Hullabaloo

Monday, May 17, 2004

 
House of Bush, House of Borgia

Fred Kaplan in Slate says:

The White House is about to get hit by the biggest tsunami since the Iran-Contra affair, maybe since Watergate. President George W. Bush is trapped inside the compound, immobilized by his own stay-the-course campaign strategy. Can he escape the massive tidal waves? Maybe. But at this point, it's not clear how.

[...]

Seymour Hersh seems to be on his hottest roll as an investigative reporter in 30 years, and the editors of every major U.S. daily newspaper aren't going to stand for it. "We're having our lunch handed to us by a weekly magazine!" one can imagine them shouting in their morning meetings. Scoops and counterscoops will be the order of the day. [this is key. ed]

All of these hound-hunts will be fueled by the extraordinary levels of internecine feuding that have marked this administration for years. Until recently, Rumsfeld, with White House assistance, has quelled dissenters, but the already-rattling lid is almost certain to blow off soon. As has been noted, Secretary of State Colin Powell, tiring of his good-soldier routine, is attacking his adversaries in the White House and Pentagon with eyebrow-raising openness. Hersh's story states that Rumsfeld's secret operation stemmed from his "longstanding desire to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations from the CIA." Hersh's sources—many of them identified as intelligence officials—seem to be spilling, in part, to wrest back control. Uniformed military officers, who have long disliked Rumsfeld and his E-Ring crew for a lot of reasons, are also speaking out. Hersh and Newsweek both report that senior officers from the Judge Advocate General's Corps went berserk when they found out about Rumsfeld's secret operation, to the point of taking their concerns to the New York Bar Association's committee on international human rights.

The knives are out all over Washington—lots of knives, unsheathed and sharpened in many different backroom parlors, for many motives and many throats. In short, this story is not going away.

Read the whole thing. It features a particularly nice, concise chain of events.

E-mail it to your friends. It makes a lovely graduation gift.



digby 5/17/2004 07:22:00 PM |

 
The War Of The Worlds

The Political Animal brings up a point that I agree should get a full airing before we go any further in our discussion of America's behavior in the GWOT:

Gonzales concluded in stark terms: "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

This strikes me as an issue that everyone — pro-war and anti-war alike — ought to take a firm stand on: should the Geneva Conventions apply to prisoners captured in the war on terror or not?

Gonzales' reasoning is appealing but misguided, I think. After all, every generation believes at one time or another that the enemies they face are so savage, so fundamentally different from any that have come before that old rules of conduct no longer apply. Every generation also turns out to be wrong. The reality is that the Taliban is not more dangerous than the Cold War Soviets, who in turn were not more dangerous than the Nazis. If we were willing to treat prisoners decently in those conflicts, why not now?

The ability to "quickly obtain information" from captured prisoners has been a critical part of every war, but we nonetheless agreed half a century ago to place this under strict limits. This was not because we felt the wars of that era were unimportant, or because we deluded ourselves into believing that our enemies would always follow suit, but because we wanted to set a standard of simple human decency for ourselves and others.

It was also viewed as counter-productive to our own troops when they, inevitably, get captured. It helps to be able to say 'we don't do this and you'd better not do this either." Just ask members of the military these days how happy they are with the prospect of throwing out the Geneva Conventions.

The larger issue is what's important, though. The 9/11 attacks were extremely dramatic and horrifying spectacles. That was, of course, the point. But, Islamic terrorism, per se, is not a threat to the nation on the scale of WWII or the Cold War. Indeed, its greatest threat to our survival is the extent to which we allow our fear to blind us to the possibility of creeping totalitarianism from within. It does not threaten our sovereignty or our way of life as those earlier wars did, despite our very understandable fear of further attacks.

I have thought since the beginning that stoking our bloodlust, while emotionally satisfying, was exactly the wrong thing to do. I thought that the correct response to 9/11 was to observe the appropriate period of mourning for the victims and then quietly, calmly and systematically set about working the problem from a number of different angles --- particularly using the unprecedented outpouring of international support --- to mitigate the threat and secure our own country. It seemed to me that the most powerful statement would be to quickly and cleanly unseat the Taliban and then be menacingly mysterious about what else we were doing behind the scenes. We should have openly and obviously embraced international institutions and foreign countries and touted their cooperation as a way of marginalizing Islamic fundamentalism as much as possible to keep terrorists wondering who was friend or foe.

We instead reared up on our hind legs like a wounded animal and began thrashing about, enraged and unhinged, stoking bloodlust and fear. Rather then dealing with the problem with seriousness of purpose we responded with vomitous bromides about our superior morality and behaved as if 9/11 was s unique threat to our survival instead of an asymmetrical challenge --- the asymmetry of which accrued to our benefit, not theirs. If we had resisted the impulse to demonstrate our power like a Moscow May Day Parade circa 1965 and engaged the world against what should have been conceived as a common enemy, we might have been able to deal with this threat over time without catastrophic results.

But we did exactly the wrong thing. We inflamed the situation with the "bring it on" and "you're with us or agin' us" macho rhetoric and, stunningly, even went so far as to invade an uninvolved Arab country. The president told our troops they were fighting for the survival of the nation in Iraq and encouraged them to believe they were exacting revenge for the acts of 9/11 even though it wasn't true.

We continue to lose hearts and minds everywhere. As Josh Marshall's Iraq correspondent reports today:

Also it is no secret that ON THE STREET the US Army was and remains openly kicking Iraqi asses whenever and wherever they want to.

About the Army - Man, it hurts my heart to write this about an institution I dearly love but this army is completely dysfunctional, angry and is near losing its honor. We are back to the Army of 1968. I knew we were finished when I had a soldier point his Squad Automatic Weapons at me and my bodyguard detail for driving down the street when he decided he would cross the street in the middle of rush hour traffic (which was moving at about 70 MPH) ... He made it clear to any and all that he was preparing to shoot drivers who did not stop for his jaunt because speeding cars are "threats."

I also once had a soldier from a squad of Florida National Guard reservists raise weapons and kick the door panel of a clearly marked CPA security vehicle (big American flag in the windshield of a $150,000 armored Land Cruiser) because they wanted us to back away from them so they could change a tire ... as far as they were concerned WE (non-soldiers) were equally the enemy as any Iraqi.

Unlike the wars of the past 20 years where the Army encouraged (needed) soldiers, NGOs, allies and civil organizations to work together to resolve matters and return to normal society, the US Forces only trust themselves here and that means they set their own limits and tolerances. Abu Ghuraib are good examples of that limit. I told a Journalist the other day that these kids here are being told that they are chasing Al Qaeda in the War on Terrorism so they think everyone at Abu Ghuraib had something to do with 9/11. So they were encouraged to make them pay. These kids thought they were going to be honored for hunting terrorists.

From the beginning we have behaved as if this was a threat so unprecedented that we didn't have to observe any previous notions of civilized behavior --- as if it were War of The Worlds and aliens were trying to colonize the planet rather than a bunch of clever criminals armed with box-cutters and a suicidal excuse to kill in the name of God. We invaded Iraq with too few trained troops, no help or input from the experts in nation building and peacekeeping and now we find ourselves in the worst possible situation. We are seen as unsympathetic, arrogant, violent and inept. This should be expected when the government and the likes of Rush Limbaugh (who is piped in every day on Armed Forces Radio) encourage our military to act like barbarians by lying to them and the public about the nature of the threat and the identity of the enemy.

We may not be facing aliens from a foreign planet, but we have now sown the seeds of an anti-American backlash that encompasses this planet and may well last for generations. And America is demonstrably weaker in the world than we were before this cock-up. For no good reason, we have boldly demonstrated for all to see that our intelligence operations are virtually useless and that we don't even have enough troops to invade and occupy a third rate dictatorship. I know I feel safer knowing that. And I have no doubt that the rest of the world has made a note of it too.

I have long said that these neocon Bushies have always been wrong about everything. But, they have never been as wrong as this.

Nobody should be surprised. They advertised their intentions quite openly. In their Pax Americana Manifesto, Rebuilding America's Defenses they clearly state that it would probably take a catastrophe on the scale of Pearl Harbor to rally thecountry to their classic comic Imperial wet dream. Despite the fact that they do not understand the concept of terrorism in the least, they nonetheless realized that 9/11 would work very well to advance their plans. All of the breast beating and sabre rattling was ultimately in service of their starry-eyed ivory tower vision of The New American Cakewalk and the triumphant erasure of the asterisk that sits next to George W. Bush's name in the history books.

Since making that first fundamental error, they made every single mistake it is possible to make, starting with pissing off the entire world and ending with Abu Ghraib. Their dream is dead, but we will be paying the price for their arrogance and vanity for decades to come.

If anyone but the airheaded George W. Bush and his terminally incompetent neocon/Team B cabal had been in office, the idea that the threat of Islamic fundamentalism was so unprecedented that it meant America must discard all of its values and morals would have been laughed out of the oval office for the absurdity it is. Sadly for America and the world, bin Laden got lucky.




digby 5/17/2004 01:29:00 PM |

Sunday, May 16, 2004

 
Ya Think?

And in other news, the sun came up this morning:

Republicans have adopted a scorched-earth strategy toward Democrats who challenge the wisdom of the way the war in Iraq is being conducted. Such critics, GOP officials say, are not merely misguided but are craven cut-and-runners who help the enemy and put politics ahead of U.S. troops' safety.

Democrats say the Republicans are twisting facts and trying to stifle debate through intimidation. Not so, say the Republicans, who insist they are not questioning Democrats' patriotism, only their judgment and resolve. If accuracy and nuance sometimes fall victim to all this rhetoric, well, there's a war on, folks.

The ruckus began May 6, when Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) -- a hawkish, longtime defender of the Pentagon -- told reporters he believed the war in Iraq could not be won without sending in significantly more troops and equipment, which he advocated. "Our failure to surge in terms of troop level and resources needed to prevail in this war" has resulted in "what appear to be unattainable goals in our current path," Murtha said at the news conference, hosted by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

House Republicans responded within minutes. "This morning, in a calculated and craven political stunt, the national Democrat Party declared its surrender in the war on terror," said Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). "Out of sheer, brazen partisanship," House Democrats have "undermined our troops." Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Tex.) said Democrats "are basically giving aid and comfort to our enemies."

Reporters pointed out that Murtha has consistently said the war was unsustainable only under the current policies, and that he urged massive troop buildups as a remedy. DeLay was unmoved. "If you don't give solutions," he said, "that is saying, 'Cut and run.' "

The focus turned to presidential politics Monday, when Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie accused Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) of using the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq -- and a mass e-mail calling for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's resignation -- as a fundraising vehicle.

Kerry campaign spokesmen said the online invitation to donate was a link in virtually all campaign e-mails and similar to one on the "national security" page on President Bush's campaign Web site.

On Wednesday, Bush-Cheney campaign chairman Marc Racicot said Kerry had suggested all U.S. troops in Iraq are "somehow universally responsible" for the Abu Ghraib prisoner mistreatment. Kerry had said essentially the opposite. The reported abuse, Kerry had said, "is not the behavior of 99.9 percent of our troops."

House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), noting that DeLay sharply criticized the Clinton administration's military intervention in Kosovo, said Friday: "The hypocritical attacks on legitimate calls for an inquiry [into the prison abuses] and thoughtful critiques of the administration's Iraq policy . . . represent a purely political calculation designed to silence debate and undercut Democrats." Pelosi, picking up the theme, said Republicans "will not silence us with these personal attacks."

Joe Biden said this morning on Meat The Press that we have to "heal Red 'n Blue, man" and everybody's begging Kerry to put McCain on the ticket and golly gosh, can't we all get along?

All I can say is good luck.

There is only one way to heal red 'n blue and that is to so thoroughly repudiate the Republican party at the polls that they will be forced to purge assholes like DeLay from their leadership and start putting their country before their party. Then we can talk. Unless that happens, it's brass knuckles political warfare because when you give these guys an inch they always take a thousand miles and move the destination even farther to the right.

We have to hold the line.

And while I don't think it would be a bad idea to put a Republican or two in the cabinet and to try to reach out to the congress (no matter which party holds the leadership) we'd also better have eyes in the back of our heads because they will slip in the shiv the first chance they get.

We've been down this road before. In the 90's the "third way" experiment was designed to mitigate the polarization of the left and right, both in politics and policy. On a policy level there was some limited success. But it was a political disaster because of the very same scorched earth tactics employed by the noxious Tom DeLay and his Godfather Newt Gingrich. You cannot compromise with people like that. I sincerely hope that we do not have to relearn that lesson.




digby 5/16/2004 10:33:00 AM |

Saturday, May 15, 2004

 
Black Ops

Seymour Hersh's latest reveals the existence of a black operation put into high gear after 9/11 that was stupidly pushed into Iraq due to frustration and impatience at the Pentagon.

First, let me say that I am not all that surprised that such a program existed nor that it was given greater ability to operate independently after 9/11. As Hersh points out, these clandestine operations had been used during the cold war and I certainly assumed that dealing with the assymetrical threat of terrorism would probably require at least some element of high risk spook style activity. It would be naive to think it wouldn't. In the hands of these unbelievable incompetents in the Bush administration it naturally turned into a complete disasater.

Moral questions aside (and there are many), as the article details, the problem is that if you use these techniques in anything but the most secret and rarest of ways and it comes into the hands of regular people instead of highly trained specialists using real intelligence, then it is not only ineffective in obtaining useful information, it is dramatically counterproductive in terms of compromising long term policy goals.

The CIA sources, perhaps covering their asses, tell Hersh that even they backed off of this stuff when it came to using it against regular people in Iraq. Some in the Pentagon apparently maintain that they had been getting good intelligence on the insurgency using these harsh measures until the "hillbillys" got involved and took pictures, which I find hard to believe. If anything the insurgency got stronger over the period they were sweeping innocent people off the streets and then torturing them in prisons so it doesn't track that they were really getting anywhere. In fact, it looks as if it may have contributed to the US military's problems. If they mean that they managed to get Saddam, I hardly think that was such a big coup. After all, he had terrorized the population for over 30 years so it's not unlikely that someone would have dropped a dime on him eventually.

The fact is that these torture techniques in anybody's hands are a terrible way to get information. People will say anything under torture. I suspect that the "historical information" that General Ripper is so proud of obtaining in Gitmo is probably bullshit. Certainly, after being down there for more than 2 years those prisoners don't know shit today. Believing their own hype about Gitmo, these people inexorably came to believe that if they just inflicted a little more pain and humiliation in Iraq they'd get the answers they wanted. Meanwhile, bin Laden is still at large and Iraq has blown up into a nightmare.

So, it is a case of macho overstepping and making things worse than they already were, much as the march to Iraq itself was a case of macho overstepping and making things worse rather than better. Evidently, the events of 9/11 released some testosterone rush in the pinched, unfulfilled systems of the ivory tower neocons and they lost the ability to reason and plan.

Hersh's article pretty much confirms that the person who gave the orders to take off the gloves in Abu Ghraib is Don Rumsfeld gofer, Steven Cambone, the man most uniquely unqualified to hold his office since well...President Bush. Of course, Cambone being the ultimate micromanager's clerk means that Rummy himself was well aware of everything that went on and approved it.

It's becoming more and more obvious that the White House was intimately involved in these issues, regardless of their plausible deniability. As I point out in my post below, one of the main reasons they wanted to create the "unlawful combatant" designation was to allow unfettered interrogations. The White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, led that argument. The Newsweek article shows that Cheney and Rumsfeld were deeply involved in the Padilla and Hamdi cases and argued forcefully that they (and any other American they deemed a threat) should be considered unlawful combatants, without the protections of even the constitution, much less the Geneva Conventions. They believe in harsh measures without regard to human rights. They have both shown a remarkable propensity to overlook the long term strategic damage of any given decision in favor of some short term emotional satisfaction or political gain.

They knew.


digby 5/15/2004 01:36:00 PM |

 
He Never Learns

In a bid to get American bloodlust refocused, Crusader Codpiece lied yesterday again about terrorist ties to Iraq prior to the war. Apparently unhappy that the torture at Abu Ghraib has been temporarily halted, the president wants to re-inflame and confuse members of the military and the American public so that they will continue to support the idea that Iraq had something to do with the events of 9/11 and therefore believe killing and torturing Iraqis is an act of revenge (while he spouts sophomoric bromides about peace and freedom.)

President Bush on Friday blamed al Qaeda supporter Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for beheading American Nicholas Berg and cited him as an example of Saddam Hussein "terrorist ties" before the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Bush's revival of accusations linking Saddam to terrorism comes as the president faces growing doubts among Americans over his Iraq policy.

At a fund-raising lunch in Bridgeton, Missouri, Bush said Zarqawi was an example of the threat posed by the ousted Iraqi leader. "We knew he (Saddam) had terrorist ties. The person responsible for the Berg death, Zarqawi, was in and out of Baghdad prior to our arrival, for example," Bush said.

It's obvious that Bush doesn't give a shit about this country. At every step of the way he has made this country less safe by his words and actions and he continues to do it without even a second thought. Every time he utters one of these proven lies he prolongs this madness and puts our lives in greater danger.

He is showing unprecedented gall in this case,however, because it has been shown that the only reason he didn't kill Zarqawi when he was holed up in Kurd territory before the war was because it was his only evidence of terrorism in Iraq (even though outside Saddam's control) and his death would have impeded his blind determination to invade at all costs.

To use Berg's murder as an excuse to lie about this once again is obscene.





digby 5/15/2004 09:50:00 AM |

Friday, May 14, 2004

 
And He Wept With Happiness

Kate "yes, I'm really this desperate" O'Beirne defends her Big Boy:

Rush is one of those rare acquaintances who can be defended against an assault challenging his character without ever knowing the "facts."

Yes. That's what it says. Even the quotes.

We trust his good judgment, his unerring decency, and his fierce loyalty to the country he loves and to the courageous young Americans who defend her.

That's very special. But, you might want to keep an eye on him when he's around old ladies or a medicine cabinet. Word to the wise.

100=2.5 to 3 days of the little blues[oxycontin] You know how this stuff works...the more you get used to the more it takes. But, I will try and cut down to help out. But remember, this is only for a little over two more weeks. Just two weeks....I understand your challenge and will do all I can to help. But I kind of want to go out with a bang if you get my drift. Hee hee hee.

Yes. He certainly has excellent judgment.

As for his decency, I guess old Kate shares his excitement about "babes and torture" which isn't altogether surprising.

Link via Media Matters




digby 5/14/2004 08:29:00 PM |

 
Taking Off The Gloves

Matt Yglesias points us to law professor Eric Muller's post about the possibility that the Solicitor general lied to the Supreme Court. Matt says:

The subject is Clement's contention in oral arguments on the Padilla and Hamdi cases that the US government doesn't engage in even "mild torture" to try and secure information from detainees. This is going to wind up hinging on whether or not various "stress and duress" interrogation techniques count as torture -- certainly this stuff sounds a lot like torture to me.

I agree that this particular argument is going to rest on whether these techniques are considered "mild torture" but it should be noted that both General Pace and Wolfowitz of Arabia agreed yesterday that these acts are inhumane and they would consider them violations of the Geneva Convention if used against US troops. (Civilians are accorded even greater protections.)

As to whether the solicitor general's office knew about it (however it is defined) it would certainly appear that Ted Olson was brainstorming in the White House about the case, right along with Cheney and Rummy:

The president's men were divided. For Dick Cheney and his ally, Donald Rumsfeld, the answer was simple: the accused men [the Lakawanna Six] should be locked up indefinitely as "enemy combatants," and thrown into a military brig with no right to trial or even to see a lawyer... "They are the enemy, and they're right here in the country," Cheney argued, according to a participant. But others were hesitant to take the extraordinary step of stripping the men of their rights, especially because there was no evidence that they had actually carried out any terrorist acts...Cheney and Rumsfeld argued that in time of war there are few limits on what a president can do to protect the country. "There have been some very intense disagreements," says a senior law-enforcement official. "It has been a hard-fought war."

[...]

But as the months wore on, Justice lawyers became increasingly uneasy about holding him [Padilla] indefinitely without counsel. Solicitor General Ted Olson warned that the tough stand would probably be rejected by the courts. Administration lawyers went so far as to predict which Supreme Court justices would ultimately side for and against them.

But the White House, backed strongly by Cheney, refused to budge. Instead, NEWSWEEK has learned, officials privately debated whether to name more Americans as enemy combatants including a truck driver from Ohio and a group of men from Portland, Ore.

Did the administration lie to the Court? Ted Olson almost certainly understood the mindset of the administration as it dealt with these "unlawful combatants" which is characterized by a total willingness to throw aside the rule of law. (Cheney is quite obviously out of his mind on these issues. Remember the smallpox freak-out?) Whether the lawyer Paul Clement was aware that the White House had taken a no hold barred approach to the treatment of prisoners is unknown. In any case, as Matt says, if that argument is ever broached it will hinge on the question of whether these admitted techniques, like holding someone under water until they think they're drowning, can be called torture. In the Bizarro World in which we now live, it's entirely possible that Scalia and gang will find it perfectly acceptable.

But, there is another little problem with the legal situation pertaining to prisoner treatment. Rumsfeld effectively locked out the JAG office in making all these decisions and the military lawyers have been complaining about it for months:

A group of senior military lawyers were so concerned about changes in the rules designed to safeguard prisoners during interrogation that they sought help outside the Defense Department, according to a New York lawyer who headed a recent study of how prisoners have been treated in the war on terrorism.

The military lawyers were part of the Army Judge Advocate General's office, which in the past has played a role in ensuring that interrogators did not violate prisoners' rights.

"They were extremely upset. They said they were being shut out of the process, and that the civilian political lawyers, not the military lawyers, were writing these new rules of engagement," said Scott Horton, who was chairman of the New York City Bar Assn. committee that filed a report this month on the interrogation of detainees by the U.S.

[...]

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the rules had been examined and approved by lawyers for the administration.

On Tuesday, Stephen A. Cambone, undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, said Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of Defense for policy, "issued any number of statements and directives to the effect that detainees in Iraq, civilian or military, were to be treated under the provisions of the Geneva Convention."

[...]

Horton said the military lawyers told him that Feith pressed for looser interrogation rules and won approval for them from the administration's civilian lawyers earlier in the U.S. war on terrorism.

Which lawyers? They don't refer to these decisions as coming from the Justice Department but rather more broadly from "the administration's civilian political lawyers."

White House counsel Alberto Gonzales openly defends the White House's decision to call the Guantanamo prisoners "enemy combatants" largely because the Geneva Convention would limit their ability to interrogate the prisoners.(It's comforting to know that they promise to operate in guantanamo in the "spirit" of the Geneva Conventions, though. Trust Us)

In a famous early skirmish in the Bush administration's ongoing civil war, Gonzales sent around a memo trying to persuade the national security council to reject Colin Powell's request to give the Guantanamo prisoners POW status. (Condi later said it was just a draft...)

It's possible these military lawyers are referring to Justice, but it's just as likely that the rules were debated and decided right in the White House. History suggests that Cheney and Rumsfeld are always in favor of the harshest possible treatment. They gave in only when Ashcroft argued to protect his own turf (and profile) in the US. (That's what passes for compromise in the Bush administration.)

In other words, it is likely that the rules for the treatment of prisoners in Iraq, just as they were in Guantanamo, were not created in some obscure Justice Department or CIA office as is stated in this NY Times article today. The history of this issue leads to the White House Counsel's office and the Office of the Vice President.

As I wrote earlier, they were frantic to get intelligence on the whereabouts of the apparently vaporized WMD. They believed from the beginning that this was such a "different kind of war" that they needn't adhere to the rule of law or war.

Somebody needs to ask which civilian "political" lawyers were making the interrogation rules in the War On Terrorism.



digby 5/14/2004 06:27:00 PM |

 
There Isn't A Big Enough Tent In The World

Ok. Somebody needs to find out what Rove has on Zell. He has now become a serious danger to the Democratic Party because he is either crumbling under the stress of the blackmail or he has gone completely insane

"...I worry that the HWA - the Hand-Wringers of America - will add to their membership and continue to bash our country ad nauseam. And in doing so, hand over more innocent Americans to the enemy on a silver platter.

“So I stand with Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, who stated that he’s “more outraged by the outrage” than by the treatment of those prisoners. More outraged by the outrage. It’s a good way of putting it. That’s exactly how this Senator from Georgia feels.”

Surely, he is not privy to any private Democratic meetings, is he? They don't speak in front of him in the elevator or anything, do they? Might as well hand over their computer passwords to the Republicans.

Oh wait...



digby 5/14/2004 12:50:00 PM |

 
The Big Swinging Dems


Yo Wolfie, you wanna piece 'o me?

Senate Democrats lit into the Bush administration's Iraq policies yesterday, using an uncharacteristically contentious hearing on additional war spending to attack the Pentagon's number two official in personal and bitter terms.

[...]

Warner seemed briefly to lose control of the committee yesterday, faced down by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) over whether Wolfowitz could be questioned on broad matters of Iraq policy or only the narrower issue of additional spending for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which together are costing about $4.5 billion a month.

When Warner admonished him to keep his questions to the budget issue, Kennedy erupted. "I've been on this committee for 24 years, I've been in the Senate 42 years, and I have never been denied the opportunity to question any person that's come before a committee, on what I wanted to ask," he said. "And I resent it and reject it on a matter of national importance."

Warner persisted, provoking a formal challenge from Kennedy. "Well, Mr. Chairman, then you're going to have to rule me out of order, and I'm going to ask for a roll call of whether the committee is going to rule me out of order," he snapped.

At that point, Warner backed down and said Wolfowitz's preliminary remarks had invited such broad questioning. "You have opened it up in your opening statement," Warner told Wolfowitz.

Hooah!

Then they let the dogs out...

After listening to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz testify before the normally stately Armed Services Committee for several hours, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said, "What I've heard from you is dissembling and avoidance of answers, lack of knowledge, pleading process -- legal process."

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) then hit Wolfowitz, who is seen as a major architect of the Bush administration's approach to Iraq, with a virtual indictment. "You come before this committee . . . having seriously undermined your credibility over a number of years now," she said. "When it comes to making estimates or predictions about what will occur in Iraq, and what will be the costs in lives and money, . . . you have made numerous predictions, time and time again, that have turned out to be untrue and were based on faulty assumptions."
[...]


Wolfowitz ... told her that in disagreeing with Shinseki's estimates on the troop requirements for postwar Iraq, he was siding with another senior Army general closer to the action -- Gen. Tommy R. Franks, then chief of the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for Iraq and the Middle East.

(This is known in Washington as the "Tommy made me do it defense.")

Wolfowitz did respond directly to Reed's attack, which followed a heated and confusing exchange on whether U.S. commanders permitted military interrogators to violate the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of military prisoners of war and civilian detainees.

"I'm not dissembling," he said. He tried to weave his way though the hypothetical questions Reed had posed about the rules of engagement for interrogations in Iraq, saying he had not been told that senior commanders in Iraq had approved questioning techniques that violate the Geneva accords.

Cutting him off, Reed said, "Well, I would suggest, Mr. Secretary, that you're not doing your job."

Damn sissies.







digby 5/14/2004 12:19:00 PM |

 
Curiouser and Curiouser

When Nicholas Berg took an Oklahoma bus to a remote college campus a few years ago, the American recently beheaded by terrorists allowed a man with terrorist connections to use his laptop computer, according to his father.

Michael Berg said the FBI investigated the matter more than a year ago. He stressed that his son was in no way connected to the terrorists who captured and killed him.

Government sources told CNN that the encounter involved an acquaintance of Zacarias Moussaoui -- the only person publicly charged in the United States in connection with the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

According to Berg, his son was taking a course a few years ago at a remote campus of the University of Oklahoma near an airport. He described how on one particular day, his son met "some terrorist people -- who no one knew were terrorists at the time."

At one point during the bus ride, Berg said, the man sitting next to his son asked if he could use Nick's laptop computer.

'It turned out this guy was a terrorist and that he, you know, used my son's e-mail, amongst many other people's e-mail who he did the same thing to,' Berg said.

Government sources said Berg gave the man his password, which was later used by Moussaoui, the sources said.

"Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions." --Jerry Falwell, 1981



digby 5/14/2004 11:52:00 AM |

 
Memo To Rumsfeld

TBogg has some excellent advice for how to deal with this little sticky wicket you've gotten yourself into:

Henceforth, being strapped to a board and submerged until you think you are drowning will be referred to as Hydro-Therapy. Being forced to simulate sex with fellow prisoners is now called Role Playing. Being made to form a naked pyramid is Job Training for the Upcoming Baghdad Cirque du Soleil. If you are stripped naked and led around on a leash you Living A Day In the Life Of Former Louisiana Congressman Bob Livingston. And if you are actually forced to have sex with a slack-jawed, clueless goober, well, now you know how Karen Santorum feels....

Are there any problems that cannot be solved with a little creative message massage? Heavens, no.




digby 5/14/2004 11:34:00 AM |

 
Daddy Dearest

Not that I personally give a damn, nor would I blame the daughters for begging their embarrassing parents to stay away, but I do think this catch by Avedon Carol is too good not to snipe about.

After saying he wouldn't attend his daughters' college graduations because he didn't want people to have to go through security, Junior will be doing at least 3 commencement speeches.

This is a Mean Girl Special if I've ever seen one. Junior goes around every day lecturing people lecturing people about how they should love their children. MoDo, Tina Brown, Lisa DePaulo, Wolf, Shep, Kit --- your table is ready.





digby 5/14/2004 11:17:00 AM |

Thursday, May 13, 2004

 
That's The Way Your Hard Core Terrorist Works

I can no longer sit back and allow terrorist infiltration, terrorist indoctrination, terrorist subversion, and the international terrorist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

General Geoffrey D. Ripper took Guantnamo Rules to Iraq for Handling of Prisoners:

According to information from a classified interview with the senior military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib prison, General Miller's recommendations prompted a shift in the interrogation and detention procedures there. Military intelligence officers were given greater authority in the prison, and military police guards were asked to help gather information about the detainees.

Whether those changes contributed to the abuse of prisoners that grew horrifically more serious last fall is now at the center of the widening prison scandal.


[...]


By the time he took over in Cuba, most of the detainees there had been in custody for nearly a year. Still, General Miller was credited by Pentagon officials with using interrogations there to produce a valuable historical account of the workings and financing of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, among other subjects, officials said.

His hard-charging attitude has also raised questions that go beyond interrogation methods. He was the official most responsible for pressing a case last year against a Muslim chaplain at the base, Capt. James J. Yee, that was initially billed as a major episode of espionage. In March, the military announced that it would drop all charges.

Last, and possibly most important, I want all privately owned computers to be immediately impounded. They might be used to issue instructions to saboteurs. As I have previously arranged, Air Police will have lists of all owners and I want every single one of them collected without exception.

Women... women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, but I do deny them my essence

An Army general on Wednesday dismissed the convictions in the case of a Muslim chaplain who was initially suspected of espionage at the Guantánamo Bay prison for terror suspects but was found guilty only on lesser charges of adultery and downloading pornography.

The appellate decision by Gen. James Hill, the Army Southern Command chief who oversees military operations at Guantánamo, wiped the slate clean for Capt. James J. Yee, who ministered for 10 months to foreign terrorism detainees at the United States naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

"This means there will be no official mention of it in his military record," General Hill said.

The decision ended what one of Captain Yee's lawyers, Eugene Fidell, called a "hoax" case. Mr. Fidell said that Captain Yee was "obviously very pleased" at the decision but that the military owed him an apology.

Captain Yee, 36, was found guilty in March of noncriminal charges of committing adultery and storing pornography on a government computer. He was arrested on suspicion of espionage in September and faced six criminal charges that included mishandling classified information at Guantánamo. Court documents accused him of spying, mutiny, sedition and aiding the enemy, and he was held in solitary confinement in a military brig for 76 days.

The military dropped all the criminal charges in March, citing national security concerns that would arise from the release of evidence against him.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller of the Army, who at the time commanded the task force running the Guantánamo prison, then found Captain Yee, who is married, guilty of administrative charges of committing adultery and storing pornography on a government computer, and issued a written reprimand.

Captain Yee appealed the decision.

God willing, we will prevail in peace and freedom from fear and in true health through the purity and essence of our natural fluids. God bless you all.



digby 5/13/2004 10:38:00 PM |

 
Another Normal American

*NOTE: This editorial was delivered by [news anchor] David Wittman after 19 Action News aired a very much edited version of the video showing American Nick Berg being held by his Iraqi captors before he was beheaded.

Well, if there is anything that's going to make us forget those photos from the prison, you just saw it. But it wasn't just what we saw, it's what we heard.

These cowards have the gall to read a political statement before killing one of our kids. The only word I understood: Islam.

As they brought out the knife, they screamed 'Allahu Akbar' -- God is great.

That's not our God.

There has been a lot written and said about our failure to understand the culture of the Middle East. We understand barbarism. We understand evil. We understand a perverted belief system that celebrates death. We can understand an enemy that quite frankly wants to kill us all.

Our God may forgive them. Just now, tonight, I can't. Can you?"

Notice it's no longer "terrorists," or even "Iraqis." It's the "Middle east" and "Islam." A pretty big chunk of the planet is now our enemy.

Then again, it is May Sweeps.


Thanks to Tim Carroll for the link.





digby 5/13/2004 07:25:00 PM |

 
Good News

Election Panel Won't Impose New Spending Limits on Groups

We need al the help we can get. Bush is spending like a sailor and there's always more where that came from. He's a very sound investment for people with money.





digby 5/13/2004 05:55:00 PM |

 
Sowing The Seeds Of Our own Demise

I honestly don't know what to say about this asshole. Media Matters is now transcribing the vitamin hustler Michael Savage's show. Read the whole thing an e-mail it to your relatives who think that the liberal media is biased and that you are exaggerating the level of hate and violence that comes from right wing radio.

Savage is heard by six million people every day:

Savage on what should be done to the Iraqi prisoners:

And I think there should be no mercy shown to these sub-humans. I believe that a thousand of them should be killed tomorrow. I think a thousand of them held in the Iraqi prison should be given 24 hour -- a trial and executed. I think they need to be shown that we are not going to roll over to them. It won't happen. It won't happen because of the CBS Communists. It won't happen because of the CNN traitors. I won't happen because of the MSNBC empty heads. And we the people are the ones who are going to suffer today. ...

Instead of putting joysticks, I would have liked to have seen dynamite put in their orifices and they should be dropped from airplanes. How's that? You like that one? Go call somebody that you want to report me to, see if I care. They should put dynamite in their behinds and drop them from 35,000 feet, the whole pack of scum out of that jail. Thank you CBS. Thank you New Yorker. Thank you Carl Levin. Thank you Ted Kennedy. Thank you Hillary Clinton. I'm sure that Mr. Berg's parents appreciate what you've done for them. I'll be right back.

Six. Million. Listeners. A. Day.


Update:

Via Atrios, I see that Yglesias has posted about one of those six million, apparently, a writer for tech central station:

Many Americans simply wish the Arabs would go away; others wish to blow them away -- and wish to blow them away not because they see this step as inevitable and tragic, but because they rejoice at the prospect of getting them back for what they have done to us. Most normal Americans today just don't care any more about the Arabs and their welfare, or about their humiliation, or about their historical grievances, simply because all the images that come to us from their world horrify and appall us, including the disturbing images of Americans doing things that no normal American would ever dream of doing to other people back at home, if only because they would never be given the opportunity.

This is how most normal Americans now feel, but they dare not express it in public. But make no mistake, this feeling will be expressed -- somehow, somewhere: a fact of which our leaders and the world must be made aware before it occurs.

"The arabs." "Normal people." "Most."

This tracks with one of Limbaugh's recent whines where he claims that everybody in America feels the same way he does but political correctness prevents them from expressing it. There is nobody more ugly than a violent wing nut embracing his victimhood.

Atrios explains the psychology of the "101st Fighting keyboarders:

I'm not sure who "most normal Americans" are supposed to be, presumably that means "most other members of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders." But, yes, the transformation from "Saddam is an evil omnipotent overlord who will kill us all" to "we are there to save the poor Iraqi people" to simply "they're the enemy" is all going according to schedule.

The sad thing, of course, is this basic bloodlust is mostly because they invested themselves emotionally in this, somehow feel responsible for it, and all along the MO has been to turn the big guns on anyone who disagreed. Well, now the people they went to liberate disagree, so the guns will be turned on them.

And it certainly helped their delusion to have a cartoon character president who strutted around with a 560 lb codpiece pretending that he could shoot lightning bolts from his fingertips in the name of loving yer neighbor like you'd love to be loved yerself.

Matt concludes:

I'm foreseeing an ugly future. Kerry wins the election and begins the slow, painful process of rebuilding the American military, American alliances, and American global credibility. Meanwhile, on the right a new "stab in the back" theory has already emerged and the forces of resentment are growing. "We came to help them and they turned on us -- now they must pay!"

That will be just one element of the wild-eyed fury on the Right when they lose the election. Their sanity is obviously hanging by a thread as it is. See, that's what Democrats were talking about when they said they were glad Al gore wasn't president on 9/11. Trumped up GOP impeachment hearings would have definitely interfered with the immediate needs of the victims and the response to terrorism. Don't think they won't do it in 2005.






digby 5/13/2004 05:00:00 PM |

 
Wing-Nut Confusion

Oh fer gawd's sake. Roger Ailes reports that the Fighting 101st Keyboarders (thanks TBOGG) have their sans-a-belt-Dockers in a wad because the media refuses to show the entire Berg video on television on a loop.

I'm telling you, this is the sickest damned thing I've ever heard. Maybe people who have sat through The Passion more than 50 times are inured to this kind of thing, but most of us aren't. This is a video of an actual brutal murder in living color. Still pictures don't have 1/100th of the power of these scenes. It is a horrible, horrible sight to see.

The mainstream media aren't showing the pictures of the bloody leg of the prisoner who was tortured with police dogs, nor will they likely show the video of the prisoners being raped when it eventually comes out (and it will.) They should not. Berg's killing is horrible documentary footage that should not be seen by children or anyone else who doesn't make a special effort to see it and who knows what they are going to see. It gave me nightmares and I'm a middle aged cynic. I can't imagine what it would do to a kid who happened to be watching TV unsupervised.

This is not political in any way. I don't think the video should be suppressed. People can access it on the internet and if my "search" traffic stats are any measure, a hell of a lot of people are. It's not being censored.

Jayzuz. These people are very confused. On the radio Rush can talk his eliminationist trash from dawn to dusk, but if Stern talks about sex he's dirty and must be suppressed. The still pictures of sadistic sexual humiliation should have been withheld from the media but an actual filmed death should be widely seen. Pictures of American soldiers torturing prisoners are wrong only to the extent they are shown on television. In reality they show a needed "emotional release" like hazing initiations at a frat party. Janet Jackson's nipple is cause for outrage.

The vaunted moral clarity of the right wing is looking more and more like presidential pretzel logic every day.

There has always been a unique conflation of sexual and violent imagery among fascists. It would appear that those who lean Right just have some problems in this area.





digby 5/13/2004 03:26:00 PM |

 
The Little Handful

Via wood s lot, from America's greatest writer of all time, Mark Twain:

"I did not like to hear our race called sheep, and said I did not think they were.

'Still, it is true, lamb,' said Satan. 'Look at you in war, what mutton you are, and how ridiculous!'

'In war? How?'

'There has never been a just one, never an honorable one on the part of the instigator of the war.

I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful as usual will shout for the war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously object at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, 'It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.' Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers as earlier but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation pulpit and all will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."

Thanks to Stephen Duncan for the link.


digby 5/13/2004 02:20:00 PM |

 
The Cat Was Already Out Of The Bag

Skeptical Notion makes the important point that despite what the right wing hacks say, the release of the pictures didn't change perceptions among ordiary Iraqis because they already knew:

I often wonder how stupid Kaus really is. Then I read his blog, and I remember: Very.

Today he's joined the Goldberg "Sixty Minutes II should never have printed those pictures, and we should never show any more" bandwagon, using the logic that "Because they showed the pictures, now the Iraqis know -- on a visceral level -- what we were doing, and now they're really pissed." and suggests that they should have done a verbal story (yes, that Red Cross report got so much attention) instead.

I'm still shocked by the unspoken assumption that the Iraqis -- and the rest of the Arab World -- are fundamentally stupid. I'm not sure why, but it appears to be an article of faith that "If you don't speak English, it's because you're retarded" among a great many of the movers and shakers.

News flash for you, Kaus: The Iraqis already knew.

Yes they did.

The 38cm sculpture with the words "We are living American democracy" inscribed on its base was fashioned two months ago.




digby 5/13/2004 01:20:00 PM |

 
Berg Central

Susan at Suburban Guerilla has an impressive collection of posts that shed some light on the Nick Berg story. Something is definitely rotten in Baghdad.

First of all, the claim that the US military didn't have him in custody is bullshit:

LIARS

Why Are The Lying?

Also:

Maybe I'm Crazy

Who Was The Real Nick Berg

A Little Extra Something


And while you're over there taking advantage of her editor's eye that cuts through the crap, send a little cash Susan's way so that she can attend the conventions. It will be worth our while, I have no doubt.


Update:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- An American who was beheaded by militants had told friends he was arrested by Iraqi police in Mosul because he had an Israeli stamp in his passport. The Mosul police chief Thursday denied having arrested him.

The body of Nicholas Berg, 26, was found last weekend in western Baghdad. Three days later, a videotape posted on an al-Qaida-related Web site showed Berg decapitated by hooded, armed men.

Questions about Berg's stay in Iraq remain, including the time and place of his abduction. U.S. and Iraqi officials have offered varying accounts of their contacts with the self-employed telecommunications businessman from West Chester, Pa., a Philadelphia suburb.

U.S. officials said Wednesday that Iraqi police arrested Berg in Mosul on March 24 because they believed he may have been involved in "suspicious activities."

U.S. spokesman Dan Senor would not explain those suspicions but insisted that Berg was held by Iraqi -- and not American -- authorities. He said, however, that the FBI visited Berg three times before he was released April 6.

In e-mails released by his family, Berg wrote about his experiences in trying to track down and later meeting an in-law in the Mosul area. Berg also described his work in seeking to repair communications towers in Iraq.

In Mosul, police chief Maj. Gen. Mohammed Khair al-Barhawi insisted his department had never arrested Berg and maintained he had no knowledge of the case.

"The Iraqi police never arrested the slain American," al-Barhawi told reporters. "Take it from me ... that such reports are baseless."

[...]

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Berg was detained by Iraqi authorities "for his own protection" because his behavior in Mosul seemed unusual for a Westerner.

He had been seen traveling in taxis and moving about the dangerous city without any escort, the official said. He added that Berg, who was Jewish, had in his possession texts that were "anti-Semitic" in tone, the official said without elaborating.

In his e-mail quoted by the Times, Berg guessed the FBI agents in Mosul had questioned him about Iran because he was carrying some literature in Farsi and a book about Iran.

He also wrote that U.S. military police who were supervising the Iraqi police had heard some of his fellow prisoners referring to him as an Israeli and suggested he be moved to a separate cell.

digby 5/13/2004 12:36:00 PM |

 
Make Your Mark

Please sign this Petition if you are inclined to do such things. It's to tell that drooling vulture they call the Senator from Oklahoma that he doesn't speak for you.

Of course, if you agree that the Iraqi prisoners should be grateful all they got was a little forced sodomy with a chemical light then don't sign. It's not like we are quite as bad as Saddam or anything.

Via the mighty Atrios


digby 5/13/2004 11:57:00 AM |

 
Big Baby

Another round of applause for David Brock's Media Matters. They are now running a TV spot in DC highlighting Limbaugh's putrid statements about the torture scandal.

You really need to check out Limbaugh's latest on MM every day and circulate it widely. I've always known that the best way to expose the right was simply by letting normal people see what they actually say.

He's never had to answer for the nonstop lies and character smears of the last 12 years. He isn't handling the pressure very well. All these tough guys on the right who enjoy seeing a grown man cry must be loving Rush these days:

They can't destroy me, folks. The media didn't make me. The media can't destroy me. The media didn't make me who I am. I did that along with you. So if the media didn't make me, if the media didn't -- if they're not responsible for building me, they can't tear me down. They can try.

And I don't know that that's what they're doing, but nevertheless, don't sweat it. That's -- I just -- I felt compelled to answer this, because there must have been over the last three or four days a whole bunch of e-mails from people who think I ought to be angry about it and want me to fight back and this sort of thing. And I've also learned that over the years, that fighting back is not the right way to handle this. You just keep doing what you're doing. Just be who you are and let that be the fight.

Don't -- if you start responding to these people, that's all you're going to end up doing, which is why I was reluctant to even do this. But I wanted to do it one more time, get it out of the way, get it on the record. And let's just see how much of this, this total explanation, including the context of the Skull and Bones comment, let's see how much of this ever shows up in any of these places which have used that quote as a means to be critical, disparaging, discrediting, whatever.

The context is that a pill popping fascist gasbag who popularized Republican hatespin and character assassination is getting a taste of his own medicine. He's been spewing this stuff for years. Finally somebody is calling him it. Bravo.





digby 5/13/2004 11:44:00 AM |

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

 
Children's Crusade

Maureen Dowd has an unusually good column up in which she reports something I hadn't heard before:

In a public relations move that cheapens the heroism of soldiers, the Pentagon merged the medals for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, giving the G.W.O.T. medal, for Global War on Terrorism, in both wars to reinforce the idea that we had to invade Iraq to quell terrorism.

Can you believe that crap? I realize that we are always calling things "Orwellian" but actually dubbing Afghanistan and Iraq as the Global War On Terrorism makes the slightly Nazi-esque term Homeland Security sound a little bit delicate.

More importantly, this is another one of those never-never land dipshit political moves that piles one disasaterous decision on top of another. In honor of Karen Hughes, we'll call them Catastrophies With Consequences.


Dowd continues:

The truth is that our invasion of Iraq spurred terrorism there and around the world.

That initial deception — and headlong rush to throw off international conventions and old alliances, and namby-pamby institutions like the U.N. and the Red Cross — led straight to the abuse of Abu Ghraib. Now the question is whether the C.I.A. tortured Al Qaeda operatives.

Officials blurred the lines to justify ideological decisions, calling every Iraqi who opposed us a "terrorist"; conducting rough interrogations, perhaps to find the nonexistent W.M.D. so they would not look foolish; rolling all opposition into one scary terrorist ball that did not require sensitivity to the Geneva Conventions or "humanitarian do-gooders," to use the phrase of Senator James Inhofe, a Republican.

One of my arguments against the invasion was the entirely predicatable blowback. It seemed to me that after 9/11 and the whole worldwide Jihad thing that we should be a little bit more cunning and wily and a little less full of shit.

I could never see the logic in unnecessarily opening this Iraq front, particularly when it was obvious that it was going to make matters worse without any discernible benefit. We had enemies enough already and smarter and simpler ways to combat terrorism than crashing around the mid-east like an uncontrolled, enraged beast.

And it doesn't take a Phd from the University of Chicago to realize that when you go around making things up--- like we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq "because of terrorism" --- there might be some glitches in the president's crusade for peace, love and understanding. Politicians should remember that children are listening. And I'm talking about fully grown Americans who may be confused by the president's clear message that we invaded Iraq to liberate a bunch of terrorists.





digby 5/12/2004 10:25:00 PM |

 
Let's Get One Thing Straight

The wing nut talking points, after an obligatory "yeah, yeah, it's icky yada, yada, yada" is that the victims of the bad apples at Abu Ghraib were the worst of the worst, the terrorists, the murders, the ones who are trying to KILL YOUR BABIES in their sleep, so let's not get our panties in a bunch because this is war, mister!

Inhofe: "The idea that these prisoners -- you know, they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cell block 1A or 1B, these prisoners -- they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. And here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."

It has been noted elsewhere that the Red Cross report and The Taguba report estimated that somewhere between sixty and ninety percent of the prisoners held at Abu Ghraib were innocent.

Inhofe said several times over the last few days that the innocent were processed and let loose immediately but numerous news reports say they were generally held for about three months before they were freed with some cigarettes and $10.00.

Unsurprisingly, Inhofe is full of it. But, like our president, I doubt that he reads anything but his picture Bible and The Moonie Times so he is unaware that there have been a number of news accounts over the past week or so from those who are in the pictures and they are not terrorists, insurgents or murderers. They are poor innocent schmucks who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact that they are free today should suggest that they were not the "worst of the worst," who, if you believe the president in his State of the Union address are either in custody or "have met a different fate. Let's put it this way -- they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."

The NY Times had this on May 5:

The shame is so deep that Hayder Sabbar Abd says he feels that he cannot move back to his old neighborhood. He would prefer not even to stay in Iraq. But now the entire world has seen the pictures, which Mr. Abd looked at yet again on Tuesday, pointing out the key figures, starting with three American soldiers wearing big smiles for the camera.

"That is Joiner," he said, pointing to one male soldier in glasses, a black hat and blue rubber gloves. His arms were crossed over a stack of naked and hooded Iraqi prisoners.

"That is Miss Maya," he said, pointing to a young woman's fresh face poking up over the same pile.

He gazed down at another picture. In it, a second female soldier flashed a "thumbs up" and pointed with her other hand at the genitals of a man wearing nothing but a black hood, his fingers laced on top of his head. He did not know her name. But the small scars on the torso left little doubt about the identity of the naked prisoner.

"That is me," he said, and he tapped his own hooded, slightly hunched image.

[...]

He was arrested in June at a military checkpoint, when he tried to leave the taxi he was riding in. He was taken to a detention center at the Baghdad airport, he said, and then transferred to a big military prison in Um Qasr, near the Kuwaiti border. He said he had stayed for three months and four days.

The treatment in Um Qasr, he said, "was very good," adding: "There was no problem. The American guards were nice and good people."

After the three months, he said, he was transferred to Abu Ghraib, a sprawling prison complex 20 miles west of Baghdad, where Mr. Hussein incarcerated and executed thousands of his opponents.

[...]

Finally, after an ordeal of what Mr. Abd believed to be about four hours, it was over.

The soldiers removed the beds from their cells, he said, and threw cold water on the floor. The prisoners were forced to sleep on the ground with their hoods still on, he said.

"I was so exhausted, I fell asleep," Mr. Abd said. "These were the same walls where Saddam Hussein used to interrogate people. We thought we would be executed."

But the next morning, he said, doctors and dentists arrived to care for their injuries. Beds and pillows were brought back in. They were fed. Everyone was nice, Mr. Abd said. Then at night, the same crew with "Joiner" would return and strip them and handcuff them to the walls.

About 10 days after it started, the nightly abuse ended, for no explained reason. "Joiner" just stopped coming to the cell block, and about a month later, Mr. Abd and two others among the seven were transferred to a civilian Iraqi prison in Baghdad.

It is a horrible story that is well documented in the Taguba report and verified by people who saw it. This innocent man was caught up in a Kafkaesque nightmare(or perhaps Saddamesque nightmare is the correct term)

It's interesting that Inhofe and Limbaugh and the rest who are trying to concoct some sort of narrative that their non-sadist base can live with, are unaware that this fellow claims that he was never interrogated, thus supporting the yesterday's fading talking points about "bad apples." Of course, the soldiers involved are now saying that the pictures of the torture were ordered up by their superiors as part of some sort of psy-op interrogation plan, so who knows?

Now, Inhofe and his cronies can say that there is no proof (except for the matching scars and paperwork proving his incarceration at the same time.) But, there is more:

From the Washington Post May 6, 2004:

Hasham Mohsen Lazim traded used tires for a living in the Shiite slum of Sadr City. He had been in trouble only once in his life, he said, a desperate time six years ago when he deserted Saddam Hussein's army to support his wife and four small children.

Then on one warm night in August, a taxi ride home ended in a U.S. Army holding cell, the first stop in what he described as a hellish four-month journey through the U.S. military prison system in Iraq. His experience veered between anguish and confusion, abuse and fury, before culminating in a series of pictures, broadcast worldwide in recent days, that memorialized his 24-day stay in the grimmest precincts of Abu Ghraib prison.

"Something awful happened to me," Lazim said during a two-hour interview broken by long pauses of silent despair. "I will never forget it until the day I die."

The story is very much like the NY Times account. It is hard to see how they could have come up with so much detail that matches the reports, the pictures and the testimony of Americans who were questioned for the investigation.

He too is now free, which puts the lie to this latest attempt to defend the indefensible. If he was a terrorist with American blood on his hands, I don't think it's likely that he'd have been set free to kill some more.

Inhofe and his crew of sadistic freepers had better have a back-up plan.


x-posted on American Street



digby 5/12/2004 06:29:00 PM |

 
Boo Fucking Hoo

Media Matters reports that the poor lil' thin skinned bullyboy doesn't like being monitored.

From Monday's show:

[Feminazi] Limbaugh on prisoners getting "a taste of [their] own medicine"

CALLER: When I saw those pictures -- the Iraqi supposedly torture pictures -- I felt no shame. The only thing I could think is, they're getting a little taste of their own medicine, and those Iraqi women must be cheering.

LIMBAUGH: Made that point last week, but it didn't go over well with Rush Monitors. I did -- that's -- made that point. That point has not been quoted. I said, you know, this might not be bad -- oh, it's gonna happen again -- I said, if you look at the role Iraq -- Arab men make their women play -- the roles they play, the roles they have to live -- to, to, to make American prison guards females and to give those women utter power over Arab men -- some might call that torture, some might call that decent punishment, some might say here's a taste of your own medicine. This is what you've been doing to your women for time immemorial, only now the tables are turned. But all that's been lost because [with a slight lisp] "This is horrible. This is, this is disgusting. This is outrageous. This is mean."

Limbaugh on Democrats and the media

I'm gonna submit here -- and I don't care who quotes me on this, and I don't care where they repeat it -- there's a lot of acting going on here, and there's a lot of false phony concern for these Iraqi detainees. This is not about people genuinely outraged about this. ...

The Democrats and the media don't give a rat's rear end about what happened to those prisoners. All this is, is the latest weapon they can use politically to harm Bush, which is why they're trying to harm me, in fact. It's all political. They don't give a hoot about those prisoners. ...

Limbaugh on Media Matters for America's monitoring

You know, isn't it interesting folks, I've been around here for fifteen and a half years. I've never been so often quoted on a single story. I think what happens is that the media has come across a new website that's supposedly chronicling what I say, and they all go there and they read it and they see and then they take the propaganda of that website and repackage it and call it news. And they leave the context of my remarks out. For example, nowhere where I've been quoted have I been quoted as saying that I think what happened there is not good. I don't support it, and I don't encourage more of it. I have not said that -- or I have said that, they've not quoted me on that. There's a number of things that they've left out, uh, most of it context. Uh, but it's just, it's amazing, all these years they could just tune in to my show and listen, but no, that's too tough. But now there's just a central clearinghouse for out-of-context quotes from this program. They can go there and present as news, even though it's just repackaged propaganda.

Imagine that. Rush says he's being quoted out of context with repackaged propaganda when his words are repeated verbatim. He says that nobody is quoting all the stuff where he condemns the torture. All they do is report stuff like this, taken from the same show yesterday:

Limbaugh on sincerity of public outrage

How many of you went out to social occasions over the weekend and this subject, this story came up? And how many of you wanted to really say, "I don't see the big deal here. This is war. These are people who tried to kill Americans." But you didn't say it or some variation of that because you were afraid because you were with a bunch of people who were start yelling at you that you for being insensitive or coarse or crude or whatever, so you said what you thought you had to say in order to get along during a controversial situation if this conversation came up wherever you were.

How many of you did that? How many of you did that? Admit it to yourself you don't have to raise your hands out there. I'm not, we're not counting hands out there. I want you to think about it because the fact of the matter is I think that's what most people are doing. I think most peo --that's where my optimism and faith in the people of this country remains steadfast. I don't think most people are that outraged by this. I don't thi -- let's put it this way, I don't think the public outrage nowhere near matches what we watched on television on Friday and yesterday exhibited by these holier than thou sanctimonious elected officials who are themselves acting and saying what they think you their voters want them to say and what you their voters expect to hear. ...

Folks, somebody asks what you think of this prisoner thing, just tell them the truth, and I guarantee you more people you tell the truth will say, "Yeah, I agree with you" than you know...

He'll be back on the little blue babies soon if people don't show some compassion and let him off the hook. Rush is not supposed to be called on his outrageous talk. He is supposed to be allowed to brainwash his 20 million dittoheads daily without interference. This is upsetting him.




digby 5/12/2004 03:51:00 PM |

 
More To The Story

I watched the video of Berg's beheading and it literally made me sick to my stomach. Do not watch it. It's a barbaric, horrible display of inhumanity. I wish I hadn't seen it. I'll never forget it.

The story surrounding Berg is getting very strange indeed. I don't know what is wrong, exactly, but something is. The government is not being straighforward about the circumstances and it's very wierd:

An American civilian who was beheaded in a grisly video posted on an al-Qaeda-linked Web site was never in U.S. custody despite claims from his family, a coalition spokesman said Wednesday.

[...]

The video posted Tuesday showed a bound Berg in an orange jumpsuit — similar to those issued to prisoners held by the American military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was sitting in front of five men, their faces masked, as one read an anti-American text.

[...]

But unanswered questions remained about Berg in the days before he vanished, as well as where and when he was abducted.

Berg, who was Jewish, spoke to his parents March 24 and told them he would return home on March 30, according to his family in suburban Philadelphia.

But Berg was detained by Iraqi police at a checkpoint in Mosul on March 24, was turned over to U.S. officials and detained for 13 days, the family said. His father, Michael, said his son was not allowed to make phone calls or contact a lawyer.

Coalition spokesman Dan Senor told reporters that Berg was detained by Iraqi police in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The Iraqis informed the Americans, and the FBI questioned him three times about what he was doing in Iraq.

Senor said that to his knowledge Berg "was at no time under the jurisdiction or detention of coalition forces."

Michael Berg told The Associated Press, however, that U.S. officials were "playing word games."

"The Iraqi police do not tell the FBI what to do. The FBI tells the Iraqi police what to do. Who do they think they're kidding?" the elder Berg said.

Calls by the AP to police in Mosul failed to find anyone who could confirm Berg was held there. The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority runs Iraq, controlling not only the police, but the military and all government ministries.

FBI agents visited Berg's parents March 31 and told the family they were trying to confirm their son's identity.

On April 5, the Bergs filed suit in federal court in Philadelphia, contending their son was being held illegally by the U.S. military. The next day, Berg was released. He told his parents he had not been mistreated.

Berg's father blamed the U.S. government for creating circumstances that led to his son's death, saying if his son had not been detained for so long, he might have been able to leave Iraq before the violence worsened.

[...]

Asked for details about Berg's last weeks in Iraq, Senor replied: "We are obviously trying to piece all this together, and there's a thorough investigation." He said he was reluctant to release details but did not say why.

"The U.S. government is committed to a very thorough and robust investigation to get to the bottom of this," Senor said, adding that "multiple" U.S. agencies would be involved and that the FBI would probably have overall direction.

Senor said that in Iraq, Berg had no affiliation with the U.S. government, the coalition or "to my knowledge" any coalition-affiliated contractor. But Senor would not specify why Iraqi police, who generally take direction from coalition authorities, had arrested him and held him.

Police in Mosul "suspected that he was engaged in suspicious activities," Senor said, refusing to elaborate. Berg was released April 6 and advised to leave the country, Senor added.

Michael Berg said that in early April, his son refused a U.S. offer to board an outbound charter flight because he thought the travel to the airport — through an area where attacks had occurred — was too risky.

State Department spokeswoman Kelly Shannon said that on April 10, Berg told a U.S. consular officer in Baghdad that he wanted instead to travel to Kuwait on his own.

Berg apparently had an Iraqi in-law in the Mosul area, according to emails to his family.

Brig. Gen Mark Kimmitt said the only role the U.S. military played in Berg's confinement was to liaise with the Iraqi police to make sure he was being fed and properly treated because "he was still an American citizen."

This man was apparently just wandering around Iraq trying to find work on his own, unaffiliated with the US government. I had no idea that Americans could even go to Iraq on their own. If I recall correctly, Democratic lawmakers had a difficult time getting permission to go to Iraq over the last year, but perhaps that was because of security concerns.

I don't know what all this means. It's possible that it's just a strange and bizarre series of events that ended in horror. But you have to wonder why the FBI was supposedly answering to the Iraqi police in Mosul while the US military who supposedly control the country are denying that they had Berg in custody when it is pretty clear that they did. Something isn't right and from the way this AP report reads, this reporter agrees.





digby 5/12/2004 01:16:00 PM |

 
Outrage At The Outrage

Although Inhofe did not directly challenge American policy dictating adherence to the Geneva Convention in Iraq, he did stress the pre-eminence of aggressive intelligence-gathering when confronting terrorism.

"We're in a different kind of world than we've ever been in before,'" he said during the interview. "And I believe that we need to be tougher than we have ever have been before ... and it's imperative that we get intelligence."

At a time when the Bush administration has issued a series of apologies for the mistreatment of Iraqi captives, it might be easy to assume that Inhofe is consciously challenging the White House from its right flank. But the Oklahoma senator insists that he is stoutly supporting the administration and beleaguered Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Asked about his inflammatory opening statement to the committee, Inhofe said confidently, "I'm sure that the president was glad that I did it."

I'm sure he was. The man who mocked a condemned prisoner begging for her life by pursing his lips and saying "Oh, please don't kill me," is definitely a kindred spirit.



digby 5/12/2004 11:29:00 AM |

 
Where Are They, Damn It!

Following up my post below, in reading today's NY Times description of the disagreement between general Taguba and Stephen Cambone yesterday at the hearings, I was reminded of something. First, here's the relevant excerpt from the Times:

[Taguba] told the Senate Armed Services Committee that it had been against the Army's doctrine for another Army general to recommend last summer that military guards 'set the conditions' to help Army intelligence officers extract information from prisoners. He also said an order last November from the top American officer in Iraq effectively put the prison guards under the command of the intelligence unit there. But the civilian official, Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence, contradicted the general. He said that the military police and the military intelligence unit at the prison needed to work closely to gain as much intelligence as possible from Iraqi prisoners to prevent attacks against American soldiers. Mr. Cambone also said that General Taguba misinterpreted the November order, which he said only put the intelligence unit in charge of the prison facility, not of the military police guards.

Many of you will recall the following passage from Time Magazine last July:

Meeting last month at a sweltering U.S. base outside Doha, Qatar, with his top Iraq commanders, President Bush skipped quickly past the niceties and went straight to his chief political obsession: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, 'Are you in charge of finding WMD?' Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it wasn't his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment, someone volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone, a littleknown deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, back in Washington. Pause. 'Who?' Bush asked.

This is pure speculation, but it is worth looking into what those interrogators were after in Abu Ghraib. Cambone framed it yesterday as "trying to prevent attacks against American soldiers.," which, I supose, you could interpret in a number of ways. But, if the focus was finding the non-existent WMD, then you'd have to ask whether the man whose "chief political obsession" was finding them gave the order to take off the gloves.



digby 5/12/2004 10:06:00 AM |

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

 
All The Way To The Top

The lawyer for one of the acused soldiers just said on MSNBC that the military was using the pictures to "break" prisoners who they suspected of knowing where the weapons of mass destruction were.

If that is the case, then I think Rumsfeld and the White House knew about the torture and may have ok'd it directly.

I had thought that the abuse was centered on intelligence about the insurgency, in which case it was feasible that it was something that got out of hand on the ground. But, the lack of WMD is the worst and most embarrassing of the myriad Bush failures, and a particular hobby horse of micro-managers Cheney and Rummy. If that was the focus of the interrogations then I think it goes all the way to the top.





digby 5/11/2004 02:37:00 PM |

 
A Respectful Dissent

I'm going to go out on a limb and disagree a bit with two of my favorite bloggers who also happen to be the most popular bloggers in the blogosphere. Let it never be said that I am a scared bunny Democrat.

First, let me just agree that deep sixing the idea of ideological purity in favor of partisanship is a really good one. We must accept that in order to win the presidency and achieve a majority in the congress the Democratic Party is going to have to welcome all stripes of Democrats, even the hated DLC. It's a fact of life kids.

On the other hand, Kos says:

We have become a party of appeasers, afraid to respond lest the Rove boogeyman jump out of the bushes and bite them in the rump. Dean helped kickstart a change in our party's culture, but it has temporarily receeded as the Kerry people consolidate their victory and take over the party apparatus. Kerry has rightly kept quiet as Bush digs his own grave, but where are our attack dog surrogates? Where are our Democrats being Democrats?

This, I think is unfair. They are out there every day doing exactly what we are exhorting them to do:



Sen. Edward Kennedy launched a blistering election-year attack on the Bush administration's candor and honesty Monday, saying President Bush has created "the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon."

The Massachusetts Democrat said that Iraq was never a threat to the United States and that Bush took the country to war under false pretenses, giving al Qaeda two years to regroup and plant terrorist cells throughout the world.

"Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam," Kennedy said at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Responding to the criticism, Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt called the veteran lawmaker the "lead political hatchet man" for Sen. John Kerry's campaign, adding that if it had been up to Kennedy, "Saddam Hussein would not be in prison but would still be in power."

[...]

Cong. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), a member of Congress since 1971 and a Korean war combat veteran, today called for the impeachment of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld unless he resigns or President Bush removes him from office...


I think America and the world want us to show the outrage not with rhetoric but with action! And, if the President does not fire Secretary Rumsfeld, or if he does not resign, I think it is the responsibility of this Congress to file articles of impeachment and force him to out of office. Then, the whole world will know - not just the military - not just Americans, but the whole world will know what we stand for!"

[...]


House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will unleash a broad indictment of the Bush administration’s Iraq policies at a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors today.

Her speech will be a stinging rebuke of the process that led to war, the White House’s immediate reconstruction plans and its schedule and strategy for transferring sovereignty in just 74 days.

[...]


While campaigning for John Kerry in Georgia today, Senator Max Cleland made the following statement in response to the right wing attacks:
For Saxby Chambliss, who got out of going to Vietnam because of a trick knee, to attack John Kerry as weak on the defense of our nation is like a mackerel in the moonlight that both shines and stinks.

[...]

MARGARET WARNER: Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin went to the Senate floor this morning to slam what he called "the Republican attack machine on John Kerry."

[...]

The fact that the media doesn't cover these thing widely (or that the blogosphere doesn't give a shit either) doesn't mean they aren't doing it.

Kos:

And it's not just them. The whole party apparatus, from top to bottom, is afraid. No Democrats talk about taking back the House. "Not until 2012" I'm told. And it's just recently that Democrats have started talking optimistic about the Senate, even though it's been ours to lose for a while.

Republicans are always confident of victory, even when they have little chance in hell. It's a problem when those idiots take us to war based on lies and best-case scenarios and all, but politically, it works. Our side needs a little backbone. It needs a little optimism. It needs to remember that the (D) next to their name means something larger than "little (R)".

This has nothing to do with ideology, whether you are a moderate or progressive or conservative or whatever. It has everything to do with establishing a clear and confident party identity. We still don't have one, and we won't have one so long as the party continues to run scared anytime a Republican says "boo!".

Our entire Party "apparatus," from top to bottom, is afraid. We have no backbone. We have no identity. Other than that, though, we are clearly the best qualified to run the country while the world is blowing up around us.

Why would Americans who are not already partisan Democrats vote for a Party whose rank and file members believe they have no identity and who run scared of Republicans, much less Osama bin laden? I'm not even sure why I would vote for such a party and I'm as partisan as it gets.

But then, I don't actually see the Democratic Party this way. Basically, it is assumed that the Party is a big loser because we are a bunch of sissies when in fact, the Democratic party won the last 3 presidential elections and is out of power in the congress by a mere handful of seats. And the fact that we aren't in the oval office today and aren't in control of the Senate is not because we are cowards.

But, there are reasons, and it behooves us to figure out what they really are.


Here's David Brock from his interview yesterday in Salon:

One of the most frightening experiences I have had in recent years in talking with rank-and-file Democrats is the extent to which they unconsciously internalize right-wing propaganda. To add insult to injury, too many Democrats have a tendency to blame the victims of these smears -- their own leaders -- rather than addressing the root of the problem. For instance, when Senator Daschle made the factual statement that "failed" diplomacy had led to war with Iraq, right-wing media accused him of siding with Saddam Hussein. The ensuing controversy caused many Democrats to think Daschle had put his foot in his mouth.

Check out Buzzflash on any given day over the last two years and you will find some kind of nasty, demeaning over-the-top headline about Daschle. When he came out swinging, it was "Finally, Daschle shows some cojones," even though he often came out swinging. And there was almost no understanding of the fact that a legislative Party leader has to be more than just a liberal partisan. His job also requires him to help red state Senators get re-elected. I know that isn't something we liberals are happy about, but it is a reality and Daschle deserved a lot better from the left wing of his own party.

My fellow Democrats, this endless criticism of the Party for being too timid is naively playing into their hands. The problem is not the Democratic Party. It is the Republican Party and the media that serves them. This "Democrats are a buncha pussies" meme comes right out of the Mighty Wurlitzer.

The Party's identity is as clear as its ever been. It's the party of fairness, freedom, opportunity and equality for all Americans, not just the few. That this has been distorted by 30 years of highly focused GOP propaganda is not surprising. But, this is what we've stood for since FDR and the only thing that's happened is that the Republicans have managed to convince a whole lot of people that Democrats are too cowardly to keep their towns and country safe, it is in their best interest for rich people not to pay taxes and that they won't be able to practice their religion if civil society doesn't become more religious.

This whole "we have met the enemy and he is us" business is looking inward when the most important thing we can do is start to look outward and deal practically and pragmatically with the real problem we are confronting --- an American public that is incresingly subject to right wing propaganda and a media that is more than happy to give it to them.

I don't have a problem criticizing outrageous examples of appeasement in the Party, like those of Lieberman and Miller. They are what they are and we have nothing to lose by exposing them. Neither do I have a problem criticizing Kerry or his advisors on strategy or policy. That's politics.

But, what I object to is criticizing the character of the Democratic Party in general and insulting the characters of Democrats specifically, who don't need to be called cowards all the time when they are in there fighting the good fight while we sit safely behind our keyboards and monitors dispensing advice.

There are real problems to be solved if we do win this election. And it is going to be very tough to do what needs to be done in the current environment.

As Brock warns in his excerpt:

With the right-wing media now a seemingly permanent and defining feature of the media landscape, if Democrats cut through the propaganda and win back the White House in 2004, they still face the prospect of being brutally slammed and systematically slandered in such a way that will make governing exceedingly difficult. There should be no doubt that the right-wing media's wildings of 1993 -- which led to Clinton's impeachment four years later -- will be replayed over and over again until its capacities to spread filth are somehow eradicated.

This is the central political problem of our times, not the alleged cowardice of the Democratic Party.

It's not smart to help them spread their memes. Nor is it a good use of our energy and passion to put a reformation of the Democratic Party at the top of the agenda as if we were a hundred votes shy of a majority in the House and under the thumb of a filibuster proof Senate.

We've been out of the White House for only four years and even that was the result of masterful GOP manipulation of the media and their unprecedented willingness to use the levers of power (and the threat of civil insurrection) in Florida and the Supreme Court.

We are not in the wilderness, we are in a death match for the soul of the United States of America at a time of enormous instability in the world (made far, far worse by Republicans) and a usurpation of democracy at home (at the hands of Republicans.) Our character isn't the question in this political battle. Theirs is.

And I would suggest that one of the first things we need to do a lot more of is what Atrios advises instead of calling Democratic politicians cowards all the time:

... the best way to encourage them is to support them when they go out on a limb.

digby 5/11/2004 02:24:00 PM |

 
So It Begins

A video posted Tuesday on an Islamic militant Web site showed the beheading of an American civilian in Iraq and said the execution was carried out by an al-Qaida affiliated group to avenge the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.


The video showed five men wearing headscarves and black ski masks, standing over a bound man in an orange jumpsuit — similar to a prisoner's uniform — who identified himself as Nick Berg, a U.S. contractor whose body was found on a highway overpass in Baghdad on Saturday.


"My name is Nick Berg, my father's name is Michael, my mother's name is Susan," the man said on the video. "I have a brother and sister, David and Sarah. I live in ... Philadelphia."


After reading a statement, the men were seen pulling the man to his side and putting a large knife to his neck. A scream sounded as the men cut his head off, shouting "Allahu Akbar!" — "God is great." They then held the head out before the camera.


Berg was a small-business owner from the Philadelphia suburbs, his family said Tuesday.


Berg's family said they knew their son had been decapitated, but didn't know the details of the killing. When told of the video by an Associated Press reporter, Berg's father, Michael, and his two siblings hugged and cried.


"I knew he was decapitated before. That manner is preferable to a long and torturous death. But I didn't want it to become public," Michael Berg said.


The video tape included a statement by one of the executioners:


"For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we offered the U.S. administration to exchange this hostage with some of the detainees in Abu Ghraib and they refused."


"So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins ... slaughtered in this way."


The video bore the title "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American." It was unclear whether al-Zarqawi — a lieutenant of Osama bin Laden — was shown in the video, or was claiming responsibility for ordering the execution.

I guess this puts to rest the meme that the torture was a brilliant tactical maneuver that scared the quivering Arabs into compliance.

But, I fear that not only Iraq is going to end up in a civil war from all these mistakes. The US may end up having another one of its own, as well. I think it's fair to say that the sadistic wing nut contingent is going to explode over this.

I continue to be amazed at those starry-eyed neocons like David Brooks who aparently made it through half a century on this planet without realizing that a war of choice is antithetical to the goal of spreading freedom and democracy by virtue of the fact that war itself is defined by violence and inhumanity on a grand scale. Why they didn't see this very elementary contradiction in their grand plan I will never know. (Perhaps it is no accident or conspiracy, after all, that conservative intellectuals aren't successful in academia. Perhaps it's simply because they are not very bright.)

We are now into a cycle of revenge that is unfortunately going to be stoked rather than redirected by the moron in the White House.

Get ready for some Western aphorisms. I can feel them coming on. Ride 'em Cowboy.





digby 5/11/2004 10:31:00 AM |

 
GOP Patsies

"When Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio) went on an inspection trip to several Persian Gulf countries in the summer of 2002, he was dazzled by the state-of-the-art command centers, airstrips and other facilities being built there for the U.S. military."

"But he was also troubled. Some of what he saw or learned from military briefers had not been approved by the House Appropriations Committee panel on military construction, which he then chaired. 'I knew I didn't have that kind of money,' he quipped recently."

"Hobson's inquiries ultimately led to a modest tightening of controls over the Pentagon's ability to move money between military accounts without prior approval from Congress. But the episode has sparked concerns on the part of some lawmakers that the Bush administration largely bypassed Congress as it expanded installations in the Persian Gulf region before the war with Iraq."

"President Bush has acknowledged that months before Congress voted an Iraq war resolution in October 2002, he approved about 30 projects in Kuwait that helped set the stage for war, with 'no real knowledge or involvement' of Congress, according to Plan of Attack, a new book by Bob Woodward, an assistant managing editor at The Washington Post."

This is the meaning of high crimes and misdemeanors, kids. I know there are no blowjobs involved and I know that Hitlery had nothing to do with it, but this is the real deal. When a president spends money explicitly authorized by the congress for something else on a war that the congress and the people of the US have yet to even debate much less authorize, it's a violation of the constitution. When the money is spent on no-bid contracts between the US government and the president's political contributors in secret, it is a crime.

I wonder if the Republicans in congress are ever going to get sick of being Bush's bitches?




digby 5/11/2004 10:19:00 AM |

 
Because We're So Good, Part XXIV

Last week I mentioned the insane James Inhofe's drooling rant on the Chris Matthews show. Today, he showed the whole world that the President of the United States is not the only powerful American politician who has a brain the size of a walnut:

Sen. Inhofe (R-OK): First of all, I regret I wasn't here on Friday. I was unable to be here. But maybe it's better that I wasn't because as I watch this outrage that everyone seems to have about the treatment of these prisoners I have to say and I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment.

The idea that these prisoners, they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cell block 1A or 1B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents, and many of them probably have American blood probably on their hands and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.

John McCain walked out of the room when Inhofe put on his little show. According to CNN, asked if he agreed with Inhofe's statement McCain said "No way."

FoxNews however is celebrating Inhofe's statement of "outrage at the outrage." The "journalist" Asman, is now screaming at Laurence Korb telling him that his own son guarded "very bad people" who were trying to kill Americans.

Keep it up boys. I don't think it's likely that more than 40% of Americans --- tops --- are sadistic scumbags like the very religious Inhofe and the fair and balanced Asman. And even a large number of them don't like to think of themselves that way.

Over on CNN, Blitzer just announced that Inhofe will be his guest today. He's a new GOP Super Star. Gosh, except for the whole fomenting of rage against Americans all around the planet and making the prospect of Americans being taken captive an invitation to torture thing, I'd say it was a good day.

On the other hand, I'm not looking forward to spending the rest of my life and watching every other American spend the rest of his or her life paying the price for Mr Inhofe's macho posturing. He has the right to free speech, for sure. But, maybe John McCain should give him a little taste of what it's like to be a "guilty" POW.

Quote via Kicking Ass



digby 5/11/2004 09:39:00 AM |

Monday, May 10, 2004

 
I'm Melllllting....

If it is possible for Fred Barnes to be a bigger whore, I don't know know how.

On the "Roundtable" today he actually attempted to pass off the argument that we shouldn't be showing these pictures because it violates the Geneva Convention to show pictures of POWs. And further it is wrong to embarrass these prisoners by putting their pictures on the front page of the NY Times.

I'm not kidding.

Perhaps we should agree to only show the pictures of tortured Iraqis who have hoods on their heads or are dead. That would solve the problems.

Now, I'm listening to Jonah Goldberg say that the media is overreacting and besides they've never shown a partial birth abortion live on television so why are they showing this stuff?

I'm not kidding.

Maybe if they keep throwing ridiculous rationalizations for their Dear Leader's utterly bankrupt Iraq adventure at the wall, there's a possibility that the splatter will start to look like a reasonable excuse. Kind of like that Idaho potato that everybody said looked like the Virgin Mary.




digby 5/10/2004 10:27:00 PM |

 
Contracting Viruses

I've been waiting for someone to report this. (I had an inkling, but it's bigger than I thought.) The private contractor-GOP gravy train (Salon)

Blackwater, the firm that guards Coalition Provisional Authority chief Paul Bremer, and whose men were killed at Fallujah, has hired the well-connected Alexander Strategy Group to guide it through the current publicity storm and help influence Congress on whatever rules are generated to govern private militias in war zones, according to the Hill newspaper.

Alexander may turn out to be a clever choice: Ed Buckham, former chief of staff to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, is Alexander's chairman. Tony Rudy, another former top DeLay operative, and Karl Gallant, who once ran DeLay's leadership PAC, are also onboard.

Blackwater also works other angles. One of the firm's founders is Michigan native Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL. His father, Edgar Prince, helped religious right leader Gary Bauer found the Family Research Council in 1988. Erik Prince's sister, Betsy DeVos, is the chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party. But Blackwater is a relative newcomer to the Washington influence game, especially compared with CACI and Titan, which have been trailblazers.

DeVos, by the way, is Amway --- and one of the wierdest people on the planet.

This Prince/Bauer/DeVos angle nicely represents the GOP axis of evil. Defense contractors, religious zealots and big wierd money.

digby 5/10/2004 08:18:00 PM |

 
Simply The Best

It's hard to believe, but Julia doesn't agree with Junior and Big Time that Rummy is the bestest darned SecDef the country has ever had:

See, I would have probably gone with George Marshall, who was - when he wasn't busy planning the Meuse-Argonne offensive which caused Germany to give up in World War One, becoming a Brigadier General, being named the Army Chief of Staff and serving in that capacity for the duration of World War Two (he was credited by Winston Churchill with planning the Allied victory) and serving as Secretary of State and subsequently the president of the International Red Cross - the architect of the Marshall Plan, which is considered by many (clearly delusional) people to be the single US initiative most responsible for keeping Europe out of the hands of the Russians after World War Two and preventing the mistakes that were made after World War One from being repeated and possibly setting off World War Three. "

But, did Campbell Brown call him a Rock Star? Did Midge Dector write a gushy semi-erotic paeon to his manliness? Was he hot, hot, hot?

I didn't think so.


digby 5/10/2004 06:59:00 PM |

 
Hoping For Armageddon

Ok. I think it may be time to start thinking outside the box. This can't be just incompetence. Nobody could be this stupid, not even Crusader Codpiece. There must be some underlying reason why they are compelled to do the absolute wrong thing every single time.

Today's little tribute to Rumsfeld was completely inexplicable by ordinary standards. It's bad enough that Bush refused to fire the asshole. But, to go out and make a point of saying that the country "owes him a debt of gratitude" is the equivalent of pouring boric acid into an open wound.

Is Cheney reading the Left Behind series aloud at cabinet meetings or something?

Arab commentators reacted with shock and disbelief on Monday over President Bush's robust backing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld against calls for his resignation.

Critics had called for him to quit after the furor over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners but analysts, editors and ordinary Arabs were united in their condemnation of Bush who said the United States owed Rumsfeld a "debt of gratitude."

"After the torture and vile acts by the American army, President Bush goes out and congratulates Rumsfeld. It's just incredible. I am in total shock," said Omar Belhouchet, editor of the influential Algerian national daily El Watan.

"Bush's praise for Rumsfeld will discredit the United States...and further damage its reputation, which is already at a historic low in the Arab world," he added.

[...]

"After Mr. Bush's decision to keep Rumsfeld, all their apologies seem like lip service," Dubai-based political analyst Jawad al-Anani told Reuters. "Mr. Rumsfeld would have certainly lost his job if the prisoners were American."

"The United States is spending so much money by setting up Alhurra television and Radio Sawa to improve its image in the Arab world...How can it reconcile that with keeping a man who has insulted every Arab through the abuses of Iraqi prisoners," added Anani, a former Jordanian foreign minister.

University of Algiers professor Mahmoud Belhimeur agreed.

"I cannot believe the United States reacts the way an authoritarian regimes would. Bush should have done the honorable thing and fired Rumsfeld," he said.

[...]

A Saudi businessman, who asked not to be named, said keeping Rumsfeld would be seen as Washington's quiet approval of the abuse.

"This just confirms that what is happening in Iraq in general, and especially what is happening in Abu Ghraib is sanctioned by the American administration and that is a hell of a position to be in.

"I see no advantage in keeping Rumsfeld. Bush should be building bridges with the outside world."

digby 5/10/2004 04:44:00 PM |

 
Little Birdies

Howard Kurtz, helpfully giving the wing-nuts a little bucking up during these dark days of dog and reality bites, says that the Democrats are panicking about John Kerrys' campaign. It's not surprising since Democrats in general seem to have a penchant for jumping the gun this year. Jayzuz. Haven't we been down this road already?

To all those nervous nellies, I just have four little words: Shut The Fuck Up.


digby 5/10/2004 04:21:00 PM |

 
Intellectual Tough Guy

Before it disappears into the ether, I'd like to point out that Wesley Clark's appearance on Meat The Press yesterday should put to rest any lingering questions about his political loyalties.

Not only was his analysis right on point, as usual, but he was very tough, saying that it would be patriotic for Rumsfeld to resign and that we should unload (war criminal Ambassador) Negroponte, something that I haven't heard anyone but Harkin even remotely address. He said in no uncertain terms that the responsibility for this debacle goes all the way to the Oval Office.

You can tell he was effective by the blustering he elicited from that mannequin in a suit they call a Senator, John Warner.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I'm very encouraged that the Congress is taking a very strong look at this. I think there are systemic failures here. But I think it does come, as Senator Levin says, from a broader perception, an announcement within the administration, really, that international law is not that important. It's legalisms. What counts is American force.

And, you know, those Geneva Conventions were put in place to protect Americans. They were put in place to protect our men and women in case they be taken. And the people who were detained in Iraq, the prisoners there, the detainees, they were all covered under the Geneva Convention--they should have been.

And so there's more than a systemic failure. There's a failure of leadership that goes right to the top. This is a presidential leadership problem. He is the commander in chief. He announces it virtually every day on the campaign trail and he, himself, must take responsibility for this because it reflects his command influence.

SEN. WARNER: Tim, could I just interrupt? We've got to be cautious because I'm convinced that the Department of Defense is doing everything they can to get the facts out in the public. I was assured yesterday that all the new photos are being reviewed by the lawyers and so forth and will be forthcoming to the Congress...[blah, blah, blah]

[...]

MR. RUSSERT: Secretary Rumsfeld has written throughout his career "Rumsfeld's Rules" and this is one of them: "Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the President and do wonders for your performance."

General Clark, do you think Secretary Rumsfeld should resign?

GEN. CLARK: Well, I think there's really two issues on this. One is his effectiveness and he said he would resign if he felt he couldn't be effective. But I think it's really a question of the credibility of the U.S. mission and how the United States is perceived in the world. I don't think his effectiveness has been compromised. I think he can still give orders; I think people will still take them. There's no issue with that. The real question is: "How is the United States perceived and how seriously are we perceived to be taking this issue?"

I think it would be very patriotic if Secretary Rumsfeld resigned. But I do think that the issue goes beyond the secretary of defense. I don't think we should indict the men and women in the armed forces. I think 99.9 percent of them are doing a great job over there and I hope the American people will support them. I certainly do. But I do think that when something like this happens that the prima facia notion of this is this goes right to the top. What did the president know? What was the atmosphere that the president created? How hard was he pushing?

We know there was a lot of pressure to get intelligence information from these interrogations. And the Pentagon was the action agency on this working with the Central Intelligence Agency in crafting the rules. But the atmosphere in which the Geneva Conventions were more or less set to one side, apparently, would have come from the top.


[...]

MR. RUSSERT: Let me just turn to the real issue here and that is who is responsible, who's being blamed, who's being court-martialed


GEN. CLARK: Well, there is a systemic problem here, and we do need to get to the bottom of it. We do need intelligence information. Our soldiers have to maintain standards of conduct. And General Taguba's report, I think, got to many of the key issues that are involved; more needs to be done.

But beyond the specific issue that's here involved and who was responsible and how do we prevent this in the future is the larger issue of the success or failure of the mission in Iraq. And that's what this prisoner abuse calls into question.

We know there was no linkage between Saddam Hussein and the events of 9/11. We know now there was no imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction, the last claim of the administration is to do good in Iraq by providing democracy, an opportunity for democracy and higher standards. And here we are with this compromising the higher standards that we believe in. So it's a very, very significant issue as we try to win the hearts and the minds of the people in Iraq and promote our views of the right way to govern around the world.


[...]

MR. RUSSERT: ... Murtha...expressed serious doubts that those remedies are even faint possibilities, given current military deployments, a lack of support from NATO allies and widespread outrage over the mistreatment of Iraqis prisoners of war."

"Coming from a senior appropriator with close ties to the Pentagon, Murtha's bleak analysis led many colleagues to surmise that he believes a democratic Iraqi is a lost cause."

General Clark, do you share that pessimism?

GEN. CLARK: I think there's a greater than 50/50 chance, let's say a 2:1 chance, of a catastrophic early end to this mission.

MR. RUSSERT: What does that mean?

GEN. CLARK: That means the Iraqi people will simply say, "We want the Americans out of here." You'll see a large outpouring of public animosity in Baghdad and elsewhere, a million Iraqis demonstrating in the streets of Baghdad against us. And, Tim, we're only going to be there and be effective if the majority of the Iraqi people want us there. That's what this mission's success hinges on.

All of the issues, international involvement, more troops and all that--all of it is measured by: Do the Iraqi people believe that we're actually helping and contributing to their betterment or are we causing problems?

And the Iraqi people are, step by step, turning against this mission. What we need to do right now is a major change in policy. We need to unload John Negroponte after the 30th of June. He cannot run that country as the American ambassador.

We've got to have an international assistance organization like we did in the Balkans, where other nations can participate, and the Iraqis will understand that it's the world trying to help them; it's not America telling them what to do.

Update: For anyone who's interested in going deeper into Wes Clark's ideas about how to fix this cock-up in Iraq, read "Broken Engagement" in the May issue of The Washington Monthly.


digby 5/10/2004 01:26:00 PM |

 
Seeds Of The Insurgency

Baghdad's art scene show US abuse :

The alabaster sculpture of a crouching naked man, with his hands tied and his head covered by a hood is on display at a Baghdad gallery.

It bears a striking resemblance to some of the shocking photographs that emerged last week of Iraqi prisoners abused by their American guards at the Abu Ghraib prison.

The 38cm sculpture with the words "We are living American democracy" inscribed on its base was fashioned two months ago.

'We knew what went on at Abu Ghraib,' the artist Abdul-Kareem Khalil said on Saturday. "The pictures did not surprise me."

digby 5/10/2004 12:36:00 PM |

 
Bleeding Money

The invasion of Iraq is not only the greatest strategic blunder in modern memory, it is also the most expensive strategic blunder in modern times.

With troop commitments growing, the cost of the war in Iraq could top $150 billion through the next fiscal year — as much as three times what the White House had originally estimated. And, according to congressional researchers and outside budget experts, the war and continuing occupation could total $300 billion over the next decade, making this one of the costliest military campaigns in modern times.

As a measure of the Bush administration’s priorities in the war on terrorism, it has spent about $3 in Iraq for every $1 committed to homeland security, experts say.

That divide may be growing.

The Pentagon says its monthly costs for Operation Iraqi Freedom shot up from $2.7 billion in November to nearly $7 billion in January, the last month for which ithas provided figures. Since then, the number of troops has jumped by 20,000 to 135,000, and the bloody insurgency has grown.

Defense officials initially said the troop increases were temporary, but last week they changed course and said they planned to maintain the higher levels through 2005, along with increased numbers of tanks and other heavy military equipment. The tempo of military operations has increased sharply in response to a wave of lethal attacks, suggesting the costs still may be climbing.

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have started to express deep concern over the costs and the way in which the Bush administration is choosing to cover them.

They contend that the White House has been relying on budgeting stratagems to conceal the overall expense, at least until after the election in November. And lawmakers worry that Congress is going to be forced to do something the White House has said until now was not necessary: Chop away at other government programs to cover the costs of an occupation that has no end in sight.

“DOD (Department of Defense) is being more than customarily opaque with us, ” Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in an interview. “We’re trying to pool our efforts and share information and piece something together, which is the only way to figure out what it is really going to cost us. But this is basic information. This is not unorthodox to get these numbers. It’s not asking for somebody to rework the whole books. I think they are embarrassed by the level of the costs.”

By contrast, Operation Desert Storm, begun in 1991 after Saddam Hussein’s armies invaded Kuwait, cost about $84 billion, adjusted for inflation, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. But because the United States was part of a broad coalition of wealthy countries, including Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Saudi Arabia, about 90 percent of those costs were paid for by America’s allies.

But you know, Junior, in his ongoing quest to prove to his father that he is a man, decided that it was a good idea to tell the rest of the world to go fuck itself and pay for the entire mistake ourselves. Besides, Chalabi and Wolfowitz promised that the war would pay for itself and that made so much sense.


Via catch.com


digby 5/10/2004 12:00:00 PM |

 
Talent On Loan from Stalin

I should have known.

The freeper screed I posted below came directly from GOP cult leader, Rush Limbaugh, on his show last Thursday:

All right, so we're at war with these people. And they're in a prison where they're being softened up for interrogation. And we hear that the most humiliating thing you can do is make one Arab male disrobe in front of another. Sounds to me like it's pretty thoughtful. Sounds to me in the context of war this is pretty good intimidation -- and especially if you put a woman in front of them and then spread those pictures around the Arab world. And we're sitting here, 'Oh my God, they're gonna hate us! Oh no! What are they gonna think of us?' I think maybe the other perspective needs to be at least considered. Maybe they're gonna think we are serious. Maybe they're gonna think we mean it this time. Maybe they're gonna think we're not gonna kowtow to them. Maybe the people who ordered this are pretty smart. Maybe the people who executed this pulled off a brilliant maneuver.

[...]


Nobody got hurt. Nobody got physically injured. But boy there was a lot of humiliation of people who are trying to kill us -- in ways they hold dear. Sounds pretty effective to me if you look at us in the right context.

We are at war with Iraq. And the Iraqis are trying to kill us. We are simply teaching them who's in charge ...

...when we aren't liberating them and creating a liberal democracy that will be a model for all the tyrannical regimes in the region, that is.

Rush is not off the reservation. He knows what he's supposed to say to keep his dittoheads in line. I have little doubt that Ed Gillespie and Karl Rove, (despite their horror toward Democratic "hate speech") are on the same page. They always are.

Update: Media Matters is keeping the heat on Rush and he doesn't like it.

You want to kill the snake, go for the head.


digby 5/10/2004 10:09:00 AM |

Sunday, May 09, 2004

 
Desert Cakewalk

Sadoun Dulame read the results of his latest poll again and again. He added up percentages, highlighted sections and scribbled notes in the margins.

No matter how he crunched the numbers, however, he found himself in the uncomfortable position this week of having to tell occupation authorities that the report they commissioned paints the bleakest picture yet of the U.S.-led coalition's reputation in Iraq. For the first time, according to Dulame's poll, a majority of Iraqis said they'd feel safer if the U.S. military withdrew immediately.

A year ago, just 17 percent of Iraqis wanted the troops gone, according to Dulame's respected research center in Baghdad. Now, the disturbing new results mirror what most Iraqis and many international observers have said for months: Give it up. Go home. This just isn't working.

The prisoner-abuse scandal is only the latest in a string of serious setbacks to the U.S. administration's ambitions for democracy in Iraq. Before that, one essential political ally was lost - the country's Shiite Muslim majority - and another discredited - Ahmed Chalabi and other members of the U.S.-appointed governing council.

A persistent guerrilla campaign is sending dozens of U.S. troops home in flag-draped coffins, and more than half the country is unemployed. Rebuilding projects the coalition started and then abandoned because the worsening security drove away contractors only add to the country's dismal landscape and dim hopes for the future.

[...]

Outside of officialdom, there is little appetite for allowing Americans to stay. Anyone still talking about liberation is shushed as disingenuous, especially now that the image of a Saddam Hussein statue crashing to the ground is no longer symbolic of the coalition's intentions. Instead, many Iraqis said, today's American presence is best summed up in photos of a laughing female American soldier leading a nude Iraqi prisoner by a dog leash.

Dulame's grim poll doesn't even take in the prisoner scandal's effects. It was conducted in mid-April in seven Iraqi cities. A total of 1,600 people were interviewed, and the margin of error is 3 percentage points. The findings, which must go first to coalition authorities, have not yet been made public.

According to Dulame, director of the independent Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, prisoner abuse and other coalition missteps now are fueling a dangerous blend of Islamism and tribalism. For example, while American officials insist that only fringe elements support the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a majority of Iraqis crossed ethnic and sectarian lines to name him the second most-respected man in Iraq, according to the coalition-funded poll.

Other than that, things are going really well.


Via The Poorman




digby 5/09/2004 06:00:00 PM |

 
Bush's Base

Via reader jh Woodyat I'm informed of some fascinating analysis of the prisoner abuse scandal over in freeperville: Did the Arab "Street" Get a Message We Didn't Mean to Send?

The POW photos are having an unintended effect on the Arab "Street" and the "resistance."

Amidst all the apologies, I want to suggest we all (Hillary Clinton here) take a deep breath and consider something that no one in the administration or Congress has (publicly) considered:

By now, everyone pretty well knows that Arab societies base everything on power and perceptions of power. In part, that is why so many Freepers and conservatives got their panties in a bunch because it appeared in public like "apologizing" was a sign of weakness.

Ah, my friends. You aren't thinking like an Arab. The "street" and, indeed, the leadership doesn't trust much of what we say---they only look at what we do. It would have made no difference if Bush formally apologized and sent each detainee a bouquet of flowers---the "street" would see that as a sham, a pretense, a distraction from the "real" policy.

No, I suggest something else. That the Arab "street" and especially the "resistance" has taken from those photos a message we didn't intend to send, but one that strikes fear into the very heart of them---a message of pure power and dominance. The submissive positions of these "tough" Iraqi men under the heels and attached to the leashes of WOMEN (and relatively small women, at that) sends a very powerful message to the "street."

Don't screw with the Americans. Oh, they'll "apologize," be we know that when the hearings are over, and the attention is off, they can do what they want.

I want to reiterate: this is foreign to our way of thinking. Unless you're a hard-core Democrat, you don't pathologically lie to achieve your objectives. But we must start thinking like the enemy.

Has anyone noticed that we virtually walked into Najaf this week, unopposed? Al-Sadr did nothing. Has anyone noticed that Fallujah is quiet? Very few roadside bombs/suicide bombs in the last couple of days. This could all change, but it is eerie that when a message of power is sent out all over the Middle East---unintentionally on our part---it resonates. Big time.

Yes, yes. Americans have the most humongous, elephantine dicks on the planet. Everybody knows that. Especially freepers. They also have the smallest brains.

In one sense, this person is right. The "Arab street" doesn't believe these half-hearted apologies for one minute. Rummy's still running things, Bush can't spit out the word "sorry" without choking and the plan continues unabated. Whether they are all shaking and weeping like little girls under the shadow of our mighty manhood is another story. I guess this "analyst" forgot that these guys lived under Saddam, who up until about five minutes ago was universally condemned for doing exactly what this fellow now praises the US for doing.

After having to endure the hate-filled rhetoric of Democrats, David "National Greatness" Brooks must be so proud to be politically aligned with fine examples of civil discourse like Rush Limbaugh and these real Americans:

It's like judo. You turn your weaknesses into strength. The scandal is a weakness, and we turn it into a strength. Right now, every would-be terrorist is going to have horrible nightmares of sexual torture before they light off their next bomb.

Sadly, American troops are now having the same nightmares. Which is why they aren't too happy right now. Their jobs just got exponentially more dangerous.

Excellent point. Also note this: the prisoners chose to submit to this humiliation. They could have defied us and chosen their 72 virgins. How strong is their faith? I believe that the Japanese were much more devoted to their faith than the Islamics. God willing, I do not expect to see as many suicide bombers as there were kamakazis back during WWII. Right or wrong, some of the guards called their bluff, and we can learn from that.

It was the prisoners choice to live or die and they chose to live. So it's their fault they were sexually tortured and humiliated. Buncha babies.

You know? You may be on to something. We know we're dealing with cowards. Perhaps alSadr crapped his kaftan when he saw those photos and pictured himself naked... barking like a dog with a chain on his neck... at the end of a leash held by a 90 pound woman sucking on a Pall Mall.

[...]

Can you imagine us apologizing and offering cash reparations to jailed lower-level Nazi crimminals during WW2 for "humiliating" them? The American people would've been horrified by such a suggestion. .....but back then we were made of much sterner stuff.

That's so true. As our National Security Advisor said, "we liberated the German people from Hitler" just as we are liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam. It's just a matter of sorting out who's naughty and nice. Luckily, American troops can automatically tell the good Iraqis we are liberating from the bad Iraqis we are fighting. The prisoners who were being beaten raped and tortured must be guilty of something or they wouldn't be there, right?

The only [thing] that would have made those pictures even worse,to the "Arab Street",would have been if these pictures also showed women rubbing bacon all over those "brave" soldiers for Allah.

Good idea. But, really, why are we playing these silly games. Concentration camps are one proven method to deal with these sub-humans.

On the other hand:

I don't know if this sexual harassment will do the job. Personally I would like us to locate this piss-ant called Al-Sadr and the mosque he is located in. Once located we drop a MOAB (Muslims & Other Arab Bastards) bomb. I figure a few of these, probably less than 10-20 would shut the Arab-Muslim's up.

They don't say Americans are the pargmatists of the world for nothing.

Yeah, you nailed it. This stuff is so lame compared to other wars. I actually thought the pictures were a bit comical. As the poster states, the pictures may have made a very large point to a culture which treats it's women like crap. And guess what? NO ONE GOT HURT! Seeing a human being jump from a burning sky scraper; now that's NOT funny. And guess what? That person died and not one Arab or Muslim leader was asked to apologize, nor did any apologize. In fact, those societies cheered at what happened on 911. I say screw 'em, and I say screw the libs who are demanding this non-stop apology.

Until we get an apology from all the Arabs who had nothing to do with 9/11, we can do whatever we want (and to all those woman hating liberals who support them, too.)

Here's another feminist for Bush:

If I were a Muslim woman and saw that tiny woman pretending she had an AK-14 pointed at their hubby's cajoles, I be saying let me get you a real handheld rocket propeller with an extra round and send him to his 72 Virgins. I'll help pull the trigger!

Muslim women (if they have seen any of these pics) must be grateful that finally the "men" are being abused and not the females in Iraqi.

I don't condone what was done and evidently there is more to come (no pun intended). Geez, these guys were in "prison" and another thought is that maybe a lot of Iraqi's recognized some of their former torturers and were pleased that Allah had sent such "tormentors" to revenge these evil doers.

One last thing! A pair of Hane's women's panties???? Get real, most of the guys in SanFran would have gone for the Victoria Secret thong with matching lace bra.

I hope we get this crap behind us and win the war on terror and have a turnover on June 30th that makes every sacrifice our Country and our Military worthwhile.

The DEMS are fiddling while Rome is burning. Clinton's "I didn't have sex with the woman is more abusive to me as an American than any of the pics I've seen so far!

Well, there you have it.



I think the way to fight off evil is to do some acts of goodness. See, the great strength of the country is the hearts and souls of our fellow Americans. And the best way to declare our position, the best way to make our position known to the world, is through what I like to call the gathering momentum of millions of acts of kindness and compassion and decency; acts of compassion and decency which take place on a daily basis, in all kinds of ways. George W. Bush


Or we could pour buckets of pig blood all over the naked prisoners.

It's all good.




digby 5/09/2004 12:09:00 PM |

 
New Insurgency

Iraqi scholars plan US opposition

The "tough" thing is, their opposition sounds suspiciously like it might end up as some form of pluralistic democracy:

What is becoming increasingly accepted as the inherent inability of the US-led coalition to come to grips with the situation - further exacerbated by the range of opposition forces ranged against it - has left a political vacuum, a vacuum that this initiative hopes to help fill.

The senior Shia cleric behind the initiative, Sheikh Jawad al-Khalisi, brought together some 500 prominent Iraqis - Shia, Sunni, Arab nationalist and Kurdish.

They hope to carve out a path, free from American and other foreign influences, along which the majority of Iraqis could be persuaded to move.

The conference set up a 16-member panel, pledged to boycott any US-sponsored political group, including the Iraqi Governing Council, to re-establish the national army and to restore sovereignty under the auspices of the United Nations.

Sheikh Khalisi's opposition to the US programme seems bound to cause hostility in some quarters.

But the idea of a broad and wholly Iraqi initiative may also win hearts and minds among the local population.

Heavens to Betsy, Donald. Do you think they'll agree to let the US keep its four planned permanent military bases and run their economy like a Cato Institute wet dream? I sure hope so because if not they might find themselves on the receiving end of a little R21.


Link via Common Prejudice



digby 5/09/2004 11:05:00 AM |

 
Time To Move On

Larry Eagleberger is now appearing on national television programs drunk, apparently. He says that this hand-wringing has got to stop. We have 50 years of history showing that we are the good guys and if others in the world don't understand that then there is something wrong with them.





digby 5/09/2004 10:33:00 AM |

Friday, May 07, 2004

 
The Daily Brew:

We Are All Wearing The Blue Dress Now

Whether Republicans like it or not, if George Bush is elected in the fall, the entire world will view the election as American approval of the torture and sexual humiliation of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. It might not be fair, it might not be reasonable, but it is nevertheless reality. Apologies, prosecutions, firings and courts martial will not be enough to expunge the stain this scandal has placed on the honor of the United States. The pictures are simply too graphic. The abuses are simply too horrible. If George Bush is elected President, the entire world will view the election, at a minimum, as tacit approval of these events.

Read the rest.

Brew is correct. If we do not turn Bush out of office, the American people will no longer have the benefit of the doubt. Up until now, most of the world has realized that Junior got in on a hummer. But, if we legitimately elect this idiot, we will be seen to have validated all the actions of this administration.





digby 5/07/2004 10:22:00 PM |

 
The Method To Their Madness

Keep in mind that General Taguba estimated that more than 60% of those detained at Abu Ghraib are innocent of any crimes:

The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they are doing, according to British military sources.

The techniques devised in the system, called R2I - resistance to interrogation -match the crude exploitation and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.

One former British special forces officer who returned last week from Iraq, said: "It was clear from discussions with US private contractors in Iraq that the prison guards were using R2I techniques, but they didn't know what they were doing."

He said British and US military intelligence soldiers were trained in these techniques, which were taught at the joint services interrogation centre in Ashford, Kent, now transferred to the former US base at Chicksands.

"There is a reservoir of knowledge about these interrogation techniques which is retained by former special forces soldiers who are being rehired as private contractors in Iraq. Contractors are bringing in their old friends".

Using sexual jibes and degradation, along with stripping naked, is one of the methods taught on both sides of the Atlantic under the slogan "prolong the shock of capture", he said.

Female guards were used to taunt male prisoners sexually and at British training sessions when female candidates were undergoing resistance training they would be subject to lesbian jibes.

"Most people just laugh that off during mock training exercises, but the whole experience is horrible. Two of my colleagues couldn't cope with the training at the time. One walked out saying 'I've had enough', and the other had a breakdown. It's exceedingly disturbing," said the former Special Boat Squadron officer, who asked that his identity be withheld for security reasons.

Many British and US special forces soldiers learn about the degradation techniques because they are subjected to them to help them resist if captured. They include soldiers from the SAS, SBS, most air pilots, paratroopers and members of pathfinder platoons.

A number of commercial firms which have been supplying interrogators to the US army in Iraq boast of hiring former US special forces soldiers, such as Navy Seals.

"The crucial difference from Iraq is that frontline soldiers who are made to experience R2I techniques themselves develop empathy. They realise the suffering they are causing. But people who haven't undergone this don't realise what they are doing to people. It's a shambles in Iraq".

The British former officer said the dissemination of R2I techniques inside Iraq was all the more dangerous because of the general mood among American troops.

"The feeling among US soldiers I've spoken to in the last week is also that 'the gloves are off'. Many of them still think they are dealing with people responsible for 9/11".

When the interrogation techniques are used on British soldiers for training purposes, they are subject to a strict 48-hour time limit, and a supervisor and a psychologist are always present. It is recognised that in inexperienced hands, prisoners can be plunged into psychosis.

The spectrum of R2I techniques also includes keeping prisoners naked most of the time. This is what the Abu Ghraib photographs show, along with inmates being forced to crawl on a leash; forced to masturbate in front of a female soldier; mimic oral sex with other male prisoners; and form piles of naked, hooded men.

The full battery of methods includes hooding, sleep deprivation, time disorientation and depriving prisoners not only of dignity, but of fundamental human needs, such as warmth, water and food.

Unless there is a ticking goddamned nuclear bomb in the basement of the White House, there is not even a tiny shred of an excuse for this shit.

The happiest man on the planet today is Osama bin Laden. He kisses a picture of Teresa Lapore every night before he goes to sleep, thanking Allah for sending her to put the dumbest assholes in the world into the White House.


digby 5/07/2004 09:26:00 PM |

 
The Smirking Jezebels From The Appalachians

Tory wierdo Boris Johnson coined the above phrase in his now infamous apologia for supporting the war. It's facile and silly, but it made me realize that the two most vivid symbols of the war are two 21 year-old female soldiers from West Virginia --- Jessica Lynch and Lynndie England --- one blond, one brunette, one the embodiment of American goodness, the other the hated representive of America's dark side.

It appears that the line between good and evil can run right down the center of one little state --- a little state that was created during the civil war when those appalachians refused to join the confederacy. Perhaps it is, and always been, the beating heart of America, warts and all.




digby 5/07/2004 06:40:00 PM |

 
Thorough Investigations:

Three U.S. military policemen who served at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison said on Thursday they had witnessed unreported cases of prisoner abuse and that the practice against Iraqis was commonplace.

``It is a common thing to abuse prisoners,'' said Sgt. Mike Sindar, 25, of the Army National Guard's 870th Military Police Company based in the San Francisco Bay area. ``I saw beatings all the time.

``A lot of people had so much pent-up anger, so much aggression,'' he said. Sindar and the other military policemen, who have returned to California from Iraq, spoke in interviews with Reuters.

[...]

Although public attention has focused on the dehumanizing photos, some members of the 870th MP unit say the faces in those images were not the only ones engaged in cruel behavior.

``It was not just these six people,'' said Sindar, the group's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons specialist. ``Yes, the beatings happen, yes, all the time.''

[...]

Until earlier this year prisoners would arrive at Abu Ghraib with broken bones, suggesting they had been roughed up, he said. But the practice ended in January or February, as practices at the prison were coming under increased internal scrutiny.

Photos obtained by Reuters show U.S. soldiers looking into body bags of three Iraqi prisoners killed by 870th MP guards during a prison riot in the fall of 2003. One photograph shows a bearded man with much of his bloodied forehead removed by the force of a bullet.

``We were constantly being attacked, we had terrible support ... also being extended all the time, a lot of us had problems with our loved ones suffering from depression,'' said another of the military policemen, Spc. Dave Bischel. ``It all contributes to the psychological component of soldiers when they get stressed.''

The Californians' remarks were unusual, as U.S. soldiers have been reluctant to speak out in public on the issue.

Some say investigators went out of their way to keep the allegations under wraps. When military investigators were looking into abuses several months ago, they gave U.S. guards a week's notice before inspecting their possessions, several soldiers said.

"That shows you how lax they are about discipline. 'We are going to look for contraband in here, so hint, hint, get rid of the stuff,' that's the way things work in the Guard,'' Leal said.

digby 5/07/2004 06:00:00 PM |

 
Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Jacob Weisberg has a fascinating piece up at Slate called, The Misunderestimated Man - How Bush chose stupidity:

Bush's assorted malapropisms, solecisms, gaffes, spoonerisms, and truisms tend to imply that his lack of fluency in English is tantamount to an absence of intelligence. But as we all know, the inarticulate can be shrewd, the fluent fatuous. In Bush's case, the symptoms point to a specific malady—some kind of linguistic deficit akin to dyslexia—that does not indicate a lack of mental capacity per se.

Bush also compensates with his non-verbal acumen. As he notes, "Smart comes in all kinds of different ways." The president's way is an aptitude for connecting to people through banter and physicality. He has a powerful memory for names, details, and figures that truly matter to him, such as batting averages from the 1950s. Bush also has a keen political sense, sharpened under the tutelage of Karl Rove.

What's more, calling the president a cretin absolves him of responsibility. Like Reagan, Bush avoids blame for all manner of contradictions, implausible assertions, and outright lies by appearing an amiable dunce. If he knows not what he does, blame goes to the three puppeteers, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld. It also breeds sympathy. We wouldn't laugh at FDR because he couldn't walk. Is it less cruel to laugh at GWB because he can't talk? The soft bigotry of low expectations means Bush is seen to outperform by merely getting by. Finally, elitist condescension, however merited, helps cement Bush's bond to the masses.

But if "numskull" is an imprecise description of the president, it is not altogether inaccurate. Bush may not have been born stupid, but he has achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. What makes mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by family connections.

The most obvious expression of Bush's choice of ignorance is that, at the age of 57, he knows nothing about policy or history. After years of working as his dad's spear-chucker in Washington, he didn't understand the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, the second- and third-largest federal programs. Well into his plans for invading Iraq, Bush still couldn't get down the distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the key religious divide in a country he was about to occupy. Though he sometimes carries books for show, he either does not read them or doesn't absorb anything from them. Bush's ignorance is so transparent that many of his intimates do not bother to dispute it even in public.

There's more good stuff about his little Oedipal issue and the fact that he really is the laziest bastard to ever become president.

I maintain that the biggest insult the Republicans have ever pulled --- and I'm including that bodice ripping romance novel they called The Starr Report --- was to put this unqualified manchild in charge of the world.




digby 5/07/2004 05:07:00 PM |

 
They Should Be Grateful

From the previously mentioned Inhofe appearance on Chris Matthews yesterday:

JAMES INHOFE: ... Let‘s look at this prison.

No. 1, this is one prison out of 26. No. 2, this is the same prison where Saddam Hussein was torturing people in an indescribable way, far worse than any abuses that took place in these pictures.

We‘re talking about drilling holes in their hands. We‘re talking about electrocuting people. We‘re talking about just dropping their bodies, half their bodies into acid. You know, things that are really serious.

Now if were an Iraqi and I went through what they said they went through, I would say to myself, That‘s not nearly as bad as if we had been here when Saddam was in charge.

They were letting off steam, Chris! Just a little 'o that Deliverance style "sooooooey" action. They were damned lucky they didn't get their hands drilled, for cying out loud.

Gotta run Chris. I'm late for the National Day of Prayer invitational Broomstick Slam. Thanks for having me.


Vote the liberals out of office. You will be doing the Lord's work, and he will richly bless you. James Inhofe






digby 5/07/2004 03:08:00 PM |

 
Good Riddance

I think that the single most egregious mistake that Bush has made in his presidency (among many egregious mistakes) is continuously asserting that we are "better" as a people than "the enemy," whom they have never adequately defined. His vaunted "moral clarity" continues to be nothing more that a puerile appeal to emotion that has done much more harm than good. Historically, nations have always done this, but in this age of global media, it is a very bad idea. It's much too easy for pictures and words to make their way around the world in seconds to contradict such assertions and destroy our credibility. As Bush himself says repeatedly, "it's a different kinda war" and indeed it is. It is much more a war of ideas than a war of military conquest. If there was ever a time when we needed someone with highly developed communication skills, it was now. Unfortunately, we were saddled with someone who speaks in the most simplistic terms possible and it is blowing back on us now.

Immediately after 9/11, Bush's braintrust framed this War On Terrorism as between "good 'n evil," "us 'n them" --- exactly as bin Laden did. Instead of using reason, strength and good will to continue the solidarity the world felt toward America after 9/11, we reacted like a hurt child, lashing out with inchoate rage at virtually everyone, all the while screaming about our superior characters. (We even went after the Europeans for Christ's sake.)

Had we emphasized our institutions and traditions rather than our alleged goodness, we might be able to get past this awful moment of Abu Ghreib by showcasing a system that resists brute power and religious judgments of character in favor of blind justice. Their scramble now to investigate and fact-find again completely rings hollow because we rested our entire argument on the character of Americans in contrast to everyone else. Our credibility is in shreds.

There were essentially three stated reasons for invading Iraq. The first was because Saddam had WMD. The second was because Saddam had ties to terrorists. The third was because Saddam tortured and terrorized his own people.

There are no WMD. There never were any terrorist ties. And by consciously undermanning the "liberation" we created the circumstances that have led to sweeps of innocent Iraqi people who are then dragged into a prison system with no due process and are systematically tortured --- by us, not Saddam. No decent person can believe that it is moral to "pre-emptively" invade a country and do such things in the name of liberation and our superior "goodness" as a people.

Now, I'm not saying that Americans are a bad people. We're just people, comprising the full range of human character from saint to psychopath. So are the Iraqis and so is every other tribe. That is why we have government in the first place. It's hard to tell who's bad or good and it's not enough to simply assert that one group is and one isn't. We need systems and institutions to sort these things out in the most perfect way we can find and those systems and institutions are imperfect indeed. If we ever had a strength in America, a source of pride and superiority, it was that we put our trust in the rule of law not men.

And that is precisely the opposite of what our president has been saying. He's said "trust us" because we are good. We don't need to provide any explanations or adhere to any laws, treaties or agreements because the character of our people doesn't require it. And that is why these pictures are being greeted around the world with both horror and glee. The president of the United States has been holding out the moral superiority of the American people as justification for flouting all laws and conventions and we've just been slapped in the face with the truth. Americans are capable of being just as depraved as anyone else. (I would have thought that anyone over the age of 10 would already know this, but apparently not.)

Once Bush is removed from office maybe we can drop this simpleminded drivel and start speaking to the world like adults again. Fewer self-righteous sermons about being "called to bring freedom to the world" and more talk about the rule of law would be a breath of fresh air. I have a feeling we might find that people around the world are more willing to cooperate if our president doesn't constantly lecture them about our superior moral character and instead leads on the basis of reason, law and justice. In the war of ideas, the latter is where the real firepower exists.



digby 5/07/2004 01:26:00 PM |

 
Silver Lining

For the first time I'm glad that Al Gore did not take office in 2000. At least Joe Lieberman is not the Vice President of the United States today.

Because, unlike Joe and his fellow Republican members of congress, I don't believe just because Dick Cheney is the second coming of Cardinal Richelieu that having a sanctimonious, sycophantic hypocrite for Vice President would be excusable simply by comparison.

Joe, like his fellow traveller the insane Jim Inhofe, just passionately asserted that Arabs who are completely unrelated to the torture and abuse at Abu Ghrieb had done bad things to Americans at different times and places that we didn't owe an apology to those who we tortured and abused at Abu Ghrieb. I guess I need to put out a call to Torah scholors for some guidance on that one too.

Here is the chief lecturer on morals and ethics in the Democratic Party back in 1998:

Mr. President, I have come to this floor many times in the past to speak with my colleagues about the concerns which are so widely shared in this chamber and throughout the nation that our society's standards are sinking; that our common moral code is deteriorating and that our public life is coarsening. In doing so, I have specifically criticized leaders of the entertainment industry for the way they have used the enormous influence the wield to weaken our common values.

...it is hard to ignore the impact of the misconduct the president has admitted to on our culture, on our character and on our children.

To begin with, I must respectfully disagree with the president's contention that his relationship with Monica Lewinsky and the way in which he misled us about it is nobody's business but his family's and that even presidents have private lives, as he said.

[...]

The president is not just the elected leader of our country...when his personal conduct is embarrassing, it is sadly so not just for him and his family, it is embarrassing for all of us as Americans.

[...]

In this case, the president apparently had extramarital relations with an employee half his age and did so in the workplace in the vicinity of the Oval Office. Such behavior is not just inappropriate. It is immoral. And it is harmful, for it sends a message of what is acceptable behavior to the larger American family -- particularly to our children -- which is as influential as the negative messages communicated by the entertainment culture.

[...]


This, unfortunately, is all-too-familiar territory for America's families in today's anything-goes culture, where sexual promiscuity is too often treated as just another lifestyle choice with little risk of adverse consequences.

[...]

The president's relationship with Ms. Lewinsky not only contradicted the values he has publicly embraced over the last six years, it has, I fear, compromised his moral authority at a time when Americans of every political persuasion agree that the decline of the family is one of the most pressing problems we are facing.

Nevertheless, I believe the president could have lessened the harm his relationship with Ms. Lewinksy has caused if he had acknowledged his mistake and spoken with candor about it to the American people shortly after it became public in January.

[...]

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

The last three weeks have been dominated by a cacophony of media and political voices calling for impeachment or resignation or censure, while a lesser chorus implores us to move on and get this matter behind us.

Appealing as that latter option may be to many people who are understandably weary of this crisis, the transgressions the president has admitted to are too consequential for us to walk away and leave the impression for our children today and for our posterity tomorrow that what he acknowledges he did within the White House is acceptable behavior for our nation's leader. On the contrary, as I have said, it is wrong and unacceptable and should be followed by some measure of public rebuke and accountability.

[...]

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

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

We are not at such a time in 2004, however. Soldiers leading naked prisoners around on a leash, riding around on old ladies backs calling them donkeys, forcing bound prisoners to simulate anal and oral sex --- things like this are not worth a righteous condemnation from the Senate Floor by our self-appointed moral conscience, Joe Lieberman. Instead, we are treated to a litany of crimes committed by Saudi Arabians on September 11th, 2001 and by a mob in Fallujah months after the torture took place as crimes for which WE deserve an apology --- and therefore, by implication, it's even steven.

By this logic, until we see some apologies from the Japanese, the Germans, the Brits and especially the French, it's perfectly ok for us to kill as many Canadians as we want.

Just as long as nobody gets any consensual, unphotographed blow jobs. That would be immoral.


Update: Yglesias notices Joe's new flexible morality too.

Correction: Smokin' Joe actually said that we did owe an apology to the prisoners. However, his impassioned conflation of the torture with the unrelated events of 9/11 and Fallujah in the next breath certainly implied that there is a moral equivalence. There is, of course, if the US has lowered itself to the level of terrorists and a street mob.




digby 5/07/2004 10:56:00 AM |

Thursday, May 06, 2004

 
Because He Isn't

A wide variety of officials in the administration had advised Bush to apologize on Wednesday when he gave interviews to two Arab television channels and were puzzled when he did not, senior U.S. officials said. An apology had been recommended in the talking points Bush received from the State Department and elsewhere, the officials said. Senior administration aides then made a push overnight for him to say he was sorry during his news conference with Abdullah, the officials said.

digby 5/06/2004 10:20:00 PM |

 
Relative Indignance

I just watched the Beltway Boyz have a complete meltdown over the idea that someone would ask Rumsfeld to resign over such minor infractions as torture, abuse and the suspension of 200 years of legal precedent and international treaties. After all, as Mort indignantly cried, "This is not My Lai!" (Fred added that Stalin was much, much worse because he killed millions.) When you look at the great historical sweep of political malfeasance, depravity and corruption it is really the lowest of the low to ask for the resignation of a cabinet secretary over such a silly little thing.

Funny, I seem to remember that the Beltway Boyz and their pals were apoplectic at the alleged criminal behavior of Mike Espy who was forced to resign because he was accused (and acquitted) of taking some free football tickets. Or Henry Cisneros who was chased out of Washington for lying about how much he paid his lying mistress. But then, unlike the stoking of a firestorm of rage from the Arab world, those things were threats to the nation so they deserved to lose their political careers and face jail time and millions of dollars worth of legal fees.

Now, I'm hearing James Inhofe, a very religious man, making the moral argument on Hardball that nobody dropped anyone into acid like Saddam did in that very same prison, so let's not get carried away with our condemnation of Americans. "Compared to what they do to us, it's a picnic." (Any ideas about what they're doing to us?) He did go out of his way to say that he "didn't approve" of the behavior of those bad apples before he waved around an Ahmad Chalabi special report from 1992 that says bin Laden was good friends with Saddam.

I'm once again struck by the moral surety of these religious Republicans who don't seem to be upset by the deviant behavior graphically shown in these pictures and who don't seem worried in the least about how they are going to explain it to their children. It seems like only yesterday that every other word from their mouths was "deplorable," "reprehensible," "despicable," "disgusting," and " "revolting," as they relayed their shock and horror at the stunning news of a 50 year old man having an affair with a young woman in his office. If I recall correctly, this was considered to be an act of such depravity that they didn't know how the nation could survive if the perpetrator wasn't removed from office.

But, somehow, pictures of a young soldier pointing gleefully to a naked, hooded prisoner forced to masturbate on camera only elicits a mild "disapproval." Anyone have some clues where I might find an explnation of this in Senator Inhofe's Baptist Bible or Freddie Barnes's Episcopal prayerbook, because I'm finding it awfully difficult to understand?





digby 5/06/2004 04:37:00 PM |

 
Voyeur Nation

Billmon says:

And so we come to the central question: Can the cover up artists keep the focus exclusively on Abu Ghraib? Ironically, the flood of S&M porn shots now making their way onto the market tend to reinforce the media's fascination with the perverted antics at the prison, which ultimately works in favor of the coverup, if not Rumsfeld personally. The new gulag archipelago, like the old one, requires anonymity. Right now, the other islands in the chain still have it, and may get to keep it - unless, of course, there are some candid snapshots from Gitmo or Bagram or the CIA's mysterious 'ghost' prisons floating around in unauthorized hands.

Even if such photos were to come to light, I'm not sure the mainstream media, much less the American public, can absorb much more than they already have. It's not easy to admit you live in a country that now owns and operates its own system of gulag camps - instead of contracting the entire job out to friendly despots, sight unseen, as in the good old days.

In other words, the administration has the public's desire not to know on its side. And that, plus Bush's gestures of contrition, may be enough to hold the line at Abu Ghraib - although Donald Rumsfeld's scalp may have to sacrified to seal the bargain.

It's funny he brings this up, because I was just thinking the exact opposite.

I think it is precisely the nature of the evidence that makes the media and the American public interested in the story. They are inured to charges of lies or corruption --- violence and prurience are what moves them. I concluded long ago that the only scandal that really interests the American public is a sex scandal.

It is the S&M image of this one that is moving it, the pictures, the graphic kinkiness of it. That's what shocks and thrills the public, if only in a sickening, voyeuristic, train wreck sort of way.

Bush and his band of faux moralists were in part chosen by the Republican establishment precisely because of their reputations for sexual rectitude. They knew they could get away with almost anything as long as they didn't expose themselves to accusations of sex -- of any kind. (The closest they came to slipping was Bush's Top Gun flight of fancy, but that faded soon enough.) The press and the public are attuned to the tiniest hint of sexual impropriety, both loving it and pretending to be shocked by it, and the GOP knows this because they virtually created the environment of sexual hypocricy our culture slavishly embraces.

The pictures at Abu Ghraib have brought sex back into the White House and they don't have a good way of dealing with it. Look at Rush --- he totally misread the party line (but he knows his public...) The politicians are soiled by their association with this violent kinkiness, but their followers, like Americans everywhere, are drawn to those images like moths to the flame. They can't escape it and they can't change the subject. No matter how pious and faithful, Bush is tainted. It's his war. It's his sex scandal. It's Clinton rules.

I don't pretend to know how this will play out long term. But, sex has been introduced into the equation now and that changes everything. The scandal receptors are turned on and the American people will start to watch. As with most sexually hypocritical cultures, voyeurism is one of America's biggest thrills. If news of further sexual humiliation and worse is confirmed about other prisons and prison camps around the world, the country will be watching with bated breath.




digby 5/06/2004 03:25:00 PM |

 
He Din' Know Nothin'

Via Center for American Progress

Rumsfeld not only preferred clarity and order, he insisted on them. That meant personally managing process, knowing all the details, asking the questions, shaping the presidential briefing and the ultimate results...In other words, Rumsfeld wanted near-total control.” – Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, pg. 16.

Keep this in mind on Friday as Rummy tries to pretend he was out of the loop.


digby 5/06/2004 02:28:00 PM |

 
Democratic Capitalism

I like to see patriotic Democrats make a buck. This guy sent me an e-mail saying he'd been inspired to create something to relieve his frustration. Makes an awfully nice stocking stuffer.


digby 5/06/2004 02:24:00 PM |

 
Indifferent Depravity

Once again we have the bizarre sideshow of pundits selectively calling for disavowels while devils are whispering sweet nothings in their own ears. TNR picks up on the strange silence on the right side of the spectrum towards Limbaugh's vomitous response to the torture and abuse in Iraq. Strange, of course, because they erupted like Vesuvius over a tasteless cartoon by obscure alternate weekly cartoonist, Ted Rall, while ignoring the S&M rantings of their talk radio hero -- who, not incidentally, boasts 20 million listeners a week.

"Why has, say, Salon not weighed in?" Sullivan wrote. "Why has Slate not barred [Rall's] work permanently from their site?" These were examples of a distinct genre of conservative political writing that seeks to pressure liberals into distancing themselves from their extreme elements, ostensibly in the name of fostering a more civil, reasonable political culture. Conservatives who deploy this argument profess merely to be concerned about the tone of American politics. David Brooks summarized this view in a New York Times column last fall, writing that "the core threat to democracy is not in the White House, it's the haters themselves."

Now we have a well-timed opportunity to see how sincerely the right believes its own platitudes about civil discourse. On his syndicated radio show yesterday, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh hit a new low. Discussing the allegations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, he suggested that the humiliation of detainees was merely a bit of misguided recreation.

See here and here.

By the standards of civility Sullivan and Brooks apply to the left, Limbaugh's outburst is surely beyond the pale. His cavalier endorsement of sadism and sexual abuse for "emotional release" counts as hate under any reasonable definition of the word. Limbaugh trivializes the suffering of Iraqi civilians as badly as Rall trivialized Pat Tillman's heroism. His comments are also, incidentally, a slur against the accused soldiers, none of whom have been so depraved as to defend their actions as "a good time." They, at least, have insisted that the actions had a purpose--to soften up the detainees for interrogation--however warped it might have been. (Limbaugh was also inaccurate; the Skull and Bones initiation, while bizarre, is apparently light on physical cruelty.)

Thus far, however, his remarks have been met with silence on the right, which has indulged Limbaugh for years. If lack of condemnation is really the equivalent of approval, then the complicity of the right in Limbaugh's bile is overwhelming. There have been no calls for radio stations to cancel Limbaugh, as Sullivan called for newspapers to drop Rall's comic. Sullivan lightly mocked Limbaugh's comments, but did not call for him to be taken off the radio. Ramesh Ponnuru came closest to mustering some genuine criticism on National Review's website, where he managed to summon up a sort of decaffeinated outrage: "It was a tough line [Limbaugh] was trying to walk," Ponnuru wrote. "But when he ended up comparing the abuse to a fraternity initiations ritual, I'm afraid he fell on the wrong side of it." You don't say!

Part of the reluctance to criticize Limbaugh may stem from his prominence in conservative politics; in terms of influence, Limbaugh, with his 20 million listeners, is an immeasurably more significant figure than Rall, whose cartoon reaches a paltry 140 newspapers, only some of which print any given strip (compared to 1,400 newspapers daily for Doonesbury). His prominence--and, indeed, the power he wields with the right-wing base--may help explain why conservatives repeatedly let Limbaugh off the hook. But it's also why his comments are even more deserving of outrage than Rall's. After all, Ted Rall is a pretty minor figure; Rush Limbaugh isn't. Both men said repulsive things this week. If one is beyond the limits of acceptable political discourse, then surely the other is, too. It would be nice to see a conservative, any conservative, acknowledge that.

It's certainly true that Limbaugh is prominent. The vice president just went on his show a couple of weeks ago. He was married by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Why, he was chosen to receive the prestigious "Statesmanship Award" from the Claremont Institute last year.

On November 21 the Claremont Institute will honor Rush Limbaugh with our Statesmanship Award. One of our heroes, Abraham Lincoln, frequently reminded his countrymen that "our government rests in public opinion." Few Americans in recent memory have done more on a daily basis to sustain and invigorate a healthy public opinion in this country than Mr. Limbaugh, known fondly to us all as "Rush."

In an overwhelmingly liberal media, Rush has brought to unprecedented millions of listeners a conservative point of view, year in and year out, on virtually every significant issue, trenchantly, intelligently, wittily, and inimitably. The buoyancy and optimism that infuse all of Rush's commentary, the unfailing good cheer in a good cause that uplifts the spirits of conservative millions every day, are reminiscent of the irrepressible spirit of the man whose life we gather here annually to celebrate, Sir Winston Churchill.

There could be few more eloquent testimonies to the success of Mr. Limbaugh in broadening and strengthening conservative public opinion in America than the deep fear and loathing he inspires among big-government, politically correct, blame-America-first liberals. Few if any since Ronald Reagan have had the honor of being more doggedly hated and feared by America's liberal elite than Rush Limbaugh. And the reasons are the same?Rush's staunch opposition to liberal cultural tyranny and tax and spend government, and his unblushing conviction that America is a good and great country that does not need the permission of the United Nations to defend itself against its enemies.

In recent months, wealthy liberals have launched a multimillion dollar campaign in the desperate --- and need one say, fruitless --- effort to create a "Limbaugh of the Left." More recently the same liberals have, of course, been publicly licking their unseemly chops at Rush's widely publicized personal setbacks.

All the more reason, we say, for friends and fans of Rush to come together to welcome him back to the good fight, honor him for his remarkable contributions, and wish him many more years of broadcasting the conservative truth "across the fruited plains."

Please join the Claremont Institute as we honor Rush with our Statesmanship Award for the service he has done our country as a leading voice of American conservatism.

Unfortunately, Rush was able to attend after all because the news broke that he was under investigation for money laundering and his lawyer advised him to go to rehab for his drug adiction immediately. Luckily, they were able to find a worthy replacement:

The Claremont Institute announced Wednesday that Rush Limbaugh will not be in attendance at the Institute's annual Churchill Dinner on Friday, Nov. 21, 2003.

The Institute announced that Dr. William J. Bennett, recently appointed Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute, will deliver the keynote address at the event.

(Here's a chance to take a Claremont institute Cruise with Bennett and half the masthead of National Review. Bring seasickness remedies.)

In case anyone thinks that Rush is on the outs with mainstream conservatives because he is a drug addict, he was welcomed back into the fold just last month to screams of adulation that Justin Timberlake would envy (if he were a balding, cretinous right wing blowhard):

Friday, March 19, 2004 10:40 a.m. EST

NewsMax.com's Wes Vernon reports that top radio talker Rush Limbaugh wowed the Media Research Center with a surprise appearance at yesterday's awards ceremony in Washington, D.C.

He was not on the program, but the audience in a huge hotel ballroom knew Rush Limbaugh was about to appear on stage when they heard his familiar radio theme song.

The occasion was the Media Research Center?s annual Dishonor Awards, held each year to spotlight grossly biased, inaccurate and downright wacky statements by the so-called "mainstream media," or "partisan media," as the famous talker prefers to call them.

Limbaugh castigated the elite media regarding a huge example of bias just within the last few days.

Taking note of the arrest of accused Saddam spy Susan Lindauer, Rush recalled that her resume includes four Democrat officeholders and several jobs with "the partisan media."

"And all they could emphasize was that she was something like the 13th cousin of [White House aide Andy Card]," he lamented, "even though Card and Lindauer hadn?t seen each other in years."

What set him off on the "partisan media" recently, Rush said, was the way South Florida news outlets had treated his well-publicized case where a Democrat prosecutor is singling him out on charges of "doctor shopping" in his pursuit of painkillers - the result of a years-long back pain problem.

Referring to the Palm Beach Post as the "newsletter" for Palm Beach prosecutors, the man regarded as a broadcast icon by 20 million-plus listeners revealed an "editorial" meeting he had with the newspaper editors.

He complained that other prominent figures in the area had been given a pass when they became reliant on painkillers, while the prosecutor went after him, largely as a result of e-mails received from Rush-haters. He cited reports from conservative news sources and interviews his lawyer had had with Sean Hannity and Joe Scarborough.

"We don?t recognize the partisan media," the editors responded.

By stubbornly refusing to recognize any news source other than those blessed by the liberal establishment, Limbaugh said, the editors were in essence regurgitating what has been heard in elitist newsrooms for years: "Facts don't matter."

Henceforth, said the top talker, he will not acknowledge that these establishment outlets are "mainstream," a concession conservatives have been willing to make until now.

They are, he told his wildly cheering audience, "the partisan media."

"Up until the last 15 or 20 years, they had 'a virtual monopoly' on deciding what is and what is not 'news,'" he explained.

President Bush, according to Limbaugh, has found out that there is little point in trying to "get along with them. They hate his guts," even more than they hated Reagan, "and that is saying something."

The Democrats, the surprise guest proclaimed, "care more about whether Europeans like them than they care about terrorists who want to kill us."

And don't let them tell you they're compassionate, he warned. "Just try disagreeing with them and see how far you get."

In the world of the left, Rush believes, politics is about seeking power "to rule other people," whereas conservatives seek to "give power back to the people."

Dizzying, isn't it?

And just so nobody gets the idea that the MRC "Dishonor Awards" are some fringe event rather than a mainstream conservative funfest, here's Brent Bozell's re-cap (pdf) from last years awards:

Nominees for each category were selected by the senior staff at the MRC, who combed through our massive archives to find 2002’s most biased quotes. The quotes were placed into five categories and provided to a distinguished group of 14 judges that included Rush Limbaugh,William F. Buckley, Jr., Robert Novak, Michael Reagan and William Rusher,among others. The judges voted for a winner and two runners-up in each cate-gory and, the “winners”were announced at the DisHonors. As a fun touch, we invite a top conservative leader to “accept” theaward on behalf of thewinner. More than 900 conservatives from around thecountry attended this year’s Dishonors and participants were a literal who's who of the conservative movement. Sean Hannity, the co-host of FoxNews' Hannity & Colmes; Laura Ingraham, the host of the country's third-highest rated conservative radio talkshow; and Anne Coulter, the best-selling author of Slander: Liberal Lies About the America Right,were our Presenters. Rich Lowry of National Review, Steve Moore of The Club for Growth, Judge Robert Bork, author Mona Charen and the Washington Times' Tony Blankley were our Accepters.

I don't know if the SCLM routinely hangs out at snotty insider awards dinners with Ted Rall, but maybe they ought to start. This kind of sophomoric Mean Girls bitchiness shouldn't just be confined to fun loving kooks like Buckley Novak and Bork.

Until our side gets it together and learns to embrace every left wing wacko like he or she is the reincarnatiuon of Bob Hope, in the spirit of public disavowelment for everyone, I suggest we write some letters to Judge Robert Bork, the man who appeared on Larry King and denounced President Clinton as morally unfit for office because he participated in a "depraved sexual act" and ask him whether he agrees with his good friend, the mainstream Rush Limbaugh, that those MP's at Abu Ghraib were just blowing off steam and getting a needed "emotional release."

Then we'll call Gary Bauer, James Dobson and Jerry Fallwell.



digby 5/06/2004 01:12:00 PM |

 
Take Action

Via Ezra Klein, I read that John Kerry has formed a rapid response operation. This is one way for blog readers to get involved in the campaign. If you have time to read my scratchings at work, you have time to write a letter. (And it's a good way to look busy when somebody walks by....)

John Kerry for President - Media Corps



digby 5/06/2004 10:21:00 AM |

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

 
General Disorder

Kevin Drum discusses the sickening new pictures in The Washington Post as well as an interview with Sy Hersh in which he mentions the strange choice of General Miller to "clean up" the abuses as Abu Ghraib:

"HERSH: No, look, I don't want to ruin your evening, but the fact of the matter is it was the third investigation. There had been two other investigations.

One of them was done by a major general who was involved in Guantanamo, General Miller. And it's very classified, but I can tell you that he was recommending exactly doing the kind of things that happened in that prison, basically. He wanted to cut the lines. He wanted to put the military intelligence in control of the prison."

Just as reminder, I posted about this a few days ago:

"One of the five Britons recently returned to the UK from Guantanamo Bay has claimed that he was subjected to cruel and sadistic treatment by US authorities.

Jamal al Harith, from Manchester, told the Daily Mirror today that detainees of Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta had to face frequent beatings, prolonged periods of isolation and traumatic psychological torture.

The 37-year-old was held at Guantanamo Bay for just over two years after coalition forces brought about the fall of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan. The divorced father-of-three said that the behaviour of prison guards was a deliberate affront to Islam and exacted to offend and terrorise the detainees.

Jamal told the Daily Mirror: 'The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not as nearly as bad as the psychological torture - bruises heal after a week - but the other stuff stays with you.'

Mr al Harith said that religious practises were often disrupted or even banned in order to punish and antagonise prisoners.

The most extreme of these claims centres around how guards would bring prostitutes into the camp to pose naked in front of prisoners, who were used to veiled women, and counter to Islamic practice.
He said: 'It was a profoundly disturbing experience for these men. They would refuse to speak about what had happened. It would take perhaps four weeks for them to tell a friend - and we would shout it out around the whole block"

If there is even a modicum of truth to this, the choice of Miller to head up the prisons in Iraq after the torture debacle is so completely insane that it may be the straw that breaks Rummy's back.

Josh Marshall has more --- according to the Taguba report there is good reason to believe this is true.

And, Newsday reported just today that:

Promising a broader investigation, the U.S. military acknowledged Wednesday that two guards at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had been disciplined over allegations of prisoner abuse.

[...]

Military officials were still investigating the three cases, which had not been submitted to a court, and whether any other complaints of prisoner abuse had been made.

The revelations came as Guantanamo's former commander, Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, apologized Wednesday for the "illegal or unauthorized acts" committed by U.S. soldiers at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Photographs showed Iraqi prisoners being abused by smiling American guards at the notorious Saddam Hussein-era prison.

Miller has taken charge of U.S. prisons in Iraq. He was the commander of Guantanamo from October 2002 to March 2004 and has said he was able to increase the amount of valuable intelligence tips gleaned from detainees during interrogations.

The hard-nosed general attributed the success to a system of rewards given to detainees and said officials were working to make the detainees' incarceration more comfortable.

[...]

Criticism from human rights groups lessened when the detainees were moved into their permanent cells but spiked again after a rash of suicide attempts. There have been at least 34 suicide attempts since the mission began in January 2001.

Marshall points out the differences between Gitmo and its allegedly hardened terrorists and the average Joes who are being "liberated" indefinitely in Iraqi prisons, but the wanton disregard for any kind of rule of law in the WOT is the root cause of all these problems. General Hard Nose is the last guy who should be anywhere near a prison right now.

And, just to end the day on an up note, Hersh also had this to say on O'Reilly:

I can tell you just from the phone calls I've had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn't want to mention on national television that was done. There was a lot of problems.

There was a special women's section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It's much worse. And the Maj. Gen. Taguba was very tough about it. He said this place was riddled with violent, awful actions against prisoners.

Jesus.







digby 5/05/2004 11:28:00 PM |

 
Big Man

Tom Friedman: "We were hit on 9/11 by people who believed hateful ideas ideas too often endorsed by some of their own spiritual leaders and educators back home. We cannot win a war of ideas against such people by ourselves. Only Arabs and Muslims can. What we could do --and this was the only legitimate rationale for this war -- was try to help Iraqis create a progressive context in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world where that war of ideas could be fought out.

But it is hard to partner with someone when you become so radioactive no one wants to stand next to you. We have to restore some sense of partnership with the world if we are going to successfully partner with Iraqis."

[...]

This administration needs to undertake a total overhaul of its Iraq policy; otherwise, it is courting a total disaster for us all.

That overhaul needs to begin with President Bush firing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — today, not tomorrow or next month, today. What happened in Abu Ghraib prison was, at best, a fundamental breakdown in the chain of command under Mr. Rumsfeld's authority, or, at worst, part of a deliberate policy somewhere in the military-intelligence command of sexually humiliating prisoners to soften them up for interrogation, a policy that ran amok.

Either way, the secretary of defense is ultimately responsible, and if we are going to rebuild our credibility as instruments of humanitarian values, the rule of law and democratization, in Iraq or elsewhere, Mr. Bush must hold his own defense secretary accountable. Words matter, but deeds matter more. If the Pentagon leadership ran any U.S. company with the kind of abysmal planning in this war, it would have been fired by shareholders months ago

Golly Tom. What happened to this?

No, the axis-of-evil idea isn't thought through - but that's what I like about it. It says to these countries and their terrorist pals: "We know what you're cooking in your bathtubs. We don't know exactly what we're going to do about it, but if you think we are going to just sit back and take another dose from you, you're wrong. Meet Don Rumsfeld - he's even crazier than you are."

There is a lot about the Bush team's foreign policy I don't like, but their willingness to restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right. It is the only way we're going to get our turkey back.

Well, that worked out really well. Looks like old Rummy took Tom literally.

And this guy is considered to be one of our leading analysts of the middle east. I think it's safe to say that after this his column is officially irrelevant and should be used exclusively as cat box filler.




digby 5/05/2004 10:32:00 PM |

 
Submissive Bigmouth


Via Road to Surfdom

Rush: In these American prisoners of war, have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes. The babes are meting out the torture. Well, I've just been asked if I'm surprised.

Pause for a few minutes of lubricous sound effects followed by a sigh...

You know, I could get into a lot of trouble here with this. No, part of me is not -- yes, I'm surprised. I am surprised. I do not believe -- I will go to my grave placing women on the pedestal of gentleness. On the surface it's a smart move, but in real life it could be incredibly stupid, but regardless - women are tougher than -- you know, we all must be honest about this. I mean, this business of weaker sex is all a bunch of trumped up stuff they teach when you you're five years old and you end up living your whole life that way, and it's just one big mystery that never gets solved.

A mystery you'll never solve, that's for sure Gordo.

One thing's becoming crystal clear lately. Rush, with his constant references to testicle lockboxes and Feminazis and "babes" with German Shepards is a certified sexual masochist. Really. Just the day before he described this behavior as "emotional release." Is it reasonable that anyone but a submissive slaveboy looked at those pictures and got HOT over them?

Folks, these torture pictures with the women torturers, I mean Marv Albert looking at those pictures would say, "Hey, that doesn't look so bad." You know, if you really look at these pictures, I mean I don't know if it's just me but it looks like anything you'd see Madonna or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe you can get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean this is something you can see at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City: the Movie. I mean, it's just me.

No, Rush. It isn't just you. There are whole communities of people who can fulfill your fantasies and lots of big, mean "babes" to punish you like you need to be punished. Nothing to be ashamed of. A lot of bigmouthed, phony macho men like you need a little spanking.

But, it's just a game, Rush.

War, on the other hand, isn't a game. It's a real life struggle for survival for all concerned and chickenhawk fuckheads like you need to confine your S&M fantasies to your little dittohead fan clubs.

But do say hello to Little Dick and Mistress Lynn next time you have "dinner" in the dungeon.




digby 5/05/2004 06:57:00 PM |

 
He No Media Ho

Via Suburban Guerrilla I find that Keith Olberman is the media hero of the week. He had Joe Wilson on and had the cojones to publicly reveal what Tweety and all the others fail to mention:

OLBERMANN: You do know that they are still going after you, right? We promoted the fact that you would be on this show tonight. Today we received three separate copies of the same e-mail with talking points from the White House, one asking a contact here “Can you please get this to the Olbermann people. Wilson is on the Olbermann show.” Misspelled my name, by the way, but that‘s neither here nor there. Another one asks one of our producers “I understand you have Mr. Wilson on. Can you please call me on this?”

Susan has more

digby 5/05/2004 06:48:00 PM |

 
Revisiting the Massacre

Sadly, this seems like a good time to bring up an earlier horrible story that nobody wanted to hear about. Were U.S. troops in Afghanistan complicit in a massacre?

June 15, 2002

Irish documentarian Jamie Doran says he has evidence of American complicity in a massacre in Afghanistan, and he's been showing his rough footage to European leaders in the hope of preventing a coverup.

Doran, who worked at the BBC for more than seven years and has made documentaries about human rights abuses throughout the world, screened 20 minutes of his unfinished feature documentary, "Massacre at Mazar," to the European parliament and the German parliament on Wednesday. After witnessing the screening, Andrew McEntee, former head of Amnesty International in the U.K., called for an independent investigation.

Doran has yet to release the footage to the public because he says his eyewitnesses' identities need to be obscured for their own protection. But Doran felt he had to get some of the information out immediately because the mass graves he secretly filmed are in danger of being tampered with, which would make an independent inquiry into his film's allegations of Northern Alliance and American war crimes impossible.

According to Doran, of the approximately 8,000 Taliban prisoners taken after the fall of Kunduz in late November 2001 to Gen. Rashid Dostum, around 5,000 are unaccounted for. He says he's filmed eyewitnesses testifying that many of those prisoners suffocated in the metal containers used to transport them between Qala-I-Zeini fortress and Sherberghan prison, and that Northern Alliance troops fired into the containers, killing and wounding other prisoners. One witness claims that an American officer ordered the bodies dumped in the desert of Dasht-I-Leili, and that living people were taken there as well and executed. Furthermore, Doran says he has witnesses claiming to have seen American special-forces soldiers torturing prisoners who made it to Sherberghan.

I remember hearing about this film on "Democracy Now" some months ago. It could not find distribution in the US and no television station would air it. It has been seen all over the world, however, including the CBC in Canada, (which also has a lot of links to various stories and resources on this story.)

Here's an article about it from the Global Policy Forum:

When the containers were unlocked at Sheberghan, the bodies of the dead tumbled out. A 12-man U.S. Fifth Special Forces Group unit, Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595, guarded the prison's front gates and, according to witnesses, controlled the facility in the hopes of picking key prisoners for interrogation and possible transportation to Guant?namo Bay. (This is how Lindh was singled out.) "Everything was under the control of the American commanders," a Northern Alliance soldier tells Doran in the film. American troops searched the bodies for Al Qaeda identification cards. But, says another driver, "Some of [the prisoners] were alive. They were shot" while "maybe 30 or 40" American soldiers watched.

Members of ODA 595, interviewed for the PBS program "Frontline" on August 2, 2002, confirm their presence at Sheberghan but cagily deny participating in war crimes. "The prisoners were being treated the exact same way as Dostum's forces were," said master sergeant "Paul." "I didn't see any atrocities, but I easily could have. Some prisoners may have died because they were sick or ill, and Dostum's forces just couldn't give them any care because they didn't have it." But even General Dostum admits 200 such deaths. And the Northern Alliance soldier quoted above says U.S. troops masterminded the cover-up": "The Americans told the Sheberghan people to get rid of them [the bodies] before satellite pictures could be taken."

These ODA 595 Special Forces guys freely admitted being very close to General Dostum and his troops. But, they had to leave right after the massacre at Mazer al Sharif:

Yeah we eh, we were ordered out quite rapidly and without General Dostum's knowledge. He was out of town and we got word that we were to be quickly ex-filled, to brief Mr. Rumsfeld.

We have no idea what really happened here, but there is ample evidence that the massacre itself took place. Whether Americans were involved remains unknown.

And, while this is a war crime, there is a distinction between what happened in Afghanistan to these suspected Taliban fighters and the Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib --- the most obvious being that we invaded Iraq, unprovoked, on the basis of lies about "grave and gathering" threats, lies about ties to terrorists and the increasingly surreal and threadbare claim of liberation. Nonetheless, war crimes are war crimes and this was a particularly horrifying one.

And regardless of any righteousness of cause, it is the policy of "gloves off" that Bush and his testosterone addled advisors begat right after 9/11 that led inexorably to the sickening display at Abu Ghraib. There is a direct line from Mazar al Sharif to Gitmo to arcane arguments about habeus corpus before the Supreme Court to Abu Ghraib and it began with the puerile warcry that afternoon on top of Ground Zero when our president called for bloodlust instead of strength and wisdom.

I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon.

With that level of statesmanship and leadership, what did we expect?






digby 5/05/2004 06:27:00 PM |

 
Freudian Spin

There are a few people there in Iraq that want to claim credit for any situation on the ground, but the people in Fallujah are tired of foreign fighters and radicals and extremists preventing them from living a normal life. And those who remain in Fallujah will be taken care of. And the Iraqi forces that have been stood up are now in the process of patrolling the streets and bringing law and order to the streets.

Most of that comment is either gibberish or a bad translation from his native Martian, but the president is certainly right about the people of Fallujah being tired of foreign fighters, radicals and extremists preventing them from living a normal life. It's just a bit disorienting to hear Bush describe himself in such terms.



digby 5/05/2004 05:08:00 PM |

 
Oh. Well That Explains It

Via Wonkette

"RUSH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the skull and bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?"

Just gimme some 'o that old time moral relativism baby. And pass me a coupla little blue babies to wash it down with.

Hate is a gateway drug.





digby 5/05/2004 04:42:00 PM |

 
Spinning Depravity

The Right is in trouble but they just keep digging their hole deeper and deeper and if we don't stop them, we will all be sucked into the void they have created. Even their most nimble spinners and rhetorical pole dancers are unable to sound even minimally coherent when trying to rationalize the horrors of Abu Ghraib. The tired old "Jane, you ignorant slut" formula is embarrassingly irrelevant in light of the pictures that shook the world, yet their intellectual bankruptcy seems to provide them no other way to discuss with the problem.

Here is Tucker Carlson, fielding a "question" to Bianca Jagger yesterday who was on Crossfire on behalf of Amnesty International:

Read the rest on The American Street, here




Also, be sure to check out (among many others) Kevin Hayden's post today about never having to say you're sorry and Mary Ratcliffe's very interesting piece about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. In fact, read it all. There are a ton of fine writers over there churning out good stuff day in and day out. I'm thrilled to be a part of it.






digby 5/05/2004 10:45:00 AM |

 
I said what I meant and I meant what I said

Wolf Blitzer's "Arab analyst" was unimpressed with Crusader Codpiece's little interview. She thought that the Iraqi people might get the impression that the president was talking down to them. Wolf, clearly stunned and shaken, said, "you think this president was condescending?!" She replied that while we may find the president friendly and open, when his words "the people of the middle east have got to understand..." are translated into arabic they sound quite rude.

I have always thought they sounded rude coming straight out of his mouth. The boy is always lecturing people with words like "you gotta unnerstand, in a democracy we love freedom. Free people love democracy. That's what freedom is. I tole the Iraqi people they are free and I meant it!" Apparently, he has somehow gotten the impression that if you forcefully say incredibly stupid things as if it's the first time anyone has ever uttered them, people will believe that you are a strong leader.

Certainly, hearing Bush go on and on again this morning about how good Americans are for bringing democracy to the Iraqis and insisting that we got rid of torture and rape rooms so the Iraqis could be free is not likely to bring any greater confidence in our ability to deal with the hideous reality Abu Ghraib.

I can't see how this will help us. They should never let him off his leash.




digby 5/05/2004 10:32:00 AM |

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

 
The Boy In The Bubble

From Salon:

It's time to revise the president's stump speech. We wouldn't want anyone out there to be misled, and surely, he wouldn't either.

We found, in just a handful of sentences from a speech Bush gave on his "bus tour," several misleading comments that would not pass the muster of even a junior factchecker. Even saying Bush is on a "bus tour" isn't quite right. Apparently, the president is taking the kind of bus tour that involves flying in an airplane.

Here are seven consecutive sentences from Bush's speech at a Michigan rally on Monday. We counted four factual problems. If we had more time, we'd fact-check the whole speech. But you get the idea.

"My opponent admits that Saddam Hussein was a threat. He just didn't support my decision to remove Saddam from power. (1) Maybe he was hoping Saddam would lose the next Iraqi election. (Laughter.) We showed the dictator and a watching world that America means what it says. (Applause.) Because -- because we acted, Saddam's torture chambers are closed. (2) Because we acted, Iraq's weapons programs are ended forever. (3) (Applause.) Because we acted, nations like Libya got the message and renounced their own weapons programs. (4) (Applause.)

1.) Actually, Kerry voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. He disagreed with the president's rush to use force. As Kerry wrote in an op-ed in September 2002: "Regime change in Iraq is a worthy goal. But regime change by itself is not a justification for going to war. Absent a Qaeda connection, overthrowing Saddam Hussein -- the ultimate weapons-inspection enforcement mechanism -- should be the last step, not the first."

2.) Saddam's torture chambers may be closed, but the president should be embarrassed to even mention the phrase "torture chamber" and Iraq in the same sentence this week. One Iraqi prisoner allegedly abused at the U.S.-run prison Abu Ghraib say he preferred Saddam's brand of torture to what the American troops meted out.

3.) Since no one, not even the scores of U.S. agents scouring bombed-out Iraq, has found evidence that Saddam had active WMD programs just prior to the invasion last year, it is not right to say they were ended "because we acted." In fact, they "ended" well before Bush rushed to war with shoddy proof. The UN says Iraq hadn't had WMD of any significance since 1994.

4.) Libya again. He continues to mention the Iraq War as the reason Muammar Gaddafi got religion and gave up pursuit of WMD programs. To get a different, correct view on this topic, read Brookings' Martin Indyk's piece, called The Iraq War did not Force Gadaffi's Hand.

And the arrogant little prick smirked all the way through it. I saw it.




digby 5/04/2004 03:31:00 PM |

 
Shoes Dropping

This may be BS and I hope it is. But, I've been wondering what went on with the women who were imprisoned at Abu Ghraib. You would assume that they'd use similar types of "pressure" to "soften them up."

New questions about U.S. troops’ conduct came to light Tuesday when the Egyptian newspaper Al-Wafd published four photographs appearing to show U.S. soldiers raping at least two women and forcing them to give oral sex, one of them at gunpoint.

The newspaper, an opposition publication whose reliability has been questioned in the past, ran the photos under a banner headline reading, "The Democracy of the American Empire of Evil and Adultery: Gang Rape by Occupation Soldiers of Iraqi Women Under Gunpoint."

The newspaper did not comment further on the photographs or report how it received them, and there was no way to independently confirm their authenticity.

After what we've already seen, I don't think it even matters. The rest of the world is going to believe the worst.





digby 5/04/2004 01:59:00 PM |

 
Veteran Vice President

Ron Brownstein suggest that Kerry needs to pick a VP with national security cred and I couldn't agree more.

Conventional wisdom among Democratic strategists has been that sooner or later national security will recede as a concern and bread-and-butter domestic issues will decide the presidential election. One senior party operative recently offered what he called the Google theory of 2004: If an Internet search about the campaign the day after the election turns up more references to Iraq than to the economy, that probably means President Bush has won.

But the continuing violence in Iraq is shaking these assumptions. It's no longer certain that domestic issues such as jobs and healthcare will displace Iraq as the central focus of public attention and the campaign debate. Nor is it certain that sustained attention on Iraq will benefit the president.

This transformed landscape will challenge both Bush and his Democratic opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

The dangers for Bush are most obvious. Iraq is his war.

[...]

CBS/New York Times survey released last week showed that approval of Bush's handling of the war plummeted to 41%, dragging his overall approval rating below the 50% level that historically marks the dividing line between presidents who win reelection and those who don't.

Those numbers are certain to fluctuate in the months ahead. Yet they underscore the threat to the president. The centerpiece in his case for reelection is that he has been a resolute and effective manager in the war on terrorism.

[...]

But that doesn't mean Kerry will automatically benefit. Instead, he faces a paradox. The more Americans focus on Iraq, the more they seem to weigh credibility as commander in chief when choosing between the candidates.

And despite their anxieties about the occupation, far more Americans say they trust Bush rather than Kerry to safeguard the nation's security.

[...]

Perhaps the most pressing challenge for Kerry is to find ways beyond his biography to reassure Americans that he can be trusted to protect their security.

One of Kerry's best opportunities to send that message could come through his selection of a running mate. So far, though, there's little evidence that the campaign is thinking in that direction. The rumors in Democratic circles are focused almost entirely on those who would help Kerry most on domestic issues: Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri and Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa.

Conspicuously missing from that list are candidates who could reinforce Kerry's national security credentials.

[...]

Even more intriguing is a name that has attracted even less attention: former NATO Supreme Commander and 2004 Democratic presidential contender Wesley K. Clark. The irony is that Clark probably would be generating more buzz as a potential vice president if he hadn't sought his party's nomination. The consensus in Democratic circles is that the retired Army general dimmed his prospects through an uneven performance on the campaign trail.

Yet those experiences left Clark with more preparation for a vice presidential campaign than if he hadn't run at all. And he has proven one of the Democrats' most acute analysts and effective messengers on national security: His speeches on Iraq last fall, which called for broadening international participation in the occupation and warned against dismantling the entire Iraqi army, look prescient now.

Last week, Clark underscored the potential value of a running mate who once wore four stars on his shoulders and a Silver Star on his chest when he responded to recent Republican attacks on Kerry's activities in and after Vietnam with a ringing challenge: "Those who didn't serve, or didn't show up for service," he wrote, "should have the decency to respect those who did … "

As a candidate, Clark demonstrated plenty of flaws. But few other Democrats could deliver a punch like that with such authority. And none could better symbolize Kerry's determination to rebuild relations with traditional allies than the man who directed, in Kosovo, the one war NATO ever fought. In an election that could revolve more around guns than butter, Clark may pack more firepower than any of the other names on Kerry's list of running mates.

Democratic conventional wisdom, it appears, is the same conventional wisdom that advised Kerry to vote for the war resolution and advised Democrats in 2002 to pretend that Bush wasn't riding all over the country on a metaphorical white horse, swinging his terrible swift sword while they labored in town hall meetings debating the fine points of prescription drug coverage. As it was then, this conventional wisdom is wrong.

Rove is pulling out all his guns to neutralize Kerry's war record because he knows it's the national security issue that is the biggest threat to President Asterisk's ascension to the ranks of legally elected presidents. The Scumbags For Truth is just the beginning. And, over the next 6 months, it is likely to take its toll.

As my 4 regular readers know, I have long believed that this election was going to be about national security whether we like it or not. Events are taking us there as much as the machinations of the Bush campaign. They must run on Bush's "gut" or lose. It is wishful thinking to believe that the election will be about jobs and health care, as much as we would like to believe that everybody is voting on those kitchen table issues and despite the fact that focus groups say that's what they want to hear the candidates talk about. What they say they want and what they actually want are often far from the same thing.

From what I can tell, the zeitgeist suggests that what voters want this time is a masculine man of action. Karl Rove knows this, which is why he is resorting to South Carolina level dirty tricks this early in the campaign. His inarticulate little boy isn't looking so good. Kerry's war record must be put into play and it must be destroyed. And there are always willing Scumbags For Truth around to do that dirty work.

I like Clark and think he could be an effective counterweight to that charge as VP. They'll attack his claim to heroism too, of course, but one wonders if they could really persuade the country that two silver star winners, one a 4 star General, are lacking in patriotism. I'm sure they'll try, but at some point enough of the non-koolaid drinking public has to start asking themselves if it's reasonable that every single Democratic war hero, from Kerry to Kerrey to Cleland to Clark are all traitors and cowards who got some sort of special treatment.

Regardless of whether it's Clark or someone else, I think Kerry should pick a veteran for VP. I think it's obvious that Iraq and the WOT are the central issues of our time. We must confront it head-on, without apology, and to do that credibly we must use the useful contrast of Republican chickenhawk incompetence as our foil.




digby 5/04/2004 01:36:00 PM |

 
Calling Karen Hughes

In U.S., Seeking To Limit Damage

The Bush administration is struggling to develop a damage-control strategy to counter the mounting global backlash against the United States after revelations that U.S. military and intelligence personnel abused Iraqi prisoners, according to U.S. officials.


The search for a strong response follows a review of international reaction by the State Department's Intelligence and Research Department that revealed devastating fallout and criticism well beyond the Islamic world, from Brazil and Britain to Hong Kong, U.S. officials said.

"It's very, very sobering," said a State Department official briefed on the INR review. He requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "It's like the song by the Who, 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.' That's the widespread perception we have to deal with.

There is no problem that can't be solved with a little bit of clever political spin, right? Karen's usually the gal who comes up with all that wonderful, nonsensical alliteration --- "Compassionate Conservative," "Reformer With Results" etc.

How about "Torturers With Tolerance?"

"Masturbator Emancipators?"

"Sadists For Sovereignty?"

Surely, the Arab world can be as successfully spun as a bunch of dittoheads. All it takes is a snappy slogan and George W. Bush assuring everybody that he believes he's been called by God to lead a crusade for freedom.




digby 5/04/2004 01:07:00 PM |

 
Liars For Bush Part CXXIII

Gen. Richard B. Myers called CBS anchor Dan Rather eight days before the report was to air, asking for extra time, said Jeff Fager, executive producer of the US network's '60 Minutes II' program.

Myers cited the safety of American hostages and tension surrounding the Iraqi city of Fallujah, Fager said, adding that he held off as long as he believed possible given it was a competitive story.

I suppose it's theoretically possible that Myers personally called Dan Rather three weeks before the broadcast aired and yet still hadn't actually read the internal 57 page report that was delivered by General Taguba back in February by last Sunday.

It's also theoretically possible that Trent Lott's aquanet hair helmet wouldn't spontaneously burst into flame in the presence of a butane lighter.

But I doubt it.




digby 5/04/2004 12:17:00 PM |

 
No Man's Land

Slate posts today about another shining example of accountability and responsibility in the Bush administration --- The CPA's Multiple Personality Disorder

The Coalition Provisional Authority, Proconsul Paul Bremer's outfit, is in charge, of course. But what, bureaucratically speaking, is the CPA? A new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, posted online by the good-government folks at the Federation of American Scientists says, "It is unclear whether CPA is a federal agency." Noting that its "organizational status is uncertain," the report speculates that the CPA may be a part of the Pentagon (the Army cuts Bremer's checks), it may be a stand-alone executive agency, or it may be an international institution, like NATO.

The confusion—which, the report notes, raises questions about "whether, and to what extent, CPA might be held accountable for its programs, activities, decisions, and expenditures"—stems from the White House, which hasn't released information delineating the CPA's authority, structure, or place in government

[...]

The confusion goes back to the CPA's birth, which the White House doesn't appear to have announced: References to the CPA just started showing up in government documents. The congressional researchers write, '[N]o explicit, unambiguous, and authoritative statement has been provided that declares how the authority was established, under what authority, and by whom.'

The report posits 'two alternative explanations for how the CPA was established.' One is that Bush may have created the CPA via a presidential directive. The researchers caution, 'This document, if it exists, has not been made available to the public.' The other explanation, suggested by the Army and others, is that the CPA was created by a U.N. Security Council resolution. However, as the congressional sleuths point out, while the resolution does recognize the United States and Britain as 'occupying powers,' it 'does not establish, or authorize the creation of, a specific organization to carry out this responsibility.'

All this ambiguity can have benefits. There's the fig-leaf factor of coursetrying to put an international veneer on a U.S. enterprise. And there's another consequence: By not clearly defining the CPA specifically as a federal agency the report notes that the administration repeatedly refers to the CPA as an 'entity,' 'group,' and 'activities' but not as an 'agency'the CPA is not subject to the government's accountability and disclosure rules.

By the way, when exactly did the Congress of the United States close up shop, anyway? Didn't we need a constitutional amendment or something before we could dissolve one branch of government? Just asking.

Anyway, I don't think it is fair to say that there is no accountability for the CPA. Our Dear Leader's words and body language are clear on this issue:

I will continue to work for a culture which says that each of us is responsible for the decisions we make in life. See, I want to help to change the culture from one that has said, if it feels good, just go ahead and do it, and if you've got a problem, blame somebody else, to a culture in which each of us understands we're responsible for what we do.

See, if you're a mother or a father, you're responsible for loving your child with all your heart. That's your responsibility. It is your most solemn and important responsibility to love your children. If you -- if you're worried about the quality of the education in the community in which you live, you're responsible for doing something about it. Just don't hope that Washington, D.C. solves problems. Get involved with your schools here in Miami, Florida and insist upon quality of education for each -- each child. Support your teachers. If you're in corporate America, if you're a CEO, you're responsible for telling the truth to your shareholders and your employees. (Applause.)

But if you're the President of the United States you should govern with as much opacity and confusion as possible so that nobody can ever be held responsible for anything, least of all you.

But, you can go all around the country condescendingly lecturing to people who are a hundred times smarter than you (and I'm talking about elementary schoolkids) about their morals and ethics and responsibilities.

That's what leadership is all about.



digby 5/04/2004 10:51:00 AM |

 
Winning Formula

Oh my goodness. George Will seems to have rubbed the sleep from his eyes and awakened to the startling notion that the Bushies and the Blairites sound like a bunch of starry-eyed girl scouts singing Kumabaya lately. He says:

This administration be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts. Thinking is not the reiteration of bromides about how "all people yearn to live in freedom" (McClellan). And about how it is "cultural condescension" to doubt that some cultures have the requisite aptitudes for democracy (Bush). And about how it is a "myth" that "our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture" because "ours are not Western values; they are the universal values of the human spirit" (Tony Blair).

His point, of course, is that the Iraqis don't have the capacity for democracy and that freedom is a product of western culture, which is debatable to say the least. However, the fact that the Bush administration "cannot be trusted to govern because it cannot be counted on to think" is indisputable.

But, George, shit flows downhill. If people of your obvious influence had bothered to protest the Republican Party foisting an obviously unqualified, substandard intellect upon the country instead of continuing to wank furiously over Bill Clinton's foibles well into the new millenium, we might have been spared this embarrassment.

As it is, George, you are an accomplice. What the hell did you think would happen when you put a man with the mind of 12 year old and the ego of a movie star in charge of the world?

Oh that's right...

That was your winning formula...



digby 5/04/2004 08:52:00 AM |

 
Tricky Dick Would Be Proud

Joe Conason fills in the blanks on Smear Boat Veterans for Bush. The ties to the Bush campaign are right out there. The same miscreants who smeared McCain are involved in this one.

They'd better be careful or the Senator from Arizona will start campaigning with Kerry. Sullying the silver star is a very dicey tactic.




digby 5/04/2004 08:24:00 AM |

Monday, May 03, 2004

 
This Week's Water Cooler Talking Point

Joe Wilson puts it very nicely:

Conason:What's the difference in the GOP from when you were growing up?

Wilson:If you're fiscally responsible, this is not your party. If you believe in a moderate foreign policy characterized by alliances, free trade and the ability to operate in an international environment, this is not your party. If you believe in limited federal government, this is not your party. If you believe that the government should stay out of your bedroom, this is very definitely not your party. In fact, I would argue that unless you believe in the American imperium, imposed on the world by force, or unless you believe in the literal interpretation of the Book of Revelations, this is not your party.

digby 5/03/2004 07:49:00 PM |

 
Boy Scout Leadership

The LA Times takes an interesting look at the recent Bush administration insider books from the perspective of what they say about the president's leadership style:

President Bush styles himself as the first CEO president, applying the rigor and authority of his MBA education to the job of chief executive of the nation.

But that's not the picture that emerges from three recent insider accounts of the workings of the Bush administration, experts in decision-making and presidential management say. On the contrary, they say, the president appears to have a highly personal working style, with little emphasis on systematic analysis of major decisions.

"There seems to be almost an absence of any analytical or deliberative process for mapping the problem or exploring alternatives or estimating consequences," said Graham Allison, a professor of government at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

And Bush appears to give greater weight to his own instincts than to experts or other sources of advice and information. The president has a "bias for action," said Roderick M. Kramer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. "I've been struck by [how] Bush's sense of personal identity as a leader shapes his decisions," he said.

[...]

Greenstein said that one striking thing about all three books was what they don't show. There are few examples, for instance, of Bush presiding over meetings in which subordinates presented problems, weighed evidence and aired differing views.

"I think a lot of policy is made on the fly," he said. "It isn't a process in which people assemble and go back and forth in a rigorous way."

Another thing largely missing from the books was any indication that documents or memos weighing policy alternatives are circulated and discussed. Harvard's Allison said one of the few documents the administration did prepare in advance of the Iraq war — the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that Iraq probably had weapons of mass destruction — was quickly compiled and not very well done.

"The more it's examined, it seems quite sloppy," he said. "At this point, if there had been some good analysis of the issues on paper, we would have seen some evidence of it.

"The contrast with the textbook conception of informed decision making is distressing," he said.

[...]

Stanford's Kramer said though Bush showed little interest in the kind of number-crunching analysis taught in business school, his style of management does conform to the popular image of chief executives as forceful and "decisive." "There seems to be a lot of value attached to showing resolve and demonstrating resolve," he said.

But Jay Lorsch, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of "Decision Making at the Top," said the decision-making techniques taught at that school — from which Bush received an MBA — focus on understanding the nature of decisions, not simplifying them.

"What we teach around here is that you've got to understand the complexity of the territory you're trying to affect," he said. "You don't make a decision until you've surveyed all the possible ramifications. The binary idea that you're either right or wrong is just foolishness."

[...]

"He doesn't like long meetings. He likes truncated meetings. That means you're not going to have the kinds of sessions … that are going to bring in lots of different kinds of information," Kumar said.


[...]

"The decisiveness part is certainly there," he said. "The imperviousness to facts and analysis is also there. So what we have is someone who is going on raw instinct."

A corollary, Rockman said, is that though Bush likes making decisions, his organizational style is not very good at implementation or follow-up.

[...]

"Bush appears to rest his confidence in a few people whose judgment corresponds to his gut instincts" he said. "He seems to be obsessive about being decisive, but willing to make hard and fast decisions on the basis of ideology more than evidence."

Summary: A spoiled 12 year old is running the world.







digby 5/03/2004 01:47:00 PM |

 
Torturing The Wurlitzer

David Brock's new site Media Matters for America is great. I highly recommend that everyone read it regularly. For obvious reasons he has a flawless ear for the tunes of the Mighty Wurlitzer.

The best thing they're doing, among many great things, is that finally, FINALLY, somebody is listening, transcribing and publishing the vomit inducing, delusional rants of Rush Limbaugh. This is such a beautiful thing that it brought tears to my eyes.

They listened to each show from March 15th to April 29th, a mere six weeks, and transcribed a long list of incendiary, divisive, racist, bigoted and mysogynistic remarks. Some of them are so depraved that not only can I completely understand why Stern is outraged at being picked out for obscenity, but I now understand where the wing-nuts in charge of prisons and POW's in our culture get permission to exploit others with their sick little S&M fantasies.

Along with his usual puerile ranting about Femi-Nazi's and revealing castration fantasies, it seems that Rush, like good Catholic Rick Santorum, is quite fascinated by the whole bestiality thing. In Rush's case he takes in in a different direction, seeing the threat of girl-on-dog sex as the tittillating image he has to share with his feverishly wanking dittoheads:

11)Well, Rich Lowry has a column today, National Review Online, and Time magazine has just discovered that stay-at-home moms are women who have made legitimate choices to stay home and raise their young children -- a cover story. Time magazine has headlined the case for staying home, and the magazine, according to Lowry, reports without sneering or condescension, the trend toward more new mothers leaving the workforce. Yes, it's a trend. It started years ago when the feminist movement decided that their best friends were going to be German shepherds. You know. So that's -- well, it's true. You go to the right airports and you can see it.

You see a lot of strange things when you're on the nod. Pop enough little blue babies in the cab and you're hallucinating hot Girl-on-Shepard action at airports.

His adorable characterization of Hillary's "testicle lockbox" must surely make all those "decency advocates" who were shocked by Janet Jackson's nipple sit up and take notice.

17) Now if Hillary does become Kerry's VP, will she have to change her positions to be on the same page with Kerry or will Kerry have to change his? (laughter) Don't forget that testicle lock box, folks. (laughter) Just as we haven't talked about it in awhile does not mean (laughter) that it's -- that it's been buried. [4/15/04]

18) If I were Bob Woodward, I would be on a lookout for Mrs. Clinton and her testicle lockbox, because she has just been snookered, like every other Liberal, by believing what Woodward says is in his book in these interviews, as opposed to what's actually in these books, or this book, because it's exactly what she claims she needs in an administration. [4/21/04]

That truly is what honor and dignity are all about. As I said, no wonder Howard Stern is pissed. (And no wonder Rush defended him.)

But, the really disturbing thing about Rush's rants are the eliminationist rhetoric and charges of treason against the Democrats. This has been going on for more than TEN Years, day after day after day. It's only a matter of time before somebody gets assassinated.

24) I'm going to tell you is what's good for Al Qaeda is good for the Democratic Party in this country today. That's how you boil this down. And it doesn't have to be Al Qaeda. What's good for terrorists is good for John Kerry. All you got to do is check the way they react. [3/15/04]


26) They [Democrats] celebrate privately this attack in Spain. [3/16/04]

27) I mean, if you wonder -- if you want the terrorists running the show, then you will elect John Kerry, who is a bed brother with this guy who just won election in Spain. [3/18/04]

28) I'm telling you, we're in the midst of a huge liberal crackup. They are so motivated by the quest for power. They are so motivated by rage and hatred, that they are not in power. And they focus that on Bush. That they have aligned themselves unwittingly -- I'm going to grant them that -- with those who intend harm on this country. [3/24/04]

29) You don't hear the Democrats being critical of terrorists. In fact, you hear the Democrats saying, "We've got to find a way to get along with them." [4/5/04]

30) Senator [Ted] Kennedy, a simple question. Does it please you to learn who your friends are? Does it excite you, Senator Kennedy, to learn that the militant, firebrand, murderer of American civilians and military personnel is on your side, Senator Kennedy? Does it encourage you? Does it invigorate you? Does it inspire you, Senator Kennedy, to know that a murdering Al Qaeda-related terrorist has taken up your argument for use against his enemy? How does that make you feel, Senator Kennedy? Does it embarrass you? Because it should. Or does it probably excite you and think you're making headway now. You've got the enemy aligned with you. [4/8/04]

33) [Speaking about Democrats] I don't know who they are, I don't know what they believe, but I can't relate. I can't possibly understand somebody who hates this country, who was born and raised here. I don't understand how you hate this Constitution. I don't understand how you hate freedom. I don't understand how you hate free markets, but that's who elites are, because freedom and free markets challenge their power. It's the only thing I can come up with. I know it's much more insidious and hideous than that, but I still can't relate to it. [3/16/04]

34) The Democrats believe that the presence of the US military is what makes the world dangerous. The Democrats, liberal Democrats in this country, believe, and have for a long time, that the U.S. military is the focus of evil, is the primary agent provocateur for all of this. That if we weren't the way we are, the terrorists wouldn't hate us. And if we weren't as big as we are, if we weren't as powerful as we are, if we weren't as decadent -- whatever. Well, they won't say "decadent," because they support that. [3/18/04]

35) [Daschle parody]: Hi and welcome back to the Tom Daschle Show... The country is suffering, and, ah -- and we're happy about that here at the Tom Daschle Show because it's -- while it's bad for the country, it's great for our party, and that's what's important. [4/5/04]

[...]

40) This is why, folks, you cannot, we cannot entrust liberals with the defense of this country. They will not do it. They will not defend the American military. They will cut and run every time. They will not defend freedom. They will not defend this country. [4/7/04]

41) The Liberals put their party and their quest for power above national interests. They wouldn't join with Reagan during the Cold War. Defended the Soviets. Tried to make Gorbachev the hero of the world. Iraqi freedom, George W. Bush. Then we had the situation down with the Contras in Nicaragua. Democrats did everything they could to support the Contras and their client state, the Soviet Union. We've got Iraqi Freedom. [4/13/04]

42) These people have become the mainstream thought -- thinkers, generators of the Democratic Party. It's who they are. They hate this country. They hate the military of this country. [4/15/04]

Day after day after day millions of people listen to this stuff. I can't do it for more than a few minutes before losing my cool. I doubt that Howie Kurtz and other Limbaugh apologists who consider him "mainstream" ever listen to him either. They just accept him as mainstream because people like the Vice President of the United States appear on his show as if it's perfectly acceptable to be associated with him:

Kurtz: Has Tom Daschle lost a couple of screws? Did the normally mild-mannered senator accuse Rush Limbaugh of inciting violence? He came pretty darn close. There were cameras there. You can watch the replay.

We can understand that Daschle is down, just having lost his majority leader's job and absorbed plenty of blame for this month's Democratic debacle.

What we can't understand is how the South Dakotan can suggest that a mainstream conservative with a huge radio following is somehow whipping up wackos to threaten Daschle and his family.

Has the senator listened to Rush lately? Sure, he aggressively pokes fun at Democrats and lionizes Republicans, but mainly about policy. He's so mainstream that those right-wingers Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert had him on their Election Night coverage.

Somebody ought to ask old Tom and Tim about that, too. Have they listened to this tripe? I'm almost more afraid if they have than if they haven't.

But, it also seems to me that there is fear on the Right that they aren't cracking "the mainstream" effectively enough. Perhaps it's because the product they are shilling for is so incredibly defective that they are unable to completely co-opt even the corporate media. Just this last week, Dick Cheney exhorted a bunch of Republicans to watch FOXNews because it is more "accurate." Ralph Reed said this week-end:

Twenty-five years ago, most people got their news from ABC, CBS or NBC," Reed said in a speech Friday night to the Nevada Republican Party's state convention. "Fortunately, that is no longer the case. The gatekeepers of dominant media have lost their monopoly on information."

Reed told the crowd of about 250 Republicans that he has not watched a newscast of a major network in years.

"I get in the car in the morning and listen to Rush Limbaugh. On the way home, I listen to Sean Hannity. At night I watch Fox News," he said.

That explains a lot. Of course, it's nonsense. But it will be key to them getting out their brainwashed base. Otherwise, some Christian fundamentalists might see disturbing pictures of Americans doing icky sexual things to naked Arabs or the sight of flag draped coffins would make patriots start to question whether the cost is worth the gain in this vague "WOT" in Iraq.

In that sense, Rush Limbaugh is as mainstream in America as Hitler was mainstream in Germany, circa 1932. He's the voice of a huge constituency of the Republican Party --- the Party that holds all three branches of government right now ---the Party that is bankrupting the country and fighting unnecessary wars for reasons they cannot explain to the American people.

But, his ugly talk still operates just a little bit under the radar in terms of specificity. I imagine the majority of people think they know what he is saying, but they don't. Until you see it written down, you really don't get just how vicious and crude it really is. His radio voice serves to make him sound somewhat friendly and funny. People think he is exaggerating for effect. Still, the message gets out, day after day. "Democrats are not real Americans like you." This treasonous, unamerican picture of liberalism has seeped into the body politic so thoroughly that even liberals themselves have internalized this distorted version of themselves.

More than a decade of pounding away at our integrity has made many of us eschew the label of liberal, Democrat, feminist, civil libertarian etc. They may not have turned many of us into Republicans, but they've managed to turn a lot of us into Greens or independents by making the designation of "Democrat" shameful. We spend more time calling each other pussies and cowards than he does now. We are obsessed with changing ourselves instead of fighting them. We meekly take the blame for the nightmare that has descended on this country under Republican rule. They have already won half the battle by making us hate ourselves as much as we hate them.

I still maintain, however, that he and his ilk haven't been able to eliminate the one thing we still have --- reason. The faith based simpletons and cynics, whether it be Jerry Fallwell or Rush Limbaugh or Richard Perle can only count on reality being held at bay for so long. Death, terrorism, wars, joblessness, lack of healthcare, impoverished retirement --- these things are real. You can tell people to watch the happy horseshit news on FOX and you can implore them to only listen to wingnut propaganda, but reality intrudes eventually. Unfortunately so much damage will have been done that we will probably never be the same.

And they are completely wrong about one thing. Rush says:

... these are the people that want to oust Bush. The people who remain skeptical of the fact that there is any difference between right and wrong, or good and evil. [3/17/04]

I am a liberal and a Democrat and I have no problem seeing the difference between right and wrong and good and evil. Bin laden is evil. Saddam was evil. Rush Limbaugh is evil.

See? Not a problem.




Update: A reader reminds me to give credit where credit is due to Orcinus for leading on this issue. Also, I should note that Joe Conason and Gene Lyons have been indispensible in exposing the right wing media machine along with many articles in Salon over the last few years. Still, it's a big step forward to see a web site dedicated to exposing specific instances of Wurlitzer distortion on a daily basis, particularly Limbaugh. It will add tremendously to the debate.


digby 5/03/2004 12:18:00 PM |

 
Sunburned Partisans

A new group called Scumbags for Truth is going to issue a letter at a press conference tomorrow:

Hundreds of former commanders and military colleagues of presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry are set to declare in a signed letter that he is "unfit to be commander-in-chief." They will do so at a press conference in Washington on Tuesday.

"What is going to happen on Tuesday is an event that is really historical in dimension," John O'Neill, a Vietnam veteran who served in the Navy as a PCF (Patrol Craft Fast) boat commander, told CNSNews.com . The event, which is expected to draw about 25 of the letter-signers, is being organized by a newly formed group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

"We have 19 of 23 officers who served with [Kerry]. We have every commanding officer he ever had in Vietnam. They all signed a letter that says he is unfit to be commander-in-chief," O'Neill said.

John O'Neill, of course, is the Nixon stooge who's been paid to come out of character assassination retirement to destroy Kerry's military record. Here's a picture of him with his mentor the convicted felon Chuck Colson and his hero the disgraced and pardoned Dick Nixon:

Haldeman: -- crew cut, real sharp looking guy who is more articulate than Kerry. He's not as eloquent; he isn't the ham that Kerry is. But he's more believable. [edit]

Haldeman: This guy now, is gonna, he's gonna move on Kerry.


The White House encouraged O'Neill to challenge Kerry to a debate. Kerry agreed and before the event, President Nixon called O'Neill into the Oval Office for a pep talk. "It's a great service to the country,?"declared the president.

Nixon: Give it to him, give it to him. And you can do it, because you have a pleasant manner, too, because you've got and I think it's a great service to the country. [edit]

Nixon: You fellows have been out there. You've got to know, seeing the barbarians that we're up against, you've got to know what we?re doing in that horrible swamp that North Vietnam is. You've got to know from all our faults of what we have in this country that, that what we're doing is right. You've got to know too, people are critics. Critics of the war, critics of [unint], run America down. [edit] You've gotta know that you're on the winning sthat, that you're on the right side.

Two weeks later, the veterans squared off on the popular Dick Cavett show:

O'Neill: Mr. Kerry is the type of person who lives and survives only on the war weariness and fears of the American people. This is the same little man who on nationwide television in April spoke of, quote, crimes committed on a day to day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

Kerry: We believe as veterans who took part in this war we have nothing to gain by coming back here and talking about those things that have happened except to try and point the way to America, to try and say, here is where we went wrong, and we've got to change.

(Amazing isn't it? Same bullshit, different war. After the events of the last week, it looks as if we have merely refined our methods. The sadistic sexual humiliation techniques are truly a step forward.)

As for the Scumbags For Truth, (aka SoFT) John O'Neill proudly consorted with felons and liars to smear John Kerry then and is doing the bidding of their heirs still today. One would hope that his picture and the Nixon tapes would feature heavily in any rebuttal. They haven't quite managed to finish the full Uncle Joe Stalin historical airbrush on Tricky Dick just yet. Their hands are full for the moment with keeping Bozo from going off the reservation and turning Dizzy Ron into a saint.

I hear a lot of complaining that Kerry talks too much about Vietnam and that it's all in the past and we should move on and deal with more pertinent issues. I can understand that sentiment, particularly among those who are too young to have a stake in the argument. (It's the way I used to feel about "who lost China" arguments.) But, as you can tell from the strangely familiar arguments above, Vietnam is just a proxy for a particular worldview that continues to be debated even 30 years later.

Progress is slow when viewed from the perspective of one life. Sometimes it's one step forward, two steps back. A lot of things have changed since O'Neill and Kerry first squared off 33 years ago, but the argument about blind patriotism, government transparency and what constitutes a just and unjust war rages on.

I would suggest, however, that with 20/20 hindsight we know that John Kerry was not the one who was the liar in those conversations recorded so long ago. And we know who ended up as convicted felons and who did not. And we also know that unlike Kerry, in the 33 years since that confrontation on Dick Cavett that Nixon's house boy John O'Neill has done nothing of note. Indeed, his only claim to fame in his entire life is as a GOP Swift Boat Stooge against Kerry.

It seems pretty obvious who holds the high ground on this one. I am betting this thing is going to backfire.




digby 5/03/2004 09:35:00 AM |

Sunday, May 02, 2004

 
Catch 'O The Millenium

Whiskey Bar: An Iraq Prison Diary

The diary is a fascinating read - not least because it documents the fact that as of last Sunday, one of the private contractors identified in the Army's own internal investigation of the torture scandal was still at Abu Ghraib, and may still have been supervising or conducting interrogations.

The contactor's name is Steven Stephanowicz, and he works for CACI International - one of two firms that have been publically linked to the abuses in Abu Ghraib's high-security cell block.

The few, the proud, the mercenary sadists.



digby 5/02/2004 05:45:00 PM |

Friday, April 30, 2004

 
Guantanamo Warden to Oversee U.S. Iraq Prison Rules


Boy, that's a relief. Well, except for this :

"One of the five Britons recently returned to the UK from Guantanamo Bay has claimed that he was subjected to cruel and sadistic treatment by US authorities.

Jamal al Harith, from Manchester, told the Daily Mirror today that detainees of Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta had to face frequent beatings, prolonged periods of isolation and traumatic psychological torture.

The 37-year-old was held at Guantanamo Bay for just over two years after coalition forces brought about the fall of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan. The divorced father-of-three said that the behaviour of prison guards was a deliberate affront to Islam and exacted to offend and terrorise the detainees.

Jamal told the Daily Mirror: 'The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not as nearly as bad as the psychological torture - bruises heal after a week - but the other stuff stays with you.'

Mr al Harith said that religious practises were often disrupted or even banned in order to punish and antagonise prisoners.

The most extreme of these claims centres around how guards would bring prostitutes into the camp to pose naked in front of prisoners, who were used to veiled women, and counter to Islamic practice.
He said: 'It was a profoundly disturbing experience for these men. They would refuse to speak about what had happened. It would take perhaps four weeks for them to tell a friend - and we would shout it out around the whole block"

Hey, at least they didn't force the prisoners themselves to pose naked and simulate fellatio for the camera. That we know of, anyway.

When I read this account last March, I thought it was bullshit. It seemed so nuts, especially the psycho-sexual sadism. But, since pictures prove that it happened at Abu Graib prison under the Americans and we now have pictures of it happening in southern Iraq under the British, I'm inclined to think this sick behavior might just be happening in Gitmo, too. There is either a common illness or a common method to their madness.

On the other hand, Colin "My Lai Cover-Up" Powell assured us that it was impossible:

"We have watched Guantanamo Bay very carefully knowing of the interest of a number of nations, including the United Kingdom, and knowing that we have responsibilities under the Geneva Convention and because we are Americans, we don't abuse people who are in our care."

Mr Powell said it was "not in the American tradition to treat people in that manner".

There you have it.




digby 4/30/2004 09:53:00 PM |

 
Coalition Of The Chilling

Britian probes torture claims in Iraq:

"I am aware of the allegations which have been made today of the abuse of prisoners by British soldiers in Iraq,' Britain's most senior army officer, General Sir Michael Jackson said, referring to pictures published in the Daily Mirror.

'All allegations are already under investigation.'

US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have today condemned disturbing pictures showing the reported abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers at a prison west of Baghdad.

In a fresh blow to the image of the US-led coalition, new pictures to be published in Saturday's Daily Mirror show British soldiers apparently beating a detainee, a suspected thief, with rifle butts, and urinating on him.

According to the newspaper, the prisoner was allegedly threatened with execution during an eight-hour ordeal, which left him bleeding and vomiting, with a broken jaw and smashed teeth.

The Daily Mirror said it was given the pictures by serving soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, who were horrified at the act depicted and concerned that 'rogue elements' in the army were undermining attempts to win the hearts and minds of local people in British-administered southern Iraq.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the soldiers told the paper that the unnamed captive, against whom no charges were brought, was driven away and dumped from the back of a moving vehicle after his ordeal.

It was not known whether he survived, the newspaper said."


URINATED ON: A British soldier urinates on an Iraqi prisoner in a vile display of abuse. The captive was beaten and hurled from a moving truck. Army chiefs are investigating.

The brutality of the repression - the death and torture camps, the barbaric prisons for political opponents, the routine beatings for anyone or their families suspected of disloyalty are well documented.

Just last week, someone slandering Saddam was tied to a lamp post in a street in Baghdad, his tongue cut out, mutilated and left to bleed to death, as a warning to others.

I recall a few weeks ago talking to an Iraqi exile and saying to her that I understood how grim it must be under the lash of Saddam.

"But you don't", she replied. "You cannot. You do not know what it is like to live in perpetual fear."

And she is right. We take our freedom for granted. But imagine not to be able to speak or discuss or debate or even question the society you live in. To see friends and family taken away and never daring to complain. To suffer the humility of failing courage in face of pitiless terror. That is how the Iraqi people live. Leave Saddam in place and that is how they will continue to live. Tony Blair 3/18/03




digby 4/30/2004 08:39:00 PM |

 
Martin Luther Bush

Atrios and Josh Marshall note this new Orwell Jr talking point about critics of the Iraq war being racists because they don't believe that "brown people" can govern themselves.

There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern.

I don't know what color "our" skin is, but I'm sure the other "people in the world" are relieved to know that the U.S. president, at least, thinks that people whose skins are a different color than white can self-govern. It's just a little embarrassing that he has the mind of a 12 year old and actually thinks it's such a huge insight that the leader of a multi-racial, pluralistic society believes such a thing. What's next? Is he going to announce that he doesn't agree with all those people in the world who think that slavery is good?

But, he is right about one thing. There are people who think this way. And they are the same people who persist in believing that Iraq and al-Qaeda were in cahoots on 9/11. And it's not just Iraq, apparently:

Hey, Hosni [Mubarek, of Egypt]...until Arabs attacked us, most Americans' feelings about y'all were pretty neutral. Now that you b*st*rds have invaded us and spilled the blood of our innocent brothers and sisters on our own soil, you'll be finding out soon what destruction your hatred will bring upon those cesspools you call countries.

Taliban, Saddam, Next???

---

I do hate Arabs as well!
I feel pity for a people who let some self-appointed cult leaders do their thinking for them. A mind is a terrible thing to waste!

---

What Islamists of any persuasion don't seem to get, their days are numbered. No more Madrasa's, No more Bin Laden, no more oil money, no more 72 virgins, no more religious spider holes, no more Islam.

---

If they don't like it they need to renounce Islam or renounce their American citizenship and move back to an Arab country, so Americans don't have to worry about them. They will be much safer. If another 9/11 kind of a terror attack happens, I'm afraid some Americans might start shooting Arabs out of fear for the safety of their families.

Yes. It would appear that some people don't believe that those of "brown skin" should be self-governing. They are the same ones who don't think those of brown skin should be allowed to vote. In fact, they are the same people who have a pronounced affection for brown shirts --- the racist base of the Republican Party who look old Georgie right in the eye and see into his soul. No matter what happy horseshit he spews about self-governing brown people, they know he's one of them.




digby 4/30/2004 01:39:00 PM |

 
The Line

"Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That's not the way we do things in America. I didn't like it one bit," Mr. Bush said.

Was I supposed to be horrified by the report of Iraqi prisoners being positioned in "pornographic" positions and humiliated by American soldiers? I was not. During your report, all I could think of was the murder, torture, maiming, burning and beheading of innocent civilians, women and children included, carried out by terrorists and supporters of Saddam Hussein. At least these men were men of war.

They had to pose for pornographic pictures? So what. We cannot imagine sitting at home on our couches the horrors our soldiers must face every day. Why not focus your attention on the unfair practices of our enemy?
--Sally Ainsley


Woman soldier points at genitals of hooded and naked Iraqis


The little bit I have read about, it seems to me that it is being completely blown out of proportion," said Roger Krueger, who served in Vietnam and is the chapter's president. "When a person is in combat, they have to do whatever they have to do to stay alive."


Two US troops pose with Iraqi prisoners piled on top of each other.

I'm sure there is more than one side of the story":, and we don't know all the facts,' said Robert Hutcheson, a Cumberland resident and Allegany County commissioner. 'In my mind, this is no blemish on their record.


Iraqi PoWs are forced to parade before their jeering captors

America has some good things to offer the world. Our Bill Of Rights may be the biggest advance in modern political history. We have tended to embrace progress, however painful, with more enthusiasm than many other hide bound cultures.

But, the character of our people is just as bad and good as any other. When Crusader Codpiece lectures the world about the justice of our cause being based upon our "goodness" he proves his simplemindedness once again.

These sickening pictures taken by some Americans and the pathetic rationalizing words of some other Americans show once again that the line between good and evil is not drawn between "America" and "the enemy." It is drawn
inside the heart of every human being.





digby 4/30/2004 12:46:00 PM |

 
Rub It In

TBOGG told me:

Via Southpaw, we see that a Left Coaster commentor had the line of the day about President Senor Wences' Fist appearance before the 9/11 commission.

'Whenever Kerry publicly demands debates with George, he should be sure to insist that Cheney can't come.'"

This is a great idea, but the punch line is exactly backward.

He should say:

"I've challenged George Bush to weekly debates, mano a mano, and he's refused. Now, I understand the president doesn't like to face tough questions all by himself. So, if he needs to bring Dick Cheney with him that's ok by me."

Like all glass jawed bullies, Crusader Codpiece is sensitive about that kind of thing. Rub It In His Face.



digby 4/30/2004 11:19:00 AM |

Thursday, April 29, 2004

 
If Those Walls Could Talk

Bush said it was important for him and Cheney to appear together so that commission members could "see our body language... how we work together."

What kind of body language could possibly give that information? I mean, we all know that the Oval Office has seen some hot action, but somehow the thought of Junior and Unka Dick revealing their work style through their body language brings some very disturbing visions to mind. Does Dubya reach out and grab Cheney's hand from time to time and give it a little pat? Does Dick rub Junior's back lovingly during stressful moments? Ruffle his hair? Give his earlobe a little nip?

Maybe so:

"There was some laughter from time to time. The president is a bit of a tease," Mr Thompson told the Associated Press news agency.

"There were no tense moments. I thought the president gave a five-star performance. I wish the American people could have seen it."

No thanks. If I wanted to see that I'd just download "Bigtime Dick's Tease" from Ooohlala Video. Bigger production values.




digby 4/29/2004 05:29:00 PM |

 
Moving Heaven And Earth

More Agents Track Castro Than Bin Laden

The Treasury Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of terrorists told Congress that at the end of last year it had just four full-time employees dedicated to investigating Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein wealth while nearly two dozen were working on Cuban embargo violations.

Hello?

There is something seriously wrong on this side of the equation in the WOT and it would be a good issue for Kerry to exploit, I think. For reasons we can only speculate upon, the Bush administration and the Republican Party are totally unwilling to do what is necessary to block the funding of terrorists.

Toss out habeus corpus like a piece of rotting garbage, flush due process down the toilet, use the Patriot Act to try to bring Laurie Mylroie's fevered wet dreams to life --- but Gawd help us, we will never let the Stalinist jackbooted thugs invade the sanctity of private banking transactions.


digby 4/29/2004 05:29:00 PM |

 
WWBD?

The best writer in America has some good advice for John Kerry:

Kerry has not been anywhere near quick enough on his feet so far. I mean, honestly, here's the president talking about having a high father -- as opposed to a lowdown brother, which would be Neil. (Back in the steamer trunk, Neilsie!) Here's the president's favorite policy hot-cha gal comparing abortion-rights demonstrators to terrorists. (Ten Minutes From Normal, indeed. And several miles beyond its sister city, Sane.) These are very big fish in extremely small barrels here.

I know part of the problem: Kerry has brought aboard some career hacks from the commonwealth, God save it. Some of these guys worked for Michael Dukakis back in 1988, and they're only now getting back in the game because it's taken them 14 years to get back those parts of their respective anatomies that were still lodged between Jim Baker's teeth. Nice to see these guys back at the helm of another campaign. It's like spotting Captain Joe Hazelwood a pitcher of martinis and another oil tanker.

What is abundantly clear is that Kerry's hired the wrong guys from Massachusetts. There's only one man, only one true leader, who's fit for the kind of battle in which Kerry has found himself.

His name is Belichick. Bill Belichick.

Quite simply, we here in Massachusetts believe in Bill, who has led us out of the wilderness and through two Super Bowls. We believe in Bill with a constant faith that makes Tim LaHaye read like Jacqueline Susann. Our devotion is whole. It is complete. In Bill we trust.

[...]

Admittedly, Bill's politics are a bit of a mystery. He's a Wesleyan man, so he's got that small, New England, liberal-arts-college thing going for him. In addition, Belichick has hinted more than once that he's a Democrat, and Rush Limbaugh once called the Patriots "socialists," because they were introduced as a team before the Super Bowl in 2002. And he's a Bon Jovi fan, which can mean anything at all. But he's driven and focused, and he's coldly maniacal about winning. That's all that's needed for the moment.

Do I overstate? In a political culture in which Fred Barnes is a thinker and Tom Brokaw a historian? Please. It's time for John Kerry's campaign to join the faithful. We, too, follow our higher father. I suggest it's time for the junior senator to adopt the first public expression of faith shared by all New England since the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, beginning our long historical march toward jobs our uncles can get for us on the county-road crews.

WWBD?

What Would Bill Do?

digby 4/29/2004 03:55:00 PM |

 
Finally!

Yglesias on TAPPED points out the obvious fact that the DNC should be blastfaxing to every mediamoron in the Washington, who up to now have not said word one about this obvious discrepancy:

"If we had something to hide, we wouldn't have met with them in the first place," he said.


Back in the real world of course, Bush did refuse to meet with the commission, only to back down in the face of public pressure. Then he refused to meet for more than one hour and, again, he wound up backing down in the face of public pressure. Finally, he agreed to let the commission ask their questions, but only on the dual condition that Cheney be at his side and that no transcript of the meeting be released. That doesn't sound at all like the pattern of behavior of a president who's trying to hide something. Why, it's been "unprecedented cooperation" from the get-go. And we all remember how eager Condoleezza Rice was to testify. . . .

I've had the cable news on all morning and not one member of the "press" has noted this bullshit. It's spoonfeeding time, Terry.



digby 4/29/2004 02:02:00 PM |

 
Calling The Mighty Casio

We knew that Bush "embellished" his National Guard Service. And we knew that he "embellished" his business achievements. Today, Bad Attitudes tells us that Bush even "embellished" his pathetic beersoaked college athletic career (not to mention that he just makes shit up about what classes he took.)

Obviously, swing voters cannot be persuaded of Junior's total inadequacy by exposing the fact that he lied and bumbled his way into a war and has driven the country into bankruptcy to benefit his rich friends. The Big Lie technique works much too well. The campaign must be run on likeability and proxy "character" issues because that seems to be how people make political decisions in this country.

John Kerry is not particularly warm and cuddly by infotainment standards, so we can only hope for a draw on that one. But, Bush has been remarkably immune to the kind of trivial character questions that plague all Democrats, mostly because of the wingnuts's phony hysteria every time anybody goes near that stuff.

The blogosphere, Air America, Stern and Stewart are the places to make this stand. Bush failed up his entire life. Now he's reinventing his past. It's our job to belittle him for it at every opportunity.

Let the word go forth.

Update:

Tina Brown on trivia (and she knows whereof she speaks) and why it works:

"I'm from the suburbs," he announced, "and I'm voting for Bush."

All eyes turned to him. "It might seem odd that a savvy New Yorker like me is voting for a guy in a cowboy hat," he went on, as he recklessly doled out ice cream to a network anchor, "but what we want is stability. This Kerry guy -- he's all over the place."

Huh? Stability? What about all the mayhem in Iraq? His intervention immediately brought the table back from a troubled analysis of American options in Iraq to how the medals debacle is affecting perceptions of Kerry. It was as if the waiter was a plant from the Bush campaign, diverting attention at a critical moment, just as he was supposed to.

The Republican attack machine -- again -- has made the right calculation: Hit 'em with trivia. Bait the hook with the absurd "issue" of whether it was medals or ribbons that Kerry hurled over the wall when he was a 27-year-old hothead. Then watch the media bite -- they'll do it every time -- and let Kerry rise to it and blow it. Presto, a thrice-wounded, decorated war hero running against a president who went missing from the National Guard is suddenly muddying up his own record on the morning talk shows. Shades of 2000, when Bush jokily bowled oranges down the aisle of his campaign plane while Gore argued about whether he did or didn't say he invented the Internet.

[...]

"When I watch Kerry trying to swat away the issue of ribbons and medals I see Karl as the Oz figure all over again," Slater told me on the phone. "Rove's technique is always to go for a candidate's strength, not his weakness. In Texas, when Bush was running against Governor Ann Richards, her strength was her tolerance, her inclusiveness. She had brought a lot of women and minorities into government. So suddenly in conservative East Texas there was a whispering campaign about why she had hired so many lesbians and homosexuals. It's the same with Kerry. The war record is his strength -- so instead of leaving it alone, Rove just goes right at it."

It's spooky to see it working, both in the polls and anecdotally. In the past 10 days, Democrats in New York have been distracted for the first time from focusing their wrath on Bush to dumping it on Kerry. Even among heavy donors there has been a wave of buyer's remorse.

I think the Kerry campaign should do exactly what Rove does. Go after Bush's "strengths" --- honest, courageous, means what he says. I know it's distasteful, but so is Armageddon, which is definitely on the menu if Crusader Codpiece gets a legitimate term in office. Fight the Right on their hypocritical, chickenshit, mama's boy flaccidity in the face of real challenge. Little George reading goat stories and running around the country like a scared little boy on 9/11 is a good place to start.

And Democrats have got to stop internalizing all this GOP propaganda. IT'S NOT TRUE. Kerry is not a waffler; his 30+ public career simply has depth and complexity unlike the simpleminded fratboy's coddled sinecures. Nor are Democrats a bunch of godless assholes who hate religion, and neither are the various constituencies of our party constantly "mau-mauing" to the party's detriment.

This is self-hatred, not constructive self-criticism and we are nothing but big fat losers if we don't stop using GOP propaganda points. If there is one single positive step all Democrats could take today to ensure a fighting chance in this election I submit it would be a promise to never, EVER use the same words to describe each other as the professional GOP smear machine uses to attack us. That simple pledge could go a long way toward keeping us straight on what this fight is really all about.

A good rule of thumb is to temper your argument with a fellow Democrat when you realize that someone overhearing it could mistake you for Rush Limbaugh or a FOXNews "analyst," if they didn't know any better. It's a very disconcerting feeling. I know. I've done it. It's a big mistake.




digby 4/29/2004 11:54:00 AM |

 
Misunderstanding


... how do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America? I'll tell you how I respond: I'm amazed. I'm amazed that there is such misunderstanding of what our country is about, that people would hate us. I am, I am -- like most Americans, I just can't believe it. Because I know how good we are, and we've go to do a better job of making our case. ---- GWB 10/11/01


A photo from TV shows an Iraqi prisoner with a hood over his head, standing on a box and with wires connected to his hands. Photo: Sky News

United States soldiers at a prison outside Baghdad have been accused of forcing Iraqi prisoners into acts of sexual humiliation and other abuses.

The charges, first announced by the military in March, were documented by photographs taken by guards in the prison.

Some of the photographs, and descriptions of others, were broadcast in the US on Wednesday by a CBS television news program and were verified by military officials.

Of the six people reported in March to be facing preliminary charges, three have been recommended for courts martial.

The program reported that poorly trained US reservists were forcing Iraqis to conduct simulated sexual acts in order to break down their will before they were turned over to others for interrogation.

In one photograph naked Iraq prisoners stand in a human pyramid, one with a slur written on his skin in English.

In another, a prisoner stands on a box, his head covered, wires attached to his body. The news show said that, according to the army, he had been told that if he fell off the box he would be electrocuted. Other photographs show male prisoners positioned to simulate sex with each other.

"The pictures show Americans, men and women, in military uniforms, posing with naked Iraqi prisoners," a transcript said.

"And in most of the pictures, the Americans are laughing, posing, pointing or giving the camera a thumbs-up."

The program's producers said the army also had photographs showing a detainee with wires attached to his genitals and another that showed a dog attacking a prisoner.

The photographs were taken inside Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, where US forces have been holding hundreds of Iraqis.

---

The Abu Ghurayb (pronounced ah-boo GRAYB), [Abu Ghraib] prison is located approximately 20 miles west of Baghdad is where Saddam Kamal (who was head of the Special Security Organization) oversaw the torture and execution of thousands of political prisoners. The prison was under the control of the Directorate of General Security (DGS) also known as the Amn al-Amm.

As many as 4000 prisoners were executed at Abu Ghraib Prison in 1984. At least 122 male prisoners were executed at Abu Ghraib prison in February/ March 2000. A further 23 political prisoners were executed there in October 2001.

Finally, the attitude of the Iraqis toward the American people -- it's an interesting question. They're really pleased we got rid of Saddam Hussein. And you can understand why. This is a guy who was a torturer, a killer, a maimer; there's mass graves. I mean, he was a horrible individual that really shocked the country in many ways, shocked it into a kind of -- a fear of making decisions toward liberty. That's what we've seen recently. Some citizens are fearful of stepping up --- GWB 4/13/04



Full story from 60 Minutes II, here.

Update:

Rule of law or men?

Hundreds of Fayli (Shi'a) Kurds and other citizens of Iranian origin, who had disappeared in the early 1980's during the Iran-Iraq war, reportedly were being held incommunicado at the Abu Ghurayb prison. Such persons have been detained without charge for close to 2 decades in extremely harsh conditions.

Yesterday, George W. Bush argued that he has the same power right here in America. The opposing counsel had this to say about that:

...when you take his argument at core, it is: "Trust us." And who's saying, "trust us"? The executive branch. And why do we have the great writ?

We have the great writ because we didn't trust the executive branch when we founded this government. That's why the government saying "trust us" is no excuse for taking away and driving a truck through the right of habeas corpus and the Fifth Amendment that "no man shall be deprived of liberty except upon due process of law." We have a small problem here. One citizen -- we're not talking about thousands -- one citizen caught up in a problem in Afghanistan. Is it better to give him rights, or is it better to start a new dawn of saying there are circumstances where you can't file a writ of habeas corpus, and there are circumstances where you can't get due process? I think not.

I would urge the court not to go down that road. I would urge the court to find that citizens can only be detained by law. And here there is no law. If there is any law at all, it is the executive's own secret definition of whatever "enemy combatant" is. And don't fool yourselves into thinking that that means somebody coming off a battlefield, because they've used it in Chicago, they've used it in New York, and they've used it in Indiana.

But, we're good and they're evil. We have nothing to worry about.




digby 4/29/2004 10:11:00 AM |

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

 
Los Angeles Times Orwellian Web Headline Of The Day

"U.S. Committed to Fallouja Talks"

By Tony Perry, Patrick J. McDonnell, Daryl Strickland 9:53 a.m.

Hours after spectacular firefight, several blasts ring out in the city as U.S. planes attack"

digby 4/28/2004 10:54:00 AM |

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

 
There Are "Terrorists" And Then There Are Terrorists

Via Orcinus I find that a real live, rock 'em sock 'em terrorist/assassin was arrested by pure luck last week:

Police came upon Breit after an anonymous caller reported a gunshot going off in his apartment Sunday night.

When officers arrived, Breit told them, "I screwed up."

He explained he accidentally shot off his AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifle in his home, blowing a hole through his door frame.

Breit agreed to a search of his house and car, according to the complaint.

The search turned up several hundred rounds of ammunition, components for pipe bombs, shotguns, more than 700 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, a cannon fuse and a recipe for dynamite.

The search also turned up a list of federal officials, political and public figures with the word "marked," next to the names. Breit told agents it meant "marked to die," because the people were liberal, opposed to gun rights or opposed to the current government.

Police also found a note that reads: "I will die for my cause, for it is just. I won't put my hands up and surrender -- I will not rest till I purge these United States from the treasonist (sic) parasites."

What the Sun-Times story neglects to tell readers is that it appears that nearly the entirety of his targets were Democrats and liberals. That information comes from a news release from the Brady Campaign:

Federal agents say they recovered seven guns, more than 1,300 rounds of ammunition, pipe bomb making components and other explosives, a list of government officials and political and public figures with the word "marked" written next to them, and a written plan for 15 heavily armed men to kill 1,500 people at a Democratic presidential meeting.

Breit's library included The Turner Diaries, the anti-government cult novel that inspired Timothy McVeigh, and Guns, Freedom and Terrorism, the book authored by National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre, investigators said.

[...]

Information about this case is nowhere to be found at the Web sites of either the FBI or the Justice Department -- though of course, both carry voluminous reports discussing threats from international terrorists. And of course, the FBI has a full phalanx of reportage on various aspects of "eco-terrorism," which is currently the agency's prime domestic-terrorism focus

Hey, this guy is nothing like an eco-terrorist. He was just planning to do what many would consider a good deed, fighting the good fight, respecting the culture of life and all that. It's not like he's out of the mainstream or anything:

You know, there are two wars going on in the world right now. There's the United States war against international terrorism and there is the Democrat Party war against George W. Bush.

The good news is that the government is ruthlessly running down the terrorists who are a real danger. Like this evil web-master:

Not long after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a group of Muslim students led by a Saudi Arabian doctoral candidate held a candlelight vigil in the small college town of Moscow, Idaho, and condemned the attacks as an affront to Islam.

Today, that graduate student, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, is on trial in a heavily guarded courtroom here, accused of plotting to aid and to maintain Islamic Web sites that promote jihad.

As a Web master to several Islamic organizations, Mr. Hussayen helped to maintain Internet sites with links to groups that praised suicide bombings in Chechnya and in Israel. But he himself does not hold those views, his lawyers said. His role was like that of a technical editor, they said, arguing that he could not be held criminally liable for what others wrote.

Civil libertarians say the case poses a landmark test of what people can do or whom they can associate with in the age of terror alerts. It is one of the few times anyone has been prosecuted under language in the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, which makes it a crime to provide "expert guidance or assistance" to groups deemed terrorist.

I feel safer just knowing this computer geek is behind bars. He may not actually believe in everything that appears on that web-site, but he ought to be a little bit more careful about the company he keeps.

Yet, I worry that a fine upstanding gun-owner like Mr Breit could be persecuted just for "screwing up" and firing off his AK-47 inside his home, bringing the jack-booted thugs of the Federal Gestapo to his door. It's not like he actually offed a bunch of Democrats or anything. You can't blame a guy for dreaming.

I'm just glad that a patriot like John Ashcroft is in charge of these things. He knows how to set the right priorities.



digby 4/27/2004 01:14:00 PM |

 
Let Freedom Ring

Our quest -- our quest for freedom -- our quest for freedom is around the world. Good foreign policy is a foreign policy that insists upon freedom in our own neighborhood. Good foreign policy is a policy that insists upon freedom in parts of the world where there's hatred and the lack of hope. That's why I will continue to work, so long as I'm President, for a vision of peace based upon the cornerstone of free societies. And we will succeed. George W. Bush


Headlines on FoxNews at 12 noon, Tuesady, April 27, 2004:

Police Clash With Terror Suspects in Damascus

Fallujah Shaken by Intense Blasts, Gunfire

Marines engaged in door-to-door fighting in Fallujah; U.S. troops kill 64 gunmen during heavy battle in Najaf

Related Stories

Iraqi to U.N.: We Want 'Complete Sovereignty'
Kidnappers Threaten to Kill Italians in
Blair: Britain Has Sufficient Troops in Iraq
Fight Goes Door-to-Door

digby 4/27/2004 12:10:00 PM |

Friday, April 23, 2004

 
What Does Perle Want From Chalabi?

Via Kevin, I find this question from Juan Cole about our good friend Ahmad:

It would be really interesting to know the list of secret promises Chalabi has given Perle (and presumably the Israelis through Perle) that would explain this Neocon fervor for the man.

The question rang a bell for me and I recalled that I had written about this very thing a little over a year ago in this post in which I discussed at great lengths the delusions already being perpetrated in the name of "demahcracy." I excerped a very interesting Washington Post article that contained this little gem:

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

It all comes back to "Clean Break."



digby 4/23/2004 02:35:00 PM |

 
Myth Takes

On TAPPED today, Matt talks about Victor Davis Hansen's lame assertion that left wing arguments about the war are "myths." In his usual convincing fashion, Matt demolishes Hansen's tired wingnut defense that while the WMD issue was put forth perhaps "erroneously" it doesn't matter because there were other good reasons for invading. And anyway, when everything comes up roses it won't matter why we did it. Matt gets to the meat of the matter and brings up the related fact that the repeated assertions of "grave and gathering" danger made majorities of the public believe until this day in what has been proven to be a complete falsehood about Saddam's WMD and ties to terrorists. He says:

I've written previously, these false beliefs correlate highly with support for the war. Now there's a case to be made that the president's done the right thing here. I can imagine an argument that the American people are just too unsophisticated to grasp the needs of American grand strategy and that, therefore, they need to be tricked into doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. But if that's the case you want to make, you need to produce an argument. Just deriding liberal arguments as myths when they are, in fact, perfectly accurate doesn't cut it.

I can imagine that argument, too, particularly coming from a bunch of phony Straussians. But it would be more than a little bit contrary to Crusader Codpiece's happy talk about liberating the Iraqi people and in total contradiction to the self-righteous Republican oratory about their commitment to freedom and democracy. Let's be clear about the real "myths" at play here.

If you look closely at the last few years you have no choice but to believe that Republicans think democracy itself is a myth. For instance, there was that little matter of impeachment over a private sexual matter -- a manipulation of the constitution to overturn the public will, to which the public, thankfully, registered its displeasure in midterm elections and polls. Not two years later there was the bizarre sight of Republicans in Florida professing that arbitrary deadlines and the mere possibility of human error were more important than the principle of making sure that all votes were duly counted --- even by judges who are charged with matters of life and death every day. Now we see Republicans slyly admitting that the public needs to be tricked into doing the right thing rather than being told the truth and being allowed to make their wishes known. It's been clear for quite a while to anyone paying attention that the GOP "reverence" for the principles of freedom and democracy is strictly a marketing device.

And this may present a little problem for Junior's Freedom Crusade because even though some Americans may be, shall we say, "biased" enough to believe that all Arab bad guys must be in cahoots and trying to kill us, I doubt that either Americans or Iraqis are gullible enough to believe that "freedom and democracy" can possibly mean this:

The Bush administration's plans for a new caretaker government in Iraq would place severe limits on its sovereignty, including only partial command over its armed forces and no authority to enact new laws, administration officials said Thursday.

[...]

The arrangement would be, I think as we are doing today, that we would do our very best to consult with that interim government and take their views into account," said Marc Grossman, under secretary of state for political affairs. But he added that American commanders will "have the right, and the power, and the obligation" to decide.

Sure, you can call a foreign military occupation "freedom" and you can say that "democracy" is a caretaker government or a handpicked governing council, but that doesn't make it so. What it does do is make a mockery of the very values we are supposedly trying to impart. A good number of Americans see it, most of the rest of the world sees it and the Iraqi people definitely see it. At this point it might be better part to have Junior just shut the hell up. His mindless blathering just draws attention to our government's rank hypocrisy.






digby 4/23/2004 02:04:00 PM |

Thursday, April 22, 2004

 
The Enemy Within


History is going to show that a nutcase by the name of Laurie Mylroie and a group of equally nutty followers, including the Vice President and the Deputy Secretary of Defense, led the United States into a war on the basis of a daffy conspiracy theory.

The proposal, pressed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, called for President George W. Bush to declare Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as an enemy combatant in the war on terror. This would have allowed Yousef to be transferred from his cell at the U.S. Bureau of Prison’s “supermax” penitentiary in Florence, Colo., to a U.S. military installation.

Wolfowitz contended that U.S. military interrogators—unencumbered by the presence of Yousef’s defense lawyer—might be able to get the inmate to confess what he and the lawyer have steadfastly denied: that he was actually an Iraqi intelligence agent dispatched by Saddam to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 as revenge for the first Persian Gulf War.

The previously unreported Wolfowitz proposal—and the high-level consideration it got within the Justice Department—sheds new light on the Bush administration’s willingness to expand its use of enemy-combatant declarations inside the United States beyond the three alleged terrorists, two of them American citizens, who have already been designated by the White House.

Actually believing this nonsensical conspiracy theory about Ramsi Youssef, and attempting to change 200 years of legal precedent in order to prove it, would be the equivalent of Bill Clinton using Oliver Stone's JFK as the basis for prosecuting the remaining members of the Johnson administration for the assassination of Kennedy.

There is no greater reason to get rid of Bush than to put this little Mylroie/Wolfowitz freakshow back in its little Lyndon Larouche conspiracy corner.


digby 4/22/2004 05:11:00 PM |

 
RIP

The Memory Hole Photos of Military Coffins (Casualties From Iraq) at Dover Air Force Base


While the Republicans are trying to distract everyone with spooky tales of the boogey man, we all must remember that Americans are already dying every single day in a useless, goddamned war. Again.




digby 4/22/2004 03:51:00 PM |

 
They're Comin' Ta Git Yah!

House OKs Speedy Elections if Attacked

Get out your gas masks. And I don't mean because of an impending bio weapon attack. I'm talking about the impending Republican gasbag attack.

The Mighty Wurlitzer is pumping up the volume and I'm sure the media are panting and groaning with anticipation of another RNC generated spin cycle.

Critics of the 45-day election plan said it was both too short a time for some states to prepare for elections and too long to leave Congress in a paralyzed state. Several warned of a martial law condition, with the executive branch taking over legislative authorities such as declaring war during the 45 days that Congress is unable to function.


"A catastrophe that could prevent whole states from being represented for 45 days is at the heart of the concern," said Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., another backer of amending the Constitution.

Run for your lives!

Hearings were also scheduled on the issue of incapacitation, or how to define when a member who is still alive is unable to carry out his congressional duties, possibly because of a biological or chemical attack.

As our Dear Leader once sagely inquired, "what's the difference?"




digby 4/22/2004 03:33:00 PM |

 
Truth "Available Soon"

Susan reports the shocking news that the Bush administration lies about absolutely everything.

Six months have passed since the Phoenix reported that the US Census Bureau’s latest income and poverty reports contained significant errors (see "The Politics of Poverty," News and Features, October 10, 2003). The reworked numbers, which will show that median after-tax household income declined far more in 2002 than the bureau reported, have been ready since January, according to sources in the agency. All that remained was to work out a "release strategy," according to one manager in the Housing and Household Economics Statistics Division. A follow-up call in March to find out when the new numbers would be made public yielded this information from Dan Weinberg, chief of the division: the bureau still needs to establish a "release strategy." It’s starting to look an awful lot like the "release strategy" is to not release the new numbers at all.

As first reported by the Phoenix last fall, the bureau used erroneous marginal tax rates in calculating 2001 data. As a result, the reports released last September falsely claimed that median after-tax household income remained stable in 2002, when in fact it dropped significantly — probably about 1.5 percent. The Census Bureau conceded the error and promised to redo the figures.

Since then, the words "Available Soon!" have adorned the Web page where the after-tax figures should be (ferret.bls.census.gov/macro/032003/rdcall/toc.htm). Meanwhile, the original report, containing incorrect data, is still available from the bureau’s main page — as are the September press release and briefing documents that tout the false numbers as evidence that things are not so bad. The bureau has known that this is not true for six months, and has had the corrected data in hand for at least three.

This would hardly be the first time that, given a choice between an upbeat falsehood and a dour truth, the Bush administration embraced the comfortable lie.

In other news, George W. Bush won the Nobel Peace Prize for smiting evil doers everywhere and bringing freedom to the world. You can look it up.



digby 4/22/2004 12:24:00 PM |

 
Another Whiff 'o Freedom

Via Kelley Kramer:

A military contractor has fired Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose photograph of flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers was published in Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times.

Silicio was let go yesterday for violating U.S. government and company regulations, said William Silva, president of Maytag Aircraft, the contractor that employed Silicio at Kuwait International Airport.

[...]

Pentagon officials yesterday said the government's policy defers to the sensitivities of bereaved families. "We've made sure that all of the installations who are involved with the transfer of remains were aware that we do not allow any media coverage of any of the stops until (the casket) reaches its final destination," said Cynthia Colin, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Maytag also fired David Landry, a co-worker who recently wed Silicio.

Silicio said she never sought to put herself in the public spotlight. Instead, she said, she hoped the publication of the photo would help families of fallen soldiers understand the care and devotion that civilians and military crews dedicate to the task of returning the soldiers home.

Freedom of the press is the cornerstone of democracy. I love democracy, don't you?


digby 4/22/2004 09:31:00 AM |

 
Framing Fear

Bush warned the editors that the United States "is a battlefield in the war on terror" and said he can understand public fears of a terrorist attack before the November election. "This is a hard country to defend," he said. "Our intelligence is good. It's just never perfect, is the problem. We are disrupting some cells here in America. We're chasing people down. But it is a -- we've got a big country."

On Tuesday evening, Bush told Republican congressional leaders during a meeting at the White House that it was all but certain that terrorists would attempt a major attack on the United States before the election, according to a congressional aide. The leaders were struck by Bush's definitiveness and gravity, the aide said.

Still, Bush told the editors, the administration is "making good progress in the defense of America."

Condi said similar things the other day, as well. So, what's the deal? Are they hearing some of that famous "chatter" or is this some kind of election year gambit?

Since they lie by reflex, it's hard to tell, and while I am this close to believing the absolute worst about these people, I haven't yet concluded that they are capable of controlling a massive enough conspiracy to actively allow another terrorist attack for political purposes. So, I expect that this is just Framing The WOT for Dummies.

First and foremost they want to ratchet up the fear level so that everyone will gather around their hero Boy George. For whatever reason they believe that people trust him to keep the babies safe. I doubt that, but I agree that it is a default position for those who aren't paying much attention or are not very bright. Terrorist-attack-scary-president-bullhorn-bombs-safe.

Secondly, this frames the election in case there actually is an escalation of terrorism and I don't think it matters all that much if it's on American soil. After their blatently phony partisan reading of the Spanish election it's clear that the Republicans are going to say that voting for anyone other than George W. Bush is rewarding terrorism. Osama hates Bush, therefore we must love Bush or be accused of appeasing Osama. Nice and Neat. And if Kerry allows any daylight between himself and Bush on national security, he's "cutting and running," and appeasing the terrorists, too.

But, I think this fear mongering is an opportunity. I say go right in his face and hammer him for saying that the mighty USA can't protect itself from a bunch of pissant terrorists. (It's logical, of course, that we can't protect ourselves against all possibilities, but since the Republicans successfully tossed logic down the garbage disposal for the last four years, I see no reason why we should allow them to dredge it out now.) Our purpose is to get this dangerous incompetent out of the White House.

If we do get hit before the election, we've been innoculated because we said he wasn't adequately protecting America. Time for a change. If we don't get hit, Bush doesn't get the credit because he's already admitted that he doesn't think the country can be protected. Its dumb luck.

"This is a hard country to defend?" That's defeatist talk, boy. But it's no wonder, coming from the man who vacationed through the month of August before the first terrorist attacks while the entire intelligence community was running around with its hair on fire. Looks like you still haven't learned from from your mistakes. You've had almost three years to shore up our defenses, the treasury is almost bankrupted and now you whine to us that the country is a battlefield but it's really big so you can't protect it?

You refused to figure out what went wrong the first time until the widows of the dead insisted; you wasted months before you agreed to a new department of Homeland Security and you still haven't funded it; you decided to fight a foreign war based on bad intelligence and phony claims of grave danger, tying down our troops in Iraq when they could be catching the terrorists overseas and protecting us here at home. (In case you forgot, that's what the National Guard is supposed to do, flyboy.)

Now you tell us the terrorists are planning to attack us again and there's not much you can do about it?

It's time for a new president who'll put the safety of the American people first.





digby 4/22/2004 08:58:00 AM |

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

 
Compare and Contrast

Intelligent, mature and rich in educational backround and experience.

vs

major strength is his ability to work with others. He makes a welcome addition to any group or team effort.

---

He utilizes the English language expertly, both orally and in writing. He is an alert and active original thinker with great potential...

vs.

a good representative of the military ... in the business world.

---
[He] constantly reviewed tactics and lessons learned in...operations and applied his experience at every opportunity

vs

I have personally observed his participation and without exception, his performance has been noteworthy.

---

The detachment of this officer will be a definite loss to the service. He is the dedicated type that we should retain and it is hoped that he will be of further perhaps earlier greater service to his country, which is his aim in life at this time

vs

[This officer] has not been observed at this unit during the period of report.


Read the whole thing at The American Street



digby 4/21/2004 08:47:00 PM |

Tuesday, April 20, 2004

 
Who's On First?

Pressed on how Iraq would assume sovereignty amid weeks of spiraling violence, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz called June 30th "just one step in a process," and not "a magical date" in which the U.S.-led occupation will shift responsibilities to a new Iraqi government.

But at a news conference last Friday with British prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush said of the June 30 handover:

"One of the essential commitments we've made to the Iraqi people is this: They will control their own country. No citizen of America or Britain would want the government of their nation in the hands of others and neither do the Iraqis. This is why the June 30th date for the transfer of sovereignty will be kept."

digby 4/20/2004 03:09:00 PM |

 
Crisco Drippings

This is obviously one of those days designed to make me feel like I'm not completely going crazy. (I'm grateful for this because I have a terrible cold and I feel like driving my car into a guard rail to end the misery.) But, glory of all glories, the Washington Post has published an editorial taking Attorney General Ashcroft to task for his disgraceful testimony last week.

IN HIS TESTIMONY last week before the Sept. 11 commission, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft loosed a remarkable attack on Jamie S. Gorelick, a commission member who served as deputy attorney general during part of the Clinton administration. The "single greatest structural cause for the September 11th problem," Ashcroft said, "was the wall that segregated or separated criminal investigators and intelligence agents," and the "basic architecture for the wall . . . was contained in a classified memorandum" from 1995 -- which Mr. Ashcroft had conveniently declassified for the hearing. "Full disclosure," he said, "compels me to inform you that the author of this memorandum is a member of the commission" -- that is, Ms. Gorelick. Mr. Ashcroft's allegations, which triggered criticism and demands for her resignation from prominent Republicans, are grossly unfair.

[...]

Pretending that such a deep-seated institutional problem was Ms. Gorelick's single-handed creation should have been beneath the attorney general.

It wasn't all that much commented upon as far as I can tell, but it truly was one of the most shocking performances by an Attorney General I have ever seen. As I wrote in my mildmannered piece entitled Consummate Prick:

Has there ever been a more blatantly partisan Attorney General than the Crisco Kid? This testimony today was contemptuous, dishonest and disturbingly inappropriate.

I also haven't heard anything from Senator Kill Bill yet about citing Thomas Pickard for perjury:

BEN-VENISTE: And you told the staff according to this statement that Mr. Ashcroft told you that he did not want to hear about this [terrorism] anymore. Is that correct?

PICKARD: That is correct.

Ashcroft denied he ever said that. Somebody's lyin' under oath.




digby 4/20/2004 02:35:00 PM |

 
Junior Mint

President-elect Bush asked some practical questions about how things worked, but he did not offer or hint at his desires.

The Joint Chiefs' staff had placed a peppermint at each place. Bush unwrapped his and popped it into his mouth. Later he eyed Cohen's mint and flashed a pantomime query, Do you want that? Cohen signaled no, so Bush reached over and took it. Near the end of the hour-and-a-quarter briefing, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, noticed Bush eyeing his mint, so he passed it over.

Mmmmm. Candy.




digby 4/20/2004 01:48:00 PM |

 
Pushn' Polls

Josh and Atrios discuss the new polls showing Kerry falling behind even though Bush has had the worst couple of weeks of his presidency. Quite rightly, Democrats are asking, "what will it take?" Both bloggers ponder the idea that this is because "the president gains as national security and war issues become more salient, even if they are becoming more salient because of what seem to be objectively bad news about his policies."

I think this is essentially correct. People associate war leadership with Bush and when the war is in the news some still feel a rally 'round the president effect. But more importantly, I think it is because John Kerry was becoming a cipher. Without him out there offering a strong rhetorical counter argument, people who don't pay attention to the details get the impression that he's not offering any alternative.

I said a couple of weeks ago:

It's one thing for Kerry to allow Bush to swing in the wind on the pre-9/11 stuff. Let the widows and the whistleblowers take that on. The less partisanship the better. But, Iraq is something else entirely.

Iraq is a crisis and an ongoing problem and it isn't enough for it to be seen blowing up on television. Kerry has got to convince people that Bush is the problem and that he can fix it. Instead, he's acting clueless and disengaged.

A lot of my readers commented that he shouldn't allow himself to get caught up in a specific plan and that his best bet was to lie low. I agree that he needn't offer a specific plan, but I disagreed that he should lie low. I believe that he needs to offer some hot, critical rhetoric about Bush's mistakes and that he should simply say, over and over again, that Bush can't solve the problem because Bush is the problem. I suggested he say (among other things):

"...this crisis untimately requires a political solution and George W. Bush has run out of political options. A new president and a fresh start are what's required to fix this problem. Only then can we rebuild the trust of our allies and go back to the drawing board with all the parties and set a proper course for a free and democratic Iraq."

Not that I have any illusions that his people are reading this blog, but I was nonetheless I gratified to hear him on Russert and quoted in USA Today saying:

More U.S. troops and a new president could be needed to win international support for U.S. efforts in postwar Iraq, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Sunday.The Massachusetts senator said President Bush has created a "quandary" for the nation by failing to develop a broad coalition to fight the war, to secure Iraq and to let countries that didn't fight participate in rebuilding.

"It may well be that we need a new president, a breath of fresh air, to re-establish our credibility with the rest of the world" and bring other countries into Iraq, Kerry said on NBC's Meet the Press.

If Kerry doesn't make it clear that Bush is the problem, there are enough people out there who are likely to do a rally round the flag bit to swing the election. Saying "I've got a plan" every five seconds isn't going to get the job done. It's about framing the election in terms of Junior's mistakes, which considering the news of the last few weeks shouldn't be all that difficult. And it has to be done with the kind of rhetoric that makes the media focus on Kerry.

Up to now, Kerry's people have been convinced that it wasn't his responsibility:

A Kerry spokesman told Salon on Thursday that it's incumbent on Bush -- not Kerry -- to address the crisis in Iraq. "What has the president said about this?" the Kerry spokesman asked. "He needs to explain what his policy is, what his plan is to address what's going on right now. But he's been down on his ranch in Crawford. The spotlight isn't on John Kerry. The spotlight needs to be on Bush. He's the president, and he's the person who has carved out these policies."

That was the problem. The spotlight is on Bush and unless Kerry sticks his neck out a little bit, Americans don't even know he exists on the issue. People don't have to know what he's going to do in detail --- in fact they don't want to listen to it. But, they must be convinced that Bush has screwed up the War on Terror and that he is now the greatest impediment to fixing it before they will be persuaded to abandon the president in "wartime." It's Kerry's job to make that case and then to persuade them that his experience, his philosophy and his leadership qualities make him the better man to get that job done. The Kerry campaign made a mistake in assuming that the press could do that for them. It appears they are changing course now. We'll see if the polls improve.

Update:

Mistah Kurtz's column explains some of the problem:

When President Bush delivered a routine stump speech to a group of New Mexico homeowners on March 26, CNN and Fox News each carried his appearance for 35 minutes, and MSNBC for 33 minutes.

When John Kerry gave what was billed as a major address on national security at George Washington University on March 17, he was knocked off the screen by a large explosion in Baghdad. CNN and Fox each dropped Kerry (who had been reduced to small box) after three minutes, and MSNBC never picked him up. But as the Iraq coverage continued, all three networks carried Vice President Cheney in California attacking Kerry as weak on national security -- Fox for 28 minutes, MSNBC for 23 and CNN for 13.

In the daily battle for airtime, Bush has drawn more than three times as much live cable coverage as his Democratic challenger, yet another example of the advantages of incumbency.

A review by The Washington Post, using a video monitoring service, finds that the cable news networks have covered more Bush events and stayed with them longer. From March 3, the day after the senator clinched the nomination, through Friday, they have devoted 12 hours and 11 minutes to live appearances by Bush -- including Tuesday's prime-time news conference, which was also carried by NBC, CBS and ABC. Kerry's live cable coverage during this period: 3 hours 47 minutes.

Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt calls the coverage "a testament to who's making news. . . . We think being on the cable news programs is very important because people who follow politics and cover politics keep a close eye on their TVs during the day."

[...]


MSNBC Vice President Mark Effron says that "we take more of President Bush when he's acting in his legitimate role as president of the United States." Yet even "if he's in a plant talking about the economy, for our world, that's news." Kerry, says Effron, "hasn't exactly been out there grandstanding and making a lot of news." But most of these appearances generate newspaper stories.

Politics is TV with the sound turned off. For many Americans, if you aren't on TV, you don't exist.







digby 4/20/2004 11:59:00 AM |

 
Extension Chord

Via Catch.com, this e-mail (excerpted) from the wife of a soldier in Iraq. She describes how her husband's company was literally waiting at the airport to leave for home when their tour was abruptly extended. Her husband briefly stayed behind but the rest of his unit was ambushed on their way back and one of the soldiers was killed:

This extension was a death sentence for that poor soldier. This extension cost three children their father. And it will cost much more. And now, to touchstone: My husband signed up so that he could go to college. If we would have forseen this, there is no way that he would have put his name on that dotted line. He has missed the birth of his third child.....he could die out there. He's supposed to be sitting safe in Kuwait right now, but instead, he's in a tent because their barracks were taken over by 1st Cavalry soldiers who went in to replace them. They haven't got enough food right now, because there are too many soldiers on that base, and DoD was too short sighted to think that they might end up needing more troops. All their stuff is out to sea at the time being, so they are just sitting ducks waiting for their equipment to come back. This is a fiasco and a logistical nightmare. DoD and Rummy have been denying that there is a troop shortage for MONTHS! General Shinseki predicted this and was forced to retire. In November, Senator McCain called for at least 15,000 more troops. Well, shucks, seems they were right after all.

This is why grunts in the military coin phrases like FUBAR, although this ranks right up there with the FUBARest civilian brass in history. Rummy simply refused to entertain the idea that his RMA, electronic battlefield, third wave wet dream wasn't working. Now, the shit comes down and you've got troops being extended at the very last minute and they don't even have enough food.

I heard McCain on the radio yesterday saying something about mistakes are always made in battle and yadda, yadda, yadda. He cited McArthur's gloriously successful Inchon landing maneuver which was followed by his absurd calculation that the Chinese wouldn't push back into the south as an example of a major achievement followed by a major mistake. Of course, he fails to mention that McArthur followed up that major mistake by insisting that we should start WWIII, and got fired for it, so I'm not sure how much water that argument holds. In any case, we are reaching a point where somebody needs to be fired. For my money, if you want to take care of the ongoing FUBAR problem, that somebody should be George W. Bush.




digby 4/20/2004 11:00:00 AM |

Monday, April 19, 2004

 
You Can Believe Me or You Can Believe Your Lyin' Eyes

Michael Tomasky gets to the point. It's really very simple:

My overwhelming reaction to the 60 Minutes segment on Bob Woodward's new book and the reports and leaks about the book over the weekend is that Woodward's account shows a man who just doesn't have the intellectual capacity to do this job. This may not strike some readers as a newsflash, I know, but Woodward does shed some new light on the question. Bush took this country in a radically new foreign-policy direction without really thinking through the consequences of his actions; without reckoning in a serious way with the question "What if we're wrong?"; without seeking the input of aides who might have disagreed or painted a more complex picture than the one he wanted painted for him. It's a profoundly irresponsible way to govern.

What his defenders will continue to call his "idealism" -- the belief that God put him in the Oval Office to spread liberty's bounty across the globe and so on -- is in fact a rather shocking shallowness. It's fine and indeed admirable for a world leader to speak this way, to aspire to greatness and fairness for his nation and for the world; Tony Blair did so in the run-up to the war, and his pro-war speeches were considerably more convincing than Bush's. But clearly, Bush actually believes this and looks at global geopolitics this way. This, too, might be fine, if it were balanced by more hard-headed and skeptical assessments, but Bush seems to have embraced it as a totalizing explanation. And as such, it has barred other interpretations of world events at the door.

Even this might be fine, if the consequences had not been so tragic. But once Bush transformed himself in his mind into God's messenger of liberty, things like the State Department's multi-volume report on post-war Iraq -- a report that predicted many of the tragedies that have come to pass -- became irrelevant. What was the research of mere mortals next to the fiery inscriptions of God, emblazoned across his welcoming mind?

And so hundreds are dead today who didn't need to die, because the possibility of their deaths was not supposed to be part of the great plan and therefore was not contemplated in its mandated fullness. There exists no acceptable definition of "idealism" by which the above qualifies as such. Neither is it quite malevolence. Dick Cheney is malevolent, all right, but he's not the president, at least officially; not the one making the final call. It is incompetence. It is shallowness. To put it more colloquially, it?s trying to wish something true; we've all done it in our private lives, so we all know how irresponsible it is.

And it's happening because the guy in charge doesn't know any better. Our first impression was, catastrophically, right.

Yessiree. But to listen to bespectacled, waspy, Episcopalean beltway insider Fred "Nascar" Barnes, this is wrong because "real Americans" like him don't need no stinkin' Kissingerian nuance.

I'll leave it to the inimitable Charles Pierce to retort:

One of the reactions to C-Plus Augustus's prime-time blithering that makes me truly angry is the notion that only elitist Blue Staters expect the president to get from a subject to an object without breaking an ankle, but that the good plain-spoken average American doesn't cotton to such book-larnin', consarn it.

What a huge steaming crock of beans. One of the nice things about being a sportswriter is that you actually get to see a lot of the country and you get to meet a lot of its people, many of them living in places that people like David Brooks and the Crazy Dolphin Queen visit only in their smug condescension. I have seen the sun rise over the Piedmont and I have seen it set over the Mississippi Delta. I know the way Puget Sound looks on a clear morning, and the way the snow blows straight up off the surface of Lake Superior on a cold afternoon. I know how the Ohio sounds, and how it sounds different from how the Fox River sounds. I have played bingo in Wisconsin and I have played poker in Reno and I have gambled on horses in the sweet breezes of Keeneland. I've seen Tracy Chapman in a subway, and Muddy Waters on a midway, and Bob Dylan at Bally's Grand on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. I have seen Michael Jordan play. I have been around.

Don't tell me what this country and its people think -- and, especially, don't be using that "We" thing to do it. Don't tell me that, as a nation, we can't distinguish courage from stubbornness, philosophy from platitudes, and an empty suit from a full one. Don't tell me we prize simplicity when you really mean we prize the simple. Don't tell me about my country and my countrymen, you smarmy, honorarium-fattened, makeup-encrusted hyenas. Don't you freaking dare. I been there.

And, by the way, all of her Beltway Heather pals should note that Peggy Noonan this week intimated that asking the president of the United States what in the hell he's doing makes you less of a real American. Go on. Go on the shows with her again, and know the contempt she feels for your craft. Then, go home and break every damn mirror you own.

It is foolish for Democrats to buy into the notion that it is too dangerous to question Bush's competence to do this job. That is blatent GOP propaganda designed to cow us into discarding a potent argument. The vast majority of American people don't follow politics to the extent that we junkies do and they don't care all that much about the details. But they are remarkably good at cutting through the bullshit when it's right in front of them.

Throughout the 90's the Republicans cried wolf on average of once or twice a week. Clinton was the anti-christ. A corrupt, murdering, philandering communist was running the country. When he was finally caught with his pants down (literally), the American people were fascinated but unmoved. His approval rating remained strong even through impeachment procedings. And that, of course, is what saved him.
And it was because they believed what they saw with their own eyes --- a competent president caught in an entertaining political spectacle that didn't affect their lives.

Bush is dumb. People can see that with their own eyes, too, and Fred Barnes knows it. That's the real subtext of that whole "the grown-ups are back in charge," nonsense. Most people thought that Bush was a middle of the road fella who would listen to his Dad if anything big came up and would calm the partisan waters. After all that wild sex with Clinton he was supposed to be the cigarette in the afterglow. But, they knew he was dumb. Times were so good that quite a few people didn't think it mattered all that much who was president.

After 9/11, people wanted to believe that Bush had risen to the occasion because it was too frightening to think otherwise. The GOP successfully framed criticism as lack of patriotism. And, as with Clinton's TV soap opera, the press liked the big budget war movie. So, for a short time Bush was seen as bold, resolute, strong, decisive, whatever. Unfortunately for him, he then made the huge mistake of selling a war on a demonstrably false premise. They can try to ignore that big fat GOP elephant in the middle of the room, but it isn't going away. There are no weapons of mass destruction and Bush is babbling about turkey farms and mustard gas. He can't testify before the 9/11 commission without Vice President Gepetto. Republicans are writing tell all books about his failures even before his first term is finished. Everyone is being reminded that he never was very bright.

Now, candidates and their surrogates can't go around saying that too obviously because people will begin to feel sorry for him. But, they should be constantly talking about the complexity of the problems we face. They should discuss what leadership really is and tie it in to experience, maturity, trust and brains.

And the rest of us should use humor to hammer the point home. I'll never forget Jon Stewert's countdown of the biggest stories of 2000. The top story of the year was Florida, naturally. We'd been watching footage from the state for one reason or another for the entire 12 months. He ran down the story of the recount and the supreme court decision and then said something like "and at the center of the storm that was Florida this year was one small frightened little boy." At which point he showed a picture of George W. Bush.

It was obvious then and it's obvious now that Bush is in over his head. And Fred Barnes's protestations to the contrary are as phony as Bush senior chomping on that bag of pork rinds.




digby 4/19/2004 04:47:00 PM |

Sunday, April 18, 2004

 
Fools Rush In

The media reports of smiling Iraqis leading inspectors around, opening up buildings and saying, "See, there's nothing here," infuriated Bush, who then would read intelligence reports showing the Iraqis were moving and concealing things. It wasn't clear what was being moved, but it looked to Bush as if Hussein was about to fool the world again. It looked as if the inspections effort was not sufficiently aggressive, would take months or longer, and was likely doomed to fail.

George W. Bush, Master and Commander of the Royal order of the Codpiece had sworn that you could fool him once, but fool him twice ... won't get fooled again. And Saddam was trying to fool him.

As we all know, this is total crap because VP Gepetto had told GWB that he was going to war over a year before. The president rather endearingly thought he was making a decision that had long ago been made. He's so cute when he's confused.

You can't exactly blame the lil' guy, though. Condi Rice, obviously suffering from a late night of single gal Pinot Grigios with Gwen Ifill, groaned this pile of nonsense when Junior asked her if we should go to war:

"Yes," she said. "Because it isn't American credibility on the line, it is the credibility of everybody that this gangster can yet again beat the international system." As important as credibility was, she said, "Credibility should never drive you to do something you shouldn't do." But this was much bigger, she advised, something that should be done. "To let this threat in this part of the world play volleyball with the international community this way will come back to haunt us someday. That is the reason to do it."

It isn't about American credibility it's about international credibility. Credibility shouldn't drive you to do something you shouldn't do, but if you don't do this international credibility will suffer so you should do it.

This answer explains why Condi's was the only opinion he sought. His poor head ached for days after that one.

He knew what Vice President Cheney thought, and he decided not to ask Secretary of State Colin L. Powell or Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"I could tell what they thought," the president recalled. "I didn't need to ask them their opinion about Saddam Hussein. If you were sitting where I sit, you could be pretty clear. I think we've got an environment where people feel free to express themselves."

Well, sort of:

In all the discussions, meetings, chats and back-and-forth, in Powell's grueling duels with Rumsfeld and Defense, the president had never once asked Powell, Would you do this? What's your overall advice? The bottom line?

Perhaps the president feared the answer. Perhaps Powell feared giving it. It would, after all, have been an opportunity to say he disagreed. But they had not reached that core question, and Powell would not push. He would not intrude on that most private of presidential space -- where a president made decisions of war and peace -- unless he was invited. He had not been invited.

Bush's meeting with Powell lasted 12 minutes. "It was a very cordial conversation," the president recalled. "It wasn't a long conversation," he noted. "There wasn't much debate: It looks like we're headed to war."

The president stated emphatically that though he had asked Powell to be with him and support him in a war, "I didn't need his permission."

He's so wonderfully masterful, isn't he? Especially for someone with his cognitive handicaps. It reminds me of Junior's quote in Woodward's BlowJob Part I:

"I'm the commander. See, I don't have to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

He didn't need to ask Powell for his opinion because he knew his opinion and anyway he didn't agree with it. Why bother listening to him go on and on and be so, like totally boring? Cheney and Rumsfeld were both telling him he should do it so there was no reason to ask them. They made him feel like a man. However, he did have to ask one other very, very important and highly experienced person her opinion on the matter:

"I asked Karen," the president recalled. "She said if you go to war, exhaust all opportunities to achieve [regime change] peacefully. And she was right. She actually captured my own sentiments."

It's pretty clear that Junior has no sentiments until he talks to Karen to find out what they are.

The only people Junior explicitly asked for opinions on whether to go to war with Iraq were Condi Rice and Karen Hughes. Both women told him he should do it --- Condi babbling something confused about playing international volleyball and Karen basically telling him to look both ways before crossing the street.

Meanwhile Vice President Richelieu sits in the corner saying nothing except a well timed "Saddam's toast" to our Secretary of Oil, Prince Bandar --- who is informed of our decision to go to war before anybody tells the Secretary of State.

Oh, sorry. Bush had informed one other person over the holidays:

The president also informed Karl Rove, his chief political strategist, of his decision over the holidays. Rove had gone to Crawford to brief Bush on the confidential plan for Bush's 2004 reelection campaign. While Laura Bush sat reading a book, Rove gave a PowerPoint presentation on the campaign's strategy, themes and timetable.

Opening his laptop, he displayed for Bush in bold letters on a dark blue background:

PERSONA:

Strong Leader

Bold Action

Big Ideas

Peace in World

More Compassionate America

Cares About People Like Me

Leads a Strong Team

I don't think even Shakespeare could do this farce justice.






digby 4/18/2004 11:38:00 AM |