May 31, 2004
Raising
Joe Isuzu
Some mischaracterizing
of your opponent's statements
and
overall record is a commonly accepted part of the political game.
Flat-out voluminous lying, on the other hand, is something political
campaigns must pay a price for if our politics and its press coverage
are to retain any seriousness.
The Washington Post
has a must-read front page article (although the facts put together
read like it's an editorial),
From Bush,
Unprecedented Negativity, in today's edition. Here are the
lede paragraphs:
It was a typical week in the
life of the Bush reelection machine.
Last Monday in Little Rock,
Vice President Cheney said Democratic presidential candidate John F.
Kerry "has questioned whether the war on terror is really a war at all"
and said the senator from Massachusetts "promised to repeal most
of the Bush tax cuts within his first 100 days in office."
On Tuesday, President Bush's
campaign began airing an ad saying Kerry would scrap wiretaps
that are needed to hunt terrorists.
The same day, the Bush
campaign charged in a memo sent to reporters and through surrogates
that Kerry wants to raise the gasoline tax by 50 cents.
On Wednesday and Thursday, as
Kerry campaigned in Seattle, he was greeted by another Bush ad alleging
that Kerry now opposes education changes that he supported in 2001.
The charges were all tough,
serious -- and wrong, or at least highly misleading. Kerry did not
question the war on terrorism, has proposed repealing tax cuts only for
those earning more than $200,000, supports wiretaps, has not endorsed a
50-cent gasoline tax increase in 10 years, and continues to support the
education changes, albeit with modifications.
Scholars and political
strategists say the ferocious Bush assault on Kerry this spring has
been extraordinary, both for the volume of attacks and for the
liberties the president and his campaign have taken with the facts.
Though stretching the truth is hardly new in a political campaign, they
say the volume of negative charges is unprecedented -- both in speeches
and in advertising.
The article goes on to detail a drumbeat of blatant distortions of
Kerry from Bush-Cheney '04. It's a decent example of a press outlet
doing an appropriately objective job rather than something that's
artificially "balanced" (although reporters Dana Milbank and Jim
VandeHei do criticize Kerry in a lone paragraph); there is simply no
comparison between the conduct of the Bush and Kerry campaigns so far.
Josh Marshall offers another take, as well as an
illustrative example of the negativity gap:
But if you'd like a more
immediate and tangible read on the sorts of campaigns the two are
running, stop by the campaign sites of President Bush and John Kerry.
Now, look at how often,
candidate A's face appears on the front page of candidate B's website,
and vice versa. For instance, as of the early morning hours of
Monday, John Kerry's face appears 6 times on the front of the Kerry website, while President Bush's
face appears not once. On Bush's website, Kerry's face appears 4
times. Bush's face, not once.
By the way, if Bush-Cheney didn't think they were
getting their asses kicked right now, they'd be proud of their faces.
I don't think it's too idealistic to ask that President Bush and Vice
President Cheney be held to a higher standard for truth-telling than
Joe
Isuzu in their statements about John Kerry. So far, they've failed
to meet that standard in an overwhelming percentage of their campaign
ads, which is why Democrats should consider using "The Joe Isuzu
Campaign" as an effective moniker for Bush-Cheney '04.
Josh
Marshall Day
I hate to steal quotes
from Josh Marshall in back-to-back posts, but this is
just too smart not to highlight:
The most salient point to
emerge from the president's recent speech on Iraq was the new rationale
he put forward for continuing to support him and his policies:
effective management of his own failures.
Consider the trajectory.
Originally, the case for war
was built on claims about the Iraqi regime's possession of weapons of
mass destruction and its support for terrorist groups like al
qaida. To a lesser degree, but with increasing force as these
other rationales faded way, the case was made on the basis of
democratizing and liberalizing Iraq.
As that prospect too has
become increasingly distant and improbable, President Bush has taken a
fundamentally different tack. His emphasis now is seldom on what
good might come of his Iraq policy but rather the dire consequences of
its unmitigated 'failure' or its premature abandonment.
In other words, the president
now argues that he is best equipped to guard the country from the full
brunt of the consequences of his own misguided actions, managerial
incompetence and dishonesty.
Yep. In a nutshell.
May 29, 2004
Barbequers
for Bush
By 50% to 39% in a recent poll,
Americans said they'd rather have a backyard barbeque with President
Bush than with John Kerry. Chris Matthews has brought this up a bunch
of times in the past few days, as if it's somehow really important.
This election is not the 2000 election. We live in grave times. We may
have then, too, but now we realize it.
We're looking for competence in this election, not comedy. I'd hoped
Kerry would somehow work the ridiculous barbeque question to his
advantage, and yesterday in Green Bay he did:
See we're not electing a
barbeque master. We're electing a President of the United States. If
Bush wants to go make barbeques for the next four years, while I'm
President, that's fine by me.
I think Democrats should turn this "We're electing a
President, not a barbeque master" thing into a theme – come up with
about 5 other creative ways to say it and repeat them to death. It
serves to isolate Bush's cheesy personality – which is attractive to a
lot of voters out there, I suppose – from his competence, which even
many hardcore Republicans have come to seriously doubt.
I also just love the "barbecue master" label – it fits Bush like a
glove, and offers an illustrative image of his clownishness.
If you want cheese on your burger, though, I have a feeling you'd have
to remind him about 10 times.
Don't
Free
Martha
I'm a big Scott Turow fan,
for his talents
as a novelist and lawyer, but especially for
his recent work as an articulate death penalty
opponent and reformer.
Since I haven't paid terribly close attention to the Martha Stewart
case, I'll just adopt Turow's views as he laid them out in a
recent The New York
Times op-ed:
...What the jury felt Martha
Stewart did — lying about having received inside information
before she traded — is wrong, really wrong. And the fact that so
many on Wall Street have unashamedly risen to her defense is galling —
galling because what she did actually harms the market. Wall
Street leaders should be expressing chagrin that a corporate tycoon —
who was also a member of the New York Stock Exchange board —
could feel free to fleece an unwitting buyer.
Virtually everybody who takes
Ms. Stewart's side conveniently ignores the fact that there was some
poor schmo (or schmoes) out there who bought her shares of ImClone.
Those buyers, no matter how diligent, no matter how much market
research they read, no matter how many analysts' reports they
studied, could not have known what Martha Stewart did: that the Waksal
family was dumping shares. In my book, that's fraud.
Martha Stewart ripped her buyers off as certainly as if she'd sold them
silk sheets that she knew were actually synthetic.
Turow's argument runs much deeper than just Martha
Stewart. He thinks widespread defense of Stewart is symptomatic of our
"Two Americas" for justice:
Perhaps the most troubling
aspect of the whole case, to me anyway, is how the
arguments in defense of Ms. Stewart show a widespread mentality that is
all too comfortable with unwarranted privilege. It is yet another
example of how justice is very different for the rich and poor.
Consider: While it's
not insider trading for Martha Stewart to make some $50,000 using
stolen information because she did not have the duty not to steal
it, something very different would happen to you if you were
caught with, say, a stolen watch in your hand. In that
circumstance, the law virtually presumes you are guilty. For
decades, American juries have been instructed that when a person is
found in unexplained possession of recently stolen property, it is
proper to infer that the person knows it is stolen, and thus almost
certainly is guilty of receiving stolen property.
Likewise, while it's
technically not insider trading for someone to sell shares of
stock for more than what he knows, through inside information, to
be their true market value, the converse, your buying or selling that
hot watch at a steep discount, will almost inevitably get you
convicted for trading in stolen property. When we're talking
about these petty kinds of crimes, most often committed by the poor,
the law does not bother with airy discussions of fiduciary duty. I
can't take seriously those who want to believe that the starkly
differing contours of the law in these roughly parallel circumstances
are unrelated to the economic circumstances, and social standing, of
the typical violators.
May 28, 2004
McCain
I just watched McCain
on Conan O'Brien, and he was pretty damn funny. The highlight may have
been that he genuinely couldn't seem to recall the name of his current
opponent for his Arizona senate seat.
Once again, he made it clear that he has absolutely no interest in
being Vice President, and I believe him. It's odd that Democrats like
Joe Biden, Dick Gephardt, and Hillary Clinton continue to encourage him
to run – I figure somebody from the Kerry campaign must be prodding
them to keep such speculation alive, perhaps because publicizing
McCain's consideration boosts Kerry's bipartisan credentials. I also
think McCain would be Kerry's first choice if Kerry thought he would
say yes, and Kerry might even give it a shot anyway (it would be very
embarrassing if McCain declined and that leaked, however). Still, I'd
bet the farm that this is all noise and McCain won't be the VP
selection.
A new
CBS News poll says a Kerry/McCain fusion ticket
wallops Bush/Cheney by 53% to 39%. That improves upon Kerry's lone
standing against Bush by 6%, where he still beats Bush pretty easily,
49% to 41%. McCain helps Kerry most with veterans.
More importantly, the
CBS poll shows Kerry also being helped by John
Edwards on the ticket, with Kerry/Edwards beating Bush/Cheney 50% to
40%. Edwards improves Kerry's standing with conservatives and
independents, and with veterans, too. Curiously, Edwards hurts with
liberals a little bit, which doesn't make much sense.
Anyway, I still think Edwards is the guy. Edwards wears better on
voters than any politician I've ever seen, so if he and Kerry start off
with a 10% advantage, that's very confidence-inspiring because Edwards
is more likely to help expand that gap than narrow it.
Newsweek's Howard
Fineman
recognizes that Kerry is giving Edwards a
prolonged audition for the role.
By the way, in more good news for Kerry, a new Annenberg poll shows
his biographical ads are working in the swing
states. Also, most observers figured Bush would be the first to expand
the number of competitive states, but it's been Kerry so far. He's
already forced Bush to counter ads in Louisiana and Colorado, and
now he's taking him on in Virginia, too.
Also, I thought Kerry's speech yesterday laying out his national
security priorities was important, and I'll elaborate soon.
Beautiful
Song
Unless you're squeamish
about creative and incessant use of the f-word,
you should definitely
listen
to this wonderful new song by Eric Idle, formerly of Monty Python.
Washingtonienne
Washingtonienne unmasked
herself in
The Washington Post
on Sunday. Her name's Jessica Cutler. You can read more gossip at
The National Debate, which has links that will
provide every last detail of this Washington mini-scandal.
Those are the last words I'll ever write about this. I promise. It's
been a nice diversion, though, from thinking about slaughter in Sudan,
for instance.
May 27, 2004
The
Economy
The only good news for Bush's
reelection hopes
right now is job expansion, especially in several key electoral states.
Job gains the last few months have been strong by most measures. But
Bush will still almost certainly go down as the first President since
the Great Depression to see a net loss of jobs on his watch, so Kerry
will always have ammo to go after his complete record. More
importantly, despite recent job growth, high home ownership, sizable
GDP expansion, and rising stock values (even if the market has fallen a
little flat recently), Bush's ratings on the economy continue to tank.
Some of this may just be people playing catch up, and I expect Bush's
ratings on the economy to improve in future polls (although for his
sake they better improve fast, because history shows that people's
judgments on a President's economic handling cements by early Summer).
But there's also another explanation: other economic bread and butter
issues are bad, and people feel it. In a Democracy Corps memo Stan
Greenberg and James Carville sent out last week, they call attention to
some of them, none of which bode well for Bush's own job retention:
In assessing why Bush is
sinking, not
rising with the economy, one has to keep in mind people's assessment of
their own personal financial situation (which has not been rising, even
as it forms a part of the ABC News/Money consumer confidence measure);
the unemployment rate which leaves people with a sense of scarce jobs
and low bargaining power; the strikingly unequal income gains in this
recovery; the focus on outsourcing and reduced benefits for current
jobs; and most important, the dramatic rise in costs of health care and
gasoline.
Plus the fact that 4 million Americans have lost their health insurance
under Bush. Plus the fact that deficits are higher than ever. Plus the
fact that the cost of the Iraq War is rapidly approaching about $200
billion (after Bush administration officials told us, remarkably, it
would pay for itself, and his chief economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey,
was fired for suggesting publically that the war would cost – you got
it – about $200 billion). Plus the fact that everybody in the world
knows there's a looming social security crisis and Bush hasn't done a
thing about it.
Yes, Bush's stunning incompetence on fiscal management is surpassed
only by his dizzying incompetence on his management of the Iraq War.
He's an even bigger loser than his dad, who at least left office with
some unassailable foreign policy achievements. His Presidency is a
colossal failure using any historical standard.
Terror
Warning
Some have suggested
that
the terror warning issued yesterday was political,
that it intended to move the focus off Iraq and onto terrain more
favorable to Bush.
2 points:
1. According to recent polls, Bush's once enormous
advantage over Kerry on the "war on terror" has dropped precipitously.
Check
this out. So even if that is the Bush
administration intention, it's not as politically advantageous for them
as it once would have been.
2. Whatever the general motives behind the warning, this
Ashcroft statement was undoubtedly political:
The Madrid railway bombings
were perceived by Osama bin Laden and al
Qaeda to have advanced their cause. Al Qaeda may perceive that a
large-scale attack in the United States this summer or fall would lead
to similar consequences.
Let me translate: al Qaeda struck Madrid to ensure that the wussies
would beat the big, tough, pro-Iraq War, Bush-like conservative party
in Spain, and they succeeded. bin Laden might try to attack the U.S. to
force the "consequence" of the American/French wussy John Kerry winning
over George W. Bush, because they fear Bush so much.
Nonsense.
Obviously, Osama bin Laden believes that all al Qaeda attacks advance
his cause. And Ashcroft doesn't know anything more than you or I about
what bin Laden "perceives" or "may perceive." He slips this in solely
to sell the line of crap that bin Laden wants Bush to lose this
election, a pretty damn unscrupulous thing to include in an address
ostensibly about national security.
Plus, it's not only empty conjecture, it's illogical. Why wouldn't bin
Laden be rooting for Bush? Bush's braindead policies have both
guaranteed the continued appeasement of terrorist benefactors
(particularly in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) and served to make
international recruitment of future terrorists an absolute cakewalk for
years to come.
Regardless, whenever conservatives like Ashcroft interpret the Spanish
election to their benefit, they always leave out a couple very
important factors in the conservative Popular Party loss. First,
opinion polls showed the overwhelming majority of Spanish people
opposed the Iraq War while their administration did not. Secondly, in
the few days before the election, the Popular Party essentially lied to
voters. They put out misinformation suggesting that the Basque
separatist group Eta perpetrated the attacks, not the true culprits, an
al Qaeda allied group.
Now I can understand why Ashcroft might not appreciate Spanish voters
actually having the gall to oust an administration that lied to them
about national security matters, but most humans I think can accept
their reasoning.
In any case, I'm now busy looking for
those 7 terrorists. You know the lone woman in the
bunch is an M.I.T. grad? Pretty scary.
By the way,
Kerry's criticisms yesterday on Bush's handling of
national security were sharply on-target.
The
Base
Bob Novak has written several
articles this year detailing Bush’s problems with his Republican
base. Here’s the latest, "
Bush's Shaky Base."
This may be the key graf:
What most bothers [67
year-old faithful conservative] Devine and other conservatives is
steady growth of government under this Republican president. If
Devine's purpose in devoting his life to politics was to limit
government's reach, he feels betrayed that Bush has outstripped his
liberal predecessors in domestic spending. A study by Brian Riedl for
the conservative Heritage Foundation last December showed government
spending had exceeded $20,000 per household for the first time since
World War II. Riedl called it a "colossal expansion of the federal government since 1998."
Future studies will now have to factor in the “prescription-drug
benefit” (aka “pharmaceuticals industry subsidy”) which conservatives
never liked. Immigration reform is also wildly unpopular with them, and
the Iraq War is unpopular in some conservative circles, too. (Novak
himself opposed the war.)
Novak is such an ideologue that it’s hard to determine sometimes
whether his reporting is an accurate reflection of what’s going on or
just a firm political reminder to the Bush administration not to forget
about people like himself, but he certainly knows his right-wing
politics. Furthermore, recent polls (specifically
CBS News and ABC/WaPo) show some fairly
signifigant erosion in Republican support. So Bush really does have at
least some work to do with his base, which is real bad political news
for him, and the clock’s ticking (it’s almost June!).
In the end, I think both parties will show up at the polls and remain
with their guys, but Kerry increasingly has a better chance to pick off
Republicans than Bush does Democrats, whose unity in opposition to this
President is nearly complete. If Bush has to spend time and resources
on his base into this Summer and into the Fall – and it looks that way
– inevitably he’ll lose more of the independents who will probably
decide the election. All the polls I’ve seen show he’s fairly weak with
them to begin with and doesn’t have a whole lot of room for
growth.
Funny
When Kerry was asked
about Bush's weekend bike accident the other day, he thought he
was off the record, so he deadpanned a facetious question, "Did the
training wheels fall off?"
He wasn't off the record, though, so it's been reported and some of the
more humorless wingnuts have railed against Kerry for it. But really,
has Bush said something funnier than that, intentionally at least, in
the past 4 years?
May
26, 2004
Bush's
Speech
Due to a series of by
now well-documented errors that began with Rumsfeld’s insistence
on invading with too few troops and the neocons’ absolute dismissal of
the
State Department’s well-laid plans for post-war Iraq,
President Bush no longer has much control over what happens in Iraq.
While his speech Monday night wasn’t quite the disaster his last few
major public addresses have been, it struck me as basically irrelevant.
A morbid fatefulness now dictates most of our politics: if there’s more
blood on the ground in Iraq this week, Bush’s speech will look bad; if
there’s less, he’ll look better.
A few other things:
1. Bush's proposal to tear down Abu Ghraib and build a new prison
seemed like a decent idea – even though it doesn’t address the systemic
detainee policy problems, I thought it would make for good symbolism in
Iraq (and for Bush, better politics at home). Then I heard an NPR
reporter this afternoon reciting Iraqis (including the U.S.-appointed
Interior Minister) responding to it as a rather silly idea, because
there’s little room for prisoners as it is now and it may exacerbate a
short-term population problem. NPR also reported that few Iraqis saw or
heard the speech because it was given in the middle of the night, and
it wasn’t in the morning’s papers.
2. The speech was mostly platitudinous and didn’t announce any real
choices. What Bush now seeks to communicate about Iraq is terribly
simple and awfully transparent:
“This
is my 5 point plan for Iraq – did you hear me?! I’ll say it louder!!
I’ve got a plan for Iraq!!! A plan!!!!”
3. Bush is lowering the bar. Remember all his ambitious rhetoric about
making Iraq a towering Middle Eastern democracy? Mostly gone. Now, you
hear Bush administration mouthpieces say their goal is merely
stability, and to see Iraqi leadership that isn’t openly hostile to the
U.S.. Such dramatic goal reduction should be called a flip-flop,
shouldn’t it?
4. Bush suggests "a force of 260,000 Iraqi soldiers, police, and other
security personnel" will soon be able to secure the country – first,
the military troops portion of that is only at about 15,000 and every
expert I know of says they're incompetent. Second, the administration's
goal of adding an additional 25,000 troops won't be met for years.
Third, even if they were ready, Bush doesn’t tell us whom would have
ultimate authority over them. Us? The interim government? Pretty big
question. He should level with us.
5. If Bush read the papers, maybe he wouldn't have to rely on advisers
too dishonest to tell him that Abu Ghraib (and other Iraqi prison
scandals) weren't just the result of a "
a few American troops who disregarded our
country and disregarded our values." He could inform the world
before
The New York Times
has to:
An Army summary of deaths and
mistreatment involving prisoners in American custody in Iraq and
Afghanistan shows a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military
units than previously known.
The cases from Iraq date back
to April 15, 2003, a few days after Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled
in a Baghdad square, and they extend up to last month, when a prisoner
detained by Navy commandos died in a suspected case of homicide blamed
on "blunt force trauma to the torso and positional asphyxia."
Among previously unknown
incidents are the abuse of detainees by Army interrogators from a
National Guard unit attached to the Third Infantry
Division, who are described in a document obtained by The New York
Times as having "forced into asphyxiation numerous detainees in an
attempt to obtain information" during a 10-week period last spring.
Great
Whites
Guarding Red Meat
When it comes to putting
industry officials in charge of government regulation, I think
the “fox guarding the henhouse” metaphor evokes an image not nearly
violent enough for what’s gone on in the Bush administration. It’s more
like Great White Sharks guarding slabs of red meat. Check out this
Sunday
Denver Post article:
Troy [lead counsel for the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration] is one of more than 100 high-level
officials under Bush who helped govern industries they once represented
as lobbyists, lawyers or company advocates, a Denver Post analysis
shows.
In at least 20 cases, those
former industry advocates have helped their agencies write, shape or
push for policy shifts that benefit their former industries. They knew
which changes to make because they had pushed for them as industry
advocates.
The president's political
appointees are making or overseeing profound changes affecting drug
laws, food policies, land use, clean-air regulations and other key
issues.
The Denver Post, God
bless ‘em, names names:
1.
Ann-Marie Lynch
The drug-industry lobbyist
who fought price controls joined the Health and Human Services
Department and has helped drug companies avoid the limits.
2.
Thomas A. Scully
The former hospital lobbyist
presided over an agency that helped a chain he once represented win a
favorable settlement in a Medicare fraud case.
3.
Daniel E. Troy
The lawyer who represented
major drug companies still fights for causes that benefit them as chief
counsel at the Food and Drug Administration.
4.
Charles Lambert
As a USDA official, the
former lobbyist for the meat industry who opposed labeling told a
hearing that mad cow disease was not a threat.
5.
Jeffrey Holmstead
The EPA official, a lawyer,
formerly worked for a firm that represents utility companies, which are
among the biggest air polluters.
6.
J. Steven Griles
The tenure of the veteran
energy lobbyist at the Interior Department was labeled an "ethical
quagmire" by the agency's inspector general.
And that’s just the beginning… Dozens more profiles can be found
here.
Business as usual, a skeptic might say.
The Denver Post says no:
Bringing bias to a federal
job isn't new. Presidents of all political persuasions have appointed
people who shared their party's values.
As president, Bill Clinton
peppered the federal bureaucracy with Democratic state officials,
lawyers and advocates from various environmental or public-interest
groups.
Only a handful of registered
lobbyists worked for Clinton, however.
Bush's embrace of lobbyists
marks a key difference because it allows "those who are affected by the
regulations to determine what the ground rules should be," said David
Cohen, co-director of the Advocacy Institute, which helps teach
nonprofits how to lobby in Washington.
While previous Republican
presidents hired lobbyists, "the Bush administration has made it rise
in geometric proportions," Cohen said, meaning Bush is "capturing the
instruments of government and using them for the ends" that favor
Bush's political supporters.
This is one issue Republicans can’t argue with a straight face, and
it’s wrong that they don’t just be honest and say, “
Yeah, we think we can do everything better
in the private sector, so as long as we control the EPA we’re going to
do everything we can to dismantle it.” Instead, for political
viability, they commonly downplay their antagonism for these government
agencies that have shown a capacity to protect people.
As a general rule, Republicans fight to privatize public infrastructure
while Democrats fight to protect it. Democratic patronage and Republic
patronage contrast accordingly. Moreover, George W. Bush and Dick
Cheney have worked to champion industry interests over public interests
their entire careers. For instance, look at Cheney’s concerted efforts,
waged over decades, to privatize the Pentagon. Even something that you
might expect to be an exception – like the ridiculous prescription-drug
benefit – is just a public handout that benefits drug companies more
than consumers.
G.W.
Interactive
"Dress'm
Up Dubya" is a hell of a
lot of fun. I guarantee it.
May 25, 2004
Jet-lagged or scandal-fatigued?
I don't know which, but I'm sorry that I won't post again
until late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning. I have to do my
homework on Bush's speech, his problems with his Republican base, Ahmed
Chalabi, 37 prisoners (and counting) "abused" to death, Big Oil,
Washingtonienne, Howard Stern, John Kerry's possible VPs,
Bush-appointed lobbyists, etc...
By the way, if you ever fly into or out of Chicago's O'Hare Airport,
based on my recent experience it might be a good idea to add about 10
hours or so to your scheduled departure and arrival times.
"Let
America Be America Again"
The
Wall Street Journal reported
yesterday that Kerry's new campaign "rallying cry" is "Let
America Be America Again," taken from the
beautiful
poem by the great African-American poet Langston Hughes. The first
few stanzas:
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used
to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the
plain
Seeking a home where he
himself is free.
(America never was America to
me.)
Let America be the dream the
dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong
land of love
Where never kings connive nor
tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by
one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land
where Liberty
Is crowned with no false
patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and
life is free,
Equality is in the air we
breathe.
(There's never been equality
for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland
of the free.")
And the last couple stanzas:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to
me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of
our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft,
and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the
plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless
plain--
All, all the stretch of these
great green states--
And make America again!
I love the poem and think the Kerry campaign is well-served by adopting
its title and ideas, for a few reasons:
1. While the public is nearly as divided as ever
politically and culturally, one of the few unifying ideas out there is
that America always holds the promise of freedom and equality. It's
optimistic and calls for unity, echoing John Edwards' calls to make the
"Two Americas" one. Kerry's hired a couple Edwards' speechwriters, and
I'm beginning to hear it.
2. It's fundamentally conservative – it doesn't
glorify some past Utopian America (that never really existed in the
first place, despite what Tom Brokaw or Tim Russert seem to convey
sometimes), but it pays homage to its core ideals as enshrined in the
Constitution. At the same time, it doesn't overlook our continuing
failures and asks us to do better. America is best served when it's
measured against its own ideals, and its the ideals themselves that
make this country exceptional.
3. It's timely – these have been a rough, rough few years,
in no small part due to the national management disaster that is the
Bush administration. We have not been living up to our ideals, and
there's no better example of that than The Torture Scandals.
4. The fundamental conservatism of a "Let America Be
America Again" message invites scrutiny of Bush's proclaimed
conservatism, which ultimately can only reasonably be seen as a lie.
Bush's central domestic policy calls for huge tax cuts and rampant
spending in a time of war, a radical idea by any historical measure.
Likewise, his central distinction in international affairs is as a
proponent of pre-emptive war, another radical idea by any American
historical measure. This administration is by no means conservative,
and certainly isn't liberal, either. It's just radically dysfunctional.
5. It pays respect to African-Americans, the soul of the
Democratic Party.
Check
This Out
Speaking of "Let America Be
America Again," check out
this video
interpretation. It's certainly heavy-handed at times, but there's
also something appropriately jarring about it. It's an impressive piece
of filmmaking.
The death numbers need to be updated, sadly, which I suppose
underscores its warning. Giving an exact figure for civilian casualties
in Afghanistan and Iraq is a bad move, too, because that's impossible
to calculate, as all the studies I've read on the subject concede.
Pelosi
Pelosi reams Bush in
this
San Francisco Chronicle interview. It's inflammatory and true. Republicans
are all over her for it, but I appreciate her bluntness. Good for her.
She's been a hell of a good House minority leader so far, by the way.
Great fundraiser, great disciplinarian.
Life
of
DeWine
I got this from Political Wire:
"The office of straight-laced
Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine (R) became the epicenter of salacious Capitol
Hill gossip Wednesday, when it surfaced that an entry-level DeWine
staffer apparently had been chronicling her steamy sex life on an
Internet weblog," the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.
"The blog was removed from
public view after another Washington blog, known as Wonkette.com,
linked to some of the racier passages from the DeWine employee's online
diary. The passages detailed the woman's affairs with several men,
purporting to include a married (but unnamed) chief-of-staff in a
federal agency, and discussed being paid for sex."
Political Wire also
provides a link to an exact reproduction of the
Washingtonienne
blog, the one alluded to above, which I'm sad to see shutdown. It
may be funniest if you read it as if Senator DeWine wrote it himself. I
know I did, and found it highly entertaining and informative.
May
20, 2004
Whistleblower
Military intelligence Sgt. Samuel Provance
goes on record in today's
Washington Post:
Military intelligence officers at the Abu Ghraib prison in
Iraq directed military police to take clothes from prisoners, leave
detainees naked in their cells and make them wear women's underwear,
part of a series of alleged abuses that were openly discussed at the
facility, according to a military intelligence soldier who worked at
the prison last fall.
Sgt. Samuel Provance said intelligence interrogators told military
police to strip down prisoners and embarrass them as a way to help
"break" them. The same interrogators and intelligence analysts would
talk about the abuse with Provance and flippantly dismiss it because
the Iraqis were considered "the enemy," he said.
The first military intelligence soldier to speak openly about alleged
abuse at Abu Ghraib, Provance said in a telephone interview from
Germany yesterday that the highest-ranking military intelligence
officers at the prison were involved and that the Army appears to be
trying to deflect attention away from military intelligence's role.
A later passage begs more questions about how exactly Major
General Geoffrey Miller changed Abu Ghraib's modus operandi. Miller is
the commander at the Guantanamo detention facility who was sent to Iraq
last August to, according to
Sy Hersh, bring an interrogation focus to Iraq's
prisons. Miller urged changing military policy so that military
intelligence would be in charge of the prison.
WaPo:
Provance said when he arrived at Abu Ghraib last September,
the place was bordering on chaos. Soldiers did not wear their uniforms,
instead just donning brown shirts. They were all on a first-name basis.
People came and went.
Within days – about the time Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller paid a visit
to the facility and told Karpinski, the commanding officer, that he
wanted to "Gitmo-ize" the place – money began pouring in, and many more
interrogators streamed to the site. More prisoners were also funneled
to the facility. Provance said officials from "Gitmo" – the U.S.
detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – arrived to increase the
pressure on detainees and streamline interrogation efforts.
"The operation was snowballing," Provance said. "There were more and
more interrogations. The chain of command was putting a lot of
resources into the facility."
Right now, I think we're at a point in the scandal where
Senate Republicans must choose whether or not they're gonna fulfill
their constitutional obligations and aggressively investigate this
thing, or if they'll do the Bush administration's bidding to obscure
it. If they want to help them push this "renegade MPs" fantasy, there
may be enough shadows for them to hide in, but the press has been all
over this thing.
In Monday's
Slate,
Fred Kaplan did a great job summarizing the chain of command and
presenting reasons why these torture scandals are likely to blow up
even more:
Read together, the magazine articles [New Yorker and Newsweek] spell out an elaborate, all-inclusive
chain of command in this scandal. Bush knew about it. Rumsfeld ordered
it. His undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Steven Cambone,
administered it. Cambone's deputy, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, instructed
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who had been executing the program involving
al-Qaida suspects at Guantanamo, to go do the same at Abu Ghraib.
Miller told Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of the 800 th
Military Brigade, that the prison would now be dedicated to gathering
intelligence. Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy,
also seems to have had a hand in this sequence, as did William Haynes,
the Pentagon's general counsel. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of
U.S. forces in Iraq, learned about the improper interrogations—from the
International Committee of the Red Cross, if not from anyone else—but
said or did nothing about it for two months, until it was clear that
photographs were coming out. Meanwhile, those involved in the
interrogations included officers from military intelligence, the CIA,
and private contractors, as well as the mysterious figures from the
Pentagon's secret operation.
That's a lot more people than the seven low-grade soldiers and
reservists currently facing courts-martial.
So, what happens next?
First, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee have said they
will keep their hearings going until they "get to the bottom of this."
Republicans as well as Democrats are behaving in an unusually—and
unexpectedly—aggressive fashion on the question of how high up the
blame should go.
Second, the courts could get involved. Newsweek reports that the
Justice Department is likely to investigate three deaths that occurred
during CIA interrogations, possibly with an eye toward charges of
homicide. War-crimes charges, for willful violation of the Geneva
Conventions, are not out of the question. Rumsfeld and Cambone could
conceivably face perjury charges; if the latest news stories are true,
their testimony before the armed services committees—taken under
oath—will certainly be examined carefully.
Third, Seymour Hersh seems to be on his hottest roll as an
investigative reporter in 30 years, and the editors of every major U.S.
daily newspaper aren't going to stand for it. "We're having our lunch
handed to us by a weekly magazine! " one can imagine them shouting in
their morning meetings. Scoops and counterscoops will be the order of
the day.
All of these hound-hunts will be fueled by the extraordinary levels of
internecine feuding that have marked this administration for years.
Until recently, Rumsfeld, with White House assistance, has quelled
dissenters, but the already-rattling lid is almost certain to blow off
soon. As has been noted , Secretary of State Colin Powell, tiring of
his good-soldier routine, is attacking his adversaries in the White
House and Pentagon with eyebrow-raising openness. Hersh's story states
that Rumsfeld's secret operation stemmed from his "longstanding desire
to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations
from the CIA." Hersh's sources—many of them identified as intelligence
officials—seem to be spilling, in part, to wrest back control.
Uniformed military officers, who have long disliked Rumsfeld and his
E-Ring crew for a lot of reasons, are also speaking out. Hersh and
Newsweek both report that senior officers from the Judge Advocate
General's Corps went berserk when they found out about Rumsfeld's
secret operation, to the point of taking their concerns to the New York
Bar Association's committee on international human rights.
The knives are out all over Washington—lots of knives, unsheathed and
sharpened in many different backroom parlors, for many motives and many
throats. In short, this story is not going away.
May 19, 2004
American
Il Duce?
Here's Alan Dershowitz on Antonin
Scalia, via
Atrios:
He's an interesting guy. His father was a teacher at
Brooklyn college when I was there. His father was a proud member
of the American-Italian fascist party and got his doctorate at Casa
Italiano at Columbia at a time when in order to get your doctorate you
had to swear an oath to Mussolini. So he comes from an
interesting background and he went to a kind of military school in New
York which was a place where many children of fascists were
educated. Therefore to call him a conservative - he's never
expressed any conservative priniciples - he's a statist. He's a
man who is well in the tradition of Franco and Mussolini. Not
Hitler. He's not an anti-Semite - there's no bigotry or
racism in him at all. But he is somebody who has these views
which would have been very comfortable in fascist Italy or fascist
Spain.
That's a very strong charge from Dershowitz, which I'm sure
Scalia's defenders will characterize as wildly unfair and perhaps
racist (stereotyping Italians as fascist). Even if everything
Dershowitz says is verifiable, we shouldn't hold what people's fathers
do against them in America, so I think we should set his father's
background aside. However, I think a serious discussion about whether
or not Scalia's ideology is fascistic is fair game, and Dershowitz is a
serious legal mind. I'd like to hear Scalia himself point out exactly
those decisions where he takes decisively anti-statist stands.
I'm certainly no legal scholar, but I do follow the Supreme Court
fairly closely, and besides certain First Amendment cases, I find
Scalia's decisions utterly predictable in that they almost always
articulate the most radical right-wing positions.
Another
Disaster
Breaking News from
NBC:
Iraqi officials said a U.S.
helicopter fired on a wedding party Wednesday in western Iraq, killing
more than 40 people, including children. Senior Pentagon officials
confirmed that approximately 40 fatalities in an attack in the area
near the Syrian border, but told NBC News that the AC-130 returned fire
after coming under attack from militants.
More:
Associated Press Television News obtained videotape showing a truck
containing bodies of people who were allegedly killed in the incident.
Most of the bodies were wrapped in blankets and other cloths, but the
footage showed at least eight uncovered, bloody bodies, several of them
children. One of the children was headless.
Iraqis interviewed on the videotape said partygoers were firing in the
air in traditional wedding celebration. American troops have sometimes
mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire.
More:
The report is reminiscent of
an incident in July 2002, when Afghan officials said 48 civilians at a
wedding party were killed and 117 wounded by a U.S. airstrike in
Afghanistan's Uruzgan province. An investigative report released by the
U.S. Central Command said the airstrike was justified because American
planes had come under fire.
Yet
Another Kerry VP Update
Okay. Now, Newsweek sources repeat the old info. that
Kerry will pick his VP early, by the end of this month. This
contradicts other recent reports, as well as what
Kerry himself has said recently. Maybe he was just
laying the groundwork for a surprise, but I doubt it. We’ll see.
Here's
another reason John Edwards would be a great pick:
Republican incumbent George
W. Bush leads Democratic challenger John Kerry in North Carolina, but
according to a WRAL/Mason-Dixon Poll, if Kerry chooses Sen. John
Edwards as his running-mate, the race in the state currently becomes a
dead-heat.
Statewide, Bush is supported
by 48% of voters, while Kerry is backed by 41%, independent Ralph Nader
draws 3% and 8% remain undecided. With Edwards as Kerry's
running-mate, the GOP ticket of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney is
favored by 46%, the Kerry/Edwards Democratic ticket gets 45%, Nader
draws 2% and 7% are undecided.
Also, Brian Cook adds something valuable:
You
report that Kerry does better with women than with men, which is
true. I think it's important to note that women vote in greater numbers
than men usually. So, gender gap isn't as big a problem for Kerry as it
is with Bush.
True, and the key point for this discussion is that
women not only vote in greater numbers than men, but polls have shown
more swing voters this year are female, another reason for Kerry to
select LLJ ("Ladies Love Johnny").
Also, CNN.com groupies
think Kerry will pick Edwards.
Wes Clark wins a
Boston Globe
endorsement, or close to it.
May 18, 2004
A
Beautiful Day
Congratulations to all the new
couples
in Massachusetts. The pictures of their happiness yesterday, at last,
make me proud to be an American. It's also fitting that the landmark
day fell on the anniversary of another American leap of progress, the
Brown v. Board of Education
verdict.
Not even our regressive President could spoil the day. He put out a
terse statement that began with, "
the sacred institution of marriage should
not be redefined by a few activist judges."
Of course, at nearly the same time as the statement was released, he
contradicted himself by praising the activist Supreme Court Justices
who unanimously decided
Brown v.
Board of Education
50 years ago. If that court had included the ideological predecessors
of Rehnquist (who carried segregationist views well into his
adulthood), Scalia, Thomas, and Bush,
Brown
wouldn't have made it.
John Kerry had it right in his speech
yesterday:
Today more than ever, we need
to
renew our commitment to one America. We should not delude ourselves
into thinking for an instant that because Brown represents the law, we
have achieved our goal, that the work of Brown is done, when there are
those who still seek, in different ways, to see it undone –
to roll back affirmative action, to restrict equal rights, to undermine
the promise of our Constitution.
Kerry, of course, has been an integrationist his whole life. In
John F. Kerry: The
Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best,
David Thorne – Kerry's good friend at Yale and future brother-in-law –
remembered an encounter between Kerry and Bush when they were both Yale
undergrads in 1965. Neither Kerry nor Bush remembers meeting at Yale,
but Thorne swears they did (the story's on page 40):
On this day, Bush met Kerry
and the
two had a discussion about busing, according to Thorne. Court cases
involving school integration were in the news by 1965. Bush, whose
father was running for Congress back in Texas, engaged Kerry, Thorne
recalled. "I just remember fairly vividly, they were having a
conversation about busing. John had been participating in busing stuff,
but George was very conservatively placed and thought it was a crazy
idea."
Kerry
VP Update
Many of the
things I wrote about Kerry’s VP prospects on
April
12, as well as my individual feelings about
Wes Clark’s
and
John Edwards' suitability, still stand, but
there’s been some new information.
Here’s what I know:
1. The timetable for Kerry’s selection has reportedly been pushed back
to a date that falls more in line with traditional announcements.
Originally, the Kerry campaign floated the idea that Kerry might pick
someone by the end of May, but now it looks like it would be June at
the earliest, or more likely July just before the Democratic National
Convention (July 26 – 29), as usual. One of the reasons for this, no
doubt, is Kerry’s extraordinary fundraising pace, which has
well-exceeded expectations and lessened the need for money help from a
#2. Also, the later in the cycle you can get a bump in the polls and a
national newsblitz to focus on your campaign, the better, so if Kerry’s
not in trouble, he may as well wait.
2. According to John Mercurio, who does “Ticket
Talk” for CNN's
Inside Politics
every Monday, Kerry and his search committee chair Jim Johnson have met
with all 5 people on what he calls “the short list.” Those 5 people are
John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, Bill Richardson, Tom Vilsack, and Wes
Clark.
Bloomberg reported a
week or so ago that Bob Graham was on the short list and Bill
Richardson was not, but that doesn’t jibe with anything else I’ve been
hearing or reading.
3.
The unions want Gephardt. I've also read that of
everyone being considered, Kerry likes Gephardt the most personally.
4. With problems in Iraq continuing to mount, the conventional wisdom
is that General Clark’s stock rises. However, Mercurio reports that
Gert Clark, or “The General’s General,” as Wes often refers to his
wife, is vociferously opposed to him being VP. Others have written that
he’d be more interested in something that would allow him to more fully
leverage his experience, like Director of Homeland Security, Secretary
of Defense, or Secretary of State. I’ll say this – I’d feel safer if
Wes Clark were running Homeland Security.
5. Richardson had a generally
positive profile in
The New York Times Magazine last
week (sorry, no longer on-line for free). One part of me is really
scared that Democrats will miss a momentous opportunity to honor Latino
voters – an increasingly important group to curry favor with – if Kerry
doesn't pick Richardson. He probably has the biggest potential upside
of any of the candidates, but it's nearly impossible to measure
beforehand the impact his presence on the ticket would have on Latino
turnout and choice.
6. I still prefer Edwards, Clark, and Richardson, probably in that
order. One of the considerations here is who would most help Kerry with
the gender gap (polls consistently show Bush doing much better with
men, and Kerry doing much better with women). I haven’t seen any hard
data on it, but presumably Edwards would help maintain or expand the
advantage with women, and Clark could help reduce the gap with the men.
All three would be tremendous assets, I think. Vilsack is a bit
of a question mark and Gephardt is so bland a choice I fear it would
damage Kerry more than it would help.
7. McCain, by the way, looks to me to be
out of the question, as much as big news media
outlets wish it weren't so.
May 17, 2004
Copper
Green
Sy Hersh's New Yorker piece,
The Gray Zone, is indeed explosive, but it's gonna
be tough for its findings to blossom into a full-blown scandal since it
revolves around an operation, Copper Green, that officials are legally
forbidden to talk to Congress about in unclassified sessions.
In order to get the full story, we need a few good
whistleblowers.
On
Face the Nation
yesterday, Hersh not only asserted that there are plenty out there, but
also where to find them (by the way, it's an open secret that most
senior uniformed military officers detest Don Rumsfeld):
Let me just say this, though,
to the senators [Lindsey Graham and Carl Levin, other Face the Nation
guests], which is I – I – believe me, I know our military is full of
really dedicated people, and they can be very rough when they have to
be. But the kind of stuff that's gone on in this prison and in – and in
– and with this program has really offended some very senior people.
And you guys have a great staff, both the majority and minority. You've
got a lot of professonal people there. If you convene a serious
hearing, and I assure you some senior officers will come and, if you
give them enough protection, and tell you things that will really knock
your socks off. So go for it.
That's Sy Hersh, America's hellraiser. We need more.
Also,
Newsweek joined the
party yesterday.
Young
John
Kerry
The New York Times has a good article on John Kerry's prep school days,
which diverges a little in some of its conclusions (and is generally
more positive) from
a piece The New
Republic published early last month.
As hard as Bush-Cheney tries to depict Kerry as both politically and
personally spineless, and as willing as news media outlets often are to
fit their coverage of Kerry into that storyline, Kerry has remained
remarkably steadfast throughout his life to a specific set of political
and personal ideals. A less-admiring way to put it might be that he
beats to his own drummer.
The Times
sums it up well in a key graf:
Mr. Kerry has always been a
pace apart in every world he has inhabited — from grade school to
college to Vietnam to the Senate — moving forcefully and successfully
through diverse milieus without ever being fully of them. To his
critics, his ambition has always been just a little too obvious, his
manner too calculating. To his friends, his tenderheartedness and
complexities have been too little understood. Always and
everywhere, his seriousness has stood out.
I think this outsider quality can be a tremendous asset
for an American President. It fosters an independence necessary for
progressive decision-making, and it assures that he's felt some
degree of pain and isolation that gives him a greater understanding
into the marginalized constituencies in America most in need of
understanding leadership. As "the most liberal" member of the Senate,
Kerry has certainly championed the goals of these groups – racial
minorities, gays, the poor, the disabled – throughout his political
life.
In
The Times, Kerry's boyhood
best friend also talks about his vulnerability:
I think what doesn't come
across publicly is exactly the problem he had when I first met him, is
that people don't see that — first of all, I liked the fact that he was
hurt, that he could be hurt. He's a guy who can be wounded. He's got
tremendous sensitivities. I don't think that comes across at all in his
public persona. He sometimes will close off, like he doesn't need
anyone. But he does.
Kerry doesn't "feel our pain" in the spectacular way
Bill Clinton does. His empathy is quiet, with a dignified loneliness to
it – I think of a moment
Tom Olyphant witnessed back on April 23, 1971,
just before Kerry lobbed war decorations over a White House fence:
At the spot where the men
were symbolically letting go of their participation in the war, the
authorities had erected a wood and wire fence that prevented them from
getting close to the front of the US Capitol, and Kerry paused for
several seconds. We had been talking for days – about the war,
politics, the veterans' demonstration – but I could tell Kerry was
upset to the point of anguish, and I decided to leave him be; his head
was down as he approached the fence quietly.
In a voice I doubt I would
have heard had I not been so close to him, Kerry said, as I recall
vividly, "There is no violent reason for this; I'm doing this for peace
and justice and to try to help this country wake up once and for all."
The more I read about John Kerry, the more I come across instances like
this that demonstrate him to be a deeply patriotic and sensitive man.
Old-fashioned, really, in the way we like our Presidents.
TNR
From The New Republic's
"Notebook":
ABU GHRAIB IDIOCY WATCH I
"You know, if you look at–if
you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don't know if
it's just me, but it looks just like anything you'd see Madonna or
Britney Spears do onstage. Maybe I'm–yeah. And get [a National
Endowment for the Arts] grant for something like this. I mean, this is
something that you can see onstage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant,
maybe on Sex and the City – the movie."–Radio host Rush Limbaugh
speaking on May 4 about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib
ABU GHRAIB IDIOCY WATCH II
"I'm sure that our committees
are going to be asking the right questions. ... But a full-fledged
congressional investigation–that's like saying we need an investigation
every time there's police brutality on the street." –House
Majority Leader Tom DeLay on the same subject, May 4 (Thanks to Paul
Goode)
I don't know which statement has a higher moron quotient, but DeLay's
made me laugh harder. What a moral atrocity that guy is.
Miller
Lite
Georgia Senator Zell Miller,
whom recent polls suggest may be the only "Democrat" in the country who
supports President Bush, perpetuated an old political myth when he
called John Kerry "
an out-of-touch,
ultraliberal from Taxachusetts" Saturday.
Atrios eviscerates him:
First of all, since Kerry
happens to be elected to the Federal government he
has little control over state and local tax policy in his home
state. But, since Zell wants to play that game, let's turn to the
facts.
According to those lovable
nuts over at the Tax Foundation, Taxeorgia's state and local tax burden
ranks 18th in the nation, at precisely the national average of 10%
of income.
While in small government
loving Massachusetts, the state and local tax burden ranks 36th in the
nation, at 9.6% of income.
What about business
friendlyness? Well, Zell, sorry to say once again your tax-loving
commie state of Taxeorgia with its totally complicated tax code appears
to be downright hostile to business! At least compared to the
free market haven of Massachusetts! You see, Massachusetts,
according to the Tax Foundation, ranks 12th in the nation while Taxeorgia ranks 25th!
And, hey, what do you
know? It appears you welfare lovers in Taxeorgia are sucking at
the federal government's teat! Taxeorgia gets more from the
federal government than
it sends in taxes! For every buck you freeloaders send to DC you
get $1.01 back! What of Massachusetts? Well, suprise
surprise! Massachusetts is supporting layabouts like
Taxeorgia! A whopping $.25 of every dollar Massachusetts sends to
the Feds is stolen from them and redistributed to states which can't
manage to take care of themselves, like Taxeorgia.
That's exactly the kind of analysis blogs are good for.
Give the man some money.
Cut
and Run?
London's The Herald
reports that Bush and Blair
want to get out of Iraq soon after the transfer of power. Colin Powell
also seems to be throwing out some trial balloons of late. Blair's
spokesman:
"They have been working on a
joint strategy for the last few weeks and it has speeded up in the last
few days. It is a recognition that people need to see we have a grip,
that we are not there for ever amen, politically or militarily."
"Neither is this a case of
cutting and running, but showing we have a strategy of achieving what
we said we wanted to achieve: the transfer of authority to an Iraqi
government and responsibility to an Iraqi security system."
Could be good, could be disastrous, we'll have to wait and see if there
can be a strong, clear U.N.–backed plan. I know one thing for sure: if
we leave that country without real security or stable leadership, Iraq
II surely goes down as one of the most tragic foreign policy disasters
in history. Maybe we're already there, but irresponsible U.S. and
British abandonement would guarantee it.
Not
Too Swift
Joe Conason uncovers yet more "
Swift
Boat Veterans for Truth" Republican ties, as if there weren't
enough on record already:
When the "Swift Boat Veterans
for Truth" launched its campaign against John Kerry 10 days ago,
leadership and guidance were provided by Republican activists and
presidential friends from Texas -- notably Houston attorney John E.
O'Neill and corporate media consultant Merrie Spaeth. Indeed, although
the group made its debut at a press conference in Washington, it looked
and sounded like a Texas GOP operation.
On closer inspection, the
ostensibly nonpartisan "Swift Boat Vets" seem to have another pair of
significant sponsors with deep and long-standing Republican connections
in Missouri. Both are officers of Gannon
International, a St. Louis conglomerate that does lots of overseas
business in, of all places, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
May 16, 2004
Bombshell
How big a story
will The Gray Zone,
Sy Hersh's article posted a few hours ago on
The New Yorker website, be? We'll
have a better idea after tomorrow's morning shows, but to me it reads
as directly linking Rumsfeld to the torture of Iraqi detainees:
The roots of the Abu Ghraib
prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army
reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had
been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of
prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American
intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite
combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.
According to interviews with
several past and present American intelligence officials, the
Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by
several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical
coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to
generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A
senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last
week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing
desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary
operations from the C.I.A.
Kerry
the
Prosecutor
The part of John
Kerry's career most often overlooked is his time as a
prosecutor. Jeffrey Toobin shed some light on it in last week's
New Yorker. It's an
important article – one that generally shows Kerry
as an effective, results-driven, extraordinarily successful manager –
and Toobin may be right when he writes:
The issues that mattered to
him then have dominated his subsequent legislative career, and it is
his brief career as a lawyer, more than his record as a protester, that
could suggest what kind of President he would make.
May 15, 2004
What
Would Kirk Do?
Yesterday, I wrote that I would put John Kerry's recent poll
performance in historical perspective today, but I lied. Another day.
This isn't the first time I've lied, and according to
Growing Pains loverboy Kirk
Cameron, I'm headed straight to hell for it. If you want to hear Kirk's
thoughts on your sins, he will show you The Way
here.
God damn it.
May 14, 2004
David
Brooks
I don't agree
with everything David Brooks wrote in
this New York Times
op-ed from last week, but I think he makes an important point here:
Believe me, we've got even
bigger problems than whether Rumsfeld keeps his job. We've got the
problem of defining America's role in the world from here on out,
because we are certainly not going to put ourselves through another
year like this anytime soon. No matter how Iraq turns out, no president
in the near future is going to want to send American troops into any
global hot spot. This experience has been too searing.
Unfortunately, states will
still fail, and world-threatening chaos will still ensue. Tyrants will
still aid terrorists. Genocide will still occur. What are we
going to do then? Who is going to tackle the future Milosevics, the
future Talibans? If you were one of those people who thought the world
was dangerous with an overreaching hyperpower, wait until you get a
load of the age of the global power vacuum.
In this climate of
self-doubt, the "realists" of right and left are bound to re-emerge.
They're going to dwell on the limits of our power. They'll advise us to
learn to tolerate the existence of terrorist groups, since we don't
really have the means to take them on. They're going to tell us
to lower our sights, to accept autocratic stability, since democratic
revolution is too messy and utopian.
On one hand, the sobering lessons of Iraq
encourage future Presidents and the American public to see war for what
it really is. That's a good thing. In the near future, at least, I
think the days of thinking about and referring to wars as "cakewalks" –
as Rumsfeld/Cheney bud Ken Adelman did about Iraq – are over.
On the other hand, because of Iraq we're unlikely to support a war like
Kosovo, where we ousted Milosevic and saved probably hundreds of
thousands of Kosovar Albanians. In that situation, the relative evil of
not using American force to prevent the genocide far outweighed the
relative evil of dropping bombs.
We did fail to act in Rwanda in 1994, and it enabled the slaughter of
an estimated 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis in about 100 days. President
Clinton calls the inaction one of the great regrets of his presidency,
as well it should have been.
One of the legacies of Iraq, I'm afraid, is that it makes choosing the
tragic Rwandan course exceedingly more likely than choosing the noble
Kosovo course.
ARG
Ohio Poll
Ohio is a must-win state for
Bush-Cheney, so this
new ARG
poll is unwelcome news for them. Kerry's got 49% to Bush's 42%.
42% is a fairly awful number for an incumbent President to have in a
Republican state.
Tomorrow, I'll attempt to put Kerry's performance in recent polls in
some historical perspective, but the bottom line is that he's doing
exceptionally well for a challenger.
Bush has problems in Washington, too. Check out this from
The Hill:
Republicans on the Hill are
so frustrated with the White House that when Speaker J. Dennis Hastert
(R-Ill.) criticized the administration at a House GOP meeting last
week, the caucus burst into applause.
House Republicans? They're Bush's most loyal constituency. I read
something like that and become very optimistic that Democrats will have
a lot more people at the polls in November than Republicans.
May 13, 2004
Torture
The New York Times ledes with a very
interesting article entitled
Harsh C.I.A. Methods Cited in Top Qaeda Interrogations:
The Central Intelligence Agency has used coercive interrogation
methods against a select group of high-level leaders and operatives of
Al Qaeda that have produced growing concerns inside the agency about
abuses, according to current and former counterterrorism officials.
Nothing much surprising about that. In fact, I remember
when Khalid Shaikh Mohammed – whom most experts peg as the operational
mastermind behind both 9/11 and the U.S.S. Cole attacks – was taken, I
think people pretty much assumed he'd be taken off somewhere to be
tortured until he gave up information. I would never shed any tears for
that guy, and I don't think most other people would, either.
But this country desperately needs to have an honest debate to
determine exactly how we feel about torture. Last year, civil rights
stalwart Alan Dershowitz shocked many when he
opened the door to debate torture in
"ticking-bomb" terrorist cases:
If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in
the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to
be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of
the United States or by a Supreme Court justice.
Actually, Dershowitz supports an outright ban on torture,
but he also says if the U.S. engages in it – which, basically, we do –
then it should be subject to congressional and judicial oversight.
Others,
like Harvard Professor Michael Ignatieff, say that
we shouldn't because it's inefficient (pain doesn't necessarily produce
truth) and counterproductive (pain does produce more committed
terrorists, like Ayman al-Zawahiri), in addition to being brutally
inhuman.
Although I lean towards arguments like Ignatieff's, I really don't know
for sure. I want to consider all sides, and I'm sure they'll be lots to
digest in the coming months, given the controversies du jour.
What I do know is there's a huge difference between high-level
terrorists like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and lower-level terrorist
operatives, and there's an even bigger difference between low-level
terrorist operatives and your average Abu Ghraib detainee. Common sense
suggests the administration would like to orchestrate a campaign that
blurs the lines between those groups, and this
NY Times article
may well have been leaked for that purpose.
No matter what they say, though, Bush's and Rumsfeld's position has
basically been that they want unchecked freedom to do whatever they
want with anybody they choose to detain, which is wrong and
anti-democratic to the core. There should be transparency in this
process, so the public knows exactly where our government draws the
lines and how it's checked. Right now, there are a lot more shadows
than light, which is good for corrupt governments and bad for
democratic people.
By the way, this
Times reporting struck me as dubious:
Under such intensive questioning, Mr. Zubaida provided
useful information identifying Jose Padilla, a low-level Qaeda convert
who was arrested in May 2002 in connection with an effort to build a
dirty bomb.
How do we know it was useful information? Because John
Ashcroft told us so in a splashy press conference? His word means
nothing. Nobody other than the U.S. government has been allowed to talk
to Padilla, and they're not letting us in on any of the details of his
"connection with an effort to build a dirty bomb," so who can even
begin to judge his guilt or innocence?
May 12, 2004
60
Minutes II
Has more on Abu Ghraib and another Iraqi prison,
Camp Bucca, tonight at 8pm.
Pictures
Last week, I
wrote that the Abu Ghraib pictures were worth way, way more than
a thousand words. Certainly, they've created an earthquake in the media
that no amount of words could match. At the same time, though, the
power of the pictures actually may work to undermine the aspect of the
scandal that's potentially most damaging to the Bush administration –
that the pictures represent not just the misdeeds of a few heartless
soldiers, but numerous instances of failed leadership at the highest
levels that practically invited violations of U.S. law and the Geneva
Convention.
The systemic problems are more likely to be exposed by complicated,
detailed investigative reports from the the news media (like Sy Hersh's
New Yorker bombshells
1 and
2), the government (like
Taguba's report), and non-governmental
organizations (like the
International Red Cross report), and I think a lot
of people out there are so confident in their visceral ability to
register images that whatever they believe about them in their gut
right now might overwhelm anything that will be discovered via the
written word over the next few months.
In other words, we already know that Rumsfeld sought and approved more
laxity in how we can treat detainees, but as long as he's not
photographed actually practicing the inevitable result of those
approvals, he'll be in better shape with the public than Lynndie
England (who's forever enshrined, alongside several of Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's ex-girlfriends, in the Genital Mocking Hall
of Fame).
Iraqi
Detainee Scandal
This may fall under the
category of semantic quibbling rather than important
distinction, but I think it's more precise to refer to this as an
"Iraqi Detainee Scandal," rather than the "Iraqi Prisoner Abuse
Scandal" that news outlets like CNN are using.
First, most definitions of "prisoner" suggest one who's awaiting trial
or
already been sentenced, and it's entirely unclear that the Iraqis at Abu
Ghraib meet that definition. In fact, both the Taguba and International
Red Cross reports point to evidence of random detentions.
The ICRC Report includes this astonishing finding:
Certain CF military
intelligence officers told the ICRC that in their
estimate between 70% and 90%
of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by
mistake.
Secondly, there are at least 2 pictures of dead men in the first batch
of
pictures, and I understand others currently not public include pictures
of Americans with Iraqi cadavers. I don't understand why there's not
more discussion in the news media about the pictures of the dead – I
think the public is still in a little bit of a state of denial on
those. That's why I'd take out the word "abuse" to modify scandal.
Conversation
Ender
The single best argument against Rumsfeld's
resignation? His likely successor may be Paul Wolfowitz.
Poll
In the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, Bush's approval rating is
46%, which puts him right around where defeated incumbent Presidents
have been in May of their election years. At this time in their cycles,
Ford was at 47%, Carter was at 43%, and Daddy Bush was at 40%.
The landslide winners – Reagan and Clinton – were at 54% and 55%,
respectively.
Nick
Berg
I'm angered, saddened, and
disgusted by the
beheading of Nick Berg.
Did the barbarians on the tape do it because of Abu Ghraib, as they
claimed? Of course not. That's ridiculous. Well before Abu Ghraib,
like-minded murderers did the exact same thing to Daniel Pearl and said
it was because he was CIA.
But the killer in the video claims to be Abu Masab Zarqawi, and if
this story
is true, then there are others to blame in addition to the barbarians:
But NBC News has learned that
long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe
out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but
never pulled the trigger.
May 11, 2004
GW
Sleeps Through Vietnam,
Again
Here's President
Bush on Meet
the Press with Tim Russert on February 8:
The thing about
the Vietnam War that troubles me as I look back was it was a political
war. We had politicians making military decisions, and it is lessons
that any president must learn, and that is to the set the goal and the
objective and allow the military to come up with the plans to achieve
that objective. And those are essential lessons to be learned from the
Vietnam War.
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel on
Face the Nation
Sunday:
Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz,
the entire civilian leadership, did not listen to the uniformed
leadership starting with General Shinseki. They dismissed those
generals who've spent their lives – these military people, lives, 25,
30 years, preparing for every possibility, and we didn't do that. Now
we are in a mess.
Then this from Sunday's
Washington Post:
A senior general at the Pentagon said he believes the United States is
already on the road to defeat. "It is doubtful we can go on much longer
like this," he said. "The American people may not stand for it -- and
they should not."
Asked who was to blame, this general pointed directly at Rumsfeld and
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. "I do not believe we had a
clearly defined war strategy, end state and exit strategy before we
commenced our invasion," he said. "Had someone like Colin Powell been
the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], he would not have agreed
to send troops without a clear exit strategy. The current OSD [Office
of the Secretary of Defense] refused to listen or adhere to military
advice."
President Bush, what were those essential lessons any
President must learn from the Vietnam War, again?
Taguba
The New York Times
profiles Maj. Gen. Antonio M.
Taguba, who authored the main report on Iraqi detainee abuse. He
sounds like a true American patriot. How long do you think Cheney and
friends can resist questioning his character? I bet they're chomping at
the bit, waiting for the signal that unleashes them.
Weisberg
with Definitive Bush Bio
I expressed similar ideas on April 1, but
Jacob Weisberg puts it much better in
Slate:
What makes mocking this
president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least once was,
capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has discipline
and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time for a
three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on
name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by
family connections.
The most obvious expression
of Bush's choice of ignorance is that, at the age of 57, he knows
nothing about policy or history. After years of working as his dad's
spear-chucker in Washington, he didn't understand the difference
between Medicare and Medicaid, the second- and third-largest federal
programs. Well into his plans for invading Iraq, Bush still couldn't
get down the distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the key
religious divide in a country he was about to occupy. Though he
sometimes carries books for show, he either does not read them or
doesn't absorb anything from them. Bush's ignorance is so transparent
that many of his intimates do not bother to dispute it even in public.
Consider the testimony of several who know him well.
Richard Perle, foreign policy
adviser: "The first time I met Bush 43 … two things became clear. One,
he didn't know very much. The other was that he had the confidence to
ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much."
David Frum, former speechwriter:
"Bush had a poor memory for facts and figures. … Fire a question at him
about the specifics of his administration's policies, and he often
appeared uncertain. Nobody would ever enroll him in a quiz show."
Laura Bush, spouse: "George is not
an overly introspective person. He has good instincts, and he goes with
them. He doesn't need to evaluate and reevaluate a decision. He doesn't
try to overthink. He likes action."
Paul O'Neill, former treasury
secretary: "The only way I can describe it is that, well, the President
is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no
discernible connection."
You could almost sum up GW's whole being in one word – a
word that he, ironically, dreads: "entitlement."
It's unbelievable that someone with such an allergy to the accumulation
of knowledge and thoughtful reflection could have such an unwavering
confidence in his ability to make the right decisions.
Differences
Between Bush and Kerry
A friend of mine
sent a mass email questioning how much different Kerry would be
in office than Bush. I could have done better highlighting the major
issues, but I guess my response is worth posting:
Kerry has been a career-long
supporter of progressive causes. This includes not just his voting
record, but fearless investigative leadership into government
corruption in the BCCI scandal and illegalities (mostly pertaining to
the CIA, whom few in Congress ever dare take on) in Reagan's Latin
American misadventures. During the Democratic primary, David Corn wrote
a very good article for The Nation entitled What's Right With Kerry,
and I encourage you to read every word of it.
In addition to reading Corn's
piece, please consider a list of important issues John Kerry voted against or fought
Bush over in just the 107thCongress:
tax cuts, ANWR drilling, nomination of Ashcroft as AG, right-wing congressional attempts to ban
gays from the Boy Scouts, every right-wing nutjob Bush appointee to the
federal judiciary, and the outlawing of overseas military abortions.
Kerry also supported
expansion of the Patients' Bill of Rights, which Bush resisted,
McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform, which Bush sought to curtail,
$ for hate crime prosecution, which Bush opposed, and for employee
protection for the Department of Homeland Security, which Bush
threatened to veto.
That's just for the period
from 2000-2002.
On foreign policy, Kerry
starts every discussion as a lifelong
internationalist and would
appoint like-minded civil servants while Bush and his administration
principals are mired in the worst possible kind of American
exceptionalism. His administration's approach to Iraq, North Korea,
and, yes, even Israel, would differ greatly from Bush's both in the
macro and micro senses. If you have trouble buying that, just think
about the kind of people Kerry would likely appoint – there's a world
of difference between the Richard Holbrookes and Wes Clarks of the
world from the Don Rumsfelds and Dick Cheneys.
You can cherrypick an issue
or two that he and Bush agree on, but he has substantial disagreements
with Bush on about 95% of the issues facing this country, and there's
no doubt that a Kerry administration – in make-up, policy, and
execution – would be nearly unrecognizable from Bush/Cheney.
You can't rebuild Rome in a
day, but please, please, please let's at least begin the rebuilding
process. This is the most important election in any of our lifetimes,
and we simply can't endure another 4 years of this crap.
May 10, 2004
Rumsfeld's
and Cheney's Privates
