Hullabaloo

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

 
Confiding in Vic

It looks like DC is just crawling with wingnuts claiming to have spotted Elvis er... claiming that Joseph Wilson told them that his wife was CIA while they were waiting to go on one News show or another. Oddly, none of them ever came forward to support poor little Scooter and Karl during their ordeal. How selfish of them.

From last July, here's a friend of Victor Davis Hanson, regaling the Freepers with lurid stories of Wilson's crass materialism and bragging about his hot blonde wife in the make-up room:

Based upon a personal conversation (we were in a small group eating; it was NOT an "off the record") I had with eminent historian Victor Davis Hanson (we were at a luncheon table together during a trip to Europe), it appeared entirely possible that Joe Wilson himself was the (or one source, if not the original one) possible source in revealing his own wife's status as a CIA agent or employee.

Victor Davis Hanson (Wilson presumably knew Victor Davis Hanson wrote regularly for NRO (National Review Online), had done OpEds for the Wall street Journal, and other publications, and had his own Website with a widespread following) said he (VDH) & Joe Wilson were both in the same "Green Room" before a televised debate-discussion on Iraq, etc. and Joe first warned the TV make-up person not to get powder on his $14,000 Rolex watch, then he bragged to Victor about several things (possessions and trips to Aspen, etc.), like his expensive car (I think it was a Mercedes), and then bragged about his beautiful wife who, Joe Wilson said (braggingly) was a CIA operative.

I asked Victor Davis Hanson Why he didn't write up this account.(?) He replied that Joe Wilson would probably simply deny it, since only he (VDH) & Joe Wilson were in the Green Room together before the broadcast.

Fitzgerald is going to have to round up every wingnut in Washington. Seems they've all been holding out on him, allowing him to spend years investigating and hundreds of thousands of dollars and now he's going to have to start from scratch. After all, he is under the impression that Wilson's CIA status was classified and not known outside intelligence circles. Apparently, Wilson spilled his guts with uncommon frequency in the Green Rooms of television studios.

For those of you who need a primer on the hard, masculine, manliness of the brave Victor Dave, (who was evidently much too busy tucking into his terrine of duck confit whilst entertaining his little friends with insider tales of crass nouveau riches clods to step up and help out his pals Scoot and Turdblossom) here's James Wolcott on the subject.

By the way, did I ever tell you that I once heard Dick Cheney recite the codes to the nuclear football over tacos at Michael Ledeen's house? He did. And while he was doing it he was picking off the neighborhood cats with a bb gun and bragging about his three-way with Lynn and John Bolton. I never said anything before because he would just deny it. We were alone together in the bathroom at the time.


Crooks and Liars has a whole list of interesting links on the Valelly/McIntyre Swift boat smear.



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digby 11/08/2005 07:15:00 PM |

 
Whole Lotta Love

Wow. CNN is reporting that Trent Lott just said that the Washington Post leak was probably perpetrated by a Republican Senator! Apparently, the gulag was discussed at the Republican-Senator-only meeting last week in which Cheney begged them to back-off the anti-torture policy.

Lott said, "we have met the enemy and he is us." Man a majority leader scorned is fearsome creature, ain't he?

I do find it fascinating that Cheney was discussing this Gulag opernly in front of the GOP caucus after they had just recently voted 90-0 for the anti-torture amendment. Seems old Dick is a little slow on the uptake. He didn't learn a thing from his earlier leaking campaign, did he?

Update: Think Progress has the video.


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digby 11/08/2005 12:05:00 PM |

 
Losing On Defense

As Dear Leader would say, I think it's a "faahbulous" idea to hold hearings into how the Washington Post found out that we have established an illegal gulag (yes, a gulag) in countries around the world where we are holding and torturing prisoners indefinitely and with impugnity. I hope it creates headlines every single day for months as we explore this issue of how reporters found out that we are behaving in an illegal and immoral fashion along the lines of the Soviet Union. We need to get to the bottom of how such a thing happened and if it requires days and weeks of media coverage discussing how we torture and imprison people in foreign countries, so be it.

This Republican implosion is really becoming interesting to watch. These people lose their wits when they are forced to play defense. They think they are being clever and "turning the tables" on the Democrats by holding hearings into a leak but they apparently don't understand that they are playing right into the Democratic narrative about Republican secrecy, lies and incompetence.

As Terry at Nitpicker says:

If Republicans think this is a good idea for the political health of their party, they're stupider than I've ever thought they were. First, they're all but admitting to the world that we do have such sites, especially when someone on the Hill tells Drudge the leak "damaged national security."

More importantly, we're finally going to get to talk about issues that we should have been talking about all along. The Geneva Convention debate will be renewed. Dick Cheney's walk on the "dark side" will show. Eventually, leaders in countries that haven't avoided the International Criminal Court will go on trial and save their own asses by ratting out the Bushies.

We'll probably also get to see a real First Amendment debate, which will demonstrate just how ridiculous Judith Miller's claims of higher moral purpose were. The honesty of journalism "shield law" advocates like Sen. Dick Lugar and Rep. Mike Pence will likewise be tested.

This could be an all-out, to-the-mattresses fight over the values that we Americans truly hold dear and, in the process, we might even save our country's soul.

digby 11/08/2005 11:09:00 AM |

 
General Wacko and General Crackpot

Via Americablog: I see that the GOP attack machine is swift-boating Joe Wilson, saying that he casually spilled his wife's CIA status in the FOX greenroom back in 2002. I kid you not. They got two wingnut ex-generals to say that Wilson told them about his wife before they were about to go on television.

I suspect they might get a visit from the FBI about this because the last I heard, there was still an ongoing investigation into the matter of how reporters found out about Plame's employment. Patrick Fitzgerald might just be interested to know why these fellows haven't come forward before. After all, the story sounds a little bit wierd considering the fact that Joe never let it slip to his own friends and neighbors that Valerie was CIA, yet he supposedly blabbed to a couple of total strangers in the greenroom of a news network.

See, Fitz will wonder if after they heard this juicy little nugget about about a CIA spy married to an ex-Ambassador that they, in turn, told a FOX news reporter who might have then slipped it to Karl or Scooter sometime later. After all, both of those guys have very faulty memories and have said that they don't remember exactly where they heard about Plame.

I think somebody needs to get on the horn and let Pat Fitzgerald know that there are a couple of witnesses going around on right wing talk radio who could blow his case wide open. He needs to get the FBI out to talk to them right away.


Just in case anyone is wondering about these two guys' political orientation, here's an excerpt of the Publisher's Weekly review of these two patriots' Regnery book called "Endgame: The Blueprint For Victory in The War On Terror"

As the authors would have it, North Korea must dismantle its nuclear program or face U.S. invasion. Syria, unless it stops supporting terrorism and coughs up the Iraqi WMDs the authors say it’s hiding, should also be invaded. Saudi Arabia should be nudged toward a diversified economy and political reform, but if Islamic radicals take over, it too must be invaded. Iran, too big to invade, should be slapped with an embargo and naval blockade,[that view is no longer operative. Iran should now be tactically nuked -- ed] while Pakistan should be enticed with aid packages into curbing its nuclear proliferation and cracking down on the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The authors’ ambitious schedule of ultimatums and conquests leads them to focus almost exclusively on the U.S. military, for which they recommend the Rumsfeld doctrine of light, mobile forces, supplemented by additional weapons spending.

.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Considering what we know about Dick Cheney, it is not surprising that these two fellows would come to his defense. Let's consider General Paul Vallely, Fox news analyst and certified Strangelovian freakshow. From Newshounds November 2004:

Colmes questioned the wisdom of a Judeo/Christian holy war against Muslims. "That's what's going on," Vallely said. "If you don't understand that, then you don't get it."

But that's not General Vallely's claim to fame. He is known for a paper he wrote with a military intelligence officer named Michael Aquino in the late 1980's called From PSYOP to Mindwar: The Psychology of Victory. Aquino is also the founder of a Satanic cult called "The Temple of Set" which has had many run-ins with the law regarding satanic pedophile rings on military bases. I still kid you not. You can find a copy of this paper on the Temple web-site. He founded the cult in the mid-1970's more than a decade before he wrote this paper with our friend Vallely. I'm not big on guilt by association -- but really.

Vallely and Aquino's views are a bit eccentric, to say the least:

In its strategic context, MindWar must reach out to friends, enemies, and neutrals alike across the globe - neither through primitive "battlefield" leaflets and loudspeakers of PSYOP nor through the weak, imprecise, and narrow effort of psychotronics - but through the media possessed by the United States which have the capabilities to reach virtually all people on the face of the Earth. These media are, of course, the electronic media -- television and radio. State of the art developments in satellite communication, video recording techniques, and laser and optical transmission of broadcasts made possible a penetration of the minds of the worlds such as would have been inconceivable just a few years ago. Like the sword Excalibur, we have but to reach out and seize this tool; and it can transform the world for us if we have the courage and the integrity to civilization with it. If we do not accept Excalibur, then we relinquish our ability to inspire foreign cultures with our morality. If they then desire moralities unsatisfactory to us, we have no choice but to fight them on a more brutish level.

[...]

Unlike PSYOP, MindWar has nothing to do with deception or even with "selected" - and therefore misleading - truth. Rather it states a whole truth that, if it does not now exist, will be forced into existence by the will of the United States. The examples of Kennedy's ultimatum to Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis and Hitler's stance at Munich might be cited. A MindWar message does not have to fit conditions of abstract credibility as do PSYOP there; its source makes it credible.

[...]

"MindWar must target all participants to be effective. It must not only weaken the enemy; it must strengthen the United States. It strengthens the United States by denying enemy propaganda access to our people, and by explaining and emphasizing to our people the rationale for our national interest in a specific war."

As Rigorous Intuition notes here, that sounds remarkably like the comment made to journalist Ron Susskind about "creating reality:"

We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

This "Mindwar" paper evidently made the rounds in the military when it was published and informed a lot of wingnut thinking. What are the odds that Sec Def Cheney wasn't impressed? He's the guy who wanted to use tactical nukes use during Gulf War One, after all.

Mcinerney is only slightly less kooky than Vallely. He is heavily involved in neocon circles, particularly the Iran Policy Group with more famous notables like Gaffney, Ledeen and Pipes. He is also an influential board member of NetStar, a very interesting global communications company. Jim Stanton at the Agonist reported:

At the Intelcon blast held this past February, McInerney chaired a panel on Securing Intelligence Networks. As a director of NetStar Systems, that subject matter is an important part of his job. According to NetStar's website, it is "a fast-growing Virginia corporation with headquarters in Vienna, Virginia. It was founded in 1998 and most of our employees are cleared at the Top Secret or higher levels. NetStar is growing rapidly in the Intel and DOD sectors and has provided numerous solutions and staff to many of the Intelligence agencies in the DC metro area." Clients include the NSA, CIA, DIA, FBI, DHS and the Office of Naval Intelligence. NetStar is a member of the National Military Intelligence Association (NMIA). Most of NetStar's clients were at Intelcon 2005 including General Jim Williams, USA (Ret.), former director of DIA, and NMIA's current director.

[...]

"He [Bush] doesn't have any choice [but to attack Iran because] he understands [the Iranians] are the king of terror right now. They are striving for nuclear weapons that can get into the hands of terrorists and then it's too late. B-2 stealth bombers, armed with the huge penetrating bombs commonly called bunker busters, would be able to pierce Iran's aging air defenses and hit 20 or more sites. They have not updated that very, very old air defense system. McInerney said that as a colonel in 1977 he went to Iran and conducted a war exercise against various Iranian targets during the rule of the United States' ally, the Shah of Iran. They were not very good then, and they have clearly just gotten worse...I can tell you from my personal experience we would have no problem there."

Vallely is also a major neocon player. He was quoted back in February saying:

"Negotiations will not work," said Maj. Gen. (ret.) Paul Vallely, chairman of the military committee of the neoconservative Center for Security Policy, who described the Iranian regime as a "house of cards."

And who else but Dick Cheney was right in the middle of all this:

... the voices in favor of an "engagement" policy are being drowned out by crescendo of calls to adopt "regime change" as U.S. policy.

The latest such urging was released here Thursday by the Iran Policy Committee (IPC), a group headed by a former National Security Council staffer Ray Tanter, several retired senior military officers, and a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

The 30-page document, "U.S. Policy Options for Iran" by former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Clare Lopez, appears to reflect the views of the administration's most radical hawks among the Pentagon's civilian leadership and in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

It was Cheney who launched the latest bout of saber-rattling when he told a radio interviewer last month that Tehran was "right at the top of the list" of the world's trouble spots and that Israel may strike at suspected Iranian nuclear sites even before the U.S.

These are all extremely creepy people involved in all kinds of neocon cloak and dagger fantasies. Just like Dick Cheney, whose idea of military leadership was gleaned from watching movies and TV series. They are part of the crackpot Cheney cabal.

These two men specifically are Jack D. Ripper and Buck Turgidson come to life. I think Pat Fitzgerald needs to talk to them. Immediately.



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digby 11/08/2005 10:27:00 AM |

 
Sickening

Reuters:.

U.S. forces in Iraq have used incendiary white phosphorus against civilians and a firebomb similar to napalm against military targets, Italian state-run broadcaster RAI reported on Tuesday.

A RAI documentary showed images of bodies recovered after a November 2004 offensive by U.S. troops on the town of Falluja, which it said proved the use of white phosphorus against men, women and children who were burned to the bone.

"I do know that white phosphorus was used," said Jeff Englehart in the RAI documentary, which identified him as a former soldier in the U.S. 1st Infantry Division in Iraq.

The U.S. military says white phosphorus is a conventional weapon and says it does not use any chemical arms.

"Burned bodies. Burned children and burned women," said Englehart, who RAI said had taken part in the Falluja offensive. "White phosphorus kills indiscriminately."

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said he did not recall white phosphorus being used in Falluja. "I do not recall the use of white phosphorus during the offensive operations in Falluja in the fall of 2004," Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan said.

An incendiary device, white phosphorus is used by the military to conceal troop movements with smoke, mark targets or light up combat areas. The use of incendiary weapons against civilians has been banned by the Geneva Convention since 1980.

The United States did not sign the relevant protocol to the convention, a U.N. official in New York said.

This report may be wrong, or a malicious attempt to make the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld military look truly monstrous.* But given everything else that we know about - Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, the black sites, the murders and "renditions" and refusal to abide by any law other than the president's will - I can only assume this is probably true. And note: white phosphorous, an incendiary, is classified as a conventional, ie non-chemical, weapon. Well, since ketchup's been a vegetable since the Reagan administration, I suppose napalm-like substances can be classified as little worse than rubber darts.

What will it take to stop these horrors? When will this country demand, with one voice, that torture and atrocities committed by the US stop, and stop, now, today?


*For the benefit of the rightwingers amongst us, who assume that those of us opposed to Bush/Iraq hate the military and think all soldiers are sadistic beasts, I don't believe the majority of American soldiers behave like the Abu Ghraib torturers. Obviosuly.

But I do believe that soldiers must follow orders from their higher ups and are often in no position to question what may be morally questionable orders. The sadistic beasts are the ones who condoned and ordered atrocities, not the soldiers who have been placed in an untenable position and cannot refuse without risking court martial or perhaps even summary execution.
tristero 11/08/2005 09:50:00 AM |

 
Is Crucifixion Legal Under Bush And Cheney?

Jane Mayer, who along with Jill Abramson wrote Strange Justice, a definitive account of how Anita Hill was smeared and ridiculed during the Clarence Thomas hearing, has written a searing account of the death of a prisoner in Iraq.

Jamadi’s bruises, [a forensic pathologist who examined the case records] said, were no doubt painful, but they were not life-threatening. Baden went on, “He also had injuries to his ribs. You don’t die from broken ribs. But if he had been hung up in this way [with his hands tied behind him in a painful position known as a "Palestinian Hanging"] and had broken ribs, that’s different.” In his judgment, “asphyxia is what he died from—as in a crucifixion.”

As in a crucifixion. At the hands of Americans. And it may not be against the law anymore:

The Bush Administration has resisted disclosing the contents of two Justice Department memos that established a detailed interrogation policy for the Pentagon and the C.I.A. A March, 2003, classified memo was “breathtaking,” the same source said. The document dismissed virtually all national and international laws regulating the treatment of prisoners, including war-crimes and assault statutes, and it was radical in its view that in wartime the President can fight enemies by whatever means he sees fit. According to the memo, Congress has no constitutional right to interfere with the President in his role as Commander-in-Chief, including making laws that limit the ways in which prisoners may be interrogated. Another classified Justice Department memo, issued in August, 2002, is said to authorize numerous “enhanced” interrogation techniques for the C.I.A. These two memos sanction such extreme measures that, even if the agency wanted to discipline or prosecute agents who stray beyond its own comfort level, the legal tools to do so may no longer exist.

So, is the "right to crucify" behind the objections of the Bush administration to McCain's bill banning torture overseas? Someone should ask Scott McClellan. Today.
tristero 11/08/2005 01:33:00 AM |

Monday, November 07, 2005

 
This is Not A Good Man

Kevin Drum says:

As a wise man said back in January 2003 regarding Cheney and his curiously enduring reputation for competence even in the face of mountains of contrary evidence, "his terrible judgment will, at some point, become impossible even for the Beltway crowd not to see." Looking back, perhaps historians will say that November 2005 was when they finally saw it.

I agree. It's finally coming into focus that every single one of this administration's so-called grown-ups are idiots. There were people who knew that the avuncular Dick Cheney was something of a nut, but nobody believed them. He just seemed so darned competent compared to the callow Junior, there was no need to look any further.

Frances Fitzgerald pointed out back in 2002 that Cheney was a bit of freak, in her fascinating article in the New York review of Books called "Bush and the World:"

In “A World Transformed,” the memoir that he and Bush senior published in 1998, [Brent] Scowcroft makes it clear that while all Bush senior's top advisers had different perspectives, the fundamental division lay between Defense Secretary Richard Cheney and everyone else. By his account, and by those of others in the administration, Cheney never trusted Gorbachev. In 1989 Cheney maintained that Gorbachev's reforms were largely cosmetic and that, rather than engage with the Soviet leader, the US should stand firm and keep up cold war pressures. In September 1991 Cheney argued that the administration should take measures to speed the breakup of the Soviet Union—even at the risk of encouraging violence and incurring long-term Russian hostility. He opposed the idea, which originated with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell, that the US should withdraw its tactical nuclear weapons from Europe and South Korea. As a part of the preparations for the Gulf War he asked Powell for a study on how small nuclear weapons might be used against Iraqi troops in the desert.

The man is clearly a fool and always has been. Larry Johnson wrote about Cheney and torture today over on TPM cafe and mentions that the real CIA guys aren't all that into torture because it doesn't work. He suggests that Cheney and his minions got their ideas about all this from the movies.

That certainly does ring true to me. Here's an old favorite, that's amazingly illustrative of the incredible shallowness of Big Time, the man who was supposed to help little Junior get over his lack of foreign policy sophistication:

Following one White House meeting at which he'd asked for more time and more troops, Stormin' Norman reports; Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell called to warn the Desert Storm commander that he was being loudly compared, by a top administration official, to George McClellan. "My God," the official supposedly complained. "He's got all the force he needs. Why won't he just attack?" Schwarzkopf notes that the unnamed official who'd made the comment "was a civilian who knew next to nothing about military affairs, but he'd been watching the Civil War documentary on public television and was now an expert."

And then, twenty pages later, Schwarzkopf casually drops the information that he got an inspirational gift from Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney right before the air war finally got under way. Cheney was presenting a gift to a military man, and he chose something with an appropriate theme: "(A) complete set of videotapes of Ken Burns's PBS series, The Civil War."

But that wasn't the only gift that Dick Cheney had for Norman Schwarzkopf. Having figured out that the general was being too cautious with his fourth combat command in three decades of soldiering, Cheney got his staff busy and began presenting Schwarzkopf with his own ideas about how to fight the Iraqis: What if we parachute the 82nd Airborne into the far western part of Iraq, hundreds of miles from Kuwait and totally cut off from any kind of support, and seize a couple of missile sites, then line up along the highway and drive for Baghdad? Schwarzkopf charitably describes the plan as being "as bad as it could possibly be... But despite our criticism, the western excursion wouldn't die: three times in that week alone Powell called with new variations from Cheney's staff. The most bizarre involved capturing a town in western Iraq and offering it to Saddam in exchange for Kuwait." (Throw in a Pete Rose rookie card?) None of this Walter Mitty posturing especially surprised Schwarzkopf, who points out that he'd already known Cheney as "one of the fiercest cold warriors in Congress.

Remember the adoring crowds and nearly hysterical screaming for this kook during last years election? What in gawd's name were those people drinking?



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digby 11/07/2005 06:47:00 PM |

 
Ever Rightward

It is a wierd goddam day when Elliott "El Mozote" Abrams turns out to be the dove in the administration. (Check out Elliott's link there if you aren't familiar with his litany of crimes.) In fact, I can hardly believe it. It's either a testimony to how radical Bush and Cheney really are or how mellow and peaceful Abrams has become. I'm pretty confident it's the former.

I remember how dumb and scary I thought Reagan was. Compared to Junior, he was Einstein. What will they shove at us next?

What "compassionate conservative" are they going to foist on this country to take it even further to the right than we can imagine today? I'm thinking it has to be a Dobson or a Robertson Armageddonist. There's nowhere else to go.



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digby 11/07/2005 05:10:00 PM |

 
The Worst Of The Worst

Sen. Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said his vote against the ban doesn't mean he favors torture. He rejected Durbin's comments as ''not really relevant to what we are trying to do to detain and interrogate the worst of the worst so that we can save American lives.''

Roberts said that success with detention and interrogation depends on the detainee's fear of the unknown. He suggested that passing a law and putting U.S. policies into a manual would tell detainees too much about what to expect.

''As long as you're following the Constitution and there's no torture and no inhumane treatment, I see nothing wrong with saying here is the worst of the worst. We know they have specific information to save American lives in terrorist attacks around the world. That's what we're talking about,'' Roberts said.

People like Pat Roberts make that fatuous argument all the time. They always say we only capture the "worst of the worst" whom soldiers and CIA agents KNOW beforehand have information that they stubbornly refuse to share (unless we make him sit on an exhaust pipe causing softball size blisters on their backside.) We don't need to apply any rules or laws because they deserve whatever they get. Of course, we don't torture and wouldn't dream of it and we always follow the constitution. But when we do it's only because they are the worst of the worst.

Once again I'm drawn to ponder why we have all this pesky due process here at home if it is possible to know before hand that someone is undoubtedly guilty so whatever punishment they are premptively given is only what they deserve. In the US, we have cops and prosecutors who investigate in scrupulous detail before somebody is tried. We go through a whole lot of gyrations weighing the evidence and making arguments according to laws that have been made to ensure we come as close an approximation of the truth as we can find. We do this because it turns out that sometimes all those cops and prosecutors make mistakes or are corrupt or are anxious to catch a fearsome killer so they get the wrong man.

It's quite cumbersome, but civilization determined some time ago that not only are torture and cruel and unusual punishment wrong --- and it has been millenia since anyone has argued that condoning the torture, punishment or imprisonment of an innocent man is anything but immoral. Yet, that is essentially what this argument does. It must condone the imprisonment and torture of innocent people. It is impossible that we are always capturing only the worst of the worst. In fact, we know that we aren't. Unless Senator Roberts is even dumber than he sounds, he has decided that torturing the occasional innocent person is just collateral damage.

The military code of justice, the Geneva conventions and the army code of conduct have all been designed to keep some sort of due process alive even in wartime so that we don't descend into depravity and chaos. They are designed to keep us moored to the idea of justice and morality in the midst of violence. It makes it possible for us to explain what we are doing -- to ourselves and others.

I recall during the great Clinton panty raid, the constant refrain about "what will we tell the children?" Everyone was concerned about the moral health of the next generation. How in the hell are people explaining to their children why we need a system of justice when we don't need it to figure out who is "the worst of the worst." How do you explain that torture is wrong except when it isn't?


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digby 11/07/2005 10:39:00 AM |

 
Republican Albatross

Laura Rozen calls out Pat Roberts and she tells quite a tale.

Still, I think it's important to remember that we are pursuing phase II of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation for purely political purposes. We will get nothing substantive out of it as long as Senator Pat Roberts is the Chairman.

In Phase I you can see that whoever actually wrote the thing for the Republicans is quite skilled with language (perhaps they hired the romance novelist who penned the Starr report). In this case, it wasn't bodice ripping sexual adventure, it was a masterful work of subliminal innuendo. The Democrats were either too lazy or too weak to fight this word for the word they way they should have done. Without the underlying information on which the conclusions were based, there is no way to understand what the hell really went on.

This is from the main body of the report, not the separate Hatch, Bond, Roberts addendum hatchet job:

( )Some 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 activity." This was just one day before CPD sent a cable DELETED 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 sounds innocuous. However, when you read the report carefully you realize the only time that any person is directly quoted it's done to create a certain impression. In that paragraph we see that Wilson "offered up" her husband to investigate a "crazy report." This shows that she has an agenda. Here's another example:

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.

Notice they don't quote Valerie Wilson there, only the INR analyst. They do not reveal what she said about the "idea to dispatch him" in this passage, but leave it hanging there, unrefuted. There is plenty of information in the report itself and elsewhere from which to support a different view of events, but the report is subtly slanted throughout to give the impression that Plame sent her husband to Niger to knock down a claim that didn't fit with her pre-conceived beliefs. (Of course, even if that were true, she would have been right. The Iraq Survey Group report put that one to bed.)

It happens throughout the otherwise rather dry, difficult report. By using selective quotes to promote a certain point of view while dissents are buried in expository language, they cleverly give weight to their conclusions while pretending to be even-handed. We can expect more of this for Phase II. (I have little faith that Jay Rockefeller can deal with this any more effectively now than he did before.)

Pat Roberts is the worst possible choice to be the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He is a partisan first and last. His predecessor, Richard Shelby of Alabama was no moderate (and he has his own problems with disseminating classified information) but he operated independently of the White House and took his job seriously. In combination with Bob Graham on the Democratic side, they were able to maintain at least some bi-partisan integrity. There is no integrity on the Republican side of the Intelligence Committee at present.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't press for the second phase of the investigation and more. We are about to go into an election year in which it may be possible to take control of the congress if we play our cards right. A huge part of that is laying this cover-up at the feet of these congressional enablers as much as the White House. They have been covering for the Dick Cheney show for years now and it's time for the public to hold them responsible.

Here's an early example of Roberts doing a bang up job of congressional oversight, from March of 2003:

Sarah Ross, a spokeswoman for Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts, said the committee will look into the forgery, but Roberts believes it is inappropriate for the FBI to investigate at this point.

The documents indicated that Iraq tried to by uranium from Niger, the West African nation that is the third-largest producer of mined uranium, Niger's largest export. The documents had been provided to U.S. officials by a third country, which has not been identified.

A U.S. government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said it was unclear who first created the documents. The official said American suspicions remain about an Iraq-Niger uranium connection because of other, still-credible evidence that the official refused to specify.

In December, the State Department used the information to support its case that Iraq was lying about its weapons programs. But on March 7, Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents were forgeries.

Rockefeller said U.S. worries about Iraqi nuclear weapons were not based primarily on the documents, but "there is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq."

Then in November of 2003, look how they handled reports that the Democrats wanted to investigate how the White House used the intelligence. Frist had one of his patented hissy fits:

Angry about a leaked Democratic memo, the Republican leadership of the Senate yesterday took the unusual step of canceling all business of the committee investigating prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) called on the author of the memo -- which laid out a possible Democratic strategy to extend the investigation to include the White House and executive branch -- to "identify himself or herself . . . disavow this partisan attack in its entirety" and deliver "a personal apology" to Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence.

Only if those steps are taken, Frist said, "will it be possible for the committee to resume its work in an effective and bipartisan manner -- a manner deserving of the confidence of other members of the Senate and the executive branch."

Roberts followed Frist on the floor and said that unless the Democratic members "properly" address the issue, "I am afraid that it will be impossible to return to 'business as usual' in the committee."

A committee meeting scheduled for yesterday was canceled, and none has been scheduled for next week, according to a senior committee staff member.

I would suggest that we use their own language against them instead of against ourselves, for once. Who are the real spineless politicians in Washington, after all? Is it the opposition Democrats who flailed unsuccessfully at a president who says that he'd prefer to be a dictator? Or are the GOP Senators and Congressmen who have spent the last five years as servile yes men and women to every single insane thing the president asked of them the real wimps in all this?

They have covered and excused and enabled and supported President Bush and Vice President Cheney no matter what cockamamie acheme they came up with at the expense of their duty as an equal branch of government. What kind of mealy-mouthed little bed-wetters are these Republicans who stood by while this president took this country down the path to perdition.

George W. Bush would be nothing today if it weren't for the unified unquestioning support of the GOP congress of the United States. We need to make sure that he's hung like a dead soaring eagle around the necks of every single Republican running for office next year. It isn't just Codpiece and his mad dog Cheney. It's the legislative branch who checked their consciences and their responsibilities at the doors to become brown-nosing sycophants for the most incompetent, radical, corrupt administration in history. It's their Party and they can cry if they want to ---- but it won't do any good.



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digby 11/07/2005 07:52:00 AM |

Friday, November 04, 2005

 
Back On The Chain Gang

Are there any Republican political types who aren't crooks? Any? I think that may be there are one or two, there have to be, but I honestly can't think of any.

It turns out that Kenneth Tomlinson, the ousted head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is being investigated for "misuse of federal money and the use of phantom or unqualified employees."

People involved in the inquiry said that investigators had already interviewed a significant number of officials at the agency and that, if the accusations were substantiated, they could involve criminal violations.

Last July, the inspector general at the State Department opened an inquiry into Mr. Tomlinson's work at the board of governors after Representative Howard L. Berman, Democrat of California, and Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, forwarded accusations of misuse of money.

The lawmakers requested the inquiry after Mr. Berman received complaints about Mr. Tomlinson from at least one employee at the board, officials said. People involved in the inquiry said it involved accusations that Mr. Tomlinson was spending federal money for personal purposes, using board money for corporation activities, using board employees to do corporation work and hiring ghost employees or improperly qualified employees.

Through an aide at the broadcasting board, Mr. Tomlinson declined to comment Friday about the State Department inquiry.

And guess who's one of Ken's good friends?

In recent weeks, State Department investigators have seized records and e-mail from the Broadcasting Board of Governors, officials said. They have shared some material with the inspector general at the corporation, including e-mail traffic between Mr. Tomlinson and White House officials including Karl Rove, a senior adviser to President Bush and a close friend of Mr. Tomlinson.

Mr. Rove and Mr. Tomlinson became friends in the 1990's when they served on the Board for International Broadcasting, the predecessor agency to the board of governors. Mr. Rove played an important role in Mr. Tomlinson's appointment as chairman of the broadcasting board.

The content of the e-mail between the two officials has not been made public but could become available when the corporation's inspector general sends his report to members of Congress this month.

The turning of public broadcasting into a cog in the GOP noise machine was undoubtedly part of Rove's master plan. One of the beautiful things about controlling the government was the availability of taxpayer money to pay for partisan propaganda. Why bleed your friends when you can bleed the saps who are paying the bills? I'm sure Rupert Murdoch and Dick Scaife would be very grateful if they didn't have to underwrite the entire thing. Why, if they played thier cards right, in a decade or two, the private sector could be completely out of the propaganda business.


Update: Never Mind. Bush has solved the problem. He's a leader cuz he knows how ta lead. Back to codpiece worship for everyone:

President Bush has ordered White House staff to attend mandatory briefings beginning next week on ethical behavior and the handling of classified material after the indictment last week of a senior administration official in the CIA leak probe.

The mandatory ethics primer is the first step Bush plans to take in coming weeks in response to the CIA leak probe that led to the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, and which still threatens Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff.

[...]

A senior aide said Bush decided to mandate the ethics course during private meetings last weekend with Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and counsel Harriet Miers. Miers's office will conduct the ethics briefings.

Is it mandatory for Rove and Cheney, do you suppose? It seems kind of pointless otherwise.


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digby 11/04/2005 09:00:00 PM |

 
Their Cheatin' Hearts

The Stranger is reporting more voter manipulation by Republicans in Seattle, trying to suppress the vote, as usual:

Steven Lacey is a regular voter whose plan for Election Day next Tuesday was to walk a few blocks from his Belltown apartment building and cast his vote, as usual, at his local precinct. At least, that was his plan until he received a letter last night informing him that his right to vote had been challenged by a woman from the east side named Lori D. Sotelo.

The letter reported that Sotelo had declared to King County election officials, “under penalty of perjury,” that Lacey’s voter registration was not valid because he couldn’t possibly be living at the address he was claiming. “Which is insane,” Lacey said. The 35-year-old insurance company account manager lives at the Watermark, a 60-unit downtown apartment building built in 1908. However, Sotelo appeared to believe the Watermark was a storage unit, a P.O. box, or some other location that Lacey could not legally be using as an address of record.

Furious, Lacey did a quick web search and realized that Sotelo was a leader in the King County Republican Party. He couldn’t understand how she came to think he was illegally registered, since the Watermark, Lacey said, “couldn’t more clearly be a physical residence.” He left Sotelo a phone message telling her as much, but he never heard back.

Then he asked around, and found that many people in his building had received the same letter, informing them that their votes would not be counted until they proved, at a hearing or through a signed affidavit, that they were legally registered.

“A lot of the people that live in the building are over 50 and have voted in dozens of elections and are incredibly pissed,” he said. “Everybody’s pretty pissed.”

It turns out that Lacey and his neighbors were just a few among at least 140 King County voters who were wrongly challenged by Sotelo, who chairs the King County Republican Party’s “Voter Registration Integrity Project.” Sotelo could not be reached for comment on Friday morning, when The Stranger first reported the mistakes on our blog, but Chris Vance, chairman of the state Republican Party later confirmed for The Stranger that a serious mistake had been made.

“We are withdrawing those challenges today and apologizing to those folks,” he said. He added that it is “just coincidence” that a significant number of the wrongly challenged voters live in a strongly Democratic neighborhood.

They do this all the time:

Oct. 30, 2004

Citing a new list of more than 37,000 questionable addresses, the state Republican Party demanded Saturday that Milwaukee city officials require identification from all of those voters Tuesday.

If the city doesn't, the party says it is prepared to have volunteers challenge each individual - including thousands who might be missing an apartment number on their registration - at the polls.

The move, which dramatically escalates the party's claims of bad addresses and potential fraud, was condemned by Democrats as a last-minute effort to suppress turnout in the city by creating long delays at the polls.

City officials, who already were trying to establish safeguards in response to the party's claim of 5,619 bad addresses, were surprised by the 37,180 number, nearly seven times larger.

"It's not a leap at all to say the potential for voter fraud is high in the city, and the integrity of the entire election, frankly, is at stake," said Rick Graber, state GOP chairman. "The city's records are in horrible shape."

Any inaccurate address, he said, is an opening for someone to cast a fraudulent vote. However, many of the new addresses now cited might be eligible voters who have voted for years without problems.

City Attorney Grant Langley labeled the GOP request "outrageous."

"We have already uncovered hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of addresses on their (original list) that do exist," said Langley, who holds a non-partisan office. "Why should I take their word for the fact this new list is good? I'm out of the politics on this, but this is purely political."

They cheat on an institutional level. Operatives are taught to do it when they are just political pups:

The Committee is the place where Republican strategists learn their craft and acquire their knack for making their Democratic opponents look like disorganized children. Many of the biggest-brand Republican operatives--from Karl Rove and Lee Atwater, to Charlie Black and Roger Stone, to Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist--got their starts this way. Walking through the halls of the convention, it is easy to see the genesis of tactics deployed in the Florida recount and by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Republicans learn how to fight hard against Democrats by practicing on one another first. "There are no rules in a knife fight," Norquist instructed the young conventioneers in a speech. And, while Norquist described a knife fight, the Gourley-Davidson rumble transpired around.

[...]

In 1973, Rove was the Establishment candidate, and Atwater, the original Sun Tsu-quoting College Republican, was his prime campaign operative. They spent the spring of 1973 crisscrossing the country in a Ford Pinto, lining up the support of state chairs--basically the right-wing version of Thelma and Louise. But, in point of fact, Rove was hardly the right-winger in the race. His two opponents, Terry Dolan and Robert Edgeworth, were. And, when Dolan threw his support to Edgeworth, Rove had no other alternative. He had to cheat.

When the College Republicans gathered for their convention at the Lake of the Ozarks resort in Missouri, Rove and Atwater relentlessly challenged the legitimacy of Edgeworth's delegates, even if the evidence did not justify their attacks.

Republican party operatives are trained to cheat. They first cheat each other in the minors and then they take their skills to the show. This is a cog of the GOP machine that needs to be exposed and dealt with.

Prepare yourself to defend every Democratic win, because they are going to go batshit crazy if they start to lose and you will see an "electoral reform" movement like we could only dream of. It will be based upon spurious claims of massive, national voter fraud.



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digby 11/04/2005 07:27:00 PM |

 
Lawyers In The Case

This article doesn't state specifically when it took place, so it's hard to know if it's referring to the meeting I found so puzzling, but according to a Rove associate, Fitzgerald at some point met with James Sharp, Bush lawyer, about whether or not Rove misrepresented his role in the leak case to the president. That's a bit more believable than Fitzgerald making a personal pilgrimage to Sharp's office to get word to the president that Rove is out of danger, as Michael Isikoff would have had us believe.

"Lawyers in the case" also said that Fitzgerald has narrowed his focus as to whether Rove lied about his conversation with Matthew Cooper.

And:

Mr. Fitzgerald no longer seems to be actively examining some of the more incendiary questions involving Mr. Rove.

They "seem" to have come to this conclusion based upon the fact that Rove and Cooper's lawyers are talking and nobody else is. In other words, they don't really know shit. It may be that he's only considering the Cooper e-mail lie or it may be that he's trying to nail down the Cooper e-mail lie as part of something else that he is no longer actively investigating --- because he already has the goods.

You can't tell what is going to happen based upon what he has been investigating this last week. Luskin's bombshell, exculpatory, pause-giving evidence notwithstanding, we are still in the dark about "Official A's" real exposure in all this.

I'm in "I'll believe it when I see it" mode. Nobody knows nothin'.



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digby 11/04/2005 05:56:00 PM |

 
Turdblossom Special


Via Pre$$titutes

If it comes to pass that Karl Rove is indicted, or even if he loses his security clearance (which he damned well should) I would hope that someone in Washington has the guts to smash this fellatory daydream in Mark Helperin's face and twist it like a grapefruit until he screams for mercy. I'm not sure if "The Note" think this is funny or if they seriously believe that Karl Rove was just an innocent bystander in the Plame outing, but either way their little fantasy is ludicrous.

Pretending that they are writing in the future on a day when Rove comes to the podium and finally speaks, they write Rove's speech for him:

"I have a statement to make before taking your questions."

"Now that the special counsel has informed me that I will not be charged in his investigation, I thought I should come to this podium and tell you the straight Texas truth about my role in this case."

"In short, my counsel advises me that there is no controlling legal authority that says that any of my activities violated any law."

"Just kidding. Lighten up, Plante."

"When news reports began regarding allegations that Valerie Wilson's name was improperly released to the media, I was asked by several colleagues here at the White House if I had played a role in illegally releasing the name of Mrs. Wilson. I said at the time that I had not. That was my best recollection at the time I was asked."

"Subsequently, three things occurred. One, the special counsel's investigation began, and both he and the President — as well as the White House counsel — asked those of us working in the government not to speak publicly about the case in any way."

"Two, my colleague and friend Scott McClellan on several occasions repeated what I had in good faith told him — that I had not played any part in breaking the law and disclosing her name. As a result, he mislead you more often than my lawyer, Luskin, which is really something when you think about it."

"Third, after an e-mail was belatedly discovered through the normal search process at the White House, my recollection was refreshed and I recalled that I did have one brief conversation with one reporter in which I mentioned Mrs. Wilson's role in her husband's trip to Niger."

"Because of the first development — the absolute barrier to speaking about the case — I was unable to deal in a timely manner with the second two developments in a public way. This had the unfortunate effect of bringing into question the credibility of the White House and my own public credibility. For that, I am sorry."

There was, of course, no absolute barrier about talking about the case. Indeed, his lawyer discussed it constantly both on backround and in the open. This is nonsense.

Furthermore, Karl Rove has a photographic memory. He did not forget speaking to Cooper and he did not forget speaking to Libby about Novak writing a story about "Wilson's wife." Sure, Karl could say this, but nobody would believe it except his little cheerleading squad at The Note. The partisan shills might dutifully repeat it, but they wouldn't believe it either. This is because it's completely unbelievable.

Karl has cultivated quite a mystique over the years. He is considered by one and all, on both the right and the left, to be a Machiavellian genius, or as ex-Democrat and media maven Mark McKinnon, his most devoted sycophant, puts it, "a chess master who always sees 12 steps ahead." He worked very hard to create that image and playing the dizzy blond won't work now.

Why, everyone knows that Bush's Brain's tactical brilliance is legendary. It's obvious that Boy Genius's political skills are unparalleled. He has been lauded for his special brand of slash and burn politics since his earliest days, doing dirty tricks in the college Republicans. He doesn't play hardball politics, he plays beanball politics. He cannot play innocent. Ever.

In this case, regardless of any illegality, his tactics were no different than usual --- low, partisan and ruthlessly over the top. Here is what he reportedly said to the grand jury:

President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told the FBI in an interview last October that he circulated and discussed damaging information regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame with others in the White House, outside political consultants, and journalists, according to a government official and an attorney familiar with the ongoing special counsel's investigation of the matter.

But Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak's column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.

This is what the man does and it's how he got his creature George W. Bush in the white house. From whisper campaigns about Ann Richards being a lesbian to siccing the FBI on Jim Hightower, he honed his skills as an assassin for more than 20 years in Texas. He's proud of it.

The LA Times reported last summer that Rove was just as obsessed as Libby and for trivial reasons by comparison:

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."

Karl Rove was in the middle of a ruthless, partisan campaign to "discredit" Joe Wilson with leaks. He, as "Official A," went to Libby and told him that Robert Novak was going to write a column "about Wilson's wife." He told Chris Matthews that Wilson's wife was "fair game."

Yet The Note wants us to actually swallow this utter bullshit that the brilliant, masterful, political genius Karl Rove "forgot" his conversation with Matt Cooper in which he spilled the beans about Wilson's wife. In a court of law, perhaps Pat Fitzgerald would not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rove lied about that. In the court of public opinion, it is as ridiculous as the idea that OJ didn't do it.

Perhaps Karl can spend the rest of his tenure in the White House looking for the real leakers.


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digby 11/04/2005 01:52:00 PM |

 
It's Confirmed: Dog Bites Man.

You may recall Colonel Laurence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Colin Powell who recently caused a...hullabaloo when he shocked, shocked everyone with his report of the existence of a cabal that has hijacked foreign policy under Bush. Well, Colonel Wilkerson now tell us the orders to torture prisoners came from the highest levels of government, specifically Cheney's office.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad the good Colonel's been able to put two and two together, but among others, investigative journalist Mark Danner's been saying much the same thing all along, long before Bush's ratings tanked (to still dismayingly high levels). Danner's reporting on the torture scandal has been detailed, meticulous, superb, accurate, and ignored.

By the way, does Danner appear regularly on major network TV news or panels? Any rumors he might replace David Brooks at the Times, who has been screwing up royally (unless Brooks's purpose has been to increase Friedman's relative stature at the Times as a prose stylist and deep thinker)?

No harm in asking.
tristero 11/04/2005 01:02:00 PM |

 
Ken, We Hardly Knew Ye. But That Was Enough.

Tomlinson resigns from the CPB board. Remember? He's the guy who hired someone to watch Bill Moyers and report on all the heinous liberalism going on. Among those dastardly, "anti-administration" liberals were Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), and ex-congressman Bob Barr (R-Hypocrite). Unfortunately, Tomlinson remains head of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. So it's too early to breathe a sigh of relief, but it is a step in the right... excuse me, proper direction.

Update: Kevin K. in comments reminds us that there's many more where Tomlinson came from still on the board, and that There's some majorly awful programming coming up. If I didn't know better, I'd think Bush was deliberately trying to destroy PBS. But he wouldn't do that, would he?

Interestingly, in the midst of all of the attention to the CPB’s fight against liberal bias, the agency quietly announced a round of grantees for its “America at a Crossroads” project (6/27/05). Among the projects receiving CPB support are The Case for War, a film about neoconservative Richard Perle made by Perle’s longtime friend Brian Lapping; The Sound of the Guns, a film about former CIA director William Colby made by Colby’s son; Soldiers of the Future, which “will tell the story of Donald Rumsfeld’s recent efforts to transform America’s military”; Warriors, in which American Enterprise editor Karl Zinsmeister argues that the U.S. military “attracts a cross-section of citizens motivated by idealism and patriotism”; and Studying Hatred, a film by David Horowitz co-author Peter Collier.

And in Spring, 2006, be sure to watch the much anticipated documentary, "Big 'Behind': A Profile of Tim LaHaye."
tristero 11/04/2005 05:34:00 AM |

Thursday, November 03, 2005

 
The Rhetoric Was Part Of The Policy


All this nonsense about Clinton and other Democrats saying the same thing as Bush, so Bush couldn't have been lying is driving me nuts. It's bad enough that they trot this out as an excuse for their own fuck-up, but when they conveniently forget that they were against the action Clinton took at the time to meet the threat (because it interefered with their blow-job trial) it's infuriating.

Seetheforest has Trent Lott's famous quote after Clinton announced Operation Desert Fox, but I've got another one:

Armey said in a statement. "After months of lies, the president has given millions of people around the world reason to doubt that he has sent Americans into battle for the right reasons."

I won't say it.

Here's the real problem. Clinton said the usual boilerplate about Saddam being a dangerous guy and how he wanted to get weapons of mass destruction and how we had to be credible with our threats of force to keep him in line. And when Saddam stepped way out of line in 1998 he ordered the massive bombing operation that got all the Republicans' panties in a twist because it happened at the time of the all important fellatio impeachment.

On the night he ordered the bombing, here is how Clinton explained American policy:

...we will pursue a long-term strategy to contain Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction and work toward the day when Iraq has a government worthy of its people.

First, we must be prepared to use force again if Saddam takes threatening actions, such as trying to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction or their delivery systems, threatening his neighbors, challenging allied aircraft over Iraq or moving against his own Kurdish citizens.

The credible threat to use force, and when necessary, the actual use of force, is the surest way to contain Saddam's weapons of mass destruction program, curtail his aggression and prevent another Gulf War.

Clinton said that American policy was that if Saddam took certain threatening actions, we would use force.

Bush and Cheney said that Saddam might take threatening actions, so they had to invade.

That's quite a different threat assessment. Clinton never suggested an invasion and occupation to deal with Saddam, his policy was to contain him with threats and judicious use of force when he provoked us. And apparently it worked. There were, after all, no weapons of mass destruction and he had perpetrated none of the other actions that would have led to a need for further use of force as of 2002.

General Zinni ran Operation Desert Fox and believed that it had crippled Saddam's weapons capabilities. Inspectors, of course, could have verified that fact and Saddam allowed them back into the country in 2002 under the "threat of force."

Even I wondered for a bit if Bush might actually be bluffing about invasion in the beginning, because 9/11 gave us some momentum to saber rattle to get inspectors back in. I suspect that some of the Senators who voted for the Iraq resolution held out some hope that this was what Bush had in mind --- it had, after all, been Bush I and Clinton's policy and it had kept Saddam contained and toothless for a decade. After about five mionutes of pondering the question I realized that Bush was deadly serious and there wsn't a chance in hell that he could have the necessary finesse to pull something like that off. He wasn't, after all, "into nuance."

There was a lot of bellicose talk for years about Saddam because a public show of serious intent was part of the containment strategy. But until Commander Codpiece came along and empowered his neocon cabal of Iraq nuts, nobody was suggesting that the US military invade and occupy the country. Indeed, nobody thought it would be necessary in order to keep Saddam in check.

A lot of Democrats (including both Clintons) made a political gamble that after 9/11 they had to support the invasion because if it was successful they would have been tagged as soft. They were fighting the last war, Gulf War I, in which many Democrats looked foolish for having objected to such a painless, inexpensive, glorious victory. I'm afraid that many of the Democratic leadership bet on the wrong horse ---- again. It is, sadly, a testament to how badly they deal with foreign policy that they got it wrong both times. A lot of us out here in Real Murika didn't because we weren't playing politics --- just assessing the situation and deciding whether it made sense.

Still, it was undoubtedly difficult. 9/11 had cast a spell on our country, abetted by a media that turned the "war on terror" into an epic pageant of national pride and patriotism to such an extent that to question, much less oppose, was an act of political courage. There are very few politicans of either party with much of that:

Akaka (D-HI)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Chafee (R-RI)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corzine (D-NJ)
Dayton (D-MN)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Graham (D-FL)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Reed (D-RI)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Wellstone (D-MN)
Wyden (D-OR)

Those were the Senators who voted against the resolution. How good, smart and prescient they appear today. The ones who didn't showed lousy instincts. When the president is an idiot, it should be easy to conclude that he is not going to make good decisions about the need for war --- or anything else. Millions of us knew the constant blathering about Bush's great "leadership" after 9/11 was hype. They should have too.

But still, even the most craven Democratic opportunist cannot be held responsible for the administration's repeated assertion's that Saddam was a "grave and gathering danger" or that the Bush Doctrine was dutifully printed out from the PNAC web-site and distributed after 9/11 without any serious consideration of its ramifications. Bush was pushing a line that had many people wondering if he didn't know something thast the rest of us didn't. It was incomprehensible to a lot of Americans that an American president would be so reckless as to launch a war on unverified information.

There was no good reason to stage an invasion based upon the threat assessment we had. 9/11 actually made that proposition more dangerous and short sighted than it would have been before. They knew this, which is why they hyped the threat with visions of mushroom clouds and nefarious drone planes disguised a crop dusters. They knew that if we relied solely upon the threat assessment that the Clinton administration relied upon, the country would not back their war. So they lied.

The true irony is that it now appears that Clinton managed to accomplish what Bush said needed to be done, with a heavy bombing campaign during his own impeachment. (Talk about multi-tasking.) Bush came along and spent billions of dollars, stretched our military beyond its capabilities, destroyed our international credibility and got tens of thousands killed to accomplish something that had already been done in 1998. What a cock-up.



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digby 11/03/2005 08:38:00 AM |

 
Foreign Policy Magazine And A Little From Foreign Affairs, For Extra Measure.

I've been subscribing to Foreign Policy for a few years now, but ever since they gave Newt Gingrich several pages to propose an American Ministry of Propaganda, I haven't had much desire to do much more than glance at it. The current issue is different. It's terrific, doing precisely what I hoped the zine would do. Not that I agree with everything, far from it, but it stirs the pot and gets some lesser-known stories out in provocative ways.

Take, for instance, this good news story about Iraq. Or so it seems at first. Commander James Gavrilis captured/liberated/whatever Ar Rutbah less than a month after the official start of the war. Spending around $3000 and relying on what sounds like a reality-based perspective on the situation, he managed to get the town back on its feet:

My initial approach to governing was very authoritative; it eliminated anarchy and allowed Iraqis to debate the details of democracy rather than survival. What the Iraqis needed was an interim authority to get them back on their feet. While the interim mayor and I provided this stability, the city council’s role was to oversee the mayor and to provide input, not necessarily to make policy. The laws and values of their society and culture were just fine. All we needed to do was enforce them. The city council was an important body for dialogue, debate, and legitimacy. But by initially limiting its decision-making power, we made sure the council couldn’t paralyze our progress.


Representatives in the city council included teachers and doctors, lawyers and merchants. At one town-hall meeting, a few of these professionals asked me about elections. They said the tribal sheiks and imams did not represent their interests, and they wanted to have a say in their government. I explained that they couldn’t vote right away because we had no election monitors or ballot boxes. Still, they insisted. Two rudimentary elections were held in the grand mosque to reconfirm the interim mayor—and Americans were not involved in either vote.

As an alternative to Saddam’s regime, the particular form of democracy was not as important as the concept of a polity that provided for the individual. That was really what Iraqis missed under Saddam. Good governance had to precede the form or type of democracy. Because we were effective in providing services, were responsive to individual concerns, and improved their lives, the Iraqis gravitated toward us and the changes we introduced. However, we didn’t have to change much. Ar Rutbah already had a secular structure that worked. We just put good people in office and changed the character of governance, not the entire infrastructure.

[snip]

One day, a few tribal sheiks came to complain of looting at night in some parts of the city. So, knowing that some of the sheiks were behind some of the looting, I established a neighborhood watch. I put them in charge and had their men act as the watchmen. And the sheiks were held accountable if the looting continued. I also had a team patrol those areas at night at random. The stealing ended abruptly.

[Snip]

n the end, I spent only about $3,000. This sum included the salaries of the police, the mayor, the army colonel, and a few soldiers and public officials. We paid for the crane and the flatbed trailers to move the generators to the city for electricity, and for fuel to run the generators. And we picked up the tab for other necessities, such as painting, tea, and copies of the renunciation form. But the change did not depend on the influx of funds; the Iraqis did a lot themselves. The real progress was the efficient and decent government and the environment we established. Without a lot of money to invest, we made assessments and established priorities, and talked with the Iraqis, exchanging ideas and visions of the future.


We intended to work ourselves out of our jobs, and when conditions were right we took steps back.

A very moving, hopeful story, and I'm not being anything other than sincere in saying so. But there's just one teensy little problem with making this a textbook case example of why Iraq should have been invaded, which becomes obvious as the article winds down.

You see, unfortunately, Commander Gavrilis and his band of brothers were there for all of two weeks, and then they left. And then:

Although the Iraqis continued the work we started, the follow-up coalition forces did not. The distance between the locals and the troops widened. The Iraqis were eventually exposed and vulnerable to regime loyalists’ retribution and intimidation by foreign fighters. The local Iraqi security forces never developed to the point where they were stronger than the gangs of insurgents; they were never brought into a larger political or security framework of an Iraqi government so that they could be part of a collective security system. Left alone, the Iraqis simply couldn’t hold off the foreign fighters who passed through the city, using Ar Rutbah as a way station en route to Baghdad and Ramadi.

Now, you might think at first that this helps the argument of the liberal hawks, that Bush/Iraq could have worked had the occupation simply been more competent. Actually it doesn't. Here's part of the reason why.

As it happens, a few days earlier, I had read this remarkably bad article about Vietnam by Melvin Laird in Foreign Affairs about his tenure as Secretary of Defense during Nixon. Short version: "Don't blame me for Vietnam. The guys before me got us into that mess, I did a great job, but I didn't have time to finish, and the guys who came after me totally fucked it up."

Now, there are major differences between Vietnam and Iraq, to be sure. Among them is that Commander Gavrilis seems like an intelligent, down to earth man, justly proud of his competence in a difficult situation while Secretary Laird reminds us what an arrogant, mistaken, paranoid son of a bitch he was thirty plus years ago. But the trajectory of failure is the same and, I'm afraid, entirely predictable. Let's, for argument's sake, take both men at their word, that they did a good job (a stretch with Laird, but bear with me). The problem is that no matter how good a job they could do, inevitably someone would replace them who wouldn't do as good a good job, who didn't care as much, who wasn't as informed, who didn't have the same combination of street instincts, commonsense, and decency that led to a temporary positive outcome. The main point is this: As Commander Gavrilis himself notes, any positive development was temporary and highly contingent. Because so little can be depended upon in such a volatile, and little understood, situation - be it Vietnam or a town in occupied Iraq - reversals due to incompetence and unexpected problems are all but certain. And let's not forget that incompetence during occupation was only one of many areas that had to go well in Iraq. There was national and international law and opinion, the economy, the insurgency, and the prospect that major US armed forces could be required elsewhere. Many of these did go well (despite Bolton's efforts to create total havoc, US forces didn't have to relocate to Korea, thank God) but Iraq still failed. The problem was that nearly all contingencies had to go well, and unless you're Bill Bennett on a roll, that's impossible.

In any event, it surely would have taken more good luck than even Andrew Lloyd Webber possesses to have pulled off Ar Rutbah for another two weeks. Amd to imagine that democracy could actually take root then and flourish 2 1/2 years later is a pie in the sky fantasy. Not even Commander Gavrlis could have kept the situation moving forward that long. Not after Abu Ghraib, for instance.

As with Vietnam, (which despite Laird's assertions did not in any way benefit from his clear-eyed genius as Defense Secretary, simply because there was no benefit to be had except to morticians and artificial limb manufacturers), Iraq could not work out. Incompetence, or insurgency, coalition atrocities, or sheer ignorance, or a combination of all four, was inevitable, and predictable.

And finally, I say with genuine sorrow: Commander Gavrilis' efforts, no matter how admirable, were, in any significant sense, predictably doomed never to last long enough to make much difference in avoiding the tragic reality of Iraq's people today.

Now, there are several other articles in Foreign Policy well worth reading that are equally interesting and subtle. For example, here's a profile of Zarqawi. What makes this article important is not only that we learn who Zarqawi is, but his significance. He is no rare anomaly, like the fabulously wealthy and fanatical bin Laden. Zarqawi is just a halfway smart lowlife thug, warped by 7 years of imprisonment with torture, transformed into a committed jihadist, originally only a reluctant an ally of al Qaeda, and finally, as a result of the American invasion/occupation, advanced to the position of "emir" for al Qaeda in Iraq. Now, guess what? As Peter Bergen and Alec Reynolds make clear in a brilliant article in the same issue of Foreign Affairs where the odious Laird held forth, there are likely to many, many more Zarqawis in Iraq's, and America's, future. And that, too, was predictable, and predicted.

Another article from Foreign Policy, seemingly just an innocuous roundup and overview of scholars is equally subtle and chilling. Take a look at this chart of the leading lights in foreign policy studies. As the article notes, "nearly all are white men older than 50." I'll add to that that there is not a single native Arab speaker on that list and at least two of the so-called wise men in foreign policy -Huntington and Fukuyama - hold what can only be described, in the kindest terms, mostly worthless opinions. Women may join the list soon, the article notes. That's all to the good, but the level of sheer mediocrity of the "scholars" on this list is astonishing, and is not likely to change much if one or two of the worst names are replaced by capable women.

Another part of this deceptively bland-seeming article notes a very scary statistic:

When asked what region was most strategically important to the United States today, a resounding 58 percent answered the Middle East and North Africa. Yet, only 7 percent of U.S. international relations scholars specialize in the region. This gap may explain why the American intelligence community is still advertising for Arabic speakers.

Well, yes, it just might explain it. That, and the fact that openly gay specialists in Arabic aren't welcome, too.
tristero 11/03/2005 06:51:00 AM |

 
35% Of The American Public Living In Alternate Reality

Be afraid, be very afraid. After all that is happened, more than 1/3 of all Americans "approve" of Bush's presidency. What will it take to wake these people up? What horrible things would Bush and his gang have to do - or not do - to drive his poll numbers further south?

And let's try to be creative here. As enjoyable as fellatio, cunnilingus and its many delicious variations are for most of us, suggesting Bush get caught in flagrante delicto with Official A - or a horse, or whomever - just simply is not that original. Allow yourself to think way, way, outside the box (and the bedroom, and the bathroom), and let your imagination roam: What more could Bush inflict on us that he hasn't already done, to make matters so bad his approval ratings would fall to a more reasonable, but still alarmingly high, number, say 10%?

Would he have to publicly declare his desire to be dictator? Nope, been there, done that. How about establish gulags in Eastern Europe? He's beaten you to the punch.

Any ideas? It's not that easy.
tristero 11/03/2005 02:24:00 AM |

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

 
The Geography Of The Psyche

I was puttering around earlier working on something else and I came across this hilarious paper dealing with the spousal notification issue from the "men's rights" perspective.

Writing jointly for the Court on this aspect of the [Casey] decision, Justices O’Conner, Kennedy and Souter struck down the spousal notification requirement as in impermissible infringement on a woman’s right to privacy. The Court offered three basic reasons for holding that a wife could not be compelled to inform her husband of her intent to abort.

1. First, the Court discounted the husband’s interests by pointing to the realities of nature:

"[i]t is an inescapable biological fact that state regulation with respect to the child a woman is carrying will have a far greater impact on the mother’s liberty than on the father’s

In other words, because the fetus is in the woman and not the man, the woman’s interests trump.

This makes sense. I would even fo so far as to say that because the fetus is in the woman, the woman's interests trump --- the fetus. This fellow disagrees:

This reasoning might be questioned on several fronts. First, it is not the case that the biology is all with the women. As dozens of studies of couvade syndrome indicate, expectant fathers experience biological symptoms of pregnancy along with their partners. Both partners may feel nausea, irritability, food cravings, indigestion, and so on. Both can anticipate discomforts from pregnancy and the stresses of infant care. While the man’s aches and pains are "psychosomatic," and are likely to be less intense than the woman’s, they are not inconsequential. Men and women both experience biological effects of pregnancy.

And they both have that glow...

In any event, the right to privacy recognized in Roe v. Wade is not based on biology only, but also on issues of emotion and identity. Justices O’Conner, Kennedy and Souter stated as much in Casey, observing that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy. These choices include the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. This is not the language of biology, but of religion or philosophy.

And if men choose to define their "concept of existence, of meaning, of the mystery of life" as being pregnant, the law should give them equal rights to the female body that is actually, you know, biologically pregnant. That's called equality.

The greater maternal involvement in biological pregnancy cannot by itself resolve these larger issues. What matters, in addition to the physical effects on the body, are the consequences of abortion for the individual’s basic value structure and self-concept. Once the liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment is phrased in terms of choices and a concept of the self, rather than biology alone, the argument that the woman’s interests should trump the man’s requires further elaboration. Both men and women face choices about their roles as parents and their concepts of their own identities. Both men and women become bonded with the fetus. The fetus may be physically growing in the woman’s belly, but in the geography of the psyche, it is inside the man as well. To exclude expectant fathers from juridical notice on grounds of biology is to miss the importance of pregnancy in a man’s concept of himself as a parent and a procreative being and his vision of the meaning of his life.

I suspect that this guy's concept of himself would be less enthusiastic about sharing the burden of pregnancy if the geography of the testicles were squeezed in a vise for 18 hours as he tried to expel a cantaloupe through his penis. It would very likely change his vision of the meaning of his life, as well.



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digby 11/02/2005 07:55:00 PM |

 
A Most Convenient Escape

Turns out a "top al Qaeda operative" escaped before he could testify to "abuse" by an American soldier. Of course, I believe it. No doubt in my mind. I mean, it's not like they would lie about something like that, right? Permit a prisoner to escape or hide him (or worse) to prevent more embarassing revelations of torture. No, they just wouldn't do that. That's not what Americans - who live in a democracy and value freedom - do.

[Update: More misinformation...sorry, I meant details... about the escape here.]
tristero 11/02/2005 09:06:00 AM |

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

 
Excellent

What Reid did was a superb variation of the strategy I was talking about yesterday. But Reid, brilliant fellow, ignored my suggestion simply to focus back on Traitorgate. No,he broadened it to our advantage, stressing the notion that Digby and others have emphasized, that the real subject of Traitorgate is the systematic, deliberate lying about Saddam's WMD before the war. Excellent, excellent, excellent.

Now, whatever it was Bush was talking about yesterday - does anyone remember? - well, Reid has the opportunity get to that when he's good and ready. And this gives me hope that when he does, Reid won't just roll over and surrender. Excellent, excellent, excellent.

Extra unexpected bonus: Watching Frist lose it today in real time, it's clear Reid's unmasked the true face of Cat Mengele. Oh, the embarassing soundbites tonight! Meow!!!

[Update: The gift keeps on giving. Reid's action also puts considerable pressure on Cheney, because, as I just recalled, Cheney's new security adviser, John Hannah, was linked to bogus information on Iraq. This means that some enterprising reporter might just think to ask whether it was all that appropriate for Cheney to hire Hannah as it really appears Cheney is just trying to extend the coverup about the prewar intelliegence.

Amazing how much good a touch of spine can do.

One final thought. When Bush, et al, get over their shock, their retaliation is gonna be quite ugly. And just as surprising. Watch out, Harry. You can expect that what Bush did to McCain will be just a mild foretaste of what's gonna happen.]
tristero 11/01/2005 01:59:00 PM |

 
Secret Session!

So Harry Reid has called for the long awaited Phase II investigation into the Iraq debacle and they are going into a closed secret session to discuss it. The Republicans are squealing like pigs in a slaughter house.

Kyra and Ed Henry on CNN are characterizing it as "bickering" and "working against the interest of the American people." Interestingly, Frist is calling it a "stunt" and "uncivil." (No word yet from anyone about the substance.)

The Democrats should not back down on this. The Republicans are going to portray themselves a victimized and martyred, weeping like little bitty babies about "betrayal." Oh mercy me, pass the smelling salts -- that mean Harry Reid has "stabbed" Scarlett O'Frist in the back!

Fuck them. This is what an opposition party does and it's long overdue. You want to change the subject, motherfuckers? Think again.



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digby 11/01/2005 11:53:00 AM |

 
The Liberty Platform

Yesterday I got chastised by at least one reader for never offering any solutions, just criticisms. It reminded me that I haven't gotten on my personal soapbox lately and harrangued my audience with the notion that I think we should adopt a western and southwest red state strategy using a platform of personal liberty, economic responsibility, land conservation, energy independence and effective national security. If you've heard this before, feel free to move on. Otherwise, here is my super-duper message package to capture at least a couple of western red states and tip the balance to our side.

I understand that building a coalition of rural western states and big city blue states has its problems. But we have to find common ground with some red states somewhere and this seems like the most fertile ground requiring the least compromise on matters of primary importance to both. That's the only way a coalition can be successful. You can't force people into a mold, you have to mold the coalition around shared principles.

In a great post discussing the Alito nomination, Barbara at Mahablog articulates one part of this platform as she talks about the paternalist right wing:

The provision represents another rightie tendency, which is that righties essentially distrust human beings to make their own decisions. We saw that during the Terri Schiavo flap, when all manner of legislation was proposed that would have allowed government to intrude in a family’s end-of-life decisions. To a rightie, human beings are mindless beasts who need to be controlled by Big Brother so they don’t make “bad” decisions; i.e., decisions with which the rightie disagrees. And righties always assume that people who make these “bad” decisions have done so because they don’t think. Notice all the legislation imposed by states intended to make women reflect on a decision to abort, as if women can’t think for themselves. It’s beyond their comprehension that most women who decide to abort do understand exactly what a pregnancy is and realize that abortion is a serious matter.

"Republicans don't trust people to make their own decisions." It's that simple. They want to tell people how to live. I believe that is a simple argument that plays ever so subtly on the Republican mantra that says "they don't trust you with your own money!" We should steal it since they've already trained the ears of Americans to hear that formulation.

Survey USA found that while Utah and Idaho are among the most conservative on social issues in the country, many of the other western red states are quite liberal. Here's a breakdown on choice:

23. Montana 53 percent "Pro-choice"
26. Arizona 56%
27. New Mexico 56%
30. Wyoming 57%
34. Colorado 61%
38. Oregon 62%
38. Nevada 64%
41. Washington 63%
46. California 65%

We do not need to pander on choice in order to win elections. In fact, we end up being mealy-mouthed and unappetising to both sides. Choice is a majority position and we should consistently articulate it as trusting people to make their own decisions about their personal lives. Period. Don't get into religious interpretations. Don't talk about the fetus. Just simply and straightforwardly say that people should be trusted to make their own decisions about complicated personal matters, that it's nobody else's business. It will make some people mad, to be sure. But it's simple and it gets to the heart of the matter. People want to know where we stand and that is where we stand.

People should be able to freely practice their religion as long as they don't expect anyone else to practice it or pay for it. People should be able to feel secure that their their homes, health and families are in the private sphere, where government has the least interest.

The western and southwestern states are far less amenable to intrusions on personal liberty, far less likely to be hyper-religious, far more "live and let live" than the southern red states. There is less history of racism than in either the south or the big cities (that's not saying all that much) and they have been leaders in women's equality. As the Republican party becomes a Christian dominated party of big government, this group is becoming unmoored from the GOP and is open to a new message from us.

They don't like taxes, which is why economics have to be presented in terms of responsibility rather than entitlement, which they are. Nobody likes taxes, but responsible people recognise that taxes are unavoidable if we are to have a decent society. "It is irresponsible to burden business with outrageous health care costs and individuals with the fear of imminent catastrophe --- the government needs to fix this problem." "It's irresponsible for the wealthy not to accept their rightful share of the burden to keep this country strong." "It's irresponsible for the government not to keep our promises to each generation by ensuring that social security stays healthy and that we don't leave behind a mountain of debt for our children."

They also don't like corruption and cronyism. It goes against the western ethos of both rugged individualism and communitarian necessity. The dishonest Republican political machine has to be grating at their very marrow. This issue is, of course, central to our critique of the Republicans generally, but I think it carries extra weight with the anti-authoritarian west. They don't like Washington much anyway. Washington corruption is particularly distasteful.

They are growing increasingly concerned about environmental degradation. Global warming affects people who work and live on the land --- people in the west are more concerned with the environment in general than those in the south. This is an area of common cause. Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana has set forth some ideas about liquid coal that should be explored. Alternative energy is, in my opinion, a winning issue for us all around.

On national security, I think the simple answer is to point out that Republican unilateralism is creating enemies and bankrupting the country. There is a lot of evidence that people are resenting the amount of money that's being spent on Iraq. The way to deal with this is to say that if the Republicans had followed the model of Bush's father and worked with a real coalition toward goals that everyone could agree upon, we would not be bearing this kind of financial burden alone. We will never hesitate to act alone if the national security of the US is at stake. With Iraq, the administration claimed that we were in danger from a threat that didn't exist and we took on the enormous cost of that mistake alone because the vast majority of the world didn't agree with that assessment. We need to make sure that never happens again.

A few of the areas that are problematic for this coalition are guns, business regulation, unions and immigration. On the first I would adopt a states' rights position and use governor Dean's formulation that the rural areas have different concerns about guns than the cities and so there can be no national, one size fits all solution. Big city cops have different concerns than those in Montana.

We should argue that if business acts responsibly toward its community, its customers and its employees, they have no beef with us. Our society depends upon business being successful and there are many millions of them around the country that are both responsible and profitable. They should be rewarded, not penalized, for doing the right thing.

Unions need to take a page from California. They have been enormously successful in re-casting thier image here by simply pointing out that union members aren't "special interests" they are cops, firefighters, nurses, teachers, state employees. Once people see unions again as average working people instead of the stereotype of mobbed-up "On the Waterfront" crooks or ridiculous patronage machines, they tend to look at the whole issue differently. We should encourage the unions to work together to send out this message of average working people you depend upon every day to take care of you when you are in need. It's worked extremely well in California and I think it can work everywhere.

Immigration is going to be tough. I think we will have to look at the southwestern governors Napolitano and Richardson for some guidance. This issue is the canary in a coalmine of a faltering economy and it must be dealt with wisely. It's becoming huge around the country and the Democrats have to find the proper balance. I don't have the answers on this one.

The other side of all this is that the mountain red state voters need to recognise that the blue states are not the enemy of Real America. It's a two way street. We should ask them for some consideration of our culture just as they ask us for theirs. These are the live and let live people. If we let them know that we have no interest in turning Helena or Las Vegas into San Francisco, maybe they will grant that it's ok for San Francisco and Boston to have their own ways too. We have more in common than we have differences.

This discussion of what "real America" is, is a good starting point for launching this coalition. Despite what the GOP is trying to sell, Real America is all of us. The red state west is one element of the current Republican coalition that may just agree with that. We need them --- and frankly they need us. Their unique culture of independence and self-sufficiency is far more threatened by what the modern Republicans are doing than anything the Democrats have ever done.

I'm sure there are huge holes in my plan. I've never sat down and really worked on it. But others have, people who are in the trenches looking at how we can build a Democratic majority now that the Republicans have a total lock on the south. I'm not saying that we should abandon the south --- but we cannot depend upon it. History shows that the south is a voting block unto itself and almost always goes together. It's a very tough nut for us to crack, particularly if we wish to keep any principles. There are better ways.


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digby 11/01/2005 08:13:00 AM |

 
Porter Goss Or The Higgs Boson?

When it comes to punishment of those who dare to disagree with the White House, the Wilsons are but the tip of the iceberg. Robert Dreyfuss has a vitally important article in American Prospect about the evisceration of CIA under Porter Goss. Take the time to read it all. Here is a short quote from the end, but you really must read the details Dreyfuss prints to understand the full meaning of the disaster:

Without a doubt, Goss’ team is the most highly partisan ever to run the CIA. The ex–HPSCI staffers were notorious for taking a Republican Party–oriented stance on many issues, especially Murray, who once tried to get classified information released so it could be used against the Democrats. Under Goss, the CIA public-affairs office has been nearly shut down, under the tight control of Jennifer Millerwise -- not an intelligence person, but a political operative who worked on the Bush-Cheney election campaigns and for Goss at the HPSCI. The partisan, pro-Bush nature of the current regime at the CIA was underlined when Goss issued a widely leaked memorandum telling agency employees to “support the administration and its policies in our work,” adding, “As agency employees we do not identify with, support, or champion opposition to the administration or its policies.”

The import of Goss’ memo to staff was not lost on agency veterans. “The meaning was that from now on, there is only one acceptable view, and that’s the neocon view,” said one. For many it was the final straw, convincing them that there was no hope of salvaging independent analysis. “At the [Directorate of Intelligence], they’re wondering, ‘What is our job now, now that our boss doesn’t seem to care about us anyway?’” says Gregory Treverton, who served on the National Intelligence Council under Bill Clinton.

That's right. Bush's familiar is systematically undermining the reliability of a president's main source of proprietary information. Oh, I can easily understand the gray areas where intelligence can be couched for or against a particular policy. But this is different. What Goss is doing, with Bush's evidently enthusiastic approval, is eliminating from CIA any data gathering and analyses that do not support the presumptions and policy wishes of the Bush White House.

In other words, what Bush is creating is a CIA that, had it existed in 2002, would have been far more wrong about WMD and Saddam/al Qaeda connections than it actually was.

Now, dear friends, for many weeks now, I have been reading a marvelous book by Dr. Lisa Randall entitled Warped Passages which is all about the new physics of branes, strings, and infinite hidden dimensions. Having done some of the most exciting work in this area, Randall not only knows what she is talking about but her explanations are as clear as a bell. Now, that doesn't mean branes, bulk, and infinite invisible 5th dimensions are easy to comprehend, they're not and Randall is too honest to spare us (which is great, you can actually learn something new about the world if you can keep an open mind and persist). You can spend several days, if you're an amateur science lover with little math, just trying to get a slight sense of exactly how a massless neutrino, which is emitted after an interaction with a weak gauge boson, can help resolve an apparent violation of the law of the conservation of energy.

But as mind-bogglingly hard as the new physics is to grasp, it is child's play next to trying to grok the reasoning behind Porter Goss's destruction of CIA. Y'see, concepts like branes and asymmetrical elementary particles that only accept a charge when they're right-handed (or is it left-handed?) get easier to understand the more you think about them. But the more you ponder why any Director would deliberately eliminate from CIA the objective gathering and assessment of data - rather than trying to improve it - the weirder it all sounds, the more incomprehensible it gets.

After a while my head starts to hurt real bad and I feel the only way to clear it is to try to understand something easy. Like modern string theory.
tristero 11/01/2005 06:50:00 AM |

Monday, October 31, 2005

 
Unleashing The Id

Can somebody explain to me why American interrogation techniques seem to always involve sticking objects up prisoners' asses? This has got to be some sort of "method" because it is reported over and over again:

"He had two, 10-hour beatings from the Americans and I said to David, 'Sure they were Americans?' (because) he said he had a bag over his head and he said, 'Oh look ... I know their accents, they were definitely American'," Mr Hicks told Four Corners.

"Some pretty horrific things ... were done to him."

The program reported the abuse had included Hicks being injected and then penetrated anally with various objects.

Hicks' lawyers say they have witnesses relating to the abuse and that the United States has photographic evidence.

His American lawyer, Major Michael Mori, would not comment on the specifics of what information he had.

"I'd say it's an area that I'm investigating and that I've already found some evidence and witnesses that support that occurring," he told Four Corners.

Former Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee, Mamdouh Habib, who was released earlier this year, has also claimed that he was abused while on foreign soil.

In February, Mr Habib detailed how he was tortured in a military airport in Pakistan.

During a particular episode of abuse, Mr Habib said 15 men stripped him, inserted something into his anus, put him in a nappy and tied him up.

Is this some sort of American sexual panic or is it official policy that sexual violence is the best way to "interrogate" prisoners?

Every time I read this stuff it makes my stomach churn. What is being described is depraved sexual violence--- rape. And I wonder about the men and women who are perpetrating these horrifying acts. This is a license to unleash the darkness which I assume exists to some extent or another in most people --- and then they are going to come back into society and we are going to expect them to behave like decent people.

I'm beginning to think that we're not dealing with interrogation at all. We're dealing with something insidious and familiar: rape camps. It appears that based upon some strange reading of Islam that says being raped is unusually unpleasant for Muslims, we are using rape as a military strategy. The same thing happened in Bosnia to Muslim women:

...the Mission accepted the view that rape is part of a pattern of abuse, usually perpetrated with the conscious intention of demoralising and terrorising communities, driving them from their home regions and demonstrating the power of the invading forces. Viewed in this way, rape cannot be seen as incidental to the main purposes of the aggression but at serving a strategic purpose in itself

Americans are apparently doing the same thing --- to men. There is just too much evidence of this wierd sexual violence and humiliation for it to be a coincidence. We have become the Serbs.



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digby 10/31/2005 07:41:00 PM |

 
Catastrophe Strategy

I'm reading a lot of comments in the blogosphere saying things like this today:

"...we'd be far better off politically if Roe were overturned and Griswold were curbed. And if a couple states -- say Kansas and Alabama -- enacted medieval restrictions that made the rest of the country puke."

This is a great idea and I don't know why we don't use it for everything. For instance, why don't we stop talking about torture. Our position is "soft" and it turns off the NASCAR dads we need to reach. Certainly, the prohibition against torture, which nobody even considered was in danger of being repealed until a couple of years ago, cannot be easily abandoned. Once people become aware of this medieval behavior, they will "puke" and step in to do something about it, right? Isn't that how it works? When the right pulls some outrageous stunt, the country stands up en masse and rejects it.

There is a lot of action on the right these days about due process. If we just keep very quiet about the threat to habeas corpus and the right to confront your accuser, trial by jury of your peers --- all of these fundamental constitutional rights, people will see how bad it is when our system of justice becomes "medieval" and then they will rebel.

Following this strategy, we should allow the Republicans to have their way on tort reform and consumer rights. Once people get ripped off badly enough they will look at the Republicans and see that they don't have their best interests at heart and they will vote for us instead. Indeed, I think that we should carefully consider whether or not it's smart to keep harping on tax policy too, for that matter. If we let the Republicans completely bankrupt the country so that we have a catastrophic economic meltdown, destroy social security and medicare, all those old, poor and unemployed people on the streets will surely wake people up. It will probably make them puke.

I'm not sure why that would lead to anyone voting for the Democrats, though. After all, we'll have sat idly by and let these things happen without fighting because we thought it would be politically helpful to our cause to force women to have back alley abortions, enable torture, destroy our judicial system, let common citizens be conned out of their hard earned money, and their lives destroyed in economic calamity --- in order to make a political point. But hey, it's a good plan anyway. We'll run on the "we told you so" platform and everyone will love us.


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digby 10/31/2005 11:36:00 AM |

 
Generative Consequences

"Men's liberation" aside, there are many many people, both male and female, who believe that a woman should be required to inform her husband that she is pregnant -- after all, they reason, the baby is his too, right?

I don't believe that women should have to inform anyone of their decision to have an abortion because it infringes on her fundamental right to personal autonomy. But even those who disagree with that should recognise that it's not always so simple:

The name of the woman pictured below is Gerri Twerdy Santoro. She was just 28 years old. She was a sister, a daughter, and she was the mother of two daughters when she died a very painful and frightening death.

This New York coroner's picture first appeared in MS Magazine in April 1973. When Gerri's picture appeared in MS, no one knew her name or all the circumstances that surrounded her death from an illegal abortion. While it was assumed that she died at the hands of a back alley butcher, the family later confirmed that she died the way most women died before Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion in this country in 1973; she died from a self-induced abortion attempt.

Gerri was estranged from her abusive husband when she met Clyde Dixon and became pregnant by him. Terrified that once her abusive husband returned to town and learned it was Dixon's baby she was carrying, he would kill her. She was determined and desperate to end her unintended pregnancy. That desperation and determination made her akin to thousands upon thousands of women in those days that were desperate and determined enough to terminate their unintended pregnancies in spite of the fact that abortion was illegal. Illegality affected the safety of abortion but it never affected the number of abortions that were performed.

Gerri was 6 ½ months pregnant in June 1964. Gerri's boyfriend obtained a medical book and borrowed some surgical equipment. They went to a motel where Dixon tried to perform the abortion. When the attempt failed, when it all went terribly wrong, Dixon fled the scene, leaving her there to die, alone, in this cold impersonal hotel room. She was bleeding profusely and tried with towels to stop it but she couldn't. How frightened she must have been, knowing she was going to die. She was found like this, on her stomach with her knees under her, her face not visible, bloody, nude, alone and dead.

You can go to the link to see the picture, if you need to see the horror.

The new nominee for the Supreme Court voted that a woman today, in the same position this woman was in in 1964, would probably have to do the same thing Gerri Santoro did. Informing her husband would put her in the exact position she is desperate to avoid. And that woman might very well end up the same way Gerri Santoro did.

Now, I'm sure there are many on the right who believe that this poor woman deserved what she got for being unfaithful to her abusive husband. Her crime was having unauthorized sex and she should have had to "pay the price" by bringing a child into an angry abusive marriage --- or perhaps being killed by her violent husband.

Indeed, great thinkers on the right are now saying this right out loud.

From Pandagon I find out that Leon Kass is dead serious about outlawing birth control, because it has unhinged women's "desire" from its "consequences:"

The sexual revolution that liberated (especially) female sexual desire from the confines of marriage, and even from love and intimacy, would almost certainly not have occurred had there not been available cheap and effective female birth control — the pill — which for the first time severed female sexual activity from its generative consequences.

[...]

Her menstrual cycle, since puberty a regular reminder of her natural maternal destiny, is now anovulatory and directed instead by her will and her medications, serving goals only of pleasure and convenience, enjoyable without apparent risk to personal health and safet

[...]

Her sexuality unlinked to procreation, its exercise no longer needs to be concerned with the character of her partner and whether he is suitable to be the father and co-rearer of her yet-to-be-born children.

How touching. If it weren't for birth control we could pretend we're in Victorian England and have a nice cup of tea. Sadly, his little fantasy wasn't even true during that time for any but the richest Mayfair heiresses (who were also bartered off like cattle) and it sure wasn't true for women who had no means.

I think it's time to call upon some down home wisdom from somebody red staters revere about the "character" of partners and the "generative consequences" for women in a life without repropductive freedom:

You wined me and dined me
When I was your girl
Promised if I'd be your wife
You'd show me the world
But all I've seen of this old world
Is a bed and a doctor bill
I'm tearin' down your brooder house
'Cause now I've got the pill

All these years I've stayed at home
While you had all your fun
And every year thats gone by
Another babys come
There's a gonna be some changes made
Right here on nursery hill
You've set this chicken your last time
'Cause now I've got the pill

This old maternity dress I've got
Is goin' in the garbage
The clothes I'm wearin' from now on
Won't take up so much yardage
Miniskirts, hot pants and a few little fancy frills
Yeah I'm makin' up for all those years
Since I've got the pill

I'm tired of all your crowin'
How you and your hens play
While holdin' a couple in my arms
Another's on the way
This chicken's done tore up her nest
And I'm ready to make a deal
And ya can't afford to turn it down
'Cause you know I've got the pill

This incubator is overused
Because you've kept it filled
The feelin' good comes easy now
Since I've got the pill
It's gettin' dark it's roostin' time
Tonight's too good to be real
Oh but daddy don't you worry none
'Cause mama's got the pill
Oh daddy don't you worry none
'Cause mama's got the pill

Loretta Lynn 1972

Scalito doesn't want women to have family leave when they get pregnant, and he thinks that women should have to inform their husbands if they want an abortion (at least until he can outlaw it all together.) Considering his views are considered to be in the same ballpark as Scalia, I assume that he thinks that Griswold should be overturned as well -- all the best right wing fascists do.

Good luck with this. If these guys have their way it's going to be a rude awakening for the women in this country.




Update: Excuse me, I just found out that Scalito believes that there should have been an exception to the "inform the husband" provision --- she would have had to go to court and reveal all of her private business to a judge in order to get permission not to tell her estranged, abusive husband. The supreme court found that to be an undue burden. I'm sure he and Nino will take care of that nonsense the first chance they get.



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digby 10/31/2005 09:21:00 AM |

 
It's Traitorgate, Stupid.

Alito, schmalito. Of course, he stinks, and stinks worse than usual. You expected a reasonable nominee from Bush? Are you joking?

Now look. Of course, if Alito isn't vigorously opposed and if he gets to the court, the extreme right will advance one more ominous giant step along the road to establishing the US as a Christian Taliban state (and no, rightwing nuts: I don't think they'll convert baseball stadiums for use as mass execution centers of heretics, liberals, abortion doctors, their patients, and gays. Well, at least not for a few more years, anyway.)

But look at where we were up to 1 second before Bush announced Alito's name, and where we still are. Bush is perceived by the press and politicos as wounded. And the wound is serious: The perception of his administration's ability to protect us, to keep our secrets, and to tell us the truth is heavily, perhaps permanently damaged. With Bush injured, now is the time to press harder exactly where it hurts, and vigorously rub it with salt.

By contrast, Alito is for Bush as Oxycontin is for Limbaugh. Alito is intended to ease the pain of Fitzgerald's indictments and continuing investigation by changing the subject. Bush, Cheney and Rove expect us to play along on their timetable, which requires that the country get distracted quickly from the brief glimpse Fitzgerald provided everyone, even Kristof, of the enormously fetid swamp of crimes and traitorous behavior behind the sealed gates of the Bush White House. No one, except Bush's base, can be anything but disgusted at what was revealed on Friday.

And Bush's base will rally around Alito no matter what. They have their carefully honed defenses of Alito ready to roll out. But they are not planning on having the country stay focused on Traitorgate. And that is why I'm saying we must.

I'm NOT saying ignore Alito. What I'm saying is DON'T LET BUSH CHANGE THE SUBJECT. Yes, we should attack Alito hard, but only when it's entirely to our advantage to do so, and not when Bush thinks we will, when it he expects it to work mostly to his advantage. And so, don't forget:

It's Traitorgate, stupid.

It's the foul stench of betrayal of country that will follow Libby around for the rest of his life. And in the mainstream (and even some places on the right), the sense that Rove and even Cheney have engaged in utterly unacceptable, if not outright criminal, behavior has begun to catch on as within the bounds of acceptable discourse. Look at what Reid said, he's calling for Rove to resign regardless of indictment! (And he's right.)

And so, it is on Traitorgate we should push. Alito can wait a bit for that heavy concerted effort to oppose him. Please, folks, think twice before jumping whenever Bush snaps. It's Traitorgate right now, not rightwing courtpacking. Let's make sure no one forgets it.
tristero 10/31/2005 08:21:00 AM |

 
Krugman

Sing it:

Let me be frank: it has been a long political nightmare. For some of us, daily life has remained safe and comfortable, so the nightmare has merely been intellectual: we realized early on that this administration was cynical, dishonest and incompetent, but spent a long time unable to get others to see the obvious. For others - above all, of course, those Americans risking their lives in a war whose real rationale has never been explained - the nightmare has been all too concrete.

[SNIP]

So the Bush administration has lost the myths that sustained its mojo, and with them much of its power to do harm. But the nightmare won't be fully over until two things happen.

First, politicians will have to admit that they were misled. Second, the news media will have to face up to their role in allowing incompetents to pose as leaders and political apparatchiks to pose as patriots.

It's a sad commentary on the timidity of most Democrats that even now, with Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, telling us how policy was "hijacked" by the Cheney-Rumsfeld "cabal," it's hard to get leading figures to admit that they were misled into supporting the Iraq war. Kudos to John Kerry for finally saying just that last week.

And as for the media: these days, there is much harsh, justified criticism of the failure of major news organizations, this one included, to exert due diligence on rationales for the war. But the failures that made the long nightmare possible began much earlier, during the weeks after 9/11, when the media eagerly helped our political leaders build up a completely false picture of who they were.

So the long nightmare won't really be over until journalists ask themselves: what did we know, when did we know it, and why didn't we tell the public?

It's hard to believe how isolated a voice Krugman was from, say, about Spring 2000 to about January, 2004. There was all but nowhere else in the mainstream press where Bush's total absence of presidential qualifications, his incompetence, and his lack of personal integrity were being honestly discussed.

And no one believed him. He was ignored and ridiculed by fellow journalists as shrill, he went mostly unread by mainstream politicians. He was disbelieved by ordinary readers including literally all of my milieu, who seemed desperate to believe that Bush - whose negligence and incompetence were crystal clear to me even when the towers were still smoking and the networks were overwhelmed with ominous reports and rumours - would actually save and protect us from the horrible fate that befell our fellow New Yorkers.

So now, if Krugman wants to tell the country and especially his colleagues, "I told you so," he deserves to. He told us exactly so. When no one else dared.

Paul, I owe you. Big time.

(Edited slightly after original posting.)
tristero 10/31/2005 12:01:00 AM |

Sunday, October 30, 2005

 
Fitz In The Tank?

Michael Isikoff reports:

Fitzgerald made another visit early Friday morning—shortly before the grand jury voted to indict Dick Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby—to the office of James Sharp, President George W. Bush's own lawyer in the case, to tell him the president's closest aide would not be charged.

Holy Shit. Can someone tell me why Fitzgerald would go to President Bush's personal lawyer on Friday to tell him that Bush's "closest aide wouldn't be charged?" Is it in any possible sense ethical for the prosecutor to be telling the president's lawyer information that isn't available to the public about members of the president's staff in the middle of an investigation?

If this is true, I think Mr Fitzgerald has some splainin' to do, otherwise it might look like he's got some back channel communication with the White House about a case that directly affects it. This would not seem in character for Mr Fitzgerald, who is by all acounts a very ethical prosecutor. If this is true, it's a bomb shell. Fitzgerald has no business discussing Karl Rove with anyone but Karl Rove and Karl Rove's lawyer.

Michael Isikoff repeats this line as if it is a matter of objective truth, but there is no way to know that, of course. This prosecutor doesn't leak so this is coming from Rove's lawyer, Luskin, or Bush's lawyer, Sharp. I'm unaware of any leaking from Sharp but there has been a ton of it from Luskin over the past few months. I think reporters like Isikoff should probably take a little inventory of all the blind alleys they've been led down by Robert Luskin these past few months. Here are just a few of the highlights:

"Karl has truthfully told everyone who's asked him that he did not circulate Valerie Plame's name to punish her husband, Joe Wilson," Luskin said. Asked if that included President Bush, Luskin said, "Everyone is everyone."


Added Luskin, "Karl did nothing wrong. Karl didn't disclose Valerie Plame's identity to Mr. Cooper or anybody else ... Who outed this woman? ... It wasn't Karl."
Luskin said Rove "certainly did not disclose to Matt Cooper or anybody else any confidential information."

"If Matt Cooper is going to jail to protect a source, it's not Karl he's protecting."

Luskin is a defense lawyer. It's part of his job. I'm not criticising him for it. But, he and Rove are working overtime to get Rove out of this jam -- and prepare the ground for a big PR push if Rove is indicted --- and all reporters should think carefully about credulously repeating what they are saying.

You'd think Luskin would be very careful before he charges Fitzgerald with unauthorized discussions of the case with Bush's lawyer. If it isn't true, Fitzgerald might just get a little testy about it.
digby 10/30/2005 12:29:00 PM |

 
Turdblossom In The Punchbowl

Karl Rove is spinning like Tanya Harding at the nationals right now, telling everyone who will listen that he wasn't part of any conspiracy to leak Plame's identity to the press, that he has a major case of CRS disease (can't remember shit.) But it just doesn't hold water.

One thing we do know is that Official A in LIbby's indictment has been acknowledged to be Rove. Here's the passage that refers to him:

On or about July 10 or July 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke to a senior official in the White House ("Official A") who advised LIBBY of a conversation Official A had earlier that week with columnist Robert Novak in which Wilson's wife was discussed as a CIA employee involved in Wilson's trip. LIBBY was advised by Official A that Novak would be writing a story about Wilson's wife.

Interesting phrasing, isn't it? Rove knew that Novak was writing a story "about Wilson's wife" --- not about Cheney's non-involvement, not about Joe Wilson never submitting a report, but "about Wilson's wife."

And here I thought Karl was just trying to warn reporters off Wilson's allegations and mentioned Wilson's wife to Cooper as an afterthought. Byron York interviewed Rove's lawyer Luskin back in July:

"Look at the Cooper e-mail," Luskin continues. "Karl speaks to him on double super secret background...I don't think that you can read that e-mail and conclude that what Karl was trying to do was to get Cooper to publish the name of Wilson's wife."

According to Luskin, the fact that Rove did not call Cooper; that the original purpose of the call, as Cooper told Rove, was welfare reform; that only after Cooper brought the WMD issue up did Rove discuss Wilson — all are "indications that this was not a calculated effort by the White House to get this story out."

Yet Karl "Official A" Rove specifically informed Libby that Novak would be writing a story "about Wilson's wife." Perhaps they were just idly sharing small tid-bits of their conversations with journalists over the urinals, but it certainly would seem that Karl had an interest in "Wilson's wife" as opposed to Wilson's alleged misstatements.

I am not a lawyer so I'm probably missing something vitally important here, but can someone explain to me why this item is included in the obstruction count? From what I gather the obstruction charge rests on the fact that he lied so often and so completely that the Grand Jury concluded that he was actively obstructing the investigation. But it does not appear that he lied about this conversation, or at least it isn't mentioned in the enumerated lies in the perjury counts. So, what does this conversation with Rove have to do with Libby's obstruction activities?

Karl, of course, has been telling everyone who will listen that he's only potentially on the hook for perjury about Matt Cooper and that he just forgot. Luskin has been spinning this as Karl presenting evidence at the eleventh hour that gave Fitzgerald "pause" because Karl never mentioned his conversation with Cooper to his flunky so he must not have remembered it. (I think Jane has the best take on that silly defense.)

Karl has a history of memory lapses about his ratfucking activity going way back. But it's always been a little bit hard to swallow, since he can recall the most arcane electoral information for any district in the country and can recite passages of books he's read verbatim. You see, Karl doesn't just have a good memory, or a prodigious memory --- he has a photographic memory.

[His sister Reba] told journalist Miriam Rozen the family used to rely on Rove's photographic memory for evening entertainment.

"The game was, "see if you can stump Karl," she said in an interview published in the Dallas Observer. His older brother Eric would read a passafe from abook Karl had read the week before. That challenge was to guess which word his brother had intentionally left out. (Bush's Brain, p.116)

Once people with photographic memories see something they remember it. If Karl Rove wrote an e-mail, he remembered it.



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digby 10/30/2005 11:40:00 AM |

 
Pakistan

Ann-Marie Slaughter reprints a letter from Pakistan:

The situation is, as per any and all analyses, profoundly dire. The statistics speak for themselves, both in terms of the damage done and the lives lost, but more importantly, for the people still at risk (at least 3.5 million). By UN estimates, the relief challenge is three times that of the tsunami.

As we have discussed, my family is actively involved in social and development work in Northern Pakistan; I myself have spent much time working in the region. I am writing to you because, having just visited the region and spoken to many community leaders across the NWFP and Pakistani-held Kashmir, it is apparent that there is a tremendous strategic opportunity for the United States and its allies. For a fraction of the cost of what is spent in other arenas of the War on Terror, an extremely volatile region and country's hearts and minds can be won over. All that is required is a very substantial, very visible US relief effort. [Emphasis added.]

'Nuff said. And needless to say, if the US doesn't help in a substantive way, it will be interpreted as the worst kind of punishment and abandonment.
tristero 10/30/2005 09:23:00 AM |

 
39% Approval? After Everything That's Happened?!?

What is wrong with this country? Bush's approval is at 39%. True, it's the lowest ever for the Post/ABC survey but think about it. How could more than 1/3 of the people think this president, whose performance in office makes it clear that Yale was already cursed with serious grade inflation when they gave him a C+, be so clueless? Look at it this way.

We just got a wonderful puppy who loves everyone; he's trusting, affectionate, and was easily housetrained. But what if I was so negligent that I let a known dog hater from the next block attack him so violently that two of his legs had to be amputated? What if I forced him through obedience training to sit, to beg, to rollover, and then as a reward, I gave all the well-fed dogs on the block delicious yummy treats while putting my puppy on a starvation diet? What if, then, on the hottest days of the year, I arranged for my dog to participate in a totally pointlesss cockfight with no end, a fight which left him bleeding, exhausted, and humiliated? What if I grabbed other dogs off the street and tortured them right in front of my dog, so they associated their pain with my dog's loving face? What if I then nearly drowned my dog in a clogged sewer, leaving him there for half a week while I joked about how I once partied hard down there, when it was an elegant cabana?

Yes, the average puppy scores twice as high as Jeb Bush on scholastic aptitude tests, but let's face it: there are smarter critters out there. But even so, don't you think that any puppy, if they endured what I've imagined mine enduring, would just about now start thinking there was something majorly seriously wrong with the guy tugging his leash? Don't you think that any puppy would snap and bite whenever I came within 10 feet of him? Or snarl menacingly whenever I pretended once again to feed him but gave his food away to the big fat dogs who regularly stomp on him at the dog run?

Am I saying that over 1/3 of the American public is dumber and more complacent than my 10 month old puppy? Not at all. Here's another possible explanation.
tristero 10/30/2005 03:44:00 AM |

Saturday, October 29, 2005

 
Headline of the Year



tristero 10/29/2005 01:14:00 PM |

 
On or about September 26, 2003

the Department of Justice authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") to commence a criminal investigation into the possible unauthorized disclosure of classified information regarding the disclosure of Valerie Wilson's affiliation with the CIA to various reporters in the spring of 2003.

On or about October 7, 2003.

Karl Rove says to George W. Bush, "Reporters do a very good job of protecting leakers, Mr President. Don't worry."

October 8, 2003:

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.

October 14, 2003

LIBBY stated to FBI Special Agents that:

a. During a conversation with Tim Russert of NBC News on July 10 or 11, 2003, Russert asked LIBBY if LIBBY was aware that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. LIBBY responded to Russert that he did not know that, and Russert replied that all the reporters knew it. LIBBY was surprised by this statement because, while speaking with Russert, LIBBY did not recall that he previously had learned about Wilson's wife's employment from the Vice President.

b. During a conversation with Matthew Cooper of Time magazine on or about July 12, 2003, LIBBY told Cooper that reporters were telling the administration that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, but that LIBBY did not know if this was true; and

c. LIBBY did not discuss Wilson's wife with New York Times reporter Judith Miller during a meeting with Miller on or about July 8, 2003.

Can there be any doubt that the Bush administration bet the farm on the idea that the press would keep their mouths shut? And can we all see that they were very close to being right? If Fitzgerald hadn't been willing to take it to the mat, they would have gotten off scott free.

The Republican (Washington) estabishment very wisely have figured out that they can use the press to disseminate anything they choose and the press will either eagerly report it or "decline" to follow up. They consider the press a cog in their noise machine and the press is willing to be a cog as long as they are given access.

It's not just Judy Miller. It's the whole lot of them.

Recall, if you will, the unbelivable performance of reporters at the presidential and department of defense press conferences in which they laughed uproariously at every lame joke as if it were Robin Williams at Carnegie Hall. Remember the way they reported the president's halting, ignorant, inarticulate answersd to questions as if they were handed down from the Oracle of Delphi. Remember how they dutifully reported every single lie the administration spewed forth in the run up to the war --- between khaki safari jacket fittings and salute lessons in anticipation of their thrilling (em)bedding with the he-men of the American military. It was enough to make you sick.

The Bush administration must be reeling with betrayal. I can certainly understand why they believed that the press would do exactly as they were told. They always had before.

They didn't realize that for Tim Russert, it was a matter of picking which government official he would keep silent for. And they couldn't have anticipated that Pat Fitzgerald would see that since reporters were first hand witnesses to a crime of national security that he would put the squeeze on them so hard they had to cooperate.

I have no doubt that Karl and Scooter gave their bosses complete assurance that the press would never talk. They wouldn't have received any more official leaks on backround if they didn't and then they would have to do real reporting. Nobody could imagine such a thing.



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digby 10/29/2005 11:47:00 AM |

 
No Hero

Now that Tim Russert has finally told his story --- and it appears to be central to the case --- a lot of people are saying that we owe him an apology for giving him grief.

While I certainly agree with Atrios that this notion of default confidentiality any time you speak to a government official is mind-boggling (and I give Russert some credit for not being a total Bush toady on this) but I don't think Russert gets any kudos for his behavior. I know that Fitzgerald asked him to keep quiet, but I don't think it's any more ethical for a reporter not to report what he knows for that reason, than if he kept quiet because he allowed Scooter to assume that he had confidentiality. There is no secrecy required for Grand Jury witnesses and there certainly is no secrecy required for discussions with the prosecutor. Where there is no secrecy required, which should be a little as possible, reporters should report. We are all better off if these people don't go around deciding whether the government is doing the right thing by keeping secrets. We the people are the government and we have a right to know.

NBC put put out a lawyerly press release which turns out to be pretty much the extent of Russert's testimony. In the context of the case it became ripe for parsing, using such words as it did about"the name" and the word "operative" which had been discussed in great depth in the context of Novak's column. By never clarifying what he meant by those words --- by never ever even addressing them --- he allowed misconceptions and speculation to simmer for months. He failed in his job as a journalist by not clearing that up.

But Russert's biggest crime was consistently discussing this case, and grilling those involved, without ever mentioning his own involvement. For two years he has been reporting this story and leaving out relevant information (as it turns out extremely relevant information) about this case. He grilled Joe Wilson like a criminal, he never challenged the Vice president, he had Bob Novak right in front of him and he talked about the case and speculated grandly while never (except in one very bizarre instance) coming clean about what he knew.

Here's the one bizarre instance from July 25, 2005:

MR. GREGORY: ... There's a political problem and then potentially a legal problem because I think what the special prosecutor is looking at right now is who might have actually blown Valerie Plame's cover, or did somebody lie, in their testimony, about their conversations with reporters? The White House defense has been that they learned about Valerie Plame from reporters. There is now information, including a classified State Department memo, that may contradict that. There at least is the potential that White House officials were aware of who she was, what she did and her role in sending her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger to investigate this uranium-Iraq thing.

MR. RUSSERT: There has to be an original source, somebody.

MR. GREGORY: Yes.

MS. TOTENBERG: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: Even if it came from a reporter...

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: ...the reporter got it from someplace.

MS. TOTENBERG: Right. And...

MR. RUSSERT: But I was asked what I said. I did not know.

I have no idea what he meant by that, but it certainly didn't inform the discussion. (And, of course, nobody followed up. Russert is godhead.)

Unless Russert had an explicit legal obligation to stay quiet, he should not have done it. His job is to inform the public of what he knows, period. By not clearing up the press release and speaking up in various roundtables and interviews he passively misinformed the public for months.

The bottom line is that a reporter's obligation is not to the government, it's to his readers or viewers, whether the government is represented by Scooter Libby or Patrick Fitzgerald. They are the Fourth Estate, empowered by a heavy duty constitutional right --- freedom of the press, which was not put in the bill of rights so that reporters could get delicious gossip about people with whom they socialize along with their tasty official propaganda. It also wasn't put into the Bill of Rights so that they could help prosecutors. Our democracy will not function if they do not operate in a separate sphere of responsibility from the government they cover.

I'm reminded of this little exhange between Russert and the Dean from a few months back:

Russert: David Broder, explain to our viewers what you have observed, and why journalists have this code where they simply will not divulge their sources.

Broder: The principle is pretty simple. It is the government’s responsibility to keep the government’s secrets secret. It is not the press’ responsibility. Our inclination, once we have information, is to try to verify it, to amplify as much as we can, the background and the context. But our basic obligation, then, is to share information with the public.

It seems that many members of the Washington press corpse believe that the story stops with printing what their favored confidential sources feed them. Then they go back for more. They've been doing this for a long time and the result has been a disasterous kind of incentuous amplification of the political establishment's efforts to guide the discourse in the direction they choose.

In this case, even after all this manipulation and lying on the part of the administration, even blaming reporters for their own misdeeds and using the threat of betraying omerta to silence them, the press is still serving as little more than conduits for the target's lawyers' public relations roll out. Their reporting on the underlying issues about the war is perfunctory at best, thrown in at the end of each article like so much filler, and calling it "context."

I heard John Dean last night on Keith Olbermann make an interesting claim: that the Nixon administration as part of their Stonewall Defense had wanted the case to be investigated in the Grand Jury because of the secrecy requirement. (Remenber Nixon's famous words on the tape: "I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment; cover-up or anything else, if it'll save it; save the plan.") Dean said that if congress hadn't investigated Watergate, it would have died behind the wall of Grand Jury secrecy and the facts behind this case may die there too.

However, there was at the time, some intrepid reporting taking place as well, some of which was aggressive interviewing of reluctant Grand Jury witnesses --- former employees of CREEP and the like. Reporters worked hard to get them to tell their tales and it was the constant revelations coming out in the Washington Post, informed by Mark Feldt but reported with shoe leather investigative work, that propelled the congress to act. Today, we have reporters who are actually part of the story refusing to tell their tales all because they are protecting, in one way or another, the government.(Andsadly, one of the reporters involved in that story is now a total whore for the Bush administration.)

This is one of the most perverse aspects of this entire story. The culture of Washington has become so insular that reporters are in the business of protecting the government's secrets on a constant basis. (The only secrets they refuse to keep are lurid tales of people's private sex lives.)

I'm glad that Fitzgerald was able to make a perjury case against Scooter Libby, since he is obviously covering up something bigger than gossip or he wouldn't have done something so uncharacteristically dumb.("Stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment; cover-up or anything else, if it'll save it; save the plan.") He deserves to be prosecuted. But I can't help but wonder how I would look at this if the prosecutor were Ken Starr and Tim Russert had helped him rather than do his job.

Oh wait, I forgot. He did.



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digby 10/29/2005 09:32:00 AM |

Friday, October 28, 2005

 
It's All Good

With yesterday's indictment of Vice President Cheney's top aide, President Bush's administration has become a textbook example of what can go wrong in a second term. Along with ineffectiveness, overreaching, intraparty rebellion, plunging public confidence and plain bad luck, scandal has now touched the highest levels of the White House staff.

Read the whole thing. When you see it all together you realize just how much trouble this administration is in.

Best Quote:

Noting that Clinton's approval ratings remained above 60 percent throughout the impeachment battle, while Bush's are in the low 40s, Podesta said, "When Clinton said, 'I'm going back to do my work,' people cheered," Podesta said. "When Bush says, 'I'm going to do the job I've been doing,' people say, 'Oh, no.' "

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digby 10/28/2005 09:23:00 PM |

 
Shaken Not Stirred

To those who want to trivialize these perjury and obstruction charges against Scooter Libby, I would just suggest they take a quick look at the report that was filed publicly by Kenneth Starr against President Clinton (and which served as the basis of an impeachment in the House of Representatives.) Here's a little excerpt in case you've forgotten what a restrained and dignified legal document it was:

According to Ms. Lewinsky, she and the President had ten sexual encounters, eight while she worked at the White House and two thereafter. The sexual encounters generally occurred in or near the private study off the Oval Office -- most often in the windowless hallway outside the study. During many of their sexual encounters, the President stood leaning against the doorway of the bathroom across from the study, which, he told Ms. Lewinsky, eased his sore back.

Ms. Lewinsky testified that her physical relationship with the President included oral sex but not sexual intercourse. According to Ms. Lewinsky, she performed oral sex on the President; he never performed oral sex on her. Initially, according to Ms. Lewinsky, the President would not let her perform oral sex to completion. In Ms. Lewinsky's understanding, his refusal was related to "trust and not knowing me well enough." During their last two sexual encounters, both in 1997, he did ejaculate.

According to Ms. Lewinsky, she performed oral sex on the President on nine occasions. On all nine of those occasions, the President fondled and kissed her bare breasts. He touched her genitals, both through her underwear and directly, bringing her to orgasm on two occasions. On one occasion, the President inserted a cigar into her vagina. On another occasion, she and the President had brief genital-to-genital contact.

Whereas the President testified that "what began as a friendship came to include [intimate contact]," Ms. Lewinsky explained that the relationship moved in the opposite direction: "[T]he emotional and friendship aspects . . . developed after the beginning of our sexual relationship."

As the relationship developed over time, Ms. Lewinsky grew emotionally attached to President Clinton. She testified: "I never expected to fall in love with the President. I was surprised that I did." Ms. Lewinsky told him of her feelings. At times, she believed that he loved her too. They were physically affectionate: "A lot of hugging, holding hands sometimes. He always used to push the hair out of my face." She called him "Handsome"; on occasion, he called her "Sweetie," "Baby," or sometimes "Dear." He told her that he enjoyed talking to her -- she recalled his saying that the two of them were "emotive and full of fire," and she made him feel young. He said he wished he could spend more time with her.

Ms. Lewinsky told confidants of the emotional underpinnings of the relationship as it evolved. According to her mother, Marcia Lewis, the President once told Ms. Lewinsky that she "had been hurt a lot or something by different men and that he would be her friend or he would help her, not hurt her." According to Ms. Lewinsky's friend Neysa Erbland, President Clinton once confided in Ms. Lewinsky that he was uncertain whether he would remain married after he left the White House. He said in essence, "[W]ho knows what will happen four years from now when I am out of office?" Ms. Lewinsky thought, according to Ms. Erbland, that "maybe she will be his wife."

That's how a responsible prosecutor works. He writes a bodice ripping yarn as an indictment. You can certainly understand why everyone was expecting something a little bit more James Bondish in this spy thriller. No wonder everyone's expectations are dashed. What a shame that Pat Fitzgerald is just a prosecutor instead of an all 'round entertainer like Ken Starr, eh?



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digby 10/28/2005 04:18:00 PM |

 
Talking Point Tryout

Crooks and Liars has the footage I posted about yesterday in which Mr (Ed) Rogers says that government officials lying about their sex lives is worse than lying about whether they outed a CIA agent to discredit a critic.



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digby 10/28/2005 03:39:00 PM |

 
The Big Picture

I wrote previously that I believed Fitzgerald was investigating a fairly narrow case and would not get into all the bigger issues of the lead up to the war. I also wrote that what is important is that the story of how we got bamboozled into the war by a corrupt, venal Republican political machine is finally told. This case is the hook that allows those stories to be told. It's all tied into the same thing --- dishonesty, secrecy, revenge and dirty politics at the highest levels in both large and small ways.

If the Republican leadership of congress weren't spineless Bush toadies and insane religious fanatics they would do their job and investigate this honestly for the good of the country. But they won't. They are nothing more than braindead fatcats gorging at the pork barrel with a fistfull of C-notes in one hand and a bible in the other. (If you want to read a purely political document, spend a little time with the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Iraq. Rush Limbaugh is more subtle.)

We are left with a timorous press and an honest prosecutor to get to the bottom of what these people have done to us.

If they care to do it, this case is a way for the media to save its soul after its outrageous conduct helping the administration make its case for war on lies. It is the responsibility of the NY Times and the Washington Post and NBC and all the rest to revisit what this administration has done ever since 1999 when the national press overlooked its sleazy and dangerous behavior. If they care to salvage their reputations they have the chance right here, right now.

And if nothing else, Fitzgerald is doing this country a huge, vastly important service simply by being honest and apolitical, proving that its still possible. Taking Libby to task (and possibly Rove) for being reprehensible pieces of shit and then lying about it is extremely meaningful after the way that Republicans have behaved for the last 15 years. Exposing the way they work to smear and destroy anyone who gets in their way, whether that's his purpose or not, is important work. This case is a window into a high level Republican smear job and cover up.

The Republicans will do anything to advance their agenda. They are fundamentally undemocratic --- they do not believe that the people have a right to vote, to see their elected politicians allowed to serve a full term, to know the reasons for their government's policies or even why they are going to war. They believe that they can do anything. That's what this case is about.


Update: I also wrote the other day that prosecutors hate perjury and obstruction because when someone covers up a crime they tend to make it more difficult to prosecute it. Fitz's "sand in the face" comments were saying exactly that.

There is no reason to think that anyone else is out of the woods, though. In the Governor Ryan case remember, Ryan was the 66th person indicted --- partially on the basis of testimony of his closest aide:

“I’m still not overly comfortable with participating,” Fawell told a federal judge last Oct. 28 during a teary testimonial to try to keep his mistress-turned-fiancee, Andrea Coutretsis, out of prison. “I don’t relish testifying against George Ryan.”

Fawell, 48, was once the heir to DuPage County political royalty. His mother is Beverly Fawell, a former state legislator. His father is Bruce Fawell, a former chief judge in the county. And his uncle, Harris Fawell, was a respected congressman from Naperville.

Scott Fawell rose through the GOP political ranks rapidly, serving as a driver for then-U.S. Sen. Charles Percy, lobbyist for the tollway authority and campaign operative for then-Gov. Jim Thompson. He ended up working for then-Lt. Gov. Ryan, and helped Ryan win a close race in 1990 for secretary of state.

Ryan rewarded him with the chief of staff job and then the nearly $200,000-a-year plum of running the agency that oversees McCormick Place and Navy Pier.

So if Ryan indeed has figurative bodies buried somewhere, as prosecutors allege, Fawell is in position to know the location. He gave prosecutors a 45-page sworn statement.

[...]

A jury found Fawell guilty for his part in the corruption scandal. He’s serving a 6¨-year sentence at a federal work camp in Yankton, S.D.

Fawell, however, gave his testimony to prosecutors reluctantly, a fact that Ryan’s defense team undoubtedly will bring to jurors’ attention.

“I’m not going to sell myself out just to save myself,” Fawell said after his sentencing in late June 2003. “I’m not sitting on any bomb of George Ryan’s. I’m not going to go in there and make up stories about him just to save myself, which unfortunately that’s the game (prosecutors) like you to play.”

That, however, was before Fitzgerald’s office charged Coutretsis, formerly of Long Grove. Coutretsis, a mother of two and Fawell’s one-time assistant at McPier, faced a prison sentence for perjury before persuading Fawell to turn on Ryan. In return, she could get six months or probation. Fawell could get six months shaved off his sentence.

Stay tuned.



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digby 10/28/2005 12:32:00 PM |

 
Rove Must Resign, Too

Since Rove is under investigation and since the potential crime is so serious - compromising the status of a CIA agent - Rove simply must resign. Now, I won't remind everyone again of Bush's remarks in 2000 about creating an atmosphere of probity and changing the tone of Washington, yadda yadda. They are unnecessary, especially when it comes to national security, because they are assumed. If there is even a hint that Rove cannot be trusted with access to government secrets, and there is more than a hint, he must immediately step down.

Karl, stop wasting my taxes and go back to whatever rock you crawled out from under. Oh, and one more thing. Fuck you, traitor.
tristero 10/28/2005 12:29:00 PM |

 
Scooter's Replacement

From MYDD

Where there has been controversy over the past four years, there has often been Addington. He was a principal author of the White House memo justifying torture of terrorism suspects. He was a prime advocate of arguments supporting the holding of terrorism suspects without access to courts.

Addington also led the fight with Congress and environmentalists over access to information about corporations that advised the White House on energy policy. He was instrumental in the series of fights with the Sept. 11 commission and its requests for information.

[...]


Colleagues say Addington stands out for his devotion to secrecy in an administration noted for its confidentiality.

[...]

Even in a White House known for its dedication to conservative philosophy, Addington is known as an ideologue, an adherent of an obscure philosophy called the unitary executive theory that favors an extraordinarily powerful president.

If this is the game plan, I think we can expect to see Randall Terry nominated to replace Harriet Miers.



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digby 10/28/2005 10:54:00 AM |

 
Still Under Investigation

Official A, also known as Karl Rove, has to be worried. He should probably be very, very nice to everyone involved, especially Scooter. Very nice.



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digby 10/28/2005 10:46:00 AM |

 
Libby Indicted

This is the first time in 130 years that a sitting White House official has been indicted. The last time was in the Grant administration.

Honesty. Integrity. Honor. Dignity.



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digby 10/28/2005 09:47:00 AM |

 
Shiverin' In Our Boots

Joe DiGenova just pulled a Mark Levin on CNN threatening everybody that the movement conservatives (which he says he isn't) will unleash hell if this issue of lying about intelligence becomes a part of the discussion because the CIA was scheming against the president and they just won't stand for it.

This is the old, "better behave or I'll tell your father" bullshit. Fuck them.

The neocons and and the movement conservatives, remember, have been at war with the CIA for decades. The CIA hasn't always been right, but the Neocons have always, always been wrong about everything.

The answer to this crap is --- show us the WMD, bitches.



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digby 10/28/2005 09:19:00 AM |

 
Pure As The Driven Snow

Reminder:

Karl Rove’s animus toward Wilson was so intense that curiosity arose within the White House about it. When asked about this, Rove reportedly said, “He’s a Democrat.”

Reminder:

Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak's column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.

Reminder:

In my administration, we will ask not only what is legal, but also what is right - not just what the lawyers allow, but what the public deserves.

In my administration we will make it clear there is the controlling authority of conscience. We will make people proud again - so that Americans who love their country can once again respect their government.

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digby 10/28/2005 08:38:00 AM |

 
Rove Roll

Jeralyn at Talk Left has been right over and over again on Plamegate. This makes sense, since she is a criminal defense lawyer and knows how to read between the lines of these things.

She has been convinced for some time that Karl Rove cut a deal. She still thinks so:

As I noted earlier, the news reports on Rove are conflicting. But this statement by one "non-legal" member of his team, who I assume is the P.R. specialist Mark Carballo who signed on to Rove's team the other day, leads me to believe Rove took a deal and Fitzgerald has agreed not to announce it immediately

It would be prefectly in keeping with Rove's PR style to have portrayed himself these last few days as fighting the charges with everything he's got while he's actually rolling on Libby.

Everything Rove does from now on must be seen through the prism of spin.



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digby 10/28/2005 08:11:00 AM |

 
Standards Of Official Conduct

Memorandum
January 20, 2001

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT: Standards of Official Conduct

Everyone who enters into public service for the United States has a duty to the American people to maintain the highest standards of integrity in Government. I ask you to ensure that all personnel within your departments and agencies are familiar with, and faithfully observe, applicable ethics laws and regulations, including the following general principles from the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch:

(1) Public service is a public trust, requiring employees to place loyalty to the Constitution, the laws, and ethical principles above private gain.

(7) Employees shall not use public office for private gain.

(11) Employees shall disclose waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption to appropriate authorities.

(12) Employees shall satisfy in good faith their obligations as citizens, including all just financial obligations, especially those -- such as Federal, State, or local taxes -- that are imposed by law.

(14) Employees shall endeavor to avoid any actions creating the appearance that they are violating applicable law or the ethical standards in applicable regulations.

Please thank the personnel of your departments and agencies for their commitment to maintain the highest standards of integrity in Government as we serve the American people.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Via Mike Liddell
digby 10/28/2005 08:04:00 AM |

 
More Fearsome than Al Qaeda

Ok, we'll just have to be patient and wait until two o'clock, it seems. Meanwhile, I learned something very, very disturbing.

There is a group operating freely in the United States that strikes so much terror in the hearts of Americans, they fear them more than al Qaeda. Who could they be? Saddamists? A coalition of renegades from Peru's Shining Path and the Tamil Tigers? And my God, what are they planning?!??! Will they attack tomorrow and blow up Mt. Rushmore or Las Vegas or Boca Raton? Is anyone safe from these Mega-Terrorists????

Learn the facts here, if you can stand the truth. We must all be forewarned against them.
tristero 10/28/2005 07:52:00 AM |

Thursday, October 27, 2005

 
The Clinton Defense

I just heard a Republican mouthpiece on Matthews' show pull out the old "how dare you compare these silly charges to the reprehensible behavior of Bill Clinton!" He went on to defend Rove and Libby by exclaiming that Clinton "wasn't indicted!" as if the second impeachment in history was a trivial matter and nothing compared to the persecution of poor powerless Karl and Scooter.

Matthews and the Dem on the panel dropped their jaws in disbelief, but I think we should expect more of this. They will drag out their old talking points because they want to make this appear to be the same as the Lewinsky scandal --- only this time they are the victims, their favorite role. Poor Karl is being tormented by an out of control jack booted thug for doing things that anyone can understand. Karl was just forgetful, he's a busy man and he's being strung up for just doing what any man might do in his position --- he misspoke. How dare they torture this fine public servant this way?

To that end, it appears that they have been lining up some help from those who have experience in Republican witchhunts:

The presidential aide's legal team has made contingency plans to defend him in both court and in public. They've consulted with former Justice Department official Mark Corallo and G-O-P strategist Ed Gillespie.

Marc Corallo is a very interesting person for the Rovians to consult on these matters. He was a major player in the impeachment:

Via Mithras

In a surprising disclosure, Baker says that shortly before the impeachment drive went to the House floor in December 1998, Republican House Speaker-elect Bob Livingston wanted to call the whole thing off.

Livingston, who would soon be forced to resign over his own marital infidelities, told an aide, Mark Corallo, "We've got to stop this. This is crazy. We're about to impeach the president of the United States."

Corallo convinced Livingston to reconsider. "Boss, we have a rapist in the White House," he said, a reference to allegations against Mr. Clinton by a woman named Juanita Broaddrick about a 1978 incident. Broaddrick's calims were not included in the House impeachment findings.

He went on to become Ashcroft's spokesman at Justice. He's a professional partisan flak with very relevant experience in scandal management. But here's an interesting little post from The American Spectator Blog that we should all tuck into a folder for later use if he becomes a member of the team:

Attacking the Prosecutor? Bad Idea - Tuesday, October 25, 2005 @ 9:39:12 AM

Message to Republicans: Whoever is generating the "Attack Pat Fitzgerald" talking points needs to cease and desist. This veteran (and some might say "victim") of the Impeachment in '98, finds it highly hypocritical to hear the same attacks that the left leveled at Ken Starr now being floated by the right to discredit Pat Fitzgerald -- Sen. Kay Baily Hutchison called perjury a "technicality." What has separated US from THEM is our adherence to intellectual honesty and principle even when it costs us politically. The Ds made excuse after excuse for Slick Willie while demonizing Ken Starr. If Fitzgerald indicts anyone, not for violating any of the statutes governing the handling of classified information, but for obstruction or perjury, Republicans must refrain from trivializing the charges or defending the indicted.

All should be thoroughly mindful of the FACT that Pat Fitzgerald is arguably the best prosecutor in the country. Nobody knows more about Al Qaeda, their methods and the way they finance their operations. America is safer from terrorism because of him.

The many recent profiles extolling his blue-collar upbringing, his brilliance, his record and his unrivaled work ethic neglect one of his core character traits: he is also eminently reasonable. This is not Javert, bent on getting his man no matter the consequences or the "triviality" of the crime. This is a servant of the law who has, to his credit, a thick vein of common sense and an understanding of what motivates usually law abiding people to violate the law. He is not out to get anyone.

I know Pat. Simply put, he is a really good guy.

If we are honest about the impeachment of Mr. Clinton, then we are acutely aware that he alone, by simply telling the truth from day one (or even day 20) could have saved the country from 2 years of insanity. While the Plame imbroglio does not rise to that level of seriousness, the same can be said (assuming there are charges for perjury or obstruction) of the indicted in this case. Pat Fitzgerald, like Ken Starr, was simply doing his job with honor, integrity and from the look of it, an inordinate amount of patience.

Posted By: Mark Corallo

If anyone thinks that's what Rove heard from Carollo yesterday, I've got a nice bridge to nowhere to sell you.





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digby 10/27/2005 03:06:00 PM |

 
Death By A Thousand Cuts

To anyone who thinks either Bush or the GOP are wounded and no longer able to concentrate on their agenda to wreck the government - oh, I'm sorry, I meant reduce the role of government - think again:

House Republicans voted to cut student loan subsidies, child support enforcement and aid to firms hurt by unfair trade practices as various committees scrambled to piece together $50 billion in budget cuts.

More politically difficult votes [!!!!!!] -- to cut Medicaid, food stamps and farm subsidies -- are on tap Thursday as more panels weigh in on the bill.

It was originally intended to cut $35 billion in spending over five years, but after pressure from conservatives, GOP leaders directed committees to cut another $15 billion to help pay the cost of hurricane recovery.

President Bush met with House and Senate GOP leaders and said he was pleased with the progress.

No doubt.
tristero 10/27/2005 03:06:00 PM |

 
"Very Serious" Indeed

To add a couple of observations to Digby's last post...

Please recall that recently Bush described the Fitzgerald investigation as "very serious." I took this originally to mean that Bush thought the charges were substantive and needed a "very serious" investigation, but a little bit of reflection makes it clear that's not what he meant at all.

Bush was issuing a threat. He deems Fitzgerald's probe to be a "very serious" danger to his presidency. We can expect him and his attack ghouls to act accordingly. They will treat the indictments as attacks on the United States, as a kind of terrorism. It is imperative, as Digby notes, for anyone who goes up against the Bush administration to be prepared for the worst. They have both the will and the power to destroy careers and lives. And they will surely do so if they believe their power is threatened. Proof? Valerie Plame Wilson.

Also, let us not forget the proximate causes for the Fitzgerald investigation, a serious suspicion which is now a terrible certainty. There existed a conspiracy at the highest levels of the Bush administration to expose the identity of an undercover CIA agent. That is a crime. That crime was covered-up. The ongoing cover-up entailed more crimes. But all these actions are more than crimes.

These people betrayed their country. Regardless of whether the evidence rises to the level of legal proof, the people who participated in this conspiracy cannot be permitted to stay. As difficult as it might be to unseat some of the worst of them, they must go. Will they? Put it this way: your physical safety may depend on it.

These sleazebags hindered and subverted the covert gathering of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. If the damage of Plame's outing is minimal, that is a lucky accident- not for them, but for the country. That in no way diminishes the "very serious" havoc these scoundrels were prepared to accept if Plame's work was vital, danger far worse than that of 9/11. Had Plame's undercover status not been transitional but still deep, there is no public evidence that any of these people would have hesitated one nano-second in their efforts to expose and destroy her, out of retribution for her husband's actions.

Digby is right. This is going to be an ugly fight. But it is a fight that is entirely the fault of those who betrayed their country, not those who refuse to be their victims. We should make sure that it is crystal clear that this is not Fitzgerald's fault, not the CIA's fault, not the Democrats' fault. It is their fault - Rove's, Libby's, and all who aided and abetted their multiple betrayals. They failed us and they can no longer be entrusted with our safety and governance.

We should never let the media get away with spinning this as anything trivial. Even if you haven't done so before, after Fitzgerald's report comes out, please consider taking a few valuable moments of your time to write letters to papers and electronic media, to your representatives both local and national, and let them know how important it is to you that these people go.
tristero 10/27/2005 12:23:00 PM |

 
Unleashing The Furies


Kevin says:

MIERS REACTION....I fear that Mark Levin's reaction to the Harriet Miers withdrawal might be unnervingly on the money:

It's time for our liberals friends to worry. If the president picks a solid nominee, the base — meaning Republican Party loyalists and conservative activists — will be united, reinvigorated, and ready for battle. At least that's the indication from my radio audience. And frankly, as an aside, there's another event that is uniting them, and that's their growing resentment toward Patrick Fitzgerald. Positive press profiles aside, they increasingly view him as a threat to the presidency, and are not much impressed with all the talk in the media about possible indictments for perjury or false statements over emails or memory lapses.

There's nothing that movement conservatives like more than redemption, and if Bush chooses a God-fearing, fire-breathing conservative to replace Miers, then not only will all be forgiven, but Bush's support from the base might well be redoubled. They'll be primed and ready to go after Patrick Fitzgerald and the hated liberal lynch mob who are gunning for their newly repentant savior.

To which I reply, no kidding? Is there anyone on the planet who thought that the wingnuts were going to sit idly by and let the White House go down in flames without marshalling a feral response? It's their MO about everything. Cross them and they turn into shrieking harpies swooping and swirling in inchoate fury.

Guys, this is Karl Rove we are talking about here. He made his bones more than 30 years ago destroying his Republican opponent. This is what he does. Pat Fitzgerald had better be prepared to be portrayed as a jack-booted, cross-dressing, gay Torquemada willing to do anything to please his Stalinist masters. Anyone who thought differently has not been paying attention.

This is why we shove their previous mantras about perjury and obstruction and "rule of law" in their faces. This is why we repeat the words that Bush used in the 2000 campaign about "not only doing what is legal but what is right." This is why we always, always, bring this back to the fact that 2000 Americans are dead and tens of thousands are disabled because of a war that the administration lied about --- lies that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby tried to cover up.

And when they go after Joe Wilson, we simply say every single time --- "Joe Wilson was right. There were no WMD." That is the lie that is really killing them and that is the lie that they sputter and trip over trying to explain. Democrats should never let a conversation go by in which the public is not reminded that there were no WMD. When the Dem spokesman is (inevitably) confronted by he fact that some of our leading lights voted for the war resolution, they should just say, "the Democrats took the president at his word. They won't make that mistake again."

This is going to be a huge battle, don't ever think it won't. Pat Fitzgerald is going to be destroyed as if he were a Democrat. I hope that the real Democrats who appear on television are preparing for this and are ready to respond. It won't be pretty.




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digby 10/27/2005 11:20:00 AM |

 
Owned By The Base

Yesterday I wrote that the Beltway Boys were all saying that in order to weather the current storms, Bush needs to run to his base and it looks like Bush heard it. (They only listen to Fox in the White House, you know.)

I'm glad to see that the Democrats seem to be saying the obvious about the Miers nomination, which is that Bush is the right wing's love slave. This is important because it looks as though the "base strategy" is going to be the way Bush will govern for the rest of his term as well. The LA Times has an interesting article this morning discussing the White House strategy for dealing with the scandals --- push "tax reform" and "immigration." (Oh, and he's going to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, too) Good luck with all that. You can run but you can't hide.

The right wing has been empowered by this "win." They are going to be more demanding than ever and Bush is going to have to accomodate them. This is both an opportunity and a danger for Democrats. If we frame the Republican party as being taken over by extremists who want to force average Americans to keep their 90 year old father alive on machines, then we can set ourselves up as the rational alternative. If, on the other hand, we position ourselves as simply against the "far right" it will be seen as a pissing match between the "far right and "far left," (which is anyone to the left of Ann Coulter.)

The Dems badly need to start using real stories to explain their positions. The rhetoric has become so abstract that nobody really understands what it means to them anymore. The president's base, the "right wing," are people who want to outlaw birth control and interfere with your medical decisions on religious grounds. I don't think people really realize that.

Bush is in real trouble, with his only option apparently to try to appease a base that is basically unappeasable. He's Phyllis Schlaffly's houseboy now. And with this taste of blood, the whole party is going to be more in the thrall of this minority than ever. But we won't be able to take advantage of it if we don't explain in terms people can understand why that is a problem.

The big national issues, of course, remain corruption and incompetence. But this is an issue that has salience in the congressional races where a little straight talk about the extreme right could go a long way. We need to develop some effective rhetoric for our candidates to use to illustrate the problem.

Update: Kos has an interesting tick-tock from the Hotline that suggests it really was Miers incompetence that did her in. Kos says:

It seems to me that Miers wasn't done in from a lack of conservative cred as the wingers want to believe. Bush was convinced she was like him and would've fought for her all the way through. She was done in from simple incompetence. Her responses to committee questions betrayed a complete lack of understanding of constitutional law. Her meager writings were incoherent. She was unable to articulate competence in meetings with senators

.

Of course, that doesn't mean that the wingnuts don't believe they won. We need to make sure the public believes they did. The narrative of the Miers nomination is that Bush nominated an incompetent crony that the right wing didn't believe was enough of a religious zealot.


Update II: Perhaps we could quote this guy:

Former Republican Sen. John Danforth said Wednesday that the political influence of evangelical Christians is hurting the Republican Party and dividing the country.

[...]

"I think that the Republican Party fairly recently has been taken over by the Christian conservatives, by the Christian right," he said in an interview. "I don't think that this is a permanent condition, but I think this has happened, and that it's divisive for the country."

He also said the evangelical Christian influence would be bad for the party in the long run.

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digby 10/27/2005 09:07:00 AM |

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

 
Confidence Man

Steve Clemons reports:

The one interesting tidbit that came my way by way of an unnamed senior American journalist is this:

My sense is that the Rove team is feeling more confident today, the Libby team despondent

I would just remind everyone that Rove has a faith based belief in the psych-out. He believes that if you can influence events by acting as if you have knowledge they do not have. (See: bandwagon effect, election 2000, final swing through California.)

If he's still negotiating with Fitzgerald, he could easily have issued an edict to his people (or even lied to them) to give a certain impression of confidence to the press. That's the kind of thing he does.

The thing is, the bandwagon effect is bullshit and cost him 2000. If it hadn't been for good company men on the Supreme Court, instead of having the reputation as the most brilliant political strategist the world has ever known, he would have been remembered as the man who blew the most expensive presidential race in history because of his arrogant belief that he could shape events just by acting like he knew things that nobody else knew.

Like everyone else I'm ODing on speculation, and he may very well have gotten some good news. But let's just say that when I hear that Karl Rove is acting like a winner before the score is posted, I'm skeptical.



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digby 10/26/2005 09:24:00 PM |

 
Good As Gold

Via tribe34 at DKos, I see that Condi is a little bit on edge these days:

Rice bristled when asked how the U.S. could be trusted when it doesn't live up to its international agreements.

"Well, I think the word of the United States has been as good as gold in its international dealings and its agreements," she snapped.

Good as gold means withdrawal from the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, refusing to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and abrogating the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty, I guess.

And then there's this:

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed in 1997, Bolton articulated his dismissive view of international treaties. “Treaties are law only for U.S. domestic purposes,” he wrote, “In their international operation, treaties are simply political obligations.”

[...]

Bolton called the moment he signed the letter abrogating Clinton’s approval of the ICC “the happiest moment in my government service.”

[...]

Following the 1999 Senate vote rejecting the treaty, Bolton said that the vote marked “the beginning of a new realism on the issue of weapons of mass destruction and their global proliferation. The Senate vote is an unmistakable signal that America rejects the illusionary protections of unenforceable treaties.”

And she bristles when other countries question whether a treaty with our signature on it is worth more than toilet paper.

According to MikeCan over at DKos, after this little snit:

"...local media in Ottawa reported this morning that Condi Rice canceled some interviews etc and rushed back to Washington based upon a phone call."

What ever could that be about?


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digby 10/26/2005 05:19:00 PM |

 
What A Good Boy! Mama's Real Proud

Taking the blame for your messed up brother one more time:

Gov. Jeb Bush took the blame Wednesday for frustrating delays at centers distributing supplies to victims of Hurricane Wilma, saying criticism of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was misdirected. "Don't blame FEMA. This is our responsibility," Bush said at a news conference in Tallahassee with federal Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who oversees the agency.

And then he added, "Chertie, yer doin' a heckuva job."



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digby 10/26/2005 04:31:00 PM |

 
The Kids Who Couldn't Wait For Fitzmas

It's driving me crazy too. But we need to take a longer view of this, I think. If we get sealed indictments, if the grand jury is extended, if a new grand jury is empaneled it is only our nerves that are stretched.

Mark Kleiman writes, and I agree:

Yes, I'm as eager as everyone else to know what Fitzgerald is going to do. But today's delay strikes me as both a Good Thing in itself and a good sign as to the eventual outcome.

It's a Good Thing because it keeps the Plame scandal on the front page and keeps the bad guys paralyzed with fear. Moreover, after two years of steady drumbeat of conservative propaganda about no crime having been committed and no charges forthcoming, the more time the commentariat and the public have to wrap their heads around the idea of All the President's Men going to stir over burning a CIA NOC, the better.

Most of the country is only beginning to wake up to the fact that this is a Big Deal and the Bush administration is in big trouble over it. It doesn't hurt a bit to keep the White House off balance, the press salivating and the story percolating for a little while.


You'll have to excuse me while I have a pacemaker installed, however.



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digby 10/26/2005 04:03:00 PM |

 
What is this investigation you speak of?

If you want to have a little laugh, watch Faux not cover the Plame story today. Harriet Mieres is the only story in Washington, apparently.

Oh, and the Democrats are ruining America, as usual.

Update: The Beltway Boyz are waxing nostalgic about how well Reagan handled his problems with Iran Contra. They all agree, including Mara Liasson, that Bush needs to appeal more to his base. (Maybe he can name James Dobson to replace Karl Rove?)

But enough of all that unpleasantness. Let's talk about how well things are going in Iraq and how great the economy is. Move along citizens.



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digby 10/26/2005 03:30:00 PM |

 
Flirting With Moneypenny

People seem to be wondering why Fitz had FBI agents out asking the Wilsons' neighbors if they knew she was an undercover agent. Why would he do this so late in the game?

I suspect it came from a grand juror's question. In presenting the case for violation of the identities protection act, one of them may have wondered how, dispute the CIA's clear assertion that she was undercover, she could live an every day life while keeping her job a secret. There seems to be a perception, born of Hollywood, that undercover agents are all glamorous, cloak and dagger figures who are very different from ordinary people. Perhaps the earlier interviews with her neighbors were a bit vague about that and so Fitz had them re-interview them with the specific intent to show she led a very normal life but told no one that she worked with the CIA.

As to the fact that she went to Langley every day to work, even if you see the spook world only through the prism of Hollywood, you can't help but notice that even James Bond shows up at headquarters between assignments to have a face to face with M. He wouldn't even know Miss Moneypenny otherwise.



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digby 10/26/2005 02:20:00 PM |

 
Pakistan Disaster Toll May Double To Over 100,000

Like Katrina, but far more extensive, it's a disaster after a disaster, and it's preventible:

Doctors are having to amputate the limbs of many survivors because they have gone so long without help, he said. Many more lack shelter as night temperatures plunge below freezing, with the full force of winter only a few weeks away.

"This disaster may have the number of people who died after the disaster bigger than those killed by the earthquake," U.N. chief aid coordinator Rashid Khalikov said at his tent office in the wrecked city of Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir.
Bad weather in the mountains grounded the vital helicopter fleet at the main airbase near Islamabad on Wednesday.

With the known quake death toll at more than 54,000, relief workers had until the end of November to provide shelter, treat the countless injured and supply food, Khalikov said.

"What these communities will have by December 1 is what they will have to live with," he said.

"We basically have four weeks to deliver."

There was a time when this was considered a moving statement of some moral truths about humankind's obligations. But that wasn't good enough. We now have this expression of sympathy for the less fortunate to guide us.

And what is our Compassionate Leader doing? Well, it turns out the US has pledged a whopping 50 million bucks for earthquake relief. Who says Bush is stingy? That's nothing to sneeze about. Why, that's at least 1/3 the cost of a Hollywood blockbuster these days and let's face it: where's that money better spent, huh?

Oh, and Pakistan estimates that it will take 100 times the current US committment of funds to rebuild the earthquake area (see here. )
tristero 10/26/2005 12:50:00 PM |

 
Whoa

Richard Sale is not an idle nobody conspiracy blogger like me. He is a seasoned intelligence coorespondent with impeccable sources. And he is writing some amazing, amazing stuff today, which, if true, is going to blow the lid off this government:

Although most press accounts emphasized that Fitzgerald was likely to concentrate on attempts by Libby Rove and others to cover-up wrongdoing by means of perjury before the grand jury, lying to federal officials, conspiring to obstruct justice, etc. But federal law enforcement officials told this reporter that Fitzgerald was likely to charge the people indicted with violating Joe Wilson's civil rights, smearing his name in an attempt to destroy his ability to earn a living in Washington as a consultant.

The civil rights charge is said to include "the conspiracy was committed using U.S. government offices, buildings, personnel and funds," one federal law enforcement official said.

Other charges could include possible violations of U.S. espionage laws, including the mishandling of U.S. classified information, these sources said.

That Vice President Cheney is at the center of the controversy comes is no surprise. Last Friday, Fitzgerald investigators were talking to Cheney's attorneys, and detailied questionaires, designed to pin down in meticulous sequence what Cheney knew, when he knew it, and what he told his aides,, were delivered to the White House on Monday, these sources said.

The probe is far from being at an end. According to this reporter's sources, Fitzgerald approached the judge in charge of the case and asked that a new grand jury be empaneled. The old grand jury, which has been sitting for two years, will expire on October 28.

Thanks to a letter of February, 2004 which Fitzgerald asked for and obtained expaneed authority, the Special Prosecutor is now in possession of an Italian parliament nvestigationi into the forged Niger documents alleging Iraq's interest in purchasing Niger uranium, sources said.

They said that Fitzgerald is looking into such individuals as former CIA agent, Duane Claridge, military consultant to the Iraqi National Congress, Gen. Wayne Downing, another military consultant for INC, and Francis Brooke, head of INC's Washingfton office in an effort to determine if they played any role in the forgeriese or their dissiemination. Also included in this group is long-time neoconservative Michael Ledeen, these federal sources said.

First of all, the fact that there have been recent contacts with Cheney suggests that something really big is up. Second, the fact that he is going to empanel a new grand jury is also huge.

I have long believed that this investigation was going to be rather narrow. It seemed to me that Fitzgerald would have explicitly asked for permission to expand the scope of his investigation into areas that did not touch upon the Plame leak.

But if this is true, all bets are off. There is little doubt that the Niger forgeries are becoming salient all of a sudden. It may be a coincidence and it may not be. But, if someone could possible put that nutball Micael Ledeen in the crosshairs it would be a beautiful thing to see.

Gird yourselves for shrieks coming from the right so cacophanous that you will have permanent hearing damage if Fitz files civil rights charges. Their heads will start spinning like Linda Blair's and the words "criminalization of politics" are going to be bursting forth like green pea soup. Richard Cohen and Nick Kristoff will sit shiva around Robert Novak's decaying corpse.

I have serious doubts that Fitz will do it, but if he does I'll say a silent prayer that somebody, somewhere has finally noticed that character assassination is wrong.


Update: To clarify, when I say character assassination is wrong, I'm speaking here of
using the pwoer of the government, as the Republicans did with their partisan hearings and bogus impeachment and now with the official smearing of Joe Wilson, should not be tolerated. Also, using dirty tricks, lies and ratfucking to portray someone dishonestly is also wrong.

Using hot rhetoric --- even name calling, openly and above board --- is protected free speech and a common part of political argument. It's not always pretty, but it falls under the rubrik of opinion. There are magnitudes of difference between that and disseminating lies to damage someone's reputation.



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digby 10/26/2005 12:19:00 PM |

 
"We will ask not only what is legal, but also what is right"

"Only one in 10 Americans said they believe Bush administration officials did nothing illegal or unethical in connection with the leaking of a CIA operative's identity, according to a national poll released Tuesday."

I will change the tone of Washington. I'll bring good people to our nation's Capitol, and surround myself with a strong team of capable leaders.

I sent a clear signal of my intentions when I named a great citizen to be my running mate: Dick Cheney.

It would be presumptuous for me to name other names before the people have spoken, but I have great respect for the man who introduced me today -- and I hope his greatest days of service to his country might still lie ahead.

Should I earn your confidence, I intend to work with Republicans and Democrats to get things done for the American people that both parties represent.

We won't always agree, but I'll work to keep our disagreements respectful and I'll work to find common ground. I will do everything I can to restore civility to our national politics - a respect for honest differences, and decent regard for one another.

I know you can't take the politics out of politics. I'm a realist. But I'm convinced our government can show more courage in confronting hard problems; more good will toward the other side; more integrity in the exercise of power.

This isn't always easy, but it is always important. It is what people expect of their leaders, and what leaders must require of themselves. My administration will provide responsible leadership.

Finally, a leader upholds the dignity and honor of his office. In my administration, we will ask not only what is legal, but also what is right - not just what the lawyers allow, but what the public deserves.

In my administration we will make it clear there is the controlling authority of conscience. We will make people proud again - so that Americans who love their country can once again respect their government.

Bush gave versions of that speech several thousand times during the 2000 campaign and it was probably the single most compelling part of his message. People were sick of the scandals and even if they knew the Republicans were behind it, many thought that Bush was different. (A majority knew better, but that's a different story.) He may have been a little bit dim but at least he was a decent guy. He was hiring the "grown-ups," the old guard like Cheney and Powell, people who were above the sort of petty politicking that characterized the Gingrich-Burton era.

That was, of course, fiction. Bush Sr, of Willie Horton fame, was as ruthless as they come and little Junior was the creation of the most ruthless Republican operative in the country.

Karl Rove, "the architect," came to the Bush family's attention in 1972:

Republican Natinal Committe Chairman George Bush has reopened an investigation into allegations that a paid official of the GOP taught political espionage and "dirty tricks" during weekend seminars for College Republicans during 1971 and 1972. Some of the 1972 seminars were held after the watergate break-in.

Bush said he will urge a GOP investigating committee to "get to the bottom" of charges against Karl C. Rove 32 [sic], who was executive director of the College Republican Committee. (Washington Post story, Bush's Brain p.135)

This had come to the attention of the Washington Post by a fellow college Republican who Rove and Lee Atwater had cheated in an election (in which Rove had sent "an alternate slate of electors" --- sound familiar?) Bush pere looked into it and wrote the guy who blew the whistle on Karl out of the party, telling him, "don't ever take sides with anyone against the Family again. Ever," (Or something like that.) A short time later he hired Rove as a special assistant to the RNC.

This was all known in 2000. Wayne Slater wrote about it in the Dallas Morning News. But the national press corpse was so enamored of their darling narrative that had the simple but virtuous Bush paired against the lying, freakish metrosexual Gore that they couldn't be bothered. And, as we've seen so perfectly demonstrated lately, they have been infected by the toxic political culture that says character assassination and dishonest smears are not only perfectly natural, they are admirable actions by virtuous people.

Still, reality does bite eventually. George W. Bush is at the center of the most powerful, vicious political machine in American history. They will destroy anything that gets in their path. They aren't just playing with silly, gossip items like extra-marital blow-jobs. They are deadly serious. Outing a CIA agent for political purposes is the least of it. They purposefully took this country to war on false pretenses for reasons that were in large part purely political:

"One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade·.if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."

Now, if the reports we are hearing about indictments are true, Karl Rove is going to be charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in the Plame case. And the Republicans are going to howl that he's being charged for politics, not criminal activity. When this happens I would hope that every single Democrat who is quoted or goes on television reminds the American people that Bush and his White House won the election by claiming that they would not only ask what was legal but what was right.

And when the Republicans say that Karl Rove wasn't committing perjury or obstructing justice --- that he just stumbled and couldn't remember --- every Democrat should remind people that Karl Rove has been doing this stuff since 1972. He is known to have an almost photographic memory. He is the man who everybody on both the right and the left have acknowledged as the most effective political operative in history. You can say a lot of things about the Boy Genius (as Bush calls him) --- bumbling, confused and dim-witted aren't among them. He does not do things he doesn't mean to do.

Bush's Brain has left a long trail of bodies behind him; it's simply not believable that a man who has been a Master of Hardball Politics since 1972 is just an innocent bystander this time. After all, his motto since he was in high school is a quote from Napoleon:

"The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack."

Update: And somebody needs to have a talk with John Weaver, Rove's Texas rival, if the man is not drunk on schadenfreude today. There are many things he's never told. If he has ever fantasized about sticking in the shiv, once Karl is indicted and begins his PR offensive to portray himself as a poor lil' office clerk who got confused, Weaver may have some tid-bits to share.



Update II: Think Progress has video of Bush making one of his "honor and integrity" speeches. I'm thinking it may be time to do some national ads.



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digby 10/26/2005 09:57:00 AM |

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

 
They Never Asked

The Times report said Mr. Libby had taken notes of a conversation he had with Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, after Mr. Cheney had spoken to George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, about newspaper stories quoting an anonymous former diplomat taking issue with the administration's use of intelligence about Iraq's effort to acquire nuclear material in Niger.

The notes do not show that Mr. Cheney had learned the name of Mr. Wilson's wife or her covert status, lawyers involved in the case said. But they do show that Mr. Cheney knew and told Mr. Libby that Mr. Wilson's wife was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and may have helped arrange her husband's trip, they said.

Republicans sympathetic to Mr. Cheney said there was no inconsistency between what the vice president is reported to have told Mr. Libby and what Mr. Cheney said on "Meet the Press." They said there was nothing in the reported conversation to suggest that the vice president knew Mr. Wilson or knew who had sent him to Africa.

Please. He spoke with Tenet about the newspaper stories. He found out about Wilson and he found out that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and and "may have helped to arrange her trip."

But he didn't know who "sent" him and he never asked. Sure.

He was either lying or he just jumped on the juicy tidbit that girly-man Wilson's CIA wife sent him on the boondoggle --- to which Libby saluted smartly and went out to spread the good word.

I think it's important to remember something. Even if these guys didn't have a clue that Plame was undercover --- they should have asked. These are people who have the toppermost of the poppermost secret clearances. They have an obligation to check before they start talking about CIA employees to reporters.

In order to smear her husband, these guys behaved in a totally irresponsible manner, no matter whether they knew she was covert or not. If they aren't fired for being under indictement for a crime, they should be fired for reckless, negligent behavior. They should have been fired a long time ago.



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digby 10/25/2005 07:43:00 PM |

 
Do The Wild Kabuki!

Via Think Progress:

CBS’ JOHN ROBERTS: Lawyers familiar with the case think Wednesday is when special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will make known his decision, and that there will be indictments. Supporters say Rove and the vice president’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, are in legal jeopardy. But they insisted today the two are secondary players, that it was an unidentified Mr. X who actually gave the name of CIA agent V alerie Plame to reporters. Fitzgerald knows who Mr. X is, they say, and if he isn’t indicted, there’s no way Rove or Libby should be. But charges may not focus on the leak at all. Obstruction of justice or perjury are real possibilities. Did Rove or Libby change statements made under oath? Did they deliberately leave critical facts out of their testimony or did they honestly forget? Some Republicans urged Rove to step down if indicted. Not a happy prospect for president Bush.

Everybody dance now...

Fitzgerald knows who he is --- why he could even be indicted for revealing the identity of a CIA agent and endangering national security! But, there are a bunch of other people who know who Mr X is, aren't there? They are called "reporters" --- the ones to whom Mr X allegedly leaked in the first place.

Won't it be nice when the public is finally informed about all the things half the Washington Press corpse has been keeping secret?



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digby 10/25/2005 03:49:00 PM |

 
Question

Chris Matthews says that it's been reported that Libby asked Cheney for guidance on how to handle the Wilson matter.

I've been a little punchy lately. Have I missed something? Does anyone know where he got that?


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digby 10/25/2005 03:39:00 PM |

 
"History, we don't know. We'll all be dead."


It's clear that the White House defense is to slime Joe Wilson some more. The Washington Post helpfully kicked off the new campaign just this morning.

Top administration officials are looking at federal indictments for crimes committed while sliming Joseph Wilson and they just keep at it. These people really do take that "stay the course" thing seriously, don't they?

Maybe some of the borg ought to check out how Bush looks at their future if this "resolute" strategy doesn't pan out:

They describe him as beset but unbowed, convinced that history will vindicate the major decisions of his presidency even if they damage him and his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

I guess you loyal GOP boys and girls are just going to have to take one for the team. He'll be vindicated eventually. And he doesn't have to run again, so what the hell. The rest of you can just piss up a rope.




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digby 10/25/2005 02:41:00 PM |

 
It's The Cover-Up

There is a reason why the saying "it's not the crime, it's the cover-up" has become a truism in these high profile political scandals. In the first place, no matter who does it, when someone covers up a crime they tend to make it more difficult to prosecute it, obviously. For instance, suppose that Novak and Rove conspired to get their stories straight. You can't prove what was originally said because they've decided to lie about it. But if you can prove that they lied to the authorities or took affirmative measures to obstruct an investigation in which it could have been found that they committed a crime, you prosecute. Committing a crime to cover up something that may or may not be a crime is still a crime.

In the political world, it happens all the time because people are as concerned about appearances as they are about legalities --- maybe more. They will cover-up actions that might not be technically illegal, but will make them look bad because they are unethical or just plain slimy. But covering up slimy political activity by lying to the authorities is illegal and you aren't allowed to do it. This is particularly true when the underlying slime would have been prosecutable if you hadn't successfully covered it up.

The Republicans abused the legal system shamelessly during the Clinton administration by financing the Paula Jones lawsuit and holding endless phony congressional investigations into arcane, trivial and lurid tabloid matters that had nothing to do with the administration's behavior in office. They forced the appointments of an endless string of independent prosecutors and actively "criminalized" politics for partisan gain. The alleged crime and sleazy behavior in the Lewinsky case involved the prosaic and ordinary act of a middle aged man having an affair with a younger woman and lying about it. The American people understood it for what it was and rejected the notion that it was criminal. It is typical of the Modern Republican Party to now accuse the special prosecutor of doing what they themselves did. The GOP truly is Projection R Us.

However, the Fitzgerald investigation is not a partisan witchhunt and the underlying crime may have been awful --- David Ensor on CNN says that his sources in the CIA report that there was real damage in Plame's outing. This is meaningful. If the crime was covering up the purposeful or accidental revelation of a CIA operative for purely political purposes, it deserves to be prosecuted.

These are people with tremendous power to shape events. They are answerable only to the public in a relativist world in which media manipulation and marketing have made it very difficult to persuade people that there is any sort of objective truth. The legal system is the only forum left in which people are held liable for lying and in which there are rules and procedures for hearing all sides of the story in a coherent fashion. Sadly, epistemic relativist Republicans and their media helpmates have managed to pretty much eliminate all other avenues for finding out the truth.

And may I second Tristero's post below:

Traitors simply cannot be permitted to continue to serve at the highest levels of goverment. And that is a principle worth defending, no matter what it takes.

When playing with national security for mere political purposes and personal grudges becomes politics as usual, this country is in serious danger. These people must be stopped. Even Nixon didn't stoop this low.


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digby 10/25/2005 01:23:00 PM |

 
2000

Thirty-four years old:

The Pentagon said Staff Sergeant George Alexander, 34, had died on Saturday of injuries sustained eight days ago when a roadside bomb set by insurgents blew up near his vehicle in the town of Samarra.

[snip]

In the Iraq war, which began in March 2003, more than 15,000 U.S. troops also have been wounded in action.

Casualties among Iraqis have been far higher, first in the invasion and then the insurgency that elections and October 15's constitution referendum have failed to calm.

tristero 10/25/2005 01:08:00 PM |

 
Traitors, Technicalities, And Crises

Kristof's op-ed which I ridiculed below, represents the elite media CW about Traitorgate that is now going public. I heard these same arguments from journalist friends over the summer. They are quite wrong. The issue of whether a crime can be legally proven is a technicality. An important technicality to be sure, but nevertheless not the real point.

It's quite clear what happened: Treason was committed at the highest levels of the Bush administration. Can it be proven? Yes, in fact it has been proven. The convergence of already available evidence makes treason the most plausible conclusion. Is there enough evidence to stand up in a court of law and prove treason in a legalistic, technical sense? We don't yet know, but that doesn't mean that treason wasn't committed, just as OJ Simpson's acquittal doesn't mean he was innocent of murder. Of course, the law must presume innocence in order to function. The civil community, meaning among others the mass media, doesn't have to operate with that presumption. That doesn't give anyone the right to sling around reckless charges. In this case, the accusation of treason rests, already, on an enormous amount of evidence that leads to that conclusion.

This case, like Simpson's, is very simple, if perhaps difficult to legally prove. A CIA agent was deliberately exposed by people who had sworn never to do so. That has the potential to undermine the safety and intelligence gathering capability of the US. By exposing a CIA agent, they have aided this country's enemies. That is a betrayal of country, in a word: Treason.

All the "yes, buts" are just so many "gloves that don't fit" and the like. It doesn't matter whether Ames had leaked her name to the Russians, or even if Plame had worn a button saying, "Kiss me! I'm CIA!" No one working in government had the right to mention her name outside highly classified circles, even if it was "just to confirm" info from other places.

Legal, schmegal, these slimeballs are traitors. That the MSM is falling for the GOP line, that blatant treason is being seriously discussed as "maybe just a policy dispute" and "no big deal," just "politics as usual," and "not a crime" should probably not surprise anyone. And it is not surprising that anyone who calls these traitors by their proper name will be more or less banned from the mainstream media. That is how low this country's media have sunk. That is how low this country's "public intellectuals" have sunk.

It hasn't always been like this. The little secret about most of "Left Blogistan" is that we're not that far left: actually most of the folks I read are moderates or moderate liberals. Need an example? Atrios will do, not to mention the brilliant Digby. In truth, many of us in "Left Blogistan" don't have much patience with radicalism, socialism, revolution, class analyses. As for social mores, few of us live the frisky, often reckless, lives enjoyed by so many rightwing priests and GOP bigwigs. It is an indication of just how far right the discourse has become that Kristof is considered a thoughtful left-wing commentator and that Krugman - a pro-globalization Reagan official - is dubbed a radical leftist.

Now back when moderate liberals were actually provided regular access to the mass media, there would have been no problem labelling treasonable behavior as exactly that. Today, since no one "reasonable" can use that word -unless you're on the right, of course- the moral outrage all Americans should feel about this exposure never happens. And so it goes.

These traitors are not, and never were, the state, despite what DeLay boasted. This government is no man or woman, this is not the United States of Cheney/Libby/Rove/Bush, et al. These are merely people who work for the state and the state is us. And some of them have betrayed us and aided our enemies. They are traitors. Given what we already know, it is high time those who betrayed us resign, all of them, regardless of whether treason technically can be proven in a court of law. The very hint that a high government official may have been involved in the exposure of a CIA agent should be reason enough to go, and go now.

Since we are dealing with scoundrels of the highest order and they will never resign, they nevertheless must be brought to trial on whatever legally admissible evidence, if any, Fitzgerald has. A constitutional crisis might result, but that is not Fitzgerald's doing. That is what these traitors have been spoiling for since the 2000 election fiasco; that's what Schiavo was about, what the torture condoning was about, what the filibuster rule change was about. Such a crisis would be as wracking to this country's psyche as Katrina was to its citizens. But they have made it all but unavoidable.

There is absolutely nothing to be gained by a constitutional crisis and no sane opponent of the Bush administration should welcome one. But there is no longer anything to be gained by appeasement, either, and much to lose. Traitors simply cannot be permitted to continue to serve at the highest levels of goverment. And that is a principle worth defending, no matter what it takes.

(Edited slightly after original posting, to fix typos, mostly.)

[Update: Larry Johnson notes:

This scandal is about destroying and diverting national security resources for petty political gains and using the power of the White House to attack American citizens. If that is not justification for impeachment than nothing meets the test.]

tristero 10/25/2005 08:25:00 AM |

 
Helping Nick Kristof

I've decided that Nick Kristof needs help, my help. He seems to have Attention Deficit Disorder and has not been taking his Ritalin. After a very promising start to his op-ed today on Traitorgate, Kristof starts to ramble, finally degenerating into total incoherence, something about Les Miserables or some other Broadway musical he once saw a long time ago.

Anyway, I've decided to help him refocus. Now, here is how Nick's column begins, before it goes off the rails:

Before dragging any Bush administration officials off to jail, we should pause and take a long, deep breath.

Not bad, eh? I agree. Now, here's how he should have continued, but didn't:

Before dragging any Bush administration officials off to jail, we should pause and take a long, deep breath.

Then, we should firmly grasp their arms and legs, and, being sure we lift from our knees, toss them into a nearby tar pit, cover them in feathers, and frog march them into the closest federal penitentiary for a very long, hopefully lifelong, incarceration.

tristero 10/25/2005 05:38:00 AM |

Monday, October 24, 2005

 
Classy

"He's a vile, detestable, moralistic person with no heart and no conscience who believes he's been tapped by God to do very important things," one White House ally said, referring to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.

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digby 10/24/2005 10:18:00 PM |

 
Ooops

I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war.

Lawyers said the notes show that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status.

Hmmm. I'd have to say that Cheney wasn't exactly forthcoming with the Monsignor in September of 2003, was he?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson. A question had arisen. I’d 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 who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back.


I guess the intriguing thing, Tim, on the whole thing, this question of whether or not the Iraqis were trying to acquire uranium in Africa. In the British report, this week, the Committee of the British Parliament, which just spent 90 days investigating all of this, revalidated their British claim that Saddam was, in fact, trying to acquire uranium in Africa. What was in the State of the Union speech and what was in the original British White papers. So there may be difference of opinion there. I don’t know what the truth is on the ground with respect to that, but I guess—like I say, I don’t know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn’t judge him. I have no idea who hired him and it never came...

MR. RUSSERT: The CIA did.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Who in the CIA, I don’t know.

Evidently, when he was chatting with Tenet and Libby about Wilson's CIA wife he forgot to ask Tenet who in the CIA hired him. Now, that doesn't sound right, does it?


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digby 10/24/2005 06:51:00 PM |

 
East Of The Potomac

Mediagirl reminds us of:

the horrible situation in Pakistan, where tens of thousands have died, and tens of thousands more, including children, still have not received any aid.

Let's look at the facts:

50,000 dead, maybe more, many of whom were children, who were in school at the moment the quake hit.

10,000 more children are facing imminent death due to injury, infection, disease, starvation, dehydration, exposure to the sub-zero temperatures at night. 120,000 children are at risk.

These figures are conservative. And aid money has not been coming.

Almost two weeks after the quake, less than 14 per cent of the UN's emergency appeal for £180 million has been received.

Unicef, the UN children's organisation, yesterday estimated that 10,000 children will die in weeks. The figure was described as "conservative" by a UN field worker.

Although the official death count remains at 49,739, local authorities put it at almost 80,000.

And once again, it is not only simple humanity that cries out for a concerted effort to help. Sheer self-interest points to making the rescue of the abject in Pakistan a major international priority. Guaranteed: if the rest of the world wont help, Osama will.
tristero 10/24/2005 11:45:00 AM |

 
Liberals With Guns

As of 5:49 am Monday (EST), it seems Jeffrey Goldberg's already famous article on Scowcroft in the New Yorker will not be posted - you'll have to buy the zine, unless it gets liberated and posted elsewhere. But the New Yorker did put up an interesting interview with the author.I'll leave it to others to analyse the political ramifications and content. But I seem to be unusually sensitive to Republican rhetorical hanky-panky ("pro-life," "tax relief," etc), and I couldn't help but notice some spanking new jargon bubbling up into the mainstream:

...the deeper meaning here is ideological: George W. Bush’s father was committed to a realist understanding of foreign policy. This served him well in Iraq, and not so well in Bosnia. George W. Bush, on the other hand, has become a leading proponent of democratic transformationalism; he believes it is America’s job to help non-democratic countries become democratic. The realists don’t believe that the internal organization of another country is any of our business; George W. Bush, evidently, does.

[snip]

Are the conservatives turning against the neoconservatives?

They’ve been doing so for some time. Just read George Will. Their complaint is that neoconservatives aren’t conservative; they’re liberals with guns. [emphasis added.]

You got that? "Democratic transformationalists" are "liberals with guns." Those are the clowns that got us into that stupid mess in Iraq.

In other words, the term "conservative" has been surgically removed from the failed ideology of neoconservativism and replaced with the word "democratic." This of course is purely coincidental, no associations to a certain political party should be inferred.

And "democratic" is paired with the brain-twisting neologism "transformationalist." Only a paranoid mentality would wonder whether the pairing of "democratic" with something invented, something hard to understand, and something hard to say, is intentional.

As for "liberals with guns," well...what could be a scarier image, given the relentless demonization of liberals that has been going on since McCarthy, if not earlier?

But never mind, as so many expert Democratic consultants are quick to tell us, it's not the language that matters, but the ideas. I mean it's not as if you can easily redefine failed Republican strategies as liberal and Democratic, y'know. That's preposterous. No one would fall for that and repeat it. LIke if you tried, people would just get confused about what things mean and then they wouldn't listen to anyone. What good would that be?

(By the way, reporter Jeffrey Goldberg shouldn't, necessarily, be blamed for the terminology. It's likely he's probably just repeating jargon that's getting tossed up into the air. As for passing it on, shame, shame, shame!)

{Update:} Content edited somewhat after original posting to focus the sarcasm.
tristero 10/24/2005 03:14:00 AM |

Sunday, October 23, 2005

 
Paterfamilias

I have often felt that the real story of this time will be written as a family history between a father and a son. If only Shakespeare were alive to write it.

Steve Clemons has excerpts of the New Yorker's Brent Scowcroft article that has everyone on pins and needles. Scowcroft is 80 years old and has apparently decided that he should speak out clearly. And he does:

The first Gulf War was a success, Scowcroft said, because the President knew better than to set unachievable goals. "I'm not a pacifist," he said. "I believe in the use of force. But there has to be a good reason for using force. And you have to know when to stop using force." Scowcroft does not believe that the promotion of American-style democracy abroad is a sufficiently good reason to use force.

"I thought we ought to make it our duty to help make the world friendlier for the growth of liberal regimes," he said. "You encourage democracy over time, with assistance, and aid, the traditional way. Not how the neocons do it."

The neoconservatives -- the Republicans who argued most fervently for the second Gulf war -- believe in the export of democracy, by violence if that is required, Scowcroft said. "How do the neocons bring democracy to Iraq? You invade, you threaten and pressure, you evangelize." And now, Scowcroft said, America is suffering from the consequences of that brand of revolutionary utopianism. "This was said to be part of the war on terror, but Iraq feeds terrorism," he said.

The underlying narrative, however, is the subconscious rivalry between the father and the son, Scowcroft becoming the stand-in for 43's resentment toward 41. You wonder how many of the tragic blunders of the last five years are the result of crafty neocons playing into Junior's desire to gainsay his father:

Like nearly everyone else in Washington, Scowcroft believed that Saddam maintained stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, but he wrote that a strong inspections program would have kept him at bay. "There may have come a time when we would have needed to take Saddam out," he told me. "But he wasn't really a threat. His Army was weak, and the country hadn't recovered from sanctions." Scowcroft's colleagues told me that he would have preferred to deliver his analysis privately to the White House. But Scowcroft, the apotheosis of a Washington insider, was by then definitively on the outside, and there was no one in the White House who would listen to him. On the face of it, this is remarkable: Scowcroft's best friend's son is the President; his friend Dick Cheney is the Vice-President; Condoleezza Rice, who was the national-security adviser, and is now the Secretary of State, was once a Scowcroft protege; and the current national-security adviser, Stephen Hadley, is another protege and a former principal at the Scowcroft Group.

[...]

According to friends of the elder Bush, the estrangement of his son and his best friend has been an abiding source of unhappiness, not only for Bush but for Barbara Bush as well. George Bush, the forty-first President, has tried several times to arrange meetings between his son, "Forty-three," and his former national-security adviser to no avail, according to people with knowledge of these intertwined relationships. "There have been occasions when Forty-one has engineered meetings in which Forty-three and Scowcroft are in the same place at the same time, but they were social settings that weren't conducive to talking about substantive issues," a Scowcroft confidant said.

George H.W. Bush was a bastard in many ways. He was one of the first to bring the new generation of operative thugs into national politics. Lee Atwater ran his 1988 campaign. But his spawn took it to a new level. This is but one of many good arguments against monarchy and succession. Think of the average family Thanksgiving table and imagine that it's the ruling elite of the most powerful country in the world.


I recommend that you read all of Clemens post and the New Yorker article when it is posted. This on top of the Lawrence Wilkerson speech from last week shows that things are breaking down in a most serious way for the Bush administration.


Lambert at Corrente notes that Wilkerson even predicts some very dangerous times ahead --- not from terrorists, but internal revolution:

WILKERSON: We have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina… we haven’t done very well on anything like that in a long time. And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city [“Reckless Indifference to the Nightmare Scenario”] , or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence. Read it some time again. … Read in there what they say about the necessity of people to [inaudible - background voice] tyranny or to throw off ineptitude or to throw off that which is not doing what the people want it to do.

And you’re talking about the potential for, I think, real dangerous times if we don’t get our act together.

Shakespearean indeed.


Update: Matthew Yglesias makes the important point that this would have been oh so much more courageous if they had backed up the likes of Richard Clarke instead of waiting until Junior was tanking in the polls. And he points to this op-ed by Richard Holbrook on Wilkerson's speech, which points out that Colin Powell is a putz.



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digby 10/23/2005 01:44:00 PM |

 
Perjury Smergury

Lying is a moral wrong. Perjury is a lie told under oath that is legally wrong. To be illegal, the lie must be willfully told, must be believed to be untrue, and must relate to a material matter. Title 18, Section 1621 and 1623, U.S. Code.

If President Washington, as a child, had cut down a cherry tree and lied about it, he would be guilty of `lying,' but would not be guilty of `perjury.'

If, on the other hand, President Washington, as an adult, had been warned not to cut down a cherry tree, but he cut it down anyway, with the tree falling on a man and severely injuring or killing him, with President Washington stating later under oath that it was not he who cut down the tree, that would be `perjury.' Because it was a material fact in determining the circumstances of the man's injury or death.

Some would argue that the President in the second example should not be impeached because the whole thing is about a cherry tree, and lies about cherry trees, even under oath, though despicable, do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses under the Constitution. I disagree.

The perjury committed in the second example was an attempt to impede, frustrate, and obstruct the judicial system in determining how the man was injured or killed, when, and by whose hand, in order to escape personal responsibility under the law, either civil or criminal. Such would be an impeachable offense. To say otherwise would be to severely lower the moral and legal standards of accountability that are imposed on ordinary citizens every day. The same standard should be imposed on our leaders.

Nearly every child in America believes that President Washington, as a child himself, did in fact cut down the cherry tree and admitted to his father that he did it, saying simply: `I cannot tell a lie.'

I will not compromise this simple but high moral principle in order to avoid serious consequences to a successor President who may choose to ignore it.

That is from the bizarre incoherent statement Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson gave in the impeachment case against Bill Clinton's penis. (The cherry tree story is apocryphal -- "a lie" if you will --- but whatever.)

Today, on Press The Meat, she was not quite so convinced that perjury and obstruction of justice were terrible things at all, much less "morally wrong." She talked about overzealous US Attorneys and prosecutors abusing the statute and how troubling it all was that people were being prosecuted for lies when there is no underlying crime. She said that the Clinton penis case was different because he was charged with an underlying crime --- which is, of course, "a lie."

If the Republicans are going to use the "perjury and obstruction aren't real crimes" defense then I think we need to gather all the material that Mr Google (and the Washington Post, here) conveniently provide and bombard the gasbags and the alleged journalists with them. They need to be spoonfed this stuff.

The Democratic defense for Clinton was that Republicans conducted a witchhunt that led their handpicked prosecutor Ken Starr to start digging inappropriately into Clinton's sex life. The country understood this and agreed with it and the Republicans lost seats in the 1998 election because of it.

The underlying crime here is outing a CIA agent and lying about a war. They apparently believe that this is politics as usual, no big deal. William Kristol wailed this morning:

Scooter Libby or Karl Rove are going to be judged criminals for perhaps acknowledging her name, perhaps knowing, though there’s no evidence they did, that she was a covert operative…That’s a crime?

Tom DeLay is not a criminal…Are we seriously going to pretend that shuffling hard and soft money around which hundreds of politicians have done over the last two decades, before McCain-Feingold was enacted [is a crime]?

This from the whining moralists who screeched like a bunch of deranged harpies for years that lying about 10 furtive blow-jobs in a dismissed civil case was a High Crime that was destroying the fabric of our country.

I just can't help but reprise again this little gem from the man himself:

Politicians, jittery as they are, may wish to reread the prophetic words of author Mark Helprin, in a Wall Street Journal piece from October 1997. For Republicans, wrote Helprin, "there can be only one visceral theme, one battle, one task" -- "to address the question of William Jefferson Clinton's fitness for office in light of the many crimes, petty and otherwise, that surround, imbue, and color his tenure. The president must be made subject to the law."

Thanks to Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp -- and, of course, Ken Starr -- Helprin's call to arms carries a new urgency. Starr's report will reveal, in Helprin's words, "a field of battle clearly laid down." The lines have been drawn. What Republicans now need is the nerve to fight. They must stand for, to quote Helprin again, "the rejection of intimidation, the rejection of lies, the rejection of manipulation, the rejection of disingenuous pretense, and a revulsion for the sordid crimes and infractions the president has brought to his office." (William Kristol, Weekly Standard, May 25, 1998, page 18.)

And now the party who rode into Washington on a promise to "restore honor and dignity" are on television saying that revealing the names of covert CIA agents isn't a crime and perjury and obstruction are just politics as usual and shouldn't be "criminalized."


So much for the Strict Daddy party. Welcome to the Juvenile Delinquent party.


Update: Haha. ReddHedd has a beautiful take down of Mizz Bailey Hutchison, here. Here's the money quote from her appearance on Press The Meat this morning:

I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn’t indict on the crime so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation were not a waste of time and dollars.

Yes, those Republicans hate to waste money on those bogus investigations.


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digby 10/23/2005 12:14:00 PM |

 
Day 2000

The Daou Report directs us to a national memorial marking the sadly inevitable passing of the 2000th US combat death in Iraq. Please consider attending a local gathering.

Such a terrible milestone should be a somber moment that the entire country, as one, should acknowledge. After all, pro-war or anti-war, no one wants our friends, our neighbors, and our children to die. It is clearly a time when all of us should support the troops by making sure they understand all Americans share in the mourning.

But no. Michelle Malkin, Peter Daou informs us (and I sure as hell won't pollute Digby's blog with a link to her), thinks we'll be partying, i.e. celebrating, on Day 2000.

And to prove it, no doubt Ms. Malkin and her fellow maniacs will grab their digicams and stalk the memorials, like the good fascist volunteers they are, looking to capture any and all grimaces of grief that could possibly be construed as a triumphant smile. After all, they photog'd us during the war protests, pretending the occasional nut represented all the middle-class marchers with families who were there. So they'll do it again on Day 2000. And they'll call us traitors again.

Well, Michelle, ma belle, I think we know who the real traitors are, don't we now? Oh, I'm not only talking about the clowns who placed loyalty to Texas Moses above their country's security. I'm also thinking of the people who sent American soldiers into battle with inadequate armor, inadequate intelligence, and deliberately false information on what they could expect in terms of a reception among the people they had been repeatedly told they were "liberating."

Below, Digby makes the point that Republicans have for a long time been the preferred party of criminals. Not just Republicans like Nixon and the goons who did Watergate, Iran-Contra, the Starr witchhunt. Not even Libby, Rove, Lay, DeLay, Frist, Franklin, Wurmser, Brownie, Allbaugh, Abramoff. But also a huge felonious database, brimming with GOP scoundrels, statutory rapists, corporate thieves and assorted unclassifiable scumbags so large, there isn't a server on the internet big enough to store all their names and their multiple serial crimes against their country. Face it, Michelle: For every decent Republican like Jim Jeffords, who finally had to quit his longtime party in disgust, it seems there's 50 or more DeLay clones snorking around the pigsty, just waiting to pork honest taxpayers and other rubes.

No, Michelle. Those of us opposed to the crooks you admire will not be celebrating on Day 2000; we'll be weeping.

But if there's a day that these bastards who got us into this insane war, who ruined all Americans' reputations by authorizing systematic, repeated torture and murder, who abandoned America's most vulnerable parents, children, and workers, to a horrible death from flood and neglect -

If ever there's a day that the fuckers who did all this, and so much more, start getting hauled in front of the courts of law they have been conspiring so long to subvert and ruin - We, the people, who love our country and revere its traditional liberal values, we will raise a huge... what's the word, I'm thinking of? oh yes...Hullabaloo!

The (French) champagne will flow like water; the banners will fly in the (globally warmed, hurricane-strength, another rightwing fuckup) winds. And we'll dance to the Dixie Chicks all night long.

And the next day, we'll recycle the empty bottles, give any leftover brie to the homeless shelter, and then drink a very strong double espresso latte. We'll get right back to work, making sure that you and your far-right asshole buddies are never taken seriously in American politics again.

Of course, that's a huge if...
tristero 10/23/2005 11:47:00 AM |

 
Judy's Enablers

I have been unable to find a complete copy of Craig Pyes' e-mail, the reporter who refused to share a byline with Judy Miller back in 2000 on the al Qaeda series. Howard Kurtz quoted pieces of it last week:

"I'm not willing to work further on this project with Judy Miller... I do not trust her work, her judgment, or her conduct. She is an advocate, and her actions threaten the integrity of the enterprise, and of everyone who works with her. . . . She has turned in a draft of a story of a collective enterprise that is little more than dictation from government sources over several days, filled with unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies," and "tried to stampede it into the paper."

The LA Times today has a few more choice quotes today:

"A reason I don't have my name on any of her stories is precisely because of this sloppy, single-source reporting," warned Pyes, now a contract reporter with the Los Angeles Times, in the e-mail. "Which, believe me, when she reports closer to home, you're going to pay for someday. You heard it here first."

Has anyone seen this entire e-mail? This guy was prescient, as were a lot of people who worked with Miller.

The LA Times article delves deeply into how Judy was given so much rope to hang herself on the WMD stories --- it was clearly the work of Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd, both of whom resigned over the Jayson Blair scandal.

After the prize-winning Al Qaeda series, then-Executive Editor Howell Raines (later forced out by the scandal over fabrications by reporter Jayson Blair) reportedly urged Miller to "go win [another] Pulitzer."

That directive made her even bolder, colleagues said.

Douglas Frantz, then Miller's boss as investigative editor — and more recently a Los Angeles Times reporter who this month was named an L.A. Times managing editor — said he and then-Foreign Editor Roger Cohen were undercut when their doubts led them to delay publishing several of Miller's stories on weapons of mass destruction.

After Miller complained, the New York Times' then-Managing Editor Gerald Boyd instructed the lower-ranking editors to get out of the star reporter's way, according to Frantz.

"Judy Miller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter," Frantz recalled Boyd telling him, "and your job is to get her stories into the paper."

Frantz said that despite that admonition, he blocked a Miller story about claims of 1,000 weapons sites in Iraq and also a profile of exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, a source of many of the overblown weapons reports.

Boyd could not be reached for comment.

I had not realized until I read this that Raines and Boyd had been around the paper as late as June of 2003. This clears something up for me. I have found it completely bizarre that Miller claimed she pitched the story to an editor and yet her editor, Jill Abramson, says it never happened. Miller refused to name the editor yesterday, which means she's either lying outright or she has a reason not to name the person.

The White House had been agitated about Wilson since the spring, particularly about Nicholas Kristoff's NYT columns in May, using Wilson as an anonymous source.
Raines and Boyd resigned on June 5, 2003.

I think it's likely that Miller pitched the idea to Raines or Boyd before they left, which means that she was on this Wilson beat weeks before she admits to it. And it explains why she won't say to whom she pitched it.

It also means that she could have been operating independently during this period, before Bill Keller was named executive editor and pulled her off the WMD beat. Keller wasn't kicked upstairs until July 14, 2003, coincidentally the day that Novak published his famous column.

Somebody should probably try to get Gerald Boyd and Howell Raines on the record.

Update: Expert Plame Kremlinologist Emptywheel writes in to remind me that Joseph Lelyveld was the interim editor during the period between Raines' and Boyd's resignations and Keller's promotion. I had assumed that the writers of the big story had asked him if he turned down Judy's pitch, but there is no record of it, so perhaps they didn't. If they haven't, they should.

If there is an editor (current or former)at the NY Times who knew of Judy Miller's interest in writing this story they need to come forward. And somebody needs to ask Judy why she's refusing to name him or her.



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digby 10/23/2005 11:23:00 AM |

 
The Sinning Choirboy

And little Karl too:

... in at least one instance, [Ralph]Reed acknowledges he used his White House access for Abramoff. In December 2001 the lobbyist was eager to prevent Angela Williams from being appointed head of the Interior Department's Office of Insular Affairs, which oversees the government's dealings with the Northern Mariana Islands, an important Abramoff client. Williams is married to former Federal Trade Commissioner Orson Swindle, who was a Vietnam pow with Senator John McCain. The subject header of Abramoff and Reed's e-mail exchange (it is unclear who initiated it) contained a misstatement about Williams that is practically Freudian in what it reveals about their animosity toward McCain: "Were you able to whack McCain's wife yet?" Reed assured Abramoff he had "weighed in heavily" with the White House personnel office to block her appointment but had received no commitment. "Any ideas on how we can make sure she does not get it?" Abramoff asked. "Can you ping Karl on this? I can't believe they just don't get this done?" Reed replied, "I am seeing him tomorrow at the WH and plan to discuss it with him as well." Baron says, "Ralph passed the information on to the White House. He is confident the Administration's decision was based on the merit." As for Rove, White House spokeswoman Erin Healy tells TIME, "It is my understanding that Mr. Rove does not recall any of these incidents."

[...]

Reed has rested his defense on fine distinctions, saying the payments he received from Indian tribes didn't come from gambling. But that line may be tested when the Senate Indian Affairs Committee—chaired by his old nemesis McCain—holds another hearing on the Abramoff scandal next week. Reed has not yet been called to testify, but the hearing will focus on the Louisiana Coushattas, whom Abramoff arranged to pay more than a million dollars to Reed for his services.

Inconveniently, the tribe has no profitmaking ventures other than gambling.

Imagine that. Saint Ralphie Reed supporting gambling and then lying about it.

If I were a member of the religious right I'd start to think I'd been royally conned. It turns out that Reed and Abramoff's buddy Grover Norquist not only consorts with gays (*gasp*) he also launders pro-gambling money for his pal Abramoff, which he excuses by saying that he supports gambling "on libertarian grounds."

One has to wonder how long the Christian Soldiers on the right are going to put up with that crap. Beverly LaHaye just woke up with a gay-loving libertarian gambler in her bed.

hu·bris Pronunciation Key (hybrs) also hy·bris (h-)
n.

Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance

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digby 10/23/2005 10:02:00 AM |

 
Monsignor Tim

Surprise, suprise. Nobody asked (and he didn't offer) an explanation about his own role in the Plame affair this morning despite discussing it in great depth during the program. Apparently, there is nothing even remotely relevant about the fact that his only public statement sounds like he's covering his ass from here to next Tuesday:

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.[emphasis mine]

It appears that the first we will learn about Russert's role in this when he appears as a witness at Scooter Libby's trial. And yet he still a revered figure in DC journalism and considered the toughest interviewer on television. Interesting standards we have these days.

I'm beginning to wonder if he's covering somebody's ass other than his own.



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digby 10/23/2005 08:54:00 AM |

Saturday, October 22, 2005

 
The Good Aspen

This article in the Columbia Journalism Review is the first I've seen that comes to the same conclusion I did about Judy Miller's mea culpa:

The more you analyze Miller’s story (I have read it four times now) the less it seems like a straightforward recitation of events and the more it seems like a carefully scripted message to Libby, and perhaps to other sources with whom Miller spoke about Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson.

I confess part of this impression may stem from my own legal background. I know too well that once a prosecutor starts circling, especially a super predator like Patrick Fitzgerald, it can get very hard for parties to communicate with one another without stepping on a landmine. This, for example, is why Libby’s lawyer, Joseph Tate, went ballistic when Floyd Abrams, one of Miller’s lawyers, suggested that Libby had “signaled” to Miller that she shouldn’t testify. To reporters such a request might be a normal part of the reporter-source relationship, but to a prosecutor it’s witness tampering and obstruction of justice. Abrams put Libby on the spot. That’s why Miller’s insistence on a personal letter or telephone call from Libby releasing her to testify was so problematic. Anything much beyond “please testify” could easily be construed as an attempt to influence Miller’s testimony. As Libby, a seasoned lawyer in his own right surely knows, a more complex communication is what obstruction charges are made of.

Which makes it all the more amazing that Libby wrote just such a letter to Miller while she was still in prison. The September 15 letter pointedly reminded Miller that no other reporter subpoenaed in the investigation had testified that Libby had discussed Valerie Plame with them. It also contained a loaded reference to how “out West where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters because their roots connect them.” Their roots connect them? Is it a coincidence that Libby and Miller shared a long-held concern about the intersection of WMD and Islamic militantism? Miller’s story implies in several places that she didn’t know Libby all that well (going so far as to point out she didn’t even recognize him when she bumped into him on a trip out West, a trip that Libby mentions in his letter to her). But it doesn’t address the key question of whether Libby was a source for Miller’s post-9/11 WMD reporting, or whether he helped arrange meetings with the Iraqi defectors who were peddling fabricated stories about Saddam’s weapons.

In analyzing Miller’s account, several themes emerge. First, with Fitzgerald clearly probing Vice President Cheney’s office, the administration would obviously have a concern that Miller’s notes might cause problems. But in her account in the Times Miller goes out of her way to stress that Libby protected Cheney at all times. This is key. While there seems little doubt that Libby would fall on his sword to protect his boss, a reporter is an altogether different matter. Miller’s account clearly signals that her notes don’t give Fitzgerald an avenue of attack on Cheney.

Second, as many have noted, Miller makes the suspect claim that she now can’t recall who gave her Valerie Plame’s name. Obviously then her direct testimony won’t be the lynchpin that lets Fitzgerald make a case that Libby or anyone else supplied Valerie Plame’s name, though the presence of her name in the same notebook as the notes of the Libby interview could allow a grand jury to draw a strong inference. Miller says she doesn’t recall who gave the name, which, by default, doesn’t finger Libby. But neither does it clear him.

It was a strange meandering account written using the odd affectation of "what she told the grand jury" instead of a straightforward, chronological account of what she knows about the case. I felt from the beginning that its purpose was to signal Libby as much as it was to inform the public. She was, as I wrote last week, a good little aspen and let them know she didn't do any "turning" on the crucial stuff.

I would bet money that her very bizarre anecdote about accidentally meeting up with Libby in Jackson Hole was a message to him as well. Can any of you say that you could spend two hours looking across a table at someone and not recognise them a few weeks later? Please. I would recognise Scooter Libby even if he were dressed up as Howdy Doody, and I've never been within a hundred miles of him.



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digby 10/22/2005 07:00:00 PM |

 
Lying Accomplices

Kevin makes note of the eery sameness of Novak and Miller's contention that Plame was idly brought up in unrelated casual conversation and asks that these assholes (my paraphrase) stop insulting our intelligence with this nonsense. He points out that someone within the White House spilled those beans long ago when he or she told the Washington Post:

A senior administration official said two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and revealed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife..."Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

It's clear to me that it was meant to discredit Wilson, but even if you take away that explanation, the mere fact that six different reporters (at a minimum) were "casually" told in "idle converstaion" ought to be enough for Judy to have gotten a fucking clue by now.

And let's not forget that Novak sang a different tune when he was first questioned about this:

"Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information," New York Newsday reporters Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce wrote. They quoted Novak saying: "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me. They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

That doesn't sound like idle water cooler talk to me.

Kevin concludes with this:

I have no doubt that these officials did their best to make their disclosures sound casual. Miller and Novak either fell for it, or else were willing accomplices. Neither option speaks well for their ability to do their job.

Considering the histories of both of these "journalists" I would have to say that they are lying accomplices. These are two reporters with many decades of national security reporting between them. They knew exactly what they were hearing.

The question still remains as to what Miller was doing. She claims that she wasn't writing an article because she had pitched the idea to "an editor" and was turned down. The editor to whom she supposedly reported says that no such conversation occurred. Yet, Judy was making agreements with Libby that she would refer to him as a "hill staffer" because she "assumed Mr. Libby did not want the White House to be seen as attacking Mr. Wilson." Seen by whom? If she wasn't writing a story, if this was casual conversation, why would Libby be concerned about how she would portray him. Why wouldn't the conversation just be on backround and leave it at that?

Judy said:

Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether I ever pursued an article about Mr. Wilson and his wife. I told him I had not, though I considered her connection to the C.I.A. potentially newsworthy. I testified that I recalled recommending to editors that we pursue a story.

Mr. Fitzgerald asked my reaction to Mr. Novak's column. I told the grand jury I was annoyed at having been beaten on a story. I said I felt that since The Times had run Mr. Wilson's original essay, it had an obligation to explore any allegation that undercut his credibility. At the same time, I added, I also believed that the newspaper needed to pursue the possibility that the White House was unfairly attacking a critic of the administration.

It is quite clear that she was writing a story and that she was writing the story that Novak actually published --- outing Valerie Plame. She admits that she was annoyed that she was "beaten" to it. Indeed, she felt the Times had an obligation to explore allegations that undercut Wilson's credibility.

And there is not one piece of evidence that she was concerned in the least that the White House was unfairly attcking a critic of the White House. All during the period when she and Libby were buttering each other's toast at the St Regis (thank you James Wolcott) and chatting on the phone and agreeing that she would refer to him as an ex hill staffer, Judy never once called Joe Wilson to get his side of the story.



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digby 10/22/2005 03:45:00 PM |

 
Focus Pulling

I am with Billmon on this. I find it highly doubtful that Fitzgerald is going to indict on charges unrelated directly to the Plame leak and ensuing cover-up, but I do think he's going to indict. As much as I'd like to believe that he's spent the last 22 months getting to the bottom of the forgeries and Iraq lies and the inner workings of the propaganda campaugn that led us to war, I don't think it's going to happen.

First of all, I think he would have sought a specific expansion of his mandate (which he helpfully supplied here on his brand new web site yesterday.) As Billmon points out, it was almost certainly done to show that he was charged with more than investigating the potential violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act --- and that the Justice Department explicitly gave him the power to investigate charges of perjury, obstruction etc in a second follow-up letter dated February 6, 2004. Fitzgerald asked for this explicit permission in order to make it very clear that he wasn't going outside his mandate by investigating a cover-up. Posting this on his web-site was very likely done to quell the predictable GOP line of defense that he is an out of control prosecutor who strayed far outside his mandate. (I doubt that he was asleep during the Starr investigation.) For this reason I don't think he's gone far outside it.

This, however, doesn't mean that these issues are not going to finally get an airing. Judy Miller's little drama is a crucible for the Washington press corps. If any of them hope to save their journalistic souls, now's the time to do it. They are already publishing articles about the WHIG, about Cheney's monomaniacal insistence on the war. Critics are coming out of the woodwork (better late than never, I guess) and the lies that perpetrated this debacle in Iraq are being examined.

I realize that this is too little too late to save the blood and the treasure that has been wasted since the media turned themselves into a group of evil teen-aged girls and helped Karl Rove propel his creature into the White House. But the country must recover somehow and we need the press to try to right itself. Democracy depends upon it.

Fitzgerald's probe may focus on the Valerie Plame leak and it may only touch upon the larger issues peripherally. But it is the hook, the opening, that allows the media to revisit the run-up to the war and correct the jingoistic cheerleading they called journalism for the first two years after 9/11. It means that there is a second chance for the American public to learn the truth of what really happened then, outside the manufactured hysteria that engulfed the culture for the last three years.

This is the most important thing. Much of the public already know a lot of this subconsciously. This case gives them a way to understand what happened without losing face. The "grown-ups" who led them into this war were liars and criminals. We need to make sure they realize that the "grown-ups" are the Republican establishment.

Many of us wrote a lot about certain memes the Republicans used to make the Dems look bad during the last few years. We are "soft" on terrorism, crime, morals --- whatever. Soft. It's a powerful primal image that they have used to great effect to put us on the defensive and turn the country to the right with coded slogans like "law and order" and "fight em there so we don't have to fight em here." It works because they've been saying it so long, and there is just enough truth in it, that people have internalized it.

But the Republicans have some baggage of their own that goes back just as far. They have long been associated with corruption and criminality in office and their poster boy is Richard Nixon, the father of the modern Republican party. "I am not a crook" has a resonance far beyond that moldy time. People know this, deep down, in their subconscious, just as surely as they know that Democrats are flip-flopping libertines. "Republicans are crooks." It just rings true.

These primitive heuristics cut both ways. If we choose to play that game, and we should, we have a perfect opportunity to portray the Republicans the way that people already think they are.



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digby 10/22/2005 01:16:00 PM |

 
Quote of the Day

[T]here is no question from private remarks and public grimaces, some reaching back to early 2001, neither Powell nor Armitage had or has much trust or respect for Rice, and they share with other senior Republican wisemen the conviction that Rumsfeld is quite literally mad, and Cheney a dangerous, vindictive monomaniac.

Chris Nelson, via Steve Clemons.

But it does the beg the obvious question. If you have this kind of a situation, aren't you, you know, kind of obligated to speak up before an election? Doesn't loyalty to country trump loyalty to party?

I think I just answered my questions. Never mind.
tristero 10/22/2005 11:48:00 AM |

Friday, October 21, 2005

 
The Day After Fitzmas

Well, it really is looking like it's gonna happen, don't it, boys and girls? Maybe Rove, Maybe Libby, and maybe a whole bunch of other scuzballs - it looks like they just may be feelin' old Mr. Law's big paw on their shoulders soon. It will be a sad day for America, a tragedy shared by all, not a time for partisan gloating. Not. It will be a totally great day. And those fuckers brought it on themselves.

Yes, things can happen, so we shouldn't count our chickenhawks just yet. There's nervous speculation of presidential pardons (aka, pee-pees) and and even a potential reprise, as farce, of Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre, when Robert Bork, on Nixon's command, fired the first Watergate prosecutor, Archibald Cox. IMO, I don't think so, and therefore we should be prepared for the best. With that in mind, here's the big question I've been mulling:

On the day after Fitzmas, what do you think a truly effective opposition party should do?

No fair trying to predict what the Democrats will do. Instead, what should they do? I'll start the ball rolling:

They should demand a full independent investigation of the charges of encouraging and covering-up murder, torture and "extreme rendition" at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

Any other ideas? Let your imaginations soar, dear friends...


[Update: Added a link to Billmon's post that emphasizes the point I originally made with the remark about counting chickenhawks: that whatever happens may be less than overwhelming.]
tristero 10/21/2005 11:56:00 AM |

 
1992

It's still a bit untidy over there:

A defense lawyer in Saddam Hussein's mass murder trial has been found dead, his body dumped near a Baghdad mosque with two gunshots to the head, police and a top lawyers union official said Friday.

In other violence, four U.S. service members were killed in two attacks Thursday, the U.S. military said. Three Marines died when a bomb hit their patrol in the village of Nasser wa Salam, 25 miles west of Baghdad, and other American troops clashed with gunmen, killing two insurgents and capturing four, the military said.

An American soldier was killed in the northwestern town of Hit by ''indirect fire,'' a term that usually means a mortar or rocket attack, the military said.

Nineteen Americans have been killed in the past week. The latest deaths brought to 1,992 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died since the beginning of the war in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

And it looks like we'll hit the ghastly 2000 soldiers dead soldiers mark right around the time Fitzgerald makes an announcement.
tristero 10/21/2005 07:07:00 AM |

 
Libby's Whale

My oh my, it appears that Libby was stalking Wilson all the way up until April 2004 when the white house finally put a stop to his psychotic obsession:

Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was so angry about the public statements of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a Bush administration critic married to an undercover CIA officer, that he monitored all of Wilson's television appearances and urged the White House to mount an aggressive public campaign against him, former aides say.

Those efforts by the chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, began shortly after Wilson went public with his criticisms in 2003. But they continued into last year — well after the Justice Department began an investigation in September 2003, into whether administration officials had illegally disclosed the CIA operative's identity, say former White House aides.

[...]

Libby's anger over Wilson's 2003 charges has been known. But new interviews and documents obtained by The Times provide a more detailed view of the depth and duration of Libby's interest in Wilson. They also show that the vice president's office closely monitored news coverage.

On one occasion, the office prohibited a reporter from traveling with Cheney aboard Air Force Two, because the vice president's daughter said Cheney was unhappy with that newspaper's coverage.

Libby "would see something had appeared in the newspaper or on television and wanted to use the White House operation to counter it," one former official said.

After Wilson published a book criticizing the administration in April 2004, during the closely fought presidential campaign, Libby became consumed by passages that he believed were inaccurate or unfair to Cheney, former aides said. He ordered up a meticulous catalog of Wilson's claims and public statements going back to early 2003.

The result was a packet that included excerpts from press clips and television transcripts of Wilson's statements that were divided into categories, such as "political ties" or "WMD."

The compendium used boldfaced type to call attention to certain comments by Wilson, such as one in the Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa student newspaper, in which Wilson was quoted as calling Cheney "a lying son of a bitch." It also highlighted Wilson's answers to questions from television journalists about his work with Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee.

Yes, it's now entirely believable to me that Libby just "heard" something in casual conversation with a reporter and had no idea that Valerie Plame was a covert agent. His friend Mary Matalin doesn't help when she characterizes him like this:

"Scooter is the most methodical, detail-oriented and comprehensive worker of anybody I've ever worked with in my life," said Mary Matalin, a former Cheney advisor who worked as a consultant on the 2004 campaign.

"He leaves no stone unturned, and it doesn't matter what the topic is," she said. "That's the nature of Scooter, and that's why he's such a superior intellect and why Cheney and the president and everybody over there respects him."

It seems to me that someone like that would find out specifically what Wilson's wife did at the CIA.

The White House has obviously decided that Scooter is a goner so they are planting the idea that Wilson was his white whale. But that doesn't leave our friend Karl off the hook. Libby may have had a special hatred for Wilson but Karl had a special reason for wanting him destroyed. An earlier LA Times article had this:

Prosecutors investigating whether administration 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 Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were especially intent on undercutting Wilson's credibility, according to people familiar with the inquiry.

Although lower-level White House staffers 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 reportedly responded: "He's a Democrat."

This is that everyday political hardball the beltway chatterers like Andrea Mitchell and William Kristol are all worried will be "criminalized." Back in Nixon's day, the media, at least, were incensed to find out that he was using the taxpayers resources to pursue his political enemies. Now it's business as usual, the poltical press content to be nothing more than the Republican party's bitches, begging for juicy scraps from Karl and Scooter's table.



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digby 10/21/2005 07:06:00 AM |

 
"This Is Just Not Going To Happen"

Hoo boy:

Marty Bahamonde, a FEMA regional director, told a Senate panel investigating the government's response to the disaster that he gave regular updates to people in contact with then-FEMA Director Michael Brown as early as Aug. 28, one day before Katrina made landfall.

In most cases, he was met with silence. In an Aug. 29 phone call to Brown informing him that the first levee had broke, Bahamonde said he received a polite thank you from Brown, who said he would check with the White House.

[snip]

Later, on Aug. 31, Bahamonde frantically e-mailed Brown to tell him that thousands are evacuees were gathering in the streets with no food or water and that "estimates are many will die within hours."

"Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical," Bahamonde wrote.

Less than three hours later, however, Brown's press secretary wrote colleagues to complain that the FEMA director needed more time to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge restaurant that evening. "He needs much more that (sic) 20 or 30 minutes," wrote Brown aide Sharon Worthy.

"We now have traffic to encounter to go to and from a location of his choise (sic), followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc. Thank you."

Remember what Michael Brown said when he "stepped aside?" How he was gonna go home and have a margarita and some yummy Mexican food ? Y'know, I think he may have a heckuva eating disorder. The poor guy.

But let's not dwell on the past, shall we?

Meanwhile, at a separate hearing, lawmakers considering Louisiana's request for $32 billion for Gulf Coast rebuilding were told that Mississippi would need tens of billions of dollars of its own to restore its coastline.

Gulf Coast lawmakers and state officials have been pushing for vast infusions of federal aid since Katrina hit Aug. 29, killing more than 1,200 people and forcing hundreds of thousands to evacuate.

"It will be in the billions, with a 'b,' level, it may be in the tens of billions; it won't be in the hundreds of billions," William W. Walker, head of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, told a House transportation panel.

But Rep. John J. Duncan (news, bio, voting record) Jr., chairman of that panel, earlier had said flatly that Congress cannot afford Louisiana's request. "This is just not going to happen," he said.

Got that?
tristero 10/21/2005 03:33:00 AM |

Thursday, October 20, 2005

 
Hardest Working Devious Minds In The Business

Winner of the Palme D'Rovegate Speculation Award goes to Jane and Emptywheel for their mousetrap theory.

As Jane says, "note to self: do not EVER play poker with Patrick Fitzgerald."



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digby 10/20/2005 09:40:00 PM |

 
It Ain't The Crime It's The You Know What

Apparently lawyers for Rove and Libby have been told that their clients are in serious legal jeopardy. Not much news there. The leaking lawyers seem to be quite sure that Fitz will not indict them under the Toensing statute (I'm sure that Richard "Joey Bishop" Cohen will be shrieking to high heaven if he indicts for the cover-up crimes) but others may not be so lucky (Wurmser, Hannah?)

Since these leaks are obviously coming from Rove and Libby, I take it with a grain of salt. They cannot know yet what (or who) Fitz has up his sleeve so they cannot know that he is planning cover-up indictments. This could be a coordinated "criminalization of politics" shot across the bow. (Which, by the way, should be met with "I know. It's terrible. We really need to get the criminals out of politics." Make them sputter and explain what they mean.)

It is news to me, however, that Fitzgerald knows who Novak's original source is (described by Novak as not being a partisan gunslinger) and that person does not work at the white house. This could mean that they don't currently work at the white house but once did --- Ari Fleischer or Mary Matalin or any number of others. Or it could mean that this person never worked at the white house, like the head of the CIA, even. Or maybe it's Tim Russert ...

I don't trust Novak's definition of what constitutes a partisan gunslinger --- Novak himself is a partisan gunslinger and calls himself a journalist. He could be talking about John Bolton for all we know.

I had my money on Andy Card early on but he still works at the white house. So, who is it?

One thing that I continue to find fascinating. The final paragraph of this NY Times article:

In Mr. Libby's case, Mr. Fitzgerald has focused on his statements about how he first learned of Ms. Wilson's identity, the lawyers said. Mr. Libby has said that he learned of Ms. Wilson from reporters. But Mr. Fitzgerald may have doubts about his account because the journalists who have been publicly identified as having talked to Mr. Libby have said that they did not provide the name, that they could not recall what had been said or that they had discussed unrelated subjects.

Gosh I wonder who those "journalists" could be? Perhaps they'll share it with the public when they write their memoirs.



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digby 10/20/2005 07:24:00 PM |

 
Buying Into The Program

In a sane political world, Press The Meat this Sunday would be a very interesting show. This is because over the past couple of days it's become obvious that Karl Rove is selling the line that he found out about Plame from Libby and that Libby says that his source for the Plame leak was none other than Tim Russert. It's long past time that the King of the Kewl Kids got the kind of treatment that Judy Miller has received. He's up to his neck in this thing.

Here is what NBC released after Russert testified:

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.[emphasis mine]

As I and others have been writing since the summer, that is a very carefully worded statement that leaves open the clear possibility that Russert did tell Libby that "Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA."

It is long past time that Russert was asked about this. He has grilled everyone from Wilson to Novak on his show about this matter and has never mentioned the fact that he was questioned by the prosecutor, nor has he explained the overlawyered answer. And the Washington press corpse has been much too polite (or intimidated) to mention it, as far as I can tell, anywhere. (Sidney Schanberg wrote about this in the Village Voice.)

As I wrote last summer, all it would take is for one intrepid journalist (or guest on Tim's show) to ask:

Prior to Bob Novak's column in 2003 did you tell anyone who works in the administration that Joseph Wilson's wife worked at the CIA?

In a healthy media climate, that would not be a problem. But our political culture in Washington has become dangerously removed from reality. Unsurprisingly, James Wolcott says it best:

If it looks as if Cheney has to resign and Bush himself enters the Nixon danger zone, we'll hear the same frets and cries from the pundit shows about the country being torn apart and Americans losing faith in their government. But it isn't the country that will be torn apart by Plamegate any more than the country was torn apart during Watergate (which provided daily thrilling news entertainment value that bound citizens together); it's the Washington establishment that will be torn apart. And it should be torn apart. It's failed the country, and it's played by its own rules for too long, and "criminalizing politics" is exactly what should be done when political criminals deceive a nation into a war with Judith Miller serving as the Angie Dickinson to their Rat Pack and Richard Cohen auditioning for the part of Joey Bishop.

I would also point out that the media pearl clutching was an important aspect of the Florida Recount (orchestrated by Karl Rove) in which the likes of Jeff Greenfield quivered like little old ladies every night fretting about how the country wouldn't survive if the election wasn't decided within minutes. This is an old trick.

This story is about a lot of different things. First and foremost, it's about this country going to war on false pretenses, the real reasons for which are obscure and inscrutable. It's about a powerful GOP political machine that thought it could foist off the village idiot as president and became so seized by hubris that it literally thought it could get away with anything.

But it is also about a toxic political culture in the nation's capital that has abdicated its responsibility to behave within certain norms of decent behavior. After eight long years of being fed the juiciest tabloid lies from a masterful Republican disinformation campaign and a group of friendly GOP special prosecutors, the media became joined with the republican establishment and took on its cheap ethics and ruthless attitudes. They began to identify with them. They helped them destroy Bill Clinton's reputation and piled-on to keep Al Gore from the presidency with a puerile smear campaign which they admitted to waging just because they found it amusing. And when George W. Bush became president, their condescending refrain to the majority of the country who didn't vote for him was "get over it."

That cozy relationship among the purveyors of Republican cant led directly into an unquestioning acceptance of administration lies after 9/11. The country would have rallied temprorarily regardless of the media's complicity in GOP messaging during that time, but the previous 10 years of confederacy between the hungry media and the Republican noise machine established a system in which it was possible to perpetrate one of the most outrageous frauds in history --- the Iraq war. The culture that marginalized dissent, that mocked anything other than manufactured beltway conventional wisdom and that normalized character assassination as "fair game" created a jingoistic circus that can be best illustrated with the allegedly liberal icon Dan Rather, saying: "I would willingly die for my country at a moment's notice and on the command of my president…."

Tha media then created a hagiography of George W. Bush that was hallucinogenic. From Howard Fineman:

So who are the Bushes, really? Well, they’re the people who produced the fellow who sat with me and my Newsweek colleague, Martha Brant, for his first interview since 9/11. We saw, among other things, a leader who is utterly comfortable in his role. Bush envelops himself in the trappings of office. Maybe that’s because he’s seen it from the inside since his dad served as Reagan’s vice president in the ‘80s. The presidency is a family business.

Dubyah loves to wear the uniform—whatever the correct one happens to be for a particular moment. I counted no fewer than four changes of attire during the day trip we took to Fort Campbell in Kentucky and back. He arrived for our interview in a dark blue Air Force One flight jacket. When he greeted the members of Congress on board, he wore an open-necked shirt. When he had lunch with the troops, he wore a blue blazer. And when he addressed the troops, it was in the flight jacket of the 101st Airborne. He’s a boomer product of the ‘60s—but doesn’t mind ermine robes.

Ermine robes and flight jackets. That was the apogee of mainstream media Republican worship and it carried this administration right into an illegal war, unprecedented debt, and even a torture regime. The beltway press, which eagerly assisted the Republican party in the political battles of the 1990's quite naturally fell into line when the "winners" of that war decided to use real guns and bullets for political purposes.

The war with Iraq could not have happened without them and they have a lot to answer for --- most especially for uncritically supporting an insane decision to unilaterally attack a country which had not attacked us and then affirmatively helping the administration cover-up the fact that they lied about the reasons for it -- with cocktail party gossip no less.

Maybe someday a member of the press corpse will ask Tim Russert whether he helped the White House expose an undercover CIA agent, but I'm not holding my breath. There are only a handful of people in Washington who seem to have even a modicum of courage and I've yet to see a member of the mainstream press among them.



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digby 10/20/2005 11:42:00 AM |

 
Grover's Sagging Tent

It's very hard for me to feel any sympathy for Grover Norquist who is being battered by the religious zealots for daring to speak at a Log Cabin Republican meeting. Very hard. After all, he's the main guy responsible for creating bullshit ideas like this:

"If he was a serious economic conservative, Grover Norquist would not have accepted the invitation or the honorarium for speaking at a fund-raiser for a group bent on the destruction of traditional families."

He built a vote machine of ignorant saps who really believe that economic conservatism has something to do with hating gays and traditional families. When you let the nutballs into the tent and give them real electoral power, this is what you get.

Wait until Big Business understands that after they get their tax cuts and deregulation they'll have to contend with a generation of creationist witch burners to sustain a first world economy.



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digby 10/20/2005 11:35:00 AM |

 
Finally.

Sam Rosenfeld and Matthew Yglesias hit one out of the park. Just read it all. It looks like finally Matt's begun to get it. Whew! I dunno what prompted this. Perhaps Sam and Matt simply faced reality. Perhaps they sensed a genuine worry that the compelling arguments from longtime war opponents might lead to a sea change in power centers amongst liberals, affecting their career prospects if they didn't openly acknowledge that some of our most important objections were correct. Perhaps both. Whatever. They have done good. But if they want to write for the New Republic anytime soon, they may not be getting their phone calls returned right away...

My only serious bone to pick, which is fairly minor given the extent of the insight and about face exhibited, is that Sam and Matt still privilege, albeit critically, an Isolationist/Realist dichotomy. This was never a good way to frame foreign policy debates, and is not terribly relevant anymore. We need better, more "realistic" - in the sense of closer to how the world works - models and as far as I can tell, no good alternatives are around. (I'll take a pass on Walter Mead's Jacksonians, Jeffersonians, et al. As Schlesinger once got Mead to admit, according to Walter's definition Jackson himself wasn't a Jacksonian.)

Finally, finally Yglesias is beginning to get it. They even addressed the cynical careerism in the liberal hawks' position (although bizarrely, they appear to find little wrong with that; their writing is quite unclear on this). I've been saying most of this stuff for three years now and I was truly beginning to despair, not that I personally wasn't getting anywhere: political punditry and analysis is not my career and I don't care to make it one. I've just wanted to see some sanity in the present discourse where there has been very, very little. So in all seriousness, I'm very glad - relieved- something somewhere has finally started to permit some smart folks, whose grasp on consensual reality seemed quite fragile for a while, to start the long road back to clear-eyed sanity.

Go thou and read.
tristero 10/20/2005 10:09:00 AM |

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

 
The Mind Boggles

As we saw in the marketing of the "new product" - the Bush/Iraq war - success (whatever that meant) rested on the assumption that nearly all steps of the most optimistic scenario would unfold as predicted. Those of us who snorted and said, "that's impossible!" were accused of not realizing that nothing is certain in foreign affairs.

Likewise, those of us who marvel at the wonders of science and read about the extraordinary discoveries and mind-stretching new theories of the last few years with a sense of genuine awe are accused of being close-minded and incurious if we strenuously object to cynical efforts to pollute the teaching of science with blatantly obvious lies.

Now, sooner or later, the national embarassment known as "the controversy [sic] over 'intelligent design' " will hit the Supreme Court because whichever side loses has promised they will appeal the Dover trial decision. All I can say is this. If the Supreme Court chooses to side with the "intelligent design" crowd, America will deserve all that is coming its way. And it won't be purty. Genuinely new levels of sheer idiocy are being achieved by proponents of "id." Read this and weep, dear friends:

A leading architect of the intelligent-design movement defended his ideas in a federal courtroom on Tuesday and acknowledged that under his definition of a scientific theory, astrology would fit as neatly as intelligent design.

[snip]

The cross-examination of Professor Behe on Tuesday made it clear that intelligent-design proponents do not necessarily share the same definition of their own theory. Eric Rothschild, a lawyer representing the parents suing the school board, projected an excerpt from the "Pandas" textbook that said:

"Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features already intact, fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings, etc."

In that definition, Mr. Rothschild asked, couldn't the words "intelligent design" be replaced by "creationism" and still make sense? Professor Behe responded that that excerpt from the textbook was "somewhat problematic," and that it was not consistent with his definition of intelligent design.

Mr. Rothschild asked Professor Behe why then he had not objected to the passage since he was among the scientists who was listed as a reviewer of the book. Professor Behe said that although he had reviewed the textbook, he had reviewed only the section he himself had written, on blood clotting. Pressed further, he agreed that it was "not typical" for critical reviewers of scientific textbooks to review their own work.

[snip]

Listening from the front row of the courtroom, a school board members said he found Professor Behe's testimony reaffirming. "Doesn't it sound like he knows what he's talking about?" said the Rev. Ed Rowand, a board member and church pastor.

"Doesn't it sound like he knows what he's talking about?"

Well, who knows, right? I mean, like, let's not limit ourselves. Anything's possible! After all, Doesn't it sound like he knows what he's talking about? And y'never can tell, there's a genuine possibility it could be true.

I think I'm going to vomit.
tristero 10/19/2005 09:17:00 PM |

 
Preznit Enforcer

Finally we have come to the real question. WDTPKAWDHKI?

Considering today's NY Daily News story reporting that Bush knew Rove had taken out a hit on Wilson, (and was angry that he'd been so sloppy about it) it's worthwhile to revisit some of the compassionate conservative's past dealings with the press and those he considers disloyal:

In 1990, he told writer Ann Grimes, "I was the enforcer when I thought things were going wrong. I had the ability to go and lay down some behavioral modification."

[...]

As one might expect, much of Bush's work for his father's presidential campaigns was done behind the scenes. Yet it's clear he was steeped in political minutiae and imposed few limits on what he was willing to do to get the job done.In 1986, veteran reporter Al Hunt predicted that Jack Kemp would receive the 1988 Republican presidential nomination instead of George H.W. Bush. When George W. saw Hunt dining with his wife and 4-year-old son at a Mexican restaurant in Dallas, he went up to their table and said, "You fucking son of bitch. I won't forget what you said and you're going to pay a fucking price for it." Bush didn't apologize until 13 years later, when the incident resurfaced in the context of his own presidential campaign.

[...]

After his father was elected president in 1988, Bush was placed in charge of a group called the Silent Committee (aka the "scrub group"), which was made up of "about fifteen blood-oath Bushies," according to the Texas Monthly. The purpose of the group was "to 'scrub' potential appointees for their loyalty and past service to Bush." The Washington Post noted at the time that George W. had a "somewhat more developed sense of political loyalty than even his father."


Although Bush left Washington after the campaign concluded, his role as loyalty enforcer remained largely unchanged. In November 1991, for example, then White House chief of staff John Sununu told a reporter the president had "ad-libbed" an ill-advised line during a speech about credit card interest rates. The younger Bush was infuriated that Sununu didn't defend his father. George W. told another White House staffer, "We have a saying in our family: If a grenade is rolling by the Man, you dive on it first. The guy violated the cardinal rule."

George W. was dispatched to Washington to deal with the Sununu situation. He met with Sununu and told him he should resign. On Dec. 3, 1991, Sununu -- also facing criticism for his misuse of government vehicles -- stepped down. Asked about the confrontation, George W. would only say, "The conversations between me and Mr. Sununu are going to be private. I talked to him, and then he and Dad reached an agreement."

Bush and Rove come from the same school of thuggish politics. Bush not only has no problem with such behavior, he endorses and expects it. The only thing that matters is results. In that respect Rove (and Cheney) failed him.

When looked at in that light, the following comment can be seen as Bush doing his own damage control:

"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."

He has a history of strong-arming the press:

In 1987, the George H.W. Bush campaign gave unusually close access to Newsweek reporter Margaret Warner. That resulted in a cover story titled "Fighting the Wimp Factor," in which Warner discussed "the potentially crippling handicap" that the senior Bush wasn't tough enough for the job. George W. was incensed. He called the magazine and "told reporters that his father's campaign would no longer talk to Newsweek." According to White House reporter Thomas DeFrank, George W. told him that Newsweek was "out of business." In his anger, however, Bush "went somewhat beyond the authorized message." The following day, a Bush campaign spokesman announced, "We're not cutting them [Newsweek] or anybody else off from their efforts to cover the campaign." George W., apparently, has never gotten over the incident. In his memoir, "A Charge to Keep," published more than a decade later, he wrote, "My blood pressure still goes up when I remember the cover."

By the way, Thomas DeFrank is the same journalist who reported today that Bush knew about the leak two years ago and was only pissed that Karl got caught. Seems he's been following this aspect of Bush's character for quite some time. And it appears that there are some people who are beginning to recognise that they needn't throw themselves on the grenade when the president is a 38% lame duck and sinking fast. The question is, who?


Update: Tangential question --- the president and veep didn't testify under oath. But my understanding is that it is a crime to lie to a justice department official regardless a la Martha Stewart. Bush and Cheney might not be subject to perjury charges, but it seems they could be charged with "making false statements to the government." Here's what Fitzgerald's mentor James Comey said about this with respect to Martha Stewart:

"This case is about lying" — to investigators and to investors. "Lying" is a harsh word....But "perjury" is a much harsher word, meaning "lying under oath." Martha Stewart has not been accused of perjury.

Normally, I would be outraged at the thought that someone not under oath could be indicted for lying. I thought Martha's case was a total sham because the underlying crime was insignificant and commonplace. I'm not big on "send a message" prosecutions. But I'm willing to make exceptions when it comes to a group of criminal thugs who are bamboozling the press and stealing elections to gain power so they can start wars for no reason and bankrupt the country. I just don't know what else can stop these people.



Clarification: I do not believe the president could be indicted. Impeachment is the only option for a sitting president and that ain't gonna happen. He could, however, be named as an unindicted co-conspirator as Nixon was, for lying to the prosecutors under the Martha Stewart statute.



UpdateII: Josh Marshall has much more on Thomas DeFrank's relationship with the Bushes. He's definitely well-connected. Who on the inside is talking?



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digby 10/19/2005 09:45:00 AM |

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

 
Judy's Silver Bullet

Puttering around I came upon this paper (pdf) that Judy Miller delivered to the Aspen Institute's 2003 symposium called "In Search Of An American Grand Strategy For The Middle East" just days before she accidentally met up with Rootin-Tootin' Scooter in Jackson Hole. It's not particularly revealing --- not even one mention of the roots or the turning. It's only notable for its almost embarrassing incoherence, in which she tries to strike a neutral analytical pose but can't seem to help slipping in her belief that those darned weapons just must have existed! Even as she pretends to be skeptical of the Bush Doctrine she says that our mission in Iraq has been successful because we've managed to scare the Mid East and Europe into doing our bidding.(The Tom Friedman "Our Guy's Crazier Than Your Guy" theory.)

Despite the superficially balanced tone, she gives her little neocon self away in numerous small ways. For instance:

Absent profound reform, the nation’s six intelligence agencies, as currently structured and staffed, are unlikely to be able to detect such sophisticated, deeply hidden WMD programs. Given its record on the former Soviet Union, India, Pakistan, and Iraq, relying mainly on the CIA for good WMD intelligence seems ill-advised.

No matter how wrong the CIA eve was, they were never as wrong as Judy's neocon pals who are now operating faith-based intelligence agencies under hacks and war criminals. But that's another story.

One thing is clear, though. Relying on Judy for good journalism is definitely ill-advised:

The military should also continue the policy of embedding journalists with weapons hunting units and urge international organizations to do the same. For the U.S., the presence of journalists would help avoid charges of having planted incriminating evidence against a proliferator. It would also help keep such units and international agencies honest. Yes, the embedding experiment was problematic in many ways, but it was important in building Administration credibility and public support for such capabilities.

Clearly it's journalists' jobs to build Adminstration credibility and public support, so this is obviously a good idea. And lord knows that Judy has fulfilled her duty on that count. But Judy Miller seems to have some sort of conginitive dysfuntion about her own reporting. When Judy was embedded, "keeping the unit honest" was hardly her highest priority:

In "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert" (Page One, April 21) Miller disclosed that she agreed to 1) embargo her story for three days; 2) permit military officials to review her story prior to publication; 3) not name the found chemicals; and 4) to refrain from identifying or interviewing the Iraqi scientist who led Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha to sites where he maintained Iraqis had buried chemical precursors to banned chemical weapons. Although Miller didn't talk to the scientist, the military allowed her to view him from afar. She writes, "Clad in nondescript clothes and a baseball cap, he pointed to several spots in the sand where he said chemical precursors and other weapons material were buried."

According to MET Alpha, the scientist also said Iraq had sent unconventional weapons technology to Syria, had cooperated with al-Qaida, had recently focused its WMD efforts on research and development, and had destroyed WMD equipment just days before the U.S. invasion.

The next day on the NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, Miller described the unnamed Iraqi scientist as not just the "smoking gun" in the WMD investigation, but the "silver bullet … who really worked on the programs, who knows them firsthand, and who has led MET Team Alpha people to some pretty startling conclusions. …"

But Miller's silver bullet tarnished overnight. The next day in the Times, she reported the military's new "paradigm shift" from finding WMD to locating the people behind them. Then Miller abandoned the remarkable findings of her April 21 scoop. The silver bulleted "Iraqi scientist" and his "precursor chemicals" vanished from her reporting after her April 23 dispatch. (She reprised some of his allegations and described how he made contact with American forces.) By May 7 she was writing about MET Alpha's search not for WMD but for an ancient copy of the Talmud! The Washington Post's Barton Gellman reported May 11 that the leaders of the 75th Exploitation Task Force, of which MET Alpha is a part, had found nothing and were leaving Iraq. At a May 13 Pentagon press briefing, 101st Airborne Division commander Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus downgraded to "theory" status the allegations the Iraqi scientist allegedly made to MET Alpha about destroyed WMD.

Judith Miller's writing and thinking is illogical and internally inconsistent. Her testimony before the GJ was too. (As a reader pointed out to me, why did she agree to refer to Libby as a "Hill Staffer" if she wasn't writing a story?) She has almost no self-awareness.

How on earth does someone this vapid become an "expert" on national security issues for the New York Times?


Update: Christorpher Dickey writes a very illuminating analysis of Judy's writing and the state of modern journalism, here:

Judith Miller takes good notes, but she doesn’t always know where they come from. That was one of the first lessons I learned about her when we were both based in Cairo 20 years ago, she for The New York Times and I for The Washington Post.

[...]

For some reason none of us had a tape recorder, so on the flight back to Casablanca we compared our notes from the one interview we’d had with a Moroccan general a few hours before. We wanted to be sure the phrases we’d scribbled down were accurate. But there was a problem. Judy had many more quotes in her notebook than I and another reporter had in ours. And Judy’s were much better. Then I realized why. I’d done a lot more homework on that particular story than she did, and I was asking much more detailed questions. She’d written them down, and now she thought they came from the general, but many of the quotes actually were from … me.

[...]

Judy’s great talent as a reporter is in gaining access. Full stop. She doesn’t always know what she has when she’s got it, and she isn’t always good at analyzing what she’s heard when she hears it. Indeed, that may be one reason so many very high level sources—kings, princes, dictators, presidents, politicians—have enjoyed confiding, through her, so many supposed scoops and secrets published in The New York Times.

All those who fret about the damage done to journalism and freedom of the press done by Fitzgrald's investigation ought to ask themselves whether that ship didn't sail some time ago. And they should ask how much Judy's kind of reporting has contributed to it:

The righteous response is that such stories should not be made public until we can report them from the bottom up, not just the top down. That’s what Craig Pyes believes, and one of many reasons he wrote a scathing memo to the Times editors back in 2000, when he was forced to team up with Judy on a reporting project about Al Qaeda that eventually won a Pulitzer. "I'm not willing to work further on this project with Judy Miller," he wrote in the memo, which recently leaked to The Washington Post. "I do not trust her work, her judgment, or her conduct. She is an advocate, and her actions threaten the integrity of the enterprise, and of everyone who works with her ... She has turned in a draft of a story of a collective enterprise that is little more than dictation from government sources over several days, filled with unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies." Worse still, she had "tried to stampede it into the paper."

That was in 2000.



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digby 10/18/2005 06:27:00 PM |

 
Vice President Corleone

Apropros of my earlier post about how the right and left view the CIA, I see (via Jeanne D'Arc) that the Senate is going to water down the anti-torture legislation to exempt the CIA.

Marty Lederer at Balkinization:

It's increasingly clear that the strategy of McCain's opponents -- the Vice President and his congressional supporters -- will be to amend the McCain Amendment in the Conference Committee so as to exempt the CIA from the prohibition on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees. The Senate delegation to the Conference Committee presumably will include three of the nine Republicans who voted against the McCain Amendment -- Ted Stevens, Thad Cochran and Kit Bond. A recent Congressional Quarterly article, reprinted here, reports Stevens -- who would "lead the Senate's conferees" -- as saying that "he can support McCain's language if it's augmented with guidance that enables certain classified interrogations to proceed under different terms." "'I'm talking about people who aren't in uniform, may or may not be citizens of the United States, but are working for us in very difficult circumstances,' Stevens said. 'And sometimes interrogation and intimidation is part of the system.'"

What this barely veiled statement means is that Senator Stevens will support inclusion of the McCain Amendment in the final bill only once it has been "augmented" to exempt the CIA from the prohibition on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. (Stevens's reference to persons who "may not be citizens of the United States, but are working for us" suggests that he also intends to include a carve-out for foreign nationals acting as agents of the CIA, such as the team of the CIA-sponsored Iraqi paramilitary squads code-named Scorpions.) If Stevens (read: Cheney) is successful in this endeavor, and if the Congress enacts the Amendment as so limited, it will be a major step backwards from where the law currently stands. This can't be overemphasized: If Stevens is successful at adding his seemingly innocuous "augment[ation]," it would make the law worse than it currently is.

This is Cheney's baby all the way. Does anyone harbor even the tiniest doubt that Cheney would put out a political hit on a CIA operative to punish her husband? He's a thug through and through.


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digby 10/18/2005 03:22:00 PM |

 
Place Yer Bets

And now for something completely different.

Atrios reports that the rumor that there are rumors that Cheney might resign are true. Got that?

Well let's just say Cheney does resign (be still my beating heart!). Who do you think Bush would choose to replace him?

Now unfortunately, the link Atrios chose mentions my first choice, Condoleeza Rice. So for those of us who say Condi as the new Veep, I don't want you to be left out of all the fun and games. Here's a question for youse (as we used to say back in Jersey):

If Condi becomes the Veep, how many hours/weeks/months/hours will it take for Bush to resign, Condi to become president, and all the Democratic hopes for a weak opponent in 2008 to be dashed?

Those who guess right will get Tristero Horn t-shirts emailed to them, once I make them up. I'm outta her for the night.
tristero 10/18/2005 03:12:00 PM |

 
The Certainty Principle

I'm sorry to bring up a subject that makes some of the most trenchant and intelligent commentators around here groan, but I do think there is an important issue at stake. I've expanded and clarified my own thought as well, so while we await the Plame verdicts, if any (I'm reverse jinxing here!), please once again, lend an eyeball or two.

Matt Yglesias has tried to clarify his position regarding Bush/Iraq. I can't help but think that the discussions engendered by this post and this post may have had something to do with Matt's clarification. What follows is the comment that I left on Matt's message board in response (I've edited it slightly):

Matt, Tristero here. Thank you for addressing this issue again. Unfortunately, you really seem to miss the point of those who are criticizing you, like myself. Please hear me out:

The mistake you made, along with all the liberal hawks, was that by accepting [pro war Iraqi refugee] Makiya's odds [of 5%] as more or less reasonable, you rhetorically opened a door to discussion. It was permitting that door to open that was the error.

From the point of view of a speech to the troops, 5% looks immoral. From the point of view of a country traumatized by 911, the Bush administration calculated that 5% might very well be a risk well worth taking, if it could prevent more attacks. Having accepted the proposition that there was a small but real chance of success, all those American myths about risk taking and doing good kick in, which made Bush/Iraq an easier sell than it should have been.

But the truth is that Makiya was a hopeless optimist. The goals of Bush/Iraq were impossible to achieve. Only in an abstruse, technically mathematical sense was there a probability of success. Why was Bush/Iraq utterly impossible?

Because nothing is certain. Again, please hear me out:

The success of Bush/Iraq depended, with absolute certainty, that just about everything the neocons predicted would, in fact actually, happen. An unbiased study of the full range of opinions and research on foreign affairs -one not skewed to the right and the far right, one not skewed towards naive optimism - would make it abundantly clear that at best, less than 1/3 of the neocons' predictions about the course of the war could ever possibly come true. That fact, based on a genuine understanding of uncertainty,exponentially increased the odds that the alternative scenario, an unmitigated disaster, would occur.

The actual odds of success were closer to .00000000000000005% than 5%. That was patently obvious to anyone who was doing research that wasn't biased.

But part of the marketing of the "new product" was to turn the notion of doubt on its head. We, who knew how utterly beyond reason a successful outcome was - because we understood the full extent of the sheer improbability of Perle/Wolfowitz's scenarios, which depended on a near-absolute certain unfolding of events - were accused of not taking into account how uncertain things are in the real world!

Bush/Iraq should never have been taken seriously, anymore than Curtis Lemay's suggestion to use nuclear bombs in Vietnam or during the Missile Crisis should have been taken seriously. The problem was that not only did Bush take Wolfowitz seriously. So did the media and the liberal hawks. Had they been laughed off the stage - as those opposed to the gutting of Social Security have laughed Bush off the stage - the chances of a Bush/Iraq war would have fallen close to zero.

But the idea was taken seriously by people far more influential than you. And that gave them the opening to make their fallacious case. What disturbs me is that you don't seem to recognize what the mistake was:

Not all arguments are worth the status of intellectual consideration. Bush/Iraq was one of them, even though a former John Hopkins professor like Wolfowitz and the president of the United States thought otherwise.

Bush/Iraq was no more realistic than the arguments for a UFO behind the Hale/Bopp comet and it should have been treated accordingly. Again, not recognizing that immediately was your mistake and that is what you need to come to grips with. Not the morality of the war, but the extent to which you and so many of your colleagues were bamboozled and provided Bush with an opening to tap into American mythologies.
tristero 10/18/2005 10:47:00 AM |

 
You Always Know What America Stands For When Bush Is President.

Richard Clarke:

Imagine if, in advance of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of trucks had been waiting with water and ice and medicine and other supplies. Imagine if 4,000 National Guardsmen and an equal number of emergency aid workers from around the country had been moved into place, and five million meals had been ready to serve. Imagine if scores of mobile satellite-communications stations had been prepared to move in instantly, ensuring that rescuers could talk to one another. Imagine if all this had been managed by a federal-and-state task force that not only directed the government response but also helped coordinate the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and other outside groups.

Actually, this requires no imagination: it is exactly what the Bush administration did a year ago when Florida braced for Hurricane Frances. Of course the circumstances then were very special: it was two months before the presidential election, and Florida's twenty-seven electoral votes were hanging in the balance. It is hardly surprising that Washington ensured the success of "the largest response to a natural disaster we've ever had in this country." The president himself passed out water bottles to Floridians driven from their homes.

From The Atlantic, but you'll have to be either a subscriber or buy the issue to read the whole thing. Trust me, it's worth it.
tristero 10/18/2005 06:06:00 AM |

 
Judy's War, And Packer's

Two more US soldiers killed in Iraq, this time near Rutba, a town I guarantee you neither soldier nor their families ever heard of before they arrived in Baghdad.

For all I know, Rutba's a beautiful spot, a land of milk and honey. But it sounds like an awful place for a poor American kid to fight and die in pursuit of a misrepresented, misbegotten illusion.
tristero 10/18/2005 01:20:00 AM |

Monday, October 17, 2005

 
Blood Feud


With the Washington Post reporting that Fitzgerald's investigation is focusing on Dick Cheney's long running feud with the CIA, I thought I would reprise this post of mine from a few months back:

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.

This idea that it was a blood feud between the neocons and the CIA ha been out there from the beginning. And it lent credence to the charge that Plame's status was leaked on purpose. It makes perfect sense that Fitz would follow that trail.

The thing to remember is that the neocons have always been wrong about everything.

...from the Soviet threat to China to rogue states to Iraq, the neocons and hardliners were wrong each and every time. And they weren't just wrong on some details, they massively, abundently wrong about everything. Korb discusses one particular fact in his piece that I think illuminates their rather insane view about terrorism:

In 1981, after the publication of Clare Sterling's book, "The Terror Network," which argued that global terrorists were actually pawns of the Soviets, leading hard-liners asked the CIA to look into the relationship between Soviets and terrorist organizations. The agency concluded that although there was evidence that the Soviets had assisted groups such as the Palestine Liberation Organization with weapons and training, there was no evidence that the Soviets encouraged or approved these groups' terrorist acts. However, hard-liners like Secretary of State Alexander Haig, CIA Chief William Casey and Policy Planning Director Wolfowitz rejected the draft as a naive, exculpatory brief and had the draft retooled to assert that the Soviets were heavily involved in supporting "revolutionary violence worldwide."

Since they never adjust to changing circumstances or admit any new evidence that doesn't fit their preconcieved notions, this was still the framework they were working from when bin Laden came on the scene. It's why the neocon nutcase Laurie Mylroie was able to convince people in the highest reaches of the Republican intelligensia that Saddam had something to do with bin Laden, even though there was never a scintilla of evidence to back it up. They simply could not,and cannot to this day, come to grips with the fact that their view of how terrorism works --- through "rogue states" and totalitarian sponsorship --- is simply wrong.

When Clare Sterling's book came out CIA director William Casey was said to have told his people, "read Claire Sterling's book and forget this mush. I paid $13.95 for this and it told me more than you bastards who I pay $50,000 a year." Wolfowitz and Feith are said to have told their staff in the Pentagon to read Laurie Mylroie's book about Saddam and al Qaeda. Richard Clarke, in "Against All Enemies" quotes Wolfowitz as saying: "You give Bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don't exist."

This, then, is simply how they think. It's as Rob Cordry says, "the facts are biased." (That's the state of mind that led neocon Judith Miller to make her bizarre incomprehensible comment "I was proved fucking right!") They truly believe that even though they have been completely wrong about everything for the past thirty years that it just can't be so.

And no matter what, in their minds the the CIA is always trying to screw them.

So the political environment in which Valerie Plame was outed was virtually hallucinogenic. There may have really been some part of certain members of the Bush administration's dysfunctional lizard brains that really thought in July of 2003 that the CIA had been trying to set them up and used Joe Wilson to do it.

But it's not July of 2003 now, is it? It's two years later and we know for a fact that the analysts, including Wilson, who said the Niger deal was bullshit were right and we know that the analysts who doubted the evidence about Saddam's WMD were right too.

Not that this will stop the Team B neocons from insisting that "they were proved fucking right." They really are delusional and they always have been.

This blood feud between the Team B neocons and the CIA has been getting this country into trouble for 30 years, culminating in the epic strategic blunder of Iraq. It's time it is stopped.




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digby 10/17/2005 09:28:00 PM |

 
Embed Wrangler

Atrios is wondering who got Judy her security clearance. Josh Marshall reports that Jim Micklaszewski says nobody at DOD, DIA or CIA knows anything about it.

Have they called Jim Wilkinson? He is, after all, the guy who was in charge of managing the embeds. From a very handy little rundown on Wilkinson from marureen Farrell, we see this:

"It was a very well-designed, well-executed effort to control the information," New York magazine’s Michael Wolff explained. "Wilkinson was, I think, instrumental. He certainly represented himself as the brains of the operation."

He was also a central player in the Iraq war propaganda operation serving as a member of the Office of Global Communication and the White House Iraq Group. If there was anyone who would have been charged with getting a special "off the books" special security clearance it would have been him. He had his own special pipeline to the White House and the DOD:

"In the early hours of April 2, correspondents in Doha were summoned from their beds to Centcom, the military and media nerve center for the war," The Guardian explained. "Jim Wilkinson, the White House's top figure there, had stayed up all night. ‘We had a situation where there was a lot of hot news,’ he [recalled] "The president had been briefed, as had the secretary of defense."

Bloomberg reported that Wilkinson was subpoenaed by the Grand Jury, which I hadn't heard before. It would be odd if he hadn't. He was intimately involved with the Iraq war lies --- and he is a known political hit man:

"Formerly a political operative, Mr. Wilkinson was put in the position of feeding, informing and calming the most motivated media army in the world in Qatar. There, inside the massive telecommunications studio assembled by the U.S. Army and the Bush administration, he earned both the enmity and admiration of various parts of the worldwide press during war in a technologically superb and informationally sparse desert press center. ... 'It was an unprofessional operation,' said Peter Boyer of The New Yorker, who said he landed an interview with General Franks only by going around Mr. Wilkinson to the Pentagon."

"Jim Wilkinson has gone from politics to war and back since he worked for George W. Bush in Florida during the 2000 election, and his journey is a mark of the administration's utilitarian approach to marketing war, politics and the Presidency. 'He's a man who prefers to work behind the scenes,' said the spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Jim Dyke. He's also got as pure a Republican pedigree as you can wish, and an edge honed in the bitter partisan wars between Bill Clinton and the Republican House leadership.

"Mr. Wilkinson grew up in East Texas and attended high school in Tenaha, population 1,046, then gave up plans to become an undertaker to go to work for Republican Congressman Dick Armey in 1992. Mr. Armey soon became House majority leader; his communications director, Mr. Wilkinson's mentor, was Ed Gillespie, now chairman of the R.N.C."

"Wilkinson first left his mark on the 2000 Presidential race in March 1999, when he helped package and promote the notion that Al Gore claimed to have 'invented the Internet.' Then the Texan popped up in Miami to defend Republican protesters shutting down a recount: 'We find it interesting that when Jesse Jackson has thousands of protesters in the streets, it's O.K., but when a small number of Republicans exercise their First Amendment rights, the Democrats don't seem to like it,' he told the Associated Press.

In the White House he was instrumental in pushing the WMD propaganda and has the kind of history that suggests he would have been involved in trashing Joseph Wilson (with relish.) He is also one guy who would likely have been involved in getting Judith Miller some sort of double secret super security clearance that nobody else knew about.

Of course, Judy could be lying.

I have been writing about Wilkinson since June of 2003 when I read Michael Wolff's seminal article about the Iraq war press operation. Wilkinson is the quintessential Rove machine operative.



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digby 10/17/2005 03:12:00 PM |

 
Tightening the Scrunchie

I don't want to hear any more belly aching from liberal pansies about how we aren't getting the terrorists. We are not only smokin 'em out of their caves we are ruthlessly depriving them of their perms and sun-kissed highlighting.

U.S. forces in Iraq said on Saturday that they were holding a man suspected of acting as a barber to senior al Qaeda militants and helping them change their appearance to evade capture.

The man, named as Walid Muhammad Farhan Juwar al-Zubaydi -- "aka 'The Barber,"' the U.S. military statement said -- was arrested in Baghdad on September 24, the day before U.S. troops caught up with and killed a militant they described as the most senior al Qaeda leader in the capital, Abu Azzam.

"'The Barber's' duties included altering senior al Qaeda in Iraq members' appearances by dying hair color, altering hairstyles and changing facial hair in their efforts to evade capture," the military said in the statement.

The vicious bastard. I hope they "render" him straight to Fantastic Sam's and play Toby Keith over and over until he gives up bin Laden's hair color formula.


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digby 10/17/2005 12:52:00 AM |

Sunday, October 16, 2005

 
Miller's Message

Kevin Drum questions the theory that Bennett didn't come clean with Fitz about Libby being Judy's only "meaningful" source, (or didn't know that Libby wasn't Judy's only meaningful source) when they made the deal that she would only testify about her conversations with Libby. This rests on the fact that Miller now has a phantom source who told her about "Valerie Flame" but she can't remember who it might have been. Kevin says:

This doesn't sound right to me. First of all, surely something like this can't happen in real life, can it? Bennett's representations to Fitzgerald would be considered binding, wouldn't they? If it turned out he misrepresented the evidence, Fitzgerald would no longer be bound by the original agreement. (Someone with experience in federal prosecutions should feel free to step in and tell me I'm wrong, but this sure doesn't sound like something a judge would spend more than a few seconds ruling on.)

I think Kevin is right. But I'm not sure that the deal was ever as clear cut as Miller made it out to be. Bennett emphatically said that the deal was limited to the "Valerie Plame Matter" not that it was limited to Libby. Robert Bennett is a very savvy lawyer and he was very precise in his language.

BLITZER: Was the conversations you had with Mr. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor -- was her testimony limited only to Scooter Libby's involvement in the Valerie Plame case, assuming that's her source as we all do? Or was it -- could he ask questions before the grand jury on other individuals?

R. BENNETT: I'm not going to go into her testimony before a secret grand jury, but I will say that the subject matter that we agreed to dealt with the Valerie Plame matter.

BLITZER: So in other words, it focused on that, but talk about other individuals as well?

R. BENNETT: It focused on the Valerie Plame matter.

BLITZER: That's all you want to say about that?

R. BENNETT: That's all I can say to you.

This does not mean that it wasn't limited to Libby, of course. There are other reasons why Bennett might not have wanted to name Libby in that interview. But it was common knowledge that Libby was the source in question and Judy, after all, had said the day before that the agreement was to "focus on that source." Bennett could have characterized the deal that way as well.

FRANKEN: Scooter's lawyer has said that, had you asked, you wouldn't have had to spend any time in jail. He would have been more than willing to give you the explicit waiver you say you now accepted.

MILLER: I was not a party to those discussions. I'm going to let you refer those questions to my lawyer. I can only tell you that as soon as I received a personal assurance from the source that I was able to talk to him and talk to the source about my testimony, it was only then and as a result of the special prosecutors' agreement to narrow the focus of the inquiry, to focus on that source, that I was able to testify.

I still think that the real problem for Judy was that the original subpoena (pdf) said:

... on August 12 and August 14, grand jury subpoenas were issued to Judith Miller, seeking documents and testimony related to conversations between her and a specified government official “occurring from on or about July 6, 2003, to on or about July 13, 2003, . . . concerning Valerie Plame Wilson (whether referred to by name or by description as the wife of Ambassador Wilson) or concerning Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium.”

I continue to believe that Judy's primary concern was about limiting her testimony to Plame. It was other non-Plame related conversations (with Libby or others) that pertained to the Iraq uranium claims, and perhaps even her involvement, that she did not want to be asked about. (This could be the matter of the sexed-up dossier, David Kelly's death and the back-up claim that the questionable claim that the British had unrelated secret information about African yellowcake.)

And after looking at it again, I suspect that this passage in Judy's mea no culpa may be a little message of her own to the powers that be --- to let them know that she was a good little aspen and understood that all the roots are connected:

As I told Mr. Fitzgerald and the grand jury, Mr. Libby alluded to the existence of two intelligence reports about Iraq's uranium procurement efforts. One report dated from February 2002. The other indicated that Iraq was seeking a broad trade relationship with Niger in 1999, a relationship that he said Niger officials had interpreted as an effort by Iraq to obtain uranium.

My notes indicate that Mr. Libby told me the report on the 1999 delegation had been attributed to Joe Wilson.

Mr. Libby also told me that on the basis of these two reports and other intelligence, his office had asked the C.I.A. for more analysis and investigation of Iraq's dealings with Niger. According to my interview notes, Mr. Libby told me that the resulting cable - based on Mr. Wilson's fact-finding mission, as it turned out - barely made it out of the bowels of the C.I.A. He asserted that George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, had never even heard of Mr. Wilson.

As I told Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Libby also cited a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, produced by American intelligence agencies in October 2002, which he said had firmly concluded that Iraq was seeking uranium.

[...]

Although I was interested primarily in my area of expertise - chemical and biological weapons - my notes show that Mr. Libby consistently steered our conversation back to the administration's nuclear claims. His main theme echoed that of other senior officials: that contrary to Mr. Wilson's criticism, the administration had had ample reason to be concerned about Iraq's nuclear capabilities based on the regime's history of weapons development, its use of unconventional weapons and fresh intelligence reports.

That's the standard company line, no deviations. She devotes a great deal of space in her article to relating all of that in loving detail despite the fact that she was questioned by Fitzgerald for many hours and was before the Grand Jury twice. Some important people are undoubtedly feeling a bit relieved knowing now that Judy stayed within the lines even as Fitz came dangerously close to asking about the Big WHIG Problem.

If Scooter and Turdblossom have to go down that's one thing --- revealing the true scope of the Iraq lies is another. Doing time for the GOP has become a badge of courage and it never stops anyone from finding their way back to the halls of power and making big money if they want to. As long as everybody keeps their mouths shut about the war, the family will take care of them.

I predict that there will be no trials if Fitzgerald indicts. A public spectacle in which the possibility of someone spilling the beans about the Big WHIG Problem is much too risky. I think this will be plea bargained. I'll bet that Rove and Scooter are looking at poncho patterns as we speak.

Update: On the other hand, if Jane's right about Ari being the Third Man, then maybe there's a possibility for some real fireworks. He's not a real member of the club. He was hired from the failed Liddy Dole presidential campaign. He may not be willing to fall on his sword for this bunch.


Update II: Can someone tell me where in Miller's article she says anything that could be construed as this:

A new account of the CIA leak scandal rocking the White House suggests top presidential aides were seriously concerned about what could be seen as a dissident faction inside the US spy agency that appeared to work even behind the back of the CIA director to debunk the notion Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

I don't see anything that leads to a "dissident faction," in her piece, but it does conveniently play into some on the right's suggestion that Plame and some of her liberal spook comrades "in the bowels of the CIA" were running a rogue operation to hide all the evidence of Saddam's WMD arsenal. (This excuse fails to acknowledge the the verified fact that there were no actual WMD found, but no matter.) I've assumed that it was confined to the fringe of wingnuttia, but it appears to have made it to the AP.


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digby 10/16/2005 11:22:00 PM |

 
Scandal Central

Referring to the NY Times coverage of the Judy Miller saga, Brit Hume said something today to the effect of, "I don't think the American people care about this and as I was reading it today it occurred to me that I don't care much either."

Well, he wouldn't. Brit's career as the dean of FoxNews was made by covering the important stories, after all:

Quick off the mark on January 21, the day the story broke, FNC had the first photo of Lewinsky on the air at 9 a.m., and, that same day, the first interview with Gennifer Flowers. It began devoting all of its daytime schedule to the crisis, except for brief segments on other news, along with weekend specials attracting hundreds of viewer phone calls. The network even inaugurated a whole new early-evening series, Special Report with Brit Hume, to keep daily tabs on the evolving story "for the duration of the developments."

And he did, scolding other news organizations all along the way for not being properly obsessed with what was going on in Clinton's pants:

"The President was forced to confront a new twist in an old legal battle. A federal judge ruling today that Mr. Clinton violated the Privacy Act by releasing letters from Kathleen Willey, who accused him of making an unwanted sexual advance in the White House." Clinton: "Obviously we don’t agree with the ruling."

[...]

The low priority given the development by the White House press corps surprised FNC’s Brit Hume, who immediately after the press conference scolded his colleagues. At 3:15pm ET he told anchor Shepard Smith:

"I think this most extraordinary thing about this news conference, Shep, and it was one of the more extraordinary ones I’ve ever seen, were the questions. We were ten questions into this news conference when he was finally asked about the federal judge’s finding today in Washington that the President had committed a criminal violation of the Privacy Act. It is not every day that a judge makes such a finding, and it, we talked, we heard all about the President’s views on Elian Gonzalez, certainly that’s in the news. We had questions on the Middle East. We had the President’s opinion solicited in the second question in the news conference about police shootings in New York. And then it was ten questions in before we got around to this extraordinary thing that happened today with the federal judge making this finding. Now the President said he didn’t agree with it, which is what one would expect him to say, and obviously there’s more on this chapter to play out. But quite a remarkable performance by those asking the questions it seemed to me."

Why, oh why, can't the press concentrate on important things? This is what real news people spend their time on:

A Clinton family friend tells Fox News that the First Couple barely speak in private," FNC’s Rita Cosby reported Wednesday night. FNC’s Fox Report and Special Report with Brit Hume led Wednesday night with Cosby’s exclusive about how the Clintons left their ski weekend early a week and a half ago because they had a fight. Cosby quoted a source who knows the Clintons as relaying how Hillary Clinton refused to accompany her husband on his current Central American trip because "I don’t want to be in the same room with him, let alone the same bed."

Paula Zahn opened the 7pm ET Fox Report: "Remember when the Clintons came home early from their ski trip last week? The White House said it was because Mrs. Clinton got hurt, but insiders are telling a very different story."

Cosby disclosed: "Sources tell Fox News the reason it abruptly ended was because the First Couple had a shouting match which left Hillary Clinton storming out of the room, saying she wanted her bags."

After letting Democratic hack Peter Fenn suggest strains are expected in a marriage after what they have been through, Cosby continued: "A Clinton family friend tells Fox News that the First Couple barely speak in private, that quote: ‘They have nothing to talk about anymore. The only thing they have in common is Chelsea.’"

Now that's journalism. Today we have all these ridiculous stories about manipulated intelligence and unconventional weapons and revealing the names of undercover CIA agents. Don't they realize that important people don't have time for these petty distractions? Don't they understand that unless the mushroom cloud is a smoking cigar that there is no need for this obsessive coverage of so-called "crimes" in the government? Where will it end? Before you know it, they'll be saying that even lying about the reasons for war is illegal and then where will we be?



Sarcasm aside, it occurs to me that CNN made itself into a powerhouse with the first Gulf War. FoxNews grew to its current status riding on Clinton's penis. Rovegate and the Machine Scandals belong to MSNBC right now and could translate into some real ratings if they play their cards right. So far, they are the go-to network on these stories.

In order to gain political advanatage there has to be a central television clearing house for all things scandal related. I think MSNBC is ripe to lead this story. And they are, coincidentally, the most blog-friendly network, with the web-site being one of the earliest entries into the blogosphere and TV personalities Olbermann, Shuster and Matthews actually producing real blog material. Perhaps they will be open to some of the research and analysis the blogs provide to help inform their coverage.

I know we all hate the dreaded MSM and all, but the unpleasant reality is that the TV news media are essential to advancing a story like this, sticking with it, plucking the best performers from the Barbizon school of blond former prosecutors to provide commentary. I think it's MSNBC's story. We should keep up the pressure on them to do it right --- which includes acknowledging it when they do.



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digby 10/16/2005 03:26:00 PM |

 
George Packer

Shorter George Packer :

Stop telling me you told me so, you fucking anti-war assholes!

No, Tristero, how dare you! Packer's too brilliant and thoughtful an intellectual to be that crude, isn't he? I mean, like he writes for The New Yorker and everything.

Ok, ok, I'm sorry, really, I am. But... well, just for the heck of it, let's "engage" our eloquent, weighty Mr. P., since he deems such engagement the sign of a first-rate mind and yeah, I really, really care what his opinion of my mental ability is. Packer types:

Before the invasion, there was the possibility of a world without Saddam Hussein and of an Iraq that no longer threatened endless violence in its volatile region — which was attractive. There was also the certainty of death and destruction in a new war, and the many reasons to doubt that this administration was up to the job — which was frightening. [Italics added]

In fact, Packer is right, but he doesn't know it. There was indeed the possibility he mentions, by following the revised sanctions regime that Lopez and Cortright discussed in an all-but-totally-ignored article in Foreign Affairs in July/August, 2004.(The link is to a "liberated" copy.):

The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has prompted much handwringing over the problems with prewar intelligence. Too little attention has been paid, however, to the flip slide of the picture: that the much-maligned UN-enforced sanctions regime actually worked. Contrary to what critics have said, we now know that containment helped destroy Saddam Hussein's war machine and his capacity to produce weapons.

[snip]

The United Nations sanctions that began in August 1990 were the longest running, most comprehensive, and most controversial in the history of the world body. Most analysts argued prior to the Iraq war -- and, in many cases, continue to argue -- that sanctions were a failure. In reality, however, the system of containment that sanctions cemented did much to erode Iraqi military capabilities. Sanctions compelled Iraq to accept inspections and monitoring and won concessions from Baghdad on political issues such as the border dispute with Kuwait. They also drastically reduced the revenue available to Saddam, prevented the rebuilding of Iraqi defenses after the Persian Gulf War, and blocked the import of vital materials and technologies for producing WMD.

The unique synergy of sanctions and inspections thus eroded Iraq's weapons programs and constrained its military capabilities. The renewed UN resolve demonstrated by the Security Council's approval of a "smart" sanctions package in May 2002 showed that the system could continue to contain and deter Saddam.

That's right, boys and girls, just around the time the fixing of the intelligence was ramping up - spring of 2002 - the UN had refined the sanctions regime.

Dismissed by hawks as weak and ineffective and reviled by the left for its humanitarian costs, the sanctions regime has had few defenders. The evidence now shows, however, that sanctions forced Baghdad to comply with the inspections and disarmament process and prevented Iraqi rearmament by blocking critical imports. And although many critics of sanctions have asserted that the system was beginning to break down, the "smart" sanctions reform of 2001 and 2002 in fact laid the foundation for a technically feasible and politically sustainable long-term embargo that furthered U.S. strategic and political goals.

The story of the nearly thirteen years of UN sanctions on Iraq is long and tortuous.

[I've snipped a long and torturous history of those sanctions. Actually, it's interesting, but here's the conclusion:]

Of course, no sanctions regime can be 100 percent effective; smuggling and black marketeering inevitably develop. Baghdad labored mightily to evade sanctions, mounting elaborate oil-smuggling and kickback schemes to siphon hard currency out of the oil-for-food program. Investigations by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) and The Wall Street Journal put Iraq's illicit earnings at $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion a year. An updated GAO report estimated that illegal Iraqi revenues from 1997 through 2002 amounted to $10.1 billion, about 15 percent of total oil-for-food revenues during that period.

Still, the sanctions worked remarkably well in Iraq -- far better than any past sanctions effort -- and only a fraction of total oil revenue ever reached the Iraqi government.

[Snip]

In the run-up to war [in 2003], some in Washington acknowledged the impact of inspections and sanctions but believed that sanctions would soon collapse. Kenneth Pollack reiterated this argument in a January 2004 article in The Atlantic Monthly, insisting that war was necessary because "containment would not have lasted much longer" and Saddam "would eventually have reconstituted his WMD programs." Support for sanctions did indeed begin to unravel in the late 1990s. But beginning in 2001, the Bush administration launched a major diplomatic initiative that succeeded in reforming sanctions and restoring international resolve behind a more focused embargo on weapons and weapons-related imports.

One major reason for this renewed consensus was the creation of a new "smart" sanctions regime. The goal of "smart" sanctions was to focus the system more narrowly, blocking weapons and military supplies without preventing civilian trade. This would enable the rehabilitation of Iraq's economy without allowing rearmament or a military build-up by Saddam. Secretary of State Colin Powell launched a concerted diplomatic effort to build support for reformulating sanctions, and, in the negotiations over the proposed plan, agreed to release holds that the United States had placed on oil-for-food contracts, enabling civilian trade contracts to flow to Russia, China, and France. Restrictions on civilian imports were lifted while a strict arms embargo remained in place, and a new system was created for monitoring potential dual-use items. As the purpose of sanctions narrowed to preventing weapons imports without blocking civilian trade, international support for them increased considerably: "smart" sanctions removed the controversial humanitarian issue from the debate, focusing coercive pressure in a way that everyone could agree on. The divisions within the Security Council that had surfaced in the late 1990s gave way to a new consensus in 2002. The pieces were in place for a long-term military containment system. The new sanctions resolution restored political consensus in the Security Council and created an arms-denial system that could have been sustained indefinitely.

In the months prior to the invasion, as Bush administration officials threatened military action and dismissed sanctions as useless, additional suggestions were offered to strengthen the sanctions system. Morton Halperin, former director of policy planning at the State Department, recommended a "containment plus" policy during July 2002 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The goal of such a system, Halperin said, "would be to tighten the economic embargo of material that would assist Iraq in its weapons of mass destruction and other military programs as well as reducing Iraq's receipt of hard currency outside the un sanctions regime."

Additional measures could have further refined and strengthened the sanctions regime. These could have included provisions to establish sanctions assistance missions and install detection devices on Iraq's borders to monitor the flow of goods across major commercial crossings; to eliminate kickbacks by preventing unscrupulous firms from marketing Iraqi oil and mandating public audits of all Iraqi oil purchases; and to control or shut down the reopened Syria-Iraq pipeline. This last option, especially, was an obvious, feasible step that would have immediately reduced the flow of hard currency to Baghdad. The other measures would have taken more time and diplomatic capital, but the United States had enormous leverage, precisely because it threatened military attack, and it could have used its clout to tighten the noose. Syria and other neighboring states, for example, could have been persuaded to cooperate in containing Iraq in exchange for improved diplomatic relations with Washington. This would have solidified long-term containment and laid the foundation for improved political relations in the region. As with other nonmilitary options for achieving U.S. aims, however, such proposals to enhance containment were cast aside and ignored.

The adoption of "smart" sanctions in Iraq was a diplomatic triumph for the Bush administration. It was followed a few months later by Iraq's acceptance of renewed inspections and Security Council approval of a tougher monitoring regime in Resolution 1441. Indeed, the Bush administration spent its first two years methodically and effectively rebuilding an international consensus behind containment. By the fall of 2002, it had constructed the core elements of an effective long-term containment system -- only to discard this achievement in favor of war. [Emphasis added]

In short, if Lopez and Cortright are correct, there was a very good chance everything Packer hoped to achieve could have been achieved without war. I have yet to see a detailed refutation of Lopez and Cortright's assertions or facts.* Packer doesn't even bother to mention the sanctions in his op-ed.

That's right, despite all his hoohah about keeping an open mind (see below), Packer doesn't even consider the sanctions worthy of mention. Packer writes:

In the winter of 2003, what you thought about the war mattered less to me than how you thought about it. The ability to function meant honest engagement with the full range of opposing ideas; it meant facing rather than avoiding the other position's best arguments. In those tense months, the mark of second-rate minds was absolute certainty one way or the other.

Among those who were absolutely certain the war was doomed to failure were Ted Sorenson, Arthur Schlesinger, Richard Clarke, John Le Carre, Harold Pinter, the CEIP, Sy Hersh, and many, many others. Second-rate losers, the lot of 'em.

"The war is not an argument to be won or lost; it's a tragedy," Packer types as the final zinger to his op-ed. It sure sounds beautiful and thoughtful, it makes me want to weep. Oh, the humanity! But as far as I can tell, it doesn't really mean a goddamm thing. Well, actually it does. In fact, the meaning's crystal clear:

Stop telling me you told me so, you fucking anti-war assholes!

*[UPDATE: Reader JS sent a link that strongly criticized the "smart sanctions" discussed above, as a cynical hoax. It was written by Joy Gordon, who has written extensively on the sanctions (a book is to be published), and the Oil for Food program. JS also referenced another Gordon article about the numerous problems with sanctions. Both were published before the Lopez and Cortright article. JS concludes her letter:

"In short, Lopez and Cortright are not right about smart sanctions.

'What we should be saying is that the Inspection regime worked. The UN administration (monitoring on the ground in Iraq) worked. But the behavior of the US and the UK at the New York end was inexcusable and unnecessary. And deadly."]
tristero 10/16/2005 02:58:00 PM |

 
Engine Seizure

What a morning.

Instead of discussing the biggest story in town (in which he happens to be intimately involved) Russert spent almost the entire hour helping Louis Freeh smear Bill Clinton. This was after letting Condi Rice get away with saying, "we could decide that the proximate cause was al Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al Qaeda…or we could take a bolder approach." Too bad about the terrorism.

On ABC Joe Klein, George Will and Fahreed Zakaria might as well have been wearing powdered wigs and sniffing snuff with their pinkies raised as they rolled their eyes and knowingly pooh-poohed the leaking of classified information, deploring the wanton criminalization of politics that has taken place under King George's reign.

Stephanopoulos, to his credit for once, actually reported the story everyone in Washington actually cares about and even got Joe DeGenova to admit that Fitzgerald not only should pursue charges if anybody in the white house lied to him --- he had a duty to do so. Apparently, he and his ball and chain, Victoria Toensing, aren't yet on the same page about Fitz --- she said the other day that he had "lost it!" He'd "gone over the edge.!"

Steph also surprisingly called on the perfumed courtiers on their casual dismissal of powerful government officials outing undercover CIA operatives to cover-up their lies about the reasons for an illegal war of aggression. Perhaps he was stung by the fact that in order to join the Kewl Kidz he was forced to turn on his political mentor with all the breathless sanctimony of a born again drug addict while the kewl kidz now thinks its terribly droll that the powers that be play political games with national security. IOKIYAR, Stephie. Remember that.

I didn't hear anybody mention this, and it's big:

Even before testifying last week for the fourth time before a grand jury probing the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, Bush senior adviser Rove and others at the White House had concluded that if indicted he would immediately resign or possibly go on unpaid leave, several legal and Administration sources familiar with the thinking told TIME.

Resignation is the much more likely scenario, they say. The same would apply to I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the Vice President's chief of staff, who also faces a possible indictment. A former White House official says Rove's break with Bush would have to be clean—no "giving advice from the sidelines"—for the sake of the Administration.

From, the way his lawyers are talking, they seem pretty convinced that Rove is likely to be indicted:

Rove's defense team asserts that President Bush's deputy chief of staff has not committed a crime but nevertheless anticipates that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald could find a way to bring charges in the next two weeks, the source said.

Of course Rove will be giving his advice from the sidelines, but without him being on the spot, his power and influence will be a shadow of what it was. And frankly, I'm not sure if I'm more nervous at the idea of Karl Rove staying in the White House or leaving it. George W. Bush has had Karl Rove at his side for his entire political career. Every minute. It's impossible to imagine him functioning without him.

George W. Bush is a creature of Karl Rove's imagination. He invented him. I would bet money that Dick Cheney is no longer a trusted second in command. It looks like he and his little dog Scooter may have taken Turdblossom down with them. If Rove goes, for better or worse (and I don't actually think it could be worse) the United States will effectively no longer have a president.

I wonder if James Baker is on call. He's the loyal Texan the Bushes usually call to clean up their shit. If he's not up for it this time it looks like Andrew Card or Ed Gillespie will be running the most powerful nation on earth for the next three years. Jesus.

Keep in mind that the political machine is also on the defensive from all directions --- DeLay, Abramoff, Reed, Norquist, Frist even Lou Sheldon and James Dobson are now in the sights of federal prosecutors. And then there's Ronnie Earle. The Harriet Miers crack-up may just be a preview. The top-down, centralized Republican machine is seizing up and it's about to explode.



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digby 10/16/2005 02:42:00 PM |

 
Judy's War, And Matt's

Five more American soldiers died in Iraq. They died not only because Saddam surely had Weapons of Mass Destruction. They also perished for America's noble mission to spread democracy where once trod the heavy boot of tyranny.

Christ, this war make me sick.
tristero 10/16/2005 10:01:00 AM |

 
The Trifecta

Abramoff quietly arranged for eLottery to pay conservative, anti-gambling activists to help in the firm's $2 million pro-gambling campaign, including Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, and the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition. Both kept in close contact with Abramoff about the arrangement, e-mails show. Abramoff also turned to prominent anti-tax conservative Grover Norquist, arranging to route some of eLottery's money for Reed through Norquist's group, Americans for Tax Reform.

It's late. Am I dreaming?



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digby 10/16/2005 01:16:00 AM |

 
Question


For any of you professional journalists out there: how common do you suppose it is for the pentagon to give a reporter "clearance to see secret information?"

I think we need another conference on blogger ethics because I'm getting all confused again.



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digby 10/16/2005 12:57:00 AM |

Saturday, October 15, 2005

 
Libby's Defense

It occurs to me in reading Judy's description of her testimony that the very nature of the investigation has required Fitz to at least peripherally examine the bogus WMD claims. If somebody goes to trial, this is going to be an issue. Judy went into some detail about what the administration was selling during the summer of 2003:

As I told the grand jury, I recalled Mr. Libby's frustration and anger about what he called "selective leaking" by the C.I.A. and other agencies to distance themselves from what he recalled as their unequivocal prewar intelligence assessments. The selective leaks trying to shift blame to the White House, he told me, were part of a "perverted war" over the war in Iraq.

[...]

As I told Mr. Fitzgerald and the grand jury, Mr. Libby alluded to the existence of two intelligence reports about Iraq's uranium procurement efforts. One report dated from February 2002. The other indicated that Iraq was seeking a broad trade relationship with Niger in 1999, a relationship that he said Niger officials had interpreted as an effort by Iraq to obtain uranium.

My notes indicate that Mr. Libby told me the report on the 1999 delegation had been attributed to Joe Wilson.

Mr. Libby also told me that on the basis of these two reports and other intelligence, his office had asked the C.I.A. for more analysis and investigation of Iraq's dealings with Niger. According to my interview notes, Mr. Libby told me that the resulting cable - based on Mr. Wilson's fact-finding mission, as it turned out - barely made it out of the bowels of the C.I.A. He asserted that George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, had never even heard of Mr. Wilson.

As I told Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Libby also cited a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, produced by American intelligence agencies in October 2002, which he said had firmly concluded that Iraq was seeking uranium.

[...]

Although I was interested primarily in my area of expertise - chemical and biological weapons - my notes show that Mr. Libby consistently steered our conversation back to the administration's nuclear claims. His main theme echoed that of other senior officials: that contrary to Mr. Wilson's criticism, the administration had had ample reason to be concerned about Iraq's nuclear capabilities based on the regime's history of weapons development, its use of unconventional weapons and fresh intelligence reports.

Needless to say, further events proved Mr Libby and the rest of the adminstration to be asses. That, however, is only partly relevant to the fact that this testimony seems to lead inexorably to an examination of the WMD claims that Libby referenced. There's a lot of detail there that will have to be dealt with if there's a trial. Perhaps we now know something of what is in those 8 pages of redacted evidence that convinced Judge Tatel that this case was important enough to send Miller to jail for.

And if Libby wants to defend his version of events to Judy Miller, keep this in mind, from that little noticed column from last month referring to a classified Inspector General report that places the blame for 9/11 and the WMD failures on George Tenent:

Mr. Tenet's decision to defend himself against the charges in the report poses a potential crisis for the White House. According to a former clandestine services officer, the former CIA director turned down a publisher's $4.5 million book offer because he didn't want to embarrass the White House by rehashing the failure to prevent September 11 and the flawed intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Tenet, according to a knowledgeable source, had a "wink and a nod" understanding with the White House that he wouldn't be scapegoated for intelligence failings. The deal, one source says, was sealed with the award of the Presidential Freedom Medal.

Now that deal may be off...In deciding not to become the fall guy, Mr. Tenet has made a fateful decision. The latest salvo in the ongoing wars between the CIA and the White House may be about to burst. Until now, Mr. Tenet has kept silent about what Mr. Bush knew and when he knew it. Mr. Tenet's decision to defend his own role in September 11 puts the White House back in the spotlight. The only way he can push off responsibility is to push it higher up the ladder.

There is a lot of pressure building on the Iraq lies coming from a lot of different directions.


For a thorough rundown of the feud between the white house and the CIA, read this post by ReddHedd at firedoglake.

For a historical view of the neocons and the CIA (and the difference between the left and right's view of the spooks) read this moldy old post of mine.


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digby 10/15/2005 11:26:00 PM |

 
Victor/ Victoria

There is much to chew over in Judy's magnum opus and I'm going to have to give it some quality time tomorrow. But the first thing that jumps out at me is this weird "Victoria" thing.

Somebody was calling Valerie Plame, Victoria --- Judy isn't the only one to make that mistake. Kevin Drum caught this in October:

NEEDED: ONLINE EDITOR....Howard Fineman in Newsweek yesterday:

I'll stipulate that it is a felony to disclose the name of an undercover CIA operative who has been posted overseas in recent years. That's what the statute says. But the now infamous outing of Victoria Plame isn't primarily an issue of law. It's about a lot of other things....

Um, anyone notice the problem here? And it's repeated three more times. Maybe Newsweek needs to hire Dan Weintraub's editor.

In the comments one of his commenter noticed others:

A quick Google search shows several incidents of the name Victoria Plame such as in the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the International Herald Tribune.

It's certainly possible that a whole bunch of people made the same mistake about her first name. It's odd, though. One might think that it is more likely that it was one person who consistently referred to her by the wrong name --- who was speaking to a bunch of reporters.



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digby 10/15/2005 10:39:00 PM |

 
Our Tax Dollars At Work

The New York Review of Books links to this recent heartbreaking, enraging account of systematic torture of Iraqis by American troops, CIA types, and others by Human Rights Watch. It demands a detailed accounting from this government but of course it won't get one, partly because not even American moderates take seriously anything a group like Human Rights Watch says concerning US human rights abuses. These are our tax dollars at work, present tense intended. The recent resolution from Congress condemning torture surely will be ignored.

And that, my friends, is the direct result of the wildly successful efforts of the Bush right to marginalize all organizations and individuals that fail to hew to a right to far right attitude regarding American foreign policy.

Human Rights Watch is neither left or right (this would go without saying if our political discourse wasn't so grossly distorted, but it bears repeating in the present climate). It simply details human rights abuses everywhere regardless of the polarity of the government. It is incredible, truly incredible, that even today Americans, even Americans unalterably opposed to torture, believe that reports like HRW's need to be "balanced" with the official propaganda line of the Bush government in order to arrive at the real truth about Iraqi torture, which "surely lies somewhere in between." It doesn't. Plain and simple, HRW's account is horribly accurate and Bush's assurances are lies that should receive only minimal coverage by responsible reporters.

It is long overdue for groups like HRW to get accorded the "moderate US mainstream" respect they deserve, and get acknowledged for the incredible courage it takes to report these kinds of abuses. While it is a secondary issue to the sheer immorality of torture, if ever there was a program designed to make overseas travel and work by Americans more dangerous, it is a policy of systematic torture of prisoners.

Once again, the Bush administration demonstrates that they are prepared to dangerously undermine American interests while branding all critics as leftwing scoundrels and traitors. And once again, they are full of shit.
tristero 10/15/2005 08:30:00 AM |

Thursday, October 13, 2005

 
Don't Look At Me

Read this very interesting Hardball transcript of a discussion between Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell as they dissect the body of public evidence we have about Fitzgerald's investigation. They speculate grandly about what Fitzgerald's up to --- and you can see that there is some serious trepidation about Fitz coming in and trashing the place by expecting Republicans to uphold the law.

But there is one tiny bit of information that they both fail to mention in their wide ranging discussion of all things Fitzgerald: the fact that both of them were subpoenaed in the case! And neither of these fine reporters have actually, you know, reported what that was about.

I especially love questions like this: "Yes, I think we are looking at something. What do you think, Jim? What do you know, actually?"

What do you know Chris? You're allegedly a reporter. You're the guy who talks incessantly about manly men and how they behave. Tell us your impressions of Patrick Fitzgerald. Presumably you've met him. What was he like? What did he ask you? What did you tell him? Can you not say anything because your lawyer had advised you not to? If so, why?

This story is the weirdest kabuki dance I've ever seen. I thought it was absurd when the news anchors held the exit poll results but winked and nodded all day about the outcome. (That's become so bizarre after the last two elections, however, that their winks and nods will be meaningless in any close election.) But this is ridiculous. We have big time reporters in the Washington press corps who know a lot more about what is going on than they are saying. A number of them have been interviewed by the Justice department or testified. They are part of the story. And yet they pretend that they are "objective" reporters who have no personal knowledge of events and don't even feel the need to issue a disclaimer saying that they had been interviewed or they testified and can't talk about it.

I have been hard on Judith Miller for not writing anything, but I'm beginning to really believe that she is in legal jeopardy. (That doen't excuse the NY Times, of course, for their failures.) For the life of me, I can't understand any journalistic ethics that would hold that it is ok for Chris matthews and Andrea Mitchell to discuss the ins and outs of a highly detailed story, speculate about the prosecutor and who he's talking to, without having to say that they are personally involved in the case. But then I'm just an amoral, psuedonymous blogger from nowhere who can't be trusted.

I won't even mention the BMOC (big man on channel) Tim Russert, who is clearly not only involved in the case, he is at the very center of it. (The Anonymous Liberal nicely connects those dots, here.) I can find no evidence that Russert has ever admitted or been asked on the air that he had anything to do with the case at all. Apparently this strange DC journalistic omerta precludes people from mentioning that fact even while they are being grilled by Russert on their own knowledge of the case.

After reading this laughable pile of offal by Richard Cohen today (who, as usual, writes precisely the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time)I'm more convinced than ever that something very sick has happened to our politics. Andrea Mitchell said on Hardball last night: "Chris, we should point out that there is a difference between playing political hardball, which people in Washington play and people in this White House play, and anything that approaches a crime." This idea that character assassination has become so normalized that even the outing of a CIA agent for political purposes is considered business as usual is outrageous and it explains a lot about what has gone wrong with our government.

The subjects of this investigation are the most powerful people on this planet. The case involves not just politics as usual but a concerted effort to conceal information about the rationale leading up to this misbegotten war. When the administration was confronted by critics, they could have laid out the reasons why Wilson was incorrect. Instead, they chose to forcefully discredit him with a ridiculous nepotism charge and in the course of that, whether purposefully of out of carelessness, they revealed a CIA agent's cover.

This was not just politics, it was a cover up using strong arm tactics. We may not have known definitively in the summer of 2003 that after all the administration's so-called proof that there were no WMD in Iraq, but we sure as hell do now. Whether they technically committed a crime under the Victoria Toensing statute, or whether they perjured themselves or obstructed justice before the grand jury to cover their political crimes, it should be prosecuted. Richard Cohen and Andrea Mitchell may think this is trivial, but I doubt that most people in this country will find it so. They understand the difference between consensual blowjobs, character assassination and national security even if the beltway doesn't.

This is at its essence about a toxic political culture. The press has abdicated its reponsibility to hold the powerful accountable. A highly centralized Republican political machine observes no limits. The opposition party is purposefully rendered impotent and irrelevant. The checks and balances are no longer in place.

The only institution that has the ability to cut through the spin, the lies, the strong-arm tactics is the justice system. Politics have become criminalized to be sure --- by the political criminals and their friendly helpmates in the press. The law is all we've got left. God help us.



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digby 10/13/2005 10:09:00 AM |

 
Fredo, You Broke My Heart

Via Americablog, Murray Waas is quoted as saying:

...Apparently Lewis Libby and Karl Rove, during the course of the special prosecutor's investigation, they almost certainly never thought that either Judith Miller or Matthew Cooper or the journals would cooperate. It's been very rare that a prosecutor – a federal prosecutor has been [inaudible] to pressure journalists into testifying against their will. It's very rare that journalists have testified, and it's almost a historical thing now for Judith Miller to spend 85 days in jail. So, I think it was -- Libby was apparently in the hope that Miller wouldn’t testify, as Karl Rove was, that Matthew Cooper wouldn’t.

If that's so, they were no more assured than their big boss who was certain that reporters would never cooperate, back in October of 2003:

"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."

....and if you want any more leaks you'll keep your traps shut.



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digby 10/13/2005 08:38:00 AM |

 
Major Discoveries

First of all, More Hobbits found. This would seem to indicate that Homo floresiensis is a real new species discovery, but there are still a lot of scientists who think the skeletons represent modern humans with microcephaly. Also, in a different story about the new hobbit skeleton, there's some speculation that hobbits may have descended not from Homo Erectus, as the main discoverers believe, but from australopithecines, hominids like the famous Lucy.

And then there are the first photos of a living giant squid. Before these pics, the most info we had about this critter (25 feet long and counting) came from dead or dying animals that had washed ashore.

Moving right along, a manuscript of Beethoven's Grosse Fuge was discovered on a shelf in a seminary's library in Philadelphia. This is a piano four-hands arrangement of one of the greatest pieces of music I know. The link gives the NY Times article but if you go to the Times itself, you can see pictures of the manuscript and play a slideshow. This is easily one of the most important musicological finds of the past 50 years or more.

Equally important is the discovery and publication of John Work's legendary study of the music and people of Coahoma County, Mississippi in the early 40's<