Heads up on upcoming media narrative

Glenn Greenwald makes the case that "Tony Rezko" is threatening to become Obama's "Whitewater," that the traditional media is already starting to make noises about this fellow with a Syrian, vaguely sinister-sounding name. I did a search of the Inky on "rezko" and got 23 hits for March 4th & before.
Greenwald being a lawyer who worked in precisely the type of cases Rezko is allegedly involved in, exhaustively searched for evidence of anything sinister about the Rezko story and came up bone-dry.
Please keep an eye out for any stories involving Tony Rezko in connection with Barack Obama and subject these stories to vigorous criticism!

Bush's view on negotiating

Very interesting view that, to me anyway, explains why Bush, in his seventh year, is without any diplomatic successes to his credit:

On Talking to Enemies

Bush also launched into a fascinating disquisition on his view of diplomacy.
Michael Abramowitz of The Washington Post asked about Bush Obama's view "that we would be better off if we talked to our adversaries, in particular Iran and Cuba, you know, without preconditions. And as president you have obviously considered and rejected this approach. And I'm wondering if you can give us a little bit of insight into your thinking about this, and just explain to the American people what is lost by talking with those with when we disagree."
Bush's response: "What's lost by embracing a tyrant who puts his people in prison because of their political beliefs? What's lost is it'll send the wrong message. It'll send a discouraging message to those who wonder whether America will continue to work for the freedom of prisoners. It'll give great status to those who have suppressed human rights and human dignity.
"I'm not suggesting there's never a time to talk, but I'm suggesting now is not the time not to talk [sic] with Raul Castro. He's nothing more than the extension of what his brother did, which was to ruin an island and imprison people because of their beliefs. . . .
"And the idea of embracing a leader who has done this without any attempt on his part to, you know, release prisoners and free their society would be counterproductive and send the wrong signal."
Abramowitz: "But no one's saying embrace them. They're just saying talk."
Bush: "Well, talking to is embracing. Excuse me. Let me use another, you know, another word. You're right. Embrace is like big hug, right? . . .
"Sitting down at the table, having your picture taken with a tyrant such as Raul Castro, for example, lends the status of the office and the status of our country to him. He gains a lot from it by saying, Look at me. I'm now recognized by the president of the United States. . . .
"Now, somebody will say, 'Well, I'm going to tell him -- you know -- to release the prisoners'. Well, it's a theory that all you got to do is embrace and these tyrants act. That's not how they act. That's not what causes them to respond. . . .
"I just remind people that the decisions of the U.S. president to have discussions with certain international figures can be extremely counterproductive. It can send chilling signals and messages to our allies. It can send confusion about our foreign policy. It discourages reformers inside their own country. And, in my judgment, it would be a mistake on the two countries you talked about."

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So, essentially, Bush is saying that before any talking or negotiating begins, the other side has to cave in completely and give the US everything it wants. Well, gotta say, that philosophy sure simplifies things. Makes diplomacy very, very easy.

Update: Atrios has a marvelous reply from Yglesias, followed by Atrios' own comment:

Bad Guys


Yglesias:

Ezra's certainly right to say that it's bizarre for George W. Bush to criticize Barack Obama on the grounds that "it'll send the wrong message" for Obama to hold a meeting with "a tyrant who puts his people in prison because of their political beliefs" considering that Bush does exactly that on a regular basis. Is it a good thing that the people of China and Russia and Saudi Arabia are, like the people of Cuba and Syria and Iran, ruled by dictators? Of course not. And if the lessons of history indicated that some kind of "no meetings ever" policy caused those regimes to melt and transform into wholesome democracies, then we wouldn't be having this debate. But things don't work like that, and in the world as it is it's hardly practical to eschew all meetings with everyone whose political system you don't approve on. The question is, thus, whether or not this posture of creating a mostly arbitrary class of "bad guy" that we're going to take down with our awesome powers of snubbing accomplishes anything meaningful. Obama's contention is "no." Bush's contention is "yes" but he has absolutely nothing to show for it.

The frustrating thing is that the media plays along, designating "bad guys" as whoever the US government is designating a bad guy that week, while perpetuating the notion that the "bad guy" designation is linked to some sort of human rights badness when in fact it's just because they're bastards, but not our bastards.

Iran and human rights

This post concerning Iran got me to thinking about how to handle Iran's problems with respecting human rights. The post ended with this statement:

The regime in Tehran unfortunately only understands a show of strength and nothing else. The mullahs in Iran know very well which presidential candidate will stand up to them if elected and which candidate will be a softy who literally let's them get away with murder.

I responded to a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer in the following manner:

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I completely agree with Trita Parsi that Iran is neither a complete democracy nor is it a full tyranny. It has instead a system which has elements of both. The US has not worn the mantle of human rights hero for many years. The Arab suspicion from the beginning was that the Iraq War was all about oil, a suspicion that has long since hardened over there into conventional wisdom. The recent retirement announcement of General Counsel of the Department of Defense William J. Haynes II confirms suspicion in many quarters that the US will not treat Guantanamo detainees fairly in their upcoming trials and that the US was simply eliminating an embarrassing symbol of its determination to conduct Soviet-style show trials that are certain to reach unanimously guilty verdicts.

Currently, the US posture of hostility to Iran's government looks to the Iranian people like the posture of a self-interested superpower that cares nothing for the human rights of Iranians. Pumping money into Iranian opposition groups has the effect of discrediting those groups as it allies them with a power that appears to be intent only upon getting ahold of Iran's oil. The US could probably rescue itself from that image by making a clear connection between Iran's respect for human rights and the resulting US posture towards Iran, but it must pursue that policy consistently and must reward good behavior on their part.

If Iranians select better politicians at their polls (Iran has some democratic elements, some pro-human rights politicians have gained office) and the US rewards that behavior by reducing its saber-rattling, then both sides will win and respect for human rights will end up being the winner.
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Now, a reasonable person might ask: "The US demonstrated hostility towards the Apartheid regime of South Africa back in the 1980s. What's the difference? Why was saber-rattling hostility good for South Africa then and not good for Iran today?"

The difference, I think, is contained in the old Texas saying "I don't have a dog in that fight." With South Africa, the US didn't have an obvious economic self-interest in having either side prevail. The US could credibly present itself as a disinterested champion of human rights without people accusing it of pursuing policies that would benefit it economically. With Iran today unfortunately, the US simply cannot take the same posture. The US has a very strong economic self-interest in Iran's oil and no amount of speechifying about human rights in Iran will camouflage that.

The only credible policy for the US to take concerning Iran's human rights situation is what I've outlined above. I strongly recommend that the US immediately cease and desist from covertly financing Iranian opposition groups and to work wholly from the outside. Let's not work harder. Let's work smarter. Let's work in a more effective manner.

Bush Administration on warrantless wiretapping

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino responded to a WaPo op-ed written by Democrats:

"There is an old rhetorical tactic in Washington: you repeat something often enough, regardless of whether it's true, and hope people will start to believe it."

As [the WaPo's Dan Froomkin has] often noted, this tactic is one of the White House's signature approaches to communication. But Perino wasn't talking about her boss.

"This has been the preferred tactic of many Democrats involved in the FISA debate," she said, "and the Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees employ it again in an op-ed published today in the Washington Post. . . .

"The President has listened to the judgment of these same professionals that the absence of long-term legislation creates uncertainty that poses a risk to those tools and could lead to the loss of intelligence information and that further short-term extensions of the PAA do not solve the problem. Stating that fact is not a scare tactic -- it reflects the considered judgment of the intelligence community, whose principal concern is not politics, but doing their jobs."

Well, it may very well indeed be the "considered judgment of the intelligence community" that the Constitution has to be stomped on with muddy, hobnailed boots in order for them to do their jobs the way they'd like to do them, but that doesn't mean we American citizens have to consider their judgment to be the final word. What Bush doesn't want to include in any surveillance program is any measure that prevents him from listening in on or rifling through any communications that he gosh-darn jolly well wants to listen in on or rifle through.

The problem with Perino's statement is that there's simply no room for the considerations of American citizens who would like to not have their communications placed under the Bush Administration's baleful glare. We don't know what the Bush Administration is surveilling and it's certainly not necessary for regular citizens such as myself to know. What IS necessary is for non-administration figures, both for Democratic partisans and for professional non-partisans, to keep a careful eye on just what communications are being read or listened to. As an American citizen, I very proudly do not trust my government. We've always been a "Show me the books" nation, where the government is responsible to the people and needs to be kept on a leash. As a democracy, we've never blindly trusted our government in the past and there's no compelling reason to do so now.

Yes, 9-11 occurred several years back, but even if we set aside the findings of 911Truth.org, even if we put aside all of the conspiracy theories, the fact remains that 9-11 was a one-time, non-repeatable event. Hijacking jet airliners is an operation that requires passengers to remain in their seats and obviously, they will only do that if they are convinced that all will be well if they cooperate with the hijackers. If passengers feel that sitting quietly in their seats means that their aircraft will be flown into a building, they have every reason in the world to jump up and to stop the hijackers at all costs. Even if half a dozen passengers are shot by the hijackers, the rest of them still have every motivation to press their attack. Could terrorists attack a nuclear power plant with equally spectacular results? Yes, but my brother took a tour of a nuclear power plant a few months after 9-11 and reports that such an attack would be next to impossible to carry out successfully.

As to the NSA surveilling all calls and emails, the question remains: Was it absolutely necessary for the NSA to have had unlimited surveillance capability in order to prevent 9-11 from happening? The testimony of the 9-11 Widows or Jersey Girls makes that awfully doubtful. They list ten separate reasons for the Bush Administration to have been aware that an attack was imminent, yet "...post 9/11 reports and commissions found no evidence of any action taken by appropriate officials." Why did the Bush Administration spend August 2001 sitting around, chilling out, their feet up on their desks, clearing brush on the ranch and generally yawning as if nothing required their urgent attention? Well, such a lackadaisical response to an upcoming disaster would not be unprecedented.

Hitler’s original plan called for the invasion of Russia to begin on May 15, but logistical problems and the need to rescue Mussolini’s forces in Africa and the Mediterranean forced a postponement. When the Blitzkrieg finally came, the Russian people were surprised; however, Stalin had ample warning of the German attack.

A variety of intelligence sources relayed information to Stalin that an invasion was imminent. Richard Sorge, his spy in Tokyo, who had access to the German ambassador’s messages, sent word of the date of the invasion. Both the British and Americans passed on a variety of warnings and details about German troop movements. However, Stalin could not be persuaded that Hitler would turn on him and did not want to provide an excuse for him to do so. He continued to ship strategic materials as agreed in his economic treaty with Germany up until the moment Wehrmacht troops crossed into Russia.

The Bush Administration's actions prior to 9-11 could be chalked up to simple negligence, incompetence and dereliction of duty. The fact of the matter is that if the NSA's apparent lack of capability to intercept and read all conceivable messages was a factor in 9-11, it was only one of many factors.
Froomkin then cites a radio address given by Bush where Bush does indeed acknowledge the issue of the government grabbing an excessive amount of information on citizens, but he doesn't acknowledge it as a civil rights or Constitutional issue. Bush identifies it purely as a method of enriching trial lawyers. He cites the patriotism of those intelligence agents and cooperating telecommunications companies, saying that they are simply trying their best to "protect America," but views the issue as an entirely one-sided problem, with the Constitution's historically-justified restraints on government snooping counting for nothing. Bush then gave a speech to governors of various states in which he movingly cited the problems of those agents and companies who trusted their government to give them sound legal advice and who were now in jeopardy of being held accountable for violating the rights of citizens.
Well, sorry if I'm kinda hard-hearted about that issue, but as a sailor (PN3(Ret), USN) I was taught the distinction between lawful and unlawful orders. I was expected to know the difference and the first kind of order you needed to obey, the second, not so much. Telecommunications companies have large legal staffs with decades of experience in FISA. They know full well the difference between lawful and unlawful government requests.
Bush wants to "go forward." Well, that sounds like a marvelous thing to do, but many millions of US citizens would like to go forward with our Constitutional rights being respected in the process.

The "Maverick" John McCain

There's a very real danger that folks consider "Maverick" John McCain to be, at heart, a liberal. He isn't.

Do you think [McCain]'s a conservative?
Absolutely. Liberals attracted to him would like to believe that he's not, but that's a mistake, and that's why so many in the national media love him. But this idea that once he's president he'll become more liberal, it's wishful thinking. If you look at his record, he's a conservative. But that gets skewed by this obsession with character. In 2000 we were assured that Al Gore was the dishonest one, that George Bush might not be bright, but he's honest. Clearly, Bush has told some pretty heinous lies. So often the press gets it wrong.

I fact, McCain's not even very honest. His statement:

I’m the only one the special interests don’t give any money to.

Actually, McCain has received about $400,000 from special interests.
As to his judgment and his hanging around with Vicki Iseman? I hate to paraphrase conservatives from the late 90s, but it's not the sex, it's the inability to learn from past mistakes. The blogs don't see much evidence that McCain actually slept with Iseman, but McCain very clearly did many, many favors for lobbyists and that's a problem that the Bill Clinton & Monica Lewinsky affair didn't have. Their affair was just that, a strictly sexual encounter. With McCain and Iseman, there was lots of lobbying and cash and Senatorial favors for corporate clients involved.

Howard Dean's statement is perfect and should be the template for all Democratic comments on McCain/Iseman.

Dimwitted political strategy

I'm in complete agreement with GG here. This has got to be the most idiotic, dimwitted political strategy I've seen for at least, oh heck, in at least the past week:

MATTHEWS: "Let me ask you again about what you're facing now, John McCain -- he's even joked about bombing Iran. I know it was a joke -- let's not overplay it -- but he's certainly a very strong hawk. Is he too hawkish for the American people as our next president?"

MCAULIFFE: "Well, listen it's going to be quite a debate as we head into the fall. I think Sen. McCain's biggest problems are going to be dealing with the issues on the economy. That is not considered his strong suit. It is considered the strong suit for Hillary, as you know -- on the housing crisis, she's been the first one to get out in front on that, called for moratorium on home foreclosures, called for a freeze on interest rates for the next five years, she's been dealing with the credit crisis. So I think as it relates to Sen. McCain, he knows that he can't really deal with these economic issues -- he's been all over the map -- supporting the Bush tax cuts, against the Bush tax cuts. Hillary has been very consistent out there on these economic issues.

So he's going to try, I think, Chris, to continue to show that he's the most hawkish, he will be the toughest on national security -- that's going to be their fall campaign. As you know, they did it to us in 2004 with the Swift Boating of Sen. Kerry. They're going to do that same type of campaign again this time. They're not going to Swift Boat Hillary Clinton. They have no ability to do that. We're going to run a strong campaign because we know we're out there fighting for millions of Americans who want health care, want their homes to be preserved, and want to keep us safe. [emphases in original] 

This is not smart strategy. Trying to change the subject when talk turns to one's opponents main political appeal is just kinda dumb. I'm not sure what people are supposed to assume, but what they're going to assume is obvious, that Democrats are conceding that McCain has a better, more intelligent strategy than the Democrats do. Karl Rove has demonstrated that he knows better than that:

Very early on, Karl Rove did something that many other political operatives don't do, and it's really an element of why he's a unique figure in American political life: He understands that while other people look for the weakness in an opponent and exploit that, Rove has long looked at the strength of an opponent. In the case of Ann Richards running for governor, it was that she was tolerant and appealed to many constituents, so you attack her as an advocate for the homosexuals' agenda. In the case of John McCain, it was that he was a POW in Vietnam, and so you raise questions about his service in Vietnam through surrogate groups.

In 2004, the number one thing that John Kerry offered was his heroic service in Vietnam, and so what Rove did was attack the strength of Kerry, not his weakness. What you had to do was confront Kerry's strength in Vietnam by raising doubts about whether or not he was a hero and whether or not his service was really all that noble. And you do that in part with a surrogate group, raising questions about whether his medals were truly warranted, and beyond that, pressing the case of John Kerry, who came back from the war as an opponent of the war.

To try and sidestep or finesse McCain's insane warmongering (Q: "President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years -- " (cut off by McCain) McCain: "Make it a hundred.") is an utter loser of a strategy that will do nothing but continue the pathetic losing streak established by the DLC (The DLC was caught flatfooted and "whacked upside the head" by Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution of 1994 and spent the next decade trying ever more futile and useless strategies until they were simply pushed aside by the netroots). Yes, there are serious questions about the 2004 vote, especially in Ohio, but the primary problem was that incompetent strategy on Kerry's part allowed Bush to get within lunging distance where cheating could then make the difference. Terry McAuliffe is a figure of the past and someone who needs to remain there. He obviously hasn't adapted to the Republican Party of Karl Rove and the new way of doing things.

The thing the Democratic Party has to remember is that when Republicans talk about a fear-based strategy, a strategy of saying "Ooh! Osama bin Laden's gonna gitcha! If we don't continue to wage war without end in the Mideast and continue dumping lives and money down into that endless hole, bin Laden will establish a caliphate and take over THE WORLD!!1@!!"

Remember!!! They already tried this for the 2006 midterm elections! It didn't work then. It won't work in the future, but it will only remain futile if the Democrats respond forthrightly and answer their arguments directly. I had a conversation with conservatives in the comments section of a newspaper article recently. He commented on how terrible things were under the evil dictator Saddam Hussein. I replied "Yes, he was an evil dictator, but..." and proceeded to detail how bad things became after the US invasion. The other guy continued the argument, but we moved onto different aspects.

A story in Michael Yon's blog

Danger Close - Chapter One is a story that begins with a confrontation between two young and polite soldiers and a very large and very unreasonably hostile anti-war protester. The confrontation goes on for several pages, with the two young soldiers just trying to enjoy themselves by doing what young men do everywhere, trying to hook up with the ladies in the bar, and the soldiers display the absolute best of manners by trying to avoid a fight with the belligerent, hostile protester. But the protester persists in making himself more and more obnoxious. Curiously, the reader has no idea what the protesters motivation is. The protester doesn't even go to the extent of revealing his ignorance by making wild accusations against the soldiers. The bouncer in the bar doesn't remove the hostile person or tell him to go home, but intervenes just enough to show that he is there.

I of course cannot claim to know whether or not the story was true, but I most certainly was bothered by these elements of the story. First of all because I took part in a fairly large march/demonstration just a few weeks back and I'd say that we were about half and half male and female. A large percentage of the males were much too old to go around picking fights in bars and quite a few were veterans. So it seems to me that the percentage of the peace movement that's going to go around being belligerent towards soldiers in bars would be vanishingly small.

Besides, we're fully aware that former soldiers from the Vietnam era felt very hurt and abandoned and shafted when they got back home. Their fathers from World War II and Korea were greeted with parades and celebrations and when they had settled in, picked up good jobs without difficulty. When the Vietnam vets got home, they were greeted with indifference and then unemployment. In fact, according to some vets, they were actually spat upon by war protesters. The movie Sir, No Sir! features the author of the above-referenced study spending a fair amount of time examining this myth. As with many urban legends, spitting was always reported to have occurred in the next town over or at the other airport or to a friend of a friend. The researcher in the movie was unable to locate any returning veterans who reported a first-hand experience with having been spat upon.

Having taken part in protests against the Iraq War from the very beginning (Sept 2002), I can testify that as a military veteran myself (PN3(Ret), USN, 1991-2001), I've run into absolutely zero prejudice against the military. Peaceniks have, from the very beginning, sought out veterans to be their allies. The very names of the organizations Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War testify eloquently to that fact. The VFP and IVAW have sought from the very beginning of the peace movement to be in the forefront of each protest, precisely to tell Americans that the peace movement is not anti-military.

As I said, I didn't read past the first few pages of this book, but on the theory that the first story in the book is meant to provide foreshadowing to the rest, I'm guessing that the peace movement as a whole is consistently represented here as a hostile, implacable and utterly inexplicable force that seeks to repeat history with a reprise of the "Dolchstosslegende" (Stab in the back legend) that der Fuhrer made so popular.

Hah! Called it! and lots of other stuff

Back about a year ago, 24 Feb 07 to be exact, I read a David Broder column which predicted a marvelously bright future for a new group called Unity08. I concluded: "Unity08 will continue to be a very small, extremely marginal party that will accomplish nothing of significance." And now from Crooks & Liars:

Worse, the Unity08 gang folded their tent to create a Draft Bloomberg campaign, which has an online petition that is yet to generate 5,000 signatures — weeks after its launch. Adding insult to injury, Joe Lieberman, an active Bloomberg supporter during the mayor’s re-election campaign, has said publicly that the mayor no longer has a reason to launch a campaign. [emphasis added]

So, not only did the Unity08 group go out of business in order to support the Michael Bloomberg campaign (He's the billionaire Mayor of New York City) for President, they then didn't even succeed in causing a sizable ripple in the waters of the presidential campaign. I'm sure David Broder is crushed.

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Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama raised more money than the four front-runners of the Republican side of the aisle. The two Democrats did $49.6 million to the Republicans' $42.2 million. McCain is the Republican frontrunner at the moment, but raised only $6.8 million, whereas Ron Paul raised $19.7 million, though Paul's doing quite badly in the polls. Paul's advantage is essentially online. Dave Neiwert of Orcinus notes that Paul doesn't seem to be actually spending much of his money and speculates he's saving it for a third-party run.

Oh, and the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama debate on 31 Jan was the most-watched debate in cable history. And gee, surprise, surprise, it was a substantive, serious debate where the candidates got to really burrow in and get really serious and deep with their answers. Juan Cole goes over the section where they discuss Iraq.

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Cole's 1/31 post includes a links to a British Study showing that Iraq has suffered a little over a million excess deaths since the US invasion. "Excess" means that the study includes things like deaths due to breakdowns in law & order, deaths due to lack of medical care, proper sanitation, etc. There's also a study showing that there are one to two million young Iraqi widows who are unable to support themselves due to being in a highly sex-segregated society and who aren't getting much government assistance, either.

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"President Bush conceded to [a Fox News person] that he failed in his goal to be a 'uniter and not a divider.' The president told me, 'I'd say that I worked to be a uniter and it didn't work.' ”

Lincoln Chafee strongly disputes this, pointing out in "an interesting quotation from Linc Chafee's book:

The book excoriates Mr. Bush and his GOP allies who repeatedly fanned such wedge issues as changing the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage, abortion and flag-burning. But he saves some of his harshest words for Democrats who paved the way for Mr. Bush to use the U.S. military to invade Iraq. . . .

"The top Democrats were at their weakest when trying to show how tough they were," writes Chafee. "They were afraid that Republicans would label them soft in the post-September 11 world, and when they acted in political self-interest, they helped the president send thousands of Americans and uncounted innocent Iraqis to their doom."

"Instead of talking tough or meekly raising one's hand to support the tough talk, it is far more muscular, I think, to find out what is really happening in the world and have a debate about what we really need to accomplish," writes Chafee. "That is the hard work of governing, but it was swept aside once the fear, the war rhetoric and the political conniving took over."

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I've been reading Dave Neiwert's careful and thorough dissections of Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism." Neiwert writes lengthy pieces, so I highly recommend that people just do a lot of cutting and pasting into a word processor, print it all out, find a comfortable chair and enjoy. Goldberg forces us liberals to really concentrate on just what fascism is and isn't. An excellent piece in the series focuses on Woodrow Wilson, where the guest writer matches up Wilson's actions in office to 13 criteria for being a fascist. Wilson scores on four out of the 13, a very unimpressive figure. One of the main, essential points made about "Liberal Fascism" is that Goldberg nowhere carefully defines what he means by the term, so one of Goldberg's buddies defines Barack Obama as a fascist because Obama calls for "national unity," which is actually a pretty plain-vanilla, standard, basic appeal used by politicians all over the political spectrum.

Answer to D'Souza's defense of Bush's 935 lies

Dinesh D'Souza presents an, uh, interesting defense of Bush against the charge that he and several other members of his administration told 935 lies in the run-up to the Iraq War. D'Souza presents the words of "liberals on campus" who "typically say"

Well, we're not saying that Bush knew for sure that there were no such weapons [of mass destruction]. We are saying that his administration stacked the data.

D'Souza then goes on to manfully and heroically blow this straw man away (And I've certainly heard "stacked the deck," but never "stacked the data." That's a new one on me). The question that this statement allegedly answers is:

If Bush actually knew that Iraq didn't possess weapons of mass destruction, and yet repeatedly told the American people that Iraq had them, didn't Bush expect that following the Iraq invasion his deception would be found out?

My answer to that would have been to recall the old statement: "Victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan." The "victory" in this case was the one celebrated by President Bush on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Had the Iraq insurgency not reared up, had Iraq been peaceful instead of turning into a full-fledged guerrilla war, there's no reason for Bush to have expected any negative consequences for his lies.

Such a belief would have had a sound foundation in historical reality. In 1846, President James K Polk launched the invasion of Mexico and the US ended up swallowing 40% of Mexico's territory. People including the young Congressman Abraham Lincoln condemned the invasion, but his condemnation proved to be unpopular and it was used against Lincoln all the way into his presidency. The Whig Party did not follow Lincoln in condemning the war and instead nominated the American commander, General Zachary Taylor, to be its candidate for 1848.

So certainly, Bush probably knew that he'd be eventually found out, but the very high likelihood is that all would have been forgiven if only the war hadn't turned into such a complete c*f*.

More on conspiracy theories

Gotta buddy who I noticed was signing his messages as RonL. A few months back, I was working for JRF, the Jewish Reconstruction Federation and RonL very enthusiastically told me about a book he had been reading, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (PDF)

Now I was fully aware that the Protocols were a forgery with two centuries of works that led up to it and finally put together by agents of the Russian Ohkrana (Tsarist secret police) in 1905, and that it incited Russian peasants to carry out pogroms against the Jews in their midst. It was also a work cited by Adolf Hitler as he rose to power in the early 1930s. I didn't remember RonL ever demonstrating any bigoted attitudes towards anyone nor of his making any anti-semitic remarks, so I suspected he wasn't referring to it as a good source on how awful the Jewish people were. Sure enough, when I had cleaned up the coffee that I had spit out all over the floor and then asked him why, oh why, was he referring me to such a book, he replied that it was an excellent source on how conspiracies work, that it was a good primer on how the current "Establishment" got into and maintains power. Having only a general knowledge of the book, I believe that accurately characterizes some aspects of it.

Lately, RonL has also been speaking of The Illuminati, an account of 13 families that allegedly wield a disproportionate influence.

"For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."
David Rockefeller, Memoirs, 2002 - Hermes-Press.com -

Of course, the lawyer-blogger Glenn Greenwald has recently turned a suspicious eye towards a member of that very family, "AT&T's personal Senator Jay Rockefeller":

When Rockefeller smugly announces that he "thinks we will prevail," the "we" on whose behalf he is so proudly speaking is Bush and Cheney, lawbreaking telecoms, and all Republican Senators. The only parties whom Rockefeller is so happily "defeating" are civil liberties groups and members of his own party. That is what is making him feel pulsating sensations of excitement and "smugness."

This is also a most interesting comment:

Edward Mandell House [Illuminati] Had This to Say in a Private Meeting with Woodrow Wilson (President)
- “[Very] soon, every American will be required to register their biological property in a National system designed to keep track of the people and that will operate under the ancient system of pledging. By such methodology, we can compel people to submit to our agenda, which will affect our security as a chargeback for our fiat paper currency..." -
- Freedompool.org -

Interesting because it sounds like an early draft of the warrantless wiretapping that the Bush Administration has been engaged in since very shortly after they took office, long before 9-11.

There's certainly plenty there that folks can raise question about. One very familiar phrase is that of the "New World Order" that the elder Bush used shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union on, get this, 11 Sep 1990. The whole concept appears to be bound up with the cult of Freemasonry. "Freemasonry has always, admittedly, held deep occult secrets which it hides from the 'profane' and unworthy."

My own take on conspiracy theories is that I found the evidence collected by cooperativeresearch.org (Since folded into 911Truth.org) back in 2002 to be compelling, not because of any one element, but because there were simply too many unexplained or insufficiently-detailed elements for the official story to be believable. Captain Eric H. May is currently detailing how the Bush Administration attempted to follow up 9-11 with a small nuclear bomb on Texas City, within Congressman Ron Paul's district:

Feb. 3, 2006: Texas City British Petroleum Employee Heard 'Strange Abort Signal' on Local Radio Station The Morning Army Intel Officer Predicted Nuclear Strike At Plant. BP employee also said "other strange events" occurred, leaving her "nervous and on edge." Galveston Daily News follows up with story, finding WMD military support team was conducting a training session at a location near Texas City.

I'm far from alone in my suspicions. Zogby revealed that "51% of Americans Want Congress to Probe Bush/Cheney Regarding 9/11 Attacks" and that "67% also fault 9/11 Commission for not investigating anomalous collapse of World Trade Center 7." The PNAC plan to establish the US as the supervisor of a "benevolent global hegemony" is so uncontroversially true that Daily Kos, a website that refuses to run "wild" conspiracy theories, ran a 10th anniversary piece on PNACs first letter to President Clinton urging the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Now, as I pointed out in another piece, not every conspiracy theory works out as neatly as one might imagine. Allegedly, Israel controls US Mideast policy, but 75% of Israelis think Bush's recent trip there was just a photo-op. I'm willing to keep an open mind on these matters. Just about everything has a more innocent possible interpretation. That's why we have courts where both sides can present exhaustive arguments and where a jury of regular citizens can weigh the evidence and ultimately render a verdict. Sunshine is, after all, the best disinfectant and the very best way to deal with questions.

Voter fraud: How big an issue?

The Inky ran an excellent editorial on 12 January about the Supreme Court picking up the case concerning Indiana's solution to the perceived "problem" of voter fraud (If you do a Google search, remember that the keywords are "votER fraud", not "vote fraud" as voter fraud refers to individuals trying to cast illegal ballots whereas vote fraud refers to rigging vote counts). The editorial made it quite clear that while the impact of widespread voter ID laws would not affect racial voting patterns, at least not directly, they would directly and immediately affect Democratic vs Republican constituencies and their ability to vote. Voters likely to vote Democrat (including, of course, racial minorities) would find their ability to vote adversely affected in the event that voter ID laws are successfully passed.

The whole point of the poll taxes that were made a condition of voting in many Southern states was precisely to disenfranchise Native Americans, African-Americans and recent immigrants. The purpose of voter ID laws is slightly different as they are aimed more at a political party than an ethnicity, but it is entirely justifiable to call a voter ID law a latter-day poll tax as the effect of such laws will be to reduce votes for Democrats.

The Inky added: "There's no documented outbreak of voter impersonation that might justify the push for photo ID at the polls - beyond anecdote and urban legend, that is." It's a very serious concern that TPM Muckraker helped to uncover a deliberate policy push to get US Attorneys to prosecute vote fraud cases right before the November 2006 mid-term elections. What raised concern in their minds was the status of vote fraud as being a complete non-problem. The strange case of the American Center for Voting Rights details how the issue of voter fraud first gained currency as an actual problem that genuinely required attention.

Consisting of little more than a post-office box and some staffers who wrote reports and gave helpful quotes about the pervasive problems of voter fraud to the press, the group identified Democratic cities as hot spots for voter fraud, then pushed the line that "election integrity" required making it harder for people to vote. The group issued reports (PDF) on areas in the country of special concern, areas that coincidentally tended to be presidential battleground states. In many of these places, it now appears the White House was pressuring U.S. attorneys to bring more voter-fraud prosecutions.
--------
Sure, one can find a rare case of someone voting in two jurisdictions, but nothing extensive or systematic [in the area of voter fraud] has been unearthed or documented.

The piece also examines the practical difficulties of successfully affecting elections through voter fraud and concludes that such a method would prove extremely (to use the computer geek term) kludgy - "a clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem" and easy to detect and prosecute. Deborah Leavy of the Inky's sister paper, the Daily News makes the further point that a successfully prosecuted case of voter fraud could mean that "For a non-citizen to vote would involve four counts of federal crimes risking 20 years in prison, $40,000 in fines and deportation, all for one measly vote." Seems like an awfully big risk for the voter just to get in an illegal vote.

Nevertheless, the Inky has run two recent letters complaining that voter fraud is a real problem, indicating that they're getting lots and lots of letters on the issue. The above-cited editorial in the Daily News indicates that the voter fraud issue is riding a wave of anti-immigrant hysteria and that right-wing politicians are cheerfully exploiting the issue to help their own political careers.

The right-wing site World Net Daily makes the charge that former President Bill Clinton is sending out a package to unregistered voters that contains the following instructions:

"Here is your personal Voter Identification Card. Sign your name, then detach your card. Bring your card with you to your polling place on Election Day. It will help your voting go more smoothly."

I'd need to see more context and detail to determine whether this package would actually be accepted by polling places as legitimate registrations, as WND charges. Seems to me that fraudulent voters would be taking a big risk (Yes, if Hillary Clinton wins the election, she could make the legal problem for the fraudulent voter go away, but with a $40,000 fine and jail time in the balance, that's a big "if") and that such a polling place would be derelict to accept such a "Voter Identification Card" as legal proof of anything. But it shows that the right wing takes the issue of voter fraud quite seriously.

Liberal blog demonstrates muscle

Can Daily Kos claim victory for Mitt Romney's success in Michigan's primary? We'll have to wait and see for all of the analyses to be completed, but Rasmussen reported that their last Wednesday's poll had Romney beating John McCain by only 1% (26% to 25%) and at a little after 9:00pm on the 15th, NRO had Romney at 35% and McCain at 29%. On the 10th, Markos Moulitsas (Who runs Daily Kos) suggested: "Let's have some fun in Michigan" by throwing votes to Romney (Who is predicted to be a general election loser at 13% preference to McCain's 22% and Mike Huckabee's 21%, so it's very much in the interest of Democrats to keep Romney in the race) and well, Michigan liberals did! Markos suggested that all loyal Kossacks cross party lines and vote in the Republican primary for Romney. As John Bambenek, a Republican, thought that sounded illegal and launched a lawsuit [Incorrect: he filed a letter with the AG] over it, Kagro X used the suit as an excuse to explain in detail why, no it wasn't illegal. In short, Michigan has no restrictions on voters in presidential primaries crossing party lines. So "the Great Orange Satan" (DKos) triumphs again!!! Woo-hoo!

Conspiracy theories

I don't really know what this means or how it really fits in with theories that Zionists are controlling US Mideast policy, but 75% of Israelis think that Bush's Mideast peace initiative of only six weeks ago was little more than a photo-op. Oh, and violence has risen. In December, Hamas fired 303 rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel. It might simply mean that Israelis are discouraged from having entrusted their foreign policy hopes to a President who was incompetent to see to it that those hopes were met.
I watched the film No End in Sight tonight. It's about the incredible c*f* that was and, very sadly, still is the occupation of Iraq. I thought back to all the times since the fall of Baghdad that I just stared at the latest news from that benighted country and wondered how the inhabitants could put up with it. Unfortunately, of course, the answer to that is that they often don't. What are the latest figures? In October 2007, 1.1 million Iraqis had been internally displaced with two million having left the country.
Thinking of the film, not many people count it as an infamous Bush vacation, but I see his August 2003 vacation as one of Bush's most ill-advised. That was taken at a time when it had become clear to citizens like myself that Iraq was undergoing a full-blown insurgency. The Middle East Institute published a study of the Iraq Insurgency during that month (The Pentagon found the study so useful that they asked the author to do an update a year later). What our President needed to do was to cut his vacation down to a week or ten days and to get back to Washington and figure out how to get his Iraq policy back on track. One may find it possible to forgive a war leader for having initially followed a bad plan, but failing to adjust when the plan is a clear failure is utterly unforgivable. The film makes it clear that the screw-ups continued long after that.

This is from a right-wing source?

Kind of interesting to see that this piece is actually from a right-wing source as it makes precisely the same complaints about our frivolous, decadent press corps that many liberals make (Hat tip to GG). Especially telling were these commenters:

Fred [Thompson] won't kowtow to the media's useful idiots. I'd rather hear a candidate say what he really thinks about the matters that are important to the country, than one who just utters talking points and lies down like a rug for some talking head.

What can I say? Yee-hah!! That was followed by (Another comment further down):

I would consider voting for Fred just for the entertainment value of watching him spend four years slapping around the drooling half-wits in the MSM. 

and another:

The MSM including FOX has gone out of its way to ignore and minimize Fred's viability. They are running as fast as they can away from Conservatism.

and:

In treating the media dolts exactly they way deserve to be treated.

I heard him do a similar slap down on Fox this a.m. When asked why he wasn't making more progress, he pointedly stated that it would be helpful if Fox had reported his success in Iowa, rather than ignoring him completely. 

and this one combines sharp analysis with a reminder that this is, after all, a conservative blog:

For the MSM, It's all about

January 6, 2008 - 12:59 ET by IamTinman

Column inches and air time! For the reporters of the press and TVs talking heads, exposure equals higher salaries and more power. Still celebrating their role in the Vietnam War defeat they have been humiliated by their failure to take down George Bush and are trying to again become kingmakers. That Fred pretty much refuses to spend time discussing the minutia of the campaign, preferring instead to discuss the serious and important issues that a president will be expected to face, rankles them to no end. Hilarys laugh, Edwards hairdo, Romneys religion, those are the subjects the media wants to discuss, not the important issues that this country faces. No wonder the public rates the media somewhere lower than whale poop!

Hm. The "MSM's" "failure to take down George Bush" eh? Erm, since when did they ever attempt to do so? A press corps that was trying to "take down" Bush would be talking up warrantless wiretapping and Chris Dodd's attempt to filibuster a bill that would have legalized it and the full-court press against Dodd and the Constitution that followed. As former Senator George McGovern points out, it's not like the press would be taking Bush down due to any unworthy motives.

But anyway, it's very interesting to see the right and left-wing blogs agree on something.

Proper punishments

Interesting comment:

"The Senate late yesterday delayed until next month its consideration of a vote on a new government eavesdropping bill.

"Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) delayed the bill because more than a dozen amendments were planned, with not enough time on the legislative calendar to manage them.

--------
"Senate leaders are trying to decide whether to shield the companies from the roughly 40 pending lawsuits alleging violations of communications and wiretapping laws. The White House says that if the cases go forward, they could reveal information that would compromise national security. If they succeed, the companies could be bankrupted."
(emphasis added)

I don't think compromising national security is a reasonable objection to holding telecom companies accountable for having knowingly violated the law and having assisted the government in spying on their customers. But the idea that going ahead with lawsuits could bankrupt the companies is worth some serious thought.

I was in Boston in the late 1970s when the Bottle Bill was discussed. There were far too many bottles littering the landscape and the $100 fine for littering wasn't doing the job of getting people to toss their empty bottles into the trash. The thought behind the bill was that a small punishment, consistently applied, would be more effective. When a litterer threw away a used soda or beer bottle, the litterer only lost $0.05, but it was a punishment that was consistent. A litterer lost the $0.05 every time a bottle was carelessly discarded. If the original litterer didn't care about the money, there were plenty of people who did and who would pick up the bottle and turn it in for that $0.05.

In June 1969, an aircraft carrier collided with a destroyer, the destroyer was sliced in two and 74 crewmembers were killed. Now obviously, had a lone bomber or gunman killed 74 persons, the punishment would be swift and terrible. In this case, "A court-martial and the inquiry that followed found Captain Stevenson not at fault, yet his career was doomed from the moment his crew readied [US Destroyer] Evans to take up plane guard/rescue position, as [Australian aircraft carrier] Melbourne prepared for night-flying operations." I saw a Navy training film in 1991 that made it clear that a junior officer was in charge of the destroyer at the time and that both Stevenson, the destroyer's captain, and the junior officer were court-martialed. Their careers were effectively dead. Now, the collision had the same real-world effect as a mass murder, but to treat the collision as equivalent to a mass murder would have had a significant "chilling" effect on the officers of the Navy. Officers would have been terrified of making an error and would have checked and double-checked every decision and would have tried to "pass the buck" as much as possible. I remember reading that General (Who later became a Field-Marshal) Erwin Rommel was complaining in 1943 that his superiors were happy to order anything done as long as it was done under someone else's signature, i.e. as long as it wasn't their responsibility. Rommel felt that this attitude was the result of excessive punishments.

A Petty Officer First Class (PO1) on my ship had been promoted to Chief Petty Officer (CPO) and had to go through a few months of training and indoctrination before he could put his new uniform on. He was in my office, speaking with my CPO. My CPO hollered at a Seaman "Shipmate! Get over here!" Hearing in his voice that our CPO was neither angry nor impatient, the Seaman got up and walked reasonably quickly over to where the CPO and PO1 were talking and stood awaiting further instructions. "Now, you see, [a female CPO who worked down in Engineering] would have asked very gently and politely and, oh, you can go now Seaman, would have gotten the same result. Her authority as a Chief would have been enough to get the Seaman to report over here. I yell just because I like yelling."

What has been the result of the Bush Administration's use of torture to force captured personnel to tell their interrogators what the interrogators want to hear? According to Dan Froomkin of the WaPo

"But it all boils down to the fact that, so far, no one from Bush on down has come up with a single documented example of American lives saved thanks to torture."

While simply putting someone like Charles Manson away for life can be justified on the basis of "He's permanently dangerous and we know of no way to really cure him," there is simply zero evidence that going really, really tough on a bad person is going to produce meaningfully positive results. There's a good deal of evidence, some of which I've cited above, that small punishments, consistently applied, can be effective. Accordingly, I'm very sour on the idea of tossing executives of telecom companies who have collaborated with the Bush Administration's spying on American citizens into jail for lengthy periods (I'm extremely skeptical as to the usefulness of purely financial punishments as I suspect the guilty executives would just find a way to pass on the pain without suffering any themselves), but I think that the "hate and discontent" (A phrase we used a lot to describe near-mutinous conditions) that they and their companions feel can be maximized by tossing them into jail for relatively short periods of time. Six months should do it. If we allow them a limited amount of time per day to communicate with the outside world, then the executive will not be cut off in such a way that the company will simply learn to get along without. As the executive will, given the opportunity, try as hard as possible to stay "in the game" and relevant, the lines of authority are likely to end up bollixed up and confused.

Obviously, if customers are aware that guilty executives are still exercising limited control over their departments, this can only hurt the company. For junior executives to take their positions for limited periods of time and to then have to give them back will cause further friction and annoyance. For the executive to feel obliged to quit the company after just six months in prison will cause still further "hate and discontent."

All in all, it would be a very jolly punishment, causing maximum friction, annoyance and aggravation while minimizing any real damage to the telecommunications company. Guilty executives would still be available to head off crises and solve any serious problems, but they wouldn't be available to start up any new projects or initiatives.

Response to Rick Santorum's proposal to spark revolution in Iran

I attended college in Washington DC from 1978 to 1982, the last two years of the Carter Administration and the first two years of the Reagan Administration. I was absolutely appalled to hear members of the Reagan Administration blaming the troubles in Central America (El Salvador's 12-year civil war began in 1979, as did the Sandinista takeover of Nicaragua) on "outside agitators," as though one could simply create revolutions at will wherever they were tactically necessary. One item that was made quite clear by books like Washington's War on Nicaragua and David and Goliath was that the sparsely-populated NorthEast of Nicaragua was an area where the Contras could operate pretty much at will, but in the heavily-populated SouthWest area, they were a negligible presence.
Well, just as with the ABM/Star Wars/Missile Defense/etc program, bad ideas never really die, they just hibernate for awhile and then rise yet again from the dead. So I was appalled, but not particularly surprised, to see Rick Santorum produce pretty much the same "We can gin up revolutions wherever and whenever we please" idea resurrected yet again in the pages of the Inky. A buddy of mine sent the Inky a good letter and I sent them the following:

Rick Santorum describes Iran as being an extremely important component of the two armed political parties Hezbollah and Hamas. He also states that "support for pro-democracy groups can be effective" in forcing Iran to adopt policies it currently resists.

I would notice that the US has tried and failed miserably to create indigenous resistance movements in other countries. Back during the 1960s, the US failed so miserably to create an indigenous resistance movement in North Vietnam that the effort was abandoned long before the US lost South Vietnam. During the 1980s, the indigenous resistance movement created for Nicaragua did so poorly that the Contras would have been completely ineffective had it not been for other policy tools (Primarily trade sanctions) being used in concert with them. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there was no indigenous resistance movement to help US troops conquer the country, there was no "Fifth Column" to work behind enemy lines, despite the fact that US agencies had over a decade to create one.

Is Iran just smarter than the US at doing this sort of thing? My suspicion is that they're not. My suspicion instead, is that Hezbollah and Hamas serve genuine political needs within their home countries. After all, they were both successful at electoral politics there. If the US succeeds in "cutting off the head" (i.e., invading and occupying Iran), will Hezbollah and Hamas shrivel up and die? They might be weakened by the loss of Iran, but I seriously doubt their influence would end.

Santorum declares, not that Iran is a serious threat in its own right, but that "a nuclear-armed Iran would be our greatest national security challenge since the end of the Cold War." In other words, it's a comparative threat, not a threat per se. Personally, I consider Global Warming to be a vastly greater threat than Iran, but Santorum is speaking specifically of "national security" challenges.

Let's not "Put aside politics to confront Iran," let's instead see if we can work out some sort of workable solution for us all. We've had quite enough of the US showing its fangs and rattling its sabre. Those policies have gone nowhere. It's time for more serious and more sensible policies.

Joe Klein's lies and insubordination

Speaking as a military veteran (PN3, USN, 1991-2001, as a Third-Class Petty Officer, I was the Navy equivalent of an Army Corporal), when I experienced, witnessed or even heard about an act of insubordination, my fists would clench and my eyes would narrow and I'd ask "They/he/she did WHAT?!?!?" Writer/artist Donna Barr very clearly had the same attitude towards insubordination that I did when in an issue of Desert Peach (About General Erwin Rommel's fictional gay brother, who was the Colonel for the 469th Halftrack and Grave-Digging Battalion) a group of junior personnel engaged in a silly series of highjinks and were punished by having to dig up and then move the entire camp one foot to the East.

Now, did Time Magazine commit an act of insubordination by refusing to print the letters of Senate Intelligence Committee Senator Russ Feingold, House Intelligence Committee Representative Rush Holt, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, all of whom wrote to correct Joe Klein's false smear about the Democrats and their proposed FISA bill?

No.

Magazines are not and hopefully never will be, required to print the letters of anyone, even Congresspeople. Still, hearing about this gave me the same ol' feeling. I tightened my fists and narrowed my eyes and wondered "Those people did WHAT?!?!?" It is further relayed to us that over a hundred persons cc'ed Glenn Greenwald, the author of the initial posting on their letters to Time and over a dozen cc'ed him on questions concerning the issue that were posed to Howard Kurtz, the person assigned to be "media critic" for Time Magazine.

Words fail to convey how infuriating this is. These are the people's representatives trying to correct an obvious lie in a magazine that goes to four million readers.

Why does the left blogosphere exist? Reasons #2,143,657 thru #2,143,659

In Media Matters, newsperson Cooper Anderson praises presidential candidate Mike Huckabee for giving a nonresponsive answer to a question that goes to the very raison d'etre (Reason for being) of his candidacy. Huckabee's justification for running is that he's a devout Christian. The question asked was how Jesus would feel about the fact that, as Governor of Arkansas, Huckabee approved quite a number of executions, a practice which is approved of in the Old Testament, but a practice that Jesus came down firmly in opposition to. Huckabee gave an answer which completely avoided this central problem.

The left blogosphere exists precisely because of events like this. Anderson praised Huckabee's non-answer. Anderson made the presumption that Huckabee is a devout Christian and that the death penalty question is just some silly complication that shouldn't prevent people from seeing Huckabee in the same fashion. But why should anybody get a free pass on questions of faith, especially when their alleged faith is so central to their presidential candidacy? Shouldn't a newsperson insist that Huckabee justify how his alleged faith is consistent with his worldly actions?

Now, one can be excessively skeptical of someone's faith. Witness the recent page one WaPo article questioning whether presidential candidate Barack Obama is "truly" a Christian or is, in fact, a Muslim. Problem with this question is that Obama has not performed any public actions or taken any public positions that one could argue are more Muslim-inspired than they are Christian-inspired. The Muslim world does not have any equivalent to the Soviet Union's Comintern (1919-1943, initiated to try and consolidate all the Communist movements and to bring down Capitalism), they are nowhere near as centralized as the Communist movements were and do not appear to have any designs on countries outside their borders. One could perhaps argue that a Muslim might oppose Israel, but the Israeli paper Haaretz has been unequivocal about that. "Obama supports Israel. Period." So even if Obama were a Muslim, it's not at all clear what that would mean. Fortunately, the WaPo has quite justifiably taken lots and lots of criticism over this article.

Another event which has also resulted in lots of criticism for the traditional media has been Time Magazine's Joe Klein (Author of Primary Colors) opining ignorantly on FISA. From immediately after publication of Klein's article on 21 Nov to 30 Nov, when The Center for Citizen Media published another piece on the controversy, lawyer and blogger Glenn Greenwald hammered away at Klein's failure to read the original bill as opposed to just listening to GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra and rushing off to scribble his story, stopping just long enough to put in a quick "Democrats disagree" without indicating the substantive nature of the Democratic disagreement or that disagreement was not confined to Democrats. Klein's quote is:

"Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee's bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that — Limbaugh is salivating — House Republicans believe would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court, an institution founded to protect the rights of U.S. citizens only. (Democrats dispute this interpretation.) In the lethal shorthand of political advertising, it would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans. That is well beyond stupid."

Never identified was the "bipartisan effort" that was quashed. At no point since the original FISA bill was composed in the late 1970s have foreigners been covered under its protections. Yes Republicans could advertise that the Democratic FISA bill would "give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans," but, and this is an important point, ONLY if the Republicans were LYING!!! Was "Limbaugh...salivating"? I'm sure he was, because he knew he had a idiot like Klein covering for him. As Harper's Scott Horton points out (In a piece that's a very good summary of the whole dispute)

"Not only was the substance of this description factually inaccurate in almost every respect, it was the very core of the piece. Moreover, what Time ran was a shameless mouthing of talking points that had been circulating on Capitol Hill by Republican spinmeisters through the prior week."

Eventually, as Wired's Ryan Singel points out, Time put out two corrections, neither of which truly addressed the central fallacy, the ludicrous charge that Democrats were trying to grant new rights to foreigners.

Why does the left blogosphere exist? Because our media is broken. Because our traditional media figures are incapable of doing their jobs. Because they've lost their way and have become lazy and inattentive and search for shortcuts where they can pop off their opinions without being truly responsible for those opinions.

Poll on 9-11 and Bush Administration foreknowledge

Firedoglake points out that two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bush Administration knew that 9-11 would occur before it happened. Author of the post doesn't really believe it, but concedes that Americans have excellent reasons to consider that to be the truth.

The Bush Administration had the Patriot Act ready to go by 19 September 2001. The written-out act clocked in at 83 kilobytes (Personal letters are about three to seven kilobytes, a newspaper editorial is about eight to 12 and 20 kilobytes constitutes a lengthy article) and it had 51 sections. There was nothing in a Houston Chronicle article of 7 October 2001 about the Patriot Act existing in draft form before being introduced. Why was the draft rejected as it stood? "However, due to Congressional opposition [to] its broad powers, the act is revised and reintroduced on October 2." And yes, comparisons have been drawn between that and Germany's Enabling Act of 1933, passed a very short time after the Reichstag Fire.

What is President Bush's general attitude towards democracy? See Mary Shaw's description of Bush's relationship to Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf where Musharraf appears to take very strong actions against democracy in Pakistan and yet, according to Bush "hasn't crossed the line" and My reproduction of a US News paragraph where I highlighted several pertinent passages, all of which suggest democracy is a tremendous bother and really, just too boring and restrictive for Bush's taste. In other words, he doesn't think much of it.

NSA warrantless surveillance began about half a year before 11 September, indicating that 1.) The Bush Administration was interested in engaging in intense surveillance long before their alleged provocation occurred and 2.) This broad and intense surveillance, strangely, did NOT prevent 9-11 from taking place.

And remember, Bush fought the creation of the 9-11 Commission:

Kristen [Breitweiser]: "With regard to the 9/11 Commission, President Bush fought the creation of the commission, fought the legislative language to make sure the commission was set up in a bipartisan manner, fought the funding of the commission, fought an extension for the commission, fought access to individuals and documents."

And refused to publicly testify on his recollections of that day and before for the public record:

The two leaders [Bush & VP Cheney] were not under oath and no recording was made of the private session at the White House.

"I'm glad I did it. I'm glad I took the time... I enjoyed it," Mr Bush said after the conversation lasting more than three hours.

Three years after Bush's & Cheney's behind-closed-doors testimony, the public still has no idea as to exactly what anyone in his administration did to stop the attack before it occurred or what they did when they realized that the attack was underway. Notably, the then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice also refused to testify publicly and under oath.

When reading the following passage, keep in mind that it only takes a nuclear missile 30 minutes to make it from Russia to the US. It is EXTREMELY important for the President to be kept informed of threats on an immediate, real-time basis:

Two accounts explicitly state Bush was told while in the motorcade. "The President was on Highway 301, just north of Main Street… [when] he received the news that a plane had crashed in New York City." [Sarasota Magazine, 11/01] (See adjacent map for the location where he is told.) Another account states, "Bush was driving to the school in a motorcade when the phone rang. An airline accident appeared to have happened. He pressed on with his visit." [Observer, 9/16/01]

The first media reports of Flight 11’s crash into the World Trade Center began around 8:48, two minutes after the crash happened. [New York Times, 9/15/01] CNN broke into its regular programming at that time [CNN, 9/11/01], though other networks, such as ABC, took a few more minutes to begin reporting. [ABC, 9/14/02] So within minutes, millions were aware of the story, yet Bush supposedly remained unaware for about another ten minutes.

Sorry, but the idea that Bush was unaware of the attack as it was taking place well before he arrived at the Emma Booker Elementary School is very, very hard to credit.

Nah, sorry, but it's been my belief for quite some time that the Bush Administration knew full well that the 9-11 attack was on the way and consciously and deliberately decided to do nothing to stop it.

Various outrages

Dan Froomkin has some goodies today. He quotes the statement to President Bush from departing Presidential Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend:

"In 1937, the playwright Maxwell Anderson wrote of President George Washington: There are some men who lift the age they inhabit, til all men walk on higher ground in their lifetime.

"Mr. President, you are such a man."

Erm, not exactly. First off:

Washington felt that public appearances were important for the president -- and his appearances were indeed open to the public. . . . Washington was intent on establishing the precedent that the president was chosen to represent the whole country, not just his partisan supporters. . . .

Bush, on the other hand:

...traveled to the historic Berkeley Plantation in southeastern Virginia yesterday for an event carefully calibrated to emphasize his compassionate side. In his remarks, he encouraged "all Americans to show their thanks by giving back."

But, as usual, he wasn't talking to all Americans. At least not in person. Admission to the event was tightly controlled by White House and Republican party officials.

Also,

George Washington believed that America's credo required that prisoners taken in time of war be treated with dignity and respect. He forbade torture and other acts of abuse. He required that the religious convictions of the prisoners be respected. "Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands," he wrote in a famous order on January 8, 1777.

Do I even need to mention Abu Ghraib?

And just how does our esteemed President feel about the give and take and intricate negotiations that democracy involves?

US News reports that Bush advisers say "that President Bush's spirits are getting a lift because of his new focus on unilateral actions to circumvent Congress. He is described by these advisers as delighted that he can move beyond butting heads with Democratic leaders and can get things done through executive orders and administrative actions.

"'He is always 'up' but he's been in a very good mood lately," says a senior White House official. "He likes the feel of things right now." At a meeting last week to discuss his use of unilateral actions to get around Congress,"This is the kind of thing we should be doing" -- a particular reference to his moves to reduce aviation congestion over Thanksgiving. He feels it's important to address such "kitchen table" issues that affect Americans in their daily lives, rather than get bogged down with endless battles with Congress, an aide said. [emphases mine]

And I have to agree that Bush's speech on the general theme of giving thanks got pretty darned offensive:

"Today, the men and women of the United States Armed Forces are taking risks for our freedom. They're fighting on the front lines of the war on terror, the war against extremists and radicals who would do us more harm. ... we vow that their sacrifice will not be in vain."

About two thirds of Americans do not agree with this statement. The Iraq War has nothing to do with freedom and the occupation of Iraq has nothing to do with the problem of terrorism, a tactic used by the weak against the strong. The Iraqis that the US armed forces are battling are natives of the country, defending their homeland against foreign invaders who apparently want to steal their oil. As for sacrifices not being "in vain," does that mean Bush is vowing to stay until a probably-unattainable "victory" is achieved?

And finally, a comment on his close adviser Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

"The rock star diplomat has become the workaday American secretary of state..."

Whuuh?!?!? Excuse me, but since when did Rice ever deserve to be accorded "rock star" status? Isn't "rock star" status something one reserves for successful government servants who, you know, like, actually accomplish things?!?!

Gauging seriousness

Various bloggers are suggesting that perhaps Bush & Cheney aren't panting and lusting and whining and scratching at the door to start a war with Iran. Patrick Poivre d'Arvor of French TF1 Television interviews Bush:

Poivre: "So to a certain extent, you did contribute to giving greater power to Iran, because it no longer is facing its hated enemy on the other side. So now is there a true threat in Iran, and are you ready now to invade Iran as you did with Afghanistan and Iraq? So it is indeed true that Vice President -- is it true that Vice President Cheney has a plan for that?"

Bush: "I don't know where you're getting all these rumors -- there must be some weird things going on in Europe these days -- because I have made it abundantly clear, now is the time to deal with a true threat to world peace -- that's Iran -- and to do it diplomatically and peacefully. And that's what I'm going to spend a lot of time on with President Sarkozy. But of course we want to solve these problems peacefully. . . ."

You see, when the President is unable to answer serious questions seriously, or even to acknowledge plain and obvious facts, I just can't help but be suspicious as to what he's up to. Of course the US has, by removing a "hated enemy" of Iran from their Western border, made Iran more of an expansionist threat (Iran is still a "regional power" as compared to the US being a "hyper power," several levels more powerful. "More of a expansionist threat" does not mean a "serious expansionist threat.") The idea that the US has, whether accidentally or not, aided and abetted the growth of Iranian power is not a "rumor," it's a fact.

Reporters from the RTL and N-TV German television networks then had an interview with Bush.

Question "Do you think that the nuclear threat that Iran poses right now is larger than the threat Iraq posed about five or six years ago?"

Bush: "I think they were both dangerous. I think both of them could have been solved diplomatically. Saddam Hussein chose to ignore the demands of the free world and Security Council 1441 -- which, by the way, Germany voted for initially. And I think they're both dangerous. And I think therefore the lesson of Iraq is that we can work together and solve questions peacefully now. . . ."

But Saddam Hussein did NOT "ignore the demands of the free world and Security Council 1441." Saddam Hussein, in December 2002, turned in a 12,000 page document detailing all of the weapons that Iraq possessed at the time. It was met with considerable scorn, skepticism and derision, but there was never any proof that anything in that document was even questionable, let alone that it was in any way inaccurate. And in response to another question:

"I've committed our troops into harm's way twice, and it's not a pleasant experience because I understand the consequences firsthand. And so I owe it to the American people to say that I've tried to solve this problem diplomatically. And that's exactly what I intend to do."

Actually, I got the impression that Bush enormously enjoyed sending soldiers off to war.

Minutes before President Bush's solemn announcement that the US military were in action against Iraq he vigorously pumped his fist and declared: "I feel good". [Mirror]

"There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on," Bush said. "We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."

And "firsthand"? In November 2003 "Mr Bush spent two hours having dinner with about 600 stunned US troops at Baghdad airport before leaving Iraq." Bush snuck in, remained at the Baghdad airport and snuck out. All of his following visits have been equally surreptitious.

Granted, his wife Laura thinks that she's endured a harsh lot in life, apparently right alongside the troops:

ANN CURRY: Do you know the American people are suffering… watching [Iraq]?

LAURA BUSH: Oh, I know that very much, and, believe me, no suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this. And certainly the commander-in-chief who has asked our military to go into harm’s way.

Nah, the idea that Bush & Cheney won't attack Iran is a bet that I won't put any money on. It seems entirely plausible they will and no, I can't believe for one minute that Bush takes war with anywhere even close to the seriousness that it requires.