Hullabaloo

Sunday, March 28, 2004

 
Woodward and Pincus

Thanks to commenter Pontificator, here's an interesting little follow up to the Bob Woodward item from the great piece by Michael Massing in the NY Review of Books called Now They Tell Us:

In the weeks following the [UN] speech, one journalist—Walter Pincus of The Washington Post—developed strong reservations about it. A longtime investigative reporter, Pincus went back and read the UN inspectors' reports of 1998 and 1999, and he was struck to learn from them how much weaponry had been destroyed in Iraq before 1998. He also tracked down General Anthony Zinni, the former head of the US Central Command, who described the hundreds of weapons sites the United States had destroyed in its 1998 bombing. All of this, Pincus recalled, "made me go back and read Powell's speech closely. And you could see that it was all inferential. If you analyzed all the intercepted conversations he discussed, you could see that they really didn't prove anything."

By mid-March, Pincus felt he had enough material for an article questioning the administration's claims on Iraq. His editors weren't interested. It was only after the intervention of his colleague Bob Woodward, who was researching a book on the war and who had developed similar doubts, that the editors agreed to run the piece—on page A17.

The White House is right to be worried.

reading this reminded me of a post I wrote last July:

Is it possible that there are no WMD in Iraq today because Bill Clinton led a coalition of the willing and disarmed Saddam Hussein 5 years ago?

We wouldn't want to let an idea like that take hold, now would we?




digby 3/28/2004 09:52:00 PM |

 
Total Incoherence

White House officials strongly dispute Clarke's conclusion, saying it reflects an old-fashioned approach to dealing with terrorism. "Those who question Iraq have an outdated and one-dimensional view of what is really a multi-dimensional threat to our nation," said Jim Wilkinson deputy national security adviser for communications. "Some think the solution is to kill Osama bin Laden, finish Afghanistan and then go back to a defensive posture and hope we're not attacked again. This approach represents the old way of thinking because it ignores the fact that the modern terrorist threat is a global threat."

Clarke's Critique Reopens Debate on Iraq War (washingtonpost.com)

Fixed link
digby 3/28/2004 09:12:00 AM |

Saturday, March 27, 2004

 
Another Shoe?

Tucker Carlson said on Matthews' weekly show tonight that the White House is worried about Bob Woodward's new book, Plan of Attack which chronicles the lead up to the Iraq War. Carlson said they were worried about Powell using this book to distance himself from the neocon crazies.

Now, this is Tucker talking and this is Woodward and Powell we are talking about, so there's no point in expecting anything earthshattering. However, it will not help them if this book has Powell arguing with Rummy, Wolfie and Cheney on Iraq or shows Condi clueless or has the president being led around by the nose on the WMD threat. (Powell wasn't exactly toeing the Party line with enthusiasm yesterday.)

I doubt Woodward is going to be the same drooling sycophant he was with Bush At War because he took a lot of shit for it and risked ruining his journalistic reputation forever. Besides,Woodward's always been a trendie. When it was in to worship Bush, he was there to lead the prayer but he may find it more profitable to be skeptical this time. He must have known that Clarke and O'Neill were writing books, too. It would be embarrassing to be too gushing this time.

Whether it breaks any new ground or not, I don't think it can possibly be good for them to have people discussing this in May. The book is due out on April 30th.





digby 3/27/2004 06:58:00 PM |

 
The Violent Dems

Ezra comments on Insty's post about the shocking political hate speech emanating from the left and the horrible, horrible violence and impending totalitarianism running rampant in the Democratic party. Excuse me, I have to loosen my corset. I can hardly breathe I'm so upset about it.

Insty says:

Something I never wanted to believe seems to be playing out daily: the Democratic party has been overrun by totalitarians. The party is marginalizing old-guard Dems who might (might!) hold differing opinions but who also could be counted on for civility and a rational basis for their arguments. . . .There is no room for dissent, discourse, debate. My experience is that people behave this way when they hold indefensible beliefs, and they know just how weak their position is. A dog with this behavior is called a "fear-biter" and I can think of no better description for these people.

Somebody bring me a shot of laudenum and a mint julep. I'm feeling one of my fevahs comin' on!

Ezra intelligently rebuts Insty's hysteria in his inimitable fashion:

There are debates going on here everday. This whole exchange is taking place in a medium that consists almost entirely of debates between the Left and the Right! The context of this is a presidential election in which the Democrat is running slightly ahead of Bush and has been proving day in and day out that our ideas are more than defensible, they are quite suited to offense as well. And through all this, the Right has remained dependent on character attacks rather than the invocation of a less-than-stellar record.

[...]

The idea that our arguments and ideas are indefensible is patently ridiculous. Yet Glenn repeats it anyway, highlighting an argument accusing Democrats of being totalitarians unable to rationally support their arguments. And somewhere the truth sits, crying in the corner, wondering why Glenn insists upon abusing it so.

Just so. But, aren't Republicans (and their useful idiot libertarian supporters) getting more and more, you know, weak these days? As in flabby, flaccid, whiny, ineffectual, weepy and emasculated? They can't seem to handle any kind of adversity without resorting to shrieks of maidenly finger pointing saying "you sirrah, are no gentleman!" They strut around, their codpieces stuffed with sock-puppets, name calling, hurling insults, verbally assaulting anybody who disagrees with them and when somebody gets fed up and turns it back on them they quiver like a herd of frightened deer and claim that their adversaries are mean and greedy and just plain icky.

Now, I expect pacifists like nuns and priests and vegans to decry physical violence under all circumstances. Indeed, I myself think that violence at political events is never a good thing and I don't condone it. But, I probably wouldn't expect to avoid it if I baited and insulted a bunch of great big thugs who hold a different political point of view. That's just the way the world works. I thought the Republican-kill-the-bastards-quick-hand-me-your-AK47 freepers knew all that, but apparently not.

Our self-proclaimed steely eyed tough guys may spend a lot of time playing one handed Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance but they don't seem to have much real life follow through. They certainly don't follow a stupid macho edict like "never complain, never explain" these days, what with all their weeping and wailing. Why, there used to be a time when they would have been embarrassed to admit to something like this ...

Can we really trust American security to these little t-ball players playing dress up in Daddy's uniform? I don't think so. They aren't tough and they aren't smart. Big problem.





If you'd like to see the way in which this poor 'lil fella sees the people who took a shot at him, check his picture page which features the description of people at the rally as mindless thugs, dykes, pillow biters and bench rats. I don't know if he called one of those teamster fellas one of those names to his face, but if he did it may fall into the category of fighting words.



digby 3/27/2004 03:16:00 PM |

Friday, March 26, 2004

 
Scumsucking Pig


Avedon Carol led me to this comment on Electrolite about Richard Clarke's apology:

Anybody who has been paying attention to these hearings will know that all of the witnesses have started their testimony with a lengthy statement explaining this or that about their role in the lead up to 9/ll, much of it self-justifying, much of it saying, well, you know, we were busy with other stuff. So on and so forth.

Mr. Clarke did otherwise. His statement was brief and to the point.

He made a heart-felt apology to the American people for failing to stop 9/ll. He said he did his best. He said a lot of people did their best. But in the end, it didn't matter because they had failed the American people, most especially the victims, and the families of the victims who died on 9/11.

The members victim's families who were in the room broke into applause.

I stared at the screen shocked.

And then I, yep, I will admit it here: I started crying.

Well, that's nice and all, but I think Senator Frist has something to say about that:

In his appearance before the 9-11 Commission, Mr. Clarke's theatrical apology on behalf of the nation was not his right, his privilege or his responsibility. In my view it was not an act of humility, but an act of supreme arrogance and manipulation. Mr Clarke can and will answer for his own conduct but that is all.

And to all of the 9/11 families, Dr. Frist added, "Fuck you."

This is one of those moments where I want to put my foot through the TV. The chutzpah, the nerve, the unalloyed balls of these cowardly little fucks makes me very, very angry. I need to take a little walk.



digby 3/26/2004 03:56:00 PM |

 
Boiling It Down To One Simple Image

Via TAPPED

Richard Clarke: "...we were readying for a principals' meeting in July, but the principals' calendar was full, and then they went on vacation, many of them, in August, so we couldn't meet in August, and therefore the principals met in September."


According to a CBS piece on presidential vacations:

Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, The Manchester Guardian calculated that Mr. Bush, in his first seven months of office spent 42 percent of his time on holiday, "a whopping 54 days at his Texas ranch, 38 days at the presidential retreat at Camp David and four more at his parents' place in Kennebunkport, Maine."

Hardworking Americans understand why this might have been a problem. The guy was a lazy bastard from the get-go.




digby 3/26/2004 03:20:00 PM |

 
Official Minutes Of The MSNBC Junior Varsity Girls Cheerleading Try-outs


Oh my Gawd, like Democrats are like such total geeks, dude. It's like totally funny to watch them all get together and like act like they're sooo kewl --- NOT! I'm soo shurr. We are sooo much kewler. And cuter, too.

MATTHEWS: ... There are the presidents all walking out on the stage, Jimmy Carter, behind him, Bill Clinton. Boy, it‘s an unusual picture here. I guess it is not exactly Mount Rushmore, but it‘s all the Democrats have this time.

Here they come. There‘s John Kerry looking great, dark hair. I love it when they point at people.

We‘re sitting here with Howard Fineman and Karen Tumulty of TIME magazine. Howard is of course with Newsweek and with us.

You know, it‘s amazing. What is this where they all do this? They walk out. Karen, they do this all the time. They go and they go like this. And golike, what is that about? They see like they see some old buddy in the audience? What is that?

HOWARD FINEMAN, NBC CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It is a way to establish intimacy. Hey, I see you. We‘ve known each other forever. You‘re not just here as a contributor. You did not just give $1,000 to get here. We grew up together. We went to school together.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: I‘m stunned by the three the three pictured.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Jimmy Carter can‘t stand Bill Clinton. They‘re doing a little oh, talk about disliking each other.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Anybody Karen, you‘ve got a moment here. Does anybody on that stage like anybody else?

(LAUGHTER)

KAREN TUMULTY, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, TIME: That‘s a very good question.

MATTHEWS: Like anyone else? Try to do a permutation here. Howard, you‘re good at this.

FINEMAN: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Permutations. Oh, Terry McAuliffe. Well, he likes Bill Clinton. Those two like each other. Any president like any other president or vice president?

(CROSSTALK)

FINEMAN: Clinton and Carter don‘t particularly like each other.

MATTHEWS: Howard Dean and John Kerry are not too close.

FINEMAN: Yes.

TUMULTY: I wonder how things are between Gore and Dean these days.

FINEMAN: Now Gore now, Al Gore was not originally supposed to be in the original shot.

MATTHEWS: Right.

FINEMAN: But he managed to do a pretty good job of getting in there as the almost president.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Almost.

(LAUGHTER)

FINEMAN: As the guy who got more...

MATTHEWS: There‘s Dick Gephardt.

FINEMAN: ... popular votes. So he was pretty instantly in the instant Mount Rushmore up there. This is a symbol...

MATTHEWS: Is that Al Sharpton there? Yes, it is Al Sharpton.

FINEMAN: There you go.

(CROSSTALK)

TUMULTY: I don‘t know. They all look like flight attendants for the same airline.

(CROSSTALK)

FINEMAN: Now, there is Bill Clinton with John Edwards, which is significant only because Edwards keeps claiming that Clinton is his big supporter in the vice presidential hunt.

MATTHEWS: Is that Charlie Rangel? Who is the guy on the left? I just thought it was an odd picture.

TUMULTY: That was Sharpton, wasn‘t it?

MATTHEWS: Was that Sharpton?

(CROSSTALK)

FINEMAN: I think that was Al Sharpton.

MATTHEWS: Was it really?

TUMULTY: And somebody didn‘t give them memo that this was not black tie. So...

MATTHEWS: Maybe that‘s the suit he has got clean this week.

(LAUGHTER)

[...]

TUMULTY: Yes, not Kerry. He is having more fun now.

MATTHEWS: What about Gore and Clinton? That‘s a recent injury to

both. I mean, Gore jumps into the campaign forthere we go. Watch

this. We‘re watching this right now. There‘s Gore

(CROSSTALK)

FINEMAN: See, now, that was very carefully choreographed.

MATTHEWS: That was the quickest one.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: How fast did Gore get past Clinton there?

TUMULTY: I didn‘t see any eye contact there.

MATTHEWS: How fast?

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: He is about to give him a high-five.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: No response to that high-five.

FINEMAN: You know, what the thought balloons are there is, Gore is thinking, if it hadn‘t been for that guy, I would have won this election. And Clinton with a thought balloon is thinking, you dummy. How could you have blown that election that I set up for you?

MATTHEWS: Oh, God, and this sort of practiced hand clapping. Most people don‘t clap like that. They clap like this.

FINEMAN: That‘s the Democratic clap. Don‘t you agree, Karen?

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: ... an official clap.

(CROSSTALK)

FINEMAN: Democrats stand up on the stage and clap.

MATTHEWS: It is official clapping.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: And then they really want to go like this up on top of their heads when they‘re really enthusiastic.

TUMULTY: Well, you remember, though, when Al Gore was running, somebody actually had to coach him on clapping.

MATTHEWS: Really?

TUMULTY: That is a true story. Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: How was he doing it wrong?

FINEMAN: Like Herman Munster. It was...

MATTHEWS: I don‘t think he was doing the back beat handshake, do you?

I think he was probably doing the front beat.

Gag me with a weapon of mass destruction.





digby 3/26/2004 12:21:00 PM |

 
Lowering The Veil

Via Reuters:

Political consultants and analysts said Clarke's allegation that Bush ignored the al Qaeda threat before the Sept. 11 attacks and was obsessed by a desire to invade Iraq were especially damaging because they confirmed other previous revelations from policy insiders.

"Each of these revelations adds to the others so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and the message gets reinforced with voters," said Richard Rosecrance, a political scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

[...]

"The administration can huff and puff but if there are enough bricks in the structure, they can't blow the house down any more," said American University historian Allan Lichtman.

"Right now, you have quite a number of bricks. It's not just scaffolding any more," he said.

[...]

"Bush has chosen national security and his response to the terrorist attack as a cornerstone of his campaign and now comes this guy Clarke, their guy, who says that the administration was intentionally or unintentionally not paying enough attention to the terrorist threat," said Rick Davis, a Republican political consultant.

[...]

"If people start to doubt that claim and if the message from Clarke and O'Neill and others begins to stick, it would seriously weaken Bush on his strongest point," said Fordham University political scientist Tom DeLuca.

The administration response has usually been to try to destroy the reputations of its critics. It suggested O'Neill had illegally used classified documents and said he was motivated by sour grapes after having been forced to resign from the Cabinet. A Treasury probe has cleared him of misusing documents.

Similarly, White House aides said Clarke was bitter about having been denied a promotion and "out of the loop" in the administration. They also said he was a closet Democrat working as a proxy for Bush's presidential opponent, John Kerry.

"This administration has shown a tremendous ability to demonize its opponents. But at some point, people start to ask themselves, could all these people be pathological liars? At some point, they can't all be liars," said Democratic consultant Michael Goldman.

Billmon thinks:

Now that Against All Enemies has gone into its fifth printing, and the 9/11 commission hearings have generated a huge amount of press coverage -- and, judging from the anecdotal evidence, a fair amount of kitchen table and coffee break conversation as well -- it looks like the events of the past week may be evolving into something much more significant than just another political mud fight.

I agree that with Clarke's charges, aside from the fact that they were very effectively delivered by a very credible source, the central complaint about the Bush administration is finally reaching critical mass. There was the outing of Valerie Plame, the phony Jessica Lynch story, the AWOL charges, Paul O'Neill's book, Halliburton corruption, the strong arming of the Richard Foster and much more, all layering upon the other until it's impossible to ignore the idea that there might be something to all this. And, of course, there is the humongous elephant in the middle of the room --- the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. That alone is such an enormous, jarring failure, especially in light of the unspeakably arrogant way in which they told the rest of the world to shove it, that all these other things can no longer be shoved aside.

The air of desperation in the furious character assassination of Clarke actually plays into that concept. They are rattled and it shows.

In the piece linked above, Billmon comments on the rather strange (and unprecedented) national sense of denial after 9/11, which I think is an important element of the George W. Bush mystique:

One of the things I found most remarkable about 9/11 -- at least when compared to past national traumas like the Kennedy assassination or Pearl Harbor -- was how willing the American public was to put questions of responsibility and accountability out of mind, seemingly indefinitely.

I think the reason for this is that subconsciously most people did not really believe that George W. Bush was capable of leading the country through a serious national security crisis. In order to keep from panicking, they simply went into denial. It's a natural reaction in a situation over which you have very little control.

There was nothing particularly inspiring about Bush standing on the rubble saying "The people who knocked down these buildings are going to hear all of us soon." (It was hardly "we have nothing to fear but fear itself.") People just knew that they had no choice but to put their faith in this shallow fellow and so they did.

Deep down, everyone has always feared that this inarticulate son of a failed president was not up to the job. It's been the undercurrent of his entire life. One of his strongest selling points was that he would bring "the grown-ups" back into government. Nobody ever thought he was one of them. He himself said on Oprah in the 2000 campaign that "the public's biggest misconception of him is that 'I'm running on my daddy's name.'"

But a politician can't be tarred with something that isn't believable. One of the reasons that most of the public didn't give a damn about corruption charges against Clinton was that he had no money. It never made sense that a smart guy like him would have been corrupt without getting rich. Yet, most believed immediately that he'd strayed with Monica. They simply didn't find such a personal matter relevant to his job as president.

Bush's appearance on Meet The Press a few weeks ago was a disaster. His public statements are increasingly annoying in their stale and repetitive rhetoric. Loyal civil servants are coming forward and complaining about the errors, lies and thuggish tactics that the Bush administrtation is perpetrating. Nothing seems to be working.

And, deep down, the American people are not surprised. With more than three years to go and a national security crisis on their hands they closed their eyes and held on for dear life, hoping against hope that he would rise to the occasion. He didn't, despite all the phony media hooplah that insisted he was Churchill in ermine and epaulets. We are now only eight months away from our first chance to replace him with someone more capable. People are starting to let go of their desperate need to believe.

The veil is being lowered because it finally feels safe to do so.



digby 3/26/2004 10:50:00 AM |

Thursday, March 25, 2004

 
He Was Right

Mark Kleiman says:

In a world dominated by uncertainty, having made a correct prediction is no proof of having had the right underlying model. Maybe the guy who was right when almost everyone else was wrong just drew to an inside straight. And of course every bureaucrat thinks his political masters would have been well-advised to take his expertise more seriously than they did.

Still, the past performance sheet has to count for something. Someone who got something important right when most other people didn't deserves to be listened to. And those who didn't listen to him before he was proven right by events can legitimately be asked whether their refusal to do so was a mistake.

Every single person who is called upon to defend Richard Clarke should just say, "He was right, wasn't he?"

It's really that simple. He said it was going to happen, nobody believed him and it happened. He's not the one with a credibility problem.




digby 3/25/2004 09:47:00 PM |

 
Random Observations

Bill Clinton was great at the Democratic Unity dinner. He was smart, funny, self-deprecating and even a bit inspiring.

His words about Kerry, in which he wove the story of Kerry's life as a series of missions for which he volunteered was just excellent. When the going gets tough, John Kerry says, "send me." From Kerry's Vietnam heroism (which Clinton deftly framed in contrast to the current president, the current vice president and himself) to his fight for kids on the streets, he praised him for volunteering for the tough assignment. And then he asked that the members of the Party go to John Kerry and say, "send me." It was perfect for the zeitgeist of the moment.

I was struck by the music that was used for these guys, too. Clinton's upbeat, optimistic "Don't Stop Thinkin' About Tomorrow" has been replaced by Kerry's "I Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty. This election is all about balls.

Also...

I am really kind of stunned that Bush is making jokes about not being able to find the WMD. That the entire press corps laughed like a bunch of would be sorority girls during pledge week doesn't surprise me.

On the other hand, if the patriotic correctness police have been dismissed then fine with me. Up until recently you couldn't ask for a glass of water in a restaurant without prefacing it with "I support the troops." "The War" was sacred. Even here in Soviet Monica people were flying flags right along side their "War Is Not The Answer" bumper sticker. If the Republicans are abandoning their position as the steely eyed and serious national security grown-ups, I'm all for it.

We've got a few guys who are more than ready to step in and fix this goddamned mess.




digby 3/25/2004 09:36:00 PM |

 
And Don't Forget T-Ball

Politus has a great post up about Bush's urgent priorities before September 11th.

Yeah, he was focused on terrorism all right.

Before the events of September 11, 2001, Bush had signed 24 executive orders. How many of them dealt with counterterrorism?

In his first month in office Bush threw a bone to the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons by setting up the vehicle to give them boatloads of taxpayer money. No time for counterterrorism in January:


Jan 29. Establish Office of Faith Based Initiatives (Remember that?)

Jan 29. Require federal agencies to establish their own Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives

February was whack-a-union month. No time for counterterrism in February either, unless you consider union members to be terrorists. Bush and the Low-Wage Republicans may think union members are terrorists, but the focus was on bin Laden, right?

Feb 12. Extend life of President’s Information Technology Committee

Feb 21. Dissolves Labor-Management Partnerships

Feb 21. Dissolves a labor-friendly executive order, allowing new contractors to fire everybody and hire scabs

Feb 21. Requires contractors to display anti-union messages

Feb 21. Encourage the use of non-union contractors

Bush couldn’t be bothered with any stinkin’ counterterrorism executive orders in March, either. The unions were causing trouble for his boys at American Airlines and something had to be done:


Mar 9. Establish an “Emergency Board” to interfere in the Mechanics Union strike against American Airlines

Likewise for April. The pesky bin Laden guy could wait ‘til next month. There was more union busting to do, and Hispanic voters needed to know that Bush was really worried about the Status of Puerto Rico:


Apr 4. Perfunctory termination of export controls

Apr 5. Slight change in pay for government employees working abroad

Apr 6. Exempt certain contractors from some requirements to hire union workers

Apr 30. Extend the President’s Task Force on the Status of Puerto Rico

Now we are up to May, when the terrorist chatter picked up by intelligence was spiking. Clarke and Tenet knew something was coming, and Clark was nearly apoplectic in his warnings. So, did Bush finally focus his administration on bin Laden, signing an executive order to that effect? No… May is the month for Social Security Privatization and phat payback to his oily buddies:


May 2. Create President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security, the first step toward privatization

May 18. Actions to Expedite Energy-Related Projects, fast track for environmental rapers and scrapers

May 18. Ditto, for Big Energy supply and distribution

May 23. Prohibit import of rough diamonds from Liberia

May 28. President's Task Force to Improve Health Care Delivery for Our Nation's Veterans, a sham committee to look for ways to improve the VA

Terrorist chatter from intelligence intercepts was at a crescendo in June of 2001, yet Bush was focused on the “compassionate” part of his resume, after spending the last few months working on the “conservative” part. But not a peep about UBL or terrorism:


Jun 1. Very slight changes to the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee

Jun 6. Extend by 2 years initiatives to Increase Participation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Federal Programs

Jun 19. Community-based Alternatives for Individuals with Disabilities

Jun 20. 21st Century Workforce Initiative; as if the Clinton boom was going to last forever

In July Bush was getting ready for his month-long vacation in Crawfish, and mumbling about “vampire” cellular phone power supplies. Wasn’t Usama bin Laden at least as important to his administration as trade with Belarus?


Jul 2. Waiving anti-communist trade restrictions against Belarus

Jul 31. Requiring government agencies to purchase energy efficient power supplies for things like cellular phones

August in Crawfish is too frikkin’ hot to think about terrorists:

Aug 17. Perfunctory extension of the cold war-era Export Control Act

This was the last executive order Bush signed before 9/11. Even though he and his lackeys now claim they were consumed with UBL and counterterrorism was a top priority to them, there is not a peep of any of that in any of the documents Bush signed to set the direction and functioning of his government. And then?

September 11.

At which point he decided to invade a country that had nothing to do with terrorism, destroy half a century of alliances and alienate the entire world.


digby 3/25/2004 06:47:00 PM |

 
Shaking The Trees

Fred Kaplan writes another fine article in Slate today about Richard Clarke. He again notes Clarke's legendary reputation as a brilliant bureaucratic infighter as he did in his first piece on the subject a couple of days ago. This skill is mentioned frequently by those in Washington who know Clarke.

Clarke demonstrated his insight into the process with this statement on Larry King Live last night:

CLARKE: Well, we'll never know. But let me compare 9/11 and the period immediately before it to the millennium rollover and the period immediately before that. In December, 1999, we received intelligence reports that there were going to be major al Qaeda attacks. President Clinton asked his national security adviser Sandy Berger to hold daily meetings with the attorney general, the FBI director, the CIA director and stop the attacks. And every day they went back from the White House to the FBI, to the Justice Department, to the CIA and they shook the trees to find out if there was any information. You know, when you know the United States is going to be attacked, the top people in the United States government ought to be working hands-on to prevent it and working together.

Now, contrast that with what happened in the summer of 2001, when we even had more clear indications that there was going to be an attack. Did the president ask for daily meetings of his team to try to stop the attack? Did Condi Rice hold meetings of her counterparts to try to stop the attack? No.

And if she had, if the FBI director and the attorney general had gone back day after day to their department to the White House, what would they have shaken loose? We now know from testimony before the Commission that buried in the FBI was the fact that two of the hijackers had entered the United States. Now, if that information had been able to be shaken loose by the FBI director and the attorney general in response to daily meetings with the White House, if we had known that those two -- if the attorney general had known, if the FBI director had known, that those two were in the United States, Larry, I believe we could have caught those two. Would that have stopped...

Michael Isikoff added this on the subject later in the show:

I do want to say, though, on the question of -- I was struck -- the most fascinating thing that Clarke said, to me, during the hearings today was he laid out a scenario by which -- actually, a plausible one, by which September 11 could have been prevented if there had been the kind of urgency to the issue that he thought it could be. And that was, we did know. The government did know. The CIA knew and the FBI late in August knew that two of the hijackers -- Nawaf al Hazmi (ph), Khalid al Midar (ph) -- were inside the United States. Two suspected al Qaeda operatives were inside the country. Yet there was no concerted government attempt to find these guys. There was a late bulletin from the FBI.

What Clarke suggested he would have done -- he says he would like to think he would have done, had he known about this, was an all-out public manhunt. Put these guys' pictures all over the place, "America's Most Wanted," have their pictures in the paper. And had that been done, which does sound like a plausible thing that could have been done, it might at least have deterred those two guys...

KING: Yes.

ISIKOFF: ... from getting on the planes, and it might well have disrupted the plot. It's the first time I've heard a plausible scenario by which the government could have taken the little information it did have and actually stopped the plot.

KING: Putting their pictures where everybody gets on board an airplane.

I think that this is a very interesting insight. Clarke, a 30 year veteran of the government and one who has a fierce reputation for cutting through the bureaucracy to get things done, says that the way to deal with an urgent national security threat is to force the issue to the top of the agenda by having the president personally lean on the cabinet heads to "shake the trees" in their own bureaucracies. That makes sense to me. When people are called to account by the boss on a certain issue they turn up the heat on their underlings. It's human nature and its certainly been my experience in the workplace.

And, he says that if that had been done in the spring and summer of 2001, when by all accounts there was a lot of intelligence that something "big" was about to happen, it's entirely possible that some of the "dots" would have been connected before they blew up the world trade center and the pentagon.

Clarke himself says that we will never know if we could have uncovered or disrupted the plot, but certainly it is clear that the system he describes in the Clinton administration was successful previously in disrupting the millenium bombing plot. That should count for something.

But, the bigger issue, I think, is that this illustrates once again what a grave mistake it is to have a president who is arrogant yet intellectually incurious and whose inexperience in life and government makes him manipulable by others. Clarke had previously worked for Reagan who was surrounded by highly professional foreign policy realists and Bush Sr who was a highly professional foreign policy realist himself. With Clinton he found a nimble, intelligent thinker who was open to new ideas and methods for dealing with post cold war threats and who was accessible and personally engaged in the decision making process.

But, George W. Bush was an inexperienced and overly protected executive with little personal depth and too much faith in a cabal of neocon radicals. He relied on an intellectually weak staff whose main job was to create unnecessary layers of bureaucracy to protect their boss from difficult problems. These layers of bureaucracy insulated him from the important issues of the day and made it impossible even for a brilliant bureaucrat like Clarke to cut through the maze and convince the ossified Iraq obsessives to look up from their dusty PNAC wish-lists and deal with the terrible threat we faced right that very minute.

The failure stemmed directly from the president because he is not in charge. No organization works under that kind of leadership much less a sophisticated bureaucracy. The system completely broke down under the effect of no real leadership, competing agendas and focus in the wrong direction.

The Bush administration's image of competence and cool collected professionalism is completely phony. From DiUllio to O'Neill to Clarke we see first hand that this is a highly dysfunctional White House, one that spends much more time on politics than policy and that is philosophically incoherent and at constant war with itself. It has been reduced to issuing thuggish threats of reprisal to any civil servant who insists upon doing his job. The president is hardly more than a public relations flack, his national security advisor is a cipher, his various cabinet departments are wholly owned subsidiaries of special interests, he's been completely manipulated by a radical Vice President and a slightly insane Secretary of Defense and his economic policy has been entirely directed toward short term political ends. And yet, amazingly, in virtually every single action it has taken, his administration has failed spectacularly.

In light of this we really need to let go of this "well, these things happen," attitude and recognize that we have been duped into thinking that 9/11 could not have been prevented. Clearly, it could have. Other plots were thwarted and they were thwarted because the government focused attention on it and directed its resources toward that end.

It is true that the bigger question of how badly Bush dealt with the issue of terrorism AFTER 9/11 is probably a more potent campaign issue, because the results of going into Iraq are still fresh and easily observable. But, after listening to Dick Clarke for the last few days and beginning to read through is book, I am convinced that Bush dropped the ball.

But then, it was entirely predictable that he would drop the ball because he was never qualified to be president and that lack of qualification led him to make very poor choices in advisors and very poor judgements about the nation's priorities.

The bigger lesson in all of this, and one which I'm sure will go inheeded by many, is that you should not elect stupid people to the presidency. Smart ones can screw up, but it's not guaranteed that they will. But, a stupid yet arrogant president is bound to fail. The job is just too complicated for someone like that.


Update: Brad DeLong and Matt Yglesias discuss the related topic of Condi Rice's obvious lack of proper qualifications for the job of NSA under the current circumstances.




digby 3/25/2004 02:14:00 PM |

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

 
Potent



Former U.S. counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke hugs and greets family members of victims of the September 11 attacks following testimony before a national commission investigating the attacks on Capitol Hill March 24, 2004. Clarke, a senior adviser to Bush and the three previous administrations, has accused Bush of paying insufficient attention to the al-Qaeda threat before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and afterward focusing on Iraq (news - web sites) at the expense of efforts to crush the network. REUTERS/Win McNamee. Via Catch.com

From Billmon:

If you watched Clarke today, you now have a pretty good idea of why the administration and the VRWC wind machine are so terrified of him. If anything, he was even more effective than he was on 60 Minutes. From his opening statement (a simple, but eloquent, apology for failing to stop the 9/11 attacks) to his final answer to the final question, he was absolutely calm, completely lucid and utterly authoritative.

Clarke simply rolled over his only aggressive challenger -- former Illinois Governor Jim Thompson -- reducing him to not much more than a greasy spot on the pavement. Thompson (who should have known better) made the strategic blunder of nailing his inquisitorial flag to a transcript ofa background briefing that Clarke gave in the summer of 2002, which was leaked to Fox News by the White House and released just hours before he testified.

In that briefing, Clarke supposedly lauded the administration's conduct of the war against terrorism in words which were not exactly consistent with the picture painted in his new book.

But the ploy backfired on Big Jim after Clarke refused to play the role of evasive double talker (Kerry could learn a lot from him.) He didn't back down an inch. The briefing, Clarke replied, was simply an exercise in spin doctoring -- "maximizing the positives and minimizing the negatives" -- as he had been instructed to do by his political superiors. It was also no different, he said, from simliar background briefings he had conducted for previous presidents. Clarke managed to make it very clear he didn't just mean Clinton. And every member of the commission, and every reporter in the room, knew exactly what he meant.

Thompson decided he didn't want to go there.

[...]

John Lehman, Reagan's former Tailhook, I mean, Navy Secretary, was a much more subtle. If Big Jiim went after Clarke with a sledge hammer, Lehman tried a straight razor -- first him lathering up with praise (he called Clarke the "Rosetta Stone" of understanding 9/11) and then trying to slice open his jugular by implying that Clarke's book was at odds with his private testimony before the commission.

But Clarke ducked the blade with ease, simply noting that much of his criticism of the Bush administration's counter-terrorism record related to its obsession with Iraq -- something the commission had not even asked him about in private session.

Fred Fielding took a crack next, and tried impeaching Clarke for his testimony before the sham congressional 9/11 investigation. But Clarke again fell back on the Bush administration's usual standard of official conduct in such situations: He didn't lie to the congressional panel, he said, he just used his supply of candor judiciously. Fielding was left muttering about the "integrity" that public officials should show in their jobs -- this from Richard Nixon's Watergate lawyer!

[...]

But I don't think the base is their big problem now -- it's the middle, the mainstream, even (or especially) the mainstream media, which has been forced by today's testimony to award Clarke the legitimacy it has denied to other administration critics, even Paul O'Neill. Now they'll expect the White House to give them the steak, not just the sizzle. They're going to demand more serious answers. So far, though the administration has shown no sign it thinks it can hold its own in that kind of debate.

digby 3/24/2004 08:33:00 PM |

 
Attack Dogs Go Rabid

"By invading Iraq the President has greatly undermined the war on terrorism."

Well, it doesn't get any more stark than that. When he said it, you could hear a pin drop in the hearing room. Reminded me of when I was just a pup listening to the Watergate hearings and John Dean uttered his famous "cancer on the presidency" line. (Fred Fielding and Richard Ben-Veniste were even there.)

Wolf Blitzer thinks, however, that the FOXNEWS "backrounder" released by the White House totally undermines Clarke's case and Peter Bergen agrees. He says that some of the stuff about Iraq might still be worth thinking about, but well...Clarke's pretty much a lying piece of shit.

When asked in the hearings about whether it was moral to put the best face on an administration you work for when briefing the press, Clark said:

"I don't think it's a question of morality at all. I think it's a question of politics." [big applause]

That, as we know, is total crap. The Bush administration has always been scrupulously honest with the press in every conceivable way and never, ever would have required that any of its members not tell the press every single problem they had within the administration. Politics is a dirty word to republicans. It's all about honor and integrity.

Now, Wolf reports that the administration is claiming Clarke has "problems" in his personal life, although they don't say what those things might be. Check Drudge frequently. The real shit is about to start flying.




digby 3/24/2004 02:28:00 PM |

 
Tough Guys

I don't know the real reason they refuse to let Condi testify (although their "separation of powers" rationale is patent bullshit and unpatriotic, to boot.) I can certainly see a public relations reason why they might have done it, though.

Richard Clarke comes across as a no nonsense, take no prisoners tough guy. Just the kind of guy you'd expect to be in charge of counter terrorism. Condi, however intelligent and articulate she may be, exudes timidity and nervousness in public. The contrast wouldn't be very positive for the Bush administration.

Dick Armitage, on the other hand, is from tough guy central casting. For those people who will just catch a glimpse of this hearing in passing, Armitage looks just as tough as Clarke. As Uncle Karl likes to say, "politics is TV with the sound turned off."




digby 3/24/2004 01:34:00 PM |

 
More on Mylroie and Wolfowitz's Grand Delusions

From the Washington Post - June 5, 2003

Vice President Cheney and his most senior aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda, creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives, according to senior intelligence officials.

With Cheney taking the lead in the administration last August in advocating military action against Iraq by claiming it had weapons of mass destruction, the visits by the vice president and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here," one senior agency official said yesterday.

[...]

In a signal of administration concern over the controversy, two senior Pentagon officials yesterday held a news conference to challenge allegations that they pressured the CIA or other agencies to slant intelligence for political reasons. "I know of no pressure," said Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary for policy. "I know of nobody who pressured anybody."

Feith said a special Pentagon office to analyze intelligence in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks did not necessarily focus on Iraq but came up with "some interesting observations about the linkages between Iraq and al Qaeda."

Officials in the intelligence community and on Capitol Hill, however, have described the office as an alternative source of intelligence analysis that helped the administration make its case that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat.

[...]

Former and current intelligence officials said they felt a continual drumbeat, not only from Cheney and Libby, but also from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Feith, and less so from CIA Director George J. Tenet, to find information or write reports in a way that would help the administration make the case that going into Iraq was urgent.

"They were the browbeaters," said a former defense intelligence official who attended some of the meetings in which Wolfowitz and others pressed for a different approach to the assessments they were receiving. "In interagency meetings," he said, "Wolfowitz treated the analysts' work with contempt."

[...]

A senior defense official also defended Wolfowitz's questioning: "Does he ask hard questions? Absolutely. I don't think he was trying to get people to come up with answers that weren't true. He's looking for data and answers and he gets frustrated with a lack of answers and diligence and with things that can't be defended."

A major focus for Wolfowitz and others in the Pentagon was finding intelligence to prove a connection between Hussein and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.

On the day of the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center,Wolfowitz told senior officials at the Pentagon that he believed Iraq might have been responsible. "I was scratching my head because everyone else thought of al Qaeda," said a former senior defense official who was in one such meeting. Over the following year, "we got taskers to review the link between al Qaeda and Iraq. There was a very aggressive search."

In the winter of 2001-02, officials who worked with Wolfowitz sent the Defense Intelligence Agency a message: Get hold of Laurie Mylroie's book, which claimed Hussein was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and see if you can prove it, one former defense official said.

The DIA's Middle East analysts were familiar with the book, "Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein's War Against America." But they and others in the U.S. intelligence community were convinced that radical Islamic fundamentalists, not Iraq, were involved. "The message was, why can't we prove this is right?" said the official.

I hope that members of the newly formed Iraq intelligence failure committee are informed of this Wolfowitz/Mylroie information. The 9/11 committee is charged with only dealing with events leading up to 9/11, so they won't address this particular case of intellectual dysfunction. I would hope that the other would, however. This delusional thinking wasted huge amounts of time because one of the nation's top foreign policy intellectuals turns out to be in thrall of a tin foil hat conspiracy theory. And, that thinking helped lead this country into an unnecessary war that has made this country more vulnerable to its enemies.


Thanks to Antiwar.com for the link.


On TAPPED, Matt Yglesias notes Wolfowitz dancing on the head of a pin as he avoids answering questions about this very thing in the hearings yesterday.


Update: In an amazing moment of Hullabaloo synergy none other than Bob Kerrey seemed to be giving credence to Mylroie and Wolfowitz's apparent beliefs that the '93 WTC attacks were perpetrated by Iraq during Clarke's testimony earlier. Clarke knocked it down very effectively, but I have to wonder just how many people in high places have drunk this noxious kool-aid, anyway?


digby 3/24/2004 11:28:00 AM |

 
Bi-Partisan Putz

I notice that Bob Kerrey is back on his hobby horse today insisting to Sandy Berger that Clinton was a sissy because he didn't declare war on Afghanistan. It must be nice to live in bizarro-utopia where it was possible to persuade the American people and the entire world that the US should unilaterally invade countries based upon the bombing of embassies in africa or a rowboat attack on a warship. And he should have done these things during times of extreme domestic political crisis.

Perhaps Bob doesn't realize that even the honorable and integrity-filled George W. Bush had had a little bit of difficulty persuading large chunks of the planet, including here at home, that it's a good idea to unilaterally invade countries even after 9/11.

Let's review what was really going on during the periods in question:

Read the rest over on The American Street




digby 3/24/2004 09:48:00 AM |

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

 
Fruitcake soaked in Anthrax

Here's Laurie Mylroie on a CNN online chat in October of 2001:

CNN: You believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in both attacks the 1993 and September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Why?

MYLROIE: You can demonstrate to the high legal standard of beyond a reasonable doubt, which is used for criminal conviction, that Iraq was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, by showing that Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of that bomb, was an Iraqi intelligence agent. I do that in "Study of Revenge." That bomb, in 1993, aimed to topple the north tower onto the south tower. Eight years later, someone came back and finished the job. Since Iraq was behind the first attack, it is suggestive of the point that Iraq was behind the second attack.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Is there any proof at all that Hussein is involved in the anthrax scares?

MYLROIE: There is no proof that Saddam is involved in the anthrax scares, but proof is different from evidence. Proof, according to the dictionary, is conclusive demonstration. Evidence is something that indicates, like your smile is evident of your affection for me. There is evidence that Iraq is behind the anthrax scares. First, it takes a highly sophisticated agency to produce anthrax in the lethal form that was in the letter sent to Senator Daschle. Not many parties can do that. Second, there is an additive in that anthrax, bentonite, which is used to cause the anthrax to not stick together, and float in the air. Iraq is the only party known to have produced anthrax with bentonite.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Should the U.S.take action against Iraq?

MYLROIE: Yes. It is necessary for the United States to take action against Iraq. The 1991 Gulf War never ended. We continue it in the form of an economic siege whose origins lie in the Gulf War. And also, we bomb Iraq on a regular basis, and Saddam continues his part of the war in the form of terrorism. It is unlikely that that anthrax will remain in letters. It is likely that it will be used at some point, for example, in the subway of a city, or in the ventilation system of a U.S. building. Saddam wants revenge against us. He wants to do to the U.S. what we've done to Iraq. One way he can do that is terrorism, particularly biological terrorism.

CHAT PARTICPANT: What is the connection between bin Ladden and Saddam?

MYLROIE: Bin Laden and Hussein work together. The contact between the two was made in the 1990s when bin Laden was based in Sudan. Iraq intelligence also had a major presence in Sudan then. There were other widely reported contacts between bin Laden and Iraq intelligence, such as in December, 1998 when Farook Hajazi traveled to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden. Hajazi is a senior intelligence officer. Bin Laden provides the ideology, he recruits the foot soldiers, and he provides a smokescreen. Iraqi intelligence provides the direction and training for the terrorism.

CNN: You hold the Clinton administration responsible for Hussein's involvement in all of these attacks. Why?

MYLROIE: Iraq is a difficult problem, and has been since the Gulf War. Many mistakes have been made, because it's inevitable that in human endeavor there are mistakes. Under the Clinton administration, specifically in February 1993 with the first attack on the Trade Center, Clinton dealt with the issue dishonestly. New York FBI believed in 1993 that Iraq was behind the Trade Center bombing. That was accepted by the White House, that New York FBI might well be right. In June, 1993, Clinton attacked Iraqi intelligence headquarters. He said that that was punishment for Saddam's attempt to kill George Bush when Bush visited Kuwait in April, but Clinton also believed that it would deter Saddam from all future attacks of terrorism, and that it would address the WTC bombing, too, so that Saddam would not think to carry out further attacks against the U.S.

And then the Clinton administration put out a false and fraudulent explanation for terrorism, saying that terrorism was no longer state-sponsored, but carried out by individuals. That false and fraudulent explanation was accepted and allowed Saddam to continue to attack the U.S. The reason Clinton dealt with terrorism in that fashion was because he did not understand the kind of threat that Saddam could pose, and by taking care of the terrorism in New York in that fashion, he avoided riling American public opinion, which might have demanded then, back in 1993, that he do a great deal more.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Do you believe this will eventually escalate into a much broader conflict as other states are identified as helping terrorist organizations?

MYLROIE: I believe that it is necessary to shift the war to Iraq and to do so as soon as possible, because Iraq is a primary threat, the primary terrorist threat to the United States, and as the anthrax shows, that threat can become very, very great. It's necessary to get rid of Saddam.

CNN: The George W. Bush administration publicly focuses on Osama bin Laden and remains internally at odds over whether to implicate Hussein and Iraq in the current war. Is that a mistake?

MYLROIE: Yes, it is a mistake to avoid implicating Iraq, or to be unable to reach a decision about that. If we do not say that we suspect Iraq in the anthrax attacks, then Saddam will have no reason not to escalate to the next step. The next step could be that anthrax used in another fashion which is more deadly, or it could be anthrax that is resistant to antibiotics. We won't be able to treat it, as we can now.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Have you spoken with officials about this information?

MYLROIE: Yes I have spoken with officials, in particular in the Pentagon. The Pentagon shares this view.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: You mentioned the bentonite in the anthrax, and yet we hear that the CIA and FBI are looking at home sources of that anthrax? Why are they not also viewing that as from Iraq rather than a U.S. source?

MYLROIE: That is a good question. Bob Bartley in the Wall Street Journal takes on that question. While one might say it is not impossible that an individual who is very knowledgeable, with access to a good lab, could have produced that in the U.S., it is also extremely unlikely. Iraq is a much more likely candidate. Bartley compares it to the situation of the elephant in the room that some people just don't want to see, including, apparently, the FBI and the CIA. But the American people can see the elephant in the room, and Iraq is a much more likely suspect than an individual in the U.S.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Is it possible that perhaps Iraq is waiting for us to accuse them and then take anthrax to the next level?

MYLROIE: We are in a very, very difficult situation. If we say clearly that it is Iraq, and we're going to get Saddam, then it is likely that he will do his best to bring his enemies down with him. It is true that we face the danger then of more deadly attacks, including anthrax attacks. If we do not say it is Saddam, we will also face the danger of more deadly attacks. This is a terrible situation. Yet I prefer to deal with the losses that will come by taking on Saddam than to be subject to the losses that will occur if we remain sitting ducks. It would seem that some ambiguity in the beginning is the best thing. If we shift the focus from Afghanistan to Iraq, we are indeed at war, and during war, extreme measures may have to be taken. For example, we might think to get children and all non-essential personnel out of U.S. cities while this war goes on, which we will carry out very quickly, or to have people remaining in U.S. cities where they are a target, wearing masks pretty much all the time, in order to deal with this problem which we should address quickly rather than slowly.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Is the reason behind the government not admitting to Iraq's involvement over the oil situation?

MYLROIE: I don't think that the oil situation is a factor. I think that at least two things are at work. First, there is a great confusion because for eight years Clinton treated terrorism as a law enforcement issue, with the emphasis on arresting individuals and bringing them to justice, trying and convicting them. That had the effect of obscuring the role of states in terrorism, particularly Iraq. But in addition, those who went along with his view of terrorism are now personally invested in it, and they are reluctant to give up that view. That would include George Tenet, a Clinton appointee who still heads the CIA, and I believe, the intelligence coming from the CIA is skewed. It may also be that there is an influence of former President Bush and Bush's top advisors from the 1991 Gulf War on President Bush. Some of those people, including former President Bush, Brent Scocroft, his national security advisor, Colin Powell, have not acknowledged that it was an error to end the war in 1991 with Saddam in power, and that may color their judgment now.

This is what Clarke is talking about when he relates Wolfowitz's seemingly bizarre contention that the terrorism priority was "Iraqi terrorism against the United States." And it explains why these fruitcakes were able to convince lil' Junior that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. We should all feel much safer knowing that this total nutcase is one of the Right's leading intellectuals, influencing the highest reaches of the Bush administration.

Say, has anybody talked to Laurie lately about Saddam's anthrax stocks that were all set to be released in balsa wood drone planes over Baltimore and Cleveland? What ever happened with that?

Update:Josh says that the usual suspects are parroting the same lies even today...



digby 3/23/2004 04:10:00 PM |

 
The Bad Kerrey

I am reminded why I came to loathe Bob Kerrey. He's one of those self-serving "bi-partisan" iconoclasts who refuses to deal in the real world. His questioning of Cohen is typical.

The idea that Clinton, in the fall of 2000, could have invaded Afghanistan without the support of congress, any of our allies or the American people is so ludicrous I can't believe he's even making the argument. Apparently, Bob thinks that it is perfectly permissable, indeed it is required, that a president make military decisions in a complete political vacuum.

Clearly, the Clinton administration could only prepare a response to the Cole bombing, (which nobody in the entire world saw as such an imminent threat that it required all out war) that they had every reason to believe would likely be carried out by the next administration, be it Gore or Bush. That's the way our bi-partisan foreign policy used to work and it is the way it should work. If Bob Kerrey or anybody else thinks that a lame duck president should go it alone and invade a country without any political support at home or abroad just one month before the presidential elections he has a hole in his head.

As Cohen pointed out, the Republican congress was a bunch of rabid dogs who had no qualms about accusing Clinton of everything from rape to treason. Invading Afghanistan against the wishes of the military and the rest of the world, ignoring all of the political considerations would have been insane. Kerrey is, as he's always been at least half the time, a useless grandstanding tool for the GOP on this stuff. You can certainly criticize Clinton for a lot of things in this matter, but this isn't one of them.

I don't even think Bush could could have invaded Afghanistan before 9/11. Up to now, I was just wishing he would have, you know, acted like he gave a shit and did what he could to thwart what everybody seemed to know was a big plot, likely on American soil. It had worked with the millenium bombing and there is ample evidence that we might have "connected the dots" if a little more attention had been paid. I didn't realize that we are now saying that Clinton or Bush should have willy nilly invaded Afghanistan without any support of anybody, including the military.

Update: Yglesias has more on Kerrey's backing of Chalabi and the INC (along with --- surprise --- our good friend Joe Loserman.)

He also appeared on Matthews making the same self-serving tough guy points. However, Trent Lott came on soon after and had the predictable effect of making Kerrey look moderate, sane and reasonable by comparison. Context is everything, I guess.



digby 3/23/2004 11:50:00 AM |

 
Chapter One

For those who are curious about the juicy details of Clarke's book, Tim at the road to surfdom is excerpting and commenting on it. Here's just one little tasty bit:

On one screen, I could see the Situation Room. I grabbed Mike Fenzel. "How's it going over here?" I asked.

"It's fine, Major Fenzel whispered, "but I can't hear the crisis conference because Mrs Cheney keeps turning down the volume so she can hear CNN...and the Vice President keeps hanging up the line to you." Mrs Cheney was more than just a family member who had to be protected. Like her husband, she was a right wing ideologue and she was offering her advice and opinions in the bunker.

Try to imagine if Hillary....

These excerpts are in addition to his interesting posts from yesterday on The Age Of Sacred Terror, one of the authors of which, Daniel Benjamin, appeared on CNN yesterday backing Clarke up all the way.

BLITZER: Clarke is the latest former Bush administration official to question the handling of the war on terror. The former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has said the Bush White House was looking to out of Saddam Hussein from the very start of the administration.

And the former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay who found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has questioned the intelligence the Bush administration used to justify the war against Saddam Hussein.

So is Richard Clarke a courageous whistle-blower or an angry ex- employee with an axe to grind? Joining us is another former national security council staffer, Dan Benjamin, was director of counterterrorism in the Clinton administration. He's the co-author of the book "The Age of Sacred Terror." You worked for Richard Clarke the Clinton White House.

DAN BENJAMIN, DIRECTOR, COUNTERTERRORISM IN CLINTON ADMINISTRATION: That's correct. For the last two years of the '90s.

BLITZER: So what do you make of his allegations?

BENJAMIN: His allegations track with what the discontent he was expressing for quite awhile after the new team came into office in January of 2001.

And I have to say that his critique of the emphases in the war on terror also tracks with what a lot of us in the counterterrorism community have been saying. It very much stands up to what we have said in our book, "The Age of Sacred Terror."

BLITZER: But the White House is coming back and saying, you know what? You had eight years in the Clinton administration to get rid of Osama bin Laden, to destroy the al Qaeda. You had repeated terror threats, the first World Trade Center, the Cole, the twin embassy bombings. You didn't do it over eight years.

BENJAMIN: Well there's no question it was a tragedy that we couldn't get him in those first eight years. But what is also the case is that we were working flat-out to get him. We found out how hard it is to get him. We've been working flat-out since 9/11 and have still not been able to find and to capture, kill bin Laden.

I think Dick's argument here is that we could have done better and might have had more successes and possibly even more prevention had we been working flat-out after the new team came in in January 2001.

BLITZER: Which raises this question, he was a career federal civil servant, highly respected going back to earlier Republican administrations as well. Were you surprised when he was held over into the Bush administration?

BENJAMIN: Not very. Dick is first of all deeply patriotic, he is eager to work for the government. I think that his whole life was invested in this kind of work. And I think he found it deeply rewarding to be so close to these issues, to really work on national security.

This has been his entire life. So I wasn't very surprised. And I must say he's also been very, very highly valued in Washington. He's known as an insider's insider who knows where all the levers and pullies are in government.

BLITZER: At the same time he was demoted at the beginning. During the Clinton administration, he had a cabinet-level jobs as counterterrorism czar. And he was demoted to a certain degree in the Bush administration.

BENJAMIN: During the Clinton administration, at end, he had a place at table as someone who was going to speak specifically for counterterrorism issues. And he was made national coordinator for counterterrorism.

He was stripped of that rank when the new team came in because frankly they didn't think that terrorism was such a big issue that any one person should be at the table to speak for it.

And historically, that has meant that terrorism has not been taken as seriously in the discussions of national security policy.

BLITZER: The other charge that they're making against Richard Clarke is that his -- one of his best friends, Rand Beers, worked for you on the Clinton administration on the National Security Council. He teach, of course, with him at Harvard, at the Kennedy School. And that Rand Beers is now one of the top national security advisers to John Kerry.

In other words, politics behind these allegations.

BENJAMIN: I don't think it's politics because I think Dick is doing so well in the private sector with his consulting and with his speaking that I don't think he's looking for a way to get back in.

And what's more is everyone in Washington, everyone in the political world knows exactly what Dick's strengths are and his failings.

I don't think he needs to audition for a job. This is because he felt strongly about the issues.

BLITZER: Are you surprised the way the White House is now going after him?

BENJAMIN: I'm not surprised. These are very, very serious accusations. And in fact, they go to the president's perceived strength in the election. Of course, they're going to fight back hard.

BLITZER: One final question. One of the charges the vice president made and others in the White House is once he was demoted at the start of the administration, he didn't attend a lot of the high- level meetings where the decision were made.

So as a result, he didn't know what the president and vice president were really doing to fight Osama bin Laden.

BENJAMIN: Well that's impossible. Dick was the pointman in charge of coordinating counterterrorism policy. If he didn't know what the policy was, and he didn't know what steps were being taken, then no one did. And there was no policy.

So it's simply inconceivable. If there were principals' levels meetings on terrorism, he had to be there.

One of Tim's commenters mentions that my good friend Jim Wilkinson was all over FOXNews calling it "a book of lies." He also appears on this Blitzer transcript rebutting Benjamin, in full character assassination mode, almost frothing at the mouth:

JAMES WILKINSON, DEP. NATL. SECURITY ADVISER: You know when I go try to buy this book tonight I'm going to look probably in the fantasy fiction section of my local bookstore. But there are so many inaccuracies in this book. For example, he says that he could never get a meeting. He asked for one meeting with the president of the United States. He asked for that during this time of research and he to briefed on cybersecurity. I brought an email I want to read to you. He claims he could never get a meeting yet, Wolf, I work for Condi Rice and we meet with her every single morning in the situation room. Anyone is welcome to come to those meetings and Dick Clarke refused to come to those meetings. He thought they were beneath him. Let me read you a note that was sent to him.

"Condi noted your absence this morning and asked me to remind you of the importance she attaches to the meeting and her expectation that all senior directors will be there."

Why didn't Dick Clarke go to these meetings? Let me remind you, it was Dick Clarke that was in charge of terrorism for this country when the attacks on the USS Cole happened. It was Dick Clarke who was in charge of terrorism for this country when the attacks on the embassies in Africa happened. It was Dick Clarke who was in charge of terrorism for this country when the threat was building towards 9/11 and it was Dick Clarke who was in charge of terrorism for this country in June when the FBI said 16 of 19 hijackers were already here, Wolf. And on the day of 9/11, he was giving a speech on cybersecurity. This book is full of so many inaccuracies.

BLITZER: What about...

WILKINSON: Wolf, let me finish. The terrorists weren't overseas, the terrorists were here in America. By June, the FBI says 16 of 19 terrorists in the 9/11 attacks were already here. I just don't see what this focus on process and titles and meetings. Let me also point something. If you look in this book you find interesting things such as reported in the "Washington Post" this morning. He's talking about how he sits back and visualizes chanting by bin Laden and bin Laden has a mystical mind control over U.S. officials. This is sort of "X-Files" stuff, and this is a man in charge of terrorism, Wolf, who is supposed to be focused on it and he was focused on meetings.

BLITZER: What about the other charge that he makes is that the president and the vice president, the secretary of defense, the deputy secretary of defense, they were all literally obsessed with Saddam Hussein and Iraq after 9/11, even though the CIA and the FBI repeatedly told them Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden or 9/11.

WILKINSON: Let me ask the question this way, let me go even further than you. Wouldn't your viewers have found it strange if the president didn't ask about Iraq? Wouldn't they have found it strange if they didn't order his counterterrorism team and his FBI director and his intelligence director to look in every corner of the globe for who might be involved? I just don't see the point with all this Iraq business.

I was working at central command for the last year as you know from our time together. In the northern and southern no-fly zone, Iraq was shooting at our pilots hundreds of times a day. Iraq had dug in deep. Iraq was threatening its neighbors. I just don't see the point of this Iraq connection. I think the American people would be comforted to know that this president wanted to know everything possible. I want to bring up another point, Wolf.

I brought with me a copy of the January issue of "Publisher's Weekly." It shows that this was supposed to come out April 27 of this year. Do you think it's a coincidence, and you've been in this town a long, could it be a coincidence that this book is released the very week he's giving his public testimony before the 9/11 commission. A commission we've spent hours with. We've given documents, 800 tapes, cooperating with fully and private, working on these sorts of issues. Is that a coincidence? I think the publisher and Dick Clarke have some answering to do. Why is he focused on book tours and these sorts of things. He should have been focused on terrorism like this president is.

Can you believe this shit? Clarke shouldn't be "focused on book tours" because he should have been focused on terrorism like the president is now. OK. And, you've got to love, "I just don't see the point of this Iraq connection."

Wilkinson needs to lay off the coffee and krispy kreme's. He's bordering on incoherence.

Tim also mentions Kevin Drum's opinion that the Bush administration is being foolish not to admit to what he thinks is a reasonable explanation as to why they didn't care much about terrorism:

The answer seems pretty simple to me: most people before 9/11 thought of terrorism as simply one among many foreign policy problems. There wasn't really any compelling reason to develop a crash program to deal with it.

I think that is missing the whole point of Clarke's story, frankly. I don't think it's unreasonable that the administration might not have known the scope of the terrorist threat before taking office. But, the minute they entered the White House, the entire national security establishment was warning them about it and they blew them off. That's the entire thrust of what Clarke, Benjamin, Kerrick and others have all said which is that the Bush administration was distinctly uninterested in terrorism even though throughout the spring and summer of 2001 people were screaming that there was a huge amount of chatter and something really big was about to happen. They were focused on Iraq and missile defense and the rest of their fossilized agenda despite what all of the experts were telling them.

And besides, it really shouldn't have been a surprise. I knew that al Qaeda was the likely culprit the minute I saw the WTC with a big hole in it and I'm no terrorism expert. The African embassy bombings were in 1998. The USS Cole was bombed in October of 2000 (which, considering the total lack of bipartisan patriotism on the part of Republicans, explains why Clinton didn't move on al Qaeda then. The GOP thugs would have tried to impeach him again for wagging the dog on behalf of Gore in the presidential campaign. I'm sure that was another reason why they counterterrorism guys were were just a little bit surprised when the Bush people told them to take a hike.)

The issue of terrorism may not have been on a hot burner in most Americans' minds, but after the millenium plot was foiled I think everybody certainly assumed that the government was very much aware of and working on the threat. The Clinton team was. The Bushies weren't --- and we paid, bigtime. That's why Clarke came forward.


Update: Read this great post by Avedon on the subject. Fiesty and wise.



digby 3/23/2004 02:08:00 AM |

Monday, March 22, 2004

 
Running Of The Bullshit

In an interview on PBS television Thursday, Wolfowitz said Zapatero's withdrawal plan didn't seem very Spanish.

"The Spaniards are courageous people. I mean, we know it from their whole culture of bullfighting," Wolfowitz said. "I don't think they run in the face of an enemy. They haven't run in the face of the Basque terrorists. I hope they don't run in the face of these people."

I'm beginning to think that the lead in the water in DC is a much bigger problem that we realize.



digby 3/22/2004 09:20:00 PM |

 
All Hail Howard Dean

I knew he was the right man for the job. I am still not as sangiune about Nader as everyone else seems to be:

Dr. Dean's new Rx:

"To that end, according to a well-placed source close to Dean, Kerry and Dean have discussed Dean's projected role in challenging Ralph Nader, whose fourth run for president has Democrats, Independents and even some Greens apoplectic. Dean has been careful to praise Nader's accomplishments before urging people not to be seduced by a quixotic campaign. This is a tactical move to avoid driving people into Nader's arms by being too combative. But should Nader manage to get on the ballot in some key states and threaten to throw them to Bush, expect the gloves to come off."

digby 3/22/2004 08:14:00 PM |

 
In The Supreme Court is suspicious. By Dahlia Lithwick over at Slate, she discussed the case I referenced below in my post about a national ID card. The case was heard by the court today:

One after another dismisses the national ID card debate as not at issue here. One after another suggests—and to a rather frightening degree, at times—that this case has nothing to do with innocent people, or ordinary people. This case has to do with "suspicious" people, and—as you were no doubt aware—suspicious people are not like you or me.

[...]

We all seem to want to live in the world inhabited by most of the justices: where our names are private, and no one needs to incriminate themselves—unless some policeman decides they are suspicious. Then, there is a duty, a responsibility, a constitution-negating requirement that you come forward—to use Scalia's formulation—and cooperate. This idea that the "suspicious people" (read: dark-skinned, poor, urban etc.) have some heightened duty to cooperate with the police is utterly backward, in light of the police's historical treatment of them. It's a shame Justice Clarence Thomas doesn't speak today. One can imagine that he has at least some idea of what it means to hold "suspicious" people to a different constitutional standard.

Read the whole thing. Somehow I'm getting the idea that the court is in the process of abandoning legal principle generally in favor of some sort of "common sense" view of the law that says the government can do what it wants because an innocent person has nothing to worry about.



digby 3/22/2004 07:01:00 PM |

 
Clarke and Wolfowitz and Mylroie

Matthew Yglesias says:

...you really ought to read Peter Bergen's article on Laurie Mylroie. Especially in light of Wolfowitz's pre-9/11 remark (reported in Clarke's book) that rather than go after al-Qaeda we should go after Saddam Hussein because he sponsored terrorism against the United States it appears more and more to be the case here that a big part of the problem is simply that Wolfowitz is a believer in her conspiracy theory. I've heard in a second-hand kind of way that this is the case, and Clarke's stuff seems to lend that account even more plausibility than what Bergen gives us.

Actually, there's quite a bit more evidence. In a post from last August, in which I wrote about this Wolfowitz/Mylroie connection I linked to Josh Marshall's reporting on the backround controversy surrounding Sam Tannenhaus' article on Wolfowitz in the August 2003 issue of Vanity Fair. Josh said:

As noted here a couple days ago, the Tanenhaus article says that Wolfowitz is "confident" that Saddam played some role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and that he had "entertained" the notion that Saddam had played some role in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing as well. (Tanenhaus sources Wolfowitz's ideas about Oklahoma City to a "longtime friend" of the Deputy Secretary.)

The exact quotes remain on backround and have never been revealed. But, in an earlier story, Time magazine reported:

One reason so many hawks seemed ready to make the case for retaliating against Saddam as well as bin Laden may have been the influence of Laurie Mylroie, a conservative scholar who had convinced herself and a number of influential conservatives, although not the U.S. intelligence community, that Iraq had been behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and was very likely behind 9/11, too. But as eccentric as her argument was to the U.S. intelligence community, it was hailed by Wolfowitz, who wrote in a blurb to her book that it "argues powerfully that the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was actually an agent of Iraqi intelligence." And invade-Iraq cheerleader Richard Perle, formerly head of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board, wrote in his own blurb: "Laurie Myroie has amassed convincing evidence of Saddam Hussein's involvement in the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center. If she is right, and there are simple ways to test her hypothesis, we would be justified in concluding that Saddam was probably involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks as well."

Clarke said that after 9/11 Wolfowitz wondered why the government was spending so much time on one apparently irrelevant man. Two days after the attacks, Wolfowitz made his famous Al Haig style comment in which he said (and which was slapped down immediately by Colin Powell):

I think one has to say it's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism. And that's why it has to be a broad and sustained campaign.

It is indisputable that Wolfowitz swallowed whole the ridiculous theory that terrorists are unable to function without state sponsorship, as his comments above illustrate. This theory was set forth again last July by Mylroie testimony before congress in which she said:

Prior to the February 26, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center, it was assumed that major terrorist attacks against the U.S. were state-sponsored. But that bombing is said to mark the start of a new kind of terrorism that does not involve states.

That notion is dubious. Rather, the claim that a new, stateless terrorism emerged with the 1993 Trade Center bombing was a convenient explanation in that it required no military response. Once promulgated, it was hastily accepted--even before much progress had been made in the investigation of that attack itself.

There isn't time to properly address that issue in this testimony. Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War against America contains the fullest account of this author's argument that there is no new source of major terrorist attacks on the U.S. They were state-sponsored--and remain so. That that is not understood is the result of a major intelligence and policy failure that occurred in the 1990s.

In the time allotted here, I want to address three major terrorist plots that have been attributed to so-called "loose networks," including al Qaeda, and illustrate that there is significant evidence to suggest that Iraq was involved: the 1993 Trade Center bombing; the 1995 plot in the Philippines to bomb a dozen US airplanes; and the 9/11 attacks.

According to Tannenhaus, as of August 2003 Wolfowitz still agreed with her about the WTC bombings. Perhaps by then he had accepted that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but his statements right after the attacks certainly comport with what Richard Clarke reports was his reaction to the information that Al Qaeda was to blame.






digby 3/22/2004 02:22:00 PM |

Sunday, March 21, 2004

 
Loser

Via SK Bubba I finally got to see the clip of the notorious Dennis Miller Eric Alterman "interview."

I don't think Jon Stewart has anything to worry about. Conservatives are not funny and they aren't entertaining. It's just a fact.


digby 3/21/2004 08:45:00 PM |

 
Big Night

Clarke's interview was even more devastating than I anticipated. Perhaps it was his delivery and demeanor, but it was the single most hard hitting criticism I've yet heard of Bush's terrorism policy. His charges were very ineffectually rebutted by Steven Hadley who seemed to be describing a Bob Woodward daydream rather than the Bush Whitehouse. Nobody ever really believed that Bush was in charge, particularly before 9/11. Even those who support the Bush administration always trusted in his advisors --- the vaunted grown-ups. In light of these charges, Hadley's description of Bush fighting his own team and insisting that the terrorism threat be a priority is embarrassingly absurd.

I have had some conversations recently with independent men who were completely persuaded after 9/11 that Bush was a ballsy guy who would do what needed to be done. They believe that the government knew things that the rest of us couldn't possibly have known. But, when they see a guy like Clarke, the ultimate non-partisan expert/insider saying that what we knew was ignored, these fellows are going to be pissed. If Bush loses these guys, he loses the election.

This may be the most important moment of the campaign. Bush's only real strength is the hagiography that was carefully cultivated after the attacks. Without that, they have very little. In fact, he becomes a failure of epic proportions. His entire campaign rests on the idea that Bush handled 9/11 flawlessly.

The press must be pushed on this. I already knew all of this stuff and it seemed very powerful to me. I would hope that the media would feel the heat from this story as well. The Democrats need to get together and push this over the next week, as the testimony at the hearings is highlighted. It is the chink in Bush's codpiece and it's time to administer a deadly blow.



digby 3/21/2004 07:35:00 PM |

 
Show Me Your Papers

Kevin the Political Animal muses about a national ID card, wondering a bit why some people are so adamantly against it. But, he has some reservations after reading this post by Mark Kleiman in which Mark wondered if it might be a good idea to curtail people's ability to buy alcohol rather than their ability to drive by using the drivers license to designate that a person convicted of an alcohol related offense isn't allowed to drink --- just as minors' drivers licenses do. Kevin then asks:

...when a driver's license starts becoming overtly more than just a driver's license, where does it end? Once people get the idea that it can be used to regulate more than just driving, why not use the same card to regulate and track sex offenders? Or resident aliens? Or handgun licensing? Or criminal records? It would be mighty handy to have all that stuff in one place, wouldn't it?

Yes it would and that is just one of the reasons you can add me to the list of libertarian wackos who are horrified at the prospect of a national ID card. It's not out of a knee jerk hatred of government, it's out of a lifetime observing bureaucrats, cops and politicians. I don't trust bureaucrats to handle information well; they screw it up a lot already and it's only getting worse with more information about individuals that's being collected.

This is one of the main arguments against the CAPPS II system, which is really a beta test of a national ID card database. Aside from a humongous error rate, and total unaccountability, you can see that the slippery slope has already had an effect. Here's how Anita Ramasastry explains the problem in a column from last Wednesday on FindLaw:

CAPPS II is designed to use commercial and government data to verify passenger identity, and to decide whether individual fliers pose security risks. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is the agency tasked with implementing this program.

The program was initially intended to detect terrorists and keep them off airplanes. In August 2003, however, TSA announced that CAPPS II would also serve as a law enforcement tool to identify individuals wanted for violent crimes.

Based on privacy concerns that I have discussed in a previous column, Congress voted to block funding for CAPPS II unless the TSA could satisfy eight criteria relating to privacy, security, accuracy and oversight. (TSA may, at this time, move forward in testing CAPPS II, however.) In addition, Congress also asked the General Accounting Office (GAO) to conduct a review of CAPPS II to determine whether it met the relevant criteria.

This February, that report came in. And it concluded that CAPPS II has numerous problems, as I will explain.

Then today, March 17, a second report was released by the DHS. It confirmed that the TSA was involved in the transfer of JetBlue Airways passenger information to a Department of Defense subcontractor, Torch Concepts, for use in a data mining study (which I also discussed in an earlier column). Moreover, the DHS report found that, "The TSA employees involved acted without appropriate regard for individual privacy interests or the spirit of the Privacy Act of 1974."

[...]

Readers may object that we can live with a few errors in order to get greater security. But the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has pointed out that even a small error rate would create huge problems.

With CAPPS II checking an estimated billion transactions, the ACLU points out, "[e]ven if we assume an unrealistic accuracy rate of 99.9%, mistakes will be made on approximately one million transactions, and 100,000 separate individuals." (Emphasis added.) So even a tiny error rate will lead to many, many errors.

She also note that the commercial information they included such as credit reports are notoriously subject to error (or criminal manipulation as with identity theft) and much government information is secret and unchallegeable. The slippery slope is already in force as the TSA --- the Transportation Safety Administration is now in the business of helping law enforcement track down criminals. Why would they stop at that? How about IRS leins, bounced checks, or criminal convictions? And certainly there is no reason that they wouldn't use political activity as a criteria. In fact, they seem to have done that already.

As for law enforcement, I believe we need to hold the line on the fourth amendment in general. If we require people to have a national ID card, then it stands to reason that we will also be required to show it to law enforcement. And it won't be just another picture ID, it will likely be a hi-tech card with a magnetic strip that connects to a huge amount of information that I don't think the police have a right to access without probable cause. Right now a case is before the Supreme Court challenging a Nevada law that makes it a crime for a person to refuse to identify himself to police.

Under Nevada law, a citizen must reveal his or her name to a police officer who has reasonable suspicion that the person might be involved in a crime. Even if the suspect is innocent, the mere act of refusing to identify oneself is - itself - a crime.

Analysts say the law creates a legal irony. If the police officer possessed enough evidence to place the suspect under arrest, the suspect would be given a Miranda warning that he or she had the right to remain silent. But if the police officer possessed only reasonable suspicion - not the higher standard of probable cause needed to justify an arrest - a suspect could be arrested and convicted merely for refusing to identify himself.

[...]

In urging the US Supreme Court to overturn his conviction, Hiibel and his lawyers argue that police are free to ask a suspect any questions they want, but the suspect does not have to answer.

A law that can send someone to jail for refusing to speak violates both Fourth Amendment privacy protections and Fifth Amendment guarantees against being compelled to make incriminating statements, they say. "It is inimical to a free society that mere silence can lead to imprisonment," writes James Logan, a Nevada public defender and one of Hiibel's lawyers, in his brief to the court.

The Nevada Attorney General's Office counters that the state's interest in investigating crimes outweighs Hiibel's interest in keeping his identity private. "A person does not have a Fourth Amendment right to refuse to identify himself when detained on reasonable suspicion," says Conrad Hafen, senior deputy attorney general, in his brief. Asking someone's name is a minimal intrusion, Mr. Hafen says. Rather than forcing a suspect to make incriminating statements, repeating one's name does not provide evidence of a crime but merely assists an investigation, he says.

"Though the name may link the person to an outstanding warrant, it does not compel the person to inform the officer that he has an outstanding warrant," Hafen says. "A person's name is more like a fingerprint, voice exemplar, or handwriting analysis. It is used by law enforcement to identify the person."

Experts in electronic privacy disagree. "A name is now no longer a simple identifier: it is the key to a vast, cross-referenced system of public and private databases, which lay bare the most intimate features of an individual's life," says Marc Rotenberg, in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

A national ID card would make it simpler to access all that information that the government has no business knowing unless they have probable cause to believe you have committed a crime. It should not be simple. Law enforcement should have to make a case before a judge in order to get it.

I don't trust politicians ever to do the right thing out of the goodness of their hearts. Privacy and freedom are so closely linked in my mind as to be the same thing and they must be protected in law with sufficient safeguards against political repression and government surveillance. Allowing the government to access commercial information and generate even more, while requiring citizens to carry and produce a card that has the means for any government representative to access it, is a recipe for a police state. I know that sounds hysterical, but these things do happen, even to free nations if they don't remain vigilant against it.




digby 3/21/2004 06:27:00 PM |

 
Jon Stewart Wonders:

"Are they going to make us marry gay?"


"I think it must be mandatory because why else would anybody care? Unless the government is going to force you to make man-love, I really don't know why it would keep you up at night."

Little does he know that the next step is mandatory polygamous man-on-dog love with Fido and Fifi, as well. It's only a matter of time.

Via: The Sideshow





digby 3/21/2004 02:39:00 PM |

 
Preserved In Amber

I can't wait for this interview with Richard Clarke on 60 minutes and I can't wait to read the book. Judging by this article on the CBS website, it looks to be a doozy, as predicted.

First we find out that Rumsfeld wanted to bomb Iraq on 9/11. This does not surprise me. He wanted to bomb Iraq on 9/10 and the attacks on the WTC were a dandy excuse to go ahead with it. But, what's interesting is Clarke's account of the meeting in which he said it as opposed to the account of that meeting as duly recorded by Bob Woodward.

Woodward's version has a bold and manly Bush taking charge of his confused and befuddled advisors who have more questions than answers until the steely-eyed rocket man gives them proper direction:

Shortly after 9:30 p.m., President Bush brought together his most senior national security advisers in a bunker beneath the White House grounds. It was just 13 hours after the deadliest attack on the U.S. homeland in the country's history...

"This is the time for self-defense," he told his aides, according to National Security Council notes. Then, repeating the vow he had made earlier in the evening in a televised address from the Oval Office, he added: "We have made the decision to punish whoever harbors terrorists, not just the perpetrators."

Their job, the president said, was to figure out how to do it.

That afternoon, on a secure phone on Air Force One, Bush had already told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that he would order a military response and that Rumsfeld would be responsible for organizing it. "We'll clean up the mess," the president told Rumsfeld, "and then the ball will be in your court."

Intelligence was by now almost conclusive that Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, based in Afghanistan, had carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the aides gathered in the bunker-the "war cabinet" that included Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and CIA Director George J. Tenet-were not ready to say what should be done about them. The war cabinet had questions, no one more than Rumsfeld.

Who are the targets? How much evidence do we need before going after al Qaeda? How soon do we act? While acting quickly was essential, Rumsfeld said, it might take up to 60 days to prepare for major military strikes. And, he asked, are there targets that are off-limits? Do we include American allies in military strikes?

Rumsfeld warned that an effective response would require a wider war, one that went far beyond the use of military force. The United States, he said, must employ every tool available-military, legal, financial, diplomatic, intelligence.

The president was enthusiastic. But Tenet offered a sobering thought. Although al Qaeda's home base was Afghanistan, the terrorist organization operated nearly worldwide, he said. The CIA had been working the bin Laden problem for years. We have a 60-country problem, he told the group.

"Let's pick them off one at a time," Bush replied

And then he hitched up his codpiece and went to bed. It was, after all, 9:30.

Here's Clarke's version from the CBS article:

After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.

"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.

"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking.

"I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection."

Clarke says he and CIA Director George Tenet told that to Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Clarke then tells Stahl of being pressured by Mr. Bush.

"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."

Clarke also describes the foreign policy advisors in the administration as "preserved in amber," (much more evocative than my earlier characterization of them as fossilized) which supports my observations over the last couple of years that the central problem with these guys is that they are unable to get past the cold war mythology that hooked them somewhere in their formative years and never let them go. It's like watching a bunch of middle aged freaks at a LOTR convention. Not a pretty sight.

And what's even more staggering about all this is that they still haven't learned their lessons. CBS reports that Steven Hadley of the NSC describes the Iraq misadventure as a success by basing it on the lie that al Qaeda and Saddam were in cahoots AND on the dangerous fallacy that terrorism has something to do with rogue states:

"Iraq, as the president has said, is at the center of the war on terror. We have narrowed the ground available to al Qaeda and to the terrorists. Their sanctuary in Afghanistan is gone; their sanctuary in Iraq is gone. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are now allies on the war on terror. So Iraq has contributed in that way in narrowing the sanctuaries available to terrorists."

Jayzuz. The bombings in Madrid, Istanbul and Bali sure as hell didn't need any rogue state sanctuary --- they were all carried out by terrorist factions loosely connected to al Qaeda and managed on local soil. I can't even begin to comment on the ridiculous concept that we've somehow provoked a positive change in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. But, we can be sure that the Iraq war has contributed to terrorism all right. It served as an extremely useful rallying cry and cause for manipulation for no goddamned good reason other than a total lack of imagination and openness to changing facts on the ground.

It's not only the White House that refuses to see terrorism for what it is instead of what they'd like it to be, the right wing punditocrisy is similarly clinging to their outmoded cold warrior worldview. All this talk of appeasement in the Spanish elections fails to account for the fact that it doesn't really matter how any single country reacts to these Islamic terrorist actions. You can't appease them or not appease them because they are not operating from any real premise.

Al Qaeda terrorists have a delusional view of world events that's only rivaled by the neocons here in the US. And they share a similar misunderstanding of the forces that bring about change in the world. For instance, they BOTH believed that they destroyed the Soviet Union through their own superior military prowess. I think we all know that the American right wing is dedicated to the proposition that their God Ronald Reagan single handedly ended the cold war. Osama bin Laden takes similar credit. From a 1998 interview:

Allah has granted the Muslim people and the Afghani mujahedeen, and those with them, the opportunity to fight the Russians and the Soviet Union. ... They were defeated by Allah and were wiped out. There is a lesson here. The Soviet Union entered Afghanistan late in December of '79. The flag of the Soviet Union was folded once and for all on the 25th of December just 10 years later. It was thrown in the waste basket. Gone was the Soviet union forever.

[...]

Today however, our battle against the Americans is far greater than our battle was against the Russians. Americans have committed unprecedented stupidity. They have attacked Islam and its most significant sacrosanct symbols ... . We anticipate a black future for America. Instead of remaining United States, it shall end up separated states and shall have to carry the bodies of its sons back to America.

You couldn't make this shit up. Al Qaeda thinks it brought down the Soviets and thinks it can bring down the US, too. Yep. And meanwhile, here in the new capital of Western Civilization we've got President Hopalong spewing nonsense about Good n' Evul while the SecDef says that we should bomb the countries with the best targets.

Dr. Strangelove, your table is ready.



Oh, and by the way, somebody ought to send a memo to the White House that its attempted character asissination of Clarke is extremely lame. They say he wrote this book to "audition" for the Kerry campaign. Yeah. The guy who ran counter-terrorism for Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Junior would need to audition. I hear Tom Cruise is doing a screen test for the next Mission Impossible movie, too. Paramount needs to see if he can do the job.







digby 3/21/2004 01:33:00 PM |

 
GOPUNKS


A Bush Surprise: Fright-Wing Support:

"I look like someone who should be hanging out with Marilyn Manson. In fact I have hung out with Marilyn Manson," Mr. Graves said. "It doesn't affect what my morals are."

"I think George Bush is a wonderful, competent leader," he added. "And I believe that he is bringing this country on a right and just course and he understands the true nature of evil."

I think we've finally found Ann Coulter a boyfriend.






digby 3/21/2004 11:14:00 AM |

 
Like Riding A Bike

Kevin at catch.com posts about Drudge's new obsession about Kerry falling down on a snowboard. I notice that Kaus is on the hunt, as well. I was shocked when I heard about it too. Imagine falling down while snowboarding. I think it pretty much disqualifies Kerry from the presidency.

Thank goodness we have a real athlete in the White House:



President Bush falls over the handle bars of a Segway.
digby 3/21/2004 10:59:00 AM |

Saturday, March 20, 2004

 
Sis Boom Bah


All this talk about Richard Clarke's interview on 60 minutes tomorrow in which he says that Rummy was ready to bomb Iraq on 9/12, reminded me of Atrios' song contest. We all thought it was a joke. Apparently, it really is the Bush administration fight song. Junior, after all, has made his living most of his life as a cheerleader:

If you're happy and you know it, bomb Iraq (clap clap)
If you're happy and you know it, bomb Iraq (clap clap)
If you're happy and you know it,
And you really want to show it
If you're happy and you know it, bomb Iraq

If your equities are falling, bomb Iraq
If your equities are falling, bomb Iraq
If your equities are falling,
and your losses are appalling
If your equities are falling, bomb Iraq.

If the euro keeps on climbing, bomb Iraq
If the euro keeps on climbing, bomb Iraq
If the euro keeps on climbing,
put your trust in W's timing,
If the euro keeps on climbing, bomb Iraq

If the GDP is shrinking, bomb Iraq,
If the GDP is shrinking, bomb Iraq,
If the GDP is shrinking,
And W's back to drinking,
If the GDP is shrinking, bomb Iraq,

If my polls are falling, bomb Iraq,
If my polls are falling, bomb Iraq,
If my polls are falling,
and Congress is stalling
If my polls are falling, bomb Iraq.

If the GOP is hurtin' , bomb Iraq
If the GOP is hurtin' , bomb Iraq
If the GOP is hurtin'
And November looks uncertain
If the GOP is hurtin' , bomb Iraq


If the talk has turned to Harken, bomb Iraq,
If the talk has turned to Harken, bomb Iraq,
If the talk has turned to Harken,
and that Krugman-dawg is barkin',
If the talk has turned to Harken, bomb Iraq!


Are they checking Halliburton? Bomb Iraq
Are they checking Halliburton? Bomb Iraq
If they're checking Halliburton
Cheney's rep will soon be hurtin'
If they're checking Halliburton, bomb Iraq

If your brother is a turkey, bomb Iraq
If your brother is a turkey, bomb Iraq
If your brother is a turkey
And Florida's goin' bazerk-y
If your brother is a turkey, bomb Iraq

If the pundits call you "moron," bomb Iraq
If the pundits call you "moron," bomb Iraq
If the pundits call you moron
Then it's time to get your war on
If the pundits call you "moron," bomb Iraq

If Noelle gets caught with crack...bomb Iraq
If Noelle gets caught with crack...bomb Iraq
If Noelle gets caught with crack
and the twins drop booze for smack
If Noelle gets caught with crack...bomb Iraq

To divert public attention bomb Iraq
To divert public attention bomb Iraq
To divert public attention
From the doings of your henchmen
To divert public attention bomb Iraq

To get drilling in the Artic, bomb Iraq,
To get drilling in the Artic, bomb Iraq,
You can run us out of oil,
With the Middle East aboil,
To get drilling in the Artic, bomb Iraq.


digby 3/20/2004 08:46:00 PM |

 
Head Of Mush

Matthew Yglesias in this post notices that Donald Rumsfeld and the the blindered neocon faction of the GOP still don't seem to understand terrorism. He says:

Rogue states are bad -- don't get me wrong -- but in a fundamental sense the terrorism problem has nothing to do with them. The fact that Iran sponsors a regional terrorist enterprise (Hezbollah) and that Iraq and North Korea both did so in the past (and Iraq to a small extent continued up until Saddam's fall) is interesting, but not really relevant to the terrorism problem that the United States faces. Rumsfeld -- and Rice, and Bush -- don't get that.

They have been convinced, it seems since the beginning of time, that the only real threat to America and apple pie is the fearsome rogue state. And you can trace this completely erroneous line of reasoning as it applies to islamic terrorism to our good friend, the crazed Laurie Mylroie and her insistence that the first World Trade Center bombing was the work of Saddam Hussein. And you can go even further back to the notion that communism would be defeated only through a series of military victories against the states that adopted it. It appears that these folks' biggest problem in life, and the reason they should never be allowed to have unfettered power, is that their thinking is so fossilized that they can never, ever let go of an idea once they have adopted it, no matter what the facts and circumstances.

They are now so deeply confused by their own twisted worldview that nobody knows what the hell they are thinking. It is true, as Matt points out, that the threat of "rogue states" like Iran and North Korea are real and require extreme vigilance. It is also true that the War On Terrorism is really a war against a bunch of loose knit organizations held together by ideology and purpose rather than a state sponsor or central location. They are two separate threats, each difficult and each distinct.

There is one exception, however, and its a biggie. There is a rogue state out there that has openly supplied nuclear arms to other rogue states, is under the despotic undemocratic rule of a military junta and is deeply involved in the spread of islamic fundamentalist ideology. The government could easily fall into the hands of the wacko Wahabist faction that forms a significant part of the current president's ruling coalition. Yet our Secretary of State was just there last week passing out high fives as a great ally in the War on Terror. The war they insist can only be won by confronting militarily the rogue states that could someday give arms to the terrorists.

The New York Times put it this way in an editorial today:

Washington failed to protest when General Musharraf cut short the prosecution of the nuclear scientist at the center of the scandal, Abdul Qadeer Khan, with a presidential pardon. It did not object when he blocked the investigation of any military involvement. The least the administration can do now is to press privately for a full accounting. Americans are at least as threatened by rogue states and terrorists armed with Pakistani nuclear blueprints and bomb fuel as they are by fugitives holed up in South Waziristan.

Pakistan's official version of the nuclear transfers ? that civilian scientists acted entirely on their own for purely financial reasons ? defies belief. There is no way sensitive nuclear hardware and uranium could have been transported out of Pakistan without the knowledge and complicity of the country's all-powerful military high command and intelligence agencies. And Washington cannot know that the network has been shut down until its enablers and protectors have been identified.

Washington also needs to insist on an end to the ambiguous relations between Pakistan and the Taliban, which have allowed fighters to cross the Afghan border and attack American troops. The problem is, in part, a legacy of the Pakistani Army's close cooperation with the Taliban until General Musharraf officially severed these ties after 9/11. A more recent complication comes from the alliances General Musharraf has made with Islamist extremist parties to prop up his dictatorial rule. These parties, which are ideologically close to the Taliban, now wield substantial power along the Afghan border.

Instead of urging General Musharraf to stop maneuvering against unfettered elections and Pakistan's main secular parties, Mr. Powell lavished undeserved praise upon him for democratic progress. Such declarations diminish American credibility as a consistent force for democracy. Behind a constitutional facade, General Musharraf rules as a military dictator, accountable to no civilian authority and basing his power on Pakistan's armed forces. It is the army high command that General Musharraf must negotiate with if he truly wants to move against the Taliban, Kashmiri terrorist groups or the nuclear weapons establishment.

Mr. Powell struck a somewhat surreal note in Islamabad when he announced that Washington was preparing to designate Pakistan a "major non-NATO ally," easing access to military sales. Pakistan's efforts to capture Dr. Zawahiri are welcome, but it is excessive to offer even a symbolic promotion to one of America's least reliable allies.

Yes, well, there is an election coming up and nothing is more important than staging a big ole "Mission Accomplished" celebration that features bin Laden's head on pike.

I realize that countries like Pakistan need to be handled deftly. I'm not unhappy that they haven't sent John Bolton over there to call Mushareff a scumbag on Pakistani television. (Would that they would keep him away from North Korea.) It may even be smart to "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" in this situation. If this team had shown even a tiny bit of real diplomatic and tactical finesse during the last three years I might think that's what they were doing. But they haven't and they're not:

India Saturday warned the U.S. decision granting major non-NATO ally status to Pakistan will impact bilateral ties between New Delhi and Washington.

A foreign ministry spokesman expressed surprise that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was in New Delhi two days prior to the announcement and did not mention the decision to Indian officials.

Navtej Sarna said: "The Secretary of State was in India just two days before this statement was made in Islamabad. While he was in India, there was much emphasis on India-US strategic partnership. It is disappointing that he did not share with us this decision of the United States government."

Indian officials were reportedly embarrassed at being caught unawares.

"We are studying the details of this decision, which has significant implications for India-U.S. relations," Sarna said in a statement.

In a case where you have two nuclear powers, bitter rivals, seething with religious animosity and territorial disputes you go out of your way to insult the one that has no record of supporting islamic terrorism or selling nuclear weapons to our enemies and openly reward the one that does. And you do this in the name of fighting terrorism and rogue states.

They call this moral clarity.

Clearly, there is no Bush doctrine, and no deep belief in anything except the tired irrelevancy that Stalinist regimes like Saddam's and the DPRK must be defeated in the name of fighting communism. That is all these people know and it's all they will ever know. They do not understand the dangers of the post cold war world just as they didn't understand the threats of the cold war.

And it cannot be ignored that we have a leader who is an idiot. Here's the image of leadership that Karl Rove is running on, from the halcyon days of 2002. I know that those of us in blogland are aware that it is a fantasy, but a good number of Americans are not:

Lacking his father's deep reservoir of experience to draw upon, how does Bush resolve his advisers' titanic disagreements? He goes with his gut. He relies on an instinctive sense of who is good and who is bad overseas?and then he sticks at all costs with the call he has made. His confidence in this process has grown with his success in Afghanistan He took to heart the lesson that he should trust his moral sense and have faith in what a former Clinton aide, not without admiration, calls "rising dominoes"?the sense that if Bush unfurls a big bright flag and marches toward the mountains, the world will follow.

But when the world doesn't follow, Bush often just keeps marching. His defenders like to point out that the President's foreign policy has had no serious failures caused by allies' rebelling against him. That proves, they say, that raw power determines international politics. As a senior Bush adviser bluntly declared earlier this year: "The way to win international acceptance is to win. That's called diplomacy: winning." If other countries get restive, U.S. officials say, who cares? Even ganged up, they will be weaker than the U.S. alone. The President summed up his lead-a-lonely-but-moral-crusade approach to foreign policy in April when he was asked whether he understood that Palestinians consider the Israeli occupation to be a form of terrorism.

That's when he said, "Look, my job isn't to try to nuance. I think moral clarity is important, if you believe in freedom. And people can make all kinds of excuses, but there are some truths involved. And one of the truths is, they're sending suicide killers in because they hate Israel. That's a truth. I know people don't like it when I say there's evil, this is evil versus good. But that's not going to stop me from saying what I think is right."

(If other countries get restive, U.S. officials say, who cares? Even ganged up, they will be weaker than the U.S. alone. That is another dangerous fallacy that animates the neocons. Again, there is no threat but the threat of a Stalinist rogue state. We'll have faith-base missile defense up by next fall and then everything will be perfect.)

Although much of the assessment in the Time article has been proven wrong --- his allies did rebel and there have been real consequences --- that image has remained in the minds of many. John Kerry's team must find a succinct way of showing that this puerile nonsense about the braindead boy-man's PB&J filled gut has made the world far less safe than it was on September 11th, 2001. Bush's team continues to operate like a bunch of amateurs, refusing to learn from mistakes and screwing things up over and over again. Kerry must counter this absurd impression of Bush as having a gut of steel when what he really has is a head of mush. The sickness in this administration all flows from that.








digby 3/20/2004 08:15:00 PM |

Thursday, March 18, 2004

 
Even More On The A-word

Atrios noted that Jim Pinkerton spewed his kool-aid on the appeasement question the other day, but he hurls the glass across the room in the above linked article in Salon:

So who lost Spain? Who thereby gave Old Europe a new lease on life? When Americans were told that toppling Saddam's regime would transform geopolitics, did anyone think that the next transformed regime would be José María Aznar's -- that "regime change" would ricochet back to Spain? The Bush administration was taken by surprise, of course, because it had chosen to ignore the huge majorities in democracies around the world who never agreed that the "war on terror" could be won in Baghdad.

President Bush pushed the Spanish -- and will soon push, probably, the British -- to change their government by pursuing policies that have cleaved Europe and America. Europeans, remembering centuries of experience in stomping out separatists, anarchists and fanatics, will now go their own way, without guidance from Paul Wolfowitz. French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, looking like two cats who shared a canary, held a joint press conference in Paris on Tuesday touting their own approach to fighting terrorism; there they offered words of welcome to incoming Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, inducting him into their non-American -- maybe anti-American -- alliance. David Frum bewailed Europe's collective-security plan as "a defeat for the antiterrorist cause," and yet Western Europeans have concluded that stirring hornets nests in faraway places is not the way to keep from being stung.

Which brings us to Tony Blankley in the Washington Times, who gloomily projected a "four in 10 chance that the American electorate will come down with the Spanish disease this November" -- that is, boot Bush out of office; the alleged ailment might be called "appeasementitis." Yup, it's 1938 all over again, same as it ever was. The historically minded -- here comes the dreaded alternative diagnosis of the realists -- might point out that al-Qaida is a criminal gang, a cadre of loony loners and conspiratorial crazies scattered across the world. These realists understand that bin Laden's bunch is not a nation-state with a Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, and Fuhrer. But no speck of realistic thinking seems ever to cloud the eternal 1930s-ness of the neocons' spotless mind.

Indeed, the most serious consequence of appeasement-accusing is the assumption that goes with it: That counterterrorism strategy and conventional war strategy are one and the same. The war on terror is not World War II; it requires dramatically different actions. The neocon strategists, stalled in the '30s -- searching for Neville Chamberlain tapping his umbrella on every cobblestone street, even as they scout out the next Winston Churchill -- are leading us into the bloody land of blowback.

I had noticed that Pinkerton had been sidling off the reservation about a year ago. And he's writing for Salon. I'd say we can put away the garlic in his presence.




digby 3/18/2004 09:56:00 PM |

 
From Beirut To The Twilight Zone

Kevin Drum takes on the Tom Friedman "appeasement" op-ed today on his great new blog Political Animal. (And why wasn't that one taken a loong time ago? Was somebody saving it for a renowned cat blogger to go big time?) Anyway, Kevin is definitely getting more animalistic. His take on what I agree was a steaming mound of something is downright combative:

This kind of stuff belongs on the pages of a third tier warblogger, not the op-ed page of the New York Times. It's juvenile and disgusting.

I love it. And Kevin is right. This nonsensical Friedman blather is even worse than his usual drivel and I didn't think that was possible. He suggests that even though the socialists ran on the platform of withdrawal from Iraq and even though the population never supported it and even though Friedman acknowledges that the Bush administration is making a total hash out of the occupation, the new Spanish government should not withdraw from Iraq because it would appease al Qaeda.

Picture if you will, September 11, 2001 and Al Gore is President of the United States. Terrorists attack London. Al Gore responds by joining Tony Blair in attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan and disrupting Al Qaeda's operation. Almost immediately, they begin planning to invade Iraq and do so just a little more than a year later, against the will of most US allies and most Americans. It soon becomes obvious that Blair and Gore's assertions of connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq were wrong (as were all the other national security rationales they set forth to justify the war.) The Republicans are going crazy, demanding special prosecutors, impeachment and criminal charges. (You know they would. Here are some of their comments on Kosovo.)

Meanwhile, Gore insists that the war in Iraq was absolutely necessary to protect America from the terrorist threat and he refuses to back down on this assessment. The first week in November the polls show the election is close. The economy is sluggish and people are restless. The war in Iraq is unpopular, but is no longer at the top of the newscasts. 3 days before people go to the polls, terrorists blow up several nightclubs in Miami, killing hundreds and wounding thousands.

The Gore administration casts the blame on pro-Castro terrorists. Doubts emerge immediately and within hours it becomes obvious that the Gore administration was again misleading the country about national security. He loses the election by a significantly wider margin than the polls had predicted.

The Republicans, chagrined and embarrassed, admit that the result was bad because the US has just "appeased" al Qaeda. Therefore, they promise to continue Al Gore's foreign policy, despite the fact that they completely disagree with it and a large majority of the country rejects it, because they know that it would be wrong to allow Al Qaeda to believe they were cowed by its terrorism.

And the next day Neo destroys the Matrix and live bats fly out of Lynn Cheney's mouth on Larry King Live.





digby 3/18/2004 08:46:00 PM |

 
Shave and Appeasement, 6 Bits.

Via Matt Yglesias, I read this post by Julian Sanchez on the Spanish elections and ensuing charges of "appeasement," by the hysterical gasbags on the right.

Aznar had defended the war in Iraq as measure necessary to "guarantee the security of Spaniards from any internal or external threat," and his government sought to dismiss claims that a Spanish club was targeted for bombing in Casablanca because of Spanish participation in the war. Meanwhile, PSOE officials had suggested that Spain, Britain, and the U.S. were "kicking a wasp's nest," that "the war in Iraq was going to provoke more hatred and rancor and, therefore, the threat of more instability." Transparently, Aznar was mistaken and the opposition was correct. Are Spanish voters to be tarred as cowards if they now hold Aznar accountable for his miscalculation? A few especially glib commentators have suggested that the Spanish should "blame the terrorists," not the PP. But why can't they blame both?

Well, yeah. Aside from it being seriously distasteful, this excessive stomping on the body politic of the site of the worst terrorist attack on european soil tells me the wing nuts are in desperate need of a shave with old Occam's Razor.

As I noted in a post yesterday on American Street, Mark Kleiman unearthed the shattering news that the turn-out was much higher than usual, probably as a result of the bombings and a desire to show public solidarity. It may be that those non-voters would have voted otherwise, but it may also be that they would have done what most voters in high turnout elections in Spain do, which is vote for the left candidate. It possible that the Spaniards are not, in fact, saying to the world, "We're askeered 'o ole bin Laden! Please don't hurt us again!" They may have just been saying, "I hadn't been paying that much attention to politics, but I usually back the socialists so that's who I'll vote for because I think it's important in this time of tragedy." Republicans ought to understand that. It's how they won the midterms.

On the other hand, the very simplest explanation for why people voted out the party in power is being totally ignored by everyone and it's a pretty good reason, too.

Man say he tough guy. He big friend of bigger tough guy. Man say his country must do what bigger tough guy say to keep country safe. Many people everywhere say bigger tough guy not know what he doing. Man say "too bad" to people.

Then bad guys blow up trains and kill and wound many. People think, tough guy and bigger tough guy not keep country safe like they say. We no like tough guy. We like other guy who not trust bigger tough guy, like we say. We make him our president.

It is hard to know how people would react in any country to a terrorist attack on the eve of an election. But, is it so impossible to believe that they might just BLAME the guys in charge of keeping the country safe for not actually, you know, keeping the country safe? I realize that this idea that you play into your enemies hands if you change your leadership is understandable to people who also believe that CEO's should be given huge bonuses when they destroy their companies, but isn't it a bit much for normal people to adopt this attitude? Surely, even Aeron-chair warriors must acknowledge that sometimes, when a leader fucks up, he needs to be replaced.

Then again, you could conclude that any response to terrorism that isn't total support of George W. Bush's policies is appeasement. Here in America it's clear that if we have no terrorist attacks in the US before November it will be because George W. Bush has kept our babies safe and we must re-elect him. To do otherwise would be appeasement. But, if there is another terrorist attack before November we must also re-elect him because to do otherwise would be appeasement.

And, we must shop til we drop. Not shopping is appeasement, too. As is gay marriage. And tax hikes on the rich. And Janet's nipple. It's all pretty much the same thing. Al Qaeda is desperately afraid of Bush's codpiece. Anything less than total support of it, no matter what, and the terrorists will have won.





digby 3/18/2004 06:57:00 PM |

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

 
Original Sin

I am gratified that Atrios has posted about this book by Alesina and Glaeser that discusses the relationship between race and social welfare. They know their stuff. Buy the book.

I wrote a long and boring mostly unread post about this a few months ago when we were all in the midst of discussing the Dean campaign's strategy in the south, in which I argued that one simply could not separate race from Americans' hostility to redistributive economic schemes and government social services. Indeed, they have been intertwined throughout our history. If I may be so bold as to quote myself:

The question has always been, why don't southern working class whites vote their economic self-interest?

In this paper (pdf) Sociologist Nathan Glazer of Harvard (bio), who has long been interested in the question of America's underdeveloped welfare state, answers a related question --- "Why Americans don't care about income inequality, which may give us some clues. Citing a comprehensive study by economists Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser of Harvard and Bruce Sacerdote of Dartmouth called, "Why Doesn't the United States have a European-Style Welfare State?" (Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2/2001) he shows that the reluctance of Americans to embrace an egalitarian economic philosophy goes back to the beginning of the republic. But what is interesting is that both he and the economists offer some pretty conclusive evidence that the main reason for American "exceptionalism" in this case is, quite simply, racism.

"Racial fragmentation and the disproportionate representation of ethnic minorities among the poor played a major role in limiting redistribution.... Our bottom line is that Americans redistribute less than Europeans for three reasons: because the majority of Americans believe that redistribution favors racial minorities, because Americans believe that they live in an open and fair society, and that if someone is poor it is his or her own fault, and because the political system is geared toward preventing redistribution. In fact the political system is likely to be endogenous to these basic American beliefs."(p. 61)

Glazer goes on to point out how these attitudes may have come to pass historically by discussing the roles that the various immigrant support systems and the variety of religious institutions provided for the poor:


But initial uniformities were succeeded by a diversity which overwhelmed and replaced state functions by nonstate organizations, and it was within these that many of the services that are the mark of a fully developed welfare state were provided. Where do the blacks fit in? The situation of the blacks was indeed different. No religious or ethnic group had to face anything like the conditions of slavery or the fierce subsequent prejudice and segregation to which they were subjected.

But the pre-existing conditions of fractionated social services affected them too. Like other groups, they established their own churches, which provided within the limits set by the prevailing poverty and absence of resources some services. Like other groups, too, thedependentpendant on pre-existing systems of social service that had been set up by religious and ethnic groups, primarily to serve their own, some of which reached out to serve blacks, as is the case with the religiously based (and now publicly funded) social service agencies of New York City. They were much more dependent, owing to their economic condition, on the poorly developed primitive public services, and they became in time the special ward of the expanded American welfare state's social services. Having become, to a greater extent than other groups, the clients of public services, they also affected, owing to the prevailing racism, the public image of these services.

Glazer notes that there are other factors involved in our attitudes about inequality having to do with our British heritage, religious background etc, that also play into our attitudes. But, he and the three economists have put their finger on the problem Democrats have with certain white Southern voters who vote against their economic self-interest, and may just explain why populism is so often coupled with nativism and racism --- perhaps it's always been impossible to make a populist pitch that includes blacks or immigrants without alienating whites.

So, we are dealing with a much more complex and intractable problem than "southerners have been duped by Nixon's southern strategy" or that liberals have been insulting them for years by supposedly devaluing their culture. Indeed, even the nostalgia that Howard Dean professes for FDR's coalition is historically inaccurate. A majority of whites have never voted with blacks in the south. (In the 30's, as we all know, southern blacks were rarely allowed to vote at all.) In fact, FDR had an implicit agreement with the southern base of his party to leave Jim Crow alone if he wanted their cooperation on other economic issues. The southern coalition went along out of desperation (and also because they were paying very little in taxes.) But, as soon as the economy began to recover, and Roosevelt began to concentrate on programs for the poor, the division that exists to this day re-emerged.

I quote myself at length here, not because I love the sound of my own words, (although they are delightfully boring yet somehow dull) but because I think this work by Glazer, Graezer and Alesina contains an important insight with which Democrats simply must come to grips if we ever expect to create a government that provides a decent enough safety net to maintain a solid middle class and thus a stable and thriving society.

This ancient attachment to racism in this country is going to finally bring us down if we do not force it out of the body politic once and for all. The need is urgent, not just on a moral basis --- the moral case is always urgent --- but on a pragmatic, survival basis as well. The American frontier is closed, our total dominance of the world economy is rapidly diminishing and globalization and technology are pressuring the middle and working classes of this country in ways that we are only now beginning to see. This path of ever lower taxes and higher deficits in service of a nonsensical insistence on the ruination of public schools, a refusal to endow universal health care, a systematic destruction of social security and the combined devastation of rolling back workplace regulations while destroying unions is based on a theological belief in unfettered capitalism and American "individualism." This romantic notion manifests itself as modern Republicanism but, in fact, it is nothing more than the same phony excuse for opportunism and racism that has existed since the founding. (It fueled the more virulent forms of anti-communism, as well.) Unless we commit ourselves to keeping this country's education and health care systems secure, ensure that workers continue to have the opportunity to thrive and achieve in the workplace and provide a decent safety net for those who cannot work, we are shortly going to find ourselves living in a high tech banana republic.

The power structure of the modern GOP is centered in the south and they cannot achieve victory without it solidly behind them. These studies reveal that there is no mystery as to why its philosophy of low taxes and minimal social services finds such loyalty among people who should logically believe the opposite. Democrats must recognize that this correlation between racism and the resistence to a fair and equitable redistribution of wealth is why populist appeals will not work for us in the south or among other demographics in which this correlation is salient.

And that means we must accept, once and for all, that our commitment to civil rights cannot be separated from our commitment to reasonable taxation in service of a stable society. In our culture they are inextricably bound to one another and we will never achieve one without achieving the other. As I wrote in my earlier post on this topic, racism is America's original sin. Until we politically and socially emasculate it, we will continue to be shackled by a fantasy of individualism and a Hobbesian worldview that can no longer be ameliorated by an endless frontier or global economic dominance.

The worst impulses of American culture are drawn from racism and those malevolent impulses are taking us into a highly competitive future without a safety net. There might be dumber reasons for a once great society to crumble but I can't think of any.



digby 3/16/2004 02:39:00 PM |

Monday, March 08, 2004

 
Klaatu Barada Nikto


South Knox Bubba finds the Non-Sequitor of the Week, which had me cleaning out my ears when I heard it as well.

BEGALA: Greg, one of the ads concludes with President Bush praising freedom, faith, families and sacrifice. What sacrifice has our president asked of the rich?

MUELLER: I think everybody's making money right now. We've got a Hispanic middle class, "The New York Times" reported about last year. George Bush created a Hispanic middle class.

Maybe the RNC is having a hard time recruiting talking heads or something but I'm hearing an awful lot of this kind of bizarre blather lately. I hear Ann Heche is available. She speaks fluent Martian.

digby 3/08/2004 09:50:00 AM |

 
Bad Hostess Behind Bars

On Friday, a jury convicted Martha Stewart of lying about a 2001 stock sale in which her broker gave her insider information concerning pharmaceutical maker ImClone. On Saturday, the media was saturated with coverage of the verdict--coverage that perpetuated the oft-repeated canard that the Stewart case was somehow an example of corporate wrongdoing. Meanwhile, in a real case of alleged corporate wrongdoing, Bernie Ebbers, the disgraced former WorldCom CEO, and Scott Sullivan, the company's head accountant, were indicted last week in the largest case of accounting fraud in the country's history. But those developments ended up serving as the week's undercard to Stewart's featured event--obscuring the fact that the two cases have little in common, and that the WorldCom case is far more important.

...apparently hungry for sensational news, many of the country's leading media outlets failed this weekend to explain the distinction. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called Stewart the "highest-profile figure in a procession of corporate scandals that emerged after the tech stock boom-and-bust of the 1990s." The Los Angeles Times described her as "the first major figure convicted by a jury in the wave of corporate scandals." And The New York Times called her "the latest and most prominent executive to be convicted since a wave of corporate scandals unfolded with the collapse of Enron."

So-called "celebrity justice" features have long been a staple of tabloid journalism, but since the O.J. Simpson trial, the media has increasingly treated those cases as hard news...The Times and other upper-tier papers--which ostensibly shun "celebrity justice" news but were unwilling to miss out on the Stewart story--developed a narrative that made no distinction between Stewart's trial and the cases of Ebbers, Lay, and Rigas.

TNR goes on to say "it was a clever way for "serious" papers to get in on a piece of the Martha action--and also retain their respectability," and how this may result in less scrutiny for the more important Worldcom and Enron trials. The public, suffering from corporate scandal fatigue after Martha will feel that justice has been served and are no longer interested. Sadly, they are probably right.

But, I've always wondered why Martha became such a top tabloid story in the first place. She's famous, but that's not the most important element in a tabloid story, certainly not one that garners the kind of wall to wall coverage this one's gotten the last few days.

In order for it to be a truly fine tabloid story it must feature sex or violence, preferably both, neither of which were present in the Martha trial. But, when I watched the week-end coverage I realized where the tabloid element of this story lies. It's the prurient vision of Martha Stewart in a woman's prison, surrounded by tough, tattooed, hardened criminals. Seriously. I must have heard dozens of comments like:

"What will it be like for Martha behind bars, will she be kept from the general prison population for her own safety?"

"Martha will be serving time with the type of women she normally doesn't invite to her dinner parties in Connecticut."

"The women in those prisons probably don't think much of Martha's decorating tips."

"Martha's going to need to learn how to negotiate with women who don't wear aprons and get 300 dollar haircuts."

Now, it's obvious that there are quite a few misogynist men who simply think the uppity business bitch must be shown her place. And, among many women there seems to be a strong resentment of her cold perfectionism. I don't pretend to understand why she evokes such strong feelings in some people.

But, the tabloid media interest in the story became clear as the week-end went on. They are aroused and tittilated by the idea that Martha Stewart could be forced to endure some sort of prison violence, sexual or otherwise. The gleam in their eye as they speculated about her fate was very revealing. Corporate wrongdoing never made these vultures so breathless and flushed.

Our press corps seems to suffer from a strange form of mass sexual neurosis. I don't know why, but time after time they act out a twisted form of immature sexuality when covering certain public figures who apparently confuse them in some way. They really need to talk to somebody about this. This is the kind of thing that can lead people to do bad things and then who knows what could happen? Kelly Arena could find herself in a woman's prison, scantily clad and vulnerable, at the mercy of Big Mama, the ex-Hell's Angel and leader of the cell block who likes to "initiate" all the new girls....



digby 3/08/2004 09:45:00 AM |

Saturday, March 06, 2004

 
Ad War

With all of this hoopla about the president's ad campaign, I am grateful that Matt Stoller at BOP news, found this great resource at the Museum of the Moving Image called The Living Room Candidate, which shows political TV ads going back to 1952. If you have time, you should look at all of them.

I was particularly fascinated by the
1992 Election Page which showed a Bush Sr ad campaign that was almost entirely based on character assassination. Trust, trust, trust. Character, character, character. Lots of "man on the street" interviews with average Americans saying "there's just something about him I don't trust."

I wouldn't be surprised to see a reprise of this campaign. It's what these guys do. Just check out 1988, if you want to see more (and also dispell the idea that Dukakis never fought back. He did, but he didn't attack back, he defended. That's the difference.)

Anyway, thanks to Matt for the link. It's a fascinating site.


digby 3/06/2004 03:14:00 PM |

 
All The World's A Stage

Ellen Goodman asks:Presidential election or casting call?

I have long believed that it is a casting call. Just as I think, sadly, that for many people 9/11 and Iraq are now seen as reality TV shows from last season. Kind of like Survivor. The question in this election is whether they want to watch the re-runs.

It's a little bit much, however, that a member of the fourth estate would act surprised by this. After all, Goodman and her ilk cover politics and news events as if they were television shows, critiquing the "performances" of the players, even (especially) themselves, and look at all events through the lens of a pre-ordained narrative.

The president of the United States plays the role of a cowboy rancher when he can't ride a horse and didn't buy his "spread" until he was running for president. He lands in a fighter plane on the deck of an aircraft carrier, prances around in a skin tight jumpsuit and the press never bothers to correct the erroneous impression that he actually flew the plane.

Why in the hell shouldn't the Democrats get a little of that action too? If we are casting the role of "President" I'm definitely going for the face that belongs on Mt Rushmore rather than the one that appears on the cover of MAD Magazine.

This is the way it is, boys and girls, and while I'm not thrilled, I think it's long past time that Democrats got with the program. The TV program.


digby 3/06/2004 02:25:00 PM |

 
Smite Me

Josh 'n Matt are all shocked 'n shit that the Bush administration is reportedly blocking an Israeli pullback from Gaza until after the elections.

I guess they forgot that our esteemed leader informed the players long ago that he was on a tight evil-smiting schedule and they had to move fast:

"God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me, I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

Mideast peace will just have to wait. The elections have come and God has told him to strike the Democrats. He has no choice. He'll get back to them next December after he smites the sodomites and takes a little R&R in Crawford.

digby 3/06/2004 09:39:00 AM |

 
Naderama

Over at Pandagon: Kerry vs. The Extremists, Ezra very wisely points out that Nader is probably not someone to be ignored, no matter how much we might like to. As I wrote last week, I think we ignore him again at our peril.

For some reason I'm reading a lot of overly optimistic commentary about this election that strikes me a naive. We have a good chance to win, but there is absolutely no reason to assume that it's a slam dunk, either on the basis of poll numbers, money or enthusiasm. Both sides are loaded for bear. The smart move is to assume that this election is going to be very close and strategize accordingly.

I know that people don't want to hear this, but Uncle Karl has a mountain of money and this being America, that mountain of money is power. And they're not just using it for ads; they are building a turn-out operation the likes of which we've never seen. He has the power of his office to get Judy Botox to cut away at a moments notice to cover his boring flag draped stump speech every single day, replete with canned cultlike shrieks of approval and hand picked children of color. He can control world events in ways that we don't even want to think about. Incumbency is very, very powerful.

All this means is that despite the fact that he is a manipulable moron and a demonstrable failure, he'll be able to command the loyalty of his 45 percent no matter what he does. And, if they play their cards right he'll get a few dumb swing voters who think they are watching American Idol.

Ralph is polling right now at 6%. I'm sure that's too high and he'll come nowhere close to that. But, he will continue to cause trouble and he'll continue to have salience with some who might otherwise be persuaded to vote for Kerry on idealistic grounds. If this election is close --- and I believe that we should plan for it to be --- then it is important to deal with Ralph. If we are going to fight for every vote, all the way down to the precinct level, it's foolish to ignore someone who could possibly get half a million votes, a fraction of which could make the difference.

Ezra's advice is for Kerry to use Nader as a liberal foil. That was my first thought as well. It can only help Kerry look more moderate for Nader to be in the race. The strategy here is that we could possibly get more swing voters by running against both Nader and Bush as extremists.

On the other hand, maybe we could try to convert the Naderites. They were impossible to deal with during 2000, but perhaps we are dealing with a different phenomenon this time. It may be that they could be persuaded with a better knowledge of John Kerry's history of fighting the Republican proclivity for supporting death squads and arming dictators around the world. And maybe if they knew that Kerry was the reigning expert (and senate prosecutor) on the single most corrupt multinational, bipartisan big money scam in history, BCCI, they might be persuaded that he isn't such an establishment tool after all.

Of course, Nader supporters generally demand that a politican be a sort of Knight errant, pure of heart and spirit in every way. So, perhaps the best way to deal with this problem would be to expose their candidate to the same harsh spotlight they shine on Democrats. It wouldn't be pretty, but it might be effective.

Josh Marshall quoted a Gore insider friend of his as saying:

We took Nader too lightly in 00. We didn't challenge him. We didn't point out his sizable personal fortune, his complete lack of assistance on any environmental cause for decades, his sources of funding. Oh progressives do not make this mistake twice in your lifetime or Nader's.

Whether that would convert any votes to Kerry, either swing voters from the middle or shocked and disappointed Naderites from the left, is another question. And that is the question that must be answered.

There are ways to deal with Ralph. But we must deal with him. We can't afford to leave anything to chance.


digby 3/06/2004 09:16:00 AM |

Friday, March 05, 2004

 
Passionate Denial

Bob Sommerby is defending "The Passion" this week and I don't have a lot to say about it because I haven't seen, and have no intention of seeing, the film. However, I do find it interesting that Sommerby quotes Gibson as saying unequivocally that, contrary to his father's views, he is not a Holocaust denier:

SAWYER: In that New York Times Magazine interview, [Gibson's father] seemed to be questioning the scope of the Holocaust, skeptical that six million Jews had died. So what does Gibson think?

GIBSON: Do I believe that there were concentration camps where defenseless and innocent Jews died cruelly under the Nazi regime? Of course I do, absolutely. It was an atrocity of monumental proportion.

SAWYER: And you believe there were millions, six million?

GIBSON: Sure.

SAWYER: I think people wondered if your father's views were your views on this.

GIBSON: Their whole agenda here, my detractors, is to drive a wedge between me and my father. And it's not going to happen. I love him. He's my father.

To be clear, Sommerby was responding to a correspondent who wondered why nobody had ever asked Gibson right out if he was a Holocaust denier. He isn't trying to defend Gibson's views, per se, although he does say that he didn't find the film anti-Semitic.

Again, I haven't seen the movie so I have no idea if it is or not. But, I did happen to read this Peggy Nooner interview with Gibson in Reader's Digest while I was standing in the grocery store line and his answer was just a little bit more "nuanced":

PN: I read that your father has some very conservative religious beliefs and that he has questioned some of the accepted versions of the Holocaust.

Gibson: My dad taught me my faith and I believe what he taught me. The man never lied to me in his life. He lost his mother at two years of age. He lost his father at 15. He went through the Depression. He signed up for World War Two, served his country fighting the forces of fascism. Came back, worked very hard physically, raised a family, put a roof over my head, clothed me, fed me, taught me my faith, loved me. I love him back. So I'll slug it out until my heart is black and blue if anyone ever tries to hurt him.

PN: The Holocaust happened, right?

Gibson: I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. World War Two killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933.

I don't know about you, but that sounds to me like a guy who doesn't think that the systematic genocide of Jews in WWII was much of a big deal. Moreover, like his father in the New York Times Magazine article that Sawyer references, he is clearly questioning the "scope" of the Holocaust. He even has some handy statistics to back him up as if he's given it quite a bit of thought and has made the point before.

"Some" Jews were killed in concentration camps, sure. War is hell. Atrocities happen. What a bummer.

I can't say absolutely that he is anti-semite based on this comment, but it's not much of a stretch to make that assumption. No matter what, however, it's probably a mistake to be too awfully impressed with his theological scholarship. The guy is clearly a cretinous airhead.




digby 3/05/2004 06:33:00 PM |

 
"Narrowin' the Noose"


I have been on the case of this little group of Bush administration dirty tricksters called the Office of Global Communications(OGC) formerly the Coalition Information Center (CIC), for over a year and when the Plame thing was first revealed, this guy, Jim Wilkinson, was who I first suspected. When the story first leaked last July, I wrote:

It would be very wrong of me to speculate wildly that the infamous smear operation of the South Carolina primary that is now working right in the White House "communications shop" could possibly be behind this (or, more trivially but just as telling, behind the Drudge Report expose of the "Gay Canadian" reporter.)

[...]

I'm certain that these same people who now work extremely closely with George W. Bush and his advisors would never resort to such dishonorable and undignified behavior in the sacred office of the President of the United States. It's merely a coincidence that the tactics are so very similar.

According to Newsday today:

Also sought in the wide-ranging document requests contained in three grand jury subpoenas to the Executive Office of President George W. Bush are records created in July by the White House Iraq Group, a little-known internal task force established in August 2002 to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

So, it now turns out that the "Iraq Group," the supervisory marketing arm of the Iraq march to war is in the sights of the Plame grand jury. Jim Wilkinson is the one member of the administration who is simultaneously a member of the OGC and the Iraq Group.

The thing to remember about both the OGC and the Iraq Group is that they are not just spin artists. They are propagandists. They were very involved with Alisdair Campbell in the "sexing up" of the WMD threat, so it will be very interesting to see if these documents are turned over without a lot of national security hoo-hah.

There is a big story in those documents, perhaps much bigger even than Plame, although the subpoenaes are only for July 2003 so they won't reveal the really interesting stuff about the blatent WMD lies. Because, not to go into too much tin-foil hat territory, there is a very interesting story to be told about the unprecedented "PR" sell-job that the White House coordinated to convince the American (and British) people that Saddam was a "grave and gathering" danger.

Many of you have probably read the paper written by Sam Gardiner, the retired colonel who taught at the National War College, the Air War College and the Naval Warfare College ( in PDF here) in which he claims to have found more than 50 instances of demonstrably false stories planted in the press in the run up to the war and charges the OCG and the Iraq Group as the culprits. This overview of the paper, originally published in The Edge brings up something quite interesting that ties it into the Plame affair:

Colonel Sam Gardiner (USAF, Ret.) has identified 50 false news stories created and leaked by a secretive White House propaganda apparatus. Bush administration officials are probably having second thoughts about their decision to play hardball with former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Joe Wilson is a contender. When you play hardball with Joe, you better be prepared to deal with some serious rebound.

After Wilson wrote a critically timed New York Times essay exposing as false George W. Bush's claim that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger, high officials in the White House contacted several Washington reporters and leaked the news that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent.

Wilson isn't waiting for George W. Bush to hand over the perp. In mid-October, the former ambassador began passing copies of an embarrassing internal report to reporters across the US. The-Edge has received copies of this document.

The 56-page investigation was assembled by USAF Colonel (Ret.) Sam Gardiner. "Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II" identifies more than 50 stories about the Iraq war that were faked by government propaganda artists in a covert campaign to "market" the military invasion of Iraq.

[...]

According to Gardiner, "It was not bad intelligence" that lead to the quagmire in Iraq, "It was an orchestrated effort [that] began before the war" that was designed to mislead the public and the world. Gardiner's research lead him to conclude that the US and Britain had conspired at the highest levels to plant "stories of strategic influence" that were known to be false.

The Times of London described the $200-million-plus US operation as a "meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress, and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein."

The multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign run out of the White House and Defense Department was, in Gardiner's final assessment "irresponsible in parts" and "might have been illegal."

"Washington and London did not trust the peoples of their democracies to come to the right decisions," Gardiner explains. Consequently, "Truth became a casualty. When truth is a casualty, democracy receives collateral damage." For the first time in US history, "we allowed strategic psychological operations to become part of public affairs... [W]hat has happened is that information warfare, strategic influence, [and] strategic psychological operations pushed their way into the important process of informing the peoples of our two democracies."

Joe Wilson apparently knew that this propaganda machine inside the White House had something to do with his wife's outing if he was handing out this inflammatory report by Sam Gardiner.

It could have been any one of the Iraq Group miscreants who leaked Plame's identity. I still think that one of them is very likely to have been Jim Wilkinson. He was, after all, privy to the highest levels of information. As Gardiner notes in the paper:

One of the things that struck Gardiner as revealing was the fact that, as Newsweek reported: "as soon as Lynch was in the air, [the Joint Operations Center] phoned Jim Wilkinson, the top civilian communications aide to CENTCOM Gen. Tommy Franks."

It struck Gardiner as inexplicable that the first call after Lynch's rescue would go to the Director of Strategic Communications, the White House's top representative on the ground.

As far as the honor and integrity of these fine people, we have only to look, again, at Jim Wilkinson, strutting around in a phony uniform (just like his boss) who told a member of the press in Iraq:

"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."

Presumably, he toned down his goosestep as he walked away.

Joe Wilson has a new book coming out in May. I can hardly wait.




digby 3/05/2004 12:47:00 PM |

 
Monster

CNN has Ann Coulter on Blitzer's show defending the president's ad camapign. Ann Coulter. The hideous, evil slag who just two weeks ago claimed that Max Cleland was not a war hero:

Cleland lost three limbs in an accident during a routine noncombat mission where he was about to drink beer with friends. He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up. He could have done that at Fort Dix. In fact, Cleland could have dropped a grenade on his foot as a National Guardsman ? or what Cleland sneeringly calls "weekend warriors." Luckily for Cleland's political career and current pomposity about Bush, he happened to do it while in Vietnam.

This is, naturally, a lie.

Ed Gillespie must be sorely desperate if the RNC has to resort to being serviced by the saber toothed harpy of West Palm Beach. Too bad Ailene Wuornos isn't available. She would have made a helluva campaign spokewoman, too.

This liar should never be allowed to comment on the air without the "journalist" host of the show confronting her about her years of outrageous lying and slanderous insults. (George W. Bush should also be asked whether he stands by her statements. That seems to be required for Democrats, anyway.)

Somebody ought to tell Wolfie a thing or two about the GOP spokespersons he has on his show.




digby 3/05/2004 10:37:00 AM |

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

 
King Mook Has Been Radicalized

Whether it's true, nobody yet knows. But, the fact that Howard Stern is telling his loyal radio audience that he was fired by Clear Channel because of his antipathy for Bush is good news for our side. And, it wouldn't be the first time Clear Channel did it.

From Salon:

From the moment last week when Clear Channel Communications suspended Howard Stern's syndicated morning show from the company's radio stations, denouncing it as "vulgar, offensive and insulting," speculation erupted that the move had more to do with Stern's politics than his raunchy shock-jock shtick.

Stern's loyal listeners, Clear Channel foes and many Bush administration critics immediately reached the same conclusion: The notorious jock was yanked off the air because he had recently begun trashing Bush, and Bush-friendly Clear Channel used the guise of "indecency" to shut him up. That the content of Stern's crude show hadn't suddenly changed, but his stance on Bush had, gave the theory more heft. That, plus his being pulled off the air in key electoral swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania.

This week, Stern himself went on the warpath, weaving in among his familiar monologues about breasts and porn actresses accusations that Texas-based Clear Channel -- whose Republican CEO, Lowry Mays, is extremely close to both George W. Bush and Bush's father -- canned him because he deviated from the company's pro-Bush line. "I gotta tell you something," Stern told his listeners. "There's a lot of people saying that the second that I started saying, 'I think we gotta get Bush out of the presidency,' that's when Clear Channel banged my ass outta here. Then I find out that Clear Channel is such a big contributor to President Bush, and in bed with the whole Bush administration, I'm going, 'Maybe that's why I was thrown off: because I don't like the way the country is leaning too much to the religious right.' And then, bam! Let's get rid of Stern. I used to think, 'Oh, I can't believe that.' But that's it! That's what's going on here! I know it! I know it!"

Stern's been relentless all week, detailing the close ties between Clear Channel executives and the Bush administration, and insisting that political speech, not indecency, got him in trouble with the San Antonio broadcasting giant. If he hadn't turned against Bush, Stern told his listeners, he'd still be heard on Clear Channel stations.

[...]

Walker, South Carolina Broadcasters Association's 2002 radio personality of the year, is suing Clear Channel for violating a state law that forbids employers from punishing employees who express politically unpopular beliefs in the workplace.

"On our show we talked about politics and current events," she tells Salon. "There were two conservative partners and me, the liberal, and that was fine. But as it became clear we were going to war, and I kept charging the war was not justified, I was reprimanded by [Clear Channel] management that I needed to tone that down. Basically I was told to shut up." She says she was fired on April 7, 2003.

Phoenix talk show host Charles Goyette says he was kicked off his afternoon drive-time program at Clear Channel's KFYI because of his sharp criticism of the war on Iraq. A self-described Goldwater Republican who was selected "man of the year" by the Republican Party in his local county in 1988, Goyette -- more recently named best talk show host of 2003 by the Phoenix New Times -- says his years with Clear Channel had been among his best in broadcasting. "The trouble started during the long march to war," he says.

While the rest of the station's talk lineup was in a pro-war "frenzy," Goyette was inviting administration critics like former weapons inspector Scott Ritter on his show, and discussing complaints from the intelligence community that the analysis on Iraq was being cooked to support the White House's pro-war agenda. This didn't go over well with his bosses, Goyette says: "I was the Baby Ruth bar in the punch bowl."

Soon, according to Goyette, he was having "toe-to-toe confrontations" with his local Clear Channel managers off the air about his opposition to the war. "One of my bosses said in a tone of exasperation, 'I feel like I'm managing the Dixie Chicks,'" Goyette recalls. "I didn't fit in with the Clear Channel corporate culture."

Writing in the February issue of American Conservative magazine, Goyette put it this way: "Why only a couple of months after my company picked up the option on my contract for another year in the fifth-largest city in the United States, did it suddenly decide to relegate me to radio Outer Darkness? The answer lies hidden in the oil-and-water incompatibility of these two seemingly disconnected phrases: 'Criticizing Bush' and 'Clear Channel.'"

[...]

At least one radio pro suggests Stern's sudden turn against Bush could prove costly to the administration during this election year. "Absolutely it should be of concern for the White House," says Michael Harrison, the publisher of Talkers magazine, a nonpartisan trade magazine serving talk radio. "Howard Stern will be an influential force for the public and for other talk show hosts during the election. Despite the shock jock thing, Stern has credibility. He's looked upon as an honest person.

I think he was probably dumped because Clear only had him on 6 stations and they could make their point without losing much money. But, it was a political decision whether it was designed to support the wing-nut agenda or because of Stern's "incorrect" opinion of Bush. It's really the same thing.

The only thing that matters is that Stern is pissed and he's connecting the dots for his audience. It's another weapon in our arsenal. This election isn't going to be polite anyway and as we know, radio is hugely influential. It's helpful to have have somebody with a large and loyal audience openly on our side for a change.





digby 3/03/2004 08:33:00 PM |

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

 
Back In The Tent

I'm relieved. Primaries are tough. It's never comfortable fighting among your philosophical brethren even when you know it's absolutely vital to give the candidates an exhibition season. This one's been a doozy. It's the most memorable primary since 1980, maybe even 1968, despite the early finish.

I'm glad to see that the candidates have been so gracious as the field has been winnowed these last few weeks. They have shown a lot of class by endorsing the winner and pledging their support for the party. In fact, I'm impressed by our bench, generally. It may be the best group of candidates I've seen in my lifetime in one presidential nominating race. It's nice to know that we'll have the necessary talent available to put immediately to work undoing the damage that Junior and the Retreads have caused in virtually every sector of the government . (The sheer volume of destruction they've managed to create in three short years is amazing.)

But then Democrats have often been called upon to clean up the messes that Republicans make of our foreign and economic policy. It seems to be our special burden. And, if we are lucky we are able to advance the cause of progress a bit along the way.

The Democratic Party is on fire right now, thanks to this primary and the perfidy of the opposition. If we can stick together for another eight months, the GOP is going to have to raise the dead to beat our turnout. (Don't think they won't try to do just that, if that's what it takes.)

Now the REAL campaign begins. Good.


digby 3/02/2004 09:55:00 PM |

Monday, March 01, 2004

 
Beat Me, Hurt Me


Schwarzenegger, Gray Davis to appear jointly on 'Tonight Show'


Is there anyone out there who believes that even one Republican would support Davis if the shoe were on the other foot? Jayzuz, will we ever learn?

Empowering Schwarzenneger like this is a recipe for disaster for California Democrats. As I wrote on American Street, he is hugely popular and is going to put every bit of his popularity on the line for George W. Bush. I'm not saying it will work, but he can guarantee that Kerry is going to have to spend money and time in super expensive California, which he should not have to do.

Boxer, Feinstein and even John Burton are giving Arnold big slurpy BJ's and lending support to these two propositions as if they were sacred texts from Mt Sinai. It's ridiculous. These propositions are band aids at best and simple GOP propaganda at worst. They are not going to solve the budget crisis but they are certainly going to cement the dominance of the Cult of Arnold in the electorate.

The Republicans always fight, even when they don't have to. We, on the other hand, say "thank you sir, may I have another." We have given up the moral high ground on the undemocratic recall travesty and are actively empowering the cyborg they used to seize power. It's pathetic.



digby 3/01/2004 05:48:00 PM |

Sunday, February 29, 2004

 
Schmuckrakers

Am I the only one who thought that Elizabeth Bumiller made an ass of herself this morning in the NY debate? I know they probably told her to try to keep it moving, but she certainly seemed to relish interrupting with what were usually non-sequitors. She was inappropriately hostile, as if she were upset that the candidates were not giving her proper respect. It was odd, I thought. She should keep her day job as a Heather because she certainly isn't ready for day time.

Not that the others were great. Dan Rather looked as if he needed a double shot of espresso. I don't know what's happened to that guy. At one time he was right up there with Woodward and Bernstein in exposing a corrupt president. He personally turned poor Ron Zeigler into a walking rolaids commercial.

Oh wait. He 's still just like Woodward and Bernstein. Just like them he's part of a fat and flaccid establishment press that is paid to write historical fiction about Junior's bravery and go on television and profess to be willing to sign on to whatever the president wants him to do. I forgot.



digby 2/29/2004 02:17:00 PM |