Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq....We all said, 'but no, no. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said, 'There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.' I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with [the September 11 attacks].'"

Former NSC Official Richard Clarke
60 Minutes Interview
March 2004

Colonel Korn gave Major Danby's shoulder a friendly squeeze without changing his unfriendly expression. "Carry on with the briefing Danby. And make sure they understand the importance of a tight bomb pattern."

"Oh, no, Colonel," Major Danby blurted out, blinking upward. "Not for this target. I've told them to space their bombs sixty feet apart so that we'll have a roadblock the full length of the village instead of just in one spot. It will be a much more effective roadblock with a loose bomb pattern."

"We don't care about the roadblock," Colonel Korn informed him. "Colonel Cathcart wants to come out of this mission with a good clean aerial photograph he won't be ashamed to send through channels. Don't forget that General Peckem will be here for the full briefing, and you know how he feels about bomb patterns."

Joseph Heller
Catch-22
1961

Back in January, I wrote a post about a session on the future of blogging at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in which I expressed a certain foreboding about that future:

I can't shake the suspicion that the golden age of blogging is almost over -- that the corporate machine is about to swallow it, digest it, and regurgitate it as bland, non-threatening pablum. Our brief Summer of Love may be nearing an end.

Unfortunately, for Whiskey Bar the future is now.

No, I'm not selling out to Time Warner ABC Disney Capital Cities Fox Viacom Clear Channel General Electric Microsoft Inc. But I have been informed by the owner of my host service that, effective April 1, he's going to start charging me for bandwidth usage.

He doesn't have much choice: He's just a wholesaler of space on other people's (big soulless corporate people's) machines. They've started charging him for bandwidth. And he's not at the bottom of the capitalist food chain -- I am.

I've been expecting this for awhile. In fact I've been pleasantly surprised at how long I've been able to get away with not paying for bandwidth, considering the telecomm industry's big push to recover at least some of those megabillions it dumped into the ocean of excess capacity during the glorious bubble years.

I guess that's water under the bridge (or electrons down the information superhighway). But while I wasn't surprised by the news, I was sent into a classic case of sticker shock by the price of our brave new pay-to-play world. I knew Whiskey Bar had picked up a decent-sized market share (thanks in no small part to the quality of the commenters who belly up to the bar here) but I had no idea how much this kind of thing costs.

But now I do. Based on current traffic, it looks like excess bandwidth usage is going to run me close to $250 a month, or $3k a year. But of course, if traffic were to keep picking up -- and it has been, quite a bit, lately -- then the great sucking sound coming from my checking account is only going to get louder.

Now I'm not poor, not even close -- at least by my standards. But I can't afford to pay that kind of money for what is, essentially, a hobby. It would interfere way too much with my other hobbies, like buying groceries, paying the mortgage and tucking away a little something (and I do mean little) for my kids' college tuitions. I probably could find another host who charges a little less (my guy admits he can't offer the best prices) but I doubt it would make all that big a reduction in my monthly tab.

So I've got some choices to make. I can:

A.) Close the bar.

B.) Start selling ad space.

C.) Begin asking for donations on a regular, and probably continuous, basis -- like public radio, but without the tote bags.

These are all rocks and hard places. Whiskey Bar has made my dreary corporate worklife much less dreary, and has helped keep my thinking and writing skills from atrophying away completely. On the other hand, I spent 14 years as a journalistic pimp for the advertising industry, and I've absolutely no desire to repeat the experience.

But I also hate begging for money. One of the most intoxicating things about blogging is that nobody pays me to do this, so it isn't work -- I can write as little or as much as I want, without feeling obligated to anyone. That's real freedom, and I don't want to give it up.

Still, something's got to give, and of the three options, C -- holding out the begging bowl -- seems the least worst, at least at the moment. And so I've put the tip jar out, up there underneath Mr. Brecht. PayPal is just a click away.

I'll try not to be too obtrusive about this (no fundraising marathons.) If I can figure out how to do it, I might put up something like Howard Dean's bat -- a shot glass, maybe, that shows where we stand relative to what I need to raise each month.

I hope this works, because (grimace) I really don't want to go into the advertising business -- not even for the touchy feely progressive advertisers. But I also don't want to be back out on the street, cadging drinks in the comments sections of other people's blogs. So whatever you can do, please do. And I'll do my best to keep the booze flowing.

Update 2:15 PM ET: Apparently, PayPal isn't very popular with a lot of people. I haven't had any trouble with them myself -- so far, at least -- and they're owned by E-Bay, which increases my some comfort level a little bit. However, I am going to add some more donation options as soon as I can get the paperwork done. Yahoo, maybe USPS, too. So bear with me.

Update 10:13 PM ET: I thought Amazon had gotten out of the honor system business, but I find I was wrong. So now there's an amazon tip jar up there as well.

South Korea balks at sending troops to northern Iraq

South Korea on Friday became the latest U.S. ally in Iraq to balk at sending troops to an increasingly violent peacekeeping effort, scrapping plans for a mission to the Iraqi hotspot of Kirkuk.

South Korea promised to eventually dispatch the 3,600 troops earmarked for Iraq, but only after it finds a safer location. The government, already worried about terrorism at home, cited security concerns in Kirkuk and U.S. pressure to participate in "offensive operations."

After it finds a safer location? In Iraq??? Could be a long wait. Who's going to tell der Weisser Engel?

Senator Kerry's characterization of our good allies is ungrateful to nations that have withstood danger, hardship, and insult for standing with America in the cause of freedom.

Dick Cheney
Speech at the Ronald Reagan Library
March 17, 2004

Duck any price, avoid any burden...

Howard Stern is beginning to remind me of Lenny -- not Homer Simpson's buddy or the dimwitted character from Of Mice and Men, but Lenny Bruce, the brilliant Jewish comic who became an early icon of the '60s counterculture.

So to speak. Our next item is an op-ed analysis by Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll, which looks at the recent historical record of presidential reelections, and explains why some of the conventional "wisdom" being peddled by the hired GOP pollsters is anything but.

Unfortunately, the piece is in The Los Angeles Times, which requires registration. But here are a few highlights:

President Bush has a 50% job approval rating at the moment. Gallup Poll archives since 1952, when modern polling techniques came into play, show that his rating is slightly below those of the most recent successful candidates for reelection ... The factor to watch is the trend: It won't be auspicious for the president should his ratings drift downward...

There are also less-than-positive signs for Bush when we look at a more direct measure: the hypothetical "trial heat" ballot pitting an incumbent against his opponent. In February and so far in March, each trial heat conducted by Gallup shows Kerry beating Bush.

Some arguments have been advanced that it is "normal" for an incumbent president to be losing to his opponent at this stage, given intense media coverage of the challengers in the primaries and the fact that the "real" campaign hasn't begun.

But the numbers show otherwise. Since 1956, of eight presidents who sought a new term, five won. Two of these eventual winners started their reelection years on somewhat shaky ground but quickly recovered. Reagan was tied with Walter Mondale in a Gallup poll survey taken in January 1984. Clinton was behind Bob Dole in two Gallup polls conducted in January 1996. But from February 1984 on, Reagan was ahead of Mondale in every trial-heat ballot that Gallup conducted. And, in similar fashion, Clinton was ahead of Dole in every trial-heat ballot Gallup did from February on in 1996.

The other three incumbent presidents who won a new term in the second half of the 20th century — Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon — never once fell behind their opponents in the election year ...

If Bush is reelected, he will become the only president out of the last eight incumbents to win after having been behind a challenger in Gallup polling conducted after January of his election year. And, if his job approval ratings don't rise above 50% in April and May, his reelection would mark the first of those eight to win with less than majority approval in the late spring of their election year.

Naturally, we should take all this with a grain of salt (or three). As Newport admits -- and as I pointed out here -- 13 elections (every presidential race since 1952) isn't any kind of valid sample. The disclaimer still applies: Past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

But if you're wondering why the Republicans are sweating machine gun bullets right now -- and shooting rhetorical ones at Kerry -- Newport kind of puts his finger on it.

Poland may withdraw Iraq troops

President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a key Washington ally, said Thursday he may withdraw troops early from Iraq and that Poland was "misled" about the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction...

Earlier in the day, Kwasniewski said Poland may start withdrawing its troops from Iraq early next year, months earlier than the previously stated date of mid-2005. He cited progress toward stabilizing Iraq.

I wonder what Cheney thinks of our gallant Polish allies now?

Am I too cynical, or does anyone else out there think that this dramatic announcement:

Pakistani forces have surrounded what may be a "high-value" al Qaeda target in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan, President Pervez Musharraf told CNN.

might have had something to do with this one?

Pakistan will be named a major non-NATO ally by the United States, making it easier for the country to acquire U.S. arms, despite U.S. unease about how much officials knew of nuclear leaks by a Pakistani scientist.

Unease? Why the unease? Is it because the nation's top nuclear scientist (a.k.a. the "father of the Islamic bomb") was running a side business selling advanced nuclear technology on the international black market? But hasn't Colin Powell heard? The Pakistani government knew nothing about that:

The Pakistani Foreign Minister said he shared Mr. Powell's interest in fully dismantling the Khan network, while also suggesting that the nuclear scientist operated with a great deal of independence from the Islamabad government ...

"I explained the particular circumstances in which Dr. Kadeer Khan enjoyed a total autonomy, was able to do that, and I went on to explain in some detail."

Some detail, I'm sure. But probably not these details:

The disgraced founder of Pakistan's nuclear programme has informed investigators that he supplied rogue states with nuclear technology with the full knowledge of the country's ruling military elite, including President Pervez Musharraf, a friend of the nuclear scientist was reported as saying yesterday.

According to an unnamed friend who spoke to the Associated Press, the nuclear scientist last week told government investigators: "What ever I did, it was in the knowledge of the bosses."

Or these:

An International Atomic Energy Agency official told CNN that IAEA Director General Mohammad ElBaradei had called the Khan revelations "just the tip of the iceberg."

The official added that ElBaradei is aware of individuals and companies in at least five other countries in Africa, Europe and Asia in the business of proliferating of nuclear technology.

Or these:

For two decades, journalists and American and European intelligence agencies have linked Khan and the Pakistani intelligence service, the I.S.I. (Inter-Service Intelligence), to nuclear-technology transfers, and it was hard to credit the idea that the government Khan served had been oblivious. “It is state propaganda,” Samina Ahmed, the director of the Islamabad office of the International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization that studies conflict resolution, told me.

But of course, Powell already knew all that. And he's no slouch either when it comes to spewing out the phony state propaganda:

In a commentary carried in Pakistani newspapers Wednesday, Mr. Powell said the U.S.-Pakistani alliance remains crucial to protecting both countries and the world from terrorism, and is not a "temporary marriage of convenience."

From Howie Kurtz's on-line column today:

The Weekly Standard's Terry Eastland looks at the electoral math:

In 2000, Al Gore lost every one of the 11 states that formed the Old Confederacy ... And yet he narrowly lost to Bush in the Electoral College, 274 to 264 votes.

From The Weekly Standard column Howie is talking about:

Al Gore lost every one of the 11 states that formed the Old Confederacy. Indeed, he lost the entire "Greater South"--those 11 plus culturally kindred Kentucky, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. And yet he narrowly lost to Bush in the Electoral College, 271 to 266...

The second one is right (hard right, actually). I don't see any note about a correction. So whose typo is this?

Yet of the many nations that have joined our coalition - allies and friends of the United States - Senator Kerry speaks with open contempt.

Dick Cheney
Remarks at the Ronald Reagan Library
March 17, 2004

That's pretty cheeky, even for Dick Cheney, considering that in less than three years he and his neocon wrecking crew have virtually destroyed the most successful coalition in human history -- NATO.

We have in effect said to them, "Line up." We have treated them as if they were the Warsaw Pact. The United States issued orders, and they have to follow.

Zbigniew Brzezinski
CNN Interview
March 2, 2003

Granted, Brzezinski is a Democrat -- of a sort. So maybe we shouldn't take his word for it. But how about James Webb, Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Navy?

Those around Bush, many of whom came of age during Vietnam and almost none of whom served, have attempted to assassinate the character and insult the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with them. Some have impugned the culture, history and integrity of entire nations, particularly in Europe, that have been our country's great friends for generations and, in some cases, for centuries.

James Webb
USA Today op-ed
February 18, 2004

And of course, our current Defense Secretary has had a hand in that:

Now, you're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe. If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the east.

Donald Rumsfeld
Press Briefing op-ed
January 22, 2003

What Cheney was up to in today's speech was a textbook agitprop technique -- one that Rove is particularly fond of. It's essentially a grown-up version of the old "whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you" playground retort. Whatever charge is made against you by your opponent, you quickly turn around and repeat it back.

Doesn't matter if it's true, doesn't even matter if it's a complete non sequitur -- as when the White proclaimed that John Kerry was "lying" because he wouldn't disclose the names of the foreign leaders (cough, Chirac, cough. Schroeder, cough) who told him they were aching to see Bush put on a slow train back to Texas. The main thing is to confuse and obfuscate the audience. Most voters, hearing virtually identical charges and countercharges bouncing back and forth, will quickly conclude there's no way to figure it out, and who the hell knows anyway?

Or at least, that's what the Rovians are banking on.

I don't know if it's a byproduct of decades of excessive exposure to television, the state of America's educational system, or something in the water, but the ability of the average journalist -- not to mention the average voter -- to remember things that happened just a few short months ago appears to be slipping into the abyss.

If this keeps up, we're going to end up like the villagers in One Hundred Years of Solitude, who all contracted a rare form of jungle amnesia, so virulent they were reduced to posting signs on various objects -- "I AM A COW. MILK ME" or "I AM A GATE. OPEN ME" -- just so they could get on with their daily lives.

That same disease has been rampant in the mainstream media for years. But, based on the press's coverage of the Bush administration's new negative ad blasting John Kerry for "voting against the troops," I'd say it's entering its terminal stages. Howie Kurtz is in particularly bad shape:

Ad Attacks Kerry Vote on Iraq Funds

Intensifying an effort to depict Kerry as inconsistent just five days after an earlier ad assailed him on terrorism and taxes, the Bush campaign seized on the senator's vote against an $87 billion funding bill for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to paint him as indifferent to the well-being of American soldiers.

The White House wants $1.9 billion for its flexible Iraqi Freedom Fund, which the Pentagon could spend as it chooses. Bush is also seeking authority to shift $5 billion of the request wherever the military chooses.

And it didn't make the customers feel any better when they got a look at what else they could have bought with the money:

Congress hated that $87 billion number, too. And if the White House is going to sling the mud around now, it's going to have to save some for the Republican side of the aisle:

In GOP, Concern Over Iraq Price Tag

A new curriculum for training an Iraqi army for $164 million. Five hundred experts, at $200,000 each, to investigate crimes against humanity. A witness protection program for $200,000 per Iraqi participant. A computer study for the Iraqi postal service: $54 million.

Such numbers, buried in President Bush's $20.3 billion request for Iraq's reconstruction, have made some congressional Republicans nervous, even furious. Although the GOP leadership has tried to unite publicly around its president, cracks are beginning to show.

"President Bush should live up to his recent pledges to restrain spending, by . . . taking a strong stance that the new Iraq can and should pay for its own reconstruction," wrote Rep. Tom Feeney (Fla.), a freshman Republican, and Stephen Moore, a conservative economist, in an editorial for the National Review.

The discontent is relatively contained so far, said Jim Dyer, Republican staff director of the House Appropriations Committee, but that is because few lawmakers have read the proposal's fine print. As more details seep out, he said, anger is sure to rise.

Tom Feeney: Wrong on defense. Wrong for America.

And here's a great quote for Kerry's response ad:

"If those are what the costs are, I'm glad Congress is asking questions," said Brian Reidl, a budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "If the White House wants to be portrayed as spending tax dollars in Iraq as cost-effectively as they spend [money] anywhere else, they're going to have to explain this."

The Heritage Foundation: In your heart, you know they're French.

And just to show how much President Bush's party cares for the hopes and aspirations of the Iraqi people and their brave struggle for democracy, we have this comment, courtesy of political columnist Charlie Cook:

As one Republican House member said to me the other day, "Those people have been pissing in the Euphrates River for 3,000 years; why do we have to build them a sewer system now?"

You gotta hand it to the conservatives: They sure know how to boil complex issues down to terms even Joe Sixpack can understand.

Now I know how much work it is to look this sort of stuff up -- Google being so hard to use and all. But you would think something that happened just six months ago, and which was considered pretty big news at the time, would have left at least a faint impression somewhere on the rudimentary brain stems of our political press corps.

But it appears the amnesia virus has already progressed too far. The journalists are sinking into slack-jawed oblivion. It's only a matter of time before it gets us, too. So I guess we'd better start printing up those signs. Here's one the ink-stained wretches should pin on their backs:

"I'M A REPORTER. KICK ME."

I came across a shapshot of Cheney delivering his rabid attack dog speech on Kerry this afternoon. It was the usual stuff: "Iraqi sources have informed us that Sen. Kerry personally pulled the plug on at least fifteen Kuwaiti incubators during the Gulf War, and donated the corpses to Saddam Hussein. President Bush and I find this profoundly disturbing." And so on.

But there was something about that photo -- maybe it was the camera angle, or the lighting, or the heavy-lidded expression on Cheney's face, I don't know. But it really reminded me of someone else.

And then I realized who it was: Dr. Christian Zell, the sadistic Nazi dentist brilliantly played by Sir Laurence Olivier in The Marathon Man:

See what I mean? Cheney's face has that same dull, soulless aura about it -- the "banality of evil" look. It's way too easy to imagine Dick leaning over Dustin Hoffman with that electric drill in his hand, patiently asking the same question over and over:

"Is it safe?"

Update 3/19 10:40 AM ET: It turns out I'm not the first person to notice the resemblence. I found this on an English language bulletin board in Japan, dated Jan. 21:

The real Master of Puppets is the VP, Mr. Cheney. He's reminds me of the villains in the old Bond films: never venturing out of his hardened bunker and dictating policy in an ice cold manner. Actually, he's most similar to the Christian Zell character in "The Marathon Man". "Is it safe, is it safe?" Notice the resemblance! It's scary!

Sigh. And I thought I was being original.

P.S. Give us a call next time you guys decide to invade a major Middle Eastern country. We'll do lunch!

The rapid deterioration in the U.S. public's mood that began shortly after Saddam's capture continues -- and may even be accelerating. So says Gallup:

Satisfaction with the way things are going in the nation continues to decline, as now fewer than 4 in 10 Americans are satisfied. The current figures are the lowest since last March and rank among the lowest of the Bush presidency.

Meanwhile, the ABC News/Money magazine weekly consumer "comfort" index also continues to move south, and is also approaching the lows it hit immediately before and during the Iraq invasion:

These trends could cause some problems for the Bush campaign's decision to go negative -- early, quickly and massively -- in hopes of burying Kerry before he can raise enough money to fight back effectively.

For obvious reasons, negative advertising tends to have a depressing effect on people, which is why it usually drives down the attacker's favorable numbers as well as the target's. The goal is to push the target's numbers down more by making sure the specific, negative impressions you've created bite deeper and last longer than the more generalized damage you've done to yourself. Thus all the talk from Team Bush about "defining" Kerry before he can define himself.

But with the public is in such a sour mood -- and apparently getting sourer -- I have to wonder whether the blowback might not be more damaging to Bush than the Rovians are expecting.

Gallup contends a president's approval rating (which itself is in the yellow zone for Shrub) is more predictive than the answer to the right direction/wrong direction question, and that the current reading, while bad, isn't extreme enough to signal the imminent sinking of the U.S.S. Pachyderm. But the number crunchers don't sound all that confident about it:

While extreme satisfaction ratings can be predictive of election outcomes, a satisfaction rating like the current one does not necessarily spell doom for President Bush's re-election effort.

"Does not necessarily spell doom." Not exactly a clean bill of health.

I have also heard it said that the nation-is-on-the-right track/wrong track number historically has been a very good predictor of an incumbent president's future approval numbers, with the approval percentage usually settling somewhere close to, but somewhat above, the "right-track" percentage.

Given that, I have to wonder if driving down the "right-track" number (with a heavily negative campaign) might not in turn drive down Bush's approvals, generating more negative media coverage, driving down the "right-track" number even more.

(In my last post, I referred to this kind of thing as negative feedback. However, I'm informed that the proper term for it is actually positive feedback -- because each iteration of the process moves the system away from equilibrium, instead of doubling back towards it. Amazing what blogging can teach you.)

Anyway, my initial take on Rove's decision to drop the hammer was that it was probably the right tactical call. And maybe it still is -- if only because it seems to have bucked up the base a little bit. But it could be like chemotherapy: effective at slowing tumor growth, but with all kinds of nasty side effects, some of which could leave the patient worse off, not better.

I've been reading the right-wing media's take on the Spanish election, and I have to say it's left me with a stronge sense of disconnect -- what the psychologists call cognitive dissonance.