Hullabaloo

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

 
If I Can Take It:

Rumsfeld scribbled a note on Haynes' memo that said, "However, I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours."

Gosh, while he stands is he also being interrogated naked, shackled, subject to "mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing" with a vicious German Shepard trying to take a bite out of his privates? I had no idea that the culture at the pentagon was so like a concentration camp.

On the other hand, a similar note by Doug Feith was found questioning why prisoners shouldn't be required to wear women's underwear on their heads since he and Wolfowitz both wear teddies and garter belts underneath their Brooks Brothers.

See, it's all in how you look at it.





Update: corrected grammatical error
digby 6/22/2004 07:52:00 PM |

 
Zero Sum Politics

I urge all four of my readers to read this great article by Paul Glastris in The Washington Monthly:

It is a cliché to observe that the parties have drawn further apart, the center no longer holds, and partisans on both sides have withdrawn further into mutual loathing and ever more-homogenous and antagonistic groupings. Where the analysis goes wrong is in its assumption, either explicit or implicit, that both parties bear equal responsibility for this state of affairs. While partisanship may now be deeply entrenched among their voters and their elites, the truth is that the growing polarization of American politics results primarily from the growing radicalism of the Republican Party.

In what is mostly an admonition to the press to open its eyes to reality and report what is actually happening, he outlines the history of this new GOP political radicalism (which goes hand in hand with its ideological radicalism), shows how the Democratic Party has responded over the course of this long transition and proves that the polarization about which all the scribes wring their dainty little hands can be laid squarely at the feet of the Republicans.

Although I'm an unreconstructed liberal, I am by nature and temperament a believer in bipartisanship. I don't like the boot to the throat concept of governance, either as a member of the majority or the minority. I have a rather old fashioned belief that if everyone has a stake in decisions they tend to follow through and not hobble the process. To me, incremental progress doesn't seem like a bad idea if it means that a substantial majority are happy with it in the end and the minority isn't marginalized from the process. Government by consensus would always be my first choice.

However, that is simply not in the cards with the modern Republican party. As Glastris says, they see politics as a zero sum game and when you find yourself in a game like that you have to find a way to win outright or you don't survive.

I've been hearing a lot of rumbling from the activist grassroots, for more than a year, that after holding their noses in this election, any patience they may have had with compromise has worn completely thin. I think it's pretty clear that if Kerry wins he is not going to be given much slack from his left flank.

Therefore, there is little chance that Democratic centrists (which Glastris points out are pretty much the only centrists left) will have any room to maneuver in a close congress, whoever holds the majority, nor will Kerry be able to cut any deals. And, I doubt it's even worth trying with these radicals anyway. They just move the goalposts. But what this means, for the first time, is all out partisan war with no quarter given.

The question is, if that happens, can we win? I'm interested in hearing thoughts on this because I honestly don't know.





digby 6/22/2004 06:30:00 PM |

 
Start Making Sense

Lord Saletan tries to explain why his mishmash of a series on Kerry's so-called "caveats and curlicues" doesn't make sense to anyone. (Frankly, his explanation doesn't make any sense either, but whatever.)

What he fails to admit is that the series is an extremely lame attempt by Slate at being "fair and balanced." As seems to be the case across all of American journalism Slate apparently believes it is necessary that if one notices a certain politician doing something unusual --- George W. Bush speaking in Martian rather than English, for instance --- then it follows that in order to be fair, one must criticize his rival for the same thing.

The truth is that the "caveats and curliques" that Saletan finds so remarkable are the result of a political environment in which Kerry is required to speak in extremely precise terms because if he doesn't, Ed Gillespie and his coven of shrieking talk show harpies will blast their faxes directly up his ass. (Ask Al Gore about that.) Bush, on the other hand, whom everyone knows is a total idiot, is applauded if he is able to string more than 5 words together without drooling on his tie.

The Kerryism thing isn't working because Kerry just sounds like a hundred other Democrats who have to parse every single statement in order to avoid people like Saletan calling him a slippery, lying piece of shit (which Saletan calls him anyway.) Conversely, the Bushism series does work because it shows that the most powerful man in the world literally doesn't make sense about half the time and the press rarely even mentions it. Now, that is noteworthy.

Maybe Saletan could try a series on Kerry's hair or his eyebrows or his choice of athletic equipment. Oh wait. Kaus has already blown the lid off those scandals. Oh well. I'm sure he'll think of something. Wouldn't want to be unbalanced.




Update: The spelling of Saletan's name has been corrected.
digby 6/22/2004 05:52:00 PM |

 
I'm An Excellent Driver

Kevin says: Please, dear god, make it stop




digby 6/22/2004 12:08:00 PM |

 
Vice Squad

I'd just like to second Atrios's thoughts on the veepstakes. Almost nothing could be more inconsequential. Kerry will pick someone who can give him a couple of points in a battleground state, or someone who could benefit him slightly in terms of image. But, truthfully, it doesn't matter a whole lot unless the choice (like Dan Quayle) is someone who people simply cannot imagine being president or, as in the case of our current resident, when nobody trusts the guy in the top slot to be able to handle the job.

Candidates choose their running mates for a variety of very prosaic reasons, the primary one being some kind of regional balance. Clinton picked Gore, against conventional wisdom, because his biggest draw was the generational shift from the greatest generation leaders to the baby boomers. He and Gore together, both being southern New Democrats, neatly put that together. But, with the exception of Gore's family, nobody voted for that ticket because of Gore.

Gephardt is uninspiring, but he's got strong union backing and that is a huge consideration since turn-out is going to be incredibly important. Not to mention that Missouri is the ultimate battleground state. If Kerry believes that Gep can bring that one home for him, then I can see the formula. He's also more than qualified to be president if the worst should happen. Vilsack is from a state that Gore won narrowly last time and in which Bush is currently leading. It's probably as simple as that.

I don't think it's unreasonable for Kerry to look at this almost purely in terms of the electoral map, considering the state of play. I realize that we Democrats are starting to have visions of landslides dancing in our heads, but it would be decidedly foolish to plan accordingly. The GOP has more money than God to spend on GOTV and they are planning to spend it. Nader consistently polls enough to bring Kerry within the margin of error and with his picking Camejo yesterday, he may very well get the Green endorsement. So, it would be foolish to count on Nader voters. They are going to vote for their man. So be it. We have to win without them which means that Kerry still runs very narrowly ahead. That may change but why assume it? It would be as foolish to count on anything but a close election as it was for Bush and his cronies to count on Iraq being a cakewalk. Smart people plan for the worst not the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is a photo finish. If that happens, one or two points in a battleground state is crucial.

Besides, VP is a bullshit job. Look at the Dems who are currently out of work and picture them in the new Kerry administration doing something Real. Edwards at Justice reversing Ashcrofts tragic legacy. Clark and Holbrooke at State or CIA reforming the intelligence and diplomatic communities. Dean as head of the DNC reforming the party. Gep as Secretary of Labor. Or any other combination thereof. In other words, there is actual work to be done by talented energetic people. The VP slot is terrific and all, because we'd get to watch our favorite candidate campaign again, but it's only one of many jobs that are going to have to be filled in a Kerry administration.

I remember the disappointment I felt when Gore picked Lieberman. I wondered how I'd get through the campaign having to listen to his hectoring moan day in and day out. But, by the end he was just part of the scenery and even somewhat entertaining at times with his rather droll sense of humor. I loathed that guy but I adjusted. So will we all --- even if Kerry picks someone without eyebrows or with a name that has the word "sack" in it.






digby 6/22/2004 11:56:00 AM |

Monday, June 21, 2004

 
The Price Is Right

The Howler today has a spectacular takedown of Wilgoren and Pickler's latest Karl Rove "around the world" special: John Kerry's wealthy. Ewwww.

Wilgoren runs behind Kerry on his Nantucket vacation tabulating the cost of sand dabs and wind-surfing equipment like she's a contestant on the Price Is Right (which she is, only it's a little different game, if you know what I mean.)

Mr. Kerry has been coming here regularly since at least 1995, when he married the ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz at the three-story, five-bedroom house she owns on Brant Point, where the clothing designer Tommy Hilfiger also has a home and H. Wayne Huizenga, the owner of the Miami Dolphins, recently sold one. Valued at $9 million in 1995, the house...has a large screened-in porch, decorative columns, and a green-and-white love-seat swing on its sandy front lawn.

Oh, the rich bastard. At least our up-by-his-bootstraps- president doesn't spend his time in rich playgrounds. He works and sweats when he goes on vacation.

The weekend was Mr. Kerry’s first real holiday since the week he spent at his wife’s Sun Valley, Idaho, home in March, where he was widely photographed snowboarding. It was reminiscent of President Bill Clinton’s vacations in borrowed houses on nearby Martha’s Vineyard, and a sharp contrast to President Bush's frequent brush-clearing forays on his sweltering ranch in Crawford, Tex.

Pickler as all right thinking Americans do, agrees:

Like Kerry, President Bush is a Yale graduate who has benefited from his wealth and family connections. But Bush spends his down time trying to be more of an everyman, preferring to spend vacations at his Texas ranch clearing brush.

Well, except for the time he spends at the fucking family compound "Walkers Point" (as in "W") in Kennebunkport, Maine:

President Bush opened a long weekend of golf and fishing Friday by hooking his first drive into a riverbank. He found his stroke on his second try, cheered by his father, who proclaimed it a "good ball!"

President Bush and former President George Bush ride their golf cart to the first hole at the Cape Arundel Golf Course ["said to be" $150,000 initially and $8500.00 per year] in Kennebunkport, Maine.



Father and son left their family's coastal compound [valued at 8 million] just after dawn, taking a mini-motorcade to nearby Cape Arundel Golf Club, where they have been golfing for years. The first President Bush drove their golf cart up to the first tee, the current president riding shotgun with his feet up on the dash. "Good morning, everybody!" he said to a group of reporters.

[...]

Three generations of Bushes were spending Father's Day weekend at Walker's Point, the family's estate here along Atlantic coastline.

The president and his father climbed into the Fidelity II power boat [$135,000] later and fished the coastline, stopping to cast for about 10 minutes before moving on to another spot. Wearing fashionable, blue-tinted shades [$480.00], the son caught what appeared to be a foot-long striper, and gently placed it back in the water.

[...]

Arriving at the family's oceanside estate the younger Bush quickly shed the suit and tie for casual wear, grabbed a tennis racket [$700.00] and whacked an orange ball for dog Spot to fetch. The president was still clutching the racket when he boarded a Segway[$5,500], a standup, motorized scooter that resembles a push lawnmower.

The Segway went down [priceless] on Bush's first attempt, but he stayed on his feet with a flying leap over the machine. Undeterred, he got on again. His father climbed on a second Segway [another $5,500] and they cruised around the driveway at the estate at Walker's Point.

The president's twins, Jenna and Barbara, and former first lady Barbara Bush all took turns on the Segways. Earlier Thursday, first lady Laura Bush, the twins and the former president took a cruise in a white powerboat[$90,000.00].

The stay in Kennebunkport was only the most recent long weekend of relaxation Bush has taken since the Iraq war. He has had three long weekends at his Crawford, Texas, ranch [acquired in 1999 and valued at $3 million] since mid-April.

I believe that the family ate dinner later that evening at the Cape Arundale Inn where the Maine Lobster Stew with Truffle Oil drizzle runs about $42.00 a plate. It was, by all accounts delicious, at a mere $776.00.

Afterwards, the president went out and cleared some brush behind the golf course and pissed on the side of of the clubhouse. Cuz' he's just a reglar Murican like you 'n me.





digby 6/21/2004 02:25:00 PM |

 
Affirmative Action

I think that it's important for rank and file Democrats to begin to develop a positive, everyman water-cooler argument for Kerry's candidacy. Frankly, I think that ABB is going to propel us into the White House, but it's important, nonetheless, to develop some real support and belief in the man we are sending in. It is going to be very difficult to govern, the problems are enormous and I'm hopeful that the Democrats will have sharp enough memories of the horrors of the alternative that we'll at least give Kerry a chance before we set upon him like sharks for failing to be all things to all people --- as we always do.

Today,Tristero posts a very interesting e-mail from novelist Amy Tan in which she admits to being less passionately for John Kerry than passionately against George W. Bush. So, she asked her friend, lawyer and novelist Scott Turow, what the affirmative reasons for voting for Kerry are:

I could say the following without blushing: He is running against a man who was not fit for duty in 1968 and is not fit for duty today, a man who lacked the qualifications for the office when he was elected and has demonstrated it. We have been through a skein of national disasters, for which he accepts no blame, because he literally doesn't understand enough about the job to realize how a better President would have responded. John Kerry has been in public life for 35 years. He was a prosecutor when GWB was running an oil company into the ground. And he was already a seasoned United States Senator when GWB decided it was time to give up abusing substances. JK has a sharper grasp of foreign policy, and more experience with it, than any candidate for President in the last 50 years, with the possible exception of GHWB (see today's NYT). His dedication to the cause of our military and veterans is long established. And his commitment to economic and social justice for all Americans cannot be doubted. A man can't be the committed liberal Bush sometimes maintains Kerry is, and also the unprincipled waffler. Life and public service are complicated, as GWB doesn't understand. JK does. He has a sense of nuance, and the experience and values to improve the life of the country.

For another affirmative argument for Kerry, I [im]modestly submit this.
There are many to be made and I hope that we bloggers, at least, will continue to try to make them. He's out there making the speeches, developing the policies, taking the punches. The least we can do is try to make a citizens argument in his favor.







digby 6/21/2004 12:36:00 PM |

 
Gitmo Betta Blues

For the full FUBAR take on the Gitmo disaster, read this article in the NY Times today.

I am beginning to think that the throwaway line in David Rose's Gitmo article in Vanity Fair last December may actually be correct:

Guantanamo may even be "a bit of a front," designed to distract al-Qaeda, he says. "It takes everybody's attention away from locations where big fish are being held. The secrecy surrounding it makes everybody think that very serious stuff is going on there."

On the other hand, that is making an assumption that the Bush administration had a plan, which in no other instance in this war has been the case. So, it's probably just the usual FUBAR.

This alone will make your hair stand on end:

American and foreign officials have also grown increasingly concerned about the prospect that detainees who arrived at Guantánamo representing little threat to the United States may have since been radicalized by the conditions of their imprisonment and others held with them.

''Guantánamo is a huge problem for Americans,'' a senior Arab intelligence official familiar with its operations said. ''Even those who were not hard-core extremists have now been indoctrinated by the true believers. Like any other prison, they have been taught to hate. If they let these people go, these people will make trouble.''

How could such a thing happen?

In late summer 2002, a senior C.I.A. analyst with extensive experience in the Middle East spent about a week at the prison camp observing and interviewing dozens of detainees, said officials who read his detailed memorandum.

While the survey was anecdotal, those officials said the document, which contained about 15 pages, concluded that a substantial number of the detainees appeared to be low-level militants, aspiring holy warriors who had rushed to Afghanistan to defend the Taliban, or simply innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Senior military officials now readily acknowledge that many members of the intelligence team initially sent to Guantánamo were poorly prepared to sort through the captives. During the first half of 2002, they said, almost none of the Army interrogators had any substantial background in terrorism, Al Qaeda or other relevant subjects.

Meanwhile:

In interviews, the officials said at least five prisoners released from Guantánamo since early 2003 had rejoined the Taliban and resumed attacks on American and Afghan government forces. Although two American officials said only one of the former detainees had turned out to be an important figure, Afghan officials said all five men were in fact commanders with close contacts to the Taliban leadership.

The most notorious of the former Guántanamo detainees, Mullah Shahzada, had been a lieutenant to a senior commander when he was first captured in the war, an American military intelligence official said. After his return to Afghanistan in March 2003, he emerged as a frontline Taliban commander, Afghan officials said, leading a series of attacks in which at least 13 people were killed, including 2 aid workers.

Senior Pentagon officials refused to explain how Mr. Shahzada had talked his way out of Guantánamo. But two other military officials with knowledge of the case said he had given a false name and portrayed himself as having been captured by mistake.

''He stuck to his story and was fairly calm about the whole thing,'' a military intelligence official said. ''He maintained over a period time that he was nothing but an innocent rug merchant who just got snatched up.''

[...]

Afghan officials blamed the United States for the return of the five men to the Taliban's ranks, saying neither American military officials nor the Kabul police, who briefly process the detainees when they are sent home, consult them about the detainees they free.

''There are lots of people who were innocent, and they are capturing them, just on anyone's information,'' said Dr. Laghmani, the chief of the National Security Directorate in Kandahar. ''And then they are releasing guilty people.''

Do you suppose there is another country to whom we can sub-contract the War on Terror? Because ours is obviously too incompetent to do the job right. At every single step of the way we are making things worse rather than better.

If we do find a country willing to take on such a complex challenge perhaps we could just write one little clause into the contract that could make a huge difference: they must be required to listen to people other than half-wit neocon Republicans, their sycophants and minions. That's all. If they do that alone, we will at least be in a position to make a damage assessment and try to figure out what the hell to do to get us out of this mess.

Seeing as nobody sane would touch this quagmire with a ten foot pole, let's just make sure that John Kerry wins and that he immediately embarks on a fact finding mission to root out every single wrong decision and action and put absolutely everything on the table. We are going to have to start from scratch. And, sadly, because they've screwed this up so royally, the United States may never be able to recover our credibility, no matter how hard we try.





digby 6/21/2004 11:22:00 AM |

 
Magic Phone Call

When they make the real movie about 9/11, (years from now, I hope) at which point many somnambulent Americans will find out what happened on that day for the first time, I hope that they make it very clear that our supposedly strong, resolute leader-who-knows-how-to-lead-cuz'-he's-led, sat in a second grade classroom waiting for instructions from his chief of staff while the secretary of defense --- next in line in the chain of command --- stood at his office podium at the pentagon, completely out of the loop. I hope the movie makes clear that the vice president, without the proper authority to do so, completely ran the (keystone kops) show, even ordering the military to shoot down commerical aircraft. And then he (and his little dog too) lied about it, under oath. Because, that is what happened:

The question of whether Vice President Dick Cheney followed proper procedures in ordering the shoot-down of U.S. airliners on September 11 is one of many new issues raised in the remarkably detailed, chilling account laid out in dramatic presentations last week by the 9-11 commission. Newsweek has learned that some on the commission staff were, in fact, highly skeptical of the vice president's account and made their views clearer in an earlier draft of their staff report, Washington Bureau Chief Daniel Klaidman and Senior Editor Michael Hirsh report in the June 28 issue of Newsweek.

The commission's detailed report notes that after two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center and combat patrols were in the air, a military aide asked for shoot-down authority, telling Cheney that a fourth plane was "80 miles out" from Washington. Cheney didn't flinch, the report said. "In about the time it takes a batter to decide to swing," he gave the order to shoot it down, telling others the president had "signed off on that concept" during a brief phone chat. When the plane was 60 miles out, Cheney was again informed and again he ordered: take it out.

But according to one knowledgeable source, some staffers "flat out didn't believe the call ever took place." Both Cheney and the president testified to the commission that the phone call took place. When the early draft conveying that skepticism was circulated to the administration, it provoked an angry reaction. In a letter from White House lawyers last Tuesday and a series of phone calls, the White House vigorously lobbied the commission to change the language in its report. "We didn't think it was written in a way that clearly reflected the accounting the president and vice president had given to the commission," White House spokesman Dan Bartlett tells Newsweek. Ultimately the chairman and vice chair of the commission, former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean and former Rep. Lee Hamilton -- both of whom have sought mightily to appear nonpartisan -- agreed to remove some of the offending language. The report "was watered down," groused one staffer.

It was always fairly obvious that Cheney installed himself as "Vice" President on the orders of the oil companies who created George W. Bush to be their spokesmodel. This latest revelation --- that, unauthorized, he ran the response on 9/11 --- (and predictably executed badly, I might add) seals it.




digby 6/21/2004 09:26:00 AM |

Sunday, June 20, 2004

 
Subversive Journalism

(I like it.)

Insiders shape postwar Iraq:

[Ari's brother Michael] Fleischer said he wanted to serve in Iraq because he believes Bush had embarked on 'a noble path' in freeing and democratizing the country and he believed he had skills that would be helpful.

He said that from his Foreign Service stint [of 4 years in the 70's], he was already acquainted with Paul Bremer, the presidential envoy who heads the CPA.

With an assist from his brother, Ari, who 'got my resume to Bremer,' Fleischer landed interviews that led to his appointment.

Among Fleischer's key tasks was training more Iraqi businessmen in the ways of U.S.-style procurement so they can land part of the $18.4 billion in reconstruction aid the U.S. has earmarked for Iraq.

Competitive bidding "is a new world for the Iraqis," Fleischer said. Under Saddam Hussein, "it was all done by cronies. The only paradigm they know is cronyism. We are teaching them that there is an alternative system with built-in checks and built-in review."

3 points.







digby 6/20/2004 01:45:00 PM |

 
Inside Out

Billmon writes:

...the White House and its allies appear to have a backup strategy in case this particular up-is-down argument proves a little too upside down. It's the time-tested tactic of claiming that everything - including the 9/11 Commission itself - has been contaminated by partisan politics:

The panel has become "a tool for partisan politics," Rep. Eric I. Cantor (Va.), a member of the House Republican leadership, charged in an interview last week. "With the latest commission finding coming out that there were allegedly no ties between Hussein and al Qaeda, I think they are totally off their mission, and I think that's indicative of the political partisanship."

The RNC talking points on this must have gone out earlier last week, because Porter Goss, the intelligence committee chairman in our Chamber of People's Deputies, and Dennis Miller, the anti-intelligence chairman of late night televsion, have both been yammering about that same basic theme. But Cantor's quote is such a gem of non-logic, I'd like to look at it again more closely.

The 9/11 commission, Cantor argues, is partisan. Why? Because it went "off mission" by questioning the alleged relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

Now since the 9/11 commission was specifically instructed by Congress to "make a full and complete accounting of the circumstances surrounding the [9/11] attacks," and to "investigate relevant facts and circumstances ... including intelligence agencies ... diplomacy ... the flow of assets to terrorist organizations ... and other areas of the public and private sectors determined relevant by the commission," it's fairly ridiculous to argue the commission exceeded its mandate by reviewing the evidence regarding Bin Ladin's alleged contacts with Iraq. What Cantor is really arguing is that the commission went "off mission" by arriving at conclusions that were extremely embarrassing to the administration, and possibly damaging to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

I loved that one too.

Since Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, the commissioners were "off mission" by investigating any ties between al Qaeda, which did perpetrate the attacks and Iraq, which didn't. The fact that the commission was working on the assumption that the administration's repeated assertions of ties between the two were meaningful is evidence of its rabid left wing partisanship.




digby 6/20/2004 01:15:00 PM |

 
Civil Unrest

My darling, dear friend Julia points me to a piece in that biased Washington Post --- you know, the left wing newspaper where all of those liberal reporters rouse the rabble. Here, we have a staff writer, Phillip Kendicott (of the Palm Beach Kendicotts, I wonder?) exposing the shocking incivility displayed by that rabid leftist poet, Calvin Trillin. The man simply doesn't know how to behave, what what:

As a poet who specializes in skewering the right-wing, he works with both a poetic and a hunting license. And yet, as a poet, there's something basically reputable about him, no matter how mean he is, that distinguishes him from the psychotic bloggers, obsessive conspiracy theorists and self-appointed prophets of extreme talk radio. Lump him in with other middle-world figures, polemicists like filmmaker Michael Moore and late-night comedians who reduce politicians to pure caricature.

Reputable? Please, I can't even read the words "Michael Moore" without needing a good stiff Glenlivet colonic just to get through the day. Bastards, wogs and kaffirs one and all, don't you know. Why, I was just saying to Muffy yesterday how alarmingly disreputable the hoi polloi has become lately. She said "off with their heads," --- only joking, of course. But, would that we had the power to threaten such, I believe we could make a difference.

I find that you can say a lot, so long as it rhymes," says Trillin, from New York. For instance: Looking to rhyme the last name of former New York Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, Trillin came up with "sleaze-bag obbligato."

"You can't say that in prose," says Trillin. Nor can you breezily call Elliott Abrams (the National Security Council member who pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of misleading Congress during the Iran-contra scandal, and was later pardoned by George H.W. Bush) "a felon," or imply that the return to grace of John Poindexter (whose conviction on five felony charges after the same scandal was overturned) is a sign of the current administration's preference for criminals among its top ranks (High-level appointments now favor the guys / With rap sheets instead of CVs).

Really now, that is beyond the pale. After all, who hasn't committed a misdemeanor or two and been pardoned by a Bush family member? Why, Bushes of one sort or another have been pardoning members of my family for simply ages. How typically lowbrow this all is. Mr Trillin and his ilk are no better than they ought to be and someone should remind them of their place.

Trillin, 68, likes to call himself a "Deadline Poet," a title that emphasizes his essential poetic talent: speed. More bluntly put, he is a doggerelist, toiling in the service of the poor, maligned Left, countering by example its unmerited reputation for humorlessness.

(One thing we conservatives are is unroariously funny. Why, I was at the club just the other day and I heard a hilarious joke about a jew, a negro and a monkey walking into a (slovenly, I'm sure) tavern somewhere where they said all manner of disgraceful things and we all just laughed and laughed.)

And, I could not agree more with this:

Von Dreele's style, like his politics, contrasts sharply with Trillin's. Von Dreele, who is just shy of 80, belongs to the old guard of the National Review. He's a gracious relic of the magazine's good old days, when being conservative had less to do with attack-dog politics and religious fundamentalism, and was more about a wry pessimism when it came to the frailties of Man. When you talk to von Dreele, and read his verse, you imagine a world of blue blazers and crisply pressed khakis, a world where the sun hangs low over the golf course and darts of orange light glint on the surface of your glacially chilled martini.

Yes, I remember it well. Indeed I spent just last evening dressed in crisply pressed khakis watching the sun hang low over the golf course, sipping my glacially chilled martini as I pondered the frailties of man. One very special frail man. In a speedo.

The essence of a partisan worldview -- and we're all guilty -- is confidence about things that can't be proved: the motivations of other people, their psychological makeup, the dark truths about their lives for which there is as yet no smoking gun. These speculations are supported with a mix of facts, fantasy and the guiding power of our most basic, operating truths about the world.

Dear God, man. Never say I swim in that fetid swamp. My basic operating truths about the world are simple. Some of us are meant to lead while the rest are meant to follow. You know who you are.

It is the role of the Deadline Poet (and all the other denizens of the political middle-world) to articulate the simple thoughts widely held by half the polarized electorate -- e.g. Bush is a moron, Kerry is a snob -- yet can't be directly spoken in respectable journals. Coated with a sweet veneer of verbal virtuosity, these truths slip into the political bloodstream. The pleasure of the poet, and the reader, is seeing these mean little memes circulating freely, doing their damage, a leperous distilment poured into the porches of our ears.

I beg your pardon. Is he comparing one's ears to a porch? What kind of porch? And what "leperous distilment" does one pour on a porch? Or an ear's porch. Or a porches ears. I do believe I've been insulted. I may have to call him out, what what?



Do read darling Julia's pithy response to Mr. Kendicott as well. I do believe she puts him in his place.





digby 6/20/2004 10:48:00 AM |

 
Huzzah!

I just noticed how much money Atrios has raised for Kerry, the DNC, DSCC and Joe Hoeffel for Senate --- well over a quarter of a million dollars! Wow.

Perhaps those stories of blog triumphalism aren't overblown after all. That is truly impressive.





digby 6/20/2004 10:27:00 AM |

 
Circle Jerk

Yglesias notices that the tittering panel on Meat The Press got all breathless and aroused talking about the Clinton book this morning.

"Oh goodie! A chance to talk about sex!" And it really was sex. Maybe someone, somewhere out there was really concerned with the penny-ante legal charges against Clinton, but these people -- quite obviously -- were interested in sex. So fun! So easy to speculate about Clinton's dick! So much more fun than looking into the intricacies of Bush's foreign policy deceptions or budget trickery. Look -- sex scandal!

This is how they got to be known as mediawhores. Day after day we watched this drooling, sophomoric obsession with Clinton's zipper and the hunk of manhood contained therein which they couldn't stop yammering about long enough to consider that they were making utter idiots of themselves on national television and fools of the entire country around the world. Not to mention their functioning as amenable tools for a right wing character assassination squad whose dark sexual proclivities we don't even want to think about.

One of the most popular cultural phenomena during the era was Beavis and Butthead. If anyone ever wanted to see what they might have become when they grew up, all they had to do was watch a couple of the middle aged men and women of the Washington press corps go on and on in great detail about Clinton's sexual issues, the psychology behind it and whether or not the country could survive such a serious assault on its morals. It was the journalistic equivalent of Beavis and Butthead's " heheh..heheh...heheh...she said 'hard'...heheh"

As Matt noticed, it was (and is) all about the sex. There is a psychology at work in the national press corps --- and in the congress at the time --- that is worth someone taking a long look at. The level of sexual immaturity the media consistently displayed in the way they talked about it speaks to some bizarre case of mass arrested development. It's just not normal for grown people to be so obsessive about public sex talk, particularly when the talk itself is so embarrassingly puerile.

It was a low point of low points for the media, at least until they deified Junior Bush in their own bizarre adherence to what they consider fair play. ("We were very hard on the last president, so we have to go really easy on this one. Wouldn't want anyone to think we're not fair and balanced.") Today's tribute to the "The Starr Report: Deep Throat Two" is par for the course.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of it all is the picture of Russert, Novak, Klein and Kay sitting around a waist high table, flushed, dewy and breathless, restlessly moving about on their chairs as they opine about how immoral and depraved Bill Clinton was for accepting the fellating gifts of a young woman. I don't want to speculate about what might be happening under that table. But, I would suggest that such a squalid public display of early adolescent sexuality might just be more inappropriate than the acts they so sternly decry.

And, lest we forget, the public was not impressed with their little game of spin the blowjob, either. Clinton left office with the highest job approval rating in history. The press, on the other hand, has never been held in lower esteem.





digby 6/20/2004 10:04:00 AM |

Saturday, June 19, 2004

 
Cockeyed Adventure:

One outside adviser to the White House said the administration expected the debate over Iraq's ties to Al Qaeda to be "a regular feature" of the presidential campaign.

"They feel it's important to their long-term credibility on the issue of the decision to go to war," the adviser said. "It's important because it's part of the overall view that Iraq is part of the war on terror. If you discount the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, then you discount the proposition that it's part of the war on terror. If it's not part of the war on terror, then what is it --- some cockeyed adventure on the part of George W. Bush?"

You tell us. We'd really like to know.

They know they've got a couple of big fat loogies hanging out there. The lack of WMD is bad enough. They can get away with it, sort of, because a lot of people thought he had them. But, this al-Qaeda connection has always been the Tin-foil Mylroie crowds' special little fantasy. Clearly, they are afraid that this revelation will seriously damage them, so they are employing the always dignified "you can believe me or you can believe your lyin' eyes" defense.

Let's face it, for many people in this country (and probably the president himself) all the high flown phony rhetoric about "freedom and democracy" notwithstanding, this war is about killing arabs. For them,the terrorists were arabs therefore all arabs are terrorists. They couldn't care less about WMD or terrorist connections to Iraq.They wanted to make an example of somebody. It's pretty much nothing more than straight out bigotry.

As the salt of the earth, all American boy Bill O'Reilly put it:

O'REILLY: Because look ... when 2 percent of the population feels that you're doing them a favor, just forget it, you're not going to win. You're not going to win. And I don't have any respect by and large for the Iraqi people at all. I have no respect for them. I think that they're a prehistoric group that is -- yeah, there's excuses.

Sure, they're terrorized, they've never known freedom, all of that. There's excuses. I understand. But I don't have to respect them because you know when you have Americans dying trying to you know institute some kind of democracy there, and 2 percent of the people appreciate it, you know, it's time to -- time to wise up.

And this teaches us a big lesson, that we cannot intervene in the Muslim world ever again. What we can do is bomb the living daylights out of them, just like we did in the Balkans. Just as we did in the Balkans. Bomb the living daylights out of them. But no more ground troops, no more hearts and minds, ain't going to work.

[...]

They're just people who are primitive.

There you have it. In the eyes of this sophisticated John F Kennedy School of Government alum, the Iraqi people are prehistoric and primitive.

The problem for Bush is that the few sentient people who might vote for him may just demand a little bit more than that. Military people, for instance, who believed Bush's argument that you had to "take the fight to the terrorists" only to find out that our military is being uselessly killed and overburdened and we aren't even in the right country. And, I'm sure there are some decent religious types who would be disappointed to find out that the president led them to believe (and they know what he was saying) that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 and it wasn't true.

And then there's the monumental disaster of the occupation what with all the torture and imprisoning of the people we are supposed to be liberating. It's getting hard to think of any good reasons why we did this thing.

Republicans cannot win with just their racist base. Bush and his puppet masters have to keep trying to convince non-kool aid drinkers that he knows what he's doing. They have decided that in order to do that they have to flat out deny reality.



Update: Reading A1 examines the game being played between Kean and Hamilton and Dick Cheney on the front page of the NY Times. Strange days.


digby 6/19/2004 11:18:00 AM |

 
Kenny Boy's Got Troubles

Grandma Millie was quoted as saying, "Fuckin' A."


digby 6/19/2004 08:35:00 AM |

 
Glass Houses

The nation's Roman Catholic bishops approved a statement on Friday on "Catholics in Political Life" that brands politicians who support abortion rights as "cooperating in evil" and leaves the door open for bishops to deny communion to such lawmakers.


-----


Between 100 and 200 Roman Catholic priests around the world were moved from country to country after they were accused of sex offenses against minors, according to an 18-month investigation by the Dallas Morning News.

[...]

"We have found a systematic practice of moving the most serious abuse cases on to other countries to protect the accused," Egerton said.

Egerton also said the newspaper found that some of the priests who were shuffled between countries spent long periods of time in the United States.

digby 6/19/2004 07:35:00 AM |

Friday, June 18, 2004

 
Don't Make Trouble

At a time when almost everything I read pisses me off, this really sent me into orbit:

Charles Pierce:

"Concern has started drifting in like a cold, noxious cloud over the past couple of weeks. There seems to be a storyline hardening among the Heathers that 'we' are really getting along just fine, and that all the obvious emotion of this political year is merely sound and fury -- good title for a book, by the way -- ginned up by our political elites, that 'Bush-hating' is out of control, and that the 'center' is reasserting itself, and so is 'civility.' An implicit track here is that, you know, maybe, it isn't such a good time to consider changing our current Strong Leadership.

You can see it in the reaction to Michael Moore's movie, in the immensely silly Michael Barone column comparing this election to the one in 1864 (and, therein, C-Plus Augustus to Abraham Lincoln), and in the amazing performance of Aaron Brown Thursday night on CNN, when he cited a new Pew poll in which 57 percent of Americans think things are going well in Iraq -- Oy! --and that Bush had edged slightly ahead of John Kerry for the moment. 'And, if you check the electoral map, you'll see he's doing a little better than that,' Brown concluded.

It wasn't so much what he said, but how he said it. An unmistakable tone of reassurance. That we maybe don't have to bother ourselves with the unruly business of self-government, especially those parts where people, you know, yell at each other. I fear that Kerry's people may be buying this nonsense, too.

The problem with this, other than the obvious one of 'It's June, and who the f**k is Aaron Brown, anyway?' is is that it leaves the "center" pushed way over on the right, and it consolidates the gains made by 25 years of rightist incivility. It began with those NCPAC campaigns run by that vicious closet-case Terry Dolan, proceeded through Lee Atwater and his lycanthropic brood (Hey, Karl!), and has emerged with renewed vigor already this year, and will continue to do so regardless of whether the Democratic party decides to play nice or not. This also, of course, was abetted by the endless herd of think-tank cowboys, endowment commandos, and honorarium-fattened hyenas that foul the national discourse, and also by a subculture of both actual and rhetorical violence -- the stuff that's limned bravely by David Neiwert here, in an invaluable post that takes Tucker Carlson down in the bargain.

All this concern erupted when the left started hitting back a little, and developing institutions and vehicles through which to do it. Well, for the moment, f**k civility. The center cannot be allowed to remain where it is. It has to be shoved back and shoved back hard. And if that means calling out ABC for criticizing Michael Moore's methodology while continuing to employ --nay, PROMOTE -- a corporate fabulist like John Stossel up through its news division, or if it means striking back at the people who go on television with their perpetual wounded victimhood and call people "Nazis," well, I'm sorry, Aaron, that's just the way politics is going to have to be for a while. Take a pill and go sit in a dark room until the vapors pass."

Yes, yes, yes.

I can see what he's talking about. The little sighs of "children, children" when Democrats get a little bit too uppity and turn the browbeating into a contest. The constant "reassurance" --- telling us not to worry, the republic is safe, no need to get excited, everything will be ok. They did this during the Florida recount, led docilely by GOP operatives who put little bugs in their ears about saving the country from civil war. Then the likes of Aaron Brown and Brian Williams, the synchronized swimmers of media Olympians, immediately adopted stentorian tones and began to seriously calm the nation --- most citizens of which were barely above comatose, thinking the recount was a really, really boring episode of The Real World with old, ugly people. The effect was, not surprisingly, to shut down protest against what was obviously an illegal and undemocratic power grab.

Now, in the middle of a war and a hard fought presidential campaign, the Heathers think it's time to stop shouting. How fucking convenient. Once again we see the press being fed pure political propaganda (and you can bet this "restoring civility" notion comes right out of Rove's shop) and not even knowing --- or caring --- that they're doing it.

What the media is really saying, on behalf of the GOP, is that we liberals should should be the punch line of a very old joke: "Two Jews are lined up against a wall to be shot. When one asks for a blindfold and a last cigarette, the other whispers to him, "Don't make trouble."

Fuggedaboudit. Aside from the obvious point that Pierce makes about capitulating at the zenith of right wing power so as to make the center of American politics somewhere to the right of the Third Reich for the next generation, we just have to be prepared for all out political war and we are going to have to be brave enough to take the heat. That goes whether Kerry wins or not --- in fact, it goes especially if Kerry wins.

Joe Conason points out today in Salon that the Clinton hating industry is already cranking up its machinery against JK. Indeed, I would imagine that a whole lot of these folks are actually hoping for a Kerry victory. They are, by nature, more comfortable being back bench fire breathers than real leaders with real responsibilities. They tend to implode whenever asked to actually govern. (see: Gingrich, Newt and Bush, Junior.) But, let's not forget the huge sums of money these character assassins made during the glory days. I have no doubt that they are betting on a Kerry win as their ticket back into the big time. Defending the Empty Codpiece is not nearly as profitable.

And, once again the mediawhores are on pace to help them in any way they can. Right now, all it takes is for them to adopt the "shrill" line against anybody who opposes Bush in anything but the most respectful terms and we have the conditions for them to trivialize the election one more time. Hopefully, the fact that thousands upon thousands of human beings lost their lives in this little foray into republican governance will draw them up short and prevent another round of "I love you long time, GOP source."

But, I doubt it.






digby 6/18/2004 02:52:00 PM |

 
Metrics

Last week I wrote a post featuring Lt. Col Stephen Jordan and his testimony that the White House had been "impressed" with the "flow of information" coming out of Abu Ghraib. Today, Spencer Ackerman, pinch hitting for Josh Marshall at Talking Points, references this USA Today article about the same fellow, connecting many of the same dots and more.

There seems to be a great deal of emphasis placed on the numbers game. From the USA Today article:

Sergeant First Class Roger Brokaw, told the paper. "How many raids did you do last week? How many prisoners were arrested? How many interrogations were conducted? How many [intelligence] reports were written? It was incredibly frustrating."

From the Christian Science Monitor article I referenced in my earlier post:

Specialist Monath and others say they were frustrated by intense pressure from Colonel Pappas and his superiors - Lt. Gen Ricardo Sanchez and his intelligence officer, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast - to churn out a high quantity of intelligence reports, regardless of the quality. "It was all about numbers. We needed to send out more intelligence documents whether they were finished or not just to get the numbers up," he said. Pappas was seen as demanding - waking up officers in the middle of the night to get information - but unfocused, ordering analysts to send out rough, uncorroborated interrogation notes. "We were scandalized," Monath said. "We all fought very hard to counter that pressure" including holding up reports in editing until the information could be vetted.

General Ripper, as well, seems to have been mighty impressed with the quantity of intelligence he got from prisoners in Guantanamo after he "took the gloves off." From January's issue of Vanity Fair:

According to General Miller, Gitmo's importance is growing with amazing rapidity: "Last month we gained six times as much intelligence as we did in January 2003. I'm talking about high-value intelligence here, distributed round the world."

Daily success or failure in guerilla wars is notoriously difficult to assess. Unlike a war for territory you cannot say that you took a certain hill or town. Political types are always looking for some measurement, some sign that they are succeeding (or failing.)

Billmon noted this back in October in an interesting post on Rumsfeld's angst at being unable to assess success or failure in the WOT:

Above all, Rumsfeld cries out for "metrics" that can be used to measure progress in such a war:

"Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror," he wrote. "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"

Billmon makes the obvious comparison between Rummy and the most recent war criminal sec-def, Robert McNamara, concluding:

The same mindset also spawned McNamara's preferred metric: the infamous "body count." In that earlier, more naive, era, it hadn't yet occurred to management theorists that numeric targets can quickly become bureaucratic substitutes for real objectives, such as winning wars. So McNamara (and the military) had to learn it the hard way, as industrious field officers dispatched soldiers to count graves in Vietnamese civilian cemetaries in order to hit their weekly numbers.

I'm not sure what the equivalent might be today, although Rumsfeld's memo points in a possible direction when it suggests the creation of a private foundation that could fund "moderate" madrassas (Islamic schools) to counteract the radical ones. Perhaps someday we'll have a "moderate student count," in which hard-pressed CIA officers dispatch agents to count child laborers in Pakistani sweat shops in order to hit their weekly numbers.

It looks to me as if they found a simpler metric than that. Like the mediocre, hack bureaucrats they are, they decided that they would guage success or failure --- certainly they would report to the White House success or failure --- based upon the sheer numbers of raids, arrests, interrogations, reports, confessions and breakdowns achieved, regardless of whether any of it resulted in good intel or enhanced security anywhere.

This was the only metric they could conceive of and in order to get those numbers up they had to detain large numbers of innocent people and torture them for false information to fill the endless reports of success on the ground in Afghanistan, Gitmo and Iraq. They could hoist up a huge pile of paper in a meeting with their president and say, "look at how much intelligence we're getting. We're really getting somewhere."

McNamara quotes TS Eliot at the end of The Fog Of War:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

Well, not everybody apparently. Thirty years after the hell of Vietnam, it's the same shit, different fools. Lyndon Johnson is laughing his ass off in hell.





digby 6/18/2004 10:47:00 AM |

Thursday, June 17, 2004

 
It's Here Already!


Take a look at the new Ronald Reagan stamp.



digby 6/17/2004 09:41:00 PM |

 
Spin Out

Commenter Ras_Nesta alerted me to some rather testy exchanges in this morning's gaggle.

Q Scott, you said there is a misperception of what the commission said on ties to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, let me ask you this, did this administration commit any mistakes? Are you -- in other words, are you considered a perfect government?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sorry? Do you consider what?

Q A perfect government. I mean you are not accepting any --

MR. McCLELLAN: You're talking about the government in Iraq?

Q No, this government -- the government of President George W. Bush.

Q You're perfect.

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sure that there are mistakes that are made, but talking about Iraq and talking about the economy and those decisions, those policy decisions were the right decisions. Let's go to those issues. Just a general question about any mistakes --

Q As we're talking about Iraq --

MR. McCLELLAN: The decision to go into Iraq was the right decision. We stand firmly behind it because it made the world a safer and better place, and it's going to make America more secure.

Q You probably don't see the headlines around the world today --

MR. McCLELLAN: If you have a specific -- if you have a specific question, I'm glad to address it.

Q But you don't think the commission is right with its conclusion about there is any -- any ties between terrorism, al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, they talked about -- they talked about the ties. They talked about the contacts between al Qaeda and the regime in Iraq. And they pointed out some of those high-level contacts that occurred. We pointed out some of those high-level contacts that occurred through Secretary Powell, and through Director Tenet. It's perfectly consistent.

Q Scott, I've got a specific question. Who are the doom and gloomers to whom you are referring here on the economy? And by name?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think you hear from them. You know exactly who they are. They're those who try to talk down the economy when the economy is moving in the right direction. We have overcome significant challenges over the last few years. And the economy is shifting into a higher gear.

Q We've already heard you say that. But I'm just wondering, you and your associates sitting over here like to lecture us about, who are you referring to when you mention critics or observers or whatever, so we're asking you: Who are these pessimists?

MR. McCLELLAN: Peter --

Q I'm talking specifics. What are specific names?

MR. McCLELLAN: And, Peter, these people are well known. All you have to go is go and look and read the paper, or watch the news.

Q Well, give us a name here, Scott.

Does anyone know who Peter is? I'd like to buy the man a drink.

Flounder (as Susan calls him) went on to repeat the new mantra:

R. McCLELLAN: The President is going to continue to talk about his optimistic, positive vision for this country and how we can build upon the policies that we have implemented to get our economy growing stronger. Our economy is growing stronger every day. New jobs are being created. This administration acted decisively to get our economy out of a recession and get it growing stronger. And all you have to do is look at the news, and you'll see who those individuals are.

Don't worry, be happy.

Is this is some lameass, obvious, "morning in America" bullshit, or what? The best they can come up with is some warmed over 20 year old bullshit from a dead man and it isn't even half true. Why not "chicken in every pot," it's more fitting.

An entire week of wall to wall slurpy Republican soul kissing and the best Bush could pull out of it was a 3 point bounce? Let's not kid ourselves, it may be 1984 again, but it's Orwell's version this time, not Ronnie's.




digby 6/17/2004 09:22:00 PM |

 
Fool Me 2,653 Times...

Peter Beinert has some second thoughts about trusting Republicans.

In the run-up to the Iraq war, I tried hard not to be partisan. I distrusted the Bush administration and feared it would be politically empowered by the war. But such thoughts felt petty and limited at such an important time. And so I evaluated the arguments for war on their merits, irrespective of my feelings about the people making them. Doing so made me feel superior to the Democrats, who, I suspected, would have supported an Iraq war waged by Al Gore, and to the Republicans, who had opposed the Kosovo war because it was waged by Bill Clinton.

But, in retrospect, my efforts not to be limited proved limiting. Partisanship, it turned out, was an extremely useful analytical tool in understanding the Iraq war. Had I not tried so hard to cleanse myself of it, I might have seen some of the war's problems earlier than I did.

This was a partisan war. By partisan, I don't mean that it was led by Republicans. It was partisan in the sense that the people who formulated it prized group loyalty above all else. They divided the world, the country, and even their own administration into people who could be trusted and people who could not. And, unfortunately, the people who could be trusted knew much less about how to build democracy in Iraq than the people who could not.

[...]


For conservatives, the right lesson of Iraq is that, if you apply a loyalty test to this country's best sources of knowledge--the academy, the press, and the government itself--you'll lose the war on terrorism through sheer ignorance. For liberals, the lesson is to see conservatives as they are, not as you'd like them to be. I'll try to remember it next time.

For some of us, it was enough to watch the "conservatives" engage in a decade long smear campaign, impeach a president over a private sexual matter and then steal an election to prove that they are "not as we'd like them to be." But, those were such fun times for the press, when they all got to pretend like they were happenin'--- talkin' 'bout the nasty 'n shit, all the while cluck clucking like a bunch of women's temperence workers over the horrors of sexual incontinence. They just couldn't bear to see the party end. The deification of Bush after 9/11 was just the latest chapter in their lazy acceptance of GOP political propaganda.

It was, in fact, another example of that which Beinert finally realized perpetuated the failure in Iraq --- myopic, group loyalty so profoundly disdainful of anyone outside of it that they cannot be trusted to even carry out their own plans successfully. The modern GOP lives in a little world of its own, made even more parochial by the advent of its own media infrastructure. The people who are in charge are second rate thinkers who rose to the top because the pool was so small to begin with.

In America today, there is no such thing as bipartisanship. It didn't have to be this way, but it is. The Democrats compromised with the other side until they came this close to selling their souls and got nothing but the boot on the neck in return. They can go no further.

And the press actually did sell its soul for some cheap, tabloid thrills and a puerile story line about Democratic weakness and Republican strength. It's way past time for them to rub the cobwebs from their eyes and recognize their snooty superiority is simply an excuse for applying a lazy "he said she said" journalistic ethic so they could go home early and chatter about the perfidy of politicians --- who are, in their minds, all alike.

After the last decade, it's quite obvious they are not.




digby 6/17/2004 03:12:00 PM |

 
Another Snootfull 'O Freedom

A suicide car bomb in central Baghdad ripped into a throng of men waiting at a recruiting station to sign up for the new Iraqi army today, killing at least 35 people and wounding at least 138, hospital officials said.

[...]

The explosion at the army recruiting station in Baghdad caused by artillery shells packed into a car raised questions about whether the Americans and Iraqi security forces could even protect men willing to sign up.

Saddam was a madman who tortured and gassed his own people and all, but nobody ever said he didn't have some good ideas:

Iraq's new defense minister, Hazim al-Shaalan, promised a bloody crackdown on the insurgents. "We will cut off their hands and behead them," he said.

The deputy United States defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, who is visiting Iraq, suggested that Iraq's security forces were still far from being able to patrol the country alone and would need "substantial help" for some time, Reuters reported.

Much more "help" from us and Iraq is going to look like the set of a Mad Max movie.

Would mayhem be considered as severely painful as organ failure, I wonder? That wasn't discussed specifically in the torture memos so we can't really be sure. But, it would certainly be justified under the "necessity" clause of Iraq's new constitution (modeled after ours, of course) in which the president can do whatever he wants whenever he thinks it's necessary. Maybe a few of those bad insurgency apples would think twice about doing this kind of thing if they lost a hand or two.

Saddam, after all, had great success with the cutting off of ears.






digby 6/17/2004 01:37:00 PM |

 
Draft Bruce !!!


What a great way to counterprogram the be-tokened,"up-with-jackboots" FUBAR convention. Sign the petition.




digby 6/17/2004 11:39:00 AM |

 
What Code Red?

AMERICAblog reports that the military unfortunately seems to have recorded over the tape (they originally denied existed) of the American soldier beaten to a pulp in Guantanamo. I hate when that happens.




digby 6/17/2004 11:32:00 AM |

 
Divorce #3

...and it's not hard to figure out why.

Ladies, this will make your blood boil:

LIMBAUGH: I remember way, way back in the '80s, at -- at one of the fractious moments when the militant feminists were ruling the roost and defining a lot of the national debate. ... The NAGs would have a press conference. Six NAGs would show up somewhere -- National Association of Gals -- don't misunderstand this, my pet name for the NOW gang. ... The NAGs don't represent the majority of female thought in this country, and they aren't -- they aren't determining who wins elections. White men are. And this is -- I'm not being sexist. This is just pure demographics.

I guess it's a good thing he's so charming and handsome or he might have trouble getting a date now that he's back on the market.

The Poorman knows a very hot Republican babe who is definitely interested. Not only is she brilliant but if you scroll down the entry, you can see that she's just the kind of gal Rush has been dreaming of (as he "investigates" those pay porn sites he keeps talking about ...breathlessly...holding back a slight moan ... whenever the topic of that girl with the leash comes up....)






digby 6/17/2004 11:16:00 AM |

 
Neocon Worms

The call for President Bush's defeat in a statement released Wednesday by a group of former diplomats and military officials highlighted the stark divide that has opened among foreign policy experts over the administration's national security strategy.

[...]


The statement suggests how much certain parts of Bush's foreign policy do mark a break with the establishment," said Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and a leading conservative theorist. "The simplest way to put it is that Bush thinks 9/11 was a fundamental break and we needed a new doctrine after that, and the foreign policy establishment doesn't believe that."

Bullshit. 9/11 had nothing to do with it and Kristol, of all people, knows that. His PNAC plans, adopted wholesale by Crusader Codpiece, were laid out long before 9/11 and should have been rendered irrelevant afterward. It was the neocons, not the foreign policy establishment who twisted the attacks to their own use without regard for the changed circumstances that 9/11 wrought. If you look at their record, they never considered terrorism a serious threat and 9/11 didn't change that.

Just as the Bush administration argued for tax cuts for the rich, no matter the circumstances --- surplus or deficit --- so too have the neocons argued for unilateralisam, global military dominance and the invasion of Iraq. It made little sense before 9/11 and even less afterwards. The neocons adopting the "9/11 changed everything" mantra is chutzpah of the highest order. For them it changed absolutely nothing.

It's not the ossified old foreign policy establishment that's rigid and unyielding to new ideas, it's the starry-eyed neocons and their ivory tower vision of a Pax Americana forced on the world at the end of a gun that's out of step with the new reality.

The result of these tremors may be the most turbulence in the foreign policy landscape since the late 1970s, when a flight of hawkish Democratic thinkers known as neoconservatives migrated to the GOP in reaction to the dovish post-Vietnam foreign policy embraced by most Democratic politicians.

"I don't know where it ends up, but clearly it is a very fluid moment like the late 1970s," Kristol said.

Those signing the sharply worded statement included Arthur A. Hartman, ambassador to the Soviet Union for President Reagan; and Jack F. Matlock, who assumed that post toward the end of Reagan's second term and held it under President George H.W. Bush. Others were William Harrop, the elder Bush's ambassador to Israel; retired Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, the Air Force chief of staff during the Persian Gulf War; retired Adm. William J. Crowe, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman under Reagan; and Donald McHenry, the U.N. ambassador under President Carter.

It's long past time for the real conservatives to speak up. Their children have gone out of control and they need to rein them in. If they can't, then it's time to join the other side and we'll help put them in their place. We are dealing with serious stuff for serious people, now. It's time for the real Republican grown-ups to take a stand.





digby 6/17/2004 10:47:00 AM |

 
Hair On Fire

It's as if while we weren't looking John Kerry stepped into the phone booth as Clark Kent and emerged as Superman. Yes, at least for one day anyway, Kerry, master of convoluted context, numbingly nuanced non-answers, and perpetually polysyllabic pentameters, has, voila! turned into a smash-and-slash, take-no-prisoners stump speaker.

A startled political press took note of the transformation in its coverage today. The Washington Post's Lois Romano described Kerry's speech to 800 union members gathered in Atlantic City as "passionate" and "populist."

Romano cited this portion of Kerry's remarks: "I'm running for president to put America back to work...I'm running for president because health care is not a benefit just for the wealthy or the elected or the connected...I'm running for president because I know that we could be a hell of a lot stronger in the world if we were to secure our freedom..."

Both the Boston Globe's Glen Johnson and the New York Times' Robin Toner sat upright for another part of Kerry's sizzling New Jersey speech:

"Our tax code has gone from 14 pages to 17,000 pages. Any of you get your own page? Enron's got its own page. Exxon's got its own page. Looks to me like Halliburton's got its own chapter."

A sense of timing is a very important thing in life. I'm thinking Kerry's got one.

Also from the Globe article :

John F. Kerry said yesterday he would appoint a prominent, independent public figure such as John McCain or Bob Dole to investigate allegations of torture by US soldiers during the war on terror, abuse that he suggested was an outgrowth of the Bush administration's liberal interpretation of the Geneva Conventions.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, speaking with reporters for the first time in two weeks, said such an investigation is needed to assure the world that the United States remains committed to human rights and to protect its future prisoners of war from similar abuse.

"Torture is not acceptable. Period," Kerry said after his campaign charter touched down in Covington, Ky., so he could attend a fund-raiser across the Ohio River in Cincinnati.

"I think the president is underestimating the full impact of what has happened in the world to our reputation because of that prison scandal. The president himself gave a speech in which he said, 'Oh, it's just a few people.' But now, already, we've seen it's not just a few people, and there are serious questions about how high it goes," Kerry added. "I believe that it's vital for us to prove to the world that this is really not going to be swept under the rug; . . . we're going to prove to the world we're willing to show that we will hold people accountable."

Kerry suggested that the inquiry could be led by McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona and former prisoner of war, or Dole, another veteran and former Republican senator. He also mentioned Senator John Warner, Republican of Virginia, and former senators George J. Mitchell of Maine and Warren B. Rudman of New Hampshire as possible picks.

Kerry noted that the administration "took themselves outside of even the prisoner abuse law that was passed," which raises "very, very serious questions about the messages that went out to leadership within the military, and especially -- ultimately -- to the rank and file." Around the world, Kerry said, "our moral authority has been tarnished as a consequence of what's happened."

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for President Bush's reelection committee, said the criticism, as well as comments Kerry made about the economy earlier in the day, reflected the "misery and pessimism" of the Democratic campaign. ''It's another example of John Kerry exploiting the war on terror and the prisoner abuse situation for political gain."

From the NY Times piece:

He ended his day at a rain-soaked outdoor rally in Columbus, which drew a large crowd of supporters as well as a scattering of abortion protesters, and some Bush supporters. The Republicans blasted the theme song from "Flipper'' for part of his speech to accuse him of flip-flopping on issues. As dusk fell, Mr. Kerry delivered his paean to the middle class, and the crowd held in a driving rain, cheering as he invoked the legacies of Presidents Clinton and Roosevelt.

The flipper thing is just sad. Kerry's talking about the president of the United States ordering torture and they're playing games.

I'm expecting to see Kerry start to ramp up the energy going into the convention where he will be introduced to the people who are only peripherally paying attention. If it's a good convention and Kerry hits the ground running, Bush may not be able to stop him. Like I said, a sense of timing is incredibly important. It's looking as if Kerry is a long distance runner with the instinct to know when to hang back and when to pull away from the pack.






digby 6/17/2004 09:46:00 AM |

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

 
Rumsfeld ordered prisoner held off the books

Pentagon officials tell NBC News that late last year, at the same time U.S. military police were allegedly abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered that one Iraqi prisoner be held "off the books" hidden entirely from the International Red Cross and anyone else in possible violation of international law.
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It's the first direct link between Rumsfeld and questionable though not violent treatment of prisoners in Iraq.

The Iraqi prisoner was captured last July as deadly attacks on U.S. troops began to rise. He was identified as a member of the terrorist group Ansar al Islam, suspected in the attacks on coalition forces.

[...]

In the military's own investigation into prisoner abuse, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba said efforts to hide prisoners from the Red Cross were "deceptive" and a "violation of international law."
Pentagon officials claim it's entirely lawful to hold prisoners in secret if they pose an immediate threat. But today, nearly one year after his capture, he's still being held incommunicado.

At the same time U.S. military police were allegedly abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered that one Iraqi prisoner be held off the books.

In fact, once the prisoner was returned to Iraq, the interrogations ceased because the prisoner was entirely lost in the system. [Can you believe it?]

[...]

Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch said, "If they thought he was such a threat that he could not get Red Cross visits, then how come such a threatening prisoner got lost in the system?"

Pentagon officials still insist Rumsfeld acted legally, but admit it all depends on how you interpret the law.

fubar.




digby 6/16/2004 11:23:00 PM |

 
Angst and Anti-Americanism

Even if you have to sit through ad, I urge you to read this fascinating article in Salon called "America's blankness," which was originally a prepared speech by professor Stephen Holmes.

He explores the roots and reasons for the growth in anti-Americanism and asks if it matters. (It does.) He examines how it happened and what actions the US took that precipitated this surge of ill feeling toward us. And he suggests various ways in which we might turn some of this around in a new administration.

The way he sees it, the Europeans are freaked out by Bush, but will put it behind them if we kick him out and behave in a more civilized fashion. If Kerry wins, Holmes suggests that he may robustly renew the Atlantic alliance on the basis of the shared threats faced by both Americans and Europeans: nuclear proliferation and terrorist attacks on major cities. After Madrid, we should be able to enlist the Europeans, whose security agencies have much more experience with infiltration and intelligence gathering of terrorists than we do. It would be very helpful if we could all sincerely work together on this. It's a terrible failure of foreign policy and national security that Bush has poisoned this necessary relationship.

Anti-Americanism in the mid-east, on the other hand, has morphed into hatred. And the probable consequences of that are even worse than I thought. The most obvious result is that we are creating terrorists in exponentially greater numbers than we are killing them. That is not a winning strategy.

But, we have also succeeded in doing the precise opposite of what we intended with Bush's long term democratization strategy by strengthening autocratic regimes as they borrow our rhetoric on the WOT and crack down on their own people. The region is becoming less democratic rather than more and even those that are democratic hate our guts too. This Iraq project is a huge failure on all levels. Holmes's scenario of what is likely to happen in iraq is both depressing and scary. It was a mistake from the beginning, but the cock-up of the occupation and the lack of planning is simply unforgiveable.

On the grand global scale, we have destroyed the mystique of American power, a subject that Michael Lind explores in this very interesting piece and I discussed here some time back. Showing our weaknesses at this particular time makes it much more likely that our enemies will feel emboldened or will make a mistake. There are huge consequences to this sad performance in Iraq, but none are bigger than that. That it was done unnecessarily makes it a crime.

Clearly, anti-Americanism has increased hugely since 9/11 all over the globe. There is no good reason why that needed to happen. We were the victims and the entire world was in sympathy with us until the Bush administration began to behave irrationally.

The GOP has recently been using the orwellian argument that to vote for Kerry is to vote for the terrorists even though we are demonstrably less safe under Bush's policies. They've been trying to innoculate themselves from this glaring fact since 9/11 by silencing dissent and forcefeeding the nation a diet of fear and fantasy to hide the fact they have been screwing things up from the beginning.

The real argument is that a vote for Bush is to validate his failed policies and convince the rest of the world that we truly are nation of dangerous fools. This will not increase our safety, I'm afraid. In fact, nothing could help the terrorists more than to put this rogue administration back in office.






digby 6/16/2004 09:47:00 PM |

 
Tribal Leadership

Q: The Vice President, who I see standing over there, said yesterday that Saddam Hussein has long-established ties to al Qaeda. As you know, this is disputed within the U.S. intelligence community. Mr. President, would you add any qualifiers to that flat statement? And what do you think is the best evidence of it?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Zarqawi. Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al Qaeda affiliates and al Qaeda. He's the person who's still killing. He's the person -- and remember the email exchange between al Qaeda leadership and he, himself, about how to disrupt the progress toward freedom?

Probably the murkiest and most intriguing feature of this man of many mysteries is the question of Zarqawi's relations with Osama bin Laden. Though he met with bin Laden in Afghanistan several times, the Jordanian never joined al Qaeda. Militants have explained that Tawhid was "especially for Jordanians who did not want to join al Qaeda." A confessed Tawhid member even told his interrogators that Zarqawi was "against al Qaeda." Shortly after 9/11, a fleeing Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the main plotters of the attacks, appealed to Tawhid operatives for a forged visa. He could not come up with ready cash. Told that he did not belong to Tawhid, he was sent packing and eventually into the arms of the Americans.

Zarqawi and bin Laden also disagree over strategy. Zarqawi allegedly constructed his Tawhid network primarily to target Jews and Jordan. This choice reflected both Zarqawi's Palestinian heritage and his dissent from bin Laden's strategy of focusing on the "far enemy" -- the United States. In an audiotape released after the recent foiled gas attack in Amman, an individual claiming to be Zarqawi argued that the Jordanian Intelligence Services building was indeed the target, although no chemical attack was planned. Rather, he stated menacingly, "God knows, if we did possess [a chemical bomb], we wouldn't hesitate one second to use it to hit Israeli cities such as Eilat and Tel Aviv."

[...]

The slaughter of Shias touches on another Zarqawi beef with bin Laden. While both men follow the strict code of Salafi Islam, which reckons Shias as apostates, bin Laden prides himself on being a unifying figure and has made tactical alliances with Shia groups, meeting several times with Shia militants. Zarqawi, by contrast, favors butchering Shias, calling them "the most evil of mankind . . . the lurking snake, the crafty and malicious scorpion, the spying enemy, and the penetrating venom." American military officials hold Zarqawi responsible not only for assassinating Shia religious leaders in Iraq, but also for the multiple truck bombings of a Shia religious festival this past March, which killed 143 worshippers.

But though bin Laden and Zarqawi differ on strategy, Zarqawi too cloaks his plans for mass murder in the language of the religious zealot. To Zarqawi, "religion is more precious than anything and has priority over lives, wealth, and children." He considers Iraq ideal for jihad especially because "it is a stone's throw from the lands of the two Holy Precincts [Saudi Arabia] and the al Aqsa [mosque, in Jerusalem]. We know from God's religion that the true, decisive battle between infidelity and Islam is in this land [Greater Syria and its surroundings]. . . ." On the tape of the beheading of Nick Berg, entitled "Sheikh Abu Musab Zarqawi executes an American with his own hands and promises Bush more," Zarqawi rages, "Where is the compassion, where is the anger for God's religion, and where is the protection for Muslims' pride in the crusaders' jails? . . . The pride of all Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and other jails is worth blood and souls."

The CIA has verified that Zarqawi himself spoke on the tape and personally beheaded Berg. Similarly, the videotaped beheading of Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal in February 2002 was carried out directly by another jihadi leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The latter, like Zarqawi, never swore allegiance to bin Laden. In this bloodthirsty crowd, it appears that slitting the throat of an American Jew wins laurels.

In January 2004, Iraqi Kurds captured a message from Zarqawi in Iraq to bin Laden. Zarqawi offered bin Laden a chance to expand al Qaeda's role in Iraq. Victory, Zarqawi instructed, meant fomenting sectarian war between Shiites and Sunnis. There are no indications that bin Laden responded, and there are now signs of cooperation between some Iraqi Shia and Sunni militants. Are bin Laden and Zarqawi running competing terrorist organizations in Iraq?

[...]

Zarqawi exemplifies Sunni terrorism after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, what some call "al Qaeda 2.0." The Western counteroffensive decimated al Qaeda's leadership, stripped the organization of safe havens and training camps, and disrupted its command and control. Former al Qaeda subsidiaries became franchises, receiving inspiration from bin Laden's occasional messages but operating independently. Historically speaking, the dynamic of revolutionary movements favors the most radical faction -- the Jacobins, not the Girondists, the Bolsheviks, not the Menshiviks. If this dynamic prevails in contemporary Sunni terrorism, Abu Musab al Zarqawi represents the future.

A very nasty customer indeed, if this is true and if he's still alive. And, of course, if he is let's not forget it will be no thanks to our president:

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

"Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it," said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.

Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

"People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists," according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

I'm sure Junior believes that Zarkawi being in Iraq proves something about 9/11, al Qaeda and the GWOT, despite all the evidence to the contrary. He believes the same thing many of his supporters believe which is that that all arabs are pretty much the same and in his mind that includes Persians, Afghans, Indians (and probably Mexicans and Frenchmen too.) The subtleties are for pussies. His gut tells him that the arabs will only do what we tell them to do (in the name of freedom and democracy, of course) if we show them who is boss. He is, after all, famously "not into nuance."

I think that the distinctions between the various players in the mid-east are simply not relevant to him, and neither is it of interest to his supporters. "They" are different from "us," but "they" are all the same. He gave himself away with his little aside last month in which he said:

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 think we know what we're really dealing with, don't we?





digby 6/16/2004 05:49:00 PM |

 
"My right hand hasn't seen my left hand in years"

Natasha at Pacific Views had an interesting little chat with one of the Republican conmen ... er, grassroots people's movement representatives who are protesting Fahrenheit 911.

Let's just say they aren't really the toppermost of the poppermost of the PR world, if this is the best they can do.

For information on how to combat the Drudge-enhanced smear campaign and boycott, go to PoliticalStrategy.org to get everything you need.





digby 6/16/2004 04:43:00 PM |

 
Beat Me Hurt Me

Let's see here. Do you want to run the table, or do you want to go eat lunch?

Hold on a second, I'll get you in a minute, please. A little patience in front of the President here.

How many questions? One question apiece. If we're going to stand out here in 100-degree temperature, let's just have one question.

You can pass your question on to some other person, and I might call on them. I'm not so sure I'm going to be so international this press conference. (Laughter.) The first question was about am I concerned about economic vitality? I'm pleased with -- what?

Go ahead, Terry. No, you've asked your question. Terry. Hold on for a second. Terry. Thank you, though

Which question do you want me to answer?

Q:Well, I think they're related; both --

No, they're not -- (laughter.)

Q Please, I'll say, please.

Look, it's very hot out here, we've got a President from a -- a respectful President here. Why don't you just ask one question, i f you don't mind? I don't mean to be telling you how to do your business. All right, I'll answer both. (Laughter.)

The second part was what? I forgot. It was so long ago that you asked it --

Q I know, I apologize, I was long-winded.

Okay, a couple more questions. Yes. Let me work my way through the TV readers.

Which one, you or Sanger?

I'm getting distracted over here, there seems to be some noise.

And then the naked emperor snapped his towel one more time at the cowering press corps and walked away as they all sang, "thank you sir, may I have another," in unison.

He was very clear on one thing. Between bouts of showing the press whose bitch they are, he repeatedly assured them that he's a leader who leading and the American people know he's leading because he's led. And, he's leading us in the fight against darkness and hatred by killing the terrorists on their own turf and then defeating the forces of evil wherever it may be, god-bless-us-everyone.

First, it's in our interests that we defeat terrorists there than fight them here. That's our short-term security interest.

Secondly, it's in our long-term interests that we work for free societies in parts of the world that are desperate for freedom. And the reason I keep saying that, Wendell, is because I know that a free society is a peaceful society. And America is interested in working with friends to promote the peace. And that's what we're doing. The short-term solution for our security problem is to find the terrorists and bring them to justice before they hurt Americans again; is to deny them training bases; is to deny them affiliates and allies in the war on terror. That's what we have done in Afghanistan and Iraq. The long-term solution is to promote free societies that are able to defeat the forces of pessimism, darkness, intolerance and hatred.

And then he went into his office and defeated the forces of pessimism by ordering up some torture of Afghan cab drivers right after he shined the light of freedom on the Geneva Conventions and declared them dead. After lunch he planned to end intolerance and hatred by holding thousands of innocent Iraqis in unlimited detention. He is the president of a free society, after all. He can legally set aside any laws he deems ... unfree.







digby 6/16/2004 03:45:00 PM |

 
This idea was not a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious

Back in the early blog days, I used to read Instapundit regularly. Compared to the neanderthal wingnuts I commonly sparred with on bulletin boards and the like, he was a breath of fresh air. But, after 9/11, like so many, he stopped making sense on a regular basis and I ended up having to put him in the "life is too short" file. Since then, when I do check in over there or follow a link I am quite stunned at how knee jerk he has become, even while there are nuggets of good sense still sometimes tucked between the lines.

Yglesias reminds me today of both why I used to like him and why he is so insufferable today:

I find it hard to respond to these things in terms of cost-benefit. My law school mentor Charles Black once said that of course you can come up with scenarios -- the classic ticking-nuclear-bomb example -- where torture might be justified. And you can be sure that, in those cases, if people think it'll work they'll use it no matter what the rules are. But there's a real value to pretending that there's an absolute rule against it even if we know people will break it in extraordinary circumstances, because it ensures that people won't mistake an ordinary remedy for an extraordinary one.

Well said.


I also think that the rather transparent effort to use this against Bush -- often by people who think nothing of cozying up to the likes of Castro, for whom torture and murder are essential tools of governance -- has caused the Abu Ghraib issue to be taken less seriously than perhaps it ought to be.

Taking the second part first, when, exactly, did Reynolds decide that he had to ass-kiss the Right with such sycophantic upside downism? It's "the Left's" fault because if they didn't make such a big deal out of it --- and hold Bush accountable --- people would take the issue more seriously. What Gillepie-esque nonsense. It's that kind of hackery that makes Reynolds unreadable.

The first part of his analysis, as Yglesias points out with his "well said", is quite interesting and relevant, however. It's one that people don't talk much about, perhaps because to debate it openly would render the concept useless. It's a bit cynical and even a bit dishonest, but Yglesias can see the utility of it and so can I, Dershowitz's torture[d] theories notwithstanding.

The idea that the "ticking time bomb" scenario might call for someone to break the law (and face the consequences of doing so) gets to the nub of our concerns with torture and the right of self-defense. As Reynolds points out, people will likely employ torture in a real ticking time bomb scenario whether it is legal or not. It is ridiculous to think someone wouldn't if the scenario were as straightforward as it's always presented. But, by outlawing acts of torture in all circumstances you prevent using torture in interrogations that are not ticking time bomb scenarios because you force the person who breaks that prohibition to show that it was a matter of self-defense. The bar is high. It must be so obvious that prosecutors or a jury of your peers can see that your actions directly saved the lives of specific would-be victims.

It would be a transparent legal process that everyone can judge based on the specific facts of the case. Finding that someone acted in self-defense under these circumstances would no more nullify our prohibition against torture than finding a policemen who acted in self-defense by shooting an armed man threatening people at a bus stop nullifies our prohibition against murder. The individual circumstances, reviewed in an open legal process, are all that would ever be required to justify the "ticking time bomb" torture defense. And, since there are an infinitesimal number of ticking time bomb cases, this specific circumstance is interesting but largely theoretical and therefore it's actually a red herring.

The real problem we face here is determining what does and does not constitute a ticking time bomb and what does and does not constitute self-defense. And, that is where the Bush administration has gone so far off the rails as to be flying.

It's not just that the torture memos explicitly give the president unprecedented powers to set aside the laws of the land (something the "libertarian" Reynolds should at least get a little bit exercized about), but that after 9/11, the Bush administration decided that the definition of self-defense is unlimited, even including preventive war. Under their definition pretty much anything goes. Somebody looks at you sideways --- kill him. Why take a chance he might have a gun and shoot you first? Somebody says somebody might have some useful information? Torture him. It could save lives. In that sense, all threats, real or imagined, immediate or potential, are considered ticking time bombs that we have a right and obligation to diffuse any way we can.

This definition of self-defense is what makes it possible to excuse wanton torture, unprovoked aggression, lying and manipulation and usurpation of democracy itself. And what makes it so dangerous is that it allows it to be done under the rubrik of patriotism and the rule of law.

I have no doubt that many Americans see any act that might prevent further attacks as justified. Perhaps there are even quite a few who believe that if many thousands of innocent people, including children, are swept up in this "preventive" activity, it is a sad but necessary and moral thing. But, in order for this make any sense at all one would have to assume that the government has some idea what the threat is in the first place and knows who can tell them what they need to know to prevent it.

Unfortunately, recent events have just proven on the grandest scale imaginable that our government wouldn't wouldn't know a ticking time bomb if it fell into the oval office with a goddamned sign on it. The Bush administration did, after all, just invade a country on the basis of a threat that simply didn't exist after ignoring people running around with their hair on fire for months about a threat that actually did. I'm afraid I just don't have a lot of faith in these fellows' ability to know when we are and aren't being threatened. So, perhaps it's best not to leave the definition of what constitutes self-defense in the hands of such incompetents and rely instead on the long established legal definitions that stood us in good stead through 223 years. Human beings, it turns out, aren't very good at playing God.

The extreme overreaction of the government to the attacks of 9/11, heinous as they were, and its subsequent willingness to dispose of all previously agreed upon limitations to its ability to act in "self-defense" led directly to pictures of torture being shown all over the world --- pictures symbolizing American indecency, immorality, incompetence and relentless will to power. And there is a paper trail that leads directly to the oval office where the man who sits behind the desk there says that he never ordered anything illegal and the world should be comforted by that.

If not that man, then who should we hold responsible for the utter vacuousness that has replaced a previously complex system of belief in the rule of law and inalienable human rights with a lizard brain definition of self-defense they wrap in meanlingless terms like "moral clarity?" The only people I see imitating Castro these days are sitting in the White House.




digby 6/16/2004 01:27:00 PM |

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

 
Tragedy Preceded By Farce

Sizzling, right on the money commentary by William Pfaff in the International Herald Tribune. Simple, straightforward and devastating. I can't excerpt any of it because every word is necessary. Read the whole thing and then send it to your friends.

digby 6/15/2004 04:32:00 PM |

 
Meanwhile, Back On Pluto

Kevin has more Reagan Lunacy from Comrade Norquist:

One of the considerations in favor of a Reagan $100 bill, Norquist said, is that the $100 bill is favored in many foreign countries as the currency of choice and "Reagan was a world leader."

"But the $100 bill is also the currency of choice of people who sell cocaine, and that is not so good."

digby 6/15/2004 11:53:00 AM |

 
Bet On It

It's official. Clinton will definitely help Kerry win the election, probably in a huge way. How do I know this?

[Dick]Morris believes that "by sucking up the oxygen in the room during July, Clinton cripples Kerry and forces him to compete for attention with a charismatic former president". He predicts that the Massachusetts senator "will look a decided second-best to Bill Clinton".

Morris is the Bizarro Oracle of Delphi. If he predicts something, the exact opposite will come true. He has a very impressive record. For example:

"Eventually, France will cave to the U.S. position." - On the Iraq/war alliance, New York Post, February 4, 2003

"Republican members of the Senate want their own person controlling the floor so they can have an independent voice ... When they reconvene in January, Trent Lott will still be there for one good reason: The Republican senators don't want him to go." - New York Post, December 16, 2002

"(U)nless (GWB) starts this war on schedule in September ... he's going to lose Congress." - Fox News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, August 5, 2002

How should we interpret these insights, do you think?

"Bill Clinton is using his long-awaited autobiography to help Hillary win the vice presidential spot on Sen. John Kerry's ticket."

"If Bill, who has trouble finishing anything and procrastinates constantly, actually finishes the book, there is a reason. Likely she was nagging him to do it so he could raise the pressure for her."

According to Morris, Clinton blackmailed Kerry by threatening to release the book during the campaign. Since he IS releasing the book during the campaign, we must assume that Kerry did not succumb to the blackmail. Which means that Hillary will not be on the ticket.

But, since this came from Morris, it must mean that Clinton DIDN'T blackmail Kerry so there was no blackmail for Kerry to deal with in the first place. Therefore, oddly, Hillary will also not be on the ticket but for the opposite reason that Morris asserts.

It takes a while to get the hang of reading those Morris tea leaves, but once you do it's money in the bank.

Via pandagon and Campaign Desk





digby 6/15/2004 10:36:00 AM |

Monday, June 14, 2004

 
Double Whammy

As much as I loved his howl of outrage (posted below) Alterman also gets something wrong:

"Bill Clinton is about to do the same thing to John Kerry with his book that Ronald Reagan did to George W. Bush by dying: remind everybody of everything the old guy was and the current guy is not.

Nope. Clinton is about to do the same thing to George W. Bush that Reagan did to him by dying: he also is going to remind everybody of everything he was and the current guy is not. The contrast is between presidents, not candidates.

This helps Kerry, the man who Clinton will be promoting right along with his book.




digby 6/14/2004 09:11:00 PM |

 
Compare and contrast.

Today Eric Alterman howls at the outrageous conduct of the Bush administration. The complaints are about huge matters of war and civil liberties and presidential actions that have extraordinary consequences for the entire world:

It’s hard to say which is the best representation of what this war is doing to and has done to this country. Is it the lies that were told to get us into it? Is the fact that we are picking up innocent people off the street and torturing them? Is it that we have suspended the most basic civil liberties in our own country? Is it that the work of professional intelligence agencies has been corrupted? Is it that we have drawn resources away from the fight against Al Qaida which has completely regrouped? Is it that we are creating more terrorists? Is it that more than seven hundred Americans have been killed and thousands have been seriously injured? Is it that thousands of Iraqis have been killed but nobody is keeping an account of the numbers of their deaths? Is it that we are now more hated around the world than we have ever been? Is it that we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars while actually decreasing our security? Is it that we are doing all this while starving the most crucial homeland security programs? Is it that everyone who told the truth about what was being planned has been dismissed and seen their characters attacked? The usually soft-spoken and moderate intelligence analyst and author Thomas Powers does not exaggerate when he notes that Bush and the neocons have "caused the greatest foreign policy catastrophe in modern U.S. history."

Now take a look at a similar howl of outrage from William Kristol The Weakly Standard, August 31, 1998

WHERE ARE THE RESIGNATIONS?


...For seven months, the president asked his staffers and supporters to lie. He assured them -- some of them personally -- that he had told the truth when he denied a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Ann Lewis and Paul Begala; Madeleine Albright and Donna Shalala; Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt: All of them were lied to by the president. And all of them, in turn, were sent out to lie to the rest of us on his behalf.

[...]

As Charles Krauthammer said, "This is the point at which cynicism turns into moral depravity." And the night of August 17 was the moment at which loyal service to Bill Clinton (already morally problematic) crossed the line into self-abasement.

Does no one in the administration realize this? The president engages in sordid activity in the White House -- in the Oval Office -- with a 21-year-old intern. He lies about it. He attempts to cover it up. Now he admits (albeit grudgingly and partially) to the truth. Yet none of his staff, no member of his administration, and almost no Democratic official seems to want to hold the president truly accountable for his actions -- by demanding that he resign. And, in the absence of Clinton's willingness to go, not a single person who works for him seems to have the honor to leave himself.

Is this an unrealistically high expectation? I don't think so. I worked in two administrations, first for Bill Bennett, then for Dan Quayle. It goes without saying that neither of them would have done what Bill Clinton has done. It also goes without saying that, if either of them had done something even remotely so disgraceful, he would have resigned. But I honestly believe that, if either man had resisted resignation, my colleagues and I would have told him he had to go. Failing that, we ourselves would have resigned.

Bill Clinton is not a man of honor. But are there no honorable men around him? Can his staff and cabinet be lied to without consequence? Is there nothing that will impel them to depart? They need not become vociferous critics of the president. They need not denounce him. A quiet, principled leave-taking would suffice. But it would be refreshing if one of them refused to be complicit any longer in the ongoing lie that is the Clinton White House. Apparently, not one of them is willing to do that.

[...]

Personal loyalty is an admirable trait, and so is political loyalty. Up to a point. Government officials work for the nation, not simply for the president. They swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the president. To remain loyal to a president who lies is to make oneself complicit in his lies. To remain loyal to a man who has brought shame to his office is to make oneself complicit in that shame. At some point, blind loyalty must yield to principled honor. When?

Stirring, wasn't it? From the son of the Neocon Godfather himself.

How did the nation survive the great Fellatio Threat of 1998 --- a year which, not incidentally, Clinton bombed the shit out of Iraq (likely taking out any possible remaining WMD) and came this close to killing bin Laden. Not good enough for old Bill, PNAC wetdreams notwithstanding. Clinton's manly member was causing a constitutional crisis.

Today we have lying on a massive scale about matters of war and national security and Bill isn't worried. He isn't exercized about the president asserting a right to set aside laws and order torture. Back in 1998, Clinton's lie about his sex life required that the entire white house staff resign if the president didn't. But, when it comes to lying about terrorism, nuclear weapons or Bush-approved pictures of Iraqi men being sexually tortured, Republicans are "outraged at the outrage."

What absurd people these neocons, especially, are. It was clear then that those who were in high dudgeon about this naughty nothingness as if it meant something important were much too trivial to be entrusted with real power. For all of their dreams of world domination, (it seems almost cartoonish now) they are incredibly childlike and naive. They may have more respect for book learning, but these people have much more in common with Bush's embarrassingly immature worldview than they'd ever admit to their cosmopolitan friends in Georgetown.


More broken Kristol at Liberal Oasis.

digby 6/14/2004 08:23:00 PM |

 
Useful Idiot

Come on Hitchy-poo. You're almost there.

You know your grubby little neocon friends are a bunch of scumbag totalitarians in democratic drag, don't you? And you know you blindly aligned yourself with a movement that pretended to be all about "liberation" when, in fact, it was all about domination. Bad move. Very bad move.

In the sober light of day, hung over and awash in moral clarity, you know it. Go ahead. Confess. We won't even put you in a painful stress position. You're already in one, aren't you?





digby 6/14/2004 05:31:00 PM |

 
Testimony

"Torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

In case anyone's wondering about the specific torture methods that are considered legal in the various gulags we now have around the world, there has been some work done on this by Human Rights Watch, even before Abu Ghraib. They found that at the "detention centers" in Afghanistan, torture as it was defined under the Geneva Convention was used routinely, often against innocent civilians.

According to the two men, bright lights were set up outside their cells, shining in, and U.S. military personnel took shifts, keeping the detainees awake by banging on the metal walls of their cells with batons. The detainees said they were terrified and disoriented by sleep deprivation, which they said lasted for several weeks. During interrogations, they said, they were made to stand upright for lengthy periods of time with a bright spotlight shining directly into their eyes. They were told that they would not be questioned until they remained motionless for one hour, and that they were not entitled even to turn their heads. If they did move, the interrogators said the "clock was reset." U.S. personnel, through interpreters, yelled at the detainees from behind the light, asking questions.

Two more detainees held at Bagram in late 2002 told a New York Times reporter of being painfully shackled in standing positions, naked, for weeks at a time, forcibly deprived of sleep and occasionally beaten.

A reporter with the Associated Press interviewed two detainees who were held in Bagram in late 2002 and early 2003: Saif-ur Rahman and Abdul Qayyum.86 Qayyum was arrested in August 2002; Rahman in December 2002. Both were held for more than two months. Interviewed separately, they described similar experiences in detention: sleep deprivation, being forced to stand for long periods of time, and humiliating taunts from women soldiers. Rahman said that on his first night of detention he was kept in a freezing cell for part of his detention, stripped naked, and doused with cold water. He believes he was at a military base in Jalalabad at this point. Later, at Bagram, he said U.S. troops made him lie on the ground at one point, naked, and pinned him down with a chair. He also said he was shackled continuously, even when sleeping, and forbidden from talking with other detainees. Qayyum and Rahman were linked with a local commander in Kunar province, Rohullah Wakil, a local and national leader who was elected to the 2002 loya jirga in Kabul, and who was arrested in August 2002 and remains in custody.

According to detainees who have been released, U.S. personnel punish detainees at Bagram when they break rules for instance, talking to another prisoner or yelling at guards. Detainees are taken, in shackles, and made to hold their arms over their heads; their shackles are then draped over the top of a door, so that they can not lower their arms. They are ordered to stand with their hands up, in this manner, for two-hour intervals. According to one detainee interviewed who was punished in this manner, the punishment caused pain in the arms.

In March 2003, Roger King, a U.S. military spokesman at Bagram, denied that mistreatment had occurred, but admitted the following:

"We do force people to stand for an extended period of time. . . . Disruption of sleep has been reported as an effective way of reducing people’s inhibition about talking or their resistance to questioning. . . . They are not allowed to speak to each other. If they do, they can plan together or rely on the comfort of one another. If they’re caught speaking out of turn, they can be forced to do things, like stand for a period of time -- as payment for speaking out."

King also said that a "common technique" for disrupting sleep was to keep the lights on constantly or to wake detainees every fifteen minutes to disorient them.

Several U.S. officials, speaking anonymously to the media, have admitted that U.S. military and CIA interrogators use sleep deprivation as a technique, and that detainees are sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours in black hoods or spray-painted goggles, and held in awkward, painful positions.

Here is some direct testimony of men who have been interrogated under rules that allow torture short of the pain accompanying "organ failure or death"

"stress positions"

Many men were handcuffed or tied to a stool as a means of slow torture. The [detainee] sat in one position, day and night. Each time he would fall over, the guards would sit him upright. He was not allowed to sleep or rest. Exhaustion and pain take their toll. When the [detainee] agreed to cooperate with his captors and acquiesced to their demands, he would be removed. Here, I have pictured a guard named "Mouse," who liked to throw buckets of cold water on a man on cold winter nights.

You're always sitting either on the floor or on a stool or concrete block or something low. The interrogator is always behind a table that's covered with cloth of some kind, white or blue or something. And he sits above you and he's always looking down at you asking you questions and they want to know what the targets are for tomorrow, next week, next month. You don't know. You really don't know. But he doesn't -- he's going to have to have an answer of some kind. Now the back of the room comes the -- the torture. And he's a -- he's a big guy that knows what he's doing. And he starts locking your elbows up with ropes and tying your wrists together and bending you.

"dietary manipulation"

Our normal diet consisted of either rice or bread and a bowl of soup. The soup was usually made from a boiled seasonal vegetable such as cabbage, kohlrabi, pumpkin, turnips, or greens, which we very appropriately called, "sewer greens, swamp grass and weeds.

"sleep deprivation"

Some men were tied to their beds, sometimes for weeks at a time. Here, I have drawn a picture showing the handcuffs being worn in front, but the usual position was with the wrists handcuffed behind the back. A man would live this way day and night, without sleep or rest.

The guards come around the middle of the night just rattling the lock on your door. That's a terrifying thing because they may be taking you out for a torture session. You don't know.

"... obviously this is an emotional thing to me, was listening to the screams of other ... prisoners while they were being tortured. And being locked in a cell myself sometimes uh, in handcuffs or tied up and not able to do anything about it. And that's the way I've got to spend the night."

"isolation"

The ten months that I spent in the blacked out cell I went into panic. The only thing I could do was exercise. As long as I could move, I felt like I was going to -- well, it was so bad I would put a rag in my mouth and hold another one over it so I could scream. That seemed to help. It's not that I was scared, more scared than another other time or anything. It was happening to my nerves and my mind. And uh, I had to move or die. I'd wake up at two o'clock in the morning or midnight or three or whatever and I would jump up immediately and start running in place. Side straddle hops. Maybe four hours of sit ups. But I had to exercise. And of course I prayed a lot

Oh, sorry. My mistake. Those illustrations and some of the comments are by former POW Mike Mcgrath about his time in the Hanoi Hilton. Other comments are from the transcript of Return With Honor, a documentary about the POW's during the Vietnam War. How silly of me to compare the US torture scheme with North Vietnam's.

It's very interesting that all these guys survived, in their estimation, mostly because of their own code of honor requiring them to say as little as possible, fight back as they could and cling to the idea that they were not helping this heartless enemy any more than they had to.

As I read the vivid descriptions of these interrogation techniques of sleep deprivation, sensory manipulation, isolation, stress positions and dietary manipulation I had to wonder whether they would be any more likely to work on committed Islamic jihadists than they were on committed American patriots.

The American POWs admitted that they broke under torture and told the interrogators what they knew. And they told a lot of them what they didn't know. And over time, they told them things they couldn't possibly know. The torture continued. Many of them, just like the reports from Gitmo, attempted suicide. They remained imprisoned never knowing when or if they would ever be set free.

"unlimited detention"

We began to talk about the war. How long are we going to be there and everything and I -- I was thinking well I'm only going to be there about six months or so. And then uh, Charlie says oh, we're probably going to be here about two years. Two years? And when I -- I finally came to that realization, my God, that's going to be a long time. And when I - it just kind of hit me all at once. And I just took my blanket and kind of balled it up and I just buried my head uh, in this -- in this blanket and just literally screamed with -- with this anguish that it's going to be that long. Two years. And then when I was finished, I felt oh, okay. I -- I -- I can do that. I can do two years. Of course, as it turned out, it was two years, and it was two years after that, and two years after that. Uh, until it was about seven years in my case. You know? But who was to know at that time.

I would imagine that our torture regime is much more hygienic than the North Vietnamese. Surely it is more bureaucratic with lots of reports and directives and findings and "exit interrogations." We are, after all, a first world torturer. But at the end of the day it's not much different.

"bad apples"

And he announced to me, a major policy statement. Some officers and some guards had become so angry at what the Americans were doing to their country that they had far exceeded the limits which the government had wished they would uh, observe in treatment of prisoners. That they had um, brutally tortured us. That was the first time they ever acknowledged that it was torture not punishment.

Same excuses, too.

The good news is that the mental torture that was used in North Vietnam, the isolation, the sleep deprivation etc. did not seem to create a lot of "long term" damage in the men who lived through it. Most have done well since. Therefore, all the mental torture they inflicted on our POWs was perfectly legal and above board under the Bush torture regime. So that's nice.


"When word of torture and mistreatment began to slip out to the American press in the summer of 1969, our public-relations-minded captors began to treat us better. I'm certain we would have been a lot worse off if there had not been the Geneva Conventions around." John McCain




digby 6/14/2004 03:51:00 PM |

Sunday, June 13, 2004

 
OhFerChristsake

Mr. Clinton's efforts to help Mr. Kerry are fraught with risks, Democratic strategists say, including the danger of arousing the legions of Clinton-haters, the possibility of upstaging the candidate himself, and campaign finance rules restricting publicity expenditures around an election. For months, Democratic strategists have worried that if Mr. Clinton's book appeared too close to the election, he could hog the limelight and upstage Mr. Kerry. In the last election, Vice President Al Gore sought to distance himself from Mr. Clinton on the campaign trail rather than risk association with the scandals surrounding his administration.

Christine Iversen, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, argued that Mr. Clinton's popularity would prove as much of a liability for Mr. Kerry as an asset. "If Bill Clinton is the most energizing Democrat available, he is not on the ballot, and that is a problem," she said.

Yes, it would be terrible to remind people of a time when the country was so peaceful and properous that we could afford to let a bunch of flaccid, hypocritical phonies gin up a bogus impeachment for fun and profit. And, needless to say, it's always a mistake to have interesting, charismatic popular people supporting you publicly and making the case for your candidacy all over the country. Silly Kerry.

I don't know what it's going to take to get these anonymous "Democratic strategists" to recognize that Clinton was a very popular Democrat who has a remarkable ability to charm even people who hate him. It's only when they let the Republicans caricature him that Clinton hating gets any traction. I would bet money that he'll bring about a national wave of nostalgia for a time when watching him dodge the slings and arrows of Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich was the only war we saw on America's news channels every night. Jesus, if the GOP were such nervous nellies as this they'd have dropped Reagans body off the Santa Monica pier at midnight and said the family wanted a private service.

Oh, and Republicans really should be careful about talking about "sex" and scandals in this campaign. They really should. The pictures of the Bush approved "frat boy hijinks" they are trying so hard to sweep under the rug are a lot fresher than Bill and Monica in that rope line.






digby 6/13/2004 09:03:00 PM |

 
More Paper Trails To Torture

Unit Says It Gave Earlier Warning of Abuse in Iraq:

Military officials said the assessment branch was created to help speed the flow of detainee releases. The unit screened prisoners in a process that fell somewhere between an exit interview and an interrogation. The purpose of the screening was to determine whether a detainee was no longer of 'intelligence value' --- that is, whether other interrogators had forgotten to ask important questions, or failed to notice inconsistencies in the answers.

In preparation for the screening, interrogators read through the detainees' files, which consisted mostly of notes by other interrogators and any intelligence reports written about the detainee. Detainee Assessment Branch personnel then asked detainees the same basic questions other interrogators had asked, like biographical queries and whether the detainees knew where Saddam Hussein was hiding.

Starting in mid-November, one member of the unit began asking detainees, 'How have you been treated since you have been in U.S. custody?' It was intended as a tactic meant to make the detainee feel like the interrogator cared, military intelligence personnel said. But the question soon began eliciting vivid and disturbing answers.

"One guy said he was thrown on the ground and stepped on the head," said one soldier. "That's when I started paying attention to it."

As more abuse reports emerged, members of the unit made the question a formal part of the screening process. In early December, the question was added to a Microsoft Word document of questions for the unit's interrogators to ask detainees, several military intelligence personnel said in interviews.

"We couldn't believe what we were hearing," said one soldier. Two detainees reported having been given electric shocks at other holding facilities before arriving in Abu Ghraib, according to the interviews. One prisoner's file included photographs of burns on his body. "We didn't want people to know that we knew about it and didn't report it," the soldier said.

First of all, whether the Torture Working Group deemed it legal or not, if electric shocks and burns aren't at least called torture rather than "abuse" then we really have gone down the rabbit hole. The press needs to start using plain english. This is getting ridiculous.

These guys reported these incidents of torture, as part of their normal process, to a three person panel consisting of Generals Janis Karpinski and Barbara Fast and a lawyer, who then decided who could be released.

Karpinski has claimed Fast was responsible for overcrowding in the prison because she refused to let prisoners who had been cleared go:

...another female general says Fast was largely to blame for the overcrowding at Abu Ghraib.

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who ran Iraq's prison system until February, said Fast refused to release prisoners who were no longer security threats and ordered them "back in the box" for more questioning.

This new article says that the panel voted on who was to be released, so I don't know what the real story is. However, it looks fairly obvious that Fast was in charge of the prison --- Karpinski has said that Fast spent more time there than she did --- so I wouldn't be surprised if her vote was a bit more important than the other two.

Why do you suppose Fast wouldn't want to release these useless prisoners from an overcrowded and understaffed facility?





digby 6/13/2004 07:54:00 PM |

 
Spicy Mercenary

Controversial Commando Wins Iraq Contract

Occupation authorities in Iraq have awarded a $293 million contract effectively creating the world's largest private army to a company headed by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer, a former officer with the SAS, an elite regiment of British commandos, who has been investigated for illegally smuggling arms and planning military offensives to support mining, oil, and gas operations around the world. On May 25, the Army Transportation command awarded Spicer's company, Aegis Defense Services, the contract to coordinate all the security for Iraqi reconstruction projects.

[...]

Major Gary Tallman, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army, explained that the contract was to create an "integrator" or coordination hub for the security operation for every single reconstruction contractor and sub-contractor. "Their job is to disseminate information and provide guidance and coordination throughout the four regions of Iraq."

I sure hope that doesn't mean that they'll be doing any "gathering and analysis of tactical intelligence" because that would be against Army regulations, as this article in today's NY Times discusses:

The use of private contractors as interrogators at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq violates an Army policy that requires such jobs to be filled by government employees because of the "risk to national security," among other concerns, the Army acknowledged Friday.

An Army policy directive published in 2000 and still in effect today, the military said, classifies any job that involves "the gathering and analysis" of tactical intelligence as "an inherently governmental function barred from private sector performance."

Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, an Army public affairs officer, acknowledged after consulting with senior Army officials that the service was in violation of that rule, but added that military commanders in Iraq, "retain the right to make exceptions." Another senior Army officer, in Baghdad, explained that using contract interrogators was a solution to shortages of suitable Army personnel.

The rule does not authorize exceptions for jobs involving the collection or analysis of tactical intelligence, which is perishable information the military can use for planning operations. A related White House policy directive insists that agencies "perform inherently governmental activities with government personnel."

Well gosh, it's getting a little bit hard to know where those lines are drawn, isn't it, what with private contractors being the second biggest providers (after the US military) of manpower in the coalition of the willing?

Private security companies have been asking the military for help in coordinating work for several months. In April, following the killing of several private security contractors in Baghdad, Falluja, and Kut, the companies started to pool information on an ad-hoc basis. At the time, Nick Edmunds, Iraq coordinator for the Hart Group, which provides security to media and engineering groups in Iraq, told The Washington Post, "There is absolutely a growing cooperation along unofficial lines. We try to give each other warnings about things we hear are about to happen."

This particular contract is interesting not only because it is run by a war criminal (which in this administration is a selling point) but it is also a big fat payoff to the UK, for huge money:

Under the "cost-plus" contract, the military will cover all of the company's expenses, plus a pre-determined percentage of whatever they spend, which critics say is a license to over-bill. The company has also been asked to provide 75 close protection teams--comprised of eight men each--for the high-level staff of companies that are running the oil and gas fields, electricity, and water services in Iraq

[...]

Industry insiders speculate that Aegis won the contract because of growing anger in Britain that UK-based companies have not been awarded large contracts in the reconstruction of Iraq, despite the leading role that the Tony Blair's government has played in the "coalition of the willing." The only other British bid for the contract, the Control Risks joint venture, was disqualified because one of the partners was under investigation for undisclosed reasons at the time the bids were evaluated.

Because of the politics in the decision, some groups are questioning the contracting process. "It's not evident why they they would run a rent-a-cop contract through an Army transportation division in Virginia except that maybe the staff there are more experienced and can write a professional contract that can withstand a bid protest better than the Heritage foundation interns that run contracting in Baghdad," said John Pike, a spokesman for the military watchdog group Globalsecurity.org. For the first 12 months, all contracts in Iraq were evaluated by a group of six men and women in their 20s who were hired on the basis of job resumes they posted at the right-wing foundation's website.

Maybe. More likely they are just hiding the paper trail.

If you want to read about the super-hero owner of this company, here's a good run down. He's quite a glamorous war criminal as war criminals go. Now he's going to be filthy rich on our dime. Ain't freedom and democracy great?




digby 6/13/2004 02:55:00 PM |

 
Last Chance

When U.S. officials pushed for war in Iraq claiming that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat, Berka believed them. Like many who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, he was inspired by President Bush's call to liberate the Iraqi people from a brutal dictatorship.

Not anymore.

"In the last few months I have seen that I was wrong to support the war," Berka, 36, said, sipping beer after work.

A tour guide from Prague, Berka is part of what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once called new Europe -- the former Soviet satellite countries that have come to be regarded as America's staunchest allies on the continent. The Czech, Polish and Hungarian governments not only sided diplomatically with Washington as part of Bush's "coalition of the willing," they committed troops to the cause.

But support for the United States, already damaged by the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and a seemingly ever-growing insurgency, has taken a particularly heavy blow from the photos and other revelations of abuse against Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison.

"The photos were the last straw,'' said Berka. "When I saw those pictures, it was a signal to admit that I was wrong."

Similar sentiments are being heard throughout this pro-American part of the world.

In Prague, Warsaw and Budapest, many say they were dismayed to see the United States -- a beacon of freedom and democracy during their dark decades under Soviet domination -- employing methods reminiscent of communist dictatorships.

[...]

"Abu Ghraib dented my belief in the perfection of America's Army, but not in its democracy," said Blazej Roguz, a 25-year-old resident of Katowice in southern Poland who still supports the war.

Describing the abuse scandal as "poisonous" for America's image, Roguz said he was nevertheless impressed that the photos were made public and the matter is being investigated.

"They published them," he said. "I liked that they didn't try to whitewash the whole issue."

Opponents of the war, like Berka in Prague, expressed similar hope in the United States' ability to rectify the damage that has been done.

"My trust in America is still there," he said. "The thing I always believed is that America has a good immune system -- that it can correct and clean itself. This is a big test for the American democratic system."

Yes it is.

These guys know that the one thing we have left is a free press and the ability to rise up as citizens and change the course of our policies. Whether we will have the wisdom to understand what is at stake is another thing. These people certainly do.




digby 6/13/2004 01:20:00 PM |

 
Match me, Sidney


A Republican front group has been created to smear Fahrenheit 911. If this becomes a "controversy" it's important that we all send letters to the press so that they will know this group is not grassroots.

I imagine that this is why Moore has hired a war room staff:

Parachuting into France for the documentary's Cannes Film Festival launch, a Miramax rep told us, were Howard Wolfson, ex-campaign press secretary for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Michael Feldman, a top adviser on Al Gore's 2000 presidential race. (Feldman founded the Glover Park Group, a D.C. communications outfit, with ex-Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart.) Also providing PR expertise on the anti-Bush movie: former Clinton White House advisers Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane.

"We knew the film would obviously draw a lot of political attention and attacks, and we try to do what's best for our movie," Miramax spokesman MatthewHiltzik said from the film festival. "We felt that having the political expertise to withstand the political attacks would require hiring the people who have the most experience on that terrain."

I know that everybody hates Lehane with a fervor only matched by their hatred for Bush. But, this is what he's good at. He'd "sell out his own girl if he could stand up there ... and suck in the sweet smell of success." Politics and Hollywood have always had guys like him. They serve a useful purpose.

And one rather significant thing is that Moore and the Weinsteins aren't hiding anything. The GOP frontgroup is pretending to be a bunch of Nascar Moms and Waitress Dads. The press will have to be reminded of this when they start interviewing Ethel and Gomer about how offended they are by the movie.





digby 6/13/2004 12:25:00 PM |

 
Dim Justice

Can somebody explain to me why everyone is assuming that Bush is going to be defeated in the Supreme Court on the Guantanamo and Padilla cases? The Guardian had this similar story.

Common sense would tell you that the court would reject the administration in light of all the information that's come out in the press regarding torture, assertions of presidential infallibility and the like. (One would think that the court would want to guard it's own turf at the very least.)

But common sense also would have said that the court would stay out of electoral matters to preserve its own reputation and they didn't. On that day, I lost all faith that the court could be relied upon to behave in a rational, consistent or even self-serving way.

I suspect that this has more to do with Sandra Day O'Connor than anyone else who seems to make things up as she goes along. She may very well vote against Bush on thses cases. But since she has no intellectual consistency, she may just as easily vote against him. Which is why I ask why anyone makes any assumptions about this court? The swing vote is completely incomprehensible.


Update: Lawyers, Guns and Money weighs in.

Any other lawyers, court watchers or dilettantes care to?




digby 6/13/2004 11:34:00 AM |

 
And Bob Jones Says Hello

Bush Asked for Vatican's Help on Political Issues, Report Says

This is the reason for the separation of church and state in a pluralistic democracy. It's not that you don't want politicians to be religious people or that you don't want religious people to be political. It's that when you get politics enmeshed in religion you screw up religion and politics to the detriment of both. Hundreds of years of bloody religious wars in Europe taught the founders of this country that religion can be a dangerous political weapon and they decided that the government should remain neutral on the subject in order to prevent both religious persecution and undue influence. It's worked out pretty well for us up to now, at least better than most.

But that's not the only reason why government and religion are a bad combination, and nowadays it's not necessarily even the most important reason:

In the last six months, a handful of Catholic bishops in the United States have already weighed in on the presidential race by threatening to withhold communion from Catholic politicians who disagree with the church's stance on abortion, a group that includes Senator Kerry.

Other bishops, however, have said that threatening to withhold communion goes too far, and the pope has warned of "the formation of factions within the church" in the United States. The bishops are expected to take up the matter at a closed-door conference this week in Colorado.

I realize that the american catholic church has a number of internal issues that are not related to politics, but surely this is not helping. And catholics aren't the only churches dividing up into political factions. You can see it happening in the episcopal church with gay priests; the methodists and the baptists both have issues with women's rights. Jews are fighting over the country's stand on Iraq. Much of this stuff is purely doctrinal and hasn't got much to do with government. But, our president and his braintrust's obsession with the religion vote as a single constituency, is making these issues more and more explicitly political. It's not only dividing the country, it's dividing the religions themselves.

If you are a religious person you should be very worried about this development. It is not in the American tradition to treat "religion" as a political constituency and govern explicitly from a religious standpoint. This is new. But as much as that might be uncomfortable to despised atheists like me, it should be doubly uncomfortable to believers who care about their religious institutions. Priests and Pastors are as susceptible to vanity and power as anybody else --- perhaps more. These are among the things that caused the schisms in Europe and led to reformations and huge changes. It hardly seems worth it in order to gain temporary influence over some politician whose time in office is short and whose loyalties are necessarily divided.

It's not only that religion is corrupting the government. It's that government is corrupting religion. That's always been the problem.



Thanks to Tristero for the link.

Update: Julia points out that Henry Hyde is making veiled threats to the Catholic church.

She reminds us:

Mr. Hyde is, of course, the gentleman who took the lead in investigating Clinton's blowjob, as well as the gentleman who was discovered while that investigation was going on to have committed a "youthful indiscretion" from the ages of 41 to 46 and precipitated the dissolution of the marriage of a woman with three children.

[...]

...I suspect that the bishops are not all that terribly likely to be led by Mr. Hyde's non-traditional view of Catholic doctrine and the public responsibilities of a moral person in this matter.

Or, for that matter, to lift a finger to help someone who is attempting to blackmail them stay in power.

For the sake of all my Catholic friends, I hope not.






digby 6/13/2004 10:30:00 AM |

Saturday, June 12, 2004

 
Bad Books For Stupid People

This business of using dogs to torture Iraqi prisoners actually is more depraved than is obvious, if you can believe that.

Islam has a prohibition against keeping dogs in the house or touching them. They are considered impure. I would guess that the braintrust who is putting together this new torture regime thought they were being very clever by doing something that "the ayrabs" would find particularly unpleasant.

We know that big tough American guys like Trent Lott wouldn't piss all over themselves if they were tied up naked while a 150 lb snarling German Shepard was allowed to back them into a corner and take a piece out of their flesh. They don't have a problem with dogs like those arabs do.

This is but another example of the crude, stereotypical approach we seem to have taken toward the Iraqis (and undoubtedly the Afghans, as well.) And it is likely because the "intellectuals" who planned and implemented the war don't have a clue.

Sy Hersh mentioned in his May 24th article in the New Yorker one of the many possible reasons why:

"The notion that Arabs are particularly vulnerable to sexual humiliation became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March, 2003, invasion of Iraq. One book that was frequently cited was 'The Arab Mind,' a study of Arab culture and psychology, first published in 1973, by Raphael Patai ... The book includes a 25-page chapter on Arabs and sex, depicting sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression ... The Patai book, an academic told me, was 'the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior.'"

You might as well read a ZOG comic on mudpeople as read this for any true understanding. The passages on sex could have been written during Queen Victoria's reign which is, indeed, the period from which many silly, crude stereotypes about arabs and sex really got off the ground. (The funny thing is that Patai's book portrays arabs as being rigidly sexually repressed when during Victoria's time they were reviled for being scandalously oversexed. It seems that no matter what, westerners believe that arabs are all fucked up when it comes to sex. Unlike we Americans, of course, who define healthy sexuality.)

So, a bunch of second rate minds read a third rate book about people they know nothing about except what they've seen at parties where Ahmad Chalabi is holding court, and they fashion a torture regime based upon a ridiculous thesis that arabs (unlike Western he-men apparently, which is interesting in itself) are particularly uncomfortable with being herded around naked, forced to pretend to masturbate in front of women and piling themselves up in naked pyramids, among other sexually charged, homoerotic acts.

It's always interesting to see people's innermost fears and insecurities projected on to another isn't it? These neocons have some serious issues.






digby 6/12/2004 08:24:00 PM |

 
War Criminal Factoid

I wonder if everyone is aware of the fact that the man who put the "Git Mo Info" into Camp Delta and then took his sophisticated naked men and rabid dogs interrogation techniques to Iraq has no backround in intelligence, prisons or law enforcement?

That's right, General Ripper, the Theodore Eicke of America's gulag is actually an artillery officer. And, he doesn't know fuck-all about interrogation.

From a January article in Vanity Fair by David Rose:

Reporters are not allowed to speak with interrogators or anyone else who deals with intelligence at Gitmo. The only testimony I hear is from General Geoffrey Miller, the task-force commander. "We are developing information of enormous value to the nation," says Miller, a slight, pugnacious man said to be a strict disciplinarian. "We have an enormously thorough process that has very high resolution and clarity. We think we're fighting not only to save and protect our families, but your families also. I think of Gitmo as the counterterrorism-interrogation battle lab."

But Miller's background is in artillery, not intelligence, and senior intelligence officials with long experience in counterterrorism, who spoke to Vanity Fair on condition of anonymity, question his assessment.

[...]

General Miller makes it clear that he does not have access to staff of this [high] caliber. Seven out of 10 of the interrogators working in his "joint interrogation group" are reservists, and they come to Camp Delta straight from a 25-day course at Fort Huachuca. "They're all young people, but they're really committed to winning the mission," Miller says. "Intelligence is a young person's game-you've got to be flexible."

Some seasoned intelligence officials disagree. "Generally, the new hires apprentice in the booths with more experienced guys," says one. "I certainly know of no one at Gitmo having the opportunity or the luxury to be able to prepare an interview for three months." Another had met some of Miller's interrogators. "They were rookies, and none were too keen on the process down there," he says. They knew that any seemingly insignificant tidbit might later turn out to be important, but in general "they just didn't feel that the process was going anywhere fast."

According to General Miller, Gitmo's importance is growing with amazing rapidity: "Last month we gained six times as much intelligence as we did in January 2003. I'm talking about high-value intelligence here, distributed round the world."

Yeah, that "flow of information" is what it's all about.

Gisli Gudjonsson, a professor at London's Institute of Psychiatry, is arguably the world's leading authority in this field. "The longer people are detained, the harsher the conditions, and the worse the lack of a support system, the greater the risk that what they say will be unreliable," he explains. Sometimes one suspect will supply the names of others, who will then in turn confess. Each will appear to corroborate the others' statements, when in fact all are false. This is what happened in the case of the Guildford Four, the subject of Jim Sheridan's movie In the Name of the Father. They were wrongly jailed in 1974 for blowing up two pubs in England and spent 15 years in prison before the British authorities admitted their mistake. "The first thing an interrogator should acknowledge is that you may get false information from someone who is vulnerable."

General Miller, however, sees no cause for concern. "I believe we understand what the truth is. We are very, very good at interrogation... As many of our detainees have realized that what they did was wrong, they have begun to give us information that helps us win the global war on terror."

Spies and psychiatrists may have their doubts, but Donald Rumsfeld is convinced that even the mere foot soldiers imprisoned at Gitmo are "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth." All, he has said, "were involved in an effort to kill thousands of Americans."

Yet since 2002, when these claims were made, 64 of these "vicious killers" have been released, all after many months' detention. John Sifton, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, has traced and interviewed some of them in Afghanistan. They are all, he says, "the most extreme cases of mistaken identity, simply the wrong guys: a farmer, a taxi driver and all his passengers-people with absolutely no connection with the Taliban or terrorism." Several were victims of bounty hunters, who were paid in dollars after abducting "terrorists" and denouncing them to the U.S. military.

Well, I suppose if a failed businessman, ex-drunk, fratrat mama's boy could be considered a strong leader, why not send in an artilleryman to gain "intelligence" from a bunch of small time nobodys. He kept that flow of information up and that's what Mr. Cambone and Ms Rice --- the worst and the dimmest --- wanted.

Update:

BRIGADIER GENERAL MARK KIMMITT, DEPUTY DIRECTOR COALITION OPERATIONS, IRAQ: It was apparent that many of the units that had not been defeated in the war were starting to act up. We started seeing some problems out around the town of Falluja and we were getting a number of security internees into the detention facilities. Large numbers. There was not an expectation during the war that we would have this large number of internees and when it became apparent that this was a process that we would have to start up, and there were some challenges at that time, we called in the expert. The expert was Major General Geoff Miller.

Miller, the artillery officer, was the expert.








digby 6/12/2004 04:02:00 PM |

 
Rogue State Chronicles


Speaking of warcrimes, I just remembered another action premptively absolving Americans of war crimes --- the dramatic "unsigning" of the International Criminal Court Treaty and the subsequent signing of the "American Servicemembers' Protection Act" handily tucked into the "vote for it or you're a traitor" Supplemental Defense Appropriations Act of 2002.

The first action, a highly unusual unilateral repudiation of a signed treaty, was taken in May of 2002:

"Dear Mr. Secretary-General:

This is to inform you, in connection with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court adopted on July 17, 1998, that the United States does not intend to become a party to the treaty. Accordingly, the United States has no legal obligations arising from its signature on December 31, 2000. The United States requests that its intention not to become a party, as expressed in this letter, be reflected in the depositary's status lists relating to this treaty.

Sincerely,

S/John R. Bolton"

Easy as pie. No muss no fuss. We don't like it we just unsign it. Now that's some tort reform.

It must be noted that the Republicans had long opposed the ICC on the grounds that the jack booted, blue helmeted thugs of the UN were coming to kill Americans because we're so strong and so good. It was not surprising that they would do this when they got the chance, although "unsigning" treaties was a bit of a shock. (How innocent we all were in those days.)

However, in May of 2002, we also now know that the US government was actively looking for ways to legalize war crimes under all international treaties and US Law. That puts a little different spin on the unsigning, doesn't it?

And it also makes you wonder about the administration's strong arming for the ASPA, aka the Hague Invasion Act:

The Washington Working Group on the ICC described it this way:

President Bush signed the Supplemental Defense Appropriations Act of 2002 (HR 4775) into law on August 2, 2002. Contained in the measure was a version of the American Servicemembers' Protection Act (ASPA) that is heavily modified from the first version introduced over two years ago (for more information on past versions of ASPA, see the WICC Archives). The ASPA limits US cooperation with the International Criminal Court, restricts US participation in UN peacekeeping, prohibits military assistance to most countries that ratify the ICC Statute, and authorizes the President to use "all means necessary and appropriate" to free from captivity any US or allied personnel held by or on behalf of the ICC -- a provision that has led European leaders to call it "The Hague Invasion Act." However, the final version includes broad waiver authority for the President, strengthened by a stipulation that no part of the bill may interfere with the President's constitutional authority to make foreign policy.

This last part is interesting in that the original versions of the bill, originating during Clinton's term (sponsored by none other than Monsieur Tom DeLay) put huge restrictions on the president's ability to conduct any kind of foreign policy with signators of the ICC treaty. Since then we have learned that the president answers to no one and can set aside any law he chooses. Tom didn't seem bothered by this.

I am not suggesting that there was specific coordination between the congress and the administration to loosen the definition of war crimes so that George W. Bush could assert that he has followed the law when he orders torture (or whatever else his puerile little imagination believes is necessary to defeat Satan.) However, it does reveal the underlying mindset that allowed these budding war criminals to seize the day without any obvious conscience.

The Republicans believe that world leadership is defined by the aggressive use of American power against others and holding itself unaccountable for it, apparantly guided by the absurd fantasy of the mythic, invincible American cowboy. Evidently, nobody told them that the cowboy myth was created by a bunch of pansy-assed, effete dime novelists from New York City.

Shallow hubris has always been their downfall and will be again.

Maybe if some of these tough guys had spent more time actually reading the Canon of Great Dead White Guys instead of complaining that liberal mush-headedness was ruining education they might have learned a thing or two. Even the good old Bullfinch's Mythology would have sufficed to warn them about the fate of nations whose leaders foprget they are not Gods:

The story of Niobe has furnished Byron with a fine illustration of the fallen condition of modern Rome:


"The Niobe of nations! There she stands,
Childless and crownless in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless
Of their heroic dwellers; dost thou flow,
Old Tiber! Through a marble wilderness?
Rise with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress."

digby 6/12/2004 01:40:00 PM |

 
Catchup

Ronald Reagan is still dead. In other news America is now officially a Rogue State.

For the full compendium of news stories, opinion and blogorama on the subject:

Sisyphus Shrugged - torture link dump

In the president's beautiful mind, he didn't order torture because he told the lawyers to make a legal finding that torture was ok and so they found that what we call torture is legal now but it isn't called torture anymore because torture is still illegal. So the president followed the law.

And lots of people pitched in to make it all possible.



digby 6/12/2004 10:18:00 AM |

Friday, June 11, 2004

 
Ignominious Nothing

Aladdin Sane wrote:

Okay, did anyone see how insignificant Dubya seemed at today's memorial? He's probably the only man ever to be upstaged by Brian Mulroney.

Lou-seur.

The stench of defeat is starting to rise off of him. I watched it happen to Carter and Senior. People keep a little distance. They don't look him in the eye. The winner's gloss is replaced by a sheen of desperation. He's got trouble. You can smell it.






digby 6/11/2004 08:29:00 PM |

 
Persuasion

Mike Finley writes a letter to an earnest young conservative and tries to explain what politics are all about. In the process, he explains what life is all about. It's a wonderful post.

Young people are persuadable. They're looking for answers not validation. It's always worth taking the time to talk to them about politics in a thoughtful interested way. By the time you get to be my age, you're already who you're going to be and it's all about finding ways to justify what you've become.

Thanks to the great Avedon Carol for the pointer.




digby 6/11/2004 08:21:00 PM |

 
Da Comrade Norquist!

Kevin at Catch has more on what he calls the Ronald Reagan Lunacy project:

In a statement on the project's Web site, www.reaganlegacy.org, Norquist said, "Ronald Reagan was the greatest leader of the free world in the 20th Century. Franklin Delano Roosevelt left Europe half-enslaved. (Winston) Churchill left Britain in economic decline.

"Ronald Reagan both defeated the Soviet Union and began a period of economic growth that has lasted a generation and continues to this very day."

At first, Norquist backed the idea of replacing Roosevelt's likeness on the dime with Reagan's. But that has met resistance from Democrats.

Chris Butler, executive director of the legacy project, said, "The ten dollar bill is a more prestigious location. The dime is so small you can hardly see the face. The name is given on paper currency."

Chris Butler knows that size does matter.

And it's so hard to tell those presidents apart if you don't have the name written there.

But, let's be serious. The only patriotic thing to do is put Reagan on all the money.




digby 6/11/2004 06:07:00 PM |

 
TBD

Jeffrey Dubner at TAPPED notes in his post called "HOWARD THE GIP" the fact that many in the blogosphere are making comparisons between Howard Dean and Ronald Reagan.

I don't really want to open up this can of worms, but I just have to say it:

The difference between Ronald Reagan and Howard Dean is that Ronald Reagan won two straight national elections in landslides that featured huge crossover numbers of Democrats. Howard Dean failed to get even 20% of the Democratic vote in the primaries. He may be similar to the Ronald Reagan of 1972, but he's a long, long way from the Ronald Reagan of 1980.

Ronald Reagan articulated for the base of his party a very distinct ideological form of conservative Republicanism. His entire worldview was shaped by anti-communism and low taxes and laisse faire capitalism, period. It was, rhetorically speaking, a repudiation of the New Deal and it was a big, big idea that animated many Americans after the hangover of the 60's. (Of course, he didn't govern as he preached --- and people didn't really want him to --- but the fact that he was able to keep his base fanatically loyal despite that is a testament to his political skill.)

Dean on the other hand offered no such big ideas --- not that any of the other Democrats did either. He ran on the "Stop The Republicans Before They Kill Us All" platform, one which I think was very powerful in helping break the trance into which we'd all been forced after 9/11 and the patriotic police started their patrols. I don't underestimate its significance or its importance in jumpstarting the Democratic will to fight back in this particular election.

But, if Dean is to build on the truly amazing loyalty he has engendered among his core group of Democrats, he's going to have to articulate a bigger vision and animate Democrats on a more ideological level.

I'm personally hoping that he will take the job of DNC chaiman in the short term, even if he decides to run again. I think it would be a huge statement to the ossified party bureaucracy and would give a voice to all those who feel left out of the party apparatus presently. That job requires a fighter and that's what Dean is all about.

But, if he is going to have the galvanizing effect on the Democrats that Ronald Reagan had on the Republicans he will have to embrace and articulate a fresh, affirmative, long term vision for the party that goes beyond what he's talked about in the past. He has a base to build upon if he wants to do it.




digby 6/11/2004 03:01:00 PM |

 
The Sweater Is Unravelling


Billmon has been writing about Joe Ryan, the "private contractor" from Abu Ghraib who abruptly stopped posting his "diary" as the scandal broke. Alert readers found a cache of Ryan's previous writings which are interesting mostly for the fact that Ryan is revealed to be dumb as dirt about the country and culture he's dealing with. (And *sigh* he's supposed to be a trained intelligence guy, not some grunt from podunk.)

However, Billmon unearthed this interesting little entry:

March 30: The other big news at work was a message sent to us from Ms. Rice, the National Security Advisor, thanking us for the intelligence that has come out of our shop and noting that our work is being briefed to President Bush on a regular basis.

Now, this could be nonsensical "rally the troops" crapola. However, this article in today's Washington Post makes it much more intriguing:

The head of the interrogation center at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq told an Army investigator in February that he understood some of the information being collected from prisoners there had been requested by "White House staff," according to an account of his statement obtained by The Washington Post.

Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, an Army reservist who took control of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center on Sept. 17, 2003, said a superior military intelligence officer told him the requested information concerned "any anti-coalition issues, foreign fighters, and terrorist issues."

The Army investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, asked Jordan whether it concerned "sensitive issues," and Jordan said, "Very sensitive. Yes, sir," according to the account, which was provided by a government official.

The reference by Jordan to a White House link with the military's scandal-plagued intelligence-gathering effort at the prison was not explored further by Taguba, whose primary goal at that time was to assess the scope of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. The White House was unable to provide an immediate explanation.

[...]

The precise role and mission of Jordan, who is still stationed in Iraq and through his attorneys has declined requests to speak with the news media, remains one of the least well understood facets of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal.

[...]

Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the chief military intelligence officer at the prison, said in his statement to Taguba that Jordan was working on a special project for the office of Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, the top U.S. intelligence official in Iraq. He also described Jordan as "a loner who freelances between military intelligence and military police" officers at the prison.

[...]

But Jordan, in the statement to Taguba, described himself as more of a functionary than a rogue operator. He said that Pappas was really in charge, as evidenced by the fact that he was not responsible for rating other military intelligence officers in reports to superiors and "had no input . . . no responsibility . . . no resources" under his control. He said he was just a "liaison" between Fast and those collecting intelligence at the prison.

What do you suppose the White House staff would have been so impressed with? There have been numerous reports that the only good intel anybody was getting in Iraq during this time came from the field. Abu Ghraib seems to have been almost worthless, which is not surprising since most of the people in there were poor schmucks who got caught up in raids and personal vendettas and wouldn't know an "insurgent" from a ballet dancer.

Specialist Monath and others say they were frustrated by intense pressure from Colonel Pappas and his superiors - Lt. Gen Ricardo Sanchez and his intelligence officer, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast - to churn out a high quantity of intelligence reports, regardless of the quality. "It was all about numbers. We needed to send out more intelligence documents whether they were finished or not just to get the numbers up," he said. Pappas was seen as demanding - waking up officers in the middle of the night to get information - but unfocused, ordering analysts to send out rough, uncorroborated interrogation notes. "We were scandalized," Monath said. "We all fought very hard to counter that pressure" including holding up reports in editing until the information could be vetted.

Ahhh. So, perhaps it was the "flow of intelligence" that was coming out of Abu Ghraib that impressed the White House so much rather than the intelligence itself. Condi Rice is, after all, notorious for not even reading reports as important ans the NIE. I'm sure a "document count" --- the GWOT version of the "body count" was more than sufficient to show "progress":

Miller's mission came shortly after the horrific suicide bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad. He was encouraged by Rumsfeld's senior intelligence aide, Stephen Cambone, to ensure there was "a flow of intelligence" from detainees picked up in Iraq.

Everyone's been speculating that the reason General Fay has requested to be replaced by a higher ranking General is because of a need to interview General Sanchez and army protocol precludes him interviewing someone of a higher rank than he. I'm sure that's at least partly true, although it is more likely that this shuffle is designed to kill more time before the election. But there is also the problem that Fay cannot complete his investigation without being able to talk to his equal in rank, Maj. General Barbara Fast, something which is also prohibited.

And, she may just be the key to the whole story:

Back on May 12, David Hackworth is quotedin the Sydney Morning Herald as saying:

"This is unravelling like a cheap Chinese sweater," said David Hackworth, a retired colonel whose organisation, Soldiers for the Truth, helped bring the abuse story to the US media.

[...]

But Mr Hackworth said he believed that more junior soldiers would soon come forward to "blow the whistle".

He said the general who was in charge of military intelligence in Iraq, Barbara Fast, who has escaped media scrutiny, was likely to become the focus of questions in the next few weeks.

So, what's the story with Fast? Surely she is under increased scrutiny since the Abu Ghraib scandal happened under her command, right?

Last summer, Fast became deputy commander of Fort Huachuca in Arizona, home of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center. But she soon transferred to Iraq as chief military intelligence officer.

In September, Fast set up the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. There, detainees were questioned for whatever light they could shed on the insurgency.

Fast's involvement, if any, in the abuse remains unclear. She was in charge of military intelligence officers at the prison, including Col. Thomas Pappas, who is accused in an Army report of being "directly or indirectly responsible" for the abuse. According to the New York Times, Pappas emerged from meetings with Fast and Sanchez "clutching his face as if in pain."

Fast also had oversight of civilian interrogators at the prison, two of whom are implicated. And another female general says Fast was largely to blame for the overcrowding at Abu Ghraib.

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who ran Iraq's prison system until February, said Fast refused to release prisoners who were no longer security threats and ordered them "back in the box" for more questioning

Quite a few of the prisoners who were tortured and abused wouldn't have even been there if it weren't for Fast. I wonder if "quantity" over "quality" may have been her watchword with prisoners as well as bureaucratic reports to the White House staff and pentagon command?

Whatever it was, it was enough to get her promoted:

In February, as investigators were deep into their still-secret probe of prisoner abuse, the Senate confirmed Fast's promotion to major general. On March 1, Sanchez pinned the second star on Fast's collar in a ceremony seen via videoconferencing at Fort Huachuca, where her husband watched, and at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, near where her parents now live.

At the same time, it was announced that Fast would return to Fort Huachuca this summer in the plum post of commanding general.

"She's done outstanding things," said Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defense secretary, "and I expect more in the future."

God help us.




digby 6/11/2004 12:29:00 PM |

 
The Mook Vote Rises

Via Campaign Journal I see that the New Democrat Network has released a new polling memo featuring an interesting tidbit:

The Stern Gang. Potentially offsetting the conservative dominance of the radio waves is Howard Stern. The nationally-syndicated radio host is listened to by 17 percent of likely voters, and nationally, they would support Kerry over Bush by a margin of 53 percent to 43 percent. In the battleground states, their preference for Kerry is even stronger, backing him by a margin of 59 percent to 37 percent.

More importantly, one-quarter of all likely voting Stern listeners are swing voters. This means that four percent of likely voters this fall are swing voters who listen to Howard Stern, showing Stern's potential ability to impact the race. Generally, likely voters who are Stern listeners are: 2 to 1 male to female; 40 percent Democrats, 26 percent Republicans, and 34 percent Independents; more liberal and less conservative than the average voter; significantly younger than the average voter (two-thirds are under 50 and 40 percent are under 35); more diverse; and more driven in their vote by economic issues.

Sleeping giant, I tell you. I have some relatives who live in Nevada -- early 30's, apolitical mostly, libertarian by instinct, hard core Howard, Tool and Quentin Tarantino fans.

I don't know if they are representative, but their big issues are freedom of speech, the religious right, Iraq and The Patriot Act. One has never voted before and the other two considered themselves Republican until now. Howard has them all fired up about this election and they can't wait to vote against Junior.




digby 6/11/2004 08:47:00 AM |

Thursday, June 10, 2004

 
The Ronald Reagan States of America

Via Catch.com, I found the awesome, majestic Ronald Reagan Circle in Tarnow, Poland, courtesy of "The Legacy Project."

I agree that we should have one of these in every single town in America! How could we do any less than this for the greatest president America has, no --- the greatest leader the world has ever known.

A fitting, fitting tribute. Thanks Grover.






digby 6/10/2004 11:26:00 PM |

 
"He looked frightened"

Brad DeLong has a must read post up featuring an e-mail from a reader who heard Sy Hersh give a lecture at the University of Chicago.

DeLong says:

If what it reports is true, then once again it looks like the Bush administration is worse than I had imagined--even though I thought I had taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is always worse than one imagines. Either Seymour Hersh is insane, or we have an administration that needs to be removed from office not later than the close of business today.

digby 6/10/2004 11:01:00 PM |

 
Your terrorist has no regard for human life. Not even his own.


I missed his show last night and didn't get a chance until just now to catch it, but I just have to say, "bless you Jon Stewart."

He's the only voice I've heard outside the blogosphere who shows the proper incredulity that the United States of America is actually having a national debate about whether we should legally torture people, a large number of whom don't seem to be guilty of anything more than being at the wrong place and the wrong time.

9/11 was bad. But, we don't have to go this far. This War On Terror has gone completely over the top and it's getting frighteningly Kubrickian.

I honestly don't think we could have had a worse administration to be in power during a terrorist attack. Bin Laden was very lucky that he waited until he had a president who would overreact to such an extent that we'd destroy ourselves almost immediately. Now he knows that all he has to do is pop up and say boo once in a while and we'll go all to pieces.








digby 6/10/2004 07:11:00 PM |

 
Sonofabitch:

Q: Mr. President, I wanted to return to the question of torture. What we've learned from these memos this week is that the Department of Justice lawyers and the Pentagon lawyers have essentially worked out a way that U.S. officials can torture detainees without running afoul of the law. So when you say that you want the U.S. to adhere to international and U.S. laws, that's not very comforting. This is a moral question: Is torture ever justified?

BUSH: Look, I'm going to say it one more time. Maybe I can be more clear. The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That ought to comfort you.

We're a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might look at these laws. And that might provide comfort for you. And those were the instructions from me to the government.

Makes you proud to be an American to have a snotty, little asshole of a president refuse to say whether he thinks torture is immoral.

But, why should any of us be surprised:

From: "Devil May Care" by Tucker Carlson, Talk Magazine, September 1999, p. 106

"Bush's brand of forthright tough-guy populism can be appealing, and it has played well in Texas. Yet occasionally there are flashes of meanness visible beneath it.

While driving back from the speech later that day, Bush mentions Karla Faye Tucker, a double murderer who was executed in Texas last year. In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. 'Did you meet with any of them?' I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. 'No, I didn't meet with any of them,' he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. 'I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?' 'What was her answer?' I wonder.

'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, 'don't kill me.'

I must look shocked -- ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel, even for someone as militantly anticrime as Bush -- because he immediately stops smirking.

'It's tough stuff,' Bush says, suddenly somber, 'but my job is to enforce the law.' As it turns out, the Larry King-Karla Faye Tucker exchange Bush recounted never took place, at least not on television. During her interview with King, however, Tucker did imply that Bush was succumbing to election-year pressure from pro-death penalty voters. Apparently Bush never forgot it. He has a long memory for slights." [Carlson, Talk, 9/99]

And he always has been a nasty little fucker, too.






digby 6/10/2004 03:59:00 PM |

 
First, Do No Harm

In this NY Times op-ed, called Physician, Turn Thyself In, the writer alerts us to another phenomenon that I have wondered about of late concerning torture --- the role of the medical profession.

I wrote about this earlier in this post back on May 22nd, in which I excerpted this NY Times article:

Much of the evidence of abuse at the prison came from medical documents. Records and statements show doctors and medics reporting to the area of the prison where the abuse occurred several times to stitch wounds, tend to collapsed prisoners or see patients with bruised or reddened genitals.

Two doctors recognized that a detainee's shoulder was hurt because he had his arms handcuffed over his head for what they said was "a long period." They gave him an injection of painkiller, and sent him to an outside hospital for what appeared to be a dislocated shoulder, but did not report any suspicions of abuse. One medic, Staff Sgt. Reuben Layton, told investigators that he had found the detainee handcuffed in the same position on three occasions, despite instructing Specialist Graner to free the man.

"I feel I did the right thing when I told Graner to get the detainee uncuffed from the bed," Sergeant Layton told investigators.

Sergeant Layton also said he saw Specialist Graner hitting a metal baton against the leg wounds of a detainee who had been shot. He did not report that incident.

Sgt. Neil Wallin, another medic, recorded on Nov. 14: "Patient has blood down front of clothes and sandbag over head," noting three wounds requiring 13 stitches, above his eye, on his nose and on his chin.

Sergeant Wallin later told investigators that when he got to the prison: "I observed blood on the wall near a metal weld, which I believed to be the place where the detainee received his injury. I do not know how he was injured or if it was done by himself or another."

He also told investigators that he had seen male detainees forced to wear women's underwear and that he had seen a video in which a prisoner known to smear himself with his own feces repeatedly banged his head against the wall, "very hard."

Helga Margot Aldape-Moreno, a nurse, told investigators that in September she reported to the cell to tend to a prisoner having a panic attack, and that, opening the door, she saw naked Iraqis in a human pyramid, with sandbags over their heads. Military police officers were yelling at the detainees, she said.

Ms. Aldape-Moreno tended to the prisoner, she said, then left the room and did not report what she saw until the investigation began in January.

Today, the Washington Post reports that interrogators have been given access to detainee's medical files, presumably so that information contained therein can be used to extract information. Accroding to medical ethicists interviewed for the story, this is strictly and unequivocally unethical:

How military interrogators used the information is unknown. But a previously undisclosed Defense Department memo dated Oct. 9 cites Red Cross complaints that the medical files "are being used by interrogators to gain information in developing an interrogation plan." Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the facility at the time, denied the allegations, according to the memo.

[...]

An account pieced together from confidential documents and sources familiar with the matter shows that a Red Cross team discovered the sharing of the medical records in a visit to the Guantanamo Bay medical facility in mid-2003, during Miller's tenure there.

The Red Cross team's task, repeated at prisons throughout the world, was to assess how the complex's medical facility functioned. The medical team studied equipment and treatment options, speaking with detainees and U.S. military medical staff. Other Red Cross experts monitored other aspects of prison life.

The team's mission was not to treat detainees, but to ensure that they received adequate care. If a prisoner had persistent headaches, was he able to see a doctor? If he suffered from psychological problems -- 21 captives have tried to kill themselves at Guantanamo Bay -- was he receiving treatment?

U.S. military doctors told Red Cross medics that interrogators had access to prisoners' medical records, according to two people knowledgeable about the issue who demanded anonymity because details of the interrogations and Red Cross monitoring are kept secret. As one source said, the doctors "were very honest about that" and "some people expressed concern."

Daryl Matthews, a civilian psychiatrist who visited Guantanamo Bay in May 2003 at the invitation of the Pentagon as part of a medical review team, described the prisoners' records generated by military physicians as similar to those kept by civilian physicians. Matthews said they contain names, nationalities, and histories of physical and psychological problems, as well as notes about current complaints and prescriptions.

Matthews said an individual's records would routinely list psychologists' comments about conditions such as phobias, as well as family details, including the names and ages of a spouse or children.

Such information, he said, would give interrogators "tremendous power" over prisoners. Matthews said he was disturbed that his team, which issued a generally favorable report on the base's medical facility, was not told patient records were shared with interrogators.

Asked what use nonmedical personnel could make of the files, he replied: "Nothing good."

The practice made some military medical workers at Guantanamo Bay uncomfortable. "Not everyone was unified on this," said one person aware of the situation. "It creates a tension. You have people with many different opinions."

There is another aspect of this that is also troublesome, aside from the apparent lack of professional ethics on the part of all the participants, is the fact that there appears to be drugs being used to coerce information or confessions and it seems likely that medical professionals are taking part in the administration of them.

Various reports from those who were detained either in Afghanistan and let go or transported to Guantanamo from other places bring this up over and over again. According to the Washington Post's analysis of the torture memo:

The law says torture can be caused by administering or threatening to administer "mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the sense of personality." The Bush lawyers advised, though, that it "does not preclude any and all use of drugs" and "disruption of the senses or personality alone is insufficient" to be illegal. For involuntarily administered drugs or other psychological methods, the "acts must penetrate to the core of an individual's ability to perceive the world around him," the lawyers found.

We have apparently been operating on this premise, because there have quite a few accounts of drugs being forcibly used on prisoners:

"Finally, on 1 May, he was dressed in goggles and an orange jump suit, injected with a sedative and flown to Guantanamo Bay." The Guardian May 16, 2004


"Mr. Shah alleged that the Americans had given him injections and tablets prior to interrogations. 'They used to tell me I was mad,' the 23-year-old told the BBC in his native village in Dir district near the Afghan border. 'I was given injections at least four or five times as well as different tablets. I don't know what they were meant for.'" BBC May 22, 2004


"Many detainees were given regular injections, after which 'they would just sit there like in a daze and sometimes you would see them shaking'. He [al-Harith] said he was beaten and put in isolation because he refused injections and was sometimes forcibly given unidentified drugs." Sun Herald (Sydney) March 14, 2004 Sunday

"A British detainee recently released from Guantanamo Bay has said that Habib had told him he had been subjected to beatings, electric shocks and injected with drugs while in Egypt." The Age (Melbourne) May 24, 2004


"A team of intelligence service psychiatrists, psychologists, behavioural scientists and psychoanalysts known as "the specialists" have prepared a detailed study of how the interrogators can break him...Truth drugs will be administered intravenously shortly before Saddam's interrogation begins - probably in the new year. Drugs were used early on in their captivity on Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to try to discover where Osama bin Laden is hiding." The Advertiser December 20, 2003

The good news is that we are being "compassionate conservatives." Despite the fact that virtually eveyone (except for General Ripper) admits that there has been almost no good intelligence gleaned from the prisoners in Guantanamo and even our own soldiers have been beaten severely in training exercizes, we can rest assured that the medical personnel are looking after the prisoners well being:

In the last six weeks alone, he said, three inmates have tried to hang themselves in their cells with camp-issued "comfort items" such as towels and sheets, and another tried to slit his wrists with a plastic razor. None has succeeded.

Hoey said camp doctors are treating some detainees for psychological disorders and have administered antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs.

digby 6/10/2004 02:52:00 PM |

Wednesday, June 09, 2004

 
The Agenda


I'm sure many blog readers, like me, spend an inordinate amount of time reading about current events. The Iraq war, terrorism, a presidential election and all the other stories, many of which I barely have time to skim, much less write about or even think much about, all start to run into one another in my mind after a while. It becomes a sort of pageant for my amusement on some level, an entertainment from which I find interesting nuggets to amuse myself and my readers and friends. I'm laughing about silly things and ranting about outrageous things and it all becomes part of one long continuous comment that loses meaning with each pithy little observation I add to it.

And then I read something that shocks me, which is not easy to do since it seems that everything is, or should be, shocking on one level or another these days.

This torture memo (pdf) shocked me. And it shocked me not because of its endorsement of torture, we knew something about that already, indeed we've seen pictures of it. No, strangely, it shocked me because it was the product of a bureaucratic "working group" and it was delivered in the dry prose of a government report on the legality of setting aside an executive order on train travel requirements. But this "working group," consisting of lawyers from throughout the executive branch, was tasked with something a little bit different than your average government project. Its job was defining the legal limits of the president's authority to order people to be tortured.

They had meetings at which I'm sure they all believed very sincerely that they were doing important work on the War on Terror. I'm sure they worked long hours and diligently analyzed the law and offered their advice to the president and secretary of defense with nothing but the good of the country in their minds. And they produced a 50+ page paper from which, I understand, only one person --- the state department representative -- dissented.

And that report, this product of a bureaucratic "working group" of lawyers is so deeply depraved and contrary to American values that one wonders if at any time during the discussions if someone had stood up and said, "we're talking about TORTURE for God's sake!" they would have produced a report at all.

Perhaps they wouldn't have. But, more importantly, I seriously doubt that anyone stood up and said such a thing. After all, this was being dryly discussed in the op-ed pages of major newspapers and in the weekly magazines as if it were just another method of warfare --- like terrorism itself. I'm sure these fine bureaucrats and political appointees believed they were doing their duty.

People are undoubtedly already in the process of wearing out the term "banality of evil" (if it has not already been trod over until its meaning is completely eradicated.) And I have already been taken to task by some who continue to believe that any comparison of the Bush administration to Naziism or totalitarianism in general is some sort of cheating. But, totalitarianism, incipient or full blown, has many features. Legal torture is one of them.

Here we have a "working group" of government lawyers tasked to find out what, if any, legal obstacles there are to presidential orders to torture prisoners in the war on terrorism. They found that the president of the United States has the unlimited power to set aside the laws of the land within his capacity as commander in chief. As has been noted by others, this general idea was explicit in the Nazi Fuehrerprinzip and is implied in what Republican legal theorists similarly like to call the "unitary executive." The American government has, up to now, never openly embraced such a concept.


Michael Froomkin and other legal experts have examined the final product of this 'working group" and found the legal reasoning seriously flawed as one might expect. Froomkin concludes his review with this:

If anyone in the higher levels of government acted in reliance on this advice, those persons should be impeached. If they authorized torture, it may be that they have committed, and should be tried for, war crimes. And, as we learned at Nuremberg, “I was just following orders” is NOT (and should not be) a defense.

Whatever the legal merits (and I'm sure Froomkin is correct --- this is an abomination) there is something even more frightening at work, I believe, than following bad legal advice and committing a war crime. It's the fact that a group of people working together from all different parts of our government came to this conclusion apparently without serious controversy.

I can't get past the fact that this is the product of a "working group" of lawyers, all of them highly educated, presumably intelligent, decent hardworking Americans who love their country. And, not one of them resigned their post rather than participate in creating a legal justification for torture. And, it was not just an abstraction to them; they went into great detail about the precise amount of pain that was to be allowed. There are long passages in which the meaning of "severe pain" is discussed, the effect of long term mental damage is assessed and where the justification of the infliction of long term damage is defined as a matter of intent rather than result. The Washington Post describes it like this:

In the view expressed by the Justice Department memo, which differs from the view of the Army, physical torture "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." For a cruel or inhuman psychological technique to rise to the level of mental torture, the Justice Department argued, the psychological harm must last "months or even years."

Under this definition you could for instance, shove bamboo shoots under someone's fingernails, pull their hair out of their head in clumps or beat them with a hose. According to the memo, you can force hallucinogenic drugs on them. You can repeatedly threaten them or their families with death. The imagination is boundless under this definition. After all, who knows how another person experiences pain, and that is what underlies their definition of torture --- how the victim experiences his pain.

What was the process by which they came to these dry legalistic definition of when, how and where on is allowed to inflict terrible pain as long as it doesn't reach the level of intensity that would accompany serious physical injury or organ failure? Did they discuss this around a conference table over a take-out Chinese dinner? Did they all nod their heads and take notes and write memos and have conference calls and send e-mails on the subject of what exactly the definition of "severe pain" is? Did they take their kid to school on the way to the meeting in which they finalized a report that says the president of the United States has the unlimited authority to order the torture of anyone he wants? Did they tell jokes on the way out?

These nice people with nice backrounds and nice jobs spent weeks contemplating how to legally torture human beings. Then they went home and watched television and ate dinner and went to bed and made love to their wife or husband and got up and did it again because it was their job and their duty to find ways to legally justify it:

A former senior administration official involved in discussions about CIA interrogation techniques said Bush's aides knew he wanted them to take an aggressive approach.

"He felt very keenly that his primary responsibility was to do everything within his power to keep the country safe, and he was not concerned with appearances or politics or hiding behind lower-level officials," the official said. "That is not to say he was ready to authorize stuff that would be contrary to law. The whole reason for having the careful legal reviews that went on was to ensure he was not doing that."

These last few days in which I've been pondering the unique horror I feel at this latest revelation, I was reminded (of all things) of a quote from George Will recently, in which he condemned the admnistration for being unable to think:

This administration be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts.

I doubt that Will intended anyone to make this connection to his phrase but it is, of course, the central thesis of Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Her observations of Eichman were of a "ludicrous" person defined by what she called his "thoughtlessness" as opposed to stupidity. He was filled with contradiction, spoke in nothing but bromides and cliches and believed that he had done his duty to the end. He was, in Arendt's view, the perfect embodiment of the banality of evil. A company man, a bureaucrat, a regular guy, the kind of man who would join a "working group" to find legal justification for torture without having one second of stricken conscience about it. Indeed, he was too shallow, too dully conformist to ever question himself about anything and thus even have a conscience. Arendt expounded on this theme in "Thinking and Moral Considerations" in which she says:

Evil is a surface phenomenon, and instead of being radical, it is merely extreme. We resist evil by not being swept away by the surface of things, by stopping ourselves and beginning to think, that is, by reaching another dimension than the horizon of everyday life. In other words, the more superficial someone is, the more likely will he be to yield to evil. An indication of such superficiality is the use of clichés, and Eichmann, ...was a perfect example.

These people who set about legalizing inhumane behavior on behalf of a president on whom they confer absolute power to order it at will are as shallow and evil as the cliché spouting president who demanded it. The slippery slope to totalitarianism started in a conference room where coffee and donuts and microsoft power point presentations on torture and pain were on the agenda one morning.






digby 6/09/2004 10:22:00 PM |

Monday, June 07, 2004

 
The Right Man For The Job

Demosthenes posits the theory that the executive power grab revealed by the WSJ yesterday is surprising only in the fact that it hasn't happened before. He says it's related to the weakness in our system that holds the head of government and the head of state in the same office.

When crises arise, then, there is both the opportunity and, lets face it, a clear desire for the head of state to "take charge and lead the people". If the problems of politics get in the way, then the president has a nearly irresistable opportunity to sweep those "problems" away, which usually means "emergency powers" of some sort. Once gained, these powers are very rarely given up, as there are always new "crises" to exploit to retain them.

These sorts of events are incredibly common. In fact, they're so common that the fact that the United States has never had this happen has baffled political scientists since the phenomenon was noticed. There are a number of theories as to why, but my own favorite stems from an American military tradition, which is that soldiers swear loyalty to the Constitution, not the president, despite being their "commander in chief". One of the most treasured aspects of the American system is its balance of power between judiciary, executive and legislature; while its effectiveness can sometimes be questioned, it's important in that it enshrines the idea that the United States is a country where the laws stand above the president; that the symbolic power of a head of state will never confer absolute power upon him. "L'etat c'est moi" does not apply. It is, perhaps, the only way in which one can have a powerful president without having the system fly apart in the face of crisis.

Perhaps this weakness in our system is only likely to be exploited by a special kind of chief executive, the kind who takes office in an anomolous fashion and then governs radically without a mandate from the people; the kind who sees his legitimacy stemming from God rather than the ballot box; the kind who is convinced that he is leading a great crusade rather than running a democracy on behalf of it's citizens.

Perhaps it took the unique combination of an attack on the country and a president of limited intellect and legitimacy to go that extra mile.




digby 6/07/2004 09:55:00 PM |

 
Spoiled Jerk

Bush bonds with leaders who see the world as he does, who in his view "get" the war on terrorism, who talk simply and straightforwardly and do not break any private commitments and understandings, officials said. Leaders who are willing to accept his point of view may be able to modify it somewhat, or gain something in return, but those looking for real negotiations or give-and-take are liable to come away disappointed, officials and diplomats say.

According to one former White House official, Bush appears to have a simple test for evaluating his fellow leaders: Good people or bad people? Do they have a vision for their countries or not?

"Whenever he talked about leaders, these were the categories he used," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He said a CIA official who regularly attended the president's daily intelligence briefings first pointed out to him Bush's use of these terms, which was then confirmed by his own experience as a senior policymaker in the White House.

[...]

Bush puts a lot of stock in his gut-level assessments of his fellow leaders. The fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin treasures a cross given by his mother -- and had it blessed in Israel -- convinced Bush he could deal with the former KGB operative. As a result, Bush declared after their first meeting that Putin was "very straightforward and trustworthy" and he was able to "get a sense of his soul."

Since then, Bush has continued to have close relations with Putin, who also will attend the summit, even as questions have arisen about whether Putin was smothering Russia's fragile democracy. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that the relationship is "so broad and deep, the presidents could talk about anything on the map" when they meet at the summit.

Jayzuz. I cringe every time I think of this silly little man making judgments based on his "gut" reaction. What possible qualification does his "gut" have to do anything but digest peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? It's not as if his instincts ever led him to any success at anything until they bought him a governorship in 1994.

Read the whole sickening article, which outlines his "relationship" with various world leaders. He comes off as if he sees the world as high school and he's the BMOC dumb jock -- throwing his weight around, disrespectful of anybody who doesn't see things his way, stupid, crude and thuggish. (Another contrast with Reagan. Reagan didn't show disgusting manners in foreign countries. For such a blue blood, Bush is a real pig.)

And for someone who apparently judges leaders on their "vision" for their countries, does anybody know what Bush's is for this country? World domination? The Rapture? Hell in a handbasket?





digby 6/07/2004 09:44:00 PM |

 
Getting Old

Jesse says, " I know (from personal experience) that conservatives tend to take the elitist attitude that if you disagree with them, it's because you're either young or immature."

Jesse, you are obviously to young and immature to know what you are talking about.

Actually, you know exactly what you are talking about, but you will find that conservatives come up with something even more insulting as you get older. They simply say that you are ill informed and stupid. Everything becomes an epistomological knife fight because you can't possible know what you claim to know because you aren't reading, watching, mind-melding the right things. And if, perchance, you are a complete freak like me and actually read, watch and mind meld that right wing drivel, unless you completely eschew any other type of drivel you are being brainwashed and cannot be relied upon to know reality from never-never land.

This argument is the basis for the Right Wingnut mantras "youcontinuetoignoretheFACTS", "youcan'tstandtolookattheFACTS", "thesearetheFACTSprovemewrong."

And, what's worse is that when you get older they haul out the "if you're not a liberal when you're young you have no heart, but if you're not a conservative when you're old you have no head" chestnut. (To which I usually think, "no, if you're a conservative, young or old, you get no head," which I'm quite sure must be true judging from their hysterical reaction to Clinton's little hallway forays.)

In any case, conservatives remain condescending and rude throughout your life. Growing older won't cure it.




digby 6/07/2004 05:22:00 PM |

 
The Third Degree

It's interesting that the crack lawyers who devised this new immunity from war crimes evoked the Nuremberg defense. Aside from the obvious fact that the Nuremberg defense failed spectacularly, it is also interesting because one of the war crimes the Nuremberg defendents, which included the SS, SA and the Gestapo as well as individuals, were tried and convicted of were using what they believed to be a legally prescribed interrogation method they called "the third degree." I'm sure you've all heard of it:

The GESTAPO and SD conducted third degree interrogations. On 26 October 1939 an order to all GESTAPO offices from the RSHA signed Mueller, "by order," in referring to execution of protective custody during the war, stated in part:


"In certain cases, the Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of the German Police will order flogging in addition to detention in a concentration camp. Orders of this kind will, in the future, also be transmitted to the State Police District Office concerned. In this case, too, there is no objection to spreading the rumour of this increased punishment. ***" (1531-PS)

On 12 June 1942 the Chief of the Security Police and SD, through Mueller, published an order authorizing the use of third degree methods in interrogating where preliminary investigation indicates that the prisoner could give information on important facts such as subversive activities, but not to extort confessions of the prisoner's own crimes. The order stated in part:


"*** 2. Third degree may, under this supposition, only be employed against Communists, Marxists, Jehovah's Witnesses, saboteurs, terrorists, members of resistance movements, parachute agents, anti-social elements, Polish or Soviet-Russian loafers or tramps. In all other cases, my permission must first be obtained.
"*** 4. Third degree can, according to the circumstances, consist amongst other methods, of:

very simple diet (bread and water)
hard bunk
dark cell
deprivation of sleep
exhaustive drilling also in flogging (for more than 20 strokes a doctor must be consulted)." (1531-PS)

George W. Bush has been making comparisons between the "War On Terrorism" and WWII. I didn't realize that in this sequel we were the Germans.


Update: Just in case Rummy's lawyers need a head start on a Nuremberg defense for third degree interrogation war crimes, here's the one the German defense lawyers used. I think they may actually be familiar with it already:

The prosecution accuses the Gestapo of having employed the third degree method of interrogation. I had already spoken about this when I discussed the question whether the methods employed by the Gestapo were criminal. At this point I have the following to say with reference to this accusation:

The documents submitted by the prosecution made it perfectly clear that it was only permissible to employ third degree methods of interrogation in exceptional cases, only with the observance of certain protective guarantees and only by order of higher authorities. Furthermore, it was not permissible to use these methods in order to force a confession; they could only be employed in the case of a refusal to give information vital to the interests of the State, and finally, only in the event of certain factual evidence.

Entire sections of the Gestapo, such as the counter- intelligence police and frontier police, have never carried out third degree interrogations. In the occupied territories, where occupation personnel were daily threatened by attempts on their lives, more severe methods of interrogation were permitted, if it was thought that in this manner the lives of German soldiers and officials might be protected against such threatened attempts. Torture of any kind was never officially condoned. It can be gathered from the affidavits submitted, for instance, numbers 2, 3, 4, 61, and 63, and from the testimonies of witnesses Knochen, Hermann, Straub, Albath, and Best, that the officials of the Gestapo were continuously instructed during training courses and at regular intervals, to the effect that any ill-treatment during interrogations, in fact any ill-treatment of detainees in general, was prohibited.

See? The Germans didn't believe in ill-treatment of "detainees," either. But, sometimes they just had to use harsher measures when the security of the state was at stake. Surely, anyone can understand that.

Not that they didn't have a few bad apples who took things too far from time to time. Doesn't everybody?








digby 6/07/2004 03:35:00 PM |

 
From The Beginning

I posted a short piece last month about Rumsfeld approving extraordinary "interrogation techniques" from the LA Times. Looking at it now, the timing implies that this is the same shocking memo that the Wall Street Journal reported on in detail today.

What the Wall Street Journal Story doesn't say is that the permission to torture was sought by none other than our good friend General Geoff D. Ripper, the man currently in charge of cleaning up Abu Ghraib prison. From the earlier LA Times story:

Rumsfeld approved in April 2003 a request five months earlier by Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who had arrived at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in November 2002 to oversee prisoners. Miller sought permission to use a broad range of extraordinary 'nondoctrinal' questioning techniques on an Al Qaeda detainee, a general with the Pentagon's Judge Advocate General's office said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

[...]

The effort to define how far interrogators can go in pressuring detainees for information without violating international law exposed the rift between interrogators and JAG lawyers, who considered some of the techniques Miller proposed to be illegal.

'You had intelligence officials that might have been pulling in a direction that was different from the lawyers,' Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said. 'It's a competitive process.'

[...]


Rumsfeld trimmed the list of requested interrogation techniques by about one-third, and he insisted that he personally approve a 'handful' of techniques, the senior Pentagon lawyer and the JAG official said. Rumsfeld approved the revised proposal in April 2003."

I commented at the end of my earlier piece that if it is true that Rumsfeld himself signed off on specific acts of torture it was the kind of evidence that war crimes trials were made of. Silly me. Today's WSJ story reveals that the administration knew very well they were giving General Ripper explicit permission to commit war crimes and went to extraordinary lengths to fashion legal loopholes in order to set Don, Dick and Geoffrey's minds at ease that they couldn't be prosecuted. And they did it all under the newly discovered doctrine of Presidential Infallibillity.

To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a "presidential directive or other writing" that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

Unbenownst to anyone up to now, the US Constitution is apparently the basis for a legal dictatorship. Very interesting indeed that such a radical new interpretation of presidential power should be "discovered" by an administration that was installed by a 5 to 4 vote by the Supreme Court, isn't it?

What's the old saying, "begin as you mean to go on?" They went on as they began, all right, using all levers of power in service of their desired goals regardless of legal precedent or constitutional legitimacy. We shouldn't be surprised. This is what people who pursue power for its own sake always do.





digby 6/07/2004 03:32:00 PM |

 
Hitch's Epiphany

Christopher Hitchens calls Reagan a senile old lizard, dumb as as a stump and worse. He compiles a list of Reagan's greatest hits from Iran Contra to greenlighting the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

But, then he remembers all the silly liberals who wished Democrats had been in power when the Soviets threw in the towel and has "been wondering ever since not just about the stupidity of American politics, but about the need of so many American intellectuals to prove themselves clever by showing that they are smarter than the latest idiot in power, or the latest Republican at any rate."

He used to be a pretty tough fellow but the inherent cognitive dissonance associated with Junior worship is making him soft and mushy. He's reduced to claiming repressed memories of the day he discovered that his intellectual superiority demanded that he embrace dumb luck as the guiding principle in the fight against totalitarianism. I think I finally understand why he became a drunk.






digby 6/07/2004 11:00:00 AM |

 
Con Artists In Arms

EMPHYRIO has all the goods on Chalabi's bosom pal and fellow INC flim flammer, Francis Brooke, the man who is now under indictment from the Iraqi police --- whatever that means.

What's truly creepy is that this guy seems to be some kind of avenging fundamentalist firebreather on top of everything else (or so he says):

Francis Brooke says he would support the elimination of Saddam, even if every single Iraqi were killed in the process. He means it. "I'm coming from a place different from you," he says in the soft southern drawl one hears from preachers and con men. "I believe in good and evil. That man is absolute evil and must be destroyed."

It has become clear to me that the neocon intellectual infrastructure was actually some kind of affirmative action program for right wing freaks of all stripes who didn't have any business connections. How else can you explain the absurdity of a fundamentalist Left Behinder becoming the errand boy to a cosmopolitan, muslim con artist like Chalabi?

I'm beginning to think that the smart thing to do rather than build a media message apparatus, would be to simply infiltrate the one the GOP has already funded and start using it for ourselves. How hard can it be to get a sinecure at one of these thinktankmedia operations? Clearly, you don't have to have any experience or track record --- look at Brooke. This could be the answer folks. They won't even know it's happened.





digby 6/07/2004 12:05:00 AM |

Sunday, June 06, 2004

 
I'm Shocked

Oh, what a big asshole I am for even suggesting that the Republicans would wrap Reagan's legacy around Junior like a mink coat on a WalMart greeter.

From the shores of Normandy to President Bush's campaign offices outside Washington, Mr. Bush and his political advisers embraced the legacy of Ronald Reagan on Sunday, suggesting that even in death, Mr. Reagan had one more campaign in him — this one at the side of Mr. Bush.

In France, Mr. Bush heralded the late president as a "gallant leader in the cause of freedom," and lionized him in an interview with Tom Brokaw. In Washington, Mr. Bush's aides said that it was Ronald Reagan as much as another president named Bush who was the role model for this president, and they talked of a campaign in which Mr. Reagan would be at least an inspirational presence


Mr. Bush's advisers said Sunday that the intense focus on Mr. Reagan's career that began upon the news of his death on Saturday would remind Americans of what Mr. Bush's supporters have long described as the similarities between the two men as straight-talking, ideologically driven leaders with swagger and a fixed idea of what they wanted to do with their office.

"Americans are going to be focused on President Reagan for the next week," said Ed Gillespie, the Republican national chairman. "The parallels are there. I don't know how you miss them."

Yes they are. Except Reagan, it turns out, had an excuse.

Other Republicans worry that Bush might not hold up so well by comparison:

Some Republicans said the images of a forceful Mr. Reagan giving dramatic speeches on television provided a less-than-welcome contrast with Mr. Bush's own appearances these days, and that it was not in Mr. Bush's interest to encourage such comparisons. That concern was illustrated on Sunday, one Republican said, by televised images of Mr. Reagan's riveting speech in Normandy commemorating D-Day in 1984, followed by Mr. Bush's address at a similar ceremony on Sunday.

"Reagan showed what high stature that a president can have — and my fear is that Bush will look diminished by comparison," said one Republican sympathetic to Mr. Bush, who did not want to be quoted by name criticizing the president.

No kidding. As I've been watching the mediawhore self-serving treacle marathon, I've been struck by just how good Reagan really was on television. He had tremendous confidence before the camera, as a professional actor would, and performed the role of president with humor and flair. Compared to him Junior is playing the second lead in the Midland Junior High version of "Grease." Let's face it, even when Bush was deep into his Top Gun phase, he looked more like a member of the Village People than the steely-eyed rocket man. He can't even ride a fucking horse, fergawdsake.

Reagan looked good in the costume. Bush always looks like he's swimming in suits a size too big. They're just not in the same league.






digby 6/06/2004 08:25:00 PM |

 
Whoopsie Daisy:

The United States and its allies are winning some battles in the terrorism war but may be losing the broader struggle against Islamic extremism that is terrorism's source, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Saturday.

The troubling unknown, he said, is whether the extremists -- whom he termed ''zealots and despots'' bent on destroying the global system of nation-states -- are turning out newly trained terrorists faster than the United States can capture or kill them.

''It's quite clear to me that we do not have a coherent approach to this,'' Rumsfeld said at an international security conference."

Should we put this quote on every campaign web-site, bumper sticker and campaign commercial going forward?

Heavens, yes.




digby 6/06/2004 07:17:00 PM |

 
The People's Choice

Here's The Hunting of the President Trailer.

The witchhunt was bullshit then, it is bullshit now and it will be bullshit in the history books. We were lucky to have a president in office who had such resiliance, intelligence and guts or they might very well have succeeded in fundamentally changing our system of government.

It will be a long time coming before anybody attempts a partisan impeachment again. It turns out the people didn't much like having a bunch of hypocritical Washington politicians and TV stars decide their choice for president wasn't acceptable, something which the Republicans refused to understand even after they were soundly slapped in 1998. So, they again manipulated the system to deny the citizens their choice as president in 2000, and this time it worked.

I suspect they will get another hard lesson in democracy this November. And once again, the question is whether they will heed it.





digby 6/06/2004 03:18:00 PM |

 
Those Incredible Neocons

Josh Marshall and others continue to be a bit gobsmacked that Chalabi defenders like Gingrich and Perle aren't getting the message from the neocons inside the administration that their boy did, in fact, do something very, very bad.

Today Josh asks around thinking that the insider neos might not be convinced themselves, but comes up once again with the news that everybody who has any info on this is convinced that Chalabi is guilty as sin. Clearly, they have let that be known to their fellow travellers.

Which leads us to the obvious conclusion that Newt and Perle and the rest of the die-hards don't give a damn if Chalabi sold the country down the river to the Iranians, nor do they care about this silly concept of "credibility." Their experience is that there is no such thing. You hold your ground, keep pushing your position no matter what the circumstances or the facts may be, and eventually people will move on, forget the details and you will have lost nothing. Where there is no accountability there is no such thing as credibility.

Newt in particular is a master at this. He has said and done the most outrageous, radical, hypocritical things imaginable over his career, he has failed spectacularly, was forced to leave congress and yet he continues to be welcomed to the DOD, the White House, the GOP think tank apparatus and the media as an elder statesman and intellectual guiding light. Why would a small matter of espionage shake his belief in Chalabi's usefulness as a Republican tool?

On the other hand, one might also ask whether there is a more personal motive people might have for continuing to defend Chalabi in spite of what appears to be a universal acknowledgement within the administration of his guilt. Just how much classified information does the Defense Policy Board have access to, I wonder?


Update: Kevin quotes Danielle Pletka, one of Chalabi's most ardent cheerleaders, as now saying that Chalabi may have given secrets to Iran, but it's not that big of a deal because he isn't an American citizen and "owes us no fealty."

It is almost beyond comprehension that the ultra-patriots on the Right have the gall to say these things and even more shocking that they aren't called on it.

Dick Cheney wanted to put those Lackawanna boys down at Gitmo and throw away the key becaue they'd been to Afghanistan. Instead they were given 8 to 10 years in prison. Chalabi, a high level double agent for a member of the axis of evil, a man who was paid millions of dollars by US taxpayers and spent time in the salons and offices of the biggest Washington movers and shakers for the last ten years, is not prosecutable and presumably should be left to do as he pleases. Jayzuz. That's some moral clarity for ya.

The hell with that. If we're dragging poppy farmers out of caves in Afghanistan based on the word of some informant we've bribed with $5,000, I think we can "detain" Mr Chalabi and send him down to Gitmo for a little of that patented General Ripper interrogation. Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan --- it's all part of the GWOT, right?




digby 6/06/2004 02:07:00 PM |

 
Get Over Yourselves

Since I seem to have been linked numerous times to grieving websites as an example of the depravity of the left because of my alleged hateful comments, let me just point out one thing.

I made not one disparaging remark about Ronald Reagan in either one of my posts yesterday. All insults were directed at the followers who would exploit his death, mostly by using it (as they use everything) as a weapon against their political enemies and a media whose love of funeral porn is exceeded only by its love of celebrity scandal.

I have nothing but sympathy for his family. It's the rest of you who are the target of my disdain. Just so you know.






digby 6/06/2004 08:33:00 AM |

Saturday, June 05, 2004

 
RIP Ronnie

You were better than George W. Bush.




digby 6/05/2004 02:00:00 PM |

 
Bobo's Confused

Hey, I'm just curious, but did David Brooks have some sort of brain tumor or accident that gave him amnesia about the years 1992 to yesterday?

He seems to be having a lot of trouble understanding why the country is so polarized. The only way to explain this would be if he had been unconscious during the years that his party has spent lying, cheating, intimidating, bullying and harrassing the "liberals" as if they were some sort of sub-human species that had no right to participate in the political realm.

Perhaps someone should send Bobo a copy of this:

THEHUNTINGOFTHEPRESIDENT

There can be no doubt that we live in one of the most tumultuous political climates of the nation's history, a climate where politicians can be toppled on a whim, election results disputed in the country's highest courts, and governors unceremoniously recalled. It's enough to leave even the most cynical voter asking, how did this happen?

Harry Thomason and Nickolas Perry's incendiary documentary, based on the best-selling book by Gene Lyons and Joe Conason, offers a glimpse at the genesis of these partisan vendettas and explores the myths and truths behind the nearly ten year campaign to systematically destroy the political legacy of the Clintons.

Using previously unreleased materials, interviews, and shocking revelations from both sides of the beltway, this probing work focuses on the smear campaign against Clinton from his gubernatorial days in Arkansas leading up to and including his impeachment trial. Kenneth Starr fans, beware.

Less of an advocacy film and more of an alarming treatise on the political power of the media and personal interests, The Hunting of the President offers us a gallery of defeated politicians, disappointed office seekers, right-wing pamphleteers, wealthy eccentrics, zany private detectives, religious fanatics and die-hard segregationists, all chiming in discord from the tops of their soapboxes.

It would make a nice summer double bill with Fahrenheit 911, don't you think?







digby 6/05/2004 01:57:00 PM |

 
Lettin' It Rip

Al Gore, continuing his stinging criticism of the Bush administration, denounced the war in Iraq and deplored the downturn in the U.S. economy.

The former Democratic vice president stopped short of reiterating his demands for the resignations of high-ranking officials in President Bush's cabinet.

Gore last week blamed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and others for bungling the war in Iraq.

``We have a responsibility to set this right,'' Gore told a crowd of more than 1,500 supporters, ``Our standing in this world has been damaged very badly.''

Gore said U.S. voters still had a chance to help the country regain credibility on the global stage by removing the current administration and electing John Kerry, the leading Democratic for November's presidential election.

``If this nation in November should affirm this administration, then we would be saying that's us,'' Gore said.

I have always had a huge soft spot for Al Gore. There's something about the guy that always hit me as very human, earnest and real. I know that goes against all the CW, but that's how he's always seemed to me, even back in the 80's.

And, I think my instincts were actually right. What happened to Al Gore after that absurd election campaign he was forced to wage against a forked tongued wind-up doll(and I'm talking about Kit Seelye) and then the recount fiasco, is that he stepped back and decided to --- as he himself said --- let it rip. That is a very rare thing. Rather than stay in the game (the nomination was his if he'd wanted it) he decided to use his position as the "real" president, and all the press attention that receives, to just say what he really thinks.

And it's thrilling for those of us who feel like we are screaming into the ether. He's a blogger with giant megaphone who points out that the emperor has no clothes, just as we all have been doing in our small way for the last three years. I don't think it is calculated beyond the fact that he probably doesn't want to hurt Kerry's chances. But, he's not running for anything and he has no reason to do this except that he believes it's the right thing to do. (Even his media venture does not necessarily benefit from it, although it might. It certainly isn't the safe route.)

And there is something about the truth that Al Gore is speaking that scares the living hell out of the Right. It's the same with Soros. You can tell by the patented Fox-style coordinated hysterical reactions. Whenever they start foaming at the mouth in unison (and whenever the little presstarts start their ecstatic dance around the pyre) you know that somebody has hit a nerve. Remember, the Right only exists in two modes --- smug and rabid. And rabid is their defense mechanism.

So, here's to Gore and Soros and others who are outside of the political process but are willing to spend their capital and risk their personal prestige to shape the debate, spread some truth and take some hits in the process. It's the highest form of citizenship.

On the same subject, check out The Daily Howler's four part bitch slap to the assholes who said Gore was "crazy" "unhinged" "off his meds" and all the rest when he gave his prescient speech last year requesting that the administration lay out its post war plans for Iraq. It was brilliant, passionate and articulate but if you didn't see it and only saw the press reaction you would have thought it was well...a George W. Bush press conference --- ridiculous, embarrassing and dumb. But that's how things work in Junior's America. Black is white and up is down. Guys like Gore and Soros are out there pouring cold water down the rabbit hole and they don't like it.








digby 6/05/2004 12:47:00 PM |

 
Uh Oh

I've been worried about this. When Ronald Reagan dies, the Right and its media handmaidens are going to go into a fit of maudlin masturbation the likes of which the world has never seen. It will be non-stop GOP triumphalism from dawn to dusk. JFK's funeral will look like a trailer park trash $2,000 special compared to the spectacle we are going to endure for days on end. Lay in a supply of pepto-bismol. It's not in their DNA to handle this with any grace, restraint or class.

And, unfortunately, it will serve to reinforce the delusion that Republicans, even stupid ones, are the right people to lead us on the world stage. Reagan, after all, personally smote communism with one hand tied behind his back. Everybody knows that. And if they didn't before the impending canonization, they soon will. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to take out "evil" before he was forced to retire. Thank Gawd Crusader Codpiece is here to fulfill his legacy.

By the time we're done, The Reagan Cult headed by swami Grover Norquist, will have probably succeeded in renaming the country the Ronald Reagan States of America.




digby 6/05/2004 10:07:00 AM |

Friday, June 04, 2004

 
B.W.A.


The Poor Man scours the internet for opinions about John Kerry's new slogan, and there are many. In the end he concludes:

I still think that my suggestion - '"My Name Is Prince (And I Am Funky)" - would be better, but it would require that Kerry change his name to "Prince". And, also, that he become funky. Perhaps a bit ambitious.

More Dem naysaying. John Kerry be straight up boo-yah, my brothah.




digby 6/04/2004 03:24:00 PM |

 
I Told The Iraqi People We're Good And I Expect 'Em To Believe It, Goddamit!

THE PRESIDENT: I'd love to go back to Iraq at some point in time, I really would. I'd like to be able to stand up and say, let me tell you something about America. America is a land that's willing to sacrifice on your behalf. We sent our sons and daughters here so you can be free. And not only that, we are a compassionate country. We want to help you rebuild your schools and your hospitals. I'd like to do that, I really would.

Yessiree. The Iraqi people need to hear what's going on from me personally so they'll know it's true. Then maybe they'll understand that this war isn't about them. This war's about us 'n our goodness. See, that's what they don't understand. We give and we give and we give and we give...

... AND ALL YOU INGRATEFUL TOWEL HEADS DO IS PISS AND MOAN!!!!


Quote Via The Road To Surfdom, which you must read to catch up with Junior's little sandbox mate, Australian Prime Minister Howard. Hilarious.






digby 6/04/2004 02:41:00 PM |

 
Deadlines Schmeadlines

Republicans are very, very strict about following the law to the letter, even when it doesn't make sense. And they are even more strict about adhering to arbitrary deadlines, regardless of the principle that underlies the issue at hand. In fact, Republicans believe that arbitrary deadlines in election contests are the very lifesblood of democracy. Where would we be if you can just change the rules as you go along?

Or, at least they did during the Florida recount in 2000. The initial issue, if you recall, was the fact that while Gore was following the process laid out by the legislature (and which had been used without controversy in past statewide races) by requesting recounts in certain districts, the deadline for the recount to be submitted to Kathryn Harris' office was physically impossible to meet. The legal issue was whether or not the statute, under the state's constitutional requirement to determine the will of the voters, required Harris to extend the certification deadline.

The Republicans argued vociferously that hand counts were unreliable in the first place, but more importantly arbitrary deadlines were the very foundation upon which our legal system rested and for the courts to change them under some constitutional flim flam like "every vote must be counted" was judicial activism at its worst. Deadlines are sacrosanct or the rule of law is nothing but toilet paper.

I guess its toilet paper.

What was once a fundamental threat to our system of government is now a "glitch."

For want of a small change to the Illinois election law, President Bush's name is not supposed to be on the state's November ballot, but officials said one way or another, it will be there.

The glitch arose because the Illinois legislature adjourned earlier this week without extending the Aug. 30 deadline for presidential candidates to be certified by the state elections board and qualify for the Nov. 2 ballot.

The relatively late dates of this year's Republican Party convention, running Aug. 30 to Sept. 2, mean that Bush will not be the official nominee until after the deadline set in state law. Eight other states had the same problem but fixed the date. As a result Illinois, is the only state where Bush could be left off the ballot.

But Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, indicated the problem must be fixed somehow. ``President Bush has to be on the ballot,'' he said.

Illinois' Democratic-majority legislature is expected to hold an overtime session soon that will require a three-fifths majority to enact any legislation -- including a change in the ballot rule.

``We're confident he is going to be on the ballot,'' said Illinois Republican Party spokesman Jason Gerwig. ``There are plenty of options out there to ensure that he is. This isn't a last-ditch effort.''

Gerwig said that if the legislature fails to act, the party is prepared to appeal to the elections board, the state attorney general and, finally, the federal courts.

If anyone has the kind of free time that allows for it, they should go back and read the Republican oral arguments to the Florida Supreme Court on the necessity of strict deadlines, respect for the legislative process and the need to set standards. It's a great reminder of just how full of shit they were then and still are today. By their own measure there is no way that Bush should be allowed on that ballot. I would love to see the Democrats make them argue for why he should be. You can bet that if the shoe were on the other foot, Kerry would be forced to take it all the way to the Supreme Court.


Update: No surprise here, but Florida voting is still amazingly screwed up. I hope that the DNC is planning to have many, many precinct watchers present with cell phones and digital cameras (and security guards...)

Thanks Donkey




digby 6/04/2004 01:30:00 PM |

 
Meme Vaccine

Before the meme spreads, let's try to knock it out with a good dose of pre-emptive truth.

George Tenet is not responsible for the fact that the administration's claims that Saddam's WMD and terrorist ties were bogus --- the president, vice president and secretary of defense are. George Tenet is personally responsible to the extent that he was a good little soldier instead of resigning as he should have when he realized that they were just making shit up. That particular form of integrity seems to be as out of fashion as firing people for incompetence.

People note that according to Bob Woodward, Tenet responded to the "skeptical" president that the WMD was a "slam dunk," which is taken as some sort of proof that Bush was hoodwinked against his own better instincts. This is nonsense. As Bob Sommerby has pointed out, this conversation took place in December of 2002, three months after Bush had begun riding his white charger all over the country proclaiming that we had to "disarm Saddam Hussein." He rode that horse to a narrow midterm victory for the GOP, flanked by flags and teary eyed country troubadours to great effect. If he wasn't sure of the evidence, he certainly didn't show any sign of it when he was calling the Democrats a bunch of cowards who didn't care about national security and warning them that they would be punished by the voters if they didn't vote for war.

If anything, Bush should be heavily criticized for not asking that question before he embarked on his crusade instead of waiting until we were poised to invade. That Tenet erroneously validated Bush's obvious wish to believe is no testament to his courage. But, if he hadn't said "it's a slam dunk" it's hardly believable that Bush would have pulled the country back from war at that point. The marketing roll out had long since begun and there was no going back.

However, let's be clear. The CIA never claimed that Saddam had nukes or terrorist ties. What they believed was that Saddam had a cache of chemical and bio weapons. Indeed, Tenet testified before congress that the most likely scenario in which Saddam might use those weapons was an American invasion of Iraq. (That was a very confusing addition to the debate and one which was simply swept under the carpet.)

So, I'm not defending the unbelievably lousy intelligence on Iraq. Clearly, we have some very serious problems. Before Gulf War I we were apparently clueless that Saddam had been quite far along with a nuclear program. So, in response we apparently assumed that he had super human talents and overestimated his abilities from that point forward. There is little doubt that the CIA is less James Bond than Inspector Clouseau. (It's a shame that Bush and company felt it necessary to be transparent about this aspect of our government at a time when terrorists are trying to kill us. But, that's our lil' Crusader Codpiece -- pretty much doing the exact opposite of the smart thing every single time.)

Having said that, the neocons have always been even more wrong than the CIA. For a quarter century they have have been screaming that the sky is falling, from the grossly incorrect Team B in the 1970's to the Office of Special Plans fantasy camp in the pentagon post 9/11. They have consistently overestimated the military strength and super-villainous intentions of our enemies to the point at which one could conclude that we should invade and occupy the entire world, just to be on the safe side. In fact, that is the underlying premise of "Rebuilding America's Defenses."

The war was sold on the nuclear and terrorist threat and the grand delusion of a reverse domino theory in the region. All of that was bullshit. George Tenet is guilty of attaching his personal prestige as the director of the CIA to that disinformation program. But, let's not let the neocons get away with pinning the entire Iraq cock-up on him. This was a neocon program from day one.

For more:

Center For American Progress Talking Points


digby 6/04/2004 11:21:00 AM |

Thursday, June 03, 2004

 
More Than Meets The Eye

I think Kevin at The American Street has the right idea about this latest navel gazing about blogosphere demographics with his post called 73% of bloggers are human. Check it out. He's definitely one of the 73%.

Also check out his nice round-up of the latest polls on the battleground states.



digby 6/03/2004 07:40:00 PM |

 
Little Big Man

If you take out the Indian reservation, we would have won," said Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), former chairman of the NRCC.

On the other hand, if you take out the assholes, Herseth would have won in a landslide.




digby 6/03/2004 05:45:00 PM |

 
The Fall Of Western Civilization

From Geraldine Sealey of Salon's War Room '04,

Lou Sheldon's Traditional Values Coalition is alerting parents to yet another danger lurking in children's entertainment. This time, the offender is a supposedly 'transgender' bartender in Shrek 2. This bartender has stubble yet wears a dress and has 'female breasts,' the TVC alert warns. Confusing matters further, the bartender's voice is that of Larry King.

digby 6/03/2004 02:09:00 PM |

 
The Delicate Arts

TBogg links to Peggy Nooners latest presription drug induced column, in which she writes something quite startling:

The rise of England's acting class the past century seems to coincide perfectly with the fall of its power as a wealthy and powerful nation that made a difference in the world--an exploring nation, a conquering one.

I wondered if the loss of a kind of national manliness, or force, tends to coincide in modern nations with a rise in expertise in the delicate arts. Then I thought: I wonder if in general one can say of Western nations that the loss of one tends to be accompanied by a rise in the other. In the case of England I think that is so.

But, what do you suppose it means when the national manliness, or "force" is embodied by someone who, although he has a lovely foot and makes the dolphins sing with joy, was a practitioner of the delicate art for more than 40 years?

Can it be that it was Ronald Reagan's terrible acting that actually led to the end of the cold war?

Food for thought, Peg. (Pass me one of those little blue babies while you're at it.)




digby 6/03/2004 01:04:00 PM |

 
Working The Refs

Robert Parry walked the walk as a journalist who reported on Iran Contra in the 80's and got punished for it.

He says that The New York Times WMD scandal (shall we call it Millergate?) is indicative of a subtle and not so subtle conservative coercion over the last 25 years.

Okrent’s critique on May 30 and the editors' correction on May 26 ignore the elephant sitting in the middle of the American journalistic living room: For a variety of reasons – including fear – major U.S. news outlets have given a conservative slant to the news, systematically, for much of the past quarter century. Mainstream journalists simply are afraid to go against how conservatives want the news presented. Otherwise, they risk getting denounced as "liberal" or even "anti-American" and seeing their careers suffer.

Working journalists recognize that there is far less pressure from the left, certainly nothing that would endanger their careers. Plus, they know that many of their senior editors and corporate executives personally favor Republican positions, especially in international affairs.

So, out of self-interest and self-protection, journalists tilt their reporting to the right, all the better to pay their mortgages, put their kids through school, and get invited to some nifty Washington parties. Especially on national security issues, no one wants to get labeled a “blame-America-firster,” in Jeane Kirkpatrick’s memorable phrase, or in the case of Iraq, “a Saddam sympathizer.”

This is someone who's been in those trenches and he should know. His advice sounds right to me too:

Some Americans who agree that the U.S. news media operates with a pro-conservative bias have told me that the answer should simply be to demand that journalists live up to their professional duties, even if that means losing their jobs. While correct on an ethical level, that approach has practical shortcomings since the ousted honest journalists would simply become object lessons for the reporters left behind, much as Bonner was in the 1980s and Webb in the 1990s. The fear of standing up to the right-wing attack groups would only grow.

A different strategy would call for major investments in independent journalism, which could generate good stories, provide jobs for honest reporters, and create new media outlets that can resist conservative pressure. The Air America talk-radio network offers an example of how that media might take shape, despite its early financial troubles.

Independent journalistic outlets must reach out to mainstream Americans with reliable information that, in turn, can put competitive pressure on the New York Times and other publications to keep pace with good journalism, not succumb to conservative political pressure. The mainstream press will only change its ways when it realizes the American people won't stand for anything else.

And we can also support online efforts like Parry's ConsortiumNews, which is always excellent --- expertly researched and extremely interesting.




digby 6/03/2004 12:41:00 PM |

 
Incandescent With Horror

Howell Raines says that a lot of us Democrats are pining for the exuberant days and clarity of Bill Clinton's campaign message. I know I greatly miss Howell's exuberant obsession with David Bossie's bait shop gossip and Clinton's manly member and I'm sure he does too.

Yes, it was an innocent time, a time before people like Raines aided and abetted partisan witch hunts that led to impeachment for blowjobs, a time before electoral legitimacy was conferred by cronies instead of votes, a time before a president was allowed to walk the streets naked as powerful media figures like Raines exuberantly described the three piece suit he wasn't wearing. It was a time before the country's credibility had been shattered, the magnificent might of our military and intelligence strength had been exposed as a paper tiger and our allies and enemies alike hated us with an unmatched fervor. In fact, the only thing that can be compared to that time is the huge job losses and enormous budget deficits of both Bush presidencies.

Yes, it is indeed a new day. But as far as Howell is concerned Kerry is blowing it big time. And the thing is that he sounds like he cares deeply that Kerry wins. Howell, you see, a southern liberal of the new school, is just offering his heartfelt good advice to the campaign. As the former editorial page editor and then editor of The NY Times, he surely knows what he's talking about. This was once the most powerful opinion leader in the liberal media.

First, he informs us that Bush and the Republicans are masters at "hammer-and-chisel" politics and shouldn't be underestimated. Who can argue? I don't recall ever reading anything like that during the 2000 election when Bush was receiving adoring front page profiles about how he fed his dogs and cats in the morning and travelled with his pillow, but I understand. Compared to the degenerate, corrupt treasonous incubus Bill Clinton and his sidekick, the mentally unstable Al Gore, Bush was a breath of fresh air.

Howell also informs us that despite Bush's poll numbers, the news is really quite good for him and the Democrats ought to be shaking things up. Keep in mind that this is the analysis of one of the most powerful political opinion leaders in the country for the last decade:

While Bush's poll figures look sickly to the unschooled eye, his 40% support level does contain some good news for him. It shows that his base of cultural and political conservatives is holding together - so far. White House strategists are betting that leaving Iraq in 30 days - no matter what chaos ensues in that country - will leave them time to revise history between now and election day and, more importantly, get on with the work of destroying Kerry's image.

To the schooled or unschooled or homeschooled eye, a 40% approval rating for an incumbent president is sickly.

But, more importantly, when did the president announce that we are leaving Iraq in 30 days? Wow, what a scoop! When Johnny comes marching home, you just know that Bush is getting a big lift in the polls --- and then they get on with the work of destroying Kerry's image.

Frankly, I don't see why they would bother. With good "liberals" like Raines around, it isn't going to be necessary. For the rest of the article, Howell fills his British audience in on all of John Kerry's hideous faults, faults which are so huge that even the fact that the incumbent is running at 40%, is barely hanging on to his base, has presided over more job losses than anyone since Hoover, and has single handedly destroyed this country's hard won credibility, prestige and leadership around the globe --- even despite all that, Kerry's flaws are so huge that he will lose:

"...he rounded up a series of experienced hair-splitters from the Clinton years - Richard C Holbrooke, James Rubin, Sandy Berger - and they produced a script that would have played very well before the Council on Foreign Relations.

[...]

Every time I talk to a reporter who has covered him, new doubts creep in about his ability to connect with voters.

[...]

...he's pompous in a way that Gore is not. With Gore, you feel that if he could choose, he would have been born poor and cool. Kerry radiates the feeling that he is entitled to his sense of entitlement. Probably that comes from spending too much time with Teddy Kennedy, but it's a problem.

The TV camera is an x-ray for picking up attitudinal truths, and Kerry's lantern jaw and Addams Family face somehow reinforce the message that this guy has passed from ponderous to pompous and is so accustomed to privilege that he doesn't have to worry about looking goofy.

It's as if Lurch had gone to Choate

Has anyone ever seen Mary Matalin and Howell Raines in the same room together? Just wondering.

And here's a piece of political advice so bad, I can't even caricature it:

Here's what Kerry has to face up to and build upon. The difference between him and Bush is that Kerry represents the liberal, charitable wing of the Privilege party and George W represents the conservative, greedy wing of the Privilege party.

Reminder: For the last decade this man was the leading opinion maker of the "liberal" media.

Then Raines says that Kerry whiffed on Meat The Press because he didn't stand behind his 1972 statement that some of the promoters of the Vietnam war should be viewed as war criminals

Kerry started crawfishing right away. The pity is, he was right. He could have named people starting with Robert MacNamara and McGeorge Bundy, and everybody in the country would have understood the point. That does not, I hasten to add, mean that he should have named those worthies.

Another excellent piece of advice from Howell. Kerry should have emphasized his past condemnation of the US as being war criminals. That's a message that the NASCAR Dads who are so turned off by his plummy, Brahmin elitism will respond to.

Here's what he should have done instead of apologising for the extremity of his language when in fact his language was common parlance at that time. He should have said: "Tim, what you see in that video clip is a young man fresh from the battlefield and incandescent with the horror he saw. I mourned deeply for my comrades who were killed and maimed. I felt moral conflict, as many of our soldiers and sailors did, about the civilian casualties all around us. I felt angry that our national leaders had put us into a war without an exit strategy or a way of defining victory.

"Those are the feelings aroused in me today when I see our young men and women dying in Iraq. I am older and I hope wiser and as the nominee of my party I have an obligation to use less colourful language. But my desire for a government that is both strong and wise in the use of that strength - that calls upon its young for necessary sacrifice, but does not gamble needlessly with their lives - is as deep today as it was then. I have seen the face of battle when it was my duty. That will make me a president who understands the cost of conflict, the need for judgment that balances our military power, the need for honesty with the American people about what we know and don't know about where and when to go after terrorists ..." And so on and so on.

Nothing pompous about that. The steelworkers in Pennsylvania are surely going to high five all the way down the bar when they hear the phrase "incandescent with horror." That's the message we've been looking for folks.

And, anyway, Kerry had already said earlier in response to a "gotcha" about his 1972 statement, "I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations."
:

SEN. KERRY: That's one of those stupid things that a 27-year-old kid says when you're fresh back from Vietnam and angry about it. I have never, ever, ever, in any vote, in any policy, in any speech, in any public statement advocated any such thing in all of the years I've been in elected office. In fact, I say the following and I say it very clearly, I will never cede the security of the United States to any institution and I will never cede our security to any other country. No country will have a veto over what we need to do to protect ourselves. But, that said, I will be a president who understands, as every president of the last century did, Tim, that multilaterism is not weakness, it is strength, and we need a president who understands how to reach out to other countries, build alliances. His father did a brilliant job of it. We need to do the kind of alliance-building that we have done traditionally.

You tell me which statement the "electorate schooled to respond to simple messages" is going to relate to.

If John Kerry, Purple Heart winner, can't take that set of [chickenhawk] facts and handle Russert as well as Messrs Bush and Cheney do, he's not likely to cause enough defections in the Christian bloc to defeat them.

First, what is this business where Raines thinks that Kerry has to get some defections from Bush's Christian "bloc" to win? WTF is he smoking?

Second, I have to catch my breath at the idea that Bush "handles" Russert well. He is barely conscious and Russert simply doesn't call him on it, that's all. Cheney lies with impunity. If that's "handling" Russert, then Kerry needs to get very,very stupid and start lying his ass off.

Which is exactly what Raines says he should do:

Kerry has to understand that when a cure is impossible, the doctor must enter the world of the deluded.

(That's so weird I don't even want to think about it. Read the piece to get the context, but it won't help.)

What does this mean in terms of campaign message? It means that he must appeal to the same emotions that attract voters to Republicans - ie greed and the desire to fix the crap-shoot in their favour.

[...]

Using that promise as disinformation, he must now figure out a creative way to become a redistributionist Democrat.

[...]

...greed will make folks vote for Democrats if it's properly packaged, just as it now makes them vote Republican, and in terms of the kind of voters Kerry must win away from Bush, I think the pot-of-gold retirement strategy is a way to work. Forget a chicken in every pot. It's time for a Winnebago in every driveway.

This is quite the cynical worldview coming from the man who thundered from the editorial pages of the "liberal" New York Times against the venality and cravenness of Hilary Clinton's 1978 cattle futures trades. The same man who almost single handedly enabled the destruction of a Democratic president because of his alleged dishonesty and personal corruption.

And this sage advice to fool the greedy rubes into voting Democratic comes from the man who in this very same column derides John Kerry for his sense of "entitlement."

Howell Raines is the perfect representative of everything that is wrong with the SCLM. They aren't really liberal and they aren't really conservative. They are shallow, bitchy elitists. Suffice to say, any advice from this guy should be taken as a sign to do the opposite. Compared to pompous ass Howell Raines, John Kerry is Elvis Presley.


Thanks for the tip, Diane



Corrected for various spelling and other mistakes. Caffeine shortage this morning.


digby 6/03/2004 11:58:00 AM |

 
I Can't Wait


Fahrenheit 9/11 Trailer




Via Suburban Guerrilla





digby 6/03/2004 09:14:00 AM |

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

 
Lou-seurs

Democrats lose even when they win, apparently. Here's the headline on the NY Times article about Herseth's win:

Could Herseth's Victory in South Dakota Hurt Daschle?

Yeah. It was a huge mistake winning that seat. Silly Democrats.



digby 6/02/2004 09:25:00 PM |

 
The Abu Ghraib Scandal Cover-Up?:

Strong Leadership

...the White House seems to be constructing a legal moat around the president. Its argument is that Bush's orders were simply disobeyed. Rice told the human-rights lawyers last week that the president's clear directives on observing the Geneva Conventions and anti-torture laws were not followed

Ministry Of Fear

Defense Under Secretary Douglas Feith, who is in charge of setting policy on prisoners and detainees in occupied Iraq, has banned any discussion of the still-classified report on Abu Ghraib written by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, which has circulated around the world. Shortly after the Taguba report leaked in early May, Feith subordinates sent an "urgent" e-mail around the Pentagon warning officials not to read the report, even though it was on Fox News. In the e-mail, a copy of which was obtained by NEWSWEEK, officials in Feith's office warn that the leak is being investigated for "criminal prosecution" and that no one should mention the Taguba report to anybody, even to family members. Feith has turned his office into a "ministry of fear," says one military lawyer. A spokesman for Feith, Maj. Paul Swiergosz, says the e-mail warning was intended to prevent employees from downloading a classified report onto unclassified computers.

Pressure pushing down on me
Pressing down on you no man ask for
Under pressure
That burns a building down
Splits a family in two
Puts people on streets

That’s o-kay!
It’s the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming let me out!
Pray tomorrow takes me higher
Pressure on people
People on streets






digby 6/02/2004 09:00:00 PM |

 
It's Showtime

The Iraqi exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi --- formerly a key ally of the Bush administration --- is suspected of leaking confidential information about U.S. war plans for Iraq to the government of Iran before last year's invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, government sources told NEWSWEEK

Somebody's got a problem.

The article doesn't go into any further detail on that, but it does feature a bunch of neocons (called here "political activists" which cracks me up) in high dudgeon screaming about "witch hunts."

People might be able to chalk up all this espionage, treason type talk as partisanship or business as usual in the nation's capital, except it's got nothing to do with the Democrats!! This is a Republican show all the way and all we have to do is bring the popcorn.

Oh, and by the way:

President Bush also distanced himself from Chalabi, saying he had only met the Iraqi very briefly a few times.

Who is this Chalabi you speak of?

If that's on camera, it would make a nice video companion to his notorious "I believe I met Mr Lay when he was working for my opponent."

And I think the more pertinent question is how many times did President Cheney meet with Mr Chalabi, anyway.

Josh Marshall points out the ultimate paragraph of this piece which is a real killer:

One Bush administration official said that in addition to harboring suspicions that Chalabi had been leaking sensitive U.S. information to Iran both before and after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, some U.S. officials also believe that Chalabi had collected and maintained files of potentially damaging information on U.S. officials with whom he had or was going to interact for the purpose of influencing them. Some officials said that when Iraqi authorities raided Chalabi’s offices, one of the things American officials hoped they would look for was Chalabi’s cache of information he had gathered on Americans.

I'm having milk duds too. This is going to be good.


Update:
Via Atrios, the actual Bush comments from yesterday:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Chalabi is an Iraqi leader that's fallen out of favor within your administration. I'm wondering if you feel that he provided any false information, or are you particularly --

THE PRESIDENT: Chalabi?

Q Yes, with Chalabi.

THE PRESIDENT: My meetings with him were very brief. I mean, I think I met with him at the State of the Union and just kind of working through the rope line, and he might have come with a group of leaders. But I haven't had any extensive conversations with him.
...

Q I guess I'm asking, do you feel like he misled your administration, in terms of what the expectations were going to be going into Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't remember anybody walking into my office saying, Chalabi says this is the way it's going to be in Iraq.

If you haven't already seen it, go read the patented Eschaton takedown of this obvious lie.


digby 6/02/2004 07:37:00 PM |

 
Woolcott on Bush's Women

Vanity Fair's James Wolcott gives the women closest to President Bush a very rough going-over in the latest issue - portraying mom Barbara Bush as a nasty piece of work, wife Laura as timid and ineffectual, former Bush aide Karen Hughes as a wacko and a liar and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice as a weirdly worshipful "professional wife." But, surprisingly, Wolcott concludes with a backhanded compliment for daughters Jenna and Barbara: "I've come to have a grudging regard for the Bush twins. Jenna and Barbara may be spoiled brats - tarty party girls - but at least they're not perpetuating false pretenses, being used as attractive props and tweeting noises they don't believe."

I agree with this, actually. Those two girls may be spoiled little Paris Hilton wannabes but you have to give them credit for not buying into the phony sanctimony of their religious-right pander patsy of a father. They told him to go to hell. I'm not sure they're Republicans.

Via the great Catch.com




digby 6/02/2004 05:52:00 PM |

 
Kinky

Chalabi, he pointedly noted, wasn't the only Iraqi exile with White House connections. He added that the administration has "had relations with a number of groups previously that were intent on seeing Saddam Hussein's regime removed from power."

And he never asked anyone to lie. Not one time.




digby 6/02/2004 05:27:00 PM |

 
Just In Case

Bush Consults Lawyer in CIA Leak Case

President Bush has consulted an outside lawyer in case he needs to retain him in the grand jury investigation of who leaked the name of a covert CIA operative last year, the White House said Wednesday.

There was no indication that Bush is a target of the leak investigation, but the president has decided that in the event he needs an attorney's advice, "he would retain him," White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said.

The lawyer is Jim Sharp, Buchan said, confirming a report by CBS News.

"The president has said that everyone should cooperate in this matter and that would include himself," the spokeswoman said.

She deflected questions about whether Bush had been asked to appear before a grand jury in the case.

If he's called before the grand jury can he take Cheney with him?





digby 6/02/2004 04:50:00 PM |

 
Bremer's Gone Mad!

Little Mikey on the big raid:

The early-morning raid on the home and office of Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi in Baghdad sends "the wrong message" to America's would-be allies in the Arab world, former Pentagon official Michael Rubin tells Insight.

"This is a huge blow to America's prestige," he said. "The message we've just sent is that we do not stand by our allies, that the United States can't be trusted. We've just told Arab liberals and democrats that it's just plain crazy to work with America."

Rubin, who served as an aide to Deputy Undersecretary of Defense William Luti, spoke with Sunni clerics, Shiite professionals and independent Kurdish businessmen in Iraq in the hours immediately after the Baghdad raid Thursday.

"Everyone in Iraq believes that because of U.S. actions, we are now heading for civil war," he says. "We have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory."

Deeply involved in planning for the Iraq war, Rubin tells Insight that he left the government in April out of a sense of frustration.

"This administration has been taking so many hits, many of them based on outright fabrications or on information from 'anonymous intelligence sources,' that I felt I could be more effective on the outside," he says.

Rubin now is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.


[...]

American news reports yesterday gave several variants of the alleged charges against the Chalabi aides, ranging from corruption, fraud and vehicle theft to intimidation and blackmail. But INC sources and Rubin believe there is no doubt that U.S. civil administrator L. Paul Bremer ordered the raid.

"The decision to "cut Chalabi down to size" was taken in Washington," Rubin said, "but the operation against Chalabi originated in Baghdad. There is no doubt that Bremer signed off on this. Basically, Bremer has gone mad. This raid shows the U.S. has not learned the lessons of Abu Ghraib, and is still trying to "humiliate" perceived opponents.

Attempts by Insight to reach Bremer for comment were unsuccessful.

At a press conference in Baghdad after the raids, Chalabi identified one of the individuals allegedly being sought as Aras Habib, his longtime security and intelligence chief. Before the U.S.-led invasion, Habib ran the INC's network of informants within Saddam's regime and identified defectors the INC ultimately helped to escape Iraq.

Chalabi's detractors claim the intelligence provided by those defectors relating to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs was false or fabricated. But in fact, says Rubin, the INC provided intelligence and human sources at a time when the CIA has no assets inside Iraq at all.

"The CIA hates Chalabi because he comes out with information they do not have and that later gets confirmed," Rubin says.

[...]

"The most virulent hatred of Chalabi comes from those who have never met him," he [Rubin] says. "Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA] and U.S. military commanders in Iraq who have worked with the INC have given them stellar reviews. They have used INC intelligence to stop operations by insurgents that were targeting Americans. They have caught insurgents red-handed because of information provided by Chalabi. [Secretary of State Colin] Powell and [Deputy Secretary of State Richard] Armitage appear to place greater value on winning bureaucratic battles in Washington than in saving American lives in Iraq."


[...]

In citing [ormer DIA analyst Pat] Lang as an expert on Iraq, neither CBS nor the Washington Post ever has mentioned that Lang has registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for an Arab government.

"How can somebody working for an Arab government parade about as a neutral analyst?" asks Rubin.

What a good question.

Now, I ask you, does Rubin sound here like he might be a tippler? Or is just wired out of his mind on venti-quad-no-foam-lattes?

This article was written the day after the raid. Perhaps what seeps through here isn't booze or caffeine. It sounds more like panic.







digby 6/02/2004 04:26:00 PM |

 
Thank You Joe Conason

Intriguing as her personal history may be, however, Ms. Miller's troubles didn't arise from mere ambition or poor manners. Instead, they reflected the reluctance of her editors to recognize that she was motivated by an ideology shared with her sources. Such 'passions' are far more common among mainstream journalists than they like to admit; indeed, strong beliefs are characteristic of many of the nation's best journalists.

But by failing to exercise adequate control over Ms. Miller's urge to propagandize, those editors allowed The Times to become an instrument for her neoconservative patrons in and out of government, and for their agenda of 'regime change' in Iraq and possibly elsewhere in the Middle East.

Miller is one of the rare reporters whose ideology was evident to practically everyone, which is why her "errors" have been attacked so relentlessly. You didn't have to be a gernius to realize that this woman was pushing an agenda because she really didn't make any effort to hide it.

But the fact is that even without a full-on GOP operative working as a reporter, The Times long ago became a willing tool of the right wing when the story was juicy enough. I don't say that because I believe the editors sincerely want to promote right wing views. Some undoubtedly do, but most of these people are big city cosmopolitan types who probably hold fairly liberal beliefs in most areas. I think there is a much subtler and more sophisticated phenomenon at work.

We know about the "working the refs" angle. They have been affected subconsiously by the decades-long "liberal media" attack on their integrity and so they lend more and more credibility to right wing sources to achieve "balance."

But, more than that, they have become dependent on the easy, stimulating, tittilating tabloid inspired "scoops" that the right wing propaganda shops learned they liked. The breathless, uncritical style of reporting that Miller personified, and the screaming headlines that accompanied her stories, were very similar in tone to the Whitewater and Wen Ho Lee series'. These were BIG stories about southern gothic corruption, lethal Chinese espionage and "smoking guns as mushroom clouds." They were sensational. They had pulitzer written all over them if they panned out. But, they didn't. They were false trails, propaganda and manipulation by people with a political agenda.

The paper has yet to grapple with the fact that they were used by political players. This means that they will remain subject to the same inducements. And they are not alone. Look at a respected TV journalist like Tim Russert. He can be indicted on exactly the same charges as the Times' editors. He has accepted far too much information from right wing political operatives that turned out to be wrong to justify his continuing to use them. Yet, he obviously does and mostly uncritically. He uses their lies to confront the political opposition and force them to deny them without ever evidencing any qualms that he might be helping to spread falsehoods and wrong impressions by doing so.

The most important thing is for Democrats, particularly in Washington, to absorb the fact that they cannot count on these institutions to be objective. They must not give credence to stories just because they appear in The New York Times and they must not adhere to the "conventional wisdom" that often follows from those reports. As long as these bastions of "liberal media" are subject to right wing manipulation, belief in their credibility by Democrats perpetuates the Republicans' brilliant use of subliminal anti-liberal cant to demoralize and disillusion us.

It's a flavorless kind of kool-aid and we don't even know we're drinking it.







digby 6/02/2004 02:58:00 PM |

 





digby 6/02/2004 12:15:00 PM |

 
The Littlest Neocon

Just in case there's anyone who isn't getting the hint in Josh Marshall's post this morning about which of the numerous neocon chumps is the most likely suspect to have given Chalabi the Iranian code info, here's who I think he's talking about (lifted from my post last week on the subject):

Michael Rubin is one of the youngest neoconservative figures to gain prominence within the George W. Bush administration. A Yale graduate whose dissertation focused on modern Iran, Rubin has traveled extensively in Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Sudan.

Rubin, an AEI scholar, was involved in several meetings and conferences officiated by Douglas Feith and Harold Rhode at AEI as part of the Bush transition team. One of the objectives of these meetings was to reshape the top leadership at the Pentagon, sidelining or removing those who were regarded as moderates. Out of these discussions came the idea for the creation of the Office of Special Plans (OSP).

Between 2002 and 2004, Rubin worked as a staff adviser for Iran and Iraq in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, in which capacity he was seconded to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Rubin was assigned to the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, which was fold into the Northern Gulf Affairs Office after the unit was implicated in cooking intelligence information to justify the Iraq war and occupation.

In a National Review article, Rubin discusses sentiments expressed whenever Secretary of State Colin Powell and Special Envoy Anthony Zinni would visit Israel.

“While working at Hebrew University this past year, I took the bus to campus each day. Whenever U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell or Special Envoy Anthony Zinni was dispatched to Israel, colleagues would urge me to stay home until after the suicide bombing. Middle Easterners understand the lesson those in the U.S. and Europe are still learning: When governments engage dictators, civilians suffer.”

Yes. Europe knows nothing about engaging dictators and civilian suffering. Quite the brilliant insight, especially coming from somebody studying at Hebrew University. (I was going to mention that a Yale degree isn't quite what it used to be, but then I remembered our preznit, so never mind.)

Laura Rozen says that one of her contacts refutes the notion that this person had access to the info. All that means to me is that loose OSP lips sink INC ships. They're a tight little bunch of crazy mixed up kids. Anybody from Perle to Wolfowitz himself could have spilled those beans to lil' Mikey. At which point, it looks like Chalabi might have gotten Mikey all likkered up and he told old kindly Uncle Ahmad some things he shouldn't have.

Note: I posted this earlier and for reasons unknown it disappeared. So, here it is again...




digby 6/02/2004 11:48:00 AM |

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

 
A Hard-Fought War

Obviously, I believe that the unlawful enemy combatant designation is unconstitutional and unnecessary. I don't happen to think this terrorist threat is really a "war," as the word is commonly defined (outside of marketing circles anyway) so the whole thing is moot in my mind. However, even if I were to stipulate that it is a war then I would argue that we should officially declare it, then hold prisoners under the Geneva conventions and quit this nonsense that we will always be at war with Oceania...err...terrorism. It seems silly to have to point this out, but that is quintessential propaganda in case anybody's forgotten.

Nobody ever knows going in when a war will end, so this idea that this is unprecedented is nonsense. When the government starts using this "open-endedness" to justify circumventing the constitution, one should be just a little bit skeptical of its motives.

And even if I were to agree that we have no choice but to throw out habeus corpus on an ad hoc basis at the discretion of the president, is there any reason to believe that the enemy combatant issue would be handled by this administration with more competence than they handle anything else? (This is the reason, of course, why you don't do this. Sometimes leaders bad and stupid --- not good and smart.)

This article from the April 26th Newsweek gives a little window into the professional approach they take in deciding who is and isn't an "enemy combatant." Let's just say it validates the concerns of Enlightenment thinkers about the rule of men vs the rule of law:

The Yemeni-born men from Lackawanna, N.Y., were accused of training at a camp in Afghanistan, where some had met Osama bin Laden. The president's men were divided. For Dick Cheney and his ally, Donald Rumsfeld, the answer was simple: the accused men 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. That's what authorities had done with two other Americans, Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla. "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. Instead, John Ashcroft insisted he could bring a tough criminal case against them for providing "material support" to Al Qaeda.

On that day, at least, the attorney general won the debate, and the Lackawanna Six eventually pleaded guilty. It wasn't the first time, or the last, that top Bush officials would spar over such weighty legal issues.

[...]

...the administration hadn't anticipated that U.S. citizens might occasionally turn up in the mix. In the months after 9/11 there were fierce debates—and even shouting matches—inside the White House over the treatment of Americans with suspected Qaeda ties.

On one side, Ashcroft, perhaps in part protecting his turf, argued in favor of letting the criminal-justice system work, and warned that the White House had to be mindful of public opinion and a potentially wary Supreme Court. On the other, 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."


It's far from over. Officials say they eventually settled on "informal" rules to decide whether a detained American should be thrown into the brig or brought to trial.

So, the policy is carried out by "informally" deciding between Cheney and Rumsfeld's omnicient talents as judge, jury and executioner or John Ashcroft's need to bask in the spotlight. Who needs that old relic, the rule 'o law, when you have a faultless sytem such as this? It's especially edifying that that politics never enter into any of this. It's always about keeping those babies safe:

In a speech earlier this year, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales tried to reassure critics, saying the White House had an "elaborate" and "painstaking" system to identify enemy combatants. But it didn't start out that way. In truth, the enemy combatants policy evolved in fits and starts. In the spring of 2002, U.S. soldiers discovered Hamdi, a Louisiana-born, Saudi-raised U.S. citizen, among the hundreds of ragtag Taliban fighters sent to Guantanamo. They realized they had a problem. The other detainees could be tried before military tribunals. But Bush's order authorizing the tribunals had exempted U.S. citizens a decision intended to disarm critics. Hamdi was flown to a naval brig in Norfolk, Va., while administration lawyers tried to figure out what to do with him. When a local public defender who read about Hamdi in the newspaper petitioned to meet with him, an assistant U.S. attorney made a novel argument in court: Hamdi was an "unlawful enemy combatant," and had no right to counsel.

Administration lawyers concede that there was a seat-of-the-pants quality to the way events unfolded. "There is a sense in which we were making this up as we went along," says one top government attorney. "You have to remember we were dealing with a completely new paradigm: an open-ended conflict, a stateless enemy and a borderless battlefield."

Yes. They were swimming in totally uncharted waters. Americans involved in terrorism was simply unprecedented. Nothing in our legal system could possibly deal with people who were involved in such an operation. (Well, except for the first World Trade Center bombers or Tim McVeigh or the Lackawanna Six or Lind and those guys in Oregon. But still...) If only we had the option of a charge like conspiracy to commit murder carrying life in prison or even the death penalty, maybe we could effectively deal with ruthless potential killers like Padilla. Our only choice was to have Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft hash it out among themselves. Our legal system just can't handle this sort of thing.

Before long, administration officials would extend the battlefield to Chicago's O'Hare airport, where agents picked up Jose Padilla on May 8, 2002. The Muslim convert was arrested while returning home from Pakistan, where he had allegedly met with a top Qaeda operative and planned to set off a dirty bomb in the United States. He was named a material witness and appointed a lawyer. But prosecutors soon realized they didn't have enough evidence to charge him with any crime.

Doesn't that seem odd? The evidence cited today certainly sounds chilling.

To avoid releasing him, Bush decreed on June 9 that Padilla, too, was an enemy combatant. He was sent to a military brig in South Carolina. At first, administration officials saw no problems with Padilla's treatment. But as the months wore on, Justice lawyers became increasingly uneasy about holding him indefinitely without counsel.

Again, why? If this guy is a huge danger and these people have all seen the evidence that makes that so, what is the problem? They're all signed on to the program, I assume. No, ACLU sissyboys in this bunch, right?

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.

Hey, there's nothing wrong with a little office betting pool. These guys needed to blow off some steam. (Consider how much worse that could have been.) And old Ted would never advise the administration to do anything for purely political reasons. He just doesn't think that way.

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.

I know I feel a lot safer. I just worry that Cheney didn't get the last word on that truck driver. He's a man who knows a terrorist when he sees one.






digby 6/01/2004 09:13:00 PM |

 
Turkey In The Straw

I like this article by Dana Milbank about Bush's tendency to make straw man arguments. The problem is that Junior isn't really making straw man arguments. He's spouting lies and half truths that were spoon fed to him by his staff in small bites that he can understand and remember. By saying that Bush has any awareness of the concept of a logical fallacy serves only to make him seem to have some sort of mental agility when, in fact, he is barely sentient. If Laura circled this article in red crayon for him this morning and he had a look at it between counting the box scores on his fingers and toes, I have no doubt that his response was "Ya' mean like a scarecrow?"


digby 6/01/2004 04:38:00 PM |

 
Sacred Cows

I have finally come around to the administration's way of thinking on this unlawful combatant thing. Here we have an American who was trained to blow up apartment buildings and maybe set off dirty bombs, but the only way we could get the information that he was trained to blow up apartment buildings and maybe set off dirty bombs was by denying him his right to counsel and holding him until he confessed to those potential crimes --- which means we can't use that "confession" in court. We simply could not take even the smallest chance that an apartment or dirty bomber might not tell all by allowing him due process. Surely, everyone can understand that.

That whole fifth amerndment thing was only put there because back in the olden days we had kings who would falsely imprison people for political reasons. Needless to say, that could never happen now. Great americans like John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney would never take advantage of the American people's fears by saying that they have captured a dangerous terrorist soldier who was trying to kill them unless it were true. And they do not make mistakes about things like that. They are good people. There is no reason to fear the misuse of government power against its citizens so let's take that off the table right now.

All of which makes me wonder how much better off we'd be if we didn't have to deal with those inconvenient legal rights and due process to begin with? I know that potentially blowing up an apartment building is a heinous act of terrorism, but suppose we arrested a member of a criminal gang who was planning to blow up the very same apartment building for the insurance money? That would just be considered plain old murder so we'd have to let the guy speak to a lawyer and face a judge. But, the result would be exactly the same. A bunch of innocent people would potentially be dead and we would not have been able to stop this heinous mass murderer because our stupid constitution forced the government to allow him due process. Not to mention that we couldn't have sufficiently leaned on him to extract a confession in the first place! I'm hard pressed to see how the families of the victims would see the distinction between a normal old "crime" and terrorism.

Why should any potential murderer or informant be allowed to use this excuse of "due process" simply because he hasn't been to Afghanistan? Why should innocent people ever be put at risk?

If there's one thing the Jose Padilla case is teaching us is that it's long past time we started calling all criminal suspects what they really are --- unlawful combatants. All criminals disrupt our way of life and hurt innocent people for their own gain. Is that not the very definition of terrorism?

The founders obviously just didn't comprehend what problems they would cause when they wrote the bill of rights. Of course, they didn't have crime and terrorism in those days to deal with, so they couldn't have known how restrictive their naive little document was going to be on future generations. I'm just glad we finally have a government that's willing to show some moxie for once and ignore these outdated sacred cows in our constitution. I would imagine they'd have the founders deep respect for doing so.





digby 6/01/2004 03:24:00 PM |

 
Omerta

You have to admire the loyalty among Republican hitmen. Even when confronted by a fellow traveller with irrefutable evidence of their pal's depraved thuggery, they simply refuse to acknowledge that it even happened. This is a rare thing. In fact, I think it happens only in the Republican Party and the mafia.

O'REILLY: Now are you buying into the -- this is just a hazing thing at Abu Ghraib?

COULTER: What, the media is hazing the American people by seeing how much we can take?

O'REILLY: Some of the right wing commentators say it's just hazing, what's the big deal? Are you buying into that?

COULTER: No, I don't think anyone is.

O'REILLY: No, they are. You know that. I'm not going to embarrass people but on the radio, talk radio you have right wing commentators say it's just hazing, what's the big deal?

COULTER: If I know what you're referring to, there were two hours and 59 minutes not saying that and at one point making fun of liberals for making fun of -- if you're talking about Rush, but Rush went on...

O'REILLY: ...program and he said it's not a big deal, it's just hazing.

COULTER: If you're talking about Rush, he definitely didn't say that.What other talk radio hosts say...

O'REILLY: I compete against him every day on the radio and I know what he says. He said many, many times and not only him that it wasn't a big deal.

COULTER: No, he didn't say that, but whatever -- no."

Ann, of course, has other ideas about what caused the torture:

I think the other point that no one is making about the abuse photos is just the disproportionate number of women involved, including a girl general running the entire operation.

I mean, this is lesson, you know, one million and 47 on why women shouldn't be in the military. In addition to not being able to carry even a medium-sized backpack, women are too vicious.

And that makes a certain amount of sense coming from her. Ann probably believes that she is a normal woman rather than the shrill, shrieking succubus that she is. It's an understandable mistake.



digby 6/01/2004 11:44:00 AM |

 
Strictly Business

This must be one of those good news stories the media have overlooked.

Kidnappings Bleed Iraq of Doctors

For two months, someone has been kidnapping the best doctors in Iraq. Health officials and doctors estimate that as many as 100 surgeons, specialists and general physicians have been abducted from their homes and clinics since the beginning of April. Some were beaten and tortured. Most were released after the payment of between $20,000 and $200,000 in ransom.

[...]

The list of kidnapping victims and those who have fled the country is a who's who of Iraq's medical establishment. A pioneer in renal transplants. Saddam Hussein's former plastic surgeon. And Khalily, who was voted Best Arabic Doctor in 1998 by the Pan Arab Medical Union.

The top cataract surgeon at a leading eye hospital in Baghdad, Dr. Jawad Shakarchi, moved to London after being abducted from his garage in April.

"He was a genius," said a hospital manager, Amira Salman. "Now his students are doing his job."

Many of the doctors also taught at Baghdad University's College of Medicine. Officials there said a quarter of the school's surgeons have gone or have requested temporary leaves next year.

"A lot of doctors are planning to quit for a year, and we don't have enough teachers for the clinical studies," said Dr. Hassan Rubaye, deputy dean of the medical school.

Some schools are having to limit enrollment for advanced studies until they can be sure there will be enough doctors to teach.

The good news is that 14 clinics have fresh paint and 8 have new office chairs. The chairs were donated by Halliburton for only $22,000 apiece, which they said only represented their cost.

Mark Kleiman notes that the raid on Chalabi's headquarters was based in part on these charges and wonder whether it was a pure money making scheme or if they were trying to deliberatly create chaos, perhaps even on behalf of Iran.

I wouldn't put it past them but I think it was probably the former. Although they did not see eye to eye on the timetable for invasion, Chalabi and GOP tough guy Dick Armey surely see eye to eye on Armey's view of power --- to the victor shall go the spoils. Ahmad was just taking the taste he deserved. Doctors have money, therefore they are lucrative kidnapping victims. It's not personal. It's not even political. It's strictly business.





digby 6/01/2004 11:21:00 AM |

Monday, May 31, 2004

 
Show Everybody What You Got For Christmas, Junior

As I read this absurd story of the childlike preznit showing everybody Saddam's gun like he'd won first place in the spelling bee (fat chance) I was reminded of another illustration of the lil' guy's statesmanlike maturity, that I posted earlier

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.

'N he has pitchers 'o the bad guyz in his desk, 'n evertime we killz one of 'em, he crossus out there faces, cuz there ded.



digby 5/31/2004 01:01:00 PM |

 
It's Nightime In America

From Bush, Unprecedented Negativity

Scholars and political strategists say the ferocious Bush assault on Kerry this spring has been extraordinary, both for the volume of attacks and for the liberties the president and his campaign have taken with the facts. Though stretching the truth is hardly new in a political campaign, they say the volume of negative charges is unprecedented -- both in speeches and in advertising.

Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush's campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads -- or 27 percent of his total. The figures were compiled by The Washington Post using data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group of the top 100 U.S. markets. Both campaigns said the figures are accurate.

Amazing, isn't it? And people wonder why Kerry hasn't been surging in the polls as Junior systematically destroys the country. And, it has such a nice salutary effect of making Democrats feel less than passionate about their candidate, too. If it weren't for such a strong and unyielding ABB feeling on our side, I have no doubt that these ads would have worked as effectively to reduce Dem turn-out as on the undecided voters they are supposedly trying to convince. As it is, I think they are succeeding only to the extent that they make it uncomfortable for the politically timid to publicly support Kerry -- e.g. take an unequivocal stand at the water cooler and the supermarket. That is an effect that is fading fast as disillusionment with Junior grows.

Incumbent presidents often prefer to run on their records in office, juxtaposing upbeat messages with negative shots at their opponents, as Bill Clinton did in 1996.

Scott Reed, who ran Robert J. Dole's presidential campaign that year, said the Bush campaign has little choice but to deliver a constant stream of such negative charges. "With low poll numbers and a volatile situation in Iraq, Bush has more hope of tarnishing Kerry's image than promoting his own."

"The Bush campaign is faced with the hard, true fact that they have to keep their boot on his neck and define him on their terms," Reed said. That might risk alienating some moderate voters or depressing turnout, "but they don't have a choice," he said.

(I love it when GOP operatives actively embrace totalitarian imagery. Smells like ... bad apples.)

At this point, the only way that Bush can win is by destroying John Kerry. Even if one of the much discussed "external events" take place, I doubt bush will gain from it. As a result he is forced to run the most negative campaign in modern memory. Unfortunately for the country, if there's one thing the Republicans have perfected, it's negative campaigns and character assassination. The Bush family specializes in it. They are the Borgias of our time.

I know that some believe political advertising has little effect on people, but the studies they cite are based upon respondent's own perceptions. The truth is that people rarely admit to being influenced by ads of any kind, yet their buying habits and perceptions of products prove that they are.

The thing that will change all of this is a critical mass of people using TiVO type technology. Then TV advertising is going to be in a world of hurt. TV ads (political ads especially because they are almost all so bad) work mostly on a subliminal level. People rarely pay active attention after they've seen it the first time. The key is for people to hear and see the key memes often enough for it to be absorbed subconsciously. One thing the Bush campaign has going for it is the money to relentlessly hammer their ads home. This gives them a much greater chance of having their message seep into the collective unconscious over time.

On the other hand, their image of Kerry as a of liberal, French flip-flopper only works well as contrasted with the Omnipotent Steely-Eyed Rocket Man, an image that I'm afraid is no longer operative. They are going to switch gears, I think, although I have no idea what form of destructive lies and images they are going to haul out this time.

It is only June. Bush poll numbers are still plummeting. It is going to get uglier and uglier. It's the only hope they have. And, don't underestimate them. They are very good at just that kind of politics. They're never happier than when personal destruction is job one.






digby 5/31/2004 09:19:00 AM |

Sunday, May 30, 2004

 
The Buck? What Buck?

It really has fallen completely apart. The government, I mean. The CIA and the Pentagon are at each others throats, as we already knew. The State Department and the Pentagon, too. The office of Homeland Security is pissed at the Justice Department. Everybody hates everybody.

Now, according to Laura Rozen the White House is tacitly approving all this infighting as long as nobody directly criticizes Junior Codpiece:

Secondly, about Condoleezza Rice's meeting with the pro-Chalabi crowd last week. I am told Rice requested the meeting with Perle, Woolsey, Gingrich, Pletka, Rubin et al, to ask them not to go off the reservation, in reaction to the White House cut off of Chalabi. And if you have noticed, they have refrained for the most part from directing their public criticism directly at the White House, attacking the CIA, DIA and State instead for a policy decision that came from the very top.

That's how bad its gotten. Go ahead and rake our administration over the coals if you want to. Just don't say anything bad about Junior. (Voters don't know that the president is responsible for the whole executive branch so they won't hold it against him.)

Did Ken Lay go to Harvard Business school too?


digby 5/30/2004 10:02:00 AM |

 
Payback

A new book on the Bush dynasty is set for release just six weeks before November's knife-edge presidential election. The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty by Kitty Kelley will have an initial print run of 500,000, and the main source is believed to be Sharon Bush, the ex-wife of Neil, President George W Bush's wayward brother.

Live by character assassination, die by character assassination. It looks like it's going to come out right after Junior makes his triumphant return to Ground Zero.




digby 5/30/2004 09:28:00 AM |

Saturday, May 29, 2004

 
All The News The GOP Sees Fit To Print

Daniel Okrent says the paper failed in its WMD coverage prior to the war. Everybody is at fault and it's wrong to single anybody out in particular and the way to put this behind them is to finally report the truth. Great.

Here's the problem. Like the Bush administration, they seem to think that "taking responsibility" means acting as if it was some vague and ephemeral "somebody" who committed the act and then going on as if nothing happened. These are children's ethics.

The only way journalists will understand that repeatedly publishing and hyping incorrect information (particularly disinformation) is unacceptable is if they will pay a price for doing so. That's what grown-ups expect when they screw up. And the only way the public can be assured that The New York Times cares about its credibility is if it holds the people who made these massive errors responsible.

The New York Times recently fired Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg because they plagiarized and misrepresented the truth. Presumably, the paper did this because its credibility was at stake. They simply could not countenance publishing work that was not truthful because then people would stop believing what they printed and wouldn't buy the paper.

Yet, they have repeatedly allowed themselves to be used by GOP Washington players to further their agenda over the last twelve years and as a result have printed wrong or misleading information hundreds of times. Sometimes, as with the Wen Ho Lee story, they investigated the problems, issued a mea culpa and then moved on. Other times, as with the endless Whitewater and independent counsel stories, they simply never addressed it. The hyped WMD stories are only the latest in a series of politically motivated disinformation campaigns.

And, the problem remains. After twelve years of blown story after blown story, it is time for the press (and not just The NY Times) to either declare that they are extensions of the Republican Party or expose their sources when they've shown themselves to be purposefully passing incorrect information (which Okrent endorses as proper journalistic ethics.)

Judith Miller undoubtedly believes she is being unfairly scapegoated, but she is not. Blair and Bragg were fired for offenses that didn't lead to any real consequences other than a lot of journalistic navel gazing. Yet Miller, more than anyone, was a willing tool for certain political friends and sources and used her prestige and position on the paper of record to further their agenda to take this country into a war. That is inexcusable. However, The New York Times has decided to excuse her and others like Patrick Tyler and Jill Abrahamson and is allowing them to keep their jobs.

Fine. If the paper wishes to hang its credibility on journalists like this then it obviously no longer cares about it. Therefore, the New York Times is collectively guilty and should be held responsible for the actions of these failed journalists.

The paper of record has officially chosen to became just another daily rag. RIP Gray Lady.







digby 5/29/2004 08:13:00 PM |

 
I don't think it's quite fair to condemn the whole program because of a single slip up.

Cuba Base Sent Its Interrogators to Iraqi Prison

Interrogation experts from the American detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, were sent to Iraq last fall and played a major role in training American military intelligence teams at Abu Ghraib prison there, senior military officials said Friday.

The teams from Guantánamo Bay, which had operated there under directives allowing broad latitude in questioning "enemy combatants," played a central role at Abu Ghraib through December, the officials said, a time when the worst abuses of prisoners were taking place. Prisoners captured in Iraq, unlike those sent from Afghanistan to Guantánamo, were to be protected by the Geneva Conventions.

The teams were sent to Iraq for 90-day tours at the urging of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then the head of detention operations at Guantánamo. General Miller was sent to Iraq last summer to recommend improvements in the intelligence gathering and detention operations there, a defense official said.

[...]

In interviews, two military intelligence soldiers who served at Abu Ghraib as part of the 205th Brigade described the unit from Guantánamo as having played a notable role in setting up the interrogation unit in Iraq, which they said was modeled closely after the one that General Miller put in place in Cuba.

"They were sent to Iraq to set up a Gitmo-style prison at Abu Ghraib," a military intelligence soldier said of the unit. None of the soldiers knew what military unit the group from Guantánamo had been drawn from, but one of them said he understood that it had also served earlier in a detention facility in Guantánamo.

It wasn't a bunch of bad apples. It was at the explicit instruction of General Geoffrey D Ripper, who sent in his best leg breakers to teach 'em how to get the job done.

And then, as reports of the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib were coming to light the Bush administration decided that the best way to deal with the problem was to put in charge the same guy who had recommended and implemented the abuse and torture in the first place.

How long will it take for somebody to ask, considering his history at the prison, why in the world General Ripper was brought in after the scandal broke? I'm just asking. He is, after all, an obviously sadistic freak who is one of the causes of the greatest foreign policy PR disaster in American history.

I have a suggestion as to who might replace him:

The commander of Guantánamo Bay, sacked amid charges from the Pentagon that he was too soft on detainees, said he faced constant tension from military interrogators trying to extract information from inmates.

Brigadier General Rick Baccus was removed from his post in October 2002, apparently after frustrating military intelligence officers by granting detainees such privileges as distributing copies of the Koran and adjusting meal times for Ramadan. He also disciplined prison guards for screaming at inmates.

In one of the general's first interviews since his dismissal, he told the Guardian: "I was mislabelled as someone who coddled detainees. In fact, what we were doing was our mission professionally."

[...]

Eighteen months after being removed from Guantánamo, Gen Baccus, 51, and a commander of the Rhode Island National Guard, is still waiting for a new military assignment.

As for Guantanamo, I keep reading this refrain about prisoners with negligible or non-existent ties to al Qaeda or the Taliban having been "sold" for four or five thousand dollars by the Northern Alliance or others. They held the five Britons for more than two years as "unlawful combatants" and then the UK just set them free. How many other "terrorists" like that are there down in Guantanamo?

From the Frontline Documentary Son of Al-Qaeda"

What's your impression of Guantanamo? Do a lot of people belong there? What's your impression of the inmates?

They asked me always this question. I told them in 100 percent there is 80 percent of people that went to Afghanistan, like people that can't do anything. They've had enough. If you put them back in their countries they won't do anything. That's in 80 percent.

Among those 80 percent there is almost 60 in those 80, 60 that are people that haven't done anything. People that worked in a project in Pakistan, an old man that his son brought him, you know, just to sell him for $5,000. Drug dealers, people that didn't have anything to do with Al Qaeda were put there for no reason but because someone brought them there or someone thought of getting thousands for them, whoever captured them that they were Al Qaeda.

The rest, the 20 percent from the whole 100 percent, there's 10 percent of them that should be kept there and 10 percent of them if they go out and they catch up with Al Qaeda again they might go back to being Al Qaeda. But there's only like 10 percent of the people that are really dangerous, that should be there and the rest are people that don't have anything to do with it, don't even, don't even understand what they're doing here.

Just explain the bounty hunting, how people ended up there. That they paid a bounty.

At the very beginning, after Americans took over Afghanistan, they needed to show the American public that you know, we have got people. So there was normal Afghans would catch normal Arabs, normal small Arabs and go to the American base and tell them, you know what, we have a big commander. The American would say yes okay and they would just buy him.

If the Americans were paying large bounties, a large amount of money they would have ended up with a lot of innocent people there, don't you think?

Yes, a lot of innocent people. I told you the one story, I remember two, actually. One is the father that was brought by his own son. The son gave him a gun and took him up to an American base up there and took $5,000 for him. That's one story.

The second story is a drug user, a person that was sitting next to me, not worried about being in jail, not worried about what's going to happen to his family, not worried about what he's going to get. All he's worried about every time he asks the MPs to come around, asking them for a smoke, asking them for some hashish for you know, for marijuana, something like that, you know. Not even, he doesn't even know what he's doing here. Truly a drug addict, not Al Qaeda at all.

Yet, despite the obvious probability of corruption and error in capturing these "dangerous terrorists," the Geneva Conventions were openly discarded because we could not take a chance that these people could be set free on a technicality if they were allowed any kind of due process. Indeed, we couldn't even treat them humanely or eschew torture in interrogations. And when Iraq didn't turn out to be the promised cakewalk, and the damned Iraqis refused to cooperate sufficiently in their foreign occupation, we decided we couldn't take a chance on due process or humane treatment with them either.

And wherever the orders for endless incarceration and torture don't get followed the way they're supposed to, whether from the resistence of a decent, professional soldier or the inattention of a half baked reserve general, the go-to guy is General Geoffrey D. Ripper.





digby 5/29/2004 02:03:00 PM |

 
He Shoulda Known Better

Tristero reminds me of another reason I recoil at the very sight of Crusader Codpiece:

There was not only a new sound,' said Al Gore, speaking about the Beatles to the editor of Rolling Stone. "There was something else that was new with the Beatles. A new sensibility...that incredible gestalt they had." The great exception to all this is George W. Bush. He was at Yale from 1964 to 1968, and liked some of the Beatles first records. 'Then they got a bit weird,' he has said. 'I didn't like all that later stuff when they got strange.

He was too stoned on Jack and coke to unnerstand them big words. Jayzuz...

Tristero also mentions that Paul McCartney (finally) spoke out against the war.

You know, it might have helped just a little bit if Paul and others like him had shown a bit more guts a couple of years ago. I remember writing on this very blog, with a kind of naivete I haven't seen in myself for quite some time, that we could count on the artist community to step up.

Some did. Janeane Garrofolo, Sheryl Crow, the Dixie Chicks and the already politically active lefties like Ed Begley Jr and Ed Asner. The big names played it safe. Pretty much everybody else hemmed and hawed and looked the other way when they had a chance to actually make a difference.

And the last of my ideals shattered like an old 45 record on the asphalt of my dreams....



digby 5/29/2004 12:35:00 PM |

 
Friendly Fire

How depressingly predictable is this?.

Pat Tillman, the former National Football League safety who left the Arizona Cardinals to join the Army after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, was ``probably'' killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, the U.S. Army said today.

In a wonderful Memorial Day post, Julia has some important advice to those who might be tempted to lash out at the friends and family who might express some dismay about this --- shut the fuck up.

And she makes a very important point:

Pat Tillman's death seems to me to be tragic because he was willing to give up a great deal to do what he thought was the right thing. The main thing he put on the line was his life. This makes him one of many hundreds of young americans who gave up their lives to do what they believed to be the right thing.

I find it incredibly distasteful when supporters of the current administration try to shove him up on a pedestal because he could have been rich instead. I haven't found any other area of political discourse where you folks think that it's honorable and righteous and patriotic to consider anything over profits. Certainly none of your political heroes have.

If you think it's unamerican to bitch about Halliburton taking a record rakeoff and serving our soldiers rotted food, just leave Pat Tillman's name out of your mouth. He didn't die for your ideology. He died to show it up.

She's right. If there's one thing that Republicans as a rule and the administration in particular do not represent is people who give up their fortunes to fight for what they believe is right. Indeed, they believe that the only right thing is making a fortune.

As Julia says, they need to shut the fuck up about Pat Tillman.



digby 5/29/2004 11:18:00 AM |

 
Look At All That Venison!

Now, this is what I call a photo-op, dammit:

So if I were John Kerry I'd go buy a grandfathered assault rifle at a gun show, then head out to the woods and mow down a few deer with my semi-automatic firing. "Some in my party," Kerry intoned, "say that this is not a legitimate hunting weapon. To them I say: Look at all this venison." Then grill it up, and start talking about Bush's giveaways to the HMOs and the pharmaceutical industry, about how his determination to cram subsidies for coal, oil, and gas companies has prevented the development of alternative fuels that could revitalize the rural economy. Etc. Where there's a will to compromise on guns, there's a way to win.

I've always thought Matt should branch out into some humor writing. He often cracks me up, anyway.

His point is well taken. I think the gun thing is pretty much over as a national issue until we have another assassination or a huge rise in crime, when it will once again rear its head. Until then, the Dems would do well to pander their asses off. It would have the salutary effect of defanging the NRA, which is basically a patronage operation for the RNC. The fewer of those the better.




digby 5/29/2004 10:38:00 AM |

 
Ahmad, We Hardly Knew Ye

The fog is lifting a tiny bit on this story and certain outlines are becoming clearer.

First, despite Matt Yglesias's reasonable belief that the outside-the-government Neo's would listen to any "ix-nay on the Alabi-chay" signals they've been getting from the inside-the-government Neo's, many are following Ahmad off the cliff without hesitation. The exception seems to be The Weakly Standard, which (with the exception of Fred "Nascar" Barnes) is always a bit smarter than the rest of the crew.

So, up to the White House march the perennially wrong Richard Perle, James Woolsey and Newt Gingrich to convince Condi Rice that poor Ahmad is the victim of a smear campaign. Condi is non-committal as is every single neocon in the government who obviously know that Ahmad is a traitor on a particularly egregious scale. (Not to mention that they all may very well be sitting in the same hot seat within a very short period of time.)

Meanwhile, in Jane Meyer's new piece in the best investigative magazine in America, The New Yorker, she relates the inside story of the rise of Chalabi in Washington. He is a clever fellow:

After the fall of Communism, the neoconservatives were eager for a new cause, and Chalabi—an educated, secular Shiite who was accepting of Israel and talked about spreading democracy throughout the Middle East—capitalized on their enthusiasm. Judith Kipper, the Council on Foreign Relations director, said that, around this time, Chalabi made “a deliberate decision to turn to the right,” having realized that conservatives were more likely than liberals to back the use of force against Saddam.[read: gullible fools-ed.]

As Brooke put it, “We thought very carefully about this, and realized there were only a couple of hundred people” in Washington who were influential in shaping policy toward Iraq. He and Chalabi set out to win these people over. Before long, Chalabi was on a first-name basis with thirty members of Congress, such as Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich, and was attending social functions with Richard Perle, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, who was now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Dick Cheney, who was the C.E.O. of Halliburton. According to Brooke, “From the beginning, Cheney was in philosophical agreement with this plan. Cheney has said, ‘Very seldom in life do you get a chance to fix something that went wrong.’”

Wolfowitz was particularly taken with Chalabi, an American friend of Chalabi’s said. “Chalabi really charmed him. He told me they are both intellectuals. Paul is a bit of a dreamer.” To Wolfowitz, Chalabi must have seemed an ideal opposition figure. "He just thought, This is cool—he says all the right stuff about democracy and human rights. I wonder if we can’t roll Saddam, just the way we did the Soviets,” the friend said.[Oh, Jesus - ed]

Chalabi was running out of money, however, and he needed new patrons. Brooke said that he and Chalabi hit upon a notion that, he admitted, was “naked politics”: the I.N.C.’s disastrous history of foiled C.I.A. operations under the Clinton Administration could be turned into a partisan weapon for the Republicans. “Clinton gave us a huge opportunity,” Brooke said. “We took a Republican Congress and pitted it against a Democratic White House. We really hurt and embarrassed the President.” The Republican leadership in Congress, he conceded, “didn’t care that much about the ammunition. They just wanted to beat up the President.” Nonetheless, he said, senior Republican senators, including Trent Lott and Jesse Helms, “were very receptive, right away.”

So basically, Chalabi charmed the starry-eyed neocons with delusions of a Mesopotamian Monticello and handed the craven, GOP powerfucks another weapon to use against Clinton. This guy completely understood the Modern Republican Party, you have to admit.

And then there is this simply mind-blowing story about The NY Times, which they somehow forgot to mention in their "editor's note":

In an unusual arrangement, two months before the invasion began, the chief correspondent for the Times, Patrick E. Tyler, who was in charge of overseeing the paper’s war coverage, hired Chalabi’s niece, Sarah Khalil, to be the paper’s office manager in Kuwait. Chalabi had long been a source for Tyler. Chalabi’s daughter Tamara, who was in Kuwait at the time, told me that Khalil helped her father’s efforts while she was working for the Times.

In early April, 2003, Chalabi was stranded in the desert shortly after U.S. forces airlifted him and several hundred followers into southern Iraq, leaving them without adequate water, food, or transportation. Once again, the assistance of the U.S. military had backfired. Chalabi used a satellite phone to call Khalil for help. According to Tamara, Khalil commandeered money from I.N.C. funds and rounded up a convoy of S.U.V.s, which she herself led across the border into Iraq.

Tyler told me that he hadn’t known that Khalil had helped Chalabi get into southern Iraq. He added that Khalil had a background in journalism, and that Chalabi hadn’t been a factor in the war when he hired her. “We were covering a war, not Chalabi,” he said. The Times dismissed Khalil on May 20, 2003, when word of her employment reached editors in New York. During the five months that Khalil was employed, Tyler published nine pieces that mentioned Chalabi. When asked about Khalil’s rescue of Chalabi, William Schmidt, an associate managing editor of the Times, said, “The Times is not aware of any such story, or whether it happened. If so, it was out of bounds.”

Out of bounds. Goodness gracious, I hope they suspend his milk money for at least a week. But, it begs the question. Was there any reporter on the Iraq story for The NY Times who wasn't in Chalabi's pocket?

Spoonfed journalists and spoonfed presidents alike all got what they wanted. (And the Chayefskys, Hellers and Kubricks of tomorrow have a veritable feast of material to draw from):

Francis Brooke said that nobody had ordered the I.N.C. to focus solely on W.M.D.s. “I’m a smart man,” he said. “I saw what they wanted, and I adapted my strategy.”

[...]

As a result, the war was largely marketed domestically as a scare campaign, and the I.N.C. was enlisted to promote the danger posed by Saddam’s regime. Brooke said, “I sent out an all-points bulletin to our network, saying, ‘Look, guys, get me a terrorist, or someone who works with terrorists. And, if you can get stuff on W.M.D., send it!’”

As Chalabi's little scam unravels, the marks are struggling to understand what's happened to them:

Jack Blum, a former lawyer for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told me that the Administration compromised its vision from the start, by relying on dubious partners such as Chalabi. He said, “We ruined what could have had some promise by dealing with all the wrong people.”

Hahaha. The "vision" was Chalabi's from the get-go. He just made the neocon fools think it was theirs. As his daughter said:

[her father’s problems could be traced to the fact that] “a foreigner, and an Arab, had beaten the Administration at their own game, in their own back yard.”

digby 5/29/2004 08:40:00 AM |

Friday, May 28, 2004

 
Ooops, He Did It Again

I am reliably informed that Dana Rohrabacher is once more blaming the Clinton administration for the Taliban and al Qaeda, this time on Crossfire. Looks like it's time to dig into the Dana files again:

Hello?

Rohrabacher’s post-Sept. 11 finger-pointing was a fraud designed to distract attention from his own ongoing meddling in the foreign-policy nightmare. Federal documents reviewed by the Weekly show that Rohrabacher maintained a cordial, behind-the-scenes relationship with Osama bin Laden’s associates in the Middle East—even while he mouthed his most severe anti-Taliban comments at public forums across the U.S. There’s worse: despite the federal Logan Act ban on unauthorized individual attempts to conduct American foreign policy, the congressman dangerously acted as a self-appointed secretary of state, constructing what foreign-affairs experts call a "dual tract" policy with the Taliban.

I mean, this is getting ridiculous. Isn't there any "journalist" in Washington who has the cojones to call this asshole on his little "friendship" with the Taliban? What in Gawd's name is it going to take to get these people to actually, you know, do their jobs? There are pictures, ferchristsake!


Thanks Wendel for the heads up.


digby 5/28/2004 08:14:00 PM |

 
Just Because You're Paranoid, Doesn't Mean That People Aren't Out To Get You

Rush told his listeners this week, "There's something going on. I mean, every day now somebody is out there trashing me and mentioning my name from someplace.These comments are two weeks old. Now they've even got Gore mouthing these comments

There's something going on, all right, hop-head. You're having to answer for the vomitous lies you've been spewing for the last 10 years. Nobody has to say anything bad about you. All they have to do is wrap your own words around your neck and let them hang you.

Guess what, Rush. You're becoming a liability.




digby 5/28/2004 03:03:00 PM |

 
What Was Your First Clue?

The one and only time I interviewed Mr. Bush, when he was running in 2000, he called me by the wrong name several times, which was no big deal, and I didn't correct him. But after this went on for a while, his adviser Karen Hughes, who was sitting in on the interview, finally said: "Governor, her name's not Alison, it's Melinda."

"I think I know what her name is; we just had lunch last week," Bush responded. "Your name IS still Melinda, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"You haven't changed it since last week?"

"No."

"OK, then. Glad we got that cleared up."

Hughes persisted, though. "Governor, you were calling her Alison."

"I wasn't calling HER Alison," he said, with apparent conviction. "I was calling YOU Alison."

At the time, I thought this was very funny. But now I'm not so sure. I keep wondering what has become of the "humble" foreign policy Bush talked about during the 2000 campaign. Yes, 9/11 has changed our president's view of the world and given him a new sense of mission, of "crusade" as he once said. Yet it has not altered just-war theory or the rule of law---which in the absence of personal humility, or any doubts about right action, seem particularly useful guideposts.

Ya think?

So, now we find out that the intellectually deficient inbred son has always had a messianic complex, has always believed he's omnipotent and has always insisted that those who surround him maintain his version of reality.

Remind you of anyone?




Another great catch from Kevin at Catch.com



digby 5/28/2004 11:13:00 AM |

 
Classic Charles Pierce:

Yesterday, prior to watching the Sox get vivisected by Oakland at Fenway last night, I was listening to The Radio Factor on my way home from work. Now, I've followed Bill O'Reilly's career since he was just a baby megalomaniac on Boston TV. It would not now surprise me in the least if, one night on TV, right there during The Memo, O'Reilly declared himself to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia.

digby 5/28/2004 09:45:00 AM |

 
Such Total Losers, Dude

If you read this article by Michael Crowley in Slate, you'll soon realize that not only is Kerry a charisma deficient loser, but anyone he could possibly pick as his running mate is even worse.

What's really fun about it is that it contains every single GOP talking point ever devised to insult and demean Democrats. It will make you feel all kewl 'n stuff when you read it because then you'll know what to say to be above it all like the totally, like, smart dudes who write for, like, totally awesome online zines.




digby 5/28/2004 09:18:00 AM |

Thursday, May 27, 2004

 
What's a drunken man like, fool?

Like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman. One draught above heat makes him a fool, the seconds mads him, and a third drowns him.


Ezra deconstructs Hitchy's somehow sad little defense of his great friend Ahmad so we don't have to.

I actually thought this was rather poignant:

At our long meeting, Chalabi impressed me for three reasons. The first was that he thought the overthrow of one of the world's foulest-ever despotisms could be accomplished. I knew enough by then to know that any Iraqi taking this position in public was risking his life and the lives of his family. I did not know Iraq very well but had visited the country several times in peace and war and met numerous Iraqis, and the second thing that impressed me was that, whenever I mentioned any name, Chalabi was able to make an exhaustive comment on him or her. (The third thing that impressed me was his astonishingly extensive knowledge of literary and political arcana, but that's irrelevant to our purposes here.)

Isn't that something. Ahmad greatly impressed him by "bravely" saying he thought the US could overthrow a third world dictator, he knew many names of many Iraqis and he dropped lots of political and literary references into the conversation. Imagine that. All those thing in one meeting with the Orwell worshipping, name dropping literary and political snob, Chris Hitchens. Why it was Kismet!

If I were a cynical type, I might just think that old Chris got himself conned.




digby 5/27/2004 06:32:00 PM |

 
Me, Me, Me

In Jack Beatty's scathing takedown of the neocon vision in The Atlantic, the sub-head reads:

In the wake of Iraq, the term "neo-conservative" may come to mean "dangerous innocence about world realities."

Now, I don't mean to toot my own horn, being the incredibly modest and unassuming sort that I am, but I simply must call to everyone's attention the fact that I have been calling the Wolfowitz claque the "starry-eyed neocons" since before I started this blog even, which was way back in oh, 2003.

You can look it up.





digby 5/27/2004 06:02:00 PM |

 
When You're Wrong, You're Wrong

Tristero's in fine form today. Read it all. He takes on the blogospheric navel gazing about whether the war was a good idea but badly executed or whether it was just a bad idea. He's not in the mood to take a bunch of idealistic hawks' discredited views seriously any longer.

I especially like this:

A "great" foreign policy, like a "great" Christianity, can never depend on evangelism. You simply must strive to embody greatness in your own country (and in your soul). You can't ram greatness down someone's throat because, by definition then, it can't be that great.

He seems think you can't create a democracy by invading a country, putting a gun to the people's heads and telling them to be free or else. How odd.

Why, that's like telling a would-be suitor that he can't make the girl love him by throwing her to the ground and screaming "you WILL love me!" in her face.

That always works. Women love it. What's he going on about?






digby 5/27/2004 05:03:00 PM |

 
Showing Up Daddy

In reading this extremely interesting article by Robert Parry in Consortiumnews.com about how Junior should sit down with his father and have a heart to heart with dear old Dad about the real story of Iran, Iraq and Israel (wow, what a story) I was reminded of how often I heard people say in 2000 that Bush would have his father as his closest advisor. I think that this was one thing that settled people's minds a bit about the obvious lack of qualifications and essential knowledge that Lil' George brought to the table. Just the other day, somebody said to me, "but his father must have warned him."

The fact is that Bush is such a callow little ass that he doesn't talk to his father. And he is such an arrogant piece of compost that he actually believes all the Karen Hughes propaganda that's been spewed these last few years about the size of his codpiece:

...the alleged Iranian intelligence trap could only have been sprung because key Bush advisers were inclined to believe the bogus information in the first place, since it fit their own agendas. In addition, Bush lacked the sophistication and the knowledge to bring adequate skepticism to what he was hearing, assuming that he wanted to. Though his father has that depth of understanding, the younger Bush says he hasn't sought out his father's counsel on Iraq. Nor is advice from his father's top confidants welcome.

When the elder Bush's national security adviser Brent Scowcroft weighed in on Aug. 15, 2002, with a Wall Street Journal opinion piece warning against an invasion of Iraq, the younger Bush's NSC adviser Condoleezza Rice reportedly gave Scowcroft a tongue-lashing. He subsequently stayed out of the debate. "Neither Scowcroft nor Bush senior wanted to injure the son's self-confidence," wrote Bob Woodward in Plan of Attack.

When questioned about getting his father's advice, the younger George Bush sounds almost petulant. "I can't remember a moment where I said to myself, maybe he can help me make the decision," Bush told Woodward.
Bush said he couldn't remember any specifics about conversations he may have had with his father about the conflict. "I'm not trying to be evasive," Bush said. "I don't remember. I could ask him and see if he remembers something. But how do you ask a person, What does it feel like to send somebody in and them lose life? Remember, I've already done so, for starters, in Afghanistan. "

He's not only an incompetent president. He's an ungrateful, backstabbing son to the man for whom he owes EVERYTHING he ever got. Why anyone would want to have a beer with this supercilious little shit is beyond me.





digby 5/27/2004 03:20:00 PM |

 
Punchin' Judy

USA Today actually names names in this column about the Judith Miller debacle. The thesis of the piece, though, is that when The New York Times runs unskeptical articles on page one, it affects the political process more strongly than if another paper does it. In this case, when they breathlessly reported that Saddam was about to launch a nuclear missile (or close to it) it cowed many Democrats into thinking that the administration might just be right.

I suspect that this is true. And it is another example of liberals internalizing right wing cant. The "liberal" New York Times spent eight years trying to run the Democratic president out of town, both on its news pages and on the editorial pages. They assigned an openly hostile reporter to cover the Gore campaign and sent a fawning acolyte to report on Bush's every manly move. They have been fed all kinds of propaganda and lies by GOP political operatives for years and people knew this early on. Trudy Lieberman wrote an amazing expose in the Columbia Journalism Review of the Whitewater disinformation campaign by David Bossie's Citizens United all the way back in 1994:

Francis Shane, publisher of Citizens United's newsletter, ClintonWatch, hesitates to say exactly whom they've worked with -- "We don't particularly like to pinpoint people" -- but he does say, "We have worked closer with The New York Times than The Washington Times." Jeff Gerth, The New York Times's chief reporter on Whitewater, hesitated to talk on the record. He did say, "If Citizens United has some document that's relevant, I take it. I check it out like anything else."

Uh huh. Sometimes I think the Washington Times exists solely to provide a phony kind of balance so that Democrats will find the the NY Times more credible just by the contrast. Besides, The Times is "liberal," right? Everybody knows that. They wouldn't peddle phony stories about Democrats.

From the USA Today article:

Martin Kaplan, dean of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, says that "for people who are serious and thoughtful, the Times is a gatekeeper of quality in terms of what's credible and believable. When it published those pieces, it sent signals which legitimized our going to war and calmed people's fears that we were rushing. It turns out that the Times was hoodwinked just like the rest of the country."

See? "Serious and thoughtful" people know that The Times is credible and believable. This in spite of the fact that they almost single handedly took down a presidency based upon proven false information provided by political operatives and then proceeded to believe many of the same people when they said that the United States was in mortal danger from Saddam Hussein.

But, they are the liberal New York Times! They can't possibly not have our liberal best interests at heart.

Luckily there are some "realists" left:

... for anyone to suggest that the Times reports led us to war is "absurd," says Stephanopoulos. The former Clinton administration communications chief says the newspaper's influence is sometimes exaggerated. "In this Internet age, there is so much information. ... No single newspaper has that much power or influence. People aren't waiting for a single newspaper to hit their doorstep at 6 a.m. to set the agenda."

Quite the little whore isn't he? Setting aside the fact that the New York Times most definitely sets the news agenda and that Democrats are more likely to believe something if it's in the Times, Stephanopoulos of all people knows what the New York Times is capable of unleashing. But, he's now in the full time business of self promotion so he's keeping his options open. Besides, This Weak is a miserable failure so he's probably looking for work. It wouldn't pay to tell the truth.




digby 5/27/2004 02:05:00 PM |

 
Who Fed The Boys?

If anybody wants to catch up the very latest in Chalabi intrigue, Laura Rozen at War and Piece has got it goin' on as usual.

It's creeping closer and closer to the inner circle. According to a UPI report Rozen cites from Tuesday, the FBI is looking at two former CPA officials who are now back in the states --- one still working for the pentagon and one snuggled safely in the arms of AEI.

Rozen says the two are reported to be Michael Rubin and Harold Rhode (although they have denied it.)

Just for kicks, here's what Right Web watch says about Rubin:

Michael Rubin is one of the youngest neoconservative figures to gain prominence within the George W. Bush administration. A Yale graduate whose dissertation focused on modern Iran, Rubin has traveled extensively in Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Sudan.

Rubin, an AEI scholar, was involved in several meetings and conferences officiated by Douglas Feith and Harold Rhode at AEI as part of the Bush transition team. One of the objectives of these meetings was to reshape the top leadership at the Pentagon, sidelining or removing those who were regarded as moderates. Out of these discussions came the idea for the creation of the Office of Special Plans (OSP).

Between 2002 and 2004, Rubin worked as a staff adviser for Iran and Iraq in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, in which capacity he was seconded to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Rubin was assigned to the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, which was fold into the Northern Gulf Affairs Office after the unit was implicated in cooking intelligence information to justify the Iraq war and occupation.

In a National Review article, Rubin discusses sentiments expressed whenever Secretary of State Colin Powell and Special Envoy Anthony Zinni would visit Israel.

“While working at Hebrew University this past year, I took the bus to campus each day. Whenever U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell or Special Envoy Anthony Zinni was dispatched to Israel, colleagues would urge me to stay home until after the suicide bombing. Middle Easterners understand the lesson those in the U.S. and Europe are still learning: When governments engage dictators, civilians suffer.” [Yeah. Europe doesn't know anything about that...ed.]

I hadn't heard of Harold Rhode, but waddaya know. It turns out that he is one of Michael Ledeen's intellectual houseboys. And he was involved in that bizarre little bit of deja vu-vu last summer when Ledeen tried to "open up the lines of communication with Iran" by getting in touch with our old friend Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian con artist who arranged the arms for hostages deal for Ollie and the boys.

Pentagon hard-liners pressing for change of government in Iran have held secret, unauthorised meetings in Paris with an arms dealer who was a main figure in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Administration officials said at least two Pentagon officials working for the Undersecretary of Defence for Policy, Douglas Feith, have held "several" meetings with Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian middleman in United States arms-for-hostage shipments to Iran in the mid-1980s.

The officials who disclosed the secret meetings said the talks with Mr Ghorbanifar were not authorised by the White House and appeared to be aimed at undercutting sensitive negotiations with Iran's Government.

A senior Administration official said the US Government had learned about the unauthorised talks by accident.

The senior official and another Administration source said the ultimate objective of Mr Feith and a group of neo-conservative civilians inside the Pentagon is change of government in Iran.

The immediate objective appeared to be to "antagonise Iran so that they get frustrated and then by their reactions harden US policy against them".

The official confirmed that the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, complained directly to the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, several days ago about Mr Feith conducting missions that went against US policy.

A spokesman for Mr Feith's Near East, South Asia and Special Plans office, which sources said played a key role in contacts with Mr Ghorbanifar contacts, ignored an emailed inquiry about the talks.

The senior Administration official identified two of the defence officials who met Mr Ghorbanifar as Harold Rhode, Mr Feith's top Middle East specialist, and Larry Franklin, a Defence Intelligence Agency analyst on loan to the undersecretary's office.

Mr Rhode recently acted as a liaison between Mr Feith's office, which drafted much of the Administration's post-Iraq planning, and Ahmed Chalabi, a former Iraqi exilegroomed for leadership by the Pentagon.

Mr Rhode is a protege of Michael Ledeen, who was a National Security Council consultant in the mid 1980s when he introduced Mr Ghorbanifar to Oliver North, a NSC aide, and others in the opening stages of the Iran-Contra affair.

Rozen says that many of her colleagues have expressed skepticism because these guys couldn't have had access to the kind of sensitive information that's being discussed.

That may be true, but it sure looks like they have easy access to those who do. Particularly Douglas Feith, who is clearly up to his neck in this thing. Ledeen probably is too. He's been playing the Iran angle for years.

Who duped who and how is still up for grabs, but it sure looks like Junior and the Retreads got taken to the cleaners. What a surprise. Them being grown-ups and all.

Update:

Thanks to commenter Vin Carreo, I was reminded of this article by josh Marshall from 2002 in which he dissected the entire "second tier" pentagon neocon crew, (which includes an amazing anecdote about Rhode) describing them as even more nutty than the first tier of Wolfowitz, Perle and the rest:

In the minds of these second-tier appointees, taking out Saddam Hussein is only part of a larger puzzle. Their grand vision of the Middle East goes something like this: Stage 1: Iraq becomes democratic. Stage 2: Reformers take over in Iran. That would leave the three powerhouses of the Middle East -- Turkey, Iraq and Iran -- democratic and pro-Western. Suddenly the Saudis wouldn't be just one more corrupt, authoritarian Arab regime slouching toward bin Ladenism. They'd be surrounded by democratic states that would undermine Saudi rule both militarily and ideologically.


As a plan to pursue in the real world, most of the career military and the civilian employees at the Pentagon -- indeed most establishment foreign policy experts -- see this vision as little short of insane. But to Bush's hawkish Pentagon appointees the real prize isn't Baghdad, it's Riyadh. And the Saudis know it.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave.






digby 5/27/2004 01:54:00 PM |

 
Consider The Source

Eric Boehlert has an interesting post up in Salon's War Room '04. Discussing the NY Times sorta culpa, he notes the similarities between the paper's Wen Ho Lee apology and the Judy Miller debacle and then asks when it will have to answer for its even more egregious Whitewater coverage. (Never, is my guess.)

But, he says something in passing that is very important:

Of course the most troubling similarity is that in both cases Republican informants, operating with a clear political agenda, took the paper-of-record for a joy ride as they tried first to tar President Clinton with a China spy scandal in the late '90s and then set out to launch an unprecedented U.S. preemptive U.S. war against Iraq.

I would say this is troubling indeed. I have had a number of altercations with journalists over my characterization of them being spoonfed by Republican liars but it is a fact. It has been going on for a long time now and it is unlikely to stop.

Alterman, Conason, Brock and others have written about the SCLM and the echo chamber effect and the Mighty Wurlitzer. The information is out there and available. But, I'm not sure what it's going to take to convince the press that when a GOP operative is offering you a juicy story that is just too good to be true that it probably is.

The list of wrong stories, innuendos, misdirection, disinformation and outright lies that have been printed and broadcast on behalf of the Republican party in the mainstream press is staggering. It runs from bullshit about haircuts to rape accusations to trashing the White House to Bank Fraud to Chinese espionage to phony assertions about nuclear bombs and pending terrorist attacks. It goes on and on and on, escalating exponentially, and yet the media keeps writing up these falsehoods as if these people haven't been proven to be liars time and time again.

Judith Miller is only the most obvious culprit because her false stories have been so blatently exposed. But, it happens every day in the major papers and networks. These journalists have cultivated "sources" who are giving them misinformation. They continue to rely on these "sources" even though they have led them astray time and time again. That these sources are also Republican operatives or GOP power players with an agenda doesn't seem to engender much skepticism, I believe, because these sources always have such an entertaining and interesting "story" to tell.

But, why should an journalist worry much about such things? Getting stories wrong time after time after time doesn't seem to have any impact on your career. Unless you are caught red handed plagiarizing or simply making things up out of whole cloth, if you've got the inside Washiington track you won't be fired no matter how badly you get things wrong. As Judy says:

I had no reason to believe what I reported at the time was inaccurate," Miller told me. "I believed the intelligence information I had at the time. I sure didn't believe they were making it up. This was a learning process. You constantly have to ask the question, 'What do you know at the time you are writing it?' We tried really hard to get more information and we vetted information very, very carefully."

That seems to be good enough for the New York Times which is why they are constantly being played for stooges by the Republican party. And it's a good part of the reason why our politics are so fucked up.

In any normal organization Judith Miller would be gone. She committed journalistic malpractice of such a magnitude that people have died partially as a result of what she did. But instead, they are protecting her. After all, if she goes she'll take all of those "great sources" with her.






digby 5/27/2004 10:29:00 AM |

 
Sending A Message

I thought it would be nice to hear what our troops are listening to today as they toil in dangerous places, particularly the middle east. This is what they're hearing from home:

Algore, this whole speech, he went nuts. He's flailing around wildly there. Not just me, he's attacking everybody who has led the nation through 9/11, the war on terrorism, and he's making statements that are flat out lies in this speech. For example, the Geneva Conventions. I don't know how many of you know this, the Geneva Conventions do not protect terrorists. They protect soldiers who serve under a nation who wear uniforms who carry their weapons openly, and with the kind of threat that we're facing today with terrorist cells in the U.S. plotting an even bigger attack than 9/11. I mean, it says a lot about Gore. It says he's perverse, that he would be argue to go confer greater rights on those who seek to murder millions of Americans and calling for even tougher actions to seek them out and destroy them before they destroy us, and this is what is truly puzzling to me about the left, and this is what's disarming about these prison photos.

What really troubles me about these photos, above and beyond what's in them, is how they're being used to undermine our war effort. Now we have the former vice president, a man who was thisclose to becoming president of the United States, speak out in this speech. We haven't played you the bites, but he was flailing around on the Geneva Convention. He starts talking about conferring more rights on the kind of people who want to murder tens of thousands more Americans than he does seem interested in dealing with the people who want to commit those murders. He has succeeded in giving our adversaries in Europe and our enemies in the caves of Afghanistan and the allies of Iraq a message that they'll take to heart, and that is that we are not a united nation, that we do not have the will to win this war, and that we are weak and indecisive. That's the message that Gore sends today, and it's the wrong message, because it's a lie, and beyond that it is an outrage.

I don't think anything of this kind has ever been done by a former vice president during a war, but our adversaries and our enemies would be badly mistaken if they actually believe that Gore speaks for this nation, because he doesn't. I speak for more of this nation than Algore does, and I will say it on this program. Otherwise, why is he bothering to mention my name? He speaks for the radical fringe in his party who have become more and more the mainstream of his party. They are the Hate-America First radical left, and I hope the American people get to hear all of this speech. I hope it's played over and over again, for this is how low Gore and his crowd are willing to go to undermine the war effort and our troops and this president to promote themselves and their own agenda and get themselves back into power. Lest we forget, Algore and his boss, Bill Clinton, stood by while the enemy was plotting and planning to murder thousands of Americans.

They did nothing serious to stop bin Laden. They did nothing serious to fight terrorism. They degraded or military. They slashed our troop levels, undermined our intelligence services. Today calls for civil rights for terrorists in his speech while opposing the Patriot Act which helps us find and stop terrorist cells right here in our country, and Gore has said nothing about how he would fight this evil because he's obsessed with hatred not for the enemy but for George W. Bush -- and that's what identifies MoveOn.org. That's what identifies most of the fringe, radical left in this country. They actually think Bush is a greater threat to the people of this world and this country than any thug dictator, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong ll, anybody. They think Bush poses a greater threat, and as misguided as that is, this is what animates them. It is what motivates them and inspires them.

I'm sure glad the boys and girls in uniform are kept up to date on current affairs, aren't you? And I'm sure they heard Gore's entire speech so they could judge for themselves if what Rush says is true. Certainly on All Things Considered or Marketplace they'll be addressing the question of whether the Democrats caused 9/11 and support terrorism. It wouldn't be fair and balanced otherwise.

Rush might be causing just the teeniest, tiniest bit of confusion, though, when the troops in Iraq hear that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to people who aren't in uniform. But, hey , I'm sure Goober and Gomer know that Rush Limbaugh doesn't know what he's talking about. I can't imagine that hearing stuff like this would make some pissed off national guardsman think that his countrymen support his treating Iraqi people like animals.

Thanks to Seeing the Forest for the heads up. Read Dave's entire piece. It's great.




digby 5/27/2004 09:05:00 AM |

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

 
Each In His Own Way

Sometimes I wonder how a Democrat can ever win an election in this country because he's being pulled so hard from all directions that he's likely to go crazy from the pain.

Al Gore gave a great speech today. The wing nuts are all over it, of course. But, it's also an occasion for our side to criticize John Kerry for not giving the same speech. Sigh.

As I said in my earlier post, I think that Al Gore holds a unique position in American politics. He is the man who was elected president who was not allowed to take the office. It's a position that allows him to speak in ways that others, who are within the political system, cannot. It's not because they are cowardly but because they have to actually govern and our system requires that presidential candidates especially, have to run to represent all the people, not just our side.

Al Gore can speak effectively yet with no holds barred because he holds the moral authority of the presidency without actually having to govern. It gives power to his words, particularly abroad. But, it is because of his unique situation that people listen to what he says. Kerry, on the other hand, is trying to get getting elected in what is currently a close election and that takes some --- dare I say it --- nuance.

Firebreathing is a powerful thing. But, it is not in and of itself a good thing. We have to use our hearts and our heads and manange this election intelligently.

For what it's worth, Kerry is on the same page this week as Gore. I don't think this is an accident:

At the same moment Attorney General John Ashcroft was telling reporters in Washington that al-Qaida may be planning an attack on the United States, Sen. John Kerry was in Seattle, arguing that Ashcroft and his Bush administration colleagues have failed to do enough to prepare for such an attack.

Noting that Bush administration officials have repeatedly said that a terrorist attack in the United States is a question of "when, not if," Kerry asked why the administration hasn't moved more decisively to increase the number of cops on the street, to require inspections of cargo container ships, to increase security on trains and to protect nuclear power plants and other potentially vulnerable targets.

"I'm not going to stand in front of you as a potential president and say to you that you can protect every single place and harden every single target in the country -- all Americans know that," Kerry told a few thousand supporters who braved Seattle's drizzle to see the candidate speak on a public pier. "But what we can do is protect against catastrophe. What we can do is protect those places that are most logical places for the largest potential damage or danger. And that is the responsibility of a president."

While Kerry didn't specifically say -- as some of his supporters have -- that Ashcroft's warnings could be a politically motivated ploy to shore up Bush's free-falling approval ratings, he came awfully close to doing so. "We deserve a president of the United States who doesn't make homeland security a photo opportunity and the rhetoric of a campaign," Kerry said. "We deserve a president who makes America safer."

Kerry begins an 11-day "focus" on national security and foreign policy in Seattle Thursday with what aides are billing as a major speech on terrorism and the war on Iraq. Wednesday's speech -- in which Kerry said that Bush had repeatedly misled the country about Iraq -- may have been a preview of things to come.

Invoking his own experience in Vietnam, Kerry said that the ultimate test of a commander-in-chief in wartime comes when he must look the parents of a fallen soldier in the eye. At that moment, Kerry said the president must be able to say of any war: "I tried to do everything in my power to avoid it, but the threat was such that we had no choice." Bush, Kerry said, "failed -- and fails -- that test in Iraq."

digby 5/26/2004 07:40:00 PM |

 
Nothing We Do Can Ever Be Bad

Via Media Matters I read this from Ben Stein:

Media, Congress, get it straight: The U.S. is the main repository of decency on this Earth. The al-Qaida can never defeat us if we are united. But we can defeat ourselves if we begin to think we are the enemy and lose our confidence in our cause. There is no moral equivalency between us and the terrorists. We're the good guys, and if we lose because we didn't play hard enough, it's the end of everything good in our world.

Then, I believe, his head turned five revolutions on top of his shoulders and he projectile vomited several gallons of matzo ball soup.

Update: Mary Matalin was on Rush Limbaugh and said:

[Y]ou inspired me this morning. There's no reason that I have to do that. I'm -- and at least I think I do, but when I listen to you, I get all the information I need, and I -- and I -- it is -- I have a confidence in the President, in the policies, in the goals. I have -- I know his conviction. I know he's right and I know he has the leadership to do it. What I don't have, and what I can only get from you, is the cheerfulness of your confidence --

It's amazing how a fistfull of little blue babies can lift your spirits, Mary. But, I think you know that.

The question I will always have for James Carville is ... how can anything be good enough to make up for all the rest?






digby 5/26/2004 05:39:00 PM |

 
Support The Troops

Salon.com is offering free subscriptions to active duty personnel. Tell your friends and relatives in the service. (It has some good sexy stuff, too, if that's what it takes to get them interested. And I mean normal sexy stuff, not the freak show stuff that Limbaugh quite obviously spends way too much time perusing.)

And, there's a petition circulating to get Limbaugh off of American Forces radio. Personally, I'd rather see them challenged to give Howard Stern the follow-up slot since he's explicitly anti-Bush these days, but this is good, too.

Turning down the volume of the Mighty Wurlitzer is key to ending the reign of the Gingrichian Republicans. If there's one thing we can do on the internet its show what glass jaws these right wing tough guy pundits really have.



digby 5/26/2004 05:04:00 PM |

 
Layers Of Lies On Lies

Bush administration has used 27 rationales for war in Iraq, study says

Only 27?

If it seems that there have been quite a few rationales for going to war in Iraq, that’s because there have been quite a few – 27, in fact, all floated between Sept. 12, 2001, and Oct. 11, 2002, according to a new study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. All but four of the rationales originated with the administration of President George W. Bush.

The study also finds that the Bush administration switched its focus from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein early on – only five months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

[...]

Largio mapped the road to war over three phases: Sept. 12, 2001, to December 2001; January 2002, from Bush’s State of the Union address, to April 2002; and Sept. 12, 2002, to Oct. 11, 2002, the period from Bush’s address to the United Nations to Congress’s approval of the resolution to use force in Iraq.

She drew from statements by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Policy Board member and long-time adviser Richard Perle; by U.S. senators Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman, Trent Lott and John McCain; and from stories in the Congressional Record, the New York Times and The Associated Press. She logged 1,500 statements and stories.

The rationales Largio identified include everything from the five front-runners – war on terror, prevention of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, lack of weapons inspections, removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Saddam Hussein is evil, to the also-rans – Sen. Joe Lieberman’s “because Saddam Hussein hates us,” Colin Powell’s “because it’s a violation of international law,” and Richard Perle’s “because we can make Iraq an example and gain favor within the Middle East.”

We knew this because unnamed Bush administration officials said in the fall of 2002 that they were throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. And, of course, there was the infamous George W. Corleone statement, "Fuck Saddam, we're taking him out." Still it is very interesting to see all the various excuses and rationales in one place.

But, here's the interesting part:

Largio also discovered that it was the media that initiated discussions about Iraq, introducing ideas before the administration and congressional leaders did about the intentions of that country and its leader. The media also “brought the idea that Iraq may be connected to the 9-11 incident to the forefront, asking questions of the officials on the topic and printing articles about the possibility.”

The media “seemed to offer a lot of opinion and speculation, as there had been no formal indication that Iraq would be a target in the war on terror,” Largio wrote. Oddly, though, the media didn’t switch its focus to Iraq and Saddam until July of 2002.

Yet, “Overall, the media was in tune with the major arguments of the administration and Congress, but not with every detail that emerged from the official sources.”

So much has happened so quickly that we lose sight of what total war whores the media were in the lead up and initial execution of the invasion. The reason the media "initiated discussions" about Iraq was quite obviously because they were being spoonfed by the administration. And, as they admitted again just today, even SCLM outlets like the NY Times just can 't shake the habit of running like a herd of buffallo over the cliff whenever the Republicans let out a war whoop.


Here's the report's web site.





digby 5/26/2004 04:11:00 PM |

 
The Best Speech Of His Presidency


I urge all of you to read President Gore's speech if you didn't get to see him give it.

Al Gore has a unique position in the eyes of the world, especially in places where Machiavellian vote counting schemes are the norm rather than the exception. He is the shadow president, the man who should be at the helm instead of the man whom they have almost universally come to despise.

His words have particular meaning because they express to many the beliefs of the majority of Americans. He alone has the authority to speak for all of us who were cheated and have been forced to sit by as this usurper, through incompetence, misplaced machismo and --- most of all --- unbelievable hubris, has managed to destroy more than half a century's worth of international goodwill and over two centuries hard won belief by the American people in the rule of law.

The world is watching to see what we do in November. They are counting on us to save this country and them. Al Gore is the single best person to reassure the world that we are serious, we understand the problem and we are going to deal with it.

A few excerpts follow, but I urge you, again, to read the whole speech:

What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances.

The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the Administration's march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of September 11th.

There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.

[...]

President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists. [Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.] The unpleasant truth is that President Bush's utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States. Just yesterday, the International Institute of Strategic Studies reported that the Iraq conflict " has arguable focused the energies and resources of Al Qaeda and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition." The ISS said that in the wake of the war in Iraq Al Qaeda now has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered arou