Friday, April 27, 2007

Sticking someone else with the bill: Tenet and Politicians in Washington

Regarding George Tenet's upcoming book:

I find it fascinating that Cheney and Rumsfeld, in particular, managed to blame all the bad pre-invasion Iraq intelligence on the CIA, while it was their own cherry-picking, tailor-made, in-house "intelligence" operations that produced the most bogus intelligence to justify the invasion.

(Update: for more on this, see this Blumenthal article at Salon.)

Another example of this Administration's skill at projection, where your own weaknesses and flaws are pinned on someone else.

Take, too, President Bush's mantra about how he does not like "Washington politicians telling Generals how to do their jobs." Last time I checked, President Bush was a politician, in Washington, who's told Generals what to do many times, and who has fired a few who, based on sound military judgement, did not agree with him.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

"Follow us home"

I was planning to write something about the idiocy of President Bush's line about the terrorists "following us home" if the US left Iraq, but Richard Clarke, who knows something about terrorism, has now put best in this op-ed. To summarize:

Does the President think terrorists are puppy dogs? He keeps saying that terrorists will "follow us home" like lost dogs. This will only happen, however, he says, if we "lose" in Iraq.

The puppy dog theory is the corollary to earlier sloganeering that proved the President had never studied logic: "We are fighting terrorists in Iraq so that we will not have to face them and fight them in the streets of our own cities."

Remarkably, in his attempt to embrace the failed Iraqi adventure even more than the President, Sen. John McCain is now parroting the line. "We lose this war and come home, they'll follow us home," he says.

How is this odd terrorist puppy dog behavior supposed to work? The President must believe that terrorists are playing by some odd rules of chivalry. Would this be the "only one slaughter ground at a time" rule of terrorism?

Of course, nothing about our being "over there" in any way prevents terrorists from coming here. Quite the opposite, the evidence is overwhelming that our presence provides motivation for people throughout the Arab world to become anti-American terrorists.

Monday, April 23, 2007

The White House at its Word

President Bush today:
"The attorney general went up and gave a very candid assessment, and answered every question he could possibly answer _ honestly answer _ in a way that increased my confidence in his ability to do the job," Bush said.
Oh, indeed, indeed. This is probably literally true.

And there's this:

Acknowledging Gonzales' lack of support in Congress, [White House Spokeswoman] Perino said the Justice Department has "a huge amount of responsibility outside of any dealings with Capitol Hill."

"I think that it was good to get the hearing over with," she said. "People can take a step back and then either ask follow-up questions or move on."

Hmmm, I think Congress has follow-up questions for Goodling, Myers and Rove. The first has taken the fifth, and the White House will not let the other two testify...

Friday, April 20, 2007

Gonzales: The Big Picture

At Harper's, Scott Horton reminds us of the big picture:
This was never about Alberto Gonzales. His role has been a simple one from the start: enabler. He was the loyal Bush consigliere who could be counted upon to provide a legalistic blessing for any scheme, no matter how putrid: torture, renditions, kangaroo courts, Orwellian surveillance, and now a political manipulation of the machinery of the criminal justice administration. Remember, only weeks ago, Gonzales was the man who stood at Cheney's side arguing against shutting down Guantánamo. It's hard to say which of these offenses is the most shocking or the worse. But even keeping the focus just on the last—the immediate cause of the Senate hearings—then it's clear that the trail leads to the White House, and specifically to Karl Rove.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

"War", or "Occupation"?

Words certainly matter, a lot. Consider the name we give to the current US involvement in Iraq.

If we call it a "War", then, surely, it is something we don't want to "lose". Who wants to lose a war? However, if one calls it an "Occupation", then suddently bringing it to an end does not sound that bad. Consider this AP report:
WASHINGTON Apr 19, 2007 (AP)— Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday the war in Iraq is "lost," triggering an angry backlash by Republicans who said the top Democrat had turned his back on the troops.
The headline at the Drudge Report screams:
DEM LEADER DELARES (sic): "WAR IS LOST"
Wouldn't sound so bad if he had said that the occupation was futile, right?

Now, which term is more accurate? I'll leave that as an excercise for the reader...

From Gonzales' testimony

My favorite exchange, as highlighted by Salon:
Durbin: And I think that we have heard here, about some of the political considerations, comments about "loyal Bushies" by Kyle Sampson, the involvement of Mr. Rove in decisions about the fate of some of these U.S. attorneys, raises a serious question as to whether or not your continued service is going to make it difficult for professional prosecutors in the Department of Justice to do their job effectively.

Gonzales: Senator, if I could respond, I think, again, it's absolutely true that this is not about Alberto Gonzales. It's about what's best for the department and whether or not I can continue to be effective in leading this department. I believe that I can be ... Clearly, there are issues that I have to deal with. And I'm going to work as hard as I can to reestablish trust and confidence with this committee and members of Congress and, of course, with the career professionals at our department. And all the credit, everything that we do, the credit goes to them. And so, when there are attacks against the department, you're attacking the career professionals.

Durbin: Now, Mr. Gonzales, that is like saying if I disagree with the president's policy on the war, I'm attacking the soldiers.

It takes a lot of gall for Gonzales to make that claim --- the charge is precisely that he's politicizing the department, in detriment of the career professionals!

Speaking of which, the top career professionals in the Minessotta office have stepped backwards, in protest for the performance of the newly appointed, 33-year old, Christianist loyal Bushie Rachel Paulose. Looks like she's lost the confidence of her staff, and quite quickly. Now this seems like a better reason to ask for a resignation, than most of the rationales used for the firing of the Gonzales 8.

Karl Rove concedes a point

This exchange reportedly happened yesterday:

In a question-and-answer period after his speech, Rove was asked whose idea it was to start a pre-emptive war in Iraq.

“I think it was Osama bin Laden’s,” Rove replied.

The problem is, he might be exactly right. As Richard Clarke and others have pointed out, deciding to invade Iraq was a great gift from President Bush to Al-Qaeda. (Clarke imagined Osama in a cave, trying to control the President by telepathic means: "You must... invade... Iraq".)

The attacks of 9/11 were probably designed, precisely, to elicit this kind of reaction - a bad, bad move on part of the US. It was a trap, and it worked.

p.s. As for Rove's comments that he never wanted the war to happen, words fail me. But it is a reminder of how grave a moral failure it really is, to choose war/occupation, when other options were available, and then to run it incompetently.

Gun Control in the US

A good article by T. Noah at Slate:
The political reality is that, for the various reasons outlined by Slate editor Jacob Weisberg, gun control is a dead letter, even though polls consistently show that a majority of American voters support it. (Blame the anti-majoritarian Senate and Electoral College. A plurality of American voters chose Al Gore to be their president in 2000, but that didn't happen, either.)
And then:
We value the lives of Mary Read, Ryan Clark, Leslie Sherman, and all the rest, but we value more their killer -------'s untrammeled right to purchase not only a Glock 19 and a Walther P22, but also the ammunition clips that, according to the April 18 Washington Post, would have been impossible to obtain legally had Congress not allowed President Clinton's assault-weapon ban to expire three years ago.
I am censoring the killer's name: he does not deserve the publicity.

Rewarding the psychos

One of the (possibly many) things that terrorists and deranged lone killers have in common is their thirst for one thing: PUBLICITY.

So, shame on all the web pages, newspapers, TV shows and other media that have had a field day with the images that the Va. Tech killer manufactured himself, for posterity. Not only are his wishes being fulfilled, but it can only help encourage the next nutcase. Well done, media!

(And it applies to publications both on the "left" and the "right": I guess the sales and ratings are too tempting to give up, uh?)

Update: A psychiatrist states that showing the videos is a "Social Catastrophe." And continues:
"It's not an issue of blame. It's an appeal. Please stop now. That's all," he said. "If you can take [talk show host Don] Imus off the air, you can certainly keep [Cho] from having his own morning show."
His reference to the movie, "Natural Born Killers," is an apt one. The movie is meant to satirize the symbiotic relationship between psychos and the press---but it's a fine line between that and a product that actually reproduces and validates that relationship.

"I promise you the disaffected will watch him the way they watched 'Natural Born Killers.' I know. I examine these people," he said. "I've examined mass shooters who have told me they've watched it 20 times. You cannot saturate the American public with this kind of message."


Monday, April 16, 2007

The Virginia Tech Tragedy

What can one say?

Interesting how the bloggers are adding politics to the analysis:

Some argue that lack of gun control is the problem. Others, the exact opposite. My own take: while letting more people carry guns might be a good thing in exceptional circumstances such as this one --- who would not want one of the victims to be able to shoot back? --- it is likely that, in the long run, more people would die if more people were allowed to buy and carry guns.

(The fallacy is reminiscent of the justifications for torture: Sure, if we knew that torture was the only way to prevent a nuclear explosion in a city, we would approve of it. But how often would that actually be the case? And why would that mean that it is justified in general?)

Other bloggers have pointed out that while 32 dead in a single incident is horrifying in the US, and worthy of extensive media coverage, it has been an almost daily par for the course for Iraq (with less than 1/10 of the population). And yet Bush complains that the Iraq violence is covered too much.

Andrew Sullivan makes the point particularly well in this post.

p.s. An update: Surely enough, the next day we have 171 dead in Iraq, mostly civilians, including children.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

It all depends on what the definition of "Improper" is

From AG Gonzales' second Washington Post op-ed piece about the "overblown personell matter":
I have nevertheless asked the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility to further investigate this matter. Working with the department's Office of Inspector General, these nonpartisan professionals will complete their own independent investigation so that Congress and the American people can be 100 percent assured of what I believe and what the investigation thus far has shown: that nothing improper occurred.
So, the DOJ will investigate itself. But the boss has already reached a conclusion.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Connect the dots

A Time magazine article about the leaked announcement of earlier and longer tours in Iraq ends with this paragraph:
Of course, soldiers and their families weren't the only ones surprised by the Pentagon announcement. Just hours before the news leaked out, President Bush complained about Democratic congressional foot-dragging that has held up approval of a $120-billion-plus supplemental war bill. "The bottom line is this: Congress's failure to fund our troops will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines," Bush told an American Legion audience in suburban Virginia. The next day, his Pentagon did it all by itself, without any help from anyone of either party on Capitol Hill.
Notice that the Democrats have not refused to fund the troops---they just want a funding bill that starts bringing the troops back home soon. Bush's statement is extraordinary in how it fails to explain how (a) Congress is failing to fund the troops, and (b) How the longer wait would follow.

Now, as others have suggested, two remarks are in order:

(1) It seems reasonable to assume that the Pentagon has known, for a while now, that these extensions would be necessary.

(2) Bush's statements seem to be preparing the ground for this scenario: (1) The Democrats passs the funding bill; (2) Bush vetoes it; (3) The Pentagon announces the extended tours of duty; (4) Bush blames the Democrats, saying "I told you so".

Looks like the leak has ruined this gambit for them...

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

The Cost of Politics

A very disturbing NYT story about bogus voter fraud claims, and Josh Marshall's analysis of it.

If true, it means that the White House is not only willing to play politics with the Justice Department for electoral advantage, but also willing to upend the lives of a few powerless folks as a result.

On a related note, Jon Rauch at the National Journal notes that President Bush has underused his pardon powers, ignoring some very deserving cases for which Presidential pardon is the last resort. He writes:
Here is a fact that historians may note with puzzlement: Bush, who is obsessively protective of unilateral executive power in every other sphere, has all but abandoned the most unequivocally unilateral power that the Constitution gives him.
Meanwhile, RNC emails get conveniently lost...

Czar Emergency

You know things are bad in DC when they start looking for a "Czar" to try and solve an intractable problem. From the Washington Post:

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation.

At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position, the sources said, underscoring the administration's difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military.

"The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going," said retired Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job. Sheehan said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq. "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks,' " he said.

As Marshall and a reader note in a classic post, this is reminiscent of an article from The Onion. Except it's for real. Slate summarizes here.

Saturday, April 07, 2007

George W. Bush, summarized

Joe Klein's column in that rabid, left-wing media operation, Time Magazine:
When Bush came to office--installed by the Supreme Court after receiving fewer votes than Al Gore--I speculated that the new President would have to govern in a bipartisan manner to be successful. He chose the opposite path, and his hyper-partisanship has proved to be a travesty of governance and a comprehensive failure. I've tried to be respectful of the man and the office, but the three defining sins of the Bush Administration--arrogance, incompetence, cynicism--are congenital: they're part of his personality. They're not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Quite the op-ed piece

A British op-ed piece, related to the discussion of whether 650,000 is an accurate number for the dead in Iraq since the invasion. Nobody is sure what the number is, though apparently this number was arrived at by established methods. (That nobody knows, and fewer care, is part of the problem.)

To quote from its last paragraphs:

At a time when we are celebrating our enlightened abolition of slavery 200 years ago, we are continuing to commit one of the worst international abuses of human rights of the past half-century. It is inexplicable how we allowed this to happen. It is inexplicable why we are not demanding this government's mass resignation.

Two hundred years from now, the Iraq war will be mourned as the moment when Britain violated its delicate democratic constitution and joined the ranks of nations that use extreme pre-emptive killing as a tactic of foreign policy. Some anniversary that will be.

· Richard Horton is a doctor and the editor of the Lancet

From Bush-Gore 2000 debate

This ranks up there with George W. Bush's claim of "I'm a uniter, not a divider" in the 2000 campaign.

MODERATOR: New question. How would you go about as president deciding when it was in the national interest to use U.S. force, generally?

BUSH: Well, if it's in our vital national interest, and that means whether our territory is threatened or people could be harmed, whether or not the alliances are -- our defense alliances are threatened, whether or not our friends in the Middle East are threatened. That would be a time to seriously consider the use of force. Secondly, whether or not the mission was clear. Whether or not it was a clear understanding as to what the mission would be. Thirdly, whether or not we were prepared and trained to win. Whether or not our forces were of high morale and high standing and well-equipped. And finally, whether or not there was an exit strategy. I would take the use of force very seriously. I would be guarded in my approach. I don't think we can be all things to all people in the world. I think we've got to be very careful when we commit our troops. The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops. He believes in nation building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place. So I would take my responsibility seriously. And it starts with making sure we rebuild our military power. Morale in today's military is too low. We're having trouble meeting recruiting goals. We met the goals this year, but in the previous years we have not met recruiting goals. Some of our troops are not well-equipped. I believe we're overextended in too many places. And therefore I want to rebuild the military power.