Hullabaloo

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

 
Journalistic Performance Art

Via Americablog, I read from CJR that Michael Wolff has an article in Vanity Fair that *gasp* questions the propriety of the major news organizations withholding important information from the public for their own purposes:

Michael Wolff deals with the Rove/Plame/Miller fracas in this month's Vanity Fair (the article isn't available online). Wolff manages to find a unique approach to the issue, positing the thesis that the New York Times and Time magazine are complicit in the cover-up of the fudging of intelligence in the prelude to war in Iraq -- in that they knew Rove was the source of the Plame leak intended to discredit Joe Wilson after he called the administration to account. "Not only did highly placed members of the media and the vaunted news organizations they worked for know it, not only did they sit on what will not improbably be among the biggest stories of the Bush years, they helped cover it up. You could even plausibly say that these organizations became part of a conspiracy -- they entered into an understanding that, as a quid pro quo for certain information, they would refuse to provide evidence about a crime possibly having been committed by the president's closest confidant."

To Wolff's mind, newspaper and magazine editors need to ask themselves an elementary question: "To whom do you owe your greatest allegiance: sources or readers?"

As Wolff sees it, by throwing their hand in with anonymous sources up to no good, instead of with readers, several distinguished media outlets let themselves become tongue-tied and thereby muffed an incendiary story that was in the palms of their hands.

"... [T]he greatest news organizations in the land had a story about a potential crime that reached as close as you can get to the president himself and they punted, they swallowed it, they self-dealt" -- all to protect a dubious source.

It's a novel take, but an intriguing one.

I don't think it's so novel. Many of us among the unwashed masses continue to scratch our heads in wonder as we watch guys like Tim Russert engage in this weird kabuki where he grills others about information pertaining to issues in which he is intimately involved --- and never mentions that fact. James Carville goes on Imus and pontificates about all the rumors he's hearing about the case and nobody asks him about his wife -- who is part of the story and was called to the grand jury. Bob Novak snaps at his press interlocutor, "how do you know if I've been called to the grand jury or not?" His questioner, of course, doesn't bother to follow up with the logical question, "Have you?"

I didn't know what Walter Pincus knew until he wrote an obscure piece for the Neiman Foundation. Meanwhile I've been reading his stories for two years as he quotes "people who've been briefed on the case" and tells it as he's phoning it in from Mt Olympus.

The NY Times rails against Karl Rove for not holding a press conference to tell what he knows while their reporter has never written a word about the same story --- an act of non-journalism for which she's in jail because she refuses to reveal her sources. Apparently, the NY Times feels that Judith Miller, a professional journalist, has no obligation to tell the public what she knows. Her only obligation, apparently, is to protect her source(s).

The media have become performance artists. And apparently they don't even see how surreal this whole thing looks to those of us who aren't involved. They all know a hell of a lot more about the story than they have revealed. And none of them (excepting perhaps Novak) have any personal legal liability stemming from the Fitzgerald investigation. They are simply protecting powerful government sources or each other or God knows what -- and in doing that they have failed spectacularly to do the job they are supposed to do. Nobody is saying that they have to reveal who their sources are, which is what the reporter's privilege provides. But is it too much to ask that they at least stop pretending that they aren't part of the story? Or better yet, is it too much to ask that they just tell the public what they know?

This is a huge scandal, as Wolff says, that may reach as high as the president. Half the press corps know details that they haven't written about. Yet, modern journalistic standards seem to indicate that if bodily fluids had been exchanged instead of classified information we would have gotten to the bottom of this a long time ago.



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digby 8/09/2005 06:07:00 PM |

 
Special Friends

So, that multi-millionaire asshole Tom Noe stole $10,000 from the disabled workers of Ohio to give to that multi-millionare movie star asshole Arnold Schwarzenneger --- who only agreed to return the money after a big stink was made about it. (He's hurting, you see. He had to cancel his lucrative 8 million dollar "supplement" payoff.) I guess it was hurting his image as a guy who would work against the "special interests." Which he has done --- except he thinks that firefighters and nurses are the miscreants. Crooked coin dealers are just "good friends."

This is getting ridiculous. Are we so inured to their graft and corruption that we can't make political hay out of the fact that the entire Republican party is nothing but a bunch of crooked greedheads? Jesus. They've had total power for less than five years and they're bleeding the country dry.



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digby 8/09/2005 04:54:00 PM |

 
Making Homos

Sadly No! posted this fascinating little note yesterday about our favorite dauchsie beater, James Dobson:

James Dobson's Focus on the Family has posted this delightful series of articles on how to instill your children with the proper "gender identification." The first piece is called "Is my child becoming a homosexual?" and it basically says that if your child exhibits "gender confusion," there's a good chance that he'll turn into a fruit

It features a full rundown of symptoms, like "is different" and "likes to play with girls" that are clear signs of impending homoism. It says that if your little boy shows any of these strange and freakish behaviors you should seek professional help. And to head off any problems, dads should take action themselves:

Meanwhile, the boy's father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son's maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.

Well, that depends on if his dad is Gary Bauer, but that's another story. (And anyway, everybody knows that real men pound square pegs into round holes and tell the hole they should just lay back and enjoy it.)

Frankly, as astonishingly simpleminded as "Dr" Dobson's understanding of human sexuality is (not to mention the pain and heartache his cruel advice is going to wreak on the poor kids --- both gay and straight -- who have the bad luck to be born into these families) there is a silver lining. These mindbendingly ignorant, primitive sperm donors will be blamed among the faithful for their children being gay.

Apparently these people believe that a boy becomes gay if his dad fails to drag him into the shower to show him his big penis...

wow



Update: For some more dog pounding FOTF fun, check out these movie reviews on the American Street. Fr' instance:

March of the Penguins

The movie doesn’t credit our Creator with the masterpiece of nature known as the emperor penguin.

*sigh*


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digby 8/09/2005 03:35:00 PM |

 
Hard-Wired

Mithras asks the perennial question" "Where are all the funny conservative bloggers?" It is one that has plagued philosophers and sit-com writers alike since the dawn of blogging (lo those many years ago.)

I am afraid that the answer is one that people may not want to hear or even think about. You see, it's not a matter of choice. From the time they were small children they knew that they weren't funny --- and more importantly, they knew that they didn't even know what funny was. These people were born that way. No matter how hard they try they are unable to be what society deems "normal."

And science has backed up this finding, which should lay to rest once and for all the canard that being entirely without a sense of humor beyond the most puerile schoolyard taunting is a matter of "preference." It's the way they are hard-wired.

For instance:

An investigation by Simone Shamay-Tsoory and colleagues shows that the ability to understand sarcasm depends on a carefully orchestrated sequence of complex cognitive skills in specific parts of the brain.

Dr Shamay-Tsoory, a psychologist at the Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa and the University of Haifa, said: "Sarcasm is related to our ability to understand other people's mental state. It's not just a linguistic form, it's also related to social cognition."

The research revealed that areas of the brain that decipher sarcasm and irony also process language, recognise emotions and help us understand social cues.

"Understanding other people's state of mind and emotions is related to our ability to understand sarcasm," she said.

[...]

The study showed that people with damage in the prefrontal lobe struggled to pick out sarcasm. The others, including people with similar damage to other parts of the brain, were able to correctly place the sharp-tongued words into context.

The prefrontal lobe is known to be involved in pragmatic language processes and complex social cognition. The ventromedial section is linked to personality and social behaviour.

Dr Shamay-Tsoory said the loss of the volunteers' ability to understand irony was a subtle consequence of their brain damage, which produced behaviour similar to that seen in people with autism

"They are still able to hold and understand a conversation. Their problem is to understand when people talk in indirect speech and use irony, idioms and metaphors because they take each sentence literally. They just understand the sentence as it is and can't see if your true meaning is the opposite of your literal meaning."

As an example, consider this famous satirical mifire by Dinesh D'Souza:

... the Democrats could become the party of moral degeneracy. In recent years the Democrats have not embraced moral degeneracy outright. They have contented themselves with hiding behind the slogan of "liberty." If accused of encouraging pornography, the Democrats have said, "No, we are for liberty of expression." Charged with supporting abortion-on-demand, the Democrats insist, "No, we are the party that gives women freedom over their own bodies." Caught distributing sex kits and homosexual instruction manuals to young people, the Democrats protest, "We are merely attempting to give people autonomy and freedom of choice."

But what is the need for this coyness? The Democrats should stop hiding behind "freedom of choice" and become blatant advocates for divorce, illegitimacy, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, and pornography. Indeed the Democrats could become the Party of the Seven Deadly Sins. The political advantage of this approach is that the Seven Deadly Sins are immensely popular. Imagine the political opportunities if all vices were associated with the Democratic party!

Yes, right now President Bush and the Republicans are riding high. But just wait until 2004, when the party of fighting terrorism, promoting economic growth, and fostering traditional moral values, meets its match in a party that stands for anti-Americanism, economic plunder, and moral degeneracy.

More to be pitied than censured, I'd say. It is insensitive to mock people for their inability to understand or be able to define irony, whether in the form of satire or sarcasm. It's simply a matter of higher brain function. They can't help it.



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digby 8/09/2005 01:59:00 PM |

 
Establishment Claws

The Carpetbagger Report points to a case that shows the dangers this modern pluralistic country is facing as it begins to legally enshrine religion into public life:

In Pleasant Grove, Utah, for example, a Ten Commandments memorial, donated by the Fraternal Order of Eagles in 1971, sits in a secluded area of city property that is intended to honor the city's heritage. Pleasant Grove is now facing litigation about the display, not from civil libertarians, but from another religious group that wants equal treatment.

People will pooh-pooh this case as they did an earlier one involving Wicca, in which a practitioner sued for the right to give the invocation for the legislature and was denied because her religion wasn't part of the Judeo-Christian tradition:

The Fourth Circuit upheld the decision of a county legislature which sought to ban certain religions from giving an opening invocation:

The 4th Circuit ruled Chesterfield County's Board of Supervisors did not show impermissible motive in refusing to permit a pantheistic invocation by a Wiccan because its list of clergy who registered to conduct invocations covers a wide spectrum of Judeo-Christian denominations. Simpson v. Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors, No. 04-1045 (April 14). Chesterfield County is in the Richmond suburbs.

"The Judeo-Christian tradition is, after all, not a single faith but an umbrella covering many faiths," Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote in the opinion.

Ok. So, as long as the Judeo-Christian tradition is fully represented then everything is ok, right? Not exactly. Guess what's starting to happen:

A religious watchdog group went on the attack Monday against a Bible study course taught in hundreds of schools in Texas and across the country, saying it pushes students toward conservative Protestant viewpoints and violates religious freedom.

The Texas Freedom Network, which includes clergy of several faiths, said the course offered by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools is full of errors and dubious research that promote a fundamentalist Christian view.

The council dismissed the Texas Freedom Network as a "far left" extremist organization trying to stifle academic review of a historical text. Elizabeth Ridenour, president of the Bible class group, accused the network of censorship.

"They are actually quite fearful of academic freedom, and of local schools deciding for themselves what elective courses to offer their citizens," Ms. Ridenour says in a statement on the council’s Web site.

Network President Kathy Miller said her group looked at the course after the Odessa school board voted in April to offer a Bible class. The network asked Mark A. Chancey, a professor and biblical scholar at Southern Methodist University, to review the council’s curriculum. He was not paid for his work, Ms. Miller said.

Dr. Chancey’s review found that the Bible is characterized as inspired by God, discussions of science are based on the claims of biblical creationists, Jesus is referred to as fulfilling Old Testament prophecy, and archaeological findings are erroneously used to support claims of the Bible’s historical accuracy. He said the course suggests that the Bible, instead of the Constitution, be considered the nation’s founding document.

All of those points may be acceptable to some religions, but not to others, Dr. Chancey said.

[...]

"No public school student should have to have a particular religious belief forced upon them," said the Rev. Ragan Courtney, pastor of The Sanctuary, a Baptist congregation in Austin.

Surprise, surprise. There is disagreement even within the "Judeo-Christian" tradition --- a fact which anyone who took 10th grade world history would already know. And some quite ugly problems promise to re-surface as more and more tax dollars are being funnelled to religious programs that are allowed to discriminate on the basis of religion:

A Christian adoption agency that receives money from Choose Life license plate fees said it does not place children with Roman Catholic couples because their religion conflicts with the agency's "Statement of Faith."

Bethany Christian Services stated the policy in a letter to a Jackson couple this month, and another Mississippi couple said they were rejected for the same reason last year.

"It has been our understanding that Catholicism does not agree with our Statement of Faith," Bethany's state director Karen Stewart wrote. "Our practice to not accept applications from Catholics was an effort to be good stewards of an adoptive applicant's time, money and emotional energy."

[...]

The agency's Web site says all Bethany staff and adoptive applicants personally agree with the faith statement, which describes belief in the Christian Church and the Scripture. It does not refer to any specific branches of Christianity.

[...]

Sandy Steadman said she was hurt and disappointed that Bethany received funds from the Choose Life car license plates. "I know of a lot of Catholics who get those tags," she said.

She added: "If it's OK to accept our money, it should be OK to open your home to us as a family."

You do not have to be a genius to see that even though this country is majority Christian, there is always plenty of room for religious strife among the pious. The founders understood this very well being that they were the decendents of religious refugees from a country that had been fighting these sectrian battles for centuries.

They understood that democracy cannot properly operate when government establishes religion and that religion cannot freely operate when the government endorses one belief over another. Religion and government exist in their own equally important spheres. One of the ways the US came to deal with this ia a practical manner has been this: churches didn't pay taxes and in return they didn't expect the government to proselytise for them. All churches were on their own to promote their creeds however they wanted --- except through the government. That way, we didn't ask people to pay for religious belief they didn't endorse and we didn't create conditions whereby one religion could be seen to have preference over another.

The rules were always relaxed in terms of certain non-doctrinal traditions like holidays, which heavily favored the majority Christians (who could at least all agree that the big Christian holidays were shared among them all.) And we long practiced a sort of cultural protestant Deism that didn't presume any specific political agenda. Socially, of course, we were horribly bigoted toward Catholics, Jews and anybody else who didn't accept whatever the prevailing local sects decreed, but the federal government held to sort of phony distance that at least allowed the long progressive struggle to create a truly tolerant religious environment to endure. And it finally prevailed. Huzzah.

Sadly (or maybe inevitably) just at the moment when this country seemed to have found its way to a real tolerance of different religious beliefs, where there was more varied religion per square mile than virtually anywhere else in the western world, we've decided to force the government to get involved in pushing certain beliefs because they are majoritarian. I guess we're overdue to take a little walk through the 17th century and experience some of that good old fashioned, traditional religious hatred.

People think "what's the harm in putting up the 10 commandments on a courthouse?" Who cares? Truly, not a whole lot of people do. But as you can see by the the various legal challenges being mounted on behalf of minority religions and the stirrings of sectarian confrontation among Christian faiths, it would have been better if the government had just made it clear from the beginning that it can't take sides. People would understand that, even most majority Christians.

The government should stay out of it, period. Let everybody believe what they will in perfect freedom. But it should be on private property funded by private money. The principle isn't all that tough. Sadly, it appears that we are now going to have to painfully illustrate step by step, through court cases and endless fighting for who knows how long, why it is better for religion for the government to stay out of its sphere. (The battle for secularism for its own sake has been lost for the time being.) I guess we just have to relearn these lessons over and over again.



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digby 8/09/2005 10:50:00 AM |

 
What Will We Have Wrought?

Matt Yglesias makes a good case for withdrawal of US troops upon the inveiling of Iraq's new constitution.

Far better to take advantage of the forthcoming promulgation of a new constitution for Iraq and then schedule a withdrawal on our own terms. Such a withdrawal would be pegged not to an "arbitrary timetable" but to the perfectly objective one governing Iraq's political process.

This would not only provide us peace with honor but also with the best chance for securing a decent outcome in Iraq. Setting an end date would allay Iraqi fears of an indefinite occupation and allow us to secure more cooperation in the short term, give moderate Sunnis the opportunity they need to join the political process and separate themselves from the jihadists, and focus the minds of Iraq's political elites on the urgent need to resolve the issues underlying sectarian tensions. Defeating every last insurgent in Iraq is not a realistic goal. But fortunately for us, neither is the insurgency's goal of renewed Sunni hegemony a realistic one. A clear plan to bring the troops home would allow us to begin focusing on the kind of support for the new regime -- political, diplomatic, financial, logistical, and intelligence -- that can be provided over the long term, and that would allow a wise Iraqi government to eventually stabilize the entire country. Meanwhile, we can work on rebuilding our armed forces and reconfiguring them for the 21st-century security landscape.

I agree that withdrawal is probably the best solution at this point and it is logical to tag it to a milestone political moment. Our presence seems to be perpetuating the insurgency rather than quelling it. But, I really wonder whether the outcome will be as benign as Matt suggests.

It seems to me that even if we reject the cynical Realpolitik that says the country needed a strongman in order to survive, certainly we screwed things up so badly that we've allowed the conditions for protracted civil war to foment quite nicely. Perhaps there never would have been a better time, but I still cannot help but wonder at the logic that said we should use the moment of al Qaeda's greatest PR victory to engage in a dicey game of chicken in the mid-east --- at huge expense, without global support.

It still stuns me that the starry-eyed neocons thought we were so all powerful that we could simply flip a switch and the world would be changed. The timing was right for domestic political purposes but it couldn't have been worse for strategic purposes. Keeping Saddam in place for a short while, until the smoke cleared at least, would have allowed us to get a much better lay of the land post 9/11 and perhaps make some realistic decisions.

But, all that is spilled milk now and we find ourselves at a point where we are thinking seriously of leaving Iraq in a chaos we have created and I would be interested in what are the realistic scenarios among the experts for a post withdrawal Iraq. It is unlikely that I would change my mind about the correctness of our doing so, but I would like to be prepared for what may follow. I have a feeling I know the answer and it makes me sick to my stomach.

In this regard I have been meaning to mention that shameful column by David Ignatius from last week called Iraq Can Survive This in which he makes the increasingly common rightist argument that someday things will probably work out in Iraq so everything we did will have been right in retrospect:

Pessimists increasingly argue that Iraq may be going the way of Lebanon in the 1970s. I hope that isn't so, and that Iraq avoids civil war. But people should realize that even Lebanonization wouldn't be the end of the story. The Lebanese turned to sectarian militias when their army and police couldn't provide security. But through more than 15 years of civil war, Lebanon continued to have a president, a prime minister, a parliament and an army. The country was on ice, in effect, while the sectarian battles raged. The national identity survived, and it came roaring back this spring in the Cedar Revolution that drove out Syrian troops.

Similar logic would have one believe that because Czechoslovakia is now a thriving democracy, the invasion of Hitler in 1938 was all for the best. And hey what's 30 years of human suffering? Eventually things will probably get better --- as long as the "national identity" survives. Dear God.

This argument reveals something very fundamental about the way that the war hawks see this as a game of Risk rather than a catastrophic upheaval in which actual human beings are being killed and maimed and in which the everyday lives of those who live on that piece of land are affected in the most consequential ways possible. Who but the most arrogant, spoiled,pampered, elitist American could write such a thing? Perhaps David Ignatius should have a talk with Peter Daou, who actually lived in that lucky land of Lebanon during the civil war and occupation while "the country" was on ice. Unfortunately, the humans who lived there had some more immediate problems:

I spent my youth in Beirut during the height of Lebanon's civil war, and I fought the Syrian presence in Lebanon long before the "Cedar Revolution." I watched young boys give their lives and mothers cradle their dying children in blood-soaked arms. I've seen more bloodshed, war, and violence, and shot more guns than most of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists combined. I wouldn't presume to question the strength or dignity of a stranger, and I pity those who blithely push the right=strong, left=weak rhetoric. It says far more about their inadequacies than it does about the target of their scorn.

Ignatius's logic is becoming more prevalent among war supporters as we see that our lame attempt at neocon nation building (which was based, as are all their "plans" upon idealistic fantasies and crossing their fingers)has failed. Therefore, they are now going to take the "long view" in which victory will be prematurely hailed because as one Bush supporter puts it: "All that matters in the long run is the liberalization Bush and Blair have unleashed."

Neat trick, isn't it? Any progress in the future can be attributed to Bush and Blair's foresight, no matter how long it takes or how much blood is spilled in the meantime. Indeed, George W. Bush, magical figure that he is, must, therefore, be responsible for the fact that:

...there was not a single liberal democracy with universal suffrage in the world in 1900, but ... today 120 (62.5%) of the world's 192 nations are such democracies.

Still, I wonder how a bloody civil war in a huge country in the mid-east, at a time of rising Islamic extremism and peak oil can be sold as being for the Iraqis' own good --- and ours? Assuming that we withdraw (because we really have no choice, as Matt Yglesias writes, and because we are actually exacerbating the problem with our presence) what are the realistic ramifications of Iraq descending into sectarian violence as seems to have already begun? What will we have wrought with this misbegotten invasion for the next decade or three --- until everything comes out in the wash and we can permanently give George Bush credit for having invented human progress, that is?



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digby 8/09/2005 08:31:00 AM |

Monday, August 08, 2005

 
Pushing Keller

Talk Left points out that all this talk of a waiver for Lil Miz Judy is bunk. Lil' Miz Judy is refusing to talk for reasons of her own.

However, I maintain that calling on Libby to produce this waiver puts pressure on the one place that may have some influence with Miller --- the NY Times. The weak point for her is if her employers get really antsy. We've already seen some indication that they are. Divide 'n conquor.

Jane Hamsher reports something I hadn't heard before which was James Carville's appearance on Imus last week in which he posited that Fitzgerald was going to call Keller et al before the grand jury. I don't know how he'd know that, but whether he does or not, it's quite clear there are rumblings down at the Kewl Kidz soda shoppe. Carville is very well connected if nothing else.

(In fact, as with so many others in the beltway circle jerk, he has a conflict of interest a mile wide --- his wife, who is up to her ears in this thing. She was, after all, hired back specifically to handle the post Novak damage control.)

Still, I assume that he's not working for Rove:

Carville said there was "heavy, heavy speculation out there" that Miller was being used by the White House to "disseminate this" - an apparent reference to CIA employee Valerie Plame's name.

"There are all sorts of rumors and I hear second hand that [Miller] was screaming out in the news room about this."

The Times, said Carville, "to some extent is going to have to come clean. Because they're going to have to tell us what Judy Miller knew, when she knew it and who she told."

"And there's a lot of people at the Times - and I know this to be a fact - who believe that," he insisted.

"It's going to be very interesting to see," Carville mused, "whether [Miller's] problem is a First Amendment [problem] - i.e., I want to protect a source - or a Fifth Amendment [problem] - I was out spreading this stuff too."

None of this is particularly new to those of us who've been following the punchin' Judy show. But it does seem to be bubbling up. As more and more strategic leaks are sprung, it becomes clear that some major media players have not been forthcoming.

Certainly Tim Russert owes everybody a little explanation about that NBC psuedo-statement that leaves wide open the fact that he may have shared a delicious little bit of back-biting gossip with his friend Scooter. If he didn't then he should come clean and take his medicine as he so santimoniously advises all his politician friends to do.

Bob Novak should be... oh forget it. The man's having a public nervous breakdown. It's absurd to think that he would behave like a journalist anyway. He should be retired. (His sources are already making a fool of him --- remember the Rehnquist is resigning today at 4:50pm story?)

And finally, we have the vaunted New York Times executive staff who've been parading Judy around like she was Jesus himself being crucified for standing up for the first amendment. It's been awfully convenient for them to do so, but their loyalty to Judith Miller is misplaced and it's hurting their reputations. They are going to have to start making some tough choices about what is really important to them.

If Lewis Libby says publicly that he released Judith Miller from all her obligations, the public is really going to wonder what in the hell is going on. See, this excuse that sources shouldn't be coerced only works when the source is a powerless lone citizen standing up against the full force of the government. Lewis Libby is chief of staff to the Vice President of the United States. If he makes it clear that he releases her from her waiver, nobody is going to believe that he's weakly acquiesing to the big bad government. He is the big bad government.

I realize that Miller will likely not capitulate even then. But it will put a tremendous pressure on the NY Times --- and they may put pressure on her. We'll see whether Miller cares more about her neocon buddies or her own career and reputation.



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digby 8/08/2005 06:40:00 PM |

 
A La Carte

Michael at Americablog brings up a point I think is worth a little passing mention. People talk a lot about pushing for "a la carte" cable as a way to appeal to social conservatives who say they want to limit what their children see on television. But these social conservatives are not being honest. John points out that you can block any channel just by calling your cable company. After all, they have the ability to block out HBO if you don't pay for it, they can certainly block out MTV if you request it.

I think that most people would like the idea of paying only for the channels they watch. I pay an exhorbitant amount of money to basically watch a handful of channels in order to feed my addiction to CNN and HBO. But I think that people have to recognise that the whole 500 channel universe is built on the idea that you pay big bucks for these channels we all like in order to subsidize the ones that fit the niche markets. In the early days, they really did support new stuff this way, although it's now become a much different game with advertisers and big media conglomerates buying up cable channels.

I think it is highly unlikely that they will create an a la carte system that will allow you to actually save money. They'll just price CNN at 50 bucks a month and you won't get any of the quirky channels you might watch once in a while.

And I would bet that there would still be no respite from the religious right's screeching about decency on cable. They can have all that dirty, dirty turned off right now if they want to. It's not that they don't want their families to see "Deadwood." They don't want me to see "Deadwood."



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digby 8/08/2005 05:21:00 PM |

 
Who Was Neville Chamberlain's Priest?

Can somebody please explain to me why the Democrats should be blamed for every stupid utterance that emantes from some junior college instructor, while the Republicans dance free of any association with a preacher who says "God Hates Fags?" Is it just the fag word that allows them to escape? It must be because the sentiment is certainly mainstream GOP cant.

I think Pastor Fred Phelps should be tied around the necks of the right wing Christianists with a bowline knot. Julia fills us in on his latest cause:

WBC rejoices every time the Lord God in His vengeance kills or maims an American soldier with an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). "The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked" (Ps. 58:10).

To most effectively cause America to know her abominations (Ez. 16:2), WBC will picket the funerals of these Godless, fag army American soldiers when their pieces return home. WBC will also picket their landing spot, in Dover, Delaware early and often.

Why, if I didn't know better, I'd think that Phelps was saying that US soldiers are all "little Eichmans."

I recall that during a supremely insane period in our recent history we were told ad nausaeum that the president receiving fellatio sent a message of loose morals to the culture. (Fellatio hadn't been popular until then.) If that were true, I would think that messages like this should be seen as incitement for the likes of Fred Phelps:

Tony Perkins:

"If we do not immediately pass a Constitutional amendment protecting marriage, we will not only lose the institution of marriage in our nation, but eventually all critics of the homosexual lifestyle will be silenced. Churches will be muted, schools will be forced to promote homosexuality as a consequence-free alternative lifestyle, and our nation will find itself embroiled in a cultural, legal and moral quagmire."

Chuck Colson:

"Radical Islamists were surely watching in July when the Senate voted on procedural grounds to do away with the Federal Marriage Amendment. This is like handing moral weapons of mass destruction to those who use America's decadence to recruit more snipers and hijackers and suicide bombers…. when radical Islamists see American women abusing Muslim men, as they did in the Abu Ghraib prison, and when they see news coverage of same-sex couples being ‘married’ in U.S. towns, we make our kind of freedom abhorrent--the kind they see as a blot on Allah's creation. Preserving traditional marriage in order to protect children is a crucially important goal by itself. But it's also about protecting the United States from those who would use our depravity to destroy us."

Alan Keyes

“It’s about time we all faced up to the truth. If we accept the radical homosexual agenda, be it in the military or in marriage or in other areas of our lives, we are utterly destroying the concept of family. We must oppose it in the military. We must oppose it in marriage. We must oppose it if the fundamental institution of our civilization is to survive. Those unwilling to face that fact and playing games with this issue are doing so irresponsibly at the price of America’s moral foundations.”

Gary Bauer

“An instinctive revulsion against evil isn’t bigotry, it’s our best defense.”

Gosh, it sure looks to me as if old Fred's only using some salty language to say the same thing the rest of these guys are saying. In fact, he's right in the mainstream of religious right thought. Apparently, God does hate fags.

So now pastor Fred is picketing outside military funerals, celebrating their deaths because they are part of a system that allows gay people to exist. He's making the same sort of logical leap that Ward Churchill made when he condemned the dead capitalist workers at the WTC for being part of a global economic system that exploited the downtrodden masses --- a point of view that is held by no more than .05% of Americans, who dwell at the far left fringe of American thought and have no influence on politics whatsoever.

Fred Phelps, however, dwells quite close to the mainstream of the religious right, which has huge influence in the Republican party. If instead of using a slur, he were picketing various events with his homemade signs and they said "God Hates The Homosexual Agenda" would he be any different than hundreds of other groups who say the same without any sense of shame or regret? It's just one little word.

I don't imagine that a spiritual advisor like Chuck Colson celebrates the killing of American servicemen, but his statement above sure sounds like he's sympathising with the Islamic fundamentalists' complaints about decadent western culture. One can see how Fred might extrapolate from that that the bad guys in this war of civilizations are Americans. In Fred's mind he's picketing fallen soldiers' funerals in order to protest his country's immorality.

I really don't want to hear any more lectures about Ward Churchill or any other obscure little left wing gadfly. The mainstream of the Republican party is out there promoting an agenda that the Ayatollah would be proud to sign on to --- and they admit it. Who are the appeasers now? And who is responsible for Fred Phelps celebrating the deaths of American servicemen? It sure isn't me.


Julia links through to some military wives' novel way of dealing with James Dobsons' blood brother's little stunt. They are turning the Phelps circus into a fundraiser.



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digby 8/08/2005 03:59:00 PM |

 
Dear Leader

Kevin points to this Ron Brownstein column in which Brownstein compares the Republican Party's governing style to North Korea. It's quite true. They believe bipartisanship is date rape. They know that they needn't fear they will be seen in a bad light by the public for this because the public gives fuck-all about legislative process --- and the media allows them to present themselves as having mandates or representing the mainstream despite having only the thinnest majority. They've taken the "winner take all" concept to new heights.

From Brownstein:

The essence of the modern Republican governing strategy is self-reliance. The goal is to resolve all issues in a manner that solidifies their political coalition. The means is to pass legislation primarily by unifying Republicans, thus shrinking opportunities for Democrats to exert influence. This approach represents the political equivalent to what the North Korean government calls Juche: a strategy of maximizing independence by minimizing dependence on outside forces.

I keep hearing that until Democrats start "winning elections" they should just step aside and if they refuse, they will be shoved aside. It makes me wonder if the founders knew what they were doing with this representation thing. Surely, it would have been more efficient to just have the ruling party come to Washington and legislate without interference from the minority. Think of how much money it saves.

One thing I think that both Brownstein and Drum neglect with their North Korea comparison is that in order to succeed it must also feature a godlike infallible cult leader. (After all, before Kim Jong Il was revealed as the successor to his father, he was mysteriously referred to as "party center"):

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

In North Korea they have the same kind of leader --- but they have the good graces to notice:

Reflecting his apparent encyclopedic knowledge and superhuman abilities, the Dear Leader is also considered by North Koreans as a "great figure of the arts and architecture," "genius of music," and "world famous writer," the report said.

The KCBS added that the Dear Leader is a "computer genius who surprises computer experts", and the "ideal leader of the world" because he is so erudite.

The North's media also have described the North Korean leader as an "incarnation of power" who exerts "unlimited creative power" and is the "hero of the heaven."

Perhaps when we are done renaming every street in American after Great leader Ronald Reagan, we can begin the movement to officially recognise our Dear Leader too.

He, at least, knows his own value

Q -- at politically? I mean, you've still got Iraq holding over your head and Social Security. You've got a lot of tough things that are going --

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it took -- it took the -- I don't know how many times I have to tell people that polls go up and polls go down. If you made decisions based upon polls, you would be a miserable leader.

Q But power is perception.

THE PRESIDENT: Power is being the President.

[...]

Q Did the Bolton decision, you think, have any affect on your relations with the Senate, or will they understand?

THE PRESIDENT: ...Bolton's standing in the world depends upon my confidence in Bolton, and I've got a lot of confidence in Bolton.

One would think it would be much more efficient if we let Dear Leader make all the decisions. After all, power is the president. However, it would be much more difficult for the revolving door of lobbying and the military indusrtrial complex to make multi-millionaires of generals and politicans. So we need to at least have a congressional pageant now and then. The Democrats can play the fools.



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digby 8/08/2005 02:04:00 PM |

Sunday, August 07, 2005

 
Punchin' Judy

Arianna has more insider dirt on the Judy Miller file:

A well-connected media source e-mailed to say that the most interesting development on the Miller story is coming from inside the Times: "I gather that Doug Jehl, who is a dogged and respected reporter, has been assigned to do an in-house investigative report for the Times and that he is already cutting pretty close to the bone. Several editors he has spoken to are now asking themselves why there wasn't more questioning of whether Miller's silence reflects a fear of incriminating herself rather than betraying a source. I predict this will start to unravel in the next couple of weeks -- if only because the Times is afraid of getting scooped again by outside rivals."

If they just now began to question this then there is a lot more wrong with the NY Times than we've known. Considering Miller's recent history any cub reporter would have at least wondered whether Miller was colluding with the administration on this.

As Xeno reminds me in the comments, the NY Times recently published quite a scathing editorial about Karl Rove "using" the press for his own ends and demanded that he hold a press conference and admit what he knows.

Far be it for us to denounce leaks. Newspapers have relied on countless government officials to divulge vital information that their bosses want to be kept secret. There is even value in the sanctioned leak, such as when the White House, say, lets out information that it wants known but does not want to announce.

But it is something else entirely when officials peddle disinformation for propaganda purposes or to harm a political adversary. And Karl Rove seems to have been playing that unsavory game with the C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson IV, a career diplomat who ran afoul of President Bush's efforts to justify the invasion of Iraq.

[...]

The White House has painted itself into a corner. More than a year ago, Mr. Bush vowed to fire the leaker. Then Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman, repeatedly assured everyone that the leaker was not Mr. Rove, on whom the president is so dependent intellectually that he calls Mr. Rove "the architect."

Until this week, the administration had deflected attention onto journalists by producing documents that officials had been compelled to sign to supposedly waive any promise of confidentiality. Our colleague Judith Miller, unjustly jailed for protecting the identity of confidential sources, was right to view these so-called waivers as meaningless.

Mr. Rove could clear all this up quickly. All he has to do is call a press conference and tell everyone what conversations he had and with whom. While we like government officials who are willing to whisper vital information, we like even more government officials who tell the truth in public.

I assume that the NY Times will issue another such scathing indictment of Scooter Libby now that we know he was the person who Judy Miller is protecting. After all, he has the power to release Judy tomorrow if he will just hold a press conference and tell everyone what conversation he had and with whom. Then Judy would be released from her obligations and could testify in good faith. Right?
digby 8/07/2005 10:23:00 AM |

Saturday, August 06, 2005

 
Libby On The Label

According to Murray Waas, Scooter told Fitzgerald that he met with Miller on July 8th. But he has not given Judith Miller the specific waiver she seeks to talk to the prosecutors.

It's time for the press to go to the mattresses and demand an explanation from the white house.

The new disclosure that Miller and Libby met on July 8, 2003, raises questions regarding claims by President Bush that he and everyone in his administration have done everything possible to assist Fitzgerald's grand-jury probe. Sources close to the investigation, and private attorneys representing clients embroiled in the federal probe, said that Libby's failure to produce a personal waiver may have played a significant role in Miller’s decision not to testify about her conversations with Libby, including the one on July 8, 2003.

Libby signed a more generalized waiver during the early course of the investigation granting journalists the right to testify about their conversations with him if they wished to do so. At least two reporters -- Walter Pincus of The Washington Post and Tim Russert of NBC -- have testified about their conversations with Libby.

But Miller has said she would not consider providing any information to investigators about conversations with Libby or anyone else without a more specific, or personal, waiver. Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, has previously said Miller had not been granted "any kind of a waiver … that she finds persuasive or believes was freely given."

Libby has never offered to provide such a personalized waiver for Miller, according to three legal sources with first-hand knowledge of the matter. Joseph A. Tate, an attorney for Libby, declined to comment for this story.

[...]

At least two attorneys representing private clients who are embroiled in the Plame probe also privately questioned whether or not President Bush had encouraged Libby to provide a personalized waiver for Miller in an effort to obtain her cooperation.

In a memorandum distributed to White House staff members shortly after the investigation became known, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, who at the time was White House counsel, wrote, "The president has directed full cooperation with this investigation." Bush himself said: "[I]f there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of."

Congressman Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, while sidestepping the specifics as to whether Bush should order Libby to provide a personalized waiver for Miller, said in an interview Friday evening: "I would say the president has the power to help us get to the bottom of this matter. And we in Congress want to do this not so much for what has happened but to prevent such a thing from happening again."

This is bullshit. The white house cannot get away with saying they are cooperating with the prosecutor by not talking --- and then not require the staff to fully cooperate with the prosecutor.

"I want to know the truth," Bush told reporters in September 2003 after news of the investigation had burst into headlines. "If anybody has got any information, inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business."

Here's Scotty from July 11th:

Q: Does the president stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in a leak of the name of a CIA operative?

MCCLELLAN: I appreciate your question. I think your question is being asked related to some reports that are in reference to an ongoing criminal investigation. The criminal investigation that you reference is something that continues at this point.

And as I’ve previously stated, while that investigation is ongoing, the White House is not going to comment on it.

The president directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation. And as part of cooperating fully with the investigation, we made a decision that we weren’t going to comment on it while it is ongoing.

Now that it's been reported that Libby is the source Miller is protecting the media should demand that Libby free their sister from jail.

"Scott, Judy Miller is languishing in a DC jail because the vice president's chief of staff refuses to grant her a specific waiver. The prosecutor has told federal judges that he needs to talk to her. Is this what the president calls cooperating with the investigation?"

There really is no good reason why Libby hasn't provided a specific waiver for Judy if he told Fitzgerald he talked to her.

Unless he lied to the prosecutor about what was said, that is.



And if Judy gets a specific waiver she has no more excuse to play Jeanne d'Arc. If she still won't squawk, the NY Times will have to finally admit that they have employed a neocon operative as a reporter.


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digby 8/06/2005 09:39:00 PM |

 
Sit Tight

A thought to ponder as we debate whether we should be moving toward more social conservatism. The number one Republican in the US Senate just endorsed stem cell research and the number three Republican in the Senate just backed off his previous support for intelligent design.

This would indicate to me that these two politicians, one of whom is running for president and the other who is trying to keep his seat in a swing state, have seen numbers that indicate the religious right is hurting their chances. They are sistah sojah-ing like madmen pretty damn early in the game.

I suspect that some democratic strategists think this is a good reason for us to "meet them in the middle" by running as social conservatives --- just without James Dobson. But anyone who thinks this is someone who hasn't been watching politics for the last 20 years.

We should sit tight. We're already in the middle, right where most of the public is. It's just that the public didn't realize it until recently. When the wingnuts start devouring each other we should tie them together and run against the whole lot. I know this because I watched it happen in the 80's. To us.



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digby 8/06/2005 04:04:00 PM |

 
Good For Thee But Not For Me

The United States' envoy in Iraq delivered a warning on Saturday to Shi'ite Islamist leaders, propelled to power by U.S. forces, not to use a new constitution to impose discriminatory laws by majority rule.

Hmmmmm.

JOINT RESOLUTION Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage .

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

"Article --

"SECTION 1. Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

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digby 8/06/2005 02:43:00 PM |

 
The Palmeiro Defense

In related news, Karl Rove returned to testify before the grand jury investigating the Plame leak today. Rove testified that while he indeed did leak Valerie Plame's name to reporters, he has no idea how it happened.

"I still don't know what caused me to do it," Rove said. "I know I didn't mean to do it. I don't even think I did it, but I did. I'm not a crazy person. We were going to get our war anyway. It makes no sense."

Read the whole thing.



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digby 8/06/2005 02:33:00 PM |

 
Confession Is Good For The Soul

In anticipation of tomorrows Press The Meat, I think that guests should be required to read Swopa and Fishbowl DC. Maybe Ashleigh Blitzer ought to see if he can get Monsignor Tim on his show.

It turns out, contrary to my post below, that NBC was a little bit, shall we say ... lawyerly, with its statement of Russert's involvement:

Mr. Russert told the Special Prosecutor that, at the time of that conversation, he did not know Ms. Plame's name or that she was a CIA operative and that he did not provide that information to Mr. Libby. Mr. Russert said that he first learned Ms. Plame's name and her role at the CIA when he read a column written by Robert Novak later that month.

What that statement very cleverly leaves open is that Russert did tell Libby that "Joseph Wilson's wife" was a CIA "employee."

Look, this is getting stupid. There is no reason on earth that Tim Russert should not be required to say right out if he repeated gossip to Lewis Libby about Joe Wilson and his wife. It means that he's a dirt-dishing little scumbag but it has no bearing on his legal culpability. One could easily understand why he would think that repeating this tidbit to a man who had the highest security clearance wouldn't exactly mean he was spilling state secrets.

I would have thought that since all this has been hashed over in great detail these last few weeks that the "professionals" in the mainstream press would have thought it was worthwhile to pursue --- even if it meant that the leader of the kewl kids was confronted with his own words and asked to explain. After all, that is what he does every single Sunday morning to whichever poor schmuck submits him or herself to his grilling.

As Atrios eloquently points out this morning, this absurd idea that celebrity journalists aren't public figures is laughable in itself. But the idea reaches total absurdity when you consider that these celebrity journalists are players in the biggest scandal of the last five years. When you have these journalists being called before Grand Juries, making deals with special prosecutors and distributing carefully worded lawyerly statements --- they are just like any other citizen in that situation; they are witnesses to a possible crime. I wish that the press were so solicitous of private citizens who don't have their own TV shows when they camp out on their doorsteps screaming for comment.

Tim Russert gave a very lawyerly statement about what he told the special prosecutor. He has never been asked to expand on it or clarify it, to my knowledge. That is journalistic malpractice.

Here's what they should do, it's really quite simple.

Mr Russert, did you ever tell Scooter Libby in any way shape or form that Joseph Wilson's wife worked at the CIA?

Oh, and then guys,if he tries to answer by saying that he didn't know her name or what her role was at the CIA, follow up. Be reporters and persist. Ask him if he mentioned Joe Wilson's wife to Libby at all. If he says yes, then ask if he mentioned where she worked. It's not hard.

Update: I see Arianna beat me to this.

...frankly, this week, instead of coming up with questions for Tim, I’d like to hear him give some long-overdue answers about his still ill-defined involvement in Plamegate.

And I’m not the only one feeling this way. Earlier this week, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sydney Schanberg called on Russert and all the other reporters involved in the story (yes, that includes you Bob Novak) to “tell us everything”: “Tim Russert cuts a large figure in Washington,” wrote Shanberg. “He should be a big man now and give us some details; why not agree to be interviewed by someone as probing as he?"

[...]

So what do you say, Tim? Why not put Roberts’ faith on hold for a week and restore the public’s faith in you by putting yourself in the Meet the Press hot seat? As Schanberg said of his fellow reporters: “We have no rational explanation for calling regularly on government and corporate giants to release all possible information to the public if we ourselves decline to release the details about our roles and our processes when they are germane to the story.… The public has a right to know; isn’t that our mantra?”

Considering how well Bob Novak has responded to being on the receiving end of the cattle prod, I suspect that The Padre will not take to well to being "probed" with his own petard. But it is worthwhile to put pressure on these guys to start leveling with the public. I know that it's too much to ask that this clubby little world be exposed, but we have to try.

I'll agree with Kevin on this to the extent that the press may be better than it used to be in many respects, but that's not really the problem. With the rise of public relations, the cacophany of information and the overwhelming power of marketing we need an independent press more than we used to to help us filter through the bullshit so that we can maintain our democracy. Instead, they seem to be drifting toward entertainment values which are by definition controlled by the very forces that are making it difficult for the public to see their world clearly. The last fifteen years of political coverage have been dominated by tabloid circuses or jingoistic parades. They need to try harder.



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digby 8/06/2005 12:57:00 PM |

 
The Terminator

In case anyone's wondering if Pat Fitzgerald is really as much of a prosecution machine as people think he is, there is actually little doubt. He seems to really like putting away dirty politicians of all stripes. In fact, he seems to be mowing down the entire corrupt Illinois political system in a thoroughly bipartisan way:

If ever U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald leaves Chicago, I figure that Mayor Richard Daley, his Democratic machine and his Republican friends in the Illinois political combine will pop for champagne at Gibsons in Rosemont.

[...]

"I'm just going to do my job until someone tells me otherwise," Fitzgerald said at a news conference in which he announced the indictments of more combine boys.

"I love my job. I'm very, very lucky to work with the people behind me and the people behind that, and I have no plans to do anything else."

Federal authorities charged three political insiders Wednesday with extorting money from investment companies working with the Teachers Retirement System pension fund.

According to the indictments, in trying to shake down a Virginia investment firm on behalf of Republican Stuart Levine, top Democratic fundraiser and lawyer Joe Cari is alleged to have said:

"This is how things are done in Illinois."

Another lawyer, Steven Loren, also was charged in the shakedown scheme. He and Cari are now cooperating with prosecutors. Levine, who was indicted on multiple counts, was recently indicted in another alleged kickback scam on the state's Health Facilities Planning Board.

Years ago, some questioned if there was an Illinois combine, a ruling bipartisan clique gorging on public money, using political muscle to fill their pockets. I don't think many people question that anymore.

According to the grand jury, some Democrats and Republicans work together just fine. They're not divided by opposing ideologies. Instead, they're bound by a common interest: cash.

The combine fought to stop Fitzgerald from coming to Chicago from New York. They ran former U.S. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) out of politics for the sin of installing Patrick Fitzgerald (no relation) in the job of federal hammer in Chicago.

Lately, there's been speculation that the president would lean on Fitzgerald and remove him because Fitzgerald is a presidential irritant, acting as special counsel in Washington. He's investigating Bush administration officials for reportedly leaking the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Presidential political adviser Karl Rove and others in Rove's sphere have been questioned in the investigation. It is assumed Rove will seek revenge. U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) wants to hold Senate hearings to question Fitzgerald about his investigation. These hearings are seen as an extension of Rove's long hand.

And in Chicago, Fitzgerald has the Outfit upset, not to mention Streets & San, the mayor's office and Daley's own 11th Ward organization, and the Republican clique of former Gov. George Ryan. Fitzgerald and Chicago FBI chief Rob Grant are expected to announce more corruption charges in another case on Thursday morning.

So they're giving everybody agita. With all this going on, all these investigations and all the political interests he's threatened by pursuing cases, Fitzgerald was asked the big question.

Do you want to stay?

"I'm not going to start lobbying for a job," he said. "I'm just saying that I'm very happy with my job, very grateful I have it, and I'm just going to keep working."

He wasn't lobbying. And he wasn't being slick about it. He was just answering the question, appearing to be slightly embarrassed to be talking about himself.

I don't know Fitzgerald well. But I can see he is uncomfortable with being cast as some knight on a white horse. He's no such thing. He's much more dangerous.

He's a federal prosecutor who does not want to run for governor or a big job in a top law firm. He's not whispering that he'd like to be made a federal judge. He doesn't want to be somebody's rainmaker.

There's nothing more frightening to the combine than someone without an appetite they can feed.

If he hands down indictments the long arm of Karl Rove is going to morph into a thousand tentacles intent upon bringing this guy down. Within minutes you will see every talking point the Democrats used against Ken Starr being regurgitated by right-wing mouthpieces as if they just made it up that morning. It's one of their favorite (and most useful) tactics --- use the other side's rhetoric against them. They take advantage of the ear worms of repetitive political rhetoric which a lot of people then just automatically accept as conventional wisdom.

And if you think you've seen Republicans whining and snivelling about being victimized before now, you ain't seen nothin' until you see them shriek like little old ladies about being persecuted by the jack-booted thugs. If and when that happens, I hope that the liberal pundits have the wisdom to turn the tables on them this time and call them out for being a bunch of bedwetting sissies. Karl Rove needs to take it like a man. There's a war on. If he'd just apologise, maybe we could move on ...

'N what about the rule 'o law?


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digby 8/06/2005 09:16:00 AM |

 
Jujitsu Death Blow


Blogenlust's Law states ...

As an online discussion among wingnuts grows longer, the probability that a Clinton will be blamed for something approaches 1 (i.e., certainty).

Here's the example John cites:

The left appears to have lost its appetite for the Plamegate scandal. This, in itself, is more than sufficient reason for conservatives to pursue the matter aggressively. The left has much to hide in this affair. Now that they have done us the service of making Plamegate a national issue, let us employ Saul Alinsky’s principle of "political jiu-jitsu" and re-direct the left’s own momentum against it.

Of particular interest is the odd connection between Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper and would-be president Hillary Clinton. Cooper is the reporter who made an elaborate show of pretending that he was ready to go to jail to "protect" his "source" Karl Rove. In fact, we now know that Rove had given Cooper a blanket release to reveal his name some eighteen months before Cooper finally revealed it. So why did Cooper pretend that he only received permission at the last minute, just before he was to be jailed for contempt? And why did major media assist Cooper in his pretense?

Plainly, the Democrats’ media allies were trying to distort the facts to cast Rove in a bad light. But to what end? Such an elaborate deception could not have unfolded on its own. Someone had to orchestrate it. But who?

One hint may come from the fact that Hooper’s wife, Mandy Grunwald, is a former spinmeister for the Clinton White House and a close confidante of Hillary. Her father, Henry Grunwald, was formerly editor of Time magazine, and wrote the first major editorial calling for Richard Nixon’s resignation (hat tip, Sacajaweau).

[...]

It would seem that the apple does not fall far from the tree. Like her father before her, Mandy Grunwald now finds herself at the vortex of what appears to be an effort to undermine our commander-in-chief at a critical phase of a major war.

How likely does it seem, gentle reader, that Matt Cooper failed to discuss his Plamegate work with his wife? And how likely does it seem that Mandy Grunwald failed to keep Hillary’s war room advised of her husband’s progress?

To put it another way, what did Hillary know and when did she know it?

I hadn't thought about it before, but it's perfectly obvious that Hitlery and her minions in the liberal media hatched this clever plot to implicate the White House in the outing of a CIA agent --- in order to help the terrorists. My God, it's been right in front of our faces all this time!

I'm reeling from the devastating cleverness of that move. My head is spinning. All is lost, my friends. All. Is. Lost. I'm joining the other side. They were always right. I was always wrong. They have won three elections in five years and I realize that we can never defeat them again. They are too smart for us.


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digby 8/06/2005 08:39:00 AM |

Friday, August 05, 2005

 
Uhm no --- He's Just An Idiot

Bush's loyalty raises doubts about his political judgment

"It seems that President Bush is falling into the Nixon trap - his administration can do no wrong. His allies and people who support him can do no wrong," said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian. "Palmeiro is above suspicion, Rove is not to be questioned, John Bolton is a stand-up guy.

"The danger is he divorces himself from public reality, political reality, and it erodes his ability to lead the country," Dallek said.

It's not that his administration can do no wrong. It's that he can do no wrong. If he picked these people for his administration or for his friends, thay are, by definition, good people who are above suspicion. To say otherwise would be to admit that his judgment is imperfect and that is impossible. Dear Leader is an infallible child.

Several analysts said the Palmeiro situation illustrates that point. Bush took a strong stand against steroids in his 2004 State of the Union address, demanding that major league sports take tougher action to eliminate steroid use by athletes.

"The use of performance-enhancing drugs like steroids in baseball, football and other sports is dangerous and it sends the wrong message - that there are shortcuts to accomplishment and that performance is more important than character," Bush said.

But when news of Palmeiro's positive drug test and 10-day suspension by Major League Baseball became public, Bush almost instantly backed the ballplayer, saying Palmeiro spoke truthfully on March 17 when he wagged his finger at the
House Government Reform Committee and emphatically denied ever using steroids.

Bush's fondness for Palmeiro - who recently became only the fourth major league player to slam more than 500 home runs and 3,000 base hits - dates back to when Palmeiro played for the Rangers under Bush's ownership.

"Rafael Palmeiro is a friend. He testified in public and I believe him," Bush said Monday. "He's the kind of person that's going to stand up in front of the klieg lights and say he didn't use steroids, and I believe him. Still do."

Bush's quick defense seemed contradictory to some, in light of his previous tough talk on steroids.

"His defense in this case, so quickly, seemed like an about-face, from taking a stand to a ridiculous statement a fan might make to another fan in a bar," said Richard Lapchick, chairman of the DeVos Sports Business Management Program at the University of Central Florida. "It certainly didn't seem like he thought that one through."

How unusual. And he's usually so intellectually thorough.

Stephen Hess, a political scientist at George Washington University in Washington, believes Bush's judgment isn't clouded by loyalty. The president had no problem in dismissing Lawrence Lindsey, his economic adviser during the 2000 campaign and the head of his Council of Economic Advisers until his ouster in 2002.

"That showed me he'll carry loyalty to a point - which is part of what presidents do," Hess said.

Of course, Lindsey was let go not long after he estimated publicly that a war in
Iraq could cost $200 billion, far above Bush loyalists' line at the time, which may have been seen as disloyal. Iraq war costs will exceed $200 billion in the next year.

And he was fat. His loyalty doesn't extend that far.

Honestly, this blind defense of Palmiero has little to do with loyalty. It's about Bush's faith based approach to everything. If he believes it, it must be true. He does not use reason to come to conclusions. He makes decisions based on feelings and beliefs and "instinct." In this case, his instinct is that Palmiero is a good guy and therefore could not have lied. His "instinct" is that creationism makes sense and therefore, is as legitimate as evolution. His "instinct" was that Saddam was a threat and therefore, we had to invade.

We have a man with a child's mind running this country. Millions of us can see this as clearly as we can see his face on our television screens. People can call me an elitist and a snob for pointing this out but I will never stop. It's like telling me it's rude to notice that the sun came up this morning or that gravity exists. It is observable fact that this president is intellectually stunted. I'm not going to pretend otherwise so that certain people's feelings don't get hurt. I'll lose my mind.



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digby 8/05/2005 05:04:00 PM |

 
Lawyered Up

It's almost spooky that I've been writing about Novak all this week --- even before he had his hissy fit yesterday. Perhaps I have some sort of psychic powers of which I've been unaware up to now. I hope so. If this works out I'll get back in the market.

Actually, there is a more prosaic explanation. I've been writing about Bob Novak all week because he wrote an odd column about the Plame case on Monday. It was the first time he's written anything about it in many months. And he said that he'd done it against his lawyers' wishes. Atrios is reporting a rumor that Novak is being called before the Grand Jury all of a sudden. I would suspect that if it's true, it's because of something he wrote in that column.

We all know that it is quite strange that he had not been called before (although we don't know that for sure.) It's even more strange that he seems to have cooperated. Otherwise, unless Pat Fitzgerald was the most incompetent boob in the DOJ, he would have been in the same boat as Matt Cooper and Judith Miller. It's the nature of the "cooperation" that's most curious.

Of the major media players, Walter Pincus has spoken to the public and the prosecutor. Matt Cooper has spoken to the public and the prosecutor. Tim Russert made a deal and spoke with the prosecutors and NBC released a statement to the public relaying the substance of his conversation. Judith Miller hasn't spoken to either the prosecutor or the public and is in jail. Robert Novak, the only one who actually published the leak information, hasn't spoken to the public but (we assume) he has spoken to the prosecutor. He has repeatedly said that he cannot discuss the case in any way because his lawyers have advised him not to say anything publicly.

Why would that be? Here's one little hint, although it may just be an accidental turn of phrase. The day after Novak had his little contretemps with Ed Henry in June, miracle of miracles, the NY Times actually did a tiny little story on why Novak has not been on the hotseat like every other reporter in town. And Novak's publisher said this:

Among those defending Mr. Novak yesterday was John Cruickshank, publisher of The Sun-Times.

"We, as news people, never want to be in a position of saying, No comment," Mr. Cruickshank said. "But he cannot respond and at the same time abide by the legal strategy his counsel has been recommending."

Why is his legal counsel recommending a legal strategy at all? Nobody else is using that excuse. Obviously, as a journalist he cannot use the white house excuse that the prosecutor has requested he not talk about the case because ... well, that would make him the worst kind of journalistic sissy there is. Especially compared to macho Judy Miller. While it's true that Miller is practising shoddy journalism by refusing to write what she knows (without revealing her source) she at least is following the general principle that the press shouldn't knuckle under to the government, which is, after all the reason for the confidentiality rule in the first place.

Novak hasn't upheld anything at all. He's almost certainly given up his sources and also refused to answer questions. He is being totally unprincipled. It's left him open to being called a hack and a liar and he's restrained from responding by his "legal strategy." It's clearly driving him crazy. And that leads me to believe that his lawyers know that there is a grave danger that if Bob keeps talking he's going to find himself in a big heap of trouble.

It's possible that Novak wrote something he shouldn't have in that column on Monday. Not knowing what he's told the authorities I don't know specifically what it said that would be cause for worry but Bob is clearly having a very hard time with the fact that he is not allowed to spin his way out of this defend himself :

Though frustrated, I have followed the advice of my attorneys and written almost nothing about the CIA leak over two years because of a criminal investigation by a federal special prosecutor. The lawyers also urged me not to write this. But the allegation against me is so patently incorrect and so abuses my integrity as a journalist that I feel constrained to reply.

Again, why would Novak have to be so careful? He's not covered under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act nor is he really prohibited from publishing classified information. His only reason for having to be so cautious is because he either has an immunity deal with the prosecution, which I sincerely doubt, or his lawyers believe that Fitzgerald thinks he may have lied to the authorities or obstructed justice.

Based on his meager public statements alone you can easily see why Fitzgerald would have ample reason to suspect him of participating in a cover-up. He's been changing his story from day one. In his original column he said that Wilson was a fine, well qualified non-partisan, ex-diplomat and that the administration had told him that his wife suggested him for the mission. He explained a few days later, "I didn't dig it out -- they gave it to me --- they thought it was significant." Shortly thereafter, he changed his story and wrote that it had been just an "off-hand remark" in the midst of another conversation. Then when the justice department began its investigation he said he pursued the story because he was "curious" as to why a partisan Democrat like Joseph Wilson with no qualifications was sent on the mission --- a characterization that is entirely at odds with what he actually wrote.

You can see why his lawyers wanted him to shut up. He tends to draw suspicion on himself every time he opens his mouth. And let's not forget that Karl Rove and others, through their mouthpieces, have been using the same line with respect to other reporters like Cooper --- "it was an offhand comment." Indeed, the administration figures involved seem to want us to believe that they were just offhandedly mentioning this little factoid with no coordination or plan at all --- to a reported half dozen elite DC journalists. Robert Novak, contrary to his earlier statements and the tenor of his original piece, seemed to want to enthusiastically back that up and imply that he was independently pursuing the story of the partisan democrat Joe Wilson's trip all on his own. How very convenient.

And there is another aspect to this story as well. Novak seems to have finally lost the protective insular cloak of the celebrity proess corps brotherhood. But that doesn't abslove them of their absurd silence all these months.

It is one thing for a reporter to withhold the names of his sources. It is quite another for a reporter to withhold information from the public to protect each other. But this case has shown in numerous ways that the press feels perfectly comfortable trafficking in gossip about a president's sex life --- and funneling that gossip through the foreign press and back to sleaze sites like Drudge in order to "get it out there." But they have been remarkably willing to stay silent when their "stars" are involved in a legal tangle.

That's one big reason why this ridiculous spectacle of Bob Novak and Tim Russert and Judith Miller the rest of these guys, who clearly have pertinent information, has been played out for two years as kabuki while the rest of us keep scratching our heads and wondering why they don't just tell us what they know.

Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei changed the dynamic last week when they printed Bill Harlow's comments about Novak. Novak lost his composure, both in print and then on television. He is a spoiled DC elder who believes that he is above the petty humiliations and character assassination he deals every day to politicians of whom he disapproves. He can't believe that he has to sit back and let people trash his reputation while he's constrained from responding by the possibility of legal consequences. Poor baby. Maybe he ought to spend some time in jail reading some of his columns and reviewing tapes of his Crossfire and Capital Gang appearances in which he ruthlessly destroyed Democrats for the last 40 years. Maybe he could write a novel about his experiences on the other side of the fence --- where Bob Novak is subjected to ... Bob Novak.


Update: Mark Leon Goldberg at TAPPED has a delicious little piece of speculation about Novak's "cooperation" and his little temper tantrum yesterday:

Picking up on what Atrios hints at, if James Carville was engaging in some privy, insider goading when he told Robert Novak that he has to “show the right wingers that you are a stand-up guy, and The Wall Street Journal is watching your every move,” does that suggest that Novak already named names? If so, is the VRWC silently sharpening their knives in the event that Novak's spilled the beans? Will they sacrifice one of their own?

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digby 8/05/2005 12:25:00 PM |

Thursday, August 04, 2005

 
Leaning On The Bulldog

Josh Marshall wonders why Novak would have stomped off the set just because Ed Henry was planning to ask him about Plamegate (if that's why he did it.) After all, Novak's been successfully fending off questions about this for two years now.

I think he might be a little bit prickly because he didn't want it generally known that his most recent column used false information not generated this time by "senior white house officials" but from a discredited cockheaded man-ho. Check out Peter Daou's full report on the Gannon "expose" that Novak used as proof that the Kerry campaign "discarded" Joe Wilson.

It seems to me that it's possible the mean old man just didn't want to face the fact that he is a has-been journalist as well as a Republican hack who's outlived his usefulness. Retirement must be looking pretty good.



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digby 8/04/2005 05:49:00 PM |

 
Just Shut Up

Bayh said there are legitimate grounds to criticize
President Bush's approach to fighting terrorism, but until Democrats establish more credibility on the issue, many voters won't listen.

"Many Americans wonder if we're willing to use force to defend the country even under the most compelling of circumstances," Bayh said. "The majority of Democrats would answer that question that, yes, there is a right place and a right time. We don't get to have that discussion because many people don't think we have the backbone."

And the best way to deal with that is to vigorously endorse whatever insane, bullshit war the Republicans want to wage. Because it's worked out so well so far.

In a major victory for the White House, the Senate early Friday voted 77-23 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refuses to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. resolutions.

The president praised the congressional action, declaring "America speaks with one voice."

I guess even though more than half the Democrats signed on to that cock-up, we still should have been even more enthusiastically running off the cliff with old George. What utter nonsense. If DLCer Evan Bayh thinks that we'll build credibility on national security by screaming "War On Terror" louder and shriller than the Republicans, he's nuts. Even they know that slogan has outlived its usefulness.

Might I suggest that the reason Democrats have no credibility on national security is not because we allegedly refuse to defend the country, but because bedwetters like Evan Bayh run all over the country validating the Republican's patented talking points that Democrats refuse to defend the country?

It's true that the American people think we have no backbone. But let's just say the reasons have less to do with our national security policy and more to do with our leadership. We will have credibility on national security when we have a credible national security policy --- and when we show the country that we aren't so afraid of Tom DeLay and Karl Rove that we'll scurry to the front of the line to sign up every time they say boo.



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digby 8/04/2005 05:06:00 PM |

 
Sensitive Little Creatures

This is best reason yet to vote for Hillary Clinton.



Speaking of which... via Crooks and Liars I see that both Little Ricky and Novakula had hissy fits on the air today. Ricky resorted to gay bashing right away. I suspect that Novakula will be buying himself a nice new SUV very soon.



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digby 8/04/2005 02:00:00 PM |

 
Waiting To Exhale

Via Talk Left, I see that Murray Waas and Joe Wilson were on Democracy Now. Waas obviously has some informed contacts and he said a couple of things that caught my eye:

MURRAY WAAS: Fitzgerald keeps his cards close to his vest. There was some interesting action in the last couple days before the Grand Jury. Two of Karl Rove's aides came before the Grand Jury, an assistant and another top aide. We're not sure what they said. We're not sure why they were called. But that would indicate some intensification or moving toward some kind of closure, which way is a little bit difficult to tell, but Fitzgerald does seem stymied still by the lack of testimony by Judith Miller.

[...]

So, we're not sure exactly where things are going. One other interesting possibility, if there isn't -- if there aren’t indictments brought, there is the option for special prosecutors to issue a public report. So, Fitzgerald can potentially put out everything that he knows in the public record. But he is kind of a man who is impervious to public opinion, who doesn't see his role necessarily as one of informing public opinion, but simply prosecuting crimes. So, he has had discussions with people in the Department of Justice, and some people have urged him to take that course, but we hope we can find out what actually happened here. If there are indictments, there would be trials, and if there were no indictments, because the evidence doesn't reach a level beyond a reasonable doubt to bring people to trial, that maybe there would be a public report. And lastly, interestingly, there's a movement by Nancy Pelosi, the majority leader -- Democratic leader in the House now, to get behind a Democratic resolution of inquiry by Congress to get to the bottom of this, when Fitzgerald is all done. So hopefully someday we'll learn the truth, we’ll learn all of the facts.

I can't tell you how much it's going to chap my hide to see Karl Rove and his buddies skate because Judith Miller is covering for them. After watching them willfully and credulously print every smear that scumbags like David Bossie could dream up about Bill Clinton, the NY Times makes a fetish of protecting the Bush administration. Our paper of record has seriously lost its way. It is now little more than a Republican plaything; its reputation is being used as a vehicle to mislead the public; its ethics and standards are being manipulated to cover up corruption. Something is very rotten at the Grey Lady. (Here's Gene Lyons' latest take on the matter. He's an expert in the perfidy of the NY Times.)

And I think we know why the republicans are being very ginger in their treatment of Fitzgerald and why Senator Pat Roberts backed off his threat to hold hearings about the investigation. They don't want to piss Fitzgerald off and force him to offer a public report in order to clear his own reputation.

Everybody's sitting tight.

Update: I see that Talk Left has yet another post on this matter in which she wonders why (Rove's lawyer)Donald Luskin is no longer talking and speculates that his law partner Benjamin Ginsberg might be involved:

Is Ginsberg serving as an ex-officio, behind the scene counsel to Rove? Don't forget, Ginsberg both represented the Bush campaign during the 2000 Florida recount and served as counsel to the Bush 2004 re-election campaign.

I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised. The post links to an interesting interview in Legal Times with Richard Sauber, Matt Cooper's lawyer:

LT: From all that you've heard and all of the people you have spoken to, what do you think Fitzgerald is aiming for?

RS: I spent a lot of time on the phone [with Fitzgerald] and in person. He was so careful not to give away anything -- even with body language -- any indication of what he was looking at or where he was going. It was quite astonishing how uncommunicative he was. So the short answer is, I don't know.

But the only clue is that he submitted some fairly extensive material under seal. Every judge who has commented on that [has said] how impressive the showing is and how important this case is to national security. All I can surmise is that he has a substantial amount of evidence to continue a fairly robust investigation. And it does involve classified material.

This Fitzgerald is a machine, isn't he?





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digby 8/04/2005 12:58:00 PM |

 
Losing Their Religion

The ratfucking operation in the GOP is getting awfully sloppy these days. They just don't seem on their game. And it's not just that Rove is sweating bullets wondering if he's going to have a fun new roommate named Roscoe pretty soon. I think it's because the true masters of the game are getting old --- and the younger generation of ratfuckers are like so many children who inherit great fortunes --- spoiled and worthless.

Consider the fact that the Republicans create a "voting irregularity" front group to counter the charges that they are fixing elections. Fine. I would expect no less. This is what they do.

But, by God, I never thought they'd be dumb enough to use nationally known Republican operatives to do it. Jim Dyke was the communications director for the RNC during the 2004 campaign, ferchistsake. He was all over television. And now six months later he's working with a 501c "non-partisan" group that released a report claiming "Democrat operatives" are stealing elections. Please. Any good GOP sleaze artist knows that you create at least a couple of degrees of separation between the party and the ratfucking. Roger Stone must be shaking his head in disgust. I suppose it's what happens when you lose the hunger for power.

Bradblog has even more on the rightwing blogs little orgasm over this "non-partisan" report.



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digby 8/04/2005 10:22:00 AM |

 
Representing Gays For Free

I think Kevin asks the right question about this story that John Roberts did pro-bono work on a gay rights case:

It's probably a sign of my slow deterioration into political senility that I'm less interested in the actual story here than I am in the meta-story. Why did Serrano write this piece? Who suggested it to him? And why did they suggest it?

Was it to make Roberts look less doctrinaire and therefore more palatable to liberals? Or was it designed to plant seeds of doubt about his doctrinal trustworthiness among conservatives? Or to insinuate that maybe Roberts is gay after all? Or what?

This sounds like a job for Arianna to me.

If I had to guess I'd say that it came from the liberal side which looked over his statement to the Senate of pro-bono cases he'd worked on and saw that he'd left out one important case. But who knows?

It certainly does seem odd to me that a staunch Republican and Catholic like Roberts, who we know by now is a winger's right winger, would work on a gay rights case like this one. This was no arcane legal issue like one of the two pro-bono cases he descibed in his statement. Nor was it on behalf of the poor like the other one, which one could say is easily reconcilable with his religious beliefs. This was a landmark gay discrimination case. He could have begged off, I'm sure.

I can't guess what went on, but I do think it's odd that he didn't mention it, if what he wants to do is present himself as a non-ideologue for the purposes of a smooth confirmation. It would have been a perfect example of his "open-mindedness." On the other hand, it might stir up discomfort among the religious extremists who are demanding perfect fealty these days. But then, he really is a super ideologue, so why was he defending gay rights in the first place? He couldn't do his pro-bono work for causes that didn't offend his religious beliefs?

I'm with Kevin. This makes my head hurt.



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digby 8/04/2005 09:32:00 AM |

 
Who He Is

Steve Soto deconstructs the GWOT-GSAVE flippity-flop and Tim Grieve over at Salon reminds us that this isn't the first time they've done it. Seems the leader who says "Aah'm a leader who knows how ta lead cuz aah've led" is a teensy weensy bit inconsistent on this issue.

But I have to say that I never thought he'd really give up the "war." After all, who is George W Bush?

I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign-policy matters with war on my mind. Again, I wish it wasn't true, but it is true. And the American people need to know they got a president who sees the world the way it is. And I see dangers that exist, and it's important for us to deal with them.

He's a war preznit for the culture 'o life. He's nothing without that.



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digby 8/04/2005 08:32:00 AM |

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

 
Heroes And Chickenhawks

Gary Farber has been writing about a very interesting follow-up to the story from last night about the Iraqi General who was killed with the novel "beating with a rubber hose while tied up in a sleeping bag" interrogation technique. I was unaware that this was only uncovered because of another honorable whistleblower:

For Sgt. 1st Class Michael Pratt it would have been far easier to look away. If war is hell, after all, there are going to be some demons. And since hooking up with the Colorado-based 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq in early 2003, the Utah National Guard soldier had learned it was simpler to ignore questionable actions than report them.

But the guardsman couldn't look past what he had seen in the Al Qiem Detention Facility. Not after the death of an inmate whom he believed had been abused by a senior officer. Not even as the Army announced that the prisoner had died "of natural causes."

Army records show that apparent abuses of inmates at the makeshift prison, known as the Blacksmith Hotel, may have been ignored had Pratt not reported his concerns to Utah Guard officials, outside the chain of command of the unit to which he was temporarily assigned. The documents, transcripts from testimony given by Pratt in a closed hearing last March, also detail the soldier's struggles to do what he felt was right in the face of pressure to remain silent.

The record also illustrates a disturbing charge: That the unit with which Pratt found himself in Iraq was little interested in hearing an enlisted soldier's complaints and concerns about the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners.

Contacted by The Salt Lake Tribune, the Bountiful native declined to speak about the matter, saying he wanted to ensure any further testimony would not be tainted by public comment. Maj. Mark Solomon of Fort Carson, Colo., the commander of 3rd Cavalry troops not currently deployed - including four soldiers implicated in the inmate's death - said he could not comment on any of Pratt's allegations.

But a 38-page transcript of previously secret testimony details what Pratt claims to have seen at Blacksmith - and why he ultimately decided that he could not remain silent.

[...]

A soldier with a squeaky-clean record and reputation during his 18 years in the Utah National Guard, Pratt was apparently unprepared for what he found in his first few months with some of the regular Army soldiers of the 3rd Cavalry.

Among the allegations made in his testimony: That he had witnessed a soldier shoot a 14-year-old boy in the back during a raid - as the boy was running away. That matter, he claimed, was never thoroughly investigated, though fellow soldiers assured him that the rules of engagement had been followed when the teen was shot.

Later, when he learned that unqualified soldiers were conducting interrogations, Pratt again logged a compliant. In response, he testified, he was investigated - and told by other soldiers it was for blackmail purposes.

The final blow came when Pratt reported that a group of combat engineers had confiscated a large stash of currency from an Iraqi family who intended to use the money to send their daughter to Jordan for an operation. When he reported the matter to an officer in his chain of command, Pratt said, "he told me I was getting too close to the Iraqis. He accused me of losing my objectivity."

"After that incident," Pratt said. "I realized that it was pointless to report anything."

[...]

Still, Pratt said he confronted the senior soldier after he watched another officer pull a sleeping bag over an inmate, immobilizing the man with cord before slamming him to the ground. When the inmate began to pray aloud, Pratt said, the officer poured water into his mouth and cupped his hands over the inmate's face.

Welshofer, the unit's "subject matter expert" on interrogation techniques, told Pratt "the sleeping bag technique" was authorized, though only certain soldiers were allowed to use it, according to Pratt's testimony. In the following days, the record states, Pratt watched as Welshofer himself applied the technique on another inmate, sitting on the bound man's chest and stomach as he asked him questions.

"I could tell by the way he was sitting, if I was in the detainee's position, I would have had a hard time breathing," Pratt said, adding afterward: "I'm surprised that it didn't kill him."

This guy was finally heard when he left Iraq and reported what he knew to an officer from the Utah National Guard stationed in Kuwait. It's likely that this whole story would have been swept under the rug if this man had not come forward as he did.

He is a hero, to be sure, as are others, which I wrote about the other night. It's quite clear that torture, beatings, abuse and sexual humiliation were standard operating procedures from 2002 - 2004 at least, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. I won't even hazard a guess about what happened to the ghost prisoners they considered to be real threats and kept in various offshore prisons or rendered to friendly despots who would happily torture them for us. One of them says they sliced his genitals --- but then we are told that they are all liars, so what do I know? (I thought the tales of menstrual blood in Guantanamo were ridiculous too --- until they turned out to be true) Considering what was done to those who were considered low level, I'm not sure we ever want to know the details. Apparently, at least for a time, people at high levels ordered our military to behave like barbarians. And gosh, it's really worked out so well.

I know that war is hell and all, but it's really important to keep in perspective one particular thing. We invaded Iraq; it didn't attack us. We weren't invited in either. We just did it. And as we now know, the reasons we gave for doing it were false. And when we got there we were so unprepared that we allowed the country to immediately devolve into chaos. Out of that chaos an insurgency developed. Our reaction was to "take the gloves off" -- in a country we had allegedly just liberated -- the same way we "took the gloves off" with al Qaeda.

The vast majority of Iraqis were not Saddam's bitter-enders, not insurgents and certainly not terrorists. They had just spent 30 years under the thumb of a totalitarian dictator. And yet we were rampaging through their homes, "hunting insurgents" and treating them as if they were an enemy. We sent in too few troops and those we sent were untrained and inexperienced. And we let the CIA and other unacountables have a free hand.

Again, these were Iraqis, the people we claimed to be liberating --- not a country of terrorists who threatened our way of life. And yet I think many of our troops did not understand this. And why would they? The president of the United States constantly made it sound as if they were one in the same. He evoked 9/11 in the same breath as Iraq over and over again. Many of our troops believed that the Iraqis were responsible for the terrorist attacks. And with the instructions to "take the gloves off" they took out their rage against those they believed were responsible.

This is why the chickenhawks should be forced go to war. It's not that they must be willing to die for their country; nobody's dying for America over there --- they are dying for George W. Bush. It's because if young (and not so young) men and women are going to be forced to have blood on their hands like this; to be involved in the killing of innocents and torture and abuse due to political incompetence, then the political supporters of this war should have to share in their nightmares and their guilt. Let them be the ones fending off nervous breakdowns and suicide, let them have this on their consciences. The chickenhawks who support "taking the gloves off" in an unjust war should be forced to be the ones who do this barbaric dirty work on behalf of the man they see as the great deliverer of freedom and democracy.

I sincerely hope that George W. Bush's God exists. Because if he does, he's sending that SOB straight to hell.


Farber has been posting on this for several days. Here he discusees an earlier story from the Denver Post.

Update: For another excellent analysis of the full story read this post and the next one down from Marty Lederman at Balkinization.
digby 8/03/2005 06:46:00 PM |

 
What Makes You Feel Free?

Armando points to this WaPo article in which we find that John Roberts does not believe in a right to privacy. Now, I realize that this is really an arcane legal debate, but I wonder how it plays politically?

According to this Gallup Poll (pdf)from 2003 (when we were in high GWOT "fear-up) this is how the American people saw it:

Tell what makes you feel free?

36.

Next I am going to read some basic American rights. For each one, please indicate whether this is crucial to your own sense of freedom, very important but not crucial, somewhat important, or not important at all.

How about - [RANDOM ORDER]?

2003 Nov 10-12

Crucial---very important---Somewhatimportant---Not Important---No opinion



The right to vote 60 37 2 1 *

Freedom of religion 55 39 5 1 *

The right to free speech 52 40 7 1 *

The right to due process 52 37 7 1 3

The right to privacy 47 44 9 * *

The right to petition the government 44 37 15 2 2

Protection against unreasonable searches/seizures 40 39 16 2 2

Freedom of the press 36 37 22 4 1

The right to keep and bear arms 30 26 27 15 2

Interesting, don't you think? It would appear that a rather large number of Americans not only believe they have a right to privacy, they believe it is more crucial than freedom of the press and the right to bear arms.


I think that this is one of those big ticket "superjumbo" items that Democrats should begin to stake out. This issue is not just one that applies togovernment, but business as well and with companies selling our personal information to the highest bidder and the government and religion encroaching into our private lives, this issue is becoming more and more salient.

The Republicans are always introducing constitutional amendments and bills that have no chance of passage in order to stake out their position on constitutional issues. We should do this too. And our elected representatives should say loud and clear that we believe in a right to privacy. Let the Republicans explain why they don't.

This seems like a no brainer to me. Guys like Rick Santorum are now just coming right out and saying that they don't believe in a right to privacy and we are about to put a new justice on the Supreme Court who believes that the Bill of Rights does not imply such a freedom. Ok. Let's amend the constitution and make it explicit, then. 91% of the public are with us. And I suspect they are going to be a bit surprised to learn that there are big thinkers out there in the GOP who believe that this very important, crucial right doesn't exist at all.



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digby 8/03/2005 05:03:00 PM |

 
Wedged In

I keep reading in the mainstream press about the terrible rift between the DLC and the left and how Democratic candidates are going to have to thread the needle in 06 and 08 to deal with it. We are all told how desperately the party needs to stop being a collection of issues and come together around some big ideas that we can all endorse and win mainstream support with.

This is all true. Democrats squabbling amongst themselves is an old story and it is certainly the case that the grassroots (which I think are erroneously referred to and perceived as far left) are more restive than I've seen them in years. We will undoubtedly have some arguments over the next couple of years about the direction of the party and what it's going to take to win.

It's interesting to me however, that there is another similar story building about which the mainstream media seem to be mostly oblivious. Indeed, many Democrats seem oblivious as well, certainly those of the Washington persuasion.

Yesterday, the president of the United States once again declared himself in favor of teaching the religiously based propaganda campaign called "intelligent design" as science. He's done this before, back in the day, coming out in favor of teaching creationism. (It's actually quite amazing coming from the son of the president who once called the religious right "the extra-chromosome set.") This is, and has been for some time, the sort of pander that nobody really took all that seriously. After all, the religious right was quite a docile community that could be manipulated for votes without ever having to deliver. But that may be changing. We are beginning to see some big tensions building around the radical religious right and its symbiotic relationship with the Republican Party.

After last night's squeaker in Ohio, people are sure to be wondering what the salient issues were that made this race so unexpectedly close. Certainly we had an attractive candidate and a Republican party in disarray. The war was an issue and it's becoming more and more unpopular. But one of the things that struck me strongly in watching Jean Schmidt was just how extreme she was. She's definitely a member of the extra-chromosome set. Her shrill views on abortion we've become used to, but what about this stuff about living wills and stem cell research? (And what in God's name was a woman from Ohio going on about the minutemen for?)She represents the far right of the GOP and it looks to me from the election results that her extremist agenda may be coming up against resistence in her own party.

There's a reason why Bill Frist just did a Sistah Soljah on stem cell research. And I think that the reason is examined in some detail in this very interesting article in USA Today:

CANTON, Ohio — Pastor Russell Johnson paces across the broad stage as he decries the "secular jihadists" who have "hijacked" America, accuses the public schools of neglecting to teach that Hitler was "an avid evolutionist" and links abortion to children who murder their parents.

"It's time for the church to get a spinal column" and push the "seculars and the jihadists ... into the dust bin of history," the guest preacher tells a congregation that fills the sanctuary at First Christian Church of Canton.

That is his mission. Johnson leads the Ohio Restoration Project, an emergent network of nearly 1,000 "Patriot Pastors" from conservative churches across the state. Each has pledged to register 300 "values voters," adding hundreds of thousands of like-minded citizens to the electorate who "would be salt and light for America."

And, perhaps, help elect a fellow Christian conservative, Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, as governor next year. That has alarmed some establishment Republicans who back rival contenders and warn that an assertive Christian right campaign could repel moderate voters the party needs.

Evangelical Christian leaders nationwide have been emboldened by their role in re-electing President Bush and galvanized by their success in campaigning for constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage, passed in 18 states so far.

Now some are organizing to build on last year's successes. They want to solidify their role in setting the political agenda and electing sympathetic public officials.

The Ohio effort isn't unique. Johnson's project — which he says has signed up more than 900 pastors in Ohio during its first 10 weeks in operation — has helped spawn the Texas Restoration Project in Bush's home state. The fledging Pennsylvania Pastors' Network has signed up 81 conservative clergy so far. Similar efforts are beginning to percolate elsewhere.

"It's maturing as a movement within the evangelical Christian community," says Colin Hanna of Let Freedom Ring, a Pennsylvania-based group that teaches pastors how to be involved in politics.

John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron, calls the networks a new chapter in an effort to organize conservative clergy that began with the Moral Majority a quarter-century ago, then faltered.

"This generation of evangelical pastors is much more open to this type of activity," says Green, who studies Ohio politics and religious conservatives. "There isn't the kind of hostility to involvement in public affairs you would have found among evangelicals 25 years ago."

[...]

But the unyielding focus by many conservative Christian activists on such issues as abortion and gay marriage worries Republican loyalists who have other priorities. Economic conservatives want to lower taxes, for instance; small-government conservatives want to limit the intrusion of government on daily life. For many voters, jobs and education are top concerns.

"This is a 50-50 state," almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, state Auditor Betty Montgomery says. She and Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro are the other Republicans now in the gubernatorial race. "We are a crossroads state and very diverse. We've never really elected anyone too far to the right or too far to the left, too liberal or too conservative, and that could make it difficult for Ken to win in the fall."

Montgomery and Petro are proven vote-getters and known statewide; each received more votes than Blackwell in their respective contests in 2002. But Blackwell can claim a base among Christian conservatives — he's featured in "Ohio for Jesus" radio spots and regularly speaks from pulpits across the state — while the other two divide the party's more moderate ranks.

Some establishment Republicans want either Petro or Montgomery to drop out and allow a one-on-one contest against Blackwell. (Both insist they're in the race for good.)

Neil Clark, a former chief operating officer for the Ohio Senate Republican Caucus and one of the best-connected lobbyists in Columbus, the state capital, says he and other moderate Republicans are worried about the state "going back to the Stone Ages of Salem."

[...]



State Republican Chairman Bob Bennett, who is neutral in the primary, predicts "a very tough year" for whoever wins the gubernatorial nomination. Investigations into financial improprieties have engulfed the Taft administration and touched other officeholders.

He says the odds are against Republicans uniting behind any one candidate — and against having a primary that doesn't leave scars. "They'll be out to kill each other," he predicts, "and they'll have $10 to $15 million each to do it with."

[...]

First, though, there is next year's gubernatorial primary — no sure thing, and a test for the emerging network of Christian conservatives.

Petro, 56, has raised the most money and gotten the most endorsements from state legislators. His hometown of Cleveland gives him a stronghold in a Democratic part of the state. Sitting in an office suite lined with portraits of his predecessors, he says he has a "record of accomplishment" in state office that Blackwell can't match.

But Petro's positions on social issues have caused controversy. After being endorsed in 1998 by the National Abortion Rights Action League, he announced two years later that after reflection he had decided to oppose abortion except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. While he opposes same-sex marriage, he also opposed the constitutional ban last year because he said as written it could have unintended consequences, including undercutting laws on domestic violence.

Montgomery, 57, has been the state's top vote-getter in the past two elections; she was the first woman elected auditor in Ohio and, before that, attorney general. She backed the gay-marriage ban but is anathema to many conservative Christian leaders because she generally supports abortion rights.

The focus on that issue to the exclusion of all others exasperates her. "If you get somebody who is with you 100% of the time and can't win an election, isn't it better to have somebody who is with you 80% of the time and can win?" she asks, sitting in a conference room at her campaign headquarters. Boxes of campaign literature are stacked along the walls. She says she was raised "not to wear your religion on your sleeve."

I think there is a good possibility that this is going to be played out all over the country in the next few years. This 50/50 electorate is not confined to Ohio. And despite the RNC's attempts to demonize Move-On as the modern Weathermen, the face of radicalism today is not Democrats who were opposed to the war in Iraq --- the Republicans themselves are trying to distance themselves as fast as they can from that debacle. (Perhaps the DLC could take notice and stop flogging the GWOT, too. It's been officially decreed as last year's color.) No, the face of radicalism is guys like this pastor who are insisting that abortion is like kids murdering their parents and saying that the "secular jihad" should be pushed into the dustbin of history. Moderate republicans are getting nervous about this crap at long last.

Unsurprisingly,Paul Weyrich is quoted in that article saying that "Ken Blackwell 'believes God wanted him as secretary of State during 2004' because as such he was responsible for voting operations in a critical state during a critical election." Weyrich added: "It is difficult to disagree with that proposition." Paul Weyrich obviously has a sense of humor. He, along with a a cadre of movement conservatives (that includes our boy Karl Rove) have been building an evangelical political machine for more than two decades. It's the red state version of Tammany Hall. "God" placing Ken Blackwell in charge of counting the votes is one of his proudest achievements.

It is, therefore, in our best interest to separate these people from the rest of the Republican party. I certainly do not believe it's impossible. They are beginning to be difficult to control and are pushing the party farther to the right than the country can accept.

The conventional wisdom yesterday was that Hackett needed a low turnout in order to get close in this very conservative district. The turnout was phenomenally high for a special election and Hackett did very well. I haven't been able to find any breakdown of the electorate yesterday, but the campaign clearly managed to engage Democrats in larger numbers than expected (there are many fewer of them in the district), suppress turnout among Republicans or persuade a fair number of Republicans to vote for him. It was probably some combination of the three. Whatever it was, it's clear that Jean Schmidt's extreme politics and Paul Hackett's "man of the people" approach was perceived very differently in 2005 than the Bush-Kerry race was in 2004. I'll be curious to see whatever extrapolations people come up with.

Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that we become hostile to religion. Nor am I suggesting that we run as the libertine Girls-Gone-Wild party. But I do believe that the zeitgeist is changing. I think we need to help drive this wedge between the radical religious right and the moderate Republicans.

I like the way Hackett put it: "I don't need Washington to tell me how to live my personal life, or how to pray to my God."

Update:

Via Maha in the comments, I see that Fafnir has weighed in about "the democratic party an its terrible internal divisions an stuff."



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digby 8/03/2005 11:15:00 AM |

 
Singing For Jesus

...as long as it doesn't require any travel.

In a telephone interview late Tuesday, Perkins said Frist wasn't invited because he had participated by videotape in the group's previous event. The main reason the event is being held in Nashville, he said, is that it is easier to line up country music stars there to perform.

So I guess country stars, many of whom spend months at a time on the road, are so committed to the cause that they will only perform if the event is held in their home town. That's very inspirational.



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digby 8/03/2005 08:19:00 AM |

 
Effective Interrogation

A week into Mowhoush's detainment, according to classified investigative documents, interrogators were getting fed up with the prisoner. In a "current situation summary" PowerPoint presentation dated Nov. 18, Army officials wrote about his intransigence, using his first name (spelled "Abid" in Army documents):

"Previous interrogations were non-threatening; Abid was being treated very well. Not anymore," the document reads. "The interrogation session lasted several hours and I took the gloves off because Abid refused to play ball."

But the harsher tactics backfired.

In an interrogation that could be witnessed by the entire detainee population, Mowhoush was put into an undescribed "stress position" that caused the other detainees to stand "with heads bowed and solemn looks on their faces," said the document.

"I asked Abid if he was strong enough a leader to put an end to the attacks that I believed he was behind," the document said, quoting an unidentified interrogator. "He did not deny he was behind the attacks as he had denied previously, he simply said because I had humiliated him, he would not be able to stop the attacks. I take this as an admission of guilt."

Excellent work. Sipowitz would be proud.

Three days later, on Nov. 21, 2003, Mowhoush was moved from the border base at Qaim to a makeshift detention facility about six miles away in the Iraqi desert, a prison fashioned out of an old train depot, according to court testimony and investigative documents. Soldiers with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 101st Airborne Division were running a series of massive raids called Operation Rifles Blitz, and the temporary holding facility, nicknamed Blacksmith Hotel, was designed to hold the quarry.

U.S. troops searched more than 8,000 homes in three cities, netting 350 detainees, according to court testimony. Even though Mowhoush was not arrested during the raids, he was moved to Blacksmith Hotel, where teams of Army Special Forces soldiers and the CIA were conducting interrogations.

At Blacksmith, according to military sources, there was a tiered system of interrogations. Army interrogators were the first level.

When Army efforts produced nothing useful, detainees would be handed over to members of Operational Detachment Alpha 531, soldiers with the 5th Special Forces Group, the CIA or a combination of the three. "The personnel were dressed in civilian clothes and wore balaclavas to hide their identity," according to a Jan. 18, 2004, report for the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.

If they did not get what they wanted, the interrogators would deliver the detainees to a small team of the CIA-sponsored Iraqi paramilitary squads, code-named Scorpions, according to a military source familiar with the operation. The Jan. 18 memo indicates that it was "likely that indigenous personnel in the employ of the CIA interrogated MG Mowhoush."

Sometimes, soldiers and intelligence officers used the mere existence of the paramilitary unit as a threat to induce detainees to talk, one Army soldier said in an interview. "Detainees knew that if they went to those people, bad things would happen," the soldier said. "It was used as a motivator to get them to talk. They didn't want to go with the masked men."

The Scorpions went by nicknames such as Alligator and Cobra. They were set up by the CIA before the war to conduct light sabotage. After the fall of Baghdad, they worked with their CIA handlers to infiltrate the insurgency and as interpreters, according to military investigative documents, defense officials, and former and current intelligence officials.

Soon after Mowhoush's detention began, soldiers in charge of him "reached a collective decision that they would try using the [redacted] who would, you know, obviously spoke the local, native Iraqi Arabic as a means of trying to shake Mowhoush up, and that the other thing that they were going to try to do was put a bunch of people in the room, a tactic that Mr. [redacted] called 'fear up,' " Army Special Agent Curtis Ryan, who investigated the case, testified, according to a transcript.

Classified e-mail messages and reports show that "Brian," a Special Forces retiree, worked as a CIA operative with the Scorpions.

On Nov. 24, the CIA and one of its four-man Scorpion units interrogated Mowhoush, according to investigative records.

"OGA Brian and the four indig were interrogating an unknown detainee," according to a classified memo, using the slang "other government agency" for the CIA and "indig" for indigenous Iraqis.

"When he didn't answer or provided an answer that they didn't like, at first [redacted] would slap Mowhoush, and then after a few slaps, it turned into punches," Ryan testified. "And then from punches, it turned into [redacted] using a piece of hose."

"The indig were hitting the detainee with fists, a club and a length of rubber hose," according to classified investigative records.

Soldiers heard Mowhoush "being beaten with a hard object" and heard him "screaming" from down the hall, according to the Jan. 18, 2004, provost marshal's report. The report said four Army guards had to carry Mowhoush back to his cell.

Two days later, at 8 a.m., Nov. 26, Mowhoush -- prisoner No. 76 -- was brought, moaning and breathing hard, to Interrogation Room 6, according to court testimony.

Chief Warrant Officer Lewis E. Welshofer Jr. did a first round of interrogations for 30 minutes, taking a 15-minute break and resuming at 8:45. According to court testimony, Welshofer and Spec. Jerry L. Loper, a mechanic assuming the role of guard, put Mowhoush into the sleeping bag and wrapped the bag in electrical wire.

Welshofer allegedly crouched over Mowhoush's chest to talk to him.

Sgt. 1st Class William Sommer, a linguist, stood nearby.

Chief Warrant Officer Jeff Williams, an intelligence analyst, came to observe progress.

Investigative records show that Mowhoush "becomes unresponsive" at 9:06 a.m. Medics tried to resuscitate him for 30 minutes before pronouncing him dead.

According to the article, they were just making up these "interrogation techniques" as they went along. One of the interrogators said his brother had zipped him in a sleeping bag when he was a kid and it had made him feel vulnerable. No word on whether the brother then beat him senseless with a rubber hose though.

They do mention that this happened after the instructions came from on high to "take the gloves off." When you get an order like that it inspires all sorts of experimentation apparently. It illustrates why the military usually operates on a very specific level with rules and orders and discipline. Things do tend to get out of hand when people are given the green light to "do what needs to be done."

They don't say it, but I have a feeling that comic books and Dirty Harry movies also played a large role in fashioning our interrogation techniques in this war. Funny, I thought we were well into the third wave information warfare and sophisticated new methods of gaining intelligence. We may document them with Power Point presentations our techniques come right out of the 14th century. Putting someone in a bag and beating him to death isn't exactly modern high tech warfare.

And man, that rotten apple barrel is getting full, isn't it?



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digby 8/03/2005 12:26:00 AM |

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

 
What Went Right In Ohio

Well, waddaya know? Schmidt pulls it out with a four point squeaker in a district that hasn't given a Democrat more than 30 percent in 20 years. And all it took was a little last minute massaging of the count in her home district.

Too bad Karl's so busy these days. The party would probably really like his input on where that permanent majority thing he's been working on stands.

Seriously, I think this really is a bellwether. There is no way in hell that Hackett should have come within 15 points of Schmidt and the fact that he came so close says that something is seriously going wrong with the GOP brand, regardless of how appealing Hackett is as a candidate or how fucked up the Ohio GOP is.

The polls show a spike in Democratic party ID and the GOP is looking more fat and corrupt than the Democrats were after almost half a century in power. We may just be seeing the beginning of our 1994.

Don't ever think it can't happen. Much larger swings than we need have happened a bunch of times. I have a feeling that this 50/50 stasis is about to break --- and this election makes me think it's going to break our way. I hope the powers that be take the time to really study what went right in Ohio.

And I hope our man Hackett decides to run again. He's got the shinin'.



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digby 8/02/2005 08:36:00 PM |

 
They Love Controversy

Talk Left points to a discussion regarding whether bloggers should stay with Blog-ads or go with the new Pajamas Media. It's using a different business model and apparently targeting larger mainstream advertisers.

My only question is how these mainstream advertisers are going to react when they find out they are affiliating themselves with a very controversial racist blog like Little Green Footballs? I suspect we'll find out.

It would certainly be a problem for me.



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digby 8/02/2005 07:17:00 PM |

 
Divining The Will Of The Voters

I'm looking at the return for Hackett at 9:49 and it's at 50/50. This is a very red district and the fact that Hackett is even in spitting distance is amazing.

But man, I'm getting tired of these squeakers, aren't you?


I suspect the GOP machine has kept a few votes "in reserve" if you know what I mean. It's Ohio, after all.

Update:

Ok. This is getting fricking ridiculous. Hackett's down by 800 votes and for some unknown reason they are holding back the tally for 91 precincts in Jean Schmidt's home county. Seems they are having some "problems" counting the vote. Can ya believe it?


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digby 8/02/2005 06:51:00 PM |

 
Talk Puke

I guess these Marines and soldiers in Iraq had better check their foxholes and humvees and ask whether their buddies hold the proper political beliefs. Those who are Democrats are all cowards and liars, evidently.

I heard Senator Tom Harkin talk the other day about his still unsuccessful attempts to get Armed Forces Radio to provide some balance in their programming. Perhaps he might have better luck next time if he's armed with a transcript of that drug addled gasbag's characterization of Marine major Paul Hackett as a "staff puke." If there's anyone left in the GOP caucus with a conscience (and that's highly doubtful) it might just make a difference.

And honorable marines out there should tell that flatulent fuckhead to shut his vomitous pie-hole, regardless of their politics. Chickenshit chickenhawks like Rush Limbaugh are telling them that they are required to be Republicans or their service will be deemed open season for any asshole who disagreees with their politics. Max Cleland, John Kerry, now Major Paul Hackett. This pattern is becoming quite obvious.

The military is Republican, godddamit. And remember that when you come home, you'd better toe the line. If you don't the Republican party will portray you as a "puke," no matter what you did. Word to the wise. Forget about freedom. Just vote GOP. That's what you are fighting for.



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digby 8/02/2005 05:39:00 PM |

 
Novakula's Tea Bag

The Howler notes something important about Novak's column yesterday in which he wrote:

I have previously said that I never would have written those sentences if Harlow, then-CIA Director George Tenet or anybody else from the agency had told me that Valerie Plame Wilson's disclosure would endanger herself or anybody.

You have to assume by this statement that he must have talked to Tenet before he ran the story, right? Perhaps this is common knwledge and I've just missed it, but this is the first I've heard of this. Novak just slinging around Tenet's name in that context is a little bit bizarre to say the least.

Somerby thinks that there's a good chance that Tenet was the source Novak refered to as "not a partisan gunslinger," and I think that's certainly a possibility. (According to joe Wilson, Novak told him that his original source was with the CIA.) In fact, Tenet was one of the few members of the Bush administration who could even conceivably be characterized that way. Somerby speculates that Tenet being a "hail fellow well met" sort who knew the names of agents and remembered birthdays and such that he might have been the one who knew Valerie Wilson by her maiden name and told it to Novak.

This is intriguing since just a couple of weeks ago the papers were all reporting that a "source who had been briefed on the matter" and others were saying that Karl Rove and Lewis Libby had been working closely with Tenet on the official mea culpa:

"People who have been briefed on the case said the White House officials said Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby Jr., were helping to prepare what became the administration's primary response to criticism that a flawed phrase about the nuclear materials in Africa had been included in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address six months earlier. They had exchanged e-mail correspondence and drafts of a proposed statement by George Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, to explain how the disputed wording had gotten into the address. Mr. Rove, the president's political strategist, and Mr. Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, coordinated their efforts with Stephen Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, who was in turn consulting with Mr. Tenet.

[...]

The work done by Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby on the Tenet statement during this intense period has not been previously disclosed. People who have been briefed on the case discussed this critical time period and the events surrounding it to demonstrate that Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby were not involved in an orchestrated scheme to discredit Mr. Wilson or disclose the undercover status of his wife, Valerie Wilson, but were intent on clarifying the use of intelligence in the president's address. Those people who have been briefed requested anonymity because prosecutors have asked them not to discuss matters under investigation.

We all wondered why that odd bit of information was revealed by the Rove forces. It was interesting, of course, as all these tid-bits are, but during that flood of friendly Rove-camp leaking, this always struck me a strange. How was this supposed to exonerate Rove? Somehow, we were supposed to believe that Tenet and Hadley and Rove and Libby were working together coordinating a Tenet's response. But, so what? Why would that have prevented Rove and Libby from leaking about Plame? Can't they walk and chew gum at the same time?

Then, on the 27th, the WaPo prints this and we are reminded that this has always been a battle between the white house and the CIA and it seems to be escalating as Rove comes under closer public scrutiny in the leak probe:

Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached columnist Robert D. Novak on the street.

In doing so, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked not only about how CIA operative Valerie Plame's name was leaked but also how the administration went about shifting responsibility from the White House to the CIA for having included 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union address about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Africa, an assertion that was later disputed.

A former senior CIA official said yesterday that Tenet's statement was drafted within the agency and was shown only to Hadley on July 10 to get White House input. Only a few minor changes were accepted before it was released on July 11, this former official said. He took issue with a New York Times report last week that said Rove and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, had a role in Tenet's statement.

If I had to guess, Novak's seemingly innocuous mention of Tenet yesterday wasn't an accident. Tenet is being fingered as the source quite deliberately. It's another salvo aimed at laying the blame for this whole mess (and I mean the WHOLE mess --- wmd's and all) at the CIA's feet:

Behind the scenes, the White House responded with twin attacks: one on Wilson and the other on the CIA, which it wanted to take the blame for allowing the 16 words to remain in Bush's speech. As part of this effort, then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley spoke with Tenet during the week about clearing up CIA responsibility for the 16 words, even though both knew the agency did not think Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Tenet was interviewed by prosecutors, but it is not clear whether he appeared before the grand jury, a former CIA official said.

Obviously, this article is informed by CIA sources who are enacting their own damage control. But it's pretty clear to me on whose side Novak is coming down.

Somerby chastises me a little bit for assuming that Novak was carrying water for the White House when it's possible his source was actually George Tenet. It's true that Novak's original column was fairly measured. It often is. But Novak's appearances on CNN leave absolutely no doubt as to his loyalty to the Republican party and his willingness to carry water for the Bush administration. When a journalist appears regularly on television to openly advocate for one political party or a specific administration I think he gives up any right to claim journalistic objectivity or even journalistic integrity in a situation like this.

For instance, here's one we can all appreciate Speaking of Al Gore at the Democratic convention last summer Novak said:

They [Democrats] just pray he doesn't go into one of his rants where he's screaming and yelling and can't control himself. They shouldn't feed him too much Coke before the uh-- Coca-Cola before tonight.

Any journalist who says things like that can be fairly assumed to be "sympathetic" to white house spin, I think.

We know that Karl Rove, and very likely, Scooter Libby, were passing the "wife" information around, whether Tenet was the original source (and whether he was involved in the smear) or not. Rove has admitted that he spoke with Novak. And, finally, we also know that Robert Novak is the only one of several journalists reportedly approached who ran with that information. I do not think it is all that unreasonable for me to characterize Novak as doing Rove's bidding in this. As I wrote yesterday, there really was no legitimate reason to report that Wilson's wife was involved if what they were trying to do was say that Wilson's mission was low level.

The man who likes to call Hillary Clinton "Madame Defarge" and a "very mean lady" who has "done very bad things" is just the guy I'd go to if I wanted to create a little smear about a henpecked little wimp and his overbearing spy of a wife who just wanted him to get a damned job.

Certainly, Novak's statements subsequent to the leak have been just as dicey as Sommerby has documented Wilson's of being. And I would suggest that they are far more worthy of condemnation since Novak is supposed to be a journalist.

In his original column revealing Plame's name, he wrote this about Wilson:

That's where Joe Wilson came in. His first public notice had come in 1991 after 15 years as a Foreign Service officer when, as U.S. charge in Baghdad, he risked his life to shelter in the embassy some 800 Americans from Saddam Hussein's wrath. My partner Rowland Evans reported from the Iraqi capital in our column that Wilson showed "the stuff of heroism." President George H.W. Bush the next year named him ambassador to Gabon, and President Bill Clinton put him in charge of African affairs at the National Security Council until his retirement in 1998.

[...]

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Wilson had taken a measured public position -- viewing weapons of mass destruction as a danger but considering military action as a last resort. He has seemed much more critical of the administration since revealing his role in Niger. In the Washington Post July 6, he talked about the Bush team "misrepresenting the facts," asking: "What else are they lying about?"

Here is his characterization of Wilson a few months later when he spoke with Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER: Joining me now for an exclusive conversation, the veteran journalist, is my colleague, Bob Novak. Bob, thanks very much for joining us. Let's talk about this. What made you decide to go out, first of all, and write about former Ambassador Joe Wilson?

NOVAK: Former Ambassador Wilson broke the secrecy that a retired diplomat, unknown, had gone to Niger in the year 2002 to investigate whether the Iraqis tried to buy yellow cake, uranium from Niger.

BLITZER: You mean when he wrote that op-ed page article in The New York Times?

NOVAK: New York Times ... That was on a Sunday morning. On Monday, I began to report on something that I thought was very curious. Why was it that Ambassador Wilson, who had no particular experience in weapons of mass destruction, and was a sharp critic of the Iraqi policy of President Bush and, also, had been a high-ranking official in the Clinton White House, who had contributed politically to Democrats -- some Republicans, but mostly Democrats -- why was he being selected?

I asked this question to a senior Bush administration official, and he said that he believed that the assignment was suggested by an employee at the CIA in the counterproliferation office who happened to be Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame. I then called another senior official of the Bush administration, and he said, Oh, you know about that? And he confirmed that that was an accurate story. I then called the CIA. They said that, to their knowledge, he did not -- that the mission was not suggested by Ambassador Wilson's wife -- but that she had been asked by her colleagues in the counterproliferation office to contact her husband. So she was involved.

Novak seems to be trying to make a case that he's the one who asked how Wilson got selected for the mission, not that anyone offered it up to him. In that same interview, he furiously denies that he ever told Newsday, "I didn't dig it out. They gave it to me." His characterization of Wilson is quite dramatically at odds with the way he wrote of him in the original column.

I would imagine that this discrepancy is something that Patrick Fitzgerald wondered about and why he was checking phone records after the Novak column came out. It reeks of cover up.

I realize that this does not demonstrate absolutely that Novak was carrying water for the administration when he revealed her name, but it certainly does show that he was carrying water for them after the fact. This entire line of bullshit about Wilson being a partisan is White House damage control chapter and verse.

I want to make clear that I'm not picking on Bob Somerby here. In the midst of that minor criticism, he also positively linked to my piece on Novak from yesterday, which I appreciate. He made a reasonable point, I think, that I was making an assertion that was not grounded in specific evidence. My response here is to demonstrate that I think it's a reasonable assertion based upon observing Robert Novak's career, his other public statements and the fact that he is, quite demonstrably, a douchebag for liberty.



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digby 8/02/2005 01:23:00 PM |

 
The Insider's Insider

I'm sure you've all heard by now that Patrick Fitzgerald is still interviewing people for the Grand Jury and that he called Rove assistants Susan Ralston and Izzy hernandez just last Friday.

Republican establishment groupies, The Note, which broke this story says this:

We should Note that Ralston and Hernandez are two of the nicest people in Washington and their being called to appear is a necessary reminder of the Caputoean phenomenon from the Clinton Era, which some have forgotten. When there are special prosecutors, a lot of kind, innocent people can get caught up in the investigation, often saddling them with huge legal bills and emotional stress.

That might be true, Perhaps these two are innocents. However, Susan Ralston's name has the unfortunate propensity to pop up in conjunction with some serious GOP scumbags:

When Rove got to the White House in 2001, he hired as his personal assistant one Susan Ralston, who previously was Jack Abramoff's personal assistant and was recommended by Abramoff for the job. Since then Ralston has become an insider's insider. "She's a remarkably gifted leader, playing a vital role," Rove told the National Journal in its June 18, 2005 issue.

According to the Washington Monthly (June 1, 2004), Grover Norquist "had a deal with Susan Ralston, who until recently was the assistant to Karl Rove. An unnamed Republican lobbyist recently told Salon.com: "Susan took a message for Rove, and then called Grover to ask if she should put the caller through to Rove. If Grover didn't approve, your call didn't go through."

"How did Norquist attain such influence over Ralston? Flowers every Friday? Redskins tickets?" the magazine wrote. "The answer, actually, is what the White House ethics lawyers call a 'preexisting relationship.' Ralston had formerly worked for lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a close friend of Norquist's and a top fundraiser for House majority whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas)."

I have no idea what Fitzgerald's looking at but it has something to do with Karl Rove. As Talk Left points out:

The two witnesses could be providing evidence that corroborates Rove's version. It's interesting, but not quite up to being a "dot" yet.

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digby 8/02/2005 11:10:00 AM |

 
Rearing His Head

I was busy yesterday and didn't get a chance to follow up, but I wondered about the item in Robert Novak's column yesterday in which he claimed that the Kerry campaign discarded Wilson after the SSCI report claimed Wilson's statements had no basis in fact. I had no recollection of that happening, particularly since the bipartisan SSCI report said no such thing --- that "no basis in fact" statement came from the "additional views" of partisan tools Orrin Hatch, Pat Roberts and Kit Bond. (It's quite telling that the committee couldn't even get all the republicans to sign on to that little smear.)

Robert Parry gets to the bottom of this and lo and behold, it all comes back to our favorite little GOP man-ho, JD Guckert:

The other part of Novak’s attack on Wilson – about his supposed repudiation by Sen. John Kerry’s Democratic campaign – can be traced back to a story by Talon News’ former White House correspondent Jeff Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert.

On July 27, 2004, just over a year ago, a Talon News story under Gannon’s byline reported that Wilson “has apparently been jettisoned from the Kerry campaign.” The article based its assumption on the fact that “all traces” of Wilson “had disappeared from the Kerry Web site.”

The Talon News article reported that “Wilson had appeared on a Web site www.restorehonesty.com where he restated his criticism of the Bush administration. The link now goes directly to the main page of www.johnkerry.com and no reference to Wilson can be found on the entire site.”

A Web Redesign

But Peter Daou, who headed the Kerry campaign’s online rapid response, said the disappearance of Wilson’s link – along with many other Web pages – resulted from a redesign of Kerry’s Web site at the start of the general election campaign, not a repudiation of Wilson.

“I wasn’t aware of any directive from senior Kerry staff to ‘discard’ Joe Wilson or do anything to Joe Wilson for that matter,” said Daou, who now publishes the “Daou Report” at Salon.com. “It just got lost in the redesign of the Web site, as did dozens and dozens of other pages.”

I don't want to hear any more speculation that Robert Novak has anything but the highest journalistic standards. Nobody has more credibility than the Bulldog.

The Talon article was scrubbed of course. But the freepers kept a copy on their site. Perhaps old Bob hangs out there --- many Republican whores do. Here it is in its entirety:

Kerry Dumps Joe Wilson From Campaign Team
Talon News ^ | 7/27/2004 | Jeff Gannon

Posted on 07/27/2004 7:22:20 AM PDT by ConservativeMajority

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Last week, the presidential campaign of Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) very publicly distanced itself from former National Security Advisor Samuel "Sandy" Berger after it became known that Berger was under investigation for removing highly classified documents from the National Archives.

Talon News reported that Kerry's anti-terror policy was removed from the candidate's web site immediately following Berger's dismissal as a campaign advisor. But in the last few days, another advisor has apparently been jettisoned from the Kerry campaign. All traces of former Ambassador Joe Wilson, the central figure in the controversy of faulty intelligence about Iraq and uranium has disappeared from the Kerry web site. Wilson had appeared on a web site www.restorehonesty.com where he restated his criticism of the Bush administration. The link now goes directly to the main page of www.johnkerry.com and no reference to Wilson can be found on the entire site.

Wilson was discredited by a Senate Intelligence Committee report that contradicted Wilson's public statements about how he was selected for a sensitive mission to Niger in 2002 and the results of his report about Saddam Hussein's attempt to purchase uranium in Africa. Wilson represented his investigation as proof that President Bush misled the United States in making the case for the invasion of Iraq. An investigation into British intelligence confirms that Bush's claim was "well founded."

It is likely that Kerry's handlers took advantage of the Berger affair to quietly break official contact with someone who has proved to be something of a loose cannon. The ambassador was known for his vitriolic rhetoric against members of the Bush administration, particularly political advisor Karl Rove. Last year he suggested that Rove be "frog-marched from the White House in handcuffs," over the alleged leak of his wife's identity.

The Kerry campaign did not respond to a Talon News inquiry about Wilson's departure.

Copyright © 2004 Talon News -- All rights reserved.

This really is worth some follow-up with the mainstream press, I think. All things being equal, Novak should be joining Dan Rather for a geriatric fuck-up cruise. It's amazing he's skated thus far.



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digby 8/02/2005 08:26:00 AM |

Monday, August 01, 2005

 
WTF

I think I'm just going to call this post my WTF post of the day.

First I read via Avedon and King of Zembla that the California National Guard doing surveillance on anti-war protesters may be a national strategy

A state senator frustrated with what he called "stonewalling" by the California National Guard said Tuesday he would launch contempt hearings against the state's military unit for failing to turn over documents.

-Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Garden Grove, sought the documents as part of his probe into the Guard's new controversial intelligence unit. After squaring off with a top Guard official and a lawyer for the unit Tuesday, Dunn also threatened to seek subpoenas against dozens of current and former top Guard officials.

The hearing was the first since the Times Sacramento Bureau reported the existence of the Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion program last month. Internal Guard e-mails show the unit had high-level interest in a small Mother's Day anti-war rally at the Capitol.

[...]

Before the hearing, the U.S. Army also dealt the committee a blow saying that a computer hard drive and a hand-held Blackberry used by the retiring California Guard colonel who oversaw the fledgling intelligence unit was federal property, and not subject to the subpoena.

The hard drive was erased the same day Dunn requested the Guard preserve all documents related to the unit.

WTF? So it really looks as if the California National Guard with the help of some members of the US Army was spying on anti-war protesters. This is nasty stuff. If it's happening all over the country, it's really nasty stuff.

One of the harshest questioners in the hearing was none other than Tom McClintock erstwhile GOP candidate for Governor. He's very right wing, but sometimes this civil liberties issue creates strange bedfellows. And needless to say, he hates Schwarzenneger with a passion. But then, these days, who doesn't?

For my second WTF, I find out that even prosecutors in the GITMO Kangaroo courts were appalled by the methods being used to find the "non-combatants" guilty. But, as with all these people who have expressed reservations, revulsion or concern about our handling of prisoners --- from the bad apples at Abu Ghraib, to reports of the "Biscuit" teams using psychological torture, to the dog handlers' testimony, to the FBI agents who were concerned about their legal culpability in inhumane treatment and rendition, to the highly placed members of JAG Corps worrying about complicity in war crimes, to the prosecutors at Guantanamo --- they are all mistaken or they are whiners and complainers.

Every day we are learning about people who complained about the legality and morality of our treatment of prisoners and each and every time the defense department whitewashes it. This is becoming unsustainable.

This latest story today about the prosecutors in Guantanamo complaining about the legality of the process discusses a "personality" clash even though the prosecutors who complained were discussing specific instances of unethical and illegal behavior. It sounds to me as if they had some legal Geoffrey Millers down there, whose tactics were as offensive as Miller's were.

And I suspect that the Colonel Borch mentioned in the article who calls these claims "monstrous lies" may be one of them. I wonder if when the dust settles we will find that Rumsfeld's Pentagon routinely put the most incompetent and the most gung-ho, quasi-psychotic officers in charge. It would certainly fit the pattern of refusing to listen to anything but their own hype.

My final WTF for the moment is from Josh Marshall, who quotes Michael Barone actually putting finger to keyboard and writing this:

"Richard Nixon, by obstructing investigation of the Watergate burglary, unwittingly colluded in the successful attempt to besmirch his administration. Less than two years after carrying 49 states, he was compelled to resign."

The intellectual contortions we are seeing on the right these days are quite magnificent. I'm just wondering when their heads will explode.



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digby 8/01/2005 10:52:00 AM |

 
Six Degrees Of Paul Hackett

Paul Hackett is asking the netroots to try out a new GOTV maneuver. It sounds like it might be worth a try, and I don't see how it could hurt. Experimentation is a good thing. And if the candidate calls, we should probably answer, particularly when it doesn't really take any effort to speak of.

Check it out. It will be fun to see if it has any impact.

They are also pushing to raise a few last minute bucks. Here's the link.


Update: I understand that some people are quite upset with the idea of sending out an e-mail to your friends asking them to send an e-mail to their friends in the hopes of spreading the word virally. Some consider this spam, but I'm of the opinion that sending a mass e-mail to people you know is not the same as sending out unsolicited messages to strangers. In fact, i do it all the time. But to each his own.

People should be aware that chain e-mails have become a primary tool of the Republicans and they used them to great effect during 2004. Read this article from Harper's about how they use them and the dishonesty and calumny they contained. (We are suggesting nothing like this.) Republicans are experts at direct mail and this is the hi-tech version of their vaunted mailing lists. Apparently they believe that it is quite effective and developed lists of people who would willingly start the chain. I don't think it was used to get out the vote so much as perpetuate whisper campaigns and bad information. It occurred mostly under the radar. I think we can be quite confident that they are refining this technique and will be using it to great effect going forward whether we learn to use it or not.

It just doesn't seem wrong to me to use the same method to simply ask your friends to pass on a GOTV message. It is slightly annoying but door knocking and phone calling strangers is far more intrusive and yet we do it all the time. It's one of the more annoying aspects of grassroots politics, but its absolutely essential. You have to try to get people to vote however you can.

But everyone has to do what they think is right. I know what the Republicans think is right. Do what has to be done to win and if that means annoying their friends with an e-mail, they do it.

Update II: I forgot to include this link which explains how chain e-mails can be used effectively and for good, written by Phil Agre, information expert and one of the clearest thinkers about the current political scene around.



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digby 8/01/2005 10:24:00 AM |

 
Removing All Doubt

You can see why Bob Novak's lawyers have told him to keep his mouth shut. Today he writes a column "defending" himself that opens up one big ole can of worms again.

Novak's original column opened with this paragraph:

The CIA's decision to send retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate possible Iraqi purchases of uranium was made routinely at a low level without Director George Tenet's knowledge. Remarkably, this produced a political firestorm that has not yet subsided.

Had Novak left it at that there would have been no repercussions. But he went on to reveal that Wilson's wife was the one who suggested him for the mission. And we know that it was the "wife" part of this story that was being spread all over town, not the fact that the decision to send Wilson to Niger was made in the bowels of the CIA.

This would have been a fairly standard issue character assassination if it hadn't been for the fact that Plame was undercover. But she was, and the CIA told Novak that. Bill Harlow, former spokesman for the CIA, recently went on the record with the Washington Post and said that he had warned Novak off the story using the only language the CIA can use without revealing classified information. Novak claims in his column today that this simply wasn't good enough:

So, what was "wrong" with my column as Harlow claimed? There was nothing incorrect. He told the Post reporters he had "warned" me that if I "did write about it, her name should not be revealed." That is meaningless. Once it was determined that Wilson's wife suggested the mission, she could be identified as "Valerie Plame" by reading her husband's entry in "Who's Who in America."

Except he could have easily written the story without revealing that Wilson's wife allegedly sent him on the mission at all. It was a colorful detail that didn't mean anything unless you were Joe and Valerie Wilson and your careers and reputations were being destroyed. The substance of Novak's story was that Cheney knew nothing of the mission, not who sent Wilson. It appears to me that this is exactly how Harlow assumed Novak would handle it when he warned him not to use Plame's name if he wrote the story.

Why did Novak think Plame's alleged involvement was important in the first place? He certainly didn't spell it out in his column. He just dropped it out there. In fact, there has still not been, to this day, any satisfactory explanation from him or anyone else involved as to why it was so significant that Plame allegedly suggested her husband for the job. Other than casting aspersions on Wilson's manhood, creating the impression that he wasn't qualified or sending a message to critics, I can't conceive of any legitimate reasons why it would be considered worth reporting -- particularly since the CIA had not given him an unequivocal green light. Reporting her involvement can only be seen for what it was: character assasination and political retribution.

Novak knew what Rove and Libby wanted him to do and, alone among his peers, he ran with the petty little detail they were working hard to get into the papers. And now he has the nerve to get indignant when he gets called on it. Douchebag For Liberty doesn't even begin to describe it.



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digby 8/01/2005 07:45:00 AM |

Sunday, July 31, 2005

 
They're Good At It

It just occurred to me how offensively stupid it is for some Washington chickenhawk to be saying the GOP is going to "bury" an Iraq war veteran.

US Military Fatalities at 7/31/05: 1796

digby 7/31/2005 01:06:00 PM |

 
National Democrats Please Listen

If you want a message that will resonate with red staters --- maybe even some of those macho white working class Nascar males who pride themselves on their independence --- this is how you do it:

"I don't need Washington to tell me how to live my personal life or how to pray to my God," he said.

The Republicans spent multi-millions over the last 25 years selling the idea that the American people want the government "off their backs." We should piggy back our candidates right on the back of that marketing slogan and ride it to victory.

What the national Democratic party needs to recognise is that when many people heard the Republicans saying that, they thought that they were talking about literally getting the government "off their backs" not just lowering their taxes. Instead, the Republicans are creating a national government that seeks to intrude in the most personal of ways, interfering with people's religious and moral choices. That wasn't what the independent, individualistic western style libertarian signed on for. They are ours for the taking if we have the nerve to say what Paul Hackett said up there.

Combine that with some big ticket ideas like "guaranteed health insurance for all Americans" with a foreign policy narrative that refocuses the threats and policy prescription in the proper direction as Matt Yglesias talks about here, and we have the essence of a Democratic message that will resonate.




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digby 7/31/2005 12:22:00 PM |

 
Pull The Other One

Talk Left points to this post about a joint US Canadian raid day before yesterday in Canada to arrest a marijuana seed distributer on charges that his seeds are being used by Americans to break the law. Selling the seeds in not illegal in Canada, but the Americans persuaded the canadians that they should be able to reach across the border and arrest their citizens. The story is complex, but if you are interested in this subject I recommend you check it out.

I was struck by one quote by the US Attorney in Seattle under whose auspices this bust came about:

“The fact is, marijuana is a very dangerous drug,” Sullivan said. “People don't say that, but right now in America, there are more kids in treatment for addiction to marijuana than every other illegal drug combined."

Now, I can't say for sure, but I would bet a million dollars if I had it that this is flat out bullshit. Certainly, the "very dangerous" part is flat out bullshit. And I cannot believe that there are more kids in treatment for marijuana "addiction" than all other drugs combined. This is your government lying in your face. The kids know it and as a result they disregard all the warnings about drugs (like meth -- a very, very serious problem.)



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digby 7/31/2005 11:17:00 AM |

 
Back In Ohio

I don't know how many people are following the corruption scandals in Ohio, but they are doozies -- just flat out graft in the highest reaches of the Ohio Republican party. It's one reason why Paul Hackett may just have a chance to win. Combine that with the outrages documented in "What Went Wrong In Ohio" and the GOP is becoming so discredited as an institution that its brand is suffering.

Jean Schmidt has been running from the Ohio bigwigs implicated in the scandal as fast as her bandy little legs will carry her. But it appears that in these last couple of days her lies about knowing some of the major players are unravelling. Swing State project has the story.

In another display of the GOP's irony and history impaired lameness, the Washington Post reports today why the national GOP decided to throw a bunch of last minute money at Schmidt:

"He called the commander in chief a son-of-a-[expletive]," said NRCC spokesman Carl Forti. "We decided to bury him."

I suppose he took off his shoe and pounded on the table too.

In many ways, they really are "Red" states.



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digby 7/31/2005 10:14:00 AM |

 
How We CIA

Arthur has a must read post up dissecting Highpockets' tribalism and the meaning of plaid pants and cultural paranoia. (If you aren't checking in with his blog frequently you are missing some of the most consistently amazing cultural and political analysis in the blogosphere.) I'll leave that fascinating topic to him for now, but he does mention one thing in passing that I'd like to expound on a bit; the wingnuts and the CIA.

I've been thinking a lot about how the Plame affair has brought up an interesting political contradiction: the right is now openly contemptuous of the CIA while the left is a vocal supporter. I think it's probably a good idea to clarify that bit so we don't get confused. The fact is that both sides have always been simultaneously vocal supporters and openly contemptuous of the CIA, but for entirely different reasons.

I usually don't speak for "the left" but for the purpose of this discussion I will use my views as a proxy for the lefty argument. I'm not generally a big fan of secretive government departments with no accountability. I always worry that they are up to things not sanctioned by the people and it has often turned out that they are. I have long been skeptical of the CIA because of the CIA's history of bad acts around the world that were not sanctioned or even known by more than a few people and were often, in hindsight, wrong --- like rendition, for instance. I don't believe that we should have a secret foreign policy operation that doesn't answer to the people. They tend to do bad shit that leaves the people holding the bag.

But I didn't just fall out of the back of Arnold's hummer, so I understand that a nation needs intelligence to protect itself and understand the world. I also understand that the way we obtain that information must be kept secret in order to protect the lives of those who are involved in getting it. I have never objected to the idea that we have spies around the world gathering information about what our enemies are up to. I also think that intelligence should, as much as possible, be objective and apolitical. Otherwise, we cannot accurately assess real threats. If the CIA (and the other intelligence agencies) only make objective analyses, the buck will stop at the president, where it always properly should.

Therefore, I see this Plame affair -- and the larger matter of the pre-war WMD threat assessment -- as a matter of compromised intelligence and an extension of the 30 year war the right has waged against what it thinks is the CIA's tepid threat analysis. Never mind that the right's hysterical analyses have always turned out to have been completely wrong.

But then accuracy was never the point because the right takes the opposite approach to the CIA's proper role. They have always been entirely in favor of the CIA working on behalf of any president who wanted to topple a left wing dictator or stage a coup without congressional knowledge. This is, in their view, the proper role of the CIA --- to covertly advance foreign policy on behalf of an executive (of whom they approve) and basically do illegal and immoral dirty work. But they have never valued the intelligence and analysis the CIA produced since it often challenged their preconcieved beliefs and as a result didn't validate their knee jerk impulse to invade, bomb, obliterate, topple somebody for reasons of ideology or geopolitical power. The CIA's intelligence often backed up the success of the containment policy that kept us from a major bloody hot war with the commies --- and for that they will never be trusted.(See Team B, and the Committee on the Present Danger parts I and II.)

Therefore, the right sees the Plame affair as another example of an inappropriately "independent" CIA refusing to accede to its boss's wishes. They believe that the CIA exists to provide the president with the documentation he needs to advance his foreign policy goals --- and if that includes lying to precipitate a war he feels is needed, then their job is to acquiesce. When you cut away the verbiage, what the right really believes is that the US is justified in invading and occupying any country it likes --- it's just some sissified, cowardly rule 'o law that prevents us from doing it. The CIA's job is to smooth the way for the president to do what he wants by keeping the citizen rubes and the allies in line with phony proof that we are following international and domestic laws. (This would be the Straussian method of governance --- too bad the wise ones who are running the world while keeping the rest of us entertained with religion and bread and circuses are so fucking lame.)

Back in the day, they used to just admit that they were engaging in Realpolitik, and as disgusting as that is, at least it was more honest than the current crop of neocons who insist that they are righteous and good by advancing democracy and vanquishing evil using undemocratic, illegal means. It makes me miss Kissinger. At least he didn't sing kumbaya while he was fucking over the wogs.

I have no idea where people who don't pay much attention to the political scene would come down on this. It may be that they think the government should have a branch that does illegal dirty work. But I suspect they would also think that the president should not be allowed to run a secret foreign policy or stage wars for inscrutable reasons. Indeed, I think most people would find it repugnant if they knew that there are people in government who think the president of the United States has a right to lie to them in order to commit their blood and treasure to a cause or plan that has nothing to do with the one that is stated.

Of course, that's exactly what happened with Iraq. The right's greatest challenge now is to get the public to believe that they were lied to for their own good.



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digby 7/31/2005 09:02:00 AM |

Saturday, July 30, 2005

 
Volunteer For Hackett

I just got this e-mail from Bob Brigham of Swing State Project:

Man, cellular laptop cards are great. I'm riding in Paul Hackett's motorcade and live-blogging over at Swing State Project.

The campaign has momentum and is peaking perfectly, but needs more people. It would be great if you could post a general call for the netroots to get down to Ohio 2nd district. People have been reading about this on the blogs and coming from all over, Philly, Michigan, Florida and a whole helluva lot of netroots people from Ohio. So far, over 7,000 people have donated. Let's see if we can get 1% to go volunteer for GOTV.

We need a few hundred more people and every available Democratic volunteer in the area is already plugged in. Let's finish the job.

Ask people to call HQ at (513) 735-4310.

It's a long shot, but if Hackett could pull this out it might be considered the kind of bellweather that Harris Wofford was back in 1991. It could change the media dynamic considerably for '06.



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digby 7/30/2005 12:55:00 PM |

 
Testy, Testy

Wow. Anyone who hasn't seen this Jean Schmidt interview with David Gregory over at Crooks and Liars needs to check it out.

Let's just say that if the election turns on which candidate has the most winning personality, Hackett should win in a lanslide. Yikes.


Update: I hope the canvassers are armed with this information as they spread the word this week-end. It may be too late to make much of it, which is too bad. it would be a nice test case of the new libertarian red state Dem vs the religious extremist red state Republican paradigm:

...here's one fact her side is carefully guarding, knowing only about 10 percent of those registered will vote Tuesday: her extreme views. If voters from places like Mariemont, Anderson Township or Hyde Park knew fully what Schmidt believed, they might sit out the election or switch over for once to a Democrat, especially one like Hackett.

Here's the backup. During the campaign Schmidt is on leave as president of the Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati. Now, no one should begrudge her that commitment. It's personal and religious. But does that commitment affect her political judgment and fitness? Second District voters must decide that.

But go to her group's Web site, www.affirminglife.org/ index.asp, and click around through the many buttons and pages and you'll learn she and her cohorts abhor living wills. Huh? Isn't that the one lesson from the Republican exploitation of Terri Schiavo -- that we should immediately get willed up? She says no.

Her local Right to Life site to this day says Schiavo was executed. And that you shouldn't buy Levi jeans or anything Microsoft or Johnson & Johnson baby cream or read The New York Times. And they say no to the promise of embryonic stem cell research that could help our relatives and friends survive diseases and crippling paralysis.

Flat out, Schmidt is a political extremist. Of course, she thinks those fringe views put her in the 2nd District mainstream. I don't think so, not with the suburban masses or even the man farming a rural field while his wife packs lunches for the kids waiting for their long school bus ride.

No doubt Schmidt will turn out her Right to Life friends on Tuesday. They believe their numbers will be enough for at least a victory.

But the more mainstream voters come to realize she's a friend of Taft's and the leader of such a fringe group, they might conclude she's not Rob Portman, she's not like them. And putting in a Democrat, especially one who still wears the Marine uniform and has economic success but with colorful, earthy edges, could be the more comfortable choice.

It all comes down to what people know, when they know it and whether they'll care. We'll soon know.

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digby 7/30/2005 09:44:00 AM |

Friday, July 29, 2005

 
Swooning

I know that most of you have already seen this, but I wanted to post it anyway, just for posterity.

Armando at Kos caught this from Hindquarter and the Gang:

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

I've written a lot about "up-is-downism" and "epistemic relativism" and "bizarro world" trying to analyse the Republicans' alternate reality, wondering whether it comes from a full absorbtion into the field of public relations, a consciously created competing discourse or simple lying with a straight face. All of that is bullshit. It's a form of mass hysteria ---- along the lines of the Salem Witch trials or the audience at an NSynch NSync concert.



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digby 7/29/2005 08:27:00 AM |

Thursday, July 28, 2005

 
Oooh Daddy

Via Jesse at Pandagon,(who will give you the full hilarious run-down) I see that the Cornerites are all a twitter at the new Geena Davis show "Commander In Chief." They are having little giggle fits at the idea that a woman president would be, like, so cute when she's negotiating and baking cookies!

Here's little taste of the more serious side of the discussion from Jonah "Doughy Pant Load" Goldberg:

The idea that a female liberal president would be more "feminine" than Bill Clinton is absurd, laughable, factually untrue. Bill Clinton was weepy, huggy and at all times pain-feeling. He'd wax eloquent on the glories of talk and empathy. At the end of one marathon meeting which accomplished nothing, he stretched out in his chair and said "That was great" as if he was about to light a cigarette. Feminists declared him the first female president. He talked of security not in the sense of blowing up terrorists but of leaving no children behind...And, sad to say, it was so successful that George W. Bush and Karl Rove copied it with their treacly "compassionate conservatism." It took 9/11 to remind George W. Bush why Republicans are called the Daddy Party.

Actually, I'd heard about that all night meeting too, except I'd heard that at the end of it, he stretched out in his chair and said "that was great --- Monica."

And I believe he lit a cigar if I'm not mistaken.


I don't actually blame Jonah. With a mother like his it's hard to see how he could have come out unscathed. But this is just sad. The little guy wrote that whole thing without even realizing what he was revealing about his issues with women --- and why Republican males like him hated Bill Clinton.



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digby 7/28/2005 08:16:00 PM |

 
Hippie Spooks

Crooks and Liars is featuring a rather nutty exchange on Faux news in which it's posited that al Qaeda set up the poor Brazilian schmuck in the London subway in order to discredit the US and British governments. That's kooky, all right.

But there's a lot of that going around, I'm afraid. After quoting from Deborah Orrin's breathless scoop that Valerie Wilson went to a Springsteen fundraiser for Kerry, Orrin Judd speculates:

It's not beyond the realm of possibility that MoveOn, ActUp, and the rest of them are just CIA fronts.

For those of you who aren't following the latest line of thinking in wingnuttia, the whole Plame deal was an elaborate scheme by a cabal of evil CIA hippies who were trying to bring the president down. Just ask Senator Pat Roberts if you think I'm kidding.


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digby 7/28/2005 07:15:00 PM |

 
Simmering The Slime

Joe Conason has a nice piece here about how the right is preparing the ground to slime Pat Fitzgerald. Now that Senator Roberts has narrowed the scope of his interest in the Plame case, I think it's pretty clear that the little trial balloon about hearings (and my speculation about them granting immunity) was premature. The Dem Senators understood that better than I did --- they are keeping the heat on Roberts to hold hearings that he now quite clearly doesn't want to have. It really didn't make sense to pre-emptively slime Fitzgerald or haul Rove before the committee. They don't know what Fitzgerald has. And if I'm not mistaken, the special prosecutor, unlike the Independent Counsel, has no requirement to file a report if there is no indictment.

Therefore, if Fitzgerald doesn't indict, there is every reason to believe that all we'll ever find out is that ... no law was technically broken. The Republicans have wisely decided to back off at least until they know what they are dealing with. Why make him mad?

But if Fitzgerald does indict somebody --- and the spectre of a trial looms --- you can bet they'll be ready to try to bury him.


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digby 7/28/2005 05:31:00 PM |

 
Failing By Their Own Standards

While I have been engaging in the blogospheric pie fight over the liberal hawks' approach to national security to some extent, I do think it's important also to engage in a substantive response to the the DLC on this. Kevin links to a very good article at Democracy Arsenal that challenges the DLC's overreliance on the military to solve problems. This is a huge issue, particularly in light of the threats we actually face.

I was actually quite stunned to realize that they had signed on so fully to the idea that the GWOT or the G-SAVE or whatever, is a military challenge when quite clearly it is something else entirely. After all we've seen from 9/11 to Bali to Madrid to London --- and our our ineffectual and impotent performance in Iraq --- you would think that even hawks would have done some tweaking of the old superpower handbook.

But they haven't. And they even went a step further, indicating that criticising the methods that the Bush administration has employed thus far is naive (or vaguely anti-American) when it seems to me that it is vital to publicly reject their approach in order to repair the damage. The Bush administration has employed some catastrophically bad tactics and methods that have destroyed our credibility and our moral authority --- two things that are essential in repelling terrorism, attracting allies and keeping foreign enemies from overreaching. And in squandering those things the Bush administration has created recruiting propaganda for the terrorists and probably ruined any chance the liberal hawks might have had to test their Wilsonian experiment in exporting democracy.

First, the Bush administration continues to this day to tell the entire world that our intelligence services are completely untrustworthy. By invading a country without provocation, failing to find the WMD which would have justified the preemption doctrine, failing to prepare for the post war and then blaming the CIA and the state departments for that failure, they are saying to the world that the greatest military power the world has ever known is entirely incompetent. It leads enemies to overreach and it leads friends to be wary of letting us take the lead.

The only thing that can set this right is to publicly hold the Bush administration accountable for its politicising of the war for its own ends. To hush it up is to make us less safe, not more.

Second, by using torture and humiliation tactics we have shown the Muslim world that we are uncivilized. This is not just a matter, as Will Marshall said, of us not being grown-ups and undertanding that bad apples will blow off steam. It is clear that these things were ordered at the highest levels. And, as it has been reported today in even greater detail than before, there was a huge amount of dissension within the military about using these tactics for a variety of reasons. The primary concern for them is that it puts our own troops in danger, both morally and physically.

Marshall says that we have no credibility on torture unless we also condemn the acts of the barbaric insurgency in Iraq. This is precisely the opposite of the truth. Civilized people take for granted that anyone who blows up innocent people is barbaric. It does not have to be individually condemned. The behavior of the insurgency is not our responsiblity. The tactics and methods of the US Military are. It is incumbent upon us to take specific note of our own people who do barbaric things and show the world that we condemn it in the harshest possible terms. We cannot hope to export our democratic freedoms and demonstrate their benefits unless we hold ourselves to this higher standard --- and exporting our democratic freedoms is what these liberal hawks so fervently believe we must do.

So, they are defeating their own stated purpose of keeping the country safe by allowing the Bush administration to get away with exploding the myth that US intelligence is virtually omnipotent and possibly emboldening would be enemies.

They are defeating their own stated purpose of defending the military, by refusing to stand with those within it who objected to the way the Bush administration ignored its rules and regulations.

They are defeating their own stated purpose of spreading democracy by refusing to demonstrate our system's higher moral and ethical standards to people who are skeptical of our power.

If we are looking to the DLC for smart thinking on national security, we'd better look elsewhere. In all these ways the policies of the DLC hawks have already failed even by their own standards.


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digby 7/28/2005 03:41:00 PM |

 
Point Break

Atrios points today to this article in the Village Voice by Rick Perlstein which I encourage you to read. It's short and to the point. I think Perlstein has really gotten to the heart of why the Democratic party is having such a difficult problem getting through to people; we're not staying true true to our long term vision.

However, I'd like to draw your attention to an interview this week with Perlstein in this week's In These Times in which he discusses his book "the Stockticker and the SuperJumbo" which is only 8 bucks and is filled with interesting insights not just from him but other writers and thinkers in response to his ideas. You get a very real sense of the outlines of the debate within the party.

I'd like to discuss one thing in particular that Perlstein notes in the book and the interview and which I touched upon in my post earlier this week about Will Marshall and the DLC. I took issue with Marshall's point that liberals had been traumatized by the "protest politics" of the 60's to such an extent that they could not rationally deal with national security --- particularly the military. He characterized this as a feature of the grassroots liberal activists which I disagreed with because the "Move-On" left is quite a diverse group and it's certainly intergenerational. I do not believe that the grassroots were traumatized by the protest politics of the 60's --- although I'm sure there are some among us who were. We are a large group.

However, there is one group of Democrats who most certainly were traumatized by the protest politics of the 60's. Unfortunately, contrary to what Marshall set forth in his piece, the Democrats who are still carrying around that baggage are now the leaders of the Democratic party --- and particularly the leaders of the DLC. Indeed, their entire political careers have been forged in response to their early radicalism and subsequent political losses in 1972 and beyond.

The rest of us have indeed "moved on," going with the flow of changing political tides and reassessing our priorities as most people do as they go through life. But the people who came of age as political leaders in 1972 through the Reagan losses have been forever chastened by their youthful enthusiasm and as a result have an emotional aversion to bold, confrontational politics. Perlstein says:

The trauma of the generation of people who are running the Democratic Party was being blindsided by the political failures of left-of-center boldness. If you look at a lot of the most resonant and stalwart centrists and Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) Democrats, for a lot of them, their political coming-of-age was being blindsided by conservatism. For Bill Clinton, it was losing the governorship in 1980. For Joe Lieberman, it was losing a congressional race in 1980. For Evan Bayh, the chair of the DLC, it was seeing his dad lose his Senate seat to Dan Quayle in 1980. But the formative traumas of my generation of Democrats—and I’m 35—have been the failures of left-of-center timidity. So there really is a structural generational battle among Democrats. People of a certain age are terrified that the electorate is going to associate them with the excesses of the ’60s, but most voters are too young to remember that stuff. The Republicans keep trying to paint the Democrats as the party of the hippies and punks who burn the flag.

I'm a baby boomer myself, although I'm 10 years younger than the vanguard leaders of the 60's, and I certainly understood the tremendous frustration that we felt as Reaganism exploded across the 80's. I was deeply demoralized for a long time and I supported the DLC's attempt to reposition the party away from sectarian social issues to a more mainstream middle class economic focus. What I didn't count on was that while we settled into our grown-up middle aged persona, the right wing was going to have a doozy of a mid-life crisis and hurl themselves into true radicalism. It was a failure of imagination of epic proportions on my part.

But when they impeached the president on trumped up charges, I learned. And I realized that as you fight the political battles of the day, all you have to hang on to are the core beliefs that brought you into the arena in the first place.

As Perlstein demonstrates in his book, the key to long term political success is to have big things you stand for over the long haul. People understand different political realitites. Life happens. But they want to know what you care deeply about and what you want to accomplish even when you haven't a chance in hell of actually accomplishing it any time soon. Perlstein calls it laying down "markers:"

It’s a gambling term. A marker basically is a commitment to pay. In Guys and Dolls, Nathan Detroit would say, “that guy holds my marker.” It’s something you can’t back out of, on pain of getting your knees broken. The marker that Republicans have is that everyone who runs for office has to sign a pledge—it’s enforced by their own knee-breaker, Grover Norquist—that on pain of political death they’re not going to raise taxes.

My thesis is that a commitment that doesn’t waver adds value by the very fact of the commitment. The evidence is that even though the individual initiatives that make up the conservative project poll quite poorly, they’ve managed to succeed simply because everyone knows what the Republicans stand for. And the most profound exit poll finding in the last election had nothing to do with moral values, it was all the people who said that they disagreed with the Republicans on individual issues, but they voted for George W. Bush anyway because they knew what he stood for.

I think this is spot on. And it applies particularly to times in which we have the strange political freedom in which to operate without the responsibility of governance. We do not have to appease the pork barrel needs of legislators. We don't have to massage corporate donors. We can, instead, use the opportunity to advance ideas that have no particular hope of passage but that illustrate what we stand for.

And we don't have to do it merely by submitting ten point plans and stirring manifestos, although that's certainly legitimate. What we should do is promote big ideas and attach those ideas to the Democratic party across the spectrum of political activity.

Perlstein sugggests that every Democrat put on his or her website that they support "guaranteed health insurance for all Americans." Simple and sweet. Do we all agree that every American should have guaranteed health care? I think so. Should we say it out loud, so that the American people know that we support guaranteed health insurance for all Americans? Uh, yes.

I would also say that there are other ways to express our long term committments to more abstract ideals, like a right to privacy. When we question Judge Roberts we should make it clear what the stakes are in that battle. We shouldn't just talk about Roe, although that's important, we should put Roe in the context of all the other intrusions people will suffer both by the government and corporations if we don't acknowledge this as settled law and fundamental to our liberties. We are going to lose this nomination battle, but it is a good forum for staking out a long term position on privacy rights vis a vis everything from the Patriot Act to birth control. The libertarian strain that guys like Paul Hackett represents needs to be woven into our agenda for the long haul so that we can continue to fight for the freedom to be left alone by religious extremists and zealous police agencies alike.

I agree with Matt Yglesias that this is also a good opportunity for the Democrats to stand together and just say no. We don't have to trash the guy, if that's something that's unpalatable, but we certainly don't have to allow any free votes for a very right wing ideologue either. Unlike social security, we will not win the battle, but we stake out a position much more strongly if we hold together as a caucus instead of allowing free "gimmes" to Senators who want to appear above the fray. Nobody should be above the fray.

Tactics and strategies are, by necessity, subject to changing circumstances. Our goals and aspirations shouldn't be. Thinking big is what progressives do, and we pay a price for that at times when people adjust to progress. But we cannot survive if people don't know what we stand for. We need to take every opportunity to make that known and then stick to it even when it's impossible to achieve in the next election cycle or two.

The Democratic party apparatus for a variety of reasons have become risk averse. We in the grassroots have to help them see that this is not wise. It means that we are going to be perceived by some as intemperate and unpleasant at times. But that's ok. As Perlstein says:

We do have a timid bunch of folks in the Democratic Party, but that doesn’t mean all is lost. Timid and cautious people can often express their timidity and cautiousness by being swept up in a tide. We’ve got to provide the tide and let them surf it.

Update: Publius at legal Fiction makes a similar point about the "60's trauma" in this excellent post.


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digby 7/28/2005 11:54:00 AM |

 
Fighting Liberals

So it looks like Paul Hackett actually has a chance. I can't tell you how happily surprised I am. According to Swing State Project he's within five points in a district in which the Democrat hasn't achieved more than 30% in over twenty years. it's still a long shot, but this is a very good sign.

Hackett is, of course, a particularly attractive candidate being a good looking Iraq veteran family man and all. But the fact that he's making inroads in such a conservative district is pretty amazing in this era of GOP dominance in the red states. Let's hope it's a bellweather.

I cannot help but make note of the fact that the allegedly anti-military Move-on crowd have embraced Hackett so fervently. I would hope that this is noticed by the critics who say that there is an anti-patriotic strain in the grassroots. Clearly, we of the rank and file do not actually have a problem with the military --- we love this guy.

What this points up is the fact that the DLC badly misunderstands the reasons why the grassroots reject their leadership. It's only partially to do with policy and has almost nothing to do with ideology. It's about tactics and strategy. We see their split-the-difference "third way" approach -- particularly their rhetoric --- as a form of appeasement that may have made sense in a time of shared power but that is now self-defeating and dangerous.This is particularly so in light of the demonstrable ruthlessness of the opposition and their willingness to go far beyond any normal political limits.

We like Hackett because he's a strong, tough talking Democrat who takes it to the Republicans. I would imagine that there are plenty of gun control advocates among the urban netroots who nonetheless have given money to his campaign. And I know for a fact that there are quite a few like me who did not support the Iraq war, who nonetheless are proud of brave men like Hackett who subscribe to the military ethos of service to country. We certainly don't hold the insane decisions of ivory tower neocons against him --- we know the difference between those who make the policies and those who carry them out -- it's spelled out in our constitution.

The grassroots are not united in pacifism or any other particular ideology. The grassroots are united in our belief that the Republicans are dangerous radicals who are driving this country off of a cliff. And we've concluded that accomodationist rhetoric at a time of total GOP political dominance is suicidal, particularly when the Republicans are losing the support of the American people on virtually every issue. We think that it's time for a confrontational strategy that shines a light on the Republicans' radicalism. We believe that the country is yearning for some authentic straight talk about real issues and real problems and real solutions --- including national security --- instead of half baked esoteric reworkings of Republican talking points disguised as Democratic moderation.

We believe that you can't be perceived as strong unless you are willing to fight the political fight head on. It's that simple. It's about speaking truth to power. We don't hate the military and we aren't afraid to protect the country. In fact, our entire ethos is just the opposite. The legendary "fighting liberal" image that the hawks evoke with such nostalgia --- is us.

Paul Hackett is one of us.


It's getting down to the wire. If anyone is in the vicinity and can volunteer over the next few days until the election --- or if you have another couple of bucks to send his way --- here's the info:

Paul Hackett For Congress

Act Blue Contribution Page
digby 7/28/2005 10:24:00 AM |

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

 
Sailed Through

There had been some talk that the Democrats had a secret plan for Karen Hughes when every one of them failed to show up for the hearings on Friday and that they would unveil it on Tuesday when the hearings reconvened. Well...

Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved the nomination of Karen Hughes, a former political adviser to President Bush, as the State Department's top public relations official.


The Senate is expected to complete the confirmation process this week before leaving for its August recess.

Hughes' main assignment as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs is to reverse anti-American sentiment around the world.

I'm sure there would have been no political value in getting Hughes on camera admitting that she'd been called before the grand jury. Not would it have been valuable to have on-camera reporters on the cable and evening news explaining to their viewers that Patrick Fitzgerald's probe evidently reached up to all of president's Bush's closest advisors, even Hughes.

It's a good thing we don't waste our time with such crass political tactics. Besides, Republicans might might say we are mean and nobody votes for mean. Well, unless it's being mean to a Democrat in which case people seem to positively love it.



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digby 7/27/2005 10:55:00 AM |

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

 
Debt Nanny

Can someone tell me why the government, under the "we trust you with your own money" Bush administration no less, is pressuring the credit card companies to double their minimum payments from 2% to 4% (with interest) for the stated purpose that people need to be forced to pay off their credit cards sooner?

Where does the government sponsored MNBA tough-love end? The bankruptcy bill wasn't enough, apparently. They now want to drive people who are struggling in a weak labor market into bankruptcy by abruptly doubling their monthly credit card bills. I guess there's no use wasting time in getting people into their properly indentured forever status.

Seriously, I can understand why the credit card companies want to do this now that they are protected from people having their debts discharged when they suddenly can't make their monthly payments. But on what basis does a Republican government excuse its meddling into the private financial affairs of American citizens?

This sounds like a good campaign issue to me. It hits home --- it's like Gray Davis doubling the car tax in California; it's an increase everybody notices. If the Bush administration is actually pushing it, the Democrats ought to staple this little GOP corporate collusion right on the foreheads of Republicans everywhere in the '06 election.



Update: Apparently a lot of progressives think that this is a good idea. The government should be in the business of forcing people to save more money, lower their credit card debt faster and behave more responsibly.

Unfortunately, the problem is that a large number of people who are paying only their minimums right now are people who just can't afford to pay any more. And while it's always nice to assume that people who get themselves into debt are all bums who aren't smart enough or don't care enough to manage their money properly, we actually have no idea why individuals have such high debt --- but the statistics show that good many of them are people who suffered a protracted job loss, a health crisis or a divorce. Some of them are juggling high debt because they are changing careers, they started a business or they took some other entrepreneurial chance. The large numbers of good people in a temporary jam are, sadly, going to get lumped in with all the people we feel need to be taught a lesson.

This piss poor labor economy has been propped up by easy credit for a long time by people who wanted to keep the party going. Individuals who have not been getting raises or who can't change jobs because of employer based health care have had to manage inflation and necessary big ticket items with credit at ever higher interest rates. They've met their obligations, but apparently that's not good enough. Now, the government needs to raise the national savings rate because the government itself is spending like drunken sailors so they are going to put the onus on people who are living under the high stress of a stagnant job market and high debt to do it. Somehow that just doesn't seem right to me.

The credit card companies get "hurt" by a slight dip in their usurious profits and the individual working stiff gets to learn a lesson in not eating.

This is a suckers issue for Democrats. Telling working people that we think the government should encourage their credit card companies to raise their payments because they need to learn how to manage their money is something even I find offensive --- and I'm a liberal Democrat. Let the credit card companies eat it for a while by telling them to tighten their new credit requirements --- don't just suddenly lower the boom on people. Make all new debt subject to the higher minimums. But if people are carrying a heavy load like 300 dollars a months in minimums which they can just manage --- doubling it to 600(+ interest) one month is enough to put them on the spiral of late payments, 30% interest and financial doom. Real live people are going to be hurt quite badly if this happens.

I hate MBNA as much as any person but "sticking it to 'em" by pressuring them to abruptly raise the payments of their customers isn't really a winning way to deal with this, in my book.


Here is another article that explains what's happening in greater detail.

And another.

And another.



In every single article it discusses the long term good of people paying down their debt faster. And they also discuss the singular hell that people are going to be facing when this abruptly happens to them and they don't have the ability to come up with the cash.

I'm sure there are a lot of people whohave just been too dumb to realize that they should pay more than the minimums each month in order to keep up with the compounding interest on their debt. This may help them. But it's also quite obvious that alot of people are going to be thrown to the wolves on this:

Of course, if your finances are already squeezed to the breaking point, the rate hike is a bitter pill to swallow -- good for you in the long run, but hard to take right now.

"If you're living paycheck to paycheck and your minimum payment goes from $200 to $275, spread over five cards, that's an extra $375 a month," says Brauer. "A lot of families can't come up with that." The banks already know that and are planning for it. Bank of America, one of the first to raise minimum payment requirements, worked an extra $130 million into its 2005 budget to cover projected losses from defaulting cardholders.

The same defaulting cardholders who are now going to have to pay much higher fees to go bankrupt and who, if they make above the median in their state, will no longer be allowed to file chapter 7. Quite the double whammy.



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digby 7/26/2005 10:48:00 PM |

 
Rumble

I have been skeptical that Patrick Fitzgerald would broaden the scope of his investigation to include anything beyond the narrow question of who leaked Valerie Plame's name to Robert Novak and other reporters. I thought it was possible that if he uncovered perjury or obstruction in the course of that investigation he might run with it. But, this WaPo article indicates that he might have gone beyond that narrow question:

The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider range of administration officials than was previously known, part of an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to several officials familiar with the case.

Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached columnist Robert D. Novak on the street. In doing so, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked not only about how CIA operative Valerie Plame's name was leaked but also how the administration went about shifting responsibility from the White House to the CIA for having included 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union address about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Africa.

Most of the questioning of CIA and State Department officials took place in 2004, the sources said.

It remains unclear whether Fitzgerald uncovered any wrongdoing in this or any other portion of his nearly 18-month investigation. All that is known at this point are the names of some people he has interviewed, what questions he has asked and whom he has focused on.

This is interesting, but I have to say that I'm not getting my hopes up. Unless he's got a high level witness who's spilling his guts, I have my doubts that this will blow the lid off of the Iraq lies. His investigation, after all, is said to have been pretty much wrapped up in 2004. How thoroughly could he have investigated this in that time? On the other hand it's very intriguing that he looked into it at all and it's at least possible that he could have exposed the white house effort to shift the blame for the yellowcake mess.

One thing is clear. The turf war between the White House and the CIA is now open warfare:

Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed.

Harlow said that after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame's name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak directly that she was undercover because that was classified information.

In a column published Oct. 1, 2003, Novak wrote that the CIA official he spoke to "asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause 'difficulties' if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name."

Harlow was also involved in the larger internal administration battle over who would be held responsible for Bush using the disputed charge about the Iraq-Niger connection as part of the war argument. Based on the questions they have been asked, people involved in the case believe that Fitzgerald looked into this bureaucratic fight because the effort to discredit Wilson was part of the larger campaign to distance Bush from the Niger controversy.

Wilson unleashed a multimedia attack on Bush's claim on July 6, 2003, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," in an interview in The Post and writing his own op-ed article in the New York Times, in which he accused the president of "twisting" intelligence.

Behind the scenes, the White House responded with twin attacks: one on Wilson and the other on the CIA, which it wanted to take the blame for allowing the 16 words to have remained in Bush's speech. As part of this effort, then-national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley spoke with Tenet during the week about clearing up CIA responsibility for the 16 words, even though both knew the agency did not believe Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Tenet was interviewed by prosecutors in the leak case, but it is not clear whether he appeared before the grand jury, a former CIA official said.

[...]

A former senior CIA official said yesterday that Tenet's statement was drafted within the agency and was shown only to Hadley on July 10 to get White House input. Only a few minor changes were accepted before it was released on July 11, this former official said. He took issue with a New York Times report last week that said Rove and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, had a role in Tenet's statement.

Fitzgerald has run a very tight investigation for it not to have come out before now that he interviewed the head of the CIA and his top deputy. (And it certainly makes it important to know if John Bolton was one of those who was interviewed and if he lied about it to the Senate...)

If he's on to something really serious, perhaps even reaching the president, it may very well explain why Pat Roberts has been hinting around about investigating Fitzgerald and talking openly about holding hearings into whether the CIA is handling its covert agents properly. They are firing shots across the bow now --- at both Fitzgerald and the Agency.


*By the way, the mysterious stranger mentioned in the article is covered in depth in Wilson's book --- and Wilson evidently went to great lengths to document the meeting at the time it happened.

**And you have to love the fact that it now looks very much like Robert Novak knew that Plame was covert and published her identity anyway. He really is a Prime DFL.


UPDATE: This is truly scary, but I think Susie may be on to something. The hearings may just be an efficent way to grant immunity to the perpetrators. There would be nothing Fitzgerald or anyone else could do about it. Wow.

And as we speak, the Democrats are all clamoring for hearings. Is it possible they didn't anticipate this possibility?

At a news conference on Capitol Hill, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., unveiled an Internet "Accountability Clock" to highlight the lack of congressional hearings in the 742 days since Plame's identity was disclosed after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, attacked some of the administration's pre-war claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Lautenberg noted that he had served in the Senate under four presidents, but that "for the first time ... I'm watching the United States shirk its duty to check the powers of the White House."

The Republican majorities in the House and Senate are giving the president "a free pass" on the CIA leak controversy, he charged.

Spokesman for Frist and Hastert did not respond immediately to requests for comment Monday.

But within hours of the release of Kerry's letter, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, announced his panel would hold hearings on toughening legislation barring unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

Similarly, Hoekstra's counterpart in the Senate, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., disclosed he will preside over hearings on how the intelligence community determines which officers need their identities protected and are covered by the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

It would be Frist-worthy if the Democrats actually helped enable the GOP to derail Fitzgerald's investigation.

On the other hand, they've given no indication that they are willing to get into this case in public, which they would have to do if they give Rove and Libby immunity and call them before the panel. But you never know. If the shit is really hitting the fan they may just be willing to take some lumps, call them as witnesses and "explain" under immunity how it really wasn't a bad thing to expose Plame because she wasn't really covert. In which case, Fitzgerald's case is over.

I can see them doing this and I can see them getting away with it too. It's just confusing enough and clever enough to baffle the press corpse and leave the Democrats gasping impotently on the sidelines.


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digby 7/26/2005 09:21:00 PM |

 
Failing Up

Following up my post below on Bremer's baby, I see that TBOGG caught the fact that the number two guy in the CPA boondoggle is being rewarded with an ambassadorship to Israel. Watch your wallets, Israelies. Neocons are coming to help you.



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digby 7/26/2005 06:34:00 PM |

 
My New Buddy

I have left it to others to do the heavy lifting on Paul Hackett's netroots campaign and I have regrets because I really would like to see him win after reading this endorsement from the conservative Cincinnati Post:

Schmidt served as a township trustee for 10 years before winning election in 2000 to the Ohio House of Representatives. There she served for four years before giving up the seat to run for the Ohio Senate - a race she lost, in a recount, by just 22 votes.

Schmidt has also held a variety of civic and political posts, and serves on the governing boards of such entities as the Clermont County Library, Clermont Mercy Hospital Foundation, the Live Oaks/Great Oaks Business Industry Partnership Council and Greater Cincinnati Right to Life.

Hackett's public service revolves around the Marine Corps. In 1982 he enlisted in a reserve officers program while he was a student at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He completed law school at Cleveland State before starting full-time active duty in 1989. He continued in the active reserves after returning in 1992 to Cincinnati, where he practiced law in a small firm before launching a solo practice in 1994. Hackett served on Milford City Council from 1995-98; he stepped down after purchasing what he describes as the oldest house in Indian Hill - a recently-renovated, 200-year-old stone structure on the banks of the Little Miami River.

Last year Hackett re-enlisted in the Marine active reserves; he went in with the rank of major and served in Iraq with a governance support team, where part of his job involved organizing convoys to bring money and supplies from Baghdad to Iraqis serving in the regional government.

In terms of their ideology and their approach to issues, Schmidt and Hackett present sharp differences.

Schmidt, from what we can discern, would likely be a dependable vote for the Bush administration, particularly its foreign policy and Iraq. In this campaign she has allied herself with the president, as she did earlier to Ohio Gov. Bob Taft and before that to former House Speaker Larry Householder. Her approach to policy issues is incremental, except perhaps concerning taxes. She seems generally to favor supply side economics, and wants to make President Bush's personal income taxes permanent and get rid of the estate, capital gains and alternative minimum taxes entirely. She supports incentives to encourage small businesses to offer health insurance, greater reliance on ethanol as a fuel source and a prohibition against Congress' use of Social Security funds for general government operations.

Hackett, in our view, is a gust of fresh air. If we had to put a label on him, it would be Libertarian Democrat. He says what he thinks and doesn't seem to have much use for the orthodoxy, or the partisanship, of either party. He doesn't want the government telling him what kinds of guns he can own, nor does he want it interfering in family or medical decisions or taking away civil liberties in the name of fighting terror. He regards Social Security more as an insurance program than a retirement savings plan, but wants to put it on a sound footing and would raise the earnings ceiling if necessary to do so.

If elected, he notes, he would be the only member of Congress with direct military experience in Iraq - which, he says, is a fight we should end as soon as possible. He wants to finish the job and get out, and he wants the United States to stop holding hands with Pakistan and to get serious about tracking down those responsible for the 9-11 attacks.

We like Hackett's candor. We're impressed with the freshness of his ideas. We believe his experience shows him to be someone who is action-oriented.

We endorse Hackett for the 2nd District seat.

It just doesn't get any better than that for a Democrat in a Republican district. I don't know if he'll win -- special elections are tough --- but he certainly seems like the kind of candidate that we should be trying to field in these conservative districts if we want to ever take back the congress.

And, by the way, I think he's even patriotic enough for the DLC, don't you? Of course, he doesn't endorse free trade and he doesn't seem inclined to jettison all of our civil liberties one at a time in order to appease religious zealots and panicked neocons, so I'm not sure he's quite malleable enough.

I understand the Republicans have found his achilles heel though, as they always do. Seems he is a bit of an effeminate pansy. As a US Marine he was only involved in transporting goods and cash through a war zone instead of furiously pounding out the words "Smoke 'Em Out!" on his little keyboard while whistling the Colonel Bogie March as true patriots do. Well, nobody's perfect. Perhaps the voters will overlook his cowardice.

Here's the page to donate if you're of a mind. Even if you don't, read about this guy and see if you can live with this mix of issues. I'm inclined to think that with a fat dose of fiery economic populism, this could really work for us on a larger scale. The fact that the Cincinnati Post sees this guy's views a "fresh" should give us pause. We desperately need some fresh.

My readers know that I'm a big civil libertarian so I'm attracted to candidates who emphasize those issues. But I think I'm a little bit anomalous among the leftie netroots crowd on that and I'm thrilled to see that we are backing this guy so fervently. It makes me think that we will be able to transcend some of our differences when the time comes and coalesce around candidates who advance our agenda but who might have a mix of priorities that don't fit perfectly with our own.

Just one last note: Hackett apparently got off the plane from Iraq and was so disgusted by the Terri Schiavo circus that he decided to run for congress. You've just gotta love a Democrat like that.


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digby 7/26/2005 02:15:00 PM |

 
Bremer's Baby

So, people in Baghdad have worms in their drinking water and no electricity during the worst heat of the day. If someone wants to know why they hate us, that's a good place to start.

Over 18 months, American officials spent almost $2 billion to revive the capital ravaged by war and neglect, according to Army Gen. William G. Webster, who heads the 30,000 U.S. and foreign troops and 15,000 Iraqi soldiers known collectively as Task Force Baghdad. But the money goes for long-term projects that yield few visible results and for security to protect the construction sites from sabotage.

As a result, Iraqis have seen scant evidence of improvement in their homes, streets or neighborhoods. They blame American and Iraqi government corruption.

"We thank God that the air we breathe is not in the hands of the government. Otherwise they would have cut it off for a few hours each day," said Nadeem Haki, 39, an electric-goods shop owner in the upscale Karrada district in the east of the capital.

Of the major completed projects in Baghdad, more than $38 million went to sewage projects, $375,000 to a water main and $101.2 million to electricity generation and transmission.

Others are in the works. More than $792 million is being invested in water, sewage and electricity projects across the capital, according to U.S. military documents.

The progress is slow and the rewards incremental. Parts of the city - such as the impoverished Shiite Muslim neighborhood Sadr City, once flooded with green rivers of sewage - now have functioning sewer systems.

"The things that go below the ground and provide enough electricity are incredibly expensive, especially when you have to pay for security for that local job site," Webster said.

Yes. All these things are very expensive. Too bad we can't lay our hands on the 8 Fucking Billion Dollars of the Iraqis own money that went missing under Paul Bremer's Coalition provisional Government.

When Paul Bremer, the American pro consul in Baghdad until June last year, arrived in Iraq soon after the official end of hostilities, there was $6bn left over from the UN Oil for Food Programme, as well as sequestered and frozen assets, and at least $10bn from resumed Iraqi oil exports. Under Security Council Resolution 1483, passed on May 22 2003, all these funds were transferred into a new account held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, called the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), and intended to be spent by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) "in a transparent manner ... for the benefit of the Iraqi people".

The US Congress also voted to spend $18.4bn of US taxpayers' money on the redevelopment of Iraq. By June 28 last year, however, when Bremer left Baghdad two days early to avoid possible attack on the way to the airport, his CPA had spent up to $20bn of Iraqi money, compared with $300m of US funds. The "reconstruction" of Iraq is the largest American-led occupation programme since the Marshall Plan - but the US government funded the Marshall Plan. Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer have made sure that the reconstruction of Iraq is paid for by the "liberated" country, by the Iraqis themselves.

The CPA maintained one fund of nearly $600m cash for which there is no paperwork: $200m of it was kept in a room in one of Saddam's former palaces. The US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he left on his desk when he popped out for lunch. Again, this is Iraqi money, not US funds.

The "financial irregularities" described in audit reports carried out by agencies of the American government and auditors working for the international community collectively give a detailed insight into the mentality of the American occupation authorities and the way they operated. Truckloads of dollars were handed out for which neither they nor the recipients felt they had to be accountable.

The auditors have so far referred more than a hundred contracts, involving billions of dollars paid to American personnel and corporations, for investigation and possible criminal prosecution. They have also discovered that $8.8bn that passed through the new Iraqi government ministries in Baghdad while Bremer was in charge is unaccounted for, with little prospect of finding out where it has gone. A further $3.4bn appropriated by Congress for Iraqi development has since been siphoned off to finance "security".

[...]

Lack of accountability does not stop with the Americans. In January this year, the Sigir issued a report detailing evidence of fraud, corruption and waste by the Iraqi Interim Government when Bremer was in charge. They found that $8.8bn - the entire Iraqi Interim Government spending from October 2003 through June 2004 - was not properly accounted for. The Iraqi Office of Budget and Management at one point had only six staff, all of them inexperienced, and most of the ministries had no budget departments. Iraq's newly appointed ministers and their senior officials were free to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars in cash as they pleased, while American "advisers" looked on.

"CPA personnel did not review and compare financial, budgetary and operational performance to planned or expected results," the auditors explained. One ministry gave out $430m in contracts without its CPA advisers seeing any of the paperwork. Another claimed to be paying 8,206 guards, but only 602 could be found. There is simply no way of knowing how much of the $8.8bn has gone to pay for private militias and into private pockets.

"It's remarkable that the inspector general's office could have produced even a draft report with so many misconceptions and inaccuracies," Bremer said in his reply to the Sigir report. "At liberation, the Iraqi economy was dead in the water. So CPA's top priority was to get the economy going."

The Sigir has responded by releasing another audit this April, an investigation into the way Bremer's CPA managed cash payments from Iraqi funds in just one part of Iraq, the region around Hillah: "During the course of the audit, we identified deficiencies in the control of cash ... of such magnitude as to require prompt attention. Those deficiencies were so significant that we were precluded from accomplishing our stated objectives." They found that CPA headquarters in Baghdad "did not maintain full control and accountability for approximately $119.9m", and that agents in the field "cannot properly account for or support over $96.6m in cash and receipts". The agents were mostly Americans in Iraq on short-term contracts. One agent's account balance was "overstated by $2,825,755, and the error went undetected". Another agent was given $25m cash for which Bremer's office "acknowledged not having any supporting documentation". Of more than $23m given to another agent, there are only records for $6,306,836 paid to contractors.

Many of the American agents submitted their paperwork only hours before they headed to the airport. Two left Iraq without accounting for $750,000 each, which has never been found. CPA head office cleared several agents' balances of between $250,000 and $12m without any receipts. One agent who did submit receipts, on being told that he still owed $1,878,870, turned up three days later with exactly that amount. The auditors thought that "this suggests that the agent had a reserve of cash", pointing out that if his original figures had been correct, he would have accounted to the CPA for approximately $3.8m more than he had been given in the first place, which "suggests that the receipt documents provided to the DFI account manager were unreliable".

I urge you to read the whole story. It was published earlier this month and fell down the memory hole. It's simply unbelievable.

I'm sure that Bush apologists will be tempted to say that's the price the Iraqi people had to pay for their liberation, but it's a little bit hard to understand why they would have had to pay to line the pockets of corrupt Americans and local bigshots for the privilege. If they weren't still dodging worms in their drinking water, they might have let it slide.

Meanwhile, we struggle at home with the fact that US taxpayers are still spending a billion dollars a week --- most of it on homegrown corruption, one suspects, because the troops are still having to put sheet metal on their humvees because they don't have the proper armor. I would guess that if there is ever a proper accounting, and there will likely never be one, that US taxpayers are being screwed more royally on this than they can possible imagine. There is no transparency and congress is ironically too afraid of being called cowardly to demand explanations.

The CPA though was a very special boondoggle, if you'll recall. It was an experiment in Republican Party governance. They refused to allow anyone on "the team" who didn't pass the GOP litmus test. They would not hire experts nor would they allow foreign or domestic political actors who were not deemed sufficiently loyal to Bush to help with planning and implementation. So much so that they were finally reduced to hiring kids who had posted resumes on the Heritage Foundation web-site in order to ensure ideological purity. If I recall correctly, Ari Fleischer's brother was put in charge of setting up the new Iraqi stock market despite the fact that he knew absolutely zero about stock markets. But he had the right contacts, that's for sure.

And, let's not forget that all this happened because we were in such a damned hurry to "disarm" Iraq that we couldn't take even a minute to think through how we might re-start their economy and rebuild their infrastructure in a planned and rational way. We just invaded come hell or high water and then sent in a bunch of college Republicans with planeloads of cash. This is one of the aspects of the DSM's that hasn't yet been properly discussed. The minutes make clear that it wasn't that our plans just didn't forsee the particular problems we encountered. We didn't plan for the post war period at all.

This is a huge story for someone to truly unravel although I think it will probably take a novelist or a filmmaker to do it justice. The grand Neocon experiment turns out to be a corrupt boondoggle of unprecedented, epic proportions. Perhaps that plot is just too predictable to sell...

I can tell you one thing, though: I don't want to hear one more goddamned self-righteous word from any Republican about the "Oil For Food" scandal. Not one.
digby 7/26/2005 08:36:00 AM |

Monday, July 25, 2005

 
Running On Empty

Will Marshall of the DLC has written a critique of us Michael Moore Democrats who are ruining the party with our anti-Americanism and lack of real patriotism. Don't even bother to read it if this kind of thing pisses you off because this one's a doozy.

There are many problems with his thesis, but this is perhaps the central thing he gets wrong:

The left's unease with patriotism is rooted in a 1960s narrative of American arrogance and abuse of power. For many liberals who came of age during the protests against the Vietnam War, writes leftish commentator Todd Gitlin, "the most powerful public emotion of our lives was rejecting patriotism." As he and other honest liberals have acknowledged, the excesses of protest politics still haunt liberalism today and complicate Democratic efforts to develop a coherent stance toward American power and the use of force.

When Americans ponder such questions today, their frame of reference is not the Vietnam War, but Sept. 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks evoked the most powerful upsurge in patriotic feeling since Pearl Harbor, and thrust national security back into the center of American politics. Democrats have yet to come to grips with this new reality. More than anything else, they need to show the country a party unified behind a new patriotism -- a progressive patriotism determined to succeed in Iraq and win the war on terror, to close a yawning cultural gap between Democrats and the military, and to summon a new spirit of national service and shared sacrifice to counter the politics of polarization.

Well, I don't know about you, but I happen to be an American who went through 9/11 just like the conservatives and the hawkish centrists did. I don't know who he's talking about. We all have the same frame of reference as everyone else who has lived in our time. We live in the new reality too and we've come to grips with it --- we simply don't agree with their prescription for dealing with terrorism and it has nothing to do with Vietnam or patriotism.

How petty and lacking in imagination this discussion is. Apparently, all honest liberals are ex-campus radicals who went to school with Todd Gitlin and who feel "uncomfortable" with this new patriotism because their formative experience was with protest politics. Whatever. Perhaps Marshall ought to check with his boss Al From, who Rick Perlstein quotes in "The Stockticker and the Superjumbo" as saying that that his formative experience was McGovern's loss in 1972. I think that might just be a bit more to the point.

I'm a baby boomer but I'm 48 and my formative political experience was probably Watergate, in which patriotism was shown to be a willingness to put the country above politics when the chips were down. Republicans Howard Baker and Barry Goldwater ranked as major patriots for me. Indeed, Watergate was one of those moments when I think the entire country was impressed (and surprised) by the incredible resiliency of its system of government and the integrity of men and women who rose to the occasion. To me patriotism isn't about fighting wars, it's about love of country.

People born in 1970 are now in their mid-30's. Are they scarred by their parents' youthful beliefs in "anti-patriotism?" Their formative political years were during the Reagan era, hardly a period of anti-americanism. Flag waving was a fetish.

My friends' mother is 80 years old. She's a child of the depression and she's a Democrat who was adamantly against the Iraq war. It had nothing to do with Vietnam; it was because she didn't believe in "wars of aggression." That was the reflexive foreign policy belief of cold war liberals who learned their lessons from the two world wars. I have another friend who is 22 and was against the war in Iraq because he believes it distracts from the War on terrorism. I was against it because I gravely mistrust the neocon vision of American global hegemony and I wanted them to do the minumum possible until we could get sane people in office to assess the threat properly. We are not all singing kumbaya from the 60's campus radical manual.

He talks about liberals (or maybe just the unbearable bi-coastal elites he describes in such loving detail) as if we are from Mars. I have no doubt that there are quite a few who really disdain the military and would be shocked to see one of their friends' children from the elite private school choosing to join the marines instead of going to an Ivy League College as expected. But really, can we call this a particularly Democratic or liberal response? Considering the remarkable problem the military is having with recruitment, I'd have to say it's a pretty common American response, rather than any comment on Democrats. It's not as if Republicans are all rushing out to join up either. If it's a lack of patriotism that's causing that reaction I think you would have to say that most Americans are unpatriotic.

He worries that the military itself is too Republican and laments that the Democrats are not better represented. His evidence is two polls which show that the majority of officers are Republicans. Can everyone see what might be wrong with that picture?

The salient point in all this is that there are no national Democrats who are anti- military and very, very few rank and file Democrats who are anti-military. Even the hated Michael Moore shows a tremendous affinity for the grunts in his movies in which he focuses on the sacrifices of working and middle class families who are being treated terribly by the government in thanks for their sacrifice. This thing that Marshall and his DLCers see is not anti-military; it's anti-Washington and that's not the same thing at all.

He builds a straw man out of poll results that purport to show that most Democrats don't want to fight the war on terrorism with the same sort of dizzying fervor he thinks is required, and calls them unpatriotic for their views. He refers to a list of foreign policy issues in which more Democrats consider outsourcing to be a bigger worry than dismantling al Qaeda.

Why is that a measure of patriotism? It's actually surprisingly rational. The statistics would certainly show that any individual stands a greater chance of being personally affected by outsourcing than an al Qaeda terrorist attack. It's actually kind of dumb to put al Qaeda at the top of your list of national security worries when really, it isn't the biggest one we face --- loose nukes are, and nobody gives a fuck about that.

Furthermore, it's entirely possible that at least some Democrats realize that al Qaeda isn't something you can just "dismantle" with a ripping good show of military might because it's morphed into a constantly changing, moving concept, rather than a single entity you can "end." And while terrorism is scary and we need to do all we can to protect people from it, it is not any more threatening than Leonid Bresznev potentially getting into a pissing match or losing control of his military or any other thing that could have resulted in an accidental nuclear exchange during the cold war. We lived for many years under an unimaginable threat (still do, actually) and we managed to keep our heads for the most part and not turn ourselves inside out over it. This threat of terrorism is real and it's important, but we simply have to stop overreacting like we did with Iraq or we really are going to turn it into the existential threat these people seem to desire so fervently.

Finally, Marshall suggests that we not make such a big deal out torture.

"...the revelation that some U.S. troops aren't saints should not come as too great a shock, at least to grownups. By dwelling obsessively on U.S. misdeeds while ignoring the far more heinous crimes of what is quite possibly the most barbaric insurgency in modern times, anti-war critics betray an anti-American bias that undercuts their credibility."

(Yeah, it's the liberals who are ignoring the barbaric insurgency in Iraq. And here the last I heard they were in their last throes.)

Let's just say I'm a big believer in supporting the troops --- troops like Spc. Joseph Darby, for instance, who had the courage and patriotism to stand up and say something when his fellow troopers were committing reprehensible acts --- or the FBI agents who complained on the record about what they saw at Guantanamo. I will never excuse the United States using torture or abuse or holding prisoners indefinitely without due process. Never. No matter what the "barbaric insurgency" does in Iraq. And I am more than willing to throw down the gauntlet on this and say that anyone who soft peddles those things is the worst kind of anti-American there is. We're not going to find common ground on this subject. If that kicks me out of the big tent so be it. I'm not signing on to that shit, ever.

I recognise that saying all this means that I couldn't get elected. And for that reason there are almost no elected Democrats who do say what I'm saying. They all wave flags and shriek like old ladies every time something happens --- and they back ridiculous wars, because if they don't the chattering classes will go nuts and label them unpatriotic. But saying it doesn't make it true. That's inside the beltway Republican kabuki which nobody who calls himself a Democrat should ever allow himself to perform. There are legitimate reasons why we might disagree on this stuff and still take national security seriously.

Being lectured all the time by effete DC Democrats on "patriotism" because I don't back their reflexively hawkish foreign policy is not only insulting it's dumb. It plays into stereotypes that only serve the Republicans by turning this into a dick measuring contest when we should be turning the conversation into who can get the job done. I would submit that if anyone's been traumatized by the Vietnam experience it's the tired Democratic national security hawks who are always rushing to support military action, no matter how insanely counterproductive, because some Republican somewhere might call him a pussy. They've been around since the 60's too. Hell, they've been around forever.



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digby 7/25/2005 05:04:00 PM |

 
"Never Tell Anybody Outside The Family What You're Thinking Again"

This Alberto Gonzales 12 hour gap is quite interesting, but I'm sure that we all also remember that Gonzales also later reviewed every document that was produced and vetted it before it was released to the Justice Department --- the Justice Department run by John Ashcroft who didn't bother to recuse himself until three months later. Let's just say there were many opportunities for documents to have gone astray in this process.

As I was perusing old articles about the document production, I also realized that none of the top administration aides bothered to lawyer up in the early days when they were talking to the FBI. One could assume that they were confident they'd done nothing wrong, but it strikes me that these guys may have thought it was in the bag. They had old "Let The Ego Soar" Ashcroft at justice and Alberto the torturer handling any incriminating documents.

And while one might have expected the president to say that he knew the truth would be revealed because he expected his staff to be forthcoming with the authorities, instead we got this:

"I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers," he said. "You tell me: How many sources have you had that's leaked information that you've exposed or had been exposed? Probably none. I mean, this town is a town full of people who like to leak information."

We always knew that somebody leaked this to Bob Novak. And unless Novak was lying, it was two senior white house officials. But the president of the United States said quite candidly that he didn't think we would ever know the truth unless reporters burned their sources. He certainly didn't seem to expect the "senior white house official" sources to come forward, did he?

With the benefit of hindsight, that sounds like the president of the United States was reminding the press corpse to keep its collective trap shut, doesn't it? (Are you listening Judy?)



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digby 7/25/2005 02:02:00 PM |

 
Tripping Them Up

Josh Marshall points out today that Senator Pat Roberts (R- Partisan Tool) has decided that the congress must waste no time holding hearings on whether the CIA is properly protecting its covert agents. After all, if Karl Rove and Scooter Libby can find out who they are, how safe can they be?

The only other possibility -- one which I've referred to jokingly in the past -- is to argue that she wasn't covert enough. That is to say, maybe she was covert to the CIA. But she really wasn't covert up to the standards of say, Bill Safire or Tucker Carlson or Bill O'Reilly.

And this, understand, is the premise of the new Roberts' hearings. Was she really covert enough? And does the CIA really know how to define 'covert'. Asked about a bankrobber caught red-handed outside the bank, Sen. Roberts response would be to say, "But how much real claim did the bank have to that money? Did they really earn it? And what did they do to protect it?"

Roberts is one of the more reprehensible hacks in the GOP caucus and that's saying something. That he's chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is frankly scary. His little addendum to the SSCI report on Iraq pre-war intelligence is one of the most amazing examples of partisan smearing we've ever seen coming from a committee that is usually held up as the model of bi-partisan seriousness.

But his appearance on CNN yesterday had him dancing like he was challenging Ricky Martin to a samba contest. And, unfortunately, my senator, Dianne Feinstein made little effort to trip him up.

BLITZER: How big of a deal in your assessment is the fact that the CIA asked the Justice Department to investigate the leak of that covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame? Is this a big deal in your opinion, releasing the identity of an undercover CIA officer?

ROBERTS: Why yes, it is a big deal. And in the Intelligence Committee, we're going to go into quite a series of hearings in regards to cover. You cannot be in the business of outing somebody, if that's the proper word.

BLITZER: I ask the question because some are suggesting she really wasn't undercover any more. She had been working at the CIA in nonproliferation. She really wasn't a technical...

ROBERTS: There's a five-year period, OK? And whether or not that five-year period had been reached or not is still questionable. And I must say from a common sense standpoint, driving back and forth to work to the CIA headquarters, I don't know if that really qualifies as being, you know, covert.

But generically speaking, it is a very serious matter although it obviously dovetails now into the issue of the day in regards to Karl Rove and the First Amendment, and all of that.

BLITZER: The fact that the CIA asked for this criminal investigation, this probe into who leaked her name to Bob Novak, what does that say to you, Senator Feinstein?

FEINSTEIN: Well, it says to me that the CIA values this as extraordinarily important. If they can't protect their agents, they can't survive as an agency. And I've been distressed to even see in the newspapers, I believe this morning, about what some of the undercover placements were, listing them rather generically.

BLITZER: Have you been briefed, has the committee been briefed by the CIA about the potential damage that has been done, if any lives have been endangered, her contacts, undercover spies, if you will, as a result of her name being made public?

FEINSTEIN: I have not been briefed.

BLITZER: Have you been briefed on that?

ROBERTS: We are going to have those hearings, or those briefings, pardon.

BLITZER: But have you received a preliminary assessment of damage? Because usually when someone has been exposed like this, they do a damage assessment.

ROBERTS: I'll tell you what we have done in the 511 page document that we've released from the WMD report: We went into considerable detail in regards to the veracity of Admiral Wilson's testimony.

BLITZER: Ambassador Wilson.

ROBERTS: Pardon me. Admiral. All of a sudden, I've got him in a different, you know category. But the ambassador. And I'm just going to be very blunt about it. I don't think the White House had any need to discredit him. He discredited himself. He was all over the lot.

Now, I'm not going to say anymore about that because that's one issue.

I want to know basically who assigned him and what role she played. And then obviously we want to find out exactly what happened in regards to her covert status.

Now, we're going to have to wait on that in regards to the special prosecutor. But overall, Dianne is exactly right. If we're in the business now where somehow, through some means, a covert officer working in the CIA, if that becomes public, that just can not happen. And so that is why the committee is going to be so aggressive in really taking a look at it.

BLITZER: Should the president's top political adviser, the deputy White House chief of staff, Karl Rove, who has now apparently, according to sources close to him, acknowledged speaking to reporters about Valerie Plame Wilson, should his security clearances, based on what you know, Senator Feinstein, be revoked?

FEINSTEIN: Well, based on what I know, I think yes for the time being. I think you have to look at this: Who had opportunity, who had means, and who had motive? And if you look at those three things, you see the White House somewhere, some way figures into it.

Now, the details and the precise statements are being analyzed by the prosecutor, very well-regarded Mr. Fitzgerald. It's going to be very interesting to see what he comes up with. But in the meantime, I mean, you have somebody that quite possibly either corroborated or volunteered information that shouldn't be in the public sector.

BLITZER: Let's talk about the new Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts.

ROBERTS: I had another comment by the way, but...

FEINSTEIN: I figured you would.

BLITZER: Well, go ahead. Briefly comment and then we'll move on to John Roberts.

ROBERTS: Well, I think you're presumed innocent until proven guilty. And I think we ought to wait on the special prosecutor. If you go down a laundry list of leaks in this town as to who was involved and who wasn't, you'd probably have 10 or 12 people, and some of them are in the CIA. And there's been leaks from the CIA.

You know, in this town, when there is a leak, nobody gets wet until there is a leak. And right now we're about up to here on this particular issue. So let's wait on the facts.

Roberts refused to say if he'd been given a damage assessment, which is kind of interesting. But, he's just a blunt tool, not a very sharp one, so it could be that he was just rushing to the next talking point. But he was all over the map with that little exchange, ending with the "everybody leaks classified information so what's the big deal" excuse.

Dianne said that Rove should probably have his security clearance revoked for the time being and that the white house had the means and the motive to leak Plame's name. Well, doesn't that just blow the lid off this thing? As if we don't know that the white house was involved ferchirstsake. She wasn't well prepared, as usual.

She and all the Democrats should be trying to tie these guys up in knots with the obvious contradiction that the tough-guy national security Republicans have been caught red-handed being loosy-goosy with classified information for political reasons. They should always bring up the president. This isn't too difficult to do.

Imagine if Feinstein had said in reponse to Wolf's question about revoking Rove's security clearance, "Well, Wolf, it is well established already that Karl Rove was involved in leaking Valerie Plame's identity to the press. His lawyer admitted just this week that he was one of Robert Novak's two sources. I have every faith that the special prosecutor will find out if there is evidence that he or anyone else broke the law by doing this. But I think that even Pat here would have to admit that regardless of whether it was legal or illegal, Karl Rove and others in the White House have shown an appalling lack of judgment. As the man in charge, the president has a responsibility for the actions of his staff. He should have called Karl Rove into his office and demanded an explanation and withdrawn his security clearance the minute it was found that he was involved in this. Breaking the law isn't the issue here, Wolf. This is about national security. We're at war. The president shouldn't be playing politics with this stuff."

It would be helpful to show Bush as being either impotent to deal with Karl Rove, or covering for him, because it is imperative for Democrats over the long haul to begin to show the Republicans as being unable to deal responsibly with national security. If you look at what Roberts was saying it was basically, "Joe Wilson is a liar and his wife worked in Washington and anyway everybody leaks." Hardly the stuff of a macho "never complain, never explain" warrior, is it? This is an opportunity for Democrats to change the long standing narrative that the Republicans have built up about their national security prowess. If the Commander in Chief can't even call his own staff on the carpet when they screw up, then how tough is he?

This is the second time in 25 years that we've had a two term GOP president who has to be portrayed as dumb, distanced and out-of-it in order to cover for his staff running amuck. They're always out of the loop, aren't they? Never quite in charge when the bad shit happens, only the good. It's time for the Democrats to start tying this into a bigger narrative about national security. These tough guys, these people who are going to keep us safe, seem to continually elect presidents who are cluelss about what's going on around them. Or, at least, that's what they are always forced to use as an excuse when they fuck up.

It takes time to build new storylines. Even if this one isn't very good, we really need get started on something. And that means that Democrats have to agree among themselves on a basic framework of criticism for Republican national security policy and practice. They need to internalize it so that when a guy like Roberts starts blathering, they can respond with vigor and authority without having to think too much about it. Vague, off-point pablum like Feinstein's is exacerbating our problem. We look weak because we won't confront a blowhard like Roberts. And we are weak because we refuse to take every opportunity to show the American people that the Republicans are screw-ups on national security. That last should actually be pretty easy, because it patently true.



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digby 7/25/2005 11:23:00 AM |

Saturday, July 23, 2005

 
Second Track

Meanwhile, a parallel investigation is under way into who forged the Niger documents. They are known to have been passed to an Italian journalist by a former Italian defence intelligence officer, Rocco Martino, in October 2002, but their origins have remained a mystery. Mr Martino has insisted to the Italian press that he was "a tool used by someone for games much bigger than me", but has not specified who that might be.

A source familiar with the inquiry said investigators were examining whether former US intelligence agents may have been involved in possible collaboration with Iraqi exiles determined to prove that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear programme.

Well now. That would be something, wouldn't it?

Josh Marshall, who was once hot on the trail of this forgery story, wrote this a couple of weeks ago, the night O'Donnell revealed Rove's name on the McLaughlin report:

One other note along these lines.

I've gotten hints or suggestions from several sources over the last month that new information is bubbling to the surface, not about who leaked Valerie Plame's identity, but who was behind the underlying caper that started the whole drama afoot in the first place: those phoney Niger uranium documents.

As longtime readers of this site know, last year colleagues of mine and I were able to trace the documents back to a former Italian intelligence agent named Rocco Martino. Martino was the 'Italian businessman' who tried to sell the documents to Elizabetta Burba, the journalist who eventually brought them to the US Embassy in Rome.

We were able determine that the documents had been put into Martino's hands by a then-serving member of SISMI -- Italian military intelligence. And this SISMI colonel had done so using a women working in the Niger embassy in Rome, an Italian national, as a cut-out.

This was, as you might imagine, more than enough to make us want to know a lot more. But we were never able to develop any conclusive proof about who or what was behind the SISMI colonel or what the backstory was within SISMI.

Suspicions, we had plenty. But in terms of hard facts, we hit a wall just inside SISMI.

Just who forged the documents? And, more significantly, who put the whole process in motion? And why had SISMI or elements within it involved themselves?

This story and Plame ar running on different tracks, but they come to the same station eventually. And, once again, the spectre of Judith Miller hangs over it --- she's the Zelig of the iraq operation.

I don't have enough information to speculate about this, but I think it is significant that information is leaking out about this case as well. It's hard to know whether it's because people are fed up or because the white house is weak or some combination of both. But the veil is lifting on this administration's shenanigans, for sure. It's going to be a very interesting time.

Here's the immediate political result for Dear Leader:

Across the board, those stellar character ratings which supposedly meant Bush could weather any political storm have become mediocre to poor. And he's lost the most ground among independents, only 38 percent of whom now believe Bush is trustworthy or cares about people like them. Even more amazing, less than half (48 percent) of indepedents now think Bush is a strong leader, which is a massive 24 point decline since Pew's previous measurement.

And how about this: in February of this year, the two leading one word description of Bush were "honest" and "good", cited by 38 percent and 20 percent of the public, respectively. Today, honest has declined to 31 percent, closely followed by "incompetent" (26 percent, up from 14 percent) and "arrogant" (24 percent, up from 15 percent).

Reality bites.

Update: Just to be clear, what's new about the Guardian story isn't that the FBI suspects Iraqi exiles of being involved, it the part about retired US intelligence being involved that I was unaware of.

Seymour Hersh has speculated that it was a sort of reverse sting by appalled ex-CIA operatives, but this would indicate a less byzantine explanation. People with common interests helping each other out.



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digby 7/23/2005 09:45:00 AM |

Friday, July 22, 2005

 
Waivering

Via Atrios I see that Steve Clemens has it on good authority that John Bolton is known to be a regular source for Judith Miller, although we don't know if he was her source on this.

We know that whoever spoke with Miller waived his or her confidentiality. Does anyone know who all signed waivers?



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digby 7/22/2005 03:34:00 PM |

 
Too Tired To Be Outraged

This is just sad:

This morning the Wall Street Journal reported that Senate Democrats were planning “to grill Bush confidant Karen Hughes” about her involvement in the ever widening leak-case. But, Senate Democrats must have gotten lost on the way to the hearing. Not one showed up. Instead, according to the Associated Press:

“A scaled-back Senate Foreign Relations Committee showered praise Friday on Karen Hughes and put the former political adviser to President Bush on a fast track to confirmation as the State Department’s top public relations official.”

The absence of the Democrats is even more glaring considering just today the New York Times reported that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald called Karen Hughes before the grand jury to testify as to her involvement in the leak-case. Of course, this begs the obvious question: Karen Hughes, did you have a role in leaking the name of an undercover CIA agent?

Instead of any substantive questions, the Democrats simply didn’t show up. But we did get this statement from ranking minority member Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE):

“Mr. Chairman, I regret that previous commitments prevent me from attending the confirmation hearing this morning.

I am particularly interested in and supportive of the nomination of Karen Hughes to be undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. What this job requires, among other things, is continuity. The last two undersecretaries have stayed six and 18 months, respectively.

I met with the nominee yesterday and understand that, barring unforeseen circumstances, she is willing to stay through the president’s term.

I believe that she is highly qualified because of her professional background, and, importantly, enjoys the full confidence of the president and the secretary of state...

Well, that's awfully friendly of him. No need to provide the evening news or the Sunday news shows with footage of Karen Hughes being grilled about getting called before the grand jury in the Plame case. That would be what Republicans would do in our situation and that wouldn't be nice at all.

Think Progress has a list of questions the Democrats might have asked if they could have gotten it up to attend the meeting. I assume they were too busy with their preparations to lionize John Roberts and didn't have the time.

We just don't have the killer instinct. They do. So they win and we lose. I guess we have to wait for total economic armageddon or nuclear meltdown in which case we will win by default.



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digby 7/22/2005 03:17:00 PM |

 
Executive Infallibility

It would appear that the president is sticking to his belief that he has the sole right to order torture, hold people indefinitely and secretly and make up the rules as he goes along. To hell with the congress. It doesn't matter what Senator John McCain, former torture victim and POW says; it doesn't matter what Senator Lindsey Graham, former JAG lawyer says; and it doesn't matter what Senator John Warner,former Secretary of the Navy says. (I won't even mention that "elections have consequences" and Democrats are supposed to STFU for the duration.)No one has any right to tell the president nothin' bout prisoners in a time 'o unending, ever-present war. And they have no right to ask any questions about it either.

The White House on Thursday threatened to veto a massive Senate bill for $442 billion in next year's defense programs if it moves to regulate the Pentagon's treatment of detainees or sets up a commission to investigate operations at Guantanamo Bay prison and elsewhere.

The Bush administration, under fire for the indefinite detention of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and questions over whether its policies led to horrendous abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, put lawmakers on notice it did not want them legislating on the matter.

In a statement, the White House said such amendments would "interfere with the protection of Americans from terrorism by diverting resources from the war."

"If legislation is presented that would restrict the president's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bring terrorists to justice," the bill could be vetoed, the statement said.

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who endured torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said after meeting at the Capitol with Vice President Dick Cheney that he still intended to offer amendments next week "on the standard of treatment of prisoners."

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was working on legislation defining the legal status of enemy combatants being held in Guantanamo, also said he would offer an amendment.

They were working with Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia on amendments intended to prevent further abuses in the wake of the scandal over sexual abuse and mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison and harsh, degrading interrogations at Guantanamo.

And just look at what these unAmerican, commie bastards are trying to do:

Possible measures included barring the holding of "ghost" detainees whose names are not disclosed, codifying a ban against cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, and using the Army manual as a basis for all interrogations.

Really, what business is this of the congress anyway? Who do they think they are --- elected representatives of the people?

It would be very nice to see the president veto the defense bill over this but, needless to say, it will not happen. But someday, if the country survives this wretched radical era, people will look back on this with particular disgust, not just because the president of the United States openly seeks to preserve his right to torture (which is stomach churning) but also the total abdication of responsibility by the Republican congress.

And people say the Democrats are the chickenshits. Another big lie. Nobody, but nobody, is more gutless than a congressional Republican cowering at the feet of the flatulent Rove and his little dog George.



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digby 7/22/2005 12:22:00 PM |

 
Leaking Briefs

Talk Left has an excellent primer on how to figure out who's doing the leaking.



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digby 7/22/2005 12:12:00 PM |

 
Overlooking The Obvious

In this week's editorial The New Republic discusses the rightwing push back on Rovegate. They complain that the emphasis on Rove obscures the more important story of Iraq lies. I submit that without Rovegate, there would be no coverage of the Iraq lies at all, so we should not knock the hook that gives us the opportunity to talk about the bigger picture.

The editorial brings up something else, however, that I think is quite important. It mentions the single most important weapon in our arsenal when arguing about the bigger picture surrounding Wilson's trip:

As that investigation has spilled onto the front pages in the last few weeks, supporters of the administration have picked up where they left off two years ago, saying that Wilson was unqualified for the Niger investigation and declaring that his credibility is in tatters. It's true that Wilson has made himself an easy target for such accusations by posing with his wife for Vanity Fair magazine and taking a very public role advising the Kerry campaign last fall. But the most serious charge that Wilson's critics level against him is the allegation that he was wrong in his assessment of Iraq's dealing with Niger. Supporters of Rove have revived this accusation in an effort to claim that, when Rove spoke to reporters about Plame, he wasn't trying to disparage Wilson so much as warn them off a "bad story." But what, exactly, was "bad" about Wilson's story?

Both the national security adviser and the CIA director at the time (Condoleezza Rice and George Tenet, respectively) issued public apologies for the Niger claim, admitting it was unsubstantiated. And the most authoritative report on the matter comes from the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which spent a year combing the Iraqi countryside for alleged weapons of mass destruction. Its conclusion: "ISG has not found evidence to show that Iraq sought uranium from abroad after 1991 or renewed indigenous production of such material."

Because of all the deliberate obfuscation coming from the Rove machine, this central piece of evidence has not been discussed nearly enough. Ivo Daalder on TPM cafe brought this up some time ago, but it's worth repeating: Wilson's conclusions have been born out by the Iraq Survey Group, who spent a year inside Iraq, looking at all the records and speaking to the parties. There is no point in speculating about meetings in 1999 or the Butler Report or any other reports that testify to evidence that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger. The fact is that it didn't. Period. End of story. The non-believers were right, the true-believers were wrong, whatever their motives.

It's two years later, we have a definitive report from the ISG, and people are still saying that Wilson was a flake, he was sent by his wife, he was trying to set up the Republicans, whatever. In a normal world, that fact that Wilson's conclusions (along with others) were correct would have some salience in this argument --- particularly since the Reublicans are basing theirs on the the mistaken premise that Wilson's credibility is in question when quite clearly, he was right.

Rick Perlstein relayed in the comments of one of my other posts a comment from a right wing correspondent of his who said of Plame: "she was part of a CIA attempt to discredit the elected government. She should be swinging from a lamp post." And yet, there was no uranium deal. There were no WMD. This comment therefore means that naysayers (in and out of the CIA, presumably) were trying to discredit the elected government with the truth.

It's enormously frustrating to argue with people who have so little intellectual integrity, but that's the way it is. They continue to dig themselves in on this point --- even as the huge elephant holding a sign that says "there were no WMD in Iraq" is sitting in the middle of the room, mocking them.

But over time, through all the bickering and small bore detail and gossip, that elephant comes more and more into focus for average Americans. And it lays the groundwork for a scathing Democratic critique of Republican foreign policy for the first time in many years if we can just find the nerve to claim it. The Republicans are going to have Iraq hung around their necks like a burning rubber tire for a long time to come, as they should.

When you strip all the fulminating away, the Republican argument for the massive failure in both concept and execution of Iraq is that they didn't do it on purpose --- they just screwed up. That's the same excuse Karl Rove is using, as well, and it's no surprise. At this point, it's realistically their best case scenario. Would you want to run on that record?



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digby 7/22/2005 10:15:00 AM |

 
Depends On What The Definition Of "Secret" Is

I confess that I'm feeling more than a bit of schadenfreude reading the rightwing bloggers' responses to the Plame scandal over on the Daou Report. It so sucks being on the receiving end of the drip, drip, drip, doesn't it?

Here's one that's fairly typically uninformed from Captain's Quarters (all links available at the Daou Report), in which he, taking his cues from the RNC, piles on the ridiculous assertion that Plame was not covert, even if her status was labeled "secret."

"Today's Washington Post article on the State Department memo detailing Valerie Plame's involvement in sending her husband to Niger lacks a great deal of context. Bloggers appear to assume that the (S) described in the article denotes the status of Plame's identity, but a more careful read of a poorly-written article shows that it doesn't mean that at all. Most people don't understand that "secret" is the second-lowest classification grade possible. I would hope that NOC lists have much higher classification than that, and surely they do.

It all depends on how you look at it. It's also the second-highest classification. There are only three levels of classified material: confidential, secret, top-secret. According to the very Washington Post article he quotes, covert agents are all classifed as "secret."

Apparently, these people think that the government has a whole string of classified levels, many of which you don't have to take seriously. Like "secret" which doesn't really mean secret, it means kinda-sorta secret but not if you need to smear a political opponent. They assume that there also must be a bunch super-duper-double-cross-your-heart secret levels that you really, really, really shouldn't tell the media about. But "secret?" Not a problem. Go ahead and spill your guts to Bob Novak.

Google is your friend:

Classified vs. Unclassified Information

In the U.S. information is called "classified" because it has been assigned one of the three levels, confidential, secret or top secret. Information which is not so labled is called unclassified information. The term declassified is used for information which has had its classification removed, and downgraded refers to information that has been assigned a lower classification level, but is still classified. Many documents are automatically downgraded and then declassified after some number of years. The U.S. government uses the term sensitive but unclassified (SBU) to refer to information that is not confidential, secret or top secret, but whose dissemination is still restricted. Reasons for such restrictions can include privacy regulations, court orders, and ongoing criminal investigations as well as national security. Information which was never classified is sometimes referred to as "open source" by those who work in national security.


Levels of Classification used by the U.S. Government

The United States Government classifies information according to the degree which the unauthorized disclosure would damage national security:

Top secret

This is the highest security level, and is defined as information which would cause "exceptionally grave damage" to national security if disclosed to the public. Despite public mystique, relatively little information is classified at "Top Secret" (when compared to the other levels of classification). Only that which is exceptionally sensitive (weapon design, presidential security information, nuclear-related projects, various intelligence information) is classified at the Top Secret level.


Secret

The second highest classification. Information is classified secret when its release would cause "serious damage" to national security. Most information that is "classified" is held at the secret sensitivity.


Confidential

The lowest classification level. It is defined as information which would "damage" national security if disclosed.

Unclassified is not technically a "classification", this is the default, and refers to information which can be released to individuals without a clearance. Information that is unclassified is sometimes "restricted" in its dissemination. For example, the "law enforcement bulletins" often reported by the U.S. media when United States Department of Homeland Security raises the U.S. terror threat level are usually classified as "U//LES" or "Unclassified - Law Enforcement Sensitive." This information is only supposed to be released to Law Enforcement groups (Sheriff, Police, etc.) Because the information is unclassified, however, it is sometimes released to the public as well. Information which is unclassified, but which the government does not believe should be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests is often classified as U//FOUO - Unclassified-For Official Use Only.

It is very serious if they were collecting and disseminating cheap political dirt from a classified document labeled "secret." The definition of secret is secret, and it's a big deal.



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digby 7/22/2005 09:23:00 AM |

Thursday, July 21, 2005

 
Father Tim And The Leak

Two top White House aides have given accounts to the special prosecutor about how reporters told them the identity of a CIA agent that are at odds with what the reporters have said, according to persons familiar with the case.

Lewis “Scooter'’ Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn’t tell Libby of Plame’sidentity.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who was first to report Plame’s name and connection to Wilson. Novak, according to a source familiar with the matter, has given a somewhat different version to the special prosecutor.

If this is true, the wingnuts are going to have to call Father Tim and poor old Bob Novak liars. I have no doubt they will do it if they have to. But this game gets more and more dangerous for them every day.

And the thing about Libby is just delicious. WTF, did Scooter just blurt out Tim Russert's name without thinking? If he lied about the Monsignor he was making a grave error. There aren't many media figures in Washington who are viewed with any reverence anymore, but he's one of them, as sad a comment as that is. It's a fatal error to get into a he said/she said with a guy like him --- if there's a trial, he's the guy who will be believed.

Oh what a hissy fit these allegedly slick operators had over this one piece of criticism. Anyone with any sense would have known this was just the beginning, as it was becoming obvious that there were no WMD to be found. If they'd have kept their poweder dry for a few days they probably could have come up with a better explanation, but they lost their heads, just like always do under pressure. There really could not have been a worse crew in charge after 9/11. This little episode, in microcosm, is why we are in Iraq today, throwing billions of dollars down the tube, losing our credibility by the boatload and seeing thousands of people die for with no end in sight. No grace under pressure.


Needless to say, this could also be bullshit. William Safire once famously claimed Hillary Clinton was going to be indicted. Rove (or a person who "has been briefed on the matter") already revealed that he learned Plame's name from Novak and then said "Oh I heard that too" or "Oh, you've heard about that?" depending on who's telling the story. We've all been under the impression that Novak agreed that Rove confirmed the story, but maybe he didn't. Or maybe there is some convoluted way in which his behavior can be explained as both learning about it and confirming it at the same time. There's obviously more to this story than we know --- perhaps Fitzgerald is putting together a bigger case than just perjury. Or maybe, as I said, this is bullshit.

But this is getting fun.



Update: According to the NY Times, friends of Rove and Libby are trying to make the case that the two were not trying to out Plame or discredit Wilson --- they were working together on Tenent's statement with Stephen Hadley. It's hard for me to see how this helps them --- it suggest coordination if not conspiracy.

There is one interesting little tid-bit, however: they say Ari testified that he never say the memo on AF One. We've certainly heard otherwise, so Ari may be in a little bit of a pickle too.

All this leaking is looking more and more like internecine fighting among the "subjects." This could get ugly.



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digby 7/21/2005 06:44:00 PM |

 
Scandal As Metaphor

In an entertaining piece comparing the sad small scale corruption of Duke Cunningham to the titanic all encompassing corruption of Tom DeLay, Noam Scheiber brings up something I think is important:

But it's worth pointing out that, if DeLay loses his job, it won't be because of the machine he has built. It will be thanks to a handful of smaller offenses, such as allowing a lobbyist to pay for his overseas travel--offenses more in line with ... Duke Cunningham's.

How to explain these little perversities? The answer has to do with the press. Most news organizations are profoundly uncomfortable making subjective judgments, however obvious. Instead, the preoccupation is with small, easily provable allegations. When it comes to political discourse, as my colleague Jonathan Chait has pointed out, the result is that politicians get nailed for tiny embellishments but get away with statements that are technically true but spectacularly dishonest, such as George W. Bush's claims about the size of his 2001 tax cut. Likewise with corruption, where the press practices a kind of literalism that dwells on what is officially illegal or improper (like an affair with an intern) while ignoring behavior that is technically OK but ethically obscene.

I think all of that is true, but it's also because scandals that expose human frailty are easier to understand. A fall from grace is the original story, isn't it?
And they are often emblematic of a bigger narrative that is instinctively understood but more complicated in detail than people need to know.

Just as a third rate burglary was a perfect window into an abusive and paranoid Nixon administration, Rovegate is a perfect illustration of the intimidation and arrogance that characterizes Bush. The Lewinsky matter could be said to show the indiscipline that characterized Bill Clinton; Iran-Contra the disconnectedness of an aging, disengaged president.

I'm not saying all those things are the only lessons to be taken from these scandals; far from it. But they engaged the public and the press because they spoke to bigger issues by using people's highly developed instinctive understanding of human character. I don't necessarily think it has to be this way, but it usually is. People seem to need to see and feel the human dimension in order to understand the big picture.

Rovegate is quite interesting in this way, not because it centers around the president but because it centers around the one person who most personifies the modern conservative movement's strategy. And he is the one person who is feared and respected for his effectiveness by people on both sides --- almost to the point of being gifted with magical abilities to tell the future and shape events.

He serves a purpose for both sides in this way, explaining for Democrats their sense of impotence and justifying for Republicans their excesses. None of this is really their doing, you see, and there is nothing they can do to change it; it the product of a brilliant political alchemist who is beyond the scope of normal human behavior or understanding. Fear him or follow him but do not question him.

So, Rove being exposed in a petty, unnecessary act of revenge and overreach, pathetically reaching for Clintonian legalisms and falling back on infantile excuses is a bit of a jolt. Whether by hubris or error, Rove's naked vulnerability is a very useful parable with which to explode the myth of Republican omniscience and explain something that is vastly complex and difficult for average people, much less the compromised kewl kidz, to get their arms around.

Bush's Brain is not omnipotent. The administration that sold itself on simple homespun values and manly virtues has been caught in an act of waspish backstabbing to cover its dishonesty. The war was based on lies and now we are losing it. How could this masterful white house screw this up so badly? These questions can now be asked outside the context of the simple narrative that's been constructed about Bush's honor and Rove's supernatural talents. The scandal opens it up. What has, up to now, been hailed by both sides and in the press as unassailable political mastery is exposed as gross arrogance combined with gross incompetence. That's the story: Mayberry Machiavellis.

Regardless of whether Karl escapes the noose, which he may very well do, Roveism --- defined as politics of the supernatural --- is dead. Cutthroat Republican tactics will be alive and well as they always has been. Roveism was actually never anything more than that.



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digby 7/21/2005 04:45:00 PM |

 
Feeling Safer

So they've released a few more prisoners from Guantanamo because they "no longer represent a threat to the United States." I'm glad to hear that being as they must have been terrorists and all. Otherwise they wouldn't have been in there in the first place, right?

So, how do we know they are "no longer a threat?" Did they promise never to be terrorists again, cross their hearts and hope to die? Did they swear on the Koran and the Bible and the TV Guide that they will be good-for-goodness-sake?

Gosh I sure hope they did because otherwise I might be tempted to think that they weren't terrorists at all --- which would mean we are holding innocent people down there for long periods of time without due process.

Surely, we wouldn't do any such thing, now would we?
digby 7/21/2005 04:09:00 PM |

 
Here's Looking At You Kid

This is rich. Christopher Hitchens is defending outing Plame in the press. He has gone completely down the rabbit hole.

I don't know if any of you remember a little episode of a few years ago in which Hitchens was personally involved in a similar situation, but let me refresh your memory if you don't. In the waning days of the Monica Lewinsky impeachment case, Christopher Hitchens dicided it was his patriotic duty to reveal to the House managers that Sidney Blumenthal had revealed at lunch one day that Monica was a stalker. He signed an affidavit to that effect and it resulted in Blumenthal being one of only three witnesses in the Senate Impeachment trial.

Here's the thing. Hitchens worked himself into a frenzy about this because he claimed this was a concerted effort by the White house to smear Monica Lewinsky, which he believed was a possible criminal act. Hitchens took his boozy self all over TV to moralize endlessly about the White house abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

In this new article in Slate, Hitchens seems to have another view. 9/11 changed everything to mean that up is down and black is white. It's now perfectly legitimate for the White House to blow CIA agents' covers as long as you believe that they aren't sufficiently slurring the word "islamofascism" at every turn and sending the proper messages about freedom by endorsing the liberating of thousands of innocent people from their lives. The infallible cult leader George W. Bush had every right to do whatever was necessary to make these people pay. Besides, everything was the CIA's fault anyway.

Blumenthal on the other hand should be in jail and President Clinton should have been convicted and removed from office because Blumenthal gossipped about Monica's obsession with Bill at lunch one day.

Ipdate: Billmon makes the excellent point that this is a good career move for Hitch.


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digby 7/21/2005 12:57:00 PM |

 
Judy's Job Description

Atrios points to this very informative article about Judith Miller by Russ Baker. There's a lot to it, but he mentions one thing in particular that has long puzzled me:

Fine. But they owe the rest of the country's journalists --- whose future ability to work with confidential sources and to operate with public credibility is affected by this -- a far greater sense of what Miller's role was in the affair, and of what "nuances" are involved. This can be done without naming the source. For example, Miller could explain what the source told her, and if it was one or more sources, and whether she called the source or the source called her, without revealing the source's identity --- which is the only issue involved in the confidentiality pledge.

This is what I don't get. Why can't Judith Miller write an article about what she knows without revealing her source? She is, allegedly, a reporter.

Matt Cooper wrote an article. Robert Novak wrote an article. Walter Pincus wrote an article. All three have dealt differently with the special prosecutor on the subject of confidential sources. But they ALL wrote articles about what they were told, which means that if they decided to protect their source, they were doing it in service of performing their jobs. And just because she didn't write one at the time doesn't mean she can't write one now. She's still employed by the NY Times.

Reporters write articles in order to inform the public. That is the essence of their job. In order to do that they sometimes have to keep their sources confidential. Miller has not done the one thing she must do to justify keeping her source confidential --- inform the public of what she knows about the story. Neither is there even a bit of evidence that she was ever even working on a story about this subject.

Woodward and Bernstein kept Mark Felt's confidence for decades --- but at the time they were using his information to unravel a complicated story that they were writing about every day. Miller has not written one word on this subject. Even if we grant that she has an obligation to protect liars who use the news media for character assasination, we can't say that she should be able to do this in service of anything but doing her job as a journalist --- either as part of an investigation or a story. And if she has a story, she should be forced by her editors to write what she knows (protecting her source if necessary, just as Cooper did) or be fired for not doing her job.

How she deals with Fitzgerald is up to her. I think when a reporter is used by a powerful members of the government, in their official capacity, to destroy political opponents with lies, that a reporter should be automatically released from any confidentiality agreement. Otherwise, it is nothing but outsourced government propaganda. Others disagree. But that has no bearing on her responsibility as a journalist and employee of the most important newspaper in the world.

Miller may now be saving her information for the blockbuster book she's planning to write, but that doesn't explain why the NY Times didn't insist that Miller do her job and write a story about what she knows, even if she can't reveal who told her about it. It's in the public interest, all the other journalists have done it, why can't she?



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digby 7/21/2005 11:09:00 AM |

 
Losing Their Touch

So the White House press corps is all up in arms because the Bush White House lied to them about Clement.

I wrote the other day that I couldn't think of one good reason why they would have done it. Many people wrote in to tell me that it was because they wanted to float a woman or distract from Rove or any number of other reasons. I agree that they could have done it for these reasons, but I didn't think those were good reasons, mostly because there was something strange and clumsy about it. But there is one reason that I hadn't considered: it was done for no other reason than to mislead the press just for the day, for purely theatrical reasons.

I read over on bartcop yesterday that Bush was reportedly "furious" that Roberts' name had been leaked before he could announce it in his bizarre, unprecedented, prime-time, no-questions-allowed little pageant. If that's true, then it's likely that they leaked Clement not to assuage people's fears that he hadn't considered a woman and not to put the liberal interest groups off base, and not to float her to get reaction from the Christianists --- but purely to misdirect the press so Junior could unveil a big surprise on National Teevee. Kind of like pulling a rabbit out of the hat, only with the Supreme Court.

That was not the brightest public relations decision they've ever made under the circumstances. So, I stand by my belief that it was a mistake. And it's looking like it was a bigger mistake than I realized at the time.



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digby 7/21/2005 10:27:00 AM |

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

 
"I'm A Source Not A Target"



Yup. That's what the button says.

I'm not kidding.

courtesy of the AP/Frankfurt Times via Crooks and Liars --- go there for larger pic and full story.



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digby 7/20/2005 10:41:00 PM |

 
President Barney

"What I'm telling you is that we're focused here," Bush said from the Port of Baltimore, where he got a waterside demonstration of cargo-screening techniques. "When you're at war, you can't lose sight of the fact that you're at war."

Among the state-of-the-art techniques Bush observed were computerized systems, sophisticated radiation detectors and advanced X-ray equipment.

"You can look inside in the truck, and you don't even have to get in it," Bush said afterward to an audience of state and local officials and port employees. "That's called technology. And it's working. It makes a big difference."

What is he, 6?

Jesushchrist! What in the hell has happened to this country?



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digby 7/20/2005 10:26:00 PM |

 
Yankee Doodle Judy

Gene Lyons has written an interesting column about Judith Miller and her crusade to protect powerful whitehouse souces who use the NY Times to destroy their critics. Lyons, many may recall, has some particular knowledge of the NY Times and its sources, having chronicled its massive journalistic failure in the Whitewater matter in his book "Fools For Scandal." Let's just say that the Times has a very credulous relationshihp with its sources. In fact, they've made a virtual fetish of being willing tools of lying Republicans over and over again.

Lyons says that Miller should testify:

In a haughty tone familiar to anybody who's ever caught the newspaper with its metaphorical pants down, the editors reminded the prosecutor that they're The New York Times, and he's not. "Mr. Fitzgerald's attempts to interfere with the rights of a free press while refusing to disclose his reasons for doing so, when he can't even say whether a crime has been committed, have exhibited neither reverence nor cautious circumspection."

What rubbish. Reverence, indeed. (To be fair, it's an allusion to James Madison, not a demand to be worshipped.) In making its argument, the Times states it wouldn't print information that "would endanger lives and national security."

So here's my question: In a post-9/11 world, what information could possibly be more sensitive than the identity of a covert agent charged with preventing nuclear proliferation?

Answer: None.

Let's put aside the fact that Judith Miller has long been a passionately outspoken ally of Bush administration neo-conservatives who pushed for war with Iraq. She gave paid public speeches urging Saddam's overthrow. Many journalists have asked why such a partisan was given the Iraqi WMD assignment to begin with. The answer? Access, access and access.

What everybody's ignoring here is that Fitzgerald already knows Miller's sources. That's not what he wants to ask her. His prosecution brief urging her incarceration stipulates that "her putative source has been identified and has waived confidentiality."

Even editor Bill Keller has conceded that there's no imaginable journalist's shield law that would protect her. It's Miller's patriotic duty to talk.

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digby 7/20/2005 09:25:00 PM |

 
Along Comes Mary

Sorry for the non-existent posting. Busy day. But here's a little Rovegate nugget to ponder: Mary Matalin was called to the Grand Jury to testify. I think we all assumed it was because she worked for Cheney and was a member of the iraq Group. But Mary Matalin left the White House at the end of 2002, six months before the Wilson op-ed and all the hoopla. (And you'll notice that Karen Hughes, also a member of the Iraq Group, was not, to my knowledge, called to testify. She left in 2002 also.)Matalin was hired back after Novak's column broke, specifically to handle the media on the Wilson matter.

He also subpoenaed the guest list for a White House party for Gerald Ford that took place on July 16th, days after the Novak column ran. I would take a wild guess that someone had told the FBI that Plame was mentioned (maybe as "fair game") at the party and Fitzgerald wanted to talk to others who had attended to see if it was being spread around.

He subpoenaed the records of the Iraq Group from July 7th to July 30th, which includes the two weeks after the leak had already been out there.

This brings up one of the questions I think is being overlooked in the Fitzgerald investigation. He seems to have been quite interested in how the White House behaved after Novak's column ran, which makes the most sense if he thinks there was a cover-up or that continuing to spread the information (as Rove admits to doing) was a violation of the law in itself. And, of course, people may have lied to the FBI or before the Grand Jury about all this, which would be criminal, but we don't know.

It's just a curiosity that I have long wondered about. It sure looks like he was thinking, at one point anyway, that he had a potential conspiracy case of some kind. I wonder if he still thinks so?


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digby 7/20/2005 08:40:00 PM |

 
The Good Old Days

Via Think Progress, we are reminded of Ronald Reagan's words upon signing the Intelligence Identities Protection Act

Whether you work in Langley or a faraway nation, whether your tasks are in operations or analysis sections, it is upon your intellect and integrity, your wit and intuition that the fate of freedom rests for millions of your countrymen and for many millions more all around the globe. …

Like those who are part of any silent service, your sacrifices are sometimes unappreciated; your work is sometimes misunderstood. Because you’re professionals, you understand and accept this. But because you’re human and because you deal daily in the dangers that confront this nation, you must sometimes question whether some of your countrymen appreciate the value of your accomplishments, the sacrifices you make, the dangers you confront, the importance of the warnings that you issue.

He continued

But that's not true. As long as you are provably loyal to the Republican Party above all else and promise to fit intelligence to our preconceived notions, we appreciate everything you do. Otherwise you are fair game.

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digby 7/20/2005 07:35:00 AM |

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

 
Back Scratch Fever

In case anyone is wondering if Roberts really is a partisan hack or not, Jeffrey Toobin's book "Too Close To Call" sheds some light on that subject:

The president's first two nominations to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia curcuit --- generally regarded as the stepping-stone to the Supreme Court --- went to Miguel Estrada and John G Roberts Jr., who had played important behind-the scenes roles in the Florida litigation.

"Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. But, until that day, accept this justice..."



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digby 7/19/2005 08:49:00 PM |

 
Up, Up And Away

A commenter asks why I think Clement was floated earlier in the day and it's a good question. I don't think it served any purpose. The only reason to float trial balloons on Supreme Court justices is to guage how they'll be accepted. That is an irrelevant concern for this White House except for one consituency --- the radical religious right. But they have a very direct pipeline to the the leaders of that constitutency and they don't need to float a name publicly to find out how it will be seen by these people. They just have to pick up the Jesus phone.

I think it was a mistake. And I'm surmising that it might just be because things are breaking down a little bit in the vaunted white house message center. Perhaps people are a little bit distracted and not keeping their eye on the ball the way they should? Wonder why?

Honestly, I can't think of a single good reason to do it.



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digby 7/19/2005 08:08:00 PM |

 
Demographically Correct

Is it just me or is it a little bit odd that the allegedly liberal Washington Post is advertising on this conservative DC blog and not advertising on this liberal DC blog?

It seems particularly odd considering that the conservative blog gets only 1/6th the weekly traffic that the liberal blog gets.

That damned liberal media sure is biased.



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digby 7/19/2005 07:37:00 PM |

 
Ooops

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove did not disclose that he had ever discussed CIA officer Valerie Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper during Rove’s first interview with the FBI, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The omission by Rove created doubt for federal investigators, almost from the inception of their criminal probe into who leaked Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak, as to whether Rove was withholding crucial information from them, and perhaps even misleading or lying to them, the sources said.

Also leading to the early skepticism of Rove's accounts was the claim that although he first heard that Plame worked for the CIA from a journalist, he said could not recall the name of the journalist. Later, the sources said, Rove wavered even further, saying he was not sure at all where he first heard the information.

Martha knitted a lovely poncho and lost 25 pounds. Do you think Karl will make such good use of his time?



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digby 7/19/2005 07:35:00 PM |

 
GOP Creature

My initial take on reading around the web on Roberts is that he's a purely political choice --- a Republican die-hard to the bone. This means that even if he isn't seen as "ideological" in theory, he's ideological in practice. They all are.

He's spent his entire adult life in Washington. He's been a judge for only two years. Before that he represented corporations and worked for Republican administrations. That's it. He's not a scholar or a prosecutor or someone who has ever worked in the trenches. He's a creature of the radical right GOP establishment.

Good choice for Bush. He'll take care of his friends. And he knows exactly what he's supposed to deliver.



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digby 7/19/2005 07:17:00 PM |

 
The Suspense Is Killing Me

CNN has already announced who the new Supreme Court nominee will be. Yet the president is still going to go live at 9pm est to give us this "news."

And right now, 29 minutes before the big "announcement" CNN is discussing the nominee while a clock ticks down in the corner of the screen telling us how long we have to wait until the president tells us what we already know.

Reason #4672 why the cable news networks are completely worthless.



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digby 7/19/2005 05:31:00 PM |

 
John Roberts

So what do the shrieking wingnuts think of him? Is he pure enough? Does he speak in tongues, handle snakes, speak directly to Jesus and James Madison about original intent? Fill me in.



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digby 7/19/2005 05:00:00 PM |

 
Scotus With The Mostest

I think Clement is going to sail through --- unless the far-right has a temper tantrum. So the question is, how do we get as much political advantage from this as possible?

Would it be best to try to bait the far right into blowing it by saying that we think Clement may be the kind of "Sandra Day O'Connor, David Souter" centrist that we can live with? You know how they feel about that.

Or do we use the opportunity to ram home all the principles and ideals that we feel are in jeopardy with Republicans in power choosing who gets lifetime appointments?

As I said, she's in. The Gang of 14 are not going to disband over this one. So, how do we get the most out of it?

I'm thinking it might be a good play to rile up the wingnuts while Karl is on the hotseat. Karl probably made this decision, after all. How could he betray them this way?


Update: What? A one day trial balloon? Whatever. We'll know in a couple of hours...


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digby 7/19/2005 02:54:00 PM |

 
Clueless

Gawd help us. Apparently Jon Meacham has spent so much time praying with Monsignor Tim lately that he hasn't had time to bone up on the basic facts of the Plame case. It hasn't stopped him from talking about it, though. According to The Daily Howler, he actually said on Don Imus that Wilson was dispatched after the war had started. For real:

How completely clueless was Meacham? This clueless—he actually thought that Wilson’s trip had been commissioned in the spring of 2003, after the war in Iraq was over. He had seemed to imply this at the two-minute mark, bringing our analysts out of their chairs; discussing the political fall-out in the spring 2003 as the WMD failed to turn up, Meacham said that Wilson had “undertaken a mission to go to Niger and discover if these 16 words were true.” Since Wilson’s trip occurred a full year before those 16 words were spoken, it seemed that Meacham was working from a bogus chronology—but even we couldn’t quite believe that the parson could be this clueless. But later, as he gave that brilliant “best guess,” his confusion became all too clear:

MEACHAM: My best guess is that it did come out of the bureaucracy of the CIA, and it may have, it could have originated with the wife.

IMUS: Who asked them to do it, the CIA?

MEACHAM: Well, they were trying—remember, everything was falling apart. So they’ve got to—now, one would hope that they would have undertaken this, done their homework before we had begun a war based partly on this. But things were beginning to very explicitly disintegrate and these documents were—it turned out they’d been faxed through Italy, remember this?—on the uranium. So I think it came out—it probably came out of the CIA, which is supposed to vet all of this.

But this should not surprise us. Meacham proved to us some time back that he has a rather odd notion of reality when he wrote this:

The uniqueness—one could say oddity, or implausibility—of the story of Jesus' resurrection argues that the tradition is more likely historical than theological.

The uniqueness, one could say oddity, of big time celebrity "reporters" who don't know their asses from holes in the ground argues that mainstream journalism is more likely moribund than relevant.



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digby 7/19/2005 01:54:00 PM |

 
Reading the Wingnuts So We Don't Have To

The Daou Report has a very helpful special page up featuring the musing of both right and left on the Plame Affair. If you want the overview of how both sides of the blogosphere are dealing with the issue this is a great place to go.

Today on the left we are talking about the Iraq lies, parsing the evidence and calling for Rove's head for leaking. On the right they are saying Clinton was worse and the whole thing is boring. It's fun, check it out.



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digby 7/19/2005 10:56:00 AM |

 
The Cup is Empty

If you have an extra buck or two, my friend Joe Vecchio, who runs Cup 'O Joe "the blog of the working unemployed man," could use a little scratch while his wife's in the hospital.



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digby 7/19/2005 10:40:00 AM |

 
Bad Advice

If anyone is still in the dark about what is wrong with the Democratic Party, look no further than this:

I just got off the boat. For the past week my family and I have been guests on the R Family Vacations cruise created by Rosie and Kelli O’Donnell. Along with 2000 other people – gay, straight and lots of kids – we sailed to Halifax, Nova Scotia and back down to NYC through Boston and Cape Cod. And I was a cynic. Truth is, since I get both claustrophobic and seasick, I had to be brought kicking and screaming on this trip. I just wasn’t in the mood for an onslaught of gayness.

I was wrong. It was a magical vacation...But sailing in international waters gave me a different perspective to the news of the moment. The distance I felt from the hype was much akin to the everyday attitude of a majority of Americans.

Over and over people on the ship asked me why the Democrats are focusing so much attention on Karl Rove and not, instead, providing a better alternative story for the American people to hear. It is a good question.

Karl Rove won’t resign no matter how many blog posts, front page stories or speeches from the floor of Congress take place...So why are Democrats wasting the chance to talk to people about what they really care about? As long as the political conversation is about Karl Rove, the Republicans win. Sure, the President’s current allegiance to Rove is damaging but the White House has obviously made a calculation that it is better to keep Karl around than to get rid of him and have the subject changed. That alone should give Dems a clue as to how important it is for us to change the subject.

It is no sure thing that Democrats will be able to get people to focus on politics at all during these few weeks. But our only hope is to talk about something more relevant. Summer vacation is family time. It is also a time for anxiety for parents. Because instead of worrying about our jobs, on vacation, most parents worry about their kids.

[...]

(And lest anyone doubt that the gay and lesbian parents on our cruise have all the same anxieties and commitment to their children as straight parents, rest your concern. In fact, the normalcy of the conversations was soothing.)

Democrats have more answers to the problems faced by families in America today. Now is a good time to try and dominate the conversation with those concerns. When people across the country feel certain that the Democratic political leadership cares more about these issues than scoring political points, we will finally benefit from the President’s dropping approval ratings.

Hold on to your hats folks. This person is a Democratic political consultant. In other words, Democrats pay her for political advice. I'm not kidding.

First of all, her attitudes toward gay people seems to be something closer to an anthropologist finding the lost tribe of Borneo. She wasn't ready for an "onslaught of gayness" but was eventually soothed to learn that gay people are normal. Good for her.

But, of course, the other huge sin is this fucking insane, deranged, bass-akwards, idiotic advice that we should stop talking about Karl Rove so we can swing the conversation toward child care. She actually said that as long we are talking about Karl Rove, the Republicans win.

Oh yes, by all means let's drop this hot potato and schedule a press conference about parental anxiety. The cable shows and the papers are clamoring for that kind of copy. They can't get enough of it. Perhaps we can get all the elected Democrats to stand on the steps of congress and sing "I'm a little teapot, short and stout" for the evening news. Meanwhile, let's just let the criminals in the White House blow up the world. After they're done, we'll have a helluva parental leave policy to enact. Unfortunately we won't have a country.

Seriously, as long as we have this white house off balance, not controlling the message and the agenda, the Republicans lose. Really. The Democrats can't "win," you see, because we have no power to legislate or mandate fuck-all. Our only job is to stop the Republicans from destroying the country any more than they already have and lay the groundwork for winning elections. Taking on Republicans is a vital part of that job.

I'm sure that Rosen had a lovely time with the liberals on the ship who all were parroting the conventional wisdom "but the Democrats don't have any ideas!" or "nobody knows what the Democrats stand for" which Rosen, the professional political consultant, took for some sort of homespun wisdom. If she thinks being on a cruise with 2000 people who can afford to spend a week with Rosie O'Donnell and her family is like being an average American she needs her head examined.

Here's a clue for the professionals who hear this shit at cocktail parties: people say this because they don't have anything else to say. These mantras are conversational elevator music, things that people say in social situations that are uncontroversial, genteel and guaranteed to result in agreement. These political platitudes are conversational filler that are often used to obscure the fact that the speaker isn't really conversant with the details or because they really, really don't want to get into an argument. And it's exactly the type of bullshit that you see among super liberals who feel they have to temper their overwhelming feelings of shadenfreude with public tut-tutting about the terrible waste of it all in light of all the real problems in the world.

I don't understand how anyone can become a political consultant without having some instinct for the manners of even her own social class. Ms Rosen should probably re-read her copy of Pride and Prejudice and concentrate on something besides Mr Darcy this time. She'd learn something about human nature.

There is no way we will ever again be in a position to help families or do anything else as long as our politicians are being advised by people like this.


Update: I've been reliably informed that Hilary Rosen is gay. It's good to know that she discovered on her trip that other gay people are normal. She must be so relieved.



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digby 7/19/2005 09:28:00 AM |

 
Hot Links

For those of you who are enjoying playing Nancy Drew in this Rove case, here is a great link resource to official documents related to Plame. Have fun!



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digby 7/19/2005 09:21:00 AM |

 
The Smoking Notes

I somewhat regrettably waded into the minutia of the Rove case last week-end and am now stuck with revising what I said everytime I become aware that I got something wrong in order to hold up the honor of the self-correcting blogosphere. So here goes.

I wrote that I thought the person who wrote the June 10th classified memo was the same INR analyst who had been quoted liberally in the SSCI report and who was evidently the one who noted that "it appeared that she [Plame] had arranged the trip" in his notes of the meeting. I won't go into it here --- if you need a nap you can read my whole post.

Anyway, I was challenged by emptywheel at The Next Hurrah (who wrote this excellent post called "Anatomy of the WH Smear defense" and this one, called "About That INR Memo") who was working the same angle, but who concluded that the memo may have been based on this INR's notes but that it appeared it was written by someone else. (We are interested in this because it might have been someone juicy from Bolton's gang, for instance.) Anyway, I said I preferred the simple explanation that the one who wrote the notes probably wrote the memo.

I was wrong because I think I know who wrote the notes and he was long gone from the State Department when the memo was written. I'm pretty sure that the INR analyst was Greg Thielman, one of the good guys. He's one of the few people who went on the record that they administration was cooking intelligence.

I had written in a draft of the post that I thought it was ironic that the INR analyst who apparently spilled the beans on Plame in his notes (which was picked up in the "work-up" later done on Wilson in May of 2003) was also the guy in the SSCI report who was most skeptical of the Niger connection and who backed Wilson's interpretation of events. (You should read how tortured the analysis was to come up with some factual basis for the Niger connection. It's shockingly thin.)

Anyway, here's the gist. Greg Thielman left the State Department in September of 2002. But he left his notes behind. When Wilson's story started to surface in the press, the white house or somebody ordered someone to put together a file on how Wilson was sent on the trip. (Although Wilson never said Cheney directly sent him, the inference was that he knew.) So the INR went through its files on the matter and put together a report. (I suspect the other agencies did the same thing.) This report contained a nugget of information that nobody else had --- that Wilson's wife had sent him on the trip.

That was seized upon as a good smear and the rest is history.

The reason I believe it was Greg Thielman who wrote the notes in question is because the SSCI report indicates that the same person who wrote the report Niger: Sale of Uranium Unlikely is the same person who noted that "it appeared" Wilson's wife arranged the trip. Greg Thielman wrote that report.

If you are at all interested in this subject, check out this PBS interview with Thielman. Has anybody talked to him lately?



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digby 7/19/2005 08:31:00 AM |

Monday, July 18, 2005

 
Tangled Up In Yellowcake

Responding to my quip about Rove not being in town to "warn off" 60 Minutes from its embarassing TANG story, Lukery of Wotisitgood4 reminds me in the comments that the TANG story actually knocked off another big story that 60 Minutes had been working on for months: The Niger forgery story.

If you'll recall, after Rathergate 60 Minutes decided to withhold the story entirely. I have been unable to ascertain if it was ever shown, but I know I didn't see it.

Salon magazine saw a tape of the show and reported this:

The importance that CBS placed on the report was evident by its unusual length: It was slated to run a full half hour, double the usual 15 minutes of a single segment. Although months of reporting went into the production, CBS abruptly decided that it would be "inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election," in the words of a statement that network spokeswoman Kelli Edwards gave the New York Times.

The real reason, of course, was that because of CBS's sloppy reporting on the Bush National Guard story, the network's news executives believed they could no longer report credibly on the heart of the Iraq nuclear issue, involving another set of completely forged documents: those purporting to show that Iraq had purchased yellowcake uranium from the African country Niger.

Salon was given the videotape by CBS News on the condition that we report on it only shortly before it was to air. But after the network effectively spiked its own story (which was reported by Newsweek online and by the New York Times), we sent an e-mail late last week to CBS stating that we believed that the embargo no longer applied. We received no reply and therefore feel free to report.

[...]

Whatever the case, the CBS producers apparently decided to concentrate on what could be nailed down: the Bush administration had, either intentionally or with breathtaking credulity, relied on patently false intelligence to make the case for invading Iraq.

"Two years ago, Americans heard some frightening words from President Bush and his closest advisors," Bradley said in his introduction of the now-shelved report. "Saddam Hussein, they said, could soon have a nuclear bomb. Of course, we now know that wasn't true." Not only did Saddam not have a nuclear program, Bradley said, but "he hadn't for more than 10 years. How could the Bush administration be so wrong about something so important?"

[...]

In his closing, Bradley explains how fiercely the White House fought his report. Administration officials and Republicans in Congress turned down "60 Minutes'" requests for interview. So did former Rep. Porter Goss, the Florida Republican whom Bush has appointed as the new director of the CIA.

"60 Minutes" defied the White House to produce this report. But it could not survive the network's cowardice -- cowardice born of self-inflicted wounds.

What a shame. The TANG story really was old news and the only people who still cared about Vietnam were hardline republicans who were always going to vote for Bush. This story was about a real scandal.

It is interesting, though, that the White House fought this story tooth and nail but didn't say a word when 60 Minutes ran the story about the Killian documents past them. You can understand why these people believe so fervently in God. 60 Minutes killed the serious story about forgeries that would have fed right into the Democrats' story line about Iraq so that they could show a senational story about Bush that was based on forgeries. God was definitely rooting for the Republicans that day.

I wonder if 60 Minutes is recovered enough from their trauma to think about finally running (or rerunning) this story. Or do they still think it's inappropriate?


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digby 7/18/2005 06:13:00 PM |

 
Case Closed

We can all close shop on Rovegate. The freepers have it all figured out:

Joe Wilson already admitted she was not under cover and:

Plame was not a covert agent. She had not been covert for nine years as she was outed by Aldrich Ames prior to 1994 and then again by the Cubans. She was assigned a desk job as an analyst at that time for her own safety.

The identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame was compromised twice before her name appeared in a news column that triggered a federal illegal-disclosure investigation, U.S. officials say.

Mrs. Plame's identity as an undercover CIA officer was first disclosed to Russia in the mid-1990s by a Moscow spy, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. In a second compromise, officials said a more recent inadvertent disclosure resulted in references to Mrs. Plame in confidential documents sent by the CIA to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana.

The documents were supposed to be sealed from the Cuban government, but intelligence officials said the Cubans read the classified material and learned the secrets contained in them, the officials said.

Washington Times

She would have had to have been covert in the last five years for Rove to have broken the law, per former Assistant Deputy Attorney General Victoria Toensing, who helped draft the 1982 law in question.

For Plame's outing to have been illegal, the one-time deputy AG explained, "her status as undercover must be classified." Also, Plame "must have been assigned to duty outside the United States currently or in the past five years."

Case closed.

So, there you go. The bizarro world version of the Plame case brought to you by the Washington Times and Newsmax.

Oh, and there's one more interesting little bit of speculation that I think we all need to think about. (These freepers are sharp.)

And we're to believe that Judith Miller went to jail to protect Karl Rove?

Really. I am so very interested to know what the Prosecutor knows about Judy Miller that we don't. Is this going to end up with The Plame-Wilsons in jail?

I've read that elsewhere. There really is a theme on the right that Fitzgerald is actually going to indict Joseph Wilson and his wife. This is understandable. In their experience federal prosecutors are all Republican hacks who work hand in glove with Drudge and Lucianne Goldberg. In their view the rule of law says that only Democrats are criminal. (And note the derisive "Plame-Wilson." Does Karl know his people or does Karl know his people?)


And then you have to really love this one:

and I'm sure he'll go right ahead and shut the whole thing down.


And end his lucrative gig?

Fitzgerald's in it for the money.

Remember, this is the base that Karl and Junior have so carefully cultivated and are valued over any other constituency in the country. Doesn't it make the hair on the back of your neck stand up?
digby 7/18/2005 04:30:00 PM |

 
Question On Judy

I'm just curious about something and maybe my readers can help me out. In yesterday's NY Times article it says:

Asked whether New York Times reporter Judith Miller might have provided information about Plame to government sources, George Freeman, an assistant general counsel of The New York Times Company told Liptak: "Judy learned about Valerie Plame from a confidential source or sources whose identity she continues to protect to this day. If the suggestion is that she is covering up for her source or some fictitious source, that is preposterous.

Has Miller ever said before that the source she's protecting told her about Valerie Plame? She didn't write a story, she hasn't turned over her notes and she hasn't talked about who or what the prosecutor wants to question her about, to my knowledge.

Certainly, it seems clear that someone else must have told Fitzgerald that Miller was a party to the information, but until now I didn't know she had admitted it or that she had so explicitly said that she was protecting someone who told her about Plame. Am I wrong?




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digby 7/18/2005 03:41:00 PM |

 
Performance Blog

If you are in New York in August, plan to check out the "Year Of Living Rudely" starring everybody's favorite dirty talker (and my personal inspiration) The Rude Pundit. Guaranteed to blow your mind. Or blow something. Bring cigarettes and bottled water.



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digby 7/18/2005 01:56:00 PM |

 
Mr Helpful

It occurs to me as I read the pithy Charles Pierce piece I've been yearning for, that it's quite wonderful that Karl Rove makes it a practice to warn reporters off of stories he thinks will embarrass them. I guess he must have been out of town the day CBS submitted its National Guard story to the white house for comment.



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digby 7/18/2005 11:35:00 AM |

Sunday, July 17, 2005

 
Rove Food

New detail about what Fitzgerald knows from the LA Times:

Prosecutors investigating whether White House officials illegally leaked the identity of Wilson's wife, a CIA officer who had worked undercover, have been told that Bush's top political strategist, Karl Rove, and I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, were especially intent on undercutting Wilson's credibility, according to a person familiar with the inquiry.

While lower-level White House staff members typically handle most contacts with the media, Rove and Libby began personally communicating with reporters about Wilson, prosecutors were told.

A source directly familiar with information provided to prosecutors said Rove's interest was so strong that it prompted questions in the White House. When asked at one point why he was pursuing the diplomat so aggressively, Rove responded: "He's a Democrat." Rove then cited Wilson's campaign donations, which leaned toward Democrats, the person familiar with the case said.

[...]

Activities aboard Air Force One are also of interest to prosecutors -- including the possible distribution of a State Department memo that mentioned Wilson's wife. Prosecutors are seeking to find out whether anyone who saw the memo learned Plame's identity and passed the information to journalists. Telephone logs from the presidential aircraft have been subpoenaed; among those aboard was former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who has testified before the grand jury.

The source familiar with the investigation said Saturday that prosecutors had obtained a White House call sheet showing that Novak left a message for Fleischer on the afternoon of July 7, 2003, the day after Wilson's op-ed article appeared and the day that Fleischer left with the president for Africa. Fleischer declined to comment for this article, but has flatly denied that he was the source of the leak.

Wilson said in an interview Saturday that he had known that Novak was interested in him a week or so before the column appeared. He said that a friend who saw Novak on the street reported that Novak told him, "Wilson is an (expletive) and his wife works for the CIA."

[...]

There have been other indications of a concerted White House action against the former envoy. Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus has said that two days before Novak's column, he was told by an "administration official" that the White House was not putting much stock in the Wilson trip to Africa because it was "set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction," according to an account of the conversation Pincus wrote for the Summer 2005 issue of Nieman Reports, published by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Let's suppose you are a straight shooting prosecutor or a grand juror. And let's suppose an extremely powerful and arrogant asshole testifies that he thinks it's perfectly ok to "discredit" his political opponents with derogatory information about them. Let's assume that a whole bunch of people from the White House testify that this arrogant asshole was obsessed with smearing a critic "because he was a Democrat."

Do you think he'd get the benefit of the doubt asbout whether he actually smeared this critic from either the straight shooting prosecutor or the grand juror?

I don't either. If they can nail him they're going to. He's a pig.
digby 7/17/2005 11:45:00 PM |

 
Closing Ranks

Bob Novak, who is now Karl Rove's howling bitch until the day his rotting cadaver finally admits it's dead, says that Ed Gillespie (whom he pointedly calls a protege of Karl Rove) may be the new chief of staff. It appears they are easing Andy Card out.

He has been disloyal in the past:

I made these inquiries in part because last spring, when I spoke to White House chief of staff Andrew Card, he sounded an alarm about the unfettered rise of Rove in the wake of senior adviser Karen Hughes’s resignation: "I’ll need designees, people trusted by the president that I can elevate for various needs to balance against Karl. . . . They are going to have to really step up, but it won’t be easy. Karl is a formidable adversary.

One wonders if Karl may think he's been disloyal more recently. After all, as Weldon Berger has been reminding us, there is still the question of who leaked to the Washington Post that the Plame leak was done "purely and simply for revenge." I always speculated it was Andy, who's not part of the Texas mafia.

In any case, it looks like the hankie twisting, pearl clutching Ed "political hate speech" Gillespie is being brought on to shore up Karl and "send a message." That's what they do. It's only a matter of time before we see Ben Ginsberg on the scene.

When they call in James "divaaaaaahn" Baker, we'll know the jig is up.



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digby 7/17/2005 08:29:00 PM |

 
Is It Safe?

Via Crooks and Liars, I see that Bob Schieffer takes the president to task for not just hauling in his top aides two years ago and telling them he wanted to know who talked to the press. This is a good question and one which I think the press should be asking every day. But then, Bush has always been a little cagey on this, hasn't he? Why you'd almost think he already knew all about it.

And then there's David Broder who seems to have popped half a viagra this morning and actually condemns the White House for it's ruthless behavior AND takes the press corpse top task for its wimpiness. Father Tim came close to giving Ken Mehman an Al Goring this morning.

The DC establishment has opened one droopy eye and they see that the Republicans might actually be vulnerable. So they pulled their guts from the storage box under the bed and tried them on for size. I wonder if they still fit after all this time?



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digby 7/17/2005 06:14:00 PM |

 
Another Unhappy Ambassador

I sure hope this guy's wife didn't have any pecadilloes in college or anything because they are going to be after him, for sure.



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digby 7/17/2005 04:57:00 PM |

 
Memo Minutia


Warning: Extreme parsing of arcane Rovegate evidence follows. Read at the risk of being put to sleep immediately.


Michael at Reading A1 suggests that I've misinterpreted the Fred Barnes piece I wrote about yesterday and that Cheney may have seen an earlier memo from an American diplomat rather than the now infamous June 10, 2003 classified memo that everybody's talking about. He may very well be right. I even questioned whether there even were any earlier memos.

Well, there were, and a whole bunch of them. (See the SSCI Report on Pre-War Intelligence, here.) And there was an American diplomat who debriefed Wilson whose report Cheney very likely saw if he requested information about Wilson's trip --- Barbara Owens-Kirkpatrick, the Ambassador of Niger. It's entirely believable that if the VP wanted to see a report on someone they'd send him the report of an Ambassador. He may have even picked up the phone and called her. In any case, it's certainly true that Cheney could have seen earlier memos and probably did. (We don't know when he saw those memos, but they do exist.) My speculation was probably off base.

Michael sets forth a theory about Cheney's revenge that I find quite persuasive. Along with him and Josh Marshall I would not be in the least bit surprised that this whole thing stemmed from the turf wars that characterized the run up to the invasion. I'm sure they are still fighting them. Negroponte may have to find some of his old friends in the Honduran Army to quell them.

Yesterday, like me, Marshall asked who wrote the June memo and why:

Who requested that the memo be written? Who actually wrote it? Why does it contain the inaccuracies the CIA claims it does? Who were the administration officials who continued to circulate the classified document to conservative news outlets even after Plame's identity was initially revealed? And how did it get into the hands of Jeff Gannon?

I think I have discovered some answers:

The answer to the first question is that we don't know who requested the memo.

The answer to the second question appears to be an INR analyst who is quoted heavily in the SSCI report and seems to be the only real source for the fact that Plame somehow finagled to get Wilson the trip.

In answer to the third, there is a big question as to whether anybody in the administration continued to circulate the memo to conservative news outlets (although they were certainly discussing it with mainstream news outlets.) Rather it appears that the CIA got the impression Jeff Gannon of Talon News had seen the memo (and rightly so, he acted as if he did) when he had in fact seen this article from October of 2003 in the WSJ (sorry can't find working link) which said:

An internal government memo addresses some of the mysteries at the center of the White House leak investigation and could help investigators in the search for who disclosed the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency operative, according to two people familiar with the memo.

The memo, prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel, details a meeting in early 2002 where CIA officer Valerie Plame and other intelligence officials gathered to brainstorm about how to verify reports that Iraq had sought uranium yellowcake from Niger.

Ms. Plame, a member of the agency's clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested at the meeting that her husband, Africa expert and former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, could be sent to Niger to investigate the reports, according to current and former government officials familiar with the meeting at the CIA's Virginia headquarters. Soon after, midlevel CIA officials decided to send him, say intelligence officials.

Classified memos, like the one describing Ms. Plame's role, have limited circulation and investigators are likely to question all those known to have received it. Intelligence officials haven't denied Ms. Plame was involved in the decision to send Mr. Wilson, but they have said she was not "responsible" for the decision.

Gannon played games for quite a while pretending he was protecting sources and the like but finally he admitted that he was actually referring to the WSJ story. (The CIA was misled by Jeff Gannon into thinking that this classified memo was making the rounds of conservative male prostitutes. You can understand why they were upset. Might as well plaster it all over the Web. In living color.)

They were also likely upset that this memo was being discussed (and in such detail) because it was still classified. (I'll leave it up to the lawyers to figure out whether releasing new details of a classified document that has been preivously leaked contitutes a crime.)

In the end, it appears to me that there is only one primary source of the "Wilson's wife sent him" story and it is a single INR (state department intelligence) analyst. I suspect he is the one who wrote the 2003 memo. The SSCI Report entry on this specific subject begins:

CPD officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador, however, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador’s wife “offered up his name” and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12,2002, from the former ambassador’s wife says, “my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activitv.” This was just one day before CPD sent a cable-requesting concurrence with CPD’s idea to send the former ambassador to Niger and requesting any additional information from the foreign government service on their uranium reports. The former ambassador’s wife told Committee staff that when CPD decided it would like to send the former ambassador to Niger, she approached her husband on behalf of the CIA and told him “there’s this crazy report” on a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq.

(This allegedly unbiased SSCI report is big on the scare quotes when describing the Wilsons's testimony.It tries to make a not very subtle case that she was trying to slant the evidence to favor Saddam even before the trip. It's this biased language to which the Democrats on the panel rightly objected in their dissent.)

The Plame memo in question here has been explained as one written about Wilson's qualifications, but not one that suggested he go. The interviews mentioned indicate only two people, the person who said "she offered up his name" and the INR analyst who said the first meeting with Wilson was "apparently convened by [the former ambassador’s] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him.]" There appears to be no other corroboration although the meeting was full of people. The only other documentation the SSCI report provides is the INR analyst's notes:

On February 19,2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, intelligence analysts from both the CIA and INR, and several individuals DO and CPD divisions. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of the former ambassador traveling to Niger. An INR analyst’s notes indicate that the meeting was “apparently convened by [the former ambassador’s] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue.” The former ambassador’s wife told Committee staff that she only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes.

The CIA has disputed in press reports that this analyst could have been at the meeting in which sending Wilson was broached. And that meeting must have been before the one the analyst refers to, since Wilson attended the one he's discussing. I don't know if the analyst had attended any earlier meetings in which Wilson was discussed for the mission, but the report doesn't mention it if he did. I think the press has been confused about this or deliberately misled.

What appears to have happened is that there was an earlier meeting in which it was decided (we don't know how) that Wilson should be sent. Plame introduced her husband at a later meeting with a bunch of people from throughout the intelligence community and then left. The analyst's impression was that she arranged the meeting and he put that in his notes. The rest is history.

Here's the bottom line as I see it. It's still quite possible that Cheney saw Wilson's report. According to the SSCI report, the CIA issued one and sent it up the line specifically because they knew that Cheney had asked about the Niger question. They did not make a special delivery to his office, so there is no way to prove one way or the other if Cheney ever saw it short of subpoenaeing the VP's records --- which I'm sure have long since been "misplaced." There were other reports issued as well, including the one written by this INR analyst called Niger: Sale of Uranium To Iraq Is Unlikely.

On the other hand, it's entirely possible that Cheney didn't see any reports. It's clear that people were trying to give him information he wanted to see. Wilson's report backed up Owen-Kirkpatrick and others who said Iraq was very unlikely to have been trying to buy yellowcake from Niger. Therefore, since it wasn't dispositive in their view on that fact, they may not have wanted to draw Cheney's ire by bringing it up.

One thing that's intriguing, however, is that the CIA told Cheney's briefer on March 5th that a source was coming back from Niger that day who could shed further light on the subject. That source was Joe Wilson. Either the briefer never gave Cheney that heads up or Cheney never followed up with it. Then again, maybe he did.

Whatever the case, Cheney says that he didn't know anything about it until he started to read the anonymous quotes in the newspapers from "a former ambassador" at which point he got a debriefing from an American diplomat. At this same time a memo was requested by somebody about the provenance of Wilson's trip (Wilson was saying it was to answer questions raised by Cheney.) It appears to me that at this point the INR analyst wrote up his notes about his involvement in the trip and those notes became the June 10th memo. And the White House seized on the fact that he said Wilson's wife was involved.

I suspect that's as far as they got. With the modern Republicans, all you have to do is mention that there might be some dirt on somebody's wife and they are all over it like slavering wolves. This would be exactly the kind of smear they'd jump on. This, then, would be their counterattack.

If that's so, the question then becomes, did they ever follow up with anyone to find out Plame's status with the CIA? Did anyone ever even contemplate that she might be in a delicate position there? Did they ever ask anyone at CIA if it was true that she had "arranged" the trip? And then of course there are the pivotal questions of who saw this memo and when --- and who leaked it to whom and when.

That's my theory of how the June 2003 memo came to be. And I'm pretty convinced that it's the real source of this whole thing. Judy Miller may complicate this, but I suspect that if she's a source, she's a cut-out for Libby (to whom we know she spoke during this period) not an original source herself. However, since I know fuck-all about what she knows, I can't really speculate.

Given what we know today from news reports and the SSCI report, this single INR analyst's notes, which people have conflated with a meeting he may never even have attended, seems like the simplest most believable source of this mess.

Update: Clarification on the Plame memo in which she discusses her husbands qualifications. TIME magazine says today:

Or, more personally, was Rove suggesting that Wilson was chosen not for his expertise but because his wife was trying to help him stay in the game? Certainly Rove distorted her role when he claimed she had authorized the trip. "She was not in a position to send Joe Wilson anywhere except to bed without his supper," says Larry Johnson, a Plame classmate at the CIA who later worked on Central American issues for the agency and then moved to the State Department as a counterterrorism officer. According to a declassified July 7, 2004, report from the Senate Intelligence Committee, it was Plame's boss, the deputy chief of the CIA's counterproliferation division, who authorized the trip. He did so after Plame "offered up" her husband's name for the Niger mission, according to the report. In a Feb. 12, 2002, memo to her boss, Plame wrote that "my husband has good relations with both the PM [Prime Minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity."

It's highly unlikely that her boss was involved in the classified state department memo that made the rounds because well ... he actually knew she was clandestine.
If he was consulted by the White House on this matter, and told them (as I assume he would) that she was undercover, then they are criminal scumbags for outing her. If they didn't bother to consult they are stupid scumbags for outing her. Either way, they're scumbags.



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digby 7/17/2005 09:23:00 AM |

 
The Dog Ate My Classified Memo

So it's finally been revealed that Libby and Rove were Cooper's sources. What a coincidence. And both of them "heard" about Wilson's wife sending him on the mission from a reporter. Man oh man, what are the odds? It's even more shocking that the two most powerful political operatives in the White House were so out of the loop because we now know that on the trip to Africa on AF One, for reasons unknown, Rove subordinates Dan Bartlett and Ari Fleischer "prompted clusters of reporters" to look into how Wilson got his job while classified memos on the subject were being faxed back and forth to Condi to prepare her to go on television. Colin Powell was reported to be waving another secret classified memo around the cabin, a memo prepared more than a month earlier, that contained the information that Wilson's wife sent him on the trip.

And yet we are supposed to believe that Karl and Scooter never saw or heard about any of this classified information, but rather heard about it from a reporter. And I'm assuming that Bartlett and Fleischer are supposed to have heard all about this from reporters too, or maybe second hand from Rove or Libby. None of these people in the white house political and press operation who were aware of Wilson's wife's alleged involvement had ever seen the classified document that was all over the place. They just heard the "gossip" and had nothing to do with planting it.

(I had not heard this business about Fleischer and Bartlett throwing out hints to the press corps on the Africa trip. Certainly, the press corps knew it, but I guess they were protecting their super-double deep backround confidential communal gaggles with the White House Press Office by not telling anyone.)

And if we are to believe they all got this information from reporters who told Libby and Rove (who because there exists no political assassin shield law are forced to say they don't recall who they were) we must also then believe that throughout all of these very innocent exchanges of water cooler gossip among the press corps and the White House, neither Rove nor Libby nor anyone else thought to check with the CIA about Plame's actual job in WMD and whether it was appropriate that her job become public. Even Novak now denies that he thought of it and only used the word "operative" by accident. Nobody anywhere had a second thought that there might be a reason not to publicize the identity of someone who works in weapons of mass destruction at the CIA. This is what we are supposed to believe.

It seems more likely to me now that Fitzgerald is building an obstruction and conspiracy case. Unless he's stupid, which no one has ever said he is, he cannot believe these laughable excuses. If he has evidence that ties Novak into it after he shot his mouth off then that's a real cover-up.

And, yes,to answer those readers who think that it's a big waste of time to be talking about Rove in this detail, I think we all know the real story here is that "Karl Rove and others in the White House outed an undercover CIA operative to cover-up their lies about Iraq." I've been saying that for some time. John Podesta said so this morning. Frank Rich wrote it yesterday. Even Monsignor Russert seemed to be seeing the bigger picture when he brought Woodward and Bernstein on to talk about how the Watergate burglary was part of a bigger story of White House corruption. (Woodward is spinning pretty badly, but then what would you expect? He wrote the allegedly definitive story of "Bush at War" and didn't really get the story did he?)

But there is value in parsing the Rove stories in meticulous detail (besides being fun.) It feeds the scandal beast and if you don't feed that beast it dies. So, I'm going to keep writing about both aspects of this story --- the big picture and the detail about Rove --- because that's how you sustain a scandal. See, I learned this at the feet of the Mighty Wurlitzer. You just keep pounding in whatever way you can --- relentless, focused and loud.

And I truly believe that Rove and his antics in this case are symbolic of the whole corrupt political machine that he has built --- and the outing of a CIA agent is symbolic of the reckless desire to invade Iraq and roll over anyone who stood in their way. I think people are starting to get this in their gut.



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digby 7/17/2005 08:47:00 AM |

Saturday, July 16, 2005

 
War Of The Chickenhawks

Apparently the wingnut braintrust thinks that H.G. Wells is a Hollywood scriptwriter living in Laurel Canyon with a gold retriever and BMW Z8. Jesus, it's almost enough to make me cry.

Amanda links to Fred at Slacktivist as they both try to come to grips with some of the stupidest people on this planet --- the 101st keyboarders --- who seem to think that Spielberg wrote "War of the Worlds" and Michael Moore invented anti-colonialism.

These critics believe that WOTW is an anti-American screed. But they are very confused. Here's why:

To anyone with a brain, the story is anti-colonial so if it can be interpreted as representing events of today, it represents the war in Iraq. The US would be the aliens, right?

The alien invaders arrive. We cannot understand them. Our best technology cannot harm them. They are inscrutable and unstoppable. There is nothing we can do.

Big tough America. Hooyah!

But the keyboarders are complaining about the behavior of the humans:

Right-wing critics of the film complain that Spielberg's hero, played by Tom Cruise, spends most of the movie running away and hiding. But that's the point -- there's nothing else he can do.

But, see, if this is an allegory about Iraq (presciently written a hundred years before it happened) then the humans represent the Iraqis. Which means that if they think the humans are behaving in a cowardly fashion, the Fighting Hellmice must admire the real life Iraqi insurgents who are ferociously fighting back the alien invaders --- the US. The Iraqi "terrorists" are behaving precisely in the manner the Cheeto Brigade insists brave people should behave.

In other words, these chickenhawks are terrorists sympathizers.

However, I don't think the fighting keyboarders understand that the movie is anti-colonial. I think they think it's about 9/11 and the martians are supposed to be al Qaeda. They think it shows America as being weak and afraid because Tom Cruise tries to get away from the aliens.

I actually agree with them, although not in quite the same way, I'm afraid. Before I ever knew that Spielberg was re-making WOTW, I saw the crazed reaction of the right wing as being comparable to the hysteria we would see if Martians had landed rather than the intelligent, critical response we would expect a superpower to show in the face of a bunch of Islamic fundamentalist losers. Rightwing behavior from the beginning has been one of extreme overreaction --- the "existential threat" the "our oceans no longer protect us," the whole litany of fear inducing lies about Iraq are all manifestations of severe panic. Look at the difference between the way everyone else in the world behaved in the face of terrorist attacks and look at us. It's embarrassing.

I think you can see the movie both as a criticism of the invasion of Iraq and as a criticism of the inchoate frenzy that overtook the right wing after 9/11. Their hysterical reaction betrayed what they would do if a real existential threat emerged --- they'd lose their heads.




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digby 7/16/2005 10:42:00 AM |

 
Who Read The Memo?

Reader Suzanne D sent me this tantalizing little tid-bit this morning. Last night I wondered who received this 2003 classified State Department Memo and it seems that Fred Barnes answered that question, at least in one respect, back in July of 2003:

Nonetheless, it was reported in the media and repeated by politicians that Cheney had asked the CIA to send someone to Niger to look into the matter. This is untrue. What did happen is that CIA officials, without the knowledge of Cheney or Tenet, dispatched a former ambassador, Joseph Wilson, to investigate. Columnist Robert Novak has reported that Wilson's wife, a CIA employee, recommended him for the job. Wilson traveled to Niger, interviewed current and former officials, and decided that no deal for uranium had been made with Iraq.

When Wilson returned, he gave an oral report to the CIA. But he didn't meet with Cheney or send him a written report on his trip. Cheney didn't learn of Wilson's trip until he read in the New York Times in May 2003 that an ex-ambassador had been sent. Cheney later received a document from an American diplomat who had debriefed Wilson. It was marked with a warning that the information might be unreliable. Leaders in Niger were not likely to admit to an American envoy that they'd violated United Nations sanctions by selling uranium to Saddam, it suggested.

If this document from an "American diplomat" who had debriefed Wilson is the same classified state department document from June of 2003 we are now talking about, Vice President Dick Cheney was one person who was aware that it was being alleged that "Wilson's wife" had sent him on the trip. Perhaps he didn't receive it until after Wilson's op-ed, but it seems unlikely since that wasn't published until two months after Cheney became aware of Wilson's charges. Is it reasonable to believe that he would have waitied that long to inquire about someone who was saying the intelligence was fixed in Iraq? I seriously doubt it.

If that's the case, then the idea that Libby and Rove didn't see it is preposterous.

I think that the oddest thing about this memo is that it was written in June of 2003. Surely, there were earlier real-time documents that reflect Wilson's debriefing upon his return? Why did they need to create this new memo at all? If Cheney really was unaware of Wilson's trip (and he may very well have been) why didn't they just send over the original debriefing instead of writing a new one?


And here's another piece of information in that article that I hadn't heard before:

Finally, last week, the truth started to emerge. At his press conference with President Bush, Prime Minister Blair said, "In case people should think that the whole idea of a link between Iraq and Niger was some invention, in the 1980s we know for sure that Iraq purchased round about 270 tons of uranium from Niger." The White House, for its part, had had enough and started what it's calling a "counteroffensive."

The first step was to declassify and release the portion of the NIE entitled "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction." Iraq, the intelligence document says, has been "vigorously trying to procure uranium ore" in Somalia and Congo as well as Niger. And there's more to come in the campaign for Bush's recovery. Congressional Republicans are joining the fight. The White House has brought back Mary Matalin, the Republican operative and ex-Cheney aide, to manage the media campaign. Maybe it will work. But the truth is, it shouldn't have been necessary at all.

The media campaign she was managing was the media campaign that also happened to smear Wilson. This was the period in which Karl Rove admits to pushing the story all over town --- reportedly claiming it is perfectly legitimate to ferociously discredit (smear) your political critics and use the entire Republican Noise Machine to do it. It appears that Mary Matalin was right in the middle of that.

We haven't seen much of her lately, have we?



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digby 7/16/2005 09:20:00 AM |

Friday, July 15, 2005

 
Canteloupe Eyes, Judy In Disguise

So, Judy actually met with an unnamed government official on July 8th, the same day Rove spoke with Novak? I don't know what it means, but it sure sounds interesting. Rove to Miller to Novak to Rove? He's known for using cut-outs.

But this, I think, is even more interesting:

In court papers filed earlier this month urging that Ms. Miller be jailed, Mr. Fitzgerald said that "the source in this case has waived confidentiality in writing."

George Freeman, an assistant general counsel of The New York Times Company, said Ms. Miller would not say who that source was. "She has never received," Mr. Freeman said, "what she considers an unambiguous, unequivocal and uncoerced waiver from anyone with whom she may have spoken."

Mr. Freeman declined to say what efforts, if any, Ms. Miller and her lawyers have made to obtain a satisfactory waiver.

Presumably, like Cooper's, Miller's lawyers don't feel it's a good idea to be contacting her source, if they even know who it is.

This statement from Miller's attorney strikes me as an explicit call for her source to give her an "unambiguous, unequivocal and uncoerced waiver." Maybe Judy isn't enjoying herself as much in jail as she thought she would.

So who's going to ask Karl and Scooter to give Judy this unambiguous, unequivocal and uncoerced waiver? Surely they will be happy to do it, right? Neither of them have anything to hide.

In fact, every person who previously signed a waiver in the matter should be asked to sign this explicit one, even if they never talked to her, in order to give the guilty party some cover so that Judy can testify and the public won't automatically know who she's been protecting. That seems fair, doesn't it?

Maybe Michael Isikoff could suggest this next time he's on TV. It might focus his mind on who's really responsible for Miller being in jail.



Oh and this business about the classified state department memo being the source is quite interesting. I wrote about this earlier in the week but there is a significant detail that's been changed since the early reports about it. It was evidently written in June of 2003, just a month before Wilson's op-ed --- probably at the behest of someone who was reading Nicolas Kristoff's columns about a trip to Africa by an unnamed ex-ambassador. (The story says it was written for Marc Grossman, under secretary of state for political affairs, but that may only mean he was the bureaucrat charged with getting a report.) All the original stories had it dated in 2002, which made me assume that it was the original state department report about Wilson's trip, written in real time. It wasn't. It was written a year and a half later based on the memory of a staffer who said he had been present at the meeting, a fact which the CIA disputed.

This memo being written just a month before the op-ed changes the equation. Who wrote it and who requested it? And did anyone in the White House see it before Wilson's op-ed was published? If so, who?

Update: Maybe this is why Miller's lawyers are starting to "ask" that her source give her a special waiver:

Lawyers in the CIA leaks investigation are concerned that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald may seek criminal contempt charges against New York Times reporter Judith Miller, a rare move that could significantly lengthen her time in jail.

[...]

While media coverage in recent days has focused on conversations that White House senior adviser Karl Rove had with reporters, two sources say Miller spoke with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, during the key period in July 2003 that is the focus of Fitzgerald's investigation.

The two sources -- one who is familiar with Libby's version of events, and the other with Miller's -- said the previously undisclosed conversation occurred a few days before Plame's name appeared in Robert Novak's syndicated column on July 14, 2003. Miller and Libby discussed former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband, who had recently alleged that the Bush administration had twisted intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, according to the source familiar with Libby's version.

But, according to the source, the subject of Wilson's wife did not come up.

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digby 7/15/2005 09:24:00 PM |

 
Anticipation

Unless something really exciting happens, I'm done for the day. But here's something to look forward to: Matt Cooper is writing an article about his Grand Jury appearance that probably has the White House boyz 'n grlz wetting their pants. I would guess it will come out on Sunday, maybe tomorrow in anticipation of the gasbags.

They are going to try to "Rather" him if says anything damaging. Rove's lawyer already laid the groundwork:

"By any definition, he burned Karl Rove," Luskin said of Cooper."

I still think that was probably not the smartest thing they ever did, but they probably thought they could intimidate Matt Cooper. And maybe they did. We'll see.

Swopa has some interesting thoughts on what Cooper might say and how it might affect the case. And if you haven't read Murray Waas' account of how this mysterious "lawyer who has been briefed on the case" came to talk with the NY Times and Washington Post, do so. It's fascinating.


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digby 7/15/2005 07:34:00 PM |

 
Awwwww

Attaturk has a special gift for Karl. Check it out.




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digby 7/15/2005 05:50:00 PM |

 
Joe And Dick On The Same Page

September, 2003

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "MEET THE PRESS")

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I had heard a report that the Iraqis had been trying to acquire uranium in Africa, Niger in particular.

I get a daily brief on my own each day before I meet with the president to go through the intel. And I ask lots of question. One of the questions I asked at that particular time about this, I said, "What do we know about this?" They take the question. He came back within a day or two and said, "This is all we know. There's a lot we don't know," end of statement. And Joe Wilson -- I don't know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back.

Here's what Wilson said in the op-ed on July 6th, that Ken Mehlman and half the Washington Press Corps is characterizing as "Cheney sent me to Africa:"

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake -- a form of lightly processed ore -- by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.

When Karl Rove was talking to Bob Novak on July 8th about Valerie Plame this is what Wilson had actually said. If Karl was "knocking down" a story it was one that he was making up in his head because Cheney himself backed up Wilson's story long after the brouhaha had hit the fan. Nothing in Cheney's statement contradicts what Wilson said, even about the disposition of the report:

I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.

Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.

All Karl and his hit squad had to do to "knock down" Wilson was say, "Cheney had some questions back in 2002, but he never saw any report on Wilson's trip and was unaware that the CIA had dispatched him. And frankly, after looking into the matter and seeing his report for the first time we can see why it wouldn't have been forwarded to the White House. Ambassador Wilsons himself says that there was nothing earth shattering in it. In retrospect he was on the right track but nobody knew that at the time. Fog of war and all that..."

But no. They couldn't try to be reasonable and put the thing into perspective. They had to immediately smear Wilson with this business about his wife. And a smear it was --- it was the main thrust of Rove's "evidence" in his discussion with Cooper and he admits that he at least confirmed this information to Novak. That's the mark of Rove.


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digby 7/15/2005 05:01:00 PM |

 
I don't think it's quite fair to condemn the whole program because of a single slip up...

Goddamn, no matter what else happens, if this sadist goes down, I'll be happy. General Geoffrey D. Miller aka General Geoff D. Ripper truly is one of the most malevolent pieces of garbage in the US Army and he really should be court martialed. Today it's been revealed the Ripper was actually meeting, apparently in secret, with Wolfowitz and Cambone and lied to congress about it. I am not surprised.

An Army general who has been criticized for his role in the treatment of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has contradicted his sworn congressional testimony about contacts with senior Pentagon officials.

Gen. Geoffrey Miller told the Senate Armed Services Committee in May 2004 that he had only filed a report on a recent visit to Abu Ghraib, and did not talk to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or his top aides about the fact-finding trip.

But in a recorded statement to attorneys three months later, Miller said he gave two of Rumsfeld's most senior aides - then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary for Intelligence Steve Cambone - a briefing on his visit and his subsequent recommendations.

"Following our return in the fall, I gave an outbrief to both Dr. Wolfowitz and Secretary Cambone," Miller said in the Aug. 21, 2004, statement to lawyers for guards accused of prisoner abuse, a transcript of which was obtained by the Chicago Tribune.

"I went over the report that we had developed and gave them a briefing on the intelligence activities, recommendations, and some recommendations on detention operations," Miller added.

Specific interrogation techniques, he said, were not discussed.

Miller's statement about the meeting, if true, suggests that officials at the very top of the Pentagon may have been more involved in monitoring activities at the prison than previously disclosed. Abu Ghraib was later at the center of a scandal surrounding prisoner abuse, which has led to punishments for soldiers.

Here's the thing. After artillery officer Miller showed such pluck and spunk down at Gitmo with his novel interrogation techniques, they sent him to Iraq to see what he could do. See, the Iraqis weren't behaving like the grateful liberated people they were expected to be. He made an evaluation and then sent his "best guys" from Gitmo to Abu Ghraib to implement his techniques. We have recently had it confirmed that many of the techniques authorized by Miller at Gitmo were of the same ilk as those captured in the pictures at Abu Ghraib.

And in a bizarro world decision worthy of Wil E Coyote, after the scandal broke they sent Miller in to "straighten things out."

All of this has been known for some time. I wrote back on May 29th, 2004:

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.

That not hyperbole. Abu Ghraib did us greivous harm around the world and probably helped al Qaeda more than any single act we've done. And General Geoff D Ripper was the go-to guy.

It looks now as if he was doing all this with the express knowledge and permission of Rumsfeld's top brass and presumably Rumsfeld himself. (Remember Rumsfeld weighed in on "interrogation" techniques in some detail --- "why shouldn't they have to stand for longer than four hours, I do!") This is not surprising either.

These guys picked a sadistic amateur to run both Gitmo and Abu Ghraib because his predecessors were insufficiently willing to "take the gloves off." This is in keeping with their over-arching theory about how to fight the War on Terror. It's worked out awfully well.

Today, we know that Bush administration loose lips are sinking ships all over the place, and their zeal to fear monger at home combined with their desire to treat the wogs with maximum ferocity has resulted in the US actively encouraging terrorism. It's a fucking miracle we've escaped another hit, and it's no thanks to anything these clowns have done.



Update: Lest anyone get the idea that I do not condemn the torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib on a moral basis because I did not explicitly say so in this piece, please feel free to check these posts in which I discuss torture in great detail in moral,ethical,practical and strategic terms. I regret not mentioning in this particular post that I think torture is immoral. Consider that oversight corrected.



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digby 7/15/2005 01:55:00 PM |

 
Toadys

...Mr. Rove and other administration officials had a legitimate interest in rebutting Mr. Wilson's inflated claims -- including the notion that he had been dispatched to Niger at Mr. Cheney's behest. It's in that context, judging from Mr. Cooper's e-mail, that Mr. Rove appears to have brought up Ms. Plame's role. Whether Mr. Rove or others behaved in a way that amounted to criminal, malicious or even merely sleazy behavior will turn on what they knew about Ms. Plame's employment. Were they aware she was a covert agent? Did they recklessly fail to consider that before revealing her involvement? How they learned about Ms. Plame also will matter: Did the information come from government sources or outside parties?

None of that matters. Her cover was blown and Rove participated in it. I don't care if he thought he was saving the world from an invasion from aliens, his act, not his motive should be the primary concern of a white house that is in the middle of what they tell us every day is a global war on terror. He could have had the best reasons in the world, but he either fucked up or he committed a crime, neither of which should be tolerated at his level. We know right now, at this minute, that at a minimum he fucked up.

Do you think that in the private sector if a person in Rove's position of trust and power had "accidentally" told the press about a secret patent or a new formula that he'd be allowed to keep his job? Would he be trusted going forward with information about patents and secret formulas? Why is this so hard to understand? What Rove did may or may not have been a criminal offense. But it definitely was a firing offense.

And what's this bullshit about "Mr. Rove appears to have brought up Ms. Plame's role." "Appears" nothing. He clearly did bring up Ms Plame's role, and for reasons that are very hard to make sense out of. And just today, the WaPo itself reports that Rove admits that he confirmed that fact to Bob Novak. There's no appearance about it. Rove admits it.


Update: MediaMatters has a thorough debuning of all these RNC spin points masquerading as an editorial here.
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digby 7/15/2005 12:54:00 PM |

 
Spikey's Threat

I woke up this morning thinking about Michael Isikoff, which isn't my favorite thing to think about first thing in the morning. Last night he told Jon Stewart that Pat Fitzgerald had better have something really, really strong to justify this investigation taking the turns its taken. It had better be about something really important --- it had better be about national security. He was quite fierce about it.

I didn't hear the rest because I threw the remote at the TV and it mercifully turned off.

The idea that Michael Isikoff, of all people, is laying down the gauntlet --- warning Fitzgerald that if he's thinking of prosecuting someone for perjury, say, or obstuction of justice, he will lead the chorus denouncing him as an overzealous prosecutor --- is stunning. I don't know what is in the Chardonnay in DC but it's causing a lot of people to have severe problems remembering things --- and seeing themselves in the mirror.

Michael Isikoff was practically Ken Starr's right hand man in the media. He performed at only a slightly less partisan level than Drudge or Steno Sue Schmidt. He admits in his book that he became convinced that the president treated women badly and therefore needed to be exposed. He didn't seem to think that throwing a duly elected president from office for lying about a private matter was overzealous in the least. He was on that bandwagon from the very beginning and one of the guys who drove it.

Michael Isikoff did not go on television and say that the punishment didn't fit the crime or that Starr should have had something really, really important to justify his 70 million dollar investigation. Indeed, he did exactly the opposite.

Isikoff has done good work on this story. He continues to do good work. But apparently he doesn't see outing CIA agents as serious as presidential fellatio. I suspect that holds true for the entire press corpse. They haven't really had the fire in the belly for this one, have they?

Isikoff was a fine help to the Bush administration last night and I hope it makes up for that unfortunate Koran in the toilet business. He set the frame for indictments to be seen as unreasonable if don't show national security was compromised. If Fitzgerald indicts members of the administration for lying or covering their tracks, it will not be taken well by the king of the kewl kidz. I have no doubt that the lemmings of the independent press corpse will fall into line as well, in the unfortunate event that Karl Rove is indicted for perjury or obstruction. After all it's not as if he's anything like that mean bitch Martha Stewart or that cruel lothario Bill Clinton. Those people really deserved it.



Update:

I realize that Isikoff was talking about the heinous, heinous crime of sending poor Judy Miller to jail. But I don't really think that should be the standard by which a prosecutor should decide that only proveable crimes of national security should be investigated.

The point here is that this case is intrinsically about the press. Fitzgerald wasn't conducting a fishing expedition to find out what Judy and Matt might know about a potential crime --- he wanted them to testify because they may have been an element of the crime itself. This is a very important distinction.

It's nice that Mikey and others are such zealous defenders of the freedom of the press. But freedom of the press is a right. Serving our democracy by giving the public the information it needs to govern itself is their responsibility. It is very hard to see how Judy's martyrdom can be seen as a pure unalloyed matter of principle when(as Stewart pointed out) the press' privilege seems to have been used pretty exclusively these last few years to protect their access to powerful government officials who want to use them to spread official lies.

I compare the coverage and attitude of the press covering this investigation to the shrill and breathless reporting of the Clinton years because it's instructive. Never once did Isikoff express reservations about the non-stop partisan character assasination, the invasion of privacy, the perjury trap or the clear overstepping by the prosecutor as he "investigated" whether Bill Clinton lied about sex in a case that had already been dismissed --- all of which were betrayals of principle just as important as the reporter's privilege in my mind. But because this case involves a member of the press caught in a prosecutors net, suddenly he isn't so sanguine about charging people with the crimes of lying or covering-up. That's just not a good enough reason to put one of them on the hot seat. He and all of his brethren salivated at the idea that our democracy would be weakened by the partisan removal of a duly elected president, but let Judy go to jail and the hinges are coming off the nation.

I am reserving judgment on Judy's status in the investigation because I have no facts one way or the other. I suspect it is more complicated than just protecting Karl Rove or someone else, but I don't really know. I do know that she is the type of person who relishes drama, so I have a feeling that this little sojourn in lock-up isn't exactly traumatizing for her. She's already compared herself to soldiers in Iraq (where she wore a military uniform for god's sake!) I'm figuring she'll soon be saying she's like MLK in the Birmingham jail. I think ole Judy can handle doing the time. In fact I think she relishes it.

Mickey and his friends can stop worrying about that part of the case and worry about why this government has lied to the nation repeatedly and blown over 200 billion dollars on an illegal and unnecessary war when terrorists are blowing shit up al