Norah O'Donnell vs Cindy Sheehan

Y'know, there are times when someone who is angry can come across as really attractive, when that slow burn can come across as a really compelling aura around that person. When the comicbook artist Gil Kane gave an extensive interview for the Comics Journal, I realized that he was making a lot of criticisms that I had already heard from many other people, but..but this was Gil Kane, the famous, very highly competent draughtsman who penciled great adventure after great adventure. This was someone who knew what he was talking about! Accordingly, his views on comicbook art and writing at the time made a deep impression on me.

Norah O'Donnell's interview of Cindy Sheehan, on the other hand, left me favorably impressed with Ms Sheehan, but quite cold towards Ms O'Donnell. Yeah, partially it's because O'Donnell is a hard-line, right-wing conservative, but largely it was because O'Donnell was more interested in simply trashing Sheehan than she was in drawing out any useful or interesting informationt. O'Donnell demonstrated about a year ago that her demeanor was not at all what one would expect from an ostensibly objective journalist. She claimed that Coleen Rowley, who was running for Congress, was aligning herself with "anti-war extremists." Rowley immediately corrected O'Donnell, pointing out that her anti-war supporters were by no means extremist. O'Donnell's answer? " 'But, Coleen,' O'Donnell snapped back, 'they do oppose the war in Iraq, do they not?' " So apparently, according to O'Donnell, all one needs to be an "extremist," is to "oppose the war in Iraq."

Here is her first question on Hardball to Cindy Sheehan:

O'DONNELL: Let me begin by asking you, you know, Americans may hate the war, but they don't necessarily hate the president. How do you expect to get change by going around the world and trashing the president of the United States?

This is very clearly not the statement of someone who is in any way, shape or form an objective reporter. This is the statement of a staunch, hardline partisan-advocate. Nothing wrong with that per se, but she never mentioned her political affiliation and her position is theoretically one that calls for objectivity.

Sheehan goes on to explain that her calling President Bush "the biggest terrorist in the world" does not mean she hates him or is trashing him. She does mean that he fits his own definition of a terrorist.

SHEEHAN: Well, you know, he says a terrorist is somebody who kills innocent men, women, and children, and there has been over 100,000 innocent men, women, and children killed in Iraq on his orders.

After Sheehan points out (Correctly - the June 22-26 ABC News poll on Iraq policy shows 37% approval to 62% disapproval.) that "two-thirds of America disapprove[s] of George Bush and his policies in Iraq", O'Donnell replies with:

O'DONNELL: And nor, quite frankly, do you see members of Congress -- and you claim to not be in the fringes, to not be an extremist, and yet what members of Congress support you in your policy?

It's hardly fair to acknowledge that two-thirds of the American people support Sheehan's position, but to then go leaping to the conclusion that Sheehan is "in the fringes" because politicians are too cowardly to openly agree with the American people. If not many politicians are with Sheehan, that speaks very poorly of them. It says nothing about the rightness and justice of Sheehan's cause. If two-thirds of the American people are with Sheeehan, then how is Sheehan "in the fringes" or "an extremist"? By what criteria does she fit either definition?

After Sheehan lists the Congresspeople on both sides of the aisle who support her position, she is asked about Senators and comes up with John Kerry (D-MA):

O'DONNELL: John Kerry supports an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Did he tell you that?

This is one of those "When did you stop beating your wife?" questions. Sheehan has at no point said that she "supports an immediate withdrawal from Iraq." O'Donnell is pulling this question out of thin air. Sheehan then made it clear that she, Kerry and the " 'Out of Iraq' Congress[ional caucus] that has 70 members" are all in favor of a prompt withdrawal, but they all agree with O'Donnell that "There is no one in the United States Congress, Democrat, Republican, or Independent who would" support an immediate, precipitous withdrawal. But O'Donnell suggested that Sheehan wants just that.

O'Donnell calls Hugo Chavez (President of Venezuela) a "dictator." Sheehan replied that he has been elected eight times Sheehan didn't mention these other facts, but Chavez was thrown out of office in a coup and restored by the people of Venezuela and his current approval rating of 82.7% is only ten points lower than Bush's rating after 9-11 of 92%.

He has helped the poor people of America. He has sent aid to New Orleans. He has sold heating oil to disadvantaged people in America, in the United States of America at low cost, and he -- the people of his country love him.

O'Donnell had no answer for Sheehan's recitation of Chavez's good qualities and immediately switched the subject. Interestingly, O'Donnell points out that Saddam Hussein was also "democratically elected." Hussein was indeed supposedly elected, but victory margins close to 100% are normally due to tricks played by dictators. As Bush's last victory in 2004 was very considerably closer and far more questionable than Chavez's was, it might not be a good idea to push THAT idea too far, that elections can be manipulated.

Overall, O'Donnell took a scorched-earth approach, a highly combative attempt to make Sheehan look bad, to not give Sheehan the slightest credit (She immediately changed the subject every time Sheehan made a good point) and to try to get Sheehan flustered. She clearly approached the interview as a battle. Granted, Jon Stewart can be a tough interviewer, see his interviews of Bill Kristol and Rick Santorum (To name the most aggressive liberal interviewer on TV, and yes, it's pretty sad that a guy who recites fake news is more of an aggressive interviewer than most of the newspeople out there.), but Stewart's guests are generally given a fair chance to respond and Stewart tends to stick closely to the actual facts involved. Stewart doesn't go around simply making up wild accusations out of nothing. Stewart is more interested in generating light than heat, more interested in getting his guests to reveal things that are important and interesting than he is in simply attacking his guests and putting them down.

I strongly object to O'Donnell's mischaraterizations of Sheehan's positions, but I'd probably have to agree that my objection to her style is rooted in a personal preference for informative interviews as opposed to slash'n'burn attacks. I don't mind some aggressiveness, as I said earlier, some righteous anger can make the interviewer more attractive. The interviewer doesn't have to agree with the person being interviewed, but I think there's a bit of a difference between tough and demanding and between being just plain abusively nasty towards one's guest.

Rape in Iraq

Juan Cole's precis/commentary on the article from Al-Zaman is well worth quoting in full:

Al-Zaman/ AFP say that a firestorm of protest is building in Iraq over the alleged rape and killing of a 15 year old Iraqi girl in Mahmudiyah, and the murder of her family, by a US GI. MP Safiyah Suhail, a woman representative from the National Iraqi List in parliament, demanded that P[rime] M[inister] Nuri al-Maliki and Interior Minister Jawad al-Bulani present themselves to parliament for questioning in the matter. She demanded that the Iraqi government be involved in the investigation. She said that this was a matter that touched on the honor of the Iraqi nation and the female MPs had a special role to play in demanding an accounting.

Suhail is former ambassador to Egypt of the new Iraqi government and stood against the imposition of Islamic law on Iraqi women. That a secular person is so stirred up about this suggests to you what the Sunni and Shiite fundamentalists are thinking. For most Iraqis, honor is bound up in the chastity of their women, at least in public, and a foreigner raping an Iraqi girl is a profound humiliation for the entire country. This matter is not going to go away quietly and if the Bush administration thinks it is just a matter of disciplining unruly troops, it has another think coming. Entire colonial empires have been shaken by such incidents in the past.(emphases added)

And from Iraq's Prime Minister:

KUWAIT CITY - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Wednesday he wants an independent Iraqi investigation, or at least a joint investigation with coalition forces, into the alleged rape and murder of an Iraqi girl by U.S. troops.
-------------

"We are going to demand an independent Iraqi investigation or at least a joint investigation between us and the multi-national forces," al-Maliki said.

He said crimes against Iraqis were not acceptable and that coalition troops' immunity from Iraqi prosecution should be reviewed.

"We believe that the immunity given to members of coalition forces encouraged them to commit such crimes in cold blood — the thing that makes it necessary to review it," he said.

Also, Chris Floyd tells us how it all looked from the American soldier's side.

AJ in DC has still more. He thinks Cole has it right. The story "is creating shockwaves throughout the country, not just among the masses, but within elite political circles as well."

Good news, an interesting item and two negative items

1. Hillary Clinton came out and said what the high-ranking Democratic Party members (Especially those from the DSCC) needed to say from Day One of the Joe Lieberman-Ned Lamont primary (Joe has served three terms as Connecticut's senator, Ned is challenging him for that seat) "...that it's important to respect the will of Connecticut voters and that she will commit to support the Democratic candidate -- whoever that is -- in November." Three cheers for someone who usually displays a tin ear for important issues like this!

2. Conservative bloggers very grudgingly concede, with all sorts of caveats and qualifications (David Horowitz is especially amusing, Billmon comments on Horowitz's ramblings. See note at bottom.) that well, gee, er, they might, possibly, conceivably have been a bit, er, WRONG about the NY Times endangering the security of VP Cheney and SecDef Rumsfeld by photographing the entrances to their vacation homes in Maryland. Many right-wing bloggers have not admitted to any sort of error. Greenwald points us to an especially amusing televised rant by the blogger who writes Atlas Shrugged. Whoooo! This woman actually contests the idea that Bush's is the most secretive Administration since Nixon's!

3. 07-03-2006, 12h27
BAGHDAD (AFP) -- Iraqi Shiite leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the head of parliament's largest bloc, has told AFP that he favours extending an amnesty to insurgents who may have killed US troops. (Emphasis added)

"Yes, they should be covered regardless of their religious or ethnic affiliations," Hakim said in an interview when asked if he would support extending a reconciliation and amnesty plan unveiled by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to those who may have attacked US-led troops in Iraq. Hakim's position would contradict that of his government ally Maliki, also a Shiite, who said on Wednesday that there would be no amnesty to those who killed US troops, foreigners or journalists.

Iraqs largest single political grouping wants American troops to depart their country. The "Battle for Hearts and Minds" is long since over and the US has decisively lost. It's time to go. It's long since been time to go. And in what I guess is good news:

At the same time Hakim said he would categorically oppose any dialogue with "Saddamists and takfeeris", catchall terms used by hardline Shiites to refer to loyalists of ousted leader Saddam Hussein and extremist Sunni Arab militants who regard Iraq's majority Shiites as apostates. Hakim, who also heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) party, visited Tehran last month where he met with the top leadership of the Islamic republic.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on US and other foreign troops to leave Iraq following his meeting with Hakim.

They have no use for any thought of returning to their Saddamist past. Cool! The Iranian leader agrees with them. Hmm.


4. In grimmer news, Orcinus points out that the use of "eliminationist" language among conservatives is getting louder and louder and is being voiced more and more insistently.

5. And yes, we have more bad news to report from Iraq about US soldiers raping and killing a 15-year-old girl and "Before leaving, the attackers fatally shot the four family members -- two of Abeer's brothers had been away at school -- and attempted to set Abeer's body on fire." Very interestingly, Iraqi Justice Minister demands UN oversight of rape-murder prosecution (Emphasis added). Gee, Iraqis not trusting American investigators? I wonder why that is?

Note: Bwah-hah-hah!! "David Horowitz, an important American writer and thinker since the 1960s, has been called “the Left’s most brilliant and articulate nemesis.” Oh mannnn! If ol' Davey is the most brilliant...ha, ha,ha!!!

Language is not neutral

The latest Media Matters analysis of how the media discusses the Iraq War (Lengthy piece at 40 kilobytes) illustrates a very old problem. Language is not neutral. It takes a considerable amount of time, thought and conscious effort to describe issues in a truly neutral or even in an effectively partisan manner. This would not be such a serious problem if it were not the favorite pose of the media, which can be described as "A pox on both your houses!" The mainstream media likes to pretend to be the harried housewife in the driver's seat who turns back to the two squabbling kids in the back seat (The Democrats and the Republicans.) and says "Stop fighting! You're both at fault!"

During the case of Jack Abramoff and his extensive political contributions to the Republican Party, several media outlets tried to claim that the scandal was a bipartisan one, with both Democrats and Republicans being equally at fault. Problem is, this framing of the story had a "Procrustean bed" quality as the Democratic connections to Abramoff had to be invented wholesale. As Howard Dean pointed out, there simply were no such connections. Wolf Blitzer, who was interviewing Dean when Dean claimed this, was obviously upset to hear this because it messed up his nice, neat storyline and required that he adjust his story to account for reality. The story as a whole really took a bizarre turn when the Ombudsman of the Washington Post not only refused to correct a reporter who had claimed that "both sides were to blame," but even insisted that Abramoff was an equal-opportunity giver. "L'il Debbie," as she was sarcastically named, finally admitted that she was wrong to defend her thesis and that Abramoff made contributions exclusively to Republicans.

So, when mainstream "respectable" media outlets use Republican "talking points," these points take on a more persuasive air as they appear to be coming from neutral, objective reporters who have taken a "pox on both your houses" attitude. When these reporters describe an anti-war speaker as being against "the troops," or as being "anti-military" when the speaker is actually just against the Iraq War (Not all anti-war speakers are pacifists, many of them just oppose this particular war.) it's a way to put down the speaker without blatantly, openly taking sides.

Point number three is especially pernicious. The claim that Republicans make is that "Iraq is the central front in the war on terror." When we actually consider what that phrase might mean, it appears to suggest that if that "front" goes well and Iraq calms down and US casualties decrease, then America is winning the WOT (The War on Terror). If on the other hand, Iraq continues to be a chaotic mess (As it has in the aftermath of the elimination of Zarqawi, formerly the "Emmanuel Goldstein" of Iraq), then the WOT must be going poorly.

Clarification: Back during World War II, it was meaningful to say that Okinawa was the "central front" in the War in the Pacific because the loss of Okinawa severely hurt Japan's ability to continue fighting and enabled American B-29 bombers to more easily hit Japan. Would the loss of Iraq impact worldwide terrorist activities in the same fashion? It's not at all clear that it would.

The first point, that "victory" in Iraq would mean that terrorists worldwide would have to ratchet down their deadly activities, is plainly false. If the Iraq War goes poorly for the other side and order is brought to that frantic country, any foreign fighters, whether they are jihadists or terrorists or whatever else one wishes to call them, would simply disperse to their countries of origin or they would assemble in whatever country they felt was the next target.

There is no reason whatsoever to presume that they'd all go down fighting and that the ranks of the jihadists/terrorists would therefore be thinned. An Egyptian has absolutely no reason to sacrifice himself to hang onto territory in Iraq. He'll remain in Iraq as a jihadist only for as long as he feels he's helping "the cause" and hurting "the enemy." If and when the Iraq War ever ends, the rest of the world will probably experience an upsurge in terrorist activities. The collapse of the "central front" for the enemies of America's efforts there would very likely be bad news for other regimes in the Middle East as many thousands of now-seasoned fighters would then be freed up for fighting elsewhere.

It's very bad news for Americans that mainstream media persons feel obliged to mindlessly parrot Republican talking points like this. The talking point that Iraq is a "central front" gives American citizens the impression that the fighting there is contributing to peace efforts elsewhere. Actually, as BTC News points out, terrorist activities worldwide have increased every year since 2002. Whatever else the Iraq War is accomplishing, it is clearly not making the world safer.

Hip-hip-hooray for Supreme Court!!

Good for the decision of the Supreme Court to slap down the illegitimate treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay!

To clarify what the choice in Guantanamo Bay was, talk show host Bill O'Reilly delivered his opinion of the matter:

During the "Talking Points Memo" segment (12 June 06) opening the program, O'Reilly asserted: "The Guantánamo controversy is easy to define. The Bush administration sees the 460 detainees as prisoners of war. The liberal press and some human-rights groups believe they are criminals entitled to due process."

This is incorrect. The choice facing the Bush Administration was never between treating the Guantanamo detainees as prisoners-of-war versus treating them as ordinary criminal suspects. The choice was between treating them as belonging to either category versus using a third, wholly made-up-on-the-spot category that had no meaning in either domestic or international law. "Unlawful" or "enemy" combatant has no legal meaning either nationally or internationally as it was invented by the Bush Administration and has never been defined by the passage of a law or backed up by any judicial decisions.

What the Supreme Court has done has been to return the Guantanamo detainees to a place where the rule of law has some relevance. Unfortunately, as Atrios points out, the story isn't over yet and we'll see what the Bush Administration does in response.

Santorum's accusation

Senator Rick Santorum's (R-PA) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra's (R-MI) claimed on June 21st that there were indeed "Weapos of Mass Destruction" in Iraq shortly before the March 2003 invasion, pointing to a stash of degraded chemical weapon shells that Iraq had produced and then lost track of during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. The Philadelphia Inquirer pointed out that the report specified that the chemicals were in a degraded state and it has long since been apparent to opponents of the Iraq War that there was no serious chance that Saddam Hussein would have passed along any serious weaponry to terrorist groups as 1. They would have been traced back to him and his country and 2. Saddam Hussein exercised a Soviet-style chain of command over his army. Control was very tight and very explicit. There was simply no room for free agents in his war-fighting doctrine.

Buzzflash explains how the "Iraq-al Qaeda link" idea works and thoroughly debunks it.

Nevertheless, Media Matters tells us how right-wing news sources, from Fox News to Rush Limbaugh, have kept the Santorum story of Iraqi WMD alive. Even though, as Media Matters points out:

The Washington Post also reported June 22 that "[n]either the military nor the White House nor the CIA considered the shells to be evidence of what was alleged by the Bush administration to be a current Iraqi program to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons."

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld demonstrated that Santorum was not acting along when he went on Fox News to confirm the charge:

ANGLE (video): Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is the first administration official to comment publicly on the declassified report that some 500 chemical weapons have been found in Iraq.

RUMSFELD: They are weapons of mass destruction. They're harmful to human beings. And they have been found and they had not been reported by Saddam Hussein as he inaccurately alleged he had reported all of his weapons, and they're still being found and discovered.

The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), characterized the shells as "old, fairly toxic stuff," but was misquoted as saying the shells were "less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point." A folksier, but less accurate rendition.

Rush Limbaugh has now stated that he is determined "to get the truth out on weapons of mass destruction" so we can look forward to hearing much, much more on the issue.

Attytood wonders what the "terror alert level" must be now and links to Vice President Cheney making a speech that sounds like it's cribbed directly from speeches on the alleged Vietnam "Domino effect" in the late 1960s-early 1970s.

In response to call for patience

The Inquirer published an article today (Jun 23rd) entitled: “Key to success lies in patient, united America" that posited that the "center of gravity" in the Iraq War was the US population and that things were going well in an unquantifiable way, in small-scale, personal experiences. The artcle asserts the need for Americans to have patience and to hang in there until victory.
My answer was as follows:

I believe that Lt. Col. Glen Butler is incorrect when he asserts that the “center of gravity” in the Iraq War is the American population. That center always was and always will be the Iraqi poulation. Non-US journalists interviewed Iraqi civilians after the fall of Baghdad in 2003 and found a very wary, skeptical population. Iraqis were, in general, pleased that their dictator had been removed from office, but very suspicious as to US motives for having done so.

The fact that “The undermanned Iraqi army and police units are challenged by corruption, desertion and enemy infiltration” is no accident and relates directly to suspicion over US motives for having invaded in the first place. No matter how many individual success stories occur, it's clear after more than three years of occupation that those suspicions remain as strong as ever.

The US Army cannot remain indefinitely where it is not wanted and Iraqis as a whole have made it clear through the people they have elected that the US is an unwelcome presence in their country. The Bush Administration laid out a detailed plan involving many “purple finger moments,” but the fact that those plans have been successfully accomplished with all the proper checkboxes checked off and the fact that Iraqis are still very sour on the idea of being occupied by US troops indefinitely means those plans have failed.

It's time to call an end to the experiment and to bring US troops home.

WaPo reviews Lapdogs

The Washington Post's Michael Getler reviews Eric Boehlert's Lapdogs and makes a point I found rather bizarre:

One obvious failing is that a book by a journalist attacking the press ought to have included some responses from editors and reporters who disagree with Boehlert's conclusions. There is basically none of that here.

First off, blogger's criticism's have been made out in the open and most lefty blogs have comments. Right-wing blogs have email addresses for readers to contact writers with, so it's not like papers and magazines and TV studios hav been unable to respond. Being from a group with a smaller audience, bloggers would be happy to feature defenses by mainstream media people as to their rolling-over for Bush & company. Had the mainstream folks had any defense or excuse for their conduct, we readers of blogs would have read of their defenses a long time ago.

Laying this out, he writes, "makes the conclusion -- that the press rolled over for Bush -- inescapable." But there is no way to prove that this is "inescapable," which would mean knowing what was inside the heads of producers and editors at the time their news decisions were made.

"...knowing what was inside the heads of producers and editors" is what the advice columnist Miss Manners derisively refers to as "mind-reading," a feat that's generally impossible in any event and that's an activity best avoided by serious people. Usually, it's quite enough to observe the words and actions of a person, which normally tell one all that one needs to know.

So does that mean that the editors who made those calls were pro-Bush or cowed by the aftermath of Sept. 11, fiery right-wing bloggers, conservative broadcasters and a mean White House press strategy? Or did some editors simply exercise poor news judgment or lack the experience or determination to make sure that nothing was left unsaid, unchallenged or uncovered? Or were they convinced that a war with Iraq was coming and were too focused on getting ready to cover it?

Interesting questions all, but going into them would require getting the inside scoop on still-ongoing matters. It reminds me of the continual discussions about "Is torture justified if there's a ticking time bomb...?" Sure, you can torture the bad guy, but there's no way to confirm that the bad guy is telling you the truth. Just because he appears to break down and appears to desperately gasp out the location of the bomb doesn't mean you're finally getting the truth. Likewise, as long as media people have any motivation to not tell us the truth about why they write what they do, we the public will not get the truth.

Generally, it's a good review, but I think Getler misses the boat on these questions.

Ann Coulter's question

Yeesh! I need to disinfect after slogging through the muck and the mire of reading right-wing partisans attacking the Jersey Girls, four women from New Jersey who have very serious questions about 9-11 and who have publicly asked why their husbands died in the conflagration of the World Trade Center towers 1 & 2 on that day.

First off, let's look at one of Ann Coulter's statements on them:

COULTER [video clip]: Why can't we hear these half-baked liberal bromides from Howard Dean? Why do liberals always choose spokesmen like the "Jersey Girls," like Cindy Sheehan, like Joe Wilson, who, because of some personal aspect of their life, we are not allowed to respond.

To begin with, pro-Bush Administration people ARE allowed to respond. It's just that we owe these women and Joe Wilson a fair hearing, we can't simply say "Oh, pish tosh. Poor silly women, you know not whereof you speak." and wave them away. Their criticisms should be taken seriously and discussed in a serious manner. The problem for the right wing is that the criticisms made by the Jersey Girls are thoroughly legitimate and are not easily answered. Before September 11, it was thoroughly routine for jet fighters to go up and check out anything happening in the air that didn't seem right. For a plane to be a half of a degree off course or for a pilot to not answer a radio call, was reason enough to scramble jets and get them up there. The hijacked planes on 9-11 starting going off course around 8:30 and didn't start crashing into the twin towers until around a half-hour later. There was no sign of any fighter planes in the sky. The Jersey Girls have asked "Why not?" No satisfactory answer has been supplied nearly five years later.

Why can't we send Howard Dean or some other spokesperson without an emotional stake in the issue to speak for us? Not our fault that the media only heeds certain spokespeople. Not our fault that Democrats don't want to take the risk of being seen as conspiracy theorists. We'd be happy to take the heat for them. We have zero problems with being their lightning rods and taking some grief for views they dare not express themselves. I attended the 9-11 Truth Convergence and I feel that we have nothing to be embarrassed about in terms of the quality of the speakers we can present.

As to the purely ad hominem attacks launched by the right wing partisans (Nowhere in the Media Matters quotations are there any hints of substantiative policy questions or disagreements. If anyone has come across any substantiative disagreements, please let me know.) the charge has been made that the Jersey Girls are seeking to make money off of the deaths of their loved ones in the WTC towers. Consider the comments on the 9-11 compensation fund:

Leslie Dimmling of Garden City, who lost her husband, Bill, said she feels many in the public have lost sight of the fund's original purpose.
"The victims' families never asked for this money," she said. "This is not free money. This is money given in lieu of giving up the right to sue."
---------

"The reason I opted out of the fund and chose to litigate was because 9/11 represented a massive failure and there was no avenue for accountability," said Monica Gabrielle of Manhattan, who lost her husband, Richard, an insurance broker.

Gabrielle said the Sept. 11 Commission has been a disappointment. "I have a legal right to litigate to find out where the responsibility lies," she said. "If that means people are fired, if it means a financial penalty, so be it."

The Jersey Girls could have made a great deal more money if they had remained quiet. That they did not is their right as US citizens "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances". In other words, in order to "petition the government", i.e. to put pressure on the various 9-11 commissions to seriously and truthfully examine the evidence, they had to give up lots and lots in compensation. In stark contrast to the charges of the partisans, the Jersey Girls made the less profitable choice, a choice that has opened them to wildly irresponsible attacks.

For more on 9-11, see an excellent overview (Quite lengthy at 74 kilobytes), or check out 911Truth.org

Zarqawi has perished

Over in Glenn Greenwald's blog, Anonymous Liberal adds an update to his or her blog post:

UPDATE: The big news this morning is that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was apparently killed in an airstrike. That rare bit of good news (and it certainly is good news) comes just in time for people like Blankley, who have entirely run out of coherent things to say.

What is A.L.'s purpose in explicitly declaring that the news is good? Well, obviously, A.L. is concerned about right-wingers suggesting that we lefties are pleased when US forces meet deadly setbacks: and that many people on our side were secretly rooting for Zarqawi. For example, take the right-winger who was earlier quoted by A.L.:

But what further cuts is to listen to media people casually perpetrate libel against not just the still- presumed-innocent Marines [In Haditha, where a number of Iraqi civilians were butchered] but against our services more generally. To see the gleam in the eyes of reporters happily cackling on about "other possible incidents" -- about which they know not whether they even exist -- is to be filled with a fury that we have a system of journalism that permits people with such mentalities to poison the minds of the world with their malice.

The quoted right-winger of course fails to provide any examples of newspeople "happily cackling" because, very simply, there are none. The news is delivered by corporate newspersons who are practiced in controlling their presentations so that no one can tell what they think of the news that they're reporting and who probably have no genuine opinion in the matter anyway (They're probably more concerned with their stock options and where they are on the corporate ladder and what they'll serve their guests for dinner that night so as to impress them with their skills as a gourmet, not that I'm, y'know, generalizing or anything). If one was not a corporate newsperson, then one is most likely very self-conscious about saying or doing anything that might hurt the cause of ending the war. So it's very highly doubtful that a noncorporate person would openly approve of a killer of American troops, regardless of what one thinks of the butchery at Haditha. So, what does A.L. get for his or her trouble?

The Hidden Imam said...

The big news this morning is that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was apparently killed in an airstrike. That rare bit of good news (and it certainly is good news) comes just in time . . . .

I found this bit illustrative of a problem among the Left. A.L. -- why did you even feel the need to add the parenthetical, "and it certainly is good news?" Of course it's good news. Why would there be any doubt? Unless, of course, you recognize that many among your audience on the Left is not rooting for success in Iraq.

This website, and Glenn's writing, is often geared towards forcing people to face the truth when their entrenched beliefs and motives conflict with a reality they don't see. The target is almost exclusively the Right. I think many people on the Left would do well to face up to the fact that they are, on some level, rooting for our failure in Iraq.

11:37 AM

Yeesh! We just can't win for losing. No matter what we say about Zarqawi's death, it'll be interpreted as "Ahh those lefties aren't really happy! Their true feeling is one of despair and disappointment that one of their heroes is dead! We know what they're really feeling!"

So the heck with it. I'm gonna say what I'm gonna say and y'all will just have to take my word for it:
Good for Zarqawi dying. The US gets one cheer (Out of a possible three) because I don't see this as being significant. About three years ago, Saddam Hussein's two sons also met their deaths and those deaths were met with great cheering and celebration and predictions that the insurgency in Iraq would soon collapse and end. Obviously, no such thing ever happened. Saddam Hussein was captured in December and again, there was a great cheering and congratulating and again there were predictions of the imminent demise of the insurgency and again nothing of the sort ever occurred. The "decisive blows" and "turning points" have been so numerous and so universally meaningless, I've lost track.
My prediction is that no one will remember this "great victory" a few months from now. I'll let Yglesias have the final word:

TIME AND AGAIN (AND AGAIN!) K-Lo with an assist from David Pryce-Jones unleashes a dispatch from the Gamma Quadrant: "He calls Zarqawi’s demise both a 'collassal [sic] morale boost' for all of us but says it also has 'big operational significance.' 'When you get rid of a leader, it’s very hard to replace him.' The Israelis have proved this time and time again."

The Israelis certainly have proven a lot of things about the tactical/operational aspects of counterterrorism time and again. And, indeed, again. And again. They've proven them so often, for so long, that one might almost conclude that tactical counterterrorism accomplishes very little absent resolution of the underlying political conflicts.

Red State post

I lived for a few years down in Pensacola, FL. We had a columnist who, every few months, would write a column explaining what "The Left" was up to and how those lefties felt abou the various issues of the day. Having had subscriptions to The Nation and Z, and having Internet access to various lefty authors (Back in the ancient days of the late 1990s) I would read her columns and wonder "WHO is this woman TALKING about?!?!" She never referred to the statements or viewpoints of anybody that I was famliar with, that was for sure! I got a similar feeling reading the following:

Were this merely the activity of identifiable partisans on the far-left wing, this would arguably be a healthy part of the debate that ought to go on in any self-governing country. However, in the United States, there exists a substantial cadre of far-left partisans who cloak their advocacy as "journalism." Such people are sufficiently numerous in the companies that provide the public's news that they severely restrict the ability of voters to receive information about military affairs that has not been processed and filtered by far-left partisans wearing reporter masks. This condition is extremely dangerous in a self-governing country, for the public cannot make informed decisions if it is not so much informed as manipulated by political partisans.

The process of correcting the political imbalance in the institutions of mass communication has begun, but it is not so far along that the public could not today be stampeded into adopting far-left policies by the partisans who still control much of what the public is told about events.

Those who oppose the far left bear a special burden in these times, to make sure that they are accurately informed about these events, and that they share this knowledge with friends, family, and co-workers who are still dependent on "news" provided by "reality patriots" who seek America's defeat.

No, I have no idea what the author means by "reality patriots." It seems to be a term the author has used so many times he feels no need to further explain it. So wow! The "far-left partisans" are running the newsrooms of America, huh? Reminds me of the story of a young Russian Jew meeting an elderly Russian Jew on the train and remarking that the elderly person is reading a Tsarist paper that accuses the Jews of plotting and planning all sorts of diabolical, anti-Tsarist, anti-Russian activities. The young one asks the old one why he's reading a paper that makes such terrible accusations against their people. The elderly one replied "Oh, this paper is marvelous! It tells me that we Jews are in charge of everything and that society is but putty in our hands. We are in charge of all the ministries and bureaus. It makes me feel very powerful! I love to feel like a member of such a powerful, effective conspiracy!"

I got pretty much the same feeling reading the above complaints about "political imbalance in the institutions of mass communication." It's like "Wow, we lefties REALLY have that much influence?" Seems to me that people of my persuasion (I consider myself a member of the "center-left", well to the left of the mainstream media, but there are many buddies of mine that are more leftist than I am.) Thinking back over the past five years, the blogs didn't really have any appreciableimpact on the public until the beginning of 2003, when Democrats running for President "discovered" the Internet and the blogs. Real influence on the other media, via the radio (Air America is pretty much it), the TV (Jon Stewart's Daily Show and Keith Olbermann) and newspapers (The Knight-Ridder chain is an unusually fair & responsbile group of newspapers) and that was pretty much it until perhaps six months ago, when still more media outlets began chiming in.

Noting the pathetically feeble response by Democrats to the Censure Resolution proposed by Senator Feingold doesn't give me much hope that the Democrats are among the "far-left partisans" the author cites.

The comments by the right-wingers after the article are interesting. They're completely unable to answer the proofs supplied by liberal commenters that, yes, the Iraq War WAS primarily justified by the phantom WMDs, Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech very STRONGLY suggested an Iraq-al Qaeda link (No, Bush didn't explicitly and precisely draw the connection, but the very strong sugestion is there) and no, as both the article and as one of the commenters completely overlook, the Vietnam War could not have been won short of the utter genocide of the people of Vietnam. Something like a quarter to a third of the people of Vietnam would have had to have been slaughtered in order for there to have been "peace."

So Americans left Vietnam and people in the millions died at the hands of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge. OK, so what was the alternative? The idea of "stay the course" was simply not an option and no one in the 30+ years since then has come up with any reasonable answer to that question of how to achieve "victory" short of simply slaughtering huge numbers of Vietnamese.

My favorite whipping boy...

The DLC's Al From pulls through again, with a statement so incredibly stupid I just had to do a double-take:

"Most people are not satisfied with their politics and would very much like to see more politicians who just got things done," said Al From, founder and chief executive officer of the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist policy group. "Most people really aren't about ideology. Most people really are about, 'Let's get something done that's going to make my life better.' "

Now I have opposed GW Bush for a long time, most especially since he announced that Iraq was a threat to World Peace and had to be dealt with, but I really have never seen him as a fellow who couldn't get things done. With both a Congress and a Senate having been controlled by his party for the last five years, the only things Bush hasn't been able to do are the things that nobody wants done. Sure, Bush can't get Roe vs Wade tossed out, but that's not for lack of competence, that's for lack of Americans willing to see it tossed in the garbage bin.

I am entirely willing to see our government come to a creaking, shuddering halt if that means that the Bush Administration can't do any more damage.

So much news...

Let's see - The Second Battle of Fallujah occured right after the American election of 2004. American soldiers appeared to have won the battle, but months later, the city still wasn't safe. Now:

Falluja has resurfaced as a major stronghold of anti-U.S. resistance despite a massive U.S. assault that had almost turned the city of nearly 300,000 inhabitants into ruins.

Rebel attacks have intensified recently and the U.S. finds it increasingly difficult to subdue the city.

The Americans control all entrances to the city and have remote control digital cameras guarding volatile quarters.

But the rebels still find ways to infiltrate Falluja and mount suicide raids on U.S. convoys.

In other words, a Third Battle of Fallujah may be necessary because the job wasn't done right either the first OR the second time! Here's a possible reason why:

Yet, visible rebuilding is taking place. More than 140,000 of the city's original residents have returned. Groups of men hammer away at buildings, and shops and restaurants have reopened in some neighborhoods. American officials say more homes have running water now than before November.

Right after the siege, the Americans doled out $8 million to 20,000 people as an initial reconstruction payment. Iraqi engineering teams estimated that 32,000 homes needed repairs and that the total cost of reconstruction would be $500 million. The government of Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister, ordered a fifth of that to be paid out, and it was flown by helicopter to the main Marine base, called Camp Fallujah.

Problem: After an Iraqi sheik brought the continued failure to deliver the remainder of the needed money to the attention of the Americans, the Americans talked to him about the elections coming up in December 2005, suggesting they were using the reconstrction money as an incentive for Iraqi citizens to get out the vote. Obviously, if the city is exploding again, then the aid might not have ever arrived.
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In the competition between Americans and Iraqi insurgents, it's not clear who's making better use of technology.

This is a dangerous problem, because the insurgents are stitching together their own communications network. Using cellphones and e-mail accounts, these guerrillas rely on a loose web of connections rather than a top-down command structure. And they don’t fight in large groups that can be easily tracked by high-tech command posts. They have to be hunted down in dark neighborhoods, amid thousands of civilians, and taken out one by one.

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Then, suddenly, the lead tank lurches to a halt. Through roiling clouds of dust, illuminated by the tank’s headlights, Feldmayer sees a pile of concrete and earth. The lead tank’s fancy navigation system has just led them into a roadblock, too tall for the vehicles to climb. A dozen soldiers curse in unison.

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It’s at this point, just beyond the edge of the American network, where the guerrillas are best connected. Using disposable cellphones, anonymous e-mail addresses at public Internet cafés, and “lessons learned” Web sites that rival Cavnet, disparate guerrilla groups coordinate attacks, share tactics, hire bomb makers, and draw in fresh recruits. It’s an ad hoc, constantly changing web of connections, so it’s hard for U.S. spooks to know where to listen in next. It also lets the insurgents keep a loose command structure, without much hierarchy—just like the network-centric theorists call for. Even if their communications are compromised, only a small cell is exposed, not the entire insurgency. "They’re more effectively networked than we are," says Hammes, the guerrilla-war expert. “They have a worldwide, secure communications network. And all it cost them was two dinars.”

On the plus side for Americans, friendly fire incidens are way down. American soldiers are far less likely to be shot at by their own forces than before.

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And hey! Good news! The Washington Post ombudsman has corrected an error! And it only took her since January to do so.

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The BBC reports a accident by an American "large cargo truck." Very disturbingly:

Hundreds of Afghans gathered after the accident, chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Karzai".

They pelted the US military vehicles with stones before scattering when the shooting began.

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As many as 2,000 protesters then headed for the city centre, towards the presidential palace and parliament, setting fire to police cars and police checkpoints.

Bursts of heavy gunfire could also be heard close to the US embassy, whose staff were moved to a secure location.

This doesn't sound to me like things are going well between the occupation forces in Aghanistan and the Afghanis. In fact, it sounds like the Afghanis are awfully hostile to the Americans in their midst.

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And in the category of extremely positive news, the momentum the Bush Administration was trying to build up for military action against Iran seems to be dissipating.

In Iraq, our ability to dictate events and a direction for the country is diminishing with every passing day. New Prime Minister al-Maliki is still unable to get agreement among the parties on filling the Interior and Defense ministry positions. Nir Rosen’s essay yesterday in the Post shows that we are less and less of an influence in Iraq, while the militias now are the power center in the country, inciting fear and disorder. Bush has in effect made our military look impotent and criminal in the Islamic world, evidenced further by how we are losing control in Afghanistan, the job Bush never finished.

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Furthermore, Iran wants direct talks, its president and clerics are unified in this desire for the first time, and the Iranians seem to be either slowing down their enrichment program or running into technical difficulties. I have heard from a source that the Iranians are willing to compromise and trade off the work they have already done at one site if we would simply show them some respect and talk with them directly.

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Our tough, rejectionist posture towards Iran was further undermined when the new al-Maliki government in Iraq came out in support of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and Iran signaled it was tired of waiting for the Bush Administration to talk with it about Iraq’s future, and decided to work with regional states to forge their own future.

Iran's president appears to have agreed to tone things down and to not play into the hands of the warmongers who wish to use him as a scare figure. The NY Times article linked to above cites Iranian economic problems as having been a significant moderating influence.

Oh good grief!

Gregg Easterbrook argues that:

Intelligent design is a sophisticated theory now being argued out in the nation's top universities.

Okay, let's get this straight. There are two theories as to how life evolved. There is the scientific theory, known as evolution and which was developed primarily by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species in 1859. It's been refined and incrementally improved upon, but it has not been essentially modified since the book was published. On the other hand, there a whole raft of other theories known as Biblical Literalism, Creationism and Intelligent Design. All three of them boil down to the book known as:

Genesis (Greek: Γένεσις, having the meanings of "birth", "creation", "cause", "beginning", "source" and "origin"), also called The First Book of Moses, is the first book of Torah (five books of Moses), and is the first book of the Tanakh, part of the Hebrew Bible; it is also the first book of the Christian Old Testament.

There is no essential difference between any of the three theories and there is no connection whatsoever to science. It is not possible to disprove the Book of Genesis, nor by the same token, is it possible to prove the Book of Genesis. You either believe it or you don't. You have faith or you do not.

There's nothing wrong with having faith and believing that the Book of Genesis is literally true, but there is something very deeply wrong with wasting class time by ignoring science and by going over matters best left to Sunday school or to the pulpit.

Bush sorta kinda expresses regrets about "Bring 'em on"

When John Paul Jones declared "I have no yet begun to fight!", he did so from the decks of the Bonhomme Richard, a ship that had taken heavy damage from the enemy to the point where the captain on the other side offered to allow the American ship to surrender. In glaring contrast, when Bush said "Bring 'em on," he did so from a comfortable TV studio, 7000 miles away from the fighting in Iraq. Bush owes veterans of the Iraq War vastly more than:

Last night, he answered: "Saying 'bring it on,' kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner -- you know, 'wanted dead or alive,' that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted, and so I learned from that."

In other words, Bush has regrets purely about how his language was "misinterpreted", not about in how it was properly and accurately understood, as the language of a chickenhawk, the language of someone who is in no danger. It's all very fine and well to talk like a tough guy when the shells are exploding around you and your ship seems to be on the verge of sinking. That's heroic and that deserves respect. Talking like a tough guy from halfway around the world is the action of a coward and deserves nothing but scorn.

The blog Crooks & Liars has a marvelous picture of Bush that beautifully sums up how our President feels about the whole press conference.

Excellent post from DailyKos on chickenhawks and on who really deserves to be honored on Memorial Day.

Answering Max Boot

On May 17th, Max Boot wrote a column in the LA Times defending the warrantless NSA spying program, asserting that "So far there has been no suggestion that the NSA has done anything with disreputable motives." Actually, there have been quite a few such suggestions based on the past history of the Bush Administration. The notion that the Bush people are somehow above suspicion is a quaint one with absolutely no basis in reality. He further says near the very end of his column that:

If it is later determined that an intelligence-gathering operation was not ordered for legitimate national security objectives — if, for instance, it was designed to gather dirt on political opponents — then the culprits would be punished with lengthy prison sentences.

That's a very nice thought, but of course it's kind of difficult to see how the "culprits would be punished" if there's no investigation and before he made this statement, he spent an enormous amount of time and energy denouncing those who are "civil liberties agitators, grandstanding politicians and self-righteous newspaper editorialists" and who are "hyperventilating worrywarts [who} fret that fascism has descended." Kind of difficult to see how Max's sensible statement concerning ensuring that the warrantless NSA spying program was legitimate can be anything but a careless afterthought tacked on to the end of his screed denouncing those who oppose the program.

Assorted critics, taking a break from castigating the Bush administration for doing too little to protect the homeland, are now castigating it for doing too much.

World O'Crap clobbers this talking point extremely well:

A lot of you idiots don’t seem to understand this very important point, so let’s try to illustrate it with an analogy: An elderly woman is walking home from the bank after cashing her Social Security check. A blond 15-year old male whizzes past on a Razor and snatches her purse. She reports the theft to a cop, who immediately walks over to a bus bench and starts beating a 65-year old black woman with his nightstick. The grandstanding victim complains that this isn’t helping to get her purse back. The moral of the story is: There’s just no pleasing you people.

As there have been no captured bad guys identified as being al Qaeda operatives for the past five years, it's difficult to see how the warrantless NSA spying program is accomplishing anything of any use to regular Americans. Why would the Bush Administration continue a blatantly illegal program that wasn't doing what Bush energetically insists its accomplishing? I refer you to the first quote about "gather[ing] dirt on political opponents." There has been no proof that Bush used the NSA to give his re-election team an improper advantage during the 2004 election, but then, there's been no investigation either.

The Black Commentator reminds us that:

[Bush] comes from a family that demonstrates a blatant disregard for the most basic moral norms. Prescott Bush was a traitor in war time and a grave desecrater. George W. stole his way into the presidency and is now prepared to risk confrontation with China, Russia and the rest of the world in order to use nuclear weapons against Iran.

There is simply no evidence that the US is dealing with an honorable person who wouldn't abuse the advantage that the NSA's illegal spying program would give him. Max suggests that FISA is obsolete:

This archaic law should be euthanized. Replace it with legislation that gives the president permission to order any surveillance deemed necessary.

In a passage well worth quoting at length:

But one aspect of the administration's decision to violate FISA that has received relatively little attention is just how extraordinary is the sudden claim that FISA, after governing eavesdropping in this country for 27 years, is unconstitutional.

It's not uncommon for a law to be passed and signed into law under a cloud of questionable constitutionality. Since McCain-Feingold was enacted, for instance, scores of people have claimed that McCain-Feingold entails unconstitutional abridgements of First Amendment liberties and litigation began almost immediately after it was signed into law. Indeed, on the very day the Senate approved it, many Senators expressed their view that the law was unconstitutional. That happens commonly with laws which are believed to be unconstitutional -- substantial public debate exists among politicians, law professors, lawyers, and others regarding the law's questionable constitutionality.

But nothing like that ever happened with FISA. It was enacted in 1978 by a vote of 95-1 in the Senate. It was amended six times since then, including under the Bush presidency. President Bush asked for amendments liberalizing its provisions, and never once suggested it was unconstitutional. Four different presidential administrations prior to this one -- two Republican and two Democratic -- complied with its provisions while engaging in surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes, including during the height of our Cold War with the Soviet Union, and during all sorts of military actions, including the Persian Gulf War and military deployments in Latin America, Yugoslavia, and throughout the Middle East.

Until George Bush, no President had ever claimed that the requirements of FISA were unconstitutional. None ever claimed that their Article II powers were infringed because they had to obtain judicial warrants before eavesdropping on Americans, and none ever claimed that their ability to engage in intelligence gathering was impeded in any way by the warrant requirements of that law. There was never any debate in any prominent academic circles or among political pundits over the constitutionality of FISA. The Reagan Administration was filled with ideologues and advocates of strong executive power and yet, as it went to the FISA court every time it wanted to eavesdrop on Americans, it never once claimed that FISA was unconstitutional in any way. Nobody of any prominence did, because its constitutionality was never in doubt.

There is simply no evidence whatsoever that FISA is in any way, shape or form a hindrance to catching bad guys within the borders of the United States. Max displays a lot of misdirected anger here. The people he denounces are trying to protect American citizens. We may not know exactly what the Bush Administration is up to, but that doesn't mean we citizens have nothing to worry about.

The Hillary and Bill story

On May 23rd, the NY Times published a somewhat lengthy (14 kilobytes or 2000 words) story on the marriage of Hillary and Bill Clinton that ran for perhaps 100-150 words on the front page, above the fold and with a photograph. The story was continued in the Metro section.
Personally, I've never particularly liked Hillary due to her having been in charge of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform back during the very beginning of Bill Clinton's first term and making such a complete mess of it that there hasn't been serious talk of comprehensive health care reform since.
The NY Times article was not written because there was any sort of "peg" to hang the story on or in fact, any genuine news within the article itself. The story was written by Patrick Healey, a reporter who has handled several anti-Democratic and pro-Republican stories (The story includes several useful links for yelling at the Times with.

Atrios goes over one of the most serious problems with "The return of Monica Madness"

And, finally, it puts on display the utter vapidity of the press corps we're dealing with. If Dean Broder, who has been covering Washington since 1820, can't sit through a 45 minute speech on energy policy, and the press on Air Force One would rather watch King Kong than the Hayden hearings, while they devote their time and resources to a long 50-source article about how often the Clintons are getting busy, then we have a problem, and it's not something we're going to clear up at a blogger ethics panel.

Yes, that's correct, the article concentrated on how often Hillary and Bill "did it" and yes, the author really interviewed 50 sources, he even counts the number of times the Clintons spent the night together over 17 months. Has America's press corps really sunk this low?!?! I mean, with the American occupation of Iraq rapidly collapsing and the dollar on the verge of meltdown, is the sex life of the Clinton's really a page-one story!?!?!? As firedoglake points out, there are magazines eminently qualified to do such stories. It's also obviously meant to put Democrats on notice that they will be relentlessly trivialized during the run up to the 2008 election.

Except for one thing: who the hell cares? I mean really, who cares? Except for the inside, gossip queens of the Beltway, how exactly does this put gas in someone’s tank, keep their kid safe on the battlefield, stop their job from being downsized, or help them pay the balloon payment on their already-ballooning mortgage? What in the hell are these people doing calling this crap "reporting?"

The press corps has made it clear that the Democrats will be lampooned and laughed at and made to look deranged because they just can't stomach a return to wonk-style politics, where politician actually care about people and issues. We progressives, liberals and leftists need to make a really loud stink about this, and it needs to commence right away!

Al From's thoughts

From Al From, who runs the Democratic Leadership Council:
"There's a group in our party that makes a lot of noise and I don't think they've ever won an election."

Let's look at how well the Democratic Party has done while under the influence of Al From's DLC , shall we?
(Source: Clerk of the House)

Year	Senators	Representatives	% Democrat
1992	56	258	59
1994	57	204	47
1996	48	206	47
1998	45	211	48
2000	45	212	49
2002	50	204	47

Democrats held a consistent numerical advantage over Republicans since 1956 and since 1984 had been slowly but steadily gaining seats.
The DLC basically ran Democratic Party political strategy from the time Bill Clinton assumed office until 2002. Democratic Senators and Representativess underwent a dramatic shrinkage in 1994, the first "mid-term" or "off-season" election cycle after Clinton took office, when Clinton should have been at his peak of political effectiveness. The last cycle here, the 2002 cycle, is especially troubling. During midterm elections when the Presidency is not at stake, the opposition party usually wins seats (Though usually not as dramatically as the Republicans did in the 1994 electios). The exceptions are few and far between. 2002 was a dramatic exception, with eight seats in the House being lost. Granted, in the Senate, Democrats saw a gain of five seats, but they quickly lost the majority they had as the result of the 2002 election.

In 2004, insurgents from what Howard Dean called "The Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" made a strong, but unsuccessful attempt to seize control from the DLC. As our wing of the party has argued, Democrats have gained from the extra energy and enthusiasm that our wing has brought into the party.

A further thought from Al From:
"A very simple thing happened that changed Democratic politics dramatically, and that was that the [Iraq] war turned bad."

"Turned" bad?!?!?! The war "turned" bad?!?! Er, when exactly was it ever good?!?! The problem, obviously, was that the Iraq War didn't stop when US troops captured Baghdad. Instead, the war simply changed shape and metamorphosized into a guerrilla struggle. It took awhile, things were pretty quiet from about April 2003 until August/September 2003, though sniping and small ambushes never truly stopped. The US had a very narrow window of opportunity where a vigorous reconstruction project might have done a bit of good, but it's doubtful that the guerrilla war could have been avoided. By September, it was pretty clear that the war had begun again in earnest.

All that being said; yes, it's clear that the war in Iraq prevented a dash into Iran or Syria, prevented a victory parade down the main streets of Baghdad a month or two before the 2004 Presidential Election and made it possible for opponents of the war to make their case to the public that those who went along with the war were acting against the interests of the American people.

Al From is a perfectly good American, but an absolutely useless Democrat. The sooner the Democratic Party gives him and his group the boot, the better.

A few interesting comments from Lieberman defenders

The Wall St Journal (From their accessible, non-subscription OpinionJournal.) defends both Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman. McCain is described as having "reacted with admirable restraint" in response to a student who declared in her speech:

"I am young and though I don't possess the wisdom that time affords us, I do know that preemptive war is dangerous. And I know that despite all the havoc that my country has wrought overseas in my name, Osama bin Laden still has not been found, nor have those weapons of mass destruction."

Yep, poor John McCain, having to respond to a "rude" student who points out the complete failures of his hero, Bush.

Poor, pitiful Joe Lieberman is described as facing "political extinction" because of "his pro-war views." Actually, as firedoglake points out by quoting Paul Krugman of the New York Times, the issue is very considerably more than just the war. Lieberman is a perfectly fine American Senator, he's just not a very good Democrat. He consistently puts his own political benefit above that of the Democratic Party as a whole.

But in any event, the WSJ then makes a wildly inaccurate statement:

"The left's larger goal is to turn the Democratic Party solidly against the war on terror, and especially against its Iraq and Iran fronts."

The War on Terror on the left side of the aisle is understood to apply strictly to al Qaeda and to various terrorist attacks around the world. The Iraq War and the upcoming Iran War are understood to be imperial grabs for natural resources, i.e. oil. The idea behind these two wars is not necessarily to get the natural resources for American use so much as it is to monopolize those resources and control access to them by the up-and-coming economic powers India and China. The political left has always understood that these two conquests had nothing to do with al Qaeda save in a purely talking-point, propagandistic context.

As with the student quoted above, the left has continued to point out that the Bush Administration, at best, allowed 9-11 to occur through a combination of negligence, incompetence and dereliction of duty. Why might the left be "enraged" and "rude"? Gee, let's review - the WOT is launched in response to an attack that could have been prevented had either the press or the Bush Administration kept their eyes on the ball, the emotional energy that was unleashed in response to the 9-11 attacks are diverted into an imperial grab for resources and there is considerable evidence that John Kerry actually won the last election. Golly, I can't imagine why the left might be angry!

Back to the WSJ:

"We doubt all of this will help Democrats with the larger electorate, which whatever its doubts about Iraq does not want a precipitous surrender."

Straw-man time again! The WSJ skips over the argument about whether or not it's wise to withdraw from Iraq and goes directly to the unsubstantiated accusation that the left wants a "precipitous surrender." The political left as a whole does not have a unifed position on when and how to pull out of Iraq. Generally, the left would like to have it be as soon as possible. The proposal made by Congressman Murtha to "Iraqitize, Internationalize and Energize", i.e. to pull off to bases that are still within Iraq or the Gulf, but in any event outside of Iraq's population centers has aroused a good deal of support on the left despite not being a complete pull-out.

In other words, the left is quite willing to be reasonable and pragmatic about how the pull-out is done.

UPDATE #1: Yes, al Qaeda appears to be actively taking part in the Iraq War on the other side from American troops in Iraq, but the important question there is: Will al Qaeda reman in Iraq if and when US troops leave? Doubtful. Al Qaeda is in Iraq for the purpose of fighting American troops, both to cause damage to American military capabilities and perhaps more importantly, to get experience in fighting Americans and to learn how to better ambush and attack American troops. Once Americans leave, al Qaeda might have other reasons to stick around, but the major current reason for being in Iraq will have disappeared.

Iraqis currently have reason to cover for and assist al Qaeda because al Qaeda is assisiting Iraqis to throw American troops out of their country. Once Americans leave, it's difficult to see why Iraqis would want to keep al Qaeda around. As both Iraqis and al Qaeda currently use the same supply sources and hiding places and tactics, it's hard to see how al Qaeda could survivie a determined Iraqi attempt to expel them. As foreign jihadists and al Qaeda have never constituted more than 3% to 5% of the forces opposing US troops in Iraq, they'd quickly find themselves in a very uneven fight if they tried to stay.

So, is there currently reason to say there's a connection between Iraqi insurgents and al Qaeda? Yes.
Would that alliance survive a US departure from Iraq? Doubtful.

UPDATE #2: Rabbi Michael Lerner, prominent progressive Jewish activist and founder of Tikkun, has come out with a salute to a collection of articles on 9-11.in which he endorses concerns that the World Trade Center towers could not have fallen down merely due to being hit by airplanes and that activists should try to tell the story in a way that minimizes the evil people involved and instead stresses turning 9-11 from a theoretical concern into an activist project. In fact, Rabbi Lerner emphasizes that a truth-seeking alliance could heal wounds left by the destruction of that day.

Updates

Ned Lamont over-achieves goals in Connecticut primary!!! Joe Lieberman has been acting quite nervous the past few days over the campaign of Lamont to unseat him as one of Connecticut's senators. Turns out Joe was right to worry. Lamont only needed 15% of the vote:

Connecticut Bob called once again to give the final unofficial tally — Lieberman 1014, Lamont 497. That puts Ned at roughly 33%, WILDLY in excess of what they anticipated. The Lamont people are jumping around, hi-fiving each other, slapping each other on the back. Rape Gurney Joe’s people are wandering around in a daze, wondering what hit ‘em.

Three words: "a short ride."

Best aspect of this is that it's a great advertisement for the netroots, the folks who organize themselves around, and take their cues from, the liberal blogs. Lieberman has been an awful Democrat, straying from the party line and voting with the Republicans time and time again. Connecticut and the Democrats generally are bette off wthout him.

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Whoooo!! Seriously warped statements from a conservative blogger! Lemme put it this way - I would never leave my young neice in his care! The idea that the age of optimal attractiveness for women is between 15 and 20 is bad enough. That statement pegs him as a pervert all by itself. The really bad statement follows, that one where he asserts he can prove the first statement by noting how many females in that "optimal" age range get raped! Yup. Read it yourself. He really does say that. Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will, published in 1975, pretty much blew apart the theory that women get raped because men find themselves sexually attracted to them. Depressingly, this conservative blogger proves himself to be about thirty years behind the curve. In an update, his concern is not that his son has been fighting at school, but "Did he win?"

UPDATE: Pandagon quotes an earlier column wherein our conservative makes it clear that he doesn't want to look at Jennifer Aniston's breasts in GQ because at 36 years old, she's rather over the hill.

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Republicans try to initiate an anti-gay constitutional amendment in a session where the public had limited access. Senator Russ Feingold objects to it, Senator Arlen Specter acquiesces to it. Question: Where are all of the other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee!?!?!?! Why is Feingold acting all alone at a time and in a place where he could have used the support of his fellow Democrats?!?!?! Why is this guy constantly having to act by himself? Seriously, Democrats need to start supporting their fellow party members!!!

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A long time after the USA Today story ran about the other warrantless NSA spying program, AT&T appears to have been assisted by the Bush Administration reworking the laws allowing them to lie without legal consequences.
Funny, but for an Administration that claims it has the right to do all sorts of things, they don't appear eager to put anything to the test. Oh, and the confirmation hearing of General Hayden helps to reveal the utter crminality of the Bush Administration when it first supported the idea of warrantless NSA wiretapping, even when alteratives were available.

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Sigh! Happy happy, joy joy!!! Turns out "turning to the right" isn't working out too well!! Simply turning to the extremes isn't turning out to be a successful strategy after all! If y'all don't turn to the left, sadness follows!

The latest warrantless NSA spying scandal

Someone in our email group sent along an appeal from Act For Change to protest the latest warrantless NSA spyng scandal. In response, someone sent us the following message:

My first reaction to this is that the phone companies were complying with a government request after 9/11 and should not be held accountable for complying with that request.

There has to be a balance between what we want our government to do to protect us from terrrorist [sic] attacks and protecting our right to privacy.

Heartily agreeing with the claim that there "has to be a balance", I nevertheless disagreed with holding the telecommuncations companies blameless:

One major telecommunications company declined to participate in the program: Qwest.

According to sources familiar with the events, Qwest's CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA's assertion that Qwest didn't need a court order — or approval under FISA — to proceed. Adding to the tension, Qwest was unclear about who, exactly, would have access to its customers' information and how that information might be used.

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Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them,"

The NSA obviously did not feel confident that its request was legal. Despite a poll taken long before American citizens could get a handle on what the issue was all about, a later poll showed Americans were quite upset over the decision and legal action could be very, very costly for the telecommunications companies, not that Constitutional rights should be dependent on polls in any event.

As to the idea of balance, our objector agreed with me in a later message that the Bush Administration had not engaged in any such thing. Major problem with the idea of balance is that the Administration never, at any point, sought any input from anyone outside their own little, tight circle of cronies and ideological soulmates. It's also become quite clear that there are simply no legal restraints on the program.

Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain't nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration. Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans -- and I know they've expanded their ops at an explosive rate.

And no, the assertions that the government does not know your name, only your phone number and the calls you've made, was quickly scotched in the USA Today article:

With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information. [emphasis added]

The fact that the telecommunications companies did not turn over specific identifying information to the government means nothing. The government can easily get that information anyway. And make no mistake, Congress very clearly came out against the very similar Total Information Awareness program back in 2003. Hopefully, the whole issue will blow General Hayden's nomination to run the CIA completely out of the water, but ya never know.

Reaction to Stephen Colbert's comedy routine

First, after about a week of embarrassed silece, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post wrote a dismissive article about Stephen Colbert's routine poking fun at Bush and his Administration. I responded with a letter, as did around 4000 others. Richard's subsequent weeping and whining and wailing caught the attention of the left blogosphere, who essentially agreed with DailyKos who said that if Cohen had a coherent point to make then why did he waste valuable time sniffling and sobbing and moaning about angry emails?

The DLC talks foreign policy

The LeftCoaster looks at some of the DLC's favored presidential candidates for 2008 and we see them offer the following advice:

Bayh accused the president of mishandling Iran and North Korea while weakening U.S. alliances and the nation's armed forces. He said the war in Iraq has been "tragically, tragically" mismanaged.

So the Iraq War was merely "mismanaged", eh? I wonder what Bayh would advise the President to do about manpower. Right now, the Army has been caught taking an autistic 18 year old. Obviously, they did so because the US has reached the limits of what persuasion can do.

Seriously, does anybody think the Bush Administration just plain forgot to have a national draft? It's been plainly obvious for over three years that a draft would energize the anti-war movement and would cause the war to come to a screeching halt. All of the sudden, the war would mean something to young people in a personal way instead of just being a faraway, "one of these days" possibility.

Sorry, but the "mismanaged" excuse doesn't fly.

Warner said the key for Democrats is to represent a muscular foreign policy that respects and supports U.S. troops; deploys diplomatic, economic, and when necessary, military assets against U.S. enemies; rises to the challenge of global competition; and unites friends and divides enemies — "not the reverse," which he complained Bush has done.

Yet, there seemed to be limits to how far Warner would go. He told reporters afterward that while he hopes the Iraq war is successful, he would consider pulling U.S. troops out if the country did not make progress in coming months on democracy and security.

Okay, but Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army is actively competing with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution for influence within the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance. Al-Sadr, as people might remember, is not very fond of the United States being in Iraq and he's very obviously a popular figure within that country. What exactly does Mark Warner plan to do about al-Sadr? What would his response be to an Iraqi demand for US troops to leave?

As the LeftCoaster puts it:

To Warner and Bayh, talking about Bush’s record and holding him accountable for his mistakes is nothing more than “lashing out in anger” and political retribution.

Accountability means nothing to these people. They've got a bunch of clever slogans with no clear thought behind them and they don't intend to hold Bush accountable for anything.

Yeah, okay guys. Great plan. Nice ideas. Way to go.

Yeesh.

Whatta buncha losers.

Fallout from Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert made a real splash at the Correspondnt's Dinner that is televised here. This provoked The Washington Post's Richard Cohen to write a column entitled "So not funny" (Pretty pathetic, in order to demonstate his credentials as a "funny guy", Cohen cites some of his elementary school teachers.) I wrote the following letter in response:

Dear Mr Cohen,
So now we're beginning to see the reaction from the press corps. After previously trying to ignore Colbert's performance (Which personally, I thought was hilarious), the "scandalized" and "outraged" press corps goes to bat for their "Dear Leader".
You remark that Bush couldn't respond because of the civility and decorum that the setting and the moment required. Pardon me, but didn't Cindy Sheehan bring up exactly the same point that Colbert and Helen Thomas did? Didn't Sheehan ask "What was the noble cause that my son died for"? As you might remember, Bush was completely unable to answer that question.
Bush's inability to respond to Colbert's ribbing (Bush could very easily have given an interview the next day wherein he referred to "some critics" and explained to the American people what the answer to Helen Thomas' question was.) shows, again, that he simply can't answer any serious questions about the Iraq War. There simply are no answers. THAT was the true point of Colbert's performance.
Did Colbert demonstrate a lack of true courage? Perhaps, but he showed far more courage than the press corps did a few years back, when Bush "couldn't find the WMD" underneath the tables and couches in the White House. For that routine, the press corps' response was to laugh uproariously and to congratulate Bush on his marvelous sense of humor.
The press corps is now demonstrating far more tender concern for the fragile ego of America's "Dear Leader" than they are for any kinds of standards.