implement their fantasy plan for Iraq.

Either you, like Joe Lieberman, continue to contribute to the rhetoric which maintains the current status quo of George Bush fucking everything up, or you find a way to support concrete options which might force a change in policy.

Everybody really understands this. Signing on to Kerry's plan to get out by next July, or an alternative timetable plan, is simply signing onto a policy which will force George Bush to do something other than what he's doing. The plans themselves in their specifics are not especially important, and not carved in stone if reality changes. You can still, uh, adapt to not fuck things up so badly if necessary.

This is why it's so silly when No Show Joe whines about the specifics of this plan or that, because the plan is not the issue. The issue is whether you continue to enable George Bush to fuck things up, or whether you try to force him to do something differently.

Joe's chosen his course: let George Bush keep fucking things up. Noble Joe. What a guy. If he would start actually leading and find some other way to force George Bush to stop fucking things up that'd be fine. But he's not. It's all about George Bush fucking things up. That's what makes Joe happy.

They Issue Statements

John Kerry issues a statement:

Iraq has been a national security disaster and a terrible set-back in the war on terror. As Robert Kennedy said of Vietnam, there is enough blame to go around. We must all accept our responsibility to change course. We don't need misleading speeches. We don't need slogans. We need leaders who will tell it straight and stand up to this administration and say it’s time to change course. Ned Lamont is providing that kind of leadership.

Senator Lieberman and I disagree deeply and profoundly on Iraq. No matter how much Senator Lieberman pretends otherwise, as we were debating a Senate resolution to change course on Iraq, our intelligence agencies were telling this Administration that America is less safe and more endangered by terrorists because of the failed stay-the-course policies in Iraq. There's just no excuse for continuing the old line that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror when in fact we know Iraq is a recruiting poster for terrorists while the real war on terror in Afghanistan spirals downwards.


The maxim that we'll stand down as Iraqis stand up is a myth. We need a deadline for the redeployment of American troops to force Iraqis to stand up for Iraq. Aimless talk of stay the course is making things worse. Every time the Administration says we'll stay as long as it takes is an excuse for Iraqis to take as long as they want. We are stuck in a growing civil war that sets us back in the war on terror. It does a disservice to our troops to stick with a broken policy over and over again and expect different results. We need leadership with the courage to change course

An American Patriot

Pat Leahy:

Today we are belatedly addressing the single most consequential provision of this much-discussed bill, a provision that can be found buried on page 81 of the proposed bill. This provision would perpetuate the indefinite detention of hundreds of individuals against whom the government has brought no charges and presented no evidence, without any recourse to justice whatsoever.That is un-American, and it is contrary to American interests.


Going forward, the bill departs even more radically from our most fundamental values. It would permit the president to detain indefinitely—even for life—any alien, whether in the United States or abroad, whether a foreign resident or a lawful permanent resident, without any meaningful opportunity for the alien to challenge his detention. The administration would not even need to assert, much less prove, that the alien was an enemy combatant; it would suffice that the alien was “awaiting [a] determination” on that issue. In other words, the bill would tell the millions of legal immigrants living in America, participating in American families, working for American businesses, and paying American taxes, that our government may at any minute pick them up and detain them indefinitely without charge, and without any access to the courts or even to military tribunals, unless and until the government determines that they are not enemy combatants.

Less Safe

Tim Ryan:

Macaca