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September 30, 2003
Rove and Ashcroft

I got sidetracked by a lot of other things tonight, but one thing I really wanted to say is that, IMO, the next big story the blogosphere should be ranting about is the longstanding political connection between Karl Rove and John Ashcroft.

How long was Rove a consultant to Ascroft? A decade? More? How many campaigns did he run? How much was he paid? Etc.

Do the Bushies seriously propose that the Attorney General should be left in charge of a criminal investigation in which his own chief political operative (unlike Novak, I know what the word means) is one of the prime suspects?

That's so over the top I think it might fail to pass public muster even in these degraded times.

Posted by billmon at 11:58 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
The Empire Strikes Back?

Josh Marshall has posted a second Wilsongate memo from White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, and a couple of names kind of leap out of it:

Pursuant to a request from the Department of Justice, I am instructing you to preserve and maintain the following:

[F]or the time period February 1, 2002 to the present, all documents ... that relate in any way to:

(skipping)

3. Contacts with reporters Knut Royce, Timothy M. Phelps, or Robert D. Novak, or any individual(s) acting directly or indirectly, on behalf of these reporters.

The inclusion of Novak is no surprise, but who are Knut Royce and Timothy M. Phelps? Josh tells us:

Knut Royce and Timothy Phelps of Newsday have done some of the best reporting of anyone in town on the whole issue of Iraq, politicized intelligence and the Joe Wilson matter. They've clearly got some awfully good and pretty generous sources. What are their names doing in this memo?

They reported early on Novak's original column. But why that should put them in the mix here isn't immediately clear.

Mind you, the two Newsday reporters do not appear to be among the six allegedly contacted by the White House leakers. So their potential role in the investigation would seem to be limited.

But some of the gang apparently have been thinking about this over at Daily Kos, and Hunter filed a report on a previous thread. So take it away Hunter:

Who the heck are Royce and Phelps? They're the (first) ones who wrote a story about Novak's outing of Plame. (Actually, I think David Corn was first -- billmon) In their story, they say:
A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.

See what just happened there? Why Royce and Phelps were named by WH Counsel, and why the investigation is starting over at the CIA? The WH just said -- "Okay, you want an investigation? Fine. We'll do it. Let's investigate who over at the CIA confirmed our original leak to Novak to be true."

Nice backhand, if incredibly evil. They're not going to concentrate on who originally leaked, they're going to dilute it with looking for anyone at the CIA who confirmed the leak... thus putting the CIA under the same guns.

It's looking more and more like war.

I (Billmon) think I'm going to withhold judgment until I've had a chance to check the Newsday stories, and mull things over a bit. But Hunter's theory doesn't appear to be implausible on its face. The FBI did say last night that the investigation would start at the CIA, and Royce and Phelps do appear to have been the recipients of a leak from the agency. But I don't know how the White House expects to turn up daming evidence against the CIA in its own records.

The last time the Mayberry Machiavellis tried to return service to the Ivy League Spooks (back during the original Yellowcakegate affair) they got the ball smashed back into their faces. We'll just have to see whether they're looking for a rematch.

Posted by billmon at 11:08 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
Digging a Deeper Hole
I want to abuse -- I want to abuse my privilege and take a little personal privilege here, just say that, in the column I wrote that has caused all this fuss, there's one bad word in there.

I referred to Mrs. Wilson as a CIA operative. I use the word operative for cheap politicians, you know, like you and Klain. And I just use it indiscriminately. It doesn't have any meaning. And I certainly don't know what she did for the CIA. And neither does anybody at this table.

Robert Novak
Crossfire
September 30, 2003

(thanks to Keith Thompson for the tip)

So now the Prince of Darkness is saying he used Valerie Plame's name in print without knowing what she did for the CIA. Maybe she was a covert agent; maybe she wasn't, but I, the great and powerful Bob Novak will out her anyway -- and who gives a flying fuck about the consequences.

And just for good measure, I'll call her an "operative" -- because I, the great and powerful Bob Novak, with my 45 years of journalistic experience, like to throw words around "indiscriminately," because they "don't have any meaning."

And this is the guy the conservatives want to use as Exhibit A for the defense in U.S. v George W. Bush??

Note that Novak now claims he still doesn't know what Plame did for the CIA. Compare with:

According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge of undercover operatives. So what is the fuss about, pure Bush-bashing?

Robert Novak
Crossfire
September 29, 2003

Novak's 24-hour change of tune may prove wise, if a bit too late. Jerry, a commentator on the last thread, reports that a former classmate of Plame's at "The Farm" -- the CIA field agent training academy -- appeared on the Newshour this evening and confirmed she was a classmate of his, and served in the clandestine Directorate of Operations for some number of years.

Again, I don't know if that's true or not, but I've no doubt the facts about Plame's (now ended) career will emerge soon enough, and I suspect they are going to leave Novak with an even riper odor about him than he already possesses.

The next time the conservatives need a character witness, they really ought to look for someone who isn't a psychotic burnout case with a Swiss Cheese brain.

Posted by billmon at 10:16 PM | Comments (28) | TrackBack
Return to Rightful Owner

Would somebody please tell Krugman I've got his Stalker, and I'd really, really like to give him back? Thanks.

Posted by billmon at 06:45 PM | Comments (57) | TrackBack
The Looking Glass War

Brad DeLong raises an important question: Why has the CIA decided to go nuclear on the Wilsongate story?

The top echelons of the CIA have, by their leaks over the weekend, left themselves with no place to retreat if the current White House staff survives. Possibly they have concluded that they finally have the lever to evict key members of the White House staff--give our weak and underbriefed Sultan a new set of hopefully more competent and rational viziers. Possibly they have concluded that their chances of changing anything are small, but that in the final analysis they are not bureaucratic hacks but patriotic Americans, and that this current White House bunch has crossed the final line.

I cannot tell which: whether this is the opening shot in a campaign to replace the incompetent hardliners and political hacks ... or whether it is the hopeless final Charge of the Intelligence Chiefs.

Speculation is probably futile, unless you're one of the 20 or 30 people actually inside the decisionmaking loops out at Langley or in the White House right now. Certainly, as I noted some months back, administrations that mess with the agency usually do so at their own peril. But the urgency with which Tenet and Co. have pushed this scandal back up from the depths of the sea is still eyecatching.

Whatever role the CIA played in bringing down the Nixon White House, or in pulling the plug on the Iran Contra operation, was very much in the background -- a few secrets whispered here, a draft presidential finding there. The agency may have left fingerprints, but the fingers themselves were not visible until well after the fact.

Not this time. These guys almost literally detonated a bomb beneath the Justice Department -- then followed up with a coordinated campaign of press leaks apparently designed to flush the White House perps (and their journalistic contacts) out into the open. We'll see over the next few days how well that game plan works, but the fact that the CIA has been so obvious about executing it really gives me pause.

So why has the agency gone to Defcon 1?

I started out thinking this was just another round in the mother of all bureaucratic turf wars -- with Tenet striking preemptively to keep the White House and its congressional allies from tagging him with responsibility for the missing WMD debacle. And maybe that's it. Maybe this really is about nothing more complicated than one man's fight to keep his job.

But the more I watch the story unfold, the more I think something deeper and darker is at stake. It seems the top career elite at the CIA, plus Tenet, has pulled out all the stops to try to bust up the Rove machine. That suggests they're worried about something much bigger than just bureaucratic turf or the WMD blame game.

In fact, if this were a Third World country, I'd say we're witnessing the early stages of a coup d'etat -- or of a desperate effort to prevent one. But of course, those kind of things never happen in America.

It's still creepy, though. In a democracy, intelligence agencies generally aren't supposed to undermine elected governments. But of course, elected governments also aren't supposed to go around outing intelligence agents for fun and profit.

So should we make an exception in this case, and cheer for the spooks? Under the circumstances, it's hard not to. But it also suggests an argument for the creation of a Special Counsel that conservatives might want to think about. Because if this investigation remains with the Justice Department, and the spooks decide the fix is already in, how will they react? What else might they spill, and who might they spill it to?

Even thinking about these things puts us a long step towards Alice's looking glass world. But so have the events of the past few days. If the CIA and the White House really are going to duke it out here, it would probably be good for both sides -- and for the country -- if we at least had a neutral referee.

Posted by billmon at 06:20 PM | Comments (83) | TrackBack
On the Other Foot
Q: Scott, the statement you gave about why there shouldn't be a special prosecutor was almost word for word what the Clinton people said in 1994 about why there shouldn't be a special prosecutor in Whitewater. Why should it stand now if it didn't stand then?

Mr. McClellan: Ken, I just reject that comparison.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan
Press Briefing
September 29, 2003


Our concern has been that you, and the Department of Justice generally, face an inescapable political conflict of interest in investigating campaign fundraising violations that may involve senior Administration officials. As you yourself have recognized in testimony before Congress, such a conflict inevitably arises whenever an Attorney General, appointed and removable by the President, is asked to investigate possible wrongdoing by senior Executive Branch officials.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.)
Letter to Attorney General Janet Reno
July 24, 1998

Steve Soto over at the Left Coaster has a nice little collection of quotes from Hatch and other GOP luminaries explaining what a mockery of justice it is for the Attorney General to investigate criminal allegations against senior White House officials.

Suitable for framing.


Posted by billmon at 05:05 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
No Hurry
The [Justice] Department notified the counsel's office about 8:30 p.m. Monday that it was launching an investigation but said the White House could wait until the next morning to notify staff and direct them to preserve relevant material, McClellan said.

Heck, the DOJ's already given them more than eight weeks to tidy things up. What's another night?

Call it the "Arthur Anderson defense."

Cheney: "I get good advice, if you will, from their people, based upon how we are doing business and how we are operating, over and above the normal, by-the-books auditing arrangement."

Posted by billmon at 01:48 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
Bush's Bad Week

The stock market isn't very happy about today's economic numbers: Tthe manufacturing sector is just barely growing (in the Midwest, anyway) and consumer confidence took a sharp tumble in September:

Consumer Confidence Falls in September

The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index, which had rebounded last month, gave back all of the gain in September. The Index now stands at 76.8 (1985=100), nearly a five-point dip from 81.7 registered in August.

The slump in confidence is particularly ominous, since the Conference Board's numbers tend to track very closely with labor market conditions. And indeed:

Those reporting jobs are “hard to get” increased to 35.3 percent from 34.1 percent. Those claiming jobs are “plentiful” retreated to 10.0 percent from 11.3 percent in August.

This suggests another awful jobs report when the September employment figures are released this Friday. As you may recall, the economy has shed jobs for the past seven months in a row. The Conference Board's report suggests that trend didn't change in September, and may have worsened.

At this point, if you're George W. Bush, you might want to think about digging a hole, climbing in the hole, and pulling the hole in after you.

Posted by billmon at 12:47 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
A Very Republican Recovery
"People are slowly starting to get more and more confident," says Myron Markewycz, general manager of One Sixtyblue, a fine dining restaurant in Chicago that has seen sales of $32 Delmonico steaks and $100 bottles of wine pick up sharply in the past two months.

The Wall Street Journal
Consumers Are Spending Big Time
September 30, 2003


The federal government says 43.6 million Americans lacked health insurance last year. That's more than the population of the nation's 24 smallest states plus the District of Columbia, and it adds fuel to a growing debate about both the cost and availability of health care.

The Wall Street Journal
Census Sees a Surge in Americans Without Insurance
September 30, 2003

Posted by billmon at 11:46 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
Desperately Seeking Solutions

The conservatives still don't seem to be able to mount a coherent defense against the Wilsongate uproar. (Did I mention that this is now officially a criminal investigation?)

According to Howie Kurtz, Limbaugh's been reduced to sputtering about a "non-story" and muttering dark predictions about the Dems "opening the door right into their nose."

Which is amusing, coming from someone who, until quite recently, couldn't even fit through a door.

But I digress, criminally. The only quasi-rational counterpoint I've heard yet from the right is the notion (as espoused by Bob Novak yesterday) that Wilson's wife was not a "real" CIA undercover operative, just one of those namby pamby analysts who sit around reading about weapons of mass destruction all day.

Or, as Johnny Cochran might put it: "If she ain't legit, you can't convict."

But this appears to be a falsehood, at least according to the Washington Post, Wilson himself, the CIA (which referred the matter for criminal investigation) and the Justice Department (which has now opened a criminal investigation.)

So conservatives are moving to Fallback Excuse B, which is that, well, yes, technically she may have been a covert operative, but her status was common knowledge inside the government, and therefore was not a criminal thing to disclose. As per one Clifford D. May, writing in the National Review Online:

On July 14, Robert Novak wrote a column in the Post and other newspapers naming Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative.

That wasn't news to me. I had been told that — but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of.

Nothing like an "offhand" felony to get the journalistic juices flowing! It's nice to see conservatives have finally abandoned their old law-and-order fetish. Trust me guys, you're gonna love it: Moral relativity is a blast.

What's facinating about May's piece is the way he tries to steer the conversation back towards the White House's original talking points -- the ones that prompted the criminal disclosure in the first place:

There also remains this intriguing question: Was it primarily due to the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the CIA that he received the Niger assignment?

A rather hopeless effort at this point, I'm afraid. Unfortunately for May -- and for the White House -- the mainstream media has decided there are more intriguing questions to be asked about the criminal conspiracy in the White House.

Which suggests the conservatives will soon need to retreat to their next line of defense: slandering Wilson's wife.

It don't think it will be too long before we start hearing the variations on "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty."

Posted by billmon at 11:26 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack
In the Country of the Blind...

...the one-eyed man is king. I don't know whether to laugh or cry about this one:

When yesterday's Washington Post gave Page One, above-the-fold treatment to the Novak-Wilson-Plame triangle, it bestowed official Washington scandal status upon the story, sending the rest of the press corps to the blogosphere and Nexis to catch up with what had been a slow-moving story.

So the professional press, which gets paid to write about this sort of stuff, which has the sources and the resources to investigate government wrongdoing, and expensive lawyers to tell them what they can and cannot get away with saying, has to come running here, to the blogosphere, to "catch up" with a major breaking political scandal???

Now that's truly pathetic.

Posted by billmon at 10:48 AM | Comments (36) | TrackBack
Even Better than "Hakuna Matata"

Justice Probes Leak of CIA Operative's ID

The Justice Department launched a full-blown criminal investigation into who leaked the name of a CIA officer, and President Bush directed his White House staff on Tuesday to cooperate fully.

"Criminal" is one of those words that should be repeated in every sentence whenever Dems talk about this story.

Anyone remember when Newt Gringrich came up with his list of trigger words and catch phrases to be applied to everything the Democratic Party did? Corrupt, out-of-touch, immoral, etc? Well, now we've got one:

Criminal investigation. Criminal matters. Criminal behavior. Criminals in the White House. Criminal, criminal, criminal.

Pass it on.


Posted by billmon at 10:26 AM | Comments (29) | TrackBack
September 29, 2003
Strange Times

OK, now the NYT has a new Wilsongate story up, with two different bylines on it:

A Top Bush Aide Didn't Identify C.I.A. Agent, White House Says

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

The new story has the virtually the same lead as the David Stout piece I looked at earlier, except:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 — The White House today dismissed as "ridiculous" the suggestion that Karl Rove, senior adviser to President Bush, had illegally disclosed the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer, as the F.B.I. opened an investigation into the case.

Then it's several acres of more or less the same blah, blah, blah -- albeit with slightly less snarky attitude -- until finally in the last two paragraphs of the freakin' story, we're told:

The C.I.A. gave the Justice Department its response several weeks ago, a government official said. Mr. Ashcroft decided during the past several days to move ahead with a preliminary inquiry, and the Justice Department notified the F.B.I. late today that the bureau would lead the investigation.

"We'll start with the C.I.A.," said an F.B.I. official. "They're the ones that held the information, so we'll go from there to find out who had access to it."

I have this picture of the late Casey Stengel standing in the middle of the Times newsroom, asking: "Can't anybody here play this game?"

Posted by billmon at 11:50 PM | Comments (34) | TrackBack
Post Time

Mike Allen is a journalism god. I'm too tired to do a point by point of his story for tomorrow, but go read and marvel at the nuggets he keeps digging up:

Bush Vows Action if Aides Had Role in Leak

Well, OK, a few points:

1.) Scooter Libby's name pops up in Mike's Wilsongate copy -- I think for the first time:

An article that appeared on the Time magazine Web site the same week Novak's column was published said that "some government officials have noted to Time in interviews . . . that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." The same article quoted from an interview with I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, saying that Cheney did not know about Wilson's mission "until this year when it became public in the last month or so."

2.) Bullshit fake quote of the month, if not the year:

A senior official quoted Bush as saying, "I want to get to the bottom of this," during a meeting yesterday morning with a few top aides, including Rove.

Ranks right up there with: "Try Commander-in-Chief. Whose present command is: Take the President home!"

Or: "We could get the $1 million ... but it would be wrong."

3.) Another anonymous journalist steps forward to confirm the story, but won't let the Post use his/her name "because of possible legal ramifications." heh heh.

4.) Wilson now puts Rove close to the scene of the crime, but only after the Novak column appeared in print:

Wilson said that based on reporters' statements, he believes Rove participated in calls that drew attention to his wife's occupation after Novak's column was published. "My knowledge is based on a reporter who called me right after he had spoken to Rove and said that Rove had said my wife was fair game," Wilson said. He said that conversation occurred on July 21.

5.) "Straight Talk" John McCain suddenly develops a bad case of the bends:

Asked if he thought an outside counsel should be appointed to investigate the leak, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he believed that Ashcroft would appoint "career professionals in the Justice Department to examine the situation" and that it would be a "thorough investigation."

The Pulitzer isn't a lock yet, Mike. But you're getting there.

Posted by billmon at 11:10 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack
Gray Lady Down

The New York Times finally weighs in with a bylined piece on Wilsongate. No surprise that: After today's White House press conference, they couldn't bury it any longer. But look at how they spin it:

White House Says Top Aide Was Not Behind C.I.A. Leak

By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 -- The White House said today that it was "ridiculous" for anyone to suggest that President Bush's top political adviser had leaked secret information in an effort to discredit an outspoken critic of Mr. Bush's policy on Iraq.

But the White House assertion that Mr. Bush's political aide, Karl Rove, was not behind the leak failed to satisfy Democrats, several of whom demanded investigations of one kind or another. By this afternoon, it was apparent that the White House had a messy affair on its hands just as the political season was warming up.

First, the Times leads with the White House's "ridiculous" reaction quote, which itself is looking increasingly, well, ridiculous in light of the disclosures that piled over the weekend, while the Wizards of Times Square were still sucking on their collective thumb.

Next, the paper immediately tries to paint the story as just another partisan squabble between the Republicans and the Democrats -- as if it were an every-day affair for a "senior administration official" (read: George Tenet) to rat out his colleagues at the White House in a potential felony investigation.

Then, the Times takes note of the fact that (gasp) we still have elections in this country, and the political "season" (synonym for the silly "season") is upon us. Again, the seriousness of the crimes allegedly committed is reduced to the same journalistic level as the inane debate over U.S.-funded zip codes in Iraq.

Having wasted two paragraphs and several minutes of our time on nothing but attitude, the Gray Lady finally deigns to let us know what the story is actually about:

The controversy, which has been simmering for two months and boiled over during the weekend, concerns Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former United States diplomat, and his wife, Valerie Plame. The syndicated columnist Robert Novak, citing "two senior administration officials," wrote in July that Ms. Plame was an undercover operative for the Central Intelligence Agency specializing in weapons of mass destruction.

And at last, four paragraphs deep in the story, we finally find the lead -- and the gritted teeth admission that, boy, did we get skunked on this one:

On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that Bush administration officials had contacted a half-dozen Washington reporters in an effort to publicly disclose Ms. Plame's identity, apparently in retaliation for Mr. Wilson's public assertions that President Bush had exaggerated the threat of any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to help justify the war to topple Saddam Hussein.

This isn't unique New York Times behavior -- I've seen the same or worse from the Post on stories it's been beaten on. But it's still alarming, because it makes it obvious the Times isn't really interested in trying to compete on Wilsongate.

In situations like this, a major paper like the Times has two choices: It can swarm the story, hoping that sheer man/womanpower will eventually help it catch up with the front runner. Or, it can hang back and play the skeptic -- downplaying the story's importance and signaling (either overtly or covertly) that it suspects its journalistic rivals have flipped their lids.

In 1972, the Times made the latter choice about Watergate, setting the story back months -- or longer. I have a sinking feeling the paper is going to take the same route now, with similar, or even worse, consequences.

The Times isn't the Godlike oracle it was 30 years ago. It can't kill a story singlehandedly any more. But it's still tremendously powerful -- still the paper the network and cable news guys take their lead from. If the Times craps out here, odds are the Wilsongate story will fade away, too -- just like all the other war-related scandals that have come down the pike in the past six months.

Maybe the Times needs a new motto: "All the News That's Safe to Print"

Posted by billmon at 10:22 PM | Comments (33) | TrackBack
Drudge on Novak

Now that's a disgusting thought, isn't it?

But the Sludgemeister has posted a few quotes from Novak about l'affaire Wilson on his site. They're a fairly typical blend of carefully tailored innuendo, fractional truths and self-serving excuses.

"Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson's report when he told the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction."

Artfully worded, yes? '"Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this."

There seems to be a subtle question of intent here. If a "senior administration official" just happened to call Novak to talk about something else - i.e. Ambassador Wilson's report -- and then just happened to mention that his wife worked for the CIA, that would seem to satisify a literal reading of Novak's words.

Or maybe Novak really did call the "senior administration official" instead of the other way around. Either way, does it make the leak itself any less criminal?

Actually, it would be interesting to hear David Corn's precise recollection of his own conversation with Novak, which occurred much closer to the actual event. Here's how he described it in his original column:

Novak tells me that he was indeed tipped off by government officials about Wilson's wife and had no reluctance about naming her. "I figured if they gave it to me," he says. "They'd give it to others....I'm a reporter. Somebody gives me information and it's accurate. I generally use it." And Wilson says Novak told him that his sources were administration officials.

That's Corn speaking, of course, not Novak. But it does seem to suggest a certain ...change in emphasis on Novak's part now that the story has gone big time. I guess if I'd caused as much distress for a conservative president as Novak -- albeit unwittingly -- I'd be looking to change the tone, too.

More from Novak:

When I called the CIA in July to confirm Mrs. Wilson's involvement in the mission for her husband -- he is a former Clinton administration official -- they asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else.

Is Novak implying that exposing the names of CIA agents is OK, as long as it doesn't endanger them??? And what, exactly, does "endanger" mean in Novak's lexicon? Endanger lives? Endanger careers? Endanger intelligence sources and methods? Endanger relationships and information built up through years of painstaking work?

The bottom line: Novak was formally asked not to print the name of a serving CIA employee, and he chose to do it anyway. That doesn't make him a criminal, but it would seem to leave him with roughly the same moral standing of a bucket of rancid puss. But, hey, we already knew that.

According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operator, and not in charge of undercover operatives'...

Note the extreme care taken with the construction of this clause: "Mrs." Wilson was an analyst, but not a covert operator. This carefully skirts the possibility that she was an analyst using commercial or diplomatic cover, even if she was not an "operator" -- i.e. an employee of the agency's Directorate of Operations (the serious spooks.)

Likewise, Novak's claim that she was "not in charge of undercover operatives" slides right around the possibility that her contacts -- foreign officials, arms dealers, scientists, etc -- might be vulnerable if her identity was exposed, even if they did not qualify as "operatives" under her "charge."

Novak's statement, then, is simply his attempt to pour a small bucket of manure in the middle of the story, in order to obscure his own role in creating so much trouble for a conservative president.

Novak cites his 46 years in the trade as proof that he would never willingly burn a source. What he doesn't add is that those 46 years have also taught him how to torture the truth until it screams for mercy.

Which no doubt explains why his little pile seems so at home on Drudge's page.

Update 9/29 6:15 PM ET: Roland X points out that Novak is flat wrong about Wilson's wife, at least according to the Washington Post. She was both an analyst and a clandestine operative:

She is a case officer in the CIA's clandestine service and works as an analyst on weapons of mass destruction. Novak published her maiden name, Plame, which she had used overseas and has not been using publicly.

Novak spreading falsehoods? What's this world coming to?

Posted by billmon at 06:07 PM | Comments (41) | TrackBack
Real Killers
"He wasn't involved," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said of Rove. "The president knows he wasn't involved. ... It's simply not true."

McClellan urged anyone with information about the alleged leak to contact the Justice Department.

Associated Press
White House Denies Leaking CIA Identity
September 29, 2003


Entertainment Network Inc., the developer of the AskOJ.com Website where O.J. Simpson will answer questions on the Internet, has announced a $100,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the killer or killers of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

If you have information you believe is relevant to this case, we request that you contact the Los Angeles Police Department directly.

askOJ.com
Reward for Real Killers
July, 2000

Posted by billmon at 04:37 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
Fun With Numbers

When the Putin gang doesn't like the results of a particular poll, it can move in and purge everybody responsible. The Bush gang can't quite do that yet.

But they can tell lies about it:

Earlier, on Sept. 14, Vice President Cheney on NBC's "Meet the Press" discussed findings from a Zogby International poll of 600 Iraqis done in August in conjunction with American Enterprise magazine. He described the poll as "carefully done" and said it found "very positive news in it in terms of the numbers it shows with respect to the attitudes to what Americans have done."

"The U.S. wins hands down," Cheney said, when Iraqis were asked what model of government they would prefer among five choices. Cheney's information, according to an aide, came from the American Enterprise essay on the poll that said 37 percent of respondents chose the United States, and 28 percent selected Saudi Arabia.

But a look at the raw data from the poll on the magazine's Web site revealed different figures. According to the data, only 21.5 percent chose the United States, while 20 percent refused to select any model, and 16 percent selected the Saudi government.

Posted by billmon at 03:48 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
Watch Tenet and Wilson

Had a chance to talk briefly with a reporter friend of mine. No, he's not covering Wilsongate, but he's an old hand and has good journalistic instincts. He thinks the fate of the story may be in the hands of Tenet and -- ironically enough -- Ambassador Wilson.

The question with Tenet is whether he has more balls to drop, and if so when he might decide to let them fall. Helping the Post find a way to get the names of the original (criminal) White House leakers into the paper might be one option. Leaking the CIA's letter to Justice might be another -- although riskier, since tracking access to such a letter presumably would be easier than tracking conversations with Washington Post reporters.

Wilson, on the other hand, has set the story back, at least somewhat, by retreating a bit from his earlier hints about Rove, i.e. "Trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words."

Now Wilson says he might have gotten a little carried away, which helps no one -- except the White House. But, my friend suggests, Wilson could undo some of the damage by releasing the names of the reporters who called him back in July to get his reaction to the White House's original leak.

Wilson has already named one journalist -- Andrea Mitchell -- but supposedly has said he spoke to four in all. (I can't find a link for that specific comment, so if anyone has one, please let me know.)

Anyway, putting those names in play would at least keep the pot bubbling, even if it doesn't move the story deeper inside the White House.

Update 9/29 3:20 PM ET: Swopa reminds me that Wilson's four-reporter comment was in yesterday's Post story:

Wilson said in a telephone interview that four reporters from three television networks called him in July and told him that White House officials had contacted them to encourage stories that would include his wife's identity.
Posted by billmon at 02:43 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
Mug Shots

It's a curious game that Drudge is playing right now: posting photos of various administration officials over the headline: Who leaked the name?

So far we've got Rove, Condi, Cheney, Andy Card, Mary Matalin and George Tenet (who is about as likely a suspect as I am)

I'm going to assume that in his own, er, unique way, Drudge is being honest: He doesn't know, and so far nobody who knows will tell him, but he is reading or hearing the same lists as everyone else.

Posted by billmon at 02:13 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
Bushdu the All Knowing

McCLELLAN: The President knows.

QUESTION: What, is he clairvoyant? How does he know?

magician.gif

Posted by billmon at 01:31 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
The Butler Did It

I swear this is almost as good as playing Clue:

White House: President Knows Rove Not Involved in Revealing Identity

"He wasn't involved," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said of Rove. "The president knows he wasn't involved. ... It's simply not true."

Of course, the only way Shrub could know that Rove was not involved is if he already knows who was involved -- which would make him (at a minimum) an accessory after the fact.

These chowderheads can't seem to get it through their tiny brains that they're dealing with a legal problem now, not a PR problem.

This time, they're the ones who need to "watch what they do, watch what they say."

Update 9/29 12:30 PM ET: Boy, I don't know how Josh Marshall gets the stuff so quickly, but he's already got excerpts from today's White House press briefing posted on his site. My favorite bit so far:

McCLELLAN: He wasn't involved. The President knows he wasn't involved.

QUESTION: How does he know that?

McCLELLAN: The President knows.

QUESTION: What, is he clairvoyant? How does he know?

Posted by billmon at 12:03 PM | Comments (36) | TrackBack
One If By Land, Two if By Sea...

U.S. Troops Battle Fighters Near Baghdad

The American military also announced the arrest of 92 people in a series of raids aimed at those responsible for attacks against Americans north of the capital. One of the raids included the largest joint operation between U.S. military police and about 200 American-trained Iraqi police.

Of the 92 arrested, four were taken into custody in the joint U.S.-Iraqi raid. But the joint raid failed to locate any major suspects. Some of the Iraqi police vehicles switched on their headlights during the nighttime operation despite U.S. instructions to drive with them off.

I wonder if they were thoughtful enough to give their chums the "all clear" sign after the raid was over.

I can see this Iraqization thing is going to work out just fine...

Posted by billmon at 09:42 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
To Hang a Thief

Josh Marshall has an interesting little factoid up on his blog:

Sources close to the former president [George H.W. Bush] say Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fundraising chief and Bush loyalist Robert Mosbacher Jr. It was smoked out, and he was summarily ousted.

Ron Suskind
Esquire
January 2003

Now I'm not an especially big Shakespeare fan (unless there's a role for Gwyneth Paltrow) but there's a story line in one of the Bard's plays that tracks very closely with the Bush-Rove relationship -- up to a point, that is.

In Henry IV, we're introduced to the king's callow and rakish son, Prince Hal, who likes to hang out with the even more disreputable Sir John Falstaff (who was later recycled in The Merry Wives of Windsor). Hal and Sir John spend their nights padding about the taverns and whorehouses of London together, producing dialogue such as this:

Falstaff: Prithee, sweet wag, shall there be a gallows standing in England when thou art king? And resolution thus fobbed as it is with the rusty curb of old father antic the law? Do not, thou, when thou art king, hang a thief.

Hal: No, thou shalt.

Now Hal's Dad, the dour and conscientious Henry IV, is bitterly grieved by his son's choice of drinking companions -- especially after Falstaff falls afoul of the law and has to hotfoot it out of town.

The King: The blood weeps from my heart when I do shape in forms imaginary the unguided days and rotten times that you shall look upon when I am sleeping with my ancestors. For when his (Hal's) headstrong riot hath no curb, when rage and hot blood are his counsellors, when means and lavish manners meet together, O, with what wings shall his affections fly towards fronting peril and opposed decay!

But Warwick, Henry IV's sage advisor, reassures the King: Once Hal has learned the ways of the wicked world, he will cast off his sleazy friends, and rule with maturity and wisdom.

And so it proves. After his father takes to his deathbed, Prince Hal is reborn as King Henry V:

Prince Hal: O, let me in my present wildness die, and never live to show the incredulous world the noble change that I have purposed!

The new King gathers his father's old advisors around him -- even the judge who threw the book at Falstaff. And so when Sir John comes flying back from the boonies, hoping to cash in on his relationship with his royal chum, the new King Henry hits him with a kind of a 14th century restraining order -- banishing Falstaff, on pain of death, from ever again setting foot in the royal presence.

In the Shakespearan moral universe, maturity leads to glory. Henry V goes on to conquer France and marry the French King's daughter. Falstaff dies, impoverished and forgotten. But that's another play.

The parallels here are obvious: Bush the Younger -- always the rebel without a clue -- just can't resist playing the bad boy with Rove. Supposedly, he and Shrub were thick as thieves during the '92 campaign, just as Lee Atwater was Shrub's frat boy alter ego in '88. Bush the Elder, on the other hand, didn't trust Rove, probably didn't appreciate his influence over his son, and fired him when he finally stepped over the line.

The difference, of course, is that Shrub never got to the part about the "noble change." He kept Rove by his side -- indeed, raised him even higher. So, instead of the bold but level-headed Henry V ("a touch of Harry in the night") we have the arrogant and ignorant George II, still hanging out (metaphorically speaking) with his delinquent old drinking buddies.

No wonder Bush is having trouble keeping his crown on his head. But there is at least one Harry-like quality to his presidency:

Shrub: Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more; or close up the Iraqi wall with our American dead...

Update 8:55 AM ET: As Snarl quite righly reminds me, Prince "Harry" is actually Prince Hal. He doesn't graduate to Harry until he gets his own play, Henry V. So corrected.

Posted by billmon at 02:38 AM | Comments (33) | TrackBack
Burning a Source

Howie Kurtz makes the point that past investigations of leaks -- even criminal ones -- usually (read: always) have come to naught:

If recent history is any guide, federal investigators are unlikely to discover who the leakers are. In 1999, a federal appeals court ruled that independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr and his staff did not have to face contempt proceedings for allegedly leaking damaging information about President Bill Clinton because no grand jury secrets were disclosed. The next year, a former Starr spokesman, Charles G. Bakaly III, was acquitted of making false statements about his role in providing information to the New York Times.

In 1992, Senate investigators said they could not determine who leaked confidential information to National Public Radio and Newsday about Anita Hill's sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court confirmation. In 1989, then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh launched an unsuccessful $224,000 investigation of a leak to CBS of an inquiry into then-Rep. William H. Gray III (D-Pa.).

That may also be how this case ends, even if the Justice Department does launch a credible investigation. Getting a hold of Karl Rove's phone logs sounds great, but it won't prove anything -- just that he likes to call up reporters now and then and tell them lies. (well, duh.)

The only people who can nail the perps are the reporters who heard the leaks. Coming from everybody else, including CIA, it's just hearsay. Unless, of course, the CIA happened to pick it up on wiretaps, which would open up a whole nother can of worms -- even if the taps were legal.

So I'm back where I was last night, wondering about the ability of reporters to protect their sources from a subpoena. Remember, it's not the reporter who's at legal risk here -- the law is very clear about that -- it's the source. So there's no 5th Amendment shield to hide behind.

It's highly debatable whether the Justice Department would actually haul reporters before a grand jury in a case like this. But if it doesn't, then it's already obvious how this is going to end legally -- and it's not with Karl Rove being frogmarched out of the White House.

Unless, of course, at least one of our five remaining journalistic contestants were to decide that in this very extreme case, burning a source was the lesser of two evils...

Update 9/29 12:28 AM ET: It just occurred to me that there could be another way to bust the perps: Get one of them to rat on the other (or get another official who knew what went down to rat on both of them, using the threat of an accessory or obstruction charge. But to get to that point, you've still need something to start with -- and I don't know how you get it without a cooperative reporter.

Posted by billmon at 12:27 AM | Comments (44) | TrackBack
September 28, 2003
The Post Goes, Well, Postal

This will be on the front page tomorrow -- as the lead story, I hope:

Bush Aides Say They'll Cooperate With Probe Into Intelligence Leak

OK, OK, it's not the strongest headline, but the story itself is dynamite:

CIA officials approached the Justice Department about a possible investigation within a week of the column's publication. Tenet's letter was delivered more recently.

So now we know the Justice Department has been trying to keep the lid on this for the past two months. So Tenet finally decided to go nuclear -- a letter, plus a rather obvious leak.

The department is determining whether a formal investigation is warranted, officials said. The officials said they did not know how long that would take.

In other words, "we're gonna keep sitting on this thing until we can tell whether or not it's gonna blow over, like every story about every other crime we've committed."

Ditto the White House:

Asked about the possibility of an internal White House investigation, McClellan said, "I'm not aware of any information that has come to our attention beyond the anonymous media sources to suggest there's anything to White House involvement."

You know, it takes real balls (or phenominal stupidity) to talk like that when the CIA has already demonstrated it's willing to use thermonuclear weapons. If the White House keeps this up, how long will it be before the letter to Justice itself gets leaked?

And then we get to the juicy stuff:

More specific details about the controversy emerged yesterday. Wilson said in a telephone interview that four reporters from three television networks called him in July and told him that White House officials had contacted them to encourage stories that would include his wife's identity.

Novak attributed his account to "two senior administration officials." An administration aide told The Post on Saturday that the two White House officials had cold-called at least six Washington journalists and identified Wilson's wife.

Cold called? The morons actually committed a felony on a cold call?? Like a bunch of college students trying to sell time share condos???

(BTW: Why is a Saturday's "senior administration official" now an "administration aide"? What's with that?)

Anyway:

She is a case officer in the CIA's clandestine service and works as an analyst on weapons of mass destruction. Novak published her maiden name, Plame, which she had used overseas and has not been using publicly. Intelligence sources said top officials at the agency were very concerned about the disclosure because it could allow foreign intelligence services to track down some of her former contacts and lead to the exposure of agents.

So let's not hear any more talk about how this probably wasn't a very damaging leak, OK Calpundit?

Did I say "felony" a minute ago? It looks like I should have said multiple felonies:

The disclosure could have broken more than one law. In addition to the federal law prohibiting the identification of a covert officer, officials with high-level national security clearance sign nondisclosure agreements, with penalties for revealing classified information.

We also find out a little bit more about the cast of players:

Wilson said that in the week after the Novak column appeared, several journalists told him that the White House was trying to call attention to his wife, apparently hoping to undermine his credibility by implying he had received the Niger assignment only because his wife had suggested the mission and recommended him for the job.

"Each of the reporters quoted the White House official as using some variation on, 'The real story isn't the 16 words. The real story is Wilson and his wife,' " Wilson said the journalists told him. "The time frame led me to deduce that the White House was continuing to try to push this story."

Wilson identified one of the reporters as Andrea Mitchell of NBC News. Mitchell did not respond to requests for comment.

So it would seem that Mrs. Greenspan sat on the story for, oh about ten weeks, then decided to let her rip late on a Friday afternoon -- about as convenient a time for the White House as possible, and preempting the much harder-hitting Post story.) No Polk Award for you Andrea.

And finally, another bureaucratic county is heard from:

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on ABC's "This Week" program: "The CIA has an obligation, when they believe somebody who is undercover was outed, so to speak, has an obligation to ask the Justice Department to look into it. But other than that, I don't know anything about the matter."

Hey, it worked for My Lai, didn't it?

Great stuff. Hats off to Mike Allen, and to the Post, which (op-ed pages aside) is still the best big paper in America. I realize that's not saying much, but still, this is what a free press is supposed to do.

Posted by billmon at 11:50 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack
Five Leaves Left

An alert reader reminds me that there are at least five other journalists (besides Robert Novak, I mean) who were also told that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. The natural question, of course, is why they didn't write about it.

I went back and re-read today's Washington Post story and found this:

Sources said that some of the other journalists who received the leak did not use the information because they were uncomfortable with unmasking an undercover agent or because they did not consider the information relevant to Wilson's report about Niger.

I don't remember that graph being in the version that was published on the web last night, but it was late and maybe I just missed it. In any case, it still doesn't answer the question. Sure, a lot of reporters (those who aren't evil incarnate, I mean) might be unwilling to out Wilson's wife -- or even buy the White House line that his wife's CIA ties were a legitimate story.

But surely, at some point over the past two months at least some of these people must have realized the leak itself was potentially a very big story. Yet, none of them has seen fit to share it with their readers/viewers -- not even now, when MSNBC and the Post are busting it wide open.

If we assume -- as seems obvious -- that all five no shows are journalistic heavy hitters, then the Washington press establishment collectively would appear to about as compromised as compromised can be. Which means there is going to be enormous institutional pressure in certain quarters not to follow the story where ever it may lead.

Judging from the behavior of the New York Times, those pressures already may be making themselves felt. As far as I can tell, the Times has yet to expand on its original terse and unbylined story. It does have a bit more up on its web site about Condi's terrible, awful, no good, very bad day, but it's buried in a related WMD story by IHT reporter Brian Knowlton. As far as the Times' own staff is concerned, though, the stage is still dark.

It strikes me that the blogospherians are going to have to make a HUGE amount of noise about this story -- more than about Lott (Trent and John), more than Rick Santorum, more than about tangled WMD webs, more more more.

So I guess Whiskey Bar will be switching to the all-Wilsongate, all-the-time format for awhile.

Update 9/28 11:05 PM ET: Well, I'll try to stick to wall-to-all Wilsongate as much as I can. But let's face it: I'm on the outside looking in here. Unless the establishment press starts digging up new stuff, I'm going to run out of things to say fairly quickly. But if anyone can think of angles that should be covered, I'm always open to suggestions.

Posted by billmon at 10:57 PM | Comments (51) | TrackBack
A Tale of Two Countries

I know I should take this with a large quantity of salt, but the latest Gallup poll appears to show a plurality of California voters are ready, set and willing to make a lowlife circus freak the governor of America's largest state:

When asked how they they would vote on recalling Davis, 63 percent of probable voters said they would vote yes, compared with 35 percent who would vote no. In a separate vote to choose a replacement for Davis, Schwarzenegger was the choice of 40 percent of respondents. Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante was the choice for 25 percent of voters polled, Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock received 18 percent.

Meanwhile, in Canada's largest province, the Liberal Party is on the verge of delivering an absolutely crushing defeat to the ruling conservatives:

The Ontario Liberals are poised to win a huge majority in Thursday's provincial election, according to a Toronto Star poll released today...If Liberal support holds until voting day, it could translate into more than 70 seats in the 103-seat Legislature.

And people wonder why I want to move to Canada...

Posted by billmon at 04:09 PM | Comments (36) | TrackBack
Promises Made; Promises Broken
We do need, and welcome, more foreign troops into Iraq. And there will be more foreign troops into Iraq.

George W. Bush
Remarks to Reporters
August 22, 2003


Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of allied forces in the Middle East, effectively threw in the towel last week. He told reporters after an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington that it looked as if he would not be able to count on building a "coalition brigade" with India, Pakistan and Turkey and that, therefore, "we have no choice but to plan for American forces" in coming months, a decision that will stretch military manpower even further.

New York Times
No Peace, Now No Peacekeepers
September 28, 2003

Posted by billmon at 03:46 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Hardball

I don't watch the Sunday shows -- I'd much rather sleep in late. But the transcript of Condi Rice's appearance on Meet the Press has been posted over at MSNBC. It's worth a quick read.

It's easy to rag on Russert for playing the whore -- I've done it myself. But in this case it looks like he was pretty tough on Condi. Not as much follow up on the Wilsongate story as I might have liked, but plenty of hard hits on the WMD charade.

They may make a journalist out of that boy yet.

Posted by billmon at 03:17 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
CREEP Redux

Scene: The newsroom of the Washington Post, Mike Allen's desk.

Allen's phone rings:

Allen: Post, Mike Allen speaking.

Menacing Voice: You just tell Katie Graham to watch out, or she's gonna get her tit caught in a wringer.

Allen: What? Who is this?

Menacing Voice: I said, tell Katie Graham to watch out, or she's gonna get her tit caught in a wringer.

Allen: Are you nuts? Mrs. Graham is dead. Donnie Graham is the publisher now.

Menacing Voice: (long pause) OK, I knew that. Well, you just tell Donnie Graham to watch out or he's gonna get his tit...

Allen: (interrupting) Attorney General Ashcroft? Is that you?

click

Posted by billmon at 02:52 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack
The Stalker Speaks

Be sure and check out the new "clarifications" to Donald "Stalker" Luskin's attempted smack down of Krugman over at National Review Online.

The column, published back in July, was the usual creepy stuff ("I know you're still on the line, Paul. So c'mon, tell me what are you wearing.") But, unfortunately, that time Stalker decided to take issue with Krugman's vicious -- and totally unfounded, minded you -- insinuation that the Bush White House deliberately leaked the name and identify of a serving CIA operative.

Ooops.

Anyway, Stalker has now gone back and tried to "annotate" his original column -- creating quite a mess, if I do say so myself. The "annotations" (in red ink) just about outnumber the original paragraphs (in black ink).

The best part, though, is the column's headline: Retraction Times

Indeed.

Personally, I don't understand why NRO didn't just yank the damn thing entirely, and let it drift down into the conservative memory hole with the rest of Luskin's "inoperative" statements. So I emailed and asked him, and got back this reply:

No – perhaps you don’t recognize it, but what you are seeing there is called honesty. It’s called full disclosure. 

Your tone suggests that I have tried to conceal something, which in fact is what you suggest that I do. But I didn’t. So why don’t I get any credit? Has Paul Krugman ever provided any similar clarifications of his assertions? You’re so tied up in your political prejudices you don’t recognize honesty when you see it.

Perhaps not, but boy I sure recognize defensive pomposity when I see it, and Stalker's certainly got it in spades. Note how quickly he tries to turn the subject from his rather spectacular screw up to another attack on Krugman?

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is an ugly thing...

(P.S. Thanks to Yermum for the pointer)

Update 9/28 3:20 PM ET: Several readers have pointed this out from Stalker's column:

It's an extraordinarily serious allegation, tantamount to accusing Bush administration officials of treason.

So it seems we actually agree on something -- except for that "tantamount" part.

Treason against the United States is defined in the Constitution as "adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." So if we are at war with the terrorists, and if outing Wilson's wife materially aided the terrorists (since she allegedly worked in the area of WMD prevention, it's hard to conclude otherwise), then whoever did it is, in fact, a traitor.

It looks like Stalker needs to add some more "annotations."

Posted by billmon at 02:33 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack
The Good German
I know nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate.

Condoleezza Rice
Fox News Interview
September 28, 2003

I know nothing? Isn't that what Sgt. Shultz used to say?

schultz.gif


Posted by billmon at 02:00 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Protecting Sources

Somebody on the last thread asked a very pertinent question:

IF the CIA's referral to the Justice Department leads to a criminal investigation, and IF the six reporters (including Bob Novak) who supposedly were leaked the identity of Wilson's wife are subpoenaed, would they be able to shield their conversations with the leakers under some sort of journalistic immunity?

I should know the answer to this, since I used to be a reporter, but I don't. My recollection, however, is that the ability of journalists to shield their sources is not absolute, and the case law is unclear and contradictory.

(And yes, I can already imagine this going to the Supreme Court, and miraculously turning Anton Scalia, Bill Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas into raving First Amendment absolutists -- long enough to issue a single opinion, anyway.)

If anyone out there is more knowledgeable than I am about First Amendment law, and would care to indulge in some completely reckless speculation on this, please feel free to do so in the comments. Because I think this may become the big question just a little further down the road.

Posted by billmon at 12:44 AM | Comments (48) | TrackBack
September 27, 2003
The Gray Lady Climbs On Board

The journalism gods have put their seal of approval on the White House-outs-Wilson's-wife story:

C.I.A. Seeks Inquiry Into Naming of an Operative

The C.I.A. has asked the Justice Department to investigate whether senior Bush administration officials broke the law by revealing the identity of an agency operative, a government official said today.

But there's still something screwy here: The Times story doesn't have a byline, and doesn't mention NBC's scoop at all -- which is pretty churlish, even for the Times. And so far not a peep from the Washington Post.

Still, the Paper of Record is on the record, which means the story is fair game for the Sunday talkers. If the corporate talking heads don't chicken out, this could be fun.

I'd say The Nation's David Corn deserves a rather big pat on the back -- maybe even a raise. C'mon Vic, I'm sure you can find the money somewhere.

Update 9/27 11:00 PM ET: OK, my mistake, the Post now has the story. And it's a doozy:

A senior administration official said two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and revealed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. That was shortly after Wilson revealed in July that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account eventually touched off a controversy over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak...

It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another. Asked about the motive for describing the leaks, the senior official said the leaks were "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility."

Which doesn't exactly answer the question. It seems pretty obvious (at least to me) that the Post (and the Times) source is George Tenet, who is now in a position to get a little of his own back for the yellowcake he was forced to eat in July.

Let the games begin!

gladiator.gif

Update 9/27 11:17 PM ET: It just hit me: Tenet knows exactly who did it, and so does the Post.

The official would not name the leakers for the record and would not name the journalists.

And when the Post reporter gets up at the Monday press conference and asks Scott McClellan if Mr. X or Ms. Y was involved, everyone else will know, too.

Posted by billmon at 11:02 PM | Comments (55) | TrackBack
Surprising Times

MoDo is on her game today:

I guess Wolfie never calculated the division in America his omissions would cause when we finally got a load of the bill — including $100 million to hide the families of 100 Iraqis in the witness protection program, $19 million for post office Wi-Fi, $50 million for traffic cops and $9 million for ZIP codes. At these prices, the Baghdad ZIP better be 90210.

And even Friedman is making sense:

I would summarize the collective response of the U.N. to Mr. Bush as follows:

"You talkin' to us? This is your war, pal. We told you before about Iraq: You break it alone, you own it alone. Well, you broke it, now you own it. We've got you over a barrel, because you and your taxpayers have no choice but to see this through, so why should we pay? If you make Iraq a success, we'll all enjoy the security benefits. We'll all get a free ride. And if you make a mess in Iraq, all the wrath will be directed at you and you alone will foot the bill. There is a fine line between being Churchill and being a chump, and we'll let history decide who you are. In the meantime, don't expect us to pay to watch. We were all born at night — but not last night."

Is there a full moon tonight, or something?

Posted by billmon at 08:07 PM | Comments (26) | TrackBack
Shades of Ex-Pfc Wintergreen!

I don't know if you've been following the saga of the stranded Australian sheep, but it's finally been resolved:

Australia's stranded shipload of sheep will be unloaded and given away in Iraq today or tomorrow unless the Federal Government can find a last-minute buyer.

Sydney exporter Mark Coulton has broken through the diplomatic impasse by negotiating with the US military and Iraqi traders to unload the sheep in the southern Iraqi port of Basra and distribute them free.

The saga began when a shipment of about 50,000 sheep from the Land Down Under was rejected by its Saudi buyer, allegedly because of a high incidence of something called "scabby mouth" (also known as "Shrub's disease").

The sheep have been floating around in the Persian Gulf for the past eight weeks, blissfully oblivious of their fate and final destination, and wholly ignorant of the mess their owners have gotten them into.

A kind of House GOP Caucus on the high seas, in other words.

But now the sheep are heading to the southern Iraqi city of Basra -- thanks, it seems, to someone who sounds very much like a fictional character:

"We can unload in Basra any time they want," Mr Coulton told The Sunday Telegraph.

A US staff sergeant in Baghdad who co-ordinates everything that goes in and out of Iraq was instrumental to the deal's success.

"He's like Sgt Bilko, he's the most powerful bloke in Iraq," Mr Coulton said.

Actually, Catch-22 is what came to my mind:

General Dreedle ... was incensed by General Peckem's recent directive requiring all tents in the Mediterranean theater of operations to be pitched along parallel lines with entrances facing back proudly toward the Washington Monnument. To General Dreedle, who ran a fighting outfit, it seemed a lot of crap. Furthermore, it was none of General Peckem's goddam business how the tents in General Dreedle's wing were pitched.

There then followed a hectic juridictional dispute between these overlords that was decided in General Dreedle's favor by ex-PFC Wintergreen, mail clerk at Twenty Seventh Air Force Headquarters. Wintergreen determined the outcome by throwing all communications from General Peckem into the wastebasket. He found them too prolix. General Dreedle's views, expressed in less pretentious literary style, pleased ex-PFC Wintergreen and were sped along by him in zealous observance of regulations. General Dreedle was victorious by default.

Ex-PFC Wintergreen is, or rather was, a major competitor of Milo Minderbinder, the commercially minded young lieutenant who accepts a contract from the Germans to bomb his own air base, and then corners the market in Egyptian cotton, which he covers in chocolate and tries (unsuccessfully) to serve to the troops.

One can only imagine what those two would have done with a ship full of diseased Australian sheep:

Third Infantry Division
Today's menu:
Sheep Surprise.

Hell, I bet the boys in the Halliburton procurement department are already getting the meatgrinders ready.

Posted by billmon at 07:45 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Looking for a Toehold

It's pretty bad when you're a political strategist and you're reduced to sending open letters to potential clients, telling them how to wag the dog:

An open letter to Karl Rove

Karl Rove
Senior Adviser to the President
for Strategic Initiatives
The White House

Dear Karl:

As you know, I have been doing my best to support President George Bush in the wake of Sept. 11. I felt — and feel — that it is our patriotic duty to do all we can to help him as we confront the threat of international terror.

Now, as the president’s ratings approach rock bottom (you hope), it’s time for me to write to you directly, if publicly, with advice on how to resurrect this dying presidency.

etc. etc...

Sincerely, Dick Morris

I think Dick's problem may be that he isn't getting enough action -- and I'm not talking about politics, if you know what I mean.

So here Dick, feast your eyes on this:

foot.gif

I know it's not much, but maybe it will help...

Posted by billmon at 05:58 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
A Lack of Tolerance

'You lied, they died,' US parents tell Bush

The father of a soldier killed in Iraq accused President George Bush yesterday of being responsible for his son's death.

Fernando Suarez, whose 20-year-old son, Jesus, was one of the first fatalities, said: "My son died because Bush lied."

Looks like Mr. Suarez could use a little pep talk from these two:

I think the level of casualties is secondary. I mean, it may sound like an odd thing to say, but all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war. . . . What we hate is not casualties but losing. And if the war goes well and if the American public has the conviction that we're being well-led and that our people are fighting well and that we're winning, I don't think casualties are going to be the issue.

Michael Ledeen
AEI Breakfast
March 27, 2003

I think the American people are going to have great tolerance for the war taking longer, and they are going to have great tolerance for more casualties.

William Kristol
AEI Breakfast
March 27, 2003

(Actually I could see myself agreeing with Messrs. Ledeen and Kristol -- but only if they were the casualties I had to tolerate.)

Posted by billmon at 04:35 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack
John Mitchell, Meet John Ashcroft

The left side of the blogosphere is getting mighty excited about this story:

CIA seeks probe of White House

The CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations that the White House broke federal laws by revealing the identity of one of its undercover employees in retaliation against the woman’s husband, a former ambassador who publicly criticized President Bush’s since-discredited claim that Iraq had sought weapons-grade uranium from Africa, NBC News has learned.

But as far as I can tell from a Google search, NBC is still hanging out there all alone -- nothing from the Washington Post, nothing from the New York Times. And I'm afraid that in the world of big-time journalism, until the Post and the Times officially weigh in, nothing is really "real."

The fact that the story broke late on a Friday suggests to me that whoever leaked it was/is hoping to ease the blow, perhaps in advance of an "official" disclosure on Monday. (Could it have been someone in the White House? Someone at the CIA acting on White House orders? Who knows.)

Oddly, the version of the story I saw on MNBC (thanks to peter j. for the pointer) didn't include any reaction from either Justice or the CIA -- not even a standard "no comment."

All very curious. Assuming this really is real, it will be interesting to see whether the administration can still work it's old black magic and make the issue disappear, or whether someone inside Justice will have to play the old role of L. Patrick Gray in orchestrating the official investigatory cover up.

The plot thickens, as they say.

Posted by billmon at 04:11 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack
Soulmates
If by democracy one means the dissolution of the state, then we do not need such democracy.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia
Press Conference
September 26, 2003

If we speak about human rights in substance, we can always find something that will complicate our relationship.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia
Press Conference
September 26, 2003

I looked the man in the eye.  I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.  We had a very good dialogue.  I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country ... I wouldn't have invited him to my ranch if I didn't trust him.

George W. Bush
Press Conference
June 16, 2001

The Washington Post has a very good photo on its web site of the two leaders shaking hands down at the "ranch," with Putin looking every inch the KGB hood that he was and (by all appearances) still is:

putinbush.gif

I think it's interesting -- read: "highly significant" -- that Bush and his inner circle find it so much easier to deal with Putin's Russia than with our authentically democratic former allies like France and Germany.

Certainly, there are many commonalities: A company like Enron and a CEO like "Kenny Boy" would have fit as nicely in the corrupt crony capitalism of modern Russia as they did in the Texas version. From what I understand, Halliburton already has and does.

(Years ago, before I understood the special place Halliburton occupies in the GOP crime family hierarchy, I attended a conference on "bidness" opportunities in the New Russia, and listened to a Halliburton guy give a very, well, knowledgeable presentation on the practical realities of investing in the Russian oil industry. Apparently, being a "shareholder of record" in a Russian company is something like writing your name on an Etch-a-Sketch toy: Management (which usually means the state) has a bad habit of shaking the thing whenever questions of corporate control arise.)

But (so far) Bush can only shake his head with envy over episodes like this:

After Russia's most reputable polling agency reported last month that support for President Vladimir Putin's war in Chechnya had fallen to 28 percent, the messengers were targeted by a state-ordered purge. Soon the center's founder and research team were out, replaced by a 29-year-old who once campaigned for Putin's political party.

Cutting a slimy little backroom deal with Putin over Iraq shouldn't be too hard, as long as certain Russian interests are looked after.

But if I were Bush, I'd check my fingers after shaking hands on the deal -- there may be a few missing.

Posted by billmon at 03:45 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack
Terrorist Family Values

Iraq's Family Bonds Complicate U.S. Efforts

The extraordinarily strong family bonds complicate virtually everything Americans are trying to do here, from finding Saddam Hussein to changing women's status to creating a liberal democracy.

Oh well, a couple of years of unmediated exposure to American popular culture ought to fix that problem.

Maybe they should use some of that $87 billion to beam the Fox channel into every Iraqi household?

Posted by billmon at 03:00 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
Dollars and Sense

And in the man bites dog department:

Study Finds Net Gain From Pollution Rules

A new White House study concludes that environmental regulations are well worth the costs they impose on industry and consumers, resulting in significant public health improvements and other benefits to society. The findings overturn a previous report that officials now say was defective.

The report, issued this month by the Office of Management and Budget, concludes that the health and social benefits of enforcing tough new clean-air regulations during the past decade were five to seven times greater in economic terms than were the costs of complying with the rules.

The value of reductions in hospitalization and emergency room visits, premature deaths and lost workdays resulting from improved air quality were estimated between $120 billion and $193 billion from October 1992 to September 2002.

By comparison, industry, states and municipalities spent an estimated $23 billion to $26 billion to retrofit plants and facilities and make other changes to comply with new clean-air standards, which are designed to sharply reduce sulfur dioxide, fine-particle emissions and other health-threatening pollutants.

So literally: Invest $25 billion or so in cleaner air, earn a $150 billion return (and probably much more).

I can't wait for the IPO.

I think most financial analysts would tell you a 600% return on equity comfortably exceeds the cost of capital. Which must be why the ex-CEO of Arbusto Energy is doing this:

MONROE, Mich., Sept. 15 — President Bush toured one of the nation's largest power plants today and hailed the sprawling complex here as a symbol of how the relaxation of clean air rules would boost the economy and protect the environment...

...Last month, in one of the most far-reaching environmental decisions of his tenure, Mr. Bush eliminated those rules, allowing thousands of power plants, refineries and factories to make extensive upgrades that increase pollutants without having to install new antipollution devices.

Thank God the businessmen are in charge again, instead of those kooky environmental crazies who don't know the value of a dollar!

Posted by billmon at 02:47 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
The Pretzel Monies
Fat Tony: I'm afraid I must insist. You see, my wife, she has been most vocal on the subject of the pretzel monies. "Where's the money?" "When are you going to get the money?" "Why aren't you getting the money now?" And so on.

If you look to your right, you'll see the Amazon and Pay Pal donation bugs are now sitting on top of my Dean for America button like a twin pair of dung beetles.

This pains me. Whiskey Bar is supposed to be strictly a commerce-free zone -- not exactly a public service, maybe, but also not a place to grub for the Almighty Dollar. However, I really want to make some improvements in the site, and I want to be able to pay a fair wage to the person who does the work. And, like Fat Tony, I have a wife who takes a certain proprietary interest in my finances.

Actually, that's not true: My wife doesn't bother me about money at all. But it's still a good excuse. So I'm putting out the tip jars. Please drop a buck or two in if you feel so inclined.

Or I may have to ask Fat Tony to pay you a visit.

fattony.gif

Posted by billmon at 01:00 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
September 26, 2003
Economic Update

5{y day in the stock market -- especially for the Nasdaq. Second day in a row the index has been hit by a late day sell off and the third day in a row it has closed on its lows -- in heavy volume.

Not clear at this point how much of the selling is just typical end-of-the-quarter cautiousness: A lot of portfolio managers, particularly tech managers, are sitting on hefty gains since June, and quite naturally don't want to give any of them back now.

Having been burned once trying to call a top on the Nasdaq, I'll shun the temptation to do it again now. But the mood definitely has changed over the past week -- first because of the weak dollar, then the OPEC-induced spike in oil prices, and now (increasingly) because of nervousness about earnings.

Nervousness would appear to be justified, based on the latest economic data. For some reason the wire service reporters got all hot and bothered today about the whopping 0.2 percentage point upward revision in second quarter GDP. But this was not particularly important news and old news to boot.

The more interesting development was the unexpected slump in the University of Michigan Consumer Confidence number for September. While not huge, the decline suggests the crappy job market, combined with the even crappier news out of Iraq, is o taking a toll on sentiment.

Eventually (assuming the employment situation remains dim) declining confidence is going to show up at the shopping mall cash registers. Given that consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of GDP (give or take) it won't take much of a retrenchment in spending to knock economic growth back into first gear.

I'm also struck by the fact that the Economic Cycle Research Institute's Weekly Leading Index is showing a definite loss of momentum. The index, which combines a number of different stats -- including jobless claims, mortgage apps and stock prices -- isn't all that forward looking, but it has been a relatively reliable indicator of turning points over the past few years. It's still heading north, but the acceleration seen after the Iraq war "ended" last April actually peaked in early August, and has fallen off somewhat since then.

My (admittedly sketchy) interpretation of the data is that the great big jolt of stimulus applied to the economy earlier this year -- from the end of the war, tax rebates, Fed rate cuts, and the springtime dip in mortgage rates -- is now well on it's way through the economy.

The pig isn't completely through the python just yet, but the bulk of the effect is being felt just now. The...residue... will exit the snake's...behind... over the next few months, unless the pace of capital spending and hiring begins to pick up -- producing the kind of "multiplier" effect on growth would make the recovery self-sustaining.

The problem, I think, is that the broader political and policy environment has begun to deteriorate, thanks to the Iraq quagmire, Shrub's declining approval ratings, the growing "wrong track" mood among the voters, etc. These kinds of things usually don't impact the stock market directly, but they do have uinfluence over time. If nothing else, the souring climate is feeding the market's sense of apprehension about the mismatch between valuations and earnings.

Economic recoveries rarely fade and die at a tender age, so it's entirely possible, even likely, that GDP will continue to grow into next year. But that may be cold comfort to Bush: Current growth rates (say in the 3-4% range) are only just strong enough to keep payrolls from shrinking even further and faster. A deceleration in growth over the next couple of quarters (say back to the 1-2% range) almost certainly would guarantee continued job losses right through the election.

Which means that the distinction between the Iraq "issue" and the economic "issue" may be increasingly arbitrary. If the hits from Iraq (more casualties, more Reserve and National Guard callups, more outrageous pork barrel spending) keep coming, the impact on consumer sentiment could offset whatever head of steam the economy has developed since the war supposedly "ended."

So it seems Bush may have bet his presidency on Iraq in more ways than one.

Posted by billmon at 06:58 PM | Comments (26) | TrackBack
No Spin Zone

Um, as much as I like a good joke and all, could we maybe have the old Atrios back?

Please?

OK. I'll shut up now.

Posted by billmon at 02:39 PM | Comments (52) | TrackBack
A Modest Proposal

Census Bureau: Poverty Up, Incomes Down

Poverty rose and income levels declined in 2002 for the second straight year as the nation's economy continued struggling after the first recession in a decade, the Census Bureau reported Friday.

The poverty rate was 12.1 percent last year, up from 11.7 percent in 2001. Nearly 34.6 million people lived in poverty, about 1.7 million more than the previous year.

It seems to me that if we just shipped America's poor to Iraq, we could alieviate the Army's manpower problem, decrease the surplus population here at home and raise average income levels in both countries.

You know: The "compassionate conservatism" thing.

Posted by billmon at 02:05 PM | Comments (22) | TrackBack
Going Postal

The White House's official position is that a $54 million study of the Iraq postal system is -- yes -- critical to the war on terrorism:

Questioned about the mail study, Press Secretary Scott McClellan replied, "The whole package is important." He says, "It's all about prevailing on the central front in the war on terror."

He thinks so, too:

cliff.gif

Sometimes you want to go, where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows your name.

Posted by billmon at 01:29 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
The Scum Also Rises

Josh Marshall calls this "Un-#$%@#*&-believable," whereas I would say that "standard operating procedure" about covers it:

New Bridge Strategies, LLC is a unique company that was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq...

New Bridge Strategies principals have years of public policy experience, have held positions in the Reagan Administration and both Bush Administrations.

It's a classic example of what the Wall Street guys call "vulture investing."

Some of the better-known members of the flock:

Joe M. Allbaugh, Chairman and Director

Joe M. Allbaugh is the CEO of The Allbaugh Company, LLC, a Washington, D.C.-based corporate strategy and counsel firm. A native of Oklahoma, Joe served as the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under President George Bush until March 2003. Prior to moving to Washington, D.C., he was Chief of Staff to then-Governor Bush of Texas and was the National Campaign Manager for the Bush-Cheney 2000 presidential campaign.

Ed Rogers, Vice Chairman and Director

Ed Rogers is Vice Chairman of Barbour Griffith & Rogers, Inc., the firm he founded with Haley Barbour in 1991. From January of 1989 until August of 1991, Ed served as the Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States and Executive Assistant to the White House Chief of Staff. Additionally, Ed was the Senior Deputy to Bush-Quayle Campaign Manager Lee Atwater, from February of 1987, through the general election in 1988. Ed also worked in the White House Office of Political Affairs during the Reagan Administration.

Ambassador Richard Burt, Director

Richard Burt ... served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany from 1985 to 1989. His appointment to Bonn followed service in several key positions at the State Department, including Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs from 1983 to 1985 and Director of Politico-Military Affairs from 1981 to 1983. Ambassador Burt also serves as the International Director for Barbour Griffith & Rogers, Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based government relations firm.

Lanny Griffith, Director

Lanny Griffith is Chief Operating Officer at Barbour Griffith & Rogers, Inc. and joined the firm as partner in 1993. Previously, Lanny served former President George Bush as Assistant Secretary of Education for Intergovernmental and Interagency Affairs from November 1991 until January 1993. Lanny also served in the White House as Special Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and was the Southern Political Director for the 1988 Bush-Quayle presidential campaign.

The firm's name is a particularly nice touch -- rich in tradition (i.e. "selling the Brooklyn Bridge") and perfectly consistent with Riverbend's recent dissertation on the relative costs of Iraqi and American bridge builders.

There's an old joke about the Quakers: They came to America to do good, and did well. But these good old boys apparently have decided to skip the "doing good" part in Iraq and get straight to the "doing well."

Posted by billmon at 10:40 AM | Comments (26) | TrackBack
Winning Ugly Reconsidered

Some interesting, um, line items from the administration's Iraq reconstruction request, courtesy of the Washington Post:

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...

...$100 million to build seven planned communities with a total of 3,258 houses, plus roads, an elementary school, two high schools, a clinic, a place of worship and a market for each; $10 million to finance 100 prison-building experts for six months, at $100,000 an expert; 40 garbage trucks at $50,000 each; $900 million to import petroleum products such as kerosene and diesel to a country with the world's second-largest oil reserves; and $20 million for a four-week business course, at $10,000 per pupil.

Now listen to what the ruling party has to say in its own defense:

Some Republican aides say the numbers may be more defensible than they sound because the budget is not quite real. They suggest the administration has inflated costs, in part to avoid having to come back next year for a new emergency spending bill, and in part so they can skim some of the money for classified military efforts.

Classified military efforts that, maybe, have the words Halliburton or Bechtel in them?

A few days ago I argued the Democrats shouldn't demagogue this thing because it would just pander to the worse instincts of the American people.

OK, I was wrong. You can't hang such a big, juicy pitch out over the plate and then expect the opposition not to take a big, fat swing at it. Not when the ruling party is so incredibly, outrageously corrupt.

So demagogue away, Dems. Go do old Earl Long proud.

Update 9/26 12:35 AM ET: The more I think about this story, the more I see it as potentially a complete ball breaker for the GOP. For the life of me I can't see how conservative Republicans can go back to their districts and defend this -- not without looking like complete frauds in the eyes of their own hard-right constituents.

This stuff rings every wing nut bell there is: Government waste, fraud and abuse, pointy headed liberal social engineering, "midnight basketball" -- and on and on and on. These guys have spent decades carefully indoctrinating themselves and their supporters to hate everything that's in this request.

And now the White House wants to "give it all away" to the Iraqis!!!

If these details start getting a lot of play (can you imagine the talk radio reaction??) I think the Republican base is going to go absolutely ape shit. This alone could rip another 5 points off Shrub's approval rating.

Posted by billmon at 12:00 AM | Comments (65) | TrackBack
September 25, 2003
Traditional Values

Like "fairness," for example.

According to that notoriously wacko leftist news organization Fox News, a plurality of Americans now support the idea of allowing gay civil unions:

Q: Do you support or oppose allowing homosexual couples to form civil unions that are not marriages, but would give gay couples rights such as inheritance, insurance and hospital visiting privileges?

Support: 46%
Oppose: 44%
Not Sure: 10%

Proving once again just how out of touch that crazy liberal Howard Dean is with "mainstream" America...

Posted by billmon at 11:37 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
The Clark Bandwagon

Kos has a lengthy post up that examines the origins and present status of the "Draft Clark" movement, and links to an online article in The American Prospect on the same subject. It would appear Kos and I share certain doubts about the Clark campaign -- most particularly about the team that appears to have moved in and taken control of it.

I've already said a lot about this, so I won't repeat myself here. But this line from the TAP article does kind of jump out at you:

"They are destroying the parts of the draft movement that worked really well and they are transforming the draft movement into people who want to lick envelopes," says one worried member of the movement. "They are rebuilding the Kerry campaign with a better candidate."

Like Kos, I was initially attracted to the Dean campaign because of the grassroots organization it has created. Win or lose, I believed (still believe) that Dean's people are creating the political model for the future of the Democratic Party -- and, more importantly, for the future of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

I was going to say the latter is a hell of lot more important to me than the former, but the distinction is probably pointless: If the progressive movement doesn't survive, I doubt the Democratic Party will, either.

But the picture Kos and TAP paint is exactly the one I've feared: A concerted effort by the party establishment to block the grassroots movement that has coalesced behind Dean, with Clark as their last, best hope.

There is a suggestion in the TAP article that the entire "draft Clark" movement was actually quietly orchestrated from Little Rock by those who wanted the general to run, but believed he would not jump into the race unless he was the recipient of an Eisenhower-style call from the people. I don't know if this is true or not, but it does appear that having served its purpose, the "movement" is quickly being sucked up inside the kind of traditional, top-down corporate campaign the party establishment has always favored.

I suppose I come down about where Kos did. I certainly see the political potential in Clark, and I'm well aware of the potential consequences of four more years of Enron-style corruption and incompetence under Bush-Cheney. But I don't see Clark's candidacy advancing the kind of political and cultural transformation that I think will be necessary before the Democratic Party can challenge and defeat the modern conservative movement.

In looking to Clark to defeat the Bush-Cheney mafia, a lot of Democrats are looking for a savior -- a white knight on a white horse. But I believe that in the end, the only people who are going to save us, are us. And right now, I don't see a whole lot of "us" in Wesley Clark's campaign.

Posted by billmon at 10:47 PM | Comments (39) | TrackBack
The Law, Sir, is an Ass

So telemarketers have a constitutional right to try to sell me aluminum siding while I'm eating my dinner, but the ACLU has to go to court to keep the White House from banishing peaceful protesters to the other side of the moon?

God I love the First Amendment!

Posted by billmon at 08:56 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack
How to Break an Army In Four Easy Steps

The legendary Joe Gallaway spells it out:

How to ruin a great army? See Donald Rumsfeld

By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers

Armies are fragile institutions, and for all their might, easily broken.

It took the better part of 20 years to rebuild the Army from the wreckage of Vietnam. With the hard work of a generation of young officers, blooded in Vietnam and determined that the mistake would never be repeated, a new Army rose Phoenix-like from the ashes of the old, now perhaps the finest Army in history.

In just over two years, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and his civilian aides have done just about everything they could to destroy that Army.

Joe Galloway is arguably one of the finest war correspondents to ever take up the pen. He's certainly one of the bravest.

Galloway spent 34 days with 7th Cavalry in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in the fall of 1965, rescued a bunch of wounded soldiers under fire, and was awarded the Bronze Star for heroism -- the only civilian to receive that decoration during the entire war. He's about as far away as it's possible to get from the stereotypical liberal yuppie reporter.

I'd like to see Instaidiot stand up to Joe's face and tell him the media is the problem in Iraq.

(Thanks to Bohemian Mama for the pointer.)

Posted by billmon at 08:32 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Cost Plus

Crossed Wires Deprived Iraqis of Electric Power

When grease-stained technicians at the Baghdad South power plant needed spare parts recently, they first submitted a written request to Bechtel Corp., the engineering firm given more than $1 billion in U.S. government contracts to fix Iraq's decrepit infrastructure. Then they went to the junkyard.

They scoured piles of industrial detritus for abandoned items that could be jury-rigged into the geriatric plant, such as the hydraulic pump from a bulldozer that was used to restart a broken water condenser.

"Of course we'd like new parts," sighed Ahmed Ali Shihab, the senior operations engineer. But he said repeated appeals to Bechtel and the U.S. military had not yielded any significant new equipment. "All we have received from them are promises," he said.

U.S. officials said the requests for new parts were beyond the scope of Bechtel's contract...

Let me see if I've got this straight: Uncle Sam gives Bechtel a billion fucking dollars to fix the Iraqi power system, but actually fixing the power system is "beyond the scope of their contract"???

So which Republican palm do I have to grease to get one of those contracts?

Posted by billmon at 05:35 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
Virginia Gentleman
Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, signaled strong support for the administration's request for $87 billion in additional financing, and for President Bush's portrayal of the Iraq campaign as part of a wider campaign against terrorism.

"America didn't ask for this war, but we have acted appropriately to defend our nation and to prevent future terrorists from reaching our shores or from attacking our interests and friends abroad," Mr. Warner said. "The decision to confront Saddam Hussein was made not without careful deliberation, extensive diplomacy and substantial efforts to find a peaceful solution."

Looks like "Liz" has been hitting the sauce again.

liz.gif

Posted by billmon at 05:14 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Pants on Fire
Sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction ... And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.

Colin Powell
Press Briefing in Cairo
February 24, 2001

If Iraq had disarmed itself, gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction over the past 12 years, or over the last several months since (UN Resolution) 1441 was enacted, we would not be facing the crisis that we now have before us.

Colin Powell
Interview with Radio France International
February 28, 2003

A lot changed between February 2001 (and the invasion), but I don't find anything inconsistent between what I said then and what I've said all along.

Colin Powell
Press Remarks
September 25, 2003


Posted by billmon at 04:52 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
Oops

Questions Over Iraq Friendly Fire Probe

The U.S. military said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, responding to a question Thursday about the Sept. 12 friendly fire deaths of eight Iraqi policemen and a Jordanian guard in Fallujah, gave a response about an earlier killing of two Iraqi policemen by American forces in the same city.

Sanchez ... said the military investigation showed no misconduct in the incident.

Col. Bill Darley, a spokesman with coalition joint task force, subsequently telephoned AP to say that Sanchez thought he was responding to a question about an earlier incident in Fallujah. Darley did not give any details.

There was no known report of U.S. troops killing Iraqi policemen in Fallujah before Sept. 12.

When you shoot as many Iraqi policemen as the Army has lately, I'm sure it's hard to keep these little details straight...

Posted by billmon at 04:37 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
News Max Goes Way Off Message

Powell on Tape in 2001: Iraq Has No WMDs

In a development that further undermines Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. attacked Iraq in March, a two-year-old videotape has surfaced showing Secretary of State Colin Powell boasting that sanctions had prevented Saddam from reconstituting his WMD programs.

I guess they just couldn't pass on a chance to piss on Colin Powell.

Interestingly, the News Max line seems to be that the whole WMD thing was a big bureacratic mistake (ala Paul Wolfowitz.) Good little brownshirts, it seems, have known all along that Saddam's connection to 9/11 was the correct reason for invading Iraq. (This was also the line in the Wall Street Journal's lead editorial Monday.)

Now from a purely pragmatic, "Goebblesian" standpoint, NewsMax and the Journal are surely correct. Wild assertions of impending WMD doom can be empirically tested -- and found wanting, as David Kay is now finding out. But vague, conspiratorial tales of secret meetings in Czech airports, hidden training camps, refuge given years ago to possible Al Quada operatives -- these kind of stories can be packaged and repackaged endlessly. (Just ask Bill Safire.)

Proving there were no usable WMDs in Iraq is possible, if difficult. Proving that Saddam had absolutely no involvement with 9/11 is much more difficult, and perhaps impossible.

Of course, if the new threshhold for world leaders hoping to avoid U.S. invasion is proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were not involved in the 9/11 attacks, then the American military is really going to have its work cut out for it.

"So exactly where were you on the morning of September 11, 2001, Mr. Chirac? Do you have any witnesses?"

I wouldn't expect that kind of loopy logic to bother the brown shirts -- they're so far gone they'd probably justify the Iraq invasion as a bid to safeguard the world's camel supply if that's what Rush told them to say. But as a practical political matter, it's a little late for them to be changing their story now.

Hell, even the administration (well, everybody but Dick Cheney) has figured that out.

Posted by billmon at 03:32 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
Boiling Point

Here, in no particular order, is a sampler of today's Iraq-related news items:

An early draft of an interim report by the American leading the hunt for banned weapons in Iraq says his team has not found any of the unconventional weapons cited by the Bush administration as a principal reason for going to war, federal officials with knowledge of the findings said today.


President Bush ended two days of meetings with foreign leaders today without winning more international troops or funds for Iraq and with a top aide saying it could take months to achieve a new U.N. resolution backing the U.S. occupation.


The Pentagon is so squeezed for troops to send to Iraq that it may have to alert thousands more National Guard and Reserve members within several weeks for possible call-up.


U.S. military investigation found no misconduct by U.S. soldiers who killed eight Iraqi policemen and a Jordanian hospital guard near Fallujah on Sept. 12, the U.S. commander in Iraq said Thursday ... Sanchez also said the unit acted within military rules when it called in a helicopter airstrike on a farm north of Fallujah on Tuesday, killing three men and wounding three other people, including two boys. He added that he would not order an investigation.


Akila al-Hashemi, a member of Iraq's 25-person Governing Council, died this morning, five days after unidentified gunmen ambushed her in the street as she drove to work.


This morning a bomb outside a hotel used by NBC News killed one man and wounded two others. The attack was the third fatal blast in as many days.


Seven American soldiers were wounded Thursday in the northern city of Mosul when two roadside bombs exploded as their convoy passed. U.S. officials said one Humvee was destroyed and another badly damaged in the attack.


Citing security concerns, the United Nations said on Thursday it was pulling out 19 of its 105 international staffers from Iraq and more withdrawals would follow. The decision to pull back international staff was a blow to U.S. claims the security situation in Iraq was under control and would undermine efforts by President Bush to give the world body a bigger say in Iraqi reconstruction than it now has. U.N. offices in Baghdad have been attacked twice.


Needless to say, all this poses a bit of a challenge for those -- such as Instaidiot -- who insist America's problems in Iraq can and should be laid at the feet of the so-called liberal press.

(It's particularly amusing to hear Glenn rant about the media's "Vietnam templating" -- completely oblivious to the fact that one of the most stubborn trends of the Vietnam War was the hawks' determination to blame the steady decline in public support for the war on (of course) the news media.)

Those inclined to follow Instafool's lead might want to give a closer read to Gen. Zinni's recent speech at the Naval Institute, which has been posted, in its entirety, on the web site Defense and the National Interest. Here's what the former Centcom Commander had to say:

I just got back from Jordan. I talked to a number of Iraqis in there. And what I hear scares me even more than what I read in the newspaper.

The truth is that getting a handle on what's really going on in Iraq is next to impossible -- it's too much like the blind men and the elephant. (It's a rope! A wall! A spear!) Some hopeful developments probably are getting drowned out by the constant roar of crisis and disaster. But it takes some rather heroic assumptions about media bias and/or incompetence to argue that the overwhelming predominance of bad news is simply a figment of some reporter's malicious imagination. That's infantile fantasy, not punditry.

Accurate or not, the flood of bad news appears to be reaching some kind of crescendo. I don't know what that means for Iraq. But politically, here at home, my sense is that we are at (or near) a major inflection point, one where public support for the war and for the administration's conduct of the war begins to collapse very, very quickly.

The irony is that such "capitulations" are often a sign of a bottom for a particular trend. It may be (although I certainly wouldn't count on it) that the news out of Iraq won't get much worse, and could even start to improve by the end of the year.

As always, though, perceptions tend to lag reality. The White House is going to pay a heavy political price for the months it spent denying and stonewalling the problem. By the time the public realizes the tide has finally turned (if it turns), it could be too late for the powers-that-be to salvage the war effort -- or Shrub's presidency.

Posted by billmon at 12:37 PM | Comments (56) | TrackBack
September 24, 2003
Dubya Breaks 50

NBC Poll: Bush rating lowest ever

George W. Bush is in the worst political trouble of his presidency, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday night. Bush’s approval rating now stands at 49 percent, the lowest point of his tenure.

I'm sure you're all just as distressed about that as I am. (Cheers!)

Actually, Kos says Shrub has already dipped below parity -- in a recent American Research Group poll. But, obviously, NBC and the Wall Street Journal have quite a bit more propaganda fire power to put behind their results.

Bring 'em on!

Posted by billmon at 10:21 PM | Comments (38) | TrackBack
Report? What Report?

US inspectors fail to uncover evidence of Saddam's arsenal

Tony Blair's already tattered case for going to war was further weakened last night amid claims that inspectors appointed by the US have found no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq.

A leak of a draft interim report by the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which has been searching for WMD since the war, says no weapons have been found...

According to the BBC, the group's interim report will say its inspectors have not even unearthed "minute amounts of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons material". They have also failed to uncover any laboratories involved in deploying WMD or delivery systems for the weapons.


State Department Press Conference
September 29

Q: Mr. Secretary, several weeks ago you said the Kay report would be published this month. September is almost over, and so far the survey team has released nothing. Do you have any idea when the American people are going to be allowed to see the Kay report?

Secretary Powell: Kay report? You mean David Kay, of the Iraq Survey Group? (laughs) Jeez guys, I don't know anything about that. I guess you didn't understood what I was saying. I was talking about the Danny Kay report. Yeah. That's right. We're taking a close look at all of his old movies, plus the TV show. And, um, the records. We should have something for ya in a couple of days.

And trust me, guys: You're gonna love it.

Posted by billmon at 10:01 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack
A Light Unto the Nations

27 Israeli Reserve Pilots Say They Refuse to Bomb Civilians

Twenty-seven reserve pilots in the Israeli Air Force presented a signed petition tonight saying that they would not take part in "illegal and immoral" strikes in Palestinian areas in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The airstrikes, aimed at Hamas militants, sometimes kill Palestinian civilians.

"We refuse to participate in air force attacks on civilian populations," said the letter, which was sent to the head of the air force, Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz. "We refuse to continue harming innocent civilians."


I the Lord have called you in righteousness, and will hold your hand, and will keep you, and give you for a covenant of the people, for a light unto the nations.

Isaiah 42:6

Update 9/24 11:00 PM ET: Courtesy of badri, here's a link to a refusnik soldiers support organization.

Address:

Yesh Gvul
PO Box 6953, Jerusalem 91068,
Israel

Telephone: 972.2.6250271

US residents can send tax-deductible donations to:

Eschaton/Yesh Gvul
515 Broadway
Santa Cruz
CA 95060
USA

To join the mailing list and receive regular updates, send a blank email to:
yeshgvul-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

Posted by billmon at 09:20 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack
Rush Job

It seems our Chamber of People's Deputies is in a hell of a hurry to rubber stamp their Dear Leader's Iraq wish list:

Republican lawmakers ... rallied behind Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials who fanned out across Capitol Hill to seek support for the proposal. The GOP-led Congress still seemed likely to approve Bush's plan largely intact, with the Senate Appropriations Committee writing its version of the measure as early as Monday.

I guess it's like passing a kidney stone: Better to get it over with quick -- before the voters figure out who set their bladder on fire.

Creative accounting always helps:

In addition to the hearings Wednesday, Cheney attended a private meeting on Iraq with House Republicans...

...Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., said the result of the administration's proposal would be for U.S. taxpayers to help repay debt that Saddam Hussein owed to European nations before his government was toppled...

Cheney and Rumsfeld said the United States will not let federal funds be used to repay debt owed by Saddam's government. And testifying to members of the House Appropriations Committee, Bremer said he would not oppose language forbidding use of the money to repay Iraqi debt.

You wouldn't think that someone with Cheney's ... track record would need lessons in the fungibility of money. But, hey, if it helps get that stone out...

The old gang from Arthur Anderson must be mighty proud of their former student.

Posted by billmon at 08:51 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
September 23, 2003
Whose War Is It?

Sen. Byrd had the audacity to challenge the wisdom of "the President's war" yesterday, as he and his colleagues on the Senate Appropriations Committee listened to Jerry Bremer make his pitch for the administration's $87 billion slush fund...supplemental budget request for Iraq.

This elicited the usual outrage from the Republican side of the room:

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), a committee member, said Monday that Byrd's comments were part of an ''emerging Democratic Party strategy'' being formulated in think tanks and among Democratic presidential candidates. ''We heard it in Bob Byrd today,'' he said. ''This is about trying to tag the war on a sitting president, so they can run against him in the '04 election."

And:

''It's not the president's war. It's our war,'' [Sen. Pete] Domenici said, alluding to the congressional vote authorizing military action in Iraq.

Now God forbid that anyone should try to "tag" Shrub with a war that he alone decided -- in the constitutional majesty of his office -- to start. But let's take a look at what Craig had to say about it back in March, when the war started:

"I fully support the President's decision to begin this military action to remove the tyrannical dictatorship of Saddam Hussein from power, disarm the country of weapons of mass destruction, and bring freedom to the Iraqi people.

Emphasis, but certainly not intent, added.

I also don't remember too many Republicans wailing about the Godawful unfairness of calling it "the president's war" back when Shrub was pretending to land on aircraft carrier decks. In fact, here's what Domenici had to say about that:

"We've come through a very serious event in our history with flying colors. Our President has shown himself to be a great leader ... It is just about over, and for our President to be there on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln is totally fitting and sets forth in a very special way, the kind of victory that this is."

Once again, emphasis (but not the fawning, totalitarian-style praise) added.

So which is it guys? Bush the bold warlord? Or Shrub the accidental tourist? Because if he's not responsible for this fiasco, I guess that leaves your sorry asses.

Posted by billmon at 10:29 PM | Comments (37) | TrackBack
Rough Trade

Bush UN speech paragraph count:

AIDS: 1
Famine: 1
Weapons proliferation: 8
Sex trade: 10

I guess he understands what sells.

"Those who create these victims and profit from their suffering must be severely punished. Those who patronize this industry debase themselves and deepen the misery of others. And governments that tolerate this trade are tolerating a form of slavery."

So when do we start bombing Thailand?

Posted by billmon at 06:28 PM | Comments (63) | TrackBack
The Emperor's New Speech

Bush Receives Cool Reception at U.N.

Bush: So how'd I do?
Courtier: Excellent, your majesty! The world adores you!

Posted by billmon at 02:43 PM | Comments (53) | TrackBack
On With the Show

May the farce be with us:

A federal appeals court ruled unanimously today that voting on whether to recall Gov. Gray Davis of California should proceed as scheduled on Oct. 7.

"There is no doubt that the right to vote is fundamental," the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said in acknowledging arguments that punch-card ballots in some counties might cause some votes to be uncounted. "But a federal court cannot lightly interfere with or enjoin a state election."

It's a pity. I really was looking forward to the U.S. Supreme Court getting into the act. Doing a number from A Chorus Line or All That Jazz, maybe.

Anyway, speaking of farces:

As the appeals court mulled its decision, the GOP congressman who bankrolled the effort urged either McClintock or Schwarzenegger to drop out.

Rep. Darrell Issa said Monday that if both leading GOP candidates remained on the ballot, he would urge voters to vote no on recalling Davis because a yes vote would assure a victory for Bustamante.

Our democracy may be corrupt and decadent, but it's still a damn good entertainment value for the money.

Posted by billmon at 02:30 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Twelve O'Clock High

It was a bumpy takeoff, and the wheels almost snagged some powerlines at the end of the runway, but the Clark campaign is airborne.

And already taking flack. It's impressive, really, how many right-wing cannons have suddenly trained their sites on the general -- Bill Safire, the National Review, the Weekly Standard, Fox News, etc.

Impressive, but politically counterproductive, at least at this stage of the game. Conservative smear jobs merely increase Clark's potential appeal to Democratic primary voters, who might otherwise be somewhat dubious of his past political loyalties and his, ah, ambivalence about the Iraq war.

If the VRWC can turn a conservative Democrat like Bill Clinton into the darling of the party's liberal base, imagine what it could do for an articulate, silver-haired soldier boy with credible (if freshly-minted) credentials as an anti-war candidate?

Michael Moore's in love already.

And early polls suggest Moore isn't the only one smitten. Clark has vaulted to the top of the Democratic pack in the latest Newsweek and Gallup polls.

Clark supporters will have to forgive me for not being excessively impressed. Massive doses of media exposure do tend to have that effect on people ("Yeah, I like that guy. Wasn't he just on the TV?") Let's see how long the afterglow lasts, now that Clark is just one plane in a formation of Democratic candidates jockeying for air space.

We're not yet at a point where national polling numbers mean very much. The race is only now moving from the "invisible" primary (appealing to journalists, donors, campaign staffers, etc.) to the set up for the early "retail" events in Iowa and New Hampshire. And Clark is still very much at a disadvantage. He's a novice candidate, trying simultaneously to put together both a national staff and local ground organizations on the fly.

Charlie Cook, the political analyst, has it about right, I think. This is from his latest newsletter:

Iowa, New Hampshire and money are most important now, and Dean is the front-runner in all three. And while it's too soon to know whether Clark can make the same splash in Iowa and New Hampshire that he did in these preliminary national polls, the odds against Clark are formidable.

Formidable, but not unbeatable. I'm sure a lot of Democrats -- including those in Iowa and New Hampshire -- are going to be impressed by Clark's head-to-head numbers against Bush in the latest Gallup poll:

(Registered Voters)
Clark: 49%
Bush: 46%

That's the inverse of a Bush-Dean matchup:

(Registered Voters)
Dean: 46%
Bush: 49%

There are several ways to look at this, I suppose. If beating Bush is EVERYTHING -- an imperative that leaves room for no other consideration -- then those three points could be critical, even if they are within the poll's margin of error. Given Bush's strengths (incumbency, money, the ruthless exploitation of 9/11), you could argue that Democrats can't afford to give up even the slighest edge.

But I was actually struck by how narrow the differences are among the major Democratic candidates. None was more than 3 points behind Bush in the Gallup poll, and two (Clark and Kerry) where ahead.

Keep in mind again, though, that this is Clark's debut performance -- his 15 minutes of media glory. We'll have to see how well he matches up against Bush after his enemies and the political press have scribbled a little graffitti on his blank slate.

My own suspicion is that in the end the "electability" question is going to prove far less important than most Democrats now seem to think. Presidential reelection campaigns are usually referendums on the incumbent. If the economy turns around and the administration can find some way to spin a PR "success" in Iraq, Bush will probably be reelected, perhaps massively (although that looks less and less likely.)

On the other hand, if Iraq and the economy remain sucking chest wounds, then Bush could very well lose -- and lose to just about any reasonably solid Democratic candidate.

I've no doubt Gen. Clark can and will prove a "reasonably solid" candidate. It's the "Democratic" part I'm still having trouble with.

P.S. That thing in the Weekly Standard about Clark's "nonexistent" phone calls to Karl Rove has to be one of the most moronic hatchet jobs I've ever read. So Clark's veracity is supposed to be at stake because of a malicious story that Howard Fineman collected from a couple of Republican hack politicians??? And White House phone logs are supposed to prove Clark is lying? Like Karl Rove doesn't have a telephone in his fucking house??? I don't know what Murdoch is paying those guys, but I think he's got a right to expect better agitprop for his money.

If that's the best the VRWC can do, then perhaps Clark doesn't have much to fear on that front.

Posted by billmon at 11:57 AM | Comments (62) | TrackBack
Life Inside the Bubble
Bush said he insulates himself from the "opinions" that seep into news coverage by getting his news from his own aides. He said he scans headlines, but rarely reads news stories...

"... the best way to get the news is from objective sources, and the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world."

Emperor: Is my new suit not lovely?
Courtier: Yes, my Lord, and the people think so, too!

Posted by billmon at 10:58 AM | Comments (68) | TrackBack
September 22, 2003
No Harm (to the GOP) No Foul

California Panel Hears Recall Delay Case

Judges Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain and Alex Kozinski hardly let Tribe get a word out before questioning the lawsuit in the California case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights and minority groups.

"We don't have a Bush v. Gore problem," Kozinski said...

Technically, he's right, of course, in the sense that George W. Bush isn't on the California recall ballot -- and thus doesn't have an electoral "problem" (i.e. counting votes) in need of a quick judicial remedy.

I'm guessing this is gonna turn into one of those vexing equal protection complexities the Supreme Court was talking about.

Posted by billmon at 05:53 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack
Country For Sale
Although the sale of businesses to foreigners could prove controversial in this fiercely nationalistic country, U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said the plan offered a "real promise" of economic revival in Iraq, which is struggling to cope with rampant unemployment, crumbling infrastructure and unproductive state-run industries.

With apologies to the late Shel Silverstein:

Country for sale
One country for sale!
One fryin' and dyin' desert country for sale!
I'm really not kidding,
So who'll start the bidding?
Do I hear a dollar?
A euro?
A shekel?
Oh, isn't there, isn't there, isn't there any
One bidder who will buy this old country for sale,
This fryin' and dyin' desert country for sale?

Posted by billmon at 05:30 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack
Buyer's Market

Another bright side of Shrub's job destruction policies -- they're keeping the price of cannon fodder down:

Soft Economy Aids Army Recruiting Effort

The slumping American economy has proved to be a boon to the Army's efforts to recruit the 100,000 enlisted soldiers it says it needs this year to fill its active-duty and reserve ranks, senior Army officials say, so far relieving concerns that the turmoil in Iraq could crimp new enlistments.

This is giving a new meaning to Marx's old crack about the "reserve army
of the unemployed."

Well, maybe not that new.

Posted by billmon at 04:35 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Supply Side Heaven

And there's still time to get in on the sub-sub-basement floor:

Economic Overhaul for Iraq

The U.S.-led occupation authority here has ordered the overhaul of fundamental elements of Iraq's socialist economy and instituted wide-ranging free-market reforms that will allow full foreign ownership in every sector except oil, U.S. and Iraqi officials said today. The new policy, enacted on Saturday by U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer, allows foreign firms to enter and potentially dominate key elements of the economy, from banking to manufacturing, that had been off-limits to outside ownership.

It was nice of Bremer to at least tell the Iraqis their country is going to be the latest experiment in University of Chicago-style shock therapy. (I was going to say "electroshock therapy," but Baghdad doesn't have enough current for that.)

It's a little hard to reconcile with this promise, though:

Decisions regarding the long-term development of Iraq’s oil resources and its economy will be the responsibility of a stable Iraqi government.

Paul Wolfowitz
Testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee
April 10, 2003

Still, the Iraqis probably should consider themselves fortunate. The Coalition Provincial Authority apparently has cancelled, or at least postponed, plans for a post-Soviet style mass privatization (read: "asset stripping") of Iraqi industry. Supposedly, the CPA had been seeking privatization advice from Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais -- the same team of free-market Leninists that did such a splendid job of turning Russia into the dynamic but law-abiding capitalist society it is today.

But throwing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis out of work at a time when the unemployment rate is already sky high apparently was too much for even Queen Bremer to swallow. (Which is hard to understand: If it's good enough for American workers, why not Iraqi workers?)

Instead, it seems the CPA is pinning its hopes on the same magic elixer that has done such wonders for the U.S. economy lately: tax cuts.

The new economic policy also will slash Iraq's top tax rate for individuals and businesses from 45 percent to 15 percent starting Jan. 1.

Of course, as the story notes, actually collecting that 15% would make for a significant tax increase from Saddam's day, since:

Hussein's government never enforced tax collection from most people, and there is no real tax remittance system in the country.

Still, I don't imagine too many middle-income Americans will be happy to learn that the Iraqis (who are proving to be a very expensive imperial subject race) will be paying a top tax rate that is anywhere from 20 to 13 percentage points lower than their own.

Awhile ago I urged the Democrats not to demogogue the aid-to-Iraq issue. But in this case, maybe we can make just a teensy little exception.

Posted by billmon at 02:49 PM | Comments (27) | TrackBack
A Second Chance

Bush prepares pitch for U.N. help in Iraq

By DAVID WESTPHAL
Raleigh News & Observer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A year ago this month, President Bush went to the United Nations with a stern warning for the world's nations: Join the United States in taking on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, he said, or risk becoming irrelevant.

On Tuesday, despite the United Nations' refusal to sanction the U.S.-led war, Bush will offer the U.N. General Assembly a second chance. This time he is asking for help in carrying out an unexpectedly difficult reconstruction effort in Iraq.

Awfully big of him, don't you think? Especially considering how great things are going in Iraq right now.

Posted by billmon at 01:13 PM | Comments (32) | TrackBack
Another Snow Job

With his usual deft touch (deft as an anvil dropped on the dropper's own foot) Treasury Secretary John Snow managed to knock a quick 2-4% off the value of the world's major stock markets this morning and erase a nice chunk of the U.S. bond market's recent mini-rally.

Not bad for a Bush Administration official still in his rookie year.

The instrument of destruction was yesterday's collective call by the finance ministers of the G-7 (The U.S., Japan, Germany, France, Italy, UK and Canada) for a more "flexible" global currency system.

Now "flexibility" is next to, if not above, "Godliness" in the G-7 book of virtues: Flexible labor markets, flexible environmental standards, flexible human rights standards (except property rights, of course.) All for the greater good of creating a globalized corporate system that hums like a well-oiled machine.

And if a few million stiff and/or fragile backs get broken trying to do the economic limbo -- well, one can't make the global CEO class rich beyond its wildest dreams without breaking a few global proletarians along the way.

But currency flexibility is tricky. In theory, the G-7 is for it just as feverently as it's for, say, wage flexibility. However, political reality has a way of intruding.

Flexible wages (which these days usually means lower wages) are a universal corporate good, which is an essential ingredient in any G-7 consensus. But currency flexibility can cut several ways -- even within each G-7 country. Some corporations may benefit from, say, a weaker dollar, but others may be hurt. Still others may be indifferent to certain exchange rates (dollar-euro) but rabidly obsessive about others (dollar-yen).

All this corporate ambiguity gives the politicians some room to manuever on currency matters, and they're happy to use it. In a sense, manipulating exchange rates has become the globalization era's substitute for the old game of trying to "fine tune" domestic monetary and fiscal policy.

Most politicians -- even Snow -- understand that exchange-rate policy is ultimately driven by monetary policy, which these days is controlled by independent central banks, like the Fed. But they also know it's possible, at least for a time, to make the cart pull the horse. By targeting certain currency values, they can compel central banks to tighten or loosen the monetary spigots to defend those values.

Indeed, in Japan's case, currency manipulation (deliberately weaking the yen) may be the only way to pull the horse, since conventional monetary policy has been knocked out of commission by the country's long deflationary downward spiral.

Therein, of course, lies the rub, since a weak yen makes Japanese goods more competitive in U.S. markets, which shaves a few tenths of a percentage point off industrial output, which kills a couple hundred thousand manufacturing jobs, which tends to pull down Shrub's polling numbers in key swing states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The Europeans, who have their own elections to worry about, take a similar view of the chain of causation. Thus the appeal for "flexiblity" -- which under the circumstances can be seen as a case of the rest of the G-7 taking the Japan in the back room and beating the shit out of it with a rubber hose until it agreed to sign the statement.

But a yen that floats is likely to float quickly towards the stratosphere -- as was demonstrated after the G-7 did its thing. As soon as currency markets opened in Asia, the dollar immediately plunged to a 3-year low against the yen. Japanese investors, correctly seeing this as an invitation to a bear market, hustled to RSVP, sending Japan's stock market down almost 5%. Other Asian markets responded in kind. The selling spread to Europe this morning, and then on to the U.S. stock market.

Meanwhile, the dollar's sharp fall cast doubt on the wisdom of the stunningly huge purchases of U.S. Treasuries and mortage-backed securities made by Asian investors in recent months, so those investors started selling U.S. bonds, too. Falling bond prices cause bond yields to rise, and they have, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury Note up almost 15 basis points (0.15 percentage points) so far today.

Way to go, John!

The problem here (as usual) is that the administration's economic policies are completely contradictory. On the one hand, it has (with an assist from the Fed) used virtually every pump it can lay hands on to try to reflate the stock market bubble and drive the federal budget deficit back to Reagan Era levels.

But perpetually rising stock prices and a deficit-driven debt orgy simply aren't sustainable without massive inflows of foreign capital. The need for such inflows tends to push long-term interest rates up. The inflows themselves tend to push the dollar up.

A high interest rate/strong dollar policy mix boosts domestic consumption and speculation -- and the industries (financial services, retailing, entertainment) and regions (the Northeast, the Southeast, parts of California) that benefit from those trends.

But the inevitable policy trade off is a crushed manufacturing sector and a struggling farm sector. Both are highly capital intensive (which means interest rate sensitive) and vulnerable to the competitive impact of a stronger dollar.

By springing his little G-7 surprise this weekend, Snow obviously hoped to take a little heat off the manufacturers/farmers -- something he failed to accomplish on his recent trip to China.

But there is no free lunch: A country running a trade deficit equal to more than 5% of GDP -- as is the United States currently -- deliberately messes with its own currency at its own risk. The result may indeed be a weaker dollar, but also higher interest rates, a lower stock market, less domestic consumption and an electorate that's in an even surlier mood come next November.

Understanding that, however, would require an elementary grasp of modern economics. So we can assume the Bush administration will have to find it out the hard way.

Posted by billmon at 10:51 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
September 21, 2003
Tunnel Vision

I've been wondering when I would finally see this particular Vietnam-era cliche used deadpan, without conscious irony or satire. And look who it is, of all people -- Britain's Dark Prince of spin:

Peter Mandelson, a close Blair ally, said: "There is no reason for a loss of nerve. We are travelling through a temporary post-Iraq, pre-Hutton tunnel. There is light at the end of that tunnel and the Government needs to continue to be fully focused on its domestic agenda, its programme for investment and the improvement of public services."

Did he really say "there is a light at the end of the tunnel"? Has Mandelson been channeling Gen. Westmoreland?

Mandelson was talking about the Labour Party's upset (big upset) loss in Friday's byelection. I thought it was interesting (although not surprising) that the winner was Britain's perennial third party, the Liberal Democrats, not the Conservatives, who look even more like they're ready to be carted off to the boneyard.

The Lib Dems are an interesting lot. The party is the direct lineal descendent of the Whigs -- one of the two great factions (along with the conservative "Tories") of 18th century and 19th century British politics. The evolution of parliamentary government eventually transformed the Whigs into the Liberal Party, just as the rival Tories evolved into the Conservative Party.

In general, the Liberals spoke for the industrial bourgeoise, the small gentry and the "better sort" of the emerging middle class -- lawyers, bankers, etc. -- as opposed to the Tories, who represented the landed aristocracy, the crown, the military and the great London merchants. (A gross oversimplification, but it will have to do.)

The party was noted for its devotion to free trade, unfettered capitalism and the Low Church Protestant God (not necessarily in that order.) It's power base was in the North, in the rising industrial cities and towns of the British Midlands. Thus the phrase "Manchester liberalism."

The Liberals peaked under their late 19th Century leader William Gladstone, but declined rapidly in the early 20th century, as the original "classic" brand of laissez faire liberalism gave way to the modern welfare-state variety. As the Liberal Party fell, the Labour Party rose, first in coalition and then on its own. This transformation eventually led a British historian to write a famous book entitled The Strange Death of Liberal England.

Strange or not, by the 1930s the Liberal Party looked done for -- down to a handful of seats and sinking fast. But the party managed to survive, somehow, barely scratching out a living on the fringes of British political world. By the 1960s, the Liberals had become something of a running joke -- as when the Monty Python gang entitled one of their episodes "A Paid Political Broadcast on Behalf of the Liberal Party."

But the Liberals experienced a modest revival in the early '70's, under a leader named Jeremy Thorpe, who was, as I recall, one of the first openly (or at least semi-openly) gay British politicians. The Liberals carved out something of a niche as a socially tolerant, economically conservative (well, compared to Old Labour, anyway) party, and with a strong pacifist bent.

And that's how things might have remained, if not for the big Labour Party split of the early '80s -- after Maggie Thatcher handed Old Labourite Michael Foote his head in the 1983 election. A right-wing faction left the party and tried to set up shop on its own as the Social Democratic Party, but eventually ended up merging with the Liberals to form the Liberal and Social Democrats.

It was a bad marriage, in many ways. The Social Democrats were anti-Communist hawks on foreign policy (think of them as the British counterpart to The New Republic crowd) while the Liberal Party was full of ban-the-bombers. Eventually, after the New Labour types got control of the Labour Party, most of the Social Dems returned to the fold, leaving the Liberals with that strange name, which they soon shortened to just the Liberal Democrats.

When Blair and the New Labourites started their drive to power in the mid-90s, there was much talk of a "Lib-Lab" alliance, but the Labs were never seriously willing to deliver what the Libs wanted most -- German-style proportional representation, which would give the party a parliamentary seat total more line with its national voting strength.

But even without proportional rep, the Liberals have done quite well for themselves lately -- mostly at the expense of the Conservatives. The 2001 general election was something of a breakthrough, as the Liberals ended up with 52 seats -- their best showing since 1929. They also did well in this year's local elections, taking about 30% of all votes cast nationwide.

Up until now, though, the problem for the Liberals has been Blair's ability to move to the center (even right-center) while still holding his left-wing base. This put the Lib Dems in a tough strategic position: Should they move to the right, to try to displace the Tories? Or to the left, to get between Blair and the Old Labourites?

Culturally and probably politically, moving to the left would be an awkward fit. The Lib Dems are a very middle-class party, and wouldn't seem to have much appeal to the "Andy Capp" vote. But Blair has made it very hard to get around his right flank -- it would mean getting closer to the hated Tories than most Lib Demmers are comfortable going.

But the Liberals have picked up a good issue: restoring public services. They've made themselves the party of the National Health Service, the higher education system, the post office and all the other parts of the British welfare state that were ravaged by the Thatcherites and starved of funds under New Labour.

And now they have another hot issue: The war. The Tories are completely compromised on Iraq. They supported the war wholeheartedly until it became unpopular, then started complaining about Blair's "mismanagement." (Sound familiar?) The Lib Dems, on the other hand, have been squarely against the war from the very start -- and are now reaping the political benefits.

I don't know if the Lib Dems are actually a threat to either of the other two "major" parties. But for the first time it looks at least possible that they will able to continue picking up seats not by running to Blair's left or right, but by taking him on in the center -- the part of the political geography that New Labour thought it owned in perpetuity.

Which means that someday somebody might actually write a book about "The Strange Rebirth of Liberal England."

Update 9/21 3:20 AM ET: Apparently, somebody already has.

Posted by billmon at 02:36 AM | Comments (28) | TrackBack
Slopping the Hogs

Energy Bill's Tax Breaks Weighed on Hill

Congressional negotiators are weighing House and Senate proposals to include dozens of tax breaks for industries in pending energy legislation, even though they could add as much as $19 billion to the federal budget deficit in the next decade...

Republican lawmakers, trying to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the far-reaching energy legislation, say the tax proposals are part of a well-rounded package of incentives to make the U.S. energy system more self-sufficient and reliable.

Well, at least they're not giving the money to those damn welfare queens!

Posted by billmon at 01:30 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Do Not Feed the Tiger

U.S. Soldier Shoots Tiger at Baghdad Zoo

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. soldier shot and killed a tiger at the Baghdad zoo after it bit another soldier who had reached through the bars of its cage to feed it, a zoo security guard said Saturday.

The soldiers had been drinking beer when they entered the zoo Thursday night after it closed, said the guard, Zuhair Abdul-Majeed. "He was drunk," Abdul-Majeed said of the bitten soldier.

After the man was bit, the other American shot the tiger three times in the head and killed it, Abdul-Majeed told The Associated Press.

I can't exactly explain why, but for me this story sums up everything that's wrong with our little nation-building exercise in Iraq.

I mean, drunk or sober, how much intelligence does it take to know not to stick your hand in a cage with a fucking tiger??? Too much for the U.S. Army, apparently.

And of course, when the tiger does what tigers do, what does our other military genius do? He shoots it in the head.

This bit's good, too:

It was impossible to reach the U.S. military spokesman's office because the telephones have not worked for three days.

But of course, we can't turn Iraq over the U.N. -- or the Iraqis -- because "they're not ready to handle the responsibility."

Posted by billmon at 01:13 AM | Comments (55) | TrackBack
September 20, 2003
Clueless in Atlanta

The bright side of Shrub's record on job creation:

Nowadays, when the GOP hits Charles Dowis up for a donation, the faithful Republican says no.

It's not that Dowis has lost faith in the party. The father of six children -- four of whom still live in his Woodstock home, along with a son-in-law and three grandchildren -- just can't afford a political contribution right now.

"I'm a conservative from Cherokee County, a contributor to the Republican Party, and I'm out of a job," Dowis said.

Be sure to read some of the quotes from John and Jane Q. Public further down in the story. They're priceless.

As a friend of mine likes to say: The South is our misfortune.

Posted by billmon at 09:35 PM | Comments (54) | TrackBack
A Bribe By Any Other Name
UPI reported Friday that Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was scheduled to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush next week on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York to sign a slew of high-tech cooperation deals between the two countries.

Diplomatic sources told UPI the deals may be part of U.S. efforts to offer India incentives to soften its opposition to sending troops to Iraq.

It's amusing that the Republicans had such a hissy fit when Sen. Kennedy suggested bribes were being paid to obtain foreign troops for Iraq, and yet here we have a rather blatant case of legalized bribery -- with a nation that poses a rather serious nuclear proliferation threat, no less.

It appears the Bush Administration is willing to sacrifice virtually every U.S. foreign policy objective there is, if that's the price that has to be paid to avoid admitting the colossal mistakes it has made in Iraq.

Posted by billmon at 09:11 PM | Comments (22) | TrackBack
Our War With Congress

This might make good material for another Tom Friedman column:

"The course we were on - insisting that we must prevail in Iraq and that Congress and the allies must give us whatever we ask for - wasn't sustainable," one senior administration official said.

"When you think about it, the Congress and the French have about the same reaction to our Iraq policy: 'You didn't ask us, so why should we pay?'"

Why does Congress hate America so?

Posted by billmon at 08:45 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Take Your Pick

Putin Won't Send Russian Troops to Iraq

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, preparing for a summit with his U.S. counterpart, was quoted as saying Saturday that Russian troops would not serve in any international force in Iraq.


Putin Says Russia May Send Troops to Iraq

NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia - (AP) President Vladimir Putin said Saturday that Russia is ready to put aside differences over the war in Iraq to work with the United States on rebuilding the country, even holding out the possibility of eventually sending troops.

I think this is an example of what the diplomats call "constructive ambiguity."

Posted by billmon at 08:24 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Dean Attack Dogs Strike Again

Clark Shifts Position on Iraq War Resolution

Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi was less critical. "I know we were surprised yesterday [Thursday] when we heard he said he would have voted for the resolution," he said. "But, look, he just got in the race. This is a new world of politics, and I think you've got to give him some time so we can learn where his positions are. But we think he's going to have an impact on the race, and other candidates should take him seriously. We do."

At long last, have they no shame???

Posted by billmon at 02:03 AM | Comments (101) | TrackBack
Winning Ugly

Louisiana Governor Earl Long may not have been in the same political league as his brother Huey, but he knew a thing or two about greasing the wheels of government. And so it proved when an NAACP delegation came to see him, seeking better employment opportunities for black nurses and orderlies in the state's then rigidly segregated hospitals and nursing homes.

At the time, in the 1950s, even hospitals on the black side of the color line were largely run by white staff, and the NAACP thought something ought to be done about it.

Now Earl wasn't exactly a racial progressive, but he wasn't a race baiter either. So he agreed to help. "I'll get you the jobs," he supposedly told the delegation. "But you ain't going to like how I do it."

Earl was as good as his word. Not long after the meeting, he held a press conference to announce that his special "investigation" had uncovered shocking and deplorable conditions in the state's negro hospitals. Young white nurses -- the very flower of Southern womanhood -- were giving sponge baths and handling the bed pans of young buck nigras! Such a situation was intolerable! Something had to be done!

Earl then asked the legislature for emergency funds to hire more black nurses and orderlies in the state's black hospitals. What could the lawmakers do? Unthinkable racial lines had been crossed. Something had to be done. And so the funds were approved.

What the NAACP thought about Earl's tactics is not recorded.

Scrooge Politics

Democrats now find themselves in somewhat the same position as Earl Long. They may have an opportunity to destroy -- or at least cripple -- the Bush administration's Iraq policies (such as they are). But it might require them to appeal to some of the more selfish and xenophobic tendencies of American voters.

The lastest polls show those voters are increasingly hostile to the administration's plan to spend another $87 billion on the Iraq war. According to a new CBS News survey, only 26% support the funding request; 66% oppose it.

Actually, the CBS poll got the question wrong. It asked: "Should the U.S. spend $87 billion to rebuild Iraq?" when the bulk of the money would actually go to pay for the costs of the military occupation. But in this case, journalistic incompetence is actually helpful, because it tends to confirm something I've suspected all along: a lot of Americans hate the idea that their hard-earned dollars (or their hard-borrowed dollars, anyway) are going to be spent to improve the lives of the Iraqi people.

Rightly or not, this perception -- that Bush's request is for reconstruction, not military operations -- has moved the debate onto the same killing ground that has long decimated the U.S. foreign aid budget. Because if there's one thing American yahoos of the left and the right can both generally agree on, it's that they don't want the federal government giving money to the foreigners (unless those foreigners happen to be Israeli).

And if money is going to be given away, the voters definitely don't want it to come out of their wallets -- or anybody else's either. In the CBS News poll, over 80% rejected cutting federal domestic spending to pay for Iraq spending; nearly 75% rejected increasing the budget deficit, and 53% said they don't want to roll back any of Shrub's tax cuts.

Making the Iraqis Pay

Republicans already know all this, which is why we've started to hear some muttering about coverting the part of the administration's request that actually is for reconstruction into a package of loans, so that the Iraqis could eventually "pay us back."

This, of course, would be roughly comparable to the scene in the movie Brazil, where the family of the suspected terrorist gets a bill for his interrogation -- even though the man was arrested (and tortured to death) due to a computer error. But let it pass.

The important thing is that the administration knows what kind of effect such a move would have on its chances of obtaining any funding -- no matter how meager -- at the international donor's conference next month. And I think it also worries that bowing to such a request could trigger a stampede in the GOP caucus, putting the entire funding request in jeopardy.

The Democrats, like parliamentary oppositions everywhere, have the luxury of taking potshots from the peanut gallery. And that's exactly what they've been doing. Certainly, David Obey's recent comparison of what the administration wants to spend on Iraqi sewers versus what it proposes to spend on American sewers was an inspired factoid. And Sen. Kennedy's admittedly over-the-top allegations about the Pentagon's use of its current funds certainly has touched some raw Republican nerves.

But is this the kind of debate we should be having? The future of American foreign policy in the Middle East -- and the future of Iraq -- hangs in the balance. And the plight of the Iraqi people is desperate.

(I know they're not the only ones in the world who suffer, but their suffering is due at least in part to U.S. actions -- not least the decision to make war upon their country.)

There are an enormous number of hard questions that need to be asked about Bush's package. The ideological idiocy of the neoconmen, the vile corruption of Halliburton and its former CEO, the total lack of planning by the Coalition Provincial Authority, the counterproductive tactics of the U.S. military -- these points all need to be hammered, over and over and over again.

It's also valid -- and necessary -- to point out the "opportunity costs" of Shrub's little misadventure, so that the voters can have some idea of what they've sacrified by following the administration down this blind alley. The case for rolling back the Bush tax cuts -- or at least freezing those that haven't taken effect yet -- is clear cut. Christ, even Joe Biden understands that!

But reducing the issue to "look how much money Bush wants to spend on the foreigners" doesn't reflect much credit on the critics. It may be effective, but it panders to the worst in American politics. In the end, it's likely to make our options in Iraq worse, not better -- and the odds of catastrophic failure higher, not lower.

Earl Long may have been right in the 1950s to exploit racial prejudice to advance employment opportunities for African Americans -- how else could it have been done? But I think it would be wrong to use those tactics now to hamstring the administration over Iraq. No one would benefit (not even the Democrats, in the end) and a lot of people could get hurt.

That kind of ugly victory we can do without.

Posted by billmon at 01:20 AM | Comments (34) | TrackBack
September 19, 2003
Cult of Personality

From the Washington Post, Via Nitpicker:

State Department types were taken aback last week to find that a longtime diplomatic photo exhibit along a busy corridor to the cafeteria had been taken down. The two dozen mostly grainy black and white shots were a historic progression of great diplomatic moments, sources recalled...

And what was put up in their place? What else? A George W. Bush family album montage of 21 large photos of the president as diplomat...

But no picture of Bush swimming in the Potomac?

That last bit is a very sly dig. For those out there who are not totalitarian trivia buffs, it's a reference to Chairman Mao's famous swim in the Yangzi River, which became a must-have photo -- literally a "must have" photo -- for millions of Chinese Communists, back in the days when Chinese Communists actually believed in things like...communism:

Mao's swim became a major yearly event of commemoration, giving thousands the opportunity to express their boundless devotion to the Chairman. They would jump enthusiastically in the water to do their bit. On the first anniversary, in 1967, there were 50,000 swimmers in lakes all over Beijing alone.

I don't hold much with personality cults. But anytime Shrub and his little friends want to go jump in a lake, it's OK by me.

swim.gif

Posted by billmon at 11:18 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Short Form Tom Friedman

"I said before the war that Bush Administration might fuck up in Iraq, and I said during the war that the Bush Administration might fuck up in Iraq, and I said after the war that the Bush Administration might fuck up in Iraq, and now the Bush Administration has fucked up in Iraq. And it's all France's fault."

Posted by billmon at 10:39 PM | Comments (64) | TrackBack
Cutting to the Chase

From Josh Marshall's interview with Ambassador Joseph "Nigergate" Wilson:

TPM: It is September 16th and it seems in the last couple months in Iraq we've basically gone through--quickly gone through--three phases, as near as I can tell. We had a period where there were fairly constant guerilla attacks, and then things escalated with a series of major bombings, and then the administration--first in sort of fits and starts and then in two or three major moves--did this reconfiguring of their policy. The president came forward with his budget request and the new overture towards the United Nations, and we're still trying to negotiate some sort of new arrangement with the international community. So, setting aside why we're in Iraq, how we go there, whether we should have gone in in the first place, where are we now? Where do you see our position right now?

Wilson: Well, I think we're fucked.

Wilson goes on from there -- at some length. But it's nice to see him get the main point out there so quickly.

Josh, on the other hand, might want to learn from the example...

Posted by billmon at 08:13 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Clark Speaks, Part II

Gen. Clark Says He Would Have Voted No on Iraq War

IOWA CITY (Reuters) - Democratic presidential hopeful Wesley Clark said on Friday he would never have voted for war in Iraq, 24 hours after he told reporters he probably would have supported the Congressional resolution authorizing the United States to invade.

The retired four-star Army general and former NATO commander, who entered the 2004 White House race this week with no experience in elected politics, said his comments had been taken out of context.

They were at odds with his public opposition to the war and caught some of his supporters off guard.

Meanwhile:

Clark will participate in debate after all

They said yes. Then no. Now it's yes again: Wesley Clark will participate in next week's Democratic presidential debate after all, his campaign said.

Clark and his people need to cut this stuff out and fast. There isn't always going to be a hurricane around to keep the media distracted.

Posted by billmon at 07:43 PM | Comments (35) | TrackBack
Leadership
My commander ... recently returned from a trip to LSA Anaconda, in Balad. He entered the room where we enlisted soldiers live, and asked what the one thing is that would boost morale and what we would all love to eat but could not get here. We said “pizza!” with enthusiasm. Then he went to go into detail about how good the pizza was that he ate while at Anaconda. That’s a kick in the teeth. You could hear a pin drop in the room. No one thought that was very funny, if anything it was immature and inconsiderate.

Such actions give us the impression that he is not concerned with the welfare of his soldiers.

A Sergeant in Iraq
Letter to Soldiers for the Truth
September 17, 2003

I wonder what gave Sarge that idea?

(The letters from Iraq posted over at SFTT really are required reading: They're like little vignettes of an Army in the process of slowly falling apart.)

Posted by billmon at 07:14 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack
Over the Hump

Iraq Attacks Give U.S. Forces Jitters

In the last six days, U.S. troops have shot at Iraqi police, journalists, a wedding party and a top Italian diplomat searching for looted antiquities...

"We are facing an adaptive, asymmetric enemy, and we, of course, are adapting and refining our tactics, techniques and procedures as well," Lt. Col. George Krivo, U.S. military spokesman, said Friday.

What, by shooting at everything that moves?

I also found this gem from one of our other military geniuses in Iraq:

"It's a handful, a rearguard that's attempting to maintain a degree of political relevance here. We're going to finish these guys off."

Col. James Hickey
Commander, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division
AP Interview
September 19, 2003

That was Hickey's response to last night's attack in Tikrit, which was "the most intense and coordinated since U.S. forces arrived in the area in April, according Maj. Jocelyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division."

Col. Hickey's comment grabbed my attention because it reminded me so much of this one:

Senior U.S. commanders here are so confident about their recent successes that they have begun debating whether victory is in sight. "I think we're at the hump" now, a senior Central Command official said. "I think we could be over the hump fairly quickly" -- possibly within a couple of months, he added.

Washington Post
U.S. Adopts Aggressive Tactics on Iraqi Fighters
July 28, 2003

But of course, "senior Central Command officials" aren't the ones who are getting "humped," now are they?

Posted by billmon at 06:51 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Political Pork Bellies

The Iowa Electronic Market, which runs a kind of a legal bucket shop in political candidacies, has restructured its presidential futures market.

Up until now, Dean has been included in the same "Rest of the Field" contract as Graham, Kusinich, Mosely-Braun, Sharpton and (for all I know) Lyndon LaRouche. But he now has his own contract -- both for the primary contest and for the general election.

The other contracts listed are for Clinton (Hillary), Leiberman, Kerry and Gephardt. Clark does not, as yet, have his own.

According to the latest prices in the market, Dean is viewed as having a 32% chance of winning the Democratic nomination (buy a contract for 32 cents, collect a buck if he wins); while "ROF" is at 29%. Kerry is third with just over 13%, Hillary has 10%, Gephardt 3.5% and Leiberman 3%.

I think it's interesting that the "market," such as it is, believes there is a roughly 62% chance the nominee will be either Dean or "ROF." It's probably safe to assume that most of the juice behind that "ROF" contract is actually provided by Clark. So, to a certain extent, the "market" already sees this as a two-man race.

In the general election pit, each Democratic candidate (including "ROF") is paired against a Bush contract (Kerry/Bush, Dean/Bush, etc.) Right now, the "market" appears to think that "ROF," Hillary and Gephardt would beat Bush, while Bush would beat Dean, Kerry and Lieberman -- albeit by narrow margins. But dividing the race up so many ways makes it kind of complicated, so I'm not sure I'm interpreting the prices correctly.

I'm dubious about the IEM's predictive abilities. Even if you think markets can predict something as inherently quirky as a political race, the Iowa Market does not in any way, shape or form meet the textbook definition of an "efficient" market.

Still, it's harmless fun (I think) and provides at least some "real world" evidence to go with all the pontificating to be found at this blog and others.

(Given Hillary's financial acumen as a cattle trader; I think she'd be a natural at this.)

Posted by billmon at 06:01 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
School for Scandal

The farce grows ever more elaborate:

Appeals Court Will Reconsider Recall Delay

A federal appeals court in San Francisco said today that it would reconsider a decision made by three of its member judges to postpone the Oct. 7 gubernatorial recall election in California.

The Ninth Circuit said a majority of the court's active judges had voted to review the decision by the panel. There are 26 active Ninth Circuit judges...

This is starting to resemble one of those intricate 18th century comedies --something Sheridan might have written, perhaps, or Moliere: With lots of fluttering judges in curly wigs, snuff-sniffing lawyers, sly servants and wealthy ladies wearing beauty spots.

But then you've got this old-fashioned GOP lynch mob grafted into it, like a scene from a classic Western -- "The Oxbow Incident," or something. And, of course, Conan.

A very strange mix.

I'll leave it to the legal eagles to tell us what this latest plot twist means. The fact that a majority of the judges in the circuit voted to review may be a "bad" sign (if you're the ACLU) but what do I know?

Not much, other than that one of the judges on the reviewing panel -- Alex Kozinski -- is a certified right-wing asshole. The other names don't mean anything to me.

Posted by billmon at 04:58 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Clark Speaks

Clark 'Probably' Would Have Backed War

Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark said today that he "probably" would have voted for the congressional resolution last fall authorizing war, as he charged out into the presidential campaign field with vague plans to fix the economy and the situation in Iraq...

"That having been said, I was against the war as it emerged because there was no reason to start it when we did. We could have waited," Clark said...

A decorated Vietnam War veteran, Clark said that if he were in Congress, he would vote against Bush's request for $87 billion for operations and reconstruction in Iraq unless the president details a specific strategy to eventually withdraw U.S. troops.

Clark said he wants more troops in Iraq, but was unsure who best can provide them -- the United States, Iraqis or other countries. He would consider cutting defense spending if elected, he said.

Clark...portrayed himself as a different kind of Democrat, one without strong partisan impulses. He said he "probably" voted for Richard M. Nixon in 1972 and backed Ronald Reagan.

He did not start considering himself a Democrat until 1992, when he backed fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton. "He moved me," Clark said. "I didn't consider it party, I considered I was voting for the man"...

Clark said the country "will not function well" with one party controlling the White House and Congress...

... He compared Bush to Nixon in abusing his power to bully Congress and U.S. allies. "This is an administration which has moved in a way we have not seen any administration since Nixon to abuse executive authority to scheme, manipulate, intimidate and maneuver," Clark said...

...He said he supports universal health coverage that includes preventive care and a "freeze" on Bush's tax cuts that have yet to take effect for people earning $150,000 or more.

OK, let's sum up:

Of course, Clark is a general, so maybe none of this matters. But if I were his handlers, I'd keep the man away from the press until he's been properly scripted. Because to me, this interview looks like a debacle.

Posted by billmon at 03:07 PM | Comments (98) | TrackBack
Playing With Matches

Saudis consider nuclear bomb

Saudi Arabia, in response to the current upheaval in the Middle East, has embarked on a strategic review that includes acquiring nuclear weapons, the Guardian has learned.

This new threat of proliferation in one of the most dangerous regions of the world comes on top of a crisis over Iran's alleged nuclear programme...

Riyadh is also worried about a string of apparent leaks in American papers from the US administration critical of Saudi Arabia...

David Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington thinktank, said he doubted whether the Saudis would try to build a nuclear bomb, preferring instead to try to buy a nuclear warhead. They would be the first of the world's eight or nine nuclear powers to have bought rather than built the bomb.

UN officials said there have been rumours going back 20 years that the Saudis wanted to pay Pakistan to do the research and development on nuclear weapons.

I guess the Saudis figure it's time to cash in on their investment.

landh.gif

"Well Donald, here's another fine mess you've gotten us into."

Posted by billmon at 12:22 AM | Comments (60) | TrackBack
September 18, 2003
A Passage to India
In an interview with The Associated Press, Kennedy also said the Bush administration has failed to account for nearly half of the $4 billion the war is costing each month. He said he believes much of the unaccounted-for money is being used to bribe foreign leaders to send in troops.


(Warning: The following material is PARODY. It is NOT an actual transcript of a conversation between Secretary of State Colin Powell and the Prime Minister of India. Any resemblance to actual individuals living or dead is strictly coincidental.)

Powell: Well, thank you for your time, Your Excellency. We certainly hope you will reconsider your decision. (rises to leave)

Vajpayee Wait. What's this on my desk?

Powell: I don't know, Your Excellency. Perhaps you left it there...

Vajpayee (looks at the document, without picking it up) It appears to be a draft on the First Bank of the Cayman Islands, in the amount of $10 million. (looks more closely) And it's made out to me, personally.

Powell: (smiles) I am delighted by your good fortune, Your Excellency.

Vajpayee But you just left it there. (He makes no move to pick up the check)

Powell: (after a long pause) Consider it a small token of our president's esteem, Your Excellency. A gesture towards improving relations between...

Vajpayee Secretary Powell, are you familiar with the terms of your Foreign Corrupt Practices Act?

Powell: Your Excellency! Surely you're not suggesting the U.S. government is trying to bribe you?

Vajpayee (short pause) Mr. Secretary, are you perhaps aware of the difficulties experienced by some of my predecessors when their... financial relationships with your Central Intelligence Agency were exposed in your press?

Powell: Yes. I see, Your Excellency. Perhaps there has been a ... misunderstanding.

Vajpayee (smoothly) What I suspect has happened here, Secretary Powell, is that through an unfortunate but understandable error on your staff's part, this draft was incorrectly made out to me. When in fact, judging from the face amount, it appears to be intended for someone else -- perhaps General Musharraf?

Powell: But...

Vajpayee (talking over him) Yes, well, these things happen. But I wouldn't be at all surprised, Mr. Secretary, if a direct deposit has already been made to my private bank in Geneva -- and for a considerably larger sum.

Powell: But...

Vajpayee (talking over him) An additional zero, I imagine, was probably added to the sum shown here (gestures at the check.) After all, India is a very large country.

Powell: But...

Vajpayee (talking over him) Unfortunately, I cannot accept such a liberal donation on my own behalf -- as I'm sure you understand. However, do not trouble yourself: I will instruct my bankers in Geneva to transfer the funds to a Government of India account.

Powell: (gives Vajapayee a tight smile; picks up the bank draft) Yes, Your Excellency. I think we both understand each other now.

Update 9/19 12:05 AM ET: Anybody remember this?

Q: The French press is quoting two different diplomats from the United States State Department [saying] the United States is giving some sort of agreements or benefits to Colombia -- and other non[permanent] members of the Security Council...

Mr. Fleischer: I haven't seen the story... But think about the implications of what you're saying. You're saying that the leaders of other nations are buyable. And that is not an acceptable proposition.(Laughter)

Ari Fleischer
Press Briefing
February 25, 2003

I think that's Captain Renault's cue...

Posted by billmon at 10:56 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack
Killing Arabs
What is routine among the Arabs of Palestine is the joy that more Jewish blood has been shed, that their revenge has once again been visited on a liberal society that is not entirely indifferent to moral thinking about its deadly enemies. (Even the reviled settler movement doesn't go around killing Arabs.)

Martin Peretz
Impossible Routine
The New Republic
September 18, 2003


On February 26, 1994, one of the settlers in Hebron, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, shot and killed 29 Palestinians while they were praying in the Hebron mosque. The Israeli government, as well as the vast majority of the Israeli and settler public strongly condemned this atrocity. However, extremists from Israel and abroad (in particular belonging to the right-wing Kach movement) have expressed support of his actions.

Wikipedia.com
Hebron
No Date

Update 9/19 12:40 PM ET:

Three Jewish settlers have been convicted by a court in Jerusalem of attempted murder after a failed plot to blow up an Arab girls' school in the city. The men, from the settlement of Bat Ayin, parked a trailer packed with explosives outside the building in April last year but the plot was thwarted by police. The judge said the men planned to carry out...a "mass killing"

BBC
Settlers guilty of school bomb plot
September 17, 2003

Goldstein was a leading activist in Kach, the Jewish extremist group whose symbol is a clenched fist and whose members believe Arabs have to be expelled from Israel and the West Bank. Although it was a small, remote organization to most Israelis, Kach -- founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane -- thrived in the tense environment of Hebron and nearby Kiryat Arba, the Jewish settlement where Goldstein lived and worked as a doctor.

The Washington Post
Hebron Assassin Entered Mosque Without Challenge
March 1, 1994

We feel that [Baruch] Goldstein took a preventative measure against yet another Arab attack on Jews. We understand his motivation, his grief and his actions. And we are not ashamed to say that Goldstein was a charter member of the Jewish Defense League."

Jewish Defense League, as cited by the AntiDefamation League
Backgrounder:The Jewish Defense League
No Date

A new publication praising Baruch Goldstein, the doctor who massacred 29 Moslem worshipers in the Machpela Cave on the eve of Purim 1994, was distributed yesterday in the territories...

The Jerusalem Post Online
Call to prosecute author of booklet praising Goldstein
March 12, 1998

Militant Jews have gathered at the grave of Baruch Goldstein to celebrate the sixth anniversary of his massacre of Muslim worshippers in Hebron. The celebrants dressed up as the gunman, wearing army uniforms, doctor's coats and fake beards.

BBC
Graveside party celebrates Hebron massacre
March 31, 2000

WANTED: MORE BARUCH GOLDSTEINS
JOB DESCRIPTION: KILL ALL THE ARABS AND MOSLEMS WORLDWIDE
AND MAKE THE WORLD SAFE FOR THE JEWISH PEOPLE

"Gary"
Comment posted on Kahane.org Forum
June 2, 2001

Kach and Kahane Chai are perhaps two of the best-known Israeli groups who use terrorist tactics to promote their agenda ... In 1993, the groups claimed responsibility for several attacks in the West Bank, in which four Palestinians were killed and two wounded.

Center for Defense Information
In the Spotlight: Kach and Kahane Chai
October 1, 2002

Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein decided this week to indict Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburgh, a controversial West Bank settler activist and a leader in the Lubavitch chasidic community, for incitement to racism ... He has been investigated repeatedly on suspicion of incitement and sedition in connection with anti-Arab statements and writings, including repeated public statements of support for Baruch Goldstein's 1994 massacre of Palestinians at prayer in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

The Jewish Forward
Israeli Rabbi Indicted for Inciting Racism
June 6, 2003

Goldstein is revered by many of Hebron's Jewish settlers. "Thank God for Baruch Goldstein," said Shulamit Bar-Kochba at a shrine to Gidi and Dina Levi set up where they were killed. "He came and redeemed our land."

The Daily Telegraph
Heartbreak in Hebron
June 6, 2003

But I'm sure that all just slipped Marty's memory somehow.

Posted by billmon at 09:19 PM | Comments (36) | TrackBack
Spam in a Can

Self-Policing Added to Spam Bill

One of the primary bills in Congress to crack down on spam e-mail contains a new provision that would shield bulk e-mailers from penalties if they agree to police themselves, raising new questions about the extent to which industry is influencing the legislation.

According to a revised draft of a bill being circulated to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, bulk mailers could form a self-regulatory group that would maintain anti-spam standards of conduct similar to those in the bill. Any member of the organization -- which would have to be approved by the Federal Trade Commission -- would be exempt from legal penalties that otherwise would apply to nonmembers.

I'm just trying to imagine what a "self-regulatory" spammer organization might look like. And who would end up in control of it -- the Viagra peddlers? The powerful penis extension industry? The weight loss quacks?

It could get ugly.

Posted by billmon at 06:03 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack
Shock Jocks
Several recall candidates participated in an afternoon debate in Los Angeles, while Republican front-runner Arnold Schwarzenegger was a guest on Howard Stern's syndicated radio show...

Howard: So whaddya think of Amber's boobs, Arnie? Show Arnie your boobs, Amber.

Amber: (Giggles, lifts t-shirt)

Howard: Something, huh?

Arnie: (licks lips) Are we on the air?

Howard: No, not yet.

Arnie: Come to pappa, Amber.

Posted by billmon at 05:12 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
Pokemon

$87 Billion War Request Details Spending

Officials said they would insist on funding flexibility that congressional members of the appropriations committees have long resisted. 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.

"Halliburtonzard, I choose you!"

Posted by billmon at 04:57 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
The Pot and the Kettle

Bush Says Arafat 'Failed as a Leader'

He should know.

Posted by billmon at 04:51 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
Getting Away from It All

I heard on NPR this afternoon that Shrub was given a detailed briefing on Hurricane Isabel this morning -- and decided to leave for his weekend at Camp David a day early.

Hey, any excuse is a good excuse for taking a day off, right?

Update 9/18 6:50 PM ET: My mistake: According to the evening news, Shrub left for Camp David last night. Something about a hot date with Jordan's King Abdullah. Whiskey Bar profoundly regrets the error.

Posted by billmon at 04:42 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
Exit Strategy

The Wall Street Journal has a very interesting piece today -- which of course, you can't read on line unless you're a subscriber -- that suggests the elements of a plan for beating a hasty retreat from Iraq may be falling into place.

The gist of it is that the military has developed a plan for quickly handing security duties in most Iraqi cities over the Iraqi police (you know, those guys we keep blowing away?) U.S. troops would be withdrawn into fortified compounds on the outskirts of the cities.

Once phase one is complete -- next May -- Operation Bug Out could begin in earnest. The Army would begin withdrawing troops from Iraq, as the new Iraqi Army starts to take shape. Those U.S. trooops remaining in country would be moved to "more remote bases inside Iraq, where they could focus on protecting Iraq's borders."

(In that regard, this quote from Gen. Abizaid deserves at least an honorable mention in the Annals of Doublespeak: "What we're trying to do is to get away from policing ... and move toward more traditional military tasks like protecting the sovereignty of a country.")

According to the Journal, the final steps in this "exit plan" would play out "over several years." But I can easily see that timetable being speeded up a bit -- to, oh let's see...June, July, August, September, October...five months sounds about right.

As it happens, I think quickly drawing down the U.S. military presence in Iraq is probably the least worst choice facing the Pentagon. The current force does not appear to be nearly large enough to suppress the Sunni insurgency, but it is big enough to be both a fat target for the guerrillas and a major political problem for our Iraqi surrogates on the Governing Council.

In other words, the military occupation, which was supposed to crush the Coalition's armed enemies and intimidate the unarmed ones, has managed to do neither, and thus has become counterproductive.

The problem, of course, is that the Sunni Triangle is not even close to being pacified, the oil infrastructure is still being sabotaged daily, Baghdad is still a crime spree in progress, the Governing Council is still deeply split between former exiles and those who survived Saddam, the Shi'a factions are still playing scorpions-in-a-bottle with their semi-covert militias, etc. etc.

Under the circumstances, it's hard to see how the Coalition can expect to simply fort up its troops, draw down its forces and hand over key security tasks to a hastily created, semi-trained Iraqi Army -- not without completely losing strategic control of the country.

This simply doesn't sound like a credible plan for building the New Iraq® (You know, the one that was going to be a beacon of peace and democracy to the Middle East?) It is, however, a very credible plan for beating a hasty exit from a war that no longer serves any real military purpose and that is rapidly becoming a serious political liability for the administration.

But bugging out before next year's election could leave the administration (or its successor) facing even tougher decisions a little further down the road. A puppet Iraqi government without heavy U.S. military backing might prove a very brief experiment in democracy-with-the-training-wheels-on. The Sunni insurgency quite likely would continue to grow and spread -- rooting itself more deeply into the landscape of central Iraq. And the Shi'a...well, who knows what the Shi'a want?

In the end, the White House might have to consider a fresh committment of U.S. troops to Iraq, in order to prevent either the complete collapse of the country or the rise of a new regime (Sunni or Sh'ia) hostile to the United States and the existing order in the Middle East.

But that's a worry that can be left for the 2008 election, I suppose.

Posted by billmon at 03:44 PM | Comments (34) | TrackBack
Does Murdoch Know About This?

Iraqis can't believe everything they read

After decades of government-enforced deprivation, Iraqis now have no shortage of news outlets.

But the information gleaned from this fresh crop of media varies widely in accuracy and credibility. Iraqi newspapers are printing everything from unedited U.S. government news releases to outlandish conspiracy theories...

It seems the Fox News formula can work anywhere...

But, have no fear, the Coalition Provincial Authority is on the case, lest our brown brothers overindulge in the fruits of liberty:

That's why the U.S.-led coalition authority appointed a commissioner this summer to supervise the media. It's also why a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, which is gradually assuming some control over the nation, proposed legislating ethical standards for Iraqi media.

Now if Rodger Ailes really wanted to serve his president, he'd have applied for that job.

The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country.

Thomas Paine
The American Crisis
1776

Posted by billmon at 11:24 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Our Man in Baghdad

The Pentagon put on a press conference yesterday for Walt Slocombe, the Coalition Provincial Authority's defense minister ... excuse me, defense advisor in Baghdad. Walt is one of the guys who's been given the job of building the New Model Army for the New Iraq®.

This is a terribly important job, since at this point it looks like the only hope for getting the 3rd Infantry Division home before its soldiers are ready to check into a nursing home is the Pentagon's planned "Iraqization" of the war. And if "Iraqization" is going to work, folks like Walt are the ones who are going to have to make it work.

Which is why I am reprinting a post I put up over at Daily Kos back in April, when I first heard Walt had been selected for the Iraqi defense job. Considering what's happening in Iraq right now:

U.S. Troops Ambushed in Central Iraq Town

I think it's important for people to know a little something about Field Marshall von Rumsfeld's man on the spot:

As it turns out, I know Walt Slocombe -- in the sense that I've actually sat down a few times and talked with him face to face. I even bought him lunch once, many years ago.

So why am I dropping his name here? Not to overinflate my own importance, believe me. I knew Walt back when he was a lawyer, representing foundations and other nonprofit organizations that had tax problems with the IRS. It was during one of the many low points in my journalistic career, and I was just an insignificant little reporter covering the IRS for a small, special-interest newspaper -- what they call a "trade" in the trade. And Walt was a source, of sorts.

At the time, Slocombe was in GOP-enforced exile from his real profession: national security bureaucrat. He was a mid-level official in the Carter Administration (Defense or State, I can't remember which) who returned to government under Clinton and rose to become Undersecretary of Defense. I lost track of him after that.

I have no idea why the neoconmen picked Slocombe, a Democrat and a Clinton appointee, to run the Ministry of Defense in our new Protectorate of Iraq. Some byzantine convolution of Beltway politics, I suppose. But just the thought of Walt as the de facto defense czar of the new! and improved! Iraq made me laugh out loud.

Don't get me wrong: I don't have anything against Walt. He's a very nice, very polite gentleman who happens to bear a striking resemblance to Buster Keaton, the silent movie star. As I recall, he liked to spend part of the summer with his family in the north of Italy, where he has (or had) a small villa. Walt's very knowledgeable about the law and history and Italian cuisine, and he wears (or wore) nicely tailored, conservative gray suits. Ivy League all the way.

If I were a nonprofit hospital, and I wanted to convince the IRS that leasing space to a group of doctors for their for-profit oncology clinic was NOT subject to the unrelated business income tax, I'd pick Walt.

If I were the Secretary of Defense, and I wanted to reorganize the Office of Defense Procurement to streamline the process for ordering office supplies for the Pentagon's satellite facilities, I'd pick Walt.

But if I wanted someone to be an America's de facto defense minister in a fractured Middle Eastern country teeming with political factions, religious sects and ethnic groups who all hate each other, devastated by years of war and economic sanctions, and brutally repressed by decades of totalitarian dictatorship . . . well, let's just say Walt wouldn't be on my short list.

Which means what?

That the neoconmen were absolutely clueless about what they were getting into? Possibly.

That the gang plans to keep a particularly tight grip on the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, and needs to have a pliable front man (preferably a Democrat) on the ground to take the flack? Perhaps.

That Walt Slocombe needs to run, not walk, to the nearest telephone and tell the Pentagon he's withdrawing his name from consideration? Definitely.

Because it's a long way from Iraq to the north of Italy, and it's hard to get good prosciuto in Baghdad. And the drycleaning? Well, don't even ask.

(Shrugs) I still think he should have taken my advice.

Posted by billmon at 10:38 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
The Gang Puts in a Good Word for Saddam
We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September 11th.

George W. Bush
Remarks to Reporters
September 17, 2003

We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein ... had either direction or control of 9/11.

Condi Rice
Nightline
September 16, 2003

Q: There have been a number of public opinion polls that show a fairly sizable percentage of the public believes that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks.  Do you believe that?

Rumsfeld: I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that.

Donald Rumsfeld
Press Conference
September 16, 2003

Mr. Russert: But is there a connection [between Saddam and 9/11]?

Cheney: We don’t know.

Dick Cheney
Meet the Press
September 14, 2003

Does anybody have any thoughts as to why the Jackass cast is doing this now? Because it's seems a little late in the game to be rolling out an honesty-is-the-best-policy policy.

Posted by billmon at 10:13 AM | Comments (64) | TrackBack
September 17, 2003
Waiting for the Cavalry
We do need, and welcome, more foreign troops into Iraq. And there will be more foreign troops into Iraq.

George W. Bush
Remarks to Reporters
August 22, 2003

Somewhere between zero and 10,000 or 15,000 troops would be a help. It would relieve some of the pressure on our forces...Whether or not there will be a [UN] resolution and whether or not even if there were a resolution, we would get that number of troops, is an open question.

Donald Rumsfeld
Press Briefing
September 16, 2003

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said last night on ABC's "Nightline" that a successful U.N. resolution would bring troops in "small numbers." She said it could be months before those forces arrive.

Washington Post
Diplomats Say U.N. Pact Still Is Feasible
September 17, 2003

I believe this is what they call "managing expectations." As in, managing them down. Way down.

In George W. Bush's own personal movie script, I'm sure this is playing like the scene in High Noon where the brave but badly outnumbered Marshal (Gary Cooper) goes to church to ask the townpeople for help, and is told -- fairly rudely -- to take a hike.

(Can't you hear the soundtrack? Boom biddy boom biddy boom. "Do not forsake me ohhhhhh my darlin'...")

In reality, of course, the people Shrub is asking for help don't even live in the same territory -- much less the same town -- told him all along he shouldn't try to tackle the bad guys by himself and are getting pretty tired of the Marshal shooting himself in the foot all the time.

But, hey, it's his movie.

According this report, Marshal Bush is asking the South Koreans to send about 3,000 troops to Iraq, which would be a very interesting cultural exercise, given how much the two countries have in common. (They're both in Asia, right?)

Since "S" comes after "B" (for Bangladesh), "I" (for India) and "P" (for Pakistan), I think we can conclude those countries have already told the Marshal -- fairly rudely -- to take a hike. But it seems we haven't gotten to "T" yet, so maybe there's still hope for Turkey.

But right now the South Koreans don't sound all that enthusiastic about the idea:

Although concerned about further dividing the nation by posting more Korean troops, the parliamentary chairman of the defense committee stressed that Seoul cannot ignore the significance of its alliance with Washington.

"If the United Nations officially asks for the dispatch of a combat force, the government should hold negotiations after conducting a field survey on the exact situation in Iraq," Chang asserted.

That ain't exactly the Korean equivalent of "Rangers lead the way!"

If I were with the U.S. forces in Iraq -- which thank the good Lord I'm not -- I wouldn't be making any plans about what to do when my tour of duty is finally up. Because the Marshal appears to be having some problems of his own...

highnoon.gif

Posted by billmon at 11:03 AM | Comments (36) | TrackBack
Depends on Your Definition of "No"
I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now for over three years.

Dick Cheney
Meet the Press
September 14, 2003


Catherine Martin, Mr. Cheney's spokeswoman, acknowledged that he would receive about $150,000 a year in deferred compensation from Halliburton through 2005 but said the amount was not tied to the company's fortunes in any way. The vice president bought an insurance policy to cover the compensation before he took office, Ms. Martin said, guaranteeing him the full amount even if the company went bankrupt.

Just think of it as Cheney's Iraq War finder's fee.

Posted by billmon at 08:40 AM | Comments (25) | TrackBack
The Arkansas Travelers

It appears Wesley Clark will enter the race for the Democratic nomination today -- with consequences that can only be guessed at.

I suppose you could say that it's just the latest stratagem of the Anybody But Dean movement. With the Kerry campaign apparently on life support, the neolib fleas are migrating to a new Big Dog:

Clark is surrounding himself with key operatives from the Clinton-Gore White House and campaigns. Among those expected to play key roles are Eli J. Segal, a former Clinton administration official who was chairman of Clinton's 1992 campaign; Donnie Fowler, former vice president Al Gore's 2000 field director; Ron Klain, a strategist for Gore; and Mark Fabiani, a communications specialist for Clinton and Gore. Bruce Lindsey, a close Clinton friend and a lawyer in the Clinton White House. Mickey Kantor, who played a key role in the Clinton-Gore campaign and was Clinton's commerce secretary, will also be helping Clark.

The resignation of Chris Lehene as Kerry's communications director suggests that some of the other Clinton/Gore fleas may be switching animals shortly.

As you can probably tell, I don't like these people very much. To me, they represent everything that's wrong with the modern Democratic Party. They're sleazy (Kantor alone is a drugstore counter full of conflicts of interest), privileged, arrogant and, above all, comfortable with the existing political and economic power structure.

It's not so much that the Clintonites are Democrats in Name Only (nobody every accused Bill Clinton of lacking the partisan spirit) but their political careers have been built, in a sense, on the decline of the Democratic Party. Their rise to power was explicitly based on the premise that Reagan-style conservatism can't be beaten, and so must be imitated.

I suppose this is a normal part of the dialetical process. When you win as many times as the conservatives have won over the past 25 years, it tends to have an evolutionary effect on the opposition.

Courage, conviction and honesty haven't necessarily been beneficial qualities for ambitious Democrats in our Republican Age. Intellectual nimbleness, deviousness and an acute sensitivity to danger, on the other hand, have usually served them well. Survival of the fittest and all of that.

And so you have the Democratic establishment in the late summer of the baby boom generation -- intimidated by the anger and fanaticism of the right, domesticated by years of selective political breeding, and increasingly nourished at the same corporate feeding trough as the Republicans.

But if those are the backers, what about the backee? To be honest, I don't know that much about Clark -- just what I've read in various accounts of the Kosovo War, plus having a chance to see him in action at an economic conference in Europe earlier this year.

I will stipulate that Wesley Clark on his worst day -- on his worst day with a brain aneurism -- could do a better job of running the United States than the current maladministration. But I can't say I was enormously impressed by what I've read or seen.

All histories are biased, of course, but my impression is that Clark was in way over his head politically as SACEUR -- particularly in his handling of the Kosovo campaign. The most vivid image I have is of Defense Secretary Bill Cohen -- about as smooth a political operator as you'll find anywhere -- screaming at Clark to "get your f---ing face off the TV. No more briefings. Period." (This is recounted in Clark's own book, Waging Modern War)

By the end of the war, Clark appears to have been almost completely neutered -- by the Pentagon brass, (who hated him), by other NATO governments (who didn't respect him) and by the Clinton administration (which didn't want the headaches he created).

Of course, this hasn't stopped the Clintonites from clutching the general to their collective bosom now. And there's no question Clark has political potential. He knows how to work a room -- work, that is, in the sense of dominating the stage and expressing himself clearly and forcefully. Or, as they say at the Pentagon: He gives good briefing.

But what he says, and the way he says it, doesn't always endear him to his audience -- especially when he's improvising. Last January, I saw Clark give a 45-minute presentation on how he thought the war in Iraq would unfold. As long as he was up there with his map and light pen, talking about JDAMs and phase lines and whatnot, he was magnificant. But when it came time to answer questions -- to talk with, instead of at, the audience -- Clark bombed. (get it? bombed?)

Part of it was what he said, which was in essence: The U.S. is going to war, the president has made his decision, so you'd better just get used to it. This to a European audience, mind you, one heavily salted with Franco-Germans. Clark actually told them -- I swear I am not making this up -- that they had an obligation to support the war, because "that's the democratic process."

You can imagine how big that went over.

And it wasn't just what he said, it was how he said it. Intentional or not, Clark has that cocky, blunt American attitude that so often grates on the nerves of Europeans (and foreigners in general.) And he made no noticeable effort to tone it down. In fact, it looked to me like Clark irritated the crowd almost as much as Colin Powell, who also spoke at the conference. And that's saying something.

Now I suppose you could write that off as a cultural glitch. I mean, who cares what the frickin' foreigners think, right? They don't vote. Americans love that swagger -- witness their pathetic fondness for our current flight suit-in-chief.

But knowing -- and yes, pleasing -- your audience is kind of an elementary political skill. If Clark can so easily piss off a room full of European businessmen (and basically pro-American businessmen at that) what's to prevent him from quickly alienating important domestic constituencies? Has Clark ever spoken before a large African American audience? (Does anyone else remember Ross Perot's disastrous 1992 appearance before the NAACP?) Or a labor audience? Or a Hispanic audience?

Giving good briefing on CNN isn't bad preparation for a political campaign, so maybe Clark's TV skills will carry him over any rough spots as a public speaker. But it still seems to me the Clintonites are taking a hell of a leap here. There isn't much time to teach the dog new tricks. If Clark screws up, the establishment is going to look pretty silly.

I can only assume the Clinton clique (like the entire Democratic establishment) is acting out of panic, or something close to it. The fleas need a dog to ride. For whatever reason -- practical, political or ideological -- they're not willing to take Dean out for a test bite. And the other mutts have the mange.

If Clark can quickly pull together an effective campaign organization -- or, more precisely, reconstitute the old Clinton-Gore organization -- he could make this a race. In fact, that would appear to be the only remaining scenario for denyin Dean the nomination.

But this isn't the brilliant, improvisational Clinton team of 1992. It's not even the smooth, well-oiled campaign machine that won in 1996. Clark's emerging inner circle looks more like the bloated, bureacratic gang that lumbered through the 2000 primaries with Al Gore, and then blew an election that should have been won easily.

I gotta say: As an insurgent Dem, and a Dean supporter, I still like our chances.

Posted by billmon at 12:26 AM | Comments (85) | TrackBack
Why We Fight
I have a vision — maybe just a hope — of a great revulsion: a moment in which the American people look at what is happening, realize how their good will and patriotism have been abused, and put a stop to this drive to destroy much of what is best in our country. How and when this moment will come, I don't know. But one thing is clear: it cannot happen unless we all make an effort to see and report the truth about what is happening.

Paul Krugman
The Great Unraveling

Read Calpundit's interview with Krugman. And go buy the book.

Posted by billmon at 12:04 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBack
September 16, 2003
Bottom Rail Top

New Twist in Recall Brings Anger From Right

This afternoon, right-wing radio was cranked up, crackling with accusations of a coup, cronyism and crass political maneuvering.

"Clinton comes to town and a day later two of his appointees on the appellate court decide to nix the election," said Roger Hedgecock, an influential radio personality in San Diego.

"I'm struck by the similarity between California and Venezuela," Mr. Hedgecock said. "Last week there was a recall attempt on Chávez down there. The signatures were turned in and his committee throws them out as invalid. That's what you had today. This is the stuff of a banana republic"...

"This is definitely a left-wing conspiracy," said Melanie Morgan, the host of the KSFO rush-hour program in San Francisco. "The court has stolen Californians' right to vote. It's partisan, bald-faced theft"...

I guess one of the things I'm struck by is the utter inability of the rightists to see the irony in their situation -- done in by the most liberal of the federal circuits, citing the very same opinion used to put George W. Bush in the White House. Double crossed by their own double cross, so to speak.

It's a wonderful field test of that academic study of the conservative personality type -- inflexible, intolerant and authoritarian -- that gave the talk ratio types such a hissy fit recently. I suppose we can now add "utterly humorless" to that list of personality traits.

I can't help recalling a story that Shelby Foote, the Civil War historian, used to tell -- about the runaway slave who joined the Union army and ended up guarding a bunch of Confederate POWs. Supposedly, the man found his former master among the prisoners.

"Bottom rail top now, Massa," the soldier supposedly said with a smile.

Of course, karma is rarely that instant -- or perfect. Near the end of the 2000 election fiasco, after the Florida Supreme Court had ordered that last-ditch recount, I remember chatting on line with a right winger who was just distraught because he thought his boy had lost the election.

"Don't worry," I told him, "Your judges outrank our judges." He thought I was being terribly cynical.

I wonder what he thinks now?

Posted by billmon at 11:29 PM | Comments (24) | TrackBack
Brer Rabbit

Republicans for Dean

By David Brooks

I called eight of the best G.O.P. pollsters and strategists and asked them, on a not-for-attribution basis, if they thought Howard Dean would be easier to beat than the other major Democratic presidential candidates ...

You would have thought I had asked them if Danny DeVito would be easier to beat in a one-on-one basketball game than Shaquille O'Neal. They all thought Dean would be easier to beat, notwithstanding his impressive rise.


"You just jammed yourself into the Tar-Baby without waiting for an invitation," says Brer Fox. "There you are and there you'll stay until I fix up a brush-pile and fire it up, ‘cause I'm going to barbecue you today, for sure," says Brer Fox.

Then Brer Rabbit started talking mighty humble.

"I don't care what you do with me, Brer Fox, says he, "Just so you don't fling me in that briar patch. Roast me, Brer Fox," says he, "But don't fling me in that briar patch."

Joel Chandler Harris
Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby

Are the Democrats really as dumb as Brer Fox?

Posted by billmon at 06:28 PM | Comments (29) | TrackBack
Onward and Upward
I'd wager money the Nasdaq has at least seen its high for the year, if not longer.

Billmon
Forever Blowing Bubbles
September 15, 2003

Good thing nobody took that bet.

Stocks Rally, Fed Leaves Rates Unchanged

The technology-laced Nasdaq Composite Index gained 41.56 points, or 2.25 percent, to 1,887.26, its biggest percentage gain in 10 weeks.

Which is a valuable reminder to me about the futility of trying to time stock market bubbles. I should have learned my lesson the last time around: Bubbles always go higher and last longer than even the bulls expect.

(Unless, of course, you're James Glassman and Kevin Hassett)

Posted by billmon at 05:39 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
The Plot Thickens ...

... and so does the manure. If it get's any thicker, they're going to be wearing hip waders in Sacramento:

Federal appeals court may reconsider recall case

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals announced Tuesday that it may hold a hearing with more judges on a decision by a three-judge panel to delay California's gubernatorial recall election.

What does it mean? You're guess is as good as mine and probably better. I'm in over my legal head here. As far as I know, the Calif. Secretary of State hasn't even responded to the original ruling yet, much less this twist. And the recall bundists have already said they want to run straight to Big Daddy Scalia. Can they do that if the full 9th Circuit decides to review? Inquiring minds (bartending minds) want to know.

I thought this was interesting, though:

David Cardwell, a CNN election law analyst, predicted Monday's decision would stand. The Supreme Court is not scheduled to return to session until October 6, the day before the recall had been scheduled to take place.

And Cardwell, who was once head of the Florida Division of Elections, said the appellate court "really put it to the U.S. Supreme Court" by hanging its decision on the Bush v. Gore ruling.

"Really put it to the Supreme Court." And without lubricant.

What a wonderful thought.

Posted by billmon at 04:58 PM | Comments (28) | TrackBack
Gen. Judy Goes Back on the Offensive

Senior U.S. Official to Level Weapons Charges Against Syria

By JUDITH MILLER

In testimony prepared for a House hearing on Tuesday, John R. Bolton, under secretary of state for arms control, says the administration is also concerned about what it sees as Syria's continuing support for terrorist groups like Hamas, and he reiterated accusations that Syria has an ambitious program to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

How many wars does this silly woman want to start, anyway?

Update 9/16 4:05 PM ET: Someone seems to have countermanded Gen. Judy's orders:

Despite Concerns About Syria, Powell Aide Opposes Sanctions

A top State Department official [i.e. Bolton] said today that Syria was continuing to cooperate with terrorist groups, to pursue weapons of mass destruction and to let militants slip into Iraq. But he declined for now to endorse sanctions or punitive action, saying that "very delicate" diplomatic contacts were under way ...

His testimony had been vetted by the White House, hinting that those in the administration who favor a harder line to Syria had, for now, been eclipsed by advocates of a more diplomacy-based approach ...

Just where does the White House get off, thinking it can second guess Judith Miller like that? Doesn't the military chain of command mean anything any more??

P.S. You gotta love the contorted way the Times acknowledges Miller's little blooper. It's buried a bit further down in the follow-up story (which the Times lifted from the International Herald Tribune):

Mr. Bolton's overall testimony, which was also vetted by the intelligence community, was harshly critical of Syria on several counts. Individuals who sought to publicize these criticisms had provided an advance copy to The New York Times.

At this point, if Bill Keller had any brains, he'd hand Judy a revolver, put her in a room, and tell her to "do the right thing."

Posted by billmon at 03:51 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
Kosher Pork

U.S. Reducing Loan Guarantees to Israel

The United States will reduce loan guarantees to Israel for expanding construction of homes for Jews on the West Bank, the State Department announced Tuesday ...

An Israeli official said ... there would be no deduction from the upcoming first installment of $1.6 billion in guarantees, only from future installments and the cuts were not related to the 400-mile West Bank barrier, of which 90 miles have been completed.

"There is nothing about the fence,"' the official said.

Calling this a slap on the wrist would be an outrageous insult to wrist slappers everywhere.

Posted by billmon at 03:31 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Prisoners With No Names,
Cells With No Numbers

U.S. Forces Detain Westerners in Iraq

Six people claiming to be Americans and two who say they are British are in U.S. custody on suspicion of involvement in attacks on coalition forces, an American general said Tuesday...

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who is in charge of coalition detention centers in Iraq, said the alleged Americans and Britons were considered security detainees, meaning they were suspected of involvement in guerrilla attacks. She did not identify the purported Westerners but said they were being interrogated by military intelligence.

When pressed for details about those being held, she declined to give any other information.

"We're not trying to withhold information from you. Some information remains classified for security reasons," Karpinski said during a tour of Abu Ghraib prison, where Saddam Hussein locked up his political opponents and where the eight are in custody.

What's striking about this story is the complete lack of intentional irony -- even in that last paragraph. As far as I can tell, it's just straight wire reporting.

When they start locking reporters up in Abu Ghraib, maybe they'll finally get the joke...

Update 9/16 3:40 PM ET:

ABU GHARIB, Iraq (AFP) - US officials said they were holding 10,000 prisoners in Iraq, double the number previously reported ...

"They didn't fit into any category," Brigadier General Janis Karpinski said Tuesday of the 3,800 extra people who have now been classified as "security detainees."

Posted by billmon at 03:17 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
War Crimes
What can I say to you? I cannot tell you that choking mothers died holding their choking babies to their chests. You know that. I cannot tell you that Saddam Hussein was a murderous tyrant. You know that. I cannot tell you that the world should have acted sooner. You know that. I cannot tell you of the suffering of those who were poisoned but nevertheless lived. You know that.

What I can tell you is that what happened here in 1988 is never going to happen again.

Colin Powell
Remarks at Halabja Mass Grave Site Ceremony
September 15, 2003


If a helo spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible [military aged male], the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him. Brutal? Maybe so ... The kill-or-be-killed nature of combat tends to dull fine perceptions of right and wrong.

Colin Powell
My American Journey
1995

A report of the My Lai 4 invasion, based on the official version supplied newsmen in Saigon, was published on the front page of The New York Times, as well as in many other newspapers, on March 17. It said that two Americal Division companies had caught a North Vietnamese unit in a pincer movement, killing 128 enemy soldiers.

Seymour Hersh
My Lai 4
1970

Calley began the shooting and ordered Meadlo to join in. Meadlo told about it later: “So we pushed our seven to eight people in with the big bunch of them. And so I began shooting them all. So did Mitchell, Calley … I guess I shot maybe twenty five or twenty people in the ditch … men, women and children. And babies.”

Some of the GI s switched from automatic fire to single-shot to conserve ammunition. Herbert Carter watched the mothers "grabbing their kids and the kids grabbing their mothers. I didn’t know what to do.”

Seymour Hersh
My Lai 4
1970

A few days after Charlie Company’s invasion of My Lai 4, Ronald L. Ridenhour … a helicopter door gunner in the 11th Brigade, flew over the stricken area: “The hamlet was completely desolate. There were no people around, no signs of life anywhere.”

The pilot, Warrant Officer Gilbert Honda, hovered the craft over a rice paddy near the hamlet. Ridenhour saw a body below. The helicopter flew down to investigate. “It was a woman,” Ridenhour remembered, “spread eagled as if on display.” She had an 11th Brigade patch between her legs – as if some type of display, some badge of honor. We just looked; it was obviously there so people would know the 11th Brigade has been there.”

Seymour Hersh
My Lai 4
1970

A test soon confronted Maj. [Colin] Powell. A letter had been written by a young specialist fourth class named Tom Glen … In a letter to Gen. Creighton Abrams, the commander of all U.S. forces in Vietnam, Glen accused the Americal division of routine brutality against civilians. Glen's letter was forwarded to the Americal headquarters at Chu Lai where it landed on Maj. Powell's desk.

In 1995, when we questioned Glen about his letter, he said he had heard second-hand about the My Lai massacre, though he did not mention it specifically. The massacre was just one part of the abusive pattern that had become routine in the division, he said.

Maj. Powell undertook the assignment to review Glen's letter, but did so without questioning Glen or assigning anyone else to talk with him … Powell reported back exactly what his superiors wanted to hear. "In direct refutation of this [Glen's] portrayal," Powell concluded, "is the fact that relations between Americal soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent."

Robert Parry & Norman Salomon
Behind Colin Powell's Legend
1996

It took twenty months for the American public to learn what Charlie Company had done in a few hours at My Lai 4. Why, and how, the deliberate murder of hundreds of civilians remained a secret so long is difficult to understand, especially because so many knew about it – and so many had participated in it.

Seymour Hersh
My Lai 4
1970

By your actions here at this spot and by the construction of this museum, you have made sure that you will never forget but above all, the world will never forget. And I will always remember Halabja.

Colin Powell
Remarks at Halabja Mass Grave Site Ceremony
September 15, 2003

Posted by billmon at 01:16 PM | Comments (39) | TrackBack
Willard

MSNBC Host Gets Bitten by His 'Rat of the Week'

Two weeks ago, MSNBC talk show host Joe Scarborough introduced a guest, attorney Mike Papantonio, to point a finger at the "Rat of the Week."

Papantonio slammed a wood-preserving company called Osmose, saying it makes a dangerous product used in playground equipment and has "figured out how to poison our children and make a profit in the meantime."

What Scarborough didn't say is that Papantonio is his law partner, and that their firm has filed a lawsuit against Osmose. Instead, he urged viewers to demand that the government recall the company's product.

After an inquiry by the Washington Post, the former Republican congressman said last night on his program, "Scarborough Country": "I should have known that Mike Papantonio was involved in that case and should have asked him that question, so you could have had the full story. . . . I'll be the first to admit it: I made a mistake. And for that, I'm this week's Rat of the Week."

Whiskey Bar will be the first to admit it: He's right.

rat.gif

Posted by billmon at 11:23 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
September 15, 2003
Escape Clause
The recount process, in its features here described, is inconsistent with the minimum procedures necessary to protect the fundamental right of each voter in the special instance of a statewide recount under the authority of a single state judicial officer. Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.

U.S. Supreme Court
Bush v. Gore
December 12, 2000

Boy, does that ever bring back bad memories. The bolded part is the "this-opinion-good-for-one-use-only" language I mentioned in my earlier post on the California recount ... um, I mean, recall case.

I don't know as an absolute fact that the money sentence was written by Justice Scalia, but it certainly has his claw marks all over it. It's a stunningly crude attempt to cover the Gang of Three's decision to ignore it's own excruciatingly narrow view of equal protection -- all for the greater good of making George W. Bush the nominal president of the United States.

In that sense, it would rank right up there with the Dred Scott decision and Plessy v. Ferguson as one of the all-time greatest hits of conservative jurisprudence, if not for the fact that the authors of those decisions actually believed their arguments were logically and constitutionally valid, whereas Scalia and Co. inserted their weasel words precisely because they did not.

But of course, equal protection cases often do present "many complexities" -- especially when the rights of poor and minority voters are at risk, instead of the presidential aspirations of rich white Republicans. So it will be interesting to see how the Scalia Gang responds to the 9th Circuit's impudent decision to treat Bush v. Gore as an honest-to-God legal precedent, instead of a hastily rationalized power grab.

I can almost imagine the judges on the 9th Circuit panel sniggering as they dug out chesnuts like this to use in their own opinion:

The press of time does not diminish the constitutional concern. A desire for speed is not a general excuse for ignoring equal protection guarantees.

I also found a few good ones in Scalia's (completely gratuitous) concurrence with Justice Kennedy's stay in the Florida case. As you may recall, the stay was the instrument that actually sealed the deal for Team Bush by shutting down the Florida Supreme Court's last-ditch attempt at a recount. The formal opinion, issued three days later, was just the window dressing.

Here's what the Dark One had to say back then:

Count first, and rule upon legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires.

Jeez, talk about being hoisted on your own petard.

So what will the high court do? Will the Scalia Gang try to persuade the "soft fascists" (i.e. O'Connor and Kennedy) to revisit the scene of their joint crime? Or will the gang prefer to let the 9th Circuit precedent stand, and wait for another, hopefully less radioactive, case to come up from another circuit?

If one of the more reactionary appellate courts (I'm looking in your direction 4th Circuit) were to issue a conflicting opinion in a voting rights case (i.e., one that fully takes into account all those equal protection "complexities") then maybe the Scalia Gang could try to build a majority to step in and "resolve" the split in the circuits, away from the nasty glare of all those TV lights.

Thus confirming what the Scalia gang instinctively knows to be true: Since justice is so precious, it's best to use it sparingly.

Posted by billmon at 11:14 PM | Comments (24) | TrackBack
Over 10,000 Served

I'm pleased to announce that Joanna has posted Whiskey Bar's 10,000th comment. A great big thanks to her, and to all of you, for your patronage.

Next round is on the house.

Posted by billmon at 05:17 PM | Comments (43) | TrackBack
Back to You, Justice Scalia

California's Recall Election Is Postponed

A federal appeals court postponed California's Oct. 7 gubernatorial recall election, ruling the historic vote cannot proceed as scheduled because some votes would be cast using outmoded punch-card ballot machines ...

State officials, who conceded in court documents that the punch-card voting mechanisms are "more prone to voter error than are newer voting systems," were likely to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

I guess we're going to find out whether Scalia's good-for-one-use-only opinion in Bush v. Gore really was good for one use only.

Posted by billmon at 01:48 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack
Reaping the Whirlwind

U.S. East Coast gears up for Isabel

Ed Rappaport, the National Hurricane Center's deputy director ... said that minor fluctuations in strength would make little difference in Isabel's effects.

"Once you get to a Category 3 or higher, you can expect extensive damage and adding 5 mph or taking away 5 mph is not going to change that," he said. "This will be one of the strongest storms seen in the landfall area in the last several decades."

Here's the National Weather Service's current best guestimate of Isabel's track:

Isabel.gif

As you can see, the storm is projected to pass almost directly over Washington D.C. sometime Friday.

Behold, I will raise up against Babylon, and against them that dwell in the midst of them that rise up against me, a destroying wind.

Jeremiah 51:1

Posted by billmon at 01:27 PM | Comments (31) | TrackBack
Name of the Game

This just in from the National Bureau of Economic Research:

Employers' Replies to Racial Names

In response to help-wanted ads in Chicago and Boston newspapers, [NBER researchers] sent resumes with either African-American- or white-sounding names and then measured the number of callbacks each resume received for interviews. Thus, they experimentally manipulated perception of race via the name on the resume.

Half of the applicants were assigned African-American names that are "remarkably common" in the black population, the other half white sounding names, such as Emily Walsh or Greg Baker.

(Personally, I think they should have used "George Bush")

Job applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback; those with African-American names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback.

This would suggest either employer prejudice or employer perception that race signals lower productivity.

I'm having some trouble understanding the difference between those last two explanations. Must be because I'm not an economist.

And to think there are still people in this country who believe we need affirmative action. Will they ever learn?

Posted by billmon at 12:11 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
The Enron War

I've been trying to think of a word to describe the attitude of the American public towards the war in Iraq. And after reviewing the most recent opinion polls, I think I've found it.

The word is "contemptible."

According to the latest ABC/Washington Post poll, 71% of the American people say they support the current U.S. military presence in Iraq. A solid majority -- 65% -- think American troops should stay in Iraq until "civil order is restored." And 61% say they still believe invading Iraq was worth doing.

A recent Gallup Poll found pretty much the same attitude: 58% said they believed the war was worth fighting.

Given that the overwhelming majority of Americans seem to believe there was a connection between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, it's not surprising they would feel that way. According to the ABC/Post poll, 66% think the war in Iraq is an integral part of the war against terrorism.

And yet:

It's hard to spin this as anything other than a demonstration of national spinelessness. A majority of the American people may say they support the war in Iraq (which they agree is an important front in the war against terrorism) but they don't want to pay for it, don't want to send reinforcements, and are upset that so many American troops are dying in it.

But that's what war does -- it gobbles up as many lives and as much treasure as it is fed, and then comes looking for more. War is messy and unpredictable and, well, dangerous. Which is why wise nations think long and hard before deliberately unchaining the beast.

If I believed Iraq really was the central front in the war against terrorism -- instead of a stupid and deadly distraction from the real war on terrorism -- I wouldn't quibble about the pricetag. I'd send the reinforcements, even it meant calling up every National Guard unit in the country, or adding two or three (or more) divisions to the active-duty Army. I'd support the troops.

Instead, it looks like the American people are groping towards a "don't ask, don't tell" policy: Don't tell us we need to send more money and troops, and we won't ask for proof that the war is necessary and just.

It is cruel and amoral to send young American men and women to fight and die in a war like this -- a war that has also claimed thousands of innocent Iraqi lives -- and then begrudge them the resources needed to win. If America learned anything from Vietnam, you would think it would have learned that. But apparently not.

Of course, if Americans prefer not to face the consequences of their own actions, they can find a powerful role model in the Bush Administration, which has never failed to put its own political interests ahead of the war effort, and which even now is frantically trying to conceal the full extent of the mess it has created.

But in a democracy -- even one as corrupt and decayed as ours -- the people ultimately do get the government they deserve. So the American people have to choose: They can support the war, and pay the bloody price, or they can demand a speedy end to the American occupation and a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.

The idea of throwing more money at the corporate crooks who gave us Halliburton, and Enron, is nauseating. So is the thought of sending more troops to die in the desert. But the status quo is simply unbearable. Either the troops have to come home -- all of them -- or the money and the reinforcements have to start flowing the other way.

And the sooner the American people (and the administration) get that through their tiny little heads, the sooner we can finally start having a realistic debate about the war in Iraq.

Posted by billmon at 12:34 AM | Comments (76) | TrackBack
September 14, 2003
Life Imitates Art

jackass.gif

I just hope they don't make a sequel.

Update 9/15 10:40 AM ET: It seems Andy Borowitz is on the story, too. (Thanks to tom for the tip.)

Posted by billmon at 10:02 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack
A Game of Inches

OK boys and girls, it's time once again to play "caption that photo!" Submit your entries in the comments section and you'll have a chance to win tonight's grand prize -- an all-expenses-paid trip to Camp X-Ray on beautiful Guantanamo Bay! (sorry: jumpsuits, leg cuffs and sedative injections are extra.)

Few will enter, but many will win!

new cheney.gif

Update 9/14 11:00 PM ET: OK, we have some winners.

1st Place:
"C is for Cheney, that's good enough for me.
"C is for Cheney, that's good enough for me.
"C is for Cheney, that's good enough for me.
Oh Cheney Cheney Cheney starts with C."
Norbizness

2nd Prize:
"So I turned the dial up a little more,
and now smoke is coming out of his ears."
deminva

Honorable Mention:
"Tim, I'm asking you for the last time....IS IT SAFE?"
libertas

"Give me the location of the rebel base, Admiral."
ChrisL
(Or how about: "I find your lack of faith disturbing, Admiral Russert.")

"Redrum! Redrum!"
Stanton
(or how about: "Dicky isn't here, Mr. Russert.")

Posted by billmon at 08:26 PM | Comments (79) | TrackBack
War of Attrition

I've been going over the coalition casualty reports from Iraq, and I have to say, Operation Feed Halliburton may not be the next Vietnam, but it looks like it's already a lot closer to becoming the next Vietnam than I had realized. It would appear the U.S. Army is now caught in a classic war of attrition -- precisely the kind of war the Pentagon has tried to avoid for the past 30 years.

First, a look at the numbers. Then some rough comparisons with the American military experience in Vietnam.

The Butcher's Bill

According to the Iraq Coalition Casualties web site, Coalition casualties from the start of the war (March 20) through 9/12/03 totaled 181 killed in action and 165 "non-combat" deaths. Meanwhile, 1,178 U.S. troops have been wounded in action, and other 313 have been wounded in "non-hostile" incidents.

More than half of the total coalition deaths (198 out of 346) have come since the fall of Baghdad and the end of the most intensive part of the conventional war. That's an average of 1.27 per day.

I don't have a breakout of the wounded before/after the fall of Baghdad, but I do know from other sources that over the past week or so WIAs have been running at about 9-10 a day. Assuming the ratio between "hostile" and "non-hostile" casualties has remained roughly the same, that suggests the coalition has been suffering about 12 wounded per day, on average.

Consider how this would work out on an annual basis:

1.27 deaths x 365 days = 464 per year
12 wounded x 365 days = 4,380 per year

Now this is obviously way below the casualty rates experienced in Vietnam. According to the National Archives, a total of 58,193 U.S. military personnel were killed in Vietnam from 1961 through 1972 -- 47,406 by hostile action and 10,787 from non-hostile causes.

That's a little misleading, though, since US causualties were relatively modest prior to America's full entry into the war in late 1964. Looking at just the period 1965-72, U.S. military deaths (combat and non-combat) averaged about 7,000 per year.

According to figures published by the vietnamwall.org web site (and also taken from the National Archives) just under 339,000 soldiers were wounded in action in Vietnam from 1961-72. But again, the 1965-72 period is more relevant. During that time WIAs averaged about 35,000 a year.

The Vietnam force, however, was much, much bigger than the one currently in Iraq -- through most of the war, anyway. U.S. ground troop strength in Vietnam stood at roughly 184,000 at the end of 1965, expanded to a peak of 536,000 in 1968, then declined to something like 140,000 in 1972, the last year before the Paris Peace Accords were signed and America withdrew from the war.

Doing the Math

It seems useful, then, to look not at absolute casualty figures but at attrition rates -- that is, the total killed and wounded as a percentage of the total force.

If we assume the U.S. ground force in Iraq continues to number something like 130,000, and if casualties continue to run at average rates of 1.27 deaths and 12 wounded per day, the attrition rate works out to something like 3.7% per year.

In Vietnam, by way of comparison, the attrition rate was slightly less than 5% in 1965, rose to a peak of 19% in 1968 (the year of the Tet Offensive) and then declined gradually to about 3% in 1972.

(Those are my own back-of-the-envelope calculations, based on the casualty figures from the National Archives and year-by-year Vietnam force levels found at various places around the web. They're may not be precisely accurate, but I think they're well inside the ballpark, which is all I'm concerned about here.)

An attrition rate of just under 4% in Iraq may not seem all that serious (in a military sense) -- especially when compared to the peak of 19% in Vietnam. But we need to remember that the Vietnam Army was a draftee army -- with the selective service lottery providing a steady supply of unlucky young men to feed the cannons. There's a draftee born every minute, but volunteers can be harder to find.

The Army's overall force structure was also much larger back then, allowing a relatively rapid rotation of personnel into and out of the theatre. While this ultimately destroyed the fighting effectiveness of the Vietnam force as a whole, it did spread the casualties around, and kept units at something close to their full strength.

In Iraq, by contrast, units that go in together are supposed to leave together. This may preserve unit cohesion, but it also means the same guys are going to be taking casualties together, week after week. If the flow of replacements doesn't keep up, then the impact of attrition on unit strength could be magnified -- particularly given all the other non-combat ways (sickness, family emergency, my-daddy-knows-a-general, etc.) that troops can get out of theatre now.

There's already anecdotal evidence that this is happening:

Soldiers also said they should be given replacements to fill vacancies. The company, which left Orlando with 132 soldiers, now has 114. One soldier died in a Humvee accident, a second was shot to death in Baghdad, and others have been sent home with injuries, medical problems or family emergencies.

132-114 = 18, divided by 132 = a 13.6% attrition rate. And these guys shipped out on Jan 2, so the annual attrition rate is actually higher.

An Army of One

It's also important to remember that today's Army is a capital-intensive Army, which means a lot of it can't be run by unskilled labor. The amount of time and money it takes to recruit, train and equip a reasonably proficient combat soldier has grown considerably since Vietnam.

The payoff -- soldier for soldier -- is a more lethal force, but also a more leveraged force. Each individual cog in the machine is more important -- and harder to replace. So even a relatively modest attrition rate, sustained over a period of time, could raise hell with combat effectiveness.

And that's not including the impact of the constant attrition on the capital side of the ledger. The unexpectedly high tempo of operations is already beginning to wear down the war machines.

Finally, there's absolutely no guarantee the combat attrition rate in Iraq will stay as low as 4%, and many reasons to think it may go higher as the insurgents continue to refine their strategy and tactics.

Conclusions

This would appear to be a damned serious problem for the Pentagon, and there doesn't seem to be any obvious solution -- other than the Coalition's increasingly desperate attempts at "Iraqization." After three decades of swearing it would never allow itself to be dragged into another meat-grinding war of attrition, the military has allowed itself to be dragged into one.

The real question is what they're going to do about it.

My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice. I ask you, is it happening again?

Gen. Anthony C. Zinni (USMC, Ret.)
Speech
September 4, 2003

Update 9/14 6:45 PM ET: Fixed a rather dumb math error on my part, which inflated the death rate since the fall of Baghdad. This did, not, however, make a very big difference in the annual attrition rate in Iraq, which appears to be running at about 3.7%, instead of my original 4%.

Posted by billmon at 04:30 PM | Comments (52) | TrackBack
The New Dick
Mr. Russert: If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?

Cheney: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.

Dick Cheney
Meet the Press
March 16, 2003

Mr. Russert: Every analysis said this war itself would cost about $80 billion, recovery of Baghdad, perhaps of Iraq, about $10 billion per year. We should expect as American citizens that this would cost at least $100 billion for a two-year involvement.

Cheney: I can't say that, Tim.

Dick Cheney
Meet the Press
March 16, 2003


Cheney: U.S. Presence in Iraq Is Unknown

WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday he does not know when the U.S. military presence in Iraq will end and hinted the Bush administration would seek more money than the $87 billion already requested to cover U.S. costs there.

"How long does it take? I don't know. I can't say. I don't think anybody can say with absolute certainty at this point,'' Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press.''

Posted by billmon at 12:55 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack
Tourist Trap
I think tourism is going to be something important in that country as soon as the security situation is resolved, and I think that will be resolved as the Iraqis take over more and more responsibility for their own government.

Donald Rumsfeld
National Press Club Speech
September 10, 2003

Halliburton Travel Corp.
The "Baghdad Bliss" Package
2 Days, 3 Nights
Cost: $87 billion (airfare not included)

Discover what the Middle East has to offer in this unique travel adventure. That's right, come to Iraq -- exotic land of mystery and excitement!

First Night

First, you'll fly non-stop to busy Baghdad International, where you'll experience the thrill of airborne evasive action as your pilot dodges a barrage of pesky SAM-7 missiles. After a quick tour of our underground airport interrogation center (please: no cameras), one of our armored Humvees will whisk you to the luxury and comfort of Camp Cheney -- our 4-star military resort hotel snuggled safely in the heart of the downtown "Green Zone." Here you'll find all the comforts a weary traveler craves, such as unlimited MREs, bottled water (sorry, maximum 1 bottle per guest) and a relaxing 3-minute shower (soap not included).

You'll spend your first evening enjoying Baghdad's glamorous night life, as you patrol the quaint alleyways and fragrant marketplaces of Sadr City (night vision goggles are complimentary.) With luck, you might even run into some of Baghdad's mischievious "Ali Babbas" -- colorful characters who are always willing to perform a trick or two, as long as the price is right (blackmail and ransom payments not included).

First Day

After reveille, you'll be treated to a Marine-style pre-sunrise breakfast, followed by a brisk 20k run around the Green Zone perimeter. (Lighweight flack jackets available for a modest fee.) After a quick sponge bath, you'll spend a productive morning field stripping and rebuilding your M-16 carbine, assisted by one of our crusty but lovable master sergeants (gratuity not included.)

Over lunch (sorry, MRE selection is limited) you'll be briefed on the remarkable progress being made by the Coalition Provincial Authority in restoring essential services to the people of Iraqi. (In case of power failure, lunch will be served on the terrace.) Our luncheon speaker, Proconsul L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, will be happy to answer any questions -- as long as they have been approved by Halliburton's public relations director and submitted to the Proconsul's office at least 48 hours in advance.

Car bombs permitting, you'll spend your afternoon touring the Republican Palace in downtown Baghdad, where you'll get a first-hand look at the obscene luxury enjoyed by Saddam Hussein while his people suffered and starved. (But please don't enter the palace living quarters -- they're reserved for Proconsul Bremer's personal use.)

Second Night

To start your fun-filled evening, you'll attend a gala reception at the elite Baghdad Hunt Club, headquarters of the Iraqi National Congress. As you feast on Beluga caviar and fresh sushi flown in from Japan, you can listen (sorry, no questions allowed) as top INC officials outline their bold vision for a prosperous and democratic Iraq.

Following your lavish five-course dinner, you'll be granted a brief audience with Iraqi President-of-the-Month Ahmad Chalabi (extradition requests permitting) so that he can describe the hopes and dreams of the common Iraqi people, drawing on his more than 40 years of experience as an exiled banker in Jordan, Britain and the United States.

(Guests who wish to contribute to President Chalabi's personal campaign fund are strongly encouraged to do so. Please note that Humvee transport back to the Green Zone will only be available to donors.)

After returning to Camp Cheney, you'll join your surviving fellow travellers for a relaxing nightcap in the main mess hall. As you sample some of the products of Iraq's fledgling vodka industry (no smoking allowed!) you'll be entertained by Col. Bull Pucky and his PowerPoint Rangers, who'll play a medley of favorites, including "Be All That You Can Be," "As the Caissons Go Rolling Along" and -- of course -- "Taps" (sorry, no requests.)

Then it's lights out. For a small fee, you can pamper yourself with our bedtime turndown service, which includes a pillow mint, an extra clip for your M-16, and a full metal detector sweep of your quarters (sorry, bomb defusing costs are extra.)

Second Day

After your Marine pre-sunrise breakfast and 20k run (10k for wounded guests), it's off to the Sunni Triangle for an exciting close-hand look at our action-packed War Against Terrorism! (Please present proof of insurance, burial instructions and a signed and notarized will before boarding your armored personnel carrier.)

Our trip to the fabled "Fallujah Shooting Gallery" will take us down one of Iraq's most exciting highways, so please don't remove your helmet and body armor until we are safely inside the perimeter at our destination, Camp Liberation. And be sure to tell your guide if you notice any suspicious activity in the villages along the way, so that these can be immediately pacified by our squad of elite Delta Force commandos. Your safety is important to us.

Once inside Camp Liberation, you'll make a quick stop at the First Aid tent, then it's on to V Corp headquarters, where you'll receive a confidential briefing from Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. Gen. Sanchez will describe his thrilling manhunt for Saddam Hussein, and explain how his search teams have managed to remain less than an hour behind the fugitive dictator for five straight months!

After your briefing, you'll be allowed to mingle briefly with the troops (mortar fire permitting) so they can explain how proud they are to be the bait in President's Bush's brilliant scheme to lure the terrorists to Iraq. Bring 'em on! But please stay close to your escorts -- they are authorized to use lethal force.

Also note that secretly accepting written messages, audio tapes or other communications materials from enlisted personnel is a violation of both Halliburton corporate policy and the code of military justice, punishable by not less than 5 years in a military prison, a $100,000 fine, or both.

Lunch will be served in grand style at the Camp Liberation Officer's Club, where you'll be treated to the finest in "Freedom" cuisine -- Pate de Foix Gras, Filet Mignon aux Oignons, Fromage Frais and Mousse au Chocolat -- prepared by Gen. Sanchez's personal "Freedom" chef, Henri. A selection of fine "Freedom" wines is available from the club cellar for a modest surcharge.

(Please note that passing food scraps to enlisted personnel is an offense punishable by not less than a year in a military prison, a $10,000 fine, or both.)

After lunch, you can retire to the officer's club lounge for brandy, expresso and cigars, or enjoy a sauna and a soothing massage in the club spa (mud packs and pedicures available for an additional charge). Then, it's back in your Bradley for the afternoon's main event -- a fun-filled excursion to Mass Graveland®, Iraq's premier genocide theme park and entertainment complex!

You'll begin by touring the Killing Field of Dreams®, a combination war crimes memorial and minor league baseball stadium, and home to Iraq's most popular AAA team, the Fallujah Martyrs. Your interpretive guide, an off-duty agent from the new Iraqi security service, will describe in graphic detail the horrible atrocities committed by Saddam's totalitarian regime. Feel free to ask questions: Our guides are also former members of Saddam's security service, the Mukhabarat, so they really do know where the bodies are buried.

Then, it's a short hop on the Bechtel Gravy Train® to the Mass Graveland® Imax® Theatre, where you'll attend our gala world premiere of Battle For Baghdad, the thrillling story of how President Bush personally led the U.S. Army's 500-mile advance from the Kuwaiti border, then single-handledly attacked and destroyed Saddam's elite Republican Guard armed only with his golf putter.

After the movie, you'll join stars Timothy Bottoms (President Bush) and The Rock (Saddam Hussein) for a lavish VIP Roman banquet and orgy at the new Caesar's Palace Iraq, co-hosted by the Republican National Committee and Fox News. Vomitorium privileges are included.

(Note: Guests who wish to contribute to President Bush's re-election campaign may do so after the orgy. Please ask your Iraqi "slave" girl for details.)

Finally, it's a thrilling twilight run back to Baghdad, escorted by a crack squad from the Fallujah Police Department (friendly fire permitting). Most of the locals are hostile, so feel free to practice your sniping skills along the way -- that's what those night vision goggles are for!

Third Night

By the time you get back to Camp Cheney, you'll probably be tired, dirty and shell shocked -- and possibly suffering from minor shrapnel wounds as well. So we've left your last night in Baghdad open. Pay a visit to the camp infirmary, get your clothes deloused, or just park yourself in the latrine and fight that nasty case of amoebic dysentery you picked up along the way -- it's up to you.

But make sure you've got your bags packed and are ready to roll by 02:00 hours. Your plane leaves at dawn, and you'll need to leave plenty of time for traffic -- and land mines -- on the airport road.

Aloha, Iraq

As you bid farwell to beautiful Iraq, you'll be able to look back on an experience rich with memories -- memories that will have you waking up screaming for months, if not years, to come. And if, by chance, you don't make it back alive, your friends and/or loved ones will have the satisfaction of knowing your death has helped make this world a richer place -- for your country, for your president and for Halliburton, America's leader in energy, defense and travel-related services.

Truly, a vacation in Iraq is an experience not to be missed. So call today and make your travel reservations. Operators are standing by.

Don't forget to ask about our honeymoon special.

Posted by billmon at 01:15 AM | Comments (30) | TrackBack
September 13, 2003
Sorry About That

US remorse over Iraq deaths blunder

The United States has expressed "deep regret" after its forces fired on Iraqi security officials, killing at least nine people...

...the engagement lasted three hours, Lieutenant Colonel George Krivo told reporters in Baghdad.

"We wish to express our deepest regrets to the families who have lost loved ones," Colonel Krivo said.


American Officer: Still no sign of Captain Carpenter, sir . . . or Mr. Neutron.

American Commander: OK. We'll bomb Neutron out. Get me Moscow! Peking! and Shanklin, Isle of Wight!

Cut to stock film of B52s on bombing raid.

Voice Over (Michael Palin): And so the Great Powers and the people of Shanklin, Isle of Wight, drew their net in ever-tightening circles around the most dangerous threat to peace the world has ever faced. They bombed Cairo, Bangkok, Cape Town, Buenos Aires, Harrow, Hammersmith, Stepney, Wandsworth and Enfield ... But it was always the wrong place.

Cut to an area of smoking rubble. A van with the words "US Air Force" on the side trundles through the rubble. It has a loudspeaker on the top:

Loudspeaker: Sorry Enfield! ... We apologize for any inconvenience caused by our bombing ... sorry ...

Monty Python's Flying Circus
Mr. Neutron

Update 9/14 2:20 AM ET: Iraq's Security Weakened by Fear

"In my heart, deep inside, we are with them against the occupation," said Lt. Ahmed Khalaf Hamed, an officer with the 100-man [police] force trained, equipped and financed by U.S. authorities. "This is my country, and I encourage them" ...

When asked whether the resistance would succeed in the Sunni Muslim city, part of an arc of territory where former president Saddam Hussein's government drew most of its support, Thaer Abdullah Saleh was blunt. "God willing," the 27-year-old officer said.

The other officers in the room hesitated, then nodded their heads in agreement. "It's our right," said Dhiaa Din Rajoub, a 38-year-old colleague sitting on a tattered mattress. "This is our country, this is an occupation and we don't accept it."

And that's what "our" guys are saying!

Posted by billmon at 05:49 PM | Comments (46) | TrackBack
Bring 'Em On

Dick Gephardt has decided to take his own shot at Howard Dean, but he's switched to a different third rail. Instead of slamming Dean on Israel, like Joe Lieberman, he attacking the governor's past statements on Social Security and Medicare:

Gephardt Shifts Attacks to Dean

DES MOINES, Sept. 12 -- Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) launched a sharp attack against former Vermont governor Howard Dean here today, charging that his rival sided with former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in Republican efforts to scale back and rewrite the Medicare program in the mid-1990s.

Seeking to slow Dean's momentum in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, Gephardt accused Dean, as a governor, of trying to undermine Medicare and Social Security, two programs fundamental to the well-being of senior citizens and, not incidentally, touchstones to Democratic primary voters, particularly here in Iowa.

I guess this is why I make a lousy attack dog, because I think these are reasonable questions to ask and ones that Gov. Dean needs to address.

I also can't really blame Gephardt for throwing the first punch. Dean, who is leading in Zogby's latest Iowa poll, has his hands around Gephardt's windpipe. If Gephardt loses in Iowa, his campaign is over, and so is his political career -- a dismal end to all those years spent chasing the brass ring.

To be sure, comparing Dean to Gingrich is a cheap shot, but the future of Social Security and Medicare is a core Democratic issue. Given Dean's, um, evolving positions, he should be asked to explain himself, and outline how he proposes to avoid the fiscal train wreck (a train wreck on top of a train wreck) waiting for us in the next decade.

But Gephardt should be expected to do the same. Simply insisting that Democrats "defend" the existing Social Security/Medicare system is just pander politics -- and counterproductive pander politics at that. If Democrats don't come up with workable reforms, the Republicans will eventually win by default, and the programs will be gutted (i.e. "privatized").

I think this is a debate Gov. Dean can win. It plays to his core strengths as a doctor, a governor and someone who has obviously thought long and hard about entitlement policy.

So by all means, let's have it.

Posted by billmon at 01:31 PM | Comments (26) | TrackBack
What Is To Be Done?

I've been a fan of defense analyst Chuck Spinney for going on 20 years now. Like his colleague Ernie Fitzgerald, who blew the whistle on the Lockheed C5A scam back in the '70s, Spinney is a truly iconoclastic figure who somehow has managed to survive inside the Pentagon for decades -- despite the best efforts of multiple administrations to pry him out.

On the side, Chuck runs a great web site called Defense and the National Interest, which is -- or should be -- required reading for anyone who wants to try to penetrate the dense cloud of oily smoke (reeking of corruption) that the defense establishment tries to cloak itself in.

Chuck has a friend, another defense analyst with the pseudonymous title of Dr. Werther, who occasionally contributes essays to the DNI site, mostly dealing with matters of "grand strategy" -- the political, ideological and moral concepts that underpin (or should underpin) a nation's foreign policy.

To my great delight, Dr. Werther has just published a set of modest proposals for cleaning the neocons out the Pentagon, terminating our insane adventure in Iraq and reparing the damage done to the American military and American foreign policy.

A tall order, to be sure. And I don't agree with everything Dr. Werther says -- I'm not sure the United States could withdraw from Iraq by the end of the year, as he suggests, even if it wanted to.

But I do think the other items on Dr. Werther's list should be the absolute, non-negotiable demands of any Senator or Representative thinking about voting for Shrub's $87 billion bail out.

And if that fails, I think his suggestions should be one of the first pieces of paper laid on President Dean's desk after he takes office.

Posted by billmon at 01:27 AM | Comments (23) | TrackBack
September 12, 2003
Apple v. Apple

Apparently, settlement talks were ... unfruitful.

Apple Computer Sued by Beatles Record Co.

The Beatles want to take another bite out of Apple Computer Inc.

Their record company, Apple Corps Ltd., said Friday that it was suing Apple Computer because the technology company violated a 1991 agreement by entering the music business with its iTunes online store.


You never give me your money,
you only give me your funny paper.
And in the middle of negotations, you break down ...

Posted by billmon at 11:37 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
Too Little Too Late?

I finally got around to reading today's New York Times editorial on the Israel/Palestine question, and I have to say, I was actually impressed:

The longer Israelis continue to settle in the West Bank and Gaza, the harder it will be to cleanly divide the land between two nations with separate identities. Talk of two states will end. Two options will remain: an apartheid state run by a heavily armed Jewish minority, or a new political entity without a Jewish identity.

The conclusion is clear. Israel must begin to plan its exit from the West Bank and Gaza not only to permit the creation of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state but to preserve its own future.

The Times goes on to chastise Holy Joe for ginning up his phony argument with Dean, and tries to frame the issue as a question of what's in Israel's best interests -- which is probably the only way an American audience can accept it.

You do not have to believe in Mr. Arafat's sincerity or the Palestinians' good will to grasp the need for a radical course shift. You need only understand the meaning of self-preservation.

Given the history, the audience and the political leanings of the New York Times, this is gutsy stuff. Maybe -- finally -- the pack ice is breaking around the frozen hull of American policy in the Middle East.

But there is another question lurking under the ice: What if it's too late?

In other words, what if the choice inevitably comes down to "an apartheid state run by a heavily armed Jewish minority, or a new political entity without a Jewish identity"?

What should America do then? Support an openly apartheid, undemocratic Israel locked in an endless cycle of violence? Push for the dissolution of Israel, and its replacement with a secular, binational state (call it Israelstine) shared by both Jew and Arab?

Or should America simply wash its hands of the mess, terminate its special economic and military relationship with Israel, and back away -- maintaining cordial, but strictly neutral, relations with whatever state or states eventually emerge in the land between the Jordan and the sea?

I'm not offering answers. But I think these are questions America is eventually going to be forced to answer, unless the downward spiral into madness isn't arrested very soon.

The New York Times showed a certain amount of institutional courage in pointing out the harsh realities today. It may need quite a bit more to face the even grimmer realities that could lie just a few years down the road.

Posted by billmon at 10:18 PM | Comments (51) | TrackBack
Manifest Destiny
"We have done a lot of liberation in Europe after Europeans had occupied other parts of Europe. We restore sovereignty, we do not deny freedom or sovereignty to those who own the land," Powell went on.

Unless they're Native Americans. Or Mexicans. Or Hawaiians. Or Puerto Ricans. Or ... well, you know what I mean.

Posted by billmon at 09:23 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack
Mr. In Between

You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-Between

Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen
Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive

We all know the administration has made the first three lines of that old Bing Crosby the heart and soul of its PR strategy -- even when the results border on the surreal. But that last line is the one that's tripping them up now.

Which is ironic, since the Bush gang has never made much of an effort to hide its contempt for any course requiring moderation or compromise. But that's the problem with being so damned rigid -- by the time events force you to move towards the middle, it's often the worse place to be.

Stretched on Iraq

The current debate over the size of the U.S. occupation force in Iraq is a case in point. Before the invasion, Field Marshall Rumsfeld and the neocon cabel insisted the country could be occupied on the cheap -- with 30,000 or so U.S. troops and a handful of multinational Hessians. The Joint Chiefs insisted otherwise, leading to the famous Battle of the Senate Testimony between Paul Wolfowitz and Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Rumsfeld and the neocons dug in their heels, and of course they got their way: The invasion went ahead with a plan that provided for a grossly inadequate post-war occupation force.

(Just as an aside, now that the CBO report on troop strength has been released, it's easy to see why the neocons reacted so angrily when Shinseki went public. The truth is that the Army didn't have anything like the means to support an occupation force of "several hundred thousand." So in effect, Shinseki's position (which was also the JCS position) amounted to an argument for scrubbing the entire invasion.)

But I'm not sure the neocons weren't right after all -- although hardly in the way they expected or intended. A 30,000 man force obviously isn't sufficient to pacify Baghdad, much less Iraq. On the other hand, a smaller, lower profile force might generate less resentment among ordinary Iraqis and be a smaller target for the insurgents. It might have also forced the neocons to reverse more quickly their disastrous decision to scrap the old Iraqi Army.

Instead, what we got is an old-fashioned ad hoc compromise -- a horse designed by a committee -- in which Rumsfeld and the neocons agreed to hold in country those forces that were scheduled to depart after the war ended, but did not agree to add much in the way of additional forces (which the Army can't spare anyway).

By now I think it's clear to most sentient humans (which leaves out both the Pentagon neocons, who are sentient but not human, and Bush, who is human but not sentient) that the existing force is Mr. In-Between at his worst: It's not nearly large enough to stamp out the insurgency, but it's plenty large enough to make the Iraqis feel like an angry, subjugated people.

Tax Reasons

A second example is the federal budget. Immediately after the war, the Bushies could have gone for a more modest fiscal stimulus package to give the economy a short-term kick, and postponed their more grandiose tax-cutting ambitions until the costs of the Iraq occupation became clearer. But instead they went for broke (literally) and pushed for their dividend tax cut, estate tax elimination, acceleration of the top marginal rate cuts -- the works. And they got most of they asked for.

But now, with the costs of the occupation soaring out of control, there's a good chance the administration's new round of proposed tax cuts will have to be sacrificed, along with the prescription drug benefit Shrub was hoping to campaign with in Florida next year.

Who knows? If the financial bleeding in Iraq gets much worse, even the last round of tax cuts might end up back on the table. So Bush could head into next year's election with an economy going nowhere fast, taxes going up and not down -- and without even a token drug benefit plan to show the seniors.

Head Count

My last example is the fate of Rumsfeld and his deputies (Wolfowitz and Feith). Shrub could fire the lot of them now, or at least next Friday, and have the White House send out one of its usual late afternoon press releases. It's what Clinton would have done. In fact the trio would already be gone -- Clinton would have plucked off their heads during the August vacation season.

Say what you like about Clinton, he never let personnel problems fester. When somebody had to take the fall for Somalia, his first Defense Secretary, Les Aspin, cleaned out his desk within a few months. And woe betide the Clinton judicial nominee who had problems getting Senate approval.

But the Bush style, of course, is to hunker down, hang tough, circle the cliches, and avoid even a hint of bending to pressure -- until the pressure gets too strong and a head has to be offered up. Harvey Pitt knows how it works.

But embarrassing resignations can't always be buried under election night news coverage. By refusing to axe Rumsfeld and Co. now, Shrub runs the risk that others -- a rebellious Republican Senate Caucus, for example -- might force him to do it later, at a time not of his choosing.

If Bush's political position continues to deteriorate, a round of resignations at the Pentagon might tempt the media to draw some awkward comparisons: to Bush I, firing Chief of Staff John Sununu in the spring of 1992 as his campaign began to fall apart. Or even worse: to Jimmy Carter and a certain weekend at Camp David in 1979, following which the Carter cabinet was disassembled and the nation learned the meaning of the word "malaise."

The point -- and Ronald Reagan always understood this -- is that acting tough and talking like the hardest of hardliners can be useful, but knowing when to move to the center and cut a deal is even more useful.

It's a lesson the Mayberry Machiavellis have never bothered to learn. Thanks to 9/11, they didn't think they had to. Now it might be too late. Or, as that old Bing Crosby song put it:

You've got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the scene

Posted by billmon at 06:26 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Captain Courageous

More intestinal fortitude from Fightin' Joe Lieberman:

Lieberman, who is on a two-day fundraising swing in South Florida, home to one of the nation's largest Jewish communities, escalated his attacks Wednesday, calling The Herald to say that Dean's shifts on the Israel issue fall into a broader context of flip-flops by the former Vermont governor and raise questions about his fitness to be president.

God, the savage courage of the man. To go into a place like South Florida and stand up for Israel -- right in front of his own campaign contributors!

Clearly, I've underestimated Holy Joe. We need to send him to Iraq. I'm sure our troubles there would be over very quickly ...

joe.gif

Posted by billmon at 01:43 PM | Comments (28) | TrackBack
The Windy City
Despite problems in restoring and repairing Iraq's electrical system, Baghdad at night glows with light, [Rumsfeld] said: "For a city that's not supposed to have power, there's lights all over the place. It's like Chicago."

Newsday
Rumsfeld: Iraq 'Better Every Day'
September 5, 2003


BAGHDAD - Interruptions to the electricity supply in Baghdad, lasting for two or three hours at a time, several times a day, are causing havoc for thousands of residents of the Iraqi capital, particularly during the stifling summer heat that regularly soars to 45 degrees Centigrade.

I had to throw away 150 pieces of meat a week ago because it went bad in the heat," 50 year-old Hamid Ramadani, manager of the Spring Time restaurant on Kharada Street in Baghdad, told IRIN. "I can't arrange the food for my customers if I have to throw it in the garbage because it's rotten," he lamented.

A man passing by Ramadani's establishment said it was not just restaurants that were suffering badly. "In homes, at work, in the shops, no one can do any work, because there is no electricity," the passer-by, Ahmed Amel, told IRIN. "Maybe it's on for two hours then off for three. We have many difficulties," he said."

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Damage to power lines hits Baghdad residents hard
September 11, 2003

Update 9/12 2:05 PM ET:

In central Baghdad, meanwhile, a huge running gunbattle broke out for about 45 minutes Friday on a busy street along the Tigris River's east bank, where several of the city's largest hotels are located. No injuries were reported.

I suppose Rumsfeld would remind us that this kind of stuff used to happen all the time in Chicago back during Prohibition.

Where's Elliot Ness when you really need him?

Posted by billmon at 12:35 PM | Comments (29) | TrackBack
Police Work
The Iraqi police force, our goal is to double the size of the police force.

L. Paul Bremer
Press Conference
September 5, 2003

It would be probably help if they stopped shooting them in the back:

U.S. Troops Mistakenly Kill 8 Iraqi Police

FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. soldiers mistakenly opened fire on a group of Iraqi policemen chasing bandits Friday, killing eight Iraqis and wounding seven others, witnesses said. It was the deadliest friendly fire incident since the end of major fighting.

I mean, "join the New Iraqi Police; there's only a moderate risk you'll be blown away by American troops" isn't such a great recruiting slogan.

Posted by billmon at 11:05 AM | Comments (28) | TrackBack
Profiles in Pandering

From the TNR "Primary:"

OFF A CLIFF by Jonathan Chait

Candidate: Joe Lieberman
Category: Political Courage
Grade: A

Lieberman's attack on Dean's Middle East policy was pretty much the definition of political courage.

Excuse me, but in what parallel universe does pandering shamelessly to a very influential, very politically active interest group -- in a publically televised political debate, no less -- meet the definition of the word "courage"?

One in which Palestinians are a major source of campaign contributions for the Democratic Party, I guess.

And look at the atta boys this kind of Leibermanesque "courage" is already getting from said very influential, very politically active interest group:

AIPAC PRAISES HOUSE DEMOCRATS' PLEDGE
FOR "UNEQUIVOCAL SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL"

Washington, D.C.- The American Israel Public Affairs Committee praised House Democrats, led by Representative Howard Berman (CA), for writing a letter to Governor Howard Dean explaining why the U.S.-Israel relationship has been, and will continue to be, the cornerstone of U.S. policy in the Middle East. The letter also explains why "it is unacceptable for the U.S. to be 'evenhanded' on these fundamental issues."

Good doggies! Now heel.

So we've finally reached the point where being "evenhanded" is a foreign policy thought crime in this country.

Unequivocal: adj 1: admitting of no doubt or misunderstanding; having only one meaning or interpretation and leading to only one conclusion.

So at what point would Americans be entitled to "admit of doubt" about lockstep U.S. support for the Jewish state? When Sharon finishes building his wall around the West Bank? When the tanks roll into Gaza City? When the Moledet party comes to power and starts shipping the Palestinians off to "Madagascar"? When?

I can't help it, but this whole "controversy" just reminds me of the scene in Bulworth where the Warren Beatty character goes to a fundraiser in Brentwood and makes some completely over-the-top remarks about why his campaign guys always set him up with the "Big Jews."

"Lemme see if I got something about Farrakhan in here for ya."

But wait: I'm not being very evenhanded, am I?

Posted by billmon at 10:28 AM | Comments (33) | TrackBack
This Is Supposed To Be News?

Wolfowitz Shifts Rationales on Iraq War

When the Wolfman stops shifting rationales on the war, THAT will be news.

Posted by billmon at 02:05 AM | Comments (45) | TrackBack
Galluping Down Hill

No, that's not a typo. The results of the new Gallup Poll are out, and they confirm the recent Zogby findings showing a sharp and significant deterioration in the president's position since Labor Day.

Update 9/12 2:30 AM ET: Gallup has posted its own analysis of the poll. Go. Read. Enjoy.

1,025 National Adults, Sept. 8-10; MOE = +/- 3 points

Q: Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?

Approve: 52% (down 7 points from the 8/25-26 Gallup poll)
Disapprove: 43% (up 5 points)
No Opinion: 5% (up 1 point, which leaves 1 for rounding, I guess.)

That's a 7 point decline in just two weeks.

And on the elect/reelect question:

Q: If George W. Bush runs for re-election in 2004, in general, are you more likely to vote for Bush or for the Democratic Party's candidate?

Bush: 46% (down 5 points since 8/25-26)
Democrat: 43% (up 4 points)
Other: 4% (unchanged)
Undecided: 7% (up 1 point)

The deterioration appears to be almost entirely Iraq-related. Shrub's economic approval rating held constant at 45%, same as the last poll (disapproval rose a point to 53%) But, on his handling of the situation in Iraq:

Approve: 51% (down from 57% in August, and 75% in mid-April)
Disapprove: 47% (up from 41% in August and just 21% in mid-April)

Meanwhile, the number of respondents who said things were going very well/moderately well in Iraq fell slightly, to 47% from 50% in August, while the number who believe things are going very badly/moderately badly rose to 52%, from 49%. Interestingly, the percentage who think things are going moderately badly has risen only slightly since the end of June, while the share who think things are going very badly has tripled.

Also interestingly, it seems the public is increasingly drawing a distinction between the war in Iraq and the "war" on terrorism -- despite the administration's efforts to conflate the two.

Other recent polls have shown that Bush continues to get relatively good marks on fighting terrorism, although those numbers have come down a little bit as the problems in Iraq have become more obvious. But 66% in the Gallup Poll still said they are very/somewhat satisified with the terrorism situation; versus 33% who were not to or not at all satisified.

What really caught my eye, though, were the polling results on the $87 billion the administration proposes to toss into the Iraq sinkhole:

Q: President Bush requested that Congress authorize an additional $87 billion in government spending for Iraq and the war on terrorism.  Do you think Congress should – or should not – vote to authorize this?

Should: 46%
Should not: 51%
No opinion: 3%

This was a bit stunning, even though I suspected the idea would not go down well -- particularly since the White House didn't do a real good job of clarifying that most of the money would pay for military costs, not Iraqi reconstruction.

Asking the American people to fork over that kind of money to the same people they're convinced were involved in the 9/11 attacks ... well, that's asking for trouble. But still: For a majority of the American people to oppose giving the president the money he says he needs to fight terrorists ... Why, that's almost unAmerican!

Then again, maybe it's because the public increasingly understands that the administration doesn't have anything like a strategic plan, but is simply making things up as it goes along:

Q: Do you think the Bush administration does -- or does not -- have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq?

Does: 40% (down 4 points from late August)
Doesn't: 59% (Up 5 points)

Iraq angst also appears to be spilling over into public perceptions of the state of the country -- the venerable "way things are going" question:

Q: In general, are you satisifed or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time:

Satisifed: 40% (down 6 points from August)
Dissatisfied: 58% (up 6 points)

This isn't quite as bad as the low (36% satisifed) hit back in early March, as the administration flubbed the diplomatic preparations for war, but the downward trend since June is now well established.

Since the labor market continues to show signs of weakness, there's a real risk that all this gloom will soon put a damper on consumer spending and business investment -- taking some of the bloom off the little squirt of economic growth we've seen in the third quarter.

Also notable: Shrub's problems appear to be spreading to his conservative base. The new Minnesota Poll shows that a third of self-described conservatives in the state now disappove of Bush's job performance. If you've been monitoring the usual frequencies (FreeRepublic.com, etc.) you probably also have picked up a disturbance in the dark side of the force.

A few flicks of the brain whip might be enough to get the brown shirts back in line, but you never know. The growing anger and unrest in the military -- not least the Guard and Reserves -- over the FUBAR mess in Iraq is clearly sapping conservative esprit de corps, as is the total breakdown of spending restraint in the Republican controlled Congress.

Which has its own popularity problems, at least according to Gallup:

Q: Do you approve or disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job?

Approve: 40% (down 5 points since early August)
Disapprove: 53% (up 7 points)
No Opinion: 7% (down 2 points)

The restlessness down in the conservative jungle is still just a baby trend, as is the anti-incumbent mood. But both have the potential to grow up to be political Godzillas -- as Bush I discovered in 1992 and the Democratic Congress found out in 1994. So they're both worth watching.

The next month or two should be very interesting, as the reality of Shrub's new political situation continues to sink in. If I were the GOP high command, I'd try to hustle that $87 billion through PDQ, because I've a feeling that after hearing from the folks back home for a week or two, your average Congressman ('Rat or Reptile) is going to be a lot more reluctant to sign on the dotted line.

Personally, autumn is my favorite time of year. But I've got a feeling Shrub isn't going to enjoy this one very much.

Posted by billmon at 12:33 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack
Changing Priorities
We still need to find and secure Iraq's weapons of mass destruction facilities and secure Iraq's borders so we can prevent the flow of weapons of mass destruction materials and senior regime officials out of the country.

Donald Rumsfeld
Press Conference
April 9, 2003


Q: And are you concerned that those weapons might have been shipped out of the country?

Rumsfeld: You bet we're concerned about it. And one of the reasons it's important is because the nexus between terrorist states with weapons of mass destruction ... and terrorist groups -- networks -- is a critical link. And the thought that ... some of those materials could leave the country and [get] in the hands of terrorist networks would be a very unhappy prospect. So it is important to us to see that that doesn't happen.

Donald Rumsfeld
Press Conference
April 9, 2003



Q: But do you know of any information that has produced credible information leading to weapons of mass destruction?

Rumsfeld: I think I've answered your question.  I'm going to allow that process to go forward.  It is orderly, it's well staffed, and in my view from the briefings I've received they're doing a good job.

Donald Rumsfeld
Media Roundtable
September 5, 2003


Q: On your meeting with Dr. Kay.  Did you discover anything that ... would ... lead you believe that they have found evidence?

Rumsfeld: I have so many things to do in the Department of Defense and Kay reports to George Tenet.  It is an intelligence issue and I made a conscious decision that I did not need to stay current every fifteen minutes on what's going on in that area.

Donald Rumsfeld
Press Conference
September 8, 2003


Posted by billmon at 12:01 AM | Comments (24) | TrackBack
September 11, 2003
Before the Fall


These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

Rupert Brooke
The Dead

towers.gif

Posted by billmon at 12:53 AM | Comments (30) | TrackBack
September 10, 2003
Forever Blowing Bubbles

The Nasdaq got creamed today -- down 2.6% on heavy volume, closing on its lows. Extremely ugly.

Some folks are blaming the new Bin Laden tape, but I suspect a delayed reaction to the tepid earnings projections from Texas Instruments and Nokia had more to do with it.

In any case, the charts remind me very much of early 2000, when the last Nasdaq bubble popped.

I think it's finally beginning to dawn on the true believers that the days of 20% or 30% annual revenue growth in the technology sector aren't coming back -- even if the economic recovery does get back on track. And the momentum players, most of whom have understood it all along, may have decided the gravy train ride is over. With less than three weeks left in the quarter, why take chances?

It wouldn't surprise me if the Nasdaq drops a bit further, then rallies and heads back up to a secondary peak -- the classic "double top." But a drop of this magnitude definitely breaks the trend.

That doesn't mean the entire stock market is going south -- although that's eventually what happened the last time the tech champagne bubbles started to pop. But I'd wager money the Nasdaq has at least seen its high for the year, if not longer.

Posted by billmon at 04:34 PM | Comments (35) | TrackBack
The Daily Grind

Someone mentioned that Shrub is skipping the second-year commemoration service in New York tomorrow, so I asked a buddy of mine to pull the president's daily schedule off the wire:

PRESIDENT BUSH'S SCHEDULE
7:30 a.m.: With the first lady, participates in a September 11th service of prayer and remembrance. St. John's Episcopal Church.

8:46 a.m.: With the first lady, observes moment of silence. White House in remembrance of those killed in the attacks of Sept. 11. South Lawn.

3 p.m.: With the first lady, visits wounded troops. Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital. Closed press.

And that's it. The DC events are all very nice. But why couldn't he go to New York? Afraid he might run into some of those firefighters he used and then tried to screw in the post-9/11 emergency funding bill?

P.S. I've heard several people claim that Bush has yet to visit any of the troops wounded in Iraq. Don't know if it's true or not, but maybe the White House Communications Office heard the same chatter. Because he's going tomorrow. And Laura is going with him.

How's that for service?

Update 9/10 4:40 PM ET: Apparently it's not true:

During a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center earlier this year, Bush dropped in on Michael McNaughton, a platoon sergeant in the Louisiana National Guard who lost a leg when he stepped on a land mine in Afghanistan. Bush reportedly invited McNaughton to go for a jog with him once he received his artificial leg.

Thanks to VAdem for the tip.

Update to the Update 9/11 9:55 AM ET: Now CJW tells me that the above is true, but that platoon sergeant McNaughton was wounded in Afghanistan, not Iraq. However, he also tells me that Bush did visit the Iraq wounded at Bethesda Naval Hospital in April, back when the war was still a glorious victory over terrorism, instead of a sucking chest wound. I don't have the time to get to the bottom of this, so lets just stipulate that Shrub has visited the wounded, and is about to visit with them some more. Lucky them.

Posted by billmon at 03:40 PM | Comments (41) | TrackBack
Looking for the Point
Dean is campaigning against Bush using language that would be appropriate in campaigning against a public enemy.

William F. Buckley
Bush is Evil
September 10, 2003

OK. And ... what?

Actually, "public menace" might be a better word choice, since Public Enemy was an excellent, socially conscious rap group that doesn't deserve the indignity of being compared to Shrub.

But this does seem to be the emerging Republican comeback to the new -- and refreshing -- brand of assertive politics being dished out by the Democrats these days. Thus Ed Gillespie, the new Chief Lobbyist, er, Chairman of the Republican National Committee:

"The Democratic candidates continued their patter of political hate speech. These kinds of harsh, bitter personal attacks are unprecedented in the history of presidential politics," said Ed Gillespie, the party's chairman.

It's an interesting thought experiment: Can the Republicans really make the Clinton presidency -- and the rabid dog reflexes it provoked on the right -- completely disappear from public memory? Is history that flexible now? (Sigh) I suppose we're going to find out.

Update 9/10 7:45 PM ET: Alert reader Drew Vogel points out that my use of the past tense in regards to Public Enemy (the rap group, not the current president) is/was incorrect. They're still around, and still political:

Their latest album, Revolverlution, isn't exactly their best work, but it's damn fine nonetheless.

If you haven't heard "Son of a Bush", you're missing out.

Struck by greased lightning
Effed by the same last name
You know what? China ain't never givin back
That God-damned plane.

But my recollection is that China did give it back -- in very small, very carefully examined pieces.

Posted by billmon at 03:19 PM | Comments (47) | TrackBack
The Politics of Despair

A friend saw my Dean endorsement and forwarded me this article, which appeared last month in the Forward -- the descendent of the magnificant old Yiddish labor paper the Jewish Daily Forward.

A Failed Israeli Society Collapses While Its Leaders Remain Silent

The piece was written by Avraham Burg, the former speaker of the Knesset, and an immensely respected figure in Israeli politics. It was originally published in the Israeli paper Yediot Ahranot, and apparently is causing quite a stir, both in Israel and in the American Jewish community. Read it, and you'll see why. Some of the key passages:

The Israeli nation today rests on a scaffolding of corruption, and on foundations of oppression and injustice. As such, the end of the Zionist enterprise is already on our doorstep. There is a real chance that ours will be the last Zionist generation. There may yet be a Jewish state here, but it will be a different sort, strange and ugly ...

It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies. A state lacking justice cannot survive...The countdown to the end of Israeli society has begun ...

Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centers of Israeli escapism. They consign themselves to Allah in our places of recreation, because their own lives are torture.

There's more, most of it dealing with the bleak choices Israel now faces as the dream of Greater Israel collapses into reality of an endless intifada.

One can argue with some of Berg's assumptions. Like many Israelis, he clings to certain myths about the nature of Zionism and the creation of the Jewish state -- just as many Americans refuse to part with some dear but distorted perceptions of U.S. history.

But his conclusions are inescapable: Israel has run out of time. Time for "muddling through" -- refusing to choose between peace and the settlements. Time for giving lip service to a two-state solution while quietly doing everything possible to make such a solution impossible. Time for pretending Israel can remain both a democracy and a Jewish state while still preserving the status quo in the territories. Time for believing that somehow, American power could rescue Israel from its dilemma. Time for illusions and delusions.

Berg's piece zeros in on the bottom line: To perpetuate the status quo is to choose, and that choice is Israel's destruction -- not now, not next year, but eventually, perhaps within a few decades.

An apartheid Israel would inevitably be rejected by the world, even (in the end) by America. But a democratic Israel with a Palestinian majority would quickly cease to be a Jewish state. In other words, we've reached that point in the chess match where both players can see how it will end. For the loser, the only choice is whether to resign or play the game out to the bitter end.

It should be clear by now that what is at stake here is not Israel's "security" as traditionally defined. Those, like Holy Joe Leiberman, who insist America must never abandon its commitment to that "security" are completely missing the point. There is no possible coalition of Arab states strong enough to destroy the Jewish State -- nor will there be for the forseeable future. If Israel falls, it will be to its own internal contradictions, not to some new Saladin. American weapons and American aid and American diplomacy cannot save Israel from that day of reckoning; they can only postpone it.

My friend notes that Berg is one of Israel's "generation of Isaac" -- the sons and daughters of the country's founding politicians. In a country with such a short history, this gives his words a certain authority -- as if the son of Thomas Jefferson had published a vitrolic attack on slavery in say, 1840. It seems at least some Israeli politicians aren't afraid to say openly and clearly what even the bravest American politicians only hint at.

There's some irony in this, and in the fact that Berg's broadside could be published in an establishment paper such as Yediot Ahranot (the New York Times of Israel) and debated as a legitimate point of view, while Dr. Dean's relatively innocuous comments were quickly denounced as heresy by America's defenders of the orthodox faith (pun intended).

But then, in Israel vigorous debate isn't (yet) considered treasonous. And the country still has a relatively free press -- instead of a corporate entertainment complex bent on world domination.

It seems Israel may not be the only country heading for a choice between democracy and fantasy.

Posted by billmon at 01:15 PM | Comments (53) | TrackBack
Losing is a Disease
You know, confidence is part of winning. We need to project confidence. And we have every reason to project confidence, because we've done a fantastic job.

Paul Wolfowitz
Senate Testimony
September 9, 2003

We've got to have the will to win. This is a battle of wills.

Gen. Richard Myers
Senate Testimony
September 9, 2003

These guys sound like they just got back from an Amway convention.

There's a scene in one of my favorite movies -- The Natural -- where the manager of a losing baseball team hires a shrink (these days he'd be called a "motivational specialist") to run the team through a little group therapy.

The scene opens in the locker room, with guy uttering meaningless platitudes ("losing... is a disease") in a dry monotone, while the team sits around looking bored. Roy Hobbes, the natural, sitting in the back, grows increasingly disgusted as the shrink drones on, until finally he gets up and walks out.

Hobbes understood that nothing was going to change until the manager benched the players who were screwing up -- the guys who put the team in the hole in the first place.

But when the manager is also one of the screw ups... Well, that's when you find a new manager, right?

Posted by billmon at 11:14 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBack
What's Wrong With This Picture?

Democrats Rip Bush on Terror War, Economy

The debate was held on a stage at Morgan State University, a historically black college in Baltimore, and hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus. Brit Hume of Fox News Channel handled moderator's duties.

I mean, imagine if:

Berlin, Sept. 9, 1932 -- Candidates for the German Social Democratic Party leadership debated at Berlin's Main Synagogue Tuesday night, in an event sponsored by the German League of Jewish Citizens. Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer handled the moderating duties.

"And the first question is for you, Herr Schmidt. Exactly why did you betray your Aryan volk to the Bolshevik subhumans?"

Posted by billmon at 10:31 AM | Comments (48) | TrackBack
September 09, 2003
Quote of the Day

From a 9/11 widow's review of DC 9/11: Time of Crisis

It is understandable that so little time is actually devoted to the president's true actions on the morning of 9/11. Because to show the entire 23 minutes from 9:03 to 9:25 a.m., when President Bush, in reality, remained seated and listening to "second grade story-hour" while people like my husband were burning alive inside the World Trade Center towers, would run counter to Karl Rove's art direction and grand vision.

Kristen Breitweiser
Salon
September 8, 2003

More on the Shrub's Big Day, here and here.

Posted by billmon at 08:24 PM | Comments (46) | TrackBack
Vote for Dean

For what it's worth (which probably isn't much) Howard Dean now has Whiskey Bar's endorsement for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Why? Because the good doctor has dared to utter the unmentionable truth: That the United States simply cannot afford to continue its current policy of absolute, unqualified support of the state of Israel.

And boy, is he taking heat for it:

Rivals Criticize Dean For Mideast Comment

Howard Dean came under fire yesterday from two rivals for the Democratic nomination for saying the United States should not "take sides" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Five days after Dean told supporters in New Mexico that "it's not our place to take sides" in the conflict, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) accused him of advocating a "major break" from the United States' long-standing policy of explicitly siding with Israel in the Middle East.

Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) said: "It is either because he lacks the foreign policy experience or simply because he is wrong that governor Dean has proposed a radical shift in United States policy towards the Middle East. If the president were to make a remark such as this it would throw an already volatile region into even more turmoil."

Dean's response? So far, at least, he's standing his ground:

In an interview, Dean sought to clarify his statement but did not back down from his belief that the United State cannot negotiate peace unless it is seen as a neutral party in the region. "Israel has always been a longtime ally with a special relationship with the United States, but if we are going to bargain by being in the middle of the negotiations then we are going to have to take an evenhanded role," he said.

This is exactly right, although in my opinion it still doesn't go far enough towards reforming the incestuous relationship between Israel, the U.S. government (particularly Congress), and the pro-Israel lobby, a camp that increasingly includes the most reactionary elements within the Republican Party. But it's a reasonable position -- particularly given the current climate of hysterical hatred and despair on both sides of the Israeli-Arab divide.

Just as the United States can never condone the butchering of innocent civilians by suicide bombers, it cannot and should not condone the stupid and yes, evil, policies of the Sharon government. For the United States government to watch (and indirectly subsidize) the conversion of the West Bank and Gaza into the world's largest minimum-security prison camps (complete with walls and barbed wire) is disgraceful, and mocks every word America utters when it claims to represent the side of civilization in the war against terrorism.

But it goes deeper than that. Virtually every Israeli (and American) government since 1967 -- if not 1948 -- is culpable for the enormous tragedy that now threatens not only the Palestinians, but the Jewish state as well.

By encouraging and subsidizing the settler movement, by using tax and trade policies to turn the West Bank and Gaza into economic colonies, by systematically expropriating the land and water resources of the occupied territories, and not least by encouraging -- or at least turning a blind eye -- to the initial rise of Hamas, Israel has virtually destroyed the prospects for a credible two-state solution.

The harsh reality is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now a problem that may be beyond any solution. The demographic trends, which will make the lands between the Jordan and the sea majority Arab within a few short decades, threaten to utterly change the nature of the conflict. Seperation -- so richly desired by Israelis of just about every political stripe -- may no longer be possible, except through the solidification of an apartheid-style regime, complete with Palestinian Bantustans.

The Israelis are heading down a road that leads only into darkness, with America trailing along behind. Yet, like the Sharon government, like the Bush administration, like most members of the American Jewish community, the Democratic Party keeps its head wedged firmly in the sand.

If the problem cannot be solved, it must still be managed. If America does not take responsibility for enforcing a just solution of the conflict, then it will eventually be forced to disengage from the conflict -- with all that that entails for the security of Israel and the future of the Palestinian people. The neoliberal strategy is in ruins; the neocon strategy is hopeless. America lacks both the resources and the will to tame the Arab world by force.

The choice is simple: America can fight its war against terrorism -- a political struggle as much as a military one -- or it can try to make the Middle East safe for Greater Israel. It cannot do both.

To me, a just peace looks like a better deal. And Dean is the only candidate I've seen who's been willing to even talk about what America must do to create the conditions for such a peace in Israel/Palestine.

All along, my big fear about Dean has been that he's a phony -- a sharp-witted but fundamentally amoral politician who knows how to press the right (or should I say left?) buttons, but who will sell his progressive supporters out just as soon as it is expedient to do so.

I still suspect that's the case. But I have to give Dean the benefit of the doubt. Why? Because there's no alternative. If the events of the past two years haven't demonstrated the dire consequences of America's current policies in the Middle East, the events of next two years could drive the message home with even more lethal force. I have to support the candidate who I think is most likely to put America on a different course. I know the odds that Dean will actually do so are slim, but the odds that any of the other candidates will do it is none.

So sign me up, put my name down, take the roll, whatever. I'm enlisting in Dr. Dean's Army.

Posted by billmon at 02:39 PM | Comments (131) | TrackBack
Gimme Rewrite

This AP story is the kind of thing that gives American journalism the shoddy reputation it so richly deserves:

Kerry Cuts Into Dean's Lead in N.H. Poll

While Howard Dean maintains a double-digit lead, albeit smaller, over John Kerry in the latest New Hampshire poll, likely Democratic primary voters are closely divided over which of the two leading candidates would be the strongest against President Bush."

There's just one problem: the AP is comparing two different polls -- the Zogby poll taken a couple of weeks ago that showed Dean up by 21 points, and a new Boston Globe/WBZ-TV poll that has Dean up by 12 points.

Different polls, different methodologies, different sample sizes, different days of the week, different everything. Comparisons between polls done by competing pollsters are absolutely meaningless. The only legitimate way to mix different polls is as part of broad sample of polls, such as Professor PollKatz's famous Pool of Polls.

I suspect the AP story and its stupid headline is more a simple case of journalistic malpractice than a deliberate slam at Dean. Still, it's a pretty pathetic an example of the kind of quality control you see on the journalistic assembly line these days.

I've often thought that if the Japanese could export news stories the way they export cars, a lot of U.S. editors and reporters would be out of work in no time. Few industries or trades benefit from having a protected market as much as American journalism. Which is a bit ironic, since the media tends to be overwhelmingly pro-free trade, right down to the last ink-stained wretch.

Just as an aside, the most interesting thing about the Globe/WBZ-TV poll is that it shows how Dean is successfully building his brand as a "radical independent" -- and not just an anti-war tree hugger. According to the poll, more than half of the N.H. voters who supported John McCain in the 2000 Republican primary now favor Dean.

I wonder if Karl Rove still thinks Dean would be easy meat?

Update 9/9 1:05 PM ET: Even Howie Kurtz is starting to worry:

Bush's Worst Nightmare?

Even Howard Dean's detractors now believe he's for real. Real as in: Scoff all you want, this guy actually could be president.

Cue the soundtrack from Jaws ...

Posted by billmon at 12:07 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Chinese Handcuffs

Someone on one of the other threads asked a question about the budget deficit, and America's need to get foreigners to pay for it. This reminded me of something else I've been meaning to post about -- Treasury Secretary John Snow's recent visit to China, and what it tells us about the Bush Administration's economic strategy, such as it is.

We start not with the budget deficit but with the enormous U.S. current account deficit (which is the trade deficit plus some other things.) As I've noted in many past posts, the amount of capital the United States needs to attract each day, every day, to cover its current account deficit with the rest of the world is simply staggering. I talked about the implications here and here.

Fortunately, foreign appetite for U.S. assets (hard and paper) has also been simply staggering -- or perhaps I should say unfortunately, because that same foreign appetite has allowed the US and global economies to get increasingly out of whack, to the point where correcting the imbalance is going to be extremely painful for all concerned.

And there is going to have to be an adjustment. As they say on Wall Street: even the tallest trees don't grow to the sky. Private foreign investment simply can't keep up with the soaring current account deficit (now equal to more than 5% of US GDP). So foreign governments, and most particularly, the Chinese government, have been making up the shortfall, by purchasing U.S. dollars to keep their own currencies from shooting higher. These dollars are then invested in U.S. Treasury securities and (increasingly) U.S. mortgage-backed securities (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac.)

But this keeps the dollar stronger than it otherwise would be, which tends to make foreign goods more attractive, which worsens the trade deficit. So you're back to square one again.

The situation is going to get much, much worse if and when the U.S. starts to enjoy a "normal" economic recovery. The monstrous trade deficit will get more monstrous; the US will have to attract even more foreign capital.

And this is why John Snow was over in China recently asking the Chinese to let their currency, the yuan, rise against the dollar. That would make Chinese goods relatively less attractive, perhaps marginally reducing the U.S. trade deficit with China.

But a floating yuan also would reduce China's need to buy dollars -- and thus its need to invest in U.S. debt. This puts Snow in the curious position of telling one of the U.S. Treasury's best customers not to buy its wares (i.e. Treasury bonds.)

The problem is that the U.S. trade deficit isn't just a currency problem. It also reflects a structural imbalance between U.S. saving (we don't) and the U.S. need for savings to finance domestic investment and the federal budget deficit. Now that Shrub has transformed Iraq into the world's largest money pit, we're going to need even more savings, which can only come from abroad.

The problem for the Bush Administration -- and the U.S. economy -- is that it's shooting at a very small target, in terms of the desired policy mix. It needs some weakening of the dollar, enough to take pressure off the struggling U.S. manufacturing sector and stop the hemorrhaging of U.S. manufacturing jobs. But it doesn't need or want a drastic decline in the dollar, which could destabilize the financial markets (particularly the bond market) and cause private foreign investors to flee.

In other words, it's the new, globalized version of the old political game of Keynesian fine tuning -- tweaking domestic monetary and fiscal policy to keep the economy at full employment.

Nobody ever really got the old fine tuning process right (at least not for very long.) Given the Bush Administration's economic track record to date, it would be expecting a miracle to think it will get the new one right now.

Posted by billmon at 10:41 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
Party Tasks
The stability of Iraq, the stability of a different kind of Middle East, will serve well the interests of the entire international community," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said on the CBS Early Show. "Therefore it is important that the entire international community be involved in this heroic effort."

I swear, the more frantic these clowns get, the more they start to sound like character actors from a 1930s Soviet propaganda movie:

"Strive heroically to increase tractor output, comrades!"

"Follow the revolutionary line of the Third Internationale in the heroic struggle against left deviationism!"

"Work harder for Comrade Stalin, heros of Soviet labor!"

Now what they really need is a good Five Year Plan.

bushstalin copy.gif

Posted by billmon at 12:26 AM | Comments (38) | TrackBack
September 08, 2003
One Weekend a Month My Ass

Reserve Tours Are Extended
Army Orders 1-Year Stay In Iraq, Nearby Nations

With U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq and the Bush administration still searching for additional international peacekeepers, the Army has ordered thousands of National Guard and Army Reserve forces in Iraq to extend their tours in the country to a year, months longer than many of the troops had anticipated, Army officials said yesterday.

This should go over big with the troops.

Posted by billmon at 11:35 PM | Comments (39) | TrackBack
Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt

Iraq Plan to Increase Deficit to 4.7 Pct of GDP

President Bush's $87 billion spending plan for postwar Iraq will increase next year's already record U.S. budget deficit to at least $525 billion, or 4.7 percent of gross domestic product, a senior administration official said on Monday.

But the official called it a "manageable" level and said it should have no detrimental effects on the overall economy. Despite the new spending, the official said the administration would still meet its goal of cutting the deficit in half in five years.

It appears Bush has hired all of Enron's old auditors.

Comparing the federal budget deficit to GDP is a questionable guide to our current fiscal dilemma, as I expained a couple of months back. Of course, everything is worse now.

"St. Peter don't ya call me 'cause I can't go; I sold my soul to the company store ..."

Update 9/8 11:15 PM ET: Somebody on one of the threads was looking for a chart that would show exactly what $87 billion will buy you in the way of an expensive government program. The Washington Post has one.

Posted by billmon at 11:07 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack
Bush League

Arab League Nations Agree to Grant Seat to Iraq's Council

CAIRO, Tuesday, Sept. 9 — Arab foreign ministers agreed early this morning to grant Iraq's seat in the Arab League to the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, according to Al Jazeera, the Arabic television channel.

The report said the Governing Council would hold Iraq's seat in the 22-member league until the election of a new government and the drafting of a constitution.

I think you'd have to score this as a diplomatic coup for Colin Powell, one which could help cement his rising ascendency within the administration.

Arab League recognition gives the Iraqi Governing Council a legitimacy it has so far lacked, which in turn bolsters the case for awarding it Iraq's seat at the U.N. This is in keeping with the thrust of the administration's draft Security Council resolution, which seeks to establish the council -- not the U.N. Special Representative -- as the controlling political authority in Iraq, at least on paper.

To that extent, Arab League recognition erodes the Franco-German bargaining position -- perhaps only marginally, but still, when you're in as deep a hole as the administration is, every little bit helps.

What strikes me, though, is the degree to which the Arab League has now been prostituted to Anglo-American power -- thanks primarily to the Egyptians and to a lesser extent the Saudis. The administration reportedly pressed down hard on some sensitive spots to get the result it wanted.

Truly, the League has come a long, long way since the 1967 Khartoum Conference, which produced the famous "Three Nos" -- no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no peace with Israel.

But in achieving this victory, I wonder whether the administration may not have wrecked whatever is left of the League's own legitimacy -- and thus its usefulness as a front for American power. The bullying (and bribing) tactics applied were so obvious and so transparent, it's hard to see how the end product could be viewed with anything other than disgust and rage by a wide swath of Arab popular opinion.

Yes, I know: Who cares what the pitiful, impotent Arab street thinks? But the administration seems to be determined to pile one straw after another on the camel's back.

America's client regimes in the region -- Egypt and Saudi Arabia in particular -- are in an advanced state of political decay. How long can they survive the progressive radicalization of their own populations? How long before their own security services are compromised? How long before their soldiers turn their guns on their own officers?

Can these regimes really survive indefinitely, suspended in their Mukhabarat safety nets, with no visible means of support among their own people?

Or will the Arab dominos finally start to fall - not outward from "liberated" Iraq, as prophesied by the neocons, but inward, towards occupied Iraq, and our Arab League-endorsed puppet regime?

Posted by billmon at 10:10 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack
Defensive End

Bush Aides Defend $87B Request for Iraq

The Bush administration tried to reassure Americans on Monday about its larger-than-expected $87 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan, saying the war against terrorism is the nation's highest priority and won't wreck the federal budget.

Politically, having to play defense on the day after the Big Speech ain't a good sign for the Mayberry Machiavellis. I think the geniuses thought the $87 billion number would earn Shrub the customary media praise for being BOLD, but instead it's become a very big, very specific target -- much easier to hit than the elusive and half-concealed casualty count.

As Atrios notes, even a lot of the freepers don't like throwing money at Iraq.

In hindsight, I think the Rovians will realize the Address to the Nation thing wasn't such a smart PR move after all. It guaranteed that the administration's policy U-turn -- and the price tag that goes with it -- will be the big story of the week. Which means every Democratic Senator or Representative who can stand up in front of a camera (not counting Joe Biden, I mean) will be able to tell the folks back home what a mess Shrub and the Republicans have made. And every Republican who can't duck behind a curtain will have to stand up in front of a camera and defend that mess.

In a sense, Bush's speech legitimized all the questions and criticisms that have been percolating in the blogosphere and the (real) liberal press. It's as if the White House said, "OK, you can now talk about how bad things are in Iraq. And you don't have to keep giving equal time to the Rosy Scenario."

In other words, the Speech officially made Shrub's U-Turn a Big Deal, whereas the previous strategy had been to describe it as no change at all.

As contemptible as it might have been from a moral or national security perspective, the stonewalling strategy (of which Rummy and the neocons are the last, tattered defenders, with Bill Safire as their Gunga Din) was probably more effective than the new "limited hangout" approach, which (as we saw today) is forcing the administration to answer a lot of questions of the "When did you stop beating your wife?" variety.

Of course, a $87 billion white elephant can't be hidden forever, not even in a Congress filled with white elephants (and controlled by them, too.) But I'm not sure the old White House approach -- the late Friday release, accompanied by a diversionary, unrelated announcement or a new terrorist threat warning -- wouldn't have been less harmful politically than Sunday's sermon.

Because when your entire policy is based on lies, a little honesty can be a dangerous thing.

Posted by billmon at 05:51 PM | Comments (40) | TrackBack
Last Refuge of the Desperate

Rumsfeld: Criticism at Home, Abroad Harms War on Terrorism

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, concluding a four-day trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, said today that critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy are encouraging terrorists and complicating the ongoing U.S. war on terrorism.

"We know for a fact . . . that terrorists studied Somalia and they studied instances where the United States was dealt a blow and tucked in and persuaded themselves they could, in fact, cause us to acquiesce in whatever it is they wanted us to do," he told reporters aboard his plane.

In other words:

hey.gif
(poster by Micah Green)

And exactly who "encouraged the terrorists" by criticizing the Clinton Administration's admittedly FUBAR intervention in Somalia? Was it, perhaps, the likes of Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott?

Clearly, the dry rot of terrorist subversion has spread far.

Yes, Rumsfeld's treason-mongering is obnoxious -- as bad, in its own way, as Wolfowitz's shameless cry to "support the troops."

But to tell you the truth, I don't find Rummy's ravings even mildly annoying any more. He's on his way out, and, rabid dog that he is, it's no great surprise he's going out foaming all the way.

Just watch out for those teeth.

Posted by billmon at 02:46 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
Role Model
In 1968 a 21-year-old Austrian bodybuilder came to the United States. Mr. Schwarzenegger followed the presidential campaign by asking a friend to translate some of the TV coverage. "I listened to Nixon talk about free enterprise, opening up . . . trade with the whole world, getting government off your back, lowering taxes and strengthening the military," Mr. Schwarzenegger recalled this week in an interview with talk show host Michael Medved. "So I turned to my friend . . . and said, 'I am a Republican!' This is the philosophy I believe in."

"Later, when I found out Nixon was also into smoking hash and having group sex in gyms, I knew the GOP was the place for me," Mr. Schwarzenegger added.

nixon and arnie.gif

Posted by billmon at 01:56 PM | Comments (25) | TrackBack
European Tour

Uggabugga gives us a look at the New Europe.

You are what you eat, I guess.

Posted by billmon at 12:26 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Killer App

It turns out that absence of evidence actually is evidence of absence:

U.S. Defense analysts are paying more attention to a “working hypothesis,” based on stories told by Iraqi captives, that no live WMD may ever be found.

So let's see:

Iraq War Rationale 1.0: Saddam has weapons of mass destruction

No WMDs

Iraq War Rationale 2.0: Liberate grateful Iraqis

Iraqis hate us, want us to leave.

Iraq War Rationale 3.0: Rebuild Iraq

Country is bottomless money pit.

Iraq War Rational 4.0: Bring Peace to the Middle East

Peace "process" falling apart.

Iraq War Hidden Source Code: Grab the Oil

Oil industry is a wreck; infrastructure can't be protected.

More Iraq War Hidden Source Code: Funnel pork barrel contracts to Halliburton, Bechtel

OK, so that sub-routine works.

This leaves:

Iraq War Rationale NT: Fight terrorists.

Finally! A self-executing program that doesn't use too much memory.

Hell, even Microsoft can do better than that.

Posted by billmon at 11:58 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
Waiting for the Barbarians
Q: Mr. Boucher, do you have anything on the proposal for the creation of a European Union military headquarters in Brussels independent of NATO -- something that have angered the United States, according to reports?

Mr. Boucher: I'm not quite sure what proposal that is. You mean the one from the four countries that got together and had a little, bitty summit?

Q: That's exactly it -- and Belgium insisting to this --

Mr. Boucher: Yeah, the chocolate makers.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher
Press Briefing
September 2, 2003

We expect billions of dollars out of the rest of the world. Billions.

Senior Administration Official
New York Times interview
September 4, 2003

Terrorists in Iraq have attacked representatives of the civilized world, and opposing them must be the cause of the civilized world. Members of the United Nations now have an opportunity and the responsibility to assume a broader role in assuring that Iraq becomes a free and democratic nation.

George W. Bush
Address to the Nation
September 7, 2003

Arrogance has always been an imperial perogative -- sometimes expressed crudely, sometimes in jest, sometimes cloaked in the lofty language of diplomacy. But the common denominator is always the power relationship behind the words.

The Latin word imperium itself means "command" -- thus imperator (emperor) or "commander." The Greek equivalent, autocrator goes even further, "the ruler answerable to none." By definition then, empires do not request the assistance or obedience of others, they demand it. They may negotiate with enemies or with allies, when circumstances compel, but they do not willingly accept any external limits on their authority.

Whether America is really an empire in this sense is an arguable point (and boy, do people argue about it!) Certainly it isn't internally -- not even now, in the twilight of our democracy. Externally, however, the case is difficult. At times (the U.N. Charter, the creation of NATO, Gulf War I, Bosnia and Kosovo) the United States has shown a willingness to share power -- or rather, to use its power within the framework of generally accepted external rules. At other times (the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Central America, Gulf War II) it's shown a definite, and at times aggressive, unwillingness to do so.

You would think the relative success rates of the two approaches would speak for themselves. But it's a curious fact that as empires age, they often tend to become more arrogant, and more imperative, not less.

As always, Roman history provides an intriguing parallel to American experience -- and perhaps a cautionary lesson for the American future.

The latter history of the empire -- a period when barbarian German tribes infiltrated imperial territory, the imperial army and even the imperial general staff -- contains repeated examples of the witless arrogance of emperors, Senators and common citizens alike. Long past the point where Rome had lost the power to command obedience, the Romans clung to their old notions of absolute superiority, and rejected (or deceitfully betrayed) the treaties proposed by their barbarian opponents.

Most of the barbarian kings had no desire to destroy the empire. They admired it, hoped to benefit from it and looked in horror at the prospect of its collapse, which would leave them at the mercy of the real barbarians -- the Huns. Gibbon, the great 18th century historian of the empire, quotes Alaric thusly:

It is now my sincere wish that the gratitude of the future ages should acknowledge the merit of a stranger, who employed the sword of the Goths not to subvert, but to restore and maintain, the prosperity of the Roman empire.

All Alaric demanded was a permanent home within the empire -- land in which he could settle his people and exercise an autonomous authority under imperial sovereignty.

Stilicho, the great imperial general, himself a barbarian, repeatedly tried to persuade his master, the emperor Honorus, that Alaric was too strong to defeat, given Rome's weakened condition, and that his reasonable demands should be granted. But Honorus, though the son of a strong and competent emperor, was too weak and too ignorant to understand the realities he faced. Or, as Gibbon puts it:

The pride and luxury in which he was educated had not allowed him to suspect that there existed on the earth any power presumptuous enough to invade the repose of the successor of Augustus.

Alaric soon filled in the gaps in Honorus's education. In the year 400, he invaded Italy. The next six years (ancient history moved slowly) were filled with complex dealings between Stilicho, Honorus and Alaric -- sometimes fighting, sometimes negotiating (usually in bad faith, on the part of Honorus.) Finally, in the year 406, Alaric's forces were defeated by Stilicho and retreated from Italy.

Roman gratitude was brief:

The people, even the clergy, incapable of forming any rational judgement of the business of peace and war, presumed to arraign the policy of Stilicho ... The first moment of the public safety is devoted to gratitude and joy; but the second is diligently occupied by envy and calumny.

Stilicho was a barbarian, after all.

Two years later, with the empire in even more dire straights, Alaric returned. Stilicho, knowing his army was too weak to turn him back a second time, negotiated a treaty calling for the payment of a substantial gold "subsidy" (bribe) to the Goths.

The Senators, as if they had suddenly been awoken from a dream of four hundred years, appeared, on this important occasion to be inspired by the courage, rather than the wisdom of their precedessors. They loudly declared, in regular speeches, that it was unworthy of the majesty of Rome to purchase a precarious and disgraceful truce from a barbarian king...

In the end, however, Stilicho convinced the Senators they had no choice but to pay up, and the "subsidy" was approved. But by now resentment of the barbarian general's power was nearly universal among the Romans -- including Honorus. Early in the year 408, he was arrested and executed by the emperor's guards.

What followed was a Stalin-style purge -- a wholesale slaughter of the barbarian element in the Roman army, and their families. New generals, worthless, but with impeccably Roman pedigrees, were put in command. The treaty with Alaric was renounced, to great Senate acclaim.

Meanwhile, thousands of barbarian soldiers -- those who had escaped the killing fields -- fled to join Alaric's army. In 408, he returned to Italy, this time marching straight for Rome, which was immediately besieged.

The first emotions of the nobles and of the people were those of surprise and indignation, that a vile barbarian should dare to insult the capital of the world; but their arrogance was soon humbled by misfortune ...

Again, a bribe was negotiated. Again, the Romans reneged on the deal. Again, the Eternal City was besieged. And yet again.

By the summer of 410, the Romans were starving. Cannibalism was rife in the tenement slums. Even Rome's obscenely wealthy elites were suffering:

Persons of both sexes, who had been educated in the enjoyment of ease and luxury, discovered how little is requisite to supply the demands of nature; and lavished their unavailing treasures of gold and silver to obtain the course and scanty sustenance which they would formerly have rejected with disdain.

Finally, the Senate admitted it had no choice but to ask for terms. Two Senators were dispatched to negotiate with the Gothic King.

When they were introduced into his presence, they declared, perhaps in a more lofty style than became their abject condition, that the Romans were resolved to maintain their dignity, either in peace or war; and that, if Alaric refused them a fair and honorable capitulation, he might sound his trumpets, and prepare to give battle to an innumerable people, exercised in arms and animated by despair.

"The thicker the hay; the easier it is mowed," was the concise reply of the barbarian; and this rustic metaphor was accompanied by a loud and insulting laugh, expressive of his contempt for the menaces of an unwarlike populace, enervated by luxury before they were emaciated by famine.

Alaric's demands? All the gold and silver; all the precious jewels and works of art; and freedom for all the barbarian slaves in the city.

The Romans quickly accepted his terms.

And so did the capital of the world's mightiest empire fall to barbarians. The empire itself would totter on for a few more decades, but Rome would never be the same.

America is obviously still a long way from the advanced decrepitude of the 5th century Roman Empire. She may not get there for decades, maybe even centuries (although history does move a lot faster these days.) And the powers America must deal with are not barbaric -- which may be more than we can say about ourselves.

But the collapse of the Bush Adminstration's unilateral pretensions -- and its current need to seek, not demand, the help of the other powers in Iraq -- should provide a caution of the dangers of imperial arrogance, especially when it can no longer be backed up by brute force.

An attitude adjustment would seem to be in order -- not just on the administration's part, but by the American people as well. Because there may come a day when we find ourselves negotiating with the barbarians at the gate, rather than with the French at the U.N.

Posted by billmon at 12:32 AM | Comments (36) | TrackBack
I Hate Joe Biden
Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) of the Foreign Relations Committee, who gave the president a rave review, calling the speech "an incredible first step" in implementing a new strategy. Bush had "made a real U-turn here," Biden said, rejecting the counsel of his "neo-con" hard-line advisers and instead adopting a course of action recommended by Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"It took a big man to do that, and I plan to support him," Biden said ...

Only moments later, Biden bounced up on CNN during its post-speech analysis, reacting to anchor Paula Zahn's observation that the speech contained no references to that elusive search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Biden said it didn't matter, that American involvement had gone beyond that. "We have to secure Iraq for our safety's sake," Biden said.

So Joe Biden is now more of a media whore than Paula Zahn??? With slit-eyed weasels like that running around, who needs the stinkin' Republicans?

Somebody really should shove the collected speeches of Neil Kinnock up Biden's skinny white ass. I hope the rats gnaw out his hair plugs. May he drown in the waste pond of a Delaware chemical plant.

With Shrub standing on top of him, making an "incredible first step" on his soggy shoulders.

Posted by billmon at 12:30 AM | Comments (30) | TrackBack
September 07, 2003
Small Potatoes

I've read Shrub's "speech" carefully now (twice) and as far as I can tell there is only one real piece of information in it -- aside from the $87 billion budget request, which was a little bit higher than the leaked estimates but still not really news.

What caught my eye was this:

Two multinational divisions, led by the British and the Poles, are serving alongside our forces. And in order to share the burden more broadly, our commanders have requested a third multinational division to serve in Iraq.

If you've been following the administration's MO, you know that "our commanders have requested" is usually code for "that's all we can possibly scrape together."

One additional multinational division -- say 10,000 troops -- is far less than what the Coalition has been looking for. The Americans have already asked India to contribute a division, and they've been looking to Turkey for a second. And I believe they've been hoping the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshi (Bangladeshians?) would add a third.

Bush's comment might not actually have been bona fide news. Earlier Sunday, Colin Powell predicted a new resolution would bring in 10-15k troops, which could be intepreted (generously) as a single division. Still, this is quite a come down from the kind of numbers some analysts have been throwing around:

With the right kind of U.N. resolution, it will be possible to add 50,000 to 70,000 non-U.S. troops to the 21,000 already there.

Think again, guys.

If you read the CBO report released last week, you know one multinational division is far less than what's needed to bring U.S. troop strength in Iraq down to the long-term sustainable level (assuming, as I think we should, that the administration doesn't want to mobilize the entire National Guard in an election year.)

Perhaps the administration finally realizes that most of the countries (India, Pakistan, maybe Bangladesh) that cited the need for a new U.N. resolution to agree to send troops to Iraq were just hiding behind the Security Council's skirts, and will now come up with a fresh excuse for saying no.

India, in fact, already has. First the Indian government said a new U.N. resolution was the ticket that had to be punched. Now, it says it wants to see power formally transfered to the Iraqi Governing Council first:

[Sources] reiterated that India would only send troops to Iraq if such a transfer of political authority took place. In short, if Paul Bremer relinquished control of the Iraqi political decision-making to the new Cabinet in Iraq, then New Delhi would consider that the ‘‘occupying powers’’ — the US, UK and a handful of European nations — were seriously in the business of enlarging command and control.

Interestingly enough, India's Prime Minister will be spending several days in Turkey before he flies to New York for the opening of the UN General Assembly later this month. Could collective bargaining strategies be on the table? Could we be witnessing the birth of the Organization of Soldier Exporting Countries?

But seriously, folks -- a single multinational division isn't going to come anywhere close to warding off the approaching breakdown of the U.S. Army. Flowery words are nice, but Shrub is going to have to do a lot better in the combat boot department if he wants to keep his job.

Posted by billmon at 10:16 PM | Comments (32) | TrackBack
Mission Creep

2002:

"We are fighting that enemy in Afghanistan so that we do not meet him again on our streets, in our own cities."

2003:

"We are fighting that enemy in Afghanistan and Iraq so that we do not meet him again on our streets, in our own cities."

2004:

"We are fighting that enemy in Afghanistan and Iraq and Saudi Arabia so that we do not meet him again on our streets, in our own cities."

2005:

"We are fighting that enemy in Afghanistan and Iraq and Saudi Arabia and Syria and Lebanon and Yeman and Algeria and the West Bank, so that we do not meet him again on our streets, in our own cities."

2006:

"We are fighting that enemy in the streets of America, in our own cities."

Update 9/7 9:05 PM ET

Short form George Bush: "Iraq is now the central front in the global war against absolute evil, but it's not so important that we have to roll back any of my tax cuts, send more U.S. troops to Iraq or do anything else that might make swing voters slightly less likely to vote for me next year. Thank you and God Bless America."

Posted by billmon at 08:54 PM | Comments (30) | TrackBack
Peace in Our Time
Success in Iraq could also begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace, and set in motion progress towards a truly democratic Palestinian state.

George W. Bush
Speech to the American Enterprise Institute
February 26, 2003


Abbas resigns; Mideast peace plan near collapse

Israel seals off West Bank, Gaza

Israel Fires Missiles in Gaza Strip

Hamas Vows Revenge After Gaza Strike

Israeli Says Arafat Could Be Expelled

Israel raises threat of Gaza offensive

Palestinian leadership split as Israel attacks Gaza

Palestinian gunmen kill Jewish settler in West Bank

I could go on, but what's the point?

Posted by billmon at 05:10 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Lies, Damned Lies and Damned Liars

Rumsfeld Hopes for Expansion of Afghan Peacekeeping

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Sunday he was hopeful NATO might expand peacekeeping operations outside the Afghan capital, but that security was primarily the responsibility of Afghans.

"I certainly agree that an expansion of [the International Security Assistance Force] would be a good thing," Rumsfeld said in response to a question at a joint news conference with Karzai.

"For whatever reason, there have not been countries lining up to expand ISAF, but it strikes me that...there is at least the possibility of somewhat of an expansion."

This is a lie so breathtakingly brazen that it can only be attributed to the final, complete breakdown of any lingering connection between Planet Earth and Planet Rumsfeld.

The NATO allies (and the Karzai government) have repeatedly begged the Americans to expand the peacekeeping force's reach beyond Kabul, in hopes of preventing exactly what has happened in Afghanistan -- a return to kind of the warlord chaos that spawned the Taliban in the first place, and that has now given them a chance to regroup and reconnect with their Pashtun base.

But, nooooooooo. The Pentagon preferred the old ways, the old days -- making its own arrangements and cutting its own deals with the regional warlords. And so the Bush Administration has repeatedly refused to expand the ISAF's reach.

And now we have this:

U.S. military spokesman Colonel Rodney Davis said that between 10 and 26 "enemy fighters" were believed killed in clashes overnight in the Dai Chopan district of Zabul that involved air support.

Lieutenant-General John Vines, a top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, told reporters traveling with Rumsfeld that 150 to 200 Taliban or other anti-coalition fighters had been killed by U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan in the past two weeks since "Operation Mountain Viper" was launched.

The return of the body count.

Posted by billmon at 04:29 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Coalition of the Killing

Juan Cole of Informed Comment, who is quickly becoming required reading, reminds me of something I should have posted about weeks ago: a bizarre little connection between America's war in Central America 20 years ago and our current war in Iraq:

The Marines are getting ready to hand over security details in the Shiite holy city of Najaf to a contingent of Spanish and Latin American troops, as follows. Spain: 1300; Nicaragua: 100; Dominican Republic, 302; Honduras: 366; El Salvador: 361 ...

... And, of course, it is worrisome that some of the troops come from countries like Honduras and El Salvador that have seen a lot of violence and governmental repression and even death squads in the past 20 years (with some of the death squads, like the notorious Battalion 3-16, supported by the United States's CIA).

Up until 1994, Honduras drafted children into its military. Guatamala's government still includes notorious war criminals like Gen. Rios Montt, who was allowed to run for president by a court packed with his cronies last summer (the election is in November): http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/07/guatemala071503.htm

I don't think the US should be sending troops to Najaf from a country where one of the current presidential candidates murdered thousands while he was a military dictator, having made a coup. Is this what Bush meant by a "coalition of the willing?" What kind of message is that to send the Shiites of Iraq? This is embarrassing.

It would be interesting to know if any of the Salvadorian troops sent to Iraq (or, more likely, their officers) are from the now-disbanded Atlacatl Battalion -- El Salvador's version of the Honduran Battalion 3-16. This at least would allow the U.S. government to increase the return on the CIA's investment in death squads.

More on the Atlacatl Battalion. More on Guatemala, and Rios Montt.

Posted by billmon at 03:15 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Moment of Truth
The militias ... on the streets of Najaf ... were there with the full authority of the Coalition Provisional Authority, and in full cooperation with the coalition forces. That is to say, they were licensed in accordance with our existing programs.

L. Paul Bremer
Press Conference
September 6, 2003


Coalition forces look set for a showdown with Iraqi militias after a deadline demanding they disarm in Najaf went unheeded. Captain Edward Lofland said those caught with weapons would be jailed. "After that, we will take their arms away and, if they resist, we will arrest them and put them in jail," Lofland said.

Sky News
Najaf Showdown Looms
September 7, 2003

It's starting to look like NOBODY -- not the Bush Administration, not Centcom, not the Coalition Authority, not even the Iraqis -- knows what the state of play is in Iraq anymore. The game is too complex (4-dimensional chess) and the Coalition has changed direction too many times. But, having challenged the Badr Brigade openly, the Americans would appear to have little choice but to follow through.

The dilemma is excruciating: If SCIRI's armed forces are allowed to operate openly, the rival Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr would seem to have little choice but to emulate them. This in turn will increase the pressure on every other political faction (Sunni or Shi'a) to do likewise. Beruit here we come.

On the other hand, if the Coalition tries to enforce its edict, it would seem to risk generating a new insurrection -- in which it would be pitted against one of the major factions on its own Governing Council. This could even drive the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army into an alliance of necessity, potentially triggering a much broader fight between the Coalition and the broader Shi'a community.

Yet, on the third hand, if the Coalition backs down, it will be revealed as politically impotent -- paralyzed, really -- incapable of mastering the situation, incapable of leaving, determined to minimize casualties no matter how much that interferes with the conduct of the war, and unwilling to risk any actions that might further destabilize the situation.

Gee, I wonder if Shrub will talk about any of those realities in his little pep talk tonight?

Posted by billmon at 02:44 PM | Comments (26) | TrackBack
The Runner Stumbles?

Dean stumps for Davis in California

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Presidential candidate Howard Dean Saturday urged Californians to vote against the effort to oust Gov. Gray Davis, calling it part of a plan by right-wing Republicans to subvert democracy.

"I think this is the fourth attempt to undermine democracy in this country by the right wing of the Republican Party since the 2000 elections," said Dean.

I have to wonder about the utility of this move. On the one hand, Davis is about as popular as SARS, and has never been accused of being a member of the "Democratic Party wing of the Democratic Party." Why tie your primary flag to his sinking ship?

On the other hand, feeding a little angry red meat to the base can be useful -- as well as truthful. Davis has a very good campaign organization (without which he wouldn't have survived last year's election.) If Davis somehow survives the recall, Dean now has a very nice chit to call in next Spring. If he doesn't, nobody is probably going to remember by then that Dean was pro-SARS. And backing Davis shouldn't alienate Bustamante -- in fact it may marginally help him, since both he and Davis are fishing from the same pool of "No" voters.

OK. But Hispanics are the future in California (and a lot of other places) And when I say the future, I mean the Democratic primary next year. Dean needs to shed his white-bread image and show he can do more than just speak a few sentences of so-so Spanish. Helping elect the first Hispanic governor of California in more than a 100 years couldn't hurt. A campaign stop and pat on the back for Cruz Bustamante should have been included in this little script.

Posted by billmon at 02:28 AM | Comments (32) | TrackBack
Monty Python Material

Bush to Ask Americans and Allies for Teamwork on Iraq

"The president will reflect on the fact that we didn't all agree on how to confront the threat from Iraq, but that's behind us and we need to focus on the future," a senior administration official said ...

"This is an effort to remind people of the stakes," the official said. "That gets lost sometimes in the day-to-day quibbles about this fact or that fact, or that dollar amount or this dollar amount.

Or this lie or that lie ...

For some strange reason these quotes really reminded me of a particular scene from the Search for the Holy Grail -- the one in which the witless Sir Lancelot goes berserk and slaughters the guests at a medieval wedding party, thinking he is saving a fair young princess from an unhappy marriage.

Lancelot quickly discovers his princess is actually a prince. But the prince's father, learning that Lancelot is a knight from the court of the powerful King Arthur ("very nice castle, Camelot ... very good pig country") tries to persuade the guests to let bygones be bygones:

Cut to the great hall. Guests wounded and bloody, are tending to the dead and injured, sighs and groans, the princess in her white wedding dress is holding her chest and coughing blood. People dabbing the stains off her dress.

The Father and Sir Lancelot start to walk down the grand staircase. Talking to each other. One of the guests notices and points to Lancelot.

Guest: There he is!

Lancelot cannot be stopped. With fearless abandon he throws himself into the crowd and starts hacking and slashing. He has carved quite a number up before the Father can stop him and pulls him back onto the stairs. Renewed groans and cries.

Guest: He's killed the best man!

Second Guest: (holding a limp woman) He's killed my auntie.

Father: No, please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who ...

LOL. And brave, brave Sir Shrub bravely ran away ...

Posted by billmon at 01:37 AM | Comments (27) | TrackBack
Just Like Old Times
Earlier, Rumsfeld visited a mass grave site and a Saddam Hussein execution chamber, paying grim homage to atrocities of the deposed Iraqi president's rule ...

Rumsfeld toured the cinderblock death house at the notorious Abu Ghuraib prison outside Baghdad. He stood in the stifling concrete room where condemned prisoners went to their deaths.

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, commander of the U.S. Army military police brigade now in charge of the prison, demonstrated how prisoners were hung from ropes tied to metal bars in the ceiling. She pushed a lever and doors in the floor opened with a deafening metallic clang.

"I can tell it was designed to impose fear on all Iraqis," Rumsfeld said.

He should know.

rumsfeld saddam.jpg

"In the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration sent current U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to meet with Saddam Hussein to improve relations between the U.S. and Iraq."

Update 9/7 12:31 AM ET: I just can't keep up with the spinning any more:

Q: My question is why not send in more troops?

Rumsfeld: Simply flooding the zone with two or three times the number of foreign forces that are here, it would increase the number of targets for the handfuls of criminals and the handfuls of terrorists, for the handfuls of Ba'athist remnants.

So, our troops in Iraq are just "targets" for the terrorists? Then we should get them all out of there, no? But I thought we wanted the terrorists to fight us in Iraq, so we wouldn't have to fight 'em in Bumfuck, Kansas, or whatever. So we should send more troops to Iraq, right?  Because Iraq is now the central battle in the war on terrorism, right? But we don't want to make them targets ...

(whimpers) My brain hurts.

Posted by billmon at 12:20 AM | Comments (27) | TrackBack
September 06, 2003
That's Show Biz

Call me slow but I just realized that the remake of Triumph of the Will -- that is to say, the Bush 9/11 propaganda movie -- will air on Showtime on Sunday, the same day Shrub is supposed to "address the nation."

But my listings show the movie starts at 8:00 PM ET, while Shrub doesn't start speaking until 8:30.

This is very sloppy scheduling. Just think of the possibilities if the White House could have gotten Bush on the air an hour earlier.

They could have worked a plug into his speech -- "And that's exactly what I said to the cast of DC 9/11: Time of Crisis when they were here filiming the movie, which airs on Showtime later tonight. Check your local listings for the channel ..."

Or put a small sign on the presidential desk with the Showtime logo on it.

Or bribed the media whores mention it in their witless "instant analysis" -- "Dan, what the President is trying to tell the voters is that they should go to the bathroom soon, because DC 9/11: Time of Crisis starts on Showtime just minutes from now ..."

How about Timothy Bottoms as the official address to the nation "guest host"? (They could even get a little Dana Carvey/George Bush Sr. type shtick going)

Show the trailer before the speech? (Better yet: Fade from black to find Shrub watching the trailer on a TV on his desk.)

Have a cast party in the Oval Office? (Maybe Arnie could come, too.)

I mean, the possibilities should have been endless. But noooooooo. Instead the White House has Shrub stepping all over his own agit-prop. Very stupid.

Roger Ailes: (slaps forehead) They should have called me first!

Posted by billmon at 05:49 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack
Give Rush Limbaugh a Heart Attack

Show him this:

Time/CNN Poll conducted by Harris Interactive. Sept. 3-4, 2003. N=883 registered voters nationwide. MoE ± 3.3.

“Suppose the 2004 election for president were being held today, and you had to choose between Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democrat, and George W. Bush, the Republican. For whom would you vote, Clinton or Bush?”

George W. Bush 50%
Hillary Rodham Clinton 47%
Not Sure 3%

Actually the latest polls are uniformly dismal for Shrub and Company. Some highlights:

More from Time/CNN:

“If George W. Bush runs for reelection in 2004, would you say you will definitely vote for him, might vote for or against him, or will you definitely vote against him?”

Definitely For: 29%
Might Vote For or Against: 25%
Definitely Against: 41%
Not Sure: 5%

Ipsos-Reid/Cook Political Report Poll. Sept. 2-4, 2003. N=766 registered voters nationwide. MoE ± 3.6.

"If the election were held today, would you definitely vote to reelect George W. Bush as president, consider voting for someone else, or definitely vote for someone else as president?"

Definitely Bush: 38%
Consider Someone Else: 24%
Vote for Someone Else: 36%
Not Sure: 2%

Zogby:

President Bush -- Job Rating
9/3-5/03

Excellent/Good: 45%
Fair/Poor: 54%
Not Sure: 1%

(First time since 7/01 (51%) that Zoby poll has shown a Fair/Poor majority.)

"Please tell me if your overall opinion of each of the following people is very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, very unfavorable, or you are not familiar enough to form an opinion. George W. Bush."

Favorable: 54%
Unfavorable: 45%
Not Sure: 1%

(Highest "unfavorable" in Shrub's presidency in Zogby poll.)

"Do you think President Bush deserves to be reelected or do you think it is time for someone new?"

Deserves Reelection: 40%
Someone New: 52%
Not Sure: 8%

You can see why Shrub wants to get on the tube Sunday and tell us more lies. Right now, he needs the best ones his speechwriters can concoct.

Now that the public opinion playing field is more level, this is the time for Democrats (real Democrats, I mean, not the Lieberman Republicans) to go on the offensive. Don't be shy about telling the world the truth about our feeble-minded chief executive. If you're the kind of person who's comfortable doing it, speak up the next time that obnoxious right winger at the office starts shooting off his/her mouth about what a dear leader Dear Leader is. There's no reason to feel intimidated anymore.

Learn from the Gephardt: George W. Bush is a miserable failure.

Posted by billmon at 05:00 PM | Comments (29) | TrackBack
September 05, 2003
Help Wanted

Several readers have complained that I've been ignoring the economic news lately. There is a grain of truth to that. It's not so much that I've been ignoring it -- I can't, really, because tracking the economy and the markets is part of my job -- but for the past few weeks my blogging brain has been totally absorbed, even obsessed, by the implosion of the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq.

Ordinarily, I'd apologize for keeping the bar TV tuned to the all-Iraq all-the-time channel. But it's not often that you see a genuine superpower fling itself into such a total policy fiasco. It's like watching a particularly spectacular crash at the Indy car races -- you can't stop watching, even though you feel guilty about being entertained by all that carnage and suffering.

The economic news also has been relatively upbeat lately, giving the bulls a much-needed emotional lift. I didn't want to spoil their fun -- lest somebody at the National Review accuse me of stabbing the stock market in the back.

We've got the Bureau of Labor Statistics to do that.

Coming Down Again

If you saw, read or heard the August employment numbers that came out Friday, you probably already know they were unambiguously awful. But I'll tell you anyway.

The economy shed 93,000 net jobs last month, after losing almost 50,000 in July. Since the start of the year, the economy has eradicated almost 440,000 net jobs.
Employment has declined every month so far this year except one -- February. Since payrolls peaked in February 2001, almost 2.8 million jobs have been lost -- a 2.2% decline.

By way of comparison, over the course of the 1973-75 recession -- the deepest since the Great Depression -- payrolls declined by just 1.6%.

So what's going on here? I've gone over this before -- after the June employment report came out, in fact. Also here. So I won't rehash it all now. Suffice it to say that economic growth (GDP) and job growth have gotten badly out of whack. GDP growth is puttering along, even accelerating, while payrolls are going in reverse -- and also accelerating.

payrolls.gif

The chart shows year-over-year growth in payrolls since the peak of the Reagan expansion (1982-90). The first big dip is the 1990-91 recession and the "jobless" recovery that followed. The recession ended in March 1991, but payrolls didn't start expanding until the summer of 1992 -- too late to save George the Father.

As you can see, job growth accelerated sharply in 1993 and 1994, then grew at a steady 2.5-3% clip until the Nasdaq bubble burst in early 2000. The right-hand dip is the younger Bush's recession and its ugly aftermath. On a year-over-year basis, job growth has yet to turn positive -- even though the recession ended (officially, at least) in November 2001. As I mentioned earlier, job losses actually have reaccelerated in 2003 on a year-over-year basis.

The conventional explanation is that this dismal trend is the product of surging productivity. Employers are learning to squeeze more output out of a given amount of labor. So much so that they are not only not hiring new employees as economic growth picks up; they're still laying off workers.

Creative Destruction

Conventional wisdom may well be right in this case. But saying the gap between GDP and employment growth is due to rising productivity is simply expressing a truism -- if output is growing and payrolls aren't, then by definition productivity is rising.

The real question is why productivity is rising so dramatically at this late date in the expansion. In previous cycles, productivity tended to surge in the early stages of a GDP recovery, since employers usually kept more workers on the payroll than they actually need during recessions. This allowed them to ramp up output when demand finally recovered, without initially having to hire a lot of new workers.

But this cyclical pattern had its flip side: As output continued to rise, employers eventually had to start hiring workers, often in a hurry. As plants neared full capacity, work became less efficient, requiring still more hiring. So productivity often dropped in the late stages of an expansion.

But what we are seeing now appears to be a Monty Python moment: something completely different. Brad Delong thinks it's a sign of a fundamental change in employer behavior. They're no longer inclined to "hoard" workers when business is slow, because they think they'll be able to meet future increases in demand by adopting new technologies or new production methods (read: outsourcing work to low wage countries.)

If this is true, then the current productivity boom isn't cyclical at all. It's a structural trend -- reflecting a major wave of change in the economy, what the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter once called "creative destruction." This suggests that many, if not most, of the jobs now being lost ain't never coming back.

It may be that firms are finally reaping the benefit of productivity gains that were actually achieved during the '90s boom, but which were obscured by the huge hiring binge that occurred in the latter half of the decade, as profit margins jumped, labor markets tightened and employers became panicky about finding and retaining skilled workers, particularly in the tech and telecommunications sectors. Now those "banked" productivity gains are being "spent."

Either way, many of these involuntary additions to the reserve army of the unemployed aren't likely to be recalled to active duty by their old employers anytime soon.

False Profits?

That's the destructive part of "creative destruction." The "creative" part is the development of new products and new industries, thus creating new jobs. But that requires new capital investment, and right now, corporations and entrepreneurs aren't feeling very creative.

invest.gif

It isn't hard to understand why, given the assorted traumas (terrorism, scandal, war, slumping stock prices) of the past few years. But an even more serious problem is the dismal profit performance of the past few years -- not just in terms of the mediocre growth of profits (which could be explained as a function of sluggish revenue growth) but also profit margins, which tumbled dramatically after the '90s boom went bust.

margins.gif

Profit margins appear to have recovered smartly this year, but there's something of a statistical puzzle about it. The chart above shows profits of nonfinancial corporations after they've been adjusted for various factors, one of which is the difference between the depreciation write offs firms report on their tax returns, and "capital consumption" costs as defined by the economic bean counters at the Commerce Department.

The difference between the two has grown quite wide in recent years -- with a positive sign, meaning the statistical adjustment is adding to reported profits, rather than subtracting In fact, if you back out that "capital consumption" adjustment, the 2003 profit recovery pretty much goes away:

book margins.gif

No doubt, much of this reflects the creatively destructive accounting that goes into both corporate tax returns and corporate earnings statements. (By pumping up the depreciation they report to the IRS, companies slash their taxes. But when it comes time to report those same numbers to shareholders, a different accounting method is used, one which deflates deprecation and pumps up profits. Thus proving the wisdom of an old journalistic rule of thumb: the real crime is what's legal.)

But it does muddy the water, since I don't have a clue about the methodology used by the Commerce Department to calculate the adjustment. And it's not a small number: Since 1997, the "capital consumption" adjustment has grown from $51 billion to $194 billion -- almost half as large as the after-tax profits being adjusted!

A Mixed Blessing

The real mystery, though, is why the profits recovery has been so tepid -- even if we take the Commerce Department's numbers at face value. Given the huge productivity gains implied by the gap between GDP and employment growth, profit margins should be soaring as labor costs (on a per unit basis) decline.

Going back to the Commerce Department's numbers, we see labor costs have declined somewhat recently -- to 64.9% of nonfinancial corporate gross revenue, from a peak of 66.9% in 2000. But that's only pushed labor costs back to their 1998 level. This doesn't looklike the fruits of an enormous productivity revolution.

It's all very puzzling, and I don't have the time or the statistical savvy to get to the bottom of it. But it appears at least some of the productivity gains that should be dropping to the bottom line actually have been absorbed elsewhere. Wages seem to be the most likely suspect. Despite the dismal labor market conditions, wage gains over the past several years actually have been fairly robust, particularly given the low inflation rate:

wages.gif

This resembles what happened in the late 1990s, when the Asian economic crisis pushed oil prices and inflation sharply lower. Because this deflationary shock was unexpected by both employers and employees, pay trends were relatively slow to adjust downward. This resulted in hefty real (after-inflation) wage gains, which gave a huge boost to U.S. consumer spending. The decline in inflation since the end of the last recession appears to have come as a similar surprise, with similar results.

Since consumer spending has been one of the safety nets keeping the economy out of recession over the past year, maybe we should be grateful for small favors. But, to the extent unexpectedly high wage growth has slowed the profits recovery, it's helped put us in the pickle we're in now.

And quite a pickle it is, too. As you can see from that last chart, the arterial bleeding in the labor market has finally started to drain the strength from wage growth, too. This, in turn, is likely to put a damper on consumer spending, once the short-term boost from the summer tax rebates and tax withholding adjustments has run its course.

Meanwhile, the mortgage refinancing boom is over. U.S. household debt levels are still extremely high, at least by historical standards. So are corporate debt burdens. The Fed is almost out of monetary ammunition. And so on.

Cloud Cover

If rising productivity and improving profit margins finally trigger the long-awaited revival of business investment spending, all might still be well. A more normal-looking recovery (one that doesn't destroy millions of jobs) could finally take shape. That's assuming, of course, the longer-term structural imbalances overhanging the U.S. and global economies don't fall down and wreck the parade.

But it's important to put events in some kind of context. The amount of fiscal and monetary stimulus that's been poured into the American economy over the past two years has been simply staggering. And that's not counting the "relief effect" from the quick and relatively painless (for the capitalists) overthrow of Saddam Hussein last spring. Given all that juice, GDP should be rising -- soaring, even. Payrolls should be growing, not shrinking.

The factors that have stimulated U.S. economic growth over the past two years can't be repeated -- the fiscal and monetary medicine chest is almost bare. God knows Iraq isn't going to be a source of "relief" any time soon. The White House, like the stock market, has been quick to see a silver lining in the economic reports of the past few weeks. But Friday's jobs report was a reminder that the clouds are still there.

Posted by billmon at 09:05 PM | Comments (26) | TrackBack
Could It Possibly Get Any Worse in Iraq?

Of course it can! It always can!

Shiites struggle for power
Slain Najaf cleric's family battling with upstart

The Aug. 29 killing of [Ayatollah Mohammed] al-Hakim has thrown Iraq's majority Shiite population into crisis and set off a potentially explosive succession battle over control of the holiest Shiite site in Iraq. Moderate factions relatively amenable to temporary U.S. rule are vying against militants openly hostile to any American role in governing Iraq.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

In Baghdad, gunmen attacked worshippers after prayers at a Sunni mosque, wounding three people.


I'm watching and I'm waiting
I'm hoping for the best,
even think I'll go to praying
every time I hear them saying
That there's no way to delay
that trouble coming every day

Frank Zappa

Posted by billmon at 05:28 PM | Comments (28) | TrackBack
More From Zinni

A couple more chunks of the red meat from his speech:

Many U.S. policymakers "don't have a clue'' about the looming threat, not only in Iraq but in a string of countries stretching from Africa to the Pacific, Zinni said.

"It's not a phased conflict. There isn't a fighting part and then another part,'' he said in an apparent jab at Bush's declaration that major hostilities in Iraq had ended. "At the end of the third inning we declared victory and said the game's over. It ain't over.''

That's taken from the Virginian-Pilot -- about as conservative a paper as you could imagine in about as pro-military a city (Norfolk-Virginia Beach) as exists on the planet. The Virginian-Pilot is also conducting a little Internet poll on U.S. policy in Iraq. I know, I know -- easy to freep. But look at the numbers (as of 4:45 PM ET):

How would you rate the job the U.S. is doing to reconstruct Iraq?

Excellent: 10.02%
Good: 23.96%
Fair: 22.54%
Poor: 43.48%

The freepers apparently are asleep at the switch on this one. And if Bush is losing Norfolk, Va. he's losing the country.

Posted by billmon at 04:48 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Bad Timing
America's economy today is showing signs of promise. We're emerging from a period of national challenge and economic uncertainty. The hard work of our people and the good policies of our government are paying off.

George W. Bush
Speech in Kansas City
September 4, 2003


U.S. employers cut jobs in August at the fastest pace since March, the government said in an unexpectedly grim report on Friday that showed Americans are struggling to find jobs even as other areas of the economy recover.

The number of workers on U.S. payrolls outside the farm sector slid 93,000 in August, the seventh consecutive month of declines, after dropping 49,000 in July. The number was far worse than the increase of 12,000 expected by economists.

Reuters
Employers Slash Jobs, Bush Downplays Data
September 5, 2003

Posted by billmon at 04:26 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
The Rumsfeld Factor

Rumsfeld Visits Troops in Tikrit

"I think we have the formula here for success," Rumsfeld said. "A lot of things have been accomplished. It's not going to be a straight steady path. In the future there will be difficulties."

I mean, you can almost hear the reporters snickering in the background.

Some other amusing moments from the SecDef's grand tour:

"The important thing is to move to a big Iraq force," Rumsfeld said aboard his C-17 transport plane, which made a steep, high-speed landing at Baghdad's airport because of concerns about antiaircraft fire.


"Jumping over a plastic barricade, [Rumsfeld] walked into an Army medical tent to chat with two wounded U.S. soldiers. "Did they find the guy who did it?" he asked Chief Warrant Officer Robert Meyerhoff, who was injured in an ambush this morning.

Meyerhoff answered no. But asked how he was feeling, as the secretary left the tent, Meyerhoff smiled and said, "Better now."


"Tonight, after a nighttime helicopter flight over Baghdad, a grinning Rumsfeld also challenged descriptions of the city's electrical supply. From overhead, the capital "looked like Chicago," said the Chicago native.


Of course, once Rumsfeld finished his little chopper hop and Bremer had all that temporary juice routed back to the provinces again, I'm guessing nighttime Baghdad looked much more normal -- in other words, like Cleveland or New York did a couple of weeks ago.

But then, this is the same guy who a few months back was comparing the Baghdad murder rate to that of Washington D.C. -- which is only off by a factor of, oh, about 50. Just another "Little America."

I also really liked this bit:

"He said data on violent incidents he had seen recently do not support the premise that Iraq is falling into chaos -- which he called an "impression" largely driven by negative news media coverage.

Can't you just see Bob McNamara, standing in front of a lecturn with the latest body count figures? "But the data I've seen prove we're winning the war in Vietnam!"

The Iraqi insurgents need to be very, very careful that they don't accidently kill Donald Rumsfeld while he's in country. The man is worth much, much more to them alive and in command than he would be dead and in the ground.

Update 9/5/03 4:10 PM ET: Actually, the Iraqi insurgents should probably worry about whether Rumsfeld will get fragged by his own troops:

U.S. Troops Want Rumsfeld to Send Them Home

I don't give a damn about Rumsfeld. All I give a damn about is going home," Specialist Rue Gretton said, humping packs of water bottles on his shoulders from a truck.

"The only thing his visit meant for us was we had to clean up a lot of mess to make the place look pretty. And he didn't even look at it anyway," Gretton said after soldiers swept the dusty streets around the complex of lakes and mansions ....

When the Armed Forces Network showed earlier footage of Rumsfeld saying that fresh U.S. troops were unnecessary in Iraq, soldiers at the base threw their hands in the air and shouted "No way" at the television.

Thanks to Joanna for the tip.

Posted by billmon at 12:43 PM | Comments (33) | TrackBack
I Hate The New Republic

Apparently, they didn't think their Lieberman sock puppet was tough enough on Dean last night. So one of their minions decided to get in a little sissy kick, too:

SWEAR TO TELL THE TRUTH
by Spencer Ackerman

On the defining issue to his liberal base--his opposition to the war in Iraq--Dean shifted not an inch of ground. As every candidate on the Albuquerque dais urged the internationalization of the occupation through a hopefully forthcoming U.N. resolution, Dean managed to offer the single worst policy option: Not only do the new troops on the ground need to be foreign troops, he said, but "ours need to come home."

We'll leave aside the fact that Dean was talking about the need to restore a normal rotation that would allow at least some of the troops now in Iraq to come home before they're old enough to retire. Even taking Ackerman's interpretation at face value, since when does "shifting not an inch" on a core issue become an act of dishonesty?

Since the neolibs started freaking out about Dean, apparently:

Dean preceded his McGovernesque declaration with the promise never to send soldiers into battle "without telling the truth" to the American people. He should also resolve never to bring troops home without doing the same.

You know, I'm not really that big of a Dean fan, but the more these sorry sons of bitches pile on, the more I start thinking, "He's my guy."

Update 9/5 11:53 AM ET: Now I really hate them:

POLICY TRADE-IN

In last night's debates, Joe Lieberman pounced on a recent statement in The Washington Post where Howard Dean seemed to say that he would not maintain free trade with countries that don't uphold U.S. environmental and labor standards--regardless of their level of development ...

Lieberman noted how problematic this would be, predicting that doing so would lead to a "Dean depression" far worse than the "Bush recession."

This from Mr. Stock Option Fraud -- one of the Senate whores who made Enron/Worldcom/Global Crossing etc. etc. possible.

I'm going to really enjoy watching Lieberman and his TNR boy toys all go down in flaming defeat in the primaries next year.

Posted by billmon at 11:48 AM | Comments (45) | TrackBack
Zinni For President

Ex-Envoy Criticizes Bush's Postwar Policy

"There is no strategy or mechanism for putting the pieces together," said retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, and so, he said, "we're in danger of failing."

In an impassioned speech to several hundred Marine and Navy officers and others, Zinni invoked the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s and '70s.

"My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice," said Zinni, who was severely wounded while serving as an infantry officer in that conflict. "I ask you, is it happening again?"

There's more. Go read it.

To hell with Wesley Clark. If you want a general for president, this guy is the real deal.

Posted by billmon at 02:07 AM | Comments (37) | TrackBack
September 04, 2003
Party Animals

This just in:

Candidates Realize Democratic Primary Voters Can't Stand Bush
Kerry: "Why Didn't Someone Tell Me Earlier?"

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M - Democrats who want to replace President Bush welcomed the president's decision to finally seek United Nations' help in stabilizing postwar Iraq, but argued Thursday that he should have done it earlier and his delay has jeopardized U.S. relations around the world.

Now Bush must "go back to the very people he humiliated," said former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who by the luck of the draw got the first question at a televised debate among eight of the nine Democrats seeking the party's presidential nomination.

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts said that "the swagger of a president who says 'bring 'em on' does not bring our troops peace or safety."

And former House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri said, "We have a president who has broken up alliances that Democratic and Republican presidents have put together over 70 years."

Democratic debates just ain't the same without the circular firing squad ...

Update 9/5 12:50 AM ET: I didn't actually watch the debate (whaddya think I am, some kind of political junkie or something?), but I understand Lieberman took off the latex "human" mask and revealed his inner reptile, making some kind of crack about a "Dean Depression." I'm sure the New Republic crowd is mighty proud of you, Joe.

But the media spin, as far as I can tell, is all "Dems Bash Bush", which is precisely what I want to hear. Hardly anybody (except those pathetic strung-out political junkies) actually watched the debate, so the major impact will be through the after-the-fact press coverage. And the more times I hear Gephardt's "this president is a miserable failure" line repeated on the tube, the happier I will be.

To paraphrase the old saying: What the TV tells me 30 million times must be true.

Now let's just check and see if C-SPAN is rerunning the debate. Just a taste. That's all I need. (taps vein in arm) Just a little push to get me through the night ...

Posted by billmon at 09:13 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
As the Worm Turns

A recent screen capture from the Yahoo News home page:

yahoo gates.gif

So that's what a Romanian net worm looks like.

Kind of like a tape worm, except uglier.

Posted by billmon at 08:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
All Sexed Up

No 10 'had ownership' of dossier, memo claims

New documents released to the Hutton inquiry today appear to blow out of the water the government's central defence in their row with the BBC - that the controversial September dossier was always "owned" by the joint intelligence committee (JIC) and not Downing Street.

A memo of a meeting chaired by John Scarlett, the chairman of the JIC, last September - seven days before the dossier was published - states that "ownership lay with No 10".

That contradicts point-blank the testimony of the prime minister, Alastair Campbell - the government's outgoing director of communications - and Mr Scarlett himself."

This would seem to put paid to the notion that the Hutton inquiry has somehow vindicated Blair, or debunked the Beeb's claim that the famous September WMD dossier was "sexed up" by 10 Downing Street to harmonize it with the Anglo-American marketing campaign for the war against Iraq.

Of course, this won't stop the usual suspects from pretending otherwise.

Also, in the Guardian today, British writer Timothy Garton Ash looks at Blair's preoccupation with being an ideological "bridge" between Europe and America:

... the second, deciding reason for Blair's up-front advocacy on Iraq was his conscious strategic choice to remain close to the United States, wherever it chose to take the "war against terrorism". In Blair's view, this was not an alternative to Britain's ties with Europe but the precondition for Britain being a "bridge" between Europe and the US. That strategy had developed during the Clinton years; it informed his unexpected embrace of George Bush in 2001; it was greatly reinforced by the 9/11 attacks; now it would face its hardest test.

But, as Garton Ash himself notes, sucking up to America isn't exactly an innovative British foreign policy strategy. It's the trick that's allowed Britain to "punch above its weight" -- as they used to say -- on the world stage for all these many years, despite its long decline into just another European middle-rank power.

Funny, isn't it, how supposedly idealistic motives -- Third Way, Gladstonian humanitarianism, etc. etc. -- can yield precisely the same result as a brutally realpolitik assessment of national self-interest?

There's a dissertation in foreign relations to be found in that one, I suspect -- if it hasn't been written already.

But, it's still better to be a bridge than an Airstrip One, right?

Posted by billmon at 05:13 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
A Kinder, Gentler Mukhabarat

US recruiting former Saddam agents

The US-led coalition has hired former intelligence agents of Saddam Hussein as it seeks to get tough in the battle against foreign Islamists and loyalists of the ousted dictator, a pro-US faction said.

"They've started recruiting ex-Mukhabarat," said Ali Abdul Amir, spokesman for the Iragi National Accord, a group with longstanding ties to the US defense establishment that counts Iraq's new interim interior minister Nuri Badran among its members.

"The coalition has been recruiting them. Iraqi parties have also been helping recruit," said Abdul Amir.

"Many of them are ex-intelligence officers who went into exile, but others are being tapped from the old regime, as long as it is clear they did not commit abuses against the Iraqi people."

Sure glad they got that straightened out. Wouldn't want any sadistic war criminals working for Uncle Sam. No siree.

(For the full chapter and verse on this, go here and here.)

Posted by billmon at 02:27 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
From Russia With Love?
In Russia, meanwhile, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov gave the first signal that the Russians may send peacekeepers.

"Outright, I do not reject it or rule it out," Ivanov said in televised comments during military maneuvers in the southern Astrakhan region. He said Russia's decision will hinge on U.N. Security Council discussions on the U.S.-proposed draft resolution giving the United Nations a greater role in Iraq.

"It all depends on the specific resolution," the Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.

Now isn't that great news? I mean, look at the splendid job the Russians did keeping the peace in Afghanistan!

Q: Why do jihadists kill Russians before Americans?
A: Business before pleasure.

Update: 9/4 2:00 PM ET: The initial Chinese reaction to the U.S. draft resolution has also been positive, in a vague sort of way:

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said the U.S. offer to share Iraq's postwar reconstruction was in line with the objectives of China, which has "actively participated" in the effort to increase U.N. participation.

"We have all along stood for the early restoration of stability throughout Iraq," Kong said. "We have stood for the important growth of the United Nations in this endeavor." He did not provide details.

Once again, the administration strategy appears to be divide and conquer: Swing the Russians and the Chinese, isolate the Franco-Germans, then put on the full-court press.

This is understandable: Russia is, at best, a quasi-democracy. China isn't any kind of democracy at all. So cutting deals with their authoritarian leaders is an exercise in straight realpolitik -- without any ideological pretensions about "collective security."

China also has other urgent business -- currency issues, North Korean issues -- with the United States. So does Russia. And they both have their own Islamic problems (Chechyna, Xinjiang Uygur). Dirty backroom deals have been built on less.

Will the Coalition of the Unwilling split? Will the Franco-Germans be outmaneuvered by the Mayberry Machiavellis this time?

Stay tuned.

Posted by billmon at 01:27 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Merde

I think I've got my French right:

France, Germany Criticize Iraq Resolution

The leaders of Germany and France criticized a U.S. draft resolution seeking international troops and money for Iraq, saying it falls short by not granting responsibility to Iraqis or a large enough role to the United Nations ...

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac insisted Washington had to go further.

The U.S. plan does not address the "priority objective" — the transfer of power to a homegrown Iraqi government, Chirac said. Schroeder said the draft resolution had brought "movement" into the diplomacy. But he added: "I agree with the president when he says: Not dynamic enough, not sufficient."

Short form:

Chirac: Bite me.

Schroeder: What he said.

Posted by billmon at 01:03 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack
Non-Starter

The AP has posted the text of the American draft of a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq. It's basically a joke.

Once you pare away the obligatory "whereas" and "therefores" and "reaffirming its previous resolutions" etc., you find there's not that much left:

The United Nations, acting through the Secretary General, his Special Representative, and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq, should play a vital role in Iraq, as set out in relevant paragraphs of resolutions 1483 (2003) and 1500 (2003), including by providing humanitarian relief, promoting the economic reconstruction of and conditions for sustainable development in Iraq, and advancing efforts to restore and establish national and local institutions for representative governance.

This would give the Security Council nothing it doesn't have already (which is nothing.) It simply reaffirms the original toothless resolution passed in May, which recognized the U.S. as the occupation authority in Iraq, and the equally insipid August resolution which "welcomed" the creation of the Governing Council. It would give the U.N. no additional political power in Iraq, no control over the reconstruction effort (such as it is), and no authority over U.S. proconsul Paul Bremer.

The draft goes on to "invite" the Governing Council to "cooperate" with the U.N. Representative (and the Coalition) in preparing a new constitution and holding elections for a new government.

And what role, exactly, would the U.N. Representative play in this political process? He or she would focus on "the facilitation of national dialogue" and "assisting the Iraqi interim administration to rejoin the international community."

Then comes the "money" paragraph, such as it is:

Authorizes a multinational force, under unified command to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq and urges Member States to contribute assistance, including military forces, to that effort.

We all know under whose "unified command" the force will be placed. As this story in the Washington Post puts it, the U.S. draft would:

... set up something unprecedented in U.N. history: a multinational force with a United Nations mandate in a country where the world body does not have political control or a say over who has political control.

This, of course, would follow the equally unprecedented May resolution, which gave U.N. recognition to an occupation government created by a war the U.N. never authorized.

The new draft goes on to urge U.N. member states -- and the IMF and the World Bank -- to throw money at the Governing Council, which is, it says, "the principal body of the Iraqi interim administration," notwithstanding the fact that the members were handpicked by the Americans and are subject to an American veto of all their major decisions.

The only specific requirement imposed on the U.S. military command by the new draft resolution is a requirement that it report back to the Security Council "not less than every six months."

It is difficult to see how anyone in their right mind could mistake this draft for a serious offer -- much less a serious change in the status quo. But the usual diplomatic sources are making the usual diplomatic sounds:

Germany's U.N. Ambassador Gunter Pleuger said his country wanted to see a "central role for the United Nations and if that is the outcome of a new resolution we will welcome that."

And France's deputy U.N. ambassador, Michel Duclos, said Paris wanted a timetable that would signal the end of the occupation of Iraq.

Meanwhile, the usual Bush administration sources are making their usual obnoxious and arrogant sounds:

U.S. officials were firm no actual control was being relinquished, a stance that would make passage of the resolution more difficult. "If you look at the way thinks are now, you've got different countries providing force and coordinating with the U.S. command. That in practical terms wouldn't change," a State Department official said.

So what's going on here? Some theories:

  1. The administration, as usual, is negotiating in bad faith. It has absolutely no intention of actually cutting a deal with the Security Council, it only wants to make a pretense of an effort, in order to gain a little political cover at home and -- maybe -- give the Indians or the Pakistanis or the Turks enough cover at their homes to fork over some troops.

  2. The administration (or at least Colin Powell) believes it is in a weak negotiating position. Like any smart negotiator, it's opening with an ridiculously low offer, in hopes of limiting the concessions it inevitably will have to make.

  3. The administration remains effectively gridlocked. While Powell has won the battle to the return to the U.N., the neocons continue to hold a veto over exactly what the United States is prepared to offer. And they aren't prepared to offer much of anything -- except puerile rhetoric and increasingly lunatic ideas, like handing Iraq over to Ahmad Chalabi.

  4. The administration figures the Europeans (or at least, the Russians and the Germans) are so desperate to get back into the good graces of Uncle Sam, they'll sign just about anything that's put before them. Nobody can afford to see Iraq implode into a failed state, so -- for the moment, at least -- the other Security Council members will bow to inevitability and follow the U.S. lead.


I will leave it to you to decide which (if any) of these scenarios might be correct. But since #2 assumes the administration is in some way "smart," I think we can probably rule it out. On the other hand, while there are reasons for thinking the U.S. negotiating position has at least some strength, I don't think Scenario #4 is especially plausible, either.

That leaves #1 (negotiating in bad faith) and #3 (gridlock.) (Shrugs) Maybe they're both true.

Posted by billmon at 01:19 AM | Comments (48) | TrackBack
September 03, 2003
The Stab in the Back
A house divided against itself cannot stand. A nation where the political opposition stands against our foreign policy, and even secretly (and not so secretly) hopes for its failure, cannot reform a region as recalcitrant as the Middle East ... Our culture war is real. Now it has taken its toll. In many ways we are strong. Yet disunited we are weak. Our turning to the U.N. is not necessarily a disaster. But it is a sign that our internal divisions have finally exacted a cost.

Stanley Kurtz
National Review Online
September 3, 2003


In reality, of course, there had been no treachery, no stab-in-the-back. This was a pure invention of the Right, a legend the Nazis would use as a central element of their propaganda armoury. Unrest at home was a consequence, not a cause, of military failure. Germany has been militarily defeated and was close to the end of its tether -- though nothing had prepared people for capitulation ... The society which had seemingly entered the war in total patriotic unity ended it completely riven -- and traumatized by the experience.

Ian Kershaw
Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris
1998

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Andrew Now and Then

Andrew now:

THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER LANDING: Can we all now agree that that was the dumbest political gesture of the last two years?

Andrew Sullivan
The Daily Dish
September 2, 2003

Andrew then:

THE SPEECH: I'm pretty sure it was an effective campaign speech. The president is exactly right to remind people of the war that began on September 11; he's right to connect the liberation of Iraq to that event; he's right to remain vigilant; and to embrace the new concept of a war that can break a regime while freeing a people with a minimum of civilian casualties. i deeply admire his determination and clarity, and felt goosebumps at certain moments.

Andrew Sullivan
The Daily Dish
May 2, 2003

Andrew now:

We hear two refrains from the White House: a) everything is going fine, actually; and b) this new intensity of terror in Iraq is a good thing because it helps us fight the enemy on military, rather than civilian, terrain. The trouble that we're discovering is that a full-scale anti-terror war is not exactly compatible with the careful resusictation of civil order and democratic government, is it?

Andrew Sullivan
The Daily Dish
September 2, 2003

Andrew then:

Being based in Iraq helps us not only because of actual bases; but because the American presence there diverts terrorist attention away from elsewhere. By confronting them directly in Iraq, we get to engage them in a military setting that plays to our strengths rather than to theirs'. Continued conflict in Iraq, in other words, needn't always be bad news. It may be a sign that we are drawing the terrorists out of the woodwork and tackling them in the open.

Andrew Sullivan
The Daily Dish
July 3, 2003

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The Boss is Never Wrong
In turning to the United Nations, the administration was modifying its strategy for postwar Iraq. But Powell said a U.N. resolution "is all part of the president's strategy of making sure that this is an international operation."

It's going to be vastly amusing watching the Politburo (and the Inner Party members) try to spin this as something other than a humiliating course correction for the U.S.S. Shrub. Powell seems to be taking first crack at it.

Update 9/3 9:50 PM ET:From today's White House press briefing:

Q: Why does the administration reverse course and decide to seek a new U.N. resolution on Iraq?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, Bill, first of all, I disagree with the premise there. I think that this is a continuation of what we have been doing.

But then, everything they do is a continuation of what they've been doing, right?

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Playing With Fire

US troops move to disarm Iraqi firebrand cleric's guard

NAJAF, Iraq, Sept 3 (AFP) - US troops moved to disarm the volunteer guard of anti-US firebrand Moqtada Sadr on Wednesday but were thrice rebuffed, a spokesman for the Shiite Muslim cleric told AFP.

"Today around 3:00 pm (1100 GMT), the Americans came up to Sadr's house in three armoured cars and demanded that the special guard hand over its weapons but they refused," spokesman Qais al-Khazali told AFP.

"The Americans left and came back with Iraqi police officers who in turn demanded that the guards disarm but they too were rebuffed," he said.

"The Americans came again but, seeing a large number of Sadr supporters around the house, they left, perhaps to get reinforcements" ...

About 200 men, many of them armed, gathered outside Sadr's house late Wednesday afternoon.

I don't have any clear idea what's going on in Iraq. I'm just making educated guesses, based on what's reported in the media and my own sense of the situation. But it's been obvious for some time that the Coalition is itching to go after Sadr. In the wake of the Najaf bombing, maybe the decision to strike has been made.

Or (more likely) this may be another timid half-way measure -- not so much a strike as a warning shot. Maybe it's connected in some way with the fiery speech that Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, brother of the martyred cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, made at the Ayatollah's funeral yesterday.

BTW, accounts of that speech, in which Abdel-Aziz denounced the Americans and called for an end to the occupation, appear to have been almost systematically removed from the web, with the previous files either replaced with different stories or toned down beyond all recognition. Only USA Today -- always the last to get the word -- still has something resembling the original report posted on its site.

Anyway, Abdel-Aziz held a press conference today in which he promised not to attack Coalition forces and said he would continue to cooperate with the occupation. He indicated, however, that his Badr Brigade militia, which is no longer even pretending to have been disarmed by the Americans, would continue to operate openly, and would "defend Iraqi interests."

This raises many possibilities. Perhaps the Coalition believes that if it disarms Sadr, Abdel-Aziz will also disarm his people. This would be about par for the course in terms of the utter naivete the Americans have shown so far.

Or, maybe the Coalition has decided to put all its chips on Abdel-Aziz and the Badr Brigade, in hopes of preventing, or at least discouraging, a Lebanon-style proliferation of armed militias. Abdel-Aziz, after all, is still inside the tent, pissing out. Sheikh Sadr is outside, pissing in.

Or, maybe the Coalition has decided that since it can't really do anything about any of this, it will make a few ineffectual gestures at disarming Sadr. But in situations like this, ineffectual gestures are usually worse than no gestures at all. The Coalition's timidity only reinforces the sense that the situation is slipping out of control -- forcing all the parties to scramble to protect themselves. Provoking Sadr, without dealing decisively with him, can only make a bad situation worse.

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The End of the American Century?
The Bush administration has abandoned the idea of giving the United Nations more of a role in the occupation of Iraq as sought by France, India and other countries as a condition for their participation in peacekeeping there, administration officials said on Wednesday ...

"The administration is not willing to confront going to the Security Council and saying, 'We really need to make Iraq an international operation,"' said an administration official. "You can make a case that it would be better to do that, but, right now, the situation in Iraq is not that dire."

U.S. Abandons Plan for Greater U.N. Role in Iraq
New York Times
August 13, 2003


In an effort to win broader international support for U.S. policies in Iraq, President Bush decided yesterday to seek U.N. Security Council approval of a resolution granting the world body greater control over multinational peacekeeping forces and a role in forming a new Iraqi government, administration officials said.

Central to that effort is winning more pledges from other governments to send troops to Iraq to ease the burden on U.S. forces, who have come under daily attacks for weeks and are struggling to contain a recent outbreak of bombings against institutions supporting the U.S. effort. "We need the forces," a senior administration official said.

U.S. Wants Larger U.N. Role in Iraq
Washington Post
September 3, 2003


I guess we really can stop calling them "freedom" fries. And that crack about the "cheese eating surrender monkeys?" We didn't mean it. Honest. We're allies, right? Old buddy, old pal, mon cher?

Now about that donation to the Iraq Reconstruction Fund ...

Someday this just might be seen as one of those big historical moments -- comparable in a sense to the day in February 1947 when the British informed the U.S. State Department they could no longer meet their defense commitments to either Turkey or Greece. Britain was overstretched and broke. America would have to pick up the burden of defeating communism in the eastern Mediterranean -- and across Europe, for that matter. The era of the Pax Britannia had ended; the Pax Americana had begun.

Things aren't nearly as dire for America now as they were for the Brits back then. But the symbolism still can't be avoided: For the first time in America's history as a superpower, a U.S. administration has been forced -- against its will, and after making at least a half-hearted effort to avoid it -- to seek the aid of the lesser powers in a war it can no longer afford to fight alone.

You might argue the same was true in Gulf War I, which had to be financed by a previous incarnation of the Coalition of the Billing. The difference, however, is that the Bush I administration understood it's much better to seek such aid voluntarily -- and make a virtue out of the necessity -- than it is to be forced to the bargaining table by your own weakness.

And so all that tough talk by the neocons -- about an America that can pick and choose its allies, ignore global opinion, define its own rules and make war on its own terms -- is exposed as a monumental fraud. The neocon men, it seems, were conned by their own rhetoric.

Power, a good friend recently remarked, is an odd thing -- it's most impressive when it isn't being used. A wise hegemon goes to great lengths to conceal the true extent of its power. It always leaves something in the tool kit, so to speak, so that enemies and allies alike can never be sure exactly what's in there.

But the Bush Administration has let the cat out of the bag. It has exposed to the world the limits of U.S. military power -- both in terms of the size of the forces (divisions, troops) and the relative ineffectiveness of those forces on a complex social and political battlefield like the one America faces in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.

Even more to the point, Bush has signaled that the financial and political burdens of unilateralism are simply too great for any U.S. administration to carry for long. Forced to choose between greater mobilization at home (more troops, less tax cuts) and compromise abroad, Bush appears to have opted for the latter.

These events no doubt will be noted, and closely studied, by friend and foe alike.

America is still a superpower. It can and will, I'm sure, drive a hard bargain at the U.N. Security Council. The security of the Persian Gulf is critical to all the powers, not just the United States. Ironically, the very scope of the U.S. failure in Iraq may give the administration leverage, since it increases the risk that instability could spread, disrupting the oil supplies upon which the entire world depends.

The neocons have suffered a major defeat, one that could disrupt, if not derail, their grand strategy for the Israel and the Middle East. But they have not been driven from power. They will regroup, and intensify their own guerrilla war against Colin Powell and the State Department. This, too, could actually strengthen the U.S. negotiating position, since presumably our "allies" will understand the limits of what Bush can accept, given his vulnerability on the right.

But a watershed, of sorts, seems to have been crossed. America is still a superpower, but she is no longer a hyperpower -- a law unto herself. Which means the post-Cold War era -- that relatively brief moment when the American Century reached its zenith -- may have just ended.

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September 02, 2003
Little Shop of Horrors

While I was in Seattle on vacation I chanced upon a wacky little store named Archie McPhee -- a kind of Wal-Mart of the cheap and tacky, stuff so awful it's good, if you know what I mean. Anyway, they had some great postcards made from posters for old horror movies and dime novels. And, of course, I started thinking about how they could be, um, improved, and, well ...

captain satan.gif


Condi.gif


bush tomb.gif

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The Last Refuge of the Incompetent

I would urge everyone to take a quick look at Paul Wolfowitz's op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal, which the greed heads at Dow Jones have graciously made available, for free, on-line. But don't bother reading it closely, because the headline says it all:

Support Our Troops

The text is simply another dose of the same bizarre mix of rationalizations we've been hearing from the administration for the last several months, in which Iraq is (simultaneously) both a beacon of peace and democracy in the Middle East and a savage battlefield upon which the American military can finally lay waste to its enemies. A village, needing to be destroyed to be saved. Or saved to be destroyed. Or whatever.

The tone is also the same sacchrine mix of querulousness and self-pity --"Oh, those awful terrorists, they don't fight by the rules! It's not fair!"

That's why they call them terrorists, Paul.

What's missing -- entirely -- is any sense of strategic, or even tactical, direction, any hint of how the administration proposes to get itself (and America) out of the royal mess it has created in Iraq. Apparently, moral posturing and feeble platitudes (accompanied by the usual phalanx of lies) are an adequate substitute for policy, at least in the neocon universe.

And so it finally boils down to what this sort of mindless propaganda usually boils down to: Support the troops. Don't give aid and comfort to the terrorists. Don't be a disloyal American. Don't ask questions. Don't think.

Support the troops.

Well, considering how the neocons hopelessly misjudged the strength of the insurgency, low-balled the forces required to deal with it, saddled the Army with incompetent civilian contractors who can't even deliver enough water (in the middle of the desert, no less), bungled negotiations with the countries that might be able to provide reinforcements, stalled on bringing the U.N. on board, and -- last but hardly least -- repeatedly lied about when the troops now in Iraq might finally be relieved ...

If Wolfowitz took his own advice seriously, he'd resign.

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Baghdad's Finest

Truck Bomb Explodes Outside Baghdad Police Headquarters

The police chief, Hassan Ali, was not in the office when the bomb went off in a parking lot about 20 feet from his window, said Col. Ismael Hussein, who was investigating the explosion ...

Colonel Hussein said the Chevrolet pickup truck had been towed to the compound by the city's traffic police, a separate force that uses the parking lot to store impounded vehicles.

The police guard manning the checkpoint at the entrance to the compound, which included a police academy, failed to perform the requisite search, Colonel Hussein said.

"The guard said he thought the traffic police had already searched it," Colonel Hussein said. The police intended to investigate who in the traffic police was responsible for delivering the car to the lot, and how it came to be parked so near the chief's office, Colonel Hussein said.

"Anyone entering the compound would have had to show a police badge," he said. "We have many questions to ask."

Looks like it's time to send in the professionals ...

keystone.gif

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Pictures at an Exhibition

A few months ago a very talented artist with a knack for political caricature sent me some samples of his work, which I posted here at Whiskey Bar. For reasons of his own, this person had chosen to remain anonymous. He has, however, sent me several additional portraits of the fine civil servants (you hear that, Mr. Ashcroft?) currently running the U.S. government. So I'd like to share them with you.

There's no caption contest, this time. But if you think of some good ones, post 'em anyway.

bush on deck.gif

condi2.gif


ashcroft.gif

bremer.gif

Cheney.gif

Rove.gif

wolfowitz.gif

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September 01, 2003
Over the Hump
Senior U.S. commanders here are so confident about their recent successes that they have begun debating whether victory is in sight. "I think we're at the hump" now, a senior Central Command official said. "I think we could be over the hump fairly quickly" -- possibly within a couple of months, he added.

U.S. Adopts Aggressive Tactics on Iraqi Fighters
Washington Post
July 27, 2003


A new series of major raids in northern Iraq against supporters of Saddam Hussein's government and criminal operatives is the first wide-scale use of a revamped American strategy in which troops carry out more precise attacks instead of broad sweeps, American commanders say ...

Iraqis had complained that the big sweeps the military had conducted as recently as mid-July were rounding up not only Baathists and criminals, but also ordinary Iraqis. As a result, General Abizaid and his top field commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, decided that the larger operations were becoming counterproductive.

G.I.'s Shift to More Precise, Smaller Raids
New York Times
September 1, 2003


U.S. battlefield casualties in Iraq are increasing dramatically in the face of continued attacks by remnants of Saddam Hussein's military and other forces, with almost 10 American troops a day now being officially declared "wounded in action."

The number of those wounded in action, which totals 1,124 since the war began in March, has grown so large, and attacks have become so commonplace, that U.S. Central Command usually issues press releases listing injuries only when the attacks kill one or more troops. The result is that many injuries go unreported ...

Kiley said rocket-propelled grenades and mines can wound multiple troops at a time and cause "the kind of amputating damage that you don't necessarily see with a bullet wound to the arm or leg."

The result has been large numbers of troops coming back to Walter Reed and National Naval Medical with serious blast wounds and arms and legs that have been amputated ...

Number of Wounded in Action on Rise
Washington Post
September 2, 2003

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