table-17

What would they be saying?

2011-05-08T17:50:00.002-07:00

The more partisan Republicans are finding ways to complain even about Obama's success in ridding the world of Osama bin Laden.

What would they say if...

Obama had lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College with a partial recount?
9/11 had ocurred under Obama's watch?
Obama invaded the wrong country, and done it badly?
The entire financial system had collapsed under his watch?
Obama had abrogated Habeas Corpus and introduced "enhanced interrogation techniques" never before considered legal in the US?

This, just among a few other things.

Instead, the President who rescues the economy, passes a Conservative version of universal health are, rescues General Motors, and gets bin Laden is labeled a "marxist".

Yes we can... be happy that Osama is gone

2011-05-08T17:50:00.001-07:00

Before it gets too stale, a quick note, reacting to the (mostly liberal) scolds who can't tolerate a celebration.

Even though I am against the death penalty, I recognize that there are people who deserve it. (I just think that very fallible governments should not be deciding how to apply it, and in any case, life in prison is a good alternative that can be reversed if an error was made).

Among the people who do deserve the death penalty, there's a further select few whose death can be celebrated, simply because it has the potential to prevent so much future suffering. Among these Kony, Escobar, and Bin Laden.

So I celebrate not so much his death, but the fact that he won't spend the next 20 years causing the trouble he caused for the last 20.

The fact that bin Laden killed 3,000 Americans on US soil and lived 10 more years to tell the tale adds further pressure to the bottled-up emotions. It was an embarrasment that he was still around.

Steven Colbert might have said it best: "I hope I am never again this happy over someone's death."

It's OK. We don't all have to be Ghandi or the Dalai Lama.

I always thought this fake Mark Twain quote was dubious: "I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure". Twain was an honest writer, and probably did wish someone dead at some point in his life.

Paying their fair share

2011-04-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

There's a piece of sophistry that has been popular in the blog comments lately, and has now percolated up to the opinion pages of the New York Times, in the form of Ross Douhat's column today.

The argument seems to be that since taxing the rich at 100% won't eliminate the deficit, then for some reason the rich should not have their taxes raised at all.

People: Just because it won't solve the entire problem, but only a part of it, doesn't mean it shouldn't be done!!!

This tax day, I'm hearing about Wall Street millionaires who pay a tax rate that is literally 20 to 30 times lower than what working folks pay. Is that shared sacrifice?

Musical break

2011-03-29T17:42:00.000-07:00

A beautiful song that I was lucky enough to hear live:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhXGyer-cIg

If the "Acoustic Africa" tour comes close to you, it is *highly* recommended.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-29T17:39:00.000-07:00

From Joe Klein:

"This is my 10th presidential campaign, Lord help me. I have never before seen such a bunch of vile, desperate-to-please, shameless, embarrassing losers coagulated under a single party's banner. They are the most compelling argument I've seen against American exceptionalism. Even Tim Pawlenty, a decent governor, can't let a day go by without some bilious nonsense escaping his lizard brain."

Double standards

2011-03-09T09:18:00.000-08:00

So let me get this right... the NPR CEO quits, because someone who worked under her said some not-so-nice generalizations about "Tea-Partiers", a subset of the right-wing in the US, in a private conversation recorded surrepticiously by a convicted felon, whose team was mis-representing itself.

On the other hand, FOX News' pundits say equal or worse things about "Liberals" as a whole, ON THE AIR, all the time, and get paid for it! And what the NPR guy said about the tea party (that they are "racist"), the FOX News guys get to say about the President of the United States.

I am wondering what we would hear if we taped the private conversations of FOX News executives... or those of any other large organization, at that.

The Governor's quest for "flexibility"

2011-02-24T11:39:00.000-08:00

In their quest for "flexibility" in dealing with the State budget, the Republican Wisconsin governor and the Republican-controlled senate passed a new law requiring a two-thirds supermajority, or a referendum, for raising taxes.

Wow, that's really flexible!

As has been pointed out, such governors are described by the media as "attacking yawning budget deficits by facing down public employees and promising not to raise taxes," which makes as much sense as describing them as "fighting the deficit by promising not to cut spending".

Something that everyone can agree on...

2011-02-21T14:56:00.000-08:00

Is that there must be a special place in hell for Moammar Gadhafi.

Posters for Madison

2011-02-21T10:11:00.000-08:00

Some ideas for posters at the Madison demonstrations:

--------------------
We're broke. Why?
Tax cuts, war, financial crisis (and more tax cuts).
Thanks, George W! (And Scott Walker.)
--------------------

--------------------
Shared Sacrifice?
The Corporations and the Rich: tax cuts
Everyone Else: benefit, salary, service cuts
--------------------

Public employee unions

2011-02-21T10:08:00.000-08:00

Joe Klein asks:

Public employees unions are an interesting hybrid. Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership. Public employees unions are organized against the might and greed...of the public?

Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2011/02/18/wisconsin-the-hemlock-revolution/#ixzz1EcNvAiMb

Answer: against the might and greed of those politicians and millionaires who only want tax cuts and tax breaks, all the time.

Courting Disaster, Indeed

2010-02-13T13:43:00.001-08:00

Another Professional Idiot, with a new book with an offensive subtitle:

"Courting Disaster. How the CIA Kept America Safe and how Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack", by Marc Thiessen.

Well, Mr. Thiessen, by politizicing the question of the next attack, you are yourself inviting it.

The "next attack" will probably happen, inevitably, no matter who is the president and no matter who gets tortured or not.

The question, really is (a) whether the torture methods that this book defends are compatible with the democratic nature and moral values of the USA, and (b) whether they, in the long run, invite more terrorism or less.

I wrote the above before reading the excellent review of this book by someone who does know what he's talking about --- a military interrogator.

Read it here: http://www.slate.com/id/2246692

The World Upside-Down

2009-06-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

So now the House Republicans are voting against funding US troops.
Furthermore, they are doing this to deny funds to the IMF.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_06/018645.php

Shameless FOX News

2009-06-10T07:11:00.000-07:00

Could they be more dishonest?

Quoting the President's speech out of context to make it appear as the opposite of what he actually said:

http://mediamatters.org/research/200906040053

What does this say about the patriotism of the FOX news people involved?

Without a teleprompter

2009-04-23T16:59:00.000-07:00

Here is President Obama speaking at a news conference, without a teleprompter.

Compare to George W. Bush.

That entire teleprompter canard, courtesy of Fox and friends, is nothing but another instance of the Karl Rove maxim: attack your enemy's strengths, not his weaknesses.

The man has a talent for projection, that's sure

2009-04-23T09:27:00.000-07:00

So Karl Rove, on Fox news, compares the investigation of torture under the Bush Administration to third world dictators:

...what we're going to do is we're going to turn ourselves into the moral equivalent of a Latin American country run [by] colonels in mirrored sunglasses...

Of course, it is the practices being investigated, themselves, that are reminiscent of said dictators. It is Rove himself who has done much to put the United States of American on the road to a Banana Republic.

On this subject, TPM makes an apt Junta analogy here.

More shameless Karl Rove projection

2009-02-26T12:36:00.000-08:00

Now Karl Rove accuses President Obama of using straw man argumentation to a "troubling" degree?

WHAT?????????

As this post correctly points out, George W. Bush knew few argumentative devices other than the straw man.

And the examples from Obama that Mr. Rove thinks are "straw men" are actually, you know, accurate.

Horton on the current GOP

2009-02-24T09:22:00.000-08:00

Another good summary...

A good summary of Karl Rove's carreer

2009-02-13T05:41:00.001-08:00

This struck me as a very accurate summary:

The good news is, Karl Rove no longer works in the White House, so his capacity to do real damage to the country has been vastly reduced. The bad news is, Rove remains a major media figure, including writing columns for the Wall Street Journal, where he continues to annoy.

That this clown helped run the executive branch of government for seven years remains vaguely horrifying. Then again, it also helps explain the mess we're in now.

Rove calls Obama's approach to the stimulus plan "my way or the highway". A CLASSIC case of the projection that they've engaged in for so long. Not to mention the boldface lying.

p.s. In this post, Noam Scheiber dissects a single paragraph of Rove's editorial. He misses one falsehood: Rove calling the Democrats' spending "permanent". The entire point of the stimulus is that it is temporary --- unlike the permanent tax cuts that Bush and Rove fought so much for.

Bush's speechwriter does not understand terrorism

2009-01-22T15:15:00.001-08:00

Sigh...

According to this guy, Chief Speechwriter for George W. Bush, the decision of who will be the next President is in the hands of terrorists.

It is true, there has been no terrorist attack in the US since Sept. 11 (let's conveniently ignore the Anthrax attacks for the time being). The article assumes, with no proof, that the only explanation for this is the Bush Administration's policies.

However, do we have any idea how much of this is due to (a) sheer luck? or (b) Al-Qaeda deciding they don't need to have one yet? Or, (c), the terrorists' planning and execution time being longer than 7 years?

This, to mention just a few possible reasons that have nothing to do with anything that the Bush Administration has done, or could possibly do. He just assumes that illegal wiretapping and torture are guaranteed to foil all terrorist plots, from now on in perpetuity.

Update: for more on the matter, see this post at the Washington Monthly.

Here comes the rabid irrational opposition

2009-01-22T15:13:00.000-08:00

A hilarious article by Dick Morris, detailing Obama's socialism.

Tax rebate checks from Obama are now called "welfare". Did he use the same term to describe Bush's rebates?

Primadonnas

2009-01-22T14:15:00.001-08:00

So yesterday I'm watching CNN with Anderson Cooper, not normally the worst offenders in the insanity (or inanity) that is media in the US, when they start talking about Barack Obama's do-over oath.

Cooper and the correspondent complained that there were no cameras at the event, and make it look like it was some mysterious thing that they uncovered by overhearing a conversation at the White House.

They remarked that the lack of video cameras was "ironic" given the promises of transparency from the new Administration.

Some remarks:

There is no clash with the transparency promises! There was a press pool at the event, everyone knows what happened at the event, and there was nothing to hide at the event. Just because CNN did not get 1 minute of video to play over and over does not make it some secret conspiracy of some sort.
Did CNN complain this loudly when the Bush White House denied to release *information* of actual importance? (Examples too numerous to mention here, but let's just start with the atendees to Cheney's Energy Policy meetings.)

Double take

2009-01-19T11:25:00.001-08:00

From the New York Times' article on Fox News and the new administration:

The media world will watch carefully to see whether Fox receives the same treatment from an Obama White House that it received from Mr. Bush’s.

Uh? Would they expect to get the same treatment? Why?

It would make more sense the other way around: We should watch carefully and see if the Obama White House receives the same treatment from Fox that the Bush White House received.

Somehow I doubt this will be the case.

Quote of the day

2008-12-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

From The New Yorker Online, Todd Snider:

Just from interviews and stuff I see on Radiohead, I get the impression that these guys aren’t in this for the chicks, and that just seems dumb to me.

What can she be thinking? How is she thinking?

2008-10-14T12:38:00.000-07:00

I wonder about Sarah Palin's though processes... Never mind the Couric interview (as telling as that might be); there's more pre-meditated problems:

There's her strange choice of quotation in her Republican Convention speech.

And there is her mis-quote of Madeleine Albright's "There's a place in hell reserved for women who don't help other women", from a Starbucks cup. Not only did it not occur to her that the quote was not applicable to the question of voting for a woman, but she did not seem to have the self-awareness to reflect that, perhaps, the quote was referring to women such as herself.

But why?

2008-10-03T14:28:00.000-07:00

Can someone please ask Sarah Palin the follow-up question, of why it is "reckless" for Barak Obama to point out the problem of civilian casualties in Afghanistan?

Update: For more on this, see this post.

New update: The McCain-Palin campaign releases an ad on this: the accusation is based on a dishonest interpretation of Obama's comments. Kinda like the "lipstick on a pig."

Here is factcheck.org's debunking.

A little disturbing...

2008-10-02T03:02:00.000-07:00

Consider this line from McCain's remarks, Sept. 30:

So, that's how we see this election: Country First or Obama First, and I have a feeling I know which side you're all on

This seems like dishonest rhetoric from the get-go. It would seem that a choice of "McCain First or Obama First" would be more fair and balanced.

Banana Republic update: The Economy

2008-09-26T07:03:00.000-07:00

Krugman summarizes nicely.

Lies and the Lying Liars

2008-09-12T05:14:00.000-07:00

If this is how they campaing, how would they govern?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/opinion/12krugman.html

Krugman left out one more outrage: the shameless mis-use of factcheck.org's fact checking.

It's as if McCain has decided that only a dishonorable campaign can win.

2008-05-08T21:56:00.000-07:00

So now McCain says that Obama is the candidate that Hamas favors?

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/05/08/obama-mccain-is-losing-his-bearings/

But wait a minute: Surely Hamas would know that whichever candidate they said they favored, would have *less* of a chance of winning. So, if indeed they "endorsed" Obama, wouldn't this mean that they really want McCain to win?

Not that farfetched a theory, I would say. But the real conclusion to be drawn is, that it is completely absurad and infantile to make statements such as McCain's, and let the U.S. Presidential Race be controlled by the ramblings of psychopaths half a world away. As with Osama bin Laden and the Bush-Kerry contest in 2004.

These guys sure knew how to run a war

2008-05-02T08:35:00.001-07:00

General Ricardo Sanchez's account, including Rumsfeld's attempt to buy him off to rewrite history. Now it seems that no-one made the decision to draw down forces after the invasion; just like the decision to disband the Iraqui military. Sanchez concludes:

In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty.

Now imagine the reaction if a General were saying the same thing about a Democratic administration.

Shape of the Earth: Views Differ

2007-11-30T12:24:00.000-08:00

Paul Krugan has remarked that this would be the headline in the "Liberal media" if George W. Bush came out and said that the earth was flat.

We now have a perfect example of how the Washington Post takes part in this kind of reporting, this time giving airtime to the "Obama is a muslim" lies, without ever saying that they are, in fact, lies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/28/AR2007112802757.html

Greenwald has a good analysis at Salon.

Kudos

2007-09-13T14:40:00.000-07:00

A good, succinct editorial from Alabama, concerning the going-ons at the DOJ and the very suspicious prosecution of the former Governor, found via Scott Horton.

Sample quote:

Something smells bad here. It smells bad even when one discounts the shenanigans involving the firings of U.S. attorneys across the nation and the hiring of DOJ personnel based on their ideological beliefs.
It smells even worse when one considers that a man may sit in prison today because his political enemies may have arranged his prosecution for political reasons.
It is a sobering thought to consider, the kind of thing often associated with third-world dictatorial regimes and not with a free, democratic nation.

How the Bush adminisration thinks

2007-09-11T10:06:00.000-07:00

A good summary on how the Bush administration operates, by someone who was very close to the action. See also the review of the book at the NYT.

Bush's Former Surgeon General

2007-07-10T15:22:00.000-07:00

Not very surprising:

"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation's top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.
"The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party," Carmona added.

Probably explains why they want to replace him with someone with, um, rather odd ideas...

Another bogus "Clinton did it too" defense

2007-07-05T17:13:00.000-07:00

President George W. Bush commuting Scooter Libby's sentence is not comparable to Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich, however reprehsible that might have been. The main reason: Rich was not found guilty of obstructing justice in a case that might possibly invove the President who pardoned/commuted his sentence.

Libby was convicted of precisely this: perjury, to obstruct justice, in a case that should have led to Cheney and, possibly, Bush himself. And unlike Rich, who was safely enjoying his money in Switzerland, Libby was facing an imminent prison term either, one that might encourage him to talk.

As some have pointed out, Bush's action would have been more comparable to Clinton commuting Susan McDougal's sentence in the Whitewhater affair before she went to jail - something he never did. (He did pardon her at the end of his term.)

Finally, there's the discrepancy between this commutation, and Bush's previous record of denying such mercy, going back to his Texas days.

US justice?

2007-06-17T13:42:00.000-07:00

More serious causes for concern, in the continuing Third-World-ization of US Justice.

Reported by Scoott Horton, federal prosecutorial abuse. And from the NYT editorial page, how the Supreme Court now prefers technicalities to basic fairness.

Not to say anything about Seymour Hersh's The New Yorker's article on General Taguba and his investigation of Abu Ghraib.

They used to call it a "filibuster"

2007-06-12T09:57:00.000-07:00

That Liberal bias in the media. From Scott Horton's blog:

Today 53 members of the United States Senate, including seven Republicans, expressed their vote of no confidence in the service of Alberto Gonzales. The vote was procedural, as the Republicans used filibuster rules to block the actual vote–a step they have now invoked repeatedly to hamstring action by the majority in the Senate.

Isn’t this surprising when, only two years ago, when an effort was made to invoke the filibuster to block nominations, Mitch McConnell, Trent Lott and company thought it presented a threat to the Constitutional order of Government? Whereas now they trot it out themselves even on procedural and symbolic votes? To abet them in this remarkable act of hypocrisy, the media now routinely refer to the filibuster merely as a “procedural vote.” When the Democrats use it to block a judicial nomination, it’s called a “filibuster,” but if it’s ever invoked by the Republicans it’s just “procedure.” This is just more evidence of how the Republicans and Democrats interact–like velociraptors and bunny rabbits caged together–and the media lean whichever way the Republicans would have them lean in their characterizations.

I would just add that the front page story in today's New York Times did not mention the F-word either.

Thinking like a Third-World Dictator

2007-05-27T23:40:00.000-07:00

From the horse's mouth:

As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for. Capture one of these killers, and he'll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.

This is Dick Cheney, at the West Point graduation ceremony.

How many times must it be said? Just because the enemy is inhuman, and abhorrent, does not mean that we should act in the same way.

Commentary at TPM.

Also see Andrew Sullivan's take.

p.s. It has struck me that this would actually be a powerful piece of oratory *if* (1) the US was actually granting these protections to all of its captives, which it is not, thanks to folks like Cheney, and (2) the snarky phrase, "delicate sensibilities," was cut...

2007-05-24T12:32:00.000-07:00

Consider these two quotes from Bush's press conference today:

I'm credible because I read the intelligence, David, and make it abundantly clear in plain terms that if we let up, we'll be attacked. And I firmly believe that.

Followed, shortly afterwards, by:

It's better to fight them there than here. And this concept about, well, maybe let's just kind of just leave them alone and maybe they'll be all right is naive. These people attacked us before we were in Iraq. They viciously attacked us before we were in Iraq, and they've been attacking ever since.

So he's saying that 9/11 happened regardless of the Iraq invasion, and at the same time he's saying the Iraq invasion will prevent other attacks. Hmm...

As Juan Cole recently wrote:

And all along the Bushies have invoked al-Qaeda with regard to Iraq. It doesn't matter what the real situation in Iraq is. Is it ruled by secular Sunni Arab nationalist Baathists who are afraid of al-Qaeda according to documents Bush himself captured and released? Nevertheless, Bushies find al-Qaeda in Iraq. Is Iraq dominated by Shiites allied to Iran? Bushies find an alliance with al-Qaeda. Like tax cuts, it is the answer to every problem.

The Republican Debate

2007-05-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

How depressing. Fox News feeds them the ticking time bomb scenario, and the Republican candidates, with the honorable exceptions of Paul and McCain, endorse torture. Sullivan's review here.

This is the terrorists' game, and these candidates are playing it.

They are putting the morality of the United States, and its foreign policy, in the hands of the terrorists.

All the talk about "enhanced interrogation techniques" is Orwellian.
Calling it a "moral freak show" seems accurate. How depressing to see the majority of the party in power in the US talking and thinking like two-bit dictators do all over the world.

Romney talks about making Guantanamo twice as big, without lawyers. Nice.
If a Democratic president were elected who would shut down Guantanamo, it wouldn't surprise me if Al-Qaeda staged another attack (even a smallish, cheap one) to reactivate hysteria and get it reopened. It is what they want.

And then, when Ron Paul (seemingly, the only rational candidate) talks about foreign policy blowback, the Fox News moderators put words in his mouth and accuse him of saying that the US deserved 9-11. Giuliani then gets a perfect chance to grandstand about it.

This use of 9-11 is very dangerous: since grievous harm and injustice has been done to us, we can retaliate in whichever way we see fit, even if it is immoral. Quiz: Who else thinks like that?

Update: From those who know more about these matters than I do: Retired generals.

Movie review: Spider-man III

2007-05-16T11:54:00.000-07:00

Well, Spidey has jumped the shark. Not a hard thing for a superhero to do, really. I can even point to the exact moment when the jump was completed: the brief appearance of an American flag at the start of the final battle.

Not that I have anything against American flags; they're a fine, proud symbol. This Sunday afternoon, actually, the flag was a running theme. We saw many fluttering in downtown San Francisco, and I regularly enjoy taking pictures of them framed against a clear blue sky. And then at the SF moma we saw Jasper John's beautiful, intriguing, literalistic-but-not-quite-so painting, American Flag. So we had nothing against it.

But the context in which it was used suggests one of two things: a craven attempt to appeal to the patriotism of the US audience, or a weak and ineffective attempt at satire. I guess it's too much to expect of your multimillion-dollar summer flick to get these things right?

The special effects were quite good - kudos to them. But the script, and the pacing, and the directing, and some of the acting, were not quite up to par. The French maitre'd was the best thing in the movie!

The movie was too long, and had one villian too many. It is also presumably the most expensive movie ever made?

More on how the Banana Republic works

2007-05-01T07:23:00.000-07:00

New disclosures: The White House and the Attorney General secretly set up things so that, basically, Karl Rove (an unelected, unconfirmed political operative) can hire and fire at the Justice Department at will, undetected.

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

2007-04-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

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.

"Follow us home"

2007-04-26T13:28:00.000-07:00

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.

The White House at its Word

2007-04-23T09:46:00.000-07:00

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...

Gonzales: The Big Picture

2007-04-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

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.

"War", or "Occupation"?

2007-04-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-19T16:27:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-19T16:05:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-19T15:40:00.000-07:00

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."

The Virginia Tech Tragedy

2007-04-16T17:19:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2007-04-15T10:53:00.000-07:00

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.

Connect the dots

2007-04-14T17:53:00.000-07:00

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...

The Cost of Politics

2007-04-11T22:53:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-11T09:07:00.000-07:00

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.

George W. Bush, summarized

2007-04-07T10:03:00.000-07:00

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.

Quite the op-ed piece

2007-04-04T14:37:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-04T10:11:00.000-07:00

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.

More Banana Republic evidence

2007-03-31T11:18:00.000-07:00

Sullivan and Marshall have recently made the analogy as well. Sullivan, in regards to the application and normalization of torture. Marshall, in regards to the politization of justice:

It's yet another example of how far this White House has gone in normalizing behavior that we've been raised to associate with third-world countries where democracy has never successfully taken root and the rule of law is unknown.

The revived Giuliani-Kerik controversy is also a good reminder of the cronyism and incompetence of this administration. This was the person that Bush wanted as Secretary of Homeland Security? A sign of how seriously President Bush took Homeland Security, indeed.

On the other hand, as some have pointed out, perhaps the Mob is the go-to organization as far as securing your Homeland is concerned.

I'd say that the biggest difference between first-world and third-world countries is good governance. Not that it is perfect anywhere, mind you, but the rule of law and competent administration count for a lot. And the US seems to have taken a large step backwards in the last 7 years.

The "Clinton Did It" defense

2007-03-15T09:38:00.000-07:00

Don't let dishonest commentators (including Bill O'Reilly last night, and a Republican senator on NPR this morning) fool you when they point out that all 93 Federal Prosecutors were replaced by Bill Clinton and Janet Reno in 1993.

Every administration replaces all, or most of, the Federal Prosecutors when they come in. What is highly unusual is to pick and choose some to replace in the middle of an administration; even more so, when it seems based mostly on partisan considerations.

To pretend otherwise is part of the Big Lie. Here's a good blog post on the matter.

p.s. It appears that two prosecutors were fired under Clinton. Why? From this blog:

As it happens, the Congressional Research Service has just released a report on this. It appears two resigned under pressure – one because he grabbed a TV reporter by the throat on camera, and the second having been accused of biting a topless dancer.

What happened in Texas...

2007-03-14T16:50:00.000-07:00

A depressingly revealing blog entry from the Washington Post, describing Gonzales' previous work for Bush while in Texas...

The AG's defense

2007-03-13T12:31:00.000-07:00

Gonzales' press conference today: Mistakes were made, I did not take part in them, and the guy who made them has quit already anyway.

Right. Once can smell Karl Rove's imprint on this from a mile away, a carefully planned and coordinated political move, to politicize the justice system. Rove... what a pernicious, damaging influence on the way politics works in the USA.

It is also interesting to revisit Gonzales' op-ed in USA today defending this "overblown personnell matter". "Related to performance, not to politics"?

Salon don't like it either

2007-03-12T00:42:00.000-07:00

From Salon (Joe Conason):

Loyal dissemblers like Gonzales can be found in every royal court and indeed are essential to the smooth functioning of any autocracy or banana republic. They are not, however, well-suited to overseeing the pursuit of justice and the enforcement of law in a democracy.

The Other Side of the Banana

2007-03-09T08:14:00.000-08:00

We've heard about the fired prosecutors, who "lost the confidence" of Attorney General Gonzalez, some after disappointing Republican Senators by not bringing up Democratic indictments in time for the elections. Now folks are asking what the ones who were *not* fired were up to.

Looks like Democrats have become 7 times more likely than Republicans to become targets of local investigations - an old Rove trick, now institutionalized and enforced from the top?

How the Banana Republic works

2007-03-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

Congressional hearings have produced interesting results.

See also this editorial in the New York Times.

No one is quite sure how the provision for letting the White House replace Attorney Generals without Congressional approval made it into the "Patriot Act" bill, but it looks like White House operatives were involved. Nice separation of powers, as Slate points out.

Dow Jones Industrial average waste of time

2007-02-27T17:55:00.000-08:00

I generally like to listen to NPR, and can be described as a news junkie.

But why, oh why, do they (and most other outlets) insist on wasting precious seconds of their broadcasts telling me how many points the Dow Jones Average has gone up or down----especially if it is just two points out of 12,000? And why would I want to know about this every hour?

Today's 3-or-4% loss is a good ocassion to make the obvious points: First, if you reallly think that I need to know how this number changes from day to day, please tell me the *percentage* that the thing won or lost; at least that saves me from having to do the math in my head, assuming that I actually knew the last day's closing price.

Second, only is news when the loss or gain is bigger than a certain percentage. What should the threshold be --- 0.5%, 1%? I don't know... but the implicit agreement should be that if the Dow is not mentioned in the hourly news, then it did not change that much. And then, maybe on Friday you can tell me how much it changed for the week.

Banana Republic Watch, February edition

2007-02-11T08:24:00.000-08:00

And here's something that you only used to see in third-world "democracies" of dubious character:

The executive branch arbitrarily firing attorney generals who happen to be conducting sensitive corruption investigations, and replacing them by political operatives and hacks. All of this, made "legal" by an obscure provision slipped at the last minute into a "patriotic" bill.

Banana Republic Watch: Shameless Sophistry

2007-01-19T13:24:00.000-08:00

It might be time for any US citizen of any political persuasion to get worried:

Responding to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18, Gonzales argued that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly bestow habeas corpus rights; it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended.

“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales’s remark left Specter, the committee’s ranking Republican, stammering.

“Wait a minute,” Specter interjected. “The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”

Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.

“You may be treading on your interdiction of violating common sense,” Specter said.

Book titles

2007-01-17T15:17:00.000-08:00

I've been collecting the titles for some books by relatively well-respected, and certainly well-publicized, "pundits" from the right. The titles alone are quite revealing, and say volumes about their authors' intellectual honesty and nuance levels, not to say anything about their estimation of their target audience. Here it is:

"Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton," by Jonah Goldberg.

“The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for Human Life,” by Ramesh Ponnuru.

"Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism," by Sean Hannity.

"Godless: The Church of Liberalism," by Ann Coulter.

"Women Who Make the World Worse : and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports," by Kate O'Beirne.

"State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America," by Patrick J. Buchanan.

"Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party," by David Limbaugh.

The latest entry into the list, which makes this post complete, is:

"The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11," by Dinesh D'Souza.

This last one is particularly unbelievable: The terrorists have indeed won.

Unclear on the Concept

2007-01-13T06:09:00.000-08:00

From the NYT article:

The senior Pentagon official in charge of military detainees suspected of terrorism said in an interview this week that he was dismayed that lawyers at many of the nation’s top firms were representing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that the firms’ corporate clients should consider ending their business ties.

As the corresponding NYT editorial points out:

It does not seem to matter to Mr. Stimson, who is a lawyer, that a great many of those detainees did not deserve imprisonment, let alone the indefinite detention to which they are subjected as “illegal enemy combatants.” And forget about the fundamental American right that everyone should have legal counsel, even the most heinous villain.

See also the Washington Post editorial.

Besides the apparent fact that the guy in charge does not seem to understand basic concepts of the rule of law in a civilized society, I also find it interesting, and apalling, that he resorts to the extortive threats that have been proven to stifle free speech in nominally free societies: If you do/say something we don't like, you won't get business from the big companies that keep your law firm/newspaper running.

Adios a Pinochet

2006-12-11T16:56:00.000-08:00

Christoper Hitchens is also glad to say goodbye:

There were those who used to argue that, say what you like, Pinochet unfettered the Chilean economy and let the Friedmanite breezes blow. (This is why Mrs. Thatcher was forever encouraging him to take his holidays and shopping trips in London; a piece of advice that he may well have regretted taking.) Yet free-marketeers presumably do not believe that you need torture and murder and dictatorship to implement their policies.

Historically, the moderate left has not been given much of a chance to try new things out in South America. In the long run, there is nothing wrong with letting leftist populists either (a) prove that their policies work, or (b) discredit leftist populism when they don't.

(Venezuela might be an exception, since the government has lots of oil money to spare.)

The same principle should apply to the right-wing policies too. Just as long as it's not "one man, one vote, one time."

Life imitates Onion

2006-12-09T09:55:00.000-08:00

Two days ago, Nancy pointed out to me one of the best headlines in The Onion in a long while:
Rebels Immediately Regret Seizing Power In Zambia. (Apologies to the real Zambia, by the way.)

Today, I see this real headline: Fiji coup chief runs ads to fill Cabinet.

Movie-related Quote of the Day

2006-12-09T00:48:00.001-08:00

From the Washington Post:

"What if you showed the ancient Maya 'The Passion of the Christ'? They'd freak out."

- Stephen Houston, professor of anthropology at Brown University.

The Borat Memo

2006-12-09T00:29:00.000-08:00

Continuing with the New Yorker crutch (it's easier to link than to write original posts!), this short bit of satire summarizes what for me were some of the more disquieting things about the Borat movie.

Lessons of Vietnam

2006-12-08T19:04:00.000-08:00

I was going to write a post about President Bush's remarks in Vietnam a couple of weeks ago, but The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg has done a pretty good job already:

In Hanoi, which under its nominally Communist rulers is more vibrantly capitalist than Ho Chi Minh City ever was when it was called Saigon, he [President Bush] was asked if the American experience in Vietnam offered any guidance about Iraq. “One lesson is that we tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a while,” he replied, and added, “We’ll succeed unless we quit.” What did he mean? That the peaceable, bustling, unthreatening (if unfree) Vietnam of today represents an American success, made possible by the fact that we didn’t quit until fifty-eight thousand Americans and three million Vietnamese were dead? Or that it represents an American failure, which would have been averted by another decade of war, another fifty-eight thousand, another three million? Who knows? And who knows, really, what this President has been taught by this month’s election? The present President Bush, after all, is a decider of decisions, not a learner of lessons. And he likes to decide that he was right all along.

The Baker-Hamilton Report

2006-12-06T12:42:00.000-08:00

I skimmed the report this morning on the train, and I must say that it is much better than I expected.

It is a breath of fresh air, a welcome dose of reality. Even if that reality is not pretty and, as the report states, there are no flawless options to pursue. I think it can also serve as a good primer for the American public to understand the complex forces at work in Iraq - infinitely more nuanced than just repeating "Iraq is a central front in the War on Terror".

A good sample paragraph:

Iraq is a centerpiece of American foreign policy, inﬂuencing how the United States is viewed in the region and around the world. Because of the gravity of Iraq’s condition and the country’s vital importance, the United States is facing one of its most difﬁcult and signiﬁcant international challenges in decades. Because events in Iraq have been set in motion by American decisions and actions, the United States has both a national and a moral interest in doing what it can to give Iraqis an opportunity to avert anarchy.

Read: it was a war of choice, and the US must get it right. But is it too late now?

Rumsfeld's memo

2006-12-03T19:24:00.000-08:00

Juan Cole has a good analysis of Rumsfeld's memo. This stood out:

Rumsfeld spends more time plotting out how to manipulate the American public than how to win the war. Everything is about spin, about giving the image of progress even in the face of a rapid downward spiral into the abyss.

It's the FOX-news, Michael "how do I look on TV during Katrina" Brown, Big Lie style of Government.

The Big Lie

2006-12-01T15:40:00.000-08:00

In previous posts, I've compared the Bush Administration's policies in the "War on Terror", and the mentality of its defenders, to those of Third World dictators. This provocative, and thought-provoking, article on Slate goes one further than that.

The article has helped me cristalize why Fox News, and the likes of O'Reilly, bothers me so much: it's the culture of the Big Lie, very dangerous indeed. Sure, there are left-wing fundamentalists as well, spouting much nonsense. But they don't get away with stating blatantly false and illogical "memes" repeatedly, as Fox News does. And call themselves "Fair and Balanced," after that.

(Case in point, the "War on Christmas." Silly, yes, but symptomatic.)

Only bad options in Iraq?

2006-12-01T08:49:00.000-08:00

This post by James Fallows explains how there's mostly only bad choices left in Iraq.

But one thing is clear: no matter how it happens, if things end badly, they will be blamed on the "liberal" media, the Democrats, the fickle American public, and the Iraqis themselves.

On a related note, NPR just ran an interview with two Iraqi exiles in Jordan this morning. Both well-educated, with excellent English, had to leave the country due to very serious threats on their lives and those of their families. One worked for the US occupation authorities; the other had the ability to borrow and pay $25,000 after being kidnapped, thus becoming a marked man.

Again, one would think that the self-proclaimed "law-and-order" Republicans would be the ones to understand how you cannot have a successful country, much less a "Democracy", without some law and order.

The Blame Game, continued

2006-11-30T15:09:00.000-08:00

A good blog post from Marshall on the deflection of blame...

Blame the Victim

2006-11-29T11:24:00.000-08:00

Last night's Talking Points by Bill O'Reilly had some classic quotes. As with Ann Coulter, this is commentary that might perhaps be best ignored, in the hope that it would just go away - but it is representative of what a large segment of the US population is being fed.

The appetizer:

The Iraq War has morphed into a number of conflicts, much like the chaotic Baltic situation under President Clinton.

He then argues that it should not be called a "Civil War". Perhaps: it might be worse than that. Baltics? Did he mean Balkans? But why bring it up, other than to mention Clinton? But that was clearly a civil war, by anyone's definition. (Of course, he ignores the obvious fact that Clinton did not exactly trigger the civil war by invading the Balkans - or Baltics, at that, but was one of the few Western leaders to do something to stop the Balkan conflict.)

And then:

The problem in Iraq is not American. The problem is the Iraqis themselves. They're not fighting for their freedom in a way that puts the bad keys [sic] on the defensive.

There is only so much the USA can do. If the Iraqi people are unwilling to challenge the bad guys, the bad guys will win — period.

Hmm, I thought that the Iraqi people had corageously challenged the bad guys when they voted in the elections, with a turnout much larger than in the US. Also, when they rose up against Saddam in '91? And what about the Kurds?

The conclusion:

If the Bush administration will not consider dividing the country into three autonomous regions, then it must consider allowing the Iraqi military to run the place, much like Musharraf runs Pakistan. Yes, that would be brutal, but clearly, the Iraqi people are not embracing freedom. So imposing order through a military strong man might be the only way.

Of course, the American media is not helping anyone by oversimplifying the situation and rooting for the USA to lose in Iraq. And that is what some media people are doing.

Hmm... Wasn't the original intention to spread Democracy in the Middle East? If we end up with a dictator, wouldn't that be akin to losing? Bill, it looks like you want the US to lose!

As for not embracing freedom, some 2003 quotes by Donald Rumsfeld come to mind:

"Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things... Stuff happens."

Banana Republic Watch: Ed Meese

2006-11-26T18:43:00.000-08:00

GQ's interview with Ed Meese, a member of the Baker Iraq Study Group, summarizes many of the problems with the Bush administration's thinking about military tribunals and "illegal combatants". What these folks don't seem to understand is that this path leads directly to dictatorship, or, at least, a Banana Republic. Here it is:

-----

Q: Let's move to the Geneva Conventions. A lot of people are concerned that terrorism suspects don't have any kind of habeas corpus.
A: In order to be covered by the Geneva Convention, you have to fulfill certain requirements. Number one, you have to be in uniform. Number two, you have to be part of a military unit subject to military discipline. Number three, you have to be engaged in combat with other military units and not primarily striking at civilians. So there are a number of criteria in the Geneva Convention that are not met by everyone on the battlefield. Then there's another category of people going back to the Revolutionary War—people who were in those days called spies. If they were not in uniform, they were subject to being summarily executed.

Q: You mean they were executed without even a military tribunal?
A: I think there were some. Also, a "tribunal" could be a military commander ordering the hanging. I think that's what happened to some of them.

Q: You're advocating summary execution.
A: Well, yeah, that happens in the military. Illegal combatants are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.

Q: So we call them "illegal combatants," without using any legal basis to determine whether they're illegal or not.
A: Well, we do. We have military tribunals.

Q: But not always, apparently.
A: My understanding is that illegal combatants are subject to military tribunals. But in any event, they have been captured on the field of battle, and anyone captured on the field of battle is either one of these two categories. And both categories can be detained until the end of hostilities.

Q: When we talk about being detained until the war is over, we're talking about a war that could go on for half a century.
A: Absolutely.

Q: Doesn't detaining someone that long compete with some of the values in the Constitution?
A: No, it doesn't.

Q: We value a speedy trial, as a culture. That's why we put it in the Constitution.
A: We value a speedy trial for criminals. But a person who's been apprehended and captured on the field of battle, that status itself identifies them as either a prisoner of war or an illegal combatant.

Q: Unless they live there.
A: Well, how many people do you have standing around the field of battle?

Q: It depends the battle. Certainly it's possible.
A: And of course, that's why the president has applied the military tribunals. So that people have the ability, if they claim their innocence, to demonstrate it. But the reason why you detain the people is that you don't want them going back and taking up arms against our soldiers.

Q: Shouldn't we extend them the right to a public trial for that purpose?
A: Why would we? Why would you do that to somebody who's not entitled to it under any law? Why would [we] extend the laws to people who are trying to kill Americans?

------

As the interviewer points out later, many criminals in the US are trying to kill Americans as well, yet they have the right to a fair trial. And without a fair trial, how is one to know if that's really who they are?

These are the same arguments that tin-pot dictators all over the third world have made over the last 50 years: "our enemies don't respect human rights, why should we?" "You have no human rights when you're dead." And so on. Resistance to these arguments, even in the face of terror, is what distinguishes truly civilized, democratic societies. You can respect human rights and still be strong and ruthless your pursuit of the bad guys; in fact, violating them is a sign of weakness.

Andrew Sullivan also points out Meesese's disingenuousness with respect to torture, in the same interview. Sullivan also links to this great speech, worth quoting again:

This week, again, the Government of the United States, a land founded on a commitment of justice for all - my country - tells us that detainees in its campaign against terror have "no rights." ... The act abolishes the writ of habeas corpus, which Thomas Jefferson called one of the essential pillars of the American Republic. It gives the president the potentially despotic power to remove anyone from the protection of the law simply by carving upon his body a label � the words "unlawful enemy combatant."

.... Once more, the model that is adhered to is not the rich criminal or military justice system of the United States, but the model of Franz Kafka's Penal Colony. What attitude towards justice does this reveal?

I am not here to argue for release or freedom for those detained in the campaign against terror. I am arguing for justice. That is something quite different. It may well be that Majid Khan is a serious criminal responsible for crimes against humanity. It may well be that he used or promoted the use of terror as a device. If that is so, he should be charged and given a fair chance to defend himself. This trial, fairly run, will vindicate my nation's counterterrorism efforts. It will show those who are held for heinous criminals, if they are heinous criminals. It would promote the view in the world that my nation has and pursues a just cause, and treats those in its power with justice, though the justice be severe.

Finally, as pointed out in TPM:

Meese is not a has-been from the Reagan years. He has been a key advisor to the current White House on the nominations and confirmations of Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. This is a man who is widely considered to be at the pinnacle of the powerful conservative legal movement. This is what we have come to.

The Baker Comission/Study Group

2006-11-26T08:52:00.000-08:00

As pointed out here, the "Iraq Study Group" has a lot of studying to do, since it does not have any Iraq experts, or even Middle East ones. Here's a good article by Michael Kinsley at Slate, about why such groups are really formed.

There are many reasons to be cautious about this team (the presence of Ed Meese being only one of them). The New Yorker's George Packer writes:

The Republicans had their neoconservative spree and emerged this month from its smoking wreckage, in Iraq and at the polls, with nothing to steady them except the hope that two aging condottieri from the first Bush Presidency, James A. Baker III and Robert Gates, can lead the way out. These are the same men who, fifteen years ago, abandoned Afghanistan to civil war and Al Qaeda, allowed Saddam to massacre his own people, and concluded that genocide in the Balkans was none of America’s business

Christopher Hitchens also makes a good argument for why Baker might not be the best man for the job. And also recalls:

For millions of Iraqis, the betrayal of their uprising against Saddam in 1991 is something that they can never forget. They tend to bring it up, too, and to fear a repetition of it.

In all of this, one must feel truly sorry for the Iraqi people, who suffered through Saddam Hussein, the absurd Iran-Iraq war (back when Saddam was on the US side), the Gulf War, the supressed insurrection at its end, the UN sanctions, the 2003 invasion, and then this bungled occupation, which might lead to even worse to come. And sorry for the Iranian, Kuwaiti, and American victims of the entire thing too.

Finally, here's one of those "what-if" questions: Would Saddam have been dissuaded from invading Kuwait, back in 1990, if the Bush I administration had been really clear about the consequences? Instead, we had these quotes from the US embassador, meeting with Saddam shortly before the invasion:

"We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."

How many lives might have been saved?

Fun with Electronic Voting Machines

2006-11-22T10:36:00.000-08:00

Salon has an update on the Florida 18,000 missing-votes-mess.

How appropriate that it was Kathleen Harris' old district. And no paper trail. They had 6 years to get it right, but didn't.

Simpson and The Simpsons

2006-11-22T09:41:00.000-08:00

So it turns out that Rupert Murdoch got the killer's interview killed. (Somehow, Fox News still does not have anything to do with Fox TV, and claims credit for the cancellation too.)

But only when it was clear that this was not going to be good for the bottom line, let alone whatever reputation they might still have.

Simpson and "The Simpsons" teach some interesting lessons about the Free Market (Milton Friedman, RIP):

Sometimes it leads to good results: Bart, Lisa, Homer and Marge, in a witty and subversive extended run on FOX TV.

Sometimes it gives us OJ interviews. Or at least, it tries.

"What God wants, God gets, God help us all". - R. Waters.

Robert Altman, RIP

2006-11-22T08:25:00.000-08:00

Never got to be a big fan, but enjoyed his unique approach to moviemaking, especially in "The Player" and "Short Cuts".

Just yesterday, saw his last movie, "A Prairie Home Companion" again on a plane (a "minor work"), and it is made rather explicit that death is hovering over all the participants, which Altman conveys with a sense of nostalgia, acceptance and peace.

Banana Republic Watch

2006-11-22T07:57:00.000-08:00

From the Washington Post:

Former attorney general Janet Reno has taken the unusual step of openly criticizing the Bush administration's anti-terrorism strategy -- joining seven other former Justice Department officials in warning that the indefinite detention of U.S. terrorism suspects could become commonplace unless the courts intervene.
....
In their brief, Reno and the other former Justice Department officials said: "The government is essentially asserting the right to hold putative enemy combatants arrested in the United States indefinitely whenever it decides not to prosecute those people criminally -- perhaps because it would be too difficult to obtain a conviction, perhaps because a motion to suppress evidence would raise embarrassing facts about the government's conduct, or perhaps for other reasons."

David Lynch campaigns

2006-11-20T14:40:00.000-08:00

Much of the news, even the so-called "entertainment news," is depressing these days. One must ask: where is the joy? Must be out there somewhere.

So some much needed levity here: David Lynch's campaign for a best-actress Oscar for Laura Dern. I look forwards to seeing his latest, "Inland Empire".

Quick scoring of Lynch's ouvre I've seen:

- Mullholland Drive: A. Great performance by N. Watts.

- The Straight Story: A+. Produced by Disney, G-rated, excellent.

- Lost Highway: The first half of the movie gets an A+; the second, a B- or worse.

- Wild at Heart: C+. Don't know why this got top prizes at Cannes. Almost a self-parody.

- Blue Velvet: A. A revelation, when I saw it in the theaters in 1986.

- Dune: B+. Not so bad, watched on a decent home theater. Much better than the rather boring mini-series that was made a few years ago.

- Elephant Man: A+

- Eraser: B-. Points for atmospherics, being a "cult movie". But didn't get it, I guess.

"Twin Peaks" deserves special mention: the first season gets an A+; the second season gets a B- except for the A+ first episode and the Lynch-directed one that reveals the killer; the movie, "Fire Walk with Me", gets an F.

Politics and the English Language

2006-11-16T16:55:00.000-08:00

This New Yorker's comment on Bush's use of "Democrat" vs. "Democratic" reminded me of the famous "Language Memo", allegedly written by Newt Gingrich, which circulated among Congressional Republicans in the 90's. (Aside: from the Web, it is hard to tell what year this memo was written, when it was circulated, and who actually wrote it. I'd also like to know if the title came with the original: Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.)

Both, of course, remind one of Orwell. Click here for his famous essay of the same name.
(Update: a better-formatted version is available from Russia.)

This is one of the things that the GOP has done better than the competition: It's not the "estate tax," it's the "death tax". (I myself prefer to call it the "Paris Hilton tax".) Not logging, but "healthy forests". And so on; not just with names or words, but, in general, "talking points" and "framing the debate". If you get to frame the debate in your own terms, your chances of winning are greatly improved.

In the spirit of bipartisanship, another classic case: "pro-choice" and "pro-life". Of course, it is less attractive to be "anti-choice" or "anti-life"...

FOX and OJ: O'Reilly should boycott FOX

2006-11-15T16:30:00.000-08:00

I started this posting with this: hope that the self-proclaimed "culture warriors" at FOX News call the upcoming FOX-OJ Simpson production for what it is.

It turns out that Bill O'Reilly is suitably outraged: but he's not calling for a boycott on FOX, and actually said:

For the record, Fox Broadcasting has nothing to do with the Fox News Channel.

What a coincidence, then, that they share a name! One of them should sue the other.

I just hope that whatever money is made from this, it all goes to the victims' families. Not just OJ's, but also the money that FOX makes. Fat chance...

A recent New Yorker profile of Rupert Murdoch appears to confirm that he cares more about power and money than ideology, and is now starting to hedge his bets with the Democratic candidates for 2008. As with most of the media in most of the world (and, especially, in the US), he certainly cares more about money than good taste, common decency, or justice. The OJ thing is just the latest proof of this.

El Cucuy

2006-11-15T14:32:00.000-08:00

From an interesting New Yorker article on El Cucuy de la Mañana,
the radio host of a very popular Spanish-language morning show:

The Hispanic locutores of today—like immigrant radio hosts from the past—both strengthen the culture of origin and help to hasten assimilation. “This kind of thing—I hate to use the words ‘multi-cultural diversity’—in broadcasting is unique to the United States,” Henry Sapoznik, an American cultural historian, said. “There is no corollary, even in Canada or England or other countries with big immigrant populations. In every other country, to get access to radio, you needed political power. Here all you needed was money.”

I'm not sure that they translated "Cucuy" properly, though...

Botero and Abu Ghraib

2006-11-15T09:06:00.000-08:00

Slate has a slide show on Fernando Botero's Abu Ghraib paintings. (Warning: disturbing images.)

These are the (unintended?) consequences of authorizing torture. We will see if the secret White House and Justice Department memos that authorized it are ever made public.

Fair and Balanced

2006-11-14T20:02:00.000-08:00

A very interesting Fox News Memo, from the Vice President of News:

The elections and Rumsfeld's resignation were a major event, but not the end of the world. The war on terror goes on without interruption. Jennifer Griffin sent in info on Hamas' call for attacks on American interests. And let's be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents, who must be thrilled at the prospect of a Dem-controlled congress.

Actually, if I were an insurgent, I would be thrilled at how divided, blind, and ill-informed the American public might be, with this kind of media in charge. Could it be any easier to manipulate? (Just issue some threat, and you'll get coverage 24 hours a day.)

The Fox story about that Hamas threat is here. One would think the bigger story, at that point in time, would be Israel's tragic mistake, which killed 18 civilians, including children. (In the US media, it was drowned by the elections.) Just the steady toll of a conflict for which that US has all but abandoned peacemaking efforts in the last 6 years.

Bad AP writing, and uninformed readers

2006-11-14T13:34:00.000-08:00

When the 2006 conflict between Israel and Lebanon ended, the AP put out this story, which was posted at Yahoo, among many other places. Here's how it starts:

"Truce will be Israel's last, Lebanon envoy declares"

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Lebanon's UN ambassador bitterly slammed Israel's month-long bombardment of his country ahead of a hard-won truce, and vowed that the treaty would be Israel's last with any Middle East country.

"Lebanon will be, I think, the last state to sign a peace treaty with Israel," UN ambassador Nouhad Mahmoud told CNN television's "Late Edition" program, without explaining the remark.

He called the agreement a "crucial" test for all the parties involved.

Without yet venturing any opinions on the Middle East conflict, let me just say that this is a classic case of very, very bad writing on the part of the AP, bordering on the irresponsible.

The AP writer cannot tell the difference between a truce and a peace treaty, which is crucial in the Middle East. There have been lots of truces, but fewer peace treaties. Israel has signed two peace treaties with its neighbors so far, each of which was a considerable achievement: with Egypt in 1979 (with Carter's help), and with Jordan, in 1994 (with Clinton's help). Still pending: Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon.

The ambassador was simply saying that Lebanon would be the last to sign. He might have been echoing a column by Tom Friedman, which, if I remember correctly, argued that while many people expect Israel to sign a peace treaty with Lebanon before it does the same with Syria, the reverse would be more likely.

As it turns out, the first time I visited a well-known right-wing blog, I happened upon a discussion of this piece. The blogger, and most of the readers, took the AP report to mean that the Lebanese ambassador had threatened to destroy Israel!

How terrorism works, and what Al-Qaeda wants

2006-11-14T11:50:00.000-08:00

Stating the obvious:

How does Al-Qaeda, or any other terrorist organization, measure success? Their "metric" is not necessarily the number of people that they kill. They do want to achieve the maximum "effect," and spectacular attacks that kill lots of people are a part of this. But what, really, are their ultimate goals?

This, of course, depends on the particular group; but it seems that, in general, one of these goals is to get their enemies to do stupid things in reaction to the terrorist threat. The cliche, "when we give up our civil rights, the terrorists have won", can be quite true.

And it seems clearer every day, that in invading Iraq, the US walked into a trap, especially, given the mismanagent of the post-war invasion.

We can argue endlessly about the rationale for the invasion - the WMD stories, the cherry-picking of intelligence, the shifting justifications, etc. Among the confusion, we can find good reasons for wanting to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and good intentions for the future of Iraq.

What is really inexplicable, and unforgivable, is the bungling of the occupation once the decision to invade was made. (Reports of Donald Rumsfeld threatening to fire the next person who brought-up the need for a post-invasion plan are quite disturbing.)

It was as if, having decided to jump into the deep end of a swimming pool, one neglected learning how to swim.

As a good blogger analysis of what Al-Qaeda points out:

The sad irony of the last five years is that al Qaeda gambled and lost. Their attack offended more Muslims than expected and their military position in Afghanistan folded like a house of cards. Then, unbelievably, with bin Laden’s outfit on the ropes Bush gave them exactly what they wanted.

Namely, the chaos in Iraq. There's also a provocative prediction, which could also explain why there have been no attacks in the US since 9/11:

What happens next? In my understanding, nothing as far as America is concerned. Notwithstanding mutations like Zarqawi’s former organization, which view killing (Americans, Shiites, whatever) as an end in itself, the terrorists got what they needed from us. Assuming that the old Al Qaeda has any influence relative to strategy-blind mutations, the folks who probably should worry are US-backed regimes like the al-Sauds and Murbarak who will turn to us in the face of a growing insurgency and find no help forthcoming. And, ultimately, Israel.

Those Electronic Voting Machines

2006-11-14T10:55:00.000-08:00

Nice: a Florida Congressional House seat is contested by a margin of 386 votes, and there are 18,000 voters whose House candidate was not recorded. Apparently, the machines had a touch-screen interface that did not always offer the proper choice of candidates.

Paper trail? There doesn't seem to be any. Hey, just ask the computers to count the votes again.

Update: see here for more details, and comments from CS profs. Dill and Jones.

Coffee rant no. 1: Starbucks sizes

2006-11-14T00:41:00.000-08:00

My friend Kristen has asked me to write a rant about Starbucks coffee sizes, which apparently annoy her as much as they annoy me. Not surprisingly, a little web research shows that the complaint is widespread.

First, the facts: The coffee sizes at Starbucks are called: "Short," "Tall," "Grande," and "Venti". Now, how the hell are you supposed to remember which is bigger, the "Tall", or the "Grande"? Especially if you speak enough Spanish to know that "Grande" means "big". Which is larger, "tall", or "big"?

My research has just informed me that "Venti" is "20" in Italian ("veinte", En Español). At least this conveys some useful information: size is 20 ounces. But still, who's to say that "Venti" has to be bigger than "Grande"? In mathematical terms, this is an attempt to specify a total order using three different types of units. That is, it makes no sense, except for the "Short" vs. "Tall" comparison.

One of the underlying reasons for this silliness is that Starbucks (along with every other food and beverage company in the US, it seems) does not want to use the word "small". The solution, as pointed out in many web pages, is for us customers to rebel and use the words "small", "medium," and "large". Dave Barry puts it best:

Just say you want a large coffee, people. Because if we let the coffee people get away with this, they're not going to stop, and some day, just to get a lousy cup of coffee, you'll hear yourself saying, "I'll have a Mega Grandissimaximo Giganto de Humongo-Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong decaf." And then you will ask for the key to the AquaSwooshie.

And when that happens, people, the terrorists will have won.

(A correction to Barry's column: Seattle's Best is actually owned by Starbucks, since 2003.)

Finally: This article at Slate explains why the smallest sizes at Starbucks are not advertised - and how the smaller capuccino is better:

The difficulty is that if some of your products are cheap, you may lose money from customers who would willingly have paid more. So, businesses try to discourage their more lavish customers from trading down by making their cheap products look or sound unattractive, or, in the case of Starbucks, making the cheap product invisible.

Note like the "small" capuccino is that cheap - "$2.35 instead of $2.65." I'll expand on how the smaller coffee drink is usually the better one in a future post!

More about Spain

2006-11-13T10:04:00.000-08:00

See here for more more debunking the right-wing meme that the Spanish voters did the terrorist's bidding in 2004; you can also find more heated discussion here.

It is easy to see how the Spanish case can be certain people's worst nightmare: a well-informed voting public, punishing an incompetent government that cynically exploits the terrorist problem. For a sample of the distortions, see this column by Charles Krauthammer, before the 2004 elections. As I have pointed out before, most of this is nonsense:

The most important fact behind the Spanish case is ignored (the Government's lies about who perpetrated the attack).
Just because terrorists are perceived to favor one result does not mean that the elections should be canceled and victory handed to the other side.
How easy for an embattled government to say, "Vote for me, or the terrorists win."
Whether Bin Laden wanted Bush to win or lose in 2004 is, actually, in doubt. There are good arguments as to why he might have wanted Bush to win, and the timing of a video he released a few days before the elections has been offered as evidence. The mismanagement of the Iraq invasion was a gift to al-Qaeda. See, for example, Richard Clarke's book.
Withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq might actually hurt the interests of Islamic terrorists in Spain.

Consider this quote from Krauthammer:

A second direct attack on the United States would backfire. As Sept. 11 showed, attacking the U.S. homeland would prompt a rallying around the president, whoever he is. America is not Spain. Such an attack would probably result in a Bush landslide.

Gimme a break. "America is not Spain"??? I hope that in America, the result would not be a landslide if the President lied about the attack for political advantage and people found out.

In short, these arguments are insulting to the Spanish people. If the Conservative Prime Minister, instead of blaming ETA, had come out with a strong statement against terrorists in general, faced honestly the possibility that it could have been Islamic terror, and promised never to yield to it, he would have had a very good chance of winning the elections. And, who knows? That might have been the result that the terrorists intended.

Borat saved by House

2006-11-12T23:51:00.000-08:00

Indeed, truth can be stranger than fiction:

BORAT star Sacha Baron Cohen was beaten up by a passer-by after he tried to play a prank as his alter ego....
He was rescued by actor pal Hugh Laurie who had been on his way to a New York bar with Cohen.

Of course, it could just be tabloid fodder. But a good story nonetheless.