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
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"...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.

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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.

The value of mea culpas (Not much)

Glenn Greenwald acknowledges the sort-of mea culpa offered by the Politico's John Harris in which Harris admits that he and his organization focused too much on:

Trivial stories -- the kind that are tailor-made for forwarding to your brother-in-law or college roommate with a wisecracking note at the top -- can dominate the campaign narrative for days. . . .

As leaders of a new publication, Politico's senior editors and I are relentlessly focused on audience traffic. The way to build traffic on the Web is to get links from other websites. The way to get links is to be first with news -- sometimes big news, sometimes small -- that drives that day's conversation. [emphasis added by Greenwald]

It's all very fine and well that Harris is now sorry over his and his organization's misguided emphasis on going after audience traffic at the expense of serious reporting, but I'm reminded of another scandal in the political media:

On May 26, 2004 -- more than a year after the invasion of Iraq -- the Times published a belated semi-mea-culpa article by two top editors, including executive editor Bill Keller. The piece contended that the Times, along with policy makers in Washington, were victims rather than perpetrators: “Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations -- in particular, this one.”

But the Times did not “fall for misinformation” as much as jump for it. The newspaper eagerly helped the administration portray deceptions as facts.

Even worse, on 10 Feb 07, the NY Times reporter Michael Gordon published a piece on how Iran was sending a diabolical device into Iraq that was killing American soldiers, i.e., Iran was waging a proxy war against the US by arming Iraqi insurgents. Media Matters reports that Gordon was permitted to issue this without any hint of skepticism or even any voices other than those of government spokespeople. On 5 May 08, Gordon did it again, acting as a stenographer for anonymous government sources and passing on the scary, scary tale of how Iraqi insurgents were receiving training in Iran. In a slight modification (Owing to the skepticism that the EFP story had received, such as in: "EFPs are Made in Iraq by Iraqis") the story now read:

In a possible effort to be less obtrusive, it appears that Iran is now bringing small groups of Iraqi Shiite militants to camps in Iran, where they are taught how to do their own training, American officials say.

The militants then return to Iraq to teach comrades how to fire rockets and mortars, fight as snipers or assemble explosively formed penetrators, a particularly lethal type of roadside bomb made of Iranian components, according to American officials. The officials describe this approach as “training the trainers.”

Of course, one could also say "In an effort to make our propaganda less blatantly obvious, we're just saying that Iranians are teaching Iraqis how to make EFPs as opposed to saying the Iranians are producing EFPs." The point is that although the NY Times issued a "semi-mea-culpa article" on Judith Miller and her fanciful WMD tales they haven't changed their essential mode of reporting and are still putting out highly questionable stories that seem designed to lead to war.
Only time will tell if Harris' reporting in the Politico will change for the better. All we have now is a "semi-mea-culpa article" that may or may not lead to any changes in how they cover the issues.

Bush Administration and the art of diplomacy

"Two Audiences, Two Speeches" May 19

Speculation in Jerusalem was that Bush will return in October, this time to try to push the parties over the finish line, and the White House was not discouraging that view Sunday. [emphasis added]

The "parties" are the Israelis and the Palestinians. Hmm, and just what is the status of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks?

However, the US's failure in rolling back Syrian and Iranian influence in Lebanon pales in comparison with the withering away of the US-sponsored Arab-Israeli "peace process". The latter hung like an albatross's cross on Bush's Middle East tour. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' credibility has greatly suffered; Fatah has been eliminated from Gaza; Hamas is significantly gaining ground in the West Bank after its consolidation in Gaza. Thus, there were no takers when Bush told the Arab audience in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Friday, "All nations in the region must stand together in confronting Hamas, which is attempting to undermine efforts at peace with continued acts of terror and violence."

What might be one of the reasons that negotiations aren't going anywhere? Well,

In particular, Elliott Abrams, Mr. Bush's deputy national security adviser, has cautioned against an Israeli-Syria negotiation, according to Israeli and Bush administration officials. Administration officials said they feared that such a negotiation would appear to reward Syria at a time when the United States was seeking to isolate it for its meddling in Lebanon and its backing of Hezbollah. [emphasis added]

This appears to be a real theme in how the Bush Administration deals with those who are outside their inner circle. CBS News asked in August 2005: "Should President Bush take an hour out of his vacation to sit down for a chat with Cindy Sheehan?" Bush somehow couldn't make any room in his tremendously busy summer vacation schedule to tell Ms Sheehan just what the glorious cause was that her son, US Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, died for. CBS got in some snark: "[Bush] ... found time to go mountain biking and went to one of the regional Little League playoff games." Bush's stated reason as to why he wouldn't see her was

‘‘And I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say.''

‘‘But,'' he added, ‘‘I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life.''

In other words, it's a privilege for citizens to have an audience with their president and the president gets to pick and choose who gets to receive that privilege.

As with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, if the administration considers merely talking to be a reward that they are free to grant or withhold, then it shouldn't be terribly surprising when serious negotiations never really get off the ground.

As with First Lady Laura Bush and the Myanmar/Burma junta and Cyclone Nargis, the Bush Administration doesn't seem to have any real clue (3rd letter) as to how to conduct negotiations. Fortunately, Laura Bush appears to have backed down a bit on her earlier heavy-handed efforts to get US aid into that country.
From yesterday's interview with Voice of America:

Q. "Now, there's some who have said that there should be no criticism of the Burmese regime in the context of trying to get aid there. Should -- in the course of the aid relief efforts, should it just be sort of hands off and no criticism of the regime at all?"

Bush: "Well, you know, if that would make the regime accept aid -- and I'm sure that that's the point -- but the regime knows that many, many countries have been critical, that many leaders of many countries have already been critical, long before this disaster.

"I think it's just important now to focus on the needs of these people who have been -- whose lives have been destroyed by the cyclone and try to get as much aid as possible there. But I think we can't lose sight of the real long-term goals for Burma, and that is a free Burma and a democracy that can be a part of the world."

If I were a member of the junta, I'd be concerned with this talk about "real long-term goals" and the possible desire of the US to conduct another "regime change," keeping in mind that the Iraq War was preceded with many protestations that the US just wanted to see to the safety of America.

The Bush Administration appears to have very serious problems conducting diplomacy. The possible reasons could fill up a good-sized book, but the feeling on their part that merely communicating with both inconveniently petitioning citizens and various "bad guys" appears to reward them seems to be a really large part of it.

Obama, McCain and Bush mix it up!

Ah, gone, we hope forever, are the days when first Mike Dukakis, then Al Gore and then John Kerry responded to attacks by remaining silent! Dukakis said nothing as the elder George Bush hammered him with Willie Horton and disparaged his manhood in failing to respond to the hypothetical rape of his wife. Gore was actually hammered more by the media than he was by the younger George Bush. Constant repetitions of "I invented the Internet" and complaints about his audible sighing as Bush told lie after lie dominated that campaign. Kerry was done in by the media collaboration with the Swift Boat Veterans and by Bush focusing the campaign on anything but his own record.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama has taken the speech given by President Bush in the Israeli Knesset (Their equivalent of the British Parliament) wherein Bush said:

Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century. Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history. (Applause.)

Of course, as (of all people, we lefty bloggers didn't expect words of wisdom to come out of this guy) Chris Matthews pointed out:

...there's a difference between talking to the enemy and appeasing. What Neville Chamberlain did wrong, most people would say, is not talking to Hitler, but giving him half of Czechoslovakia in '38. That's what he did wrong, not talking to somebody. . . . Appeasement is giving away things to the enemy.

But Obama has not stood silently by as Bush has questioned his wisdom and manliness:

"I'm a strong believer in civility and I'm a strong believer in a bipartisan foreign policy, but that cause is not served with dishonest, divisive attacks of the sort that we've seen out of George Bush and John McCain over the last couple days," he said.

Obama said McCain had a "naive and irresponsible belief that tough talk from Washington will somehow cause Iran to give up its nuclear program and support for terrorism."

And yes, Obama is very consciously and deliberately trying (successfully) to tie Bush and McCain together as strongly as possible. He's very clearly attempting to paint a John McCain presidency as a third Bush term. Oh, and by the way, there really isn't any doubt that Bush was speaking of Obama in the Knesset. CNN's Ed Henry reported that:

White House aides privately acknowledged the remarks were aimed at the presidential candidate and others in his party.

Is attacking a presidential candidate from a foreign parliament standard operating procedure? Not according to Democrats:

Democrats accused Mr. Bush of breaching protocol by playing partisan politics overseas. . . .

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic [Senate Majority] leader, called Mr. Bush's remarks "reckless and irresponsible." Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said Mr. Bush had behaved in a manner "beneath the dignity of the office of president."

Apparently, Republicans are rattled by this response and aren't quite sure how to answer a non-doormat Democrat. Governor Mike Huckabee "joked" (At least that's his explanation) about Obama having to duck a gunman. Huckabee quickly apologized, but it clearly shows a very scattered and confused GOP.

Santorum's word choices

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has a gig writing a monthly column for the Philadelphia Inquirer. His latest column had some interesting choices of words. He said that the words "jihadist or mujahedeen or Islamo-fascist" are all now in the category of forbidden terms. Folks are officially advised not to use these terms anymore. Putting jihadist or mujahedeen into this category strikes me as very peculiar as I don't think either term has ever been considered insulting. In fact, mujahedeen was the term used by Osama bin Laden and his fellow fighters against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. This may be the State Departments' way of saying "Don't glorify our enemies."

"Islamo-fascist" on the other hand, was very clearly a silly term when it was first coined. As Paul Krugman pointed out:

[T]here isn’t actually any such thing as Islamofascism — it’s not an ideology; it’s a figment of the neocon imagination. The term came into vogue only because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein, who didn’t.

I commented on this a few months back in response to David Horowitz's "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week." I had a commenter make the very earnest argument that because various Arab groups have declared themselves to be fascists, that they were then fascists. Well, 'fraid it's not that simple.

David Neiwert on the blog Orcinus responded to Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism" by doing a lengthy series of posts delineating precisely what fascism is and is not. One of the best posts for readers who aren't entirely clear on the concept is largely written by "Woodrowfan," a guest blogger who runs through Goldberg's chapter that calls President Woodrow Wilson a fascist. Woodrowfan examines Wilson's actions against 13 criteria and finds Wilson only took the fascist position four times. More than is proper for a American president, but not a good reason to award him that particular title.

Do Arab Muslims fit the Orcinus definition of fascism? Hardly.

-- the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess in a Darwinian struggle.

Um, no. Arabs are hardly in a position to win a "Darwinian struggle" against the West. It's precisely the restraints imposed by higher ideals and principles that has been their salvation in struggle after struggle against Israel.

-- the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success

Yes, Arabs have been quite violent towards national and religious opponents, but it doesn't seem to me they glorify it. They feel that wonderful things await martyrs who perish in a glorious cause, but that's hardly the same thing.

- a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions

and

-- the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against the group's enemies, both internal and external

No, it seems to me Arab diplomacy was characterized well by Donald Regan:

Asked what he had recommended to the President when no hostages were freed after arms shipments to Iran in February 1986, Mr. Regan said, ''I told him that we'd been snookered again, and how many times do we put up with this rug merchant type of stuff?''

The image of Iranians and Arab Muslims acting as "rug merchants" is utterly inconsistent with the idea of Arabs feeling that they are in a unique crisis sort of situation and with the sentiment that "Ordinary moral strictures don't apply to us because we're victims." A "rug merchant" in Regan's view, is someone who carefully calculates advantage and cost and opportunity and who acts accordingly. A "rug merchant" is a supremely rational actor, unlike how we could expect a fascist to behave.

Nah, the term "Islamo-Fascist" is just silly.

I'm in 100% agreement with the following sentences of Santorum's:

"We are not fighting a war on terror," I said then, "any more than we fought a war on blitzkrieg in World War II."

Blitzkrieg, of course, was a tactic. So is terrorism.

There are designated military specialties, or in the case of the Navy, there are "rates." Neither the Army nor the Marine Corps has a "terrorist" specialty, nor does the Navy have a "terrorist" rate. One cannot be a "Terrorist Second Class" as there's simply no such job description in any military service. However, Santorum goes on to say:

In World War II, we fought against German Nazism, Japanese Imperialism and Italian Fascism - militarist, totalitarian ideologies that governed these societies and motivated believers elsewhere to rally and spread these movements across the globe.

My understanding of history is that states fight for pragmatic, mostly economic reasons. Sure, ideology plays a part, but I don't really see it as actually motivating nations to start wars. Of course, fascism as defined above is not really a rational system, but as we saw, fascism doesn't apply to Muslims in today's world.

This statement puzzles me: "We are at war only with terrorists motivated by Islam who view themselves as true followers, as self-described holy warriors." Obviously, this does not describe anywhere close to all of the people US forces are battling either in Iraq or Afghanistan. Most of those people are fighting strictly because the US has invaded their homeland and with Iraq, because the people of Iraq have suffered horribly with over a million dead, several million displaced and shortages of all sorts of necessities. The declaration that the US is battling jihadists who are fighting as holy warriors is certainly true for a large number of people over there, but I doubt that it describes all that many.

"In speeches I give across the country, I ask basic questions about the ideology and motivation of the enemy. The response? Blank stares." Well yeah, when one describes the enemy as motivated by ideology but when no one really knows what that ideology is, yes, confusion will result. If the Iraq War is simply a colonialist war to obtain Iraq's oil, yes, it will result in blank stares when one tries to paint it as an ideological struggle. Describing the war as something it's not will indeed result in confusion.

More scary stories on Iran from the NY Times

The NY Times passes on a report that's, on first read, very scary. It charges that "four Shiite militia members" (From what country? From which militia?) have provided details on training camps in Iran that have taught Iraqi insurgents such subjects as "how to fire rockets and mortars, fight as snipers or assemble explosively formed penetrators, a particularly lethal type of roadside bomb made of Iranian components, according to American officials."

To take the last item first, there is no evidence that the "explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs) they refer to have been manufactured exclusively in Iran or even that only Iran is capable of making these. There is much evidence that Iraqis are perfectly capable of manufacturing EFPs in local machine shops. Second, Iraq fought a very lengthy war with Iran from 1980 to 1988. The skills of "how to fire rockets and mortars [and to] fight as snipers" are simply not difficult to obtain there. Iraq has millions of veterans of that war that have been more than capable of passing on this kind of knowledge.

The Mideast is a heavily militarized place that has seen much fighting over the last several decades. There is no reason that jihadists can't "hit the ground running," i.e., arrive in Iraq fully competent, equipped and ready to start fighting Americans. There is no reason to think they have to make a stop-off in Iran first. As Juan Cole points out about the weapons themselves:

After all, Iran has a well developed criminal black market in arms (Ronald Reagan once got involved in it). So the presence of Iran-made weapons proves nothing about Iranian government intentions. The ayatollahs in Tehran have been openly siding with the al-Maliki government against the Mahdi Army militia.

The really important point to make about this article is that every single, solitary scrap of information included in it comes second-hand from anonymous American "officials." Some also makes its way from Iraqi officials, who were in turn briefed and shown "captured Iranian equipment" by, you guessed it, anonymous American "officials." Absolutely nothing, none of the interrogated prisoners, none of the "captured Iranian equipment," has been personally viewed by reporters or by anyone who might provide anything approaching an objective, non-deeply-compromised point of view.

Everything in the article comes from a Presidential administration that has shown a very deep interest in launching a war against Iran. As Glenn Greenwald points out:

Worse, despite noting that "there has been debate among experts about the extent to which Iran is responsible for instability in Iraq," the article does not contain a single skeptical word about any of these accusations, nor does it quote a single "expert" who questions or disputes them. This omission is particularly glaring in light of this McClatchy article from yesterday reporting that "the Iraqi Government seemed to distance itself from U.S. accusations towards Iran," which echoes an Agence-France-Press report that "Iraq said on Sunday it has no evidence that Iran was supplying militias engaged in fierce street fighting with security forces in Baghdad." There's not a word about any of that in Gordon's article (though it does note that the Iraqi government "announced Sunday that it would conduct its own inquiry into accusations of Iranian intervention in Iraq and document any interference").

This article ratchets up tension still further. Two NYT Public Editors have been critical of reporter Michael Gordon's work in the past, Byron Calame:

(Mr. Gordon has become a favorite target of many critical readers, who charge that the paper's Iran coverage is somehow tainted because he had shared the byline on a flawed Page 1 W.M.D. article. I don't buy that view, and I think the quality of his current journalism deserves to be evaluated on its own merits.)

The problem with Gordon's work, however, is far more extensive than just one article. He collaborated with Judith Miller on many Saddam-Hussein-has-WMD pieces that served as justification for war with Iraq and as we've seen in today's article (May 5th), these problems with uncritically repeating administration claims have hardly stopped. Public Editor Clark Hoyt also criticizes Gordon and Gordon's style of reporting Administration claims:

...as the newspaper has slipped into a routine of quoting the president and the military uncritically about Al Qaeda’s role in Iraq — and sometimes citing the group itself without attribution.

And in using the language of the administration, the newspaper has also failed at times to distinguish between Al Qaeda, the group that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an Iraqi group that didn’t even exist until after the American invasion.

As to claims about Iranian involvement in Iraq being presented by Iraqis as credible, believable sources the Christian Science Monitor reports that Iraqis are feeling squeezed between America and Iran.

"We do not want to start a conflict with Iran," says Iraqi spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh. "We need our own government documentation of this interference, not from the Americans, not from the media."

He suggested Sunday that Iraq had no "hard evidence" of Iran's involvement or of the 2008 markings on seized weaponry, and that a top-level committee would be formed to investigate. 

Very interestingly, this statement appears nowhere in the NY Times article cited above.

Accomplishments?

Several years back, I heard about a high school girls cross-country track team. For a reason I forget, it didn't have much in the way of leadership for a whole school year. The girls slacked off and ran at a leisurely pace, didn't really try and didn't push themselves. Their poor performance really made itself felt at their year-end party. They realised that they had nothing to celebrate as they hadn't accomplished anything.

I remembered that story when reading about this years White House Correspondents' Association dinner. It was apparently a complete drag as the Bush Administration had nothing it had accomplished in the past seven-plus years that it could openly brag about. Katrina/New Orleans is something they may have regarded as a success, but obviously, they can't brag (at least not openly) about it. I mean, besides voter suppression and initiating bogus "voter fraud" (i.e., anti-likely-Democratic-voter cases) and getting the Iraq War extended into the next president's term, what can loyal Republicans brag about?

The press corps? The statement by the evening's entertainer was "It is your task to watch the government, to make sure they do not exceed their power. Well done on that, by the way, the last eight years." But the press corps did nothing of the sort. On March 8th of this year, President Bush vetoed a bill that would have outlawed waterboarding. That very evening, Bush attempted some off-key warbling and the press corps stood to applaud him. One could perhaps argue that the correspondents were applauding his singing and that his veto of the bill wasn't considered to be relevant, but it's not like their publications made a big fuss over the veto, either (Our local paper covered it, but it's hard to say where in the paper the story appeared. A Yahoo search shows many, many more alternative media sources on the story than it does traditional media sources).

The story of networks using retired generals as TV commentators, generals who were still working for the Pentagon to spread the Bush Administration's stories, was put out on the 20th of April. On the 24th of April,

Judy Woodruff stated:"[W]e invited Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and NBC to participate, but they declined our offer or did not respond."
----------
Media Matters for America previously noted that, in contrast with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, as of 11:59 p.m. on April 22, none of the following outlets had covered the Times report on shows whose transcripts are available in the Nexis database: PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, and NPR. A follow-up search* on April 25 determined that as of 11:59 p.m. ET on April 24, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News had still not covered the report during news programs whose transcripts are available in the Nexis database.**

So no, it really can't be said that the traditional media had anything to celebrate, either. But Froomkin gets in a good one:

Throngs surrounded aging professional floozy Pamela Anderson, a guest of Bloomberg, who happily posed for countless photos in a dress that exposed the preponderance of her two most outstanding achievements.

Ooooh! Snap!!

Armed Liberal's flawed argument

Whiskey Fire introduces us to Armed Liberal, who tries to argue that for the Pentagon to hire retired military officers to testify on the TeeVee that Bush's war is a-okay and peachy-keen and is a necessary step to defeating the Iraqi insurgency (Which apparently includes both the Palestinian Authority and Hezbollah). AL appears to see the other side as engaging in propaganda. Okay, sure, I'll go with that. But as Iraqi insurgents don't have direct access to the American public, and as AL is apparently arguing that they are degrading the fighting spirit of our public, then that of course means that our traditional media is complicit in carrying their message to us. A quick look at any day's worth of output from Media Matters makes the very strong case that the traditional media is very much an Establishment institution, dedicated to bringing us the word of the day as seen from a deeply Republican national power structure.

But what I find very disturbing about AL's viewpoint is his apparent belief that it's okay to manipulate American public opinion to support whatever war the Establishment chooses to fight at the moment. According to "Betz," whom AL quotes:

Third, by contrast, we do not focus enough effort on winning and maintaining the hearts and minds of the most critical and accessible population: our own. [emphasis in original]

This of course presumes that the war that the US is fighting is a just one and that the cause is a good one. The Establishment certainly thought Vietnam was a good cause, the American public disagreed. Certainly the Establishment under President Ronald Reagan thought it was a good idea to get involved in Lebanon, at least until the Marine barracks was blown up with nearly 300 Marines inside. They supported President Bill Clinton getting involved in Somalia until the "Black Hawk Down" incident occurred.

See, the problem is that the American public is supposed to act as a brake on leaders who want to get our country involved in unwinnable conflicts. We're supposed to act as a "check" or a "balance" against overeager warmongers. AL doesn't seem to understand that there is something deeply undemocratic about treating our own population as a dumb audience to be manipulated. It's explained in the Whiskey Fire comments section that AL is not a liberal at all, he's a libertarian, which is a different creature altogether.

This problem is compounded by AL's refusal to recognize the distinction between a government PIO (Public Information Officer), who clearly and explicitly speaks on behalf of the government and between a covert spokesperson who is allegedly speaking as an individual. The manipulation that the Marine PIOs engage in in the movie Full Metal Jacket or that the "Five O'Clock Follies" (Public briefings given in Saigon) engaged in is not a danger to democracy as the public can easily see where the information is coming from and can weigh it and judge it accordingly.

ALs view of the American and Islamic audiences is an interesting one;

Basically, if you need to target your base and find that it is fractured and lacks purpose, lacks the attention span for in-depth appeal to argument but is exquisitely sensitive to manipulation and possesses an innate mastery of semiotics then you have a problem. And if, moreover, your opponent’s base is unified, has a sense of purpose, a rich oral tradition which lends itself well to story-listening (and telling) and is fairly credulous when it comes to conspiracy theories then you have got a very serious problem.

First off, we've known since very early in the Iraq War that the Iraqi insurgency is made up of many different groups with many divergent viewpoints and strategies. The problem for the US has been that they all agree on ejecting US troops from what is, after all, their country. Second, this is a very, VERY insulting way to describe the American public! Obviously, someone who describes us as a population that "lacks the attention span for in-depth appeal to argument but is exquisitely sensitive to manipulation and possesses an innate mastery of semiotics" is someone who simply doesn't believe in democracy. Period.

There's a reason we liberals keep saying that conservatives worship Gee Dubya Bush, their "Dear Leader."

The 16 April Obama-Clinton debate

George Stephanopoulos defends the 16 April so-called "debate" between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but really, it was largely just an attack on Obama by Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson. Clinton caught some flak as well, but she joined in a few times, thereby occasionally making it a three-to-one fight.

“The vote for the president,” Stephanopoulos said, “is one of the most personal” decisions that someone makes.

“When people make that choice, they take into account how candidates stand on the issues,” he said, but also are concerned with “experience, character [and] credibility.”

“You can’t find a presidential election where those issues didn’t come into play,” he said.

Stephanopoulos explained that since the candidates are not far apart policy-wise, the “core of the nomination fight” has been about these issues.

“They’ve been fighting it out on this turf,” he said, adding that these are things that “came up between this debate and the last one.”

But as Media Matters has pointed out more than once, the media really can't be relied upon to assess character with any accuracy.

Of course character is important in choosing a president; of course personality will always play a role. The problem isn't that journalists think character and personality matter, it is that they are spectacularly bad at assessing these traits, and even worse at predicting how the candidates will govern as a result.

One example was the case of Al Gore and Naomi Wolf. It was charged during the 2000 presidential election that Wolf was advising Gore to wear "earth tones." Well, Wolf was indeed working with Gore as a campaign adviser, but she wasn't hired to provide clothing advice. And if she had been doing so? Well, John McCain was heard to complain just a few months back that his campaign adviser instructed him to wear what he called "gay" sweaters, so it would hardly be a dramatic break with tradition for Wolf to have provided that advice.

In their attempt to assess Gore's character, the media messed up the Gore-Wolf story on two levels. One, it wasn't even true. Two, even if it were true, so what?

As to experience, G W Bush was an MBA, the CEO of several companies and Governor of Texas. We can see where all that experience got us.

The Obama-Clinton "debate" spent almost a full hour on such idiotic trivialities as to what Obama's pastor said during a sermon shortly after 9-11 (Obama says he wasn't there and nobody considered the speech significant enough to have told him about it, a quick look at Wright's biography shows that the attitude expressed in the speech was a very minor part of his life) and Obama's being on same board of directors with a former Weather Underground member who made a really stupid statement about 40 years ago (Obviously, if the fellow was serving on a board of directors, then he's apparently matured and is much less stupid these days). Clinton, to her discredit, chimed in to agree that Obama showed poor judgement in both cases.

Clinton claimed that she's faced the Republican Noise Machine in the past and so knows how to handle it. Well, I don't think it shows very good judgement to back up the other sides' talking points and attacks on your own side. Even if you agree that your ally showed poor judgement, it's a very, very bad idea to join up with the other side to attack your own side. As Allahpundit from the blog that Michelle Malkin sometimes contributes to, Hot Air, puts it: "Hillary: Why, yes, Jeremiah Wright is a legitimate campaign issue," followed by "Coming soon to a McCain campaign ad near you."

That was a major complaint about Joe Lieberman that cost him his membership in the Democratic Party. As the Jewish Daily Forward put it:

Many activists believe that Lieberman’s conciliatory approach [to Republicans] undercuts the party’s unity, consistency and confrontational posture, all of which are essential for an effective opposition party. They resent his style more than they resent his voting record, which is not very different from those of many popular Democrats.

Andrew Sullivan was less than impressed with Clinton's performance:

Clinton has exposed herself in this campaign as one of the worst shells of a cynical pol in American politics. She doesn’t just return us to the Morris-Rove era, she represents a new height for it.

The Swamp from Baltimore agrees:

...for Hillary Clinton to get so giddy about the Wright question was really just sad. She was the official purveyor of fringe talking points. Shockingly so. And, she seemed to enjoy it. There’s a reason people think Clinton is dishonest as we saw today in the findings of the Washington Post-ABC News poll. She’s not only in this to win, she’s in it to win dirty — and to destroy Obama. She invoked Louis Farrakhan tonight for no reason — just to say it.

Daily Kos was considerably less than kind to the two interrogators:

I’ll bet if they had more time, ABC anchors Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolus would probably have gotten around to asking Obama and Clinton about Willie Horton….The questions asked were not the kinds of questions Democratic primary voters care about. But they are the “gotcha” kinds of questions Republicans try to spring on Democrats in general elections.

Very interestingly, a blogger from Hot Air was very supportive of Clinton:

…The winner of this debate? John McCain. Both Democrats came out of this diminished, but Obama got destroyed in this exchange.

Jon Stewart's Daily Show for 18 April also commented on this episode:

ABC News had traveled about, taping questions from Pennsylvanians. Which question was presented to Obama? A woman asked him to explain why he doesn’t wear a lapel pin.

Should that question have been selected? You can make a case for almost anything. And it’s true—this matter has been bruited about; almost surely, there are other Pennsylvanians who are wondering about it. Some Pennsylvanians, including that woman, may even cast their vote on this basis. (People vote for every imaginable reason. See example below.)

But ABC News had less than two hours, and the world is full of complex issues. At some point, journalists have to set their priorities. And by the way: If ABC taped a lot of citizens, surely someone looked into the camera and asked Obama if he’s a Muslim—or if it’s true that he won’t swear on a Bible. Did someone ask Clinton about all her murders? At some point, a news org has to show some judgment about which questions to pick.

---------
In the real world, some questions are more equal than others. And some questions reflect the broken-souled culture of a broken, multimillionaire press corps.

Both The Moderate Voice and AmericaBlog have done round-ups of opinion on the web.

Bush's speech on Iran

On Iran, Bush ratcheted up his so-far rhetorical battle with that country's government. Bush said the Iranian government has a choice: It "can live in peace with its neighbor, enjoy strong economic and cultural and religious ties, or it can continue to arm and train and fund illegal militant groups which are terrorizing the Iraqi people and turning them against Iran

"If Iran makes the right choice, America will encourage a peaceful relationship between Iran and Iraq. If Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests and our troops and our Iraqi partners."

Very tough and clear speech. If Iran continues to meddle in Iraq, watch out! Slight problem: there doesn't appear to be any evidence that Iran is doing any such thing.

It's blame-blame-blame, blame-blame Iran. We've heard this song before. The Bush administration warbles it every time it needs to justify its failed Iraq policies and rally a skeptical public.

One of the main charges against Iran is:

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, who will also testify, accused Iran of providing some of the rockets that have struck the Green Zone in Baghdad, causing a number of U.S. casualties. "We got the tailfins of what was dropping on us ... This was quite literally made in Iran," Crocker told reporters.

But Juan Cole points out that religious pilgrims travel from Iran to Iraq and back again in very large numbers, perhaps a million a year. Weapons may indeed be traveling across the border, but it's not like the weapons would necessarily come to Iraq via a deliberate Iranian policy:

Cole also questioned U.S. claims that Iran was intentionally supplying weapons to the Mahdi Army. "There's no proof for that, and whenever the U.S. Army is pressed for evidence, they always back off." The weapons are available on the black market, and the Mahdi Army, flush with funds, can easily buy them.

Back during the Vietnam War, whenever an advanced weapon appeared in the hands of Vietnamese who were fighting the Americans, it was so plainly imported from either the Chinese or the Russians that no attempt was made to hide where any of the weapons came from. That's not the case in the Middle East. With approximately 100 million AK-47s produced worldwide (They sell for $30 to $125) and with no gun control in Iraq, an AK-47 is part of pretty much every family's arsenal. IEDs and RPGs are also pretty generic and similarly hard to trace.
Vice-President Cheney had a talk with Sean Hannity wherein he warned darkly about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad having all sorts of crazy beliefs. Beliefs about Iran's need to destroy Israel (Juan Cole has argued that Cheney is quoting from a mistranslation) and that Ahmadinejad believes in "The 12th Imam," a rather mystical notion similar to the Christian Biblical "End Times." Mid-east scholar Bernard Lewis has already predicted an Iranian attempt to bring about an Islamic version of the "End Times," but nothing happened on the predicted day of Aug 8th, 2006.

In a rather alarming statement from Bill Kristol (Whose magazine, The Weekly Standard, pressed for war with Iraq from that famous September 11th until the invasion began), he said: "I think people are overdoing how much of a lame duck the president is." Shades of the 1989 "Wimp factor" that the elder George Bush exorcised by invading Panama!

And finally, the very latest news is that "Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the U.S. will be as aggressive as possible to counter the increase in Iranian support for militias." As the Iranian support for the militias appears to be more a matter of covering all their bets as opposed to trying to push Iraq in one direction or another, it's not really clear what countering Iranian support actually means. Gates was then quite vague about whether Iran was supplying more weapons to Iraq or not, echoing Bush's "gut instinct" of the period before the Iraq War. Gates went on to claim: "I think the Iraqi government now has a clearer view of the malign impact of Iran's activities inside Iraq."

I'd say if there was an Iran War equivalent of the nuclear "Doomsday Clock," I think we can move it a bit closer to midnight.

Too good not to quote

From the WaPo's Dana Milbank:

Bush may be a loathed figure in much of the world, but one group owes him a debt of gratitude: the many opposition leaders who came to power after Bush-friendly ruling parties were voted out. Howard took his place alongside Jos¿ Mar¿a Aznar of Spain (whose party was dumped in 2004), Italy's Silvio Berlusconi (tossed out in 2006), and Britain's Tony Blair (stepped aside in favor of a Bush-skeptical understudy in 2007). Ruling parties in Poland and Japan also paid for their leaders' friendships with Bush with big defeats.
Bush's pariah status has turned his Coalition of the Willing into a retirement community and given the president an unusual role in the domestic affairs of other countries. In Australia, one of Rudd's predecessors as Labor leader, Mark Latham, got the top job after describing Bush as "the most incompetent and dangerous president in living memory." He further described members of Howard's government as a "conga line of suckholes" to Bush.
Howard, in turn, expressed a view that al-Qaeda terrorists would be praying for a 2008 victory by Democrats in general and Barack Obama in particular.
Bush enjoyed this mutual affection. "I can tell you, relations are great right now," he said last year in Sydney, which was all but shut down by security measures needed to keep him safe.

Classic statement

From the Toronto Globe & Mail:

Mr. Bush, it has been said, compares himself to Harry Truman, a president who left office dogged by an unpopular war and low public approval, but who is today viewed as one the 20th century's finest presidents.

It is possible that posterity will be equally kind to Mr. Bush. But if you're going to compare yourself to Mr. Truman, it helps to have your own equivalent of the Marshall Plan, the containment policy against Russia, the formation of NATO, the defence of South Korea and desegregation of the armed forces on your resume. What in the Bush legacy even comes close?