Hullabaloo

Friday, April 18, 2003

 
What’s Wrong With The Democratic Party?

Nothing, actually.

First of all, it is terribly important that we remember that the Democratic agenda is remarkably coherent for such a large coalition and it is universally supported within the party and by a majority of the country as a whole.

That is really quite remarkable when you think about it and it is the Democratic Party’s great strength.

We are weak on national security, but I think we can deal with that if we do not cede patriotism and American values to the Republicans. This issue is driven by emotion, not policy, and that is best conveyed through symbolism and rhetoric. We can do that. (See my post below for a longer discussion of that concept.)

It is also important to remember that the Bush administration does not have a real governing majority or an electoral mandate. They just behave as if they do. There seems to be a misapprehension that there has been a huge sea change in American attitudes and political belief and that a vast majority of “regular Americans” have rejected us decadent liberals when in fact all that happened was that a small handful of votes went the wrong way in ’02. Al and Ralph, both left of center, won a clear majority in 2000. We should not allow them to make even us believe that they are universally beloved and supported in this country. The ballot box has certainly not demonstrated that and neither do the re-elect numbers.

Yet, they have successfully enacted a radical economic and social agenda of supply side tax cutting, begun a revolutionary overhaul of the legal system, initiated massive regulation rollbacks and dissolution of the traditional separation of church and state. And they have also, not incidentally, completely overturned half century of foreign policy doctrine in just 2 years.

What’s amazing is that they have done all of this not only without a mandate, but without even explicitly campaigning on those issues or being honest about their implications. They are secretive and uncooperative with both the congress and the press and have assumed an inappropriate level of power in the executive branch. They do this because they know that they cannot win with their real agenda.

So, if most Americans support the Democratic agenda and the Republicans are blatantly governing far more radically than they promised in their campaigns, how are they getting away with it?

First, the other side has a huge advantage in money, incumbency and a constituency that benefits lopsidedly from the unrepresentative electoral college and senate. These are very powerful advantages that are unlikely to go away soon. But, even more importantly, they are overwhelmingly powerful in media, with the megaphone of power they now hold in all branches of government as well as the outright ownership of powerful talk radio, Murdoch newspapers and cable news. As Seeing the Forest so astutely observes, they have a message amplification infrastructure and the Democrats don’t. And that infrastructure serves as a conduit to the grassroots and the mainstream media. It shapes the conventional wisdom and defines the boundries of the establishment mainstream. All of these forces taken together give them the advantage even though a majority of Americans support the Democratic agenda and would reject the radical elements of the GOP agenda if they knew what they were.

Karl Rove knows this and has refined GOP tactics to obscure that profound weakness by using their infrastructure to not only demonize Democrats to the faithful (as they have always done) but to present the Republican Party in general and George W. Bush in particular as a triumphant and overwhelming juggernaut in the belief that this will carry the mushy uninformed with them over the finish line and keep the press on message. It is why, as Paul Krugman points out, “they focus all their attention on an issue; they pull out all the stops; they don't worry about breaking the rules. This technique brought them victory in the Florida recount battle, the passage of the 2001 tax cut, the fall of Kabul, victory in the midterm elections, and the fall of Baghdad.”

But, he downplays the most salient aspect of these victories. The Republicans don’t just “not worry about the rules.” The fact is that they haven’t won anything without cheating since Bush ran as a moderate, seized office on a technicality and began to govern from the most radical edge of his party. The tax cut was passed with fuzzy math and outright falsehoods about the beneficiaries and the election of ‘02 was (barely) won because of smears against a disabled Vet and a coordinated talk radio campaign against a dead man’s grieving family. The invasion of Iraq was sold on lies about WMD and ties to terrorists.

The Bush administration, then, really is the political equivalent of Enron. Ken Lay and George W. Bush and Karl Rove and Andrew Fastow and Jeff Skilling and Dick Cheney are all cut from the same cloth.

If you recall, what Enron essentially did was cook up a bunch of complicated experimental schemes to take advantage of “energy deregulation,” one of those ivory tower think tank wet dreams they managed to foist on a gullible public in various states . They were theoretically clever but had never been tried in the real world. And they predictably failed, but since the company’s financial reports were so byzantine it was able to hide their losses by creating a bunch of new off the books sweetheart deals with insiders and investment bankers who were also recommending the stock to the public. And they kept moving like sharks, using misdirection and tricks to keep investors looking at their "next big new market," while they covered up the failure of the last one.

When a rare person raised questions, the entire establishment that now stood to benefit from Enron’s success joined together to silence the critics. The company appealed to stockholders purely because of their winning ways and preternatural confidence. Nobody knew the details but they knew the plan was good because the cheerleaders and the analysts were all so convinced. So, everybody bought the stock and it became a self fulfilling prophesy. For a while.

They danced as fast as they could but inevitably all the fuzzy math and all the false bravado and all the secrecy and all the backroom dealmaking eventually caused the company to cave in on itself. There was nothing left but a bunch of theories that never worked and a crippling amount of debt.

The Democrats’ job is to prevent this from happening to the country. As taxpayers and citizens we are all shareholders in U.S. Inc. and if George W. Bush gets 4 more years I have no doubt that the results of his erratic decision making, his lack of transparency, his trust in radical ideologues and his reliance on sophisticated public relations to mislead the public will crash into reality. But, by that point the country will have been so seriously damaged that we may never quite recognize it again.

We shouldn't let these guys intimidate us. They are dangerous, but it's because they are reckless and corrupt not because they are a political juggernaut. That's their schtick. It's not real.

UPDATE:

Seeing the Forest has more on this subject today, as does the watch and worldgonewrong. If my comment section is any guide, Democrats have a lot of thoughts on this issue.

My position is most poetically expressed by that most excellent comment writer -- the farmer:

"W is only a "great brand" by virtue of the marketing that made him a "great" brand. Great in this case, having about the same inate "great" value as say, the Great San Francisco Earthquake, the Great Fire of 1871, the Great Depression, and/or the Great White Shark. As "unknown blogger" mentioned, you can sell a rock in a box if you want to. Its still just a rock. But, its the box that sells the rock.

So, as Digby is getting at, its now up to liberals to restablish their dominance in the political marketplace. To market a high quality product in a highly visible high quality package. A better deal, more for your money, at a better price. Something that you can plant and it will grow for you. A real live perennial tree of liberty that you can plant in your own back yard. Not a nut tree either. Too many nut trees already. Rather, a big sprawling sugar maple, or a big blue atlas cedar. Or an apple tree, the kind you can make your own fresh pies from for years and years. Mom will love it. Mom and her apple pie tree. Its a patriotic American living thing and it arrives in a traditional hoop bound oak stave barrel half all ready to be planted in Washington DC. Ships in 2004, order today

Now, that's what I'm talkin' about...



digby 4/18/2003 02:41:00 AM |

Thursday, April 17, 2003

 
4 Star Democrat

I have written a few blog posts in the last couple of months about General Wesley Clark, (here, here, and here) mostly as a jumping off point about the absolute necessity for the Democrats to drop the silly notion of the 2002 elections that they will be able to set aside national security in favor of preferred Democratic domestic issues if they vote with the President on foreign policy. Once again, they failed to appreciate that the Republicans will portray their opponents in what ever way suits their game plan regardless of their actual record or personal history. There is no margin in trying to appease them because they will only move the goal posts or lie outright if that's what it takes to stay on message.

Bush has a formidable advantage going into this election and it's not just because of incumbency and money but because many in this country are drawn to the nostalgic martial spirit that is being marketed and sold by the Republicans like it was Classic Coke. Patriotic symbols of strength and superiority make them feel secure at a time when the world seems confusing and chaotic. Questioning of authority is deemed unsafe for any number of reasons, not the least of which is the resulting harsh criticism by those in power.

George W. Bush will be marketed in 2004 as a visionary foreign policy genius and battle hardened commander who is the only man in the race who is seasoned and experienced enough to win the war on terror. He will be wrapped tightly in the flag with brass bands and yellow ribbons and allusions to the great victories of WWII. He will speak of high hopes and serious challenges and he will wield his great personal defeat of Saddam as a weapon against any little pissant who has the balls to suggest they should replace him before he’s even begun to smite evil once and for all. (Oh yes, and we need more religion and tax cuts too. Cue "I'm Proud To Be An American.")

The media, having already learned that patriotism sells, will be signing on to the George W. Bush campaign not so much because of explicit political bias but because the image the Republicans are selling is an image that Americans want to buy. Mostly, that comes down to Good America, Strong America.

I believe that Democrats should give no ground on this. We represent real American values and we have every right to use the traditional language and symbols of patriotism to express that. We are the ones who stand for the Constitution and the American system of justice, which we hold so dear that even in times of war we do not waver. We are the ones who believe in the sacred American values of Liberty, Equality, Opportunity and Democracy and we are the ones who work to ensure that every American, not just the privileged, share in them. We are the ones who have faith that America is strong enough to survive any challenge without sacrificing those values. The flag and Sousa and apple pie and love of country are not the exclusive property of the Republican Party; they belong to all Americans. We should take them back.

I believe that the best person to make the argument that Democrats are Americans too is someone who defies the phony liberal stereotype manufactured by GOP Inc. I think that many Americans could have their eyes opened to the true patriotism of the Democratic Party if that case were made by someone who spent more than 35 years maintaining American security. If that someone was so excellent that he began this career by graduating first in his class at West Point and ended it as the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, the Democrats would have the perfect symbol of patriotic leadership as well as someone who has the demonstrated ability to maneuver the political shoals of the Pentagon and Washington without the taint of partisan politics.

I want the Democrats to nominate the candidate who can best beat George W. Bush. Standard stump speeches and stale rhetoric cannot compete with the spotlight conferred upon the flag draped Commander In Chief who is being expertly marketed as the Man Who Saved The World. We will not defeat that 200 million dollar juggernaut with predictable Washington faces or unknown iconoclasts without national security credentials.

This election is not business as usual.

I believe that Democrats can beat the Republicans at their own game if we take back our rightful ownership of patriotic symbolism and nominate someone who embodies those All American virtues.

General Wesley Clark is as qualified to be President today as was Colin Powell in 1996 when he was seriously courted by the Republicans as the most serious threat to Clinton's re-election. He is far more qualified to be President than George W. Bush ever will be. He is a Democrat.

I sincerely hope that he throws his hat into the ring and if he does, I will support him.

To read more about General Clark, please visit the Daily Kos’ Draft Clark web site. Sign the petition even if you are not entirely persuaded but think that he could make a contribution to the primaries. Having a General on the stump would be helpful to the Democrats and he could very well be an attractive VP candidate if someone else emerges as a clear winner. We need him in the race.



digby 4/17/2003 06:57:00 PM |

 
Roundheels

We read that the Bush administration has rolled out a plan to parlay its "success" in Iraq and the immense and overwhelming personal popularity of our wartime President to push its its crazy domestic program. Political strategists speak openly of this strategy and discuss at great length Poppy's failure to do the same thing back in 91. Everyone reporting on politics understands that conflating the President's wartime popularity with his unpopular tax cut is a conscious political tactic.

So naturally, Judy Woodruff just promoted an upcoming segment on CNN with this script:

"Next. The Commander In Chief tries to revitalize his battleplan for the homefront."

All that was missing were the strains of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" in the backround. Judy may have even issued a smart salute, but I probably missed it when my eyes filled with tears at the image of our battle-weary Dear Leader forced to once again climb aboard that political Humvee and roll on down to Capitol Hill to fight the evil liberals and (sadly) even some of his own troops as they try to sabotage his crusade against terrorism and taxes.

Can't we even let our hero shake off the dust of his latest mano a mano combat with the satanic Saddam before we force him to take on Mullah Daschle and Olympia bin Snowe?

Thank goodness we have Major Judy around to keep us focused on the fact that while the war between Good (Republicans) and Evil (Democrats) is not over, our tired but determined President George W. Patton will not rest until every last enemy is crushed under the boot of liberty and justice.




digby 4/17/2003 03:07:00 PM |

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

 
The Lesson Of Iraq

Demosthenes and others have blogged this item from The Guardian yesterday which claims that Dubya has nixed a Syria invasion. Let’s hope it‘s true.

But, it would seem to me to be fairly easy to change his mind if Wolfowitz or Rummy are of a mind to. All they have to do is draw the parallel between Poppy leaving Saddam in power when he had enough troops on the ground to go all the way to Baghdad and Junior leaving Assad in power when he has the troops on the ground to go all the way to Damascus (and Beirut.) I’m sure his good friend and fellow “man of peace” Ariel Sharon would be happy to weigh in on that as well.

If Syria is off the table, however, it appears that Israel is consciously playing cozy with the administration for reasons that make no sense unless they really believe that Assad is about to fold up his tent and run crying from the room. Otherwise, this sort of thing seems designed to inflame the situation to a point where invasion is unavoidable.

Mofaz, who often serves as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's "bad cop" in taking a hard security line regarding Israel's Arab neighbors, was quoted Monday as detailing demands he said Israel would ask the Americans to pass on to Syrian officials.

Accusing Assad of having supplied Iraq with weaponry during the war, as well as making statements that appeared to negate Israel's right to exist as a nation, Mofaz told the Ma'ariv daily:

"We have a long list of issues that we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians, and it is proper that this be done by the Americans. It begins with removing the threat of Hezbollah in south Lebanon; distancing long-range rockets; moving Hezbollah away from the south, up to dismantling [Hezbollah]; stopping Iranian aid to Hezbollah via Syrian ports; and halting the granting of the cover of respectability to the terror headquarters of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad based in Damascus, from which they dispatch orders and funding to Palestinian terrorist organizations."

Inexplicably, (to me, anyway) the prevailing view really is that the US can now control events without having to go to war because it has demonstrated that it is willing to use force in Iraq.

Thomas Friedman says that we should begin a policy of “aggressive engagement” with Syria which, because we have no legal basis for a military invasion, falls somewhere between military aggression and “useless constructive engagement.” Basically, it consists of “getting in Syria’s face every day” and reminding the people of Syria how bad they have it. Somehow, this is supposed to force Syria to change because Assad saw what happened to Saddam when he refused to do what the US told it to do.

If that is the case, then it would be ridiculous to take the threat of invasion off the table because without it, it’s just a bunch of annoying hot air. Implicit in these complaints is the threat of military action and everybody knows it. It makes no sense otherwise.

But, more importantly, we need to look more closely at the example we made of Saddam Hussein and the lessons that other foreign leaders are likely to have drawn from it.

Immediately after 9/11 various friends of the administration like Perle and Woolsey immediately began banging the drum to invade Iraq, a desire that was fully documented for years by various highly influential policy makers in the administration.

Throughout the next few months, speculation in the media built as to whether the US was going to adopt this policy.

The administration released TheBush Doctrine stating in clear terms the fact that the US is adopting a strategy of pre-emption to remove the threat of weapons of mass destruction before they are operational.

In August Dick Cheney made a speech laying out the case for regime change in Iraq and the US willingness to invade unilaterally.

In September, the President changed course and went to the UN and asked for a resolution requiring that Iraq rid itself of its WMD and allow inspectors back into the country to verify said disarmament.

The UNSC voted unanimously for this resolution, Saddam declared he had destroyed his WMD long ago and the inspectors were allowed back into the country.

From that time until March, inspectors had been in the country and found no evidence of WMD. The US then said that time had run out and launched the invasion against the wishes of most of the Security Council and much of the world.

Throughout this time, the US government had insisted that if Saddam disarmed we would have no need to invade. Saddam claimed throughout that he had disarmed and allowed weapons inspectors into the country to verify that.

We have been in the country for a month now and have yet to turn up any evidence of WMD and now seem to be shifting our sights to Syria and rewriting the reasons for the invasion to be purely a war of liberation.

Yet, everyone is saying that since we deposed Saddam tyrants and despots everywhere will scurry to do our bidding in order to avoid similar treatment. Indeed, the administration says this straightforwardly: “They would do well to learn the lesson of Iraq…”

But, the lesson of Iraq is that if the US has decided to invade it has no compunction about drawing up a speculative list of crimes such as harboring terrorists and WMD’s, followed by a series of demands that you cease doing those things. Unfortunately, it has also shown that even if you make an effort to comply with those demands and as impossible as it is to prove a negative, it will say that you are lying and invade anyway.

I have no doubt that Bashar Assad is aware that Bush stuck his head in Condi Rice’s office last spring and said “Fuck Saddam, we’re taking him out,” which means that nothing short of Saddam’s ruling junta committing mass suicide could have stopped the war despite all of the posturing before the world community about "disarmament."

The lesson of Iraq is that the United States is going to do what it wants to do without regard to international law or any nation’s good faith effort to cooperate. If they have decided to take military action against you it is a fait accompli. “Aggressive engagement” looks suspiciously like the “Decade of Defiance and Deception” public relations package that sold the war to the American public. No world leader is now under the misapprehension that complying with American demands necessarily guarantees that he will not be invaded and deposed anyway. There is no value in face saving or compromise because the US has proved that it will change its goals and create new rationales at will. So, the only question for any leader in this situation is whether to surrender without bloodshed or go down fighting. All moral authority is vested in America's willingness to deploy its military.

The lesson of Iraq for the US is that the United States had better be prepared to invade any country it “aggressively engages” from now on because it proved to leaders everywhere that capitulating to its “demands” guarantees them nothing. US power now rests entirely on force – it can no longer use diplomacy or any kind of positive reward for good behavior because the lesson of Iraq is that the US cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith. Any threats short of war are useless because foreign leaders can no longer count on the US to keep its word not to invade if certain conditions have been met.

American foreign policy is now entirely unpredictable and is based upon nothing more than an elastic self-serving notion of American security. It requires no international consensus regardless of whether it directly impacts US national security and does not follow any international law or norms. It interprets treaties as it wishes without regard to precedent and holds other nations to standards to which it does not hold itself. It does not speak with one voice so its impossible to judge its real position and act accordingly. The American public are overwhelmingly supportive of the administration's new policy regardless of whether the government lies blatently about its reasons so there is little hope of any internal pressure to moderate. The world must now base its relationship with America on nothing more than blind hope or fear of one man's unknown intentions.

The lesson of Iraq is that the US is now the world’s most powerful rogue state.


digby 4/16/2003 01:02:00 PM |

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

 
GOP Flack

Following this Atrios post I see that Robert George of the NY Post writes to Romanesko’s Media News in response to Michael Wolff's article and my post speculating that the unnamed "uber-civilian" is Jim Wilkinson:

Michael Wolff probably should have named who he was having trouble with -- it would hardly be the first time that a journalist has complained about how much (or how little) information that they are getting from official sources (or for that matter, how much they are being "spun"). It seems to me that the biggest problem that Wolff (and many in blogworld) have with Jim Wilkinson (if that is indeed the person to whom Wolff is referring) is his "uber-civilian" and "Republican operative" status. First, there seemed to be a hint that it is wrong for a civilian to be doing public affairs. But the simple fact is -- as has been reported elsewhere and I can confirm -- is that Wilkinson is a Navy reservist. Now, that doesn't make him active duty, but it doesn't make him a total "civilian" either.

As for Wilkinson's alleged party affiliation, well before heading to CENTCOM, he worked out of the White House press operation. I'm sure the WH people felt that the combination of military and political background made him a good pick to flack for Tommy Franks. Kinda makes sense to me. Besides, are we to be shocked -- shocked!!!! -- that a press person representing an administration's viewpoints (even those in a war zone) might have been involved in politics earlier?

I don’t know why a civilian reservist who is not on active duty would be wearing a uniform, but perhaps that’s just an odd vainglorious affectation rather than an attempt to appear to be DOD instead of White House. In any case, it is just a little bit of delicious detail and holds no real importance.

What I find really amazing is that George acknowledges Wilkinson is representing the “administration’s viewpoint” when he says:

"I have a brother who is in a Hummer at the front, so don't talk to me about too much fucking air-conditioning." "A lot of people don't like you." "Don't fuck with things you don't understand." "This is fucking war, asshole." "No more questions for you."

I always felt that the administration acted like a bunch of cheap movie gangsters, but it’s quite refreshing to see a Republican concur.

However, he still does not really understand why people object to a partisan hack like Wilkinson being influential in the war zone. It’s not just that Wilkinson characterized the bourgeois rioters as “volunteers” when everybody knows that they were virtually all paid congressional staffers. It’s because his job is to spin the war and control the message and that’s just a little bit offensive to old fashioned people who still think that the military should not be explicitly political, particularly in wartime. And it’s all the more objectionable when this very same fellow is the one who was in charge of compiling the report "A Decade of Defiance and Deception that included so many of the now disproved allegations about aluminum tubes and the like.

Here are some excerpts
of an internet cache of this archived article
from Newsweek written by Martha Brant last September:

Ladies and Gentlemen ... the Band: Selling the war in Iraq

"We’re getting the band together," White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett told the group on their first conference call last week.

The "Band" is made up of the people who brought you the war in Afghanistan—or at least the accompanying public-relations campaign. Their greatest hit: exposing the Taliban’s treatment of women.

Now, they’re back for a reunion tour on Iraq. The Band's instrument, of course, is information.

They aim to use it against Saddam Hussein, respond to his disinformation and control the message within the administration so no one—not even Vice President Dick Cheney—freelances on Iraq.

That’s no easy task. The members talk every day by phone at 9:30 a.m.

The key players are a handful of rising stars in their early 40s and under:

For starters there’s Deputy Communications Director Jim Wilkinson, 32, a fast-talking Texan who has become an unlikely but keen student of Islam. He recently got back from a trip to Morocco where he continued his study of Arabic (which he can now read and write pretty well).

It was Wilkinson who spearheaded the successful Afghan women’s campaign last year. A Naval Reserve officer, Wilkinson got his start working with Bush ally Texas Rep. Dick Armey. He’s the go-to guy when the White House needs information against its enemies.

In the last few weeks, he and his underlings have weeded through hundreds of pages of news clippings, U.N. resolutions and State Department reports to compile an arsenal of documents against Saddam Hussein. They released the first round last week: "Decade of Defiance and Deception" (a broken-U.N.-resolutions hit parade).

Then there’s Tucker Eskew, 41, a savvy South Carolinian, who will soon be named the director of the new Office of Global Communications, which will be formally launched this fall. Neither a Texan nor a lifelong Bushie, he earned his stripes during the Florida election mess by becoming the campaign’s tropical smooth-talker.

[…]

It was Bartlett, Bush’s right-hand man and the 31-year-old leader of the Band, who has insisted that this and all documents be sourced. Wilkinson spent hours footnoting the 22-page "Decade of Defiance" document released last week, for example. "We compiled every single possible bit of research we could find and then set out to verify, verify, verify," Wilkinson explains.

[…]


The White House is sending administration bigwigs to hearings this week and next to help make Bush’s case against Saddam Hussein—not just to Congress, but to the American people. It’s the Band’s job to make sure that case gets heard.

They’ll be playing soon at a TV, newspaper and radio near you.

I would have thought that once the invasion was underway that the DOD could be depended upon to handle the press. Why a costumed White House "band member" needed to be there is still not clear, George's oh-so-world weary Raines impression notwithstanding. Perhaps it is standard in all wars for the White House to have a representative at Central Command to coordinate "the message" and tell reporters "don't fuck with things you don't understand" and "no more questions for you." But, that wouldn't make it any less disturbing.


digby 4/15/2003 03:29:00 PM |

Monday, April 14, 2003

 
Law and Order: Private Justice Squad

Boy, those police states are just awful. I'm sure glad we liberated the Iraqis from a regime that would do things like this:

...[he] witnessed coworkers and supervisors literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they had purchased."

...[they were] engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior [and] were purchasing illegal weapons, women, forged passports and [participating in] other immoral acts."

...women and girls were handed over to bar owners and told to perform sex acts to pay for their costumes.The women who refused were locked in rooms and withheld food and outside contact for days or weeks. After this time they are told to dance naked on table tops and sit with clients. If the women still refuse to perform sex acts with the customers they are beaten and raped in the rooms by the bar owners and their associates. They are told if they go to the police they will be arrested for prostitution and being an illegal immigrant."

It is so nice that the United States has arrived to set things right.

Oh, wait a minute. These are things that were done by our All American Dyncorps Rent-a-cops in Bosnia. And guess what? We're gonna send 'em to Iraq! I'm sure they'll have some juicy stories to swap with those Ba'athist secret police we've also hired to "restore order."

Dyncorp Wants You

That plan appears to be almost ready. Half a world away from the bedlam in Iraq, just outside of Forth Worth, Texas, police recruiters are currently manning the phones for Dyncorp, a multi-billion dollar military Contractor. For Dyncorp the turmoil that is emerging in Iraq could mean a boom in business.

"When the area is safe, we will go in. Watch CNN. In the meantime fax us a resume if you want a job," Homer Newman, a Dyncorp recruiter told Corpwatch. But Chuck Wilkins, a company spokesman in Virginia, said: "The contract hasn't yet been awarded."

Yet a website has been offering Dyncorp jobs to "individuals with appropriate experience and expertise to participate in an international effort to re-establish police, justice and prison functions in post-conflict Iraq." The company is looking for active duty or recently retired cops and prison guards and "experienced judicial experts." Applicants must be US citizens with ten years of sworn civilian domestic law enforcement. The site even has a toll free number and a "cops.recruiting@dyncorp.com" email address for applicants.

The website explains that recruits will help "establish police stations and monitor activities determining the selection, screening and training processes for police officers, demonstrating police practices and techniques used by democratic societies advising local police on criminal investigation methods and monitoring their progress working side-by-side with police officers from around the world reporting humanitarian violation."

Cool, huh? Too bad about those unfortunate allegations of Human Rights Violations and Fraud

The company is not short on controversy. Under the Plan Colombia contract, the company has 88 aircraft and 307 employees - 139 of them American - flying missions to eradicate coca fields in Colombia. Soldier of Fortune magazine once ran a cover story on DynCorp, proclaiming it "Colombia's Coke-Bustin' Broncos."

US Rep. Janice Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, told Wired magazine that hiring a private company to fly what amounts to combat missions is asking for trouble. DynCorp's employees have a history of behaving like cowboys," Schakowsky noted.

"Is the US military privatizing its missions to avoid public controversy or to avoid embarrassment - to hide body bags from the media and shield the military from public opinion?" she asked.

Indeed a group of Ecuadoran peasants filed a class action against the company in September 2001. The suit alleges that herbicides spread by DynCorp in Colombia were drifting across the border, withering legitimate crops, causing human and livestock illness, and, in several cases, killing children. Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers intervened in the case right away telling the judge the lawsuit posed "a grave risk to US national security and foreign policy objectives."

And then there was all that unpleasantness about slavery and prostitution:

What you have here is a Lord of the Flies mentality. Basically you've got a bunch of strong men who are raping and manipulating young girls who have been kidnapped from their homes. Who's the bad guy? Is it the guy who buys the girl to give her freedom, the one who kidnaps her and sells her or the one who liberates her and ends up having sex with her? And what does it mean when the U.S. steps up and says, 'We don't have any jurisdiction'? That's absurd."

Rummy meant it when he said freedom meant people were free to commit crimes. "Course, you're especially free to commit crimes if you are a private cop working for a defense contractor who has immunity from prosecution.

I sure hope our Iraqi friends don't choke on those big old whiffs 'o freedom we're giving them.



digby 4/14/2003 06:33:00 PM |

 
The American Death Star

Mary over at the Watch (which has a whole bunch of great posts up) sent me this analysis from Stratfor by Dr. George Friedman on the Big Picture. Their belief is that the rationale for invasion can be reduced to 2 simple premises:

1. To transform the psychology of the Islamic world, which had perceived the United States as in essence weak and unwilling to take risks to achieve its ends.

2. To use Iraq as a strategic base of operations from which to confront Islamic regimes that are either incapable of or unwilling to deny al Qaeda and other Islamist groups access to enabling resources.

The first is really just a way to demonstrate the basic logic of the Bush Doctrine and it comes down to a rather cultish worship of Machiavelli. (Check out Michael Ledeen's onanistic writings on the subject.) You know the line:

My view is that it is desirable to be both loved
and feared; but it is difficult to achieve both and,
if one of them has to be lacking, it is much safer
to be feared than loved.

[…]

Nevertheless, a ruler must make himself feared
in such a way that, even if he does not become
loved, he does not become hated. For it is
perfectly possible to be feared without incurring
hatred. And this can always be achieved if he
refrains from laying hands on the property of his
citizens and subjects.

I’m at a loss as to how this can possibly fit in with the Straussian views of the conservative Virtuecrats, but I guess it all just boils down to team sports or something. The more I delve into the philosophical foundations of the Bush Doctrine and those who support it the more incoherent it is. Christians for Machiavelli. Now that’s some intellectual gymnastics.

I suppose it is of a piece with a government that openly embraces fear and power as a policy while using the rhetoric of liberty and religion to sell it. This kind of cognitive dissonance is so pervasive that you have to give them credit for their superhuman ability to keep their heads from exploding.

Anyway, the Stratfor report takes a whack at examining the psychology of those we believe we can cow with our vast military prowess:

The simplistic idea that resentment of the United States will generate effective action by Arabs misses a crucial point. Two scales are at work here: the radicalism scale and the hope scale. On the radicalism scale, the level of radicalism and anti-Americanism in the Arab world has been off the chart for months. Increasing the level would be difficult. However, radicalism by itself does not lead to action. There must also be hope -- a sense that there are weaknesses in the U.S. position that can be exploited, that there is some possibility of victory, however distant. So long as the hope scale tends toward hopelessness, radicalism can be intense.

The United States was prepared to allow the radicalism scale to go deep into the danger zone, but Washington has been trying to keep the hope scale deeply in the green zone. Israel's failure after 1967 was inherent in its position: The Israelis depended heavily on outsiders for national security. The Arab perception was that the Israelis could be attacked by splitting them from their patrons. This sense of vulnerability led to an active response to defeat. .

It goes on to say that the US must now work to avoid projecting a sense of vulnerability and suggests that in order to ultimately prevail it must reduce the hatred. The hatred will cause us to lose control of Iraq and that loss of control will lead to a perception of vulnerability.

I agree that the administration believes all this, but it remains inexplicable to me. Yes, al Qaeda uses the “Americans are a bunch of pussies” rhetoric in their recruitment videos. And, they do harbor the illusion that they single handedly brought down the Soviets (a trait they share with the neocons.) But, does anyone believe that this invasion of Iraq has somehow made us seem invulnerable to anybody but a bunch of stupid Americans who missed the point of Star Wars?

Terrorists don’t have to defeat the mighty US military to win. These people already know that all it takes is a handful of fanatics killing American civilians on American soil to provoke our government into acting like a rabid dog by wildly undertaking reckless adventures abroad, invoking totalitarian measures at home and spending more and more of our money on warmaking capability. We could theoretically scare all the tinhorn dictators in the world into cowering like a bunch battered Democratic Senators before our mighty sword, but it is an extremely strange reading of psychology that says you can frighten suicide bombers.

But, the neocons think that terrorists are just agents of rogue states so they don’t spend a lot of time second guessing their decade old plan to rule the world. But even by their own logic, I fail to see how aggressive bellicosity toward Syria even before the bullets have stopped flying in Iraq is going to accomplish their goal of being both feared and loved.

With respect to the second point, there is some speculation that this saber rattling toward Syria is a sop to Ariel Sharon as an inducement to sign on to the "road map." On the other hand Richard Perle believes that since we’ve “liberated” 25 million Iraqis, we’ve done our part for the Arabs and the Palestinians can piss up a rope. So, as usual, nobody really knows what the hell they are up to.

Perhaps they actually believe they can force Assad to step down just by saying “boo!” But, if the Stratfor analysis is correct, if he stays in power after all of this in your face rhetoric we must invade Syria or risk being seen as vulnerable. And, if we do that then we will definitely create more hatred. It’s hard to see how they can finesse this one into another “liberation.”

When you open your big mouth and roar at other countries that you “expect” them to do what you tell them – no need for a UN resolution fig leaf or wimpy coalitions in Bush’s Empire --you’ve got to be prepared to back it up. And when you talk tough to a guy whose power rests entirely on his repressive authority you’ve left him no choice but to go down fighting. So, unless Assad humiliates himself and backs down or Bush backs down, thereby making the US appear vulnerable, we are backing ourselves into a corner. It's very likely that we will be invading Syria.



digby 4/14/2003 05:31:00 PM |

 
You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!

Via Atrios this may be the best article yet about the surreality of Operation Big Swinging Manhood.

Even Kubrick and Southern couldn’t have made this stuff up:

[…]

First it was CNN that replayed my question - the CNN view was, more or less, the liberal media view: a certain hand wringing about whether the media was being used. Then it was Fox, with its extreme, love-it-or-leave-it, approach to the war, which took me apart: I was clearly a potential traitor.

And then it was Rush.

To his audience of 20 million - pro-war, military minded, Bush-centered, media-hating - lily white-Rush laid me out. I was not only a reporter, but one from New York magazine. "New York" resonated. It combined with "media" and suddenly, in the hands of Rush, I was as elitist and as pampered (fortunately nobody mentioned the Ritz) and as dismissive of the concerns of real Americans as, well, Rush's 20 million assume the media to be. Whereas Rush, that noted foot soldier, represented the military heartland.

What's more, according to Rush, that great defender of the rights of African-Americans, I was a racist. Duh. A white liberal challenging a black general. It's a binary world.

And Rush gave out my email address. Almost immediately, the 3,000 emails, full of righteous fury, started to come.

Clearly marked as the rabble-rouser of the get-out-of-Doha movement, I was approached by some enforcer types. The first person was a version of a Graham Greene character. He represented the White House, he said. Wasn't of the military. Although, he said, he was embedded here ("sleeping with a lot of flatulent officers," he said). He was incredibly conspiratorial. Smooth but creepy: "If you had to write the memo about media relations, what would be your bullet points?"

The next person to buttonhole me was the Centcom uber-civilian, a thirty-ish Republican operative. He was more full-metal-jacket in his approach (although he was a civilian he was, inexplicably, in uniform - making him, I suppose a sort of para-military figure): "I have a brother who is in a Hummer at the front, so don't talk to me about too much fucking air-conditioning." And: "A lot of people don't like you." And then: "Don't fuck with things you don't understand." And too: "This is fucking war, asshole." And finally: "No more questions for you."

I had been warned.

Read the whole thing

It's pretty clear who the civilian in uniform is and he's a real piece 'o work:

Signaling the high interest in improving the military's image is the appointment of [Jim] Wilkinson as spokesman for CENTCOM. A veteran White House publicist as well as a Navy Reserve lieutenant, Wilkinson headed the anti-Taliban Coalition Information Center during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and was spokesman for the Bush campaign in Miami-Dade County during the Florida recount after the 2000 election.

Wilkinson's political credentials have aroused journalistic concerns that the Bush administration, not known for its openness, is trying to control the message and use it for re-election purposes in the 2004 campaign.

Buzzflash reported:

...this entire public affairs operation is headed Jim Wilkinson, one of the thugs who protested the Florida recount. Ever the good soldier, (though a civilian, Wilkinson reportedly wears a military desert camouflage uniform to work)...

He is a big believer in freedom of expression, though, so it's hard to believe he would try to muzzle the press. Why, during the Florida recount CNN reported:

A spokesman for the Bush recount team in Florida said he was there during the exchanges Wednesday and saw no violence or kicking.

"I can tell you that simply did not happen," said Jim Wilkinson.

"What you had was a lot of young volunteers who, frankly, objected to this election being decided behind closed doors, without the media having a full view and without our observers having a full view," Wilkinson said. "We executed our First Amendment rights in a peaceful manner, with full decorum."

Yes. Elections these days are so darned "untidy," aren't they?



digby 4/14/2003 12:15:00 PM |

Saturday, April 12, 2003

 
Heads or Tails?

If there was ever any doubt as to the reason why nothing makes sense in this administration this removes it:

With strong and powerful personalities such as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney at the center of these disputes, the battles are often carried on to the last minute, when Bush makes a decision. Both sides wage spirited fights because, up until the moment Bush tips his hand, they assure themselves that the president shares their point of view.

The process, some officials say, at times verges on dysfunctional, largely because people at the lower levels make decisions without knowing or understanding the actual policy. That in turn can confuse and confound allies and foes as the administration appears to shift tactics from diplomacy toward confrontation, and back again.

No kidding.

That bodes well for this:

Administration officials have told the Israeli government that it is in its interest to allow Abbas to succeed. "We're talking hard, right now," an official said, about the steps expected of the Israeli government. A senior Arab official said Arabs will be watching to see whether Israel takes substantive steps such as quickly reducing the number of roadblocks and checkpoints on the West Bank or dismantling some settlements.

Yet Israel has serious concerns about the road map, and officials have indicated they want to renegotiate some aspects, a position that has some sympathy in other parts of the administration.

And this could certainly be a problem:

Asked if the United States was preparing to take some action against Syria, Wolfowitz said, "That's not a decision the Defense Department makes. That obviously . . . would be a decision for the president and Congress."

Yet, on the same day as Wolfowitz's comments, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage told reporters that "in the last several days they have responded quite well to U.S. and coalition warnings and démarches about closing their borders and things of that nature and she has done so."

While the State Department is not unhappy to have Syria rattled, the rhetoric has begun to alarm some officials, as well as officials in the British government. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is frequently forced to deny in television interviews overseas that the United States has a secret list of countries it plans to attack next

So, what do you think he does? Eeeny meeny miney mo? Rock, paper, scissors?



digby 4/12/2003 11:06:00 PM |

 
Good Cop, Bad Cop

I swear I was being facetious when I said back on April 8th:

Saddam's Ba'ath party probably has some damned good administrators. And police forces, for that matter. Highly experienced. Surely they can be convinced to assume a more benign role in a post-Saddam Iraq. Maybe we don't have to engage in all that messy "accountability" mucky muck. Particularly when the ungrateful Iraqis are looting all the spoils (that we will just have to replace with our oil profits...)

I honestly did not believe that the United States would actually put Ba'ath Party police back on the streets because well...you know... all that torture, killing, cutting tongues out stuff. It didn't seem like the kind of thing that would be good for that All American altruistic liberator image to put Saddam's police apparatus back in place. Call me crazy, but I think some Iraqis might find that a bit disconcerting. Iraq wasn't called a police state for nothing.

Explaining the decision to encourage the Iraqi police to return, another civil affairs officer, Major David Cooper, said: "An awful lot of these people were police officers first and Ba'athists second. If we can identify those who were not hardline Ba'athists but are hardline Iraqi policemen, we can use them to maintain order. The first thing is to find out who they are and then see if we can work with them. We are not going to put war criminals in positions of authority."

And to think I was afraid they might be using some of the bad Ba'ath police who did the electrodes on the genitals and raping kids in front of their parents thing that Dubya mentioned about 3,236 times in the last month.

I'm awfully relieved American soldiers can tell so easily which ones are the war criminals and which ones are the good Ba'athists. They probably have a lot of experience negotiating labyrinthine social systems in total chaos. Perhaps they'll see into their souls.




digby 4/12/2003 06:16:00 PM |

 
Oh heck

Officials at the Pentagon have specific concerns about one aspect of the widespread looting -- that vandalism of government offices could destroy evidence about weapons of mass destruction.

Wouldn't you just know it?

Update: All Is Not Lost

Britain and the United States have bypassed the United Nations to establish a secret team of inspectors to resume the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

[...]

The role played by the new inspectors, who set up a base in Kuwait a week before the war began, was disclosed to the Guardian by David Kay, the former head of Unscom, the arms inspections team which left Iraq in 1998 after Iraq accused it of being infiltrated by spies.

No mention has been made of the new group by ministers or military spokesmen, who have indicated that weapons inspections are carried out by military forces. But the group, headed by Charles Duelfer, a former deputy head of the Unscom weapons inspectors, has travelled extensively in Iraq.

[...]

Mr Kay described the new inspectors as a "robust group of people". "There are special forces teams that carry out [immediate] inspections. But they are not as technically based as the Kuwait team, who are heavily science-based civilians."

A spokesman for Mr Blix, Ewen Buchanan, said the US-led team had tried and failed to recruit some of his staff.

Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, said the existence of the secret team would lead to a major dispute. "You are more likely to find what you want if you do it yourself," he said. "If this team finds a smoking gun, people will not believe it."

The disclosure is likely to embarrass British ministers, who are officially committed to allowing Unmovic a role.

Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, would only say yesterday that Britain and the US had set up a "machinery" for resuming inspections. "It may take some time," he added.

Whew. That's a relief.

I don't know why people wouldn't believe it if our secret team comes up with a smoking gun. And, anyway, who cares what a bunch of losers think? They thought we couldn't beat Saddam either and boy are they eating their words today. They'll eat more words when our special super secret team finds all those WMD's. At least that's what Andy and Rummy and Dubya will say. And that's ALL that matters.



digby 4/12/2003 01:10:00 PM |

Friday, April 11, 2003

 
Goodfella

This is so damned nuts that I'm just going to let it speak for itself. Is America really ready for this?

A strong warning to Syria
Barry James/IHT International Herald Tribune
Saturday, April 12, 2003

Perle, a Pentagon adviser, sees more preemption in future

PARIS Richard Perle, one of the chief U.S. ideologists behind the war to oust Saddam Hussein, warned Friday that the United States would be compelled to act if it discovered that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have been concealed in Syria.

Perle said that if the Bush administration were to learn that Syria had taken possession of such Iraqi weapons, "I'm quite sure that we would have to respond to that."

"It would be an act of such foolishness on Syria's part," he continued, "that it would raise the question of whether Syria could be reasoned with. But I suppose our first approach would be to demand that the Syrians terminate that threat by turning over anything they have come to possess, and failing that I don't think anyone would rule out the use of any of our full range of capabilities."

In an interview with editors of the International Herald Tribune, Perle said that the threat posed by terrorists he described as "feverishly" looking for weapons to kill as many Americans as possible obliged the United States to follow a strategy of preemptive war in its own defense.

Asked if this meant it would go after other countries after Iraq, he replied: "If next means who will next experience the 3d Army Division or the 82d Airborne, that's the wrong question. If the question is who poses a threat that the United States deal with, then that list is well known. It's Iran. It's North Korea. It's Syria. It's Libya, and I could go on."

Perle, a Pentagon adviser as a member of the Defense Policy Board, said the point about Afghanistan and now Iraq was that the United States had been put in a position of having to use force to deal with a threat that could not be managed in any other way.

The message to other countries on the list is "give us another way to manage the threat," he said, adding, "Obviously, our strong preference is always going to be to manage threats by peaceful means, and every one of the countries on the 'who's next?' list is in a position to end the threat by peaceful means."

"So the message to Syria, to Iran, to North Korea, to Libya should be clear. if we have no alternative, we are prepared to do what is necessary to defend Americans and others. But that doesn't mean that we are readying the troops for a next military engagement. We are not."

The former official in Republican administrations said the United States also has "a serious problem" with Saudi Arabia, where he said both private individuals and the government had poured money into extremist organizations.

"This poses such an obvious threat to the United States that it is intolerable that they continue to do this," he warned.

He said he had no doubt that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

"We will not find them unless we stumble across them," he said, "until we are able to interview those Iraqis who know where they are. The prospect of inspections may have had the effect of causing the relocation of the weapons and their hiding in a manner that would minimize their discovery, which I believe will turn out to mean burying things underground in inaccessible places."

He added that the speed of the coalition advance, "may have precluded retrieving and using those weapons in a timely fashion."

Asked if the United States was doomed to follow a policy of preemption alone, Perle replied that it is necessary to restructure the United Nations to take account of security threats that arise within borders rather than are directed across borders.

"There is no doubt that if some of the organizations that are determined to destroy this country could lay their hands on a nuclear weapon they would detonate it, and they would detonate in the most densely populated cities in this country, with a view to killing as many Americans as possible, " he said. Yet there was nothing in the UN charter authorizing collective preemption to avoid such threats.

"I think the charter could say that the terrorist threat is a threat to all mankind," Perle said.

Perle said resentment over France's opposition to the war ran so deep in the United States that he doubted there could ever be a basis for constructive relations between the two governments.

"When you have both the government and the opposition agreed on one thing, which is that they are not sure whether they want Saddam Hussein to win, that is a shocking development and Americans have been shocked. The freedom fries and all the rest is a pretty deeply held sentiment. I am afraid this is not something that is easily patched and cannot be dealt with simply in the normal diplomatic way. because the feeling runs too deep. it's gone way beyond the diplomats."

Perle said he had no doubt the world is safer than it was a month ago. "The idea that liberating Iraq would spawn terrorists all over the Muslim world I think will be proven to be wrong, and it will be proven to be wrong by the Iraqis themselves . We are about to learn what life has been like under Saddam Hussein. Even in the tough world we are living in, people are going to be shocked about the depravity and sadism of the Saddam regime."

Perle said there were good reasons to support the Middle East peace process, but not in a way that suggests the United States has caused damage by the war in Iraq. "The sense that we somehow owe this to the Arab world only diminishes the essential truth about what we've done in Iraq," he said. "We have not damaged Arab interests. We have advanced them by freeing 25 million people from this brutal dictatorship."

Now I don't know if this guy is a certifiable psychopath, but he is obviously completely fucking demented. This kind of talk scares the hell out of me now that it's quite clear that this freak really does speak for the administration.



digby 4/11/2003 08:31:00 PM |

Thursday, April 10, 2003

 
Ain't Misbehavin'

Calpundit makes a small point in his post today on Michael Tomasky's excellent call to arms in The American Prospect. He has said this in so many words a number of times in the ongoing debate about extremism vs. moderation etc.

My problem is with extremist liberals who seem to go out of their way to alienate Middle America — highly public vomit-ins, tree spikings, trips to Baghdad — without ever thinking about what effect this might have on acceptance of the liberal agenda in general.

Every political party has its fringe. In a two party system, the coalition in each is huge and represents a wide range of opinion. There are also always those who will use dramatic and over the top actions in the name of politics. However, they rarely signify with the public unless a concerted propaganda campaign makes it appear that these people represent a mainstream view and then closely ties them to elected politicians.

White supremecists, Christian Reconstructionists, militias, neo-confederates and anti-immigrant bigots represent the extremist fringe of the Republican party and I would suggest that their activities would be far more repulsive to most middle of the road Americans than some theatrical kids at a protest rally --- if they heard about them constantly. If there were a non-stop barrage of criticism coming from talk radio and cable television against comments like this, many of Kevin's ordinary Americans would begin to see these people for the rude, immature bigots they are.

But, the fact is that the only "extremists" who are pointed out and regularly lambasted in the media are from the left. And, it is part of a long standing, organized effort to portray the entire democratic party as being out of the mainstream. Even if we could persuade every single theatrical liberal that it is in the best interest of the liberal agenda to behave in a more politic way, it would not make one bit of difference. They already call Tom Daschle an ultra liberal spawn of Satan and Howie Kurtz says that's mainstream partisan discourse. If the "extremists" of the left didn't exist, Rush would just make some up.

The problem for Democrats isn't our cultural nonconformists who embarrass and disconcert the bourgeoisie. Our problem is the GOP extremists who are now directing the government and buying up the media while dishonestly presenting themselves as moderate middle of the roaders. The Republicans have successfully convinced a lot of people that kooky gay guys "shocking" the straights or removing the word God from the pledge of allegiance are more of a threat to them than a series of expensive unilateral wars while bankrupting the government and discarding the safety net and all consumer protections.

We have to recognize that the other side will demonize us no matter what we actually do so there is no margin in trying to tailor our image. The other side won't let that happen. We have to depend upon our ideas and our candidates making a better case. And we have to finally go after the other side with everything in our arsenal. Worrying about our own extremists instead of exposing theirs is playing into their hands.



edited slightly for clarity

digby 4/10/2003 05:55:00 PM |

 
Shanghai Surprise

This is too rich. The FBI “handler” of Johnny Chung in the hysterical Chi-Com fundraising scandals in the late 90’s turns out to have been sleeping with a Chinese double agent – and well known Republican fundraiser – for many years.

If you have forgotten the sad and tawdry story of Johnny Chung, let me remind you what all the breast beating was about:

MARGARET WARNER: Last year, Senator Fred Thompson, Chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, opened his investigation of campaign fund-raising abuses...

[…]

...but the hearings ended last October without establishing a Chinese government connection to various illegal contributions made during the 1996 election season.

Then, last Friday, The New York Times reported that Justice Department investigators believe they have established such a link, based on testimony provided by California businessman Johnny Chung. Chung, who made hundreds of thousands of dollars in questionable contributions to the Democratic National Committee, began cooperating with the Justice Department after pleading guilty to campaign-related bank and tax fraud charges in March. Chung reportedly told investigators that a significant portion of his 1996 contributions came from China's People's Liberation Army by way of Liu Chao-Ying, a lieutenant colonel who also is a top executive of Beijing's state-owned aerospace company, China Aerospace. That same year, the Clinton administration was making it easier for American commercial satellites to be launched by Chinese rockets--a move that benefitted Liu's company. Such launchings had been tightly restricted in the past out of concern that they would give China access to technology that could be used for military purposes.

The Justice Department is also investigating whether the administration's decision was influenced by domestic campaign contributions from executives of two American aerospace companies that had been lobbying to get the restrictions eased--Loral Space Communications and Hughes Electronics. Loral Chairman Bernard Schwartz gave the Democrats more than $600,000 before the '96 elections, making him the party's largest single contributor that year. President Clinton insisted that contributions had not influenced the decision to let China launch American satellites.

Remember now? Clinton had supposedly knowingly taken money from the Chi-Coms and two aerospace companies and then, acting as the Communist agent we always knew he was, eased regulations allowing the sale of extremely sensitive satellite secrets to his comrades. It was, of course, never even slightly proven that anybody in the White House had the slightest idea that the money Chung donated came from Chinese sources, the money was returned immediately upon hearing that it may have been, and all the scandal really managed to do was nail some low hanging fruit for violations unrelated to the screaming headlines charging espionage and treason. The investigation of Loral and Hughes continued but it was determined that the easing of restrictions had nothing to do with the kind of sensitive information the companies were suspected of sharing with Beijing.

Fast forward to March 28th of this year as we entered Operation Neocon Wetdream:

While he led an influential Pentagon advisory board, Richard N. Perle advised a major American satellite maker, Loral Space and Communications, as it faced government accusations that it improperly transferred rocket technology to China, administration officials said today.Officials at the State Department said that the senior official considering how to resolve the rocket matter, Assistant Secretary Lincoln P. Bloomfield Jr., was contacted by Mr. Perle once or twice in the second half of 2001 on behalf of the company.

At the time, Mr. Bloomfield, who heads the State Department's bureau of political-military affairs, and other officials were investigating accusations that Loral turned over expertise that significantly improved the reliability of China's nuclear missiles...

"We have an office, our political-military office, led by Assistant Secretary Linc Bloomfield, who did receive queries from Mr. Perle," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in response to a question during an interview today. "And quite appropriate, since Richard was, I guess, authorized for Loral to ask. In conducting our regular business I know that Linc and members of Linc's staff did have conversations with Richard Perle. We would do that with anybody who is authorized to call and ask of such matters."

Mr. Perle said this afternoon that he was retained by Loral seven months before his appointment by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to head the Defense Policy Board and was given a one-time retainer at the outset of his work. "I was retained by Loral in January 2001 to assist the company in assessing its dispute with the government concerning transfers of technology to the Chinese, to recommend approaches to settling that dispute including new security arrangements to assure against any further technology leakage," he said. "At no time did I urge any government official to settle the case."

He said any conversations he may have had with Mr. Bloomfield or his staff "related to the licensing" of other Loral satellites for the Chinese and that he was "not compensated by the company in connection with that activity."

[…]

The government accused Loral of providing Chinese officials with confidential materials from an American panel that investigated the February 1996 crash of a Loral satellite, which was built for Intelsat, the international consortium, and was launched by a Chinese Long March rocket.

The inquiry into Loral and other companies resulted in restrictions that have prevented the industry from seeking new business with China.

[…]

… people involved in the case have said Mr. Perle was retained on the instructions of Mr. Schwartz, who came under criticism by some Republicans during the Clinton administration for being one of the largest political donors to Democrats.

Mr. Schwartz retained a prominent team to defend the company in the investigation. Among those who worked on the matter were Douglas J. Feith, who is now under secretary of defense for policy. Mr. Feith is also an old friend and former colleague of Mr. Perle. When Mr. Perle was an assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration, Mr. Feith was his special counsel.

And now we find that one of the FBI agents who was heavily involved in the Chi-Com fundraising scandal was also heavily involved sexually with a Chinese double agent who also happened to be a well known Republican fundraiser. Meanwhile, the company that was portrayed as a treasonous Chi-Com front for Bill Clinton and his commie brethren hires a bunch of neocon heavyweights in the Defense Department to get it out of its mess.

Oh congressional committees, where art thou? Anybody? No treason? What about the “smell test?” As Senator Specter (R-Gasbag) said at the time, “… these matters may be coincidences, but they raise an unsavory inference and ought to be investigated.”




digby 4/10/2003 04:12:00 PM |

 
Offers They Can't Refuse

Chris Anderson has some criticisms of my newfound friends, the neocons. He says:

This is a foreign policy in which America's primary role is that of a protection racket. People can go about there business, just so long as they don't do anything that we don't like. Then they better watch out! Look what we did to Sadaam!

And I say, what's wrong with that? There is a lot wrong with the Mafia, as we all know, but they did bring order to unruly neighborhoods by selling their protection. We too will bring order to the world by laying out the rules under which nations may behave and then taking only the resources we absolutely need to maintain our hegemony. If they fail to behave (or give us these small tokens of respect) we will have to make an example of them. This is the very essence of the Pax Americana. Sometimes a little "knuckles de sandwich" is the price 'o freedom, my friends.



digby 4/10/2003 01:46:00 PM |

 
Ich Bin Ein Neoconer

"In removing the terror regime from Iraq, we send a very clear message to all groups that operate by means of terror and violence against the innocent. The United States and our coalition partners are showing that we have the capacity and the will to wage war on terror-and to win decisively." Vice President Cheney 4/9/03


Ok. I’m a convert. I have been studying the neoconservative movement for some time and thought them to be little more than crass imperialists who couched their will to power in a delusion born of discarded leftist radicalism. But, after seeing the American flag draped over the statue of Saddam’s ugly mug, the cheering people getting their first “whiff ‘o freedom” I now know that all that talk of weapons of mass destruction and support for al Qaeda was just a clever ruse by the Bush administration to convince wimpy Americans to support the first in a series of wars against those who operate by means of terror and violence against the innocent. I now believe, like most Americans and good people everywhere, that it doesn’t matter if Saddam had WMD or supported terrorists. It was never about that.

It has now been established that America boldly defied the cowardly Europeans and the perfidious United Nations and put its own blood and treasure on the line for purely altruistic reasons --- the liberation of a repressed people from a cruel and heartless dictator and all that talk of threats to ourselves were forced upon us by cynics who refuse to see that we are a country that operates solely out of humanitarian concern.

You see, Americans have also been liberated today.

We are liberated from the restraints of Realpolitik, the need to consider issues of stability, economic interests or the outmoded concept of the “sovereignty” of nations. No longer will ideology or politics or “strategic interests” play a part in our foreign policy calculations. It will not be necessary for our government to set forth thinly veiled rationales for our actions, paying lip service to silly notions of international law that only serve to protect the guilty. We will not have to provide evidence that the United States or an “ally” (whatever that is) is itself threatened and therefore we are operating out of self-defense. We have openly declared ourselves liberators of oppressed people everywhere. We will use our vast military power to back up President Bush’s words in his State of the Union speech:

“America is a strong nation, and honorable in the use of our strength. We exercise power without conquest, and we sacrifice for the liberty of strangers.

Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity.”

Our President was clearly chosen by God to be his instrument. We are going to free the world. This, then, truly is moral clarity.

To that end I would like to suggest that the following nations be considered for invasion immediately.

We should start with almost all countries in the middle east (except Israel, which is as devoted to freedom as we are.) Every single regime needs to be changed. We have a small fraction of the troops we will eventually need already in the area and I think it would be a grave mistake to do as Bush’s father did and leave the innocent people of the region in the clutches of what can only be deemed repressive violent governments. We must not repeat the mistakes of 1991.

We can give them warning, as the neocons and the defense department are now doing, but it simply must be backed up with a willingness to invade when a given deadline for reform and/or exile has passed. Only cynical naysayers could object now that we’ve established our sterling motives for invading Iraq.

And, even if they do --- so what? This is about bringing freedom to oppressed people everywhere. We cannot let outmoded notions of casus belli stand in the way of our crusade.

Our “ally” Turkey, for instance, is a known violent repressor of its Kurdish population and is documented to employ torture tactics against innocent people. The most frequently reported methods included severe beatings, blindfolding, suspension by the arms or wrists, electric shocks, sexual abuse, and food and sleep deprivation. Many Kurdish politicians have “disappeared” and political prisoners are numerous. Extrajudicial executions are common.

There is no excuse for this. We must liberate the Turkish people from the yoke of its government’s use of terror and violence against innocent people.

Every other country in the region is guilty of even worse. No political freedom, no democracy, torture, extrajudicial executions, repression of women and ethnic minorities. The list of crimes that must be stopped is so huge as to be overwhelming. We simply cannot allow this to go on.

And, that’s only the beginning. Countries throughout Africa are in even worse shape. Amnesty International reports, “whether in Angola, Burundi, Central Africa Republic (CAR), Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan or Uganda, thousands of unarmed civilians suffered some of the most egregious human rights violations in Africa -- illegal arrests and detention, kidnapping, torture and ill-treatment, rape, murder, "disappearances" -- by both government forces and armed opposition groups.”

Is that any less of a horror than that which we saw in Iraq? Are those people any less deserving of liberation? I think not. And through the generosity and altruism that has been released in the American people by their neoconservative leaders, I have little doubt that we will soon begin the planning to bring freedom and democracy to Africa.

There is so much more work to be done, however. Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Chechnya, Russia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Myanmar, Indonesia, North Korea, Tibet, Nepal, China and many more all have horrific human rights records. We must systematically prepare to take them down.

We will issue warnings, much as we did with Saddam Hussein, but if they do not capitulate before the deadline, we will invade them, depose their despotic rulers, liberate their people and do whatever it takes to build democracy. Our military is unbeatable and our people are willing to do whatever it takes to bring freedom to the oppressed.

John F. Kennedy told us more than 40 years ago:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

Unfortunately he went on to say:

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do—for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

To those new States whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom—and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

[…]

To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support—to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective—to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak—and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.

[…]

So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

Thankfully, we’ve learned some lessons since that time. Our oldest allies and newly freed states have proved to only be useful to the extent they agree to do exactly as we say and the United Nations is irrelevant. Civility is counterproductive. Threats backed by guns are what works. American sincerity is unquestioned. We do not negotiate.

But, thankfully, the larger point --- our commitment to bear any burden for liberty --- has now been engaged with all the weight of our vast wealth and power. We are on a crusade for freedom and we will invade, occupy and democratize any country that tries to stop us.

Long live the neocons.

Long live the Pax Americana.





digby 4/10/2003 01:12:00 PM |

Tuesday, April 08, 2003

 
The Doctrine of Infallibility

Matthew Iglesias posts the following and I quite disagree:

The other day I saw someone all upset by some kind of poll indicating that most American don’t think we need to find any WMDs in Iraq for the war to have been justified. I found myself actually agreeing with this proposition — whether or not the invasion was a good idea has almost nothing to do with whether or not we find WMDs.

For one thing, the whole WMD issue only speaks to the narrow topic of legal justification. As long as we’re on that topic, however, only one thing matters: compliance with UN resolutions. As everyone knows, Iraq was not in full compliance with the relevant resolutions and the United States did not receive authorization to enforce the resolutions by invading. You can make of that what you will (it was blogged to death about a month ago) but it has no relationship to whether or not we’re able to find any WMDs in the country. Saddam was supposed to comply with the inspectors, and he didn’t. We were supposed to get yet another UN resolution, and we didn’t.

This is truly perverse. One of the fundamentals of the Bush Doctrine is the doctrine of "preemption," stating that the US has an obligation to invade and depose any regimes that are developing weapons of mass destruction. "We can't wait for a smoking mushroom cloud." This, and the doctrine of overwhelming US military dominance, rejection of deterrence as a strategy, keeping Europe from presenting a military challenge and Mid-east and China regime change are what make up the global security guarantee envisioned as the Pax Americana. The worry about selling or giving WMD to terrorists was tacked on recently but it more or less fits with the overall construct and provides a powerful (if phony) argument post 9/11.

The threat of asymmetrical warfare and terrorists getting their hands on WMD is a real one. This is why the administration makes the argument that the preemption doctrine must be stretched to say that any existing WMD program in an unstable regime presents an "imminent" threat, merely by presenting an opportunity for terrorists to obtain fissionable material or small amounts of deadly chemicals and toxins. I don't agree that this situation presents an explicit rationale for invasion, and it seems clear that it is little more than a fig leaf for what is otherwise a doctrine of preventive war, but I can at least see some logic in the argument. But, if there is no evidence that such a program exists then we have no justification other than an arbitrary decision by our government to depose the rulers of a sovereign nation (and kill a bunch of their citizens in the process) for no better reason than that it suits our strategic objectives. (The “liberator” rationale so favored by the media is really only suitable for children and really dumb Republicans like President Bush.)This is a very dangerous concept and Americans should not accept it unless we actually believe that our leaders are all ordained by God and therefore always know what is right and just and need never present their rationale or evidence for taking action. This does not sound like liberal democracy to me.

If we do not need actual evidence of a regime's WMD development program and if this entire project relies instead on the idea that our government can be trusted to have total prescience of a regime's future intentions then the Bush Doctrine is a straight up doctrine of preventive war.

And, while the Bush Doctrine clearly backs into an embrace of preventive war, even the neocons aren’t going to openly admit that and for good reason. Their mission is to establish global military dominance to ensure American hegemony (and not incidentally ensure Israel’s security.) Therefore, even on their own terms it is in their best interest to at least appear to adhere to international norms that everyone understands.

A policy of straightforward preventive war would be intolerable to most of the world, which will justifiably feel threatened by a huge and powerful nation that believes it can reject agreed upon international law and tradition (which are far more longstanding than any UN resolutions) simply because it is powerful enough to do so. The United States does not, by virtue of its military power, really have any unusual claim to righteousness. If we do not adhere to the rules that have been designed to set guidelines of tolerable behavior for the nations less amenable to democratic values -- especially in the name of those same democratic values -- we will have become incoherent and unpredictable. We will have no allies who don't operate solely from fear and opportunism which is an invitation to perfidy. Nobody will share our "values," because our values are no longer known and predictable. And we will have taken a giant leap into creating an anarchic global system that no matter how powerful we are, we cannot hope to unilaterally control through force alone.

Even wild-eyed neocons have to adhere at least on some level to the rule of law and international norms if they truly believe in a Pax Americana. They cannot rely on a puerile notion of being selective “liberators” nor can they straightforwardly propose a policy of preventive war. Therefore, they must produce evidence of “imminent” threat (even as they elastically define it) before taking action like that in Iraq. And if they are proven wrong after the fact, the war should rightly be deemed illegal and immoral, on the terms the neocons themselves set forth.

.

Update: I see Kevin Drum has already posted a more cogent response.






digby 4/08/2003 11:07:00 PM |

 
A Thousand Flowers Bloom

Armed gangs in Najaf undermine peace plans
By Charles Clover in Najaf, Iraq
Published: April 8 2003 17:57 | Last Updated: April 8 2003 17:57


The people of Hay al-Ansar, a district on the outskirts of Najaf, were glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party rule when the city was seized by US forces last week.

But they appear to be just as terrified, if not more so, of their new rulers - a little known Iraqi militia backed by the US special forces and headquartered in a compound nearby.

The Iraqi Coalition of National Unity (ICNU), which appeared in the city last week riding on US special forces vehicles, has taken to looting and terrorising the people with impunity, according to most residents.

"They steal and steal" said Abu Zeinab, a man living near the Medresa al Tayif school. . "They threaten us, saying 'we are with the Americans, you can do nothing to us.'"

Sa'ida al-Hamed, another resident, says she has witnessed looting by the ICNU and other armed gangs in the city, which lost its police force when the government fled last week. One man told a US army translator on Monday that he was taken out of his house and beaten by ICNU forces when he refused to give them his car. They took it anyway, he said.

If true, the testimony of residents in Hay al-Ansar reveals a darker side to US policy in Iraq. In their eagerness to hand local administration back to Iraqis, US forces are in danger of losing the peace as rapidly as they have won the war, by handing power back to tyrants.

US special forces said they were looking into the complaints, which had been passed to them by US military sources. They declined, however, to discuss the formation of the group, how its members were chosen, or who they were.

The head of the ICNU, who says he is a former colonel in the Iraqi artillery forces who has been working with the underground opposition since 1996, announced on Tuesday that he was acting mayor of Najaf, and his group has taken over administration of the city. Other Iraqi exiles, brought in by the CIA and US special forces to help assemble a local government over the next few days, say the militia is out of control.

"They are nobody, and nobody has ever heard of them, all they have is US backing," said an Arab journalist traveling with a group of exiles from the US and UK in Najaf.

Abu Zeinab said the ICNU "has no basis in this city, we don't know who they are." He said the residents of Najaf, who are predominantly Shia Muslims, follow only one man, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who lives in the city.

Ayatollah Sistani has so far refused to meet representatives of US forces, according to associates, and has made no public pronouncements on co-operating with the US military. Associates say he is "waiting for the situation to become clearer".

"We only follow Ayatollah Sistani, and so far he has said nothing," said Abu Zeinab.

Hassan Mussawi, a Shia' Muslim cleric who helps lead the ICNU, said on Tuesday that the reports of looting by his group were untrue and fabricated by religious extremists to discredit his movement.[uh oh..ed.]

"There are people with guns stealing things in their neighbourhood, but they think anyone with a gun belongs to our group," he said.

He added that his group was seeking to arrest former Iraqi government officials and "collaborators" with Saddam Hussein's regime throughout the city.

"If they do not resist arrest, we hand them over to the Americans. If they resist then we take measures accordingly."

The allegations against the ICNU threaten to undermine much of the goodwill built up by US forces among the people of Najaf, who still wave and cheer at US troops driving through the city. In an effort to curb the looting, which is rampant in Najaf, US forces have begun to patrol at night. They will not be undertaking specific police functions, according to their commanders, but "if we come upon looting, we will try to control the situation and disperse those doing the looting," said Lt Col Marcus De Oliveira, of the 101st Airborne Division.

The city's political rivalries appear to be affecting humanitarian assistance to the town. US special forces have objected to allowing certain local Shia religious leaders, with ties to Iran, to distribute food aid.

The 16 truckloads of food that recently arrived in the city from the Kuwait Red Crescent Society is being distributed according to a plan drawn up by the Iraqi ministry of commerce for the United Nation's oil-for-food programme.

US forces are also trying to restore running water and power to the city, by bringing in a 2.5 MW generator from Kuwait to restart the city's power plant, which was shut off by Iraqi forces.

Hussein Chilabi, a father of six in Chilabat, on the outskirts of Najaf, said until running water is restored, his family are forced to drink water from canals, which is not healthy. "The children are sick in their stomachs from drinking this water. We need running water more than food - more that anything right now."

How very interesting. US Special forces installed a bunch of thugs nobody has ever seen before to patrol the city of Najaf. It is unexplained and unremarked upon in the major papers.

Meanwhile, in Basra, they have named a local sheik as leader, but these reports don't seem to know much about him. Viceroy Garner signed off, so I guess we have to assume it's all part of his cunning secret plan...

..The sheik was identified as a tribal leader, but his name and religious affiliation were not disclosed. Col. Chris Vernon, spokesman for the British forces, said the sheik had met British divisional commanders Monday and been given the job of setting up an administrative committee representing other groups in the region.

The sheik and his committee will be the first civilian leadership established in liberated Iraq, even as retired U.S. Gen. Jay Garner, appointed by the Pentagon to form an interim post-war administration, tries to define a new leadership for the whole country.

The sheik's committee will be left alone by the British to form a local authority, Vernon said...

Interesting plan they have going. Locals are being chosen to lead by the US military. It looks like some, at least, aren't working so well. I wonder what will happen if it turns out that these local leaders aren't as schooled as they should be in the Enlightenment values that so animated our founding fathers and are sure to take hold in Iraq within a matter of days? Will we be forced to institute some more of that "regime change" in the name of democracy?

It's just so hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys and install a democratic beacon of lightness for the whole world to imitate when you haven't a fucking clue about anything or anyone you are dealing with. What a sticky wicket.

Surely, the new sub-Viceroys who have no experience with Iraq or the language or large organizations are sure to be able to sort all this out, though. And, although he has not been to Iraq since 1958, Mr Chalabi's vast experience leveraging his position in neocon salons from one end of Georgetown to the other will stand him in very good stead in putting together a government from scratch.

Of course, the sheik who shall remain nameless said that he will likely appoint Baathists whom he believes are tolerably good, so maybe the country won't have to start from scratch after all. Saddam's Baath party probably has some damned good administrators. And police forces, for that matter. Highly experienced. Surely they can be convinced to assume a more benign role in a post-Saddam Iraq. Maybe we don't have to engage in all that messy "accountability" mucky muck. Particularly when the ungrateful Iraqis are looting all the spoils (that we will just have to replace with our oil profits...)

I am just breathless with excitement as we watch this brilliant plan for regional, no global, democracy begin to take shape. Just like in Philadelphia circa 1787 we have gathered the finest minds of a generation, all together in one place, to ratify a bold new experiment in self-government. The names Perle, Wolfowitz, Garner, Bodine and the sheik with no name will long be remembered. Feel the magic.





digby 4/08/2003 05:56:00 PM |

 
In the Tank and Providing Sexual Favors

I just heard Wolf Blitzer argue with Christianne Amanpour that the journalists who were killed this morning were pretty much asking for it because they knew that Saddam was using them as human shields. A visibly pissed Christianne explained that the rules were very clear and that the dead reporters in Baghdad probably know a lot more about courage in warfare than any of those who were suggesting such a thing. She went on to say that this was missing the point because there was NO evidence that any shots had emanated from the building in the time before the tank opened fire and that this was the rationale being offered by the Pentagon. Wolf then said that a NY Times reporter indicated in this article that senior Iraqi officials were going into the hotel and not allowing journalists to leave as if that was supposed to mean something.

Needless to say, Wolf didn't bring up the fact that on the very same day, by pure coincidence of course, we also bombed the offices of al Jazeera. Ooopsie. Our precision weapons sure are hitting journalists today, aren't they? Damn that Saddam.

Gosh, I sure am glad that Wolf isn't let any feeling of solidarity with fellow journalists interfere with his deeply embedded gratitude at being allowed to bury his head as far up the asses of the Bush administration as humanly possible.


digby 4/08/2003 03:23:00 PM |

 
Daily Fix

Salon has a great article up today on Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. It makes the usual observations (only real liberal “news” etc.) but I think it gives short shrift to the extent to which the humor flows from puncturing the media and showing what complete whores for establishment power they are. Having said that, it does highlight one segment that perfectly nails the media’s wholesale absorbtion of the Republican strategy:

The show specializes in satires of bogus experts: No matter what the subject at hand, for example, Stephen Colbert is introduced as the show's "senior analyst." He's the senior U.N. analyst, senior media analyst, senior theater analyst, senior death analyst (commenting on a Texas execution), etc. He can always be counted on to speak utter drivel with unflappable authority.

After the war started, Stewart had the following conversations with Colbert, who was wearing his "senior media analyst" hat:

Stewart: What should the media's role be in covering the war?

Colbert: Very simply, the media's role should be the accurate and objective description of the hellacious ass-whomping we're handing the Iraqis.

Stewart: Hellacious ass-whomping? Now to me, that sounds pretty subjective.

Colbert: Are you saying it's not an ass-whomping, Jon? I suppose you could call it an ass-kicking or an ass-handing-to. Unless, of course, you love Hitler.

Stewart [stammering]: I don't love Hitler.

Colbert: Spoken like a true Hitler-lover.

Stewart: Look, even some American generals have said that the Iraqis have put up more resistance than they were expected to.

Colbert: First rule of journalism, Jon, is to know your sources. Sounds like these "generals" of yours may be a little light in the combat boots, if you know what I'm saying.

Stewart: I don't think I know what you're saying.

Colbert: I'm saying they're queers, Jon. They're Hitler-loving queers.

Stewart: I'm perplexed. Is your position that there's no place for negative words or even thoughts in the media?

Colbert: Not at all, Jon. Doubts can happen to everyone, including me, but as a responsible journalist, I've taken my doubts, fears, moral compass, conscience and all-pervading skepticism about the very nature of this war and simply placed them in this empty Altoids box. [Produces box.] That's where they'll stay, safe and sound, until Iraq is liberated.

Stewart: Isn't it the media's responsibility in wartime ...

Colbert: That's my point, Jon! The media has no responsibility in wartime. The government's on top of it. The media can sit this one out.

Stewart: And do what?

Colbert: Everything it's always wanted to do but had no time for: travel, see the world, write that novel. I know the media has always wanted to try yoga. This is a great time to take it up. It's very stressful out there -- huge war going on. Jon, hear me out, it was Thomas Jefferson who said, "Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach."

Stewart: Stephen, Stalin said that. That was Stalin. Jefferson said he'd rather have a free press and no government than a government and no free press.

Colbert: Well, what do you expect from a slave-banging, Hitler-loving queer?

I think that is a masterful take down of the entire right wing “stifle dissent” strategy while at the same time totally eviscerating the silly, self-serving press corp. (Not to mention that it is just plain, fucking hilarious.)

But the author also makes the following statement that gives me pause:

Political humor used to belong to the left, but that all changed in the 1990s, when the priggishness of political correctitude injected new vitality into a segment of the population that had been shut out of comedy's pantheon: assholes. Suddenly, a guy could flaunt his most petty and vindictive prejudices and still get to feel like a champion of truth and freedom. You could rail against "victimology" when, say, sexually harassed workers dared to resort to it, and then turn around and avail yourself of the same trend by claiming that a pack of censorious puritans was trying to shut you up. In fact, the appeal of shock jocks and other bad boys mostly lies in the idea that they're offensive to somebody else, someone you can imagine gasping in horror at each transgression. Without political correctness (and that's fading fast), a big chunk of what passes for contemporary American humor would be flapping in the wind.

I do agree that asshole humor became fashionable as a response to political correctness. The Clinton hating cabal gained plenty of currency for being “shockingly” politically incorrect with their snide humor and bitchy outrageousness (but are now looking slightly passé.) Where would Ann Coulter or Lucianne Goldberg have been without political correctness to play off of? Much of the Clinton bashing was pure attitude --- snide, gossipy, derisive --- National Enquirer style.

But, I don’t see a lot of evidence that political correctness is fading fast. And, my evidence for this is the fact that I often find myself pulling my punches because I always hear from some people who will be offended by the fact that I would use a line like “slave banging, Hitler loving queer,” even as a way of exposing the other side for the bigots and extremists they are. Most disheartening is the fact that I frequently get arguments saying that by printing those words I am contributing to the problem – as if the context of words is completely irrelevant. Some very well intentioned people seem to believe that you can eliminate bigotry and hatred by eliminating the words that people use to express them. This rule applies to all except those who co-opted the term as a way to defiantly express pride in whatever the wing nuts are saying with derision. (Which is something I wholeheartedly approve of – take their slurs and turn them into badges of honor. Use language, be nimble, don’t create a bunch of rules that limit our ability to express ourselves.)

This probably shows why I fall into the Left/Libertarian spectrum on all of those stupid internet tests. I hate the idea that certain words or phrases are banned just because they have been used by some people with ill intent. And, something in me roars with frustration that because of that I should not even laugh when these bigots’ own words are used against them. It makes no sense to me. Ridicule is one of the surest ways to puncture the self-importance of pompous right wing asses.

The author of this article believes that Stewart is creating the new satirical form that leftwing comedy will take, using Bill Maher as the example of one whose show is much better in its serious segments than its comedy bits. The Daily Show certainly seems fresh and pointed to me, and explicitly political in a new way --- using familiar media formats to expose the idiocy of the current political/media establishment --- so I very much hope that this writer is correct. (At least the fiction of the bitchy right wing being "cool" seems to coming to an end.)

But, if our side hews to the idea that pointed satire is unacceptable or that context is irrelevant when judging the intent of a writer’s use of certain words or phrases, then we are relinquishing one of the most potent tools in our arsenal --- the ability to hoist the right wing and their media tools on their own artificially inflated petards.


Oh, and I’m officially endorsing Stephen Colbert for President in 2004. If we ever needed a Sr. Analyst of everything, it is now. Plus, his name is pronounced Col-bear – tres French, don’t you know. Vive Le Steve!




digby 4/08/2003 01:35:00 PM |

Monday, April 07, 2003

 
They're About As Relevant As OJ

The "movement " conservatives have these cutsie little bitch fests, (like the "Clinton Adminstration funeral") that they think are just screamingly clever. Unfortunately it's actually becoming embarrassing. The Clinton hating coven isn't exactly cutting edge these days, is it?

TBOGG reports on the Media Research Center "DisHonors Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2002.

Notable Conservatives (two words not often used together) who made appearances included Cal Thomas, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter. John Fund was supposed to be a presenter but instead spent the evening slapping his girlfriend around in the parking structure. Just like last year. Entertainment was provided by washed-up cracker band, The Charlie Daniels Band, who played their one hit song six times before stumbling off-stage and back into obscurity

The highlight of the evening, besides the Kate O'Beirne/Phyllis Schlafly Astroglide Wresting Smackdown, was the award for the Quote of the Year, this year delivered by Bill Moyers:

[...]

More






digby 4/07/2003 09:10:00 PM |

 
Read This

This article, Rage, Hubris, and Regime Change via Josh Marshall is one of the best refutations of the starry-eyed neocon fantasy I've read yet. And it's from a Republican who supported the removal of Saddam.

The Bush national security doctrine is a response to the likely proliferation of horrendous “wildcat violence” when state disintegration and/or the covert actions of tyrannical regimes offer movements of rage access to insidious weapons whose advanced technology demands only global reach, not global power. Largely in response to this possibility, the Bush doctrine stresses American military predominance, military preemption, and political transformation. From an historical point of view, these are extraordinary ambitions. More, they represent the practical (not necessarily successful) integration of international relations with non-Western political development in the form of an American foreign policy based on the ideological concept, and political-military pursuit, of democratic regime change.

He breaks the "Bush" Doctrine (I use italics because it is really the Wolfowitz Doctrine) into three components:

Dominance

The first “person” in the new Bush “trinitarian” doctrine is military predominance — or, if you like, dominance. In the administration’s words, “our [military] forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build up in hopes of surpassing or equaling the power of the United States.” This tenet has no immediate bearing on the international issues facing the United States because it will most likely take at least a decade for any imaginable nation to be taken seriously as a military competitor (unless, of course, Japan undergoes radical regime change on its own nationalistic terms).

[...]

If the Bush administration’s foreign policy towards countries in the “axis of evil” is “either you become capitalist democracies or we will do it for you,” then for both ideological and material reasons, the leaders of those regimes have every incentive to do exactly what the United States doesn’t want them to do: develop a nuclear capacity. The Bush administration’s fundamental solution to the danger of terrorism, regime change, has a decidedly Jekyll-and-Hyde quality — to wit, in trying to create democratic Dr. Jekyll regimes, it is likely to create enraged Mr. Hyde regimes.

Preemption

Preemption, the second “person” in the trinitarian doctrine, is indeed a radical departure from deterrence as a strategy against hostile regimes. The difference between preemption and deterrence is simple: In the former case, you attack first. You don’t wait for an attack and then counter-attack. However, both deterrence and preemption rely on evidence of a hostile power’s weapons capacity, not simply its desire or search for such. The Bush doctrine rests on something much more radical (though, if Thucydides is correct, not historically unprecedented) than preemption: anticipation. The logic behind an anticipatory attack against a country like Iraq is that its leader will never cease in his search for military weapons of unprecedented destructiveness, and that once he possesses them, he will certainly use them against us in the form of blackmail, veto, or aggression.

[...]

So the logic behind an anticipatory strategy is powerful. However, its strategic application demands the combined wisdom of Pericles and Solomon. To begin with, the premise for an anticipatory attack posits a hostile leader and regime platonically impervious to any environmental changes whether domestic or international. This is not always a mistaken premise — Hitler and Pol Pot are cases in point — but it is almost always mistaken. Over time, most regimes do change substantially if not essentially. One has only to look at the Soviet Union after 1956 and China after 1978.

[...]

Regime change

Political transformation is the third part of the Bush administration’s national security trinity. If global military domination sounds somewhat un-American, not to mention impractical, and if a strategy based on anticipation carries the extraordinary risk that international politics will become more a matter of arbitrary intuition than sober threat estimation, then regime change — that is, the forceful transformation of tyrannical regimes and non-modern societies like Iraq (and North Korea and Iran) into democracies — signifies a radical change in our idea of democratization. By making regime change the central feature of American foreign policy, the Bush administration appears to favor the “imposition of democracy” over the “transition to democracy.”

[...]

History, the Bush administration has concluded, needs deliberate organization, leadership, and direction. In this irony of ironies, the Bush administration’s identification of regime change as critical to its anti-terrorist policy and integral to its desire for a democratic capitalist world has led to an active “Leninist” foreign policy in place of Fukuyama’s passive “Marxist” social teleology.

[...]

The 9-11 attacks made it clear to the Bush administration that a belief in the inexorable unfolding of History favoring the West was both unfounded and dangerous. In a quite remarkable about-face, the Bush administration has devised a radically new American global posture.

[...]

Its rationale is sophisticated and begins with the proposition that the United States cannot simply wait and hope for internal transitions to democracy, particularly in countries whose leadership is dogmatically and hysterically intent on preventing such. Regimes of this type might acquire or develop wmd and use them to end our history. (Point well taken.)

Second, internal transitions to democracy such as in Meiji Japan or Imperial Germany in the nineteenth century are often “arrested.” They stop short of creating a “constitution of liberty” and remain dangerously unstable political, military, and economic hybrids.

[...]

...the reconstruction experiences of Germany and Japan (as well as Korea and even the Philippines) are considered pertinent or exemplary. They are not. No envisaged invasion of Iraq will produce the psychological trauma, institutional disintegration, socio-cultural dislocation, or economic destruction brought about by our successful invasions of Japan and Germany.

I urge you to read the entire article. His conclusions are fresh and compelling, most especially his cogent analysis of the probable effect of "imposing" democracy on a nation and culture which does not see individualism as a virtue. He points out the "missionary" nature of this new form of enforced democracy and dryly suggests that "one might at least consider the fate of earlier Western crusades."

He finishes with a very interesting insight:

Given enough power, a conquering authority can impose any kind of rule it wishes on a defeated society. More often than not, however, military-political imposition produces social dissimulation, not cultural assimilation of the conqueror’s way of life. As Aristotle and Durkheim knew, the types of political innovation most likely to be accepted by a defeated society must closely resemble previous, familiar forms of political life. In the case of a defeated Iraq that requires, at a minimum, the Bush administration’s recognition of and respect for the reality of ruling families as the central feature of Arab political life. Surely an easy task for what the Financial Times considers the most successful political family in American history.

digby 4/07/2003 06:31:00 PM |

 
Victories Old and New

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP)

-- Before executing the International Red Cross worker, the Taliban gunmen made a satellite telephone call to their superior for instructions: Kill him?

Kill him, the order came back, and Ricardo Munguia, whose body was found with 20 bullet wounds last month, became the first foreign aid worker to die in Afghanistan since the Taliban's ouster from power 18 months ago.

The manner of his death suggests the Taliban is not only determined to remain a force in this country, but is reorganizing and reviving its command structure.

There is little to stop them. The soldiers and police who were supposed to be the bedrock of a stable postwar Afghanistan have gone unpaid for months and are drifting away.

At a time when the United States is promising a reconstructed democratic postwar Iraq, many Afghans are remembering hearing similar promises not long ago.

Instead, what they see is thieving warlords, murder on the roads, and a resurgence of Taliban vigilantism.

``It's like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem,'' said Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghanistan's president and his representative in southern Kandahar. ``What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing. Everyone is back in business.''

Karzai said reconstruction has been painfully slow -- a canal repaired, a piece of city road paved, a small school rebuilt.

``There have been no significant changes for people,'' he said. ``People are tired of seeing small, small projects. I don't know what to say to people anymore.''

When the Taliban ruled they forcibly conscripted young men. ``Today I can say 'we don't take your sons away by force to fight at the front line,''' Karzai remarked. ``But that's about all I can say.''

But progress also is a question of perspective. Capt. Trish Morris, spokeswoman for the Coalition Joint Civil-Military Operations Task Force, said civil affairs teams have spent up to $13 million on projects affecting the daily lives of Afghans.

``That may not sound like a lot of money, but that's hundreds of schools and clinics and bridges and wells all over Afghanistan,'' Morris said in Kabul.

``That may not sound like a lot of money, but that's hundreds of schools and clinics and bridges and wells all over Afghanistan,'' Morris said in Kabul.

``Some might say not a lot is being done,'' but the U.S. government, the United Nations and the private aid agencies ``are all working very hard,'' Morris said. ``It's just going to take some time, because 23 years of war has destroyed a lot of things.''

From safe havens in neighboring Pakistan, aided by militant Muslim groups there, the Taliban launched their revival to coincide with the war in Iraq and capitalize on Muslim anger over the U.S. invasion, say Afghan officials.

Karzai said the Taliban are allied with rebel commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, supported by Pakistan and financed by militant Arabs.

The attacks have targeted foreigners and the threats have been directed toward Afghans working for international organizations.

I don't want to hear another word about how the US is on a humanitarian mission to bring peace and freedom to the world. Even the neocons, who supposedly really truly believe in spreading the American love, are obviously full of shit. If they really cared about the people in the countries we are "liberating" this would not be happening in Afghanistan.

We've spent the huge sum of 13 million dollars to help the lives of average Afghan people. Meanwhile, the Taliban are still around terrorizing the population, Pakistan is more radicalized than it was before 9/11 and is blatantly harboring Taliban and al Qaeda. Afghans are again living under the rule of fractious warlords and remain in deep, deep poverty. In other words, the Afghan campaign succeeded in sending the terrorists to another sympathetic country that happens to have nuclear weapons while leaving the people of Afghanistan living in anarchy. Victory.

Clearly, the Afghanistan campaign was just a way of letting off some of that post 9/11 steam, and letting Rummy experiment with his newfangled military doctrine, while we laid the groundwork for Iraq. And they knew nobody would care. The minute they sent Ashleigh Banfield home to cover the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping we knew the "story” had ended. Whatever happens now is a “new” story, unrelated to the story of how the Americans gloriously liberated the Afghans from the Taliban and destroyed the foundation of al Qaeda.

No matter that anti-American terrorism has been only slightly and temporarily thwarted.

It is very important to remember that the neocons do not take the threat of Islamic fundamentalism seriously. They never have, even to the extent that they have gone completely off the deep end trying to prove that the 1994 world trade center bombing was actually the work of Saddam. The first thing the claque did after 9/11 was send James "WWIV" Woolsey to Europe to root out the "evidence" that Saddam was behind it. In the rigid neocon worldview, the only true immediate enemy is a totalitarian rogue state run by a militaristic dictator (theocratic or secular.) The long term enemy is any state or group of states who would threaten American military dominance. The only danger from terrorism is the extent to which one of the rogue states gives it access to WMD. Any threat that falls outside of that paradigm is made to fit, whether it does or not.

(This is another reason why the military didn't "war game" guerilla tactics and was surprised by the paramilitary presence in southern Iraq. The Republican Guard, supposed crack troops using traditional forms of warfare would put up the biggest fight. Isn't that how Stalinist dictatorships behave?)

It has occurred to me in the last few weeks that one of the reasons these people are so stuck on this problem is because their lives were built around fighting communism and they truly believe that Reagan's large military buildup and bellicose threats were the instruments that ended the Soviet Union. They never believed in containment. Indeed, even after the Berlin Wall fell, Wolfowitz was planning for a large force based in Lithuania in order to be prepared for what he still considered the inevitable military confrontation with Russia.

It stands to reason that if you believe that threats and a massive military build up were responsible for the defeat of our rival superpower (and created a "reverse domino effect" of democracy throughout Eastern Europe) then you might believe that the same effect could happen in the Middle East. That is, if you see the entire world in stark manichean terms of "strong" vs. "weak" and view all of human behavior through the prism of your own experience and expectations.

One of the more interesting elements about this is that al Qaeda also believe that they defeated the Soviet Union when the Mujahadeen "forced" the Red Army to retreat from Afghanistan. Their arrogant assumptions of victory in Holy Jihad largely stem from the fact that they believe that action caused the USSR to break up. In their view, they took one superpower down and have one to go.

So, both the neocons and al Qaeda believe they single handedly ended the cold war and defeated the mighty Soviet Empire, but neither of them take the other seriously in the least. The Islamic fundamentalists think the US is soft, not because its military is not formidable but because its people are irreligious and cowardly. Therefore, they strike at our most vulnerable spot, the civilian population --- which in turn gives the neocons the green light to dispense with international law and initiate its plans for American Empire. The neocons believe that a show of force will intimidate everyone, including terrorists, so attacking a secular totalitarian state in the middle east is necessary in its own right and will have the salutary effect of cowing whatever rag tag terrorist organizations exist out there.

Because neither understand the other or ever really engage the other, they end up reinforcing rather than defeating each other's goals.

Each in their own way create the conditions for the other to pursue their separate ends. The neocons inflame the radical elements of the middle east thereby providing a valuable recruiting tool for terrorists and al Qaeda provide a useful excuse for the neocons to pursue their long standing goal of global military dominance. The result is an escalation of violence with little hope of “victory” because the violence of each is aimed at those who do not actually threaten them.

Both al Qaeda and Neoconservatism are built upon illusions about their own power based upon a willful misreading of their place in recent history. Their desire to be right about this delusional interpretation of recent events has made both of them dangerously ambitious.

Beware of “movements” that believe their own propaganda.


Addendum:

In response to some readers who think I've donned a tin foil "no blood for oil" hat, I don't suggest that an advance into Syria would be solely because of a pipeline to Haifa. There are many factors at work in these calculations. One of them, though, is most certainly the presence of vast amounts of oil in the region and a pipeline into the Mediterranean is certainly a benefit to both Israel and the US. In addition, I do not doubt for a second that contracts for building and rebuilding are relevant to the Bush administration both from a fund raising and a policy standpoint. They are as much carrots and sticks as any military operation as we are seeing in the refusal to allow anyone but the US and British to "share in the victory."

The problem with initiating this pipeline is that it will require a recognition of Israel by both Iraq and Syria. This is, in my opinion, a very worthy goal. But, if it is imposed by a pair of puppet governments without a Palestinian state in place, the United States will be occupying the middle east forever. Richard Perle is already out there telling anyone who'll listen that his Chalabi based dream of an Iraqi government has expressed its willingness to recognize Israel. This is such an obtuse comment at this particular time that I find it hard to believe that it could actually happen. But, with this crowd you just never know. There seem to be no limits.





digby 4/07/2003 03:35:00 PM |

Saturday, April 05, 2003

 
I'll Tread On You If I Damned Well Want To

Sadly, the United States is being run by people who believe their own hype. We've already won the war in Iraq, the occupation has gone perfectly, we have successfully scared the North Koreans and the Iranians into completely capitulating to our every whim and the entire world knows they'd better not mess with us or we will, well, we'll...you know. It won't be pretty. Welcome to the Pax Americana, mothafuckaaa.

Viewing the War as a Lesson to the World
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, April 5 — Shortly after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld issued a stark warning to Iran and Syria last week, declaring that any "hostile acts" they committed on behalf of Iraq might prompt severe consequences, one of President Bush's closest aides stepped into the Oval Office to warn him that his unpredictable defense secretary had just raised the specter of a broader confrontation.

Mr. Bush smiled a moment at the latest example of Mr. Rumsfeld's brazenness, recalled the aide. Then he said one word — "Good" — and went back to work.

It was a small but telling moment on the sidelines of the war. For a year now, the president and many in his team have privately described the confrontation with Saddam Hussein as something of a demonstration conflict, an experiment in forcible disarmament. It is also the first war conducted under a new national security strategy, which explicitly calls for intervening before a potential enemy can strike.

Mr. Bush's aides insist they have no intention of making Iraq the first of a series of preventive wars. Diplomacy, they argue, can persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programs. Intensive inspections can flush out a similar nuclear program in Iran. Threats and incentives can prevent Syria from sponsoring terrorism or fueling a guerrilla movement in Iraq.

Yet this week, as images of American forces closing in on Baghdad played on television screens, some of Mr. Bush's top aides insisted they were seeing evidence that leaders in North Korea and Iran, but not Syria, might be getting their point.

"Iraq is not just about Iraq," a senior administration official who played a crucial role in putting the strategy together said in an interview last week. It was "a unique case," the official said. But in Mr. Bush's mind, the official added, "It is of a type."

In fact, some administration officials are talking about the lessons Mr. Bush expects the world to take from this conflict, and they are debating about where the he may decide to focus when it is over.

The president seemed to allude to those lessons in his radio address this morning, saying his decision to oust Saddam Hussein was part of his plan to "not sit and wait, leaving enemies free to plot another Sept. 11 — this time, perhaps, with chemical, biological or nuclear terror."

Well yes, there is that. We will not sit and wait while countries continue the pretense of national sovereignty. If a nation does not do what we tell it to do, and I mean right now, we will simply take them out. We believe that diplomacy is always a useless first step so we will send our smoothest most diplomatic state department representatives like John Bolton, to threaten...er negotiate with these countries. If they properly and obsequiesly bow down to our omniscience we might let them off with just economic punishment and public humiliation (to serve as another "lesson," don't you know.) But, at the end of the day, rest assured that if any nation even thinks of defying the United Goddamn States of America, we will kick it's ass from here to kingdom come.

But what we really want is to liberate the people from their despotic, violent rulers. Like we liberated the Germans from Hitler.

Today, Colin Powell is quoted as saying that nobody in the American government is discussing invading Syria or Iran.

Saturday, Apr 05, 2003; 11:29 AM

CAIRO, Egypt - Iraq should be ruled by its own people and American forces will not invade Syria and Iran after liberating Baghdad, Secretary of State Colin Powell was quoted as saying in an interview published Saturday.

Powell's comments in the London-based al-Hayat newspaper come as the Bush administration faces criticism over its plans to temporarily govern postwar Iraq, and amid speculation in the Middle East that Iran and Syria would be America's next targets.

"Nobody in the American administration (has) talked about invading Iran or Syria," Powell said. "It seems that there is a constant desire by everybody to accuse us of invasion operations. That didn't, and won't, take place."

Looks like ole Colin's a teensy weensy bit out of the loop, doesn't it?

It makes you wonder, with all of Junior's talk about global terrorism and September 11th and protecting the American people and Islamic fundamentalism, why we are completely ignoring the countries that are actually spawning those things, like Pakistan, and instead we're concentrating on the tough guy tin horn despots like Saddam and Assad? Sure, Syria bankrolls terrorists, but it bankrolls terrorists who blow up Israelis, not Americans. Not that that is a good thing, by any means, but it does make you wonder why the street protests in Islamabad (that number a quarter million or more people, where they're burning Junior in effigy and declaring holy war on the United States) aren't seen as a concern. But Syria is suddenly looming large on the radar screen.

Is this sudden interest in Syria only about a bunch of power mad neocon conquerors with delusions of grandeur and a neurotic attachment to the right wing party of Israel, or is there some additional reason why little Donnie Rumsfeld just "out-o-the-blue" practically declared war on them?

What ever could it be?

[Israeli] National Infrastructures Minister Joseph Paritzky has requested an assessment of the condition of the old oil pipeline from Mosul to Haifa, with an eye toward renewing the flow of oil in the event of friendly post-war regime in Iraq.

[...]

Hanan Bar-On, then the deputy director-general of the Foreign Ministry, confirmed Sunday that Israel was involved in talks during the mid-1980s on a plan for an Iraq-Jordanian pipeline to the Red Sea port of Aqaba. Among the participants in these talks was Donald Rumsfeld, then an adviser to U.S. president Ronald Reagan and currently secretary of defense. The American corporation Bechtel was slated to build the pipeline. According to the deal, which eventually fell through, Israel was to receive about $100 million a year via former Israeli businessman Bruce Rappaport in return for a commitment not to oppose the construction or operation of the new pipeline.

Isn't that something. What a coincidence. But, what does that have to do with Syria? Oooooh

As acknowledged by the Israeli minister, a prerequisite for the project is, therefore, a new regime in Baghdad with friendly ties with Israel. However, such a regime, if ever it comes to power, will still require Syria's consent to operationalize the pipeline. Given the overall political environment in the Middle East and Israel's continued occupation of Syria's Golan Heights, the existing Syrian regime will never grant its consent as long as the status quo prevails. As stated by the Iranian government, during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) when Iraq enjoyed cordial and close relations with Israel's mentor, the United States, Israel tried, but failed, to resume the oil flow through the pipeline. Syria, a friend of Iran and an enemy of Iraq, blocked the flow of Iraqi oil.

Hence, unless the pipeline were redirected through Jordan, another country bordering Israel and Iraq with normalized relations with Israel, the pipeline project will require a different regime in Syria. In other words, regime change in both Iraq and Syria is the prerequisite for the project. As Paritzky did not mention a redirecting option, it is safe to suggest that the Israelis are also optimistic about a regime change in Syria in the near future.

Mr. Bush smiled a moment at the latest example of Mr. Rumsfeld's brazenness, recalled the aide. Then he said one word — "Good" — and went back to work.





digby 4/05/2003 01:20:00 PM |

 
Rally Round The Conquest

In a testament to the intellectual consistency and personal integrity of my fellow Americans, the following article in today's LA Times shows that not only do a vast majority of the country now support the war, they also support taking huge casualties, (as long as it's somebody else, I assume) are content to stay in the middle east for years and are very open to the idea of "taking out" Syria and Iran next.

Needless to say, it will likely not be convenient to invade any of our many new enemies -- be it Syria, Iran, North Korea, France, Canada, Chile or Barbados until just a little bit closer to the election. The thrill of invading a much weaker country and kicking its ass to provide entertainment to bloodthirsty Americans makes for a helluva bounce. Better make sure we win, though. Murikans get testy when we don't annihilate our opponents.

One thing, though. It really is time to start talking about that draft. We are going to need a lot more troops if we are going to be "taking out" country after country. These reserves aren't going to be able to handle this alone forever. Since we are so dependent upon precision guided weapons and we can pretty much kill anyone we choose from miiles away, I would suggest that all those who support this war so fervently be the first to be called up. No matter what the age, Rummy's modern high tech military can find a use for them.

Support of U.S. Military Role in Mideast Grows

Americans' backing for Bush rises; many might endorse action against Iran or Syria.

WASHINGTON -- Buoyed by success on the battlefield, most Americans now express support for an expansive U.S. role in the Middle East, with a clear majority backing the war in Iraq and half endorsing military action against Iran if it continues to develop nuclear weapons, according to a new Los Angeles Times poll.

[...]

More than three-fourths of Americans — including two-thirds of liberals and 70% of Democrats — now say they support the decision to go to war. And more than four-fifths of these war supporters say they still will back the military action even if allied forces don't find evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

[...]

By 62% to 33%, those polled said the war is likely to make the world a safer place; 52% believe it will help stabilize the Middle East, while 21% believe it will seed more instability. Just under 20% think it's unlikely to have much effect either way.

[...]

Those optimistic about the war's long-term effect believe that removing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could serve as both deterrent and inspiration. "Getting a foothold in creating a stable, pro-Western and hopefully democratic regime in Iraq, combined with what's going on in Afghanistan, can be a wellspring for good things to happen," Hart said.

But Americans are split almost exactly in half when asked whether the war will increase or diminish the threat of terrorism. Still, that's a significant improvement from the two-thirds who predicted more terror in a Times poll in December.

[...]

Americans are divided almost in half when asked whether the United States should take military action against Syria, which Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has accused of providing Iraq with military supplies. Syria has denied the accusation. But 42% said the United States should take action if Syria, in fact, provides aid to Iraq, while 46% said no.

More Americans take a hard line on Iran, which recently disclosed an advanced program to develop the enriched uranium that could be used in nuclear weapons.

Exactly half said the United States should take military action against Iran if it continues to move toward nuclear-weapon development; 36% disagreed. Perhaps surprisingly, women are slightly more supportive of such action than men.

[...]

In any case, most of those surveyed said they were willing to accept a lengthy commitment to oust Hussein. Among those backing the war, 60% said they would support it even if it took longer than a year, while 11% said they would back the war for up to a year. Just 17% of supporters said they would back the war for less than a year.

Few, though, expect it to run that long. About three-fifths expect the fighting to be over in six months. Fewer than one in six think it will take more than a year.

Those polled also indicated a willingness to accept relatively substantial U.S. casualties. Just 17% of war supporters said they would back it only if 500 or fewer U.S. troops are killed; 52% said they would continue to support the war even if the United States suffered more than 1,000 casualties.

[...]

Nearly eight in 10 Americans now accept the Bush administration's contention — disputed by some experts — that Hussein has "close ties" to Al Qaeda (even 70% of Democrats agree). And 60% of Americans say they believe Hussein bears at least some responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — a charge even the administration hasn't levied against him.

.

In fairness, the poll does say that Americans want the UN to handle reconstruction and that the war will not be won unless Saddam is killed or captured. But, lets face facts. If the Dauphin and his masters tell people that the UN shouldn't handle reconstruction and that capturing or killing Saddam was never part of the plan, the sheep will instantly be convinced that is what they thought all along.

There really is no excuse for this. No amount of "support the troops" sentiment can explain such a large number of Americans endorsing invading Syria and Iran based upon what they know at this moment. We are becoming a stupid and sick culture. Perhaps that finally explains why we are being led -- and so easily -- by someone as callow, puerile and mean as George W. Bush.




digby 4/05/2003 08:49:00 AM |

Friday, April 04, 2003

 
Kerry Fights Back

This is what we need to see. Give no quarter. Get right back in their faces. If the candidates don't do this now they will be hamstrung through the entire campaign.

Now, the rest of the Senate Democrats need to stand up and support an American citizen's right to run for president against the Cheerleader in Chief during wartime, and even {gasp} suggest that he should be turned out of office because he isn't doing a good job. That's bordering on treason these days, I realize. But making that claim is unprecedented. We have never before said that people could not criticize a sitting president during wartime, especially in the midst of a presidential campaign.

Jesus. Even Abraham Lincoln had to run for re-election during wartime. He faced numerous challengers even for the nomination and was second guessed in every paper by every politician in the country ---from both parties. FDR ran for re-election in the middle of WWII when Thomas Dewey called him a "tired old man." The Little Dauphin deserves no special treatment.

Kerry lashes out at Republican criticisms.

April 4, 2003 | WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry lashed out at top congressional Republicans on Friday after they assailed him for saying the United States, like Iraq, needs a regime change.

"The Republicans have tried to make a practice of attacking anybody who speaks out strongly by questioning their patriotism," the Massachusetts senator said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "I refuse to have my patriotism or right to speak out questioned. I fought for and earned the right to express my views in this country."

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, backed a congressional resolution last fall giving President Bush the authority to use force to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but he repeatedly has criticized the president for failing to give diplomacy more time.

In a speech Wednesday in Peterborough, N.H., Kerry said Bush so alienated allies prior to the U.S.-led war against Iraq that only a new president can rebuild damaged relationships with other countries.

"What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States," Kerry said.

Several leading Republicans said Kerry's comments were inappropriate with U.S. troops fighting in Iraq. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said the statement amounted to "petty, partisan insults launched solely for personal political gain."

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, called Kerry's words "desperate and inappropriate." Said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., "Once this war is over, there will be plenty of time for the next election."

Kerry dismissed the attacks, telling an Atlanta political gathering Thursday that patriotism is not mutually exclusive with questioning the war. One day later, he delivered an even sharper rebuke to the GOP complaints.

"If they want to pick a fight, they've picked a fight with the wrong guy," Kerry said in a telephone interview.

The lawmaker said this round of charges and countercharges is not the first time Republicans have made a "phony issue of patriotism." He cited last year's campaign against former Georgia Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in the Vietnam War.

As part of a broader GOP campaign, Bush and other Republicans criticized Senate Democrats for holding up legislation to create a Department of Homeland Security over a labor provision, suggesting that the delay reflected weakness on national security. Republican Saxby Chambliss unseated the first-term Cleland in the November elections.

"I watched what they did to Max Cleland last year," Kerry said. "Shame on them for doing it then and shame on them for trying to do it now."

Kerry also mentioned recent GOP criticism of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who said Bush's diplomatic efforts had failed "miserably" because he didn't secure a U.N. resolution for the war.

Following a speech to the New York State United Teachers convention in Washington, Kerry said, "I'm not going to let the likes of Tom DeLay question my patriotism, which I fought for and bled for in order to have the right to speak out."

Neither Hastert, Frist nor DeLay served in the military. In response to Kerry, DeLay spokesman Jonathan Grella said, "There's a difference between loving your country and leading it. Demanding regime change in America isn't unpatriotic -- it's vile."

Kerry said Republicans have no right to criticize him when they are cutting funds to veterans hospitals.

Kerry's comments come on the eve of a trip to Iowa, where rival Howard Dean's strong anti-war stance has played well with the state's Democrats. Dean also has been critical of Bush and Kerry, suggesting that the senator waffled in his position on the Iraq war.

Dean also addressed the New York Teachers group Friday and said although he probably would not have used the words that Kerry did, "I have not criticized Senator Kerry for that, nor am I going to.

"It certainly would be unusual for me to line up with Tom DeLay, and I don't intend to start now," said the former Vermont governor.

Kerry's arrival on Sunday in Iowa also comes as another presidential primary rival, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, takes part in a town-hall meeting.

digby 4/04/2003 05:41:00 PM |

 
End Run

If the GOP congress, Colin Powell and Tony Blair cannot change the administration's mind on this, I think that Colin Powell may have to finally resign. I don't see how he can continue when it is obvious that Junior is completely in the hands of the neocon zealots who are intent upon pursuing their imperial fantasy. It was bad enough to insist upon this invasion on its own terms, but they now seem to be dead serious about rendering the UN permanently impotent, even when it comes to humanitarian action. It would seem that they are also intent upon completely gutting the state department's functions as well.

And, in typical Rumsfeldian backstabbing fashion, they did it while Powell was overseas trying to mend fences with the UN and the EU.

Tony Blair will rue the day he ever took up with these crazy bastards. They just cut him off at the knees, too.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Friday ruled out a leading role for the United Nations (news - web sites) in immediate post-war Iraq (news - web sites) and said Washington and its allies had earned top-status having given "life and blood" to the war effort.

Washington promised to include Iraqis in the decision-making process from the beginning, and said it hoped to get an interim Iraqi authority [can you say, Chalabi?]quickly up-and-running, possibly in parts of the country even before the government of President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) is toppled in Baghdad.

"It would only be natural to expect that ... having given life and blood to liberate Iraq, the coalition would have the leading role. I don't think anybody is surprised by that," President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told reporters.

She also made clear that the Pentagon would oversee humanitarian and reconstruction efforts, while other agencies play supportive roles. That puts the Bush administration at odds with Congress, where this week both the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Senate gave the State Department control of the purse-strings.

U.N. involvement in post-war Iraq is expected to be one of the issues to dominate next Tuesday's meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Northern Ireland

These people are now just blatently employing strongarm tactics all over the world:

Sounding like a third rate movie thug, a snarling Otto Reich threatened tiny Barbados of all places:

Reich responded to Caricom’s decision not to support the war and subsequent statements by regional leaders.

“It is not the kind of support that we expect from friends,” he said. “We listen very carefully to what our friends say and we’re very disappointed by some of the statements. We’re not violating international law, neither is Great Britain or any of the other countries and I would urge Caricom to study very carefully not only what it says, but the consequences of what it says.”

The US official, who is in the island to attend a conference on Competitiveness in the Caribbean sponsored by the Caribbean Latin American Action, noted that his country was at war and that Americans were being killed in the attempt to disarm Iraq and liberate it from president Saddam Hussein. With that in mind, he stated that the US would appreciate “a little support” from its friends, or at least not to be criticised in public.

He also made the link between support for the US-led war and access to that country for Caribbean goods.

Stating that the region must be more helpful to those who have to approach the US Congress on behalf of the Caribbean territories, he said: “What do I tell a member of Congress if I go asking for increased access for Caribbean products, for example, and he says, ‘well they didn’t support us in our time of need’?”

Godwin's Law be damned. It's looking more and more as if Iraq is our Czechoslovakia.





digby 4/04/2003 04:56:00 PM |

 
GUEST BLOG

Thumb, the Comment King, has some thoughts on why we are all feeling discombobulated by this administration. The psychos are making us psycho:

Are psychopaths running our government?

Throughout the 90's we employed anywhere from 6-15 people at any given time. Of all the destructive traits we had to contend with the sociopath was both the most destructive and the most difficult problem employee to identify. After several near ruinous encounters with this type of employee I developed a simple test; if someone made me psycho, they were a psychopath. On the small scale that is our company this has worked fine for years but now I find this same curious effect occurring with our present administration; they're making me psycho.

Greater luminaries than I have declared this group to be Psychotic Personalities (Kurt Vonnegut recently caught flack for suggesting as much) but I wanted to know if there was any means by which to make a more serious medical diagnosis than "because they make me crazy." There is. Giles Whittell, writing for the Times On Line, interviewed Dr. Robert Hare, who, along with his colleague Dr Paul Babiak, will publish a book called Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work later this year. Hare defined psychopathy for modern scientists with an exhaustive questionnaire called the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R). Introduced in 1980 it has become an internationally recognized tool for identifying psychopaths. From the article:

. . . the PCL-R revealed that psychopaths are everywhere. Most are non-violent, but all leave a trail of havoc through their families and work environments, using and abusing colleagues and loved ones, endlessly manipulating others, constantly reinventing themselves. Hare puts the average North American incidence of psychopathy at 1 per cent of the population, but the damage they inflict on society is out of all proportion to their numbers, not least because they gravitate to high-profile professions that offer the promise of control over others, such as law, politics, business management ... and journalism. [emphasis mine]

[...]

Hare and Babiak will also produce a new diagnostic tool based on the PCL-R but designed to help businesses to keep their recruits and senior management psychopath-free.

Enter the B-Scan. It won't be available to everyone, and it won't be free. If you are B-Scanned, it won't be you answering the questions. It will be your colleagues, grading your personal style, interpersonal relations, organizational maturity and antisocial tendencies according to 16 buzz words, none of them uplifting. They include the following: insincere, arrogant, insensitive, remorseless, shallow, impatient, erratic, unreliable, unfocused, parasitic, dramatic, unethical and bullying.

Yikes. Who isn't most of these things, at least some of the time?

I meet Dr Hare in a London hotel and find him used to such anxieties. I know, I know, he says. People read this stuff and suddenly everyone around them is a psychopath. They pick up on three or four of the characteristics and say "yeah, he's one". But it's not like that. It's a medical syndrome. You've got to have the whole package.


Not having access to the specific B-Scan test or the ability to personally interview administration colleagues I'm going to use the next best thing, a recent article in USA Today describing Bush by those close to him that can be run through the filter of The serial bully: Identifying the psychopath or sociopath in our midst.

He rarely jokes with staffers these days and occasionally startles them with sarcastic putdowns.

- is frequently sarcastic, especially in contexts where sarcasm is inappropriate and unprofessional

''He's got that steely-eyed look . . .'' says a friend who has spent time with the president since the war began.

- often reported as having an evil stare, sometimes with eyes that appear black rather than colored

He's infuriated by reporters and retired generals who publicly question the tactics of the war plan. Similar complaints continue, and some people outside the administration are pressing current Bush advisers to urge him to retool his war plan. The president's aides say he's aware of those efforts but ''discounts'' them.

- displays a compulsive need to criticize whilst simultaneously refusing to value, praise and acknowledge others, their achievements, or their existence

His history degree from Yale. . .

- often fraudulently claims qualifications, experience, titles, entitlements or affiliations which are ambiguous, misleading, or bogus

. . . makes him mindful of the importance of the moment.

- has a short-term focus and often cannot think or plan ahead more than 24 hours

He's a critic who sees himself as the aggrieved victim of the news media and second-guessers.

- feigns victimhood when held accountable, usually by . . . claiming they're the one being bullied and harassed

- presents as a false victim when outwitted

Bush, who was drilled in corporate style while earning his MBA at Harvard, prefers his days to be structured.

- is fastidious, often has an unhealthy obsession with cleanliness or orderliness

Bush has imposed an almost military discipline on himself.

- finds ritual important and comforting, and frequently indulges in ritual and ritualistic activity

He understands that he is the one person in the country, in this case really the one person in the world, who has a responsibility to protect and defend freedom.

- is selfish and acts out of self-interest, self-aggrandizement and self-preservation at all times; everything can be traced back to the self

- is convinced of their superiority and has an overbearing belief in their qualities of leadership but cannot distinguish between leadership (maturity, decisiveness, assertiveness, co-operation, trust, integrity) and bullying (immaturity, impulsiveness, aggression, manipulation, distrust, deceitfulness)

- wraps himself or herself in a flag or tradition and usurps others' objectives, thereby nurturing compliance, reverence, deference, endorsement and obeisance; however, such veneration and allegiance is divisive, being a corruption for personal power which exhibits itself through the establishment of a clique, coterie, cabal, faction, or gang


Of course this is all simply anecdotal evidence that our Commander in Chief is certifiable, but there is one more distinguishing test that Dr. Hare uses to determine if someone is indeed a psychopath:

Babiak certainly counsels caution. Being psychopathic is not a sin, let alone a ground on its own for dismissal. But underpinning the PCL-R is hard science, hard to ignore. Before he published it, Hare performed two now-famous studies which suggest that psychopaths really are different from the rest of us. In the first, subjects were told to watch a timer counting down to zero, at which point they felt a harmless but painful electric shock. Non-psychopaths showed mounting anxiety and fear. Psychopaths didn't even sweat.

Could Bush's jocular demeanor, his "Feel good" as he prepared to declare war fit this description?

In the second, the two groups had their brain activity and response time measured when asked to react to groups of letters, some forming words, some not. Words such as "rape" and "cancer" triggered mental jolts in non-psychopaths. In psychopaths they triggered precisely nothing.

In the absence of such word association games lets instead look back to the morning of 9/11/01. The president is reading to a class when one of his aids approaches and whispers to him that the WTC towers have both just been struck with hijacked airliners. The towers are burning out of control and thousand are presumed dead in the worst terrorist act ever committed on American soil. With zero visible reaction, from a man who is serially unable to hide his emotions (think smirk), the president immediately goes back to and spends the next half hour reading to the class.

People read this stuff and suddenly everyone around them is a psychopath. They pick up on three or four of the characteristics and say "yeah, he's one." But it's not like that. It's a medical syndrome. You've got to have the whole package."

[...]

Being a psychopath is not something that ordinary people aspire to, but neither does it have to involve face-eating cannibalism (Hannibal Lecter probably wasn't a psychopath at all). The central qualification is to show no conscience; to fail to empathize.

[...]

They reveled in risk, took no account of its potential cost to others or themselves, and rose to power during a time of chaos and upheaval.

Are we there yet?



digby 4/04/2003 12:17:00 PM |

 
Rolling Democracy and Other Illusions

Junior's government is hurtling out of control and I don't know who is going to stop them. This is truly unbelievable:

Rumsfeld sent two memos to Bush calling for the United States to "support those Iraqis who share the president's objectives for a free Iraq" and arguing that Iraqi and Kurdish expatriates, with some experience of democracy, are better equipped to take over the country than Iraqis living under Hussein.

[...]

Sources confirmed that the memos probably would be discussed in the next day or two by Bush, Vice President Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and CIA Director George J. Tenet. But they cautioned that the ideas expressed by Rumsfeld were more in the form of suggestions than fixed plans. The sources said Rumsfeld had not specified how authority would be divided between the exile leaders and the U.S. postwar administration.

A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on the memos, saying, "We have nothing for you on that."

Even if there were agreement on the advisability of a U.S.-installed interim Iraqi authority, its composition probably would be disputed. The Pentagon's civilian leadership and other prominent hawks close to the administration have long supported Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress.

Chalabi is particularly close to former CIA director R. James Woolsey, whom Rumsfeld has proposed for a prominent position in postwar Iraq, and Richard Perle, a key Pentagon adviser. He is also backed by a group of influential Republican senators, including Sam Brownback of Kansas, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Jon Kyl and John McCain of Arizona and Norm Coleman of Minnesota, who this week wrote a letter to Bush asking him to clear "roadblocks within the State Department" for increased funding of Chalabi's group.

In public comments last month, Perle suggested that installing Chalabi in power in Baghdad would alleviate any Muslim fears of U.S. imperialist aims. It would also improve the chances for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Perle said, because "Chalabi and his people have confirmed that they want a real peace process, and that they would recognize the state of Israel."

Can anyone think of a move more likely to create a total middle east meltdown than to instll a puppet government and then recognize Israel right off the bat? And, call me crazy, but I don't remember the recognition of Israel as being one of the 412 ever changing reasons set forth for going after Saddam these last few months. For those of you who do not understand how important this is to certain neocon nutballs, please spare me the accusations of being anti-semitic. It is simply a fact that many of the neocon claque have concentrated a huge amount of their time and energy on Israeli politics and are very closely aligned with the Likud party. Their hard-on to invade Iraq, which goes back many years, is intrinsically tied to that issue. And, just as they are putting Americans into more danger at home, their puerile, simple minded world view is actually going to make things much, much worse in the middle east, and that includes Israel. If I were Israeli, I would want these guys as far away from me as possible. It would only make my country even less secure than it already is.

And, I must ask again, why wasn't a post war plan finalized and approved before we invaded, particularly since they assumed we were going to win within the first 2 or 3 days? It's not like Saddam had actually launched one of his non-existent nuclear armed drone planes. We actually did have the time to present Junior with a coloring book version of various plans and let him play pin the tail on the donkey. It's amazing that we are surrounding Baghdad and nobody knows exactly what constitutes victory or what we plan to do once we declare it.

It's looking as if, in true EnronBush style, we'll just keep scrambling and scrambling, covering up one mistake after another, digging deeper and deeper until the whole damned thing just falls apart.

Meanwhile, over on Daily Kos, there are a number of exceptional posts today by his pinch hitters Billmon and Steve Gilliard. In particular, I was struck by Steve's post asking "who is the president?" I have also been taken aback by the fact that the actual illegitimate president is wearing cute little jackets and cheerleading before adoring military crowds while the functional illegitimate president, the secretary of defense, is threatening the entire middle east and setting up an amateurish and dazzlingly foolish post war government in Iraq without any real authority to do so. WTF?

We all know that Junior is incapable of holding a real press conference and answering questions with
anything other than repetitive, programmed bumper sticker phrases, but he should be worried that Rummy is running out of control and making policy on the fly. Particularly since that policy is absurd and dangerous. As Gilliard points out:

The PNAC Cabal are the most naive people to run US foriegn policy since Woodrow Wilson sailed to Paris in 1919. The expectation that the INC exiles can run anything in Iraq is as amusing as the Cuban-American Foundation being allowed to run a post-Castro Cuba. I always figured the Angolan vets would meet them at the dock and send them packing. So that was never serious.

This is an excellent observation. These guys live in a tight little echo chamber of reinforcing delusions, enhanced by their own sense of victimhood. The movement conservatives operate on the same principles as "exiles" which explains their frantic determination to check off every item on their agenda at record speed. They feel as if they were exiled by a virtual coup for 8 years when Clinton illegitimately seized power and they will never let that happen again. It's why they hated Clinton with the same fervor that the right wing Cubans hate Castro and it's why the "exiled" Iraqis hold such a place in the hearts of the neocon armchair warriors. They all believed they were unfairly denied their rightful positions as leaders.

What is so frightening about our new spokesman-in-chief is that his threats don't scare anyone. The Iranians and Syrians don't care, the Turks laugh at him, yet he keeps blustering. Rumsfeld is the Chainsaw Al Dunlop of international affairs. Dunlop was a CEO who had the reputation of firing people and cutting costs until he ruined Sunbeam. [He also turned out to be a crook, surprise. ed]

Rumsfeld and his deputies may think they're running the world, but the surprise they're going to get is due directly to their naivety about the Middle East. Tilting towards Israel? Are they kidding? Yes, the Shia clerics will agree to that. Just before issuing the fatwa to kill every American and their Iraqi quisling allies. Think car bombs are a problem now? Just wait...........

And, oh please, somebody explain to me how they can even dream of getting away with this shit, as reported in the Washington Post:

"The objective is not necessarily to take buildings or occupy areas," said a senior military officer involved in endgame planning. "It's the people. It's getting them to accept the fact that the regime is gone. That's the essence of the thing. It's not going to be a geographic piece."

The timing of declaring victory is important in military and psychological terms, and would be up to the president after a recommendation from military advisers. The administration is set on intimidating Iraqi leaders and seizing power, yet it would risk its credibility by declaring itself in charge while significant resistance remains.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, would not need to be under U.S. control for the administration to establish an interim Iraqi administration. When Baghdad is isolated from the rest of the country, he said, the city is "almost irrelevant."

But, but...what about holding Saddam and his regime accountable with war crimes trials? Not to mention shutting down all those al Qaeda cells hiding in Baghdad? And, how can we say we have "liberated" the fucking country if we haven't "liberated" the 5 million people in the biggest city? And, most importantly, what about the vast cache of WMD he's keeping in his underwear drawer? Don't we need to "control" the whole country to be sure they are all accounted for? Wasn't that the whole goddamned point?

It really is a bloody pageant. If we say we've won, then we have won. If fighting goes on for the next 10 years and we are forced to have tens of thousands of soldiers on the ground getting blown to bits by suicide bombers, we will still be the "victors" because we say we are the victors. But, hey, it worked in Florida, didn't it? Call yourself a victor and everyone, even the U.S. Supreme Court, will stand for your right not to be "irreparably harmed" by any assertion that you aren't. Good strategy.

If this is a recipe for democracy then I'm afraid we'd all better get ready here at home for a suspension of elections. After all, we have now reached the point where the Republicans are explicitly telling the Democrats to refrain from even putting up a candidate while we are at "war" (which James Woolsey says he doesn't expect to last quite as long as the cold war, thank goodness.) Via Atrios Marc Racicot said yesterday, in response to a call for "regime change at home" by John Kerry:

"Senator Kerry crossed a grave line when he dared to suggest the replacement of America's commander-in- chief at a time when America is at war..."

And finally, this piece in the NY Times struck me as being right on the money. The starry eyed neocons seem to be under the illusion that all Arabs and Persians are of the same frame of mind as the American founding fathers in 1776; that our notions of liberty and democracy are as clear and compelling to the average Iraqi worker as they are to the guest list at the AEI Christmas party. This is just stupid.

To Imagine Iraq After Saddam Hussein, You Must Think Like an Iraqi

We are running seriously off the track and somebody besides a bunch of blogging nobodies has got to start speaking up. Kerry made a good start and if he refuses to back down may give some of the others the will to speak up as well. If they don't, we're in trouble.



digby 4/04/2003 11:25:00 AM |

Thursday, April 03, 2003

 
Blowhard Mussolini

On CNN just now Tom DeLay told Judy Woodruff that Wesley Clark is a "blowdried Napoleon." Look for that phrase to be repeated.

Delay said that Clark was running for president and using his job at CNN to undermine the war for political purposes. He claimed that he (Delay) gets briefed every day and knows a lot more about battle planning than any ex-General.

He would have been one too if all the negroes and wetbacks hadn't ruined his chances by taking all the good slots in Nam. So, he spent the time huffing D-Con and puking in the hot tub, pre-requisites for assuming power in Dubya era Republican politics.



digby 4/03/2003 02:13:00 PM |

 
More Perles of Wisdom

Speaking of Perle, why do they send him all over the world to alienate every single one of our allies in the most rude and condescending way possible? It must be part of their cunning plan or they would tell him to shut his pie hole and stop doing things like this:

OTTAWA, April 3 (Reuters) - An influential adviser to the U.S. administration used an interview published on Thursday to write off Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien as "a lame duck" who was giving support to Saddam Hussein, and said Ottawa would pay a price for not sending troops to Iraq.

The comments by Richard Perle were the strongest attack yet by Washington on Chretien and underline how seriously relations between the world's two largest trading partners have deteriorated in recent months.
Officials say the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush is irate over Canada's refusal to send troops to Iraq and a series of anti-American comments by members of Chretien's ruling Liberal Party.
Perle, a prominent neoconservative who sits on the Pentagon's influential Defense Policy Board, told the right-wing National Post newspaper that Washington felt Chretien -- who plans to step down in February 2004 -- was being irresponsible.

"The Prime Minister is a lame duck. So that may help explain the failure to appreciate the disappointment that would be caused not only by the Canadian government policy on Iraq, but by the cacophony of criticism -- much of it ill-informed and much of it simply name-calling," he said.

"There is simply no other way to describe the positions of some countries -- not many, but some countries -- which is to lend far more support to Saddam Hussein's regime than they may have intended by the positions they have taken."

According to the Post, Perle said the White House was looking forward to dealing with Chretien's replacement. One member of Chretien's cabinet said Bush had failed as a statesman while one Liberal legislator said she now hated the "damned Americans" and called them "bastards".

[...]

Seriously, this continuing modus operandi of publicly proclaiming to the world that our policy is "my way or the highway" and that we will punish any country that dares to defy us is starting to get completely out of hand. I never thought William Kristol was completely blind and stupid, but apparently he is. If he weren't he'd put a stop to Perle. He's the only one who can.





digby 4/03/2003 01:34:00 PM |

 
Quisling Chalabi

I may have been too hasty in believing that the government had no plan. Wolfie of Arabia and his cohorts most certainly did have a plan, one that they had on the drawing board for many years. Barbara Bodine, by the way, was the choice of the State Department and the Pentagon hawks don’t want her near their little fiefdom. (Of course, she is a piece of work in her own right…) It is still unclear whether she will be part of the occupation. The problem, as usual, is that the government has more than one plan and it remains for President Junior to make a decision as to which faction he’s going to favor today. I hear he's feeling testy so who knows which way the wind is going to blow.

If today’s reports are to be believed, it is quite interesting that while the GOP congress has decided to give the State Department the purse strings, the Pentagon is still calling the shots on the post war planning. This promises to be another battle royale for the soul ‘o Dubya, and the ongoing and endless quest for control of American foreign policy. If the congress takes a stand as well, this could get very interesting.

Joe Conason has more to say about the post-war occupation cock-up and points to this editorial from the Washington Post that names names and points fingers. In particular, he discusses the neocon pet Ahmed Chalabi, the putative head of the Iraqi National Congress

I had been under the impression that Chalabi had been effectively sidelined some months back when the state department declined to give him any more “covert” money that he could not account for. But, I should have known better. He’s a member of the in-crowd and I mean the super-in-crowd --- the Wohlstetter/Wolfowitz/Perle nexus of true believers. They will fight for him:

This article from The American Prospect gives the lowdown on Chalabi:

In Washington, Team Chalabi is led by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, the neoconservative strategist who heads the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. Chalabi's partisans run the gamut from far right to extremely far right, with key supporters in most of the Pentagon's Middle-East policy offices -- such as Peter Rodman, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and Michael Rubin. Also included are key staffers in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, not to mention Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former CIA Director Jim Woolsey.

And here’s more evidence of the wooly headed, think tank insularity of the neocon claque:

What makes Chalabi so attractive to the Washington war party? Most importantly, he's a co-thinker: a mathematician trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago and a banker (who years ago hit it off with Albert Wohlstetter, the theorist who was a godfather of the neoconservative movement), a fellow mathematician and a University of Chicago strategist. In 1985, Wohlstetter (who died in 1997) introduced Chalabi to Perle, then the undersecretary of defense for international-security policy under President Reagan and one of Wohlstetter's leading acolytes. The two have been close ever since. In early October, Perle and Chalabi shared a podium at an American Enterprise Institute conference called "The Day After: Planning for a Post-Saddam Iraq," which was held, appropriately enough, in AEI's 12th-floor Wohlstetter Conference Center. "The Iraqi National Congress has been the philosophical voice of free Iraq for a dozen years," Perle told me.

The Plan:

Almost no one, not even the INC itself, thinks that Chalabi has any cachet inside Iraq. Entifadh Qanbar, the earnest, young ex-Iraqi officer who heads the INC's office in Washington, says that Chalabi represents Iraq's "silent majority." Asked whether people in Baghdad have even heard of Chalabi, Qanbar says: "They may not know the man. But he represents their views."

Others scoff at even that notion. "It's a formula for setting up a puppet regime," says David Mack, vice president of the Middle East Institute, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and ex-deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs who's dealt extensively with Iraqi opposition politicians and military officers. "And we will have responsibility for propping them up for a long, long time to come, possibly with the blood of American soldiers."

But indefinitely propping up an INC-style quisling regime might be exactly what the United States wants, as it would mean that U.S. troops would be occupying Iraq's oil fields for years to come.

Now, at least according to the NY Times article discussed below, it is unlikely that they will set up Chalabi as the head of government, at least right away. But, all of those newly minted neocon idealists who truly believe in their shiny little hearts of gold that America will bring peace and democracy and love for all the little children to the middle east with Operation AEI Wetdream need to take a closer look at the history of the people who have been planning this war for decades.

I do believe that some of this neocon madness is starting to seep into the mainstream. The W. Post has been single mindedly pro-invasion and yet they are starting to sound very skeptical of the occupation planning (something you’d think journalists would have found the time to investigate before now fergawdsake.) Perlegate drew some unflattering attention to one of the premiere architects of the Neocon Pentagon faction of the administration. Their loudmouthed assurances of Iraqi defections (predicated upon “intelligence” by none other than Ahmed Chalabi) have seriously damaged their credibility.

If Democrats operated like Republicans, every single Dem would be pounding the neocons at this moment. Salon would do a story a day. Bill Press would enlist Pat Buchanan in a rousing denunciation on each show. The backbench firebrands in the congress would hold press conferences. Oppo researchers would distribute literature about the wacky neocons to every journalist on the beat.

They would shrug off “anti-american” criticism saying that they are not concerned about the war effort itself. No matter how badly Rumsfeld planned it, we have complete faith in our most respected and competent military. What we are worried about is the aftermath which is being poorly planned by a cabal of radical ideologues who have duped the poor over-his-head President into supporting their crazy plans. They would not care if they were thought of as tin-foil hat wierdos because all that matters is getting the word repeated and talked about. They would build the whispers so that when the war (not likely to really “end” for some time) moves into the occupation phase, this information is already churning in the media sludge.

But, all we’ve got is this lousy Casio. A story like this will fade away in the white noise of flagwaving, yellow-ribbons and Jessica "Old Shoe" Lynch.




digby 4/03/2003 01:21:00 PM |

 
Wolfowitz of Arabia

It is simply inexplicable that the U.S. Government doesn't already have a plan in place for the Iraqi occupation. Why is this being done on the fly? Didn't anybody in the administration have the job of putting a scheme together before we launched the invasion? (And, isn't Wolfowitz stretched just a little bit thin?)

I am hard pressed to name even one thing this administration has done without screwing it up. Gawd help us. If the occupation goes as badly as the planning for it, I pity eveyone involved. This is an embarrassment.

KUWAIT, April 2 — Along a promenade of beachside villas, several hundred American government officials — from well-worn former generals to fresh young aid workers — are working at their laptops, inventing flow charts and examining maps of Iraq in what has become Potomac on the Persian Gulf.

This is the nucleus of the Bush administration's new Iraqi government. One of the faraway masters, in the minds of many here, is someone known fondly, or not so fondly — depending on one's political orientation — as Wolfowitz of Arabia.

The reference, of course, is to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the undersecretary of defense, who has dispatched some of his protégés here to prepare key Baghdad ministries for American management.

Mr. Wolfowitz is also passing judgment on others assigned here, making the transitory Potomac here as divisive and political as the permanent one at home, some participants say.

[...]

The overall boss of this Iraqi government-in-waiting, an operation that has been endowed with the Washington-speak title "Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance," is retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner...
Arrayed below General Garner is a group of former army officers, former and present American ambassadors, aid bureaucrats who give themselves away by their many-pocketed khaki jackets, a smattering of State Department officials, several British officials and a cluster known as the "true believers."

[...]

Fairly predictably, State Department officials say, the Pentagon deemed the most senior State Department appointees as unsuitable for the enterprise, even though one of them, Timothy Carney, a former ambassador to Sudan, was invited to come here by Mr. Wolfowitz.

[...]

The politics of the Potomac aside, some of the officials acknowledge they have been handed complex jobs, the real complexity of which will not be known until they know how the war ends.

If there is a surrender by the Iraqi forces and Saddam Hussein is toppled, their jobs will be easier, they say. There could be a messier ending: perhaps some kind of festering war, with outbursts of urban fighting, that would make the Americans' jobs much more precarious.

Another complexity is the role of the Iraqi exile groups that the Bush administration has been courting.

The State Department and the Pentagon hold profound differences on this question, and advocates in the administration say, a definition of the role of the exiles still awaits a decision by President Bush and his senior foreign policy advisers.

Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, has made it clear that he would not be satisfied with just an advisory position. The State Department has made clear it would prefer a diminished role for Mr. Chalabi. In recent days Mr. Chalabi has said through spokesmen that he wants the formation of a provisional government in which he would be a leading figure. In this he has backing in the Pentagon.

"The decision on the new political class in Iraq is very hot. It has yet to be made in Washington," said one member of the Garner team here.

[...]

Many of the officials here rushed to Kuwait City in the belief they would be sent almost immediately to Baghdad. Now that the war has gone longer than they were led to expect, there is a lot of cooling of heels, and time for reading. Few of these people are Iraqi experts. But some have come armed with books and articles on the history of Iraq. The chapters on the mistakes of British rule are well underlined.

Well, gosh. What would be happening if we had already won the war under the rosy scenario? It sounds like they have absolutely no idea what they are going to do, yet.

There is no excuse for not planning this adequately before this war. They had months to work out plans for every contingency and have a team in place ready to go. Instead, they are infighting between State and Defense on this, as with everything else in Bush foreign policy.

When does this become the big story? The Pentagon and the State Department have been at each other's throats since the beginning of Bush's term. All the ups and downs of the past year with diplomacy and the UN and the alienation of our allies and the erratic and inconsistent lead-up to this war have been the result of the two factions of the Bush foreign policy team fighting for dominance.

Our vaunted Commander in Chief obviously cannot manage his way out of a paper bag. He has no control over his people and is drawn back and forth depending on who he talks to on a given day. His administration is incoherent because he is incoherent.

This occupation is going to be a trainwreck.




digby 4/03/2003 09:26:00 AM |

Wednesday, April 02, 2003

 
Bye, Bye, Bodine

I haven't seen any play of this article from today's NY Times. I think Rummy's in trouble. The GOP congress refused to let him have a blank check on how the 75billion will be spent. And, now they've taken away the reconstruction project.

It's a sad day when you have to depend on the Republican congress to hold back the megalomaniacal neocons, but it's all we've got.

Three weeks before the war in Iraq began, Bush administration officials based their plans for reconstructing the country on what they called a "major assumption" — that military operations would end in 30 days, according to briefing documents circulated in the White House.

But now, some senior administraton officials involved in making plans for aiding the Iraqi people, rebuilding the country and creating a new government say that that assumption appears overly optimistic. They say that the American military will likely need to retain tight control over the country for longer than they anticipated.

[...]

Even as the plans are debated and rewritten, however, bureaucratic battles are breaking out over who will control the new government and the aid effort.

State Department officials, speaking on condition that they not be named, complain that the Pentagon is seeking greater control over the roster of American officials who will be appointed as liaisons to oversee the operation of major Iraqi ministries.

Several former ambassadors with long experience in the Mideast, including Barbara Bodine, the former ambassador to Yemen; Robin Raphel, the vice president of National Defense University; and Kenton Keith, a former ambassador to Qatar, were in line for key appointments under Jay Garner, a former general who will be directing the reconstruction effort. But their names have been pulled back.

State Department officials say they suspect that some of the more ideological Pentagon officials, including Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary for policy, are seeking to fill the slots with like-minded former officials who have strong views about what a new Iraq should look like. Some at the Pentagon have pressed for those who have led the charge for the overthrow of Mr. Hussein, including R. James Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

A senior defense official said tonight that the issue was one of timing, not ideology. "The fact of the matter is that the State Department put up their list of qualified candidates before we got together a list of our own," said the official. "We simply asked that we have some time to broaden the pool of candidates. It is in flux. Everyone's talents will be used."

On Capitol Hill, however, even the Republican-controlled appropriations committees of both the House and Senate voted today to take control of reconstruction out of the hands of the Pentagon, and give it to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

The committees voted to give the State Department and other agencies authority over the $2.5 billion in post-conflict aid that the Bush administration sought for the Pentagon under an emergency appropriation.

"The secretary of state is the appropriate manager of foreign assistance," said Representative James Kolbe, an Arizona Republican. "Bottom line: reconstruction is a civilian role."

digby 4/02/2003 06:22:00 PM |

 
Lesson Plan

David Neiwert shares this lovely e-mail making the rounds in Neanderthal circles:

With all of this talk of impending war, many of us will encounter "Peace Activists" who will try and convince us that we must refrain from retaliating against the ones who terrorized us all on September 11, 2001, and those who support terror. These activists may be alone or in a gathering... most of us don't know how to react to them. When you come upon one of these people, or one of their rallies, here are the proper rules of etiquette:

1. Listen politely while this person explains their views. Strike up a conversation if necessary and look very interested in their ideas. They will tell you how revenge is immoral, and that by attacking the people who did this to us, we will only bring on more violence. They will probably use many arguments, ranging from political to religious to humanitarian.

2. In the middle of their remarks, without any warning, punch them in the nose.

3. When the person gets up off of the ground, they will be very angry and they may try to hit you, so be careful.

4. Very quickly and calmly remind the person that violence only brings about more violence and remind them of their stand on this matter. Tell them if they are really committed to a nonviolent approach to undeserved attacks, they will turn the other cheek and negotiate a solution. Tell them they must lead by example if they really believe what they are saying.

5. Most of them will think for a moment and then agree that you are correct.

6. As soon as they do that, hit them again. Only this time hit them much harder. Square in the nose.

7. Repeat steps 2-5 until the desired results are obtained and the idiot realizes how stupid of an argument he/she is making.

8. There is no difference in an individual attacking an unsuspecting victim or a group of terrorists attacking a nation of people. It is unacceptable and must be dealt with. Perhaps at a high cost.

We owe our military a huge debt for what they are about to do for us and our children. We must support them and our leaders at times like these. We have no choice. We either strike back, VERY HARD, or we will keep getting hit in the nose. Lesson over, class dismissed!

Another example of why homeschooling by idiots is a very bad idea. Let’s make this lesson a little bit more relevant to actual events, shall we?

With all of this talk of impending war, many of us will encounter "Pro-War" patriots who will try and convince us that we can keep America safe by exercising military force against anyone who we think might threaten us in the future. When you come upon one of these people, or one of their rallies, here are the proper rules of etiquette:

1. Listen politely while this fellow explains his views. Strike up a conversation if necessary and look very interested in his ideas. He will say that we will invade any country that even thinks of threatening us. He’ll shake his fist and get in your face. He’ll loudly proclaim that everyone in the crowd agrees with him. When a couple of his friends speak up and say that they really don’t agree, he’ll tell them to piss off and that he never liked them anyway. He will then smugly tell you that this is why working with allies weakens our country and leaves America unable to protect its citizens. He says the US can do anything it damn well pleases.

2. In the middle of his remarks, without any warning, punch him in the nose.

3. When the guy gets up off of the ground, he will be very angry and he will shove you to the ground. But then, for some reason, he’ll run into the crowd and coldcock that creepy guy from your old neighborhood who he beat up at the last rally and left with two broken legs.

4. Because he has been so rude, and his actions are so inexplicable, none of his friends will help him (except his brother-in-law, who works for him.) He’ll shout to his victim’s family (who the victim treats like shit) that he’ll give them money if they’ll help him but blood runs thicker than water. (And they can’t help noticing that he seems awfully interested in their valuable heirloom jewelry.)

5. Meanwhile, you sneak around the corner and lie low while he beats the weakened opponent into the ground. The boys from the old neighborhood get more and more angry that this guy is grabbing at the jewelry and roaring that he's going to take down everybody they know unless they do what he wants. Gather them around you and tell them to go blow up his car, destroy his place of business and burn down his house.

6. When he sees his car explode and turns around looking alarmed and confused, sidle up from behind and hit him again, only harder.

7. Repeat steps 2-6 until the desired results are obtained and the idiot realizes that if you are going to fight back, it’s smart to fight the real enemy instead of invading a country that had nothing to do with attacking you. Keep doing it until he understands that it is stupid and counterproductive to rally everyone in the neighborhood to hate him with the same fervor as his attacker just so he can prove how tough he is.

8. There is no difference between an individual using the excuse of an unwarranted attack to attack someone who had nothing to do with it and a country using the excuse of a terrorist attack to invade a country that had nothing to do with it. It is unacceptable and results in a loss of moral authority, credibility and necessary allies in the fight against the real enemy.


We owe our military respect and must hope for as little bloodshed as possible in the current circumstances. But we must do everything in our power to vote out this administration so that these brave Americans are not asked to lay their lives on the line for a bunch of ivory tower think tank intellectuals who have always been much too willing to sacrifice others to fulfill their own dreams of imperial greatness. We either fight back VERY HARD and put these people out of power, or we will keep getting hit in the nose. Lesson over. Class dismissed!







digby 4/02/2003 03:38:00 PM |

Tuesday, April 01, 2003

 
NEWS RELEASE – April 1, 2003

Rengery Publishing wishes to announce publication on May 1, 2003, of the title:
“Brothers In Arms”
A novel of neocon love
by Lynn Cheney


In her first novel,”Sisters” Lynn Cheney gave us the sensual tale of Sophie Dymond, a beautiful, strong-willed widow who leaves New York to investigate her sister's death in Wyoming, and finds herself in a world where wives were led to despise the marriage act and prostitutes pandered to husbands' hungers . . . where the relationship between women and men became a kind of guerrilla warfare in which women were forced to band together for the strength they needed and at times for the love they wanted.

Now comes a story that blows the lid off the elite world of neocon think tanks and supply side salons. “Brothers In Arms” is a mid-life coming of age story about two young neocon hawks, Dick and Dick, who avoid the Vietnam war and spend the rest of their lives trying to prove their manhood. Married to high achieving women, superior in every way to their husbands, the two friends remain close, depending upon each other to reinforce their views of the world and reassure each other of their masculine prowess by saying “fuck” and driving drunk. In midlife, the boys attain the highest reaches of power and find that all the years of striving and conniving have left them feeling empty and unfulfilled. Whether it’s launching WWIII or bankrupting the federal government they can attain no satisfaction and no peace.

Until one night, desolate and lonely, they finally reach for one another in desperation and need to discover the love that dare not speak its name…

Full details are to be found at this Amazon listing
digby 4/01/2003 10:41:00 AM |

Monday, March 31, 2003

 
Wing-nuts Launch "Decapitation" Campaign Against Clark

When Coulter and Limbaugh both launch character assassinations on the same day, you know the word has gone forth. The Republicans are worried about General Wesley Clark. Rush says:

Wesley Clark Looks Really Bad

March 28, 2003

One of the Democratic Party's supposed rising stars has been former NATO General Wesley Clark. After a recent appearance on Meet the Press, many Democrats salivated over Clark as "our Colin Powell." CNN hired General Clark to use the occasion of the war as a platform for his presumed 2004 presidential bid. That was his strategy - and according to the London Spectator, it's backfired.

"So much for the Democrats' hope that retired general Wesley Clark was going to be their Colin Powell. 'He's more Benedict Arnold than anything else if you believe the mail we've been getting here,' says the Democratic National Committee staffer, who only a month ago was touting Wesley Clark as his party's answer to the military star power lined up with the Republicans." They say Clark has pretty much peed away his chances on TV by bemoaning the Pentagon and General Tommy Franks for their strategy in the opening days of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"While several other senior retired military men have made critical comments about the ongoing fighting, such as Barry McCaffrey - another former Clinton era official - Clark has by far been the most vocal critic of this administration. 'It just looks really bad that he's knocking the troops and the way we're executing this war,' said the staffer at the Democratic National Committee. 'He's taking hits everywhere - on TV and the newspapers, talk radio. People are furious at Wesley Clark. We can't fund-raise off performances like this!'"

I have to laugh at that last part! "The only presidential candidate that would probably want to be seen with him right now is Howard Dean," said this DNC informant. Prior to crashing and burning at CNN, the DNC had pegged the chief of the Kosovo campaign "for political stardom." He even visited New Hampshire in his pre-presidential bid. Now the Democrats want him gone, because he's so negative about the war effort it's turning off the American people. This is great, folks. The Democrats thought Wesley Clark would be their Colin Powell, but he turned out to be their second George B. McClellan.

Sure. Lots of Democratic National Committee staffers talk to rabid right-wing newspapers and give them quotes like "We can't fund raise off performances like this!" They wouldn't make something like this up would they? And, how about this patented "put it in the british papers, circulate it to the Scaife funded press and the AM radio terrorists until it makes it into the mainstream press" gambit. The Wurlitzer remembers its favorite tunes.

Kevin Drum wonders why all the hoopla about Clark since we don't know what his positions are. He's a believer in just war theory, he's pro-choice, he's for affirmative action (he signed a friend of the court brief in the Michigan case). Now, that doesn't give us any idea about his positions on trade or health care or any of the thousand issues we all care about, but it certainly gives me a good idea of where he stands on the political spectrum.

Unless a Democrat is so outside the mainstream that I think he's worse than Bush, and I can't actually think of one who would be, I will vote for the Democrat who has, in my opinion, the best chance of ousting the current administration. I suspect that whoever this is will probably not be channeling my every thought and will likely disagree with me on any number of issues. This is a big country and a big party. Within that party are a number of coalitions that span the center-left continuum. We'd better start negotiating amongst ourselves in a serious strategic way to get a Democrat elected to the presidency. I gave my reasons for thinking Clark can beat Bush in the post below.

It would be great if we could take back the congress, as well, and it is not beyond our grasp in any way. But, a true Democratic governing coalition is going to be much harder because of the red-state conservative Democrats who must function as de-facto Republicans on issues of taxes and national security. These Democrats will be turned into Republicans if we push them too hard which is not going to help our cause.

It is far better to focus on usurping Bush and capturing one branch of government in its entirety. We can take a long term view on this and try to make our consituency grow, but I think our current situation is sufficiently dire that we need to concentrate everything we have on turning back the radical Republican agenda immediately. At this point there are absolutely no checks and balances and it is rapidly hurtling out of control

So, I pick a Democrat who is a 4 Star General because I think he has the best chance to beat Bush if this perpetual war plays out the way the Republicans plan it. If we disagree on matters of funding for Head Start or Gays in the Military, I'm going to live with that.

I know, I know. I'm tired of making those sorts of compromises, too. But, the world is what it is and there's no use in pretending that this issue of national security is going to fade away in a flood of concern about prescription drug coverage. The Republicans and media who are benefitting from it will not let that happen. So, we'd better face up to reality and try to form a coherent, common sense alternative to the radical path the Republicans are leading us down.

I'll be writing more about this today. I have been working on a long overdue post on a very interesting survey of the peace marchers in NYC. There are some real surprises and some interesting things to work with if we can get the centrists and the liberals to be pragmatic and form a two pronged strategy.



digby 3/31/2003 01:10:00 PM |

 
Iraqis to Gitmo

I thought this might happen. They are thinking of shipping Iraqi paramilitaries to Guantanamo as unlawful combatants.

Suspects are being segregated from enemy prisoners of war, in part because they may have been tormentors of regular army soldiers now being held. The detainees will be treated like POWs, but without official status, until a hearing is held under Article 5 of the Geneva Conventions, officers said.

Such hearings, to be held in Iraq, will determine whether the detainees are released, held as POWs or declared illegal combatants. If they are labeled POWs, they will be held until the end of the war and then released along with other prisoners.

Any who are determined to have used civilians as human shields or otherwise violated the international covenants of war will be declared illegal combatants and sent to Guantanamo Bay or other holding facilities, to be detained with al Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan, military officers said. "That guy's going to get the full treatment," said the senior officer.

Military lawyers said they were trying to decide how to hold the hearings and said they wanted to conduct them as quickly as possible to return any innocents caught up in the roundups to their homes, but they acknowledged they were ill prepared for the venture. "We're still figuring this out," said the senior officer, "because we thought we'd have mass surrenders, not this crap."

I'm relieved that they'll be able to separate all the innocents so easily before they send the guilty parties to Cuba to live in prison and legal limbo until George W. Bush decides what to do with them.

There is a standard way to deal with people like this. It's called a war crimes trial. Yes, they get a lawyer and everything. But, it enforces the concept of the rule of law. Apparently, we now find that too inconvenient. I'm sure the captured US POW's will be delighted to hear it.




digby 3/31/2003 01:16:00 AM |

Sunday, March 30, 2003

 
Embedded

Read this amazing story about the battle of Nasiriya. This guy watched a group of marines turn from idealistic liberators into cynical warriors in a matter of a few days. Nobody deserves this, American marines or Iraqi civilians. Useless.
digby 3/30/2003 11:53:00 PM |

 
Command and Control

Reader Pi brings to my attention this post on Unintended Consequences that quotes a Stratfor article:

Ten days into the war, Iraqi command, control, communications, intelligence and information systems appear to be operational at all levels, including the national command authority. From the standpoint of U.S. war planning and doctrine, this should not be the case. The fact that it appears to be the case is shaping the war, as U.S. air power pounds these facilities in Baghdad. Clearly, the Iraqis have thought through the survivability of their systems and have made some adjustments. The United States must take down these systems. The difficulty coalition forces are having represents the first serious strategic crisis of the war. The problems the media have obsessed over are trivial

If this is so, the most basic objective of 3rd wave Information Warfare has not yet been met. It hasn't just been a failure of the more kooky aspect of the plan -- the clumsy psy-ops, "decapitation" and selective intelligence. It has not yet accomplished the one aspect of IW that everyone agrees is essential-- eliminating the enemy leadership's ability to communicate with their troops.



digby 3/30/2003 11:17:00 PM |

 
I've Been Leaning That Way Myself

Kos puts in a big plug for General Wesley Clark for president. He's being seen by a lot of Americans for the first time on CNN and he's been quite impressive. Perhaps that is why he opted to keep the CNN job rather than declare for President. An hour a night, 5 nights a week is a mighty good way to get some name recognition and public exposure.

I have been watching him for sometime and posted this analysis called General Dynamic about a month ago. People seem to believe that he is only viable as a VP, but I'm more and more convinced that the Democrats are going to need someone with the kind of sterling national security and demonstrated leadership credentials that someone like Clark could provide.

The fact that the heinous harpy Ann Coulter is already going after him by calling him "The Enemy Within" says that he is definitely on the GOP radar screen. I get the feeling he can take the heat.

Everyone's been complaining about Rumsfeld and company not planning for the worst case scenario, yet the Democrats seem to be making the same mistake with 2004. We should be planning for the scenario that has the Cheerleader in Chief riding atop a wave of popularity for his handling of the "war," which will be ongoing and ever more adventurous. If that is not happening and the war has left Bush with a weak hand, all the better. But, it would be wise for us to find somebody who can stand in a room with Bush and look like he's got just as much experience leading this country in battle as he does. (In my opinion, that could be Anna Nicole Smith, but I realize I'm not a typical middle American.) Clark is a Democrat who is also a 4 star General. I just don't see anybody who can match that profile.

My dream ticket would be Wesley Clark/Bob Rubin.





digby 3/30/2003 10:58:00 PM |

 
Incestuous Amplification

“defined by Jane's Defense Weekly as ‘a condition in warfare where one only listens to those who are already in lock-step agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation.’”

Paul Krugman uses this military term today to explain the Bush administration’s reaction to the California energy crisis. By doing so, he also cleverly highlights the fundamental problem with the Republican establishment that runs Washington. They live in an intellectual echo chamber of insular think tanks, political operatives and partisan media.

But, war is not as controllable as the American political process.

Brad DeLong posts this article and rightly points out that 3 senior administration officials say that: "President Bush's aides did not forcefully present him with dissenting views from CIA and State and Defense Department officials who warned that U.S.-led forces could face stiff resistance in Iraq."

The New York Times explicitly stated this back on March 18th:

During a White House planning session with his top military advisers late last month, President Bush turned to Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with a pressing question: How long would war with Iraq last? But before General Myers could respond, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld put a hand on his arm and said, "Now, Dick, you don't want to answer that."

The exchange is recounted by senior officials at the White House and State Department, as well as the Pentagon, as a window into Mr. Rumsfeld's complicated management style — and, indeed, it presents a Rorschach test to separate Mr. Rumsfeld's detractors from his supporters.

Critics cite the meeting as evidence that Mr. Rumsfeld muzzles the military, as an effort by the defense secretary to prevent the nation's highest-ranking general from performing his lawful duty to give his best military thinking, unvarnished, to Mr. Bush.

Keep in mind that this article was written before the current cover-your-ass operation began. They had no way of knowing at that time that the rose colored glasses scenario would not come to fruition, but there was obviously concern on the part of some that Junior was being managed by the IraqHawks, particularly the starry eyed neocons.

As DeLong noted, this "Sr" complaint can only come from a very limited number of people (my guess being Rove, Card and possibly Powell.) And most amazingly, in the March 28th article, they name Cheney and Rumsfeld as being the ones who misled the Commander in Chief. It's possible that Rove is beginning to circle the wagons to protect Bush's viability and as a result, Rummy (and Cheney?) are feeling a little heat coming from the inside.

This is very intriguing, if true. Much depends upon developments in the war over the next few days. If the troops remain dug in outside of Baghdad for any length of time (even if air power is being used relentlessly against the Republican Guard positions) there will be a news vacuum that might very well portend a continued drumbeat of complaint against Rumsfeld. If suicide bombings become common, he looks very bad indeed.

And, that might lead him to want to take a big gamble and push into Baghdad before the situation on the ground is optimal. The question then would be whether Bush's true inner circle would start to lead Junior away from Rummy and toward the Generals. The only person, after all, who can stop Rumsfeld from ordering General Franks to take a wild unnecessary chance is Bush himself.

Rumsfeld's problem is of his own making. There were many reports of friction between Rumsfeld and the pentagon staff from long before Iraq planning began in earnest. Daily Kos has a great post up about Robert Novak’s reporting on the dissention in the pentagon going back more than a year. Everyone chalked this up to the "transformation" that Rumsfeld was attempting and in typical Howie Kurtz style, it was
reported by most of the press as it interprets everything -- as a high school turf battle. But, this goes way beyond that to a serious concern amongst the brass that Rumsfeld is actually endangering national security.

Perhaps the biggest issue is that he depends almost entirely upon a small group of advisors from Republican think tanks. His insistence on deploying a missile defense system that doesn't work, his uncritical dependence on unproven theories like "effects based warfare" and most importantly, his refusal to allow for contingency battlefield planning are seen by many as not just bad management, but as reckless and dangerous at this particular time. We aren't just playing any more, it isn't theoretical, Rumsfeld is insisting on actually using untried military doctrine based upon pop futurist and techno dreamer scenarios. And he is so sure he is right that he refuses to fully consider back-up plans, instead seeing any deviation as a political concession and therefore without merit in its own right. Franks asks for extra time to adjust to the Turkey debacle and Rumsfeld grumbles that he already gave him 50,000 more troops, what more does he want?

Military planners and intelligence sources were all very aware that Iraq was a different situation than Afghanistan, as anyone with half a brain could see. But, in the tight world of right wing thinkers (remember, they fired all the moderates and liberals that had previously given the Defense Policy Board a variety of perspectives) it was time to put their long time theories into practice. They were not going to be dissuaded by a bunch of cowardly military officers or ossified state department careerists.

They had spent many years, from the Plan B group up through the back halls of the Reagan administration to the AEI/CSP/PNAC echo chamber refining their dreamy utopian vision of a world easily dominated by American technology, business and values and they were not going to let a bunch of cynical naysayers get in their way with nitpicking about how to get there.

We've made this mistake before, as The Pentagon Papers made clear. But, this time it is even worse. There is no rival superpower to keep us from completely destabilizing the world order and then having nothing tangible to replace it with besides the chimera of brute American force.

Despite all the hype and all the money, we are kidding ourselves if we believe that we can rule the world with our military power. The American people are not Spartans and we are not willing or able to take on that project. These people know that which is why they are depending upon this "projection" of power, "effects based" warfare, "3rd wave" information manipulation and fake missile defense to do the job for us. They believed that we would not really have to demonstrate our power because we can make people believe that they face sure defeat.

And remember, many of the people who have theorized this new world order have no personal experience with war, have learned all the wrong lessons from history and formulated many of their ideas from popular fiction, movie myths and half baked futurist proselytizing. These are not the smartest guys in the world. Remember, the two top planners of the war with Iraq came from the Ford administration. The intellectual neocon claque of Wolfowitz and Perle are slightly deranged from having spent their entire careers convinced that the Soviet Union was so all-powerful that any compromise was a defeat. Wolfowitz thought Gorbachev was a stooge and lobbied hard for the US to name Lithuania a US vital interest so as to put a US presence on the ground to prepare for our inevitable invasion of Russia. And, this was after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

They have always been wrong. Always. But events have now taken on a life of their own. We may just have to depend upon Karl Rove to pull Bush back from the brink. That is a very slender thread to hang on to but it looks like it's all we've got.


Update: Josh Marshall also believes that this “3 senior officials” designation is significant also and may mean that there is some serious rumbling inside the administration.







digby 3/30/2003 08:33:00 PM |

Saturday, March 29, 2003

 
Fudgy Liar Cake

Ken "Cakeboy" Adelman just said that the war is going much better than anyone predicted because we haven't had any terrorist reprisals or nuclear war. And, they will STILL greet us with rose petals just as soon as we've won the war. Chris Matthews is such a nice polite fellow. He didn't mention the "cakewalk" comment.

Perhaps if Adelman had done something really dangerous like receive a furtive hallway hummer, Chris would have been reduced to screaming, spittle flecked outrage. There are limits.

digby 3/29/2003 05:33:00 PM |

 
The Worst and the Dumbest

Reuters reports that Sy Hersh has a big one coming out about Rummy:

"He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn," the article quoted an unidentified senior Pentagon planner as saying. "This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn't want a heavy footprint on the ground."

Following up on my post below, here is a June 2002 article from National Review that discusses the ongoing tension within military circles between the radical technophiles and the traditional services. He describes the varying schools of thought as "strategic pluralists," "strategic monists," and "technophiles."

The first are the traditionalists who have believed that they need every possible weapons system and believe in maintaining a large capable force that can meet any threat. This group has been at odds with Army Chief Eric Shinseki, who began an ambitious and long needed Army transformation plan in 1999. But, they had no idea how good they had it until Rummy came along. He pretty much told Shinseki that his plan was scrapped in favor of a much reduced role for the Army in the future and that "boots on the ground" is a discredited concept.

The second group "strategic monists" are simply the types who believe that "air power (or whatever) is all you need." It has been proven wrong time and again. Still, it persists.

The third group falls into the Tofflerite category described in my previous post. Rummy is a technophile of the highest order with a deep and enduring belief in the efficacy of missile defense and space weapons. When he is forced to come back down to planet earth, in the near term this translates into a belief that "standoff and precision-strike weapons, delivered from the air or from space, will always provide a substitute for land power in future combat operations."

The author concludes with:

The fundamental flaw that characterizes both the strategic monist and the technophile is their certainty that they can predict the future. As Loren Thomson of the Lexington Institute recently observed, "much of what transpires under the rubric of transformation is actually grounded in implicit assumptions about future threats." But the future isn't knowable. The fact is that since 1940, the United States has suffered at least one strategic surprise every decade. "So any concept of transformation that proposes sweeping programmatic changes based on a presumed understanding of future challenges is likely to go wrong. There are simply too many possible threats, and the very act of preparing for some reduces the likelihood that those are the ones we will face."

We should be very skeptical of anyone who claims we can know the future well enough to eliminate or substantially reduce certain capabilities, such as land power. Strategic pluralism and balanced forces have provided a hedge against uncertainty in the past and, as such, have served the interests of the United States well. We should not use special cases such as Kosovo and Afghanistan to justify a return to the strategic monism of the 1950s to the detriment of overall U.S. security.

This is yet another example of the radical Republican experimentation with every institution of the United States. Like the wild supply side experiment with radical tax cuts, the Federalist Society assault on the legal system, and the abrupt change to a doctrine of unilateralism and preventive war, it is the result of insular, second rate, ivory tower think tank intellectuals taking the reins of power and completely running amuck.

It is hard to overestimate the level of damage this chaotic agenda of dangerous, radical change these people can wreak. This is no joke. The Democrats had better get a grip on this threat to our way of life. It is not about offended sensibilities or cultural niceties or social conformity. It is about a bunch of mediocre minds and megalomaniacal personalities who are experimenting with the most powerful government on the planet as if it is a Heritage Foundation seminar.

This war is still likely to turn out all right (for the US) in the short term, but it is not nearly the sure thing that it would have been if Rummy wasn't a pie-in-the-sky true believer who has no respect for history, tradition or intellectual inquiry. If we end up having to bombard civilians in large numbers in order to end the Saddam regime, the blood is on Rummy's hands. He really believed that you can win wars through nothing but propaganda and precision bombing of empty buildings. He didn't realize that the only enemies who are that gullible are the Democratic Party.

WE are the conservatives now, folks.





digby 3/29/2003 05:32:00 PM |

Friday, March 28, 2003

 
Future Shock and Awe

Last week I wrote a post about the likelihood that Newt Gingrich is heavily involved in the actual war planning for the Iraq invasion. I had no proof other than some gossipy items in newspaper columns. However, I have since been informed that Newt has had almost unequalled influence in long term strategic military planning for many, many years.

And, when he introduced the Generals to his intellectual mentors in the early 1980's he began a revolution in military affairs that is playing itself out in the Iraqi desert at this very minute.

Last November, Newt spoke to the U.S. Joint Forces Command about the future of the military in the 21st century. He spoke of fast paced deployments, joint services, men on horseback with cell phones commanding B52’s, “The Bridges at Toko Ri” and “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" and a whole lot of other stuff. It’s quite a speech and he’s given many just like it for the last 20 years.

… in 1979 as a freshman congressman …

My dad retired as a lieutenant colonel, and here is a brigadier general [Donald Starry] in the United States Army asking me to advise on the core pattern of how you fight a battle. I promptly said to my staff, "Hold the phone calls, postpone my next appointment…He said, “We have a real problem.” I whipped out a legal pad and said, “Now to understand what we're doing, let me share with you a framework so you can advise them." I was thrilled. Back then, this was pretty powerful, and he pulled out a little flip chart from his attaché case, and for 45 minutes he walked me through every battle doctrine.

[…]

Now, the thing that actually sold me was when he left he had taken notes that would begin a dialogue which continued until 1987. I advised the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command from the spring of 1979 through the fall of ’87 on Army battle doctrine. Oh, and I guess in that sense the only elected member of Congress to have ever done anything quite like that.

He says in the same speech:

…my stepfather who was an infantryman who was stationed in Orleans, France, and he took me to the battle field for the Verdun, and we spent a weekend with a friend of his who had been drafted in 1941, sent to the Philippines, served in the Bataan Death March and spent 3 1/2 years in a Japanese prison camp. And at the end of the weekend of Japanese prison camp stories at night and Verdun battle fields during the daytime, I had this sense that this stuff's all real. People die, and not just in Tel Aviv malls, but, as we discovered on September 11th, in our biggest cities.

So I come down here with a passion which is the equivalent to the passion some of you may have felt in combat…

One supposes that those who have actually been in battle might feel differently, but there you have it. In any case, Newt has been advising the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) for many years, (where he also spent a lot of time talking politics apparently.) He remains very active in military matters since he left office:

(June 18,2002)Command leaders briefed Gingrich, who was accompanied by the Commander in Chief of U.S. Joint Forces Command and Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic, U.S. Army Gen. William Kernan and Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic, British Admiral Ian Forbes, at the JFCOM Joint Warfighting Center.

During those early years in congress he was also heavily involved with some other big thinkers, the authors of the popular bestseller, “Future Shock,” Alvin and Heidi Toffler. He introduced his good friends to the above mentioned General Starry in 1982 and they soon came to have an almost unimaginable influence on a certain group of military planners in creating a new military doctrine called alternatively “third wave” and “information warfare.”

This doctrine relies on the Tofflers' thesis that the United States is in the midst of a transition between the 2nd wave industrial society and the 3rd wave information society. This concept is the single biggest influence on Newt Gingrich’s “vision” and the military is the one place where Gingrich seems to have been taken very seriously as a planner and long term strategist from very early in his career. (At one time he had 5 active military officers serving on his congressional staff, a fact which raised eyebrows but since he was the Speaker nobody said much about the obvious conflict of active duty personnel directly involved in the political process.)

After the Gulf War the Tofflers wrote “War and Anti-War: Summit at the Dawn of the 21st Century,” in which they claimed that the first Gulf War was the first war to occur between the 2nd wave and 3rd wave of civilization and was the greatest military victory in history. There were
dissenters but many in the military began to plan along the lines that the Tofflers suggested developing a theory called Information Warfare.

In its most benign form it is merely a doctrine for attacking and defending the ever more important information systems (i.e command and control.) But the concept became merged with another doctrine called the Revolution in Military Affairs or RMA that includes the ideas of small, fast “niche” special forces, “information driven” airpower, psy-ops and propaganda and as Don Rumsfeld called it “Exquisite Intelligence.” And these ideas are the basis for Rumsfeld’s military transformation, including his personal favorite “effects based warfare.”

To 3rd wave military enthusiasts, Information Warfare is the thrilling notion that:

"Information dominance is superior situational awareness applied to seize and maintain the initiative, influence the enemy's actions, and induce operational paralysis while denying your adversary the ability to do the same."

In other words, war as mind fuck. “Shock and Awe,” falls into the Information Warfare doctrine with its psy-ops goal made possible by information driven precision weapons. IW relies upon the assurance that, in the face of proper information (i.e. the massive superiority of the offensive force) that logically the enemy will not fight. Well...

The target of information warfare, then, is the human mind, especially those minds that make the key decisions of war or peace and, from the military perspective, those minds that make the key decisions on if, when, and how to employ the assets and capabilities embedded in their strategic structures.

Newt put it more prosaically in a speech at the Hoover Institute last July:

…their [old] answer has been to design campaign plans that are so massive - I mean the standard plan in Afghanistan was either Tomahawks or 5 divisions, and that's why Rumsfeld was so important. Cause Rumsfeld sat down and said, "Well what if we do this other thing? You know, 3 guys on horseback, a B-2 overhead." And it was a huge shock to the army. I mean, because it worked. Now I'll tell you one guy who does agree and that's Chuck Horner who ran the air campaign.

You can still find people out there who are warriors who came up during the Reagan years, all of whom will say flatly to the Secretary of Defense, "The right model is simultaneous, massive, immediate combined air and land forces, period."

Now, some people see much of the Afghan campaign as a failed strategy, particularly the battle of Tora Bora, which was roundly condemned for its misjudgment of the Afghan “allies” and a failure to put adequate troops on the ground. (Sound familiar?) This was the battle from which Osama bin Laden was believed to have escaped. The guys on horseback with cell phones didn’t quite get the job done.

After Operation Anaconda was proclaimed a victory, (why, we do not know) Junior turned to Condi and said “what’s next?” Immediately, the planning began in earnest for the invasion of Iraq. News reports said that Rumsfeld and crew initially believed that the operation would only require 50-60,000 troops, in keeping with the rapid deployment of “niche” special forces theory. And although they were ultimately persuaded that a much larger force was needed, events of recent days suggest that the adjustment was badly planned and then micromanaged.

Certainly, it would seem that the planners badly miscalculated the Iraqi response to the invasion, sent in light armor when heavy armor is more appropriate and is now scrambling by putting forces into areas for which they are not specifically trained. Perhaps most importantly, their exquisite intelligence was very selective:

Intelligence officials say Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and other Pentagon civilians ignored much of the advice of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency in favor of reports from the Iraqi opposition and from Israeli sources that predicted an immediate uprising against Saddam once the Americans attacked.

Perhaps this is the fatal flaw of this 3rd wave Information Warfare theory (although there are many.) Relying upon rosy scenarios is a human failing, particularly amongst those who are invested in certain beliefs and ideals. No matter how good the information, if ignored it is useless.

(All of this was, of course, predicted by the Millenium Challenge wargames played earlier this year in which they simply refused to adapt to the idea that “the crazy middle eastern dictator” was not going go along with the script.)

This article from the Intl. Herald Tribune from last fall is interesting in light of Rumsfeld calling it “Franks’s Plan” today. Newtie himself said at the time:

Gingrich, who also is a member of the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory panel, said he was confident that General Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, would not be swayed by suggestions that he include more reinforcements and plan a more cautious attack.
He said that Franks, an army general, "will probably have a more integrated, more aggressive and more risk-taking plan."

"If the chiefs wanted to be extremely cautious, extremely conservative and design a risk-avoiding strategy, that would be nothing new," he said in an interview.

It appears that the high command of the military is not as smitten with the Toffler’s New Age vision as a military plan of action. They came through Vietnam and their desire for political support and a clear goal makes them McClellans to the civil war buffs like Cheney and the RMA types who read too much Tom Clancy. Derision toward the traditional idea of overwhelming force is emblematic of Newt and his 3rd wave super true believers.

I do not know how much Gingrich has been involved with the war planning since 9/11. There have been numerous reports that he has been advising Rumsfeld and we know that he is a member of the Defense Policy Board. But, even if he isn’t, in his own way, he has been as influential on the thinking in military affairs as any of the neocons (which he isn't, really) and his influence is being felt today and will continue to be felt for many, many years to come. He’s the man who brought pop futurism into the American military and got a lot of people to believe that we can run the world militarily without having to commit human beings in great numbers to face the enemies that result from such adventures. Perhaps someday that may be true. kosovo worked out ok, but Milosevic wasn't laboring under any illusions that his neighbors might join the fray or that he could leverage world opinion. The Afghanistan campaign was a very middling success considering the circumstances and Operation Exquisite Intelligence is turning out to be messy and ill-planned at the very least. The post war scenario looks quite grim.

I have no great quarrel with the Tofflers. They are pop futurists and they have had an enormous influence on the way we think about change and the information age. But, it is truly amazing to me that their thesis has become a serious basis for military planning. While these concepts are intriguing and give one plenty of food for thought about how the future will play out, they are also extremely limited. Their prescriptions for how to deal with new challenges in a non-military sense are almost entirely utopian nonsense and have no practical application. There is no reason to believe that their thinking about military strategy is any more realistic.

The vision of Information Warfare is premature at best. We would like to fight a 3rd wave war. But, it appears that Saddam, still mired in the 2nd wave, refuses to cooperate.

In “Creating a New Civilization, The Politics of the Third Wave,” the Tofflers define their ideas as this:

“The way we make war reflects the way we make wealth and the way we make anti-war must reflect the way we make war.”

I know that I will always be grateful to Newt Gingrich for introducing that kind of clear thinking into our military back in 1983. We can only be more secure as a result.






digby 3/28/2003 08:42:00 PM |

Thursday, March 27, 2003

 
Goin' Courtin'

Souter wonders why Texas doesn't limit sodomy among heterosexuals. "Because it can lead to marriage and procreation," says Rosenthal...

Wow. And I thought California had some unusual dating rituals.




digby 3/27/2003 09:24:00 AM |

Wednesday, March 26, 2003

 
Even If They Hate Him

I have often wondered how anyone could accept the Perle Wolfowitz claque's rose colored glasses scenario with a straight face. Perhaps they've all been watching "Patton" on a loop with Michael Ledeen and believed that it would be just like the scene of the Americans liberating Paris. (And when Condi said that the Americans had liberated the German people from Hitler, I just assumed she was carried away with the moment.) But, now that I fully realize how completely these people depended upon the Iraqi people to welcome them with open arms I'm convinced that their biggest problem, from diplomacy to war planning, is that they are completely clueless about what motivates and animates human beings. They are psychologically crippled.

Clearly they never gave even a moments thought to the fact that average Iraqis might assume that a bunch of American guys in uniforms running around shooting at Iraqis aren't really a whole lot different from a bunch of Iraqi guys running around shooting at Iraqis. Except for one thing. The Iraqis, at least, have not invaded their country under circumstances that many people in the world, much less the citizens of Iraq, find suspicious. And after our ignominious bail-out in 1991, it's not hard to predict that those most likely to rebel might just be a little bit gunshy. We don't exactly have a good reputation for follow through.

And, did it not occur to the neocon planners that our determination to overthrow and occupy Iraq without international sanction or support would be looked at askance, even by the victims of Saddam Hussein? Merely proclaiming yourself to be "good" and Saddam "evil" is unlikely to persuade anyone but silly red-staters who carry around signs that say "W Is A Hottie." Nobody else is going to buy it. Certainly not Iraqi people who have every reason to be a teensy bit skeptical of politicians who talk and act tough. They've learned the hard way that strong men aren't particularly thrustworthy.

And they underestimate the fact that just like people everywhere the Iraqis love and will protect their home, their country from a foreign invader. It's instinctive. One would have thought that if the Bush administration were depending upon a popular uprising against Saddam (or at least a passive reaction) they would not have cavalierly dismissed the value of international support, particularly from the UN, nor would they have neglected to make their post-war plans for a free and democratic Iraq known to everyone in great detail. It might, at least, have helped to allay the obvious fear that the Iraqis are trading a horrible Iraqi dictator for a horrible American one.

Via a great post on Liberal Oasis I found this article in the Washington Post from a couple of days ago that puts it in terms most Americans surely should be able to understand -- national pride:

When it came to the cause of Iraq's predicament, family members pointed to Hussein, describing him as rash. He invaded Iran, trapping them in an eight-year war. He seized Kuwait, bringing on the Persian Gulf War and the devastation of sanctions that largely wiped out Iraq's middle class. After that war, they were ready to overthrow him themselves.

But they bitterly denounced the war the United States has launched. Iraq, perhaps more than any other Arab country, dwells on traditions -- of pride, honor and dignity. To this family, the assault is an insult. It is not Hussein under attack, but Iraq, they said. It is hard to gauge if this is a common sentiment, although it is one heard more often as the war progresses.

"We complain about things, but complaining doesn't mean cooperating with foreign governments," the father said. "When somebody comes to attack Iraq, we stand up for Iraq. That doesn't mean we love Saddam Hussein, but there are priorities."

Tom Tomorrow said it best:

We took a lot of lessons from 9/11, but it occurs to me that there's one we might have overlooked. When you attack a nation, people tend to rally around their leader --- even if they hate him.

digby 3/26/2003 05:27:00 PM |

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

 
An Angry Dutchman

Martin Wisse tells it like a REAL leftist:

You may have noticed I have not blogged much this week; with the war now officially started I really have not felt like it. Now more then ever it feels like shouting into a vacuum. I just feel so helpless, you know? Bush finally has his war, innocent people are dying already and many more iwll die before this war is over and I get the feeling none of the socalled adults is taking this fucking serious. William Hague smirking his way through the war debate in the Commons on Tuesday, making oh so clever jokes about Claire Short. Bush and his cronies mouthing platitudes about peace and democracy, Blair and his cronies blaming France for this war because they opposed this war. The fucking reporters on the fucking BBC sounding so fucking pleased with the bombardments going on right now in Baghdad, getting their hardons from all this kewl military stuff. Finally, here's the New and Improved Gulf War for all those boys and girls who missed the first one: now they too can do the Hero Reporter from Beleaguered Baghdad or Tel Aviv or Kuwait or where fucking ever. Then, escaping to the wonderful world of blogging, I get the same sanctimonious pricks who all along told me I Was Doing it All Wrong that mass protests or direct action is sooo passe and shouldn't I just vote Democratic and get involved into nice, respectable ways of doing politics. You know the same sort of politics that DIDN'T WORK BEFORE EITHER?? Fuck 'em.

There's a war going on. It's time to get serious.

digby 3/25/2003 09:25:00 PM |

 
DittoheadJarhead

[...]

The marines are aggrieved: aggrieved that the Iraqis aren't more grateful, aggrieved that the Iraqis are shooting at them, aggrieved that the US army's spearhead 3rd Infantry Division tore through Nassiriya earlier in the invasion without making it safe.

"They didn't clear the place, and then they left, and now the marines sure have to clear it," he said. "Just like the goddam army."

And the Iraqis are aggrieved at the marines. A 50-year-old businessman and farmer, Said Yahir, was driving up to the main body of the reconnaissance unit, stationed under the bridge. He wanted to know why the marines had come to his house and taken his son Nathen, his Kalashnikov rifle, and his 3m dinars (about £500).

"What did I do?" he said. "This is your freedom that you're talking about? This is my life savings."

In 1991, in the wake of Iraq's defeat in the first Gulf war, Mr Yahir was one of those who joined the rebellion against Saddam Hussein. His house was shelled by the dictator's artillery. The US refused to intervene and the rebellion was crushed.

"Saddam would have fallen if they had supported us," Mr Yahir said. "I've been so humiliated."

Under the bridge, Sergeant Michael Sprague was unrepentant. The money, the marines said, was probably destined for terrorist activities - buying a suicide bomber, for instance. "The same people we determined were safe yesterday were found with weapons today," he said.

Marine scouts shot two Iraqi men yesterday when they were seen carrying Kalashnikovs. Each man was found to be carrying three magazines, but they never fired at the marines before they were killed.

"They were pointing their weapons in an aggressive manner, and they were taken out," said Sgt Sprague.

Nathen had been captured the previous day, along with dozens of others, and like them, had been let go, Sgt Sprague said. Then they caught him again with a Kalashnikov in mint condition and 3m dinars.

"So the question I would like to be asked is, if this person already went through EPW [enemy prisoner of war] questioning and was found to be OK, why on earth would he come back? The problem with these people is that you can't believe anything they say."

Could he understand the locals' distrust of the US after what happened in 1991?

"If it weren't for the liberal press, we might have taken Baghdad last time," said the sergeant.

[...]

So closely entwined were some populated localities with the tentacles of the VC base area, in some cases actually integrated into the defenses, and so sympatheic were some of the people to the VC that the only way to establish control short of constant combat operations among the people was to remove the people and destroy the village....

That it was infinitely better in some cases to move people from areas long sympathetic to the Viet Cong was amply demonstrated later by events that occurred when the discipline of an American company broke down at a place called My Lai.

--General Westmoreland in his memoir A Soldier Reports,

"We must necessarily appear to them in the nature of supernatural beings -- we approach them with the might as of a deity. . . by the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power and good practically unbounded."
Heart of Darkness




digby 3/25/2003 08:08:00 PM |

 
Neocon Ecstasy

Josh Marshall has some really interesting stuff up today, but this quote by looney tunes Michael Ledeen is just a pip:

I think it all depends how the war goes. And I think the level of causalities is secondary. It may sound like an odd thing to say. But all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people. And that we love war. And one of my favorite comments on American character, which is Patton's speech at the beginning of the movie, where he says "Americans love war. We love fighting. We've always fought. We enjoy it. We're good at it. And so forth." What we hate is not casualties but losing. And if the war goes well, and if the American public has the conviction that we're being well-led, and that our people are fighting well, and that we're winning, I don't think causalities are gonna be the issue.

I guess Patton is his idea of a great intellectual. And, for an AEI "freedom chair" scholor, you'd think this idiot would know that the speech he is referring to actually took place and it took place on a very auspicious day --- June 5th, 1944. (But yeah, the movie was like, cool too.) Patton was speaking to his men on the eve of the Normandy Invasion and he knew that huge numbers of them were going to die. So, what he was doing was pumping up the troops. Here's (more or less) what he is supposed to havesaid:

Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight. When you, here, everyone of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American."

Now, I don't know what other "scholors" Ledeen may have been referring to, although Tom Hanks made a good speech in "Saving Private Ryan" and John Wayne was positively riveting in the "Sands of Iwo Jima."

One thing is very, very clear. It's damned easy being a war loving American when you are a flabby middle-aged doughboy sitting behind a desk and talking the big talk. This really is one of those situations where the chickenhawk label is completely apt. Ledeen is still a little boy in a grown man's think tank. Had he proved his manhood in Vietnam instead of onanistically watching Patton and absorbing it as "reality," this country would be a safer place today.

What an utter embarrassment. He makes Newtie's silly military history book reviews sound like Sun Tzu.











digby 3/25/2003 05:36:00 PM |

 
He Knows Something

Wampum posts this heartfelt plea for a call to your Senators to protest this outrage on the part of our own favorite Dr. Catkiller.

She believes that his relentlessness in getting this provision passed has to do with a larger ambition toward "tort reform" and capping medical malpractice awards. But, I actually think it may be more sinister than that.

That explanation makes a lot of sense as it pertains to Frist the majority leader, but it doesn't really explain his prior undeviating focus on what is surely a rather obscure issue in the entire medical malpractice scheme. Long before he was responsible for bankrupting the trial lawyers to cripple the Democratic party, he was trying to get this bill passed. He has been rebuffed again and again, but he keeps coming back. As we all know, he even stuck it into the Homeland Security bill and forced poor, drunk Dick Armey to take the fall.

No. There must be more to this. The best spin is that he is owned by Eli Lily and this issue is of extreme importance to them. He's a typical senate whore doing what he's paid to do. Simple. They do not want any liability on anything. And, one can easily see how it might be that Frist and his cronies want to raid the vaccine trust fund as Wampum speculates. I certainly wouldn't put it past them.

But, none of this explains why he specifically snuck the thimerosol issue into the Homeland Security bill in the dead of night.

In an earlier post Wampum links to a story about the new tobacco case that John Ashcroft apparently let slip through the cracks:

Five big cigarette companies and a public relations firm sat down to devise a fraudulent scheme "to preserve and enhance the tobacco industry's profits by maximizing the number of smokers . . . and to avoid adverse liability judgments" linked to smoking-related diseases, the government charges.

That's what these greedy bastards do. I think it's about the thimerosol. And Frist knows it.

correction: Dick Armey, not Bill.




digby 3/25/2003 04:10:00 PM |

 
Thanks

...to Eric Alterman of Altercation who, at Jeralyn's kind suggestion, added this humble site to his blogroll. I understand that if I want to stay there that I must shamelessly plug an obscure little book called...what was it? ...oh yes, "What Liberal Media?"

Has anyone heard of it?

I must say, it sounds ludicrous. Is he suggesting that the media are not run by left-wing socialists whose sole purpose in life is to steal the hard earned inherited wealth of the most deserving citizens and pass it out willy-nilly to lazy, low born losers? How ridiculous.

Buy it if you want to. But, anyone who thinks that careerist social climbers who work for giant media corporations run by billionaires aren't liberals to their bones just doesn't know what he's talking about.




digby 3/25/2003 02:12:00 PM |

 
All Resistence Is Terrorism

Rumsfeld just said that Iraqi troops who dress in civilian clothes or fake a surrender are terrorists.

We have invaded a country and their troops are fighting back employing guerilla warfare against our vast technological superiority. This is now called terrorism.

Terrorism.
In a war zone.
Against armed troops.

It would seem that the only form of warfare that Rumsfeld considers legitimate combat against Americans is standing up in uniform and walking into the line of fire. Perhaps if you shot your gun in that situation Donald Rumsfeld would not consider you a terrorist. But, you never know.

One wonders if our special forces, stealthily living by night in Baghdad for the last week or so, (and presumably not wearing their navy whites on the streets) are similarly considered terrorists. Or is this another of those situations where the distinction must be made between good (us) and evil (them.)

Am I not correct in saying that terrorism is specifically defined as violence against a civilian population for the purpose of spreading terror? (Unless it's called "Shock and Awe," of course. Then it's called "liberation.") Can we not assume that the battlefield is not exactly the prime location for that activity? Our soldiers, after all, do have guns and they know how to use them. And, while I have no doubt that they are frightened, they are trained professionals whom I think we can expect will react with something short of terror.

I would have thought he was being hyperbolic, but he's probably just laying the groundwork to justify "unlawful combatant" status for Iraqis caught out of uniform. They don't like treaties, as we know. If they try very hard they may just manage to trash the Geneva Convention as the coup de gras.




digby 3/25/2003 11:13:00 AM |

 
Fear Sells

In another chapter in the ongoing debate about whether we will scare off moderates with strident liberal rhetoric I must note Kevin’s post on Calpundit about the marketing of ideas and the politics of fear. If you read the article by Chris Mooney to which he links you see that it is about framing ideas. It's interesting in and of itself.

But then Kevin hurls a zinger at the misplaced idea that only a positive message will work.

It's true that doom-and-gloom messages by themselves don't sell, but something similarly negative does: fear. And it sells big.

Not fear of things like eventual environmental collapse (she's right about that), but fear of people. Conservatives have very successfully gained ground by convincing moderate swing voters to be afraid of liberals: liberals "blame America first," they have contempt for traditional values, they are atheists, they're soft on child molesters, etc. etc. These are not people who should be in control of our government…

Fear sells…

I could not agree more. It works and it works well. And, there is nothing more important than taking back the realm of what is considered “normal” in political discourse in this country. "Permissive liberals” have been so successfully demonized many have actually stopped calling themselves that. They have even made us believe that our ideas are offensive.

I would once more like to point out that there is no evidence that the vast majority of Americans are as conservative as the right wing ranters like to pretend. At least by any definition of conservative I’ve ever known. For instance, this survey found that 70% of employees admit to viewing or sending adult-oriented personal e-mail at work.

According to U.S. News & World Report, March 2000, the pornography industry brought in revenues of $8,000,000,000 (8Billion) in the year 1999. That exceeds the total revenue of the Rock and Roll and Country Music Industry combined.-

The south has the highest divorce rates in the country and the highest numbers are amongst born again Christians.

ABC averaged 24.1 million viewers during the first hour of the "Bachelor" finale … opposite the controversial "Victoria's Secret" special on CBS, which drew an audience of 10.5 million, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Oh , and by the way, the Dixie Chicks album went from number 6 to number 4 on the Billboard chart this last week.

Popular culture tells the tale. The idea that liberalism is something confined to a few deadheads on the coasts is a shibboleth. It is a highly successful propaganda ploy that has convinced many millions of Americans that they aren’t what they are and has created a straw man in its place to conveniently set aflame. It is quite brilliant and it will not be turned around by mealy mouthed appeals to sunshine and happiness.

As for the other side, David Niewert has some words for the left on the politics of fear:

The mainstream left has been content to make jokes about the stupidity of militiamen instead of recognizing the actual threat they represent. There has been little recognition of the way the far right is able to insinuate its ideas and agendas into the mainstream; indeed, the left's dismissive attitude about right-wing extremists has only helped further their ability to penetrate broader society.

Americans aren’t radicals. The right wing of the political spectrum actually is hurtling headlong into radicalism and a lot of that is due to their acceptance of truly freaky and dangerous elements into their mainstream. The Lott affair provides a lesson. They have developed a need to be seen as not being racist. Yet, the party is crawling with confederates, anti-semites and anti-immigrant haters. They have also made common cause with a bunch of end-days fundamentalists and self-styled militia. There should be a concerted effort to make the urbanites who profess such solidarity with the pick-up truck crowd confront this and explain it.

Of course I agree that the democrats have to offer a positive agenda. But, survey after survey shows that Americans already agree with the Democratic domestic agenda. And even though I believe whole heartedly that national security is going to be the number one issue in 2004, it consistently polls lower than the economy and education, areas in which the Dems traditionally hold a large advantage, particularly when jobs aren’t plentiful. So, clearly it’s not liberal ideas per se that so-called moderates don’t like. In many ways they are quite liberal themselves, at least compared to the stereotype we are fed of the “average” American from the heartland. But, still the Republicans hold enough of an edge nationally to control the congress and (sort of) win the presidency while rendering the political opposition virtually impotent .

Fear trumps everything. They created a monster and called it “liberal” then scared everybody into believing that it is extremist and dangerous.

Nothing we say will get past that until we expose the other side. What Neiwert has pointed out in his series on Rush, Newspeak and Fascism is that something actually is happening and it’s dangerous as hell. We don’t have to make anything up. We don’t have to construct a straw man. It’s real. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with pointing this out. Indeed, it is an obligation

Kevin said:

…we must convince the middle third of voters that they should be afraid of what extreme conservatives are doing. When they are more afraid of them than they are of extreme liberals, then the real work can start.

Yes. Playing by the old rules is going to kill us.




digby 3/25/2003 03:49:00 AM |

 
Newtie's Strategery

So Wolfie and his safari jacketed cohorts finally realized that war isn’t a movie or a video game. Actual humans are getting killed. I’m relieved they woke up. The surreality of videophone wargasm was really starting to get to me.

There is also the beginning of some rumbling that while there is still no uncertainty as to the outcome of the war, there is some question about the timing and the strategy. General Wesley Clark says in his interview in Salon today:

Well, I said two to three weeks. But that was all premised on our having our force there and being ready to go at the outset. Of course we weren't. The 4th Infantry Division was in ships off the coast of Turkey. The 1st Armor Division was still in Germany. The First Cavalry was still at Fort Hood.

Why would the Pentagon start the war if not all the troops were in place?

I can't explain it. I can't defend it; I've never seen the plan. This is the decision that was made. It might work out; then again, it might not.

Does this mean you'll change your prediction from two to three weeks?

It may be longer than that, but it's still early. So I'm not changing my prediction at this point

Of course, he says there is absolutely no chance that we will be defeated, but he echoes here again this question of why we adopted a plan that leaves our rear flank vulnerable and what in the hell was the hurry? (And how could we let things get so out of hand in Turkey?)

I think I have the answer buried in a little
Washington Whispers column in US News and World Report from earlier today:

Travels with Newt

The universe of ousted House Speaker Newt Gingrich continues to expand. Not only is he giving advice to war planners at Central Command, but he's also suggesting policy strategies to the White House and offering lines for Bush speeches.

Seriously, this is not the first we’ve heard of Newt being involved in the war planning.

Paleotraitor Robert Novak said as much way back in October:

Hawkish civilians, in and out of the government, have been suggesting that Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard will throw up its arms in surrender. No serious person believes that. The question is whether an uprising of the persecuted Shia majority will be enough to overthrow the Baghdad regime without heavy application of U.S. force. If there is no effective revolt, the generals and their friends on Capitol Hill worry that the unknown plans may not call for sufficient U.S. forces.

The concern goes to the executive style of Don Rumsfeld, who recalls the forceful and abrasive qualities demonstrated by war secretaries in the mold of Edwin Stanton during the Civil War. To his credit, Rumsfeld has attempted to toughen up the officer corps, softened by standards of political correctness during the eight Clinton years. However, the officers who thought that happy days were here again on the day that George W. Bush became president have been disappointed.

Their disappointment stems from Rumsfeld's inclination, born of a turbulent lifetime in governmental and corporate affairs, to make decisions within a restricted circle. That includes war planning. According to Pentagon sources, the secretary does not consult the uniformed service chiefs. Participating in the immediate planning are Gen. Tommy Franks, commander in chief of the Central Command, and a few officers from the Pentagon's Joint Staff.

What most bothers the generals, however, is Rumsfeld's preference for outside advice.For example, Pentagon sources say a frequent consultant with the secretary is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, an amateur military expert and member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. There is no distribution through the Pentagon of such advice.

Generally, this advice probably follows the longtime line by Richard Perle, the Policy Board's chairman, that indigenous Shia forces will do most of the fighting to dislodge Saddam…

True, I cannot prove that Newt Gingrich is an architect of a battle plan that appears to have split the difference with the military --- theoretically giving them their requested number of troops, but not deploy them on time and insist that they rush to Baghdad and mop this thing up by May so the medal ceremonies can give FoxNews a needed lift for sweeps. But, it sounds so like him. Filled with hubris and macho bravado, sure that all he has to do is snarl convincingly and the other side will give up. It didn’t work with Clinton so he thought he’d try it on Saddam.

However, I know for a fact that Dick Cheney has a history of sticking his chickenhawk beak into battlefield planning. Frances Fitzgerald writes in the New York Review of Books:

In “A World Transformed,” the memoir that he and Bush senior published in 1998, [Brent] Scowcroft makes it clear that while all Bush senior's top advisers had different perspectives, the fundamental division lay between Defense Secretary Richard Cheney and everyone else. By his account, and by those of others in the administration, Cheney never trusted Gorbachev. In 1989 Cheney maintained that Gorbachev's reforms were largely cosmetic and that, rather than engage with the Soviet leader, the US should stand firm and keep up cold war pressures. In September 1991 Cheney argued that the administration should take measures to speed the breakup of the Soviet Union—even at the risk of encouraging violence and incurring long-term Russian hostility. He opposed the idea, which originated with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell, that the US should withdraw its tactical nuclear weapons from Europe and South Korea. As a part of the preparations for the Gulf War he asked Powell for a study on how small nuclear weapons might be used against Iraqi troops in the desert.

This is the guy who has almost unlimited power today. Only Junior could stop him and, well…no need to even go there.

Stormin’ Norman Schwartzkopf related some even stranger stuff in his memoir, reviewed here in 2000:

Following one White House meeting at which he'd asked for more time and more troops, Stormin' Norman reports; Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell called to warn the Desert Storm commander that he was being loudly compared, by a top administration official, to George McClellan. "My God," the official supposedly complained. "He's got all the force he needs. Why won't he just attack?" Schwarzkopf notes that the unnamed official who'd made the comment "was a civilian who knew next to nothing about military affairs, but he'd been watching the Civil War documentary on public television and was now an expert."

And then, twenty pages later, Schwarzkopf casually drops the information that he got an inspirational gift from Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney right before the air war finally got under way. Cheney was presenting a gift to a military man, and he chose something with an appropriate theme: "(A) complete set of videotapes of Ken Burns's PBS series, The Civil War."

But that wasn't the only gift that Dick Cheney had for Norman Schwarzkopf. Having figured out that the general was being too cautious with his fourth combat command in three decades of soldiering, Cheney got his staff busy and began presenting Schwarzkopf with his own ideas about how to fight the Iraqis: What if we parachute the 82nd Airborne into the far western part of Iraq, hundreds of miles from Kuwait and totally cut off from any kind of support, and seize a couple of missile sites, then line up along the highway and drive for Baghdad? Schwarzkopf charitably describes the plan as being "as bad as it could possibly be... But despite our criticism, the western excursion wouldn't die: three times in that week alone Powell called with new variations from Cheney's staff. The most bizarre involved capturing a town in western Iraq and offering it to Saddam in exchange for Kuwait." (Throw in a Pete Rose rookie card?) None of this Walter Mitty posturing especially surprised Schwarzkopf, who points out that he'd already known Cheney as "one of the fiercest cold warriors in Congress.

I certainly believe that policy and goals should be left to the elected and properly appointed civilians. But, the actual battles really need to be conceived and run by professional military planners. And, maybe they were. But, these reports of interference by Rumsfeld’s claque of armchair generals and political hacks rings very true. Rumsfeld is a micromanager of epic proportions and his good friend and closest confidante Dick Cheney has a history of liking to play GI Joe with real GI Joes.

It sounds like the generals won on the issue of troop numbers, but that the political leadership was so enamored of their “they’ll greet us with rose petals” scenario that they may have jumped too soon, discounting the military’s caution about their rear flank. Turkey, we know was a complete screw up from the get-go and probably has resulted in some serious last minute scrambling to make up for it. Josh Marshall expands on
this piece in the Washington post and explains why it was so damned dumb:

Buried in the last graf of this article in Saturday's Washington Post comes this ...
But one senior U.S. official acknowledged that U.S. pressure in recent months has backfired, saying that at one point Pentagon officials insinuated to Turkish politicians that they could get the Turkish military to back the request for U.S. troop deployments in Turkey. "It was stupid stuff. These are proud people," he said. "Speaking loudly and carrying a big stick wins you tactical victories from time to time, but not a strategic victory."

I am still hoping for a quick win and minimal loss of life. I don’t want to see anything bogging down. It’s bad for everyone. But, if Don Rumsfeld, Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney are micromanaging the battle and overruling the military as Cheney sought to do in Gulf War I, this could get very bad. Rumsfeld and Cheney are very likely running the war and they have brought in the brilliant Gingrich to write the Contract on the Middle East.

It pays to remember that Newtie was stabbed in the back by his own best friends and lost his speakership when he miscalculated and thought the Republicans would gain 30 seats and ended up losing 5 instead. As a strategist, he leaves a lot to be desired. But, it is not impossible to believe that he and others might have insisted on a half assed battle plan that is making the job more difficult than it should have been if they’d listened to something but the sound of their own voices.

And by the way, in case anybody had remaining illusions that this dream of taking on the long term responsibility of rebuilding the country and establishing democratic government was for real, the newspapers report:

[Out of a request for 74.7 billion] Bush's request had only $543 million in humanitarian aid for Iraq, $1.7 billion to rebuild the country and nothing for a peacekeeping effort after the war. Prior congressional and private estimates suggested the long-range expenses for those efforts would be many billions of dollars, though administration officials are hoping allied nations will help with the financing.

Let’s hope they don’t have the crack team that negotiated with Turkey do the asking.


Note: For a little bit of insight into Newtie's thinking --- not to mention a fine list of all the Tom Clancy novels and spy thrillers he reads, check out his copious book reviews on Amazon.

(Strangely, reading them almost made me like him just a little bit. He obviously loves books.)

Update:

"The Secretary of Defense cut off the flow of Army units, saying this thing would be over in two days," said a retired senior general who has followed the evolution of the war plan. "He shut down movement of the 1st Cavalry Division and the1st Armored Division. Now we don't even have a nominal ground force."

He added ruefully: "As in Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, we are using concepts and methods that are entirely unproved. If your strategy and assumptions are flawed, there is nothing in the well to draw from."

In addition, said senior administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, Rumsfeld and his civilian aides rewrote parts of the military services' plans for shipping U.S. forces to the Persian Gulf, which they said resulted in a number of mistakes and delays, and also changed plans for calling up some reserve and National Guard units.

"There was nothing too small for them to meddle with," said one senior official. "It's caused no end of problems, but I think we've managed to overcome them all."

uh oh










digby 3/25/2003 12:32:00 AM |

Monday, March 24, 2003

 
Dehumanization


I know that it is old news now in this whirlwind of information we are living in, but I wanted to make one comment about the Oscars, Michael Moore and Adrian Brody before it all disappears into the ether.

First, if Michael Moore had not said what he said, his career would be over. His audience of strident liberals would have rightly treated him as a pathetic sell-out if he had not made that comment when and where he did it. So, you could almost say that Moore was just being a good careerist and looking out for number one.

But, of course, he wasn't. His words spoke for a good number of Americans and they have a right to have their furious, righteous anger heard just as much as the furious right wing Dittoheads have a right to have oh...50 to 60 hours per week devoted to non-stop liberal-hating vitriol broadcast all over the country. For more than 10 years they have owned the AM dial, developed their very own news network and run hundreds of newspapers within which anti-Clinton diatribes were delivered with a viciousness and relentlessness that Michael Moore can only dream of emulating (and, if he's very lucky, get a 250 million dollar contract to disseminate.) The only difference here is that the stakes are higher and many, many lives are at risk. And, that is not Michael Moore's fault; it is George W. Bush's fault.

Moore is a left wing polemicist. I'm sorry if his polemics offend people, but I'm pretty damned offended by Rush, Sean, Neal, Peggy, Annie, Charles, Michael, and the rest. Nobody seems to give a damn about ME being offended by a juggernaut of right wing polemicists who are blatantly and obnoxiously disrespectful of everything I believe in. Now, why is that? All I can say is that it seems to have worked pretty well for them.

As for the rest of Hollywood, I think it’s fair to say that there has never been much of a political flavor to the Oscars, even during the height of the antiwar movement during Vietnam when Hollywood was much more politically outspoken. The Academy Awards are almost sacred to movie people and they worry about devaluing their status as a high honor. Nobody liked Satcheen Littlefeather, either.

But, I was still disappointed that so few made any kind of statement, political or otherwise, about the huge elephant in the middle of the room. Adrian Brody was the only one who managed to bring some sorely needed humanity into the event by acknowledging that war...is...well, hell. That is indisputable whether you are for this one or agin' it, and I would have thought that more artists, purveyors of emotional catharsis, would have felt some necessity to infuse this strange event with some feeling.

But, nobody seems to be able to talk about this war in human terms. Yes, there are the little CNN profiles of the wives and the kids and the send-offs and the features about what the grunts are eating and how they wear a gas mask. But, these stories are modeled on the coverage of the Olympic moments, canned and artificial and completely without any sense of who these people are. When I watched the foreign footage yesterday of the POW's, unavailable in our clean and tidy media script at the time, I was struck once again by how very young and scared these soldiers are. One of them looks just like my next door neighbor, a carefree motorcycle loving kid who has a slew of girlfriends and passion for Eminem. He's over there somewhere.

I also forced myself to watch al-Jazeera and some of the photos on their web-site were so disturbing I had to shut down and take some time for reflection. Where our coverage is sanitized for public consumption, theirs is sensationalized. They are looking at rivers of blood in hospitals and crying children and desperate refugees. While we were seeing a war of overwhelming technological force, they were seeing bloodied Arabs bravely beating back the invaders.

After that, watching the battle plan unfold, compulsively following the war news, riffing on my blog and making pithy comments on others just seemed like another form of denial. I'm disassociating from the reality. And, it occurred to me that maybe we are all doing that to some degree -- maybe because we are biologically programmed to do so just to keep ourselves from going crazy in times of war. (Perhaps Richard Dawkins could shed some light on that.)

So, when I watched the Oscars last night, something I normally enjoy and go out of my way to see, I was just hoping for someone to say something heartfelt about peace. I was actually hoping that a lot of them would say something about peace --- not necessarily in the political sense, but in the universal value sense. Instead, sadly, most of them just pretended that nothing was happening.

But a few -- foreigners mostly -- did say some words about peace. Almodovar said, “I also want to dedicate this award to all the people that are raising their voices in favor of peace, respect of human rights, democracy and international legality. All of which are essential qualities to live.” (Thanks, Pete. At least the Europeans love us, even if our own timid political brethren want us to tone down the rhetoric and let Rush Limbaugh dominate the discourse.)

But then Adrian Brody, the guy nobody expected to win, came up and let himself be human and emotional --- for his win, naturally, but also because of the the nature of the role he was being rewarded for playing. He said:

“My experiences of making this film made me very aware of the sadness and the dehumanization of people at times of war,” he said. “Whatever you believe in, if it’s God or Allah, may he watch over you and let’s pray for a peaceful and swift resolution.”

Dehumanization. That’s what I’m feeling when I see the scared faces of those POW’s and the horrors of decapitated children.

This is why civilization was supposed to be beyond the superficially logical rationalizations of "preventive war" and grand global ambitions of world domination through military force. While tallying up the 20th century’s horrific body count we were supposed to have recognized that war must be a last resort in the face of NO OTHER OPTION. There can be no excuse but immediate self-defense to justify it. If Vietnam didn't teach us that, then it taught us nothing. Wars of aggression, by definition, cannot be glorious.

This war never met that test. And we have opened up Pandora’s Box.

The historians will sort out the rightness and the wrongness of the policy. But, as I was watching that glamorous telecast being held just a few miles from where I live, I could not help but be struck, once again, by the fact that we Americans are the luckiest people on the planet. I hope that we stay that way. We are good people, decent people, but we are being led astray by a leadership that is perpetrating a wrong. We simply cannot expect to remain safe and prosperous if we create a world in which it is the prerogative of one country, our country, to decide that a potential future threat is enough to justify a war. It is a dehumanizing undertaking that devalues every single one of us. It is not the America I know.





digby 3/24/2003 03:31:00 PM |