The bail-out plan

Starting with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in mid-month September 2008, the US economy started showing signs of distress. Looked like all of the bragging about the successes of Bush's economic stewardship weren't true after all. The trouble with the housing bubble actually started back during the Clinton Administration and with Alan Greenspan's habit of talking in vague, indecipherable mumbles.

Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan deserves much of the blame. He was grossly negligent in allowing both the stock and housing bubbles to grow unchecked. He decided to just let the bubbles run their course, expecting to pick up the pieces after they burst.

Further explanation from Dean Baker of CEPR:

Everyone should understand that we are in this mess for two reasons. First the financial regulators, both in the Bush administration and more importantly at the Fed, were completely asleep for most of the decade. As the housing bubble grew to ever more dangerous proportions, and lenders adopted increasingly questionable lending practices, the regulators did nothing.

The other reason we are in this mess is that the Wall Street banks got themselves hugely leveraged in real estate and other assets. In many cases they had no appreciation of the value of the underlying assets. They also apparently did not understand the complex financial derivatives that they had themselves created.

As Paul Krugman of the NY Times explains, the current problems stem directly from the housing bubble's collapse:

The new system was supposed to do a better job of spreading and reducing risk. But in the aftermath of the housing bust and the resulting mortgage crisis, it seems apparent that risk wasn’t so much reduced as hidden: all too many investors had no idea how exposed they were.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though Bush was very educated about how the economy worked before he entered the Oval Office. During a talk on the 23rd, he sure didn't talk as though his economic knowledge was very wide or deep.

"Well, my first instinct wasn't to lay out a huge government plan. My first instinct was to let the market work until I realized, upon being briefed by the experts, of how significant this problem became.

"And so I decided to act and act boldly. It turns out that there's a lot of interlinks throughout the financial system. [emphases added]

The full talk is at the link, but I read that and I'm like "Wow! Did this guy not know that the economy was very highly 'interlinked'?!?!?!" And when someone doesn't know much about the economy, is it really a good idea to "act boldly"?!?!? Really?!?!

Actually, the final bail-out plan that was voted on appears to have been a pretty good one. Krugman did not like Treasury Secretary Paulson's initial plan. Baker also didn't like it:

The bailout is about taking money from the school teachers and cab drivers and giving it to incredibly rich Wall Street bankers, who are so incompetent that they drove their banks into the ground.

But Krugman approved the re-worked plan that was voted on upon the 29th:

Maybe we can let Wall Street implode and Main Street would escape largely unscathed. But that’s not a chance we want to take. So the grown-up thing is to do something to rescue the financial system.

Why didn't the bill pass?

Mr. Paulson never offered a convincing explanation of how his plan was supposed to work

And let's also consider the Bush Administrations record in handling huge amounts of cash. These guys have a well-documented record of flushing billions and billions down the toilet.

Many people also noticed Section 8 of the bail-out plan:

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency. [emphases added]

This section simply made any trust in the administration absolutely impossible and made it necessary for Democrats to extensively re-work the proposal. That wasn't enough to save the plan, though.

The Republicans tried claiming that they couldn't vote for the bill because Speaker Pelosi was mean to them. A claim they later backed off on. Other conservatives came up with similarly unconvincing reasons as to why the crisis occurred in the first place. As the blogger emptywheel says:

It's bad enough Bush fucked up the economy so badly. Now his party wants to use his own failure to beat Democrats over the head for their plans to fix the broken economy.

Personally, my answer is that first, we have to remove Republicans from power. Getting Blue Dog Democrats out would be a good thing too. But there are simply no good solutions possible with the current crew in office.

Debate initial reaction

Liveblogging of the debate begins with FireDogLake, Daily Kos and Think Progress.
John McCain appears to want to keep all the old wars going AND to begin new ones! He thought the US should keep at it in Iraq. He thought that troops should be increased in Afghanistan. He was for defending Georgia against Russia, even though Georgia clearly started the fight (Obama unfortunately agreed with McCain even though he probably knows better). He even appeared to want to have Ukraine join NATO! The US is very heavily overstretched as it is. Exactly where does McCain expect to get the troops to do all this? Obviously, if the US population was willing to put up with a draft in any form, we would have seen that awhile ago.
McCain tried and tried to make the case that the "surge" in Iraq was a success and that the drop in violence owed nothing to factors that the US didn't control, but for anyone familiar with the arguments, that just didn't wash. Especially telling on that score was McCain's description of "clear, hold and build," a strategy that was tried many times, unsuccessfully, long before General Petraeus assumed command of US forces in Iraq.
McCain mentioned the former Bush policy of refusing to meet with bad international actors. Gives good summary of the idea, saying we don't wish to reward bad actors by legitimizing them (via publicly meeting them). Barack Obama correctly points out though, that the policy was a complete failure. Bush has begun to change it and even denounced John Bolton, who was very fond of that policy.
McCain's economic proposals sound a lot like Ronald Reagan's, and we all know how that "great deficit hawk" thing worked out! Deficits shot through the roof!

The economics education of our president

Y'know, is it just me, or does it sound as though President Bush, after seven and a half years on the job, is just now getting some idea as to how the economy works?

The president finally took his first two questions about the exploding financial crisis on Saturday, in a joint appearance with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe: "I know -- look, I'm sure there are some of my friends out there saying, I thought this guy was a market guy; what happened to him?

"Well, my first instinct wasn't to lay out a huge government plan. My first instinct was to let the market work until I realized, upon being briefed by the experts, of how significant this problem became.

"And so I decided to act and act boldly. It turns out that there's a lot of interlinks throughout the financial system. The system had grown to a point where a lot of people were dependent upon each other, and that the collapse of one part of the system wouldn't just affect a part of the financial markets; it would affect the average citizen -- and how. Well, it affect their capacity to borrow money to buy a house or to finance a college loan. It affect the ability of a small business to get credit. . . .

"I asked Hank Paulson -- who, by the way, in my judgment, is doing a fabulous job; he's got a lot of credibility and he's working, and his team are working hard, as are the people at the Fed and the SEC -- I said, what's it going to take to make sure Main Street doesn't get affected by the policies of Wall Street? And this is what they came up with, and this is big ticket, because it's a big problem. . . .

"And I believe this is going to work. We had the considered judgment of a lot of capable people. It's not only just here in Washington, but our people were listening to a lot of other voices. And we took our time to come up with a strategy and a plan that would address the problem. . . .

"And, you know, I know a lot of people here in Washington, Mr. President, saying, well, who to blame? Now is not the time to play the blame game. There's plenty of time to analyze the situation. But from our perspective, it's time to solve the problem, and that's what we did."

Of course, "play[ing] the blame game" would hurt Bush's corporate buddies and all his rich friends wouldn't like him anymore if he did that. But for Bush to just now be discovering that there are "interlinks" and that "the collapse of one part of the system wouldn't just affect a part of the financial markets; it would affect the average citizen" caused me to do a real double-take. Did this fellow really come into the Oval Office with that shaky a grasp as to how the economy works? Has his knowledge really been that shallow the whole time?

Pro-life beliefs

Tom Englehardt examines the massacre at Azizabad, Afghanistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai cites the work of

Ahmad Nader Nadery, commissioner of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, similarly reported that one of the group's researchers had "found that 88 people had been killed, including 20 women." The U.N. mission in Afghanistan then dispatched its own investigative team from Herat to interview survivors. Its investigation "found convincing evidence, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, and others, that some 90 civilians were killed, including 60 children, 15 women and 15 men." (The 60 children were reportedly "3 months old to 16 years old, all killed as they slept.")

The American military strongly disagreed, at first citing a casualty count of

...exactly 30 Taliban "militants"... ("Insurgents engaged the soldiers from multiple points within the compound using small-arms and RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] fire. The joint forces responded with small-arms fire and an air strike killing 30 militants.")

Later, the American military was pushed into agreeing that yes, indeed, some civilians did indeed perish. The story contains a very chilling description of the way that American forces view real-time information and air power:

That night, a combined party of U.S. Special Forces and Afghan army troops attacked the village. They claimed they were "ambushed" and came under "intense fire." What we know is that they called in repeated air strikes.

Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James Conway explained:

"You know, air power is the premiere asymmetric advantage that we hold over both the Taliban and, for that matter, the al Qaeda in Iraq… And when we find that you're up against hardened people in a hardened type of compound, before we throw our Marines or soldiers against that, we're going to take advantage of our asymmetric advantage… You don't always know what's in that compound, unfortunately. And sometimes we think there's been overt efforts on the part of the Taliban, in particular, to surround themselves with civilians so as to, at a minimum, reap an IO [information operations] advantage if civilians are killed."

It's just very difficult to believe that the Special Forces really had on-the-ground, real-time, close-up human observers to inform the aircraft that their target was a memorial service. Tactical, close-in air support is of course, vitally important and needed if US troops are to win engagements. But it's really not clear that there was any "hardened compound" involved or that there even was any return fire. The NY Times piece cited in the story refers to "eight bomb-damaged houses," but the only mention of any "compound" is:

In the compound next to his, he said, four entire families, including those of his two brothers, were killed.

In other words, not a "hardened" compound at all, certainly nothing resembling a military bunker. There's no talk in the piece about captured weapons. And as to the "fire" reportedly received from the village:

The villagers and the relatives of some of the people killed in the raid insisted that none of them were Taliban and that there were no Taliban present in the village.

and

The villagers say they oppose the Taliban and would not let them in the village.

The real question is then, were the Special Forces anywhere near the village to begin with? Were they observing from a distance, through scopes, or were they even that close? Did they simply hear or did their devices detect a large gathering? This is an inherent problem with airpower and guerrilla wars. Airpower is necessarily a very blunt and clumsy instrument to use against an enemy that slips around barely detectable, mostly unobserved and in the shadows. As stated earlier, close-up air support is vitally important while conducting tactical operations, but planes flying around and bombing targets without any human observers on the ground to confirm that the planes are indeed striking legitimate military targets do counterinsurgency forces far more harm than good.

Problem is, how on Earth can we reconcile military tactics that President Bush has approved with his allegedly "pro-life" stance? In his desire to be seen as a defender of the sanctity of life, he insisted back in 2001 that stem cells could used for medical research, but only under very strict conditions. He also made it clear during the 2000 campaign that he really didn't like abortions and wanted to reduce their incidence. He also favored, in July 2008, a sort-of conscience clause for hospitals that would allow employees to refuse to provide contraceptive services.

Can a human being really be that "Ahh, who gives a $%#@!" when it comes to casualties from an air strike, yet tenderly concerned and solicitous when it comes to decisions involving the unborn? It's not like the Afghan villagers of Azizabad were guilty of anything. Killing them was like killing the drivers and passengers in other cars when one is driving drunk. They were simply slaughtered at a distance. Their "guilt" was not an issue at all as there is no apparent evidence they were even in the vicinity of a legitimate military target.

As Christy Hardin Smith of FDL makes clear, women must have control over their bodies and their reproductive functions if they're to be full human beings and citizens.

Why tell you something so personal? Especially when it is no one's business but ours?

Because it is no one's business but ours how we made the decision, what medical issues were at stake, and what choices we made together. Which is the point of choice. No one but the people involved in the individual circumstances can truly know why the decision is made -- to terminate, to keep, to risk. [emphasis in original]

As Bush himself says about the Bristol Palin pregnancy:

President Bush "believes that this is a private family matter," says White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. The talking points circulated at the GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn., are in remarkable concurrence: "This is a very personal matter for the family," a suggested script distributed to delegates and leaked to the press says.

Well...exactly! That's precisely what pro-choicers have been saying all these many years! How a woman, how a family, deals with a problem pregnancy or with an unwanted pregnancy is their business and should be their choice.

Anti-abortion activists promote a policy of official meddling — yes, by government bureaucrats — into the private lives of millions of American women, and the lives of their husbands and boyfriends.

"Pro-lifers" are nothing of the kind. They're people who want to deny choice and to force people to do things that people really don't want to do.

Number of Sarah Palin items

"...a local Wasilla woman's view of Palin the politician"

•"Hockey mom": true for a few years
•"PTA mom": true years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since
•"NRA supporter": absolutely true
•social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, BUT vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she did this because it was unconsitutional).
•pro-creationism: mixed. Supports it, BUT did nothing as Governor to promote it.
•"Pro-life": mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby BUT declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life legislation
•"Experienced": Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.
•political maverick: not at all
•gutsy: absolutely!
•open & transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.
•has a developed philosophy of public policy: no
•"a Greenie": no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.
•fiscal conservative: not by my definition!
•pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards.
•pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on residents
•pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla's history.
•pro-labor/pro-union. No. Just because her husband works union doesn't make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is pro-labor/pro-union.

Membership in an heretical church.

Palin's dedication to the Wasilla church is indicated by a Saturday, September 7, 2008, McClatchy news service story detailing possibly improper use of state travel funds by Palin for a trip she made to Wasilla, Alaska to attend, on June 8, 2008, both a Wasilla Assembly of God "Masters Commission" graduation ceremony and also a multi-church Wasilla area event known as "One Lord Sunday."
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The Wasilla Assembly of God church is deeply involved with both Third Wave activities and theology.
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The Third Wave is a revival of the theology of the Latter Rain tent revivals of the 1950s and 1960s led by William Branham and others. It is based on the idea that in the end times there will be an outpouring of supernatural powers on a group of Christians that will take authority over the existing church and the world. The believing Christians of the world will be reorganized under the Fivefold Ministry and the church restructured under the authority of Prophets and Apostles and others anointed by God. The young generation will form "Joel's Army" to rise up and battle evil and retake the earth for God. While segments of this belief system have been a part of Pentecostalism and charismatic beliefs for decades, the excesses of this movement were declared a heresy in 1949 by the General Council of the Assemblies of God, and again condemned through Resolution 16 in 2000.

A close look at Palin's pregnant daughter Bristol and what exactly the liberal objections to her pregnancy are.

Of course, there is no shame attached to choosing to have a baby when you're young. Nor is there any shame for choosing not to.

McCain, like Bush, wants to eliminate our opportunity to have that choice. But that's not all. Despite all evidence that it doesn't work, McCain, in lockstep with Bush and Palin, wants to continue the ludicrous notion of funding sex education that doesn't educate, but only preaches [i.e., "abstinence only"]. [emphasis in original]

Obama gets in a good one:

Keith Olbermann: “He fights pork barrel spending,” said this new McCain/Palin ad, “she stopped the ‘Bridge to Nowhere.’” ...

Barack Obama: They’re not telling the truth. You know, I mean, it’s — I think we’ve all gotten accustomed to being able to spin things in politics. But when you’ve got somebody who was for a project being presented as being against it, then that, you know, stretches the bounds of spin into new areas.

And do we REALLY want someone of McCain's temperament to be our Commander-in-Chief, with his finger next to "The Red Button"? Sounds like an awfully dangerous proposition! But even given McCain's explosive personality, do we REALLY want the 2008 presidential election to be about personalities? Does that truly serve the interests of the American people?

The lowdown on Palin

Now that we've had a few days to analyze and digest the Alaska's Governor Sarah "Maverick Mom" Palin, the left blogosphere has reached a few conclusions. First thing to keep in mind is that she's a likable and popular figure up in Alaska, even to serious, hardcore liberals. So, personal attacks are pretty much out of the question. They're sure to backfire. The above blogger has recommended emphasizing how heartless she is in wanting polar bears to drown just so that she doesn't have to recognize the reality of global warming.
John McCain's "base," the traditional media, is also highly supportive of her.
One of the better takedowns of one of the sillier right-wing talking points is that, no, even though Alaska is host to a Star Wars/ABM/Missile Defense station, Palin as Governor has nothing to do with that. She doesn't receive briefings on it and makes no decisions concerning it. It's a federal facility and she's a state official. The facility does NOT give her "Commander-in-Chief experience."
Fortunately, her reputation as a reformer and as anti-wasteful spending are both completely shot.
Surprise of the day, Richard Cohen has written a good piece on Palin (Cohen has taken a considerable amount of grief from the netroots for many years).
For me and lots and lots of liberals personally, I'm really offended by her anti-science views, both concerning evolution and sexuality and her position as a book-burner but as those are issues that inflame liberals more than they do others, it's best to speak of those with those that one knows are in agreement.
Very, very dangerously, the serious, hard-core right-wing religious "Christianist" folks absolutely LOVE Palin. They think she's just wunnerful.
BTW, Oh, and is it really fair to compare Palin to Dan Quayle? Actually no, as that's pretty unfair to Quayle.

AP's talking points on their "Ron Fournier problem"

Heh. Let's take these items in reverse order. Ron Fournier is the Washington Bureau Chief for the Associated Press. He discussed a position in the McCain presidential campaign while not at AP. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but he has also written pieces that read as though they came directly from the desk of Karl Rove. Here's a comment to a "talking points memo" from AP:

I was one of those who said this anti-Fournier thing was ridiculous. But after those talking points, I'm far more sympathetic to the anti-Fournier position than I was. They're quite misleading--especially the Rove email & the interviewing with McCain one. They make it sound like Fournier got a casual "hey, want to join the operation?" and turned it down. But clearly had a number of high-level meetings. You don't do those kinds of sitdowns unless it's a genuine possibility. Again, there's nothing wrong with that (he didn't take the job), but the fact that AP is being so deliberately misleading in how they characterize the McCain/Fournier interaction--either they're being lied to by Fournier or they're carrying water for him. Neither is acceptable.

Posted By: jackalope | September 01, 2008 at 02:37 PM

Here are the talking points "jackalope" is referrig to:

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Chiefs, RVPs, APME:

As many of you know, some political groups and left-leaning blogs have aligned to organize a newspaper letter-writing campaign against AP Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier. The campaign started this weekend with an email writing push aimed at Kathleen Carroll and Mike Oreskes, but has now moved on to urge newspaper readers to write their local editors. Below you will find some talking points to help guide you as this issue plays out. Please feel free to use them in talking with editors and readers and forward to other AP staff you think might find them useful. In addition, later this week, Corporate Communications will go live with a robust new Elections page on ap.org that will provide some real estate to deal with these issues. It will highlight our Elections Team, include an archive of Ron's political analyses as well as those of other AP journalists and also have a FAQ that expands on the talking points below. This will be in addition to the elections and vote count background we normally post on the site.

Ellen Hale
Corporate Communications

AP Elections Coverage Talking Points

For Internal use only by Bureau Chiefs, RVPs, APMC By way of background, the campaign started after Ron wrote an analysis piece about Barack Obama's choice of Joe Biden for a running mate. The original headline on the piece, which was labeled an analysis, read:

Biden pick shows lack of confidence. The analysis was similar in perspective, tone and content to what other journalists for major news organizations were writing or saying. Some of the same blogs now are also picking up the drumbeat of dissatisfaction with AP that some members have been voicing with the roll-out of Member choice, encouraging readers to write letters against AP in general. In doing so they grossly misrepresent AP in many areas, including how much AP content is contributed by members. For the record, member content comprises less than two percent of AP national and international content -- the slice that is found on Yahoo, Google and other portals.

This small fraction usually involved a scoop which is credited to the member paper. On the AP State Wire, which is not distributed beyond members, about 45 percent of stories come from members.

AP has what arguably are the strict ethics and news values policies in the industry. They are closely monitored and adhered to. These guidelines lay out in great detail that AP reporters and editors must avoid any political activity, whether they cover politics or not. AP journalists may not perform any kind of work for politicians and may not donate money to political organizations or campaigns, or any other organizations that take political positions. They must avoid any activity or behavior that constitutes a conflict of interest. You can refer anyone to The Associated Press Statement of New Values and Principles at http://www.ap.org/newsvalues/index.html.

In addition, it may be important to remind members that The Associated Press has a long and continuing legacy of aggressively but fairly reporting on how government and politicians serve the people who elect them, regardless of political affiliation. AP fought to win the identities of those held at Guantanamo Bay detention center, for example, and Ron Fournier's own coverage in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was extremely critical of the GOP Bush Administration.

To help you deal with questions that may arise as a result of the ongoing issues, here is some background and also what we've publicly said. You can use these in public responses to queries --Ron Fournier started in political reporting in Little Rock, Ark., covering Bill Clinton, who was governor at the time. He covered Clinton's presidential campaign and moved to Washington in 1993, where he spent 13 years covering politics and the White House. He has a strong reputation among his peers for honesty and even-handedness. In 2000, Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz described Fournier as one of the "most dogged shoe-leather scribes around," but one who "avoids the spotlight himself." Fournier was AP's chief political writer when he left in 2006 to edit Hotsoup.com, a site that was founded by a bipartisan group of prominent political strategists. He returned to AP the following year as online political editor, charged with developing new approaches to AP's online political and election coverage and to lead new coverage on accountability and governing. He was named acting bureau chief in May and bureau chief on Aug. 1.

--The dual rule of AP Washington Bureau Chief and political writer has long roots in AP history, as well as that of other Washington bureaus. Walter Mears, who won a Pulitzer for his 1976 presidential coverage, served in both capacities from 1977 to 1984. As bureau chief he continued to write news copy, usually analytical pieces. Likewise, other leading news organizations have often had their bureau chiefs serve in both capacities.

--The blogs and political organizations have made much of an email from Ron to Karl Rove that surfaced soon after Ron was named acting bureau chief, and which involved the death of Pat Tillman. The email exchange between Ron and Rove occurred in 2004, while Ron was a correspondent for AP -- long before he was named bureau chief. Ron has widely publicly said that the tone of the email was unfortunate, but that the contact with Rove was in the pursuit of a story. Ron has written both columns and articles that are critical of Rove. Here's what Ron said publicly about the email: "I was an AP political reporter at the time of the 2004 e-mail exchange, and was interacting with a source, a top aide to the president, in the course of following an important and compelling story. I regret the breezy nature of the correspondence." [emphasis mine]

--Blogs also have made much of Ron's discussions with the McCain campaign regarding a position in it. These discussions occurred before Ron returned to AP. he also was considered for employment by Politico.com, the blog. Here's what AP said about it, and what we continue to say in response to queries: "It is not uncommon for journalists to be approached by political campaigns, elected officials and government agencies about possible job opportunities. Ron Fournier was approached by the McCain campaign and turned them down, months before he rejoined AP in March of 2007." (Paul Colford, Corporate Communications) The McCain campaign has made it clear that Ron was not interested in the position and that they never had any idea of his political leanings.

--It also has been claimed that Ron has a conflict of interest because he is listed as a possible speaker for a speakers' agency. When Ron left AP, in 2006 to edit a Web site, he was briefly listed with an agency as part of a speaker's tour to publicize a book he had written. This is routine practice for anyone who has written a book. He has not been involved with any speaking agency since before he returned to AP.The listings are outdated, and were to have been taken down by the agency but were not.

And here's one of the blog pieces that criticized Fournier in the first place:

The AP has a Ron Fournier problem

by Eric Boehlert

You never know what nuggets congressional investigators will uncover when they set off on official inquiries.

Last week, we learned that while investigators for the House Oversight Committee were looking into the 2004 death of Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former NFL player whose story was promoted by the White House before it was revealed that he had been killed by friendly fire, they discovered that top political aide Karl Rove had exchanged emails with the Associated Press' Ron Fournier on the day the news of Tillman's death broke.

In one email, Rove asked, "How does our country continue to produce men and women like this?" Fournier responded: "The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight."

That sign-off, which seemed to indicate an allegiance between the two men, raised hackles all over the Internet. That kind of correspondence ("Keep up the fight") between a reporter and a partisan White House aide during a campaign year lands way outside the boundaries of acceptable newsroom practices.

But Fournier, now the wire service's D.C. bureau chief, shrugged off the embarrassing revelation, conceding only: "I regret the breezy nature of the correspondence."

Of course, Fournier wasn't simply being breezy. "Have a great weekend" -- that's "breezy."

Instead, Fournier was declaring sides. That was the implication of Fournier's note: "Karl, you might think the media are liberal, but you can trust me. And give me access and return my emails. Because I'm on your side."

The Fournier revelation came as no surprise to anyone who has read his recent campaign work, which has routinely been caustic and dismissive of Democratic contenders. In two "Analysis" pieces and a column, Fournier questioned whether John Edwards was a "phony," announced the Clintons suffered from "utter self-absorption," and claimed that Barack Obama was "bordering on arrogance." That's the right of a pundit. But at the same time, Fournier avoided raising any doubts about Sen. John McCain, and in fact rushed to his aid in print during the senator's time of campaign need.

Boehlert's piece continues...

Notice that Boehlert provides detail on Fournier's correspondence with Karl Rove that AP's talking points don't shed much light on. AP pretty much just repeats what they said earlier. The AP talking points came out on August 26th. Boehlert's piece was on July 22nd. So it's not as though AP didn't have time to investigate and explain why Fournier was corresponding with Rove in such a friendly manner. The (Minneapolis) StarTribune "yells" at bloggers for a paragraph and then:

...these letter writers raise a legitimate point. Fournier was in discussions about joining the McCain campaign and was pretty cozy with Karl Rove while he was still in the White House. So when he wrote in a news analysis that that the selection of Joe Biden as Barack Obama’s running mate showed a lack of "self-confidence," I wonder who was doing the analysis: the AP bureau chief or the man romanced by the McCain campaign?

If he were writing for the opinion page, no problem. As the head of the AP’s most important bureau -- directing reporters and determining coverage - it’s troubling.

On September 1st, Fournier declared that "Analysis: [Gov. Sarah] Palin's age, inexperience rival Obama's," an evaluation that the gay conservative Andrew Sullivan strongly disagrees with

I don't think experience is irrelevant as an issue for Obama...
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But yes, I think Obama is in a simply different league than Palin in terms of seriousness as a candidate, and record on the issues, especially foreign policy.
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But pointing out her obvious cluelessness about foreign policy, her anti-neocon views when she actually had any, is totally legit and completely of a piece with my arguments for Obama.

In other words, yes, AP very much still has a "Ron Fournier problem."

Clarification and a thinkpiece

I had a conversation with a conservative a little while ago where we discussed whether or not Pro-President Bush people were war criminals. Of course, as many people remember, a Nazi on trial at the Nuremberg Tribunal plaintively cried "But I was just following orders." The Tribunal concluded that no, that wasn't an all-purpose excuse, that no one had an excuse to follow illegal orders no matter how insistent their military superiors were. People, both in uniform and out, are expected to know the difference between legal and illegal instructions and to react accordingly. No one among the netroots considers the actions of our telecom companies in assisting the government to stomp all over our Fourth Amendment rights to be justified. The telecom companies have used reasoning very similar to that of the Nazi at Nuremberg, but as they have large staffs of expensive lawyers, we don't accept their reasoning. They knew full well they were doing something that was completely illegal and they should be jailed for that.
Many religious authorities during the build-up period for the Iraq War examined the issue as to whether or not the proposed invasion of Iraq fit the definition of a "just war" and largely concluded that it did not. Is it fair to condemn pro-Bush people for fighting in or supporting that "unjust war"? A major problem with doing that is that our traditional media was keeping up a steady drumbeat about how Saddam Hussein had something to do with Osama bin Laden and therefore with 9-11. I can't even count how many cartoons I saw that featured Hussein and bin Laden sitting in a cave together. Were cartoonists formally instructed to use this visual metaphor or did they simply read the news in the traditional media and interpret that as what "everybody" was saying?
The number of people who believe there was a Hussein-bin Laden connection is still alarmingly high, but as the traditional media has never really pressed very hard to inform people of the change in the storyline, that's not terribly surprising.
As people are pointing out in connection to the Bruce Ivins/anthrax case of October 2001, the American people were strongly encouraged by our Establishment to believe that America was under attack from beyond our shores and that Hussein was probably guilty. ABC News especially has been fingered as having passed on stories about the anthrax attacks that were very favorable towards the end of heightening citizen fear and paranoia.
I didn't watch Secretary of State Colin Powell's dramatic presentation at the UN (I was too busy preparing for the February 15th demonstration), but my brother-in-law did and he described the presentation as "Convincing, if you were looking into the whole situation for the first time. If you were familiar with the evidence before that, it wasn't persuasive at all." The alternative media (The left blogosphere didn't exist yet) pounced on Powell's speech and quickly tore it to bits, but the traditional media was absolutely floored, awestruck and amazed by how utterly convincing Powell's case for war was. "Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise" than that Iraq was guilty, proclaimed an allegedly liberal columnist.
Add to these the usual "Rally 'round the flag" tendency of citizens to support their government in times of perceived crisis, and you have a pretty compelling case for citizens to support the war that's still ravaging Iraq and driving so many Iraqis to seek shelter in foreign countries.
So, although war crimes are never forgivable and as the invasion of Iraq counted as a "war of aggression," but as it's really not clear how many American citizens were fully and truly informed on that issue, we on the left don't automatically count all pro-war people as being war criminals.

Also, we discussed whether someone is really a warrior if they're in the military, but in a relatively safe part of the military. We on the left apply the term "chickenhawk" to a very small number of people who actually wore military uniforms during the Vietnam War precisely because there is indeed a large gray area between being in the military and between being "in harm's way." If one was back in the Roman Army or one was a fighter in a German tribe, there were no two ways about it. If you were part of the army or were considered a "warrior," you were a front-line fighter who made direct contact with the enemy. Sailors were no exception as, in the days of the wooden ships, the call to "repel boarders" was heard frequently.
Since at least America's Civil War, we've had specialties within the military that do not involve front-line fighting. We've had military specialties like supply clerks or Yeomen or Hospital Corpsmen (My own Navy specialty, Personnelman, is distinct from Yeoman in that I dealt with Enlisted persons as opposed to Officers. Since I left, the PN specialty has been merged with that of the DKs, or Disbursing Clerks). And since Navies all over the world went to metal ships, there hasn't been much hostile boarding. Generally, the attitude on that is to give the great majority of all military members the benefit of the doubt as to whether they really count as warriors or not. In my capacity as a member of the Damage Control/Firefighting team, yes, there was a possibility of my being physically injured, but the risk of injury was far lower than it would have been had I served on a wooden ship or in America's Army during the Revolution or during the Indian Wars.
An Army officer was talking to some shipmates of mine and was trying to get them fired up and enthused by declaring they were "killers." They agreed with the officer, but later said among themselves "Well, yeah, we're killers. We push a button and ten miles away, something blows up. So...yeah, technically, we count as killers, but...well..." As I said, there's a large gray area between being in the military and between being an actual warrior.

US and Poland ratchet up tension further

In the aftermath of what appears to be a settling of the South Ossetian war between Russia and Georgia, the US and Poland ratcheted up tensions another notch by Poland agreeing to accept a US missile interceptor base on its soil. Back in 1983, the original design for what was then quickly dubbed "Star Wars" (A continuation of the ABM system which had been temporarily forced to proceed as an entirely privatized system running "on spec") was for it to be a series of satellites that would launch small rockets upon detecting a missile launch. As that was rather obviously a system that could very easily be used in an offensive, first-strike role (A rocket fired from the upper atmosphere would be traveling quickly enough to wipe out just about anything without even the need to carry an explosive payload), it was reconfigured to use different means to knock down missiles.

In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that the US integrate its latest iteration of Star Wars, "Missie Defense," with a Russian weapons system, specifically by using their Gabala radar station located in Azerbaijan. The US countered that they could build safeguards into their system so that Russians need not be concerned over it being used against them. Obviously, for the US to have constructed an integrated system would have meant that the two systems could not have been un-integrated in a hurry. Looking at it from the Russian perspective, they clearly would have felt much calmer and more relaxed had their proposal been accepted.

The Russians have made it quite clear that they interpret the Polish acceptance of a Missile Defense system as a hostile move aimed at them. Apparently, America's neoconservatives have been trying to encircle Russia since at least the administration of the Elder George Bush. Of course, as US military assets are pretty thoroughly tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's not at all clear that the US has any serious response available should Russia demonstrate its displeasure through more energetic means.

Fight for survival or the fight of the chickenhawks?

William Kritsol in the NY Times says:

Russia is aggressive, China despotic and Iran messianic — but none is as dangerous as the 20th-century totalitarian states.

Okay. But then he carries on with all sorts of 1930s, pre-World War II, Hitler and Churchill and appeasement-type analogies. Which is it Bill? He spends most of his column drawing a picture of a dark and evil world united against the forces of "freedom and democracy," only to acknowledge that well, it isn't all that bad. Diplomacy is an utterly hopeless and useless option, but it's not as if The West is in a fight for its very survival.

First off, Bill displays the usual right-wing misconception as to why diplomacy exists. We can debate the late 1930s European example (and we have, ad infinitum and ad nauseum), but leaving that example aside, we can see that diplomacy is not and never was an attempt to "be nice to the bad guys" in the vain hope that they will be nice in return. It was always an attempt to find common ground, to find areas where we could agree and to build upon those areas of mutual interest. The US and the Soviet Union decided they had a mutual interest in survival in the face of many tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Ipso, facto, ergo, sum, we engaged in diplomacy to try and defuse the struggle, to try and lower the temperature, to try to find a mutually satisfactory accommodation. The Soviet Union eventually collapsed from its own internal weaknesses, diplomacy prevented the two adversaries from blowing up the world in the meantime.

And I'm sorry, but If the United States "...seem[s] oddly timid and uncertain" in the face of this existential/not so serious threat, it might be because, from President Bush on down, the right-wing side of the political spectrum in this country refuses to call for any real sacrifice for this melodramatically-named "War on Terror." The right-wing screamers and pontificators refuse to call for either higher taxes or for a draft, making a complete joke out of their picture of it as a "generational struggle" of allegedly huge significance.

The problem with Kristol and all of his chickenhawk fellow travelers is that their rhetoric and their actions are in completely different worlds, where one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. As to this:

But Georgia, a nation of about 4.6 million, has had the third-largest military presence — about 2,000 troops — fighting along with U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq. For this reason alone, we owe Georgia a serious effort to defend its sovereignty.

Erm, I'm sorry, but there is no mutual, nationwide "we" that invited Georgia, formerly a province of Russia, to send 2,000 troops to Iraq. "We" peaceniks and hippies and people who felt that the unprovoked invasion of Iraq was a really bad idea never supported the war to begin with. Much less did we support other nations joining in on the fight. From the very beginning, the invasion of Iraq was what we considered to be an unwarranted war of aggression, illegal under international law. Yes, concerning Georgia, "Russia has sent troops and tanks across an international border," but on March 19, 2003, so did the US.

The US looks upon the invasion of Georgia, not as a country that is morally superior to Russia, but as one that is their equal.

Conversations with conservatives

Had some extensive email conversations with conservatives recently that I think are of some interest. Number 1 (PDF - 70+ kilobytes) and I've appended extra comments to Number 2 (PDF - roughly 200 kilobytes). I think these conversations are worthwhile to the extent that one can make one's speech shed light instead of heat, but it really helps when both people have a fair amount of understanding between them to begin with. A condition that I don't think was really present in either case.

Hypocrisy

President Bush made a speech July 24th where he spoke of human rights and how certain nations don't respect those rights.

"Over the past seven years, we've spoken out against human rights abuses by tyrannical regimes like those in Iran, Sudan, and Syria and Zimbabwe," Bush said.

"We've spoken candidly about human rights with nations with whom we've got good relations, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia and China."

All of which may be true (I'm not really aware of speeches concerning the last three countries but, parsing those words carefully, they might have been talks that occurred behind closed doors), but these talks fade into utter meaninglessness compared to the permitted torture methods authorized by the 2002 memo just unearthed by an ACLU Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit:

...authorizes the CIA to use specific interrogation methods, including waterboarding. The memo states that interrogation methods that cause severe mental pain do not amount to torture under U.S. law unless they cause "harm lasting months or even years after the acts were inflicted upon the prisoners."

Which is basically a get-out-of-jail-free card. After all, if one has to wait "years" to see if the mental pain suffered by the tortured person is still there, then authorities have plenty of time to devise a way to see to it that they never spend a single day in jail, regardless of how guilty they are.

To "speak out" against human rights abuses by Sudan or Syria while allowing one's own personnel to torture to their heart's content is the absolute height of hypocrisy and double standards. I'm not aware that Egypt or Saudi Arabia's human rights record has improved, but if they essentially flipped the US the bird, well, I wouldn't blame them one bit.

Calendar vs Conditions

A few weeks ago, a blogger surveyed the field and found that when asked to choose between a calendar-based withdrawal from Iraq and a conditions-based withdrawal, Americans by almost two-to-one chose a calendar-based withdrawal.

In other words, when asked to choose between "The 3rd Division leaves Mosul in February. No ifs, ands or buts about it" versus "The 3rd Division leaves Mosul when commanders on the ground certify that it's appropriate to do so and when the Commander-in-Chief agrees with them," Americans preferred the first option by 55% to 65%, depending on who was doing the polling.

Now that presidential candidate Barack Obama finds himself in agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, that for the US to get out of Iraq sometime in 2010, is a good idea, that left presidential candidate John McCain throughly deflated.

As Crooks & Liars comments on the 21 July Daily Show:

The speculation before Senator Obama left for Iraq that he would possibly commit a presidential-bid-ending gaffe was deafening.

The traditional news media was absolutely dying for Obama to slip up, because the news that Maliki agreed with Obama and not McCain, came as a crushing disappointment to them. Andrea Mitchell was so upset that she accused Obama of conducting "fake interviews" because he treated the press corps in exactly the same manner that McCain treated them back in March of this year. Of course, McCain can do that because he's a Republican and Obama is not.

So, when McCain was asked what he'd choose, a calendar-based withdrawal versus a conditions-based one, he was trapped between simply agreeing with Obama and Maliki or of coming up with his own spin.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said the senator's comments did not reflect a shift in position.

"The two years in his answer today is consistent with his position that we can begin to responsibly discuss the reduction of troop levels in Iraq as long as they are based on maintaining the security and stability of the gains we made," Bounds said.

In other words, McCain is for both a calendar-based withdrawal "two years is okay" and a conditions-based withdrawal "...as long as they are based on maintaining the security and stability of...," and of course the fact that these positions are mutually exclusive and contradictory won't bother anybody in the traditional media. In fact, McCain's people are now selling the position that a conditions-based withdrawal is more flexible in both directions than a calendar-based withdrawal:

"Whether that happens in 12 months, or 16 months, or 24 months, the important thing is that our troops come home with victory and America's vital national interests secured."

So Obama is now being criticized because his calendar-based approach is too rigid! He's standing in the way of American troops coming home even earlier than his "rigid" calendar allows for. Of course, the whole point of a conditions-based withdrawal is that conditions will never allow a withdrawal!

The death knell for the Fourth Amendment

Eric Lichtblau of the NY Times writes the epitaph for FISA and the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States that was then printed in the Inky today. In it, he makes a most curious statement:

The vote came two and a half years after public disclosure of the wiretapping program set off a fierce national debate over the balance between protecting the country from another terrorist strike and ensuring civil liberties.

Funny, I don't remember a "fierce national debate," I remember the blogs quickly shooting down all the legalistic arguments that the Bush Administration brought up and I remember the traditional media just giving the whole issue a yawn and a pass. It would have been a debate had the Bush Administration ever been able to muster any real arguments for their side, but aside from those early legalistic arguments, they just relied on fearmongering and on throwing money at the Blue Dog Democrats to split the Democratic vote. At no point did they ever convincingly show that America had to surrender its civil liberties in order to be safe from the terrorists. As Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) pointed out:

I sit on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, and I am one of the few members of this body who has been fully briefed on the warrantless wiretapping program. And, based on what I know, I can promise that if more information is declassified about the program in the future, as is likely to happen either due to the Inspector General report, the election of a new President, or simply the passage of time, members of this body will regret that we passed this legislation. I am also familiar with the collection activities that have been conducted under the Protect America Act and will continue under this bill. I invite any of my colleagues who wish to know more about those activities to come speak to me in a classified setting. Publicly, all I can say is that I have serious concerns about how those activities may have impacted the civil liberties of Americans. If we grant these new powers to the government and the effects become known to the American people, we will realize what a mistake it was, of that I am sure.

Which doesn't sound to me as thought members of Congress were fully briefed and informed. In fact:

None but a few government insiders knows what they’ve got, who gets to look at it, what becomes of it. And because the FISA revision bill gives the telecoms immunity from lawsuits, we may never know the extent of this illegal spying. More important, we won't know how our private information becomes misinterpreted and misused – that is, used against us, without us knowing why or being able to do anything about it.

Only a handful in Congress have been briefed, and given this Administration's pervasive lying, we have no reason to trust that even these few were told the truth. Most in Congress remain blissfully ignorant of what these programs involve, and their attempts to explain their support for the revisions reveal they have no clue what they’re approving.

Back on 5 May, when the bill was still just an awful rumor, FDL pointed out that:

There is no public outcry to "free Dick Cheney." There is no constituency ready to storm the halls of Congress unless the telecoms are given immunity, just a lot of K Street money pouring into the coffers of the Blue Dogs.

I guess the most utterly pathetic statement had to come from Speaker Pelosi:

Democrats pointed to some concessions they had won. The final bill includes a reaffirmation that the FISA law is the “exclusive” means of conducting intelligence wiretaps — a provision that Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House speaker, and other Democrats insisted would prevent Mr. Bush or any future president from evading court scrutiny in the way they say that the N.S.A. program did.

But keep in mind that FISA was already the "exclusive" means for the American government to spy on the American people. The Bush Administration never found any legal way to get around that provision. They simply ignored it in a procedure known as "breaking the law."

To brag that Democrats got the bill to reaffirm a law that everyone knew should be followed is hardly a victory to crow about. Will Bush continue to break the law? Seems doubtful as the bill allows him more or less unlimited freedom to act as he sees fit. Kinda like saying "The thieves were having trouble removing the statues from my garden, so I knocked down a section of the wall so they could simply carry the statues out to the street" and then bragging that you've prevented the thieves from tracking mud from the garden into the house.

Update: Now that I've thought it over a bit and have done some more reading, I should mention that the ACLU and The Nation have decided to initiate lawsuits against the FISA cave-in atrocity of a bill.

[The Nation] filed suit along with a coalition of other plaintiffs including Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, Global Fund for Women, PEN American Center, Washington Office on Latin America, Service Employees International Union and several private attorneys.

Also, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is determined to continue it's suit against AT&T and Strange Bedfellows is building up a campaign war-chest to take on selected "Blue Dog Democrats" (They're up to over $325,000 as of the evening of 10 July). Blue America just awarded $1000 in campaign contributions to each of a dozen of the pro-FISA stalwarts who hung tough in there. And:

Davin Hutchins at the American News Project follows the money trail to find out how telecom dollars influence Congressmen to say what they say and vote the way they do.

So no, the fight is FAR from over!

Controversial piece in the Inky

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Chris Satullo causes a fuss. A while back, Satullo had written a pretty annoying, pat-on-the-head type of piece where he congratulated the left for "actually" having some sensible ideas (He presented mostly warmed-over right-wing ideas), so his July 1st column, in my view, brought him "up to zero."

As of midday July 4th, that latest column garnered 480 comments and the Inquirer published a "Readers Respond" section (Only five comments so far, also at noon on the 4th).

Two points to respond to:

Anthony P. Schiavo says

But is it more honorable to allow tens, even hundreds of thousands of Americans to die rather than to twist the arm of a terrorist who knows how to stop it?

This has long since been known as an entirely theoretical point. As Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) put it before hearing testimony on coercive interrogation techniques:

Too often those who would have us use torture or other harsh interrogation techniques say it cannot be ruled out because in the post 9/11 world, you may need to get information quickly from a suspect to save lives, or even to prevent another catastrophic attack. But as today's witnesses will make clear, this is just not so. Experienced interrogators, like 27-year veteran FBI Special Agent Jack Cloonan will tell us that this "ticking bomb" scenario is a red herring. A committed terrorist will use those situations to his advantage either to provide interrogators false information or simply to act in defiance, hoping to become a martyr. The ticking time bomb scenario is not taken seriously by experienced interrogators, and cannot and should not be used to justify illegal acts or torture.

John D. Froelich says:

It has been accepted as doctrine that aggressive interrogation techniques like waterboarding, stress positioning and sleep deprivation are examples of torture. But those techniques are routinely applied to our special forces during training so they are prepared for what might happen in the field. I have never read of a claim by a member of our elite military that he was subjected to torture.

I was once examined in a way that was, shall we say, left me in "a world of pain." The examination left me physically shaken for the rest of the day. It had no psychological effect on me, no nightmares, etc. Why not? Very simple. I knew that the doctor had no intention of hurting me. Hurting me was simply not the point. Hurting me was simply the unfortunate by-product of a procedure that needed to be performed. Hence, the examination was entirely different from a procedure where the person doing the procedure appears to enjoy the fact that the person suffering from the procedure is in pain.

The perceived motivation of the person inflicting the pain is extremely important to whether the pain is perceived as torture or not. I would presume, by the way, that the normal attitude on the part of the interrogators who are demanding information is one of "So, our evil al Qaeda captive feels pain, does he? Hey well, tough #$@%!" Obviously military members being trained are going to trust their "interrogators" not to take their pain any further than absolutely necessary, thereby making their experience something other than torture.

One of the common complaints I have heard from people who are frustrated that Americans are "squeamish" about torture is that "Al Qaeda does it too!" whereupon they launch into hair-raising descriptions of the tortures that these evil people inflict. But consider the words of the Plymouth Colony Governor John Winthrop (1588-1649):

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.

America wasn't founded to be just another state. It wasn't a destination simply because riches could be had there. It was founded because it was meant for grander things. Of course there were evil people about at that time. My father pointed out that typical behavior by soldiers was far worse in ages past. To enter a city and to slaughter all of the inhabitants was a pretty standard operating procedure. To read of the Sack of Rome (Chapter 10 of Rome: the Biography of a City) is to understand just how horrifying it was to be a non-combatant back in the old days of the early 1500s:

...the Pope tried to come to terms with the commanders of the advancing armies, now well over 20,000 strong...They rounded upon their leaders, shouting that they would not go back until they had had their way with Rome...they continued under the nervous direction of the Duke of Bourbon who was as much the servant as the master of the undisciplined, heterogeneous force he commanded. These forces, half-starved, their ragged uniforms soaked by torrents of rain and the swirling waters of the mountain streams through which they stumbled, holding hands in gangs of thirty, drew ever nearer to Rome, excited by thoughts of plunder.

The number of Romans who died after the raiders entered was never determined. The raiders arrived thoroughly soaked and hungry and miserable and took their anger out on the city, leaving it devastated and depopulated. The barbarity of drilling holes in people's heads with hand power drills while they're still alive (Something al Qaeda likes to do) sure is awful, but that sort of barbarism is hardly unprecedented.

Barbarity is nothing new, but we can be proud of America for having decided to be something better. As the blogger emptywheel puts it:

Two hundred-some years ago, a bunch of guys fought hard to make this country special. It's our fight now, to make our country back into the leader and beacon of hope it ought to be.

There's no need to descend to al Qaeda's level.

Motivations for war with Iran

Washington Post reporter Dana Priest does not take seriously the idea that the Bush Administration may launch an attack on Iran before January 2009 and most likely soon after Barack Obama wins the election in November. The post where this is mentioned cites several conservative persons (John Bolton, Bill Kristol, Joe Lieberman and Liz Cheney) who either explicitly advocate such an attack or who at least consider it "a good idea."

So, what would be cited as the provocation for such an attack? It's actually not clear at all. Columnist David Ignatius wrote a piece full of rhetoric that was really scary about Iran, with phrases like:

In the new cold war between America and Iran
-------
"...Some things are being done, but not with the seriousness that's needed."
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"...it's not a tied-together, long-term strategy that would make Iran change its policy."
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The Iranians, by contrast, seem adept at interweaving aggressive operations and diplomacy.

[emphases added]

Ok, but what exactly is Iran doing? Ignatius cites a story about Iran tracking and then eliminating "dissident Iranian operatives," but this sounds like a purely defensive (and highly understandable) move. Iran's "covert-action campaigns" have to do with Hamas and Hezbollah. Hamas is described in Wikipedia (The entry is described as one in which the neutrality of the piece is disputed) without even mentioning Iran in the opening description and Hezbollah is described as having been inspired by Iran, but as with Hamas, it arose in opposition to Israel. Neither appears to be in an organization similar to the Comintern that was operating in Western countries in the 1920s and 1930s and was tightly controlled by Moscow.

Ignatius then claims:

The Iranians have used Syria effectively as a platform for these intelligence operations, from political action to paramilitary operations to clandestine terrorism.

Sounds pretty awful, but this is a really vague set of accusations. By the way the paragraph reads, these operations appear to function simply to deliver "extensive financial and military support" to Hamas and Hezbollah.

Saudi Arabia seems angry about "Iranian meddling in the region," but Ignatius again fails to cite exactly what it is that Iran is actually doing. As has been pointed out in many pieces, yes, it's possible that Iran is supplying Iraqi insurgents, but if so, the insurgents are receiving ordinary, plain-vanilla weapons that can come from just about anywhere. The AK-47 submachine gun, for instance, is ubiquitous in the Middle East.

As it's been made quite clear lately that the Iraq War was launched for oil, that appears to be the default explanation for a possible war on Iran as well.

---------
And I'm sorry, but I really have to comment on the next-to-last paragraph:

The proponents of a tougher U.S. strategy argue that Iran should be confronted everywhere it operates, much as the Reagan administration decided to challenge the Soviet Union, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua. [emphasis added]

Erm, I was paying close attention to the news back then and US attacks on Nicaragua had nothing to do with challenging the Soviet Union. Back during the Vietnam War, there was a direct land connection between the Soviet Union and North Vietnam via Red China. The Soviets made very heavy use of ships from Vladivostok to Haiphong and that route was vulnerable to interdiction, but it was impossible for the US to cut off all supplies. As a result, neither the Soviets nor the Chinese made any attempt to hide where North Vietnam's weapons came from.

In the case of the Soviet Union getting supplies to Cuba, that country could very easily be blockaded by the US and the active drug trade interdiction in the Caribbean made it a rather simple exercise for the US to interdict supplies moving from Cuba to Nicaragua as well.

So yes, for the US to supply Afghan rebels was indeed a direct challenge to the Soviet Union. Attacking Nicaragua? Not so much.

McCain, Obama & the press corps

David Broder makes an observation:

“McCain benefits from a long-established reputation as a man who says what he believes,” writes Broder. “His shifts in position that have occurred in this campaign seem not to have damaged that aura." (emphasis in blog post)

Gee, could it be that the press corps is carrying McCain's water for him? Could it be that the press corps is doing its best to cover for their man and are determined NOT to cover his many flip-flops? Broder goes on to observe that Obama "has tapped into a rich vein of small contributors using the Internet" while poor, poor John McCain (*Sob!* Weep! Wail!) "has lagged all year in his private fundraising." Broder then suggests that townhall-style debates would help the "credibility of the election process." The same blog post notes that Broder didn't seem very concerned about the "credibility of the election process" when it came to the Voter ID case in Indiana, where nuns in their 80s and 90s, lifelong voters, were prevented from voting because they didn't have photo IDs. Broder seems to have a highly selective concern for the "credibility of the election process." Sometimes, when credibility is sacrificed and it helps Republicans, no biggie. But when it helps Democrats, we get all sorts of tsk-tsking.

Media Matters has a piece on how Obama and McCain are covered by the press corps when it comes to campaign finance laws.

John McCain said he would take public financing for the Republican primaries. Then he used the promise of that public financing to help secure a loan for his campaign. Then, after he wrapped up the Republican nomination, he abruptly decided he did not want to be bound by the limits on campaign fundraising and spending that accompany public financing, so he announced that he had changed his mind.

But Federal Election Commission chairman David Mason sent McCain a letter saying that he cannot unilaterally opt out of the public financing system without FEC approval -- a letter the McCain campaign ignored. If McCain cannot opt out of the system unilaterally, he has broken the law by raising and spending funds in excess of legal limits, and continues to do so each day. Even if McCain isn't breaking the law, he has already broken his word and "reversed himself" on the question of whether he would take public funding for the primaries.

This history got a passing mention on ABC and NBC News, but neither station went into any detail and both quickly went on to other subjects without dwelling what McCain's on-again, off-again relationship with the public campaign-financing system meant. Other news sources didn't cover it at all.

One of the reasons Obama claims that he wants to stay outside the public financing system is so that he can respond to attacks from 527s (The Swift Boat Veterans who successfully attacked John Kerry and dominated the news in August 2004 were a 527 group). The AP, The Politico and the Washington Post all claim that there are no 527s currently attacking Obama. Obviously, these organizations do not have very good news-reporting staffs, because Media Matters identifies Freedom's Watch and Vets for Freedom as being 527s that are currently attacking Obama.

And this one's actually pretty funny. A conservative blog post screams out the headline "Obama Would Be A Clinton Third Term" 1!!1!! Umm, okay. And for America to get a relatively peaceful presidential term and an economic boom and a reasonably corruption-free government would be a bad thing? Seems to me that by far the worst thing about things under Clinton were all the attacks by Republicans!

The failure of Goldwater-Reagan conservatism

I agree with Jonathan Lasts' assertion ("Bush isn't evil or stupid, just a bad manager" Jun 20) that President Bush cannot be both evil and stupid. That's like saying "We can't swim in that lake because it's polluted and it's full of fish." I come down on the side that says Bush is evil, but I explain Bush's failure by saying that the Republican conservatism of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan is a deeply flawed philosophy.
The flooding problems of the Midwest (And the collapse of the I35W bridge over the Mississippi in Minnesota, Katrina-New Orleans and the wildfires of California) can be explained in the words of Grover Norquist "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." The two goals of maintaining the infrastructure of modern industrial society and keeping government small and cheap are utterly incompatible and mutually contradictory
Like Communism in Russia, the flawed ideas of Republican conservatism have been implemented without any concern for the human cost of doing so. What we're witnessing now is the utter bankruptcy of that philosophy. Hopefully, Barack Obama can act as Franklin D. Roosevelt did and save capitalism from its own excesses.

Strange Bedfellows

Concerns FISA and the Democrats who act as traitors to the Democratic Party and the US Constitution.

Tell Congress "No Deal on Telecom Immunity!"

Further info on Congress' attempt to set aside US Constitution on the warrantless wiretapping issue.

Update: ACLU's press release

Contributions as of Wednesday at 5:00pm have raised $90,000 in the past 24 hours ($170,000 total) The campaign the money will go towards is aimed at three backers of the bill.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) "is now offering the excuse that he had no choice but to negotiate it because 'conservative' Democrats were threatening to support the Rockefeller/Cheney Senate bill and Hoyer was thus forced to negotiate the best deal he could." This excuse is ridiculous.

Update: Many Congresspeople less than pleased with "compromise"

New wiretapping bill dubbed ‘repugnant’ and ‘a capitulation.’

"The Beltway establishment needs to be trained to understand that there is a real constituency for defending our constitutional framework."

Contribute to ActBlue to fight telecom immunity

The candidates: How different?

A buddy of mine sent me the following:

Now the Democrats seem to be focused on one particular candidate, I hope that you are all aware what this really means. It means that David Rockefeller again has managed to set the agenda and is on track for his.

Thanks,
RonL
Shebuté

CFR Stacks The Deck With Both Democrat And Republican Presidential Candidates

Michelle Obama is on the Board of Directors in the Chicago branch of the CFR.

Obama Economic Controller Is Skull And Bones Member

Barack Obama CFR info

Barack Obama and the Council on Foreign Relations

I haven't read any of the stories at these links for two reasons. First off, RonL is a pretty reliable source and tends to read widely and deeply. Second, Dean Baker is an economist I've read for quite some time and whom I have found to be thoroughly reliable. From his piece bemoaning the fact (A bit tongue in cheek, of course) that he wasn't chosen to be one of Obama's economic advisers:

When it comes to economic issues the tone this crew sets is decidedly more in line with Wall Street than Main Street. This can be seen on issue after issue.

In other words, yes, Obama is choosing to follow an Establishment economic model. However, does this indicate, in Ralph Nader's words: "...there is no real difference between the two major-party candidates"?

I don't think so. Observe the very positive and heartening decision by the Supreme Court to re-affirm basic, fundamental, American, Constitutional values by their decision that "...foreign nationals held at Guantánamo Bay have a right to pursue habeas challenges to their detention. The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights."

Lawyer & blogger Glenn Greenwald points out how critical this next election could be to our rights:

Three of the five Justices in the majority -- John Paul Stevens (age 88), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (age 75) and David Souter (age 68) -- are widely expected by court observers to retire or otherwise leave the Court in the first term of the next President. By contrast, the four judges who dissented -- Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Sam Alito -- are expected to stay right where they are for many years to come.

John McCain has identified Roberts and Alito as ideal justices of the type he would nominate, while Barack Obama has identified Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Ginsberg (all in the majority today). It's not hyperbole to say that, from Supreme Court appointments alone, our core constitutional protections could easily depend upon the outcome of the 2008 election. [emphasis added]

We're talking about very fundamental differences that remain quite important, even if Obama and McCain see eye-to-eye on economic issues.

The Senate Phase 2 report on misuse of available intel on Iraqi WMD

The first part of the Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence was put out on 9 Jul 2004. Democrats on the Intelligence Committee pointed out at the time that:

...the report painted an incomplete picture, because the Committee had put off until phase two of the investigation the key question of "how intelligence on Iraq was used or misused by Administration officials in public statements and reports."

This phase of the Senate report (PDF) was finally issued on 5 Jun 2008. How did our local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, cover it? A search of Philly.com for the report showed a single hit from an AP piece on the day it was issued. A decent round-up, it concentrates on the second part (PDF) of the Phase 2 report, the part that focuses on the meeting in Rome between various characters. The author doesn't appear to be aware of, or ignores, the first part that concentrates on where the speeches of members of the Bush Administration contradicted or went beyond the available intelligence on the threat posed by Iraq, starting in late 2002. It's not clear whether the AP piece was published in the Inquirer, The Daily News or simply on the web. The paper copy of the Inquirer for Thursday doesn't have any sign of the report. The paper copy for Friday has a New York Times piece "Bush overstated threat, Senate committee says" on page A6. The NY Times title was: "Bush Overstated Iraq Evidence, Senators Report." The only other sign in the Inquirer that the report was ever published is a Tony Auth cartoon on Sunday the 8th.

One reason that the Inquirer may have for underplaying the report is an issue that crops up several times in the Republican response to the report. This issue was articulated in President Bush's nonresponsive answer to a series of charges of incompetence made by Senator Kerry (D-MA) in the 30 Sep 2004 debate between them:

BUSH: My opponent looked at the same intelligence I looked at and declared in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was a grave threat.

On 14 Nov 2005, Kerry responded to that assertion:

The very worst that Members of Congress can be accused of is trusting the intelligence we were selectively given by this Administration, and taking the President at his word. But unlike this Administration, there is absolutely no suggestion that we intentionally went beyond what we were told were the facts. That is the greatest offense by the Administration. Just look at their most compelling justification for war: Saddam’s nuclear program and his connections with Al Qaeda.

The facts speak for themselves. The White House has admitted that the President told Congress and the American public in the State of the Union Address that Saddam was attempting to acquire fuel for nuclear weapons despite the fact that the CIA specifically told the Administration three times, in writing and verbally, not to use this intelligence. Obviously, Democrats didn’t get that memo. In fact, similar statements were removed from a prior speech by the President, and Colin Powell refused to use it in his presentation to the UN. This is not relying on faulty intelligence, as Democrats did; it is knowingly, and admittedly, misleading the American public on a key justification for going to war. [emphases added]

The fact of the matter was, and this was known at the time, the Democrats didn't (and still don't) have an independent intelligence service, they had to rely upon the statements given to them by the government and those statements had to be approved by the Chief Executive, President Bush.Once this single fact is taken into account, most of the Republican objections to the report fall apart.
One other objection might be that this is all terribly overblown. The blogger Glenn Greenwald reports that columnist David Broder is just oh-so-terribly bored and unfazed by the whole controversy as Broder states:

I am reluctant to see every big policy dispute turned into a criminal or impeachable affair. There needs to be accountability but there also needs to be proportionality.

Greenwald explains this reaction on Broder's part by pointing out that Broder is complicit in Bush's crimes as he was supportive of them at the time. Naturally, calling too much attention to the criminality of the Bush Administration calls into question Broder's own dereliction of duty in not raising objections to the war before it began.

And was the propaganda campaign waged by the Bush Administration in late 2002 and early 2003, a criminal matter? As a matter of fact, it was.

Since 1951, Congress has enacted an annual, government wide prohibition on the use of appropriated funds for purposes of "publicity or propaganda."
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The bottom line seems to be that any "covert" program by the government to shape the news, or disseminate false news, to the domestic American audience constitutes a violation of both the Appropriations Act prohibitions as well as the Anti-Deficiency Act.

PRAWN, the Philadelphia Regional Anti-War Network has long been interested in protesting the Inquirer for it's shoddy and conservatively-biased coverage of the news. Members have felt that they need a specific complaint to focus their protest around. I'd say this constitutes a very good focus.

Update: FireDogLake has a post that links to two WaPo pieces. The first is Fred Hiatt, a reliable right-wing water carrier, who notes the many times that the Senate report notes that Bush Administration talking points were generally substantiated by the intel. Very true, the report does indeed note that there is a high degree of correlation between reality and the talking points, but there are enough discrepancies and Scott McClellan describes the White House sales job well enough, nah, we don't have to scrape off the "Bush lied, soldiers died" bumperstickers.

The second is a report by Walter Pincus (Whose report is published, predictably, on page A15) that details the evidence that the Senate did not review. Both are worth reading, if only to add depth to the initial reading of the Senate report.

Jun10 update: The Inquirer delivered a satisfactory piece on the Senate report in today's paper, covering all of the essential details of the issue.