Hullabaloo

Saturday, September 30, 2006

 
Keyboard Kommandos

by tristero





More here.
tristero 9/30/2006 07:29:00 AM |

 

Institutions, Power, and Tyranny

by poputonian

Chalk up another win this week for the established order as they grind forward with a full and complete grip on power. The Hillary and Bill display of righteous indignation, which coincides not with the latest atrocity accomplished by the administration, but with the attack upon their 'good' name (a Rovian ploy, by the way), did little to assuage my contempt for mainstream Democrats. The Clintons, like most other Democrats (save the likes of Feingold and Conyers) are highly sublimated animals whose efforts are geared more toward social acceptance into the club, and not sufficiently toward political opposition, in my opinion. I've expressed before my belief that all the engineered politics of Billary are designed to cover her flawed judgment of having ever supported the war in Iraq. Karl Rove neutered the entire Democratic party when he forced them to anti-up on the war - in or out - and all those who registered high on the presidential ambition meter -- John Edwards, Evan Bayh, Hillary Clinton -- said, "Oh, count me in ... I'm strong on defense too." As the then twenty-two year old dylanesque song-writer, Conor Oberst, exclaimed at the time (in his song called "Let's Not Shit Ourselves") -- "The approval rating's high, so someone's gonna die."

The rest is history, as they say.

So once again I feel helpless as that amalgamation of the most powerful persons in industry, politics, religion, and military -- I'm speaking of the Republican Party -- commits ongoing tyranny against every citizen of the United States. Yesterday it was by misleading the nation into war, authorizing illegal wiretapping, bribing legislators for favorable votes in Congress, and exerting power and control over the now-corporatized press, and today it is by authorizing human torture without any due process whatsoever. It's human tyranny, something so new and unusual (tongue firmly in cheek) that the opposition party has no idea how to deal with it. We must be very careful with the language we use so as not to offend the sensibilities of the American Idiots.

And this is why one more time I find myself hearkening back to the pre-Revolutionary period when a group of New England liberals took opposition to a previous established order, one that also got too big for its britches, and one that also began committing acts of tyranny in order to preserve its power. I'm referring, of course, to the British parliament. Note the similarity of the setting: At the time, Great Britain was the wealthiest nation on earth, and the foundation for free institutions; the people of England had a Bill of Rights, and an unwritten constitution based on the natural law; the constitution had been confirmed more than fifty times by Parliament, according to John Adams. In short, the English people were -- free.

So when Great Britain used coercive measures to bring her subjects into compliance on matters of taxation and trade, things that seem almost trivial by comparison to today, many American intellectuals became obsessed with the threat of tyranny. So much so that they actually used the word "tyranny" to describe the party in power. That word, in fact, appeared thousands of times in print throughout the Revolutionary period. It was used in private letters written by and to the delegates of the Continental Congress and appeared in such derivative forms and creative spellings as: tyrany, tyrrany, tyranni, tyranic, tyrannic, tyranical, tyrannical, tyrannically, tyrannies, tyranys, tyrannize, tyrannized, tyrannous, tyrant, and tyrant's. And how ironic that the letters were directed at an earlier tyrant George, this one the King of England. The delegates' letters (culled from this CD ) were peppered with colorful phrases:

inexorable Tyrant
the artful Wiles of an infatuated and tyrannical Ministry
the impious War of Tyranny
the severest extremities of tyranny
deep lay'd Schemes of Tyranny
instruments of tyranny
mercenary Soldiers of a Tyrant
the Ministerial Sons of Tyranny
the infernal hand of Tyranny
outrages of Tyranny
Threats of a Tyrant
barbarous Tyranny
the rapacious Hand of a Tyrant
the Pillars of Tyranny
merciless Tyrant
Torrent of Tyranny
Slaves of Tyranny
bloody Standard of Tyranny
Infringements of a Tyrant
Altar of Tyranny
absolute despotic Tyrant
Encroachments of Tyranny
System of Tyranny

Particularly colorful, and my personal favorite was one by Oliver Wolcott of Connecticut, who asked: "When will Tyrant Worms cease to disturb human Happiness?"

Clearly, in the interest of preserving their hold on power, Parliament had stepped on someone's liberties.

In spite of the inflammatory language, the early leaders in America were not mere propagandists. They actively sought knowledge of human behavior and understood the threat posed by institutional tyranny. One source of knowledge (please note here that I'm paraphrasing and borrowing heavily from the source by Delbert Cress referenced below) was a book written by James Harrington in 1656 called Commonwealth of Oceana. Harrington tracked the themes of tyranny and corruption, and set forth theories about political degeneration, the decline of freedom, and the need for a constitutional balance. In pre-Revolutionary America, Oceana could be found in the Harvard College Library, the New York Society Library, and the Charleston Library in South Carolina. The contents of Oceana and theories of how political institutions always devolve into tyranny had become part of a pre-Revolutionary mindset.

Another source of knowledge for the revolutionaries was John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon who had written behind the pseudonym of Cato. In the early 1720s, in London, Trenchard and Gordon published a set of works called Cato's Letters. The letters conjured up images of tyranny, and explored the threat to society posed by institutional corruption. From Cato's Letters emerged a view that power itself corrupts men, leading eventually to political intrigue, unfair influence, and patronage. By 1776, Cato's Letters were known to exist in 40% of the colonial libraries and they, along with Harrington's Oceana, were known to have been studied by Thomas Jefferson, John Dickinson, John Adams, Henry Knox, and Benjamin Rush. These same men also studied the works of Sidney, Molesworth, Fletcher, Hutcheson, and Blackstone. So too did Benjamin Franklin, James Otis, Josiah Quincy, Jr., John Hancock, Samuel Adams, George Mason, James Wilson, and scores of lesser known citizens. The American intellectuals also studied the Greek and Roman republics, the ancient Goths and Germans, the success of the Swiss, and the writings of Machiavelli. James Burgh brought many of the earlier theories forward and added to them when he published Political Disquisitions in 1775. John Adams, George Washington, Samuel Chase, John Dickinson, Silas Deane, John Hancock, Thomas Mifflin, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson all were known to have received copies of Burgh's work when it was first published in America in 1776.

Those early American politicians were profound in their enlightened thoughts on institutional behavior and the workings of government and society. Many of the contemporary views on the inevitability of political corruption were formed as a result. Josiah Quincy was exceptionally marked in his prose, suggesting that the powerful institution was "a monster" birthed by "human follies and vices" where "depravity and cowardice" can thrive. He called the professional soldier an unwitting "slave" hired by men of "ambition and power" who could then manipulate the soldier for self-serving ends. Quincy believed the military's awesome power made "wicked ministers more audacious" and saw them advancing "schemes inconsistent with ... liberty" and "destructive of the trade." According to Quincy, the military/political institution was the place where "a will and a power to tyrannize are united." He called the impacts inevitable and fatal in both the political and the moral world.

The learned nature and the observations made by men such as Samuel Adams, Josiah Quincy, Simeon Howard, and others, reflected their wisdom and the studied reality which they came to know about human nature. The inclination to increase personal power is simply a part of the natural human makeup. Inclination toward power leads to the unfair advancement of self-interest, personal gratification, and exploitation. And powerful people, facing any perceived threat to their power, large or small, are inclined to use coercion to protect their standing. Tyranny, therefore, was a natural ingredient that could eventually be found in any institution. As the institution devolves, it always seeks to increase its power.

People also morph into unrecognizable characters as their institutions become corrupt. Samuel Adams, writing after the shots were fired at Lexington, but before Independence had been declared wrote in elegant prose to his friend James Warren about the threat posed by ambitious men and the institutional military:

A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Soldiers are apt to consider themselves as a body distinct from the rest of the citizens. They have their arms always in their hands. Their rules and their discipline is severe. They soon become attached to their officers and disposed to yield implicit obedience to their commands. Such a power should be watched with a jealous eye.

...

Men who have been long subject to military laws, and inured to military customs and habits, may lose the spirit and feeling of citizens. And even citizens, having been used to admiring the heroism which the Commanders of their own Army have displayed, and to look upon them as their saviors, may be prevailed upon to surrender to them those rights for the protection of which against invaders they had employed and paid them. We have seen too much of this disposition among some of our countrymen.

The anonymous essayist Caractacus earlier expressed the same sentiment when his essay "On Standing Armies" appeared in a colonial Philadelphia newspaper:

History is dyed in blood when it speaks of the ravages which standing armies have committed upon the liberties of mankind: officers and soldiers of the best principles and character have been converted into instruments of tyranny by the arts of wicked politicians.

America was once a vibrant and vocal enterprise where prominent people spoke with courage and conviction. We are now a muted and sublimated culture where the opposition is cowardly, and too afraid they will be ostracized if they speak out. A once participatory and opposition-minded mainstream press is now preponderantly part and parcel of the largest institution, that amalgamation of powerful forces referred to earlier. The most influential reporters (Russert, Brokaw and their ilk) are millionaire staffers, corporate automatons, and vanity authors who have become inured to the ways and customs of their employers. The elite way of living that goes along with their wealth and social status make them less likely to question the actions of government tyrants. Yet they are the very people with the responsibility to do so, and they are the people who are in a position to do so.

I want to ask how did we get here, but I think the answer is obvious. We are still in the dark ages politically and if we are lucky enough survive the current phase of the human journey, it will be a long, long time, I think, until society advances beyond this sorry state.

Sources: As noted above, the references to tyranny are from Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789, Paul H. Smith, editor. The background on sources of study for the early American leadership comes from Citizens in Arms, Lawrence Delbert Cress, Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1982.

poputonian 9/30/2006 06:38:00 AM |

 
Shrimp Puffs

by digby


Just in case anyone's wondering...



100 Most Invited: Find Out Who's Hot and Who's Not

My personal favorite:

3 GEORGE and SUSAN ALLEN SENATOR & WIFE The former Virginia governor and son of a legendary Redskins coach wears cowboy boots and is all over the news of late - could it be his attempt to win the 2008 Presidential Superbowl of Politics, or is that just a bunch of "macaca?" She's lovely, bright and known to loosen him up.

How droll.


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digby 9/30/2006 06:19:00 AM |

 
Keeping It Real

by digby


What with all the soul searching lately and discussion of where we draw the line as we attempt to traverse the minefield of current electoral politics, I think this is a good time to link up to this very interesting meta-blog piece by political scientist and blogger Henry Farrell of Crooked Timber in this month's Boston Review.

Farrell does a thorough analysis of the netroots and then homes in on our common self-description as non-ideological partisans out to change a corrupt and inept party structure:

Their experiences have deepened the netroots’ conviction that there’s something rotten in the Democratic Party. Quasi-corrupt relationships hamper the ability of Democrats to win elections; candidates for office are expected to hire certain well-connected consultants if they want to receive party funding. Party leaders try to eke out narrow wins, focusing their attention only on the most competitive races instead of campaigning aggressively across the country. Elected officials prefer stroking the egos of major donors to grass-roots organizing. Senators mug to pundits’ and newspaper editors’ penchant for bipartisanship by denouncing fellow Democrats as extremists, giving cover to Republicans, and dragging the political center ever further toward the right. These problems cripple the party’s ability to compete successfully, guaranteeing continued Republican hegemony. In response, netroots bloggers want to reform the party’s organizational structures and punish elected officials who weaken the party in pursuit of their personal agendas.

Absolutely. As I watched the torture debate unfold this week, I was acutely aware of exactly those deficiencies in the party and saw the whole ugly mess as a result of terrible partisan tactics and non-existent strategy. But something else niggled at the back of my mind. There was something tremendously meaningful happening about which Democrats of good faith were deeply concerned and it had nothing to do with partisanship and everything to do with citizenship.

I was reminded one of one the previous times such an outrageous, hurried, ill conceived machination was presented as a fait accomplis by the Bush administration and it brought millions of people into the streets -- the Iraq war. I recall pragmatic voices saying at the time that protesting was a bad move, that it hurt our image, that we should concentrate on gaining institutional power. And I wrote at the time that I understood why people said that, but you have to give people something more than dry tactics and strategy in politics:

People need to feel part of something in order to get involved in politics. And as someone who has volunteered in many a campaign I can tell you that for the last decade it has had all the uplifting inspiration of the Bataan death march. It is work with no satisfaction in the soul or spirit and without that politics becomes nothing more than a duty.

The Republicans have a base of committed true believers and we desperately need some of that too. Telling these newly galvanized Democrats that the only way they can legitimately express themselves is through the ballot box --- particularly in this day of manufactured, pre-fab campaigning --- is a very self-defeating idea.

I thought about that this week. Most people don't commit themselves to politics simply because they want to win or even because they want to stop someone else from winning (although when dealing with these modern Republicans that is a huge factor.) Most of us are interested and involved because we believe in certain things and we care about our country and our government. We band together with others who share our ideology and our values.

Farrell writes:

Netroots activists often compare themselves to the Goldwater supporters who took over the Republican Party in the 1960s and 1970s. But a close reading of Rick Perlstein’s book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (which enjoys near-canonical status among netroots bloggers), suggests that the differences between Goldwaterites and the netroots are as important as the similarities. Goldwater’s followers succeeded not only because of their organizational skills but because of their commitment to a set of long-term ideological goals. Over two decades, they relentlessly sought to undermine the ideological foundations of the existing American political consensus, rebuilding it over time so that it came to favor conservative and Republican political positions rather than liberal or Democratic ones. The result is a skewed political system in which Republicans enjoy a persistent political advantage. The issue space that American politics plays out on has been reconstructed so that its center of gravity quietly but insistently pulls politicians to the right. So it isn’t any accident that bipartisanship in the modern era mostly consists of hewing to the Republican agenda.

As Perlstein argued in these pages two years ago, it isn’t impossible to remould this conventional wisdom, although it is difficult and risky. And the netroots can surely play an important role. Their comparative advantage is exactly in framing political issues and controversies so that they resonate widely. Prominent netroots bloggers recognize in principle the importance of the battle over ideas. Kos and Armstrong devote a substantial portion of Crashing the Gate, to discussing the need for a Democratic apparatus of think tanks and foundations that parallels the conservative intellectual machine. Kos writes regularly about how the Democrats need “big ideas� if they are to win. However, because the netroots conceive of themselves as a non-ideological movement, they aren’t delivering on their potential to help provide and refine these big ideas themselves and thus reshape the ideological underpinnings of the political consensus. If the netroots truly want to tilt the playing ground of American politics back again so that it favors the Democrats, they will need to embrace a more vigorous and coherent ideological program.

I want to win, don't get me wrong. And I'm a pragmatist by nature so I have little patience with purity pledges or tilting at windmills. But I am explicitly liberal in orientation and I want to see this country tilt back to a more liberal politics. If I was afraid to make a point of that before this week I no longer am. I learned that even upholding the constitution is now a matter of liberal political ideology instead of simple mainstream patriotism.

Farrell makes many interesting observations about our nascent movement and comes to some conclusions that I think we all need to at least begin to think about. We care about changing the party and we're practical people who aren't operating on a rigid agenda. But is that really enough? Farrell makes a compelling case that it isn't.


Update: For more bloggy goodness, if you haven't seen this video interview with our man Atrios, you're missing out. My only complaint is that he rudely failed to introduce the famous Eschacats. What was he thinking?



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digby 9/30/2006 06:15:00 AM |

 
That Was The Week That Was

by digby

It's been a tough week for all of us. But it's been a tough week for the Republicans too. From John Hulse in the comments:

We have Mark Foley a republican congressman from Florida's 16th Congressional District, a 52 year old man, sexually harassing a 16 year old (boy) congressional page, resigning from congress immediately. The congressman was even asking the young boy for photos of himself. Sexually explicit computer messages. Something like "Would you please slip your tighty-whities off for me." and "Are you turned on?" Creepy times 10.

We have snippets of Bob Woodward's new book, where Laura Bush is walking around the White House hallways calling for Don Rumsfeld's resignation.

Then a CIA report that says that the invasion and occupation has made the United States LESS SAFE and recruited 1 million new crazed terrorists who are willing to kill themselves and all of us.

Reports are now saying that American troops are coming under attack 100 times EVERY SINGLE DAY. That�s an attack about every 13 minutes. Give or take a roadside bomb.

Crooked republican lobbyist, Jack Abramoff now is being reported to have had hundreds of meetings inside the White House. Offering gifts to the richest men in the White House. Free concert tickets, free dinners to nice restaurants, free trips, free travel. FREE FREE FREE.

Quite ironic how the poor of Katrina were left to starve and die, but Bush's friends get concert tickets and a free meal. The average American can't afford to take a vacation and these corrupt pieces of human garbage get free trips to Scotland to play golf. All they had to do was agree to screw over the Indians. It seems from the evidence that it was an easy call for them to make.

The question one wonders is how much more harm to America could George Bush and the republicans do to America if they were with the other side?

And finally Bill Clinton's slam dunking of poor Chris Wallace. Mr. Wallace ended up peeing all over himself and lying about all the tough questions he asked the Bushies.

All this and we left out, TORTURE. George W. Bush will be known forever to history as the torture president. Both al Qaeda and the United States, I'm afraid.

Oh yeah�.I almost forgot. MA-KA-KA!

Let's just say this is going to be a helluva campaign. Fasten your seatbelts.

Update: This Republican Boytoy scandal must really have the leadership freaked out:

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of some "contact" between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and that Hastert assured him "we're taking care of it."

ooops

Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert.

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digby 9/30/2006 06:10:00 AM |

 
Know Your Place

by digby


Just in case they failed to get the memo:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is defending President Bush's anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, said Friday that federal judges should not substitute their personal views for the president's judgments in wartime.

He said the Constitution makes the president commander in chief and the Supreme Court has long recognized the president's pre-eminent role in foreign affairs. "The Constitution, by contrast, provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime," the attorney general told a conference on the judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center.

Right. The Empty Codpiece and his federalist society drones are the ones the constitution anticipated should be interpreting the constitution when the US engaged in an unending, undeclared "war" on a tactic.

If these Republicans manage to hold on to the presidency, which they very well may since we've anointed St McCain of Guantanamo, I guess we'd better get used to the idea that we are living in an All American form of military dictatorship. There really is no other way to interpret Gonzales' statement.

Funny how we managed to get through the cold war and WWII without stripping the courts of authority, but then the Commies and the Nazis were nothing (nothing, I tell you!) to the existential threat posed by Osama bin Laden and his henchmen. It'll be a miracle if the country survives.



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digby 9/30/2006 06:04:00 AM |

 
"They All Look The Same To Me"

by digby


I read today that one of the biggest corporations in the world has taken sides in the election and has chosen to explicitly identify themselves with a right wing shill. General Motors has actually hired Sean Hannity for a "patriotic" campaign to sell their cars. (This is a man who asks his guests "Is it that you hate this president or that you hate America?" )

Hannity is an unusual choice, to say the least. Apparently GM no longer cares if Democrats buy their cars. Good to know.

As I was casting about today for various Hannity quotes, I came across this beauty from his book "Deliver Us From Evil." The events of this week made it particularly striking, I thought:

Uncomfortable with the idea of God-given natural rights, [liberals] seek to substitute their own concepts of liberty and justice --- whatever they may be at the moment. The prefer the idea of a "living and breathing" constitution, one that can change with the times. Yet what they fail to see is exactly what Madison warned against: that a government with unchecked power --- whose authority is not grounded in a more fundamental source of morality --- leaves its people unprotected from evil.

This blind spot has left liberals far less suspicious of totalitarian regimes than they should be. Monarchism, national socialism, fascism, communism -- all these forms of authoritarianism are illegitimate and inherently unjust. They enable a relative handful of people to hold the state's levers of power, and use them to impose their will on an entire population. And inevitably they lead to abuse, oppression, even mass murder.

...We believe that American is a superior society not because Americans are superior human beings, but because our culture was founded on a recognition of our God-given natural rights --- the "unalienable rights'" referred to in the Declaration of Independence. From that awareness flows a basic, shared respect for humanity, individual liberty, limited government and the rule of law.

Well, there's unalienable and then there's unalienable.

They (the detainees) do not deserve the full panoply of rights reserved for Americans. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) 9/28/06

Let's let Trent Lott explain it as only he can:

"It's hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what's wrong with these people," he said. "Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israeli's and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me."

Do they all look like macacas Trent? because animals don't qualify for those unalienable rights that are reserved for Americans. Well, some the Americans. The good ones. You know which ones.



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digby 9/30/2006 05:51:00 AM |

 
Who Cares What The Supreme Court Says?

by tristero

Oh, yes, it's disturbing. But let's not not over-react. In reality, it's just election-season politicking, the torture bill, I'm talking about, the limitations on habeas corpus. They really don't mean it to stick 'cause they know full well it's unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will overrule it. And that will be that.

Bullshit:

Supreme Court decisions that are "so clearly at variance with the national will" should be overridden by the other branches of government, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says.

"What I reject, out of hand, is the idea that by five to four, judges can rewrite the Constitution, but it takes two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate and three-fourths of the states to equal five judges," Gingrich said during a Georgetown University Law Center conference on the judiciary.

It takes approval by two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the 50 states to adopt an amendment to the Constitution, the government's bedrock document.

Gingrich, a Republican who represented a district in Georgia, noted that overwhelming majorities in Congress had reaffirmed the Pledge of Allegiance, and most of the public believes in its right to recite it.


As such, he said, "It would be a violation of the social compact of this country for the Supreme Court to decide otherwise and would lead, I hope, the two other branches to correct the court."

In 2002, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled that the pledge was unconstitutional when recited in public schools because of the reference to God. The Supreme Court in 2004 reversed that decision on a technicality, but the case has been revived.

Gingrich said "the other two branches have an absolute obligation to render independent judgment" in cases that are "at variance with the national will."


He spoke at Thursday's panel discussion on relations between the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government.

And I can just hear the rationalizations. Look, it's well known Newt isn't in the Bush inner circle, even other Republicans think Newt is crazy.

Keep going...

Besides the country wouldn't stand for it. If George W. Bush chooses to ignore Supreme Court decisions he doesn't like, why, there would be...well, no there wouldn't be riots in the streets, but a lot of very irate people would write letters to the editor!

Riiiiiight.

And don't you just love Daschle's charmingly naive riposte? What if Gore ignored the Supremes? The Republicans wouldn't have liked that one bit! ROTFLMAO!

My dear Daschle, you really don't get it. This isn't a game where the rules are "I play fair so you play fair." This is about the reality of asymmetrical power and that's no game. For a Republican in 2006 to worry that a Democrat would ever be in a position, let alone dare, to override a Supreme Court decision is like worrying that Noam Chomsky might have his own talk show on Fox News.

Now, for those of you clinging on to the delusion that what is happening isn't what actually is happening, let me spell it out. Gingrich is floating out there the very real possibility that Bush will not abide by any Supreme Court judgment he doesn't like. Suddenly the idea that the Supremes aren't the final arbiter on constitutionality is something that "merits discussion" and if you don't think this notion is going to dominate the discourse if the Supremes strike down the torture bill, well, I hate to be so blunt about it, but you are completely, totally wrong.

Rogue presidency. Fascism.

I'm not joking, I'm not being shrill, and I'm not being alarmist.

tristero 9/30/2006 02:16:00 AM |

Friday, September 29, 2006

 
Saints Preserve Us

by digby


Susie informs me that today was Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, the protector of light against the forces of darkness. Apparently St. Mike is honored by all the people of the book, which is news to her --- and me too.

Susie nominates him for our patron saint and I'll second that nomination. We need all the help we can get.



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digby 9/29/2006 09:56:00 PM |

 
It's Getting Hot In Here

by digby


Many thanks to tristero for voicing the frustration and outrage so many of us are feeling about events of this week. I remember writing a piece sometime back about the danger presented by the constant drumbeat of cruel and violent rhetoric that bubbles up from the right wing into the national conversation and becomes more and more acceptable. (David Neiwert, as you know, has written about this extensively.) Civilized taboos are being broken everywhere, especially the most important taboos, the big ones, the ones that put untrammelled power in the hands of unaccountable authority. I wrote in that post called "Flame On High"

Seeing Ann Coulter feted on the cover of Time magazine as a mainstream political figure instead of the deranged, murderous extremist she actually is was quite a shock. And then a friend sent me the links to the Free Republic thread discussing the death of Marla Ruzicka, which made me so nauseous that I had to shut down for a while.

It has become clear to me that we are frogs being slowly boiled to death. And the media are enjoying the hot tub party so much that they are helping to turn up the heat.

Ann Coulter is not, as Howie Kurtz asserts today, the equivalent of Michael Moore. Michael Moore is is not advocating the murder of conservatives. He just isn't. For instance, he doesn't say that Eric Rudolph should be killed so that other conservatives will learn that they can be killed too. He doesn't say that he wishes that Tim McVeigh had blown up the Washington Times Bldg. He doesn't say that conservatives routinely commit the capital offense of treason. He certainly doesn't put up pictures of the fucking snoopy dance because one of his political opponents was killed. He doesn't, in other words, issue calls for violence and repression against his political enemies. That is what Ann Coulter does, in the most coarse, vulgar, reprehensible way possible.

Moore says conservatives are liars and they are corrupt and they are wrong. But he is not saying that they should die. There is a distinction. And it's a distinction that Time magazine and Howard Kurtz apparently cannot see.

I have long felt that it was important not to minimize the impact of this sick shit. For years my friends and others in the online communities would say that it was a waste of time to worry about Rush because there are real issues to worry about. Likewise Coulter. Everytime I write something about her there is always someone chastizing me for wasting their time. Yet, here she is, being given the impramatur of a mainstream publication of record in a whitwash of epic proportions. Slowly, slowly the water is heating up.

The idea was that the rise in heated, violent rhetoric in our culture was leading to serious concerns about the eliminationist impulse on the right. Just this week we see a disgusting anthrax "joke" played on Keith Olbermann because he has had the temerity to speak out against the president --- and a right wing newspaper laughs about it.

But why should that surprise us? We also saw more than half of our elected representatives explictly endorse torture and the repeal of habeas corpus (although they lied right to our faces and said they didn't.)

That shouldn't have surprised us either. CJR has an interesting article this month on how the press covered torture called A Failure of Imagination. It's not pretty:

There is a final factor that has shaped torture coverage, one that is hard to capture. In most big scandals, such as Watergate, the core question is whether the allegations of illegal behavior are true. Here, the ultimate issue isn’t whether the allegations are true, but whether they’re significant, whether they should really be considered a scandal.

Though the administration has decided not to defend publicly the need for “coercive” interrogations, others have. Their argument is that the policy of abusive interrogations is not only acceptable but necessary to protect the United States. At the same time, polls on torture are notoriously sensitive to phrasing. It’s the mixed results themselves, though, that may be telling. Americans appear to be ambivalent about the occasional need for torture. And with ambivalence, perhaps, comes a preference for not wanting to know.

Within this context, any article, no matter how straightforward or truthful, that treats abuse as a potential scandal — even by simply putting allegations on the front page — is itself making a political statement that “we think this is important,” and, implicitly, wrong. To make such a statement takes chutzpah. Between the invasion of Afghanistan in fall 2001 and the revelations about Abu Ghraib in spring 2004, chutzpah was in particularly short supply.

And it still does, apparently. While there has been ample coverage of Bush's torture and indefinite detention regime it has never assumed the level of "scandal." Even Abu Ghraib, where there were pictures of abuses, never really touched the administration. And what happened to the culture?

You'll recall what the most popular radio host in the world had to say about it:

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

And you'll recall what leading Republicans said about the criticism he received for that:

Rush's angry, frustrated critics discount how hard it is to make an outrageous charge against him stick. But, we listeners have spent years with him, we know him, and trust him. Rush is one of those rare acquaintances who can be defended against an assault challenging his character without ever knowing the "facts." We trust his good judgment, his unerring decency, and his fierce loyalty to the country he loves and to the courageous young Americans who defend her.

In the days after 9/11 the panic and hysteria were so thick in the air that people were saying a lot of crazy things. I remember writing a blistering post some time back about Jonathan Alter, who is a good guy, but who lost his mind for a bit after 9/11 and entertained this torture concept in his column. We all remember Alan Dershowitz going on the record early with an argument to make torture legal. I was quite stunned at the time, but I assumed that once the smoke cleared the nation would realize, with some chagrin, that many of the things they felt and believed while the rubble was still fresh was no longer acceptable.

The opposite happened. Our culture, debased by years of ugly rightwing eliminationist rhetoric has gotten worse. It is so much worse that it has abandoned the taboo against torture. There is no other way to read the results of this week.

Some of our leadership did speak out against the abuse of prisoners. Hillary Clinton, in particular, addressed the humane treatment of the captured enemy in explicit terms of fundamental American values. Others did as well. But overall, I think it's pretty clear that speaking out against torture is still something that requires chutzpah --- which means that approving of torture is now the norm. We need to recognize that and form our strategy based on that recognition. We are no longer the country I grew up in.

I feel I should point out that the old frog in boiling water thing is incorrect. When a frog feels the water heating up he jumps out. His survival instinct is strong. Humans, on the other hand, are much more complex creatures. It's not that we don't have a surivial instinct --- it's that we have the ability to rationalize and make ourselves believe that boiling water can't kill us --- it only kills frogs. But primitive lizard brain instincts are important in warning us when something is terribly wrong --- and we fail to heed them at our peril.

This country is very swiftly retreating to an uncivilized state. It's not because of gay people getting married or women aborting blastocysts. It's because a vicious, violent ugly faction took over the political discourse and normalized the idea of a powerful enemy within and without America that must be stopped by any means possible.

And the government is giving these people tours of the prison at Guantanamo and they come back and report that it is beautiful resort and the residents are fat and lazy. (Literally. It couldn't be more soviet.)

Of course, the very same person who said that wrote this in 2003:

"In a year's time, Iraq will be, at a bare minimum, the least badly governed state in the Arab world and, at best, pleasant, civilised and thriving. In short: not a bad three weeks' work."

That would be amusing except for the fact that he is no more deluded than the people who run the most powerful country in the world. This water is starting to bubble.


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digby 9/29/2006 04:29:00 PM |

 
What Exactly Did Bush Do About The Cole In His First 8 Months?

by tristero

Olbermann examines the recent claims that Bush in his first 8 months was as aggressive in going after bin Laden as Clinton. Guess what? It's all lies and Olbermann has compiled the facts and footage to prove it, including stuff I suspect is quite new to most of us (such as that the Taliban offered Bush, yes Bush, to hand over bin Laden to the Saudis and he ignored the offer). And guess what? It's on MSNBC and nobody will see it.

Wotta racket. It's even better than suppressing the truth. Make it available so no one can claim censorship. But keep it away from the mainstream mass media so it has absolutely no impact at all. And if by any chance anyone gets suspicious, ignore the substance but dismiss the reporter as "too far left" to be taken seriously.

Wotta racket.

ht, Daou Report
tristero 9/29/2006 02:36:00 PM |

 
This Ain't Yer Grandpa's Democracy

by tristero

Well. Now what?

The first thing to do is apparently quite controversial, why, I have no idea. But it is imperative that we fully recognize how seriously godawful the situation is.

I'll say it again: Americans are living in a fascist state. Don't like the word "fascism?" Neither do I. So what? It's ludicrous to call the gutting of habeas corpus, etc, etc, by near unanimous consent merely "authoritarian."* We are living in a fascist state. [See update.]

Some commenters in the post below said I am being too discouraging. Hardly. This country's government has been transformed and is no longer recognizable as a working democracy. That's simply a fact and we better accept it.

Because when you're dealing with fascism, "We can beat this, people if we just fight harder!" is naive win-one-for-the-Gipper fantasy-land. It's gonna get a lot worse than it is now before it gets better. We're gonna be lucky if more of us don't end up "persons of interest" to the Bush administration. Remember, if you're not with Bush, you're objectively pro-terrorist and I can't tell you how many times when commenting on rightwing blogs I've been accused of "aiding and abetting" the terrorists.

Does that mean not to resist Bush as some people suggested yesterday? I have no idea where that comes from. It never occurred to me.

I fail to see the connection between being realistic - that the situation is absolutely godawful - and giving up. Perhaps it's my experience as a composer, where confronting literally intractable obstacles - aesthetic, personal, and professional - are often an hourly occurrence. Of course, it's difficult to stick with it. Of course, it's discouraging, probably impossible with the odds of failure 10 to 1 or worse. Understanding that - truly understanding that - is the first step towards fighting with competence. You still very well could fail, but at least you're reality based.

And that makes you a lot more agile and street-smart than most of the folks you have to fight. And that increases the odds in your favor. And your chances of capitalizing on luck. Maybe not enough, but there's something downright satisfying about giving the bastards the worst possible time you can give them.

But in order to resist Bush, it's not enough to understand that we are in the early stages of a major catastrophe. We must also recognize exactly how it is bad, awful, dangerous, and the full extent of it before we can craft an appropriate resistance. What is clear is that the strategies used by the Democratic party to resist Bushism are useless.** We need much better ones.

Finally, we must realize that we will be fighting what this unspeakable bastard has done to the country and the world for a very long time.

*Only Republican votes count. And even then, a signing statement can easily finesse where they deign to restrict the god-inspired power of Oedipus Tex to do whatever he wants.

**Of course, you have to vote and of course you must vote for Democrats. Why? Because.

You think that's no answer? In the amount of time it would take for you to type out all the reasons you and I shouldn't bother, including gleefully pointing out that in the footnote above, I "admitted" it doesn't make a difference (which I didn't, btw), you could have saved yourself all that tedious effort and just voted. So grow up and just do it.

That's the least you can do. But if you're serious, you have to find ways to resist Bush in addition to voting that are less futile.

BTW, don't waste valuable electrons telling us how voting legitimizes a corrupt system, blah, blah, blah. I've heard it all before and it doesn't sound any more plausible the more it gets repeated. And yes, I know full well that the machines are rigged and it is not a paranoid fantasy to think that. It doesn't matter. Get off your lazy ass in November and vote for Democrats.

Don't wanna vote for Democrats who voted for torture? Agreed. Don't vote for them. Vote for other Democrats.

[Updated slightly after original post.]

[UPDATE: Some in comments and elsewhere have disputed my use of the F word here. Among the arguments: fascist states don't have elections. Well, in fact they do. But they're rigged. Computerized voting machines anyone. Another is that free speech is curtailed in a fascist state. Well, in fact it is. What matters freedom of speech in an era of megachurches if you don't have access to a significant microphone?

I deliberately chose one the most "extreme" words available because it sets off alarm bells. I am aware that this eruption of American fascism is quite different than classic examples. I am also aware that the extent of fascistic repression is small compared to other countries. American fascism doesn't resemble European models, or Asian, or Middle Eastern totalitarian states. But that doesn't make it any less fascistic.

If the cult of a leader inspired by God and Manifest Destiny, deeply beholden to corporate interests, which condones torture, heaps contempt on habeas corpus, plays the race card whenever it can, passes laws based upon the whim of the leader, and severely restricts the free discourse of ideas on the truly mass media isn't fascism, then please tell me what is.

More active use of the repressive powers Bush has seized? More censorship? That's simply a quantitative argument. The "quality" of fascism is undeniably here.]
tristero 9/29/2006 02:43:00 AM |

Thursday, September 28, 2006

 
Rogue Presidency

by tristero

Yes, the NY Times gets it. But it's not telling the whole truth.

The truth is that the United States government is presently holding, torturing, and even murdering countless numbers of people who have no chance in hell of obtaining a lawyer, let alone anything resembling a trial. The government is doing this under the direct orders of George W. Bush. There is no law, no bill, and no legislature who can stop him. If Congress were to pass a law unequivocably banning torture and send it to him, he'd use it for toilet paper. If the Supreme Court were to rule against Bush in the harshest and bluntest language, he'd yawn.

The truth is that there is a rogue presidency and there has been, since January, 2001 (earlier, if you count the stolen election). Certainly, everyone in Washington knows it, but no one dares to admit it. The bill legalizing torture merely enables Congress to pretend they still have some influence over an executive that from day one was governing, not as if they had a mandate, but as if Bush were a dictator. If, for some miracle, the bill didn't pass, every congress-critter knows Bush would keep on torturing.

Better to vote to pass and preserve the appearance of a working American government, the thinking goes. For the very thought that the US government is seriously broken - that the Executive is beyond the control of anyone and everyone in the world - is such a truly awesome and terrifying thought that it can never be publicly acknowledged. If ever it is, if the American crisis gets outed and Congress and the Supremes openly assert that the Executive has run completely amok and is beyond control, the world consequences are staggering. It is the stuff of doomsday novels.

And this brings up the dilemma of a post Nov. 7 world. Apparently, one if not both houses of Congress may be controlled by Democrats. Now what? You think Bush is gonna get impeached? Put on trial for war crimes? Forget it. You think they're gonna repeal the pro-torture law they're about to pass? You can almost certainly forget that, too. Remember: it is crucial to maintain the illusion that Congress still has some say, as it was in November of 2002 about the Bush/Iraq war.

If, for some reason, Congress does decide to move against Bush in some substantive way, there will be hell to pay. Those of us who well remember Watergate remember that while it was genuinely thrilling to have Nixon caught, disgraced, and removed, it was also a time of extreme tension. Would Nixon tough the impeachment trial out, causing the country incalculable harm? It looked for quite a long time that he would. About Bush, there is no doubt.

Since the day after the 2000 election, Bush and his goons have been playing chicken with the very structure of the United States Government, double-daring anyone to try and stop them. If Congress does try - and I'm not talking little things like wrecking Social Security, that'll happen and a dictator can afford to let things like that wait a while, I'm talking atomic bang bang and thumbscrews - he will force the private Constitutional crisis into the open. And there is no guarantee that Bush will lose.

And that is the truth. The Congress has been given an awful choice: Vote to approve torture and the suspension of habeas or show the world that yes, you really do have no genuine power to check Bush.

Of course, all of Congress should vote against the bill anyway. But they won't. And to themselves, they will justify the vote as saying they made a hard choice but made the best one they could for their country.

Me, well...I've gone on record numerous times about how much I dread radicalism and serious national crises (which are two reasons Bush scares the hell out of me). The prospect of an open Constitutional confrontation, Bush vs. the Congress plus the Supremes...Jesus Christ. Perhaps I should understand the Congress had no real choice?

Absolutely not. The time truly is long overdue where there simply is no choice but to say "enough." It should have been enough over the stolen election, or the neglect that led to 9/11, or Schiavo, or the filibuster.* But voting to permit the US government to sidestep Geneva? To suspend habeas? What the fuck is Congress thinking, for crissakes??? Has fascism moved so slowly that only a few bloggers can perceive the inevitable progression? I don't think so.

There's no question about it. Any person in Congress who votes for this - listening, Hillary? [UPDATE: Apparently, she was.] - will never get my vote again. Ever, not even for dogcatcher, let alone president. If there is going to be a public Constitutional crisis over Bush's rogue presidency - and there will be sooner or later, guaranteed - bring it on now.

[Update: * To those hardy souls amongst you who feel that I, an appeasing liberal, advocated "going along" with Bush during those earlier moves towards fascism, please read what I wrote. I have been consistent in actively opposing all his stunts of Constitutional chicken and of calling his bluff. Before I started blogging, I was quite active as well. Regarding the Iraq war resolution, I wrote a post long after the resolution passed examining Clinton's motivations for agreeing to it (I am a New Yorker, by the way). Whatever remaining willingness I have to give her a pass will evaporate for good if she votes for torture. She would be sending a strong signal that she simply isn't serious about responsible governance in a time of internal crisis. ]

[UPDATE 2: John Kerry and other Democrats speak out today against USA Mengele Act:

[Kerry] Let me be clear about something—something that it seems few people are willing to say. This bill permits torture. It gives the President the discretion to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions. No matter how much well-intended United States Senators would like to believe otherwise, it gives an Administration that lobbied for torture just what it wanted.

The only guarantee we have that these provisions really will prohibit torture is the word of the President. But we have seen in Iraq the consequences of simply accepting the word of this Administration. No, we cannot just accept the word of this Administration that they will not engage in torture given that everything they’ve already done and said on this most basic question has already put our troops at greater risk and undermined the very moral authority needed to win the war on terror.]

[UPDATE 3: From a letter that was sent to me and others by ARIS:

My wife and I have been lifelong Democrats and have contributed and worked on national and Ohio campaigns for the Democratic Party since 1988. This year we were actually looking forward to winning Ohio for the Democratic Party.

No longer. We're livid. We will not work, support or even vote for either Brown or Strickland. Judging from the reaction of many fellow Democrats, we're not alone.]

Looks like I'm not the only person for whom this bill represents a line that cannot be crossed.
tristero 9/28/2006 05:00:00 AM |

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

 
Mad Hatter

by digby


I wrote a post a couple of days ago quoting Admiral Henry Harris, the commander of Guantanamo asying there are no innocent men imprisoned there and that those who committed suicide were committing an "act of asymmetric warfare waged against us." It struck me as absurd that hanging yourself in your cage could be considered an act of war and I thought this guy was likely taking the notion of "suiciders" to some ridiculous conclusion.

But I came upon another quote from him saying something even more absurd:

Rear Admiral Harris is adamant that the people in his care are well looked after and are enemies of the United States.

He told me they use any weapon they can - including their own urine and faeces - to continue to wage war on the United States.

Where do they find these nutballs to send down there to Guantanamo? First Geoffrey Miller and now this kook. Apparently he believes that any act of resistence by these people who are imprisoned in cages is an act of war.

It seems to me that far too many Americans have worked themselves into some sort of hysteria, including this loon running Gitmo. When heavily guarded people in cages throwing feces is considered assymetrical warfare, we have gone down the rabbit hole. (Either that or a couple of toddlers I know are in training to be the next Osama bin Laden.) Does this man think he's actually fighting terrorists down there?

The men being held in Guantanamo might have been terrorists, but when they are under the total control of the most powerful military in the world they are most definitely not combatants, they are prisoners. It's not an act of war to dislike your jailers or resist your imprisonment. That's absurd.

These people need to get a grip before they give themselves heart attacks from irrational fear. Those prisoners are just human beings not aliens from outer space.


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digby 9/27/2006 04:34:00 PM |

 
Trusting Huck

by digby


I was just listening to old Huckleberry go on about turth and justice and the American way of torture. He says that all the analysts who say this bill is an abomination and an affront to everything we stand for are just wrong. We should believe him because he is a military lawyer and an expert on these issues. If you listen to the beltway wags you also know that he is a man of honor who courageously went against his president and insisted that we needed to ensure this legislation lived up to our ideals.

While listening to his soliloquy it occurred to me that this might be a good time to take a trip down memory lane and revisit one of Huckleberry's finest moments:

How can the paper of record write a lengthy puff piece about the brave, maverick integrity of Senator Huckleberry Graham and make no metion of the fact that he and his pal Jon Kyl inserted a fraudulent 12,000 word colloquey into the congressional record to fool the US Supreme Court and were caught red-handed. The Supreme Court merely noted this in the footnotes of the Hamdan decision, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued an unusual order rejecting their amicus brief alone, although they accepted five others. As John Dean wrote: "No one familiar with this remarkable behavior by Graham and Kyl can doubt why the court did not want to hear from these senators."

This was not a small thing. Huckleberry and Kyl wrote an entire script of a debate that never happened in order to create a false legislative history that they then cited in an amicus brief for the government in the Hamdan case. They defrauded the court and they did it with the express purpose of bolstering the government's argument that the Senate had intended that the Supreme Court be stripped of jurisdiction in the Hamdan case.

This is remarkable not only because it features two Senators outright lying to the Supreme Court. It is also remarkable because the decision in that case is the one the NY Times says Huckleberry is now bravely defending against the wishes of his own party. I would have thought the reporter might have asked old Huck about where he actually stands on this issue.

This is the thing about Graham and why he is one of the most untrustworthy members of the Republican party. He is the guy who is out there portraying himself as the voice of reason, the man who thoughtfully entertains the whole range of opinion and settles on the reasonable middle ground. The truth is that he pretends to do all that while he ruthlessly advances the Republican agenda --- even to the point where he would outright defraud the US Supreme Court while claiming to be a strict adherent to the rule of law.

This is the man whose intepretation of the torture and detention bill we are supposed to trust. He's one of the men that congress trusted to do the kabuki "negotiation" with the president. Because he's a man of integrity.


Update: This post by Vagabond Scholar gets deep into the weeds on Huckleberry's rank dishonesty in this case, but it's fascinating to read if you're so inclined. He is an outright lying piece of garbage. He not only scripted a fake colloquy for the congressional record to fool the court into believing that the legislative intent was different than it actually was --- he also wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post taking the other side. He should have been disbarred --- and nobody should have ever trusted him anywhere near this issue again.

After his history it's just a little bit difficult to believe he suddenly cares about the Geneva Conventions don't you think?



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digby 9/27/2006 03:22:00 PM |

 
Answering Ignatius's Question

by tristero


David Ignatius asks, in a genuinely stupid column, "How do we prevent Iraq from becoming a failed state? "

Step One: Bush and his entire cabinet leave office.

Step Two: Wait for Step One.

Until then, it is inevitable that Iraq will stay firmly on the path towards becoming a failed state (or it already is depending on the measures of failure used). If anyone thinks Bush will listen to a good idea, let alone follow it, let alone execute it in an effective manner, then that anyone has been comatose for five years. I know: this is a terrible thing to write, that increased tragedy, suffering and death are inevitable for Iraqis. But nothing good has a possibility of happening until Bush is out, meaning until January, 2009.

Oh, and David, you write:

Some extreme war critics are so angry at Bush they seem almost eager for America to lose, to prove a political point.

As Yglesias says, who you talking about, pal? Just to repeat what I said even before the launch of the New Product in Fall, 2002, a pre-emptive, unprovoked invasion of Iraq was doomed to failure. Not that I was happy to realize that. I was, and am, sick to death over it.

Why was it doomed to fail? Because it an unspeakably stupid idea that five seconds of sober thought would have revealed had no chance ever of working. And, no, it's not that Bush et al were incompetent that it failed. That's backward. The Bush administration demonstrated its total incompetence because it took a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq seriously and thought it could succeed.
tristero 9/27/2006 02:41:00 PM |

 
Sick

by digby

It really takes a lot of gall for the NY Post to obnoxiously ridicule Keith Olberman for calling the police when some asshole sent some white powder to his house with a note that said it was in response to his commentary against the president. The NY Post was one of the places that the original anthrax killer hit in 2001 --- and their own employees got sick.

What in the hell is wrong with these people? Jesus.



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digby 9/27/2006 02:40:00 PM |

 
It Could Happen To You

by digby


As we ponder how this torture legislation might develop in the future, it's probably a good idea to check out how the intelligence community of the United States sees the threat of terrorism developing in the future. From the NIE:

Anti-US and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies. This could prompt some leftist, nationalist, or separatist groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack US interests. The radicalization process is occurring more quickly, more widely, and more anonymously in the Internet age.

Let's hope that our leaders in Washington don't decide that the war on terror has expanded to such groups any time soon. (Although all the hoopla about Hugo Chavez's remarks may just be a precursor to such designations.) But keep in mind, that the generic term "terrorism" is the word used in the new bill that:

blesses detainee abuse and looks the other way on forms of detainee torture; it immunizes terrible acts; it abridges the writ of habeas corpus-- in the last, most egregious draft, it strips the writ for alleged enemy combatants whether proved to be so or not, whether citizens or not, and whether found in the U.S. or overseas.

For those in America who think that this only applies to dark skinned foreigners who don't really deserve the rights that God gave Americans, this should give them pause:

Most of the attention in the press has focused on subsection (i) of the definition, which would designate as an UEC any "person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces)." And that subsection is, indeed, broad, and fairly indeterminate, depending on how "materially supported hostilities" is interpreted (something that the Administration apparently could do without much or any judicial review).

But the really breathtaking subsection is subsection (ii), which would provide that UEC is defined to include any person "who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense."

Read literally, this means that if the Pentagon says you're an unlawful enemy combatant -- using whatever criteria they wish -- then as far as Congress, and U.S. law, is concerned, you are one, whether or not you have had any connection to "hostilities" at all.

This definition is not limited to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It's not limited to aliens -- it covers U.S. citizens as well. It's not limited to persons captured or detained overseas. And it is not even limited to the armed conflict against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, authorized by Congress on September 18, 2001. Indeed, on the face of it, it's not even limited to a time of war or armed conflict; it could apply in peacetime.

Therefore if, as everyone is assuming, this definition does establish who may be detained by the military outside the civilian justice system, it would quite literally give the Secretary of Defense the statutory authority to detain just about anyone he wants, indefinitely. And if that's the case, then the habeas-stripping provision would really be the least of it, because even with all the due process and habeas protections in the world, it would be almost impossible to challenge the grounds on which someone is detained if the Executive itself can establish what the permissible grounds for detention are.

I noticed that Carl Levin just praised the efforts of McCain, Graham and Warner again and said the new bill has two good things about it: it prohibits torture and secret evidence, which is just wrong. But he said that the compromise contains other things which are troubling and he will offer the slightly less shitty bill that came out of the Armed Services Committee later today as an alternative. It will probably fail, but perhaps all this McCain love today and the characterization of his bill as prohibiting torture and secret evidence is a way to bring over some wavering Republican senators, I don't know. Sometimes the unexpected happens.

I'll try to watch the debate for the rest of the day as I can. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to see where I am. If you hear any good speeches, let me know. I'd like to give credit to those who stand up to be counted on this major issue of our time.

I think the bottom line is that most people don't give a damn about a bunch of swarthy foreigners. They think the people in Guantanamo are animals and even if they aren't exactly guilty of the things the US says they are guilty of, they are guilty of not being American. I don't think they lose much sleep over it and they don't see it as applying to them. But they are wrong. In light of the possibilities outlined above for using this legislation to "disappear" anyone from terrorists to leftists to those who are deemed to be anti-American, this may be a day to remember the famous poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

H/T to Professor Foland in the comments for the NIE language.


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digby 9/27/2006 09:27:00 AM |

 
Faithbased Torture

by digby




By now probably everyone knows that the torture bill that's working its way through the Senate is even worse than the one they crafted last Friday. It's so bad that they are now saying it has "drafting errors" when something particularly egregious is pointed out. One wonders how many other "drafting errors" will wind up in this sloppy, hurried mess. They are rushing it through without anybody knowing what they hell it really says:

Democrats, while being careful to say that they had made no decision to block the detainee bill, expressed rising concerns about changes to the proposal that they said went beyond what Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, had described Monday as merely “technical changes.”

The changes had been made over the weekend, as negotiators from the House and White House adjusted a compromise that had been reached between the White House and Senate Republicans on Thursday.

In one change, the original language said that a suspect had the right to “examine and respond to” all evidence used against him. Mr. Graham and his colleagues in resisting the White House, Senators John W. Warner of Virginia and John McCain of Arizona, had insisted that the provision was necessary to prevent so-called secret trials. The bill submitted late Monday dropped the word “examine” and left only “respond to,” reviving complaints about secret trials, this time from Democrats.

In another, the original compromise said that evidence seized “outside the United States” could be admitted in court even if it had been obtained without a search warrant, a provision Republicans and Democrats agreed was necessary to deal with the unusual circumstances of seizing evidence on the battlefield.

The bill introduced Monday dropped the words “outside the United States,” which Democrats said meant that prosecutors could ignore American legal standards on search warrants within the country. The bill also broadened the definition of an unlawful enemy combatant, from anyone “engaged in hostilities against the United States” to include anyone who “has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.”

[...]
Republicans and the White House explained the change to the provision about viewing evidence as, in Mr. Graham’s words, “literally just a drafting error,” and said the word “examine” would be restored.

Right. And George Allen just happened to make up a word that means n*****r in several different languages. Life is full of such unhappy coincidences.

Republicans and the White House defended the change on unlawful combatants. It is narrower than the definition originally proposed by the White House, which said that anyone who materially supported hostilities could be prosecuted because it added the phrase “intentionally and purposefully.” Senate and White House staff members said this would resolve the problem of what one Senate aide described as “the grandmother in Switzerland” who writes a check for charity that ends up going to a terrorist organization.

“Most of us feel if someone is engaged in actively assisting Al Qaeda or terrorists that they should fall under this legislation,” Mr. McCain said.

[..]

Republicans also said they were trying to reach a compromise on the habeas corpus provision of the bill, which would deny a suspect the right to challenge his detention in court.

"Actively assisting Al-Qaeda or terrorists." One assumes that would be stuff such as giving "material support." Like the guy who was arrested for selling Hezbollah TV as part of a satellite TV package. You know the type. (The good part is that rightwing welfare queens are on the case "helping" the government track down these dangerous terrorists. Lucky for us the far right is so level headed, isn't it?)

And then there's this. And this.

I don't know why the Senators are even pretending to know what's in this bill. One of the most important pieces of legislation in recent American history is being put together in the dead of night and hurried through the congress for political reasons. It's a constitutional clusterfuck.

The vote is going to happen and it's going to pass. But I can't help but wonder if the momentum wouldn't have gone the other way if some of the Democrats who constantly exhort the rank and file to be more friendly to religion and values and morals had stood up and said no. Imagine if Barack Obama had staked out a leading position against this legislation making the explicit argument that it is immoral and unamerican to torture. That would have gone farther to demonstrate our respect for religious values than his frequent process talk and scolding could ever do.

Or imagine if Holy Joe Lieberman showed even one tenth the righteous indignation toward this torture legislation that he showed toward president Clinton's personal affairs. Imagine if the great centrist hawk, the man of morals and religious sincerity whom the Republicans have anointed as a principled example of a Democrat who understands the stakes in the war on terror, went to the floor of the senate and said:

In choosing this path, I fear that the president has undercut the efforts of millions of Americans who are naturally trying to instill in our children the value of honesty and decency toward others --- and the absolute taboo against torture. As most any mother and father knows, kids have a singular ability to detect double standards. So, we can safely assume that it will be that much more difficult to convince our sons and daughters of the importance of treating even enemies with humanity and dignity. Many parents I have spoken with in Connecticut confirm this unfortunate consequence.

The president's legislation allowing torture and repealing habeas corpus may also undercut the trust that the American people have in his word. Under the Constitution, as presidential scholar Newsted has noted, the president's ultimate source of authority, particularly his moral authority, is the power to persuade, to mobilize public opinion, to build consensus behind a common agenda. As Teddy Roosevelt once explained, "My power vanishes into thin air the instant that my fellow citizens, who are straight and honest, cease to believe that I represent them and fight for what is straight and honest. That is all the strength that I have," Roosevelt said. Sadly, with his deception about the contents of this legislation, from the meaning of torture to its intentions, President Bush may have weakened the great power and strength that he possesses, of which President Roosevelt spoke.

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

As the debate on this matter proceeds, we would be advised, I would respectfully suggest, to heed the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln's second annual address to Congress in 1862.

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

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

There's so much at stake, we, too, must resist the impulse toward catch arguments and reflex reactions. Let us proceed in accordance with our nation's traditional moral compass -- yes -- but in a manner that is fair and at a pace that is deliberate and responsible.

Let us as a nation honestly confront the damage that the president's decisions in the war on terror and Iraq over the last five years have caused, but not at the expense of our common interest as Americans. And let us be guided by the conscience of the Constitution, which calls on us to place the common good above any partisan or personal interest, as we now in our time work together to resolve this serious challenge to our democracy.

He's already got it drafted.

But we aren't going to see the moral scolds standing up on this, I'm afraid. At least I'll be very shocked if they do. They believe, as do so many Republicans and members of the press that morals are attached to somebody elses crotch. They apparently don't see that institutional torture isn't just something that a few bad apples learn from popular culture.

Joe pondered that very question in this Wall Street Journal op-ed after Abu Ghraib. Even before the investigations were started he was already convinced that the guards were a unique group of deviants and didn't seem inclined to believe that such things could have become policy. But now the Republicans are going to ram through a bill that makes all that ugly deviant stuff perfectly legal if the president wants it to be. Here were the closing words to his Rumsfeld apologia called "Let Us have Faith:"

But, as we are showing in our response to Abu Ghraib, we are a nation of laws, and therefore must punish only those who are proven guilty. The Iraqi prison scandal has been a nightmare at an already difficult moment in the war in Iraq...With determination and confidence, we should recall President Lincoln's words at another difficult moment in American history in pursuit of another just cause: "Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us do our duty as we understand it."

Makes a tear come to the eye, doesn't it, the way men like McCain and Lieberman keep evoking Lincoln and the Bible as they work to institutionalize torture and continue a bloody, useless war that kills thousands and thousands of people? It's all very inspirational.

Keep your eyes on Holy Joe as the debate unfolds. If he bothers to show up at all, I will be shocked if his vaunted religious values lead him to vote against the bill. And that says everything you need to know about his sincerity. When it comes to lying about consensual sex he's all over it, leading the charge. Torture and endless imprisonment with no trial, not so much.

I'm with Atrios. If these religion scolds vote for this bill I will never stand for being lectured by them again about how liberals need to be more respectful of the faith and values crowd. The time is now for them show what they are made of. Let's see it.


Update: Here's the Washington Post's take on the legislation.

AFTER BARELY three weeks of debate, the Senate today will take up a momentous piece of legislation that would set new legal rules for the detention, interrogation and trial of accused terrorists. We have argued that the only remedy to the mess made by the Bush administration in holding hundreds of detainees without charge at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere since 2001 was congressional action. Yet rather than carefully weigh the issues, Congress has allowed itself to be stampeded into a vote on hastily written but far-reaching legal provisions, in a preelection climate in which dissenters risk being labeled as soft on terrorism.

As we have said before, there is no need for Congress to act immediately. No terrorist suspects are being held in the CIA detention "program" that President Bush has so vigorously defended. Justice for the al-Qaeda suspects he has delivered to Guantanamo has already been delayed for years by the administration's actions and can wait a few more months. What's important is that any legal system approved by Congress pass the tests set by Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) months ago: that the United States can be proud of it, that the world will see it as fair and humane, and that the Supreme Court can uphold it.

[...]

White House pressure may have persuaded many in Congress that the easiest course is to quickly approve the detention bill in its present form and leave town. If so, their actions almost surely will come back to haunt them. Until this country adopts a legal system for the war on terrorism that meets Mr. Warner's standard, the war itself will be unwinnable.

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digby 9/27/2006 12:00:00 AM |

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

 
Moving On

by digby


I keep hearing from the right wing talking heads today that it's time to put all the arguments about how we got into Iraq behind us, that even though it's now official that it created more terrorists and made the nation less safe, we need to look to future and figure out where to go from here, not live in the past.

That's very compelling. But there's just one little thing we need to do before we move on. We need to figure out which people we should trust to lead us as we move forward to fix the mistakes of the past.

The Republicans were in office when 9/11 happened and Islamic terrorism emerged as the nation's greatest external threat. The entire country and the world rallied around them. They then lied the country into an unnecessary war in Iraq on the basis of an illegal, immoral military doctine. They threw away billions of dollars and created a massive training camp for jihadists to learn how to fight Americans and recruit converts from all over the world while degrading the constitution at home and demonstrating for the world that our ideals are disposable. That's the record on this issue.

Sure, we have to figure out where to go from here. Everything is a huge, huge mess. But it would seem obvious that this is an administration gravely in need of some oversight. Another two years of undivided government will just lead the Republican congress to give our president more of the bad advice and cover he's been getting. This country needs a new congress if we're going to figure out how to get out of this mess. The American people need to decide if they are going to continue to put all their trust in the guys who fucked up and continue to fuck up --- or see if the other guys might have some ideas. It's that simple.

Update: I probably should point out that "solving the problem" will require some very specitic actions for the new guys. Since the Republicans have been so secretive, they new congress will have to force the administration to submit to the constitutional oversight the constitution requires. That means investigations and hearings. In order to fix the mess, they really have no choice.

It's all about problem solving 101:

1. Define the problem

2. Look at potential causes for the problem

3. Identify alternatives for approaches to resolve the problem

4. Select an approach to resolve the problem

5. Plan the implementation of the best alternative (this is your action plan)

6. Monitor implementation of the plan

7. Verify if the problem has been resolved or not

Just as it is in any business or organization, if in the course of this problem solving it becomes evident that certain people have committed criminal acts or gross acts of malfeasance, then they will have to be dealt with. There's no moving forward unless the proper lessons are learned and the entire organization is shown that there are repurcussions for bad acts.

It's not about playing the blame game, oh no. It's just a matter of making sure that our government runs efficiently and that everyone understands the rules and regulations. Accountability. Nothing political about it.



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digby 9/26/2006 04:48:00 PM |

 
Like Shooting Fish In Barrel

by tristero

The Bush administration is lying so often and so poorly these days they're not even bothering to make it even slightly tricky to catch 'em. One recent whopper couldn't withstand more than a few hours before it fell:

A memo received by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shortly after becoming National Security Advisor in 2001 directly contradicts statements she made to reporters yesterday, RAW STORY has learned.

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda," Rice told a reporter for the New York Post on Monday. "Big pieces were missing," Rice added, "like an approach to Pakistan that might work, because without Pakistan you weren't going to get Afghanistan."

Rice made the comments in response to claims made Sunday by former President Bill Clinton, who argued that his administration had done more than the current one to address the al Qaeda problem before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. She stopped short of calling the former president a liar.

However, RAW STORY has found that just five days after President George W. Bush was sworn into office, a memo from counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke to Rice included the 2000 document, "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects." This document devotes over 2 of its 13 pages of material to specifically addressing strategies for securing Pakistan's cooperation in airstrikes against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Pakistan obstacle

The strategy document includes "three levers" that the United States had started applying to Pakistan as far back as 1990. Sanctions, political and economic methods of persuasion are all offered as having been somewhat successful.

Other portions of the passages relating to Pakistan – marked as "operational details" – have been redacted from the declassified memo at the CIA's request.

The document also explores broader strategic approaches, such as a "need to keep in mind that Pakistan has been most willing to cooperate with us on terrorism when its role is invisible or at least plausibly deniable to the powerful Islamist right wing."

But Clarke also made it clear that the Clinton Administration recognized the problem that Pakistan posed in mounting a more sweeping campaign against bin Laden: "Overt action against bin Laden, who is a hero especially in the Pushtun-ethnic border areas near Afghanistan," Clarke speculated in late 2000, "would be so unpopular as to threaten Musharraf's government." The plan notes that, after the attack on the USS Cole, Pakistan had forbidden the United States from again violating its airspace to attack bin Laden in Afghanistan.

The memo sent by Clarke to Rice, to which the Clinton-era document was attached, also urges action on Pakistan relating to al Qaeda. "First [to be addressed,]" wrote Clarke in a list of pending issues relating to al Qaeda, is "what the administration says to the Taliban and Pakistan about ending al Qida sanctuary in Afghanistan. We are separately proposing early, strong messages on both."

A disputed history

The documents have been a source of controversy before. Rice contended in a March 22, 2004 Washington Post piece that "no al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration."

Two days later, Clarke insisted to the 9/11 Commission that the plan had in fact been turned over. "There's a lot of debate about whether it's a plan or a strategy or a series of options, but all of the things we recommended back in January," he told the commission, "were done after September 11th."

The memo was declassified on April 7, 2004, one day before Rice herself testified before the 9/11 Commission.

Truly pathetic, Dr. Rice.

Y'know, sooner or later the press will have to consider whether it is in the country's interest to disseminate any info asserted by the administration that hasn't been indepedently verified for factual accuracy.

tristero 9/26/2006 04:44:00 PM |

 
April National Intelligence Estimate

by tristero

I've read the parts of the National Intelligence Estimate cherry-picked by Bush for release. They say exactly what the news reports said they say and they demonstrate that Bush is is full of it:

Excerpts from the report, released late this afternoon, show that intelligence agencies found that “the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.”

“The Iraq conflict has become the ‘cause célèbre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement,” the excerpts said. “Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.”

tristero 9/26/2006 02:53:00 PM |

 
Torture And National Security Are Entirely Different Subjects

by tristero

Yesterday, in making the case that the only strong argument against torture is that nearly every value system, religious or otherwise, condemns it, I criticized Matthew Yglesias for trying to argue against torture by pointing to its inutility. Despite some very intelligent objections to my postion in comments, I still hold to this view: Torture does not become acceptable if it can be shown to be useful in some real world circumstances. Torture simply is immoral. Period.

I'm happy to say that Matt, too, has come to the same conclusion. In his post on American Prospect Online, Rogue State, Matt relies on the moral argument in making his case against torture (the utility arguments he make - that torture lowers our already low world standing - depends upon the centrality of the moral argument).

However, in reading over Matt's post I realized that there is another, very different issue - national security concerns - that has become deliberately mixed up with torture by the rightwing in their bizarre effort to turn America into a torture capital. While banning torture under all circumstances is an extremely simple-to-grasp moral imperative, a serious discussion about what improves or undermines national security and law enforcement is not. Mixing the two, as the right does, creates an opportunity for them to advance an obscene moral relativism, to base the morality of torture solely on its potential utility for national security.

But these are entirely separate issues that occupy entirely different epistemological domains! Torture is a moral issue and we understand how and why torture is unacceptable by studying the moral codes most human beings live by. On the other hand, discussions of national security focus on tactical and pragmatic concerns, not primarily moral ones. We understand how to improve national security and why certain techniques succeed and fail by examining the empirical evidence, not by passing moral judgment.

Within that latter discussion - how to make us safer - Matt rightly argues you'd have to be a fool to countenance torture, let alone advocate it. Why? Because not only national security but ordinary law enforcement has been shown to dangerously deteriorate if torture is used, an assertion Matt backs up with a relevant link.

I realize that many of you will read the above and think I'm just being political. As if I'm merely trying to say that I realize I foolishly attacked an ally in the fight against Bushism but without directly apologizing. Furthermore, I suspect that some of you will think that my distinction of when the inutility of torture is appropriate is just an academic distinction. Not so.

If I felt I owed Matt an apology earlier, I would apologize, but I see no reason to apologize for a criticism that I believe was quite fair, sincerely made to sharpen both his and my ability to oppose the rightwing, and delivered without resort to ad hominem (which I've used in discussing Matt in the past and which use does deserve an apology from me. Sorry!). More to the point, I think the distinction I'm drawing is far from an academic one but a fundamental one. I believe Matt also understands it simply must be drawn in order to have a coherent discourse on either issue. It is a distinction - the moral and the pragmatic - that the incompetent, cognitively challenged pro-torture gang has deliberately blurred and the only way to fight back is to start by clearing up the confusion. In other words, and briefly:

Torture is wrong AND it makes security worse. That's a helluva lot different than saying torture is wrong BECAUSE it makes security worse.

The latter is the playing field the rightwing wants us to accept as the only valid one. But it's a false one as it confuses a moral and pragmatic issue to generate the appearance of moral relativism vis a vis torture where there simply is none at all.

Hope that's clear...
tristero 9/26/2006 10:30:00 AM |

Monday, September 25, 2006

 
Mou oshimai da

by digby

Republican leaders said Monday that they had reached a tentative agreement to garner political support for legislation on domestic surveillance, in part by sidestepping the question of whether the president has the constitutional authority to order wiretapping without a court order.

There was wide disagreement about the plan’s impact. Supporters billed the most recent version as a way of requiring a court order for most domestic wiretaps. But civil rights advocates and even some administration officials suggested that it would maintain the status quo in allowing the continuation of wiretapping without warrants under a program approved by President Bush.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who leads the Judiciary Committee, said that in recent negotiations, the White House had agreed to delete language from his bill that critics said would have implicitly acknowledged the president’s constitutional authority to order wiretapping without a warrant.

Three Republican senators — Larry E. Craig of Idaho, John E. Sununu of New Hampshire and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — had raised concerns about this and other aspects of the Specter bill, which would submit the wiretapping program to a secret court to rule on its constitutionality. With the changes, they said they could support the legislation, and Mr. Specter predicted he would have enough Senate votes to gain passage.

[...]

Some lawmakers and civil rights advocates said they believed that the three senators had mischaracterized or misinterpreted what they had agreed to and that the White House was retaining the right to order wiretaps without a warrant.

The administration declined to say when it would choose to seek warrants under the new plan.

The program approved by Mr. Bush “does allow for the interception without court order of international communications where one end is within the United States, and this agreement would provide this authority and would establish a process for moving to individualized court orders with respect to individuals within the United States,” said Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman. He declined to elaborate.

Some opponents of the wiretapping program said they saw the new plan as a step backward because of technical language that would narrow the definition of what constitutes “electronic surveillance” that requires a court order and would effectively make warrants optional.

“This is a major setback for the Fourth Amendment and civil liberties,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Securities Studies.

As Norman Ornstein said about the torture cave-in: "It sure doesn't look to me as if they stood up and did anything other than bare their teeth for some ceremonial barking, before giving the president a whole lot of leeway. I find it really troubling."

Yes, it is "troubling" to see three more brave Republican defenders of civil liberties (and Arlen Specter) pretend to be standing up for truth and the American way make yet another one of those last minute "deals" with the president that legalizes every heinous thing he's done and giving him explicit congressional authority to keep doing it.

I hear the Senate is planning to put the combined the torture and spying bill that Mitch McConnell introduced last Friday to the vote. It's much more efficient to destroy the constitution with one big bill they can hold over Democrats' heads like a samurai sword if they fail to vote for it. Very clever.


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digby 9/25/2006 09:49:00 PM |

 
WWJD

by digby

Following up on tristero's post below which links to David Niewert's observations on the torture debate, this video says it in pictures:



Link to the video on YouTube, here.



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digby 9/25/2006 01:12:00 PM |

 
Neiwert On Torture

by tristero

David Neiwert says it:

The baseline problem with torture, after all, is that it is prima facie immoral, a violation not just of the Golden Rule and basic Christian precepts, but of nearly any system of ethics. Even the most hard-nosed rationalist will come to this conclusion (see, e.g., Kant's Categorical Imperative). It's an obvious one if you're a Christian.

All you have to present to any Christian, when it comes to torture, is their own favorite moral-guidepost aphorism: What Would Jesus Do?

To anyone familiar not just with Jesus' teachings but the story of his martyrdom -- including his torture at the hands of authorities -- the answer is crystal clear.

Exactly. Torture is unacceptable and immoral behavior. It is not for nothing that Bush and Cheney are going to exceptional lengths to hide what they're doing to people right now. And what they've done in the past.

Oh, and Matthew Yglesias? Arguments from inutility vis a vis torture? Uh uh, no good. They are extremely poor arguments to advance in the torture debate. What if I could prove torture did work? Would THAT make it a reasonable "interrogation technique?" It would not. The only strong argument is that torture simply is immoral. It is a gross violation of what it means to be human.
tristero 9/25/2006 12:22:00 PM |

 
Clinton And Kerry Stood Fast When Republicans Wanted To Cut 'N Run

by tristero.

Hoo, boy, lots going on today, what with Dems holding hearing on the conduct of the war today and so many other things.

But let's not forget a recent story, the Clinton/Wallace confrontation where Clinton showed the kind of brilliance and anger towards the rightwing that we can only hope all politicians opposed to Bushism and modern Republicanism will show in the next month or so.

Wallace accused Clinton of providing aid and comfort to bin Laden by withdrawing from Somalia after Blackhawk Down. You may not remember the Somalia story too well or you may be too young to remember. But the standard line propogated for years by the rightwing, and recycled by Wallace in his question to Clinton, is that Clinton cut and ran; therefore bin Laden took from that ignominious flight the lesson that Americans are cowards. The implications are:

1. Clinton behaved like a coward who wouldn't stay the course and he emboldened the terrorists by leaving.

2. By extension, all Democrats cannot be trusted with foreign policy and national security.

It's a complete lie. Let Glenn Greenwald tell you who really wanted to cut and run from the terrorists. It was Republicans including St. John McCain.

More importantly, let Greenwald show you who fully understood the implications of withdrawing from Somalia precipitously after Blackhawk Down. It was Clinton and Kerry who got it exactly right and understood the situation.

Knowing the truth of what happened regarding the fight over staying or leaving in Somalia, we can apply the "logic" of the rightwing to historical reality. And the implications are very clear:

1. Republicans, including McCain, behaved like cowards who wouldn't stay the course. They emboldened the terrorists by calling for the US to leave.

2. By extension, all Republicans, including McCain, cannot be trusted with foreign policy and national security.

Note to rightwingers and others who have cognitive difficulties understanding English prose: I do NOT agree with the "logic" of the rightwing. I dislike McCain intensely, but his Vietnam record, like Kerry's, demonstrates he is no coward. I believe the real implications of this inexcusable piece of historical revisionism are:

1. Republicans, including McCain, were fools for failing to gauge the effects of a precipitous withdrawal. They emboldened future terrorists by their panic in hysterically calling for the US to leave.

2. By extension, all modern Republicans, including McCain, have demonstrated they do not have the judgment or character to conduct competent and robust foreign policy in a sober manner. They can, and they have, made the US far less safe when they are in power than when Democrats have been.

One more note. There are very few parallels between the Somalia situation back then and what is going on in Iraq today. It is utterly fallacious to compare the Republican fools immediately after Blackhawk Down with a majority of the world calling for a US withdrawal more than three years after an illegal invasion.

And for the record, back in 0'3 it was not only liberals horrified that Bush had invaded Iraq in the first place who urged a rapid withdrawal from Iraq. Deluded neoconservatives who were the instigators of the war did as well, confident that the mission was codpieced, I mean accomplished, the only piece missing being the installation of Chalabi as Emperor of Ir...I mean president.

Truly incredible, the extent of the right's projection and lying. and that they are allowed to get away with it. As Greenwald writes, "As always, no matter how many times it occurs, it is truly disturbing how there seems to be no limit on the false propaganda and rank historical revisionism which can be disseminated by this administration and its followers and uncorrected by our national media. "
tristero 9/25/2006 07:28:00 AM |

 
Bush's Comma

by tristero


Many blogs have linked to the comma quote as one more indication that Bush epitomizes the callous conservative. I agree: it's a disgusting remark. But I perceive something even more distressing about it than obscene sociopathic indifference to human suffering.

Let's say I was president of the United States and when someone asks me about my central achievement, I respond that one day it will look like "just a comma." I think you'd be quite justified in thinking I was very depressed and unsatisfied with my record. Why? Because I'd just told you I hadn't done anything much more important than an historical speck, a squib, a doodle. And being president, I'd be wanting to accomplish something really big, really memorable. Like, say, attacking a really large country. Like being the first since Truman to drop a nuclear weapon in war. Now we're talking. That's worth at least a paragraph in the Book of Human History Before The Rapture.

In other words, I think Bush's comma is a signal to the world that he's barely started with the bang bang and the carnage. The casualties he's already inflicted around the world are too small to mean anything to someone as narcissistic and grandiose as the Churchill of Crawford. He expects - no, he needs - many, many more battles, bigger targets. Real men, after all, go to Tehran. And we know that Bush - Oedipus Tex, the black sheep awol drunk loser who failed at business - has some problems thinking about himself as a real man.

But how realistic is this? That is, setting Bush's truly dubious mental health aside (and regardless of whether you buy my speculations above, he is not the tightest of screws at the best of times), can the US military actually give Bush something more than a comma to remember him by anytime soon?

Well, there's a post over at Talking Points Memo which makes a pretty convincing argument that logistically the US military, quagmired in Afghanistan and Iraq, is in no condition to attack Iran anytime soon.

It seems likely this could be true. Unless you consider a first strike nuclear attack as part of a concerted effort to effect regime change. Which is insane. Which, coming full circle, brings up the relevance of the mental state of a president who would characterize the ghastly horrors of the Bush/Iraq war as a mere comma in history.

Please, people. Do not misunderestimate him or this administration. They are crazy, and I am not speaking metaphorically here. They were crazy to ignore the warnings in the summer of '01. They were crazy to invade Iraq. They were crazy to pass laws keeping a brain-dead woman hooked up to a feeding tube. They are crazy to write into law that George W. Bush has the right to torture people at will. Indeed, they are crazy in their lust to assert their will over anything and everything.

And they are crazy to plan any kind of attack on Iran (in both senses: it's nuts to consider it, and they really, really want to do it). They are crazy to think that threatening something like that will put pressure on the Iranian government to capitulate; if anything it will increase Iranian nationalism, fuel anti-Americanism and increase the Iranian government's support.

They are also crazy to think that retaliation will come only via terrorist attacks on the US and those attacks will increase domestic support for the Bush regime ("we're the ones serious about national security"). No. Retaliation for a pre-emptive strike on Iran will be swift, brutal, and on numerous fronts. The US will be economically and culturally quarantined. The world will unite to fight the US on trade agreements, will implement sanctions and make international business deals impossibly difficult. To those rightwingers who say, "Yeah? The Frenchies gonna threaten us? Haha! Bring 'em on!" I say, be careful what you wish for. They don't call this a global economy for nuthin'.

Again, as unlikely as it seems, as offhand as it appears to be, I see the comma remark as one more indication that Bush expects to attack Iran very soon. And, while he doesn't go so far as to believe it will involve nuclear, I note that Gary Hart writes, "It should come as no surprise if the Bush Administration undertakes a preemptive war against Iran sometime before the November election." It's not just inconsequential bloggers who are very worried, dear friends.

This ain't no party. This ain't no disco. This ain't no fooling around.

[Update: As pointed out by a coupla folks in comments, Steve Gilliard has a terrific take on Bush's comma:

When Bush said Iraq was a comma, he was speaking in dog whistle to the fundies. It comes from a saying "Never put a period where God puts a comma".Which means things will get better. Which is, of course, insane.

Indeed. And while I agree with Steve, and glad he mentioned it, I'm not sure that necessarily invalidates my psychoanlytic interpretation, although, it's true, it seems less convincing to me in the light of Steve's post.]
tristero 9/25/2006 05:30:00 AM |

 
Iran's Nuclear Ambitions

by tristero

As mentioned in a previous post, my copy of Iran's Nuclear Ambitions by Iranian author Shahram Chubin arrived and it looks very good, very compact, and very detailed.

Assuming that those of you who expressed interest in reading the book together will receive it by today/tomorrow, I propose we read up throught the first two chapters, to page 43, and discuss it this Friday, when I'll post a summary and some thoughts of my own.

In glancing through it, it's dispassionate, clearly the work of a serious and knowledgeable author, and seems to be free of polemics. Heaven knows we need more resources like this.
tristero 9/25/2006 04:28:00 AM |

Sunday, September 24, 2006

 
False Advertising

by tristero

Jonathan Wells, the Moonie from the Discovery Institute who is one of their principle shills for "inteliigent design" creationism - and, incidentally, a man who actually believes that the earth is about 6,000 years old, tops - has released a book with a title so misleading it amounts to blatantly false advertising. As the delicious multi-part series at The Panda's Thumb makes quite clear, it should be titled "The Thoroughly Incorrect Guide to Darwinism [sic] and Intelligent Design."

Check it out.

And by the way, those of you who object to my calling Wells a Moonie and referring to him in an obviously contemptuous fashion, perhaps you should remember that Wells is the stupid sonuvabitch who once compared biologist Ken Miller to the Hitler's propagandist Heinrich Himmler, thus simultaneously exhibiting the gutter level at which his department at Discovery operates, his historical ignorance and the sheer sloppiness of his "scholarship."
tristero 9/24/2006 04:39:00 PM |

 
Smell The Sulfur

by digby

I just heard John McCain get pissy on on Face the Nation about his bogus torture legislation and say, "The ACLU and the NY Times may not like it but we think people will recognise it defends both our values and our security."

I honestly don't know whether he's stupid or immoral. But assuming he isn't a complete idiot, I have to say I'm not sure if a man can sink lower than to leverage his heroic status as a tortured POW to codify his own government's torture policy. You really don't need to know any more about the man's character than this.

And in case anyone's wondering about the vaunted integrity of Huckleberry Graham, after he went on at length on Fox news this morning about protecting the soldiers and the rule 'o law, he let this slip:

I want one of these guys tried in my lifetime and I'm tired of the supreme court throwing this back. It wasn't my idea to give em Geneva Convention protections, it was the supreme court. Once the supreme court rules that the Geneva Convention applies we have an obligation to make it work.

And establish yourself as a manly, macho maverick McCainiac. So much for principle.


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digby 9/24/2006 10:10:00 AM |

 
Wow

by tristero

I read the transcript but nothing prepared me for the passion and intelligence shown by President Clinton as he makes mincemeat of Chris Wallace. It really must be seen.

More importantly, it must be carefully studied by the leadership of the Democratic Party. This is exactly how to respond to the right wing's attempt to load the questions and manipulate the debate to their advantage. Notice how Clinton responds immediately to the rhetorical framing* of the question by challenging its honesty. Notice how he reinforces that assertion of opinion - the question is loaded, biased and cheap - by literally overwhelming Wallace with clear, detailed, assertions of fact. Wallace expected evasion and bluster. But he clearly had no idea who he was dealing with.

Within the space of a few minutes, Wallace realized he was in way over his head - that Clinton, this figure he's held in contempt, knew far more about the subject of his responsibilities, his successes, and his failures than Wallace ever would - and that the trap Wallace had tried to spring on Clinton had totally backfired. He seemed to be all but begging Clinton to let him off the hook. But Clinton, both furious and capable of channeling that fury, toyed with him longer. By the end of the segment, Wallace looked drained, grinning inanely, and Clinton appeared as if he was just getting started.

Many honest folks, as opposed to rightwingers, had serious problems with the Clinton presidency - NAFTA, welfare "reform," don't ask don't tell - and I'm not sure they're wrong. But warts and all - damn, that was a helluva president and is a helluva human being. There are some great potential presidents out there - Gore, Clark, Kerry, add or subtract your own names - but it is very, very unlikely this country will see anyone as brilliant as Clinton - both intellectually and emotionally brilliant - in my lifetime.

Watch the video. The only thing I can compare it to is Coltrane live at the Half Note or the Ives Concord Sonata. A simply amazing treat for which we have the hapless Chris Wallace to thank almost as much as Clinton. Chris Wallace is surely no Elvin Jones. He's more like an insipid melody like "My Favorite Things" or "Inchworm" which a genius can turn inside out, develop and reveal a reality that the melody itself could hardly imagine it held.

*Simply because fans of Lakoff have made the words "frame" and "framing" trendy, slathering them on arguments where they don't belong, is no reason to avoid using it in the proper context.
tristero 9/24/2006 09:42:00 AM |

Saturday, September 23, 2006

 
Aesthetic Insanity

by digby

So I see that the NY Times has teamed up with Drudge and Fox News again, calling any Democrat "crazy" who doesn't fold himself into a little ball in the corner and meekly take his punishment from the Republicans.

Earlier the wingnuts started hyperventilating that Bill Clinton had completely lost it when he vociferously defended his honor in the face of Mike Wallace's hellspawn Chris sandbagging him on Fox News after persuading him to come on to talk about the Global Initiative. It made Big Bill a little hot under the collar to have to be rudely interrogated by this Faux journalist who was dutifully following the "Path to 9/11" script and implying that he was responsible for the attacks. Frankly, I would have thought there was something wrong with him if he hadn't gotten mad.

And now I see that a would-be MoDo named Jennifer Senior is reviewing books written by liberals and calling them "berserk," unhinged and unglued. Worst of all she feels they confirm all the worst stereotypes about liberals, which is so awfully annoying when you are a smug, contemptuous journalist writing book reviews about politics for the NY Times and everyone confuses you with people who just don't know how to behave.

The embarrasing books in question are "Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration" a polemic written by Louis Lapham, editor of Harpers magazine and "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime" a compilation of columns written by journalist Sidney Blumenthal.

Senior is disturbed by the angry tone:

One can certainly understand how these developments — and Bush’s correspondingly rotten approval ratings — have emboldened the opposition. The problem is that these developments have also made the president’s critics more susceptible to rhetorical excess, and Bush, like his predecessor, already has an impressive gift for bringing out the yawping worst in those who disagree with him. Otherwise reasonable people go slightly berserk on the subject of his motives; on the subject of his morality, the hinged fall off their door frames and even the stable become unglued. This is both an aesthetic problem and a substantive one. Substantively, it means gerrymandering evidence so that inconvenient facts don’t make it onto the map. And aesthetically, it means speaking in a compromising and not wholly credible tone.

Yes, getting angry about usurping the constitution, torture and sending thousands to their deaths in a losing war for inexplicable reasons among a hundred other outrages is aesthetically jarring. Please, children, use your indoor voices. There's no reason to scream.

I haven't read Lapham's book, although this review prompted me to order it immediately. I expect polemics to be filled with righteous indignation and I'm quite sure I will not be offended by the intemperate tone. Indeed, that's why I bought it. Lapham, apparently, still has a beating heart in his body and a functioning brain in his head.

I have read the other book, "How Bush Rules" by Sidney Blumenthal and I simply don't get what Senior's gripe is. It's a compilation of columns written during Bush's tenure that lays out in damning detail the case for his total immorality, corruption and incompetence. The truth hurts but it's still the truth. There are no inconvenient facts to "gerrymander" (which means, what?)

I do agree that Blumenthal is guilty of a very serious misjudgment, however. He sees a difference between the Ken Starr witchhunt and Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the Valerie Plame matter. You see, Blumenthal thought that a blatantly partisan special prosecutor fishing around in President Clinton's pants was inappropriate. Therefore, by Senior's logic, he must think that all federal prosecutions are inappropriate. The fact that he dedicated his book to Joseph Wilson and included columns about the Scooter Libby jihad (oh, excuse me, that's so aesthetically inappropriate) ... Scooter Libby's noble whistleblowing campaign to inform the American people what their government was doing, is hypocritical. Surely his previous defense of president Clinton against the Republican smear machine means it would be inconsistent for him to speak out on behalf of another victim of the Republican smear machine. Oh wait.

Anyway, he's done something aesthetically hypocritical but I can't quite figure out what it is. And he's kinda crazy and obsessive, too.

After a while, it’s hard to deny that these columns have a certain cumulative power. But their content has also been curated with one aim in mind, and that’s to cast the Bush administration in the grimmest possible light, rather like Philip Roth telling the story of his protagonist in “Everyman” from the point of view of his illnesses. Blumenthal also has a taste for tiresome epithets — he calls Paul Wolfowitz “the neoconservative Robespierre” and compares Bush (yawn) to a cowboy. And rather than letting damning facts speak for themselves, Blumenthal insists on pushing his arguments to the breaking point. He claims Bush had “plenty of information” to act on before Sept. 11, but fails to produce anything more specific than the findings of the 9/11 Commission. He suggests the tragedy of New Orleans might have been prevented if funds for a flood control project hadn’t been diverted to the Iraq war (as if dozens of other factors hadn’t conspired against the poor city). He even suggests that Rudolph Giuliani became a figure of national reassurance after the Sept. 11 attacks “in large part because President Bush was not to be seen for days.” (Does he really think Giuliani would have been less impressive if Bush had responded with alacrity? Was Blumenthal anywhere near New York that morning?)

Well, this clears something up once and for all. Apparently it is quite common for journalists like Jennifer Senior to believe that it's their job to mitigate unpleasant facts about President Bush or risk being accused of lacking credibility. Good to know.

Apparently, Mr Bringdown Blumenthal should have included a few columns about some of the "good things" Bush has done to even out the grim ones. I'm not sure what they would be. Those Barney videos are sort of cute; perhaps Blumenthal could have gotten a column or two out of them. After all, as she says "it’s hard to trust a narrator who only and always assumes the worst." Lord knows George W. Bush has given us little reason to assume the best but he does like to make jokes at others' expense, so maybe that should count for something. (Senior really enjoys that kind of humor apparently.)

I, on the other hand, couldn't help but be amused that she faults Blumenthal for not providing more evidence that Bush had "plenty of information" than the 9/11 commission did. After all, all the 9/11 commission found was that Bush sat on his ass for eight months ignoring terrorism while Richard Clark and others were running around with their hair on fire screaming that the terrorists were getting ready to strike inside the United States any day. Surely one needs more evidence than that before one can condemn Bush for his inaction.

Senior delivers the sweeping coup de grace in her final paragraph:

The left has often complained that what it needs isn’t polite speech, but voices as pungent as those on the right. Maybe so. But even the angriest people on the right tend to be funny. Books like this one are a depressing reminder of how important it is for writers to have a slight sense of humor about themselves, if they want to be taken at all seriously.

Oh my goodness yes. The most obvious characteristic of the right's "pungent" books about liberals being "Unhinged," "The Party of Death" and "Godless, Slanderous Traitors," is their self-effacing humor. How refreshing it is to be called a fascist by people with such delightful wit.(And you'll note that those books are written about their fellow Americans, not the political leadership, as these books about Bush are.) I now understand why the rightwing publishing industry is taken seriously by journalists like Jennifer Senior. They apparently share an aesthetic obtuseness, which explains a lot.

Blumenthal's book, by the way, is very good. You probably read at least some of the columns in Salon or elsewhere before, but it's seeing them in their totality, over time, that gives the full picture of how Bush rules. And I have to say that when I read it I didn't find a thing funny about it. I guess somewhere between the intelligence faking, the waterboarding and the constitution shredding I lost my sense of humor.



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digby 9/23/2006 11:09:00 PM |

 
Churning Them Out

by digby


And the hits just keep on coming. From the beginning many of us made the very down to earth, non-pie-in-the-sky, pragmatic argument that invading Iraq would exacerbate the terrorist threat and would therefore make America less safe. Saddam was successfully contained, the benefit of taking him out was not worth the price we would pay in escalating terrorism.

Now, four years later, that position has sadly been validated:

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

Glenn Greenwald suggests:

If I were shaping the Democrats' election strategy, I would create a television commercial where someone reads the [previous] four paragraphs -- from a new report in the NYT today -- and then I would air it over and over and over every single day as much as possible until November 7.

Absolutely. Bush's iraq adventure has put this country in much more danger than it was and for no good reason. If people believe terrorism is a serious threat, then these Republicans are the last people they should trust. They have alienated everybody in the world (especially our allies) with their arrogance and disregard for the rule of law. And their drive to invade Iraq for no good reason has put everyone on this planet in more danger.

Bush has been election season fearmongering all over the country for the past few weeks getting more and more hysterical, coming very close to actually shrieking "they are coming to kill you in your beds, don't you understand!!!"

THE PRESIDENT: Matt, I'm just telling you, what this government has done is to take steps on security to protect you and your family. You asked me about your family, and you represent a lot of other people, and the best information we can get is from people we take off the battlefield, so we can act on it. So we can stop plots before they happen. We're at war. These are people that want to come and kill your families. And the best way to protect you is to get information. And I'm confident the American people understand why we've done that. We've acted on information they've given us to prevent attacks. And these are real. This isn't make-believe. These are attacks that were coming to hurt the American people again.

That's nice George, but it might have been smarter not to start another completely useless and inexplicable war that's creating terrorists at ten times the pace you can catch and waterboard them!

If we had concentrated on Afghanistan, today we'd be dealing mostly with the morons trying to blow up their tennis shoes and take down the Brooklyn Bridge with blow torches. Instead we're making hundreds of battle-hardened, violent jihadists by the boatload in Iraq and getting them ready for export all over the world. Excellent plan, Just excellent. You can see why the Republicans are so proud of their expertise on national security.



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digby 9/23/2006 07:49:00 PM |

 
Rigorous Process

by digby



More from the great Billmon:

It's important for Americans and others across the world to understand the kind of people held at Guantanamo. These aren't common criminals, or bystanders accidentally swept up on the battlefield -- we have in place a rigorous process to ensure those held at Guantanamo Bay belong at Guantanamo.

George W. Bush
White House Address
September 6, 2006

It's hard to picture Haji Nasrat Khan as an international terrorist. For a start, the grey-bearded Afghan can barely walk, shuffling along on a three-wheeled walking frame. His sight is terrible -- he squints through milky eyes that sometimes roll towards the heavens -- while his helpers have to shout to make themselves heard. And as for his age -- nobody knows for sure, not even Nasrat himself. "I think I am 78, or maybe 79," he ventures uncertainly, pausing over a cup of green tea.

Yet for three and a half years the US government deemed this elderly, infirm man an "enemy combatant", so dangerous to America's security that he was imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay.

The Guardian
Three years on, Guantánamo detainee, 78, goes home
September 22, 2006

I've got more of your rigorous process for you, right here:

August 25, 2006. A German native who was imprisoned by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was released Thursday, more than 18 months after a federal judge in Washington ruled there was insufficient evidence to detain him.

and here:

August 21, 2006. On Jan. 18, 2002, six men suspected of plotting to attack the U.S. Embassy were seized here by U.S. troops and flown to Cuba, where they became some of the first arrivals at the Pentagon's new prison at Guantanamo Bay.

The seizure was ordered by senior U.S. officials in defiance of rulings by top courts in Bosnia that the men were entitled to their freedom and could not be deported. Today, more than four years later, the six remain locked up at Guantanamo, even though the original allegations about the embassy attack have been discredited and dropped, records show.

In 2004, Bosnian prosecutors and police formally exonerated the six men after a lengthy criminal investigation. Last year, the Bosnian prime minister asked the Bush administration to release them, calling the case a miscarriage of justice.

and here:

February 13, 2006 Five Muslim detainees from China's western Xinjiang province are stranded in a legal no man's land at the US terrorism prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

They shouldn't be there. Even the US military has found that the men, members of the besieged Uighur ethnic group, are not enemy combatants. But their ordeal in custody isn't over. Because they could face harsh treatment back in China - and the US doesn't want to set a precedent by granting them asylum here - they sit in a barracks-like detention center waiting for a country to give them a home.

or here:

12 June 2006: One of the three men who committed suicide at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was due to be released - but did not know it, says a US lawyer.

[...]

At the weekend, one top state department official called them a "good PR move to draw attention", while the camp commander said it was an "act of asymmetric warfare waged against us".

(These terrifying terrorists are so formidable that they can wage war against us by hanging themselves in their cages. They are the strongest and most powerful enemy the world has ever known.)

or here:

3/10/2004 vAll four men who were arrested on their return to Britain from U.S. military detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were released Wednesday without charge, police said.

A fifth man had not been arrested when the group arrived at Northolt Royal Air Force Base Tuesday, and he was freed within hours.

In case anyone's not convinced, how about this "Report on Guantanamo Detainees: A Profile of 517 Detainees through Analysis of Department of Defense Data:"

There are now about 490 prisoners at Gitmo, and "55 percent of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or coalition allies.

"Only 8 percent of the detainees were characterized as Al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40 percent have no definitive connection with Al Qaeda at all and 18 percent have no definitive affiliation with either Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

"Only 5 percent of the detainees were captured by United States forces. [A total of] 86 percent of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86 percent of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were turned over to the United States at a time at which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies."

But the US insists that no innocent men have ever been held at Guantanamo:

MORAN: Are you holding any innocent men here?

HARRIS: I believe truly that I am holding no innocent men in Guantanamo.

[...]

MORAN: So no man who ever came to Guantanamo Bay came there by mistake [or] was innocent?

HARRIS: I believe that to be true.

(Read that whole interview if you want to see some twisted logic in action.)

The evidence shows that the "rigorous process" allows the United States to capture or buy many innocent or low level grunts and then hold them and torture them in Guantanamo as long as they choose. This is indisputable. And we are now codifying that process --- and granting legal immunity to those who do it. There's nothing more to know. It's all out there.

And aside from the indefinite imprisonment of both guilty and innocent men,this is what else they are excusing:

The information from the various sources frequently matched, providing corroboration of the use of specific procedures, which included prolonged sleep deprivation and shackling prisoners in uncomfortable positions for many hours. One F.B.I. agent wrote his superiors that he saw such restraining techniques several times. In the most gruesome of the bureau memorandums, he recounted observing a detainee who had been shackled overnight in a hot cell, soiled himself and pulled out tufts of hair in misery.

Military officials who participated in the practices said in October that prisoners had been tormented by being chained to a low chair for hours with bright flashing lights in their eyes and audio tapes played loudly next to their ears, including songs by Lil' Kim and Rage Against the Machine and rap performances by Eminem.

[...]

Mr. Kahtani was, for example, forcibly given an enema, officials said, which was used because it was uncomfortable and degrading.

Pentagon spokesmen said the procedure was medically necessary because Mr. Kahtani was dehydrated after an especially difficult interrogation session. Another official, told of the use of the enema, said, however, "I bet they said he was dehydrated," adding that that was the justification whenever an enema was used as a coercive technique, as it had been on several detainees.

[...]

The interrogators also discussed another factor in the Red Cross report, the use of a Behavioral Science Consultation Team, known as Biscuit, comprising a psychologist or psychiatrist and psychiatric workers. The team was used to suggest ways to make prisoners more cooperative in interrogations.

"They were supposed to help us break them down," one said.

The same former interrogator said the Red Cross report was correct in asserting that some female interrogators used sexual taunts to harass the detainees.

They're all off the hook. All the perpetrators, all the personnel who ordered them to do it, the doctors who betrayed their oaths and all the politicians and their sycophants in the military, the CIA and the Justice Department who sat around in Washington dreaming up this sick, sadistic, perverted program.

And there's no guarantee that George W. Bush (the man who had his aides scan the reports for him before he personally signed off on 150+ executions in Texas and famously said he knows that none of them were innocent) will not use these measures in the future. The brave Knights of the Big Kabuki, McCain, Huckleberry and Mr Elizabeth Taylor all agreed to allow him to "interpret" decency out of existence. After all, it's something he knows a lot about.

And there's nothing these guys in Gitmo can do about it:

Another huge problem remains section 6 (in both of the underlying draft bills), which presumably will "overrule" Rasul, by purporting to strip aliens detained overseas of the right to petition for habeas review, and to drastically limit any further rights of such aliens to seek judicial review of (i) the legality of their detention; (ii) the terms and conditions of their detention and interrogation; and (iii) the proceudres and results of any military commission trial. Jack and others have thoroughly explained why this section is so troubling.

They hate us for our freedom.


Update: The bill is so bad, so convoluted that it's taking all our smart lawyers awhile to wade through it a figure out just what in the hell is going on. Hilzoy at Obsidion Wings has hit upon something I hadn't seen before:

I was thinking of the habeas-stripping provisions from the point of view of a detainee, who might wonder: what legal recourse do I have if this bill goes through? How can I protest my detention if, for instance, I have been found innocent but not released, or if I have been tortured? The answer to that question is, as far as I can tell, 'you have no recourse'; and that horrified me.

But then it occurred to me to think of it from a different angle: from the perspective of the system of extraterritorial prisons that we seem to be setting up. From that point of view, the main question raised by the "compromise" bill (pdf) is a different one, namely: who has the right to question, in a court of law, any aspect of our treatment of alien combatants held outside the US? As far as I can tell, with very limited exceptions, the answer to this question is: no one but the very same government that set the system up in the first place.

This means, basically, that this bill will remove the entire system of detention, with the exception of its military commissions and combatant status review tribunals, from any judicial oversight at all...Literally anything could be going on during interrogation and detention, and the courts would have no way to pronounce on its legality, or to require anything to change.

This means that while the Republicans are pretending to keep the Geneva Conventions intact and prohibiting torture and taking great credit for it, they have removed any means by which one could hold the US government accountable for failing to live up to those rules. Rights without remedies. In other wrods, the whole thing basically just legalized torture for any practical purpose --- and that means all of it, from forced enemas to waterboarding to the rack. What's a furriner gonna do about it? He's is specifically not allowed any judicial review of anything to do with his treament unless his US government torturers turn themselves in and ask their superiors to punish them.

This is it folks. There will be no judicial oversight of torture which means there is no way to enforce the law. The world will just have to trust George W. Bush to follow those laws based upon his superior morals and decency.

Update II: Here's the WaPo pretty much saying the same thing. This bill is an abomination.

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digby 9/23/2006 03:54:00 PM |

 
Hicks Fer Jesus

by digby


I just watched "Red State" yesterday. It's very well done. The narrative seems slow moving and kind of meandering at first and then everything just sneaks up on you until by the end you are truly creeped out.

At first I thought it was a slightly unfair portrayal because he was only showing a very particular kind of red state person. By the end I knew why --- he had a point to make and it's scary as hell. He let these people make it for him. There are way too many Americans who truly believe that the government of the United States should be a theocracy. And throughout this film you see how that idea has so permeated a certain constituency that there's almost no way to get through to them. (The film works well as a companion to Kevin Phillips' "American Theocracy" and Michelle Goldberg's "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.")

There is one character in the film --- a youngish car dealer in Mississippi --- who represents an interesting contrast. He votes GOP because he perceives that they are looking out for his business interests but he doesn't buy the social conservatism --- although it was obviously politically incorrect in his social melieu to come right out and say it. He struggled mightily to make his point without insulting his tribe. (It reminded me a bit of certain hippies I knew back in the day who couldn't quite come out and say they didn't want to live in a commune because they thought they'd offend their friends.)

My favorite moment was when Mrs Gill, the Mississippi director of Concerend Women For America, gets upset that she's been "worked over" by this interviewer who had just asked her what she believed in. It's clear that when the totality of Mrs Gill's racism and intolerance became manifest in the few minutes that she spoke, she suddenly realized that she had given herself away as a white supremecist and Christian nationalist. Naturally she claimed victimhood and ended the interview.

One of the things that's obvious in this film is that these people are practiced phonies too. They say things like "we took us a trip to California and couldn't believe what we saw out there!" like it's 1952 and they're Andy and Barney. You can't tell me these people don't watch TV. There's a good part of their schtick that's pure poseur --- the "heartland hick fer Jesus" is very often a thoroughly modern American who's playing just as many games as anybody else. Taking their "moral concerns" at face value and thinking they can be persuaded by tweaking issues and changing rhetoric is to be a chump. This is a tribal game.



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digby 9/23/2006 03:04:00 PM |

 
The USA Mengele Act

by tristero

I've spent a good chunk of the morning reading and re-reading Adam Liptak's news analysis of the so-called compromise deal regarding the use of torture and unconstitutional trial procedures.* And for the life of me, I can't make head or tail out of it. Maybe if I spent a week slogging throught the "94-page measure" it would start to reveal its meaning but that's not the point. The point is that it is deliberately obtuse. And in real-life, ie, when interrogating suspects, it is bound to lead to more, not less, extreme torture and murder paid for by you and I. Y'think any Bush administration lawyer is gonna sift the nuances when asked to interpret the law for commanders in the field?

While the "compromise" is incoherent, what's quite clear are the moral and legal issues involved. Whether you argue from within a faith or from a purely naturalistic standpoint without recourse to any higher deity or cause, torture is wrong. Always. It's wrong not because it doesn't work and leads to false and often dangerously misleading confessions. It's wrong because it violates the essence of what it means to be a human being, whether you define that essence as a gift from God or derive it from purely naturalistic principles.

It is that simple. And it is beyond mind-blowing that such a basic goes-without-saying moral principle as a ban on torture needs to be asserted in 21st Century America. But it has to be, because the people who have taken over this country are in the process of tossing out every single law and moral principle adhered to by human society since what seems like the code of Hammurabi.

What especially stuck in my mind were these two things from the article. First, a moment of the kind of dark humor my friends in communist Prague used to indulge in about their leaders:

“The McCain, Graham, Warner trio really fought back and prevented the administration from winning its effort to reinterpret Common Article 3,” said Jennifer Daskal, the United States advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

The proposed law, at least if it is interpreted honestly, Ms. Daskal said, would prohibit interrogation techniques like sleep deprivation, forced standing for long periods and extreme temperatures.

"The proposed law, at least if it it is interpreted honestly..." Now, that's funny. The other thing that caught my attention isn't:

But some voiced concern that using statements obtained through coercion, even coercion forbidden by the McCain Amendment to Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, would still be allowed in many circumstances. So would be hearsay evidence, as well as a combination of the two.

“You create a situation,” Ms. Daskal said, “in which someone could be convicted based on a second- or third-hand statement from a detainee during an abusive interrogation.”

That sure sounds as if, in many cases, even if information is obtained via torture, even if that torture results in the death of the tortured, that information is admissible against a defendant.

And that's why I"m calling this law, if it is passed, the USA Mengele Act, because it empowers modern-day American psychopaths to do their worst and pass it off as just trying to do their best for their homeland. Republican Ted Bundy would have loved this law, including the sheer cynicism of it. Torment and maim whomever you want just as long as you get something that can be used against a Bush-fingered terrorist. And yes, it's true, you can get into biiiiiiiig trouble if you do the nasty a little too much, but let's get real here. Someone tortures a prisoner to fink on Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and that "information" is used to convict KSM - that person's a friggin' hero, for crissakes. Okay, he got a little too enthusiastic, but his only crime was being too eager to protect his country!

The USA Mengele Act permits legal evidence to be gathered for an American legal procedure by committing atrocities against prisoners. Exactly the way Josef Mengele went about gathering his "scientific" evidence during the Nazi era.

And let's not kid ourselves that this will stop with terrorist suspects. After all, Tom DeLay used the Department of Homeland Security to try to round-up Democrats to pass his gerrymandering efforts. Of course, I'm not saying that Bush intends to torture to death his American political opponents. But it opens up the possibility down the line of using torture to produce legal evidence for American courts in, say, drug cases, and sex crimes. And when that happens, then yes, it will be pretty easy to re-evaluate the defintion of "terrorist." Let's say a modern-day Elllsberg - we should be so lucky - leaks a new set of Pentagon Papers. With this law, there's no reason to have Plumbers to burglarize his psychiatrist's office - you just grab the doctor and let him find out what a real headshrinking feels like.

I don't think in his wildest dreams Osama bin Laden could have anticipated such a tremendous and rapid victory over America and its values as Bushn delivered. Yes, the destruction of Iraq and any day now, the fall of Iran and the consequent radicalization of millions of Muslims, the ruination of American prestige and influence, not to mention the vampirical drain on our economy: all that bin Laden joyfully anticipated. But for America to abandon all pretense of adherence to western law and morality, that was a pure gift from God to his obedient servant, Osama.


*Full disclosure: NY Times reporter Adam Liptak is a friend of mine. I know him to be an enormously dedicatd reporter (I believe he also is, or was, a lawyer), scrupulously honest and unbiased. That doesn't mean I necessarily agree with everything he says, or his analyes. I simply respect him.
tristero 9/23/2006 08:37:00 AM |

Friday, September 22, 2006

 
Unleashing The Beast

by digby


I have written often about how the Republicans are becoming what they railed against for decades: totalitarians. Unsurprisingly I suppose, it turns out that what they really hated about Soviet communism was the economics. The 50 years of ranting about personal liberty and anti-authoritarian government seems to have been mere political rhetoric. Now that they are in power themselves they have adopted certain Soviet values quite seamlessly.

Here's a former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, writing in this Sunday's the Washington Post:

This is a new debate for Americans, but there is no need for you to reinvent the wheel. Most nations can provide you with volumes on the subject. Indeed, with the exception of the Black Death, torture is the oldest scourge on our planet (hence there are so many conventions against it). Every Russian czar after Peter the Great solemnly abolished torture upon being enthroned, and every time his successor had to abolish it all over again. These czars were hardly bleeding-heart liberals, but long experience in the use of these "interrogation" practices in Russia had taught them that once condoned, torture will destroy their security apparatus. They understood that torture is the professional disease of any investigative machinery.

Apart from sheer frustration and other adrenaline-related emotions, investigators and detectives in hot pursuit have enormous temptation to use force to break the will of their prey because they believe that, metaphorically speaking, they have a "ticking bomb" case on their hands. But, much as a good hunter trains his hounds to bring the game to him rather than eating it, a good ruler has to restrain his henchmen from devouring the prey lest he be left empty-handed. Investigation is a subtle process, requiring patience and fine analytical ability, as well as a skill in cultivating one's sources. When torture is condoned, these rare talented people leave the service, having been outstripped by less gifted colleagues with their quick-fix methods, and the service itself degenerates into a playground for sadists. Thus, in its heyday, Joseph Stalin's notorious NKVD (the Soviet secret police) became nothing more than an army of butchers terrorizing the whole country but incapable of solving the simplest of crimes. And once the NKVD went into high gear, not even Stalin could stop it at will. He finally succeeded only by turning the fury of the NKVD against itself; he ordered his chief NKVD henchman, Nikolai Yezhov (Beria's predecessor), to be arrested together with his closest aides.

So, why would democratically elected leaders of the United States ever want to legalize what a succession of Russian monarchs strove to abolish? Why run the risk of unleashing a fury that even Stalin had problems controlling? Why would anyone try to "improve intelligence-gathering capability" by destroying what was left of it? Frustration? Ineptitude? Ignorance? Or, has their friendship with a certain former KGB lieutenant colonel, V. Putin, rubbed off on the American leaders? I have no answer to these questions, but I do know that if Vice President Cheney is right and that some "cruel, inhumane or degrading" (CID) treatment of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then the war is lost already.

I wrote some time back about the ramifications for the torturers in this regime. I quoted liberally from this great article article by Jason Vest in the National Journal:

"If you talk to people who have been tortured, that gives you a pretty good idea not only as to what it does to them, but what it does to the people who do it," he said. "One of my main objections to torture is what it does to the guys who actually inflict the torture. It does bad things. I have talked to a bunch of people who had been tortured who, when they talked to me, would tell me things they had not told their torturers, and I would ask, 'Why didn't you tell that to the guys who were torturing you?' They said that their torturers got so involved that they didn't even bother to ask questions." Ultimately, he said -- echoing Gerber's comments -- "torture becomes an end unto itself."

[...]

According to a 30-year CIA veteran currently working for the agency on contract, there is, in fact, some precedent showing that the "gloves-off" approach works -- but it was hotly debated at the time by those who knew about it, and shouldn't be emulated today. "I have been privy to some of what's going on now, but when I saw the Post story, I said to myself, 'The agency deserves every bad thing that's going to happen to it if it is doing this again,'" he said. "In the early 1980s, we did something like this in Lebanon -- technically, the facilities were run by our Christian Maronite allies, but they were really ours, and we had personnel doing the interrogations," he said. "I don't know how much violence was used -- it was really more putting people in underground rooms with a bare bulb for a long time, and for a certain kind of privileged person not used to that, that and some slapping around can be effective.

"But here's the important thing: When orders were given for that operation to stand down, some of the people involved wouldn't. Disciplinary action was taken, but it brought us back to an argument in the agency that's never been settled, one that crops up and goes away -- do you fight the enemy in the gutter, the same way, or maintain some kind of moral high ground?

This is an important thing for us to think about. It's not just a matter of abstract morality. It's a practical question of what happens to societies when they let go. It's hard to imagine how gay marriage or women's rights could even come close to the kind of weird, inhumane behavior that is set free when you go this deeply into sanctioned authoritarian sadism. I wrote in that post, called Genie In A Bottle:

To some extent civilization is nothing more than leashing the beast within. When you go to the dark side, no matter what the motives, you run a terrible risk of destroying yourself in the process. I worry about the men and women who are engaging in this torture regime. This is dangerous to their psyches. But this is true on a larger sociological scale as well. For many, many moons, torture has been a simple taboo --- you didn't question its immorality any more than you would question the immorality of pedophilia. You know that it's wrong on a visceral, gut level. Now we are debating it as if there really is a question as to whether it's immoral --- and, more shockingly, whether it's a positive good. Our country is now openly discussing the efficacy of torture as a method for extracting information.

When Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined the phrase "defining deviancy down" he couldn't ever have dreamed that we would in a few short decades be at a place where torture is no longer considered a taboo. It certainly makes all of his concerns about changes to the nuclear family (and oral sex) seem trivial by comparison. We are now a society that on some official levels has decided that torture is no longer a deviant, unspeakable behavior, but rather a useful tool. It's not hidden. People publicly discuss whether torture is really torture if it features less than "pain equavalent to organ failure." People no longer instinctively recoil at the word --- it has become a launching pad for vigorous debate about whether people are deserving of certain universal human rights. It spirals down from there.

People and societies don't just wake up one morning to find they no longer recognize themselves. It's a process. And we are in the process in this country of "defining deviancy down" in ways I never thought possible. We are legitimizing torture and indefinite detention --- saying that we will only do this to the people who really deserve it. One cannot help but wonder what "really deserves it" will mean in the years to come as we fight our endless war against terror.

Sure, right now it's just a bunch of foreigners and I guess we don't feel foreigners are entitled to basic human rights. They must not be human --- or at least not as human as "we" are. When you think about it, who knows who "we" are either? Right wingers make millions of dollars writing books about how liberals are godless, death-loving, traitors within. Many people who read those books probably believe these liberals are only one step away from being sub-human too ---- they are, after all, godless traitors.

But as the soviet experience shows, anyone can be defined as such sub-humans and at some point it usually comes around to catch even the people who wrote the original tales of godless, death-loving traitors within. I don't know why --- maybe it's a kill the messenger thing.

I would almost guarantee that if we continue down this path there will someday be a fine, loyal conservative who, for reasons of petty insider warfare or political expediency finds himself in a position like this at the hands of his former comrades:

In 1971, while in Lefortovo prison in Moscow (the central KGB interrogation jail), I went on a hunger strike demanding a defense lawyer of my choice (the KGB wanted its trusted lawyer to be assigned instead). The moment was most inconvenient for my captors because my case was due in court, and they had no time to spare. So, to break me down, they started force-feeding me in a very unusual manner -- through my nostrils. About a dozen guards led me from my cell to the medical unit. There they straitjacketed me, tied me to a bed, and sat on my legs so that I would not jerk. The others held my shoulders and my head while a doctor was pushing the feeding tube into my nostril.

The feeding pipe was thick, thicker than my nostril, and would not go in. Blood came gushing out of my nose and tears down my cheeks, but they kept pushing until the cartilages cracked. I guess I would have screamed if I could, but I could not with the pipe in my throat. I could breathe neither in nor out at first; I wheezed like a drowning man -- my lungs felt ready to burst. The doctor also seemed ready to burst into tears, but she kept shoving the pipe farther and farther down. Only when it reached my stomach could I resume breathing, carefully. Then she poured some slop through a funnel into the pipe that would choke me if it came back up. They held me down for another half-hour so that the liquid was absorbed by my stomach and could not be vomited back, and then began to pull the pipe out bit by bit. . . . Grrrr. There had just been time for everything to start healing during the night when they came back in the morning and did it all over again, for 10 days, when the guards could stand it no longer. As it happened, it was a Sunday and no bosses were around. They surrounded the doctor: "Hey, listen, let him drink it straight from the bowl, let him sip it. It'll be quicker for you, too, you silly old fool." The doctor was in tears: "Do you think I want to go to jail because of you lot? No, I can't do that. . . . " And so they stood over my body, cursing each other, with bloody bubbles coming out of my nose. On the 12th day, the authorities surrendered; they had run out of time. I had gotten my lawyer, but neither the doctor nor those guards could ever look me in the eye again.

Perhaps nobody cares that that this very thing is being done every day to hunger strikers in Guantanamo. But do people honestly think it can't happen to them? Once we unleash this beast it won't only be terrorists or muslims who will be in danger. In one way or another, we all will be.



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digby 9/22/2006 10:03:00 PM |

 
Here We Go Again

by tristero

US Strike group ordered to move off Iran's west coast. And it looks like Bush is gonna try a blockade. Assuming he does, everyone better brush up on their Cuban Missile Crisis history because that is how they're gonna try to market this product.

And yes, I know, the situation is in no way analogous to the Cuban Missile Crisis. For one thing, Iran is a little farther from the east coast of the US than Cuba is. That's the kind of knowledge you glean when you glance at a map. The president of the United States might want to do so every once in a while.

[Update RC in comments linked to two articles about the Eisenhower Strike Group (here and here), the implication being that the deployment to the Gulf is not being moved up because of war but because of exercises. However, RC agrees that Bush is up to something vis a vis Iran. I suppose we'll have to wait and see if the ESG deployment is part of that. An already existing plan for an exercise in the Gulf sounds like a pretty good cover, doesn't it?]
tristero 9/22/2006 04:09:00 PM |

 
"I Tried"

by digby


Oooh. Chris Wallace interviewed Bill Clinton today and sandbagged him with a question right out of the box about "why he didn't do more to stop bin Laden."

Clinton went ballistic. I just saw the excerpt on Fox:

At least I tried. That's the difference between me and some, including all the right wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did NOT try. I tried.

No kidding. I remember hearing this kind of garbage constantly:

"Look at the movie 'Wag the Dog.' I think this has all the elements of that movie," Rep. Jim Gibbons said. "Our reaction to the embassy bombings should be based on sound credible evidence, not a knee-jerk reaction to try to direct public attention away from his personal problems."

And back in the day Republicans were so concerned about encroaching federal police power that they routinely watered down Clinton's anti-terrorism proposals:

The measure, which the Senate passed overwhelmingly Wednesday evening, is a watered-down version of the White House's proposal. The Clinton administration has been critical of the bill, calling it too weak.

The original House bill, passed last month, had deleted many of the Senate's anti-terrorism provisions because of lawmakers' concerns about increasing federal law enforcement powers. Some of those provisions were restored in the compromise bill.

[...]

Sen. Don Nickles, R-Oklahoma, while praising the bill, said the country remains "very open" to terrorism. "Will it stop any acts of terrorism, domestic and international? No," he said, adding, "We don't want a police state."

Yes, they cared a lot about a police state when a Democrat was in office. So much so that looking back you'd have to conclude that by their standards today they failed to properly anticipate the threat.



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digby 9/22/2006 03:15:00 PM |

 
Taking It Outside The Beltway

by digby

Here's some good news:

Congressional Democrats plan to hold Iraq war hearings on Capitol Hill and around the country, turning an election spotlight on an issue much as the GOP did with immigration during the summer recess.

The Democrats’ will highlight the fact that they intend to go toe-to-toe with Republicans on the issue of national security, believing that this election cycle it can play to their advantage rather than to their detriment as it has in elections past.

And Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), a leading House critic of the war, indicated yesterday that he would give the hearings a degree of bipartisan cover by attending them when he can.

“Any [hearings] up here that I can get to, I’ll attend,” said Jones, who voted for the resolution authorizing President Bush to use force in Iraq but has since pressed to bring American troops home. “I wish it was my party, the committees in the House, doing the same thing. The American people want answers.”

Jones said he would try to attend the Senate Democratic Policy Committee’s (DPC) first planned hearing on Monday, provided he can make the five-hour drive from his district in time.

Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.) also said he would consider taking part in the hearings, which Democrats say will be open to Republican lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol.

“I might take them up on it,” Gutknecht said. “I would certainly consider sending them some written testimony.”

The hearing on Monday, featuring military officers who served in Iraq, will delve into “the policy decisions that led to the current situation in Iraq,” according to Barry Piatt, spokesman for DPC Chairman Byron Dorgan (N.D.).

Democrats said they will follow up that hearing with field hearings around the country at least through November. They argue that Republicans have neglected to provide proper oversight of the war in a number of areas, including postwar planning, troop readiness and care for troops and veterans.

Hopefully there will be a one stop shop that people can go to in order to find out where these field hearings are taking place. I know I'll be attending if there's one in my area. I'll keep you posted on that.

This is important stuff. Iraq is a huge issue and it trumps the GOP fearmongering if we can keep the focus on it.



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digby 9/22/2006 02:00:00 PM |

 
Outrage And Shame

by tristero

From Marty Lederman

[I]t only takes 30 seconds or so to see that the Senators have capitualted entirely, that the U.S. will hereafter violate the Geneva Conventions by engaging in Cold Cell, Long Time Standing, etc., and that there will be very little pretense about it. In addition to the elimination of habeas rights in section 6, the bill would delegate to the President the authority to interpret "the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions" "for the United States," except that the bill itself would define certain "grave breaches" of Common Article 3 to be war crimes.

So tell me, my fellow Americans:

How does it feel knowing that your government will pass laws permitting the violation of the Geneva Conventions against torture?

How does it feel knowing the taxes you pay from money you earned are going towards the salary of legally sanctioned torturers?

How does it feel knowing that the only political party with an organization large enough to stand in opposition to the American fascists in charge of this country's legislature and executive were actually boasting that they were not going to get involved in one of the most important moral debates of our time?

And how does it feel to have George W. Bush, that paragon of moral probity, mental stability, and well-informed intelligence, granted the legal right to determine what is and isn't torture?

I'll tell you how I feel. I am outraged and ashamed.

Kudos to Digby for calling this exactly right from the start. Shame, shame, shame on the cowards in both parties that permitted this disgracefully grotesque farce to happen. This is as inexcusable a stupidity as the neglect that permittted the 9/11 attacks, the idiotic reasoning and intellectual blindness that advocated and executed the Bush/Iraq war, and the failure to prepare for Katrina. What the hell is going on, that a country that prides itself on its heritage of freedom and liberty, that fought such an awful war over the degrading enslavement of human beings - that such a country would vote to permit some of the most repulsive and evil practices human beings are capable of and place the power to do so directly in the hands of a moral midget?
tristero 9/22/2006 01:19:00 AM |

Thursday, September 21, 2006

 
Tough and Smart

by digby

Democrats have put their trust in Senators Graham, McCain and Warner to push back against the White House, and Thursday they signaled that they intended to continue cooperating. “Five years after Sept. 11, it is time to make the tough and smart decisions to give the American people the real security they deserve,” said the Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada.

Still, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he would press to change a provision in the proposal that would deny detainees a right to challenge their captivity in court.

If you'd like to ask your Senator to support the Specter-Levin Amendment to preserve habeas corpus, you can go here for information and directions.

Update: Here's some more of that old time clarity:

On the key issue of detainee treatment that had caused the impasse between the White House and the dissident Republicans, the two sides agreed on a list of specified crimes that would provoke prosecution of CIA interrogators and others. They also agreed that past violations of the Geneva Conventions, an international treaty barring degrading and humiliating treatment of detainees, would not result in criminal or civil legal action.

The White House, for its part, yielded in its demand to adopt, with congressional approval, a restricted definition of its obligations under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. That article requires humane treatment of detainees and bars "violence to life and person," such as death and mutilation, as well as cruel treatment and "outrages upon personal dignity."

The compromise language gives the president a dominant -- but not exclusive -- role in deciding which interrogation methods are permitted by that provision of the treaty. It also prohibits detainees from using the Geneva Conventions to challenge their imprisonment or seek civil damages for mistreatment, as the administration sought.

[...]

The biggest hurdle, Senate sources said, was convincing administration officials that lawmakers would never accept language that allowed Bush to appear to be reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions. Once that was settled, they said, the White House poured most of its energy into defining "cruel or inhuman treatment" that would constitute a crime under the War Crimes Act. The administration wanted the term to describe techniques resulting in "severe" physical or mental pain, but the senators insisted on the word "serious."

Negotiations then turned to the amount of time that a detainee's suffering must last before the treatment amounts to a war crime. Administration officials preferred designating "prolonged" mental or physical symptoms, while the senators wanted something milder. They settled on "serious and non-transitory mental harm, which need not be prolonged."

These definitions appear in a section of the legislation that specifically lists "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions that might bring criminal penalties.

For lesser offenses barred by the Geneva Conventions -- those lying between cruelty and minor abuse, putting them at the heart of the intraparty dispute -- the draft legislation would give the president explicit authority to interpret "the meaning and application" of the relevant provisions in Common Article 3. It also requires that such interpretations be considered as "authoritative" as other U.S. regulations.

But the language also requires that such interpretations be published, rather than described in secret to a restricted number of lawmakers. That provision was demanded by the dissident lawmakers, who resented the administration's past efforts to curtail the number of members who were told of its policies. The provision also affirms that Congress and the judiciary can play their customary roles in reviewing the interpretations, a statement that Senate sources say the White House vigorously resisted.

A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview that Bush essentially got what he asked for in a different formulation that allows both sides to maintain that their concerns were addressed. "We kind of take the scenic route, but we get there," the official said.

So the good news is that these fine Republicans were all able to sit in Dick Cheney's Senate office and hash out what "amount of time that a detainee's suffering must last before the treatment amounts to a war crime" in the last three days. We can sleep better tonight knowing that they decided that the suffering must do "serious and non-transitory mental harm, which need not be prolonged." Excellent. And now we know that "cruel or inhuman treatment" that would constitute a crime under the War Crimes Act is comprised of "techniques resulting in 'serious' physical or mental pain, rather than 'severe.'" That's just the kind of "clarity" they've been looking for. On with the interrogations.

Oh and they will leave it up to the president to decide if standing shackled naked in a cold room with ice water splashed randomly on you for 72 hours is torture. Or if being forced to walk around on a leash like a dog or have fake menstrual blood smeared all over your face is degrading. (I wonder what he'll say?)

The best part is that they might let the prisoners see classified evidence used against them that's been redacted or summarized, nobody who was tortured will be able to sue the government or hold anyone in it legally liable and there's a nice fat habeas corpus loophole so these embarrassingly innocent people down in Gitmo will stay under wraps.

It's tough and smart for St John and the Republicans, for sure. For reasonable people, not so much. This is a terrible bill and I don't think the Democrats will get any benefit from backing it.



Update: The NY Times Editorial Board doesn't think it's much of a bill either.


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digby 9/21/2006 09:31:00 PM |

 
Speaking Of Torture

by digby

In the event of conflict, America also accepts our responsibility to protect innocent lives in every way possible. We'll bring food and medicine to the Iraqi people. We'll help that nation to build a just government, after decades of brutal dictatorship. The form and leadership of that government is for the Iraqi people to choose. Anything they choose will be better than the misery and torture and murder they have known under Saddam Hussein.

Uhm:

Torture in Iraq is reportedly worse now than it was under deposed president Saddam Hussein, the United Nations' chief anti-torture expert said Thursday.

Manfred Nowak described a situation where militias, insurgent groups, government forces and others disregard rules on the humane treatment of prisoners.

"What most people tell you is that the situation as far as torture is concerned now in Iraq is totally out of hand," said Nowak, the global body's special investigator on torture.

"The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein."

Nowak, an Austrian law professor, was in Geneva to present a report on detainee conditions at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, as well as to brief the UN Human Rights Council, the global body's top rights watchdog, on the situation of torture in countries around the world.

He said that some allegations of torture in Iraq he received were undoubtedly credible.

Government forces were among the perpetrators, Nowak said, citing ``very serious allegations of torture within the official Iraqi detention centres.

"You have terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these militias. There are so many people who are actually abducted, seriously tortured and finally killed," Nowak told reporters at the UN's European headquarters. "It's not just torture by the government. There are much more brutal methods of torture you'll find by private militias."

Nowak has yet to make an official visit to Iraq, and said such a mission would not be feasible as long as the security situation was so dangerous. He based his comments on interviews with people during a visit to Amman, Jordan and other sources.

"You find these bodies with very heavy and very serious torture marks," he said. "Many of these allegations, I have no doubt that they are credible."

digby 9/21/2006 08:59:00 PM |

 
Punked

by digby

The "compromise" will, as I predicted, allow the "tough interrogations" by amending the war crimes act. And they will reportedly create a new JAG office to review classified information and determine if terrorist suspects can see it if it's being used against them in a trial. We already know they have devised some habeas corpus loophole to keep innocent people imprisoned without any due process.

Republicans are happy.

CIA Director Michael Hayden said..."If this language becomes law, the Congress will have given us the clarity and the support that we need to move forward with a detention and interrogation program that allows us to continue to defend the homeland, attack al-Qaida and protect American and allied lives," he said in a written message to agency personnel.

The Republicans are now standing shoulder to shoulder having worked this whole thing out --- they are strong, they are tough, they are moral, and they are willing to work together to form a compromise that they can all live with. Aren't they great? This is why we should vote Republican.

Now watch this drive.

Ed Rogers on Hardball said Bush got to look both tough on terror and effective in bringing the senate along. Kweisi Mfume says McCain looks good to Democrats and independents and Bush looks good to Americans in general.

Can anyone in the know explain to me how letting McCain run with this torture debate benefitted the Democrats in any way?

Here's how the optics look to me:

McCain, the Republican rebel maverick, showed that Republicans are moral and look out for their troops.

Bush, the Republican statesman and leader, showed that he is committed to protecting Americans but that he is willing to listen and compromise when people of good faith express reservations about tactics.

The Democrats showed they are ciphers who don't have the stones to even say a word when the most important moral issue confronting the government is being debated.

Unless the Dems ready to threaten to filibuster a national security bill a month before an election --- which I doubt --- I expect that the Republicans are going to rush this through the conference and force through this piece of shit bill in a hurry, just like they forced the AUMF through in October 2002 and give the republicans a big honking "victory" in the GWOT.

The Dems are all going to be twisted into pretzels and look like they have no backbones as they struggle with a united GOP saying that McCain and Huckleberry Graham made sure "the program" is moral and necessary. Vote for it for for the terrorists. So they'll end up voting for it without getting any benefit from it.

I honestly think it would have been much, much better if they'd have forced their way into the debate and taken a firm stand -- if only to show they give a damn. This is a turn-out election and I have a feeling many a Democrat's stomach will turn as they see this triumph of GOP "leadership" in action. Why bother to vote when the Democrats don't bother to show up?

Update: MSNBC

The accord between President Bush and Republican Senate leaders announced Thursday afternoon on tribunals for al Qaida detainees at Guantanamo Navy Base sets up litmus-test votes both in the House and Senate next week.

These votes fit into the Republican strategy of scheduling showdowns that will highlight differences between the two parties in the run-up to the Nov. 7 elections.

The effect may be to put Democrats in close races on the spot — Democrats such as Sen. Bob Menendez in New Jersey and Rep. Sherrod Brown, who’s running for the Senate seat now held by Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio.

Just a few hours before the deal was announced, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid had held a press conference in which he mocked GOP leaders for being unable to come up with an agreement on detainee interrogation and tribunals.

He scoffed at the Republican “do nothing Congress.”

I don't know for sure, but it sure looks to me as if Reid got rolled by McCain.

But now it seems likely that Republican leaders will have at least two significant bills to vote on next week, a Mexican border fence bill and the detainee tribunal bill.

Who won? Who lost?

[...]

Political winners, assuming the detainee deal is drafted and goes to a floor vote in the the House and Senate:

* Bush: In return for making some concessions, he gets clear guidance for CIA interrogators on what they can and can’t do to detainees and he ends an intra-party impasse.
* McCain: Conservative commentators had attacked him for blocking Bush on the detainee tribunals but now he can resume his courtship of the GOP rank and file as he looks to the 2008 presidential nomination.

Probable losers: Civil libertarians who may still object to the tribunals and Democrats who have been laying low on the issue, apparently assuming that McCain-Bush impasse would prevent any deal. “They painted themselves into a corner,” said GOP Senate aide Don Stewart. “They said, ‘I’m with McCain,’ and now McCain has reached an agreement.”

Goddamit, I told you so. I couldn't be more unhappy that I was right.

Update:

Marty Lederman: Senators Snatch Defeat From Jaws of Victory: U.S. to be First Nation to Authorize Violations of Geneva


Clarification: When I wrote "why bother to vote" I meant it in a purely rhetorical sense. Of course you must vote and you must vote for Democrats. I don't believe they are playing this well in a turnout mid-term election but we simply have no choice but to try to stop the people who are actually ordering this torture and degradation.

Send your representatives letters and let them know what you think. But vote! Unless you're leaving the country the only choice you have is to fight.


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digby 9/21/2006 02:17:00 PM |

 
Breakthrough

by digby

I'm waiting on the edge of my seat to hear what the "bipartisan compromise" on the torture and detainee legislation between Rebel McCain and the white house is. The one thing I noticed in the tiny bit of the press conference I just saw on CNN in passing was that this great "deal" didn't include even one Democrat.

Can we all see how horrible the optics of that are?

So far, when it comes to the nation's policy on torture and terrorist detainees, the Democrats are not just soft, they are completely irrelevant. I'm not sure that's a great idea --- but waddo I know?



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digby 9/21/2006 01:39:00 PM |

 
Thank You Big Gumint!

by digby

My internet service has been disrupted since last night and my laptop is on the fritz so I've been offline until this moment --- where I am blogging from the beautiful new Santa Monica public library.

The place is crammed full of people, in the stacks, online at the 50 or more modern computers that are available to the public or sitting comfortably in easy chairs in this free wifi environment with their laptops --- some of them ancient but still servicable. There are a whole bunch of kids in the great children's sections being taught how to read and love books. And there are a ton of elderly who are hanging out in a nice peaceful, comfortable environment in the presence of other people instead of sitting all alone.

Can I just say how valuable these kinds of public services are to a community and how much those who are usually lucky enough to be able to afford all these luxuries like broadband or wi-fi or new computers take such things for granted? This is the type of thing our tax dollars pay for and when we "starve the beast" it's the first thing that goes. Yet without it we will further stratify out society and make it impossible for a vast number of people to be productive, informed, connected citizens.

This is one of those great examples of important government functions that Bill Sher suggests we talk about in his book "Wait! Don't Move To Canada." So I'm talking about it.

Today, I'm one of those people who needs this public service. I'm damned glad to have it and proud to pay my taxes to support it.


(Of course, this is Santa Monica, so I can buy a delicious soy latte right here too. Is this a great blue state or what?)



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digby 9/21/2006 11:21:00 AM |

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

 
Party Like It's Fall, 2002!

by tristero

I wonder: Did anyone at the Times realize that the facts in these paragraphs contradict the Bush-dictated propaganda spin in their "reporting"?

When President Bush and his advisers decided to allow President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran into the country to address the United Nations, their strategy was simple: containment.

There would be no visits to other cities where he could denounce Washington or question Israel’s legitimacy. There would be no opportunities, beyond his speech to the General Assembly, to turn questions about his nuclear intentions into repeated diatribes about America’s nuclear arsenal.

It turned out that Mr. Ahmadinejad had a Plan B.

The scope of his determination to dominate not only the airwaves but the debate became evident yesterday evening, when he entered a hotel conference room on the East Side with a jaunty smile, a wave and an air of supreme confidence.

Sounds to me like the only person trying "to dominate not only the airwaves but the debate" was George W. Bush who did everything he could to, in the Times's own words practice "containment" of Ahmadinejad.

The issue of whether it was a good or bad thing to provide Ahmadinejad an opportunity to yak it up in public is a separate one from the issue of whether the Times is once again kowtowing to Bush propaganda directives. It is perfectly consistent to be revolted by Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial and be horrified by the notion that the American media has once again capitulated to pressure from the Bush administration. I may address the former in a day or so [I do so below in the second update], but the notion that the newspaper of record would report, with a straight face, that Bush tried and succeeded in totally suppressing Ahmadinejad's access to American media, but characterize the Iranian president, and not Bush, as the one trying to dominate the debate, is simply bizarre. And freaky. And very scary.

The prospect of living through a repeat of 2002/2003, when it was simply impossible to determine the truth from any American media source of influence - my God, please, not again.

[Update: I want to add that I know the people at the Times are not stupid and probably did see the contradiction, yet chose to print Bush propaganda spin anyway. Why? I suspect word has come down from above that discussion is over (not that there ever was any in the way Americans understand it), the die is cast, it's happening. Bush is not planning to go to war, but is going to war with Iran, and with that in mind the Times doesn't wish to appear to be coddling this season's black hat.

Don't bother praying that the Bush/Iran war will be short. It won't be. As to what to do, I haven't the foggiest idea. But I think I can detect the outline of what Bush is up to. Unlike 2002, there won't be some 7 months of what Rice laughingly called "diplomacy." It was, from Bush's standpoint, a pointless, useless, exercise and a waste of time. Who says Bush doesn't learn from his mistakes? This time the official New New Product launch seems, in a word, imminent.

And man, there is nothing that would please me more than, two months from now, for all of you to write me and accuse me of being entirely wrong, irresponsible, and alarmist.]

[Update: After some serious thought on the issue, informed as always by the commenters here, I think I've sorted out what I think about providing Ahmanidejad with a platform in the American press. It is a difficult call and I may change my mind as I think about it some more and learn more.

Ahmanidejad's Holocaust denial is odious and inflammatory, but that is all it is. It is not fact-based, of course, and therefore, it is not news and not interesting and should be noted, en passant, unless directly relevant to other issues. Please note the "directly." I am not saying to "hide" his views; I'm saying that there is no newsworthy reason to harp on them (by the way, several commenters urged me to consider that Ahmanidejad's been poorly translated. I'm sure he has, and I've read some of Juan Cole's posts on the subject and while it's important to understand exactly what he's saying, the gist is perfectly clear. Whether Ahmanidejad's a properly understood anti-Semite or a misunderstood one really is not the point: it is difficult either way to make a case that he likes Jews (let alone Israel) or even that he's merely indifferent to Jews (and yes, I suspect you will let me have it in comments, but you will have to show me stronger evidence than a misconstrued remark to convince me Ahmanidejad is not anti-semitic as well as anti-Zionist). What is germane is whether his anti-semitism directly informs his remarks and actions on issues critical to Iran's self-interest, and the world's, including Israel.)

While his Holocaust denial has neither truth nor value as news, Ahmanidejad's view of the present world situation, and Iran's place in it, is an extremely important view for Americans to have unexpurgated access to. Therefore, Americans need to hear quite a bit from Ahmanidejad and other Iranians. Journalists, however, would be derelict if they reported only his most inflammatorily stupid remarks, and neglected to report also what he says about crucial issues to US/Iranian/Middle East relations.

While this clearly makes sense to me, there are others who feel quite strongly that permitting Ahmanidejad a platform to say anything to the American people tacitly condones his anti-semitism. It's not an entirely bogus argument - it's quite true that providing proponents of "intelligent design" creationism a microphone imbues them with a false credibility they don't deserve. A similar argument could be made with Ahmanidejad.

However, it's not Ahmanidejad we must hear from. It is the president of Iran who happens, right now, to be Ahmanidejad. The benefits of hearing from the president of Iran trumps any concerns about elevating his presumed status through exposure on CNN and the networks. When and if Ahmanidejad is again an anonymous nobody with no power or influence, then it is no longer necessary to listen to anything he has to say. Before then, we simply have an obligation to listen.

"Would you say the same if this was 1934 and his name was Hitler?" Of course I would. Listening to Hitler wasn't the problem. It was refusing to understand that Hitler was Hitler that led to catastrophe. Hitler both lied and was simultaneously quite candid about his intentions, but the only way to separate one from the other was to study Hitler and that took, among other things, listening to and reading him. If Ahmanidejad has even the slightest chance of harming the world as badly as Hitler did, it behooves us to learn as much as we can about him. And by us, I don't mean "the Government," I mean you and me. It is our duty to be informed and vote for informed representatives who will take our informed opinions into account. The fact that this is true only in principle -and non-existent under Bush - doesn't relieve us of our duties as citizens, however.

Here's another argument that could be made in support of keeping Ahmanidejad from conducting interviews with the press and others. While many folks seem to have forgotten this, many former hostages believe Ahmanidejad was directly involved with the Iranian hostage crisis. When the story broke, I took one look at the pictures and felt that it was a virtual certainty he was one of the captors.

While I fully understand, and partially share, the revulsion of those who were held hostage in Iran by Ahmanidejad and his buddies, I'm afraid that, like it or not, his position as a powerful Iranian makes it imperative to hear from him.

But again, not everything he says is interesting. His opinions on the Holocaust are as batty as Crazy Mel's and don't deserve news-space. His call to debate Bush is hilarious. But there are hundreds of questions that could be asked, hundreds of things he could be told about the situation in the US, all of which might be helpful in lessening tensions.

He must be heard from and he must be engaged.]
tristero 9/20/2006 11:10:00 PM |

 
Six Paks

by digby

So Blitzer interviews the codpiece today and actually makes some news.

But before that, here's what we heard:

Blitzer: Osama bin laden is still at large. Ayman al Zawahiri is still at large. What went wrong?

Bush: (agitated) A lot went right. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, if we can get a good bill out of the senate and the house is gonna go on trial. Ramzi bin al-Sibh. Abu Zubaydah

Blitzer: The main guys are still at large

Bush: (more agitated) Well, no question Osama bin Laden is at large, but the men who ordered the attack ann about 75-85% of the Al Qaeda that was involved in the planning and operating the attacks are in jus...

Blitzer: But the United States is the most powerful country in the world

Bush: (pissed) ... can I just finish?

Blitzer: Why can't we find these guys?

Bush: (red-faced) Wolf, Wolf. Thank you. Give me a chance to finish... Uuuh...

Osama bin Laden is in hiding.

And we're still spending a lot of time trying to find him. But the key thing the American people have gotta know is that security comes not only with getting him which I'm convinced we will, but also doing other things to protect 'em. One is to dismantle Al Waeda. Two is to listen to phone calls of Al Qaeda calling the United States and responding to that. Three is to get information so we can prevent attack.

Getting bin Laden is important but doing, putting thins in place, putting procedures in place that protect you is equally important and we're doin' both.

Did everyone get that? Bin laden is in hiding which is why we can't find him. And we'll put "KSM" on trial if Bush can get a "good bill" out of the senate. Otherwise ... he'll have to keep him at Gitmo forever without a trial

It's becoming more and more evident that Bush's war on terrorism consists of getting the country sucked into middle east quagmires and institutionalizing random torture, endless detention and warrentless wiretapping of Americans. I feel so safe.

Meanwhile, Bush went on to say that he think Musharref is a good guy who wants to bring Al Qaeda to justice because they tried to kill him. Several times. (This is how the decider thinks of all global politics --- it's all about the leaders' personal feelings.) Blitzer asked if there were others in Pakistan who might not have the same committment. Bush answered:

Eeeeee...maybe. Maybe. There no queastion there's a kind of hostile territory, the remote regions of Pakistan that makes it, uh, easier for somebody to hide. But we're on the hunt. We'll get him.

Blitzer asked if he would give the order to kill or capture bin Laden if they had actionable intelligence that he was in Pakistan. Steely-eyed rocket man looked in the camera and said "absolutely."

Musharref was not amused, apparently. He was asked about this at a press conference and said:

We would not like to allow that at all. We will do it ourselves. We would like to do it ourselves.

Bush knew he wasn't supposed to say that but he couldn't help himself. This was the correct talking point, from his press conference last week:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Earlier this week, you told a group of journalists that you thought the idea of sending special forces to Pakistan to hunt down bin Laden was a strategy that would not work.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q Now, recently you've also --

THE PRESIDENT: Because, first of all, Pakistan is a sovereign nation.

Let's all get the laughter out of our system, ok? Ok.

Continue:

Q Well, recently you've also described bin Laden as a sort of modern day Hitler or Mussolini. And I'm wondering why, if you can explain why you think it's a bad idea to send more resources to hunt down bin Laden, wherever he is?

THE PRESIDENT: We are, Richard. Thank you. Thanks for asking the question. They were asking me about somebody's report, well, special forces here -- Pakistan -- if he is in Pakistan, as this person thought he might be, who is asking the question -- Pakistan is a sovereign nation. In order for us to send thousands of troops into a sovereign nation, we've got to be invited by the government of Pakistan.

Secondly, the best way to find somebody who is hiding is to enhance your intelligence and to spend the resources necessary to do that; then when you find him, you bring him to justice. And there is a kind of an urban myth here in Washington about how this administration hasn't stayed focused on Osama bin Laden. Forget it. It's convenient throw-away lines when people say that. We have been on the hunt, and we'll stay on the hunt until we bring him to justice, and we're doing it in a smart fashion, Richard. We are. And I look forward to talking to President Musharraf.

Look, he doesn't like al Qaeda. They tried to kill him. And we've had a good record of bringing people to justice inside of Pakistan, because the Paks are in the lead. They know the stakes about dealing with a violent form of ideological extremists. And so we will continue on the hunt. And we've been effective about bringing to justice most of those who planned and plotted the 9/11 attacks, and we've still got a lot of pressure on them. The best way to protect the homeland is to stay on the offense and keep pressure on them.

See, "the Paks" are supposed to be in the lead. Bush just couldn't force himself to say that again when Blitzer cornered him on the issue. And Blitzer cornered him on the issue because this weird stuff about Waziristan and Pakistan's deal with al Qaeda is very hard to square with our alleged committment to fighting the next Hitlerstalinfascists.

How Bush is able to get away with playing the Codpiece card when he's obviously completely stymied with Afghanistan, Pakistan and al Qaeda is beyond me. It takes guts to do it, you have to give him that. And in the six weeks before an election in the United States of the 21st century, guts are the only thing that matters.



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digby 9/20/2006 02:54:00 PM |

 
A Liberal's Handbook

by digby




Bill Sher of Liberal Oasis has a new book and it's a great guide for those who are looking for common sense arguments to use as an activist and in your every day life.


Here's an example:

Promote the Three R's of Liberal Government

Don't refer to "the government" and feed the image of a distant, oppressive entity. Always speak of "our government," to accurately paint government as an extension of the people that we control and direct.

Don't accept that the core debate between Democrats and Republicans is whether government should be big or small. Define liberal government as representative, responsive, and responsible and conservative government as elitist, callous and reckless.

In conversations about politics, cite examples from your community where our government makes a positivie difference in people's lives, such as when veterans receive good medical care from a veterans Administration facility or children get access to the Internet at school or in a library thanks to federal funding. At the same time, point out instances where the lack of government involvement made a situation worse, such as when electricity deregulation increased rates and degraded service.

Don't leave it to anti-government conservatives to criticize our government in places where it is not working well. The more we lead the charge for reforming ineffective government, the more credibnility we will have when proposing effective government solutions and the harder it will be for conservatives to exploit those examples and fan overall distrust of government.

The book is full of down-to-earth advice like this as well as a thorough analysis of our goals and prospects. And it's written in the clear and entertaining prose you find on Liberal Oasis every day.

I'm sure you already know that Bill Sher is one of the sharpest bloggers around. His insights are always invaluable and this book very nicely distills his best stuff into one inspiring, but practical, guidebook.

Support your local blogger by buying this book.


Update: The Talking Dog interviews the man himself about the book and other matters.


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digby 9/20/2006 01:55:00 PM |

 
Running With It

by digby


A lot of people have questioned why I think the Democrats have decided to let McCain run with the torture issue. It's because that's what the press was reporting last week.

Here's one example:

So there you have the president's, perhaps, chief foe on this issue, again, as dug in as he is. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats, Wolf, have been pretty much trying to sit back and let John McCain and his colleagues fight it out for them. The senator from New York, Chuck Schumer, who is in charge of getting Democrats elected and reelected this Fall, here is what he had to say. He said "when conservative military men like John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Colin Powell stand up to the president, it shows how wrong and isolated the White House is."

So, Democrats are happy to have John McCain fight their political fight for them right now. As for Republicans, who are allies of the president here, and there are a lot of them on Capitol Hill, they have been meeting behind closed doors, trying to figure out the best strategy to echo the arguments that Mr. Bush is making in the Rose Garden today, because, as you noted, this legislation will be on the House floor next Wednesday and possibly on the Senate floor, which is where there will be a big fight as early as next week as well, Wolf.

Schumer's statement doesn't mean he's going to vote for whatever McCain comes up with, but it sure sounds like it's possible. In any case, the bill that was passed out of the armed services committee is terrible, so even if McCain "succeeds" Democrats still can't, in good conscience, vote for it.

Here's the Center For Constitutional Rights on this issue

President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Ratner said today: "The Warner-Graham-McCain bill denies habeas corpus to all aliens held outside the United States and currently in U.S. custody. And 'outside' includes Guantanamo.

"However in the case of those who have been found to be unlawful enemy combatants by Combatant Status Review Tribunal (combatant status review panels used at Guantanamo) it gives a meaningless court of appeals 'review' -- a review that examines whether or not the U.S. complied with its own procedures -- but not ... a real court hearing with factual development as habeas corpus requires.

"For those aliens detained outside the U.S. that have not had CSRT hearings -- the high majority -- in facilities like Bagram in Afghanistan, the Warner bill simply abolished habeas or any other court review.

"The consequences are breathtaking. The U.S. can pick up any alien, even a legal permanent resident in the U.S., and take them to an off-shore prison and hold them forever without any kind of court hearing.

"While all the attention on this legislation has focused on Geneva conventions and military commissions, the Warner alternative, like the administration bill, authorizes lifelong detention without habeas or any genuine review whatsoever."

They
have an action recommendation that's worth doing:

The debate around these bills misses the point: both versions strip away the fundamental right to habeas corpus, the right to challenge your detention in a court of law, not to be locked up under the President’s say-so, guilty or innocent, never to be heard from again.

An amendment in play could take out this dangerous measure – please use our site to fax your senators and tell them to support the Specter-Levin Amendment on habeas corpus when it gets introduced. The bills are S.3901, The Military Commissions Act of 2006, sponsored by Senator Warner and S.3861, The Bringing Terrorists to Justice Act of 2006, sponsored by Senator Frist. Please call your Senators at (202) 224-3121 IMMEDIATELY, especially if they are among the 26 we’ve identified below as critical in this fight.

This is what is happening to innocent people under our system today. It's right out of Kafka and it won't change because St John the Annointed and Huckelberry Graham stage a fake fight with the president. The whole scheme is untenable and the Democrats need to delay this legislation at the very least until after the election.

This rush to pass it before Novemeber should be everyone's first clue that this thing is a sham. Unless somebody puts a poison pill in the McCain/Warner/Graham legislation that we haven't seen, I have a feeling a bunch of Dems are going to roll on this piece of garbage and another step toward American becoming a rogue superpower will have been taken for political reasons. That's how we got into Iraq, after all.

And, sadly, this whole thing will end up giving John McCain one more notch in his belt as the savior of the republic.


You can access a simple form and the addresses and phone numbers of senators at the link above if you want to let them know that you expect them to support the Specter-Levin amendment.


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digby 9/20/2006 10:13:00 AM |

 
Torture Trap

by digby


Blow me over with a feather. It looks as if the White House may have "compromised" on the torture bill. Let's just say I'm not shocked.

A couple of days ago I quoted this MSNBC article

McCain and the other GOP senators have indicated they would be willing to amend domestic U.S. law, especially the War Crimes Act, to permit at least some "enhanced" CIA techniques. They are also willing to pass legislation that would deny many rights to detainees at Guantánamo Bay and allow them to be held indefinitely.

and then commented:

Bush has always said that he wanted to "clarify" Article III and I predict that they will soon have a "breakthrough" that says they have found a way to do just that --- by amending the War Crimes Act.

The NY Times reports:

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a Republican on the Armed Services Committee who has supported the president’s legislation, said Tuesday morning that the White House had agreed to work within the War Crimes Act to refine the obligations under Common Article 3.

“There’s agreement on the goal,” Mr. Cornyn said, “that is, that we continue to comply with our international treaty obligations and all of our domestic laws, but at the same time not tie the hands of our intelligence officials.”

[...]

The senators propose to provide clearer guidelines for interrogators by amending the War Crimes Act to enumerate several “grave breaches” that constitute violations of Common Article 3.

That's the Kabuki. Here's the rub:

Several issues appeared to remain in flux, among them whether the two sides could agree on language protecting C.I.A. officers from legal action for past interrogations and for any conducted in the future. Beyond the issue of interrogations, the two sides have also been at odds over the rights that should be granted to terrorism suspects during trials, in particular whether they should be able to see all evidence, including classified material, that a jury might use to convict them.

I predict that McCain and Graham are prepared to do the big el-foldo on all that and take the "victory" on amending the Geneva Convention which was never really in dispute in the first place. They will be heroes, the president will claim victory like he always does and everyone will get exactly what they need. (Man, I'll bet Joe Lieberman is kicking himself that he didn't get a piece of this. It's his kind of bipartisan deal.)

But regardless of how this Geneva/torture Kabuki comes out, let's not forget that the McCain, Warner, Huckelberry bill is already a very, very bad bill that no Democrat can in good conscience support.

From Jack Balkin:

It's important to understand that although Senators McCain, Graham and Warner are getting a lot of great press on their disagreements with President Bush, and are being widely championed as brave defenders of human rights, the bill they have authored in the Senate is not a good bill; it is merely less terrible than the one the President is pushing. The press has either been hoodwinked on this score or has been complicit in downplaying this aspect of their handiwork. I choose to believe that it is the former: hence this post.

In particular, the McCain-Graham-Warner bill, like the President's, would prevent anyone detained in Guantanamo Bay (or any other detention facility outside the U.S.) from challenging what has been done to them in court except as an appeal from the decision of a military commission.

That means that if the government decides never to try an individual before a commission, but just holds them in prison indefinitely, there is no way that they can ever get a hearing on whether they are being held illegally-- because they are not in fact a terrorist; or a hearing on whether they are being treated illegally-- because they have been abused or tortured or subjected to one of the Administration's "alternative sets of procedures"-- a.k.a. torture lite.(read on)

I think Bill Kristol's partially right about how this plays politically in his essay called "The Trap:"

There is now a clear and live contrast between Bush and the Democrats on an important issue in the war on terror.

Wait a minute, you say--it's not just Democrats who oppose Bush. Four Republicans joined the Democratic senators--John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins. Colin Powell is with them. So the Democrats have cover.

No, they don't. The fact that McCain has badly damaged his 2008 presidential chances doesn't mean the Democrats can't be hurt in 2006. True, there could be a dozen GOP votes for the Democratic alternative on the floor of the Senate next week. There were a dozen Democratic votes for Bush's tax cuts in 2001. It didn't prevent Republicans from distinguishing themselves from Demo crats on taxes. A few defections won't prevent Republicans from saying--truthfully--that there is a real difference between the two parties on the war on terror, and that they stand with Bush and against Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

Democratic candidates will respond that McCain also stands with them. It won't help. The American people don't agree with McCain on this. And they're not going to be persuaded by some of the arguments made by Bush's critics. Let Democratic candidates try to argue that, unless we go even further than required by the 2005 legislation sponsored by McCain (which Bush's proposal embraces), al Qaeda might react by not treating Americans decently. Let Democratic candidates try to defend the notion that we'll get lots of credit in Europe by going the extra mile--as if the 2005 detainees legislation generated any good will there. Let Democratic candidates align themselves with world opinion (as interpreted by Colin Powell), and join in expressing doubt about "the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."

I don't think it's quite the electoral smash for Republicans he thinks it is nor has Mccain "badly damaged" his chances in 2008. Bush is going to give him a big sloppy kiss when this is all done and everything will be forgiven. But it's still a trap. I think the Dems are thinking that McCain et al are going to get this bill delayed until after the election. Maybe they will. Or maybe they can stall it in conference and they have their fingers crossed that they will win in November and can derail the thing.

But what in the hell are the Dems going to do if McCain makes a deal and this thing gets to the floor? Are they actually going to vote for a bill that eliminates habeas corpus for terrorist suspects? Because if they don't, you know what the Republicans are going to be saying, don't you? After all, the saviors of the republic and guardian kinghts of the constitution say this bill is ok. The only reason the Dems can possibly have for opposing it now is that they are terrorist loving cowards.

I have to assume the Dems have good reasons for letting McCain run with this. But they are certainly placing a lot of trust in a man who is running for president from the opposing party. If Democrats in 2006 end up voting for this McCain/Warner/Graham monstrosity based on nothing but McCain's word they have learned nothing. Unless they are willing to filibuster a month before the election, which I seriously doubt, the Republicans will have backed them into exactly the same corner they did with the Iraq war resolution and the Homeland security bills in 2002. I'm not going to believe it until I see it with my own eyes, but I'm worried.



Update: The Senate Majority project has started a McCain Weasel Watch on Detainees. Probably a good idea...
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digby 9/20/2006 12:22:00 AM |

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

 
Boffo

by digby


My piece from earlier about why liberal hawks shouldn't have supported the invasion of Iraq on the merits, unfortunately comes to mind as I read Sam Gardiner's paper (pdf) at the Century Foundation that everyone's talking about. He's been convinced that the US has been preparing the ground in Iran for military action since last spring.

He writes this:

The real U.S. policy objective is not merely to eliminate the nuclear program, but to overthrow the regime. It is hard to believe, after the misguided talk prior to Iraq of how American troops would be greeted with flowers and welcomed as liberators, but those inside and close to the administration who are arguing for an air strike against Iran actually sound as if they believe the regime in Tehran can be eliminated by air attacks....[But] no serious expert on Iran believes the argument about enabling a regime change. On the contrary, whereas the presumed goal is to weaken or disable the leadership and then replace it with others who would improve relations between Iran and the United States, it is far more likely that such strikes would strengthen the clerical leadership and turn the United States into Iran’s permanent enemy.

....At the end of the path that the administration seems to have chosen, will the issues with Iran be resolved? No....Will the United States force a regime change in Iran? In all probability it will not....Will the United States have weakened its position in the Middle East? Yes....After all the effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers. "You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. You have to make diplomacy work."

That sounds, once again, as if the administration is rushing headlong into something that is a very bad idea. But then, it's not surprising, is it?

Here we are, a few weeks before another important election in which the Republican hold on power is threatened and suddenly the shit is coming down. The terrorists are all going to be running in the streets if we don't hurry, hurry, hurry and pass the president's torture bill. Iran is on the verge of getting nukes and sending them to kill you in your beds any day now. The world is a horrible, frightening place and if you don't know it you are a fool. All that's standing between us and chaos is a man and his codpiece.

Richard Holbrook was on Blitzer today and was terribly confused by all this. It made me laugh:

Holbrook: And today's events -- and Jack Cafferty really got it right -- President Bush's speech was pretty good as speeches go, but the theater here is remarkable. A hunk president, the world's leading anti-Semite, has been elevated to a mano a mano on the world stage today by circumstances which I don't understand. I don't understand why President Bush would have allowed himself to be scheduled on the same day as Ahmadinejad.

BLITZER: Could he change that, or is that something that is up to the United Nations?

HOLBROOKE: That's a technological issue. I'd leave it to the current ambassador, but let me just put it this way: Had I been in that job, I would have done everything I could to prevent them talking on the same day so that -- to prevent the kind of conversations you and Jack Cafferty correctly were just having.

This is just theater today, but a tiny pipsqueak leader and an anti-Semite of the worst order, the worst since Hitler in some ways, is being given this co-equal status. That's what we're talking about.

Really, Dick. You aren't that stupid are you? They desperately need to make that pip-squeek leader equal to Bush so that Bush can be seen "standing up to him" and smiting him. The theater at the UN today was boffo and it was the whole point. There's an election to win.

And meanwhile, playing on screen #2, we had the macho, resolute president demanding that the congress approve his "tough" interrogation techniques while the Senators proved that Republicans are independent mavericks who follow their own equally resolute moral code. God bless the Republican Party, it has it all. Only they can save us from the Islamofascists and keep America clean and pure and good at the same time. Vote GOP or die.

I don't know if it will work again. This trillion dollar franchise is getting a little bit stale. But damn, the production values are awesome. They not only know how to put lipstick on this pig, they give it botox and liposuction.



Update: I don't mean to suggest that this is only about electoral politics. That dictates the timing but it doesn't mean they aren't serious about confronting Iran or legalizing torture. It's all part of the same game. I think they've proven they like exercizing power in all the ways that that implies.



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digby 9/19/2006 07:27:00 PM |

 
Cry Wolf

by digby


Here's our favorite pychotic diplomat talking about Iran today:

BLITZER: ... the International Atomic Energy Agency stops short of flatly saying they are building a bomb.

BOLTON: They have stopped short, but they've also refused to say that Iran's program is purely peaceful. It may just take one piece of information that the IAEA published. Iran has documents from AQCON[A.Q Kahn], the great nuclear proliferator from Pakistan about how to fabricate uranium metal into hemispheres. There's only one use of uranium metal formed in the hemisphere, and that's to form a nuclear weapon. But nothing to do with peaceful uses of nuclear power.

BLITZER: But you understand why some people are skeptical of the Bush administration's stance given the failures on the weapons of mass destruction intelligence leading up to the Iraq war?

BOLTON: Quite honestly, I think it's few and far between, people who are skeptical of what direction Iran is taking. Where there have been disagreements with our European friends and even with Russia and China have been over how to handle it. But I will say, it's not -- this is not a dispute over intelligence. Obviously, intelligence can be wrong in several different directions. This is fundamentally a dispute I think within the security council about when to impose sanctions.

BLITZER: Because I raise the question because going into the war with Iraq, all of the intelligence communities in Europe and the Middle East and United States, they seem to be convinced that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We now know he did not, so maybe all of the intelligence communities as far as Iran are wrong right now for whatever reason.

And I say that only because the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, a member of the intelligence committee, Carl Levin of Michigan, they told me recently that U.S. intelligence on Iran -- they don't believe is very good.

BOLTON: Well I think our intelligence could get much better, let's put it that way. But don't forget, intelligence was wrong about Saddam Hussein in 1990, '91 too when they didn't think they were close to developing a nuclear weapon, where the IAEA had no proof, but where after that war, we learned a lot about what Saddam Hussein was up to.

So as they say, intelligence can be wrong in a lot of directions. There is no doubt that the strategic decision that Iran has been following for close to 20 years has been to get not only a nuclear weapons capability, but to enhance the range and accuracy of their ballistic missile forces as well and that combination is extraordinarily dangerous.

BLITZER: How close, based on the information you have, is Iran to building a nuclear bomb?

BOLTON: Well, this is where the intelligence estimates vary and they vary all over the lot. I think precisely because of our uncertainty about the exact state of Iran's nuclear program, we have to treat their clear effort to get a nuclear weapon capability as very serious and not to assume that the intelligence estimates that put it off for many years are necessarily going to be right.

When you see a regime seeking the capability and you see a president like Ahmadinejad denying the existence of the Holocaust, calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, sponsoring conferences with names like the World Without the United States, this is something that it's not only capabilities, it's intentions that you have to take seriously.

BLITZER: So you think it's realistic to assume if they had a bomb, they would actually use it?

BOLTON: I think it's realistic in a regime that is the central banker of international terrorism that is seeking a ballistic missile capability far beyond any legitimate defensive needs they might have, but which also puts arms and weapons in the hands of terrorists today. We've got a threat if they had the weapon, they could not make it with a ballistic missile, they could give it to a terrorist group like Hamas or Hezbollah as well.

BLITZER: Well that sounds very ominous, even much more dangerous than what the United States feared going into the war with Iraq. I assume the military option is being dusted off if it's not more advanced?

BOLTON: Well I think we've said repeatedly we never take the military option off the table, but President Bush has been emphatic for several years now our preferred way of dealing with the Iranian program is through peaceful and diplomatic means and he emphasized that again this morning at the U.N.

BLITZER: If those peaceful diplomatic means don't work, sanctions don't get off the ground, if there's no change in the Iranian position, what happens then?

BOLTON: Well that's why we say we don't take any option off the table about, but our effort at the moment, our concentration, our focus is on getting it resolved through diplomatic means. Through sanctions, if need be.

BLITZER: Is it credible to think that the U.S. could destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program, assuming they have one?

BOLTON: I think they should believe that.

BLITZER: Do you think the U.S. could that with air strikes, with cruise missiles, with -- presumably they spread out their facilities around the country and they're deep underground. They learned the lessons of the Iraqis back in 1981 when the Israelis destroyed their reactor.

BOLTON: Well I'm not sure what the Iranians have really learned and I don't want to get into a hypothetical how it might happen. But I do think that the president has been very clear over a number of months that it's unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons. I think when he says it's unacceptable, I think what he means by that, it's not acceptable.

BLITZER: Is Senator Voinovich of Ohio right when he compares Ahmadinejad to Hitler?

BOLTON: I think any man who denies the existence of the Holocaust and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map hasn't learned the lessons of history and I don't know what kind of comparison you can draw other than that.

BLITZER: Would you make a similar comparison?

BOLTON: That's not my function. I mean, what I do is follow the policies set by the president and the secretary. We all have our personal opinions. I think it's unacceptable for the head of a member government of the United Nations that says -- the charter of which says we are to resolve our differences by peaceful means to have somebody like that calling for another U.N. member state to be wiped off the map.

BLITZER: Is that why you don't think the president or other top officials should be meeting with Iranian leaders right now?

BOLTON: Well, we have made an incredibly generous offer to Iran on the nuclear question, even though they are a principal state sponsor of terrorism. We've even been willing to put that aside to say we would be prepared with the Europeans and the Russians and the Chinese to sit down with Iran if they do one thing, they suspend their uranium enrichment activity. And that's not the U.S.' condition, that's the European's condition, it's the Security Council's condition, it's the IAEA's condition.

I don't know why all that sounds so familiar, but it does. I feel like I was sitting right here at my desk some time in the not too distant past, reading speeches about an evil man who wanted to kill Americans and gassing people like in the holocaust and centrifuges and aluminum tubes and security council resolutions and mushroom clouds...

It was fall, too ... just after labor day. Must be deja vu.


They couldn't possibly try this again before another mid-term election, could they?

And the country isn't going to fall for it again, are they?


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digby 9/19/2006 06:16:00 PM |

 
Bad Idea

by digby


The ongoing back and forth about why liberal hawks shouldn't have supported the invasion of Iraq because they should have known that the Bush administration was incompetent or known it was impossible to succeed continues. And all those things are correct. But I never hear anyone discuss why invading Iraq was a bad decision on the merits.

For reasons I've never been able to fathom, a whole bunch of liberal hawks accepted the premise of the Bush Doctrine without considering the ramifications of such a doctrine and whether it was wise to adopt it. Right after 9/11 the Doctrine was a simple formulation that if a government harbored terrorist enemies of the United States, they too were considered an enemy of the United States. That made some sense, particularly as it was applied to Afghanistan. After all, the Taliban didn't just have terrorists in its midst, it was actively working with them and supporting them. Deposing them was an obvious reaction to the terrorist attacks and very few but the purely pacifist (a thoroughly respectable but extremely rare principle in our culture) objected to it. Indeed, most Americans, hawk and dove alike, agreed after 9/11 that any government that would actively help such criminals as bin Laden had to be stopped.

But soon the Bush Doctrine took on a new character altogether which came almost verbatim from an infamous Defense Department document written by Paul Wolfowitz in 1992 (and rejected by Bush's father.) I won't go into the details of that (if you're unfamiliar with that you can read up on it here) except to point out that the concept of preventive war was folded into the Bush Doctrine and accepted as if it had always been there and that the nation had embraced it just as they'd embraced the much simpler, earlier doctrine. They had also very cleverly hijacked the term "pre-emptive" (which had long been an accepted form of self-defense) to mean the more sinister and illegal term "preventive" which had been rejected by all civilized nations for decades. And lo and behold, Iraq was immediately seen as the first nation in need of such "pre-emption."

We all knew that certain members of the Bush administration had been obsessed with Iraq for a decade for reasons that had nothing to do with terrorism. And while their obsession did not automatically delegitimize their argument to go into Iraq after 9/11, it certainly should have given liberal hawks some pause. Here was, after all, a group of people who robotically insisted "9/11 changed everything" and yet it had not, evidently, changed their view on Iraq at all, nor had they even taken a moment to reassess. You could smell the opportunism in the air and that should have made smart people skeptical. Nobody knew for sure what the state of Iraq's WMD arsenal or programs were, of course (although the shaky nature of the "evidence" certainly made my tin-foil hat chirp and squawk like crazy.) But we did know that he had successfully been contained for twelve years and after 9/11 there were good reasons not to rush into anything without a full reassessment of everything. And my God, were they ever rushing into it.

Virtually none of the foreign policy establishment were concerned that invading Iraq was a bad strategy in light of the threat of terrorism. It was obvious that we would inflame the Islamic radicals and create more of them --- an American occupying army in the mideast at a time of rising extremism and anti-American fervor was about as provocative an act as could have been imagined. This argument was glossed over as some sort of appeasement when, in fact, it was extremely salient. Why on earth would you go out of your way to aid the recruitment of your enemy unless it was absolutely necessary? The administration may need to play to its base with useless strongman preening but there was no excuse for liberal hawks not to care about this argument.

But the greatest strategic error was dismissing the possibility that by occupying Iraq it would empower Iran in the process. This was indoubtedly seen as pessimism or immoral realpolitik by the neocons and liberal hawks, but it was a very serious consideration that we are now seeing played out before our very eyes. It's quite clear that the most successful beneficiary of our Iraq policy has been Iraq's longtime rival, Iran. Had Iraq really presented the existential threat the administration claimed, it might have made sense. But nobody but the most deluded of neocons believed that Saddam was planning to launch drone planes filled with nukes and chemical weapons at the US. There should have been more attention paid to the ramifications of empowering Iran before we invaded Iraq by people who should know better. (The great irony is that the administration is now recycling the same fearmongering to use against Iran --- instead of "gassed his own people" it's "denies the holocaust." SOS)

So, in the months before we went into Iraq the situation was this:

• The Bush Doctrine was morphing before our eyes into a permission slip for unilateral aggression based on nothing more than guesswork about a possible future threat, degrading our moral authority before the war even started.
• Many of our allies were balking which meant that we would potentially lose valuable cooperation on terrorism and would have a much harder time coalition building in the future.
• Saddam had been successfully contained for more than a decade and could have stayed contained for some time, even if the hyped up threat assessment had turned out to be correct.
• The evidence for terrorist ties between Iraq and al Qaeda was virtually non-existent and there was no reason to believe that they would ever have the same goals. Conversely, invading iraq was likely to empower islamic extremism in Iraq and elsewhere.
• We rushed into it as if it were an emergency when Saddam had done nothing for years. This meant that planning (which never happened anyway) would have had to be done on a crisis basis, increasing the chance of mistakes and missteps.
• We were commmitting our military to a non-urgent long term operation at a time when we needed them to be flexible for the emerging threats of the new era of Islamic extremism.
• We knew that upending the structure of the middle east before we had a chance to fully assess the situation could result in empowering the actors we wanted to marginalize, both state and non-state.

For all those reasons one could see not just that it was an impossible task or that the Bush administration would mess it up but that it was simply a bad idea when the circumstances after 9/11 dictated that we be smart about national security. 9/11 didn't change everything but you'd think the threat of terrorism and assymetrical warfare would have changed the neocon and liberal hawk's longtime assumptions about the efficacy of traditional military power. If there was ever a time for realism --- in the pure sense of the word --- it was then. Instead, we had the right lashing out incoherently at their ancient demons and the liberal hawks naively believing that it was a good idea to express our goodness and greatness through a military action that was quite obviously unnecessary at that moment and for which the risk far outweighed the benfit.

We all know that the result was even worse that we feared. We couldn't know they did no planning at all for the occupation. It didn't occur to us that they would literally bring in 20 something college Republicans to run the reconstruction. I couldn't imagine they would botch it so thoroughly on every level that we have now exposed ourselves as something of a paper tiger when it comes to such unilateral actions. It's weakened us considerably. (And it's also brought us to a very frightening point...) The abandonment of moral authority with aggressive war and torture, the lost opportunities in Afghanistan, the empowering of Iran are all fall-out from this terrible decision and while we couldn't necessarily know exactly what would happen, there was NO DOUBT that the outcome was unpredictable. Great powers can't afford to run dangerous military experiments with unpredictable results unless it's absolutely necessary. Blowback tends to be rather extreme.

The administration dazzled the nation with a big show and the media was chomping at the bit to have a "real" war that they could cover. But when you stripped away all the hysterical rhetoric it was clear then that even if the Bush administration had been capable of preventing Iraq from descending into chaos and achieving all its goals, liberal hawks should have known that rushing into war in the spring of 2003 was a bad idea anyway.



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digby 9/19/2006 02:23:00 PM |

 
Remember: Bush Don't Bluff

by tristero

In pondering a post by Digby from last Sunday, I couldn't help but notice this strange quote courtesy of Fred Barnes. I have boldified the stuff that isn't cheap partisan boilerplate:

In the midterm election on November 7, Bush predicted Democrats won't win either the House or the Senate. "I believe these elections will come down to two things: one, firm belief that in order to win the war on terror there must be a comprehensive strategy that recognizes this war is being fought on more than one front, and, two, the economy." Bush said the price of gasoline, which has been falling rapidly, is one of the "interesting indicators" that the press should watch carefully. "Just giving you a heads up," he added.

Now, Digby observed that Bush must have told Them - the Oil "Them" - to open the spigot. And indeed, gas prices have fallen. But in truth, it's a leap of faith to suggest that the lower oil prices this election seas...sorry, I meant, this fall, had anything to do with the fact that there are 2 oilmen running the United States and their political ass is on the line. I wouldn't presume to suggest, say, that Bush, Cheney, and Rice begged the cartels and companies to temporarily ease off on the pricegoug... sorry, the utterly fair profit margin they're taking.

No, what interests me is Bush's confidence that the election is in the bag. And him giving his rightwing press pals a "heads up." A heads up. For what? The world anxiously awaits. And I'm not kidding.

I remind you: Bush don't bluff. Bush do whatever the hell he wants to do. If I were Betting Bill Bennett, I'd lay even odds that the Mayberry Machiavelllis got a little treat in store for the rest of us this fall. And no, I'm bettin' it ain't jes' gamey voting machines, which goes without saying.

As it happens, I've kept a short list of October surprises I've been working on and I was gonna wait until, you guessed it, October, but given that the "heads up" comment seems to have slipped under the radar a little, I thought I'd release it now to draw a little attention to the very probable threat behind Bush's remark.

Potential October Surprises

1. Osama bin Laden is captured or killed. That would explain why Osama's name's been cropping up in Bush's speech after so long an absence. Somewhat possible.

2. Another attack on the continental US. This seems unlikely to me, not only because Bush/Rove would never plan such a thing -they didn't in the past and they won't in the future, people. Nor will they let bin Laden or any of the zillion of new enemies Bush and Cheney have created do 9/11 part deux from their neglect. Why? The country simply won't unite behind Bush if he neglects to protect us a third (or fourth) time during his regime. He got a free pass on September 11, ditto for anthrax. But after Katrina, a spectacular attack on the "homeland" ain't gonna play too well.

3. A nuclear strike, either on Iran or somewhere else like NoKo, unilateral, pre-emptive, and announced as a fait accompli. Bush has, after all, started military ops against Iran, according to Sam Gardiner. Not that likely, but I was getting jumpy one night, and the paranoia overruled my desire to sleep.

4. The exquisitely-timed revelation of a major financial or sexual scandal involving major Democrats. I think this is very likely.

5. Rumsfeld will resign for "health reasons." Very likely, imo. Everyone loathes him. His replacement? Well, the kind of mentality that would replace a bozo like Ashcroft with a worse bozo like Gonzales...who's to say? Jerry Boykin? Nah, not even Bush is that stu...as I was saying...who knows who will replace Rumsfeld? But I think Rumsfeld is about to pursue a career for which he has genuine talent: Comic poetry.

6. Bush got bupkus and the "heads up" really is a bluff, which means he psyched us out and so we waste tons of time and bucks trying to figure out what's he holding and come up empty. I think that's highly unlikely. He's a liar but he's no bluffer, if you can get your heads around that. (And if you do, you can 'splain it to me sometime 'cause I can't.)

7. Gas prices will fall. Oh, right, that happened already, but it's not enough to tip the election his way.

Feel free to imagine other surprises Bush may be concocting. Maybe his ever creative lawyers have found a legal means to strip Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont, and so on of their statehood and annex them as single counties in New Alabama, New Mississippi, or New Texas. The ultimate gerrymander. Maybe, lawyers are standing by ready to contest each and every Democratic victory that slips past Diebold.

Go for it, boys and girls. Emulate Karl Rove. Let your imagination, eh... rove free. What's Bush planning?
tristero 9/19/2006 10:51:00 AM |

Monday, September 18, 2006

 
Wingnut Bipartisanship

by digby


I just saw John Fund on Hardball saying over and over again that the president and John McCain would find a reasonable compromise on the torture issue that will satisfy everyone. I find that amusing. It was as if government was working as it should with the president debating the opposing party and coming to a nice bipartisan outcome.

The only problem, of course, is that is isn't really "bipartisan" at all, is it? It's a stragely public debate between a nutball Republican president and a nutball Republican senator. Can there be any question that "bipartisanship" and "compromise" between these two, six weeks before an election, would not result in John Fund being satisfied? I thought not.

I hear Joe Lieberman is running on his bipartisan credentials these days too and it's not surprising either. His definition of bipartisanship is also to take sides with John McCain in a Rovian kabuki with George Bush, follow the script, get rolled and then call it a compromise.

George W. Bush doesn't actually compromise with Democrats and Republicans in congress have consciously governed without Democratic input for six years. There has not been any birpartisanship as it is commonly understood since Bill Clinton was president. (And when Bill Clinton was president, Lieberman sided with the same Republicans he sides with today and called that bipartisanship too.)

This new definition of bipartisanship means Republicans like Joe Lieberman, John McCain and Lindsay Graham are considered the loyal opposition to a Republican president.

I don't think that's very good for America, do you?



Update: Click through to the link above to see some actions you might take to get the man who says he should be re-elected because he can work with Republicans to get things done, to answer the burning question: Whatjah Get Joe?


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digby 9/18/2006 02:34:00 PM |

 
Yoo Said It

by tristero

If facts mattered, and they haven't for a very long time, this would be among the very stupidest things printed in a major newspaper in the last five years. And that is saying a lot, believe you me.

A reinvigorated presidency enrages President Bush’s critics, who seem to believe that the Constitution created a system of judicial or congressional supremacy. Perhaps this is to be expected of the generation of legislators that views the presidency through the lens of Vietnam and Watergate. But the founders intended that wrongheaded or obsolete legislation and judicial decisions would be checked by presidential action, just as executive overreaching is to be checked by the courts and Congress.

The changes of the 1970’s occurred largely because we had no serious national security threats to United States soil, but plenty of paranoia in the wake of Richard Nixon’s use of national security agencies to spy on political opponents.

Both Eschaton and Josh have weighed in on the unspeakable historical illiteracy of this remark. I would like to add a few things to what they said.

I remember the '70's very well thank you very much, and while the USSR was a threat, and so was the Middle East - I well remember the gas lines - the most serious threat of all to the security of the United States was the imperial presidency of Richard M. Nixon. Many of us who do recall how dangerous he was, including Krugman himself, now agree that Nixon was a piker compared to Bush.

But there's something more important here than proving Yoo wrong, which any highschool kid with access to a stack of history books, or the Internets could do in five minutes.

Yoo knows he's lying here and he doesn't give a damn what you or I think. Why? Because he knows the New York Times has anointed him worthy of space on their editorial page and all that matters is that they print what he writes. It's the same con as "Intelligent Design" creationism: you gain mainstream cred merely by being included in the debate. And Yoo's little stunt is all of a piece with the far-right contempt for normal American citizens, not to mention reality. The kind of mentality that would assert there were no serious national security threats during the '70's is the same mentality that plants a male hooker among the Whiite House press corps to fluff the press secretary (and at least once, Bush) when the questions get too tough.

The extent of sheer contempt for the people of America these people show never fails to take my breath away. They truly hate Americans, and American values. And these monarchy-loving assholes, these total losers who are literally smirking at the presumed ignorance of the people they dare to lead, these are populists?
tristero 9/18/2006 11:14:00 AM |

 
King Of Pain

by tristero

Paul Krugman at the top of his form:

So why is the Bush administration so determined to torture people?

To show that it can.

The central drive of the Bush administration — more fundamental than any particular policy — has been the effort to eliminate all limits on the president’s power. Torture, I believe, appeals to the president and the vice president precisely because it’s a violation of both law and tradition. By making an illegal and immoral practice a key element of U.S. policy, they’re asserting their right to do whatever they claim is necessary.

[snip]

Only now, five years after 9/11, has Mr. Bush finally found some things he wants us to sacrifice. And those things turn out to be our principles and our self-respect.

Read the whole thing.

[From the Department of Patting Oneself On One's Back: I can't resist linking to this post from a few days back:

Bush was not bluffing, he was actually going to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 because...well, because he could. It is still the only reason that makes sense. Because he could.

BTW, the first time I wrote that that was the reason Bush was invading Iraq was back on February 28, 2003.

Note: I'm not suggesting Krugman steals from bloggers like yours truly - he's a brilliant man and this isn't the hardest conclusion to come to, after all. No, I'm simply boasting shamelessly that I said it first. Boasting shamelessly about priority - and proving it with a link - is one of the great pleasures of blogging, made even more so because said priority is, as it is in this case, utterly trivial and meaningless.]
tristero 9/18/2006 04:27:00 AM |

Sunday, September 17, 2006

 
Nutty Buddy

by digby


I had read excerpts of Fred Barnes' column describing his meeting with the president and fellow conservative sycpophants, but I didn't get a chance to read the whole thing until today. The codpiece is full to bursting even as the mind is shrinking.

Inside the Oval Office President Bush gives journalists a "heads up" about the mid-term elections, among other things.
[That's the real headline, I swear --- d]

WE NOW KNOW WHY the Bush administration hasn't made the capture of Osama bin Laden a paramount goal of the war on terror. Emphasis on bin Laden doesn't fit with the administration's strategy for combating terrorism. Here's how President Bush explained this Tuesday: "This thing about . . . let's put 100,000 of our special forces stomping through Pakistan in order to find bin Laden is just simply not the strategy that will work."

Rather, Bush says there's a better way to stay on offense against terrorists. "The way you win the war on terror," Bush said, "is to find people [who are terrorists] and get them to give you information about what their buddies are fixing to do." In a speech last week, the president explained how this had worked--starting with the arrest and interrogation of 9/11 planner Khalid Sheik Muhammad--to break up a terrorist operation that was planning post-9/11 attacks on America.

"It's really important at this stage . . . to be thinking about how to institutionalize courses of action that will enable future presidents to gain the information necessary to prevent attack," he said. This, presumably, would include the use of secret prisons, tough but legal interrogation techniques, a ban on lawsuits against interrogators, electronic eavesdropping, and monitoring of bank transfers, among other measures.

Bush talked about his strategy in the fight against Islamic jihadists in a 95-minute session in the Oval Office with seven journalists. At the outset of the interview, which occurred the morning after his speech to the nation on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Bush declared: "I've never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions."

Barnes is so in the tank for Bush that he's grown gills, so I wouldn't expect even the tiniest bit of skepticism from him. But I assume he's accurately reporting what the president said. And he's reporting that Bush's plan to combat terrorism is to institutionalize torture, warrentless spying on his own citizens, indefinite detention, secret prisons, warrantless monitoring of bank transfers and legal immunity for those who carry out those tasks.

What do you suppose such "institutions" usually characterize?

He's also consciously conflating "rogue states" and terrorists, and failing to draw the proper distinctions at the same time, just as he's done from the beginning. He does not think, for instance, that it's important to "decapitate" the head of al Qaeda, yet "decapitating" Saddam Hussein made the world safer.

I'm sure I don't need to point out how wrong both of those suppositions are. Bin Laden continuing to elude the vast power of the US only makes him stronger --- and deposing Saddam uselessly destabilized the world in ways that we haven't even been able to fully discern yet. (What we know now is that we have precipitated a civil war in Iraq and empowered Iran --- not bad for government work.)

This also brings up something I found somewhat hilarious in his press conference the other day:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Earlier this week, you told a group of journalists that you thought the idea of sending special forces to Pakistan to hunt down bin Laden was a strategy that would not work.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q Now, recently you've also --

THE PRESIDENT: Because, first of all, Pakistan is a sovereign nation.

Q Well, recently you've also described bin Laden as a sort of modern day Hitler or Mussolini. And I'm wondering why, if you can explain why you think it's a bad idea to send more resources to hunt down bin Laden, wherever he is?

THE PRESIDENT: We are, Richard. Thank you. Thanks for asking the question. They were asking me about somebody's report, well, special forces here -- Pakistan -- if he is in Pakistan, as this person thought he might be, who is asking the question -- Pakistan is a sovereign nation. In order for us to send thousands of troops into a sovereign nation, we've got to be invited by the government of Pakistan.

I know. I know...

Barnes continues:

Bush said it's difficult for many people to understand how serious the terrorist threat is. "It's impossible for someone to have grown up in the 50s and 60s to envision a conflict with people that just kill mercilessly, using techniques that are kind of foreign to modern warfare. But it's real. I'm telling you, it's real."

I grew up in the 1960's doing nuclear war drills in school. My next door neighbors in Wichita, Kansas had a bomb shelter in their back yard. On October 22, 1962 the president of United States went on television and told the American people that we were on the brink of nuclear war --- and we were. If he thinks that is somehow less frightening than bunch of suicde bombers and nutballs with box cutters, he truly is stupid.

This was what a president sounds like when he is dealing with a real and imminent existential threat:

I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations. I call upon him further to abandon this course of world domination, and to join in an historic effort to end the perilous arms race and to transform the history of man. He has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction by returning to his government's own words that it had no need to station missiles outside its own territory, and withdrawing these weapons from Cuba by refraining from any action which will widen or deepen the present crisis, and then by participating in a search for peaceful and permanent solutions.

I pity these poor idiots who are so desperate for meaning in their lives that they are trying to turn Islamic extremism into a threat on that scale. Apparently, since it isn't they are just going to try to make it so.

The aburdity of his statement that people who grew up in the 50's and 60's can't understand this kind of threat should send chills down people's spines, however. This is the president of the United States not some moist, bobby soxer who's desperate to be that nurse kissing the handsome sailor in the famous VE Day picture. We need leaders who are clear eyed about threats to our country and fashion appropriate responses.

Barnes continues:

Bush dismissed as cynical the charge that he hasn't asked the American people to accept sacrifices as American soldiers fight against terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere. "You know what the definition of sacrifice is for a lot of people" who question him about the lack of sacrifice? "How come you didn't raise taxes? That's what that means as far as I'm concerned . . . If we had raised taxes to create a sense of sacrifice, it would have caused even greater sacrifice because I believe raising taxes in a recession would cause the economy to get even worse."

I don't know what he thinks he's saying here, but he's said it more than once. Evidently he's persuaded himself that by cutting taxes, he's asked the American people to sacrifice. Or something. It's completely incoherent.

The truth is that he hasn't asked anyone for a sacrifice (except the poor soldiers) because he's waiting to get out of office so somebody else can give the country the bad news and be blamed for it. That's how Republicans govern. And until Democrats learn to hang this stuff around their necks they will continue to get away with it.

The president said he is not isolated in the White House. "I know exactly what's in the news," he said. "I listen to a lot of people. I've got smart people around me. And they can march right in here--this Oval Office can be slightly intimidating, but I've got people here who can fight through the aura and say, 'I think you're wrong. I think you're right.'"

Bullshit:

It's a standing joke among the president's top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States, or, as he is known in West Wing jargon, POTUS...it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it's mostly a one-way street. Most presidents keep a devil's advocate around. Lyndon Johnson had George Ball on Vietnam; President Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, grudgingly listened to the arguments of Budget Director Richard Darman, who told them what they didn't wish to hear: that they would have to raise taxes. When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth.

He won't stand for dissent, it's quite obvious. Instead, grey eminences like Dick Cheney play all kinds of mind games to get him to do something he doesn't understand. He is a spoiled, stupid stubborn little brat --- a dauphin terror who does not lead but rather succumbs to whichever appeal to his vanity sounds good. He is a disaster.

In the midterm election on November 7, Bush predicted Democrats won't win either the House or the Senate. "I believe these elections will come down to two things: one, firm belief that in order to win the war on terror there must be a comprehensive strategy that recognizes this war is being fought on more than one front, and, two, the economy." Bush said the price of gasoline, which has been falling rapidly, is one of the "interesting indicators" that the press should watch carefully. "Just giving you a heads up," he added.

I guess he told them to "turn on the spigot."

This guy doesn't just sound thick and slow any more. He increasingly sounds completely nuts.



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digby 9/17/2006 02:26:00 PM |

 
Tortured Compromise

by digby

The outlines of the torture debate kabuki emerged this morning with the interviews with John McCain and Stephen Hadley on This Week. It is actually quite straightforward. McCain was very optimistic they could reach a compromise and Hadley said that the three conditions for compromise are this:

1. they must be able to keep the program (which is, of course, entirely up to Junior who stomped his little feet until he turned blue at his press conference, threatening to allow terrorists to kill us all in our beds if he doesn't get his way.) It's entirely within his power to "keep the program."

2. they must give their intelligence professionals "clear guidelines" with congressional support. In other words they need some sort of bill that says the congress supports the president's CIA interrogation program. (Perhaps Bush can lead a little cheer.)"Clear guidelines" means nothing. What they are seeking is exactly opposite of "clear guidelines. So, basically, they simply have to assert that they've got them and they've got them. Check.

3. they must find a way to do this by accomodating McCain's desire that they not "amend" Article III. McCain has already set forth how they will do this:

McCain and the other GOP senators have indicated they would be willing to amend domestic U.S. law, especially the War Crimes Act, to permit at least some "enhanced" CIA techniques. They are also willing to pass legislation that would deny many rights to detainees at Guantánamo Bay and allow them to be held indefinitely.

Bush has always said that he wanted to "clarify" Article III and I predict that they will soon have a breakthrough that says they have found a way to do just that --- by amending the War Crimes Act.

And all over the country the word will go forth that the Republicans in the US Senate stood up to the unpopular George W. Bush --- Sing Hallalujah! They are tough on terrorists and moral to boot! We can all vote Republican again with a clear conscience --- accountability and oversight have arrived thanks to St. John McCain the Anointed One.

Aside from the obvious electoral benefits of this kabuki dance, I also suspect the administration's substantive goal all along was to stage a public fight on torture in order to get the congress to compromise on all the military tribunal issues. They got their cornpone tool Huckelberry Graham to eliminate judicial review and habeas corpus, and all they need now is to force the kewl mavericks to give up their requirement that terrorists be allowed access to the evidence against them and they will have codified their Gitmo gulag. Excellent work.



Update: The main reason I know this is kabuki is more than just instinct. It's because crap like this gives away the game:

Another irony lies in the fact that the congressional rules for interrogations that the Bush administration now seeks to embrace in the new legislation -- the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 -- were vigorously opposed by the White House before their adoption by Congress. Bush disliked them so much that when he signed the law Dec. 30, he appended a statement objecting to some of its provisions and explicitly reserved his right to interpret them "in a manner consistent" with his constitutional authorities as president and commander in chief.

In another twist, the principal Republican lawmakers responsible for the Detainee Treatment Act -- Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) -- said last year that they meant the law to set a minimum, humane standard of treatment for detainees held by both the Defense Department and the CIA. But they now are telling colleagues it would be a bad law for the CIA to follow in the future because its language would slight international treaty obligations.

A retired intelligence professional who said he has discussed the matter at length with colleagues said the predominant view at the agency is that McCain -- who made clear in congressional debate last year that he disapproved of what the CIA was doing -- was surprised to learn later that the Detainee Treatment Act did not put a stop to it.

All those "twists" and "ironies" and the picture of a naive, hoodwinked St John the Anointed just don't pass the smell test.

I have no doubt that McCain and Bush will stand together, all smiles, at a bill signing ceremony some time in the not too distant future. And then the president will issue a signing statement designed to cover his ass and everyone elses ass and John McCain will run for president as the man who saved America's soul.



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digby 9/17/2006 11:18:00 AM |

 
Catching Up And The Doctrine Of The Good

by tristero

Two points to add to Digby's post on the sheer stupidity, Republcian cronyism and cynicism that operated within the CPA:

1. This story is not news. I recall hearing within months of the invasion that the main qualification for service in CPA was obeisance to the Sun King of Crawford. What is news is the prominence that an influential member of the media is providing for this story. In an election season no less. But the fact that this wasn't discussed when it was happening should remind us all of how completely the media was co-opted when it mattered the most, when robust reporting could have made a difference.

Not that by the time of the CPA much difference could be possible. The moment the invasion started, a blunder of historical proportions was set in motion. The rest is weary detail and a Euphrates of blood.

As glad as I am that these stories are finally getting wide, prominent coverage, I would be a lot happier if the press would report aggressively and, most importantly, report in a prominent way in real time on the current pack of lies about Iran and the Bush administration's plans for war. While readers of this blog are informed enough to know that war with Iran is a very real possibility unless there is a significant shift of power in Congress this fall, it seems to be falling under the radar of most Americans.

Time to beat the drums, loudly.

2. Perhaps the most difficult thing for normals like you and I to understand is the myth that "The Good Person can do no wrong" to which rightwing nuts, especially the religious, are so prone. But it is quite real. When Bush nominated Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, a woman with absolutely no legitimate qualifications for such an intellectually demanding job, he defended her by insisting on her Goodness. And had she been found to be truly Good by the extreme right, she would be sitting on the court right now, in way, way, way over her head. But it wasn't her lack of qualifications that doomed Miers. It was that, to the right, she wasn't Good - she was a feminist who probably had objections to poor women using coathangers and lye for abortion.

To the right, if you are Good, then you simply cannot, by definition, do wrong. So, when you're looking to fill a position of authority, you don't look for the most qualified in terms of experience. You look for the person who is the most Good. Since being a "Christian" means you're Good, since being a Republican loyal to Bush means you're Good, that is far more important than Arab language skills. Because what does it matter if you can speak the language if you're not Good? By definition your decisions are Bad!

Therefore, from the Bush administration's standpoint, they truly believed they were hiring the best people possible to bring Iraq rapidly to its feet. Yes, of course, it was cynical politicking. But it was also, at the same time and without contradiction, utterly sincere.

And therefore, not only must Republicans be routed from Congress this fall, but Americans must fight a constant battle to ensure that in the future, these lunatics lose even more influence over the American government and never regain the presidency.

[Update: See Billmon for more info in the well-titled The RNC Branch Office on the Tigris. ht Nell and Hamletta in comments.]

[Update: Atrios makes the important point that it's not just the notion of The Good that drives the rightwing, or cynicism but also a full disconnect with reality and genuine sociopathy. Agreed.]
tristero 9/17/2006 04:47:00 AM |

Saturday, September 16, 2006

 
Katrina Queen Of The Desert

by digby


Atrios links to another lengthy part of this fascinating article but I think the lede is worth excerpting too. Before there was Katrina, there was the CPA:

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What they needed to be was a member of the Republican Party.

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation that sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people.

The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, deploy police and spend Iraq's oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America's viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire staff.

Interviews with scores of former CPA personnel over the past two years depict an organization that was dominated -- and ultimately hobbled -- by administration ideologues.

"We didn't tap -- and it should have started from the White House on down -- just didn't tap the right people to do this job," said Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA's Washington office. "It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings."

(Jim O'Beirne, by the way, is the husband of wingnut welfare queen Kate O'Beirne, naturally. There's never more than one degree of separation between these taxpayer scam artists.)

The Republicans are telling us that they should be re-elected because the Democrats aren't serious about national security and only they can be trusted to keep the terrorists from killing us in our beds.

But the way the administration went about creating the CPA illustrates everything you need to know about the childlike sciolism of these so-called grown-ups. They insisted on invading a well contained country of 25 million people, ripped its society to shreds, and then put a bunch of low level cronies and inexperienced schoolkids in charge of creating a Club for Growth wet dream in the desert. And they spent billions and billions of dollars failing to do anything but lay the groundwork for civil war. I don't know if it's possible to screw up on a grander scale than that.

Here's the question for the American people. Let's, for the sake of argument, say that you don't like Democrats. You have the vague feeling in the pit of your stomach that they just don't have the cojones to do "what needs to be done." You can't get over the feeling that they aren't serious enough.

But if you are a thoughtful person of any political persuasion who is concerned about national security or the economy, you simply cannot read that story above and have even the slightest faith that such people can be trusted to continue to run the government with no oversight.

The question is not whether the Democrats have a better plan to correct these grievous errors or whether they are hard enough to deal with hard issues. The question is how anyone could think Democrats could possibly be worse than an administration that ordered the US government to eschew all expertise and give billions of taxpayer dollars to inexperienced Republican functionaries to rebuild a foreign country from the ground up? Considering the stakes in all this, I don't see how anyone can think it's a good idea to let these people continue unchecked. They screw up everything they touch and they never, ever, learn from their mistakes.

I find it very hard to believe that anyone who isn't a purely faith-based voter can read this story in the Washington Post and come away believing that the Republicans are capable of running any government, much less the government of the most powerful country in the world. They are like children playing Risk and Monopoly.

If anyone thinks that political considerations will keep people like this from making more huge, irrevocable, catastrophic strategic blunders are kidding themselves. They are capable of anything. That's not hyperbole. Read the article and then bookmark it. We're going to need it to send to journalists and members of the press over the next few weeks to remind them about GOP "seriousness."



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digby 9/16/2006 11:21:00 AM |

 
First As Tragedy, Then As Farce Worse Tragedy

by tristero

Via Atrios via Josh comes this reminder that there really is something terribly wrong both with the leaders of the US for thinking like this and with the people in this country who let them get away with it:

U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials say Bush political appointees and hard-liners on Capitol Hill have tried recently to portray Iran's nuclear program as more advanced than it is and to exaggerate Tehran's role in Hezbollah's attack on Israel in mid-July. [Heard that one before.]

The struggle's outcome could have profound implications for U.S. policy.

President Bush, who addresses the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, has said he prefers diplomacy to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon [And the moon is made of green cheese.], but he hasn't ruled out using military force.

Several former U.S. defense officials who maintain close ties to the Pentagon say they've been told that plans for airstrikes - if Bush deems them necessary - are being updated. [To include nukes, I wonder?]

[snip]

The International Atomic Energy Agency complained in an unusual letter made public on Thursday that a House intelligence committee report on Iran contains "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated information."

A top official of the IAEA, which conducts nuclear inspections in Iran and elsewhere, wrote that the report exaggerated advances Tehran has made in enriching uranium, which can be used to fuel nuclear arms if made pure enough. The official, Vilmos Cserveny, said the report also falsely claimed that IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei had removed an inspector from Iran for being too aggressive.

Cserveny's letter was addressed to intelligence committee chairman Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich.

Hoekstra spokesman Jamal Ware said that the reference to weapons-grade uranium in the report was in a photo caption [where it would stand out like it was, heh, radioactive], but that the report makes clear elsewhere that Iran has not yet achieved that capability.

[Snip, in which the article asserts that most experts agree that Iran is, unlike Iraq, actively seeking nuclear weapons technology.]

The dispute was a virtual rerun of the months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, when ElBaradei and his agency questioned claims that Saddam Hussein was aggressively seeking nuclear weapons. Some top U.S. officials sought to discredit ElBaradei, although the IAEA's assessment proved correct.

The IAEA's written protest, dated Tuesday, was echoed privately by U.S. intelligence analysts, who saw the House report as an attempt to discredit the CIA and other agencies on Iran.

Some officials at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department said they're concerned that the offices of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney may be receiving a stream of questionable information that originates with Iranian exiles, including a discredited arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, who played a role in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.

Officials at all three agencies said they suspect that the dubious information may include claims that Iran directed Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, to kidnap two Israeli soldiers in July; that Iran's nuclear program is moving faster than generally believed; and that the Iranian people are eager to join foreign efforts to overthrow their theocratic rulers.

The officials said there is no reliable intelligence to support any of those assertions and some that contradicts all three.

The officials said they fear a replay of the administration's mishandling of what turned out to be bogus information from Iraqi exiles in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, documented earlier this month in a Senate intelligence committee report.

But they said this time, intelligence analysts and others are more forcefully challenging claims they believe to be false or questionable.

"There's no question that people are less afraid to speak up after what happened in Iraq," said one intelligence official. "There's less of an inclination to let Cheney and Rumsfeld run free." [We'll see how successful they are.]

[Snip]

"That is outright manipulation of information to suggest a predetermined policy," Murray [retired CIA station chief] said.

I'd like to point out the bogosity of how this "debate" is played out in the press and in the rightwing media (I know, I know, but there is still at least a token difference between the two). And that is framing this as the Bush administration versus The Left.

Since when are retired ex-CIA station chiefs part of The Left? Since when are generals at the Joint Chiefs level, who are fighting the use of nukes as forcefully as they can communists? They're not, in any description of reality that would attract a rational consensus. And that is something to bear in mind:

The political crisis in America today is not betwen the Left and the Right, but between a numerically small but extremely dangerous, very wealthy, well-connected, and powerful cabal of extreme rightwing radicals and the rest of the country.

At the moment, the cabal's wealth and connections are all but impervious, give or take an Abramoff or two. But their power, that's a different story, that's where you and I come in. We have to vote. Yes, it's quite conceivable that Bush will ignore Congress and launch an invasion or nuclear assault on Iran despite a hostile Democratically controlled Congress that forbids it. But at least we can help elect that Congress and, if he ignores their wishes, make the point even more explicit to the unconvinced that we are no longer living in anything remotely resembling a working democracy.
tristero 9/16/2006 08:41:00 AM |

 
Hullabaloo Reads Carnegie

by tristero

Following up on a previous post, I counted more than 10 people willing to read Iran's Nuclear Ambitions by Iranian author Shahram Chubin. Unless I missed them, none of our prolifically commenting rightwing colleagues signed up. I will take their failure to participate as a sign of their utter lack of serious interest in views that contradict their own fantasies.* We are talking 244 pages here, not Atlas Shrugged, fer crissakes.

So I have ordered the book. When it arrives, I'll suggest a time period in which to finish each chapter or section which I think is reasonable, given that all of us are busy, and a time at to discuss the section. I'll also try to reach Shahram Chubin or someone else at Carnegie to see about answering questions we have.

I do hope that all of you who agreed will follow through and order the book, primarily because I think it will help all of us understand the situation in Iran a little better, as most people whatever their politics agree it is a very serious one. As mentioned, Carnegie has done excellent work in the past and although I don't know Chubin's work, I think the fact that Carnegie chose to publish it means we'll find it a very helpful place to focus our attempts to understand some of what's going on with Iran.


One more thing. Here's the link to Cirincione on Fresh Air.


*The common rightwing retort to refusing to look at the facts of a situation is something like, "Hey buddy, you may have time to sip a latte and read a book, but I gotta work for a living, loser." To which one can only reply, I gotta work for a living, too but I also happen to be an American citizen. It is an obligation of each and every American to stay informed on important issues facing our country. so we can vote responsibly for our representatives. Furthermore, I don't drink lattes. Have t'watch the cholesterol, y'know. I prefer expresso or coffee American style, brewed dark, with a little 2% in it, no sugar, although what my preference in caffeinated beverages has to do with my politics or authenticity as an American is a little obscure to me.
tristero 9/16/2006 07:30:00 AM |

 
Charles Krauthammer Gets It

by tristero

Exactly right:

Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days.

If ever there was an argument for voting against Republicans and other rightwing lunatics, this is it. We should all take this to heart.

Oh...But wait a minute...Did I possibly misread this? Hmmm...Maybe he's not talking about Bush. Could he mean Iran? Here's the next sentence:

The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age.

Oh, now I get it. He's using "the mullahs" metaphorically, meaning the "top banannas" in the government, meaning "the White House." Seriously, who else could Krauthammer be referring to? After all, since the US is the only country actually to use nuclear weapons, it's surely "infinitely more likely" to use them again than a country that doesn't have them and which experts believe is 10 years away from getting them.

ht, The Anonymous Liberal

tristero 9/16/2006 12:38:00 AM |

Friday, September 15, 2006

 
"You're Looking Beautiful Today, Dave"

by digby


Here is Bush getting pissed off at David Gregory for suggesting that North Korea or other countries might adopt Bush's new way of dealing with the Geneva Conventions --- "interpret" them however it suits them and change them at will. Bush seems to think that would be just great.

Dave? He's back!

QUESTION: Sorry, I've got to get disentangled.

BUSH: Would you like me to go to somebody else, here, till you get...

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: Sorry.

BUSH: Well, take your time, please.

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: I really apologize for that. Anyway...

BUSH: I must say, having gone through those gyrations, you're looking beautiful today, Dave.

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: Thank you very much.

Mr. President, critics of your proposed bill on interrogation rules say there's another important test. These critics include John McCain, who you've mentioned several times this morning.

And that test is this: If a CIA officer, paramilitary or special operations soldier from the United States were captured in Iran or North Korea and they were roughed up and those governments said, "Well, they were interrogated in accordance with our interpretation of the Geneva Conventions," and then they were put on trial and they were convicted based on secret evidence that they were not able to see, how would you react to that as commander in chief?

BUSH: My reaction is, is that if the nations such as those you name adopted the standards within the Detainee Detention Act, the world would be better. That's my reaction.

We're trying to clarify law. We're trying to set high standards, not ambiguous standards.

And let me just repeat: We can debate this issue all we want, but the practical matter is, if our professionals don't have clear standards in the law, the program is not going to go forward.

You cannot ask a young intelligence officer to violate the law. And they're not going to. They -- let me finish please -- they will not violate the law.

You can ask this question all you want, but the bottom line is -- and the American people have got to understand this -- that this program won't go forward if there's vague standards applied like those in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. It's just not going to go forward.

You can't ask a young professional on the front line of protecting this country to violate law.

Now, I know they say they're not going to prosecute them. Think about that, you know. "Go ahead and violate it, we won't prosecute you." These people aren't going to do that.

Now, we can justify anything you want and bring up this example or that example. I'm just telling you the bottom line. And that's why this debate is important and it's a vital debate.

Now, perhaps, some in Congress don't think the program is important. That's fine. I don't know if they do or don't.

I think it's vital and I have the obligation to make sure that our professionals who I would ask to go conduct interrogations to find out what might be happening or who might be coming to this country -- I got to give them the tools they need, and that is clear law.

QUESTION: This is an important point, and I think it...

BUSH: The point I just made is the most important point, and that is the program is not going forward.

You can give a hypothetical about North Korea or any other country. The point is that the program is not going to go forward if our professionals do not have clarity in the law.

And the best way to provide clarity in the law is to make sure the Detainee Treatment Act is the crux of the law. That's how we define Common Article 3. And it sets a good standard for the countries that you just talked about.

Next man?

QUESTION: But wait a second. I think this is an important point.

BUSH: I know you think it's an important point.

QUESTION: But, sir, with respect, if other countries interpret the Geneva Conventions as they see fit, as they see fit, you're saying that you'd be OK with that?

BUSH: I am saying that I would hope that they would adopt the same standards we adopt; and that by clarifying Article 3 we make it stronger, we make it clearer, we make it definite.

And I will tell you again, you can ask every hypothetical you want, but the American people have got to know the facts.

And the bottom line is simple: If Congress passes a law that does not clarify the rules -- if they do not do that, the program's not going forward.

QUESTION: This will not endanger U.S. troops in your...

BUSH: Next man?

QUESTION: This will not endanger...

BUSH: David, next man please. Thank you.

He was angry and petulant throughout this press conference but especially in that exchange. He seemed to be truly pissed at McCain et al.

However, I must say that I'm so jaded about those so-called independent Republicans, particularly Huckelberry and McCain, that I have a strong feeling that this is some sort of Kabuki. Huck, especially, has never once failed to validate my belief that he is a phony little prick, pretending to be a moderating influence when he's really just an egomaniac. (Besides, if there's one member of congress who is subject to Rovemail, it's him. I just don't see him bucking the president on something that's important to him.)

I think Bush is making a lot of noise about this right now because that's how he hopes to keep the House on track to pass his bill. If that happens then he's in a much stronger position to negotiate with the Senate --- and I think they know that too. The compromise may already be being worked out. It may even be the case that they've decided to have the president "lose" so that a few Republicans can be seen as voting against him. It's the smart play although I don't know if Bush's ego will allow him to do something like that.

I don't believe for a minute that the CIA interrogators are going to feel constrained from torture of these "high value" secret prisoners because of the Geneva Conventions. They never have before and if they do feel constrained they'll just "render" the prisoner to the prisoner's home country for a little homegrown waterboarding. (For all we know they have bin Laden in thumbscrews as we speak.) The underlying issue is the congress legalizing the president's prerogative to change the definition of the Geneva Conventions.

Marty Lederman, expounding on that, also points out that the major issue was always with the military torture and humiliation regime in the battlefield and Guantanamo and there seems to have been some "clarification" of that already. Therefore, there is no good reason to even be having this debate and many, many excellent reasons not to.

Powell is right about one thing, "the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." Actually it isn't beginning to doubt it, it sees us as downright immoral. If you want to talk about rhetoric that's dangerous to the war effort, the president of the United States loudly and angrily proclaiming that he expects the congress to legalize this thing --- and unilaterally "redefine" the Geneva Conventions"in the process would qualify. People around the world tend to see that as somewhat arrogant.

There is a major reason why Bush is trying to work the country into a frenzy of inchoate fear right now, even beyond the necessities of the upcoming election. The only way he can justify his torture regime and destruction of the Bill of Rights is to create a boogeyman so heinous that the rules that stood this country in good stead throughout its history and even in fighting WWII and the Cold War are no longer adequate. In fact, this enemy must be frightening beyond all previous human experienc so that we will have no choice but to loosen up other taboos as well.

There's one nation of Iran and, you know, a bunch of nations like us trying to, kind of, head in the same direction. And my concern is that, you know, they'll stall; they'll try to wait us out.

So part of my objective in New York [at next week's UN address] is to remind people that's stalling shouldn't be allowed. In other words, we need to move the process. And they need to understand we're firm in our commitment and that if they try to drag their feet or, you know, get us to look the other way, that we won't do that; that we're firmly committed in our desire to send a common signal to the Iranian regime.

I hesitate to mention what product he's in such a hurry to roll out this time.



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digby 9/15/2006 12:57:00 PM |

 
Saddamites On The Rise

by digby


I noticed that after Bush belligerantly defended torture, he went on to describe Iraq as not being in a civil war using the term "Saddamist" to describe the people who are causing the trouble.

He's been listening to Joe Lieberman and The Committee For Present Danger whose primary advice recently was to change the way we talk about the Iraq war to characterize it as a resurgent Saddam fedayeen trying to recapture the government.

This was their number one recommendation in its recent Iraq paper:

* Define the threat to stability to include Saddam Fedayeen insurgents, in addition to al-Qaeda in Iraq and its jihadi allies:

Keep your ears open for this latest slogan. They're rolling out a new marketing campaign.

And, yes, the craziest grown-ups are still in charge.


*** Also, it seems that Rove has decided that having Bush blabbering incessantly on TV will result in their keeping the congress in the fall. Think it'll work?



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digby 9/15/2006 08:54:00 AM |

 
Carnegie Endowment On Iran

by tristero

One of the most remarkable things about that most remarkable of periods in recent American history, 2002/2003, was that the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published paper after paper, sat for interview after interview, held seminar after seminar, about the dangers of pre-emptive unilateralism (PU) in general and conquering Iraq in particular - and nobody listened despite the fact that they got it nearly exactly right.

You think it might be a good idea to listen to them now, given their track record? I mean, sure, Kenneth Pollack is better connected to Big Media, and Bill Kristol has a disarmingly goofy smile, but they were after all wrong, and lots of people died because of their little oops moment. Maybe they're not exactly the brightest bulbs in the firmament when it comes to foreign policy. And maybe, just maybe, one might pay attention to what Carnegie's saying right now about Iran. So....

Here's a book they publish - and lo and behold, it's by an Iranian - entitled Iran's Nuclear Ambitions and it looks pretty good. Shall we read it, folks? And that includes our friends on the right who comment here. If 10 of you, including the righties, pledge to read it (and be honest), I'll contact the Endowment and see if I can get the author or some other spokesperson to answer our questions. (BTW, I'm sure there are plenty of other books to read, but this one is short and current and unusual so feel free to suggest additional reading for people, but I want to stick with this one for a blogread.)

Meanwhile, here's some commentary I culled from the Carnegie website:

From a paper entitled Crisis in the Middle East, George Perkovich writes:

Iranian leaders risk over-reaching. If Hizbollah is perceived to lose badly (a big if), and Iran cannot come to its rescue, then Iran’s power would be diminished and the wisdom of confronting it, including on the nuclear issue, would be more apparent. And if Sunnis broadly conclude that Hizbollah and its Shiite Iranian patrons, despite the excitement generated by their anti-Israel words and deeds, actually harm Sunni interests, then resistance to Iran’s regional ambitions may become mobilized.

In other words, it will be very difficult to achieve a major defeat of Hezbollah. Indeed, one troubling result of the recent war in South Lebanon is the possibility of a stronger Sunni/Shi'a alliance against Israel. Such an alliance would enhance Iran's standing in the region. Therefore, one way to resist this is to counterbalance " the excitement generated by their [Hezbollah's] anti-Israel words and deeds" by highlighting how much Iran's ambitions will impinge Sunni interests.

Of course, we could just take the neocons' advice and just kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out. No Shi'a, no Sunni, no problem. And I can also cure your dandruff by inviting Dick Cheney to join us for our next hunting trip. No head, no dandruff, done. Finis.

Now, here's Joseph Cirincione:

It's not just that the officials are saying that everything is still on the table; you can understand officials saying that. It's beyond that. It's very reminiscent of the coordinated campaign that we saw before the Iraq war. You have cabinet officials, the president, and the vice president giving major speeches on the subject. They're labeling Iran the central or main threat. They try to link Iran to the war on terror, even to 9/11 itself, by talking about Iran as the central banker for terrorism, or the main state sponsor for terrorism. Officials have leaked information to the press just in the last couple of weeks that claims that the Iranian nuclear program is further advanced than it really is.

And there seems to be a concerted effort to convey this threat as imminent, without using that word, and that action will soon have to be taken. And, finally, you hear a drumbeat from both the neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby arguing for military action on Iran. None of this is conclusive in and of itself, but together they really present a very ominous picture. And it is now my working hypothesis that at least some members of the administration, including the vice president of the United States, have made up their mind that the preferred option is to strike Iran and that a military strike will destabilize the regime and contribute to their longtime goal of overthrowing the government of Iran.

You really can't, I guess, comment on how strong the regime in power is in Iran, but it seems like a risky plan.

I believe a military strike would consolidate the hold of the Islamic government, not loosen it. If you want to keep President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad in power for the next five years, launch a strike on an Iranian facility. There is no doubt in my mind that the Iranian people would rally around the government and would become convinced that what the government has been telling them is true, that the main threat to the Iranian people comes from the United States or the U.S.-Israeli alliance. I can't think of any more counterproductive move if you have the goal of enabling the Iranian people to choose their own government, than to launch a military strike against Iran now.

What is your analysis of Iran's nuclear progress so far?

This is the key point. This is where I believe this whole debate should go over the next six months. The Iranian threat is a serious one but it is not an imminent one. Iran does not have a nuclear weapon; it is not going to get a nuclear weapon this year or even this decade. The Iranians are at least ten years away from the ability to enrich uranium either for fuel rods or a nuclear weapon.

You're sure about that?

Everything we've seen indicates that that is in fact the case, and this is the consensus opinion of the U.S. intelligence agencies. We have a national intelligence estimate that was done last year and discussed in the Washington Post in August 2005 that reached the conclusion that Iran is five to ten years away. We've had testimony this year from John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, which confirms that U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Iran will not be able to construct a bomb until "sometime in the middle of the next decade."

Now, what we need to do is declassify that intelligence estimate. Let's get all the facts out on the table. Let's examine this evidence in public, as to what Iran's capabilities are and what various estimates are as to the nuclear timeline. If those intelligence estimates are wrong let's find out why.

Sounds entirely reasonable to me.

By the way, Cirincione was recently interviewed on Fresh Air about Iran. I couldn't find the link but if anyone has it, please post in comments.
tristero 9/15/2006 07:12:00 AM |

 

Running Mates?

by poputonian

Ok - here's an opening (from today's WaPo editorial):

A Defining Moment for America
The president goes to Capitol Hill to lobby for torture

... and stepping forward to fill the breach:

"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," former general and secretary of state Colin L. Powell wrote to McCain.

McCain/Powell in '08?

I don't know, but I think Karl Rove is losing his grip on the White House.

poputonian 9/15/2006 04:23:00 AM |

Thursday, September 14, 2006

 
Who's Appeasing Now?

by digby

This is unbelievable. We are facing a threat that dwarfs the threat of fascism, but Bush doesn't think it's important to remove Hitler. From ThinkProgress:

HOST: Alright Fred, you and a few other journalists were in the Oval Office with the President, right? And he says catching Osama bin Laden is not job number one?

BARNES: Well, he said, look, you can send 100,000 special forces, that’s the figure he used, to the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan and hunt him down, but he just said that’s not a top priority use of American resources. His vision of a war on terror is one that involves intelligence to find out from people, to get tips, to follow them up and break up plots to kill Americans before they occur. That’s what happened recently in that case of the planes that were to be blown up by terrorists, we think coming from England, and that’s the top priority. He says, you know, getting Osama bin Laden is a low priority compared to that.

Yesterday, the WaPo reported it this way:

On another topic, Bush rejected sending more troops to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas to find Osama bin Laden. "One hundred thousand troops there in Pakistan is not the answer. It's someone saying 'Guess what' and then the kinetic action begins," he said, meaning an informer disclosing bin Laden's location.

Fred's president is waging a war like no other, on an enemy that is allegeldy more dangerous than anything the world has ever known, who is plotting to take over the United States of America and end western civililzation as we know it. Yet, he's sitting around waiting for a tip from some sheep-herder in Waziristan to tell him where the leader of this dastardly plot is so that he can send someone in to catch him? Whah?

And that whole definition of a war on terror sounds shockingly like that wussified Democrat law enforcement and intelligence crap, doesn't it? Here I thought we were going to "fight" this war like manly men with big brass bombs, take it to the terrists and all that. Guess not. We're taking our lead from the Euro-weenies, instead.

Bush cannot be allowed to demagogue this thing into some sort of War of the Worlds alien invasion and then say he's waiting around for some goatherd to drop a dime on bin Laden. Democrats need to wrap this BS around every Republican candidate's neck and set it on fire.



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digby 9/14/2006 11:33:00 AM |

 
Crusader Codpiece

by digby

President Bush said yesterday that he senses a "Third Awakening" of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation's struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as "a confrontation between good and evil."

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. Bush noted that some of Abraham Lincoln's strongest supporters were religious people "who saw life in terms of good and evil" and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.

"A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me," Bush said during a 1 1/2 -hour Oval Office conversation on cultural changes and a battle with terrorists that he sees lasting decades. "There was a stark change between the culture of the '50s and the '60s -- boom -- and I think there's change happening here," he added. "It seems to me that there's a Third Awakening."

I love this. He and his administation want to try people for treason for leaking to the papers about his illegal spying on US citizens and then he blurts out some babble that validates every stupid thing bin Laden preaches to his deluded followers. He might as well just call it a Christian Crusade and get it over with. He just framed his War On Terror in religious terms, which is very, very dumb.

Perhaps everyone has forgotten, what with all the idiotic hyperbole about "The Ideological Struggle of the 21st century" but al Qaeda framed this jihad from the very beginning as being a religous war against the "Jews and Crusaders." I don't know about you, but I don't think it's very smart for the president of the United States to keep helping him make that case. It's the basis for bin Laden's demagogic appeal.

Meanwhile, Bush goes on and on about how we can't leave Iraq because bin Laden will think we're chicken and ... I don't know ... be "emboldened." This is based upon bin Laden trash talk, which really seems to make these wingnuts so mad they just lose their wits:

"We are sending signals today that no matter how much you provoke us, no matter how viciously you describe things in public, no matter how many things you're doing with missiles and nuclear weapons, the most you'll get out of us is talk," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said.

Viciously describing things in public will not stand! For a superpower, we sure are easily provoked by religious fanatics calling us chicken if we leave Iraq or fail to respond militarily to some Iranian nutcases ramblings.

Meanwhile the president of the United States is holding court with a bunch of his sycophants characterizing the U.S. as being in the midst of a Christian crusade. Oy.

Why is it they do absolutely everything bass-askwards? It's a bad idea to base US policy on trash talk. We should not be making national security decisions on whether bin Laden will "think" we are weak. We are the United States of America and we are too big and powerful to be playing games like this.

On the other hand, it makes no sense to provide bin Laden and his ilk with ready made recruiting tools and propaganda for no good reason either. It is irresponsible for Bush to be characterizing this "war" in religious terms when it isn't true, it's purely for his own political purposes and it gives the terrorists ammunition.

The administration and its allies succumb to bin Laden's taunts when it comes to important matters of policy and then turn around and overtly help bin Laden recruit terrorists with ridiculous rhetoric about Great Awakenings and the war on terror. (Meanwhile, he's got his inane undersecretary of state for public diplomacy running around the mid-east talking about her experiences being a suburban soccer mom.)

If you didn't know better, you'd think that Osama bin Laden had George W. Bush wrapped around his little finger.



*** Following up on tristero's posts below about Bush's potential use of tactical nuclear weapons --- a fear that I share, since, for all the reasons tristero outlines, it's hard to see how the GOP's fear mongering can lead to anything else --- I recall a post I wrote some months back on the subject of taboo's. It ended with this quote from Gene Lyons:

Once again Bush has denied hostile intent, just as he did for many months after secretly ordering the Pentagon to draft detailed war plans against Iraq. Writing in The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh suggests that all systems are go at the White House, including possible use of tactical nuclear weapons. He hints that the neo-conservative ideologues around Dick Cheney have deluded themselves that bombing Iran would lead to internal rebellion and the overthrow of the nation's Islamic regime.

Yeah, sure it would. Ever noticed how much the neo-cons' ignorance of basic human psychology rivals only Osama bin Laden's ?

yep.



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digby 9/14/2006 11:25:00 AM |

 
Ahh, Bush Is Just Bluffing On The Nukes

by tristero.

The hell he is.

Let's go back to more innocent times. When I first heard of the New Product (the unilateral, unprovoked invasion and conquest of Iraq), which was nearly nine months before its official release in September '02, I thought Bush was bluffing. I thought this was just a way to put pressure on Saddam. But by the early summer of '02, it was quite clear that if this was a bluff, it was one helluva realistic one. Perhaps folks don't remember, but I distinctly recall that the Bush administratin declared around July that their lawyers had determined Bush had all the authority he needed to order a pre-emptive unilateral strike. He did not have to get permission from Congress, he did not have to go back to the UN. He could just do it. And they were quite sincere-sounding: Bush planned to assert his authority even if it caused a constitutional crisis. The congressional resolutions in the fall were a meaningless rubber stamp; Bush had simply permitted Congress-critters to save face by pretending to decide. By then, it was a fait accompli, and everyone but the American public knew it.

But even that fall, as I was thinking, "He really is gonna do it, he means it, he doesn't care what anyone says" I held out some hope that this was just one helluva bluff, to bring the inspectors back and so humiliate Saddam he would fall from power and be destroyed. But in late winter, I heard rumors that hospital ships had moved near Iraq. Bush was not bluffing, he was actually going to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 because...well, because he could. It is still the only reason that makes sense. Because he could.

During this time, many folks thought Bush was playing one helluva sophisticated game of chicken. Nope. He wanted war, he wanted bang-bang. And that is exactly what he got.

As for Iran, let me explain: YOU may think it's highly unlikely - the famous 1% probability, as a commenter mentioned - that Bush won't use nukes and is setting us up for conventional warfare. That is because you are sane and sensible. But the Bush administration thinks it's very likely. Hersh is alarmingly clear that there was close to a mutiny at the highest levels of the military recently until the nuclear option was taken off the table vis a vis Iran. Now, do you think it's still off the table? Don't be naive. Remember TIA and how it was scuttled? But what's all this brouhaha I hear about mass data mining of information the Bush administration has no business looking at whatsoever?

Folks, many people have made the mistake of misunderestimating Bush again and again. He can't be that stupid. He can't be that vindictive or violent. He can't be that immature. He can't be that incapable of remorse or that messianic and delusionally religious.

It's time to face the fact that Bush is all these things and many more. He has been consistent from the earliest days of his regime - consistently incompetent, delusional, and violent. He does not bluff. He does exactly what he wants to do. And there is nothing he wants more right now than to use nukes on Iran. It's not merely because he's a kid with a cool popgun, but one shouldn't misunderestimate his impulsiveness and immaturity. It's also because he, and the other rightwing lunatics genuinely believe that since 1945, liberals have severely crippled America by making such a big deal out of nukes. By all means, check out Curtis Lemay's "America is in Danger" for an historical example (late 60's) of this delusion. How are we crippled? Well, according to them, by refusing to use nukes, America fights bloody prolonged conflicts that are difficult to conclude with decisive victories.

Bush and his pals wants to save America from liberals that will once again deny America a critical victory, crucial to its safety and security. Bush wants to break the nuclear taboo.

How to stop him? First of all, don't be fooled or gulled into thinking he's not serious. He, and they, are very serious indeed. So raise a stink. If we out the nuke strategy prematurely and fuck up its marketing, it may backfire, as a lucky jumping of the gun in Pennsylvania derailed "intelligent design" creationism, which while still around shows some hopeful signs of dying - oh sure, they'll be back, they'll always be back, but they gotta craft an entirely new strategy now. In any event, getting the nukes off the table will be much harder.

Secondly, for heavens sake, vote, and vote responsibly. Do not vote for Republicans - as Atrios and others have said, there are no good Republicans: they will do Bush's bidding if they get in, every last one of them. And remember before you cast that vote for the Ralph Nader clone who says all the right things about class revolution and impeaching the entire judiciary along with the executive, that in the close races between Republicans and Democrats, that righteous sounding reincarnation of Eugene Debs very well may be accepting cash from Republicans intent on splitting the ticket. Vote for the 3rd party candidate if you want to - hell, I'm not a Democrat but an independent, I have no loyalty to the Democratic Party per se - but be responsible, fer crissakes. If there's even a chance of a Florida 2000 again, do you want to vote for a Nader and get another Bush? I don't think so (and no, I'm not entirely blaming Nader for the 2000 debacle, but he's not entirely innocent either).

It looks very likely that the Democrats will get at least one of the houses away from the Republicans. If so, that may be enough to put a stop to Bush's (nuclear or non-nuclear) invasion of Iran, but it will be very, very hard. With a Republican lock on the government, it will be impossible. Iran will almost surely be invaded and if so, I firmly believe that the chance Bush will use nukes is very high. How high? I don't know, but hovering too close to the 50-50 mark for comfort. It's is much higher than 1%. It's somewhere in the two digits.

Okay, enough, I've done my posts on this issue for quite a while. Frankly, it is exhausting to play nuclear Cassandra and terribly painful to watch the same patterns of denial and disbelief play themselves out again. But I also understand how it must sound to the unconvinced among you. It sounds like I've gone overboard, succumbed to the delusional paranoia I'm warning you against. I am quite aware that it really is hard to keep in the forefront of one's mind that Bush and Co. really are nuts enough to use nukes in Iran. And Christ, I hope I'm crazy. But I look back at what he's done over the past five years - one utter catastrophe after another, the unspeakable, pointless violence - and I am very alarmed.

Just do me a favor, okay?

When Bush is out of office, in January 2009, and the nukes haven't fallen (and btw, everyone sane and knowledgeable agrees that none are coming our way from Iran by then) let's laugh together at tristero's ridiculous terror over the essentially harmless, befuddled fake cowboy George W. Bush was. But until then, please humor me and treat Bush as a very serious...concern... and work to put as many legislative and legal restraints on his wanton presidency as we can this fall.

At the very least, consider the possibility that he really is not bluffing and intends, no matter what, to deploy nuclear weapons, and what that would mean.
tristero 9/14/2006 09:26:00 AM |

 
The New New Product

by tristero

Hey! Remember Andy Card back in 2002, about selling the country on the idea of invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11?

From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.

A line that ranks as one of the ugliest lines ever in American politics. I wonder how the mothers of all those Americans who died in Iraq since Card said this feel about having their children's sacrifice characterized as a new product. I wonder what the mothers of all those Iraqis who died - their deaths being in fact one of the main ingredients of the new product - would feel about Card if they were told about what he said.

But I digress. Because we now have a NEW new product for the fall of 2006. And it's being marketed the most effective way possible, word of fucking mouth;

On the September 12 edition of his CNN Headline News program, Glenn Beck said that "[t]he Middle East is being overrun by 10th-century barbarians" and "[i]f they take over ... we're going to have to nuke the whole place."

CNN, ladies, gentlemen, and Republicans. This was said on the Communist News Network, not Fox. Not the Washington Times.

And you thought I was joking. Let's make this very, very clear:

The world will not tolerate the use of nuclear weapons by George W. Bush (or anyone else for that matter, but it's Bush who is wagging the nuclear cock most often these days, and yes, Beck is reading from a White House script). The consequences for this country will not be nuclear retaliation, of course, not in the short term at least. There are plenty of other ways to attack America. And if Bush does drop even one itty bitty "tactical" nuke, this country will be at war. For real. Not with some neocon delusion, but with nearly everyone on the planet. Trust me on this: it won't be pretty.

Adults are needed to tell Bush and Rove to zip it. Fast. They are in way over their heads. The White House isn't a frat house and nuclear saber-rattling is no joke. This is one New Product that should be pulled from the market before it's ever released.
tristero 9/14/2006 02:09:00 AM |

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

 
"Poor George. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."

by digby


It is probably inappropriate to bring this up on the sad occasion of her death, but the passing of Governor Ann Richards tonight brings to mind one of the most despicable political campaigns in American politics. I have a feeling that Governor Richards would understand, though --- she didn't seem to care too much for stiff propriety --- and it may be just the right moment to remind every Democrat running for office right now to watch his or her back.

The Bush family hated her for saying that "poor George" line at the 1988 convention. When Junior ran against her for governor, Karl Rove got their revenge for them.

Ann Richards was a socially progressive and inclusive governor of Texas, appointing a few gays and lesbians to state boards and commissions. In 1994, Rove pinpointed this as an issue certain to help George W. Bush win election in a conservative state. Of course, Rove was not about to let his candidate broach the subject himself. Instead, he worked through Republican operatives in East Texas. Rumors soon began to circulate through coffee shops and agricultural co-ops that implied Gov. Richards, an unmarried woman, might be a lesbian. Without identifying the topic, she acknowledged she was being hurt. "You know what it's about," she told reporters, dismissively, after being asked about the rumors. "And I'm not talking about it."

But Republican state Sen. Bill Ratliff from East Texas, who was also Bush's regional coordinator for that part of the state, was quoted in newspapers as criticizing Richards for "appointing avowed homosexual activists" to state jobs. The rumors were then given a form of legitimacy and widely reported. Then just as he did with Kerry and the Swift Boat controversy, Rove had Bush step forward as a voice of understanding and reason. "The senator doesn't speak for me," Bush told reporters. "I don't know anything about what he's talking about. I'm trying to run an issues-oriented campaign."

Governor Richards would undoubtedly join us in hoping that it won't be too many more years before that particular "smear" will no longer be a smear at all but just a natural description of a person that carries no value judgment one way or the other.

She lost that election, of course, but she carried on with style, panache and great wit. She was a great lady and one of my favorite Texans. RIP.



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digby 9/13/2006 09:59:00 PM |

 
Answering Kevin's Question

by tristero

Riffing off Atrios, I'd like to take a stab at answering Kevin Drum's question. Briefly, neocons like Kristol and others are calling for more troops, but there ain't any, cause they're really lowering standards to get more folks enlisted , so Kevin asks:

If we need more troops to win, but there aren't any more troops to be had, then what?

And the answer, as far as Kristol, Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush administration are concerned is obvious:

What do you think all those "tactical" nukes are for, anyway?

And anyone who doesn't think the neocons aren't advocating nukes as the answer to the troop shortage hasn't been paying attention. Hersh made it clear that's the plan back in April, 2006.

Nukes replace troops. Not to mention that Bush et al are jonesing to drop the first Big Ones since Dubya Dubya Two. For one thing, they don't want Kim Jong Il, let alone other losers like India or Pakistan to have any fun before they do.

If that sounds gruesomely cynical, that's because it is. And I hope to hell that is all it is. But I'm afraid it's also an accurate description of the Bush administration's thinking.

Folks, let's remember this: The next time you vote for president that guy or gal is gonna have his hand on The Button. You think Frist or Jeb Bush is mature enough to control themselves? Or Rice? Or McCain? Let's get real here. Say what you want, Kerry could. Clark could. Gore could. As Clinton could, and did.

Voting for president is serious bizness, people. You don't vote for a moron like Bush if you're serious. Ever.
tristero 9/13/2006 04:16:00 PM |

 
Low-Tech Sophisticates

by digby


This article by Walter Pincus in the Wapo indicates that the white house is coordinating with the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee by providing them with selective, unclassified talking points for them to use. This is not surprising, of course, since they have treated the NSA spying as a political campaign and the Eunuch Caucus members on the committee have dutifully followed in lock-step.

The talking points are the usual drivel, but I especially like this one:

"Current law is not agile enough to handle the threat posed by sophisticated international terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda"

Wow. Those terrorists sure are frightening. Here's what we learned just this week in the Washington Post about the "sophisticated" methods of al Qaeda:

Faced with the most sophisticated technology in the world, bin Laden has gone decidedly low-tech. His 23 video or audiotapes in the last five years are thought to have been hand-carried to news outlets or nearby mail drops by a series of couriers who know nothing about the contents of their deliveries or the real identity of the sender, a simple method used by spies and drug traffickers for centuries.

"They are really good at operational security," said Ben Venzke, chief executive officer of IntelCenter, a private company that analyzes terrorist information and has obtained, analyzed and published all bin Laden's communiques. "They are very good at having enough cut-outs" to move videos into circulation without detection. "It's some of the simplest things to do."

It seems obvious to me that what they really want to do is spy on law abiding American muslims and political opponents and that is wrong on both practical and moral grounds. Radicalizing the first group is the Republicans' most dangerous and stupid desire, but they seem intent upon doing it. It almost seems as if they are jealous of the Europeans who actually have a home grown threat while we don't.

Profiling, warrantless spying, conflating their religion with fascism --- all this seems designed to make American muslims feel as if they are being blamed for Islamic terrorism. If they persist in doing this kind of thing they will likely succeed in turning some of those Americans into extremists too. But then, Republicans are desperate to make this threat greater than it already is in order to justify their overblown hysteria; if they have to actually create homegrown terrorists themselves, they will.

As for spying on political opponents, well --- that's just a Republican traditional value. And we know how they love traditional values.


Update: For another example of not-so-latent wingnut muslim bigotry, read this. (via)




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digby 9/13/2006 10:47:00 AM |

 
Cha-cha-cha

by digby

I don't know what it means, but every time I play Tucker Carlson's "Dancing With The Stars" Youtube, it crashes my browser at the end. Not that it matters because I'm unable to see through the tears of laughter anyway.

If you dare, take a look. It is truly hilarious.

Update: On the other hand, this snotty little bitch isn't so funny when he's not making a fool of himself on the dance floor. Get a load of this lovely little exchange:

CARLSON: Now clearly, we all agree that there is -- there are things to be afraid of. We disagree about what they may be. Here's one I think we can all agree is, frankly, a terrifying prospect. It comes from our old pal Pat Buchanan [MSNBC political analyst and former presidential candidate]. He says this about Al Gore. He proclaims that if the former vice president ran for the Democratic nomination right now, Pat Buchanan predicts, he would beat Hillary Clinton to win the nomination. Now whatever you think of Pat's politics, he's a pretty, I think, smart prognosticator. The idea of Al Gore, I think both of you -- Mark, we'll start with you -- you agree even the Democrats don't want that.

WILLIAMS: You know, if he does, I mean, from Pat Buchanan's lips to God's ear because that would be the Talk Show Host Employment Act of 2008. You know, Rush Limbaugh and I and guys like me are lighting candles every Sunday praying for just such an event. You know, the Hildebeast is just an amoral politician. Al Gore is nuts. I mean I've met the guy. I've talked with the guy. I stood 10 feet from him at a MoveOn.Org thing I crashed in D.C., watching him bellow and sweat like a racehorse on -- you know, has been drugged out or something. He wasn't, but he looked like a racehorse, his nostrils flaring. The guy's nuts, and he's angry. He was up there talking about how President Bush is agitating for the assassination of judges, and then he said, "If the Supreme Court doesn't get its act together, people just may rise up against them." I mean, the guy's out of his mind. It would be very entertaining. I think the Hildebeast would take him down. I just wish the Republicans had somebody other than, like, [Sen.] George Allen [VA], who's a great guy, but I wish we had a little more to choose from on the Republican side.

CARLSON: Alex Bennett, what do you think? And be honest, here. I know we're on television, but tell the truth. The idea of Al Gore getting the nomination again, you don't welcome that. You're not a masochist, are you?

BENNETT: I absolutely am a masochist. If I were really a masochist, I'd want Hillary to run.

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digby 9/13/2006 08:55:00 AM |

 
"Conservatives" Will Benefit If Democrats Win The House

by tristero

Yes, and I hope they keep benefitting by losing the Senate. It builds character, trust me. In fact, "conservatives" will surely benefit from, I dunno, 100 years or so of losing. That's a bare minimum, if you want my considered opinion, before the benefits of losing will kick in.

Dig what Ponnuru, the author of the thoughtful, learned, and ever so civil, "The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for Human Life” is saying and see if you don't agree.

He's saying that congressional Republicans are hopelessly corrupt. In the spirit of comity I'm sure he will appreciate, I'd like to state categorically that I completely agree with him. He's also saying that Republicans aren't conservative enough. Now about that, Mr. Ponnuru, and with all due respect, your dishonest rhetorical scam exposes you as a thoroughly reprehensible conniving sleazebag.

Colin Powell is a conservative, Mr. Ponnuru. Christie Whitman is a conservative. Joe Lieberman is a conservative. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom Delay, Bill Frist, Tom Coburn, and their ilk are NOT conservatives. They are rightwing extremists. In the sixties, I would have called them Birchers, not having the knowledge of the far right back then to distinguish amongst different flavors of rightwing lunacy.*

Conservatives don't look at videos of a brain-dead woman twitching and drooling, declare her conscious and then pass a law that eviscerates a 200 plus year old history of jurisprudence in order to deny her a dignified death. And conservatives don't call out state agents, as Jeb Bush did, to to kidnap the woman from her bed in defiance of federal and state laws, not to mention reality-based common-sense. Conservatives don't stand for "unitary executive" or have any interest at all in restricting science, let alone teaching our children lies about science. And conservatives don't neglect to protect their country's shores, or lead their country's soldiers into war based on a cynical marketing campaign of lies and distortions.

I don't like conservatives like Powell, Mr. Ponnuru. I don't like them one bit. They are biased against working people and favor solutions that benefit managment, and that's a gross understatement. Their international diplomacy is dangerously shallow because they hold to a foolishly narcissistic exceptionalism that holds American values as the standard by which to measure the rest of the world. Historically, and today, conservatives minimize or ignore potentially serious problems (eg global climate change) until they are so serious that it is nearly impossible to do much good about them. And they are so adverse to government solutions - unless it props up monopolies and other practices benefitting business management - that they fail to understand that failure-of-government-to-act is quite often the problem.

No, conservatives aren't terribly competent or effective politicians. But they aren't raving mad like you and your pals.


Note to commenters: Yes, I entertained the thought that it might be useful to encourage Republicans to adopt Ponnuru's arguments and get in even closer touch with their inner stormtrooper (or Salem judge). The arguments in favor of doing so being:

1. The sooner They take over completely, the sooner The People will realize the depths of their oppression and revolt.

2. If the American people see the full face of Ponnuru's pals' radicalism, they will be so nauseated, they won't elect another Republican for X years.

But then I thought better about it. Why? Because I'm a liberal, that's why. And liberals hate radical solutions and revolutions, especially if they increase suffering. And liberals don't believe anyone who tells them that short-term suffering caused by increased oppression will lead to long-term benefits for the people suffering the most. It never has. It never will.



*The Birchers can be recognized because they not only have screwy ideas and a screwy metaphysics but their metaphysics is utterly paranoid, rather than almost entirely so. Clear? For example:

Cheney thinks the world is out to shoot him in the face at any moment and so feels he must shoot first. A Bircher thinks the world's been plotting to shoot him in the face ever since the Templars were formed. And so feels he must shoot first.

Or something like that. I'm sure you folks can come up with far more precise analogies. And far funnier, so have at it, make it so, make it work, whatever.

tristero 9/13/2006 06:46:00 AM |

 
And They Lied Shamefully About Bush, Too

by tristero

And the lies made Bush look much worse than Clinton. Much, much worse.

Ha, ha. Just kidding.
tristero 9/13/2006 04:56:00 AM |

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

 
Pimping the Greatest Generation

by digby

The president seemed a little confused last night. For the last two weeks he's been evoking images of WWII, talking about islamic fascists and the like. Last night he seemed to be adding the Cold War into the mix. Apparently, he wants people to believe that al Qaeda is more threatening than the Nazis and the communists combined:

The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century and the calling of our generation.

Our nation is being tested in a way that we have not been since the start of the Cold War.

And then:

Do we have the confidence to do in the Middle East what our fathers and grandfathers accomplished in Europe and Asia?

[...]

Across the broader Middle East, the extremists are fighting to prevent such a future. Yet America has confronted evil before, and we have defeated it; sometimes at the cost of thousands of good men in a single battle.

When Franklin Roosevelt vowed to defeat two enemies across two oceans, he could not have foreseen D-Day and Iwo Jima, but he would not have been surprised at the outcome.

When Harry Truman promised American support for free peoples resisting Soviet aggression, he could not have foreseen the rise of the Berlin Wall, but he would not have been surprised to see it brought down.

This is actually about something more than his War On Terror. Bush is speaking to a deep yearning among some Americans that was apparent before 9/11. Chris Hayes has a wonderful new piece this week in "In These Times" that explains:

On September 11, 2001, George W. Bush wrote the following impression in his diary: “The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today.” He wasn’t alone in this assessment. In the days after the attacks, editorialists, pundits and citizens reached with impressive unanimity for this single historical precedent. The Sept. 12 New York Times alone contained 13 articles mentioning Pearl Harbor.

Five years after 9/11 we are still living with the legacy of this hastily drawn analogy. Whatever the natural similarities between December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001, the association of the two has led us to convert—first in rhetoric, later in fact—a battle against a small band of clever, murderous fundamentalists into a worldwide war of epic scale.

[...]

How did we get here?

The best place to look for the answer is not in the days after the attacks, but in the years before. Examining the cultural mood of the late ’90s allows us to separate the natural reaction to a national trauma from any underlying predispositions. During that period, the country was in the grip of a strange, prolonged obsession with World War II and the generation that had fought it.

The pining for the glory days of the Good War has now been largely forgotten, but to sift through the cultural detritus of that era is to discover a deep longing for the kind of epic struggle the War on Terror would later provide. The standard view of 9/11 is that it “changed everything.” But in its rhetoric and symbolism, the WWII nostalgia laid the conceptual groundwork for what was to come—the strange brew of nationalism, militarism and maudlin sentimentality that constitutes post-9/11 culture.

To fully understand what has gone wrong since 9/11, it is necessary to rewind the tape to that moment just before.

I don't think younger people can understand the depth of the generation gap between the baby boomers and their parents, the Greatest Generation. It was a chasm and it turned families inside out for many years. But by the 90's our parents were starting to get very old and for many of us, the fetishizing of the Greatest Generation was a form of generational rapprochement.

For conservative baby boomers, however, it had much more resonance. Vietnam was their war, of course, the most lethal, meaningful hot war of the Cold War, but they had largely avoided it like most of their age group, even as they extolled the warrior virtues and supported the policy. (This led to cognitive dissonance that never left them.) They also sat out or opposed the successful, defining social movements of their generation --- civil rights and women's rights --- and were looking back at a life made up of nothing more than petty culture war resentment. By the time they came into power even the Cold War was over --- resolved by the last presidents of the Greatest Generation. It looked as if the conservative baby boomers were going to be left without any meaningful legacy at all. You could feel their emptiness.

Karl Rove and other rightwing operatives saw a way to feed that gaping void with WWII kitch while furthering their long standing narrative. As Hayes also makes clear in his article, the entire Greatest Generation campaign was partially designed to further the conservative culture war by evoking that epic generation gap and portraying the WWII parents as the proper role models.

He writes:

Even before 9/11, Karl Rove understood this all too well. In his essay “Operation Enduring Analogy: World War II, the War on Terror and the Uses of Historical Memory,” David Hoogland Noon, a history professor at the University of Alaska, Southeast, writes that even in his first campaign George W. Bush “consistently referenced World War II not simply to justify his own policy aims, but more importantly as a cultural project as well as an ongoing gesture of self-making,” positioning himself as “an heir to the reputed greatest generation of American leaders.”

“In the world of our fathers, we have seen how America should conduct itself,” Bush said in a 1999 speech at the Citadel. Now, the moment had come “to show that a new generation can renew America’s purpose.” Throughout both his campaigns, Bush would go out of his way to criticize the dominant ethos of “If it feels good, do it,” instead calling for a “culture in which each of us understands we’re responsible for the decisions we make.”

Bush’s allusions to the Greatest Generation were so persistent that the press came to see him—a Boomer child of privilege known for his youthful carousing—as a kind of throwback. Reporting on Bush’s first inaugural address, Newsweek’s Evan Thomas wrote that “Bush wants the White House to recover some of its dignity, to rise above baby-boomer self-indulgence and aspire to the order and self-discipline prized by the Greatest Generation.”

Yes, the press veritably quivered with excitement that the "grown-ups" were back in charge. The aburdity of it all was staggering, of course --- the boomer man-child who never had a real job and drank himself into oblivion until he was 40 representing the Greatest Generation --- but there it was. When 9/11 hit shortly after he took office it was a seamless transition. (They even put him in a flightsuit and tried to pass him off as a heroic WWII pilot.) This yearning for "grown-ups" to take charge is a conservative boomer psychological condition. They and the political class are the only ones who are still fixated on the 1960's; the rest of us moved on sometime back.

One big problem for the Republicans is that a majority in this country now are too young to give a damn about any of this. Rove might be able to tap in to the yearning of middle aged rightwingers to be involved in an epic struggle that competes with their parents' greater accomplishments, but the young conservatives who are required to sustain this endless war don't have the same psychic needs. They didn't grow up in the shadow of a generation who fought and won two existential battles; their boomer parents either failed to rise to the occasion (in opposition or battle) when they had the chance or rejected the whole war fetish all together. These young conservatives'idea of glory is winning a fast paced video game. If 9/11 had even had a modicum of the same sense of threat as Pearl Harbor, we would have seen a similar rush on the recruiting centers and we didn't. In fact, the strongest youthful supporters of the war, the College Republicans, commonly say things like this:

"The people opposed to the war aren't putting their asses on the line," Bray boomed from beside the bar. Then why isn't he putting his ass on the line? "I'm not putting my ass on the line because I had the opportunity to go to the number-one business school in the country," he declared, his voice rising in defensive anger, "and I wasn't going to pass that up."

That's quite a stirring call to arms isn't it?

This rhetoric of epic struggle that rivals WWII and The Cold War serves the simple political purpose of rallying the conservative base so that the Republicans can maintain power. It is guided by the deep psychological need for conservative baby boomers to find some meaning in their pathetic lives and a cynical attempt to co-opt some sunny, simple vision of the Greatest Generation --- who would be the last people to claim the depression and the wars of their lifetimes were either sunny or simple. The younger conservative generation sees it as a cynical political game, which it is.

The entire campaign is built on a Disneyfied version of WWII and boomer childhood nightmare cartoons of The Cold War. They trying to squeeze all the boogeymen of the 20th century into Osama bin Laden's turban in the hope that they can cop a little bit of that Hollywood heroism themselves. (After all, their hero Ronald Reagan didn't actually fight in any real war either --- he just remembered the movies he was in and thought he had.) It is deeply, deeply unserious.

I had to laugh last night when I heard George W. Bush say this:

Osama bin Laden calls this fight "The Third World War," and he says that victory for the terrorists in Iraq will mean America's defeat and disgrace forever.

Well, he's not the only one who calls it that, is he?

Mr Bush told the CNBC television network the revolt of passengers on the hijacked flight 93 on September 11, 2001, was the "first counter-attack to World War III".

He said he agreed with the description by David Beamer, whose son Todd died in the crash, in a Wall Street Journal commentary last month the act was "our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war - World War III".

Mr Bush said: "I believe that. I believe that it was the first counter-attack to World War III.

It would appear that bin Laden and Bush have a meeting of the minds on this. They and their followers apparently need to see this as a "world war" but I think it would be very, very unwise to allow them to have their way. These things have a tendency to get out of hand.



Update: Attytood makes an important observation about our new "world war"

slightly modified to make sense.

.
digby 9/12/2006 05:26:00 PM |

 
Dancing With The Idiots

by digby

I just heard Tucker Carlson casually say that he told his "lesbian leftist friend" (probably Rachel Maddow), "when al Qaeda takes over you'll be the first one hung up by your thumbs."

I would really love to hear by what scenario these piddling chickenhawks see al Qaeda "taking over" the United States of America. Super secret laser beams from Mars? How?

What children these people are.



.
digby 9/12/2006 05:15:00 PM |

 
A Speech Too Far

by digby


I am seeing some Bush skepticism today on the news as CNN sends Anderson Cooper (looking fabulous in prada, as always) to Afghanistan under the heading "The Forgotten War." They are talking a lot about the resurgence of The Taliban. Most interestingly, the news today is all about how the president exploited 9/11 politically. I think it's far batter to have the press discussing that than drooling over the Codpiece as they have in the past.

The crawl on CNN says:

Dems: Pres. used 9/11 to defend Iraq war, score political points
Republicans fire back: Accuse Dems of being soft on terror

Normally I would see that as a win for the Republicans, but the media is having none of it today. Here is how the story is encapsulated on CNN right now:

• Democrats say President Bush used 9/11 address for political attacks
• White House says speech was not meant to be partisan
• House GOP leader questions Democrats' interest in fighting terrorism
• With elections near, both parties try to gain upper hand on terrorism issue

Pelosi deftly pivoted from criticism of exploiting 9/11 to Iraq:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, also denounced Bush's speech, citing a Senate Intelligence Committee report released last week that said that the CIA had dismissed ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

"In fact, the war in Iraq has made our effort to defeat terrorism and terrorists more difficult," Pelosi said in a written statement. "Last night's speech demonstrated that the president will go to any lengths to distract attention from his failures in Iraq, which have diverted focus from the war on terrorism."

Wolf Blitzer just did his lead-in with "more on the presidents speech and the political fallout."

Media Matters points out that the Washington Post and the NY Times both initially portrayed this as Democrats stoking partisanship. But watching television today, that interpretation doesn't seem to have taken. The cable news outlets are talking about whether the president is too partisan.

I would rather we be talking about Bush's failures, but considering the fact that Bush just had the microphone for a solid week, this isn't a bad transition into the campaign. The wingnuts are sounding more than a little bit shrill:

When asked about the Democrat's response to the president's speech, House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said "if you listen to the Democrats, [you] have to wonder if they're more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people.

Here's how the press reacted to that in this morning's press conference with Tony Snow:

QUESTION: Last night, the president asked Democrats and Republicans to put aside differences in the war on terrorism, and I wanted to see how you think that's going a day later when...

(LAUGHTER)

... Harry Reid accuses the president of playing election year politics and House Majority Leader Boehner says of Democrats, "I wonder if they're more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people. They certainly don't want to take the terrorists on and defeat them."

SNOW: Apparently there are differing points of view.

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: Do you leave at that? You don't think it's anything more?

So did the president fail in this mission?

SNOW: No, I don't think so, because on broader -- it's interesting. We're going to have a lot of political conflict this year. Perfectly understandable, acceptable, predictable. That's the way it works.

But yesterday gave the American people a chance to reflect on September 11th and how it froze us in an instant ... [blah, blah, blah]

So, no, I think Americans are united on the important things. And they also understand that in politics there will be a vigorous debate about how best to pursue the goal.

But I don't think there's any disagreement that ultimately our freedoms are precious and that this country is an extraordinary place that remains not only the beacon of the world but the envy of many, and that it is our responsibility to preserve that for this and every future generation.

And Americans also understand political seasons.

QUESTION: Do you think both sides, Democrats and Republicans, want to defeat the terrorists?

SNOW: I do. I mean, I think -- I don't think...

(CROSSTALK)

SNOW: I'm not going to get in a debate over statements that I haven't seen.

I think that there are going to be plenty of debates about who's going to be more effective in waging that battle. But, you know, I'll let John Boehner and Harry Reid duke it out on their own. I'll speak for the president.

QUESTION: As you well know, this is not a campaign season about whether America is a great place or not, right? I mean, it's a lot more substantive than that and it has to do with the path that this president took the country after 9/11.

Now, when a Republican leader of Congress says, "I wonder if Democrats are more interested in protecting terrorists than they are in protecting the American people," as a spokesman for the president, do you think it's your duty to say that that's out of bounds or not?

SNOW: Frankly, again, this is one of these things -- I haven't even seen the Boehner statement. But let me make a larger point. When people call the president a liar or a loser, that happens. There have been all sorts of names and smears aimed at the president. And he understands that he's a big enough boy to deal with that.

The other thing is that in this present political season, unfortunately, there will be a lot of -- there will be some name calling.

You know what? I think you and I agree. Let's figure out what the substantive issues are, let's get past the name calling and let's get down to it and let's talk about it.

QUESTION: This is important because, as a matter of fact, the vice president said over the weekend to Tim Russert that, "The sort of debate we're having in this country about withdrawing troops from Iraq emboldens the terrorists." Now you have a Republican leader of Congress saying the Democrats may be "more interested in protecting terrorists than the American people."

Does the president agree with that?

SNOW: The president -- what you've done is you've taken two things. Let's focus on what the vice president said, which is that withdrawal from Iraq would embolden the terrorists.

I think it's true. Osama bin Laden has made it clear. And one of the things he says is if the United States is pushed from Iraq, it will be to the eternal humiliation of the United States.

So it is clear that from the standpoint of bin Laden, who, in the past -- and you quite kindly corrected me on the misstatement back in August when I got it wrong -- bin Laden drew the conclusion when we left Somalia that the Americans didn't have what it took to stick it out.

See, that's the way the enemy's looking at this.

Now, so, as an objective statement about the way in which bin Laden views the United States, that is a true statement.

I'm not going to get into trying to characterize what John Boehner said.

QUESTION: You certainly would get into, if someone accused the president of being a liar, do you want to let a statement like this stand from a Republican leader?.

SNOW: Like I said, you're presenting me with a statement I haven't seen. I'll tell you what, I'll get back to you on it.

QUESTION: It's been out there for a couple of hours. I think you had ample time to see it.

Let me ask you this final point. Can you describe how it's possible to oppose the president on the war on Iraq without emboldening the terrorists?

SNOW: There are probably -- yes, absolutely, there are ways to do it. But also, if you say, "We need to leave right now with no preconditions" -- and I'm not sure anybody says that, but I'll give you a hypothetical -- that would embolden the terrorists.

If the end result was that we left Iraq and we did not have an Iraq that was able to sustain itself, govern itself and defend itself, that would embolden the terrorists.

If the terrorists have the ability -- if the terrorists draw the conclusion that they can use political means -- because they can't defeat us militarily, so it has to be a political battle -- if they can use political means to drive us from Iraq and make Iraq a place from which, like Afghanistan before, they can mount terrorist attacks and set up their own headquarters and this time have in addition oil as a weapon, then that, in fact, is the kind of situation that we can't let stand.

But there are ways -- you can disagree over a lot of things. If you share the objective of having an Iraq -- and this is what's, kind of, interesting about the debate last night, because if you look at the president's speech, he talks about an Iraq that's going to be able to be democratic -- I don't know that that's controversial with anybody -- an Iraq where Iraqi forces are going to be able to defend Iraqi ground -- I don't know that that's controversial. I think those are the things.

So to answer your question -- and I'll let you get back to this -- to answer your question, it is possible to disagree. But on the other hand, if you were proposing a position that says to bin Laden, in effect, "Iraq is yours," then that is not the kind of thing that I think is going to lead to victory.

QUESTION: Do Democrats want to protect terrorists more than the American people? What do you think?

SNOW: Again, you know, I know you think that in the last hour -- I had an hour to prepare, because we had long meetings...

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) question. Forget about what John Boehner said. I'm putting the proposition to you. Do you have an opinion on that topic?

SNOW: Do I think -- no, I think...

QUESTION: Democrats are more interested in protecting terrorists than the American people?

SNOW: No.

Big of him, don't you think?

I think Bush's speech is blowing back on him.

Update: I see Josh Marshall thinks this is a Democratic screw-up. Normally I might agree. But this time the white house made the mistake of selling that speech as being non-partisan to the press and the press is (surprisingly)leaping on it. The Dems are using this controversy about abusing the sacred 9/11 to pivot to Iraq. This is one case where I think phony sanctimony may have worked to change the subject and the Republicans overreacted.

One thing we know for sure: the 9/11 pageant is over.

Update II: Newsweek puts it this way:

Sept. 12, 2006 - The White House promised a non-political speech. Bush's aides said the president's address to the nation would exploit no partisan differences, and issue no calls to Congress. In technical terms, they were right. To all intents and purposes, they were wrong.

Sure, President Bush avoided the words Democrat and Republican. And there were no exhortations for legislation. But if that's the definition of political, then there's little that qualifies outside a 30-second TV ad and a State of the Union speech. Instead, the 9-11 anniversary speech carried all the hallmarks of politics as honed and polished by President Bush in the 12 years he has held public office.

The most important hallmark is a passive-aggressive strategy-to land a punch without looking like you're in a fight. So Bush took the high road of patriotism, as he called for Democrats to stop opposing his policies in Iraq and elsewhere. "Winning this war will require the determined efforts of a unified country," Bush said, "and we must put aside our differences and work together to meet the test that history has given us."

Nothing in his speech, and nothing outside it, suggests that President Bush is ready to meet his critics half-way in setting aside their differences. In the president's view, the people playing politics-and dividing the nation-are those who oppose his approach. That may not be explicitly partisan politics, but it is political debate dressed up in patriotic clothes.

.
digby 9/12/2006 02:15:00 PM |

 

Vested Bedfellows

by poputonian

Here's what's wrong with the American Boardroom:

October 12, 2005

Apple cuts the TV out of TV programming

"This is a first giant step," said Disney Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger, who appeared on stage with Jobs to tout the new offering. "It is the future, as far as we are concerned."

Today

Apple Launches Online Movie Service

The iTunes Music Store, however, will initially carry movies only from The Walt Disney Co. studios, where Apple CEO Steve Jobs is a board member. By contrast, Amazon.com Inc.'s movie service launched last week with distribution deals with seven studios -- but not Disney.

I don't see how Jobs can fulfill his obligations as Disney Director (regarding potentially libelous TV movies) when he has a stake in keeping his mouth shut.

Conflict of Interest (from wikipedia)

A conflict of interest is a situation in which someone in a position of trust, such as a lawyer, a politician, or an executive or director of a corporation, has competing professional or personal interests. Such competing interests can make it difficult to fulfill his or her duties impartially. Even if there is no evidence of improper actions, a conflict of interest can create an appearance of impropriety that can undermine confidence in the ability of that person to act properly in his/her position.

poputonian 9/12/2006 01:40:00 PM |

 
Letter From Clinton's Office

by tristero

[Note: All emphases were in the text sent to me.]

September 10, 2006
Dear Bob,

We are deeply disappointed that ABC and the Disney Corporation chose to air "The Path to 9/11." The final product was fraught with error and contained contrived scenes that are directly contradicted by the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report. The film has undoubtedly cemented in millions of viewers' minds a false impression of critical historical events.

While there is not enough room here to fully document the fiction in your film, attached to this letter is a detailed fact sheet listing the numerous inaccuracies in the film according to the 9/11 Commission.

Nine days ago, we wrote to you asking simply that the miniseries tell the truth, as researched extensively and definitively by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. We asked that your network not present outright fiction as historical fact to the American public. In fact, we took pains to detail sequences in the movie that were plainly invented, based upon the version of the film that was shown to television critics and distributed to many conservative commentators. During our two recent conversations, you assured us that you were personally taking the responsibility to ensure that appropriate edits to the film would be made. Publicly, ABC said that the editing process was ongoing and that it was irresponsible" to condemn the film before seeing the finished product.

Having now seen the first night of this fiction, it is clear that the edits made to the film did not address the factual errors that we brought to your attention. "The Path to 9/11" flagrantly ignored the facts as reported by the 9/11 Commission and invented its own version of history. The result, in our judgment, is irreparable damage to the Commission's work. More importantly, it is a disservice to the American people.

That the film directly contradicts the findings of the 9/11 Commission is troubling. That it defames dedicated public officials is tragic. But the fact that it misleads millions of people about the most tragic and consequential event in recent history is disgraceful.

Sincerely,

Bruce R. Lindsey
Chief Executive Officer
William J. Clinton Foundation

Douglas J. Band
Counselor to President Clinton
Office of William Jefferson Clinton
tristero 9/12/2006 07:10:00 AM |

 
"Projecting Fascism"

by tristero

Dave Neiwert has, as he has so often, an extremely intelligent post entitled, you guessed it, "Projecting Fascism:"

[John] Dean has hit on exactly what we've been observing about movement conservatives and their increasingly ugly tone in recent: it is part of a sometimes conscious strategy to project their own ambitions onto their opponents:

In other words, for a number of the right's leading rhetoricians, the projection appears to be perfectly conscious: it is a strategy, designed to marginalize their opposition and open the field to nearly any behavior it chooses.

And it is extraordinarily successful precisely because projection, as a trait, is so deeply woven into the right-wing psyche. Those who engage in it consciously set off waves of sympathetic response from their audiences because it hits their buttons in exactly the right spot.

The deep-seatedness of this trait can make it diffidcult, at times, to discern whether the behavior is conscious or not. But it also lends to a certain predictability: One of the best indicators of where the right is heading, I've noted previously, can be found in the very things of which it accuses the left.

So when it starts to accuse its opponents of coddling fascism, you can rest assured that the American right is embarking on precisely that path itself. And considering what we know about fascism historically, this shouldn't be a surprise.

Yep. In the jargon of psychotherapy, projection is a primitive defense mechanism for eliminating anxiety about one's own self-worth. Let me try to illustrate with an example.

Let's say, hypothetically, that you are President of the United States. Picking a name out of a hat, I'll call you George W. Bush. All your life you've avoided serious danger, both physically (going AWOL, perhaps from a National Guard Unit) and psychologically (maybe you are a one-time heavy boozer who has replaced cocktails with sycophants instructed to keep all criticism away from you). You have started a war in a Middle Eastern country - any one, but let's just say it was Iraq - and it's going badly. You're afraid to withdraw the troops because you think everyone will learn that you are what you know yourself to be: a deeply terrified coward.

The thought is unbearable and you must get rid of it. But how? You simply "project" those thoughts onto a hated enemy. You deny them in yourself by accusing your political enemies of the failure to commit and focus that, you fear, you yourself, for your entire life, are guilty of.

You may also try to project some of your overwhelming guilt into very revealing jokes. Suppose, for example, you can't abide people doing things you don't like. But you know that those who seek to control others are often given the most odious labels your culture can bestow. It makes you uncomfortable because you're afraid you're one of those people. So, to relieve the psychic tension, you quip, "It's a heck of a lot easier being a dictator, as long as I'm the dictator," just a good natured chuckle that hopefully makes you look like a powerful, responsible person that can laugh at the burdens of power, rather than covet more. Never mind that the grammatical lapses (the tenses) might expose more lust for power than you might like; no one listens that closely anyway to off the cuff laffs, so you're safe.

Now all this is hypothetically speaking, of course. No one, not even Charles Krauthammer, should try to psychoanalyze anyone by long distance. But while my little crude example may be inapt, it is quite appropriate to note the conscious use of projection as part of the rhetorical strategy of the right. And it is, as Neiwert implies, quite conscious.

The right knows exactly who are behaving like fascists - who are, in fact, fascists: themselves.
tristero 9/12/2006 05:34:00 AM |

 
Olbermann

by tristero

Digby mentioned this at the end of a post below, but let me highlight Keith Olbermann's history-making condemnation of Bush's response to 9/11, which comes close to Edward R. Murrow's level of eloquence.

Don't miss it.
tristero 9/12/2006 03:41:00 AM |

Monday, September 11, 2006

 
Why Haven't We Been Attacked Again?

by tristero

Of course, we've been attacked, again and again. No, I'm not talking about the anthrax attacks. Or the assault on July 4, 2002 at LA airport, an incident that was relabeled possible terrorism when no one was looking. I'm talking Spain and Britain and Indonesia and Jordan and so on, so on.

Y'know the fake term "Islamo-fascism" used to justify the invasion of Iraq for an attack perpetrated primarily by Saudis? Guess what? Al Qaeda thinks the same way about "the Jews and the Crusaders." New York, Madrid, London - they're all in it together, if we attack Indonesia we send a message to Paris not to fuck with us. America's support for Israel, Western-style nightclubs in Bali - it's transnational, an ideology of hate. These are people who simply want to destroy us. The West - we're all the same to al-Zawahiri, all responsible. The US bombs us? Hit Spain.

The awful tragedy of this time, and what makes it radically different than Lincoln's or FDR's, is that Osama is facing an enemy even more ignorant. narcissistic, and insecure than he is. Ignorant armies clashing by night, indeed.

Susan Sontag got a lot of flack when she wrote, a short time after 9/11/01 that everyone knows the US is strong, the question is whether we can be smart. Sontag was no fool. She knew there was no doubt about it, not with these clowns in charge.
tristero 9/11/2006 10:13:00 PM |

 
Can't Handle The Truth

by digby


How very truthy of Disney/ABC to change the erroneous "PT9/11" line, "ever since the Washington Post disclosed that we intercept his calls, UBL stopped using them altogether" to "ever since the wonderful press disclosed that we intercept his calls, UBL stopped using them altogether."

The facts on this are well known: the Washington Post was right to complain and request that the line be changed because the Washington Times was the paper that the character in the movie would have been referring to.

Why in the hell didn't they just change the line to reflect the paper that actually wrote the story or cut it all together? Is it just reflex now for Disney/ABC to default to the right wing?



.
digby 9/11/2006 09:17:00 PM |

 
Won't Get Fooled Again

by digby

Kevin Drum explains why Democrats are unwilling to genuflect to Republican posturing on 9/11 anymore.

James Joyner, noting the harsh tone evident in many of the lefty blogosphere's 9/11 posts today, says that "the stridency of these posts, even from bloggers and publications on the moderate side of the lefty blogosphere is surprising."

Speaking only for myself, I'm not sure this should come as a surprise to anyone. My biggest disappointment of the past five years — the biggest by a very long way — has been the way that George Bush transformed 9/11 from an opportunity to bring the country together into a cynical and partisan cudgel useful primarily for winning a few more votes in national elections.

It's not my biggest disappointment; I knew they would exploit it. But I never expected they would be this aggressively shameless about it. Read the whole post for the full litany of opportunistic partisan BS.

And yet after all that, here is what the president had the nerve to say tonight:

“Winning this war will require the determined efforts of a unified country. So we must put aside our differences, and work together to meet the test that history has given us. We will defeat our enemies, we will protect our people, and we will lead the 21st century into a shining age of human liberty.”

"Put aside our differences?"

You first.



Update: If you haven't seen Olberman's comment tonight, be sure to check it out over at Crooks and Liars. Wow.



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digby 9/11/2006 06:35:00 PM |

 
Duped

by digby

Max Blumenthal has the latest on the rightwing cabal that got ABC to air its propaganda. It looks like Iger was asleep at the wheel and rudely awakened.

While I had speculated here that it was writer Cyrus Nowrasteh, whose credits included "The Day Reagan Was Shot," who brought in the lil' religious fanatic director David Cunningham, it turns out that Cunningham brought in Nowrasteh. Weird.

David Horowitz is doing his best Sergeant Schultz impression.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald reports even more proof emerges that the marketing campaign was aimed exclusively at rightwingers. No screeners for Alan Colmes, Al Franken, Ed Schultz or Rhandi Rhodes. Local LA bloviator Bill Handel got one, though. Unsolicited.


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digby 9/11/2006 05:54:00 PM |

 
9/11 Symbiosis

by digby


I've been getting a few admonistions from readers who are upset that I'm not suspending my anger to observe this day with solemnity and seriousness. But I'm not going to apologize for being angry. I was angry that day five years ago and I'm still angry.

You see, I knew --- I knew --- that bin Laden had just achieved a huge victory, perhaps a decisive one. This was not because of the attacks themselves or even the possibility of more in the future, which as horrible and dramatic as they are do not in themselves represent any kind of existential threat. This was because as an observer of the zeitgeist and the political scene for over 30 years at that point, I knew that our government and media would react to this event in exactly the way bin Laden hoped and that we would do to ourselves what the Islamic extremists could only dream of doing: turn the country into a permanent state of faux crisis --- and enable the authoritarian right wing of this country, which was unfortunately in power at the time, to pursue a doomed military empire, create a powerful imperial presidency and build the American style police state they had longed for for decades. I knew that they would run with this "opportunity" and run with it they did.

It became a cliche and then a joke when people would say "the terrorists have won" but there is little doubt in my mind that they have achieved much of what they set out to do. Rather than being the object of sympathy and solidarity we were in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the world now sees the United States as the terrorists do --- a rogue superpower, untrustworthy and unpredictable. The irrational invasion of Iraq cemented an image in the minds of muslims and others that the US intends to steal valuable mid-east resources and wants a permanent presence in the region in order to subjugate its people.

The next generation of Americans is going to be left with a crippling economic burden from the twin effects of runaway spending on Iraq and an insane fiscal policy. Our society is being trained to believe we live in a perpetually fearful state of suspended animation, waiting for the ax to fall and increasingly sure that we must be willing to allow the government to do anything to maintain our precarious safety. (As long as we can keep shopping, of course.)

SCHNEIDER: One year after 9/11, 31 percent of Americans said they felt fear when they thought about the attacks. Five years after the attacks, that numbers is up to 44 percent.

One year after 9/11, nearly half the public expressed a desire for vengeance. Osama bin Laden is still out there. Only now are some of the terrorists being brought to trial.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We will continue to bring the world's most dangerous terrorists to justice.

SCHNEIDER: The desire for vengeance is about the same five years later. Do Americans believe the country will ever completely return to normal? No, a view shared by more and more people. One year after 9/11, 54 percent felt the country would never get back to normal. Now, five years after the attacks, 70 percent believe the country will never return to normal.

Good work Osama. If you wanted to create terror, you seem to have succeeded. Or someone has on your behalf. There are those who seem intent upon wallowing in this "fear," immersing themselves in it, rubbing it all over them and everybody else. And there's no question why they want to do that. After all, terror doesn't just benefit Al Qaeda, does it?

The conservative Center for Security Policy will begin airing a new television commercial criticizing those who might oppose [Bush's proposed legislation on show trials for terror detainees].

Some in Congress think "that if we retreat our terrorist enemies will leave us alone," says the ad that will run in Ohio, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Vermont and New York. "They say we should close Guantanamo, where captured foes are kept from waging war against us. ... They seem to think we'll be safer if we cut and run."

With menacing music in the background, the commercial ends with an admonition: "Vote as if your life depended on it. Because it does." via

And the Democrats, a day late and a dollar short when it comes to national security, have no choice but to feed into that sense of existential fear by nattering on about failed homeland security and accusing the president of feeble leadership because he hasn't caught Osama bin Laden, thus reinforcing the notion that we are under seige. Not that they have any choice really. To do otherwise would be, as Tom Kean said yesterday on This Week, "heresy."

So, in a very real sense, just as bin Laden depends upon the Republican party's fear and loathing campaign to keep him relevant, the Republicans depend upon bin Laden to keep the terror on simmer. (Those tapes always dribble out just at the right moment, don't they?) According to Ron Susskind's book "The One Percent Solution" it is well known why in intelligence circles:

Deputy CIA director John E. McLaughlin noted at one meeting, "Bin Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President." Suskind quoted Jami Miscik, CIA deputy associate director for intelligence, as saying "Certainly, he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years.

The problem is that this country simply cannot take an endless ginned-up "war" designed to benefit the Republican party and Islamic terrorists and neither can the rest of the world. We have big problems to face and we need allies and cooperation to deal with them. Right now we are actively making things worse by allowing our government to pursue terrorism policies that create more of it.

This week the administration is planning to force the congress to rubber stamp its heretofore illegal torture and detention regime. They are going to use some of the 9/11 families to demagogue this legislation as the only proper response to the WTC attacks and they are going to try to trap Democratic politicians into voting for it or risk being "Clelanded" in the coming campaign. You can already see the outlines of what we can expect to see in that ad I excerpted above.

This torture and detention regime is making our country less safe and less free by creating more terrorists and degrading the US Constitution, but rather than dismantling it the Republicans are going to institutionalize it. It is only the latest of many such foolish actions our government undertook since 9/11. The question is whether we will continue to allow them to do Osama bin Laden's dirty work or if people of good sense will be able to resist their irrational warmongering and confront terrorists intelligently instead of giving them exactly what they want.

I'm not a big fan of Islamic fundamentalists myself. Like most fundamentalist religious fanatics, they are delusional, repressive, authoritarian tyrants and I have no desire for them to succeed in any way. I'm a liberal, after all. I'd really like to see the US government stop empowering them.

The fact that it is doing so makes me angry, I admit. On this day, of all days, especially.


*Note: I must admit that as much as I *knew* the Republicans would make the terrorist threat self-fulfilling by their overreaction, I never imagined that they would so boldly say things like this:

"We are used to a peacetime system in which Congress enacts the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them. In wartime, the gravity shifts to the executive branch.''

Uhm. No, actually it doesn't. Not ever. And especially not when the war is a "war."


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digby 9/11/2006 02:12:00 PM |

 
Stoking The Myth

by digby


CNN just gave President Bush some enthusiastic fellatio with its segment called "Commanding Presence?" I thought the question mark might lead to a serious discussion of Bush's timorous behavior on 9/11 but since the people answering this question were Ari Fleischer and Andy Card you can imagine how critical it was. They did show the "My Pet Goat" footage, but Ari and Andy helpfully explained that it was highly unusual for anyone to interrupt the president in the middle of a photo-op so it shows just how seriously they all took it.

We then learned that he was desperate to get back to the White House, saying immediately, "I'm not gonna let some tin-horn dictator terrorist keep me outta Washington."

They portray him as being very unusually voluble throughout that day --- in private, at least. Later, after he insisted that he take marine-one instead of a motorcade because he wanted to "land at the white house" he looked down upon the smoldering pentagon and said to no one in particular, "the mightiest building in the world is on fire --- this is the face of war in the 21st Century."

Sure he did.


Thank you, CNN ---

love, Karl


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digby 9/11/2006 01:42:00 PM |

 
The Catapault Malfunctions

by digby


CNN just reported that the ABC event movie, "The Path To 9/11" had 13 million viewers compared with CBS's 10 million for the third repeat of it's 9/11 documentary and football won the time slot with a strapping 20 million viewers.

When they look at the numbers closely, I think they will show an ABC audience that shrank tremendously within the first 15 minutes. This is not because it was politically sensitive but because it is one of the most tedious, incomprehensible pieces of garbage they've ever broadcast. A bunch of advertisers must be breathing a sigh of relief this morning that they hadn't been talked into blowing any money on it.

It wasn't just that it was a pathetic and obvious attempt to ape real talent like Oliver Stone, Steven Soderberg and Stephen Ghagan, or that the characters were robotic cliches whose turgid dialog actually made me laugh out loud several times. (There is a particularly hilarious scene in which Amy Madigan stomps around like a weepy linebacker, practically rending her garments before a conference table full of bedwetting bureaucrats, proclaiming "we had him and we let him go!") It's that it was, despite all the hoopla, so slow and plodding that even someone like me who had a great interest in watching every frame to find details I could use, simply could not sustain my interest after the first hour. I forced myself, but it wasn't easy. Somehow, I doubt that middle America was more riveted than I was.

Here in LA on the ABC 11 o'clock news they held a sort of focus group to watch the film and comment on it. (They all looked a little shell shocked --- and I doubt it was because the movie was so powerful.) I found it quite interesting that more than half of them saw it as a rightwing attempt to re-write history and found it "dangerous" and "false." The rightwingers present were forced to say things like "I find it amazing that half this country refuses to accept we are at war." From seeing that exchange, I'm hopeful that this movie failed to convince anyone who isn't already dogpaddling around in the wingnut kool-aid. If that focus group is any indication, most of those who managed to make it through the whole thing without being rendered comatose could see that it was unbalanced.

The problem with wingnuts in popular culture is that they can't seem to attract real creative talent. I think creativity rarely fits comfortably with authoritarianism, so that isn't surprising. They are going to have to find a better team than Nowrasteh and Cunningham if they hope to indoctrinate the public with wingnut propaganda through film and television. Perhaps they should stick to screaming Hiteresque ranting on talk radio. That they know how to do.


Update: the numbers are actually worse than CNN reported




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digby 9/11/2006 09:42:00 AM |

 
Leadership

by digby

Youtube



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digby 9/11/2006 09:00:00 AM |

Sunday, September 10, 2006

 
The Onslaught

by digby

From Andrew Sullivan

Next week, I'm informed via troubled White House sources, will see the full unveiling of Karl Rove's fall election strategy. He's intending to line up 9/11 families to accuse McCain, Warner and Graham of delaying justice for the perpetrators of that atrocity, because they want to uphold the ancient judicial traditions of the U.S. military and abide by the Constitution. He will use the families as an argument for legalizing torture, setting up kangaroo courts for military prisoners, and giving war crime impunity for his own aides and cronies. This is his "Hail Mary" move for November; it's brutally exploitative of 9/11; it's pure partisanship; and it's designed to enable an untrammeled executive. Decent Republicans, Independents and Democrats must do all they can to expose and resist this latest descent into political thuggery. If you need proof that this administration's first priority is not a humane and effective counter-terror strategy, but a brutal, exploitative path to retaining power at any price, you just got it.

My prediction: McCain, Graham and Warner sputter a little bit and then do the big el- foldo. The institutionalization of the American police state will proceed apace until Republicans are removed from power --- and probably beyond. This is the kind of genie that fights going back in the bottle every step of the way.


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digby 9/10/2006 01:50:00 PM |

 
Who Lost Osama Part VII

by digby

As we gird our loins for "Fantasia Redux" tonight in which the public will be throroughly brainwashed into believing that Clinton outright refused to kill bin Laden because he was too busy schtupping interns and didn't give a damn about terrorism, it becomes more and more obvious that even after 9/11, the Bush administration didn't take terrorism seriously.

The most galling thing about this entire episode is that aside from the ridiculous rightwing slant toward Clinton, which isn't surprising, the wingnuts have been going on and on about how the problem was "the wall" (which they also misrepresent) and that the bureaucratic Clinton administration wouldn't allow the various agencies to communicate. Fine. If that was a problem, everyone can agree that, in accordance with the law and the consitution, that should be fixed.

But guess what:

Bureaucratic battles slowed down the hunt for bin Laden for the first two or three years, according to officials in several agencies, with both the Pentagon and the CIA accusing each other of withholding information. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's sense of territoriality has become legendary, according to these officials.

In early November 2002, for example, a CIA drone armed with a Hellfire missile killed a top al-Qaeda leader traveling through the Yemeni desert. About a week later, Rumsfeld expressed anger that it was the CIA, not the Defense Department, that had carried out the successful strike.

"How did they get the intel?" he demanded of the intelligence and other military personnel in a high-level meeting, recalled one person knowledgeable about the meeting.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then director of the National Security Agency and technically part of the Defense Department, said he had given it to them.

"Why aren't you giving it to us?" Rumsfeld wanted to know.

Hayden, according to this source, told Rumsfeld that the information-sharing mechanism with the CIA was working well. Rumsfeld said it would have to stop.

A CIA spokesman said Hayden, now the CIA director, does not recall this conversation. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said, "The notion that the department would do anything that would jeopardize the success of an operation to kill or capture bin Laden is ridiculous." The NSA continues to share intelligence with the CIA and the Defense Department.

[...]

Today, however, no one person is in charge of the overall hunt for bin Laden with the authority to direct covert CIA operations to collect intelligence and to dispatch JSOC units. Some counterterrorism officials find this absurd. "There's nobody in the United States government whose job it is to find Osama bin Laden!" one frustrated counterterrorism official shouted. "Nobody!"

But then, it's not surprising, is it?



I certainly hope that after this "Path To Propaganda" debacle somebody decides that the real story of the Bush administration should be made. It will have to be a farce, of course. Too bad Jerry Lewis is too old to play George W. Bush. Maybe Gilbert Godfried is available.



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digby 9/10/2006 10:57:00 AM |

 
Swamp Mouse

by digby


I was just listening to Johnny Wendell here on KTLK interviewing Ray Richmond of The Hollywood Reporter who reports that there have been rumors around town ever since Disney refused to distribute "Fahrenheit 9/11" that Disney has a corrupt relationship with Jeb Bush in Florida. I don't know if it's true, but I do know that Disney has made some very questionable corporate decisions in recent years when it comes to political material.

Matt Stoller reports that Disney also seems to be employing well known Republican flacks in high level corporate positions. It gives new meaning to the word synergy.



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digby 9/10/2006 10:25:00 AM |

 
Even The Cons Hate It

by tristero

You know you've got a Condition Red public relations debacle on your hands when everyone from Bill Clinton to John Podhoretz agrees you suck. What Christy sez.

I assume someone will collect and publish the list of commercials for show 2 - show 1 being broadcast without ads. I for one will take that list very seriously. Any sponsor whose products I can avoid, I will, and those that can't will hear from me.

As for ABC, you couldn't pay me to watch their shows. And there are plenty of really exciting places to take my kid for vacation, none of which have anything to do with copyright-protected rats... sorry, I meant mice.
tristero 9/10/2006 05:05:00 AM |

Saturday, September 09, 2006

 
Purity Purge

by digby

Last month we all read endless stories about how the leftist blogofascists are trying to purge the Democratic party of its moderates. We read that we not only didn't have any decency, we were naive and self-defeating, just like our hippy heroes, the McGovernites. The national media closely covered our wild antics so that everyone in politics would see how untrustworthy we were and properly shun us.

Now, in a different race, we see this different angle on similar circumstances:

With a barrage of television advertisements and the mobilization of its get-out-the-vote machine, the national Republican Party has lined up in Rhode Island to beat back a conservative primary challenge to the most liberal Republican in the Senate, Lincoln Chafee. The outcome on Tuesday could help determine whether Democrats have a shot at taking back the Senate.

In an extraordinary pre-emptive announcement, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has said it will concede Rhode Island to the Democrats should Stephen Laffey, the mayor of Cranston, defeat Mr. Chafee in the primary. Citing poll data, Republican leaders said they saw no way someone as conservative as Mr. Laffey could win in a state as Democratic as this; as it is, they are increasingly worried about Mr. Chafee’s hopes in a general election.

[...]


In many ways, what is happening in Rhode Island is a mirror of what happened in neighboring Connecticut last month: an ideological challenge from the wings to an established senator who is seen as out of step with his party. In that case, a Democrat, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, lost a primary to Ned Lamont, who attacked Mr. Lieberman for his support of the war in Iraq and his dalliances with the White House.

The difference is that there was no serious Republican challenger in the Connecticut race, so the Democratic Party invested relatively minimal resources in Mr. Lieberman.

Uhm no. Actually, the difference between Connecticut and Rhode island is that the primary challenge in Connecticut was consciously waged because it was in a state with a safe seat. From the beginning, the cognoscenti have failed to understand the difference between that pragmatic political decision and a quixotic, suicidal run from the right by Club for Growth in Rhode Island that might cost the Republican party their majority. They still don't. From the beginning they have portrayed the Lamont challenge as a stupid, dangerous purge by leftwing wierdos while Stephen Moore's vicious Rhode Island jihad is treated as perfectly respectable.

This is what happens when people don't question assumptions they made 30 years ago. For the last time --- it isn't 1968 and it isn't 1972. It isn't even 1992. It's 2006 and the radicals today wear nice suits and drive nice cars and they are crazy, rightwing motherfuckers who don't give a damn if they drive the Republican party --- and America --- right over a cliff. You'd think it would be obvious by now that the grown-ups are definitely not in charge.



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digby 9/09/2006 06:02:00 PM |

 
Naht Guh Happen

by digby


Josh Marshall has an interesting post up at TPM cafe in which an extremely confident (one might say delusional) President Bush talks about how he is virtually certain the Republicans will maintain the congress (and will phase out SS in 2007.) It is creepy, I admit.

But if you'd like to see him get really testy and aggressive at the suggestion that the GOP might lose this fall, watch this footage of him and Charles Gibson. (Go to the menu on the right and click on "President Bush on his campaign to reassure Americans about the War on Terror.")

"....And I'm gonna say to you, it's not gonna happen... you think you're not talking about a hypothetical but you are!"

Watch the whole thing as he has his hissy fit and then slouches all over the back seat of the limo until by the time the tape is finished he looks like some sort of Roman Emperor waiting for Gibson to peel him a grape. Very creepy.

Oh and here's a neat little excerpt from another segment for you all to chew over. I honestly don't even know where to start. Gibson tries, but it's like talking to a three year old:

Gibson: But the point that I make and that many of the critics make is that Iraq wasn't a part of the war on terror until we went in there.

Bush: I think we … (overlap) Gibson: Now because of Iraq, they're being produced, because (crosstalk)

Bush: I … I … listen, I understand it's dangerous and troublesome, but I think it's very important for the American people to ask, "Why, why is it that Osama bin Laden wan